Project: Online Reputation Assassination……Cancelled. Never ever, ever spam a seo interview. ;)

Well it worked. Tim Nash & I decided to co-operatively ‘out’ a scurrilous / inexperienced / stupid / possibly reformed ;) comment spamming ’seo company’ in a recent post on the Hobo blog and on Tim’s blog.

The idea was to (temporarily) hit them where it hurts – in Google results pages (SERPS). To rank above them for the company name with one post even though they have been building links to their site for months if not years…..(21,200 Inlinks). I did this because he p*ssed me off, wasted my time, and I could.

Tim & I managed to achieve this with 1/2 hour, 2 articles and a few organic links and a bit of experience. Within 9 minutes I was No1 in Google UK for their company name, replacing that with bad press about them.

Dang, I hate being right even some of the time….

Tim followed shortly thereafter, and even now we are in everflux competing at the top of Google for their brand name.

They faced, after possibly years of ninja link-building (though not Jim Boykin’s type :) ) and search promotion, total discredit at the top of Google when anyone was researching their company name, all because they didn’t play nice with my blog.

Within 24 Hours Online Reputation Disaster Ensued

Reputation Assassination After 24 hours

(PS – And yes, I will blank out the name in the image…..in time)

Tim and I went for the quick kill, but in a very considered way, with every intention of repairing these guys serps – we just wanted to “frighten” them and make them think twice. I certainly managed to keep the reputation damage to the company under my control and confined to this blog, thanks in large to Andy Beard’s considered title change at Sphinn (actually he was probably just playing it safe in case I got him sued) ;)

Oops - This article went hot and a lot of people saw it!

…. and although there will be residual effects in the social networking space – and you guessed it, from spam scraper sites – guess they will just have to live with that for now and just thank their lucky stars we didn’t fight back in a prolonged damaging frenzy.

Some started calling for an apology from the ’spammer’ and he gave me it on Tim’s post, here.

Not that I particularly set out for an apology, but I’ve received an apology, and I have removed the seo company name on the original post – after an agreement the top guy in the company takes the blame, not the inexperienced link ninja (if they are indeed two different people) – Ninja Commenting On This Blog & Others! – in the interests of good Karma.

I think there’s things anybody can take from this;

  • Bloggers hate comment spam, even seo bloggers (ironic I know)
  • Be careful commenting on blogs especially representing a company or using an online identity you need
  • Be sensible if you are commenting
  • Don’t “look” like a spammer
  • Don’t Spam me or I will out you
  • Bloggers have pals
  • Sometimes bloggers have nothing to blog about…except YOU
  • Remember any blog can be a potential reputation management headache you might not be able to recover from so easily
  • One creatively optimized post on a moderated semi-authoritative or trusted domain can trounce a domain promoted through crap directories and on splogs and give you a real and present danger to your online identity
  • Number of inbound links mean nothing
  • Site Trust & Authority in Google mean everything
  • I beat Tim in the SERPS :)

Disclaimer – As a ‘reformed comment spammer’, I am not saying this guy is evil or any such nonsense. Hell, we’re all spammers to Matt Cutts :) He flew in well above the radar with 10 comments on the blog one after the other – adding little or no value to any of the conversations – so high above the radar it would have been remiss of me not to shoot him down, take my frustration out on him and slap him about publicly.

There’s no intention of prolonging the ’spammer’s’ misery (too much) – it’s not as if we want to see their actual business suffer – so as we agreed – Tim and I are already starting to repair these serps (as much as we can). This was a 24 hour show.

This guy hopefully has learned he needs to be a bit more considered in commenting on blogs – he needs to become a Ninja Link Builder if he’s going to go down that route, or perhaps he should just retire to his own blog, as I did, and start improving the content on that.

Of course, you might want to reconsider your entire strategy in case you’re on Google’s radar now….eek!

I’d really like to thank Andy, Tim, Sebastian, Shady SEO, Martin and all at Sphinn for the visible link & Stumble support, and request, in the interest of Good Karma, to remove the company name from your blogs too. Of course, it’s up to you, but I’m willing to give the guy a break assuming we don’t see him pop up again any time soon, and would ask you to consider doing the same.

Thanks & Kudos!

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