Casino Backlinks: Full Link Building Guide

Achieving casino backlinks is quite effective in increasing the trust and authority of a page, which can help it rank for highly competitive keywords in organic search results.

Casino Backlinks: Where to Get Casino Backlinks?

You will be hard-pressed to secure a 'cheap' casino backlink from a trusted blog. And the first mistake that you can make is going after low-cost backlinking opportunities. It’s a sure way of increasing Google's scrutiny as the only sources of low-cost links are sites with low domain authority. 

The sites may be in unrelated niches and with foreign audiences. It's actually better to have a few high-quality backlinks than many toxic links. 

As you also undertake casino backlink buying, leaving footprints— any indicators of a link building scheme—will be another fatal mistake regardless of the link building technique you choose even if it's relatively 'safe' like guest posting. 

There's a lot more to know, and this casino link building guide will give you a better understanding of how to achieve casino links, and point out potential mistakes you should avoid. Let's dive in. 

Why Are Casino Backlinks Important?

A casino backlink is generated when a third-party site links back to a website in the online casino niche. Links mainly originate from homepages, directories, forum comments, blog articles, news pieces, and even press releases syndicated on PR networks. So, what is the importance of backlinks? 

Helping SEO

With so many websites providing similar content and services, there is no way for search engines to tell which websites to trust for information. 

The main way Google assigns trust is by looking at how many websites are linking to a particular service or resource. A high number of backlinks suggest that the page can be trusted and that it would match the searcher's intent—be it transactional, navigational, or informational. 

Making Your Brand More Recognizable

Backlinks on third-party sites can increase the amount of referral traffic. The new visitors will become acquainted with the brand. Additionally, backlinks improve the rankings of the linked page and positively impact other pages as well. The site will appear in more search results, and searchers will grow more accustomed to it. 

Where to Find Casino Backlinks?

If you need gas for your car, you can simply drive to your nearest gas station. But figuring out where to get links for casino sites is not so obvious. 

As Google frowns upon the practice, many sites that do actually sell links will not put a banner on their homepage advertising link building opportunities. You need to reach out to them. But remember the thing about leaving footprints. It is better to avoid using your company or corporate email to scout link building opportunities. 

Let's assess some of the methods of acquiring links that involve a transfer of value. 

Exchange of Links

The technique doesn't exactly entail trading links. And as a matter of fact, it tends to happen quite naturally.  

An Ahrefs study revealed that nearly 74% of domains driving more than 10k in organic traffic every month had reciprocal links to each other. Given this, exchanging links may not trigger Google suspicions if it's done as naturally as possible. You should: 

• Choose casino niche sites; 
• Avoid cross-linking with relatively new sites with a spammy backlink profile; 
• Avoid participating in link exchange groups where sites have a lot of overlap and congruity; 
• Generate powerful backlinks to new content gradually and not at the same time; 
• Acquire backlinks for casino websites through other means before improving them with link exchanges. 
• Place the link on a relevant page and contextually in a way that improves the user’s experience. 

You may need to reach out to another webmaster to exchange casino backlinks. Ensure that the other person is trustworthy and professional and that their website does not raise any red flags. 

Note: It’s preferable to use link exchanges in combination with other methods as there is a possibility that your website may be penalized if they are utilized excessively.

You can also participate in a three-way or ABC link exchange, where three websites are parallelly linked to each other to reduce suspicions. 

Paid Links

There are two primary ways of acquiring a paid link. Firstly, you can perform outreach guest posting, where you submit an article to another website and the article will have a contextual link to your preferred page. 

Niche edits or link insertion is the second way of acquiring paid links. It means inserting your link into an existing page that's already indexed, ranking for search terms, and with backlinks of its own. 

What is the process of getting paid links? Some steps to take are the following: 

1. Research websites in niches that naturally link back to online casino sites. The most obvious choices would be casino blogs or poker sites; however, the majority of casino backlinks are acquired from websites related to lifestyle, sports, gaming, technology, entertainment, etc. The sites have to meet the quality criteria that you will specify.
2. Contact the site administrator and pitch your suggestion. For instance, if it's an affiliate gambling site that has published a list of top online casinos in your region you may ask for a chance to be included.
3. The site administrator may reply to your requests and provide you with the requirements and pricing guide. You may have to negotiate so that you can save money and stretch your budget over the long haul. 
4. If required, you will hire someone to produce and edit the content. 
5. You will then submit the link. 
6. The link placement has to be monitored constantly using backlink manager software to ensure that the other party has not wrongly removed it or made any errors while posting it. 

You can build your capacity in-house to facilitate the process of getting links. But it can be much easier and scalable to work with reputable casino link building services with their own teams of specialists, content writers, technical SEO experts, and programmers. 

PBN

Private blog networks or PBNs are artificial websites created for the purpose of passing link juice to linked domains. 

The process of building a PBN starts with finding domains that are expired or sold at an auction and have good domain authority earned from other websites pointing back to them. Like any other domain, it has to be hosted, and additionally, you may need to produce articles. It's from these articles that external links to other websites are generated. 

There are two main approaches for getting links from PBN sites. You can do it yourself or buy PBN links from a trusted service. The latter route is more favored as any mistake can attract strict penalties. But it's paramount to find a trusted provider. 

What can you look out for to find a trusted source? 

• The articles need to be high-quality, unique, and niche-related, either written by a human author or AI-generated (in which case you have to ensure proper post-editing). 
• The vendor should have a broad network of sites, so you can receive links from a niche-related site. 
• PBN sites need to have a sufficient number of referring domains. The more referring domains the more expensive the PBN link will be. 

How to Choose Qualitative Backlinks for Casino Websites?

