It looks like a pretty good way to deceive people into hiring your services, just look at Google Re-Sell and the fuss they caused! When I was researching that post I found a lot of dissatisfied customers so chasing the Google brand is obviously an effective marketing strategy!

As an SEO who spends a lot of my time working with Google (in the sense of a third party) I’d consider myself to be pretty well informed on the latest goings on at Mountain View, but I’d never go as far as advertising myself as a Google consultant. To me that sounds like someone’s trying to big themselves up more than they should.

If you Google “Google consultant” you’ll see that there are plenty of websites out there that are actively pushing this keyword/job description. It would be perfectly understandable for somebody looking for an SEO to focus purely on Google rankings/traffic and Google such a keyword. But what would they be getting? They’d be hiring an SEO, but half not much of an SEO… what about all the other factors not associated with Google? What about all the other search engines?!

Do yourself a favour people… Search for an SEO, not a Google consultant! You cant polish a turd!

If a sales rep from an outfit called Google Re-sell calls and offers to improve your website’s Google traffic, you’d be forgiven for thinking the caller might actually be from Google.

You’d be wrong. Google Re-sell is a name used by a firm called Sphere Marketing run by habitual conman Graeme Ross.

He first featured in this column in 2001 with an advertising scam that preyed on hard-working firms. Now he’s got a team of coldcallers who spout a line about how they can help more clients find your business website.

Some of their clients had this to say:

“They said that we would be listed at the top of page one on Google initially and then be guaranteed a place on the first page for the next three months,”

“I was contacted by someone who implied she worked for Google,” said Park Hall’s Trish Ford. “She explained this offer was only available to the first three companies that signed up for each specific key phrase being offered by Google.”

“I was contacted by a man who introduced himself as from the Google marketing team.”

“We paid £940 in 2008 for a Google AdWords campaign, and paid by telephone quoting our company credit card. It did sound too good to be true, but we thought they had a special relationship with Google. Imagine the shock to have another 7 transactions totalling £9,450 taken in January 2009 without authorisation, it was quite sickening.”

“We too were taken in, are now in the process of taking legal action against these people, and have reported them to Trading Standars. I have contacted some of the people mentioned in the article, and compared notes. I don’t know how this mob sleep at night – I wish them all a very pleasant stay at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in the very near future.”

Google Re-Sell didnt have much to say on that matter and responded with:

“There is a lot more to the situation than you are being told. It is very easy to blame Sphere Marketing for the problems. We are, however, looking into the situation.”

And Google, the all mighty one said:

“Our lawyers will investigate.”

Exciting stuff as ever from the big man! Google Re-Sell are very local to me and they are conning small business owners out of their hard earned and conducting themselves in a way that is completeley illegal. This really aggrevates me for two reasons. One, it makes it harder for genuine SEOs and Online Marketers to pick up new work and two, it makes it harder to keep hold of existing clients. I’ve had to deal with a few clients recently who have been contacted by bogus seo firms offering to sell them dirt cheap SEO packages that guarantee top page rankings. It’s difficult to field these sort of questions at the best of times but in the current economic climates business owners are watching every penny and these sort of deals look all the more attractive to them.

Educate your clients and you’ll avoid this situation most of the time. But my advice would be to send them the article link, or the link to this post ! That way you get in first!

We all know the Google guidelines and the “dos and don’ts” of SEO and on-line marketing. But is Google actually as clever as it says at spotting violations or is it a case of smoke and mirrors? There are numerous examples of sites ranking that break these guidelines and there are also plenty of contradictions between SEOs ideas about how to gain top rankings.

Here it the fundamental question which all SEOs need to consider….
Q. How clever is Google?
A. Thick as pig sh*t
A. Not clever at all and what they say and recommend isn’t usually correct or worth considering.
A. They are more or less spot on with what they say and how they act.
A. They are cleverer than they make out but like to keep this from us.
A. They are light years beyond the public perception.

