Day Trip Media: Poor SEO Planning From ITV's Bingo Night Live

Wednesday, 4 June 2008

Poor SEO Planning From ITV's Bingo Night Live

It's a good idea if you're going to launch a TV show with a major online element to do a bit of pre-planning and preparation to get your site well ranked ahead of its air date. Unfortunately, the people behind ITV's brand new show Bingo Night Live didn't think ahead and do a bit of ground work to get their programme's web site up in the SERPs. Currently they're down in 9th place, whilst my site ranks second for the term Bingo Night Live and as a result, I've spent the last few months enjoying the traffic.

Now, to take part in the TV show you need to register at the site (and you can print off your bingo tickets too), so as you'd expect, a lot of people are looking for it. Until earlier today there was just a single holding page (on a different URL) with no content on it. As a result, there's been nothing for the many sites reporting on the show to link too, there's been nothing there to make Google want to index the page and rank it well and as a result the site's easy to overlook in the SERPs.

Now, if that had been me, I'd have had content up on the site from the day the press releases went out, and there'd be the option to pre-register as well. I'd find something to go on there be it updates and news on the production, and I would have made damn sure that everyone who was reporting the programme had a reason to link to my site. Then again, having worked in broadcast media, I can understand how these sort of things can be overlooked or undervalued or simply not resourced.

Ok, I'm not saying the traffic I've received as a result would necessarily stay with my site or even spend much time on it without bouncing off. That said, thousands of bingo fans have now seen my brand and maybe will come back again at some point as a result. This kind of association is something all website owners can aim to take advantage off. If there's something big in your niche and you can find a way to cover it well in advance you should do so. Better still, add some value in the form of comment or opinion as well to further elevate the value of your coverage. You never know, you might just get an unintentional jump start on a major brand and benefit thanks to their inability to effectively plan ahead as a result.

Posted by Dio Bach at 20:55

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...: YOU ARE SO RIGHT ILL THIS DAY THERE ARE STILL PROBLEMS WITH IT LOADING AND DABBING YOUR NUMBERS ON TIME AND ALSO THE BELL FOR A WINNER HAS GONE OFF LIKE 1/2 NUMBERS EARLY AND THE NUMBERS HAVENT EVEN BEEN READ, STILL PLAY 4 THE FUN BUT NO I WONT WIN; 26 June 2008 20:46