Comment Spamming SEO’s is Just Plain Stupid

I think we can all agree that Online Reputation Management is important, both for big brands and for up and coming companies. While sifting through my spam comments (I check to see if there’s any legit ones caught by Askimet), I found this archaic comment spam from not, one but two different IP’s leading to the same destination url - in this case widecircles.com (you don’t deserve a link, but this post will rank for your name!).

Wide Circles is a ‘Social Media Marketing’ platform as per their website, but they clearly arent’ paying much attention to their link building efforts. Commenting on blogs is still enough to rank in some low competition niches, but the ease of commenting should be accompanied by some prior prudence. Something along the lines of:

1. Don’t comment where you can be called out for being overly promotional or spammy
2. Don’t be stupid enough to look for links on a competitors blog, or dropping your own links in.
3. Don’t be daft enough to think that spamming SEO’s of all people wont get you into ORM issues.
4. Make your comment relevant to the blog post you’re commenting on (Duh!…)

For all I know they may offer a great platform, but if they are outsourcing their SEO then they should probably work with a provider that knows what they are doing.

Conclusion

There are many times I’ve thought about putting together massive SEO programs that follow a checklist of tasks and handing it over to an offshore outsourcing agency. Stuff like the above is exactly what tells me not to take that decision every single day I think about scaling SEO in volume. It’s about time that folks who still think that the template : ‘hi, nice post, very informative’ <drop link> need to think twice before spamming. In the end, it’s not the (so called) SEO that suffers the most - it’s the client.

Wide Circles, if you’re outsourcing, take my  $0.02 and fire your SEO provider or agency.

Look Out For Posts Every 2nd Tuesday

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be joining SEJ’s best and the brightest in contributing new and interested search marketing news, every 2nd Tuesday. It’s part of my own personal mandate to get more involved in the search marketing community, especially where more people can benefit from any tips I provide.

You’ve just got to love the fourth quarter of the year if you’re an affiliate marketer. For my retail clients, I’m happy for them too, as it gives my team and I the opportunity to do our very best to ramp up christmas sales and have a very happy client by the time the first week of January rolls around. Now, that’s a great way to start a new year!

Check out my inaugural post on Search Engine Journal - How to Super Charge Your Online Marketing for The Holiday Season. I’d like to thank all the folks who liked the article and shared it on sphinn (made the homepage), and through Stumbleupon and other outlets.

Look out for more interesting local seo, small business marketing, and general seo tips coming your way by subscribing to my rss feed, and Search Engine Journal’s RSS as well.

A Worthless Use of SERP Real Estate?

I can’t for the life of me figure out why I would want to see Alexa’s blue rating bar in my SERP results. While the usefulness (really, somewhat uselessness) of the Alexa rating has been beaten to death by SEO’s and other internet marketers alike, I did keep it around on a relatively less frequented corner of my screen.

With the Alexa Sparky 1.3 update, there is no option provided to turn off this feature, and frankly that is irritating, given that other plugins such as SEO for Firefox, and SEO Quake let you control what shows up as additions to the SERPs.

The Solution

I’ll probably end up disabling the toolbar now since it really had little value to begin with. If I really need it, I will try to find the older version and go with that instead. Way to go Alexa in ticking off the webmaster community - the very people that drive most of your data by having the toolbar installed.

Is anyone with me then? Do these guys even bother to do a survey of if their users would like such a feature?

If you have a web service, here’s you can learn from Alexa’s mistakes:

1. Your platform/plugin/extension is user driven - People don’t find your tools using search engines, they find them based on referrals from industry authorities, their friends, and through blogs. No tool is 100% bug free or ‘perfect’ so it’s important to manage problems as they crop up.
2. Incorporate User Feedback - Early Adoptors are your biggest evangelists - It’s important to listen to them, give them beta and alpha products to test, and incorporate their feedback into bettering your offering.
3. Close the Loop and Communicate - I double checked to see if Alexa had given a heads up to its users about the new update, and none can be found on the Alexa Blog. It’s important to communicate changes to an existing platform that users are accustomed to, giving them enough time to choose whether to upgrade or not. When I worked at Microsoft, we gave all resellers and partners due notice of the changes that Vista brought about, and despite the fact that many chose to adopt Windows XP for months to come, our partners were a happier bunch because we were forth right.

Prepare for Stumbleupon 3.27 Beta

Unknowingly to most social media marketers, Stumbleupon is rolling out a fair number of changes that could affect user profiles, and their ’stumble power’.  The beta has already rolled, and its only time before the finished release becomes available.

Prominent changes in this release include:

• Adds a thumbdown menu featuring the following options:
  1. Not-for-me ~ This doesn’t suit me.
  2. Stumbled this before ~ This content was in a previous stumble.
  3. Too much like this lately ~ Baby animals are nice, but that’s enough for now.
• Adds website blocking via the thumbdown menu for FF 3.x users.
• Fixes a bug in FF 3.x bookmark integration that could cause a tag to be applied upon rating thumbdown.
• Adds options to report a stumble as ‘Factually incorrect’ or ‘Unsafe’.
• Adds more convenient reporting of incorrect topic via an optional reporting menu. See the ‘Show topic as’ item on the Configuration tab of Toolbar Options.
• When topic is displayed as a menu (for reporting incorrect topic), other reporting items are located on this menu rather than on the Tools menu.

Implications of the Algorithm Change

Let’s evaluate what this change means in order of the updates for the new release:

Expanding the Thumb Down Menu

• Not For Me - This is the same as its always been and excludes stumbles by the tags and domain.
• Stumbled This Before - As a user I like this! I’ve seen a fair number of the same stumbles being rotated especially if the tag doesn’t have much content.
• Too Much of This Lately - Great for the user, but potentially a deterrent for viral marketing campaigns.

