Skittles Newlyweds Aka Share The Rainbows [NSFW]

2 Comments
July 25  |  Viral Marketing  |   Ryan Clark

I have a feeling I’m going to get some emails about this post. Some of you may be wondering and or questioning my taste lately with some of the more adultish ads we’ve been posting. I mainly enjoy it because the more shocking and rude ads are what go viral, they’re talked about around the water cooler and shared all over the place. While you should hide the children before hitting the play button on this video, you yourself may regret doing so. With that being said, let me warn you all again that this one is a dirty one. This is also not an official Skittles commercial, and while they’d never admit they like it, it’ll do them a huge branding buzz boost. That I do not doubt!

 

Tagged , ,

Link Building F$%# Up Of The Day

2 Comments
July 22  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

Only once in a blue moon do I get out my mocking stick and put the smack down on some idiot link builder who is clearly smoking some crack. This is just one of thousand of examples why you need to be very careful in whom you hire to build links for you. There are a lot of lousy ways to do it, and there are some really stupid ways as well…this one being the latter. The link spammer either is up for link builder dummy of the year, or it’s just automated software. I think it’s an actual human because I’ve never seen a robot post on Google Webmaster Central before. This thread is also being spotlighted in my next post because it brings up another linking issue that we all should have a look at. For now, here is the post that made me lol!


Click Here To View The Post

Tagged

Interview with Anand Patel, Founder of TalkHotels.com

2 Comments
July 21  |  Social Networks  |   Simon

Recently I’ve been enjoying the beta-test of TalkHotels.com, a new professional and social network for hoteliers and hospitality professionals. I’ve been sharing my knowledge and chatting with hotel industry members and had a chance to meet the founder, Anand Patel. He’s agreed to have an interview with me to share what it’s all about.

Simon: Hi Anand, please fill our readers in on the basic concept and features for TalkHotels

Anand: The concept for TalkHotels is simple: create a free networking tool for hospitality professionals to exchange ideas, opinions, and reviews of products and services. Hotels continue to face more challenges each year and I noticed there wasn’t a single tool they could use to get reliable, up-to-date, organized information from their peers. Of course, there’s trade magazines and a few notable hospitality blogs but that conversation is one-way; there isn’t much dialogue there between the people that are involved in day-to-day operations.

Simon: Give me a little history on what inspired TalkHotels

Anand: It really stemmed from the early experience I gained by working with hotels around the world. I made websites to help pay my way through college and the majority of my clients were in the hotel business so naturally, I heard stories about how difficult it became to find reliable information when you needed it most. With each story I heard, the idea for TalkHotels grew until I felt I had a pretty good, sustainable model to take to market. I guess the purest inspiration I had was the fact that nothing like TalkHotels existed before. I wanted to provide an authentic solution to a real-world problem and I believe I’m on the right track.

Simon: Here at Linkbuildr we’re pretty excited about how you are connecting vendors and services together with the hotel industry, Please elaborate.

Anand: The TalkHotels ‘Shop’ experience is designed to give hoteliers access to the largest collection of vendors and local service providers, along with unbiased reviews from their peers. If you operate a franchise hotel, you can’t just work with anyone so we wanted to provide our members with a catalog of vendors that was custom-built for you and the brands you’re involved with. As we grow and we get more vendors on board, we plan on introducing a handful of tools to make the buying process even easier for hotel operators. Simply put, the vision is to equip hotel operators with all the information they need in a concise manner to make educated, informed decisions on the go.

Simon: I see TalkHotels is taking on an environmental initiative as well. Tell us about these plans and your collaboration with CarbonFund.org?

Anand: Yes, the environmental initiatives were something I wanted to incorporate from the beginning because I’m aware of the impact hotels and travel/tourism in general has on the environment. As TalkHotels grows, I want to use our voice to help raise awareness and look for authentic solutions to reduce the impact hotels have on the environment. Right now, we’re planting a tree for each invite that’s requested. Later, we plan on introducing several other environmental initiatives for hotels and travelers to participate in.

 

Simon: Are you planning a mobile app version of TalkHotels?

Anand: Yes, that’s definitely something we’re working on in the near future. Before we fully jumped into creating a mobile version of TalkHotels, we wanted to build up our member base and gain insight as to what we can improve, what we can ditch, which features were deemed the most important, etc. We’re still in the process of gathering this information but we’ll definitely be unveiling an app for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, and iPad in the near future.

Simon: Do you have plans for any additional features or services from TalkHotels?

