From the day I decided to go back to college, I've had one strict goal in mind:
Earn my degree to back up my work.
In case you don't know, (as some people in class do) a great friend of mine and myself run our own website called UTRMinors.com, a niche website that focuses on low-level minor league baseball players that don't get the attention we feel they deserve.
I'm not going to lie. The website leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically. At the same time however, the service we offer is one-of-a-kind. During our last class I asked professor Leonard a question about search engine optimization and the power of keyword searching. Upon doing so, I immediately did a keyword search of my website. I typed "under the radar minors", "UTR", "under the radar minor league baseball players." Even I admit that I was surprised by the results. We ranked 1st, 9th and 4th respectively using those three keyword phrases. So, how does such a niche site that looks amatuerish at best have rather high SEO? I'm no expert, but I'm going to do the best I can to try and figure it out.
My first idea: Our website offers a one-of-a-kind stat service.
Every player you read about on our website has passed through our own self-created metrics. Metrics that have been tested over and over again since 2009. Metrics that were developed strictly to make it easier for fantasy baseball participants to find the next wave of great players. Metrics that we ourselves claim to have only scratched the surface of what they can do and who they can be applied to.
My second idea: Our fan base cares less about aesthetics and more about the numbers.
I'm not going to say our fans don't give a shit about the way our website looks. Of course they do, but when a reader is looking for something specific and they know where to find it, the beauty isn't as important as the priority. I mean, isn't that the principle behind the "dive bar?" It doesn't look appealing, but the cheap drinks and loud music are what gets people there.
My third idea: The experience behind the work.
Between Jim and myself, we bring over 30 years of fantasy baseball experience to the table. With the popularity of daily fantasy leagues rapidly on the rise, it puts a slight dent in the appeal of dynasty leagues. These are the days of immediate satisfaction, but there are still millions of diehards who find lifetime dynasty leagues the way to go. You build something from the ground up, and with minor leagues playing a bigger and bigger part in said leagues, people want to go to a trusted source, and sometimes the most trusted sources don't always mean they're the most popular or most well-known.
Now, it might seem that I'm taking this staunch approach when referencing our current product. Sure, I have the utmost faith in the numbers we apply and the players we promote. Several players we bought into years and years ago (that no one gave a glancing look at) are now stars at the major league level. Kudos to us right? No. We just do what we do, we love what we do and just so happen to have solid SEOs to back it up.
But I'm taking this course to take what I believe is an already good service and want to take it up not just one notch, but 10, 20, 100, 500 more notches. I want the website to appeal to everyone, not just those baseball stat heads like myself. I want to appeal to a mass audience, not stay within the niche community. The service we currently provide is simply applied to minor league players. We haven't begun to sniff the major leagues yet. This is all part of a plan. We want to take a pure grassroots approach, and when we're ready to take the visual appeal of our website to the next level, we bring with us the tried and tested metric side, and most importantly, a loyal fan base, with us.
Some would say that it's selling out to the masses. No, it isn't.
It's buying in to ourselves.
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