Hi guys, welcome to the latest iGaming SEO show podcast episode. I’m Dylan at
Big Pond and this is Alan that I’m here with. Um, we haven’t too enthusiastic. [laughter]
We haven’t actually done an episode together yet, so this is very uh unusual, but yeah, I’m looking forward
to our conversation. Yeah, people are going to be wondering where it’s kind of weird [snorts] not seeing face on this. I know he’s the
face of the podcast at this [laughter] point. Sick of him. I know. All these clips of Ari across
the internet at this point. No, I’m sure after I’ve been talking for 10 minutes, they’ll be wanting Ari back. So, we want Ari back as a campaign. Um, but
yeah. No, for this episode, we’re really trying to like peel back the curtain on what it’s like day-to-day to work in iGaming SEO um agency. So, I mean some context straight away if anyone’s new to
this. We are based in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland, but we have a lot of
iGaming clients that are based across the world basically. So, um we’re taking
video calls all the time with people based in Europe, Canada, um South Africa. So, yeah, we definitely
punch above our weight, which is Oh, yeah. Small agency with big results. That’s what we are. Exactly. That’s what we stand by
100%. But, I mean, we’ll just get into it.

So, what in your role do you do at Big Pond day-to-day?

 

Uh, yeah. So, I’ve been working at Big
Pond for gosh, I actually forget now. Almost eight years, I think. Eight, nine years.
It’s funny cuz I always people always ask me that and I’m kind of like I don’t know how long it is. I think it was I
think it was 2017 is when I started, but um basically there’s obviously a lot to SEO, but my main focus really for
clients are um really content and technical. Mhm. So um a bit of link building in the side
as well, but mainly the content and tech stuff. Um so I mean obviously when it comes to
what my actual position is, it’s basically SEO manager. Manager, senior at this point.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Don’t make me sound too old. [laughter] Not age wise, but quality of experience.
Exactly. But um no, I mean really I manage clients on a day-to-day basis. Um
making sure that they’re ranking for what they want in the locations that they want. Um when it comes to the content, the
technical stuff. I mean obviously um anyone who knows SEO listening to this will know that
ranking for trying to rank with content is getting harder and harder. So you have to basically look at it and
sometimes even refresh it every day. All depends on the client and the industry. Um without trying to waffle on too much.
Yeah. Basically my job is to make sure clients content on their site is up to date and technically their websites are
working well. So and obviously the job naturally involves checking rankings on a daily basis, making sure nothing’s
dropped, um checking traffic, conversions, all that kind of stuff. making sure they’re getting their sales, appointments,
bookings, whatever it is. So, that was going to be my question was to sort of peel back what you do on a
day-to-day uh basis.

 

Like, what does a typical day look like for you?

 

Um,
I mean, you’re going to hear this phrase a lot. You’re going to hear the phrase it depends quite a lot. It really does.
Um, I mean, for every client, it’s more or
less the same. I mean content is content but how you write that and how you
approach it differs per client obviously um you know we’re obviously going to
chat a lot about iGaming on this iGaming content is very specific and it has to be written in a certain way
um whereas content for something say like a doctor or dentist um has to be
written a very very different way um but it all comes under the kind of content umbrella if you like um so on the
content side it’s basically um doing a lot of research, writing a lot, um trying to write for specific
keywords uh that we obviously want to rank for. And on the technical side, it’s more about just checking stuff like
um making sure the website can get crawled effectively. Can Google even see what you’re doing? Google can see what you’re doing. Um
making sure it’s fast, easy to use, user-friendly, all that kind of stuff.
All the things that help towards SEO. Yeah. So, thinking back to what you were just
saying, like you can’t even remember how long ago it was.

 

What kind of attracted you to it in the first place?

 

SEO.
[snorts] Well, the funny thing is nothing. No. Like, you better No. So, basically, uh, how I got into
the industry is quite interesting. Like, I didn’t I didn’t know anything about SEO before I applied
to this job. And um you know I’d just finished uni which I did it wasn’t even
marketing um but basically I was just out there looking for a job um saw the
post locally online and uh I kind of read a little bit about it and it was only really when I read the job
description that it kind of occurred to me like that actually sounds really interesting because you know you Google stuff every
day but you don’t really think about how that stuff gets [snorts] there. You know you just Google it and see results and
go okay I’ll go with that one. So when I heard that the job was about actually doing work to get those results, I
thought, “Okay, that’s pretty that sounds pretty cool.” Um, thankfully I was lucky in the sense that Ari was kind
of looking for someone who didn’t really know much about it at all because he was looking for someone to kind of bring on and train up and introduce to it. Um,
and as the days, weeks, months, and years went on, I got more and more interested [snorts] in it. So, and here you are.
Here I am. Yeah. How many years later? We don’t know. We don’t even know. Yeah. It’s a guess to guess eight plus
maybe. I think I’m six. 2020 I joined. It’s good. You know I’m not 6 years old. I joined six years
ago. [laughter] I have no idea. Yeah. I think you were probably like 3 years before me. I’ll work out I work out one day. Yeah.

