In Chapter Four your author states that using a third-party website to enhance the organizations search engine ranking may be perceived by some as an easy answer and for some, that is the case. However, as is the case whenever an organization puts itself in the hands of another, there are risks involved.

Find an example of how this helped or hurt a business or organizations website. Make sure and source your findings.

Reading:

In the previous section, directories were used as an example of how an organization with no website can feature highly in SERPs. However, this also applies to organizations with websites with a link to its website being listed on a third-party website that features high on the listings itself. Aimed mainly at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) these organizations have a business model that charges a fee for services that include a listing in some kind of directory. Essential to their business model, in that it is a selling point for their services, is that their directory pages feature highly in searches for any business that is listed in that directory. The most noticeable of these is Yell (Yell.com).

An offshoot of the telephone number publication, Yellow Pages, their website is in essence the online version of their telephone directory. In the same way that the company put their clients details in front of potential customers by delivering a free copy of the Yellow Pages book to every household with a telephone, so Yell put their online clients details in front of potential customers by ensuring that the Yell pages appear high on SERPs for the appropriate search terms. Similarly, if a small hotel pays to be listed on the likes of Hotels.com, it will pretty much ensure the hotel will appear on the first page of SERPs for relative search terms if it doesnt, customers wont use the comparison shopping engine to make a booking at the hotel, and so the site Hotels.com makes no commission. However and there is a certain irony in this perhaps the organization that is most effective at getting SMBs to the top of SERPs is Google. The search giants My Business service is, in effect, a third-party service even if it does have the same owner as the search engine it promotes businesses on. A further category of third parties is the various social media platforms. Messages on Twitter, for example, will frequently appear at the top of SERPs for trending subjects. If such messages are commercial in nature (i.e. refer to a brand rather than a news story) then thought should be given to keywords within the message and if any words or phrases should be afforded hashtag status. Similarly, social media pages from a variety of platforms may appear in the SERP for a search for an organization, brand or product indeed, some marketing on social media has search engine optimization as a key reason for its development. There is, however, a further consideration for search engine optimization on social media pages that of the platforms internal search. As suggested in the introduction to this chapter, the likes of Facebook are used as a search facility rather than a search engine such as Google. This might take place in one of two ways: 1. A straightforward search on the platform for the required service or product for example, restaurants in Berlin. 2. A request to other users. Using Facebook as an example, someone might post an update on their page saying something like: Im in Berlin and Im looking for a restaurant serving traditional local meals. As is the ethos of social media, other users may respond. But also, such is the commercial nature of Facebook, the comment will trigger the platforms recommendations feature, and when a user responds with what Facebook sees as the name of a business, that business Facebook page will automatically be included in the comment. Both of these methods of social media search require that the organizations social media page is properly optimized in the same way as their website should be. Note that I could have included this section in Chapter 9, where marketing on social media is covered, but decided that ensuring that a social media presence is found when users search on relevant terms is better placed here.

textbook: "Digital Marketing a practical approach"