Fish4jobs - reasons NOT use them!
I read an article/case study this last week about how Fish4 had used a SEO agency to improve their 'vital pathway' to their customers.
And their crowning glory was:
Ranking in position 1 out of 81.7 million results in the Google rankings for the keyword 'jobs'.
Do they really? And so what if they do!
First, making such a claim is pretty stupid. The agency who no doubt wrote the case study must know that this kind of position:
- Changes constantly.
- Prospective customers will check and ask questions if it is not as stated.
In my search (30/6/08) they were 19th position in Google UK only search i.e. bottom of page 2. Not sure how that fits with the case study.
Second, who the hell wants the kind of person on their site that just searches 'jobs'. Fish4 claim a 371% increase in traffic due to this; great results Fishy. Do advertisers who pay a lot of money to use a site such as Fish4 really want this kind of traffic? I think not. Do Fish4 senior management have a clue? It does make me wonder yet again what they think. Maybe they are like fish and forget by the time they have finished their cup of cappuccino?
Apparently, according to the case study the greatest volume of search traffic comes from a very small number of terms such as 'jobs' and 'recruitment' and the agency challenge was to ensure Codface performed well for such terms. Well, 'recruitment' didn't even see them in the first 5 pages.
It's all well and good outsourcing parts of your business to 'specialists' but I'd suggest it may make more sense to pick a specialist who knows your industry. Having said that, if Fish4 were selling 'fish' they'd do quite well' 3rd position on page 1 - pretty good huh!
And just when you thought you were out of the water.
I know the name of the agency; maybe they should change their name to Greatwhite.
