According to reports, The Oakland-Alameda Coliseum Authority announced a deal to rename the home stadium of the Raiders and A’s as Overstock.com Coliseum. The agreement with the Internet retailer will run for six years at a cost of $7.2 million. But did you know that this deal also will include text links, which will ultimately help Overstock.com’s organic search engine rankings in Google?
Based on my previous extensive link building and link research, it is inevitable: whenever a company buys the naming rights to a public stadium where events are held and tickets are sold, the site’s search engine rankings always go up. Why? Because the name of the public venue is changed to include the company’s name. And the name of the stadium will start showing up whenever the venue is mentioned–like on Ticketmaster.com, LiveNation.com, and on news web sites that cover events at the stadium. Those sites are influential, and they will link out to Overstock.com. Which, in turn, will help their organic, or natural search engine rankings.
So, not only did Overstock.com purchase the naming rights to a stadium–they also have just purchased a bunch of text link ads to their web site. Sure, I am being a little overly dramatic here in stating that. But really, honestly, spending $7.2 million on the naming rights also comes with privileges–the mention of your company name, but also links from other web sites to your web site.
As you might recall, Overstock.com was recently under fire and technically penalized by Google for artificially boosting their search engine rankings. They bought links to their web site that helped them rank better in Google.
And we have recently learned that Overstock.com is no longer penalized in Google. But now, after all of this, Overstock.com has purchased the naming rights to the Oakland Raiders and the Oakland A’s stadium, now to be called Overstock.com Stadium. I don’t have a problem with that–that is a great move by Overstock.com. Just keep in mind that the deal also includes text links.