How to Build an SEO Team in iGaming: The SEO Dream Team Approach

Summary

How it all began. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and slashed marketing budgets in e-commerce SEO, the team ventured into gaming SEO. Instead of competing for big brands (Pin-Up, 1Win, etc.), they focused on low-competition game-related keywords (Aviator, Book of Dead, Gates of Olympus).
Key takeaway: You don’t need a lot of money to launch a strong SEO team—you need a sharp mind, analytical skills, perseverance, and the patience to wait. SEO is always a long-term game: the first results take at least six months to appear.
A minimum team of four people (a developer, an SEO specialist, a link-building assistant, and a copywriter) can launch 60 websites per year manually and up to 100 per year using AI solutions.
An ideal team of 4 “duos” (8 SEO specialists, 1 developer, 2 copywriters, an analyst, and a sysadmin) launches ~400 websites per year.
Economics. The optimal budget is about $30,000 per month, with a payback period of 1–1.5 years. Budget up to 0.5 million per year and be prepared to lose it.
How to retain a top SEO specialist. One effective method is a profit-sharing arrangement that grows along with the number of FD.
Scaling. After the first 400 websites, partners will come to you on their own. From there, you can scale not with money, but with expertise—the MADS project model: resources and experience are shared in exchange for ~20% of the net profit generated by the teams under your guidance.

How It All Began

My name is Lesha, also known as Alex Nomad. Five years ago, we founded SEO Dream Team and entered the gaming industry. I’ve been in SEO since 2007—which means I had about 18 years of experience prior to that, mostly in e-commerce.

I’ll start by explaining how we went from being a team of SEO enthusiasts to a company with offices in Colombia and Montenegro. Yes, we have two offices: one in Colombia—covering LATAM—and the other in Montenegro. We set up the Montenegro office for our Slavic team members: it’s easier and cheaper to relocate them there than to send them to Latin America, and it’s simply easier to work with Slavic colleagues.

It all started in 2020, during the pandemic. At the time, I was living and traveling around Europe and the Baltic states. Times were tough: marketing budgets were being slashed, and e-commerce SEO orders simply went down the drain. When the money runs out, you start thinking about where to get more. And that’s exactly when the opportunity came up to try my hand at gaming SEO.

At first, I worked with brands. I remember those successes—I was making up to 70–100 FD a day. That’s actually quite a lot, considering the conversion rate. Let’s take an average GEO: for example, $50 per CPA and 70 FD a day—that’s easily 3,500 euros/dollars a day.

But something was always gnawing at me. The battle for a brand is like spiders in a jar: you’re constantly eating each other. On top of that, there’s the regulator (for Russia, for example, the RKN), which bans and takes down websites. Plus DDoS attacks, a horde of competitors trying to devour you, and you’re lucky if a rights holder isn’t breathing down your neck, ready to take you down over the brand—even for screenshots on your site.

And then an idea struck us: why do we even have to fight over a brand like spiders? There must be a way around this. We analyzed the semantics and, five years ago, tried shifting our focus to games.

The results we saw

To be honest—the results were impressive. All the SEO teams and traffic farmers were fighting over brands like Pin-Up, 1Win, and so on. But we noticed: there was decent search volume for “Aviator,” “Book of Dead,” and “Gates of Olympus.” And we thought: why isn’t anyone going after this? And indeed—five years ago, no one was even trying to rank there. We ended up in those search results by accident.

Without taking time away from our main work (we had e-commerce projects, scientific journals, and so on), we simply started rolling out one or two gaming sites a month. And what was the result? In a year, the two of us launched a total of 30 websites, which brought in 1.5 million.

So why bother fighting for a brand after that?

What I’m getting at is this: to build a good SEO team, you don’t need a lot of money. You need a sharp mind, an understanding of the situation, analytical skills, perseverance, and the ability to be patient. SEO isn’t like PPC or arbitrage, where you invest money and see results immediately. SEO is always a long-term game. You’ll see results in six months—and that’s in the best-case scenario.

