SEO Tracker: Grosvenor overtakes Admiral as the market leader in online casino

Six months ago, we commented on how Admiral Casino was enjoying a commanding position in the search engine results. But all that has changed and while Admiral Casino remains one of the stronger brands in the market, there is a new leader at the top of the casino market.

The result is a more competitive search market in the online casino segment – one where the chasing pack may not have necessarily grown, but where the advantage of the leading brands has been somewhat cut to create a more equal search market.

Grosvenor rises as Admiral Casino sees drops

Grosvenor Casino has become the market leader in the casino market, based on the 353 biggest non-brand keywords in the market.

The brand has grown from fourth in the market back in July 2020, when it was achieving around 17,399 monthly organic visits from our keyword set, to achieve 42,185 visits from the same keywords in January 2021 – a 143.3% increase in organic monthly non-brand traffic.

A large part of this growth has been driven by Grosvenor improving its ranking for the keyword “casino” (the biggest keyword in the market) from sixth position to first position. This keyword alone contributes to an uplift in traffic of 14,147 – 57% of the brand’s total traffic growth.

The brand also holds position two rankings for five of the next six biggest keywords, including “slots” (from position four), “online casino” (from eight), “online slots” (from four), “casinos” (a fall from position one to position two) and “online casinos” (from 10).

But the results show signs of Grosvenor Casino deploying a wide-ranging strategy to improve rankings across the board, rather than simply concentrating on the higher-volume terms. The brand actually holds 123 top-three rankings – a significant increase on the 44 that it held back in July 2020.

Netbet.co.uk is the third most visible brand, increasing its monthly organic non-brand traffic by around just over 4,000 to 15,547, putting it just ahead 32Red.com.

How far has Admiral fallen, and why?

The scale of Admiral’s lead in the market back in July was significant, which makes the fact that it has fallen to second in the market all the more striking.

Back in July 2020, the brand was enjoying just over 67,000 monthly clicks from non-brand organic search, compared to the second-placed 32Red with 17,999 – a huge lead in any market, but particularly for one as competitive as online casino.

So why has the brand ended up as the second-most visible in the market, generating traffic of 26,421 from the same keywords in January 2021?

Part of the decline can be attributed to search volumes for some of the high-volume keyword terms declining somewhat in the intervening period. This will affect all brands in the sector, but will be most acutely felt by those brands that do rank well for those affected high volume terms.

For example, search volumes for “casino” have fallen from 74,000 to 60,500. Searches for “slots” have almost halved from 60,500 to 33,100, “blackjack” from 33,000 to 27,100 and “roulette” from 18,100 to 12,100.

Much of this is down to the unprecedented spike in activity that we saw in the market in and around July 2020, as we can see from Google Trends data.

Our previous analysis, performed in the latter part of July, captured the back end of that peak and this would have influenced the monthly average traffic figures for that period. Now that the market has returned to a more recognisable level of search activity (although still higher than pre-pandemic levels), the search volumes in our analysis will reflect this.

But for Admiral, it is a case of lost ground on some of those important keyword terms. Back in July, it held position one rankings for the nine biggest terms in the market, with these rankings accounting for 73.5% of the brand’s total organic non-brand traffic at the time.

But come the turn of 2021, those nine keywords provide just two position one rankings (for “online slot” and “online casino uk”. The position one ranking for “casino” in July has become a position six ranking in this analysis, with the brand dropping to position three for “slots”, eight for “blackjack” and position three for “online slots”.

What we can’t criticise Admiral Casino for is a narrow keyword strategy, which is often one of the root causes of a brand falling from position one in a market. While not having the broadest keyword coverage, the brand does rank for 245 of the 353 keywords we analyse. What this appears to be is simply a brand falling from an extremely dominant position in a market that now has something of an equilibrium – a search market that is more competitive, with more brands enjoying a share of the prime search engine real estate.