SEO: 21.co.uk responds to ‘grey hat’ SEO claims

21.co.uk has responded to the SEO allegations levelled at it by Blueclaw director Luke Ormerod in yesterday’s article Opinion: Sometimes Google rankings just don’t make sense by saying the links outlined in the article date back to “June 2014 and come from a company affiliated to us as they lease some of their domain names to us”.

The article said the site used “grey hat” SEO techniques such as  redirects from internal pages and got significant volumes of traffic when it was published by iGaming Business yesterday, topping Google’s SEO-related news and features. 

Ian Erskine, managing director of 21.co.uk’s holding company IP&S, commented: “We are obviously delighted 21.co.uk is ranking so highly for relevant search words but all our SEO work has been entirely white hat since launch and we believe that is how we are doing so well. The links that Luke Ormerod describes as being the likely cause of our high ranking have been in place since 6 June 2014 and come from a company affiliated to us as they lease some of their domain names to us.

“It seems unlikely they would be causing a surge in our ranking because other brands which have the same links have not enjoyed the same ranking and also because the links – which are perfectly legitimate affiliate links – have been there for so long.

“In truth, the good SEO probably comes from a mix of white hat SEO we have done over the past three years and reflect the large number of customers who like our casino.”

21.co.uk holds a UK licence and has been ranking highly on Google’s SERPs for some time, prompting Blueclaw, at the behest of clients, to look into the factors enabling the high ranking.

Issues brought to light by Blueclaw include a link network, internal redirects and the fact that most of the site’s links come from the Netherlands and the US.