Comments on: Is Trump Tower Philadelphia SEO Friendly?

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:21:05 +0000

Real Estate in general is local and searched on by users in a fashion that is consistent with the location of a user/visitor/searcher

Example: NYC condos or Philadelphia condos for sale.

The website should have the content in an indexable format for googlebot to index it

By: Dustin

Dustin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:53:19 +0000

So then in Trump’s case of SEO friendliness he would need to decide if his strong personal brand is enough or if he wants his sites to also rank well for other related terms. Thanks for your comments, Jeff.

By: Jeff Tomlin

Jeff Tomlin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:09:31 +0000

I shouldn’t have said that I disagreed. The site is not search friendly for relevant keyword terms. The flash site isn’t friendly to indexing content and the site isn’t well optimized in general. I guess my point is that SEO if most likely not a priority for the Trump team. Everything goes into the brand. The brand is so strong that everyone in Philly would know that Trump is building a tower. He is certainly missing out on the relocation people that would search for ‘Philly condos” rather than Trump however. Regardless, he’ll sellout (maybe now so quick in this market though). This is a great example of a site to breakdown, but it’s hard for a guy like me to say the marketing team missed the mark if search was specifically not a priority.

Interestingly, it’s cool to see how strong his personal brand is for search. The names of all of his new condo and hotel towers are “Trump Tower [city]“. Sometimes the word ‘hotel’ is in there. He’s been building a lot of them so people are increasingly aware that he’s all over. If you search for “Trump Tower”, all of his towers come up including images in the universal search. As he expands and builds more projects, these interlinked sites will help him rank for terms like “toronto hotel”. (current title of that site is “Trump International Hotel & Tower, Toronto”)

By: Dustin

Dustin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:31:47 +0000

Setting aside the strong personal brand that goes with the name of Trump and looking at the site with an SEO point of view, it is not SEO friendly. Trump might be able to draw plenty of traffic for his name brand but besides that the site isn’t showing up well for any other searches. Whether you are Trump or someone else with out the name brand recognition you have to look at the big picture. Someone searching for luxury condos in Philadelphia might not be thinking about Trump Tower at first but after finding the website they might discover that Trump Tower is exactly what they are looking for.

By: Jeff Tomlin

Jeff Tomlin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:45:21 +0000

I think Trump has an unusually strong personal brand so people in Philly might search for Trump Tower Philadelphia more than “Philadelphia luxury condos”. The google search suggestion tool actually shows that the average search volume is higher for Trump Tower Philadelphia so for this example, I would have to disagree that the site is not seo friendly.

For the general case, however, I clearly understand your point and agree. A site has to target both your personal brand and appropriate keyword phrases. Not everyone has a brand like the Donald…

Another benefit Donald has is that his name isn’t that popular, that is, there are not a lot of other people with his name. Online, his brand dominates. Unfortunately, a lot of us have a fair amount of competition because there are a lot of people online with our name – increasingly so. It may be of interest that we have a reputation monitor that we just released at steprep.myfrontsteps.com. Whether you are Trump or small time Joe, it’s important to monitor and promote your personal brand.