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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

(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.

Social/realtime goes live, seems pretty irrelevant, 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 19^th 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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

1. The User Pilgrimage

I searched for “Vatican” “The Vatican” and “The Holy See,”  and top of the pops I get…

Holy SERP!

I’m using my dutty browser at the moment as you can see. No big deal at this stage, as I’m thinking around the user paths-to-entry. Personally I tend to adopt a WWMD approach. (What would Mum do?) My Mum would probably realise that any listing above Wikipedia, is truly the omnipotent and all powerful listing.

What I’m trying to get at is, though it is highly unlikely that a user has seen a .va TLD before (it’s the smallest Nation State to have a TLD and only 23 official Vatican sites have this extension); there are some pretty clear signs of legitimacy here.

[Random Aside: I had intended this post to be a light-hearted review with a tenuous link to Christmas; however things got very "Da Vinci Code" when researching the domain history.  It seems the history of The Vatican website is littered with episodes of domain squatting, and 'brand-jacking'. For the record, I called Gerry, owner of Vatican.org and the number did not exist; nor did the email address. He’s had the domain since '99, so perhaps the contact details are no longer relevant. I was interested to know if there had been any approach from The Vatican in respect to the domain. Had I gotten through, I would have asked if Gerry had any personal plans for the domain, and if he had any political or otherwise motive in retaining it.

When it comes to http://vatican.com,  this domain is privacy protected, though it is being commercially utilised, with a Google parked domains feed. On landing, we're shown a list of commercial keywords, which when clicked, generate a search and results shown are a full commercial implementation (ten sponsored links, ten algo, per page.)

Think that’s mercenary? Try www.madeleinemccann.com.

Anyways; I’m not about to debate the rights of The Vatican, to any TLD variant of 'vatican'. I was just genuinely surprised that they didn’t own all the domains. I hear they're quite powerful.

Okay... switching to clean browser, cookies off, etc. On to the Holy See!

2. On-site, first impressions

I land on a ‘select your language’ switchboard, which is pretty squinty on the eye, with an ancient parchment sort of background design.

The Da Vinci Scrawls

On selecting my language I get to another switchboard style page, with four different navigation elements, all set around a circular graphic, which again has the look of a Da Vinci sketch. It is unclear as to which of the four lines (or semi-circles) of navigation has priority, if indeed any. Nor is it clear to me if there is any commonality between items on the same navigation ‘curve’, though the left-hand curve does seem to be for Vatican buildings/Institutions. Some navigation headings are images, which reveal on rollover, some are abbreviations and some are in Latin!

Da Vinci Scrolls

Holy Sepulchre! I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Let’s just say that there’s an Information Architecture job, which could make mapping the human genome look like the vegetarian option.

3. Design and Usability

Inextricably linked and often overlooked; trying to SEO a site with poor usability is a waste of everyone’s time. So what if the search engines can see the content, if the user can’t?

We’re looking for a clear navigation structure, above the fold and with rollover states. Main headings should contain logical sub-headings, and so on to the next level. Calls to action should be consistent and clear, and fonts should be highly legible and 12pt minimum. A site with a lot of content needs a good search facility; and best position for search engagement is top and centre or top right.

Looking at www.vatican.va usability and site’ search box, perhaps the Google ‘domain-restrict’ [site:] under the first listing on the SERP wasn’t just another example of trying to serve as much of the webs’ content on a G SERP as possible?

4. URLs

On the switchboard page, post the language selection page, each navigable element seems to have its own rulebook (or set of commandments’ – *coughs* not funny *coughs*).

We have on the left hand ‘curve’ navigation: (possibly buildings/institutions);

http://asv.vatican.va/home_en.htm

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/

http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MV_Home.html

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions_connected/lev/index.htm

On the inner circle (to the right of His Holiness’ Pope Benedict XVI):

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/index.htm

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/index.htm

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/index.htm

http://www.vatican.va/various/index_it.htm

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/index.htm

http://www.vatican.va/archive/index.htm

Okay, I think I can leave it there and omit the remaining two right-hand navigational ‘curves’. We’re seeing a picture here and it ain’t pretty. We have subdomains and directory styles all sharing the same ‘curve’. We have completely separate domains (vaticanlibrary.va) and we have links to second level folders on apparently top level navigation headings. Quite the mishmash!

