As I’ve promised you in this piece on the legal silliness between Apple, Google, and Samsung—and others—my spin on the reality of the Google Nexus 7 is on its way. I think you’ll like it; what I have to say about the Nexus 7 and business change casts Google’s new tablet in a very different light that you’ve seen anywhere else and I believe will give you a perspective you’ll really be able to use.
If you look back at the last several pieces I’ve written here, you’ll see that they all have an opportunity to point at the upcoming Nexus 7 commentary. And they’ll do just that. When they do, we’ll be off to the races on a new topic for Search Engine Optimization ranking here at Answer Guy Central. and SEO is today’s focus.
These numbers in this table represent where Google see us as ranking for Search Engine Optimization on several phrases that I’ve done a bit of ranting over. Other than the “Steve Madden Felony” ranking at #1, these might not impress you very much, (we rank at #31 for “Steve Madden customer service”, by the way), but the more you know about search engine optimization the more you realize that even that #78 rank for “verizon wireless customer service” is pretty good. And it’s been as high as #22.
When I wrote each of those piece I was taking advantage of the place where my personal indignation intersected with my business goals. I was doing the same when I wrote about Acer Customer Service, when I told you the story—just once, just a few weeks ago—about Zuma London, and especially when I told you about absolutely awful customer service at Nissan of Manhattan.
As another aside, Google sees us as #26 for “nissan of manhattan customer service”. Bing actually sees us as #1 !
Because of that, when people search for various phrases concerning Nissan and Customer Service, there’s a decent chance they’ll get to read the story I wrote about the way lying masquerades as customer service at Nissan of Manhattan. And because of that, we get traffic and prove our mettle as SEO consultants . . . and I expect Nissan of Manhattan loses a few customers.
What would happen if Nissan of Manhattan called and asked me to remove that link, or even delete the page talking in such gory detail about Nissan of Manhattan Customer Service?
I’d refuse. But I’d also offer to sell Search Engine Optimization services to Nissan of Manhattan, and if they hired us to do SEO, over time the result would be that the piece I wrote would disappear naturally.
That might sound unsavory. I think it’s fine. We can agree, agree to disagree, or if you feel like doing some ranting of your own you can do it below in a comment.
The reason this is on my mind right now is that there’s something going on in search engine optimization land that’s going to change some other things. The Internet as we’ve known it for a couple of decades is about to get really, really interesting.
Links are the lingua franca of the Internet. Over time, how people feel about links has shifted, and while we’ve all come to understand that the more people who link to you the better you’ll look in the eyes of search engines, there was a time when companies were suing other companies for linking TO them. It was a simpler time; all they were worried about was the linkers misappropriating copyrighted material. This issue has re-raised its ugly head as recently as today.
But what’s happening now is that web sites with links to other web sites are charging a fee to remove those links. Once again, I’m (sort of) OK with that. The content here at Answer Guy Central contributes to our business plans, business processes, and business change, and if you wanted me to change those things it would be reasonable for me to charge either for doing it, for the time it takes to do it, or both.
The issue gets ugly when “pay me to remove this nasty thing I’ve written about you” becomes a form of premeditated extortion. Just as Yelp! doesn’t believe it’s in the extortion business, ‘perception is reality‘ drives the actions of people in the business of creating and selling links. And Google doesn’t like it.
All the more, this means you need to have your search engine optimization plans defined and under control, and your long tail marketing strategy in place, too.
Search Engine Optimization is business change, and so’s the way you get your SEO done.
Wanna talk about it? Me too.
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