Can Small Companies Compete with Gambling ‘GIANTS’ at SEO?

Many people assume that major international gambling companies always dominate the main key words for gambling and that it is practically impossible for the smaller gambling companies to compete with the ‘giants’ and their massive marketing budgets. Well surprisingly it is actually the smaller gambling companies that actually dominate the main gambling keywords on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). You may ask yourself why?

Here is why:

Timeliness of Execution:
In big companies any on-site SEO modification can take forever however minor. This is because most big companies have to go through lengthy internal processes, modifications have to be tested, approved, and approved again by different departments etc. Most big gambling companies also have various websites to update and this also adds to the delay. Whilst the minor SEO modifications are going through the various internal processes the SEO Manager at the ‘Small’ firm has already done the necessary modification and starts sipping his second morning coffee.

Content Writing Budget:
Big gambling companies are willing to pay extortionate fees for web content. The SEO manager at the ‘Small’ gambling company on the other hand will either write the content himself or contract domain experts who focus on SEO when writing the contents and who actually know what they are doing! Hence they write with SEO in mind or the content can be optimised quickly.

‘BIG’ Gambling Companies prefer ‘BIG’ SEO firms:
Big Gambling firms usually think that a BIG SEO company can always do a better SEO job that a ‘Small’ SEO company. Wrong, this is not always the case. Big SEO companies tend to have major gambling companies as their clients and have to divide their time with many clients and also focus on  many other areas of  advertising, SEO, PPC etc. The smaller ‘SEO’ firm has a small portfolio of clients and can provide a more efficient personalised service. For Example, the company’s SEO manager can simply attend a meeting go back to the office and make the SEO modifications on his content management system over a cup of coffee.

SEO Team:
The SEO teams at the ‘BIG’ gambling companies  more often than not spend the majority of their time solving SEO problems usually caused by web developers and the technical team. Also note that this usually happens because the technical team do not have in depth knowledge of SEO or they simply do not care. The ‘Small’ company will incorporate his SEO knowledge into every single task.

Developers do not always have sufficient SEO Knowledge:
Many BIG gambling companies tend to suffer from outdated coding which affects the website’s SEO performance whist small SEO companies always concentrate all the efforts to have a website which is SEO compliant in every respect.

Bogged Down by Corporate Governance:
SEO teams at BIG gambling companies have to keep on persuading everyone on the benefits of SEO.  Not just management and the board but the technical team to ensure they develop an SEO savvy website and the content writers so that they write SEO friendly contents. Moreover because senior management and the board of directors do not have an in depth knowledge of SEO it is extremely hard to convince them of the SEO benefits. Once and if they are fully convinced the SEO budget, modification etc need to be approved by senior management and then go to the board however the next board meeting might not be anytime soon. So as mentioned above, whilst all this convincing and approving is going on, the ‘Small’ gambling company just gets on with it.

Office Politics:
Like in most companies, office politics often gets in the way. There are many big gambling companies who are tied down to specific gambling software for various reasons. These Gambling Software Products, in many cases, are not SEO friendly and make it impossible applying SEO friendly content to the website. Moreover they probably have to liaise with the software company to make a simple modification. The ‘BIG’ gambling company may not be able to just ditch the software and replace it with another one that easily. The Pros and Cons have to be carefully considered by senior managers and directors who probably cannot grasp the negative effect of it on SEO in the first place so do not have it in their list of priorities.

Therefore can the ‘Small’ company compete with the gambling ‘Giants?’ The answer is ‘Yes.’

There are of course Big Gambling companies who have taken all this on board and are aware of the issues they face being a Big company however fortunately for the smaller companies there are still many out there who do not appreciate the importance of SEO or have not overcome all the above issues. Therefore the ‘Small’ firm still has an advantage to compete on the Search Engines and online marketing.