3. SHOUTOUT TO
@RHEA DRYSDALE
My online reputation
management coach
Rhea is an awesome friend and she let
me borrow her brain and experience
when I was trying to figure out the most
effective tactics for ORM.
@iPullRank
7. I LOVE A challenge
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
I maybe love a challenge too much because I often put myself in
places where the challenge is insurmountable like my previous
position at Publicis Modem.
8. WE NEED HELP WITH
A little BIT OF
CLEANUP
Iacquire was among a number
of companies that aggressively
courted me
9. BUT IACQUIRE
WANTED MY
VISION
A lot of companies wanted my “talents”
but iacquire wanted my LEADERSHIP vision
After interviewing at a ton of places iAcquire sounded
like it’d be the place that offered me the most latitude
to truly take an agency forward, innovate and do
great work.
@iPullRank
10. This isn’t an excuse, it’s just me explaining
that I didn’t understand the magnitude of the
paid link building until I did the quantifying
outreach study which was literally days
before my official start date.
11. I was already scheduled to be in Australia,
Arizona, Indiana and Montreal during my
first 2 months at iAcquire so my goal was
to bring on more white hat clientele so we
could quickly transition out of paid links.
12. On may 21st, 2012 An April
fools joke came to life
before our very eyes
I officially started at iAcquire on April 3rd after I
returned from LinkLove London, but before I got
there Joe, Robb and I played this joke on Jay and
TR. Matt Cutts and Mike King = BFFS 4 EVER
@iPullRank
13. IN Iacquire’s corner @iPullRank
Joe Griffin Jay swansson John-paul barnych
Co-founder Co-founder Vice President of Revenue
Tom rusling Cindy nieves Jeffrey nappi
General Manager Director of Operations Director of Technology @iPullRank
14. Our OLD
Process
We used to use money at this
point as a motivator to get links.
Protocol was not to talk about
money unless the webmaster
asks for it.
@iPullRank
17. REJOICED
A lot of people came out of the woodwork to
dance on the grave of iAcquire including people
who are to this day actively selling links
themselves
@iPullRank
22. Internally: I lost my shit
I wanted to respond right away with a very transparent explanation of
what happened. In fact I wrote it 3 times. The rest of the leadership
team felt differently.
23. Externally:
I was fairly nonchalant
Early on, it was pretty easy to not to lose it externally because I still
had hope we would hash out a solid transparent response.
@iPullRank
24. 8 DAYS
My voice was missing from that conversation because I hated it, but
as a team player I lived with it
25. WE CHANGED OUR
BUSINESS MODEL
OVERNIGHT
We locked ourselves in a conference room for a few
days and voila just like that Content Marketing
became all that we did. There was no more link buying
at all.
26. An invite to speak at a SEMPO event
was rescinded
An invite to write for SearchEngineLand never
materialized
28. There’s a lot more where
this came from.
On behalf of the people on my team
that work hard everyday
29. iAcquire was never like these companies that are forever branded as a
B
charlatans. I personally don’t know what happened to these guys, but I
do know…
Aren’t we supposed to stay
down now?
30. Accolades
WAS
DEINDEXED
CIRCA 2002*
iCrossing went through a series of rebrandings
and ultimately has been regarded as one of the
best digital agencies by a variety publications
such as advertising age, forrester wave, omma
and ad week. There is life after deindexation.
*According to Joe Griffin
@iPullRank
31. This is when I realized
reputation management is
JUST not about the serp
@iPullRank
34. It was an unfortunate byproduct
of the process
Many people on our outreach team were not prepared to
make the leap with us so we had to let them go.
We did keep the team member who contacted the Kansas
blogger, but ultimately the loyalty was not reciprocated.
36. C Reativity
WE R Esponsibility
DEFINED OUR
PRINCIPLES A Cumen
F Ortitude
iAcquire had already mastered the WHAT and
the HOW, but we needed the WHY. We’d
already had CRAFT, I repurposed it and used it
to define what our brand stands for.
T ransparency @iPullRank
37. We took the money from link
buying and invested it in hiring
creatives
We hired writers, graphic designers, an animator and project managers to improve
our processes through verticalization.
@iPullRank
38. We invested in teaching
our people about
content strategy
We needed our people to feel confident in
servicing and selling the new approach so we had
workshops and book clubs around Content
Strategy.
@iPullRank
39. WE MOVED Transition Plan
CLIENTS FROM
PAID LINKS TO
CONTENT-
BASED LINKS
Being that iAcquire is a business we couldn’t
just pull the plug on all of our links overnight, so
we set up transition plans for all clients and (DRAMATIZATION)
gradually replaced the Paid links with content-
based links. Naturally, there were those who
chose to cancel rather than transition.
