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Watchdog Group Takes Google to Task in Times Square

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

Consumer Watchdog’s InsideGoogle.com has something to say about Google’s disrespect for people’s privacy and they’re saying it at one of the busiest intersections in the world.

The group has purchased advertising space on a 540 sq ft Jumbotron in Times Square and they’re using it to blast Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. The animated feature is called “Don’t be Evil?” and shows cartoon Schmidt spying on children from the innocent trappings of an ice cream truck.

In a press release, Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog said;

“We’re satirizing Schmidt in the most highly trafficked public square in the nation to make the public aware of how out of touch Schmidt and Google are when it comes to our privacy rights.”

The ad asks people to text the word Evil to 69866 to show their support. I guess “666″ wasn’t available.

“Don’t be evil” is Google’s unofficial corporate motto, but Consumer Watchdog says that Google isn’t doing a good job keeping the mounds of personal data they collect private.

Court says that Schmidt himself is clueless when it comes to privacy and quotes him as saying,

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Then there’s this, from a recent Wall Street Journal interview;

“[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.

“I mean we really have to think about these things as a society,” he adds. “I’m not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things.”

Really? When I started writing about this sign in Times Square I thought it was overkill. Now, I’ve now changed my mind.

John M. Simpson, director of the group’s Inside Google Project, suggests a “Do Not Track Me” list that would keep Google, or anyone from tracking your moves online.

According to a poll conducted on behalf of InsideGoogle.com, 80% of people in the US supported such a list. They also like the idea of an “anonymous button” that allows individuals to stop anyone from tracking their online searches or purchases and a ban on collecting data on minors.

All good ideas, but implementation and enforcement would be very difficult. The trouble is, it’s not just Google who is collecting and / or spreading private data. Schmidt was right about one thing when he mentioned the “youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites,” and then there are the drunken Facebook updates and the obscenity-filled blog post aimed at your ex.

Maybe, before we go throwing stones at Google, we should be looking at how much information we ourselves put online for all to see.

Not passing by Times Square anytime soon? You can watch the ad on YouTube.

Go here to see the original:
Watchdog Group Takes Google to Task in Times Square

Is There Any Room in Retail for the Small Business?

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

At least once a week, my husband laments the loss of a mom & pop record store we had near our home. They carried mostly used albums and rock and roll memorabilia and a visit there was like hunting for treasure on the beach. If we go to eBay, we can find all those same albums and more but it simply isn’t the same as flipping through stacks of worn cardboard and finding a gem you didn’t even know existed.

It’s a sad fact that the small business is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. comScore is reporting that small business is down 5.6% over last year with those dollars going to the big box retailers we drive by every day. Usually we blame it on the economy, but the big boys are seeing a rise in profits, so why aren’t the mom and pop stores seeing it, too?

The National Federation of Small Businesses (NFIB) says that a poor economy forces prices down and small retailers simply can’t afford to take the same cuts as a Walmart or Target. The Gap can put a 50% off deal on Groupon but what’s a pet shop owner in Sheboygan to do?

Since small businesses can’t compete on price point, they need to compete in other ways such as service and community. Cake companies that create one of a kind masterpieces stand head and shoulders over anything you can buy at Costco. I have a clothing store that I return to again and again because the staff there takes the time to help me put together a look and they’re honest about what works and doesn’t. Try getting that kind of service at Walmart.

Creating a sense of community is also important for the small business. Sponsoring a local sports team, donating to local charities, participating in community fairs and events all help sway customers your way. We have a small chocolate shop that offers free candy making classes for kids once a month. The kids may burn through a few dollars in supplies but while they wait, moms consume coffee and snacks at full price.

When it comes to advertising, social media is the great leveler. Twitter and Facebook are virtually free to use and small companies don’t have to worry about jumping through legal hoops before making a statement online. Now that everyone is going “local” with Foursquare and Facebook Places, it’s the perfect time for small businesses to step up and get customers.

Do you have a favorite small business that is no more? Tell us about it.

Excerpt from:
Is There Any Room in Retail for the Small Business?

