One of our new staff members pointed me to Seer Interactive’s site– and I liked what I found. Here is a company focused on getting real results from the web for their clients- much like us.

They dissect Nike.com as an example of how to be too slick for search- I’ve only quoted the first 2 mistakes- but, the whole article is worthy of a read.

If you are wondering how well you do on search- look at your keyword search stats- and see how diverse it is- if everything has your brand name in it- and none of your competition you should be instantly worried!

Overall, big brands typically screw up search in two big ways, and Nike is no different:1. Missing out on long-tail terms: If you are not familiar with the term “Long Tail” as it relates to search, you can get the basic idea from a blog post by the search Granddaddy himself, Danny Sullivan.

Typically, big brands want to target the big unbranded terms like “tennis rackets,” “golf clubs,” or “running shoes.” I do recommend that they target such terms as a way to position their brand in the minds of people who are searching, but they often miss terms like “golf club reviews” or “women’s trail running shoes.” Typically, these long-tail terms are the ones that convert best.

Even worse, in Nike’s case, it doesn’t show up in the top 10 for the term “Nike trail shoes.” That is a term that includes its brand name. This happens a lot with Nike branded search terms. If I were Nike, I would start on the branded terms because they are the easiest to rank well for given its existing Web assets. They are most definitely the low-hanging fruit, just waiting to be plucked. People searching for products using the word Nike in their search are already familiar with the brand and are probably calling out for you to show up—but there’s Nike, hiding from them on page 80!

2. All-Flash sites with no alternative version: Does it make sense to spend significant amounts of money on heavily Flashed branded sites—but not on driving people who know the brand to the branded site using organic (natural) search engine optimization… AKA free clicks?

So maybe you are saying… “Hey Wil, maybe Nike doesn’t want to use search at all in their marketing.” I thought about that. When I did a search on Google for “Air Max,” I got this page:

Nike is paying to be in a top position on PPC, which means that search matters as a way of gaining exposure, brand awareness, and possibly, just maybe, sales. But when I clicked on the PPC link for “Air Max,” I was taken to the Nike store homepage.

see the whole article here: Eight ways Big Brands Screw up Search – A case study: Nike.com

We’ve been railing on Crispin Porter Bogusky build websites for the very same reason- and a quick search on vdub rocks in Google has The Next Wave above them – except for the paid placement above.

There is no reason to pay Google for search results- if you take our Websitetology seminar.