Is our sector too regulated for content marketing to work?
Betting compliance is about as regulated as a category gets, and it worked there. Starting from zeroed metrics in May 2024, 21 terms reached position zero on Google in under nine months and another 18 landed on the first page, while click-through rate climbed from 1.1% to a 5.4% average. The client is not named on this page.
The situation
The client is a one-stop compliance provider for betting houses: KYC, verifying who is actually placing the bet, and geolocation. The client's name stays out of this page, which is part of the agreement.
The site already had content published. The metrics were still at zero. And the subject is one where being wrong is not a copy problem. It is a compliance problem.
What we did
We started by learning the field: how KYC and geolocation actually work in practice, what competitors were already saying, and what the sector's rules do and do not allow you to claim. Only then did anyone write.
- Mapping the searches around KYC, geolocation and safety in online betting
- Content written as a direct answer to the question, the format that earns position zero
- On-page technical work: heading hierarchy, structure, readability
- Building a custom CMS integrated with a CDN, for performance and protection of the site's data traffic
- Link building and PR to grow domain authority
- Monthly review of CTR, impressions and average position
The content line
The sector's compliance rules keep the full list of the 21 terms private. These are examples of the content line built for the project, in the same family of searches:
- Fastest KYC in Brazil · Best KYC in Brazil · Best KYC for iGaming
- Geolocation for iGaming · Geolocation monitoring · Geolocation for sports betting
- Documents needed to bet online · Is betting online safe · Identity verification for betting
- KYC for betting houses · Online identity verification · Anti-fraud for iGaming
- Document validation for sports betting · Compliance for iGaming in Brazil
The numbers
| What we measured | Result | Window | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terms at position zero on Google | 21 | Under 9 months | Project case study |
| Additional terms on the first page | 18 | Under 9 months | Project case study |
| Search impressions accumulated, from zero | 418K | May 2024 – Jan 2025 | Google Search Console |
| Clicks accumulated | 22.5K | May 2024 – Jan 2025 | Google Search Console |
| Click-through rate | 1.1% → 5.4% | First month → window average | Google Search Console |
| Average position at close | 7.4 | Jan 2025 | Google Search Console |
What happened
In under nine months, 21 terms in the sector reached position zero on Google, the featured answer that feeds the AI Overview and that the models read first, and another 18 landed on the first page. Impressions went from nothing to 418,000, and click-through rate climbed from 1.1% in the first month to a 5.4% average over the window.
Position zero is not a vanity ranking. It is the block the AI Overview quotes, which makes it the cheapest route from a search result to being the answer a model gives.
The figures above cover the window we ran the project. We open the detail in a meeting.
