Well sports fans, it’s time for another season on the grid-iron. When the hardened fans and bandwagon jumpers alike don their colors for battle. While the ultimate prize won’t be snatched up for many months, we thought it would be a fun exercise to see who’d triumph in the more important venue; Search Visibility.
Over the next few days we’ll be publishing the road to the championship based on how prevalent the teams websites are in the world of search and social (more and more part of the SERP display landscape). Who will come out on top? Who’s got the kick-ass search marketing team? Who’s the most social? We shall see.
The Metrics
For starters, don’t get all worked up. This is not meant to be some kind of meaningful study. We’re just having some fun with data. Ok? Here’s what I used;
SEO Visibility – the Searchmetrics scoring system that looks at over-all presence of a domain in the SERPs. This metric was certainly a core metric of importance that was highly valued.
This includes;
- search volume (ie how often people are searching for a keyword or phrase)
- how often and which position (ie ranking) a domain/web site appears
- whether the ranking keywords are navigational or informational.
- the statistical value of traffic distribution.
I have a more detailed description of this coming out next week here. Be sure to subscribe.
Social Visibility – another one that’s a bit of a no brainer. If it is social postings and accounts that are in the SERPs or the fact that social elements affect rankings (especially in the logged in state), social is something that has it’s place in the search result landscape.
Universal Elements – another thing we know is that the concepts related to click bias (that users click top listings more than lower ones) can be overcome to a degree with universal listings (images, video, news etc). Here we valued ‘news‘ and ‘videos‘ over ‘images‘ and ‘maps‘, over the last 12 months. I scored this on a 1-10 scale for visibility.
Paid Visibility – this looks at the presence of the domain from the standpoint of paid advertising. It wasn’t as heavily weighted as SEO Visibility, but worth having in the mix as it is indeed part of the SERP landscape. This was our lowest valued metric.
Now that we had our metrics, it was time to get the teams in and see how they stacked up!
Game ON!
First off, let’s look at all the teams. Who’s a lock for the playoffs? How’s the wildcard matches shaping up? The anticipation is just killing me.
AFC Teams;
In the AFC, the world of social was weaker (than the NFC) with the Steelers and Ravens having the strongest presence. The East division had the strongest SEO visibility ratings and the Patriots in particular, having the best balance. The AFC South was the weakest division of the three but at least the Colts made up some limited ground with the strongest paid search showing in the conference. While the Bronco’s managed to make it to the playoffs, I doubt they’ll be strong enough to contend.
AFC North | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
Pittsburgh Steelers | 25,207 | 22 | 1,973,086 | 6 | Website |
Baltimore Ravens | 10,914 | 0 | 1,190,926 | 7 | Website |
Cincinnati Bengals | 7,552 | 0 | 173,401 | 6 | Website |
Cleveland Browns | 6,992 | 0 | 249,826 | 6 | Website |
AFC South | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
Indianapolis Colts | 7,421 | 55 | 365,114 | 4 | Website |
Tennessee Titans | 6,729 | 0 | 253,090 | 2 | Website |
Houston Texans | 5,850 | 3 | 236,645 | 3 | Website |
Jacksonville Jaguars | 3,396 | 0 | 139,896 | 5 | Website |
AFC East | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
New England Patriots | 19,223 | 40 | 531,046 | 2 | Website |
New York Jets | 14,533 | 0 | 210,618 | 4 | Website |
Miami Dolphins | 13,029 | 2 | 261,767 | 5 | Website |
Buffalo Bills | 6,353 | 0 | 283,162 | 2 | Website |
AFC West | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
Denver Broncos | 11,400 | 0 | 227, 132 | 3 | Website |
San Diego Chargers | 9,873 | 177 | 500,406 | 6 | Website |
Oakland Raiders | 9,338 | 0 | 1,502,414 | 8 | Website |
Kansas City Chiefs | 7,975 | 0 | 571, 246 | 7 | Website |
Division Champs; Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Indianapolis Colts.
Wildcard teams; Baltimore Ravens & Miami Dolphins (Dolphin’s were deeper than the Jets overall)
NFC Teams;
Over in the NFC, the North division was extremely strong on the social front, as well as SEO visibility. The NFC East was also strong in SEO, but a bit behind on the social scene. Sadly the Southern division lagged behind other than the Saints, who had some reasonable social traction. Most of them weren’t strong on paid search presence, except for the Giants, who seem to be more than a little active.
NFC North | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
Green Bay Packers | 28,366 | 0 | 1,073,519 | 8 | Website |
Minnesota Vikings | 22,638 | 0 | 574,512 | 4 | Website |
Chicago Bears | 18,786 | 0 | 474,983 | 3 | Website |
Detroit Lions | 10,745 | 0 | 1,296,982 | 3 | Website |
NFC South | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
New Orleans Saints | 13,755 | 0 | 769,015 | 5 | Website |
Carolina Panthers | 8,610 | 0 | 353,868 | 7 | Website |
Atlanta Falcons | 8,448 | 0 | 246,763 | 2 | Website |
Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 6,220 | 0 | 238,212 | 5 | Website |
NFC East | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
Dallas Cowboys | 32,734 | 0 | 659,282 | 9 | Website |
Philadelphia Eagles | 20,422 | 58 | 603,824 | 6 | Website |
New York Giants | 18,821 | 466 | 833,376 | 3 | Website |
Washington Redskins | 13,458 | 1 | 755,876 | 6 | Website |
NFC West | SEO Visibility | Paid Visibility | Social Visibility | Universal | Domain |
San Francisco 49’ers | 12,245 | 0 | 1,076,203 | 9 | Website |
St Louis Rams | 11,208 | 0 | 140,504 | 4 | Website |
Seattle Seahawks | 7,913 | 3 | 425,397 | 6 | Website |
Arizona Cardlinals | 7,877 | 0 | 158,494 | 6 | Website |
Division Champs; Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, San Francisco, New Orleans Saints
Wildcard teams; Philadelphia Eagles & Minnesota Vikings
It’s playoff time!
I know, fast season right? We’ve come to the end of another grueling season and things have rounded into form quickly. The match-ups are set and the band-wagon jumpers are surely changing allegiances as we speak.
Be sure to join us tomorrow for the AFC and NFC playoffs (two posts) as well as the Big Game, on Wednesday. Along the way I’ll also start to show you what any of this might actually mean. Beyond just being fun to do.
Do you think you know who’s gonna’ win? I dare ya to try (leave a comment). There may be a few surprises ahead. I can say that much. We might even have to pull some other data out of the bag to decide some overtime sessions. Grab our feed – and I’ll see you there!