I have long been waiting for viperchill to release his new eBook on online reputation management. He let me know a few weeks ago on twitter that he was writing a book on online reputation management and ever since that day I was waiting in anticipation of the book. Glenn is an incredibly talented young man, who has continually proved that he knows his stuff. So early today when I got the tweet that I was so incredibly pumped. I am currently reading the book and will be posting a review tomorrow. But I wanted to make sure I got a post out today talking about the eBook. Here is what we know so far:
The guide is 75 pages long and includes the following sections:
- Introduction - A piece about me and the topic
- What is Online Reputation Management?
- Reputation Management Ethics
- Reputation Monitoring
- Types of Reputation Management Issues
- SEO Basics
- How to Deal With - Multiple specific issues
- Managing Your Reputation (14 pages)
- Resources
Over the past several weeks there has been much discussion about serp hijacking and ninja linkbuilding. Whether or not you should be transparent with your clients and engage in knowledge sharing. We have recently started a project with client to help them properly manage their own online reputation and increase their social media presence. They were already working with another company on redesigning their Web site. This was not only a redesign of the site but a site overhaul to improve the search friendliness of their site. As we were moving forward with our portion of the project we did an internal analysis of the sites SEO so that we would know how the site would play in our plan. Discussing the preliminary results with the client - lead them to tell us not to worry all these issues were being addressed. That we should wait till the second week of January and we would be able to view the new and improved site with all of these fixes and more in place with a brand new look and feel!
We were rather excited about the prospects of the client getting and updated look and feel along with some much need search friendliness. We kept moving forward with our planning knowing that all of our concerns some of the things that raised a flag in our analysis were being addressed - and we would have a more solid jumping off point when the project went forward in January. The email stating they have gone live finally arrives, I anxiously open up the email and click the link. The browser opens to a Flash Splash Page, not just a splash page but one that hasn't even used any <NOSCRIPT> to provide any additional SEO boost and it doesn't have any links pointing the rest of the site! And even though google says they are reading flash files, there are some ongoing seo and flash tests that seem to indicate otherwise. So googlebot is already with a massive hurdle in indexing the "new and improved" "rehased" website. I click on the button in the flash animation and enter the site. I see only two paragraphs of text and some links. Links that I find are all hidden behind some javascript. But as I continue to scroll down the page I come across something that I find to be very disturbing.
This is the footer that is included on each page. I have blacked out the company name as to not drag them into this, even though this is about outing them to the client I don't feel that outing them to the world is appropriate or my place. But each of the red circles in the above graphic indicate a followed link, a link that has been styled to not appear as a link. They have given themselves 9 followed links with varying anchor text, appropriate title attributes and on images alt attributes. The attributes are something that they somehow forgot to include on any of the clients pages. So this of course leads me to dive into an all out analysis of the "new and improved" "rehased" Web site. And I proceed to find problem after problem.
We now have a bit of a quandary they have paid for services that we are now telling them they didn't receive. On top of that we are going to tell them that they really need to do these things so that all of their internet marketing efforts aren't in vein. I don't feel particularly comfortable with going back to them and handing them another bill to go back and fix someone else's work. Especially someone who has an established relationship with the client; we are the new kids on the block (yes, I just linked to 80's boy band new kids on the block). So the team comes together and writes a massive report on the "new and improved" "rehased" Web site. In this report we include everything we look at problems and their solutions - we spell it all out for them. We have decided by engaging in knowledge sharing; by not forcing them into choosing us that we will gain both trust and help make them successful - which is our ultimate goal. We don't want to create a drove of people who are dependant upon us. We want to create successful strategies, we want people not to need us; but to want to work with us on a continued basis to be a part of the process that creates the next winning strategy for them. Everyone on the team is feeling great about this decision. The client now knows what their problems are and how they can be fixed.
