How should a webmaster handle this kind of thing?  The links were not placed in an attempt to influence rankings at all, so they aren’t falling under cleaning up paid links or spammy article submissions from years past.  It is being done from a “Bwoahahah reputation management just go sooo much easier and I can say it’s because Google is requesting it!”

Why aren’t they simply cleaning up the problem?

Which also raises the question as to why aren’t these companies doing more to clean up their reputation management in more meaningful ways that can actually turn an unhappy customer into a happy one… in many instances it doesn’t take much.  Or why aren’t they investing their time into raising their own profile via more positive connections with their site and brand, such as branded blog, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and Pinterest boards.

In most of these cases, the companies in question aren’t even addressing the issues that gave them negative reviews or comments in the first place  In the online world, burying your head in the sand is never a very effective strategy when people are upset enough with you to blog about how bad you are. Sadly, too many companies are doing exactly this, instead of defending their position or reaching out for resolutions, in hopes that those people will add updates to those negative reviews or blog posts.

The rise of link removal companies

With a lot of link removal companies popping up recently, many which automate the process, businesses with reputation management problems are instead using these services in an attempt to purge the negative feedback links… even if they aren’t affecting SEO in a way other than these sites ranking for their company name, as nearly all of the emails claim.  Some of the more amusing ones will accuse you of running a “poor quality site”, even when you know nothing is further from the truth, while obviously the same doesn’t apply to the accuser!

Step up for resolution

If you get a link removal request for a page that is clearly for a reputation management issue, if you still have unresolved problems with the company, it would be a great way to actually get resolution.  However, if it is from a link removal service, the bad company might still not have the motivation to solve the problem unfortunately.  However, I am sure someone will take it upon themselves to write a great blog post detailing how they posted a negative review then the company insulted them by declaring them a poor quality website to get the links removed!

Even with removal

Even with the links being removed (if you choose to do so) the company still has the issue that the same negative review is there with the company name, even if it isn’t linked up.  However, if you do decide to bow to pressure and remove the link to their company page, you might even get better negative results if you then link to their Twitter page and Facebook page, where people who find your post could go and voice their own displeasures about said company!

Link removals could affect your credibility

If you stand behind your original blog post however, it could affect YOUR credibility if you then remove links to the company you are talking negatively about… anyone who happens upon your blog post would wonder why you are not even linking to the company you had the negative experience with.  In this case, I absolutely would not remove the link, as you are really doing a service to anyone doing their due diligence.  Or you could charge an insane $1,000 link removal fee for your pain and suffering, and see if they bite

It is an interesting issue with more and more webmasters being bombarded with these link removal requests, even when the original links were placed legitimately.  How is everyone else handling this new breed of reputation management cleanup disguised as link removal requests?

But first up, Matt and Mike were up first talking about some of the recent changes happening with Google search.

Matt talked about how they have “spam fighters” across multiple time zones with team members all over the world.  So there is always somebody awake fighting spam.  Likewise, he said just because he goes on holidays doesn’t mean that people should consider his holidays as a free pass to spam, because again, his team has grown to a large number of people from the days when there were only a couple of team members 10 or 12 years ago.

Matt then talked about the new knowledge graph that they have recently rolled out, where Google will provide relevant information regularly searched for right on the search page.

He also talked about the new autocomplete change where as you type in keywords, it will ask you for the context if there are multiple contexts people might search for on a particular topic.  Matt used the example of someone searching for “Rio” and asking for context if people are looking for Rio the movie, Rio the place, Rio the hotel.  You can see it in action when you search for Rio, and you can also see it in the knowledge graph as well where Google asks which context you are searching for.

Next Matt brings up the new Gmail in your search results.  It was recently added, so if you do a search on Google and you have something relevant in your Gmail results, it will show those results too.  He does mention that you do need to expand the email in order to see it, so you won’t show anything embarrassing from your email if someone is looking over your shoulder while you search.  He used the example of how he searched for which Moscone SES was in, and an email from Mike Grehan with the details about SES being in Moscone West came up in his results.

Next Matt talked about how they are trying to bring up collections of results when people do certain types of searches.  An example of this is when you search for Tom Cruise movies, it shows his movies across the top (not sure how they are sorting the specific movie results, it isn’t chronologically and doesn’t seem to be by popularity either) and you can side scroll to see more.  California lighthouses is another example Matt used that shows the same type of results across the top.

Matt also revealed that the Search Quality team is now known as Knowledge.  An interesting name change, although I suspect most people will still think of him as being on the Google Spam Team

Mike Grehan asked why all SEOs need to be come zoologists with their updates.  Matt retold the story that the name Panda came about because it was the last name of the engineer behind it.  When it came time to name what would become the Penguin update, Matt says about the engineer behind that ”here is a list of the top 100 cutest animals, and he picked Penguin”.   When asked about both Panda and Penguin being black and white animals, he said it was a coincidence, but that people are sending suggestions for other black and white animals, so I suspect we will probably see a Zebra update at some point.

Next was a surprising twist with Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land and SMX as well as Brett Tabke from WebmasterWorld and PubCon joining Matt and Mike on the stage for an impromptu panel, and one we probably won’t see again – although attendees can always hope!  It brought a really interesting dynamic to the keynote.

