SEO Tracker: Grosvenor Casino has lead cut as casino sector becomes a four-horse race

Since the start of the year, Grosvenor Casino has seen its dominance slip in the online casino search results, with a 43% decrease in traffic from January to August and several major operators closing the gap to create a much more competitive search market.

As was the case when we previously commented on Grosvenor Casino’s growth in the organic rankings, the search term ‘casino’ (by far the largest in the sector) has been the main factor. Although searches for this term have seen a notable 22% increase since January to hit 74,000 monthly searches, Grosvenor Casino hasn’t seen any of the benefit, slipping from position one to position six and seeing the estimated clicks brought in by this keyword fall by 11,779 despite the increased consumer interest.

The traffic loss from this keyword alone makes up for the majority of the 18,159 estimated monthly clicks that the brand has lost, with further decreases in traffic caused by keywords such as ‘slots’ slipping from position two to position four and ‘online casino’ falling from position two to position six. Beyond the largest volume search terms, Grosvenor Casino also now has 46 top rankings, down from the 60 that they had in January, indicating that there have been smaller losses across the board for the brand.

Betfred a surprise name in the chasing pack

In January, while Grosvenor Casino was looking particularly dominant, Betfred only received an estimated 4,494 monthly clicks from the search terms we covered. However, after a 491% increase in organic traffic from these terms, Betfred finds itself sandwiched between Netbet and Casino.com as Grosvenor Casino’s closest rivals.

Despite ranking for a relatively low number of keywords compared to its rivals, Betfred is getting traffic from the terms that matter, ranking in position one and two respectively for ‘slots’ and ‘online slots’, which are the second and third most important keywords in terms of the volume they bring, accounting for just under half of Betfred’s total estimated monthly clicks.

While Betfred has grown quickly in the organic search rankings, Netbet has continued the steady growth that we have seen over the last year to become the second most visible brand within the casino sector. Over the last seven months, its traffic has increased from 15,547 monthly clicks to 22,769. This is in part due to the brand now ranking in the top three positions for key terms ‘online casino uk’, ‘online casino’ and ‘casino’, with these terms bringing 12,877 monthly clicks between them.

The final of the three sites behind Grosvenor Casino, Casino.com, is the brand that has most benefited from the increased search volume for the term ‘casino’. In addition to greater interest in the term, Casino.com now ranks in position one for the biggest term in the industry (up from five). This means that the brand now receives an estimated 17,856 clicks per month from this keyword alone, making up 90% of its total organic search volume. While this is a high percentage of traffic to come from one term, Casino.com has improved rankings across the board, going from four to 10 terms in position one, and from 39 to 50 first page results.

Admiral Casino falling further behind

In July 2020, Admiral Casino was riding the wave of interest in the casino market as the industry experienced a spike of activity, resulting in the brand receiving over 67,000 monthly clicks and enjoying a commanding lead at the top of the organic search rankings for the industry. It was therefore a surprise to find in January that it had fallen to second most visible behind Grosvenor Casino after the surge in interest had calmed down, with 26,241 monthly clicks.

Remarkably, we have seen the brand fall further to sit as the ninth most visible brand in the sector with an organic traffic of just 10,303 monthly clicks.

Whereas in January a drop in clicks could be explained by the interest in the market cooling off slightly from its peak, we have seen overall growth in terms of the number of searches for the terms we analyse. Admiral Casino has also increased the number of terms it ranks for from 245 to 255 out of the 353 keywords included in our research.

The loss of traffic is therefore a result of falling down the rankings for several key terms, or in the case of ‘casino’, no longer ranking for them at all. This has led to a decrease in their weighted average rank from 11 in January (the best out of the top 10 brands) to 23 currently.