{"id":5,"date":"2019-02-15T09:58:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T09:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/?p=5"},"modified":"2019-02-15T10:59:42","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T10:59:42","slug":"10-things-you-should-have-learnt-form-the-jc-penny-seo-fiasco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/10-things-you-should-have-learnt-form-the-jc-penny-seo-fiasco\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Things You Should Have Learnt from the JC Penney SEO Fiasco"},"content":{"rendered":"

You are probably bored reading about the\u00a0JC Penney Fiasco<\/a>. I know I was for a little while. But I couldn\u2019t ignore this opportunity \u2013 it isn\u2019t often that you get to see a Brand SEO campaign that is nearly burnt to the ground because of dodgy link building practices. You want a case study? Well it\u2019s all in there. Intrigue, suspicion, politics, dirty PR, etc etc.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With such a high profile shame and name in SEO, what have you learnt? If you didn\u2019t walk away with the following 10 learnings, you have wasted this wonderful educational opportunity.<\/p>\n

a) – Link Farms Are Alive and Well<\/h3>\n

Doug Pierce, the SEO responsible for highlighting the poor SEO practices by JC Penney ran quite a\u00a0detailed analysis of backlinks<\/a>. \u00a0After careful consideration, a number of these have come from the TNX network:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe link came through a Web site,\u00a0TNX.net<\/strong>, which pays Mr. Camichel with TNX points, which he then trades for links that drive traffic to his other sites, like\u00a0cookingutensils.net.<\/strong>\u00a0He earns money when people visit that site and click on the ads. He could also, he said, get cash from TNX. Currently, Cocaman is home to 403 links, all of them placed there by TNX on behalf of clients.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We saw that this strategy gave JC Penney a massive boost. We saw that the traffic and revenue potential of the keywords it was targeting. We also know that this link net would probably have carried on until it was caught by a manual review \u2013 and that algorithmically it\u2019s not easy to spot a link farm, if done well (and in instances even if done badly).\u00a0 For\u00a0an over view of TNX, see this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

b) Anchor Text Links Rule<\/h3>\n

This one is simple. In most cases many SEOs are going down the path of \u201cAnchor Text is Dying<\/strong>\u201d.\u00a0 It may be being degraded a bit in its value for ranking, however as this VERY recent example showed, the volume of anchor text still works.<\/p>\n

c) Off Topic Links Hold Value<\/h3>\n

We are often told that the context of the area where we acquire links is extremely important. That the site, the age etc should be relevant to the linked to destination. \u00a0The JC Penney scenario blew this out of the water. Is relevancy that important? For a sustainable strategy, absolutely. To pass human review, it\u2019s a must. But for a quick win? Not so much.<\/p>\n

As Search Engine Land puts it:<\/p>\n

\u201cDoug Pierce, who worked with New York Times to uncover what was happening with J.C. Penney \u2026 that the site had a LOT of links pointing to it.\u00a0From<\/strong>\u00a0peculiar sites. With very descriptive anchor text<\/strong>.\u201d (emphasis mine).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

d) The Art Of Booster Linking<\/h3>\n

Do you know what a booster linking strategy is? No? You should. This is the biggest lesson to those who haven\u2019t run high scale brand and seasonal SEO campaigns. It has been the Gray Hat \u00a0practice of a number of large brands to \u201cacquire\u201d volumes of links just before any large trading season. Normally this is put into place 3-4 weeks before and should ideally be eradicated almost immediately the end of the season, to avoid detection.<\/p>\n

Branko Rihtman<\/a>\u00a0ran some of the URLs through\u00a0Majestic SEO\u2018s link reporting tool and found that it appears that links were acquired in two bursts that coincided with the holiday seasons at the end of 2009 and 2010.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Booster Links for JC Penny<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

SEL showed us with the help of Branko (or @Neyne on twitter) when these links went up. Unfortunately they didn\u2019t come down quick enough, to quote a\u00a0Couple of\u00a0Dave Naylor Tweets:<\/p>\n

\u201cthey took a risk( calculated I hope), boost ranking for the holidays, they should have pulled the links down 2 weeks ago\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201c\u2026did you see the links? they were at best booster links, short term gains but long term NONOs\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Does this strategy work? I have seen proof that it does. And now with the JC Penney issue, You can all see it in action.<\/p>\n

e) The Need For In-house SEOs<\/h3>\n

JC Penney has categorically denied the knowledge of the existence of paid links. They refuse to admit that they were aware what their SEO agency was doing to get them such stellar results. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it highlights why all brands need an inhouse SEO\u00a0to ask these relevant questions<\/a>, even if they have an agency that does the SEO work. A real SEO would have spotted the bad linking practice and questioned it. \u00a0The least they can do, as\u00a0Econsultancy puts it, is to use some basic free tools<\/a>\u00a0to make sure that their strategies are on track.<\/p>\n

