Since casino affiliate marketing largely means promoting international brands, the standard rules of local SEO don’t apply.
Although most countries have their own Google page — google.fr in France, google.com.au in Australia, etc. — make no mistake: Savvy web users in any country tend to utilize the main Google.com page when searching online.
So, in a global sense, local isn’t always local.
The WSOP as business model, and marketing tool
But that doesn’t mean that Google Local can’t still help your casino affiliate marketing plan. A great example of the crossover factor in online gambling is the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the biggest land-based poker tournament of the year and online poker’s key traffic driver, all in one package.
The WSOP is a perfect model for this way of thinking: Owned by the gargantuan Caesars Entertainment, the WSOP is poker’s biggest brand. Period. And the brand’s new owners make the most of this advantage with year-long WSOP events.
Those events are an instructive look at the combination of local marketing and poker affiliate programs. Consider how successful this recent WSOP event was, in Oklahoma:
“The WSOP Circuit stop in Durant, Okla., wrapped up on Monday with 25-year-old online poker pro Huy Nguyen taking down the title and $232,706,” writes Andrew Feldman at ESPN.com, summing up the crossover between Internet poker and local marketing.
Think that marketing WSOP qualifiers on your poker affiliate site doesn’t have local appeal? Think again.
The benefits of Google Local for casino affiliates
So, even though your casino affiliate business partners aren’t local, that doesn’t mean your site, your brand, your business, shouldn’t be. If you’ve got more than one affiliate marketing website, then you’ll have set up a business office of some sort, wherever you live, for tax and accounting purposes.
So, list your home office address in Google Places. It’s free to do. Unless you plan on offering any services — such as writing content or designing pages — you’ll probably want to leave it at that.
If you’re in an area that’s near physical casinos, you may want to investigate whether your online gambling site may appeal to people looking for gambling in your state or region.
In that sense, there are even more benefits to taking your casino affiliates site local, beyond the basic SEO advantages of a greater presence on the Internet.