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Paid Search & Analytics Tips & Takeaways | SMX London 2012

Paid Search & Analytics Tips & Takeaways | SMX London 2012

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Paid Search & Analytics Tips & Takeaways | SMX London 2012

Posted: 14 May 2012 07:39 AM PDT

Yesterday at SMX London was full of information and handy tips on Paid Search and Analytics. There were four sessions:

  • Highlight what's unique about your business, product or offer
  • Include prices, promotions and exclusives when possible
  • Tell your customers what they can do – call to action
  • Include at least 1 keyword in your ad text
  • Remember user intent! Understand what part of the funnel they're in. eg Different message to someone with a generic search who's in the top of the funnel
  • "official site", "free delivery" – tried and tested phrases that drive CTR
  • Use language that turns away the wrong customers – prequalify your click. Don't drive irrelevant traffic to your site
  • Match ad to landing page. Make sure the language resonates on your landing page
  • Experiment – the key to understanding best performance is experimentation. Results can be counterintuitive, but have to go with what the data tell you
  • Gives example of Manchester hotels ad – the winner didn't give price or discount numbers, was more plain but stood out from what was around it.
  • Ad has to stand out in its surroundings. Eye is drawn to differences.
  • Be aware of your surroundings! Understand competitor landscape of your core keywords and differentiate yourself.

Leverage new ad formats

  • 33% of all queries with ads have at least one new format (location, sitelink, product, click to call, etc). Where these are relevant to you, use them.
  • Larger ad formats drive better CTR and take up more space.
  • Sitelinks:
  1. 40% average CTR lift from 3 line sitelinks
  2. 17% average CTR lift for 1 line sitelinks
  3. 30% average CTR lift for sitelinks on mobile
  • Product ads – takes up space, gives price to prequalify click
  1. 6% lift for text ad with product extension
  2. 100% for product listing ads

Fine tune once you've experimented. There's always room to test and fine tune. Use a continuous testing methodology.

  1. ACE – mitigates risk by letting you control how much traffic goes to experiments
  2. Can test keywords, bids, ad groups, ads, placements, remarketing lists

Pamela Olson, King Schools (provides pilot training material)

We have 70 characters in which to grab attention of our prospects.

Identify and target your prospects, then write ads that target prospects type.

Types of buyer:

  • Survivalist – looking to fulfil basic need eg food or shelter
  • Scarcity – respond to urgency
  • Convenience – looking to save time
  • Prestige – willing to pay hundreds of dollars for ver saachi jeans
  • Social –like being part of a community
  • Value minded – like a good deal
  • Fearful – do lots of research before making purchase, have to find out their fears and address them
  • Goal minded – seek personal satisfaction

We choose based on emotion and justify with logic. Emotional part of brain sends 10 times more info than rational side. Evoke emotional response and give facts to justify it with. We seek

  • Validation
  • Affirmation
  • Assurance

Factors that influence our decisions. No one wants responsibility of making a bad decision. Avoid ‘DRED’:

  • Discomfort
  • Risk
  • Embarrassment
  • Doubt

There are four key emotional drivers, the four Ps:

  • Praise
  • Prestige
  • Popularity
  • Personal satisfaction

Target prospects based on their point in purchase cycle

  1. Novice – at the start. In research mode. Queries will include words like reviews, testimonials, best, comparison, information, cost.
  2. Master – further along purchase cycle. More targeted search query. More emotional phase, flooded with adrenalin. More apt to pull the trigger, so create sense of urgency.
  3. The Pro – may be familiar with your product or have seen your website before. Search query is broader, but they're looking for a higher level of product. Combine master and novice ad copy techniques.

Top tips:

  • Use sitelinks
    1. Address fears: eg link to testimonials or guarantees
    2. Get more product specific; eg ads for a shoe store could have different types of shoe
  • Use 'you' or 'your' in ad copy. Makes a presumption that you know something about your prospect and their need. They feel that you're talking to them.
  • Create ad copy to fulfil a need
  • Test 3-4 ads at a time – depends on your traffic. Use different offers and USPs. Test, test and test your ads
  • Create ad copy relevant to landing page
  • Use call extensions – although whether this is a good idea on brand search depends on your business
  • Use keywords search queries in ad copy
  • Have copy that people ENVY
    1. target their Emotion
    2. fulfil Needs
    3. Validate their decision
    4. Yay Factor – I got a deal, yay! :D
  • You're a consumer: think like one when you're writing ads. Give the info consumers are looking for.

Ed Schofield from Expedia

Expedia is Google's 3rd largest client, after Amazon and eBay

Travel is a high engagement vertical. Shoppers spend around 2 hours researching, viewing up to 20 websites across 6 sessions. Transaction latency can be anything up to a month.

Travel grows by 25% a year. 85% of leisure bookers use internet as main research aid

Users are device agnostic, using whatever's available to them. Customers have never had so much choice about when, where, how to shop – so brands have to be everywhere.

Research and understand your customers' needs, not what you think they want. Use search query reports – they should form the backbone of everything you do. See what searches trigger your ads and identify negatives.

Think carefully about match type strategies – Expedia run on broad match for a week then add negatives and start using more precise match types

Make ad copy as relevant as possible, and make landing page as relevant as possible to the ads

Leverage opportunities to take up more space on the page – eg sitelinks

25% of consumers scan URL for relevance, so include terms as subdomain in the display URL.

Align SEM and SEO strategies

Winning the click is just one part of it: you have to demonstrate how one click affects another. 60-70% of conversions are on brand terms, but people hear about that brand earlier in buying cycle. So consider how you spread attribution.

Most businesses use last-click, so they switch off head terms, which kills the traffic that goes into funnel. If you're knocked out at start you won't be there at end. Try different attribution models, eg 'prefer first click'.

Remember search marketing small part of very big mix. Consider other channels like TV, radio, print. Try using dynamic phone numbers to track where phone calls come from.

Top tips:

  • Make copy & content as relevant as possible – be all over SQRs "like a tramp on a bag of chips"
  • Move beyond last click (it's so last year)
  • Invest in technology that lets you look at the effects of different channels (like Marin or Kenshoo)
  • Stay focused on customers

Q&A

How do you imply prestige? Pamela uses words like exotic, luxurious, rich, high quality, 5 star. Also, the brand may connotate luxury already.

Guy Levine suggested looking at magazines within your niche for inspiration, as they have similarly little space to grab your attention. Look outside the 'bun fight' that is the search results.

How do you check competitor ads and keep your ads different? Pamela makes seasonal ads: this lets the audience know she's paying attention to the times, and keeps ads fresh.

Ben suggests having a good spread of ad copy for biggest spending ad groups

How do you measure attribution and use that to allocate budgets? Ed said that attribution is largely academic, and that whatever model you use isn't going to be right for everybody. Foster a testing culture.

