Case study · Betting SEO
Building search visibility for a UK betting brand.
The brand's wider marketing activity generated substantial awareness and branded searches. My work focused on developing non-brand visibility and a useful library of search-led content alongside that activity.
The brief
The business wanted search to reach people who weren't already looking for its brand name. The brief covered competitive commercial terms and content answering questions from betting audiences.
Separating branded and non-brand searches helped us understand those different sources of traffic and assess the SEO work more clearly.
What I did
Regular reporting. Around 80 consecutive weekly reports helped track performance and identify technical issues, including removed pages without redirects.
Commercial search terms. The programme included terms such as “racing bets”, “football betting”, “first goalscorer odds” and “betting on horses”.
Guides and event content. Content covered events including Cheltenham and the World Cup, alongside odds information and betting guides.
The results
Over roughly seven months, the blog grew from 178 recorded traffic-driving keywords to 3,123, approximately 17 times its starting reach.
The monitored non-brand keyword set grew from around nine terms in the top 10 to a peak of 29. Number-one positions included “racing bets”, “first goalscorer odds”, “betting on horses” and “best first goalscorer odds”. “How to bet on horse racing” rose 35 places to eighth.
These figures describe the reporting period and tracked keyword sets. They don't imply that rankings remained at their peak afterwards.
What this project illustrates
Branded search and non-brand search both matter, but they answer different questions about performance. Reporting them separately made it easier to see how the content and commercial search work developed alongside the wider marketing activity.
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