SEO WORLD NEWS

Posted by randfish

Last week in Whiteboard Friday: Why Your Viral Content Isn’t Working, I covered the importance of creating content that goes beyond just reaching the top of social media portals into the realm of attracting coveted high value links as well. Today, as promised, I’ll share the big separations between the two and some tactics to implement when launching viral content with the intention of link acquisition.

First off, a Venn Diagram (credit to Mystery Guest for the concept on this):

You can see in the purple section, at the intersection of viral success (from reaching the top of Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc) and link attraction, I’ve placed the desired result - a successful linkbait campaign. In the Fall of 2006, SEOmoz conducted some research analyzing the amount of links earned by content that went popular on the major social media portals (everything from Digg to Slashdot to TechCrunch). Unsurprisingly, we saw that a significant amount of the successful content on those sites attracted only a small number of legitimate links (a few dozen to a couple hundred), while a smaller group would attract thousands, or even tens of thousands.

Common Characteristics of Content that Earns Social Media Votes, But Doesn’t Get Links:

• Shallow Humor
  Funny can definitely get you to the top of Digg, but it often won’t carry you much further, particularly if the laugh is only enough for a "ha" (think Edna Krabappel) and not enough to inspire sharing. 
• Simplistic Observations
  Even with an insightful bit of writing, it can be hard to attract links if the content is surface-level and carries no depth.
• Reinforcing Stereotypes or Beliefs
  It’s fun and easy to create content that reinforces what everyone else is saying. Another comic making fun of Microsoft might hit the Digg popular page, but it’s unlikely to draw the links you might want unless it has some other standout qualities.
• Low Value Lists & Amalgamation Posts
  These are probably the most common kinds of posts I see on the social media sites, especially Sphinn (in the SEO field) and Del.icio.us/Popular (in the developer world). Grab a few friends, get a little boost, and everyone will vote up your CSS Rounded Corners technique. Whether you’ll get long term value and links is another matter.
• Niche-Pandering
  If you’re aware that a particular sect of followers has a powerful influence on a site’s content (Wii fanboys at Digg or Ron Paulites at Reddit), you can take advantage of that by authoring materials geared towards those audiences. Unfortunately, even if you do get on the front page, you might not earn the links you’re hoping for unless you’ve authored something truly new or brilliant on the subject.
• Weak Signal to Noise Ratio
  Plenty of the content on social news sites has great shock value and drives clicks, but once it’s time to convert those views into links, you’ll need substance over pure style and rhetoric.
• Drive-By Images/Video
  As with the weak signal-to-noise ratio, many pictures and videos that find their way into the popular content have little to no chance of attracting additional interest after that first view.
• Market Saturation
  If the social portal(s) you’re targeting have users that already read 99% of the material you write, you might not be getting any additional value from having one more story make the front page.
• Extremely Short-Form Content
  While there’s a decent amount of short-form content that makes it on the portals, much of it gets passed over when it comes time for links. Linkers need something they want to share or something that’s incited passion or critical thinking - short-form content is often consumed fast, browsed away from quickly, and forgotten before they’ve clicked the next item.
• Highly Negative/Inflammatory Content
  This can go either way, as some negative material gets an inordinate amount of attention. However, be cautious about how you do it - if you’re negative and pandering and shallow, there’s a good chance your linkbait won’t earn you much besides a high bandwidth cost.
• Beating the Dead Horse
  Some content has been seen one too many times. Repeating the same tired list or showing a collection of images, videos, links, or other material that’s already made its way around the web might get you a few more page views, but the Linkerati are a smart bunch, and they’ve often been around the web more than the average reader.
• Extremely Temporal News
  News items can attract lots of links, but if the material’s old within 12-24 hours, don’t expect the links to come racing in. This is why coverage of emerging events can be dangerous, as the post that only tells part of the story as fast as possible could be passed over when the whole story comes out.
• Inaccurate or Misleading Material
  If a piece is obviously incorrect, readers and voters might not catch it, but most linkerati are smarter and will investigate before they post (and even if they do link to it, will frequently use nofollow to indicate their distaste).
• Lost in the Echo Chamber
  If a blog post or content piece is simply writing the same story that’s been bandied about dozens of times or covering a subject that everyone in the niche thinks they’ve covered already (or covered better), linkers may be particularly stingy.

Recent Examples:

• Tech Solutions Your Small Biz Can’t Use - Not only is it a low value list, it’s also obviously inaccurate and misleading. As of today, Yahoo! only reports 6 links (3 are spam, the other 3 are nofollowed).
• SEOmoz’s 2007 Site Stats - Considering how big our previous reporting on stats have been, you might expect that we’d once again earn lots of links with this release, but no. Yahoo! reports 17 links, of which more than half are spam (and several other are nofollowed). What happened? We’re lost in the echo chamber and we’re saturating the market - even though the post reached the top of Sphinn, SEOmoz has such an overlap with the linkerati who read Sphinn that it probably attracted very few new readers.
• List of Social Networking Sites in Education - Although this list of great value (I even put it in the premium tips section here at SEOmoz), the content is very long-form, very niche and, for most readers, is going to have low value. Thus, Yahoo! shows it’s only got 29 links (many of which are low quality or nofollowed).
• Photo of Digg Accuracy - It’s funny, but it’s niche-pandering and very forgettable content, so even though it was on top of several social portals and even on the most Dugg list for the past 30 days, Yahoo! only shows 65 links (and not many of those are followed).

Common Characteristics of Content that Earns Links, But Doesn’t Always Make It on Social Portals:

• Duplicate Content
  When posting material that’s already been released elsewhere, you can have some success earning links from the population who hasn’t previously seen it, but it can be tough to get onto the major social portals where savvy bury-ers will shout "dupe" from the top of their keyboards.
• In-Depth Research
  A terrific source of links, complex research is also tough to consume quickly, and therefore isn’t well suited to the "don’t Digg it if you can’t understand it in 4 seconds" crowds.
• Interviews
  They’re good sources of information and insight, but they rarely appear on the social portals these days. Summaries or "important" quotes can help an interview stand out to the social crowds, but those votes can be tough to come by.
• Complex News Analysis
  As with in-depth research, a complex look at the news will, tragically, often earn fewer links than a shorter, punchier piece of coverage. Anyone who watches the major news outlets in the US can see this phenomenon in action on a daily basis. Tragic? Yes. Avoidable? Not really.
• Segments of a Larger Content Piece
  When content gets broken into multiple pages and pieces, linkers may find the relevant portion and reference it, but social voters don’t have the attention span to focus and will frequently abandon prior to finding the value.
• Community-Focused Material
  If you’re pandering or even speaking to an audience that doesn’t consistently participate at the portal you’re targeting, you’ll have a very tough time earning the necessary votes.

