iGaming Daily

Ivana (00:01.391)
Hello everyone and welcome back to SBC, iGaming Daily Podcast. I am Ivana Flynn and I will be welcoming fantastic Marta Schmidt, who is an excellent SEO and my dear friend. And today we will be discussing brand. Why is brand important? Why do we build it? How do we protect it? And why should we protect it? Marta, welcome to our podcast. I'm very happy to have you. Please introduce yourself. If there is someone out there who yet does not know

Marta Szmidt (00:28.238)
Oh, thank you, Ivana. Thank you so much for inviting me to today's episode. I have been working in SEO for almost 10 years now, and I started my career in the educational sector, where I learned just the basics of SEO. But I moved very quickly to iGaming, where I also met you at Katena Media, as I work for all the kind of business models, from affiliation to providers and even

operators where I work currently. So I'm working at Rhino Entertainment Group as an SEO Director. yeah, brand protection is a very important topic also for our business. And I'm very happy to be here and excited to speak about today with you.

Ivana (01:15.483)
Marta covered some really, really big brands like Evolution Gaming and me and her met at Katena Media and ever since we stayed SEO friends, SEO friends forever. So today we are discussing brand. Marta, what is brand? Why is it important to protect it? And how are we protecting this? Why all of this should be in our SEO strategy?

Marta Szmidt (01:24.691)
Exactly.

Marta Szmidt (01:36.65)
Brand protection is essential for any business. Brand protection monitors and controls the usage of your brand name across search results. It can be Google or any other search engine. Brand protection combines all the actions, not only from SEO point of view, but also from marketing, PR, and legal point of view to ensure that your brand is correctly represented online.

Brand protection helps you to protect your branded traffic and the visibility and integrity of your brand on the internet. So it's crucial for any business, the bigger your brand, the more probably you should invest in your brand protection as well. And it is important because it also helps you to protect the misuse of your brand identity. And I noticed especially

This year, happens more and more often. The Blackhead SEO, the SEO attacks that I notice on bigger brands, where if we would have protect ourselves or other brands from the start, it would be more difficult for the competitors and for others to block our service with wrong results. So it's very important to invest in brand protection and to take care of it from the beginning.

because it makes the life of our competitors and hackers more difficult.

Ivana (03:11.033)
Exactly. So just imagine you spending all this money on creating a fantastic brand. And across our niche, we have got lots of great brand names. Like you have casino .org, have got Cammon, you've got William Hill, you have got Casino Days. There are tons of it. And you spend money to creating a good brand, serving good product to your people and spending money on marketing it. Not just from SEO point of view, but you are on TV, you are on radio, you are on print.

and are all over the digital channels and then you are not position one. Right, Marta, this is the problem that we're discussing today.

Marta Szmidt (03:46.024)
Exactly. That would be tragic for any big brand. So it's very important to include the strategy for brand protection and as one of the first strategies for your marketing from your legal department. it's a combined effort of the whole company and different departments.

Ivana (04:04.517)
I would say sometimes, sometimes brand protection needs to even come before you launch your brand because you want to lock down the SERPs for your branded keywords, right? I mean, why are branded keywords so important to us, Marta?

Marta Szmidt (04:18.562)
They're bringing us the customers. already are aware of our service of our product, depending on which niche we are. So those customers, those users are interested to convert on our site. So it's very important to take care of it from the start with the treat marks and copyrights. Those are crucial legal tools for brand protection. And when we start a business, when we have our brand name,

This should be the first step because in case someone is stealing our branded traffic and those very valid customers, we can react, we can request take down, for example, of websites and content that was stolen from us. So this is just one example how we can very easily protect our brand from the start before we even have the SEO part.

Ivana (05:14.521)
Exactly. So you would recommend cooperating with other departments such as legal, right? I mean, we copyright everything, not just the content, not just the brand, but as well our graphics. So watch out for graphics. Make sure that those are not stolen from you. And as well, would add that branded traffic is very important because it brings a lot of returning customers and returning customers and returning traffic is very important for

Marta Szmidt (05:20.44)
Yeah.

