Industry News - The Online Marketing Guy

Liability - the risk of poor practies as an SEO Agency

Well, for a long time now I’ve been bumping into muted exposure for seo malpractice coverage, and seeing law firms at search shows quietly waiting in the wings for folks to realize their butts ARE truly on the line.

Looks like an old story has come back around to haunt one Washington state company. The basics of the story are this:

1 - they call you up and solicit your business while promising top rankings
2 - you buy into the prices for a monthy fee, billed to your credit card on a recurring basis
3 - you get a bit of work from them, then they basically disappear
4 - you call to talk to someone, maybe they answer, maybe they don’t
5 - you ask to cancel your contract, maybe they do, maybe they don’t

All bad situations as it’s your hard earned cash floating into their pockets for no return.

Well, the state of Washington has had enough complaints filed about one company since 1995 that they are taking them to court.

So, now, let’s think about this for a minute.

This appears to be the beginning of the tightening of things for the industry, at least in concept. Starts with scattered lawsuits, then grows from that visibility. ‘Bout time, too. Far too many companies exist to scrape money from unwitting businesses. There has been precious little activity in this arena and many times calls have gone out across the industry for regulations. No one is willing to step in front of THAT bus, so the industry, while acknowledged as a real, reliable way to effectively market, remains tainted by stories of many shifty folks.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again - if WE don’t regulate things and set up accoutabilities, someone will step in and do it for us. Get enough lawsuits filed, and some enterprising young Senator (so that means they’d be under 70 or so… ) will step forward with a bill that will, for all it’s best intentions, no doubt screw vast numbers of those in the industry.

Far, far too easy for the media to say this is spam, and we’re plastered with that foul stench.

Do I have the answer? No more than many of you. But I do belive it starts with someone doing something. Everyone doing nothing certainly isn’t the way forward.

PS - ConsumerAffairs - ditch the popups that hit me when I visit your site already…

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Tags: Industry News, SEO Lawsuit by searchgeek
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CNET reviewed my book - an unexpected find

I never thought to go looking for this, but playing with www.cuil.com’s rather slick SERP pages (and, I’ll admit, my own name - hey, anyone can return RELEVANT results; try getting it right on weird searches like that ), and saqw the CNET reviewed my book.

CNET review

They seem to have liked it, as did the few who left comments.

Amazing the way data, information and commentary spreads on the web, then is later unearthed. I can barely remember the hardship search was in the days before *gasp*, Google et al. Back then you actually had to know what you were looking for - by name - in order to find it. There was no sense in searching really, as you could as easily navigate directly to a website. The trick was how to learn of new doamins, because this was all before every domain name and permutation was snapped up and accessible with “something” on it when you went there.

Ah, the good old days when SEO meant stuffing title and keyword tags chock full of as many keywords as possible - related or not, the traffic was your for the taking. I guess everyone was a spammer back then, but some of us drifted away from that logic as the engines massaged their algorithms. Still, fun to remember.

Now, since www.cuil.com came up, here’s my impressions:

1 - relevancy needs some work - results in G’s first page of results are, in some cases, not showing in Cuil’s. Not saying it’s “wrong” per se, but if G is the current benchmark for relvancy, there’s room for improvement, IMO. Hardly scientific testing here, though, as my opinion is based on about 25 side by side searches between the two engines…all very esoteric; not mainstream stuff.

2 - page layout - I love it - love how they have a clean interface (soon to be monetized I’m sure), love how they let you select 2 or 3 column layouts and love the thumbnails with each result

Naturally, the responses today form the site are spotty, but given they just went live, and are likely the talk of every news source from the aforementioned CNET to the Podunk Times, you really can’t blame their servers for dropping some calls.

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Tags: Google, Blog Books, Industry News, Cuil by searchgeek
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Live from my patio deck - a weekly roundup

WOW! The first day it’s really felt like spring around here.

I’m on the deck, dogs wandering around panting, enjoying the building mid-day heat. I was going through some missed e-mails form earlier this week and figured I’d offer a bit of a news round up for folks, so here goes.

Here’s a great little item I’ve been enjoying lately. The Hawthorne Videoactive segment. It runs daily to keep you up to date on all things online marketing, Interactive and such. This yesterday’s stories included the following items:

# Ohio Mobile Providers Offers Discounts To Cell Users Who Accept Ads
# Your Billboard Is Watching You Now
# Are Greenbacks Printed On White Paper?
# If There Were A YouTube For Business, Would CEOs All Start To Lip-Sync?

Other stories covered on their site included:

# Forgot What To Get At The Pharmacy? Check The PharmaTv
# Move Networks Media Player Offers Something New
# EyeSpot Invites You To Take On The DeathStar
# Case Study: BigFix Viral Video Campaign
# Video-Rich Shell Campaign Takes Time To Make Company Case
# Business 2.0 Takes A Look At 2007’s Most Likely To Succeed Startups

Visit them here - it’s worth it

A book update.

