Israeli SEO companies going wild

As an SEO contractor takes on a project, they experience immediate pressure to show results.  No matter how well they’ll try to communicate to their clients that “whitehat/textbook” practices take time, they will forever be judged by how fast Google ranking for  their websites improved.

This pressure leads SEO companies to use aggressive and sometime questionable practices.  Contractors use their own existing pool of web pages (some of the more questionable companies even use their other clients’ sites!) to seed backlinks to their newbie client’s website.

There are also  SEO companies collaborating with one another to create a strong backlinking cooperation pool. The sophisticated companies will develop a cooperation that is dynamic and categorized by topics and relevancy, thus benefiting from stronger weight in the SE’s. This practice is called link farming.  The search engines, recognizing this problematic practice that fill the Internet with bogus content and paid-for links, have vowed to fight the phenomena and punish the link-farmers.  But the reality is that little has been done to successfully prevent the phenomena and it is still a prevalent tactic used by the SEOs looking for fast and dirty results for their clients.

While link-farming falls into the gray zone of SEO ethics, the following phenomena was recently brought to my attention and I see growing evidence of some SEO companies actually blackmailing their clients. It goes like this. A company asks to terminate their monthly retainer based SEO contract with Acme SEO Consultants. Acme, in turn, threatens their client to immediately replace all their existing  backlinks with those of  a new (competitor perhaps) client.  Using dynamic engines, it will take them seconds to make the replacement and the ranking will be effected almost immediately. In many cases, the client actually paid for each of those links but probably without knowledge that they were on sites belonging to the SEO company!

If you are about to contract SEO services, there are two lessons to take from this post.

1. When contracting any SEO company, make sure your agency acts on your behalf and that you own access to every link.

2. The other lesson is to ask your SEO contractor to not deploy link farming practices but rather focus on long  lasting tactics that bring real value to your website and your visitors.

Actually, I am not a social media consultant or social media expert, at least I would never introduce myself that way. I know a whole lot about social media and how it can fit in, or not fit in, to an overall Internet marketing mix. And Dror knows even more than I do. �But when a company jumps on the bandwagon and without any clear goals or strategy, decides it needs a Facebook fan page or Twitter account, count me out. It’s probably not a client I could end up pleasing. Why? Becuase I would be honest with them, even if it cost me getting a job. Ween a CPA tells me he wants his own Fan page, I am compelled to tell him that CPA’s don’t have fans. Sorry to all the accountants in my family. But I could probably come up with some much better ways for him to achieve his goals

When a company is seeking how to leverage the internet for risk management, media exposure, standing out from competitors, improving and expanding message delivery, etc. etc. count us in.

I’ve been saying it about SEO and now I’ll say it about social media — these are all tactics and without an overall, solid, well thought out online marketing strategy, nothing much will come of it. �It’s great that today you can readily higher a guy in Pakistan to SEO your website by writing to everyone and his mother to place a link to your site from their site. Heck, you can hire a woman in Southern Spain to create a Twitter account and tweet your content in Spanish all day (I’ve done it when an LA Medical institute we worked with needed to reach out to the large Spanish speaking population of LA). But at the end of the day, you need to be sure that it is somehow serving your goals and that it is doing so effectively.

So when should you jump on the social media bandwagon? When you have some goals for what your Internet marketing efforts should bring you and you can use the social media tools that exist today to help you achieve those goals. Imagine that you can use social media to understand where a certain customer group is most sensitive and then provide them with the solution they were seeking from your competitors. Imagine that you can use social media to get the word out about a new beta release. �Or imagine that you establish a devoted fan base who love your music that is not yet available to the general public. Some CEO Tweeting what he did this weekend may have been novel for about a day, maybe longer if your CEO is Steve Jobs.

Dror worked together with Yagil of in- Design. Yagil has cooperated with WebWhile on several projects over the years and always manages to understand our crazy  thinking and to breath graphic life into our creative concepts.  WebWhile and Coca Interactive are now cooperating on the redesign of the leading web filter software web site and it should be up and running in the coming weeks. Looking forward to reporting on the improved results for bounce rate, click through and conversion on the Optenet PC web filter site as well.

