Teleflora's Mother's Day Commercial on All EFlorist Websites

I like the new Teleflora Mother's Day commercial, but I'm not sure how I feel about Teleflora uploading their commercial on to the entire fleet of their Eflorist websites. Yes, that's right, yesterday Teleflora uploaded their commercial to every hosted Teleflora website. If you OWN a domain that has a Teleflora hosted template, you'll see it on YOUR website.

Google Does Forgive: "Reconsideration Request"

Yesterday Google published an interesting video on "reconsideration requests." For those of you who don't know, a reconsideration request is for websites that have been penalized. In that regard, websites are often penalized for artificially manipulating Google's algorithm. 

The moral of the story below.....is that if your website has been penalized you must come clean with everything you did (in detail)....ask for forgiveness.....and promise to never do it again.

The frustrating thing about a Google penalty, is that Google does not tell you if your website has been penalized, nor will they inform you of why your website was penalized. It is up to you to spill your guts.....and hope that Google here's you. So if you ever find yourself submitting a "reconsideration request," think of it as a prayer.

In some cases, it appears to work.

Mother[']s Day:To Optimize With or Without the Apostrophe

I was just looking over last year's search stats (2008) for a floral website that I run that ranked in the top 5 results (in Google) for all of the following keywords. Of interest in that regard, is the search volume difference between the use or non use of the apostrophe.

These stats represent the 5 days leading up to Mother's Day. 

Keyword	Visits	% visits
mothers day flowers	2,366	44.69%
mother's day flowers	1,585	29.94%
flowers for mothers day	427	8.07%
flowers for mother's day	158	2.98%
flowers mothers day	84	1.59%

"SEO Marketing" Showing in Local Results

Local search has worked it's way over to the SEO field for the first time today. A search on "seo marketing" will now yield local results below the top ranking websites.  

It hasn't yet carried over to search phrases like "SEO" or "SEO company" or "SEO firm" but I'm sure it will.  I find it particularly intriguing that "SEO marketing" is given special value as the 1st to include local search among other SEO terms.

Have you ever heard of MajesticSEO.com?

MajesticSEO.com offers some great free tools on website backlink discovery as it pertains to charting link-vote activity over long periods of time. Of interest, if we apply this tool to FTD, 1800flowers, Proflowers, and Teleflora, we can see each floral company’s offsite SEO push at different stages. In the graph below, highlighted in blue, we see that FTD made a huge push in late 2007 thru early 2008. 

Color codes below: FTD, 1800flowers, Proflowers, & Teleflora

Check out the tool here

SEMRush.com

Have you ever heard of SEM Rush? If not, SEM Rush is a great competitive research tool that can be used to peer into the search volumes of websites other than your own. Of interest in that regard, are the monthly averages of the major floral players:

Teleflora.com - 300.3k a month

Proflowers.com - 755.0k a month

FTD.com - 851.0k a month

1800flowers.com 2680.0k a month

I have a handful of tools that I use everyday, and SEM Rush is counted among them. 

Have fun with it!

Multiple Brands Experience "Sitelinks" at Once

Just days ago I blogged about Google running an IP-based local algorithm within general search for single keywords like "flowers" and "florist" etc...  As we saw in that post, Google is now ranking 3 brand websites followed by a local IP-based 10 pack. As I mentioned back then, this is a breakthough for local business exposure as it now evens the search field.

Fast forward to today, and now Google has implemented another feature called "sitelinks" to their brand ranking process. Yes, sitelinks are nothing new as they have always been reserved for the top ranking website only (not all top ranking websites can generate them) as we see in this example:

But now Google is giving the top 3 brand rankers all "sitelinks" at once for the keyword "flowers:" 

Google PageRank Update April 1st

There was a PageRank update today. Not much to report as far as the major players are concerned. The only real difference is that Google removed FlowerPetal's apparent penalty reduction that happend back in Feb. and reinstated it to a PR5.

The following chart covers the last 5 updates. 

PageRank Prior to Sept. 27th 2008	PageRank Update Sept. 28th 2008	PageRank Update Dec. 30th 2008	PageRank Update Feb. 28th 2009	PageRank Update April 1st 2009
FTD PR7	FTD PR6	FTD PR6	FTD PR6	FTD PR6
Proflowers PR6	Proflowers PR6	Proflowers PR6	Proflowers PR6	Proflowers PR6
1800flowers PR7	1800flowers PR7	1800flowers PR7	1800flowers PR7	1800flowers PR7
Teleflora N/A	Teleflora N/A	Teleflora PR6	Teleflora PR6	Teleflora PR6
Justflowers N/A	Justflowers N/A	Justflowers N/A	Justflowers PR4	Justflowers PR4
Flowerpetal PR4	FlowerPetal PR5	Flowerpetal PR5	FlowerPetal PR2	FlowerPetal PR5
Wesleyberry flowers.com PR7	Wesleyberry flowers.com PR5	Wesleyberry flowers.com PR5	Wesleyberry flowers.com PR4	Wesleyberry flowers.com PR4

