Customer loyalty is important for any business, but for those in the iGaming industry, it’s indispensable. You need to make sure that you secure repeat customers – people who love your games and want to keep coming back. In this article, you’ll learn how good iGaming marketing can build customer loyalty right from the start.
4 minutes – read
Bonus and rewards for your online casino and iGaming marketing strategy
A great iGaming marketing strategy starts with a great product. No matter how well-crafted your sales pitch might be or how expert your mobile app localization is, customers won’t stick around if you don’t have games they enjoy. Securing a customer base that’s both large and loyal means having a wide range of popular games that will draw in new customers and turn them into regular players.
Bonuses and rewards are great for encouraging return visits. Associating each of your popular games with a bonus makes them even more appealing. For instance, you could offer daily or weekly free spins on a roulette game, or free sessions on a popular slot game for repeat customers who log in every day.
Bonuses and rewards are great for encouraging return visits
A welcome bonus, like free plays or complimentary credit to spend on your games, is a tried-and-tested iGaming marketing tool. This kind of bonus gives new customers a reason to sign up and creates a positive image for your company. Players like to feel valued and a signup bonus shows that you’re serious about welcoming new players.
Create the best iGaming experience with security and responsibility
Players put a lot of trust in iGaming services when they participate in online gambling. Your players need to know that their sensitive personal and financial data is protected at all times. It only takes one security breach to lose that trust. Once it’s gone, it’s very hard to get back. Using the best information security systems and practices keeps your customers’ data safe and protects your reputation.
Different players prefer different payment options. Some will be paying by credit or debit card, while others will prefer various online payment systems. Make sure that your site has a range of different secure payment options that your players can use. Players are more likely to sign up if you offer familiar and trusted payment methods.
Players put a lot of trust in iGaming services when they participate in online gambling
Websites nowadays need to put responsive design front and centre. While many gamers enjoy the expansive and immersive feel of a desktop monitor, others prefer the convenience of a mobile device. Your site needs to look great and perform flawlessly on a range of devices, operating systems and display configurations.
Another factor to consider is the promotion of responsible gaming. Online gaming should be a fun and exhilarating pastime, not a dangerous compulsion. Your site should encourage players to game responsibly. Allow players to set a budget so they don’t spend too much and offer advice on keeping their gaming fun rather than risky. You should also give players the option to permanently block their accounts if they don’t feel able to use your site responsibly. Provide links to relevant support organizations for those who suffer from compulsive gambling.
Quality iGaming services: localization, customization and communication
The iGaming market is a global one, with players from all over the world logging on to enjoy the thrills and spills of online gaming. When you expand into markets overseas, great iGaming translations and localization are the keys to success. Players are more likely to join your site and stay around if they feel that you speak their language and are in touch with their culture. That’s why you need expert website and mobile app localization and professional translations.
When you expand into markets overseas, great iGaming translations and localization are the keys to success
Multilingual content is also important for marketing and engagement on social media. Players want to see the latest news about their favourite gaming sites in their native language. Proper translation is also important for effective communication with your customers, something that’s vital for retention. Consider adding a multilingual chatbot to your site, too. These chatbots can provide customer support 24/7, regardless of which language the customer speaks. This saves players from long, annoying waits, putting the information they want at their fingertips.
At 1StopTranslations, we provide top-tier professional translations and localization services for the iGaming industry. We can help you reach and retain more players in more markets than ever before. Whether you’re looking for website translations, mobile app localization or translations for your iGaming marketing materials, we can help. To find out more about our iGaming translations and other services, contact us today.
Positioning a website on Google requires an appropriate link building strategy, but sometimes this activity tends to be neglected or not done properly.
10 minutes -read
Positioning a website on Google requires an appropriate link building strategy, but sometimes this activity tends to be neglected or not done properly.
Forcing the positioning by link building with unsuitable practices may produce the opposite effect, causing the website to fall in the SERP and, in the worst cases, to disappear completely from the search engine.
