Olga-Zarr-John-Wright-Casino-SEO - Made with Clipchamp (3)
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[00:00:00] Olga: Hi everyone, it's Olga Zarr from SU SLY. Today I have a very special guest this is John Wright and John is here, I think, for the second time. And John's episode in the past, I think, was one of the most popular ones because the topic John specializes in and the topic we're going to talk about is very interesting.
[00:00:20] Olga: interesting, a little bit controversial, which is SEO for like gaming casino industry. So John, how are you doing today?
[00:00:29] John: I'm doing amazing. Uh, really happy to be on here and especially for the second time. So thanks a lot.
[00:00:34] Olga: Cool. I'm very happy to have you here. So, John, for people who don't know you, can you briefly introduce yourself, what do you do in SEO, how you landed in SEO, and in this part of SEO especially?
[00:00:48] John: I'll try to keep it short. So, I've been in online gambling, or iGaming as what they call it, for 23 years. My background, I went to school for engineering, so that's kind of where I belong. Uh, but I went down a weird path and I became a professional gambler after graduating, did that playing online casinos, online poker, sports betting for advantage play as they called it.
[00:01:09] John: Uh, for about seven or eight years, then I got an opportunity to work on the operator side, the other side of the fence as a casino manager, VIP manager, affiliate manager, running a multiple online casinos and affiliate programs. And then of course I got to see how much affiliates were making and how they ran their business.
[00:01:26] John: And of course you saw the SEO power behind it. So I became an affiliate in 2010 and I've also done B2B affiliation as well as B2C. I sold those sites recently and I've been building the software that I currently do today, which is currently mainly for gambling affiliates. And, um, yeah, it's been a, not the ordinary path.
[00:01:45] John: I've done SEO consulting a long time ago. And right now I care about SEO more because I need that for my own SaaS company. And what I believe to be true is. I've always been, I've always enjoyed helping affiliates. So if I can understand what they have to go through, then I can speak their same language.
[00:02:01] John: I'm not going to be their SEO consultant, but when we're building our app to be the best in the market, it really helps to have, to speak the same language, I'm able to have a unique conversation, so I enjoy. Having my point of view, looking at affiliation in iGaming today.
[00:02:18] Olga: Wow. And engineering, I think this is, this is a good background to have for, for that type of, and what does it mean to be a professional gambler?
[00:02:29] John: It's a good question. Um, there's a lot of people that might say they are professional gamblers, but here's, here's like a bit of stats that will summarize it. Um, when I used to help people do what I do. Probably if I taught a hundred people, one or two might figure it out. Um, the same, it's probably actually a worse rate for professional poker.
[00:02:49] John: So if you want to learn poker, everyone can do it. But what ends up happening most of the time is people end up doing the things you're not supposed to do. You have to separate the emotion and apply this logic. But the thing is everything we do in life is all emotionally driven. So I'm asking you to make a bet.
[00:03:06] John: Where on average, you're going to make money from it and just remove the emotion from it. You win, you don't care. You lose. You don't care what you care about is you're doing the same thing repetitively. So the reason why I didn't feel like I wanted to do this for a long time is that I treat it like manual work.
[00:03:21] John: It's like, go build spreadsheets and do data entry. To me, it's the same thing. It's not fun. You use your brain to learn the skill, but once you have the skill, it's, it's not challenging. Unlike, maybe poker is, is more challenging, but poker is a lot tougher. So, um, it, it seems fun and exciting. It gave me the ability to travel and live in different parts of the world, uh, back like literally 20 years ago when people were like, what are you doing?
[00:03:45] John: And, you know, um, you know, even to this day, iGaming and online gambling is not really looked upon as, you know, the most ethical industry, but doing this 20 years ago was. It was just absurdity to my friends and family. They thought I was actually crazy and, um, maybe I still am.
[00:04:02] Olga: So you are originally from the US, right?
[00:04:05] Olga: Or Canada. Canada. oKay. I thought your accent was U. S., but yeah, maybe I'm saying it wrong. It is
[00:04:11] John: American. I'll say that on behalf of a lot of people, even if I piss off some Canadians. But our accents, in a long distance, there's very little change in it. Unlike the U. K., where you go a hundred miles and
[00:04:21] Olga: Yeah.
[00:04:22] John: You're like, it's like two different people.
[00:04:25] Olga: so what parts of the world were you living in as, as, as this professional gambler?
[00:04:31] John: Yeah, I actually went all over the place. I went to the Caribbean, uh, went to London, UK, uh, Dublin, Ireland, uh, Barcelona, Spain is where I spent a lot of time. And it's kind of like a second home away from home.
[00:04:43] John: Um, different parts of Canada. Yeah, it was just anytime I wanted to travel, it was like, not a big deal. It's like, Oh, my birthday's next week. Uh, let's go to Scotland. You know, it's, uh, it's fun and exciting. And I think, you know, the world that we both live in today, it's, it's digital everything. Of course you can get up and go and go to the beach and then go back to your room and work online.
[00:05:03] John: But, um, I was doing this 20 years ago when it wasn't really as common of a thing.
[00:05:08] Olga: So, what is it exactly that you do now? what is a stats drone? I think this is your main thing, right?
