What we did

LegalZone is a comparison portal for online sportsbooks and casinos licensed by the Spanish gambling regulator (DGOJ). A tough niche: regulated content, competitors with seven-figure budgets, pure YMYL territory for Google, and legal constraints that shift with every new guideline the regulator publishes.

We run the whole thing. This isn’t a project where we came in to build the layout and left: hosting, custom WordPress theme, SEO architecture, content, affiliate tracking, ongoing maintenance and continuous adaptation to changes in DGOJ regulation and Royal Decree.

Blocks we operate:

Managed hosting on a dedicated EU server, tuned for the project’s traffic pattern and with daily backups.
Custom WordPress theme, no Elementor, no page builders. Clean HTML, our own CSS and JS, zero dependencies we don’t control.
Technical SEO and content architecture: silo structure (sportsbooks, casinos, bonuses, payment methods, eSports, guides), schema.org (Organization, FAQPage, Product/Review for operator profiles), segmented sitemap, hreflang and canonical done properly.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): structured content with direct answers so ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini cite the site. The “what does it mean that…” sections and the FAQs are written specifically for that.
Content written by a team specialised in gambling regulation. Operator reviews, legal guides, bonus analyses with the actual small print (wagering requirement, minimum odds, deadline).
Custom affiliate redirector (stats.legalzone.bet) that avoids reliance on third-party platforms and enables clean tracking without loading the main site with tracker scripts.
Ongoing legal compliance: Juego Seguro seal, age verification, links to the Spanish self-exclusion registry (RGIAJ), acknowledgements to FEJAR and Gamblers Anonymous, responsible gambling messaging where required.

How we built it

Stack: WordPress with a custom theme (no Elementor), PHP and MySQL on managed EU hosting. Independent tracking subdomain for affiliate redirection.

Technical decisions that shape the project:

Custom theme, no page builder. Visual builders introduce bloat that costs Core Web Vitals points and perceived trust in a niche like this. Every template (home, operator profile, category, bonus, guide) is built to purpose.
Controlled dynamic content. Bonuses, wagering requirements and rankings load from our own data structures, not third-party plugins. When the DGOJ changes a rule, we update one field and it propagates across every affected page.
Full schema.org. Organization, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList sitewide; Product and AggregateRating on operator profiles; Article on the blog. That’s what earns rich snippets and citations in generative engines.
Performance. LCP and INP green across most of the site, even on pages loaded with comparison tables and operator logos. WebP images with srcset, fonts with font-display: swap, deferred JavaScript, critical CSS inline.
Monthly updates. Rankings, bonuses and operator availability are reviewed every month and the visible date changes with them. Google penalises comparison content that appears fresh without actually being fresh.

What we didn’t do

We don’t include operators without a DGOJ licence. The pre-filter is fixed: no active licence, no entry into the comparator. It’s an editorial decision that anchors the site’s positioning.
We don’t use third-party affiliate plugins or banners loaded from external servers. All tracking goes through our own redirector under our own domain.