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

Monopoly – targeted at ages 8 and above – have moved away from their classic paper money approach and brought the game up to speed with a credit card style format.  That in itself isn’t too bad a thing, although personally I still think we shouldn’t be introducing children to the concept of debt at such an early age.

What bothers me is their promotion on UK TV – a Visa tie in that leaves real cash and real Visa cards in some boxes as a prize.  That’s a step too far in my mind – what do you think?

People will argue that “it’s just a promotion” or “it isn’t the responsibilty of businesses to deal with these issues” but I disagree.  In the UK, debt is becoming a real problem – I know lots of people falling into an ongoing cycle of living a lifestyle outwith their means, sustaining their day to day lives with credit cards and loans.  I used to be one of them.

While I never found myself in the levels of debt that people with “serious” debt problems can end up in, I still feel this is one of the more unpleasant traits of our society over recent years. 

Marketing “debt solutions” to adults is commonplace – we all know the value of debt related organic rankings and cost of PPC budgets – but marketing to children, even in a roundabout way, is a step too far.  I never left school with the idea that I would be spending the next few years in debt – although that was the reality of the situation (and more so these days) with my student loans, I never considered a credit card as a viable option until later years.

Teenagers grow up aiming for 18 so they can go out to the pub with their mates and get pissed.  Perhaps that’s not the most healthy state of affairs in itself, but it has been the case for years and years.  Do we want our children anticipating their 18th birthday so they can get the “freedom” of a credit card (no doubt at a stupidly low rate to entice long term custom)?

It’s not the Visa / Monopoly tie in that bothers me so much – it’s what it represents.  It’s a precendent and I think it’s a bad one.  It may be unique and uncommon just now, but in a few years it could lead on to regular “cross generation” promotions to avoid advertising legislation.

Tobacco firms can’t advertise on billboards close to schools or sponsor sports events other than F1.  Breweries can’t run TV commericals showing people having a good time drinking alcohol.  Shouldn’t the same line of regulation apply to companies promoting debt related services?  After all, these rules are there to protect impressionable groups – surely promoting an 18+ service on an ages 8+ board game falls under that remit?

It can be argued that the age of Monopoly means that it’s average user group is likely to be 18+.  Therefore it is a sensible marketing approach, isn’t it? 

Of course, I’m not suggesting that Visa would have ever have thought that exposing their brand to a young age group during their most retentive years would be a viable long term strategy.  That would just be silly.

Your thoughts?

MG

The basic lowdown – the contract for Sky One, Sky News and Sky Travel ran out on March 1st so all 3.3 million VirginMedia cable customers lost these channels.  Both companies were unable to come to an agreement for an extended contract with VirginMedia claiming that BSkyB were wanting to charge double for the channels and BSkyB claiming that VirginMedia kept rejecting all their proposals.  Fun fun fun!

Personally (as a VirginMedia customer) I was pretty annoyed at the lost of Sky One – Simpsons, Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, 24 – all exclusives to Sky One in the UK, but VirginMedia did quickly replace the channel (check out the tone of some of the pages!) offering a freebie channel where you could pick from a selection of programs for free (The Office specials, Spooks, Nip Tuck, etc) – while they won’t replace my 24 addiction, the loss isn’t going to switch me to a BSkyB provider.

In the UK we saw a major cable battle back in the 90’s with Sky and BSB going head to head for market share, eventually resulting in a merger, creating Murdoch’s BSkyB that we know today.  Are we going to see another battle for the UK cable market over the next year or two?

Perhaps not on the scale that both companies might expect.

While back in the 90’s, cable channels really did have a monopoly on TV programs which people were staunchly loyal to, now in good old 2007 a large percentage of people that these programs target have access to broadband and the skills, knowledge and complete lack of care for copyright laws to be able to simply download their favourite episodes – in fact most people I know would rather do that.

I can understand why BSkyB would make life difficult for VirginMedia – Telewest had a wide coverage cable coverage in the UK prior to the NTL deal and now with Virign taking over the group and adding a huge network of brick and mortar retail outlets, mobile phone services and a multitude of other businesses, Branson finds himself positioned pretty well to move his business into the future. 

While in our industry we watch the development of search engines and online media platforms, I think it is about time we considered checking out the real world and how businesses are adapting themselves for these new emerging markets.  Consider Virgin’s portfolio:

• Decent share of the home cable market – TV, broadband, telephone.
• Decent share of the mobile phone service market
• Huge range of travel services
• Music festivals, music label
• Finance – loans, credit cards, insurance, etc
• Books, drinks, games, jewellery
• Health clubs, health care

Now how much consumer data can you derive from all that?  Lots!  I’ve always admired Richard Branson – he’s an innovative and highly talented businessman and Virgin’s somewhat scathing attacks on BSkyB are an excellent example of his resolution to move his business forward.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Virgin move to become a much more forceful player in the online advertising media industry in the next few years – they have the resources to give Google, Yahoo and MSN a run for their money by more fully integration online advertising spend with offline media platforms.

