To all my friends and readers, please be aware that due to some malicious people, there appears to be malware downloading onto computers that visit SEO ROI, or at least an attempt to that effect (some browsers seem to notify users and/or be impervious, eg Google Chrome’s notifications).

I’ve notified my hosting company and asked for their help, as well as posted a job to some freelancers I work with to see what they can do. So I’m hopeful to have this resolved by the end of the week. Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Also, thanks to everyone who dropped me a note about it – your concern and looking out for me are really appreciated.

Cheers
Gab Goldenberg
p.s. Another good reason to add my feed to your reader, ironically – that way you can read without visiting and exposing yourself to bugs and other junk.

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A while back someone in the search community recommended I get a form fill extension for Firefox. The way it works is that in the admin panel, you fill in stuff that most web forms ask. The next time you need to fill in a form, you just click the extension’s icon and it fills it in for you. Nice for commenting and checkout forms etc.

What didn’t occur to me is that the tool, since it also lets you set custom fields and values for them, can be helpful for directory submission or registering social media profiles (it doesn’t, unfortunately, break captchas).

This is great both for link building and reputation management, as well as preventing phishing by users posing as your employees on social media networks.

Here’s the one I’m using, though there are several around:

http://autofillforms.mozdev.org/

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Big ideas and food for thought:

How the social web is helping propagate racism: Online Antisemitism 2.0. “Social Antisemitism” on the “Social Web”

Seth’s Blog: Music lessons

Search geekery:

Adwords Support – Get It!

Note: It won’t be great, but you might still get minimal help. Requires the ability to read between the lines [of bs].

TypoHound – Find eBay Typos and Misspellings

Keywords with two meanings? Inconceivable! | SEO Woman

Project Wombat: the Difficult Reference Question Mailing List

Simple Block segmentation analysis • Tim Nash UK SEO Blog

Hiding the Sphinn Button When a Post Fails to Go Hot

SEOmoz | Does “Query Deserves Diversity” Algorithm Exist at Google?

YOUmoz | Bad Bots Confound Web Analytics By Executing Javascript Tags

Reputation management:

Avante Gardens: You Had Me at Hello – Cameron Olthuis

FTD.com Sucks – Cameron Olthuis

On a related note, I was chatting earlier tonight at Yulbiz with a webmaster called Nicolas who apparently ranked on Google.fr for things like ‘dictionnaire’ ‘synonyme’ and ‘cigarette’ . Anyways, this pro was happy that someone else was ranking for his last name as it drew attention away from him; he’d rather the competition not be able to find out about him. Also why he’s not on Facebook. Interesting approach I thought I’d share.

On being a value added affiliate, see these two (especially for SMX Advanced ):

Webcam Reviews

The Best Rate Guarantee Blog – Best Rate Guarantees, Free Hotel Rooms, and Other Travel Deals: Seattle

I’m working on a meatier post to release later this week or early next week. I’ve taken on Ice.com as a client for SEO work (have a look at their Pearl pendants or Diamond Rings and keep an eye out for an interview either here on in the Domaining press on the true story behind the acquisition of Diamond.com) and between that and current clients, am briefly swamped until I get some things sorted.

That said, I wrote what I think is a kickass post on email marketing for linkbait, and because I wrote yet another crummy title, Sphinn didn’t promote it to the front page (http://sphinn.com/story/47807 ) and for whatever reason Rebecca didn’t feel it was main blog worthy …

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One of my favourite things to do when browsing the web is take screenshots of interesting things I notice, particularly in the SERPs, but also on other sites. It’s an easier way of taking notes and learning from others. Featured below are some sites you know, like DoshDosh, Treatment Search, Sphinn and others.

There’s also the genuinely stupid Stupid.com, some much more intelligent Sphinn spammers who’ve carefully observed what tips us off to spam, and more. In the interest of load times, I’ve linked to some pictures rather than post them here. Enjoy!

Keywords and Search Demand/Volume per DoshDosh

I thought that taking a historical look at Maki’s most viewed posts would give us an idea what’s popular with the search engines, and what gets more transient attention such as social media love or being on the front page of his blog. Another possible explanation is that the effect of showing most viewed posts is kind of self-reinforcing, as more people view the posts by clicking the sidebar links.

Here’s a May 13 2008 screenshot:

Here’s another screenshot taken slightly over a week earlier.

What I pick up on is that Maki’s adsense posts are very popular. The search volume for them is probably greater than for social media terms.

If you find Maki interesting, you’ll probably be interested in this series of screenshots on…

Sphinn spam.

Kombucha tea bags and affiliate marketing on gas offers… lame! No avatars, no subtlety in the titles, just plain volume. I’m so tired of this crap. On a more humorous note, consider the irony of this guy’s Sphinn submission of domaining advice.

In the above Webkinz toys picture, the spammer had a short title, and a single vote. These probably attracted attention to his post as (i) being different from average Sphinn material and (ii) likely spam. But he also had an avatar and used a trusted domain (from which I exclude the subdomain, obviously), which make people speed over the submission and not notice the spam.

Finally, we get to the more sophisticated spammers.

They’re getting 2 votes to avoid being lumped with the 1 vote churn and burn spam submissions. They’re also using avatars. In particular, the Bangkok hospital one blends in with Sphinn’s dark green color scheme without looking like the newbie/spammer default green avatar.

There’s also some manual spam submissions. I’d bet that the Iron Man submission was done by a human because it goes to a legitimate news site. Probably a spammy SEO/webmaster who sold search marketing services to naive clients. Note also the avatar aimed at not being categorized with the rest of the spam. That one almost got by me because the title is typical length for Sphinn and there’s an avatar…Just looked like a meh submission (becaues of the single vote) by a newb who was making an effort to do well on Sphinn, until I read the headline.

Then finally there’s the really dirty affiliate free get-rich-quick-on-clickbank-and-adwords-ebook squeeze page aiming to get people’s emails. The only subtlety was making the title sound like it could be a review (e.g. inspire reasonable doubt in would-be spam reporters) and getting a vote.

Blogged.com Widgetbait Spam and other miscellaneous spam, like Submit Express’ link trading…

I blogged it earlier, and while browsing around, I found out that their “use this badge to show off your great rating” spam has met with some success.