[00:05:15] John: Yeah, it's like the QuickBooks for affiliates. So we pulled the data in from all the affiliate programs to say, well, how much money, Did you make today or yesterday or last month or this year or this year versus last year?
[00:05:27] John: So there's different layers to it. Uh, the first layer is just getting like all the different types of data. And then it's like, well, wait a minute. Can we help you analyze that data to say, where should you send more traffic and where should you send less traffic to? It's optimizing of your campaigns and using business intelligence to make better decisions.
[00:05:44] John: So I wanted to work on the software for a long time after. Being an affiliate manager as well as an affiliate and saying, you know what, I think there's a lot of affiliates that they're not really looking at their data the way they should. So going full circle back to my engineering roots, I just kind of thought, you know what this, there are some apps on the market that do some of these basic things, but they don't take it to the higher level.
[00:06:05] John: And I like calling this revenue leak where it's, well, what is revenue leak? Well, imagine you're an affiliate and I'll give you a few examples. Um, you're, you're sending all this traffic to these online casinos and you're getting paid a commission, let's say 35 percent commission on the losses, which is very generous.
[00:06:21] John: Now, what happens if one of the programs. Just all of a sudden you're getting, you're making, let's say 500 per day consistently for, for the last six months, then it goes down to zero. You should probably stop sending traffic to them. It makes sense. But when you're looking at tables of data, it's easy to lose visibility.
[00:06:37] John: Or another common one is a program. If they change their tracking technology. The link could actually be invalidated without you ever knowing it. Um, or what happens if the program goes offline? Do these things happen all the time? Think about FTX, you know, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world offline for almost two years.
[00:06:54] John: And people are still linking to FTX within affiliate tracking link. It's there's so many opportunities for losing money that I believe this is a means of making money. If you're. If you're losing money, it's like you could make more money and reinvest that back into your business. So I'm pretty passionate about this part of the business.
[00:07:12] John: And, you know, without realizing this was business intelligence, I just said, look, there's a problem here I want to solve. And it just goes back to my engineering roots.
[00:07:20] Olga: Uh huh. Okay. Okay. Yeah. This is like, very, very interesting. Like, I never really thought about, about like, uh, affiliate SEO from this way.
[00:07:29] Olga: I'm not like, An affiliate expert. I have a bunch of affiliate websites, but definitely this is like far from, from what you are doing. Uh, so, um, what are the differences between like SEO, SEO strategy for, strategies for like normal websites? And like casino gambling, gambling websites,
[00:07:51] John: it's tough and it's, it's tougher today because things are just changing.
[00:07:54] John: I mean, 10 years ago, people were using more social media going, Oh, these are amazing channels for marketing, but you have a lot of compliance to deal with from the affiliate programs. So affiliate programs will say, we don't want you using Facebook or putting the affiliate links there. And of course, today, we believe that social channels are becoming a more important part of both search as well as generating traffic.
[00:08:15] John: It's like, you don't want to have all your eggs in a single Google basket, but if we believe that Google's now using social signals as part of this, I think we're in a really weird, uncomfortable spot in the iGaming space. My personal opinion is and I'm sure you probably share some of these thoughts is people want to buy from people.
[00:08:31] John: So look at what we're doing. We're doing a podcast and people like it's going to be very easy for me to recommend you as an SEO consultant because we've had a chance to chat. You're visible. You're sharing a lot of knowledge. So imagine what you could do in the iGaming space. You could be the authority and the expert, but there's certain channels that you won't have the perfect opportunity to share this.
[00:08:51] John: Like YouTube, for example. Uh, a podcast, I think you might be safe. Twitch, you're probably safe, but you're at the risk of both the social channels and the iGaming. Blocking you. And you're also at the risk of these affiliate programs saying you're violating our terms and conditions. So we can't do this anymore.
[00:09:06] Olga: So I think
[00:09:07] John: I gaming in, in relation SEO is even more challenging. And then, okay. What's happening since last September helpful content update. And then we've had almost like what one update per month, what I believe to be changing right now in affiliation. Is that if you don't have a product, then you're kind of doomed.
[00:09:26] John: So if you're just an information site that says, okay, here's online casinos and reviews and comparison from one casino to another, it's what's so special about that it is information. Okay. That's good. But this information has been around for kind of a long time. Uh, so if you are one of a thousand websites doing the same thing.
[00:09:43] John: Why should Google care about you? And I think what's happening is a lot of these sites that have been kind of in the middle, they are being fully de indexed. Like you'll look at Ahrefs and you see the number of index pages, just like plummeting. You see their traffic plummeting. And I think you have to productize your, your service in any way.
[00:10:00] John: So to give you another insight, um, in online casinos and gambling, there are sites that do casino complaints. Like, let's say for example, you play, you win money, but the casino says, sorry, you violated term and condition, but you disagree. You're like, well, what can I do about it? Well, there's websites like ask gamblers, casino Meister, casino reviews, a casino doctor, and there's a bunch more.
[00:10:21] John: And those people are going to be upset. I didn't mention them, but what they do is they do a valuable service. They act as an arbitrator and say, we will decide if. If the case goes for you or against you, and quite often the casinos will actually pay out based on that. So this is a valuable service. And what's happening is all these sites are skyrocketing in value.