 

But um building on that, did you actually expect then to work in iGaming specifically if you didn’t even know obviously what SEO was?

 

No. Not at all. No. And I couldn’t have
told you what iGaming was. I’ve I’m I’m as much as I know about casinos
and sportsbooks now, I personally myself, I’m not a bettor, you know, I don’t really gamble. I don’t bet on
sports. I’m interested in sports. I just don’t bet on them. Mainly because I’m scared of losing money. Yeah, I know.
But um it’s Yeah. No, I could not have told you anything about iGaming. Um
obviously for my first say probably four or five years working in SEO, I didn’t work in iGaming at all.
Mhm. Um well maybe a little bit but very very minor. Um I started out working for
um just local clients. So your very small businesses um you know like
finance um as I said like local dentists lawyers all that kind of stuff just a
lot much smaller businesses. Uh it’s probably it’s only really been the last
3 or 4 years that we’ve really expanded into iGaming. Um
but since we’ve done so it’s been it’s been great. You know, I’ve really kind of learned how big an industry is. I mean, I always knew it was a big
industry, but it’s really when you go in deeper into it, you know, and you look at these conferences that you go to and
everything and it’s massive. Like it’s just it’s a it’s a crazy crazy industry. Um, obviously that does mean that if
you’re trying to get in the space online, it is very competitive and it’s tricky. Um, but it’s all part of the challenge.
So, and Ari had obviously done that before you joined for like years. So,
he had that background anyway. He’s an old iGaming wizard. He’d been raging at the old maybe
Gandalf could be. [laughter] Yeah. Oh, I call him that all the time. He won’t care. [gasps] He won’t care.
But no, in all seriousness, yeah, obviously Ari is super experienced when it comes to all things iGaming. So, I
guess it was only expected that I was eventually going to end up working in it. Totally. Dealing with clients,
especially, not especially in the iGaming space, but just clients in general.

 

What do you think the kind of gap is between what they think SEO is and what it actually is? Misconceptions, anything like that?

 

I think the most obvious one is probably how long it takes. Yeah. Yeah. Do
you know what I mean?
SEO and they understand that it’s an investment of time. Um the worst thing is when you get any
client who’s impatient Mhm. and expects results in weeks. Yeah. Yeah.
Um really that’s just never ever going to work. you know, if you if if if you
want to be successful with SEO, then you need to know and understand that this is going to take, you know, this could
potentially, I mean, for competitive terms, it could take you years, you know, totally. Um, once you know that and you
understand that, then you’ll probably be more patient with it and ultimately you’ll see better results. Um, you have to from our side,
you know, agency side, you have to obviously be consistent with what you’re doing, but it’s important for the client to understand that this is something
that is going to take time. if you want to see decent results. So, yeah. Yeah.

 

And is there anything in particular that clients often are surprised to learn about SEO?

I suppose the time frame
thing is I’d say probably the same. And I know it’s a boring answer, but
I think probably that yeah, I think there’s definitely a misconception
about um say if a client comes on board, they want to rank for a specific query or
service or whatever it is. Depending on how competitive it is and what market you want to actually tap
into. Yeah. Yeah. It could be a shock to them that you say to them, listen, this could take
you years of investment. Mhm. Um, as I say, you know, some clients
obviously get it straight away, but that’s what I’d say the biggest misconception is. Yeah. And I was going
to say that iGaming clients maybe often have a better
than maybe like a local client or something cuz as you say a lot of people might not even know that you can influence what’s where things are on
Google and it’s an education process that we have to like tell them what SEO is all about and then also then the time
frame whereas I maybe already knows that it’s going to be that type of competitiveness built in
to the industry. For sure. I think again it just comes down to knowledge. Yeah. And um
some clients that you work with, they might not even think about what goes on behind the scenes.
Mhm. And really what’s involved with SEO as a whole. I would say [snorts] another big misconception actually, and this is
something we’re going to be talking about loads, no doubt, but is probably AI now. Of course. Yeah. So it kind of makes me
laugh when you see a lot of things about how I think people say AI can do SEO, you
know, you don’t need that, you know, like, oh, you can get Claude or ChatGPT to do it.
Um, I mean, sure, those things can can do things for you. They can write content for you,
but ultimately you need someone who is actually knowledgeable about how to
implement all this stuff. Totally. sitting there
especially now that Google is getting smarter identifying all these content patterns.
Yeah, I’m sure we’ll probably talk about that more. But I think AI as a whole is a big misconception. So,
agreed. Um, what would be you obviously deal with clients a lot like day-to-day
on calls and stuff.

 

What would you ban in terms of a client phrase? Like something that SEOs say to clients, I guess.

