Courtney Leinen

Mitchell Decker
SEO Analysis & Recommendations for SportsAuthority.com
Keyword Research 3 Recommended Keywords (Cr)

The 3 Keywords/Phrases I think will drive the most traffic:

1. Tennis Racquet
2. Best Tennis Racquet
3. Head Tennis Racquet

Current Rankings of my 3 Keywords

Ranking of Recommended Keywords on
SportsAuthority.com
Keywords

Google

Bing

Yahoo

Tennis Racquet

Yes

No

No

Best Tennis Racquet

No

No

No

Head Tennis Racquet

No

No

No

Google

Bing

Yahoo

Tennis Racquet

Yes

No

No

Best Tennis Racquet

Yes

No

No

Head Tennis Racquet

Yes

No

No

Ranking of Recommended Keywords on

DicksSportingGoods.com
Keywords

Explanation of my choices:
1. Tennis Racquet
This is the keyword focus given to me by the client.
My research on this keyword phrase leads me to believe
that those consumers searching for this product, are
searching in a broad spectrum in order to see everything
there is. This leads me to the conclusion that most people
using such broad words are somewhat new to the sport
and are looking for suggestions and need a place to start.
When considering the demographics of this search key
phrase, the largest population searching using this key
phrase is coming from Australia and the second largest
group is from the United States, with a few searches
coming from several other countries.

2. Best Tennis Racquet

From studying the web site and Google Trends, I
determined that the key phrase Best Tennis Racquet was
the lowest out of the three key phrases, but still had a
decent amount of search requests. I realized that adding in
the word best before our baseline key phrase, it made the
search a little less notable. The word best might make the
user think that the products they will find are going to be of
higher quality, but also of higher price. This may not be
something that a user who is just starting out would want.
Also, the keyword best is somewhat opinionated, since
anyone can say that a certain product or brand is the best
compared to others. The demographics for this key phrase
have searches come from Australia and the United States,
with very few coming from other countries.

3. Head Tennis Racquet

A little more research into this topic and I realized
that the keyword head might increase the search results
further. Since there are still people searching for more
particular products in this sport. Although the search
results for this key phrase are still lower than that of the
baseline, it shows that not everyone searches for general
topics and focuses on more particular products. The
demographics for this key phrase consist of once again,
most searches coming from Australia and the United States
and a variety of other countries. The demographics for all
three key phrases, shows that Australia and the United
States have a higher focus for tennis than many other
countries.

Current Traffic
SportsAuthority.com Monthly Unique Visitors: 2,508,601
DicksSportingGoods.com Monthly Unique Visitors:
5,919,394
Analysis:
When comparing both SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com, the traffic flows for both are quite
similar to each other, yet DicksSportingGoods.com has more
than double the amount of monthly unique visitors than
SportsAuthority.com does. This being said,

DicksSportingGoods.com obviously makes better use of their site

than SportsAuthority.com does, which is a big issue for
SportsAuthority.com. Most of the unique monthly visitors peak
around the colder months, mainly around December. The most
likely reason for this would be holiday shopping events. Also,
because both SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com
have large winter clothing sections in their stores and online
when the weather gets colder out. SportsAuthority.com may pay
more for their online advertisement on Google than
DicksSportingGoods.com does, but is seems that paying for
advertisement does not help them out much at all.
DicksSportingGoods.com clearly focuses on organic search
results and how well they show up on those results, than they do
on paying for their advertisement.
When looking at the way that SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com drive most of their traffic to their sites
would be from social media activity. SportsAuthority.com is
involved in Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and
Google Plus. On further observation, SportsAuthority.com
updates their content for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and
Google Plus on a one through three-day cycle that does not seem
to follow any predetermined pattern. When looking at the Twitter
page for SportsAuthority.com, they seem to be doing a better job

of keeping their users up to date with what is going on, since

they are posting multiple messages a day. SportsAuthority.com is
decent when keeping their social media accounts up to date and
pushing traffic to their site. Except for on the YouTube account for
SportsAuthority.com, where SportsAuthority.com only post videos
once every few months, with some months having multiple
videos and others having none. SportsAuthority.com not focusing
on YouTube and the amount of traffic that SportsAuthority.com
could be obtaining is an issue, since YouTube is the second most
used search engine just below Google. DicksSportingGoods.com
on the other hand, is far more involved in their posting on
Facebook and Twitter, posting multiple messages in a day,
practically every day. Their posting on Facebook and Twitter are
much better than SportsAuthority.com, as well as on YouTube
where they posted a video almost every week. Even though
SportsAuthority.com has been lacking with their posting on social
media, they have been much better at posting pins on Pinterest
with a total of 3000 pins compared to DicksSportingGoods.com
and their 925 pins. When it comes to product sales, Pinterest
may not be the best social media site to focus your
advertisement on, since most people who get on Pinterest are
looking for inspiration and not products to purchase. I would
suggest that SportsAuthority.com focus more on keeping all of

their social media advertisements balanced, rather than focusing

on one social media site that does not do very much for their
overall traffic flow. Ways that they could do this, would be to
increase the frequency of posts that they distribute, as well as
the amount of videos that they post on YouTube. Doing so would
increase the flow of information about SportsAuthority.com
throughout social media, which is the main goal of any company,
to get more traffic.

Content Analysis
Overall Quality (Cq, Vt, Va)
SportsAuthority.com Score: 7
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 9
Analysis:
First I analyzed the quality of content on
SportsAuthority.coms Tennis Racquet category page. My first
thought was that SportsAuthority.com offered a wide variety of
tennis racquets. Along the left side of the tennis racquet product
page is a list of possibilities to help the visitor narrow down its
search. These possibilities are broken down into 9 different

categories, including Brand, Price Range, Color, Racquet Type,

Racquet Length, Frame Composition, Swing Style, String Gauge,
and Clearance. One of the keywords I chose is presented as an
option under the Brand category. This does not surprise me
because I chose that particular keyword because it was a specific
brand of tennis racquet. To the right of this categories bar is a
list of available tennis racquets. They are organized into 3
columns with 8 rows on each page. There are 7 total pages. Each
column contains an image of the product, the product name, a
rating out of five stars, the price, special deals on the particular
product, if it is available in different colors, and if it is available
online and/or in stores. SportsAuthority.com is inconsistent with
the way it writes the brand of tennis racquet in the title of the
product. In some cases the word is in all caps while in others only
the first letter is capitalized. I would consider this a typo even
though it is not spelled incorrectly because it causes
inconsistencies with the content. SportsAuthority.com offers a
total of 157 different tennis racquets. The way
SportsAuthority.com words the product title and any other
information under the product image is simple and straight to the
point. This leaves little to interpretation and makes the user
understand right away what the product offers. Unfortunately,
this caused the content on the category page to not be unique. I

