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Is Matt Mullenweg of WordPress Playing Favorites with Commercial Themes

August 12th, 2010

UPDATED: See End of Post

A few weeks ago Matt Mullenweg of WordPress threatened to take Thesis Developer Chris Pearson to court over his not supporting the GPL Licence. Fortunately they were able to works things out a lawsuit was averted and everything got back to normal … except that Matt Mullenweg might have started to use the commercial resources of Automatic (the parent company of WordPress.com) to convert users away from Thesis, and he’s pulled Chris Pearson’s free thesis theme cutline from the wordpress archives …

Up until a few days ago several high profile blogs like LaughingSquid.com and PaulStamatiou.com were running on Thesis, now they are running on the commercial theme Genesis. Normally someone changing a blog theme’s isn’t a big deal, however in this case there is more than meets the eye, lets look at the css file for those two sites (example 1, example 2)

In case things change (yeah I’ve done this before) here are screen shots highlighting the interesting parts:

What the two lines in those two files say are “The Automatic Theme Team”. So either someone at Automatic (the company who was inches away from suing Thesis) is footing the bill for converting people off of Thesis onto other themes, or someone is doing a decent job setting up Matt Mullenweg. I’m not a lawyer and don’t know the legalities involved, but stealing customers from someone you are about to sue and doing free work to get them to switch to a competitor is a pretty unethical behavior in my book, so if it’s not Automatic doing the work, WordPress might want to follow up with those sites and see who is setting them up to look like the bad guys.

But isn’t Matt Mullenweg a stand up guy, I mean he built this great software called wordpress, he made it free for all of us. True Matt did create and release wordpress, but he’s also been caught with his hand in the cookie jar in the past. In fact the offenses were so bad he got wordpress kicked completely out of Google for being an adsense spammer.

Back in 2005 WordPress was caught running auto-generated content on subdomains with some adsense. This is against Google’s guidelines and caused Google to take wordpress out of the index until the spam was removed. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t think Matt is the saint that he has fooled most of you into believing he is today.

So which is it Matt are you just being a vindictive vengeful person, or is someone setting you up to take the fall?

If you want to respond here I’ll post your response in full (comments are turned off), or if you do it somewhere else let me know and I’ll link to it …

Here is Matt’s reply

UPDATE: After this post was written is seems Matt Mullenweg had his henchmen remove one of Chris Pearson’s old theme’s Cutline from the WordPress Theme Library, a move which has pissed off several users as wordpress just broke their themes. I’m not the only one who thinks it’s too much of a coincidence (see Cutthroat for coraline, and Coraline the changing way). Way to keep it classy Matt.

UPDATE 2: Mullenweg says it wasn’t a coincidence at all … WOW is all I have to say

<disclosure>In an effort to be clear, I am a Thesis Affiliate. I haven’t used the Genesis theme, and don’t have an opinion about it one way or the other, and to be honest don’t even know runs it.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Is Matt Mullenweg of WordPress Playing Favorites with Commercial Themes

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How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead

August 11th, 2010

One of the more powerful tools an SEO can use when setting up or fixing an existing website is siloing or themeing. However, when I mention this to beginner or intermediate SEO’s, they are often confused about how and where to start. In this multi-part series, I’ll be giving you some examples of how I use the technique.

Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine what you would want your site links to look like in the SERPS …

Let’s take a step back and understand what siloing is. Basically, it’s dividing your website into high level themes or vertical sections, then using information architecture and strategic internal linking to control the flow of link equity or pagerank where we want it to go.

First step: determine your top 4-6 keyword terms. If you have a large trusted site you can do more, but 4-6 is a good place to start. These should be high level head terms, usually 2-3 words. These are not longtail terms. Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine what you would want your site links to look like in the SERPS. For this example I will use a fictional Disney World travel website. These would be my top choices:

Hotels
Vacations
Travel Tips
Information

Ideally these would be the words, tabs, or options in the masthead of the site. Here’s where things get tricky. Within the context of the site, “hotels” has meaning, but to the external world it doesn’t. It’s extremely unlikely the internal anchor text “hotels” will enable us to rank for hotels. Additionally “hotel reviews” is going to be a much better converting term, so here’s what we really want in our masthead:

Disney World Hotel Reviews
Disney World Vacations
Disney World Travel Tips
Disney World Information

… there is no good reason for any search engine to crawl your shopping cart … ever …

Ok now those terms are ideal and exactly what we want to have in our sitelinks. However the tabs/anchor text in the masthead will end up being really wide, or two-three rows, which looks kinda text-heavy. So when you are in this situation I suggest using an image replacement technique. Now this is not a clear cut issue, and some people at Google don’t endorse it. So if you are going to use it make the image exact or very close to the text being replaced. The more different it is, the more likely it is to get you in trouble. Also use an established image replacement technique, like Leahy/Langridge Method or Gilder/Levin Method. Unless someone at Google wants to answer the image replacement question without a side order of waffles (*cough* Matt *cough*) we are left to find our own way in the dark.

