The Mitchell Report – What the Implicated Should Do from a(n Internet) Marketing Perspective
Posted on December 13th, 2007 by Justin Seibert in PPC, Paid Search, SEM, SEO, Search Engines
TAGS: baseball, hgh, mitchell report, search engine reputation managment, steroids
For as busy as I am, I waste WAY too much time on sports. I mean, what do they add? The good times are greatly outweighed by the bad. And if I do try to draw parallels from the sports world into internet marketing, often times the results are usually disastrous for all involved.
Having said all that, I just can’t help myself. The Mitchell Report has me all giddy. Besides, if the World Wide Leader says it’s important, it must be.
Michael Vick
In August, I delivered a speech on search engine reputation management at the Online Marketing: Innovations that Work conference. I mostly picked on Michael Vick. Side note – my favorite slide – a screenshot from his Web site after the dogfighting stuff came out where under news it listed a quote from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (included here since his site is currently, ahem, “under construction“:
“Not going anywhere” is the polite way of saying federal prison.”One thing’s certain; quarterback Michael Vick…’s not going anywhere. Barring injury, Vick is the Falcon’s starting quarterback.”
Oops! Wonder if Bobby Petrino’s site had anything similar. He seems like a good, honest fellow.
In addition to the problems it caused him, Vick also greatly damaged the NFL’s brand (deliberately choosing to ignore some other folks from a university I’m fond of). And no matter who you are or what company you’re with, you can get ruined over the Internet in a heartbeat. The internet just multiplies things so quickly and takes stories that were once local or regional and turns them global.
So in a semi regular feature starting, well, today, may I present What they Should have Done.
What the Baseball Players Should Have Done
Every walk of life has idiots; it just seems that sports talk radio has more than its fair share. One yahoo last night was talking about why it would be good for some baseball players to get a heads up that their name might be on the report (here’s the definitive list of steroid users for people like me too lazy to sift through that tome – by the way, you’re not all that surprised about the Pirates’ results over the last 15 years when you see how many of their regulars made the list.)
Are you kidding me? How would these players not know there was an excellent chance they would be on that list. The sports media has been talking about it forever. Not as much about the NFL. Which sport do you think has more players juiced?
Search Engine Reputation Management: The Basics
Before we get into some basics, let’s go over some basic points about search engine reputation management (SERM). Disaster recovery and reputation management has been going on forever in the offline world. This is just an adaptation – perhaps the most important one. While tv and radio may have a more lasting impression because of the sensory input (for the time being until online audio and video really explode), your past indiscretions can be called up at any time to haunt you forever.
SERM works with other forms of reputation management, especially pr through press release optimization and focuses on two distinct areas: search engine optimization and paid search marketing. Each are very important.
Get Ready
So assuming that these players knew that what they were taking wasn’t flax seed oil, they should have known for some time that their day of reckoning was going to come. Much prep work should have been done in too intricate of detail to list here, but the players should have at least:
1. Start optimizing their Web sites, blogs, and building relationships online with their fans.
2. Opened up some paid search marketing accounts with our friends over at Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter.
The reason they should have started months ago is that time is of the essence when bad news drops. Search engine optimization takes a very long time for results to improve even when you do everything you can and follow good white hat principles.
It’s Not Too Late – Fight Back
Now even though the report hit just a couple hours ago, it’s not too late. Start sending press releases carefully optimized for keywords. For example, Mr. Smiley (I almost didn’t include this link, because this blogger is practicing black hat seo by spamming his own comments! Paul will probably yell at me.) should send out press releases in an effort to save his legacy that focus on search terms likely to become very popular very soon, like “roger clemens”, “clemens steroids”, “is roger clemens such a jerk because he was cleared up, or did the roids only enhance his natural unlikability.”
Do all the other things that are smart for general SEO purposes, too, along with some tactics particularly well suited for SERM. Plus, this is the best time to get those paid search campaigns going. One of the major benefits of paid search (of several this practitioner would argue) is that it is immediate. With a little hard work and some knowhow, players can start fighting to get your story out and have it be seen tomorrow while people are surfing the internet for the latest commentaries and updates. Besides, I’m sure none of them ever took anything knowingly, anyway, right?
So if you’re one of the dozens of folks named in the Mitchell Report and you’re worried about your legacy, protecting your image, or trying to keep those endorsement dollars coming in, give us a call at 1.800.979.3177. It’s not that expensive (especially considering the alternatives). Besides, you can afford it.
Thanks for the link. For the record, I didn’t spam my own comments. If you follow those links, you’ll plainly see that this post was part of a group writing project and that several other participants linked to me. Please verify your claims before making them.
Comment by Geoff Young on December 14, 2007
Geoff, thanks for the response. You were right in that you are not self-spamming your comments. I did a quick look and did not notice the comments were actually pingbacks – I apologize.
Having said that, I still argue that you are – either inadvertently or advertantly (is that a word?) – trying to game the system. In each of the 28 pingbacks, the same comment is listed each time: “Five Unforgettable Roger Clemens Moments by Geoff Young”. That makes it seem like people are in some weird linking scheme. I don’t know, maybe that’s just a byproduct of ProBlogger’s Top 5 Contest, but it sure doesn’t look like it’s on the up and up.
Also – maybe it’s something with our system, but I’m curious why the portion of this post wouldn’t show up in your pingback. Is that because I don’t have the same text?
Regardless, it’s a shame in either case, because I really enjoyed your post and think it’s a great list that stands on its own merit.
Comment by Justin Seibert on December 14, 2007
You argue incorrectly. I honestly have no idea why that text keeps showing up. Personally I think it looks ugly, but as they come in, I approve them out of courtesy to the folks who linked (so other people can visit their sites).