Win a Free Pass to MN Blogger Conference

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

TopRank Online Marketing is proud to be a founding sponsor of the first Minnesota Blogger Conference. Tickets for this event “sold out” within a few hours and there are over 100 people on the waiting list. Thanks to conference founders Melissa Berggren, Arik Hanson,  Suzi Magill and Katie Schutrop, it’s already one hot event.

The date is Saturday, Sept 11 (the day I fly to Hong Kong) and the location is at CoCo MSP in Saint Paul.  Topics to be presented range from “how to blog” to “how to get your blog published as a book” to “how to make money with a blog” to “blog analytics” to a “business blogging panel” that will include Adam Singer from TopRank Marketing.

If you’d like to attend this networking rich and information packed event, you can’t.  It’s sold out!

However, what you can do is win a free pass from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.

All you have to do is:

• Write a blog post explaining the most important thing you’ve learned from blogging yourself
• Or if you don’t blog yet, one thing you’d like to learn
• Why you should get to attend the MN Blogger Conference
• Use the MN Blogger Conference logo above in your post and also include a link to the page you’re reading right now: http://tprk.us/mnblog

All blog post entries must be published and we must be notified (mnblog at toprank dot org) by Friday 9/3 at noon Central.   Once received, all posts will be linked to from the bottom of this page and the TopRank Online Marketing staff will read the entries and decide the winner.  THE WINNER of a free pass to the sold-out MN Blogger Conference will be announced at 5pm on Friday.

So what are you waiting for? Get started now on a compelling, creative and persuasive blog post that explains why you should be the winner of a very rare MN Blogger Conference pass.

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Don’t Let Good Content Die - 4 Ways to Keep It Alive

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, searchengineguide

by Stoney deGeyter

Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don’t, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced.

There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it’s old.

Keep content up to date

Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust.

Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, reviewing all your editorial content and brushing it up to keep it current is an important item to put on your task list.

Redirect deleted pages

Pages on websites often get moved or deleted over time. Perhaps you are restructuring your information architecture, removing services that you no longer offer, or deleting tutorials that have become obsolete. Just because this content is considered old, doesn’t mean that it can’t still work for you.

Simply adding “301 redirects” or a building a custom “404″ page can capture that traffic and send them to other areas of your site. This allows them to stick around long enough to see if you still have something that will meet their needs, even though you no longer have exactly what they want.

Adding redirects allows you to keep visitors on your site if they have arrived, say, from a bookmarked page or an old page in the search results. Instead of losing those visitors, this gives you the opportunity to keep them engaged with your site, with the possibility of attracting them to your other excellent content.

Repurpose old content

Blogs are a great place to re-purpose old content and provide an updated spin on it. If you’re running out of ideas for what to publish on your blog, you can go back several years in your archive and find old topics and discussions for which you can provide a new take.

Blog back history can give you a wealth of topics that you can pull from to create fresh, new content for your readers.

Another way to re-purpose old content is by removing excessive content from your site and moving it over to your blog. This can be necessary after years of site content build-up. This happens when you keep adding content to your site and it becomes so bloated that your readers end up spending too much time working through your site instead of being moved through the conversion process.

A couple months back, I worked on the Information Architecture for a client, and they had this very problem. We were able to take dozens of pages of content and move it off of their main site onto their blog. The content was good, but it was excessive. This hindered the conversion process, making the site both convoluted and confusing at the same time. By moving this stuff to the blog, the main site was better able to do the job of selling and the blog became the avenue of informing readers.

Link to historical pages

Content, especially blog content, often gets buried after months and years of time passing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the content isn’t valuable or even needs to be re-written.

What you can do is write new content that links to this valuable content that was written long ago. You’re giving your readers something fresh, while linking to something historical, that you can use to make your point or provide more detailed information for the reader to peruse at their leisure.

Take advantage of any area of content that allows you to link to another page that provides more information. The web isn’t a brochure, it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. That historical content can be a goldmine of information, provided you’re giving your new readers a way to access it.

