Ash Nallawalla is a consultant enterprise SEO with a long background in large companies with complex websites. He is a published author of several books and thousands of magazine articles.
When I observe a random large company I sometimes see the work done by so-called social media experts. Most of Corporate Australia is trained to outsource most of its marketing and advertising work. Well-known digital agencies are always hiring experts to tap into this market. You can read about these comings and goings in B&T or Mumbrella.
Make no mistake, some of the ad agency work is brilliant – think of the TV commercials (TVCs) that you will remember for years. Some great slogans even enter the vocabulary. Branding campaigns, when they aren’t memorable, are hard to analyse because there isn’t any trackable element to most of them. However, many social media campaigns are tactical and need to be measured.
Large agencies are multi-headed, but nice Hydras. They consist of a number of companies in related disciplines, so it is too easy for the contracted incumbent to bring along their sister company experts to the table. The trouble is that the subject matter expert isn’t necessarily the best you could find.
I submitted my latest site, a review site called CEviews.org, to blogcatalog.com after moving some reviews from this site to it. It was rejected with the following email:
Dear Ash Nallawalla,
Thank you for submitting your blog CEviews (http://www.ceviews.org) to BlogCatalog.
Unfortunately upon reviewing your blog we are unable to grant it access to the directory. Continue reading…
Techworld and ComputerWorld recently reported an incident that shows the risks of engaging with strangers via social networks. Thomas Ryan from security company Provide Security (with a generic name like that I feel for their SEO person) created a fake profile for a woman named Robin Sage, who posed as a Navy cyberthreat analyst and tried to befriend around 300 real people in the US military, defence contractors, infosec companies and intelligence agencies. It was a 28-day experiment that was to be showcased at the BlackHat USA 2010 conference, which finished yesterday.
These incidents are a sobering reminder of how easy it is to conduct social engineering for nefarious purposes. Fortunately, no real damage was done other than having the accounts cancelled (Facebook also banned Ryan permanently and closed his account). The fake LinkedIn profile is still visible in the Google cache. Continue reading…
Arguably the most comprehensive SEO tool on the market, Market Samurai is an affordable, must-have research and management aid for the affiliate marketing expert and novice alike.
Eugene Ware demonstrates Domain Samurai
Yesterday, more than 150 people were privileged to see a presentation of Market Samurai by Eugene Ware of Noble Samurai, the company behind the tool. Speaking at the Affiliate Marketing SIG of the Melbourne PC User Group, Eugene went through the basics of using this tool that is rapidly catching the interest of affiliate marketers everywhere. Continue reading…
A discussion in the Webmasterworld Supporters forum (you need to be a paid Supporter to get there) entitled Rank checking for agencies led to a comment suggesting that using tools to make ranking checks is not a good idea for search agencies. Apparently, a manual check results in different results.
I had just made a check of some UK banks rankings while testing Axandra IBP.
New Link analysis app for the iphone! http://r3.ms/2o Very cool. has majesticseo moz and semrush data.
I bought it for $2.49 and checked it out. I entered my URL and pressed Done.
Waiting, waiting. Oh, there’s a Link Juice button up there. Does it take me to the beginning? Try it.
Success. The numbers in the top box are not clickable. OK, let’s try the links below. The first one I try is SEMRush.
Let’s try another one. SEOmoz Linking Domains:
Hmm. Let’s try MajesticSEO:
Hmm, I need More Details, and there’s a handy green button. Let’s see where it takes us:
Oh, it needs permission. OK:
Now I’m annoyed. This isn’t “more detail” about the link stats I was looking at but the app was closed and I am now in the browser looking at a non-mobile web page that has to be enlarged to be legible and it doesn’t even have my URL preloaded, waiting to be clicked.
The SEOmoz information is fairly detailed, but the MajesticSEO and SEMRush data is minimal – just three values from MajesticSEO:
Indexed URLs
External Backlinks
Referring Domains
and three from SEMRush:
SEMRush Rank
SEMRush Traffic
SEMRush Cost
I can’t say I recall hearing about SEMRush before and it hasn’t heard of my site, as it estimates my traffic to be 166 visitors per month.
Verdict
This is Version 1.0 and I am underwhelmed. I can imagine an SEO using this app while visitng a client but it isn’t something I’d be using in a coffee shop or in the crapper. It has the feel of a lead generator for SEMRush and MajesticSEO and not a good one at that, since we don’t get a mobile site in the browser.
