The Url is dead...

The URL is dead...LONG LIVE SEARCH!
Posted Thursday, May 22, 2008 by Chris Baggott
In a great post today from ReadWriteWeb called "The URL Is Dead...Long Live Search." My favorite quote:


".....it would seem that long, unwieldy URLs will become even more cumbersome on devices with limited screen size. That makes search even more important, and driving consumers to your product via search seems like a safe bet."

Basically it talks about a big brand (SpecialK) that ran a TV commercial and asked the viewers to search rather than remember a URL. It's a great point, but I still think misguided execution.

The strategy was a big high production TV commercial that I'm sure drove a huge spike in sight visits to download a diet plan. I don't know the exact number of visitors, or how many people actually downloaded the plan.

What I do know, is there are Thousand of keywords associated with diet and weight loss and millions of searches....and those searches happen every day. It's frustrating to me that an old media 'campaign' like this gets so lauded when if SpecialK or any big brand would simply invest a fraction of the resources that goes into one commercial into a corporate blogging strategy designed for SEO they would be able to accomplish a couple of significant goals:


A blog program designed for Search Optimization will throw a very wide net out and attract lots of qualified traffic over a wide range of keywords. Enterprise blogging is one of the best ways to drive SEO.
Real Engagement. The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2008 tells us that the most trusted sources for information are "people like me". What corporate blogging does is allow organizations to create a lot of content written by real human beings....when a searcher finds you, they find 'someone like them' and the result is significantly higher conversion.
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