Two consumer-driven trends are forcing companies to enhance their Web content and underlying technology to make their sites as “search-friendly” as possible. The objective? To win the coveted number-one spot in the results pages of major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, much like a mall anchor store grabs the most traffic.
It’s all in the name of protecting brand integrity at a time when consumers — through the broad reach of the Internet — enjoy unprecedented power to speak their minds and be heard, for good and for bad. To ensure the brand message does not get lost in all the flotsam, companies are adding content to their sites that search engines view as relevant and worthy of top rankings in results pages. Companies are also making sure their sites are structured in such a way that search engines can easily find this new content, index it and make it highly visible to consumers.
It’s a battle. Every major brand has its detractors and the Internet is an equalizer. For instance, $19 billion McDonald’s succeeds in getting its official site listed first before the eyes of Google searchers who enter the keyword “mcdonald’s.” However, a McDonald’s watchdog site that provides “alternate views” to the fast food empire’s “glossy” image also ranks very highly, in second place. Similarly, coffee king Starbucks ranks first when searchers enter its name into Google, but an “I-hate-Starbucks.com” site appears on its heels.
“There really is no strategy that says you can push certain sites down [in search results rankings] while raising certain sites up. It truly is a matter of how your Web site is laid out,” said Kathleen Stockham, marketing director for Bestbuy.com. “Smart retailers are making their sites ‘crawlable,'” which means they are open to search engines to collect information.
Some retailers restrict outsiders’ access to their sites, claiming security concerns, but that only limits their exposure on search engines, she said.
Two forces are nudging retailers to rethink their Web sites: consumers’ increased reliance on searches to gather information on the Internet and the proliferation of consumer-generated media such as blogs, which are online journals authored by individuals and groups.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
Consumers are creating new blogs at an astounding rate of nearly one every second, or 80,000 new sites a day, according to Technorati, a San Francisco company that tracks blogs. As of late July, Technorati reported that 900,000 messages were posted each day on 14.2 million blogs. These sites’ discussion topics can have a narrow focus, such as shoddy customer service at a specific retail chain or rumors about a celebrity designer.
That’s a lot of chatter.
Get What You Don’t Pay For
Companies can attempt to counter this glut of negative or incorrect information by purchasing sponsored positions on search engines sites. However, consumers gravitate instead toward unpaid search results such as those appearing on the left-hand side of Google’s results page, according to Kevin Lee, executive chairman of Did-it Marketing of New York.
Consumers’ preference for unpaid search results was validated in a study that examined their eye movements while viewing a search page. That report was conducted by Did-it, search marketing company Enquiro of Kelowna, British Columbia, and EyeTools of San Francisco.
Increasingly, these unpaid search results that consumers favor point to consumer-generated media, such as blogs, rather than sites developed by corporate America. In fact, when any of the top 100 brand names (as identified by BusinessWeek) are entered as a keyword in Google, 39 percent of the first 20 search results will be consumer-generated media. That finding is among those to be released later this month in a search engine report conducted by Converseon and Hill & Knowlton, both of New York, and Intelliseek of Cincinnati.
“Consumer-generated media just continues to explode,” said Rob Key, president and chief executive officer of Converseon, a search engine marketing company. “This is content a company has no control over.
“We expect the penetration of consumer-generated media in search engine results to go from 39 percent to 50 percent” in the next 12 to 18 months, he added. “If that happens, companies will really have lost control of their brands, or their voice will have been minimized compared with third parties.”
Bestbuy.com’s Stockham said companies are just now coming to terms with the brand integrity risks they face on the Internet. “I think, for retailers, this is one of the first times they have found that you can’t always control the messaging,” she said.
It’s tricky terrain and amounts to “managing the unmanageable,” said Stephen Henderson, director of e-commerce and consumer services for Mikasa. The china and glassware maker is part of $1.6 billion Arc International, a 180-year-old company based in Arques, France. “People can say anything they want,” he said.
For instance, “Mikasa” appears on a site called “I-Hate-France.com,” which bills itself as a resource “where you can find a list of French companies so you can boycott their products!” Fortunately, for Mikasa, this site does not rank well on major search engines so a consumer would have to dig to find it.
Industry experts say these alternative sites rank as well as they do on search results pages because they do a lot of things right, as determined by search engines’ secret formulas for prioritizing information. Search engines do not reveal their formulas, called algorithms, but they tend to favor certain factors, such as whether a site draws heavy traffic. A record of steady traffic to a site indicates consumers value the information found there and that counts as a “vote” when determining rankings. Other attributes that search engines look for include the presence of relevant keywords, fresh editorial content, numerous links to other relevant Web sites and articles authored by people regarded as credible and who craft lucid arguments.
Retailers that follow these best practices for their own sites stand to rank highly in search results. The idea is not so much to silence detractors as it is to take steps to maintain high visibility to consumers.
“We tell our clients to become a content company. Build content that surrounds your product,” said Converseon’s Key. For instance, a home improvement chain can develop a site that provides “how to” guidelines for building a patio and an online forum for consumers to share do-it-yourself tips.
Mikasa will launch a new Web site in the fourth quarter and content and functionality will be greatly enhanced. Henderson said, “We will make sure we are optimized for search engines” by carefully choosing relevant keywords and placing those keywords on the site in ways that search engines can access them and index Mikasa’s content.
Debunking Urban Myth
The likelihood that a company will have to defend itself against some sort of rumor cooked up and distributed over the Internet has never been greater. Designer Tommy Hilfiger is among those companies leveraging its Web site, not to squelch rumor-monger Web sites but to ensure the Tommy Hilfiger point of view gains visibility on search sites.
A portion of the Tommy Hilfiger Web site is dedicated to refuting an urban legend that has dogged the designer for a number of years. The site contains supporting information from reputable sources such as the Anti-Defamation League and daily newspapers such as the Miami Herald. The site invites consumer comment and designates an e-mail address for that purpose. It also contains links to rumor-refuting sites such as “truthorfiction.com” and “urbanlegends.com.” Tommy Hilfiger has no connection to these groups, but by posting their links on its own site, the company has enlisted them to take up its cause and set the record straight.
“This is definitely a good example of search-related brand management,” said Sapna Satagopan, research associate at JupiterResearch.
Satagopan, who entered the keywords “Tommy Hilfiger rumor” into Google, said the results backed up her assessment. “Tommy Hilfiger’s direct Web page that clarifies the rumor is fourth on the listings, which is great,” she said, “considering the other Web sites listed above it carry the same message” refuting the rumor.
She noted that her search also turned up Web sites that propagate the urban legend, but they were ranked less prominently. Officials at Tommy Hilfiger declined to be interviewed for this story.
Individuals, companies or special-interest groups intent on getting high-profile visibility on search engines can attempt to do so in an unethical fashion, but it can backfire, said Bill Furlong, ceo at SearchChannel.com, an Oak Brook, Ill., company that builds private label search engines. Some people, known in the industry as “black hats,” exploit technology and tactics to try and trick the search engines into granting their sites’ unwarranted high rankings in search results.
“Google is very proficient at policing the game of black hat artists,” Furlong said, and those using shady practices can be banned from being indexed on major search engines.
Bestbuy.com’s Stockham, who worked at America Online about 10 years ago, said the search engine companies offer guidance on how best to design a site to optimize the search base and “the smart retailer is paying attention to that.”