Here’s one of the emails I got:

Here we see a knucklehead posting a comment in a misguided attempt at link building. It’s not really the fault of the “spammer” that the link building attempt is for naught: this is an obvious mass-submission. Really, enough sites were probably hit by this submission machine that this message had some kind of benefit, and if so, congratulations to your diet supplements, dude.

Still, the fact stands that this carpet bombing of links missed its target with any LiveJournal comment fields it was posted on. Not because of LiveJournal’s disabling of HTML-formatted links on anonymous comments, or because this little comment is formatted in BB-code, but because of a little attribute on links that Google doesn’t like:

After joking with our very own Anthony Coleman about offering “LiveJournal SEO” services at our company, he admitted to researching the viability of this. Sadly or possibly as expected, he said that this was an empty pursuit, letting me know that every external link on LiveJournal is “nofollow,” as depicted and highlighted in the above picture. While my area of expertise in this company does not qualify me to comment on the exact benefit (or lack thereof) a “nofollow” link provides to a page’s rank, such links are certainly less desirable for SEO.

LiveJournal’s not the only site practicing the nofollow tactic to dissuade would-be spammers: Twitter takes the same approach, and so do the other social media giants. Even so, this doesn’t stop Search Influence from getting our clients a nutritious glass of “link juice” when we put links into our proverbial Juiceman Juicers all around the web. While “LiveJournal SEO” may not be a service that Search Influence will offer anytime in the future, we’ll always hold the site dear to us, and I’d personally like to thank my new pal “Odzywki” for reminding us of the respectable approach that Search Influence takes to SEO.

Google is feeding local business owners to the wolves with their latest Places update. Lior Ron, Google Places Product Manger, announced yesterday evening that Google will be “helping” business owners keep their business listings updated by now allowing anyone, mischievous competitors included, to edit your entire Places listing for you. Yes, even if it is verified.

How… thoughtful of Google.

Damn it feels good to be a Panda.

Over two weeks ago, Google scared the SEO community by publicly releasing what even they called a “pretty big” change in their algorithm, “noticeably” affecting 11.8% of queries. This change, coming on the heels of competitor Blekko.com blacklisting certain content farms and the announcement of a Chrome plugin to block websites from search, is part of what analysts at Sistrix call a “quest for quality.” This is old news to anyone paying attention, but a wide variety of opinions are still circling about what this update really meant. Most people pointed at “content farms” as the target of the update; yet it becomes clear that these sites were not the primary target nor were they targeted intentionally as “low quality.”

Pandas munch only on bamboo…

The Big Panda update is the culmination of a long line of work; Matt Cutts, Google’s spam god himself, points to the Caffeine update from way back in 2009 as the beginning of his team really looking at low-quality results. The spiders were finding so many new pages that they had to do something about plagiarists, scrapers, aggregators, and meaningless fluff content. While Cutts was happy with the low amounts of straight V14gR4-style spam, he was worried about that fluff — what he called “shallow content.”

Moving forward two years to the end of this January, Cutts announced a small change which attempted to make some programmer-centric search terms rank Stack Overflow and other providers of original user-created content over sites scraping that content. This affected a whopping .5% of queries, including such high-converting gems as “pass json body to spring mvc” and “aws s3 emr pig.” Obviously, ma and pa aren’t going to see these changes.

But the ones made a month later, seen first on February 24th, are the kinds of searches the average user would be making. Demand Media, owner of eHow and other alleged content farms made an almost-snarky blog post that either thumbed its nose at Google’s change or reaffirmed the company’s legitimacy, depending on how much bile you smelled on the words.

By the time Google officially announced the change on its blog on the 28th, webmasters, SEO experts, and even CNN had weighed in on the change. Website owners noted major changes in their rankings and traffic, and they were rarely happy with the results. Finally, on March 1st, a heart-to-heart with Cutts and algorithm genius Amit Singhai at TED 2011 explained the change in depth.

…Authoritative, quality bamboo.