The topic of links was brought up about how much authority links will have in the future.  Matt said in the short term he doesn’t see links going away, which is probably a relief for webmasters who are working on white hat link building.

He said Panda has been regularly updating on a monthly basis but that Penguin is still being improved, so there will be “a little more jolting and jarring for a while”, which is good or bad depending on what side of the fence you are sitting on.

Someone raised the question about social signals in search results.  Matt Cutts brought up Twitter and how they used to have access to the firehouse of data but when that agreement with Twitter ran out, Twitter blocked Google from crawling the site.  If Google cannot see how many people are following or retweeting you, Google is unable to use it as a signal for ranking.  and there is concern that Twitter could block Google again in the future.

Matt also said that anyone can compete with Google if they can crawl and rank better than Google can, which is true to an extend.  If the users aren’t getting a good user experience with the search results they are given, they could be more likely to try and search alternative.

Matt also brought up some interesting stats behind the Google search.  Google crawls 20 billion pages per day.

The question was raised about why Google is more open and transparent with webmasters now.  He said any system with a lot of traffic will be spammed.  He also said that someone commented recently that it is cheaper to do things legitimately than it is to go blackhat and try to be under the the radar.

He also reveals how the transparency with Google’s communications with webmasters came about.  The first send a message to webmasters with hidden links, and there were no problems with it.  Next they did emails about parked domains and no problems.  He said if people are hit with a penalty they probably know it anyway.

He also brought up the infamous “over optimized SEO” which had webmasters freaking out several months ago.  He said “it was a mistake on his part to say don’t do too much SEO.”  It more specifically refers to when something has been SEO’d so much that when people land on the page they are unhappy with what they get.  They want webmasters to optimize websites so they load quicker and make sites more crawlable.

One of the most interesting things Matt revealed was the fact they keep old versions of the algo so they can compare old results to new results.  That would be so interesting to see that, so people could see how much search has evolved over the 12 years Matt has been with Google.

He also said when the search team meets, they aren’t concerned about whether changes will make money or lose money.  They only are looking at what is good for the user.

Matt also commented on the complaint that webmasters want traffic but if Google is providing answers right on the search page, webmasters are losing that traffic.  Matt commented that facts can’t be copyrighted, using the example of how tall is the Eiffel Tower, but again it is about what is best for the user.  He reiterated that Google has to put the user first, if they don’t, someone else will and people will start using that search engine instead.

He said again that they don’t want people to buy rankings and feels that people should know when payment is involved.

He also said some of the sites showing Panda/Penguin winners and losers is only a small sample, but is relevant and it does give a good idea of the kinds of sites being impacted.

Matt revealed some more search stats.  Google has seen over 30 trillion URLs, does 100 million searches a month.

Dealing with duplicate content, he said some sites are known to have more original content and some sites have more duplicate content.  He says Google has handled duplicate content pretty consistently over the years.

Next up was Google+ and its influence on ranking.  Google+ is a signal they will look at and see how good it is.  He also said don’t put a lot of weight on Google +1s just yet.

Someone asked if Google is giving more influence to Google properties over non-Google ones.  Matt used Google Video search as an example returns a lot of non-YouTube videos.  This is something I have seen a lot myself when I use video search.  Matt says there is no boost for Google properties just like there is no boost for payment.  We want people to trust Google.

He talks about Knowledge Graph coming from freebase, which is open source and anyone can download for free.  They also use Wikipedia for it as well.

Someone asks why Google does not have its own rating system, ala HubSpot.  He says an example of an independent metric is PageRank, but it ended up being the basis for link sales and link values on a site by site basis.

Someone else asks why Google won’t tell webmasters what they are doing wrong and Matt says they are working towards that in Google Webmaster Central.  Then he says “in an ideal world we’d like to give you URLs when sites are doing enough link buys that it starts to affect the entire site because they are links we don’t trust.”  He’d like them to be able to say  “here is an example link we don’t trust”.  He says that is the vision and to keep turning up the knob on transparency.  They don’t want to say “we don’t trust you” without giving something actionable.

And back on the topic of duplicate content, he says that if you have content similar to many other sites, such as product pages, add something original like product reviews.  Add something of value for the user.

Unfortunately, the keynote, which really turned into a Google search Q&A, came to an end, I think people would have been happy to stay for another hour to hear Matt answer more Q&A from the audience as well as Mike, Danny and Brett.  It was easily one of the best highlights of SES San Francisco, and something I hope repeats itself and future SES conferences.

The Answer Is…
It sounds obvious, but so many companies fail catastrophically at this one – if someone is asking you a question, well, you answer it.  If you don’t know the answer, point them in the right direction.  If your audience is on Facebook, you could do it as a poll that is shareable.  And do you find yourself getting the same questions over and over again?  That means it is probably a great thing to either write an article about or to add to your site’s FAQ.

Survey Says…
Ask questions.  Some people fall under the mistake that company Twitter and Facebook accounts are only for answering or announcements.  But asking questions is a great way to get your community engaged and responding to you.  Not only do you get insight into your followers/customers, but you just might find out something interesting about your site you didn’t realize.  And for bonus points, you can compile the best and most interesting responses into an article or blog post.