Anand: Absolutely. I wish I could share more information but at this point, we’re still in the planning stages. Stay tuned, though, because we’re going to be introducing some new services that we feel our members will enjoy and gain tremendous value from.

Simon: TalkHotels is still in beta testing, do you know when you plan to launch officially?

Anand: We’re getting there. We still have about 200 invites to grant so once we grant those we’ll give those people ample time to sign up and tour TalkHotels. After that, we’ll open up the invite system so that our existing members can then invite people they know in the industry. In fact, we have some interactive promotions and campaigns planned for our existing members so that we can share TalkHotels with even more people. We plan on keeping it invite-only because we want our members to have total power to let in people who they feel will contribute to the TalkHotels network.

Simon: Thanks for your time Anand. For anyone involved or who follows this industry you really see the progressive nature that people outside don’t pick up on. The trends of the modern traveler are evolving at an accelerating rate, with new niches and new needs that constantly challenge hotels. For instance I just discovered a new category I’m slowly getting sucked into called the “micro-tripper”. It’s being built around the popularity of flash sales, private travel sales and group buying sites and is made of people interested in very short or last minute vacations. While there are always naysayers when any new social network arrives, the size of the global hospitality industry is big enough to warrant its own. And with the constant changes we’re seeing in travel,  the demand within the industry for this will only grow. The Linkbuildr team is excited to see how the community expands and what new features are integrated. I’d be happy to check in with you for another post in the near future.

If you’re in the hospitality industry, or supply a product or service for hotels, make sure to check out TalkHotels. Right now it’s an invite-only network, so please visit to request an invite. And remember, they’ll plant a tree just for your request!

TalkHotels.com

 

TalkHotels on Facebook

 

TalkHotels on Twitter

 

Email Anand – anandp[at]talkhotels.com


Follow Simon on Twitter: @S_Gerard

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Our Google Panda Commercial

3 Comments
July 20  |  Viral Marketing  |   Ryan Clark

So taking some of our advice from the Fiverr post the other day, we got a fun little commercial made up for our brand. While it isn’t a $5 million dollar ad agency job, we paid a measly $5 for this quick commercial about Google Panda. This is just one example of affordable and cool marketing you can get on a microjob site like Fiverr, I mean it can’t hurt right?

 

Tagged , ,

Five Fiverr Marketing Tactics Worth Paying For

5 Comments
July 19  |  Brand Building  |   Ryan Clark

Fiverr.com is a hot topic these days and it has inspired a whole niche of microjob sites in the process. I’ve been quite intrigued with the whole idea, and I’m always browsing Fiverr for the vast database of unique opportunities. You can get everything from video marketing, to advice and yes of course SEO. Now you all know that we deal in the more higher ending of link building, social media and branding. With that being said, I don’t recommend a lot of the “SEO” you’d find on here. It’s almost always not something the Google TOS would agree with, and that’s dangerous for big brands.


So what do I like? Well, the amount of unique little extras one can get for their brand here is quite interesting. We’ve been experimenting with an Ecommerce site of ours with a few of the following tactics listed below. The result? A whole bunch of content that has pushed our site to a new level of quality. There are all sorts of different marketing tactics to take from here, so snoop around and see what might work for your business. And hey, if it doesn’t then you’ve only wasted $5 bucks!

Marketing Tactic 1) QR Codes

These nifty little codes are all the rage and we wanted to have one to market our online shop with. For $5 you can have a custom one designed and sent back to you within 24 hours, just check out this post here or do a search for others offering the same service.

Marketing Tactic 2) Facebook Landing Page

If your brand doesn’t have a landing/intro page for your Facebook account by now then you’re missing out! We’ve been getting a lot of our clients to get this done as it looks way more professional. Looking good inspires confidence, and getting that for only $5 ain’t too bad neither! I had one landing page designed by this bloke, and it was well worth the price.

Marketing Tactic 3) Have Videos Made

Videos can be a pain in the ass sometimes, especially for an online brand where no one wants to get behind a camera. We’ve been experimenting with a few of the people who make videos with their puppets. You can use the highly recommended getting a commercial done by a puppet, or a real human who can pitch your website/brand/product. There are plenty of really unique options here folks….you can even get video effects done for $5!

 

Marketing Tactic 4) New Banners & Graphics

When’s the last time you had graphics, a logo or a new banner done out? There are a whole bunch of awesome designers, coders and ad copy people offering some great deals. Even if the banners are different from what you’re doing, live a little and switch it up because you never know what will happen.

