James Dooley: iGaming SEO in 2026.
Obviously, with regards to the search engine results page, it is a pretty crazy industry at present.
So, with regards to iGaming SEO, what is working in today’s algorithms?
Charles Floate: Black hat.
[laughter]
Unfortunately, it is pretty much all black hat all day long.
Even if you get your white hat SEO working, you will probably get negative SEO’d by one of the black hats anyway.
A lot of the negative SEO techniques working right now revolve around DMCA takedowns.
James Dooley: So, if you have got a white hat iGaming website ranking number one for a big keyword, someone will black hat it and take it down?
Charles Floate: Yes, one hundred percent.
James Dooley: Via what method?
Charles Floate: Right now, it is mainly DMCA takedowns.
There is a specific portal where you can submit a DMCA notice to Google saying a page infringes copyright.
That system is mostly automated, so Google removes the page from the SERP automatically.
The problem is that in most cases there is no copyrighted material involved at all.
Google still removes it automatically.
You can appeal and maybe get reinstated a week or two later, but for that whole period you lose rankings.
Some operators in iGaming are dealing with hundreds of DMCAs per day, sometimes even on the same URL.
James Dooley: I hate negative SEO strategies personally.
I think Google needs to patch it very quickly.
So, if somebody wants to stay completely away from negative SEO, what can they do to win?
A lot of people are talking about virality.
Does virality work well in the iGaming sector?
Charles Floate: Yes.
Viral boosting, CTR manipulation and those types of campaigns work fantastically well if done correctly.
The problem is that most people cannot execute it properly because there are so many layers involved.
You need the correct geo-specific IPs.
If you are ranking in the UK, you need clean UK IP addresses.
You cannot use dirty VPNs, spam IPs or obvious bot traffic because you can actually negative SEO yourself.
Timing matters too.
If a keyword gets 600 searches per month and you suddenly send 600 clicks per day, it looks manipulated.
You need the traffic spread naturally over time.
Some people even account for time zones so the clicks happen during normal user hours.
James Dooley: Then there are people using pop-under traffic through things like Twitter redirects.
The issue is they get instant boosts because of the click volume, but long term it destroys the site because the engagement metrics are terrible.
You get users bouncing in under two seconds.
So they get addicted to the short-term ranking boost, but long term the whole domain drops.
It feels like crack cocaine for rankings.
Charles Floate: Exactly.
James Dooley: Let us move onto aged domains then.
A lot of people in iGaming use aged domains to rank quickly.
What are people actually looking for in an aged domain?
Charles Floate: Nowadays, it is more about root authority and trust signals.
Things like whether it was a real business or had genuine entity trust.
Expired domains and dropped domains tend to lose equity because Google can clearly see the ownership gap.
Aged domains maintain more of their historical trust.
James Dooley: What about parasite SEO?
Using high DR third-party domains with listicles and reviews.
Do those domains need to be niche relevant?
Charles Floate: It depends on the SERP.
For some iGaming keywords, relevance matters.
For others, Google’s anti-spam systems are nowhere near as aggressive as they used to be.
You can get away with much more now.
James Dooley: Once somebody has the parasite article ranking, are they powering it up with tier twos and virality?
Charles Floate: Yes.
A lot of the time we use CTR manipulation for the parasite article itself.
We also link parasites together.
You create chains where one parasite links to another, which helps power the whole network.
James Dooley: That is where people talk about daisy chaining parasite pages together.
So what other strategies are working well in iGaming SEO right now?
Charles Floate: Canonical tricks, subdomains, PBNs, link spam, aged domains and negative SEO.
Those are the big ones.
James Dooley: A lot of people now use subdomains because Google still seems to pass some trust from the root domain.
Do you think combining strategies is the real key?
Charles Floate: Yes.
If you combine subdomains, canonicals, CTR manipulation and PBNs together, you get a much stronger effect than relying on one tactic alone.
Google definitely seems to still transfer some trust from root domains into subdomains now.
A lot of operators are canonicalising aged domains into subdomains and then blasting links into the canonical layer.
The canonical acts almost like an anti-spam 301.
James Dooley: So let us say someone only wants to do white hat SEO in iGaming.
What can they realistically do to compete?
Charles Floate: Topical authority is still massive.
Most iGaming sites do not have anywhere near the content depth they could have.
You can still win loads of long-tail traffic with properly structured content hubs.
The issue is that consensus matters in the SERPs.
If Google sees lots of black hat-style sites ranking, it tends to prefer more of those.
But there are still loads of opportunities around long-tail searches, sports betting queries, game searches and celebrity searches.
You need strong site structure, internal linking and high-quality content.
The content cannot be thin either.
Even if you are targeting tiny keywords, you still need to maintain overall quality signals across the site.
James Dooley: For sure.
Anyone watching this who is in the iGaming SEO sector, whether you run a casino site, poker site, sportsbook or bingo website, leave a comment in the comment section and let us know what is working for you in the iGaming industry.
Charles Floate, it has been an absolute pleasure.
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