Build a personality
You want people to think of you as a person, not as the logo on your Twitter account.  Include something about your personality in your bio, and periodically in your tweets.  My bio includes #GOCANUCKSGO and more often than not, my profiles on social media sites say my location is Starbucks or Calypso Casino.  And throw some personal pics into the mix, but on the other hand, don’t bombard your followers with an instagram of your cat every morning.

Be the breaking news source
If you are the first to break news in your industry, people will want to follow you so that they get the news first and can then share with their own followers or write about it.  And make sure your sources know you appreciate getting the heads up on news, otherwise Twitter search and Google News alerts are your friend.

Update regularly
It doesn’t take much to fire off a few tweets a day or do a couple updates on Facebook.  But we all get distracted or knee deep in work and forget to take the time to tweet.  However, those tweets are important to remind your followers about you, whether you are a information-based website or a news-based one.  Use something like Hootsuite to schedule tweets and updates in advance.  You would be surprised how easy it is to write a week’s worth of tweets in advanced when inspiration hits.  Then pepper those updates with anything noteworthy that happens during the week.

Be retweet friendly
Not everyone uses Twitters new way of retweeting, and still do the old school “RT @___” at the beginning of everything they retweet.  So especially if you think your tweet will be shared a lot, be sure to leave enough characters to cover the  RT and your Twitter handle.

Be time zone friendly
Twitter is fast, especially for those who have a lot of followers.  If you have followers split across the world, there is nothing wrong with doing a “From earlier today:” type tweet 12 hours later to get those on the other side of the world who might have otherwise missed it.  You don’t want to do this for everything, but pick and choose the most popular thing to share.

Segmentation
Maybe you are a network of sites that is popular in its own right.  But what if your audience is only interested in a segment of that network?  You don’t want to alienate an entire group because someone might only be interested in your Star Wars updates, but not on the entire SciFi genre your site covers.  Nothing says you cannot build out for each of those segments, however you want to make sure you don’t neglect any of them.  There is not a lot of point of building out that Star Wars segment if you only have something noteworthy to say once or twice a year.  And definitely make sure that those segments talk to each other if the social media accounts are run by different teams, while you are developing them individually, they should adhere to the same standards between them all.

Don’t be boring
The world doesn’t need another tweet with the same old “We announced the launch of blah blah blah” today, sounding like you have cut and pasted it from a press release.  Instead, depending on your audience, play it up as “Woot, guess what we launched today” or “We launched what’s going to be @___ (insert well known community member you know will love it) favorite thing ever on our site”.

Be original
In the same vein that you don’t want to be boring, draw on the original content your site has that others don’t.  Live stream something.  Make a video and share it.  Take pictures of funny stuff people have written on a whiteboard in the meeting room.  Go to conferences and hit up well known people for tweetworthy tidbits.  Find those interesting things your community would enjoy that they won’t find elsewhere.

Kudos, hat tips and shout outs
Someone retweet one of your tweets – especially if they have a lot of followers or are well known in your industry – be sure to do a quick “Thanks for the retweet @____”.  Also has the added benefit that when others see it, they might retweet more of your tweets in hopes they get a shout out too.  Did someone give you a heads up about something?  Be sure to give them a hat tip to say thanks, and so they will give you dibs next time they see something you should be talking about. Giveaways I am not a big fan of “retweet and win” tweets.  Usually the people who retweet aren’t even in your market area, they just want a chance at a free iPad because it was mentioned on a Freebie website somewhere.  That said, giveaways can be extremely popular if done right.  While everyone would love a free iPad, you are better putting the money for a prize to something that only the people in your community would think is awesome, because these are the people you really want to reward.  If you are a hockey website, offer a jersey.  If you are a local coffee shop, offer a pack of ten “buy one get one” coupons.  And you can easily tie it into asking your community a question too, where they need to tweet their answer to “enter”.

Think before you tweet
All it takes is a single tweet to do considerable damage to a brand on Twitter.  Probably everyone has heard about @celebboutique’s ill-timed (now removed) tweet stating “#Aurora is trending, clearly about our Kim K inspired #Aurora dress Shop: celebboutique.com/aurora-white-pleated-v-neck-strong-shoulder-dress-en.html”  Well, logic would say that if someone sees a term that is somewhat generic like Aurora trending, that one should click it before making a promotional tweet using that same hashtag.  But they didn’t and were vilified on Twitter and in the media.  A writer for Destructoid attacked Felicia Day on Twitter, comparing her to a glorified booth babe, and promptly lost his job.  And a racist comment by a Greek athelete resulted in her being removed from the Olympic team.

If you screw up…
Say you are sorry, and do it sooner rather than later.  Maybe you made an off-color joke that didn’t go off as well as you thought.  Or maybe in a moment of weakness you @replied something that in hindsight (and a cooling off period) you really wished you hadn’t.  The faster you do it, the better.  This is one time where time is of the essence, especially if others might have seen it in action and are doing their own tweets or blog posts about how you are such a jerk.

Engagement is key in social media, especially when you are using it to drive more traffic and uniques to your website.  While it might seem that you could swing by the seat of your pants, in reality, it is not quite as easy as it seems.  Definitely work on keeping your current followers happy while looking to attract new ones with your witty content.

