Rob Watts - SEO - SEM - Social Media

MSN Live Search Spam BOT Cloaked referrals

Jun 212008

Hey Microsoft? What gives with all these dodgy false referrals? Do you think it’s a good thing to send zillions of false queries to website owners? Why are you doing this? Don’t you think it’s a little rude.

Back in December here Nathan Buggia said on the very issue of these cloaked referrals

Hopefully webmasters have also noticed these issues disappearing. If you are still experiencing any issues, please contact us before you block MSNBot, to see if we can address the issue.

Yet it’s now what June six months later and it’s getting worse. Can you please stop, thanks! This isn’t a way to endear yourself to the search community.

Here are 10 other people commenting on the same.

(hat tip to Carlo)

Psst Carlo, drop the nofollow on those links in your post!

Search Marketing Services Holistic Search

The cant rank for jack shit looky likes a penalty penalty

funky ranking shit 5 Responses »

Jun 202008

Interesting, it seems like a ranking penalty has been applied to yackyack.co.uk, that or some funky Korean hijack has had the effect of kicking this domain out of the rankings

Go try a search for any of my unique title strings and see what comes up! I tried, .co.uk, .com, .ie, .in, .jp google domains and all returned the same.

Here is unique page from this site.

Here is the Google result for a search for the unique string, notice that yackyack.co.uk doesn’t appear anywhere on the first pages.

The interesting thing about this apparent penalty is that pages from my domain appear in about position 60 odd for a 92 result SERP. For a unique ‘in quotes’ search it isn’t returned within the 7 results returned, yet the page concerned has both pagerank and a cached representation.

There is a slim chance that the ‘enjoy Korea’ (see graphic) result that frames this site is having an impact, but it seems unlikely.

I’ve had penalties before (not here) it goes with the territory of PTASHFYCG (push test and see how far you can get). Great for learning and ultimately harmless, well perhaps not so for me at the time, but in terms of getting to know how far you push before you break it then priceless.

I have to say, it does look like a penalty yet… OTOH, maybe someone decided it’s warranted, not for spamming or anything like that but for simply being a contrary oppositionist, I’ve certainly said a thing or two in the past that might just have put a nose or two out of joint.

Where’s that old rascal Igor when you want him

Bebo Promotes Herbal Viagra

blogging 20 Responses »

May 312008

I’m kinda wondering what Bebo stands for. Bonk early Bonk Often perhaps?

But hey, at least it’s natural and organic!

Working for DT and Co

work 13 Responses »

May 172008

I don’t get too much time on my hands these days as I’m too busy working. The cool things is I work with a group of people who are passionate and knowledgeable about Search and strive to deliver the best possible solutions for the clients they work with. They are a friendly happy bunch an…I’ve got a lot of time for everyone who works there.

Who is this company? Well, to be honest it isn’t that important. They could be here in Hertfordshire, London, San Francisco, New York or Paris even, the important part for me, is that they have a dedication and appreciation of the space we inhabit. I get to work with people who challenge my thinking and surprise me, who are knowledgeable, professional and for the most part damn good at what they do. The work environment is good too in that it’s bang in the centre of the most vibrant city on the planet, we get massages, fresh fruit daily, gym membership, private health care and stuff like that, lunch is seldom boring through access to all manner of eateries and cafes and munch joints. If I’m feeling health conscious I’ll stride down to Tossed and grab a salad. If I’m not then I’ll grab a Pizza at that little place with the fucked up menu pricing with Michael or if he’s about Andy or Phil or Dave (if he hasn’t got a homemade wrap that is) failing that I’ll nip into Silvas and grab a bit of Italian. Yesterday a group of us went to Nando’s and had a lot of chicken and chips and a cheeky beer Luke, Andy, Alan ,Ruro, Alex, Julia, Mike and Adam it twas fun too, no one I work with is thick, which is good. Do I not like thick people? Heck no, thick people are fun too but for different reasons. Christ that sounds mean, I really don’t mean it that way, perhaps I should use a different word like less intelligent or less knowledgeable, less witty etc. The fact is that you just can’t do the sort of work we all do and be thick, shit there I go again I said it again. Ok, what I mean is you just can’t do a job that requires…fuck it, why am I even digressing on this thick point? What am I some kind of fucking Einstein? Absolutely not.

