sportsauthority.com seo analysis
DESCRIPTION
Third paper for Intro to Web Publishing.TRANSCRIPT
Rachel DeYoung, Aaron MefferdSearch Engine Optimization Assignment
November 19, 2015
SEO Analysis & Recommendations for SportsAuthority.com
1. Keyword Research- 3 Recommended Keywords
a. The 3 keywords/phrases I think will drive the most traffic:
1. Tennis racquets
2. Wilson tennis racquets
3. Head tennis racquets
b. Current rankings of my 3 keywords
2. Ranking of Recommended Keywords on SportsAuthority.com
Keyword Google Bing YahooTennis racquets 39 No NoWilson tennis racquets 23 No NoHead tennis racquets 20 No No
3. Ranking of Recommended Keywords on DicksSportingGoods.comKeyword Google Bing YahooTennis racquets 4 No NoWilson tennis racquets 16 No NoHead tennis racquets 9 No No
c. Explanation of my choices
1. Tennis racquet: This keyword was given to me by my client. My research on
these keyword phrase leads to believe that SportsAuthority.com has a lot work
to do in order to make its tennis racquet section optimized for search engines.
The benchmark for determining whether the tennis section of
SportAuthority.com is search engine optimized is to compare it to the tennis
section on DicksSportingGoods.com. Currently SportsAuthority.com sits at the
39th organic listing on Google, while DicksSportingGoods.com sits at 4th. The
keyphrase “tennis racquets” is considered a short keyphrase, which only makes
up about 30% of searches online. Most searches contain more than two words,
any less creates a keyphrase that is too generic. It is also important to find
keywords and keyphrases that are considered high traffic. These keywords and
keyphrases will drive more traffic to your site, which is the overall goal of SEO.
The keyphrase “tennis racquets” gets an average of 6,600 searches per month
according to Google Keyword Planner, which is considered fairly high traffic.
When the search term is entered into Google Trend there is a noticeable
downward trend in the search term. The search term peaked in July 2004 and
hit its low in October 2015.
Above- Google Trend showing the search query "Tennis Racquets"
2.Wilson tennis racquets: From studying SportsAuthority.com and Google Trends,
I have determined that “Wilson tennis racquets” would make a great keyphrase
for Sports Authority to focus on. Both “Wilson racquets” and “Wilson tennis
racquets” were listed on Google Trends as a related query for the keyphrase
“Tennis racquets”. I chose to use “Wilson tennis racquets” over “Wilson
racquets” because of the added benefits of having a long-tail keyphrase as
opposed to a short keyphrase. Long-tail keyphrases, keyphrases with more than
one or two words, make up 70% of all search engine queries online. There is a
downward trend in the search activity for the keyphrase “Wilson tennis
racquets”, just like the previous keyphrase “tennis racquets”. The search activity
for “Wilson tennis racquets” peaked in July 2004 and hit its low in October 2015.
Google Keyword Planner lists the keyphrase “Wilson tennis racquets” at having
an average of 1,000 searches per month on Google, which is higher than other
keyphrases that were considered such as “cheap tennis racquets” or “affordable
tennis racquets”. This high amount of searches per month puts this keyphrase
as a high volume keyphrase, meaning it will have the potential of bringing a
great deal traffic to the site. It is also important to note that the site content of
both SportAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com was a large factor in
determining the use of this keyphrase. The largest brand of tennis racquet
offered on both sites is Wilson brand tennis racquets. SportsAuthority.com
offers 46 Wilson brand tennis racquets, while DicksSportingGood.com offers 49
Wilson brand tennis racquets between their adult section and unstrung section.
DicksSportingGood.com also features Wilson as one of its top brands on its
tennis racquet categories section.
Above- Google Trends showing the search query "Wilson tennis racquets"
3.Head tennis racquets: I chose the keyphrase “Head tennis racquets” after
examining the content on SportsAuthority.com, DicksSportingGoods.com, and
Google Trends. From reviewing this content and various data, I was able to
determine that this is a relevant keyphrase that SportsAuthority.com should be
focusing on optimizing for search engines to appear higher, organically on
SERP’s. The keyphrase “Head tennis racquets” appeared on Google Trends as a
related search query for the keyphrase “tennis racquets”, along with the
phrases “head racquets” and “head tennis”. I chose “head tennis racquets” over
the other keyphrases because it is a long-tail keyphrase, meaning it specific and
used much more often than shorter keyphrases. There is a downward trend in
searches for the keyphrase “head tennis racquets” just like the two previous
keyphrases. The search activity for the keyphrase “head tennis racquets”
peaked in August 2004 and hit a low in October 2015. According to Google
Keyword Planner the keyphrase “head tennis racquets is considered a very high
volume keyphrase with its average searches per month at 5,400. I also
examined the site content of both SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGood.com and felt that it further cemented the idea that “Head
tennis racquets” is a keyphrase for SportAuthority.com to focus on when
optimizing its tennis racquet section. Sport’s Authority offers 36 Head brand
tennis racquets on its website, only surpassed by Wilson and Babolat by an
amount of 10 and 6, respectively. DicksSportingGoods.com offers 16 Head brand
tennis racquets in its adult section, and an additional 8 Head brand tennis
racquets in is unstrung section. The Babolat brand does not have as many
options as Head brand on DicksSportingGoods.com. When comparing the two
brand on Google Trends, it is very clear that Head is a far more popular brand
than Babolat, and that Head should be focused on as opposed to Babolat.
Above- Google Trends showing "Head tennis racquets"
2. Current Traffic
SportsAuthority.com Monthly Unique Visitors: 1,030,448
DicksSportingGoods.com Monthly Unique Visitors: 1,764,351
Analysis:
In an attempt to determine the current traffic being driven to SportsAuthority.com, I went to
Quantcast.com and plugged in the site. I found the average of six months, from the beginning of April to
the end of September. This is how I came up with 1,030,448 as an average number of monthly unique
visitors to the site. Looking at the monthly patterns (screenshot below),
I noticed a huge dive in the amount of monthly unique visitors in May 2015 where the number dropped
all the way down from 1,135,051 in April to 814,703. This may be because May is generally the last
month of school and not a lot of school sports are going on. The number of unique visitors immediately
went back up the following month, having been the highest number out of the six months I calculated.
This could be because June is typically the start of summer for most schools and also the start of new
sports seasons. After the month of June, numbers begin to drop, steadily at first, but going into
September there is quite a dramatic drop. This is strange because as fall begins, multiple sports seasons
get their start as well, yet SportsAuthority.com didn’t seem to benefit from that.
After I searched SportsAuthority.com’s information on Quantcast, I took the competing site
we’re using – DicksSportingGoods.com – and plugged that address into the site. Here I took the same
months that I previously used with SportsAuthority.com and found the average for
DicksSportingGoods.com. With 1,764,351 average unique monthly visitors, DicksSportingGoods.com is
averaging over 700,000 more unique visitors than SportsAuthority.com.
As shown in the screenshot above, DicksSportingGoods.com also had quite a dramatic increase in the
month of June. Probably for the same reason, with summer sports beginning, and likely more sales going
on within the site. Besides this month, DicksSportingGoods.com monthly visitors seems a little bit
steadier. In the three months after June, there was no more than 100,000 visitor difference between
them. Though when comparing the DicksSportingGoods.com chart with the SportsAuthority.com
infographic, it looks like the numbers look about the same, in the screenshot below with the comparison
of the two, it’s obvious that DicksSportingGoods.com is steadily above SportsAuthority.com when it
comes to unique visitors.
