Forex Technical Update 8/31/2010 The EUR/USD had a sharp correction rally in the European session but did not invalidate the bearish swing outlook just yet. You can also see the Euro pare losses against the Yen, but the Japanese currency remains firm. The USD/JPY continues to decline. The Swiss franc dominated the European session as the EUR/CHF is at an all-time low, and USD/CHF is at a 7-month low. The CHF also is also threatening to outperform the Japanese Yen as a safe haven currency. Fan Yang CTA Technical Analyst www.fxtimes.com
Americans have given $25 million so far to help victims of Pakistan's flood disaster -- far less than the U.S. donations made in the immediate aftermath of other major disasters. Experts cite the relative lack of news coverage, attitudes toward Pakistan and the nature of the disaster itself.
If you’ve seen the current state of the United States economy, you might be hesitant to think about starting your own business. In the following roundtable discussion, small business owners sit down to discuss the challenges and rewards of being able to own and successfully operate a small business during these tough economic times.
I was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales. Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.
I’m not sure I buy the “social media has turned things around” story exactly, but I do wonder how many companies and consultants roll the dice and take shortcuts and loopholes to get ahead only to find out later it’s worthless? The notion of paid links is an old story (Paid Links Evil? Dec 2005) but many of the tactics used to shortcut results for SEO will always be a fresh topic of discussion.
It turns out the retailer in the Inc. story was doing SEO internally then hired two SEO companies to help out. The story goes on to say that a SEO company was to “reach out to relevant sites and ask them for links. Instead, one of the companies admitted it was paying for links.” That’s worded in a way that makes you think maybe the retailer didn’t know the SEO company was buying links.
We don’t buy links at TopRank Marketing.
We never have. Not ever in 10 years of being in the search marketing business. As far as the retailer in the Inc. article, it’s surprising because buying links isn’t cheap. If a company didn’t know the SEO consultant was buying links, it’s peculiar any way you look at it. Where did the money come from to buy the links? How did the SEO company not report what it was doing? How did the company owner not know what the SEO company was doing?
I polled followers of @leeodden on Twitter whether they or someone they knew knew had ever been penalized for buying links. Almost all of them said yes. When I’ve mentioned that we never buy links to other search marketers, the disbelief was like I told them I didn’t need to breathe air.
The point of relating this story to you isn’t so much about the risks and rewards of paid links, defining exactly what “paid means” (what about a 3 way barter?) or even judging those that sell and buy links. The point is that the online retailer in the story says social media tactics were largely ignored and now they’re committed to blogging, Tweeting and being active on Facebook. He claims all is now well in their SEO world. “We’re back on top.”
The point: Why didn’t the online retailer commit to a better online marketing strategy in the first place?
It’s been promoted for years that paid links can carry consequences. People like Google’s Anti-Spam Czar Matt Cutts make their perspective clear and make it easy to report paid links. Right or wrong, it’s the way search engines want to play. Obviously, paid links with the right anchor text from very authoritative and relevant websites have a positive impact, or SEOs and website owners wouldn’t participate. It’s important to note that Google doesn’t have a problem with paid links per se, but with paid links that pass PageRank.
The question I have for companies that rely too much on shortcuts and loopholes is, “Why not suspend the “free money now” attitude and invest in a smart and competitive online marketing program that can get results AND stand the test of scrutiny?” Won’t a customer focused marketing effort that provides optimized and linkable content to a growing social network earn more links, more traffic and more revenue anyway?
I don’t think there’s much reason to put your brand and revenue at risk if you have a long term view of how the search and social web works. The investment in understanding and engaging customers plus the staff, software and time to implement content, analyze performance data and ongoing content marketing is well worth the cost and there’s virtually no risk.
“Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight”
Years ago at a search conference discussion about black hat and white hat tactics, Tim Mayer, ex head of Search at Yahoo! made the comment “”If you’re being entirely organic and going after ‘Viagra,’ it’s like taking a sword to a gunfight. You just aren’t going to rank” when discussing acceptable tactics in really aggressive industries like “PPC” (pills pron casino).
The temptation and pressures to profitability are great in industries that are flush with heavily optimized and marketed web sites. However, most companies don’t fall in that category and I think smarter and more creative marketing can still win for the vast majority of websites, especially in the long run. We’ve seen it happen with our own clients nearly 10 years.
Why rent when you can own?
The reason I’ve never participated in link purchases or endorsed the practice isn’t as much about Google’s rules on paid links that pass PageRank. It’s because I could never understand why anyone would “buy” something with such risk associated with it when they could “earn it and own it”? With roots in Public Relations, our online marketing agency has been accustomed to earning media placements and often times highly desirable links since we started the business in 2001. It can take more time to see aggressive results, but when you focus on making creative content and doing the hard work of promotion to earn traffic and links, the cost is one of investment vs. the often higher cost of advertising with no equity in what you’ve purchased. Then there’s the cost if the links are devalued by the search engines and subsequent lost revenue. I’d rather build, promote and earn those links that will be in place indefinitely.
