GPWA Times Magaine - Issue 23 - February 2013

Deciphering today’s Google propaganda will fail to fully leverage the natural inte- gration points. While Media Skunk Works won’t talk about specific examples, the general work- around we found was to build specialist teams where each member of the team had an equally shared vested financial interest in the outcome of the project. To be hon- est I stole that idea from U2’s Bono, where the band all had equal shares in the busi- ness, rather than the named songwriter getting all the royalties. The model works wonderfully and we use it all the time when building specialist dream teams for clients who require truly integrated campaigns. How should I use online PR with an iGaming project? Drawing upon Sun Tzu for inspiration… “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” While we do use online PR to create a shroud under which we are able to deploy a particularly aggressive link-building campaign, we are also able to carefully use online PR to deceive search quality engineers where a tricky redirect has been used to shake a penalty. A few months ago, Google booby-trapped the old 301 penalty removal trick. Howev- er, they are unable to booby-trap the use of 301s where a genuine rebrand requires a site-wide redirect. So when we’re tasked with fixing a penalty for a client, we always aim to make the move look like a rebrand – and back it up with a legitimate indus- try press release, which ensures that deception is maintained under careful human scrutiny. Example: “Due to a recent move to expand into interna- tional and emerging South American casino markets, oldpenalisedenglishdomain.co.uk will undergo a full and extensive rebrand. The new brand – newcleandomain.com – has been chosen for future global expansion. “A spokesperson said . . .” You get the idea! Reasons for rebrand include: • Move to a domain, which is memorable and pronounceable in other languages. • Company X engaged with branding consultants and – Hey Presto! – a brand strategy was devised! It’s all about deception! Some affiliates may even want to run a small but targeted, above-the-line billboard campaign in and around the Google offices – to be sure the brand subliminally holds the search qual- ity engineer’s mind share. Remember . . . • Follow your instincts when hiring expertise. • Don’t believe the hype! If you have any specific questions e-mail me directly at: paul@mediaskunkworks.com or follow me on Twitter @paulreilly or stalk me on: http://foursquare.com/user/paulreilly “Bomb disposal is dan- gerous, brain surgery is dangerous and buying links is dangerous, but there are al- ways situations where all three activitieshavetobecarriedout, carefullyandbyexpertswith trainingandexperience.” Paul Reilly has worked in search marketing for over 13 years and has earned multiple awards and honors. Today Paul is regarded by many as one of the U.K.’s most influential SEOs. He is the founder of mediaskunkworks.com. 54