As a small sports blog, it may seem like an impossible uphill battle to compete with big sites like TSN and TheScore. However, rather than giving up, you just need to understand the challenges you’re facing and adopt some strategies to overcome them.
The advantages of being a big sports site
Sites like TSN and TheScore will usually come up first on a search engine results page for several reasons. This is because these sites have a few key advantages:
- Domain authority.
- A large number of diverse links that point back to them
- A well-known reputation and trustworthiness
- Financial resources they can put towards their marketing and SEO efforts.
The advantages of being a small sports blog
While a smaller sports blog may find it hard to rank alongside bigger sites on SERPs, there are several benefits to being small:
- Agility: You can change direction or priority quickly. Also, there are fewer management hoops to jump through to get things approved, so stuff gets done faster.
- Artistry: You can develop and execute ideas that might not be within the bounds of what’s traditional for your company.
- Targeted attention: You can focus your marketing efforts on one specific thing until it’s perfected rather than having to divide your attention among multiple projects.
- Niche appeal: You can focus exclusively on one aspect of sports and become an authority in that niche because you don’t need to monetize as fast or as directly as bigger brands.
How smaller sports blogs can compete with the big guys
Provide better value content
As a small sports blog, you can invest more in a solitary piece of content than the big guys can. This is because the more prominent sports sites need to scale quickly, and when you do things at scale, you can’t focus on individual content as much. This is where being a smaller website is advantageous. As a smaller brand, you can focus on providing quality pieces. You can put more effort into producing your content so that people see you as a five-star resource. For example, if people want more in-depth content, they may seek you out as an alternative to TheScore.
Create direct relationships
Big brands have a PR team that handles relationships with partners and consumers. However, as a smaller brand, you can build personal relationships that hold more meaning between you, your partners, and your consumers. In this way, you’ll be reinforcing your authenticity and niche appeal. For instance, imagine how it would feel if the writer of an article you liked responded to your social media comments. You would feel seen and heard and would likely be encouraged to engage with the writer and their content.
Target the keywords that the big sites aren’t
In the SEO world, there will be keywords that the more significant sports sites, like TSN, won’t or are unwilling to target for a variety of reasons. For instance, they might avoid keywords with legal or PR issues. This can be things like long-tail keywords that are too specific or comparison keywords that compare two competitors. For example, TheScore would not want to target their competitors’ brand names, but as a small blog, you can have a page comparing two sports media giants. Additionally, many big brands will avoid editorial keywords. For example, TSN has business relationships with a number of different sports teams and outlets, so they would never want to rank them in a particular order. However, as a small sports blog, you don’t have this constraint.
Address a Specific Niche
Rather than talking about every sport and team out there, you should build authority in a niche in which the big guys can’t build the same brand equity. So, for example, you might want to focus on European Soccer Leagues or write exclusively about baseball.
Final thoughts
Although bigger sports media sites like TSN and TheScore will gain more traffic from search engines and have a broader social media reach, this doesn’t mean your smaller sports blog can’t compete. On the contrary, if you focus on the areas that the media giants neglect to address, you have a good chance of gaining a steady and loyal following. For instance, by spending more time on the content you develop and covering topics the big guys can’t or won’t, you will be filling a niche for consumers.
Other articles from mtltimes.ca – totimes.ca – otttimes.ca
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