Link Building or 'Black Mailing' ?

A client of ours sent us the folllowing e-mail they received from a link building 'professional'.

It is a follow-up letter to his original solicitation.

**********
I have send you already a mail for link exchange if you want good links for your site than reply me fast..

I will place your link at our good site.

Send me mail for link exchange…. Here …

**********

It is obvious that this person is not a trained professional and doesn't have any sense that he is essentially trying to market his website. Most likely he is a freelancer trying to meet a set quota of links within a set time frame.

The more such e-mails go out, the more companies will be apprehensive of outsourcing link building. After all, their reputations are at stake.

On a slightly different note, notice the impatience and brashness in the tone of the e-mail? Unfortunately, I see a lot of it in the ITES/BPO generation in India. Arrogance is increasingly being mistaken for confidence. Of course, we want to see a self-confident society that can face the world on its own terms, but not an arrogant one that does not appreciate the value of humility.

Google, George Soros to fund SMEs in India?

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim quotes a report from AP & Reuters that says Google along with the Soros Economic Development Fund and the Omidyar Network is going to fund SMEs in India.

It might well turn out to be a great investment for the future. Wonder what kind of businesses will be targeted for funding.

YouTube partner program- A bonus revenue opportunity for content creators

Revenue sharing with content creators is not a new concept--- numerous publishers, particularly those driven by the user-generated content (UG)model have been doing that for some time, mainly with the Google AdSense program, to incentivise content creators to contribute content.

What appears to be different about the YouTube partner program, which has been in place in the US and Canada and introduced to the UK very recently, is that the video content contributed to YouTube does not have to be exclusive ie. content creators can post/ distribute that content at multiple locations.

Without going through the terms and conditions closely, it seems like a very good opportunity for content publishers to generate additional revenue from YouTube's captive audience. Not only can these publishers monetize their content on their own properties with whatever audience they are able to attract, but they can also generate revenue from the publishing of the same content on YouTube, while still retaining the rights to license/ syndicate content anywhere else they choose to. How attractive this revenue stream will be for these publishers will depend on their reputations, ability to generate traffic to their own properties and the price the content can command, if licensing was an option.

Of course, such publishers may not be the key target for the partner program. That would be the individual/ small-time content creators who may be able to generate good-quality and relevant, niche video content, but don't have the marketing wherewithal to attract a sufficient audience and monetize the content.

SEO & keyword ranking reports

One of the questions we often get asked is: how often do you provide keyword ranking reports? Monthly, we answer. Can you provide it weekly, we get asked in return? Why would you need those weekly, we are tempted to ask, but choose to decline in a more polite manner.

Suffice to say, the obsession with "keyword rankings report" is one of those things a SEO agency has to live with. Not that it is totally bad--- afterall, it is one of the ways clients get an idea of what is happening with their SEO campaign. The problem is when that report is taken as indisputable evidence of the success or failure, or the competence or lack thereof, of the SEO agency.

The evolution of search engines means that position ranking reports need to viewed with a handful of salt. Search results may vary from location to location- why, even computer to computer. We've seen numerous examples where users sitting a couple of metres apart and searching for the same phrase have been shown a different set of results by Google, even when none of these users were logged in. So, how could one rely entirely on the ranking report, typically generated using a software?

The challenge for a SEO agency is to try and get clients (and often, prospects), focused on the right metrics. While Google Adwords says it very powerfully,"It's all about results", for us the focus has to be "It's all about results that matter".