TRAFFIC
Content audit : what to analyse Content audits should have two goals : 1 . Identify possible issues with the existing on-site content : thin content , unindexable content , duplicate content etc .
2 . Identify the site ’ s content needs for onsite and off-site use ( ie what a site needs to be more appealing to its visitors , and what it needs to attract external links ) Some of the on-site content audit aspects are really SEO 101 but I will repeat them here as many industry sites still don ’ t get them right .
Unindexable content is one of the most difficult issues to diagnose . Many sites , especially older casino brands , use old CMSs built with no regard to crawlability and SEO , and the biggest problem with them is often that no tool used for on-site auditing will even identify the issue . It is not even unlikely that nobody in the organisation will even know that the content in question exists !
Do not just trust the tools — take a careful look at the site manually . For one of my consulting clients , I literally discovered this sort of content by accident . Content hidden behind JavaScript , shown only when a user takes some action and not linked to by a direct HTML link , is likely to be unindexable and therefore uncrawlable by any tools . Yet your site can have literally hundreds of pages of high-quality , relevant content that could have been helping you rank , attract visitors and convert them into depositing players . That content probably cost a lot of money to create — yet you ’ re not getting any benefit from it if it can ’ t be indexed .
Check your site ’ s text-only Google cache — if you can ’ t see your content there , Google likely can ’ t see it either ( see Figure 2 ). Check the page ’ s source code , figure out why and make changes to eliminate indexing problems .
Cross-domain duplicate content is a huge issue for any affiliate-rich industry . If a casino brand is providing game reviews for its affiliates , they better make sure this is not the same content they use on their own site . Feeds , widgets , game rules and
Figure 2 : Google text-only cache of a page
descriptions used on multiple sites will devalue the content on the original site . Do not expect Google to figure out the original source of content , because they have never been particularly good at it . Rather , avoid doing anything that is likely to increase the amount of your content ’ s duplication by other sites . ( Of course , there will always be unscrupulous site owners who will just scrape and steal other sites ’ content and there is no real way to protect yourself against it except for legally copyrighting your content and filing DMCA complaints against perpetrators .) Also , if you are buying games from a provider and using the same game description as every other casino who buys the same games , this is also a source of duplicate content .
On-site duplicate issues are typically discovered during an on-site SEO audit . These could arise from the same content accessible via different URLs ( eg because of the CMS specifics or incorrect setup ). The issue is not unique to the gambling industry so I won ’ t dwell on it much . But one aspect of it more typically seen on online gaming sites seems to be the practice of using the same title for multiple pages , sometimes even the same title for all pages on the site . This also constitutes duplicate content and can cause issues with your site ’ s indexing and ranking . This can affect your clickthrough rate from the SERPs , so treat each title as a brief presentation of its corresponding page — make it relevant for that page so that your potential visitors understand what your page is about and would want to visit it . The same rule applies to meta descriptions — although depending on the query , Google can modify what they show as a snippet for your URL in the SERPs and it may not always coincide with what your meta description is . If this happens , Google uses onpage content or a combination of onpage content and the meta description . Hence , it helps to keep the overall page content consistent .
14 iGB Affiliate Issue 65 OCT / NOV 2017