I have no idea if this is fake but it was a hot discussion on Reddit this past week. I for one hope it’s real as it would be one helluva PR stunt. A lot of brands are not against pulling off a stunt like this although they’re quite family oriented so I can see how this may be a photoshop. Despite that factor, this image has been the talk of the town and it has inadvertently brought a lot of eyes back on The Olive Garden.
A hot topic in the past year has been whether or not EMD’s still work and if you should bother with them. The answer is highly debated yet I’ve never seen someone bring up actual search results to give examples. There are a few different reasons why you’d want an EMD, but if you’re planning on building a real brand then don’t put all your eggs in this basket.
The big reason they’re so sought after are due to the affiliate marketing perks and the ability to spam the living shit out of that anchor text/keyword. You truly are allowed to get away with quite a bit of junk link building when you’re rocking an EMD. I wouldn’t bet on this as a solid long term strategy, but there is definitely some easy money to be made with the right domain.
I was meeting with a new hotel client today based out of Thailand and was quite shocked at the results for “Thailand Hotels”;
This is a very competitive market and I’d expect that most emd’s in the .com/net/org varieties is going to rank quite easily. A quick look at the backlink profile shows that the first ranking site is there will very little effort. His own network of other Thailand travel blogs was enough to land this site a no1 ranking spot on Google. The site is also pretty much entirely made up with duplicate content so you’d think ranking for a keyword like that wouldn’t be so easy?
So let’s take a look at a few more queries to get an idea of what’s going on in a rang of niches.
You can search all day and see strong signs up EMD’s working just great. If you look at the ones ranking in tough verticals you’ll notice they’re not thin. If you build up a solid website with great content around an EMD then it looks like you’re in for some #winning for a long time to come. As always, I’ll ask for you folks to chime in and let me know what you’re feeling and seeing around in the search results these days.
With the launch of the Nokia Lumia 800 they sourced deadmau5 to drop some serious branding magic on the world in London. If you want a top notch example of branding that’s going to bring you serious attention both in the real world and the social, here it is. This event drew in a massive crowd that sparked thousand of user videos, blog posts, newspaper and magazine mentions, pictures, TV buzz, radio buzz…pretty much the bloody works. I love bring you folks amazing examples of branding even if I’m a month behind on mentioning this one.
No we didn’t get a notice of detected unnatural links but more and more people are these days and I expect this to ramp up a lot more in 2012. As I’ve stated many times, I’ve got my ear to the ground and a lot of the webmaster/affiliate forums are bringing up threads with this message. Google’s war on link spam is like America’s “war” on drugs – it’s a big fat fail boat year after year. The biggest hole in their algorithm is the links although they don’t need to change that aspect entirely. The anchor text abuse is rampant and that’s what needs to be curbed or turned down a notch…something we’re actually seeing in our link analysis a lot over the past 8 months.
I’m writing about it today because I saw yet another thread started in Google’s Webmaster Help Central regarding a rather larger site getting this notice. It comes in your webmaster tools area and you definitely don’t want to be seeing it. There are still a lot of people who claim that links cannot hurt your rankings, there are also a lot of people who believe in all sorts of fairy tales. Google’s guidelines on link schemes clearly state that you can be kicked in the ass (loss of rankings) if you’re heavily gaming their algo.
Image Credit: http://searchnewscentral.com/20110629173/Latest/does-google-think-your-links-are-unnatural.html
This is what she looks like and for a lot of people I’ve spoken with, it doesn’t always follow with a decrease in rankings. I imagine your site is now under some serious watch from your big brother G so proceed with caution. From what I can tell, it takes a certain type of “link scheme” to trigger this message. The type I’m referring to is usually link exchanges as they’re really easy to spot and trigger an alert to Google. A lot of people these days are link spamming via article marketing, blog comments and forum profiles and I’ve only seen a couple cases where these links caused a problem. Those types of links are too easy to spam a competitor with, thus Google most likely won’t be causing a fuss from these links too much…I imagine they just eventually devalue them and move on.
