50 Ways To Lose Your Link

1. Demanding placement. If you’re paying, I can see where you feel that you have the right to tell the site owner where you’d like the link, but don’t be too insistent or else you’ll risk them turning you down. If you’re asking nicely and saying “pretty please?” then, unless it’s truly a disastrous spot, just shut up and move on.

2. Indirectly insulting the site. The site owner may be passionate about his work, so why risk putting him off? No one wants to hear that their site is only worth x because it has a PR of y, or that you can help them drastically overhaul it and make it sooooo much better. How are you going to feel when you say that and learn that the site owner had to use a head pointer to peck out code? Yeah that’s right. You’re gonna feel like the jerk that you are.

3. Offering too little money. This can immediately cause the site owner to never open another email from you again.

4. Offering too much money. This makes you look flash and no one likes a rich boy. Well, some people do…

5. Continually harassing the site owner after the link is placed. If it takes you fifteen emails to get a link worked out, YOU may be better off walking away. If the site owner is trying and you’re just one of those really picky people who orders a no-foam latte with just a dusting of cinnamon, the site owner’s going to get quite tired of your constant demands and just say screw you.

6. Not being honest about risk. If someone asks if what you’re asking is legal or ethical, then be honest and explain it.

7. Approaching a site with the wrong client. A site for addiction and recovery isn’t the best choice for a gambling link.

8. Being too impersonal in your opening email. A salutation of “Hello Site Owner” is a bit off-putting.

9. Making it obvious that you have never looked at the site. Since I run a link building agency, all of my friends enjoy forwarding their one-size-fits-all email requests that come from, apparently, reputable firms.

10. Not paying on time if you’re buying. Stand by your agreement and pay in a timely manner. Otherwise, you could pay late and find that the site owner is pissed off and has taken down your link, then you waste more time working this out.

11. Being unresponsive when the site owner has a question. Doing this can destroy any future relationship.

12. Bad grammar. That is just wrong.

my grammar are badd

13. Misspellings. These say that you have little attention to detail and can’t use spellcheck.

14. Purple prose.

15. Being too succinct. You risk sounding scripted and robotic, therefore not like a real human being.

16. Not following up quickly. If someone responds to your link request, get back to them asap. Don’t wait a week, or they might think you were scamming them and will badmouth you all over the internet. It’s also just rude to leave someone hanging.

17. Being ignorant about your subject. It’s usually very obvious when you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

18. Telling the site owner that your link won’t hurt the site, then insisting on moving the link to a “better” page once your page loses PR.

19. Sending an obviously scripted first email, then replying with one that is in a completely different tone.

20. Getting too personal. Yes, a site owner may want to know what color your hair is but avoid getting into the habit of feeding the souls of lonely guys who operate out of Mama’s basement.

scary basement man

21. Asking for a link that is coded to look like regular text. This just makes the site owner suspicious.

22. Insisting that the site owner make permanent changes to the site’s template or structure just to accommodate your needs.

23. Giving the site owner bad code. Chance are that if you screw up someone’s site, you’re not going to end up with that link. This also makes you look like an idiot. HTML honestly isn’t that tricky.

24. Not providing technical help for the site owner when he or she is putting up the link. If you can’t give any technical advice on getting a link up, you should not be asking for a link.

25. Having your name spattered all over the internet as a known spammer. For the most part, if you’re a quality link builder, this won’t be a major problem but even when you’re doing things by the book, you’ll still encounter a few nuts who will immediately accuse you of spamming and will blaspheme you all over the interweb.

26. Having your company’s name spattered all over the internet as a known crap company. See above.

27. Trying to renew a link by making it a completely different link without any incentives. If someone’s having to make a change, offer up something for his or her time.

28. Removing the page a link points to without notifying the site owner or redirecting it. It’s not nice to cause someone to have broken outbound links.

29. Writing copy for a link that is completely unlike the copy of the site.

30. Approaching an SEO with a lame link request.

31. Approaching the highly idealistic with a paid link request. This usually includes any blogger who fancies himself or herself a true artist/writer/poet/pagan.

lions tigers and wiccans oh my!

32. Asking to trade links if you put yours up first.

33. Asking to trade links when what you have to offer is truly a worthless site.

34. Using a name that does not correspond with your email address.

35. Assuming anything. The sports site owner must be male. The guy who runs a fashion blog must be gay. The mom who has a coupon blog must be poor. Don’t assume anything and make a stupid mistake. You have no idea how many people piss me off by calling me Joyce. Yeah, it’s a first name but it’s not MY first name.

