Casino Website Promotion: SEO Where It’s Hard

In the sphere of SEO, there are niches that require many times more resources and experience than any others, and online casino promotion is confidently among them. We are talking not only about SEO promotion of casinos in Ukraine: high competition and strict restrictions are found in almost every GEO. Each country has its own laws, requirements for content and advertising tools, so comparing “grey” and “white” verticals directly is pointless.

We have already shared cases where our links help clients reach the top and maintain positions in competitive search results. Now we are working on systematically strengthening the SEO foundation – that very basis which determines how quickly and stably a project can grow.

It is useful to study materials on learningseo.io – it is an excellent structured base for understanding key processes. But our experience shows: in gambling projects, this information is not enough, especially if the task is not just to survive in the search results, but to bypass strong competitors. Here, additional steps are needed that beginners and even experienced specialists rarely include when assessing project potential and forecasting results.

This article is a squeeze from real practice, without retelling banal materials that are easy to find in the English-speaking segment. Here are collected details that most often remain behind the scenes for both beginners and experienced SEO specialists during project evaluation and forecasting. On the example of casino website promotion, these nuances are particularly visible: every calculated detail here can cost the project a place in the top, and every mistake can cost the budget.

Main challenges of casino promotion in 2025

• Strict moderation of paid traffic.Google Ads and social networks increasingly cut casino advertising. In a number of GEOs, advertising is possible only with a license, and sometimes it is blocked entirely. It is almost impossible to enter head-on – SEO, PR placements and careful outreach in relevant media save the day.
• Growth of competition and KD for upper clusters.Queries like online casino [GEO] or best casinos become more expensive in terms of links and require more content. Fast entries into the top work less often, especially with a new domain.
• EEAT and authority.Google has become stricter about quality: real authors with confirmed expertise are needed, transparent information about licenses, payments, a section on responsible gaming. Without this, pages quickly lose positions.
• Filters for links.Anchor over-optimization and obvious networks increasingly catch manual penalties. Now a balanced profile works better: articles, homepages of strong sites, crowd and social links.
• SERP volatility.Updates since the end of 2024 clear out junk content and strengthen requirements for the quality of donors. Positions are held only by those who build in a buffer of trust and quantity of links.
• Behavior and retention.Simply bringing traffic is not enough. If users do not return and enter only from organics – positions will float. Retention points are needed: subscriptions, useful services, additional content.
• Localization and work on different markets.A universal landing page for all countries no longer pulls. For different GEOs – different queries, rules, audience interests. Separate pages and localized content have become the norm.

What is required for ranking and for the TOP in any niche in Google

1. Foundation. Mandatory requirements for participation

• Technical part – https, speed, mobile adaptability, lazy load
• Content (on topic, unique, meeting the requirements of the best analogs on the web)
• Intent. If a user is looking for where to buy a product, they should be able to place an order directly with you or go to where it can be done. If they want to play – give them this opportunity without extra steps. The final goal of the user must be realized on your page, otherwise they will go to a competitor.

2. Trust domain and Topicality

Two key indicators that young domains (up to a year) are in most cases unavailable, and getting them quickly is only possible for serious money – which often makes the project unprofitable at the start.

With topicality everything is simpler – this indicator is easier to define and describe.

If you have a gambling site, it is logical that it should have a structure and content interesting to the user looking for games, slots, betting platforms, reviews, impressions, withdrawals, account verification, KYC.

In fact, if you take an ordinary site, for it to be considered topical, it must have a structure similar to that of sites from the top. Not literally copy, but have a set of articles and materials that are considered basic for working in the niche. One-pagers are harder in this regard – always make at least 4–15 basic topical pages.

With trust domain everything is more complicated. It has many components, and further we will analyze basic points for a gambling site, and at the same time provide examples of how this trust can be synthetically evaluated.

Trust indicators

• History of project creation, authors, references to expertise
• Like in graduation theses – which materials you rely on when forming your thought.
• Presence of organizational and educational links. (incoming, outgoing, cooperation, general programs)

Gambling

• Research and publications from psychology specialists.
• Educational materials on mathematical expectations.
• Sociology and human behavior.
• Topics of excitement and gambling addiction, medical approaches to prevention and control.
• Participation or mention in the work of public organizations helping people with gambling addiction.
• Financial tools and services – gambling is closely related to finance.
• Games in general: gambling is dopamine, similar in mechanics to computer and other games.

If you have links with these areas, then you are a serious player in the market. You can not only advertise a product, but also cooperate with organizations and sites in these industries.