Just before changing the topic, I’d like to share some other spam, including some link exchange spam by Submit Express, who happen to rank pretty well for SEO terms.

PPC

So with all these people spamming to rank for keywords, you’d think the people spending money (rather than time/server resources) for traffic would be careful. Turns out that buying ads for a page that’s gone/doesn’t exist is more common than you think.

Bupa International was advertising on my buddy Rishi Lakhani’s Treatment Search.

Unfortunately for Bupa, their PPC person/agency was sending traffic to this page that tells you the page you requested is unavailable.

You’d think it was an isolated incident. Stupid.com’s stupid PPC agency brought me to this page when I clicked an ad of theirs:

Sticking with the theme of stupidity in pay-per-click advertising, I’ve seen this ad to “increase Your Page Rank” on Search Engine Land. What happened to knowing your audience?

Another thing of interest were Israeli PPC ads I saw, in two languages and with two character sets.

Similarly, this is what Lyndon Antcliff’s Cornwall SEO organic site listing looked like to Israelis, back when it got hacked. The blue line of Hebrew text under Cornwallseo.com reads: this website might cause damage to your computer.

Furthere in the topic of original PPC ads is this one using a URL shortening service!

This clever fellow is succesfully buying two spots in the PPC results. Can you tell it’s converting well for him?

After discussing Google’s Expanded Broad Match with Andrew Goodman and Amy Konefal, I’ve got some ‘craptastic relevance due to Google’s Expanded Broad Match’ screenshots to share.

First, here’s a picture of GoToMyPC, Google and Goofbay showing up for a copywriting keyword. There’s actually more irrelevant ads than relevant ones – quality score my eye !

Then I did this search and poor Microsoft (yes, that’s an oxymoron) saw Google taking its money for “free search engine submission software.”

That ad came up when I tried to see if Google Expanded Broad Match would make this ad for Engine Land Inc (motors, not SEL) show up again.

Unusual Reputation Management Cases

Well, it appears that besides Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Hermione Granger has a taste for stronger flavours. The caveat is that the beer drinking shot may have been photoshopped. What’s interesting here is that you need to do image SEO for reputation management here, and that not only do you need to deal with the universal SERPs but also the Image SERPs.

For those people who steal content, wouldn’t you like to know that the DMCA can get you booted from the SERPs and give you reputation management problems?

Feeds, IP Addresses and Other Miscellaneous Items Ranking in SERPs

Shawn Collins’ feed is showig up rather than his actual blog post. Sounds like a case for nofollow… And Shawn, if you’re reading this, I’d be happy to do SEO for Affiliate Tip .

Finally, one strange pic of an IP ranking for “Honda Civic.”

Odd.

I’ve got other cool pics, so check out my Flickr photostream (nofollow cuz Flickr nofollows outbound links).

You might find some retargeting after I tried booking a stay for SMX Advanced (I got accepted to speak on the Site Buying panel). Copeac’s also doing intelligent stuff with their email marketing to get inactive affiliates moving. Our national news network in Canada, CBC, is shamefully incompetent and biased in nearly all its journalistic endeavours, but at least they know to track RSS referrals.

And if you dig really deep, past my screenshots, I did some paid drink spam arrests (inspiration came from Chris Hooley’s Drinkbait). Arrestees included notably Miguel Salcido and Michael Gray, (eVisbility and Wolf Howl) as well as Sugarrae (Sugarrae), Andy Beal (Marketing Pilgrim), Rob Kerry (Evil Green Monkey), and Mike McDonald (Web Pro News).

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Google killed former SEOmoz CTO Matt Inman’s widgetbait because some Guardian reporter didn’t like it and wrote his negative opinion up. Then Aaron Wall was unlucky enough to trust a jerk who asked Matt Cutts about Aaron’s affiliate program based linkbuilding.

The question is: Will Amazon get a beat-down too? For their affiliate program based linkbuilding?

Don’t be silly.

3 Lessons for the Weary:

1) Don’t make Google look stupid. This is the cardinal rule of SEO. Spam isn’t a problem until it makes Google look bad. Sometimes that’s just by ranking. Other times you figure out a way to get lots of whitehat links and then bingo – you’re nailed. Note: I personally find the Widgetbait issue particularly weird, since Google’s saying to webmasters: we’re not holding you responsible for your own content.

2) Avoid getting too specific, particularly about your sites or clients’ sites.

3) Build your brand. Duh.

4) If you find some code that works to build whitehat, links in a scaleable fashion, keep it to yourself and do your best to stay on the downlow/practice reputation management. The Guardian folks wrote the story up a couple of times, and it’s plausible that they’d have wrapped it up after one piece with some reaching out.

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And it isn’t Google Analytics, as I mistakenly thought. So I need to apologize to Google (and to you, my readers) for the error/false accusation and getting people worried for nothing.
Even more humbling, both Matt Cutts and the official Google Webmaster Central blog have called yours truly’s site “high quality.” So let’s see …

• Matt Cutts intervenes early at Sphinn and in my comments here to clarify that Google Analytics wasn’t at the source of these new items in Google’s index;
• In followup explanations by email, he shares where those site SERPs were coming from;
• Matt & Google provide a public explanation of what’s really going on, thus joining the conversation rather than ignoring it and hiding away
• Matt and Google compliment me/ SEO ROI (!) for having a high quality site worthy of this fancy treatment.

How’s that for reputation management? (Incidentally, on a prior occasion it took Matt about a month to get back to me on something, so it looks like they’re improving .)

A little while back I wrote about how I thought Google was indexing site SERPs for those sites that had Google Analytics tracking site searches. In effect, I mistakenly accused Google of leaking Analytics data into its index. I had enabled site search tracking and my friend Brian had too, and we were both seeing these site search results pages turning up in Google’s SERPs. Thus we were worried about the integrity of our data.

As it turns out, Google’s experimenting with a new form of discovering deep content on “high quality” sites. Whereas content hidden behind forms and javascript was once inaccessible, Google is now testing out new ways of discovering and crawling it, including performing limited numbers of site searches [and indexing the results].

