Daisy the Tabby and Minnie
Sadly, yesterday one of my cats was diagnosed with Feline FIV (aka HIV or AIDS). I was searching the internet to try and find out more information and our options as a family for on-going treatment, costs etc. as I didn’t like the first option that sprang out of my vet’s mouth.
Whilst I found a lot of useful blog posts and facts about the disease I was horrified to find some very misleading information, posted by a leading pet insurance comparison site which prompted me to try and turn this tragic situation into something positive.
Playing the Search Engines with Blogging
Searching using “Feline Aids facts” should give you some inkling of the type of information I was looking for. As a pet insurance comparison company I’d expect them to know what they were talking or blogging about.
The first paragraph told me they didn’t. It was actually an article about Feline Leukaemia, with the title Feline Aids Facts; two entirely different cat diseases with very different outcomes and treatments.
The article went on to speak about both diseases being the same and FeLV being referred to as something cats can live a long and healthy life with. Possibly true of FIV but not FeLV (a cat can entirely recover from the virus but in most cases (according to other sources) cats develop long term health problems with cancer being the most common, ultimate result.)
It actually incensed me that this company clearly think very little of the customers they are trying to attract by:
- Allowing a blog post to be written that isn’t factual and full of misinformation.
- Their ranking in Google clearly means more to them than their customers.
- There is not quality control in place with regards to content.
Proof that this blog post was written entirely to play the Search Engines and spam search results, all in the hope of dragging people to their website with a plethora of misinformation.
Yes it could be a one off, it may well be that their entire site is full of really useful information (I somehow doubt it though).
How to avoid the same mistakes
- Write blog posts for people not search engines
- Research your subject (whether you are writing for your own blog or someone else’s)
- Be informative and natural
- Make your title not only informative but factual (yes keywords are important but only if they refer to the content!)
How is it turning Negative into Positive?
I thought I’d use a really bad experience and situation to try and educate how not to write a blog post to just try and play the search engines and bring customers to your website.
P.S If you have any information about Feline FIV please do contact me. Many thanks, Emma 🙂
