Facebook Faceoff !! It had to happen
Facebook has been under spam and chain letter attacks recently.
It had to happen! I had become so accustomed to using facebook as a spam free zone that it didn’t occur to me that anyone would want to spam it. How naïve, as an internet marketer I should have known better.
First up - I owe an apology to an old friend that I recently reconnected with through Facebook.
Secondly – I have posted Instruction on how to stop the spammers.
The Apology
As I religiously went to update my status one morning I saw a message on my wall.
“FIND OUT WHO YOUR LOVE IS!! VISIT: XXXXXX .COM (remove spaces) HURRY BEFORE IT’STOLATE!”
blah, blah, blah, another love match nonsense scam!
It was 7 am and I probably should have been doing something other than logging into facebook but I had only had 3 espresso’s and my firey Sicilian blood took control of my keyboard and politely abused this poor girl for sending me the message.
This is what I wrote:
“ It’s great to reconnect on facebook with you - Please stop sending me nonsense links - I am 41 years old, co founder of 2 Internet companies and CEO of 1. I am a father of 2 and have a demanding wife. My life is very busy. I just don’t have the time to follow your childish and silly links. As an Internet marketer - here is a lesson that will serve you well. Keep your messages relevant to your audience. Otherwise I hope you are well - take care “
She responded with:
“ Great to hear from you, just so you know I don’t send these bullshit messages, for some reason Face Book does this on it’s own, so please don’t blame me for it!!!I have better things to do in my life then send you stupid messages at 6.13 and 7.05am, we all get these stupid messages all the time so just ignor them like we all do….. there not from me. I’m offended that you would even think I would send such messages. Frank I’m to busy with my life for this crap! I’m 31 and I work and I’m a full time mum to a 28 month old girl. I don’t have time to sit down let alone follow these stupid childish links ok. So Frank take it easy, here is a lesson that will serve you welll……. ask the person weather they said or did something before you accuse them”
I clearly upset her so here it is.
I am sss- ssss,s- sor . Ok I am not sorry because good has come of this for my old friend.
I asked one of our techs to look into the matter and it appears that it is yet another virus or worm. The same kind that attacks Internet banking. So if your Facebook profile is under attack the last thing you should do is ignore it.
If you are a victim of such a spam attack here is what you should do
This is basically a virus or worm that is attacking your computer and it needs to be fixed ASAP.
If you have Antivirus software installed on your computer run an update
If you don’t have Antuvirus software installed, use one of the free online virus scanners
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
http://security.symantec.com/
or alternatively download a free virus scanner
http://free.avg.com/ww.download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition
Scan the computer with the antivirus & remove any malicious software found.
Log into Facebook account and change your Facebook password.
As worms, viruses & etc rely on Operating System aswell and sometimes exploit OS vulnerabilites…It is also recommended that the user downloads the latest updates for their operating systems
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/updates/bulletins/200809.mspx
What do Shoes, customer service and Cooking have to do with SEO
This is more of a customer service story than an SEO story but the link juice, link bait and social medial buzz that resulted from this one act of great customer service resulted in page rank that money simply can’t buy.
Great work Zappo for providing great customer service. For the SEO freaks out there that measure success by the amount of Snot on the Google toolbar lets have a look at what this one remarkable act of service and compassion did for page rank.
First the Story
A lady purchased 7 pairs of shoes for her terminally ill mother from www.zappos.com of which only 2 pairs actually fitted. Zappo have a free 15 day return policy. They will pay for the shipping but the only condition is that you have to take the goods to a UPS depot. The lady intended to take Zappo up on the return policy, however her mother had just been hospitalised and later died. When Zappos heard what happened they sent a UPS vehicle to pick up the shoes at no cost to the lady and the next day sent a bouquet of flowers.
This lady just happened to be a prominent blogger who was so touched by this heart felt act of kindness that she wrote a blog called “I heart Zappo’s – I really do”
Here is what happened to links
First up – I liked it so much I linked to both Zappo’s and the Blog post.
The Blog Post links to Zappos with the text
“IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS.”