Read the full explanations at Matt Cutt’s blog and the more technically detailed explanation at the official Google Webmaster Central blog.

Oh, and if you haven’t already, don’t you think it’s time you subscribed?! Consider that prior to the loud-titled “Google Analytics Is Leaking…” post, I had actually written about the topic over a month earlier! If you pay close attention to my blog, you’ll learn/discover nuggets of information waaay ahead of everyone else!

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Google Analytics is broken (like PageRank is broken), and leaking my data into the index. All the site searches here on SEO ROI are resulting in site-SERPs pages getting into G’s index. How is this happening?

Final Update: This has been disproven as being the source of the site-search-results appearing in Google’s search results. I had good reason to believe that Google Analytics was the source of this (you can see below for my original thoughts on the matter), but there’s now a clarification. My apologies to Google and to my readers for the mistake.

A while back I saw a video about using Google Analytics to track what searches people perform on your site (note: the video seems to be gone, but you can read Avinash’s explanation on how to set up the site search tracking). It seemed like something worth tracking, in order to find out what I might write to meet my visitors need, and perhaps get some keyword research too. So I set it up.

I forgot about the whole thing until I did a site: search on SEO ROI in order to do some research on how the big G was liking my pages. Well lookee here! SEO ROI Site SERPs in Google site: SERPs!

Naturally, I wanted to see whether this was just affecting me. Guess what? Brian Chappell set up the tracking too, and here’s what a site search on brianchappell.com turns up:

Google Analytics Leaking Brian Chappell’s site search results.

While if I were a blackhat this would be great – I’d automate bots to search for keywords on my sites, have Google Analytics push it all into the index, then linkspam my SERPs – I’m a white-ish SEO with the coding skills of a luddite. I can do html reasonably well, but programming is waaay over my head.

More importantly: This proves that Google Analytics is integrated with Google’s organic search, and not just AdWords. I remember reading Winning Results with Google AdWords, and Andrew highlighted a debate as to whether or not Google Analytics “gives your sales receipts to the landlord,” to reprise his metaphore. Here we have another problem with Google Analytics, quite evidently.

This is another reason to make the switch to a Conversion Ruler (hat tip for the reference to Andrew), Click Audit for your [very easy to setup and use click tracking - you'll notice me using it instead of Feedburner/Google Analytics for tracking subscriptions], Mongoose for call-tracking, or any of the other analytics tools on the market. On a related note, if you found this material interesting, why not subscribe to my RSS feed ? There’s lots more where this comes from.

Update: Matt Cutts and Mike VanDeMar have anecdotal evidence (which I verified) that this happens on sites not using GA too. Mike’s site had this without ever using Google Analytics, apparently (he’s since developed a neat bit of code to drop those pages out of the index). So GA isn’t necessarily involved. It may, however, be one of several possible causes.

Update 2: Matt emailed me and he “will try” to get a post up on Google’s Webmaster blog about this.

Update 3: Both Google’s official post and Matt’s announcement are now live. Turns out Google itself is doing a new form of crawling, submarine crawling, which includes querying forms and discovering links from Javascript.

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Scratchpad, for those of you who don’t know, is my informal column. Take the ideas for what they’re worth and ignore the style.

Questions

Q1: What is the best measure of attention equity? Links? Daily visitors? Repeat visitors? Subscribers? Trends in the prior statistics? Something else?

Q2: Is scannable content contributing to ADD/ADHD readers? Does it contribute to information overload, by encouraging rapid consumption of content?

Q3: What trends do you see in the consumption of content? I feel that major shifts are occurring but can’t put them into words/don’t know where to look.

Q4: With Google stock’s recent $200+ nosedive, who else is going to get hit in advertising soon?

Related note: There’s a glut in advertising, driven by the trend to offer everything for free and make money by selling ads. The problem, as the article notes briefly in passing, is that the ads have to support something that is eventually paid for, or else you end up with a massive pyramid scheme.

Q5: Should you write scannable content? Or will that make people skim your content and cut into your attention equity? My hypothesis is that there will be poorer retention.

Friendly tip: Don’t bold headers that give away your whole paragraph idea. That encourages people not to read all you have to say, which may in some cases add necessary detail to the header. But if the whole can be summed up in a header, why are you blathering on for three more lines?

You’ll notice the headers here indicate the content to follow, but not the ideas contained therein.

Reputation Management: Get Human and The Domain Registry of Canada (DROC, Droc.ca) aka Registration Services Inc.

• Get Human help you reach human operators. Which is great, because too many companies rely on machine answering services! <rant> Now if only it would help me with those jerks at Paypal! I opened a $USD account at my [Canadian] bank (Scotiabank) and Paypal says that if I withdraw US $, the funds auto-convert to Canadian. But I want US$! Which is why I opened the USD account! If anyone here has the solution, please leave a comment and/or email me! gab at this domain .com

• Shady has a great bit on Clickbooth and why Clickbooth sucks.

• The Domain Registry of Canada uses direct mail with sketchy language to make you think you have to renew/transfer your domains to them.

“You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your domains from your current Registrar to the Domain Registry of Canada*. Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the Web.

“* A Registered business styleof Registration Services Inc.”

Well golly gee, sirs, I guess I’ll renew right away!

Seriously, DROC sucks. www.sibername.com/support/droc.php . www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/domain-registry-of-canada-scam-with-direct-mail-and-online/ . www.active-domain.com/news/2002sep-2.htm.

It also appears these people operate the “Domain Registry of America.”

Reminds me of Network Solutions’ SEO consulting services.

Domains: How To Make A Market-Based Appraisal Tool

1) Scrape completed domain sale records.

2) Provide an input form for the domain and its extension.

3) Check the keywords in the inputted domain and the extension against the recently completed sales.

4) Provide list of sale prices for similar domains and average going rate.

PPC

I was at Treatment Search and clicked an AdSense ad there. It took me to a page that was down. That has got to be the biggest, stupidest mistake you could possibly make. Paying for visits to a page that’s down. I had screenshots but they’re lost, unfortunately.

p.s. On the schedule to be published/submitted for publication this week are a totally original greyhat idea and SMX West photos and coverage. Also, if you enjoyed this post, check out the first Scratchpad and the second Scratchpad.

