iGB Affiliate 69 June/July | Page 27

T RAF F I C M E XICO While Mexico is experiencing huge growth, particularly as a sportsbook market, there are a few quirks that should be kept in mind by those looking to expand in the country. Betting might be legal but many in the sector would agree that it only really started to professionalise in line with regulation in the past decade. In terms of the market opportunity, there are a number of factors at play. While internet connectivity is increasing all the time and mobile penetration has topped 90%, with smartphone adoption expected to hit 75% by 2020, this does lag behind other Latin American nations. Internet use is on the rise, particularly via mobile devices, but there has been slow take-up of broadband subscriptions, with single-digit annual growth being common. Mexico had an estimated 81 million mobile phone users in 2016. Opportunity in this sports-mad nation, therefore, is in capitalising on the mobile moment. A significant portion of the homegrown betting sector is focused on serving foreigners with higher disposable income, while a large number of Mexican fans chose to bet on international sites. It’s easy to see why: the popularity of the Spanish language, wide acceptance of Mexican players and potentially bigger wins due to lack of regulation all have a part to play. As the market grows and matures, we expect to see more firms – both homegrown and international – targeting Mexican players. BETTING CONTENDERS COMPARED Three of the top sites visited by Mexican users are Bumbet.com, Caliente.mx and Ganabet.mx, all focused primarily on football betting. From an SEO authority perspective, they don’t have jaw-dropping statistics. For context, Sky Bet in the UK has a citation flow of 61 and a trust flow of 58, while William Hill has a citation flow of 49 and a trust flow of 44. While Bumbet has a large amount of inbound links, Caliente actually has links from more than double the number of unique domains. Caliente also has the most page-one rankings for the terms apuestas deportivas México (sports betting Mexico) and fútbol apuestas México (football betting Mexico). In terms of visibility – a calculation made by taking into account the number of keywords ranked for, as well as the traffic associated with these keywords – Caliente again comes out in front. We tend to take SEMrush traffic projections with a pinch of salt but the monthly suggested figures shown in the table above again show Caliente doing very well in terms of monthly traffic drawn from Mexican users. MEXICO: SEO AUTHORITY OF LEADING SITES Root domain TLD Domain Majestic citation flow Domain Majestic trust flow Domain Majestic ext back links Domain Majestic ref domains Bumbet.com com 44 31 360,758 321 Caliente.mx mx 36 29 114,254 789 Ganabet.mx mx 25 10 4,546 52 MEXICO: KEYWORD RANK, TRAFFIC AND VISIBILITY OF LEADING SITES Root domain SEMrush organic keywords Search metrics visibility (desktop) Search metrics visibility (mobile) Domain Majestic ref domains Bumbet.com 84 93 7 6 Caliente.mx 1,140 252,182 2,048 1,890 Ganabet.mx 107 4,689 100 71 iGB Affiliate Issue 69 JUN/JUL 2018 23