 

I mean, one comes to my mind,
but I don’t want to ban it. I’m like the opposite. I protect it, which is things [laughter] are moving in the right direction. Things are moving in the right
direction. Yeah. I know that sounds vague, but a lot of the time it’s like that is exactly what’s happening.
No, it’s not vague at all. It’s like just Yeah. Back to what I said about the it depends
thing. Yeah, it’s just all these like phrases that get chucked about when you work in SEO. And the funny thing is like we laugh
about them and be like, “Oh, it’s, you know, funny how you say this and say that, but they are they actually are valid. It’s descriptive.”
You know what I mean? I’m not saying it depends to take the P. I’m saying it depends because it’s actually true.
You know, same with you when it comes to things moving in the right direction. You know, you have to like constantly um remind clients that things
are indeed going in the right direction, you know, or because it’s such a long process. How would you how would you like
trajectory? I don’t know. No, I don’t know either. It’s people each to their own really. But
yeah. Yeah. I mean, clients wise, it’s good to kind of look at the reality of what we’re
doing day-to-day and Oh, I’ve just thought of another misconception. It’s funny now that these are all like coming back to me.
So, one thing that is important um I think one misconception clients have is this whole thing we talk about like
top three or die, right? I was talking about this earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So, just to [clears throat] fill everyone in, it’s basically I don’t
think clients really understand that if you want to see consistent solid results from SEO, you have to basically be in
the top three positions. Um, you know, anyone who’s listening will probably know that Googling stuff
themselves. If you Google something really realistically, how far are you going to scroll through the results? You
know, and even if you do scroll to say the bottom of page one, are you really trusting the sites that
are ranked at the bottom of page one? Scroll back up. Exactly. [laughter] Scroll back, I’ll probably pick one of the top three. Um, that obviously makes
our job a bit harder because we have to rank uh these sites higher,
but um yeah, I think sometimes clients might think, oh, if I’m on page one, it’s all good, but it’s like you’re kind
of halfway there. Totally. And I was discussing with Ari on the other podcast that SERPs are so messy now with different things.
It’s actually [ __ ] ridiculous. Like, it’s crazy. It’s ridiculous. Yeah. And again,
um I’m really self-conscious about using depends now, but I’m going to say so often, but it depends on the industry
that you’re in. So, some I’m trying to think of an example. I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but
you’ll know yourself like sometimes when you actually look at page one.
Mhm. Um you’ve got everything like AI ads,
map pack, questions, questions in the middle. Sometimes you you’ll probably have even noticed that you get sponsored results in the middle
of the page as well. So, you know, going back to when I started in the industry,
you almost like never saw that. You obviously had your um sponsored, map pack, organic.
Mhm. But things have changed so much now to the point where it’s like, it sounds kind of depressing to say it,
but it’s like ranking on page one now doesn’t almost feel like a massive
victory in a sense because it some some search results are so cluttered. So noisy
if you’re if you’re not top three or number one. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, you’re probably not really
going to get noticed 100%. And it’s a sad reality, but it’s just going forward, it’s probably going
to be what what we’re considering.

 

Do you think there’s a clear difference working with iGaming clients to like ones in other industries?

 

Uh, yeah, 100%. Um, for a start, it’s massively
competitive. Yeah, that’s probably the biggest thing. Um, it’s just a hugely competitive industry.
Mhm. Um, the other thing is you have to be aware that when you’re trying to
optimize an iGaming site, you’re obviously in a situation where people are gambling here with their
money, you know. Um, so you have to make sure that all the information you have on the site is
as accurate as it can be. Mhm. Obviously um a big part of iGaming
is um E-E-A-T as well. Google’s content guidelines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Um which stands for Oh, don’t put me on the spot. Experience experience, expertise,
authoritativeness, trustworthiness. Yeah. Uh surpris.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. The final boss. But that plays a really really big part.
Um because when you think of iGaming [snorts] and gambling, you think of things like um making sure you have
content in place for responsible gambling, mentioning that all the time. You basically just want to make sure
that the site you’re optimizing ticks all those boxes. Um I feel like sometimes with other less
competitive industries, you can maybe get away with not being quite as strict with that. But I think for for iGaming, whether you’re writing for a casino or a sportsbook, it’s it’s quite tight the content. You have to make sure
very sensitive. It’s very sensitive. Yeah. You have to make sure it’s all in place. So, especially with some of the markets we’re working in, strict licensing rules
and everything like that. So, yeah. The the other big one if you want to stray away from content obviously is links. We’ve spoken about that.
Yeah. Yeah. Loads. But you know yourself it’s like it’s a completely different ballgame in
iGaming. Like you’re dealing with if you want to get into the really competitive spaces for the really competitive terms in the really
competitive markets then you’re going to be dealing with sites that have colossal link profiles.
Um so you know it’s a completely different world from from optimizing your kind of local client if you like.
Yeah agreed. I mean, I deal with links obviously on a daily basis and it is the
wild west when it comes to um links in the iGaming space specifically.
Um the enthusiasm in your voice there was almost like so I was dead.
I know how hard [laughter] it is. Don’t remind me. Don’t remind me. I was like don’t even bring it up. You’re doing the talking. [laughter]

 

Uh how often sort of day-to-day is watching what competitors do a part of the job?

