Then there was the site that was a guide to hotels. While they had lots
of great information on the showcased hotels, it took way too many
clicks to find it all. For instance, if you clicked the "Bed and
Breakfast" link on a top-level page, rather than taking you to a list of
the B&B's it took you to a page describing what bed and breakfasts were
all about. And even when you clicked a particular city link within the
B&B section, you still were not taken to a page that provided the lists
of B&B's in that city. Instead, you got a whole lot of information on
how the site reviewed and rated the B&B's that they were eventually
going to show you.
If you didn't leave in frustration at that point, you could then click
through and find the listings and the reviews, which were great. But
many users probably didn't make it that far and Google eventually
stopped ranking the site as highly for important keywords such as "[bed
and breakfast] in [city, state]".
Another variation on the merry-go-round site was one sponsored by a huge
tech company, but on a separate domain. It had a forum, articles, videos
and other interesting things on the surface. But upon closer inspection,
much of the content already existed on the sponsor's main website. And
when you really started clicking around the site you found lots of links
that never quite took you to the topic you thought it would. Instead,
you were led to a page with one sentence of information and a link to
the sponsor's site for the rest.
In this case, it was difficult for the company to create great content
for the site because there wasn't really any reason for the site to
exist (other than to try to gain more results in the search engines).
The main company already dominated the first page of Google for the
targeted keyword phrases, but I guess they wanted even more.
of great information on the showcased hotels, it took way too many
clicks to find it all. For instance, if you clicked the "Bed and
Breakfast" link on a top-level page, rather than taking you to a list of
the B&B's it took you to a page describing what bed and breakfasts were
all about. And even when you clicked a particular city link within the
B&B section, you still were not taken to a page that provided the lists
of B&B's in that city. Instead, you got a whole lot of information on
how the site reviewed and rated the B&B's that they were eventually
going to show you.
If you didn't leave in frustration at that point, you could then click
through and find the listings and the reviews, which were great. But
many users probably didn't make it that far and Google eventually
stopped ranking the site as highly for important keywords such as "[bed
and breakfast] in [city, state]".
Another variation on the merry-go-round site was one sponsored by a huge
tech company, but on a separate domain. It had a forum, articles, videos
and other interesting things on the surface. But upon closer inspection,
much of the content already existed on the sponsor's main website. And
when you really started clicking around the site you found lots of links
that never quite took you to the topic you thought it would. Instead,
you were led to a page with one sentence of information and a link to
the sponsor's site for the rest.
In this case, it was difficult for the company to create great content
for the site because there wasn't really any reason for the site to
exist (other than to try to gain more results in the search engines).
The main company already dominated the first page of Google for the
targeted keyword phrases, but I guess they wanted even more.
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