36. Using spellcheck but not reading over your email before you send it. Yes, “incontinent” is a word but maybe you didn’t actually mean that “I hope you don’t think that I’m incontinent.” Or maybe you did, in which case you’re fine.

37. Making a joke or pun before you know the style of humor that the site owner has. Bowel blockage may amuse you, but it might not amuse the site owner.

38. Using tech slang that not everyone knows. Just because someone has a web site doesn’t mean that he or she is familiar with technical jargon that you toss about wildly in day to day interactions.

39. Stating that your company is one of the best-known and most successful SEO firms out there when no one in the industry has ever heard of you.

40. Stalking a site owner on any social media platform beforehand and referencing that in your opening email. That is just creepy.

41. Stating that you have references when, in fact, you’re just gonna make them up. A lot of the link building emails that I receive do state this, and I’ve never been arsed to call anyone out on it, but I have a strong suspicion that said references are either made-up or from other sketchy types.

42. Linking to the definition of any technical term on Wikipedia in your email.

43. Having a truly asinine quote associated with your email signature. It’s awesome that you think Buddha was wise but I don’t want to hear about it. I do too but you don’t see me going on about it when I’m building links.This is especially true for quotes attributed to religious figures, Southern authors, and politicians.

45. Using quotes without listing who said them. This is highly annoying as we struggle to determine just who it was that said this asinine SEO quote. Was it someone well-respected in the industry? Was it just your mom?

46. Using FTW, WTF, LOL, LMFAO, or any other acronym that you may be used to using on Twitter or in IM. Email provides you with the space to properly show people that you are not, in fact, an illiterate hack.

47. Cursing. I will be first to board the cuss buss but it’s just inappropriate in a business-related email unless you’re close to someone and know how it will be taken. As much as I love a good cussing, I also know that some people simply lose respect for you when you do it. Feel the person out before you drop the f-bombs please.

48. If the site owner changes your link and it’s still acceptable but not perfect, just deal with it. Maybe you asked for the anchor text for a keyword but they decided to go with the brand name. If you’re paying for it, yes you do have the right to speak up but you should accept that there are no guarantees. If you asked for the link without offering payment, then just keep quiet and move on.

49. Asking for personal details too quickly, before trust is established. Many people immediately think you’re trying to scam them for whatever reason, so be cautious about getting payment information, address, etc.

50. Approaching a site owner who’s already turned you down.

Twitter Is Not a Social Media Strategy

I’ve been talking to a lot of companies lately, who are starting to think that maybe they need a social media campaign. Their mum’s brothers dog suggested it, because, well, you’re not anyone these days unless you’re on twitter, right?

Upon further investigation, it seems that they have had a few social media agencies come and pitch to them, most of whom have provided no history on their business, or even the individuals history in social media, but these “social media agencies” have confidently advised these organisations that they “need a social media campaign”. In some cases I have seen the client be set up with a nicely skinned twitter account, a Facebook page with their logo, log in details and a wing and a prayer.

So I want to get a few things straight about social media,

This is not a bandwagon everyone should jump on

Social media is not suitable for everyone. If you truly think you can “do” social media, this fact should be jumping about slapping you in  the face when you meet one of these clients.  It might be that they are never going to be able to make the resource work for them, they may  have huge reputation  management issues, that are going to swamp them as soon as you open the flood gates, or they may simply not get it yet. This doesn’t mean that you as a “social media marketer” can’t work with them though. Each of these problems can be worked on, you start with educating them perhaps, or working on a strategy to help them get the processes and procedures they’re going to need in place. Just because someone isn’t in the right place to launch a social media strategy, doesn’t mean that you can’t work with them, just that you need to lay the ground work first.

A Twitter account is not a social media strategy

Nor is a Facebook account for that matter. These things are social media tools, nothing more. They are not the strategy any more than having a phone is a telesales strategy. The minute you set up a twitter account without a plan of what that account is going to say, what it’s aims are and who it is supposed to be talking to, you’ve failed. You need to know (or rather your client needs to know) what the process is for dealing with negative comments, you need to ensure that your tweeting is fully compliant with regulators. You become the companies public spokes person, So  you better be sure that you’re saying the right things before you start.

There are more than 3 social networks

So you’re creating a social media strategy. Great. Is your audience mass market? No? are you sure Facebook is going to be the most effective audience? Is it 20-30 something, affluent and left wing? No? Perhaps twitter isn’t going to be the medium for you. Is your audience very young? No? then stay the hell away from Bebo. There are hundreds, no make that thousands, of social networks out there. You’ve probably been using them for over a decade in some instances, but in the rush to get on twitter they are all but forgotten. Blogs, forums, yahoo groups, they’re all still hugely popular. What’s more (apart from the spam) they’re not marketed to. But they’re full of people who are interested in what you have to say.