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Actually, I didn’t. And that’s why this post matters.

Money shot by Tracy O.

If you’ve been around the internet marketing sphere for any extended period of time you’ve seen one of these hypey, outrageous headlines. They suck you in by telling you half the story, but when you read the content, you find out one of two things:

• You’re at a Getrichquickbank-run one page sales letter landing page. Some guru will unveil the “the secrets” of how he/she/they made $3000 each and every week, while sitting in their pyjamas reading the newspaper and eating croissants. Or drinking their coffee, rather, as these people aren’t usually sophisticated enough to appreciate French pastry. When I was at Andy Beard’s (who is a truly bright guy), I saw a badge for Rich Schefren’s crap, featuring something about a $580,000 video. Puh-leaze.
• You’re reading a post by some legitimate author, in which case, they’re disguising the fact that they actually worked long, hard hours building up to the point where they can make $3k+ a week. Skellie (for whom I have a lot of respect for, just to be clear) wrote a post like this, albeit relating to subscribers: How To Get 1100 Subscribers in 5 Days. Here’s an excerpt:

“I had decided to be optimistic and hope for 100 subscribers in the first week. Clearly, I had underestimated the value of three factors:

1. A loyal audience.
2. A profile in your new niche.
3. Connections with other bloggers.”

So if it took you a while to build up the audience, profile and connections, why did you say that it can be done in 5 days? Because sensationalism sells, and when so many people are suffering from information overload, titles like that obviously help break through the clutter.

But sensationalism is also really annoying, and a time-waster. Frequently, it can hurt your brand too, as with a certain goofball’s repeated exclamations that SEOs suck. Likewise with the search conference that, as per their website magazine ad, is inviting him to speak again (I’m pleased to say that it’s not the search conference I’ll be at). Does Jason Calacanis have anything to say that could be worth an SEO’s time?

Personally, I’m extremely turned off by these titles because I know that they’re misleading. The only reason Skellie’s got a link is because there’s some decent content there. But as part of my frustration with this tactic, the link is nofollowed. (@ Skellie: Since you regularly write quality content, let it stand on its own two feet. Your readers will appreciate it more.)

I’m speaking about my own frustration with sensationalism and similar tactics. But I’m sure many other people are sick of seeing flamewars and ignore them too. And if my experience/opinion is at all a bellwether – and as far as calling trends, I suggested to my college economics prof that a recession was looming for 2008 back in mid-07, and I called Google’s stock dropping under $500 – many others are tired of this too.

Think about that next time you make $7538 in a day. Drink some more coffee before you click publish. Maybe even eat a croissant.

Update: Rishi gets a link to Treatment Search, and Mike Tekula gets another link for his Web Design & SEO shop.

As always, your thoughts and insights are welcome (likewise social media votes ;D), and the better ones are rewarded with dofollow links here in the post. Also, if you liked this post, check out my friend Charlie’s blog on why trust matters, and my earlier post on credibility and linkworthiness.

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What follows is a letter I wrote late one night out of anger, frustration, depression, pain and a desire to get my feelings off my chest so that I could finally fall asleep. I’ll be using it to illustrate and explain the two most important elements of human behaviour: motivation and influence.
The former is the explanation as to why someone behaves a certain way, and the latter explains how to affect the former. If you enjoy this post, be sure to get my RSS feed as there’s lots more where this came from.

Frozen Motivation courtesy of Robbystyle.

To give you some background on the letter, I was bullied pretty badly in grade school. The kid to whose parents I had addressed this letter had once been my best friend, years earlier. They’d moved away, then returned, which explains some of the references to returning to the school.

The only friend I had in grade school was this incredibly nice, compassionate and smart guy named Ofir. He ignored the fact that I was unpopular and stuck with me, even nominating me – to my great and pleasant shock – for class president in grade 6 (needless to say, I lost miserably to a popular kid). Nowadays, Ofir is an excellent all-around athlete who recently won the Quebec provincial football championship with his team, the Vanier Cheetahs. Here’s a highlight reel of his kicking for you coaches – definitely a hardworking athlete you’ll want to recruit and give a scholarship to .

Anyways, here’s the letter, verbatim except for the fact that I changed the names for legal reasons. Bare in mind, those of you who would comment on the grammar, that it was written by a 12 year old, or thereabouts.

“Dear Mr & and Mrs X,”Hello, it’s your son’s ‘friend’ Gab.

“I’m writing you concerning your son’s change to this school. He does not deserve this school. This school is for losers like me, isn’t that right Kev? Over the past 2 year’s [sic] since your return from Florida, your son (and others)* have been despicable to me. Earlier this year, I gave up hope for the situation and left. However before that, something very significant concerning your son & [sic] me happened. In grades 5 & [sic] 6 even though Kev treated me poorly I kept hope for our friendship. Soon though, in grade 6, someone told me [that] you had gotten me invited to your son’s b-day [sic]. I did not believe it. Earlier this year, at the time of your son’s bar [sic, Bar-Mitzvah], that thought came back to me. I gathered all my courage and confronted your son with what I heard. He confirmed [that it was true]. Even if it was not true, He [sic] was too dumb a f*** to deny it. I still doubt that it was not true. I’m not lying.

“So please keep your son in the school for popular other mean kid’s name kids. Tell him he does not need to act like we are friends. I just do not want to see his face.

Gabriel Goldenberg

“P.S. I do not want apologies. Just do not bring your son/slimeball to my school.”

Let’s ignore the petty insults and cut to the chase. Why did I just share that intensely personal episode? What was my motivation?

I shared it because that anecdote illustrates the symbiotic relationship between motivation and influence. The influencing of another person can only occur where there is a motivation that is being spoken to. (Note: The target of the attempted influence need not be aware of the motivation beforehand, if the influencer can communicate the motivational idea to his/her target.) I also shared it, on a more personal level, because if you/your children have a tendency to bully/intimidate/”kid”/make fun of others, you should think twice because those people could destroy your reputation one day. Imagine if I used my bully’s real name – I could rank this without breaking a sweat and give him considerable reputation management problems.

