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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
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Hello everyone and welcome to yet another episode of SBC iGaming Daily Podcast, the Marketing Edition. iGaming Daily is presented by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. 56 % of the EGR Power 50 personalized player experience with OptiMove. And we have yet another special offer for you. OptiMove is offering new clients a free first month when you buy OptiMove.
for further information and claim the free month, please go to OptiMove .com slash SBC. I am Ivana Flynn, and I like to welcome you to our next podcast, which is going to be talking about the next gen SEO. You know that AI is on a rise, and we're going to be talking exactly about that. AI tools and the next emerging technologies in usage of marketing and SEO. I am joined with two amazing speakers, Maria and Janet.
Ladies, I will kindly ask you to introduce yourself and we jump right into it. Maria, please. Hi, everyone. My name is Maria and I'm currently director of Casino and Game Lounge. I've been in gaming for the past eight years and SEO 10 years plus, so I've seen a lot of changes and it's never a dull day here in SEO world. That's true. Never a dull day for us. And Jeanette? Hi, everyone. I'm Jeanette.
I'm the SEO lead at Extended Gaming. I've been in the iGaming industry for the past six years, online casinos, sports betting, crypto casinos, you name it. And thanks for having us today, Vana. It's an honor to be here with you and Maria. Thank you for joining me. Well, shortly, last year, AI was everywhere. It was on a rise in
every panel, every conference, everything was covering AI, not just for SEO, not just for marketing, for game creation, for everything. It was just everywhere. And this year, it feels like a little bit people got fed up and everybody is starting to, I don't know, punish AI from the March update where we see Google saying, too much AI now, people, to European Union creating a legislation, AI Act, that should be
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in power by end of this year and it's covering a lot of things from biometrics to social scoring to facial recognition. But one part says manipulative and deceptive practices. And this is, this includes systems that manipulate behavior or decisions in a way that individuals would not have made otherwise. I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like marketing. I mean, that's what we do, right? We try to show people things they didn't think before and tell them, try this.
So is there still a place for AI in our SEO future? Or are we going to do this otherwise? Is my topic absolutely irrelevant today? What do you think, girls? I can start. So yes, I know I always thought that can be a part of marketing. However, as a big chunk of marketing is making sure that people are making informed decisions. So now how you showcase that information is really up to you.
meeting information has never been good for marketing. And especially when it comes to iGaming and gambling world, I think here we have to be as transparent as possible. We never want to manipulate anyone, whether it is AI content, whether this is content written by humans. So we just want to present all possible information that we can have. And the decision has to be with the end user. So I think here,
I agree with the legislation, whether this is again concerning any really industry. When the decision is manipulated, I think that's not a very good job done by any really marketeer because you want them to make that conscious decision because of how you'll lay that information in front of them rather than by a meeting or manipulating it. So it's a really fine line where we'll walk, but I think in gambling, it's not fine line. It's very strict.
how we should be presenting ourselves. And it's extremely important. I think this is something that we're all know and we've been working when it comes to the compliance, how we speak about certain things, different legislation. So I hear with this regulation, I don't think it's going to have an impact on us having that regulated. I think it's actually will make users feel more secure. And the tools that we'll be using, we know that they are regulated, let's say.
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and they will be regulated in a way that we will still save using them, that we're not going to be using something that can potentially hurt us. Janet, what's your take on this? How do you feel about AI being regulated? I mean, we called it last year, we said it in many panels that we think AI will become regulated, at least in European Union. This is not US, this is not UK, this is not Asia. So it's Europe, it's a leading away. How do you feel about this? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I don't think it's a matter of
good or bad, I think it's actually needed, but it also depends on how the implementation will be. So the AI Act says, for example, that CHAT GPT and the content that comes from AI, the generative AI, is actually a limited risk. So the implementation on limited risk is also something to be seen. Now, when the AI, so the AI Act,
just got approved, but the implementation of it will take at least two years. This means that for the next two years, we'll be seeing a lot of AI content still being used. And I think it's whatever we've been saying for the past months since chat jibbity has become so popular and more AI tools there have become more popular as well. I think it's a matter of fact checking always whatever the AI tools give you.