As Doug puts it:<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, it\u2019s the most ambitious attempt I\u2019ve ever heard of,\u201d he said. \u201cThis whole thing just blew me away. Especially for such a major brand. You\u2019d think they would have people around them that would know better.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

f) The Need For Contracts<\/h3>\n

So let\u2019s assume that JC Penney are in fact LYING. Let\u2019s assume that they KNEW what was going on.\u00a0 Where does that leave us? With one SEO agency that did as they were told, maybe even highlighted the dangers, and who now may have to shut down after such a visible destruction of their reputation.<\/p>\n

\u201cJ. C. Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links that you sent to us, as it is against our natural search policies,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Assuming that the above quote is false, then the agency should have something in writing, an email, a contract, a mutually agreed disclaimer highlighting the dangers of these bad links. If they did, then they could make a massive come back \u2013 proving that they did what their client ask. So protect yourself if a client asks for dodgy practices, despite being warned.<\/p>\n

g) Google New Link Spam Algo<\/h3>\n

Interesting to me was a specific comment on the NYT piece\u00a0and tweet\u00a0from Matt Cutts.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid Segal of the NYT discusses some blackhat SEO: http:\/\/goo.gl\/RdnTi Google\u2019s algorithms had started to work; manual action also taken.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the first part is the Google Algorithm \u201cstarting\u201d to work. What were these algos? Considering that from what I have been reading, google has been concentrating on low quality Spammy sites, as well as maybe looking at content farms, what is this \u201cnew\u201d algo that is looking at Spammy links? To highlight the NYT comment:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe noted, too, that before The Times presented evidence of the paid links to JCPenney.com, Google had just begun to roll out an algorithm change that had a negative effect on Penney\u2019s search results. (The tweak affected \u201chow we trust links,\u201d Mr. Cutts said, declining to elaborate.)\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So a new link detection algo. Maybe not strong enough to capture links like JC Penney\u2019s in one sweep (hence the need for manual action) but a new spam link detection algo, which I don\u2019t recall reading anywhere else about.<\/p>\n

h) Google Manual Movements<\/h3>\n

The same tweet above also confirms Manual Action by the google Spam team.<\/p>\n

This shouldn\u2019t be news to you. Shouldn\u2019t be news to any one. There have been countless stories about manual penalization, and recently, via googles \u201cBing Bait\u201d fiasco, that these movements can happen upward or downward. Does anyone else need proof that Google can, and does manually influence organic results?<\/p>\n

i) Negative Spammy SEO \/ j) Killing Competitors With PR<\/h3>\n

I have bunched these two learnings together because they work well togther. For years google says that Spammy links cannot hurt your site. Anyone who believes this must be insane. How does google determine via the algo WHO placed the Spammy link?<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Matt Cutts on Spam Links<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Lets assume, just for a second, that neither JC Penney nor their SEO agency were at fault here \u2013\u00a0someone used TNX to buy those links,<\/a>\u00a0and then leak the story out to the NYT, what would the result be?\u00a0 To quote\u00a0neyne:<\/p>\n

Dear @jcpennys, one of your competitors just did a hit job on you by the means of NYT article. A smart hit job at that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And to summarize this joint strategy? Well\u00a0Skitzzo\u00a0puts it well:<\/p>\n

How To Kill Competitors’ Rankings<\/h4>\n
    \n
  1. Buy spammy links to their site<\/li>\n
  2. Get media to embarrass G about the spam<\/li>\n
  3. Profit!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Finally \u2013 You may want to see Alan\u2019s Post on\u00a0JC Penney Has Bigger problems than paid links<\/a>\u00a0as well as\u00a0JC Penneys Official Relpy\u00a0 regarding the Fiasco<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    You are probably bored reading about the\u00a0JC Penney Fiasco. I know I was for a little while. But I couldn\u2019t ignore this opportunity \u2013 it isn\u2019t often that you get to see a Brand SEO campaign that is nearly burnt to the ground because of dodgy link building practices. You want a case study? Well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/29"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}