The reason i ask is based on the conflicting advice I hear from SEOs all the time. One SEO does not recommend something but another does and they generally fall into three categories white, grey and black. The white hat guys would call the black hat guys fools and vice versa.

Answers on a post card…

This time around PRS are demanding far more from YouTube than they ever have which has led to a stalemate situation with YouTube unwilling to pay. A post from their UK blog reveals why:

Our previous license from PRS for Music has expired, and we’ve been unable so far to come to an agreement to renew it on terms that are economically sustainable for us.

But why can’t YouTube just pay? Isn’t it about time artists starting earning more money from all the plays that their creations are receiving? And YouTube certainly aren’t struggling? They’ve found themselves in the position of the World’s number one music search engine.

But YouTube try have tried to justify their actions with this statement:

We value the creativity of musicians and songwriters and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright. But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before. The costs are simply prohibitive for us — under PRS’s proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in the license they can provide so that we can identify those works on YouTube

OK, so maybe PRS have something to say for themselves as well? Maybe YouTube (a.k.a. Google) aren’t being too nasty? So I went over to their website press section and read this:

PRS for Music is outraged on behalf of consumers and songwriters that Google has chosen to close down access to music videos on YouTube in the UK.
Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing.

This action has been taken without any consultation with PRS for Music and in the middle of negotiations between the two parties. PRS for Music has not requested Google to do this and urges them to reconsider their decision as a matter of urgency.

Google had revenues of $5.7bn in the last quarter of 2008.

Ha! So it’s Google! Their just being tight fisted b*st*rds!? That would certainly make sense and it seems to be the way. Steve Porter CEO of “PRS for Music” went on to say:

We were shocked and disappointed to receive a call late this afternoon informing us of Google’s drastic action which we believe only punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent.

So who do you think is on our side, the good music loving people of the United Kingdom? Who protects our people, the musicians!? Not the fat cats at Google HQ who are running a business for the money… It’s the musicians out there who are skint but still making music that I’m with and that’s who PRS are supposed to serve.

On the 10th of March PRS released this statement:

Talks between “PRS for Music” and Google took place today to discuss the licensing of YouTube following Google’s sudden decision to block premium video content on the service in the UK.

The meeting was positive. We are committed to ensuring our 60,000 songwriter and composers members receive a fair deal and that UK consumers continue to enjoy music videos on YouTube.

And today we have music videos again! So I can go back to compiling playlists of all those tunes that I’ve lost over the years! But one thing rings true. There could be stormy times ahead for Google as struggling musicians try to claw back some of their lost earnings. Good for them I say!

Neil McCormick did a really good article about the issue which appeared on the Daily Telegraph website. I read it after towards the end of the piece but you’d be forgiven for thinking I hadn’t! His take on the issue is that this is simply another step in YouTube’s inevitable demise:

YouTube has already fallen out with Warner Music, leading to the muting of all Warner content. I suggested this might be the beginning of the end of the video site and the rapid escalation of this dispute does little to persuade me otherwise.

I don’t think it is. I don’t think it can be! I think the potential for YouTube as a source of revenue, so desperately needed by UK artists, is too big to be missed and what we could be witnessing here is a landmark moment in the history of online music. The arrangement that Google and PRS arrive at will most likely set the benchmark for all other video sites and if we see more cash for artists because of it then hurray! But one thing’s for sure, the gloves are on!

But one thing I’d always struggled with is the lack of continuity in what I’m listening to, especially with YouTube as I always had to flick to the next track. The solution was staring me in the face. It was a simple feature of YouTube that I’d been missing, the playlist [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpFDzBOKp34]! YouTube regulars will probably be cursing me now and labelling me a pebble for such an over sight!

Here’s a playlist I did just for you!

The Variety of Music Available

I often get a tune in my head for some reason and if I don’t own that tune I’ll fire my machine up type site:youtube.com “name of tune” and it’s usually first. If I don’t know the name I might have to search for a few of the lyrics I know and 99% of the time I can figure it out.