So this is nothing new. I mean, if the AI tool gives garbage, then you don't want to produce garbage. You want to actually go in and add it using actual data sets that you have. So this is how I feel like from our stand view, the iGaming industry, whatever content we present to the user must be checked. Over the past years, we've gone through GDPR changes.
do still need to be in place. AI content, yes, is more popular, but you can't go and reverse some things that are already in place. And that's why I think it's needed. It's like pulling the ear of someone and saying some things need to be checked and fact -checked. It's not a matter of typing in a prompt and whatever comes out.
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You just copy and paste it online basically. As Maria said, marketing is, and as you said Ivana, it's a matter of manipulation the user as well. But we don't want to manipulate the users in a bad way. We want to do marketing, but in a good way, obviously. So basically this act, it's paving a way for a better AI usage in the future and creating better, safer AI tools and giving a certain standards of how to use them.
Right? Exactly. So it's just like with any innovation really that comes to the market, everyone's so keen to try and people like really explore it to the point of, I mean, right now, really and truly I can, at this point, I can really see what's written something with AI or not, like certain words that being overused and you can see how like really being overused right now.
And it's fine. That's normal when something new comes on the market, we'll abuse it a little bit, but now let's come down and actually put it to the right use and use it where we actually need it so it can help people. And we don't just bluntly put it everywhere because that's actually not good, but it's fine. Like we all got excited about ChaiJPG. And Google is saying guys too much. I mean, you're doing too much. I don't know how I feel about this. I'm happy they are cleaning up the web. Don't get me wrong.
My concern is Google's business model is on having an amazing algorithmic search of the web and understanding of the back and understanding what's a good result on bad result, right? They are able to process 8 .5 billion searches a day, which comes to 999 ,000 a second. And suddenly they are giving manual penalties on AI content. In my understanding, this little bit means that Google's
Google's model is off. If they need to go review things manually and give penalties manual on AI content, do you think that their AI content scanner in their algorithm actually doesn't work that properly that they actually have to have humans to check it and say yes and a no and then give you the penalty? I think it's quite difficult actually. So as Maria said, some things you can understand that they're AI written. You have some
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words, how we open up a sentence, for example, conversation starters that are clearly AI generated. But I think it's really hard for Google and even AI checkers like zero gbt .com, originality .ai, they are trying to pinpoint what AI, if the content.
like the percentage of content that's using AI and that's not, but it's not accurate. It's really hard. And I think with Google's new partnership with Reddit, this is going to be very interesting as well, because Reddit, I believe that's like, I've read somewhere some statistics, 23 % of the content that you see on Reddit is AI generated. And we'll be obviously seeing due to that partnership, Google,
favoring Reddit at the top positions. So technically speaking, they're still putting AI content up there first. So yeah, it all combines with how well Google will start understanding AI, but I think it's a very big challenge. Yeah, so following on that topic, then what you mentioned, Ivana, is it's strange that they're activating so many manual penalties right now. I think...
before this massive explosion of AI and content, Google always had the manual reviewer of the site. And we know that sometimes they select it in the industry, select certain keywords, and they just manually go through it. That's how they actually train the algorithm. So when AI got introduced, I think the amount of adoption and how fast it was adopted across all the industries, yeah, I think none of us expected it because it was so good. So everyone just started using it and it was so fast.
So in order for them to train their AI, they need the manual intervention. So before their AI algorithm can be as good as they want them to be, they actually need a manual, a lot of manual intervention. So people, because as Janette as well said that not all AI content is bad, right? It's kind of the topic that secondary discussion to all the AI topics we're having. And I think this is where
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it gets tricky to understand whether the AI content being used on the site brings value or is just being scrapped. So, and I think this is where you need the human kind of knowledge and experience to understand, okay, even though this is an AI content, but it's actually good. It brings value to the user rather than there can be a very nicely with nicely prompt AI, just like almost like copies or nothing new being done. So.
This is where I think Google really, really need to train the algorithm. So to make a difference, whether AI is being overused to the point where it's just spamming the web or where this is AI, but in a good way that still brings value, generates users, attraction, and so on and so forth. So this is the bridge that I think they're trying to gap right now, because I mean, Google has been saying all the time, yes, you can use AI, but make sure it brings value to the people.