This talk laid out how Google designed its algorithm. Instead of trying to find factors and hope that said factors are in line with users’ expectations, they asked questions of real people about a variety of websites, then built the algorithm to match the answers to those questions. These questions cut to the core of what’s important on web sites: Would I give this site my credit card information? Would I use this information for my sick child? These questions should be at the core of website development and content creation — unfortunately, Google has to step in and play Gatekeeper and Keymaster.

Jason Calcanis tastes like Bamboo to Big Panda.

The next day, Jason Calcanis, CEO of “education site” Mahalo.com known for quipping “SEO is Bullshit,” laid off 10% of his workforce and halted all written content production in response to the site’s losses in search engine ranking, when a month earlier he boasted of doubling the size of the company this year. While not talking to the press, he tweeted: “We were the right size for a certain market opportunity, and overnight that changed.” Somehow that sounds like AOL and Netscape, too…

Later that day, Google set up a thread in their forum to try to assuage the growing litany of discontented site owners. Google knew people were watching, and they were quickly responding. Most posts complained of losing a majority of income from the algorithm switch, and pridefully stated nothing could have been wrong with their websites. SEO gearheads wagged their heads in frustration and more or less told everyone to chill out. Without copying what Ms. Fox said, not much has changed in SEO — don’t try to “win” at it by doing the bare minimum and don’t base your entire livelihood on search engine ranking. That’s not comforting to someone like the owner of Fonerbooks, who claimed to see everything but his original work in the rankings, or HealthCastle, who saw a 40% drop in traffic and wanted to know “why Google named us low quality.”

Demand vs. “Thanks”

Two companies represent diametrically opposed business plans and responses to the Algorithm change: Demand Media and Mahalo, the well-rounded shrug and the panicked crisis. I think that the differences in approach to content farming truly showed the reason why the sites were affected differently by the Big Panda algorithm change.

Demand Media owns eHow, one of the most egregious of content farms. Yet, according to most data, it rose in the rankings. While this is enough to aggravate “legitimate” content creators, how eHow is supposed to be used sets it apart and mitigates much of the spamminess it’s known for. Adweek explains the concept well:

The company’s evolving media strategy, according to Rosenblatt, is to attract users to eHow and other properties by answering highly specific search queries, and then drive them to other branded channels, hoping they become loyalists. “We are constantly trying to figure out ways of bringing people in [and] give them a much broader experience on our network,” he said.

They use long-tail and specific search phrases to drive traffic to niche branded sites. These sites have meaningful authors and sponsors: Lance Armstrong, Tyra Banks, and Rachael Ray among them. I’ll even admit two Demand Media-owned sites are too often in my history: David Wong’s Cracked.com and Fancylad’s i-am-bored.com. What sets Demand Media apart from some of the other content farms is the high level of community loyalty and interaction these sites enjoy. Most stories and links on these sites have plenty of user comments, and their Facebook pages enjoy a level of curation and personality that rival traditional content providers like bloggers. The links are strongly shared and enjoys some market saturation — an “article” on the flaws in alien takeover strategies has 1.3 million views, 10,000 likes, and 1600 comments over the course of 32 days. That’s better than most SEO companies’ biggest clients.

Branding for the Bored

Compare this to Mahalo, which hardly enjoys the same kind of saturation. A much more broadly marketable subject, “Super Bowl Commercials 2011,” garnered only 37 tweets and no comments over the same number of days. Mahalo, though designed cleanly and conspicuously missing any ads, refuses to market themselves to an audience, happy to provide something that doesn’t work over and over. This piece of poetic gold shows the difference in style of laziness:

DreamWorks forthcoming animated comedy “Kung Fu Panda 2,” featuring the voice talent of Jack Black, had a trailer debut during Super Bowl XLV. The ad features the film’s tag line: “We Will Wok You,” along with the lead character attacking enemies with a wok…

While Demand might pump out three articles on the same fluff topic, there isn’t the lack of attention to meaningfulness seen on other farms. Don’t forget that Mahalo is trying to brand itself as a one-stop-shop for learning, while Demand revels in its content for content’s sake mission.