Local Algorithm Showing within General Search

It looks like Google has rolled out an algorithm where a local algorithm is now being shown within general search terms. For instance, ever since the recent brand ranking algorithm was implemented in January the top 4 floral companies have seemingly appeared secure in their dominance for many general floral keywords like “flowers,” "flower delivery," “florist,” etc…

Fast forward to today, and it looks like Google is now attempted to aid mom & pop shops. Here is a search on the keyword "flowers:"

I live in California so it appears Google is reading my IP address and populating local results in apropos. However, if I click on “change location” above the local algorithm is removed and replaced with a field box with the option to enter a new location. So if I wanted to locate a particular Baltimore Florist or just look for funeral flowers in a particular area, I would change the field box to populate that areas florists. This is a different from the usual text in the upper right corner that says: "Customized based on recent search activity." In that circumstance, a simple refresh removes the customization. But this in not the case in the new algorithm, you actually have to physically click "change location."

Also, the local listings seem to be from areas *near* my IP address location but not directly *in* my IP address area. If Google could just perfect that element to populate truer local listings this algorithm will be a breakthrough in favor for the local florist.

March Yahoo Algorithm Update

While there hasn't been a weather report released by Yahoo as of yet regarding an algorithm update, I am seeing changes in how they pull results.

Check your rankings.

Cut Flower Commission & TaxPayer Money

Hot off the press regarding California's Cut Flower Commission and use of taxpayer money. Source is cited at the bottom: 

On The Money: Cut Flowers

SACRAMENTO (CBS13)

Its a business with a more than $10 billion dollar impact on the state! 

Flowers, and many of the buds you buy are grown here in California. The largest growers actually have to pay the state to do business in the form of fees to an agency called the Cut Flower Commission. In fact, the commission runs of those fees, as well as federal grants paid by your income taxes.  Critics say Governor Schwarzenegger has told all state agencies to cut travel costs and since the commission is a state agency they, too, should watch what they're spending. 

So we wanted to know what the Cut Flower Commission spent on travel and found a lot of money spent on things that had nothing to do with flowers. 

Kasey Cronquist holds the title of Executive Director - and Ambassador - for the commission. While they have a Sacramento address, Cronquist is based in Carpinteria, California. He spent thousands in travel last year, travelling all over the country, from Salt Lake City to Cleveland to Washington, D.C. He even made a trip to Bogota, Columbia. 

Nearly every time he's come to Sacramento, he's stayed right across the street from the capitol at the Hyatt, spending upwards of $120 or more a night. 

Nearly every time he leaves town Kronquist stays at expensive hotels like a Radisson or the Fairmont in Washington, D.C. He's paid $7.00 per bottle for water; charged up to $60 for laundry; ordered room service nearly every time he stays in a hotel; hit the mini bar; and charged hundreds of dollars for fancy dinners every time he's out of town. 

They seem to be wasting fee payers revenue, says Jon Coupal, president of the watchdog group the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. He says they're spending money every trip for things that are quite purely fluff. 

Coupal says at a time when state agencies are being asked to make cuts, the commission is spending too much. 

Whether its a non-profit or a government entity people need to understand they have a fiduciary obligation to the people who pay the bills, says Coupal. 

Kasey Cronquist refused to speak about his expenses on-camera, but told CBS-13s Sam Shane that he believes all the expenses are acceptable. He sent us this statement: 

...room service meals and the occasional snack or bottle of water from the mini-bar are expenses that I'm confident any frequent business traveler would find reasonable. 

He also adds that "We are passionate about what we do and all our travel takes place to help ensure a positive business environment for our growers to thrive." 

But critics like Jon Coupal say it doesn't take cross-country travel for the flower business to grow. There's still no concerted effort to look at the expenditure side, says Coupal, and see if Californians are getting the best value for their dollar and quite frankly, they're not!

Source: CBS13

Teleflora Link Bait SuperBowl Video

A recent blog post over on SEOmoz about Comedy Central's use of video link bait reminded me of a similar situation where the SEO for Teleflora.com embedded their SuperBowl Ad with text links aimed at ranking the giant for "flowers," "florists," and "flower delivery".... 

Notice the blue font text links above. The SEO for Teleflora is hoping that bloggers will do as I just did and post it. As more and more bloggers post the video Google begins to credit Teleflora to rank better for those terms. 

Unfortunatly, in order to tell of this, I had to post the video.

Update: I replaced the live link bait with an image of it. I was just educated by my wife on the Fn + PrtSc key.