So where was I? Oh yeah, I was talking about my job and extolling the many facets of it that are fun and interesting and all that stuff. So is it in any way not so great? Jesus, duh of course! Like any job there are downsides to it, it’s a part of the human condition to moan and complain a little after all. For example, I have to wear a whistle and flute which is…I won’t beat about the bush,a fuckin pain in the arse, especially on hot sunny beautiful days where I could be out on my mountain bike getting a nice brown colour to my skin distracted by hotties and scenery and beaches and ice cream and all that stuff, but hey I’m getting used to it and if you are meeting clients and stuff like that then you’ve got to present a professional image. After all, would you entrust the future of your online enterprise to a geezer in his underpants? Lots of people do I know, but in person, it just doesn’t quite cut it. My hours are a little sucky too in that I leave my home at 7am and don’t get home to 7pm doing a job that for the most part could be done in part from home, I’m finding that tough especially with the warm weather upon us. Ha, listen to me sounding like some whining minnie. There are other downsides too, but that just goes with the territory of dealing in a client services world and of course I couldn’t possibly comment any further than that. I’m lucky, all of the clients I work on are great, no really – I shit you not.

I gotta go now, Jord just rang me “dad, you coming to get me or not” he says. Wants me to take him out to help him choose his trainers which is a bit of a bollocks really, because what he really means is that dad is going to go out and just buy the trainers that he has his eye on but..yes of course, he’s m y son and I love him so, I’ll do what dad’s do and stick my hand in my pocket no doubt.

What about you? Who do you work with? Are they cool, do they ‘get it’? Or are they a bunch of useless tossers. I’d love to know

SEO’s our own worst enemies and Negative SEO

negative seo 51 Responses »

Mar 242008

I just wanted to get this out there and vent a little it’s a little rant fired up by what I keep seeing every single week on forums, blogs etc. It isn’t going to go away, I know that – but I’ll feel better for getting it off my chest.

To any SEO who thinks its cool to file a spam report then, unless it’s around something heinous or illegal then here is the news. You suck. No you really do. If you think that by reporting a site that ranks above your own, or venting somewhere in a forum is cool, then again, just in case you missed it the 1st time around here is the news. You suck.

The upshot is that by being a rat SEO you are doing the job of those who may one day move the goal posts and kill your site. Ultimately the only long term benefactor from all the tittle tattling and finger pointing is Google. If you manage to get a site demoted, if you manage to ruin someones hard work then the only real winner is those who they’ll end up paying PPC fees to. Sure, site in position number 2 and 3 will be happy too, but for how long? How long before they end up in a similar position too, not to mention of course the bigger question of how it can be so damn easy to get a competitor banned (more on that later)

What am I saying? I’m talking about competitive SERPs, those ones that are damn difficult to rank for, at least difficult in the sense of creating the required number and mix of links needed to push ones way onto page one.

My site is more relevant than yours

The ultimate arbiter of what is the most relevant site for a keyword is of course the algo that puts it where it is. An algo that does supposedly rank sites based on factors that the people who constructed it believe to be the most useful signals in determining what is and what is not a good or a bad user experience. Yet, in a tope 10 SERP, how many sites can be the most relevant for say Loans, or Mortgages or Insurance or any other number of one or two word keywords that people pay huge bucks on PPC for? The answer is of course 10 but there are of course many many more.Every single site that sells or dissects the vertical in which it is in, is in some way relevant to what it is about. Just because the Google algo happens to place too much emphasis on a sites link profile doesn’t mean therefore that every domain that tries to play catch up is in some way web spamming, that whole negative connotation with competing really does need to go away. Christ it’s human nature 101 isn’t it? Don’t we all in some way try and learn from our peers? Don’t we all try and take the best of what our friends , competitors, family, allies, enemies do and in some way learn?

If my friend Bob just happens to have a knack for kicking my ass on the XBOX360 cos he has learned some nifty little 6 button combo that does little shimmies and leaves my players for toast or is glitching his way to success, then am I just supposed to let him continue to do so? Or do I take stock, learn and emulate. If I’m dumb then I do the former and just get used to never beating his ass at Pro Evo or whatever other game he happens to have a move or two on me. Yet of course I’m not dumb so I take the route of observing and learning and finding a way of doing what he does and then some.

What I don’t do is write to Microsoft and complain bitterly and ask them to ban his ass from Xbox Live. Neither do I go to various Internet fora plastering his Xbox ID all over the shop. Unless of course I happen to be a malicious malevolent S.O.B. I like to think that I’m not

Yet some SEO’s do so all the time. They whine and bitch about how a competitor has managed to accrue so many links in so short a time. They whine about the unfairness of it all, the whole buying of links thing being one such example. They don’t quite get the connection between there being no difference in a link being acquired for cold hard cash and a link being acquired for cold hard cash. Whatever way it’s sliced and diced someone, somewhere is being paid to influence a decision. Just because Google or Yahoo say that x is bad it doesn’t make it so. Why is it that some people are so thick that they struggle to think for themselves; incapable of any semblance of independant thought, like monotoned Zombies wandering around aimlessly looking for the next juicy head to stick their teeth into. What’s worse is that when they find a victim they let off this hue and cry that encourages all the other Zombie gang to wade in and take their little piece too, tittling and prattling like fish wives in some 30′s production line. Sooner or later the big feck off Google Zombie comes along and rips out the heart of the tottering victim. A victim whose only crime was to do the same as practically everyone else beneath him in the SERP, only better.

