by Dev Basu on November 20, 2008
Comment Spamming SEO’s is Just Plain Stupid
I think we can all agree that Online Reputation Management is important, both for big brands and for up and coming companies. While sifting through my spam comments (I check to see if there’s any legit ones caught by Askimet), I found this archaic comment spam from not, one but two different IP’s leading to the same destination url - in this case widecircles.com (you don’t deserve a link, but this post will rank for your name!).
Wide Circles is a ‘Social Media Marketing’ platform as per their website, but they clearly arent’ paying much attention to their link building efforts. Commenting on blogs is still enough to rank in some low competition niches, but the ease of commenting should be accompanied by some prior prudence. Something along the lines of:
- Don’t comment where you can be called out for being overly promotional or spammy
- Don’t be stupid enough to look for links on a competitors blog, or dropping your own links in.
- Don’t be daft enough to think that spamming SEO’s of all people wont get you into ORM issues.
- Make your comment relevant to the blog post you’re commenting on (Duh!…)
For all I know they may offer a great platform, but if they are outsourcing their SEO then they should probably work with a provider that knows what they are doing.
Conclusion
There are many times I’ve thought about putting together massive SEO programs that follow a checklist of tasks and handing it over to an offshore outsourcing agency. Stuff like the above is exactly what tells me not to take that decision every single day I think about scaling SEO in volume. It’s about time that folks who still think that the template : ‘hi, nice post, very informative’ <drop link> need to think twice before spamming. In the end, it’s not the (so called) SEO that suffers the most - it’s the client.
Wide Circles, if you’re outsourcing, take my $0.02 and fire your SEO provider or agency.
by Dev Basu on November 19, 2008
Look Out For Posts Every 2nd Tuesday
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be joining SEJ’s best and the brightest in contributing new and interested search marketing news, every 2nd Tuesday. It’s part of my own personal mandate to get more involved in the search marketing community, especially where more people can benefit from any tips I provide.
You’ve just got to love the fourth quarter of the year if you’re an affiliate marketer. For my retail clients, I’m happy for them too, as it gives my team and I the opportunity to do our very best to ramp up christmas sales and have a very happy client by the time the first week of January rolls around. Now, that’s a great way to start a new year!
Check out my inaugural post on Search Engine Journal - How to Super Charge Your Online Marketing for The Holiday Season. I’d like to thank all the folks who liked the article and shared it on sphinn (made the homepage), and through Stumbleupon and other outlets.
Look out for more interesting local seo, small business marketing, and general seo tips coming your way by subscribing to my rss feed, and Search Engine Journal’s RSS as well.
by Dev Basu on November 14, 2008
A Worthless Use of SERP Real Estate?
I can’t for the life of me figure out why I would want to see Alexa’s blue rating bar in my SERP results. While the usefulness (really, somewhat uselessness) of the Alexa rating has been beaten to death by SEO’s and other internet marketers alike, I did keep it around on a relatively less frequented corner of my screen.
With the Alexa Sparky 1.3 update, there is no option provided to turn off this feature, and frankly that is irritating, given that other plugins such as SEO for Firefox, and SEO Quake let you control what shows up as additions to the SERPs.
The Solution
I’ll probably end up disabling the toolbar now since it really had little value to begin with. If I really need it, I will try to find the older version and go with that instead. Way to go Alexa in ticking off the webmaster community - the very people that drive most of your data by having the toolbar installed.
Is anyone with me then? Do these guys even bother to do a survey of if their users would like such a feature?
If you have a web service, here’s you can learn from Alexa’s mistakes:
- Your platform/plugin/extension is user driven - People don’t find your tools using search engines, they find them based on referrals from industry authorities, their friends, and through blogs. No tool is 100% bug free or ‘perfect’ so it’s important to manage problems as they crop up.
- Incorporate User Feedback - Early Adoptors are your biggest evangelists - It’s important to listen to them, give them beta and alpha products to test, and incorporate their feedback into bettering your offering.
- Close the Loop and Communicate - I double checked to see if Alexa had given a heads up to its users about the new update, and none can be found on the Alexa Blog. It’s important to communicate changes to an existing platform that users are accustomed to, giving them enough time to choose whether to upgrade or not. When I worked at Microsoft, we gave all resellers and partners due notice of the changes that Vista brought about, and despite the fact that many chose to adopt Windows XP for months to come, our partners were a happier bunch because we were forth right.
by Dev Basu on November 2, 2008
Prepare for Stumbleupon 3.27 Beta
Unknowingly to most social media marketers, Stumbleupon is rolling out a fair number of changes that could affect user profiles, and their ’stumble power’. The beta has already rolled, and its only time before the finished release becomes available.
Prominent changes in this release include:
- Adds a thumbdown menu featuring the following options:
- Not-for-me ~ This doesn’t suit me.
- Stumbled this before ~ This content was in a previous stumble.
- Too much like this lately ~ Baby animals are nice, but that’s enough for now.
- Adds website blocking via the thumbdown menu for FF 3.x users.
- Fixes a bug in FF 3.x bookmark integration that could cause a tag to be applied upon rating thumbdown.
- Adds options to report a stumble as ‘Factually incorrect’ or ‘Unsafe’.
- Adds more convenient reporting of incorrect topic via an optional reporting menu. See the ‘Show topic as’ item on the Configuration tab of Toolbar Options.
- When topic is displayed as a menu (for reporting incorrect topic), other reporting items are located on this menu rather than on the Tools menu.
Implications of the Algorithm Change
Let’s evaluate what this change means in order of the updates for the new release:
Expanding the Thumb Down Menu
- Not For Me - This is the same as its always been and excludes stumbles by the tags and domain.
- Stumbled This Before - As a user I like this! I’ve seen a fair number of the same stumbles being rotated especially if the tag doesn’t have much content.
- Too Much of This Lately - Great for the user, but potentially a deterrent for viral marketing campaigns.
However, using ‘too much of this lately’ affects the stumbler’s user profile as stated by SU staff: “Using Too much like this lately’ will affect the aggregate reputation for the profile. Usually there’s something about the stumble that makes it the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you’re getting profiles too often when stumbling within ‘All’, it may be better to remove the Stumblers topic. Then, when you’re in the mood to see profiles, choose the Stumblers channel from the Channel Menu”
Website Blocking - Self explanatory. Either serve up decent content, or run the risk of never showing up for a stumbler again.
Factually Incorrect or Unsafe - This will become the new haven for stumble trolls, or folks who want to to engage in negative social media (much the same as negative SEO). Stumbleupon is working on this, but I can definitely see potential for it to be gamed.
Stumbleupon Takeaways
Overall, the change has been for the better, but it will be interesting to see how traffic levels and sharing of content changes as the new release is adopted by the entire SU user base. For marketers, this definitely means refraining from stumbling up those pesky proxy website stumble requests, and others that fit the ‘low quality’ bill. That’s just my 2 cents, but feel free to add your own in the comments!
You can download the beta or join in with your own questions and comments at the official stumbleupon thread.
