As a follow up to the SVT Aktuellt TV show last night, there have been some questions around the fact that you can buy your way into the search engines. Unfortunatley SVT didn’t have enough time to go into the details of this so I will explain it a bit more here.

First of all: There is NO reason, action or defined need for anyone to buy or manipulate the results in the search engines. There are a few spammers out there doing exactly this and they create a bad situation for their clients and for the user. The search engines as well as the user want to see the current and most important articles that show truth and discuss all areas of the topic. Companies can only provide their facts and their details and view around the topic.

Influencing the organic listings of Google: This is difficult and hard and the issue that SEB and others might have is that there are old articles from newspapers or blogs that rank in the index and that might not always involve the correct facts or truth. In this case, companys have to provide the media, bloggers and searchers with relevant material and facts. They can do this by optimising their own content on the website, blog, press releases, You Tube section or newsroom . If Google rank it or not is up to Google and the interrest of the market, but the key here is that you at least show what is the truth and the message from a corporate level! The actual opinion is always the users and that should always be the case in all areas of good marketing and PR.

Influencing the sponsored listings of Google:

To buy a listing in Google Adwords is easy and for companies that need to get their facts out on the very moment the reputation changed, this is an easy and fast way of making it accessible. In this case, as well with organic, you need to provide information around the topic and the actual area that people search for. If people search for financial crisis this is the area they want information about! Do not sell them a new mortgage. I see this happening all the time! Again, this is the same strategy as organic. It is all about facts. You can buy an Adwords position but you can’t change the opinion with that…. The user will judge and evaluate but at least it is a way of letting them know of the corporates own facts and view. This is also for some companys with an “old” website structure (like SEB) the only way to let the user know what content they have as Google have problems ranking content within for example framesets.

In summary:

Don’t put your head in the sand! reach out and listen to the voice of your customers and see them as your sounding board. Provide them with facts in both a proactive and a reactive way and let them judge you as you are!

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