The online golf club and global golf society, TheSocialGolfer.com, has issued its 2021 Google Analytics site stats, which saw the unique platform see a jump of over 230% in unique visitors to the site.
At the start of the pandemic, The Social Golfer was averaging between 6 – 10k monthly visitors. But during various lock-down periods, the online club has been working extremely hard on their Search Engine Optimisation, improving mobile pages and adding new Content. This has led to phenomenal growth for the site in an 18-month period.
The Social Golfer has also been recognised for their SEO work by winning WooRank Best SEO Strategy Award for their work on site. WooRank has customers and agency users in over 150 countries and processes over 200K website audits a day for businesses all around the world. In a hotly contested first event, with winners from Canada, New Zealand, and Ecuador, The Social Golfer came top across all business sectors.
The team (working alongside their agency, MC2 Marketing) also moved the site ranking in the Google listings, from 75 Top three positions to 316. In addition, the website saw the platform listed on Page 1 of Google for over 5k different search terms, including “Golf Societies” to bespoke content blogs like “Diversity in Golf – The Black Hole”.
TheSocialGolfer.com (TSG), based in Essex, is a community where you can make new friends, join local golf games, run local golf societies and local golf groups, join in chat and forum discussions, track your scores, establish a Handicap and compete in the monthly TSG league table.
Speaking on the increase in site traffic, Editor and Owner, Ian Mullins said. “When everything went dead in March 2020, it gave us the chance to take stock and review our marketing of the site and with hindsight, it was the best thing that could have happened to us. With more than 1600 golf games and events posted on the website in 2021, it’s an example to all golf businesses who still neglect their SEO. The growth has come at the same time as England Golf followed our lead and launched its own ‘official’ version of online handicaps. Yet this made no dent on us whatsoever. If anything, it highlighted the need for platforms like ours among nomadic golfers even more.”
Director of Marketing at WooRank, Courtney Harrington, who on announcing the winners, commended TSG for their “unbelievable” increase in both their site scores and site traffic. “The Social Golfer & MC2 Marketing have done a ‘tonne’ of targeted work on The Social Golfer and given they featured highly in a number of SEO categories…not only have they seen a giant leap in site traffic but to also increase their keywords listings to over 300, 1-3 Google Ranking positions, over 5k, 4-10 Google Ranking positions and over 12K, in the 11-20 positions…that is ‘unbelievable!’. Congratulations to MC2 and The Social Golfer.”
The site was also a winner in the 2015 Essex Digital Awards for Best Sport & Entertainment website, was the recipient of the Microsoft Start-Up of the day in 2010 following its launch and in its lifetime has raised more than £20K for golfing charities including BALASA, Cancer Research UK, The Scottish Blind Golf Association, British Inclusive Golf and Community Golf. In 2022, they are one of the sponsors of The Cairns Cup – the disability match play event between Europe and the USA.