Ben says there are technologies out there to track what assists each keyword gives: eg Marin, Kenshoo, Acquisio, Google Analytics Premium and Adobe.

Does the increase in CTR from sitelinks lead to an increase in conversions? Ben said you'll only feel the benefit when your ads are already in the three top positions, so it tends to be the keywords with the highest conversion rates that get sitelinks and the increase in traffic.

Winning the Conversions

Malcolm Graham from LimeTree

Pages that look like blatant advertisements don't work. Don't say "Buy my stuff! Now!!!"

Don't violate design conventions.

Answer user questions: normally when people are searching they're looking for an answer to a question and they'll leave if they don't find the answer.

Simple and low cost products can have simple and easy designs with simple messages, eg Mail Chimp.

Complex or more expensive products (eg financial or property) need more information – people won't convert from one sentence.

Graphically rich pages work well for branding, eg LimeTree.

Guy Levine from Return on Digital

Biggest challenge for CRO is the cookie law.

The home page is not a great place to send PPC traffic.

Every landing page should have a purpose and a defined 'most required response'. The most required response should match up the stage in the buying cycle – eg someone with searching on a generic is too early in cycle to buy, so the required response shouldn't be buying.

Use ecommerce tracking on form fills, so you can get 'days until purchase' info.

Think above the fold – that's the first step you've got to make someone decide to stay. Repeat your messages – like a small child, you have to say the same thing over and over, but in different ways.

Restrict navigation. Don't give people too many options of where to go if there's a specific thing you want them to do.

Build trust. Video is good for this. Use convincers like trade membership logos and partnerships.

Not everyone is in buy mode – use a 2 step sell. Get info like email address, then follow up to get a purchase. Some people abort if pushed to buy too hard too soon.

Use forms scientifically. If you want to qualify use longer forms, as those who fill them in will be more important. eg They had a training company with a form to fill in to book a free session; as the form is long, people who are bothered to fill in the whole thing are more likely to turn up.

Don't just think about keywords and landing pages – think about people and their needs

PPC testing comes on the back of a good campaign set up. Otherwise traffic is out of context. Use 'peel and stick' – peel out good keywords and stick them into their own ad groups.

Have a tight correlation between keyword and ad copy.

Track conversions (including call tracking)

A/B testing versus multivariate testing – A/B works well if you're starting out or have less traffic to work with. Multivariate is good if you're advanced.

Testing is about overcoming people's objections – people have reasons they won't buy what you want to sell, so you have to overcome them.

Choose an experiment, don't just guess – have a hypothesis, eg 'people don't buy because they can't find the Buy button'

Do big tests first. Then refine.

Site needs to say 3 things:

  1. We are experts
  2. This is what you should buy
  3. Please buy it from us

Brain Lewis, Solutions-insight Interactive.

Brian went through some top landing page mistakes. It takes two tenths of a second to form a first impression of a website, which will bias them for the rest of the visit – so your page has to be good.

Mistake 1 – Visual Bullying.

Trying to use overly aggressive visual elements to make people buy, eg really large 'Buy Now' button. No one buys just because the button is big. The 'Buy' button should be prominent but shouldn't be aggressive.

Too many font treatments – serif v sans serif, drop shadow, bold, italic, coloured… creates clutter and makes the page hard to read. Use fonts to organise copy not to call attention to too many different things.

Distractions, eg rotating banners –distracts attention and slows loading of page. Can't digest and understand when something is changing every few seconds. You can't just slow the banner down to the right speed, as then it will be too slow for some people. Can put little boxes to flick between banners but people won't click them. Brian was less opposed when you're using pictures to create emotional appeal.

"You're gonna have to read it all" – too much text on one page. Use tabs. Make pages scanable.

Overuse of colours and contrast. Eyes go from dark to light, and notice high contrast first. Too much colour and contrast clutters the page.

Mistake 2 – Ignoring Context

Why are visitors on the site and where are they?

We like to think that everybody visiting our site is ready to buy: but they aren't.

Get inside peoples' minds with use cases. Define the most typical roles and tasks of people who come to your site. Who are they, what's important to them, what level of knowledge, location in buying cycle, where they've come from, motivations, beliefs, desires.

Remember the 'pre-research' phase – "is your product even right for me? I don't even know what questions to ask yet!"

Mistake 3 – Not Establishing Trust

Types of trust:

  1. Presumed credibility – have people heard of you? You don't have much direct control over this.
  2. Visual credibility – do you look professional and trustworthy, or does your site look like it's from 1996?
  3. Industry trust – associations and logos, 'as seen in'
  4. Social trust – testimonials and reviews

Say if you have thousands of customers or have been in business for 35 years.

Stephen Pavlovich from Conversion Factory

Relevance – What a user has seen just before they come to landing page. Landing page has to look like and be what they're looking for.

Try to work out what people have seen – snippet in organic search, ad for PPC, etc.

Attention – Grab attention. Use the headline and image. Link back to the brand and values you want to represent. The appeal should reflect your value proposition.

Motivation – Need to motivate people to keep using the page.

Show, don't tell: don't say "this is the best product", give proof. eg LifeLock – CEO gives social security number on website to demonstrate his trust in his identify theft protection product.

Make your appeal sticky – read Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

Don't need all of these factors, but you should try to get as many as possible:

  • Simple – be understandable
  • Unexpected – get attention
  • Concrete – grounded in facts
  • Credible – be believable, eg by pulling in social factors, reviews
  • Emotional – be emotionally relevant
  • Stories – does your page tell a story? Provide a narrative rather than flat info, eg the narrative behind creating your product

Orientation – don't lose the call to action. Guide peoples' navigation so they look at things in the right order.

Action – people need to know what to do next and you need to push them to do it.

You can't skip the other steps and just have a CTA. Can't just say "15% OFF!" without saying why they should trust you and what your product appeal is.

Bonus tip – steal! Do research and find out customer concerns and language, and steal ideas from that. Do consumer research with surveygizmo, surveymonkey, crazyegg, kissinsights, silverback, usertesting, going into Starbucks and interviewing people, etc.

Use Evernote religiously – it lets you organise screenshots of websites, emails, etc. Tag things according to the principles they use so you have examples. If you have an account you have an Evernote email address, so you can sign up for all competitor newsletters and forward them automatically into Evernote to build up a portfolio of email marketing.

Q&A

Stephen – Any consultant should go after biggest returns first, so there are diminishing returns on doing lots of testing. He's seen a lot of Website Optimiser accounts with around 20 tests in, none of which have statistical significance – make sure you have a strategy.

Malcolm – User testing can make more drastic improvements than CRO.

Guy uses Visual Website Optimiser, Google Website Optimiser, Optimisely. Biggest lift comes from knowing what tests to do rather than which platform you choose.

Malcolm – ClickTale gets good data (records every mouse click) but can slow page loading.

