SEO articles are an important part of the marketing strategy for any online gambling business. Why? Because they bring traffic to the site, either directly or indirectly.
But SEO articles have always been a bit of an irritant for me, especially in the early days of search engine optimisation, where keyword stuffing was the name of the game.
Surprisingly, this ‘pleasing the search engines’ approach is still very common, but it’s not that aspect of it that annoys me the most. It’s the fact that online gambling businesses are still forgetting one incredibly crucial issue…
You’re still writing for real people.
Yes, a 2,000 word article with all your carefully selected, top performing keywords and suitable contextual links may well get you a place on page 1 of Google’s SERPs…
But what will visitors to that page do?
If you’re not ALSO writing to convert visitors into new members with copy that elicits an emotional response, all that effort you’ve put into constructing that Google-grovelling, keyword rich article will have been wasted.
Now that’s not to detract from the job of SEO article writers. It is damn hard to find a natural way to add the keyword phrase ‘play live casino games India’ into a sentence and not have it sound like some text bot with verbal diarrhoea.
And with many of these articles demanding the appearance of a multitude of keyword phrases that may vary by just one word, they can end up sounding very repetitive and boring – something that’s more likely to put you to sleep than gear you up for slot spinning!
SEO articles are super important, whether they appear as part of a gambling company’s blog or a third party affiliate site’s regular content, but it’s important to bear in mind that there are two goals these pieces of work must meet:
- Satisfy the search engines: Yes, you need to include all those top keywords, contextual links, headers, sub headers, short paragraphs, min. word count, etc. to stand a chance of SERP 1 appearance, and that’s no mean feat in itself
- Inspire your visitors: This is just as crucial, if not more so, as pleasing the search engines. All that traffic might as well be running you over if it’s not converting to meaningful clicks and/or membership!
So how do you go about meeting both goals?
You write for people first and optimise for the search engines second.
I have seen far too many 3rd party affiliate casino sites with pages that rank well in Google, but are stuffed with endless banner ads from dozens of online casinos before you even get to the text, then the text itself is just an exercise in nonsensical keyword stuffing.
As a copywriter, I find this stuff incredibly painful to read!
Please don’t subject your visitors to that. They’re people too!
Someone searching with the keyword phrase ‘Texas Hold’em optimal flop strategy’ is not looking for 10,000 banner ads with various poker site sign-up bonuses, they’re looking for, funnily enough, good strategies for the flop in Texas Hold’em poker – so give it to them!
And you know what the best bit is? If you take this ‘people first, search engines second’ approach and give the people what they’re looking for, if they like your content, they will click on your banner ads because they will have found what they were searching for and will be ready to put those strategies to the test by signing up with a poker site!
But only if you haven’t pissed them off first by practically plastering those banners all over their face!
People buy for emotional reasons, not because you forced them into a corner. In the example above, a well written page that addresses the visitor’s keyword phrase FIRST will satisfy that visitor and inspire them with their newly acquired flop strategy knowledge to SECOND click on a banner to join a poker site.
There’s no action without inspiration.
So next time you’re thinking about constructing an SEO article for your gambling company or affiliate website, get an experienced copywriter on the job, one who can combine SEO techniques with word crafting that inspires emotionally driven actions.
In other words, stop feeding the Google monster quite so much and spare a thought for your visitors. 😉
Sarah McIver Copy 