Secure in its rankings
When you pretty much own one of the top spots for the particular article or blog post, it can be hard for your new content to compete with it, especially if you have plenty of links, +1s, tweets, going into it.

Keyword tweaks Maybe when you wrote the article, it was commonly referred to it one way, but now another word is more common.  Or maybe there are two ways of referring to it but you only used one.  A perfect example is if you wrote an article on green gardening techniques, but failed to mention eco-friendly in the article anywhere to take advantage of both.  Just make sure you don’t sacrifice readability to add those keywords or cross the line to keyword spamminess.

Authority
You just might have the blog post that everyone has linked to and recommended.  Kudos! But do you really want people to think some of your slightly outdated thoughts or tips are the best you can do?  Often, people won’t even realize it is an older article if they aren’t looking for the date, and you don’t want them thinking anything you said that is outdated – or currently just plain wrong – reflecting on your reputation.

Outdated = Wrong
There was a day when commenting on blogs was a great way to get links.  Or when buying links was nothing more than a slap on the wrist by Google if you did it.  And link exchanges were something all the cool kids did, even if it was between your Underoos fan page and someone’s holistic healing website.

Change of Opinion
Maybe you have a blog post where you proclaimed buying links was the most awesome of awesomeist and everyone should do it… then Panda’s Zoo hit you full force… as did your opinion that paid links are now the bane of all evil.  There is no shame it revamping your opinion – and feel free to include a disclaimer that it was valid years past, but not so much now.

Cosmetic updates
Maybe you just want to add some updated charts or toss some images on that you were lacking the first time around.  Anytime there is something you can cosmetically do to an article or blog post without affecting anything else, you should do with no hesitation.

Refreshing broken links
Maybe some of those sites you linked to once upon a time are now residing in deleted domain heaven.  Or maybe someone finally moved off their blogspot.com domain to mynewawesomeblog.com.  And if you want a quick way to find where you link to 404s, Xenu Link Sleuth is probably the oldest most useful tool for SEOs, and has been around since 1997.  Then take any 404s and either replace with the new URL or find a good current substitute.

Copyediting
Especially if you aren’t a natural writer, your skills have probably grown over the years.  Sometimes going through old content with a copyediting frame of mind can fix things like oddly worded sentences, incorrect grammar, typos and more.  Anything you can do to make something read easier is a good thing

Still not sure?
Still not exactly sure if you should simply rewrite a new article and link them, or update the old one, look at it from a visitor’s perspective.  Is the update something that brings something new to the table, and gives something more to the reader by linking to points you made previously?  Then going with a new blog post is probably the way to go.  But if the content is stale, outdated or even incorrect, yet is still bringing in a significant amount of traffic from people who view that page as the landing page on your site, then updating the old is probably the best thing to do.  A blog or website can always benefit from fresh new content, but if that content is outdated, update the old, then add the new and link them up.

I have done live tweeting at multiple search industry conferences, and something I have definitely realized is that some speakers and presentations just tend to be very Twitter worthy, while others give presentations that I struggle to even find a single thing to tweet about that my followers would find remotely interesting.  And trust me, I want to tweet as much interesting things as possible!  And having your presentation tweeted a lot can give you a lot of promotion, exposure and it also shows off how smart you are about your chosen topic :)

Reminder tweet

Before the event and session, remind your own followers that you will be at the conference and hope to see some followers attending and tweeting your session.  Be sure to include a link to the conference session, so those who might be interested in attending but hadn’t heard of it can check out the conference details themselves.  Then be sure to remind people shortly before it starts.  I personally am a huge fan of Lee Odden’s way of announcing it on his Twitter stream, here is what he did for our session at SES Toronto last week.

Any industry people pre-announcing their live tweet schedule?

If you see certain blogs have announced what sessions they are live tweeting, and yours is one of them, do a quick intro tweet.  “@___ I see you are tweeting my session on Tuesday, looking forward to seeing it ”  You remind them of your twitter handle before they have to look at it sitting in the conference room, and you will likely get a follower out of it.

Tweeters love stats & quickie tidbits

Give us lots of short and sweet stats and tidbits that are easily tweetable, especially if you have the feeling most of the audience – and even more importantly, that the followers of the tweeters – will find interesting.  It is always the stats that make me think “Wow, really?” that I tweet the most… especially stats that will increase the bottom line of the audience – and my followers.  And tweeters will love it when you not only say the stat but have it in your presentation, as this gives us the ability to quickly double check what we are typing and make sure we have the stat right.  If I am unsure about the correct percentage, number or stat, I would rather not tweet it than tweet something wrong, especially when I am attributing it to someone else.

Put your twitter handle on each page of your deck

When I went into one session, I ended up being late because someone approached me in the hallway to chat.  And when I got into the room, every single seat was taken, so I ended up standing in the back tweeting with my blackberry instead.  I spent the session tweeting, but because I wasn’t familiar with the speakers, I couldn’t add any @name attribution to any of my tweets, and I didn’t want to take the time to bring up the conference website, find the session and view each bio to get twitter handles, when I might miss something important in the meantime.  Here is a sample of one of my PowerPoint templates with my twitter handle on the bottom (looks pretty boring when it’s blank!)

Does your session and conference have a hash tag?

