Apparently the Queen doesn’t need SEO
Posted on | February 13, 2009 | 6 Comments
Most people, companies, businesses needs some form of SEO, whether the focus is actual keyword rankings or some form of reputation management. Unless you’re the Queen. I was just perusing the new Royal website, created with the able assistance of Tim Berners-Lee (the founder of the interwebs) and noticed that the site had no PageRank (aside from the actual URL which has a very solid 7). It appears that no care was taken to transfer PR for even some of the top tier pages. Why bother when you’re the Queen? It’s true. It probably won’t impact traffic numbers, the brand is a pretty strong one. Still, I would think that greater care would be taken to keep the brand strong.
I just Googled “The Queen” and I’m afraid she’s outranked by imbd. “Queen” and she’s down to #3. Strong with “Royal Family” at #1. “Elizabeth II” and she’s still doing OK. Overall, I don’t think the redirect oversight is going to do her any harm, but if you’re a small business, if you rely on search rankings for your website, you are going to want to include 301 redirects where possible!
Overall, I like the Queen’s new website. Obviously accessibility was a high priority and the information is well organized which would be no easy task as it looks like there’s a lot of it! Couple of nice features like the very stalkerish “Track the Queen”, a veritable Where’s Waldo. Though I think she might want to think about using Google Latitude if she’s really serious. There are also some of the usual players which seem so old hat these days in podcasts, videos and RSS feeds (only 1 actually). I don’t love the design, it seems a little 2001 but that probably appeals to a wider audience anyway. Go check it out at royal.gov.uk
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6 Responses to “Apparently the Queen doesn’t need SEO”
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February 14th, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Never thought of trying this before
I frequently see IMDB and wikipedia outranking official movie websites.
Google latitude is only for friends, she will have to befriend the world
She would be better off with Yahoo’s fireeagle.
February 15th, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
I would have to commend the designer of that site. As you’ve said, it is well organized.
March 16th, 2009 @ 1:44 am
I have to agree with the comment that the site is a bite turn of the century but at least it has a lot of info. God bless the Queen and her website and maybe the designers.
March 27th, 2009 @ 11:57 pm
Haehe. those are very interseting comments
God bless
April 14th, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
I just checked the SERPs in google and ibmd is all over the place on the 1st page for “the Queen”. Poor Queen has been moved away )))
With regard to PR transfer to internal pages – I don’t think PR is any long that important for rankings as it used to be. And althouhg link juice surely still is, it would be rather difficult for the inner pages to rank high without some authoritative external backlinks, almost certainly not on competitive terms.
Anyway, good post, nice humor! )))
Andrew
May 9th, 2009 @ 2:42 pm
A fantastic read….very literate and informative. Many thanks….what theme is this you are using and also, where is your RSS button ?