Posts tagged serm

Groupon Uses Multi-Domain Strategy to Dominate SERPs

The consumer packaged goods industry has been fighting for real estate in store shelves for decades. Now, the battle for search engine results page (SERP) real estate is on. Knowing that many consumers turn to search engines for “unbiased” information on companies that they are ready to make a transaction with, companies are getting savvy and putting an effort towards managing their brand reputation in the SERP on major search engines.

One effective way to accomplish this is by maintaining multiple, branded web properties and social profiles. Groupon, a popular social coupon website is doing this by having distinct web properties with unique domains for different audiences, such as grouponworks.com for prospective clients and liveoffgroupon.com to support a consumer-focused campaign. Currently, they completely control 8 of the top 11 results in Google for their name and indirectly control the content on Wikipedia, which holds the 5th position.

As BP scrambles to patch up the well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, their online PR arm has been working to patch up their reputation, which is obviously taking a nose dive with every day that passes. Since the majority of users online start browsing for information through a search engine, one way a company can take control of what people are seeing is by controlling as much search engine results page (SERP) real estate as possible. BP has done just that by initiating a search engine reputation management effort. BP spokesman Toby Odone was quoted saying  “We have bought search terms on search engines like Google to make it easier for people to find out more about our efforts in the Gulf and make it easier for people to find key links to information on filing claims, reporting oil on the beach and signing up to volunteer” Aside from purchasing sponsored results (PPC) that appear at the top of searches for terms like “oil spill”, BP also controls the primary organic search results because so many news articles about oil spills link to the BP site. 

As BP scrambles to patch up the well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, their online PR arm has been working to patch up their reputation, which is obviously taking a nose dive with every day that passes.

Since the majority of users online start browsing for information through a search engine, one way a company can take control of what people are seeing is by controlling as much search engine results page (SERP) real estate as possible. BP has done just that by initiating a search engine reputation management effort.

BP spokesman Toby Odone was quoted saying 

“We have bought search terms on search engines like Google to make it easier for people to find out more about our efforts in the Gulf and make it easier for people to find key links to information on filing claims, reporting oil on the beach and signing up to volunteer”

Aside from purchasing sponsored results (PPC) that appear at the top of searches for terms like “oil spill”, BP also controls the primary organic search results because so many news articles about oil spills link to the BP site.