By Nicole Fletcher

We all Google….daily….multiple times daily. Whether we’re looking for pictures, facts, stats, information, what have you. We all do it and most of the time..it’s a pretty basic, normal, even banal activity. Sometimes though when you least expect it, you’re thrown for a loop. That said, I thought I’d Google some random, basic, fun, things, phrases etc and post the weirdest stuff that comes up. As such I’ll ask you to post the same on our Facebook wall…because it’s fun and funny and you’ll enjoy yourself while doing so. Without further delay, here are some things I Googled.

Googled: Funny Cows (Googled simply because I started typing Funny and cows populated)

Googled: Crazy Face – Here’s a big screen shot with people’s faces ranging from Tom Cruise and animated characters, to babys with crazy eyes and Robert Pattinson. Go figure.

Googled: Where is...which then led me to Where is Chuck Norris. The result was perhaps one of the most awesome things ever. The world will never know.

Googled Who is…and these are the things that populated. I have a few thoughts.

1. Who would ever Google Who is in Jail? Are they looking for a master list? Seriously..what were those people thinking.
2. Those poor souls who awkwardly smiled and nodded at the mention of Rebecca Black’s name rushed to the computer the first free moment they got. Here’s the proof.
3. John Galt. I’m not going to lie to you, I had no idea but turns out he’s a character who does not appear until the last third of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. I am now fulfilled that I know this but still don’t understand why this is a big enough deal to get auto-populated by Google.
4. Finally, I can’t even really comment on this …but it’s pretty darn funny. So funny in fact that Judas himself is laughing about it.

Googled: Funny Cookies. Priceless.

As posted on Search Engine Watch, this post shows  the benevolence of Google after they buried JC Penny for link building a few months back. I, for one, am shocked.

The manual penalty Google handed JCPenney, which was outed by the New York Times for “shady” link building practices in February, is now lifted, according to two new reports. The damage? JCPenney last week reported $376 million in online sales, an increase of 6.6 percent vs. the same period in 2010.

Seems Google’s penalty didn’t really do any short-term damage to JCPenney, unlike Overstock.com, which reported a 5 percent decline in sales due to a Google penalty. Back when this news first broke, JCPenney said only 7 percent of its online traffic came from organic search results.

Search Visibility Returns

Now SEOClarity and SearchMetrics are both reporting that JCPenney’s search visibility is back, three months later.

SEOClarity, which had been tracking JCPenney’s performance on more than 2,000 keywords, on May 12 received more than 900 alerts of major ranking changes:

This particular change was unique because the keyword competition shifted to accommodate JCPenney moving up without any other significant movement in competitors’ rankings. The competitors had simply ‘moved aside,’ where normally we would expect to see a major shakeup typical of a global algorithm change.

SEOClarity noted that, in addition to removing internal links from the footer, JCPenney has made massive changes to its URLs (with redirects to the homepage rather than a relevant page), and now uses a more convoluted and less SEO-friendly structure with multiple query parameters. For example, this http://www.jcpenney.com/products/Cg13344.jsp became this http://www.jcpenney.com/jcp/XGN.aspx?DeptID=70752&CatID=72423&SO=0&SelDim=4294957900~+5~&CatSel=4294953245|chests+%2b+cabinets&Ne=4294957900
+5+18+949&x5view=1&shopperType=G&N=4294953245+4294964616&Nao=0&PSO=0&CmCatId=70752|72423.

The new URL structure seems to have been in the works for a while. In a statement responding to criticism of their SEO practices in February, JCPenney said:

“jcp.com is a closed site. Google bots currently don’t crawl our site. Our natural search vendor manages a mirror site for us that redirects to jcp.com … We are planning to open jcp.com to Google bots with the launch of our new platform.”

SearchMetrics also put together a couple graphs showing the increased organic visibility. This one is an overall view:

And this shows the rankings history of organic visibility for [jewelry]:

Google Rankings Check

When the original story was published in February, JCPenney was ranking either number one for or “at or near top” for several terms, which were then banished to Page 5 or beyond. Let’s check how those terms rank now that the penalty is up (with the February ranking in parenthesis as reported by the NYTimes).

• dresses: Page 2 (1)
• bedding: Page 2 (1)
• area rugs: Page 2 (1)
• Samsonite carry on luggage: 4 (1)
• living room furniture: 3 (1)
• skinny jeans: 6 (at or near top)
• home décor: Page 2 (at or near top)
• comforter sets: 3 (at or near top)
• furniture: Page 7 (at or near top)
• tablecloths: 3 (at or near top)
• grommet top curtains: 2 (at or near top)

JCPenney hasn’t earned back all of those valuable top spots in Google, but the brand has seen some rankings restored.

As we reported in “What if JCPenney Link Buying is Just the American Way?,” JCPenney’s SEO firm saw a loophole in Google and aggressively chased the opportunity. They took a risk and, seemingly, they’ve come through unscathed.

By Nicole Fletcher

Insert YET ANOTHER Google update…none other than Google’s own take on the ‘Like’ button. They’re calling it the ‘Plus one’. It’s goal? To further integrate social into search.

Google will now allow Internet users to vote on search content they find useful and then share that content with their personal connections within their Google accounts. Reports say, the ability to share this social content to twitter is coming soon. In search, people will now see the number of votes in addition to the name and photos of their Google connections who have shared content.

