Stop Losing International Players to Traffic Blocking
Gaming publishers from all over the world attract numerous visitors from around the globe. Publishers leverage various channels to attract visitors from outside their region to grow their iGaming business.
However, once these visitors arrive at the gaming operator publisher’s website, they are often lost due to the operator being unable to legally accept players from the visitor’s country.
The lost traffic for publishers due to the inability of operators to legally accept players from certain countries results in a loss of revenue for the publishers. However, by understanding where the losses occur and by implementing certain traffic management strategies, publishers can turn their lost international traffic into revenue opportunities.
Why International Traffic Gets Blocked
Due to regional licensing requirements, an operator may be licensed to receive players from specific countries. However, if a publisher tries to promote that same operator to another country, the publisher will lose that visitor.
International traffic is often lost due to:
Country restrictions
State restrictions
Licensing restrictions
Currency restrictions
Compliance restrictions
Though necessary, these restrictions result in revenue losses for the publishers.
Measure Your Global Audience
The first step is to understand where your website visitors come from. Tools will allow you to measure various metrics to understand your audience’s composition, such as:
Number of visitors from each country
Conversion rates from each country
Revenue generated from each country
Bounce rates from each country
Returning visitors
Results of such an analysis will help publishers better understand their audience.
Identify High-Loss Markets
Not all countries represent the same challenges for publishers. Some countries will have more lost traffic than others. Therefore, it’s essential for publishers to identify these high-loss markets for various reasons, such as:
More significant traffic volume from these countries
High engagement from users from these countries
High registration loses from these countries
Minimal revenue generated from these countries
By recognizing these markets, publishers can better allocate their resources to fix these problems.
Match Operators to Local Markets
Instead of promoting the same gaming operators to users from all countries, publishers can promote region-specific operators based on licensing, currencies, and other relevant criteria. Such an approach will lead to:
Increased conversion rates
Higher satisfaction from visitors
Better legal compliance
Build Country-Specific Landing Pages
Create dedicated landing pages for each of your countries featuring content like:
Best casinos for Canada
Crypto casinos in Brazil
Sportsbooks available in Germany
Local payment method guides
These pages will improve the visitors’ experience on your website and improve your website’s visibility on search engines for your target countries.
Detect Unsupported Visitors
Evaluate the traffic your website receives before the visitor sees the gaming operator’s unavailable message. By detecting visitors from specific countries early, you can:
Deliver an improved visitor experience
Promote region-specific offers
Offer Intelligent Alternatives
When a visitor comes to your website and selects a gaming operator that is not available in the visitor’s country, offer them with alternative operators that could work for them. These alternatives can be based on:
Licensing
Bonus offers
Gaming selections
Payment methods
Providing these alternatives ensures that your visitor continues to engage with you.
Monitor Traffic Recovery
Keep track of how many visitors and how much revenue your site can generate from visitors who would have otherwise been blocked from the gaming operator. Tracking these metrics will help you understand the success of your traffic recovery strategies. Consider tracking:
Number of visitors recovered
Number of dollars recovered
Improvement in regional website conversions
Number of successful website redirects
Number of visitors who selected alternative offers
Improve International SEO
Improve your website’s international SEO to attract more visitors from your target countries. To improve your international SEO, publishers should focus on optimizing their websites for:
Regional keywords
Country-specific metadata
Local currencies
Native-language content
Regional FAQs
Strengthen User Trust
Visitors want to engage with your website and your gaming operators. By localizing the website experience for each visitor, you offer them with an experience that will strengthen the trust that they place in your brand.
AI Can Optimize Global Routing
Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that can optimize your international traffic. By using AI to route your traffic, publishers can:
Detect where visitors are headed
Recommend the appropriate gaming operator for them
Avoid licensing conflicts
Automate routing decisions
Analyze where traffic losses occur
Automation tools using AI can help publishers better manage their international traffic.
Common Global Traffic Mistakes
Many publishers make mistakes that result in the loss of international traffic. The most common mistakes include:
Promoting the same offers to all regions of the world
Ignoring analytics from different regions of the world
Creating the same landing pages for all regions
Not understanding which regions use which currencies
Failing to monitor their blocked markets
These issues can be fixed to bring improvements to their current traffic figures.
Best Practices
To recover international traffic:
Analyze traffic from all countries
Create local landing pages
Build relationships with regional operators
Monitor blocked markets
Offer alternative gaming operators as selections
Improve geographical targeting of websites and advertisements
Improve the geographical licensing of the operators promoted
Improve international SEO
Even a few improvements to localizing their websites can result in significant revenue for publishers.
Looking Ahead
The future of publisher websites and their traffic recovery will include more intelligent solutions based on artificial intelligence. In the future, publishers can expect to see the incorporation of:
AI to detect gaming markets
AI to recommend operators
AI to validate licensing
AI automation for website and operator localization
AI to route traffic based on predicted viewer preferences
Publishers who prepare themselves will be the best equipped to handle the future of traffic recovery.
Final Thoughts
The international traffic that publishers receive from all over the world represents revenue opportunities that most publishers have not yet tapped into. Though the licensing regulations that exist in certain regions of the world cannot be eliminated, they can be managed better through the implementation of the strategies proposed in this article.
By understanding where their traffic originates from, publishers can promote the regionally appropriate gaming operators to them. Furthermore, publishers can monitor their traffic from various countries to offer them appropriate alternatives to the gaming operators they select. Through these efforts, publishers can recover some of the revenue that they lose from these blocked countries. As the world becomes more interconnected, publishers and their websites will have to offer the best experience and best promotions for the viewers from wherever they may be located. This will ensure that the viewers are more likely to convert your website visitors into customers.