Definitely one to watch! Some more info here.

MG

I just did a freebie consultancy for a small business – the lady who runs it on her own is completely bewildered by SEO, and having seen her so passionate about her business I gave her a call and straightened a few things out, offering a free basic consultancy (which tbh, is all the site needs – it’s not a competitive market).

During the conversation it came up that she had hired a SEO agency (UK based I gather) a year ago who had done some “SEO” work for her.  She had some rankings from the work, but then the agency landed her with a monthly bill for link building work.  As she had already spent most of her budget on the initial consultancy, she couldn’t afford what they were charging and hadn’t realised the monthly fee was required so she cancelled the services.

They told her if she cancelled, they would remove the backlinks they built – which they promptly did!

Shower of bastards!  You know me – if I knew the name of the agency I’d be outing them right now with a scathing attack on why they are the scum of the industry…

While I am happy to admit that all is fair in business, I think that the very least SEOs have an ethical responsibility to clearly outline what it is they are doing for their clients and what costs / risks are involved.  Even putting ethics aside, landing additional fees on people is always – ALWAYS, without exception – going to piss them off.  Is that the way you want to run your business?

It is bad enough that we are in a industry where a “professional SEO” will happily offer conjecture and misinformation as “fact”, putting at risk their clients’ sites, but is holding people to ransom really acceptable practice?

IMO things need to change – only so long can businesses go on getting burned by amateurs before there is a call for legislative change.  It’s happened so often in the history of marketing – telesales, door to door sales, email marketing, billboard advertising, sports advertising – all have faced a legislative crack down in the past 10 / 20 years, mainly due to businesses taking things to the extreme and ripping people off – how long before SEO gets the same treatment?

After all, if SEOs know one thing for sure – it’s how to push techniques to the extreme!

My pet peeves with the SEO business:

• Lack of disclosure in terms of the risks carried with spammy techniques.  I don’t have a problem with spam techniques as such, but I do think that there should be full transparency when selling these services to others.
• Lack of standardisation in terms of professional skills and knowledge.  Basically, SEOs selling “facts” that inaccurate.
• Unethical business practices when providing services.

Anyone care to add anything to the list?

MG

I don’t use gas, but I get charged for it.  Well I use a little – just the rings on my cooker (which I rarely use), but because I pay for electricity + gas in one bill I get charged for gas as well.

About a year ago I queried my bill because it seemed a lot for my tiny little flat – and found out that Scottish Power had been over charging me for gas.  Basically they estimate use for property size and don’t really make an effort to check it out.  So they changed my bill.

Then for the next 6 months I get people round to read the meter numbers to double check this – fair enough, I can deal with that.  Just not every fucking week.  And monthly letters asking me to take readings.  And phone calls every few weeks.

I explained over and over that I don’t use much gas, hence the reading doesn’t go up much week on week, but no one pays attention.

Today I got my new estimate for the next 6 months – £100 per month.  I had been paying £50 per month (I should have been paying £30).  Again, a fuck up at their end.  But, £100 a month!  For a 1 bed flat?  Idiots.

Seriously – what’s the fucking point of all this pro-conservation advertising and “let’s all save energy” bullshit if companies are just going to screw people over who are actually saving energy?  If people don’t see a change in their bills, then they are way less likely to bother conserving energy in the first place and where does that leave the planet?

Just a typical example of how social issues are picked up and raped by marketing professionals who don’t bother to back them up with any kind of substance.

MG

The live results are now fixed – the description was pulled from a sponsored listing on the news article page.

Now the question is – why did Google choose this highly inappropriate description in the first place?  It was probably pulled randomly from the page, but surely it is within the technical ability of the big G to pull at least semi-relevant descriptions.

It could be that the entire sponsored link text can be found within an H4 tag – perhaps giving the text more relevance than it otherwise would?

Checking the code of the page, it roughly breaks down as this:

• H1 = “News Story”
• H2 = “The article title”
• H3 = “Related stories links”
• H4 = “Sponsored links” (interestingly, the descriptions are H4, but the titles (bold) aren’t)
• THEN the content

So…the page uses several H# tags to markup a lot of content before the actual body text (which is an unusual way to approach markup) – perhaps this is why Google picked up the sponsored result text as a description?  They simply grabbed some text based on markup?

