Crackle.com: Missing the Media Point Online

This morning, I made an amazing discovery: Crackle.com, Sony's online TV network. It's a database of shortened TV shows and films, perfectly served and edited into snack-time feasts.  Truth be told, I found it while searching for Three Stooges clips.

For this sort of content, it's much better than YouTube.  The quality is higher, it's legal and you don't have to wade through terabytes of lousy home videos to find what interests you.  AND, when you strike a vein you like, the videos just role into one another ... perfect for my three-year old son's Spiderman obsession.

Now... what's wrong? That I found the site in a round about way, where ideally it would come up in my search for THREE STOOGES, right?

Part of the reason is that Crackle seems to have missed a MUST HAVE online marketing technique for their sort of business: the emerging communications practice of offsite search optimization. It's also know as SEO PR, Ambient Content, and other home-made names.  In short, it's using RSS press releases and content to capture attention at the critical moment of search, while also boosting search rankings by securing incoming links from authoritative sites.

The crux of the technique is issuing frequent RSS press releases containing good content and optimized for search engine rankings. By often, I'm talking at least weekly, and likely every few days. And before you get all "don't bug the media" on me, understand that THESE ARE PRESS RELEASES IN NAME ONLY. It's about the content and the links, baby.  That's all.  For this, we don't care if the media ever even sees them.  We get to them in other ways (hear evil laugh track here).

It starts with choosing keywords: things people are searching for related to your business or site.  You can get ideas on Google Adwords.  There they will tell you how many searches are conducted for each term, and alternate terms to consider.  

Then, as I said, crank out the content so the next time I search for THREE STOOGES or SI SWIMSUIT or even JOHNNY CASH, Crackle comes up as one of the top links on Google and Yahoo! (collectively, these two capture about 75% of all searches on the Internet.)

Of course, there's lots of things to know about optimizing the site itself with "link-based pages" and techniques to meta-tag information (the text used to identify your site to the search engine, and to describe the content in search rankings).  But that can wait today.  For now, suffice to say that anyone like Crackle who wants site traffic but is not using SEO PR is in my humble opinion ... cracked.  (Sorry, I can't help myself.)

Comments

[M.J.]

When you say issue RSS press releases frequently, where and how do you "issue" them? If there is a cost associated in issuing the release and if so is it better to invest in Google Ad Words?

[Leonard Cercone]

MJ: I don't know if you got my email, but the quick answer is PRWeb.com is the best place to issue the releases. The system is easy to use, and they have lots of help available.

And yes, the cost ranges from $80-$360 for each release, so it can get pricey if you do a lot of them. But the Ad Words vs. Release question really isn't about cost. A good SEO program will use both.

The difference is the age-old editorial vs. advertising question. With ads, I can better target my audience and control my message, but because it's paid placement, it has relatively low credibility.

Editorial, which is what the RSS releases get, is viewed as a 3rd party endorsement, and very credible. BUT... I don't know where and how my content will be posted.

However, when that content is picked up, the incoming links it produces are some of the most powerful factors in raising your profile on search engines over time.

So if you need immediate results, use Adwords. To build equity over time, use RSS content.

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