Last week, we discussed the inner workings of Google and their pursuit and focus on displaying relevant information for their customers. This week, we follow on from this, by providing some examples of websites that have successfully supplied Google with relevant content.
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A huge proportion of Google searches are either direct business and product searches or information-seeking queries involving products and services. It is in this information seeking where the grey area of content emerges. Too often searchers in this category are seen as fish. Provide the right bait (which can be readily researched), lure up and cast out. The problem is that getting a click through to a desired page isn’t the same as catching a fish. The users behind these queries are free to digest the page’s content as they wish, look deeper on to a website, or leave without exploring. People are also very aware of when they are being advertised to, and if it is inappropriate, or if they feel they have been deceived in to clicking through to the web page this is not just a lost customer. This is someone with a bad taste in their mouth. A business guilty of this will then occupy a negative space in the user’s mind. Given the huge importance of word-of-mouth these days, this is an absolutely disastrous outcome. Far worse than having never had a user come to your page in the first place. How then, to harness the volume of searches made daily to achieve awareness, interest, desire and action? Be like Yellow Pages, be like Google – provide something relevant. Here are some interesting examples of success and failure when it comes to this.
Big Success – Red Bull Stratos
http://www.redbullstratos.com/
Energy drink giant Red Bull sent a man up in to the stratosphere to complete the largest free-fall in history as part of a wide-spanning marketing and branding plan. While this particular case extends way beyond the realm of SEO, it is worth noting that the original live filming was only viewable on an official Red Bull website. Traffic increases would have been phenomenal – and so too would the knock-on traffic to the various Red Bull entities (Music, Surf, Skate, Red Bull TV etc.) that are often considered underappreciated for their quality.
Budget Success – Blendtec
US-based family business Blendtec creates – you guessed it – blenders for the home. The blenders they create are incredibly powerful and what better way of showing them off than by blending things that were never meant to, nor would anyone have guessed could, be blended. The videos they made were essentially wildly popular, thoroughly entertaining product demonstrations.
These examples are food for thought for companies wanting to create content outside of the box and prove that effective SEO via Google can be done; don’t lose hope!