iGaming Daily

Ivana (00:03.069)
Hello everyone and welcome back to our podcast iGaming Daily where we talk about marketing. This is Marketing Edition and today I am welcoming Dani, who is an amazing SEO expert, especially for dark market, and Sylvia, who is very much into content. She's a content lead in Bettson and we'll be talking about how to optimize and how to work with the fact that Google is giving us more and more of the zero-click results. Girls, welcome and please introduce yourselves.

Dani Leitner (00:35.534)
Do you want to start Sylvia?

Silvia (00:37.156)
Yes, go ahead. Well, I'm Sylvia. I've been leading the SUO.

global on-site team at Batsum for two years now, but I've been around the SEO industry for 15 years, something like that. So that makes me feel a bit old, but it also allows me, allowed me to have, let's say a quite wide overview about the evolution of content and SERPs and everything related to SEO.

Ivana (01:08.743)
Very good, and done-y.

Dani Leitner (01:11.31)
Well, I'm Dani Leitner. I'm a SEO consulting living in Switzerland. I'm specialized in the Tach market. And my background actually is completely different because I'm coming from, I've studied civil engineering and I've been an IT project manager. So completely different things, but now I'm doing SEO and I also have a newsletter.

where I write about how to rank it at the market, which is a little bit of strange market with the three countries that don't like each other, I would say.

Ivana (01:43.463)
Fantastic. Well, Dani just proved that SEO talent comes from anywhere. You don't have to be studying marketing or being a blogger to become an SEO expert. Very good. So Google is changing the game all the time and we are seeing the increase of zero clicks. Right? What are zero clicks? You search for something, you find either AI overview or a knowledge panel or people also asked and the answer is right there. How do I cook chicken?

There it is. How long do I need to boil an egg? There it is. You don't click to the website. And this for us as drivers of traffic of the clicks to the website, this is a little bit of a problem. How do you feel about this zero click growing? By now we stand not in all countries, but average on 60 % of all the searches ending up in zero clicks, which obviously, if your job is bringing traffic to a website, it is a little bit of a problem.

How do you feel about it? Is it a problem or do you have a way around it?

Silvia (02:46.21)
Well, if I can start with that. We can see it as a problem, but I'd rather see it as a challenge. However, because otherwise we won't be able to survive as SEO because in SEO the landscape changes quite often. Google is changing, but also the user behavior are changing. So what we are seeing now within SCRPs is, let's say, the consequence of different user behaviors. So the users that we have now are way different compared to the ones

that used to search information on the SIRPs, including us, I would say. So we are more demanding and on the other side, slightly lazier, if I might say so. And on top of that, what we need to change is our mentality. Because as you said, Ivana, of course, will be zero clicks means that no one or at least less people are accessing our website. And if in the

past or still now, we are measuring the result of our campaign or of our SEO efforts into clicks. We need to shift a bit the mentality because now the success of an SEO campaign can be different and maybe can be measured with the number of times your website is quoted or used as sources within the AI overview. So that's something that

Dani Leitner (03:56.919)
you

Silvia (04:15.608)
that we have to, let's say, have quite clear in mind. Otherwise, we won't be able to proceed any further. in short, yes, will be a decrease in clicks. That might be a challenge, especially if you have to explain this new landscape to stakeholders or clients. But we are SEOs and we are prepared to face this new landscape.

Ivana (04:38.747)
And Dani, how do you tackle this? How do you tackle this in your markets? Plus you are as well outside of iGaming, so you give us a little bit of fresh perspective. How do you tackle this? Do you see these zero clicks growing or is not affecting your markets yet?

Dani Leitner (04:41.047)
I really like your point.

Dani Leitner (04:55.214)
Well, there are now with zero clicks, there are a few things to mention. First, there are the zero clicks that kind of go like if I'm searching the conversion from francs, Swiss francs to euro, I just, I don't click anywhere. I just want the graph of the calculator from Google. But that these things that display things like that, they are also, what business would they bring you if you have a calculator on your page? Because I just want this task done. I don't go to your page to...

