Cape Town – Online marketing agency Quirk eMarketing has scooped an international Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) award for its work with South African Tourism (SAT). Brought onboard to assist with SAT’s online marketing, Quirk built a new layer for Google Earth, punting South Africa as a world-class tourism destination. It is only the third official tourism layer to be integrated into the Google Earth core.
Quirk received the award for Innovation in SEO and Natural Search at the E-consultancy Innovation Awards in London last week. It is one of the largest European awards in innovation and the bench of judges represented big names like Apple, the BBC and Whatif. E-consultancy, founded in 1999, is the United Kingdom’s leading online publisher of best practice internet marketing reports, research and how-to guides.
The Google Earth project was recognised as an innovative means of both increasing engagement with SAT’s website and driving links, which ultimately improved search engine visibility. Google Earth, which is a downloadable geographic information programme that allows users to view satellite images, maps, terrain and 3D buildings, reportedly has 350 million users around the world. While companies are taking greater steps to improve their ranking on the Google search engine, few have tapped into Google Earth as a means of doing this.
Continues Below↓Quirk’s Google Earth project, which can be viewed at http://earth.southafrica.net, took roughly three months to develop and implement, once the necessary partnerships with Google had been formed. It follows in the footsteps of Pure New Zealand and Egypt Tourism, both of which have tourism layers on Google Earth. Quirk bolstered their project by adding an itinerary planner for tourists coming into South Africa and a back-end component where companies can make use of placemarks.
The award is Quirk’s first international accolade and Group CEO Rob Stokes said that he was “tremendously proud” of the company’s achievement. “We look forward to showing the world what South Africa is capable of,” he said.
