How Do Casino Affiliates Build Domain Authority?

Domain authority and trust are closely related terms that determine how a portal casino is perceived by Google and its visitors. It is primarily concerned with the power of the domain name.

In this article I’m going to tell online casino webmasters how domain authority is calculated and how it can be accomplished. 

Domain Authority is accomplished by taking the following five factors into account:

1. The age of the domain.
2. The site’s popularity.
3. Who is linking to it?
4. The sites your site are linking to.
5. The size of the site. The amount of pages it contains and how long each respective page is.

What Exactly Is Domain Authority (DA)?

Most visitors to a site are usually not aware of domain authority. In fact they are more concerned with user trust. User trust is something search engines traditionally had a hard time measuring. The best way they can come up with is to measure and analyze bounce rates and how users interact with the website.

”All websites may be created equal but some may become more equal than others.” George Orwell.

To gauge your website’s trustworthiness ask yourself the following questions: Does it contain accurate information? Will my visitors recommend it to their friends and family? If I was a player will I sign up through it? In any website’s commercial life trust is an important component.

When it comes to ranking your site it’s essential that you build trust first. Before we get to this let’s see how we can increase your website’s domain authority. Many webmasters still find it difficult to wrap their heads around domain authority since they see it as a nebulous concept. Nobody really knows the equations Google uses and to compound matters further it changes all the time.

See it as Google baking a cake. Google collects the five ingredients known as age, popularity, outbound links, backlinks and size. These factors vary proportionally from site to site. In return they are analyzed by the various algorithms and the net result is the domain authority ”cake”. As a rule of thumb the higher your site’s domain authority the better it will perform on Google’s serp (Search Engine Results Page). Keep in mind that by themselves none of the five factors has an influence on how your site will rank. When they are combined only then are their full power unleashed.

To determine their site’s performance in the serps many portal casino webmasters are turning towards Majestic SEO’s Flow Metrics rankings. It provides an up-to-date indication of how a web page is performing on a daily basis. These metrics are split into two categories:

Citation Flow

This number is between 0 and 100. It indicates how influential the site’s URL (uniform research locator) is based on the number of sites linking to it. The ranking is determined according to the metric flow of these sites. Google has a rating of 99 on both metrics. It goes without saying that it’s impossible to attain 100. If you want to calculate your site’s CT divide it by 10 to predict what the latest Google Page Rank might be. Here’s an example. If your site’s citation flow is 30 it’s actual PR is 3.

Trust Flow

This number is also between 0 and 100. It indicates how trustworthy a page is. The general consensus is that trustworthy sites link to other trustworthy sites. Anything that’s under 10 raises a red flag and needs some serious working on.

How Do I Increase My Portal Casino’s Domain Authority?

Google uses domain authority as an important metric since it wants to be sure that it can refer its precious traffic to your website. Although the quality of your content is a very important factor it’s not the only factor Google looks at. Do you take care of your website? Does it contain links to dubious websites or does it contain a sea of broken links? If it does you can bet your bottom dollar that these issues will reduce your trust score significantly. When you add links to authoritative websites it indicates to Google that you are serious. But if you have too many links, Google might construe it that you’re busy with SEO and you might incur a penalty.

Thanks to Google’s Panda and Penguin updates links coming into your website became less important. However, they are still seen as an important key indication of a site’s authority. In the past the more backlinks you had the better. Luckily this is not the case any more your site must only have backlinks from the right sources.

Getting The Right Backlinks

As it is Google has declared war on sites that engage in illegal link activity. If your site has a ton of spammy backlinks pointing to it, it will be penalized faster than you can say ”spamalot”. So, how does one acquire quality backlinks?

• Generate your own links albeit with a twist.
• Get fellow portal casino webmasters to link to your site. This is easier said than done. If you do follow this route it must be beneficial to both sites.
• Become active on social media sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

To begin with your site’s backlink profile must look natural. Even if your site has the best content on the Web it’s going nowhere slowly if nobody sees it. It will simply disappear into the mire along with the other 95% of websites. Time to roll up your sleeves.

Key Take Aways

• Inbound links must only come from relevant websites within your niche. If the links are from a bunch of unrelated ”link farms” it tells Google that you’re trying to manipulate its rankings.
• In the pre-Panda and Penguin days any link would suffice but not any more. If you want to gain trust with Google authority sites must start linking to yours.

Why Anchor Text Diversity Is Important

Before you start creating a backlink you must vary the anchor text. Pre-Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird it was considered good practice to have every backlink with your main keyword phrase in it. Today diversity is the new mantra especially if your site is an EMD (Exact Match Domain).