As it's hard for them to understand it, it is hard as well for us how to use it, make sure that we are on the same page. And I think within the next, I mean, with this current update that's going on, we are seeing the patterns as well. So the more Google doing the manual penalties, the more Google does the core updates will understand what instances AI can be used and where it's published. So basically...
never abuse it and always try to have user in mind, which I think was always the end goal for SEO. Very true. So having all this knowledge we just discussed, what do you think is the future? Where can we safely use AI? Where we should use it and where we definitely, definitely shouldn't touch it at all? Not just for content creation, but even from the EU legislation, where is it too deceptive? If I can continue since I started on this, I...
compare this a little bit to like cooking and like SEO is like cooking a bit. So I don't know how many of you know like the thermal mix craze that's going on right now and all this technology disruption in the cooking space. So basically you can use technology to enhance your cooking, but you cannot tell people this is like a Michelin star done by the Michelin star who's been living and experiencing one two different countries. This was done by the machine and
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And that's okay because you know, you get the standard, right? That's your standard as done by the machine. Like everything's been tested and can be replicated. But if you're looking for something authentic, I don't know, Gordon Ramsey who traveled like everywhere, like you can't be deceptive and then use the machine to, to do that. So as long as you kind of. Disclaiming everything that you're using, there is nothing bad again with AI, but if you're trying to portray that this is something authentic, this is a person.
writing it that has experience and good knowledge, that's not right. And I think this is where it should stop and the legislation should kind of say, if you use it AI, that's okay, because there are so many instances that it can help us to optimize so many things and make our content better. But it needs to be almost like a disclaimer that people know what they're consuming. They're consuming an AI -generated cockpit. So I think this is where we should draw the line.
I definitely agree with Maria there. I think so we need to avoid deceptive content. And I think that's what the legislation regarding content is actually trying to do. I mean, what the EU is saying is they want to promote transparency and like ethical regulations, basically. So as Maria said, if you're speaking to
a chat on a website, you need to understand if it's actually a human or whether it's AI that's actually speaking to you because AI can do a pretty good job. But as Maria said, we can't be deceptive. So we act like if it's an AI chatbot, you need to make sure that you define that it's an AI chatbot speaking to you. From our end, I mean, I don't believe
at least Google is trying to tell people, okay, you're using AI content, they're right that it's AI content. But obviously from what we're seeing, those are the first websites that actually get trashed. So the more we go into it, the more people will not be very transparent on using AI content, but we can definitely use the AI tools to help us create great content. So basically,
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using the tools, but not relying solely on them. If you're doing forecasting, no one can do forecasting better than a human person, because when it comes to AI tools, there is a lot of made up stuff. There's a lot of hallucinations and you need to get rid of them. But only a person, a human, can actually understand that. Like it's a good base, but you need to go in and decide for yourself, basically. Also, we all know that
especially with this regulation coming in, or that AI have to be objective. Sometimes what we want people, we want a subjective opinion on something. And as a human, it's totally fine to be subjective on certain things. I'm not talking about, for example, the gaming industry, right? As like you're a blogger or something, as a human, it's okay to have an opinion. As AI, you cannot have an opinion. And this is also, I mean, different sometimes. Users want to have that opinion, whether to
to connect with other people, whether to find something to have an argument upon. But with AI, it's always objective. And that's the reason of AI, because it gives you this and this, but never take a stance on this. And that's also a main difference between human and AI content. True. And I think there are good places to use AI content, like when you're reviewing a licensing for Ontario. I mean, it doesn't matter if human rights it.
or AI writes it, it sounds the same. I mean, it's a robotic way of saying it. But if you are looking for a recommendation for a restaurant in Prague, are you going to go to someone's experience, a blogger, to see like, yeah, this is a good Japanese place or this is authentic Czech cuisine? Or are you gonna rely on on ChetGBT telling you about that never ate? I think there are places where you can and can't use it. What do you think future holds? Not just AI wise, but what do you think future holds?
SEO wise for us because now it's changing more than ever. I never seen so much volatility, never seen such a huge update. And Google has a new head of search that is saying most of the search is going to look like SGE. So is SEO finally dying or is just Google starting to die and they're trying to stay alive with doing all of this, all of this fight? What is it? I think SEO is not dying.