You are going to need a link to the homepage for usability purposes. I’m not a fan of using the word “home.” I prefer an obvious icon of a house and an image replacement with the site name. I’m assuming you have a logo in your masthead–again use image replacement for the name of your website to link back to your homepage.

If you are going to have a blog, use image replacement again. This time, try using “Disney World Blog” or “Disney World Travel Blog”–something that matches your content nicely.

I’m going to ruffle some feathers here by saying you probably don’t want customer service, privacy, or contact us in the masthead. Every link up there dilutes the emphasis, so put them in the footer. This isn’t 1998: it’s unlikely your website is the first website the user has ever visited. They will know enough to scroll down.

If you have an onsite cart, you can put that there. It’s where Amazon has trained us to look for it. I would nofollow the link. Not because I’m trying to conserve pagerank, but because there is no good reason for any search engine to crawl your shopping cart … ever.

Resist the temptation to add more links. Or to add a second row. Or a sub row at the bottom of your masthead. You will be rewarded.

So what are the takeaways here:

Put only your top keywords in the masthead. Remove all other links.
Use the the full keyword you wan to rank for, not a shortened version that makes sense within the site.
Use well known image replacement techniques to fit longer keywords in.
Replace “home” with an image using image replacement

Next in the series, How To Silo Your Website: The Breadcrumb.
photo credit: Let Ideas Compete

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead

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Vzaar Video Hosting Service Review

August 10th, 2010

The following is a sponsored post.

For this post I’m going to be taking a look a third party video player from Vzaar.com. As Google continues to emphasize videos with universal search, not including them as part of your overall search marketing strategy is probably not a smart move. In the past Google would only show video results from high- reliability websites like Youtube, MetaCafe ,and Video Jug. However, in recent months, you can host videos on your own site as long as the hosting is reliable.

In the past people would upload videos to places like Youtube and cross the project off their to-do list and call it a day. The problem was, at the end of every video, Youtube would show a related video to keep viewers watching. If you were a merchant selling a product, someone selling information like an ebook, or someone trying to get people to sign up to a mailing list, these related videos were a distraction that kept people from entering your conversion funnel. If you use third party players like the one from Vzaar, you don’t have that issue to worry about. Another issue with Youtube is they have started showing advertising overlays, so you never know when your competition might show up on your video.

Vzaar has worked with some large companies like ToysRUs, Walmart, and Budweiser. You can see samples of other clients on their showcase page. They also have a lot of other features like player skins, video settings, ecommerce, analytics, ebay integration, mail chimp integration, and more. You can see the full list on the features page. You can take and upload your videos as you would any other video service without any special equipment. A computer webcam, digital camera, or mobile phone will work fine (my video came from the front facing camera of an iphone 4)

This is a paid service, so it’s for people and businesses who are professionals. It’s not the place to upload the funny videos of your cat in the bathtub. They have a limited free trial so you can give it a try to see if you like it. Professional plans start at $49 a month for 50GB of video playback. You can get more information about it and other plans on the pricing page.

If you’ve tried using videos in the past and not gotten the conversions you were looking for and were losing people to more Youtube videos, this is a service you should probably look at. You can get more info from Vzaar.com.

The preceding has been a sponsored post. Find out more information about sponsored posts

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Vzaar Video Hosting Service Review

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Interview with Loren Feldman of 1938 Media

August 7th, 2010

For today’s post were going to be talking to Loren Feldman of 1938 Media. Hi Loren for my readers who might not know you can you tell us a little about yourself, your company, and what you do.

I make videos for companies and people. I also make them for my website.

Many people who read my blog know you best for your satirical puppet video about the tech industry and it’s celebrities, like this video of Mark Zuckerberg of facebook

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you think that silicon valley and tech blogger taking themselves so seriously is part of what makes your videos stand out?