She writes a cooking blog so I am tipping that she is not an SEO expert. Keywords near the link are “buy shoes online”
Zappo ranks number 1 in Google for the keyword “Buy Shoes Online” so this link only helps strengthen their position and reinforce their authority as a place to “buy shoes online”.
The blog post had 196 positive comments and 79 links from other prominent bloggers, news sites, social media analysts and people that just though it was a great story.
Who are the SEO winners here
- the blog for receiving 79 links gets a page rank boost
- zappo get the benefit of that page rank boost via the link from the blog but most importantly they get a positive PR story that money just can’t buy
There is a lesson in this for all of us.
Google API Fees lowered – now cheaper to ad and update ads
This is either a great big coincidence or Google being incredibly responsive.
In my last post I mentioned a conversation between myself and Mark Armstrong from Google at SMX Sydney where I said that the cost of updating and creating ads was excessive.
Today I got an email from the adwords api team that the
Thank you Google – this will make a big difference to the way we optimise ads
From the API Newsletter Below
Effective today, we have lowered the number of API units charged for the following services:Service Name, Former Rate (in API units), New Rate
- addAds: 125 -> 50 per item
- addCriteria: 25 -> 20 per item
- updateCriteria: 10 -> 3 per item
- getKeywordVariations: 25 -> 20
- getKeywordsFromSite: 25 -> 20
- estimateAdGroupList: 25 -> 20 per item
- estimateCampaignList: 25 -> 20 per item
- estimateKeywordList: 25 -> 20 per item
- scheduleReportJob: 1000 -> 500
Smx Sydney Review – Hats off to Barry Smyth
SMX Sydney was a great success well done Barry. I went to all the way to San Jose last year to hear what our international comrades think about search and Barry has saved me a trip this year by bringing the best of the best to us here in Australia.
Some of the A list thought leaders that I got to discuss the future of search with were Danny Sullivan, Rand Fiskin, and Gord Hotchkiss. I couldn’t get within 10 feet of these guys in San Jose.
It was also very good to see a lot of very familiar Australian faces in the crowd. My old mate Mark Armstrong from Google and I had a very constructive conversation about AdWord API Fees – I said they were a touch expensive to add and update ads and he accused me of melting down several adwords servers and causing the San Fran power grid to shut down when the adwords api was free. We came to a mutual agreement that the adwords api fee was a good way to make people like me develop smarter software and hopefully he will push my feedback up to the people that set the api quota system and make it cheaper to publish ads.
Apology
I would like to make a public apology to Stuart Bartram from Double Click for calling him a big tool in the middle of my SEM tool kit presentation. What I meant to say was that there were many big companies in the market that “BUILD” SEM tools - instead I said, “there are many big tools in the market” while pointing to Stuart. – Sorry about that matey, it was a genuine slip.
Thank You
Thanks to Adam Lasnik for being so incredibly generous with his time and sharing so much webmaster tool wisdom. The legendary Rand Fiskin - thanks for sharing SMO/M insights. Of course Danny Sullivan for his views on the future of Bid Management.
Last but by no way least thank you to the very lovely Ani Babaian for sharing the incredible Live Webmaster Center with the Aussies and for draging us to the ice bar.
SMX Presso’s
To those of you that missed SMX Sydney here are my two presentations
- First session was managing ads that convert (will open in PPT) – always a difficult topic but one of my favourites none the less.
- Second was SEM toolkit (PPT) where I discussed the importance of campaign management and how Dynamic Creative solves the pressing problems that search enginine marketers face in a Quality Score world of SEM.
love to get your comments
Bootcamp Brisbane
I was asked to talk about the major issues to consider when running a search engine marketing campaign on a budget. The theme for the Brisbane bootcamp was travel and travel is of course a competitive category. Of course it is possible to compete but there are no shortcuts.
You can download the presentation here
Creative Management, Search Engine Bootcamp
I presented Creative Management at search engine bootcamp on Thursday the 26th of November.
For those of you that could make the event you can download the powerpoint presentation here
Any questions please leave a comment and I will answer as soon as I can.