DicksSportingGoods.com: top line
SportsAuthority.com: bottom line
When looking at this screenshot, it makes even SportsAuthority.com’s highest months look like
nothing when compared to DicksSportingGoods.com. The dramatic increase in June I referred to when
looking at SportsAuthority.com’s chart earlier, which was 1,181,749 unique visitors is still 325,000 less
visitors than DicksSportingGoods.com’s lowest month of the six month period, which was 1,506,749.
This definitely shows that Dicks Sporting Goods is doing something right that Sports Authority obviously
isn’t doing yet.
After comparing both sites on Quantcast, I went to Compete.com and did the same thing as I did for
Quantcast, just to make sure that I would find the same patterns. Although the numbers differed, as
they will since Quantcast and Compete aren’t as accurate as using Google Analytics, I still found that
DicksSportingGoods.com was drastically more successful than SportsAuthority.com when it comes to
traffic and specifically unique monthly visitors.
3. Content Analysis
a. Overall Quality
a. SportsAuthority.com Score: 5/10
b. DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 8/10
Analysis:
Quality content has become the most important factor in determining where sites appear on
Google. This shift to a focus on quality content occurred in 2011 when Google updated its algorithm to
what is now known as Panda, named after Navneet Panda, the developer of the algorithm. The “Periodic
Table of SEO Success Factors”, a chart put out by Search Engine Land to help people understand how to
optimize their site, lists three important elements when determine the quality of a sites content; Quality
content, the robustness of the content, and the use of ads.
When examining the quality of the content for SportsAuthority.com it is important to examine
both the categories page showing all of the selection, and individual product pages themselves. I
navigated to the tennis racquets category by using the navigation at the top of the page, hovering over
the button “Golf/Racquet”, and clicking on the button “Racquets” under the Tennis section. The
category section features extensive navigation along the left side of the page. These option are used for
narrowing down the results of the page using factors such as brand, price range, color, racquet type,
racquet length, frame composition, swing type, string gauge, and if the racquet is on sale. Each item
shown on the categories page has the name of the product, an image of the racquet, a rating based on a
5 star system, price, and an indication of whether it’s available in stores or online. Users are also able to
sort the products using a drop down menu at the top of the page. Options for sorting include top sellers,
lowest price, highest price, and new arrivals. The information featured on the categories page is very
standard and is something you would see on most categories product pages.
Above- Screenshot of Sports Authority product page
I clicked on the product page for the Babolat
Pure Drive Wimbledon- Unstrung tennis racquet.
Above the fold the page features the product
name, price, rating, the ability to select color,
size, and quantity, as well as the availability of
the item in stores and online. All of this
information is very standard, and essentially
extension of the categories page. There is only
one photo of the product offered. It is a wide
shot showing the overall design of the racquet.
As the user scrolls down they are presented with a section labeled “Product Details”. This section
features descriptions and features taken right from the manufacturer’s website. This is a huge loss for
SportsAuthority.com as this is what would be considered thin content. Not only is the content not
original, it’s also very bland to start with. According to the “Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors” thin
content will give you a negative 2, demoting your listing. As the user scrolls further they are presented
with a “Product Recommendations” section which lists 5 related products. Below that is the “Product
Reviews” section which allow users to post reviews about the product being viewed. One important
thing to note about the “Product Reviews” section is that there is a verified buyers tag offered on
reviews. This means that the person who wrote that review purchased the product from
SportAuthority.com. This can help users feel as though the review is genuine because they know this
user actually purchased the product. And finally the last section on the product page is the “Ask a
Question” section. This section allows users to ask questions and communicate with each other, similar
to a forum. This is a great benefit for users looking to get real answers from people who have used the
product. I ran the webpage through a spell checking software and it was determined that there were
Above- The only image offered on the Sports Authority product page
four words misspelled on the product page. A simple thing like a misspelling can hurt the quality of the
content, and in turn hurt the listing of the site.
To check the consistency between product pages I chose another tennis racquet. This time I
chose Wilson Adult Pro Staff 97LS Tennis Racquet – Unstrung. This page features the same section as
before with the name, price, color, size, quantity, availability, product details, product
recommendations, product reviews, and the ask a question section. The first noticeable difference
between this product page and the last is that this page features multiple photos of the racquet. There
are four photos in total showing the wide design, as well as the curve above the handle and the area
that will be strung. The product details also features a uniquely written description, as opposed to one
pulled from the manufacturer’s website. I ran the webpage through spelling checking software and it
returned that there were no errors
The final product page I visited was for the WILSON Juice 100S Tennis Racquet. The items
featured on this product page are the same as the two previous product pages. This features three
product photos, the same as the previous Wilson production page. It also features uniquely written
content on the product description page.
The only ads featured on the categories page or the product page is a small ad in the top right
corner for a fitness app called Body Fit. It is a self-promotion as the app is offered by Sports Authority.
In order to give a fair comparison between SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com, I
made sure to compare the same products when looking at product pages. I navigated to the product
category page by using the navigation at the top of the homepage. I clicked on the “Team Sports”
button, then clicked on the “Tennis Racquets” button under the Tennis section. I was brought to a page
that features 8 categories dividing the products inducing adult racquets, unstrung racquets, by swing
type, 3-6 years old, 7-8 years old, 9-10 years old, 11+ years old, shop all junior racquets. This acts
similarly to the navigation on the SportsAuthority.com product category page that allows you to narrow
your results using various factors. Once one of these categories are selected users are brought to a page
showing a variety of tennis
racquets offered in that
category.
Left- Screenshot of Dick's Sporting Goods product page
The first product page
I examined was the Babolat
Pure Drive Wimbledon Tennis
Racquet. The product page for
this site features some
familiar sections including product name, price, rating system based on 5 stars, color, size, quantity,
production information, and customer reviews section. The first thing I noted when looking at the
product page is that there are 4 product photos showing off the product. SportsAuthority.com only had
one picture for this exact same racquet. The product information section also features a description that
is totally unique to Dick’s Sporting Goods. The description is written in a way that gives background
information on the racquets and highlights its perks. The production information section is also divided
into two sections: features and specs. This makes the product description section about twice as long as
the production description on SportsAuthority.com. It is worth noting that DicksSportingGoods.com
does not feature an “ask a question” section on the product pages like SportsAuthority.com.
DicksSportingGoods.com also does not show whether the product is available in store, as well as online.
Other than this missing section I would say that DicksSportingGoods.com has much higher quality
content than the production page on SportsAuthority.com.
The product pages for Wilson Pro Staff 97LS Tennis Racquet and Wilson Juice 100S Tennis
Racquet are more of the same featuring the product name, price, rating, color, size, quantity, images,
product information, customer reviews, and related products. Both feature product information
sections with original product descriptions as well as features and specs sections. The product page for
Wilson Pro Staff 97LS Tennis Racquet on DickSportingGoods.com only has one product image, while
SportsAuthority.com has three product photo. The product page for Wilson Juice 100S Tennis Racquet
on DicksSportingGood.com features 2 product photos, while SportsAuthority.com has 3 product photos.
Neither the category page nor product pages on DicksSportingGoods.com have ads. I ran both of the
product pages through spellchecking software and found 3 possible spelling errors. One of the errors
was false, and two of them had capitalization errors.