expected as much because the only information offered on the

category page is the product name, price, and whether it is
offered online and/or in stores. It is hard to supply this
information in a unique way. All of this information leads me to
believe that SportsAuthority.coms Tennis Racquet category page
has a fair amount of content.
After reviewing the category page I looked at some of the
individual product-level pages to review the quality of content. I
decided to select the first product, which was the BABOLAT Pure
Drive Wimbledon- Unstrung from the category page to analyze.
When I opened this product-level page the first thing I noticed
was an enlarged image of the tennis racquet. This image allowed
me to zoom in on a certain area just by hovering, placing the
mouse over a section of the image, over the image. When I
hovered over the image another box appeared to the right of the
image. This box contained an enlarged version of the area of the
tennis racquet that was being hovered over. To the right of the
product image was information about the product that
SportsAuthority.com had deemed most important. This included
the original price of the product plus the discounted price. Under
the price and discounts section is the rating of the product out of
five stars. This area also includes the item number and the
number of reviews this particular product had. From this area the

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user was able to read the reviews by selecting the link that said,
read 1 review. The number of reviews differed depending on
the product. The user was also able to write a review by selecting
the write a review link, which is located directly under the
read 1 review link. Directly to the right of these links was a
Questions? section, which contained links that allow the user to
ask a question or see previously, asked questions and the
answers. Below this section is a Promotions area. This area
consists of three things that the user was eligible for. The next
area was a Pick A Color section. To the right of the 1. Pick A
Color section title it read No Color. Under this is a smaller
image of tennis racquet. The next section was titled 2. Choose
Your Size. This section offered a link to a size chart, which was
designed to help the user select the appropriate sized racquet.
After this section was 3. Choose A Quantity which consisted of
a box with a minus button to the left and a plus button to the
right. The user had two options for changing the quality; they
could either type in the number of racquets they desire or they
can press the minus or plus button depending on if they would
have liked to add more racquets or get rid of some. After filling
out all of this information the user had the option to select the
Add to Cart button or the Find in Store button. The Add to
Cart button took the user to their shopping cart and allowed

11

them to purchase the item while the Find in Store button

opened a popup window where the user could enter their zip
code to see if there were any stores near them. Under these two
buttons was the Availability of the product. This area let the
user know if the product was in stock and/or in stores. The next
section was the Product Details section. This section gave a
brief introduction about the product as well as a list of the
specific features this product had to offer. This particular product
does not have a very long introduction, but the important
information such as what type of player it is best suited for and if
it is better for control or power is presented. The product
introduction was well written and unique to SportsAuthority.com.
This particular product only had 6 features available, which were
Composition, Weight, Head Size, Balance Point, Length and
Flexibility. Under this section is the Product Recommendations
section, which consisted of five recommended products along
with the products image, price and title. After this section was
the Product Reviews section. This showed the written review,
what the reviewer rated the product, a pros and cons list, what
type of player the racquet would be best for, the name and
location of the reviewer, and whether or not SportsAuthority.com
had verified the reviewer. Under this section is the Ask a
Question section and it showed the question asked along with

12

one or more answers. There was also a Recently Viewed

section at the bottom of the page. This feature makes deciding
between two different racquets much easier. The user was not
forced to go back to the category page every time they wanted
to look at a racquet they previously viewed.
While looking at multiple products, I noticed that the
overall layout is similar but the content or sections can differ
slightly. For example, the BABOLAT Adult Drive Max 105 Tennis
Racquet had three different image options while the BABOLAT
Pure Drive Wimbledon- Unstrung only had one. This is not the
only item that differed between the two pages. While the
BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon- Unstrung had a Pick A Color
section and a Choose Your Size section, the BABOLAT Adult
Drive Max 105 had a Select Variables section as shown in the
screenshots below.

13

14

15

This section consisted of a drop down list that contained the

color choice along with the racquet size. The BABOLAT Adult
Drive Max 105 also had more features than the BABOLAT Pure
Drive Wimbledon- Unstrung. It had 16 features while the
BABOLAT Pure Drive Wimbledon- Unstrung only had 6. I also
noticed that some product-level pages gave the option to watch
a video about a specific tennis racquet, while other pages only

16

offered images. I found that the content of the product-level

pages was unique. The only areas that were not unique were the
specific product measurements. Overall, I feel like the content
was well written and easy to understand.
SportsAuthority.com does a good job of limiting its amount
of advertisements to only three per page. Every ad that
SportsAuthority.com had on their pages was an in-house ad, and
it was located above the fold. One of these advertisements was a
banner ad, which stretched across the across the page and was
located directly under the navigation bar. The other two
advertisements were located directly under the banner ad and to
the right and left sides of the pages content.
DicksSportingGoods.com organized their category page
differently than SportsAuthority.com. Instead of having all of the
tennis racquet options displayed in no particular category like
SportsAuthority.com, DicksSportingGoods.com had their tennis
racquets divided into 8 different categories. These included Adult
Racquets, Unstrung Racquets, By Swing Type, 3-6 years old, 7-8
years old, 9-10 years old, 11 + years old, and Shop all Junior
Racquets. Selecting one of these categories took the users to a
category page that was similar to SportsAuthority.coms. I
decided to select the first category, which was Adult Racquets.
Along the left side of the page is a Filter By navigation bar that
17

contained 8 different categories. These categories were Brand,

Racquet Stringing, Swing Style, Racquet Balance, Racquet Head
Sizes, Price, Availability and Rating. Many of these categories
were also offered on SportsAuthority.com. To the right of the
Filter By bar was the list of tennis racquets that were included
in the Adult Racquet category. The products are laid out in the
same manner as SportsAuthority.com. The only difference was
there were 4 columns, 12 rows and 2 pages instead of 3
columns, 8 rows and 7 pages. There was an image of a product
with the title, rating out of five stars; price and shipping details,
much like SportsAuthority.com.
After reviewing DicksSportingGoods.coms category pages,
I looked at a few of its product-level pages. My initial thought
was that the layout and content looked similar to
SportsAuthority.com. The same general information was available
above the fold for both websites. One of the main differences
between DicksSportingGoods.com and SportsAuthority.com was
that DicksSportingGoods.com placed the item price on the same
line as the product title. It also had the rating and number of
reviews located directly under the product title, whereas
SportsAuthority.com had it located under the price, which was
located under the product title and to the right. Under this area
were the Color, Size and Quantity sections. The Add to

18

Cart button was also located in this area. The next section
consisted of the Product Information. Much like
SportsAuthority.com, this area contained a brief introduction to
the product along with some features. DicksSportingGoods.com
also included a separate area for specs, while
SportsAuthority.com included this information in the features
area. The introduction paragraph was unique to
DicksSportingGoods.com and in my opinion was well written.
Certain features and specs however, appear on other websites.
This is to be expected because this information was written by
the product manufacturer, which means that any website that
sold the particular product was given this same information.
Under the product information section was the Customer
Reviews section. This area gave the same information as
SportsAuthority.com except DicksSportingGoods.com added a
rating breakdown area. This area showed the number of reviews
and how many stars each reviewer gave the product.

