Ask the SEO Guru

Sometimes it is better to remain silent and have others wonder about your true abilities than to speak and remove all doubt.

Donna Fontenot is one of my favorite people I’ve met online. She has a unique perspective on the seo community and articulates it well at Seo-scoop. This past week she wrote an impassioned post about the negative aspect of the new world social media and her decision to remove herself from it.  I Refuse To Participate In The Vicious Nastiness Going On In Our Industry 

While I applaud the attempt at raising the awareness of social responsibility in others and admire her having the intestinal fortitude to take a stand, I doubt it will have much impact on actually decreasing the daily drama such is social media.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be plenty of support from her readers and passer-bys who are attracted to the theme of the post as they feel the same way, at the moment at least.  A lot of people all agreeing that yes, it is a problem and they are happy to see someone speak out and maybe even wish they had said it first.

You see, it’s easy to champion a lofty ideal as long as it is from a detached position because we all know it’s the way it SHOULD be. That’s cool and all but I still don’t see much changing. Probably not for the reasons you may be thinking though.

Moments after publishing her mini-rant against the vicious, nasty cr@p blogging, (Donna’s words,not mine. I love the way she can make her descriptions almost eloquent  in their brutality), someone promoted it on Sphinn, http://sphinn.com/story/60431 where it quickly went hot and gained several supportive comments. One of the comments I felt summed up the general attitude of a lot of people not actively involved in any dispute perceived to be referenced in the post. The comment was:

We're destroying and abusing the very nature of social media. Which is ironic when so many of the articles we produce ourselves describe processes to leverage social media.

I tried to post a comment myself but somehow my comments keep getting cut off after just one or two lines.

{planting tongue firmly in cheek }
I’m probably banned and only allowed to post two lines because my posts are too long. That would be discrimination and I’d like to do the research to prove it but I lack the time and motivation that Mr. Lewis has to make my case The Sphinn Exposé
***********************************

What I was wanting to say was simply this:  

"It isn't a thing that "we" can destroy. It is what it is. By definition, it is the actions and reactions of humans being in a social environment.

It simply reflects what it is that makes us human. I think that is sad and more than a little scarry but it simply is what it is. When you say “we’re destroying the very nature of social media”, the thing is that the entire topic of this post IS the very nature of social media."

We all have the right to choose to participate or not and Donna has publicly announced her decision. I applaud her and desperately hope it helps to raise the bar on online social etiquette ---- but I doubt it.

The Lord of the Flies wasn’t so much fiction after all. Backstabbing, false accusations, hateful comments used to make a weak point, those things all live within the realm of human emotional responses. Now, couple those human frailties with perceived anonymity AND an element of promotional value and ------- HELLOOOO  ugly underbelly !

For me, I choose not to participate except in very rare cases, (and those cases usually offer an opportunity to benefit some goal or objective of my own), but rather observe, accept and use the data to formulate strategic plans to capitalize on the cause and effects.

When you see vicious, nasty cr@p, publicly displayed online, what you are seeing is what we all really are. At least online no one is actually getting physically harmed and personal property isn’t being destroyed. It is all just emotional responses. And I never forget that it is emotional responses that sells things. Not search engines, not blogs, not twitter.  People being people is what makes it all happen and when it is ugly, I always try to remind myself that ugly can be a stimuli as can beauty and both can make a sale.

You see, no one wants to be made to look foolish. No one wants to be hurtful for no good reason and no one wants to see themselves as “bad” people.

BUT, we DO all want to be respected, validated, rich, powerful, happy, satisfied, oh yeah, and we all want our link bait to work like a charm.

While the guru completely agrees with Ms Fontenot’s choice to not participate, the Guru also suggests you remember:

#1. Your words online represent who you really are

#2. Other peoples words online represent who they really are

#3. Once words are published online, they follow you probably forever

#4. As much as we’d like to believe in the ultimate goodness of mankind, there is a dark side in us all and that dark side is as strong a motivator as the light.

Peace Y’all!

G

If ya cain’t say nuthin good bout somebody ----- make sure ya cover yer ass!

Law#13 of the 48 Laws of Power

When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude.

I have never fully subscribed to this entirely mercenary philosophy. I do believe in the basic goodness of mankind and I also believe people do things for others out of gratitude and mercy. But, if like me you consider yourself human, then like us all, you have an ego. You crave validation as do we all. This is the underlying emotional reality that makes law #13 my favorite when it comes to link requests.

