Anne Polland

01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

WEBSITE OVERVIEW

Content analysis: SBnation.com seems to cover a broad variety of sports including: football,
basketball, soccer, baseball, golf, hockey, NASCAR, and MMA fighting. The website has all the
latest game stats and updates for its visitors to read about. Under each sport, all of the teams are
listed and their highlights are displayed on the correlating landing page. When visiting the
different sports teams for each category, I noticed that it is more fan-based. The tabs lead to
opportunities to shop for fan gear, game tickets, game results and stats, and many more options
focused on that particular teams fan base.
The homepage has a mixture of feature stories with the action shot used to draw the
reader in. There is one large photo and then four smaller ones that are all linked to the feature
stories. Some of the stories include a short video clip embedded. SBnation uses YouTube as its
source for their video clips. SBnation is very image heavy. The large action shots of the main
players are intended to bring attention to the story. Each headline has a story, along with a subtitle
in a smaller italicized font and then the media and story text follows. The stories are written from
a journalists point of view. There are direct quotations from the key players in the game and they
are properly attributed which helps with accreditation.
SBnations homepage has type and image hierarchy. Having hierarchy helps because
when the viewer first looks at the webpage, their eyes typically move towards the most appealing
image. Our book says that people tend to read a webpage as they do a book; their eyes read left to
right and top to bottom. They put their largest and most focused picture on the top left. The white
text over the picture is larger and capitalized pulling the readers eye to that story.

The action pictures are all similarly shot. A tip for improvement would be to hone in on
the main action in the photo, get a closer view or try to capture better action shots. Below is their
layout of photos for their main stories.

Figure 1 Figure 5 SBnation's Feature Stories:Home page

Anne Polland
01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

Sbnations quality of content includes:

rich photo, text, videos embedded, audio,
and highlight stats. SBnation isnt just a
sports page for scores and stats of all the players and teams.
Instead, this website is designed to be more user-
friendly where users can interact with the stories
posted. Each of the stories are set up as a blog. Some stories have
50+ comments where the users can actively chat
and discuss their opinions. I noticed that even the creators of the
website comment and post in the blogs as well. The website is
almost a portal to other websites. Once you click away from the main
page, it takes you to another site that SBnation
owns. These click through sites can be reached by either selecting a
tab on the navigation bar or clicking on one of the feature stories on
SBnations homepage. This is kind of Figure 2 Figure 1 SBnation Fanposts Side Panel
confusing at first because you dont realize that youre still connected to SBnation but the content
goes more into depth on these next pages. I noticed that the stories are written by a mixture of
authors. The main stories are written by the SBnation staff. There is also a panel on the bottom
right where fan accounts can post. The stories that the blog staff writes initiate the discussion post
for their fans.
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01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

SBnation has a wide coverage of sports. The pro leagues such as the: NBA, NFL, NHL and
MLB seem to have pretty complete coverage indicating depth. Other sports such as Golf, CFB,
UFC, Soccer and a few others listed in the more tab dont seem to go as far into depth. I assume
this is because these sports arent as popular amongst most sports fans. Another reason for why
these sports arent as detailed in their coverage might be due to the fact that there arent as many
teams in these leagues.

Overall, SBnation.com covers a very wide variety of sports. Their targeted audience
consists of intrigued sport fans, mainly males, around the age 20-35 years old. The quality of the
content could be helpful in finding more about specific game highlights and direct quotes from
interviews of key players and coaches of the games. There is the option to comment in the user-
friendly blog set up for each main event covered. It seems that many users take advantage of this
and are able to actively participate in the discussion. The speed of the website could be improved.
One main reason for the delay in loading of the content is the information overload. SBnation has
a lot of information on a broad variety of sports topics. Their homepage leads to other webpages
in correlation to the story or link clicked on. All of these landing pages are all products of
SBnation as well. These pages tend to have more information and fan services for the selected
team including: ticket purchasing options, roster, schedule and team highlights. The framework
for the website is organized similarly throughout all of the click through websites which is helpful
so that the user knows that they are still linked to Sbnation. SBnation gives its users a feeling of a
community, like they belong and they can engage with each other about sport debates. Users want
to visit Sbnation because they can learn about highlights of games and find final stats and they
can also vent with other users web-wide discussing hot topics.