Where I’d also be suspect is in a few other areas of your link profile. If your top anchor text are clearly gaming or a certain keyword then I’d be quite worried as a business owner. Half the time businesses hire some crack pot SEO firm and all they do is spam spam spam for certain anchor text links. A lot of companies have no idea what’s going on or if this were even a bad thing to have happen. Another area I always like to peep on is the distribution of links to pages besides the homepage. This is another area Google can easily calculate in their algorithm is something looks highly unnatural. If I were Google, I’d also take a look at the number of C classes that total the link profile, but that might just be a little too hard to determine by a machine if something’s awry.
Is Google passing value on the type of link? I’d put a lot of money on yes they are. If your link profile consists of only blog comments, how could they not determine something was going on. I’m a big fan of link diversity, but I’m also a bigger fan of creating something that encourages people to link to you…that’ll provide you with more than enough natural links.
That should give you folks a good idea of what they’ve been going after in the past year or two. Like I said above, I expect these messages to be ramped up in 2012 so make sure you’re really thinking about your current and future link marketing efforts and tactics. If you’ve seen this message and would like to tell your story, then feel free to do so in the comments below. If you’ve got this message and would like us to take a look at your website for free then get in touch via our contact form.
I just caught this promo video calling for entries into the ADDY Awards and couldn’t get but think this should already be the winner. This contest is open to students, professors and agencies of all sizes and the only thing that matters is creativity. If you want to take part you can drop off your entry to the Miami International University of Art & Design 1501 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, Fl 33132. You can alsoenter by going to http://www.addycompetition.com.
I was browsing Reddit while sitting on my overly fed arse here on Christmas day and came across this form a Best Buy shopper. I imagine that Best Buy is getting their fair share of shopping traffic all month long, but never ever have I seen a “waiting room” for an online store. I’d love to hear from them or someone else who knows why this is needed.
It has been a while since I’ve posted a whiteboard friday from Rand over at SEOmoz so here’s the latest one right in time for the holidays. This one he gives away some awesome link building tips to show you how you can give away products and other items to get some juicy links. If you’re running an ecommerce site then definitely watch this because it’s the best way to get links imho.
Fiverr is an awesome addition to the marketing world. You can get everything from promo videos to the crappiest link building packages on the planet. There are a lot of strange and unique Fiverr gigs and I thought it would make for a decently interesting post. I have not used any of these gigs but spent some time sipping coffee and sniffing out these weird gigs. There were a boatload of them as well, and I picked what I thought was the most strange.
I’m sure there are stranger gigs to come but for now these five will have to do. Some of these gigs are a wicked deal for only five bucks! I’m not talking about the 50000 xrumer links, nor am I talking about the article spinning or other weird and lousy SEO. I’m talking about random, quirky things people are willing to do for five bucks.
While my five picks may not still be available down the road, make sure you folks link out to other crazy/weird ones you mind in the comments. These gigs are so wild and whacky that it’s help out their link profile and traffic quite a bit. I’ll be trying out some of these gigs over the next few weeks and I’ll be posting the results here on the blog. I think it’s safe to say that these will be some of the strangest company purchases I’ve made to date.
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WTF #1) Armpit Fart Branding Message in a Bunny Suit?
Get This Gig: http://fiverr.com/sexysamantha/armpit-fart-for-you-and-say-anything-you-want-me-to
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WTF #2) Chainsaw and Knife Juggling With Brand Message
Get This Gig: http://fiverr.com/mr_marcus/juggle-one-running-chainsaw-and-two-knives-for-twenty-seconds-while-yelling-anything-you-want
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WTF #3) Get Positive Energy Sent Your Way
Get This Gig: http://fiverr.com/buddha7/send-you-positive-energy
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WTF #4) Drive-By Verbal Assaulting
Get This Gig: http://fiverr.com/patrick04/yell-random-things-out-my-car-window-at-someone
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WTF #5) Hire This Guy To Party With You
Get This Gig:http://fiverr.com/l1qu1d/come-to-your-house-party-or-night-out