Big Panda vs. Old Dinosaur

But all this talk about content farms is a red herring. This was not Blekko; this was not a targeted swipe at a business plan. If that were the case, Fonerbooks, who had allegedly well-respected web sites with large amounts of original and informative content, would have no problems with the “Farmer” update. The Wall Street Journal took up his case, citing his innovative computer troubleshooting techniques, and using it as a screed against the latest update’s failure to address the “real problem.” The article compares Demand Media’s eHow 200-word summarization to the detailed article 10 times the length that eHow supposedly “stole.”

Here are the two pages in question: the first link on Google for “toshiba troubleshooting” and the first result for “toshiba troubleshooting fonerbooks.” The difference is striking.

Sure, eHow has two other articles linked that have nearly the same title, though thankfully with different content. Sure, eHow has 7 ads in the first 900 or so pixels of the screen, and even more below the fold. Sure, eHow’s writer has written such crucial treatises on computer repair as “How to Take Crease Marks Out of Posters” and “Fitness Requirements for the Army Reserves.” But what page is more useful to the reader?

Is this really quality?

Is it the one with poorly laid out tables, walls of text, veiled insults to the reader, and links to static gif flowcharts, culminating with an ever-present plug to buy a $25 self-published book? Or is it the one that someone can look at immediately and see if the information is useful? Comparing site statistics shows that users spend the same amount of time on both sites — can you read 2000 words in under 3 minutes?

This isn’t to indemnify the owner of Fonerbooks; rather to show that this update was really about user experience, rather than a content-based punishment. Are you providing a brand to your readers? Will they come back, recommend your site, and consider you a valuable source of information? 4 people “Liked” the eHow link on Facebook — that kind of user interaction is absent on Fonerbooks, excluding buying his prose.

Playing numbers games with Big Panda

At the heart of all SEO is trying to figure out what Google wants. How do we deliver what the algorithm deigns important, while still remaining relevant to the clients of our clients? Eight factors seemed relevant across the posts and stories about the “Farmer” update. Big Panda doesn’t want to play games; the factors suggested are a product, not a cause of good marketing and website design. These factors were culled from a variety of sources, though Searchmetrics’s confidence in visitor statistics like bounce rates, saying they “have obviously been part of the quality guidelines of the update” provided an excellent starting point to develop a way to examine. Search Engine Land’s “Why Me?” post also provided important metrics to test, such as website authority and ad density.

1. Duplication of Content
2. Author Authority
3. Ad Density
4. Overzealously Using NoFollow Links
5. On-site User Engagement
6. Off-site User Engagement, i. e. Social Media
7. Link Profile
8. Visitor Statistics

Using these eight metrics, I tested the top winners and losers from reports by searchmetrics.com, seoclarity.net, sistrix.com, the Google support thread, and other news stories. My method tried to discern if any of these suggested metrics truly held weight.

Using a random article, page, or product linked from the home page of the site, I checked each metric. My method was hardly scientific, and limited by the process of doing it by hand and the subjective nature of some of the variables.

Duplication of content was checked using articlechecker.com or Googling random paragraphs, depending on what gave any results. No duplication was 0; otherwise it was a count up to 20 duplicates on the web. The goal is always 0 duplication, though this method ignored any canonicalization.

Author Authority was a subjective 0, .5, or 1 denoting the author’s specialization of his writing. A writer in a wide variety of fields or with no name received a 0; one who wrote in one general field, such as electronics, received a 1. Those that I felt could have gone either way got a .5. Clearly, more authority should be better.

Ad density was a simple count “above the fold.” My screen is set to 1440×900, falling into the majority of web users according to W3Schools. This helps determine purpose of the page — too many advertisements could mean a low-quality site.

Nofollow links were the percentage of outbound links with a nofollow tag. If a site doesn’t want to pass its link juice, how can we trust those links are helpful to the reader?

On-site User Engagement was a simple count of comments on the page. This usually means a site has repeat visitors and is building a brand.

Off-site User Engagement was split into tweets and Facebook posts. I searched the titles of the pages, long and shortened URLs, and keywords in Tweetscan.com and youropenbook.org. Rarely did these numbers match what was on the site; I’m not sure if this is a weakness or not as Google might not index old tweets or private Facebook pages. Either way, more social involvement means people find your site useful, and should bring your rank up.

The page’s Link Profile was checked via a random smattering of off-site backlinks from the Yahoo Site Explorer. I rated the links on a 5 scale, where 1 is least spammy (AOK) and 5 is most spammy. A spammier link profile should mean a lower ranking, if backlink quality were taken into account.

Finally, visitor statistics of the domain were checked for the most recent time period on Alexa. I checked the bounce rate and time-on-site. Ideally longer is better, though you can’t beat a timewaster like Facebook, who reigns supreme at 32.7 minutes per visit.

The data is embedded and linked at the bottom of the post; I invite anyone to seriously crunch the numbers, but a quick analysis can show “direction,” that is, whether a given factor positively or negatively affects ranking. For a 90% confidence interval, we can see that 4 metrics definitely matter: ad density, social networking, link profile, and visitor statistics. All of these metrics fall in line with the expected effect on ranking described above. In short, Big Panda works.

So what does it all mean?

Deeper study is always needed, but for a designer or marketer, Big Panda brought the web back to the user. The goal, more now than ever, is to create a site that people will want to interact with. Compelling visual designs, interesting and relatable content, and user loyalty both on and off the site will reign supreme.

But that’s been the standard operating procedure of advertising and content production the whole time. In many ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Now, Google is whole-heartedly supporting your efforts and rewarding you.

If you’re having trouble surviving with a Big Panda in the room, it’s time to change how you do business on the internet.

Big Panda Data Spreadsheet

CityGrid Media (Orange Soda) Form Spam Image

I’m very surprised to see this kind of thing from a company of this stature.

I’m glad to see that the address is in New York and not American Fork Utah as I’m fairly confident the folks I’ve known at Orange Soda wouldn’t condone this behavior.

Full text of email message follows:

Good afternoon, I wanted to reach out to you about your placement in online search. Citygrid is the largest local content and marketing network on the web. I noticed that you are not populating on the major search engines for a few key search terms. Your competition is capitalizing on this and I wanted to discuss how to take some of this market share. We gain placement on Google, Bing, and Yahoo and offer clients 86% of the local web. As part of our SEO, SEM, (Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing) and content network campaigns we provide phone call tracking, stats, and other comprehensive data to directly track ROI. We will optimize your website to come up on the first page of Google, driving people looking for your services to your business. I’d like to set up a time to speak about this and go over your options to determine if this would be a good fit for your business. Please reach out with your availability. Thank you. Best, x-x-x-x Senior Account Executive P: 212-373-7798 F: 213-351-7011 E: x-x-x-x@CityGridMedia.com www.CityGridMedia.com 555 West 18th St. 5th Floor New York, NY 10011 The largest content and marketing network on the web

This is shameful behavior from a reputable company. I expect better of both CityGrid and Orange Soda.

In Twitter’s blog post “State of Twitter Spam” they identify

Twitter SPAM as “behaviors that range from insidious to annoying. Posting harmful links to phishing or malware sites, repeatedly posting duplicate tweets, and aggressively following and un-following accounts to attract attention”

Their progressive and aggressive approach to taking down the spammers has been a good fight. I’ve had numerous odd accounts follow me who seems to disappear due to “suspicious behavior” before I even got around to seeing who it was. I don’t know about you but I like that, a lot. It gives me confidence that I won’t be completely inundated with crap – I mean spam.

Some forms of Spam as identified under Twitter’s rules are (as quoted from their forum):

• If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account;
• If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;
• If you repeatedly post other users’ Tweets as your own;
• If you have attempted to “sell” followers, particularly through tactics considered aggressive following or follower churn;

Here are a few perfect illustrations of Twitter SPAM “duplicate content over multiple accounts”

and the next one ….

And another….

And another…

If you were to partake in this sort of evil for yourself or on the behalf of clients, the consequence could be an immediate termination of the account or accounts in question. 

