Ryanair Trolled for Links?

It couldn't have happened to a more deserving case.

Ryanair have been very effectively trolled for links in a masterclass of linkbaiting, which we are going to jump right on the end of and link at too because someone needed to troll these tools.

Jason Roe, SEO blogger noticed a slight bug on the Ryanair website and blogged about it, then it all went a bit surreal with the help and input of their genius "senior programmers" 1, 2 and 3 who appeared on the blog comments in question and showed off the kind of PR and customer care skills usually reserved for the general traveling public at large on their outrageous lastminutecharges.com website, or at their infamous check-in desks.

Our troll-alarm bells have been ringing since the start as to whether the "senior programmers" did actually work for Ryanair or if the whole thing was planned and engineered by the genius who is Jason Roe SEO ;)

..but Spec ops have done some research and are satisfied that the approach and behaviour shown to public on this blog is genetically highly similar to that of the www.ryanair.com sales website and therefore very likely came from the same place.

Contrast this to the virgin complaint letter thing from a couple of weeks ago, and you can very clearly see the class divide between Branson's slick PR handling & Ryanair's balls-out arrogance.

That said, once the robbery is actually over (you are successfully past the airport security and no further last minute charges can be compulsarily added to your booking) we have been impressed with the Ibiza to Stansted service this winter, and begrudgingly have to admit that Ryanair do ultimately supply good value for air distance covered.

If only they didn't do it so distastefully all the way through to that point we're sure everyone would be much happier with them generally.

Its not even that we begrudge paying, its that we don't like to be told its one price, then find out one surcharge (at a time) that it's something else entirely..

"...and will you also be breathing on our plane sir? that'll be 20 Euros.."

and hopefully some Ryanair muppets will come over here and have a go, where they'll find their reception much less polite ;)

New SEO Humour site.

Right, I'm not sure where we've been these last couple of weeks (well I am actually, last minute battle preps, weaponry checks, and a prolonged bout of seo on the beach) - but in line with our policy of not taking life (and seo) too seriously we're always on the lookout for funnies, and especially seo related funnies.

Finding good seo humour is more difficult than you might think, and finding seo humour that translates to non-seo types (or seo civilians come to that) is almost impossible, as it's generally all "in-jokes" and geeky techy humour, and most seo civilians either dont understand, dont think its funny even when you explain it to them, or plain just don't care.

So as we are supposed to be an seo recon unit, we have to admit to slacking a bit really by letting this one slip under the radar so far.. ..It's has like 47 Sphinns and everything!! :)

..Introducing http://schmearch.com/blog/ - creative satirical and well, (we think) quite funny. Check:

schmearch.com/google/linkbait-crashes-new-google-truthrank-algorithm-saves-the-world

there ya go schmeach, bask in the glow of Ibiza's linklove, and we'll send you a postcard from foreign serpshores when we've landed and secured the area, and in the meantime keep an eye out for those "suicide google bombers" and if you need the seo jihadi warriors give us a shout. ;)

Tactical Linking Tactics

Ok we've been accused in the past of talking a lot but not actually saying very much about tactics, of being vocal about what we are doing, but not so much how go about it.

As this is the SEO spec ops group, on mainly covert operations, that's to be expected really, but here's a few things we usually do as pretty much SOPs (standard operating procedures to you SEO Civilians)

1) Link to pages on sites that link to you - especially new links that arent yet cached - find somewhere else suitable & if possible drop a decent contextual link from there to it. It will often speed up caching, and gives the outgoing link a little jolt. This includes forum posts, forum profiles in some cases blog comments (dofollow) or mentions on other blog posts.

..like this web design usability & power of impressions (thanks to SEO Design Solutions) or these ones, Boutique Self Catering Ibiza , Ibiza Events and Ibiza Hotels - where we've made some changes on the page we want recached and we've also arranged with the client to link to a friend of theirs (and another of our clients) on the page too. ..Of course we (always) want it cached ASAP (yesterday) -so get on with it Google :)

2) If you run more than one blog, syndicate the feeds from each onto the other. ...when you post on one, the other is then immediately linking at you with your best choice of anchor text. As your blogs grow in power, and dependent on your market, they can sometimes almost even rank each other's posts using this alone.

3) Always link to other bloggers posts, their permalinks, not their blog domain, and do it using suitable anchor text. Use the seo power of wordpress to alert them that you liked their post and have referenced it. People like to know that long hours of staring at screens and typing is being appreciated somewhere, and everybody likes to see links inbound. (You may even make new friends, and from there great things can happen.

4) Think about any subpages with either good pagerank or decent inbound links to them as "power-nodes" - think about routing this out of there through your best anchor text at pages that need help.

5) Courtesy of SDS (above) - brilliance in it's simplicity - use google to tell you which page is most relevant for your term by searching

term+term site:www.mysite.com

- it usually makes sense to further link to the strongest page for the term, or at least it highlights potential issues in the site, i.e if your "best" page for the job is not showing at the top.

6) Always keep in mind that the relative strength of a link, whether it's an internal or external inbound is always PR divided by no of links offpage with regards to ranking power. The gurus will tell you (toolbar) Pagerank is unimportant, but they would always select a PR6 link over a PR0, we guarantee you.

No, it's not accurate but on a scale of 1-10, ..well, we'd bet it's more accurate than just picking a likely number blindfolded? ..combine this with looking closely at the number of links off the page and you probably will be surprised which and where your best links are PR / strength wise.

And finally, unrelated to tactical linking ops, if you're a wordpress design theme wizard, get onboard this one ASAP, Wordpress theme competition - it could be your big break, seriously..

Google strips blogger blogs from SERP?

Over at HQ they made some big changes to the site last week and naturally assumed that as some of the rankings tanked immediately as the new pages cached, that they'd got the calcs wrong.

However since then the forums have been filling up with people saying their rankings have tanked across the board at around the same time.

And now a thread in Digitalpoint points out that Google's own Blogger blogs have been fairly rinsed from the index, and everyone's looking, and seeing theirs has gone too.

And, checking, our long standing #2 for *Microsofts Free Websites* search (see link for screenshots) has indeed vanished, and is not showing in the top 10 pages...

This is somewhat of a relief as hordes of angry Microsoft-loving mid Westerners have been making our lives hell with their Country & Western-loving redneckiness.

We are actually relieved to no longer have to shoulder the responsibility of being the #2 authority site on a Microsoft freebie gimmick we didnt think much of, aimed at pocket rinsing of stupid people, as to be fair the C&W loving Republicans deserve everything MS have in mind.

Check your levels but we suspect that if you had a blogger blog that was ranking for anything more than some random drunken typo about some div of a singer you can kiss that goodbye.

On a lighter note the SEO Malta invasion is full steam ahead, the boys landed last late night, indexed today and will be putting their feet up in your local in Valetta in a few days time I wouldnt wonder.