If you make a big deal of something and make a big enough noise and point to an example then a search engine will respond, they will take actions and reinforce their agenda, it suits their purposes on a number of levels. PR, (thats public relations) and profit, why can’t people get this?

Kill your competitors with Negative SEO

Just to reinforce the point a little further did you know that you can stealthily add links to any top ranking competitor that you like. You can buy links from a link broker in a steady as you go way and after a month or two, silently slip in a little anonymous or overt blog post, or comment somewhere in the right place and get that business penalised. Just go Google for ‘negative seo’ and see how many firms are even offering this as a service.

Why would you try and help a site positioned above yours with link buying? Simple really! If they gain any short term benefit, then it doesn’t matter in the link numbers game, because they are above you already. If you do it properly and examine their link profile and present your case to the right people in the right way then…bang you can kill them, just like that.

Shut it Rob it’s business

I’m not so naive in my thinking that I’m not aware of the whole ‘hey this is just business Rob, get used to it’ line. It’s part of the territory that goes with the whole free SERP thing, but for the love of something a whole lot bigger than I, can those of you that continually buy in to the whole ‘SERP fairness’ angle that the search engines like to feed us just wake up and smell the coffee? Can you just try and remember that the search engines exist to generate huge levels of profit for their shareholders via a little mechanism called PPC. Can you just please wake up to the fact that it is in the direct interests of the Search Engines to paint SEO as a risky hit and miss strategy that may or may not work and has many potential pitfalls. Can we all just stop adding fuel to the fire and close the whole gasbag factory down.

Thanks

Site links for yack yack

site links 16 Responses »

Mar 152008

Cool – This domain now has site links (not to be confused with subscribed links). A search for the phrase ‘yack yack’ returned this

Who searches for yack yack? Answer – no one, but hey – for those who are interested there are lessons to be learnt.

I’d like to know how they arrived at those titles and why too,they snipped the word SEO from the first link there, from my post entitled “SEO a waste of money?”

Ok, off for alka seltzer

Google Subscriber links – The Good – The Not So Good and The Reality

subscriber links 9 Responses »

Feb 262008

Google Subscriber links

There’s a little bit of buzz about today over Googles subscribed links feature. I thought it might be handy to share my robwatts view on it. The view being one that is informed from 3 perspectives. A google user a site owner and an SEO.

I’ll stick to three classifications, good, not so good and tell it like I see it reality good.

The Good

User

From a user perspective it could be a handy thing to stumble across sites that display the ‘subscribe to links’ badge and know that subsequently if I search on a related keyword that the site owner has added to the Google system then provided that I’m logged in to my Google account, I’ll get a trusted result in the SERP to a site I’ve used before, kindly highlighted and formatted to stand out from the page. Saves me having to bookmark lots of sites and refer to things of old. I’ll just find a good site, see their Google badge and hit it. Done, subscribed.
Site Owner

From the perspective of a site owner a thing like this gives me an excellent opportunity to promote whatever it is I do and inject highly targeted keyword links to specific URL’s that for my subscribed user base, are guaranteed to appear in a good position for whatever keywords I choose to target in my TSV text or XML feed. I can get to position 4 for any search I want on any keyword related, provided of course I can win the numbers game (subscribers) and have the content to go with it. I have a potentially huge incentive to get as many people as I possibly can to sign up for this. I can lower both my PPC and SEO costs and save a bucketload of cash if I manage to crack it and hit it spot on.

SEO

From the perspective of an SEO/SEM a thing like this is a useful opportunity to demonstrate to clients that I have a broad understanding of the range of complexities and angles required to succeed in the Internet of 2008. If my client happens to have a huge database with some kick ass products too, then the whole process of getting their users to sign up to their subscribed links will of course inform my overall SEO strategy and be a part of any subsequent site rebuild. If you assume that Google is always on the look out for signals that are harder to manipulate, then this really could be just one very big signal indeed.

The not so good

User

Of course to every good there is a not so good. What I don’t like is this. I have to be logged in to my Google account to experience the benefits of this. Google will be a fabulous position to track my searches, the types of sites I visit and the types of sites i choose to buy from or subscribe to. If I don’t have an account and happen to stumble upon one of these sites pushing this thing, then if i want to participate I have to sign up for an account. I can’t do so anonymously, I have to join the borg collective and sign up to being tracked.

