SEO Tracker: Oddschecker leads the market as football comes out of lockdown, although Paddy Power closes the gap

The football is back. Project Restart has kick-off, not only with the remainder of the Premier League but a new surge of activity in the football betting search market.

So just which brands are fighting for the top spots, and which ones have work to do to avoid the dogfight at the bottom of the search rankings?

Paddy Power closes the gap, but oddschecker still leads

For some time, we have commented that oddschecker is the leading brand in the sportsbook market and, in this analysis of 319 football-related keywords, the story is no different.

The brand has particularly benefitted from Google’s drive to increase the use of features such as featured snippets and it also benefits significantly from multiple listings for many keywords. The brand has more than 500 search results from the 319 keywords we analysed – giving it significant levels of search result real estate.

As a result, we estimate that the site generates around 25,585 from organic non-brand search, with 87.6% of that traffic coming from position one rankings. To put that figure into context, we estimate that the theoretical maximum level of traffic that any one brand could achieve from these keywords is 29,205 (based on ranking in position one for every keyword).

This comes from the fact that oddschecker, as a trusted and largely impartial source of content, is extremely adept at ranking for medium and long-tail event and competition-based keyword terms, as well as the higher-volume keywords that are much more competitive.

However, what we have seen is that Paddy Power, typically the leading bookmaking brand in this market, has closed the gap on oddschecker. Paddy Power is the only other brand in the sector to have more than 100% keyword coverage and it generates around 14,439 organic non-brand search visits.

Sky Bet is the next most-visible brand but is some way behind the leading two, with a visibility of 4,048.

Search activity picks up quickly after ‘Project Restart’, as Bundesliga enjoys a period in the limelight

The start of the lockdown invariably saw a reduction in activity around football betting terms but as quickly as the interest in football betting subsided, it has come back to increased levels as various leagues have come out of lockdown.

Interest from UK search users in betting on the German Bundesliga, the first major league to resume after European lockdown measures, reached their highest recorded level for more than five years in the week of 10-16 March, the week that the league returned to behind-closed-doors action, according to Google Trends.

The interest in the Bundesliga has subsided as it was joined by other major European leagues returning to action, with interest in the Premier League shooting up on the week of 14-20 June. The Premier League resumed with Aston Villa versus Sheffield United on 17 June.

While the Bundesliga certainly attracted UK punters during its period as the sole major football league on British television screens, the return of the Premier League allayed to the fact that Bayern Munich was able to wrap-up the league title within three weeks of the league restarting, saw it drop back down to its usual level.

Can bookmakers capitalise on the final weeks of Premier League action?

Understandably, the majority of sportsbook operators pulled back on marketing efforts in the absence of live sport. The challenge for those brands now is that they have a very short period in which to ramp-up activity for what is going to be a relentless period of televised football.

With every game until the end of the season now televised in the UK, including a proportion of games on free-to-air television, interest in football betting terms is likely to see new peaks. Television audiences for the first round of ‘Project Restart’ have suggested that the Premier League may well be reaching new audiences.

That could result in bookmakers resorting to more brand and  ‘above the line’ activity in order to capitalise on that trend, and it could also result in those brands that lack the organic visibility to turn to paid search as a way to quickly come to market.