If you want your anchor text links to look natural they must be varied. In other words only a few of them must contain the main keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for. Sites are not penalized by Google if they use the following anchor text variations:

• 25 to 30% Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is when you use associated phrases such as ”deposit bonuses”, ”sign up bonus” or ”match deposit” etc.
• 25 to 30%. When you use your site’s URL in its various forms: http://yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, www.yoursite.com, www.yoursite.com/, yoursite.com and so on.
• 5 to 10%. You site’s name must be included in sentences.
• 25 to 30% generic. Okay so what does this entail? Instead of using a keyword you can use click here, more information, great site, Zoltan’s blog etc.
• Main keyword 5 to 10%.

The above percentage variations is not a given, as a matter of fact it’s still very unclear and there’s no definitive answer at this stage. The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty when it comes to your anchor text, never include your main keyword more than 10%. If you site is an EMD, just to be safe make it 5 to 8%. Reserve your main keyword phrase for your best links and use it sparingly. The idea here is to create as much link juice as possible.

Generating Your Own Links

Quality is key and not quantity. Be careful where you get your links from. It’s better to have 20 quality links than 50 shoddy ones. The days where your site benefited from restaurant or dentistry links are gone-links must be niche specific now.

YouTube

YouTube is owned by Google and very popular. This is why it is such a great source for link juice. Branding your profile is the first part of the SEO process on YouTube. Not only is it a powerful link back to your site but it helps you to connect with users on Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Use one photograph for all your online profiles.

Once you’ve edited your video, upload it and pay special attention to the description. This is where you’re going to insert your link. Always put the URL first. Include the http:// prefix, it’s a clickable link which is important. Describe what your video is all about in a few sentences. In a new paragraph finish off your video with a light call to action. Try and upload new videos to YouTube on a regular basis.

Blog Comments And Forum Posts

Many SEO’s are of the opinion that you should not join forums or leave comments on blog posts. I disagree. If done correctly it’s a good method of attracting targeted traffic and boosting your site’s link juice. If you just joined a new forum don’t add your site’s link just yet. Be patient. It’s best not to swoop in and spam your site’s link all over the place.

If you want to be recognized as a trusted member of the community, add valuable comments by addressing issues and answer questions fully and honestly. By do this you’ll be seen as an authority in no time. The best forums in our niche are Casinomeister.com, Casinolistings.com, GPWA.org and Affiliate Guard Dog. When you think the time has come to include your website in your signature, do so.

If you’re ”trigger happy” by adding spammy links to your signature you’ll get booted from the forum, some moderators are meaner than a junk yard dog. I find that a joke in your signature can work wonders. Avoid blogs that will only let you login via Facebook or Twitter-they won’t send any link juice to your site. Stay away from forums that contain a ton of spammy links pointing to other sites. Very important; don’t include money keywords in your forum signature this is a sure recipe for disaster and will get you penalised.

Getting Backlinks From Wikipedia

If you can get links from your Wikipedia to your website the link juice potential can be enormous. A legitimate link can give your website a huge boost. However, Google’s Matt Cutts said that it isn’t the case any more because Wikipedia uses no-follow links and there’s no flow of link juice, things might have changed since 2009. What are the benefits of such a link?

• A link from Wikipedia tells Google that your site is an authority. Once your site is seen as an authority by Google it automatically receives a higher placement in the serps.

Conclusion

Getting your site to rank high on the Google serps is a slow and arduous process. There are no short cuts. By implementing the five methods, although not a guarantee is enough to get your site ranked highly in Google and any other search engine. There are huge volumes written on how to harnass the power of social media. It’s a vast subject and not all of it is concerned with SEO.

Make sure that all your accounts link back to your main website and interlinked where possible. There are several top-notch WordPress plugins that can help you spread the word on social media. Just be careful that you don’t post duplicate content via social media. Not many people realise that Twitter profiles are assigned PageRank (although PR is dead). The downside is that, due to Google’s lack of access to Twitter’s full stream and most of Twitter’s links are no-follow, it’s virtually impossible to pass on any link juice from Twitter.

The mistake most business owners make is that they promote their business from their personal Facebook profile-don’t do this. It’s like trying to sell your products by showcasing your high school photo album to people. Set up a Facebook page that specifically caters to your business. Many webmasters still don’t know what’s the difference between a Facebook like and a share. The Share button lets your readers share something you’ve posted with their friends on Facebook. The Like is a personal endorsement of a specific post.