If you understand and harness these two forces (motivation and influence), then your site will convert, you will win your election, avoid losing your best employees, become a thought-leader and you’ll have power beyond what the worst tyrants of all time ever dreamed of. Shits ‘n giggles, what?

Since psychology was created, one of the most interesting things to psychologists has always been motivation. Varying explanations were proposed, such as the instincts theory (whatever we do is because some inner instinct compelled us to it, as I understand it; kind of deterministic, if you think about it) and Freud’s famous id/ego/superego theory (I’m a great example of the superego part, at least ).

The most accurate explanation to date is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow suggested that human beings feel five types of needs, and that for a person to feel a need higher up in the hierarchy, the lower-level needs had to be satisfied. It’s like building a pyramid: you can’t create a third floor if you haven’t set blocks in place for the first and second floors.

Left: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs courtesy of Pictopedia. Right: 7 level version of the hierarchy of needs courtesy of Mark K Kaser.

Let’s illustrate with some examples from real life.

1. Influence derived from Physiological Needs and Safety Needs

Dictators work off physiological needs, as by controlling rationing of food, electricity and other essential amenities (OK, you could live without electricity, but you’d be pretty miserable … believe me, I’ve done it when the Ice Storm hit Quebec 10 years ago). That’s how North Korea’s Kim Jong Il does it.

You can also work on people’s security needs. Want to meet your needs for food and drink, and not have your roof torched in the evening? Better keep quiet about that beating you saw in the sidestreet last week. Or about the mafia style kneecap blowouts.

Truth be told, these tactics often do work. Most dictators hold onto power largely as a function of their repressive tactics. The problem with messing around with people’s physiological and safety needs is that it doesn’t tend to earn you many friends. For every dictator using these tactics, there are 1000 people planning to slit their throats, and hundreds of thousands more who would be grateful to them for succeeding. And for every dictator that succeeds with this, there’s 10,000 who made one enemy too many on their way to the top and got killed along the way. It’s a high-risk method.

The flip side of that is that even if you do meet some people’s physiological and safety needs, in a positive (think UN handouts) or negative (Saddam etc.) way, you still won’t have happy people. So even if Kim Jong Il managed to feed every person in his country, chances are they’d still want to leave. We complain about a brain drain here in Canada, but we should count ourselves luckily because the fact of the matter is that most Canucks are happy to stick around and see themselves living here in the future.

2. Motivation based on Love and Belonging

I was just reading a book called The 100 Unbreakable Rules of Business Success. Rule 37 is the Rule of Power. The author, Brian Tracy, defines Power as the “ability to influence the allocation of resources.”He’s applying the notion of power to businesses, hence the allocation reference. You’ll notice however that the bottom line message is that power is influence.

Tracy goes on to write the following brilliant, very insightful explanation as to where this influence is derived from: “Ultimately, true and lasting power in an organization comes from the consent of the followers.” Permission marketing anyone?

The context of the followers reference is that the Rule of Power is in the book’s section on leadership. What matters to us, however, is the relation to motivation. Influence is granted to others by the influencee’s consent, and that consent is much more likely to be granted when the influencee feels that a genuine relationship exists between them and the influencer. They see that they are respected, loved, befriended, possibly sexually intimate etc.

Imagine that a soccer player on a team is jeered by a rowdy fan in the stands for hogging the ball. In all likelihood, the tone of the comment and the absence of any pre-existing relationship between him and the fan means that the message will be ignored as one more taunt by a jealous opponent, challenger etc.

Now suppose that the player’s teammates, whom he interacts with on a daily basis and goes out with during holidays, suggest in a discrete way (to avoid embarrassment) that the player should look for his teammates more. There is a relationship of mutual trust and respect, and the player may be ostracized if he continues to hog the ball. In all likelihood, the player will take note of his teammates’ suggestion and practice having his head up for teammates to pass the ball to. He desires continued acceptance as part of the group, and therefore willingly submits to their influence.

Picture of various motivational/influential considerations courtesy of grantlairdjr.

Peer pressure works on people’s desire for belonging. And it can be used for good, as with the soccer player example.

Another example, which was discussed in my intellectual property class with Prof Gold, is the case of students sharing notes and/or summaries. One of the essential motivating factors for people to share notes is the desire to encourage others to reciprocate if/when they should need it (which goes back to Cialdini). Word gets around about people who don’t share, and there are sanctions imposed by the group of students who do share (such as exclusion, and refusal to share).

When social media experts highlight tactics such as commenting, social submitting/voting/bookmarking, sending [non-self-promotional] tips etc., they are highlighting relationship building – a means to influence based on the desire for belonging/love. This also relates to respect, in that the building such relationships is largely motivated by a desire for influence. (You social media mavens and players reading this please share your thoughts on this in the comments. Do you agree/disagree? Why?

3. Respect (of others and self-respect) as a Motivator

Anybody who has ever felt that they had something to prove will certainly understand my meaning here. Having the respect and esteem of your peers is something that nearly everyone desires. The reason I’m so excited about speaking at SMX is that it’s great for my reputation and serves as social proof. It says that my peers in the search marketing industry recognize me as contributing something noteworthy to the conversation.

Picture courtesy of Soooosh.

Again, this is tightly related to the concept of peer pressure. Some people cave in to peer pressure, to do drugs for instance, in order to get the respect of certain peers. As a peer of mine in high school once said, sarcastically and very self-consciously, “Come on, all the cool kids are doing it!”

When a person buys a Lamborghini, they aren’t buying a car, nor even a sports car. They’re buying a promise of recognition at their favourite place to cruise for women or car afficionado community. Jaguars and BMWs are sold on the premise that owning one will gain the owner respect as a succesful businessman at the country club. Status symbols aren’t sold on features, comfort or any of the other buzzwords that ad creatives likely to feature. Those are just the excuses provided to purchasers to rationalize the purchase to themselves. Status symbols are sold on respect. That’s why they’re called “status” symbols .

4. Influence due to Self-Actualization Needs

In just about every Hollywood movie of recent memory pitting a good guy against a bad guy, there is a line to the effect that the bad guy can kill people easily whereas the good guy is always hesitant and remorseful. Why is that?

