How to prevent Negative SEO or How to prevent your competitors in harming your website

Some time ago one of my work colleagues left in order to go to another, much bigger Online Marketing company and at one point when we met up we started talking about how things are working for her at her new employer. And what she told me left me speechless. At my current company, we pride ourselves in being an online marketing firm which, apart from working according to white-hat SEO practices, abides by ethical and moral rules when it comes to providing services to our clients. So when I've heard that my colleague's new company was buying links by the dozens, not to their clients' websites, but to their clients' competitors' sites, I was astonished.

This is a big online marketing company I'm speaking of. So this shows you two things: 1. That you have to be very careful of what online marketing company you choose to work with, because if they have absolutely no problem in doing this, who knows what they are able to do to your own website and 2. That even if you work hard in building up your site and everything you do is 100% according to Google's Quality Guidelines, if your competitor buys tons of questionable links to your site, you can still get hurt.

Before Google Penguin people didn't really talk about negative SEO. Of course, buying links was a black-hat practice long before, but I don't believe websites were negatively influenced by these sort of practices, not in the way they are currently anyway. If you still don't quite believe in negative SEO, you should definitely check out this experiment from Tasty Placement, which shows the impact of low quality links on rankings. It will make a believer out of you.

So what is there to be done in order to prevent competitors to buy links to your website? Well, you can't really do much to prevent it, but what you can do is to implement a process through which you can catch such a  practice on time and do what you can in order to fix it. Below is a short guideline in order to help you get started (please use this before crying out for your MAA' :).

1. Monitor. In order to catch such practices you have to monitor your link profile. You could start implementing the following steps only when you notice something odd going on with you rankings or organic traffic and so on, but you should do it constantly. In any case, as you might know, there are a couple of great tools, which can help you in doing so. The main one is Google Webmaster Tools. So after you have logged on to GWT and go to the Search Traffic section to the Links to your site area, click on More to see the whole list of Who links the most. Here you will find the Download latest links button with which...you guessed it! You can download the latest links to your website :)

Now, depending on the amount of links you receive in a given time frame, you should do this periodically and not only with the sole purpose of preventing competitors in harming your website.

An additional tool you can use is Open Site Explorer. Even though you can download a similar report containing inbound links as from GWT, I like to use the Anchor Text report (unfortunately you do need a paid Moz account to have access to the complete list) and I'll tell you how I actually use it in a minute. What is important to note is that you should download this report often, as you will need a previous Anchor Text report to do the necessary comparisons later.

2. Analyze. All the tools in the world cannot help you if you don't analyze your data properly. So, the first step would be to analyze the Anchor Text report from OSE (don't worry if you don't have this one, you can still figure things out, but it could take more time than with this particular report). So if you do have the Anchor Text report you should compare it to the previous one you downloaded (this is why you have to download this report often). You should be looking for abnormal increases in a particular anchor text. Why? you ask. Because when competitors buy links they buy a bunch and I don't believe that they will take the time to "diversify" the anchor text the links will have. That way, apart from pointing paid links to your site they will also create an unbalance in your anchor text profile, which can likewise gain the disapproval of the Mighty Google.

The reason I said having the Anchor Text report might save you time, because it is much easier to spot if something odd is going on with your anchor text profile, than going directly to the next step.

So if something is not quite right with your Anchor Text report you have to take the link report you have downloaded from Google Webmaster Tools and identify any spammy links that started pointing recently to your website. Again you can use a couple of tools for this. What we have recently tried is Link Detective, which you can use to take a look at the domain and page authority of the links you uploaded, together with their type. If you notice a bunch of low authority sites (an authority under 30 for example) pointing to your site and you are more or less sure that you or your team didn't build those links, then you might have gotten a nasty present from one of your competitors.What is there to do next?

3. Act. Be prepared because a lot of work awaits you. There have been many articles on how to clean up your link profile, which are perfectly viable in this case as well, so I will not get into more details here. But, an additional thing you can do is try to identify the service which was used by your competitor. Try searching for clues on the pages you are getting harmful link juice from, for example. If you are able to identify the company, you should contact them and try to get those particular links removed.

There it is. MAA coming to the rescue when your competitor is bullying you :) Have you ever thought that your competitor could be buying paid links to your website? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

What 2012 meant for Online Marketing

Looking back at all the changes that took place in 2012, I can say with certainty that 2012 was a great year for Online Marketing. And I'm not just affirming this because it was the first year which I spent entirely in this industry or because the Mayans launched the "2012 Apocalypse" marketing campaign :) (which I really enjoyed), but because a great number of industry updates shaped how we will do online marketing in 2013.

Below are the major modifications (in no specific order) that I believe will have an impact on the industry at least for the upcoming year:

1. Google Authorship. I wanted to list this first because it is my personal favorite and it shows Google's attempt to model its search engine algorithm after how we trusted information in the "real world before Google". What I mean is that we all trust what experts in certain fields tell us regarding particular topics, right? And even if the majority of us often don't remember their names, we all remember faces. In any case AuthorRank will have somewhat of an impact on SEO as well, because AuthorRank will be 2013's PageRank. I found this article on SEOMoz particularly interesting on this subject.

2. Google Penguin. I believe you'll agree with me when I say that this Google update created a lot of fuss in the SEO world. Google's little black furry creature changed a lot of things in the line of Search Engine Optimization, which lead to increased focus on Content Marketing, especially in the second half of 2012. So I expect this trend to grow wings in more businesses in 2013.

