11 SEO Lessons You Can Learn From Heidi Montag (Part 3 of 3)
Here it is, the exciting conclusion of our three part series, 11 SEO Lessons You Can Learn From Heidi Montag, written by the cosmetic surgery snarkmaster himself, Andrew Martin of The Cosmetic Surgery Directory Blog. The White Hat, Black Belt ninja squad hopes you’ve learned something. Like, “Be like Heidi!” Or.. “Don’t be like Heidi!” Or something…
Lesson 8: Building your Brand
Engage, engage, engage. Heidi “whores” herself out to all possible media outlets at all times to stay visible in the public consciousness. You know what? It worked. We can’t escape her. This may be one of the most effective ways she has maintained her tenuous hold on celebrity status.
SEO lesson: Take advantage of all possible outlets to engage the public. This is where social media can greatly benefit your online marketing campaign. You should be using social media in all ways possible and as often as possible to stay in the public eye. Plus, social media can be a valuable tool to build links to your site, which will ultimately help improve its search engine rankings.
Lesson 9: Famously Ever After
As Heidi proves, becoming famous is much harder than staying famous. It takes a lot of work to break through and achieve that initial fame, but once you are there, it can be self-perpetuating. However, do not be fooled into thinking that maintaining your fame is easy. If that were the case, every one hit wonder to achieve their 15 minutes would still be in the public eye. If you want to stay famous, it will take a lot of work, and of course, you will need some talent and substance.
SEO lesson: Gaining a high page rank is harder than keeping it. But to keep it, you will still need to put in a lot of work. You will need frequent updates and a quality site, otherwise someone else may come along and snatch your high page rank right out from under you.
Lesson 10: In Case of Emergency
A more appropriate title for this lesson may be “How to Spin Negative Press.” The answer – talk about it in other press outlets. Negative press can only hurt you if you are not savvy enough to use it to your advantage. Some may consider Heidi’s mother’s rejection of her massive plastic surgery as negative press. However, a savvy media manipulator like Heidi can use this negative press to become more human and sympathetic in the public eye.
SEO lesson: Reputation management – push down bad reviews with multiple good ones. To be more forceful, BURY the bad review under a heap of positive ones so that consumers never find it.
There is a caveat here. Anyone can have a bad day, resulting in a dissatisfied customer. If you truly provide a good product and service, it will be obvious to the bulk of your customers, and they will be happy to provide you with favorable reviews. In this case, it will probably be easy to bury that one bad review. However, if your product or service is not high quality and you are garnering bad reviews with regularity, you will have a much harder time covering them up. The only solution here is to STOP SUCKING SO PEOPLE DON’T HATE ON YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE.
Lesson 11: Epilogue
A few more lessons worth mentioning:
How to be a Bimbo
KISS it! For those of you not in the know, that stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. In terms of Heidi Montag, this needs no explanation. There is nothing complex about her. If there were, she wouldn’t be a bimbo.
SEO lesson: Cater your content to the average audience by avoiding technical jargon. Also, your design and code should be simple and clean. It is easier to spider, easier to navigate, and easier to consume for both the general public and the search engines.
Followers Do Not Equal Fans
Shocking as it may sound, Heidi has over one million followers on Twitter. But that does not mean she has one million fans anxiously waiting to consume every piece of crap she tries to thrust on us. Heidi recently released a pop music album. Based on her rather large Twitter following, she was somewhat overconfident regarding the commercial viability of her album. She was counting on this album to sell lots and lots of copies. How many of her one million Twitter faithful ran out to buy this album? A mere 650. Ouch.
SEO lesson: High rankings and large numbers of page hits do not necessarily translate into conversions. In order to gain these valuable conversions – which is the ultimate goal of your internet marketing campaign – you still need to provide a quality product and market it well. Target your marketing to consumers, not voyeurs, if you want to convert your leads.
Hard to believe Heidi Montag can teach us so much about SEO, isn’t it? Fortunately, if you’ve read this blog post, there is now no reason to buy the book. Hopefully, book sales in the same league as her record sales may help marginalize her along the fringe of public consciousness sooner than later. In the meantime, take her SEO lessons to heart. You may be surprised at how much they will help your results.
Did you miss parts one and two? Why then here you go!
Part 1
Part 2