Mini-metrics (quick check):

Indicator	How to measure	Why it is important
DR (Ahrefs)	Through Ahrefs/SEMrush	Reflects link authority
Topicality	Donor content analysis	Increases relevance
Domain age	WHOIS	Old domains rank faster

Contacts and legal aspects of the site

• Ability to contact the site in 2–3 ways to solve any issues.
• Legally mandatory elements: privacy policy, terms of use, cookie consent (especially for Europe) and other notices required by law in your niche.

Social channels and behavioral factors

How you work with traffic, what % returns to the site not through SEO channels.

It is important what actions besides the transition to the affiliate program the user can take on your site. These signals are read by Chrome and Google services – and in perspective without them the project will grow with great difficulty.

This also includes email mailing and work with the base. Social channels – Facebook, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, Telegram – are also part of the overall picture of audience behavior.

Links from trust

What is expensive to buy and hard to get. These are both large media with a PR effect about your site. And niche trusted sites existing for a long time in the niche.

This is about networking in SEO (a good example from the series “Inventing Anna”, she was refused four times until one person received a personal recommendation from their circle. After that, a chain reaction of trust worked, and all those same four agreed to cooperate).

Also Wiki and similar projects belong here. Nofollow also works, especially in terms of crawling and brand mentions. Banners work. Recommendations in X or even mentions in PDF – also a plus.

Each such link gains weight over time. Stood for a month – good, four years – excellent. Therefore, aged domains without resetting the registration date (5–15 years) give the project a serious boost at the start.

Partially trust by links can be estimated through Ahrefs (DR). This indicator is useful at the stage of primary competitor analysis to understand the realism of forecasts, but it cannot be used as an absolute metric.

Case (external): outreach for several GEOs + crowd when advertising is prohibited

Result in 30 days: 87% of links in index, 65% led to target pages.

International casino provider. In part of GEOs there is a ban on direct advertising, so the main emphasis is on SEO and public donors.

Goal: quickly compensate for the drop in incoming traffic without paid advertising.

What was done (in 1 month):

• Placed 100+ outreach links in several countries: Ukraine, Brazil, USA, India.
• Added 50+ crowd links: India, Bangladesh.
• Followed indexing and “pushed” publications (did not leave hanging as dead weight).Result (after 30 days):
• 87% of links – in index.
• 65% of links – lead to target pages, not only to the main page.
• Traffic began to recover from the 3rd week (according to source).Conclusion: variety of GEOs and types of links gives a better effect than a bet on local placements under advertising restrictions. (Source: Luxeo Team, Promotion of a Major Casino Through Link Building)

3. Backlinks profile / Behavioral factors

This is a pure SEO indicator. Link profile – the final element that finishes the goal in the search results. After it remains only work with user behavior on the site. Return and retention.

Any SEO specialist can count the total number of donors to the site, individual quantity and types of links for each page so that it ranks normally. Formulas are simple and do not require long explanations.

Tools for link building and competitor analysis

Tool	What it is really useful for
Ahrefs	Finding donors, checking competitor backlinks, catching fresh brand mentions in the desired GEO.
Majestic	Quick trust assessment, but look with eyes – in gambling it likes to “inflate” networks.
SEMrush	Tracking positions and semantics, especially convenient for several GEOs simultaneously.
Serpstat	Quick link audit + visibility check for keys with low KD.
Hunter.io	Email outreach, weeding out “junk” contacts before mass mailing.

How we use it:

• Filter donors at the entrance. Ahrefs + Majestic: DR ≥ 40, TF ≥ 15, traffic ≥ 5–10k/month. If traffic jumps or comes from one source – we do not take it.
• Monitor anchors. 70–80% – brand/URL, 10–15% – commercial (only on relevant pages), the rest – generic.
• Mix link types. We make the base on article links, add homepages of strong domains for weight, crowd – for naturalness.
• Outreach – with calculation. Response of 12–18% is considered the norm. If the publication is not indexed for 30 days – either we change the site, or we push with social signals or internal links.
• Check donor’s theme. If its top pages are about something else, the link will give us little.

We do not chase quantity. Better 10 live donors with an understandable audience than 50 links for the sake of a checkmark – updates are survived by exactly such.

From our experience in the gambling niche:

• Article links – base.
• Homepages with fat weight – contextual and banner.
• Crowd – natural links from users, UGC.
• Social links – reposts, discussions, mentions.

No need to invent anything: we take the average indicators of anchorness and types of links of top-5 in search results, but plan with a small overtake to not just catch up, but bypass competitors.

Let’s move to practice

Any project – new or already with history – that enters our services, we start with analysis and audit. Then comes the client brief or evaluation of the goals that he has already set. It is at this stage that errors are often laid that later break the entire result – both for the client and for SEO specialists and other project participants.