Recommendation for improvements:
After examining the categories product page, as well as various tennis racquet product pages, I
have found three recommendations for Sports Authority on how to improve their site content and in
turn improve their listing on SERP’s. The first recommendation is to include more images on individual
product pages. Some tennis racquet product pages include only one wide, typically a wide shot of the
product, and other product pages include multiple photos of various parts of the tennis racquets. I think
the best approach is to include 7 photos on every product page covering 7 different sections of the
tennis racquet. I would recommend including a wide shot of the full tennis racquet, the head of the
tennis racquet, the shaft, the throat, the handle, an extreme close up of the grip, and an extreme close
up of the bumper guard. My second recommendation for how SportsAuthority.com can improve the
quality of the content of their site is to include more information and original content on the product
pages. In the product description section there is a short paragraph describing the product and below
that is a list of features and specifications about the product. Unfortunately for Sports Authority much of
the information on the product details section is simply taken from the manufacturer’s website. In order
to improve their ranking on SERP’s, it would be in the best interest of Sports Authority to write some
original content describing the product, much like what Dick’s Sporting Goods features on their website.
My final recommendation for improving the overall quality of the content on SportsAuthority.com is to
have more consistency across product pages. The amount of information in the product details section
and the amount of images varies from brand to brand. It appears that Wilson brand has much more
content than other brands such as Babolat. It is important that Sports Authority acts in an unbiased
manner and show users that they have an extensive amount of information about all of their products.
b. Engaging Content
a. SportsAuthority.com Score: 4/10
b. DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 4/10
SiteBounce
Rate
Page
Views/Visi
tor
Daily Time
on Site
Product
level
share
tools
Product-
level
ratings
Product-
level
reviews
SportsAuthority.com 26.8% 6.01 4:30 Yes Yes Yes
DicksSportingGoods.com 28.2% 5.87 4:23 Yes Yes Yes
Analysis:
While it is absolutely essential for a successful website to have quality content, it is also
important that the content is engaging and keeps the users on the website. SportsAuthority.com has a
bounce rate of 26.8%, an increase of 6% over the last 3 months. This mean that 26.8% of the users reach
the site and immediately leave. SportsAuthority.com has a page view per visitor rate of 6.01, which is an
increase of 1% over the last 3 months. This means that users are viewing more pages when visiting the
site. The daily amount of time spent on the site by users is estimated at 4:30, an increase of 2% over the
last three months. This means that users are spending more time on the site each day. Surprisingly
DicksSportingGoods.com, the main competitor in improving SportsAuthority.com’s SEO, doesn’t have
great numbers when it comes to bounce rate, page views per visitor, and daily time on site.
DicksSportingGoods.com has a bounce rate of 28.20% with an increase of 3% over the last three
months. This means that more users are reaching the website and immediately leaving. Page views per
visitor is at 5.87, which is down 3.61% in the last three months. Daily time spent on the website for users
is 4:23, which is downs by a staggering 5% over the last three months. This data shows that users are
spending finding SportsAuthority.com and staying on longer than DicksSportingGoods.com
There are a variety of ways that website can offer engaging content. Some of the best ways
when it comes to retail sites are to include things like social network share tools, product reviews, and a
product rating system. SportsAuthority.com offers social network share tools on their individual product
pages. Users are able to share the product to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google Plus.
DicksSportingGoods.com offers social network share tools on their individual product pages as well.
They allow for users to share to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google Plus, as well as Wanelo.
SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com both offers a rating system on their individual
product pages based around a 5 star system. Both websites also offer user reviews on individual product
pages. The system allows for users to leave a rating and a short review of the product.
SportsAuthorit.com however does something that I believe sets their review system above the rest, and
that the inclusion of “Verified Buyer” tag on reviews that have been left by users that purchased that
product from the website. This small tag gives added assurance to the users that the review is valid and
from a real user of the product. In addition to these standard areas SportsAuthority.com also offers an
“Ask a Question” section that allows users to post questions and have discussions with other users. This
section can be very useful to users when trying to select which racquet to buy. Another area of
SportsAuthoirty.com that differs in its engagement is the category page. When users navigate to the
tennis racquet section on SportsAuthority.com they are presented with a list of every tennis racquet
offered, and the ability to narrow the results using filters. DicksSportingGoods.com has a slightly
different approach by requiring users to select a few parameters such as swing type or age before they
are shown any tennis racquets. This slight changes result in SportsAuthority.com having much more
engaging content than its competitor DicksSportingGoods.com, which is likely causing it to have better
numbers in bounce rate, page views per visitor, and daily time on site by users.
Recommendation for improvements:
SportsAuthoirty.com may have better numbers then DicksSportingGoods.com in terms of bounce
rate, page views per visitor, and daily time on site by visitor, and the site may also have more engaging
content, but there are areas for the site to improve. I have 5 recommendations for how to add more
engaging content to SportsAuthority.com. My first recommendation is to add a dedicated forum to the
site. While the site already offers the “Ask a Question” section on individual product pages, I believe it
would benefit users to add a dedicated forum section where users can have discussions and ask
question about all varieties of topics. My second recommendation for the site is to add
demonstration/review videos on the infidel product pages. The videos would feature a hands on
explanation with the actual product and show it in action. This would allow more visually inclined users
to gain the information they’re looking for while adding more engaging content to the site. My third
recommendation for improving SportsAuthority.com’s engaging content is to add a wizard that would
ask users question and recommend tennis racquets to them. Personally I have never played tennis and
would have no idea where to start when looking for a racquet. A wizard would allow users of all
experience levels to narrow to the vast selection offered on SportsAuthority.com and make a much
more informed decision. My fourth recommendation would be to add a 360 degree rotatable image of
the racquet on the product page. This would allow users to examine every inch the racquet so that they
know exactly what they’re getting. My final recommendation for improving the engaging content on
SportsAuthoirty.com is to add the ability to compare racquets when on the categories product page.
While users are looking at a wide selection of tennis racquet they would be able to add up to 5 to a
compare page that would place them side by side showcasing their images, reviews, rating, features,
description, and prices. Many other retail sites like already allow users to do this and I believe it is an
essential tool for creating more engaging content for users. With these recommendation
SportsAuthority.com will create for more engaging content, which in turn will cause users to spend more
time on the site, as well as help is listing on SERP’s.
4. Social Analysis
a. Social Signals: Reputation (Sr):
SportsAuthority.com Score: 3/10DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 9/10
Analysis:
To begin examining SportsAuthority.com’s social media reputation, I first used the analyzer
SocialMention.com to get things started. Here I found that out of ten mentions, nine of the mentions
were positive, one of them was neutral and there were no negative mentions. This is good news for the
site, but after looking a little further, I noticed that the posts SocialMention.com had to offer were
exclusively for the site Reddit.com. This is sort of misleading since there are a number of other social
media sites that are important for a company to be mentioned on.
After I looked at SportsAuthority.com, I plugged in DicksSportingGoods.com to see what the competition
was like. I found that out of 20 mentions listed on the site, Dick’s had 12 positive, six neutral, and one
negative mention. This may seem good for SportsAuthority.com, but the competition had twice the
mentions on this specific analyzer, and while SportsAuthority.com averaged a mention on social media
every 30 days, DicksSportingGoods.com averaged at least one mention every day.
After looking at SocialMention.com’s analysis of SportsAuthority.com, I plugged in the address to
SiteScore.co to see what it came up with. Here SportsAuthority.com ranked a 38 out of 100, which is a
very low score, but when it came to social media the site ranked a nine out of ten – which according to
SiteScore.co means that a lot of people are talking about and mentioning the site on social media.
I plugged DicksSportingGoods.com into this site as well and found that it scored just the same as
SportsAuthority.com.