We’ve all seen the emails,(thousands of them),telling us some site has linked to us and if we’ll link back blah, blah, blah. A classic example of trying to appeal to my gratitude.  Using this approach, you can expect a 1% success rate on a consistent basis.

Or the one explaining how search engines rank websites and exchanging links will help us both. Again, the you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours is not appealing to THEIR self-interest, it is appealing to yours and simply a variation of appealing to their gratitude. 1% is yours!

Of course there is the time factor and there are times when a 1% makes sense when comparing time/cost to ROI. But there are those links that represent a value of 1000 to 1 and often one link from the right source can move a money term right to the top virtually overnight. Those types of links are worth investing in.

The technique I’m about to reveal is one that I have used for some time although sparingly due to the time and cost factor. BUT I’ve always felt it was kind of a secret weapon and was hesitant to discuss it openly.

However, this past two months I’ve had occasion to discuss a variation of the technique with a client and then a question came up at SEO Community Forums,(the premier SEO forum online in my opinion), which I decided to answer privately as a way to try to contribute to the community and pay it forward for such a great resource.

So, feeling the cat’s out of the bag so to speak AND accepting that smart/good SEO’s have already thought of it or soon will and the dumb ones won’t get it anyway, here it
goes.

 
Question for the Week of July 17th, 2008

 Originally Posted by XXX XXXX XXXXXX

Understanding The Trick

and What Makes it Work for You, Them and the Web

What’s the Trick? The trick is ---- there is no trick.

If you attempt to use this technique as a fast, easy way to get authority links, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of work with greatly reduced returns. If you automate the process, (which I’m pretty sure some of you will thereby diminishing the value to us all.), you will insult the intelligence of your target, you will soil your own good name and the image and value of your site. Of course if there is a potential increase from 1% to 1.001% then I expect the old “if one is good then 10 million must be better” philosophy to apply. Such is the way of the web.

BUT, if you use this technique to secure linking relationships and valuable, industry-specific content for your site and your visitors, you get the links from industry thought leaders, you provide hi-quality content for your visitors, you make Google look good by placing your content in front of their visitors and you contribute to the overall quality of the web.

Choose people to interview whom you genuinely respect. People who you actually know something about because you have engaged yourself in their content.

Ask questions that give them the opportunity to express their views on issues that are important to the industry and to your visitors.

Be honest and tell them what you will do and then DO IT!

The Basic Technique
Just a suggestion      

Build a page, (sub domains can work very well too), named Press or in the News of similar and link to it from the index page.

On this page provide links to:

News stories about you or your site, (by far the most impressive)

Press releases (also strong for trust builders)

 Industry related stories

Blog comments about you or your site

LIST OF PROMINENT FIGURES IN THE INDUSTRY YOU HAVE INTERVIEWD

(or plan to but haven’t got to it yet.)

On each of the Interviewee pages, use your sites’ logos, headers, sidebars, etc but display their name and a short bio of them
 

Hints and Tips

When building these pages pay attention to your anchor text.

Do the same when asking the questions in the interview  

Do the Research to locate your targets.

Become familiar with them, their site and what others have said about them so you can use that in your bio and in your introduction email. Positive or negative comments about them from other people are good for openers.

EXAMPLE:

John Dow of bigmouth.com said in his blog, (provide link here), that you have never given proper credit to your employees. How do you respond to that?

Include links to their site where appropriate and make sure they get clicked so they show up in their referrers 

When you get an interview completed, place it on the page you already have set up for that person making sure to end with a thank you and a link to their site. Make sure the links get clicked.

Promote the site like you would any other page or target you cared about. Blog about it. Rss it. Social tag it. Create videos where appropriate. Get links to it so it starts placing, etc. etc. etc.

Remember to NEVER ask for a link in the emails you send but you’ll be amazed at how often the target links to your interview on his site, on his blog and on his profile pages from Myspace, Facebook, Twitter,etc. He will tell his friends, his family, his employees his vendors and his competitors. Why? Because you showed respect and that is validation !

A Couple of Cool Tricks We’ve Discovered 
Aaron Wall of SEObook.com has written another great article about the perception of value. Do yourself a favor and read it if you haven’t already.
http://www.seobook.com/value-perception-and-perception-value