Fight Comment Spam at the Source

February 26, 2009 8 Comments

The Start of the problem

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From “Today’s Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen”, displayed with special permission. For many more cartoons, please visit Randy’s site @ www.glasbergen.com

I got a ping back for my recent Storm Trooper Disco blog post, and looking into it I saw that the link went to a junk wordpress blog that had scraped part of my post. At the bottom it had 4 links to different sites as “site design” credits. Obviously, they are attempting to get link juice/value from comment spam, then pass it on to their sites/clients sites. Looking at these sites receiving links from this spammy blog, it looked like they are real, valid businesses. Perhaps, I thought, their webmaster/SEO is using underhanded tactics and not telling the actual owners of the company… that would mean that possibly these legitmate business owners are inadvertently funding comment spam, so I decided to contact them and make them aware of the spamtastic web tactics that were being used to “promote” their website. Naive? Maybe, but I felt I needed to take action! Here’s What I emailed and submitted via their contact form.

Fight the Source

“I don’t know if you are aware, but the person who is doing your internet marketing is using bad business practices.I received a spam comment that referenced a blog that had scraped some of the text on my site to make a small post, with a link pointing at my post, in order to get a “pingback” and hyperlink to the page. At the bottom of this spamtastic blog website, it says:Designer Webdesign Coded by MCSE, Noise Survey, Mock Theory TestMCSE and is hyperlinked to your website!
This tactic is obviously an underhanded trick to attempt to gain links and pass the value on to your website. I beleive that you should check your webmaster/SEO’s business model/practices immediately because these types of tactics could be at worst cause for a penalty and at best send little or no real long lasting value to your website. If you are paying a marketing service, then you are actually supporting a type of spam, much like those companies who pay for email spam to be mass blasted to email inboxes. Please, take the time to review this problem, I think you’ll see it’s the right thing to do!”

What About You?

We’ll see if they respond to my email and messages… What about you? Are you doing anything to fight blog comment spam? Have a better approach? I’d be really happy to hear anyone’s thoughts on other methods… or perhaps..it’s a lost cause.

Filed under Opinion, Random Tagged with

Storm Trooper Disco

February 25, 2009 2 Comments

Sometimes a storm trooper may be depressed and beat himself up about their mistakes.

And sometimes, a Storm Troopers just gotta Dance!

Filed under humor, Random, star wars Tagged with , , ,

Youtube Content Strategies for Small Business

February 23, 2009 3 Comments

Opportunity When Adding Youtube Content for your Business

Youtube is now the 2nd largest search engine online, with 15 hours of video uploaded every minute it also is one of the fastest growing mediums online. This represents a vast opportunity when it comes to generating video content for your business. This is becoming even more crucial, as Google’s “Universal Search” is becoming more and more prevalent, and gives even more exposure to businesses than ever before.

Strategy For Creating Video Content

First off you need to get yourself any decent type of video camera, which at this point could be anything from a phone to a professional camera with a tripod setup. I personally recommend a GorillaPod, so you can setup and film on any surface, even uneven surfaces. Next you need to look at your business, what do you offer and how can you interpret that into video. I myself believe this is where many people give up, and walk away because they don’t feel very creative, however I suggest taking a pen and pencil, and writing down every time you find yourself describing something your company does that takes more than 5 minutes to explain. You’ll find all sorts of topics in your industry that need explanation, and chances are that your clients are online looking for that information. If you are the one to present it to them, then you are likely to be remembered when services are required, or be contacted to become the service provider right then and there. Also remember that you don’t have to simply take videos of EXACTLY what it is you do…for example, a Realtor might take videos of vintage homes in different neighborhoods around the city. This would give the viewer an idea of what the community is like, and possibly affect their future home purchases. Here are some more random thoughts on local based video opportunities.

  • Neighborhood tours- short little 1-5 minutes talking about the different neighborhoods, and showing people around to give them a feel for the community
  • Neighborhood info- Video of you on camera talking up the area, providing the highlights and low lights
  • Local Events- Is there a local celebration, parade or problem you could video and describe?
  • Homes/Architecture- Take videos of different style homes, especially of ones you are selling- You can do an overview of what makes this home part of that architectural style ( Bonus for Realtors, you can also let the viewers know that the home is for sale and how to contact you.

