How to increase visits to your personal sports website

Sports

For those athletes who are looking to gain an edge over their competitors by having a personal sports website, there are more opportunities to increase your profile and fan base by attracting more visitors to your website. A personal sports website should be thought of as a store: the more people you can bring to your door, the more likely someone will buy your product. Whether athletes are looking for sponsorship, a scholarship, training opportunities or increasing their fan base, it can be beneficial for them to spend some time attracting visitors to their site.

Increasing visits to a personal sports website can be accomplished in many ways. One of the most effective tools to help get the word out is a business card. A simple business card with the person’s name, sport (ie professional baseball player), website address, and email address should be given to as many people as possible. People are more likely to keep a business card and visit the website than that paper napkin with the website address written on it; it’s pretty obvious what creates a better impression. Professional looking business cards are not too expensive and can be designed and ordered online.

Promotional products are another great idea to attract visitors to a personal sports website. Many of the online business card companies offer cheap or sometimes free promotional products such as personalized calendars, pens, mugs, notepads, sticky notes, fridge magnets, greeting cards, etc. Whether ordered online, created at the local stationery store, or printed at home, calendars give athletes the opportunity to have their name and website address on someone’s desk or wall during 12 months.

Athletes who have their own personal sports website realize the important role the Internet plays in today’s world. More and more people are socializing, shopping and searching online, presenting a great opportunity for athletes to drive traffic to their site. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are fun places to connect with new and old friends. Sports social networking sites are becoming more and more popular and must be searched through search engines. Through social media, athletes can inform others about their goals and, most importantly, invite visitors to their site.

Free advertising for a personal sports website can be achieved through active participation in blogs and forum websites. Athletes should use search engines to find the most popular blogs and forum websites in their chosen sports and register with them if possible. Many blogging websites allow anyone to post a blog, and virtually all forum websites allow people to participate. Athletes must think about their experiences and knowledge of their game to create interesting content for a blog. There is usually a place in your article to describe yourself and insert a link to your website. The more people read your blog, the better chance you have of getting readers to visit your site. Active participation in forums also helps to increase awareness of a person’s sports website and increase visits.

Many people may have heard the term SEO when reading about the increase in visits to a website. Search engine optimization is a process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website through natural search engine results for certain keywords. This can be a very complex and expensive process; However, a sportsman must ensure that his website contains at least his chosen keywords and that search engine bots can read the text content of his website. Search engine bots search websites for words entered into their search engines and will list all websites containing those words when someone searches for them. Those who have personal sports websites need to think about the type of keywords or phrases that could attract their target audience to their site. Obvious keywords or phrases include the athlete’s name, sport, major achievements (ie “2006 World Tennis Champion”), town, city, country, and certain goals (ie “Tennis Classes”). tennis” for someone looking to win more customers). With so many other websites available today, it is extremely difficult to drive traffic to a personal sports website from search engines unless people are looking for a specific person’s name; however, basic SEO should always be considered.

Of course, once athletes have driven traffic to their sites, the next most important thing is to entice people to come back. This is where it is important to update the content of the site regularly. Certain text, such as achievements and goals, will generally remain the same; however, text related to the latest news or schedule should be updated regularly to prevent visitors from returning to the site just to see the same old information. Another tip to attract return visitors is to add words like “Check back on my site next week when I update you on my recent experiences playing event XYZ in some city.” The date of the last update is also something to take into account.

With a little time and effort, athletes can take a step closer to achieving their career goals by having a personal sports website that attracts and retains repeat visitors. Athletes need to set their target audience based on their goals and decide the most appropriate methods to attract visitors to their site. One particular visitor can make all the difference!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *