.png){kind=logo}
If you’re a fan of football, or sports in general for that matter, then you’ll probably have noticed a massive uptake in the sheer amount of social media and marketing content being pumped out by sports brands - especially Premier League clubs. Every team in the league, from Liverpool to Luton, will be seen engaging in viral challenges, uploading curated Instagram and TikTok content, regularly producing YouTube videos, and much more. In terms of content marketing and maintaining a strong digital presence, generally, the premier league seems to have a good handle on things. But do they take this same, considered approach to the industry of SEO?
In this blog series, we’re going to be taking a look at every single team in the premier league, from Arsenal to Wolves, and taking a critical eye to their official club websites. Are they up to snuff in terms of technical performance? Do they regularly create, and update, EEAT content for their website’s users? Do they rank well for their most-valued keywords? Or, are some of these clubs in danger of slipping into the relegation places!? Let’s find out. Up first, we’ll be taking a look at AFC Bournemouth (my team), Arsenal, Aston Villa, and Brentford.
What SEO metrics will we be using?
Before we begin, we should establish the core metrics and key performance indicators that will be relevant for this mini SEO audit series of sorts. Granted, as an SEO Freelancer, I’m not going to be wheeling out the biggest hitters here. I have a living to earn, and I’m certainly not going to be giving Man City the full SEO audit treatment for a free blog series (though if the Sheikh is reading this, you can find my rates and prices here; do get in touch). These miniature SEO audits will be examining, in more general detail, the following metrics:
Keyword performance (using UK data only)
Site Speed
EEAT Content analysis
General Page Structure analysis (Header Tags, Metadata)
I’m going to be giving each football club a mark out of ten across all four of these categories, and the team with the most points will top the table at the end of the blog series. While this blog series is all in the name of fun, and there would normally be more complex issues and items to check off in a regular audit, these mini audits should give a decent insight into these sites' general levels of performance. For an example of what a more detailed on-page, and technical SEO audit would include, you are more than welcome to consult my services guide. Now, on with the analysis.
AFC Bournemouth
As a season ticket holder at Dean Court, AFC Bournemouth is a fun place to start our analysis. The biggest, dare I say most massive club on the south coast, cut me open and I bleed black and red. Unfortunately, SEO takes no prisoners, and if the Cherries have a dismal website, then the metrics and their overall performance will reflect this.
AFC Bournemouth’s Keyword Performance
To start with, we’ll take a look at AFC Bournemouth’s current level of keyword performance across a few of their most valuable, most relevant keywords. As a premier league club with a lot of inherent domain authority and presence, as well as a strong backlink profile, they should rank very highly for most, if not all, of their exact match search terms. According to Ahrefs’ keyword ranking checker, the AFC Bournemouth club website performs as follows for these keywords:
Keywords | Ranking |
afc bournemouth | 1 |
afc bournemouth news | 2 |
afc bournemouth shop | 2 |
afc bournemouth tickets | 1 |
afc bournemouth matches | 1 |
A very solid performance in terms of keyword rankings here. They rank number one, as you would expect, for the exact match brand name and for tickets and matches (the club website is the only place you can buy tickets, so it would be a bit of a disaster if they didn’t rank first here). They also perform fairly strongly for other, brand-relevant search terms; for topics like the club shop and wider club news. Appearing in the top two positions for most of the relevant search terms that the site exists for is indicative, overall, of a good command of their keywords.
Score: 9/10
AFC Bournemouth’s Site Speed
There are many technical SEO metrics we could look at, but for a catch-all, quick examination, we’re going to be analysing site speed. Mainly for its SEO, UX, and site health implications. By using Google’s own PageSpeed Insights tool (which grades mobile and desktop speeds across a variety of KPIs), we can see that the AFCB site has a performance score of 64 on desktop, and 34 on mobile. Quite frankly, this is an appalling set of scores for site speed; this would not stand up to any kind of scrutiny in a more detailed technical SEO audit, and would be one of the very first issues I would inform the “client” of.
Score: 3/10
AFC Bournemouth’s EEAT Content
EEAT Content can very quickly be summarised as how Google wants a website to approach its content. Google wants all ranking content to display Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. To analyse a football club's approach to content, we should then look into how much valuable, informative content is being produced by the website, and how often. As a club, AFCB produces a decent amount of content for site visitors, with a variety of different content hubs for recent news, international fans, video and podcast content, and more.
Across all of AFC Bournemouth’s written articles and content, there is an average word count of 563 words per page. Word count is not a concrete indication of quality content, but it does underline that there is a degree of effort being put into their written content. Another feature of EEAT Content is regularly updated and uploaded content, and the site is consistently producing around three blog and news articles every single day. Overall, this combined with their multitude of other content offerings, gives the AFCB website a decent score for providing EEAT Content.
Score: 8/10
AFC Bournemouth’s Page Structure
For general page structure, we’re going to be analysing some of the more common issues that can crop up here; H1-H2-H3 header structure, and metadata. In terms of using the right header tags in the right areas, the AFCB site is pretty poor, with 35 of their pages not having a H1 title tag. Not including a H1 on a page is one of the cardinal sins of SEO and page design, and it makes content and page structure confusing to understand for search engines like Google. Regarding meta titles and descriptions, they seem to use the exact same meta title for all of their pages, and they have 101 meta descriptions that either don’t contain any words, or are above the recommended 155 character limit.
Overall, this is a very poor level of optimisation across these very basic SEO and page structure metrics. Both would be incredibly easy and simple to optimise, and both would have a reasonable impact on the AFCB site’s SEO and site performance overall.
Score: 2/10
TOTAL: 22/40
Arsenal FC
We move from the biggest club in the premier league, to the plucky underdogs of Arsenal. After bottling the real-life premier league last season (yes, it was a bottling, let’s all be adults about it), can the North London outfit complete a comeback as strong as Rob Holding’s hairline with some strong SEO numbers? Or will they fall short once more?
Arsenal FC’s Keyword Performance
As established, we will first take a look at the current level of keyword performance across Arsenal’s most important keywords. As one of the top 6 clubs, with a huge global fan base and strong branding, Arsenal should really excel by default in these kinds of areas; even without much deliberate optimisation. According to Ahrefs’ keyword ranking checker, the Arsenal club website performs as follows for these keywords:
Keywords | Rankings |
arsenal | 1 |
arsenal news | 4 |
arsenal shop | 3 |
arsenal tickets | 1 |
arsenal matches | 1 |
Arsenal are a surprising example of the lack of authority being claimed over some of the more tertiary search terms. They rank in position 1 for arsenal (as well as ranking first for arsenal fc), and they rank as high as expected for the general tickets and matches terms, which is ultimately what the website is there for, but for as strong a website as they have in terms of producing regular, detailed, and up-to-date content, they should really be ranking higher for arsenal news and shop in my opinion.
Score: 7/10
Arsenal’s Site Speed
By once again using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool (grading mobile and desktop page speeds across different KPIs), we can see that the Arsenal site has a performance score of 74 on desktop, and 10 on mobile. That score for desktop actually isn’t too bad, but the mobile score is, and I genuinely mean this, the worst score I’ve ever seen (at least so far). Having a website that performs this slowly and poorly for mobile is damning, and borderline catastrophic.
Score: 2/10
Arsenal’s EEAT Content
As a club, Arsenal also produces a solid amount of content for fans visiting the website, with a variety of different content hubs for recent news, international fans, video and podcast content, and more. They also, in contrast to AFCB, have an entire About Us section of the website dedicated to the history of the club, the academy, and more.
Across all of Arsenal’s written articles and content, there is an average word count of 1,337 words per page. This is quite a substantial amount of content, on average, across each piece of content; which is indicative of detail, expertise, authority, and value. The Arsenal site is also regularly uploading as many as six pieces of written and video content every day, which more than satisfies the criteria of EEAT Content centred around providing regular content for users. Overall, the Arsenal website does an excellent job at providing EEAT Content.