[00:10:41] John: Um, so again, it's a product it's like a user generated content, but this is the future of the iGaming space. If you don't have a product that can attract its own audience or generate its own links in a natural way, it's kind of like, Yeah. The space is getting a lot tougher. What worked a year ago does not work today
[00:11:00] Olga: anymore.
[00:11:01] Olga: Yeah. Because like my next question was supposed to be. we had this Google helpful content updates, core updates, whatnot, and, looking at SERPs and, like, casino gambling, keyword phrases, do you see, have you seen, like, changes in what's actually ranking, like, before you had a lot of info sites, like blogs with just Providing information roundup reviews and now there are different things.
[00:11:26] Olga: Have you noticed something like that?
[00:11:28] John: I wouldn't necessarily say it's the change in like the Like what people are looking for. I think that's always been kind of constant and it moves with time But the actual results have drastically changed
[00:11:40] Olga: Yeah, people
[00:11:41] John: that use like here's the old school method. It's you get a content writer.
[00:11:44] John: You write the content You, you get your link builders, you build links towards it. You make money, you print money, you're able to buy more websites and you get bigger and stronger. I've personally know a lot of affiliates that the strategy has now just tanked them right to the bottom. They have money in the bank, so they're able to do something about it, but there's sites that have basically been doing their own strategy without realizing, is this the right thing to do?
[00:12:06] John: So to give you an example. Things as, as common as a forum. You're like, well, how big are forums? Well, we know what Reddit is today. It's pretty much the largest forum on the net. Reddit has just gone through the roof. Casino Meister just sold to Gig, which is a very big group and they acquired Ask Gamblers.
[00:12:23] John: Those two sites both do complaints and they both have forums. So it's just, it's gone through the roof. So I think what's happening is. You know, there, there's people that are going up and going down. I think the value in the search results is mostly increasing. I think we're seeing less of these, I'm just going to call them content only websites as kind of fading.
[00:12:43] John: So I think if you do have like a user generated, uh, content section, or do you add a product on top of what you're doing to me, those places always deserved more of the traffic. But now Google's made that decision for everyone saying. Whatever you've done in the past, we don't care anymore. Here's the new Google.
[00:12:59] John: Um, yeah, I just think, uh, yeah, lots has changed.
[00:13:03] Olga: I'm asking because my business partner, like two years ago, he decided he wants to create an affiliate site about gaming, not iGaming, just gaming, reviewing gaming stuff. He took like many months with my help to do keyword research. We like researched every keyword possible.
[00:13:21] Olga: We found very easy to win info keywords ideally for Roundup review, stuff like that. We hired a writer, like 200 pages written. Perfect. Like we didn't review the stuff, but it was like, Very high quality SEO, everything. We published the site last year, I think in June. The site was kind of getting, not getting, but it didn't really, it didn't really take off.
[00:13:48] Olga: And after the most recent update in March, all the impressions, everything went down. And when we reviewed the keywords we selected at the time, there are basically no Similar websites ranking for that like the similar blogs and it's kind of, I think this project, unless we change it, like significantly is doomed because Google changed what's it, what's ranking now, right?
[00:14:14] Olga: Like Google's changed the search intent somehow or it changed and Google, I don't know.
[00:14:19] John: Yeah, I agree. I think actually what I believe to be true as well is I think more bottom of funnel content is starting to become a thing. It always was a thing. And some people were benefiting from it in the background without telling anyone going, this is amazing.
[00:14:31] John: I have this, I have this whole box to myself. Um, I think when you do bottom of funnel content, Google is able to understand your site as being more authoritative, you know, so we all talk about EAT, but it's like, what's behind that, you know, just doing another casino review or a gaming review or a gaming product review.
[00:14:47] John: It's not enough. It's like, you got to go super deep as if you are the authority. So just to give you an example, it's like, I've been in, I gaming and affiliate marketing for 20 years. And I'm now trying to rank for really competitive keywords, like casino affiliate programs, very competitive. Um, so I wrote all that content myself.
[00:15:05] John: I said, wait a minute, it's, I can hire someone to do this, but I've lived and breathed this space for so long. So not only did I write over 4, 000 words, but I tried to take that bottom of funnel concept and put that into my content and the more bottom of funnel that I go, the, the more I'm benefiting it personally, And I've seen some affiliate sites that when they do bottom of funnel, it benefits them.
[00:15:26] Olga: And where do you rank now for that?
[00:15:28] John: Right now, as of today, we're number five. My goal is to be I want to be number one. Have you tried
[00:15:33] Olga: Cora?
[00:15:35] John: I've used Cora a long time ago, I'm probably gonna have to get back into it. I'm actually using Surfer SEO, which is pretty decent. But what I'm doing that Surfer isn't telling me to do is I'm going.
[00:15:47] John: Surfer is telling me to write this and I'm going, I'm the expert. What is, what is missing from all of my competition? You
[00:15:53] Olga: have to write this.
[00:15:55] John: Yeah. And that's, that's exactly what I'm doing. So I went deep. I said, well, no one's talking about postbac and dynamic variables or S2S tracking within affiliate marketing.
[00:16:03] John: Um, what about the different laws and regulations? It's like, okay, some people touch upon that. I'm going. You know what? I'm going to give you everything. I'm going to break it down into everything. Um, I plan to do smaller YouTube clips, eventually embedding them inside the article. I think it's going to help more, but it's like, I've already got my own product, which is for affiliates.
