I analyze a 16-year-old authority sports e-commerce site, PickleballCentral.com. The site receives 200,000+ pageviews per month (SimilarWeb estimate).
The owners have done an exceptional job of transforming a once-classic simple blog about an obscure sport into a leading e-commerce shop for the currently #1 trending sport across the US.
As pickleball gains popularity in the US, you may have noticed players occupying tennis courts. Curious about one of the best online stores in the industry, I decided to analyze their ability to attract organic traffic.
Upon examination, it became evident that the site could significantly improve its organic rankings for both general and buying intent keywords by optimizing its existing blog.
This is what I cover in this report:
- Website overview
- Major highlights
- Competitor overview
- Easy wins to increase revenue and/or traffic
- How much is this website worth (valuation)
- Actionable takeaways you can apply
Let’s get into it!
✅ Website Overview & Highlights
The website has had amazing growth over the last couple of years peaking at 105,000+ pageviews/mo according to Ahrefs (most likely much more as the organic traffic is not the leading source of traffic).
Ahrefs shows a steady growth traffic curve with a significant amount of referring domains (2,000+) linking to the site. However, it is evident that the site was hit by the latest update.
The website’s domain has been active since 2007, initially serving as an educational blog before transitioning to an e-commerce platform in 2010.
Over time, the shop has undergone various design and platform changes, ultimately settling on BigCommerce, an excellent solution for mid-sized businesses.
Highlights
- More than 15 years of experience in the niche
- 1,500+ products available in the shop from more than 70 brands
- An active affiliate program with an 8% base commission
- Other shop features include a price match guarantee, free shipping over $69, seasonal promotions, etc
- A great backlink profile with links from sites like Yahoo.com, Wikipedia and NYmag.com
- They run a well-managed Amazon shop with excellent product listings
Top 3 Competitors
Here are similar competitors targeting the majority of the same keywords.
- JustPaddles.com – new and upcoming competitor, 80k+ visits according to SimilarWeb, ranking for more keywords than PickleballCentral.com
- PickleballPortal.com – 50k+ visits according to SimilarWeb, the site dropped significantly during the last 12 months
- PickleballGalaxy.com – 40k+ visits according to SimilarWeb, looks obsolete
Let’s get into the easy wins to grow this specific website.
🔥 3 Easy Wins To Grow This Website
There are opportunities to significantly grow this brand. I break down the following easy wins:
- Improve existing blog, formatting, and call-to-actions
- Leverage Youtube channel
- Optimize existing affiliate program for SEO and sales purposes
This teardown will look at the blog/content side of the business. It will not look into the easy wins that are on the e-commerce side; that’s not my expertise.
Let’s get into it!
➡️ Win #1: Improve existing blog
The site boasts an active blog with approximately 400 articles covering educational pieces, pickleball news, and a few buying guides.
However, most of the content is not optimized for SEO.
Despite this, the site still manages to rank for over 360 keywords containing the term “best,” likely due to its authority in the pickleball niche.
By improving the appearance of their blog, the site could attract more traffic and significantly increase revenue from sales. Here are some basic tips on how to improve it:
💰 Blog formatting needs to improve
The blog articles need to be significantly improved. Here is a list of things that should be done:
- Increase font size; 18px to 20px is bare minimum
- Break up paragraphs; currently it’s hard to read due to blocks of text
- Add images. Only product images are included in buying guides. Education articles have minimal images
- Develop call-to-action product boxes showcasing products from the e-commerce store
- No internal links exist on the information articles. Adding internal links to e-commerce pages will significantly improve on-page SEO and this traffic.
- Add related articles at the end of the article
- Hire expert pickleball players to write the content and add their author bios at the end of article for Google EEAT purposes
💰 Add comparison tables to buying guides
The buying guides are poorly organized. Here is a good example on this page:
https://pickleballcentral.com/blog/top-5-pickleball-paddles-for-power/
It’s clear that these types of articles are not well-optimized, lack proper calls-to-action, have insufficient word count, and low-quality product images.
For a start, I would start by adding a comparison table, similar to the one found on their Amazon shop.
💰 Add a filter with products available on the e-commerce shop within all blog articles
It makes it easier for users to find the products they’re looking for, which can improve their overall shopping experience and increase the likelihood of making a purchase.
Additionally, the visitors will be able to sort products by specific criteria, such as price range, brand, or product type which will further enhance their buying intent.
Incorporating a filter with their products can bridge the gap between two key components of your site: their blog and actual shop. By allowing users to easily find and purchase products while browsing the blog, they can create a seamless and convenient shopping experience.
➡️ Win #2: Leverage existing Youtube channel better
The existing Youtube channel for this e-commerce shop is highly active and has a solid following of 14K subscribers.
However, as someone who isn’t a Youtuber, I can see several opportunities for improvement.
For instance, many of the product reviews are too short and lack alternatives, and the videos could benefit from segmentation. Also adding some more technical information about the product should be helpful
Additionally, it appears that the best-performing videos on the channel are educational in nature.
As such, the owners should focus more on creating this type of content, leveraging their existing authority in the space to collaborate with players and trainers to produce a comprehensive set of instructional videos.
Finally, an out-of-the-box idea could be highly effective: creating a channel similar to the popular TennisTroll channel, but with a focus on pickleball.
This would provide an additional avenue for attracting potential customers to the shop, while also showcasing the fun and social aspects of the sport.
➡️ Win #3: Optimize the affiliate program
An affiliate program can be leveraged in several ways to drive more traffic and increase revenue.
Firstly, you can benefit from backlinks generated by your affiliates.
Secondly, you can offer special deals to top-performing affiliates, incentivizing them to drive even more traffic to your site.
Often, affiliate programs are not well-managed, so hiring an experienced affiliate manager can be beneficial.
They can monitor existing affiliates, reach out to popular niche blogs, and create special deals for your affiliates, such as Black Friday promotions.
💰 How Much Is this Website Worth?
Here are the assumptions I am making:
- 200,000 pageviews/mo according to SimilarWeb
- Great authority in the space
- Solid amount of sales from both Amazon and the site’s shop
Pickleball is a relatively new sport that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), pickleball participation in the United States has grown by 21.3% annually since 2010. In 2020, there were an estimated 4.2 million pickleball players in the US, an increase from 3.3 million in 2019.
Having that in mind, I would say they are well in the 7 figures when it comes to sales, as for the revenue it depends on the expenses (e.g., they also closed their physical shop), the shop earns somewhere from $200,000 to 500,000 per year (most likely much more).
👉 Actionable Takeaways
Here are actionable takeaways that you can apply to your niche website today:
- Free traffic = best traffic. Having a well-known e-commerce shop with non optimized blog means you are losing money every day. Optimize blogs for SEO which will drive traffic to your e-commerce business.
- An affiliate program is an excellent way to build backlinks and partnerships. But it requires significant effort; hire someone to manage it.
- Blog articles need to not only have good on-page SEO but need to have good UX for actual visitors. This is critical.