Obviously, as marketers we need to consider the consequences of what we do for our clients. Ignorance of rules and policies does not exclude anyone from the repercussions of not following or understanding them.

If your client’s account is terminated, you put them at risk. Your efforts to create your Twitter brand awareness and embrace their customer base will alienate those customers and tarnish their name.

In the least, a lot of time and effort is lost. All of your building then has to start from over step one. If you did this in a client’s name, I would say it’s a safe bet their Twitter rebuilding efforts will be with someone else.

As users and viewers we can practice vigilance. If you see this type of behavior, flag it! Let Twitter know. If you’re not sure how, find out here. By all means, don’t follow the links or buy the products. Sometimes it’s hard to spot, but it’s important to be prudent in your clicking and buying.

Remember, every action is a vote. Don’t vote in favor of spam …

… unless it’s the salty, occasionally delicious, when-sitting next-to-a-campfire meat product.

Related reading:

Internet Marketing for Plastic Surgeons – Less Scary than You Think

You Can Buy Brand Love on Twitter?,

The Secret of Small Business Social Media – You Must be Present to Win

(Thanks for the pics! “hegarty_david” and “pabo76“)

There is obvious value to a small business owner in getting users to leave positive reviews. The question is how much should a business pay for a review? No, no, no … I’m joking. The question really is how do you encourage customers to leave Yelp reviews naturally and organically without abusing the intent of the site?

To Solicit or not to Solicit

Yelp is clear about incentives for reviews: “Yelp has advised business owners not to offer incentives for reviews. For starters, paying people to write reviews about your business is another form of shilling and that’s just wrong. Second, very often you’ll offend a customer and the offer will be quickly outed in your reviews, resulting in unintended negative reviews and/or negative publicity. Finally, it’s typically a fruitless exercise.”

It’s a fruitless exercise because of the Yelp review filter.  Yelp knows their site is a great opportunity for illegitimate behavior, and they have built tools to attempt to minimize the spam and attempt to maintain the authenticity of the site. They haven’t been entirely successful. Says Luther Lowe of Yelp,

‘It’s very tough to design algorithms that can tell the difference between the guy who’s cranking out a fake five-star review about himself, and the guy who’s flipped that laptop around and handed it to his customer and said, “Hey, write a five-star review about me.” So, you know, I know that businesses are going to ask people to write reviews. If you do that, you need to be prepared for pretty violent review fluctuation.”

From Yelp Common Questions: “Some reviewers are more credible than others. For the most part, users can decide for themselves which reviewers they trust the most. We remove some of the guesswork by filtering out reviews that are written by less established users. We do this in order to provide more trustworthy and useful content to our users and to help protect against fake reviews from malicious competitors and disgruntled former employees.”

Control Yourself on Yelp

Every small business wants testimonials to help drive traffic. Yelp is tremendously trusted by real world users. (Isn’t it more encouraging to try the new restaurant in town after you read 10 great reviews online?)

And Yelp is tremendously trusted by search engines, and being so trustworthy makes it ripe for abuse by some businesses and internet marketers. The prime example is Google Local map rankings, which are influenced by some degree by the presence of online reviews on select review sites.

But Yelp advises you to control yourself:

“Should I ask customers to write reviews for my business?

While we understand that there is a temptation to solicit reviews from your customers, it is not something we encourage. The most successful businesses on Yelp have had their reviews come organically. This is for a couple of reasons:

1. Potential customers can sometimes have an adverse reaction to a business that looks like it has solicited reviews.

2. Quite often those solicited reviews will be filtered out (see above) based on the activity level of those users within the Yelp community.

If you do ask your customers for reviews, please be prepared for the review number fluctuation that might follow.

Also, keep in mind — success on Yelp is primarily measured by the number of people who view your page and thus walk in the door or set an appointment, not the number of reviews you have. Yelp users are savvy: they care about quality — not quantity — when it comes to your business reviews.”

