I recently carried out an SEO case study covering SEMrush fundamentals, traffic insights, keyword and content strategies, and technical basics for a gambling and gaming company. The insights and strategies I uncovered could benefit a broader audience, so I’m sharing my findings in this post. I hope it offers valuable takeaways for anyone looking to improve their SEO knowledge and best practices.
To respect the confidentiality of the company involved, all specific company names, brand names, and URLs have been anonymized or removed.
Semrush basics:
By using a free account on Semrush (or in any other SEO tool, if you prefer Ahref or Similarweb for example, you can), please answer the following questions.When looking at the [Company’s Domain] domain, tell us:
Our organic competitors in the Czech Republic
According to Semrush (below screenshot), the following websites share the most common organic keywords with https://www.[Company’s Domain]/ and can be considered as primary organic competitors:
1. casinoarena.cz
2. sazkove-kancelare.com
3. tipsport.cz
4. encyklopediehazardu.cz
5. pokerarena.cz
However, according to Ubersuggest, the below ones can be considered as primary organic competitors of https://www.[Company’s Domain]/ with highest amount of common keywords (below screenshot).
So, I would consider them, as well:
1. betarena.cz
2. livesport.cz
3. tipsport.cz
4. sazka.cz
5. casinoarena.cz
Top 5 non-branded keywords
What are our top 5 non-branded keywords?As I use free version of SEO tools and filtering out Organic Research of Semrush doesn’t work on the free version, so I use Ubersuggest, checking Keywords by Traffic and filtering out “[Brand]” as the brand name from the result and sorting based on volume.
However, I believe “sazka” and “hokej” are also branded keywords
for your competitors.
So, I filter them out from the below list; else they are they your top keywords
(Below screenshot)
1.
olomouc
2.
korunka vysledky
3.
korunka výsledky
4.
clash stars
5.
euro kurz
Trends and Direction
Unfortunately, with the free version Semrush, I cannot access the
details for other months or the last 3 or 6 months. Therefore, the below report
is based on last month, January 2025 compared to December 2024:
1. Organic Traffic & Visibility:
According to SEMrush, the number of Visits has
declined by 34%, but unique visitors have increased by 64%. Additionally,
backlinks have dropped by 25%, and the bounce rate has decreased by 13% (below screenshot).
The increase in unique visitors
suggests that more new users are discovering the site. This could be due to
improved SEO ranking or market
targeting, indicating growth in brand
awareness or visibility.
However, these new visitors are visiting
less often, which could be attributed to users finding the
information they need more quickly, suggesting an improvement in the UX/UI
or a change in user behavior. For instance, in the case of a betting
company (such as https://www.[Company’s Domain]/), this could be due to fewer
attractive sports events or changes in users' financial situations or similar
cases which can be studied by having access to relevant data.
On the other side, we need to take this to consider that when
amount of unique visitors are getting higher, but the amount of site
visit is declining, it can be relevant other factors as well. For example
to have sponsored ads with low CTA, which landing pages provides the
traffic, but there is not a proper Call to Action (such as registration)
to bring back the traffic to the site. To know about this, more data is needed,
which I can’t access on non-verified and/or on free version SEO tool.
The drop in
bounce rate by 13% is a positive indicator that users are engaging
better with the content, potentially finding what they need more efficiently,
and staying longer on the site.
Totally, the direction seems positive,
as you're attracting new users and improving their experience. While the frequency
of visits may have dropped, this could be a sign that the
website is meeting users' needs more effectively in less time.
The drop in backlinks by 25% is concerning. Backlinks are an essential factor for SEO, and a reduction in backlinks could negatively affect your site's ranking and visibility. This should be a focus area for improvement.
2. Keyword Trend:
Organic traffic and organic
keywords are almost stable with a slight
increase. While this suggests a positive trend, it would be beneficial to compare
these metrics with those of your competitors for a more complete picture.
However, at this stage, the trend still points in a positive
direction.
In this regard, Similarweb shows a more comprehensive overview of the last 3 months, highlighting improvements in both the Global Rank and Country Rank, as well as an increase in total visits (below screenshot). This further supports the idea that the overall direction is positive, despite some fluctuations in specific metrics.
