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We’ve got an internal blog policy at Lessing-Flynn – never rip other ad agencies. That being said, I am not going to rip another ad agency, I am merely going to point out what they are doing and let you draw your own conclusions.
Let me start by saying to our friends at Push Branding DOT COM, that all of us at Lessing-Flynn are flattered you included us in your source code:
<p>PUSH is not your typical advertising agency or marketing firm as our focus is brand building and brand strategy.</p><br /><p>Our competitors include Trilix Marketing, Flynn Wright, Lessing Flynn, The Meyocks Group, Performance Marketing, The Integer Group, ZLR Ignition, Juls Design, Innova Ideas and Services, Conyers Design, Sally Cooper Smith and Company, Pattee Design, Sayles Graphic Design, Movement Inc., Owen Design, Strategic America.</p><br />
What you are looking at is the source code that I found on the Push My Branding DOT COM Web site home page. “Push” formerly known as Mauck Groves but doing business online as Push Branding DOT COM is trying to get people that search for “Lessing-Flynn” or other ad agencies in Des Moines to be fooled into going to the Push Branding DOT COM Web site.
Is Lessing-Flynn losing traffic because of this? Not unless you count page nine of a Google search of “Lessing Flynn” (they forgot to hyphen it) as losing traffic. And when you do get to page nine you don’t find the Push Branding DOT COM Web site, you find a Groves Design DOT COM Web site which leads me back to the formerly known as part. (Still with us?)
This Groves Design DOT COM site is known in the industry as a “parallel site.” This site actually redirects to the Push Branding DOT COM Web site. See here how page nine on the Google decription reads just as the code above reads?
While it itsn’t working against Lessing-Flynn, I can’t say the same about some of our other agency friends. Look what searching for “owen design iowa” does though. That’s right, our friends at Groves Design DOT COM show up at #4.
Nowhere on the Push Branding DOT COM site do they ever have copy that says, “Our competitors include Trilix Marketing, Flynn Wright, Lessing-Flynn, The Meyocks Group, Performance Marketing, The Integer Group, ZLR Ignition, Juls Design, Innova Ideas and Services, Conyers Design, Sally Cooper Smith and Company, Pattee Design, Sayles Graphic Design, Movement Inc., Strategic America.”
See what I did there? I actually talked about companies on a REAL Web site and LINKED to THEM. Now when people search for these types of names they will actually find them in a true context. And hopefully, if you just googled Juls Design and wonder how you got here, just click Juls Design to go to Juls Design.
From an SEO standpoint, the more links on the Web that go to your site increase your Google search ranking. By not linking to Push Branding DOT COM anywhere in this post I ‘m hoping to level the playing field for the rest of our ad agency friends. Will this blog get more traffic because of this post? Absolutely. Will we try to confuse Web searchers by burying key words of our competitors in our source code? Never.
I wonder what Google would think about all of this?
Author: Josh Fleming
www.lessingflynn.com
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Google, who happens to be a good friend of mine, would not be pleased.
Also, my dad used to tell me that "nobody kicks a dead dog," which means you should be flattered when someone is messing with you. That phrase still haunts my dreams, but I digress.
Brady, thanks for the LOLs. Push was never in the blog roll because they don't have a blog – at least not one that I am aware of.
I think the word you left out in discussing all this was "smarmy". A lovely word describing what they are doing. And if this is their business model-or a cute ploy to become a "hit whore" well-on wonders how that reflects on the work they do.
Smarmy. Just saying it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
SMARMY!!!!
(Possibly) In their defense, the first thing I did was visit the site from my phone. As I suspected, all of the hidden code is visible from my mobile device, because I don't have flash. All of the "hidden" code is visible for anyone that doesn't have flash. So, while it is hidden for most of the world, it is their "alternate" content for non-flash viewers, which is really not a bad design choice if someone does not have flash, and is probably a smart choice for someone in today's environment when so many people are mobile.