Silvia (05:08.475)
you

Dani Leitner (05:24.0)
Afterwards buy something because I just want to have this calculation. And so this zero clicks we have for a long time now, which are really like, well, if you try to rank for that, why, what was the purpose behind? Because what did you think would the user do afterwards? And what do you think the traffic would bring you? And then we have the other things with AI overviews. I mean, I don't have AI overviews in the tech market yet, but

still I see with a lot of clients also like with chat gdbt and perplexity dimensions and everything and if you research thing with these tools you're not always going to click it's also like you get your answer but I think there it's like Silvia says we need to shift from the clicking to see SEO as well SEO also is there to build your brand

And to get mentioned because if you are the one that gets mentioned in AI overviews or in Chatchi PT, when somebody searches for something, I mean, when somebody searches like, should I contract an SEO expert? I want to be there on Chatchi PT. want to say Chatchi PT. Well, you should look at Danny. That would be the best solution.

Even though they don't click, maybe they hear my name, they hear the company's name, think like, well, they have something to do. And there is this theory that in marketing now, it's not just you, they find you, they click, they buy. It's more like you need seven impacts.

Silvia (06:35.238)
you

Dani Leitner (06:49.77)
So people actually recognize your brand and say like well I heard about them and then maybe they buy with the seventh impact. So you really we really need to think about what impact we make with mentions and everything and not just about do we get a click or not.

Ivana (07:02.161)
Yes, OK, so attribution model needs to change. I think that's where we need to go. And branding, you are right, it is a fantastic branding opportunity. And this is a challenge. If you are working with a brand like Sylvia, Bettson that is around for what, 25 years, everybody in gaming knows Bettson, right? But if you have a small, tiny little brand that just starting, how do you optimize for that? How do you go about to create a brand? How do you go about creating something that will show in AI overviews? What's the...

with the approach here, so people listening to it will be like, okay, we just started our casino two months ago, we are not Betson. However, we want to be seen in AI overviews, we want to be in knowledge graphs, we want to be everywhere. How do you do that? What would be your trick of optimizing on page or all the other channels that are coming up? What would you do?

Silvia (07:53.271)
Well, sorry good if you want to go ahead then go

Dani Leitner (07:53.292)
I have a...

for Topical Authority, my favorite topic here. All these tools you need to keep in mind, they are very informational. So you normally look up a lot of informational stuff. So if you want to get to mention, you need to show your expertise. And the best would be to find like a niche in your niche. I mean, you can't just be, I'm the expert in gaming now because I just started my company. That won't happen. So you really need to find like your gaming niche, maybe to say like, well, I start to really dig deep on these topics.

And be the expert out there and all the tools will recognize it. If you have like a lot of content about the topic, if you go out and present this niche in, I don't know, conferences on podcasts and everything, they will also get like, well, maybe we should mention this person because it's always popping up because they search in the back as well.

Silvia (08:52.846)
And if I can step here just to conclude what Dani started, because of course, topical authority is a key. However, especially if you are a new brand starting really from scratch, I would suggest to start creating contents in the, let's say, in a good way that this new landscape can, let's say, make you rank, make you be more visible within SAP. I will say rank because I'm still belonging to the old mindset that I should shift as well.

Besides that, then start creating content with those few basics tips like creating formative content, concise, in order to let search engine and users and these artificial intelligence as well, which is everywhere right now, to really understand your content, to facilitate the work of letting you show on those zero-click results. Then add FAQ.

as much as you can for the contents which are applicable, improve the readability. I know that I'm saying very basic things, however, those should be implemented all the times that the content are...

Dani Leitner (10:03.022)
You

Silvia (10:10.352)
there's a content creation need, like you create, divide the content into paragraphs, use adding or sub-addings, use lists, bullet points, tables, which finally have the importance that they didn't have back in the day, I would say. And also implement a schema markup wherever it's applicable, use visual assets, and of course, focus on the quality, improve the EE.

which should become even more important right now. I didn't say anything special, but if you're starting your business from scratch, implementing those few basic tips would be definitely useful, especially if you want visibility in those zero-click, zero-b's new features.