Recent Examples:

• Comparing Search Popularity Services - this post from Danny brilliantly covered the differences in the major services showing search market share percentages, and while it didn’t make the social news sites (probably due to being so in-depth and targeted), it earned 450+ links.
• How to Order Wine Without Looking Like an Asshole - I suspect this actually did get some good social traffic through StumbleUpon, but it perfectly exemplifies an in-depth, niche-focused (but broadly interesting) post. The subject matter isn’t social crowd-focused enough, but the list format is near perfect and it’s earned those 5,000+ links. Maybe I should submit it to Digg… (UPDATE: Oops! It did make Digg a couple years back, although it wasn’t very popular there)
• Why to Not Not Start a Startup - Paul Graham has very community-focused and in-depth material, and although some of his essays do make it onto sites like Techmeme (and of course, they all go to Hacker News), this one earned its 2200 links without the benefit of a major social media push.
• Interview with Sep Jemvar on Personalization - A perfect example of how even though the material’s great, the interview format somehow prohibits social media success. Thankfully, it still managed to earn several hundred links.

Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to dodge a good number of pitfalls in your viral marketing campaigns, and I suspect that will give you a big leg up in your quest for simultaneous social media and link-earning success.

As a next installment, I’ll cover why the search engines will have a vested interest in continuing to reward viral marketing campaigns (as there’s been some debate around this subject in the recent past).

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

May It Please the Mozzers,

Wecome to Legal Monday! I wanted to kick off 2008 by discussing an exciting, developing case on domain tasting. This case has three things that I think make for a sexy case. (1) It involves at least one well known party. (2) It exposes a cunning money-making scheme or business plan. (3) Finally, It’s obvious that this scheme should be illegal, but it’s not obvious which law is being broken.

Dell has stepped in where I-CANN and Verisign have feared to tread by filing suit against  one of the largest domain tasting networks. Dell did everything right to put itself in a good position for this lawsuit. Unfortunately, documents filed with the court last Friday, January 5, 2008 indicate that Dell may lose the case despite its efforts.

Part I of this post talks about Dell v BelgiumDomains, LLC.
Part II of this post asks a few questions about domain tasting.

Let’s recap the facts for those of you who haven’t been following this case over the past two months:

In the Southern District of Florida, Dell filed suit against three domain registrars, ten John Does, and a gentleman who goes by the name of JP Vasquez. Dell alleges that these defendants were involved in a domain tasting network that registered and used over sixty-four million domain names. According to John Levine and Jay Westerdal, these three registrars have been responsible for about 72.5% of the 255 million domains tasted in the past six months and have the most egregious history of domain churning.

According to Dell’s Complaint filed in October 2007, the registrars acted in concert with several shell corporations scattered around exotic locations with liberal banking laws, such as the West Indies, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Panama, and Argentina. Dell cannot yet identify who owns these registrars and shell companies (hence the John Doe defendants), but it does know that Mr. JP Vasquez managed the registrars out of Florida. Like smaller scale domain-tasting rackets, the network passed around profitable domain names like a hot potato in order to take advantage of I-CANN’s five-day refund policy. If you keep passing around your domain names in an endless loop, you never have to pay for the privilege of owning and using the web addresses. Meanwhile, the profitable sites bring in pay-per click dollars. If you want more information about how the scheme works, I commend to your attention the Washington Post article outlining the facts more fully.

No One Knows Who the Man Behind the Curtain Is.

Vasquez, a man of simple means, does not appear to be the mastermind behind this international scheme. All that is certain is that the Dr. Evil orchestrating this plot must have extremely deep pockets. Keeping millions upon millions of domain names registered, even if only for brief, temporary intervals, takes substantial amounts of cash.

Dell v. BelgiumDomains, LLC et al was originally filed “under seal” (that’s a term of art meaning "in secret") so that Dell could swoop in with its forensic experts, image the hard drives, and freeze the defendants’ U.S. assets before they even realized they had been nailed. Dell needed this information to build its case and find out who is behind the domain-tasting network.

While Vasquez originally claimed that he would cooperate by preserving and turning over valuable evidence, it appears that Vasquez changed his mind.

Dell Accuses Defendants of Destroying Evidence

Dell filed a request for sanctions last Friday, January 5, 2008, accusing the defendants of willfully and in bad faith erasing information from nine out of twenty-two servers. Allegedly, the defendants began erasing data only three days after they were instructed by the Judge to preserve evidence and hand it over to Dell. The defendants, who had remote access to the servers, used BCWipe to permanently and selectively delete information on at least five of the servers.

Dell is Seeking a Default Order Against the Defendants for Spoilation of Evidence.

In response, Dell is asking the Court to enter a default judgment (in other words, to give them an automatic win) as punishment for spoiling the evidence. You can read the Motion for Sanctions and the supporting declarations of the forensic experts here and here.

Granting a default judgment for spoliation of evidence is an extraordinary remedy and the chances of it being granted are slim. However, the defendants’ conduct is certain to inspire rancour in the judge hearing the case. It is more likely the court will award monetary sanctions than hand Dell a freebie win.

Dell’s claims may not survive without the missing evidence. There is solid evidence that the registrars are involved. However, without proof that the registrars and the foreign shell companies were acting in concert and owned by the same person/s, Dell’s case weakens.

Dell May Encounter Collection Problems Even if the Court Grants its Request for Default Judgment.

Further, even if the Court does award a default judgment or monetary sanctions, it is not clear whether Dell will be able to collect on the judgment. Having a slip of paper signed by a judge that states someone owes you money doesn’t put the cash in your bank account. You’ve got to chase it down. Dell probably doesn’t have much of a chance of getting to Dr. Evil’s assets.

The Defendants are Seeking to Dismiss the Case, including Dell’s Big-Money Trademark Counterfeit Claim.

