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This is another subject I have been meaning to discuss that I haven’t seen debated a huge amount openly even though everyone in the industry is aware of it.

Simply checking the UK agencies ranking for ‘SEO’ (as an example) it’s very easy to spot that some of them are using their own clients as a link network to rank for that very term. I am not going to call anyone out or make examples of anyone, they know who they are.

Presumably by doing it they think its fine, so perhaps I can give examples.

Historically web design and development agencies have always left a signature in the form of a hyperlink on client’s sites often in the footer to show who produced the site. This for me is not a problem at all, but is it right for search marketing agencies often acting merely as consultants to do the same?

Do any other types of consultant do this? No. What benefit is this to the client? None. Does it do them any harm? Mmm.

Is It Ethical?

While I am sure most clients are aware of the ‘SEO’ hyperlinks, I know for a fact that some clients are either not aware, or do not fully understand the implications of having the link.

I have also seen cases where the links are hidden extremely well, or hidden completely in a few cases which obviously makes this a little darker as it goes against the search engines guidelines.

Perhaps these clients have been given code to insert on their site as part of their SEO service (a scrolling text box…) with the keyword rich anchor & hyperlink included, perhaps it’s a requirement of the contract or even incentivised as an option for reduced fees, or they have been told that linking out to reputable sources will ‘help them rank’.

I also know some of these agencies hard sell their SEO services off the back of their ranking for the said term to justify to potential clients why they should work with them over the competition.

There are definitely varying levels of ethicality in this, I believe some agencies are very open about it while some are less so and I am not pointing fingers at anyone in particular. But it does make you think, if some are willing to use their own clients as a link network for no benefit to the client, what does it say about them?

In an industry that is so often criticised for lacking credibility & transparency, does this not simply support these assumptions?

Perhaps some view this as simply a form of advertising similar to web design agency signatures, a clever technique to outrank the competition that is no more than any other type of ‘partner’ (if reciprocal) or supplier link or the incentivised links at least could be seen as no more than a form of paid links you see everyday.

Perhaps some would argue that despite all the criticisms above and questionable ethical nature, if it helps them rank for their desired term it’s clearly worth it in the long-term regardless.

My personal opinion is that everyone involved owe it to their own industry to keep standards as high as possible and in particular for their own clients.

Using your own clients as a link network for your own benefit no matter how you pass it off, to me, is taking advantage of your position. It is of no benefit to the client and it sends out the wrong message about our industry. I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone work with an agency that uses this technique regardless of how good they might actually be in reality.

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It was back at the start of June that a number of SEOs spotted a change in the Google UK search results where by US sites seemed to be ranking unusually high for queries in Google UK. Geo filters have always been fairly strong in Google UK for generic phrases for obvious reasons and many, myself included expected this to change back quite quickly as these fluctuations do happen from time to time.

I have heard some chatter that the results have reverted back, however almost two weeks later I am surprised to say that the geo problems in the UK SERPS still exist. The UK search results are as bad as I have seen them, they are quite simply shocking in terms relevancy for a UK audience. The Google.com results from the UK (IP) have always been more of a half way house between UK/US results and now these results seem to be even more US focused aswell.

I recently asked Matt to comment, but he choose not to respond which is fair enough. It’s difficult to know the cause of this change, a tweak in the geo algo or some have suggested problems with Googles link graph due to a massive UK ISP hack. Lets take a look at some of the results where we can highlight the problem that still exists.

A search for ‘web hosting’ on Google UK brings back a number of US sites in the top 10. Webhostinggeeks.com which compares a load of US web hosting companies with all prices in dollars is 7th. Justhost.com is 8th which may look like a UK site with a quick glance (if you look from the UK as it’s delivering price/phone number by IP) but you can see from Googles cache its very much a US site in their eyes. Webhostingstuff.com again another US site takes up the 10th spot on the 1st page.

The 2nd page of results is much worse and really shows the scale of the issue.

Webhostingsearch.com, Webhosting.info, Findmyhosting.com, Webhostingrally.com, Hostseeq.com, Envisionwebhosting.com and Webhostingratings.com are all US sites now ranking in the UK results.

So out of the top 20 results for ‘web hosting’, 10 of them are US based sites with US prices. That’s 50% of the results with a US bias. Even more scary is that every single one of the sites on the 2nd page is basically an affiliate comparison site.

Sure some visitors from the UK will be willing to pay on their credit card in dollars for a (sometimes) cheaper web host as often people don’t care where it’s hosted.  You could argue (badly) that Google has decided that for this query, UK searchers habits have shown that US sites derserve their positioning as it’s still relevant? Ok, so lets look at another example for ‘flowers‘ -

The first page results are actually not to bad with a lot of UK results. But the 2nd page again is where the problems are obvious. In 15th position there is 800florals.com and just below 1800flowers.com. These are both US sites, with US prices which only deliver within The States and Canada. What exactly are they doing in the UK results? At the same time well known relevant online UK florists such as Arenaflowers, Flyingflowers, Debenhams and Bunches sit below them.

A search for ‘SEO’ on Google.co.uk now pulls back SEO.com a US based SEO agency in 8th position. On the 2nd page we now have Aaron Walls Seobook.com and SEOmoz.org. Both great sites in their own right with good content, but they have appeared from nowhere knocking UK based content further down the listings. It’s not just US sites either, there are some examples of Australian sites ranking higher (not as high as US sites) for generic phrases or for longer tail, less competitive queries.

So the questions are, is this a test? Were these changes made on purpose and are Google working on the issue?  The answers would be no, no and hopefully yes.

While Webmasters and Google UK users are scratching their heads at the poor SERPS, Bings results are looking comparatively much better.