The first team: three people

How did we launch websites that first year? Initially, there were three of us, and we worked on this in the evenings, taking time away from our main jobs:

One developer—front-end, who also handled back-end. You don’t need deep back-end knowledge here; it’s mostly front-end: building templates, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
One SEO specialist—that was me.
One SEO assistant—a guy who knew his way around marketing. He’s now my co-founder. I trained him in link building, and he also handled the content.

Essentially, you need to address three key areas: content, backlinks, and SEO. There are two types of SEO: technical SEO and link building.

On average, each of these 30 websites generated around 100+ clicks per day. The average conversion rate for SEO traffic (“click → deposit”) was 5–7% (this varies by region: the UK has one rate, France another, Australia a third, and India has none at all). Roughly speaking: 10,000 clicks per day yield approximately 500–700 FD.

The ideal SEO team structure: 4 people

When we made our first money, it dawned on us: it was time to take this on professionally. I don’t like the words “holding company” and “corporation”—I’ve always believed that work should be done by teams. Teammates are probably the best thing Western work culture has come up with.

That’s how we arrived at the ideal structure for an SEO team. To work effectively and achieve results, you need just four people:

Developer
SEO Specialist
SEO Specialist Assistant (handles link building)
Copywriter

People often ask us, “You must be a huge corporation, right?” No. At its peak, the SEO Dream Team had 25 people—and even so, we generate millions of clicks every month. You don’t need a lot of people; you need smart people.

A Gaming SEO life hack: no matter how bad your website is, put a prominent “Play” button on the first screen—and you’ll get conversions. After that, three things are important: content updates, new pages, and new language versions.

How many websites can a team of four people handle?

To avoid overworking the team, a group of four can launch about 60 websites a year—without AI solutions, using handwritten content. We always strive to have the first language version written manually by copywriters and content creators.

An important point: every website needs to be refined the following year as well. “Launch and forget”—that doesn’t work. Work on a website must always be ongoing. Google loves this: it will even boost the ranking of a mediocre website if it sees that you’re constantly working on it.

With the advent of AI solutions, you can increase your output from 60 to 100 websites per year. But I wouldn’t recommend going any higher—you’ll burn out your team, and they’ll lose focus and just drift off course.

Scaling: “Pairs”

Based on this structure, we’ve developed a scaling model. The basic unit is a “pair”: two SEO specialists.

One developer supports three to four teams;
one copywriter supports two teams.

Why are SEO specialists the core of the team? In e-commerce, I’ve often seen this situation: you want to implement an SEO solution to boost traffic, but the developers say, “We have usability tasks to work on; we’ll get to yours in three months.” Then the manager comes in: “Lesha, where’s the traffic?” But the changes won’t be ready for another three months.

Therefore: if you hold SEO specialists accountable for results—then all decision-making authority should lie with the SEO specialists, not with product managers or project managers.

The Ideal SEO Company Made Up of Four “Twos”

A company with four “twos” launches about 400 websites a year—that’s a very good result. Team composition:

8 SEO specialists—I recommend 4 mid-level/senior and 4 junior-mid-level;
1 developer (front-end, back-end)—for 3–4 teams;
2 content specialists;
1 system administrator—when you have 400 websites, all of them need to be maintained: making sure they don’t get DDoS-ed, servers don’t go down, hosting bills are paid on time, and domains don’t expire;
1 analyst — sets up trackers and analyzes your specific traffic.

A separate note on the analyst. Every traffic source is different: one team’s traffic is brand-based, another’s is game-based, and conversion rates for the same products will vary. When managers say, “Our SEO conversion rate is such-and-such”—don’t believe them; that’s their conversion rate. When they tout a PPC conversion rate—don’t pay attention to that either. You need your own analyst who determines the conversion rate specifically for your traffic.

Economics: How Much Does It Cost

Salaries in the CIS for 2025 are good—not the highest, but not low either (all amounts in U.S. dollars):

SEO Specialist (Senior) — starting at 1,700/month. Affordable, and you won’t be overpaying;
Mid-level specialists — around 1,200;
Junior — starting at 700 and up;
Developer: Senior — starting at 2,200; Mid-level — starting at 1,500. Hire a senior developer: you only have one, so if they mess up, everyone else does too;
Content specialists—don’t hire only Juniors right from the start. Hire one Senior and one Mid-level to cover your content needs. Bring in Juniors later, as you scale up;
Analyst — starting at 1,700 (entry-level, whom you’ll train);
System administrator—1,500/month. While you still have only a few websites, you can hire part-time—it’s half the cost.