We all are. Tech is now like entertainment.

There’s no denying that you’re a funny person, but your also a smart guy. Back when the Bill Gates and Jerry Sienfeld commercials you where way ahead of the curve on understanding what was going on. What gives you an edge that a lot of tech pundits don’t seem to have?

Honesty.

Some people have said that the tech space is very spotty when it comes to real journalists. If you could change one thing about the tech bloggers and how they cover the industry what would it be?

So much of it is cut and paste and flat out scraping. They all are rehashing the same nonsense.

On the positive side who are two or three journalists, online blogs or news sources, that you admire or respect?

Kara Swisher, CNET, I like Wired lately.

Let’s change gears you have a conference in New York City coming up on August 14th called the Audience Conference, can you tell me a little bit about it.

It’s a learning experience on how to make your business more engaging to your audience by working with artists who deal with an audience up close and personal. We all want our business to be engaging and capture and audience ie.customers so I figured lets mash it all up and get some great ideas.

I spoke with a lot of people who went to last years show and said how different it was from traditional conferences. Can you tell me what makes your show different from the other shows.

I think it a lot more fun. We are also the least expensive.

Looking at your speaker list I can see you have quite a few marquee name presenters, can you tell me about them, and what they will be talking about?

All the comedians will do a set and then a Q&A about their experiences with an audience. The tech people will be talking about their tools and experience in dealing with an audience online.

If there where one or two things you hope that everyone who attends your conference could take back and put to use what would it be?

To always remember their is now an audience of some kind for your business. How do you best engage them.

Any closing thoughts you’d like to leave us with?

Just to remember to keep your eyes open. Thanks.

Thanks Loren for taking the time to talk to me today. If you’d like to read and see more of Loren’s work head over to 1938 Media. If you are going to be in the New York City area on August 14th you should think about attending the Audience Conference tickets are available online.
Photo via adrants

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Interview with Loren Feldman of 1938 Media

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Book Review – You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

August 4th, 2010

I recently came across an article in paper magazine by Jaron Lanier which helped me discover his new book “You are Not a Gadget.” While I do read a lot of good books, this is really one of the few great books I have read in a while. I liked this book so much I have recommended it to some of my friends. For those of you who may not know him, Jaron Lanier is an old school technologist involved in computing and artificial intelligence programming and systems when I was barely old enough to drive a car. He is a contemporary of Ted Nelson (who coined the term hypertext), a visionary whose ideas would have dramatically changed how the online world would have developed. I can remember reading articles by and about them on my lunch hour in Wired magazine (Ted Nelson, Jaron Lanier). Suffice to say he’s a smart cookie who’s been around the block a few times. He is not filled with wide eyed naiveté like so many who are the darlings of Silicon Valley nowadays.

What makes this book so interesting is that it offers an insider’s view of what’s wrong with the valley dweller’s current approach to themselves, their lives, and technology. He puts forth the theory that modern day technologists are no different than religious zealots of the middle ages. They were willing to sacrifice themselves for god and church; similarly, web 2.0 weenies are willing to sacrifice themselves to the coming computer singularity, hoping they live on in eternity in the machine. It’s heady stuff, but good stuff none the less.

While he does make some direct criticisms of Google, he makes a lot more criticisms that apply to so many technology centric companies today (which may explain why one Googler I recommended the book to winced at he mention of his name). To get the impression that book is a criticism of technology would be wrong: Lanier uses and is a fan of technology. He doesn’t believe in subjugating ourselves, our identities, our sense of worth, and our values to the machine or the algorithm. He’s more of a modern day humanist.

Now, I don’t agree with everything and every point Lanier makes, but I do agree with a lot of them. Where I do disagree with him, I can concede that he does have a well thought out reasoned viewpoint, even if I disagree. Personally I think this is a book everyone involved in the technology space should read. I wish I had the ability to make it mandatory reading for everyone in the valley and who works for Google because, to be honest, while they may not agree with him, they need to hear his message more than anyone else.

I wish I had the ability to make it mandatory reading for everyone in the valley and who works for Google because, to be honest, while they may not agree with him, they need to hear his message more than anyone else…

I was reading this book at the same time as Cognitive Surplus from Clay Shirky. The two books were a nice contrast to one another: one was a bit more hopeful and the other was a bit more foreboding. I think it’s important for intelligent people to see both sides of the story and not just read books or news that they agree with or get spoon fed personalized news feeds. It will be interesting to see where Nicholas Carr’s book What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains fits in (review coming soon).