However, using ‘too much of this lately’ affects the stumbler’s user profile as stated by SU staff: “Using Too much like this lately’ will affect the aggregate reputation for the profile. Usually there’s something about the stumble that makes it the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you’re getting profiles too often when stumbling within ‘All’, it may be better to remove the Stumblers topic. Then, when you’re in the mood to see profiles, choose the Stumblers channel from the Channel Menu”

Website Blocking - Self explanatory. Either serve up decent content, or run the risk of never showing up for a stumbler again.

Factually Incorrect or Unsafe - This will become the new haven for stumble trolls, or folks who want to to engage in negative social media (much the same as negative SEO). Stumbleupon is working on this, but I can definitely see potential for it to be gamed.

Stumbleupon Takeaways

Overall, the change has been for the better, but it will be interesting to see how traffic levels and sharing of content changes as the new release is adopted by the entire SU user base. For marketers, this definitely means refraining from stumbling up those pesky proxy website stumble requests, and others that fit the ‘low quality’ bill. That’s just my 2 cents, but feel free to add your own in the comments!

You can download the beta or join in with your own questions and comments at the official stumbleupon thread.

Is The Proof in the Writing or The Ranking?

Recently, Jon Wuebben sent me a copy of Content Rich (Amazon), a book that he claims to be the ‘bible’ of seo copywriting. As a search marketer who believes in the union of great content, good structure, and worthy inbounds links, Jon’s already preaching to the choir.

At the price of $19.95 the average business owner looking to learn by reading books has a number of options, and my evaluation argues whether its worth spending on an seo copywriting book, or just learning about it from the fantastic resources that have been online for years - and might I add, for free.

John is a good businessman. Not only did he send me the book, he also kept in touch multiple times to followup as to when this review would be posted, and I give him kudos for that. That said, this review is meant to be an objective review of the book, and not John.

Content Rich has some good points overall, but there is a lot of misinformation as well. For example, John makes a clear difference between static websites and the dynamic nature of blogs, stating that static websites rank better. Proof lies in the ranking as to this day, John’s blog outranks his top level website. So what gives?

Living Up to The Claims

Can I really generate $50,000 to $100,000 extra revenue from reading this book? Probably not, as seo copywriting is only one part of the internet marketing puzzle. As a book that is my opinion only valuable to those that wish to update an ageing website, and have no idea where to look for good content online.

While I appreciate the role sensationalism plays in sales, its equally important to set realistic expectations for businesses that are just getting into the game. For the average small business, it involves a considerable amount of time set aside to go through new (but interesting) topics such a SEO, and its important for an author to give the right kind of information and set realistic expectations.

Depth of Information

The book provides basic overviews into usability, content writing, calls to action, and utilizing different vehicles such as press releases, blogs, ppc, and more. It also covers interestings aspect of consumer intent and psychology such as AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action).

Putting myself into the shoes of a small business, I am not entirely sure I’d know where to begin after going through the book, as it provides a good overview, but does not comprehensive enough to put an action plan together and tie in the different aspects covered.

You won’t find much information on how to do deal with competitive industries, so if you’re a lawyer, dentist, plumber, mover, or mortgage broker, you will not rank on the 1st page just by having effective copy.

Closing Comments on SEO Copywriting

If you really want to get the complete guide to search engine rankings - keep looking, there isn’t a single ‘bible’ of search in my mind yet. There are lots of very very good resources though. If you’re a beginner I’d give Content Rich a shot, but intermediates or experts will find little value from it.

I’d like to say thanks to John for his time and initiative in sending me his book, and I hope this review offers up some constructive criticism for his next big venture.

photo credit: emuriel

Value Isn’t Counted in Dollars

There are lots of stark differences between pitching the value of SEO to big companies versus small businesses. In the former, price is often the last factor discussed, whereas service offerings, support, consultancy and integration into existing infrastructure matters. In short, they understand that you can’t order steak on the a McDonald’s budget.

That’s not to say that small businesses are cheap (although some can be). At the end of the day, proving value is always harder than to a bigger firm because there is a natural fixation on getting the right price. The average small business owner I’ve encountered thinks along the lines ‘Am I getting my bang for the buck in paying what I am’? Truth be told, can someone who is hearing about SEO for the first time accurately judge if they are getting value for their money, without giving the service the time to prove itself?

Tangible and Intangible Value

Demonstrating tangible value is fairly easy. Talking about ROI, ROAS, Cost per Customer Acquisition, and Cost per Lead are all great ways of solidifying some numbers around a campaign.

But a lot of the times, SMB’s don’t realize the value of expert opinion that is priceless to their business. I’m all for profitability and efficiency in business, but I like adding extra value of to clients who are in a tough spot, or need advice on broader internet marketing. Just this week I’ve talked to clients about things that aren’t included in their contract, and have got a fair share of ‘thank you’ emails back. I won’t bill them, but you can bet the guy charging $500 for the year will, if they bother to give the client one on one service at all.

Good SEO’s are hard to come by, and most clients will attest to the fact that they make back their investment in a short period of time. I hope this post helps those that fixate on price too much, because it’s important to remember:

Price is What You Pay, Value is What You Get - Warren Buffet

–
Shameless Plug: I am looking for an SEO specialist to join my team in Montreal. We work with some very exciting clients, and offer great pay and benefits. If you think you’re our guy/girl, then get in touch with me through the contact form or email dev [at] devbasu.com

photo credit: teamstickergiant

Oh Gee, I’m Featured on Seo.Alltop.Com

It’s nice to know I kick ass, or atleast that the folks at Alltop think I do. I wonder if there’s some sort of Alltop optimization in the works, and if there’s a better way to rank in what seems to be an ever-growing list. That said, it’s good to be in the company of many of the folks I respect and trust in our relatively small but tight-knit industry.