[00:16:23] John: So this is a, for me, I'm in the right space at the right time without realizing it. But, um, when I, when I've interviewed people that do B2B content and they say bottom of funnel content does wonders for them. I believe this is the, this is another extension of what affiliates need to do today to be successful.
[00:16:39] John: So for that gaming site, I think they need to be like, what, what's they, they need to write down. You've already done the top of funnel stuff and the middle funnel, but you got to go like super deep and go, what is the bottom funnel content that no one's talking about my opinion. That will make that one site stand out and it'll give Google a reason to say, okay, we'll give you the bottom of content, uh, rankings, but we'll, we'll give you more.
[00:17:00] John: But I think bottom of funnel is going to become more important because what is SEO? It's two top of funnel. AI is going to give you that answer. What is an online casino? AI is going to give you that answer. No one cares if you rank number one for it. Cause. Like, what is the intent? Um, you know, I want someone that's going to be a, you know, give me a list of like 10 free spins or greater in, you know, maybe even a specific language or the fact that they're searching for that in, in Barcelona, Spain, you know, the, the results could be very tailored to them.
[00:17:28] Olga: I asked about Cora because I also used surfer and it's recommendations are towards the average. While Cora very often asks you to like, go totally overboard. And I'm not sure if this is something you're also doing, but with AI, you can also like pretend there are different situations and ask AI, for example pretend you are a user who is hesitating and has this and that, blah, blah, blah.
[00:17:52] Olga: What things they may be thinking in relation to that. And very often you can really get A lot of viewpoints, kind of perspectives that are unique and which can, of course, extend your content, make it more in depth, and usually add those, like, entities, LSIs, blah, blah, those things that can potentially help you rank better.
[00:18:11] Olga: Okay, so, this will be a very layman's Question. Let's say I am an SEO quite advanced with a lot of experience. I heard there is a lot of money in gambling SEO and I, I have never done anything with that. How do I get started to earn money from casino SEO? What do I do? Do I create a blog? If a product, what product?
[00:18:34] Olga: How to get started ?
[00:18:35] John: It's a good question, and I'm gonna take a step back and, and go in a different, uh, direction, because in my podcast I'm always asking, like I'm mainly focusing on one, but I've asked a lot of like, SEO O Pro.
[00:18:47] John: And said, if I had to take you and put you in this competitive iGaming space and give you the minimal budget, maybe even no budget at all, how would you do it? And are you intimidated? And almost everyone says they're not intimidated at all. It's like people like Kyle Roof, Matt Diggity, um, uh, Victor Karpenko.
[00:19:05] John: Uh, Ferry Casoni, and then even people outside of iGaming, like, um, I interviewed, uh, Lashay Lewis, who does B2B content. I said, I'm gonna put you into this really brutal space, uh, how confident are you? And they're all confident. And I actually believe that they would all do well. So to answer the question is like, what should they do?
[00:19:24] John: I'm pretty sure a lot of SEOs have a really good mindset going. Okay. I need, I probably want to partner with someone who knows the industry inside out, but they would take it to another level. I think most good SEOs right now know that the content only game is over. And then it's like, what are your channels?
[00:19:38] John: And in my opinion, the channels are kind of, they're kind of infinite. You could do a podcast. You could do. like live streaming or, uh, like streaming, which is already a massively popular segment. You could do forums and communities, which they don't really ever go away. And then another angle could be products.
[00:19:55] John: That's another one. Um, and then of course, if you want to just say, okay, we're just going to do the content game and we're going to play this long form content. Um, it's going to be, um, it's going to be the, the bottom of funnel content. I think if you pick any of those strategies. What I believe to be true is that so many iGaming affiliates have made a lot of money by doing the bare metal.
[00:20:15] John: And I'll put my hand up. I've been guilty of doing that in the past. Like, I had a site that had 2, 000 casino reviews, had all the bonuses, and it's like I didn't think it was very challenging. I was like, just by creating it, it ranked and by creating so much of this content, I might've ranked for, uh, brands that had maybe not a lot of attention, but that sometimes gave me a number one position in that.
[00:20:36] John: So yeah, to, to say, what, what do you need to do today? You really need to know the space inside out. You're going to want to partner with someone who, whether they're a writer. Or, um, maybe I'm going to suggest you get someone that has a product mindset. It's, uh, you know, we, we keep talking about product led SEO and it's like, well, what is a product?
[00:20:55] John: Um, I think you've got someone that understands gambling very well. Those are the types of people that can understand the product better. It's like how many, how many affiliates today, or even in the past year, Would actually review, like play the online casinos and actually test it. The content I see surviving right now is, is the type where they've actually gone through and they document it.
[00:21:16] John: They're like, look, I played this casino, I played these games. This is the deposit method. And they're being real about it. Um, as opposed to what I've done in the past, which as of today would not work anymore, which is I look at the website and I'm just talking about it. Personally, no one, no one really cares.
[00:21:30] John: I kind of, maybe I was lucky back in the day for being able to get away with it. But I keep saying it's like, it's gotta be a product, a forum. That's a product casino complaints. That's difficult to sell. I'd probably say don't do that. But if you can find someone that actually knows how to do that, then.