That being said, some of the text is difficult to view because it's a dark font on a dark background.
Most all of the hidden text is available in their flash navigation throughout their site. Although I could not find anything in the flash site about Des Moines competitors.
@Scott, This is a keyword tactic used back in the golden days of the internets and unfortunately, as Nathan Wright noted on twitter, it's called keyword stuffing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing
Even if it's an "alternate" version most sites nowadays will have a redirect to a mobile site in the head section of their code. If it's hidden and you can't even see it on the mobile version, it wasn't meant to be seen.
My suggestion to push design dot com, get used to the competition and get your code up to web standards. I SAW TABLES BEING USED!!!
Love this post!
@nate It IS visible on the mobile site. It is not hidden.
That's because they aren't any good, they're behind the times, and they can only hope to steal clients from competition.
You just have to disable javascript to get it to display.
Nice read.
@Scott
You're right it's quite visible, they are being quite bold. However…still unethical and quite sleezy.
This is less about keyword stuffing (which hasn't worked in years) and more about brand hijacking.
Remember the SmartyPig / TrustyPig example? Using basic SEO pracitices we were able to perform a "brand hijack" on TrustyPig by taking over the organic search results for their name.
More -> http://getanewbrowser.com/2008/08/brand-hijack-bl... and http://getanewbrowser.com/2008/08/trustypig-socia...
Generally this doesn't work because Google is smart enough to rank brands ahead of mentions like this. In some cases this does work – if your business is not findable on the web.
Aside from the shady-ness of this tactic there is a great lesson here.
If your business doesn't "own" search results for your name you are subject to brand hijack on Google. If you have a decent website, a few content outposts, and a few good inbound links this tactic will never work because you will be the authoritative result.
Wow, I might try that for my Blog, although, I will have to determine who my competition is and then look to use their name to better my page hits. Sort of feels like theft of a brand…
This doesn't seem like Brand Hijacking though…they're not actually taking over the local brands or identity at all just merely using their names in a statement. They technically do not have more control over the other brands either, just merely stating the obvious "our competitors." so it can't be taken as slander either. They obviously went to great lengths to make sure all of their "competitors" were in the code hoping a search for those companies would yield their site as well.
Nothing really we can do unfortunately except add the same thing to all of our html and hope it wins out!
Josh,
When asked about our competitors we’ve often said wonderful things about Lessing-Flynn and many others. We appreciate quality work done by others in our industry and though we are competitive and hate to lose bids, we consider it a good thing when a prospect “gets it” and chooses a firm that will take their branding seriously; even if it isn’t us.
Has anyone here actually disabled Flash and looked at our website? There’s nothing hidden or sneaky going on. What you’ll see is just a well-designed non-Flash page telling people to install Flash and giving them a bit of information about our company. The text listing our competitors isn’t hidden or “grey on black”. It uses the same style treatment as the surrounding paragraphs – our secondary color theme distinguished from the primary color theme above.
As our site is all-Flash, this is also the page that is most significant to our search engine ranking. We’ve listed our competitors in order to position us within the minds of our prospects as a company that offers similar services and can competently compete with those listed. When potential clients are looking for a Des Moines-based agency or design studio, we want to them to include us in their list of candidate vendors.
A couple of other points:
Groves Design was our former name and grovesdesign.com our former website. Google’s published best practices instruct us to redirect our previous site to the new one, just as we have done. Again, nothing sneaky.
Your own admavericks.com and lessingflynn.com often do not use a hyphen in “Lessing Flynn”.
If you have more to talk about on this or other matters, you are welcome to call.
Regards,
Ryan Parlee
(515) 288-5278
Co-Owner
PUSH Branding and Design
Josh,
Wow. Not quite sure how to respond to all of this, but I certainly feel it is necessary to say something.
I invite everyone concerned to please go look at the non-flash version of our website before drawing any conclusions and actually look at what we did. We simply put a list of our peer group companies very publicly on our site. Nothing sneeky or underhanded at all.