Those two sites gave a decent overview of how the two sites looked social media wise, however,
just using these two tools still doesn’t give me much of an idea what kind of reputations the sites have
on specific social media platforms, so I analyzed their specific profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+,
YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Facebook:
Sports Authority Dick’s Sporting Goods
Likes 1,197,915 4,096,013
Most Recent Post Yesterday – 3:02 pm One hour ago
Year Joined May 2009 April 2010
Comments on Posts Avg. 23 Avg. 3
Likes on Posts Avg. 2,769 Avg. 43
When looking at both Sports Authority and Dicks Sporting Goods on Facebook, the results ended
up being sort of strange. Sports Authority has almost three million less likes on its page than Dick’s
Sporting Goods does, yet Sports Authority averages 23 likes (out of the 10 most recent posts) while
Dick’s Sporting Goods only averages 3. Also, Sports Authority averages 2,769 likes (out of the 10 most
recent posts) while Dick’s Sporting Goods averages a measly 43 in comparison. I also noticed that Sports
Authority’s posts are quite a bit more spread out than Dick’s. Sports Authority will post every 3-7 days
while Dick’s will post at least once a day, if not more. It’s interesting because one is likely to think with
the more posts, the more successful you’d be, but Sports Authority gets a lot more interaction from its
viewer than Dick’s.
It is difficult to say who is more successful on Facebook because of this. Dick’s profile has an
extremely high number of likers compared to Sports Authority, which means more people see their
posts, but Sports Authority gets more feedback from their likers, which is very important as well.
Twitter:
Sports Authority Dicks Sporting Goods
Tweets 14.1 K 26.4 K
Followers 56.5 K 380 K
Most Recent Tweet 6 hours ago 11 minutes ago
When comparing the two companies on Twitter, I found that Dick’s Sporting Goods dramatically
outranked Sports Authority in the Twitter world. With almost two times as many tweets and almost
seven times as many followers, Sports Authority really needs to step up its game if it wants to compete
on this social media platform. In the case of Facebook, Sports Authority was behind on likes but had
quite a bit more interaction than Dick’s. However, when it comes to Twitter, Sports Authority averaged
1.5 retweets each tweet (from the last ten tweets) while Dick’s averaged a little over 12. The problem
here may not only be Sports Authority’s lack of followers, but also its lack of tweets. Dick’s Sporting
Goods tweets from its account almost every two hours from morning until night time, but Sports
Authority only tweets maybe twice every day and a lot of times even skips days.
Google +:
Sports Authority Dick’s Sporting Goods
Followers 2,739 6,807
Posts 1+’d Avg. 2.7 Avg. 2.7
Most Recent Post Nov. 13, 2015 Yesterday
Google + is difficult to analyze, because frankly, it’s not used often, so it’s difficult to really see a
company’s success or lack thereof when it comes to this platform. It is, however, very important for
companies to play the Google + “game”. What we’re focusing on here is Search Engine Optimization,
and it may as well be called “Google Optimization” because that’s who a company wants to please with
its web site. Neither of the two companies seem to have much interaction on this social media platform,
but it does seem that Dick’s is doing a much better job of playing along. It has almost three times as
many followers as Sports Authority and this could be because Dick’s does a much better job of posting
on the site. Sports Authority hadn’t posted for four days when I looked at its profile while Dick’s had just
posted the day before. Dick’s seems to have a consistent pattern when posting that probably helps its
success on Google+ while Sports Authority’s posts are completely random – it seems as if something is
posted when Sports Authority occasionally remembers that it has a Google+ account.
YouTube:
Sports Authority Dick’s Sporting Goods
Joined May 2006 August 2006
Number of Subscribers 1,997 13,407
Number of Views 2,526,334 19,222,736
Comments Avg. 0.1 Avg. 1.3
Thumbs Up Avg. 1.3 Avg. 30.3
Thumbs Down Avg. 0 Avg. 0.6
After looking at both YouTube channels for Sports Authority and Dick’s Sporting Goods, just by
looking at the numbers it’s easy to see that Sports Authority is not keeping up with Dick’s. Though Sports
Authority joined the network a little earlier than Dick’s Sporting Goods and both the channels have a
large amount of content on them, Dick’s has 13,407 subscribers while Sports Authority has 1,997. Dick’s
has almost ten times the amount of views as Sports Authority, and looking at interaction, Sports
Authority averages 0.1 comments a video, out of the ten most recent, which means there’s only been
one comment on the last ten videos. Dick’s Sporting Goods doesn’t have a large number of comments
either, but in comparison they are doing much better. Looking at thumbs up and down, Sports Authority
only averages 1.3 thumbs up a video (out of ten most recent) when Dick’s Sporting Goods averages over
30. Sports Authority has zero thumbs down in the last ten videos, while Dick’s had a few, but there’s no
question that Dick’s is more successful on YouTube than Sports Authority is.
Instagram:
Sports Authority Dick’s Sporting Goods
Followers/Following 11.6 K / 612 182 K / 240
Number of Posts 412 1,095
Favorites Avg. 198 Avg. 2,636
Comments Avg. 3 Avg. 17.5
On the topic of Instagram, Dick’s Sporting Goods is again more successful than Sports Authority.
The interesting part about this is that Dick’s doesn’t even provide a link to its Instagram on its web site,
but Sports Authority does. Even so, Dick’s still has almost 16 times more followers on its Instagram than
Sports Authority. Instagram is extremely popular with today’s youth and while there are a large number
of adults who play tennis, there are many high school and middle school teams, and even younger
leagues that play. This platform is one of Sport’s Authority’s best shots to get kids’ attention. It seems
that by putting a link to their Instagram on their site and by following a reasonably larger number of
accounts than Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sports Authority is attempting to up its game when it comes to this
social media platform, but the problem lies elsewhere. Dick’s Sporting Goods, who doesn’t even seem to
put much value on its Instagram account (considering it’s not on the web site), still has over twice as
many posts on its account than Sports Authority. It’s simple. The less activity on an account like this
(where it’s all in order of the latest posts), the less people are going to see your products.
Pinterest:
Sports Authority Dick’s Sporting Goods
Number of Boards 34 18
Number of Pins 3K 925
Number of Likes 242 9
Followers/Following 6.6K / 151 12.1 K / 51
When looking at Pinterest, it may seem that Sports Authority is more successful than Dick’s
Sporting Goods, and while they are quite a bit more successful on this social media platform, they still
have just over half of the followers that Dick’s Sporting Goods has. Sports Authority, however, is doing
an excellent job of organizing their Pinterest. There are different boards for a lot of different sports,
different types of brands, and gift ideas, while Dick’s doesn’t have much variety or organization on their
Pinterest. Sports Authority is doing a better job using the site, but Dick’s has more followers.
Recommendations for Improvement:
Facebook:
Sports Authority is doing a fairly good job when it comes to Facebook, but to compete with
Dick’s it is essential that it gets more likes on its page. One way to do this is to post more engaging
content. There is already a lot of interaction on Sports Authority’s Facebook, but it’s possible to improve
this even further. Most people who shop at sporting goods stores like Sports Authority and Dick’s
Sporting Goods are professional sports fans as well. I noticed that Dick’s has a lot of celebrity athletes
featured in their posts, while I rarely recognized any professional athletes in Sports Authority’s posts.
Getting a professional to use its products and then showing that on social media would definitely boost
Sports Authority’s success.
Twitter:
The solution to Sports Authority’s lack of success is simple. Tweet more. There is no reason
Dick’s should have twice as many tweets. The more Sports Authority tweets, the more retweets the
account will get, and the more people will see what the company has to offer. This will then lead to
more followers and more traffic on the actual site itself. There are sites, such as Hootsuite.com, where a
company can manage its social media accounts and can even schedule tweets to send at whatever time
they like, so there doesn’t necessarily have to be someone tweeting for the company all the time.
However, it’s still very important to have someone managing a company’s social media sites if it wants
to be successful in the social media world.
