An article from AdvertisingAge magazine shows just how important search engine optimization is, and how a missing "s" may be affecting a Burger King ad campaign.

Recently, Burger King started its "Whopper Virgins" campaign which has people from Romania, Thailand and Greenland, who have never eaten a hamburger, participating in a Whopper vs. Big Mac taste test.

Keeping in the tradition of other microsites the company has introduced like Subservient Chicken and Whopper Freakout, it also created a website showing clips of the taste tests.

But for people who can’t quite remember the URL, a Google search might not help them

A look at Google trends shows that while searches for "whopper virgins" spiked on December 7th, searches for "whopper virgin" – minus the "s" – have been just about equal.

The problem is that whoppervirgin.com is a parked domain with ads for things like the Virgin Islands, Virgin Atlantic and Burger King.

In fact, a Google search of "whopper virgin" does not bring up the Burger King’s microsite within the first 10 pages of results.

AdvertisingAge says that if the company had only spent a portion of its multimillion dollar branding campaign on SEO, it may not be in this position.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.