ChasNote

Pretty much every marketer pursues twin search strategies — buying paid links (SEM) as well as taking measures to improve placement the natural search results (SEO). Intel buys text ads from Google for phrases such as “tech makeover.” (See below screenshot: PC.com is an Intel site.) Nothing out of the ordinary here; in fact, Target is buying text ads on the same page of Google results.

But instead of doing what many brands do to improve their organic search performance — hire a legitimate SEO consultant to coach them on how search engines work, or hire a less legitimate SEO firm that attempts to game Google’s algorithm — Intel uses its marketing dollars to become a better content publisher. Its Need A Tech Makeover site, a contest platform that invites people to say what they’d do with a new state-of-the-art computing set up, quickly morphed from a marketing site to a conversational media publication. Content (the individual pitches for a tech makeover) sparked conversation among the site’s other readers (comments and votes), and those conversations continued even after readers went to other sites (mentions and links back to the contest site).

Now when a Google user searches for “tech makeover,” Google points to Intel’s PC.com as part of the the AdWords paid search program (highlighted, by Google, in yellow), and also points to three web pages — in the #1, #2 and #3 positions — associated with Intel’s Need A Tech Makeover project. One is Intel’s site itself, and the other two are promotions at Hot Hardware, the reviews site Intel partnered with on the program.