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A refreshing blog post that doesn't just repeat the same old crap about reputation management. If only it had a Sphinn button that we could easily find it would probably be on the home page already.
The article was good without the resources at the bottom, which to me seemed like they were just included to highlight the point - Every tool gives widely different results so don't trust them. Therefore, i don't see why anyone would "desphinn" the article because they didn't like those tools.
Sphunn.
iBrian - I try not to blindly follow "SEO wisdom" about things that I've personally found not to be true. There are many red flags, from the words "sponsor" and "advertistement" to scripts and tags surrounding link network links. And, while I wouldn't advise someone to buy "sponsored post" links on sites that only remotely have to do with their industry - it has been my experience that sponsoring events (think National Heart Foundation Races and the like if you have a health-related site) and causes within your industry yields possitive results. Why would Google punish someone for sponsoring a worthy event in their industry? At worst, they would discount the link (assuming this doesn't constitute a huge proportion of your link profile) but it isn't the sponsors fault that a nofollow tag wasn't used. And if you're going after good PR and advertising by being a socially responsible business in your industry - why not look for those opportunities that might pass a little page rank?
All things in moderation.
I would like to add a third value add - reputation management. Even the biggest brands with tons of links and highly optimized websites still only get two search results per domain. That leaves 8 unpaid, largely uncronrollable spots for someone to diss your brand on a site like Rip Off Report (*cough extortion cough*). By writing something like a well-thought-out, well-researched, honest-but-possitive review on the merchant's product or service, an affiliate is doing more than just sending direct sales to that merchant's website. They are acting as a defacto PR agency and helping to bogart another spot on the SERPs.
Client work is addictive. While a steady stream of passive revenue from your own sites is great, so is that big injection of cash every now and then. Sure, one could start their own ecommerce business, social network, blog network, etc... and possibly strike it big in a few years - but while they are working on that "big project" or their multidute of little projects they will probably find themselves in need of liquid cash injections. That's where I think client work comes in for the independant SEO with an entrepreneurial nature.
It is a good article and a solid idea, but any decent eCommerce site is going to have an affiliate program, and coupon sites would be in the affiliate manager's domain - not the SEOs - nine times out of ten.
Why are some of the profile links followable and others are nofollowed? Mine is followable so I'm not complaining ;-) but am just curious.
Talked to him the first time at SMX Advanced in Seattle. He's a very smart guy. Great interview - great read.
Story: Twitter Backlink Tip
How is linking to your own site from your bio spamming? By the way, this "trick" can be used on SO many sites because most CMSs are designed to automatically turn anything containing http://www...com into a link. If the developers haven't applied a nofollow condition to that field then you get the good link. I shudder whenever I see people just put www. in press releases and distributed articles instead of including http:// . What a waste...
Great advice. If you want more examples search for something like "journalism finding the angle" or "journalism finding new angles" on Google. I remember a whole week of Writing for Newspaper classes in J-school dedicated to taking an old story and finding a new angle. They were fun exercises too.
Story: Identifying Market Trends
Most SEOs are going to know about some of these tools, but this article really provides the inspiration to pull it all together for the purpose of spotting a trend in the market that you may not be aware of yet. This is great info for domainers, and keyword researches - not just marketers.
By the way, if you're interested in some ways to fortify links using "white hat" methods, check out: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/50-sites-to-help-you-bury-negative-posts-about-you-or-your-company.html . This is the same ol' tactic used by anyone who has been doing reputation management over the last couple of years. The darker hats will quickly realize that they can often get away with using less-than-ethical link building techniques to build page-rank into these social profile pages, which then pass on page-rank to their own pages without drawing as much algorithmic or human attention to the link profile of their own site.
You want we should buy dose links boss? Fuhgettaboudit...
Belasco was making a joke, BTW. In reality, my link building efforts don't go so dark that I have to "launder" anything at all. I just thought it worth mentioning how easily someone can turn a perfectly "legitimate" link building tactic into something more nefarious.
The truth is, sometimes it all comes down to perception. Whether you call it fortifying external links or laundering link juice, it's really the same thing with different shades of intent, method and scalability.
Great idea for a post. Sphunn. I doubt Shoemoney agrees with his being labelled an "SEO" but that's a difficult term to define sometimes. ;-)
Either Matt thinks that everyone knows what this means, or that spelling it out will result in people who shouldn't know trying something stupid. But just because you don't know what this stuff means doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to protect yourself - a little.
For those of you who are new to the idea of cross-site-scripting and html injection, here is a quick, easy (the easiest) example of how someone can exploit your forms and how you can test to see if your site has an issue:
First, do a search (One that producses 0 results and one that does produce results) using your internal search bar and/or leave a comment using your contact form. Does the confirmation page repeat what you searched for or put into the comment form? Do you get something like "Your search for yourkeyword produced zero results" where 'yourkeyword' has whatever you typed? OR when the comment form confirmation (or submission form confirmation in cases of directories, etc.) page comes up do you get a repeat of your message, such as "Thank you for contacting us. Your message below has been sent on to our team... Repeatofyourmessage." AND does this confirmation / search result page have it's own unique URL like:
www.yourdomain.com/search.php&keyword=yoursearch ?
Now what happens when you put that keyword inside an href tag by typing it directly into the URL query string or search form? Does the text being repeated on the confirmation page havej the link?
IF SO, you are in danger of someone doing this to you:
- Send a bot thru the interwebs testing all the forms for an occurrance of what is described above.
- Bot finds that your site does this.
- Same bot or new bot sent back to the site to repeat this 1,000 times with 100s of different keywords each linking to a page about their penis enlargement pills, ringtones, offshore gambling site...
- Bot reports all the unique URLs back to the spammer, who then either manually or with another bot creates social web profiles, blogger.com blogs, etc... for the purpose of linking to all of these crappy search result / comment / submission confirmation URLs.
- Now Googlebot comes by, cralws the links and voila! You have pages in the index that link to Billy Bob's House of Pornophenalia.
Again, that was the EASIEST example I could think of> Just because your site passes this test doesn't mean it's safe. Hire someone to look at it for you if you're unsure.
I see the /short version of the page in the #1 spot on Google for "web 2.0 awards" no quotes with a PR 6.
Loren, is it true that you were originally going to title this post "Give Your Site a Linkjuice Facial". That would have been post slug of the week for sure! :-P
Todd is a smart marketer and an all-around good guy. I always look foward to seeing him at conferences. Heading over to have a listen now...
"Real SEOS" know that great linkbait makes those reading it feel good about themselves by telling them they they are 'elite' in some way because they fit a certain profile.
Bravo! If I still blogged about SEO I'd give that a link for sure. Hell, maybe I will anyway.
A little birdy told me I might know that 'Guest Services Manager'. Take note of how they are responding to these because the guy knows what he's doing.
And remember also that if you are a product-oriented business (i.e. eCommerce) Google is now making this even more important by incliuding customer reviews from sites like epinions in the shopping search results.
Story: Dealing With “Impossible” Online Reputation Challenges