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Advertorials and Google

Matt Cutts, Google’s voice to my industry, has recently stated in a video that Google considers advertorials and sites that use them without a no follow tag to be in violation of Google’s quality guidelines. You can watch the full video here.

So what exactly is an advertorial and why should I steer clear of them for now?

Wikipedia says this about advertorials:

“Advertorials differ from traditional advertisements in that they are designed to look like the articles that appear in the publication. …The differences may be subtle, and disclaimers—such as the word “advertisement”—may or may not appear. Sometimes terms describing the advertorial such as a “special promotional feature” or “special advertising section” are used. The tone of the advertorials is usually closer to that of a press release than of an objective news story.”

In other words many advertorials are created to appear as if they were native articles belonging to a website or news site. They may not even be marked as a paid advertisement; but that is exactly what they are. A huge cottage industry has grown up around the creation and marketing as well as the placement of advertorials. Just recently sites which use advertorials and sell space have started to (in some cases) mark these well written articles as advertising. Some sites still flow PageRank to the promoted site providing SEO benefits.

Matt Cutts states plainly that these SEO based activities are clear violations of Google’s policies and in near future updates sites that use, promote, and place advertorials will be penalized in organic placement. For now, I highly recommend that using advertorials not be a part of your promotion programs.

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Google’s New Keyword Planner for AdWords

Coming to Google AdWords accounts and accessed from the tools menu drop down is a powerful new tool called the Keyword Planner. I am seeing this new tool in many of my client AdWords accounts as of today. This new tool is a real gem and a wonderful improvement to Google’s integrated keyword tools.

Start looking for the Keyword Planner in your AdWords account.
Start looking for the Keyword Planner in your AdWords account.

The Keyword Planner is powerful, you can now really estimate activity

  1. Choose options before you start search for keywords, estimate your own list, multiply your keywords.
  2. Choose targeting for estimates not only at the national level but get estimates at the state and city level.
  3. Set your average cost per click with a slider and set a daily budget to see results.

But that’s not all, you can do more:

  1. Pick over a list of keyword suggestions.
  2. Set the match type of keywords to target.
  3. Cull out keywords as you go.
  4. Download your new list as a .csv or an AdWords Editor import file.

I am just starting now to run the Keyword Planner through its paces in client accounts and so far I am finding the suggestions for my specific needs an excellent starting point. I am still carefully reviewing keywords on load, but there are some variations that I feel are pretty good additions to my client accounts.

What I like is the speed. I created a new list of phrase matched targeted keywords that look like they could really generate some sales with a few clicks and in under 10 minutes. As I try the tool out more this week, I’ll let you know additional thoughts.

For now, look in the tools section of the AdWords accounts you manage to see if you find the the Keyword Planner there. For the accounts I am managing, the tool seems to be appearing in accounts that are about 90 days old or younger. My older accounts do not have the tool appearing yet in the drop down menu.

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Is AuthorRank or BrandRank Coming for Businesses on Google?

Is AuthorRank or BrandRank coming for businesses on Google?  That’s an interesting question and one that I feel Google is leaning toward based on the chatter online, but one I doubt we will see this year. What exactly is BrandRank? First, let’s start with a little bit of detail.

AuthorRank passes SEO juice.
AuthorRank passes SEO juice.

This past year Google really pushed AuthorRank as a way to verify authors and help to build credibility of content. It all starts with a personal Google+ page, a tie-in to your website, and then tagging of your content you may write around the web. When properly done, you will see a face next to an article and SEO juice flows from links to the owner’s website, to the Google+ page, and pushes results higher in personalize and organic placement. It is a real boon for writers such as myself.

Google understood that there are many businesses where this benefit of authority of content would be valuable, especially for big companies/brands. So it quietly rolled out rel=”publisher” in addition to rel=”author”. For brands and companies the ability to tie together a website, blog, Google+ Business page using the publisher tag makes terrific sense.

However, Google has already stated that it won’t be putting a face or brand icon next to any of these results, at least not for right now. With Google really pushing AuthorRank, I would expect them to do the same with BrandRank, but more judiciously and most likely not this year. I just don’t think that they want to dilute what is happening with AuthorRank yet, but I feel that BrandRank  will come in the relatively near future.

In the meantime, I would strongly recommend that you position yourself early and start working to develop BrandRank if it is meaningful for your business. Preferentially use AuthorRank if it makes sense to your business or BrandRank if you are a medium to large business.

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Google Cracks Down on Fictitious Google+ Local Reviews

I knew that eventually Google would address the growing problem of SEO firms selling services to create fictitious Google+ Local reviews, and finally they have. Here is a quote from Google:

“For business owners:

  • Be wary of an SEO or reputation management service that promises to generate reviews for your business. We’ve seen companies make up fake glowing testimonies — and we’ll take them down.
  • We don’t take down negative reviews for simply being negative for anyone, regardless of any other relationships with Google. Instead, we encourage you to utilize the owner response functionality to respond to the review and address the user’s concerns.
  • If a third party claims that they know how to remove reviews from Google, don’t believe them. Google does not work with any third party reputation management companies and we certainly don’t remove reviews unless they violate our guidelines.
  • Don’t set up a computer or tablet device in your place of business for customers to leave reviews on site. Consider sending a reminder e-mail so customers can review on their own time.
  • Remember, we don’t allow you to give customers free gifts or discounts for leaving reviews.” Read the full disclosure for business owners and SEO on this Google page.

Based on what I see, it appears that Google is not only scanning for fake reviews, but actively and aggressively targeting Local Pages that use them, but interesting enough appears to be tracking the IP address. Take a careful look at the section that says don’t put a tablet or computer in your place of business – that means IP tracking.

Additionally Google has turned to crowd sourcing to catch the offenders. If you know a competitor is doing this or suddenly has tons of reviews magically you can report them to Google for review.

“If you see a review that violates our policy guidelines, you can report the review to us by clicking on the gray flag icon next to the review in question. You’ll be taken to a form where you can tell us why you’re flagging that review. Please note that we won’t follow up with you individually, but we do review every piece of content that is flagged.”

This information is very important for website owners. I know of several who have been approached by firms selling these exact review services. They are stating that they set up individual Google email and Yahoo accounts just for your review creation, work to mask the IP address and then create a glowing supposedly untraceable review. Be wary of these types of services, is it worth being banned from Google+ Local pages to try to scam Google?