So Google’s 40 new changes to their algorithm in February brought on many new changes. While there are already many blog posts covering the changes I thought we’d look at some humor.
Of course, the folks at Google state a lot of stuff that just doesn’t yet work or take effect. I’m quite content in saying that half of the stuff that comes out of their PR department is bollocks and mostly just hype. For example, they stated they’re making sure less duplicates show up in mega site links. It’s typical that Google cannot even get that part right as is evidenced here:
The Raspberry Ketones diet is was recently recommended by Dr. Oz and it has sent the diet pills to the top of Amazon’s best selling list. This has sent people scrambling online and to local health food stores to pick up a bottle of Raspberry Ketones in pill form in hopes to lose some weight. While there seems to be a fruit weight loss pandemic every year, you know that marketers are going to be all over it as soon as the show ended. I thought it would make for an interesting post to see how all the link spammers are bringing out the big guns in order to rank for the coveted keywords. I imagine Google will be seeing an onslaught of folks trying to rank for raspberry ketone and I’m going to sit back and enjoy the show.
The ranking war has already begun and all the usual tricks are coming into play. As usual, Google’s mantra of “Content is King” is utter BS. The links are already inflating web 2.0 properties and keyword heavy domains are popping up all over…even Youtube has over 100 raspberry ketone videos already pimping the berries once again. I imagine over a million spam links have been dropped to various places so let’s take a look at what’s already ranking for various keywords related to raspberry ketone products and hype words.
The first two results which I cut out from the first page results for the keyword “raspberry ketone” were of course Wikipedia and then the shopping results. I don’t imagine Wikipedia will hold the number one spot for long as the link juice is a flowing, so we’ll give it a week or two before checking back to see how the SERPs are doing. Naturally we’d see a ton of keyword domains flooding the marketing and doing quite well right off the get go. A quick look at the backlink history in the last week for pretty much all the domains ranking top 10 looks like this;
I imagine that link graph is going to spike a lot larger in the coming weeks and I’m quite interested in collecting the data from the top 20 ranking sites for the raspberry ketone keyword. If you dig down into the 3-6th pages of search results in Google you’ll find all the web 2.0 properties that are currently getting spammed to death in hopes of ranking well. I will be doing a follow up post at the end of March to see how it all played out and if the fad is still going strong. By the looks of Google Trends there is an insane amount of search volume going on right now and I expect this high to ride at least until the summer!
It’s the little details that can set your business apart and while we’re not obsessed about our business cards like a scene out of American Psycho, we were overly stoked about these. Our in house graphical ninja Lindsay Anne put her design talents to work and came up with this new design. We’ll be expanding it into the rest of our material soon enough and I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome. Our clients who have used her talents before are always overly impressed and she does more than just logos. She tackles everything from labels, magazines(in which we build for clients for tablets) as well she’s a published woman….she’s going places and we’re thrilled to have access to her talent. Her designs and branding ideas have helped some of our clients attract links to levels they didn’t even think possible.
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.
Car Insurance Quote
Payday Loan
Miami Real Estate
Student Credit Cards
RC Toys
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.
Nike and their long-time agency Wieden+Kennedy have never missed a game, lost a round, missed a shot or any other winning sports analogy you can think of when it comes to branding and marketing. W+K was actually formed as a result of Dan Wieden and David Kennedy taking Nike as their first client, after they left mega-agency McCann Erickson in the early 80s. Since then, Nike and W+K have had only victories in their ilustrious track record together and have never failed to impress both customers and marketers. And they definitely didn’t lose their stride with the recent achievement with a viral and social media-powered campaign to brand a new product. And I promise that’s the last (intentional) sports analogy.
W+K came up with Nike’s “Just Do It”, which is probably the most well known slogan ever. Since its inception, it has stood as the ultimate motivational phrase. I recently watched the documentary “Art and Copy” that had interviews with people on the impact of “Just Do It” and their responses went far beyond sports or fitness goals. Check out the clip:
The new #MakeItCount slogan is a modern social media take on the same simple concept of their original “Just Do It” slogan. The #MakeItCount campaign combined traditional marketing elements, such as print, commercials and brand ambassadors, combined with smart social media and viral marketing efforts. They fully leveraged all this through positive customer engagement and, in a sense, customer crowd-sourcing to promote their campaign.
The #MakeItCount hashtag started up just before Christmas, acting like a new year’s resolution for physical fitness, was all a buildup for a mystery product launch yesterday morning. Nike encouraged its fans to tweet what they wanted to accomplish in 2012. Building a positive and motivational hashtag at the perfect time of year, to lead up to a mystery product launch.