Another thing to note: the navigation image and heading is often meaningless, e.g. “various”.

We’re ideally looking for meaningful names for navigation headings, which should correspond with meaningful URLs. (Not exactly, but some consistency and relevancy is required).

URLs of the same type, should be used for sites or sub-folders of the same type. So it is not a problem that they have used sub-domains for the apparent institutions, however, perhaps ensuring all of the Vatican Institutions, have a sub-dom URL and are titled as such would help.

Different URLs such as http://vaticanlibrary.va (and I’m sure there are more) might be more logically housed in footer links to “Other Vatican Websites”.

As for the remainder of the navigation, if a directory/sub-folder style is in play, then consistency in the on- page position of the navigable item and consistency in the level of the corresponding URL would be nice.

5. Links

2,442,479 inbound links shown in (the soon to be missed) siteexplorer; including many authority sites, such as Theopedia (who knew?) Holy links from authority sites! (Literally.) There are some 200,000 internal links looking at the difference in ‘All pages’ and ‘except from this Domain.’

6. Code, Tags, MetaData

I’ve said it before, I’m no technical expert. I’m my company’ founder (I do the invoicing and make good builders tea); however even I can tell this is basic. No code standards compliance such as W3C, there are no header tags, (then again there are not really any headers to tag, but such things could always go on the Da-Vinci scrawls).

When we get to the meta-keywords on the homepage, it’s a good job no search engine is looking at this stuff.

In terms of meta-titles and descriptions, it gets as complicated as the URL structure. I’m coming to the conclusion that each page has been created by a different person or agency, and in different centuries. Sometimes there is metadata, sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes it is multi-lingual, sometimes Latin.

Okay; we’re looking at the website of possibly the largest religious institution in the world, where the domain is the same as the TLD and there are 2MM inbound links. I guess the site has been around since the 80s. Who needs on-page or consistent good-practise in build; or clean code for that matter???

My Final Confession:

Forgive me SEOs (or whatever you’re called now, if you’re following Scobles’ last crusade) for I have sinned. I’ve missed a whole bunch of stuff out, as I can no longer see straight. I’ve not addressed the content, as I have no idea who this site is aimed at; even having spent days looking at it. Ordinarily we would know through customer consultation as to whom the site content is aimed at and be able to identify relevant keywords; assess content organisation, relevancy of keywords within content; plus the flow-thru from section to section. Oh and the error page has been ex-communicated.

If you fancy a grail quest: have a go yourself; though be more patient and noble than I!

(Please bring me an Egg Nog; I am too weak to move. I’m somewhere in Latinitus, Opus Fundatum in Civitae Vaticana. It’s like Tron in here, but with robes.)

Welcome to the latest installment in our SEO 101 series, where we attempt to weed out all the conjecture and give you a very basic understanding of the part of online marketing that we’re most comfortable with…mine being links. Lucky, lucky me. Now, the reason for my choice of paid vs. non-paid links as a subject for 101 is because I think that there’s a huge amount of misinformation about paid links out there, and, being public service-minded (not really), I view it as my goal to explain just what the fuss is all about. After all, if you’re starting to build links, you’re going to soon get into the whole paid vs non-paid debate, right?

Note: We’ve written several good posts about links (how to make irrelevant links relevant, what exactly constitutes a paid link, etc.) and I encourage you to read those, despite any nasty formatting errors.

What IS A Paid Link?

This isn’t as clear-cut as you think. Technically, a paid link is one that has been purchased. However, what about links that are given for some other non-monetary reason that’s really no different? The exchange of goods, for example, is one that’s bandied about as people argue whether that constitutes an actual violation of Google’s guidelines. The FTC has recently cracked down on bloggers who blog about a product without releasing the info that they have, indeed, been paid for it, but currently, that same issue isn’t affecting the buying and selling of actual links themselves.


Who Says Paid Links Are Bad?

