Here in Metropolis, online advertising is at a premium. You have to make sure it is catchy and if it is not, you have to sign a superhero (or villain) to a contract to endorse your product. It's a cut-throat world and in constant change.
So how does Superman stay at the top?
I'll tell you how … he has a great SEO guy.
Mind you, the hero will not tell me the secret identity of the genius behind his online image, but it is clear that he knows what he is doing.
Owning Keyword Phrases
It's always important to own your keyword phrases especially your company name. If you do not own this, then you are going to lose money faster than Lex Luthor lost his hair.
Superman's SEO guy understands this and has spent hours ensuring that the word "Superman" points straight to the superherp. Open up Google and type "superman". He owns the first three pages. Do not you wish you could get the same for your client?
Try typing some other phrases.
- "Superhero" – The third link should be to Wikipedia. Who is the first hero that they mention? Superman.
- "big blue Boy Scout", "dc" and "daily planet" – He is listed in the description of the first link.
- Even if you put in "Lois Lane", you get info about Superman.
To do this, you need good content, effective META tags and strong H1 tags. (And it helps if you save a school bus or two to get some good buzz.) This just goes to show that writing good content with great keywords can do you wonders.
The Importance of Good Link Campaigns
It also helps that Superman's SEO guy has spent time building legitimate linking campaigns throughout the web, starting with Wikipedia. Inputting a legitimate page on Wikipedia became a goldmine! There are 8,756 pages linked to the Wikipedia page. Fourteen of these links are from inside Wikipedia, creating some excellent inner-linking campaigns. If you branch out and check all fourteen of these links, you'll see that there are thousands and thousands of secondary links built in that ever lead back to Superman.
Are Taglines or Mottos Important on the Web?
You bet they are! If you are known for a certain catch-phrase, then use it to your advantage. That's what Superman does.
The Man of Steel? The Man of Tomorrow? The Last Son of Krypton? All of them lead to Superman.
Faster than a speeding bullet? More powerful than a locomotive? Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Even though all of these phrases contain common words, the SEO guy has spent years flooding the internet with the phrases in content near the word Superman. You can not go to the web and type in those keywords without seeing Superman on the page.
The Love of the People
Because of his notoriety and high visibility, Superman shows up all over the place on forums and community message boards. Do not forget that this can be extremely valuable. Those messages typically stay on the web forever and if you get a link in there, it will build history. Who knows? Maybe it will even gain you new fans.
History, History, History
Speaking of history, did you know that Superman is 70 years old? He's also been on the internet since its inception and continues to build up his reputation with Google. I hope Google still knows who I am in 40 years. Heck, I hope they still know who I am in 10 years! You can not buy that kind of history.
We can all take a lesson from this ingenious, unnamed guy who continues to retain his secret identity (until some villain uncovers it). He has taken basic SEO principles and applied them in a manner that is natural and unassuming. It's almost as if he has super powers.