The wealth of music that’s featured on YouTube is huge and it is, for me, the main music search engine. There have been a few reports recently on the relationships that YouTube (a.k.a. Google) has with the major record labels, most noticeably the arrangements with Sony and Warner [http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKTRE51C0NR20090213]. So it would appear that YouTube is perfectly placed to seize control of the current on-line music industry from iTunes.

Is this the future of Music?

So is this the next stage in the development of the music industry? Have we gone from 12inch records to CDs to MP3s to not even owning any physical copy of the music we listen to? Is our entire CD collection going to be in the cloud? Let’s face it this could be an easier way for the record industry to take back some control of what we pay to listen to music. Last.fm charges a subscription and members get to listen to as much as they want so why couldn’t the same principal be applied to a fee for unlimited access to EMI’s entire back catalogue which we can playlist as we wish?

The only draw back could be the mobile music market. iPods still rule the roost in that market and mobile connectivity isn’t quite good enough to reliably stream music. So in the meantime downloads will have to continue but there’s nothing to say that it wont be possible to stream music from almost any location soon enough – making the download obsolete.

One thing’s for sure, as with most technical industries, the online music industry is changing so rapidly it’s nearly impossible to predict what will happen. Fashions change as well, so who knows?! In 20 years time we might all be sat there listening to vinyl on a gramophone claiming that listening to poor quality digital sound is a crime against music!

Here’s a few tips garnered from my thread at WPW:

• Get an unlocked GSM phone from Ebay… much cheaper than through a regular mobile service vendor, plus no contracts to sign and you can change SIM cards very cheaply from country to country.
• Bring your laptop, make sure it has WI-FI capability.
• Try to get an all-encompassing warranty for the laptop in case it breaks down on you somewhere on the road (*I got a special warranty from Future Shop in Canada that allows me to have my Sony VAIO laptop replaced hassle free, and on the spot, at ANY Sony store worldwide).
• Bring at least 2 credit cards for wi-fi time etc. if applicable
• Buy the Pacsafe anti-theft laptop bag
• Buy a retractable travel lock or 3
• Bring an 8GB removable USB memory stick or 3 (*laptops get stolen and broken frequently when travelling internationally… use the memory stick to back up all your data on a regular basis… plus they are small, light, portable and customs agents do not look at them normally) and you can use them in virtually any internet cafe if a crisis arises while you are travelling.
• I’ve had bags stolen when travelling/working abroad before… ALWAYS use the retractable lock to secure your laptop on trains, hotel rooms, cafes… everywhere.
  Remember this… theft of bags abroad etc. is normally much more stealth and advanced than we see in North America… expect the unexpected at all times and never take your eyes off your valuables.
• You’ll also need to get a special program to secure your WI-FI transmissions… Jwire offers a WI-FI security software for $25.00 if I remember correctly.
• Do not go into isolated/remote areas with no internet access or cell phone signal (obviously).
• Always keep in mind the time zone differences when travelling abroad.
• The key issue is whether you can maintain client relationships whilst on the move.

Most of these tips were from rcmedia so thanks for that!

There was also a great link from CBOSLeeds to a post he did with loads more great advice: How to make money on the internet without being a couch potato.

So why not get involved with the movement!?

Something which I’ve begun to look at lately is the concept of creating mini satellite sites on behalf of clients, who don’t always have a large website.

Let’s say for example, a hotel on the English Riviera in south Devon. They currently have a static 8 page website, with no new content coming onto that site.

Of course, each page of their current site is already optimised, hopefully, for a set number of keywords and long tailed keywords too, if they know anything about search engine optimisation. The trouble is often, that they are loathe to changing out these keywords and their respective content, for fear that their competition will overtake them in the search engine rankings and one can certainly empathise with this well founded fear of theirs.

My suggestion therefore is to create a number of satellite minisites for them, the ones I use are based on a WordPress blog theme. Each satellite minisite is targeted for no more than four long tailed keywords. The content I write myself of course paying particular attention to these keywords.

At the bottom of the content is a direct link to their main website, thereby the satellite minisites act as a funnel, driving the traffic from the satellite sites to the main website of the hotel or other business in question.