Of course, if you’ve read this blog prior to this post, you landed up here through a means other than alltop, and I’ve yet to see what the long term traffic impact might be from the inclusion.

Alltop - Why Bother?

What Alltop offers isn’t unique, and is definitely a subjective way of ranking the blogosphere’s best content on any topic. If you’re relatively internet savvy, you may be able to find this through a number of outlets such as technorati, google blog search, social media, or others, but there are many who still have difficulty in separating the leaders from the followers in a given space.

Hell, there’s folks have no idea how an RSS feed works, so it’s no surprise that a blog directory such as Alltop can be quite useful for those that do not use Google Reader, or any other equivalent. Some of my clients fall right in this category, and they often ask ‘What does one blog about in my space?’.

With the growth of Alltop, answering that question becomes much easier, and often as simple as providing a link to the industry in question.

From an internet marketing stand point, here’s why I would take the effort to submit an application to Alltop:

• Juicy Links
• Targeted Traffic
• Building Subscriber Base
• Might Enhance Brand Reputation by Association

That said, if you’re visiting this post from Alltop, I urge you to subscribe via RSS for exclusive updates and tips that regular online readers do not receive.

photo credit: Larsz

Act in Supplement and You Will Succeed 

Today, I met a top player in the Canadian insurance industry, and left the pitch fairly impressed with their involvement in search marketing. Not only did they have a well run paid search campaign, run in-house, an seo campaign in the works, but to my surprise, were using Google insights for competitive research.

Of course, this begs the question - What could I possibily offer them? Efficiency and Foresight. A recent study proves that agency based SEO is upto 22% (correct me if I am wrong) more effective than in-house efforts. I can attest to this from experience, from working at one of the worlds largest forex brokers as an in-house specialist.

How To Engage in Enterprise SEO

There are a number of ways one can aid, expedite, and provide recommendations on the implementation of seo for the enterprise. First, it is important to identify the key problems enterprises face around seo in the first place:

1. Red Tape or Lack of Corporate Buy-in
2. Complex CMS - Staging Sites, Content Approvals, Process Queues
3. Confusion Between the Roles of Marketing & IT Teams.

Now its time to fix these problems by offering the right solutions:

1. One Time Corporate Buy-in for Agency Managed SEO Recommendations.
2. Site Audit Document that Provides all SEO Fixes.
3. Recommendations are Agency based, Implementation is IT based, and Marketing plans are brainstormed betweent the agency and marketing teams.

A short post, but hopefully something to think about before an enterprise SEO pitch.

Daily Moolah dot Com is now http://devbasu.com. We’ve got a new name and a new banner, but we’re offering the same fresh content. Kindly subscribe to http://devbasu.com/feed/ to keep updated on new posts. The Best Posts from DailyMoolah will be added to devbasu.com’s archives very shortly.

Credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

How To Be on A Roll :Time After Time

If you work as a consultant or for an agency, you probably spend a fair amount of time being remarkable, convincing, and irresistable. Of course, not all days turn out that way, and I have had a number of client pitches that could have gone better. What matters most is being able to learn from mistakes, and perfecting pitch techniques as you go along. In my opinion, it’s not enough to just deliver a seemingly good pitch on the surface, but rather to read between the lines and peer into your audience’s thoughts.

Key Pitch Indicators

1. Overtones

We recall only about 50% of information that is delivered to us, 24 hours after processing and segmenting that information. Coupled with a lack of motivation, this is a key reason most people never create actionable plans - they simply can’t remember every relevant piece of information that they need to succeed. Similarly, in a client meeting, one can expect that the client won’t recall everything you talk to them about.

SEO, by its very nature involves a fair number of technical points in any discussion, and this is most likely what the client will not remember. Therefore, its important to have the right meeting overtones which a client can recall at any point because they can relate to what you’re telling them. These include:

• Key Metrics They Understand - ROI, Brand Awareness, Recall : Not Clicks, Page Views, Bounces.
• Case Studies of Past/Present Clients - Success that can be replicated for them.
• Timelines, Budgets, Costs - Impart actionable strategies, and associated costs.

2. Undertones

Parts 2 & 3 relate to being able to read between the lines and really ‘read’ the client as you present. Things to observe include body language, inquisitiveness, lack of interest, and anxiety. The undertone of any meeting involves the direct perception of what is being said. In normal relationships, people always focus on what is coming out of their mouths, rather than how what other parties percieve what they are saying. In a client meeting, it’s imperative to read the client as they process what you are imparting. Some take aways a client perceives from a meeting that is going well includes:

• This Guy/Girl Knows His/Her Stuff - Specialization is key to the success of any capitalist economy, and successful businesses understand that the value of their time in doing what they do best, while outsourcing the rest.
• Glowing Recommendations - Case studies and testimonials help create trust and confidence in your skills. A colleague of mine name drops a lot during meetings, not to show off, but to reference all the good thingshis clients have to say about him. After all, who doesn’t want to work with the best, or have the best working for them?
• You Will Take Care of Me and My Interests - The intangible value of positioning oneself as a thought partner to your client is paramount to building long term profitable relationships. No contract, pricing attractiveness, or actual business value can beat the trust that a client can place in you to ensure that their interests take precidence over your own in servicing them.

3. The After Taste

Much can be said about the after taste of any meeting. Looking back at many of the meetings you might been part of in your career, you probably won’t remember all the details, but are sure to remember how you felt after a particular meeting. By following steps 1 & 2, here is the ideal emotional recall that a client has after a great pitch.

• The Warm Fuzzy Feeling - Man, that was a great meeting, wasn’t it? So we’re really going to this? Damn, I’m pumped about getting started. Those are all emotions that a client can feel after a great pitch.

• Sign Now Because Time is Money - Nobody likes wasting time and opportunities, especially when you know you’re losing business to competitors. Instilling a sense of urgency will entice a client to sign earlier than later.
• Anger & Testosterone - Strong A-type clients feel like they have a new weapon in their arsenal after understanding the potential of capturing market share from their competitors. I’ve had many an experience where the client has said ‘Dev, let’s blow them out of the water…’. This can work in your favour, as long as you set reasonable expectations for results with your client.

So there you have it - An actionable guide to perfecting your client pitch, employing sales tactics, human psychology, and the ability to instill and invoke different emotions. A veteran sales genius once taught me

“People Compare Similarities, but BUY the Differences”

“Any Sales Pitch is About a Transferrance of Emotion (regarding the product/service) From The Salesman to the Customer”

photo credit: Marcio Eugenio

Dealing with Hard To Please Clients

Search marketing, just like any other business, has its peaks and valleys that make it both rewarding and frustrating to be to be an SEO at time. I find it rewarding and motivating to help my clients who have little or no business being generated online gain new business they never imagined they could capture. Conversely, it is equally frustrating when I have to face clients that are hardly appreciative, expect me to be the jack of all trades for their marketing, and aren’t ready to pay for any work that is out of the scope of the contract.

The 3 Types of Clients

The ZOMG Thank You Client - This type of client is my obvious favourite because they truly appreciate how online marketing helps grow their business in a way they never could imagine before their SEO comes along. About 60% of my clients fall into this area

The I’m Not Getting What I Paid For Client - No matter what you do, this type of client will never admit that they are getting their value for money regardless of whether you deliver superior results. Generally speaking, they also want you to manage everything related to their online campaign (website, seo, sem, social media, yada yada) because they don’t have time for this ‘online stuff’, but aren’t willing to pay a penny more for the additional services.  There are several ways of dealing with this type of client that I’ll discuss later in this post.

The ‘I’m Secretely Happy But Can’t Tell You I Am’ Client - This type of client loves having internal meetings where they secretely adore what you’re doing for them, but generally are devoid of any facial expressions in your monthly phone calls, lest you understand you’ve ‘hooked them in’ and charge them more. It’s in the same line a showing a salesman disinterest in a product or service, in order to squeeze more of a bargain. I don’t mind this type of client at all, but honestly it’s rather silly to try and hide enthusiasm, because it’s easy to figure this out if you have a knack for reading people.

When The Client Screams …Just Woosaa

When you’re in business, it’s important not to take things personally. Myself and countless others have suffered professionally by taking business misgivings personally. Here’s a couple of things to consider before throwing in the towel on that impossible client situation.

1. Customer Life Time Value - Do you envision retaining the client over a period of 2 years or more? If so, there may be ways to tweak the account management such that reports are automated, there are interim status updates, or you have another member of your team handle the account if you absolutely cannot. That said, if you can bare to live with the client, suck it up.
2. Intangible Value - The client may well be difficult to deal with, but can you obtain valuable referral business if you do a good job of pleasing them? An ideal example of this would be working with a hard to please franchise owner, if they have the influence of getting other similar franchises signed on.
3. Business Sense and Reputation Management - SEO’s may think of reputation management in its online extension, but word of mouth is far more powerful in smaller SMB circles. An unhappy client can spread a world of negativity about their experience with you or your team, so being cognizant about the ramifications of ‘dropping’ or ‘firing’ a client is imperative.
4. Don’t Take on Clients You Don’t Want - Agency-Client fit is very important to have a long term profitable relationship. By following your own business intuition and principles, you won’t be afraid to say ‘no’ to a client if the fit is just not there.

photo credit: brokinhrt2

Using Corporate Events & Govenance to Generate Links

I’m a big believer in enabling offline marketing and online marketing to work with each other in tandem.  While some small businesses may not have active involvement in scheduling corporate events, mid sized businesses often throw a couple of events every year for ther suppliers, customers, or community.

Throwing such events can increase brand awareness, sales, and even help upsell current customers and find new ones through referrals. Aside from the obvious benefits of planning events, they can be a great way to build relevant local links to your website as well.

What Sort of Events Can be Used to Build Links

1. Charity Sponsorship - Pick a community charity website to link back to yours.
2. Local Youth Club Sponsorship - Use a similar idea to sponsor a sports team or something to that effect.
3. Annual Conferences Onsites - Ask your clients and suppliers to link back to you if they have blogs.
4. Trade Show Involvement - Since you’re just establishing relationships, write a company blog post linking to all the interesting people you met. Then send them an email, and watch reciprocity take its effect.
5. Client and Partner Events - Set up a clients and partners page and then call your partners to let you know you’ve linked to them. Tell them you’d appreciate a link back as a sign of good faith.
6. Every Print Invoice and Communication - Add a ‘call to action’ for your customers to visit your ‘link to us’ page in every direct mailer, invoice, and communication. Adapted from SEOMoz

How To Ask For Links

• The Plain Ol’ Contract Terms - Event sponsors get to ask for all sorts of nifty advertising like having their brand names on banners, table cloths, hats, and other chatchka. Make sure that a link back from the sponsored organization is mandatory to your sponsorship.
• Ask Nicely - Ask for links in good faith. SMB’s don’t usually understand the what and why of linking to each other, so position yourself not in terms of SEO, but rather in terms of bringing offline partnerships online.
• Don’t Ask At All - Do good things for your customers, suppliers, and community and watch the links come back to you. As time passes on, links are the new citation, reference, and hat tip.