Good content never has to die. If you’re treating it right, it never will. New people are coming to your site every day. These people have not had the benefit of reading all your past or historical stuff. No need to let it go to waste. Instead, keep it alive… and keep it working for you.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Originally posted here:
Don’t Let Good Content Die - 4 Ways to Keep It Alive

Is BP Just Trying To Buy Its Reputation Back With Advertising?

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, Object, book, marketing

Because it is our nature to do such things, most of the world has moved on from the anger or whatever was experienced during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico. There are still pockets of activism but the mainstream has started to flush that story out of its faulty and extremely short-termed memory and is moving on to something that is deemed more current and important like maybe politics (Oh, please God help us!).

In the wake of this waning uproar it looks like BP is working hard to put its reputation back together and a big part of that is the amount of advertising spend they have put into the stream.

The Wall Street Journal reports

BP PLC spent more than $93 million on newspaper advertisements and TV spots in the weeks following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, paying out three times as much money on ads as it did during the same time last year, according to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee.

BP also expanded the scope of its marketing efforts in newspapers during that time, running ads in 17 states—including Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi—up from just two states last year.

Of course, these activities have gained the attention of headline grabbing politicians who need some press leading up to the November showdown. Regardless of why, this kind of ‘marketing’ is part of the new normal course of action in how to repair a broken reputation that may not have much left in the tank (pun intended). So what is all this ad spend really for?

“Our objective has been to create informational advertising to assure people that we will meet our commitments and tell them how they can get help—especially claims,” said BP spokesman Scott Dean. “It is an important tool to help us be transparent about what we are doing.”

Not everyone is buying that explanation though.

Some lawmakers, however, are more suspicious of BP’s motives. Florida Democrat Kathy Castor, for example, was among the first representatives to take an interest in BP’s ad spending and believes the company is merely trying to burnish its image.

“She has been concerned by all the advertising showing BP polishing its corporate image,” said a spokeswoman for Ms. Castor.

Here’s my question. Because of the moral uproar that all of this mess caused and the hyper sensitivity of people in general when there is a ’cause du jour’, coupled with the new activism (I “Liked” it on Facebook so I participated! Yeah!), should there be any concern about who is taking the advertising money that is being spent to repair the damage?

I am not trying to create something out of nothing. I think it is a reasonable question to ask what outlets are taking this BP money gladly and not caring that it could be aiding and abetting the very ‘criminal’ it was trying to hang just a few short months ago.

I hope we are paying attention here. With the “if it bleeds it leads” mentality that the press takes there is a business reason for it. It sells ads. The news is the means to an end. The end being revenue in a time where it has been tougher to come by than maybe ever in history.

This unnatural and unseemly relationship between those who pay for advertising and those who have decided that human misery is always the lead story is heading in a new direction. Could it be that the media is just fine with feeding their revenue streams from diametrically opposed ends of the same issue?

The company that one day creates news by trashing the Gulf is the same company that is shelling out dollars to make reputation related amends. All that money all ends up with the same media that is supposedly reporting it (not benefiting from it). If that’s not a system that is designed to be abused and bled dry every day then there never will be one.

Maybe there is no sense in questioning this because I bet dollars to donuts that not one of the media outlets will turn down BP advertising money that is designed to make the company whole after it was torn to shreds by these very same people who ‘report’ the news (without any bias Ha!).

This dysfunctional yet symbiotic relationship is something that may be a dilemma for some marketers. Maybe not. So what’s your take? Mountain out of a molehill? Is this really as broken as it looks? As marketers, is there a moral side of our actions or are we just to do whatever it takes to make the bottom line sing? Any thoughts on this one?

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Is BP Just Trying To Buy Its Reputation Back With Advertising?

Ping: Another Social Network …. Woo-Hoo!

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced Apple’s foray into the world of social networks with the iTunes centric Ping service. Maybe I am experiencing some social network fatigue, but despite this probably being a good idea, I am not sure just how people will jump in even if the “water is fine”.

The picture below hits the highlights of the service in that now familiar Apple announcement / press event look.