By visiting SBnation, the user can stay updated on the newest news coverage and
upcoming announcements of signings, rivalry games, game highlights and more. SBnation is the
website to visit if the user wants coverage on a variety of stories about multiple sports teams and
leagues. SBnations biggest strength is its reputation of being a large sports conglomerate. Sports
fans go to SBnation for all the latest sports news and upcoming events.

General company information: SBnation is owned by the website voxmedia.com. Vox media is
a company that owns multiple websites including SBnations sisters: Verge, Vox, Eater, Polygon,
Racked, Curbed and Recode. Vox media owns these 8 websites and their goal is to reach as many
people as possible. These websites are fitting to their names, for example: Eater is a website that
Anne Polland
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Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

provides national food trends and coverage on the best places to eat. Racked is a website that
provides shopping guides and trending style tips which appeals to even more of the popular
generation. I can conclude that Vox media is really trying to get its name out there by touching all
different groups of people. Each of SBnations sister sites provide a multitude of information in
their area of expertise. SBnation covers most of the questions that a sports fan would have
because the width and breadth of the website, as we discussed in class, stretches both ways.

Competing Site: According to TopSimilarsites.com, Deadspin is the #1 competitor of SBnation.

Deadspin also covers a wide variety of content on their user-friendly website. When I first went to
Deadspins homepage, the first difference that I noticed was its use of white space. Too much
cluttering of information and content can be tiresome and cause the user to leave the page. I felt
that way when I first started browsing through SBnations website. The layout for Deadspin is
similar to SBnations because they are both set up like a typical website design. They both have
a header with their names displayed at the top of the page. Deadspin has similar topics such as
NFL, NBA, and a highlight reel. The feature stories on both of these websites have appealing
captions to get the readers attention. The text is displayed over the top of the images with a white
font and a black background creating great contrast so that the user knows what they are looking
at. These story titles are one of the main selling points that makes the reader want to continue
further because the wording is clever and catchy. Deadspin doesnt go into depth on stories and
each of the specific sports leagues like SBnation does. Deadspin does a nice job at keeping the
text short and concise so that the reader wants to keep reading. I know that as a viewer, I like to
be able to skim over the story text quickly unless something catches my eye. Deadspins articles
are short enough where even one highlighted or linked phrase in a sentence stands out.
Sometimes white space and breathing room is good.

Deadspin also does well with identifying its main topics of debate. As SBnation has,
Deadspin also allows its users to actively blog and comment on stories. Deadspin seems to
choose its stories that they cover based on humor. The content on Deadspin appeals more to the
people who like to talk about topics that arent in everyday conversations. For example, one of
the blogs is centered on the question, are shelled or unshelled peanuts better? There is a cartoon
drawing of the two different peanut shells looking angrily at each other. Obviously, there is no
right answer to most of these debates on Deadspin but they are appealing to the same younger
audience as SBnation is. Deadspin has debates over all sorts of random topics. SBnation mostly
focuses theirs off of sports-related issues/events. Deadspin does an overall good job with keeping
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Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

the customer engaged with its heavy image use and less clutter. Deadspin also owns their own
newsletter. The option to subscribe to their newsletter and make comments on their blog is easily
accessible which makes it a very user friendly website. Deadspin also keeps up with todays
trends by keeping their Twitter account active. On some of their stories, they will include
hashtags and also a link to promotions. Deadspin has a lot more room for advertising on its site.
This can be useful because users will see promotions for their brands that they love. Deadspin
may make a lot of its money by allowing advertisements to be a part of their webpage.

Deadspin one of SBnations top competitors. Deadspin covers more than just sport topics
whereas SBnation is mostly a large hub for sports fans. Therefore, Deadspin attracts many more
types of users because the users may have multiple interests within Deadspins site. I noticed that
SBnation does not update their posts as much as Deadspin does.