It’s because both the good guy and the bad guy are looking to “be all that they can be,” as the US army used to say. Creative activity, morality … most of the advanced thinking that we do falls into this category. Appealing to someone to solve a puzzle or a unique problem challenges them to think deeply and helps them satisfy the need for self-actualization.

In a nutshell, proposing to someone that they pursue a particular path because it is more ethical, or more creative or somehow involves one of these advanced functions, is one of the strongest arguments that can be made. Appealing to a person’s need for self-actualization makes for a compelling argument. Who would work in advertising cigarettes when they knew that cigarettes killed people?

Actually, that was a trick question. The fact of the matter is that many people have advertised cigarettes, and many still do. While many more people ban these ads and refuse the work because their need for self-actualization (here, their ethical drive), other people have taken up the torch (no pun intended). Why is that?

You’ll recall that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a pyramid – the an upper level of blocks can’t be laid until a lower level is laid, which blocks in turn can’t be set in place until the lower level needs are satisfied etc. The people working in advertising cigarettes are likely in a situation where they can’t even think to focus on their self-actualization because their more basic needs aren’t being met. IMHO, it’s probably the “sexual intimacy” need that isn’t being met for the cigarette advertisers !

Another possibility is that, like the bad guys in said Hollywood flicks, some people have an inverted sense of ethics. They see the perpetrating of some evil act as the greatest thing they can do.

Investigative journalist Stewart Bell wrote a book, The Martyr’s Oath, about the true story of a young middle class Iraqi boy who, through the 90s and onwards gets brainwashed progressively into al-Qaeda’s doctrine. He goes on to become an important terrorist. What’s notable about this is that it disproves the terrorist apologists who claim that terrorists commit their murderous acts out of desperation and because of their miserable living conditions. Heck, just consider that Osama Bin Laden is the son of a billionaire Saudi construction magnate and you’ve got all the proof you could ever need. If that weren’t enough, consider that his right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an Egyptian doctor. Twisted, yes. Motivated by subsistence needs, no.

These people are killing not because they’re desperate, but because they’re more educated and are looking for self-actualization. The greatest thing that they can be, in their brainwashed world view, is a “martyr” who blows himself up to kill others.

The flip side of this is the story of Israeli soldier Ro’i Klein, who jumped on a grenade to save his friends. Likewise US soldier Ross McGinnis who flung himself onto a grenade to save his buddies in their armored vehicle. Those people are true martyrs, and obviously motivated by self-actualization to “be all that they could be.” (That is, lifesavers; I’m sure that had they lived, both of these two heroes would have gone on to great things.)

Whether good or bad, you need to understand that self-actualization is the most powerful motivator. When you have somebody whose other needs are being met, appealing to their need for self-actualization is the most influential, the most persuasive argument you can use.

Conclusions on Influence and Motivation

Influence can only exist where there is motivation to support it. Understanding your audience begins with assessing what their motivations are, or are likely to be. Only then can you influence them. You can also do this in reverse and start by designing your product/brand/service to appeal to a specific need that people have, and so define your audience. In any case, it’s essential to grasp Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in order to see what motivates people and thus be able to influence them.

Now that we’ve seen motivation and influence, be sure to return here (SEO ROI :p scrapers) tomorrow to learn about 2 new metrics that will affect your measurement of your social media efforts. Plus I’ll be sharing some creative ideas to get you started improving how your blog/site tallies up. Or you could take the easy way out and rather than commit to returning tomorrow, get my RSS feed to read that post when you’re ready to improve your social ninja skills. Finally, for some further reading, see what motivated Ann to blog (opens in new window).

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I’ve gotten two emails from a certain “RankRanker@gmail.com” (aka “webmaster@RankRanker.com”) trying to sell me their “Free SEO System and Link Exchange With Extra Earning”. While spam email pitches for terribly named, grammar-rule-flaunting, “get rich quick” systems (NEW: Now With An SEO Twist!) are high on my priority list of things to pay attention to, that I’m going to have to politely decline the offer. I’m so busy considering SEO pitches from Traffic Power, Network Solutions, and Vijayinfo.in that I have no time to consider an additional SEO system — even if it does come “with extra earning!”

However, I’d like to commend them for writing me these excellent, highly professional emails. They’re clearly way ahead of the rest of the industry’s best practices for email and have no need to pay attention to other SEOs’ inferior ideas. Besides which, SEO is about the individual’s power, not about the network. So more power to you for writing such great email pitches for your SEO system, RankRanker!

Date: 1/20/2008

By : SEO Team of RankRanker

Subject : Free SEO System And Link Exchange With Extra Earning.Dear Webmaster, You know what the best part is? RankRanker make it soooo easy for you. You don’t have to keep your ear to the ground. You don’t have to practice. You don’t have to make mistakes. All you have to do is follow the simple instructions in this easy-to-use automated system of SEO. Our Marketing department has visited your attractive site especially “the Home page”. Your relevant site theme attracted a lot and compelled for sharing with you an entire new concept, where you can earn with the help of (SEO) RankRanker.com, it’s a Business linking platform which contains One-way, Two-way and Three-way automated linking. Free-Registration offer for limited time. We would love to have you our partner in this new Evolutionary Automated System of SEO. You are just a click away to become a free member of this exciting SEO system. Click the link below NOW! http://www.rankranker.com/regiter.aspx [ED: Did you mean register? Yeah, I also hate it when my spam links are broken because of typos...] Special Area for you. You can earn Dollars. You can optimize your own site. (SEO) You can get SEO Techniques, strategies, Tips & Trick. You can get free software’s and helping books. You can get advice from our experts and international analyst. You can make your site as useful as yours seems to be. Silver & Gold Plans We have two major plans for our users, Gold and Silver feature plans. WE ARE GLAD TO ANNOUNOCE THAT FIRST 500 REGISTRATIONS WILL COME UNDER SILVER PLANS THROUGH LUCKY DRAW FOR FREE This offer stays only for first one month after RankRanker launching. We also have “Auto Advance plan” as future enhancement to maximum facilitate our visitors, towards fully automated Link exchange system. (coming soon). More and more people are subscribing because of great results against MOST ECONOMICAL PRICE, your site will reach a very broad range of potential and will adjust in our home page if you avail our feature or advance plan. NOTE: We have launched Beta version of RankRanker.com & need your precious feedbacks & comments to improve our functionality and maturity of our unique SEO product. On inauguration we are please to inform that in first month all of our honorable visitors can avail paid area/plans for free.