To be completely genuine, solicitation of reviews even without incentive is frowned upon. And incentivized reviews (buying Yelp reviews) are absolutely unethical …

This picture taken in the store suggests completing a review, and not only a review … but “as good as it gets” review, to get 20% off the next purchase. One reviewer complains on this business’ Yelp profile about the incentivized review request in the store; Mel T comments on Yelp:

“How would they base the authenticy of a Yelp review? What if I just claimed ownership of Jane D.’s (as in Jane Doe – I’m not trying to impersonate any fellow Yelpers here) review? How would they know if I was really Jane D.?

- Would I still get a discount if I had written a review, but it wasn’t “raving?”

Well, I’m sorry, Pure Beauty. You cannot buy a five star Yelp review from me. Instead, your blantant bribary is going to cost you two whole stars. Yep, that’s right; I’m knocking you down TWO full stars. Had it not been for your sign, I would have given you three stars – an A-OK for decent employees during my visits, a relatively clean shop, and reasonable prices.

But, again, I will not stand for your bribary. Hmph. (Hmm..wonder if I can get 20% off with this review..?)”

This beauty supply store has bigger issues than their Yelp spamming. There are quite a few reviews blasting their customer service. Perhaps, they should consider better ways to combat negative publicity.

Asking for Help on Yelp

One self-proclaimed newbie small business on Yelp asks help of the Yelpers, Greg “GSKChicago” K., asks, “I am relatively new to Yelp and still learning my way around … What do Yelpers look for from a business owner on Yelp?”

The answers:

Miguel “the Coach” R. says: “honesty!”

Lauren “Order” H. says: “if you do anything related to your own busines, disclose that you are the owner. and don’t use the talk boards or other parts of the yelp site as free promo or spam.”

nikki c. says: “just be real, honest and your own worst critic.”

Seems legitimate enough. This business owner wants to do the Yelp thing correctly, but Miguel “The Coach” R. comes back later to point out some problems, and all of Greg’s good intent evaporates:

Miguel “the Coach” R.:  “Greg -No offense but after reading the reviews for your business, I am a little disappointed. Everyone who did a review on your business – only did a review on your business. So, that means that you either made several profiles, had your friends make profiles, somehow convinced your customers to make a profile and only rate your company – or – some combination of the three.

If you want my opinion. No company will EVER completely 100% satisfy each and every customer. And to see nothing but 5 stars for each review is flat out unbelievable.

As of right now I feel as though you have already been dishonest by doing what you did, and that will eventually hurt your business rather than help it.”

Using Social Media to Drive Fans over to Yelp Profile

If your small business has a strong Facebook Fan base, you can attempt drive Fans over to your Yelp profile and hope that some percentage of them will actually leave reviews. These businesses on Facebook are technically soliciting reviews but offering nothing in return, so their Yelp review building may be considered more legitimate. They are still soliciting, but they aren’t buying Yelp reviews.

This Facebook-er is more blatant. The Lone Star Salon tells Fans if they leave a review on a review site, Lone Star Salon will give them $10.   Totally buying a review.

And ….

And …

We’re talking about pretty low value transactions here – a water bottle, a free cookie, etc. – but any incentive can be enough for a reviewer to take a few moments to drop a review into a Yelp profile that they would not have done if not incentivized.

Raffle Your Incentive … is Still Incentive

Another way to buy a review is a little more subtle, but it is still crossing Yelp’s guidelines for good Yelping. Essentially it is offering a chance to win a free product or gift certificate in a raffle. It’s not a direct exchange like Lone Star’s program, but these are still incentive for leaving a review.

Any reviews on Yelp from these campaigns are not the natural and organic reviewing that is Yelp has struggled to maintain. From Yelp Terms of Service:

“You agree that you will not, and will not assist or enable others to: use the Site in a manner that may create a conflict of interest, such as trading reviews with other business owners or writing or soliciting shill reviews”

And there are a few abusers on Twitter too …

Again, offering a chance to win free product or discount is not directly buying a Yelp review, but it is definitely incentive for the reviewer, warranting the review as forced.  Not natural behavior for Ramona Family Naturals.

They tweeted on the 14th and got 2 5-star reviews on the 15th. (I wonder who won the box of organic produce?  They should tweet that.)

