When fire broke out in the Channel Tunnel in mid-September, there was no shortage of related news articles for those searching via Google. If, however, you were looking for travel updates or a response from the tunnel's parent company Eurotunnel, it was a very different story, with little or no relevant references appearing in the search results.
Such a situation could cause more harm than good. When a news story breaks, people inevitably go online to find out more about the brand, but what they usually get is a generic link to the company's website or coverage from other sources, rather than a more useful link that relates to the incident in question and that provides additional information and pictures.
The effect of negative news stories online can be immensely damaging, because people are more likely to link to these via blogs or forward them on to their friends. It's then only a matter of time before negative coverage hits the top of the search rankings. Nilhan Jayasinghe, vice-president and head of natural search at iCrossing, cites the following example. "I was in a meeting with BAA the day two planes collided at Heathrow, and I showed the company the BBC version of the story appearing in the search results," he says. "The story had been blown way out of proportion, but BAA hadn't put out its own version. When you clicked through to the site, there was no mention - any passengers planning to fly in or out of Heathrow that day would have unnecessarily panicked or even cancelled their journey."
The potential power of negative news stories is so great that it has given rise to a form of reputation management combining PR and natural search. According to Paul Mead, managing director of VCCP Search, when a brand is in the news or engaged in a major PR or above-the-line advertising campaign, there is a significant spike in the volume of traffic searching for brand-related terms.
Be prepared
The challenge in using natural search to respond to this type of news, however, is that it is difficult to push messages through the medium. The key lies in the ability of brands to publicise news themselves or prepare a response to a sudden crisis in good time in order to pre-empt any negative publicity.
"Timing is everything. If the company has advanced knowledge of an issue over a period of several weeks, for example, they can start building bespoke pages and optimise them for relevant terms that they would anticipate being searched on," says Richard Gregory, chief operations officer at Latitude Group.
Essentially, it's crucial for brands not to wait for a crisis to break. Natural search results take longer to achieve - typically three to six months, so using it on the back foot is rarely effective. Brands need to think about their SEO (search engine optimisation) programme in advance of any issue happening.
"Getting SEO right and being prepared to react in a crisis requires everyone involved in producing content for the business to work effectively together," says Mead. "Websites with lots of rich, relevant and regularly updated content across a variety of formats, including video, news feeds, images and blogs, will have the best chance of achieving the kind of search profile which creates an effective communications platform."
Mead says that brands such as Northern Rock and British Airways are two examples of companies that failed to see the importance of search from a communications point of view (see box, above). Northern Rock will be associated for some time yet with the image of queues of people outside its branches looking to withdraw their savings, while BA has suffered negative publicity on the back of cabin crew strikes last year and the more recent launch of the much-hyped Heathrow Terminal 5.
"These brands could have set up a sub-domain of their site with relevant content to achieve a high ranking around the issue," adds Mead. "This is what Nestle did to combat the negative issues and campaigns relating to Nestle Baby Milk." It took BA months to put together an integrated 'Terminal 5 is working' campaign, but the airline could have used search to respond to consumer backlash in a variety of ways.
When negative news breaks, considering the consumer is also key. Consumers today are not just customers, they are also bloggers and researchers.
"Content seeded naturally into search engines can help bury negative items on to the second page of results and beyond," says Tim Gibbon, director of PR consultancy Elemental Communications. "Many, although not all, users rarely go beyond the first page of results, so by acting quickly and coming out with a positive news story, you may be able to counteract negative results appearing."
Advantage of impartiality
News articles serve as a third-party endorsement of a brand and are naturally ranked higher in search engines than press releases, which are regarded as second-tier because they are not considered to be impartial. Embedded elements such as images can also add legitimacy to the weight of a brand's content online.
"If you looked at how this content ranks in search engines, you will find that items that appear with images will almost always be ranked higher," says Gibbon.
Celia Pronto, director of marketing at STA Travel, says brands should use tools such as JavaScript to ensure a message in response to any negative information appears on their home page, since this is where most searches for the brand will arrive.
"Brands need to actively engage in any information they send out to customers, to demonstrate their commitment towards them," she says.
According to Andreas Pouros, managing director of SEO at Greenlight, brands should optimise for generic, brand-related search terms, expected new queries and unexpected ones, such as searches generated as a result of a sudden crisis.
"Identify search-term usage and add relevant content to existing sites," he says. "If you keep your blog ticking over, for example, it is likely to be your best chance of responding on time as traditional natural search may be too slow to respond to an immediate crisis."
While SEO can't prevent a crisis from happening, it can help to lessen its impact. But for brands that have little time to prepare, using both SEO and PPC (pay-per-click) may help to build a more effective response. Jon Myers, head of search at MediaVest, says that combining the two with a tailored message means a brand is more likely to maintain the quality and recognition of its values, as well as being able to communicate directly with its audience.
"If you're not already hitting the top of search pages on regular keyword searches, something must be done," Myers says. "In these situations, restoring consumer confidence is key, and paid search supported by maximum SEO activity could be the answer."
According to iCrossing, paid search was a tactic IT manufacturer Dell used successfully in response to publicity around its exploding laptops, before all its natural search content took effect.
