SEO and User-Friendly Content

As an AYSO webmaster , you have your work cut out for you. Even to many seasoned webmasters, the dos and don’ts sometimes seem to be written by aliens in another language. You probably wear many hats and have many other tasks to perform as well, so making sure that your website is search engine friendly can sometimes fall by the wayside. Today we’re going to briefly discuss SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and how you can perform a few easy tasks in your day-to-day website upkeep to make sure your website stays code-modern and content-focused.

1. Get in the niche

We’re all about soccer! What does that mean for your website? Try to think about terms that folks will search for, and incorporate them into your content whenever possible. Phrases like “Local Game”, “Youth Soccer”, “Pick-Up Games”, these can be valuable for improving your search engine results. If there are ways to make your tour or activity even more specialized, then you might want to consider them. Perhaps you could mention your town, city, state, local fields where games are typically played? Providing a specialized offering means that the content you create for your website content in general will be more relevant to you, and therefore, your target audience.

TIP: As a specialized webmaster, you are the expert! Share your knowledge with good key words and phrases!

Building a Lean, Mean, Quick, Web Machine!

Building a website can be a time consuming process. If you use the wrong kind of assets in building your site, it will become a exercise in patience and anger management. Here is a few simple tips to keep that site light on its feet, easy to build, troubleshoot, and maintain.


Small pages = Fast pages

The art of building a site that loads quickly and is quick to transition is a tricky one. no matter a persons connection speed there is always content to download. How frustrating is it when you go to a page you want to view only to have to wait sometimes, what seems like forever, for content to load. We have all been there. (modem era anyone?) Do your viewers a favor, keep those pages small no more than a couple hundred kb. (yes you can still have images and content and keep it that small)

Learn SEO From the Professionals

Case studies are always a good way to get an insiders look into how something comes to fruition. They let you see how things are done in the real world, by the big wigs.

With this case study, the designer/programmer of the landing page for ConvertKit takes you on a step-by-step copywriting venture to show how he has taken on the world of metrics (also known as search engine optimization). This case study includes lots of advice and feedback on conversion rate optimization and copywriting, to help you make the most out of your website.

Where Are My Web Stats?

Web stats are an easy way to track your Region site and see if your hard work is getting you the traffic you want. If your Region’s website is hosted with a provider like Go Daddy or Yahoo, you might already have site statics on your site (or available for activation). If you don’t know where to find your site statistics, you can contact your hosting provider and they will show you how to access it.

If you don’t have access to site statistics through your provider, you can use Google Analytics. All you need is a Google account to get started. Once you set up your account, they’ll give you a code that you paste into the header section of your website. You’ll have to place the code on every page you want to track. It takes about 24 hours for statistics to start showing up in your account after you install the code.

Google Analytics is a comprehensive and free tracking solution. You can view visits, unique visits, browser types, what country the visitor is from, how long they spend on your site and much more. By installing analytics, you can see which pages are your most popular and which ones you should spruce up or make easier to find. It can show you what topics people are interested in and what keywords people are using to search for your Region.

You can learn more about how to add Google Analytics to your website here.

If you have any questions about how analytics or stats work, ask away in the comments!

Make Your Website the Right Way…and Keep People Coming Back!

People depend on the web today for a fast, simple way to access the most current information on any topic. If a site is designed poorly, or doesn’t contain good information, people will stop coming and you’ll lose your audience. Audience is very important in AYSO because if we lose parents, we lose players. Here are some points to keep in mind when working on your website to ensure that it’s the best it can be:

KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid

This is a mantra used throughout user design. No matter how simple YOU think it is, there are people out there who won’t think it’s so easy to use. Test your designs before implementing them by choosing a few (non-tech) people to test it out. Gather their feedback and design it to fit their needs and not yours. Here are some ways to keep it simple:

• Create a clear visual hierarchy on each page
• Take advantage of conventions
• Break pages into clearly defined areas
• Make links obvious
• Minimize distracting elements
• Use common sense

Keep It Focused and Purposeful

Users have a reason to visit a website and it’s usually to find specific information. Anything that gets in the way of that purpose is counterproductive. Eliminate “landing pages”, including introductory animations/slideshows. People don’t want to sit and wait for something to load just to click through it anyway. Let them get in, get their information and get out. Keep your content up to date. Parents will not continue to visit a website to read the same information as their last visit. That doesn’t help the parents stay informed. Know the purpose of your website and don’t stray away from it.

The Importance of Good Website Navigation

Website users, especially busy soccer parents, don’t usually have the time to sit and search all over a website to find what they are looking for. You can help keep your visitors on your website with clean, concise and organized site navigation.

There are two common spots for website navigation: the top of the website (horizontally across) or the left side (in a vertical list). These are the two places that most people will look for a list of links to navigate your website. Some websites will also offer a complete list of links at the bottom of each page. People are trained to go there for links as well (but usually as a last resort).

When designing navigation for your website, keep in mind the “Three Click Rule.” A user will click on an average of three links before they leave the website. Try not to bury your links so deep that you have to click more than three times to get to them. You want to get your user to the content they desire as quickly as possible. Note that long lists of links are just as cumbersome as hiding them ten layers deep. Organization is key when creating site navigation.

What Does Your Title Tag Say?

 
A title tag (circled above) is the text that appears at the top of your internet browser, and it is often used when your page is shared on Facebook or Twitter. 

Taking full advantage of the title tag is a great way to improve the SEO for your Region’s website – be sure to include all the important words that not only define your page, but things you think parents/families might be looking for.

We have a class of RCs coming to attend RC Training at the AYSO National Office in the next few weeks. To prepare, I looked up these Region Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and Region websites. I was surprised to find that a couple of the Regions didn’t show up in the results when I Googled “AYSO Region XX.” If they had taken full advantage of the title tags, this wouldn’t have happened.

Is Your Region Website Searchable?

When a family decides it’s time for their kid(s) to play sports, some parents are familiar with AYSO and are out there actively searching for your Region on the web. But, there are plenty of other parents that aren’t acquainted with AYSO – and may not be sure that there is any local soccer program in their area.

This is why it’s important to be sure that your Region website is “searchable” or in other words, uses positive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices. For those of you not familiar, here’s a handy SEO beginners guide.

In a nutshell, focusing on improving SEO will ensure that your Region website ranks highly in Google search results – making it easy to find for those unfamiliar parents I mentioned. Here’s a quick trick to find out where you stand: Google “youth soccer (your city name here)” and see if your website appears on the first page of results. Yes? That‘s a good start. No? We’ve got some work to do!