Question my motives if you must, but let the record show that there is nothing underhanded going on here. I don’t know a way to prove this beyond giving you my word but there it is.
Comment by Geoff Young on December 14, 2007
Given that it’s obviously not black hat SEO (dozens of blogs, all independently authored and none of them affiliated), probably best to edit your original post.
As far as folk pinging with the same words, the reason’s obvious if you just click around:
Every post linked just copies and pastes Darren’s list. Since that list includes Geoff’s post, each pingback will look exactly the same to WordPress.
While I’m quite biased (as Geoff’s “boss”), his approving bloggers who linked to him is totally the right call.
Now, if this happened every day or week we could question Geoff’s motives or whatnot. But making an out and out claim that another blogger is engaging in back hat tactics is not only mean, it’s uninformed. A few minutes of research would have shown what I saw: a lot of blogs copying a list of posts.
All the best with your continued blogging and success, just please feel free to click around a bit before posting something as damning as “black hat SEO”. It’s like me saying you’re obviously working withe mob because your standard of living suddenly increases, even though you do the same job you did last week – when the real reason is your uncle died and left you $$$.
Comment by Jeremy Wright on December 14, 2007
In your placing the blame on the players, you must not leave out the role of owners, GMs (like Brian Sabian) and most importantly the Commissioner (the dishonorable Bud Selig) among those who could use more than their fair amount of reputation management because of their failure to act and their role in creating an atmosphere where those who were taking were rewarded.
But I’m not sure any amount of reputation management is going to rehabilitate the images of these individuals for some time.
Comment by David Woods on December 14, 2007
How ya doing, Jeremy?
Was the competition not run by Darren Rowse, a vice-president and founder of b5media?
And does Geoff not write his blog for b5media?
Also, has Darren not run more than one or two of these types of competitions?
With all the reciprocal linking (considering Darren promised two reciprocals for each entrant and one or two out of the 893 who participated linking to each other) and the odd bit of network cross-linking going on, you could possibly equate it to link building on steroids.
Comment by Paul Woodhouse on December 14, 2007
Paul – “link building on steroids” is a little extreme, IMO also.
It appears as though you’re quite the stranger to ProBlogger writing projects versus “black hat SEO” – I tend to think your focus is more along the lines of damning people who appear to be doing something you don’t like right off the cuff, rather than realize that it’s not just Geoff or Darren, or even the other bloggers involved in the writing project who are doing things this way. It’s the way WordPress handles trackbacks and the way Geoff chooses to give back to those who thought enough to link to him by allowing the trackbacks to appear. There’s no black hat (or even white hat) SEO involved here.
As an SEO myself, I’m all too familiar with the kinds of people who just flat out think that SEO is a scam or full of black-hatters. In this case, you’re way off base, and I think you should probably do the right thing (because you now know, and have admitted yourself that you were wrong) and post a retraction for the statement you made about Geoff.
Rather than try to defend your incorrect assumptions, that is.
Comment by Lara Kulpa on December 15, 2007
Paul, if you have an accusation to make, make it. But back it up with facts and data.
Darren ran a contest on his blog. Darren does lots of those. Geoff entered. He wasn’t given any preferential treatment (no offence to geoff, but if we were going to “game” contests, we’d do it with larger and more profitable blogs. Geoff was one of the winners (decided, I believe, by a panel of judges).
For winning, he got links. from those links, he got pingbacks. As a way of saying thanks, he accepted those.
Forgive me if this sounds snarky, but I don’t get the connection from that to any kind of misdeed on b5’s, darren’s or geoff’s part. And nobody with any knowledge of seo would say this is blackhat (which is, by definition, all about exploiting vulnerabilities in a deviant manner).
Now if you have problems with network interlinking, feel free to bring that as well. But I’d encourage you to use my email first, as you’ll find we’ve been the most aggressive network on the planet in terms of creating healthy, topical interlinking programs that go well beyond what even the mainstream media does.
Again, if you have accusations, bring’em, but make sure to bring data as well.
And, since the comment notification system here is fubar’d, email me when you do so I can set you straight
Comment by jeremy wright on December 15, 2007
Personally, I’m not a fan of of inferring what color hats people are wearing as we all know that over time they all come out looking different after a few rinse cycles.
I only tend to take any notice of what Google talks about in its own Webmaster guidelines, which I’m presuming you’ve read with all the bluster being talked about SEO.
If not, here’s a link to what they have to say about linking.
My only accusation is that the linking patterns that this particular contest encouraged appear to bend or break a number of them. That’s it. I fear the big G.
As for your protestations about gaming contests……..what’s that about? Some Freudian slip?
And thank you for the head’s up on the comment subscription thing. We’ve only just moved this blog over to Wordpress and are still ironing a few kinks out. Still, better to have a slightly squiffy comments notification system than to hide behind private forum posts.
But, it’ll have to wait until Monday morning as it’s snowing and I’ve got to do a spot of Christmas shopping.
Have a lovely weekend.
Comment by Paul Woodhouse on December 15, 2007
Wow – thanks everyone for all the great comments. I’ve included some thoughts in response on a new post.
Comment by Justin Seibert on December 17, 2007
Here is an article off espn.com that talks a little about the issue of fan perception of steroid use in baseball vs. football
My favorite part is the paragraph, “Sorry, we’re just tired of the ridiculous oversimplification of a complicated issue. It never stops. People just can’t wait to pin easy talk-show labels on every one of these stories. But look a little closer the next time you come up for air. They don’t all fit.” Then you go read the comments section and most people miss this statement all together.
Comment by Frank Pufall on December 17, 2007