Manchester United most visible in Search, Chelsea most Social
Search Engine Optimisation

Manchester United most visible in Search, Chelsea most Social

24th October 2012

In a week in which there is a lot of Champions League Football taking place it is always nice to build a bridge between two completely different industries. And that is exactly what Searchmetrics decided to do when they started their research to find out which Premier League team is most visible in Google.co.uk and which team has the most social mentions.

The results are interesting. As you will see further down in this post the ‘League Table’ has a slightly different look than the one which shows the rankings of the ‘real’ Premier League. A few teams however rank well on all tables: Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal do well online, where Arsenal needs to catch up in points in the real Premier League. The best social platform to be visible on seems to be Facebook.

Visibility in Search Results

As you can see in the table below Manchester United scores best when it comes to visibility in the search results, followed by Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea. This means these teams are most showing up in the search results on relevant search terms.

The Top 5 of visibility looks like this:

ClubSEO Visibility
1 Manchester United44,954
2 Arsenal42,784
3 Liverpool32,176
4 Chelsea30,547
5 Tottenham Hotspur16,519

(Complete table below)

Visibility in Social

But we cannot ‘just’ look at search anymore these days off course. So Searchmetrics also looked at Social. Using a Social Visibility score based on how often content from a web site is shared, liked, tweeted etc on social sites Searchmetrics found that Chelsea is mentioned the most, followed by Manchester United. One thing to keep in mind here though is that Searchmetrics did not look at

The Top 5 of social looks like this:

ClubSocial Visibility
1 Chelsea50,363,039
2 Manchester United32,605,712
3 Arsenal22,272,385
4 Manchester City3,613,681
5 Liverpool3,257,427

(Complete table below)

When it comes to social the top 5 is mentioned over the different platforms like this:

ClubFacebookTwitterGoogle+
1. Chelsea29%3%68%
2. Manchester United98.7%1,2%
3. Arsenal92%8%
4. Manchester City93%7%
5. Liverpool23%7%70%

It shows that Facebook is by far the best platform to be visible on. Surprising here is the high percentage Liverpool gets on Google+

Why bother?

What’s interesting off course is what this says. Why should we bother? Well, for one thing, professional Football probably is one of the industries where most money is spent on marketing, so online marketing and in this case search and social, is playing a larger and larger role in their strategies.

Marcus Tober of Searchmetrics explaines:

“When it comes to the web, in many ways Premier League football clubs act like media businesses. They try to attract visitors and fans to their official sites where they can engage with them and potentially sell tickets, hospitality packages and merchandise. They compete with newspaper publishers, broadcasters and online media, making visibility in search engines and social media a vital part of their online marketing.”

For these teams it is important to be visible as much as possible. It is what in the end will make them money.

Find below the entire list of visibility and social:

ClubSEO VisibilityClubSocial VisibilityLeague position
1 Manchester United44,9541 Chelsea50,363,0392
2 Arsenal42,7842 Manchester United32,605,7129
3 Liverpool32,1763 Arsenal22,272,38512
4 Chelsea30,5474 Manchester City3,613,6811
5 Tottenham Hotspur16,5195 Liverpool3,257,4275
6 Manchester City14,9746 Tottenham Hotspur834,2043
7 Everton12,9617 Everton565,6514
8 West Ham United10,8198 Aston Villa543,2147
9 Aston Villa8,5739 West Ham United320,97617
10 Newcastle United4,13310 Queens Park Rangers232,18111
11 Norwich City2,84611 Newcastle United231,71415
12 Southampton2,63512 Fulham195,73918
13 Stoke City2,29413 Southampton184,54813
14 Fulham1,86914 Sunderland161,8728
15 Sunderland1,79915 Norwich City118,92714
16 Wigan Athletic1,71816 Swansea City96,26216
17 Swansea City1,31417 Reading85,93110
18 Reading1,18418 West Bromwich Albion85,35319
19 West Bromwich Albion93819 Stoke City84,3336
20 Queens Park Rangers90820 Wigan Athletic53,85120

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Written By
Bas van den Beld is an award winning Digital Marketing consultant, trainer and speaker. He is the founder of State of Digital and helps companies develop solid marketing strategies.
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