I have been approached several times recently from people in my SEO circle to give my oppinion about "Big Game" SEO.
Haven't heard about it? Me neither!
So What is Big Game SEO
This is the technique where the SEO team does work not only the web property or brand, but for the entire first (and sometimes parts of second page) results. They push comments or reviews up or down, do link building for favorable articles related to their own product or service, create knowledge graph and QA answer boxes on websites like Wikipedia, create, or push favorable Youtube videos regarding the subject matter and more. The idea is that when a potential customer searches for the brand product or service, their attention will be drown towards the negative stuff first. So instead of landing on the website and potentially becoming a lead, they will drift away to do "needless" research. If however there is nothing but positive reviews, videos, mentions and some of the organic results are pushed down by the knowledge graph, QA box or other, the CTR of the query will rise and will provide more "sated" potential customers, that will have the belief that the product or service is solid.
Is Big Game SEO Trending?
Well seems so. Over the past two months I have been asked for opinion a couple of times and I know for a fact that some heavy money-keyword niches are dominated by this practice where SEOs are trying to "cover up" bad reviews, promote favorable third party content and link-build to it so it can take a spot on page one, link build to youtube channels, etc. in order to populate the first page of Google with nothing but positive content. I have not witnessed their results first hand but I have on good authority, that it does raise the CTR rate of the first organic result (which often is the original website) above the 60% threshold and does increase the % of "good leads".
I did some research to see whether this tactic is coming from some of the more popular SEO website but have not seen any mentions. Same for the coined term "Big Game SEO", no results par how to do digital marketing around the Big Game (NFL Final). So, I believe this practice is not trending yet, but rather spawned in some of the black-hat forums and made its way to the regular SEO space.
Can this become the norm?
Hope not. While it does make sense. Luckly, there is a huge variety of search result pages, filled with big and small brands ranking and as such this tactic does not make sense for every scenario. However. I do believe, more companies will demand this tactic as a service for their branded queries.
So what are your thoughts about this? Have you seen this "Big Game SEO" in action? Were you approached by clients who wanted similar service?
All in all what is your standing regarding this new approach to SEO?