This would definitely be considered the most aggressive integration of social into search to date and we can only expect Google to incorporate the plus 1 button into their algorithm soon. Bryan Wiener, CEP of 360i, says:

“Its important for Google to bring in social influence into search results to prevent the social web from becoming a parallel universe. I do think they need to have the Facebook ‘likes’ in there because you’re going to have two webs, the social web and the open web.”

Interesting point Bryan. Indeed, if Google does not incorporate ‘likes’ into their algorithm, there will be further separating the social interactions that take place on social sites like facebook, from the rest of the open web. While they do of course have their differences, it certainly would be counter productive to compete with one another.

And here’s your answer…

Google’s Principle Engineer for Search, Matt Cutts, said, “When someone recommends something, that’s a pretty good indicator of quality. We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings.”

So far as SEO is concerned, inbound links have been of utmost importance when it comes to page rank. Last year, Google included Twitter updates to aggregate the most recent conversations on any topic. Adding Google’s plus-one will add yet another social component. Basically the point of this update is simple: you would more willingly visit a site recommended by a friend than you would click through the clutter that is modern search. This update makes it easier to find quality content because users are now able to see what their connections have shared.

This though, might not be the biggest part of this update. According to AdAge, “the biggest move here may not be about search at all, but about taking another swing at the social networking business — and at Facebook itself. The first time users clicks on a plus-one button, they will be prompted to create a Google profile, as well as be given the opportunity to adjust privacy settings.” Interesting. Is Google trying once again to compete with Facebook? And if so, will they succeed? Only time will tell. Bing integrated Facebook “likes” into their search at the end of 2010 but NOT into their algorithm itself. What that means is that a “like” does NOT, I repeat does NOT, affect search rankings. Google’s Matt Cutts also reported that Google does not have plans to include Facebook in their algorithm…but they also don’t have the authority to do so. He said, “It would depend on whether that data were available” …so again, time will tell.

In the mean time, keep an eye out for recommended content and small pics of your friends faces in your search results.

By Nicole Fletcher

My boss recently got back from SXSW and made an interesting comment. A question was posed in a talk he attended at SX asking marketers if the contests, giveaways and bright shiny fanfare that has been so popular as of late is as brilliant as it seems to be…or if it’s just lazy/shotty marketing.

My gut reaction was this: I run contests… I’m not lazy – what gives? That got me thinking though and in doing more research, I realize that there is a LOT of “black hat social” out there and I guess my naivete turned my blinders on to it.

I pride myself on the creation, maintenance and growth of our clients’ social communities. I take care to find each voice, do the industry research, tread lightly until accepted and grow fans organically with better chance of return and brand loyalty in the future. My clients are happy and they actually see the difference a few months of good quality social makes. Certainly, I run contests to inspire fan interaction and growth. They work and at the end of the day, clients want to see numerical proof of their financial investment and fans want to be rewarded for their loyalty. When agencies though, promise skyrocketed fan numbers in short amounts of time – I can’t help but wonder, what am I missing? – And I think I hit the nail on the head: it’s black hat social and I’ll tell you, black hats never prosper (just ask the SEOs).

It seems history repeats itself and as with the search engine marketing boom of the early 2000s, social is beginning to flirt with that turn toward the dark side. Black Hat SEOs would weave keywords and link builds into web content to get high page ranks and as a result, increased web traffic. It took some time, but Google has finally caught up with these delinquents, changing their algorithm significantly a number of times recently. They now heavily incorporate social into their secret sauce and rely less on high page ranked content farms laden cruddy content. Well done Google, well done. (Read more about this Panda Update)

So what is social media and why is it important(on a basic level of course)? I see the social movement as an honest evolution in marketing inspired by modern technological innovations. The social sphere acts as a modern extension of one’s brand. That means you have to:

Step 1. State and create your brand- what you do, who you are, how you want to be perceived by your target market.
Step 2. Maintain brand consistency internally -ie: face to face interactions, customer experience, products etc.
Step 3. Expand and extend this ‘vibe’ or ‘personality’ through your marketing whether that be print, Facebook updates, tweets, videos, your website, etc.

As a result of technological advances, consumers can now easily talk back to their favorite and most hated brands alike. While in the past, businesses would put out expensive billboard and print ads without any proof of conversion, now, those same billboards can talk back to you…and boy do they. I think the thing most people fail to understand or accept is that these conversations are going on with or without you – so really, your choices are to listen and evolve…or to become extinct.

Back to my original point: black hat social. Countless studies have been published regarding the value of a facebook fan. Is it $3.60, $1, $100? Personally, I’m not even close to confident you can generalize that value. What I am confident of is that the non-socially-savvy business owners are number happy and they scarf these stats up. The more fans, the better. I get it. But as a social marketer/brand advocate/community creator, I’d rather have your fan page grow to 3000 loyal, chatty, amazing fans that actually interact with your company in REAL life and not just by clicking the like button once, than I would have you have 300,000 fans that only joined your page because they were told they’d win a big screen. After all, isn’t the point of marketing to increase brand awareness, advocacy and loyalty so that customers will interact with your brand in real life and as such, you will ultimately increase revenue and grow? That’s not to say I don’t advocate facebook ads and contests – I do. It’s just that while my intention in running promotions like these is fan happiness, brand consistency/loyalty, fan interaction and getting that return on investment, the black hat’s goal is numbers. Bottom Line.

Call me crazy. Call my wrong. I just hate to see something with as much honest potential as the social sphere turn toward toward the dark side. In the mean time, I’ll be here…over on the white hat side. Feel free to email me with any questions and remember: black hats never prosper.