Even The Tiger King Knows About SEO
/Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you’ll know about the Netflix documentary series, Tiger King. It’s the story of Joe Exotic, an eccentric zoo owner and keeper of a lot of big cats.
In the much-talked-about series we follow Joe as he tries his hand at a number of things; music videos, animal breeding and smuggling allegations, and becoming embroiled in a murder for hire case… but he also knew a thing or two about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Appearing Top of Google Rankings
In episode four of The Tiger King, Joe Exotic realises that his competitor, and arch nemesis, Carole Baskin was appearing on top of most search engine results pages for her business, ‘Big Cat Rescue’. That means whenever somebody was searching for Tigers, Lions, Leopards and anything related to big cats, her Big Cat Rescue sanctuary was found first, giving her the ‘Lion’s share’ (sorry!) of the customers.
Now, under normal circumstances, good SEO practice would be to add relevant keywords to your website, include appropriate imagery, and include content that keeps the readers on the site for longer. But Joe Exotic doesn’t do normal.
Duplicate Content
Instead the owner of GW Zoo decided to try to manipulate search engines and mislead users into booking visits with him by calling part of his business ‘Big Cat Rescue Entertainment’. The idea was that anyone searching for Carole’s ‘Big Cat Rescue’ would be instead directed to ‘Big Cat Rescue Entertainment’.
Joe started realising that if he made his name close to Big Cat Rescue, when they Google it, it might pull him up first - John Reinke, former manager, GW Zoo
In the short term, the SEO tactics were successful, as Baskin admitted in an interview that customers would often be confused when they contacted her to ask about Joe’s live shows. However, Baskin eventually sued Exotic in 2012 over copyright violations (his logo and imagery was identical to hers) resulting in a $1m settlement.
Good SEO Advice
My advice: don’t rebrand your business to piggy-back someone else’s successful search engine results. It’s a clear attempt to mislead customers and manipulate search engines. This will severely affect your organic visibility and you may even be deleted altogether from search results pages. (not to mention the obvious legal issues)
If you want to improve your SEO the right way, have a look below at some of our previous blogs on getting started with SEO, or contact us to see how we can help.
How To Use SEO To Boost Your Website