When travelling through Heathrow Airport this Christmas I was faced with this message :

It was a while after the Tiger Woods scandal broke out and I was surprised that the ad hadn’t been withdrawn already but what struck me most was the relevance of the message. It was as if Tiger Woods was teaching himself a lesson and I couldn’t agree more. No matter how many mistakes you make or how badly you play your cards, it’s what you do next that counts.

Since I work with search strategies and constantly fight with the mainstream perception of what SEO is and what areas it involves, I thought this example was a good way to illustrate how I look at  recent developments within the SEO business. Mainly; You can no longer (if ever) treat SEO as a secluded action that takes place in the coding and copy of your website. SEO is becoming more and more integrated with P.R, advertising and social media and is rather a question of setting an overall digital strategy than optimizing a webpage. Because fact is: everything that is ever produced about your brand will eventually end up online and everything is therefore in need of a search strategy.

What happened due to Tiger Woods scandal was that his entire wholesome image as a “loving family man and continually successful golf pro” was scattered. In the search engines this was obvious. When typing in a search for “Tiger Woods” in Google (post scandal) this is what Google suggests I was searching for:

As you can see none of the suggestions are remotely connected to Golf.  The result page for “Tiger Woods” gives the same type of results, mainly negative and connected to the scandal rather than golf. The search engine result page (SERP) can be compared to an online display window and since Woods made no attempt to influence the publicity and outlook of his personal brand he handed the power of the SERP to others. So you could say that he allowed his online display window to be solely negative. This case may be somewhat extreme but what I’m trying to say is that by being involved in the online conversations and meeting the press about you, you can influence the search results for your brand. As social networks and blogs are ranked high and Woods already have a good rank on his own blog it could be worth using these channels to try and justify your digital outlook. A blog post with a statement in Woods own words would most likely push down statements from others in the search results.

Obviously anyone can make mistakes but the real mistake could actually occur when acting on the first mistake. To avoid the snowball effect with mistakes make sure you: Have a crisis plan prepared, always keep an eye on what others say about you, meet the criticism and engage in online conversations. Try to avoid being caught off guard, but remember: it is what you do next that counts. And doing something is always better than doing nothing.

/Petra

Related posts:

1. How much better is the search business today? I got the inspiration for this Blog post from...
2. Latest fashion; “The Holistic Perspective of Search” This week we got to experience the third Search...
3. The bad taste won’t go away -5 steps to improve your online reputation Following my colleagues earlier post about Tiger Woods and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.