Re: Online marketing for a celebrity (Online Advertising Discussion List Archives)

From: Michael Martinez <Michael_at_xenite.org>
Date: Tue 03 Oct 2000 15:36:05 -0500

IAN LEICHT <onlineadvertising_at_thecampus.com> WROTE:
> The company I work for is building an online company
> for a high profile celebrity. I think it is fairly safe
> to assume that her name is a common search term.

Assuming for the sake of discussion the celebrity's
name is "Jane Doe", you WANT to get control of
"janedoe.com". You'll need to find out what ICANN
requires in the way of taking control over the name. I
have heard, but have not researched this, that ICANN
responds most readily where a registered trademark is
involved. But if your client is clearly a celebrity
whose name comes up often in the search terms, then I
believe recent ICANN decisions lend a degree of
favorability to your case. And you can easily verify
this with the free service offered at
http://www.wordtracker.com/ as long as the celebrity is
not involved in pornography -- you'll have to pay for
adult-oriented search terms, I think.

Why is important to control "janedoe.com"? Because,
believe it or not, that domain name carries a lot of
weight with certain search services (though not all).
But, more importantly, it's going to be the one that
most people try on the fly. Many people try to see if
celebrities have their own domains simply by typing in
celebrityname.com or some variation thereof. It is,
therefore, important to get rid of cybersquatters, and
you may not have to pay the cybersquatters.

Another factor that's important is establishing a "Web
reputation". That is, you don't want the celebrity's
name associated with the wrong kind of content. It's
just as important for an adult star to ensure his or
her name is not associated with, say, children's
content, as for other celebrities to ensure their
names are not associated with adult-oriented content.
People will filter out some sites because of that.
It's well-known that you don't go looking for
information on the president of the United States at
whitehouse.com (or, at least, the last time I found
myself directed to that Web site, it had nothing to do
with the president).

Now, in terms of basic search ENGINE placement, it's
generally agreed by many industry observers that you
want your most important search words to be in the
domain name. In your client's case, that means
"janedoe.com" if it can be had, or some very close but
unique variation of it. You don't want a long name if
that can be avoided, however.

Basic Web page design is the next thing to consider.

The <title> tag should have an informative title which
uses the desired keywords: "Jane Doe's Official Web
site" or "The Official Jane Doe Web site". And it's
important to use the word "official". For one thing,
once all the fan sites find out about the Web site,
they'll link to it. And THAT is important, but I'll
get to that shortly.

You also want to use "Jane Doe" and "Jane Doe's
Official Web site" in the "description" and "keywords"
meta tags if you're going to use meta tags. Some
people have noticed that AltaVista sometimes ranks
pages highly even if they don't have meta tags. I
would put something like, "Welcome to Jane Doe's
official Web site. Fans of Jane Doe will find her
biography, filmography, etc...." in the "description"
meta tag. I would put something like "jane doe's
official web site,official jane doe web site,jane doe
homepage" in the "keywords" meta tag. Don't repeat any
word more than three times and try to use phrases
which can be broken down into smaller phrases (this is
called "power keyword design" by some people).

Next, you want to use HEADER tags in the main text.
Web designers have gotten away from that, but it's
important to have large text near the top of the page
which uses the most important keywords. I would go
with something like <h1>Jane Doe</h1>. Some people
have found that using <FONT> tags works if the size is
greater than 4 or 5.

It also helps, if you put banners on the page, to
repeat the title tag's content in <small> text right
after the <body> tag, centered above the banner.

Try to create a multi-page Web site with easy-to-find
navigational links either at the top and bottom or in
the margin. If you use tables, use several instead of
one massive table for the page. Be sure the
celebrity's name appears in a copyright notice near
the bottom of the page, like, "This page is copyright
(c) 2000 Jane Doe. All rights reserved."