If anyone has an issue or concern with what we have done you are more than welcome to call me and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.
Have a great weekend and enjoy the SuperBowl – hopefully there will be some great ads.
Take care,
Eric Groves
Creative Director/Owner
PUSH Branding and Design
515.288.5278
Ryan and Eric,
Thank you for commenting. It just seems that all of those agencies you list on the flash disabled site should show up on your flash enabled home page – like the rest of your content does.
If you decide to keep this code on your site, I think you should add some other Des Moines ad agencies that you missed. Here they are in no particular order:
McLellan Marketing Group http://www.mclellanmarketing.com/
Two Rivers Marketing http://www.tworiversmarketing.com/
Love Scott and Associates http://lovescott.com/
Insight Advertising http://insightcubed.com/
Pepper Ricci and Associates http://www.rjgd.com/pra/port/pra.html
Test of Time Design http://www.testoftimedesign.com/
Lingo Moxie http://www.lingomoxie.com/
Onpurpos http://www.onpurpos.com/
McCormick Advertising http://www.mccormickcompany.com/
Relationship Marketing Inc. http://www.rmarketing.com/
Wesley Day Advertising http://wesleyday.com/
Create Wow http://createwowmedia.com/
If I am missing anyone, please let me know, you can play too.
Ryan Parlee states: "We’ve listed our competitors in order to position us within the minds of our prospects as a company that offers similar services and can competently compete with those listed."
Then the only question that remains is why list them in your Flash disabled site, and not include them in your all-Flash version?
Let's just cut to the chase. Most people are already going to have Flash installed, and will never see the names of the other companies listed once they enter Push Branding DOT COM.
So the reason, as you have stated, is SEO and to draw attention away from the other companies and to yours. Obviously, you would not wish to draw attention away from your own company, and that is why the list is not on the all-Flash version. Simple.
It is a sad state of affairs when businesses resort to these sort of tactics and I am glad to see that colleges are once again requiring that ethics courses be taken in their business programs.
I agree with Josh…it does seems that all of those agencies you list on the flash disabled site should show up on your flash enabled home page – like the rest of your content does.
I personally thought that this tactic was underhanded. They knew that the majority of viewers already had flash — and if the didn't they should have. The truth is they never thought anyone would find out what they were doing and if they did, no one would do anything about it.
But i thought that I would get some more insight on the matter. i asked the Communication Arts community what they thought about this tactic. Some of the words that were used was unethical, immoral, and desperate. They also felt that sooner or later Google would fix the problem.
I then went out and asked several of the companies that were in that list what they thought. Everyone that i spoke to thought that they needed to learn how to play well with others. Other comments included: the design community here is too small to stoop to such low levels; while we are all competitors we are a family; there are certain things that you do not do and this is one of them.
I applaud Lessing-Flynn for bringing this to the community and opening up the discussion.
Josh – well done on this sneaky and misleading post. As you have now used SEO to your advantage to put this blog post 2nd to Push Branding when googling
"Push Branding Des Moines"
So. Who's confusing people now?
Google loves social media. Keyword stuffing, not so much.
Sam,
Maybe Push should start a blog. The big difference is I talk about these agencies in actual context AND I link to them. And as you probably know, linking to other Web sites increases their search engine rankings and relevance on Google.
Thanks for reading!
There's the new catch phrase of the decade, "This is a WWGD moment" What Would Google Do?
I'm not going to debate the intent/java/non-java stuff at play here (because I can't
What is most interesting to me is that over time…as the "Results Within Your Social Circle" that the goog is testing become non-beta and a key "decider" of what you see on page 1…that this post and the resulting fallout will have more effect on SEO that any "tactic" anyone can muster up anyway.
Thanks for listing us in the "competitor" list in the comments too. I'd like to see that meeting eh…"We're considering createWOWmedia and Lessing (DASH) Flynn" Nice!
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