Marta Szmidt (05:25.389)
Yes.

Marta Szmidt (05:38.782)
Exactly. And not only the legal part, like the copyright, what you mentioned protects as well our videos, our written content and the trademark, our logos that shouldn't be used by competitors or by others. But also the free brand protection methods are social media. So the moment you create Facebook, Twitter, Instagram on LinkedIn profile, it's going to be for free and it's going to rank very high because those social media profiles have high authority and

Google like to push them on the top of the results just under your main brand website. So you can block the SERP with free tools. Another good idea would be also to create a Wikipedia page. It's also for free and you can control even better the narrative about your brand.

And even a special tip, you can insert their important information. So another links to your pages or to websites that you want to protect. And also a Wikipedia page. I know it's not easy to get, but it runs excellent in Google search results. Another method that it's for free and you can do as a business, it's to create free customer review platforms for your brand, like on TrustPilot or Google My Business.

And this will allow you as well to react to positive or negative feedback very quickly. And you can demonstrate a very good customer service. So also this will help you to work on your brand reputation. In terms of paid methods of brand protection.

You can work with the PPC department if you have one and you can protect your branded keywords, as you mentioned also because of the returning visitors and bid on your branded keywords. And the biggest part, I think for us SEO is the creation of brand protection satellite website that can also rank below the social media or in between and under your main brand.

Marta Szmidt (07:48.179)
and they can protect your brand because you can insert the CTA to your main brand website from

Ivana (07:56.893)
Exactly. And all of these tools can actually help you block the serps for, would say crucially, at least the top five, but ideally top 10 positions, right? Would you agree or would you, would you go for a different number

Marta Szmidt (08:06.006)
Yes.

It depends how big is your part.

Ivana (08:10.224)
Good.

Ivana (08:13.776)
And I'll continue.

Marta Szmidt (08:15.342)
If you have a bigger brand like Petson, guess you can get all the social media profiles and in addition the Wikipedia page and maybe one or two brand protection sites. So you can be in top 10.

you can control the top 10. If you're a smaller brand it's not always possible to get the Wikipedia page for example. It's a difficult process for smaller brands because you need official publications in high authority websites to get to prove the Wikipedia page. So this can be tricky as well.

Ivana (08:52.845)
You need to be sort of a recognized force of nature to get a good Wikipedia page. That is true, it's becoming more more difficult. But then lot of us work with big brands and we have got PR departments that can help you. If you cannot get it, maybe they know how to help you with it. So again, work across departments to achieve this. Now, I think this is all just talking about helping us protecting basically from reselling our own brand traffic back to us by affiliation.

Marta Szmidt (09:10.996)
Exactly.

Ivana (09:20.613)
Many times they basically beat you fair and square, right? They have got a strong domain such as gambling .com or casino .org. They create a review about you and they sell you lots of traffic, which might be on your branded keywords, but they are actually doing it legally. So all of these methods are to protect the debt. For example, the sort of legal affiliation traffic, but I think there's space for affiliate branded, semi branded keywords where we actually want to have them.

Would you agree? think for me it would be the bonuses and reviews of casinos where they mentioned us as the best casino bonuses or best casino for certain market where you cannot call yourself the best. Would you agree that this is a good usage of brand for affiliation that you would not fight with the brand protection sites?

Marta Szmidt (10:06.562)
Definitely. As you mentioned, those sets of keywords will be owned mostly by affiliates. So Google will prefer to display comparison websites for those kinds of keywords. So there is nothing to fight against. And it's also natural for the user to see a comparison website, to write about different casinos, to write about your brand, to have an external review about your bonus. It's also very important. So I wouldn't fight against.

Ivana (10:37.551)
And especially if you are a new brand or a smaller brand, it still gives you sort of like validity that this huge affiliation site that is already known is writing about you and recommending you. in the end, if you work correctly together with affiliation and you agree on which keywords they should target and help you grow on, it's actually in your advantage.