Best Regards webmaster@rankranker.com

Also, I’m highly appreciative of their persistence, which they demonstrated by resending me the same email which I ignored the first time. This clearly shows a marked determination to help me improve my email’s spam filters – thanks guys!

Cold-calling is a tried and true sales tactic. It may not be as effective as search marketing, because it’s classical interruption marketing as opposed to permission marketing, but it still exists today because it does work. For it work, however, you need to understand that it’s a volume game. Some tiny percentage will convert. And much as I hate spam, I recognize that even some spam emails do convert.

I’ve got to wonder though: if you’re going to use spam, why would you try it on someone who’s going to out you? And why annoy someone who’ll give you reputation management issues (like 1 and 1‘s issues)? Silly RankRanker (aka Rank Ranker aka webmaster@rankranker.com). What do you guys think about unpersonalized spam emails like this? Any experiences to share? Funny stories? Others who’ve gotten stuff from RankRanker@gmail.com?

(P.S.: If you link here, please use “RankRanker” “Rank Ranker” “RankRanker.com” and related anchor text. On a related note: go find out why Web Hosting Geeks suck. Also, do see 20 steps on Web Search PR – those “clueless numpties.”)

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The following are four cases involving reputation management. The paragraphs are long because (i) they were written that way and it felt natural (ii) I’m too lazy to edit (iii) most importantly, we’re all suffering from shorter attention spans. I promise you good content if you read on. Some definite lessons to be learned about proactive reputation management for those of you who are attentive to detail.

Adviso: I was supposed to meet Jean-Francois Renaud, founding partner of Adviso, for coffee and a chat. We had met at FacebookCamp Montreal, where he told me that he was interested in chatting SEO, after which we set an appointment to chat. JF was late, so when he showed up and found no one (I had gone looking for him at other nearby cafes, in case I had gotten the wrong place), he called my place to see what was up. I’d left a note for him with the helpful people at the Couche-Tard/cafe, whereupon he went looking for me.

He apologized for being late and bought me a hot chocolate. He showed he was checking my blog by congratulating me on going to SMX, which was an impressive touch. Then we had a good chat, he taught me some stuff I hadn’t known, I shared some tips of my own and we called it a night. Until he caught up with me though, I was pissed. I’ve had other business meetings where I’ve been stood up and when that happens, someone is telling you that your time isn’t valuable.

Thinking J-F had stood me up, I was mentally getting ready to send Adviso a bill for my time and write a nasty blog post. Instead, I’m here highlighting Jean for his proactive approach to reputation management and making amends.

All too often reputation management is called in to clean up a mess. When you’re proactive like J-F, messes don’t happen and you save a lot of money. Compare the cost of an apology, a compliment and a cup of hot chocolate with the cost of paying just one staffer to write a response blog post and comment here and any other places that might have picked up the story. If the average SEO staffer makes only $35 an hour, the ROI is about 7 times!

These are people skills, ladies and gents, and you’d be well-advised to develop your own if you want to last. They sell ergonomics and other marketing services worth checking out.

Dreamhost: To begin with, I’m in love with these guys. I registered for a basic hosting plan. Did I get follow-up spam sales calls? No. Domainsarefree.com (a shell company for Glob@t) do that, in my personal experience, and John’s gotten the same from GoDaddy.

Do Dreamhost they hide their support away? No sir! There’s a UVP to use against Netfirms! Netfirms are my former hosting company whose support reps are MIA, unless you’re cancelling their auto-renewal and reminding them that they can’t bill you for the domain that they included for free in your hosting package. Better yet, their support have responded within a half-hour and sometimes within 15 minutes to all my support requests to date, and there’ve been a few! I don’t mean auto-responders either. This is good quality, human written stuff that answers your problem with specifics (rather than referring you to some stupid FAQ that is supposed to answer your question but usually doesn’t *cough Netfirms cough*).

Recently, all this built-up goodwill nearly got blown sky-high in a way would have made great fodder for some harshly critical blogging. Dreamhost billed me for next year’s hosting 9 months in advance. This would have been a terrible mark on their reputation if it had been left unattended. Lucky for them, I quickly got a follow-up email stating that they had made a mistake, apologized for the error and had reversed the charge.

I’ve learnt my lesson about domain names and hosting: you get what you pay for. And Dreamhost offer the best damn web hosting around! (Note: Godaddy’s phone support, which I used once, was decent. The guy was friendly and though he didn’t know the answer to my question, he got it from his boss in a few minutes.)

1 and 1 Internet Inc. Where do I begin? Should it be the fact that every domainer alive hates 1 and 1′s guts ? Or perhaps that their generous CPA program promotes 100% BS affiliates, like this one: 1and1.ReliableHosts.org. On a related note, for you PPC managers, note that they’re using a subdomain in the PPC, yet aren’t redirecting it to the actual landing page/homepage? That’s not a newb mistake, that’s a dumb-arse mistake. Speaking of which, I wonder if that’s not even 1and1 Internet’s own site, and they’re just trying to get a review that looks good when people decide to look around the SERPs. I mean, “1 and 1″ isn’t a genius keyword to come up with and bid on, yet other affiliates are noticeably absent from those ppc results… On a related note, look at how Google treats those SERPs, and which keywords it bolds. And is bolded in the PPC listings, but not the organics. Interesting news, if you care about stop words. (Or use them in anchor text.)

My story with 1 and 1 started innocently enough. Like most of their customers, the cut-rate domains drew me in. As I was getting into domaining, I bought more domains with them than I should have, including some clunkers. That’s my fault though. What’s not acceptable is their billing out of the blue months after the last time I ordered a domain. WTF? I got that charge removed from my card, and moved on, thinking it was just a mistake.

