Sports Sites Are Way Behind With Social Media And SEO

December 14, 2008 by Dave Freeman
Filed under Featured, social media

Wimbledon, The US Open, Roland Garros and the Australian Open

The sites mentioned above and their associated two week tennis tournaments probably have some of the highest technology budgets on this planet – this is shown through the top end features they have on their websites curiosity of IBM. What I ask myself when I visit these sites is “could they be doing more?” and the answer I always come up with is “yes”.

Why Do These Sites Not Have A Blog?

A blog would be a relatively simple addition to any of these sites and by doing so they could not only create some user interaction, but they could actually expand their user base by tracking player’s progress throughout the year. For example how many additional visits would the Wimbledon website get if they tracked and blogged about the progress of the top British tennis players like Andy Murray?

Even if we took the expansion side of things out of the question, having a blog for the two weeks of the actual tennis tournament would be fantastic and would give both tournament and the players to give their views and opinions. Would the blog be one of the most read blogs on the web for the two week period of the tournament – it most certainly would.

So Why Haven’t These Cutting Edge Websites Gone With Social Media Or SEO?

Is it because they do not have the resource to write the posts – well no, with the amount of media people and writers that decent on the tournaments for these two weeks there is definitely no shortage. So why then? This is only an opinion but when it comes to social media and SEO my feeling is, the people behind these websites are slightly stuck in the past and are not willing to accept that social media is becoming a big part of the web.

Currently a few of these sites are trying to go slightly social, with the US Open leading the way with its news section which includes user comments and social book marking buttons. Even taking this into account in terms of SEO, these sites are way behind – all you need to do is look at the page titles they are using.

The Big Football Sites Like Arsenal.com

Whilst some of these site are way ahead of the tennis sites in the fact that they actually have a blog and forum, with a lot of the sites is seems like these areas have almost been seen as an after thought! Taking the example of Arsenal.com the blog is just one very very long page with no means of leaving a comment other than email the writer. Again you have to ask why a site with a big budget has put so little thought into one of the fastest growing areas on the web. On the plus side some of the big football sites have made a much better attempt with their SEO than some other big sports sites.

The Way Forward

Just looking at these kinds of sites there is a massive opportunity presenting itself for the companies involved to embrace SEO and social media and then push their websites to new levels. If and when the site owners push ahead with SEO and the social media aspects such as blogging I can guarantee that their visitor base would increase and that the sites in question would receive many more page views. Not only this many of the site have a shop attached and as such it would be pretty likely that they would see and increase in online revenue.

Will Big Sports Websites Adopt SEO and Social Media

Who knows, all that is certain is the these sites definitely have the budget to make it happen, but if there is a lack of understanding in the respective companies then their sites will miss the boat and get left behind, and if that happens then they will have some serious catch up to do.

Share and Enjoy: