Social Media Links On The Brink Of Extinction?

Lisa Barone
Lisa Barone
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Posted On:
January 5, 2009
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I think I’m missing something€¦

Right before the New Year, Michael Gray asked if social media links were on death row, citing Google’s SEO guide (pdf) which includes a line about not “involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services.” He comments that Google was once all about social media sites like Digg and didn’t realize that people would sell their first born for votes. Now that they are, they’re tweaking their stance.  Is a “report social media spam” call-to-action about to be added to the Google Guidelines?

If there is, it’s your fault. You helped put it there.

When I first read Michael’s post, I rolled my eyes and moved on. Seriously. What the heck did you think was going to happen once social media manipulation became commonplace?

The circle of life here in SEO looks something like this:

  • New ranking factors are created.
  • SEOs manipulate them.
  • The weight given to those factors is reduced.
  • We find something else to manipulate.

If Google felt the need to add a disclaimer to its Guidelines about not “artificially” promoting your stories, we did that. We need a time out.  Not Google.

Have you been present the past two years? We have search marketers creating fake avatars. Speakers on panels giving the audience tips for how to “beat” social media and manipulate it for their own gain. We have incestuous, circle-jerk voting armies. We have marketers paying kids in electronics to Digg stories. People creating dummy accounts to push worthless content.

What did you think Google was going to do? What else can they do?

I don’t even understand why this got attention. It’s like paid links all over again. Google was in favor of social media because they thought it was a natural way for the good stuff to rise to the top and that the bad stuff would fall away. It was our new toy. Then Google realized we were popping the head off and choking on it. Damn straight they’re going to put a warning label on it.

And that’s all they’ve really done. Social media is still listed as a recommended tactic. They’re just asking you to not be a jerk about it.

Once upon a time, social media meant something. Getting a story to go hot meant that the community read the story and voted it to be there.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that today. Today social media is about profit. It’s gamed. It’s where marketers went when they realized they couldn’t buy links anymore.

Google’s watching it. However, if you can get your story promoted without using these means €“ Google’s watching that, too. And if you can, you’re going to be rewarded for it.

You want to do yourself a favor?

Stay away from the quick fixes. The paid links, the gaming social media attempts, and anything else that you know in your gut isn’t smart to be doing for a client or yourself.  If you don’t manipulate the system and you use techniques they way they were designed to be used €“ you should be okay.

And if Google does create a €˜report social media spam’ section in its Guidelines. Do everyone a favor and don’t use it. It’s not cool to rat out your own. Even if they maybe deserve it.

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A Site without Linkability is a Site Destined for Failure

Jim Boykin
Jim Boykin
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Posted On:
December 9, 2008
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Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working on new reports with analysis and recommendations for our clients. One report that all our clients are getting is the “Content Analysis Report.”

This particular report is essential to everyone. A link building campaign will run out of steam quickly if there’s not much of a reason for anyone to link to your site.

The most successful link campaigns are going to be the ones where the sites have pages of valuable content and resources. If you’re going to earn links by telling other webmasters that adding your link will be valuable to their users, then you have to have something to promote of value.

Sometimes it’s like doing a press release. “Hey, have you seen this? ….. If you added it to http://www.example.com…, it would really add value to your page”. What our link marketers are working on is putting the right resources under the right noses to get the recognition these resources deserve. There are many other methods of getting links besides this one, but if you want to earn permanent links by telling people to “Check out this Great Resource”, you’d better have a great resource. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time in pursuit of permanent links.

In our Content Analysis Reports, we first need to assess your site’s current “linkability.” (Definition: Linkability – The ability for your site to get links from other sites based on the merit or value that linking to your site brings to the other sites’ users.) Then we look at the linkability of your competitors and make recommendations about what your site should do to enhance its linkability. Not only do we make the recommendations, but we can perform most of those services to follow through on our recommendations.

Here are the 5 main points we analyze and recommend in our Content Analysis Report:

  1. We list techniques that we can utilize to get the site links to the home page as it stands today.
  2. We dig deep into the site to find other specific pages/tools/promotions/etc that can attract natural links, and list those.
  3. We identify 10-20 competitors. We analyze those sites to see why others are linking to them, ignoring paid links – what content/resources/tools/features/etc do they have that attracts natural links – so that we can list the best ideas of what the competitors are doing, and suggest how we can do them better.
  4. We include some overall keyword reports to show what’s being searched in the industry to see where additional resources can be added..
  5. We work through a system of analysis to provide lists of articles and resources that should be added so that the site continues to work toward becoming the authority in its industry.

We have many other reports that look at many, many other Internet online marketing aspects, but a site without linkability is a site destined for failure.