Traffic quality
What can you say about our traffic quality?Due to the limitations of the free version of SEMrush, I used Similarweb to evaluate the traffic quality.
Based on
Similarweb data (below screenshot), approximately 77% of the traffic
is direct, 9.3% comes from organic search,
and 5.2%
is from referrals. The traffic from social media and emails are quite low.
This
suggests that the website has a general strong returning traffic base,
which is a positive indicator of brand recognition and loyalty. However, the organic
traffic percentage is relatively low in compare to the direct
channel, and there is a potential to increase visibility through SEO
optimization.
Additionally, the website seems to be underutilizing social
media and email marketing as sources of traffic, which could be
areas for improvement.
To fully
assess the quality of the traffic,
additional metrics such as bounce rate, average pages per session,
click-through rate (CTR), and average time on page would be
necessary. These metrics help to understand user engagement and whether the
traffic is genuinely interested in the content. Unfortunately, since I do not
have access to Google Analytics (GA) or more detailed data from SEMrush, I am
unable to provide a comprehensive analysis of these engagement indicators.
Backlinks
What can you tell us about our backlinks?
As previously mentioned, https://www.[Company’s
Domain]/ has been losing backlinks for a while.
According to Semrush, in comparison to January 2025, the website has lost 869,000
backlinks and 55 referring domains by February 2025.
The graph below highlights a decline over the past year, particularly from August 2024 onward. The number of referring domains decreased from 2,729 to 1,948, and the number of backlinks dropped dramatically from 19.5 million to 2.5 million.
This is concerning, as such a significant loss typically signals potential issues unless there's a strategic reason behind it, such as removing backlinks from toxic or low-quality domains.
Domain Authority Insights:
The analysis of the referring domains' authority score reveals that most backlinks are from low-authority domains, with a smaller portion coming from higher-authority domains. This imbalance suggests that the backlink profile could be improved by focusing on gaining links from high-authority, reputable sources. Particularly, backlinks from domains with a score of 0-10 should be reviewed for potential toxicity.
Follow vs. Nofollow Ratio:
The
ratio of follow to nofollow backlinks is
currently 98% to 2%, which is unnatural
and raises a red flag. Google favors a
more natural
backlink profile, which typically includes a healthier
balance of follow and nofollow links.
This heavy skew towards follow backlinks may indicate that the backlink
acquisition strategy was not entirely organic or natural, which could negatively
impact the site’s rankings.
Anchor Text Distribution:
The top
anchor texts are mostly blank or without usage
of proper keywords (below screenshot) and the rest are branded ones. It is
essential to perform a more in-depth analysis of the anchor
texts, including language and niche of the
referring domains to ensure that anchor texts are diverse, relevant (e.g.,
usage of keywords or alternative key words), and natural, which are crucial for
improving the backlink profile.
Keyword “casino” and our position
What can you tell us about the keyword “casino” and our position?“casino” is a main keyword with a high keyword difficulty (KD) of 89, which makes it hard and competitive to get rank in search engines, while it comes with a high search volume.
According to Semrush, at this time you don’t hold a global position for this keyword, however you have position of 6 and 16 for longer tail keywords of “[Brand] online casino” and “[Brand] casino”, which both are branded keywords. (Below screenshot)
According to Ubersuggest, your website does not rank for "casino" in the Czech Republic either (below screenshot)
The keyword "casino" is
dominated by well-established, high-authority websites with strong backlinks
and optimized content. Competing for this term directly will be
difficult, especially without a focused content and backlink strategy.
Actually it’s not easy to get rank for this keyword or the alternative ones
such as “online casino” or “casino online”, but still it is achievable
by producing proper and optimized contents and backlinks, especially that I can
see you have the top sponsored rank in google with “online casino
games” (below screenshot)
Suggestions for SEO improvement
Based on the information you have; do you have any Based on the information you have; do you have any suggestions to improve our SEO?I’m going to have below suggestions and recommendations:
- Targeting high-authority domains:
To focus
on acquiring backlinks from reputable sites with high domain authority, ideally
in the same niche and language (Czech).