When I started this blog, I promised to offer unique ideas and fresh content. I hope I’ve been achieving that goal so far, and would love for you to subscribe to my updated RSS feed.

photo credit: Anyhoo

The Questions You Forget to Ask

There’s a lot of reasons online marketing is very different in strategy and execution when compared to traditional marketing, but there are some things that remains the same whether you’re doing business development for an SEM agency or a traditional Ad Agency:

• Identify Client’s Needs
• Analyzing Gaps in Current Performance
• Suggesting Business Solutions that Fit Client Goals
• Identify the Client’s Existing Inventoriable Assets

It is quite rare to find a client that has not taken baby steps into the world of online marketing, whether that be putting up craigslist ads for their business, or having strategic partnerships with vendors, suppliers, customers etc.

I’m prepping some of my team in Montreal for client pitches in French (which I understand, but am not very good at speaking), and thought that any biz dev folks reading this could benefit from it as well. Expert SEOs can often spot such ‘client asset’s or ‘useful inventory’ but that process can be optimized by simply asking the client the right questions.

10 Question You Should Ask Your Clients Today

1. Do you have a list of unused domains you may have bought but aren’t using? [ Redirect Them ]
2. Do you advertise your url in any offline advertising outlets? [ Helps Estimate Direct Traffic Numbers ]
3. Do you use server load balancing i.e www1.domain.com, www2.domain.com [Duplicate Content Issues]
4. Do you already have listings on Craigslist, Kijiji, Gumtree? [ If Listings Rank Well...Put Tracking Links In]
5. Do you use Facebook, Youtube, Google Video to promote your services? [ Consolidate the accounts ]
6. Where are your additional unused domains being hosted? [Localization & SEO]
7. How many sub-domains do you currently have? [Duplicate Content & SEO]
8. Do you have any embeddable content (widgets, calculators) that use dynamic query strings?  [ Might create indexing problems, link juice concentration problems, and might look unsightly. Eg: 5th backlink down the results].
9. Are all your telephone numbers, addresses, and contact email id’s up to date? [Usability and Accuracy]
10. Where do you see your online marketing efforts going in 1 year’s time? [ Client's need a vision too, even if you help them see it. Also judges worthwhileness of the client]

Folks, I’ve learned to ask these questions over time and through experience, because I’ve lost precious time and money discovering errors on a client’s site on my own time and without prior knowledge from the client.

Examples of such errors include:

• Finding 95 sub-domains on a PR8 site that gets over 3 million visitors every month that was majorly sucking SEO juice off the parent domain. Each sub-domain was named america.domain.com, europe.domain.com, canada.domain.com and none of them redirected to the main domain. Worse yet, they were all duplicate versions of the same site.
• Load balancing issues with a large corporate bank with each load balancing server running slightly different versions of the same site. Each time you tried loading up the main domain, it would lead you to a visibly different version of the site with completely different product and service promos.
• Embeddable content woes where there were 4 query strings in pulling data off a simple calculator.
• Discovering 50 additional hyper local domains that were never mentioned 3 months after taking up a contract!

Avoid the horror stories and ZOMG moments by remembering to ask the questions you usually don’t ask your client the next time around. I’m sure there’s more that experienced SEO’s can offer, so please leave me a comment with your feedback. Don’t forget to sign up to my RSS feed while you’re at it too!

photo credit: robertodevido

Small Biz Can be Creative Too

Sometimes it can be pretty hard to come up with creative social media link bait ideas for otherwise un-interesting small businesses. After brainstorming for a bit, I think I’ve come up with some ideas that can be applied to almost any SMB regardless of what they do. If I’ve missed anything you can come up with, leave me a comment and I’ll credit you in the post.

10 Creative Ideas for SMB Social Media

1. What to Ask Your [Business Type] Before Hiring Them.
2. 10 Ways To Save Money by Using a [Business Type].
3. How to Choose a Good [Business Type].
4. 5 Totally New Ways of Sprucing up Your [Business Services].
5. How to Get 50% Off Your Next [Business Service].
6. The Latest and Greatest in [Business Service].
7. 10 DIY [Business Service] Tips You Can Use Today.
8. 15 Factors That Affect Your [Business Service] Quote.
9. How to Become a Certified [Business Service] in 6 Months.
10. Ten Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring a [Business Type].

Real Life Examples of The Above

1. What to Ask Your Car Mechanic Before Hiring Them .
2. 10 Ways To Save Money by Using a Chartered Accountant.
3. How to Choose a Good Mover.
4. 5 Totally New Ways of Sprucing up Your Interior Design.
5. How to Get 50% Off Your Next Oil Change.
6. The Latest and Greatest in Aromatic Massage Oils.
7. 10 DIY Carpentry Tips You Can Use Today.
8. 15 Factors That Affect Your Car Insurance Quote.
9. How to Become a Certified Hair Stylist in 6 Months.
10. Ten Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring a Plumber.

Daily Moolah dot Com is now http://devbasu.com. We’ve got a new name and a new banner, but we’re offering the same fresh content. Kindly subscribe to http://devbasu.com/feed/ to keep updated on new posts. The Best Posts from DailyMoolah will be added to devbasu.com’s archives very shortly.

photo credit: oooh.oooh

Outsourcing SEO For Fun and Profit

In my last post on the how to efficiently outsource seo campaigns, I promised I’d cover some of the best places to find cheap yet reliable outsourcing. If you’re an experienced search marketer, you’ve probably used one or more of these services at some point or other.