Stephen – New ClickTale users can get overloading with the info – need purpose for it

Brian uses roles instead of personas – personas need more details (what type of car they drive, favourite sport etc), while you can manageably have more roles.

Stephen – In an ideal world, you would divide up website between user groups and place in buying cycle, but takes that significant development time.

Stephen – The process for different languages or cultures are the same, although results may be different. For example people in Germany took at terms and conditions for poker sites more than in UK or USA.

Malcolm – Some countries have less credit card penetration, so ecommerce sites can't be set up the same way.

Complying and Coping in the New World of Regulated Global Marketing Environment

Andy Atkins-Krüeger, WebCertain

Different countries are implementing the European cookie directive differently. Germany hasn't actually implemented anything yet. Italy hasn't really required the opt in. France has a strict opt-in law.

The UK's implementation has been "rather messy". They said they'll be tough, but then one of the ICO websites said that it's "highly unlikely" they'll act on first party analytics cookies that have a "low level of intrusiveness". But they will look more harshly on people who've done nothing than people who've done something even if it's a bit wrong.

The ICO website use a banner at the top of the page for you to opt in to cookies. 90% of visitors chose not to.

What should you do? Guidance says:

  1. Audit site
  2. Identify countries you're targeting – you have to work to lowest common denominator.

Demonstrate you have taken action on cookie law, then you're much safer than you would be otherwise.

Anthony Haney, 21 Interactive

Don't put your head in the sand.

Do a site cookie audit – should do this about once a year

"we know there are too many tags when we have tags to manage the number of tags"

Call the other departments in your company – SEM/SEO/IT/Compliance/Legal/Everyone – everyone likely to be affected

Watch what other people are doing. Watch the giants – Google, Microsoft, Omniture, etc. Watch your direct competitors – the more prominent you are the more you should worry.

Don't be 'excessively' open about your modifications – users won't respond well to splash pages and pop ups. You can still browse the ICO site while ignoring banner at top.

Allaboutcookies.org – give pop up with choice of permanence. If you say 'no' the page says 'we need ads to support us, please change your cookie settings'

The ICO are not saying exactly how they'll police laws.

Look for new tools to emerge eg Wolf software http://cookies.dev.wolf-software.com

Craig Macdonald, Microsoft Search Advertising

Intent Marketing – intention tracking has been going on in direct marketing for decades. You can get unbelievable amount of info from credit card use, and it's acceptable to sell this info. You can also get data from store cards – are you diabetic, alcoholic, a parent? This is mined and used for circulars and promotions.

These same techniques are used for digital, to create relatively precise advertising.

Why is the standard different in digital? Why do people expect privacy that isn't there in a physical shop?

An Econsultancy study says that 82% of digital marketers think cookie law is bad for consumers, but 80% of consumers think it's a good idea. But most consumers hadn't heard of law before, and associated cookies with malware.

Keywords are good indicators of intent – but they stay out of the privacy debate as consumer is giving them away. But keywords are not the end state.

Google think their main competitor is Facebook rather than Microsoft – because Facebook has more info on the users, so they could answer users' questions more precisely.

What does this mean for SEO? Personalisation and social are becoming more important for SEO. There's going to be a huge amount of flux.

  • Google giving personalised algo results. According to PWC, 45% of people are logged in when searching – so around 45% of searches are affected. So no keywords passed through to websites from these searches.
  • Both Bing and Google are making a more aggressive showing of social media in their results.
  • You can't get accurate rank information, as you'd get the ranks for non-personalised results that most people don't see.

What does this mean for PPC? Better info on users' location, social networks, device, demographics. There will be additional signals to help target intent.

But the expectation of anonymity online is a key consumer issue.

Q&A

Andy – There is now a call in Spain for the right to be forgotten; people are now realising that digital data are permanent. There isn't the same direct link between credit card data and the direct mail people receive as a result of credit card data mining.

Craig – The current conversation is technologically naïve. The cookie law is responding to last year's issue. How do you market the advantage to the consumer? No advertising is not an option: the options are untargeted advertising or targeted advertising.

Andy – People think remarketing is neat initially but then it becomes spooky. Things won't go as far as Minority Report because if advertising goes too far consumers will complain.

Anthony – In online space a lot of what we're seeing is a reaction to what marketers took to excess, eg adware. There is general mistrust of what we'll do with information. Governments have slowly caught up with this because of flak from constituents. So we have to explain that remarketing can be a good thing. We've put ourselves in the position where we have to explain ourselves.

Andy – The problem is partly that advertisers are not managing their retargeting correctly. Advertisers have to use it right so that consumers appreciate it.

Craig – After people drop out of the conversion process and get retargeted to, most conversions happen within 4 hours. There's not much point retargeting

What are dangerous cookies? Andy said that the fear with cookies is that we're taking more data than we need. There are rare instances of people misusing cookies.

Could the cookie law make smaller companies more dependent on larger players, like Google and Facebook, who have access to personal data? Anthony said it does depend how large you are how much info you can collect. Andy pointed out that big companies have the advantage of more data but also have harder time complying; small companies can be more modest in complying with cookie law.

With their new privacy policy, Google now share data across accounts: those data are personally identifiable, so now Google Analytics can give you the identity of users who share your things. Previously Analytics was very careful to only give anonymous information.

Andy – Google is signing people in automatically. You could say that 'signed in' is the new 'cookie'. The danger for the industry is that people push that too far and that need it needs more legislation to regulate. The industry should self-regulate before that happens.

Overlooked, Underloved & Unknown Analytics

Dennis Hart, SE Jones

What's your analytics plan? Build a plan around marketing calendar, sales funnel, key initiatives, or channel/discipline.

It's easy to ignore dashboards when you get used to them. But they can be useful.

Develop key performance indicators over time – not a long laundry list of metrics, they should be absolutely key. Not seen any that are not measured over time.

Then plan ad hoc exploration.

Despite its 'pretty appearance' Google Analytics has robust dashboards and pretty powerful reporting.

They have a 'demand gen KPI' dashboard. Look at 5 or 4 week period and compare with the previous

Tip – if you're looking at short periods of time, eg 5 weeks, then if one period starts with a Monday then compare it to one that also starts with a Monday so the days of the week align.

Transfer dashboards between profiles – be careful as conversion metrics may not be lined up.

Use custom reporting and then add segments.

Look for meaningful spikes when there's some segmentation. Eg spot above average conversion rate for paid search / non-brand traffic – did you run a newsletter? The spikes are actionable data.

Use standard multi channel funnels for PPC – use 'ad group' as primary metric and 'AdWords keyword path' as secondary metric. You can then work out which keywords are working best.

Set up conversion values for soft conversions, eg sign ups for webinars or email list subscriptions – consider how much you'd spend to get someone to convert and use that as the value. Then you'll be able to get relative value of campaigns.