Site Owner

As a site owner I am sort of pushed into a little bit of a dilemma. Easy, apparently cost free traffic, might appear to be a good thing, yet there is a cost attached. I have to install Google code on my site which then gives Google insights to my business and visitors who land on my pages. I also provide Google with potential new account holders and have no guarantees with how they’ll use their actions in the future. If I want those coveted positions then it makes sense that I take steps to build my user base and get those casual searchers back and clicking on those subscription buttons. I have no guarantees that having built up a following via Google that Google will introduce options that’ll require some kind of payment.

SEO

A world where SERP results are informed solely on the basis of logged in user actions, of where people subscribed to every site they visited using fully personalised SERPs for practically every vertical would obviously impact upon the traditional SEO model. Link building – forget it. Ranking reports – forget them. Anchor text – scrap that . HTML formatting – forget it.

A site owner could in theory completely and utterly circumvent the need for traditional SEO. A system that allows for site owners themselves to decide on what their XML feeds are relevant for, is potentially huge. The Google back end might even add features and offer tools that suggest relevant keywords for them to target for each feed or text file, it could use such data to inform its algorithm and push out sites that had no such profile, especially in the more competitive niches, which is exactly where things like this will be targeted most.

Getting realistic

Of course the reality is that some of the things above will and some will not come to pass. The truth of the matter is that take up of such a thing will probably be very low. Most people will swing merrily along with their existing set of habits and suspicions and will keep on doing things in the way they have.

We need to think about why the search engines are pushing such things and look for some of the reasons behind it. The number one reason is of course money. Sure, they probably do want to ‘improve their users experience’ too yet at the same time they also want to get a little more control and say so over who gets to put what in where and how. By getting site owners into a direct relationship and delivering traffic, they help set up a platform for subsequent monetisation and consolidation of the search marketing pie by taking a bigger cut of spend that is currently going to SEO. By demonstrating that SEO is not too effective, by converting as many people as possible to personalised models they undermine some of the attraction that traditional SEO offers. What good is an SEO ranking report if every bodies results differ based upon their user profile. How can an SEO firm demonstrate the impact of their actions if ultimately there is no sure way of measuring such actions. Why employ an SEO to advise you on markup and keyword density and inbound links and a whole lot of other paraphernalia, when you can simply upload a feed, choose your own keywords to rank for possibly assisted by Google back-end web page optimser tool , advising this that or the other.

From a user perspective. I’ll certainly use this and when logged on certain pc’s I might even subscribe to a site or two, especially if they are related to me or a client or are in some way exceptionally useful.

From a site owner POV, heck why not what’s to lose. I already use Google analytics, I don’t particularly care too much what they do or don’t know about my visitors, it’s really not a concern. It could be a positive it could be a negative. If I have 20,000 visitors per day and no one subscribes does it mean that I have a crappy resource just because a site in a similar vertical with similar visitor numbers gets people signing up to this? Conversely, will my site that has this code and gets the subscribers win out in the SERPs; just because the site of a competitor who kicks my arse in other ways doesn’t?

As an SEO – being the adaptive bunch that we are, I’ll probably see it as a selective opportunity tool. If a site has good content, then I’ll advise it as part of the overall mix. I’ll apprise a client of the pro’s and the cons. I’ll tell them how it could be used potentially. I’ll tell them all about quality scores and quality signals, of Googles aversion to SEO tactics and general dislike and disdain for its ability to detract from their PPC revenues. I’ll tell them and show them like I always have of the best methods for using it to their advantage. That’s what I’m paid to do after all.

Bring it on Googiebaby

Google spidering its own custom search results?

self referencing loops, spam 22 Responses »

Feb 252008

I was doing a little search this evening and found this amongst the results on the 1st page.

I thought it might be something related to me being signed in to a Google account so I signed out and tried again. Same result. So I opened up IE7 and same result.

I tried the same query on Google.com but it didn’t replicate.

Who is this mystery user=016597473608235241540 I wondered, no one it seems there’s a few more of them too. A little site:google.com/coop/preview query reveals just 152 results which in the grand scheme of things is just tiny . The question is however why? Why spider customer results and include them in a SERP however small the sample.

Noindex perhaps? How about robots.txt even

The result page itself has the distance in Kilometres but no link to any defined map or directions/distance page. Just two links to wikipedia – crap really, not a good user experience.

I’m sure there’s a better result out there than this one.

SES London 2008 Day 3

ses london 2008 4 Responses »

Feb 232008

I attended SES London on Thursday, my first since way back in 2002 or was that 2003, Christ I can’t remember!

Customers Prospects and ~~Drug~~ users

The first session I went to way a presentation by Brian Eisenberg of Future now entitled Redefining the Customer loosely speaking, Brian hit on important aspects to consider when designing a site, usability issues, seeing site visitors as citizens rather than ‘users’ and how the small changes can really have huge impacts. One funny thing during this speech was the woman sat next to me who started to snore whilst waking intermittently agreeing and nodding with what he was saying! Bizarre person. Anyhow on the whole a good session if a little too ‘markety’ for my liking.

