Stupid Things We Say – Part 2
Last St. Patrick’s Day, I had a couple of cocktails and wrote a post called “Stupid Things We Say.” That post contained some examples of really stupid press releases that were distributed through PR Web by companies in the SEO space. At the time I wrote it, I was just trying to kill some time with a little light-hearted humor. Although the irritation these press releases caused was real, they didn’t really have a negative impact on my daily routine because I don’t rely on press release distribution sites as a source for “industry news.”
But that has changed. For some reason, Google News have decided that the constant flow of crap coming from online press release services is in fact quality news. And that fact has made it virtually impossible to use keyword queries to find good stories. That saddens me. I would really like Google to take “distribution pollution” more seriously.
So I’ve decided it might help if I started featuring PR garbage on a regular basis. That way, everyone will get to see what sites produce the greatest volume of junk, and we’ll also get to take a closer look at the companies who are the biggest polluters. (and maybe even give them some of the search engine exposure they are so desperately seeking)
pFrom this point on, I’ll be posting my favorites in my new category “Stupid News.” If you come across any releases you think belongs here, feel free to send them to me.
Here’s a few gems from the last couple of days:
(All found in Google News by searching for “SEO.”)
Major Search Engines Caught Penalizing Sites Displaying Contextual Ads
RankingMeasures.com has just finished conducting a monthly study of nearly a million search engine results for 15,000 popular keyword phrases. The most notable finding concerns a strong negative correlation discovered in the big three search engines.
RankingMeasures.com has found that for over 75% of searches, sites with contextual advertising from the search engine network are more likely to rank lower in the natural results. For example, on one major search engine 816 sites with contextual ads were found in search engine ranking position one while 1,356 sites were found in rank position 20. “To the search engines, one warning sign of a ’spammy’ website is the presence of contextual advertising. Sites displaying contextual PPC advertising are consistently ranking lower than similar sites without these ads.
While other SEOs have been wasting time trying to figure out all of Google’s 200+ ranking signals, Chris Crompton has been quietly running a keyword scraper. It turns out that’s all you really need to do to accurately determine why sites rank. And the best part is, scraping SERPS can also help you identify specific penalties. How cool is that? Definitely worth $97.00. And definitely worth a 1st page listing in Google News.
PRComplete Offers First Ever SEO-Focused Online Press Release Service
Until now, most press releases have never been fully optimized for the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. PRComplete is turning the tables on expensive press release agencies with it’s innovative writing and distribution service.
Adam Davis intends on offering Internet Marketers the chance to have their press releases written by professionals who not only have a vast amount of experience within the PR field, but who also know how to perform search engine optimization techniques. Something that standard offline press release writing services do not perform.
Come on Adam. if you were really the first to offer SEO press releases, I wouldn’t be writing this post. Next time, you might want to spend a little more time surfing PRWeb’s site before clicking the submit button.
Starr Tincup and HRAmerica reach SEO goal
FT. WORTH, Texas (FV Newswire) - Starr Tincup, an integrated marketing firm that serves software and services companies through customer selection, acquisition and retention, announced today that its client, HRAmerica, achieved its search engine optimization (SEO) goal of being one of Google’s top five listings with the UltiPro brand.
HRAmerica, a leading HR outsourcing firm that combines Internet technology and dedicated service to deliver comprehensive employee administration solutions, was listed 53rd for the UltiPro brand on Google when the company began working with Starr Tincup in December 2005. Now, HRAmerica is in the number two position on Google with the UltiPro brand.
"This is a grand accomplishment for which I give Starr Tincup all the credit," said Stephen Boyd, CEO of HRAmerica. "The content management, persistent listing of HRAmerica, and the ‘bag ‘o tricks’ that they bring to the table is making our brand known and our lead generation a reality. Truly, Starr Tincup has become a competitive advantage for us."
Are you shittin’ me? A competitive advantage? It took them a year to get a client to rank in the top 5 for a word that only returns 46,000 pages! At that rate, they should have HRAmerica ranking in the top 5 for HR software Some where around 2107.
Multimedia Awareness Campaign Hits A Nerve
(PRLEAP.COM) Toronto, ON. MRPwebmedia of Thornhill, Ontario has hit a nerve in the website design and advertising community with an article published in SiteProNews. The article about the company’s latest awareness campaign is aimed at telling businesses to concentrate on delivering their marketing messages on their websites and to not let search engine optimization get in the way of delivering those messages in the most effective manner.
The reaction was instantaneous. We were receiving calls from Spain, California, and just about everywhere else. Blogs from the States, Israel, and Britain where full of comments both positive and negative depending on which side of the search engine optimization versus multimedia controversy you were on. Those that got the message were extremely positive and we have booked several new projects already based on the campaign. The SEO community reacted predictably with comments ranging from begrudging acknowledgement to name-calling.
So about a week ago, MRPwebmedia published a controversial article that got the SEO blogging community all bent out of shape. The reaction was so severe that another press release explaining the incredible uproar was warranted. I felt like Rip Van Winkle on this one because it never showed up on any of the 200 + feeds I track. So I went over to Google Blog Search to try and find what I had missed.
Out of the 40 results that came back for MRPMedia, almost all of them were just duplicate copies of the press release. Then there were a handful of blogspot blogs who had reposted the original article. And finally, there was this “I can’t believe it didn’t make the front page” digg post.
Now that’s one hell of an uproar.
But I will say that I did get a kick out of the ads. Just like the Apple ads, they were very funny. I’m just not sure it’s really a good idea to copy the ad campaign of a company that has been creating great ads for 20 years, yet still can’t climb above a 2% market share if your goal is to changes the hearts and minds of a bunch of PC based web marketers.
Comments
4 Responses to “ Stupid Things We Say – Part 2 ”
Got something to say?
Yep, that multimedia awareness campaign missed me too.
The trouble with clowns like these is people read them and believe that they’re innovative, different, brilliant.
When all they do is regurgitate and/or make stuff up.
And that inevitably damages the industry.
Cheers
Brendon
The uproar just happened - right here on Greg’s blog.
I guess “uproar” is in the eye of the beholder, because they sure thought that was one, but you wouldn’t classify it as a blip on the radar.
SEO is in one way exactly like Affiliate Marketing.
No year passes by where the industry is not at least once announced dead, because of a new “killer” that will end it.
It never died so far and most of the time not even blinked. It continued growing instead, like every year, but that is never front page news.
This article wraps it up nicely
http://www.revenews.com/bethkirsch/archives/002535.html
Cheers
Carsten
I am an instant fan of the Stupid News category. Surely there’s mounds of stupid SEO stuff out there… like a valleywag for SEO