Score: 9/10
Arsenal’s Page Structure
When looking at Arsenal’s H1-H2-H3 header structure, we can see that 4 of their pages do not have a H1 title tag, and that 42 have two H1 tags. Pages should never have more than H1 title tag, and having two on a page is an easily-avoidable and disappointing issue to have, that will make it much harder for Google to understand the structure of pages. Regarding meta titles and descriptions, 23% of their meta titles are over the recommended 60 character limit (according to Screaming Frog) and 6 pages have duplicate titles. In terms of meta descriptions, 16% exceed the recommended character limit, and 30% of pages are missing meta descriptions entirely.
Overall, this is again another example of low-quality optimisation across these SEO and page structure metrics. As with the AFCB site, the issues uncovered here would be very easy to fix, and could have a big impact on the performance of the website.
Score: 2/10
TOTAL: 20/40
Aston Villa
From the North-London giants of Arsenal, we move on to Aston Villa; a club seemingly on the up since ditching the dour Stevie G as their manager. With a strong feel-good factor at the moment, and a lot of forward momentum, will the Aston Villa website match this energy with their approach to SEO?
Aston Villa’s Keyword Performance
As already established, we will first take a look at Aston Villa’s most important keywords, and see how they’re performing currently. While not a top 6 club, Villa still have a pretty recognisable brand, and so they should perform fairly well for these terms with even a merely okay level of keyword optimisation. According to Ahrefs’ keyword ranking checker, the Aston Villa club website performs as follows for these keywords:
Keywords | Ranking |
aston villa | 1 |
aston villa news | 4 |
aston villa shop | 2 |
aston villa tickets | 3 |
aston villa matches | 1 |
Aston Villa’s website is the first that has a separate subdomain/portal specifically for users to buy tickets (which you can see here). This means that, while the core site technically ranks in position 3 for the tickets keyword, they may as well be ranking in the top position. The other rankings are what you would expect, with the core brand terms being ranked for in the top 1-5 positions. As with the other sites so far, a reasonably strong but expected performance on the keywords front for the Villa website.
Score: 8/10
Aston Villa’s Site Speed
By once again using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool (grading mobile and desktop page speeds across different KPIs), we can see that the Aston Villa site has a performance score of 57 on desktop, and 29 on mobile. Aston Villa’s site continues the trend of football websites having atrocious mobile site speeds, and the desktop score isn’t much better at all, making this yet another club that needs to pull its finger out a bit when it comes to making a fully-functioning, well-run website.
Score: 3/10
Aston Villa’s EEAT Content
As a club, Aston Villa continues the other trend of having a fairly decent content offering overall; producing a good amount of content for site visitors, including hubs for recent news, and video content. In comparison to the previous two sites we’ve analysed, however, their content offering is overall slightly thinner, pretty much just sticking to the news articles and videos and not providing much else.
Across all of Villa’s written articles and content, there is an average word count of 325 words per page; the lowest of any club so far, and compounding the earlier observation that the Villa site offers less content overall when compared to the other club websites. The Villa site does also regularly upload around 2-3 pieces of written and video content every day, so they aren’t necessarily slacking on providing users with content. Overall, the Aston Villa website does a serviceable job at providing EEAT Content, but they could do a little better.
Score: 7/10
Aston Villa’s Page Structure
Analysing Aston Villa’s H1-H2-H3 header structure, we can see that 35 of their pages do not have a H1 title tag, and that 2 have two H1 tags. These two issues compounded make for an overall confusing site structure for search engines to get to grips with, on an individual page basis, and when looking at the site as a whole. For meta titles and descriptions, none of their meta titles are over the recommended 60 character limit (according to Screaming Frog), however, 37 pages have duplicate titles. In terms of meta descriptions, none of their pages have descriptions that exceed the recommended character limit, while none of the pages are missing meta descriptions, either. However, they do have 38 pages with duplicate descriptions.
Aston Villa’s site actually performs quite well in terms of keeping metadata within the recommended character limits, but they are pretty lousy at everything else, with a tendency to lazily duplicate titles and descriptions across multiple pages, and a poor grasp on header tag structure overall.
