I have been wanting to write a post like this for 2 reasons.
- To shed some light on common SEO myths.
- To show how powerful international companies just with huge marketing budgets such as Nikon are loosing out because they neglect SEO as part of their strategy.
In no way is this article intended to damage the Nikon brand, I highly respect the brand it is merely an observation about facts that should be acted upon.
Company leaders and even marketing managers often get surprised when they type in their brand name or a product they are selling and notice that they are not number one. They automatically make up the assumption that just because they have a powerful brand, their company website will automatically catapult to the number one position on Google.
An example of this is when I did a Google search for buy Nikon D5000 camera. The Nikon.com or Nikonusa.com website are nowhere to be seen. Instead companies like Amazon, EBay, CNET and other Review Sites are raking in more profits by mooching of the Nikon brand. Now this in no way is illegal, Nikon are still making profits if either one of the websites promoting their products sell, but it’s coming to a greater cost, lowering their margins.
After I modified the query for from buy Nikon D5000 camera to just Nikon D5000 camera I hit the jackpot (or so i thought), Nikon.com website appeared and I clicked on the link which took me to http://www.nikon.com/about/news/2009/0414_d5000_01.htm which is just a news page with no information on where to buy the camera whatsoever, no asking for location to find nearby stores, nothing. It just took me to a page with a list of cameras which have nothing to do with the D5000.
I believe you get the point….
The last facts I want to share with you is Nikon.com …
- has a Google Page Rank of 7/10
- on Yahoo Site Explorer it registered 144,000 inbound links
- using Google’s Site command, we know that they have around 27,000 pages indexed.
We are all fighting to get more links to our website and to increase our page rank. SEO starts at home. Do not attempt to do Off Page SEO before you get your On Page SEO to a respectable level. Do not just get links to your home page, make sure they are targeted to landing pages also.
First fix your website as much as you can. It doesn’t make any logical sense to get people into a broken down and messy restaurant. First fix fix the restaurant and then get people to visit.
P.S. If you see “holes” in big brands’ SEO Strategy, that could mean an opportunity as an affiliate to jump into a niche or target a product.
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Probably your best blog post yet. Well done! One man’s loss is another man’s opportunity…very much the truth in SEO & Marketing in general.
it is a very good post. Off course, the different marketing companies are using some different strategies to increase the business of the company. Some owners of the companies often hires even some good SEO Services Company to build a good amount of traffic for their website so that more and more visitors can visit their website to increase their business…
There are a lof interesting points mentioned here and they should they take your advice. In your professional opinion should they shift their entire marketing efforts online?