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A Farewell to Selling Links

Lauren
Lauren
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Posted On:
November 25, 2008
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I loved getting up in the morning and picking out my all-black outfit, slithering out the door unnoticed and popping up in front of my glowing computer screen. The soft glow was always so comforting, always calling, always calming. It got to be that any light that wasn’t created from phosphors was too intense for my cryptic eyes.

I was a ninja…a real life ninja. A occupation that when you are a child is right up there with being a cowboy, mermaid or a princess. I admit, I had originally wanted to be a princess, but being a ninja is pretty awesome, too. I imagined myself as a cool “Angelina Jolie-type” ninja. Sexy, seductive and completely convincing. “You want a link? You got it sweetheart!”

Now…I know what your saying, “whoring yourself out for links is not classy, tisk tisk!” But hey, sex sells! (How do you get your .edus?) And besides, that is just one trick up my sleeve because, you see, when you are a ninja you get to talk in many languages and wear many different hats. Its fun and its the closest thing to acting I will ever get, which was was my second choice in case the princess gig fell through.

After I took my ninja vows I was given a white belt and sent to my sensei. I practiced in the holiest temple and learned from only the best. I worked my way up through the ranks until I had the coveted black belt, a privilege that only the savviest ninjas could achieve. It was cut throat the first few months. I spent hours in training meditation and shadowed the master sensei with deep determination. My work paid off and I became a true link Ninja. Rand Fishkin said it the best, “A true link ninja is so invaluable as to virtually name their price – the return on investment makes it worthwhile.”

These were the words we lived by.

I had ninja eyes and told ninja lies. I could tell in a split second if a site was worthy enough for my link, while catching flies in mid-air with my bare hands. My mind was as sharp as a death star and I could give every excuse as to why my link had to be on that page, in that sentence, with that exact wording. I told stories so great that webmasters just could not resist. Some days I was a college kid, some days a biking enthusiast, some days a married mother of four and some days even a grandparent. I formed awkward friendships during these quick business exchanges, some of which carried on for months. I would receive random emails saying something like, “Just wanted to let you know I added some more pages to the site, wondering if you’d like any more ads? By the way, how’s your team doing? Did you end up making the finals?” I had to trek back through these long elaborate emails to remember what ads I had posted and which hat I was wearing that day. It was fun, though, and never stopped being exciting.

It became my everyday; a rush to place the meatiest, most creative, juicy ads I could. People would ask all the time about my occupation and at first I just said,”I work in Internet marketing”, which was always followed by, “So you answer phones all day?”. Once that got to be insulting, I started saying, “I am an SEO specialist”. However, that was a slight fabrication but it was also OK because no one ever knew what an “SEO” was anyway. Then, one glorious day, someone asked, “and what do you do for work?” to which I replied, “I am a ninja…” which was followed by a, “wow…that’s awesome”. No questions asked. It was fantastic.

Our clients soared and applauded our ninja skills and asked us for our secrets. They didn’t realize that ninjas are sworn to secrecy, and that we bare the burden of holding life-long classified and unpublished knowledge right next to our ninja hearts.

Our ninja hearts that broke into pieces the day we heard we could no longer do what we were doing. Yes, I will miss some of my ninja tactics like hiding out in secret nooks and cloaking myself from those pesky Google spiders. It was always adventurous, always rewarding and always dangerous for one slight misstep could be tragic, ranking right up there with death.

However, don’t think you have seen the last of us, for ninjas are like cockroaches chameleons. We are mysterious, changeable beings, capable of adapting to any new surroundings. We are taught by those who are held in the highest regard as masters of their craft. We may have been knocked to the ground but we have already sprung up on our nimble feet, brushed off our dirty hats and we are ready to take on the rest of the world again.

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Jim Boykin: Paid Links Aren’t Worth It To Me

Jim Boykin
Jim Boykin
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Posted On:
November 21, 2008
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Two days ago Matt Cutts said, “The reality is that accepting money to link to/promote/market for a product without disclosing that fact is a very high-risk behavior, in my opinion.”

And I believe him€¦.big time€¦.I can tell you from first hand experience that buying links can be a “high-risk behavior”, and it can have very strong consequences.

In the past I always felt I was one step ahead of Google….for years I’ve tried to “be one” with my vision of the Google Gods, thinking that I was always one step ahead of Matt because my links were “under the radar”.

Years ago I used to worry about Google finding my links through connections in their algorithms… today, I’d worry more about my competitors “turning me in” to Google.  Even a Ninja-obfuscated paid link had better pass the review of all your competitors, otherwise, you could be put above the radar and possibly penalized by Google…. one wrong move today, or a technique used today and caught in the future, could spell your downfall tomorrow. I remember once Matt asking at a conference if anyone in the audience was working with sites that they could afford to burn….not many hands went up…and I can’t think of any of my clients handing us a site that they can afford to burn either.