Marta Szmidt (10:58.75)
natural. I agree. It's your advantage. It gives you additional credit, but it also looks natural that some third -party website is writing about you. yeah, I think it's the way it should be because you will always have positive, negative feedback on different websites. And if you have good cooperation with affiliation and if the affiliate is recognized and has

high authority on the internet, on Google search results, it is important to have those kind of reviews as well and to keep them.

Ivana (11:42.287)
Absolutely. Plus there are always bonus hunters or people that just simply want to convert through affiliate website. I think the problem comes when we start to face certain cyber squatting or as well known as brand jacking. when affiliates actually steal your branded name and start to build and many times out drunk you on your own brand. let's say Betson would be out drunk on Betson casino keyword, which will be absolutely ridiculous because our competitor use their trademark. Have

experienced something like this? Have you experienced brand jacking and all of these nasty unethical practices?

Marta Szmidt (12:18.158)
Yes. And especially this year, I have noticed that Google cannot react to this attacks. Like I see even government websites being hacked and there's absolutely nothing that Google wants to do about it. So I think there's in India, least 20 to 25 websites that they run for big casino name and

They're up there for months and nothing is done from Google sites. They are just there. And you cannot contact the government websites and make aware of this issue because especially in India, you don't want to be very visible for the government. So it is a big issue. And I have the feeling that Google has been very spammy with the search results. Not only brand jacking, but also parasites SEO can be used for it.

and yeah, it creates a mess.

Ivana (13:18.309)
I agree this year has been crazier than ever. And I think the search quality has decreased. We discussed it over and over and over. But yes, it is a problem and there are ways to fight it. I mean, we are trying, obviously. You can report to different places. You can speak to your legal and they can send a cease letter, right? You can speak to the registrar of the domain or the hosting unless they are in Russia, in China, that no one will actually ever get back to you.

and you can request the MTA take down, but those are just not that successful as you would hope. So I think it really comes down to sort of moral compass of your partners. As well, my other issue that I've been seeing lately is the PPC abuse when you have got, of course, we have got different types of partners. have got affiliates, they sell you SEO traffic and PPC traffic and social media traffic.

Marta Szmidt (14:01.491)
Exactly.

Ivana (14:15.249)
And when it comes to PPC one, obviously we, there are contracts in place telling people do not bid on our brand. But when those are broken, they are basically completely hijacking your traffic on brand. And this is impossible to fight. mean, you've got tools that can help you to spot it such as brand variety, humble AI, or what is it called? Blue pearl. They all help you find these and they all help you report it, but it is not a hundred percent. Do you have some special trick?

how to deal with it or just swallow it as a bitter pill and know that it's going to always be there some kind of abuse.

Marta Szmidt (14:53.41)
think we all need to report it and try to monitor and spot it. We shouldn't give up. But just be aware that the success rate is not very high from my experience. As a team, we even submitted the MCA request yesterday. So it was funny because the site

ranking in different markets below us. It's not our domain. It uses our brand name. So I'm curious if they're going to take it down. But the first reply we got from the MCA was, we cannot reach the site. So they're not even using VPN to check the website that it's brand jacking us. So I also question

if they are going to remove the site, they cannot even see the content on the site, but I still would not give up. think it's important, like you mentioned, to use different tools to monitor, the situation and to report as soon as possible. And I think, you know, getting all exact match domain with your brand name and branded keywords and semi branded keywords in domains.

to secure all of the domains as soon as possible when you start your business, it's important. So at least you can create the brand protection sites of them and you don't risk that the competitors are going to buy those domains and create websites for your name. This is maybe a basic step, but it's something that shouldn't be forgotten when starting a business.