IMHO if you are involved in any way in the tech field, this is a book you should read. If you were to read only one book this summer, this would be it. I believe so strongly in this book and getting its message to the right people that if Robert Scoble or Gabe Rivera send me the email they use for amazon I’ll buy them both a gift copy (standard or kindle format). This is a book that changed me as a person: it solidified ideas that have been floating around in my head for years and allowed me to move forward on a lot of those ideas.
photo credit: _ltwp

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Book Review – You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

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Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors July 2010

July 30th, 2010

I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn’t be regular posts here.

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Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week

Interested in seeing your message here? There are banner and RSS advertising options available find out more information. Be sure to check out our new Sponsored post option.

Here’s a list of some other programs and products I reccomend

Thesis Theme for WordPress – Hands down the best theme on the market right now, read my Thesis Theme for WordPress Review.

Scribe SEO – Improve your blog posts with this easy to use built in tool, read my Scribe SEO Review.

KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites, read an Interview with Michael Streko.

TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price, read my Tiger Tech Review.
photo credit: Seattle Miles (offline until Tuesday)

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors July 2010

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Badges & Widgets Can Take Your Rankings to the Top!

July 29th, 2010

SEOmoz has mentioned it before in their link building videos that badges and widgets are a great way to get links, but can they really help you get to the top for very competitive terms? I believe so and have some proof to demonstrate it. Most badges I have seen are some type of image that is hyperlinked to the owner’s web site. I’m sure everyone would agree that there is some value in image links, but probably not a whole lot. The big question is how can you turn this into a phenomenal ranking boosting tool? It’s easy and I will show you how one company has been successful at it for a couple of years now. This article may create a lot of discussion, but the numbers speak for themselves.

A normal badge would look something like this:

The company I am using in my example is called Authorize.net. They are an Internet gateway service used by online stores for credit card processing. What they have done is created a badge merchants can place on their web site showing their customers that they are a valid merchant. The badge is called a verification seal. The difference in what they have done is they added a text link below their badge. I’m sure a lot of merchants are smart enough to remove this promotional code when they download it, but many do not. According to Open Site Explorer, over 10,000 root domain names have not done so.

Their badge looks like this, which “online payments” is a hyperlink pointing to their home page and the badge itself is pointing to a page that verifies the merchant:

They say the best kind of links are in the content and Google is great at determining this while giving very little value to links of this nature. This may be very true, but it is definitely working for this group. If anything, you should consider implementing it if you can make it work for you. If you are thinking this may only work temporarily, let me say this. Authorize.net did not have great rankings 3 or 4 yrs ago. I started watching them implement this and over time their rankings started to climb. A year or two ago they moved to the top on a few very competitive keywords and haven’t dropped since.

Lets look at the numbers shall we?

Click to Enlarge

Obviously this doesn’t work for every web site due to the inherited requirements, such as having a badge people want to link to. However, the ones that can take advantage of this could really exploit it. Even SEOmoz could do something like this as well with their badges. There may be a question of professionalism for some, but definitely a nice topic to debate on. Please share your thoughts.

Curtis Stevens is the founder of Gotmerchant.com, a credit card processing service provider. They help merchants accept credit cards or switch processors if they’re not happy with their current provider. They also specialize in a few unique products such as the Casio cash register or a wireless credit card machine.

photo credit: Foto Blog SMR

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Badges & Widgets Can Take Your Rankings to the Top!

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How To Get Customer Reviews on Your Website

July 27th, 2010

While UGC and Reviews can often be a mixed blessing, as long as Google continues to reward rich snippets with enhanced visual listings, it’s probably a good idea to try to make reviews part of your website strategy.For those of you who haven’t seen rich snippets and reviews in action, here’s a sample of what they currently look like

To qualify for this program you have to have reviews, format your data using microformats, and submit your website for inclusion in the rich snippet program. While it may change in the future, currently you need to have site level approval, so let’s clear the hardest hurdle: getting the review data.

Your first and best source for reviews should be your existing customer base. Contact your most recent customers and ask them to provide a review about their last sale with you. While some may provide you with the information right off the bat, most people will need an incentive to spend the time sending you a review. My suggestion is to offer a future discount to everyone who sends you a review. Or put everyone who sends you a review into a contest for a larger prize (check your local laws before getting involved in any contests). Going forward, you should make soliciting reviews part of the order process. First they get an order confirmation, then a shipping confirmation, then a review request.