 

Um, it is a big part of the job. Not even specifically for iGaming and SEO in
general. It’s a big part of the job. Um, you have to
constantly be on top of what your competitors are competitors are publishing content-wise.
Yeah. Um, I suppose if you think about something like a casino,
a lot of your kind of big brands, um,
they are very very active with publishing content. Oh, yeah. Um, it doesn’t it doesn’t matter if it’s
like for a slot game, a category page, blog content, they um they kind of
publish stuff all the time. Mhm. Um you and and I think what we’ve seen a
lot of now is that SERPs are hugely volatile. Rankings are so so up and down
that it’s almost it’s we’re almost at the point now where it’s like when you check on a daily basis there’s always a
new name popping up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you know, so if you want to rank for online casino, for
example, you want to be checking that page one result every day because you might
either see some of your competitors dropping off, some new competitors coming on, we’ve obviously spoken as well, but
things like DMCA attacks, you know, there’s a [ __ ] ton of black hat stuff going on just now kind of I mean, I was
talking to Ari about this who’s obviously been in the game for so long and he kind of feels like he’s never seen so many black hat stuff going on at
once. So, I think now more than ever, you have to be checking, you know, page
one results on a daily basis to make sure that a new competitor hasn’t arrived or one
of your competitors haven’t haven’t dropped off or you haven’t dropped off. Yeah. They haven’t like submitted a DMCA thing. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a um messy game out there.
It’s a It’s a pretty cutthroat. It’s probably going to only get [snorts] worse as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It’s like identifying
loopholes and then trying to get as much out of it until Google like clamps cramp
clamps down on it. Yeah, that’s the thing. Right now it’s the DMCA thing. Yeah. And you know what I’ve learned
like a lot recently is that there are [ __ ] dirty tactics out
there. People will do anything to get you off and get them up even one or two positions, you know. Um,
it seem I don’t know about you, but to me it seems more so in iGaming. Yeah, even
that industry seems especially kind of bad for it. You know, like black hat
stuff. People people are willing to do anything to, as I say, even get one or two positions higher or make your site
disappear entirely. I think it’s cuz it’s like seen as a gray niche or like a sensitive niche. I
mean, that’s how it’s worded when I’m buying links. like it’s almost like its own category where you’ve got a separate
price, separate terms. A lot of webmasters are actually skeptical of even putting iGaming content on their sites
these days because of algorithm updates. You see that quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah. People saying genuinely admitting to me
like I we can put this post up and link but I don’t know to what scale I can
keep doing it or like if I can accept future posts or anything. They’re very weary
wary of it. um doesn’t make your job any easier. No, it doesn’t. Especially where it changes mid um mid like transaction. So,
I could one day agree to buy a link with someone then come back 2 days and
they’ve already taken the link down genuinely within like 48 hours and then they say, “We’ve changed our policy
overnight and we can’t accept casino posts anymore and I’ve just bought it.”

 

Why do you think that is?

 

I think it’s
to do with um them being overly cautious based on like them not knowing if their
whole site’s going to get penalized by Google because it’s got this association with iGaming.
It’s just they almost maybe see their competitors or and they’re just playing it playing it safe basically or like
right we might have [snorts] um accepted it like last year but now we’ve just seen Google
updates cracking down on spam.

 

So you think do you think they’re worried that it might affect their site?

 

Exactly. Yeah. So they don’t want any they might get deindexed or they don’t
want to have that affiliation with iGaming in general. Um or if they do they
will say um have like a topic that’s super relevant to the site like finance
related and then the link in it is super super subtle.
It’s not like overly optimized anchor text saying like this online casino. something a lot more subtle like this
website or something. So the subtlety and help it doesn’t help
me out when you’re trying to maybe experiment with like exact match anchor text or pushing a certain phrase. It’s
not the end of the world. You’re still getting the link which do carry a lot of weight obviously which they do your your anchor text
100%. Um so yeah it’s kind of I think everything feels like it’s in a state of
flux at the moment with AI coming in. Yeah. Yeah. All the black hat stuff everyone’s
having to be aware of all of a sudden like Yeah. I mean, we’ve obviously spoken a lot as well about um just how volatile
rankings are. Yeah. And it seems I think you said the same
thing, but like for as long as I’ve worked in the industry, I don’t think I’ve ever seen ranking trackers look so
confused. I know. Like, you know, it’s almost like unreliable is probably the word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, oh, I was
ranking third for this keyword yesterday. Why am I now not even in the top 100 and then you think, “Oh, fuck.” You
know, it’s gone completely. And then you log in the next day and it’s like, “Oh, no, you’re number three again. It’s back.” And then you have to
manually check it in case it’s like just totally tripped out. Yeah. Um Yeah. It’s very very everything has
to be kind of like taken with a pinch of salt, I would say, and then some kind of like manual.
And it doesn’t make it any easier when you’re trying to communicate those results to clients. No, it really doesn’t. And there’s
nothing more. Well, I guess it’s quite embarrassing in a way when you report to
a client, oh, we got you to number three for this keyword. They Google it from their side and they’re like, what the
[ __ ] you talking about? We’re not number three. You know, so we almost have to put in I mean, it’s a
big thing. And and what we do is always have that caveat layer to it where it’s like
this this is a snapshot in time. It’s kind of like what they say about polling all the time, like polling people. This
has to be taken a pinch of salt. It’s a snapshot in time. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be true in like 10 minutes or
on that device or in that location. It’s in terms of the search being made. Like it’s just all over the place.
Yeah. Um but we we’ve seen a lot in our time just we’ve talked about it a lot like
how crazy this industry is, the iGaming space, but we want to talk about the the weird stuff that nobody kind of
mentions usually.