Use customised channel groupings to separate brand versus non-brand keywords in organic and in paid.

Use custom multi channel funnels to find the most effective campaigns or keywords.

Sampling – watch out for the ugly yellow bar that tells you the data are sampled. The more data you have the more likely this is. You can press the button ("looks almost like a bingo card or something") and drag the slider to maximum accuracy, but it's still going to be sampled.

To avoid sampling, you can add 'keyword contains' as part of the dashboard, so you don't need segments – this limits you to the top 10 results, but it might get you some long tail clues.

The conversion optimisation overview is great for CMOs – it shows the combined effect of multiple channels.

Daniel Waisberg, Online Behaviour

Custom variables are the most important feature of Google Analytics by far.

Define additional segments to your visitors – eg if they're subscribed to your newsletter, you don't want to show them the subscription form again.

It doesn't come out of the box – you have to add some code to use this feature.

There is a hierarchy of custom variables. Women have:

  • Personal identifiers: eg gender, eyes, colour.
  • Daily identifiers: eg earrings, makeup, hairstyle
  • Ambient identifiers: eg winter clothes, sun glasses, hats

Similarly on Analytics, there are:

  • Visitor level: distinguish same person over several visits
  • Visit level: distinguish visitors experiences on current session
  • Page level: distinguish page-level activities on current visit.

An example of a visitor level variable would be if they are registered or have made a previous purchase. You could also use demographic info from forms visitors have previously filled in, like gender or age.

Custom variables can be used for campaign attribution, if you have the original campaign that led them to the site as a variable.

You can use custom variable to see which promotion banner on your homepage someone clicked, to see how effective the promotion was.

Segment or die – you can't provide better experience on website without it.

For more information see http://Onbe.co/CustomVar

Anna Lewis, Koozai

You can see Anna’s slides here.

Social reporting was added to Google Analytics recently. It shows you:

  • How many conversions you had, how many were assisted by social, and how many were made when the last contact was social.
  • The percentage of different social platforms on which your content is shared.
  • Stats per socially shared URL.
  • Which share buttons were pressed
  • Which users have shared your content
  • The revenue generated by social sharing – so you can calculate your Social Media ROI.

It works on social platforms that Google has access to, ie places they own: Google+, digg, delicious, reddit, etc. The list links as 'Trackbacks'.

It's like multi channel funnels in that you can see what assists conversion. You can see where social comes into the user journey, and how can you improve it, by using secondary dimensions like "Keyword (or source/medium) Path" to see more detail.

Martijn Beijk, comScore

There are many analytics tools, like Google Analytics, comScore, Yahoo Analytics, Omniture, etc. These tools are focused on data collection, not visual representations. All have export functionality.

Using Thomas H Davenport's 'Maturity Model' you can see what level your analytics is at. Some clients on stage 2, 'localised analytics' – they're focused on the ROI of individual marketing channels. They need regular reporting, which is probably automated. At stage 3 you're beginning efforts to see integrated data and web trends.

People don't have clear understanding of what some metrics are. To make real sense you need segment or context.

For example duration of visit might be used when there isn't a proper conversion (eg for informational website when you want people to read your pages). But duration of visit doesn't have the length of time you spent on last page. And for info websites it's likely you spent a small amount of time navigating to article then a long time reading that article, so 'duration of visit' is unlikely to be accurate.

Need event tracking or custom variables for insights into shopping basket behaviour.

You can have events to see if people click on footer or header links, to see how people navigate, but this can slow the page down.

Use video measurements to monitor your video adverts – how do visitors interact with adverts, what's ideal length or the best placement? You can see the viewing behaviour of videos, how many completed the video. You can see who watched from different sources to help promote viral marketing.

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SEO & Social Media Tips & Takeaways | SMX London 2012

Posted: 14 May 2012 07:38 AM PDT

The second day of SMX started with a panelist discussion on social shares, and top tips on how marketers are truly going to be influential.

Here are the top takeaways from the first morning session with more to follow later on today!

Social Shares | New Link Building from @LisaDMyers

  • Rel=Author one of the key factors of Link signals in years to come, mixing in the need of SEO & Social Media
  • If your not there already understand and begin to use Google +, as research has shown a direct correlation for companies having better SERPs because of using G+
  • The end game has not changed in terms of link building, in essence creativity is essential to build great links
  • Examples of short term Social SEO link building: post and publish blogs, articles, breaking news, infographics, competitions and interviews
  • Example of long term Social SEO link building: create a social community, developing a blog, writing white papers and making yourself seem a social authority
  • Understand your target market in making sure they will share your items, relevancy is key
  • Makes the most of what is happening now in the market

Making Waves Not Ripples: Effective Syndicatoin to Drive Social Sharing from @mrjamescarson

 

  • Social Shares are like links its good to have a mix not just G+, don’t just focus on what social media platform
  • Understand where you should invest your time for social media, as for different industries work better  for example:
  • Facebook better geared for big brands and the media
  • Google + and Twitter better geared for Technology
  • Reddit & Youtube caters for a wide market
  • Tumblr better geared for fashion and music
  • Pinterest better geared for gifts
  • Focus on quality of your audience who will retweet you and like you in the long term rather than just vanity figures
  • How to find your social media influencers: G+ Search, Follower Wonk & Klout
  • Create a list in understanding and segmenting your list | Step by step
  • Aiming for the big shot influencers may not be the best for you and aim for who they are influenced by!
  • Celebrity endorsement probably the best way to get celebrities to retweet and social share your brand
  • Good Tip | Within product pages create a competitions for long term social value
  • Understanding different local trends for Twitter check out trendsmap.com
  • Even though research has shown in general people are better receptive for different social media times – your actual target social market might be better receptive at night times rather than day times
  • Ultimately game and engage with your customers for better results from your social media marketing campaign

Google+ify or die from @basvandenbeld

Discussing the similarities of key human interactions in real life social terms and how Google+ has taken this and developed the idea further:

  • The question?  How can G+ translate what people do to our social network?
  • Understand that there are essentially two uses of G+: For Users (Which Bas Discusses) & Businesses (Discussed by Kevin)
  • Google + aims to offer people: Authority, Trust, Envy, Peer Pressure, People enjoy interacting with one another
  • Authority – How Trust worthy is that person
  • Trust – Word of Mouth Marketing is key
  • Envy – People naturally are curious and are influenced by what others have and if they see it they will want it, even subliminally!
  • Interact – We enjoy interaction and socialising with one another
  • G+ is essentially growing to help better understand their users and can be seen as an “Identification Management Tool”
  • Rather than seeing G+ as a competitor to Facebook, it is not!  G+ essentially maps out and shows where everyone is connected and then brings the data together
  • Use G+ to get into the mindset of your target market and understand what they like to talk about and see who they perceive as influential

