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Kalamba Games: a year of milestones and evolution

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As 2021 draws to a close, a look back over the last 12 months reveals a period of success for Kalamba Games, and also one of great change. Kalamba CEO and Co-Founder, Steve Cutler runs us through his highlights and what he expects for 2022.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that the team at Kalamba Games was celebrating our first anniversary, but since then, and approaching our fifth birthday in December, we’ve gone from a start-up to a recognised provider of quality products to the igaming industry. Despite 2021 still suffering from the effects of the global pandemic, it has witnessed one of the greatest years of growth for us.

Such successes don’t come easily, or without a solid product to back yourself with and we’ve been fortunate enough to have an amazing team in place that has been able to produce just that. Our line-up of games this year has been one of our strongest and most diverse ever – from the eerie fairground of Ducks Till Dawn to the spiritual sequel to one of our best performing games ever, Blazing Bull 2 – a game on which we registered the billionth spin ever made on a Kalamba game!

It’s difficult to choose the best among such a list, but the highlight was probably the eighth in our successful Joker series, Joker Times. Its classic Vegas-style reels with a twist proved a hit among players and it has even been updated for a festive outing this December with Joker Times Xmas Edition.

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Launching before that, however, was Age of Huracan, which enjoyed the honour of being our 50th game release. A lot has changed since the early days of our first-ever title, and we’ve come a long way as a company, which is evident in this landmark title.

It wasn’t the only half-century we clocked up either, as our ever-growing team of tenacious innovators welcomed its 50th member. One of the great things about a company like ours is seeing how people come in and strengthen a group of hard-working colleagues that continues to support our growth ambitions and the partners we enjoy working with every day.

Our expanding portfolio of games and tools has made the job of collaborating with new clients in new jurisdictions and regions incredibly easier too. Since the turn of the year, we’ve taken our games into Italy, Spain, Greece, Colombia, Portugal, Netherlands and Sweden and these markets are set to be followed by a host of others as we move into 2022.

Perhaps the crowning glory of our recent commercial success is the award of our MGA licence, which, on top of local certifications in Sweden, Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands; will allow us to push even further into regulated markets. It’s also been a busy year for awards, with numerous nominations and short list, particularly being nominated for Innovator of the Year at the iGaming Idol Awards, and winning silver for Best Game Soundtrack at the SBC Awards.

It’s unfortunately been another difficult year for Trade Shows, but we did manage to attend a few, with the latter half of the year culminating in a truly excellent SiGMA event which finally saw us catch up in person with so many of our past, present and now future partners.

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One of the biggest shifts we’ve undertaken since our founding has been evolving into a future proof technology provider, as well as a leading games studio. The launch of our Bullseye brand, which incorporates our proprietary remote gaming server (RGS) and promotional tools product offerings is integral to our plans.

These tools began rolling out in 2020, but this year has seen a host of improvements, and 2022 will see many more that will make Bullseye an even stronger proposition for operators. Its player engagement credentials include tournaments, leaderboards, metagames with standard progressive and mystery jackpots, plus a new AI-driven predictive CRM platform, StarGazer, which is set to lead us into the new year with renewed purpose and will open up a whole new avenue for our and our partners growth roadmaps.

Bullseye, with a laser focus on an expanding games portfolio serving regulated markets, represents the next stage in the core strategy and vision we established back in 2016. Naturally, we look forward to building further on our games library but making titles interconnected via meta-features and layers will ensure we build a player driven and market-leading slots experience, not just for 2022 but for many years to come. Onwards and upwards!

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Amatic and Comatel Present Innovative Gaming Solutions at FIJMA Madrid

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Amatic Industries has teamed up with long-standing local partner Comatel to wow the crowds at premier gaming expo FIJMA Madrid. Together, the two are presenting a comprehensive display of solutions at the show running until May 9 at IFEMA, Madrid.

There are different Gemini configurations, each including a mix of the best slot games of Amatic’s library, 5 games of the Multi Link collection and the table game classics roulette, baccarat, SicBo and blackjack, with the possibility to connect them to a physical roulette wheel.

Viva Vegas is a gaming concept specially developed for the Spanish market. In addition to the traditional slot games, the new “King of Fichas” feature has been implemented, allowing players access to a much wider range of games only playable with the so-called “Fichas”. There are three different versions playable on various game cabinets.

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With the Revo III configuration, the players get offered the table game classics roulette, baccarat, SicBo and blackjack with the advantage to play the additional “Go for Gold deluxe” feature from all games. Within this configuration, the players have now the possibility to place up to five golden Jetons on the “Go for Gold deluxe” feature.

“We are delighted to exhibit alongside our valued partner Comatel at FIJMA Madrid. Through our longstanding collaboration, we have built a strong foundation of trust and innovation. Together, we look forward to showcasing our latest gaming solutions and providing attendees with a glimpse into the future of entertainment,” said a sales representative at Amatic Industries.

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The untapped potential of SEO in iGaming

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With Filip Podborschi, SEO Strategist at The Unit

From our experience in SEO in igaming, there are a number of areas where we see room for improvement and common mistakes which can be rectified. Let’s take a look at these facets of SEO one by one, with our best tips for how to make sure you can maximise your search ranking and drive more volume to your website.

Keyword strategy

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The first thing operators should do in this area is identify the best performing keywords that result in higher search volumes on each post. It’s pages that rank rather than websites, so you need a different search intent on each page, and that increases the list of keywords you’re ranking for.

The way to do this is by checking the search volume, and then implementing the keywords according to SEO best practices, which means having primary and secondary keywords and adjusting repetition accordingly.