Given the name of the app, Link Juice, I can’t see how the SEMRush data has anything to do with links. The SEOmoz data seems to come from Open Site Explorer, which is worth a visit in a desktop browser or a mobile browser if that’s all you’ve got. MajesticSEO is also well worth a visit with a desktop browser.
But the app has potential, i.e. provide more detail, or a connection with LinkDiagnosis.com.
The Inside AdWords blog reports that the Google AdWords Tool now shows “more relevant” traffic estimates. I don’t like it so far, more relevant or otherwise.
Google Keyword Tool
I was chucking keywords into the tried and tested keyword tool when I noticed the link to the new tool, so I took a look. The old information is still there, and some features from the Search Based Keyword Tool are incorporated.
So what didn’t I like? Actually just one thing — when I choose (Show results for) Ideas containing my search terms, I get zero results. Even if I enter “Google” I get zero results. What am I supposed to enter to see something for that option?
The option to enter a website URL apparently produces relevant keywords that you may not have considered. Good idea, but for my test site (an Australian migration consultancy), the suggested terms included inappropriate ones such as “embassy uae, canadian embassy, american visa” . It also had fragments such as “visas for, visa and, etc” and other non-Australian keywords that would be worthless. Great for Google if your PPC agency uses this tool blindly.
This makes no sense. I liked the old interface, which first shows results based on my keywords, and then additional terms to consider. If you are not logged into your AdWords account, you only get a maximum of 100 results.
I suppose I’ll get used to it.
Added 1/5/10:
I took a closer look at the downloaded Excel CSV file. This is an improvement. Instead of getting an unformatted file as per the old tool where we had to convert Text-to-Columns each time, we now get a comprehensive data dump in a zipped file.
Exported Excel file from the new Google Keyword Tool
How useful is this dump? Most of it is not useful to me. For either SEO or PPC I am usually targeting a country or a smaller locality, so the Local Monthly Searches data is the most valuable. The global count is meaningless to me. When I try to sort the Local column from high to low, the hyphens are sorted above the largest number – zeroes would have been better.
I’d prefer to be able to choose which data I want to export, e.g. 12 months worth of Local searches would be more useful than the Global ones. Even so, monthly search volumes are rarely news to business owners, who know exactly when seasonal changes come into play. Over here, the period post-Christmas through mid-February is our summer break, when search volumes dip for most websites, particularly B2C sites.
Anyway, I know from my access to large traffic data sets that these numbers are wildly understated, so I don’t scrutinise the actual numbers. They are good for assessing relative popularity of the keyphrases.
It would also be useful to be able to select more than one country at a time, showing each country’s Local Monthly Searches results in a separate column. What do you think?
Today I also happened to read some affiliate (joint venture) promotional emails pushing a new link-building tool, but I won’t give it any exposure here other than to say that the promoter was complaining about a “Google slap” to SEOs. There is a growing theme here.
What “used to work” isn’t working now, it would seem. Blame some of it on the Caffeine update; blame some on Google conspiracy theories, but blame a lot on not keeping up-to-date. Either way, some SEOs must be worried.
I consult to some of these agencies and have noticed a 30% drop in ranking success at one agency I have known for several years. I have also seen the work of other agencies where the customer didn’t get ranking joy and moved to another SEO.
The common theme arising at these SEO agencies is a failure to keep up with the search engines. Many use a checklist to tick off a list of tasks such as the following real example (their words):
Article submission
Directory submission
Search Engine submission
Social Networks submission
Technical errors correction
Remove Meta robots
Robots
Google Sitemap
Google Analytics code
Meta Keywords
Meta Description
Page Title
Image Alt Tags
H1 Tags
Content pasting
Those tasks are mostly fine, but the main issue is that this templated approach doesn’t suit all projects. After working with the agency (which needs to use checklists), they now have three longer checklists covering three kinds of projects they get:
Competitive niches
Non-competitive niches
Ecommerce sites in competitive niches
Back to the Yahoo patent, there is more scrutiny of backlinks to detect unnatural patterns. Most agencies I know keep a list of submission-friendly directories and blogs. They usually submit all clients to the same list but the more savvy ones take care to match a client to a relevant industry directory.
Too many directory links in quick succession should raise a flag at the search engines. What about a link from EzineArticles? If your site is linked from an article submitted to this popular directory, followed by a couple of others, does this look unnatural? Sure does to me. Most business owners would neither know those sites nor the concept of writing articles for republication. If search engines did not exist, would anyone write articles containing links to a website and submit them to an article directory?
