Field Insider: a sports brand built on search

A football and basketball brand, rebuilt with a new site and a content system. Traffic recovered 1,000%, the highest in two years.

Client: Field Insider
Services: Brand building, Web development, Content systems
Result: 1,000% traffic recovery, the highest in two years
Website: fieldinsider.com

Field Insider is a sports site for football and basketball fans and players. It publishes analysis, guides, training content and gear reviews. We built the site and the brand, then grew it on search, social media and advertising.

Directly from the field: a short introduction to Field Insider beside a basketball player shooting

Where is Field Insider now?

Rebranded and rebuilt, with a new site and a content system behind it. Since the rebuild, traffic has recovered 1,000%, to the highest it has been in two years.

Field Insider results: traffic recovered 1,000% since the rebuild, eleven times the level before, the highest in two years

How was Field Insider built?

—Concept and planning: market research and strategy.
—First version: built in one month.
—Full launch: the brand, search and social media, in two to three months.
—Tools: WordPress and PHP; Figma, Photoshop and Illustrator; Mediavine for advertising.

What does the brand stand for?

Insight from the field. The name is short, easy to remember and says what the site is. The identity is bold and professional, in black, yellow and blue, and used the same way on the site and every channel. The aim was trust, for casual fans and serious players alike.

Field Insider font, Familjen Grotesk, and colours: black, yellow, blue and white

What is on the site?

More than 350 articles on player development, tactics, training drills and gear. Most are evergreen, so they keep finding readers. The layout reads well on a phone and on a desktop.

Field Insider website on a laptop and a phone, showing a football news article

How did Field Insider grow?

Before Google’s Helpful Content Update, the site averaged 100,000 page views a month, with more than 3,000 links from other sites. After the update we moved the focus to the brand and its authority, and recovered 25 to 30% of the lost traffic.

Facebook grew to 243,000 followers and became the strongest channel. Instagram and YouTube grew steadily; one YouTube Short reached 3.9 million views. Content was reused across every channel, in one voice.

Field Insider social media and search figures: followers, monthly page views, backlinks and articles

How does it earn?

Through ads on the Mediavine network. Placements were tuned so revenue did not cost readers a good experience.

What did Field Insider teach us?

—A strong name builds trust from the first day.
—Search changes. A brand people know holds up better.
—Ads work when readers come first.

Built by our founder as Building Persona, before Pembury & Stone.