There is one example of marketing to a targeted forum audience that always springs to mind for me, and it’s one you’ve probably all seen. Google has representatives in Webmasterworld they provide a service to the users of the forum, they are a port of call for webmasters all over the world. Is this marketing? Damn straight it is, and it’s one of the best examples I’ve ever seen.

There are so many ways to make a social media campaign work for an individual clients needs, targeting is the key. Lyndoman recently blogged that it’s not about the conversation, and I agree, for me it’s about the strategy.

Photo Credit: Stephen Poff

Google Suggests URLs in Search Suggest Box

The insertion of a link from Google search suggest list in the search box directly to a website has been on then off then on again and quickly off again. I took a screen shot and lost it but one day in early November while being lazy and going to Google to get to Webmaster Tools, I noted when I got as far as “Webm” I was offered a direct link to “Web MD” in the search suggest box.  This was switched off before the end of the day I believe and life went on as normal though I was surprised the normally US-only site was coming up.  I later learned Boots had partnered with Web MD so that would be a huge bonus to Boots.

The screen shot I took and the reason it stood out to me was because of the implications here for paid search.  No longer was I even completing my search phrase before being offered a URL link to go directly to my destination (in this case, the wrong one).  If a searcher doesn’t even see the search results, how are they going to be exposed to advertising?  How will affiliates work in a space with direct-to-URL search suggestions?  While it seemed to be only for a few searches, it was not just brand searches which were getting suggestions.

This is, of course, nothing new to those folks using Google.com and in fact, a test with Google.com shows what this might look like in the UK if it is ever rolled out for good (or longer than a few hours).  Danny Sullivan back in December 2008, a full year before we saw this here in the UK, found it in the US with not just URL suggestions but news and paid search ads.  At the moment, it seems to only work for clearly intentional brand searches like Godiva but not Ghirardelli (which is just plain wrong – Ghirardelli chocolate is clearly deserving as it is yummy chocolate).  This could be as a result of testing and the same concerns I have which I assume are shared by some of the engineers – or at least sales.

I maintain now, as I did last year, that this is a game changing move if it proceeds as it was.  It would strengthen known brands, harm affiliates and new brands, and make life generally more difficult.  By directing people away from the SERPs, it stops all sorts of brand exposure for smaller players.

While it does not seem to direct searchers away from the SERPs yet, a possible alternative to this implementation would be, as was demonstrated to Danny, paid results in search suggest.  How to establish the authoritative paid search result, the cost and the demand for this by brands and non-brands alike would be difficult to manage.  I’m excited by the ever-changing nature of the SERPs – their chocolate SERPs need work though ;-)

Americanize This! Google Changing My Search Spelling By Default

(I have a half written blogpost in my head, about ‘deathbait’. When I finally resurrect it, you can smugly point me back to this question.)

Is it just me or are the days of the bucket test now dead?

I was ‘told off’ by a journalist recently for using jargon- laden crap language.., so by bucket test (which was the terminology we used at Yahoo! and I’ve seen it on the outside too) I mean when a small percentage of search users, are deliberately shown a different set of results to most others. Performance criteria such as likelihood of refining query and repeating search, interaction with results, interaction with which result etc. are all closely monitored and then the findings used to inform whatever change may be required.

(You totally knew that anyway.)

Why bother with a bucket test? Anything that seriously impacts the relevancy of the search results (algorithmic or paid) may seriously impact the revenue. When a 1% swing in click-through rate could plus-or-minus millions, you tend to be a bit anal about this.

Lately; it seems like Google in particular, do not bucket test anything for the UK market. Perhaps they test a behaviour in the US and apply the gross learning to the UK (and possibly Australia too, based on another piece of panic-addled conclusion- jumping research I’m halfway through.)

Examples? I’ll give you examples.

Crap results for my location and search intent.

US Listing for Immediate UK Requirement

Social/realtime goes live, seems pretty irrelevant, easily gamed.

Realtime Results Easily Gamed

Palin Pwned


There are others, but the latest one has my interest seriously piqued, as I’m selfish and there is the potential for this harming one of my clients. All credit to the sharp eyed Peter Handley @ismepete who got to work yesterday morning, did a quick check on “search engine optimisation” and to his surprise, found that Google had assumed “search engine optimization”. (Note the ‘Z’ spelling). More on that here: Google Changing Your Search Automatically.

