Tag Archives: SEO

SEO Clients Deserve NoFollow Discounts

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SEO clients may well be aware of the furor that has been going on in the SEO world. Danny Sullivan described why SEO experts were so incensed in signaling that Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting.  It is all concerned with the NoFollow tag that can be applied as part of the code for hyperlinks from web pages.

If you want to understand the implications of the changes then an article, PageRank Calculation – Null Hypothesis, will provide a lead-in to the ongoing discussion.

What does all this mean for SEO clients who have paid their consultants fees for Search Engine Optimization.  The aimClear Search Marketing Blog has a good account of what they are telling their clients in a post, NoFollow noWorries: An SEO Linking Update.

Though this 180 degree about-face in what Google had been preaching (literally) to webmasters was poorly handled from a public relations perspective, presumably it was made because the tag was overused, abused and had the potential to skew Google’s rankings. No worries. We actually think the change will bring some positive changes to the SEO process, though as always there are tradeoffs.

Of course this has all been going on in a time of recession where companies are trying to make sure they get the maximum bang for whatever bucks they still have in their budgets.  Companies paying SEO consultants who have implemented PageRank Sculpting programs are now told that such programs were ineffective.  This only came to light when Google decided to spill the beans since it looked as though SEO experts had not spotted that the Google advice was no longer effective.

It is all rather messy but the bottom line is that clients have spent money that produced zero returns.  What recourse do they have?  Who should they be talking to?

Unfortunately the biggest culprit, Google, will provide the defense that they are providing a free search service.  Too much information given away would mean that webmasters could perhaps manipulate the search results so that less relevant web pages nevertheless  would appear high in the keyword query listing of results.  If any information is given out, then webmasters should do their own checking to be sure that the information works for them.  This is somewhat facile reasoning since it is very difficult to do Split A/B testing on anything other than simple changes to web pages.

If Google is off the hook, this leaves only the SEO consultants to listen to the SEO clients.  Here again the discussion is difficult.  Reputable SEO consultants use their best skills and knowledge to provide maximum search engine visibility to their client’s web pages but without any guarantees on performance.  In this case, they were following information put out by Google and which was never withdrawn or modified until very recently. They put in the effort.  Google rendered their efforts for naught.  It would appear that the SEO consultants are off the hook too.

If companies were doing their own SEO, then they would have paid the salaries and again would have seen no results from the PageRank sculpting.  Using SEO consultants or doing SEO in-house would have had comparable effects. Perhaps this is just grin-and-bear-it time.  Search engine marketing is on average very powerful, but its mechanisms are sometimes difficult to discern. The NoFollow confusion has just added to those ongoing difficulties.

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Death, Taxes And Google

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It was Ben Franklin who said “but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.“   I was somewhat surprised at a recent article by Adam Penenberg in Fast Company that covered Google Bombing and the IRS.  He found that someone had cleverly arranged by manipulating search results that Google searches for IRS forms ended up on websites that could create serious online damage.  Google is everywhere now. 

I did some Google searches on some very popular topics and the results may surprise you.  The following shows the number of web pages on each of these very basic words. (M stands for million here.)

  • 1,700 M for Google
  • 1,420 M for Yahoo
  • 747 M for air
  • 660 M for water
  • 611 M for sex
  • 404 M for fire
  • 395 M for death
  • 238 M for search engine
  • 230 M for seo
  • 134 M for taxes

Death and taxes may be certain but it is quite clear that some other topics are much more on our minds.  Indeed there is much more written on seo (search engine optimization) than there is on taxes.  It is perhaps indicative of how ‘top of the mind’ Google is and why there should be such a demand for search engine optimization services.  Even if you go for quite local services such as MA seo or CT seo, you will find quite a slew of web pages on these topics.

Since people seem to use Google now-a-days rather than following some URL they may have, perhaps it is time for the IRS to be using some seo services to guard against these Google bombers.  After all, if you cannot trust the IRS, who can you trust?

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Reputation Management and Social Media

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When Does Reputation Management Become Unethical? That is an interesting question posed by Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People.

There is obviously a great deal of power in being able to hide certain search results from the majority of searchers. With this power however, comes great responsibility. This responsibility becomes even more important if one considers that there are currently no guidelines to help guide us through the murky waters of morality.

It is certainly true that by careful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) one can push negative references down the Google search page, or with sufficient other online properties perhaps even off the top 10 page.  however you cannot make them disappear.  Now with the rise of social media, it is even harder to still all those dissident voices.

The words of Katie Delahaye Paine as recorded by Liana ‘Li’ Evans reflect current reality.

Trying to manage your reputation in a social media environment of today, is just plain silly (and futile), you just can’t.

