http://twitter.com/#!/TheRealBoydo

Here’s the donation link: http://www.justgiving.com/Scott-Boyd/

Come on SEO’s – get yer cash out!

Cheers

Scott

…don’t first present me with an image of three dirty great big hippos bathing, farting and pooing in my cereal bowl!

Kk thx.

Scott

One of the projects I’ve been working on has just launched – Zero Strategy, a news site for the UK marketing folks.  It’s something I had planned for ages but the development took a little longer than expected.  Subscribe to the news feed here.

The idea behind the site is that I’ve felt for a while that many companies don’t have a great deal of communication between their marketing efforts (due to departmental divides or different suppliers handling the work).  I.e. “zero strategy” connecting your efforts.

An example could be your PR agency producing work that doesn’t really benefit your SEO efforts as well as it could – perhaps not taking advantage of social media, or even something simple like not linking to your new content or product launches.  So I thought a place to chat about these issues was worth a shot.

The site is new (although news content has been produced for it for a while now – it was in basic blog form for a while) – so the discussion forums are pretty quiet and the directory doesn’t have many listings (although I am spending some time populating it just now – feel free to submit your own site!).

I have the news content produced by an agency so there’s quite a few articles being published each month and I’m planning on supplementing this with my own articles (more like guides than news though).

I’d appreciate any feedback you have on it and if anyone really wants to register on the forums to help kick things off that would be cool!

Cheers

Scott

I stopped using my MINT card a while back and cancelled the card.  Or so I thought.  Apparently me cancelling the card but not telling them specifically to cancel the card protection plan means that the annual payment comes off.  OK so that’s my fault for not outlining that I would no longer need the card protection plan for the card that I was cancelling….

So that charge goes on the MINT card and a few months pass without me paying it (one of the reasons I cancelled the card is that they tend to go a few months without sending a bill out then send one with loads of charges on it) – the card I haven’t been using for 4 months and thought I cancelled now has a balance of £60 on it.  Not that I’m particularlly bothered about £60 here or there, but I do object to paying out money that I shouldn’t be paying out.

So I call up MINT and complain – they take the charges off and cancel the card protection.  Fine.

Next month I get a bill for the proection plan again and another late payment charge.  I’m getting annoyed now so I call up and rant at the first person I can eventually get through to – the nippy bitch decided to have a go back so we had a nice 20 minute debate over the phone which resulted in me telling them where to go and that I wasn’t paying the charge. 

I think her attitude and raised voice must have made its way back to her supervisor (who she wouldn’t let me speak to at the time) because a few days later I get a call from her department to sort the situation out.  You know the type of call centre staff – cute sounding girl in her twenties that kinda comes across that if you do as she says she might put out…well she got the payment from me (minus the charges – which the other less personable member of staff had been adamant they couldn’t remove).  OK I’m a sucker but it was taking up too much of my time and frankly for £30 it’s not worth it.

So I made a point of clearing up everything – there would definitely be no more charges on the card – the card was definitely cancelled and they definitely would send me out a letter saying this.

This morning I got another bill through from MINT.  Only £1.21 – interest and payment protecton that went on the card a few days after I had cleared the entire balance.  I call up, determined not to be quite as beligerant as I was the last time (in fairness the last time I called the overdue payment people – this time was standard customer services) and tried to clear it up.  Apparently the nice girl who took my money from me and assured me that was the end of it, failed to mention that the interest and payment protection would be calculated a few days later…

I paid it – £1.21 certainly isn’t worth wasting time over.  Let’s see what else I get from them – I’m assured (again) that the card is definitely cancelled, no more payments will be taken on it and I can finally leave MINT forever!

This is an open letter to MINT.  Please, please, please let me stop using your service.  I want to leave!  I’ve been trying to leave for over 6 months now and you just won’t let me.  You tell me I can go then when I think I’m safe you come back into my life and take my money.  You’re like a horrid ex-girlfriend that just can’t get over my departure!  I know, I know – you want me back!  But it’s over – just deal with it and move on.  You were just far too expensive; too moody; too unpredictable – I need my space.  Please, MINT, leave me in peace!

MG

Scott

Yes, that’s only a few weeks when Gary Robinson, Marketing Manager for Jobsite.co.uk came here and said, “[we] by no means condone spamming”.  Yes, this is Jobsite.co.uk who on their own website say, “we don’t like spam and we don’t want to send you any either”.

I have to admit it though.  Having one agency spam one of my sites in January and then another agency spam via another site in February is a little unfortunate!   I’m fairly certain they aren’t part of a concerted effort to personally spam me!  If it was, it would go down in history as a piss poor marketing campaign seeing I’m self employed and don’t need the services of a job board lol!

Come on though guys – this is really lame!