If there is a hash tag for the conference, remind people of it when you do your introduction including your twitter handle.  “You can follow me on twitter @___ I’d love you to cc me on any tweets you make during my presentation.  And don’t forget the conference hashtag is #___”.  You not only get tweets with your handle on them – making it easy for you to track as well as so you get the promotion from those tweets – but those following the conference hashtag will also see them.  Most conferences have a hashtag like #SESTO but conferences such as SMX also have individual session tags like #14B, which were conveniently included on the agenda.

Don’t forget the value of retweeting what others say about you

It isn’t uncommon these days for all panelists on a session to be sitting with their smart phones reloading their @reply screen or the conference hashtag on Twitter to see what people are saying,.  If someone has said something about your presentation – whether positive feedback or statistic tidbits you included – definitely retweet it.  Also retweet your panelists or tweets others made about them during your session.  I retweeted @KristaNeher since she included a photo of one of my #zombieapocalypse slides from my Content Marketing panel at SES Toronto.  So not only did I get a lot of feedback from the Zombie Apocalypse portion of my Content Marketing presentation, but I also got others who were unable to attend asking me about it because let’s face it, the zombie apocalypse isn’t a topic normally found at any SEO industry conference, and people were curious about how I incorporated it into my session.

Choose an easy to remember and type twitter handle

While it could be too late by the time you read this, keep it in mind if you are considering doing a twitter handle change or rebrand.  The less memorable and more complicated it is, the harder it is for conference live tweeters to remember or type easily while trying to type stats as fast as they can so they can both share more and get all the correct stats off the slide before you switch it to the next one.

I did numerous tweets of quotes from Avinash Kaushik at Google, Twitter handle @avinash.  Thankfully, he didn’t pick @avinashkaushik or @akaushik or something not nearly as memorable as @avinash, especially with the number of times I quickly tweeted it over the course of an hour long keynote.

Thank those who retweeted you

After the event, even if it is a couple of days later when you are back in the office, take the time to thank those who were live tweeting your presentations.  They might not have been following you when they tweeted the quote from your presentation, but when they are also back at the office, it reminds them that you saw them speak and gives you a second chance at a new follower – who could just be an influencer, but maybe in a different circle than you normally run in.

As more and more conferences are becoming more Twitter friendly, and attendees more Twitter savvy, you are going to see even more tweeting in the next year, so it is definitely worth looking over your conference presentations to make sure it includes lots of Twitter friendly content to get you free promotion.

But there are plenty of people shocked (and complaining) that Google will go as far as to remove Iacquire from the Google search index, because previously, Google has banned the sites benefiting from the agency’s tactics, not the agency themselves, when they are caught violating Google’s webmaster guidelines.

If I am a small business owner who doesn’t know a lot about search marketing, and I am hiring an agency, I am going to assume that they practice responsible marketing tactics that won’t get my website banned from Google.  So I would be pretty upset if the company I hired caused my site to be de-indexed.  And I sure would be throwing the agency who did me wrong under the bus.

But with Google deindexing the agency instead of the customer, it ends up hitting several birds with one stone.

Buyer Beware Isn’t Always Good Enough

There have been countless stories of websites getting banned from Google because they hired what turned out to be a disreputable consultant or SEO company to do their search optimization and marketing.  While those active in the industry often know who to trust (and who not to) when it comes to marketing tactics, Joe Business Owner doesn’t know.  In the case of Iacquire.com, there is really nothing that should raise a flag.  Even their Noob’s Guide to Link Building they offer as a free PDF warns against black hat SEOs (Ironic, I know).

Black Hats are those whose tactics violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines or Terms of Service. Typically these people are engaging in manipulative link activity and optimize their backlink profile heavily for a handful of unbranded anchors. Use Link Detective to see what types of link tactics your competitors are using but don’t get your site penalized or banned!

So seeing that, Joe Business Owner would have a sense of reassurance that yes, this agency is going to follow the Google guidelines.  And we have heard of far too many websites falling victim to bad SEO’s, it is about time that the same punishment is given to the agency responsible, even if they only thing the agency gained from it is fees from the client.

JC Penney got banned from Google for paid links (both algorithmically & manually, according to Matt Cutts who tweeted about the spam at the time) but their SEO company SearchDex  got away unscathed by Google, although JC Penney did fire them.

Scare Tactic for Cleanup

Any SEO agency that is engaging in risky link practices has to be alarmed by seeing Iacquire getting banned.  For most agencies, if a client gets banned in Google, that’s collateral damage.   But if the agency itself gets banned, not only does it prevent a fair amount of organic traffic, but if any potential client starts to do research into the company, the first thing they will notice is it is MIA in Google.  And of course, if it makes as much news as the Iacquire agency being delisted does, well, that is one heck of a reputation management job needed to get some favorable search results back for anyone doing due diligence…. If the site ever comes back.  But even if/when Iacquire gets back in the index, there is no saying if it will regain the #1 listing for their name – or any other terms – and which of the many “Iacquire has been banned” articles will also be in the top ten.

But the real question lies is if many of these agencies can still produce results if they aren’t engaging in paid link tactics, or any tactics that go against Google’s webmaster guidelines.  And I imagine some of them will struggle, or will have to hire experts whose SEO skills go beyond suspicious link building techniques.   Iacquire has finally come out with a statement saying they are removing financial compensation from the link development toolset .

