bigpondlatest

Hi everyone, welcome to episode two of the iGaming SEO show. My name’s Alan, I’m the SEO Manager at Big Pond Digital, and I’m joined today by Ari Purnas.

How are you doing?
Good — new year, good Christmas break. Had a good two weeks relaxing, not doing much. Checked a few emails in between, as tempting as that always is. But back to it. Ready to go. A full new year of iGaming.

Setting the scene for 2025
I always love chatting to you about iGaming specifically because you’re experienced in it and you’ve been in the game for a long time. There’s so much to talk about right now — not just in iGaming but in SEO in general. The buzzword is obviously AI, and just how big an influence it’s having. I’ve been doing this for 18 years and it’s constantly changing, but the last year had a lot packed into it. Loads to unwrap over the next few episodes.

Is the cost of entry going up for iGaming?
Now that we’re in a new year, it seems fitting to look at things a bit broader — overall trends, entry points, lesser-known brands trying to get in and grow their visibility. My first question is: do you feel like the fundamentals of SEO are actually changing, or is the cost of entry just going up?
The cost of entry for iGaming is definitely going up. It’s just becoming more and more competitive year on year. I remember back in 2011 doing affiliate marketing — to rank on page one for competitive terms like roulette and blackjack, the investment wasn’t that much at all. You needed an exact match domain, a decent content strategy, and a bit of link spend. I think I put something like four or five grand into one affiliate site in total and it was generating six figures. Those days are over, sadly.
But there are other ways in if you get creative — if you focus on a niche, if you have a unique selling point, a specific tool, or a community you can build around. The landscape has changed and you need to adapt.
In terms of the fundamentals, the core things are still the same: technical SEO, good content, links. What’s changed is there’s an added layer on top of that with AI. It’s not entirely new ground, but there are things we used to do that now need more emphasis and attention. The basics remain, but the landscape is different.

Does AI make things easier or harder for smaller brands?
It’s a mixed bag — a bit of both. It makes it easier to automate things that used to take up a lot of admin time, which is a big deal for smaller teams with limited resource. But at the same time, it means things get saturated faster. Websites are popping up everywhere, people are pumping out content at scale, and just because you can automate something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or that it’s actually going to work.

It’s about using those AI tools to your advantage and being creative with them. And in iGaming specifically, trust signals are huge — people forget that. You’re talking about people’s money. Google is going to be strict on that. Money or your life, I think that’s what they refer to it as. So getting your trust signals nailed and your content right is more important than ever.

It’s a congested space

It’s such a congested space for smaller brands trying to rank. You’re not just competing against other operators — you’re up against affiliates, bigger brands, black hat sites, regulatory constraints, licensing. It’s a combination of everything.

And for a lot of keywords, affiliates actually outrank operators. That must make it particularly difficult for new entrants. It is difficult. Most operators when they launch focus on getting traffic through affiliates — negotiating tenancy deals to get listed on sites that already have the audience. But what a lot of them neglect while they’re building that affiliate channel is their own SEO. It becomes very easy for an affiliate with a strong link profile to outrank you even for your own brand terms, never mind something highly competitive like “online casino.” They can just swoop in and rank second with a compelling CTA, and it’s relatively straightforward for them to do that.

Have backlink prices risen overall?
Overall, yes. I remember a few years ago doing our own outreach and finding webmasters who didn’t really know the true value of their site. That’s changed — webmasters now understand what links are worth. A lot of them also have deals with networks and middlemen that push prices up further. We tend to go direct, but the prices have still increased because people understand how much operators and affiliates actually make. You do occasionally get someone come back with a figure like seven grand for a single link, which is a hard no — they’re just throwing it out there — but someone must be paying it because they keep sending those emails.

Going back to around 2010 or 2011, when I worked in-house as an SEO manager for a casino, you could get links for as cheap as $20. We used to measure things by PageRank back then. The brand I was working for had a £10k monthly budget for tech, content, and links combined, and I’d struggle to spend it — because at $20 a link, that’s an effectively infinite pool of spend. Some of the higher tier links were obviously more expensive, but there were opportunities everywhere.

That was also when I first got the bug for affiliate marketing. I sat across from an affiliate manager who was also my boss, and he’d casually mention what some of these affiliates were pulling in. There was one guy with about 10 or 15 websites that looked like they were built in the nineties — heavy on content, entire link profiles made up of directory links bought from services like Directory Maximiser. The commissions we were paying him were around £100k a month across 15 brands. The websites were basically dead by then, just accumulating players over time. The guy was in his thirties and retired. That was the lightbulb moment for me.