[00:21:44] John: Partner with that person. You'd be good at SEO and you can help, you can help this content rank, uh, super strong. Um, yeah, put a product mindset on, you know, I'm going to keep going back to product led SEO as being the way forward.
[00:21:57] Olga: Okay. And talking about, uh, websites, you, you said you had a lot of websites you sell.
[00:22:02] Olga: I don't know some of them, most of them, exactly what types of websites were there and what websites,
[00:22:09] John: Yeah, right now I technically have some affiliate sites, but they're, I don't spend any time on them. I'm 100 percent all in on not just my podcast, but the stats from company. So any content I'm writing is stats from blog.
[00:22:21] John: It's, it's stuff, but the sites I've had in the past, they were like 2000. online casinos, we had 10, 000 bonuses, multiple languages. We weren't as good as we could have been on the SEO part. So if I had to go back and redo it again, I think I would do a better job of it. But yeah, it's, I think I was very good on on the tech side.
[00:22:42] Olga: So that's your website, right?
[00:22:43] John: Yes. So we're redesigning this. And we have 1300 gambling affiliate programs in our database, which are published online, which I'm actually kind of scared if you're even going to click on it because some of the content on there is bad, but I'm going to be honest. Um, it's very less competitive for affiliate program reviews, which I like.
[00:23:04] John: So, uh, we have low quality reviews that we're actually redesigning the website, redesigning. The review page and we're redoing the content. We're literally in the middle of rebuilding the content and to answer it just because Google's now giving us traffic, even though we're not putting in the full effort, um, we, we don't really care.
[00:23:23] John: We're going, you know what, let's pretend Google's going to kick us out and not stop giving us the traffic. So we are now basically going, we, we, the, the design agency that redesigned our website is called user active.
[00:23:35] They are,
[00:23:35] John: they are product designers. They're not, they don't call themselves UX or UI designers, they're product designers.
[00:23:41] John: So they educated me in a way I couldn't have imagined. So now I look at everything as a product. Affiliate sites, product. I literally, if I had to do affiliate sites all over again, I would hire that agency without hesitation. I'd say, I need you to design our website from a user first experience. So our affiliate program reviews, we want to be not just another affiliate program review.
[00:24:02] John: We want to be like, what would matter to you as a webmaster, knowing that we have a product over here and we want to be more than just content. So I'll give you an example, which affiliate programs have S2S tracking. So it's server to server where you send a token and you get that token back. That gives you rich data.
[00:24:17] John: That's business intelligence. Which programs have real time data, or is it by the hour, or only gives you the data every 24 hours? What time zone is the data in? Um, you know, it's like, what are the terms and conditions? What is negative carryover? Do they have bond length? Things that matter for that specific niche.
[00:24:33] John: So it's really detailed. We, we are now about to publish 60 unique data points on every affiliate program that we can get our hands on. And we just want to keep going. What more can we do? And when you put that product hat on first, the answer is like, it just doesn't stop. And so from that point of view, it's exciting.
[00:24:51] John: It is a bit more work, but taking this concept and applying it to what a village should do today. I think it's the same thing. You gotta be product first all the way. What do my, what are my users care about? I want to be so good that people naturally link to us and share our stuff in social media, or they share it in a private Slack channel or WhatsApp, which, which is happening.
[00:25:11] Olga: So if someone is starting out and is looking for a good affiliate program from this industry, I guess they should use your website.
[00:25:21] John: Yeah, we can help them with that. We are actually working, you know, going full circle back to this product concept. We're working on a recommendation engine that goes deeper than any affiliate program review sites ever done.
[00:25:32] John: So you can say, well, If I review casinos, but I focus on a bonus category, can you give me casinos that have that bonus? Well, as of right now, you won't find that database, but we're building that database.
[00:25:43] Olga: Okay. So question about backlinks, link building. So back in the day, like, I don't know, 2012 or something like that, I had a website about, , Android, Android games.
[00:25:55] Olga: I was reviewing games, stuff like that. Got a lot of requests from people who and I had adsense there and I got a lot of emails from people who wanted me to link to a casino and They were paying really good money. I was afraid of doing that. I think I I finally sold a couple of links this way, but then I heard a lot of stories that people's websites got banned because it is prohibited to link to casino games if you have AdSense.
[00:26:26] Olga: Not sure if this is the case still, but I guess it is. So how do we do back linking for casinos? Like, how, how does, do casinos even need back links?
[00:26:36] John: Uh, you've asked the most painful question, uh. If there's a question I could dread right now, it'd be that one. So back in the day for my Felix sites, it, you could earn some links, but you pretty much had to buy your way.
[00:26:50] John: Uh, it's very difficult to earn the links without paying for them in, in casino. It's, It's very rare that I actually have, uh, no people that, that do successful affiliation without any link building.
[00:27:00]
[00:27:00] John: so there's a couple of ways in which you can get free links. Uh, there's industry. So the iGaming industry has no problem linking to itself.
[00:27:08] John: You can go to sites like, uh, Bojoko, which is B O J O K O dot com.
[00:27:12] Olga: And they do
[00:27:13] John: amazing, uh, digital PR and link building. They're probably one of the, the, um, classic versions of link building where Sometimes it's paid, but when you look at their link profile, you're like, there's stuff in there. You wouldn't know what's paid and what's not.