More Outtings

You know that more webmasters who have fallen victim to agency’s bad SEO practices are going to start outing those agencies – as well as those who are on the receiving end of those link requests.   There have been plenty of sites banned in Google because of what the SEOs they hired did ( But now that people can see agencies themselves can get banned, be prepared for more people throwing agencies under the bus.

The paid link request that ended up outting the company only paid $30/month, and it was obviously worth more to that site for the traffic than the $30 would be.  But also shows that the link buyers were not doing their homework, you would think someone would know better than to cold email an SEO to buy a link or exchange link, unless they knew the owner personally.  Even Googlers have received really bad link exchange requests.

And in the competitive world of SEOs, especially those who are in need of clients or who want to get revenge for someone stealing a client/employee, there just might be more people scouring certain client lists and checking their SEO to see if it is all on the up and up or if something smells fishy.

Clean up the index

The heart of the issue is Google wants a spam-free and natural index that isn’t influenced by who has the bigger pockets for buying links or the best SEOs.  They want Suzie Crafter with her hobby site and better content to be able to compete against Savvy Webmaster who has been in the industry for years and has a network they can get easy links from to rank their less-than-stellar content.

Google wants  to look good

Google wants to be known for having a good index.  And every time some major brand gets outted for spamming, it can put Google in a poor light if their algorithm doesn’t catch it before the media does – as plenty of people asked when the JC Penney link scandal broke.  And Google is about giving the users the best possible user experience, even if it isn’t your spammy site that you might think is awesome sauce

On the whole, there has been plenty of discussion about whether Google is doing the right thing or not about banning agencies for their link practices for clients.  And of course, the age old “is it okay to out people/companies/agencies” for spamming?  There is a pretty interesting discussion about this issue at Inbound.org as it relates to Iacquire – specifically if Josh Davis, who wrote the originating article should have outted Iacquire or not, and tied Michael King (@ipullrank), who is well known writer/speaker in the industry but also the Director of Inbound Marketing at Iacquire, into it (Iacquire’s statement also specifically stated that Michael was brought in to move away from paid links).

I am sure it is going to be a pretty hot topic next week at SMX Advanced on the You&A with Matt Cutts and the Ask the SEOs sessions.  Not to mention at all the bars and parties

While infographics got their start on news sites, even well before the internet was around (remember back in the pre-internet days when they used to pop up occasionally in newspapers), infographics really took off this past year as a great way to get a significant amount of traffic, and of course, links.  But as all SEOs know, any worthy “lots of links fast” strategy tends to be used and abused.  And wow, they are definitely getting abused.

But for all those SEOs out there pumping out infographics at an alarming rate for all their own – and their client’s – websites, you can bet many of them haven’t stopped to think about the long term consequences, only the short term link gain.  Short term is traffic (yea!) but long term could end up being a bit more sketchy.

True, many SEOs argue that links via infographics are quality links.  And while some of those links might be quality, just as many of not more are pretty poor quality.  It would take nothing for Google to flip a switch and discount a majority of those links obtained via infographics.

How Google can spot the infographic footprint
Images are already indexed in Google in the image search – along with the image size – so it wouldn’t be a stretch for Google to add some sort of penalty (or not so much penalty, but maybe a signal to discount links) for landing pages where an image length is longer than 1500 and wider than say 500 or 800 pixels, because that is an image size not used often for anything but infographics.  While not all infographics are the long and skinny, a fair amount of them are.  And I am willing to bet when you oh-so-conveniently included the copy and paste code for your infographic that you failed to include a no-follow tag (of the dozen or so I checked, none included the no-follow attribute in the code, which Google would argue that all webmasters should do when they are unsure of the quality, or legitimacy, of an incoming link.

They could also go further with the larger landscape infographics, using OCR technology (which we know they have the ability to use on images) to be able to differentiate between photos and infographics.

It could also potentially be used as a signal for the dreaded over-optimization penalty.  And in that scheme of things, one or two infographics could be kosher, while a site rocking 30+ (and yes, there are definitely sites with that many and more) infographics could be a little more suspect, especially if those infographics aren’t linked to from the main site.  A fair number of infographics sit on orphan pages that link to other pages on the site, yet no main pages on the site link to the one with the infographic one – particularly the types that are spamming Angry Birds infographics on a recipes site.

Spying on the infographics your fellow SEOs & competitors are sharing
And does the evil side of you want to know how many SEOs are using and abusing infographics, aside from the ones you notice spamming them on Twitter?  Simply add one of the many “SEO expert” circles into Google+, make sure you are logged into your Google account, and then do an image search for infographic.  At the top of the page will be all those spammy infographics than SEOs have shared, showing through the wonder that is Search Plus Your World.  And yes, the spam team can easily add those same SEOs into their circles and see this too, if they wanted.

Likewise, hit up Pinterest, add a bunch of SEOs to your friends, and see what infographics they have pinned.  And this also works well for checking what infographics competitive websites are pushing, especially when they are doing the Angry Birds on a recipe site type infographics that you might not otherwise notice.

