Casino affiliate: full SEO audit, strategy and execution

A casino affiliate site in a regulated market, with about 600 pages: casino reviews, bonus pages, payment method guides and "best casinos" lists. The site earns money when readers sign up at a casino through its links, so every lost position in Google costs money directly. Traffic had been flat for a year while two competitors kept growing. The team publishes a lot, but nobody could say what was holding the site back or what to do first.

One person who could look at the whole site and answer three questions: why aren't we growing, what should we fix first, and how do we keep it running? Then the plan carried out, with the team able to keep going afterwards.

I started with the data: which pages bring visitors and sign-ups, which searches they rank for, and how that changed over the last 12 months (Google Search Console plus the rank tracker). That shows where the site is strong, where it's slipping, and which pages are worth the most money.

I had Claude crawl every page the way Google does. It checked for pages Google can't reach or isn't storing, broken links and redirect chains, duplicate pages, slow pages on mobile, and errors in the structured data (the code that gives results star ratings). Each problem got a priority based on how many valuable pages it affects.

For the 50 most valuable pages: is the title strong and the right length, does the page answer the question in its first lines, are the headings clear, is the information complete, is it up to date? Pages are scored and get a short fix list each.

Google is strict about gambling content. I checked whether reviews show real testing, name an author with relevant experience, explain how casinos are rated, and back up claims with sources. These are the signals Google uses to decide whether a gambling site can be trusted.

Every market has its own advertising rules for gambling. Claude checked each page for forbidden phrases ("risk-free", "guaranteed win"), missing age and responsible gambling warnings, and bonus mentions where they aren't allowed. One compliance mistake can cost a partnership with a casino, so this runs before anything else gets published.

Links from other websites are still one of Google's strongest signals. I analyzed the site's backlink profile: how many sites link to it, how trustworthy they are, which pages they point to, and whether there are risky links that could hurt. Then I compared it with the competitors.

For the site's most important searches, I compared its pages with the pages ranking above it: what they cover that we don't, how they're structured, how fresh they are and how many links point to them. That turns "they rank better" into a concrete list of differences.

I looked for searches where the site already ranks on page 2 or at the bottom of page 1. A small improvement there gives the biggest jump in visitors. I also used "People also ask" and related searches to find questions the site doesn't answer yet.

Affiliate sites often have several pages chasing the same search, for example three different "best PayPal casinos" pages. Google then doesn't know which one to show. I found these clusters and decided per cluster which page stays, which gets merged into it, and which gets redirected.

Not every page needs work. I ranked existing pages by value and decline: high-value pages that are slipping come first. Each one gets a refresh brief: what to add, what to remove, which facts to re-check.

From the gaps found in steps 7 and 8, a list of new pages worth creating, each with a brief: the search it targets, what the reader wants, what it must cover and what it must not claim.

The refreshes and new pages run through a Claude content chain: brief → draft in house style → remove AI tells → fact-check every bonus and casino detail against the casino's own terms → compliance check → a check that pages don't contradict each other → final QA. An editor approves each page before it goes live.

I mapped how pages link to each other and fixed the gaps: valuable pages with too few links pointing to them, pages with no links at all, and links with vague anchor text. Reviews link to the matching bonus and payment pages, and the other way round.

Based on the off-page audit and competitor gap, a monthly plan for earning new links: which pages need them most, what kind of sites to approach and what anchor text to use, so the profile grows naturally.

A weekly report written by Claude in plain language: what moved in Google, the likely cause and what to do this week. A monthly health check flags new technical problems, new cannibalization and bonus pages that haven't been checked in 30 days.

A full audit report, ranked by impact, explained in plain language

A 90-day roadmap: what to fix, refresh and create, week by week

Refresh and new-page briefs, ready to use

A content process with fact-checks and compliance built in

An internal linking and link-building plan

Weekly and monthly reports that keep the team on track

All of it set up in Claude Code as skills, with a playbook and walkthrough, so the team can run it themselves

How long it takes: About 2 weeks for the full analysis and roadmap (steps 1–11). The content process, linking and monitoring are set up in week 3 and run from then on. Rankings in competitive gambling markets usually take 3–6 months to move meaningfully; the weekly reports show progress before that.