The 3-step Guide to SEO for Busy Athletic Directors
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making specific tweaks to the words and structure of your website in order to help it rank higher in Google search results. It’s a long and complex process, but it’s critical to getting your site found online.
Luckily, VNN has put together a handy dandy cheatsheet of some things you can do right now to make a big improvement to your SEO.
1. Titles:
Use your school name and the name of the sport in the title of your article.
Example: “Forest Hills Northern football takes down Grand Rapids Christian” is a great, search-engine-friendly title to an article. Search engines don’t know that you’re writing directly for your school, so you need to write your titles like you’re writing for a worldwide audience if you want Google to find your story. (Exception: Don’t force it where it doesn’t fit. If you write like a robot you risk losing your human audience.)
2. Tags:
Use tags religiously, but keep them short.
Example: “Volleyball” is a good tag. “East Kentwood Volleyball” is a bad tag. Names are also great tags, so “Betsy Smith” works too. Search engines look to the tags to properly index your article, so be sure that you’re using them (hint: they’re on the right side of the screen when you write an article).
3. Links:
Link your district website to your VNN site.
Example: When you click “Athletics” on your district website, it should go directly to your VNN website via what’s called a “301 Redirect” (ask your tech department). Search engines transfer clout from one website to the next via links, so having multiple sites link to one another helps raise the search engine love for all sites.
Follow the three steps above, and watch as the traffic to your site increases.
About the Simple Sports Marketing series
Varsity News Network helps clients successfully market their athletic departments online. There is a ton you can do, but there are only 24 hours in a day. The Simple Sports Marketing series makes it easy to prioritize what you do with the time you do have, to help you get the most bang for your buck.
If you’re not proactively marketing your athletic program through VNN, what are you waiting for? Learn more