19

DicksSportingGoods.com:

20

SportsAuthority.com:

DicksSportingGoods.com does a better job of limiting the

amount of advertisements. There was only one ad on the
category page and product-level pages and it was an in-house
banner ad. I also did not notice any typos or inconsistencies.
Recommendations for Improvements:

21

Overall, I believe that DicksSportingGoods.com had better

quality content. I would recommend removing some of
SportsAuthority.coms in house advertisements. Having the
advertisements frame the content is distracting and makes the
page look crowded. I would also recommend making all of the
SportsAuthority.coms product level pages consistent. Having
different options available for different racquets makes the site
feel disconnected. SportsAuthority.com also needs to go through
and make sure that they are being consistent with the brand
names. This will help cut out of the amount of typos and make
the site seem more accurate. Having this inconsistency makes
SportsAuthority.com seem lazy and unconcerned with how their
site looks. Adding a video of the racquet being used to every
product-level would also increase the quality of content. It will
also help boost the uniqueness of SportsAuthority.com. I would
also recommend reorganizing the content by having it split into
more categories, much like DicksSportingGoods.com. This would
make searching for a specific racquet much easier for the user. I
would also reorganize the information on the product level page
so that it is less crowded. For example, I would move the rating,
reviews and questions area. The rating and review would go
under the product title. This would make it more noticeable
because it is slightly hidden under the price section. I would also

22

recommend moving the promotions section to under the

Availability section. Its current location is slightly distracting
because it breaks up the flow of information. Once the user sees
the price of a product they want to be able to see the different
color and size options not what kind of promotions they are
eligible for. This will just distract them from the task at hand. I
would also relocate the share tools, but I will discuss this more
later.

Engaging Content (Ce)

SportsAuthority.com Score: 8
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 6
Site

SportsAuthority.c

DicksSportingGoo

om

ds.com

Bounce Rate

26.40%

28.00%

Page

5.97

5.92

Daily Time on Site

4:30

4:26

Product-level

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Views/Visitor

share tools
Product level
ratings
Product-level
reviews

23

Analysis:
Based on the data presented in the chart above,
SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com have very
similar results. SportsAuthority.com has a slightly better bounce
rate than DicksSportingGoods.com but both are well under the
average, which is 50%. Both sites are doing amazingly well with
their bounce rates and the amount of page views per visitor.
Having almost six pages viewed per visitor expresses that the
user is engaged in the content of both sites, since they are
clicking on multiple product-level pages. This means that the
main category page is doing a good job of directing the user to
the type of tennis racquet they desire. Both sites are excelling at
how much time the user is spending on the site. The data
expresses that SportsAuthority.com is keeping its users on the
page slightly longer than DicksSportingGoods.com but the time
is very close. This helps show that the user is engaged in the
content because no one is going to spend that much time on a
site that does not have something they are interested in.
Recommendation for Improvements:
I would recommend increasing the amount of page views
per visitor. This can be achieved by providing categories on the

24

category page, similar to DicksSportingGoods.coms category

page, instead of just having the list of available tennis racquets.
SportsAuthority.com could also allow for more options, or
increase the amount of products that are recommended to the
users. This would let users view a greater variety of products that
fit their needs but they might not have known exists. These
recommendations would be decided based on the users previous
search results and page views.
Social Analysis

Social Signals: Reputation (Sr)

SportsAuthority.com Score: 6
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 8
Analyze:

Based on information from SiteScore.co, SportsAuthority.com had

a social media rating of 9/10. SportsAuthority.com had many different
social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
Pinterest, YouTube and Google Plus. SportsAuthority.com only offered
links to its social media sites through the footer of its website.
25

SportsAuthority.coms joined Facebook in 2009 and had a total of

1,197,869 page likes. They get an average of about 3,489.6 likes and
an average of 32 comments per posts. I arrived at this number by
averaging the number of likes and comments from the five most recent
posts. Most of SportsAuthority.coms posts consisted of upcoming deals
that SportsAuthority.com had to offer or images that were sport or
outdoors activity related. The most recent item was posted around
9:41 am on November 18th, but the post before that was from
November 16th at 3:02 pm. As I explored later posts, I noticed that
there was usually at least a day in between posts. These posts also
never consisted of statuses; they were only pictures or videos with a
caption. This makes me believe that SportsAuthority.com does not put
much thought or effort into its posts. Most of the images that were
posted on SportsAuthority.coms Facebook page were from their
Instagram page. Almost every video and picture that was posted to the
Facebook was also posted on one of SportsAuthority.coms other social
media pages.
Some of the content that was posted on SportsAuthority.coms
social media accounts was not theirs originally. Based on the captions
of some of the posts, I realized that some of the images were taken
from other sources. I came to this conclusion when I noticed
SportsAuthority.com tagging people in the image caption using their
instagram tag. I wanted to make sure my theory was correct so I went

26

digging into the account of the people SportsAuthority.com tagged.

While looking through the accounts I found some of the images that
SportsAuthority.com used on their page and reviewed the comments
and noticed that SportsAuthority.com asked permission to use the
particular image on its social media page.

27

Original Post:

28

SportsAuthority.coms Post:

SportsAuthority.com had about 11,600 followers and 412 posts on their

Instagram page. Averaging up the five most recent posts showed that
SportsAuthority.com had an average of 189.6 favorites and 4
comments on their Instagram posts. The amount of favorites ranged
from a low of 14 to a high of 1,849, and the range of comments went
from 0 to 60 with mainly positive comments. Most of
SportsAuthority.coms instagram posts have been taken from another
29

user, with their permission of course. Many of their post contained

images of younger children playing sports, which were supplied by
other users. SportsAuthority.com also posted images of the type of
clothing that they offer. The most recent image was posted on
November 17th and the second most recent item was posted on
November 16th. SportsAuthority.com does a good job of keeping their
Instagram posts up to date. Four of their most recent images were
posted within the same week. It seems to me that SportsAuthority.com
tried to post at least one image a day or an image every other day.
The social media site that SportsAuthority.com updated the most
was their twitter account. SportsAuthority.coms twitter account
consisted of 56,500 followers, 14,100 tweets, and 1,572 likes and was
following 1,627 people. The most recent tweet was about one of their
new store locations and it was posted around 6 pm on November 18th.
SportsAuthority.com received an average of 4.8 retweets, 3.6 favorites
and 1 comment on of their tweets. I gathered this information by
averaging the data from the five most recent posts. The content of
SportsAuthority.coms twitter page was updated fairly often. I have
noticed that SportsAuthority.com tweeted at least twice per day. Most
of these tweets included images that can also be found on their other
social media pages. Most of their tweets consisted of instagram
pictures that were given to them by an outside source. They also
tended to retweet any tweets that they were mentioned in.