This works perfectly fine if you have customer data, but what if you’re an affiliate? Affiliates don’t have that information, so what do you do? You’ll have to get creative and think out of the box. Look for reviews on Kitchen Aid Mixers. Take out an adwords ad on Kitchen Aid Mixer attachments or extras looking for reviews. Your approach might look something like this …

You could take out reviews on Kitchen Aid Mixers but it would probably be cost prohibitive. Don’t limit yourself just to Adwords: take advantage of systems that invade people’s privacy … er … offer really good targeting like Facebook.

Another suggestion would be to use forums. Looking for Disney Hotel Reviews? Inquire on any of the popular Disney forums about taking out an ad. There are plenty of people who could be easily incentivized to share extremely in depth reviews. You could also use social media services like Twitter with intelligent searches. Want to know how people feel about iPad games–here you go. You’ll have to filter for quality, but asking someone if you can re-use their tweet as a review is pretty painless. If you’re running a local geo based website, you can try going old school and take out an ad in your local newspaper. Again, you’ll be a lot more successful if you provide some sort of incentive to get people to give you what you want.

I’m not going to be naive and tell you there’s no such thing as fake reviews because we know that’s not true. That said, if it’s a practice you are going to engage in, do so with caution: the laws are pretty fuzzy and those fake reviews could come back to haunt you down the future. The real hurdle is getting that initial critical mass of reviews to jump start the process. Once you clear that hurdle, it becomes a lot easier

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

How To Get Customer Reviews on Your Website

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Directory Journal – List your website in our growing web directory today.
Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week
Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

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Interview with Steven Wyer of ReputationAdvocate.com

July 27th, 2010

The following is a sponsored post.

For this post we’re going to be talking with Steven Wyer of Reputation Advocate. Steve, for my readers who aren’t familiar with your firm, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Reputation Advocate started in 2006 and is based just outside of Nashville, Tennessee in Williamson County. I have a deep history in media, marketing and software development and came to ORM out of a personal need. I was involved in protracted litigation and my own search results didn’t reflect the complete reality of the situation. At that time, there were very few options that addressed the needs of small business and individuals. While major corporations utilized online tools to defend themselves, solutions for those that fell under the Fortune 1000 were hard to find. Because of previous businesses I have owned, I put a team of Internet marketing professionals together and Reputation Advocate began to develop online tools and solutions with the goal of influencing and controlling the search engine results. Four years later we have been fortunate in representing business and individuals throughout North America, Latin America and Europe.

Online Reputation Management or ORM is a growing industry, and as more personal and private information makes its way onto the web it’s not always flattering. What types of clients does Reputation Advocate provide services to and what are some common problems encountered?

In the early years, most of our client projects were aimed at a handful of slander sites and blogs. They had high traffic, are very well optimized to rank, are magnets for organic back links and offered little in the way of presenting a balanced perspective for persons that they targeted. In 2010 the Reputation Advocate client base is much more diverse and the online violations now take on many forms. Reputation Advocate tracks several hundred complaint sites and there is a linear growth to these that is quite concerning. As public records become digitized and offered through the Internet, professionals can be repeatedly confronted with issues they assumed were addressed long ago. This content is now delivered at the top of someone’s search results and the ramifications can be very negative.

Businesses are now routinely attacked, and many times these violations come from former employees and competitors. Most businesses now have a presence on the Internet. They have focused on content and graphics and some clients are even employing SEO and PPC campaigns. However, problems appear because a broader perspective relating to online defense has not been considered.

Even though most people believe that they are careful about what they post about themselves online, that may not always true. Casual acquaintances, business associates and even family members might post content that is sensitive, untrue and damaging. Do you see that becoming a more serious problem in the future?

People have become much more aware of social media and with that awareness has come a certain power that has not existed before. 500 million Facebook members believe that they are “safe” and yet Reputation Advocate has seen many instances over the past six months that allow us to draw different conclusions. Hundreds of millions of blogs exist and everyone claims the First Amendment right to free speech. The difference is that you cannot confront your accuser, resolve differences in private and deal with conflict. When you are violated online you may never know who the attacker is. Client’s can speculate but very few individuals come to the point of confronting the attacker. Currently the courts have a very narrow body of law that specifically addresses these issues. While there have been several precedent-setting cases, most people attacked do not have the financial ability and stamina needed to even attempt to defend themselves. Until fundamental federal laws are adapted to meet our digital world, we believe that this problem will only escalate.