 

Um, what’s the strangest thing that you’ve seen in a SERP?

 

You mean for iGaming? Yeah. Oh, that’s a tough one. I think Well, you think of something Ari
said that he saw like some kind of like cancer charity ranking on like page one
for some casino term and it was because someone had bought the site over. Yeah. And they were piggybacking on someone’s
link profile. Yeah. To get ranked. That’s what they do. is the they’re abusing canonical things.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Um which I don’t know is that not recently been Google recently clamped down on that.
They’ve clamped down on it. Yeah. And I know for a little while there it was like super abused.
Yeah. Like there were so many people doing it and all it really did was make you know iGaming SERPs messier.
Mhm. Um yeah. In terms of the strangest thing I’ve seen that is a tough one. Um, I
have this weird thing. It’s probably a really unpopular opinion, but I, I find emojis in titles and descriptions really
weird. It bugs me out. I don’t like it. It looks tacky as [ __ ] And the thing is, it’s amazingly common in iGaming.
Um, I mean, you could argue it works, you know. Maybe it’s just that
kind of thing of it’s eye-catching and it kind of draws you to the search result. But it’s easy for me to say I think it looks
tacky and I don’t like it. But really, if it works, then I guess it works. But we don’t use it very often. It’s not
something we No, but that’s my stubbornness being like, “No, we’re not going to use that.” If you saw me signing that song, you’ be like, “No,
absolutely not. [laughter] Get that tacky [ __ ] off my It is tacky. It’s already It’s I don’t
know if it’s controversial to say. There’s a lot of tackiness in the industry already with a lot of the kind of No, no, there is imagery and like um
Yeah. So it just adds an extra layer to it to be honest. Yeah. It is that kind of industry. I know what
you’re getting at. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But AI is obviously massive. Um we’ve
mentioned it a lot already, but

 

Do you think it’s made it easier or harder for what we do so far?

 

So like for our work in particular? Yeah. Like for your job as an SEO manager? I think [snorts] to be honest
you’d have to say it’s made it easier. Oh no. Um now that’s not obviously to say that
you can just generate stuff and go with that. Absolutely not. Um where it has
made it a lot easier and it’s really aided us. Mhm. You know again not even just for iGaming for any industry if you like. Say for example you’re trying to optimize a dentist’s website.
Yeah. We’re not dentists. So when it comes to writing about content, the honest answer
is we don’t really know that much. Now the easy solution would be to
contact the client and say, “Hey, can you write this great blog post about teeth whitening?”
Yeah. Then throw it over to me and I’ll optimize it for you and we’ll chuck it on the site. That’s an easy easy thing to say. But the reality is the clients
don’t have the [ __ ] time. No, they really, you know, I think a lot of them would probably tell you to bugger off. Totally. Um, so in that sense, it is a
good aid. It’s good for giving you ideas, drafts, drafts for content. Um, and to be
honest, the same applies in iGaming. You know, it’s the same same rules really. As I said before, I’m not a big
gambler. Um, I’m not super clued up on obviously I’m clued up on SEO. I’m not
super clued up on gambling as a niche. Yeah. Like the language and the terror,
all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So, so you know, like content writing tools, if you
like, can definitely give you can kind of uh point you in the right direction. [laughter]
That’s what I Oh, here we go again. Point in the right direction. They can give you some good ideas to start with.
But it’s, you know, people need to get over this theory that you can just
generate whatever you want and chuck it on your site and get results cuz I’m sorry to break it to you, but Google is
way too smart for that. Yeah, it’s going to see straight through that. And I can’t,
you know, I can go down a rabbit hole with this, but I have, you [snorts] know, literally written prompts for AI
that are, you know, pages long. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s because you have to train
these things hard to, you know, say you
cannot use this wording, this language. Um it’s just obvious patterns, you know,
that are just going to Google’s just going to take one look at it and chuck it, you know. Totally. Um just ignore it entirely. So yeah, so
coming back to your question, um I would say overall it it’s it’s made it easier. There are just things that you have to
look out for. Yeah, it’s not to use it as like the sort of final thing. It’s more like an
aid to do things that we want to do but on scale that we just don’t have the
time to do. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the way to think about it is like before AI
tools came along, if you wanted to write content, you would have to spend
you’d either have to spend hours, maybe even days researching the topic,
you know, or you’d have to, as I say, reach out to the client and get ideas from them. Um, so you could say that
it’s it’s it’s kind of taken away a few hurdles, if you like. Totally. Yeah. So obviously you talk
about AI making it easier.

 

What are the kind of tools then that you deal with day-to-day?