Tactics To Get The Most of Your Youtube Video

There are many opportunities to promote your website through the use of your Youtube video. First and foremost, make sure that you use an accurate title, a full description using complete sentences and tag the video with relevant topics. Be sure to add your hyperlink to your full URL first thing in the description of your video, example http://www.yourwebsite.com, because your video might be exported to other platforms, and if you add your full URL, it may be seen on a whole host of various websites. Make sure that you create a “Channel” for yourself, and give your site proper credit through a link where they allow you to add it, as well as again adding the full URL to the description. Also be sure to “Geo-Tag” your video, in the settings when you upload it. This allows you to set a specific geographic location for your video, which might be used as a trigger to appear in specific searches. One advanced tip for you is to make sure that your Business listing in the Google Local Business Center will let you associate up to 6 videos with your online business profile. This cross reference can strengthen the value of your business profile, as well as the value of the videos themselves.

Do you use video with your business? Have some thoughts on creating video content, please share!

Update: Wanted to add this link in to a list of other video sites where you can add your video, and a break down of how they link back. From @seosmarty

Filed under Content, Google, Opinion, Video

Does Barter work with SEO?

February 18, 2009 8 Comments

Recently my beautiful wife, a talented artist, who runs an online vintage store, went into our local Riverside tailor shop, to get her clothes altered. She had spent a good amount of time online trying to find a Riverside, CA Tailor. She finally found a reference to his store 9 or 10 pages deep…at the wrong address. After talking to Miguel Cruz, the owner of Cruz Custom Tailor, he really wanted help getting his site and online presence in order. He still had dial-up through AOL at his business, and really wasn’t tech savvy, but he knew that people were looking for him and had no idea what to do or how. We then came to an agreement that I would help him get his business listed locally online, and he would tailor me a custom suit.

Custom Tailored Suit

After hammering down the details of how much the suit was worth and how many hours I would spend, we put it down on paper. 1 month later, he’s now listed and getting business from online referrals, and I have a beautiful custom suit.

A Tropical Paradise for a Website Redesign

I was talking to Heather Rhoades, at SMX West this last week, she is a technical services manager over at The Search Guru.  She was telling me how she recently went out to a long planned vacation in Belize, South America. When she arrived her host started talking about the troubles she was having with her site about it not being user friendly, and completely useless. After talking at length to the owner of the vacation home, they agreed that they could help each other out. By creating a new web site layout and design the owner got a substantial improvement in her business and Heather got a free week long stay at the hotel! I asked Heather if she thought that this was a good or a bad practice. Her thoughts are that this is a continuation of the regular economy, and since you may not be able to afford their goods you need, businesses do need your services. So it’s a natural market exchange.

Barter Smarter

Reaching out into the twitterverse, there was a mixed bag of responses when it came to bartering services.  Sean Carlos was worried that there might be a lack of commitment and follow through on both sides of the table.  I think this is a valid concern, but Oliver Amar, of Compucall Web Marketing makes a fantastic point about the system of bartering.

We have (bartered for services) and if you do just make sure the contract is very specific about what is expected i.e hours, results etc

It would seem that you have to be very upfront about what you want, and what they’ll get in return, even more so I’d say than a cash paying client. When I worked with Miguel Cruz, I provided him with a printed copy log of hours worked and what was gained from that time spent, which went a long way to satisfying both sides of the barter.

A Paying Proposition?

What about your experiences? Have you ever bartered? Did it work out well or did it cause more problems than it was worth?

Filed under Opinion, Random, Search engine optimization Tagged with ,

Google Can Cache The Future

February 4, 2009 12 Comments

Google can Cache the Future

John Jones, and his new Weekly SEO blog have discovered that Google has now gained the ability to travel through time, and cache a page in the future!
This represents a whole new unprecedented level of technology being harnessed by Google…TIME TRAVEL!

Google Breaks the 4th Dimension

While it’s always been known that search patents and systems are constantly being devised by Google to shorten the return time of pages when queried, this I feel represents the next logical step in Search, which is of course “Futuredexing”(Indexing pages before they’ve been modified by the user). While I don’t yet have any confirmation from @mattcutts that they are implementing measures to circumvent the space-time continuum,  we don’t have any DENIAL of it either…

Well, the proof is right here! GOOGLE CAN TRAVEL THROUGH TIME!

UPDATE:

Although Cynics like @kid_disco of SEO Disco may nay say and state that it’s a function of Greenwich Mean Time Differing with my Pacific Standard time…there’s still no conclusive proof that Google isn’t hopping into the Digital Delorean, and Gunning it to 88 MPH!

Filed under Google, humor, Random

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