Global SEO Turnaround: From Flatline to 2 Million Impressions in Competitive Sports News
Our client is an independent sports news website focused on trending global events such as UFC fights, football awards (e.g. Ballon d’Or), and tennis highlights. Despite publishing timely and quality content, they struggled to gain search visibility, often overshadowed by major media outlets like ESPN, BBC, and UFC.com.
Challenge
Despite producing valuable content, their site had:
Low Google visibility for highly competitive event-driven keywords
Poor average search positions (beyond page 5)
Underutilized schema and technical SEO setup
Lack of internal content hierarchy and topical authority
Strategy & Solution
We executed a 4-pronged international SEO campaign:
1. Keyword Intelligence & Topical Clustering
Mapped breakout and evergreen sports-related queries (e.g. "ufc 229 fight card", "ballon d’or 2018") to structured landing pages.
2. On-Page Optimization
Structured H1–H4 headings
Entity-rich content
Internal links between related news pieces and categories
3. Schema Markup + Performance Fixes
Deployed Article, Event, and Breadcrumb schema
Enhanced load times and mobile performance
Implemented AMP versions for news snippets
4. Search Console & Real-Time Indexing
Leveraged GSC’s URL Inspection for real-time article submission
Monitored impressions/clicks daily to adjust content velocity
Results
2,060,000 total impressions
34,900 organic clicks
CTR increased to 1.7%
Average keyword position improved to 8.7
#1–#3 rankings for time-sensitive queries like:
- "ufc 229 fight card" (92.9K impressions, 5.5K+ clicks)
- "ballon d’or 2018" (1.2M+ impressions across variations)
- "rafael nadal ocd" (3K impressions, high CTR)
Key Learnings
Topical clustering beats shotgun publishing
Real-time indexing via GSC is crucial in news SEO
Schema markup increases both CTR and Featured Snippet potential
Authority content + intent mapping = scalable ranking wins
From The Client
"This was a complete transformation. We now show up next to - and above - global news outlets. Our site has become a top destination for breaking sports news."