- Improving anchor text diversity: Use a
variety of anchor texts that align naturally with the content and keywords of
the linked page.
- Balancing follow and nofollow
backlinks: The current 98% follow vs. 2% nofollow ratio
is unnatural. Efforts should be made to increase the proportion of nofollow
links by acquiring mentions from authoritative sources (e.g., forums,
directories) where nofollow links are commonly used. A more balanced
distribution will help ensure a natural and sustainable backlink profile.
- Focusing on quality over
quantity: Ensure backlinks come from trusted,
high-quality sources rather than a high volume of low-authority sites.
- Disavowing toxic backlinks: If any
harmful or low-quality backlinks are identified (particularly from domains with
low authority or spammy behavior), they should be disavowed to prevent any
negative SEO impact.
-
Again as mentioned above, there is an issue
with the backlinks dropping down dramatically, which should be taken care.
2.
To get rank for the keyword “casino”, I
suggest to target alternative or long-tail keywords such as "online
casino games" (which you already rank for in sponsored
ads), "best
online casino CZ", "casino bonuses for Czech players"
and "trusted
online casino reviews" which are less competitive but
still attract qualified traffic can be an effective strategy.
This should be supported by high-quality, optimized content
covering casino games, bonuses, and betting strategies, along with structured
data (schema markup) for better search engine visibility and strong
internal linking to reinforce keyword relevance.
Additionally, acquiring high-authority
backlinks from casino-related websites, industry blogs, and
gambling forums while diversifying anchor texts to maintain a natural
backlink profile will further strengthen domain authority. Over
time, these efforts will improve rankings and increase the chances of ranking
for highly competitive keywords like "casino".
3. As mentioned above, we need to know the reason that while unique visitors are getting higher, the site visits goes lower. If it’s for better UX and visitors easily find the what they are looking for (Good side) or if it’s due to low CTA or poor landing page experience or even to getting rank for non–relevant keywords (Bad side).
4.
Here are some keywords gap that
competitors got ranks for them, but [Brand] is missing such as:
·
casino prague
·
cz casino bonus za registraci
·
sazka kameny vysledky
·
plátýnko
·
hokej online zdarma bez registrace
We can find more keyword gaps, create rich
contents and backlinks for them to get rank for them in search engines. (Below
screenshot)
Also there are keywords that [Brand] already
has rank for them, but in compare to the competitors, the ranks are weak. The
relevant content for such keyword need to be optimized for better ranking in
search engines. Key words such as:
·
stahnout hraci automaty zdarma
·
sazkabet bonus
·
automaty otočky zdarma za registraci
·
volne otocky
·
zdanění výher tipsport
5.
There are also backlink opportunities
from the sites with high domain authority that the competitors have backlinks
from them, but [Brand] doesn’t have. Such as:
|
Domain |
Domain ascore |
[Company’s
Domain] |
tipsport.cz |
sazka.cz |
casinoarena.cz |
betarena.cz |
|
aktuality.sk |
74 |
0 |
1 |
20 |
9 |
15 |
|
slevomat.cz |
65 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
58 |
69 |
|
rozhlas.cz |
61 |
0 |
1 |
9 |
5 |
9 |
|
cvut.cz |
51 |
0 |
1 |
8 |
638 |
3 |
|
euro.cz |
49 |
0 |
1 |
10 |
5 |
4 |
|
zena-in.cz |
39 |
0 |
3 |
295 |
3 |
4 |
|
szm.com |
38 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
8 |
58 |
|
blisty.cz |
35 |
0 |
12 |
14 |
3 |
90 |
|
diit.cz |
34 |
0 |
1 |
4 |
7 |
7 |
|
protext.cz |
34 |
0 |
3 |
14 |
2 |
1 |
More domains can be found via Backlink gap
section in Semrush (below screenshot)
6.
Regarding on-page SEO, I can see some pages
missing proper headings and heading orders (e.g. the home page is missing
<h1>, but contains 2 <h2>), while <h1> plays a very
important role is SEO and rankings.