In addition to destroying evidence, the defendants are also trying to use legal means to avoid responsibility in this case. They have requested dismissal of Dell’s claims. They claim that Dell’s claims are inapplicable and improperly pleaded. Most of Dell’s claims against the defendants are what you would expect in a domain tasting case: trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair business practices, etc. However, one of Dell’s claims, trademark counterfeit, is considered by many to be a novel claim that would expand the purview of trademark law. The U.S. law on trademark counterfeit can be found at 15 U.S. Section 1114(1).

Dell Has the Chance to Win Multi-Millions in Damages if the Court Allows the Counterfeit Claims to Go Forward.

Why bring in a counterfeit claim at all, you may be asking? The difference between a counterfeit claim and a regular infringement claim is hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Check out this math: If Dell proves its infringement claims, it can “win” up to $100,000 per domain. That sounds substantial, but it’s nothing compared to the damages for trademark counterfeit. If Dell proves its counterfeit claims, it can earn up to 1 million dollars per violation.

The defendants argue in their Motion to Dismiss that there is no such claim as trademark counterfeit in the domain tasting context. Hosting ads on an infringing domain name, the defendants argue, is not like selling fake Gucci bags on the street. Instead, it is a bona fide business model. The defendants claim they are offering a search service. Well, that’s one way to look at keyword advertising, I suppose.

Dell, on the other hand, argues that counterfeit is not limited to mislabeled physical products. Rather, trademark counterfeit should be defined broadly as occurring whenever a deceptive commercial practice involves an “identical or substantially indistinguishable” mark.

These are very different visions of counterfeit. It will be interesting to see whether the court will be willing to expand the law and hold that mass cyber- and typo-squatting amounts to counterfeit. There hasn’t been a ruling on either the request for sanctions or the request for dismissal. I’ll keep you posted as those decisions come in.

People have divergent, passionate views on domain tasting. Most people agree that registering and using web addresses that include trademark infringements or typographical errors, such as many of those in the Dell case, should be off limits. No one except Dell should be allowed toe use DellFinancialServices.com.

 However, people disagree passionately about domain tasting purely descriptive, non-infringing sites, such as icecream.com.

Domain tasting is not illegal or against I-CANN policy so long as there are no trademark issues. Regardless, some people believe that I-CANN should take immediate action to curtail domain tasting. They believe it stresses the registries’ resources and harms legitimate businesses by hoarding all of the good domain names. Further, small business owners, lacking the resources to do any medium to large scale tasting of their own, are disproportionately shut out from valuable web addresses. The big fish keep getting bigger and it doesn’t trickle down from those off-shore banks.

The Public Interest Registry (PIR) that registers dot-org web addresses has eliminated free trial periods for some registrars in order to discourage domain tasting. David Marher, PIR’s Senior Vice President, told The Washington Post that PIR was “being hit by a few registrars that were tasting millions of domains but literally deleting 99.9 percent of their domains so they wouldn’t have to pay for them.” PIR decided to take action because domain tasters were straining the automated systems and hoarding domain names from ‘legitimate’ users. In June 2006, PIR instituted a five cent surcharge for registrars that deleted 90% or more of their domains within the five-day grace period. The policy was successful. Almost overnight domain tasters abandoned dot-org domains.

Despite PIR’s success, there is no similar policy for companies managing other top level domains. Verisign, for example, has no current plans to institute a similar program. There is speculation that Verisign refuses to take action because it makes money off the domain tasters [gasp]. However, Verisign claims that it is waiting for ICANN to issue a universal policy for all registries. [Don’t hold your breath.]

Jay Westerdal has started an excellent post listing some pros and cons of domain tasting. There is also a good thread with well-made points on both sides of the domain tasting debate at webmasterworld.com.

As always, thanks for your attention. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Very truly yours,
Sarah

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

May It Please the Mozzers,

Wecome to Legal Monday! I wanted to kick off 2008 by discussing an exciting, developing case on domain tasting. This case has three things that I think make for a sexy case. (1) It involves at least one well known party. (2) It exposes a cunning money-making scheme or business plan (3) Finally, It’s obvious that this scheme should be illegal, but it’s not obvious which law is being broken.

Dell has stepped in where I-CANN and Verisign have feared to tread by filing suit against  one of the largest domain tasting networks. Dell did everything right to put itself in a good position for this lawsuit. Unfortunately, documents filed with the court last Friday, January 5, 2008 indicate that Dell may lose the case despite its efforts.

Part I of this post talks about Dell v BelgiumDomains, LLC.
Part II of this post asks a few questions about domain tasting.

Let’s recap the facts for those of you who haven’t been following this case over the past two months:

In the Southern District of Florida, Dell filed suit against three domain registrars, ten John Does, and a gentleman who goes by the name of JP Vasquez. Dell alleges that these defendants were involved in a domain tasting network that registered and used over sixty-four million domain names. According to John Levine  and Jay Westerdal, these three registrars have been responsible for about 72.5% of the 255 million domains tasted in the past six months and have the most egregious history of domain churning.

According to Dell’s Complaint filed in October 2007, the registrars acted in concert with several shell corporations scattered around exotic locations with liberal banking laws such as the West Indies, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Panama and Argentina. Dell cannot yet identify who owns these registrars and shell companies (hence the John Doe defendants), but it does know that Mr. JP Vasquez managed the registrars out of Florida. Like smaller scale domain-tasting rackets, the network passed around profitable domain names like a hot potato in order to take advantage of I-CANN’s five-day refund policy. If you keep passing around your domain names in an endless loop, you never have to pay for the privilege of owning and using the web addresses. Meanwhile, the profitable sites bring in pay-per click dollars. If you want more information about how the scheme works, I commend to your attention the Washington Post article outlining the facts more fully.

No One Knows Who the Man Behind the Curtain Is.

Vasquez, a man of simple means, does not appear to be the mastermind behind this international scheme. All that is certain is that the Dr. Evil orchestrating this plot must have extremely deep pockets. Keeping millions upon millions of domain names registered, even if only for brief, temporary intervals, takes substantial amounts of cash.

Dell v. BelgiumDomains, LLC et al was originally filed “under seal” (that’s a term of art meaning "in secret") so that Dell could swoop in with its forensic experts, image the hard drives and freeze the defendants U.S. assets before they even realized they had been nailed. Dell needed this information to build its case and find out who is behind the domain-tasting network.

While Vasquez originally claimed that he would cooperate by preserving and turning over valuable evidence, it appears that Vasquez changed his mind.

