With legalised sports betting sweeping across the United States and more and more countries globally regulating the sector, Sports Betting SEO has never been more important.
SEO in 2025 is quite a bit different to SEO in 2010. This applies to sports betting sites. A large number of on-page and off-page variables contribute to your SEO rank.
However, many sports betting sites fail with their onsite SEO. This is the foundation of your SEO strategy. It must be considered “revenue critical” and be prioritised if you are to become a market-leading betting site.
Here are some of the important points that you should make sure you have covered.
Technical SEO is The Key Foundation To Sports Betting SEO
The platform used by the operators is the most important item for SEO. Yes, you can optimise off-page SEO and drop a WordPress site on top of your “functional” betting site but this is not ideal. The core reason is conversion and leveraging true long-tail betting terms.
As a result, the gold standard is to ensure your odds/market feed, page structure, titles and meta descriptions as well as on-page content are tied together on functional SEO-focused pages.
These need to load fast and provide a great user experience.
On top of this, you should also put your business hat on and ensure that conversion from both new customers (registration/FTD) and returning customers (bet/deposit) are optimised.
Essentially, your betting platform could be a significant inhibitor of SEO performance, or if set up correctly, a key competitive advantage.
Common SEO Mistakes made by Sports Betting Sites
- urls are not “readable” – The urls look like yoursportsbettingsite.com#ui=204524524524534535&hu=23423423452523452345 when they should be yoursportsbettingsite.com/basketball-betting
- One title tag and meta description for all pages. Yes, a surprisingly high number of betting sites do not have proper titles and meta descriptions.
- No structured data is built into the CMS template. Much of the page content on sports betting sites is feed based. This can be turned into structured data which will help get rich snippets featuring upcoming fixtures etc.
- No Brand or PR. In this day and age, most links to your site will come from affiliates. However, most well-run sites will have similar affiliate link profiles (yes I know they are “no follow” links but with brand mentions etc. and given the sector profile your affiliate footprint does affect SEO). The key difference is your brand and pr. This can differentiate you through brand ranking signals. Basically, you want to get more people searching your brand term. This will give Google confidence to rank you higher on generic searches.
- UX issues – This is a major issue. People have a low tolerance for poor UX in the betting sector. They will pogo stick back to SERPs if your UX is not up to scratch. Also, core web vitals is crucial for SEO in the sports betting sector.
- Too many subdomains. This is another common issue. With multiple providers across sports and casino products quite often each product is siloed in its own ecosystem which sit on separate subdomains. This is bad for SEO.
- Unattractive pricing – Yes your trading department can impact SEO. Better prices mean a longer time on site which is a UX signal for google. Bad prices mean quick bounce backs to the search engine which is really bad for SEO.
- Product – If you don’t have a good product SEO will be difficult as user metrics will suffer. More and more user metrics will become the most important part of technical SEO. In summary, optimise your user metrics and Google (and other search engines) will notice.
SEO Approach – Online Sports Betting Sites
There first thing you need to do is answer the two questions below. Clarity on both answers is key to successful SEO (and marketing as a whole).
Define your brand – how are you positioned?
What is your content strategy?
Generally, there are six distinct areas for sports betting SEO.
- Market Pages
- Event/Tournament Pages
- Sport Pages
- Betting Education Pages
- Free Bet/Promo Pages
- Blog/News Event Preview Pages
SEO Sports Betting for Market Pages
These are pages that contain specific betting markets such as first goalscorer or over-under markets.
Typically these contain content from a feed with teams/competitors and odds.
Opportunity:
Include specific text 200+ words relating specifically to the two teams (in the case of a 1 X 2 market).
Structured data of the market.
Ensure that odds are included in the title and description. Example: Page Title: Liverpool v Man City First Goalscorer Odds.
SEO Sports Betting for Tournament Pages
World Cups, Premier Leagues, Cheltenham, The Super Bowl, The Stanley Cup, NBA Championship and Conference Championships are all tournament pages.
These pages should include popular markets or races in a prominent position.
Also, structured data for “events” should be used.
Essentially these are a level up the hierarchy than market pages. So, a similar approach is required.
Opportunity:
Include specific text 1200+ words relating specifically to the tournament/event.
Structured data for key races/fixtures.
