William Hill surges to number three in UK's most visible casino sites

WilliamHillCasino has blasted past rivals Casino.com and Casino.co.uk to become the third most visible casino website to UK web-users, a ranking of the casino brands best optimised for search engines seen exclusively seen by eGaming Review reveals.

The research was produced exclusively for EGRmagazine.com by search engine marketing agency Greenlight, which this month won the SEO mandate for the UK National Lottery. It also shows that while 888 and SpinPalace remain the two highest profile casino sites, both are experiencing tougher competition from rivals.

William Hill’s casino site leapfrogged Casino.com and Casino.co.uk to take third place in the list of websites most highly optimised for Google’s UK-facing search engine, Google.co.uk – which dominates web searches and accounts for roughly 90% of total searches made in the UK each year.

William Hill managed to increase the percentage of searches in which WilliamHillCasino.com appeared on the first page of results to 36% in June, the last month for which reliable statistics are available, up from 34% in April when an identical Greenlight study was conducted.

Casino.com and Casino.co.uk, by contrast, both experienced sharp falls, with a first-page appearance in just 35% and 30% of searches respectively, down from 42% and 38% in April.

888 and SpinPalace remain the clear leaders, despite their dominance having weakened. 888 was seen on the first page of results in 60% of the casino-related searches made in June, down from a 63% result in April, while SpinPalace was seen on the first page of results in exactly half of searches, down from 54% in April.

The top 20 most visible sites for casino-related terms, which includes popular non-casino sites that feature some casino-related content such as Wikipedia, movie site IMDB and Sony Pictures, can be read below.

A total of 380,000 casino-related searches were made in June. The results also show tight competition among SEO experts for key search terms. Searches for the word ‘casino’ alone were by far the most common, comprising 35% of the total, while ‘online casino’ was entered in 19% of searches, and the third most popular term, ‘casino games’, was used in just 4%.

The top 20 most visible casino sites for UK web users (% of casino searches in which appears on first page results)

1. 888.com (60%)
2. SpinPalace.com (50%)
3. WilliamHillCasino.com (36%)
4. Casino.com (35%)
5. Wikipedia.org (32%)
6. Casino.co.uk (30%)
7. IMDB.com (28%)
8. InterCasino.co.uk (23%)
9. 32Red.com (21%)
10. OnlineCasinoKing.co.uk (15%)
11. LittlewoodsCasino.com (15%)
12. SonyPictures.com (14%)
13. GamblingPlanet.org (14%)
14. OnlineCasino.com (11%)
15. JackpotCity.com (11%)
16. PartyCasino.com (9%)
17. Jackpot.co.uk (8%)
18. 777.com (7%)
19. CasinoGamblingWeb.com (7%)
20. Freeslots.com (7%)