Google +:
Like I mentioned earlier, Google+ is difficult to really get any interaction out of because there are
only a select few that use it. It is important for a company to make use of it though, if it wants its web
site recognized by Google. I said before that Sports Authority seemed like it only used the site when it
remembered it had one. This is an easy fix as well. Just like I mentioned before, using a social media
organizer will help if the problem is forgetting to post. The more Sports Authority posts on Google+ the
more followers it will start to accrue and the more Google will notice it in this aspect.
YouTube:
Something huge that stood out to me while I was reviewing Sports Authority and Dick’s Sporting
Goods’ YouTube channels was that Dick’s posts at least weekly while Sports Authority only posts once a
month, if that. YouTube is considered the number two search engine on the internet currently, which
means it’s a social media platform Sports Authority cannot be struggling with if it wants a presence in
the top of a Search Engine Results page.
Along with increasing the number of posts Sports Authority has on its channel, it could yet again
incorporate professional athletes into them. Dick’s YouTube channel has a professional athlete featured
in practically every fifth or sixth video and their success on YouTube is remarkably higher than Sports
Authority’s. Professional athletes will get viewers’ attention which will lead to the videos being shared,
then viewed more, and then Sports Authority will gain more subscribers.
Another huge thing I also noticed while looking at the two channels is that on the right column of Sports
Authority’s YouTube channel is a link to Dick’s Sporting Goods channel with a button to subscribe
(screenshot). Dick’s YouTube channel does not have a button to direct toward Sports Authority. This is a
major problem
for Sports
Authority because
there is a button
on its own
YouTube channel
that links directly to the competition. It’s important to keep in mind that Google owns YouTube, and it
could be that the higher Google views your site, the less you will run into a problem like this one.
Instagram:
The fix is easy yet again for Sports Authority when it comes to Instagram. For as little as it posts,
Sports Authority does get a good number of likes considering how many followers they have. If Sports
Authority posts more photos to its account and makes it a habit to post daily, or even once every two
days. The more people see the account being active, the more relevant it will become.
Another way to boost Sports Authority’s success on Instagram would be for them to tag athletes,
celebrities, and brand name’s Instagram accounts in posts that are relevant to them. Business is a lot of
who you know, and if they’re promoting others, big name Instagram accounts may return the favor.
Pinterest:
Like I commented earlier, Sports Authority is doing well with its Pinterest account. It’s beating
Dick’s Sporting Goods all across the board except when it comes to followers. The organization of their
boards is well thought out and Sports Authority’s Pinterest is involved in far more interaction with users
than Dick’s Sporting Goods is. Here, my only recommendation would be to cross-post. If Sports
Authority shares their pins on Facebook or Twitter, where they have more viewers, more people who
have Pinterest as well will notice the store’s account and followers will start to accumulate.
b. Social Sharing (Ss):
SportsAuthority.com Score:DicksSportingGoods.com Score:
Analysis:
To begin my analysis of how Sports Authority facilitates social sharing tools, I went to a product-
level page for both SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com. As I clicked on five or six different
tennis racquets on each site, I noticed that SportsAuthority.com makes use of share tools while
DicksSportingGoods.com has no options for sharing on any of its tennis racquet product pages.
After realizing this, I began looking
harder at how SportsAuthority.com’s
share tools worked. I started with
Facebook. I clicked on the button
provided and it wasn’t actually a share
tool, but an option to “like” the tennis racquet. After I did that I noticed that a box appeared allowing
me to actually share the racquet’s page on my wall and say something about it. However, I did notice
that if I did decide to share the racquet, the link to the page was no good, saying that there was some
type of error with the link (screenshot). So even if I was to share it, there’d be no way for anyone who
wanted to go to the link would be able to.
Next I clicked on the Pinterest share tool. It took me right to my Pinterest account and was available to
pin. I pinned it and then went to the pin and the link worked like it should have. It also had a description
of what the Tennis Racquet was and an option to write my own. SportsAuthority.com’s description of
the pin wasn’t an option to edit and that is a plus because no matter who repins the racquet, the
description and what site it comes from will always remain.
I clicked on the Twitter link afterward and tweeted the racquet page to my account. It provided a full
description of which racquet it was on the tweet just like it does on the web site page. When I followed
up with the tweet, the link was clickable and led me directly to the product page. The Google+ also
worked as it should have.
Recommendations for Improvement:
Most of the share tools on the multiple product-level pages I clicked through were useful and
worked as they should. And the fact that Dick’sSportingGoods.com doesn’t even have any sort of share
tool for its racquets already shows that SportsAuthority.com is doing much better in this aspect.
However, there are a few changes I would suggest for the site to make better use of its share tools.
When it comes to the Facebook sharing tool I would change it from a like to a share tool first of all. If
someone sees just a like button, they don’t feel the need to click it. The reason people use share tools is
to do just that – share. If they just think it will like the racquet on Facebook, they may feel no need to
click it.
Second of all, the link needs to be shareable. When someone is scrolling through Facebook and
sees a product of Sports Authority’s shared, yet the link doesn’t work, it makes the company look
horrible and will result in way less shares and maybe even less business for the store and web site.
As I clicked through multiple product-level pages, another thing I noticed is that the share tools worked
the same way on every page, but on some pages, the tools were placed in a different order for whatever
reason. This is extremely confusing to the user of the web site. One of Jakob Nielsen’s Heuristics
revolves around consistency and standards. If things are out of order, especially on different pages of
the same site, the user doesn’t know where to find things and feels less comfortable using the site.
5. HTML: Current Keyword Location Analysis
a. Title Tags
SportsAuthority.com Product Category Page <title>Tennis Racquets | Sports
Authority</title>
DicksSportingGoogs.com Product Category Page <title>Tennis Racquets | DICK’S Sporting
Goods</title>
Analysis
I chose the tennis racquet product category page because it is the page the client would most
likely want to drive traffic to. The page acts as a general purpose page showing the complete inventory
of all tennis racquets offered by SportsAuthority.com, 154 to be exact. Choosing a specific product page
would only focus on driving traffic to that specific product, which is not the goal of the SEO.
Title tags are an important part of a webpage as they appear in four crucial areas. The first is in
the tab or browser window. At the top of your browser where there is either a tab or text, it is based off
of whatever is in this title tag. This is important for letting the user know where they are. It is especially
crucial in modern web browsing where browser allow for users to open a multitude of tabs. The second
area that title tags appear is in social share tools. When a user clicks a social sharing button, another
windows is opened to allow them to insert a comment about the link they’re sharing. The title that
appears on that social media post is based on whatever is put inside of that title tag. The third place that
title tags appears is in SERP’s. This stands for Search Engine Results Pages and is the list of results that
you get when searching on sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The headline that appears in SERP’s is
whatever is placed in the title tag. There is a difference between organic search results and paid search
results in the way that they appear. The fourth and final place that title tags appear is in bookmarks.
Many users utilize bookmarks to save the locations of various websites. When a user saves a bookmark,
the title of that bookmark defaults to whatever is placed in the title tag of that page.
The title tag for this page is <title> Tennis Racquets | Sports Authority</title. The inclusion of the
keywords “Tennis Racquets” is very important for the page as a whole. The use of the phrase in the title
tag means that when a user is browsing this is what will appear in their browser tab, the phrase “Tennis
Racquets” will appear first in SERP’s, it will be first when a user bookmarks the page, and it will be front
and center if a user shares the page to social media. The most important part of this assessment is to
improve the ranking of SportsAuthority.com on SERP’s when related to tennis racquets. When search
engines like Google scour the internet “reading” websites it look for certain words that tell the search
engine what the site is about. The title tag is one of the important words that tells Google what the site
about. The inclusion of the keyphrase “Tennis Racquets” in the title tag will greatly improve Google’s
understanding of what the webpage is about.