And The Spot Yogurt in Santa Monica appear to be naively direct in their request.

And before that, they requested on March 31^st too.

Of course, we know that ignorance of the rule is not exception from it.  Yelp says of this type of false reviewing:

“very often you’ll offend a customer and the offer will be quickly outed in your reviews, resulting in unintended negative reviews and/or negative publicity”

Luther Lowe on business owners aggressively soliciting reviews from customers:  “it just looks spammy and decreases the authenticity of your overall presence. That can turn the customers off to you.”

Charles Grumblemouse O. has a more virtuous Yelper attitude. He says of being Paid to write reviews:

“… the impetus for writing reviews is surely different if you’re paid than if you were just doing it for the love right?”

And finally, it’s important to be creative and sincere. Here’s a great case study of a New York Locksmith. He’s got a great perspective on how to get Yelp reviews without direct solicitation.

Image credits: Thanks to “twonjosh,” “Silver Smith,” ZDNEt, and Steve Rhodes for the images!

So, it’s taken me a few days to get back to this, but I was blown away by a recent cold-call from a company purporting to be the marketing arm of the Better Business Bureau.

I think everybody knows that the BBB is a commercial venture, but this was a little over the top.

Here’s why I liken it to Merchant Circle: The caller says “This is Valerie calling for William Scott. Calling on behalf of the better business bureau if you could please contact me at 888-xxx-xxxx. Thank you.”

Message from Valerie of BBB (.wav file)

Notice, nowhere does the caller indicate she’s calling to sell me something. So here I am presuming it’s something about a complaint or a renewal or something.

I feel compelled to get back to them.

Surely it’s not as bad as Merchant Circle telling me I’ve got bad reviews, but c’mon, why else would the BBB be calling.

So I call Valerie back and she instantly goes into how she’s so excited to hear from me because we are a search marketing company. She then asks me how I would self identify and I say “internet marketing” and she walks me into a search for “New Orleans Internet Marketing” (for which we’re second organically and #3 on the map behind neworleansinternetmarketing [dot] com which I feel pretty good about given our low level of effort).

Local Handyman Columbus OH

She blows right past that and then walks me through an examples of a search for a “Local Handyman in Columbus OH

” at which point she shows me a sponsored listing in the right hand margin at about half-mast. In the example it’s at least top of page.

Clearly I was impressed. Makes my organic and earned map ranking pale in comparison, no?

So I asked “how much”? And <em>I think</em> she said $195.00 a month! Really though, it’s a bargain compared to $300.00 for Yelp! I’m not 100% sure that was the quoted amount and I may call back just because.

Like a dope I hustled to get off the phone. She offered to let me talk to a specialist and I said no rather than sticking around to get the real dope.

Handyman Columbus OH

Then I decided to do a little more digging. I backed out from “Local Handyman in Columbus OH” (a little long-tail to get much bang for that $195) and tried something more likely “Handyman Columbus OH” I saw our sponsored link and two 10 pack listings for different advertisers on BizzSpot: “Affordable Handyman” and “Handyman Professionals”. The website address on the “Handyman Professionals” listing goes to some guy in San Francisco (?!).

And, the on-page optimization is awful — no h1, bad title — a generally weak offering.

In short, I’m confused. BBB & BizzSpot have put together what looks like a mediocre listing product, with some attempt at distribution.

It seems as though the BBB is taking advantage of its members in a Merchant Circle style approach to position a weak eLocalListing knockoff at 4X the price. I know it’s not the eLocal co-brand because Steve would never let such drek out the door.

If anyone else has gotten this call and stuck around to listen to the full rap I’d love to hear about it.download Mata Hari

These are actually pretty good from a sales perspective. What they lack is any kind of real preparation and review.

See also: Links Hog and High Web Rank

Subject: I visited your searchinfluence.com site and had a question

I was looking at websites under the keyword plastic surgeons new orleans and came across your site searchinfluence.com. I see that you’re ranked #10 on page 5 in google.

I am not sure if you are aware of why you’re ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is.