[00:27:26] John: Whereas other sites you look at and you're like, this is all paid. So I think what's already happened with Google is that it's already said, look, we know what low quality content is and we know what low quality link building is. It's both gone down. I've got friends that have, uh, amazing content, but bad links and they're suffering and I have friends that have the opposite and they're suffering.
[00:27:44] John: So it's like, what do you do? Um, get, if you can get free quality links, that's great. But I think personally, this is the most biggest challenge. I think digital PR is the future of link building and to do that in iGaming, it's not easy, but it's possible. And I think the only way to really reverse engineer this is kind of go, Who are the big sites right now that are ranking for a wide range of keywords and start looking at who, what kind of links are they getting?
[00:28:11] John: Um, I know that you could probably find companies like search intelligence, uh, that would probably do this work. Um, but at the same time, it's not easy to find any good digital PR that can successfully do. Like
[00:28:23] Olga: I've been working with search intelligence, the one from with, with ferry, right?
[00:28:27] John: Yes.
[00:28:28] Olga: Yeah, because I have a vaping client and it was very difficult for him to get PR going and with Ferry, it seems that it is going to work amazing. So,
[00:28:38] John: yeah, by default, I mean, without hesitation, he's the easiest person to recommend as a person as well as search intelligence. So I'd say that is a possibility, but man, it's like to try to do your own link building.
[00:28:50] John: I know very few. Amazing link builders and I gaming and the work that they have to do. It's, I kind of look at it as two buckets. It's either fairies, um, with the search intelligence, it's either their strategy or you have to do it from a, like a journalist PR where you've got to befriend a journalist.
[00:29:07] John: That's, that's a full time job. Like that's an actual career. Anyone that's good at that, they're probably going to realize that they're better off becoming their own agency. I think you're going to have to probably be an agency unless you can find a clever way of finding someone who's amazing, pay them a lot of money such that they don't kind of leave and start their own agency, or you start your own agency and you just gain the experience.
[00:29:28] John: You get clients that pay you money and then you're able to keep everyone happy. It's the most challenging question is building links for iGaming sites. But my answer to that is. Um, when you talk about industry stuff, it's very linkable and it has an ability to link beyond anything. It's,
[00:29:46] Olga: could
[00:29:47] John: an online casino link to you?
[00:29:48] John: It's like, that is possible. Like, what are the ways? Well, here's the most basic one. Create awards. But what's awards? Awards generate backlinks. You're able to pay for press releases and link internally. Um, being a casino complaints. That's not easy. Uh, ask gamblers has. the who's who of online casinos all linking to ask gamblers through their complaints link.
[00:30:08] John: That's amazing, but you have to set up the infrastructure to be ready for complaints. Um,
[00:30:14] Olga: if
[00:30:14] John: you're able to create unique data stories that no one has published or talked about in iGaming, people will link to that. Um, even, even some affiliate sites would actually link to it. I think this is, this is the new link building moving forward and I think it's the only way.
[00:30:28] Olga: I just wanted to ask, what about those, kind of more black hat ish types of backlinks like PBNs or like, getting, links through different, like, tiers, like, this is
[00:30:39] John: I, I, I think PBNs are mostly done. That's my, my personal take, because it's kind of like a, like, think about what a PBN is or was.
[00:30:46] John: A PBN is, it doesn't even matter if you make this, like, super high quality. Like, it's got an amazing design, it's got its own IP address. I don't think it matters anymore. If that content's not ranking and doesn't have authority and doesn't have EEAT, then the power of that link going to your core content is not good.
[00:31:04] John: You actually need, in my opinion, Um, you need really good, amazing, authoritative content linking to you, and that's not easy. It's like, you almost have to set up your own PBN that's not a PBN, and
[00:31:18] Olga: Yeah, right. because like, like for the past, I don't know, two years or something, I have been playing with stuff which isn't like super white hat.
[00:31:26] Olga: And one of the things I've been playing with is cloud pages, right?
[00:31:30] Olga: I guess this may be a short term game, and for a bigger website like casino, it may be too risky. But talking about black hat things, penalties, like how is Google treating those casino websites? Do they often get, like, manual actions? Like, what's the state of Google liking or not liking casino websites?
[00:31:51] John: Yeah, I know Victor Karpenko, he published a case study not long ago about Uh, how we got an iGaming site, uh, unpenalized. I can't remember if the site was manual penalized or if it was just a, a site that ended up tanking because of a lot of these updates. What did he do about it? I don't know. I didn't read the case study in detail, but I just know with some of these affiliate sites that have, you know, suffered, it's kind of like, what are the things you need to do to get out of it?
[00:32:16] John: It's, um, usually if you've, if you've got a penalty, those are really difficult to, to undo. I remember like 10 years ago and even longer friends that would get penalized, but here's the nature of iGaming. Um, friends that push the envelope and did excessive link building, when they got penalized, they never really.
[00:32:33] John: They, they cared, but they didn't care because they made so much money leading up to it, that they had insane bankroll that they could bar their way. They could literally wait a year and a half before they regained it. They then acquired another site and they just kept amplifying this. So I know so many friends that, um, they've made insane amounts of money over the years.
[00:32:50] John: And even some of the, today, some of the largest iGaming affiliates have actually done this. They've done everything from Parasite SEO. They just made and printed so much money that when something goes down, they have so much money that they can just buy something else, right? It's it's too easy. You can now buy everything as scamblers was acquired, um, I think a year and a half ago by one of the biggest groups.