Moreover, I can see usage of heading for date
(below screenshot). Headings (<h1> to <h6>) are important for SEO
because they provide structure and meaning to a webpage's content and they
should be used for semantic purposes, such as section titles and keyword-rich
content that helps search engines understand the page better. Search engines
use them to understand the hierarchy and relevance of information on the page.
Using <h4>19.2.2025</h4>
does not contribute to SEO because a date does not provide meaningful content
hierarchy or keyword relevance for search engines. Instead, it's better to
style the date using CSS (e.g., <span
class="date">19.2.2025</span> with appropriate styling)
rather than using a heading tag.
7. Of course having more languages for the website (such as English) can be helpful in many aspects, including SEO and higher conversion rate for non-Czech language speakers, residing in Czech Republic.
8. The website misses Apple touch icon, which is good for UX, plus branding and trust.
9.
As mentioned
above, the website traffic analysis reveals underutilization
of social media and email marketing channels. Current traffic
from these sources is significantly lower in comparison to other channels,
indicating a missed opportunity to engage potential customers and drive
conversions.
To address this, I recommend developing comprehensive campaigns focused
on improving both social media presence and email marketing effectiveness.
These campaigns should include strategies for content creation, audience
engagement, list building, and targeted outreach to maximize traffic generation
from these valuable channels. A thorough audit of current social media and
email practices is also recommended to identify areas for immediate improvement.
10.
Checking some pages of the website, I noticed
of very thin content or completely lack of content at all. However, I
know it’s a betting/Gaming site which people are not visiting to read content,
but search engine loves contents.
Even pages that are temporary (e.g., for a specific football match) or being
generated dynamically, with content can get rank and increase sites traffic.
So my advice is to add content as much as possible to all pages or to create blog
section with rich content and then have internal links from them to
the relevant pages.
11.
As the website is very huge and visitors may
get lost, using breadcrumbs can improve UX and user engagement, helping
visitors to navigate better among pages they want to visit.
If using breadcrumb is not an option, at least having a fixed menu can
be helpful to access to the navigational section of the pages easier while they
are in the middle of huge and long pages.
Also, when having long pages, scrolling up from bottom or middle of pages is
not easy for users. In such cases, having a “to top” button can help
them to scroll up faster and easier, which can improve the user experience and
consequently improving user enjoyment.
For example bwin.com,
as one of your competitor uses fixed menu to improve UX and site
engagement.
12.
Also we can use Site Audit section in Ubersuggest
or Semrush or even using Screaming Frog to find SEO issues with
the website, which fixing them can lead to SEO improvements:
For example Ubersuggest on its limited versions finds the below issues.
Opening each
report, will show the pages that they have the relevant issue or warning. We
can start with the one that higher priority and higher SEO impact. For
example in Ubersuggest, there are pages with duplicated titles or low word
counts, which have higher SEO impact and in SEMrush, there are incorrect pages
in sitemap.xml, pages with duplicated content and pages with duplicated or
missing title tags, which fixing them are crucial for SEO improvement.
Or Semrush finds the below issues:
13.
Having proper Schema markup is helpful for
letting know the search engines about our website and getting rank in search
result, which apparently is not being used for [Brand] website.
14.
PageSpeed Insights shows a very poor
performance of the site which is need to be taken care. Speed of the site is
one of the factors to give rank to the website in search results. With
consulting with developers, there are items that can be fixed or improved such
as LCP, FCP, reducing blocking time and so on. (below screenshot)
Of course there are still other ways of SEO improvement for the website, but for this case study, I believe the above 14 points are enough and to have more improvement points, a more in depth analysis of the website and competitors is needed.
Traffic insights:
Those are screenshots of the organic performances of our Polish website in 2024.Please analyze quickly those graphs.
Information from Graphs and data
Which information can you take from those screenshots?
Graph 1 and 2 show 18.9 million clicks and 71.4 million impressions, indicating a high level of visibility in Google search results. They also indicates that increases in impressions generally lead to increases in clicks.
The
average CTR of 26.5% suggests effective title tags and Meta
descriptions, successfully attracting clicks from search results.
An
average position of 9.7 indicates that the website ranks well for its
targeted keywords.