This campaign was so successful that not only was the hype clearly seen through social media, but also in the stock market. Nike Inc. shares hit an all-time high Wednesday, breaking the $100 mark, just in anticipation of the mystery product launch, the day before it was actually revealed.
Twitter was an important element leading into this new product launch, was the long-overdue launch of the official @Nike account. They already had a range of Nike Twitter accounts for their various sports and divisions, but were seemingly holding out on @Nike to coincide with the #MakeItCount campaign. Nike’s real-life clout transferred with ease into Klout on Twitter, with all of Nike’s big name athletes following the first day, including Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, Steve Nash, the NBA and of course Nike’s strong existing Twitter accounts.
Tweet by NBA star Kevin Durant turned into a poster.
Launched on Dec. 29th, @Nike was able to surpass rival @Adidas within 24 hours, gaining around 14,000 followers. after 23 days, @Nike has over 227,000 followers. Over the last few weeks, Nike had their wide range of celebrity athletes, through all sports, countries and cultures, tweet and Instagram their goals for 2012 and #MakeItCount, encouraging fans to do the same. Topsy.com recorded 24,387 mentions on Dec 31st alone. Combined with Instagram, Nike has created a dynamic #MakeItCount page to showcase their fans motivational #MakeItCount tweets, along with their celebrity athlete ambassadors. The current tweet total is showing at over 59,000.
Here is the Youtube commercial released to coincide on Dec.31, which received around 62,000 views that day alone:
Nike was founded on the genuine goal to encourage sports and fitness, along with all the positive side effects they have. And by selling the products that help people to reach this goal, their marketing and products a honest combination that has always been well received by the public. With their ongoing #MakeItCount campaign, Nike has already received an obvious high-level of engagement with their huge fan base and effectively crowd-sourced them to hype their upcoming product.
And Thursday morning, the Nike FuelBand was released to plenty of hype, praise and criticism, that you most likely caught some of by now. Even the @NikeFuel Twitter account that was launched yesterday morning has topped @Adidas’ follower count, with over 10,000 after around 36 hours.
Here is the Youtube video that also coinsided with the release, which has seen over 478,000 view in 3 days:
The huge press conference to finally reveal the mystery product involved out plenty of stars (and their Twitter followers). Pictured here at the event is Kevin Dudrant, Carmelita Jeter, Lance Armstrong and host Jimmy Fallon. With coverage hitting every major news source, blog and social media platform as a rusult, Nike has seen instant exposure for their FuelBand that few companies outside of Apple rarely see.
Photo courtesy of CNET
For a better explanation of what the FuelBand does, check out the video below:
From a marketing perspective, the desktop and mobile app are important mentions. They lets you track and monitor your progress, using elements of gamification to keep you engaged with the product. The social aspects come in here, letting you share your goals and progress with friends through social media, either to motivate, brag or compete with each other.
Now the Nike FuelBand, retailing for $150, isn’t a new concept,with comparable products already existing, such as Motorola’s MOTOACTIV (with costs $250, but with a music player and GPS) and the cheaper JawBone UP at $100. But like the world of gadget brands being divided by Apple and non-Apple, no fitness brands can touch the Nike brand.
Nike was eager to get people testing the FuelBand, with most reviews saying it’s does what it promises too. But when it comes down to it, this product can be seen two ways: Either a great motivational tool for fitness or a unnecessary gimmick that doesn’t technically improve your fitness. With the social elements of sharing with friends and the gamification element of gaining points, beating records and tracking progress, it can be a great tool for some. Or you could just do all those activities without the $150 wristband.
Every Karate Kid-style crane kick counts too.
One thing is for sure, Nike has branded a fitness tracking product like no other company could ever do. They excelled in all areas, from traditional, viral and social media marketing efforts, to leveraging their athlete brand ambassadors to engaging and crowd-sourcing their fans.
And to keep these $150 FuelBands selling, Nike has no plans to let #MakeItCount and @NikeFuel stop trending. First by using their athletes’ continued promotion and and massive combined Twitter following they’ve easily built up. Secondly, with their fans’ utilization of the social sharing and gamification aspects to keep each other engaged and active. Has Nike started a new era in fitness? Or have they just started a big pile of barely used $150 wristbands? We’ll have to wait and see.
Here is Nike’s pop culture/sports/movie montage to promote the FuelBand and #MakeItCount that’s racked up over 1.3 million views in 3 days. Another stellar commercial by W+K that’s imagery resonates with its audience, conveys what the product is about and is just fun to watch, check it out:
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.
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.
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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.