Ivana (10:58.575)
Absolutely, absolutely. support that. Especially the EAT signals because especially in iGain we just...

you see affiliation popping up the websites left and right with no brand, just to try to get some traffic. They manipulate the traffic, they manipulate the DR, they manipulate the traffic with bots. So it's not actually a real website and they really forget to build a quality. So I like that approach of building quality as well. think we can discuss here the importance of being visible everywhere, not just on your own platform, because we know that Google is training AI overviews. We know that the SERPs are starting to look more like a social media, right?

Dani Leitner (11:30.574)
Hmm.

Ivana (11:34.741)
used to be you ask what is online casino, there will be a text, there will be a second text, will be a third text. Now you have got pictures, you have got videos, so you have to be visible everywhere. You need to go to YouTube. YouTube is a tool because it is Google product, which means it ranks. It is an interactive content that people love because it is not AI, you are a normal human being there. And you need to...

You can create fun videos if you are in affiliation. Maybe you can create reviews using videos and put it on YouTube. just you need to be visible on more platforms. We know that Reddit is growing in importance. Reddit is extremely, extremely difficult to get right. It is breaking left and right. They suspend you for no good reason. But if you manage, you should be there because and I see this on LinkedIn all the time, people getting frustrated like whatever I search Reddit is there.

Yes, it's there and you need to be on it to be visible. Which are other platforms or any other sources you would recommend people to be visible on? I mean, obviously I would go TikTok, Insta, but we cannot really use it in gaming, but maybe outside of gaming, you can give us tips where you would go to build visibility and be more visible outside of your website. And then Sylvia, I can take it from the eye gaming point of view. Danny, your turn.

Dani Leitner (12:56.95)
Yeah, I mean, I would obviously when you start your business and you look for your name and you look for your domain, also reserve all the social media to have your name saved. Even if you don't lose it, it, just have your name. We can talk about using it afterwards and to be also visible. think the most important thing for everyone is to look at their own niche.

And what are the platforms, the other websites, the YouTube channels, the podcasts that people listen to your niche or your clients niche. So if you say like your client will listen to this podcast, you obviously should be invited there and you should try for the next year, two year to get your spot into his podcast. so I think it's really depending on the nation to see, like, if you look at the SEO niche, if you want to show that you're an expert, you should be on the most blog.

You should be on one of the big events talking once, maybe not the first time, but later around, you should look for all the podcasts that really talk about the topic that you could actually go there and present your stuff or write articles for really important blogs in your niche to show that you're an expert. not just.

looking for social media where you can easily publish anything. Also look for the community and where people go and consume content that you could bring yourself in front of this audience.

Ivana (14:19.909)
Very good. And Silvia, from your expertise in iGaming, where would you want to be visible? I mean, how would you build up that visibility and eat signals going hand in hand with that outside of your own website? I Betzen doesn't really need to try, let's be honest. None of your brands really need to try. But imagine that you are not in Betzen, OK?

Dani Leitner (14:36.972)
You

Silvia (14:38.598)
you

Okay, and I have to start my brand from scratch as we were already talking before. Well, ideally, as you already mentioned, in my game it is very difficult that we go slash impossible that we can use social media. ideally what I would say, of course, I would keep on focusing on the organic searches, because in the end, they won't die. I'm quite sure about that. So they will still have a bit of importance and working a lot in building the brand over there.

trying to let's say create ripple effects starting from there, creating your brand and let other people talk about you, of course, in a good way. And then as you were mentioning, there are other platforms which might still belong to SEO somehow. I'm not super sure about how to classify them, but like Reddit or big forums where people are talking about that. So ideally, if

everybody is there, you should be there as well. So you should look at your landscape. Of course, I do work in iGaming. However, I have to say that not all markets are the same and in quite a few markets that I'm operating in, Reddit is not that important yet, at least. So that can be good, anticipating the trend. yeah, basically I'm translating what Dani was saying for other niches. So let's

focus on what you can do and improve your presence over there. Regarding eye game, definitely search will be still quite important and everything which is rotating around that.

Ivana (16:25.139)
Great. And now let's talk about EAT a little bit because for iGaming, creating good EAT signals is very difficult if we are not a very good brand and we have got social media and sponsorships and these are dead. So imagine you're running a smaller website or starting your affiliate website. How would you recommend to go about EAT? Because it obviously helps with everything. You need to eat better. How would you go about creating it? Because for us, right now, when you look at any affiliate website, there is an author.