 

So I the to be honest the only two I personally use are ChatGPT and Claude.
Mhm. Um Claude is I would say stronger
probably for for content writing as long as you give it the right
instructions. Um, it can obviously, um, it’s obviously very good at using tools
as well. Um, I’m not sure if that’s even something you can do with ChatGPT. I
don’t really know, but I know that with Claude, it has a feature that, you know, you can give it access to whether it’s
like um your ranking tools or even something like Google Search Console and if you give it the right
instructions, it can pull all that data for you. Mh. Um, so those are the two that I mainly I
mean ChatGPT is probably more I would say for general research. Um, so if I want to know something about a specific topic, you know, whether it’s
like blackjack or roulette or something, you know, if you’re talking casino specific, it’s quite good for that.
But I would say if you want say AI to generate some some pieces of content, then probably Claude is the better
option. Or that’s what I’ve found personally. I like the way that um someone we work with who’s like very
experienced in SEO and has a very particular way of like saying metaphors
and things for stuff. He said that using them in combination is great as in treat
ChatGPT as the sketch artist and then Claude as the um like color artist. So
creating a draft of text and then making it more like brand tone, the right
style, etc. with Claude. So like using them together as if you’re like an animator. Basically the metaphor was
that you’re an animator. Yeah, you can definitely use both in conjunction. The issue I have with that is that these
[clears throat] things obviously have stored memory. Of course. Yeah. So, you know, for
example, my ChatGPT, if you like, is very clued up on iGaming, sportsbooks, casinos. It has all the memory of stuff that it’s done before. True. So, as soon as you pass that over to
another um AI tool, you have to kind of remind
it of everything. Yeah. I wonder if there’s a way to get them to work together. Get ChatGPTs.
Yeah, that would be crazy. Yeah, I’m scared. I don’t want to do that. Yeah, that would be scary. I don’t like
the idea of that.

 

What are people getting wrong about AI and SEO?

 

I mean, I hate to repeat myself, but I think it’s comes back that thing that it can just do everything. Yeah. which you can’t um as smart as AI
is getting and I mean I don’t know where it’s going to eventually get to but in terms of where we’re at just now
it’s it still requires the human expert knowledge to actually give it the right
instructions and and do the right things sense check it there’s a lot of like hallucination goes on [snorts]
yeah I think there’s too many I think there’s a lot of people out there just now who think that AI can just do all your SEO for you and
it’s just not the No, there’s too much to SEO. There’s too many different little nitty-gritty
things that you have to try and get right, whether it’s like um technical stuff or
content related things. You know, there’s there’s too much to it so that you know AI can’t handle the whole thing. It’s quite like a kind of controversial
way of putting it, but like

Do you think AI in terms of making content is making us more productive or producing more noise as in like garbage?

 

I mean, that’s quite a leading question because I was I’d say
that it’s more garbage to be honest with a lot of it because it can only repeat
what’s already out there. It’s not like um creating
original human thoughts or perspectives. It’s like a regurgitation of all information out there. So,
it could quite quickly become garbage that it’s putting out in the internet. Yeah, it could do. I mean, I think the
important thing to remember is that it’s it all it’s really doing is fetching
what’s already out there. Exactly. Yeah. So, in terms of what was your question? So,

 

Do you think it’s made are we becoming more productive with it or is it just um producing more noise into the ether or is it a place in between?

 

I guess I’m not sure. I think it just depends
how you how you use it really. Um, I mean that relates a lot to what I always
stand by in SEO and I remind myself of this basically every single day
[clears throat] is that whatever you’re trying to rank for, whatever you’re writing for, ultimately it has to be
helpful. So, you’re writing things that are helping the user and are what the user
is actually searching for. If you just generate something in five minutes with
with AI and publish it out there, that’s not going to achieve that, you know. Um, it’s always going to
require your own input and your own thoughts and your own ideas to actually make things helpful for the user. So,
makes total sense. Um, obviously we’ve dealt with a lot of different clients
over different countries and different levels of competitiveness and

 

I’d like to hear what your perception is of like the biggest win we’ve ever had in the iGaming space. Is there one that comes to your brain just from saying that?

 

Yeah, I mean we’ve, you know,
there’s too many to Yeah. We we work with a online casino and sportsbook in a very competitive
market. Mhm. And I guess you could say in the span of what how many years? Maybe like two or
three years or something. We’ve basically gone from ranking for super
long-tail lower volume keywords to now ranking for big hitters, you know, slots
online casino, sports betting, soccer betting, soccer betting, all the really big
stuff, you know, and as long as it’s taken, seeing results like that is hugely rewarding.
Totally. Um, and it’s uh I think again just because of how
competitive a market is that that specific site is in, it makes it more satisfying. Um, it’s
always quite I mean even for as long as I’ve been in the industry, [clears throat] it’s always quite surreal when you Google a keyword that’s
as competitive as that and you see your site up there, you know, in the top three or top five
positions. It really does give you that feeling of like, wow, you know, we actually [ __ ] nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. So
yeah, it is pretty cool. It kind of makes it all worth it as you say cuz every day you it can definitely feel
like you’re taking two steps back a lot of the time with ranking fluctuations and evolving with algorithm updates and
everything. But um put exactly what you said, not doing cheap kind of like quick
wins, taking a more sustainable long-term approach sets us up better, I would say.
Yeah. Um in competitive markets.

