No — each localized version of a casino site needs its own backlinks pointing directly at it. hreflang is a signal that tells Google which language or region a page variant serves; it is not a channel for link equity to flow between those variants the way internal navigation does. A German-language subfolder with no inbound links of its own will not rank in Germany just because the English homepage is well linked.
That single fact changes how a multi-market link building budget should be allocated, which URL structure to pick before building anything, and why some multilingual casino sites dominate the market they launched in and stay invisible everywhere else.
Does hreflang pass link equity between localized pages?
No. Google's own documentation on telling it about localized versions of a page describes hreflang purely as a matching signal — it helps Google serve the right language or regional URL to the right searcher. It is not described anywhere as a mechanism for passing authority, and it behaves nothing like a hyperlink for crawling or ranking purposes.
The confusion is understandable because hreflang annotations sit in the same `<head>` section as canonical tags, and canonicalization does consolidate signals toward one URL. hreflang does the opposite: it tells Google these are deliberately separate, parallel pages for different audiences, each of which needs to earn its own visibility. Agencies that build a casino site's entire backlink program against the main domain and assume hreflang will 'spread' that authority to the /de/, /es/ or /it/ versions are working from a model of how Google ranks pages that simply isn't how it works.
Should a multi-market casino site use ccTLDs, subdirectories or subdomains?
For most operators, subdirectories on one strong root domain (example.com/de/) are the right default — they inherit the root domain's accumulated authority far more efficiently than a subdomain, which Google's guide to managing multi-regional and multilingual sites effectively treats as a separate property that has to build its own signals from closer to zero. The exception is when local licensing forces the decision: several regulators expect operators to run a locally registered domain or in-country hosting as a licence condition, in which case a ccTLD stops being an SEO choice and becomes a compliance requirement.
This is also why a single Malta Gaming Authority-licensed operator can often centralize more of its multi-market footprint under one domain than an operator juggling several national licences — the European Gaming and Betting Association represents exactly that reality, since its members hold licences across more than 20 European jurisdictions and each one can impose its own domain, hosting or disclosure conditions that override whatever structure would otherwise be cleanest for SEO.
- Subdirectories (example.com/de/) — strongest inheritance from the root domain; the default choice absent a licensing requirement
- ccTLDs (example.de) — strong local-market trust signal and sometimes mandated by a licence condition, but each one is effectively a new domain for link building purposes
- Subdomains (de.example.com) — generally the weakest option; Google has long treated subdomains closer to separate sites than subfolders for authority purposes
- gTLD with hreflang only, no local structure at all — fine for content localization, but gives you nothing to anchor a market-specific link building program against
How should backlinks be split across localized versions of the same site?
Treat every localized URL as its own backlink profile that needs direct, in-language, in-market links — not as a page that benefits from links built elsewhere on the domain. This is the same principle covered in splitting a link building budget across multiple gambling jurisdictions, applied at the page-structure level rather than the campaign level: a .de niche edit linking to the English-language homepage does essentially nothing for how the /de/ subfolder ranks on German search results, because it is a different page with a different, mostly empty profile.
In practice that means running a backlink gap analysis per localized version against the competitors that actually rank in that specific market, not against whoever outranks the English homepage. It also means anchor text has to be written in-language and in-context rather than translated mechanically — the anchor-text ratios that keep a profile looking natural apply separately to each localized version's own link history.
What happens if you only build links to the main-language homepage?
The site plateaus one market deep. The homepage keeps strengthening in whichever market it originally launched in, while every localized subfolder sits on hreflang-correct, well-translated content that no publisher has ever linked to — so it has nothing of its own to rank on. This is the most common reason a multilingual casino site shows strong traffic in its home market and near-nothing in the markets it supposedly expanded into: the content localization work got done, but the link building program never followed it past the original domain.
It is also why a multi-market agency program that reports one blended backlink count for the whole domain can look healthy while individual localized pages are starved — the number hides exactly which markets never got their own links.
How do you avoid duplicate content issues across localized casino pages?
Pair every hreflang set with a self-referencing canonical on each version, and make sure each localized page actually carries translated, market-relevant content rather than a templated shell. Google's multi-regional guidance is explicit that localized versions are only treated as duplicates when the main content stays untranslated — a /de/ page that's just the English copy with a different URL and a hreflang tag gets nothing from the localization effort and can still be flagged as near-duplicate content.
The same logic extends to internal linking: a sound internal linking structure should route users and crawlers between a localized subfolder's own pages, not funnel every internal link back to the English version, which quietly tells Google which version actually matters and undercuts the hreflang signal you set up specifically to avoid that.
Checklist: before you link-build a multilingual casino site
Run through this before committing budget to any new localized version:
- Confirm the URL structure (subdirectory, ccTLD or subdomain) is locked in and matches any licensing requirement for that market, before building a single link
- Verify hreflang and self-referencing canonical tags are correctly paired across every language version, not just the two or three most-visited ones
- Confirm each localized page carries genuinely translated, market-relevant content — not a machine-translated template
- Run a market-specific competitor and backlink gap analysis for every localized version you intend to build links for
- Set a per-market link building allocation, even a small one, for every active localized version — a version that never gets its own links will plateau regardless of how well it's translated
Sources
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iGaming link building & gambling SEO
Written and fact-checked by the iGaming Links team — the people who source, vet and place gambling backlinks across a network of 60,000+ casino and mainstream domains every week. Our guidance comes from running real guest-post, niche-edit and PBN campaigns for SEO agencies, iGaming operators and affiliates, not from theory.