(Image courtesy of Adam Billyeald)
Yahoo revealed the other day that Britney Spears is the most searched-for…thing on the internet in Britain. Big Brother, The X Factor, Oasis (bit random) and High School Musical 3 made up the rest of the top five. That is so depressing.
Still, there’s no big surprise here, really. For a start, the Britney Spears saga is one of many developing chapters, and to keep track of what she’s doing – the latest single, the latest haircut, the latest incident of child abuse – you have to check the news nearly every day.
The other reason it’s not a surprise is because she’s very reader-friendly. Apart from the fact she’s a one-name brand (seriously, name another famous Britney), if she’s on your webpage you are going to tell people. “You want a piece of me”? Yes, we do, apparently. Everyone does. She’s a brand. She sells magazines – her next career move, perhaps – so if you want your webpage to be read, you’re going to get her involved somehow.
Shameless.
This is not an open invite to start false tagging, or whatever it’s called, which is done far too much on YouTube and the like. This is when some idiot wants their crap to be seen by everyone (actually, that blog’s quite good) and so tags their video ‘BRITNEY SPEARS HEATH LEDGER GORDON RAMSAY AFFAIR SLUT WHORE CREDIT CRUNCH TERRORISM PORN GLOBAL WARMING DEATH’. Sorry, that’s an Independent headline. My mistake. Clearly you should only mention Britney if she’s relevant and not just at random, but you’d be a fool not to do it.
There’s another, probably more important reason why she’s so searched-for. Britney Spears has many qualities: she’s talented (perhaps), attractive (arguably) and a good mother (uh….), but one thing that’s forgotten is that she’s very SEO-friendly.
Media Guardian seems pretty appalled that the American Presidential election is only sixth on the list of searched-for items and that the global financial crisis isn’t there at all, but think about it – how do you search for these things? ‘Financial crisis’? ‘Credit crunch’? ‘Recession’? ‘Nuke Iceland’? There’s no one umbrella term to help people to find what they want; with Britney Spears, on the other hand, you only have to search for her name and wait for the internet to do its thing.
And that’s why it’s no great surprise that Britney Spears is the most searched-for thing on the internet – because she’s a person. Apparently.
Thursday, 4 December 2008
This Is An SEO-friendly Headline (or How Britney Spears Can Save Your Blog)
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