SEO Tracker: Admiral commands the casino search results with number one rankings for high volume terms

In the online casino sector, it appears that one brand is running away with the search results. But just why is Admiral Casino commanding the Google search results pages, and what can the competitors do to claw back their share of the traffic?

Admiral extends its lead in the search results

Admiral Casino has experienced huge growth in the organic search rankings over the course of 2020, leading the market by some considerable margin.

The brand generates 67,249 visits from organic, non-brand search to dominate the search results – more than three and a half times the visibility generated by the next most visible brands, 32Red and Paddy Power.

It is a story of continued growth in the organic search results for the Admiral Casino brand, which has almost doubled its traffic from organic non-brand search since we last looked at the market back in January 2020.

Data from the web visibility monitoring platform Searchmetrics shows the scale of the brand’s organic growth since late January, with the brand seeing notable gains in visibility and organic traffic.

So, what is the secret behind the brand’s success, and what is the challenge for the competition if they are to claw back some of that traffic?

Big rankings for big keywords

One of the key drivers behind the success of Admiral Casino in organic search is the brand’s ability to rank in prominent positions for those high-volume keyword terms.

Of the 10 biggest keywords by search volume, Admiral ranks in position one for six, with one further second place ranking and one third place ranking.

The position one ranking for the biggest keyword in the market, “casino” is clearly the biggest traffic driver of traffic, although “slots”, “roulette” and “casino online” all make significant contributions.

It is these high-volume rankings that are of particular importance to Admiral, particularly when you consider that many of its competitors have a much broader keyword coverage. Of the 353 keywords that we analyse in the casino market, Admiral ranks for just 271 – the least of all the top five most visible brands.

Admiral gets to players quicker, with faster page speed

There are many factors that go into Admiral’s high rankings for those terms, but one factor could be the brand’s page speed performance, which is significantly higher than many of its competitors.

Google has been very public in declaring page speed as a factor in its organic rankings, and changes due to come into force in 2021 around page experience make this even more important.

The challenge for many casino operators is the nature of many of the platforms and content management systems that the casino operations run on, which rely heavily on imagery and interactive elements which are, by nature, bandwidth intensive. Good page speed load times are, in many respects, inherently hard to achieve.

Admiral’s page speed does however out-perform most of their competitors, with only Netbet scoring higher (out of a score of 100) for both desktop and mobile page speed, according to Google PageSpeed Insights.

While many elements go into organic search ranking, page speed is one that many brands need to pay greater attention to – even within the limitations of their platform. Simpler landing pages, with fewer interactive elements and smaller imagery, are one of many ways in which to achieve that.

A delayed lockdown boom for online casino

Most sectors in the gaming industry have seen a boom in interest following the imposition of the Covid-19 lockdown, although the casino sector saw that later than others.

While sectors such as poker and bingo saw spikes in March, as the British public was ordered to stay at home, the spike in casino interest didn’t materialise until much later. Despite a blip in interest in late March, the interest only really started to spike in July – peaking notably on and around 19 July.

This spike appears to coincide with announcements that physical casinos will not be permitted to reopen as had been originally planned by the UK government. Whether the spike in search interest results in a spike in playing activity remains to be seen but, for the time being at least, it appears that digital remains the key battleground for the casino industry.