From looking at both

sites, it seems that Deadspin does
a better job with updating their
stories. As of
1/22/17 at
Figure 3 Deadspin and SBnation Recent Posts
11:53a.m.
Deadspin has
recently just posted a new story 46 minutes ago. SBnation hasnt posted one since 1/19. For these
websites where the purpose of their websites is to engage with the users, it is important to post
stories and leave it open for discussion. In less than an hour, there has been 5.6 thousand likes, 9
comments, and 1 favorite on Deadspins most recent post. On SBnations most recent post 3 days
ago, there are only 7 comments. SBnation needs to find a way to get their users to engage more.
Deadspin heavily relies on Twitter hashtags and Facebook likes to gauge their websites success.
Anymore, it is easier to just get on your personal tablet or mobile phone instead of logging on to a
laptop of desktop computer to access the latest news stories. SBnation needs to update their
website and utilize social media more.

TRAFFIC ANALYSIS

Visitor Analysis

SBnation Deadspin
Anne Polland
01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

Visits [SimilarWeb.com] 21.2M 27.6M

Unique Visitors [Quantcast.com] 27 10.3M
Unique Visitors [Media Kit] N/A 25.7M

o Analysis: The unique visitors are the number of people that visit the site from any one
mobile, laptop, and tablet or given device. Once the device has viewed the site, other
users can view it as well, but it doesnt count towards the sites unique visitors. That
number of multiple users visiting from one device adds to the average number of monthly
page views. SBnation shows to have the most unique visitors on 2/3 of the sources. I
couldnt directly access SBnations media kit; I first had to go to Vox Medias site and
then clicked on a separate link to SBnations media kit and all that showed was the
monthly content users. This is not the same as unique visitors. SBnation must not be
proud of their numbers and that could be the reason the UV isnt shown on their media
plan. The larger number of 372M could be a combination of their views on YouTube
videos and page views to get a larger number. It helped to look at three different sources
to find the UV for each of the companies. For Deadspin, the numbers were pretty similar
according to both their media kit and SimilarWeb.com. Quanticasts results were totally
different from the other sources.
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01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

Figure 4 SimilarWeb.com Total Visits Comparison

This graph is a 6 month time period showing the trends for SBnation from
SimilarWeb.com. I noticed that the user activity peaked in August. The reason for this
peak in users may be caused by the starting of fantasy, NFL, CFL football seasons. I used
Google.com to research why the total visits would peak in August. SBnation covers all
three football leagues into depth. There are many football feature stories on the homepage
which leads me to my inference why user activity peaked in August and then stayed
steady for the rest of the year.

Figure 5 SBnation NFL Coverage

As you can see on SBnations homepage, the NFL section is well covered. SBnation
gears its content for users to be able to have access to all of the different teams
information and schedules.
Anne Polland
01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

Engagement
Analysis:

SBnation Deadspin
Bounce Rate % 66% 62%
Page Views Per Visit 1.69 1.97
Average Visit Duration 0:01:46 0:02:41

o Bounce Rate
Analysis: A bounce
rate is the percent of
people that visit one
page and then leave.
The world-wide
bounce average for websites is between 40%-60%. According to SimilarWeb.com,
SBnation has a higher bounce rate than Deadspin. It isnt good to have a high bounce
rate. There are many reasons to why a website can have a high bounce rate. According to
SimilarWeb.com, SBnation has a higher bounce rate of 66% than Deadspin does of 62%.
A reason for this may be the abundance of content on the homepage; this large amount of
information available can be good because users may find exactly what they are looking
for on one page. Another reason to why SBnation has a higher bounce rate is because
they are continuously leading users away from their site. As I have learned, SBnation has
Anne Polland
01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

a very large family of sister sites. One click can lead the user to a completely different
site not owned by SBnation. An example of this is their use of YouTube embedded
videos. The stories that have the YouTube videos automatically lead them away from
SBnation to YouTube when they click on the video.

Figure 6 YouTube Example

Users may also bounce from the site due to the demographics of the
audience. This site is primarily for
men who enjoy sports. If a woman,

like their
wife, just
goes to
SBnation to look for a game time or
the final score, they may not want to look much further.
They got all the information that they were looking for on the
landing page.