What this all boils down to is, once again, Google. As you may or may not know, Google has decided that buying links is not a great idea, and it’s a violation of their webmaster guidelines. Thus, to remain happily in their index, you should not buy links, according to them. You’ll read link builders going on and on about how bad paid links are, but I’d honestly love to know how they’d feel if it didn’t constitute a violation that could get a site thrown out of an index.

How Are Paid Links Detected?

Some of them are just so glaringly obvious that it’s laughable. Some of them are so well-done, there’s honestly no way someone would know that the link was purchased. There are the give-away keywords like “Sponsored Links” or “Advertise Here!” There is my favorite, the link that is so obviously out of place, it’s just stupid. There are footprints, where you can find the same exact text surrounding a link, on 15 sites. Some site owners enjoy hiding paid links in text that matches the color of the background. Clever!! Very, very clever. OK it’s not. It’s not at all clever. If I see a link that’s hidden in that manner, I am immediately suspicious when, many times, I wouldn’t have been before.

Why Would You Buy Links?

If you’re working in an ultra-competitive niche, you honestly may not be able to rank well without buying links. All the competitors are doing it, and even though the “everyone else is doing it” argument isn’t usually one that I enjoy making, in this case…it’s true. As I’ve said before, if anyone IS ranking in the top 3 spots for ultra-competitive terms without buying any links, I’d love to hear about it. If you encounter a lovely site owner who wants to give you a great free link on a high-traffic site, I’d also like to know.

What Are The Alternatives?

Building content that attracts links on its own, using social media, and simply asking for a link in a very, very nice way. While these methods definitely work for the right niche, including some very competitive ones, nothing really seems to convince people better than cash. That’s kind of a sad social commentary all on its own, but hey, we live in a capitalist society don’t we?

What’s a NoFollow?

Nofollow is an HTML attribute that basically tells a search engine not to influence the link target’s Page Rank from that link. Thus, if you nofollow a link, you’re telling the engines that you don’t want that link to pass any link juice. Some people will only give you a nofollowed link, but if your aim is traffic and the link is in a nice spot, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Personally, I have become much less interested in nofollow over the past few months, as we’ve seen that nofollowed links are part of a natural link profile. Technically speaking, if you’re buying a link somewhere and it’s really, really obvious that you’re buying, you may want to ask for a nofollow so that you aren’t violating any engine’s guidelines. Since nofollow could really take all day to discuss, just go search and read about it.

Are Paid Links Right for Everyone?

Absolutely not. They may work for everyone, but that doesn’t mean that you should always buy links. A backlink profile for a non-profit that is full of nothing but crappy sitewide fashion blogroll links is just a waste of time and money and a damn good shot at getting a handreview that knocks you out of Google. Good luck cleaning THAT mess up…

Just as I think that there definitely are some sites that will never move up in the rankings without buying links, I’ve definitely seem enough sites where I think it simply isn’t a good idea for one reason or another. Basically, even though I pretend to be all anti-establishment, when it comes to certain niche industries, buying links is just stupid. This site, for example, has never bought a link and we’ve been able to generate a decent amount of backlinks for our troubles. We may not rank in the top 3 for massively competitive phrases all the time, but we’re doing ok. It just depends on what you want to get out of it, I imagine. We want qualified readers, not loads of people who hit the site and immediately leave.

Are There Some Cases Where You Should Never Buy Links?

Absolutely. In fact, if you would lose your shirt if your site got banned, you might want to steer clear of link buying. However, I’ll tell you that I have worked with clients who would indeed be up the creek without a paddle if they got thrown out of Google for buying links, yet they continue to do so in spite of the risk because their ROI happens to make them skip hand in hand with their bankers down the yellow brick road. That’s also an ethical dilemma for you as a link builder. My theory is that if people are aware of risk and still wish to do something, in this case, I’m ok with it. I don’t equate buying links to butchering babies or committing genocide, so I do tend to save my energy for getting angry at meaningful things, like the cashiers at Marshall’s who only open up another lane once I’ve waited 45 minutes and am next up, the bitches.

What Happens If You Get Caught?