Of course, “search engine optimisation” and “search engine optimization” provide two different sets of results. Don’t know about you, but I’ve been optimising for the “ise” and “sation” spelling of such terms, under the impression that the alternative is an Americanisation and incorrect to boot; (not to mention the client preference, publisher preference and the site content). Sure I’ve dropped a deliberate Zed here and there in the metadata and in Base feeds, but seriously… who is going to ask for a link with the anchor text to a US spelling for a UK client from a UK site. Seriously unprofessional? No? Totally fair game? (I’d like to get @juliejoyce opinion on this as a linkbuilding professional par excellence. )

I was under the impression that both spellings are acceptable, with the ‘s’ form possibly more traditional and correct and that the ‘z’ form is a more modern Americanisation. How wrong I was…

Before getting off on my high unicorn and throwing a mounted strop, I checked a number of resources including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Wikipedia. Most have a pretty tough copywrite policy, so have a look at the definition linked to here, which I’ll also paraphrase.

Oxford English Dictionary.

Both “ise” and “ize” can be correct in most instances. The American English language was standardised in the 19th Century, with preference to “ize” which seemed to provoke the opposite preference in most other English speaking countries including most of Britain and perhaps even stronger in Australia and New Zealand. “Ize” has its’ roots in the Greek, whereas “ise” is more of a Latin preference, particularly the French.  Many UK publishers favour the “ise” form, and there seems to be generalised acceptance that this form is most correct, and the other form is an Americanisation. (Wrong!)

So why are we getting this default assumption in our SERPS now? Is there any pattern I can establish as to which terms get the Greek treatment? I’ve taken some terms at random and performed a pretty basic and manual test. In the interests of being correct, I’ve used FR to denote where the “s” spelling I have used is retained in the results, and I’ve used Greek, where I am presented with “ized” variants by default.

Results of spelling test


Comments

1. No assumption is made with single token terms e.g. optimise, personalise, realise, actualise, amortisation, optimisation, realisation, pasteurisation, industrialisation. (I tested the shizzle out of this, but please let know if you spot a single token example).

2. Many, but not all two-token terms, force me to view results for the “z” spelling whether my problem term is an “ised” or a “sation”.

3. In both cases (“ised” and “sation”) three token keywords, produced the same results as two- token keywords.

4. “sation” ending keywords produced more instances of the Greek than “ised” keywords.

In an increasingly internationalised culture, I’d argue that the issue of correctness is a moot point. What is interesting to look at, is the volume demand for the Greek spelling and consider that against the preferences in common usage with UK publishers. I tested the volume and most of the two and three token terms had no associated local volume (in the Adwords New Keyword Tool), however with “search engine optimisation” and “search engine optimization” there wasn’t a huge disparity in the local volume. 90,500 searches for the FR form and 74,000 for the Greek. Whilst I have doubts about the accuracy of the local volume data; this is still nothing like the kind of results or the amount of results we would need to make statistically meaningful inferences. That said, I was surprised that the volume demand would be this close. When I tested the single token terms there were more instances of data being available.

Local Volume Per Term


Comments

1. In many cases there is no available volume data

2. Where volume data exists; with the exception of “pasteurised” and “industrialisation” the volume of requests for the Greek spelling is either very close to or much greater than the volume of requests for the French spelling.

Conslusion

Though there is very little data available and my little test is by no means exhaustive, it does seem that the volume of demand on such terms might of been the driver of the recent change/test. Perhaps the online community by its’ very nature is already more internationalised and is becomming more so.

Is this really such a big deal?

Maybe not right now, and maybe not for everyone; but if your client is the Milk Pasteurisation Board, or your client offers a personalised engraving service for iPods it could be! Or if you offer conversion rate optimisation, or if you’re on page one for social media optimisation, then I would be seriously considering this. If this change is by default  rolled out to all possible instances of terms, then that’s yet another thing we will have to factor into the work that we do, and yes that’s what we’re paid for, and yes – we’d get bored otherwise. I think this is most significant because there is a disjoint in the spelling used in demand, and the spelling used in publisher content (for many high-profile and trusted UK publishers and I’m sure – a lot of our clients).

My question to you is this? Do you have client keywords that are or could potentially be effected? Will you be factoring and accomodating this potential change into your work? What will you be doing? I’ve mentioned dropping different spellings into meta data and Base feeds, but would you consider using different spellings  for URLs on a new site? Would you use different spellings in visible content? Would you drop these into footer links?

Is this a good time to pre-empt a sea change and optimise for the Greek spellings whilst the competition is less? I’d love to know!

