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Allison Fabella

As Search Engine Strategies San Jose draws closer, I’m pleased to welcome conference speakers to the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog. The “six questions” series is a fun tradition of interviewing panelists to get the early, inside scoop from the foremost experts in their field on some of the issues that will be explored during the conference.

First up is Allison Fabella, SEO Manager at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of the largest metro newspapers in the U.S. Allison is speaking during Stop the Presses! How SEO Can Help Save the Publishing Industry on day one of the show and News Search SEO on day three. Welcome to the blog, Allison!

1. The newspaper industry is one that’s so-far struggled to adapt to the Web. Do you think that in general the publishing industry has bought into the value of SEO? In what stage of evangelism are most major publications? Is the opinion that Google is a vampire a commonly held belief or does it come from a vocal minority?

Generally speaking, the publishing industry has come a long way in embracing SEO, thanks to pioneers like Marshall Simmonds at The New York Times. That said, there’s still more work that needs to be done. Although many news publications now employ in-house SEOs or outsource SEO services, they are frequently understaffed or under-budgeted. As a result, they don’t always experience the total benefit of optimizing to the full extent or get results as quickly as they could. In that regard, more evangelizing needs to be done within most media outlets.

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to label Google a “digital vampire.” They do plenty of “good” as well. However, publishers are understandably frustrated. They carry the full burden and expense of producing content - a very costly undertaking - while outfits such as Google profit from that effort free and clear. Until publishers can find better solutions around monetizing their content, though, I would expect to hear those frustrated voices grow louder.

2. There’s an ongoing debate about Google as the enemy of publishers. Many publishers want the traffic benefit of being listed and to also retain control over the content as copyright holders. The AP has gotten a lot of scrutiny as a leader of this movement. Is copyright protection a worthwhile concern in the Web environment today?

Copyright protection in the Web environment is a concern that spans far beyond the news business. Over the years, there have been myriad unsuccessful attempts by the music, movie and television industries to protect their content via copyright laws. Many are coming to realize that the Internet is simply too porous to effectively insulate their product. Instead, some companies are now exploring ways to share their product with the public, but still “own” it through branding and advertising. Hulu.com’s business model comes to mind. They offer free content, monetize it with limited commercials, and a build a strong advertising campaign to “own” the brand. Can something like that be successfully duplicated in the publishing industry? That’s difficult to predict, but it might be worth exploring.

3. The Wall Street Journal is one of the few major publications that has been able to charge for Web content. What publications, if any, is this also a viable option for? Are there certain characteristics (like local-specific or niche-specific) that might be better suited for the paid access approach?

The idea of charging for a product that was formerly free is not without precedent. The television industry accomplished this in the mid-’70s with cable TV. How? They successfully sold the concept that pay TV will yield a more unique and superior television viewing experience than free TV. And that’s the question many publishers are asking themselves today. Do they have a product superior to free publications, or can they offer their readers something that is unique and has added value? If so, will people pay for it?

Larger news publications, like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, not only have great content but also have a tremendous amount of brand equity, which might be considered premium (or “freemium”)-worthy. That’s not necessarily the case for local or regional papers. Feeling the squeeze to stay out of the red and reduce costs, they often rely on wire stories as filler, consequently diluting their brand. That’s not to say that regionals and locals don’t offer anything of any value. To the contrary, no one knows a community better than the local newspaper, and there might be value in that depth of knowledge - especially in locations of historical significance where the paper may possess robust archives. Note that I say “might” in both of these situations. Nobody knows at this point what type of pay model might be sustainable and under what circumstances.

4. I read an interesting article about how the New York Times home page is created each day. I was surprised to read that Web stats had no bearing on what was put on the home page of the site. What is your recommendation on using analytics as a guide for pushing content?

Web analytics can be a great aid in discovering trends or catching topical interest on the rise. However, I don’t think it would be particularly effective in helping to determine home page content. Home page news moves too fast. Personally, I use Web stats to unearth SEO opportunities for the mid- to long-term. When I find something of interest, I forward the data to the editorial chiefs and leave it in their capable hands to determine whether there’s a place for it. Oftentimes that ends up being a hand-rolled topics page - a long-term traffic driver. I also encourage the editorial staff to keep a close eye on Google Trends, Twist (for Twitter) and Facebook Lexicon, to determine if there is buzz growing around a particular subject.