Professional Freelancer Job Boards

1. Get A Freelancer
2. Rent A Coder
3. oDesk
4. Elance
5. Scriptlance
6. Guru

Outsourcing on the Cheap

1. Craigslist
2. Kijiji
3. Gumtree
4. Digital Point Forums [Just Google it!]

SEO and Web Design Specific Job Boards

1. SEOMoz Market Place
2. Problogger Job Boards
3. Marketing Pilgrim Job Boards
4. Blogstorm Job Boards
5. Freelance Swith Job Board
6. Mashable Job Board

Of course, these are just of my personal favourites, but there are many other sites out there where you can find a freelancer or outsourcing party of your choice and needs. There’s a monster list of freelance job sites over at Freelanceswitch if you’re interested.

photo credit: Will Lion

Outsourcing SEO for Fun and Profit

Outsourcing SEO is an integral component of building scale in your processes. Of course, I know what you’re thinking - won’t SEO’s from India, Russia, [Insert Country Here] harm my overall SEO campaign or create more inefficiencies than I currently have?

The answer could be YES or NO, entirely depending on the decisions you make regarding the following questions:

• Will I expect the outsourced party to create, strategize, execute, and measure my seo campaign because I’m paying them to?
• Do I expect the oursourced agency to proactively search for ways to improve your seo campaign?
• Can I hold the SEO agency really accountable for targeting mistakes in their approach?

If you answered YES to any of the questions above, you’re bound to have an outsourcing experience that will more than likely leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

That said, outsourcing can be useful, heck, even enjoyable if you plan your deliverables right. The key point here to remember is:

The reason you are outsourcing is not JUST to save money. You should be outsourcing to increase efficiencies for your own staff by offloading repetitive and mind-numbing tasks to 3rd parties/drones/mechnical turks.

Capice? Now that we’ve got that established, the following are simply a list of what you might choose to outsource in an seo campaign, if you choose to exercise such tactics at all of course. Every SEO practioner has different views on each of these tactics, and I leave it to you to figure out the value in each tactic, and whether its worth it to pursue them. Additionally, outsourcing does not necessarily have to be to a country where english is not the 1st language, as you can find perfectly good freelancers to do work in the US, Canada, UK, NZ, and Australia. Use your good judgement in picking folks who speak english as their first language, versus those that don’t for the following tasks.

What to Outsource in an SEO Campaign

• Free Directory Submissions
• Base Level One Way Link Building (Forums, Blog Comments, Etc.) It’s best to use folks that speak english as their first language.
• Base Level Link Requests (en masse). If you’re going this approach, then make sure you have a good template with variations for your outsourced party to follow.
• Social Media Account Creation - Alternatively use spam bots (hat tip: SEOROI)
• Social Media Bookmarking Services
• Mass Gmail/Freemail ID Creation
• Simple SEO copywriting
• Simple PHP Scripts and Programming Work

What NOT to Outsource in an SEO Campaign

• SEO Site Audits
• Social Media: Submissions (User, Sub. Texts, Promotion)
• Anything Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit related
• Any communication with a link target
• Approaching high level link targets (including sending link request emails)
• Code level changes to a client site. Don’t provide FTP details for your client’s site for example.
• Complex coding or scripting work is best done in-house or with folks you trust.

How Not to Regret Your Outsourcing Decision

• Check the outsourcing party’s work everytime before including it in a client report.
• Create a template for your outsourcing party to work from for every single activity you expect them to perform. While this can be painstaking, you’re paying them to ‘do’ and not ‘think’.
• Give them lists - directory lists, email lists, website target lists. This is part and parcel of providing a template.
• When your outsourcing party claims to have 100 different c-class block and different ip ranges, make sure that their claims are valid.
• Bad english isn’t necessarily a sign of incompetence. Read in between the lines and repeat yourself loads of times to ensure the communication is clear. Just remember to appoint the right tasks to parties that speak english as their 2nd language, meaning that copywriting, commenting, link requests may be off-bounds.
• Make sure you let your outsourcing party know what is ‘off-bounds’ in your project. This may include spamming, blackhat and greyhat activities, 302 redirects, and a gamut of other SEO no-no’s.

Every suggestion above comes from personal experience in learning how to efficiently manage outsourcing for seo campaigns. Hopefully, you found this post useful and know how to save yourself some pain the next time you choose to outsource your seo. Roger Montti has an awesome post on how outsourcing to India can be good for you, that you should give a read too.

In my next post, I’ll cover the Best Places to Find Cheap Yet Reliable Outsourcing, so I urge you to subscribe to my RSS feed to keep updated.

photo credit: Marcio Eugenio

Link Building For Local Businesses

Most local businesses don’t make their sales online. Their customers walk through the doors, talk face to face, and that is the traditional nature of commerce. That said, a local business website is a great way to get those customers in the door, after they find you through relevant local search queries such as ’scarborough dry cleaner’ for example.

Most local businesses don’t have a clue as to why link building is important or how to go about acquiring links from other local businesses or institutions. However, they do know the incredible power of word of mouth marketing, and how it can drive business, and create a great reputation for the business.

In the world of search marketing, not only will a top google ranking drive a lot of targeted leads to a business, it’ll also enhance perceptions regarding the superiority of the businesse’s service offerings.

Surprisingly, most link building campaigns can actually begin offline! Here’s a couple of ways how you can leverage offline marketing to drive links back to your local business website.