And for all of you still looking for “the best’  SEO companies in Israel because you think you can zoom in on one tactic to solve your online marketing challenges, feel free to talk to Itzik at Interspace. He’ll explain why you need Internet Marketing consulting from experts with lots of experience, a wide understanding of business and how to do business on the Internet and a solid grasp of the web technologies (not hype) that are available and can enhance what you do.

Yahoo, Bing and even the Chinese search engine Baidu, as well as other smaller search system, mobile devices and mapping quarries, all need to play an active roll when relevant in your SEO efforts. The rise of total searches done in these often SEO neglected search engines, present an opportunity in gaining visibility by optimizing and advertising of businesses on these frontiers.

2. Mr. MicroManage
MM knows he needs a nice site. He even attends the design meetings and has input about the colors and fonts used. He wants the web development company that his Marcom Manager chose to include SEO in the project – mostly because he knows “SEO” is a hot topic these days online and, like any good Israeli business manager, he wants to get the most he can out of his vendor. But MM is unable to see the big picture because he is always looking at the details and staying up close to everything that goes on in the company. MM will tell you that, in HIS business, the website is not where he is going to get his real leads and certainly not the place where in his market business gets done. MM has a hard time with change and fears losing control.

Katan Ali and MicroManage are great salesmen. They travel around the world, close deals and know their markets well. But they don’t yet recognize the opportunity to move their businesses forward online. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that we think face to face meetings are no longer relevant or that exhibitions will simply cease to take place, but today, there is virtually no industry in which companies are not finding success online. If you are not already doing so, I guarantee that some of your competitors are. The Internet is another venue where you can generate and conduct business. And if you are not doing it today, you are losing potential customers to a competitor.

3. Mr. Wise
Wise has some online business experience and he is familiar with just how much the right online presence can boost their bottom line. He wants his website SEO’d and it is very important to him to reach top search positions in Google. But he also understands that he needs an overall online marketing strategy, in which website optimization is a part of an overall tactical plan. Wise puts trust in those around him. He knows that his business will be enhanced by good, solid online marketing. But he does not sweat the details. He recognizes the trend and leaves it to professionals to guide his business towards real online business results.

A wide variety of SEO experts have popped up in Israel. Many seem to talk a lot about the Google algorithm, measuring traffic, and some even make it sound like a mysterious combination of science and voodoo. They even refuse to explain what they are doing to their clients (or else they will have to shoot them?). I personally am bored with talk of the Google algorithm and I have never practiced any technique that I could not easily explain to any client who cares to listen. I reach page 1 of Google for incredibly competitive terms over and over. But even more importantly, I achieve conversions from those efforts. SEO is mostly an art of communication. It is about building a website that effectively communicates with the search engines to “explain” what they are about. It should be a part of you overall online marketing plan– not a separate tactic that you zero in on for some brief period by paying an engineer $5k to “SEO your site”. What should you zero in on? Achieving results. Once you accept that, you can start building a real tactical plan for your Internet marketing.

 יש את המשווק, בעל האתר התמים שמתגלה בהמשך כלא פראייר. יש את יועץ ה-SEO שבהתחלה נראה כמו טיפוס חלקלק אבל לכשמתרגלים אליו מגלים בו צדדים נסתרים וסימפטיים. וכמובן שיש את היישות החייזרית האכזרית והמניפולטיבית שרוצה לכבוש את העולם בכסות נעם והדר (גם נעם והדר בטח רואים יסבבה). בעצם היא יכולה להיות גם סופה מושלמת או כח מחץ שה”פראייר תחילה” והיועץ מנסים לשרוד. לצורך העיניין נקרא למגלומנית Google. היועץ תמיד בהתחלה שיכור ומעוך ומשחק אותה כאילו לא בא לו על העבודה למרות שהוא מת למכור 4. ה”לא פראייר” נכנס לצרה צרורה שלא באשמתו, יתכן והוא נפל בדירוג במנועי החיפוש והבוס שלו נלחץ בשעה שהמתחרה הנוצץ החדש והמניאק עקף בסיבוב.

