April 30th, 2012

Did Home Depot Just Try to Pull A Fast One on Google?

Yes they sure did, but they got busted! The world’s largest home improvement specialty retailer recently was caught trying to solicit links from their network of nearly 2,000 service providers. However, this wasn’t another typical paid link situation like the JCPenney and Overstock cases. Home Depot deliberately provided false information to their vendors and demanded links from their sites.

 Home Depot sent out an email to their vendors who they recommend for installation projects. The email, written by a Home Depot Representative, suggested that the service partner place a link to a particular page with specific anchor text in order to “support” the Home Depot Company. Of course as the email spread, it was picked up by a few SEO experts such as Bill Hartzer and thanks to him, we have the email.

From: The Home Depot – Home Services

Sent: Monday, April 9, 2012 PM

To: [email address removed] xxxxxx

Subject: Online advertising for Installation Services

 

SERVICE PROVIDER COMMUNICATION

Date: April 9, 2012

To: All US Service Providers

From: Home Services Operations

Re: Online advertising for Installation Services

 

SUMMARY 

The Home Depot is in the process improving our online advertising efforts for our installation services. We are using our brand authority and marketing power to increase traffic to our site and convert customers. We would like to extend this benefit to all of our business partners and are requesting that you add a link on your site to relative key words that will aid our related installation page authority. Please note that the hyperlink does not have to be visually indicated.

Linking to The Home Depot website will benefit our business partners by increasing the page authority of your website.  Page Authority predicts the likelihood of a single page to rank well in search results.  Ranking high in search results will assist with driving more relevant traffic to your website.

We look forward to working with you on this mutually beneficial marketing endeavor. Please refer to “Action Required” for next steps and instructions on implementation.

 

ACTION REQUIRED 

*Create the link using the following format:

[Link Text]

URL:http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/ servlet/ContentView?pn=SV_HS_Home_Insulation

Link Text: “Carpet Installation” or your preferred text.  Please request the Keyword List spreadsheet for a larger sample of keywords to use for your preferred text. Below is a sample of preferred text to use for flooring:

Carpet flooring

Carpet install

Carpet installation

Below is an example of the HTML Code necessary in order for the link to appear properly on your web page:

Carpet installation 

*Ensure that the link is displayed in the correct format and located on the appropriate page related to The Home Depot’s corresponding installation category. Provide us with the URL of the page where the link will be once it is live on your site.

*Please send a confirmation email to xxxxxx at xxxxxx@homedepot.com once you have implemented the link on the appropriate page that includes the URL.

 

“On this mutually beneficial marketing endeavor,” yeah, I don’t think so. As you can see in the letter, Home Depot requires their vendors to place a link on their page that leads back to the Home Depot site. The company makes their vendors believe it is to their benefit by stating that they are making an effort to increase the Page Authority of all their vendors’ sites. As we know, it doesn’t work that way! If anything, Home Depot’s Page Authority would go up, not theirs. And then to say that the link doesn’t necessarily have to be visible…oh, here is where the Black Hat SEO occurs. Sneaky, sneaky!

 

 

 

After hearing of the situation, Google began investigating Home Depot and here’s what Google had to say…

“It’s simply untrue to tell vendors that linking to a specific page will automatically increase the vendors’ page authority. Likewise, encouraging websites to make hidden links to a website can lead to violations of our quality guidelines that result in demotion or removal of pages from our index. We will be monitoring this situation closely and taking appropriate action.”

Experts aren’t completely sure if Google will ban Home Depot from their indexes. It actually depends on whether or not the vendors implemented the links in the way Home Depot had requested. Google penalizes for hidden links, but Home Depot claims to have spoken with Google to rectify the situation and ensures that a follow-up email will be sent out to those service providers to correct the errors from the previous email. As you can see, you don’t want to try to pull a fast one on Google because sooner or later, they’ll find out. Stick to proper SEO tactics and if you want to make sure your site follows Google Webmaster Guidelines and never gets banned, hire a trustworthy search marketing firm.

Published by Mike Canarelli on April 30th, 2012 in Did You Know, Link Building, Uncategorized

April 26th, 2012

The New Facebook Timeline: If You Can’t Beat Em’, Join Em’

As I am sure you are already aware, Facebook has once again forced us into a new version of the reining social media network. Thanks Mark Zuckerberg for influencing me to spend more time updating my Facebook timeline than trying to promote world peace. Facebook’s profile has now been replaced with the new layout called Facebook Timeline. Frankly, I was not thrilled about this change because I did not feel like going through the mundane task of updating my Facebook, however I have come to embrace this new concept. This new layout provides its users with a timeline of their Facebook history, from photos, events, apps, etc. arranged in the order in which they happened. Essentially making Facebook “stalking” much easier to manage.

 

And so it goes that with any new change, there is always hesitancy and the big question “how will this impact our business?” Well other than the fact that social media companies now need to put in the extra effort to update these changes for their clients, this new timeline proves to be advantageous for business users.