Above- SERP's page from Google.com showing the results of the search query for "Tennis racquets"
Recommendations
Google produces a document called the “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide”. The
document is a guide on how to get started on making your website more search engine friendly. One of
the big topics mentioned in the starter guide is the importance of title tags. The guide goes over the
basics of what title tags are, the areas they appear, and the best practices involved in using them.
Google lists three important area to focus on when optimizing your title tags on your website. The first
area of focus is to make sure that your title tag accurately describes your page’s content. The content of
the page I chose is the selection of tennis racquets available at SportsAuthority.com. The use of the
keyphrase “Tennis Racquets” in the page’s title tag I would say perfect describes the content and meets
Google’s recommendation. The second area that Google recommends focusing on is creating unique
title tags for each page. Since I’m only examining one page for the title tag portion I chose to go into
three separate product pages to make sure that SportsAuthority.com is using unique title tags on each
of their pages. The first product page was for the BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon – Unstrung. The title
tag used on this page is <title>BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon - Unstrung - SportsAuthority.com
</title>. The second product page is for the HEAD TiS6 Tennis Racquet. The title tag use on this page
reads <title>HEAD Ti-S6 Tennis Racquet | HEAD S6 Tennis | HEAD S6 Racquets -
SportsAuthority.com</title>. The third product page I visited was for the Wilson Adult Pro Staff 97S
Tennis Racquet – Unstrung. The title tag for this page reads <title>Wilson Adult Pro Staff 97S Tennis
Racquet - Unstrung - SportsAuthority.com </title>. Based on examining the title tags of these three
individual product pages, as well as the category product page, I would say that SportsAuthority.com is
using unique title tags for their pages. This matches the best practice recommended by Google. The final
recommendation from Google is to use brief, but descriptive titles. Google finds lengthy titles unhelpful
to users and that it’s best to avoid including unnecessary words in your title tag. The use of the
keyphrase “Tennis Racquets | Sports Authority” is short and to the point. It lets the user know that the
page is about tennis racquets, and that it is a part of SportsAuthority.com. The keyphrase is very clear
and concise, with no filler. This title tag meets the Google recommendation for brief title tags.
Based on my analysis and comparison to Google recommendations I have two of my own
recommendations on how to improve the title tags for this page. The first is to make the links for more
attractive and clickable when on SERP’s, which is the main purpose of this analysis. This can be achieved
by adding some of the elements from keyphrases that we have already determined to be successful,
namely brand names. The inclusion of brands names would help increase the chances of coming up on a
SERP, but it would also allow Sports Authority to fully utilize the precious space they are given on that
SERP. I would recommend changing the title tag to something like <title> Tennis Racquets | Wilson |
Sports Authority </title>, <title> Tennis Racquets | Head | Sports Authority </title>, <title> Tennis
Racquets | Babolat | Sports Authority </title>, or <title> Tennis Racquets | Wilson| Head| Babolat |
Sports Authority </title>. This would incorporate other successful keywords and make the link far more
appealing to users. My second recommendation is to utilize temp tags in during special events. Currently
Sports Authority has an offer of free shipping with no minimum purchase. It would be good for
SportsAuthority.com to take advantage of this on SERP’s by using a title tag such as <title> Tennis
Racquets | Free Shipping | Sports Authority.com </title>.
The competition in this analysis, Dick’s Sporting Goods, has essentially the same title tag
structure as Sports Authority. The title tag <title>Tennis Racquets | DICK’S Sporting Goods</title>
includes the keyphrase “Tennis Racquets” and the name of the company. Unfortunately Dick’s Sporting
Goods suffers from the same problems as Spots Authority. The title tag is brief and there is unique title
tags for each page, even including the product name in the title tag of product pages, however the
accuracy of the title tag is debatable. When a user chooses to look at the tennis racquets offered on
DicksSportingGoods.com the first page they are brought to is not a product category page like
SportsAuthority.com, which lists all of inventory. The first page a user comes to on
DicksSportingGoods.com is a category selection page which makes them choose either an age group or
swing type. This means that a more accurate title tag for the page would be <title> Categories | Tennis
Racquets | DICK’s Sporting Goods </title>. This small inaccuracy is significant to Google could hurt their
SERP rankings. I would say that as it stands now SportAuthority.com is doing a better job when it comes
to title tags.
b. Meta Tags
SportsAuthority.com Product Category Page: <meta name="description" content="Buy Racquets
at Sports Authority - the nation's preeminent full-line sporting goods chain. Shop online or in-store
for your favorite brands - Nike, Under Armour, The North Face, Bowflex, Schwinn, Lifetime and
more." />
DicksSportingGoods.com Product Category Page: <meta name="description" content="Get in
the game with a new tennis racquet from DICK'S Sporting Goods. Shop a variety of tennis racquets
for juniors & adults from top-rated brands. " />
Explanation
Meta tags act as descriptions for various aspects of your website. When Google’s bot reads
through your website it will come across a meta tag and that tag will give it additional details about a
webpage. There are a variety of meta tags included in the HTML code, but the one we’re focusing on in
this analysis is the meta tag for description. The description meta tag is very important as it acts as the
description for that webpage. The description meta tag will appear in two very important place, SERP’s
and social sharing tool. On SERP’s, description meta tags act as the body text for a link. In organic search
engine results the body text that appears is whatever is placed in the description meta tag. On paid
search results the body text appears as whatever is paid for in the ad. It is very important to have a tag
that is descriptive and appealing to users. It is also important to include relevant keywords and
keyphrases in the description meta tag. These keywords will be appealing to both the Google bot and
your users. The description meta tag for this page read <meta name="description" content="Buy
Racquets at Sports Authority - the nation's preeminent full-line sporting goods chain. Shop online
or in-store for your favorite brands - Nike, Under Armour, The North Face, Bowflex, Schwinn, Lifetime
and more." />. The tag includes a very short, fun description of the tennis racquets they offer. The meta
tag even includes various major brand names, which will catch the eyes of both Google and users. The
meta tag also includes keywords and keyphrases that have already been determined as important, such
as “tennis racquets”.
As part of Google SEO Starter Guide they include a section on meta tags. Google has two areas
of focus that they consider to be “best practices” when it comes to these tags. The first it is best if the
tag accurately describes the pages content. Google says to avoid writing tags with no relevant
information, using generic descriptions, only using keywords instead of writing an actual description,
and pasting an entire document into your meta tag. It is important that meta tags are brief, but
descriptive. You want to make sure the tag is appealing to the user, but is not so long that they’re
unable to read it on SERP’s due to length. The second are that Google considers a “best practice” is using
unique descriptions on each one of your pages. This is especially important in searches where multiple
pages of your site are brought up in one search. If your description is the same on every page, users will
have trouble distinguishing which page they need.
Recommendations
When examining SportsAuthority.com against Google’s recommendations, the results are
interesting. The description meta tag for the product category page reads <meta name="description"
content="Buy Racquets at Sports Authority - the nation's preeminent full-line sporting goods chain.
Shop online or in-store for your favorite brands - Nike, Under Armour, The North Face, Bowflex,
Schwinn, Lifetime and more." />. The actual page shows the entire selection of tennis racquets offered
by SportsAuthority.com. The meta tag mention that they sell tennis racquets online and in-store, and
features a number of brands listed in the meta tag. However, the tag should mention the wide selection
offered by SportsAuthority.com with nearly 150 racquets being offered. The tag should also mention
actual tennis brands like Wilson, Head, and Babolat. A better tag would “Buy Racquets at Sports
Authority – with over 150 to choose from both in-store and online – Shop your favorite brands like
Wilson, Head, Babolat, and many more”. When it comes to using unique tag for each page
SportsAuthority.com is doing great. I checked the products pages for the HEAD TiS6 Tennis Racquet,
Babolat Adult Drive Max 110 Pre-Strung Tennis Racquet, and BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon –
Unstrung. Each of the pages has a unique description meta tag. The description is even unique from the
description that occurs on the actual product page.
