Branded visibility and operator bonus rankings for a free bets affiliate

A single campaign built around one ex-Premier League footballer secured placements in Hull Live, the Liverpool Echo and the Sunderland Echo - pushing the client's homepage into the top five for their exact match branded keywords and lifting rankings across all operator bonus terms.

The challenge

Free bets and betting offers is a fiercely competitive niche where affiliates with exact match domains have a natural head start — but only if the domain authority backs it up. This client had the right domain but lacked the editorial links needed to make that advantage count. Their homepage wasn't ranking where it should for branded terms, and the operator bonus pages they depended on for revenue were buried behind better-linked competitors.

Our approach

• Secured a single interview with a well-known retired Premier League footballer with strong regional football ties — a player whose name carried genuine weight with sports desks in the north of England
• Shaped the interview around topical football content relevant to the player's career clubs and regional fanbase, making it a natural fit for regional football publications rather than a generic betting piece
• Targeted regional press with strong online presence and real sports audiences — Hull Live, the Liverpool Echo and the Sunderland Echo — publications whose editorial links carry authority and genuine referral traffic
• Pointed the placements at the client's homepage to reinforce the exact match domain signal and channel equity to the operator bonus pages that drove the most commercial value

The results

Three editorial placements in Hull Live, the Liverpool Echo and the Sunderland Echo were enough to move the needle where it mattered. The client's homepage climbed into the top five for their branded exact match domain keywords, and rankings improved across the full range of operator bonus terms they were targeting. A single well-placed campaign with the right player in the right publications proved more effective than volume outreach to lower-authority sites — and gave the client a clear model to scale from.

Example placements