SEOs for Tibet
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August 11, 2007
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July 25, 2008SEOs for Tibet
Many people are concerned with the plight of the Tibetan people, particularly now that Tibet’s level of protest has risen dramatically during the Beijing Olympic games. The problem is the Chinese government’s manufactured illusion of freedom and acceptable level of human rights, and is compounded by its relentless anti-Tibet PR campaign.
So what can concerned search engine optimizers do to help the Tibetans and raise awareness of their plight?
In years past, SEO professionals have competed in playful contests to see who could rank a site the highest for a nonsense term like “nigritude ultramarine,” or some other similar goal. To my knowledge, we’ve never collectively used our powers for something big that could help others.
I think the situation in Tibet represents an unprecedented opportunity for SEOs to do just that. But instead of running an ego-driven contest (and instead of “Google bombing” some unsuspecting site, which is no longer really feasible since Google defused this with their algorithm), let’s all see how high we can rank a Tibet-related site for the keyword “olympics.” The site would need to have the word “olympics” on their home page in order for it to really work. Ideally, the site would cooperate with us and take our SEO advice in terms of on-page factors that they would need to change to help with the “olympics” ranking. I think a good candidate site to send our “link love” to would be FreeTibet.org, a non-profit, non-governmental campaign to help the Tibetan people achieve the right to determine their own future. The organization has been in operation for more than 20 years, and has nearly 20,000 members. Alternative sites to consider: Save Tibet, the official Tibet-in-exile site, and the Dalai Lama’s site.
If we could get the site to hit, say number 8 in the Google SERPs (search engine results pages) for “olympics,” that would be a great statement of support from SEOs for the Tibetan people.
15 Comments
Sounds like a great idea.
http://ciarannorris.co.uk/2008/05/17/the-olympics/
The site http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org is already ranking number 3 for the official slogan, One World One Dream.
Might be an idea to link to this site with the slogan as anchor text as well…
Great idea, Stephan. I’ll include a link in my next blog post, to be published Monday.
@百奥谷 – I wasn’t actually saying that there was racism in Tibet, just that one doesn’t have to have experienced something first hand to know whether it’s right or wrong. I’ve read enough about the history of China & Tibet to know that I don’t agree with what went on – as is my right.
@GBY Way to keep the conversation dignified. Nice.
As a chinese,I still know seldom about racism in Tibet cause Goverment controlled all the chinese media.So Let more people notice the tibet is not a bad thing,maybe chinese government will tell the truth under the international pressure.
If a SEO has to put in his efforts into something, it’d rather be something to “Create Peace”, rather than promoting sites that you have no control over (a risk of antagonism with the China government).
Now, tainting the Olympics and using them as a chance to cause political and other chaos isn’t really the answer.
Welcome to beijing,Welcome to xizang to have a look!
NOT ONLY FOR THE TRURTH OF Dalai Lama,IT IS BEAUTIFELL,YOU KOWN.
Well I don’t know anything about Tibet or the issue at hand, but when it comes to google bombing for a good cause you can pretty much count me in.
Of course, I’ve got to do some research first, and if all is as it seems here, I will have some juicy links headed that way in a week or two.
Viva La Resistance!
[…] Olympics Stephan Good has posted a plea on Change For Good for SEO’s to put their powers to good […]
Got my links up Stephan.
Bombs away!
[…] Spencer from Netconcepts asks SEOs to join the campaign to have FreeTibet.org rank for the term "Olympics." Several SEOs have already joined the campaign to acknowledge […]
[…] Spencer has launched a campaign encouraging SEOs to use their powers for good by sending links to the Free Tibet website using “Olympics” as the anchor text in an […]
Wow,
What a hate mail over here.
Keep it peaceful please
Honestly, it would be better to target “China” than “Olympics”. Not only is it more targetted, but more useful.
Second, I’m the SEO for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and I really don’t see what Tibet has to do with that. Do you?
Ian
[…] would be 2 of you) don’t know what that means…but I just found a post about using SEO (search engine optimization) powers for good, and I thought it was a pretty sweet idea. So here is the […]