It’s one thing to put a public gloss on what your company does – it’s another to outright state you aren’t spamming when you clearly are!

It wasn’t even particularly good spam.  I’ve had more sohpisticated spam from bots on the forums!  While the email was nicely written and not particularly offensive (the poor girl just emailed the wrong person), again it was making wild claims – “we regularly keep up to speed with your blog”.   Lol sorry, it’s just well optimised for a couple of random terms – there aren’t very many posts to keep up with!

I guess it wasn’t just dumb luck that BBPR emailed me – I am a SEO after all and if your PR agency uses Google SERPs to contact people, it was inevitable they would have found a site belonging to an SEO.  So even if Jobsite did brief BBPR not to contact my other site, the chances area they would have found one of my other sites.

So Jobsite – please, please stop spamming me!  Pretty please with a cherry on top. 

I’m still waiting for an apology from your SEO agency – you can add your PR agency to the list as well.   In the meantime, I’ll mull over just how many of my network of job, business, marketing and news sites I want to cross post this on.

Scott

But I thought this might be a useful little exercise that would serve as an example for anyone reading this – you might be able to take some ideas away that could help you in the future.

What you can take from this post:

• Some ideas on how to research competitors.
• Some tips on how not to manage your online public relations!

  

Follow the paper trail of SEO services

The first port of call is a Google search for the name / URL and some additional keyword qualifiers like “SEO”.  Here: “Jobsite.co.uk + SEO“.

Only a couple thousand results so naturally my first post on the subject is there up top.  A quick browse through the first few pages reveals some information:

• Listings on “SEO directories” (i.e. directories that really have no traffic value and are only used for SEO purposes)
• A Webmasterworld thread from back in 2001, which leads to
• The Wayback machine page from 2001 – very interesting – spammy doorway page!

This all took no more than 10 minutes to find out just now (and yeh, I should have probably done it a few weeks ago when the subject was active).

  

Lesson learned – don’t claim to be clean if you have been naughty in the past!

Let’s not tar Jobsite with the spam brush because they were spamming back in 2001.  If anything, some credit is due there for being at the forefront of emerging technologies which is a hell of a lot more than most companies say.

Also, for most companies, worrying about past attempts at spamming doesn’t really need to be a public relations issue – it was 6 years ago – no need to be concerned about that.

But, if you are going to come out with public statements like:

Both the agency and ourselves take an ethical approach to our search marketing and by no means condone spamming. We have been adamant about this throughout our 12 years in search.

…then perhaps you should be sure you haven’t actually spammed in the past.  It’s not an “ethical” issue – it’s just about sending out a clear message when it comes to PR.  Given this part of the statement from Jobsite is technically wrong, I think it leads to the conclusion that the rest of the statement could be questionable.

Not a big deal – the point is that there’s a lot of stuff that can be traced back through search engines so if you are going to try and solve a situation with a definitive statement, you should be reasonably sure that what you are saying can’t be contradicted.

  

On the trail of Jobsite’s SEO agency…

This will be a tougher nut to crack.  Chances are there is no obvious paper trail between Jobsite and the SEO agency they are using.  A lot of agencies will circulate press releases announcing relationships with new clients which is an easy way to make the connection, but it isn’t always the case as some clients don’t want this exposure.

Starting this search, there are a few assumptions that can be made:

• Chances are the agency is using the same or similar link building methods for their own site as for their clients.
• This may include the same directory submissions, article distribution, PR distribution or deep linking to key pages on the site.
• Chances are the agency is UK based.

While these are unlikely to give us a definitive answer, I can use these assumptions to narrow my search a little and see what I find.

I don’t really have time to do all this just now, but I’ll will be doing it at some point and will probably post back with some details.  I thought it was worth putting this down on a post for reference.

Researching websites can be a time consuming affair, but if you do take the time you can reap plenty of rewards and it is a very useful skill for an SEO to have.  For example, a clever use of search can help you:

• Research competitors (i.e. who’s linking to them, what marketing activities are they using)
• Out spammers (i.e. find past examples of spam)
• Locate problems with new client sites (i.e. fix spam)
• Identify problematic forum members (i.e. competitors trolling your boards)
• Research new acquisitions (i.e. if you are buying a new site – does it have a history of dirty competition?)

Still waiting on the apology from your SEO, Jobsite! 

The guy started the thread because I had deleted one of his spam posts (link drop for his business – not pure SEO-keyword-spam but spam all the same).  It eventually leads to the revealation – THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FORUM SPAMMING! OMG!

The guy said,

Scott,

I am surprised that anyone posts on your forum at all.  I mean with all your RULES and STIPULATIONS you sound like everyone’s DADDY. Dude, I was looking forward to posting here and adding some really good content for everyone else but MY GOD! Even the RULES regarding this thread in my professional opinion is going way too far man, come on it’s just a damn forum for god sakes… How insulting and degrading.