The competition that this analysis is focusing on is Dick’s Sporting Goods. The description meta
tag for the product category page reads <meta name="description" content="Get in the game with a
new tennis racquet from DICK'S Sporting Goods. Shop a variety of tennis racquets for juniors &
adults from top-rated brands. " />. It appears that DicksSportingGoods.com follow the Google
recommendation of accurately summarizing the page’s content. The product category page for the
DicksSportingGoods.com tennis racquet section has the user select from age range or swing type before
they are shown any actual products. This meta tag perfectly describes this by emphasizing the selection
of junior and adult racquets. DicksSportingGoods.com however falls short when it comes to creating
unique tags for individual pages. When examining the description meta tag for individual tennis racquet
product pages it appears they all follow the same formula. The name of the racquet will come first,
followed by “find more information and get customer reviews today.” All of the tennis racquet pages
follow this same, boring formula. The description meta tag for the Wilson HYPERion PowerX 8 tennis
racquet reads <meta name="description" content="Shop Wilson HYPERion PowerX 8 Tennis Racquet at
DICK'S Sporting Goods. Find more information and get customer ratings and reviews today." />. While
these are still technically unique because the product name changes, they aren’t fully utilizing their
description meta tag space like SportsAuthority.com is. These description met tags will appear in SERP’s
and social sharing tools, what is written in the tag is very important as it will be seen by potential
customers. It is best to fully utilize the space you are given by creating unique, interesting descriptions of
your pages.
c. IMG names and ALT text
<img src="http://www.sportsauthority.com/graphics/product_images/pTSA-17922092nm.jpg"
alt="BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon - Unstrung - SportsAuthority.com "/>
<img src=http://www.sportsauthority.com/graphics/product_images/pTSA-9752619nm.jpg alt="A HEAD
S6 Tennis Racquet lets you dominate your tennis competition with an advanced design and detailed
construction."/>
<img src=http://www.sportsauthority.com/graphics/product_images/pTSA-16956793nm.jpg
alt="WILSON Four BLX Tennis Racquet - SportsAuthority.com "/>
Explanation
I chose to examine the product category page for the images and alternative text section of this
analysis. The images I analyzed were the thumbnail images for the following tennis racquet product
pages: BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon – Unstrung, HEAD TiS6 Tennis Racquet, and WILSON Four BLX
Tennis Racquet. I chose to analysis these images because they are the most prevalent images on the
page and are important to the sale of tennis racquets. I noticed that with all three images there is a lack
of an apparent numbering system. All images are named with “pTSA-“then a series of numbers. The
numbers do not appear to follow any sort of a logical order or system. The alt text is also inconsistent
between the images. The Head tennis racquet has an almost advertisement in its alt text trying to sell
you the racquet by saying “”A HEAD S6 Tennis Racquet lets you dominate your tennis competition with
an advanced design and detailed construction”. The other two tennis racquets, from Babolat and
Wilson, simply have the tennis racquet name as the alt text.
Recommendations
Google has three recommendations for optimizing the images on your website as part of their
“Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide”. The first is to use brief and descriptive filenames and alt
text. Google says to avoid generic filenames, long filenames, and stuffing alt text with keywords. Sports
Authority does not follow this recommendation when it comes to file names. The file names don’t
appear to have any logical structure. I would recommend organizing their files into folders by sport, item
type, then brand. Once you get to the actual image file name I would name it by using the product
name. For example, the name for the BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon – Unstrung would be: <img
src=http://www.sportsauthority.com/graphics/product_images/tennis/racquets/wilson/pure-drive-
wimbeldon.jpg alt BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon - Unstrung - SportsAuthority.com "/>. The second
recommendation from Google is to supply alt text for images that are being used as links. The best
example of this would be the thumbnail images on the category product page. The thumbnails acts as
images, as well as links. Google recommends avoiding using long alt text and only using images as
navigation. SportsAuthority.com follows this recommendation by using alt text on each of their product
images on the product categories page. Googles final recommendation is to supply an image sitemap,
which lists out all of the images on your site. Unfortunately I am unable to determine whether
SportsAuthority.com is using an image sitemap due to a lack of tools.
In the end it very important to organize your images and alternative text in a logical way. It will
not only help your users, but boost your ranking on SERP’s like Google, which is the real goal in the end.
6. Architecture
a. Speed (As)
SportsAuthority.com Score: 9.419 seconds (fully-loaded)
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 4.482 seconds (fully-loaded)
Explanation:The average load-time for web site on a desktop computer is 6.5 seconds. According to
WebPageTest.org, DicksSportingGoods.com’s tennis racquet page – the competition of Sports Authority
– loaded in 4.482 seconds which is quite above average. SportsAuthority.com’s racquet page loaded in
9.419 seconds, which isn’t the fastest that it could be and certainly isn’t helping a site. It’s pushing the
limit, really, because according to Jakob Nielsen’s testing, it only takes ten seconds for a person to start
directing his or her attention elsewhere if a site isn’t loading. Even after two seconds a person can lose
interest.
As shown in the screenshot to the right, almost half
of the content on SportsAuthority.com’s tennis racquet
page is images. Images slow down a web page almost
more than anything else.
When looking at the waterfall provided on
WebPageTest.org, there was some content that stood
out that takes up quite a bit of the load time. The first
thing that even loads is a “.jsp” file that takes up almost
a third of a second. This type of file was unfamiliar to
me so I looked it up and found that a .jsp is format for Java Server Pages.
Further down the waterfall, I found a file that took up 641 milliseconds of load time. It was yet again
another .jsp file called “family.jsp” just like the one before. There were two more .jsp files that took up
808 and 632 milliseconds of load time further down as well.
I also noticed quite a few .jpg files that were taking up over 100 milliseconds each. That may not
seem like much, but when you have less than 10 seconds to grab a user’s attention, every second
counts.
Recommendations for Improvement:
It’s obvious a few things need to be done in order to decrease the amount of time it takes
SportsAuthority.com’s tennis racquet page to load.
To begin with, I would recommend that whatever a .jsp file is, the site needs to either get rid of this
content, or if it’s important, find a faster way to put it on the site.
The site also could improve its speed if it were to take away some of its image files. I noticed way
more than necessary on the waterfall, and with the chart showing that 44.7 percent of the page is
images, it seems like just getting rid of some of the images alone would save on load time.
One thing I noticed about the tennis racquet page on SportsAuthority.com is that it loads all of the
pictures, even below the fold, at once. If the site was to implement a system where images only load
when the user wants them to, or when they scroll down to a certain point, the initial load time would
become a lot faster.
Another way to keep the images the site wants on the page is to put it into code instead of an image
file. Code
takes up a
lot less time than an image file will. Or, the site could always get rid of some images it just doesn’t need
period.
As one can see in the screenshot above, Sports Authority has two huge images on either side of the
main column. It’s important to let your users know of sales going on but this two could easily be
condensed into one ad. Also, a smaller ad could fit both promotions on it, would still grab the user’s
attention, would look less tacky, and would definitely take some load time off of the page.
b. URLs (Au)
SportsAuthority.com Score: 6
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 4
URL: http://www.sportsauthority.com/Team-Sports/Tennis/Racquets/family.jsp?
categoryId=22702526&cp=3052500.66276696
According to Google’s Starter Guide Best Practices for URLs, the best URL structures use words
and have simple organization. Above is the URL for the tennis racquets page on SportsAuthority.com.
