SEO snapshot: Affiliate moves in the Big Apple

In a recent article, I compared the ‘big five’ newly licensed operators of New York’s betting landscape from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, but just as interesting are the affiliate brands which (for the moment at least) are picking up notable rankings.

It’s worth highlighting that the challenge for affiliates in the US market more generally isn’t necessarily to obtain rankings. Most operators, many with large teams and more-than-ample budgets, have shown a lot of SEO naïveté. Beyond this, there are good reasons why agencies like us get some wind in our sails if we learn we’re competing with a US SEO agency for a betting project.

Technically savvy, agile affiliates are therefore well-placed to pick up rankings, especially in pre- or newly regulated states. The challenge is how to maintain and grow those rankings, as well as earn new ones, once the clunking fist of operator marketing budgets finally gets allocated to SEO in joined-up ways and new bettors drift further towards well-known ‘name’ brands. That said, when looking at top rankings for key informational terms, it’s striking just how well affiliate brands are doing. As an example, the table here shows the top-ranked sites for the key phrase ‘new york betting’.

While this is a search term that lacks major betting ‘intent’, it’s still a highly competitive phrase that clearly many sites are fighting over — and in the top 19, the top ranked sites are all affiliates, with a couple of major news/editorial sites sprinkled in alongside an operator.

Of course, as bettors (and potential bettors) become more familiar with the legalities of betting, available sportsbooks/casinos, and how to bet more generally, interest in such broad keywords may diminish. For now, though, it’s clear that many affiliates are doing a good job at filling the information gap, even if they will likely need to pivot to other strategies as bettors become more informed. It’s this agility and SEO-thinking that means that even in such a complex and competitive market — or series of markets, to be more accurate — there will be further opportunities for affiliates to monetize and send slower-moving operators the traffic they crave.

Looking at the third and fourth columns of the table, there’s further evidence that these rankings are not accidental, with clear evidence of purposeful, off-site SEO and link acquisition strategies in place to boost site authority and give (often exhaustive) content the best chance to rank.

Big business

These are not all plucky underdog affiliates battling it out for SEO supremacy. Brands like Catena Media (owner of LegalSportsReport.com), Gambling.com (owner of Empirestakes.com), and Better Collective (owner of ActionNetwork.com) are pretty big beasts and behind some of the most important informational sites in New York and beyond.

However, when comparing the resources of these brands with Caesars ($2.6bn revenue), FanDuel ($2bn revenue), BetMGM ($1.3bn revenue) and the like, it’s a world of difference. While these larger affiliate brands count their revenue in the tens/hundreds of millions and can do some pretty creative things with brand ambassadors and media deals, there’s a reason why purposeful SEO and optimized content remains the core discipline for traffic generation.

It’s also the area where much smaller, niche affiliates have greatest scope to carve out rankings, traffic, and profit — but it’s an ongoing battle. Looking at a broader spread of shared keywords, we can see how some of the most notable names targeting the New York market are faring in terms of ranking positions based on a shared set of keywords.

Once again, we can see that LegalSportsReport is the beneficiary of a content-rich approach to SEO that really leans into anticipating and responding to the key questions that new and potential bettors have about the market.Of course, this is just snapshot data but it does show just some of the terms that affiliate brands are coalescing around. But, as the legal questions start to fall away and online betting becomes further normalized, we can expect competition for more action-oriented key terms to grow in prominence.

In this regard, our snapshot analysis suggests that Gambling.com’s Empire-Stakes is looking furthest ahead. As we can see, although it does rank for important informational queries, it has more top rankings around ‘intent’-oriented keywords like ‘sports betting app new york’, ‘new york online casino’, and ‘ny casino apps’ than its competitors.

In terms of the right strategy for future growth, affiliate brands will have to strike the right balance between informational, trust-building rankings, and conversion-oriented keywords that show strong betting intent. In both cases, the route to success is heavily based firstly on significant quality and quantity of content — an approach few operators currently adopt, in part due to platform limitations but also due to being comparatively less SEO-savvy.

Secondly, there are clear, deliberate, sustained, and sustainable approaches to link acquisition at play which, in the hyper-competitive world of affiliate marketing, means a spread of off-site SEO methodologies. Well-seasoned affiliate groups like Catena, Better Collective, and Gambling.com are experienced in putting the right mix of onsite and offsite SEO methodologies together, but smaller affiliates need to be mindful not to over-optimize or spin their wheels through ‘fatal half-measures’.

There’s still plenty of opportunity to capitalize in markets like New York but it’s notable that current top performers have deep roots and an unambiguous focus on all aspects of SEO. To succeed in this and other markets, affiliates will need to take an objective view of where the market is going and where they can win as search trends adapt in line with the maturing audience of bettors.