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I was sitting around today doing some work (aka farting around in Facebook) when I saw my friend Aly going ape over something she saw on PCMag’s blog post about SEO. So I checked out the author’s article first, then I hit her blog up for what she had to say. It was a FUD campaign on the authors part, actually a very deliberately calculated one delivered with the usual amount of bias and skew that you can come to expect from someone knowing little of the topic or just enough to be dangerous. I didn’t pay much mind to it, because as I said before… it’s FUD. Rather than get up in arms about it, I focused on what the author was doing in an attempt to understand the anatomy of what comes out of a corporate blog.
One of the first things I picked up on was the title of the post and it’s blatant negative slant; “SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization”. Instantly you’re told that there’s trouble and this is a fiasco on some level. Yup, this is linkbaiting at it’s finest. Ah and you definitely noticed the other sly thing that PCMag did in order to have some on-page SEO in place.. we have “SEO” and Search Engine Optimization” both sitting in the title tag and of course.. a nice fat H1 tag at the start of the article. Damn that SEO junk, it never works.
So besides the on-page SEO stuff that’s there, let’s look at what external SEO was done under the guise of being a random blog post. At the time of writing, there are now 305 pages in Googles SERP’s buzzing about this article. Also at the moment, one page of twitter search results show that it’s hit the twitterverse as I type this. This is probably going to grow. Oh but wait a second… what have we got here? Why it’s PC Magazine’s own dedicated twitter account. Clearly, someone inside of PC Magazines online marketing department knew that if you drop the bait, the rest is history. Piss off the bloggers and they will get you that coveted traffic.
Anyways, this article is a ploy to start controversy. Get traffic. It’s a tech blog, dedicated audience, good chance that a percentage of the audience is in a web industry of some sort. This is deliberate. It’s smart too. Here’s what we can learn from it;
- Attack the bloggers - Being a blogger, and calling out other bloggers, especially with such a wide brush is sure to rile up some attention. In this case, it’s a whole industry… which ironically is driven by bloggers. Funny how that worked out huh? Not really. Oh and when I say “attention”, I really mean links.
- Negativity sells if you have authority – The author wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground in terms of what we do for a living, but then again, he safely bet on his audience to believe in his authority since they believe him to be a source of absolution. Again, smart move. Devious, but yes, smart.
- Put your experience with the topic as a secondary focal point- This again, is smart and deliberate. Avoiding personal accountability, the author can keep himself as a distractor to the real story. In this case, the author talked about his experience of trying some optimization techniques and that they failed miserably. Therefore, SEO is at fault. His authority cancels the possibility that he fudged up somewhere in the procedure or he was expecting instant gratification.
- Be prepared for multiple offensives - If you look at Captain Chucklenut’s post, you’ll notice that it’s not clearly visible how to comment, if at all. Deliberate again. When you chum the waters, the sharks will come. But that’s why you stay on the boat all nice and safe. So in this case, you get to go piss in a hole with other people that might think he’ll notice your thoughts. But more importantly, MOST importantly, it’s pre-emptive damage control on a corporate level. All dissenting opinions about the author, the article.. hell ANYTHING for that matter, cannot be visibly associated with the site. But it’s there. Go share some words with him if you like, but seriously.. why bother??
Need more examples of this technique? Go have a look at ZDNet and CNet. Man oh man, if you wanna see some nasty linkbaiting going on, find ANY article where they compare operating systems up against each other. Hell, I kid you not, the authors misspell things often in their posts, almost as if they’re in a rush to just put out something to chum the waters with. And they do this perfectly every time. Within 3-4 hours, flame wars begin from readers viciously directing their thoughts and rants at the authors, the topic, the other readers, their own shoes.. hell anything in the way at that moment.
And it’s DELIBERATE.
Remember that. It’s the greatest lesson of them all.