Dynamic Websites

The second session was entitled Dynamic Websites: Beyond the Basics and for me, whilst it didn’t teach me very much of anything I didn’t know already was hugely entertaining due in large part to the contribution of Mikkel Demib Svendsen who was an absolute hoot delivering his part of the session in an informative but humourous way.

Then there was Ralph Tegtmeier , aka Fantomaster who in fairness had a hard act to follow but made the key points about controlling Pagerank and ensuring that you adopt an optimal approach. I wasn’t that impressed by Ralphs’ contribution as for me at least he could have gotten a whole lot more specific and focused on one particular aspect as opposed to just sticking up lots of theoretical boxes with arrows pointing to them and not saying very much else on the wheres and why’s of it all. I got the feeling that it was more about if you want to know more about how to do this then come and talk me and maybe we can do business but hey.

The 3rd guy in the session Kristjan Mar Hauksson of Nordic eMarketing had ran out of time and zipped though some top level stuff around how optimizing your site and it’s structure can help it’s bottom line and drive more sales. Besides lots of ‘no shit sherlock’ moments overall it was a to the point here’s what you should be doing and come and see me to learn how we can help you do the same kind of thing approach.

Linkbaiting

After lunch I went to Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions speakers were Alan Webb, CEO, Abakus Internet Marketing , Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Creative Director of deMib.com and Brian Turner, Director of Britecorp, Ltd . Alan Webb or Webby as he has been known over the years gave an excellent run down of tactics and methods that you should use when building your links and getting those all important social votes. I actually learnt something from Alan too which is very cool and will be used to good effect over the coming weeks and months. To share, it’s the linkdomain:site.com “keyword keyword” -site:site.com method of using Yahoo to find out who is linking to you thematically. For those who know what I’m on about, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the practicalities of this.

Mikkel deMib Svendsen was again on good form using a mix of humour and outrage to deliver a message that covered some of the more controversial link acquisition methods. Whilst a little blackhat, the important message he was getting out there was that as a site owner or site admin at least, you really do need to be aware of these methods and more importantly the means for closing such loops.

Brian Turner delivered a social link node presentation whereby he gave an illustration of how websites are social nodes and of how some are more active than others and of how if you use them in the right way and create the right conditions in the right regions of your vertical then you can harness the power that comes from these and use it to boost your core product or service. By and large I heard what he was saying but felt that the whole idea of buying communities and gaining mindshare publically is very hard to achieve and needs careful nurturing and TLC. Why? Well the idea of building a strong niche and using communities to help achieve that is all well and good, yet there is a fine line between getting a community to participate and drive love towards your business and alienating everyone to the point that they all up sticks and piss off out of it. This graph from Alexa showing what happened when SEO Chat was acquired sort of illustrates what can happen to a community if that community suddenly feels that they are contributing to the bottom line of some would be or megacorp.

So yeah, I think you can build it and grow it, but it’s difficult to just buy it and expect it to carry on as before.

Local Search

The next session I attended was entitled Local Search Marketing Tactics which to be honest I really don’t know why I attended as it was very low level stuff that I could have read about online. Still, handy for those who wanted to know about getting in to the local search results and searching locally too.

Web Metrics and Analytics

My final session of the day was the Web Analytics & Measuring Success session which covered the whole metrics thing from the perspective of people who had both developed, commented upon and used them regularly.Moderatored by Mike Grehan SES London Co-Chair and Founder and CEO of Searchvisible Ltd

The speakers were Frank Watson, CEO, Kangamurra Media Stephen Turner, CTO, ClickTracks/Lyris Andrew Goodman, Principal, Page Zero Media Dema Zlotin, Founder & VP of Strategic Search, SEMDirector

Andrew Goodman focused on Google analytics and showed a series of graphs and trend data highlighting how generally web analytics can be used to identify key user actions and draw benefits to your site as a result of that knowledge.

It was to be a common theme, Stephen Turner spoke elaborated on the concept of ‘segmenting’ which for the unawares amongst you is the means of being able to compare and contrast metric data and determine with increased clarity whether user action a or b was more effective because of measurement c or d. This can be pretty powerful in reporting how people behave on your domain. You could for example have a look at the behaviours of people from different geographic regions for instance and fine tune a page or section as a result. I use a tool called indextools daily which gives a similar level of granularity enabling you to draw down to very specific aspects of user visits both individually or as a group.

Demo Zlotin from San Diego gave an interesting account, I particularly liked his shelf analogy whereby he showed a graphic of a SERP with the top 5 positions inhabited or influenced by a company with vested interests and strengths within each domain. His segmentation point being, that by using your refererr data and knowing your presence you can quickly determine how effective or ineffective your recent strategies have been.