5. What recommendations do you have for publishers looking at the social media realm? Would you say rules are a little different there for publications than for other kinds of companies or individuals?

At their core, the job of news publications is to inform their community about news, events, issues, etc. - be it locally or globally. Although the means through which we distribute that information may have changed with the advent of the Internet, the spirit still remains. Therefore, news publications should embrace social media as a valuable tool for disseminating information to their community.

As for rules specific to newspapers, there are a few best practices, which carry over from the traditional media, such as refraining from endorsing political issues on Twitter or “friending” political candidates on Facebook. If you are a news “personality,” segregate your public and personal Twitter or Facebook accounts and keep your private stuff private. Beyond that, most rules around social media are merely cultural adaptations that news organizations need to get comfortable with - being more agile, learning to try new things, and not shying away from new technologies. That includes mobile and video as well.

6. Are there any sessions at SES that you plan not to miss? Where can people track you down while in San Jose?

That’s a tough question. There are so many great SES sessions from which to choose. I always enjoy the “SEO Tools of the Trade” sessions and would be sure to get some great tips on the latest cool tools. Unfortunately, that session is happening at the same time as mine, so I’ll have to catch up on the recaps afterward.

Also, “The Advanced SEO Roundtable: What is it Really?” session looks terrific. It’s got a top-notch lineup and Bruce Clay, Matt Bailey, Mike Grehan, Todd Malicoat and Todd Friesen are sure to deliver a lively debate.

Of course, I wouldn’t miss the In-House SEO session with Jessica Bowman, Melanie Mitchell, and Laura Lippay.

Where can I be found? I’ll probably be wandering around looking for replacements for The Google Dance (I hear WebmasterRadio.FM is throwing a great bash). It might be easiest to just e-mail me at afabella [at] ajc [dot] com. Also, in addition to the “Stop the Presses” session at 3 p.m. Tuesday, you can catch me on the panel of the “News Search SEO” session at 12:45 p.m. Thursday.

Thanks, Allison! The news industry’s adaptation to the online environment represents a common challenge to the traditional business mindsets, so thanks for coming on the blog and sharing these ideas and recommendations.

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6 Questions with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Allison Fabella

If you follow me on Twitter or read Shoemoney’s latest post, then you already know I’ve been let back into the Google search engine. This post will explain how I did it and provide some background into my battle with Google.

Despite Shoe’s attention grabbing headline, Google did not give in to me. Then again, I didn’t give in to Google either despite my headline. The three year saga ended to the benefit of all parties involved. I am back in Google and Google no longer looks bad when someone does a search for John Chow.

Background Information – Playing with Fire

Three years ago, Google decided to make an example out of me because I violating some major rules in their Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, I was selling paid links, writing paid review and created a huge linking building scheme to rank for certain keywords. This all happened around the time when I was trying to present myself as an “evil” blogger.

When the Google slap hit, many bloggers wrote me off, saying that without the Google traffic, I would slip off into the sunset and never be heard from again. After all, who can possibly survive without the help of big daddy Google?

I had two choices. I could correct my blog to comply with Google like all the other webmasters did when they got slapped. Some were let back in, some weren’t. Instead, I chose the other route, which said, “Screw you Google! People say I can’t build my blog without you. I’m going to prove them wrong!”

You know the rest of the story. Without the help of Google traffic for the past three years, John Chow dot Com continued to grow in both traffic and income. The blog and the brand are bigger than ever. I had accomplished what many bloggers and SEO “experts” said could not be done.

Why I Decided To Get Back Into Google

The decision to try to get back into Google was made a month ago after discussions with Shoemoney and Neil Patel. Since the challenge of building a blog without Google was pretty much done and proven, the new challenge was trying to get back into Google. Would Google even talk to me after I’ve made them look bad for three years?