[00:33:12] John: Now that big group didn't, I don't think did a lot of black hat, uh, SEO, but the fact is they have so much money in the bank. They can just like click and buy everything. So what's happened in iGaming in the last, uh, Probably five to 10 years as there's been more consolidation, um, going to the conferences year after year.
[00:33:28] John: I'm hearing this from affiliate managers. They're like, Oh, there's, there's less affiliates attending these things. Well, of course there's less affiliates because they're all being acquired by the biggest companies. Better collective. Um, they're publicly traded. I think they, they published. 373 million euros in revenue last year.
[00:33:43] John: That's just one of them. And then there's gambling. com there's rake tech. There's Katana media. There's a Excel media. There's a whole bunch of them and some of them are suffering, but a lot of them, they're just getting stronger and they just, they have large budgets. Like a hundred million in the bank, ready to buy whatever is exciting.
[00:34:01] This reminds me of like when chat GPT came out there were like a ton of websites created, like automatically with, I don't know, a million. Pages about everything and very often at least and I think it is happening still those pages Started to rank for everything and even for a short period of time they ranked for I don't know They had a couple of million visits per day and they made a ton of money from ads The site is tanked.
[00:34:27] Olga: No problem. we earned what we wanted. Right. So this is kind of a similar, I would say approach. It doesn't matter that it has been tanked. Right.
[00:34:37] John: Yeah. I still think it's even possible to do that today. So. For example, it's like, I have a site that I don't even have time to do, and it's all about land based casinos.
[00:34:45] John: In my opinion, land based casinos is such an untapped niche that it's like, people are looking for a casino near me, wherever they are in the world. Uh, they're probably going to be interested in online gambling. I think that's a perfect example of still being able to use AI content without the risk of being penalized.
[00:35:01] John: Because You know, what do, what do all the SEO experts say about AI content? They're like, get your AI content, but get an editor to clean it. And, you know, just make sure that it's factually correct and things like that. To me, this is a perfect example of doing a hybrid of programmatic SEO and AI content.
[00:35:16] John: It's if I, if I wasn't so busy with what I'm doing today, I would go right into this with that website, but I just don't have the time.
[00:35:24] Olga: This was supposed to be my next question. Does local SEO even exist for, for that industry? Like Google Maps, like, tell me about it.
[00:35:33] John: I've heard this from affiliates that have told me directly that because, you know, it's kind of like a common trick.
[00:35:38] John: Like put it, put your own company address, put a phone number on the foot of your website. Cause you're telling Google that you're a real thing. Now I have a company, I won't name them, but they're based in Poland and they put it, they put their address there with a number. So it's Polish everything.
[00:35:52] John: They've said that their local SEO from a Polish point of view in parts of Eastern Europe is their, their rankings are high and they believe it's all because of that. And I've heard a lot of examples where this has actually benefited them. So it's the more realness you put in there will help. And I've heard this from a lot of, uh.
[00:36:10] John: SEO is that say, when you put this kind of local entity on your website as a signature, you start gaining that. I think Google's kind of looking for, you know, Google's in the worst place. Um, they, they have to decide who gets to have what traffic and they got to try to be fair. You know, if they give everything to one person, it's kind of like, well.
[00:36:27] John: You know, that doesn't really help anyone. They need some people to make money so they can have money in the bank to pay for their performance Mac or their P max product, you know, Google, that's how they make all their money. So they're like, we'll give you a little bit. And then when you lose it, you know where to come back and buy their traffic.
[00:36:40] John: So I do think local SEO plays an important, um, in this. And I think just as something as trivial as that is, it's worth doing.
[00:36:49] Olga: This may a little bit, this may sound a little bit obvious, but I am from Poland and I also like help some Polish websites even though I mostly do like international SEO. I also do some Quora tricks for Polish websites and Polish Google algorithm is definitely way less advanced, sophisticated.
[00:37:10] Olga: And I, and I think still things that used to work 15 years ago on the English side and do not work there anymore, they do work, work here. So, so this is like getting into those other languages, other, easier, I would say, industries is also worth doing. And I think, Gaming in Poland is also like doing quite, quite well.
[00:37:31] John: Yeah. Like take, take whatever you could get, whether Google's giving you like a strong dominant position in one market. But you know, I think just trying like, there's still too many people that they're like, let's be number one for English in America for super competitive keyword. And it's like, yeah, it's a good luck.
[00:37:48] Olga: Yeah. But on the other hand there is definitely more money on the, on the English side than for example, in Poland. There might be
[00:37:56] John: more, but I'll tell you that in the last 15 years, both being an affiliate manager and watching other affiliates, anyone that's gone away from English has done extremely well, very well, French, Polish, uh, even Serbian.
[00:38:11] John: I've watched these people dominate their local markets to the point where they've made so much money that they go, wait a minute, let's go into check. Let's go into Finland or they they've started in Finland and they're going, let's go into Spain. Uh, they're going into Latin America. It's these affiliates have actually done well.