7 Ways to Leverage Offline Marketing to Build Links

1. Offer Internet Only Coupons - Every city has a couple of ‘deal seeker’ websites or forums. In Toronto, we have RedFlagDeals.com which is frequented by over 180,000 registered members, mostly located in the Greater Toronto Area. Offering internet only coupons can get you featured on such websites - bringing massive amounts of traffic, and links in from those that discover the coupon, and then repost it on their own blogs, twitter, livejournal accounts etc.
2. Create a Referral Program - Reward your customers for driving more leads to your business by giving them a referral incentives. Bonus points if they tell all their friends through a blog or website service.
3. Talk to Your Customers - Sometimes all it takes is requesting a link verbally, if you’re customers really enjoy your service. This can apply to other things such as leaving a review on local citation sources, and google maps reviews as well.
4. Talk to Your Suppliers - If you’re selling blue widgets then ask wholeseller to add you a local distribution or reselling centre on their website. This not only benefits your own rankings, but can help customers find you more easily as well.
5. Talk to Your Mall Management - This tip works really well if your business is located in a mall. Every mall website has a directory of the stores including a description and location within the mall. Speak to your mall management and get a hold of their webmaster to get a targeted anchor text link in your business description page.
6. Issue A Local Newspaper/Magazine Press Release - Many local publications mirror their print and online versions with the same content. Issuing a press release of local interest can get you a link from the online version of the same article.
7. Create a Resource of Local Interest - If you’re a self owned and operated DVD store for example, you may have customers dropping in to ask you about when you’re going to have new released come in or if you have a specific movie in stock. Why not use Word of Mouth Marketing to drive customers online where you can supply them with a weekly newsletter alert or information update on your website? If your customers find this useful, they will link to it and to inform other friends.

Marketing offline to build links isn’t easy, but with a little hard work and a lot of creativity anything is possible. I’ve only covered 7 offline marketing tactics that drive links to your small business website, but I’m sure there’s many more you can think of. Leave a comment and I’ll credit you with your thoughts and link back to your website.

Ziya Genceren Gives it Up

Eric Enge’s recent interview with Microsoft’s Ziya Genceren provides some pretty unique insights into Microsoft’s involvement in local search, thorough Live Search Maps.

MSN Live Search Maps actually has an edge over Google Maps in my opinion, both in usability and innovation with features such as the birds eye arial view, and live traffic updates. From a local search perspective, the listings actually change based on the area you’re hovering around on a particular map.

No one has paid much attention to live search maps, but it is a contender in local search for those who brace internet explorer. And with IE still capturing close to 70% of what I know, that makes positioning on Live Search pretty lucrative to businesses that don’t have a particularly tech savvy audience.

Ziya’s Top Factors for Live Search Rankings

There are 300+ factors that determine local seo listings for live search, although these are the most important as indicated by Ziya Genceren in the interview with Eric Enge:

1. Keywords in the business name Eg: Joe’s Pizza Shop, Toronto, Ontario.
2. Category membership based on meta data. Eg: ABC Optometrist, Category: Optometrists, Eye Doctors, Eye Clinics.
3. 3rd Party Vendor Data based - Hours of operation, Payment accepted.
4. Distance from query location (local centroid).
5. Business reviews are currently not taken into account.
6. Yelp, Zagat, UGC content will be considered in the near future.
7. 3rd party vendor information from Info USA, Yellow Pages, and Axciom is trusted more than UGC.

Read the entire interview to get more scoop on Live Search Maps ranking over at the STC blog.

photo credit: chegs

Why a Local Landing Page for Each Location

Every local businesses I’ve worked with wish to rank for multiple city + service oriented terms for each of their locations, but only 20% realize that each location deserves its very own landing page.

In a way, it’s like asking to get business to from all over your business service area, without actually having brick and mortar locations to service local customers. In this case, Google is your customer, and it needs to see a separate ‘landing page’ for each of your locations to be a satisfied ‘customer’.

Local Landing Pages for Each Location = Good Local Search Engine Rankings

In fact, having a local landing page for each business location or area served will not only enhance your your organic rankings, it’ll most likely be a cited website picked up by Google Maps as well. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

Landing Page Best Practices

What’s useful for people to find your location faster, is useful for the search engines as well. Here’s my top 10 factors to include in a local landing pag, starting from the top to the bottom of the page.

1. Optimized Title Tags -’Business Name + Service Type, City, Province/State’ | Keyword 1 & Keyword 2′. Eg: ‘Joe’s Bakery, Toronto, ON | The Best Wedding Cakes and Twinkies in Toronto’.
2. H1 & H2 Tags - Use header tags that reflect your full business name and service type. Eg: ‘ Joe’s Bakery, Toronto, Ontario’,
3. Full Business Address - Include this in a easy to use hCard microformat. hCard may help the search engines separate address information such as business name, street address, locality, and postal/zip codes. Interested on how to create an address in hcard? Try the handy hCard generator.
4. Regional/Local Phone Number - Local phone numbers build trust - both from customers, and from search engines. Often, businesses such as plumbers only have one service location but multiple local phone numbers to gain trust from small town customers, which they then forward to a singular call centre. ALWAYS use a local phone number on each landing page in the format (123) 345-6789.
5. Services Offered & Business Hours - Services often differ from location to location based as do business hours. Save your customers time and add to your body content by adding this valuable information.
6. Embed Google Maps on your Landing Page - This is imperative to include on your landing page. Not only will it provide an interactive way for a customer to map their way to your location, it will also count towards a better ranking in the Google local ten-pack listings.
7. Include Driving Directions Anyways - Unless your customers are relatively savvy with the concept of using Google Maps to get driving directions to your location, you’re best off by providing a brief paragraph of directions from the NSEW (North, South, East, West) end of your city.
8. Single Line Business Address in Footer - Having your address in the format ‘Business Name + Service, Street Address, City, Province/State, Country’ can provide an easy format for search engines to pick up on your address.
   
