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 :)
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.