So, the best thing for my company to do, if we want to stay out of the fire, is to make sure that We Build Pages adheres to the Google Guidelines, and that means we won’t be getting any more paid links for manipulating search engines.

On top of that, we’re also doing a major audit of our clients’ paid links (some we got, some the client/others got [done to client specifications, but any we feel could be construed as paid...now or later, we're suggesting be nofollowed or removed]), and we’re sending emails out to lots of places that are linking to our clients based on the data we’ve collected from our own audits, and from the clients data, seeking to have these links either nofollowed or removed.

It actually feels great to be following Google’s Guidelines. Any fears I once may have felt for Google, are now gone with my outlook on the future.  I can now bring We Build Pages to the level where I don’t have to worry about Google looking into anything I’m doing, and being upset…because I’m playing by Google’s rules now.

Oh, we’re still building links…that’s still the cornerstone of our business right now….we’re just not paying for any of them and are working on several techniques for getting links without even having to ask (create great content and they will link), as well as putting great resources in place to help people find out about this content.

The We Build Pages team has embraced this change and I have been lucky to have the right people, in the right positions, at the right time for this adjustment in our link building strategies. This can be evidenced by how many ninjas put in grueling hours over the past couple of weeks. It’s midnight on a Friday and four of us are still here getting the job done and done well!

We’re more than links though…oh, so much more. Why do you think I hired Patrick Sexton, the Google guideline guru and best Google gadget developer that I knew of? And Rhea Drysdale,  the person who I felt had the perfect balance between SEO and SEM skills? Or Lisa Barone, my favorite SEO blogger who can also assist our clients with community building? Or QualityGal, who brings the quality rater eyes to everything we publish….not to mention a team filled with all-stars in my eyes.

A few weeks ago we announced that we’re going through major changes at We Build Pages with our services, and today I’m happy to announce that We Build Pages has stopped buying links that are not within the Google Guidelines and are doing an audit, as well.

I plan to make We Build Pages the ultimate Internet Marketing company, and I don’t want to risk my business’ future by buying links…and if you’re worried about your site’s future, and you’re buying links, you might want to think twice. Buying links passed the tipping point long ago… you must get over it, and evolve, or be ready to face what might be coming your way.

I’m Feeling Lucky,
Jim Boykin

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Being an Effective SEO Within Your Organization

Lisa Barone
Lisa Barone
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Posted On:
November 11, 2008
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As I’ve Twittered already, I’m giving up my outlet space so that I can actually see the projector and stare at the dreamy speakers. I haven’t discussed this decision with my laptop yet but I’m pretending I’m in charge.

Up this morning we’ve got a panel of total awesome: Jessica Bowman, Scott Polk, Aaron Shear, Tony Adam and Alex Schultz. Lou Ragg is moderating and with both Scott and Tony on the panel, I don’t know which one to make fun of first. Okay, that’s a lie. The answer to that question is always Scott.  Scott loves me.

Tony Adam is up first. He says he’s all about shameless self promotion. Yup.

How do you start being effective?

  • Get an understanding of the people you with and interact with.
  • Find out who the business stakeholders are in your organization.
  • Know what projects are going on and if there is any opportunity to create SEO projects.

It is extremely important to know the company culture. You want to know how the organization moves. Is it quick or is it slow? At Yahoo, they’re slow.  What are the personality types? How do you interact with them? Who can you talk to push your agenda? Be patient and grow a thick skin.

Build Relationships and Partnerships: Create relationship with the right people. Partner horizontally with anyone and everyone. Make friends. Tony says he loves making friends and I almost spit out my water. He’s such a dork. He also says to take people out to dinner. Get drunk with them and have “dates”. [Work dates. Don't take your coworkers.]

Be Everywhere and Get Integrated: Integrate into Processes: planning and strategy, design and development, QA, go to market. Lead and Review meetings are very important.

Set and Manage Expectations: What do you plan on achieving and can it be quantified? When are you planning on getting it done? Be clear about the expectations. Pick your battles wisely.

Creating SEO Guidelines: Build SEO guidelines into product development. Put them in Content & Copy, User Experience & Design, Engineering, etc.

Reach Out To Everyone: Train the entire organization on SEO. Push your SEO knowledge through internal blogs, internal wikis and newsletters. Set up office hours.

Be Passionate and Evangelize SEO: Be passionate, bring tons of energy and get people excited about SEO. Get SEO into every conversation possible. Find people that will be your Mini SEO Evangelists (do they have to be little people?). Talk about success stories.

Tony Adam is a total dork. That’s all. :)

Scott Polk is next. He shows us his last slide and then the screen goes black. We all clap. Hee!

Apparently he’s not really done.

Why Evangelize SEO?