In this article we’ll address the topic with the knowledge that, especially for the iGaming and Betting sector, there are few ways to boost organic positioning and to increase visits to a website, being severely limited by current regulations and content sponsorship.
What is link building?
Link building is the construction of a network of links among websites. If you think about the web itself, it’s made up of these links among web pages, and all search engines do is browse this huge network, evaluating which pages are most suitable based on search criteria and rewarding, among other factors, those pages that receive more spontaneous references from other pages.
Google not only appreciates links but also needs them for its own proper functioning, in order to give users the answers they’re looking for when they perform a web search. Google itself is keen to let users know that links are awards given by choice, which reward the quality and usefulness of the content. Therefore, the more valid and interesting the content, the greater the chances that another user will offer it to their readers and include the link in their content.
By means of complex and sophisticated algorithms, search engines can understand how pages are connected to each other, evaluating links with their own internal parameters.
Do you think that’s the right way to look for connections?
How Google evaluates backlinks
At this point there’s little scope for quantity: it’s quality that reigns supreme in Google’s evaluation criteria. Before Penguin (the latest update of Big G’s algorithm), it was possible to increase popularity and positioning based on the number of inbound links to a given page. Quantity was the only yardstick. No checks, no attention paid to individual pages, not even a basic analysis of the site hosting the backlinks. This jungle in which SEO analysts wallowed lasted until 2012, when Google’s algorithm saw a drastic overhaul.
The main goal of Penguin was to break down all kinds of spam activities, identify unfair link purchases and exchanges between networks that had no other goal than to distribute backlinks here and there without any logical criteria. In short, Google started a battle against “adulterated” pages, as was said at the time. Wild link-swapping practices were considered by Big G to be an outright violation of Google’s webmaster instructions. From that moment on, things changed dramatically.
The evolution of Google and SEO
In recent years, Google has further perfected its algorithm, its key goal being the evaluation of link quality, which looks at a variety of factors. However, the evaluation of a webpage continues to be based on backlinks, and this parameter remains one of the key evaluation criteria, even though today the algorithm is much more precise in detecting evil webpages.
So, how is link building actually done?
After having clarified the theory, let’s look at the practical aspects. Link building remains the most effective technique for optimising off-page positioning”pushing an ill-conceived page with mediocre content won’t serve any benefit overall. In practice, increasing the number of inbound links to a webpage pushes the search engine to assign it greater authority, placing it towards the top of the SERP. Of course, as we have seen, Google is currently also able to evaluate indicators such as quality, nature, origin, relevance, etc., of which the incoming link will leave a trace.
the enormous importance of analysis – 1ST Blog
The importance of backlink analysis
As mentioned above, the determining factor in setting up an effective link building strategy is the credibility of the site the backlink originates from. If the latter comes from an authentic website, with a history and a high reputation in terms of SEO, the quality index of your site gets a boost.
Conversely, if the site the backlink originates from is designed to host “guest posts” and generate links only on paper, the backlink has a high probability of receiving a negative score and being penalised in terms of its quality index.
The main strategies to link build effectively
A tried and tested strategy involves the creation of optimised content with specific target keywords, which deepen the topics covered by the host site. Remember that Google’s algorithms have become very accurate in capturing the relevance of backlinks. In this regard it might be useful to study the current ones and track them as No-follow or Follow links.
Another effective way, especially in the iGaming and Betting sector, is to be included in themed websites or blogs with topics and reviews related to online gaming platforms: this increases the access points to the site of highly targeted users and offers a significant boost in terms of SEO.
How to get natural backlinks
The best way to obtain natural backlinks is through “link earning” – the free and unmanipulated increase of links and citations of your page. The natural earning of backlinks occurs when the content (news, information, insights, etc.) is deemed useful by the host site. Google is keen to ensure that links are spontaneous and free from manipulative interventions. As it is easy to imagine, link building experts set up strategies to disguise the planning of campaigns that at first glance are classified by Google as natural links.
