Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog

Dealing With a “Scam” Listing For Your Company Name in the SERPs

Posted: 27 May 2010 07:21 AM PDT

Anyone who deals with the public sector will have to deal with negative listings about them in the SERPs at some point. The most damaging of these is the “scam” listing. In this post I’ll discuss some tactics you can use to handle them.

In this age it’s inevitable that some will say something negative about you and you need a strategy to deal with it…

I got the idea for this article when I read a post by Tim Ferris called Tim Ferris Scam – How to Deal With the Haters. The article offers some practical real world advice ( I’m particularly fond of the Colin Powell quote), but this post is really just about dealing with the SEO aspects.

First and foremost, approach the problem from a customer service perspective. Drop the person an email or, better yet, a phone call and FIX THE PROBLEM. If someone wrote a bad post about you when they felt they got the shaft, chances are good they will post another when you bend over backwards trying to fix it.

Let’s say that won’t work–or maybe you’re in an unsavory industry, like one that engages in rebilling. What do you do? Because you are almost always going to be an authority for your own name, ranking for “brand name + KWD” should be easy. One post, a bit of internal anchor text, and a few scraper links should do the trick. Make sure you use “brand name + scam” in the title and in the anchor text when linking to the page and try and use the phrase in the main body copy at least once.

Have more than one negative listing you want to displace? Wait til your post is scraped, rewrite your original post, and link to the most authoritative scraper and that too. Need another? This is the time to maximize the list of parasite SEO sites, like squidoo, google knol, wordpress.com, and others.

So what should you talk about on these pages? Explain why your product or service isn’t a scam. Speak directly to the problems or issues people are having. Don’t sidestep or put a spin on it. You can fool some people, but most people know when they are being lied to.

In this age it’s inevitable that someone will say something negative about you, and you need a strategy to deal with it. You can choose to be part of the conversation, you can use some of the tactics discussed here, or you can try a combination of both.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Dealing With a “Scam” Listing For Your Company Name in the SERPs

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Writing Keyword Focused Posts that are Interesting

Posted: 26 May 2010 08:00 AM PDT

One of my constant criticisms of bloggers and the blogosphere in general is the sacrifice of keyword focus and the traffic it could bring when bloggers are more lyrical with their prose than they need to be.

In my opinion that post meets the goal of being interesting while talking about a commercial subject…

Last week I was reading an article in USA today (on my iPad) and came across an article that shows you can do both. Take a look at this article on five concerts you should see this summer before we get started. The article discusses five artists, the shows they are putting on, and why you should see them. They even go so far as to talk about ticket prices (without putting links to buy the tickets … missed opportunity right there). However, the author discusses why they feel these shows are worth spending hard earned money to see. The article isn’t an attack or flame piece, but it does express an opinion. In my opinion, that post meets the goal of being interesting while talking about a commercial subject.

If I were running a site, I would have executed this slightly differently. First, I would have written individual pieces about each of the 5 shows in more detail. These pieces would have some character and opinion but would be optimized for for phrases like “Justin Bieber Concert Tickets.” I like to use scribe SEO (see scribe SEO review) to make sure my posts are focused, but you can use any tool you like.

Next, I would have created an article like the one in USA Today. This piece would have had some keyword focus but would have a lot more editorial value. This article wouldn’t be optimized for any keyword; in reality, it would be closer to a piece of link bait. What you are really trying to do is create an article people want to share on stumbleupon, Digg, or Twitter, or a post that makes readers want to leave comments–if you haven’t turned them off, of course. Then I would link to each of the individual posts using anchor text like “Justin Bieber concert.”

This is a strategy I call head and tail content. After the post has gotten the majority of its traffic and hopefully built a few links, you need to go back and make an adjustment: change the anchor text to the tail pieces to “Justin Bieber concert tickets.” This secondary change takes the link equity you have built and uses it to your maximum benefit. The reason you do it later is to maximize the page’s link building potential. If you started out with the links that are overtly commercially-motivated, you build less links in my experience.

So what are the takeaways here?

Create your tail pieces first and keep them focused on a commercial keyword phrase
Create the head piece with focus on creating good interesting content first. Don’t ignore KWDs but don’t focus on them
Interlink the head and tail articles on publication
After the head has gained links and traffic slows down, focus the anchor text used to connect to the tail pieces

photo credit: Mad House Photography