@iPullRank
40. It was incredibly important that
we reconnect with our client base
to encourage them to remain confident in our abilities to
transition from paid links to free content-based links.
41. We invested
Tom harari Brittan Bright
in strong
Seo manager DIR. Of client strategy
new talent
These people have helped us transition from
being a link vendor to a full SEO Agency
Megan Brown Norris Rowley
Social media Strategist MGR. Market Research
@iPullRank
42. SOME THINGS
DIDN’T NEED
TO CHANGE
We were always transparent. These are
screenshots from the client-facing reporting of
iRank that is available 24/7 on-demand.
@iPullRank
44. I met MATT CUTTS AT SMX ADVANCED
AND WE GOT REINDEXED
Sorry, but this is another example of Correlation !=
Causation. It didn’t make any difference, but we had a
pretty direct conversation about the iAcquire situation at
SMX Advanced in front of a bunch of people. Matt said Matt Cutts + Mike King =
he felt sorry for me because he knew I had nothing to
do with it. BFFS 4 EVER
45. WE CHANGED
THROUGH AND
THROUGH
Initially there was a disconnect between
what was being communicated to clients
and what was being said publicly. Google
had a problem with this so we aligned
communication across the board.
@iPullRank
46. WE REMOVED
THIS POST
Tom Rusling (with some editing help from me) wrote
a post about how the Google Webmaster Tools
messages weren’t something you needed to worry
about and it was mentioned as a specific point of
contention multiple times so we removed it.
47. WE
WROTE
THIS POST
As a part of our earnest effort to show that we were committed
to no longer offering paid links, joe griffin wrote a post about the
second wave of the google webmaster tools unnatural link
messages in support of google.
@iPullRank
48. WE KEPT TRYING
TO OPEN THE
DIALOG WITH
GOOGLE
THROUGHOUT
THE PROCESS.
We showed public commitment to change and kept
reaching out to Google in hopes that they would take
notice and ultimately on July 23rd, 2012 our pages
started to trickle back into the index.
50. fixing the social contract
requires a focus on the why
The golden circle is what separates winning brands
from losing brands. Shoutout to @joannalord, and
Ian Lurie who talked about this yesterday.
http://bit.ly/WqnsHF
@iPullRank
51. Chrysler turned it around by focusing
on the why
During the Superbowl Chrysler launched a highly-
effective commercial with Eminem, focusing on the why
of their brand and the city of Detroit.
http://bit.ly/RB2z8m
@iPullRank
52. I PERSONIFY
OUR SOCIAL
CONTRACT
Transparency. Innovation. Brand humanization.
Brand positioning. New offering launch.
For iAcquire I am a walking reputation management
content strategy, simply because I am transparent,
innovative, authentic and I lead the expansion of our
offerings. Anything I do that is positive galvanizes
iAcquire in that direction.
@iPullRank
53. Introducing The “road
to reinclusion” content
strategy
I developed a content strategy called “The Road
To Reinclusion” wherein the core strategy was:
“We will offer a transparent look at our transition
to a content marketing agency that is in full
compliance with Google’s Webmaster guidelines
with a focus on regaining the trust of the
community, clients and Google.” #R2R
@iPullRank
54. ROAD TO REINCLUSION PERSONAS
CLIENT CARLA Grouchy Googler Supporter Sam Hater Harry
MAIN FOCUS Secondary Focus Tertiary FoCus Not a FOCUS
55. TRANSPARENCY.
Share what you are doing exhaustively, people will respect your
efforts. and more far more prone to believe that you and your brand
has changed.
@iPullRank
56. INNOVATION.
We continue to invest in free marketing tools
such Broken Link Index and Authora with plans
to rebuild LinkDiagnosis from scratch.
COST: Authora / BLI- $10K
@iPullRank
57. BRAND
HUMANIZATION
Getting our people involved in content efforts
allows us to introduce our audience to the
people behind the brand and understand the
iAcquire culture.
COST: Canon 7D and accessories: $3000
@iPullRank
58. Show off the creative
talents of the team
My MozCon talk wasn’t just about me showing
off my talents as an emcee, it was also about
showing off iAcquire’s Creative team. Kyle
Bastian did the kinetic typography video in a few
days and Robb Dorr designed the deck (and
this one).
Cost: 20 hours of internal
Creative
@iPullRank
59. THE CRAFT
AWARDS
We wanted to celebrate the seo community
with a content marketing awards ceremony
We planned and spec’d out a CRAFT Content
Marketing Awards ceremony and party for SMX East
2012 which would have featured celebrity host, DJ and
musical act as well as the distribution of awards for the
best content developed by agencies.