The other reason for trying to get back was purely financial. Three years ago, paid links were a big part of the blogs income. However, as time passed, I moved the blog’s income stream to a backend system. As the backend income grew, paid link became a smaller and smaller percentage of the blog income. At the time I removed them, the paid links accounted for about 2.5% of blog income. I knew I had to remove the paid links and comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines in order to get back in and since the links made up so little of my income, it wasn’t a big deal to dump them.

I also worked out that I would need Google to send me only 2,000 visitors per month in order to make up the income lost by the paid links. I know how much I make from every new visitor that comes to my blog (I explain how I do this in my How I Make $40,000 a Month from a Blog post). I knew that if Google were to let me back in at full strength, I would get far more than 2,000 referrals a month from them.

Testing The Google Waters

The normal way for getting a ban/slapped site back into Google is to correct whatever got you ban in the first place and then send a reconsideration request using Google Webmaster Tools. There is no assurance or guarantee that Google will reconsider you and let you back in. You just basically have to hope and pray. This was something I didn’t want to do.

To test if Google would let me back into the index, I came up with the idea of creating a duplicate blog that was Google compliant on JohnChow.ca and redirected the Googlebot to it. If Google would rank the dot ca blog correctly, I would then make the same changes to the dot com blog and redirect the bot back. However, I made a grave mistake. When you show your visitors one thing but something else to the Googlebot, that is known as cloaking and it’s against the Webmaster Rules. The end result was the dot ca blog getting slapped and the dot com blog getting a PageRank of ZERO. I was off to a really bad start.

The Dinner That Changed Everything

The turning point came when I was having dinner with Neil Patel and the boys from Unique Blog Designs.

Neil told me the best way to get back into Google was just to talk to Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team. Neil told me that Matt is an extremely fair guy and would be open to the idea of letting me back in even after that stupid cloaking trick. Neil facilitated an introduction and Matt and I exchanged several emails. I got the feeling that Matt must work 24 hours a day because every time he emailed me, it was after 10PM.

Neil was correct in saying that Matt was extremely fair and after correcting one misunderstanding, Matt informed me that a member of his team had submitted a reconsideration request on my behalf. The next day, I was back in Google.

The process I went through to get back in Google is probably beyond the means of most webmasters. Because of this, my recommendation to you is just to work with Google and comply with their Webmaster Guidelines instead of going against them. Sure, it might be fun to be like John Chow and play the rebel but you have to keep in mind that I am the exception and not the rule. Most blogs can not grow to any meaningful size without Google traffic.

Thanks goes out to Shoemoney, Neil Patel and Matt Cutts for making it possible for me to get John Chow dot Com back into Google.

Find out what I’m doing right now by following me on Twitter.

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John Chow Gives In To Google, Back In Search Engine

Summer You Never Even Really Gave Yourself enough time.

There was a bit of confusion with my cycle sites technique illustrated in the SEO Empire Part 1 post. I used autoblogs as an easy to understand example. Autoblogs generate links quickly to themselves and can be cycled (redirected) to a source to push those links. Therefore by the definition:

Cycle Site-A site that automatically gains links to itself and then through a redirection passes that link value to another site.

an autoblog is a perfect example of a Cycle Site. However, an Autoblog by itself is not a Cycle Site and a Cycle Site is not just an Autoblog. Any site that quickly gains links to itself and is capable of redirection can be used as a Cycle Site.

In contrast as we all remember, a Link Laundering Site is a site that has an ability to gain links not just to itself but directly to another site. In the post I used a reciprocal link directory as an example. However really almost any platform can be used to launder links. I haven’t actually of heard anyone getting confused amongst the differences between the two techniques, but I also haven’t heard very much discussion pertaining to the extremely close relationship they share. These two techniques more so than the some of the other techniques on this site are very closely related. Inherently a link laundering site takes precedent over a cycle site. Why? Because if a site can constantly feed link value to another site without having to cycle and closing out, even if its for a short while, than its worth more as a link builder.