Dell Accuses Defendants of Destroying Evidence

Dell filed a request for sanctions last Friday, January 5, 2008 accusing the defendants of willfully and in bad faith erasing information from nine out of twenty-two servers. Allegedly, the defendants began erasing data only three days after they were instructed by the Judge to preserve evidence and hand it over to Dell. The defendants, who had remote access to the servers, used BCWipe to permanently and selectively delete information on at least five of the servers.

Dell Is Seeking A Default Order Against the Defendants for Spoilation of Evidence.

In response, Dell is asking the Court to enter a default judgment (in other words, to give them an automatic win) as punishment for spoiling the evidence. You can read the Motion for Sanctions and the supporting declarations of the forensic experts here, very soon.

Granting a default judgment for spoliation of evidence is an extraordinary remedy and the chances of it being granted are slim. However, the defendants’ conduct is certain to inspire rancour in the judge hearing the case. It is more likely the court will award monetary sanctions than hand Dell a freebie win.

Dell’s claims may not survive without the missing evidence. There is solid evidence that the registrars are involved. However, without proof that the registrars and the foreign shell companies were acting in concert and owned by the same person/s, Dell’s case weakens.

Dell May Encounter Collection Problems Even If the Court Grants Its Request for Default Judgment.

Further, even if the Court does award a default judgment or monetary sanctions, it is not clear whether Dell will be able to collect on the judgment. Having a slip of paper signed by a judge that states someone owes you money doesn’t put the cash in your bank account. You’ve got to chase it down. Dell probably doesn’t have much of a chance of getting to Dr. Evil’s assets.

The Defendants are Seeking To Dismiss the Case, including Dell’s Big-Money Trademark Counterfeit Claim.

In addition to destroying evidence, the defendants are also trying to use legal means to avoid responsibility in this case. They have requested dismissal of Dell’s claims. They claim that Dell’s claims are inapplicable and improperly pleaded. Most of Dell’s claims against the defendants are what you would expect in a domain tasting case: trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair business practices etc. However, one of Dell’s claims, trademark counterfeit, is considered by many to be a novel claim that would expand the purview of trademark law. The U.S. law on trademark counterfeit can be found at 15 U.S. Section 1114(1).

Dell Has the Chance to Win Multi-Millions in Damages If the Court Allows the Counterfeit Claims to Go Forward.

Why bring in a counterfeit claim at all, you may be asking? The difference between a counterfeit claim and a regular infringement claim is hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Check out this math: If Dell proves its infringement claims, it can “win” up to $100,000 per domain. That sounds substantial, but it’s nothing compared to the damages for trademark counterfeit. If Dell proves its counterfeit claims, it can earn up to 1 million dollars per violation.

The defendants argue in their Motion to Dismiss that there is no such claim as trademark counterfeit in the domain tasting is context. Hosting ads on an infringing domain name, the defendants argue, is not like selling fake Gucci bags on the street. Instead, it is a bona fide business model. The defendants claim they are offering a search service. Well, that’s one way to look at keyword advertising, I suppose.

Dell, on the other hand, argues that counterfeit is not limited to mislabeled physical products. Rather, trademark counterfeit should be defined broadly as occurring whenever a deceptive commercial practice involves an “identical or substantially indistinguishable” mark.

These are very different visions of counterfeit. It will be interesting to see whether the court will be willing to expand the law and hold that mass cyber- and typo-squatting amounts to counterfeit. There hasn’t been a ruling on either the request for sanctions or the request for dismissal. I’ll keep you posted as those decisions come in.

People have divergent, passionate views on domain tasting. Most people agree that registering and using web addresses that include trademark infringements or typographical errors, such as many of those in the Dell case, should be off limits. No one except Dell should be allowed toe use DellFinancialServices.com.

 However, people disagree passionately about domain tasting purely descriptive, non-infringing sites, such as icecream.com.

Domain tasting is not illegal or against I-CANN policy so long as there are no trademark issues. Regardless, some people believe that I-CANN should take immediate action to curtail domain tasting. They believe it stresses the registries’ resources and harms legitimate businesses by hoarding all of the good domain names. Further, small business owners, lacking the resources to do any medium to large scale tasting of their own, are disproportionately shut out from valuable web addresses. The big fish keep getting bigger and it doesn’t trickle down from those off-shore banks.

The Public Interest Registry (PIR) that registers dot-org web addresses has eliminated free trial periods for some registrars in order to discourage domain tasting. David Marher, PIR’s Senior Vice President, told The Washington Post that PIR was “being hit by a few registrars that were tasting millions of domains but literally deleting 99.9 percent of their domains so they wouldn’t have to pay for them.” PIR decided to take action because domain tasters were straining the automated systems and hoarding domain names from ‘legitimate’ users. In June 2006, PIR instituted a five cent surcharge for registrars that deleted 90% or more of their domains within the five-day grace period. The policy was successful. Almost overnight domain tasters abandoned dot-org domains.

Despite PIR’s success, there is no similar policy for companies managing other top level domains. Verisign, for example, has no current plans to institute a similar program. There is speculation that Verisign refuses to take action because it makes money off the domain tasters. [gasp] However, Verisign claims that it is waiting for ICANN to issue a universal policy for all registries. [Don’t hold our breath.]

Jay Westerdal has started an excellent post listing some pros and cons of domain tasting.  There is also a good thread with well-made points on both sides of the domain tasting debate at webmasterworld.com.

As always, thanks for your attention. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Very truly yours,
Sarah

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by randfish

Last week in Whiteboard Friday: Why Your Viral Content Isn’t Working, I covered the importance of creating content that goes beyond just reaching the top of social media portals into the realm of attracting coveted high value links as well. Today, as promised, I’ll share the big separations between the two and some tactics to implement when launching viral content with the intention of link acquisition.

First off, a Venn Diagram (credit to Mystery Guest for the concept on this):

You can see in the purple section, at the intersection of viral success (from reaching the top of Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc) and link attraction, I’ve placed the desired result - a successful linkbait campaign. In the Fall of 2006, SEOmoz conducted some research analyzing the amount of links earned by content that went popular on the major social media portals (everything from Digg to Slashdot to TechCrunch). Unsurprisingly, we saw that a significant amount of the successful content on those sites attracted only a small number of legitimate links (a few dozen to a couple hundred) while a smaller group would attract thousands, or even tens of thousands.