@iPullRank
60. Knowem.com
Only 67 out of 300 profiles were indexed even after using a Bulk
ping tool. None of the profiles ever ranked for [iAcquire]. Links
from these sites support iacquiretweets.com
@iPullRank
61. IACQUIRETWEETS.COM
We have nearly 100 people at iAcquire and
most of them use Twitter, so it was pretty easy
to make a microsite that just aggregates all the
tweets with the #IACQ hash tag.
COST: 10 hours of coding/design + $100
domain/hosting.
@iPullRank
62. SHAKESHACKCAMERA.COM
We launched a camera for the Shake Shack fast food
restaurant across the street from our office and placed
post-it art in my windows with a CTA for tweeting while you
wait in line.
4 days later Shake Shack called us and asked us to
take it down. COST: $500 + 20 hours of Creative
@iPullRank
63. HELPING
PEOPLE IS
FREE.
What scales the best is helping people out and
delivering something of value on a regular basis
as we do with Cliff Notes Tuesday, Live Site
Audits and Lunch Break.
@iPullRank
64. DOUBLE-
SERVED PAID
SEARCH ADS.
I was initially against doing these because it’s
obvious that they are for reputation
management, but gave in in interest of owning
everything above the fold. FYI – Double-serving
ads is against the Adwords rules.
@iPullRank
72. THE MAIN
FOCUS IS THE
WORK.
Above the fold on the site you have case
studies and the sliding hero that
showcases work we’ve done for our clients
followed by our USPs (our WHY).
@iPullRank @iPullRank
73. MORE BRAND
HUMANIZATION
AS YOU GO
DOWN
The further down the homepage
the user goes the more you get to
know the actual people that work
at iAcquire.
@iPullRank @iPullRank
74. EVERY PAGE
IS LINK
WORTHY &
SHAREWORTHY
Each page on the new site incorporates
some element that make it worth linking so
our site can be a shining example of what
we’d like our clients to be doing.
@iPullRank @iPullRank
75. AIR-TIGHT
SEO
When we re-launch I will issue a challenge
to the world to poke holes in the SEO of
iacquire.com. If you can find something we
didn’t do well we’ll give you $530.
@iPullRank @iPullRank
76. SOCIAL PROOF
ON ALL THE
THINGS!
These will act as our Twitter
testimonials similar to what
@mikecp talked about.
@iPullRank @iPullRank
77. USER
GENERATED
COMICS
The marketing team is the smallest team at
iAcquire and while our founders don’t want to
build a community around our brand I shouldn’t
be the only one having fun with Gary &
Cogswell.
@iPullRank
78. BRANDING
REFRESH
Since we’ve made a substantial change from
link vendor to full-blown strategic SEO partner It
is important that we appear as though we have
changed. We’ve updated the brand style and
guidelines to reflect that.
@iPullRank
79. Has any of it done anything yet?
ROUND VI: RESULTS
@iPullRank
83. More discovery calls, more overview
presentations and less cancellations
Turns out there is life after reinclusion after all.
84. What can you learn from our mistakes?
ROUND VII: KEY TAKEAWAYS
@iPullRank
85. No brand is completely immune to a meltdown. Always have a plan
for crisis content strategy ready to launch.
86. Check out this checklist to determine
your risk quotient
http://bit.ly/QivIGY
87. MONITOR
YOUR
REPUTATION.
Use Social Mention, Amplicate, Google
Alerts, turn the SERP into an RSS
feed: http://bit.ly/TTEn3R or use our
new Reputation Tracker:
http://bit.ly/SNPvxm
@iPullRank
88. SIDEBAR:
The powers that be don’t see the
value in the tools I create
Please help me show that value by
signing up for the launch of Reputation
Tracker otherwise I can’t continue to
justify the creation of free tools.
Reputation Tracker:
http://bit.ly/SNPvxm
90. DON’T
Tie the hands of your spokesperson.
Choose your spokesperson wisely and then don’t hold
them back from getting the job done.
91. Your reputation is yours to fix. Don’t involve other brands until you have
recovered yourself. We made this mistake with Shake Shack.
92. I made the mistake of getting wrapped up in the sensation of the SEO
echo chamber rather than focusing on the content that made me popular.
93. It is very easy for people to tell when a fix just cosmetic. Fix things from the
inside out and you are insulated from most negative responses.
94. MAKE NEWS
WITH THE
CHANGE.
Very few people are going to care about the positive
things you are doing. Be sure to position your positive
change as newsworthy.
@iPullRank