But then they’ve got your domains on auto-renew (little did I know) and thus charge you fees even for the domains you’d like to just allow to drop. The misleading cancellation instructions – which I had to request by email as they’re by no means obvious within 1 and 1′s setup – that list a number of steps then have a link with the filename ‘for more information’.

As it turns out, that more information is REQUIRED for you to cancel the auto-renew on their domain names. I couldn’t show my bank that I cancelled the domains, and after trying to resolve it with 1 and 1 and my bank’s challenging, incredulous dispute officers (I suppose after challenging the other claim for a few bucks, they put me on some watchlist; totally undeserved as I never ordered anything around when I got billed the first time), I gave up on it. That was $45 and change.

But you can bet your high-horses that I’m rooting for Elliot Back’s expose on 1 and 1 ‘s scandalous business practices to rank all the way at the top for their name. He’s right: 1and1 Internet sucks! He points out that Digitalpoint have also noticed how much One and One Internet suck, ditto this 1&1 critic, and this smart fellow explaining when 1 and 1 makes 3! See also 1 and 1 is the devil, and how dramatic action was required to fight 1 & 1 Internet. Please do link to those sites as well and help pass the word along to other webmasters about how crummy a company 1 and 1 Internet really is! (Even Domains Are Free don’t do that stuff! Zing!)

Network Solutions: These guys are a catastrophe! Everything Network Solutions does they get wrong. Seriously. And their wannabe participation in the conversation is a joke. Just not a particularly clever or funny one.

Before I conclude, I’d like to point out my friend Susan’s recent post on Amazon adding video reviews to their site. While video game sites have done this for ages, it’s new to Amazon and potentially very powerful. Reputation management will gain a new dimension with that. And like I said, with attention spans getting shorter, it’ll be interesting to see how much footage per video is actually watched. Also, if your attention span lasted until now, check out Andy’s five steps for recovering from a reputation management crisis. Smart and practical, his tips are like these 7 Habits.

One final comment: I’m reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street. In Chapter 10 on Behavioural Finance, the author shares a study showing that people are 2.5 more loss averse than they are inclined to gain. That probably helps explain Susan’s observation that reviews are skewed negative – consumers are trying to help others avoid the loss and are frustrated and angry at their own loss. The losses 1and1′s caused to hundreds of domainers and webmasters and web newbies generally are a case in point for the community feeding back angrily.

And that’s why proactive reputation management as practiced by Adviso and Dreamhost are so much greater than the reactive stuff most companies need.

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Think you’re going to linkbait people with whitepapers? Maybe get their email or have them register for your webinar? MyVenturePad is bringing the stakes of the game one step higher: They’re giving away Meatball Sundaes! What is a Meatball Sundae?Meatball Sundae is Seth Godin‘s new book. I registered for a webinar given by My Venture Pad(.com) and just got a thankyou present from them: a copy of Meatball Sundae. Brilliant marketing, folks!

(Picture courtesy of … no, not Tamar this time. I took that .

So what is MyVenturePad?

They’re a business community a la Liblogs (run by my friend and all-around cool-guy, Jason Cherniak), for those of you familiar with Canadian politics. That is, the main community element is a blog reader/moblog consisting of feeds fed into the system by the community’s businesses and/or participating bloggers. Here’s how MyVenturePad describes itself:

“This is a moderated online business community for owners and managers of companies with fewer than 500 employees, and the professionals who advise them. Before you can use most of the community features of the site, you will need to sign up (Upper Right Corner).

As a registered member you can create your own profile and view the profiles of others. You can leave comments, rate posts, and directly connect with other members. You can add your existing blog feed to the content flow or blog here ”

Seems to me linkbait in 08 is going to mean free giveaways…

Other related notes: I recently bought “Pourquoi Bloguer dans un Contexte D’Affaire,” or 10 Reasons Why Businesses Should Blog for those of you who only speak English. While I think Seth makes a good argument in Meatball Sundae – Web 2.0 is not the silver bullet – Why Business Should Blog features a pretty good argument for the use of blogs, at least. Speaking personally, I know that blogging has helped me get more business, so there’s certainly some potency there.

10 Reasons to Blog in a Business Context features the writing of 10 well known Quebec business bloggers, including a few I’m proud to claim as friends, or at least friendly acquaintances. Four of them wrote me dedications on the inside cover (ironically, I didn’t know those guys yet from any prior Yulbizes, though I had met – not quite the same as knowing – Martin Lessard at an earlier one).

The shirt is from Africa Is Real’s One Voice Concert to raise money for the fight against genocide (esp. in Darfur), proverty, and AIDs. The dog tag is from Hillel, inscribed with the names of the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped by terrorists last summer.

The dedicators are Tristan Peloquin, Claude Malaison, Mario Asselin and Martin Lessard. The other authors are, in no particular order, Sylvain Carle, Michel Leblanc, Philippe Martin, Martin Ouellette, Marc Snyder and Marie-Chantal Turgeon. I now know all of them except for Martin Ouellette (whose chapter on blogging as a tool for provocation – in the sense of making people think, not provoking a flame war – is quite good) and Marie-Chantal Turgeon. Each of the 10 have an impressive blog and if you can read French, then these are people worth bookmarking at least, and probably RSSing too.

While some of the information in the book on SEO is of debatable accuracy (like links being “votes,” as per Martin Lessard’s otherwise highly intelligent chapter, which I credit along with Shana’s Social Desire for explaining why commenting is worth it and thus making me comment more) , much of it is highly educational and informative. Just like two of the book’s 10 reasons, namely Mario’s “blog to teach” and Tristan’s “blog to inform.” I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I am enjoying it thoroughly, and can assure you that Claude, besides writing a chapter, did a damn good job with the editing.

But I digress: Thanks again to MyVenturePad for giving me Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae as food for thought! This is how you do proactive search engine reputation management.

On a related note, I vote for Gyutae and Winning the Web, in his friendly challenge to Tyler Cruz. He’s ahead of us all and already on the giveaways trend, and after giving away a review by John Chow, he’s now offering free t-shirts for people to vote for his blog. Smart guy, that Gyutae! Did I mention he comments on this blog and has real ice cream under his Sundae’s toppings?)

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data