Some of you who’ve been reading this site for a bit may recall I’m writing a book. Well, it’s coming along. In fact, the first manuscript draft is due next week to the publisher. This doesn’t mean it’ll be out soon, it simply means we’ve got to have our stuff into them to begin the editing process. It’s still slotted for a fall release.

Good Music

If you like 80’s music (which I do), here’s a tip for a great station heard through iTunes.

Go to the International section
Scroll down a bit
Look for the station labeled Hot Mix Radio 80 - 100% années 80 - Hot Mix Radio 80’s - Live from Paris France - http://www.hotmixradio.fr

It’s one of the best 80’s stations I’ve found online so far - very good mix an decent depth, too, so you’re not hearing the same songs every hour.

Well, I’m going to leave this post at that. I’m off to get something cold from the fridge and get started on many more hours of content creation for the book.

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Tags: Blog Books, Book Deal, Industry News, Hawthorne Videoactive Report, Interactive News by searchgeek
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Microsoft to buy Doubleclick? Google yawns, hits copy

OK, so the WSJ is saying that Doubleclick might be on the block for 2 billion. No biggie, right?

Well, who do we all know with pockets deep enough to handle that purchase and still have change for parking? Microsoft.

Makes sense, sort of.

If Microsoft buys Doubleclick, they’ll be one of, if not THE, largest providers of ad serving services in the world - to say nothing of network opportunities. You’d htink this might make Google quiver a bit - right?

Nope - see, it appears they are planing (unofficially) to make a carbon copy of the Doubleclick system for themselves. No details have resolved around all this, but the possibilities are interesting.

OK, so back to the point. We have this MS + DC beast lurking about, massive in size and it’s about to do…what , exactly?

Serve ads? Cool - but where? Doesn’t matter, as something that size will create it’s own gravity.

But, will it slow G down? Likely not. The critical problem that Microsoft tends to have is that it does big business very well and it does some entry level stuff rather well, but really does nothing to focus on the bulk of the space - in the middle. So, companies stuck in the “mid-size” category find solace with Google’s offerings. Easy to use, robust, low-to-no cost - they’ve built their image on this stuff.

The other rather significant missing item in the puzzle for MS is market share. Google has it, MS wants it. Buying Doubleclick isn’t goign to make Microsoft any better at search, nor will it increase their market share in search.

It could have a positive impact on revenue, but if ever there was one company in history that wasn’t at a loss for funding, it’s Microsoft.

The whole thing is still an interesting idea…but I like the one where MS buys Yahoo better…

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Tags: Google, Industry News, Doubleclick, Microsoft by searchgeek
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SportsGuy on SEMPO Board of Directors

Well, it’s been killing me to post about this, but the press releases are floating around, so here goes:

Most folks know I’m active with SEMPO as Co-Chair for the in-House SEM committee. I recently (back in December) decided to run for a seat on the Board of Directors, too.

I figure if the organization is good enough for some of my time, it’s good enough for more of my time…LOL Seriously, I believe the work they do and direction SEMPO is headed in, so it made sense to me to step up and help out some more.

I can now officially report that I’ve won a seat on the Board of Directors with SEMPO for the 2007/2008 season.

For those who don’t know, this is strictly voluntary. We don’t get paid for this involvement, nor do we even get our membership dues waived. I pay my way just like every other member.

Also, this involvement requires certain attendance levels. I have to attended, face to face, at least 2 Board meetings this year. …and before you scoff and say “your company will cover it”, I’ll remind you that I personally don’t run an active consultancy (that is, I have no immediate clients), and my actual day job is as an in-house SEM for a sports media company, so they get nothing directly from me being involved. This means they don’t cover my expenses to travel to these meetings. I might get lucky if I’m goign to an SES show and the meeting happens at the same time, but other than that, it’s all me.

I believe in it, so I support it.

Now, naturally, my first task as a member of the SEMPO BoD will be to take over the world. After that, we’ll see what I feel like…

Big thanks to those who voted for me and to the rest of the elected members.

Duane

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Tags: Industry News, SEMPO by searchgeek
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Search knowledge forums - why all the hating?

OK, maybe I’m the last person on the planet to notice all this, but when the realization hit me this morning, I was sickened.

I have a routine each morning where I hit a number of search and online marketing forums and try to answer questions for folks. Admirable? Sure. But really, I do get soemthing from this to, you know, so I’m not an altruistic saint here. Like everyone, there’s something in this for me, and I’m after it. Now, that obvious admission out of the way, here’s what I’ve been seeing…

The main sites I hit every day are:

Small Business Forum (SBF)
Search Engine Watch Forum (SEW)
ihelpyou Best Practices Forum (IHY)
Search Engine Forum (SEF)

I actually moderate at SEF, but regardless of the site, I try to answer a few questions each day.