Ensure that odds are included in the title and description. Example: Page Title: Premier League Odds – Current Round of Games.
SEO for Sport Pages
Sport pages and a level up from events. The approach to these can vary but generally, we would suggest you include relevant events and a description of top markets. These should involve an FAQ component that can be included in structured data.
Opportunity:
Include specific text 12+ words relating to betting on the sport in question.
Structured data for key races/fixtures.
Ensure that betting is included in the title and description. Example: Page Title: Football Betting – Live Betting Great Odds.
SEO for Betting Educational Pages
A number of sports betting sites have been very successful in ranking for educational style pages. For example, Asian Handicap Football Betting.
The page should include FAQ structured data along with detailed information on what the market is and how to bet.
Internal links should also be used.
Opportunity:
Include specific text 1200+ words relating to betting on the sport in question.
Structured data for FAQ.
Ensure that the title and meta description are correct.
SEO for Free Bet/Promo Pages
Now, this is one to think about. Do you want to rank for free bet terms?
Talk to BI and Trading and see if they do. Ranking for these terms could actually cost the business. So there are two options. However, remember the matched betting sites will find you anyway.
1) Rank as normal
2) No index (I am serious)
If you opt to rank as normal then include “offer” structured data on the page.
Like “Betting Education” pages you need to have a substantial amount of content.
As a result, we recommend including offer terms and conditions on the page as well. UK sites have to do this anyway as UKGC requirements.
Note: For jurisdictions like New York and South Africa where you must run offers through the commission as well as Ontario (Canada) that doesn’t allow advertising offers on third-party sites.
SEO of Blog/News Preview Pages
We recommend using WordPress and Yoast (or similar SEO plugins) for this. Quality of content for this is key and the social reach of authors can make a difference.
So, if the preview is good you may get backlinks.
Increasing interaction is key. A great way to do this is to include interactive banners and contextual widgets within your post. These will provide up-to-date odds and the ability to easily place a bet on a relevant market.
If you post regularly, consider leveraging Google News.
Also, embedding videos and tagging the page with the correct Schema.org structured data can help with search results.
Google Publisher Center has been deprecated so you can’t submit and manage your news site through that anymore. Instead you must signal to Google that your news/blog site should be included on Google News. Again, proper formatting and structured data can help.
Changes to Sports Betting SEO – What You Should Understand
In an article on upcoming changes to Sports Betting SEO we covered some key changes in the pipeline that you should be aware off and outline how it could impact both Operators and Affiliates.
AI will change how results are displayed with early tests by Google posing some interesting strategic questions for search engine optimisation within the sector.
Differences – Sports Betting SEO and Online Casino SEO
- Sports Betting includes ever-changing events and betting markets while Casino is more static and relates to game availability onsite.
- Hub pages are used for evergreen sports content with time-specific market pages while most casino content is evergreen.
- Head terms dominate both but longtail in sports requires smart use of “market pages” and google news functions with sports articles while casino focuses mostly on slot games and niche games.
All in all, sports betting and casino technical while both adhering to SEO best practice have their own quirks. However, the core technical SEO philosophy remains the same.
Relevant content for target search terms that are:
- Easy to Index
- Easy to Understand
- Easy to Use
SEO on the Edge for Sports Betting Sites
SEO on the edge can help JavaScript client side rendered sites across a number of SEO metrics.
They are as follows:
- Core Web Vitals – CLS, LCP and INP issues can be resolved by rendering on a CDN.
- Text and SEO friendly content can be added to a modified page on the CDN. This can get around platform issues.
- Perform SEO tests and experiments.
Conclusion – SEO Sports Betting
We have only scratched the surface. The following topics deserve articles in their own right.
- International SEO for different territories.
- Leveraging sponsorships and outreach for brand mentions and links.
- SEO automation and AI.
However, the core focus. Step one of the program is onsite SEO. Get this right and you will be well on the way of increasing traffic.
Remember, the ROI of an SEO program for Sports Betting is massive. Especially if you can cross-sell to Casino (outside Germany).
Start measuring the value of traffic on two criteria.
a) The value of customers acquired
b) The saving SEO has delivered versus Paid Search
All in all, you should prioritise SEO above most other development requirements. With the high cost of paid search keywords in regulated jurisdictions, you can build a solid case for SEO investment within the sports betting space.