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I think that people need to stay away from these negative connotations about SEO that are always bringing up a lot of talk, but are also somewhat a waste of time. Why? Because we need to really concentrate on what's happening in the SERP. SG has been the talk of 2023 and now 2024. Whether there's a date of the actual release, no, there isn't yet.
So what do we do until then? We need to constantly look into the SERP, the volatility as you mentioned, Ivana, and understand how the SERP right now is changing. As you said, a robot like Chagibiti can't tell you what restaurant is better. You'd rather go on reading a blog or TikTok and understand people who actually went through the experience and have been there and experienced it themselves.
And that's what we'll be seeing also in Google, I feel. There is more, obviously, there's user first. So even in the SERP, I'm seeing a lot of YouTube videos coming up in the search results, because that's what people want to see. They want to experience something through someone else who has already experienced it. So even when related to gaming, if you look for like,
how to play Blackjack, for example. The first few results that come up are for YouTube videos or more. And that's something to consider even when you're doing the strategy and understanding your CTR or predicting the CTR that will come from that. If you have an opportunity to do videos, do video, because that's something that we'll be seeing more and more in 2024, I believe.
Definitely is a fight for traffic and traffic is changing the source it's coming from. It's not just Google written text, but definitely videos. Maria, what do you think what the future holds if you look into your SEO crystal ball? I think it's been always the topic is SEO going to be dead? I mean, when they introduced the Humminbird is going to be dead. Alexa Voice Search, it was saying that SEO is going to be dead. Each time there is a new something new coming out. Everyone's saying that SEO is dead now.
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The reality of things is that it will change. I mean, it will never be the same. We're, I mean, looking 10 years ago, right? We're not doing the same SEO. We're not doing the keyword stopping and all the same things. So we need to adapt how people consume information. And for example, following up on what Jeanette said, people are more looking into videos now. So like the new generation, the TikTok and everything.
And YouTube is not only YouTube, they're going to shorts now. That's where people consume even more and more information. So it's people driving how the search is taking place, but people will always be searching for information. So the search for knowledge will never go kind of to null. It will always be there, but it will take different shape or form. So where else people before used to go to libraries, now they're going to go.
to Google and that's why Google is introducing all the shorts. So they want to make sure that people don't go to TikTok, they go to Google and then they're going to go and show them YouTube shorts there. So we just need to stay on the trend and know what user wants. So if user wants shorts, we give it to them and we'll adapt our content because we are able to do that as well. But there are certain parts where they do want written content and there are certain topics where they do want to read. Also, there are different cultures which we need to
always take into consideration like cultures that like reading more than watching videos. So, and for them, I think we still can go on and have long pages of content explaining and we actually need to hear their feedback by seeing how they interact with the page and have all those tools available. So I think this is something that
The future is definitely exciting. We get much more and more data on how users are interacting with our pages. We know that there are more and more tools that help us make our content better. And I think AI in this case is one of the tools that can make our content better. And where it needs to be made better is just to wanna mention, like for example, with legislation, like maybe someone read this like a lawyer, but it's mostly the thing to that, okay, it has it, right?
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But if people are looking for authentic experience, I don't think here AI would be helpful. Maybe some sort of a video where people can relate to or shorts. So doing your research right now is more important than ever. And actually giving users what they're looking for right now and going to future will be more important than ever. So not focusing on what I mean, we are focusing on what Google say, but actually just know your user and give them what they're looking for.
The rest will kind of fill in the dots. Because I know that in our SEO community, we're all like to kind of follow what Google says, and they release new thing. And in reality, of these people who try new things, just because they see the user want for it, they win in the long run. It's not doing what Google tells you to do. It's actually following your user and giving them what you want, get to the first positions. Fantastic.
This was very informative. Thank you very much. Just to summarize, AI is still relevant and is going to be more relevant, but used properly. Don't abuse, not for the EU legislation, not for Google, not for your end user. Know your user and diversify your traffic if you want to stay relevant. Thank you so much. I loved it. And have a lovely day and we'll speak later. Bye.