How much SEO juice do you get from Google + from @kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons discusses the value of Google+ for businesses:

  • Used two case studies of brands using G+ signals actually lowers CTR’s – which makes sense as +1 results are often less relevant than standard listings
  • Using a Tool called Analytics Canvas found that brands with G+ brand page found a drop in 19.5% in organic traffic for those that did not use G+ & then 42.6% in organic traffic for clients who actively use Google+
  • ASOS is leading the way in terms of utilising a G+ brand page – using stats from Search Metrics found a significant uplift attributed Year on Year from the implementation of G+
  • Ultimately having a G+ page does this mean you will get better rankings and better search results? NO! G+ is just an attribution that can have an effect.
  • Read the signs quote from Greg Boser "SEO is like being a weather man" – Understand where things are going at the moment and you will be market leading
  • When opening up plus.google.com it seems that this is now crawlable and being indexed by Google!
  • Google Panda has made link building harder, its more about long term results now
  • 5  tips for G+ businesses – 1) Focus on great content and stop chasing the algorithm, 2) Build a great content team or you can outsource it using Pro Blogger Job Board  3) Use the Rel=Author Mark up Now! 4) Create a G+ brand page and link to your site for example Mashable 5) Share content daily, force yourself to do it!
  • Tools to check out for G+ – View your social connections, find your influencers via findpeopleonplus, Google ripples in showing the outreach of key influencers and Google Analytics information
  • Read the full slides below:

King Content versus Panda: How to Survive & Thrive with New Content Rules

 

Expanding on Panda and Penguin, rebounding and capitalizing on these algo changes. The speakers were:

Andy Atkins-Krueger is Group CEO at WebCertain Speakers (moderator)

Vince Blackham is director of social media at 97th floor

Stephen Croome is heads of seo delivery at seogadget

Ken Dobell is president of digital at DAC Group

Simon Penson is founder at Zazzle Media LTD

 

  • Semantic search means its now about more than counting links, we need to fulfill deeper personal engagement
  • Must get people to like you and not just notice you shouting in the SERPs
  • Tool rec: PAGEtorrent
  • The more specific queries are leading to higher conversions
  • SEO is not an end within itself, we must push into content solutions
  • Understanding site penalties is key, often times site owners are confused
  • “Continuum of link understanding in a penguin context” – translation: link evaluation with penguin update
  • The old evaluation of links includes count, anchor text, location of link on page, age of page, last time page was edited
  • How to best understand your links?
  • 1 -The relevance of content on page is now playing a much larger role in link evaluation
  • 2 -Density of links and keywords on page
  •  Then compare your links with competitors: where on the page are links placed?
  • Lastly is knowledge, check out your back link acquisition graph.
  • Use at least 20% branded links as minimum for
  • How to perform panda recovery
  • 1 implement a good monitoring system
  • This may include awr, gwmt, twitter, email, analytics, search metrics, Somoza
  • 2 use data to prove that shit content needs to be deleted or improved
  • 3 cleaned up the sites index that had Los of ugly URLs
  • Use no index follow and canonical
  • 4 deleted or rehomed the orphaned pages
  • 5 reorganized the navigation and internal linking
  • 6 threw away product feed descriptions so affiliates don’t create duplicates. For a few money rich products the site content were rewritten
  • 7 too many target niches, throw away. Like gifts for moms vs mums
  • 8 adding UGC to product pages, like fb comments
  • 9 use l
  • What do you need to consider with your content: Diversity freshness quality and authority
  • Content vs link buys – content is the long term win
  • Infographics rock with embedded links
  • Tool suggestion TINEYE

 

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miercuri, 16 mai 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Real Estate Crash in China Underway: Foreign Funding Down 80%, Land Sales Down 57%, Starts Down 27%; Expect Chinese GDP to Plunge

Posted: 16 May 2012 03:39 PM PDT

Inquiring minds are reading an excellent report China Real Estate Unravels by Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China.

The report confirms many of the things I said would happen in regards to the Chinese real estate bubble and GDP.

Here are a few items of note.

Developers, burdened by 70% leverage ratios and loans threatening to come due, rushed to complete projects already in their pipeline, to put those units onto the market and raise cash.

That rush to complete inflated real estate investments, allegedly up 23.5% in the first quarter. Other statistics from the report tell the real story.

  • Year-on-year sales in Q1, for all real estate, was down 14.6%.
  • Residential property sales were down 17.5%
  • Office sales were down -10.2% 
  • Sales in January-February were a disaster, falling 20.9% overall, compared to the first two months of 2011, -24.7% for residential.
  • Total amount of floor space "for sale" was up 35.5%, compared to the same date last year
  • Floor space of residential units "for sale" grew 47.4%.
  • At the end of 2011, total floor space "under construction" was roughly 4.6 times the floor space sold
  • A year and a half worth of excess inventory is hidden somewhere in the pipeline
  • New starts in April fell 14.6% year-on-year and 27.0% month-on-month, for property as a whole
  • Housing starts fell -14.4% year-on-year and -23.4% month-on-month
  • Office starts fell -21.0% year-on-year in April, and -45.1% compared to March
  • Retail property starts fell -18.7% year-on-year, and -36.8% compared to March
  • Land sale revenues in April (RMB 27 billion) were down -54.7% compared to April last year
  • Foreign funding for property development was down -91.4% in March and -80.8% in April, compared to the same months last year.

Clearly a crash is underway. The above stats also show the soft-landing thesis is written on toilet paper.

GDP Analysis

I like the analysis by Chovanec on GDP implications and the highly-overrated "soft landing" theory.
The "resilient" growth in real estate investment that seemed to promise a "soft landing" is not very resilient at all. It's more like the last gasp of a market that's running out of steam. Once the surge in completions plays out, the declining number of new starts will become the pipeline, and growth in property investment will flatten or go negative.

Property investment accounts for roughly a quarter of gross Fixed Asset Investment (FAI), and net FAI accounts for over half of China's GDP growth. As I noted in January, in a back-of-the-envelope thought exercise, if property investment plateaus (growth falls to zero), it could shave as much as 2.6 percentage points off of real GDP growth. If it fell 10% (in real, not nominal terms) it could bring GDP growth down to 5.3%.

At the time I first saw this dynamic in the data, when the Q1 numbers came out, I figured it would take several months to begin playing out. But the April numbers suggest it is already happening.
Chovanec notes if real estate investment drops by 10%, GDP will come in at 5.3%. What if real estate investment falls by 20% or 25%? Moreover, why shouldn't it?

Nails in the Hard Landing Coffin?

One of the sillier stories making the rounds earlier last month was China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin

I responded at the time with ...
The longer China puts off rebalancing its economy, the bigger the crash later on. Moreover, widening the band on its currency is a needed part of that rebalancing, and does not preclude in any way a huge slowdown in growth.

