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Social Media Success Video Most companies large and small perform some sort of search engine optimization on their sites. It’s natural, as Google is such a tremendous traffic driving machine. When we hear of large automotive publishing firms engaging in pre-school link-building spam efforts, it shocks us. Why? Because they simply do not work, and you’d think a publisher like Car and Driver would know that.
They didn’t.
How NOT to Build Links
The effort here was to do a link exchange with Techcrunch, a publication that has a Google PageRank of 8/10. To put that into perspective, the LA Times website is a PR 8. It is clear that they are searching for any publication that is posting about “Ford” and trying to optimize their site to be the next Ford Buying Guide traffic recipient.
It didn’t work. In fact, Techcrunch sent the email to Matt Cutts, Google’s SEO Spam Czar. The lesson here is that if you’re going to try link farming and link exchanges, try to use something other than a tactic that comes from the SEO playbook, circa 2004.
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Read more offbeat automotive news on this blog.
Tags: automotive seo
Heh. Always funny when stuff like this rises up…
Makes you wonder whether the people at the larger brands are just ignorant to the right way to do things or they believe the rules don’t apply?
It seems based upon the email that they are probably just ignorant. You would think that with a brand like Car and Driver, they would be able to do real engagement-style SEO such as picking up the phone and talking to others in the industry for links. Email link-exchange spam is still around, I know, but I would never have expected such a strong marketing firm to still be using such old tactics.
This is so “old school” that it confirms that at the top, executives still don’t understand how effective SEO strategies would be deployed. Car and Driver, if your listening, give me and Jim a call!
This is not very uncommon. Almost daily we get email from sites asking to buy links and trade links across our vast blog network. It would really surprise you at what level this activity takes place.
One lead aggregation site that many are familiar with recently got outed as well.
http://www.lakeland-printing.com/blog/lemonfree-com-busted-for-buying-links-thats-against-googles-terms-of-service.html
Car and Driver,
If can’t get help here. Please, get help somewhere.
Worst part I see.. Is that they probably thought this was the “right way” to do things…
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