The risks of link building
It is practically impossible for Google to recognise paid backlinks from spontaneous ones; however, some steps to this end have indeed been taken by Big G. It’s possible for the search engine to detect the so-called “link schemes”. This includes, for example, a practice called “link neighbourhood”, or the bidirectional exchange of backlinks without any added value and in non-linear contexts. And it’s certainly possible that Google will be able to identify content full of links, anchor texts and keywords with the sole purpose of increasing a page’s ranking. If this is exaggerated, the page ranking system collapses to the point of jeopardising the visibility of the entire website.
For this reason, link building is now considered an art, and the SEO analysts who master this discipline are few and far between. A strong strategic ability is required to plan a link building campaign, as well as also creativity, intuition, overview and, of course, an adequate budget.
How are backlinks evaluated?
Now that the big picture is a little clearer, let’s take a look at the practical aspects of link building.
First of all, we need to understand the value of the link that we have received and whether it could offer a real-world advantage in terms of positioning. It is practically impossible to fully define all the factors that contribute to the progress in the ranking (or to the loss of positions in cases of malpractice). The detailed functioning of the Google algorithm is only known by Google, but we certainly have access to clues and signals to help us understand it a little more.
Quality links
The quality of a backlink is evaluated by analysing and combining a series of parameters.
The most important parameter is popularity, or how relevant and authoritative the website is. Then the geographic and content relevance is assessed:a completely off-topic site coming from a foreign domain will be looked down upon by search engine crawlers, whereas a vertical, on-topic site with high domain authority will most likely offer excellent benefits in terms of SEO.
Another relevant variable is the site’s trust. We can define the trust parameter as a kind of “criminal record” of the website. If in the past the site was subject to link exchange activities aimed at deceiving the search engine, it will have a dirty criminal record, or a lower trust score than the sites that have always played by the rules. Obtaining links from websites with high trust scores guarantees 100% SEO improvement.
The main SEO monitoring apps define trust as a value ranging from 1 to 100, 100 being the maximum score.
The age of the link is also considered. Search engines favour younger links as they consider them fresher and more current.
Lastly, there’s the social spread. It’s still not abundantly clear how search engines interpret links from social media, but it seems that these have some influence on page ranking.
always looking for the right key – 1ST Blog
The key elements of a link
Along with the characteristics that define the quality of the backlink, which we can consider more “generalist”, there are more specific parameters related to the content the link points to.
An increasing number of experts argue that the position of the link within the page is significant. Links positioned at the top and easily visible seem to provide greater quality to the backlink, but to date this remains a hypothesis, supported by non-exhaustive data and evidence. On the Google side, all is quiet, so we have to figure this all out for ourselves.
A point of consensus among the vast majority of SEO analysts is the anchor text factor. Anchor text is that portion of text that links to another site, which we usually find underlined in a different colour. This practice is almost unanimously considered one of the strongest signals for the ranking even if, in the past it’s been used with a certain flippancy, leading to huge penalties in the most serious cases.
We should avoid forced cases, for example if our site includes too many anchor texts which, coincidentally, are all identical and match the keyword of the page the link originates from, we’re giving Google the impression of wanting to play fast and loose with the rules.
Conclusions
Our journey through the Link Building Universe ends here, but let’s end with a consideration.
We know that there are few opportunities to promote the iGaming and Betting sector online and we know how difficult it is to create a complete 360º strategy to “turn on” a sales funnel. The restrictions in terms of advertising are well known, and SEO outreach/link building remains one of the most important practices to increase online visibility and receive new traffic, which we can then use to implement lead generation strategies.
If you decide to invest in this practice, rely on genuine professionals and be wary of those offering low-cost strategies: link building shouldn’t be a “low budget” practice but a complex tool which responds to precise strategies. As well as complex, it’s also delicate, and there’s a non-trivial risk of spending money and obtaining the opposite effect to the desired one.
Did you like the article? Contact us to let us know what you thought.
Do you need help to get started or to further your existing link building strategy? Contact us for a free advice or request a video call with our experts.