SEO can be effected by your entire organization: By the executive level, copywriting teams, technical people, creative, HTML, etc. SEO requires training. That means education, transparency and feedback.

SEO also requires: beer, relationships and more beer. Eat, drink and be merry with everyone in the company. SEO is so on the outside of the normal product life cycle that you need to get yourself integrated.

Evangelism inhouse is the most important thing you can do. It will make your job a whole lot easier.  And that concludes Scott’s six slides. Nice.

Jessica Bowman is up next.

Jessica says that Tony and Scott are right. Beer and coffee work when trying to get people on board. Is that really today’s takeaway? Get people drunk? I guess it is Pubcon…

When it comes down to being an effective SEO, you really have to constantly investigate how the company works and then act on that knowledge. There’s an intake process that you have to go through.  Every time you turn around, you’ll learn something new — new documentation, a new thing someone created, a new step, an extra meeting, etc.  This is important even for small companies.

Investigation Process

You need to know what’s happening, what are the agendas and what is the development life cycle?

What’s Happening…The Politics: Understand what’s going on in the organization. The stress indicators, pressures, sensitive areas, politics. Look at both the business and the personal. You learn this by asking questions and just listening to what’s going on. This will tell you when to pitch and when not to pitch.

What’s Happening…The Site: Know the changes happening on the site at any given time and what’s coming up.

Learn the Different Agendas: Find out what makes each person tick. What are their agendas and goals? Let people come up with the idea that you were already thinking of. Lead them into the right direction until they said what you wanted them to. You know, like in marriage! :)

Learn the Development Life Cycle: What are people doing? How are they doing it? What are they passing across departments? What documents are they creating?  What standards and guidelines are being used? Get your SEO standards into the most current guidelines.

She gives us an example of what the typical development life cycle looks like.

Often, the SEO person isn’t high on the organizational chart.  You want to be managing upward. And one time investigation doesn’t cut it. It once took her two years to figure out the development life cycle.

Please say hi to Alex Schultz. He’s next.

Alignment: What is the number one priority for your organization? At his organization (Facebook), it’s growth. Work out what is the key thing that your organization needs to do and throw out everything else.

Measurability: Most companies don’t appreciate the value of SEO. Make sure everything you do is measurable to show the true value of SEO. That’s what will get you your momentum.

Get Results: Facebook did not believe in Internet marketing when he joined the company. They didn’t invest any money into it.  He showed a few engineers how SEO was aligned to what the company was trying to do. They made a simple change, which got them instant results. It showed the engineers how SEO could be valuable to the organization. It builds credibility and momentum.

Double Down: You’ve got a result. You can now present a big PowerPoint slide and convince them that SEO has value OR you can go out and get the second result and actually use the momentum. If you can’t use your momentum, you need to quit your job. Heh, harsh.

Share: Present your work, put that PowerPoint out there, and prove that the work you’ve done has driven value to your company.

Aaron Shear is going to bring it home, which is good because I have a rumbling tummy. I wonder what’s for lunch? Maybe there are cupcakes? Mmm, frosting.

How To Get Hired

Learn how to sell*: He says he can’t tell you how important it is to be able to sell yourself and your ideas. Have an appropriate experience — an analyst or an accountant doesn’t cut i. If you cannot speak as an authority you wll no get anywhere. Speak as if you know what you are talking about, but do not BS your way through the ranks, any decent exec can spot that.

*[I originally thought he said "spell", not sell. I'd like to advocate that people also learn how to spell. Thank you.]

Train – Train- Train: Nothing is more important than training. If the supporting office staff does not understand how and why SEO works, it will never be sold up the executive ladder. You should have a “director” level and or higher responsibilities or everyone will just ignore you.

Train Again: You have to keep training people and keep them up to date. Use real life examples and make sure to repeat constantly. He coined little phrases like “I smell SEO” and other not-so-appropriate sayings.

Now You Have Support: Use it to pitch to your execs. Understand your traffic, make sure that you understand the weaknesses of the site and build a strategy around how to rectify issues. Almost every exec is going to turn around and say SEO isn’t free.

How to Get a Budget

Competitive research will almost always uncover some sort of paid strategy. Nothing gets a SEO in more of a tizzy than bringing up what your competitors are doing. Make sure to remind your bosses of this.

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help

There are great consultants who know specific markets very well. They can help you sell concepts internally. The mocking bird effect also helps. Engineers may blow you off even if you are right.

Work with marketing and PR. They typically have more money to use and it wil never hurt to ask if they can do something to help. Don’t forget to give them credit for it.

Report Like Crazy

Executives love to see numbers. Anything you can send them about how things are moving is a very easy to understand way will hel pour cause. Even if numbers are not promising, at least give them status updates.

And that’s it! Time for lunch and battery charging.

[rubs tummy]

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