ההמשך ידוע. ה”פראייר הקטן” מחליט שהוא לא פראייר יותר. הוא יוצא למסע שאין ממנו חזרה.

הסוף גם כן ידוע, כנגד כל הסיכויים הוא מקמבן איזה משהו בעזרת טיפ של היועץ. אולם מכיוון שמישהו תמיד מת, היועץ מקריב את עצמו ואיכשהו באופן הירואי מותו מהווה את המפתח להצלחת המבצע.  רגע לאחר מות  היועץ, ה”כבר מזמן לא פראייר”, נותן למגלומן הרשע בראש ומנצח. עכשיו כל שנשאר לו לעשות זה לאחוז ביד את הבת של היועץ ז”ל, נגיד שקוראים לה קמפיינית, ולרכב איתה אל עבר השקיעה.

היחס של Google ליועץ ה- SEO יכול היה להיות דומה ליחס של קולגות מתעשייה משלימה. למשל כמו שמתייחסים בבתי מלון למדריכי תיירים. אני מקווה שאני לא שוחט פה איזו פרה קדושה, מקסימום פרגית,  אבל לדעתי היחס בגוגל דומה יותר ליחס של תעשיית הפיתות ליצרני השיפודים. כן, התוצאות לפעמים עסיסיות, אבל כשאתה לאפיונר לא מיומן זה מה-זה דוקר. כמו שכמעט אמר המשורר: “אחר כך הוקל הלחץ על העמבה הכתומה”.

אם תחשבו על זה בהגיון, קידום אתרים בכובע לבן אמור לעשות בדיוק את זה, לקדם את האתרים. לא רק במידרג תוצאות החיפוש כי אם גם ברלווניטיות שלהם. אתרים מקודמים היטב בסביבה האורגנית יצליחו יותר כלכלית ויפתחו את התיאבון למנהלי השיווק להשקיע יותר  בתוצאות הממומנות ובקמפיינים – PPC. אז נכון שאתם שם ב- Google משקיעים בכלי חיפוש ובכלי ניהול קמפיין  אבל זה די ברור שאתם עושים הכל על מנת ולהלחם בקידום אתרים ושסימנתם את יועצי הקידום כאויבים ולא כקולגות. האנשים מהתעשייה יודעים בדיוק על מה אני מדבר. אז לפני שאתם ממשיכים לתקוע מקלות בגוגלגרים של עגלת ה- SEO ומחסלים באופן ממוקד את הענף, כדאי שתזכרו שלא כדאי לנשוך את היד שמאכילה אתכם גם אם זה חמוצים.

For a long time now, Google has been promising us that they will start to index Flash. That day has not come yet. But now there is another storm of noise as Google, Yahoo and Adobe start collaborating to enable indexing Flash.

But don’t start running to your designers to okay that beautiful Flash design you rejected last week because of your SEO needs – it’s likely to be a very long time before this becomes a reality. Not just because it’s tough to do and involves coordinating development teams of some of the worlds most prominent companies – ultimately, Flash developers may likely be required to develop sites differently in order to make them indexable.

Who will benefit? And who will lose?
The interactive agencies will have a picnic when this comes to fruition.
And all the big brands and Internet giants will enjoy it as well.
The ones who suffer, in the short term at least, will be the little guys and this is a real shame – to watch the Internet become less and less a level playing field. Once we could really say it was level, then for a while we could fool ourselves into thinking it was, then we found lots of techniques for keeping it somewhat fair game; but now – we know it is not. And over time, it looks like the barriers to entry (or to traffic) are only getting higher and more costly.

We always tell our clients to avoid focusing on SEO. It deserves serious attention and should be a part of the marketing mix. But don’t obsess. At the same time, when a client’s design team wants to use Flash, we guide them towards a healthy balance, so as not to harm their search engine ranking aspirations. The idea that sites could start to integrate more flash and stop worrying about the search engines and concentrate more on design is certainly good news. But in the short term, it will clearly give a boost to the big guys who are typically more reliant on Flash and will have the budgets to make the needed adaptations once the best practices are established.

Keep your eyes peeled.