Most Popular Search Engine Marketing Blogs
I asked over 200 people I know in the internet marketing world (via my LinkedIn network) to tell me where they get their SEM and SEO news and here are the most popular responses after I striped away the serious spammers.
- www.SearchEngineLand.com - An industry standard - Good info
- www.bluehatseo.com - Borderline spam - a good read but spam nonetheless
- www.searchenginewatch.com - Its been around from the beginning of search and still worth a read
- www.SEObook.com - Lots of content - Good Glossary
- www.SEOmoz.org - Half way between publishing and providing services - a good read at times
- www.emarketer.com - Great in the broader Internet marketing world and Good on search
- www.marketingvoices.com - Very professional and very informative
- www.mediapost.com - More of a marketing site than search marketing but a good read
- www.sphinn.com - A social media site made just for us
Longtail Marketing
After working in Tourism for 17 years on major marketing campaigns I thought I was reasonably IT savvy but having recently joined e-channel I realise, knowing what I know now, my advertising strategies would be very different today, especially in terms of any online media strategies.
Much of the non IT marketing world would think you were from another planet if you started talking the IT lingo.
Some marketers in tourism for example might think longtail is a new budget airline entering the Australian market or a new species of Wallaby!
If you’re a marketing executive and haven’t heard of the longtail or terms like Spider, SOAP, DELTA and PageRank, then chances are your competitors that do will be attacking your market share. It may be that you are not as knowledgeable in online marketing as you think you are?
Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) companies are revolutionising advertising with campaigns able to respond to customer reaction almost instantly. Online advertising is a relatively new world rapidly evolving, more and more companies, that get online media, are spending a larger portion of their advertising dollars on SEM. Online advertising is also one of the most affordable and measurable components of a media campaign, but some are still shy to engage it. Much of this resistance is due to a lack of knowledge and perhaps the sectors inability to communicate the product benefits simply. Those companies that have embraced it are reaping the rewards and keeping it quiet.
As one of Australia’s leading SEM & SEO providers we find time and again that people think they have this area covered but most don’t. This advertising sector is evolving, for the better, so quickly that efficiencies dreamed about a year ago are now achievable. One of our challenges is educating business people about the power of online advertising, once you explain the product and demonstrate the results, it sells itself!
If you’re a CEO or a marketing decision maker and your website is vital to your business, or you spend more than $5,000 a month on advertising and your online marketing is an after-thought you’re leaving the door open to competitors.
Find out if you should be advertising in the longtail and discover why on-line advertising is expanding faster than any other form of advertising globally.
If you want to know more about SEM or the longtail contact us at e-channel.
What makes a great search engine marketer?
I have battled with this question from the very first day I decided to scale up my business.
When I started e-channel in 1999 I was armed with an entrepreneurial spirit and an associate diploma in mechanical engineering. In the early days search engine marketing was source code and Meta tags, and as odd as my background sounds it suited search engine optimisation (SEO) nicely. When Overture (now YSM) launched paid search - the landscape began to shift. Suddenly my skills were not enough and I knew it. My technical skills were still suited to SEO but I had to learn to deal with ad budgets, copywriting and data analysis. I enrolled in a Masters of Marketing at the University of South Australia and that was the turning point for me and e-channel. I learnt about the science of marketing and was instantly able to apply it to search. When Google came along with AdWords and took Overtures model to a whole new level I was ready to handle the technical and marketing aspects of search. The only problem was that my unique combinations of skill sets were not easy to find - So when I went about employing people I found the task of finding search engine marketing talent quite a challenge. I soon realised that I needed great software engineers and great marketers in my team to deal with the increasingly complex needs of my customers.
I now have a great team of search engine marketers and engineers around me. Here are some of the things I look for when recruiting a new team member.
Read the rest of this page »
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About the Authors
The world does not need another search engine marketing blog to tell us when Matt Cutts has a haircut or to regurgitate news that has just been posted on searchengineland.com. We will attempt to provide genuine commentary and opinion on how we see search today and where it is going in the future. I am the CEO of e-channel and my team and I will cover SEO and paid search and try to explore the marketing aspects of search rather than the technical. Please post your comments freely.
Frank Grasso, CEO