I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to how most well-known companies have failed to leverage the strengths of their online properties as part of a search engine optimization or brand association strategy. Go to any big name corporate website home page and you’ll almost always see a Page Rank of 7 or 8 out of 10, which is very high. It always amazes me how many large corporations waste the strength of their websites, due to poor optimization strategies.
McDonalds
You would think a company that sells so many hamburgers would come up on the first page when you do a search for hamburgers on Google. They do rank for hamburger but the page listed links to their training center, located on their corporate website. This goes to show that they could easily implement what I’m suggesting, they just don’t know to do it.
What I really want to know is why there isn’t a page titled, “The McDonalds Hamburger, First Among Hamburgers” showing the world how great their main product is. Doing so would give them a well targeted page promoting their product that will easily rank for the plural and singular versions of the word hamburger, which according to our keyword research tool both get a lot of traffic:
Before moving to the next example I wanted to invite comments on how Wendy’s is ranking for “hamburgers” as they don’t have the word hamburger anywhere in their page source:
Major Car Manufacturers
I was recently reading a post by Bill Imada on the Big Tent Blog at AdAge.com and he pointed out an ad in China for Subaru:
Chinese Headline: “Free and unrestrained; expect to exceed expectations in the New Year!”
Advertising Agency: AdAsia Communications, New York
Creative Director: Paul Ng
Account Supervisor: Julia Kang
The idea with this ad was to associate their brand with the emotional high of rebirth/reinvention, suggesting that this renewal can occur at the beginning of the New Year, and that this feeling is also captured by purchasing a Subaru. An esoteric, abstract idea at best, that clearly required hours of creative collaboration.
You would think that if the big car companies are putting resources into such far removed ideas as an ad strategy, that they would at least be putting equivalent resources into more direct media like search, where people are actively looking for information about these products in preparation of making a buying decision.
Based on these examples I’d say either the major car manufacturers aren’t very good at keyword research or they’re not really paying attention to search at all:
hybrid vehicles ~ Doesn’t turn up any major automakers in the natural search results. There are a few in the sponsored section, (Cadillac, Toyota, Saturn, Honda). I want to know why no one has “www.carcompany.com/hybrid-vehicles” listing all their hybrid options.
alternative fuel vehicles ~ Once again no one in the natural results and only Saturn in the sponsored.
hybrid suv ~ This actually brings up a few sites in the natural results:
All the pages ranking naturally for “hybrid suv” aren’t really targeted for that keyword, they’re more of product pages for one individual hybrid vehicle, rather then their full line of hybrid offerings. This again demonstrates that they have the strength to accomplish the desired results, they’re just not doing it.
These are just two dramatic demonstrations of the truly unlimited potential for utilizing SEO as part of the arsenal in brand association campaigns. Anything from activities to ideas to self identity related searches as well as related products or slang terms can be used as the basis of an online brand association strategy, the only limit is your creativity and ingenuity.