Marketing Tactic 5) Writers & Song Writers

We recently had a bunch of songs, jingles and voice overs done for our Ecommerce website, and it all worked out quite well! Besides that, we’ve even outsourced some writing which has turned out better than expected. I’m sure a lot of you are sick of dealing with content writers, but for the easy stuff I say jump on Fiverr.

Tagged , , ,

Q1 Sub Penthouse Commercial From NEO Property

2 Comments
July 16  |  Viral Marketing  |   Ryan Clark

For those that pay attention, I blogged about what was quite possibly the best real estate commercial ever made. While it’s flagrant in its sexual theme, its over top Michael Bay-esque action sequences and top of the line real estate, this is another hem from the NEO Property crew over in Australia. This commercial is for the Q1 Sub Penthouse property located in the heart of the Gold Coast, and it deserves a post! While this style of advertising may offend a lot of people, it’s spot on to attract a crowd with money as well as everyone else who loves something so “ballsy”. I’m a huge fan of risky advertising as it’s so much more entertaining than the usual junk you get forced down your throat. So sit back, turn it up loud and enjoy the ride!

Tagged , , ,

Buy Espresso Beans: Panda Results Study 1

6 Comments
July 15  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

This is the first post of ten in our series covering Google Panda results, and this round covers the buy espresso beans keyword. I stated in the first post that I will randomly pick the search term at the start of writing, and being in a Starbucks this was one that came to mind. I also periodically buy my espresso beans online so this should be an interesting first look at what’s going on in the SERPs.

What are we looking for? Well a set of common factors that might help us all determine more of what Google is looking for, and in return help rank your website better. Panda was all about bringing up the high quality content, and especially it is here to return the most relevant search results. Since I’m interpreting the results, I may not be correct in my assumptions so feel free to call me out on them in the comments.

This first look is ecommerce in nature, so who knows what we’ll find out. I don’t imagine online shops need to worry as long as they have unique product descriptions, a good link profile, a social media presence and the usual on-page SEO factors. I’m still a big believer in links are king when it comes to ecommerce, so we’ll see what we notice after a few experiments.

From what I’m seeing already, Google has a good chunk of these search results correct in my mind, but there are a few here that I don’t think fit the bill. Take a look;

First Result: Passion For Coffee

Domain Links: 124
Page Links: 0

This to me is content made for the search engine and just talks about the different types of espresso you can buy. The page has some adsense on it, but other than that there is no way I’m going to end up buying any espresso from this site. So I was quite shocked to see this as the first result for this search term. Any actual online shop selling espresso beans shouldn’t have to put much effort into out ranking this site for the top spot. I have no idea why Starbucks.com isn’t outranking this.

Second Result: Starbucks

Domain Links: 200,000+

I could have guessed Starbucks would be ranking in the top 10 for this search query, although I’m surprised their Espresso page isn’t showing up. While they don’t have the right string of keywords anywhere to be seen, the slight mention of beans and espresso is enough drop them into the top 10. So the rankings here are easily nabbed due to them being a huge brand and having an even larger link profile. Although you think Google would rank the Starbucks Store Espresso page which actually sells the beans….

Third Result: Wikipedia

Domain Links: Millions
Page Links: 2500(ish)

The word buy isn’t even on this page, so content targeting is a big giant fail here in we’re wanting to be specific. I know Wikipedia ranks for damn near every keyword, but in this case I don’t see why it’s ranking so highly for this term. To me, it’s the link profile that’s doing it because even a search term for refined like “where to buy espresso beans”, Wikipedia is still in the top 5 results.

Fourth Result: Espresso Guy

Domain Links: 939
Page Links: 305

This result is in my opinion a good one. This site is dedicated to espresso coffe and provides just about everything you need to know from history, to beans types and where to buy the goods. The page ranking has great content, little ads and at the bottom lists a few different places to buy espresso beans. Even though I’d expect an online shop to be somewhere in the top 5 results, this page does a great job of informing first, then offering a multitude of buying options.

Fifth Result: Flying Bean

Domain Links: 1128

Flying Bean is a well known online shop that has been around for a long time, and I’ve even been a customer of their sampler pack! The shop CMS they’re using is pretty ghetto, but they have accumulated tons of natural links over the years, have unique written content and offer a lot of unique product. Their product pages however have little to no content on them, mostly just a one or two sentence description and that’s it…no customer reviews, ratings or anything fancy. This is definitely a hint that you don’t need a lot of content in the ecommerce sector so long as your product is unique.

