Nikolas Monti-Potsolakis introduced himself as half Greek and half Italian. He is based in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and he is the owner of Black Lantern Marketing.
I'm the owner of Black Lantern Marketing, which is an SEO digital consultancy.
Black Lantern Marketing offers end to end SEO services for casino operators, sportsbook brands, affiliates, and companies in other competitive industries. Their work also covers adult, crypto, forex, and similar high competition markets.
This gives the company a strong position in search areas where competition is high, regulation can be complex, and normal SEO methods are often not enough.
Nikolas started working in SEO very early. He said his first SEO experience came when he worked for a small events company as a teenager. Because the company was small, nobody else wanted to handle SEO for them, so he took on the task.
No one wanted to do SEO for them. So that was it, I was the person to do it.
From there, he developed his skills over time and worked with different businesses, including larger brands such as Vodafone. Around 10 to 12 years ago, he moved into the iGaming industry.
His early iGaming work included SEO for OPAP in Greece, a major local operator. About 10 years ago, he opened Black Lantern Marketing, and the company has since grown around its experience in iGaming and other high competition niches.
Since we had the expertise in the iGaming industry, it's most of our biggest clientele right now.
Black Lantern Marketing started with only a few people, but the company has grown significantly. Nikolas said the team is now a little over 20 people.
The company has several internal areas of work, including AI, content strategy, link building, and other parts of SEO. This allows Black Lantern Marketing to work across the full SEO process rather than only focusing on one narrow service.
We have an AI team, we have a content team for the strategy, for link building, a bit of everything.
The company wants to continue growing its brand and become better known for its expertise in the iGaming industry.
According to Nikolas, around 80 percent of Black Lantern Marketing's clients are from iGaming. The company works with operators, sportsbook brands, and affiliates.
About 80 percent of our clients is iGaming.
He mentioned that Black Lantern Marketing has worked with brands such as 888 and Superbet, as well as larger affiliates in the iGaming industry.
The company also works with clients outside iGaming, including eCommerce, clinics, adult industry businesses, and AI companion clients. However, iGaming remains the main focus.
Black Lantern Marketing works in both regulated and unregulated markets. Nikolas also mentioned that the company has a black hat team, which reflects the wider range of SEO environments they deal with.
One common reason clients contact Black Lantern Marketing is panic after a Google update. When rankings change, companies often need guidance from people who understand SEO in difficult markets.
Either the case is that they're panicking because there is some Google update.
Another common reason is competition. A company may notice that competitors are ranking above them for important keywords. This often starts an internal discussion and leads them to search for external SEO support.
Usually it's the case where you have some CMO that saw some keyword on Google and says, "Why we don't rank there?"
Black Lantern Marketing then helps clients understand what is happening, what the competitors are doing, and what the right SEO direction should be.
Nikolas explained that SEO in iGaming is different because the industry is heavily regulated and often judged differently from other restricted industries.
It's very regulated compared to other industries and also it's very biased.
He compared iGaming with industries such as tobacco. Both are highly regulated, but gambling often faces a different public perception. This makes it harder for operators and affiliates to compete in their target markets.
Regulation also affects player behavior. In some countries, strict rules can push some players toward unregulated alternatives. This means SEO strategy has to adapt to the realities of each market.
Localization is important in iGaming SEO because each market has its own player behavior, search habits, regulations, and business risks.
Black Lantern Marketing looks at what players want in each country, what they are searching for, and what local legislation allows. A strategy that works in one market may not work in another.
Operators and affiliates need to be aware of what the players want, what they are looking for, the local legislation, all these things that make it difficult.
This is why a hyperlocal SEO strategy is important for iGaming brands. It is not only about translating content. It is about understanding the local market, the rules, the competition, and the search intent behind player behavior.
At Island Conference, Nikolas also gave a keynote about AI and search visibility. The main idea was that affiliates are no longer only chasing classic keyword rankings.
They're not chasing rankings anymore, they're chasing visibility in terms of LLMs.
Large language models are changing how users discover information. This means affiliates need to think beyond old review page structures and keyword stuffing.
Nikolas said that websites now need stronger structure, better technical foundations, clearer paragraphs, and content that gives useful information to the reader.
You need to have a better structure in terms of paragraphs, technical background, how you structure your content.
For affiliates, this means content should not exist only to rank for keywords. It should help users who are researching before they bet, deposit, or choose a gambling site.
Nikolas explained that there are different ways to become a trusted source for AI systems. He mentioned that LLM manipulation exists because the space is still early, but he focused on the more normal brand building approach.
The main point is to strengthen the brand through PR, guest posts, campaigns, and wider visibility. When more people know the brand, it becomes easier for search engines and AI systems to see it as an authority.
To strengthen your brand, essentially that is the biggest thing.
He also talked about entity structure. A brand should not look like only one isolated website. It should have supporting signals across the web, such as social media pages, references, and other online mentions.
You're not just a website. You're a website who has a Facebook page, an Instagram page, there is a page in Wikipedia.
These signals help show that a website is real, active, and trusted by people from different sources.
This was Black Lantern Marketing's first year at Island Conference. Nikolas said the company was impressed by the organization and is considering having a booth at the next edition.
We were very impressed by the organization from NEXXIE Group and Alex, the organizer.
He said the event was well organized, especially for speakers, with support around flights, hotels, and other details.
He also liked the diversity of people at the conference. For Black Lantern Marketing, this was useful because SEO has overlap across iGaming, adult, and other competitive industries.
For us, SEO, there are a lot of overlap between them. So there are things that work in all industries.
He also said the event felt different from many of the conferences they attend every year and described it as more fun.
During the interview, Nikolas also spoke about a new AI dashboard that Black Lantern Marketing is launching. The dashboard is designed to give businesses useful information about competitors, keyword gaps, content gaps, backlinks, traffic, and revenue.
We're launching a new AI dashboard.
The tool is being built by the company's in-house AI team. It can combine different data points and help connect organic performance with business results.
One important part of the dashboard is that it is customized for each website and business. It is not presented as a generic out of the box SEO tool.
It's customized to you and tailored to your own business based on what your business competitors are and your organic competitors are.
The dashboard includes sections around keywords, content, backlinks, competitors, and revenue. Black Lantern Marketing can also use different tools and data sources together, rather than relying on one external tool only.
We have the ability to combine all the information together from different sources and put them all together.
The goal is to create actionable insights for the client. Instead of making the client collect and interpret all the data alone, the dashboard is designed to do much of that work and present tailored information.