At the moment of goal analysis, it is important to understand:

• Keywords + GEO
• We look at the search results for queries, compose a trust profile of domains that are in top-10 for these keys.
• Match domain and project with what is in TOP-10
• Create a roadmap to achieve the necessary parameters:
  1. Foundation – necessarily, without this we do not even start.
  2. Trust and topicality – with an overtake of competitors by 20–30% (orient on growth dynamics of top-3).
  3. Link Building – also with an overtake, based on annual market dynamics.

What is overtake?

If competitors in top-10 for key queries have an average DR of 50–60, we plan so as to reach 62–65 DR. This is a serious increase in links, and you need to remember that DR is not a linear formula, but a synthetic indicator.

If it’s about ordinary links, we plan Linkbuilding with an lead: we count not only the current picture, but also the natural growth of competitors. The goal is to come to the future point not “back to back”, but with a buffer, otherwise the time factor will play against you.

Let’s take an example from life

Query – online casino nederland (18000 frequency, KD – 64)

Geo – Netherlands

Average DR – 60, Donors on page – 400

To have real prospects to get there, we target:

• DR (as one of the trust indicators) – 62–63;
• Donors per page (in required types of links) – 500–600+.

I will warn you right away, this is not the PRICE of achieving only this query. We are talking about the development of the site as a whole: dozens of pages and clusters. Usually there are 20–80 such “packages”, and exactly they make up the general growth plan.

Even this one query often lives on pages with 450–3000 keys. This is the tip of the iceberg: the task of SEO is to count frequency, potential of traffic and budget for, say, 12 months; the task of the owner is to estimate monetization and evaluate the attractiveness of such a project.

Our conclusions: there is no sense in chasing from scratch into the top for high KD queries. Exception – only if it is a new brand with a million budget (and you really got into such a project).

Case (external): pure link building, nine-month sprint

Result in 9 months: traffic ~3 500 → ~36 000 visits/month (+930%); +143% key phrases in top-1/top-2.

Online casino in USA. Worked without paid advertising, emphasis on link strategy. Budget for links: ~$3 750/month.

Goal: increase organic traffic and share of top positions due to “pure” link building.

What was done (every month):

• Placed 20 contextual links in already existing, indexed relevant materials (DR 20–250).
• Plus 15 links on high-authority domains (DR 200+).
• Carefully worked with anchors (without over-optimization with commercial formulations).Result:
• Organic traffic grew from ~3 500 to ~36 000 visits/month (+930%).
• Number of key phrases in top-1/top-2 increased by +143%.Conclusion: mix of contextual links on relevant donors and a thought-out anchor plan give a noticeably faster growth than mass purchases without topicality. (Source: Rhino Rank, Gambling & Casino Case Study)

What to do for projects and young projects?

Need to look for your place in the niche. If we continue talking about the Netherlands market, then:

• Perform project evaluation. Empty domain or with some base. If base exists, we estimate how relevant it is to the niche and whether it can be leaned on. If no base, we calculate how quickly a minimum foundation can be gathered to reach at least top-20 and show the client that work is going on.
• Choose the best semantics for start. We always recommend starting with keys with KD below 10 and presence in top of a number of sites with DR below 30. Exactly a number – one weak domain in search results is not enough. And remember: Ahrefs often does not show PBN networks, so hoping that you will be lucky with DR lower by 2 times, and get into TOP-10 – not worth it.

Example 1

• Few mentions of target key in titles.
• Stable demand for key – this is not PF manipulation.
• Info query for review site – so-so option.

Example 2

• There is a chance to get into top-10 with DR above 42 and sufficient quantity of quality links to target page.

Example 3

• There is search result in DR below 40, few domains, easy to beat.

You can try this option:

Ambiguous, but working method of searching for “easy” queries for the capabilities of a specific domain.

• In search results find a couple of sites that have weak DR (remembering they may have their own networks).
• Further disassemble their structure and look where traffic goes.

Example – www.casinosite.nl/.

Even if it has its own network, it is unlikely to cover the volume of public links. I will assume that upon reaching DR 45–50 and with other things being equal, its structure can be taken as a basis and collect a normal volume of traffic – provided that donors are topical and links go not only to the main page, but also to target URLs.

Its traffic growth is from 06.23, increase of links – from 04.23. There is a correlation: it looks like public links worked (not a fact that all links are visible). We would additionally check anchor distribution, seasonality and GEO to not copy blindly: structure is ok as a landmark, but it needs to be adapted for intent and your resources.

In GEO it is important not only to look at today’s competition, but also at the growth trend of leaders.

Advertising in social networks: Meta (Facebook) and TikTok

In 2025, social networks became a working channel for traffic in gambling, but entering there with “casino” is still not so simple. Meta has tough rules: advertising is allowed only with official approval (wait 1–4 weeks), and even after start there is a risk to fall into ban in a couple of hours if GEO or creative do not match. USA (in legal states), Great Britain, Canada – working markets, but without a clean account and an approved landing page there is nothing to do there.