Sixth Result: iGourmet

Domain Links: 27,000
Page Links: 61

This result is is ranking well even though it’s just a made for search engines landing page that feeds into their online shop. They have a strong link profile, but the content in their shop is just manufacturer product descriptions. Every page also has a few extra page length in blank white text as well which is caused by their hideous sidebar setup. If this isn’t an example of links over content I don’t know what is!

Seventh Result: Coffee Nuts

Domain Links: 19
Page Links: 0

I have no clue how this site is ranking and I don’t think it’s for the content. To me the page looks like jumped copied content that has a lot of grammatical errors. So folks, I’m at a loss at explaining this result being in the top 10…care to elaborate?

Eighth Result: Woot Deals

Domain Links: 14,200
Page links: 0

This page has a lot of good chatter from folks interested in espresso, and they’re getting a lot of answers back. While there are no links to the page, Woot.com is no slouch when it comes to having a killer link profile. As for the content, it’s 100% unique and user generated, so I imagine the time-on-site factor here is helping quite a bit as well. I spent a couple minutes reading through all the answers and actually found it useful myself.

Ninth Results:Cerini Coffee

Domain Links: 830
Page Links: 8

This is the type of site I’d expect to get in a search for this query, and when it comes to an ecommerce page ranking well, content is not really much of a factor. I will say that as long as it’s unique and properly laid out you can get in the top 10. On a page like this, you don’t really need or want much content, just enough to lead into the shopping results on the page.

Tenth Result: Coffee Review

Domain Links: 28,000
Page Links: 1

This page is broken down into 5 different sections that all cover a different aspect of espresso. I personally wouldn’t have structured it like this but it seems to be doing ok. This is a relevant search result from one of the biggest coffee sites on the web, so no surprise here. I am a little shocked this isn’t ranking within the top 5 results though.

Final Thoughts:

Perhaps not the best keyword idea to go on, but being off the top of my head at the time it’s a decent start to the 10 posts. High quality content doesn’t seem to play any sort of a role in these listings, and it’s still down to brand size and link profiles. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on these results as well so please speak up! I hope in the coming posts to get all different sorts of queries that really bring in a good mix of results.

Tagged

Panda Ranking Factors: A Look At 10 Search Results

4 Comments
July 15  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

While a few version of Google’s Panda update has completed, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at 10 different SERP results and poke around to see what we can find. I know a lot of people are complaining about the amount of junk results still showing up, the cheaters who are still link spamming for years and years, as well an influx of socially mashed content sites. I’m going to pick 10 different keywords off the top of my head at the start of each post. I’m going to look around me and come up with the search term by seeing what products are around me at the time. I’m usually at home, the office or working from a Starbucks somewhere here in Victoria, so I shouldn’t have a problem finding a good keyword to break down.

The whole purpose of this experiment should hopefully bring forth a lot of common factors into the open that we can go on. While Panda was supposed to weed out lousy content, I have a feeling that links are also getting a slightly different look. I’m aware this claim has been denounced by others, but we’ll wait and see what kind of things we see after these 10 posts. I’m also aware of the fact that the data pulled might not reflect any solutions or solid evidence, but I hope something good comes of it. I’ll be using Cemper’s Link Research Tools to pull all the data I need, so thanks to him and his team for hooking a nerd up!

Since sites to naughty things to rank hard, we’ll have to keep in mind that what we look at that day most certainly may not be the case next month. I’ll not only be looking at links of course, but the content on site as well as the social media metrics in hopes this pin points a lot of common themes. This will be especially interesting within the ecommerce realm because I will look at a few shopping related search results.

I hope to hear a lot of chatter on these posts from the readers here because I’m getting a little tired of the comment spam coming in. This post will also be a jump off spot for all the posts, so you can come back over time to jump around to the results you want to look at. There’s no doubt I’ll miss something in my analysis, so if you see something I forgot and you mention it, you’ll score yourself a nice link from that post!

The Post Index:

 

1) Search Result Of The Day – Buy Espresso Beans
2) TBA
3) TBA
4) TBA
5) TBA
6) TBA
7) TBA
8) TBA
9) TBA
10) TBA

Tagged

  • The New Paid Link?



    Find out the results of a year of high volume content marketing on guests blogs taught us money still talks. Read the results!

  • Join Us On Facebook

  • Negative SEO Attack?


    Check out the anatomy of a "negative SEO" attack on our own site in our latest post. There's too much worry about these attacks happening, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. Come read what I think and just what to do if anything like this happens to your brand.

    Read It Now: View Article

  • Archives