 

So looking ahead at the future of uh iGaming SEO, do you think it will look the same in five years 

 

I think that’s probably honestly it’s an
impossible question to answer. You know, we’re in a situation now where I couldn’t even probably tell you what
it’s going to look like in a few months. No, [laughter] you know, I mean lying as well. Yeah, things are changing so rapidly. Um
I mean in terms of what it’s going to look like in the next 5 years, who knows? Who knows? Sometimes I’m scared to think
about it. I know. You know, things are just changing so so rapidly that you could be looking at a
completely different search landscape if you like. Um I mean AI is going to get
bigger. Everyone knows that. Um but a world without Google seems quite
hard to imagine. So never though I guess I don’t think your big search engines are going anywhere soon. Um, you know,
SEO is still going to be a thing in 5 years. It’s just going to be a case of what’s involved in it really.
Very, very true.

 

Do you think that AI is changing like how people actually search

 

Yeah, for sure. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, if I guess if you’re looking
at an industry um, like iGaming, you could argue it’s maybe not changed quite
as much. Um, I think what AI is definitely affected more informational
websites. Mh. Um, so sites that could win a click from
someone doing a quick informational search, a question, now that’s harder for [snorts] them because AI overviews are
going to give you your result instantly or there’s a high chance of that at least. Um, I think what we see in iGaming just
now, it comes back to that thing of good SEO [snorts] is good GEO. Yeah. So if you do your SEO right, so um
optimizing your you know slot game pages, game categories or generic
category pages, if your site is well optimized, then you have a high chance of appearing in AI
overviews. You know, Google is going to pick you up somewhere, I would say. So I would say that just now for iGaming
specifically, no, not really. No, no.

 

Do you want to do a quick fire?

 

Absolutely. Fire away. So, I’ll do a quick fire round now where um you have to obviously say what comes
to mind. No nuance, black and white, just like the world is right [laughter] now. Straight straight back at you. Okay,
shoot. Um,

 

Most overrated SEO metric.

 

Yeah, impressions is a tough one. I
think for impressions, you’re obviously looking at search console data, which as people know is quite heavily
sampled. Yeah, true. um that it’s good for guidance. Yeah. Maybe don’t take it
as Bible as that. Maybe take it with a slight pinch of salt. It shows if things are moving in the right direction.
Exactly. Yeah. [snorts] Yeah. Show that upwards graph, you know. Totally.

 

What’s the most underrated SEO metric?

 

Uh SEO metric or
Oh, yeah. It’s a different question. I was going to say one though. Okay. Shoot. My most underrated SEO
metric is probably like time spent on the site. Engagement time.
Engagement time. Yeah. Because it’s all and well that we’re getting people on the site. But
it depends on like what industry you’re in, what your content’s about,
what you want someone to do on the page. obviously reporting to a client that last year people were bouncing off your
site even though we got maybe like the same level of users but then this year they’re spending like two plus minutes
on the site. That is a way underrated thing to tell the client about um that maybe a lot of people wouldn’t
um report [clears throat] sort of off the cuff. Yeah, for sure. I would agree with that.
I mean, I think um things like engagement time and bounce rate are are massive. And I think when you’re maybe
new to SEO or you’re trying to get your head over what’s, you know, involved in it. Yeah. Um it comes back to this thing we talk
about a lot, doesn’t it? Which is like step one of SEO is actually ranking the
site. Yeah. Like a flow diagram. Step two is getting people on the site and then step three is getting people to
engage with the site and convert, which is very hard. And I think a lot of people probably fall at the third
hurdle. Yeah. So I think looking at things like engagement time, making sure that people are spending as much time as you’d like
them to, making sure that they’re performing the activities that you want them to. Yeah. Uh you know, clicking the right buttons,
scrolling to the right places. That’s all super important. Absolutely. Um I think one SEO activity if you like
that I think is probably quite underrated. Honestly, I’d probably say maybe
something like schema code. I’ve always thought that you could argue that it’s maybe something that’s that’s
more important for maybe smaller local businesses, but I still think it has a place in bigger
um you know, bigger industries and more competitive online spaces, I would say. Yeah.
Mainly because it’s like I’ve always felt like it’s a high reward for minimal
effort. Yeah, totally. You’re basically just adding super basic HTML code to your
website, but at the same time, it’s a great way of telling Google as much about your site as possible,
whether it’s for whether it’s like information about the site as a whole, whether it’s for a specific service,
whether it’s for a specific game even um or like a, you know, casino category
page or sports category page. I think people don’t really realize how in-depth you can go with schema code.
Yeah, there’s so many different types. There’s a lot of different types, you know, some very very specific.
Um, so I guess if someone came up to me and asked me for one simple piece of SEO
advice, I would say utilize that more. That’s a good one. Um, you can even
influence what it looks like in a SERP like add star ratings and things like that. Well, that’s basically the whole point
of it. It just it kind of it it adds more what’s the
best way to put it? It basically adds more information to your search result.
That’s all helpful for the user. So obviously the most basic example is probably um
adding like a price for a product. So if you have a product page, you want to make sure you’re adding schema that
tells the user how much it is or like the price range if you want. I like the idea as well of adding like your socials
if it’s like organization type schema cuz that’s important now for like clearly showing Google what your
official accounts are in terms of your entity and your footprint. It’s another way of like forcing it to see which ones
are yours cuz you might have um similar brand name socials. It’s just clarity,
isn’t it? Yeah. But I guess going back to iGaming um you’d probably want to use it for things like I guess a good example is so
if you have a slot game obviously you know your kind of metrics like RTP and whatnot
um you know they are obvious that’s obviously something that changes a lot per slot game so you can um
you can add very specific metrics to each game and you know that that’s kind of like um you know like winning
ranges and like return to player stats. That’s all the stuff that people who are looking for slot games are actually
want, you know, that’s what they want to know. So, the more information you can give them, the the better.
That’s all very uh helpful advice for sure. I mean, that wasn’t a quick fire. [laughter]
That was very nuanced.
controversial. Both. I know that’s a really shitty answer, but it has to be both. You can’t just say one or the other, especially in iGaming. For God’s sake, no. Uh, I would say h Okay. If I could put it one way, I
would say content short game links long game. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that makes sense to me. Yeah.