During late June and July, there is peak for impression and
click, which can be related to a successful marketing campaigns, seasonal
trends, or viral content, while in December there is drop with
impression and clicks, which can be a potential seasonal decline, or
related to the marketing campaigns or even Google algorithm updates.
Image 3 shows that the top queries are heavily focused on the brand name "[Brand]". This indicates strong brand recognition with having loyal users.
Image 4 says Organic Search is the primary traffic driver with significant sessions of over 45M and engaged sessions of over 31 M, accompanied with a 69.8% engagement rates. This means organic users find the content relevant and valuable. The average engagement time of 3 minutes and 15 seconds is also commendable. Moreover, the direct channel has a significance portion of the traffic with over 28M sessions, indicating to have returning visitors and loyal users.
Image 5 says Organic Search has increased by 21.88% compared to the previous year, demonstrating positive growth in organic traffic.
Learnings and conclusion
Which learnings should we keep in mind? Any conclusions?Organic Search is the dominant traffic source and it's a good idea to continue investing in and prioritizing organic strategies and year over year growth demonstrates the effectiveness of the SEO efforts, strategies and campaigns, which is suggested to continue.
Users
are finding the content valuable, leading to longer sessions and higher
engagement rates. So, why not to maintain it in the same way!
Branded
keywords seems very strong with high amount of clicks
and impression and with CTR of over 80 in compare to the non-branded
keywords. This means that while we need to improve the website for other
keywords, we can use the branded keywords for new products of the
website.
For example if there is a new game in the website "Tetris", besides
trying to get rank for the main keywords such as "Tetris",
"Tetris online", "Tetris Free", it's a good
idea to have the branded keyword for it such as "[Brand] Tetris",
which probably can get rank easier.
However, this doesn't mean to neglect from the non-branded keywords. The data
shows they have reasonable CTR of 20 to 30. Obviously they can be
improved, too.
For example by finding content gaps in comparison to the top competitors
of each query to enrich our content, providing high quality backlinks
and improving meta descriptions, UI and UX or if needed improving technical SEO
aspect of the relevant pages.
During late
June and July, there is a peak of impression and clicks. We can investigate
about the reason and in case it is related to marketing campaigns or strategy,
to keep it back, improve it and to work on it.
Contrary to late June and July, we can see a drop of clicks and impression during December. We need to investigate the issue and if it is related to marketing campaigns or strategy, we need to fix them and avoid them in future.
Keywords & Content:
This is our Croatian website https://www.[Company’s Domain]/We plan to develop our visibility on basketball queries (In Croatian, basketball is called ”kosarka”)
Those are the keywords we may target, as well as their data:
Keywords analysis and recommendations
Based on those keywords and our website, what would you recommend?
As "kosarka" means Basketball in Croatian and you would like to increase visibility on basketball queries for the Croatian website, which has sport betting niche, then we need to target the audience in Croatia with content strategy coming with balancing information & betting integration. It mean to have a strong section for "kosarka", giving information to the users, while it is integrated with betting.
For example in that section, we can have contents about teams analysis, historical results of their previous matches, the ranking of each team in the corresponding league or world ranking for national teams, introducing best players of each team and so on, while having content regarding betting on match, tips on the bet, betting guide or tutorial.
Even we can take advantage of using short introductory videos about the teams or games in our content to get rank in video searches, as lots of people search for videos of matches and this can take them to our pages.
I believe the website "Bet & Win" (bwin.com) as one of your competitors, has licenses to stream live certain matches, while they do not get benefit from video search as just registered users for the purpose of betting can watch online the live matches. But using short basketball videos inside contents, while using proper schema markup (such as Videoobject), can improve the traffic from video searches for "kosarka", which with a proper and interesting CTA phrases in those pages, can convert visitor to clients.
"nba" and "nba rezultati" have the highest search volume, indicating significant interest in the NBA. However, "nba" has a very high KD of 92, meaning it is a very competitive keyword, while "nba rezultati" has KD of 20 with high volume of searches. So, "nba rezultati" can be a good keyword to start.
We also have"kosarka", "kosarka rezultati", which have good search volume with lower KD and the website has already got rank for them. So, the website has the potential to improve ranks for these keyword by optimizing content and proper backlinks from high authority and relevant domains.
