SEO case study: Nike Golf

In this space I will provide the top 10 best searchengine optimization companies of March 2015 as well as a case study.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, marketers use search engine optimization and search engine marketing to secure a high rank of their websites on search engine results. The top companies are Webpage FX, Digital Current, Boostability, ThinkBIGsites.com, Customer Magnetism, Lead to Conversion, drumBeat Marketing, Netmark, SEOValley, and Ignite Visibility. These companies truly understand what it takes to efficiently use SEO and SEM. They work with companies of any size to help them obtain the best results in their campaign. These companies eat, breathe, and sleep SEO and that is why they have been named the top best at online marketing.

            Now, for the case study, I will be discussing Nike Golf, which is a business in apparel & sports equipment. For their SEO campaign, their goal was to “increase visibility of the Nike Golf site in search to position the brand to attract site visitors during the golf season.” Therefore their strategy focused on making the site search engine accessible and surface research-informed content. Before we continue, it is important to note that Nike Golf is one of Nike’s many retail branches. They are most known for sponsoring Tiger Woods in all of his golf apparel and equipment. For this campaign, Nike Golf partnered with SwellPath to accomplish their goal of maximizing their website visits through search engine optimization. During the campaign, Nike Golf had many difficulties and one of them being the choosing of a good keyword for their search results. As I had mentioned in my previous blog, finding the correct keywords is crucial to the success of search engine optimization. The website also made it difficult for crawlers to retrieve content.  The information that was visible to users was not visible to search engines. Once research of keywords was finished, Nike Golf found that the best keyword was “golf apparel,” which is what most visitors that landed on Nike Golf’s website used. With this information, coding quickly began and a rewriting of content so that it could contain the words golf apparel. The decision of when to launch the new and improved website was determined by golf season of the year 2012. Within a week, Nike Golf began to notice an increase in rank and visitors to their site. Search engines were now able to see the coding and obtain that information necessary to show Nike Golf’s website when people searched golf apparel.

            I think that this case study is a great example of how important search engine optimization is. Following specific steps and being patient while learning the keywords that most people use to search Nike Golf was the most important part of the campaign. Once the research is done, then the rewriting of content is easy to do because all you have to do is add the keyword as many times as you can into your coding and content so that search engines can find them. This campaign was successful because not only did they find out what keywords were important but they also worked with their website so that it was search engine friendly. Even though keywords are important, it is not enough to add them to the content because if search engines cannot find them then they do no good. It is also vital that the structure of the website allow crawlers to find the information.

SEO & SEM to the rescue!

Imagine. You are looking for a company for which you know the name but do not know their website. On the search engine’s box you type the company’s name and in return get over 100 results but none match your search. You then try again with different wording that relate to the company and still nothing comes up. You begin to get frustrated with the search and decide not to continue. You may even choose the first result and go with that. This scenario is an organization’s and businesses, or any brand marketing itself, worst nightmare. Luckily we have search engine optimization and search engine marketing to try and limit the times this happens. Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the amount of people viewing a website by making sure that the site appears as high as it can on a search engine’s results. This is possible through the use of keywords, which is the reason why some people call it organic. These keywords are embedded in the content that the company’s writers use on their websites. Thus, the search engines look for and gather this information and in return provide their results for given keywords. Therefore, if a company wants to be high on the search engine’s results, they must be careful in understanding what their target audience type when searching their company or services.  It is best to use analytics and find the top 3 words individuals use to find your company and use those as keywords for your website.

            As mentioned above, there is also search engine marketing which is paid search or Adwords. This usually takes the form in pay-per-click or banner ads, which is the advertising side of things. However, this also takes the form of search engine optimization. SEM has methods and metrics used to optimize the websites and they are keyword research and analysis, website saturation and popularity, back end tools, and whois tools. The difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO is organic or earned whereas SEM is paid for. This can be a bit confusing to those who are new to the marketing industry. But as digital becomes a more meaningful channel for companies, practices like search engine optimization and search engine marketing are a must-do for all competitors. A great way to start, if the person in charge of the website does not know anything about search engine optimization, is by understanding all of the components that go into search engine optimization.  Google has provided a great Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide available to anyone who may need it. It includes SEO basics, improving site structure, optimizing content, dealing with crawlers, SEO for mobile phones, and promotions and analysis. Here is a quick way to understand pay-per-click . 

            Both SEO and SEM work together to get the best rank a company can have on search engine results. The most important part of all is knowing what the audience is typing into these search engines when looking for the organization, business, or service and using those keywords in the websites content or in ads.