We have already looked at some tips that you can use when evaluating paid links or PBN links. Let's delve further into link building tips you can use to determine the quality of the referring domain.

Organic Traffic

It's imperative to buy links from websites generating consistent organic traffic from search results and other sources. At the least, the website should be generating 1,000 visits per month. 

You should further determine the quality of the organic traffic by looking at the following:

• GEO

Quality websites will have the closest overlap in the audiences you want to target. 

• Traffic Growth

Watch out for any recent drops in traffic that may indicate a Google penalty. You should also be careful about any recent spikes. 

• Top Pages

The best websites will have top pages ranking among the first results for certain keywords. 

If you're using Ahrefs for your analysis, here is a quick table showing which tool to use:

 

 

You can use some free tools by Ahrefs including Traffic Checker, Website Authority Checker, and Backlink Checker to get insights about the sites you’re analyzing. 

 

Domain Rating

The domain rating is a metric coined to measure how strong and authoritative a website is. It's based on the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing back to the website.

Sites with a high DR score share some characteristics: 

• They have lots of unique domains linking to the website; 
• The referring domains have high authority. 

The minimum score may differ depending on which SEO tool you're utilizing. But ideally, it should be 20+.

Website's Niche

When evaluating where to get casino backlinks, think of niches where it's possible to generate a natural link back to a casino website. Websites in the following niches may be preferable: 

• Online gambling industry 
• Poker
• Gaming
• Sports betting
• Lifestyle and entertainment
• Travel
• Sports and culture
• Business and finance
• Cryptocurrency and blockchain
• Technology
• Product and service review sites

 

Casino Link Building Guide

You should have a strategy before performing paid link building. The strategy will dictate the approaches you'll use to get links and answer crucial questions like how many links you need. 

1. Analyze Your Competitors

Before building links, figure out who your main search competitors are. Find out their domain rating score, the number of referring domains, where links originate from, if they're using PBNs, etc. You can even find link building opportunities from competitor analysis and replicate methods that are working for them. 

2. Create a Link Building Plan

The link building plan should outline the techniques that you want to implement in order to generate backlinks for casino websites. For instance, do you plan to perform outreach guest posting or niche edits on existing articles? 

The plan also acts as your casino link building guide as it further specifies: 

2.1 Links Amount

How many links are you planning to generate? The simple way to figure this out is to get an average domain rating score of your top competitors. For instance, all your top 10 competitors may have an average domain rating of 50. Next, work out how many casino backlinks you’ll need to get to achieve this score. 

Note the distribution of DR scores in the referring domains. For instance, you may need up to 60 referring domains, with at least ten links coming from domains with at least 50+ DR. 

2.2 Requirements for Link Building Websites

The plan must also specify the requirements for the link building websites you will partner with. Here are some baseline recommendations:

• Monthly traffic: 1000+ visitors
• Traffic consistency: no big dips and spikes in the last three months 
• Domain rating: at least 20+ on Ahrefs
• Number of linked domains vs referring domains: Ideally, the number of linked domains should not exceed two times the number of referring domains. 
• Number of links to other casino sites: Not more than 5% of linked domains as it may indicate that the website sells plenty of links to other gambling and casino companies making their link scheme more obvious. 
• Number of referring domains for PBNs: At least 10 and the content should be high-quality. 
• Additional requirements: The website must be in a relevant niche and language. And it should not label posts as sponsored or paid. 

3. Create an Anchor Text Plan

Google utilizes the anchor text to better understand what the linked page contains. 

Being aggressive with the anchor text entails using an exact-match anchor text with descriptive keywords. This may be okay if you’re linking from high-quality sources and once your site is more established. But you may need to be careful as over-optimizing the anchor text can result in a penalty. It's best to have a mix of anchor text to appear as natural as possible. 

If your site is relatively new and if you’re linking from PBNs, it’s better to use branded, generic, and partial match anchor text. 

4. Post Links and Enjoy the Results

After posting the links, you should start enjoying the results once the referring domain starts passing link juice. You can see an immediate boost in several weeks, or it could take several months. 

 

How Not to Lose Your Money and Optimize Your Budget?

It's quite possible to waste your money on low-quality links that Google will just ignore. Similarly, you may end up spending too much money on a few casino backlinks. 

The following tips should help optimize your budget and ensure that you don't waste resources: 

1. Use LinkChecker PRO for Backlink Monitoring

Purchasing links is built on trust and, in certain situations, the link provider may abuse that trust by removing your link prematurely or not following up on their promise. Casino backlinks are certainly not cheap, and you need to do your best to monitor if the link was added or if it was erroneously tagged as no-follow. You also need a bulk backlink checker to constantly monitor all your links in real-time. 

LinkChecker PRO is the ideal tool to track and analyze your links. It has proved useful in numerous situations, helping users recover links worth $14,000 by making users aware of link removals and giving them ample time to initiate PayPal disputes.  

2. Find Cheaper Websites for Casino Link Building

Cheaper link building opportunities do exist. They are a bit harder to find and will require you to be more proactive in your approach and cast a wider net to find opportunities that others in the industry are not going after. 

That said, you should be careful about cheap links, particularly where the site owner is too greedy and is trying to raise all the money they can from selling links.

3. Don't Be Afraid to Negotiate the Price with Site Owners

If you receive the rate card from the site owner, there's always room to negotiate a lower price. The worst answer you can receive is “No”.

 

Bottom Line 

The links that you buy for your casino website can appear as natural as other links. Just steer clear of leaving footprints and only work with high-quality sources. 

You should keep tracking your links after placement using a link monitoring tool like LinkChecker PRO. It’s full of features and can meet the needs of any agency with several team members and link building specialists. Test it out for free by claiming your free trial.