You say you will moderate this thread HEAVILY. Where do you find the time? MLM schemes? Work from home schemes? I MUST correct you as I know MANY people who have made fortunes in networking and work from home businesses ME being one of those people. I even own a few forums but NEVER do OVER Moderate them. I refuse to post here anymore. I just thought I’d let you know this before you Destroy your forum dude.

I responded with,

Thanks for the comments. Forum has been running just fine for quite some time now.

There are plenty of methods of promoting businesses and this isn’t one of them. This forum is here for job hunters to receive advice. Not for businesses to make more money.

I’m more than happy for recruiters and employers or other businesses to promote their services in the commerical forum or in their signature, but blatant spam posts detract from the overall quality of the forum.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect those who profit from promoting their businesses here to in return contribute something back to the users. It’s a process of giving and taking – users get advice and information, businesses get exposure and credibility for offering it.

If you don’t want to post here, that’s absolutely fine. I don’t think the recruitment industry will crumble as a result.

Clearly getting angry now, he comes back with:

Scott,

Please, when you use the word SPAM use it correctly and in it’s correct definition. . .

SPAM is unsolicited E mail.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING as SPAMMING a forum.

There is a such thing as running a tyrannical despotic forum where the moderator picks and chooses what type of content the readers are ALLOWED to see. I personally DO NOT believe that is how to run a REAL forum.

Scott,

I originally posted under a thread here specifically designed to have jobs posted on it. YOU deleted my thread because I simply wanted to tell your readers about a FREE jobsite, that is the purpose of this forum isn’t it? To help members find Jobs???  Or is it just informaton YOU deem appropriate…?

Anyway you look at it you’re NOT giving your members FREE reign to post what they want, therefore it is your members that get cheated out of something that may help them. Do you understand my point? I am partner to several succesful job sites niche and mainstream and now I decided to give valuable content elsewhere.

YOU lose and your members LOSE all because of OVERMODERATION.

Now I’m getting slightly annoyed – this guy thinks that somehow he has a right to promote his job board on my forums (which BTW, was an out of the box job board CMS with no data)…

Go to any web design or SEO forum and tell them there is no such thing as forum spamming and they will laugh you off the boards. “Spam” hasn’t been limited to email for a long time and has always refered to unwanted, tacky, inappropriate solicitons – the medium by which they are delviered is not the issue.

Your free jobsite that helps jobseekers had like 5 jobs on it and 4 employers.

It is this kind of bias, self promoting SPAM that is of ZERO use to the real members of this board. That is the kind of selfish, single minded mentality that I don’t want on these forums – because it is of ZERO use to the REAL users of this forum.

You came here to promote your your job board and the first things you did were to complete disregard the board rules which you had clearly read, then went ahead and personally attack the forum owner and operations.

Well let me put this is no uncertain terms for you.

You job board sucks. It is of zero use to anyone – no jobs on it, no CVs on it for employers. Frankly it looks like it’s a fresh install of a shop in a box.

Your marketing strategy sucks. Your sales-esque posts trying to get people to go to your empty job board were transparent and amateurish. That’s not a big deal because good sales copy is hard to write. But it was compounded by your arrogant presumption that you could come here and dictate policy just because it doesn’t suit your desire for free advertising.

The irony is that had you any common sense whatsoever, you could have simply followed the not unreasonable rules and got your free advertising.

What I think is you are a one man band web designer / SEO, probably working from home. You setup a few websites, joined a few affiliate schemes, whatever and decided to setup a job board because the job board business model is low maintenance and easy to create.

Yet_another job board is of ZERO use to jobseekers – the market is already heavily saturated and the search technology behind 99% of job boards is fundamentally flawed.

The single reason more job boards keep popping up is that they are relatively easy to create and maintain.

Please don’t post here again.

Scott

I got bored and banned the guy after this.

What a stupid approach to marketing a site.  The guy actually believed that he had a right to promote his business on a public forum without any thought about the forum rules.

Self promotion on forums isn’t a bad thing – many of my moderators work in the same field as do many of my regular users – that’s just part of running a community.  But marketing your business in this way needs to be a more subtle activity – forcing your business on communities when you are an unknown is just plain silly.

I wonder if the guy works for Jobsite now?

Anyone have an amusing spammer story to share?

Scott

The blog roll has gone, but I’ll put together something to list the blogs that were up there.

There are still a few small bugs with the theme which will be ironed out over the course of the day.  Be patient!

Scott

ADDED – what do you think of this as the temp blog roll page? http://www.fusednation.com/seo-blog-roll/