Let’s switch gears and talk about the corporate end of things. What are some of the common problems Reputation Advocate sees for your corporate clients?

As I mentioned before, most businesses now have a simple online presence. The Reputation Advocate clients we hear from most are those that believe that the digital world plays by the same ground rules that have been generally accepted business practices for decades. Traditional member organizations like the Better Business Bureau and the National Federation of Independent Business have offered channels for communication, conflict resolution and business validation. The Internet bypasses all of that. What we hear is that “It isn’t fair” and that these online attack practices “lack integrity”, and it’s absolutely true! The whole landscape for business has changed forever. Either businesses accept this new reality or they open themselves up in ways they cannot even comprehend. Businesses can actually lose their online identity, have others misrepresent themselves and even have their name associated with terms like fraud, scam, thief and worse. The only way to defend a business is to adopt a new perspective. Companies need to proactively create, monitor and manage their online reputation and Reputation Advocate is seeing an increase in the number of businesses hiring us before they are attacked online in order to build a defense for their online reputation.

As companies become more involved with social media and communication on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, the potential for an error or mistake increases. What are some guidelines companies can set up that will allow them to participate in social media without creating a reputation management problem for themselves down the road?

To begin with, every individual and business in the United States should read the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) and the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Many businesses make key assumptions regarding rights and protections that are not correct. Once it is understood that the current laws put in place to protect Internet service providers may actually act against the protections that could be provided to individuals and business it wakes everyone up.

Next, monitor keywords. You will learn a great deal about your online reputation by simply utilizing Google Alerts. Monitor your name, your company name, company officers, products, brands, competitors and your industry as a whole. As the old saying goes: knowledge is power. Also, make sure that you have formal, legal trademarks filed to protect your brands. If there is blatant slander against a trademarked name, a Takedown Demand can be sent to the hosting company based on trademark infringement.

Finally, the most basic of online defense strategies is to own the URLs that represent your company and your brand. Reputation Advocate consults with companies often and it seems that they almost never consider this, the most vulnerable area of all. Simply put, if you don’t own it, someone else can.
Reputation Advocate offers services both for reputation repair and reputation monitoring. Not everyone needs to monitor what’s being said about them online, but a lot of us do and more will as time goes on. When do you think people need to start being concerned about their online reputations?

The most direct answer to your question is right now! We believe that every individual and business should be concerned about what is presented about them online. The old adage “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” absolutely holds true for a person’s online identity. There are a number of good general monitoring tools that can deliver comprehensive reports detailing every time you or your company are mentioned online. For most people this is just too much information. The sheer volume can overload small businesses and consume a major part of most days for business professionals. What most people need to be aware of is the negative information that can be found. Reputation Advocate offers these services as part of a comprehensive ongoing online defense.

What is some advice you can give people about preventing reputation management problems or minimizing them right out of the gate?

You must be vigilant. Just because a negative listing is not easily found today, does not mean that it will not begin ranking next week, additionally, you don’t always know what long tail search terms people use when doing research on you or your company. Reputation Advocate’s best advice is to establish your online presence immediately before you find the need to defend yourself. Also remember that whatever information you place on a social site can be used against you. This goes for contact information, pictures, family information and the names and titles of employees. For headhunters this is low hanging fruit. Slander has the ring of integrity to it when it includes specific information and many times this information comes from the client themselves. Always have the perspective that every piece of content that exists about you online is available to anyone at any time to be used for any purpose by those who know how to use it.

How does someone know they are in over their head and that it’s time to use a professional service like Reputation Advocate to help with the problem?

In general, by the time a person or company discovers an online attack, outside help is immediately needed. One reason for this is that when someone is slandered they react and want to be vindicated. Generally speaking their response, which is usually triggered by emotion, almost always hurts their online reputation rather than help it. The solution usually lies in a solid planned response that may not provide the immediate gratification of a fiery response but will deliver a stable long-term solution. Simply creating a bunch of social sites and hoping to hide the negative listing(s) does not work anymore and nicely asking for the content to be taken down seldom works. Online violations are not easy to address. There is no such thing as a “silver bullet” or cookie cutter solution. Companies that offer services with blanket marketing statements may not approach a client solution comprehensively. It is always easier to sell then to deliver. By partnering with the right online reputation management firm, over time a client can have confidence in a solid online defense that protects the most valuable thing they own; their name.