30

SportsAuthority.coms pinterest had 6,600 followers, 34 boards,

3,000 pins, 242 likes and is following 151 people. It was organized by
specific products brands, sports and activities. Some of the boards
were more specific about their content than others. For example, one
of the boards was titled Burton | 13 Cozy Things for Fall while another
was simply titled Running. SportsAuthority.com pinned more content at
least once every day or every other day.
SportsAuthority.coms YouTube channel contained 108 videos,
had 1,998 subscribers and had 2,526,555 total views. The amount of
viewers on the videos ranged from 63 to 848,363. As I was attempting
to figure out the average amount of comments I realized that there
were very few comments. The average amount of comments was 7.2.
The only reason this number was this high was because one of the
videos I reviewed had 36 comments; the other four videos did not have
any. Out of the 36 comments, about half of them were positive and half
were negative. Comments were not the only item that was lacking on
SportsAuthority.coms YouTube channel. I also noticed that not many
users thumbs up or thumbs down the videos because the average
thumbs ups was 1.4 and thumbs down was 0. The most recent video
was posted about a month ago and the one posted before that was
from two months ago. This lead me to believe that posting to YouTube
and having users input was not as big of a priority as on other social
media sites.

31

SportsAuthority.com had 2,738 followers and 947,943 total views

on their Google Plus page. The average number of +1s on a post was
3.4 and the average number of comments on a post was 0.4. There
were very few comments on any of the posts. Most of them did not
have any comments at all. The most recent post was from November
13th and it was an image of a girl holding a softball. Above the image
was an inspirational message. This post was also shared on Facebook
three days before it was posted on Google Plus. I found it interesting
that SportsAuthority.com posted the same information on two different
sites on two different days. They could have posted the information to
the two different forms of social media on the same day. This lead me
to believe that SportsAuthority.com was trying to figure out what to
post on Google Plus so it took older posts from Facebook.
DicksSportingGoods.com:

DicksSportingGoods.com got a perfect 10/10 for their social

score from SiteScore.org. At first, I found it interesting that
DicksSportingGoods.coms score was higher than SportsAuthority.com,

32

even though SportsAuthority.com had more social media sites.

DicksSportingGoods.coms social media sites consisted of Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and Google Plus. After reviewing the social
media sites I came to realize why DicksSportingGoods.com had a
higher media score. DicksSportingGoods.coms social media pages
were updated more frequently than SportsAuthority.com, with the
exception of SportsAuthority.coms twitter account.
DicksSportingGoods.coms Facebook page contained 4,097,046
total page likes. This number was more than triple
SportsAuthority.coms, even though DicksSportingGoods.com has had
their page for a shorter amount of time. DicksSportingGoods.com
joined facebook in 2010 while SportsAuthority.com joined in 2009. Both
sites posted similar content except instead of taking pictures from
Instagram; DicksSportingGoods.com posted images that they have
taken. DicksSportingGoods.com also does a better job of referencing to
their other social media sites within their Facebook page as shown in

33

the screenshot below.

The most recent posts were on November 17th at 5 pm. This

post contained a guide for running during the winter.
34

DicksSportingGoods.com averaged about 1,240.8 likes and 2.2

comments per post. This average was about half the amount that
SportsAuthority.com had. SportsAuthority.com might have a high
average of likes and comments but DicksSportingGoods.com updated
their information more often. Their Facebook page was updated at
least twice a day, usually once in the morning and once in the evening.
Some of the information that was posted to
DicksSportingGoods.coms Facebook page was repeated on their other
social media sites, such as Twitter. DicksSportingGoods.coms Twitter
account had 381,000 followers, 26,400 tweets, 2,610 people they were
following and 4,357 likes. Their most recent tweets were on November
18th around 9 pm. This tweet contained information about five gym
bags that fit your life. DicksSportingGoods.com tweeted about
exercise related topics and products that they offered, such as apparel,
tips and discounts. The average tweet got about 0.8 comments, 27.4
favorites and 9.4 retweets.
DicksSportingGoods.coms Google Plus page had 6,811 followers
and 15,365,841 total views. The most recent post was from November
17th at 5 pm. The post was the guide to running during winter. This
information also appeared on their Facebook page and Twitter. It was
posted around the same time on all of the sites.
DicksSportingGoods.coms Google Plus page did not have many
comments so their average came out as 0. I arrived at this number by
35

selecting the five most recent posts and averaging the amount of
comments. Some of the comments on DicksSportingGoods.com Google
Plus page were inappropriate because one user thought it would be
funny to comment unnecessarily on the post. These inappropriate
comments had nothing to do with DicksSportingGoods.com or the post.
DicksSportingGoods.com posted the same type of information on this
page as they did their other social media sites.
Their YouTube channel contained 186 videos. It also had 13,409
subscribers and 19,231,854 total views. The range of views went from
208 to 1,777,123. DicksSportingGoods.com did not receive many
comments on their videos so the average was 0.8 comments per video.
The range of comments as 0 to 49. The 49 comments came from one
of their more popular videos and the comments were mostly positive.
Not many of their videos received thumbs up or thumbs down so the
average was 124.6 for thumbs up and 13.6 for the thumbs down. The
most recent video was posted one week ago and the one before this
was posted two weeks ago. DicksSportingGoods.com updated their site
quite frequently, especially for a video based social media site. The
variety of content ranged from commercials for
DicksSportingGoods.com to inspiration videos.
DicksSportingGoods.coms Pinterest page consisted of 18 boards,
925 pins and 9 likes. They were also following 51 people while 12,100
were following them. The board categories ranged from gift ideas to
36

inspiration messages. For example, one of the boards was titled 2015
Hottest Gifts while another was simply called motivation. Their last pin
was on November 16th and it was pinned to the 2015 Hottest Gifts
board. Most of their recent posts had been to this board. The difference
between the second most recent pin and the third was seven days, but
the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh most recent pin were pinned on the
same day.
Social Media Information for SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com:
Social Media