[00:38:26] John: So it's one of my, I used to do affiliate coaching a long time ago, and I've always advised people to do this. Like one of my friends who was very successful, he started off, um, first he wanted to do a poker, uh, affiliate site. And I said, go to casino poker is super competitive. Uh, in the wrong sense, like casino, you have, you have, let's say a thousand casinos you could promote and you don't need a lot of traffic to make good money.
[00:38:49] John: Whereas the poker, all the players go to like one poker room. Like, you know, it's usually party poker, poker stars. Um, but I said, don't focus on English, focus on French. You'll, you'll dominate the French market first. And then sure enough, now he's got the money to be able to compete in all the different markets in the world.
[00:39:05] John: All because it became, you know, really good at one, one thing.
[00:39:08] Olga: So, one final question. because I heard such stories, you, you heard them probably as well, like, gambling, this is emotion is at play, as you mentioned at the start. How do you like keep sanity?
[00:39:21] Olga: Because of course there is a risk of addiction. There are a lot of people losing like all their money because they got so much involved into that. I personally know such a person who was very into that in terms of SEO as well. And they had to like totally give this up because they lost all their money.
[00:39:37] Olga: They, all the money they had and earned.
[00:39:39] How
[00:39:39] Olga: do you, what do you do? how do, what do you advise here? If, if. There can be any advice.
[00:39:44] John: Yeah, great question. I mean, if I had the button where I could push it and end all of gambling today, I probably would, even if it would destroy my, my, my career or my future career, if I want to stay in this space.
[00:39:57] John: So you got to understand like, how do people act and why do people do this? So unfortunately, with the rise of online gambling, it's creating more gambling problems. What I think the industry needs and people need to be aware of is like, what exists on the market that is there to help people? I think what we really need is we need more education on all levels.
[00:40:14] John: Uh, so just to give you a bit of a background, I volunteer for a. Uh, a charity called bet blocker. org. They are an app which requires no registration and no fee. So you don't have to pay for it. You can download on any device you want unlimited and it blocks all on a gambling sites. So they maintain a full database.
[00:40:33] John: It's the biggest comprehensive database, um, of every online site that accepts real money for gambling. So you can either block it permanently. It basically stays on your app for like five years, or I forget what it is. Or you can say, I only want a timeout because I have, I like to have some drinks on the weekend and I don't want to be able to gamble in the evening when I've already had some drinks.
[00:40:52] John: Cause I'm going to, I'm going to do something that I'm going to regret. So I think it's helpful that the industry knows that this stuff exists. I'm happy to see the industry starting to support, uh, not just bet blocker, but other things that are kind of pushing the industry forward. I think this is what is needed.
[00:41:06] John: I think people that work in gambling, they, they need to have their own means of, Being ethically responsible because my opinion is if you don't care to be ethically responsible, then government's going to come along and make you responsible against your own. Well, it's not to say that that's a bad thing, but I think we just need to be like, look, do we do we care?
[00:41:25] John: Like, Yes, it's an industry that's filled with people that are making a lot of money from the business side of it. It's just the way it is. But I think what we need to do is show that, you know, we actually care about people and we have products and services that can actually monitor this. And then, you know, this is another tangent, but it's like, why, why do people gravitate towards certain types of addictions, whether it's gambling or alcohol, or social media or whatever it is?
[00:41:49] John: I think hopefully as a, as the human race. evolves or hopefully evolves, I'd like to see that we can find ways of addressing that. But
[00:41:56] John: ,
[00:41:56] John: my take is on it. It's like, I do think whether I'm in the space or not, someone is going to be in my position doing the same job. So if I'm going to be the person here, I think it's my responsibility to do a bit of volunteer work, spread the word about what some of these Things are, and I think more affiliates and operators should care and it should care beyond just linking to like responsible gambling, it's a show that you care and do, do one thing that could make someone's life a little bit better.
[00:42:25] Olga: I totally agree. Okay, John, so where can people find you how to connect with you? Tell me all about it?
[00:42:32] John: Yes. Okay. I've got a very common name, so if you find, yeah, if you look for John Wright on LinkedIn, it's fine. Fine. You might find a lot of people, but we're friends in common, so if you see that, uh, connection, that's a good one.
[00:42:43] John: Otherwise, uh, just look up stats stone, uh mm-Hmm, . SDAI will, its DROE. Uh, John at sastron. com and my, a lot of my comment handles on social media are always look right. So with an R, so it's a, there's a, there's a funny joke there, but
[00:42:58] John: ,
[00:42:58] John: it has to do with the being in the London, you know, when not on the street where it says look, right.
[00:43:02] John: Yeah,
[00:43:03] Olga: For people who always look
[00:43:04] John: right. So one, you literally need to look right. But it's kind of like a joke on the, you know, the English words, you got to look right. You got to look good.
[00:43:13] Olga: Very nice. Yeah. This will be, I think the catchphrase I will put somewhere in the image for the video thumbnail.
[00:43:19] Olga: Okay, John, so thank you so much for, for being with me that I think this was a very insightful episode. People will learn a ton from it. I hope we will be able to make another one in some time because this industry is like changing all the time. So, so super nice to have you.
[00:43:34] John: Thanks for having me. And if you have me on again, I'm sure things will be a lot different than they are now.
[00:43:38] John: Yeah,
[00:43:39] Olga: definitely. Okay. So thanks, John. And thanks everyone. And always look right. Bye
[00:43:44] bye.
