Sports Illustrated's LeBron James Exclusive and Limitation of Capitalization from Search

Last Friday, Sports Illustrated published a first person essay titled "I'm Coming Home," written by LeBron James with a help of Sprots Illustrated Senior Writer Lee Jenkins. Through this essay, Lebron James first publicly announced that he is returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Until the publication of the essay, only few editors knew what the upcoming publication was about. Since the essay was poised to be the biggest traffic event in the history of the magazine, the technology team was informed to be prepared for the extra traffic, but they were also not told what the traffic would come for. 

With a careful preparation, the essay did not get leaked. Sports Illustrated managed to publish the first announcement on where LeBron James is heading next and attracted incredible amount of unique visitors to its website. 

However, what is interesting is that Sports Illustrated is not being able to capitalize as much because of where it comes on the Google search. Many publishers re-wrote the story, and search results for "LeBron" brings up local new sites, ESPN and Slate ahead of Sports Illustrated. A search for "Sports Illustrated LeBron" didn't even turn up the magazine's essay among the top results. This case shows the importance of effective search engine optimization strategies. 

To read more: http://adage.com/article/media/sports-illustrated-lebron-james-exclusive/294096/