If you get caught, which means that you’re turned in by some nasty horrible troll of a person, you’re hand-reviewed by Google, or something else, then you’ll be tossed out of Google’s index and you have to “clean up” your site before you can be reincluded. That’s a massive pain in the arse. It won’t affect you in the other engines, but if you’re dependent upon Google for the majority of your traffic, you’re fairly well screwed. I’ve spoken to people in this situation and it can take full months to clean things up. This isn’t like the days of cloaked sites where you could say hey Google, I’ve removed those redirects and then you’re back in. This involves going to other people who have linked to you with paid links, and either nofollowing them or removing them altogether.

So there you have it, on a very basic level. Paid links are all about risk versus reward (or just not getting caught) so proceed with caution.

This is the third of the SEO Chicks 101 series that Lisa introduced a couple of weeks ago with her delve into canonicalisation issues. The second post in the series was Nicholas look at data analysis

This post was inspired by Lesley Cutts, owner of one of my favourite sites www.Goodnessdirect.co.uk who posted what I thought was an interesting response to a statement I made on twitter. Now not to make you think I’m disorganised, but I had lost some notes I had made on a keyword strategy for a client (I found them in the end & all was well), and Lesley commented that she wouldn’t know where to begin writing down a keyword strategy, as it seemed like quite an intangible thing.

This got me thinking, as there is a lot of information about how to do keyword research out there, and lots of information on conducting on page optimisation, but really I find there is very little about the middle step, deciding what to do with your keywords once you have them, so I convinced Lesley to be guinea pig case study for this post. Armed with a keyword list for Goodness direct, I’m going to show you how I use that to define how I apply the on page optimisation.

Getting organised

looking at the Goodness Direct site you’ll see that there are lots of categories, which means hundreds of keywords. This can seem quite unmanageable when it comes to optimisation, and deciding what goes where. For me the first step in creating a strategy, is always to create some order. The reason for this is two fold, firstly, it makes the job a hell of a lot less daunting, and secondly, it makes life a lot easier when it comes it grouping for internal optimisation.

To anyone who has ever done large scale PPC campaigns the way to organise keywords will be obvious, you manage your keywords in themed groups. so looking at just one section of the site, supplements, there are categories that we can place the keywords into, just as we catagorise the products

• vitamins
• minerals
• herbal

Those are our categories
form there we group our keywords into groups

• vitamins
  • vitamin c
  • vitamin A
  • Vitamin B
  • etc
• Minerals
  • Iron
  • calcium
  • zinc
  • etc
• Herbal
  • Garlic
  • Ginger
  • Ginko Biloba
  • etc

And in each group we assign the relevant keywords

• vitamins
  • vitamin c
    • daily vitamin c
    • vitamin c supplement
    • vitamin c benefits
    • vitamin c powder
    • pure vitamin c

So now we have a way of managing the huge number of keywords we have for the site, it becomes much easier to determine the strategy of what we are going to do with them.

So where does the strategising start?

The next step is to look at which pages we are going to i for individual keywords, and which pages are going to be the focus. Every product in the range qualifies as a vitamin C supplement, so which page should be optimised for it, do we try and use the term on every page? No. It’s much easier to focus optimisation on key pages, especially when it comes to key terms. For some things there will be a need to optimise one page above all others, for instance product x is a best seller with a huge profit margin, it makes sense that that would be the page you want to optimise for the highest volume term, but if that page is terrible, and another product page has a higher chance of getting positions, you may want to optimise the best page instead, get the quick win that that will afford and look at optimising the high profit product longer term.

Before I start looking at the financial benefits of individual pages or products though, I want to know what Google thinks. So I check which pages already have positions for the keywords (I generally go 3 pages in on a manual search) if the site isn’t ranking for the term, I then use the site operator to look at which pages Google is picking up for the term, for example; site :www.goodnessdirect.co.uk daily vitamin c

These are the results I got;

From the table & links above a few things become clear. First is that Goodness direct is missing out on some very easy wins, simply from having more keywords rich page titles. In the one instance where the keywords are in the title they’re ranking very highly indeed, so adding keywords to their page titles is likely to have a big impact. We have also identified the most relevant pages to do this to for daily vitamin C & vitamin C supplement. However the page identified for vitamin C supplement is the Vitamin C home page, which may not be the page we want to rank for that term long term (although it is likely to be the quickest win).