Frank Watson aka aussiewebmaster talked about how the knowledge and use of web analytics had helped his company save millions over the years. The message being track track and track again.

Wrapping up

Overall, the day at SES was good. It was good to be back in Islington again being born and bred and whatnot. I met people who I’ve only ever seen before online and it’s always good to get a feel for what is happening out there on the ground. To be honest, my day visit doesn’t really do the thing any justice as by and large these events are more of a social networking opportunity the majority of which happen in the hotel bar and surrounding pubs and restaurants of an evening. Still, it’s always good to get out of the office, who knows maybe I’ll manage a longer visit elsewhere some other time.

Buying links without a creditcard

blogging 12 Responses »

Feb 202008

It’s good to rant

I’ve probably written other stuff like this in the past, but hey, I might say it a little differently this time, so i’ll say it again and see how it comes out this time. You can’t beat a good rant!

We all know already, I don’t need to preach to the converted, that amongst the inhabitants of this planet of ours that there are these people called the spam police who just so happen to have a lot of Internet user market share and naturally enough want to hold on to as much of the monetary pie that comes from this for themselves. In terms of the whole search economy they’ve been very clever indeed. What they’ve done is this. They’ve demonised the whole concept of buying links. They’ve made it seem like this hugely unfair unethical thing that gives people an unfair bump in what is supposedly an otherwise fair algorithmic system.

*non seo bod note:links drive the search economy, they push sites up the search engine rankings. Without them sites would not rank for jack

Here is the news – It isn’t a fair algorithmic system! Seriously, I shit you not! It’s based on a string of metrics that give those at the head of the race a distinct advantage. If you want to catch up then you’ve got to do things to compete. Acquiring links is one such way. However, by buying such links you are seen as manipulating the index and risk some form of penalty especially if ratted out or investigated for not spending enough on some PPC program.

See the thing here is that competitors, or those wanting to be on the 1st page of a SERP just don’t have the time to wait around for years of brand and so called ‘natural’ link building to take effect. They need to compete today, not tomorrow. They want the same competitive advantage afforded to their competitors in positions 1 – 10 of a SERP and provided no one dies and no laws are broken they’ll pretty much pay what it takes to get there. PPC won’t do it. PPC is dead, spend once money, whereas SEO is a real investment in actions and factors that will make a tangible benefit to their positions in some algorithmic link dependent system. Yet to say all that it needs to be said that it isn’t you or I that decides what is spam. The search engines decide on what is and what isn’t spam, it is as they like to say, ‘their index’. Link buying is spam, because they say so. Yet the irony is that link buying actually improves their indices! Funny.

The search engines will often say that it’s all about safeguarding the integrity of their index or stopping those pesky evil spammers but the reality is that those arguments don’t really hold water as at the end of it all, it’s all about money and advertising and where those advertising budgets are spent. Most search engines with PPC programs believe that such money is better spent with them on their PPC programs, contributing to their bottom line. I can’t blame them for this, they are after all a business with a profit mission, just like you and I. Yet as SEO’s with clients to rank and bottom lines to maintain and an Internet to play with we SEO’s still have to get our links from somewhere. We can buy them sure, do secret deals, set up little networks that no mofo knows nothing about. We can duck and dive and bob and weave and …yeah, we can get very tired playing a cat and mouse game of hide the link source. The more competitive the niche, the more we will see others either rat us out or tittle tattle at a search forum or some moody blog somewhere. You know the drill, those link bertie small characters giving it “ooh how did these guys get to be 1, so quick so fast…” tittle tattle tittle. Shame on the lot of them really, but hey you can’t stop people saying what they want to say, especially if they are desparate for a link or two or are being pushed to do so, selling their negative SEO services to some party with a vested interest.

Anyways I digress, yet again. What I wanted to say is that it isn’t so hard to get links, and lots of them too. You just got to be more imaginative and creative than the next guy. You can linkbait your way into a link or two. Controversialise yourself (check my link bertie smalls reference earlier) and get all the jealous naysayers cooing and oohing, you can spam peoples blogs with your crappy comments and make out that you give a stuff about what they wrote on their dofollow blog or you can use your brain instead and do something productive with your life.

Don’t get me wrong; buying links is productive, there’s nothing criminal about it except in the eyes of the search engine. No one looks at what they get up to, no one is allowed to look into their activities or question their profit motives, they have carte blanche to do what they like with the online activities of the planet, yet in fairness no one is forcing people to use their platforms either, so I suppose that at some point be it through law or natural boredom with it all, it’ll balance itself out.

Damn I did it again (digressed) getting back on topic.

Writing and stimulating buzz and getting links. Shit, for some verticals it must appear to be damn damn hard.

