SEO Tracker: Volatility shakes up online bingo search results
In this month's SEO Tracker, Stickyeyes analyses trends in the online bingo search market
There has been significant change in the online bingo search results, where previous market-leading mainstays have seen notable drops in visibility in organic, non-brand search despite a growing market.
Among the biggest drops, previous market-leaders Mecca Bingo and BJ’s Bingo have seen sizeable slides in organic visibility, with Buzz Bingo and Gala Bingo two of the big winners. So what is going on in the market?
As is the case with many of the igaming sectors that we have looked at over the past months, bingo is experiencing a period of growth, with overall search volume increasing by 10% between September 2022 and March 2023.
However, that growth also comes with volatility, with the bingo search results being much more prone to change than other igaming sectors, such as poker and casino, and this means that there is a lot of movement within the top 10 brands.
Nowhere is this clearer than looking at the most visible brand in the market. In March the most visible brand is Buzz Bingo, which has seen a 359% increase in organic traffic in the past six months, rising from being the 10th most visible brand in the market to taking the top spot.
This is in stark contrast with BJ’s Bingo, which was the top-ranking brand for organic traffic in September. Now receiving just 269 organic clicks per month, the brand has lost 98.5% of its organic traffic in six months.
‘Bingo’ key to success
While another brand making a large leap up the rankings to become the most visible in the sector may be surprising, it is no shock that the keyword which has powered this increased visibility is ‘bingo’.
The keyword ‘bingo’ has a vastly disproportionate impact on search visibility in the sector. For context, with 74,000 monthly searches, ‘bingo’ accounts for 33% of all searches in the market. When you compare that to the slots market, in which ‘slots’ makes up 13% of all searches, you see why ranking top for ‘bingo’ is so important in this market, and how it can completely transform the visibility of a brand.
Buzz Bingo already ranked in position six for the term, yet moving up the rankings to position one has resulted in an additional 15,037 monthly clicks for the brand. This represents 88% of Buzz Bingo’s increase in visibility, but there are some key differences between Buzz Bingo’s increase in traffic and BJ’s Bingo’s increase that we covered in our last bingo column.
The most obvious one is the number of keywords that the brands rank for. Buzz Bingo ranks for 310 keywords in our data set, a number beaten by only WhichBingo and Wink Bingo. In contrast to this, BJ’s Bingo ranked for just 70 keywords in the data set, by far the lowest of the top 10 brands.
Traffic obtained outside of ‘bingo’ is also a key differentiator, as even without the additional 15,037 clicks from the rankings improvement, Buzz Bingo would have improved its overall visibility to be the eighth most visible brand, with 6,905 monthly clicks. BJ’s Bingo, meanwhile, only received 815 monthly clicks outside of ‘bingo’.
Solid improvements and continued losses
It isn’t just the top spot that is occupied by a new brand, as Gala Bingo has seen an 18% increase in organic visibility to become the second most visible brand in the space.
This increased organic visibility can largely be attributed to the brand increasing the number of keywords that it ranks for (now 240 compared to 210 in September), without seeing a decrease in its average ranking position. Gala Bingo’s average ranking position of eight was already the best out of the top 10, and has enabled it to outpace the overall market growth over the last six months.
Mecca Bingo, on the other hand, has experienced a considerable loss in organic traffic since September, losing 60% of its traffic and now ranking as the eighth most visible brand in the space.
The brand has seen keyword rankings worsen across the board, as it now ranks for fewer keywords and with a worse average ranking position than in September.
This is most clearly demonstrated, and most keenly felt, at the top of the rankings. Mecca Bingo now ranks in position one for only one keyword, and has seen the number of keywords that it ranks in the top three positions for drop from 37 to eight.
The most alarming aspect of this for the brand is that this is the second consecutive six-month period where they have lost considerable traffic. In September, a lot of that loss was attributable to its ranking for ‘bingo’, but the losses of the past six months have come across a much wider range of keywords.
Having previously held a commanding lead as the most visible brand in the sector, Mecca Bingo will be keen to see a reversal in the trend of the past year.