Authority Score is not moving

[winningspin]

It's been two years since I launched my slot review website, winningspinslots.com. My Authority Score has been stuck at 5 for the past 1.5 years.
I haven't spent any money buying backlinks. Instead, I've earned 650+ backlinks naturally, including links from several slot providers and affiliate portals.
Despite publishing high-quality content, my Authority Score hasn't improved, and my website still isn't attracting the level of organic traffic I was expecting.
Could you take a look at my website and help me identify what's holding it back? I'd appreciate an honest assessment of the site's SEO, content, technical issues, and overall strategy, along with recommendations on what I should prioritize to improve my Authority Score and organic traffic.

[eenzoo]

What the hell is the Authority Score? And who you let you pay to measure this nonsense?
I just take care on the ASS but that's probably a different one.

[allfreechips]

Have to say I have no idea what my Authority score is

[TheGooner]

ABOUT AUTHORITY RANKING
------------------------------
After asking AI and checking it out I think it is SEMRush and their rating.

I have a 27 year old site with 350K backlinks from 3,800 referring domains according to them - it rates 31 .

Mind you SEMrush had my organic traffic at about 230 daily - probably a 5-7% of the real total?
So with the one metric that I can actually compare they are wildly out - which puts all their assumptions in doubt.

ABOUT YOUR SITE
------------------------
Regarding your site - I took a quick look, real short 5 minute trip.

TECHNICAL
Front page looks pretty and responsive.
I looked at one 100 spins review https://winningspinslots.com/midnigh...lusterbreaker/ and it looked ok too.
Good graphics and fonts and colours, nothing wrong with the site.

STRATEGY
Now slots are not my thing, but you asked what we thought of your strategy - and did not say what it was?

What is your thinking behind the site, and the 100 spin test?
To catch long tail terms? Which terms?
Are they money terms? How will you monetise them?

SELLING
I read through that page (scrolled more than read) and it seemed fine, but other than the string of cards with "visit casino" underneath I did not see any real attempt to sell an affiliate click ... and by offering 6 cards on a page I can see a player thinking "which one" - and/or why click on this one now ?

OVERALL
--------------
Overall, your site is fine, and it potentially could even have a good USP - with your experience building and developing slots. But I don't think that you play enough on that angle and the writing feels very AI / affiliate lite.

The slot run page I read was good - but at no point did I think - right I've got to play this now.
Nor did I see where you said HERE is a good place to play it.

Those cards do not say that, they say ( logo / offer / visit casino) which people just scroll past.

You have a niche (experienced developer reviews actual slots run and shows results) ... is that popular, or a money term?
If you do get a reader, how often do you expect them to click on an ad card?

Selling is a tough gig, but you've got to actually try ...
I'm not sure that you have - you've built a mildly interesting site about a facet of slots ...

--------------------

Hey - that's just my view mate - good luck with it ...
And maybe my attempt at reviewing will encourage more active casino affiliates to join in

[allfreechips]

Ok the Gooner made me read more, the site reviews on slots is actually very entertaining and and I do like the 100 Spin recap. I feel content is unique and quite good.

[PaulEchere]

Any specific reason why you are focusing on Authority Score (assuming it is SEMRush's score as mentioned above)?

I mean,m if you looks at your domain authority on Ahrefs, that looks pretty solid so why not just refer to that?

Also, you mentioned "improve my Authority Score and organic traffic" but generally {whatever artificial metric} and real organic traffic don't necessarily go hand in hand.
Based on Ahrefs the traffic for your domain is 0, not sure how true that is but given that you are looking for ways to increase it (although I guess we all are) - it is smaller than what you would be satisfied with.

You also mentioned never actually buying backlinks and "not buying BLs" is really not a good strategy as an igaming affiliate in 2026. If you look at the current BL profile for your domain, at first glance it may look good - you many high authority domains linking to you and many of them are igaming-related.
However, these links themselves and the context in which they are placed is irrelevant. Majority come from /partner pages and affiliate portal pages. While these are good to have as a general practice, you can't just rely solely on them. You need real content to link to you, you need real pages from other igaming sites with real organic traffic to link to your pages (not just the homepage) with relevant anchor texts that represent the KWs / terms that you are looking to rank well for. In my experience, this is something you need to pay for or at least give a link in exchange.

[casinobonusguy]

I stopped paying for Semrush after comparing my own sites. My big money site was equal to a site i made $300 a year on lol .1/20 of the traffic is being generous .I don't even bother to check them anymore.

[winningspin]

Thankyou so much for sharing your thought, I can see that selling is missing at my end.

[winningspin]

Thankyou so much for sharing detailed review

[Stan Ventures]

I agree with Paul here. Besides, who cares about authority score? That's a third party metric. They want you to care about your AS because that's what they sell you on. Build backlinks, that might be what's holding your rankings and traffic.

[NoahBonusBandit]

Authority score is primarily moved through backlinks from other high authority score pages. As opposed to DR which mainly focuses on the number of separate referring domains, authority score mainly cares about the quantity of high authority INDIVIDUAL backlinks.

regardless, Google does not rank your page based on AS, DA, DR or any other third party metric. At best they are guesses at your sites authority, and sites with lower metrics can often outrank other higher AS domains.

it’s a useful estimate, but don’t worry obsessively over it

[abidseo]

You're asking the right question but pointing it at the wrong metric. Authority Score is a third-party estimate -- useful for comparing link profiles, useless as a goal. That said, a score stuck at 5 while you've earned 650+ links is telling you something real, so here's how I'd read it:

First, collapse those 650 links to unique referring domains and look at the distribution, not the count. A handful of strong domains beat hundreds of weak ones, and affiliate-portal links are often sitewide/footer links that tools count individually but search engines heavily discount. If most of your referring domains have no organic traffic themselves, the score won't move -- and more importantly, neither will your rankings.

Second, check the traffic trend, not the score. If organic traffic has grown over those 1.5 years while AS sat still, the score is just noise. If traffic is flat too, the priority isn't "more links" -- it's link quality plus on-page: which slot titles do competitors rank for that you don't (content gaps), and are your review pages buried 4+ clicks deep with weak internal linking?

My honest prioritization: (1) content gaps vs. the top 3 slot affiliates in your niche, (2) internal linking so every review is within 3 clicks of home, (3) then a small number of genuinely editorial links from sites with real traffic. The score will follow the rankings, not the other way around.