The rest of the pages on the satellite minisite are kept fully up to date with RSS aggregator feeds, the actual text residing in shadow boxes, so that it appears to Google that the satellite sites are indeed, WordPress blogs, which of course Google loves and ranks well.

This method increases the chances considerably of sending to the main website, plenty of new traffic based on the extra targeted four long tailed keywords. Typically, I’ll create about 10 satellite minisites which opens up the business to use an extra 40 long tailed keywords. And the original website of course, stays intact relieving the client of any fear of losing rank.

Hope all is well in your part of the world.

All the best!

Mark – http://www.iSpyWithMy.com

Hi Mark,

You bring up some interesting points. There are two schools of thought regarding minisites. Some people would suggest that you keep everything on one site and ethically this makes sense. In the example you provide another option would be to build extra pages for the client’s main site. That way you save on domain registration, hosting and you only have to spend time marketing one domain.

But, building extra sites can be a good way to generate links. For example, a lot of my clients have similar areas of business so we create industry theme blogs, for free, on wordpress (any other free blog platform would do). We populate these blogs with good quality industry related news, reviews etc. But we always try to make these blogs decent quality so they will attract natural links and interest. The blogs build PR and we have control of linking to whoever we want from them.  The advantage of doing it this way is you don’t have to reserve the site(s) purely for one client and any further links in that area are easily created. Happy days!

Not a lot of large on-line businesses have success with social media marketing, mainly due to the bitter taste they leave in the mouth of the average social media user. But with a scheme this wacky and plenty of TV coverage CompareTheMarket will probably do very well out of it! I’m writing about it now aren’t I?!

I’ve checked out the CompareTheMeerkat site from an SEO point of view and it’s linked like mad back to the main CompareTheMarket site so with all the viral linking the hoax site is sure to generate plenty of PR through anchor text with the word compare in. This is bound to have a knock-on effect!

The marketing team behind the campaign have also created a FaceBook and Twitter account for Aleksandr Orlov the Russian meerkat. The FaceBook account has so far massed 138,327 fans and no doubt it’s still growing!

One other aspect which now seems to be occurring, and what is a master stroke in my opinion is the Google result when you search for comparethemeerkat – a nice suggestion of your intended destination! It’s a shame it doesn’t do it when you search with spaces but there you go! EDIT: It seems to be a little erratic and doesnt always give you a suggestion!

So, has the cost been worth it to CompareTheMarket? Well the Alexa rankings would suggest so:

The thread is focusing on how I go about deciding levels of competition for different keywords and which ones I target first:

When finding out levels of competition i use the allinurl:”keyword”, allinchor:”keyword” and allintitle:”keyword” searches. Doing all these will give you a better idea of what you’re up against. I don’t usually try and calculate the amount of traffic a keyword is going to provide and just go for the ones that i know are going to bring relevant visitors. Remember quality of visitors is the most important factor to think about.

www.seoers.org/BB/general-search-engine-optimisation-discussion/keyword-analysis-best-method/msg57663/#msg57663

Here’ some info on how I come up with the original set of keywords:

I use suggestions from the client, wordtracker, googles keyword tool, observations of the serps and personal intuition to come up with a list which may contain hundreds of keywords. But every keyword on the list will be relevant and a potential converter. I analyse the numbers from wordtracker and use the various google allin:”keyword” searches to get an idea of competition. The number of returned pages for standard google searches means very little. A low amount of returned pages can be just as competitive as a high number, it all depends on the quality of the top sites. I lay all this down on a spreadsheet and once all the data is in place its easy to figure out the easy keywords and the ones that will require more work.

