How can bookmaking brands compete with the “big three”?

The search market in the sports betting industry has become something of a “tri-opoly” over the course of the last year or so. We have looked at the sports betting search results a number of times and the visibility graphs have tended to have a familiar look about them.

We have the odds comparison engine Oddschecker at the top of the pile with two of three big bookmaking brands, Paddy Power, Sky Bet and William Hill, leading the chase. So when we run the analysis again in December 2017, what do we see? Do we have a new challenger for top spot?
Well, and I’m sorry to spoil the surprise, we don’t. In fact, at first glance, it’s pretty much the same story as before.

That’s all folks; article over, move along, nothing to see here. Except, we arguably do have a story, because it’s not just that the big three are leading the market, it’s that they’re getting stronger and stronger – and at a very rapid pace.

So what is actually going on in this market? Just how are three brands succeeding in becoming so dominant in the search market?

Big three making big gains

We conducted our last analysis of the sports betting market in October, and even in this short period, we are seeing Oddschecker, Paddy Power and Sky Bet in particular make big gains in the organic search market.

Between October and December, the three are achieving almost 20,000 additional estimated clicks from organic search between them, with Sky Bet increasing their visibility by 8,539.

This is despite actually ranking for fewer keywords in the market. Sky Bet ranks for 60 fewer keywords in our analysis, with Oddschecker dropping rankings for 12 terms and Paddy Power for four. In fact, only three brands in our top 10, BookiesBonuses.com, The Jockey Club and Ladbrokes, have actually increased their keyword coverage during the course of the year. So what is at play here?

Looking at Sky Bet’s growth in visibility, we actually see that it is down to relatively small gains on big keywords, which are actually compensating for a loss of visibility on lower-volume terms.

The brand has doubled its visibility by moving from second to first for the term “bet”, and has also increased visibility notably with improved rankings for terms like “online betting” (sixth to third), “horseracing” betting (fourth to third) and “sports betting” (8th to third).

Bwin surges into the top 10 after historical underperformance in organic search

One notable riser in the rankings is bwin, which is generating 11,759 more clicks from organic search than it did back in October.

Looking deeper into this, it appears that bwin has seen a significant recovery for a number of key ranking terms in a very short period. Back in October, the brand ranked in position 91 for “bet” and position 88 for “betting”, but has surged into positions 10 and 13 respectively. Bwin now has 260 page one rankings in the sports betting market, compared to just 154 back in October.

There could be a number of reasons for this, but they would appear to be rooted in previous underperformance in organic search for the brand.

So how do bookmakers break the dominance?

Despite their loss of rankings for some keywords, the one area where the top brands do show their strength compared to the competition is keyword coverage and content.

The more content that brands can produce, and the better that they can optimise their landing pages, the more likely they are to rank for those important event, market and tournament-specific keywords that make up so much of this keyword set.

Paddy Power and Oddschecker are the two most visible brands in the market, and they are the only two brands that rank for more than 900 of our 988 keywords.

The lesson from Google isn’t changing, but Google may be rewarding those that heed its lessons about content, brand and user experience even more than it may have done.