Major bingo brands' search visibility declining, report says
Digital marketing agency Stickyeyes claims established operators are losing up to 56% of non-brand traffic to smaller firms and affiliates
Some of the UKâs biggest online bingo brands have lost substantial organic traffic in 2015 due to the increasing search visibility of smaller operators and affiliates, according to a report by digital marketing agency Stickyeyes.
The agencyâs research â âBig bingo brands lose ground to low authority domainsâ â has claimed smaller online bingo operators and affiliates are now ranking far higher for core keyword terms at the expense of bigger brands when compared to 2014.
Googleâs âMobilegeddonâ update in April was highlighted as a key reason for the shift with smaller operators found to have developed websites with a greater focus on mobile usability.
âThe way that the bingo search market has changed in the last year is extremely interesting, and perhaps this is one sign that âMobilegeddonâ has had some sort of impact on wider search results,â Will Hoyle, strategic analyst at Stickyeyes, told eGaming Review.
An emphasis on bonus offers is also determined to be a key factor in the increased search visibility of low domain-authority websites by incentivising players and leading to higher click-through rates.
According to figures from the report, Sky Bingo was estimated to have lost as much as 56% of its non-brand organic traffic compared to last year, while bwin.party-owned Cheeky Bingo was said to have lost up to 17%.
However, Stickyeyes said Foxy Bingo, also owned by bwin.party, had grown its traffic by 35% and ranked number one across 26 high volume terms.
âGoogle has taken specific action in the past in certain search markets that tends to favour higher-authority brands, as we have seen in the payday loans market,â Hoyle said.
âBut for now at least, it appears that strong customer offers and sound technical optimisation is proving to be a successful formula for brands in this market,â he added.
Stickyeyes analysed the top 100 ranking websites across 319 online bingo market keywords which generate 240,780 monthly searches in the UK – 30% of which come from the terms âbingoâ and âonline bingoâ – and a maximum potential organic traffic of 58,100 visits per month.