Using that strategy, Online Marketing Blog has accumulated a substantial number and quality of links (according to Majestic SEO). The devil is in the details with this sort of thing of course, since it matters very much what the topic, anchor text and PageRank are of the link sources. But suffice it to say, we experience very good results in each of those areas as evidenced by over 21,000 different keyword phrases that sent organic traffic each month and top visibility for important and challenging keyword queries.
What’s your experience with managing risk with SEO tactics? Have you experienced what the online retailer above went through and focused anew on a sustainable and longer term online marketing strategy?
Home prices were higher for the third straight month amid a burst of home-buying due to tax incentives that have since expired. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index posted a 1 percent increase in June from May and was up 4.2 percent from a year earlier.
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Andrew G. Biggs of National Review argues, when it comes to Social Security, it's too politically risky to revive the Bush-era idea of personal accounts. A solution will come from a mix of government intervention and personal initiative.
The first content session I’m attending at OpenCamp is by Gio, aka Giovanni Gallucci, a longtime search and social media marketer based in Dallas. The topic is “Blackhat SEO” and the room is packed!
The session was cut a bit short due to technical difficulties with getting the conference started and Gio took it in stride and was both entertaining and informative – the right mix for a morning tech crowd.
Gio says “Black hat is simply another way to automate a time-consuming process. In other areas of marketing and life in general we encourage automation in order to maximize efficiency and get a leg up on our competitors”.
According to the conference session description, the nature of this session doesn’t allow liveblogging or tweeting, which i think is a load of crap, so I’ll liveblog it anyway.
Speaking of liveblogging, I am writing this on an iPad and the brilliant WordPress app deleted the first version, so I am writing now from memory on a notepad app.
The session is basically about what Gio does on a daily basis for his SEO clients. Based on insights from Woopra analyticz Gio says these are 5-6 social media sites you need to focus on to drive traffic and affect your search visibility:
- Media sharing: YouTube and Flickr
- Social Bookmarking: StumbleUpon
- Social Networks: Facebook & Twitter
When you undertake your social media marketing efforts, don’t let “little people” and naysayers hold you back. Gio gives Cali Lewis as an example with her growth of online shows and current success with GeekBeat.TV
As far as as Geolocation services like Gowalla, Foursquare, Whrrrl, etc Gio says these are cute and fun, but that there’s not much measurable social media marketing value to them. (If you don’t buy that, check out Mashable.com for FourSquare case studies)
We’re 15 min into the presentation and thee’s no black hat SEO yet
YouTube lists are unreal for driving search traffic. Organize your individual videos into lists and optimize them. Find other videos that are highly trafficked and add them to lists that include your own videos. If you’re not creating video, you’ve got to get started.
Tools: tubetoolbox.com (Now we’re getting into the automation and almost black hat stuff). With YouTube ToolBox, Gio says you create a message in 2-3 sentences, mail merge their username and then create multiple versions of the message with different content and the same call to action. Then you can schedule the sending of messages to YouTube users that have been harvested at the rate of about 20 messages per hour. Something like: Hey “username” I saw that you commented on a video about XYZ and wanted to let you know about another similar video and would love your opinion.”.
I have to note, using automation tools like this must be done by someone that REALLY knows what they’re doing or you will suffer consequences. Managing risk vs. reward is important and for the record, my agency doesn’t use automation in this way.
The key to getting YouTube videos ranked high is activity on YouTube. with Flickr, you can add comments with a link back to your content.
Take advantage of current events. Gio shows a video of ComicCon geeks talking about how comic are not geeky anymore. Thee’s some irony to a code geek making fun of comic book geeks.
When going somewhere offline to get photos or video for content, blend in. Gio tells a story of buying a cowboy getup to blend in at a rodeo or maybe it was somewhere else like that where there was a concentration of cowboy types.
Keep it fresh. For example, make a presentation the day you give it.
Tool: tweetaddr 3.0. Using this tool makes it appear as if you’re communicating with Twitter via a web browser (when you’re not and actually using an automated follow tool).
“Can’t is not an option”. Gio gave an example of a how a school with only 200 kids earned 68,000 votes on a list of top schools.
“Show up and just get it done”. If you look like you’re supposed to be there, no one will bother you. (Regarding collecting content or promoting online content in the offline world).
Tool: Bookmarking Daemon – Put in your social boomarking accounts and it will randomly pick your content and promote it.
According to the room monitor, that’s all the time we have. You can find out more about Giovanni on his blog: Blog.gallucci.net and get a copy of his social media manifesto at: gallucci.net/smm
I was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales. Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.
