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Are Outbound Casino & Gambling Links Bad For My Site?
Casino link building is something that divides opinion. There are webmasters who feel that the practice of building gambling links is wrong, and there are others who don’t have an issue with it.
As part of our outreach work for our iGaming clients, we tend to find that there are an array of reasons as to why a site won’t accept an article that links out to a gambling domain. Sure, if the content is poorly written, has no relevance to the publishing site, or the link is entirely non-contextual in the content – then that makes good sense. We certainly wouldn’t publish an article like that, gambling related or otherwise, so why would they?
However, there are times when the article isn’t remotely like the above. For example, our piece on iGaming search trends is data driven, unique, and offers something beneficial to the readership (we hope!). And all of the articles we write on behalf of our casino clients follow the same suit. But the one objection we typically face is – outbound casino or gambling links are bad for my site.
How true is that?
Well, firstly, paid links are in breach of Google’s T&Cs. So, accepting a guest post on a travel site for example, that is titled: ‘The Best Casino Bonuses 2020’, is an absolute no-no. The article is completely out of context, totally irrelevant to the site’s demographic, and sticks out like a sore thumb.
However, contextual links are absolutely fine. We already know that iGaming link building is completely different, in comparison to other industries, so our approach needs to be different.
It’s important that we’re creating something unique, something different, but above all – something designed for the site’s readership. The number of articles that we see, with the title: ‘Best Online Casinos’ or something similar, with exact match casino related anchors throughout, is somewhat shocking – it’s adding no value.
Let’s take for example a tech site, talking about technological trends and advances across its categorised content. The aforementioned would have no space on a site like this, as it’s out of context. However, advances within major tech companies would – and major tech companies include the likes of NetEnt, Microgaming and Playtech – three of the largest casino software providers in the world. Content that talks about how these platforms have improved their technology to the benefit of players, in terms of both UX and data protection would be perfect – any outbound link would likely be natural, and the content is perfectly in fitting with the site’s overall editorial.
As a gambling link building agency, we produce a lot of iGaming and casino related content on our blog. Are we going to link out to sportsbooks, poker operators, and casino providers through the course of our editorial – absolutely not, because it’s not relevant to do so, and it wouldn’t add any benefit to our readership to do so. We are talking about the marketing of such products, the strategies we use, and what we feel is best practice.
Outbound links to casino sites aren’t bad, and won’t harm you, if they’re in context. Furthermore, and of the utmost importance, is anchor texts. Your site will be penalised if you are accepting gambling articles in high numbers, and each one has an exact match anchor text – such as ‘best online casino’ – linking out to the contributor’s site. Again, this isn’t natural, and no author would consistently link out like this in a regular manner. It’s important to get this bit right.
Outbound gambling links aren’t bad – it’s just sometimes the contributors work in such a way that make them bad.
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