Black hat sites are back
What actually surprises me is that black hat sites are back in the SERPs. There was a period where you didn’t really see them much, but over the past year or so they’ve crept back. A lot of it is expired domains — sites that used to be car websites or charity sites, with strong authority built up over years. Someone buys the domain, repurposes it into a black hat affiliate site, builds links to it, and ranks. I’ve seen people spending £40,000 or £50,000 on these domains. What’s strange is they’ll spend that kind of money and then put almost no effort into the UX — the sites look terrible. But the average user isn’t thinking about that. They’re just searching, they come across it, they click it. And apparently it’s working, because they keep showing up.

The algorithm feels like it’s a bit of a mess at the moment. It’s history repeating itself — patterns you’d typically associate with ten years ago are back. The SERPs are volatile. In iGaming specifically, because it’s so competitive, you’ve got black hats pushing, brands pushing, sites getting removed, DMCA actions, DDoS attacks — it’s constantly moving, especially at the top end of the keyword landscape.

Content strategy for operators
What would your advice be to a newer operator wanting to rank through content?

For an operator, you’re a bit more restricted than an affiliate, but you can still carve a niche. If your main focus is live casino, for example, you could produce content around live dealer experiences, introduce the dealers, cover the studio — there are loads of angles. But before any of that, the basics need to be right, and that’s something I see multiple brands failing at.

A lot of operator sites are primarily client-side rendered, which means when Google crawls them, it doesn’t see much. There’s a crucial crossover between tech SEO and content that operators especially need to get right — making sure Google can actually see and index your content in the first place. Get that sorted first, then focus on building unique content with a clear angle. And I wouldn’t go chasing quick wins by scaling AI content at volume. That’s not a sustainable approach.

You have to be realistic as a newcomer. You’re not going to rank for “online casino” or “slots” straight away — it’s just not going to happen. You need to look at what niche you can go hard into. Game providers are a good example. You could pick someone like Pragmatic Play — one of the biggest names in the space — and write in depth about the history of the company, what makes their games unique, why players trust them. It’s about picking the right battles.

One thing that’s actually worked well for us is slot game descriptions, served in a format that AI systems can pick up too — structured with schema so it’s easy for engines to interpret. We also found that writing a piece like “five Pragmatic Play slots paying out big in Canada” — something with a real hook — performed far better than expected. It’s now one of our top ten most clicked pages. And the great thing about casino content compared to sportsbook content is it’s evergreen. Sportsbook is time-sensitive — you’ve got a window. Casino content you can write it, let it do its job, and it keeps working.

Picking the right battles and gap analysis
The biggest mistake we made early on was going almost exclusively after slots content. There were benefits — we rank pretty well for slot terms now — but you really need to cover the full picture. We’re now writing more about blackjack, roulette, poker. The volume isn’t as high as slots, but it’s important for backing up the overall topical authority. It shows Google you offer everything.

In terms of gap analysis, it’s about analysing the volume in your specific market, then looking at who ranks for the gaps you want to target and what their link profile looks like. If you find an opening that looks relatively uncontested, go for it and see how you perform. When new brands come to us wanting to rank for “online casino” with five backlinks, competing against sites that have had 10,000 links for the past 15 years, the first job is just setting realistic expectations.

Algorithm updates in iGaming
Do iGaming sites get hit harder by Google updates than other industries?

The SERPs are tracked daily and the changes are constant. In iGaming, because it’s so competitive, even a standard update can create big swings. Usually when you hear about an update, you log into your rank tracker and your Search Console and it’s panic stations. The last update was actually a nice change — all our clients got a bump, which felt like a reward for doing the right things consistently over the previous months. But it can always go the other way.

AI overviews and entity building
How much should website owners care about AI overviews and targeting AI answers?

Compared to a few years ago, when you could get away with a faceless website with no social presence and no listings elsewhere, it’s now much more about building a real brand. Google and other engines need signals to actually interpret authority — so you need listings on relevant sites, a knowledge panel if you can achieve it, social channels set up properly, Reddit presence, Trustpilot. There’s a checklist of things you need to tick to demonstrate that you’re building a brand and not just another site.

For FAQs and structured answers, the approach is similar to what worked in the past — tools like AlsoAsked are still useful for building topical authority. The SERPs change quickly though. Things that felt essential a year ago can shift in importance rapidly. It comes back to building a brand rather than just a website.

Do you think people underestimate the entity side of things — building presence off their own site?
Yes, definitely. People immediately default to thinking about what’s on their site and what links they’re building to it. The off-site brand-building piece is still underestimated by a lot of people in the space.

Hi, welcome to the first Big Pond Digital podcast. We are an SEO agency based in Scotland with a global client base, and we’re starting this podcast to share our experiences in the space.