Common Characteristics of Content that Earns Social Media Votes, But Doesn’t Get Links:

• Shallow Humor
  Funny can definitely get you to the top of Digg, but it often won’t carry you much further, particularly if the laugh is only enough for a "ha" (think Edna Krabappel) and not enough to inspire sharing. 
• Simplistic Observations
  Even with an insightful bit of writing it can be hard to attract links if the content is surface-level and carries no depth.
• Re-Inforcing Stereotypes or Beliefs
  It’s fun and easy to create content that re-inforces what everyone else is saying. Another comic making fun of Microsoft might hit the Digg popular page, but it’s unlikely to draw the links you might want unless it has some other standout qualities.
• Low Value Lists & Amalgamation Posts
  These are probably the most common kinds of posts I see on the social media sites, especially Sphinn (in the SEO field) and Del.icio.us/Popular (in the developer world). Grab a few friends, get a little boost, and everyone will vote up your CSS Rounded Corners technique. Whether you’ll get long term value and links is another matter.
• Niche-Pandering
  If you’re aware that a particular sect of followers has a powerful influence on a site’s content (Wii-fanboys at Digg or Ron Paulites at Reddit), you can take advantage of that by authoring materials geared towards those audiences. Unfortunately, even if you do get on the front page, you might not earn the links you’re hoping for unless you’ve authored something truly new or brilliant on the subject.
• Weak Signal to Noise Ratio
  Plenty of the content on social news sites has great shock value, and drives clicks, but once it’s time to convert those views into links, you’ll need substance over pure style and rhetoric.
• Drive-By Images/Video
  As with the weak signal-to-noise ratio, many pictures and videos that find their way into the popular content have little to no chance of attracting additional interest after that first view.
• Market Saturation
  If the social portal(s) you’re targeting have users that already read 99% of the material you write, you might not be getting any additional value from having one more story make the frontpage.
• Extremely Short-Form Content
  While there’s a decent amount of short-form content that makes it on the portals, much of it gets passed over when it comes time for links. Linkers need something they want to share or something that’s incited passion or critical thinking - short-form content is often consumed fast, browsed away from quickly and forgotten before they’ve clicked the next item.
• Highly Negative/Inflammatory Content
  This can go either way, as some negative material gets an inordinate amount of attention. However, be cautious about how you do it - if you’re negative and pandering and shallow, there’s a good chance your linkbait won’t earn you much besides a high bandwidth cost.
• Beating the Dead Horse
  Some content has been seen one too many times. Repeating the same tired list or showing a collection of images, videos, links, or other material that’s already made its way around the web might get you a few more page views, but the Linkerati are a smart bunch, and they’ve often been around the web more than the average reader.
• Extremely Temporal News
  News items can attract lots of links, but if the material’s old within 12-24 hours, don’t expect the links to come racing in. This is why coverage of emerging events can be dangerous, as the post that only tells part of the story as fast as possible could be passed over when the whole story comes out.
• Inaccurate or Misleading Material
  If a piece is obviously incorrect, readers and voters might not catch it, but most linkerati are smarter and will investigate before they post (and even if they do link to it, will frequently use nofollow to indicate their distaste).
• Lost in the Echo Chamber
  If a blog post or content piece is simply writing the same story that’s been bandied about dozens of times or covering a subject that everyone in the niche thinks they’ve covered already (or covered better), linkers may be particularly stingy.

Recent Examples:

• Tech Solutions Your Small Biz Can’t Use - Not only is it a low value list, it’s also obviously inaccurate and misleading. As of today, Yahoo! only reports 6 links (3 are spam, the other 3 are nofollowed).
• SEOmoz’s 2007 Site Stats - Considering how big our previous reporting on stats have been, you might expect that we’d once again earn lots of links with this release, but no. Yahoo! reports 17 links, of which more than half are spam (and several other are nofollowed). What happened? We’re lost in the echo chamber and we’re saturating the market - even though the post reached the top of Sphinn, SEOmoz has such an overlap with the linkerati who read Sphinn that it probably attracted very few new readers.
• List of Social Networking Sites in Education - Although this list of great value (I even put it in the premium tips section here at SEOmoz), the cotent is very long-form, very niche and, for most readers, is going to have low value. Thus, Yahoo! shows it’s only got 29 links (many of which are low quality or nofollowed).
• Photo of Digg Accuracy - It’s funny, but it’s niche-pandering and very forgettable content, so even though it was on top of several social portals and even on the most Dugg list for the past 30 days, Yahoo! only shows 65 links (and not many of those are followed).

Common Characteristics of Content that Earns Links, But Doesn’t Always Make It on Social Portals:

• Duplicate Content
  When posting material that’s already been released elsewhere, you can have some success earning links from the population who hasn’t previously seen it, but it can be tough to get onto the major social portals where savvy bury-ers will shout "dup" from the top of their keyboards.
• In-Depth Research
  A terrific source of links, complex research is also tough to consume quickly, and therefore isn’t well suited to the "don’t Digg it if you can’t understand it in 4 seconds" crowds.
• Interviews
  They’re good sources of information and insight, but they rarely appear on the social portals these days. Summaries or "important" quotes can help an interview stand out to the social crowds, but those votes can be tough to come by.
• Complex News Analysis
  As with in-depth research, a complex look at the news will, tragically, often earn fewer links than a shorter, punchier piece of coverage. Anyone who watches the major news outlets in the US can see this phenomenon in action on a daily basis - Tragic? Yes. Avoidable? Not really.
• Segments of a Larger Content Piece
  When content gets broken into multiple pages and pieces, linkers may find the relvant portion and reference it, but social voters don’t have the attention span to focus and will frequently abandon prior to finding the value.
• Community-Focused Material
  If you’re pandering or even speaking to an audience that doesn’t consistently participate at the portal you’re targeting, you’ll have a very tough time earning the necessary votes.

Recent Examples:

• Comparing Search Popularity Services - this post from Danny brilliantly covered the differences in the major services showing serach market share percentages, and while it didn’t make the social news sites (probably due to being so in-depth and targeted), it earned 450+ links.
• How to Order Wine Without Looking Like an Asshole - I suspect this actually did get some good social traffic through StumbleUpon, but it perfectly exemplifies an in-depth, niche-focused (but broadly interesting) post. The subject matter isn’t social crowd-focused enough, but the list format is near perfect and it’s earned those 5,000+ links. Maybe I should submit it to Digg… (UPDATE: Oops! It did make Digg a couple years back, although it wasn’t very popular there)
• Why to Not Not Start a Startup - Paul Graham has very community-focused and in-depth material and although some of his essays do make it onto sites like Techmeme (and of course, they all go to Hacker News), this one earned its 2200 links without the benefit of a major social media push.
• Interview with Sep Jemvar on Personalization - A perfect example of how even though the material’s great, the interview format somehow prohibits social media success. Thankfully, it still managed to earn several hundred links.