TechCrunch reports

It’s like “Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes,” Jobs says. “But it’s not Facebook, it’s not Twitter,” Jobs is quick to note — “it’s a social network all about music.” And guess what? It has 160 million users in 23 countries built in right away (Apple will presumably be opening it up to other iTunes users later). And it’s available on your iPhone and iPod touch — right in the iTunes Store.

Jobs notes that this feature is all about discovery. You can follow both artists and your friends. And you can be followed. With it, you get custom song and album charts to discover new music. And you can post your thoughts and opinions about your favorite music. Plus, there are 17,000 concert listing in the network.

If Ping gets any real traction this will possibly be the death blow for MySpace who has tried to claim the music space social network thing for a while now. Honestly, though, any prognostications about this service are really kind of silly. This is Apple after all and right now they appear to have the ‘Midas touch’ and considering how passionate people get about music there could be something here.

On a complete side note, I wonder how the makers of ping golf clubs feel today? Is there some way to leverage the fact that their brand name just got more popular than ever in an area that has nothing to do with their product?

Let’s take an informal MP poll. Are you going to jump into Ping with both feet? Would you consider yourself curious, indifferent or chomping at the bit? Ping us and let us know your thoughts.

Read the rest here:
Ping: Another Social Network …. Woo-Hoo!

Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

Aaron Goldman is an accomplished digital marketer that I know through MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit conference. He reached out to me while writing his new book, “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google”, and asked if I’d like to contribute. Such a request is a great honor to me but unfortunately, I never did end up sending anything to Aaron even though he was incredibly patient and went out of his way to make it easy.

I know what you’re thinking: Smart AND nice guy? Yes indeed, that’s Aaron and now he’s on a blog tour to promote his new book, graciously stopping by Online Marketing Blog with a video recognizing how TopRank Online Marketing “Acts Like Content” (Chapter 7) as well as offering insights from the book on the value of content for marketing. Overall, the book offers 20 lessons “straight from Google’s playbook” that I think you’ll get a lot of value from. Check out the video:

Aaron also talks about a blog post by TopRank’s Adam Singer, 10 Keys to Content Marketing, that offers specific tips and guidelines on how marketers can make their brands memorable.  He finishes up with a freestyle rap that you’ve got to hear. Well done Aaron and thanks for the TopRank Marketing love.

Be sure to check out the Googley Lessons site and blog tour page to see where Aaron is going to show up next. You can check out his book at Amazon and anywhere else great marketing books are sold.

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Yes, Virginia, There Are Men Using Facebook

Written on September 1, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

Texting may be the most popular mode of communication between men, but for men under forty, Facebook beats out phone, Twitter and even email.

The result comes from “The Great Male Survey,” a study conducted by Ipsos OTX for AskMen.com. eMarketer boiled the responses down into a nice chart that shows Facebook gaining on texting as you move from young teens up to the 20 somethings. By thirty, Facebook becomes just as important as texting and incredibly, that old fashioned thing called the telephone becomes an even more important tool for communication. Imagine that.

Even though most of the men in the survey didn’t choose Facebook as their main means of communication, an average of 69% of all the men who responded said they do log on to the site regularly. The 20-24 age range comes in on top with 78% of men using Facebook and as you can imagine, it drops off dramatically after 50.

What is surprising is the fact that Twitter barely makes it on to the grid with only 8.5% of the men surveyed saying they use it regularly. 60% said they found it useless.

Once again, these stats prove that I hang around with a weird crowd since I have a large number of men associated with my Twitter account. I imagine it’s because I deal with people in the marketing, online and entertainment business, all of which are heavy on the Y chromosomes.

As for Facebook, my numbers do match up. I follow a large number of men, but rarely do they use the site to send me an email or even comment. My girlfriends, on the other hand, do both with alarming frequency. And all of those Facebook game updates come from the women I follow and that alone is good reason to cut them off in favor of more men.

The bottom line? The men are out there, so keep that in mind when you set up your new Facebook campaign. They may not respond to your fun, daily trivia question, but they are out there reading what you have to say.

