How to rank games preview/odds articles

[smartuner]

Hey everyone

So I finally launched my sports betting site and published my first game preview article this morning. It is related to the opening game of the German second league which is going to be played tonight.

So after I published it I "fetched" it by Google in the Webmaster Tools. 5 minutes after this it was already hitting 8th position on Google for the term Team1 vs. Team2 odds.

While I am quite happy about this I guess beeing on position 8 is not enough to receive decent traffic from it.
My question now is what in your experience are the main ranking factors to get these kind of preview articles on top of Google.

Is it the general backlinking and history of the root domain or do you also try to build backlinks to these posts. Or is there anything else I might be missing.

Also how many words do you usually write in these preview to rank. And what keyword density and h1/h2/h3 and title structure do you recommend.

Apologies in advance if my question sounds stupid but thats the first time I try to rank a match preview article.

[wonderpunter]

A lot of people think they are doing well because they rank for one good keyword.. the trick is to rank for 200 different variants.. then you are getting traffic.. so you might be 8th for that straight keyword but some people use shorter words, abbreviations.. mis spellings. slang etc.. once you rank for all these expect to get heaps of traffic

[PromoteCasino]

Well done on achieving first page for a keyword. Be aware I have had many keywords show up on first page only to drop off after a day or so. Google likes fresh quality content on a regular basis. This is something we are ourselves looking into over the next week. Best of luck with your site and let us konw your url when you are able to

[Rostick]

Good job to get started!

But, sorry to burst your bubble, it does not mean that much. I am in positions 1-5 on google for most of the previews I write (1-8 per day) under keywords x - y betting preview, x-y betting tips, x-y tips and I`m not exactly breaking the bank. Traffic is decent, but conversions are not. These type of hits, from "x-y tips/odds/whatever" are the lowest converting searches in the affiliate gambling industry.

So, as wonderpunter said, you have a lot of work ahead of you and you need to rank for other keywords aside for your previews.

But, to answer your question specifically

- you should not need backlinks to the previews. usual social media links maybe help (google +, facebook, twitter). Of course backlinks would likely help (depends how much time between preview and the game), but it would be impossible to get fast backlinks for daily previews.

- domain authority is very important (root domain backlinking, age, keyword structure, etc.)

- title and keywords are the most important (if you use wordpress, obviously you should get a SEO tool and insert title, keywords, description for every preview. I use all in one seo pack). H1 or H2 titles. But I don`t mean keyword stuffing.

- sitemap helps

- maybe try to use the date in the title

- conclusion at the end of the tip with Bold on keywords (ex: Tip - x win, Odds - 1.10, Bookie ....)

If you are ranking 8th now, it`s a good sign, you should rank better as you keep writing and pile up articles on the website and improve website ranking.

[Rick Perry]

Like Rostic says - if you use wordpress, everything is much easier to optimize. Try plugin Yoast SEO or Easy WP SEO, it will learn you a lot! And yes, domain authority is very important as well..