The structural imbalances in China are large and for now, still growing. However, huge cracks have appeared in real estate, and changes are coming up with a regime change. Finally, peak oil alone makes many of the growth estimates we have seen for China outright impossible.
The real estate crash has arrived. The GDP crash will follow. For details, please see 12 Predictions by Michael Pettis on China; Non-Food Commodity Prices Will Collapse Over Next Three to Four Years; Nails in the Hard Landing Coffin?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Capital Flight From Greece Accelerates, €5bn in May, Exodus Even Hits Time Deposits; Fed, ECB, BOE, BOJ Balance Sheet Comparison

Posted: 16 May 2012 08:22 AM PDT

Capital flight from Greece continues, €5bn in May, not counting orders to buy foreign bonds. The exodus now includes cashing out time deposits as reported by the Financial Times in Greek banks see steady deposits outflow.
Greek banks have seen a steady outflow of deposits this month, reflecting savers' concerns over the failure of political leaders to form a coalition government and the prospect of another inconclusive election, which will be on June 17.

Athens-based bankers said withdrawals exceeded €1.2bn on Monday and Tuesday – 0.75 per cent of deposits – as President Karolos Papoulias failed in two final meetings with conservative, socialist and leftwing leaders to form a national unity government.

A senior Greek banker said the experience of the past few days "gives rise to concern that withdrawals may accelerate". Another banker said: "We are seeing something very unusual, customers breaking their time deposits in order to withdraw funds."

"The situation with the banks is extremely difficult ... there is no panic but there is great fear which could turn into panic and the resistance of the banks is very limited just now," Mr Papoulias told the political leaders on Sunday, according to a transcript of the meeting released by his office.

The president cited a briefing by George Provopoulos, the central bank governor, who told him that withdrawals last week reached €700m, excluding funds used to buy German bonds and other foreign securities.

One of the Greek bankers said that since the end of April, deposits had been reduced by some €5bn, including orders to buy foreign bonds and securities.
Why anyone would have even a cent in Greek bank accounts is a complete mystery. Certainly the smart money left long ago.

Here are a few charts courtesy of Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank in Denmark.

Demand Deposit Flight: Greece, Italy, Portugal, to Germany



click on chart for sharper image

ECB Deposits



click on chart for sharper image

Central Bank Balance Sheets as Percent of GDP



click on chart for sharper image

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Note to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph: You Have Excellent Insight as to What is Happening and Why, But Please Get a Grip on Reality as to Solutions

Posted: 16 May 2012 12:37 AM PDT

Once again, I sadly report that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph hits the nail on the head as to what is happening, yet cannot hit the broadside of a barn with a shotgun from 15 feet in regards to the solution.

It really pains me to see excellent analysis go straight into the toilet with hopeless proposals to problems at hand.

Please consider Appetiser cost of Greek exit is €155bn for Germany, France: trillions for meat course by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
Eric Dor's team at the IESEG School of Management in Lille has put together a table on the direct costs to Germany and France if Greece is pushed out of the euro.

These assume that relations between Europe and Greece break down in acrimony, with a full-fledged "stuff-you" default on euro liabilities. It assumes a drachma devaluation of 50pc.

Potential losses for the states, including central banks.


Upper bound of the losses
Billions €

French State
German State
TARGET2 liabilities of the Bank of Greece
22.7
30.2
Greek sovereign bonds held by the Eurosystem: SMP
9.8
14
Bilateral loans to Greece in the context of the first programme
11.4
15.1
Guarantees to bonds issued by the EFSF to provide loans to Greece in the context of the second programme
8.4
11.2
Guarantees to debts issued by the EFSF in the context of its participation to the "Private Sector Involvement" –restructuration of the Greek debt:"sweetener"
6.5
8.6
Guarantees to debts issued by the EFSF in the context of its participation to the "Private Sector Involvement" –restructuration of the Greek debt: payment of accrued interest
1
1.4
Guarantees to bonds issued by the EFSF to provide loans to Greece in order to buy back sovereign bonds used by banks as collateral to obtain funding from the Eurosystem
7.6
10.2
Total
66.4
89.8


Sounds about right.
So far so good. I think a 70% devaluation is about right, but let's not quibble.

Contagion Silliness

This is where Pritchard's analysis starts getting more debatable.

Pritchard writes ..."Needless to say, the real danger is contagion to Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, and the deadly linkages between €15 trillion in public and private debt in these countries and the €27 trillion European banking nexus."

This idea of contagion sounds much like the totally discredited "domino" theory in regards to Vietnam. Simply put the rest of Asia did not fall into the hands of communists when the US lost the war in Vietnam.

In this case, Spain will sink or swim on its own merits regardless of what Greece does.

If anything, there will be contagion in the reverse sense. There exists a possibility that Greece recovers "because" it exits the Eurozone (however structural reforms are needed as well).

The ridiculous fear is failure in Greece will lead to a failure in Spain. Clearly both states have failed already.

Mad Hatter Tirade

Pritchard then went off the deep end into a mad hatter tirade.
This nonsense can of course be stopped in ten minutes if the EU:

1) announces that it will equip itself with a real central bank (a lender of last resort) that takes all risk of sovereign default off the table — with conviction and overwhelming force, with no ifs and buts, and no ambushes from the Bundesbank.

2) announces EMU debt-pooling, fiscal union, a joint EMU budget and tax system, and an EMU government as a counterpart for the enhanced the ECB.

The idea that Greece and Spain can be saved by central bank printing "with conviction and overwhelming force, with no ifs and buts" is of course asinine.

Sorry Ambrose, "asinine" is the best word that describes what you propose. Greece and Spain can only be saved if and only if they implement badly-needed structural reforms.

Defaulting on debt which would cause inflation in Greece and Spain (not Germany), may assist recovery, but the 100% necessary condition in both cases is structural reform.

Pritchard then recovers by concluding ...
My sympathies to the German people. This is what your leaders got you into (without asking permission). It was the elemental implication of monetary union.

We at the Telegraph screamed from rooftops in the early 1990s that EMU was a destroyer of nation states, and democracies. So did the brave German professors. Nobody would listen.

My guess is that German citizens will not accept this implication.
Precisely!

As Pritchard suggests, Germany will indeed pay. Mathematically Germany must pay. It's something I have pointed out numerous times over the years.

The problem as Pritchard notes is the flaw in the Eurozone in the first place.

I commend Pritchard for being among the first to point that simple fact out. However, neither Keynesian nor Monetarist nonsense is the cure for anything.

Regrettably, Pritchard keeps attempting to put a square peg into a round hole, and worse yet keeps proposing "asinine" solutions to a fundamental problem.

