FAQ: What is Search Engine Optimization?

What can Britney Spears Teach Us About Web Marketing?

Regardless of what you think of Britney Spears' singing skills, the pop princess can offer some guidance on how to market a business through a strong web presence and proven web marketing strategies.

Let's break down the web marketing practices on www.britneyspears.com to find out if Britney knows as much about web marketing as she does about navel rings.

1. Link Popularity - When you're an internationally famous pop star, getting people to link to your site is as easy as getting into a hot nightclub. Britney has thousands of inbound links into her website from news stories, concert sites, fan sites, her hometown's website, fan's profile pages, lyric pages, etc. If you don't happen to be a pop star, getting inbound links to your site involves a bit more work. Try running reverse lookups on your competitor's sites to find out who is linking to them. If they're linked somewhere you should be too, send a quick link request. Yes, it's labor intensive, but it's an effective way to get your site listed where your potential clients and customers are hanging out online.

2. Site stickiness - Britney knows that a stale website makes a pop princess seem soooo 5-minutes ago. To prevent this, she publishes fresh content on her site on a regular basis about tours, new albums, videos, appearances, etc. Yes, this is also labor intensive, but fresh content entices visitors to bookmark her site. What does it take to keep a site fresh? A press release, a fresh jobs page, a tip of the day. Be creative, but do something to keep things fresh. Britney can't keep touring on "Oops! I did it Again" and neither can you.

3. Directory Submissions - Britney's fans run searches online to find her site so she's taken the time to submit her site to Yahoo!, LookSmart (powers MSN.com results), and the Open Directory Project (feeds AOL). Was it worth shelling out $299 each for Yahoo! and Looksmart? Of course it was for the multi-million dollar enterprise called Britney Spears. Is it worth it for your business? In almost every case, the answer is yes. Take a look at the Jupiter Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings to get a grasp on the reach of these directories. An effective directory submission will deliver traffic for keyword related searches beyond your company name. Consulting with an experienced search engine optimization to make sure this is done right. If your directory submissions are done poorly, you'll have as much chance getting them changes as you will getting Britney to return your phone calls.

4. Discussion Group Buzz - Are people talking about your business? Word of mouth is a great way to generate qualified leads. Customers love getting information from trusted sources and they trust other customers much more than your biased opinions of your own company. Britney has buzz. She's mentioned in over 300,000 posts on groups.google.com, Yahoo! Groups has over 1700 groups dedicated to Britney, and thousands of messages are posted every day on messages.yahoo.com (not all favorable, but any press is good press, right?). Do you contribute to any online discussion groups related to your company's business? It's a cheap and effective way to build credibility and get in front of your potential clients and customers.

5. Call to Action on Site - Britney knows visitors to her site are there for a reason. First, she hits them with a pop-up window promoting her 2002 tour with the wording "BUY YOURS HERE" and "AVAILABLE NOW." A call to action and a sense of urgency bundled into one small window. While you don't need to use a pop-up window to do this, does your site guide visitors to buy your products or fill out a contact form? If not, you're missing an opportunity to capture a sale or a future sale.

6. Newsletter Subscription - If Britney doesn't entice you with the pop-up, she'll at least try to get you to subscribe to her newsletter. "Get the Newsletter" (call to action) with "SIGN UP" as the wording on the subscribe button; easy, simple, fast, and effective. Britney wants to turn a visitor into a fan, and making it easy for visitors to join her email list is a perfect strategy for building a online fan base. Can people subscribe to your site? Do you send a regular email to your site's subscribers? For more information on why this is important, check out Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

What Britney still has to learn:

Britney's hit song "I'm not a girl, yet not a Woman" is a great metaphor for her current web marketing accomplishments. She's doing a lot right, but still has a few things to learn before reaching web marketing maturity.

1. Page Titles - While Britney sees the value in picking unique song titles, she overlooked the importance of well written web page titles. Britney may be able to get away with this due to her link popularity, but chances are that your site could benefit from page titles that accurately describe the content within your pages. Britney's home page title is "Britneyspears.com." Do people search for that term? Yes, but it's already the site's address which will be enough to get the site to come up in most search engines. A better title (not the best, but better) would be "Britney Spears" since it receives thirty eight times more searches per month.

Does every page of your site have exactly the same title? Are you using your domain name as your title? Does all of your site traffic enter your site through your home page? Is so, you're missing a lot of easily targeted traffic from search engines like Google.com.

2. International Site Versions - Britney has become an international success yet her site is only available in one language and uses a lot of image embedded text within the site. Jessica Simpson offers visitors five international site versions. Get with it, Brit. Should you consider international or multiple language versions of your site? For international sites, spend some time deciding whether it's realistic to expect to sell your product or service in another country before making the investment. When considering language versions, in some cases you can get away with having only an English version of your site due to the increase in online website translation services. However, the translation services cannot translate text that's embedded in images like Britney's navigation. Be sure to include appropriate keywords and search phrases in the native languages of your international customers.

3. Pay Per Click Advertising Brand Protection - With such a well indexed website, Britney can probably skip using Pay Per Click advertising through Overture, Google, or FindWhat. But this doesn't mean she should ignore the Pay Per Click industry. Many companies are making money off her trademarked name and copyrighted images and the Pay Per Click industry is profiting by allowing advertisers to promote their websites for a fee. In order to protect her innocent, down home image, Britney's peeps should work with the Pay Per Click industry or hop onto the Body Solutions lawsuit to shut down this trademark violation. Are other companies using your trademarks to market their websites? If so, the first step to take is to contact the violating companies directly to straighten things out. If that fails, the Body Solutions lawsuit should offer some guidance for your next move.

She's So Lucky, She's a Star

According to the footer on her website, Britneyspears.com is part of the Signatures Network. Signatures Network appears to have a great sales staff and a graphic design department, but no one specializing in Search Engine Optimization on staff. This shows the value of consulting with a search engine optimization firm in addition to a web design firm. To be fair to Britney, her web peeps are doing a lot more things right than wrong, and let's face it, she'll do just fine either way.

By taking a web marketing lesson or two from the Pop Princess, maybe your company can become the Britney Spears of your industry.

Ed Kohler is the president and founder of Haystack In A Needle - a full service web marketing and search engine positioning firm based in Minneapolis, MN. Britney does not return Ed's phone calls.

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