Casino Review Sites

Today’s online environment is highly competitive for both consumers and service/product providers. Users are generally overwhelmed with offers and options, and they rely on social proof to support their decisions. This is when review websites come to light. These are websites that compile hundreds or even thousands of review articles that revolve around a specific topic: top e-books, the trendiest dresses, the best-performing GPUs, the safest casinos, etc. Such websites are capable of generating impressive volumes of traffic, which makes them a common choice for marketers who have experience with site-building and SEO optimization. Let’s break down the creation of such a resource for the iGaming niche and see whether it’s a doable project for an average media buyer not deeply immersed in SEO practices.

At the first glance

A common casino-themed review website usually features a listing of “top” casinos with a variety of filters and sorting options. It is not a true rating because the webmaster’s goal here is to add as many brands as possible to monetize the affiliate links to their fullest. Still, from a user’s perspective, this looks trustworthy and informative.

Each entry has a contrasting CTA that leads directly to the landing page of the said casino, there may be a bullet list with some basic information and a button that opens the review itself.

All reviews have the same structure and provide general information about the gambling platform and its features that the players might find interesting. Such as payment and withdrawal methods, the selection of games and betting events, the specific features of the site’s interface, terms of service, and so on.

The review page also features one or more CTA buttons leading to the target page.

How to build a review website

Now, let’s walk through the creation of a basic review website step by step. Bear in mind, that keyword analysis, filling the site with content, and link building take a lot of time and effort and these steps cannot be fully covered in one article.

Domain

There are several ways you can go when you need a domain.

• Register a new domain with a registrar — it is a cheap option, but the domain will be a level-zero start-from-scratch and in dire need of an upgrade. It will take more effort to bring it to the desired size and visibility.
• Buy an aged or expired domain, also known as a dropped domain. Sometimes domain owners can’t renew the registration, don’t need the website anymore, or just don’t care for some reason. At the same time, a “dropped” site can hold an impressive link mass and rank high in search engines. To purchase an aged domain, check out platforms like GoDaddy, DropCatch, NameJet, or NameSilo (or any others to your liking). There are many factors that influence the price and value of a domain, but it’s an ample topic worth of a separate article.

Here’s a quick recap of the domain lifecycle from a portal domain.com that holds more useful information about everything to do with domains.

Semantics and keyword analysis

Once you have a domain (or better — many domains), you can start building a private blog network (PBN) or using the sites for different projects, it’s up to you. In any case, you will need to run a keyword analysis for your niche and determine a pool of keywords that you are going to work with and rank for. There are more and less frequent search keys or phrases, and there are also different approaches to site optimization based on your choice: whether you want to rank high for highly competitive keywords or not.

The core keywords of your project form the so-called semantic kernel. Check out our article on keyword analysis tools and this page on Serpstat to learn more about this step.

Content

Once again, content is king, even when we are talking about template-based reviews that have little literary value. This being said, using machine composing tools and AI writers is not a particularly good idea for lengthy articles. But, since our casino reviews are based on one template, you could invest time into teaching an AI to write for your specific goals. We have looked into some AI tools in one of our previous articles, check out these options. By the way, Jasper.ai (former Jarvis.ai) has decent feedback for content review websites.

If you decide to stick to traditional methods and employ human content creators instead of robots, make sure that you hire native speakers or at least qualified linguists. A little lifehack: you can find native speakers of French and English in African countries (Cameroon, Botswana, Congo), as well as Spanish and Portuguese speakers outside of Spain and Portugal (Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Cape Verde). Their rates are usually lower than in Europe.

Markup and design

Your website or blog network should be easy to comprehend and navigate. Incorporate filters, themed sections, Q&A and FAQ blocks. You can also add made up phone numbers and map locations to provide greater authenticity in the eyes of search engines.

Make your pages look nice and visually smooth. For example, by using WordPress templates for review websites.

Make sure to include “article” JSON markup — it ranks higher as valuable content that may be useful to readers. Also, add “FAQ” and “Q&A” markup because these sections will not be parsed correctly if they are seen as part of the “article” portion of the text. These types of markup have a good chance of getting into the search engine snippets because traditionally this section shows user experience and can also be useful.

Conclusion

Review websites and blog networks can become a useful tool for almost any niche. A well-structured and well-optimized network of websites will steadily generate a flow of traffic even when you stop adding new content. But bear in mind that before this miracle happens you will need to invest a lot of time and money into purchasing domains, optimizing the pages, building links, and commissioning copy.