Remember: your team makes all the difference.

Other expenses

Link building, domains, servers, hosting, SEO services. With the structure described, expenses range from 7 to 20 thousand per month, of which link building accounts for 4–15 thousand. Links are expensive but necessary—you can’t get anywhere without them.

Total

When people ask me how much money is needed for an SEO team, the optimal amount is ~30,000 per month. The team pays for itself in a year to a year and a half (in the best-case scenario). If you’re not particularly lucky and didn’t launch your site “on a roll” like we did, plan for a payback period of 1–1.5 years and a budget starting at 360,000. And factoring in unplanned expenses, tests, and hypotheses—feel free to budget half a million a year.

The money isn’t huge, but be prepared to simply lose it: SEO is always about the long haul and timelines, and there’s no guarantee you’ll break even in the first year.

Turnover: Be Prepared

By the time you’ve hired four “twos,” only half will remain by the end of the year. Half will leave on their own, or you’ll have to let them go. The reason: people come into the gaming industry thinking there’s crazy money to be made, but in the first year, they see only base salaries. That’s why you need a motivation system (more on that below). Be prepared to hire new staff and fill gaps.

How to Retain a Top SEO Specialist

Training a specialist is only half the battle; the next challenge is retaining them. It’s nearly impossible to retain a good, capable SEO specialist—and there’s only one method that works.

Put yourself in their shoes: this person knows how to launch websites, drive traffic, and knows where to sell it. Why would they work for some random boss? They could go solo.

The solution is simple. All the websites they build belong to the company—that much is clear. But give them a percentage of the profits, and don’t be stingy. The percentage should depend on the number of FDs: the more FDs he brings in, the bigger his share. Don’t be afraid to give him as much as 50%—over time, you’ll earn more and more.

The moment he launches 400 websites generating, say, 100,000 clicks a day, he’ll realize: if I go solo, all this success will be for nothing, but here, the bonuses and money keep coming in. Treat these guys like teammates and respect them.

Three Ways to Launch Your Own Team

You’re an SEO specialist with experience in gaming (as was the case for us). Then it’s the easiest: you build a team tailored to your needs.
You’re a manager without SEO expertise. You need a strong Head of SEO—that’s 5,000–10,000 per month. Finding someone like that is extremely difficult, plus you’ll need a competitive compensation package to retain them. About 50% of your success depends on this person.
You’re an investor. Be prepared to risk 1 million over two years. I can’t promise you’ll recoup that investment—you need to understand that you could lose that money.

Where to Find an SEO Specialist

An HR agency—but one with specific experience working with SEO specialists. These are a special breed of people: geeks, nerds, and often introverts. While affiliate marketers are hanging out at parties, SEO specialists sit at a separate table, sharing tips and gaining experience.
Through an acquaintance who’s a Head of SEO with department management experience—have them sit in on the final interview to see if the candidate is full of it or not. Reach out to Sasha Flint or me.

Scaling Beyond the First 400 Websites

As soon as you launch your first 400 websites in a year, the problem of finding partners will solve itself—partners will start finding you. Show them your traffic, showcase a couple of case studies—and you’ll be swamped with offers.

That’s what we did back in the day with “Aviator”: the site brought in millions in traffic and revenue. When we realized it was on the decline and that SEO specialists already knew about the case study (we all monitor search results), we simply shared it publicly. What did we get in return? Reputation, respect, media attention—and we lost almost nothing.

From there, you can either pour in a ton of money or recruit remote workers. We took the second route. We share our expertise and resources, help teams grow, and in return, take about 20% of their net profit.

In my opinion, this is a perfect example of scaling: you don’t need to invest a lot of money or a million to launch a new team—you simply share your expertise. That’s exactly why you need to showcase a couple of case studies.

That’s probably all for now.