“A Disco Selling Hydraulic Hoses”

We acquired a client who is in the hydraulic hose business to redesign its outdated website and do SEO subsequently. We discussed the brief with the boss man and delivered a concept that we thought was in line with our philosophy of keeping things simple, clean and elegant. The color scheme of that particular concept was neutral and definitely not in conflict with the many hydraulic hose photos that were mostly shot against a black background. We were then put to a young chap who had just joined the client’s company. An eager beaver sort of chap, he quite naturally wants to impress his boss. He turned our concept (plus subsequent concepts) on its head. We surrendered to his creative directions and now the website looks like a disco selling hydraulic hoses. For respect and confidentiality reasons, we can’t show you this website but this ugly thing is out there.

“I gotcha!”

Some months back, a large Berhad company, manufacturing electronics and transformers, invited us to present our SEO services. I suppose we were one of a few summoned. Because we are always erroneously thought of as an IT company, which we are not, the honchos deem it necessary to get their IT folks involved. We have no way of knowing whether they had talked to other SEO outfits before us, but their line of questioning smacks of superficial SEO knowledge gleaned from a little bit here and there. Almost immediately, they zoomed in on the subject of keywords, my favourite.

This bright IT personnel pressed us to do single keywords like “transformer” and “reactor”. The more we explained to him that single word keywords, while voluminously and commonly searched for, is not necessary a good thing especially for you the client. For example, if you are looking for a particular type of restaurant, you wouldn’t just type restaurant. You would end up having to screen the mis-meshed search results. Wouldn’t it make more sense to type in the type of restaurant you are looking for and get the specific info you are searching for?

But the more we reasoned, the more this bright IT personnel seemed to revel in his “I gotcha” moment. And he had an admiring audience made up of his bosses. I powered up my laptop, went to Google and search for “transformer”. We have Wikipedia educating us about what are transformers and lots of Transformer movie reviews, blogs etc. “Step up transformers”, “power transformers”, “auto transformer manufacturer” etc would have yielded much less comical results and helped the client a lot more in the process.

Then it’s on to another single keyword, “reactor”. Off course, now we all know what exactly happened at Fukushima, Japan and about nuclear reactors in general. “Line reactors” which is what this company manufactures would have been a much better keyword!

Alas, despite our best efforts, we did not get the account. But they are still not ranked in “transformer” or “reactor” and whatever else. Who lost more?