The common mistake we see here is that companies don’t go into enough depth when conducting competitive analysis; especially when they’re new to the industry. Identifying what exactly your competitors are doing regarding SEO is harder than it looks, and it’s an area where marketing agencies tend to be quite lazy. They may use some tools which will show the standout competitors by algorithm, but they won’t crawl for long enough to ascertain what services they offer and provide a comparison with their client’s service. You need to find out which sites could be ranking better than you, and why.

We also see issues with the ranking of sites based on the user’s location. For example, you may have a website that ranks well in Canada, and when I as a user based in Romania search for that category, I’m not going to get the same list of results as a user who is based in Canada. The best thing to do is use a VPN to gauge how your websites are ranking and performing with your specific audience in your domestic geographical area.

SEO tags optimisation

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With SEO tags, which are essentially the page title and description you see on the search engine results page, the page title has the highest ranking power. Google will first check the page title to get an idea of what the page is about and what searches it is relevant for. It will then check the H1 and the content, and it may look through the H2 as well.

A common issue here is some websites have templated SEO tags, especially for the inner pages, so it’s more of a formula within the code to generate a random structure. It is very obvious they are templated and that the operator doesn’t really care about the length.

The key thing with tags is to make sure your pages have titles that don’t exceed the ideal length. This is a big mistake if you get this wrong, and it is very important to optimise your titles. SEO tags can be optimised around keywords. Once doing so, it is very important to prioritise your main pages. If you have 10 pages as part of the main menu, then you should optimise those, before optimising the inner pages.

Identifying duplicate pages is also important, as well as making sure meta inscriptions include CTAs; those inscriptions don’t impact rankings directly, but they do impact the CTR. You have to do that without being too spammy though, so it’s advisable to avoid words like ‘sale’ or calls to “CLICK HERE NOW”.

Headings

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Keywords must be implemented in headings; especially in H1s and H2s. Make sure not to overuse H2s and keep them optimised for content value.

If we structure the ranking power of the elements that are bringing results, we would optimise with the page title first, H1 second, content third and H2s fourth. It is better to have five H2s with three of them being optimised around the same search intent that is highlighted in H1, than it is to have 3/10 optimised around keywords. Too many H2s will just confuse Google about your search intent. You can have similar search intent as with H1s, and also have H3s and H4s to highlight value to the reader.

Interlinking strategy

Interlinking between pages is often missing. I’m not talking about interlinking from the main menu, as every page has the ability for you to go back, but I’m talking about interlinking within content, which Google considers to be much more important, because it cares about the relevancy. Google will consider pages with high-quality content as a higher authority page.

Our advice would be to implement anchor links on both branded and non-branded keywords. You should make sure there is an anchor link to the parent page. For example, domain.com/blog is a parent for domain.com/blog/igaming-seo.

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It’s very important to have child pages linking to the parent page, passing authority to the parent page. Having that interlinked structure will pass more authority to that parent page.

To explain that in a little more detail, let’s say you have a sportsbook page with 10 more child pages that reflect a particular set of sports. Having each of those 10 pages optimised so they have some authority and linking them to the parent page would pass authority to that parent page. Parent pages usually have a keyword with higher search volume, and passing as much authority as you can to the child page is very important. Too often websites lack content on child pages.

The future of SEO and experience needed

Going forward, we see AI as one of the most significant developments in SEO. At this point, we are not able to rank user engagement in AI, and it is important to keep yourself updated with how Google is reacting to this.

Google in time may provide additional options if you want to be eligible for a particular set of results in that environment. Keep an eye on what features it will offer and the types of websites. Google may consider implementing specific types of results for betting, such as displaying odds or a comparison of odds from three or four sites at the same time.

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With all these issues, it is vital to have the relevant experience on board, particularly when it comes to the skill of conducting very in-depth competitor analysis, and this is something The Unit can provide. Conducting competitor analysis is something we have done across several industries, and not just in igaming. The main strength you can have with SEO is to know your competitors inside out, and those skills can be adjusted based on your needs.

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IGT Expands Footprint in Spain’s ‘Salones’ Sector with Launch of New Multi-level Progressive Theme

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International Game Technology PLC announced that its latest multi-level progressive (MLP) game, Diamond Mania, has launched in Spain’s Amusement with Prize (AWP) “salones” sector. Diamond Mania will follow the success of IGT’s Magic Fortune Link AWP game in Spain, a high-performing title that recently surpassed a 1000-unit deployment milestone.

“IGT is committed to growing its footprint in Spain by supplying researched-backed, market-attuned games that meet the player preferences in the region. Building on the successful deployment of IGT’s debut title for the salones sector, Magic Fortune Link, we are excited to expand our offering to include Diamond Mania, a unique multi-game jackpot that can help operators achieve excellent results and diversify their gaming floors,” said Maria Aldana, IGT Director of Sales Western Europe and Africa.

Specifically adapted for the salones market, Diamond Mania features four lively base game themes: Samurai Takeo, Majestic Stallion, Ramosis Treasures and Wish Mistress. Featuring proven mechanics for a highly engaging experience for players, Diamond Mania offers three special bonuses, a reel boost, a prize boost and a jackpot bonus, which can combine to activate the super games and mega games features and ultimately lead to the chance to win one of the four progressive jackpots.

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Diamond Mania is available on the BINTIA 27-inch multi-game cabinet, which offers dual HD monitors and a topper option for casino-like styling. It features an ergonomic design, programmable LED lighting, vivid high-resolution graphics, an immersive sound system and can be configured with the TITO function.

The game will be exclusively distributed through Orenes Grupo, Spain’s salones sector market leader in operations and gaming machine distribution. Later this year, IGT plans to introduce Treasure Box, the Company’s third MLP developed specifically for Spain’s salones sector, which represents approximately 3000 gaming and bingo halls.

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