9. Meta Tag Descriptions with Local Address + Phone Number - This one’s self-explanatory. If you’ve got an additional phone tracking number handy, you can include the spare phone number in your meta tags to see if customers would rather call you via seeing the search results, or prefer to click on the results and view your landing page. This tactic is also specially useful for folks that use Skype (which makes phone numbers clickable) and on the iPhone.
   
10. URL Naming Structure - Last but not least, it’s important to include keywords in your url. Separate keywords by using hyphen’s and only include your most important keywords minus your business name, unless you have a highly recognized brand: Eg: domain.com/toronto-rexdale-ontario-bakery.html

I can promise you that if you’re diligent in your landing page design and follow the tips above, you’ll score some neat rankings in non-competitive markets. Subscribe to my RSS feed today to keep updated on a future post on how to capture local rankings for competitive search terms.

photo credit: kittyz202

About the Local SEO City Centroid Factor

In layman’s terms, a ‘centroid’ when referred to in the context of local search is simply a local search engine’s geo-location of a city or town’s geographic core, a.k.a ‘down town’ to the rest of us. This means that if you’re business serves a greater city area, but happens to be physically located on the city outskirts on or in a suburb, you’re already losing points toward ranking well in the local search algorithm. You can read more about the importance of the centroid on David Mihm’s local search ranking factors, which is a fantastic resource by the way.

Finding Your Business’s Core Service Area as Per Google

Let’s say you’re located in Richmond Hill, Ontario and you’re business serves the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) covering the boroughs such as North York, Etobicoke, Scarborough, Mid Town Toronto, and Toronto City Proper. If you happened to be a florist for example, and were trying to rank for ‘Florist in Toronto’ or ‘Florist Toronto’, there would be quite a bit of work needed to rank you in the Google ten pack for that term.

That being said, Google is getting smarter about the hyper-local nature of communities, and is paying attention to search volumes for local specific keywords such as ‘Florist Richmond Hill’ instead of ‘Toronto Florist. 

The second factor at play is understanding where your customers are located. Most savvy (including non-technical) business owners know this information like the back of their hand, so this is one of the questions I’m bound to ask in my initial meeting with a client. In this case, if you’re a Richmond hill florist, but most of your business happens to be coming from the neighbouring community of Thornhill, Ontario, then there’s probably a way you can capitalize on that market as well through Google Local.

Looking at the difference in ten-pack competition between florist richmond hill, and florist thornhill its pretty apparent that thornhill is a low competition market. Setting up a Google Local keyword rich listing will do the trick in this case, such as ‘Richmond Hill and Thornhill Florist’ along with an appropriate description of service areas, and inbound anchor text from local business directories to boot. 

But What if I Don’t Know Where My Customers Are Located?

Eh? You don’t know where your customers are located? Not a problem - I can help you figure out how to get a centroid location for that too. Let’s assume you run an ecommerce store serving the Greater Toronto Area, selling the aforementioned flowers - You receive orders from all over the city, and you’re trying to figure out where most of those online orders are generated from. Using a tool such a Map a List it’s easy to figure out shipping and billing addresses, and home-in on your customer location centroid. 

Map a List Google Maps Visualizer

   credit: lifehacker

Here is how it works:

• (1) Upload the spreadsheet with the list of addresses to your Google Docs account. Or create a new one online.
• (2) Sign-up with MapaList and grant it access to your Google Docs account.
• (3) Point MapaList to the the spreadsheet with the list of addresses you want to map.
• (4) Follow step-by-step guide to map the address list.

Features:

• Map the address lists on top of Google maps.
• Map as many address lists as you like.
• Customize maps further by adding markers for each address, hiding certain points etc.
• Make maps public and share them with friends.
• Change addresses in your spreadsheet files and have them automatically synced with MapaList.
• Download marked maps as KML and view them in Google Earth.
• Send map to your mobile phone.
• See a sample MapaList map here.

photo credit: tilaneseven

Turning Counter-Intuitive Advice into a Strategic Advantage

Search Marketers are a great bunch. Among all the marketers I’ve worked (some of whom have 20+ years of experience), I’ve found search marketers to be the brightest of all marketing folk in being able to relate, transpose, create, and execute on complex marketing campaigns.

While we’re great at tying in the code level aspects of website promotion, in additon to blogging, PR, social media, email marketing (the list goes on), we cannot ever forget that we’re servicing a client’s customers at the end of the day. Thinking like customer would can save time, effort, and yield better results than what the marketer in you think’s he or she ought to do.

So How Do I Think Like the Customer?

Eh, that’s pretty simple really. Your brain is too attuned to dissecting marketing messages, so ask someone more like the customer than emulating what the customer would think. Here’s some ideas:

• Ask your Mom - Your mom probably is 10X less search savvy than you are. My respect goes out to all mothers who are teaching their grown up kids a thing or two about using Google.
• Ask your kids - They are definitely as savvy as you are if not more, but they might not think about a marketing campaign the same way a marketer does.
• Ask a the Real Customer - Surveys are a great way to get information direct from the source. Why not run one via Facebook, or other survey services? If you’re promoting Tim Horton’s coffee’s newest iced cappaccino flavour, why not strike up a conversation with a customer just like yourself about an exclusive preview if they’re willing to offer up their thoughts on the product?

There are many ways to get into ‘customer-vision’ mode and leave the marketer in your behind for a while. Once you’ve got your insights ready, jump right back in and plan that campaign to glory.