Now, each has it’s own flavor…

SBF is a broad-focused place where everything is on tap. From getting an idea for what type of business to run to how to get insurance for your business is discussed. There are plenty of marketing questions, which is what attracts me. The folks are open and quick to welcome new folks. There’s also, clearly, a broad knowledge base at work in answering questions. I recently starting posting here and was so warmly welcomed I damn near had a tear in my eye. It’s not every day that you go to a new place to learn folks know who you are and are happy to see you.

SEW seems to have seen a drop off in traffic lately. I have absolutely no stats to back this up, just gut instinct based on frequency of posts across the numerous sections and the length of time between replies in threads. That said, SEW is still a great resource frequented by many on the industry side of things. I have noticed an apparent increase in self promotional type posts and link drops - certainly nothing disastrous, IMO, but something that’s occurred to me none-the-less. I’ll stress, though, that other than my own opinion here, I’m not basing this statement on anything solid like actual stats, etc. I’m not a mod at SEW, after all… I do still hold SEW as a solid industry resource - good articles (I write for them, yes) on relevant topics.

ihelpyou has been a recent addition to my list of daily haunts. Fresh off my smiles & love at SBF, I figured I’d cruise over to IHY and pitch in a bit. They are all about white hat, and so am I, so this was a perfect fit, I figured. We had a rocky start, to say the least…

My first recent post (I’ve been a member for a while, just not a frequent poster) was a request for ideas on marketing a project I was working on here at work. Within minutes the post was removed. When I asked what happened to the post in another thread, it too was removed. One of the mods PM’d me to suggest maybe the reason why it was removed was because it seemed to promote gambling. Hmmm, I asked for ideas on marketing a free sports contest (pick 25 winners in a row and win a prize) and was labeled…not a good start, but I figured, whatever, each forum has it’s limits.

I then asked if I’d over stepped the lines - no answer.

Figuring I was digging a hole, I decided to start fresh - I went to intro myself in the Intro section.

I stated that I post regularly elsewhere, that I mod elsewhere and that I’m all about white hat practices. I was immediately called on where I modded at and the notion of me being white hat was subtly called into question - nothing overt, just probing as the poster said, basically, “other than IHY and SEF they weren’t aware of any other truly white hat forums…” I then mentioned I was a mod at SEF.

Seems this was my “test” as after all that, things have been fine. My original post was put live again and I’ve had some great ideas from it (thanks folks. ) IHY is a useful place, just mind your manners and be careful what you say - you may well be called on it. They take white hat seriously and don’t take kindly to folks offering advice that might lead people astray. Some other recent discussions I’ve had there have been great, helpful and eye-opening.

SEF has always been my first home for search marketing info and advice. It’s where I learned the basics years ago, and where I mod to help out now. There’s a zero tolerance policy on link dropping and self promotion that serves to keep the forums pretty much spam free. It also seems to be one of the busier forums in this space (I know, I know, that’s totally biased since I mod there, but I see no traffic stats from any of the forums I post at, so really, it’s open to perception, and mine is that SEF is quite busy compared to others…)

Now, what really rotted me this morning was a thread I stumbled across at IHY.

Basically the mods were discussing how poorly the HighRankings forum handled posts that differed from their own opinion and how some of the responses by the HR folks were potentially inaccurate.

I don’t frequent the HighRanking forums, but I have met Jill Whalen numerous time at the SES shows - she never struck me as unreasonable, but hey, what do I know…

The IHY folks also made mention of how SEW has become a haven for link droppers and spammers. Now, in fairness, I can’t really tell if this is the poster’s opinion or if he’s simply mentioning he saw this opinion posted elsewhere…

Now, lest you think I’m picking on the IHY crew, I’m not - they’ve just provided me with the most recent, obvious example of a big problem this industry has:

We love to rip at each other and we come off looking like kids in a sandbox as a result.

I mean what’s the issue? Just do the best you can, where you can. If folks want to go down the dark path, the wrong road, etc., then let them - no need for extended commentary on it. Having your own forum should not mean you have a space to bash others freely (express your opinions, yes, but this topic has spanned 12 pages to date…). By doing so, there’s as big a statement about yourself being made as that being made about others.

Now, I realize the folks at IHY probably won’t like me much after this posting, but the bottom line remains - if non-productive posts like the one I read this morning keep going (it was 12 pages for crying out loud), it helps no one and hurts everyone.

Sure, I sound like a Mom saying “Play nice!”…but maybe that’s needed every now and then…

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Tags: Search Engine Forums, ihelpyou Forums, Search Engine Watch, Small Business Forums, Industry News by searchgeek
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