Score: 3/10
TOTAL: 21/40
Brentford FC
The final club we’ll be taking a look at today is the London-based Brentford FC. One of the smaller clubs in the premier league, Brentford are known for their savvy, data-driven, money-ball approach to running the business side of the club, and they’ve experienced great success because of this. Will this approach extend to strong SEO performances, too?
Brentford’s Keyword Performance
You’ll know by now what we’re looking at first; Brentford’s most important keywords. As perhaps the smallest club so far in terms of the combination of branding, fanbase, and location, it will be interesting to see how this is expressed in terms of overall keyword performance. According to Ahrefs’ keyword ranking checker, the Brentford club website performs for these keywords as follows:
Keyword | Ranking |
brentford | 1 |
brentford news | 5 |
brentford shop | 2 |
brentford tickets | 1 |
brentford matches | 1 |
It is more of the same really when it comes to Brentford’s keyword performance across these most common, most valuable search terms. We can see by these results that the club website ranks fairly highly for pretty much every keyword that represents any kind of value to the site, with the site. Another decently strong showing for a football club’s website in terms of keyword performance.
Score: 8/10
Brentford’s Site Speed
We’re once again using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool (which grades mobile and desktop page speeds by using different KPIs), and with this tool, we can see that the Brentford site has a performance score of 30 on desktop, and 8 on mobile. I commented earlier that Arsenal’s mobile page speed is the worst I’d seen when specifically analysing for page speeds during an audit. That record didn’t last long; and this time, the desktop speed doesn’t even come close to making up for it. Awful stuff.
Score: 1/10
Brentford’s EEAT Content
As a club, Brentford’s website to my eyes offers a similar level of quality, in-depth content as Aston Villa’s website does. They pretty much stick to creating video and blog/news/articles for users, with a few different content hubs for fan and community resources, recent news, and videos. Overall, they offer slightly more of a total content package than Villa, but a little less than AFCB and Arsenal.
Across all of Brentford’s written articles and content that I was able to sample, there is an average word count of 320 words per page; now the lowest of any club so far, and just like with the Villa site, is indicative of the idea that they offer slightly less content overall when compared to the other club websites. The Brentford site also regularly uploads around 4-5 pieces of written and video content every day, fulfilling the EEAT criteria of producing regular, fresh content. Overall, the Aston Villa website does a serviceable job at providing EEAT Content, but they could do a little better.
Score: 7/10
Brentford’s Page Structure
A peek behind the curtain here! Brentford’s website has proven to be very tricky in terms of getting the data I needed for the previous three mini-audits; I’m fairly certain that the way they’ve coded their website has made it so that web crawler tools like Screaming Frog can’t access most of their data. I performed a manual scrape of their XML Sitemap to individually upload 250 of their pages into SF, and while this returned some results, it has not given me the data I need for header tags, unfortunately. So instead, I’m going to take a manual look at 10 of their most prominent pages, and examine their header structure with my own eyes.
Brentford’s header structure across all of their core service pages doesn’t appear to be all that good, with the homepage, Teams, and Fixtures hubs all missing a H1, and the Fans hub (as an example), having H3 tags implemented before H2 tags; which messes up the recommended hierarchy of tags. I would have preferred a more granular look at this site’s header structure, but this microcosmic look shows the similar pattern of the header structure not being particularly good. For meta titles, Brentford’s site has 4 pages with duplicate titles, and 12% of pages have titles that exceed the recommended character limit. For meta descriptions, 60% of pages are currently missing them, and 33% fall outside of the recommended character lengths.
Brentford’s site doesn’t look too bad with regards to meta titles, but everything else (as seems to be the case with every football website so far), is handled rather poorly.
Score: 3/10
TOTAL: 19/40
That concludes this first instalment of the SEO Premier League Table. Were there any surprises for you personally? Be sure to check back in for part 2 very soon, where we’ll be taking a look at the SEO performance of Burnley, Brighton & Hove Albion, Chelsea, and Crystal Palace. If you’ve been inspired by this article to take a gander at your own site’s technical and onsite SEO performance, then be sure to get in touch with me here, or have a look through my pricing and services guides; for a detailed insight into how I can improve your site’s SEO.
Comments