You’ve probably also noticed that I have highlighted two of the results, this is because the most relevant pages to these terms, and in fact the top 10 most relevant results on site returned by Google, aren’t vitamin C related pages. This highlights the need for additional content to be added to the site to cater to these search terms.
I know at this point you’re thinking “bloody hell Sarah that’s a lot of work to go through just to decide where keywords go” and for some sites it is, but if it can mean the difference between seeing results in a couple of months, and chasing your own tail for years. I do this a lot, and so the information I have provided above took about 10 minutes to produce. Doing this throughout a site will take a few hours, but it will let you identify the quick wins & the long term goals. So bare with me, because there is just a couple more paragraphs and another table before I’m done.

Build your road-map

You now have all of the information you need to actually build your strategy. This can be seen in the table below, which outlines the strategy for the vitamin C pages of Goodness direct. In Excel I can sort this by tasks, position, and a number of other factors to look at how the site is doing at any time, this is also arranged into campaigns & adgroups, to allow me to focus on higher value product groups or specific site areas at any given time.

For me this is a road map to the entire optimisation process. When I’m looking for links, I’m thinking about what page is relevant based on the information here. When I’m thinking about content creation, I’m looking at what gaps there are that my strategy tells me need filling. I use it to look at whether the pages that are ranking are the most effective for that term, or whether I need to start trying to outrank myself with a more relevant page. As with all journeys in life a road map might not be necessary, but setting out without one can cost you dearly both in time & money,  sometimes an extra few hours planning can make all the difference.

There are a number of things that have led me to this post. I first started thinking about it following Judith’s post on SEO Moonlighting, then I had an experience with my pilates instructor and her website, that has my blood boiling still a week later, and finally Judith turned the SEO accreditation strategy session into a blog post which cemented my ideas and suddenly this post came together. I had planned for this to be the third in the SEO chicks 101 series, but this had to be written (in the way that blog posts often do) so I’m afraid you will have to wait until Thursday if you want to learn more about Keyword strategies.

For now let me tell you about my pilates instructor.

For quite some time now I have been moonlighting. Interestingly when I first read Judith’s post on the subject I disagreed, on the basis that many of us have lives outside of SEO and that there are only a limited number of hours in the day. Then after a lot of thought I realised that I managed to combine my moonlighting with other interests by doing SEO for very small business, on a barter basis. In the last couple of years I have worked with Yarn vendors, rat hammock makers, my optician, and now, my pilates instructor. I get free or discounted products and services, they get very cheap, quality SEO. It’s a win win situation. Most of these people would never be able to afford a good SEO, but because I barter they spend £100-£200 and I get products worth £200-£300. Not only that but I get to work on sites where the owner never argues, or tells me that their branding team won’t let me do something essential.

So when Abbie told me that she was leaving the health centre that she had been doing classes at and branching out on her own, I let her know that if she wanted help marketing her site, to give me a call. I also gave her a few hints, like making sure that she was able to edit the site and that there was a CMS in place to let her make the changes she needed to.

Lo and behold last week she called to let me know her new pilates site was liv, I had a look and wrote out some recommendations for the site. We then arranged for me to go round to show her how she could implement them. This was when it all went horribly wrong. The list of things that her web developer had screwed her on was huge, but some of the biggies were;

Not to mention the sexual harassment from someone who just couldn’t accept that he wasn’t getting a date!

Now, in some ways these aren’t the worst things a developer can do, but for someone who has never worked on line before, they are deal breakers. Abbie had been planning to get business cards printed out the following day, and had she not spoken to me would have built her business around a brand she did not own.

I’m working with Abbie to resolve many of these issues, and look at what we can do with the site on an ongoing basis to help make it manageable for her. She doesn’t need monthly ongoing SEO, she needs educating on the little things that she can do to make her site visible, against relatively few competitors.

So what does this have to do with regulation? When Judith was first venting about this on twitter, I pointed out that it wasn’t the medium sized companies who should know better that I got pissed off about, it was the really small, one man bands, without the resources to find out this information. Abbie proved to be the perfect example of this. So I urge everyone, if in any area of your life outside of work, you deal with small businesses or niche vendors, go out of your way to spend an hour or two to educate them, barter for your time if you want, or jut do it for free. Work with your local small business groups to provide some training, even if they’re not your target businesses. Not because it will bring you business in the future (though it might) but because the only way to beat the charlatans in this industry is to educate the people who are most likely to fall victim to them.