Original post:
Yes, Virginia, There Are Men Using Facebook

How To Write Good

Written on September 1, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, seo

Yes, deliberate mistake

It grates when people write poorly, huh. When writers write well, the words almost become invisible. The focus shifts away from technical details, and onto the message.

Is there an easy way to write better blog posts? E-mails? Web copy?
Let’s take a look at three guidelines for web writing.

1. If You Can Say It, You Can Write It

The Dilbert Mission Statement Generator - sadly now offline - comes up with convoluted gems this:

“Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance based infrastructures”

Satire, one would hope.

However, the US Air Force uses the following mission statement:

“The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests - to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace”

“Deliver sovereign options”?

Who talks like this? Well, apart from the US military.

Nobody.

Good web writing is the same as good spoken language. Use short sentences, short words, simple structures and a natural, predictable flow of ideas. Avoid waffle, hyperbole and words that hide meaning. Whenever you finish a piece of writing, read it aloud. Cut or rephrase phrases that sound clunky, because they’ll read clunky, too.

Your writing will sound warm and human.

The human voice is especially important online. Communicating at a distance, particularly two-way communication, is relatively new to humans. To help people connect with one another more easily, it pays to write in a warm, conversational style that mimics personal conversation when conducted in close, physical proximity.

When you think about how you would say something, especially to a specific person, you choose words, expressions and structures based on that personal context. Try to imagine that person in front of you as your write.

This approach works well for all applications - from formal legal sites, to personal sites.

2. Planning

Planning what you’re going to say helps you to complete any writing task more quickly and easily.

• 1. Identify and list your goals. What is the message? What is the desired action you want your reader to take? What is the key thought you want your reader to take away?

  For example, a goal list might look like this:

  *inform people the last project went well, even though there were problems
  *highlight the good aspects about the project
  *highlight the problems
  *present ideas on how these problems can be overcome in the next project
  *get everyone revved up and excited about the next project

• 2. Think about the audience. Who is your audience? What do you know about the person or group?
• 3. Determine the right tone and format based on answers 1& 2
• 4. Write quickly. Don’t edit, even if your writing is a mess. Separate out your writing and editing functions.
• 5. Draw a solid conclusion. Calls to action work well.
• 6. Read aloud what you’ve written. Cut, fix and tighten. Writing comes alive in the rewrite.

Solid blog posts sound spontaneous, but they’re not. They’re often structured, worked and reworked.

3. Hyperbole Doesn’t Work On The Web

Hyperbole means extreme exaggeration. i.e. “All the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten this little hand”. Web readers tend to gloss over the flowery and the convoluted.

On the web, people scan, so the shape of your writing - how it appears on the page - can be just as important as what you say. So think about the shape and form of your writing. Can you use bullets, headings and images to break up large blocks of text? Sometimes, the best thing to do is not write at all. Can an image convey your message? If so, use it.

Also consider context. When visitors arrive on a page, a page deep within your site, do they know what your site is about from glancing at that one page? If not, consider using chunks of content to provide context. These chunks of information can be repeated on every page of your site, and should be self explanatory. Think directory entry. Your repeat visitors will become blind to it, but your first time readers will appreciate it.

We could go on all day about web writing. However, we’d like to hear your tips. How do you approach writing on your site? Do you plan? Do you wing it? What style of writing gets the best results?

The rest is here:
How To Write Good

The Real Cost of Buying Links for SEO: $4 Million

Written on September 1, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing, seo

I was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales.  Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.

I’m not sure I buy the “social media has turned things around” story exactly, but I do wonder how many companies and consultants roll the dice and take shortcuts and loopholes to get ahead only to find out later it’s worthless? The notion of paid links is an old story (Paid Links Evil? Dec 2005) but many of the tactics used to shortcut results for SEO will always be a fresh topic of discussion.

It turns out the retailer in the Inc. story was doing SEO internally then hired two SEO companies to help out. The story goes on to say that a SEO company was to “reach out to relevant sites and ask them for links. Instead, one of the companies admitted it was paying for links.”  That’s worded in a way that makes you think maybe the retailer didn’t know the SEO company was buying links.