However, given that most news items can deal with serious subjects that can provoke a lot of emotion in people, surely leaving descriptions to random chance isn’t the best way to go?

MG

ADDED: Just had a shudering thought that this might spark a new level of Google news spamming – getting your URL into the description of popular stories! >.<

“Note: Touch Search Marketing promotes ethical search engine optimisation. We strongly object to black-hat SEO techniques that spam the web and could result in a permanent ban from search engines.”

Indeed very noble (highlighting added be me).  However a closer look at some of their techniques leads us to a much more grey area…

A link on their directory takes us to a “Premium Suppliers” page (http://www.touchlocal.com/advert/premium/suppliers) – a big ol’ list of keyword links to other pages.  A bit of research shows that these are click-to-call advertisers.

Click on the “Audi” link – you get taken to a click-to-call page for Yes Car Credit.  Click on the “BMW” link – you get taken to a click-to-call page for Yes Car Credit.  Click on the “BMW cars” link – yes, you guessed it – click-to-call page for YCC.

Here’s an ethical dilemma – is a doorway page still a doorway page if it takes your phone number rather than have a link on the page?

Nice Meta btw guys…

<*meta content=”Bmw Cars. Bmw Cars” name=”description”>
<*meta content=”Bmw Cars. Bmw Cars. Bmw Cars” name=”keywords”>

Yeh gotta love “ethical” SEO!

Looking down the list of “premium advertisers” the same deal is repeated – multiple keywords linking to unique pages optimised for those terms – each advertiser has a collection of pages for their 1 advert.  The list is clearly made for search engines – there’s no definable order to it (there are several “sections containing mortgage links for example) – real people won’t use that list.

OK so it may not be pretty, but their network of inter-linked sites is ranking pretty well.  For example a Google search for “Aberdeen Business Directory” returns this page in 4th place.  Nice list of keywords there.  All linking out to a different domain.

Relevant results Google?  A list of links that all point to different pages on a different domain?  Don’t think so.

While I’m happy to contend that the layout of the network is clever and is clearly working not too badly, I wouldn’t label it as “Ethical” or “White Hat” SEO by any means.  It may not be autogenerated garbage content (well it’s not far off), but its hardly designed for users is it (regardless of the gloss poured over it)?

Funny quote #3 from their affiliate page:

•  
  • Automatic Search Engine Optimisation so Search engines like Google and Lycos can find your business (new)

Niiice.  Ethical SEO and Automatic SEO go hand in hand.   Flick that switch!

So let’s recap what Touch Search Marketing apply as “Ethical” SEO techniques:

1. Big ol’ list of keyword links that point to doorway pages targeting relevant keywords and other company brand names.  Resulting pages hold no (useful)content for users.

2. Keyword stuffed Meta.

3. An unnecessary interlinked network of sites (content could and should be held on one domain – other domains serve no purpose other than to boost keyword rankings for deep content).

4. Top level business directory pages ranking well but only contain a list of links (all of which lead to different pages on different domains).

I thought we were passed the days of networks of sites with minimal content dominating the SERPs?  Do search engines really have so much trouble finding this stuff?

Does it really matter?

I know lots of people are in the “if it works, then do it” camp and that’s fair play – been there a few times myself.  This isn’t really a rant about the techniques as such – more that people ALWAYS claim to be “Ethical” SEOs and few rarely are.

MG

Basically the original poster asks a question about duplicate content based on a blog post he read (I assume it was this topic from Pubcon):

“No two links should point to the same page”

Why not?  Anyone expand on this?

A reasonable request based on a topic which is pretty complicated.  However the resulting “discussion” made me laugh – it’s so typical of the SEO community to take something at face value and run a mile with it without looking into a little bit deeper…

The confusion has arisen from the terminology used in the original blog post, where the panel members at the Pubcon roundtable (Duplicate content issues):

Types of dup include multiple URLs going to same page, similar content on different pages, syndicated content, manufacturers’ databases, printable pages, different languages or countries, different domains and scraped content.

A “page” here is refered to as a piece of content.  The “URL” is the direct URL used to reach the content.  So a simple example would be http://example.com and http://www.example.com both leading to your homepage – 2 URLs, both leading to the same “page”.

However, this was misinterpreted by the good folks over at WMW (shocker!) who took the statement to mean that multiple links to any URL could cause duplicate content.  Ie, if you had a 10 page site, every page linked to “Home” and caused 10 duplicate version.

