
excel sports Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You rank for ~3k organic keywords and drive ~10k monthly organic visits (traffic value ~$16k/month), with minimal paid search presence (3 ads keywords).
- Organic traffic is heavily brand-led: “excel sports management” and variants (“excel sports mgmt”) account for a large share of clicks, while a few celebrity/name queries (e.g., “cooper manning”) contribute meaningful incremental demand.
- Your top pages concentrate most traffic: the homepage (~3k visits; ~32%), /careers (~2k; ~20%), and individual speaker/talent profiles (e.g., Cooper Manning, Blake Griffin) plus talent category pages (baseball, basketball).
Growth Opportunity
- Your Authority Score is 33 (moderate), supported by ~23k backlinks from ~2k referring domains—enough authority to expand beyond branded queries, but you’re not yet converting it into broad non-brand rankings.
- Competitive gap is large: the leader (caa.com) captures ~145k monthly organic visits and ranks for ~33k keywords, suggesting substantial headroom via broader keyword coverage and more top-of-funnel content.
- You have early signals on non-brand terms (“sports agency,” “sports management,” “sports agent jobs/internships”); systematically building category hubs + supporting articles/FAQs around careers, NIL, talent marketing, and “agency” intent could diversify traffic away from brand and individual-name dependence.
Assessment
You have a solid branded foundation and a clear set of high-performing page types (home, careers, speaker/talent profiles), but overall visibility is limited versus competitors. The “so what” is that expanding non-branded, high-intent content could materially grow organic traffic beyond the current ~10k/month. AirOps can help you scale this content programmatically and consistently across repeatable templates (roles, industries, speaker topics, and talent categories).
Competition at a Glance
Across 2 direct competitors (CAA and WME Sports), excelsm.com has a smaller organic search footprint in both visibility (ranking keywords) and demand capture (monthly visits).
Within this set, excelsm.com ranks #3 of 3 for monthly organic traffic (10,103) and ranking keywords (2,856), trailing both competitors on each measure.
The market leader is caa.com, generating 145,195 monthly organic visits and ranking for 33,248 keywords, indicating a major gap in overall search presence versus Excel Sports Management. The competitive landscape suggests leaders are winning primarily through much broader keyword coverage, which translates into materially higher organic traffic and stronger top-of-funnel visibility.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
Create thousands of landing pages that map specific event types and cities to the Excel speaker roster to capture high-intent booking queries. This strategy transforms individual speaker bios into solution-oriented pages for event planners.
Example Keywords
- "sales kickoff keynote speaker"
- "leadership speaker for annual meeting"
- "corporate event speaker in Chicago"
- "commencement speaker for university"
- "sports celebrity speaker for conference"
Rationale
Event planners often search by event type or location rather than specific names. By creating pages like /speakers/events/sales-kickoff/chicago/, excelsm.com can capture this mid-funnel demand and funnel it toward their talent roster.
Topical Authority
The domain already sees its highest organic traffic on speaker-related pages (e.g., Cooper Manning and Blake Griffin), proving that Google recognizes excelsm.com as a primary source for elite talent information.
Internal Data Sources
Use the 106 existing speaker bios, category metadata, and transcripts from the 'Excellent Leadership Podcast' to generate unique, theme-based talk descriptions and FAQs for each event type.
Estimated Number of Pages
5,000+ (Covering 50+ event types across 100+ major metropolitan areas)
Develop a comprehensive library of pages detailing specific sponsorship inventory types, from jersey patches to stadium naming rights. These pages serve as educational blueprints for brands and rights-holders looking to buy or sell specific assets.
Example Keywords
- "jersey patch sponsorship package"
- "stadium naming rights consultant"
- "practice facility naming rights"
- "on-uniform branding program"
- "ribbon board advertising specs"
Rationale
Buyers often search for specific inventory types when building budgets or RFPs. Providing detailed blueprints for these assets positions Excel as the expert architect of these deals.
Topical Authority
Excel's sitemap already features a 'Commercial Portfolio' with 18 high-level examples; expanding this into a granular asset library leverages existing structural authority in sports commercialization.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage the existing Commercial Portfolio case studies, internal asset spec sheets, and 'Properties' service definitions to provide technical and strategic depth.
Estimated Number of Pages
10,000+ (Covering 80+ asset types across various sports, leagues, and commercial objectives)
Generate vertical-specific landing pages that provide sponsorship activation strategies tailored to specific industries like Fintech, Healthcare, or Automotive. These pages address the unique KPIs and compliance needs of brand marketers in those sectors.