There is no reason you cannot have a top three ranking for this keyword based on your site structure and content. You have a very nice site, with quality content.

You need significantly more one way anchor text backlinks. If you are interested I can help you with this…

I am talking about getting you ranked for ALL your keywords. Adding new backlinks on a steady and consistent basis from high PR quality websites is what produces the rankings you
are looking for.

The right kind of links are very critical in getting top ranking….and I can hand deliver these quality links to you.

My partners and I own 1000′s websites and offer private linking to hundreds of website owners just like yourself.

I did not send this email out to thousands of people but I am currently reaching out to a list of your “keyword competitors” as well. You are the one I really favor and the one I see can monetizing the targeted website traffic this can deliver.

I have your contact info as: phone #(504) 617-6096. Is it Ok to give you a call?

I have a very simple way to prove that what I do works and it is risk free for you to try. Nothing beats seeing the results with your own eyes.

Is it ok if I give you a call? I would love to pursue this further over the phone with you or should I go somewhere else?

Sincerely,

Peter Cogan
PrivateLinksBuilder.com
704-489-0616

P.S – Please just hit reply and tell me specifically who to ask for when I call and what time of day is best to reach that person and what is their position with the company?

For a little background please see my Links Hog post.

Hello,

I was looking at websites under the keyword ‘ chiropractor new orleans ‘ and came across your website http://www.ifindsales.com/. I see that you’re ranked number 2 on page 15.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of why you’re ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is.

Are you aware of what the difference between first page and page 15 would mean to your business?

Look at the difference in revenue for the highly competitive search term ‘cheap airfares’. “Moving from position five to position one on the search engines means a difference of $2.5 million in commerce per year”. You can view the entire study here at:

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/19430.asp

While your industry or profession may or may not be quite as competitive as the example above, you are surely leaving profits on the table if youÂ’re not ranking for ALL of your industries profitable key search terms.

Before you get comfortable thinking that we found you under some obscure keyword and that you rank well under “other” keywords, let me explain something. We found you under this “chiropractor new orleans“ keyword and you are losing traffic, and clients, on this keyword.

Chances are that you are also losing valuable traffic on other keywords as well. There are usually 15-20 very profitable keywords for every business market and if you are not ranked on ALL of them, your competitor is stealing business away from you.

There’s no reason you can’t have a top page ranking for this keyword based on your site structure and content. You need significantly more “one way” anchor text back links. If you’re interested I can help you with this…

Again, I’m talking about getting you ranked for ALL your keywords. Adding new back links on a steady and consistent basis from high quality websites is what will produce the rankings you are looking for. The right kinds of links are very critical in getting top ranking. I can hand deliver these quality links to you.

My partners and I own over 13,000 websites and offer PRIVATE linking to over 3200 website owners just like you.

I did not send this email out to hundreds of people, but I am currently reaching out to a list of your “competitors” as well.

I have a very simple way to prove to you that what I say works and it doesnÂ’t cost you a dime to try. Nothing beats seeing the results with your own eyes.

Is it ok if I give you a call? I would love to pursue this further over the phone with you.

Just reply to this email and I will be glad to contact you to discuss this offer. I only work with one type of business in each city, first come, first served. My client in your market will dominate the organic search traffic that is worth thousands of dollars. Will that client be you or will you pass and give that business to your competitor? Reply now while you are at your computer.

Sincerely,

Gregory Fort

P.S – I emailed you because itÂ’s a win -win for both of us. This is a private offering by invitation only. You will not receive this offering again as it is extremely confidential and time sensitive.
High Web Rank Gregory Fort, President 967 Roanoke Rd. Cleveland Hts., Oh. 216-339-0798 www.highwebrank.com Darrin Spiesz Director of Marketing and Sales 440-263-3136

Golly – it just keeps coming. By the way I’ve decided I’m going to start publishing all of these as I get them.

WordPress Spam Injection = Google Penalty for My Blog (But Not Website)

I had been wondering for about two weeks why I was no longer ranking for “Locomotive Consultant” and reading David’s post made me check my code.

Darn spammers

David Mihm Rocks!