P.S. I haven’t named the web developer in question in this post because that wasn’t the point of the post. Abbie and I are giving him time to correct some of his errors before we look at way to take further action.

The seminal meeting of the Search Engine Optimisation Accreditation Strategy Session met upstairs in the Cock Tavern in Fitzrovia on December 8th to attempt to begin the process of establishing standards by which the industry could be held accountable.  This was both to improve the industry as a whole and for brand protection.  SEO as a brand has taken its fair share of knocks, and as an industry which is so young, it is experiencing growing pains of a kind not experienced by another industry for possibly over a century.

Numerous industry professionals crowded around a table and set the world of SEO to rights.  We attempted to hammer out a roadmap towards something which most of the industry would opt in to.  Why do something like this again may be a frequent question.  Unlike the reason the SEMPO representative suggested to me, I was not “stung by a black hatter” but instead at a conference met yet another in a long list (double digits) of people ripped off by a firm/agency claiming to offer SEO.  My impetus was about protecting ‘brand SEO’, something which I think has to be done, but by a neutral 3rd party lest we become the car mechanics of the marketing world.

One of the problems with utilising one of the existing professional bodies, it seemed, was the very nature of the industry.  SEO is more than just a discipline of marketing or an arm of advertising – it is a term representative of a particular skill set which is populated with professionals and amateurs alike.  While exciting and new as only a mixture of technology and marketing can be, it is also populated by a broad spectrum of levels of service.  It is the disparity in the levels of service, expertise, execution and accountability that this session was attempting to address.

The prospect of any sort of badge, qualification or exam is, in some ways anathema to such a new and pioneering industry.  Qualifications, though, may be about to be imposed upon it.  Indeed, the co-chair of SEMPO UK and top bod at iCrossing confirmed just prior to the meeting that the IPA would be releasing a qualification with an exam in February of 2010.  While the attempt to create a minimum basic level to which all within the industry must meet has been tried before, with varying levels of recognition and success, the current environment of social media fuelled communications could help this succeed where others have failed.

A SEMPO rep was invited and while someone was going to attend and chat to me about the IPA and SEMPO work which was going on in the background of this new qualification we’ll be seeing soon.  While the SEMPO rep’s suggestion that we back SEMPO was probably well-intentioned, backing a professional body whose own website had not been updated since 2008 in an industry which often lives and dies by fresh content seemed somehow less than the obvious choice.  It also seemed somewhat presumptuous since no one officially representing the organisation was present thought it was nice they decided to tell me about the IPA exam coming out in 2010 and offer to send me details of the SEMPO/IPA deal.

One suggestion made by Dixon Jones was to have modules related to each discipline.  Individuals taking an accreditation could then take a module, pass an exam and there would be a degree of confidence in the skills and ability of that individual relating to that one facet of SEO.  Someone could therefore take the Google Maps exam or the Google Local exam and while not perhaps always indicative of where the algorithm is at any particular moment, it would give a foundation in the principles underlying the system being learned.

My favourite option was more of a service level guarantee.  I was arguing for something under the IAB which is already neutral and independent where a minimum level of service was guaranteed by anyone who was a member.  This could then be promoted and the IAB would become the independent regulatory body for what is a type of advertising.  Fees would be paid and in return a degree of brand protection and defence would be undertaken within the UK and they could be the go-to place when businesses had questions.  The usual trade body perks could then be utilised and because it was a large, not small body there was the economies of scale.

Freshness of content, relevancy and participation was all spoken about and many ideas about contributing to exams made, including a review panel and some excellent suggestions based around certain sections of CIM.  There was some concern about policing, granting of authority and recognition, barriers to entry and the like.  Nothing is ever going to be perfect but another start has been made.

Sabre-rattling though it may have seemed, it was a rather good excuse to gather together and drink with a theme and as the night wore on, the charitable arm of the session was born – RED(tm) SEO ASS.  For those present at this and future meetings, perhaps a “certified SEO ASS” badge should be created

Of course, these views are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the SEO Chicks.