How one keyword is dominating the bingo market

The search results for the online bingo market has always been dominated by one keyword in particular. The keyword ‘bingo’ has always been the dominant keyword in the market, and that will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. It was and still is the single biggest keyword in the entire gaming sector.

But what is quite notable is how, over the course of 2017, the prominence of this keyword has grown in a way we haven’t seen in any other areas of the gaming sector. More and more of the search volume around bingo seems to be gravitating towards this one keyword, and it is starting to have a marked effect on the way in which the search market looks.

The growth of the ‘bingo’ keyword

The term ‘bingo’ has always been the dominant keyword in the market, but it is the rate at which the term has grown that is particularly striking.

Back when we looked at the bingo sector in May 2016, the search volume for the sector stood at 286,540, with the keyword ‘bingo’ accounting for 74,000 of that volume – just over one quarter of the market (25.8%).

However, in December 2017, the overall search volume in the market has decreased slightly to 285,838, but that search volume for the keyword ‘bingo’ has grown to 110,000. It means that one keyword accounts for 38.5% of the market and that a brand ranking in position one can expect to drive around 26,500 from this one keyword. Only the poker market is more heavily skewed towards a single keyword.

This shift from searchers towards generics is quite striking. From 2016 to 2017, the level of traffic available purely from generic keywords has increased by 35%, while the level of search volume (and therefore traffic), has decreased in every other category of keyword.

The level of traffic available for ‘no deposit’ keyword terms has fallen by 3.1%, while traffic for ‘bingo bonus’ terms has declined by 26.1% – perhaps indicative of consumer demands and expectations in this market.

How is a trend influencing the market?

The shift towards those generic keyword terms, and the keyword ‘bingo’ in particular, is having a marked influence on the search market for online bingo, with this one keyword arguably having a disproportionate level of influence in search visibility.

Gala Bingo is the most visible brand in the market, and perhaps unsurprisingly ranks in position one for the keyword term ‘bingo’. But Gala Bingo, as well as having the strength of a brand that consumers will recognise, supplements this with strong keyword rankings across the board – the brand ranks for 69% of the keywords in this market.

However, for the second most visible bingo operator, Crown Bingo, it is a slightly different story. Of the 319 highest-traffic driving keywords in the bingo market, the brand ranks for just 60 of them – less than a fifth. In other words, the brand’s visibility is underpinned almost entirely by a position two ranking for the term ‘bingo’.

How sustainable that proves to be in the medium and long term is something that will emerge, but it demonstrates how a brand with relatively minimal coverage across the sector as a whole can drive huge levels of organic non-brand visibility based on one keyword term.

However, there is more to this market than one keyword as demonstrated by the second most visible brand, WhichBingo.

WhichBingo doesn’t, according to our analysis, rank prominently for the term bingo, but it does rank prominently for a huge number of terms in the market. The brand is visible for 91.5% of the terms in our analysis and holds 185 top five positions – including 128 position one rankings. The approach taken here has the hallmarks of a sustainable and planned SEO strategy that understands the brand’s value proposition, and focuses on ranking for the right keyword terms.

The bingo market may well be shifting towards one generic keyword, but brands need to remember that successful SEO strategies need to be much more nuanced than ‘bingo or bust’.