Armed with this knowledge you should be able to dodge a good number of pitfalls in your viral marketing campaigns and, I suspect that will give you a big leg up in your quest for simultaneous social media and link-earning success.

As a next installment, I’ll cover why the search engines will have a vested interest in continuing to reward viral marketing campaigns (as there’s been some debate around this subject in the recent past).

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Danny Dover

For those of you who don’t know me yet, my name is Danny and I am SEOmoz’s intern. I have spent the last several weeks reading and categorizing all the blog posts written over the years on this site. It has been quite the project and has let me really experience how this company and the SEO industry as a whole have evolved. I, like the other mozzers, am a stat junkie and kept notes on notable trends, stats and general quality as I read through the posts. Below I have listed what I believe to be the most successful, funny, and best posts ever written on SEOmoz. Enjoy!

Most Successful Posts

I defined the most successful posts as those that most successfully exemplified SEOmoz purpose and style. Specifically, I looked for posts that I felt excelled at teaching SEO, interacting with the community and sharing sought-after information.

7.    In Web 2.0, Fostering Community Creates Value
YouMoz Post – With the emergence of Web 2.0 we have seen an unprecedented boom in social online communities. Many resources have emerged that enable anyone to build the technical framework for a community but fail to provide a human touch. This post goes the extra mile by teaching the values and human elements required to create a successful online community.

6.    A Simple Explanation for Why MySpace is So Successful
Myspace is the quintessential example of ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’. This post attempts to describe why this social network took off and while other seemingly good communities did not. The discussion that that starts in the comments really supplements the post and provides great additional views.

5.    Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content
This post is a perfect example of creating unique viral content out of publicly available information. By analyzing the percent of power diggers’ stories that went on the homepage, the post uncovered the lack of true democracy that is expressed at social news portals. I believe this really opened many peoples eyes to the politics that affect Digg and similar communities.

4.    The SEO Routine
What does every new SEO want to know? They all want to know how to become
a successful SEO of course. This post lays it out honestly and with all the important details. It provides accurate information in an understandable and concise manner.

3.    Dispelling The "Get Rich Quick" Myth
YouMoz Post – Many first time SEOs dream that they can find secret tricks that will instantly make them riches from crafty pages and hidden text. Many people prey on this human desire by selling bad information at high prices. This post attempts to explain why these so called tricks don’t exist and provides valuable alternatives.

2.    My Personal Opinion - 90% of the Rankings Equation Lies in These 4 Factors
This is the second most successful post ever written on this blog. It describes SEO to the layman in a nutshell. (The description is in a nutshell, not the layman. (-; ) The quality information is complemented by intelligent comments. This post successfully gives the answers many people are searching for without any BS and free of cost.

1.    Anatomy of a Super Digg
YouMoz Post - I really love this post and believe it is the most successful post ever posted on SEOmoz. It chronicles the journey of creating content and experiencing the rush of watching the content go truly viral. It contains valuable information, detailed stats and a human voice. It teaches great SEO techniques, appeals to a large community and shares valuable information in a interesting manner. Next time you  need to explain why being an SEO is thrilling and a work of love, find this post.

Funniest Posts

My first indication that SEOmoz was better than its competition was its frequency of funny posts. While choosing the posts, I defined the funniest ones as those that made me laugh the most (duh!) while serving some purpose. Since humor is so subjective I tried to take other users perspectives and opinions into account as much as possible.

I only included blog posts so I left out much of the site. However I think Rebecca’s comics are worth mentioning. They are sure to make you giggle like a little girl at least once.

6.    Top Eleven Social Media Startups I’d Give My First Born For
YouMoz Post - Web 2.0 is known for company names that contain mispelings, acronyms, foreign references and sometimes just plain dumb words. Combine the popularity of American stupidity and social networks and you’ve got yourself a funny blog post.

5.    One Reason You Shouldn’t Go to the SEOmoz Premium Training Seminar
YouMoz Post - This article is well written and funny by itself. However, the addition of the pictures is what made it stand out among the rest. Apparently, Kevin from Blue Acorn is an exact replica of Rand. He even has Rand’s strange attraction to canary yellow shirts. No word on Mystery Guest clones yet, although it should be noted that upon seeing the Rand clone, MG instantly decided what she wanted for her birthday.

4.    SEOmoz’s Unusual Search Terms from the Month of November
“Titties, Mud Wrestling, Hot Young Things, Freebasing Coke, Weird Thumb Porn, NAMBLA, Evil Cattle”. Sounds like my Saturday Night… (Cue Hatemail) This post really has something for everyone. If you read this without laughing please go outside and talk to someone.

3.    We Add Words to AdWords… Google Subtracts them.
Compilation of the funniest Adsense Ads. This post is great because the humor is appreciated by almost anyone and it is all original content. Bonus points to Matt Cutts for trying to plant the idea of using Google Adsense as a drinking game. His amiable attempt to boost Google’s Ad Revenue should be noted by Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask.

2.    Porn Filters Taking the Ogle out of Google
Undisputed winner of funniest title. This post is one of the funniest things I have ever read online. I show it to my friends when they ask what I do at work. I then determine the importance of our friendship on their reaction. A must read.

1.    How to See Paris in Seven Hours
This post is clever, funny, informative, and universally understood. This is one of the rare pieces of content that will make my grandmother, my little sister and I laugh all for the same reasons. Rebecca’s writing combined with Scott’s facial expressions make this the funniest posts ever to make it onto the blog.

Best of the Best

Choosing the best of the best was an agonizing process. The difference between a great post and an excellent post is not always immediately evident. The difference, I found, comes several days later when a post I read would creep back into my mind. These posts are the ones that truly inspired me and changed how I view the industry.

The qualities I used to rank the best of the best are as follows:

    Human Connection – Did I feel like I was listening to the teacher from Charlie Brown ("whaa-whaa-whaa" trombone effect) or a friend sharing a memorable experience?
    Relevance – Does the audience care? Was the post on topic? What was the noise vs signal ratio of the piece?
    Completeness – Did the author answer all of my questions in the article and more importantly did the author    continue the conversation in the comments?
    Unique – format, style, and content.

