Ranking a sports betting affiliate for the most competitive terms in UK search

An eight-month programme of weekly player interviews with two retired Golden Boot-winning footballers pushed a sports betting affiliate to position one for terms including "betting sites" and "best betting sites" — sustaining that ranking through consistent link velocity of 60+ placements per month from national and regional press.

The challenge

Sports betting comparison is among the most contested verticals in UK search. The terms this client needed to rank for — "betting sites", "best betting sites" and related high-intent queries — are targeted by every major operator and affiliate with significant SEO budgets. Getting to page one wasn't the challenge. Staying there was.

Our approach

• Ran two Premier League tier player interviews every week — eight interviews per month — with two retired professional footballers, both former Golden Boot winners with genuine national name recognition. Additionally we added them as authors to the affiliate site that they could use on the blog articles we provided to improve authenticity.
• Shaped every interview around the current Premier League and Championship news cycle: upcoming fixtures, form, transfers and rumours — giving sports desks a timely, citable angle rather than a generic football opinion piece
• Pitched to national tabloids, regional football press and sports verticals simultaneously, targeting the publications whose sports editors would run a story from a name they already knew
• Mapped every placement back to the client's priority commercial pages with a deliberate anchor strategy, building link equity consistently toward the terms that mattered most
• Maintained the interview cadence without interruption across the full eight months, creating a steady, credible link velocity that reinforced rather than spiked the profile

The results

Over eight months the campaign built more than 60 editorial links per month from publications including the Metro, The Irish Sun, the Daily Record and the Liverpool Echo. The sustained link velocity pushed the site to position one for "betting sites" and "best betting sites" — two of the highest-value terms in UK sports betting search — and held it there. Average monthly site traffic across the campaign period was 60,000+ visits. The two-interview-per-week structure proved that consistent, newsworthy volume from credible players compounds in a way that periodic bursts of activity cannot replicate.

Example placements