Paul Cuthbert celebrates 3 Years of SEO Content

This month marks the official anniversary of my entry into online marketing as a freelance writer and SEM consultant. Three years ago in mid April 2009 I began creating unique articles that are appearing all over the Internet. Working as part of an outsourced team of more than 70 professional writers my work appears under the names of fictional writers that are credited with the work that I have continued to produce over the past 36 months. In that time my skills as a writer have improved and so too has my ability to type. When I started writing professionally I was producing between 35 and 40 articles a week, but as I have grown in speed and proficiency I now turn out between 60 and 75 unique and original articles that are used to generate backlinks from publishing sites to the landing pages of my client's websites.

Although I am prolific and to date have delivered over 6,500 unique articles to the online publishing community I do not receive credit for my work as a writer because my name is pooled with others that are also writing for the same organization that outsources assignments to me. However if you look up the names Art Gib, Billings Farnsworth or Johnny Wik you will be able to see some of the articles that that I written for hundreds of clients of my 1099 employer. For about 9 months the supervisor that I reported to also added articles to the web under his name instead of giving credit to the individuals that were submitting work under his direction. Although he is a credited author and has written many articles himself a number of submissions for my work can be found under his name instead of under Paul Cuthbert. (Legally that's plagiarism, but there's nothing I can do as I was paid to write and compensated for my work.)

As for me I continue to generate content for the Internet and work to help people with their Internet marketing by offering website analysis and optimization in addition to writing supporting content for the search engines to index and reference. With the knowledge of search marketing and my own brand of SEO strategies I continue to move forward as I am happy to working from home doing something that comes naturally to me. So to celebrate three years of working in Internet marketing I am posting this article to my blog as part of my own marketing media strategy.

SEO Strategies to Avoid

Last week I met with a man who had some questions about his website marketing. Although he has been paying out $500 a month for PPC (pay-per-click) advertising his business is not gaining from the advertising that is taking place in the search engines. As we chatted he talked about moving his online marketing from PPC to SEO for the organic results that will do more for his business than he is currently gaining from the money that is being invested in AdWords and other online promotions.

As part of the reputation management work that is supplementing the SEO strategies that are in place the company is doing something that I wholeheartedly disagree with. In an effort to gain customers and give the appearance that the organization is a success (although it is still a startup) the owner has authorized the creation of 1,500 email addresses and social media profiles that are in realty a sham. Without realizing the mistake the company is attempting to generate support through likes and comments that are made by their employees who are posing as customers. This practice is considered to be black hat and is not helping the company at all.

The reason that no one is taking notice of the false success of the number of "likes" is that the search engines know that all of the emails and profiles are linked to the same IP address. Even if the reviews are positive and appear to be coming from outside sources there is no fooling the search engines that identify each URL and email address by the senders IP address and location. Geotargeting is engineered to help customers to find businesses in their immediate vicinity, but it also works to provide the analytical information that the search engines provide to website owners to determine unique visitor traffic. So by creating 1,500 new users that are all using the same router and IP address the search engines are not fooled and therefore are not applying the results of the fraud to the page rank or placement of the site.

Even with the same IP address being linked to 1,500 different emails or social media profiles the search engines see only one unique IP address and that is the reason that a business ranking and links are not being recorded and tied into the statistics that build up the legitimacy of a website and add to the PR (Page Rank) of the URL. Even though the company's social media page might appear to have 1,500 "likes" from each of the unique profiles that are attached to the individual email addresses the long reaching effects of the Internet requires that a business conduct their reputation management legitimately.

As I listened to the frustrations of the executive concerning the lack of interest in the website and subsequent failure of their internal social media campaign I recognized that there are a number of things that can be done to review the website and make recommendations to improving the status of the site in the search engines.

Through the tools and techniques that I have discussed in past blogs I can help this organization to build a marketing media strategy that will get it to where it wants to go. But for anyone reading this article and thinking "I can fake some social media likes too," I have to say please do not stoop to black hat practices that will ultimately do nothing for your website and may cause more damage than good. Remember that online reviews and reputation management cannot be faked and success comes from patience and putting in the work that will build long term results. If you need a refresher review my blog about "The Tortoise and the Hare approach to SEO.”