3. Facebook IPO. Even if this is more a business decision than a product related update, Facebook being listed on the stock market gave birth to more than a couple of product changes, in order for the company to better monetarise its "social network". Sponsored Posts and the EdgeRank algorithm change, Global Pages, Facebook Nearby, the announcement of Video adds and so on are all the result of the company trying to get better quotations on the stock market. Some even speculate that the company will release Premium Facebook Pages in the near future. Although, I have to admit, as a user, I kind of like the Google updates I mentioned, but where Facebook is concerned the user really had to suffer from an experience point of view. So I wouldn't be amazed if users will emigrate to other social platforms, especially if Facebook keeps this up.

4. Google+ Local and the focus on local. I think we will see more changes from Google in this direction (especially because we are still waiting to be able to answer reviews as businesses - it would be about time). Additionally, local has got a big role when it comes to ranking in SERPs. And this takes us to the next item on the list ...

5. Mobile Marketing. The number of people owning a smartphone and using it to navigate the World Wide Web has skyrocketed and we started to see great marketing campaigns that integrated mobile. I hope to see more businesses having mobile-optimized sites and great apps in the upcoming year. If you want to get ideas in this direction, check out the MobilePlayBook, a great mobile guide with examples put together by Google. Apart from advice it has a couple of great examples of how businesses designed their mobile website or how they used apps successfully. Some are really creative.
Even though 2012 has been the year of mobile, 2013 will probably be the year of the tablet, so keep that in mind when you put together your marketing strategy for this year.

6. Search Plus Your World. Social is starting to be even more intertwined with SEO, and SPYW is definitely a sign of this. If you think about it, it does make sense, apart from the fact that a particular piece of content has been written by experts, the buzz it creates on social media platforms is another indicator of its quality. And in the end the AuthorRank is supposedly measured taking social signals in consideration as well. So, this fact adds to the pressure of having to be successful on social networking sites.

7. Focus on data. I left this for last, because every year there is more and more focus on data than in the previous one. Thus, 2012 brought the inclusion of the Social tab in Google Analytics, to help measure the ROI of social media marketing, together with focusing on conversion, instead of more mediocre metrics. In 2013 I hope to see more ways to measure multi-channel conversion, including offline touch points.

What are your thought on this list? Which change you like the most and which do you dislike entirely? Both from an user's and an online marketer's perspective? Do you think semantic search will have a significant evolution this year, I mean Google's Knowledge Graph is just the first droplet in the glass.

6 essential skills for newbies in marketing

 There are a number of  skills that a newbie must possess to get a job in any domain, not just marketing. And the following soft and hard skills are important if you want to storm your way into this particular field. Do not worry, the majority can be easily learnt and assimilated, but others make up the passion for marketing and are part of who you are as a person. I'll start with the former. So let's jump right into it, shall we?

1. Analytics or statistics, as you might want to call it, both words hide more or less the same concept. And they are important because in my opinion marketing is a combination of science and (let's call it) feeling. And analytics is the science part of it.

2. SEO is a significant part of the XXIst century's marketing and I foresee a major increase in the role it will play in marketing, as search engines have become the most important source of information in today's society. Of course, we have to consider the fact that access to internet does not cover the whole globe just yet, and decades will pass until it does. But the majority of the target market of many-many businesses, first action in the decision process is to search.

3. Photoshop. Oh yes! The time when Photoshop skills weren't needed passed approximately when the Adobe started developing it. The only person who doesn't have to know how to create breathtaking images is the CMO, but you can't actually get there if you do not know Photoshop. Although it's probably something you learn so you can forget it latter, for newbies it is a necessity.

4. Creativity. Although you probably need to creative in any position, you have to be ultimately creative in the marketing field, because you are in charge of making your brand memorable, and only the shocking "advertisements" (and here I do not use it solely in the traditional sense) are unforgettable. In one hand your interviewer cannot measure you creativity, so let's say you can get a marketing job without being creative, but creativity will keep you from being dismissed latter on.

5. Smiling. Although this is an action, for me being able to smile with all your heart and soul to a customer or potential customer is a sign of having great people skills. But, do be careful, Pan-Am smiles won't get you nowhere, I am talking about crow's feet causing smiles.

6. Listening, understanding and acting. Although it is the sixth skill on my list, listening is the essence of marketing. If you cannot listen to what people say, to what you customers are saying, to what your competitors' clients are saying, to what those employees are saying who get in touch with the customers on a daily basis, and understand theirs feelings, motivations, dissatisfaction and so on, and act based on these, you will probably get fired (best case scenario) or bankrupt the company (worst case scenario). I do believe listening is a very hard thing to do for some of us, because the human nature is built in such a way in which it's primary concern is him/herself. So it is difficult to switch off our primary instinct, but with a little self-discipline nothing is impossible.

7. Social Media. I left SM for last because I consider it to be a combination of hard and soft skills. There are some aspects of social media that are basically science, you can easily learn it, but some aspects are related to your sociable side. In contrast with our "listening problems", humans are sociable by nature (yes, everything comes down to our monkey instincts as I like to call them). But the real challenge is to be popular on the world wide web, which is a totally different thing compared to real life, so not everyone got a hold of it, but we all will. Eventually.

Now all we have to do is to identify our weak spot and start building it up. For example my weakest spot is ... you guessed it: Photoshop :) If you're like me start reading this Photoshop manual (it is indeed for an old version, but the basics are the same and the information is fairly organized).

If your weakness lies in the first 2 points I highly recommend Hubspot's Inbound Marketing University. But if the 6th point is giving you trouble check out Carnegie's Secrets of Success for tips :)

If you would add some other skills as well, and you probably would, please do.

All newbies in marketing, I salute you! :D