I've started writing news reports on soccer news from the Premier League, La Liga, Bundelsgia, Seria A, Transfer News, and news from around the world. I did this for the basis, of getting into google news. Strange thing is, according to my google analytics chart, i am getting around 50 direct visits, 17 referred from digitalpoint, and NOTHING, from the search engines. On average, each article is around 400 words. The site is only around 3 weeks old and i'm astonish on how things are going. I have comments on the site such as: I am just puzzled on the response's i am getting at the moment, i really didn't think i would get user's enjoying my articles. I am really up for getting my site out there. I hear people talking about On and off page seo - What can i do, i don't know how to go about this. Also social bookmarking, is the same. Thanks!
That's a really tough competition. In this "news" niche, you really badly need this "reputation" and "credibility" for you to be able to have consistent flow of traffic. Ask yourself, What are on my website that soccer fans wont be able to find on other news sports websites such as ESPN, Star Sports and on your local popular news websites? But if you're writing soccer news just for your enjoyment and that's really your passion then you have nothing to lose there my friend. Having some visitors who really appreciate your work is good enough for you to be able to pursue it.
BTW, those comments on your site, are most probably linking to websites, Looks like comment spam, check it out.
You must focus on organic SEO to get search engine rankings. Generate some good quality links from other websites too.
You've chosen a fairly difficult niche to get in. Soccer is quite saturated and it is tough to become a recognised news site. Also if you might have noticed, football doesn't pay as well as other niches in Adsense. Plus shelf life of articles is quite low, nobody really searches for articles that were writing more than say, 48 hours ago. You're on the right track though- getting into Google News will be a big advantage. Try applying to NewsNow too; will be a fabulous source of traffic if you do manage to get in. Ranking for soccer news is tough ( you've already got folks like BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, Sportingo, Goal.com and others as competitors) and unless you do some serious marketing and link building for your site, no organic visitors will come. I'd recommend you to focus on a micro niche- may be a particular club or country, especially if your resources are limited. It is more easy to get a dedicated reader base for niche clubs. And those comments are spam- a look at their username and the sites they're promoting will tell you that.
I have to agree with the other poster that the "comments" do look like spam especially if you are saying you have no search engine hits but one says they found you by accident on a search engine! Can it make it big? It is certainly possible to but your aiming at a mainstream topic and therefore a lot of competition. What is it about your blog/ news site that is going to be the unique selling point and the reason people come to your site rather than one of the millions of others? Secondly, how are you going to make people aware of your USP? You may want to have a look for niches within the topic that you will be able to more easily dominate.
Thanks for all the suggestions guys. Looking back, i do think all the comments are spam ones! Anyway, i do think that i can get some kind of standing with the site within the football niche if i work hard. I appluad people who work with multiple niches are the same time. I am working with one at the moment and that is hard to manage so can you imagine people who have 5 plus sites to manage on daily basis?
Well if you are doing a great work, why not? If you like the soccer and bring useful information like stats, unique notices, etc, you could make a good website! Go ahead
Football is popular so the traffic potential is huge But the competition is HUGE Such websites need for sure several people in the TEAM of the site ...
I think soccer is pretty saturated, plus, why would i enter you soccer news site when i can enter one of the big ones. But if it was a blog, then things do chane.
Definitely SPAM that almost gets underneath the radar screen. Notice how it is so generic. It could talking about anything. First thing to do is delete the SPAMs, you need to put some serious antipsam modules on, depending on what CMS you are running. DO some serious study on SEO/SEM. You need to do some serious market research and focus on one the less competitive niches, Take Webceo for a spin on their free version. It will show you which are the least competitive keywords that you opposition is missing, among other things like who to write the page to optimize your SEO friendliness.
Im not sure that proper SEO or SEM will make his website big, because there are already many established sites on the niche of his website, so, as i said above, why would i visit his site, if it offers nothing different to the already established big ones like goal.com, espn.com or others...
goal.com and caughtoffside.com produce fake articles when it comes to transfer news. They make up ludicrous reports that will never happen. Have you noticed that they don't quote official reports, it is always "an insider" bullcrap in everyone of their articles.
Like what I said, How can you tell your visitors that you're the more credible and reliable source of news when it comes to football compared to those established ones? That's the hardest part there. You need to be credible and reliable 1st so your visitors will keep coming back on your websites.
Gossip sells, and football is no exception to the rule. People are suckers for rumours, and headlines like those tend to attract plenty of readers. In their initial days, both goal and caughtoffside were fan made sites ( not sites containing proper news from a journalist). Goal is now trying to be a primary source of information, but I think CoS still remains a secondary source of info.