Should you bandwagon?
If you haven’t jumped on the infographic bandwagon yet and are tempted to, weigh the pros and cons of tossing a no-follow on the copy and paste link code you provide.  And yes, infographics can send a ton of traffic just from the sharing, especially the creative and well done ones, aside from the benefits of the links.  Some will argue that a Google penalty would be a stretch, it isn’t too farfetched that Google can simply tweak their algo to discount those infographic links anyway.

Going the way of the dodo bird?
Are infographics for links a dying art?  I am sure we will all be annoyed by them for years to come, the same way link bait persists.  And yes, they will clearly be effective for getting the initial traffic from people sharing them… and rediscovering and resharing them again later.  But don’t count on those links you gain benefitting your site from an SEO perspective (aside from the straight clickthrough traffic), especially because we know that Google is leaning towards discounting the benefits of all kinds of links when it comes to their algorythm…. can you say hello social?  You need to think ahead whatever the next big link gain thing is…. Or is it already here and you don’t know it yet

Q&A Moderator: Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com

Speakers:Sean Carlos, CEO, Antezeta Web Marketing (@seancarlos)
Janet Driscoll Miller, President and CEO, Search Mojo (@janetdmiller)
Daniel Dulitz, Product Manager, Google (@dulitz)
Monica Wright, Social Media Editor, Search Engine Land and Marketing Land (@monicawright)

First up, we start with the Google+ rep, Daniel Dulitz.  He says you can ignore Google+ if you’re hoping to do well with Google Search.

A user’s path to good content ranking: give the user what she wants

Appearance: tell the user why its good.

Make content stand out; display your reputation click.

With Google authorship, connect web content with your author profile.  Use rich snippets (use schema.org microdata).

Then: first, who wrote it (with profile) and who is interested in it (+1s)

Effects on search: show richer content, show the author; show the site’s Google+ page annotations from your circles, so visitors can see who +1s and who shared the sites in search results.

Consider search results as a way to insert your own stamp on things.

Power of one – enliven your content with rich snippets; develop reputation with authorship; reach fans with g+; help people recommend your content with +1s.

Next up is Sean Carlos and he talks alot about Google “direct connect”.  To be eligible, companies must cross-link their G+ page to their website.  But, you do not need to put a Google+ badge on the site.

If you feel Google+ is too visible, you can opt out of indexing. On the other hand, if you can’t rank #1 for search terms, let authorship make it stand out more in the search results.

Do note that “related places and people” is moving adwords further down the page on the right hand side, usually below the fold.

Next is Janet Driscoll Miller

Using direct connect means it is something additional for Google suggest to display in drop down, which really helps if negative results are showing in search suggest.

Create a link between Google+ and your website.  Either use the code snippet or badge.

Only 3% of fortune 100 havea Google+ badge on their site.

Think about where you put your +1 buttons on the site.  Make it easy for people to +1

She also notes that the plugin AddThis didn’t add Google+ functionality until December.  If you are using older code, the old Google button only adds a bookmark.

Last is Monica Wright.

Organize your circles, categorize audience commenters, newbies, loyalists, researchers, etc

Is it ok to duplicate Facebook and Google+?  Yes, because it is usually a different audience.

First up is Tami from Buddy Media, with a series of tips for promoting your business on Facebook.

Keep posts short.  Posts under 80 characters have 30% higher engagement.  This is especially true for photos, events and video.

Post on Thursdays and Fridays.  Engagements on these days are 18% higher than on the other days of the week.

Photos and plain status posts work well.  Photos have a 53% higher engagement.

Have clear calls to action.  You want to use terms like: like, post, take, comment, submit.  You want to avoid terms like: order, see, become a fan, shop

If you sell, sell softly. Using more direct/aggressive language doesn’t work as well.  Does it smell too sales-y?

Place questions at the end of the post.  Posts that end with a question (rather than beginning or middle) have a 15% higher engagement rate.

Ask a question well.  You should use: when, where, would, should.  Avoid asking why questions.  because it can put people on the defensive and requires people to defend what they think.

Use fill in the blank posts as a way to encourage engagement.

Mine data for fan insights, then use that information to posting things that get a higher comment rate.

Be topical and relevant to what is happening now.  Super Bowl posts had 60% higher engagement on game day.  99.7% higher but less than 30% of brands posted about the Super Bowl, so they missed the opportunity.

Winning the Super Bowl resulted in the Giants aquiring 2x more fans during the game.

Understand what is a bigger ask.  It is far easier for people to like than share.  So don’t expect to get the same share rates as like rates.

Actually ask for something…  less than 1% of postss contain a share call to action.  When posts said share this, they had a 77% higher share rate.

Post visual content, if you want people to share, make it visual.

Support social sharing.  Embedding sharing buttons to drive referral traffic is a great way to increase traffic.

Why is social sharing so important?  People are 2x as likely to trust information emailed or shared on a social network from a friend.  The average Facebook sharer has 240 friends (83% hgiher than average).  And on average, a single share drives 6 new visitors.  And customers aquired via  shares have 26% higher average order value than other sales… these are highly valued customers.

Next up is Aaron Friedman (@aaronfriedman) on targeting audiences and maximizing engagement.