8.    SEOmoz Has a Pen Pal!
This is one of my favorite fan contributions to the site. An entrepreneur at a federal correctional institution sent a handwritten note to our offices asking for SEO advice. Be sure to read both of the hand written notes that are attached. They will brighten your day.

7.    SEOmoz’s 2006 Financial Statements
Many companies claim to be transparent. They share advice, inside information and resources. They generally are well respected and become an important resource. This is all fine and dandy until someone asks for financial information. It is generally understood that businesses don’t publicly release valuable financial information for any reason. In the true fashion of mozism, these figures were released first in this post in 2006 and every subsequent year.

6.    Helping to Build the Web: A Day in the Life of a Web Developer
Traditionally the web developers at SEOmoz have rarely posted on the blog. In the rare instances that they did blog, it was always on a technical topic. This post was different. Jeff, our CTO, detailed the day in the life of a web developer. It was a side of his profession that is rarely seen. In addition to the post, other web developers shared their thoughts in the comments.

5.    Please Stop Spamming Me for Votes
Generally the posts on here sing of the joy of being an SEO. Although being an SEO can be a fun and prosperous job, it is not without its difficult times. This post uniquely focuses on the latter. It is full of voice and proved to be more of a conversation than a declaration.

4.     Dear Digg.com: I’m going to save you a million dollars with three lines of code
This is one of the most well written posts on this blog. It has the perfect mix of all the requirements of a successful SEO post. It provides a modest suggestion to Digg.com on how it could fix a simple canonical issue. It is well researched, understandable, and a good read. I really think we should have more posts that have this tone and present information in this way.

3.    Apparently I Work for Google
I think this is Rebecca’s best post. It explains how she deals with the fundamental problem of our industry, explaining our job to our families. This post is funny, full of voice and a genuine day brightener. A must read for anyone in the industry.

2.    Snippets from 30,000 Feet
I believe that this is the best post Rand has ever written. It is the perfect mix of all the best of the best criteria. This “day in the life” style post is not only humble and thought provoking but also poetic. It interesting and a good read for people involved in SEO as well as those who are not. If you have not read this post before please treat yourself and read it.

1.    Good to Great: Gillian Responds to Rand’s Answers to Hard Questions
I think it is very fitting that the best post ever written on the SEOmoz blog was authored by our least vocal staff member. Gillian, president of SEOmoz, shares her experience of running a successful company while maintaining a healthy relationship with her son/CEO. I think her own words describe the general sentiment of this post better than I can.

“As I see it, the job of the president and/or CEO is to climb the tallest tree on the highest mountain and shout to the team hacking at breakneck speed through the forest below, Wrong mountain! Go that way!”

This blog has improved by leaps and bounds since its inaugural post over three years ago. If the gems listed above are any indication of the things to come, then I warmly look forward to this blog’s bright future.

Do you like this post? Yes No

You can go to prison for just sending email spams in bulk like they were doing:

A federal grand jury in Detroit has indicted a Michigan man dubbed the “spam king,” and 10 others, in an international illegal bulk e-mailing and stock fraud scheme, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.

 

But throw in stock manipulation and fraud and you’re bound to attract the wrong type of legal attention.

Posted by great scott!

Howdy, Gang, and happy 2008 to you all!  Here we are with our first Whiteboard Friday of the New Year and it’s one that many viral marketers out there should pay close attention to.  This week, Rand discusses what it takes to make viral content and linkbait hit home with users in order to gain links to boost your rankings, rather than just landing on the front pages of social media sites.

All too often we can get caught up in the rush of hitting the homepage of big social media sites through our close-knit networks of spies, informants and Digg spammers, only to be less than impressed with the links that come out of these carefully crafted victories. Why? Well, sometimes the content just ain’t link worthy.  We, as marketers, know how to game these social promotion systems with the best of ‘em. But what we also know, though often fail to keep in mind, is that the real value in hitting the homepage with viral content is the link volume we can get. Just remember, everybody stops to look at a crosswalk sign, but they won’t tell their friends about it unless the little dude is break dancing.  You can quote me on that…if you want.  Most awkward analogy ever.

Those of you with an eye to production value may notice things looking a little smoother, spiffier and…umm…soundier (?) this week.  As Rand mentions in the video, we’ve got new mics, lights, cameras, action, and a biggity big-ass new whiteboard!  Hopefully some smoother camera work and better audio will help increase your viewing pleasure.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by rebecca

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had fun ringing in 2008. In Seattle, we had a lovely non-fireworks display at the Space Needle (looks like someone will be jobless in ‘08), and I brought in the new year by rocking out with my friends to Rock Band and by kicking some tail in Wii tennis…I’m such a nerd.

Anyway, onto this week’s worth of additions to SEOmoz and stories throughout that great big Internet sea.

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

• CMS developer for Let’s Make It Awesome (nice company name, Bob!) in Boston, MA
• An SEO with many hats and an SEO with a small but smart hat for NVI in Montreal, Quebec
• SEO guru in Hatboro, PA
• SEO contractor in Dayton, Ohio

Featured companies:

• Braveheart Design Inc. (I wonder if their CEO’s name is William Wallace)
• TP1
• TopSpot
• IMASEO
• Ki Media
• Resonate
• SDH Interactive

Featured resumes: none this week. Be sure to add your resumes to our Marketplace, folks!

New events added to the Events Calendar: none this week. Frowny face. There are lots of industry events coming up, so be sure to add them to the Events Calendar to increase visibility and awareness!

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

• SEOmoz has been nominated and is competing in the 4th International Blog Cup competition. First round voting is still open, so vote for us so we can advance to Round 2!
  
• The Economist brings us a brief history of the origins of spam, as well as an introspective about technology etiquette (cell phones, email, etc).
  
• The International Herald Tribune talks about how bloggers are starting to earn the big bucks off advertising on their sites. It’s a pretty basic write-up, but interesting to see this topic get a bit of mainstream exposure.
  
• On the other side of the spectrum, The Guardian talks about how "the big switch may turn off jobs," meaning that bigger companies trying to compete with the small employee, virtual location Internet powerhouses (YouTube, Skype, etc) may have to downsize (employees, locations, or both) in order to keep up.
  