SportsAuthorit

DicksSportingGoo

y.com

ds.com

Facebook: page likes

1,198,123

4,097,046

Facebook: year joined

2009

2010

Facebook: average comments

32

2.2

Facebook: average likes

3,489.6

1,240.8

Twitter: tweets

14,100

26,400

Twitter: Followers

56,500

381,000

Twitter: Following

1,627

2,610

Twitter: Likes

1,572

4,356

Twitter: average comments

0.8

Twitter: average favorite

3.6

27.4

Twitter: average retweets

4.8

9.4

Google Plus: Followers

2,738

6,811

37

Google Plus: views

947,943

15,365,841

Google Plus: Average +1

3.4

2.8

YouTube: videos

108

186

YouTube: subscribers

1,998

13,409

YouTube: views

2,526,555

19,231,854

YouTube: Range of views

63 - 848,363

208-1,777,123

YouTube: average comments

7.2

13.6

YouTube: comment range

0 - 36

0-49

YouTube: Positive or Negative

About 50/ 50

Mostly positive

YouTube: average thumbs up

1.4

124.6

YouTube: avg. thumbs down

13.6

Pinterest: Boards

34

18

Pinterest: Pins

3,000

925

Pinterest: Likes

242

Pinterest: Followers

6,600

12,100

Pinterest: Following

151

51

Instagram: Followers

11,600

Instagram: Following

612

Instagram: posts

412

Instagram: average favorite

189.6

Instagram: favorite range

14 - 1,849

Instagram: average comment

Instagram: comment range

0-60

Instagram: Positive or Negative

Positive

comments

38

comments

Recommendations for Improvements:

I would recommend that SportsAuthority.com spend more
time updating their social media sites. Their YouTube channel is
failing in comparison to DicksSportingGoods.com. I would
recommend posting a new video every week or at least once
every two weeks to try and compete with
DicksSportingGoods.com. I would also start to encourage more
participation from the users. They can do this by encouraging
more comments and reviews. I would also recommend
referencing their social media sites on their other social media
sites. They can do this by posting things like visit our pinterest
page to see gift option, much like DicksSportingGoods.com.
Following all of these recommendations would definitely increase
their social media score, which will improve traffic flow.

Social Signals: Sharing (Ss)

SportsAuthority.com Score: 7
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 0
Analyze:

39

Every SportsAuthority.com product-level page had their

share tools located under the Availability section. These share
tools allowed the user to like and share the product to Facebook,
pin it on Pinterest, tweet about it on twitter and recommend it on
Google Plus. The Like button doubled as both a like and share
tool on Facebook. Shown below are the social sharing tools
located under the Availability section.

This is not the only area where the user is able share something
to a social media site. In the comments section,
SportsAuthority.com added a comment on this review link, which
allowed the user to post their review to Facebook.

DicksSportingGoods.com did not offer sharing tools.

Recommendation for Improvements:
I would recommend that SportsAuthority.com move their
share tools closer to the product image. They get buried slightly

40

in their current location. Moving the share tools to the upper left
of the product image will make them easier to find. Relabeling
the Facebook share tool to say like and share instead of just like
is also something that I would recommend. The Facebook like
and share button does not actually work for most of the productlevel pages. I would recommend going through and fixing the
linking problem. I would also remove the numbers shown beside
the buttons. I think that they are unnecessary and make the
share tools seem cluttered.

HTML: Current Keyword Location Analysis (Ht, Hd, Hh)

41

Title Tags
SportsAuthority.com Product Category Page:
o

<title>Tennis Racquets | Sports Authority</title>

Dicks Sporting Goods.com Product Category Page:

o

<title>Tennis Racquets | DICK&#39;S Sporting

Goods</title>

Analysis:
The title tags for both SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com are almost identical, aside from having
Sports Authority and Dicks Sporting Goods respectively added to
the end. They way that SportsAuthority.com and DS detail their
title tags, shows that both SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com understand how important their title
tag are for search engines and the ability for those search

42

engines to locate their sites. SportsAuthority.com and

DicksSportingGoods.com have titles that are simple and straight
to the point, making sure to be more accurate, rather than word
stuffing to get more search results. The SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com titles are showing search engines as
well as users, that tennis racquets will be found on this certain
page. The only difference that can be seen between
SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com in respect to
their titles would be the &#39; ascii code in
DicksSportingGoods.com. This group of symbols and numbers is
a segment of code that is used to place an apostrophe in
between two letters, also called an ascii code. The reason that
this method is used instead of placing the actual apostrophe is to
prevent syntax errors from occurring in the code. A syntax error
is when a character or string is incorrectly placed in a command
or instruction that causes a failure in execution. Syntax errors
occur when the computer registers a character as part of the
code rather than just part of a sentence. When an apostrophe is
used in code, it represents a word or phrase that is supposed to
be registered by the computer as a whole called a string, but can
also result in a break in code if not used carefully. For that fact, it
is understandable why the coder decided to use the ascii code
instead of the physical apostrophe, so that they did not have to

43

worry about such syntax errors. SportsAuthority.com does not

have to worry about this error occurring in their title since they
do not need an apostrophe. However DicksSportingGoods.com,
in this situation does not necessarily need the ascii code either,
since there are no prior apostrophes to worry about closing a
string or statement too early.
Recommendation for Improvements:
After reviewing the title tags for both SportsAuthority.com
and DicksSportingGoods.com, it seems that neither of the sites
did anything that was against the rules or anything that could
hinder their traffic flow. Both SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com made sure to provide the content of the
page, as well as their respective company names inside their title
tags. SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com also
keep clear of word stuffing, making sure to only placed the
required words and nothing else, most likely in an attempt to not
make Google angry at them and not post their content in the
Google Search Engine Results Page. I would also recommend that
SportsAuthority.com make their title tags more interesting and
content oriented, so that users can understand where they are
and what is located on the page.