As soon as we deliver this report of course the client goes into panic mode. The president wants to know what is the most pressing issue that needs to be addressed is. We of course mention that some of their pages are ranking better for some the other companies terms and even their brand than they are for their own terms. And that they are leaking lots of link love on every single page to this other company 9 different times. I also wanted to stress that one link is acceptable but 9 was a little excessive and that they should really talk to these people and see if it was done on purpose, cause as I forgot to mention this is a .EDU site. And we all know how we SEO's covet .EDU backlinks. So we establish that this is indeed the standard footer and that they just want to build lots of links :) So there wasn't any attempt to game this client in particular; that they just game all their clients in this way. Anyway back to the story, we continue to work with the client and their internal Web department to identify things that they can easily fix and what they can't. Well as we get into the site more and more we realize that this is truly a mess. It's an ASP.NET CMS, that actually isn't really being used only it's database is being used - then they have ColdFusion pages making calls to the db pulling out content to display. So there is no "Theme" to edit and fix the menus, every one of the 23,000 pages has this stuff hard coded, they don't even use any include files. They let us know after the last group created the "look and feel" they went in and manually edited the pages to incorporate them. Wow! I was amazed. Many people had came through their doors - this was the 4th rework of their site; but no one had taken the time to integrate any of the different parts of the sites. Just band-aided them together and let the client worry about the consequences.
We are currently working with the client to help them decide how to best move forward. And I really believe that it was the transparency and knowledge sharing that really gave us the extra bump in their trust of us. They saw that we just wanted to help make their efforts successful, that we weren't trying to just make another buck. We honestly had their best interest in mind. We empowered them with the knowledge to fix it themselves or hire out someone else. But instead they turned to us; because they now know that they can trust us - we put their success first and it's paying off. I would encourage more Search/Internet/Social Marketers to engage in knowledge sharing and be a little more transparent and see how positively it impacts their bottom line. I will keep everyone updated as the saga continues to unfold :)
Well after all this looks like **** SEO Services India is going to have lots of trouble trying to effectively manager their online reputation. After only a few hours Tim Nash and http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ have been dominating the SERPs for there brand across the pond in the .UK and now it appears that they are controlling the .US results as well. Here is a screen shot of the Google.com SERPs at 2:40 EST.
First I would have to say that **** SEO Services India should have probably issued an apology by now, it's clear that **** SEO Services India were in the wrong. ***** SEO Services India got busted the least they could do is apologize. I am sure that ***** SEO Services India doesn't want to continue having to issues with their brand. Or having things like shady tactics, spam, unethical practices or other negative terms associated with the **** SEO Services India brand.
This all started when ***** SEO Services India decided to leave all kinds of off topic comments on the Tim Nash Interview over at Hobo SEO. One such comment actually made it through at first pictured below it appears the comment has now been removed so my chance to screen cap it has now vanished. As you can read over at Hobo SEO the comments continued to poor in and were clearly off topic and provided no value what so ever to the conversation. So now ***** SEO Services India has not only pissed of Hobo SEO but Tim Nash wrote a little piece lambasting them as well. And now you have me writing up something talking about the shady tactics that ***** SEO Services India are using. And I am sure as more bloggers come across Hobo SEO's story they will probably be writing a nice little piece saying their part. Because placing relevant comments, joining the conversation is part of the blogosphere; but leaving pointless spammy comments just to try and get some link love is wrong and very very shady tactics. So in a show of solidarity I have also wrote a post that will likely give ***** SEO Services India some additional online reputation management whoas and gave them some nofollowed links (because let's be honest we all know that nofollowing doesn't really work 100%) with some anchor text that would reflect very poorly on them in the future. I will also remove the company name ***** SEO Services India from my post and do my part to make it better if we see an apology to Hobo SEO. I would also like to note that I am a big fan of the No-NoFollow movement and passing link love to those who actively participate on blogs; but this is beyond what is acceptable and nothing short of spam.
***** SEO Services India Spamming
should stop and they should live up to what they did.
As 2008 approaches, I decided I better start taking some of my own advice and do some real online reputation management because if you google martin bowling I am no where to be found on the first page :(
So I have decided I am going to actively change that. We have been doing some small scale SEO,SEM,SMM & other Internet Marketing for clients around our area; but we are starting to branch out into some niche's that are providing us clients that are national and international. So if I am going to help those people manage their brand and online reputation, I better do it myself.
So this blog is going to start out as a step by step of how I am planning on have zero results to dominating the Vanity SERPs for Martin Bowling.
This is an exercise that I am sure many have gone through and this is something that is long over due; so that's why I am getting it out of the way first thing in 2008.
Part of my plan for better managing my online reputation and personal brand is to become a more active part of the Internet Marketing Community. I have long been a lurker on many of my favorite sites; but now I intend on becoming an active member that fully participates.
Hopefully my little experiment will provide some with a good intro to brand management and to others hopefully it will offer some comic relief :).
I want to wish everyone a happy new year and let you know that you will see a far more active martin bowling in the new year.