With change, come new opportunities. The new Facebook timeline gives businesses the chance to capitalize on their marketing campaigns and customize their timeline accordingly. My major hang up of this new timeline concept was what the heck I was going to use as my “cover photo”. So I chose a picture I had taken of a flower (I know, I know, so cliché). However cliché my photo might be, this cover photo in conjunction with the profile photo provides the opportunity for businesses to really advertise their brand and logo. As a billboard would show off the main product and point of the advertisement, so should your businesses cover photo. Make sure the photo grabs your follower’s attention and showcases what you are all about!

 

Captain Morgan has melded their logo into their cover photo to make one cohesive piece that clearly represents the product they are marketing for.

 

Another advantage to this new layout is it enables businesses to highlight the milestones of their business in an easy to view timeline. Photos now appear larger on the timeline, essentially overshadowing the text info. This can yield huge reward for businesses with catchy photos, because lets face it, people would rather look at a picture to sum something up than read a paragraph.  So promote away via your most market worthy photos!

 

Designer, Kate Spade, has also capitalized on showcasing their brand in the cover photo along with their tail tale logo.

Now to touch on posting, status updates and more goodies. The timeline displays the top 4 most used apps front and center beside the “about me” section. So choose the apps most important and essential to your customers, however the photos app will always appear first. One of the new features of Facebook, is the ability to post a story to your timeline. This story can be “starred” and made to either stay at the top of your page or it can be displayed along the width of your page, essentially making it pretty darn hard to miss. This is something businesses should take advantage of if they want their followers to acknowledge a new event or product.

 

So now you can sleep at night knowing your business is not in jeopardy from the new Facebook timeline. It’s here to stay (well at least for the next 6 months until they figure out a new way to frustrate us all over again) so embrace it and use it to your businesses advantage!

 

Published by Sarah Stoltzfus on April 26th, 2012 in Business, Did You Know, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

April 25th, 2012

Google Adwords Updates – Better Than A Stick In The Eye

Recently Google has gone out of its way to make usability updates to the Adwords interface. If you are a frequent user of Adwords, you know that this is uncommon. More often than not, either no updates are made for months, or Google acts like a nanny dealing with a 3-year-old drawing pictures in sharpie on the living room wall. This means that mostly Google just likes taking away things I use every day. Like custom shapes in geo-targeting. I’m not saying it was a bad move, Google, but it certainly wasn’t to increase usability. And if I have to add cities in one at a time every time I need to target a custom area, I may make like an unemployed, middle-class white girl with dreadlocks, and occupy your corporate office.

On a positive note, the updates Google has released within the last month have actually made the interface easier to use, which is a fun and interesting surprise.

1. Location Targeting – Ok, so yes, they took away the most useful tool they had in specific geo-targeting, and yes this ticks me off beyond belief due to the cluster-F of errors my campaigns went through after that change rolled out. How can you make it up to me, Google? Well a new car would be nice, but I will be momentarily satisfied with the following update to location targeting.

In days of yore, you can to whip out a dictionary and your thesis paper from Philosophy 201 to figure out what Google meant when it asked if you wanted to target based on location or search intent. The wording was confusing, to say the least, and I was never really sure if I picked the right answer. If chosen incorrectly, my clients in Philadelphia could be getting phone calls from Columbus, OH, and this makes me look like a schmuck. I really hate looking like a schmuck. So Google thought, “hey, you know what would help people use our amazing advertising platform? Wording that makes SENSE!”. I applaud you, Google. But just this once, so don’t let it go to your head.

 

2. Display Advertising – Google snuck a mini-update in there without me noticing. I stumbled upon this little gem while checking on a client’s managed placements, and then immediately became enraged that only one client had this update. I have one client who has 20 display campaigns. TWENTY. That is a lot of campaigns spending money without any way of optimizing for keywords.

 

In this newest update, I can view what keywords are causing my ads to show, and within the same Display Network tab, I can look at the managed placements that are receiving those clicks. Brilliant! If you don’t think that this will change the way you manage display campaigns, well, you’re a moron. It’s the one thing your campaign needed, you know, KEYWORDS. I am so happy I might cry.

 

3. Quality Scores – the most recent update seems to be more in-depth thought on the topic of quality scores. Nevermind the fact that the factors that determine a quality score are vague and inexplicable. According to Google, much like a wafer-thin fashion model, you’ve either got it, or you don’t. This update allows Google more opportunities to tell you whether or not you’ve got “it”.

I cant be the only search marketer in the world completely frustrated with Google’s quality scores. Or maybe I am.

I will continue to hope that future updates in Adwords are as forward thinking as the previous three. Maybe they will come up with an acceptable and reasonable alternative to custom-shape geo-targeting (You see what I did there? It’s called bitterness). Until then Google, I’ve got my eye (just one) on you.

Published by Miki DeHaven on April 25th, 2012 in Did You Know, Google AdWords