"kosarka uzivo", "kosarka live" are also good keywords with reasonable search volume and low KD. So, there is an opportunity to get rank for them in search engines by producing rich content and backlinks.
3 Actionable recommendations for visibility & traffic
Please review our website and the keywords and make at least 3 actionable recommendations to develop visibility and traffic on that topic.
In the above section, I
already have more than 3 actionable recommendation and strategy, but to have it
outlines, the below are my 3 recommendations:
1. At first,we need a content strategy
by having focus on keywords such as “kosarka", "kosarka rezultati”,
"kosarka uzivo", "kosarka”, "euroliga košarka" which
have high volume of search, but not very competitive and it’s easier to get
rank for them by creating or optimizing
their contents.
We can check our competitors for the top search results for the above keywords
to find content gaps or content ideas.
Also, we need to optimize our content with the balance of giving information
and betting integration (according to what I have mentioned in the above
section and examples I provided there).
With this regard, we need to enrich the relevant pages with various types of
content such as text, images and even videos.
We need to have a proper and authentic usage of each keyword for the page
title, meta description, inside the content as well as the headings
for each corresponding page.
An example content with a focus
on keyword:
The keyword "kosarka uzivo" (basketball live) is good keyword with
high volume of search and low KD, so we can focus on it get decent rank.
We can have Croatian translation of bellows to have a page about Live
Score Updates & Match Tracking and Betting:
Page Title: “Basketball
Live: Results, Stats & Betting | [Company’s Domain]”
(combination of keyword usage and
branding for the title)
Meta Description: “Follow
live basketball results, match statistics, and bet on the action in real
time! [Company’s Domain] brings you comprehensive live basketball information
and betting opportunities.”
H1 tag: “Basketball Live: Results and Betting”
Page Content Structure: With focus on Urgency and Betting which
immediately grab the user's attention and connect their desire for live
information with betting opportunities. Example:
Don't miss a moment of the action! Live basketball on [Company’s Domain]
brings you the latest results, detailed statistics, and exciting live betting
opportunities for all your favorite matches.
And then to have:
Live
Scoreboard:
Clearly display the current score, time remaining, and key stats (points,
rebounds, assists) for a selection of featured live matches. Prioritize matches
with high betting interest.
Match Details
Link: A prominent
link to a dedicated Match Details page for each featured game.
Live Betting
Odds (Integrated): Display the
most popular live betting markets (e.g., Spread) directly below the scoreboard
for each featured match.
"Bet
Now" Button (Direct & Clear): Place a "Bet Now" button directly
next to the odds, allowing users to quickly place a bet.
My experience says that for niches that visitors are not in to read contents,
even a short 300 to 500 character content with a good schema markup, heading, title
works to get rank. For example according to Ahrefs the keyword “hbo live
stream” has the same volume search of "kosarka uzivo", but
on the contrary side it’s KD is hard.
My website is online TV streaming niche, so people are not visiting for reading
content and even having content can disturb them as they want to access to the
player easily just to stream TV. So I cannot have big content, but by a good
and rich (but very short content of approximately 400 characters) and with
proper title, Meta tags and headings and proper usage of Schema
Markups of Article and VideoObject, my website has a top
rank in Google Video search (below screenshot).
We also can use alternative and relevant keywords inside our contents and headings such as “Košarkaška oklada“ (basketball bet), “košarka hrvatska”(basketball Croatia) and "kosarka eurocup". We can find more related keywords by using Keyword idea in Ubersuggest (below screenshot)
2. Then, we need to have proper link building strategy, including backlinks from relevant high authority domain (e.g. Croatian sports news websites, Croatian basketball forums), preferably in the same niche or language and internal link building. The contents we use for blacklining and internal link building should also be rich.
We need
to make sure to have authentic blacklining strategy in the way that
there will be a balance between follow and nofollow backlinks.
Also we need use proper anchor texts (including branded terms, target keywords,
partial match keywords, and generic anchor text) to make links to the relevant
pages.
