Friday, 9 January 2009

ecb.co.uk crisis management - why it matters

We recently examined the problem the England and Wales Cricket Board had with its website keeping up to speed with the departures of Peter Moores and Kevin Pietersen.

This is why it matters.

1. If you search for Kevin Pietersen on Google, the top result is Kevin Pietersen's website. Not a problem whilst he was captain.

2. Search for Kevin Pietersen and ECB on Google and ecb.co.uk is ranked 15th, with a poorly worded meta description:


The same is true of all of the key search terms related to the affair.

Now, it may be that the ECB has such a good relationship with journalists that it successfully communicated all of its key messages directly to the media online. But even if that was the case, the number of websites that broke the news, the volume of traffic they have and the online influence they carry means that they played a critical part in shaping understanding of the story - before the ECB had communicated any messages.

Finally, the ECB has a significant database of cricket supporters. I pay a subscription to receive information on the England team straight from the ECB - and get access to the ECB TV channel. I haven't yet received an email from the ECB announcing the news. A missed opportunity.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd have thought they could do better than that.

My article has dropped into the top 20 sites for "Kevin Pietersen", though I'm not claiming a perfect meta-description either since I don't always write them especially.

Matthew Cain said...

Matt - the difference is that your site's content management system automatically creates meta descriptions and good URLs. And you write well.

Matt Wardman said...

And it's tweaked ... slightly.

 
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