Youth sports programs have been facing challenges in recent years. The number of participation among youth athletes has been decreasing, the cost of running sports has been increasing, and a rise in the number of programs has increased. All three challenges have been affecting sport programs tremendously and have led to changes that need to occur. Before social media, the key factor to running a good program was flyers and word of mouth; however, this is not the case anymore. Being ranked at the top of google when someone types “youth sports near me” is crucial for success. The article, Sports Connect SEO, talks about key simple ways to help someone improve the SEO for their website.
The first way to improve the SEO is the emphasis on high quality content and key words on your website. When deciding on a key word it is important that it is relevant to your program and allows for google to easily understand what your organization offers so it can help you appear in relevant search results. An emphasis they make in the article is to only use the keyword four – six times allowing for higher quality than quantity. In addition to having keywords, including supplemental keywords to the website is beneficial. These processes should be incorporated in all pages on your site.
The second way to improve SEO is the emphasis on quality and fresh content. Incorporating photos, blog posts, downloaded links, and other forms of content allows higher quality content which leads to being ranked higher. Although most local youth programs are run by volunteers, regularly updating the website allows it to stay fresh in the eyes of Google. This process does not need to be daily or weekly, however, having new or updated content close to every month allows for you to rank better.
The third way to improve SEO is purchasing a good domain for the website. They recommend buying from Godaddy.com to help give your program a unique domain. This will allow you to differentiate yourself from competitors and allow more traffic on the website which improves the ranking.
Overall, this article discusses three key ways youth programs can improve and adapt to the era of advertising and marketing. Incorporating these three simple components to your website will allow for you to rank higher, more visibility, and more traffic which can lead to more signups for your program.
Link to Article: https://sportsconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Sports_Connect_SEO_
3 Responses
I think this was really well written! I can see how things have changed in youth sports even within my own life. When I was younger everybody and every kid was in a sport what seemed to be at all times. I have two little sisters that are 13 and they don’t do nearly as much and neither do their friends and our parents are always saying that they don’t know where to look to get them started with things. I think youth sports need to do a better job at broadcasting things online since they aren’t handing out flyers anymore and almost just expecting parents and kids to know.
I enjoyed your blog and it was very informative of the multiple different ways that you can enhance your website’s SEO. When you mentioned the use of keywords within your website and how using them with higher repetition in order to have those keywords, it reminded me of digital marketing. Also, that you need to be careful with those keywords so that it does not flag as being unethical such as making the word font white with a white background to try and hide the number of times you use that word on your page. I also liked your point about how this digital age is shifting away from the hard copy fliers and there needs to be an enhancement in sports websites if they wish to thrive and grow in their area.
I like that you brought to attention the effect of SEO and the digital age on local sports. It is important to adjust quickly to improve visibility on the youth sport programs. I like that you showed us three different ways to approach the problem and different strategies to fix it. Marketing and advertising goes a long way in bringing the community together, and when things such as sports programs go unnoticed, it can be rough on the local youth. Great job!