Sometimes I think about Kim Kardashian and I salivate. Not because I find her particularly attractive or appealing (not really my type), but because I look at all the web properties she is associated with and see a tremendous amount of untapped search engine potential. SEO geeks like myself are essentially organic web traffic opportunists. We can analyze and break down consumer search engine behavior quickly, and find opportunities to make money, sometimes a lot of money, for our clients.
Although her 15 minutes of fame is lasting an excruciatingly long time, eventually it will burn out. Yet, as of today’s writing, Kim Kardashian is still wildly popular and Google searches confirm this. As evidenced in the Google Adword Keyword Planner tool snapshot below, she still generates MILLIONS of Google searches every month.
“Kim Kardashian” and closely related search terms generate millions of Google searches per month:
As an SEO consultant in Kansas City, what I find most interesting about Ms Kardashian’s (or is it Mrs. West’s?) organic search profile, is that many of the core search term rankings related to her own name are related to content on third party sites. As many of my fellow SEO consultant peers will point out, content on high authority news sites and social networks has a much better chance of of outranking content on independent websites (in general). This is especially true when high profile people use social networks and third party sites exclusively to publish their best content. Yet, many celebrities like Kim are Internet powerhouses in their own right – they could easily take more control of their online presence by taking a more disciplined, strategic approach to search engine and content marketing.
If we had Kim as a client, what would we be doing differently?:
1. Site Audit(s): Do a full audit of Kim’s website assets and immediately start developing a new, SEO friendly website(s). In her case, really just applying some of the SEO basics would go a long LONG way,
2. New SEO Strategy: Develop a new SEO strategy that incorporates the website assets she owns, and start leveraging her social networks and future online exposure back to her website(s). Just by having a content hub and luring online coverage back to her sites, she could own more of her traffic and keep more of the organic SEO value that Kim is currently giving away for free or cheap to 3rd party sites.
Why in the heck is the “Official Website of Kim Kardashian” at: http://kimkardashian.celebuzz.com/ ??!!
Sure, they pay her for this – but whatever the fee is – Ms Kardashian is selling herself WAY short on this one.
3. Execute Strategy: Integrate a longer term approach for more lucrative, generic keywords related to fashion and celebrity news. She has a captive audience now and huge potential to generative highly valuable, long term, organic links from and massive levels of social signals. If she had a decent search engine consultant on here team, right now she could be positioning a fashion.
4. Content Marketing: Along the lines of #3 above, use an independent, branded website as a platform to release new content, then use third party platforms to amplify the content (rather than using these networks as the primary distribution channel). In other words, post a pic or new pics on Twitter, then tweet the post back to her site, allowing her to double dip on her huge twitter following as well as driving traffic back to her site – which can be resold today for advertising, and will accumulate search engine value for the natural links point back to her site and posts.
This post is really not so much to call out Kim Kardashian. In truth, there is an ENORMOUS amount of organic search value in Hollywood from celebrities that almost exclusively use the major social networks to distribute their content and communicate to their fan base. By ignoring SEO and relinquishing content control (and in come cases content ownership) to the social networks , many celebrities are leaving a ton of money on the table.
