Over two years ago, a client approached us with a request for comprehensive link-building for a casino review site. The project goal was to secure top positions across the English-speaking internet, including the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
The site was newly launched, with no backlinks, keywords, or traffic – you can see this in the screenshots taken at the project’s start.
What strategy was chosen
It’s no secret that gambling is the toughest niche in SEO. This means that achieving results requires building a massive number of links due to extreme competition.
We decided to steadily grow a diverse link profile month by month, as a sudden surge in such a large volume of links could trigger penalties from search engines.
What we did
- To ensure steady link growth, we started with pillow links, placing them consistently over the first year. We ultimately created over 550 pillow links.
- Around six months after starting pillow links, we began adding forum links, gradually increasing their volume to the present day. In total, we’ve added over 2,400 forum links across various site pages. It's important to note that most keywords in this niche, even low and medium competition terms, are highly competitive. This means that ranking them requires strong links, like guest posts and PBNs. However, to avoid Google penalties, these links must be balanced with natural links, such as forum links – which is exactly what we did.
- As mentioned, promoting competitive keywords in this niche requires guest posts. Once the site achieved a stable growth trend and gained Google’s trust, we moved forward with guest posts from highly authoritative sites. In total, we’ve placed over 200 of these links.
In total, over the past two years, we've delivered more than 3,150 domains valued at $110,000.
It’s worth noting that results didn’t appear overnight, so we’re grateful to the client for their patience and trust in our team. The casino niche is highly competitive, and achieving fast results is nearly impossible (at least if you're aiming for sustainable outcomes) without relying on spam techniques and black hat SEO.
So, what results did we achieve? Spoiler alert – they exceeded all expectations!
Most of the key high-value keywords our clients aimed to rank in the top positions are now sitting in the Top 1-3 across most tier-1 geos.
It’s also important to highlight that the link-building work from our team was continuously supported by ongoing site optimization from the client’s SEO specialist. This combination of efforts led to outstanding results, leaving both us and the client highly satisfied.
Key Takeaways
- If you’re consistent with high-quality link building in any niche – even one as challenging as the casino industry – you’re bound for success!
- The key in this space is to develop a long-term strategy and stick to it rather than chasing quick wins. Four of our competitors we’ve tracked started with an overly aggressive link-building approach. As of now, three of them have been penalized by Google and lost nearly all their traffic.
- In tough niches, it’s essential to communicate with the client and coordinate your efforts, advising them against impulsive actions and disrupting link-building flow for quick results.
Working as a team with the client is the way to succeed!
In links we trust!