 

Google or AI?

 

[snorts] Google. Yeah. The overlord. Yeah. Yes.
Lord and Savior. [laughter] The reason we’re here.

 

Casino or sportsbook?

 

For me personally, casino. Yeah. you’re more involved than Yeah. The thing is um
for I mean if you want to talk about content specifically honestly sports is 100% harder.
Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why is because it’s time sensitive. M true. So if you’re trying to rank put it this
way if if if I was just tasked with ranking an online casino I think you know it’s never going to be
easy. It’s always difficult, but I think you would probably have a from a content angle, I think you’d always have an
easier time probably trying to rank a casino than you would trying to rank sportsbook. Yeah. Mainly because,
you know, like look at the World Cup coming up. You know, if you if there’s a big game coming up and you want to rank
a page and get as much traffic on that page as possible, you have you’ve got like a four or five
day window to do that. Maybe not even. And think about it, you have to in that time frame, you have to make sure you’ve
created content, optimized it, put it on the page, index the page, rank the page,
even harder now. like you know if you actually want to try and get consistent traffic from sporting events it’s
[ __ ] difficult and it’s like you have to there’s so much planning in place you know you really have to plan
you know I mean for for for one-off events it’s a lot easier you know take something like I don’t know Wimbledon
for example everyone knows Wimbledon is in July it’s ahead is in July isn’t it I better
not [laughter] that’s embarrassing I’ve got that wrong but it’s um you know it happens at a
specific time. So, you’re like, “Okay, I can create content for that time frame.” But for something like a World Cup
final, you don’t know who’s going to be playing in that cup final. You have to, you know, be
on your game, pardon the pun, and uh know who’s playing so you can tailor
your content for that. It’s really, really difficult. For something like casino, you’ve got um
you know, there’s more, it’s more relaxed, you could say. I mean like for casino you’re writing about
you know a topic that’s not really changing that much. True. So true.
It’s it’s not quite as time sensitive. Put it that way.

 

One thing every SEO person should stop doing.

 

I would probably say building
low-quality backlinks. Mhm. I’d say something like that. Um, I think it’s becoming more common
knowledge now that links is like a it’s not a numbers game. No, you know,
quality over quantity. It used to be back in ye olden times of SEO. I didn’t tell [laughter] you.
Yeah. Uh, he’s told me a lot and I actually like listening to it cuz it is interesting. But, you know, I think back
in the day it was like they have more links than you so I’m going to rank them higher than you whereas now it’s like it’s just not the
case. At best they’re going to get overlooked and at worst they’re going to like kind of maybe harm you a little
bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like depending on the scale of it. The way I always look at it is like if you go ahead and if you spend a day
building shitty links to your site it’s not even so much that you know
Google will punish you for it. It’s more just that you’re wasting your time because it’s not going to look at them anyway. So you’ve basically just spent a
whole day doing nothing. Agreed. It’s always quality over quantity.
Agreed.

 

Final quick-fire. One thing every client should understand

 

it takes time. Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s just the truth. It takes time. You know, uh comes back to what I
said at the very very beginning of the podcast. Sandwiches the conversation nicely. Back to the start.
It’s just like that thing of you’re not only investing your money, you’re investing your time, you know? So
you have to understand that especially if you know you’re you’re in iGaming and you’re trying to rank for um say a
competitive term in a really really competitive market. You know it’s it’s something that
you have to just trust the trust the process um and you know invest your time
properly in it. But you will see results eventually maybe. It depends. [laughter] We we promise. We promise. Yeah. No
promises made, but yeah, it’s been a good insightful conversation. I feel like we’ve covered
a lot of really useful stuff. Yeah, for sure. Um, and if anyone has any ideas for us
on what to talk about next, you can always comment or reach out to us. But yeah, like and subscribe the episode,
the channel, and thanks for listening if you’ve made it this far. Thank you very much.
Cheers.