Facebook is great because it has 800M users, engaged audience, 52.1% sharing on web.  But unfortunately, it is hard to target how to reach a larger audience and get your posts seen.

Don’t  buy likes, it will hurt more than help. Don’t be afraid to buy some ads to further target your audience.

Use the facebook advertising tool to define your audience.

Example: Bass Fishing Favorites now has 66k fans.  The cost was  $0.15 per like with an overall $6k ad spend. Effective for fairly cheap.

Tools he recommends include Kenshoo social: quick, advanced targeting options, lower cost per fan (bid management helps optimize what is and isn’t working).

It is about quantity vs quality on Facebook.

When sharing, chose your image carefully and create a great description that is not truncated.  For your title, you want about 95 characters, description about 297 characters.

Dan Robbins is up last.  For Facebook audience development, never pay or bribe for likes.

Types of content they post: photo galleries and videos, both raw and polished footage links: website content, product reviews, event coverage and videos – contests and special offers – market research – fan calls to action.

Handling of user posted content:  make sure you answer every questions in a timely manner; ignore the antagonists; remove only pure spam and hate posts; leave questions directed at the community for the community; check hidden posts daily (check the spam feed)

As fan base grows, community answers a lot of the questions posed to the company.

3 Facebook publishing philosphies: post only quality relevant content; once posted, forever posted; time is not of the essence – make sure you fact check.

Why people unlike brands on Facebook: too many posts; too much marketing; repetitive or boring content; only liked to take advantage of an offer; didn’t offer enough deals.

Top 3 KPIs: weekly like growth likes, comments, shares and clicks user posts.

Branded URL shorteners, such as foxchox.info/kpi means you can track clicks.

Look at direct competitors as benchmark ie. RockShox, a competitor, hasn’t posted on Facebook since 2010.

Also look at industry benchmarks(those who are not competitors but in same industry).  How do you compare?

Mobile interaction is where it is at, but Facebook falls short – on Facebook mobile you can’t share, only like or comment.

From the Q&A:

If your market area isn’t sexy… if you are selling life insurance, don’t focus on insurance, focus on life.  Not every brand is sexy, so what can you talk to people about that isn’t the brand, but will end up attracting people to the brand?

What to do when marketing department is begging for likes?  If you aren’t a brand, start to look at buying for ads to get those likes.  Also look at benchmarking and see where your competitors are at.  Then ask why do you need more likes?  Is it only because a bigger number looks cooler?

For marketing special offers on Facebook, people like specific dollar value off as opposed to % off.  There is a much higher engagement rate when it is $X off instead of X% off.

When it comes to both Facebook and Twitter, share with both audiences.  But also see if you have different audiences each place and customize for each.

Q&A Moderator: Noran El-Shinnawy, Director of Marketing, BoostCTR (@noranshinnawy)

Speakers:

Addie Conner, VP, Advertising, SocialCode (@socialcodeinc)
Matt Lawson, VP of Marketing, Marin Software (@marinsoftware)
Will Scott, President, Search Influence (@w2scott)
Marty Weintraub, CEO, aimClear (@aimclear)

First up is Matt from Marin Software.  He says consumers exposed to a brands social media are 50% more likely to click on paid search ads.  He also recommends the white paper ”The Influenced: Social Media, search and the interplay of consideration and consumption” by Group M for more metrics.

He advises to expand to fans of related brands and competitors.

Use keyword stemmping to find interests.  For example, type “camping i” and see what Facebook suggests.  Then do it for every letter of the alphabet following your main keyword.

Micro-segment your audience to keep cost down and get the most targeted audience.  Finely tuned segments allow you to shift spend to audiences that perform, increasing conversion and ROI.

Test images before copy.  Draw attention to ads with contrasting colors, and try to avoid blues because it is too similar to the Facebook color scheme.   Link images to audience to increase relevance:  use people’s faces and when all else fails, test pictures of cute puppies (LOL!)

Keep ads fresh: finely targeted audience x 4 hours/week on Facebook = ad blindness.  When your ad starts suffering from ad blindness, Facebook will reduce your ad inmpressions since it is less likely people will click on it.  Rotate ads every 2-3 days or as impressions drop, as you want to maintain your impression volume with an increase ctr and lower cost per like.

Maintain the facebook experience and integrate social experience on your site.

Next is Addie Conner

Think beyond the “like”-  optimizing towards facebook’s edgerank algorithm and fan value.

Sponsored like ads and inline fan ads are the most cost efficient advertising and have the highest engagement rates. Sponsored story units have the highest CTR but no control over them.

Next is Will Scott   from Search Influence

They ran a campaign for 7 days in January – overall it was a $o.17 cost per fan. with a 0.6% CTR on ads.

Clicks are expensive but impressions are cheap, likes are cheap.

Marty Weintraub @aimclear is next.

Target people based on where they work, and target people with really freaky interests – he showed all kinds of crazy interests people have that you can target with your advertising.

With sponsored stories, target the friends of your friends.

During the Q&A, Addie Xonners said Facebook is trying to make their ads not look like ads.

Some other tips given include: don’t write one ad, write many. Images must pop, adjust contrast to make it pop if you can. Don’t ask  people to buy your product, ask them to like you instead.  Focus on copy and consider rotating ads as extremely important.