I’m Dylan, SEO Manager at Big Pond Digital since 2020, and today I’m speaking with Ari, the founder of the company.

Ari, do you want to introduce yourself?
Yeah, hi, I’m Ari, founder of Big Pond Digital. I’ve been involved in SEO since 2008, so quite a long time, and I’ve been running Big Pond since 2018.

What makes iGaming SEO different from traditional SEO?
iGaming is simply super competitive compared to other industries. You get a lot of industries that fall into a certain group — pharma, adult, gambling, finance — all the grey areas that are super competitive. The SEO tactics are slightly different too.

How did Big Pond start in the iGaming space?
Big Pond was formed by accident, really. It was never my intention to run an agency. I started out as an affiliate, running a website that did really well. Off the back of that I built a few more affiliate sites, started going to conferences, meeting people, and got a few of them asking if I could do their SEO. Started with one, then got another, and it just naturally evolved into what it is today. I had to hire staff, do all the boring business stuff that nobody wants to do — but here we are, a few years on, still going strong and growing.

What are the biggest misconceptions people have about SEO in the gambling industry?
I think a lot of people are afraid of it. When I started out in SEO I was working in the fashion industry, lost my job and applied for a role in the gambling space mainly because I wanted a challenge. A lot of people don’t touch it because they think there are dodgy tactics involved — and obviously there’s some of that — but you actually learn a lot too. The gambling space is full of innovators. The tactics we’re using today will filter down to other industries a year or so down the line. That’s why I’m passionate about it. I never had an interest in gambling itself, but I love the industry because it’s competitive, cutting edge, and ahead of the curve.

What does the SERP actually look like for a casino or sportsbook in 2025?
The search results are quite mixed. AI overviews are taking up a big chunk of the real estate. PPC ads are everywhere — yesterday I was looking at my phone and I genuinely couldn’t distinguish between the ads and the organic results. There’s a lot less space to compete in compared to years ago when most people searched on desktop. Now it’s mobile, ads, AI overviews — you need to scroll past all of that before you even find an organic result. It’s a lot noisier and a lot harder to break through.

Are operators at a natural disadvantage?
I think anybody entering the gambling space right now trying to compete online is at a natural disadvantage, especially with a fresh domain. Unless you have very deep pockets — and even then, you’re not going to compete straight away. You’re playing catch-up essentially.
That said, there are still opportunities in certain countries and sub-niches. If you go more specific — crypto gambling, for example — you can grow faster than if you’re targeting something like “online casino” in the UK. I’ve had conversations in the last year where brands have come to us with those ambitions and our answer has basically been: you’re going to need £400k and come back to me in two years.

How do regulations and compliance impact SEO strategy?
The UK is particularly tough right now. It’s super strict, very competitive, and there’s not a lot of room to manoeuvre even for established brands. It’s a good thing in many ways, but it is restrictive. For other countries, different laws apply, so you really need to research the regulatory landscape thoroughly before deciding which market to focus on.

What goes into ranking for high-volume, high-intent terms?
A lot of patience, first and foremost. You need CMOs who actually understand the industry and how long SEO takes — and the investment it requires. Good communication between the agency and in-house SEOs is key. Beyond that, you need solid technical foundations, content, and links all working together. UX matters too, as do things like virality and traffic from other channels. Conversion rates, traffic signals — they all feed into each other.

How much of it is links versus on-page?
Links are a huge part of what we do in iGaming. Once you take good content and solid on-page SEO off the table, what’s left is links. You need a good profile — and it gets very competitive even approaching page one for the big terms. There are tier two links, refreshing old links — a lot goes into it.

What are the brutal realities people don’t want to hear?
It’s a tough sell. When you go to a new brand and say “give us a bunch of money and it’s going to be a year and a half to two years before you see real traction” — that’s a difficult conversation. So we try to ease clients in, but be honest and realistic from day one. How long does it actually take? It depends on the country and the competition. In the UK, a very long time — especially for a new brand. In a more open market, maybe a year. But it always takes time.

What does the link profile of a top iGaming site look like?
Usually it’s a blend. As a brand — or even as an affiliate — you need to be seen as a brand. That means having a presence on social media, bookmarks, review sites, citations, mentions in newspapers, Reddit threads, forums. Then on top of that, the super relevant, high trust flow, topically relevant links. A site that’s ranking well has a strong overall digital footprint — not just the links you’d typically build day to day, but everything a legitimate big brand would naturally have.

