The Q1 2023 benchmarking report for UK online betting companies has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK online betting companies perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2023 benchmarking report for UK Online betting companies has just been published.  It covers the largest 12 national online betting companies, including Paddy Power, William Hill, 888 Sport, Coral, Bet365, BetVictor, Boyle Sports, Betfair, Betfred, Betway, Sky Bet and Ladbrokes.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest marketing share online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for online betting brands to win brand awareness, online bets, and digital growth. The report highlights quick wins that will improve the performance from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each brand based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.  

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing.  Given the cost per click on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Technical Website Compliance

Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance.

We noted that online betting companies generally are very strong when it comes to avoiding website errors, particularly when compared to other sectors we have reviewed. However, Boyle Sports and William Hill’s significant 383 and 371 4xx errors when crawling their website make them an unfortunate anomaly, as we pointed out in Q3! Both Boyle Sports and William Hill must ensure that users are not being directed to dead ends on their sites, which could lead to them turning elsewhere out of frustration.

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates.

In our research, we discovered that three of the twelve online betting companies in our report achieved an ‘okay’ score of 50-89, which was an increase to the one we saw in Q3. The other nine were all below 49, indicating that all these brands have some serious work to do on improving their mobile page speed.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads.

Domain authority is considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. ‘Good’ DA score depends on the competition level of the industry. However, a ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing. In our research, UK online betting companies saw their domain authorities range from an excellent score of 85 to a score of 69. These are higher than most DAs we see across the board, however, all twelve companies can still focus on building a stronger backlink profile to ensure their DA stays at this level.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions.

Continuous improvement and optimisation are also needed to secure traffic year after year. We found that seven out of the twelve online betting companies have achieved year on year growth in mobile traffic. Ladbrokes saw a 88% increase in mobile traffic in the last year, while Betway lost 37% of mobile traffic.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings.

Image pack seem to be the most popular universal search result UK online betting companies are optimising for, with Paddy Power achieving 8,200 image pack results (the most of all the brands). However, online betting companies generally appear to be underusing any universal search opportunities, with most appearances clocking into the hundreds, rather than thousands.

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for brand-new search terms as they enter Google’s index.

Though BetVictor are ranking for 14,339 long-tailed keywords overall, nearly all of these are ranking outside the top 20, with none in the top 3 positions. BetVictor should be looking at how to improve their rankings on existing long-tailed keywords, but also at how they can expand their strategy to include new specific search terms.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019.

Below, we can see examples of Paddy Power’s Facebook ads. They’ve used bold, strong, creative to capture the attention of users, including famous players and the odds to win in large, eye-catching font.

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time.

With online betting companies offering a range of different odds, sports and events, there should be a wide variety of content opportunities for these brands to jump on. However, while some of these brands are showing a consistent content output, Bet365 are lagging behind when it comes to content production. This is a missed opportunity for these brands, who could be sharing content, getting involved in social media crazes, and sharing information about special offers.

Website Readability & Accessibility

20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere.

Compared to many sectors we have reviewed, online betting companies appear to have been struggling with accessibility within sites with higher errors than we typically see. Brands which are still seeing errors, such as 888 Sport’s 42 contrast errors should still be reviewing and optimising their accessibility.

Q1 2023 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 online betting companies on, check out our quick-look table below;

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2023 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash