Opinion: The fading value of the links effect in SEO
Katrina Pond, digital marketing executive at Coral Interactive, asks if operators need to adapt their SEO strategy as the "links" effect begins to fade
With Google’s algorithm updates becoming far more frequent and difficult to predict, it’s becoming increasingly important to understand what makes Google tick in order to ensure rankings remain stable in the highly competitive online gambling industry.
Overnight search engine results pages (SERPs) can dramatically change in the light of an update release and this only amplifies the need for gaming operators to be more proactive with their SEO strategies. Last year’s most talked about algorithm updates were Panda and the continuous rollout of Penguin.
Panda policed the quality of sites’ content whereas Penguin focused on back-link profiles and penalised spamming links, excessive exact-match anchor text and keyword stuffing in internal links. Penguin hit the gambling industry hard with many suffering as a result of the competitive landscape which had left some operators resorting to low quality link building tactics.
With previous algorithm updates imposing penalties against low quality, duplicate or thin content and spam link building techniques, the question is what does 2015 hold for the Google algorithm and the gaming industry?
The value of link building
It has long been recognised that the days of relying solely on links to help increase rankings is no longer best practice. What once could have been likened to the Links effect – to misquote the well-known deodorant brand – whereby numerous back-links would have more than certainly attracted positive movements in the SERPs, seems to be fading.
It’s becoming clear that Google is taking into consideration other factors when determining the rankings, with user experience appearing to be a key focus and influencer. User experience (UX) looks to further play an important role in the rankings. If a site’s UX isn’t good and users are bouncing back to Google, why would Google want to send any more search traffic to the site?
UX has long been considered a key part of SEO and should continue to be a focus in 2015 not only for desktop but also mobile devices. Google announced in 2013 that mobile site optimisation would become a factor in mobile rankings and with the release of Google’s mobile-friendliness testing tool in November 2014 and the visible mobile-friendly labels in mobile SERPs, Google may be considering mobile UX as a more important factor.
Alongside UX, engaging content continues to be an influencing factor in the rankings. For example, relatively new affiliate sites such as footy-tipster.co.uk can be seen outperforming established operators in the rankings with very few links. This is considered to be due to the quality and relevance of their content.
Www.footy-tipster.co.uk has only 14 referring domains in its back-links profile but has over 80 rankings in top 10 positions. In comparison, the domain skybet.com has 6,398 referring domains but only ranks for 23 top 10 positions, emphasising the need for more than just links.
A need to be social
In tandem with content, a strong social presence can also be a powerful ranking factor. Examples of strong social brands positively influencing the SERPs can be seen from the new breed of affiliates who predominantly use social media to promote operators. For example, footyaccumulators. com has created a strong social media brand with over 17,000 shares of its content through Facebook alone.
It seems that little effort has been placed on traditional link building and they are outranking many established operators with far greater links but a weaker social presence. 2015 will continue to see Google algorithm updates. The need to constantly evolve SEO strategies will become critical in order to retain and improve search engine rankings, especially in the gambling industry where competition exists in both the SERPs from operators and numerous affiliate sites.
Nobody can truly predict what 2015 holds for the Google algorithm and we can only continue to speculate, while utilising the possible indicators of what may be favoured and adapt our strategies in order to remain on top of the SERPS.