TikTok is softer, but also with its own troubles: business profile is mandatory, 18+ warnings must be not only on landing page, but also in creative, and Responsible Gaming section – better immediately. Some GEOs (e.g. Poland or Ukraine) allow pouring, but check is still strict. Saw projects that flew in with excellent indicators for installations, and after 2 weeks caught a ban simply because they forgot to add a block with responsible gambling.

Good example – SciPlay campaign for Gold Fish Casino game.

Case (external): UGC in TikTok through TTCC for Gold Fish Casino

Result: CTR +150%, CPI −60%, ROAS on iOS stably +25% (week to week).

Brand SciPlay promoted Gold Fish Casino game. Instead of classic media purchase, they used TikTok Creative Challenge (TTCC).

Goal: lower installation cost and increase efficiency of advertising creatives without “advertising” look.

What was done:

• Set a brief to creators in TTCC and received a pack of UGC videos that look like content of real users.
• Focused on native format: short videos, gameplay demonstration and simple “user-style” stories.Result:
• CTR +150%.
• CPI −60%.
• ROAS on iOS: +25% on weekly base.Important for repetition:
• Prepare account and landing page: 18+, brief Responsible Gaming block, careful formulations (without promises of “easy money”).
• In regions with restrictions – avoid direct call-to-action, focus on UGC and public sites.Conclusion: in gambling UGC format in TikTok through TTCC can be safer and cheaper than “media head-on”, provided correct preparation for moderation. (Source: TikTok For Business – Case Study SciPlay)

Conclusions from all written

For website review or casino owners:

• Count your capabilities from the current point – either yourself, or assign the calculation to an SEO specialist with arguments and specific metrics.
• Estimate investments on a horizon of 6–12 months, forecast potential traffic (with complex promotion of 30–100 pages). Count affiliate rewards – this is your money and your zone of responsibility.
• Plan budget for achieving goals. If there is no resource, there will be no result.
• We honestly say: do not believe forecasts where they promise to get into top-5 for queries with competitor DR around 60, having your DR at the level of 20, in 2–4 months and with a budget of $1000 for links and $1000 for works. Miracles do not happen, and asking the same from specialists is to initially go into failure.

For SEO specialists:

• Do primary evaluation of project by three key points: foundation, trust and topicality, links.
• Do not plan tasks that do not match parameters of current domain and site.
• Count aggregate result immediately for 40–100 landing pages (and more), but only if budget is enough to bring each page to mind.
• Discuss with client real conditions for achieving goals. We are against creating fantastic forecasts that in half a year end in dumping the project because of deliberately unattainable KPIs.

Errors and pitfalls – what exactly not to do

1. Ignore GEO and moderation requirements. Launching an ad in Facebook without gambling approval? Minus account in 24 hours. TikTok without Responsible Gambling section on landing? Block in a couple of days.
2. Aggressive anchors for grey queries. Slapping “play online”, “casino bonus” in every second anchor – a fast way to get under a filter, especially in countries where advertising is prohibited. Balance commercial anchors with diluted ones, otherwise DR even 70 – zero sense.
3. Cloning someone else’s structure without adaptation. Even if you found a site with DR 45 and normal traffic, blindly copying the structure for your domain – a dump. He could have his own PBN, old domains, special internal linking. Without adaptation for your DR and budget – you will get half of his traffic at best.
4. Ignore link indexing. Throwing 200 crowds and fifty outreaches, but not monitoring indexing – means half of budget simply does not work. In gambling niche, where donors are often from grey zones, without forced indexing up to 40 % of links may remain dead.
5. Setting bets without ROI calculation. First we spend on links, then “we’ll see what comes out” – a strategy that in casino ends the same: budget burned, positions did not grow. At DR below 40 and without complex promotion of 40–100 pages, expecting tops fast – useless.

In gambling segment, the price of error is twice as high as in white niches.

Talking about links, we offer link promotion for any project.

In casino niche we make topical placements, articles, homepages. Plus there are networks of general themes, where we can also place a casino. We plan to further deploy our network towards grey niches – the result there is more predictable, and for white projects we use outreach more and more. For international markets our conditions are some of the best on the market, and in Ukraine – the same as on leading exchanges.

Separately – our English-language network on casino, where you can place and get normal trust from relevant sites. We select donors so that they really strengthen the project.

In total in our English-language network – 38 sites strictly on casino and betting. Want to discuss project promotion or order link building for your niche – contact us by indicated contacts. We will select a strategy for specific goals and budget, without template solutions and empty waste of resources.