Presented at IGB's London Affiliate Conference on 02/02/2015. The presentation uses Blueclaw's MarketScout reports as a starting point from which to understand what metrics and signals are leading to success in Google's organic search results for iGaming brands and affiliates.

1. What's moving search results?
A snapshot of what is driving major iGaming SERPS

2. • Lead Blueclaw’s operations, including our Technical SEO,
Development/Design & Online PR/Outreach teams
• Trained journalist, and have worked in PR, Social Media
and Digital for seven years – worked in and around search
marketing for a large proportion of that time
• Contributed to a number of iGaming industry publications,
including GPWA Times and IGB Affiliate
Joel Turner
Operations Director
@joelturner

3. Blueclaw
Founded in 2005, Blueclaw offers Content
Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) and Social Media
Marketing; developing campaigns that build
online visibility and sales.
Based at offices in Leeds and London, our
team comprises of on and off-site SEO
specialists, PR executives, copywriters,
designers, developers and PPC consultants.
We have worked with a number of leading
iGaming operators and affiliates for the last
five years and continue to work with some of
the industry’s biggest players.
www.blueclawsearch.co.uk

4. • Its been a tough few years for iGaming affiliates and operators
• Penguin and Panda updates coupled with waves of manual spam actions
have left many demoralised
• Some big name operators are still labouring under penalties
• A lot of affiliates don’t know which way to turn, and many are nervous
after spending years removing penalties from sites

6. • The tool brings together data from industry-
standard tools Majestic.com and Buzzsumo.com –
amongst others – to produce a comprehensive
market comparison report that takes into account
rankings, links and social metrics.
• This unique combination of source data enables
marketing teams to see where they need to make
improvements to catch-up with or overtake their
competitors in organic search.

7. • Majestic.com is one of the biggest crawlers of the web
• Uses its own metrics to assess the value of domains and URLS
• Crawls over 2 billion new URLS each and every day
• Citation Flow is a number predicting how influential a URL might
be based on how many sites link to it
• Trust Flow is a number predicting how trustworthy a page is
based on how trustworthy sites tend to link to trustworthy
neighbours.

8. • In Spring 2014 Majestic.com announced the launch of Topical Trust Flow
• Works out the proximity of a page/domain/sub-domain to one of nearly one thousand categories
e.g. Arts/Television, News/Weather
• Hugely useful in understanding a marketplace and what links a site should be obtaining to fit with
competitors

9. • Buzzsumo.com is a relatively new social media analysis platform
• It allows you to discover socially successful content in particular niches, and social media
influencers, bloggers and journalists on a similar basis
• Provides snapshots of the number of times domains/URLs have been shared socially
across popular networks

10. • The tool creates reports with several major sections:
• Overview page
• Market comparison Traffic Lights
• Visibility analysis
• Off-Site Equity Analysis
• Topical Equity Analysis
• Opportunity Analysis
• Social Analysis
• Conclusions
• Analysis Key Phrases and opportunity
&
&

12. • Since the launch of MarketScout Blueclaw has
developed a series of reports exclusively for IGB
• These have focused on a number of markets within
the iGaming space, as well as specific keywords
and SERPs
• To date we have looked at Forex, Binary Options,
Bingo, Horse Racing, Poker, Blackjack and Lottery in
the UK SERPs.
&

13. • During the course of the reports we have noticed a few
trends…
• Exact and Partial Match Domains are still hugely powerful
• Key indicators of off-site SEO success can now vary widely
• Fresh, regular content can be just as powerful as link-
building
• Building a strong social brand can positively impact search
rankings
• Staying on topic is important when it comes to link-
building
&

14. Exact/Partial Match Domains

15. Exact match domains
• The influence of Exact Match Domains and Partial Match Domains seems to wax and wane
• Moz.com’s Mozcast shows the influence of them changing over time
• My personal opinion is that Google knows exact match domains are highly likely to offer relevant (if
not always quality) content
• When other algorithmic tweaks exclude sites (like Penguin updates) the SERPs have to made up of
something
• The EMD update in 2012 certainly did not kill them, but possession of an EMD or PMD alone is not
enough to rank.

16. Exact match domains

22. Is bigger better?

23. • Bigger used to be better in terms of link profiles. More links = better rankings
• Now it more obvious than ever that high authority links are exponentially more valuable than lower
quality links
• Looking at certain search verticals from a link profile perspective can be confusing, and show significant
variation in numbers
• Link-building is no longer an arms race in the traditional sense
Link profile comparisons

26. The role of on-site content

27. • We see a number of affiliates performing well simply on the basis of the content they produce
• Fresh, high-quality content on an architecturally sound site can be a winning combination
• A number of new generation affiliates, who are new to organic search are performing well on this basis
• They have built big brands socially to market their content or offers – but paid little attention to traditional
link-building activity
Fresh content

32. Social media impact

33. • A strong social media presence can now be a powerful ranking factor
• Expending time building a brand on Twitter in particular can pay off in search
• The influence of social media is a brand-building one, still hard to assess the importance of
metrics around domains
• A number of newer affiliates have made their businesses on social media, but their influence on
networks such as Twitter is now being felt in the SERPs
Social impact

37. Remain on topic

39. • We believe this does matter, if Majestic can make this assessment with some accuracy – so can
Google
• The original incarnations of Penguin were very much focused around anchor text ratios
• Newer versions of the algorithm, or a future spam detection algorithm could well look far more
closely at the theme of referring domains
• Links from completely unrelated niches, or which contribute to a pattern that doesn’t fit with the
vertical should be avoided
• Does the linking domain seem as if it should have a relationship with your domain?
Remain on topic

40. Conclusions

41. • Even the most competitive verticals are open
• There is lots of opportunity – think about the limitations of
operators and analyse the successes of other affiliates
• Google wants to provide value to searchers and must return
something for queries
• It has also decimated the link graph in iGaming, meaning
PMDs/EMDs, on-site content and social brand building are
more important
• It may dislike affiliates, but they play an important role in the
iGaming SERPS
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42. Questions?