If Wishes Were Fishes

  • If monetary stimulus worked, the LTRO would have been a spectacular success already. 
  • If monetary stimulus worked, housing in the US would be in full-blown recovery.
  • If monetary stimulus worked, Japan would not have a debt-to-GDP ratio above 200%. 
  • If printing worked, Zimbabwe would have been the greatest country in the world long ago.

It is really sad to see otherwise fine analysis go straight into the toilet with such ridiculous proposals as solutions.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid

17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid


17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid

Posted: 15 May 2012 02:02 PM PDT

Posted by Carson Ward

If the last few months of ranking changes have shown me anything, it's that poorly executed link building strategy that many of us call white hat can be more dangerous than black-hat strategies like buying links. As a result of well intentioned but short-sighted link building, many sites have seen significant drops in rankings and traffic. Whether you employ link building tactics that are black, white, or any shade of grey, you can do yourself a favor by avoiding the appearance of link spam.

It's become very obvious that recent updates hit sites that had overly aggressive link profiles. The types of sites that were almost exclusively within what I called the "danger zone" in a post about one month before Penguin hit. Highly unnatural anchor text and low-quality links are highly correlated, but anchor text appears to have been the focus.

I was only partially correct, as the majority of cases appear to be devalued links rather than penalties. Going forward, the wise SEO would want to take note of the types of link spam to make sure that what they're doing doesn't look like a type of link spam. Google's response to and attitude towards each type of link spam varies, but every link building method becomes more and more risky as you begin moving towards the danger zone.

1. Cleansing Domains

While not technically a form of link building, 301 "cleansing" domains are a dynamic of link manipulation that every SEO should understand. When you play the black hat game, you know the chance of getting burned is very real. Building links to a domain that redirects to a main domain is one traditionally safe way to quickly recover from Google actions like Penguin. While everyone else toils away attempting to remove scores of exact-match anchor text, the spammers just cut the trouble redirected domains loose like anchors, and float on into the night with whatever treasure they've gathered. 

A cleansing domain for NFL jersies

When Penguin hit, this linkfarm cleansing domain changed from a 301 to a 404 almost overnight.

Link building through redirects should be easy to catch, as new links to a domain that is currently redirecting is hardly natural behavior. To anyone watching, it's like shooting up a flare that says, "I'm probably manipulating links." The fact that search engines aren't watching closely right now is no guarantee of future success, so I'd avoid this and similar behavior if future success is a goal.

2. Blog Networks & Poorly Executed Guest Blogs

I've already covered the potential risks of blog networks in depth here. Google hates blog networks - fake blogs that members pay or contribute content to in order to get links back to their or their clients' sites. Guest blogging and other forms of contributing content to legitimate sites is a much whiter tactic, but consider that a strategy that relies heavily on low-quality guest blogging looks a lot like blog network spam.

With blog networks, each blog has content with a constant ratio of words to links. It posts externally to a random sites multiple times, and with a lot of "inorganic" anchor text for commercially valuable terms. Almost all backlinks to blog networks are also spam. 

I cringe when I see low-quality blogs with questionable backlinks accepting guest blog posts that meet rigid word length and external link guidelines. Quality blogs tend not to care if the post is 400-500 words with two links in the bio, and quality writers tend not to ruin the post with excessive linking. Most of us see guest blogging as a white-hat tactic, but a backlink profile filled with low-quality guest posts looks remarkably similar to the profile of a site using automated blog networks.

I'd obviously steer clear of blog networks, but I'd be just as wary of low-quality inorganic guest blogs that look unnatural. Guest blog on sites with high quality standards and legitimate backlink profiles of their own.

3. Article Marketing Spam

Article link addiction is still a real thing for new SEOs. You get one or two links with anchor text of your choice, and your rankings rise. You're not on the first page, but you do it again and get closer. The articles are easy and cheap, and they take no creativity or mental effort. You realize that you're reaching diminishing returns on the articles, but your solution isn't to stop - you just need to do more articles. Before you know it, you're searching for lists of the top article sites that give followed links and looking for automated solutions to build low-quality links to your low-quality links.

Most articles are made for the sole purpose of getting a link, and essentially all followed links are self-generated rather than endorsements. Google has accordingly made article links count for very little, and has hammered article sites for their low-quality content. 

Ezine Articles SEO visibility

Maybe you're wondering how to get a piece of that awesome trend, but hopefully you'll join me in accepting that article directories aren't coming back. Because they can theoretically be legitimate, article links are generally devalued rather than penalized. As with all link spam, your risk of receiving more harsh punishment rises proportionate to the percentage of similar links in your profile. 

4. Single-Post Blogs

Ironically named "Web 2.0 Blogs" by some spam peddlers, these two-page blogs on Tumblr and Wordpress sub-domains never see the light of day. After setting up the free content hub with an article or two, the site is then "infused" with link juice, generally from social bookmarking links (discussed below).

Despite their prevalence, these sites don't do much for rankings. Links with no weight come in, and links with no impact go out. They persist because with a decent free template, clients can be shown a link on a page that doesn't look bad. Google doesn't need to do much to weed these out, because they're already doing nothing.

5. (Paid) Site-Wide Links

Site-wide footer links used to be all the rage. Google crippled their link-juice-passing power because most footer links pointing to external sites are either Google Bombs or paid links. Where else would you put a site-wide link that you don't want your users to click?

To my point of avoiding the appearance of spam, Penguin slammed a number of sites with a high proportion of site-wide (footer) links that many would not have considered manipulative. Almost every free Wordpress theme that I've seen links back to the creator's page with choice anchor text, and now a lot of Wordpress themes are desperately pushing updates to alter or remove the link. Penguin didn't care if you got crazy with a plugin link, designed a web site, or hacked a template; the over-use of anchor text hit everyone. This goes to show that widespread industry practices aren't inherently safe.

6. Paid Links in Content

There will never be a foolproof way to detect every paid link. That said it's easier than you think to leave a footprint when you do it in bulk. You have to trust your sellers not to make it obvious, and the other buyers to keep unwanted attention off their own sites. If one buyer that you have no relationship to buys links recklessly, the scrutiny can trickle down through the sites they're buying from and eventually back to you. 

If you do buy links, knowing what you're doing isn't enough. Make sure everyone involved knows what they're doing. Google is not forgiving when it comes to buying links.

7. Link Exchanges, Wheels, etc.

Speaking of footprints, I believe it's possible to build a machine learning model to start with a profile of known links violating guidelines, which you can acquire from paid link sites and link wheel middlemen with nothing more than an email address. You can then assess a probability of a site being linked to in that manner, corroborating potential buyers and sellers with a link graph of similar profiles. I have no idea what kind of computing/programming power this would take, but the footprint is anomalous enough that it should be possible.

Exchanging links through link schemes requires a lot more faith in a bunch of strangers than I can muster. In a link wheel, you're only as strong and subtle as your "weakest links." My opinion is that if you're smart enough to avoid getting caught, you're probably smart enough to build or write something awesome that will have superior results and lower risk than link wheels.