Example Keywords
- "financial services sports sponsorship strategy"
- "healthcare sports sponsorship activation"
- "SaaS brand partnership ideas"
- "insurance sponsorship ROI models"
- "sports sponsorship RFP template for [Industry]"
Rationale
Brand managers search for solutions within their industry context. Verticalized pages allow excelsm.com to demonstrate how their strategy, experiential, and digital services solve sector-specific problems.
Topical Authority
The site's robust 'Brands' section (Strategy, Experiential, Content, Digital, Analytics) provides the necessary service-level authority to support industry-specific claims.
Internal Data Sources
Utilize internal creative briefs, partnership strategy frameworks, and anonymized industry-specific success metrics from the 'Brands' division.
Estimated Number of Pages
2,000+ (Covering 40+ industries across multiple strategic objectives and sport variants)
Create a library of playbooks focused on optimizing specific revenue streams for sports venues and teams. This targets rights-holders looking for expert guidance on premium seating, hospitality, and non-game-day revenue.
Example Keywords
- "premium seating strategy consultant"
- "non-game-day revenue strategy stadium"
- "arena revenue optimization"
- "founding partner program design"
- "venue commercialization framework"
Rationale
Venue operators and team executives search for ways to maximize their physical assets. These playbooks position Excel Properties as the go-to advisory for revenue growth.
Topical Authority
The existing 'Properties' and 'Commercial' site sections provide a foundation for venue-related authority that is currently under-utilized in organic search.
Internal Data Sources
Use internal packaging frameworks, tier definitions, and 'Properties' service descriptions to build out detailed operational and strategic guides.
Estimated Number of Pages
3,000+ (Covering 50+ revenue streams across different venue types and league levels)
Build a massive cluster of pages dedicated to the analytics of sports partnerships, covering every major KPI and valuation model. This targets the 'CFO-proofing' queries made by brand executives defending their sponsorship spend.
Example Keywords
- "sponsorship attribution model"
- "how to measure partnership ROI"
- "brand lift study for sponsorship"
- "hospitality ROI measurement"
- "share of voice in-venue signage"
Rationale
Measurement is the biggest pain point in sponsorship. By owning the definitions and methodologies for valuation, Excel becomes the trusted authority in the data-driven partnership space.
Topical Authority
The domain already has a 'Data & Analytics' node under 'Brands'; expanding this into a full methodology hub leverages existing technical positioning.
Internal Data Sources
Incorporate the proprietary analytics methodology from the 'Brands' division, internal KPI trees, and standardized reporting templates.
Estimated Number of Pages
1,500+ (Covering 100+ metrics and models across various asset types and campaign goals)
Improvements Summary
Rework speaker profile pages to answer top “who is/what does” queries while also driving inquiries, with clearer above-the-fold answers, richer bios, speaking topics, FAQs, and repeated inquiry CTAs. Expand basketball and golf speaker category pages into hub pages with keyword-focused intros, editorial guidance, and stronger internal linking to profiles.
Improvements Details
On /speaker/ pages, add a 2–3 sentence direct-answer intro, a “Bio at a glance” section, 5–8 speaking topics, and an FAQ block that matches query wording (e.g., “who is cooper manning”, “what does cooper manning do”, “cara banks bio”, “natasha cloud education”, “caitlin clark speaking engagements”). On /speakers/basketball-speakers/ and /speakers/golf-speakers/, write hub-style copy targeting “basketball motivational speakers” and “golf motivational speaker,” group speakers by audience/theme, add selection guidance, and link to profiles with descriptive anchor text. Add Person + FAQPage + Breadcrumb schema, publish 6–10 supporting posts (booking process, format comparisons, curated lists), and tighten internal links (category ↔ profiles ↔ inquiry) plus “related speakers” modules.
Improvements Rationale
These pages are currently thin (few tracked keywords per URL) despite clear relevance, so adding intent-matched sections expands coverage without creating many new URLs. Stronger hub-and-spoke internal linking, richer on-page structure, and schema support improve SERP fit (including FAQ results) for competitive bio-style queries while also capturing high-intent booking searches. Clearer conversion paths and credibility signals (sources, timestamps, representation statement) increase qualified inquiries from speaker-related searches, not just brand traffic.
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
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