How can anyone really get excited about some of the commercial crap out there, but there’s the rub. Speaking with a colleague the other day about some project or other I remarked something along the lines of ‘yeah right, well I find it hard to get excited about that sort of stuff (finance)’ and why? Well, because in most cases nearly everything you read about it is piss poor or boring, to me at least. If you want me to get excited about it, then you’ve gotta hit my buttons and speak to me.

You’ve only got to look at TV and see how they approach it to see it for what it is. Humour is a good approach (Nationwides Mortgage TV ads -Brand new customers only) as are cheeky chirpy youngsters singing and dancing (Halifax Building Society) , yet the serious message is that they recognise that money and saving and banking IS boring shit (for most) yet they’ve got to turn people on somehow, so what do they do? They appeal to our emotions and build associations and feel good factors designed to make us look at them in different ways. We’ve all got to bank after all, and if we are young and looking for somewhere to bank then we might just be more inclined to bank with an organisation that resonates than with one that does not. Guess what? It’d the very same with links too! If we can get people to invest in us and in what we write then we get those links.

I’m sure you get it by now, I won’t ramp on anymore about it, other than to say that really, whoever you are, whatever you are doing, with a little creativity and some traditional marketing approaches you’ll most certainly be able to fire those synapses, get people talking about your customers and their brands. By doingit right in the online world, you’ll get a bucket load of links back in return. You won’t escape the effects of negative SEO, but it might make your job easier in the longer term.

Writing or Buying Paid Posts

blogging 22 Responses »

Jan 272008

Writing paid posts

Do you blog? Do you sell paid posts or sponsored reviews? If the answer is yes and you want to get top line dollars for your blog posts then here is a little message for you.

STOP WRITING ABOUT EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. PLEASE LINK OUT TO OTHER STUFF WHEN YOU WRITE!

I looked at a few blogs last week that offered paid reviews. There was a disturbingly typical pattern that occured over and over and over.

If you look at a typical blog post (by that I mean a blog that doesn’t do the paid post thing) you’ll often find that a person might link out to a variety of sources. They’ll point to this domain or that domain to add weight to a point. Sometimes they might not even link out at all, sometimes they’ll write the piece as if they actually cared, they’ll inject a little passion, a little enthusiasm for their muse, they’ll write with a little panache a little style and verve, they’ll add something different to the mix, at least the good ones will.

What am I saying here? I’m saying that on the whole, a lot of the blogs out there writing for profit simply aren’t making a big enough effort! Ok, so yes, a lot of the people purchasing such posts are doing so because of the value they get for the keywords they target. It’s a big reason behind why some search engines come out so publicly against the things. They like us to believe that paid posts harm relevancy. They formulate arguments and show examples of poor quality posts that purport to review important topics and say that they harm the user experience. The odd thing about such a claim is of course that the opposite is true. People using these services do so because they have a real world product that is spot on and laser targetted to the market that they serve, the bloggers who write about their products don’t end up ranking for them in the SERPs either, the products that they write about do. I’ve written about such things in the past already but never really expounded on the topic itself but as its Sunday and Ive got an hour or so before I pick my son up, then heck, why not.

Good blogs versus bad blogs

There are good blogs and bad blogs – I’ll focus on the bad type and tell it like it is. If you have a blog and you are looking to monetise it via some kind of paid post or review route then you really have to start looking at it from the angle of a potential advertiser. You have to convince the prospective customer that what you are going to write is going to stand the tests of time.

Off putting flags from a buyer perspective

If your blog is plastered with badges and words that say “I SELL LINKS” in twenty five foot neon lettering then that really is not good – Do not stand on street corners shouting, hey officer of the law, I have a Bren gun under my coat and I’m going to shoot yo ass with it! Cos, you’ll just get busted.

If you have a blog in a particular niche, say Computing or Floristry and your home page is littered with posts about phentermine, cialis, online gambling, hotels in timbukfarkintu, then it’s going to look a little crappy, it’s going to shout out “LOW QUALITY” – By selling out to the highest bidder you’ll ultimately lower your value to advertisers. When a search engine cop stops by, they’ll instantly see your blog for what it is and kick you up the hiney. If you really must chase every vertical, then go and set up a few other blogs instead. Don’t ruin what you’ve built up over the years for that quick fast buck.

Do not have a one or two post blog home page where your posts stay on the home page for one or two days only – Keep your home page long, output 10 or 15 blog posts on your homepage, snippetise them and ensure that a link to your advertiser appears amongst them. Advertisers want to get maximum exposure for their money. By maximising the time that your review stays on the front page, you are increasing the attractiveness of your offering.

