The Top 10 Wrestling News Websites
for 05/02/15 – 05/08/15
1. Wrestlezone.com
2. Wrestlinginc.com
3. Lordsofpain.net
4. Ewrestlingnews.com
5. 411mania.com/wrestling/
6. Pwinsider.com
7. Nodq.com
8. Rajah.com
9. Wrestleview.com
10. Pwmania.com
What’s interesting to note about the top ten wrestling news sites above are the sites omitted from the list. Just barely out of the top 10 (ranked at #11) is PWTorch.com — and nowhere to be seen anywhere in the top 100 sites in this category will one find f4wonline.com.
While, in the cast of F4Wonline.com, this is more a case of the site likely not being properly indexed or tagged, and therefore not even “seen” by Alexa as being in this category, in the case of PW Torch, it is likely due to the trending upswing of major cut and paste sites, each of which have gotten far more sophisticated in the way they have presented their news—even when borrowing it from other sites.
In this way, it’s almost as though the sites that have typically broken insider wrestling news over the last two decades, have taken on a role much like the Associated Press or Reuters News Service.
Very few would argue where the preponderance of breaking news happens. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter to this day produces the balance of new and noteworthy information that would typically pass for insider news in wrestling these days. However, it’s weekly distribution makes it nearly impossible for the site to which it belongs to gain and maintain the organic traffic that ought to accompany the information it delivers.
But what these so-called “cut and paste” sites have learned, either through research or the luck afforded them by choosing WordPress as their chosen platform, is how one can leverage small chunks of content, broken up into individual articles, to increase the rate of organic traffic through search engines, like Google, that use sophisticated algorithms to match terms users are actually searching for to content that presents those terms in an ordered, intelligible manner that both humans, and Google, can understand.
The more these results are clicked on in the resultant pages in search, the higher-ranked the sites that serve the pages users click through them become.
Premium pay sites are automatically at a disadvantage because, by their nature, the best content resides behind a restrictive pay wall, so access is limited. This is exacerbated when 90% of the news for the week is relegated to one post.
Google likes headlines.
Take #10 on our list. pwmania.com
I know of no one who reads wrestling news sites who turn to pwmania.com for the news. But that doesn’t matter, because of the number of people who turn to google to get their news.
But their headlines are well crafted. Barely a post exists that doesn’t have WWE or TNA or a popular name contained therein.
Here is a site with barely an original article on the entire site. Everything posted on this site as NEWS has more than likely come from somewhere else on the internet—whether WrestleZone, or F4Wonline, we can’t be sure, because it’s also one of the more under referenced sites available, too. Rarely do they cite their sources, and most of the content tends to disappear into this unattributable void of mediocrity.
And, yet, they get traffic. And Alexa knows they belong among wrestling news sites.
There are ample links to other, more reputable, content in a way that makes it easy for the consumer of the content to stay on pwmania.com to consume. Their YouTube videos are embedded. Likewise, their twitter snippets are embedded as well. There is little need to leave the site in order to consume the information they are referencing.
Other, larger, more reputable sites cannot boast this feature, and likely suffer from higher bounce rates, and lower time on site retention rates as a result.
The columns ate pwmania are suspect, too. Rushed, poorly thought through pieces offering little more than fleeting reactions to recent stories without regard to perspective, or the larger picture.
- New TNA creative team member and Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan could be great, or he may end up a bust because Destination America offers such slim penetration.
- King of the Ring was rushed, and should have been more of a WWE Network exclusive.
None of these even approach originality.
But the site is neatly structured. Articles exist separate from news. And news and recaps, by and large, receive their own headline and content spots that tell a reader what they can expect upon clicking.