And sometimes there is a fake LinkedIn page and that's it. Now we know that Google is getting more and more importance to eat. What would be your tips and tricks? I'll share mine as well to make sure that your eat signals tick, your on page and off page and social media and all of that. What would be your golden trick and tip for anyone who just wants to increase their eat signals? Because we keep saying it almost in every podcast that it is becoming more and more important in 2025 for sure.

Ivana (17:32.049)
That is an awkward quote.

Silvia (17:33.899)
Okay, well, ideally...

First of all, it doesn't come overnight. So it takes a while to create, it takes a while to create, let's say, this eat recognition. So however, my tips would be focus on experience because nowadays the experience being your personal experience, so real facts and not fake one, that can be a clue. So definitely focus on that part.

because the rest will come if you're really bringing your experience people will notice. People will recognize you as a trustable and authority sources. So that's the starting point.

Dani Leitner (18:21.198)
Yeah, I really like your point. I just thinking, I'm writing at the moment for a website article that's about how to make money with your hobby. And I was Googling that and you look at the results and everything is 20 hobbies you can start now to make money out of it. And it's just like, well, someone searching for that doesn't want to start a hobby now and go like the next five years making the best hobby. And it's just like, well, you never thought about this topic, no. And like, I'm writing from my experience.

when I was building my travel blog and then found like well I already have this travel blog how should I monetize it and things like that so you really see like how if you're just coping the competition like everyone was doing on this first page for this keyword

Then you don't show your expertise. You just write the same with like a different order. Nice. Nobody needs that. So really like Sylvia says, bring your own experience in there and say like, well, just think like, what did you experience? How did you experience that? And also I find it really funny with EAD, we focus so much on the author, like putting a picture there, putting a name there, putting a text bio, linking to your LinkedIn profile, which is really funny, especially in SEO when we think we have a lot of SEO writers that are normally ghostwriters.

Ivana (19:22.803)
Yes.

Silvia (19:28.954)
Mm-hmm.

Dani Leitner (19:37.248)
writers write a blog post and then we put the client's name or someone in the client's company down there. is actually a scientific paper even where you can see in a text, if you have a lot of text written from one person, you can put numbers there with like how long are the sentences, how long are the words, how much change is there. So you can actually make it with numbers scientifically and then compare and say, well, all

these 20 articles are from this person and then you give him another 20 articles. said well I put the offer down there and it will say no that's another offer because you can read it in the text and you really think that Google and all of these tools can't do that. They notice if the offer is different so maybe instead of inventing someone just to have this offer icon down there we should just skip it and focus on other things.

Because that's not like everything, it is not just having this offer down there. And obviously if you're a company starting a small one and you write the content from your perspective and you have your face down there and your name and you have a LinkedIn profile and you have social profile privately, you should also like be visible. Like, well, that's my brand. I'm connected with it. So that's helping as well. So if you want to build, I know in iGaming, maybe you say like, won't have my name down there, but

We know the topics if you can and if you stand behind it, it's always better to have to really write a person who writes and is visible online and has a life and exists to be there as well or maybe just skip it.

Ivana (21:18.227)
think the problem in iGaming as well with having an author is the consistency. We change jobs. If you are somewhere one year, it's almost way too long. iGaming is extremely fast. Companies just decide to go to this market and not to go to this market and they hire people and fire people.

We don't stay in one job way too long. Some people do, obviously, but when you look at it, it's not, or people get promoted and they stop writing. So I think the consistency here is a question, and that's why we go with a fake author, which I have big problem with because I don't think that's an it signal at all. However, lot of people still insist like, we need to get a Swedish phone number to look like we have got a Swedish person writing for our blog, but this person never existed.

Dani Leitner (21:52.749)
Hmm.

Ivana (22:02.725)
So for me, it signals are again, depending on an industry, but very industry focused. So if I would be promoting it.

for me or my client within iGaming, I would make sure that there is an interview with person from this company in some of the big publications, for example, SBC Magazine, right? And then they can link to the website of, let's say, Bettson. I would make sure that people go to podcasts and talk about it because we know that Google is trained on the transcripts of YouTube.