While every situation is different, what’s a reasonable timeframe to expect that it will take Reputation Advocate to “clean things up”?

While we read marketing materials that indicate conclusive permanent ORM results in a matter of days, our experience suggests that there is simply no definitive answer to this question. The biggest companies involved in ORM suggest 30 day results. We benefit from these claims when clients contact Reputation Advocate after being disillusioned by unrealistic expectations and disappointing results.

Everyone who contacts us receives a free initial evaluation. During this evaluation we review the negative listing(s) and their SERPs, and after this is completed we can provide them with a reasonable timeframe about when to expect to see new positive listings on page 1 and when they can expect the negative listings to begin to be pushed down. Clients are involved in reviewing content and the initial collaborative effort is an important aspect of a project for most of our clients. Our average client begins seeing results within two to three weeks of beginning a project.

Let’s look to the future a little bit … what are some interesting things you see on the horizon in your space … and how different do you see things in the next 12-18 months?

As I mentioned earlier, there is an absolute linier progression of growth as it relates to unwanted content for all sectors; business, professional and every day people. The damage is real. As additional historical information is digitized and social sites continue to expand, the need for services like Reputation Advocate provides will also multiply. The wild cards are held by the search engines and the dominant social sites. With Google changing algorithms daily and the projected growth for sites like Facebook and Twitter, an ever-growing percentage of business will be driven by SERPs. Congress is scrambling to address privacy concerns and foreign governments are asking for meetings with the CEOs of private social media companies. This digital landscape changes daily and those providing ORM will continue to adapt.

If the question is asked, “Where is this leading us?” everyone within this industry peers into the same dimly lit glass. I don’t believe many people have any true sense of what this means to the average business owner or college graduate looking for a job. What I do believe is that the need to take action is immediate, that those who take control of their online reputation will defend themselves better than those who ignore the inevitable and that all of us will be viewed increasingly as who we appear to be online and less by a more thoughtful examination of our business, our character and our lives. We are not going to stop this train.

Thanks Steven for taking the time to talk to me about Reputation Advocate. If you have any questions please contact Reputation Advocate or Steve Wyer at 888-229-0746 or request a free consultation regarding your online reputation.

The preceding has been a sponsored post. Find out more information about sponsored posts

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Interview with Steven Wyer of ReputationAdvocate.com

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CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.
BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
Page1Hosting – Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99.
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Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
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Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

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You’re All Wrong! Paid Links From Offtopic Sites Do Count

July 24th, 2010

“Paid links from off topic sites get devalued and flagged.” A common claim by otherwise savvy SEOs such as Ross Hudgens.

Ross, would you take three links from the Wall Street Journal if its reporters write about internet marketing?

Would you buy those links?

I would.

Both for the direct traffic (duh) and the SEO boost (duh).

The page is relevant, the readers are interested in the field… what more do you want?

Guys like Ross seem to think that if a site isn’t on your topic, then you don’t get any value. The reasoning is that their site is irrelevant, so the links are bogus.

That’s obviously wrong.

For starters, the Yahoo directory isn’t on any topic. Yet the links are good.

Second, even if the regular audience isn’t core/interested, the author obviously is.

Last I checked, the test for a link’s acceptability to Google was editorial discretion. Not readership discretion.

Lastly, sites are dynamic. You can start out writing about your mother and then end up talking about my mother. Then you no longer have a site. But I digress…

(Those of you who care about paid links and text links, check out my 101 tips on how to buy text link ads.

If that’s your bag, you’re probably also advanced enough for an advanced SEO book free chapter. Also, I personally liked Mike’s bit on buying links for third party sites.)

p.s. I know that the title should have been, ‘Can Count’ not ‘Do Count’, because links from offtopic sites in a sidebar aren’t getting you anywhere. So sometimes, paid links from offtopic sites don’t work. But “do” has more pop to it than the timid “can” … it’s a style issue.
photo credit: TheTruthAbout…

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

You’re All Wrong! Paid Links From Offtopic Sites Do Count

Advertisers:

Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.
CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.
BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
Page1Hosting – Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99.
Directory Journal – List your website in our growing web directory today.
Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week
Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

Go to Source

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