8. Low-Quality Press Release Syndication

High-quality syndication and wire services possess a few unattractive attributes for spammers: there are editorial guidelines, costs, and even fact checking. Low-quality syndication services will send almost anything through to any site that will take it. You'll end up with a bunch of links, but not many that get indexed, and even fewer that get counted.

My experience has been that press releases have rapidly diminishing returns on syndication only, and the only way to see ROI is to generate actual, real coverage. I still see link-packed press releases all over the web that don't have a chance of getting coverage - really, your site redesign is not news-worthy. I'm not sure whether to attribute this to bad PR, bad SEO, or both.

9. Linkbait and Switch

In this context, we're talking about creating a real piece of linkbait for credible links, and later replacing the content with something more financially beneficial. Tricking people into linking to content is clearly not something Google would be ok with. I don't see linkbait and switch done very often, but I die a little every time I see it. If you're able to create and spread viral content, there's no need to risk upsetting link partners and search engines. Instead, make the best of it with smart links on the viral URL, repeat success, and become a known source for great content.

10. Directories

Directories have been discussed to death. The summary is that Google wants to devalue links from directories with no true standards. Here's a Matt Cutts video and blog post on the topic. Directory links often suffer from a high out/in linking ratio, but those worth getting are those that are actually used for local businesses (think Yelp) and any trafficked industry directories.

  1. Would I pay money for a listing here?
  2. Are the majority of current listings quality sites?
  3. Do listings link with the business or site name?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, don't bother with a link. This immediately excludes all but a handful of RSS or blog feed directories, which are mostly used to report higher quantities of links. When I was trained as an SEO, I was taught that directories would never hurt, but they might help a tiny bit, so I should go get thousands of them in the cheapest way possible. Recent experience has taught us that poor directory links can be a liability.

Even as I was in the process of writing this post, it appears that Google began deindexing low-quality directories. The effect seems small so far - perhaps testifying to their minimal impact on improving rankings in the first place - but we'll have to wait and see.

11. Link Farms and Networks

I honestly can't speak as an authority on link farms, having never used them personally or seen them in action.

"I'm telling you right now, the engines are very very smart about this kind of thing, and they've seen link farming over and over and over again in every different permutation. Granted, you might find the one permutation - the one system - that works for you today, but guess what? It's not going to work tomorrow; it's not going to work in the long run." - Rand in 2009

My sense is that this prediction came true over and over again. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

12. Social Bookmarking & Sharing Sites

Links from the majority of social bookmarking sites carry no value. Pointing a dozen of them at a page might not even be enough to get the page crawled. Any quality links that go in have their equity immediately torn a million different directions if links are followed. The prevalence of spam-filled and abandoned social bookmarking sites tells me that site builders seriously over-estimated how much we would care about other people's bookmarks.

Sites focusing on user-generated links and content have their own ways of handling trash. Active sites with good spam control and user involvement will filter spam on their own while placing the best content prominently. If you'd like to test this, just submit a commercial link to any front-page sub-Reddit and time how long it takes to get the link banned. Social sites with low spam control stop getting visitors and incoming links while being overrun by low quality external links. Just ask Digg.

13. Forum Spam

Forum spam may never die, though it is already dead. About a year ago, we faced a question about a forum signature link that was in literally thousands of posts on a popular online forum. When we removed the signature links, the change was similar to effect of most forum links: zero. It doesn't even matter if you nofollow all links. Much like social sites, forums that can't manage the spam quickly turn into a cesspool of garbled phrases and anchor text links. Bing's webmaster forums are a depressing example.

14. Unintended Followed Link Spam

From time to time you'll hear of a new way someone found to get a link on an authoritative site. Examples I have seen include links in bios, "workout journals" that the site let users keep, wish lists, and uploaded files. Sometimes these exploits (for lack of a better term) go viral, and everyone can't wait to fill out their bio on a DA 90+ site. 

In rare instances, this kind of link spam works - until the hole is plugged. I can't help but shake my head when I see someone talking about how you can upload a random file or fill out a bio somewhere. This isn't the sort of thing to base your SEO strategy around. It's not long-term, and it's not high-impact. 

15. Profile Spam

While similar to unintended followed links on authority domains, profile spam deserves its own discussion due to their abundance. It would be difficult for Google to take any harsh action on profiles, as there is a legitimate reason for reserving massive numbers of profiles to prevent squatters and imitators from using a brand name. 

What will hurt you is when your profile name and/or anchor text doesn't match your site or brand name. 

car-insurance-spam-profile

"The name's Insurance. Car Insurance"

When profile links are followed and indexed, Google usually interprets the page as a user page and values it accordingly. Obviously Google's system for devaluing profile links is not perfect right now. I know it's sometimes satisfying just to get an easy link somewhere, but profile link spam is a great example of running without moving.

16. Comment Spam

If I were an engineer on a team designed to combat web spam, the very first thing I would do would be to add a classifier to blog comments. I would then devalue every last one. Only then would I create exceptions where blog comments would count for anything.

I have no idea if it works that way, but it probably doesn't. I do know that blogs with unfiltered followed links are generally old and unread, and they often look like this:

Followed blog comments

Let's pretend that Google counts every link equally, regardless of where it is on the page. How much do you think 1/1809th of the link juice on a low-authority page is worth to you? Maybe I'm missing something here, because I can't imagine spam commenting being worth anything at any price. Let's just hope you didn't build anchor text into those comments.

17. Domain Purchase and Redirect/Canonical

Buying domains for their link juice is an old classic, but I don't think I have anything to add beyond what Danny Sullivan wrote on the matter. I'm also a fan of Rand's suggestion to buy blogs and run them rather than pulling out the fangs and sucking every ounce of life out of a once-thriving blog.

Domain buying still works disgustingly well in the (rare) cases where done correctly. I would imagine that dozens of redirected domains will eventually bring some unwelcome traffic to your site directly from Mountain View, but fighting spam has historically been much easier in my imagination than in reality.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but it should paint a picture of the types of spam that are out there, which ones are working, and what kinds of behaviors could get you in trouble. 

Spam Links: Not Worth It

I have very deliberately written about what spam links "look like." If you do believe that black hat SEO is wrong, immoral, or in any way unsavory that's fine - just make sure your white hat links don't look like black hat links. If you think that white hat SEOs are sheep, or pawns of Google, the same still applies: your links shouldn't look manipulative.

I'm advising against the tactics above because the potential benefits don't outweigh the risks. If your questionable link building does fall apart and your links are devalued, there's a significant cost of time wasted building links that don't count. There's also the opportunity cost - what could you have been doing instead? Finally, clearing up a manual penalty can take insane amounts of effort and remove Google's revenue stream in the meantime.


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