Just an after thought… Once the above part is done Ill match up the keyword(s) with the urls of the site I’m working on, with the tougher keyword(s) assigned to the more prominent pages – golden keyword(s) on the home page! If its a new build then these keywords are implemented in the site from the start. If it’s an existing site then you have to do several things… figure out if they are already ranking somewhere for the keyword and what page (google often gets it wrong so you may have sort that out), do what you can to improve it and so on…

http://www.seoers.org/BB/general-search-engine-optimisation-discussion/keyword-analysis-best-method/msg57909/#msg57909

But one of the most important factors in figuring out which keywords will work is experience, this could be experience in anything from whether client’s payment warrants the time required to achieve what they want or if you already have a good idea what a site could be capable of. There are many factors which just become second nature and are born from an understand what you a, a client and a site can do:

I don’t throw any keyword away due to the levels of competition or the research I’ve done on the SERPs. All of my clients have “golden keywords” which are bound to have high levels of competition. They get moved to the top of my keyword list and become long term strategies. The ones where my allin searches have revealed weaknesses become the short term goals. If you find there are no pages returned for “allinurl” searches then you usually find there are low levels of competition for allintitle and allinanchor. The three figures that you get from that research become a great indication of how well all the competing sites have been optimised.

So my competition research never results in me dropping keywords, just which ones i target first. It’s worth noting that how long it will take to achieve top rankings for keywords should be discussed with the client from the start. If your client isn’t paying for a lot of your time then it’s going to take longer to accomplish positions for their bigger keywords. If a client is niche then you maybe able to achieve what they want with a low amount of time.

The returned pages amount gives you some idea but i quite often get in situations where a site will appear in the top 10 for a search which results in 10s of millions of returned pages but not for 10s of thousands of returned pages for another search. Most searches pull up noisy pages which are loosely related to the keyword and therefore easy to beat.

KEI and all the research in the world doesn’t mean anything until you use the force… (intuition based on SEO experience and instincts).

http://www.seoers.org/BB/general-search-engine-optimisation-discussion/keyword-analysis-best-method/msg57933/#msg57933

This is where me and boogaloodude start discussing what the only really way to figure out the level of competition facing each keyword and what do you actually do with that list of keywords when you’ve done all the research:

The only way to fully understand the levels of competition you’re facing is to check the back links and seo work for all the top returned pages (the deeper you go the more you know!). But what were talking about are trends and reading between the lines of those trends.

When i do the “allin:” searches I’m not bothered about whether they match the standard searches. For example.. if we were doing research for the keyword “online dating” we’d expect to find high numbers for the “allin:” searches and we’d also expect those numbers to drop as we research the longer tailed equivalents. It’s these drops which become the metric to judge the popularity and therefore competition.

If I end up with a list of 800+ keywords then most of the time they can be grouped; whether this be by location or product/service etc. I’ll work through the keyword list and assign each keyword (or it’s group) to a URL/page; then ill optimise that page (and how it is linked) for those keyword(s). If I’m left with keywords which aren’t assignable then ill leave them in the bank and try and add a page for them at a later date.

http://www.seoers.org/BB/general-search-engine-optimisation-discussion/keyword-analysis-best-method/msg58102/#msg58102

With a lot of my clients there are keywords which they want to rank for no matter what so the level of competition is something that Ill make them aware of and from there I’ll tell them how long and how much work I think it will take to accomplish top rankings.

But the client is interested in their big keywords and the idea of long tail never usually occurs to them. So I’ll target the ones with lowest levels of allin searches first (usually the long tail) and work up the list. As the site improves (links etc) the more competitive keywords can be targeted.

I figure that the allinanchor is a good indication of how many links I’m going to need, the allintitle is a good idea of how many pages I’m actually competing against (there will be pages that rank well without a direct title tag match but the title tag has so much seo weight that a direct match will usually beat most of these) and the allinurl gives me a good idea of how many pages are optimised well for the keyword, well its a clue anyway!

All my allin searches have “speech marks” by the way and I find certain websites will keep appearing so Ill check these out as well and check what we said about backlinks etc. And i always you the force!

http://www.seoers.org/BB/general-search-engine-optimisation-discussion/keyword-analysis-best-method/msg58153/#msg58153
So there’s a little insight into how i do my keyword research. How do you do it? Please feel free to check out the whole thread for some great posts by other SEOers users.

(my bolding)