Would an agency client be notified about a fairly new development that has SEO implications, such as microformats and have it implemented in their code? Google just announced mark up support for recipe RDFa/hRecipe microformats, which isn’t new, but once Google announces something like this, a lot of SEOs will take note.
A long time ago I alerted my friend Edward Lewis about this company that purported to rank SEO companies and awarded them badges. I had been working as an in-house SEO at a large IYP, so my own businesses had not been operating (or barely). Those websites, however were and are still up. (as it so happens, I have been downsized at Sensis Yellow Pages® as of this coming Friday, so I may need to revive those businesses):
Since 2008 I had been getting “award badges” from TopSEOs.com such as the following examples:
SEO July 2009PPC Management April 2010SEO Training April 2010
The reason I don’t display them is pretty simple: I didn’t deserve a ranking that could not be determined by anyone. It’s meaningless at best – do we rank our doctors? Is Fred Nurk better than me? Moreover, the list of my clients is out of date or taken out of context.
Here is an example of my latest #2 ranking for TrainSEM.com:
Rankings for training companies April 2010
The list of clients is taken from my testimonials, with the odd exception of my soon-to-be former employer Sensis. The latter is mentioned on the About page as a place where I worked. The number of employees, active clients, client retention rate (!) etc is sheer fiction. Here is a screen shot of the detailed profile for TrainSEM on their site.
There is a similar ranking chart for PPC companies and one for Organic SEOs. I haven’t received a recent award for Organic SEO possibly because SEM911 sounds like it does SEM (which a lot of ignorant people think means paid search – PPC), hence SEM911 keeps winning PPC awards. In reality, I haven’t done any major PPC work since 2005, so it’s irritating to keep getting these flattering awards. OK, I managed a 7-figure annual PPC spend for my current employer, but that doesn’t count for SEM911. The profile for SEM911 is accurate.
My “rankings”? If I remember correctly, I might have been sent an email or three in the early days, encouraging me to get a paid listing. I used to get a #1 ranking for TrainSEM when Kalena Jordan was the only other person to offer SEO training. Sometimes her Search Engine College would rank #1 and sometimes it was me. Then as other companies entered the training market, we were demoted. In those days there was not a separate list for Australia, so we were on the global list. I hardly do any SEO training in Australia, but I’m not worried about the non-existent TopSEOs ranking for India where most of my students live.
This isn’t the first month when I have received two different ranks for the same website one minute apart, (ranks #2 and #3) – OK, this is because in the US rankings, TrainSEM is #3 but in Australia it is #2. However, in the column for “Comprehensive”, for Australia I score “Very Good” but in the US I am “Excellent”.
Some of my work colleagues have done Bruce Clay’s SEO training in Australia and I have seen the detailed course notes – they are comprehensive. In the Australian list he doesn’t make the top 10 but in the US, he’s #4 and Kalena scrapes in at #10. Jill Whalen offers SEO training too, but I can’t recall seeing her site on the list.
Begs the same question others are asking – who makes the list and who doesn’t?
I have never paid to be ranked by TopSEOs or to be a member. Initially, TopSEOs only dished out a free membership badge, which I displayed, but I dropped it some years ago. I don’t believe I linked it to them, or perhaps it was nofollowed – not terribly important. Each month I would get at least one award but no attempt was made to sell me a membership. Perhaps the time zone difference was too great. It was amusing to see who was at the top – either they were a new company or they had paid for top billing.
Fast forward to the present.
There’s a small tempest brewing about TopSEOs right now:
My verdict: TopSEOs have not tried the hard sell on me but I agree that a for-profit company is in no position to rank anyone or anything, particularly SEOs.
There is no comparison between an agency with 10 happy customers who were ranked #1 for non-competitive phrases and another agency with 10 equally happy customers who got #1 placement for very competitive phrases. If the set of customers were swapped around, the results might be very different.
The victim here is the SEO’s potential customer. It is bad enough that anyone can slap on an SEO shingle, but if they can also get a favourable ranking by virtue of a paid review/inspection, then there is a risk that a shonky operator might fall through the cracks and be awarded a high ranking.
Fortunately, my free high rankings have not given me a single paying customer (that I can identify) through TopSEOs. I think there’s a message there.