SBnation can improve its bounce rate by implementing a few of the ways listed on
www.marketingtechblog.com. SBnation could really benefit from building a clear
navigation panel. They should keep SBnation related content within their websites
instead of having their pages link to other sites. They could improve their page loading
speed using Google Page Speed plugin which can lower their bounce rate.

o Page Views and Visit Duration Analysis: The number of page views is gauged by the
average number of pages viewed per visit. Visit duration is the average amount that users
spend on the site. SBnation and Deadspins average page views are pretty similar, but
lower than the average word-wide website page view which is 4.6. One reason for this
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01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

may be due to the large amount of content that these websites cover. Deadspin has a
higher average visit duration time than SBnation does. Interactive tools like embedded
videos contribute to the visit duration. In SBnations case, when the user clicks on the
videos, the user is taken away from the site which negatively affects the visit duration.
SBnation doesnt have any playable videos embedded on their site. Linking users to their
sister sites does not benefit SBnation. Traffic numbers are important in business meetings
when the company is trying to persuade advertisers to buy space on their sites.

Traffic Conclusions: SBnation and Deadspin are competing sites and they both have their
strengths and weaknesses, both in their overall content coverage and their website design. When
comparing the two sites on three different sources, I found that these rates are not very consistent.
Based off of the bounce rates, Deadspin has a lower bounce rate of 62% than SBnations bounce
rate of 66%. There isnt a huge significance in the numbers here but there is a list of several
factors that may influence the bounce rate. They both cover a great amount of information which
can lead to the amount of time spent on the pages and also the page views per visit. If the content
is interesting and its easy to navigate from one page to another, the page views per visit may be
influenced. The potential threat that Deadspin has over SBnation is its coverage on a wider
variety of topics. Advantageously, Deadspin may generate higher unique visitors, longer page
duration, and more page views than SBnation.

POPULARITY ANALYSIS

Link Analysis:

No. of Refering No. of External No. of .gov No. of .edu Trust Citation
Domains Backlinks Backlinks Backlinks Flow Flow

Sbnation.com 53,147 97,318,782 1,412 3,252 63 65

Deadspin.com 39,327 3,595,743 2 2,482 38 46

o Analysis of Link Quantity: Link quantity is important because these are supporting
links on other sites which link back to a website. These sites are called referring sites.
According to Majestic.com, SBnation has a higher amount of referring domains. For
example, the referring sites have a range of 1.5M to several that have less than 100
backlinks. External backlinks tend to be higher in amount because one referring domain
may have multiple links that link back to SBnation.
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Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

SBnation has a relatively larger number of referring domains which is useful

because that shows that there are many sites linking back to SBnation. This could mean
that there are multiple external backlinks on their sister sites as well.
This is a chart from Majestic.com comparing both SBnation and Deadspins domains and
links. The more sites that link

back towards the site, the better. SBnation also has more
governmental referrals.
o Analysis of Link Quality: The quality of a backlink is important because that means the
site is being linked back to by trusted sources. Link quantity and quality ultimately affect
the traffic for a site. The SBnation has over 1,000 .gov backlinks which is higher than
Deadspin who has 2. SBnation also has over 1,000 more .edu backlinks than Deadspin.
Government and education websites are examples of restricted sites which can only be
secured by approved entities. These restricted sites are good to be referred by because
their trust flows tend to be towards the higher end of a scale of 0-100 for site approval.
Sites like Google.com and Wikipedia.com have trust flows of 100 and 99. When
assessing the popularity of a website, the link quality and quantity should be considered.
A site like Google, who has the highest credibility, is valued in link quality and it is good
to have a lot of external backlinks from Google. The list of the top 10 referring domains
really depends on how the information is organized.
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Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

Figure 7 Majestic.com Trust Flow>Backlinks

This chart from Majestic.com shows SBnations top 10 referring domain in order
by trust flow then number of backlinks. This is important because the top 3 websites:
Google (100), Wikipedia (99), and Yahoo (96) have some of the highest trust flows.
Yahoo.com also provides over 20,000 backlinks to SBnation which helps with the sites
credibility. A website like nba.com is useful because it is another sports domain that is
referring SBnation. Nba.com and SBnation will have similar users that visit their sites.

