SEO Tracker: Oddschecker leads the football betting market as England’s Euros performance boosts sector

After a hectic month of football where Lionel Messi finally got his hands on the Copa América and football nearly came home, it is a familiar face at the top of the organic search rankings in the football betting market as a new season looms.

While oddschecker has continued to dominate searches for football betting, closest rival Paddy Power has lost ground over the last 12 months as the chasing pack behind the long-term market leaders has condensed.

The keyword market has seen more than 23% growth in search volume year-on-year, rising from 121,030 to 149,230 estimated searches, with that growth in search activity seemingly being spread across the industry, rather than disproportionately benefiting the leading brands.

Oddschecker holds firm as Paddy Power falls back

As was the case in June 2020, as we prepared for the 2020/21 season, it is oddschecker that leads the way in the organic search rankings both in terms of the number of ranking keywords and visibility, with the brand receiving an estimated 15,823 more monthly clicks than Paddy Power.

Ranking in first position for 159 individual terms, including high volume keywords such as ‘premier league odds’, ‘champions league odds’ and ‘premier league relegation odds’, has given the brand a seemingly unassailable lead at the top of the search rankings. Positioned as an impartial and reliable source of betting information and price comparison, it is no surprise that oddschecker continues to perform well across the board for search terms.

This domination of the market comes even though the brand hasn’t seen as much of the benefit from the overall market growth as some of their competitors in the search results, seeing a small increase in visibility from 25,585 to 26,167.

Once again, Paddy Power finds itself as the leading bookmaker for football betting, but has experienced a fall in overall visibility from 14,439 to 10,344 year-on-year. As a result of this, the chasing pack of bookmakers, including Betfair and Sky Bet (both, along with oddschecker, Flutter Group stablemates) and William Hill have closed the gap, with all three increasing their visibility within the market.

Paddy Power is the only brand out of the 10 most visible in the sector that have seen organic non-brand traffic fall over the past year, with a large factor in this the loss of a number of first position rankings, including high-volume keywords such as ‘football betting’ and ‘football odds’. Betfair now ranks top for both of these terms, and they are among the 30 first position terms that Paddy Power has lost.

Affiliate sites gain trust across the board

Oddschecker’s continued success appears to be an indication of the wider market sentiment, with affiliates and odds comparison sites growing in visibility.

Since we looked at the market 12 months ago, both Just Bookies and Betting Odds have broken into the 10 most visible sites in the niche, edging ahead of operator brands including Ladbrokes, bwin and Betway. Both of these sites rank highly for terms relating to betting in the lower leagues in particular, where competition for the terms is lower but where, cumulatively, significant search volume can be found.

European Championships spark search frenzy

While football didn’t quite come home, bookmakers still benefited from the wave of national optimism brought about by England’s run to the final.

Although the market was already growing in the year prior to the Euros, it did receive a notable boost during the tournament, most clearly demonstrated by the fact that searches for ‘football betting’ peaked on the day of the final, reaching its highest search volume since February.

Will England’s promising performance translate into more “patriotic punts” ahead of Qatar 2022? We won’t have to wait as long as usual to find out.