Ivana (16:37.509)
Absolutely. To the DMCA takedown, maybe you can take screenshots of what you're seeing and attach it to them. So they actually have some proof because maybe they just simply are not SEOs, are not nerds like us. They will not go through the VPN. So maybe this is an idea what you can use or anyone listening having the same struggle, maybe take screenshots. It's a powerful tool. We use it all the time. Screenshots are the thing.

Marta Szmidt (16:59.15)
Yeah, yeah, we even record a video. Yes, we even record a video. So I completely agree. We already send the reply back. We record a video of it. But I was just surprised that you still have to pay for it. Even if you're on the DMCA certification, you still need to pay $200. And if you want to take down another website who's stealing from you basically. even for that, I was surprised

they deal with this issue on a daily basis and that they don't use it VPN. It was just very surprising for me. But yes, for sure we, we, will let you know what is the result of this investigation.

Ivana (17:43.173)
Yeah. And as well, I just want to point out here that many times SEOs get a little bit of tough time, especially with operators saying, you are just ranking for branded keywords, especially when we start a website and first three months, we just really are going for the branded keywords and we get pushback like, why are we not position one on casino? So I think to this, I want to tell anyone who is not SEO and does not maybe realize this, we need to first protect our own brand. And the strategy has to include brand protection.

has to include creating a good strategy, strong strategy to keep your branded keywords and semi branded keywords such as brand casino, brand sports, brand betting on position one. And even if there is something higher, like no click positions, zero clicks position, you want to be there as well. If there is a carousel, you want to be there. If there's a picture, you want to be there. So Marta, how would you go about making really good brand strategy for ranking for your brand position one?

because this is sometimes very omitted by lots of people and they just go directly for the money keywords.

Marta Szmidt (18:49.272)
couldn't agree more with you. think we can leverage our content on our splash or our homepage. It's very normal that this page has the power already of links. Mostly this page will get the majority of the links. So just by adding the content that it's very branded, that includes all the branded keywords you can find in Google search console with the highest clicks, you can...

already leverage the power of your brand and you can save your rankings and using localization, so making sure that the same happens on any other market that it's important for you, will also protect your brand in other languages. So I think this is the first step using the power of your own brand on your main website. But in addition to that, you can create satellite sites for each market that is relevant for

So as I mentioned, can use domains for it that have branded keywords inside the domain name and maybe semi branded. And you can create additional content about your brand there. I think it's important to use internal data, speak to your customer support guys, speak to your casino manager and ask questions like what do

want to know about our brand, what are the most common questions. So you can create more content on the satellite websites because you want to rank for all long -time keywords as well related to your brand. And usually those satellite websites are very content heavy and they, from my experience, they rank very

Ivana (20:39.781)
Yeah. And usually as well as they are brand protection sites, if you are in markets where you are lacking a license or maybe because the market is a license, don't get closed off by government. No, your main website might get closed, but the satellite brand protection sites usually don't. you even protecting your FTDS and your money if you are creating a correct strategy with your brand protection sites. So let's

really put it in a shell. Brand protection is important because it is our brand that we own and we should protect it, but you should work with legal to make sure you have got trademark, right? Basics. You should create a good branded strategy and you should create brand protection satellite sites and all the things that Marta has mentioned in this podcast of all the free things you can get, but all of these will create a very nice brand awareness, brand protection.

and bring more customers to your site. If they get lost on the way, it will return them to your site because SEO and people don't think of it. We are very much of a retention channel as well. Have I forgotten anything, Marta, that you want to make sure people understand and remember from this podcast?

Marta Szmidt (21:56.328)
I think, there are a things that don't work anymore. think cross -linking from those satellite sites is maybe not a good idea or linking from your main brand to the satellite site. So you kind of want to do this incognito, the whole project, because Google very often is not gonna like to give you the whole monopoly. if Google notice, this site is actually your

the satellite size is actually your own size. So I think we need to be conscious about, but rather than that, you summarized everything perfectly.

Ivana (22:33.767)
Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and knowledge with us. And I really hope that you listening to us enjoy this and learn something. Thank

Marta Szmidt (22:44.109)
Thank you.