Figure 8 Majestic.com Backlink>Trust Flow

Anne Polland
01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

This chart from Majestic.com shows SBnations top 10 sites in order from first,
number of backlinks, then by trust flow. More than half of SBnations top 10 referring
links are their sister sites. After researching SBnation, I have learned that they have a
large family. The top site arrowheadpride.com is one of SBnations team websites for the
KC Chiefs. Seeing that arrowheadpride is a site connected to SBnation, their overall link
quality goes down. 9/10 of these sites are within the sports category which helps but their
trust flow numbers arent very high. Milehighreport.com and ninersnation.com have the
highest trust flow of 33 on this top 10 list. Thousands of referring domains that have a
lower trust flow with a lot of backlinks arent as valuable as the one or two respected
sources such as Google.com or Wikipedia.org. The 300+ backlinks that these two sites
provide are of value to SBnation.
Social Media Share Tool Analysis:

Sbnation.com Deadspin.com
Facebook share tools Yes Yes
Twitter share tools Yes Yes
Pinterest Some No

Analysis: SBnation uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Rec as their share tools. The
Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest share tools work just as expected. I tried clicking on the
rec share tool and nothing happened. I then Googled what the rec share tool means and
the best conclusion that I could
come up with is that its a share
tool of recommendation for
SBnation users. To access this
rec tool, the user must be signed
up and be a member of
SBnation. The other three share Figure 9 SBnation Twitter Share Post
tools provide the user with the option to share the post with others. The Facebook and
Twitter share tools benefit and make sense for a website like SBnation.
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01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

Most users are familiar

with at least one of the
two social media tools.
Above are two examples
of a Facebook share post Figure 10 SBnation Facebook Share Post

and a Twitter share post

on one of the stories about
the Atlanta Hawks. The
pictures and captions work
well for sharing. They
intrigue others and would
make them want to click and read on. When clicking on these share tools, I made sure the
links worked correctly. I was successfully led to their respective share posts.

For the Pinterest share tool option, it is not as accessible. I clicked on the button
and I was taken to the Pinterest page where I have to make an account. This is something
to consider because not everyone can see the posts if they dont have an account.
Pinterest is set up differently than Facebook and Twitter because you dont necessarily
post things on a timeline. I have my Pinterest account information on my mobile device
and was able to see the share option. All that came up was the picture in the story and no
caption. I had to add my own description and choose the board that I wanted it on. I
suggest that SBnation create its own suggested boards and write a mini caption like on
their Facebook and Twitter share options. This makes it just a one-step process for the
user to share. They shouldnt have to put too much work into it.

SUCCESS CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, SBnation and Deadspin both have their strong points as a website, as well as their
downfalls. SBnation is a sports hub that covers a great amount of content. The homepage has 5
main stories with links to their respective landing pages. Both sites encourage their users to have
an open discussion about their stories. SBnation has a large fan circle and the users discuss and
comment quite consistently. I found that Deadspins staff seems to post more frequently allowing
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01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity

more opportunity for their users to participate in the blog discussion. SBnation could work on
improving their frequency of posts to keep up with their competitor.
SBnations traffic is less in the websites bounce rate, page views, and average duration.
The leading factor to why SBnation has less traffic is because they lead users away from their site.
They have a large family of sister sites owned by their mother company Voxmedia.com. For
SBnation to improve its traffic metrics, they need to link to their sister sites or other sites like
YouTube as frequently.
In terms of popularity, meaning links, SBnation has more referring domains that have a
large amount of external backlinks. The restricted sites like .gov and .edu are valuable to
SBnations credibility. These sites have higher trust flow and only certain entities are allowed
access. SBnation has the share tools Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest which are all useful to their
site. These links give the option to share and post on the users feed. Providing links on the users
personal feed helps grow SBnations network and contributes to the overall traffic and popularity.
SBnation is a successful site in the sports world. SBnations web design and posts are created to
satisfy their targets needs. Aiming mostly towards males, SBnation provides enough information
for the user to find any sports-related information that they are looking for.
Anne Polland
01.25.17
Intro to Web Publishing
Analysis of Web Site Traffic and Popularity