Monthly Archives: August 2015

Why Google is pushing business through Google Doodles to questionable Search Result Pages?

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And how this impacts later search results and AdWords performance of these websites? Today’s Google Doodle is a nice animated graphic of Tomato throwing festival in Buñol – nice work. Opposite to San Fermin, I love this festival. La Tomatina Animated Graphic Screenshot Google Doodle I was surprised when I clicked through, and I noticed SERP is for the keyword “La Tomatina” and on the top of the results I can see an organic listing – a microsite made for SEO purposes! La Tomatina SERP   I know this market quite well, and I used to compete with PPTravel, The company behind this particular microsite (That’s my connection with this SERP for you). Guys from PPT are seasonal spenders (PPC, Contextual, etc.) and heavy SEO focused lot. Ages ago they created a lot of landing pages and microsites to deals with all the events they have in their annually repeating portfolio (very simple and sensible solution in my opinion). For all of you interested my former client is no longer in the top section of the search results for this term after they changed their approach to the online marketing and priorities.

Coming back to  the point I know how hard is to fight for the top spots in this area and I know what money are generated for the next year bookings from all of these people who missed on the event this year. I wonder how such exposure will work for PPT in the long term (try to imagine re-marketing audience alone). Their “Made for SEO” microsite that is created to increase PPT’s main website search footprint.

It was earlier this year I came across a Google’s Search Quality team post about Doorway Pages (Sites) post. Pretty much this website from PPT does not represent unique content and you are diverted to the main website with this same content to close the deal and book tours or read again this same text 😉 – so…

After viewing “La Tomatina” SERP to which Google Doodle sends today millions of users I wonder:

1) When your “Made for SEO” microsite is legitimised? The moment it has over 5K likes on Facebook? The moment Google Doodle leads you to this page?

2) Should Google team send traffic from Doodle to such a business critical search results or should links from Doodle be limited to some non business critical (unless charity) to assure things like today’s “accidental” exposure do not happen? How about sending people to publishing based SERP “70th Anniversary of La Tomatina” instead of “La Tomatina”?

I don’t know, but this would be my choice of link for Google to consider for their La Tomatina Doodle

Please note I strongly believe product pages, microsites that allow us to pitch different elements to different audiences are a great way to segment our online marketing efforts. Whatever is the “dream” search output Google expects the duplication of content is unavoidable but what I am asking here is related to power of links like Google Doodle. With high profile links and traffic – is Google in right to promote SERPs that are questionable?

Email Marketing Mishap (Chelsea FC)

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As an avid Chelsea fan, I didn’t have a very good Sunday as the team I support lost out to rivals Manchester City in a crushing 3-0 defeat. However, I had only a short time to recollect my thoughts after the game, when to my surprise I was sent a marketing email.

This wasn’t just any ordinary marketing email it was an e-newsletter from Chelsea. Originally I thought this might have been a commiserations email or something to do with the match as I had received this a few minutes after the final whistle.

But it was an email to buy training equipment from Chelsea, with an offer of free delivery on orders over £60! As it was sent so soon after the defeat this made me seriously question the timing (as surely they wouldn’t knowingly send out the email after a crushing defeat).

Although I have considered the following cases which may be how this e-marketing mishap occurred. The first is that they may have scheduled the email completely sure of a victory, so fans may purchase, after a victory over their rivals. With the only other alternative being that they sent the email without even considering the match timing.

In the first case the newsletter creator could perhaps be perceived as naive, in the second case it would be an unfortunate blunder where the timing, of all things, should be highly important. Both cases are more likely to annoy fans, rather than encourage them to buy.

From my knowledge of working in the e-marketing field, to stop this type of mishap happening in the future, I would set-up two email campaign’s, one for each possible result. With someone monitoring how the match result went (in the case of a draw, the most relevant newsletter could be sent) and then sending the relevant campaign, this may mean fans get the newsletter slightly later after the match, but it would be better than the campaign sent out Sunday immediately after a defeat.

Another way to have this completely avoided is to send the newsletter before the game. As this would make the newsletter relevant at the time of sending. Through either of the methods I have mentioned, the newsletter will most likely gain more and have a more positive impact on the fans.

To summarise, the situation for these emails being sent out immediately after the match needs careful review by the Chelsea marketing team, as their e-newsletters are wholly dependant on how the football team are doing and therefore the newsletter sending schedule must be entirely focused around this (especially for the UK Subscriber Base).