Dr. Pepper really hasn't been known for its marketing efforts since David Naughton was singing and dancing to the "I'm A Pepper" commercials back in the late 70s. And it's been about 15 years since anyone has given a crap about Guns N' Roses. So when savvy marketers put two stale brands together and drum up some lame controversy the result is instant online marketing success.

It all started back in March when Dr. Pepper promised Americans a free Dr. Pepper soda if Guns N' Roses long-awaited album "Chinese Democracy" was released before the end of 2008. Well it may have taken 14 years, but Axl Rose and a bunch of random studio musicians calling themselves Guns N' Roses did just that.

On November 23 Guns N' Roses released "Chinese Democracy" and Dr. Pepper was ready to deliver on their promise - free soda for everyone. Dr. Pepper posted a coupon on http://www.drpepper.com and gave fans 24 hours to go the web site and print it out. There aren't too many guarantees in this world, but one thing is certain - people love free stuff. So many people attempted to download the free soda coupon that the Dr. Pepper web site crashed. Let me repeat that - so many people attempted to download the free soda coupon that the Dr. Pepper web site crashed. Talk about brand awareness!

Now here comes the lame controversy. Some of those people who weren't able to get their free soda because of the crashed site complained publicly on blogs, forums, and social media sites blaming Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses, who weren't even involved in the promotion. Today it was announced that GNR lawyers sent a letter to the Dr. Pepper lawyers requesting an apology.

It's all kind of silly, but you can't argue the success of building brand awareness. Since the debacle of free soda for a select few, the recent search volume for searches for "guns n roses" and "dr pepper" are through-the-roof according to Google Trends. Perfect timing for a band that's not been in the news lately and needs to sell some albums.

So whether you got your free soda or not, Guns N' Roses and Dr. Pepper are getting a lot of free publicity from this mess. Maybe it’s all just a coincidence, but I'm guessing it as something to do with some awesome web marketing. 

Recent search volume for 'guns n roses' and 'dr pepper' from Google Trends

I thought it would be interesting to see what Google is showing as relative volume of searches for the candidates and their running mates.

 

Search marketing is forever evolving, and the rules for good optimization a year or two ago may not necessarily apply today. To help explain some basic search engine optimization techniques, Genuine Interactive asked each member of The Jackson Five to provide a snippet of information to keep in mind when optimizing a web site.

1. “Branded optimization is good, but I'm not impressed.”  - Jermaine

Just because your site ranks highly for searches that include your brand, doesn’t mean you’ve done a thorough job at optimizing your web site.  Your web site SHOULD rank highly for branded searches. It’s the non-branded searches that describe your product and/or service that you should work to optimize for.

2. “Page titles are important and should include more descriptive keywords.” - Marlon
 

The page title is displayed at the top of your web site's search ranking  The page titles play an important role in search engine optimization and should not be reflective of the hierarchy as to how your web site was built.  Your page titles should be keyword-rich and unique per page describing the content of that page.

3. “Don’t forget to create unique meta descriptions for every page.” - Jackie

Meta descriptions are what your searchers will we see when they find your site in a search engine's ranking and are an important piece of the SEO puzzle. Well-written meta descriptions provide not only search engines with more relevant text to crawl when indexing your site’s content, but also searchers with enticing copy when viewing your site in the search results.

4. “Generic text links like ‘click here to learn more’ do nothing to help SEO efforts” - Tito

Text links within your web copy should describe the content on the page it’s linking to. Search engines read a site’s text links and value the content when valuating your site’s rankings.  So lose the ‘click here for more information’ text links, they offer no value for search engine optimization.

5. “Use popular keywords to name your files and directory structures” - Michael

The old way to create file structure was to build it like a file structure on your computer, so long as you the user can figure out which files reside where.  For instance, a web site’s Resources section was to live in the /resources/ directory.  Not anymore. Your directory structure and file names, when populated with your content’s keywords, will help build keyword relevance with the search engines.

The Jackson Five:  (right to left) Jermaine, Marlon, Jackie, Michael, and Tito.  Actually, we aren’t sure who is who, so if you know please leave a comment and let us know.

 

Technorati Profile

There are many of different aspects to creating a solid search engine optimization plan. One piece to the puzzle that search engines evaluate when determining their rankings are the number of backlinks to a web site. 

Backlinks are links from other web sites that point to your site and when properly implemented have a positive impact on your web sites rankings within search engines.  To search engines there are good backlinks and bad backlinks.  When your web site is linked to from credible web sites that share relevant information, search engines will reward you by increased exposure and improved search rankings.  However if you have 8,000 links to your web site from sites like Ted's Link Farm, they may give you a demerit. 

Some quick ways to get quality backlinks:

• Viral Marketing or valuable tools and content- Create something that’s worthy of people creating links to you.
• Editorial Trading - Exchange guest blog article writing duties with some of your business partners.
• Online PR - Submit an online press release featuring your latest news to be picked up by credible news outlets like Google News.

Remember search engines evaluate your web sites backlinks as if they are judging you on the friends that you keep – backlinks are about quality, not quantity.

If you'd like to see which web sites are linking to your web site do not dial 1-900-MIXALOT, rather visit Google and search "link:www.YourDomainName.com" 

 

The Genuine office has two feuding factions:  The Hatfields - the Flash developers. The McCoys - the Search Engine Optimization team.  The epic rivalry started years ago because Google could not properly index Flash files.  

It looks like the bitter feud is about to come to an end, because Google improved Flash indexing in their search rankings. Basically, any text that users can see as they interact with your Flash files can now be indexed in Google. This is an exciting first step for unity amongst Flash developers and search engine optimization specialists everywhere. Here in the Genuine offices - white doves were released and group hugs ensued as Flash developers and SEO specialists began their new torrid love affair. 

NOTE:  The actual Hatfields and McCoys are no longer feuding. In 1979 the families burried the hatchet on national television on "The Family Feud." If only all of our international battles could be settled on The Feud.  Survey says?

  "Ole-Ranl" Hatfield and "Devil-Anse" McCoy prove that bad nicknames can lead to years of feuding.