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Thursday, March 29th, 2012
It would seem that scammers have been quick to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon, using fake Pinterest and Twitter accounts, harnessed to affiliate links, to generate revenue.
Pinterest will need to take action to prevent this becoming more widespread but the process for the scammers is little different to that which a genuine business can use to get the most out of Pinterest.
Firstly, you need people following you on Pinterest, and you need to be following others, plus taking an interest in what they are pinning. Tying this into other social media accounts too can help to widen your audience so link Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and so on to and from your Pinterest account.
Secondly, you need to post eye catching photos and images that are linked directly to a product or landing page, not to the home page of your website.
Thirdly, you need well-written copy on that product or landing page that entices people to buy and also to repin.
Pinterest as a marketing tool will not suit all businesses, just as other social networks cannot be all things to all men. However, if you are in the retail industry, Pinterest should be high on your list of properties to populate with product photos, as well as to engage with your potential customers. Hotels, restaurants, travel agents and accommodation providers are also discovering the value of Pinterest in reaching a wide audience, although it is still difficult to localise to reach the audience required.
If the scammers can make money on Pinterest, you should be able to as well by encouraging repins of your boards’ items. Why not run a monthly competition and offer a prize to one random repinner? Or create a special discount landing page for Pinterest users? Incentivise pinning in imaginative ways for great products and you should be able to use Pinterest as a cost-effective internet marketing tool.
Tags: cost-effective, images, marketing, photos, Pinterest, scam
Posted in Blog, Small Business Resources, Social Media, Tips & Tricks
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Monday, May 9th, 2011
Running a PPC campaign in order to support spam and scams seems rife. After all, even on highly competitive terms, the costs are little if the ad brings the results you require. Before you are banned. The Farmer / Panda update may have targeted organic results, but there are still issues within PPC. Especially for the following type of scam.
This weekend, I endeavoured to do a simple task – quickly create a Follow Us on Twitter button. Obviously Twitter offers Follow Me Buttons but Twitter’s solution didn’t figure for any of the obvious searches in the first two pages. So, I thought I’d explore some of the other options. There were two PPC choices and several first page organic results that fit the search.
The first PPC choice is twitterflash.net. (No link, don’t go there, read on and see why). Obviously, in the top PPC position, with 60,500 monthly searches on the term, this ad is getting some eyeballs.
You choose your button and are then asked to enter your Twitter username to generate the correct code for your Twitter button.
However, it does not matter what code you insert into that box asking for your Twitter username, this is what you are asked to copy and paste into your page.
<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”
data=”http://www.buzzbuttons.com/BUTTON0/twitbutton.swf” width=”100″
height=”80″><param name=”movie”
value=”http://www.buzzbuttons.com/BUTTON0/twitbutton.swf”></param><param
name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><param name=”menu”
value=”false”></param><param name=”wmode”
value=”transparent”></param><param name=”flashvars”
value=”username=your_id_here”></param><a
href=”http://www.gamblinginsider.ca” title=”gambling insider”>gambling
insider</a><embed src=”http://www.buzzbuttons.com/BUTTON0/twitbutton.swf”
type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”100″
height=”80″ menu=”false” wmode=”transparent”
flashvars=”username=your_id_here”></embed></object>
Spot the problem? I didn’t immediately on entering that page, but I did fairly quickly when I pasted that code into the page I was adding it to and the word Gambling appeared instead of a nice neat button.
[I also believe that AllowScriptAccess is a problem - can anyone clarify this please?]
The real problem is that you have just potentially exposed a Twitter username to spambots; Twitter is rife with them. However, it also comprehensively breaks Google’s T&Cs which forbids PPC ads for gambling.
Which raises the question: what is Google doing to prevent such ads being placed in top spots?
(Interestingly, the second PPC result threw up this:
so a small company of web professionals are, sadly, wasting their own money on PPC ads that lead to a 404 page – have YOU checked your PPC campaign recently??).
Google is making money from these types of ads that feature spam and scams; yet, reporting such an ad is, as I discovered, quite difficult, although I eventually tracked down the Complaint Report form for Google AdWords. It seems that others, such as Ben Edelman, have looked into this and the implications for Google far more deeply than I. In a post from 2006 entitled “PPC Scams”, many of the problems were exposed.
Little appears to have changed, although I hope a reply from Google may prove otherwise.
Whilst on this particular term there is little competition, it is likely that on other keywords and phrases, genuine advertisers are being forced to pay a higher price for their PPC ads than would be required if there were not scammers sitting in top spots. Who wins? Google. It is high time Google resolved this issue of relevancy and quality in the SERPs – organic and paid.
Tags: complaints, Google, PPC, scam
Posted in Blog, Google, SEM Industry
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Monday, April 27th, 2009
The recent Pandalabs report on the targeted attack by spammers on Ford makes interesting reading, and the video on how the blackhat techniques work is well worth watching. The purpose of the techniques are to lead unsuspecting users to malware or rogueware, and extort money and credit card details from those users.
Other recent rogue blackhat software campaigns show that the spammers are targeting an extraordinary variety of keywords ranging from fairy tales to health issues, and are being utterly unscrupulous in how they con the user into parting with their money. (See video: pop up window to simulate a secure session).
As SEOs, it is important to be aware of how professional these sites can be made to appear and how they have successfully (to date) conned the search engines. Your competition on the SERPs is no longer just a similar business, but fraudsters and criminals who are seeking to steal your traffic and business. As an internet user, it is vital to be extremely careful when trying to escape from such a site as even an innocent looking video that 41 other people have apparently bookmarked may well not be what it seems.
Tags: blackhat, cybercrime, scam
Posted in SEM Industry, Stats & Trends