Both PR Coverage and Social Media (it’s better when they are working together) have a big effect on how companies are perceived and in the end a big effect on what they are doing. The key though, is to measure both what is working and what is not working. Companies also need to understand that people are talking online, they are saying and doing things with brands, products & services, whether you are active in the conversation or not.

The first imperative of course is to try to make sure that the actions of your company are blameless, as far as you can achieve that.  With such a policy you no longer need to hide but can become active in the conversations.  You probably need a blog and may well decide to be active on Twitter. 

One example among many is the CPA advertising network, ClickBooth.  Early in the year, there were a number of negative comments from disgruntled affiliates that could be found through search.  Now there is a ClickBooth blog and you can also follow ClickBooth through Twitter.  The two approaches provide the best possible channels for dialoguing with any who may be dissatisfied.  Now that is the way to do reputation management.

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Better Marketing Through Dialogue

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There are many ways you can interpret that phrase, ‘better marketing through dialogue’. They are all important in highlighting some of the truths in marketing more effectively.

In thinking dialogue versus monologue, it brings out the whole notion of push marketing versus pull marketing. A supplier can push advertising at prospects whether they want it or not. That is a type of monologue. Prospects are increasingly upset at this kind of intrusion. In thinking pull marketing, the aim is to get prospects seeking out information from the supplier. Such dialogue is more likely to result in a purchase.

The other aspect of dialogue is that the two parties get to know each other better. It is the old sales person’s rule that you sell your self first so that the prospect then wishes to buy from you.

What is the best way of setting up a dialogue? Often nowadays people decide that a blog is the most convenient way to do this. A customer or prospect can usually comment on particular blog posts that are of interest to them. This is the way the dialogue gets going. By coincidence, a topic has started up at the Crea8asite Forums that is particularly relevant here. Stories, The Great Competitive Advantage, And Video, Oh My. Watching a video of the author can give much more information about the author that can help establish a connection. It certainly enriches the dialogue.

In that light, we will be adding short videos from time to time to blog posts to expand on the topics being discussed. What follows is largely an introduction to this blog, however it also deals with the likely explosion of the mobile web given Google’s entry this year.

The corresponding video, StayGoLinks, a blog about the Mobile Web, can be found on YouTube.

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SEO Cash Cows Anyone?

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SEO no longer offers easy pickings.

The Internet continues to get ever more crowded. Google is continually modifying its algorithms and its ways of presenting more personalized results to searchers. It’s no surprise that many feel that SEO, or organic search engine optimization, is getting increasingly difficult. That’s the view you’ll see in many forums. Just check a discussion at Cre8asite Forums for confirmation. It was titled ‘Been Reading That SEO Is Slowly Dying / Changing‘.

A coming SMM newsletter will discuss the state of the nation on SEO. As always, the aim is to create something useful for our readers but also create a memorable and search visible item. As we have recommended, potential titles were checked in both a Google Web search and a Google Blogsearch. The results were intriguing.

One possibility was the notion of a SEO Cash Cow. That kind of talk has not been around for some time. Back in 2006, a website offering SEO Cash Cows claims that all packages were sold out within 15 days of launch. Early in 2007. you could still find other sites that would help you build your cash cow or would turn your website into a cash cow. Since then, the Internet seems somewhat quiet on the subject of cash cows.

Another possible phrase to draw the eye might be fat cow. This seems to be in more current usage. That’s because of the efforts of Garry Conn with his John Cow dot Com website. His tagline is Making Money Online by Milking the Internet. Of course to an extent he is riding on the coattails of the much better known John Chow dot Com website. John Chow is a resident of Vancouver and and has the tagline, I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online. It was visible on the fat cow query, because of a little sniping at John Chow from Garry Conn. Whether the efforts of either of these gentlemen and their interactions can be regarded as examples of fat cows or cash cows that others might wish to copy is open to question.

Clearly something is happening and webmasters must adjust. Perhaps the final word should go to John Mueller, one of the more visible Googlers who is always delivering eminently good sense, in his post on that Cre8asite Forums thread.

If you “fall” for a product/service that doesn’t deliver close to the expectations that they set in their marketing, you’re not going to fall for it a second (or at least a third time). If a search engine notices that it’s falling for content that doesn’t deliver close to the expectations set with regards to SEO, it’s going to work on recognizing and ignoring that. If you constantly have to adjust your SEO efforts because the search engines aren’t falling for it anymore, perhaps the problem is not the SEO.

What seems quite clear is that SEO is no longer a license to print money. There are increasing challenges which the successful practitioner of SEO must overcome. However, the ROI (return on investment) will still well reward the effort.

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