Project Overview
Rimington Trophy, a prestigious annual award given to the most outstanding center in NCAA Division I college football, sought to strengthen its digital presence, engage college football fans, and increase awareness beyond core audiences. Our mission: build an SEO-driven content strategy, improve site structure and authority, and drive organic visibility for award / watchlist / committee / historical pages.
Challenges
- Narrow niche with tight competition — sports awards have many authority sites (sports news, college football portals) that dominate search results.
- Content segmentation issues — pages like “Watchlist,” “Committee,” “Past Winners,” and “Award Process” lacked comprehensive optimization and internal linkage.
- Technical & structural limitations — missing schema markup (e.g. for awards, events), limited interlinking among related pages, and suboptimal metadata.
- Content value gap — limited long-form content (e.g. player profiles, analysis, historical context) to attract deeper engagement and links.
- Engagement & conversion gaps — low repeat visits, limited email signups or subscription drivers tied into award cycles, and missed opportunities for event promotion / tickets.
Solutions
- Keyword & Audience Mapping
- Mapped target keyword clusters: “Rimington Trophy 2025,” “best center award NCAA,” “Rimington finalists,” “watchlist predictions,” “past Rimington winners.”
- Identified adjacent content opportunities: player profiles, center position history, award analysis, news / commentary.
- On-Page & Metadata Optimization
- Optimized title tags, meta descriptions, headings (H1 / H2) for key pages (Watchlist, Past Winners, Committee).
- Integrated semantic keywords (e.g. “college center awards,” “NCAA award finalists”) into content.
- Implemented structured data (Award, Event, Organization) to enhance SERP features.
- Internal Linking & Site Architecture Enhancements
- Created link flows among related pages (e.g. from Watchlist → Finalists → Past Winners → News).
- Added contextual “see also” modules (e.g. related award pages, player stories).
- Ensured crawl depth is optimized—important content reachable within a few clicks.
- Content & Editorial Strategy
- Developed content around award commentary, player spotlights, historical retrospectives, interviews, and watchlist previews.
- Aligned content calendar with award cycles (pre-season, midseason, announcement periods).
- Promoted shareable assets: infographics of past winners by school, timelines, center position stats.
- Engagement & Event Promotion Integration
- Embedded calls to action (ticket purchase, newsletter, social engagement) on high-traffic pages (presentation event, current winner, watchlist).
- Enhanced event pages with media / photo galleries, schedule details, and cross-promotions.
- Used social synergy (posts, watchlist announcements) to drive traffic into site content.