I know what you’re thinking. Making a link between Todd Phillips’ Joker and Search Engine Optimisation is far-fetched and tenuous. Think again. The recent Joker block-buster, with a little imagination, shares numerous parallels with a successful SEO strategy.
The story of Joker follows a deeply troubled Arthur Fleck as he falls further into his mental illness and, unbeknownst to him, starts a revolution in Gotham city off the back of his own iconic brand of madness. The incredible and undeniable recognition that Joker receives, both on screen and off screen, is what every business should be striving for (not too be taken too literally). Organically boosting your website through the use of backlinking, keywords, and image optimisation is a sure-fast way of rising up the Google ranks and getting that all important recognition.
At its core, SEO is about getting noticed, and there’s no better model to learn from than DC's infamous character, the Joker.
Backlinking
A simple way of boosting your website’s SEO is through the use of internal linking and backlinking. Internal linking is where you link to other pages on your website in your content, and back linking is when websites of higher authority link back to your website through their content. In the all-seeing eyes of Google, this makes your website appear more relevant and therefore more worthy of a higher ranking.
The same can be said for the Joker franchise. Nobody would know who the Joker was if not for Batman. The Batman comics and the subsequent movies boosted the Joker’s profile to such a level that he now warrants his own movie. However, as we see in the iconic scene of Bruce Wayne standing over the bodies of his murdered parents, there is also no Batman without the Joker. Joker’s small nod to the Batman movies is the Hollywood equivalent of a digital backlink; they’ve both shot back into relevance on the back of each other’s success.
Keywords
Another integral component of a good SEO strategy is the use of relevant and targeted keywords. When someone searches for a specific product or service on Google, you want your website to come up top. You therefore use choice words, pre-empting what people are going to be searching for in order to make your presence known when the time comes.
Throughout the movie, Arthur Fleck uses specific, choice phrases that pre-empt what is to come. One which comes up repeatedly is, “my mother always tells me to smile and put on a happy face,” Fleck says… “she told me I had a purpose, to bring laughter and joy to the world”, as well as the phrase “My life’s a comedy”. Both of which have serious Joker-about-to-go-wrong vibes surrounding them, and foreshadow Fleck’s demise into our favourite super-villain. Obviously language is important in any context, movie or website; however, you really build a brand when you use relevant and thematic language.
Imagery
Finally, one of the most potent ways in which Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker rises to his position of such infamy is, of course, through imagery. He first gains recognition as the anonymous murderous clown plaguing Gotham city. As the message spreads, more and more clowns begin to pop up and the image of a clown becomes a symbol of the revolution, something for people to rally around. The Joker then becomes immortalised through the clown-like green hair and iconic, wide, twisted smile.
If we can take anything from this, it’s that there’s a lot to be said about the importance of branding your business and the image you put out in to the world. From an entirely SEO perspective, your images need the correct optimisation in order to be recognised and prioritised by Google search crawlers – green hair won’t quite cut it. To ensure your images, and their associated pages show up in the right searches, make sure you include those all-important keywords in the alt-tags of the image. You also should keep your images file size to a minimum so to boost the overall loading speed of your web page, thus making it more ‘google-friendly’.
A Less Murderous Way To Boost Your SEO
Todd Phillips described Joaquin Phoenix's take on Arthur as, "a guy who is searching for identity who mistakenly becomes a symbol”. Here at Christian Michaels, it’s no accident when your website becomes a symbol. Our team of SEO specialists and content writers will ensure that your website is optimised, down to every last detail… we’re not Joking. Give us a call if you want to discuss your SEO needs further.
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