We don’t buy links at TopRank Marketing.

We never have. Not ever in 10 years of being in the search marketing business. As far as the retailer in the Inc. article, it’s surprising because buying links isn’t cheap.  If a company didn’t know the SEO consultant was buying links, it’s peculiar any way you look at it. Where did the money come from to buy the links? How did the SEO company not report what it was doing? How did the company owner not know what the SEO company was doing?

I polled followers of @leeodden on Twitter whether they or someone they knew knew had ever been penalized for buying links. Almost all of them said yes. When I’ve mentioned that we never buy links to other search marketers, the disbelief was like I told them I didn’t need to breathe air.

The point of relating this story to you isn’t so much about the risks and rewards of paid links, defining exactly what “paid means” (what about a 3 way barter?) or even judging those that sell and buy links. The point is that the online retailer in the story says social media tactics were largely ignored and now they’re committed to blogging, Tweeting and being active on Facebook. He claims all is now well in their SEO world. “We’re back on top.”

The point:  Why didn’t the online retailer commit to a better online marketing strategy in the first place?

It’s been promoted for years that paid links can carry consequences.  People like Google’s Anti-Spam Czar Matt Cutts make their perspective clear and make it easy to report paid links. Right or wrong, it’s the way search engines want to play.  Obviously, paid links with the right anchor text from very authoritative and relevant websites have a positive impact, or SEOs and website owners wouldn’t participate.  It’s important to note that Google doesn’t have a problem with paid links per se, but with paid links that pass PageRank.

The question I have for companies that rely too much on shortcuts and loopholes is, “Why not suspend the “free money now” attitude and invest in a smart and competitive online marketing program that can get results AND stand the test of scrutiny?”  Won’t a customer focused marketing effort that provides optimized and linkable content to a growing social network earn more links, more traffic and more revenue anyway?

I don’t think there’s much reason to put your brand and revenue at risk if you have a long term view of how the search and social web works. The investment in understanding and engaging customers plus the staff, software and time to implement content, analyze performance data and ongoing content marketing is well worth the cost and there’s virtually no risk.

“Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight”

Years ago at a search conference discussion about black hat and white hat tactics, Tim Mayer, ex head of Search at Yahoo! made the comment “”If you’re being entirely organic and going after ‘Viagra,’ it’s like taking a sword to a gunfight. You just aren’t going to rank” when discussing acceptable tactics in really aggressive industries like “PPC” (pills pron casino).

The temptation and pressures to profitability are great in industries that are flush with heavily optimized and marketed web sites.  However, most companies don’t fall in that category and I think smarter and more creative marketing can still win for the vast majority of websites, especially in the long run. We’ve seen it happen with our own clients nearly 10 years.

Why rent when you can own?

The reason I’ve never participated in link purchases or endorsed the practice isn’t as much about Google’s rules on paid links that pass PageRank. It’s because I could never understand why anyone would “buy” something with such risk associated with it when they could “earn it and own it”?   With roots in Public Relations, our online marketing agency has been accustomed to earning media placements and often times highly desirable links since we started the business in 2001. It can take more time to see aggressive results, but when you focus on making creative content and doing the hard work of promotion to earn traffic and links, the cost is one of investment vs. the often higher cost of advertising with no equity in what you’ve purchased. Then there’s the cost if the links are devalued by the search engines and subsequent lost revenue. I’d rather build, promote and earn those links that will be in place indefinitely.

Using that strategy, Online Marketing Blog has accumulated a substantial number and quality of links (according to Majestic SEO). The devil is in the details with this sort of thing of course, since it matters very much what the topic, anchor text and PageRank are of the link sources. But suffice it to say, we experience very good results in each of those areas as evidenced by over 21,000 different keyword phrases that sent organic traffic each month and top visibility for important and challenging keyword queries.

What’s your experience with managing risk with SEO tactics? Have you experienced what the online retailer above went through and focused anew on a sustainable and longer term online marketing strategy?

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