The challenge

America’s Favorite sportsbook, BetUS, came to Rise at Seven with a mission.

It started with an audit of the site and recommendations from our technical SEO team, leading to a full-service contract and partnership to help them scale their organic traffic.

They hired us for SEO, content, and link building through Digital PR, and it took off from there.

As a relatively new website split between Sportsbook and Casino, they approached us to help scale their organic traffic in an effort to compete with industry giants like FanDuel and DraftKings. At the time, they were averaging 240K monthly visits, and we proposed a strategy aimed at doubling that within 12 months.

BetUS already had links pointing to their website, providing a foundation for their rankings, but many of them were low quality. In order to compete with the big players, they needed high-quality, high-traffic links from reputable publishers across the web. We used a digital PR approach, creating stories that large news sites such as the New York Post, LADbible, and more would talk about.

What we did

Located in Central America, our entire team flew out for a sunny week to collaborate closely with their SEO, social, and creative teams, as the brand was ready to go all in.

Focusing on key sporting events including NFL, NBA, MLB and more - we broke our strategy down targeting high value, high traffic keywords. We started with a huge SEO and content project coupled with building links on high authority press into money categories onsite. The site needed links in order to compete fast for such competitive keywords and see Google trust the site and drive rankings.

A breakdown of our process:

Technical SEO

The audit highlighted several technical issues, including a high number of 404s, anchor text, internal linking problems, and canonicalisation issues. Our technical SEO team collaborated with their internal team to provide expert recommendations and worked with developers to fix these issues. This involved cross-agency/client training, support, and collaboration.

Content

BetUS had over 24K pages, but only 1.6K ranked in positions 1-3, which is a low 7%. In comparison, FanDuel had 56K pages, significantly more than us, with 24,700 ranking in positions 1-3, equating to 44%. This led us to develop a two-part content strategy: optimising existing content and creating new pages, including FAQs, informational guides, and team- and sports-related content.

Digital PR/Link Building

We ran always-on reactive PR, jumping on sports news and trends to secure consistent links in high-authority media, alongside several monthly campaigns to drive brand awareness, acquire new links on different domains, and increase the followed link ratio.

Seven of these campaigns were data-led pieces focused on key sports and lifestyle topics, while five were larger, cross-channel campaigns incorporating creators and social media. These campaigns not only drove links to key categories and events but also boosted brand awareness and search interest. One standout example was our Wiener campaign.

Creative Campaign Example: The Wiener Campaign

In America, hot dogs are widely known as wieners, and they are the most popular food ordered in MLB, NBA, and NFL stadiums. Wiener content was trending on TikTok during games, with a huge focus on how BIG the wieners are!

So, in true Rise at Seven style, we asked: who’s got the biggest wiener? What stadium proudly serves the biggest wiener? We decided to find out.

To build links and awareness around MLB, we toured all 30 MLB stadiums in America, measuring wieners to create a ranking. Our audience went wild for it! Fans followed our journey as we toured stadiums, measuring wieners, and, of course, taste-testing them too. Hundreds of sports fans asked if they could help, so we made it official—we opened a job posting for an official Wiener Connoisseur!

This of course formed a story to send to the press in order to get links. We created a landing page to gain traction and promote to the media. This sat under the MLB section of the site in order to drive links, rankings and authority towards this category.

The results

As a result of our SEO, content, and link-building activities, BetUS has seen a 101% increase in visibility for Sportsbook-related terms and an 845% increase for Casino. This has equated to an additional 1.1 million monthly visits over the past 18 months. In August, we reported 1.5 million clicks, compared to 240K when we first started.

A year ago, we had 574 more queries ranking in positions 1 to 3 than in August 2023, and 1,337 more queries on page 1 over the same time period.

In just 18 months, we built 345 high-authority links on top-tier media, with an average of 80% being followed. Many of these links were targeted toward key sporting events in Sportsbook, based on high-traffic opportunities.

Wiener Campaign Results:

This campaign in particular spread widely, reaching over 650 million people. A total of 150 media publications, including NBC, Fox News, Daily Mail, Yahoo, and Timeout, covered the campaign, with 345 of them linking back to our site. Over 5,000 people applied to be the Wiener Connoisseur and one lucky person was chosen.

A massive 80% of the links to the site were followed links, passing SEO value to the MLB section. The domain authority of these links ranged from 98 to 35. The high quality of these links has significantly boosted MLB-related keywords, which now have an average ranking of 4, compared to 40 previously.

A poor backlink profile? Fixed it.

Overall website traffic has now surpassed FanDuel for the first time.

BetUS has signed a new deal with Rise at Seven to grow two other domains in their portfolio and run more social campaigns.