Things you should NOT do include:

1) Use an "ENTRY" page. Usually these are pages which
load some sort of graphic or, worse, plugin with music
and/or video. The first page any search engine,
directory, or casual visitor to a Web site should see
should explain cleary what the site is about in
plainly visible text.

2) Use graphics to represent your text. Pretty as they
may look, the search engines won't index them, and
they can't index the text, they can't return the page
in search results.

3) Frames. Technically, frames are okay as long as you
use a "NOFRAMES" tag and fill it with text, header
tags, and outbound links that use the keywords. But
many people make the mistake of setting up a framed
site where the main page doesn't include a NOFRAMES
tag and then they wonder why the search engines won't
index their site. But framed pages CAN be indexed,
and if you don't include a link in them for people to
load the navigational frame, you're in a mess. Some
designers use Javascript to check and see if the frame
was loaded separately, and they force the frames to
load.

4) Hidden text. Never, ever put hidden, invisible text
on a page. Some people do this and get away with it.
Other people get caught.

Things you should include on every page in the site:

1) The celebrity's name, 2-3 times (don't engage in
overkill or you'll be penalized for spamming) in
clearly visible text.

2) Links to other parts of the site so people can enter
through any page and navigate through it.

3) Content that fan Webmasters may use, provided they
indicate who owns the content. This includes pictures
and special graphics for linking to the site. You
WANT other sites to link to the celebrity's page. And
the best way to keep from pursuing overzealous fan
Webmasters is to give them something to work with,
including guidelines for what is and isn't acceptable.
And don't be hard-nosed. You don't want to create
resentment. You want to build up a community of Web
sites which will link to the celebrity's site and
support it.

Technically, it may be easier (and preferable) to
create a separate, special page for fan webmasters.
This page should clearly explain the rules in simple
language.

4) Some sort of contact link. Not for the celebrity.
For the Webmaster. Fans will want to feel like they
can connect to SOMEONE.

Content the Web site should include:

1) Celebrity biography. This should be in
easy-to-read, INDEXABLE text. Don't do it in flash,
graphics, video, audio, or anything other than plain
text. Once you get the plain text in there, THEN you
can add the bells and whistles. Always make sure
every page can be indexed by a search engine.

2) News section. It's tough to keep up with celebrity
news. Even if it's only updated once a month, that's
better than nothing. And it should all be in
INDEXABLE text.

3) A newsletter fans can subscribe to. It's okay if
they don't get anything more than a quarterly, "Hello,
I rode my horse for the last three months!" type
message. But the more information the Web site
provides to fans, the more people will visit it, and
the more sites will link to it.

4) Pictures. You'd better believe these pictures will
be redistributed and copied everywhere. Accept the
reality of the Web and put some controls in place.
Select only pictures the celebrity doesn't mind seeing
on fan site after fan site, and imprint the pictures
with the domain name. Make sure credit is given where
due.

5) Other information as required by the celebrity's
actual profession. This might include a filmography,
an online store (even if it's only referral links to
some online merchant's products), book reviews about
books concerning the celebrity or written by the
celebrity, film information, television information,
upcoming appearances, press releases, occasional
statements from the celebrity, etc., etc.

Is that more than you asked for? No. You wanted to
know what steps can be taken to "assure" the site
comes up first. I'll be honest with you, nothing will
guarantee that the site comes up first. The various
directories MAY ensure it's listed first, but the
search engines are a different story. They try to
list "authoritative" sites first, and what they
consider to be authoritative is influenced by many
factors.

One of the most important factors is the number of
sites which link to you.

Another important factor is the content you provide.
Believe me, if you don't provide it, someone else will
try to. And you have to remember people aren't just
going to type in the celebrity's name, they're going to
add extra stuff to filter out superfluous sites. As
many relevant content pages as you can create will
help you get top rankings.

But expect to go up and down. As long as you can keep
the site in the top ten, you're doing okay.

And be sure to use meangingful ALT= tags for all the
images on the site.

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Received on Tue Oct 03 2000 - 15:36:05 CDT