Comparison and aggregator sites need substantially more backlinks than single-brand review sites, and those links have to be spread across hub and category pages rather than concentrated on a homepage, because comparison sites compete for high-volume terms like 'best online casino' and 'best slots sites' that pit them directly against other aggregators — typically the strongest competitors in iGaming SEO — rather than against individual operators. They also carry a heavier E-E-A-T burden, since a site ranking and recommending dozens of licensed brands faces more scrutiny over editorial independence and disclosure than a site reviewing one operator in depth.
Here's what actually changes, and how to allocate a link building budget across a comparison site's page structure instead of applying a single-brand playbook to it.
What actually makes a comparison or aggregator site different from a single-brand review site?
A single-brand review site goes deep on one operator — bonus terms, game library, withdrawal times, licensing — and competes for branded and long-tail terms built around that operator's name. A comparison site does the opposite: it ranks multiple operators against a shared set of criteria, publishes that ranking across a hub page and a growing set of category pages ('best live casino sites', 'best fast payout casinos', 'best casino sites for slots'), and often spins up geo variants of each ('best online casino UK', 'best online casino Ireland').
That structural difference changes everything downstream. A single-brand site's link equity only has to support one domain's authority against other reviews of the same operator. A comparison site's link equity has to support a hub page competing against other hubs, plus a growing stack of category and geo pages that each need enough authority to rank on their own — which is exactly why internal linking matters more on a comparison site than it does on a single-brand site: the hub page's authority has to flow down into every category and geo page beneath it.
Do comparison sites actually need more backlinks than single-brand review sites?
Generally, yes — and not just a little more. Head terms like 'best online casino' sit among the most competitive in the entire iGaming SEO landscape, and the sites already ranking for them are almost always other aggregators with years of accumulated link equity, not individual operator brands. A single-brand site competing for its own name rarely faces that level of competition, so how many backlinks a casino site needs is a very different number once the target is a comparison hub rather than a branded review.
The gap isn't just volume — it's also referring-domain diversity. Ranking a hub page against other established aggregators generally requires a wider spread of unique referring domains than a single-brand site needs, because the sites you're competing against already have that diversity, and a narrow link profile will look thin by comparison regardless of total link count. That also means link velocity needs to be paced differently — a sudden volume spike aimed at catching up to an established aggregator's profile reads as unnatural faster than the same spike would on a single-brand site with a smaller, newer footprint.
How should link building budget be allocated across hub, category and listing pages?
Treat the site's page hierarchy as a funnel for link equity, not a flat list of pages competing independently for outreach targets:
- Hub/homepage ('best online casino'): heaviest share of external link acquisition — this page carries the site's core topical authority and competes directly against rival aggregators
- Category pages ('best slots sites', 'best live casino sites'): second-largest share, each needs its own dedicated guest posts and niche edits with category-specific anchor text rather than reusing the hub's anchors
- Geo variant pages ('best casino sites UK/Ireland/Canada'): a smaller, deliberate allocation with genuinely unique content per market — not a reason to skip links entirely, but a reason to avoid treating them as interchangeable clones
- Individual operator listing or review pages: minimal direct external link acquisition; these should earn authority mainly through internal links flowing down from hub and category pages above them
What E-E-A-T and compliance risks are specific to casino comparison sites?
A comparison site is making an explicit recommendation across dozens of licensed operators at once, which is a stronger claim than a single review and invites more scrutiny of how that ranking was actually produced. Google's own guidance on people-first content expects a visible, consistent methodology behind any 'best of' ranking — not just a list that happens to favor whichever operators pay the highest affiliate commission — and its site reputation abuse policy specifically targets pages that lean on a host's authority without the editorial substance to back the ranking they're publishing.
There's a regulatory layer here too. In the UK, every operator a comparison site links to is bound by LCCP Condition 1.1.2, which makes the licensee responsible for third parties acting on its behalf — meaning an operator has a direct incentive to drop a comparison site that makes unsubstantiated claims ('fastest payouts', 'best odds') it can't back with data. Comparison sites generally sit under more consumer-protection attention than single-brand reviews for exactly this reason; the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has separately pushed comparison sites across sectors toward clearer ranking disclosure, and gambling comparison sites aren't exempt from that broader scrutiny just because the sector has its own regulator.
The practical takeaway: a comparison site's link building program has to sit on top of a defensible, disclosed ranking methodology, not instead of one. A strong backlink profile pointed at a hub page that can't explain its own rankings is building authority on a foundation Google and operators are both actively watching for.
Sources
Related services
Browse our live inventory
See our full network of 60,000+ real gambling and mainstream domains — filter by DA, DR, Trust Flow, Spam score and category.
Open the inventory →The iGaming Links Editorial Team
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.