The Local File – Google Local Business Hijacking Issues

As some of you might already know I experienced some issues with one of my client’s local business listing the other day and it royally pissed me off. It seems Google Local Business Listings have a hole bigger than the Grand Canyon. And apparently it’s been there for a while, talking to DaveN over IM the other day he ran into similar problems month ago. And it’s still not fixed, ARGH!??!!

Ok, so let me paint you a picture, at the moment local business listings are HOT property, especially in the UK and particularly in the hotel, restaurant and pretty much any service industry that is applicable to location in the search phrase. Most of these searches now includes a BIG FAT 7-10 pack in the SERPs, basically LBL (local business listings) are dominating the search result, having a 1st position in the organic results is now more like a 5-6 position. It’s had a massive impact. So, obviously for our client (which are in one of these industries mentioned above) the Google LBL are really important, and we have spent allot of effort on ranking highly in the local. Now imagine this, we get back from the Christmas holidays, login to our client Analytics and see that the local business listings traffic has halved!! We went on to search on the top “local keyword terms” on Google and found ALL OUR listings had been replaced! Our exact listing, with all the reviews, pictures, videos – everything was the same, including the phone number BUT the web address was to another website. A website that was loosely related to our client through a third party affiliate scheme. They were ranking for all the terms in the local result that we have been ranking for for months, they had in fact STOLEN our listings, and our hard work.

HOW could this have happened?
So after looking into it, we believe we found the HOLE that would have allowed these vultures to hijack our clients local business listings. I’m going to go through step by step what we think they did, and yes this will reveal how to do it, and you might say this is just teaching the dirty spammers out there how to do it. BUT I’m actually hoping that by doing this Google will finally close this massive hole for good. Oh and for the record, yes I have contacted Google, in fact I have contacted the UK branch, the European branch, twittered, emailed contacts and more, but have I heard anything back from anyone? NOPE.

So here goes our theory of how they hijacked our local business listings:

Step 1. They registered a new listing, with our clients name, but their address.

Step 2. If you are using the same company/organisation name as an existing listing, the below screen pops up, asking if your entry is the same as an existing listing, thus you can claim the listing!! The hijackers would have just gone,yep I’ll claim listing A) please, and “Bobs your uncle and Fanny’s your aunt”.

Step 3. It then clearly states that “By claiming this listing, you are saying that these two listings refer to the exact same physical business.” Which means that our listing would have been merged with theirs.

Step 4. They will then need to verify the listing, which they could have easily done via post to go to their address first then just changed the details later once they have verified.

The result = Our listing being dormant and them getting ALL the traffic until we discovered it. Now the above is just one avenue that they could have hijacked our listing, I’m sure there are several ways this could have been done (as the hole is rather large) but for this blogpost this will do for painting the picture. What we DO definitely know is that it happens, and that is VERY annoying when it happens.

SO how did we fix it?
What you need to do if this problem occurs with your company or your client is basically go through the re-verification process again. In our instance we changed the phone number to Verve Search’s phone number temporarily, as that prompted a verification process, then we changed it back to the clients details. As soon as you verify the account again the dormant listing becomes live again. ALSO it might be a good idea to do option B) track down those bastards that stole your listing in the first place (and rip them a new one), which we also did and our clients lawyers are currently looking into legal avenues for compensation. Maybe one of the most shocking things about this whole incident is that; currently there are nothing preventing this happening again, and us having to go through a yo yo process of verification! But I’m hoping, please, that Google will work to rectify this problem (aka get their arses in gear and fix it)!

Comments, theories and similar stories welcome!

Happy SEO Christmas: Vatican.VA Site Review

Ah Christmas!..

Don’t know about you, but I’ve managed to get myself a good distance over my fighting weight. Also – something strange has happened to the space time continuum, that has nothing to do with the Doctor Who Christmas special. I’ve lost a day somewhere. It is New Years Eve tomorrow and I have less than 24 hours to lose that weight and decide which party to go to. Or I could just stay in, scoff the remaining stilton and make a list of resolutions. (No. 1. Stop counting “hoovered the rug” as an excercise class.)

I digress. Christmas isn’t all about me. It’s about you. It’s about giving, growing, learning and (ahem) religious tradition. (And with the subtlety of Katie Price, she dumps a segueway to the point.) Ding Dong Merrily on High, let’s get cracking!

First, a friendly warning! Visit the site after you read the post, but do not go there now. You will spend days, lost in the labyrinthine tunnels and passages of inconsistent protocols, of sub-domains on parallel with folder structures, with shifts in look and feel, style and functionality. If you do go, take a turkey sandwich with you and an Enigma machine.
(more…)

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