The beginning of this URL is good for the most part, but after the “Racquets” folder it gets messy. There
are multiple numbers and letters mixed around. The page’s URL should simply end after /Racquets to
clean it up.
Another thing that’s odd about this particular URL is that it says “/Team-Sports/” when to get to this
page on Sports Authority’s web site, the user goes to the “Golf/Racquet” section. To avoid confusion,
the URL should say that instead.
URL: http://www.sportsauthority.com/BABOLAT-Pure-Drive-Wimbledon-Unstrung/product.jsp?
productId=31975046&cp=3052500.66276696.22702526&parentPage=family
This next URL is the first product featured on SportsAuthority.com’s tennis racquet category page.
Once again this URL starts off correctly, clearly organized and stating what product it is, but then the
second half gets messy again and has a large amount of unnecessary numbers. It also doesn’t even show
up as a link when it’s copy and pasted into a document. This unclear URL isn’t going to please Google.
URL: http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?
productId=59433086&cp=4406646.4413887.4418829.4418840&categoryId=4418849
This URL was taken from the first racquet under the Adult Racquets page of
DicksSportingGoods.com. This is actually worse than SportsAuthority.com’s. The only thing we can really
tell from this URL is that it’s on DicksSportingGoods.com and that it’s a product. Everything past that is
hazy and unclear to us. It seems that though SportsAuthority.com doesn’t have the best URLs, Dick’s is
doing even worse. However, DicksSportingGoods.com still shows up higher on a Google results page for
tennis racquets, so improving its URLs could still help boost SportsAuthority.com.
c. Mobile (Am):
SportsAuthority.com Score: 7.5/10
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 9/10
Explanation:
To first test to see if SportsAuthority.com and its competition, DicksSportingGoods.com, were
mobile-friendly, I went to Google’s Mobile Friendly Test Tool. First, I plugged in SportsAuthority.com’s
tennis racquet category page into the tool as well as DicksSportingGoods.com’s. It showed me that both
of these pages were in fact mobile friendly.
Afterward, I tested a few product-level tennis racquet pages from each site and found the same
thing – they were all mobile-friendly.
Even though being compatible for a cell phone is a major thing, half of all traffic comes from mobile
devices now, so it’s important to actually look at the content from a mobile device to see if any
improvements need to be made.
First, I went to SportsAuthority.com using Chrome as my browser on a Samsung Galaxy S4. The
website loaded fairly quickly and I was able to get to the tennis racquet category page with ease and no
confusing. The page loaded racquets in just one column which allows the user to see the image clearly
without having to click on it. I loaded a few product pages and everything was as easy to access, if not
easier as the web.
Recommendations for Improvement:
Although everything on SportsAuthority.com’s
mobile version was very user friendly and easy to
navigate, there was one thing I noticed that was kind of
odd. When I would go to a product level page, there was
an option to scroll to the left and right to see different
images of the racquet I was looking at. However, while
some of the images differed from one to the next, some
racquet pages only had one image multiple times
(screenshots below).
Either SportsAuthority.com needs to have
multiple images of every racquet it has to offer, or it
needs to just have one image of each racquet so the
user doesn’t get frustrated and the site isn’t using precious load time on images that aren’t even
necessary.
7. Links
a. Link Numbers
a. SportsAuthority.com No. of Referring Domains: 6,694
b. DicksSportingGoods.com No. of Referring Domains: 12,445
b. Link Quality
a. SportsAuthority.com No. of Referring Domains: 4
b. DicksSportingGoods.com No. of Referring Domains: 8
c. Explanation:
Backlinks and referring domains are very important to the success of your
website when it comes to SEO. Google likes to send users to websites that have a
good reputation, and that reputation can be achieved through backlinks and
referring domains. Referring domains are the number of sites that currently have
links to your website. Backlinks are the number of links on all of those sites. It is
possible for one site to have more than one link to your site. The best links come
from what are known as restricted domains. These are domains that are given to
organizations and institutions after they have met certain requirements showing
they are worthy of these domains. These domains include .edu, .mil, and .gov.
According to WebSEOAnalytics.com, SportsAuthority.com has 21 .gov referring
domains and 5 .edu referring domains. DicksSportingGoods.com has 53 .gov
referring domains and 18 .edu referring domains. DicksSportingGoods.com is also
beating SportsAuthortiy.com in overall referring domains and overall backlinks.
When it comes to links, it is clear that DicksSportingGoods.com is beating
SportsAuthority.com
8. Conclusions & Priority Recommendations
We have completed our analysis of the SportsAuthority.com website and have concluded that there
are some crucial areas that require immediate attention. While there are many things that
SportsAuthority.com is doing well, it is suffering greatly in the areas of overall content quality, title tags,
and links. These three areas are crucial to the success of a website to drive traffic using search engines.
These three categories are also ranked as +3’s on the “Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors”. In the
area of overall content quality we recommend focusing on three areas: including more images on each
product page, more information and original content on product description pages, and overall
consistency between product pages. Title tags are incredibly important for search engine success as
these tags are displayed on SERP’s as the prominent blue link that everyone clicks on when they load a
Google query. It is important for these to be attractive and clickable in order to drive more users to your
site. It is also important to try and utilize temporary title tags featuring sales and promotions such as
free shipping offers. SportsAuthority.com suffered not only in link numbers, but overall link quality in
comparison to DicksSportingGoods.com. DicksSportingGoods.com has almost twice as many overall
links, and over twice as many restricted domains. An increase in links and link quality would greatly help
SportsAuthority.com’s ranking on SERPs.
The next area of focus are engaging content and social reputation. These areas are +2 on the
“Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors”. These areas are incredibly important when considering the
search engine success of a website. We have five recommendations for improving engaging content:
adding a dedicated forum, creating demonstration/review videos for each product offered on the
website, creating a shopping wizard that will recommend products through a series of questions, 360
degree renderings of products, and the ability to compare up to five racquets side by side.
SportsAuthority.com is suffering greatly in social media simply due to the lack of engagement. Dick’s
Sporting Goods is beating Sports Authority in every social media platform other than Pinterest, including
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. The easiest way for Sports Authority to
increase the quality of its social media is to simply interact and post more often. We also recommend
trying to get some celebrity endorse for its various social media outlets.
The final areas of focus are social shares and speed. These two areas are in the +1 category of the
“Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors”. These are areas that are important, but are not the areas that
should be focused on first. There are three recommendations that we have for social share tools: change
the Facebook “Like” tool to an actual “Share” tool, make sure that share links are working, and keep
your social sharing tools consistent throughout the whole site. Speed, or load time of your site, can be
one of the biggest factors of whether the user stays on your page or not. SportsAuthority.com is loading
in 9.419 seconds, while the competition loads in 4.482 seconds, that’s half the time. After 10 seconds
most users leave the website. Our recommendations for improving the speed of SportsAuthority.com is
to find a way to improve the load time of .jsp files and reduce the weight of images on the load time by
loading above the fold content first or converting the images into code.
The purpose of this analysis is to improve the SERPs’ ranking of SportsAuthoirty.com and as a result
drive more traffic to the site. In order to improve your site and appear higher in SERP’s it is imperative
that your follow the recommendation made by Google, the leader in search engine traffic online. We
have analyzed the tennis racquet section of SportsAuthority.com and compared them with Googles
recommendation, resulting in this list of recommendations. Following these recommendations will
improve the overall quality of your site and make it more favorable to Google, increasing your SERP
rankings, leading to more traffic for your site.