44

Description Meta Tag

SportsAuthority.com Product Category Page:

o

Category Level

<meta name="description" content="Buy Racquets

at Sports Authority - the nation&#39;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." />

Product Level

<meta name="description" content="Buy BABOLAT

Pure Drive Wimbledon - Unstrung - Well suited for
competitive players in search of the perfect balance
between power and control. This legendary racquet
no longer needs any introduction." />

DicksSportingGoods.com Product Category Page:

o

Category Level

<meta name="description" content="Get in the

game with a new tennis racquet from DICK&#39;S
Sporting Goods. Shop a variety of tennis racquets for
juniors &#38; adults from top-rated brands. " />

Product Level

<meta name="description" content="Shop Babolat

Drive Max 110 Tennis Racquet at DICK'S Sporting

45

Goods. Find more information and get customer

ratings and reviews today." />
Explanation:
The use of the description meta tag is very important in
websites, it allows for users to read a small description of the
important information for that page. The description meta tag
shows up on the search engine results pages under the title and
url for the page. Not only does it show up on search engine
results pages, but it is also an important piece of code for people
with disabilities, since the description meta tag is holds the
content that their screen readers picks up and presents to the
user. If the description meta tag is not detailed enough, or has
very vague information, the users with disabilities will not get the
relevant information that they require, and will find another site
that can be of more service to them. Given these facts, it is
important to keep the description meta tag up to date and make
sure that it has the most relevant information pertaining to its
page. Otherwise, you will lose large amounts of traffic over such
a small but important issue.
The content on the description meta tag for
SportsAuthority.com for their category page is weak and has very
little relevant information towards this specific content page,

46

aside from start of the meta tag that it showing you that this is
the page that you can buy tennis racquets at
SportsAuthority.com. The content section on the category page
for SportsAuthority.com starts off fine, but ends up going to their
generic description line that they use for the whole online store,
when they do this, the relevant content for that page stops and
they lose traffic. When looking at the product level description
meta tag for SportsAuthority.com, they do much better compared
to their category page. The description meta tag starts out with
the name of the product, then it gives a quick message about the
product. The way SportsAuthority.com describes their product
level description meta tags is much better, since it has further
relevant information, rather than generic filler information that
you can find on any page. When compared to
DicksSportingGoods.com and their description meta tag,
SportsAuthority.com is lacking in their category description meta
tags, but does much better on product level description meta
tags. DicksSportingGoods.com focuses on saying exactly what is
in their page with some side details, they first state what the
page is, and then they say that they have a variety of tennis
racquets for juniors and adults. When looking at the description
meta tag for their product level pages, DicksSportingGoods.com
starts to lack in originality, opting to go with a generic message

47

to end their description meta tags. Compared to

DicksSportingGoods.com, SportsAuthority.com does better on
their product level description meta tags since they have far
more information that helps the users who use screen readers
understand what is on that specific page better. Overall, the
description meta tag on the category level pages for
DicksSportingGoods.com are far more detailed than
SportsAuthority.com, yet SportsAuthority.com does better on the
product level description meta tags than
DicksSportingGoods.com does.
Recommendation for Improvements:
I would definitely recommend SportsAuthority.com to go
further into detail when writing out their description meta tags
on their category level pages. SportsAuthority.com should
describe more than what the initial page is, but go more into
detail on what products they have or styles and age groups that
they sell to. When going into further detail, SportsAuthority.com
should spend much more time on the description meta tags since
it will bring in much more traffic in the long run. When the
description meta tag is optimized, the information will show
higher up on Google's search engine results pages, increasing
the traffic flow, which increases profit.

48

IMG names and ALT text

Explanation:
This is an image of the very first racquet that shows up on
the Tennis Racquet page. This is important since it will most likely
be the first racquet the users see when first on this page. The
title tags for images are important to SportsAuthority.com and its
success since title tags consist of the words that will show up on
search engine results pages, so you must have them up to date
and consist of relevant information. The alt description tags are
also very important because they too show up on search engine

49

results pages right under the title tags. Title tags and description
tags must have a uniqueness to them, so that Google will be
more likely to show that search in their search engine results
page over any other. Google prefers to link their users to content
that are more unique, so they check to see if title tags or
description tags are similar to others. The image alt text and title
tags for SportsAuthority.com are identical to one another, which
poses a problem since it divides the amount of reference words
Google has to find SportsAuthority.com with. If the title tag and
alt tag are the same, you are only lowering the amount of traffic
you have coming to your site since search engine results pages
only have half the information to find you with. When looking at
the title tag for this image, they do a good job of describing what
it is and where it is from. But when you look at the alt tag, it's a
mimic of the title tag, but it should be describing in as much
detail but keeping it brief what the products is and whom it is for.
Doing so will allow for users with screen readers to understand
what the image is and know what it looks like or who it is meant
for.
Recommendation for Improvements:
I would suggest that the coders change the image name
and its alt tag so that it is a bit more user friendly to people with
disabilities. The title as well as the alt tag is exactly the same,
50

which could cause some confusion. The title is supposed to be

the name and developer of the product, and the alt tag is
supposed to describe in a little detail what the product is.
SportsAuthority.com making the title and alt tags the same will
cause issues for anyone using screen readers since it doesnt
differ between the two. Another issue that SportsAuthority.com
has with their image tags, would be the actual name of those
files. The image name should be the name of the product, not
incomprehensible numbering systems that only people who work
there understand. This will make it clearer for the person putting
together the website as well as anyone who is using a screen
reader to read the file names. The link to those files should be
much simpler, making folders have more unique and
understandable names, which will again help any web coders
and their organization. For an example of a link I would suggest
for SportsAuthority.com, look below.
www.sportsauthority.com/golf_racquet/tennis/racquets/babolatPureDriveW
imbledon.jpg

Follow the above format that I provided for

SportsAuthority.com as an example, will make it so that their
folder names will make sense, since they are simply the
navigation steps to get to that particular product on the
SportsAuthority.com. Doing so will also make the presentation of
51

it much cleaner to look at and easier to organize for coders.

Changing the name of the jpg file to a more condensed version
of its title tag will make it cleaner and easier to differentiate
between the other images. The biggest point to make for this
edit would be that it would make the code make sense to those
who have to use screen readers in order to see what is on the
screen. Aside from their alt tag being a mimic of the title tag,
SportsAuthority.com did a good job of keeping their information
about the product images up to date and unique to that
particular product.

Architecture (As, Au, Am)

Speed (As)
SportsAuthority.com Score: 6.682 seconds
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 4.659 seconds
Explanation:
The importance of speed for any website is one of the most
influential subjects, since if a page loads fast, then the users are
able to obtain the information that they need in a much more
timely manner. This will also make the user happier and keep

52

them from drifting off to another site that loads faster than your
own. So the question every website has to ask, is how fast does
their page load and what can they do to speed that load process
up. When searching through the different content, we noticed
that the items that take the longest when a web page is load are
the images and the servers attached to those website who
actually use them.
SportsAuthority.com:

From reviewing the charts above, you can come to the

conclusion that SportsAuthority.com has a decent load speed of
6.682 seconds. Which is still under the max load time of 10
seconds where users usually lose interest in what they are doing

53

and move on to another subject or site. The larger amount of

time spent when the site is loading would be on images, since
images take up more space and are usually larger files sizes,
After that, servers and JavaScript files take up the largest section
since they are the segments of code that do the hard computing
for the site such as logging in or taking care of monetary
transactions. Aside from that, most of the other files don't take
up much time when the page is loading, which is why
SportsAuthority.com had a lower load time.
DicksSportingGoods.com:

As with SportsAuthority.com, DicksSportingGoods.com has

many image files, which means that they have very long load
times since images are a lot larger. But DicksSportingGoods.com
54

has much larger JavaScript files, which take up nearly the same
amount of space and load time as images. The overall load time
for DicksSportingGoods.com is 4.659 seconds which is much
better than SportsAuthority.com. A reason for that might be a
better optimization of their JavaScript files, since JavaScript files
don't use up a lot of load time. Aside from the images and
JavaScript files, the other files don't take up much load time at
all, allowing for the developers to spend more time optimizing
their code.
Recommendation for Improvements:
My first recommendation for SportsAuthority.com would be
to add in the function for a continuous scrolling system that will
take away the need for multiple pages and the different products
will only load whenever the user scrolls near that section. Doing
so would make the initial page load time to be reduced by a big
amount, since the page will only load the first six or so and load
the rest whenever the user scrolls. To add on to that, if
SportsAuthority.com optimized their images instead of using full
raw images, then they could further decrease the load time for
their pages, even more if combined with the scrolling system.
Another recommendation would be to add some organization
features that DicksSportingGoods.com employs, such as
organizing individual content into separate sections, allowing for
55

users to select the section that they need and not having to
scroll through pointless products that they are not interested in
my last recommendation would be to lower the load speed of
java server programs, since they take up a lot of time on the
initial start up. Doing this will allow for the developers to have a
simpler time adding code to the server as well as prevent issues
of people leaving the page after a certain amount of time.

URLs (Au)
SportsAuthority.com Score: 5
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 4
URL:
SportsAuthority.com URLs

1. http://www.sportsauthority.com/TeamSports/Tennis/Racquets/family.jsp?
categoryId=22702526&cp=3052500.66276696
2. http://www.sportsauthority.com/BABOLAT-Pure-Drive-WimbledonUnstrung/product.jsp?
productId=31975046&cp=3052500.66276696.22702526&parent
Page=family
3. http://www.sportsauthority.com/PRINCE-Tour-23-Junior-ReducedLength-Tennis-Racquet/product.jsp?

56

productId=25119176&cp=3052500.66276696.22702526&pg=7
&parentPage=family
DicksSportingGoods.com URLs
1. http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/family/index.jsp?
categoryId=4418849
2. http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?
productId=59433086&cp=4406646.4413887.4418829.4418840
&categoryId=4418849
3. http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?
productId=67842906&page=2&cp=4406646.4413887.4418829.
4418840&categoryId=4418849
Explanation:
What defines a good URL is the way that it is formed and
organized, making it simple enough that users can remember
and recall what it is. Good URLs should consist of all words and
no numbers at all, allowing for it to be very simple and
straightforward in its organization. This allows for Google search
results to easily find it and place it in relevant search results
pages for their users. Whenever a URL has too many numbers or
characters that make no sense to normal users, Google
automatically removes the nonwords when showing the
information in a search results page.

57

When looking at the SportsAuthority.com URLs, it is easy to

realize that SportsAuthority.com does not focus on optimizing
their URLs. SportsAuthority.com sticks to their own way of
naming their folders and files, which are not very user friendly,
making them lose traffic flow from Google results pages. The first
URL for SportsAuthority.com starts off with the domain, then
states the root folder location as Team-Sports, which makes no
sense since the navigation order to get to this page is through
Golf/Tennis and does not have anything to do with their Team
Sports section. Then it moves onto a more generic sub section of
Tennis and then into the last subsection of Racquets, which are
accurate enough, following the navigation path to get to the
current category level page. After that, all content falls into
SportsAuthority.com and their unique naming system, which is
most likely automatically generated by their java server page
family.jsp. The other Urls stick to the exact same format for
SportsAuthority.com, opting to show the someone accurate
navigation path to that certain page then dropping in their
random numbers. When looking at the DicksSportingGoods.com
URLs, DicksSportingGoods.com does nearly the same thing as
SportsAuthority.com, showing root folder names then defaulting
to server-generated numbers for the links.

58

Recommendation for Improvements:

I would recommend greatly that SportsAuthority.com get
rid of their weird numbering system and switch to a format that
has only words. This will make it so that users can understand
and completely comprehend exactly where they are on the site.
Once they accomplish this, Google search results page will be
able to more accurately place SportsAuthority.com and its
relative pages into the correct user search results pages, this will
greatly increase traffic flow.

Mobile (Am)
SportsAuthority.com Score: 9
DicksSportingGoods.com Score: 6
Explanation:
The importance of mobile devices and the traffic that is
created from mobile websites has increased greatly in the past
few years to nearly 50% of all traffic for web sites. With that
much web traffic flowing through mobile devices, there has
become a higher focus on mobile compatible sites because
companies have realized that users want mobile sites. The age of
responsive design has passed much faster than what was initially
thought. The idea of responsive design was amazing at its

59

beginning, but had its flaws where it slowed down the load time
for websites substantially. So developers have moved to the
multiple design process, where they design their website for
three different sizes, desktop, tablet and mobile. This allows for
sites to load fast and still have the feeling that they are
responsive to the size of device being used without any of the
drawbacks. Although this seems like the best fix for how slow
responsive design was, there are still issues where some content
that is less important for the overall success of the company are
shifted to a lower location or removed from the navigation
altogether in an attempt to free up space for more important
subjects.
When initially looking through SportsAuthority.com on the
mobile, I noticed that the navigation went from a horizontal bar
to the standard mobile menu button in the top left of the header
that, when clicked, opened up the full navigation in a vertical
style list. Doing this allows for all of the navigation items to be
shown without having to sacrifice any. This is really important for
consistency throughout the site, making sure that users do not
have to remember multiple ways on how to navigate your site.
When compared to the desktop version, when the size of the
window shrinks, many navigation items get dropped instead of
resizing the text to fit properly. Which means that

60

SportsAuthority.com understands that mobile traffic is as

important to desktop traffic, but SportsAuthority.com starts to
ignore the desktop traffic in the process. Another important
difference on the mobile version of SportsAuthority.com is that
there is a side scrolling function employed for the product level
pages, which shows all the images for the currently selected
product. The only issue with this unique feature so far, is that if
there is currently only one image available for the selected
product, then that single image will continually cycle through
acting as though there were different images. This causes
confusion and could possibly lead people to doubt the credibility
of SportsAuthority.com and their developers, making them steer
clear of SportsAuthority.com and choosing other sites such as
DicksSportingGoods.com, which is not very good for business.
One huge issue on the mobile version of SportsAuthority.com
would be that there is a large advertisement on the homepage
that takes up about half of the page, which takes away from the
product space.
When comparing the mobile and desktop versions of
DicksSportingGoods.com, I instantly notice the big difference in
the amount of content stuffed in their navigation and how
awkward their site feels with multiple versions of a navigation.
Their first version of their navigation is the most obvious, smack

61

dab in the middle of their prime real estate, taking up most of

the page is a large vertical list that is their navigation bar. But
upon further inspection, the shop button at the top of the header
is actually another hidden navigation bar that seems redundant.
Compared to SportsAuthority.com, DicksSportingGoods.com is
lacking greatly in the mobile website department, seeming to
focus more on their navigation over products.

