SEO Tracker: Tight at the top in the sportsbook organic rankings

In a much-changed sportsbook market, one thing has stayed the same. Oddschecker continues to dominate visibility rankings, with PaddyPower in a photo finish for second place.

This comes as attention in the category shifted away from football and towards horseracing, while overall searches have continued to increase slightly from our January analysis.

The largest single cause of this shift in interest is that the last analysis we ran covered the period around the men’s World Cup in December. While search interest in football-related terms remained high over the course of the Women’s World Cup, it was not at the same level as the men’s tournament and, combined with the lack of league football for a large period covered by the analysis, has resulted in lower average monthly searches.

We can see the changes in interest levels for football betting in this Google Trends graph, which shows how interest in the topic peaked during the men’s tournament at the end of last year, before steadily declining through the rest of the season to a low after the season finished, before climbing again for the women’s tournament.

While there was considerable growth in searches around the tournament, its peak was around 30% lower than it was for the men’s tournament.

This analysis also covered the horseracing season, meaning that unlike the last analysis, our September insights included the peak in horseracing search interest. This resulted in searches for ‘Cheltenham races’ increasing from 27,100 monthly searches to 40,500 monthly searches.

The waxing and waning of different sectors hasn’t mattered to PaddyPower though, as with an extra 27 position one rankings (now 138 total), the brand has begun to narrow the gap with Oddschecker. The 1,109 monthly click difference between the brands is the smallest the gap has been since 2016, and given that it stood at 12,793 clicks in January, PaddyPower will have confidence that it can overtake Oddschecker in the near future.

World Cup comedown increases competition

One interesting thing to note here is that, likely due in part to the reduced impact of the largest keywords in the space after last year’s World Cup (in September only seven keywords see an average exceeding 15,000 monthly searches, compared to 10 in January), the top 10 brands have become more competitive than in previous years. PaddyPower and Oddschecker have both seen organic visibility decrease, while almost all brands below them have seen organic traffic increase.

This is easily ascertained when comparing our latest data with the bubble chart below from Jan 2022.

With these two brands being so dominant across search terms with higher interest, it makes sense that they would be disproportionately affected by any changes in overall market search volume. As such, PaddyPower getting closer to Oddschecker isn’t so much a case of increasing organic traffic, but retaining more than Oddschecker when overall market searches decreased.

Despite ranking for fewer keywords than Oddschecker, PaddyPower’s range of keywords ranking in position one mean that it has a better average weighted ranking, and helped it to edge ahead in terms of visibility.

Whether it can overtake Oddschecker remains to be seen, but being the most visible brand in such a competitive market, especially as an operator overtaking such a dominant affiliate site, would be an impressive achievement.

Aceodds improves rankings in the right places

One of the brands which has seen visibility increase behind the two leaders is Aceodds, which continues to punch above its weight in terms of the traffic it is earning compared to the number of keywords it ranks for.

This is down to Aceodds improving its already impressive position two ranking for ‘betting calculator’, to now rank in position one for the biggest keyword in the market, which receives an average of 135,000 monthly clicks and generates an estimated 32,576 clicks for the brand.

We’ve of course discussed the pitfalls of overreliance on one dominant keyword in the past, and up against larger competitors it may be a challenge for Aceodds to hold onto position one. But beyond that, Aceodds does rank in position one for other medium volume ‘calculator’ terms, including horseracing and football odds.

As a betting calculator site, these are the keywords that Aceodds should be ranking for, and while it may benefit from broadening the keyword set that it ranks for, it is holding the key positions for the keywords that its target market is searching for. Its ‘right to rank’ for these keywords as a dedicated calculator site may be enough to hold on to these all-important position one rankings.

Beyond the top two brands, with the exception of a slight decrease in visibility for William Hill, who now rank for fewer keywords and have a slightly higher average ranking, all of the brands in the top 10 have seen an increase in organic visibility.

The most notable of these is Ladbrokes, which ranked outside of the top 10 brands in January, but is now the sixth most visible in the sector, thanks to a 293% increase in traffic, resulting in an extra 17,863 monthly clicks.

This appears to be largely down to Ladbrokes focusing on its horseracing and tennis offering, with the majority of its position one ranking keywords coming from terms related to the Grand National, and a large number of keywords around Wimbledon in the top two positions as well.

While these aren’t the most in demand search terms in the space, they generate a considerable amount of traffic for Ladbrokes when combined. Considering that the brand didn’t rank in the top two positions for any keywords in January, its current haul of 44 keywords is a significant improvement.

Combine that with a position three ranking for ‘betting’, which is one of the largest keywords in the space, and Ladbrokes has given itself a strong footing to continue building on these improvements and start targeting the higher volume keywords in the space.

Whether it can maintain its overall visibility as we move further into the football season and focus shifts away from horseracing towards various football betting terms remains to be seen, but maintaining strong rankings within horse racing would be an excellent way for the brand to enter 2023.

Overall, the key takeaways from what we’ve seen in this sector are:

• Niche brands can make an impact on a whole sector when they have a right to rank for key terms. Finding a USP or variable that stands out from the pack is a great way to enter the mix.
• Changes in search interest for the highest-volume terms will disproportionately affect the traffic for brands at the top of the rankings.
• A focus on particular content areas can drive significant ranking improvements.

To find out more about how Stickyeyes could help your brand to establish and maintain organic growth in the sportsbook market and beyond, please reach out to William Conboy, director of igaming by Stickyeyes at William.conboy@stickyeyes.com.