Though Semrush or Ahrefs we can review our competitor backlinks to find our
backlink gap, as well (Below screenshot)
For internal link building, we can create relevant and supportive contents in blog section or tutorial section of the website and by using the keywords, or long-tail version of the keywords or even alternative keywords as anchor texts, to make links from those posts to our targeted page and this way we can address search engines about our targeted page for the keywords used.
Also we can use Social Media, to share the pages or even have a small content with a link to the pages that we have created in Croatian groups in Facebook or other networks or directories. If there is an issue with those networks about sharing gambling or betting contents, we can share the supportive contents that we have use for blacklining or internal linking to respect the guideline and policies of those networks.
3. Optimizing Technical SEO aspect of pages.
For example using proper schema markups helps search engines to understand
pages better and pages to be shown in rich result.
You can have FAQ for the website with faq schema markup and then addressing the
pages relevant to basketball pages there. As I explained above, having videos
for the pages are helpful while using videoobject schema markup to get traffic
form video searches.
As this website is a local website, you can use “Google my business” to
optimize it for Croatia with the logo and company’s details with can create
trust. For example in the below screenshot, bwin as your competitor has
its own logo and company details while searching on Google, but [Company’s
Domain] doesn’t have:
Technical basics:
https://virtuals.[Company’s Domain]/ is our subdomain dedicated to virtual games3 Technical improvements for the subdomain
Please check the different pages and propose at least 3 technical improvements for this subdomain.1.
My first recommendation is to use a subdirectory
instead of a subdomain, if applicable. So, rather than having https://virtuals.[Company’s
Domain]/, it would be better to use https://[Company’s Domain]/virtuals.
Subdomains are often treated as separate
websites by search engines, meaning they do not automatically inherit
the domain authority of the root domain. This makes it harder for them to
rank in search results since they require independent SEO efforts, such as
separate link-building and optimization.
On the other hand, subdirectories inherit
the domain authority of the root domain. This not only benefits the
subdirectory itself but also strengthens the overall domain, potentially
improving search engine rankings and SEO performance.
While subdomains can still rank well with
proper optimization, using subdirectories is generally a better approach for
improving SEO, unless technical or organizational needs dictate otherwise.
2.
The sitemap at https://www.[Company’s Domain]/sitemap.xml/
doesn’t have good structure, plus content of virtuals.[Company’s Domain]
are missing on it (below screenshot)
I can see the sitemap looks like below, which just
providing list of links:
https://www.[Company’s Domain] https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/tenis https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/rukomet https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/kosarka https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/stolni-tenis https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/nogomet https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/kosarka/meunarodne-18 https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/stolni-tenis/meunarodne-6 https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/kosarka/japan-5 https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/kosarka/francuska-
<urlset> tags
and each URL within <url> tags.
Each <url> tag must contain a <loc> tag
specifying the URL. It should be something like below:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://www.[Company’s Domain]</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/tenis</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/rukomet</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://www.[Company’s Domain]/oklade/rukomet/island-1</loc>
</url>
</urlset>
Plus. we need to keep our mind that while search engines support up to 50,000
URLs per sitemap (with a maximum file size of 50MB), it's generally recommended
to keep each sitemap around 1,000 to 2,000 URLs for better efficiency.
This helps search engines crawl and index content more effectively, especially
for large or frequently updated websites.
To further optimize SEO, it's a good practice
to create separate sitemaps for different content types, such as pages,
posts, categories and etc.. This structured approach improves indexing
performance and ensures that search engines can easily process all
important content.
3.
I can see there are Video pages on this
site, such as https://virtuals.[Company’s
Domain]/game/nationalTeams, but no VideoObject Schema markup has
been used with those pages and consequently the website doesn’t take benefits
from Video Search Results traffic. As you can see below, Google shows 0
result for Video search result for this subdomain:
A minimal VideoObject schema in JSON-LD format would look like the below, which are recommended be used for these video pages:
<script
type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context":
"https://schema.org",
"@type": "VideoObject",
"name": "The Video
Title",
"description": "A short
description of the video.",
"thumbnailUrl":
"https://example.com/thumbnail.jpg",
"uploadDate":
"2024-02-21T12:00:00Z",
"contentUrl":
"https://example.com/video.mp4"
}
</script>