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So Microsofts new search engine brand Bing is live in the UK.

I think some negative matching might be required for Bingo PPC advertisers.

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Some interesting talk today of ways of using paid search to play with your competitors. I am sure many advertisers have noticed incorrect prices, promotions, erroring destination urls or just plain poor adverts for their own campaigns - whether it be down to an in-house team, their agency or affiliates.

It can be a very frustrating process tracking down who is running the offending advert and getting it amended to display accurate information.

The reason is anyone can run any advert as anyone else. I can run an advert with the display url set as any company in the world. So can anyone else.

Sounds strange that someone might be willing to pay to do this if they are an competitor. But by doing this a person or company can set about a negative ad campaign against their competitor. It could be a fairly minor thing to something much, much naughtier.

Take for example if I were a competitor of both DialAFlight and Flight Centre.

DialAFlight have just released a statement saying it is instituting legal proceedings against Flight Centre for infringement of their trademark.

Flight Centre say they have removed the ‘DialAFlight’ keyword phrase from their campaign. This is not the first time DialAFlight have warned Flight Centre apparently.

So imagine what a competitor can do to really wind this situation up by just displaying a little advert against DialAFlight as Flight Centre. I’d imagine that would not go down well.

Another example might be where all competition within a niche are playing nice, not bidding against each others brands out of respect. There is an almost unspoken mutual agreement in place of ‘don’t bid against me, I won’t bid against you’.

So you could shake it up a little and start running competitors adverts against your other competitors.

You might just find that the competitors you are running adverts against spot this and react by now advertising against the company you were acting as.

Time to remove your own advert and watch the company you have been advertising as now run their own advert against the competitor because they spot their advert.

Oh the fun.

I am certainly not recommending anyone to do this. In fact, I am recommending people not to do this as there are more intelligent ways to spend your advertising budget. But I have seen some cases of this over the past few months and it’s something to keep an eye as we might see more cases.

More on black hat PPC techniques here.

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I think the majority of the time everyone would agree with a big fat no on allowing affiliates to bid against their brand. Why pay an affiliate a commission for something you will get 99% of the time anyway?

However, there are times where clients of mine have agreed to a select few affiliates to bid against their brand and it is something I have been asked about a number of times since.

If you are unsure of the reasoning behind the closed brand bidding group, the logic is that by allowing a small number of top performing affiliates to gain extra commissions from the merchants brand it allows these affiliates to bid broader on more generic keywords or pay a higher CPC to send increased traffic and sales the merchants way.

Due to the change in trademark policy on keywords in Google, this might in some cases make more sense in terms of supporting brand protection, especially in higher CPC markets with more competition. But separate from this issue, I find the affiliate brand bidding argument extremely weak on the whole. What irritates me more than anything about this concept is often the lack of real thought gone into it like most marketing or business decisions should have.

In using a closed group of brand bidders the merchants aim is ultimately to increase their traffic, conversions or revenue (or whatever else the goal might be) by effectively paying the affiliate additional commissions, which does make sense. That’s fine.

But like any marketing decision for this to be measured accurately in terms of return and performance the merchant needs to know -

• The increase in extra traffic, conversions, revenue (the end goal)
• The amount of extra cost/commission paid to the brand bidders
• Any other extra cost involved (time, tracking, management whatever)

So Why Is This So Often Flawed?

• Ignorance - Very often, none of the above are even properly considered let alone set up to be tracked and measured accurately to be able to determine the performance

• Trust In Tracking & Affiliates - Tracking and measuring increases from the data can be inherently difficult to gauge anyway due to the number of factors involved. But even more so with a closed group the merchant needs to be completely sure that tracking is accurate because quite feasibly an affiliate can set it up however they wish. How can you be sure that every branded advert is being tracked separately? You can’t.

• Brand Ownership - Merchants are allowing affiliates to be the face of their brand. They will need to dedicate some time to monitor and police the ads and make sure they are representing their brand accurately. Also, if there are many adverts against the said brand, this can equally confuse searchers.

• Lack of Control - For large scale brands there are huge variances in brand related traffic that cannot always be predicted or controlled - meaning on occasions affiliates could all of a sudden receive a huge amount of commissions direct from the brand without providing extra in return.

• Higher CPC - If the merchant is also running a branded PPC advert, what extra cost are will they now be paying due to the increased competition from their own affiliates?

So Why Do We Still See The Closed Group Brand Bidding Model?

There are numerous reasons from bad advice from affiliate managers to pressure to hit targets. However in some cases I have found that marketeers actually embrace the lack of transparency that affiliate brand bidding provides. That may sound strange, but there is a sweeping under the carpet mentality sometimes.

It means they can reach their targets without seeming to pay a higher cost to do it. It’s easier to hide marketing expense in what can be viewed as just improved affiliate sales by allowing affiliates to syphon from their own brand than actually just paying out a higher CPA/commission. There can be a blissful ignorance in gaining more sales using this method (at least more perceived sales) and far from enough thought or consideration which is scary.

Conclusion

A much more transparent method is to simply agree to pay a higher CPA or commission to the select top performing affiliates because this is effectively what the affiliate brand bidding concept is attempting to do. In a roundabout kind of way. However, this is much easier to budget, track and measure and offers the same basic premise of more money for more of whatever the said business goal is. Working closely with the affiliate and providing extra offers or discounts is also a great option.

Marketeers will still have the same overriding issue of measuring performance of what extra they are receiving against the extra outlay of cost - but it comes with much greater transparency and control. My advice would be, if you want to push affiliates and really get the most out of them and your campaign, don’t hide your true cost in a closed brand bidding group.

Do you have any arguments for a brand bidding group? I would be interested in hearing any.

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