Recommendation for Improvements:

The biggest recommendation for this section would be the
removal of the side scrolling function on SportsAuthority.com and
their product level pages. This feature is really unique, but has
many flaws to it that take away from its overall appeal. Instead
of removing the feature all together, the developers could simply
add in an authentication check for the feature, making sure that
it does not scroll to the side when there is only one image, and
allowing for it to scroll when there are multiple. Another
recommendation would be that SportsAuthority.com learn to
balance their mobile site and their desktop site in order to make
them more equal since traffic is divided equally between mobile
and desktop. Doing so would make sure to secure the optimum

62

amount of traffic, since neither size format will feel left out or
discriminated against. My last recommendation would be to
either reduce or completely remove internal and external
advertisements from the mobile version of SportsAuthority.com
since it takes up prime real estate from more important features
to the site such as the actual products. Once SportsAuthority.com
removes their advertisements, they will instantly seem more
professional and have a better response to their online site.
Links (Ln, Lq)

Link Number (Ln)

SportsAuthority.com Number of Referring Domains: 2.3
Million
DicksSportingGoods.com Number of Referring Domains:
16.2 Million

Link Quality (Lq)

SportsAuthority.com Number of Referring Domains: 70
DicksSportingGoods.com Number of Referring Domains:
60
Explanation:
When studying the stats given to us by
checker.monitorbacklinks.com and majestic.com, I realized that

63

the amount of sites and the amount of links that have some sort
of link directing traffic to SportsAuthority.com and
DicksSportingGoods.com were nowhere near the same amount.
The amount of links that were created that lead traffic to
SportsAuthority.com was around 2.3 million backlinks on
checker.monitorbacklinks.com when looking at the whole site
and 2,753 backlinks from majestic.com when looking at the
category level page. This amount was a lot more than what I
thought it would be given the amount of overall traffic
SportsAuthority.com actually gets. But when looking at the
number of links to SportsAuthority.com, the sites that link to
SportsAuthority.com are far fewer at 10.9 thousand sites on
checker.monitorbacklinks.com when looking at the whole site
and 246 sites from majestic.com when looking at the category
level page. Both of these statistics are understandable since
there are normally far fewer sites in the world compared to
backlinks, and the fact that sites can link multiple times to the
same place using the same link.
Sports Authority SEO Link Popularity Results
Majestic.com
External Backlinks

Referring Domains

Trust Flow

Citation Flow

2,753

246

60

49

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checker.monitorbacklinks.com

When looking at DicksSportingGoods.com, the amount of

links that direct traffic to their site is greater than
SportsAuthority.com at 16.2 million links on
checker.monitorbacklinks.com for the whole website and 11,297
links from majestic.com for the category level page. Which did
not surprise me at all, since DicksSportingGoods.com has had a
higher traffic flow going to their site compared to
SportsAuthority.com. When looking at the amount of sites that
linked to DicksSportingGoods.com, you can tell that there were
more as well, compared to SportsAuthority.com at 20 thousand
sites from checker.monitorbacklinks.com for the whole website
and 312 sites from majestic.com for the category level page. This
shows that DicksSportingGoods.com does much better when it
comes to sites linking to them, which is not good for
SportsAuthority.com. Overall, SportsAuthority.com did a little

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worse than DicksSportingGoods.com, which is understandable

since DicksSportingGoods.com has much better overall traffic
flow than SportsAuthority.com.
Dicks Sporting Goods SEO Link Popularity Results
Majestic.com
External Backlinks

Referring Domains

Trust Flow

Citation Flow

11,297

312

57

50

checker.monitorbacklinks.com

When looking more in depth at the individual sites that link

to both SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com, you
can easily tell that there were far fewer sites that were
considered quality sites, or credible sites. The reason that there
are so few sites that are considered credible is due to the fact
that those sites such as .gov .edu and .mil are all required to
prove who they are and what their purpose is in order to get past

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the restriction, then they can be rewarded with one of those

domains. There are other credible sites out there on the internet
that do not have one of these restricted domains, and those sites
are the big name companies such as news sites that thrive on
telling the truth and people understanding that they only tell the
truth, thus making them credible. When searching through many
sites looking for specifics on how many restricted domains link to
both SportsAuthority.com and DicksSportingGoods.com, I could
not find specifics. But upon further looking, I found that there are
70 restricted domains linking to SportsAuthority.com and there
are 60 restricted domains linking to DicksSportingGoods.com.
This comparison was very unexpected, since SportsAuthority.com
has been taking up second place the whole time I have been
comparing them. The mere fact that SportsAuthority.com has
more restricted domains linking to them than
DicksSportingGoods.com does, should help prove that
SportsAuthority.com is far more reliable and trusting than
DicksSportingGoods.com.
Conclusions & Priority Recommendations
Overall, SportsAuthority.com is not a bad website but there are
things that they need to improve in order to increase their overall
traffic flow. One of the recommendations of improvement that needs to
be done, is reorganizing the layout of the main category page and the
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product-level pages because they are too cluttered and causes users to
miss key information . This error can be fixed by removing the
unimportant information, such as the promotions on the product level
pages. Fixing these areas will increase the quality of the content, which
is ranked as a +3 on the periodic table of SEO success factors. This is
important because Google focuses on these factors when determining
which sites to send traffic. SportsAuthority.com should also increase
the amount of information they put on their social media sites. This is
important because Social Reputation is ranked as a +2 on the periodic
table of SEO success factors and the amount of recent content on
social media sites is directly related to the social reputation of a site.
The location of the share tools on the product-level pages should also
be changed to the upper left of the product image. This will make it
more visible to the user and allow for easier access.
Another issue that was presented was how vague and overused
the description meta tags content was for the SportsAuthority.com
pages. The description meta tags are also a very important part of the
website since the tags are directly linked to the search engine results
page, directly under the title tag. With regards to title tags,
SportsAuthority.com keeps their title tags up to date and filled with
relevant information to their respective pages. The title tags of a
webpage are very influential with search engine results pages, since all
information on title tags are the main subjects for those results pages.

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Most of these issues are very important to the overall success of a

website since they all have higher rated factors, which influences the
amount of traffic that is sent to their website from search engine
results pages.

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