Therefore whenever possible a Link Laundering Site should be used over a Cycle Site if possible. The Cycle Site simply gives you more structures as to which gain links by than Link Laundering Sites can provide. Since you’re not worried about people liking the site and continuing its success you are able to build links to it much quicker. There is however a happy medium between the two techniques that can give Cycle Sites link laundering stability and Link Launder Sites Cycle Site power. This technique is called Cyclic Documents and its exactly what it sounds like and it is very powerful.

Cyclic Documents
A Cyclic Document is a document or link given to a user of a Cycle or Link Laundering site as to qualify a given set of links or time before it cycles (redirects typically) to its target.

The Premise
The idea is very simple. The link you give to gain the links to is instead of your main page, for which you’d have to cycle out and thus loose the link building power of, goes to a secondary document and/or a redirect to the main page where as its viewed as either just an obscurity, a method of tracking, or even not noticed at all. To help remove the confusion and to help differentiate the actual example with the technique itself I’m going to do the methodology portion twice. The first will be with the classic Autoblog example given in the SEO Empire post the next with a random structure.

Methodology 1 - The Autoblog
1) If you’re using Wordpress or similar platform for your Autoblog do a simple modification to the code that includes a simple conditional with a redirect checking for a certain string in the posts title that would normally never exist in a post title.
if($post_title==”elineverpostswhatabitch”)
{
header( ‘Location: http://www.mytargetsite.com’ ) ;
}
?>

2) Create a cronjob script that parses through the previous posts on the Autoblog and finds posts beyond a certain age. Use the actual mysql database don’t just write a scraper! I’m just going to throw my recommendation out there and you can adjust and make your own necessary changes to it based upon your experience and best judgement. 8 Days.

3) If it finds a post past the set days have it change the title to what your picked unique title was in step 2.

What Does This Do?
Your Autoblog will create posts based on rss feeds (typically). It will then do pingbacks and gather at least one link to that post. I say at least one because there is odds of these new breed of comment scrapers The author of the original blogpost may check for the link, hopefully within your set number of days. See his link and hopefully leave the trackback alive on his site. After the author no longer cares about the link and has forgotten about it, but before the search engines have had a chance to index the page it will cycle that single post to your new target site thus giving it +1 link. This is why I never mentioned robots.txt in the original technique post. I wasn’t hiding something fantastic from ya after all.

Methodology 2 - The Image Upload Site
1) On your image upload site when the user uploads there image and you give them back the link code instead of linking to www.myimagehoster.com have it link to a sequential numeric subdirectory or subpage. eg. www.myimagehoster.com/10.

2) Through mod-rewrite have all /# or /[0-9]+ pull a script. In this script have it read in a variable saying what number its currently on and incriment it then make all numeric at and below it redirect to your target site. This sounds more complicated than it really is. Really, all you’re doing is recording the number 1 to a file or db or something and every so often have it change it to the next number up which in this case is 2. From that point on every /1 and /2 link automatically redirects to your target site thus giving it it’s hopeful link (assuming the person kept the image code in tact). Based on the popularity of the site you can increment the number faster or slower and redirect more at a faster rate.

What Does This Do?
If your image upload site used to a be a Cycle Site where it would work for awhile and eventually gather tons of links very quickly then cycle out and generate no links for a period before you’d bring it back. Now you keep it going forever and instead of destroying its momentum you can use it to gather even more links faster than you ever could before. After so long people will forget the link code and not click on it. That’s prime to have your link change out. You can also control your rankings. ie. if your image upload site ranks for terms that give it a tons of traffic and you know x amount of link are required to maintain those rankings you can maintain that amount of links thus keeping your momentum at its maximum and yet still produce equally high volumes of links to your target. Also, I could very easily have used the link directory and software directory site example used in the link laundering technique with this same methodology.

Now for Jebus sake don’t go creating a shit ton of image upload sites or Autoblogs like what happened when SEO Empire came out. <- Even my other blogs on other subjects were getting hit by hundreds at a time. Use some creativity as I typically encourage you to do. You won’t ever get rich doing the direct examples gurus give you and you won’t with me either. Most of all have fun and learn a lot from it.

More here:
Blue Hat Technique #20 - Cyclic Documents