Why is link building so expensive in this niche?
It’s expensive everywhere, but iGaming specifically is in a different league. A lot of mainstream publications still won’t link to gambling sites. Because of the nature of the industry, websites have actually popped up specifically to link to operators — and webmasters know how lucrative casino traffic is. They know their worth and they price accordingly. Our job as an agency is to negotiate that down as much as possible, but a lot of them won’t budge — they get so much outreach that they can afford to ignore negotiation entirely.

In a market like Finland, for example, we had to acquire Finnish-language links and they were three or four times the price of a standard link. You could barely negotiate. So sometimes you compensate by going after cheaper .com links to bulk out a profile, then investing in the specific country-level TLD that will actually move the needle.

What separates a high-quality link from a useless one?
A lot of SEOs chase metrics blindly — and you need to remember those metrics come from third-party tools. The first two things I look at are traffic and relevancy. Does the site you want to buy a link from actually have traffic? Is it relevant to your brand? Is the placement going to fit naturally? If you can answer yes to those, you’re off to a good start. After that, look at trust flow, topical trust flow, and work through a checklist if you’re buying at scale.
You also need to keep an eye out for sites where traffic has clearly been pumped in artificially — you can see it in the data, a sharp spike then a crash. And there’s a sniff test too. If a site covers Jenna Ortega’s net worth alongside vitamin advice for elderly people and the latest casino bonuses, it covers everything under the sun. The broader it is, the less topical relevance it has. You can tell straight away.

Have you ever seen a site tank because of bad links?
My own site tanked because of bad links, back in 2012. I was at a conference negotiating a deal when the affiliate manager I was speaking to mentioned, almost in passing, that my rankings had just collapsed — apparently they tracked my rankings hourly. I hadn’t checked in a day because I’d been out the night before. I went back to the hotel and sure enough, I was nowhere to be seen. I managed to recover the site fairly quickly, but it was around the time of the first Google Penguin update, which put a lot of businesses out of business. The site had been built on pretty much pure black-hat links — minimal budget, exact match domain, thin content — and it had ranked well for about a year before it all came crashing down. There were probably 50 similar sites that tanked the same day.

You do learn a lot from it though. That’s when I actually started figuring out how to build something sustainable — not just rank and tank.

If you had £10k to spend on links as a new brand, how would you allocate it?
First, go after all the free links you can get — social profiles, bookmarks, Web 2.0s, citations, any relevant mentions on social networks. Get all of those in place first. Then when it comes to spending the budget, initially focus on building authority to the homepage rather than going deeper into the site. I’d say at least the first six to eight months should be about building that homepage authority, then start diversifying into deeper pages.

What technical issues do you see most often on iGaming sites?
Migrations gone wrong — by a mile. When brands re-platform and don’t have the right planning in place, a lot can go wrong. If SEO is a major traffic driver, you absolutely need a migration plan. That’s where I see most mistakes.

How does site structure impact rankings for competitive terms?
Massively. Everything from picking the right domain to planning the right architecture plays a big role, especially early on when you’re building your brand. If you’re targeting multiple markets, international SEO needs to be sorted from day one — folders, hreflang, everything. What usually happens is brands launch, then go back and try to retrofit it all. It’s far better to have your SEO team involved from the very start. It saves time, money, and a lot of platform tickets that might take six months to get actioned.
Changing a URL without proper planning can wipe out links you’ve built to that page and break all your internal linking in one go. It’s like cutting a thread in a web — it creates a chain reaction. Having everything mapped out in a spreadsheet, knowing where everything lives, having tools to monitor it — that’s how you mitigate the risk.

Do things like schema, page speed, and Core Web Vitals still matter in iGaming?
Absolutely. If you’re spending serious money driving traffic to your site, you want to make sure it loads fast and that the UX is good enough for people to actually convert. Schema helps with search visibility across all engines, including the newer ones emerging right now. And clickstream data is increasingly a factor — if your site is slow or your UX is poor, you get fewer clicks, your rankings drop, and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.
Traffic from other sources is also a ranking signal now. If something goes viral within the industry — even just within that community, not millions of hits — search engines tend to reward it. That wasn’t a priority a few years ago. Now it is.

Can you walk us through an example of a site you turned around?
One case involved a migration that had gone wrong — the client came to us months after the fact. We did a full audit: technical, content, links, everything. All the signals pointed back to the week of the migration. It was a significant client with a big backlink budget, and when we dug into it, the issue came down to key pages that had been ranking for high-value terms having large amounts of content removed when the new site went live.

You can get everything technically right in a migration and still cause major damage by removing or changing content. The lesson is: know exactly where you are before the migration, have everything tracked and mapped, and do a full before-and-after comparison to make sure nothing’s been missed. In this case, the damage had been done for six months before anyone realised what had happened.