Quick off the mark
Justin Moodie, head of online at HMV, says that if a negative, off-diary news story is published, it's vital for brands to release their own news stories to the wires in response.
"These are indexed more frequently than web pages and would have a better chance of appearing against a search term," he says. "Aggressive PPC activity alongside SEO would ensure the brand's response is shown wherever the keywords are used. Brands can buy the exact keywords that are relevant, control the copy in the listings and direct people to the exact information they want seen."
Moodie adds that brands need to use existing best practice for natural search when using the medium to counter a crisis situation, paying attention to use of keywords, meta descriptions, titles, coding and content. "This will help to give the best chance of a high ranking on the search engine results pages. SEO, however, is a slow-acting tool and better suited to long-term responses to crisis situations - unless you've been extraordinarily clever in your planning."
In times of trouble, there is clear evidence that people will go online to determine the accuracy of reports and look for the latest information. Natural search needs to be considered as an integral part of a crisis management strategy - in such situations, the website needs to be viewed as a communications tool rather than a sales tool. With the propensity for brands to suffer lasting damage online, using SEO in this way is an issue that few can ignore.
CASE STUDY - How British Airways could have handled the T5 crisis differently
British Airways (BA) has had its fair share of negative press, with threats of a cabin-crew strike in 2007 and the flawed opening of Terminal 5 earlier this year dubbed a 'PR disaster' by the national press. How could search have helped to lessen the impact of such negative news, and what can the brand do in the event of future problems?
According to VCCP Search's Paul Mead, BA did learn from the cabin-crew strike issue and used paid search during the Terminal 5 crisis to ensure consumers could access the latest updates on the situation and information on how their flights were affected by the chaos. However, he believes it was a case of too little too late, and ultimately, he says, "the online response to the crisis reflected the offline one in that it was shambolic".
Mead adds that negative press was always going to occur, and no amount of SEO could have prevented this. When a major issue or crisis happens, he says, the most important thing in terms of salvaging brand equity is to be transparent, hold up your hands if you are to blame and ensure that you communicate clearly and effectively with consumers, giving them access to the information they need when they need it.
So what can BA do in the event of any future crises involving Terminal 5? In Mead's opinion, in terms of SEO, BA could set up a Terminal 5 blog to keep passengers and the media up to date with progress. This could establish good SEO rankings well before any crisis occurs and would give the airline a platform from which to communicate quickly and in a more personal way with disgruntled passengers.
The website analytics and paid search campaign data could be analysed to understand how consumers are reacting and searching around a particular issue. This would help to identify the different types of information consumers require, informing the public relations team as to the exact type of content required and how this could best be matched to the way consumers are searching, in order to ensure good rankings.
A crisis-led paid search campaign could also be launched using this data and structured around those themes, pointing customers directly to relevant information on the ba.com site. Content such as a corporate blog could be employed to help BA establish a platform to connect more effectively with passengers during normal activities, which would come into its own during times of trouble.
SMART THINK!NG - The good ... and the bad
Companies that ensured their responses came top of the search rankings in times of crisis ...
Mattel - The toy manufacturer had an entry at the top of the search engine results page dealing with product recalls, following fears that the paint in its toys contained too much lead
Primark - The clothing retailer reacted swiftly to a BBC Panorama report on poor conditions at its factories in India, with an online response giving its ethical codes
Taco Bell - Customers at several of the fast-food giant's outlets were stricken by an E. coli outbreak in December 2006. The brand initiated a paid search campaign and created websites with video messages relaying information responding to the outbreak
- and those that did little to get their message across
Cadbury - When news broke of the salmonella scare, there was no communication from the company on the first page of the search engine results
National Express - Only negative news coverage was visible online following a crash in which a coach overturned in January 2007
British Airways - The airline was forced to cancel flights in the wake of a strike by cabin crew in 2007, a story that dominated the search rankings
JetBlue Airways - The US airline grounded flights during a storm earlier this year, leaving customers stranded on the tarmac. While the airline issued same-day press releases and an apology, disgruntled passengers had already aired their views on sites such as MySpace. The airline's press releases were online but couldn't compete with passenger-generated horror stories related to the situation.
SMART THINK!NG - How marketers can use SEO to their advantage
- Understand search behaviour - assessing what people are searching for, and where, will enable brands to reach the biggest potential customer base.
- Cultivate online brand advocates, then identify them and include them in both press and communication schedules. They will prove to be invaluable if bad news does strike.
- Use SEO to increase the efficiency of other media touchpoints - 80 per cent of internet journeys start with a search, so understand in particular the interplay between above-the-line media and search.
- Use SEO to make your pay-per-click programme work hard - take a holistic view of search activity across the board.
- Prior to information being released, make sure that you have optimised the relevant pages on your site - those you will be directing customers to. You need to dominate the results for the relevant keyword searches and control the agenda and information flow to your customers.
- Make sure your paid search and SEO work together. One is not a substitute for the other.
- If you're building a website or planning to have a quick-response PR strategy in place, SEO should be part of the thinking from day one. Day two is too late.