OK, fair enough some of the folks may not have read the report on the WebmasterWorld Pubcon session…but then maybe think before posting comments such as…

• This is pure nonsense
• I hate to say it in such strong terms but this is BS.

Hat tip to moderator jdMorgan for stepping in and clarifying the situation with a perfect explanation / clarification and a statement that I think should preceed every comment posted on every forum on the net:

“Reading earlier posts in this thread may save some embarassment to those who wish to assume the worst….”

Now here’s a thought for the forum junkies out there.  For every stupid comment made without thought that is subsequently brought to light – how many aren’t?  Worth considering while you base the future of your business on information you read on forums.

MG

While I’m happy to contend that a little arrogance is both healthy and that in the past I have probably been guilty of more arrogance than I warrant, I still feel the need to lecture some of the countless individuals that are so void of sound business acumen, that they feel the need to prove themselves against a larger entity.

All to often do I find a newbie, wannabe or fool that decides that they want a piece of me in some shape or form, be it a share of a market I occupy through various websites, or a more direct slice of my pie.  It is a weird situation to find yourself simultaneously mildly annoyed and mildly amused at the same time!

Why the amusement at someone trying to step into my turf?  Well, because it’s all so predictable!

Back in the day, when I was still new to the whole SEO / web marketing thing, I found myself in a situation where I had a (decent) generic keyword domain with a decent site on it and all was well in the world – traffic stats were doubling every month and Google loved my content!  Inevitably someone else decided to do what I was doing (which in itself didn’t bother me), and registered the .co.uk of my .com.

You see, their mistake there wasn’t to compete with me – that’s a legitimate business move.  Their mistake was to piss me off.  In all honesty, I would have happily linked to the other site and gave the guy tips on promoting it, despite how closely it resembled mine (information sites, so didn’t really consider anyone as competition).

But no he went on to mirror the changes I made on my sites, basically copying my every move.  So decided to take it to the next level and bust my ass working on my site.  Very shortly his site dwindled into nothingness, as he tried every spam trick in the book to keep up with my organic rankings and now the site is just_another part of his small link network of sites.  Mine on the other hand has surpassed many expectations – ranks well on many competitive phrases and brings in a nice earner and in 4 years has never been affected by search engine updates and the like.

What’s the moral here?

That guys mistake was that he pissed me off.  Don’t take that as a sign of arrogance on my part – he could have gone and made the same mistake with anyone else – just in this case he made it with me.  And it’s not that the mistake hurt his site – all it did was force the level of competition sky high.

Forcing bad blood onto the web is a mistake.  Period.  A mistake all too often made by newbies, wannabes and fools and a mistake that usually leads to a very costly outcome.

The worst thing you can do in this business is base your income on simply copying other people.  That won’t get you anywhere and frankly if that’s your best approach to business then you need to get out of the game.

All that said, I’d like to thank the newbies, wannabes and fools.  All the idiots armed with a little knowledge and an arrogant sense of self importance brings a little variety to the business, and at times, a little motivation.  Competition is good for business.  Stupid competition is good for my business!

Sure, they no doubt spend a load on PPC and it could very will be killing off a reasonable source of business for you, but hey – it’s not like you’re all short of a buck or two now is it?

SEO agencies are responsible for spam.  Well, not all of them – there are a lot of good agencies out there.  But why should they be tarred with the same brush as other agencies who pimp dodgy, outdated techniques?  And why should their clients be the ones who suffer, not only losing money paying for this crap service, but losing business when you ban them?

So here’s the idea – get together, agree on a SEO agency spam list and completely kill them from your index so they can’t tout more business. Hey, they are basically selling ways of getting round your guidelines anyway so you’ll be better off getting rid of them (and I’m sure a few managed PPC accounts ain’t worth soiling your organic index).

So a client site gets banned.  They check some SEO forums to find out why and people tell them they’ve been naughty.  Or more accurately, their agency have been naughty.  So what can they do?  Nothing.  Not a damn thing.  They’ve just lost a shitload of money because search engines don’t disclose a lot of info about organic rankings.  Or they’ve been sold by a glossy sales pitch. 

Why not create an agency spam report feature?  Limit submissions to comments from sites who have been banned.  Ask for evidence (consultancy documents, invoices, etc) and ban the agency.  Simple.  The agency will find it very difficult to get more business without search engine listings for their own site and as such, less people will have their businesses hurt, and SERP’s will be all minty fresh and clean!

Search engines need to take more responsibilty for this industry that they (allbeit, unintentionally) have created.  Get your shit together.  More regulation is needed and right now, search engines are in the best position to do it.  Start hitting the spammers where it hurts.

MG