James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley: Casino SEO. How to rank in the iGaming industry.

It is one of the most competitive markets in the world.

I am joined with Craig Campbell, who is a huge iGaming consultant for some of the biggest casinos in the world.

So Craig, if someone owns an online casino and they are looking to improve rankings, grow impressions, clicks and most importantly FTDs, how can an online casino improve rankings?

Craig Campbell: The casinos I work with already have serious authority.

Most have been around for years. DR75, DR80 and all that kind of stuff.

So the first thing I look at is where the shortfall is.

Is it content? Virality? Technical setup? Brand signals? Something else?

Usually different operators are missing different pieces of the puzzle.

At that stage, building more standard links is not massively important because they are already on page one.

What matters is finding the missing edge.

James Dooley: Virality is obviously a massive topic in casino SEO.

Craig Campbell: Yeah, but people misunderstand what virality actually is.

A lot of people are blasting rubbish traffic using things like pop traffic and pretending that is virality.

That is not virality. That is a quick way to damage long-term rankings.

Years ago people used tools like CTR Booster and other manipulation systems. A lot of that technology is now detectable by Google.

If you are going to push engagement signals, it needs to be done properly alongside everything else.

When done correctly, it absolutely works.

James Dooley: I think the biggest mistake is people repeatedly pushing bad quality engagement directly to the money site.

They see instant ranking boosts and think it is amazing.

Then six weeks later the site gets hammered because the user experience is terrible.

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

You never want to put the actual casino brand at risk.

That is why I always say run multiple lanes.

If you do not want to test aggressive things on the branded domain, fine. Use separate projects.

The iGaming space is full of canonical abuse, 301 tricks, subdomain tricks, expired domains, mass links and parasite SEO anyway.

Everyone is pushing the boundaries.

James Dooley: Let’s go through some quickfire questions then.

Parasite SEO. Is it essential in the casino market?

Craig Campbell: Absolutely.

If I own Craig’s Casino and somebody can steal my branded traffic using parasite SEO, then why would I not defend against it?

Things like review pages, login searches and brand comparisons are massive.

Trustpilot pages rank really well right now too.

If competitors are using parasite SEO against you, you would be crazy not to protect your own brand.

James Dooley: What about press releases specifically for casinos?

Craig Campbell: Definitely worth doing.

Not just for casinos either.

Even if someone started a gardening business tomorrow, I would still recommend press releases.

They help with brand mentions, trust signals and entity recognition.

They are not magic ranking boosters on their own, but they are part of the overall mix.

James Dooley: Tier two backlinks then.

Would you recommend powering up good links pointing to casino sites?

Craig Campbell: Yeah. One hundred percent.

And I would push traffic to those links as well.

You need to fuel the fire.

If you are not powering up those assets, your competitors definitely are.

James Dooley: I think that is one of the biggest takeaways.

People are obsessed with sending traffic directly to the money page, but there are loads of other places you can push signals to safely.

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

Why would your homepage and landing pages be the only options?

If your guest posts and PR placements get traffic and engagement themselves, Google is going to value them more.

You are strengthening the entire ecosystem around the site.

James Dooley: Let’s talk semantic SEO and topical authority.

Would you recommend casinos build thousands of slot pages and topical clusters?

Craig Campbell: I would focus on the pages that actually bring traffic and revenue.

There is no point building pages for slot games nobody searches for.

But at the same time, topical authority will matter more over time.

Even if Google does not heavily reward it today in iGaming, I think they eventually will.

So I would rather build the structure now than try to catch up later.

James Dooley: I also like it because it creates more internal linking opportunities and more pages to build links into.

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

It strengthens the whole site.

James Dooley: Technical SEO then.

Some people sell massive casino SEO audits focused on Core Web Vitals and technical fixes.

How important is technical SEO for casinos?

Craig Campbell: Important, but nowhere near the number one factor.

Most casino operators are constrained by their platforms anyway.

It is not like working on a simple WordPress site.

A lot of casino systems are old, complicated and difficult to change.

The casino I currently work with is rebuilding its entire platform because the existing one is about ten years old.

We know it is slow and clunky.

We know the user experience could be better.

But despite that, it still ranks and performs well.

I would not be spending twenty grand on technical audits unless there is a genuine issue.

James Dooley: What about schema?

Craig Campbell: Historically I never cared that much about schema.

It always felt like a lot of work for limited reward.

But with AI search and LLMs becoming more important, I think schema matters a lot more now.

So yes, I would absolutely be implementing schema moving forward.

James Dooley: Internal linking then.

How important is internal linking for casinos?

Craig Campbell: Hugely important.

You want to pass power around the site to the pages that actually matter.

But again, casinos have thousands of pages.

Hundreds of slots, sports betting pages, games and categories.

You cannot obsess over every single page equally.

Focus on the twenty percent of pages bringing eighty percent of the traffic and revenue.

Double down there.

James Dooley: I think the biggest takeaway from your casino SEO advice is that everything matters.

Not just one trick.

Schema matters. Internal links matter. Virality matters. Topical authority matters.

It all compounds together.

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

The difference between position three and position one in casino SEO can be worth millions.

Sometimes it is one missing piece of the puzzle.

Most casinos already have authority.

So often the win comes from adding the smaller things competitors are ignoring.

James Dooley: If you are an online casino operator and enjoyed this discussion around casino SEO, leave a comment below.

There is a lot more we could discuss around DMCA attacks, negative SEO and advanced ranking strategies.

Craig, it has been an absolute pleasure.