Rugby club website design: what belongs on it

A rugby club website has three jobs: tell people about Saturday, show them what happened, and give sponsors somewhere to be seen. Most sites do the first two badly and the third by accident.

The log is your most valuable page

Competition tables are searched far more than most clubs are. In South Africa, "currie cup log" peaks at close to fifty thousand searches a month in August at a difficulty most club sites could beat.

If your site does not carry a correct, current log for your competition, that traffic goes to a newspaper or a league site, and the supporter who arrives there sees somebody else's advertising instead of your sponsors.

The squad page does more work than clubs think

Player profiles are checked constantly — by supporters, by opposition, by journalists, by agents, and by the players themselves. A squad page with names and photographs is a start. A squad page with appearances, points, position and career history is a reason to come back.

It is also the page most likely to rank for a player's name, which brings people to your site rather than a database somewhere.

Structure that works

• Home — next fixture, last result, current log position. Not a carousel.
• Fixtures & results — by competition, with the log alongside
• Squad — by position, with individual player pages
• Match centre — live during a game, then the report
• Partners — a real page, not a logo strip in the footer
• Tickets and membership — wherever these actually live

The partners page nobody builds

Most clubs put sponsor logos in the footer and call it delivered. A proper partners page — each sponsor with a description, a link and a reason they are involved — is worth real money, ranks for the sponsor's name alongside your club, and gives you something concrete to point at in a renewal meeting.

It also costs nothing to build, which makes it the highest-return page on this list.

Multiple programmes

Senior men, women, under-21 and academy. Shared sponsors, separate squads and fixtures. Check any platform handles this before committing, because retrofitting it is painful.

What we build is set out on rugby club websites and apps.

Structuring the log page to actually rank

Competition tables carry more search volume than most clubs do, and the page is winnable because most club sites do not compete for it. What the page needs:

• The full table with bonus points calculated on your competition's rules
• Played, won, drawn, lost, points for and against, difference, tries, bonus points, total
• Form over the last five fixtures
• Updated within minutes of full time, not the following Tuesday
• A clear heading naming the competition and season in plain language

The last point is the one that decides whether it ranks. A page titled “Log” will not be found. A page titled with the competition name and the season will be, because that is what people type.

The player page as a ranking asset

Individual player pages are the most under-used SEO asset a rugby club owns. Each one can rank for that player's name, which brings people to your site rather than to a statistics database.

What makes a player page rank and hold attention:

• Full name, position, height, weight, date of birth
• Season-by-season appearances and points at your club
• Previous clubs and representative honours
• Recent match involvements, linked to those fixtures
• A decent photograph and, where you have it, video

For a squad of forty, that is forty pages that did not exist, each with a genuine reason to be visited. It is also the page an agent or a journalist lands on, which matters more than most clubs realise.

Matchday, from Thursday to Monday

A club site should behave differently depending on the day. The homepage in the hours around a fixture should be the match, not a news carousel.

Very few club sites change at all across that week, which is why supporters check Facebook instead.

The partners page, built properly

A logo strip in the footer delivers almost nothing. A real partners page — each sponsor with a description, a link, a category and a reason they are involved — costs nothing to build and does three things.

It gives you something concrete to point at in a renewal meeting. It ranks for the sponsor's name alongside your club, which they will notice. And it turns a logo into a referral link you can actually measure clicks on.

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