• Seth Godin offers wise words about how people talking about you is more effective than talking about yourself. Amen to that, brutha! I know quite a few vanity bloggers to whom I’d love to send that gem of information.
  
• The lovely Danielle Winfield over at 10e20 has a good post about the benefits of participating in forums and some advice on how to create a strong profile presence in forums.
  
• Technology Review has an exceptionally well-written piece from the perspective of a journalist who used to work at Dateline NBC. It chronicles the deterioration of television journalism and is a compelling, frustrating, and often sad read.
  
• Psychology Today has an incredible article about new developments that could explain why we dream. In a nutshell, it’s to practice for combat, which is supremely badass.
  
• This one comes courtesy of our favorite overzealous NBA team owner, Mark Cuban. He wrote a succinct but to the point post on his blog about how your effort is the one thing you can control. Pretty smart stuff there, Mark! Now, if you could only talk to Dirk Nowitzki about his admiration for David Hasselhoff…
  
• And finally, though this is way off-topic, the best show on television has started its fifth and final season. Watch it. Now. (And if you haven’t ever watched the show, shame on you. Go buy or rent them now, lest I judge you forever.)
  

That’s it for this week, folks! Have a great rest of the week, and be sure to check out tomorrow’s Whiteboard Friday video, where Scott unveils a snazzy new format (dual camera angles, a microphone, and a ginormous whiteboard). No green screen yet, but we’ll try to get that up and running by next week’s video…

Do you like this post? Yes No

Using a scraper? Violating Terms of Service?

Sounds pretty blackhat scooby.

Don’t be surprised when you get banned.

As download squad so aptly points out:

Facebook won’t join Open Social, and you can forget about the pipe dreams of the Data Portability movement. The simple fact is, as the market leader, there is no benefit for or strategic advantage in Facebook making your data available to you in any format you wish.

 

Damn Straight!

Posted by Jane Copland

It’s the third of January and those of us in the United States are already pretty tired of hearing about November’s Presidential Election. I’m sure the rest of you are, too. The world of social media is already flooded with stories about the U.S.’s political dramas and I can only imagine that if you’re in any other country, today’s offerings at Reddit might not interest you all that much. Currently, seven of the top 10 Reddit stories focus on the U.S. elections. But this really isn’t my point.

We’re tired of it already and it won’t be truly over for another year and two weeks. Yes, it’s a Wikipedia link, but it’s nofollowed. Do you know how hard it is to find an impartial result for searches like "2009 inauguration day?" Hopefully, a year is enough time for politicians across America to get their web campaigns together. No, I am not going to rehash Herdon Hasty’s Search Engine Watch post, SEO for President. Herndon does a great job highlighting how these national campaigns, armed with more money and resources than God, have implemented absolutely no SEO and only rank well due to a large number of inbound links. However, the presidential race is not the only thing Americans will vote on this year: thousands of positions are up for grabs all over the country and thousands of people are campaigning to fill them.

Over the Christmas break, I took a look at the online campaigns of candidates in a Washington State race. The seat itself is a local one which won’t attract any publicity outside of a certain Washington town. However, the race for this seat has been fantastically tight during the last two elections (2000 and 2004). Candidates spent a lot of time, money and effort on their campaigns, as I’m sure similar people in similar positions did all across the U.S. However, right as Election Fever hits America, only one candidate appears to have started an online campaign. The candidate has a surprisingly good Facebook fan page, a Myspace account and a YouTube channel. While this candidate’s old website, which still ranks first for his name, is the most atrocious thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, his new campaign has some social media know-how behind it. It’s not all that fantastic, but his competitors stand to lose a lot in the coming months if they don’t step it up. I’m not linking to these Washington candidates’ properties for personal reasons. Don’t get excited; my reasons are far from interesting.

The most striking thing about this person’s campaign is that this candidate didn’t even make it past the primaries in 2004. For anyone who’s unsure what that means, candidates from the same party compete against each other in order to obtain their party’s nomination. Once they have taken care of everyone from their own party, they get to compete against candidates from other parties. This person lost to a fellow party member. Four years later, he has not only cleaned up his image, but he’s attempting to usurp his competitors online.

This said, the SEO behind this candidate - both in terms of on-page optimisation and overall strategy - is still pretty poor. Presumably, he owns http://www.hisname.com/ (which ranks first for his name and eighth for "(position) (area)"), and yet his website for the 2008 campaign is http://www.votehisname.com/. This new website ranks twentieth for the "(position) (area)" query, which is still about one-hundred positions higher than his competitors, but could be a lot better.

The site is badly optimised, with no H1 or H2 tags, no meta description and images used in place of text (with questionable alternative text). It has a title tag, which is a giant victory over all of his competitors. I am seriously considering revising the title of this post, because these political websites aren’t four years behind the times: they would have been unacceptable in 2000, let alone 2004. In the Search Engine Watch article, Herndon Hasty says, "Holes this big would sink normal sites and create e-commerce job openings by the dozens," and he is correct. The astounding thing about this is that these holes and mistakes are easy to fix.  For local races such as this one, the competition for rankings is remarkably minimal. Often, the candidates aren’t even competing against .gov sites!

Imagine ranking highly for queries such as "(area) (pressing local issue)." At best, the general public still only has a fleeting understanding of how search engines work; immediately, the candidate will earn a certain amount of trust and credibility when his or her site appears for searches like these, even if that trust isn’t deserved. Another thing to keep in mind is that visibility is half the battle in smaller political races: unless people have decided to vote "down party lines", they will often simply vote for the person whose name they have seen in more television commercials, billboards and newspaper articles. Something about being visible seems to translate into being reputable, hence the reason why the person who raises the most money often wins the race.

Controlling relevant SERPs is also an exercise in reputation management if you are running for office. Local politics can be as mean and nasty as it is on the national scene: This year, I am quite certain that people will head to search engines to research political rumours. Again, it won’t take much social media or SEO work to push a controlled message to the top of the search engines, but few are currently taking advantage of the easy public relations opportunity.

The awful job politicians are doing online this year surprises me. The Internet plays a far bigger role in our day-to-day lives than it did in 2004, even though most of us were quite well-attached to our computers back then. Politicians should realise the importance of search engines, social media and Internet marketing. While I wouldn’t expect people outside of the technology world to inherently know these things, I would at least expect them to do a bit of research. With the amount of money these people spend on their campaigns, it would be a shame to lose based upon easily fixed SEO problems.

Do you like this post? Yes No