We live in a time characterised by huge competition, a lot of strategy, persuasive technology but also… boredom.
In fact, in the digital marketing sector, it’s increasingly difficult to find useful content and tools to secure the attention of the target audience. Buyer personas increasingly tend to distance themselves from the brand if it fails to constantly fulfil their need for stimulation.
Advergaming fits into such a scenario. It’s the emerging promotional tool with the highest potential for effectiveness, capable of generating fascinating results.
Advergames are not gamification – 1ST Blog
What are advergames?
Advergames, also known as advertising games, are among the most powerful tools that a company can use to bring customers closer to its brand. With this technique, the product is advertised while the consumer has fun.
In the UI/UX creation of the video game, each element is key to achieving the goal: music, graphics, names, colours, and so on. The creation of an advergame requires strong commitment, similar to the one needed when creating a video game, in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of the game itself. Even though it will certainly be less complex in terms of structure, levels and plot.
What is the difference between gamification and advergames?
Advergames should not be confused with the current trend to apply game mechanics and techniques to non-game activities, i.e. gamification. The difference between the two concepts is clear.
Gamification uses videogame mechanics to build customer loyalty among the various contexts in which the game is not initially expected. Advergames are games created around a brand seeking to engage the public and convey its values to consumers.
M&M’s Flip the Mix
It’s a new way to achieve brand awareness, aimed directly at users to make them feel an integral part of the entire process.
We also need to differentiate advergames from another industry concept: in-game advertising. This technique consists of including advertising for a product or brand within the game. The best-known example of this is the collaboration between the producers of The Avengers and Epic Games when the character of Thanos was included in the hit video game Fortnite to promote the film.
Advergames virality
A feature that distinguishes successful advergames is virality. If designed correctly, some features can help the game reach virality. Here are three ideas:
Ease of sharing. Advergames playable in web browsers are much more shareable than apps to download or software to install. To share the game with a friend, simply share the link. Fast connections and the latest smartphones allow you to create increasingly complex games that can be played on browsers.
Social Currency. Will players be proud to tell friends about their gaming experience? The answer depends on how the advergame is structured. We like to share our status, achievements, useful information and victories with other people. An advergame with game mechanics capable of stimulating these feelings will be more likely to be shared.
To try on running shoes, you run inside a video game similar to Super Mario. The game is simple: you have to keep running in the real world to move your avatar forward and press a button to jump over obstacle. When you fall, it’s game over.
Game mechanics
Avatar. When you enter the store, a photo of you is taken to create your own personalised avatar.
Ranking and Points. Your score increases as you explore React Land. Game over marks the end of the experience inside the store. When you lose, you are shown the position you reached on the leader board.
Shareable element. Upon exiting the store, you are given a 10-second video to share on social media. The video is personalised and shows your experience inside the store.
Limited number of participants. The experience is exclusive: there can’t be hundreds of people entering the store at the same time.
Rescue Matilda
Rescue Matilda – Advergame of Chiara Ferragni
This is Chiara Ferragni‘s advergame in which you have to save her little dog Matilda. The game is a platformer in which the user plays as Chiara Ferragni. The advergame encourages users to subscribe to the newsletter and visit the brand’s e-commerce site. The first step in order to play is to create a profile with a username and password. The advantage of creating a profile is the ability to save the game and resuming it at a later time.
The advergame has achieved interesting results: 350,000 games played by 120,000 users in 140 countries around the world. As many as 40,000 people have given their consent to subscribe to the newsletter.
Positive aspects of advergames
If you’re interested in advergames for your business, you’ll need to know the main advantages for promoting your product or service:
if the video game goes viral and the brand’s goals are exceeded, the impact can be astonishing
it’s a form of advertising that adapts to any medium
it allows you to outperform the competition
it’s a new and attractive experience for the user
the product or brand remains engraved in the consumer’s mind
high ROI can be achieved if the advergame campaign is successful
it can be easily integrated into your existing marketing plans, accelerating goal achievement