Crap crap posts. The anti paid post camp like to point to instances of low quality stuff. They love to point out how awful some of the stuff that’s out there is. It makes their whole PR job that much easier. Do yourself and the advertiser a favour. Write the post like you would any other. Say it like it means something to you, if it doesn’t then maybe you ought to consider why the hell it is you are writing about it. If you simply say ooh company x is really cool and they do this wonderful keyword product, then people are going to see through it. Be inventive, be imaginative, make an effort.

Don’t be an idiot. If you use a brokerage service to advertise your blog, then please please please, don’t say high quality pagerank n blog in your blog title or description. It really doesn’t help and sticks out like a plasma tv in ancient Rome. Don’t make the job of those looking to hurt you any easier that it already may be.

Terrible terrible english – Some people write the most awful blithering nonsense full of typographical and the most basic of grammatical errors. I appreciate that for some people, especially those in emergent economies that $10 for 20 or 30 minutes work can seem very appealing, but do know this, to some, it’s a reason not to purchase. If english isn’t your mother tongue and you know it’s a little rusty then take a little time to ask a native english speaker to run your work over once finished, it’ll pay dividends long term.

Nofollow – I don’t need to say much on this. If you blog and your post links are nofollow, then the level of interest in your offering will speak for itself. Nuff said.

It’s not only the bloggers of course, they need help from the advertisers and the brokerage services too. Whilst it’s not for me to teach snakes how to suck eggs and all that, I do nonetheless have an opinion or two on the topic built up on the back of having to work with and sift through a platform or two.

Advertisers

Write good adverts – Inspire your bloggers with your creatives. Think about the type of blog posts you want to see for your products or clients. Help your bloggers by giving them ideas or examples.

Be flexible – Give your bloggers options. Let them link out liberally, instruct them too even. Tell them to cite other sources than your own. Get them to link to wiki’s or Y! answers other companies even. You want your post to look as natural as you can get it. Get away from that bog standard approach. Be creative for your brand and your products. Deep link and vary your requirements, chase that long tail , take a long view.

Create more opportunities – Don’t just write one advert and be done with it. Write lots of different ones and vary your requirements. Mix it all up . By doing so you will get a whole lot more diversity. You might have to spend a little more to get what you need, but in the long term, it’ll pay.
Innovate -use your noodles, lower your costs and deliver more effective solutions. Consider combining your efforts with other themed advertisers. Build relationships with advertisers and quality bloggers, employ them directly, use them to help build new content and projects. Break out.

Brokerage services

Educate – Your bloggers are the lifeblood of your service. Some of you just don’t do enough to educate those who are contributing to your bottom line. If they aren’t kept abreast of changes and policies and shifts in the market place, then it’s going to affect the perception of your product. If you want the continued patronage of agencies and big spend clients then you really must step up to the plate and deliver more on this.

Incentivise – Reward quality posts, quietly behind the scenes. If blogger x writes above and beyond the call of duty then reward them. Just because Johnny bloggo writes 10 posts per day and earns you x profit doesn’t necessarily mean he is doing a good job. Encourage quality, weaken the arguments of those who would see you destroyed.

Innovate – Keep on innovating, don’t stay still. One brokerage service I know of offers a fantastic sub product that is very popular and very powerful, products like this are an immense asset in competitive webmastering, please deliver more of these.

Build trust in your products. Give us the option to trust in what you say, evaluate your bloggers and what they write, tell us who they are, what they do, yet controversially perhaps, do so in a way that masks their identities. Too many bloggers are getting caught up in unfriendly fire. It needn’t be so, be inventive with your platforms and deliver.

I’m sure there are more, but you get the general gist. If you want to make paid blogging attractive and want to build a quality resource then be smart about it, it’s a big cake we can all have our equal share. The internet doesn’t exist to benefit those who just happen to have found a way to make good money from it. It’s there for the little guy too. Let’s not forget that fact.

Have a great day!

Google Like it – Promote your site in your SERPs

google, search personlisation 13 Responses »

Jan 202008

Here’s an interesting little thing.

This button (fig. 1b) will move the result to the top of the page and add this orange marker (fig. 1a) next to it so you can easily recognize it. The result(s) you promote will appear at the top whenever you search for the same keyword(s) in the future.

Maybe it’s old, I haven’t seen it previously. Looks like one of those personalization of SERP features that allows you to manipulate your own returned search results.

At the moment it seems like you need a Google account to use the thing, which may be a sign that they’d like to use such signals to affect SERP outcome. Not to mention user demographics, behaviours and all that other track your movement stuff.

What I’d like to know is whether or not they will be taking such factors into account long term. If a lot of people continually push a result to the top, does this mean that it’s a great result, or does it just mean that some group of SEO’s have found a way to cut in and mimic a few natural behaviours? How many Google accounts do you have?

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Rob Watts – SEO – SEM – Social Media