I would make sure that I tick all the things that are not just author. For example, in my ideal world, you can have people, you how we do all these blogs and the blogs in iGaming are super boring, how to play roulette, and what is European roulette and what is American roulette. Everything is copy paste, copy paste. There is not an original thought and this is not it. This is not enriching anyone. So for me, blog could be a place where you publish actually interviews with interesting people with your industry.

Silvia (22:54.758)
you

Ivana (23:06.685)
talking about expertise like payments, for example, or talking to your fans, why do they love betting with your website? And then these people would promote it on their own social media saying, look, there is an interview with me and I actually stand by my points. And I think this is the way to start to go around, to start to think outside of a box rather than having an author. I'm very allergic to let's have an author. So.

Dani Leitner (23:30.382)
Yeah.

Silvia (23:31.046)
Now I agree with it and those alike what you said about the consistency because why it's very right that people come and go so today you have a good author that's tomorrow.

lead you. However, what you can do is, let's say, keeping that standard high, even if others are changing, keeping those, let's say, let's make sure that your authors are the best one ever. Because as we know, we are a different topic can be treated by different people. And those different people can be good in any case. So I would also work on that consistency, because yes, gaming, as you said,

You made me laugh a lot. There's plenty of boring topics. However, if you switch a bit on the sportsbook side, it's not boring at all and the content creation can be very, very active and there can be quite a lot of people creating the good quality content which still keeps your EEATI high if you're representing a brand.

Ivana (24:34.853)
Exactly, it could be, but usually we don't do it. it's very, Bettson is doing this, we're gonna do this. Kasumo is doing this, we're gonna do this.

Dani Leitner (24:44.116)
But that's not just in iGaming the case. I feel sometimes that's what the thing was last year about that SEO killed the internet. That was exactly that now. That we just Kobe from each other without thinking like does actually anybody want to read what we're writing?

Ivana (24:45.787)
Yeah, true.

Silvia (24:47.642)
Yeah

Ivana (25:02.459)
Yes, actually we created this mess of bad information, repetitive information and poor content. Now we are almost done for time, so I'm going to ask these very important questions. Are you worried for AI overviews? We know that they might come this year or next year. They are coming. They are coming. So are you worried that they're going to steal more of our traffic, that we're not going to be able to deliver to our clients or our main websites? Is it a scarecrow for you or not?

Silvia (25:04.709)
Hmm.

Silvia (25:35.59)
If I can go first, well, if I would be worried, I wouldn't be an SEO. So no, I'm not worried. I will adapt. And I will make sure that people working with me will adapt as well to that change.

Ivana (25:46.193)
Very optimistic person, I love it.

Dani Leitner (25:51.586)
Yeah, I'm also not worried at all. I'm trying out a lot of stuff. I'm actually really exciting for all this AI because we have to change. Just like we said, all this boring content, chat GPT will just need one page, not 10. So we will need to change a little bit our perspective, which was about time. And I think...

I think it's really funny to talk with people that say like, SEO, we won't need that anymore because AI overview and chat GPT will take over. And you look at like their website and say, well, if a normal person doesn't understand what you're selling, how will chat GPT do? And that's a lot of times what we are doing, just defining what you're actually selling and make putting it in words that people can understand and structure your website, which is like I see it on all the pages. You still need to do that.

Ivana (26:44.689)
always say because I keep hearing I'm in SEO for 16, 17 years now and every year hear SEO is dead, SEO is dead, every year I've been so many SEO funerals but the truth is if you really believe SEO is dead, de-index all your websites, block all the robots from your site and tell me if it made any change to your traffic. So I think if you believe SEO is dead, this is your approach you should take because you know if that's what you believe in.

Silvia (27:07.27)
Ha ha.

Dani Leitner (27:08.91)
That's really good, I need...

Silvia (27:12.742)
Right?

Ivana (27:13.299)
All right, and we're done for time. Thank you very much for joining me. It was an utter pleasure talking to you and learning from you. I wish you a beautiful day. Thank you.

Silvia (27:23.92)
Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

Dani Leitner (27:25.74)
Thank you, bye.