Anyone who knows me knows I am a rugby NUT and an All Blacks tragic. So I’ve been following the Rugby World Cup action very closely over the past few weeks. The thing is, I’m finding this particular RWC season to be almost unbearable from a media perspective.

First it was the media coverage following the All Black’s 41 to 10 win over Tonga. The New Zealand media were bad enough, claiming the All Blacks played poorly and that the 41 point victory wasn’t decisive enough.  Which prompted me to ask Twitter:

“If a 31 point win margin *fails as a decisive victory* then how many freaking points did the #allblacks need to win by?”

Then there was the Wall Street Journal piece, written by someone who clearly doesn’t know anything about rugby (“New Zealand – nicknamed the All Blacks due to their attire” – REALLY?), claiming that the All Blacks “failed to inspire” and that “the win wasn’t sufficient to reassure fans”.

Of course, there have been the expected digs at the All Blacks team by the Australian media, about how they were going to choke, just like the last World Cup and Aussie television news anchors having a good old chuckle at the done-to-death sheep / Israel Dagg jokes wheeled out by the sports reporters. Commentators Andrew Slack and Ken Sutcliffe for Channel Nine in Australia clearly find it difficult to hold back their bias when it comes to their coverage of Wallabies matches. But in my opinion, there is a clearly defined line between light-hearted fun poking and outright racist commentary.

Today, New Zealand’s TV3 stepped over that line, in my opinion. With their One Eyed Kiwi Commentary of today’s game between the All Blacks and the Wallabies, I think 3News have sullied New Zealand rugby with their offensive, juvenile and racist pre-match banter. I wanted the All Blacks to win as much as anybody, but that promoted commentary was simply embarrassing.

Think I’m over-reacting? Here are some extracts:

• “Well here we go… the big one, the All Blacks totally dismembering our Aussie cousins from across the ditch and marching on to hand a hiding to the limpet mine-carrying nation in the final.”
• “Refresh your browser occasionally. We’ll warn you when video is up with the words ‘VIDEO UP’ (even an Aussie could follow that)”.
• “…here’s some friendly folly fire at the convicts from the island.“
• “The first Wallaby has been seen inspecting Eden Park.” (accompanied by the picture above of a giant convict carrying a rugby ball and chain).
• “What do you call an Aussie with half a brain? Gifted.”

And on it goes, with more crude anti-Australian jokes thrown into the mix. Based on his tweets, the content appears to have been written by a post-grad journalism student called Michael Oliver who is apparently about to be employed by TV3.

Now my main problem with this is not so much the content, as juvenile as it is. You can see this type of immature trolling on Twitter or Facebook about any big sporting event. No, my problem with this lies in the way it is presented on the 3News web site. It is published as *official* RWC content. There is no banner or byline indicating this content is written by a guest blogger or a student. The content is simply presented as endorsed coverage of what is likely the most important game of the World Cup, on the site of the official media sponsor covering the event.

I am concerned that the content will be viewed as offensive, if not outright racist and by allowing it to be published, TV3 is endorsing those views. As an Australian, I was quite offended, even though I (mostly) live in New Zealand and am a hugely vocal supporter of the All Blacks. I can only imagine how Wallabies supporters would feel upon reading that. And the petty limpet mine (Rainbow Warrier) reference is really quite a controversial and dangerous topic to bring up with so many French media representatives in NZ right now.

What’s worse is how proud the author is of his field day approach:

@mj_oliver : I’m manning tonight’s live updates for 3News.co.nz. We’re gunning for the most parochial commentary known to human kind. #RWC2011 Link to tweet

@mj_oliver: Sanctioned trolling. I love my future job. http://www.3news.co.nz/One-eyed-Kiwi-VIDEO-LIVE-UPDATES-All-Blacks-Vs-Australia-semifinal-2-RWC-2011–highlights/tabid/1534/articleID/229706/Default.aspx Link to tweet

With millions of international viewers studying New Zealand closely right now, can TV3 really afford to be seen as endorsing such potentially racist drivel? I don’t think so.

TV3 have a very strict policy when it comes to comments left on their site:

• No comments that seek to cause offence on the grounds of race, sex, sexuality, religion, age or ethinicity will be tolerated
• No comments that are obscene, offensive, pornographic, vulgar, profane, indecent or otherwise illegal
• No comments that are defamatory in nature

Right. But that apparently doesn’t apply to their own contributors?

I left the very first comment on the page, politely expressing my concerns, but for some reason, @3newsnz seems to be only publishing positive comments. When I tweeted Mr Oliver about this, he claimed he didn’t have control over comments.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments. And unlike the team at 3News, I’ll actually publish them.

POSTSCRIPT 1: Since I started writing this blog post, TV3 have put up a pseudo disclaimer in red text on the page. It reads:

“Thanks for tuning in to tonight’s completely biased commentary. It was all in good fun, and no offence to our friends across the ditch was intended. The Wallabies weren’t allowed to play, and that’s entirely due to their opposition being on another level.”

Yeah, that’ll fix everything.

If you’re interested in how I got started in this crazy SEO industry or what 3 things I think you should look for when hiring a SEO company, you might want to go check it out.

It all started back in February after the second earthquake in Christchurch. We moved away from New Zealand to Darwin, Australia to get away from our munted house and the ongoing trauma of aftershocks. But instead of finding things easier, I found things more difficult. I couldn’t concentrate for long periods. I would find my mind wandering at the slightest distraction.  Until as recently as last week, I found myself checking the Geonet site every few hours, just to see the number of aftershocks Christchurch was experiencing and watching as many YouTube vids of the earthquake coverage as I could.

Basically, I think #EQNZ stole my blogging mojo.

Where I was once pumped about blogging and full of energy every day, I now arrived at my desk feeling burnt out and lethargic. Last year I was writing 3 or more blog posts a day for different sites, whereas lately I can hardly pump out 1 post a month. Before I was excited by changes to the search industry and keen to talk about them, whereas now I’m more annoyed by changes because they mean more work for me.

I’m not sure if I’ve been suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress or if I am actually just burnt out, but it’s been a really tough few months.

Earlier this year I was offered an opportunity to write for the best-known and respected web site in in my field – my own column in fact – focusing on social media, which I love. But I just couldn’t get my act together. I found the idea too challenging. Too daunting. Too exhausting. And I was scared. Scared that my writing wasn’t good enough and terrified that I’d lost my blogging mojo.

Well enough is enough. Screw the earthquakes and the drama. I’m physically out of the disaster zone and it’s time I mentally removed myself as well. It’s time to lose the attitude and take my seat in the big leather blogging chair again. Time to find my mojo and make the effort to blog EVERY day from here on in. I figure with your encouragement and lots of caffeine, I can do this.

I’m back baby!

Although smaller on the richter scale than the 7.1 in September and lasting less than 10 seconds, this 6.3 earthquake on 22 February caused widespread damage and 182 fatalities because it was much closer to the city and very shallow at 5km deep.

According to scientists, the ground accelerated at more than twice the force of gravity – the highest ever recorded during an earthquake in New Zealand and a force that no building is EVER built to withstand. The quake also happened to hit at lunchtime, when thousands of people were out and about in the city.

My beautiful city is completely unrecognizable, with our iconic Christchurch Cathedral lying in ruin and the collapse of many buildings in the CBD causing death, destruction and horrific injuries. The epicentre was less than 1km from my house as the crow flies – in the port of Lyttelton – a few metres from the day care centre my son used to attend.

Needless to say, my house was pretty trashed, both inside and out. My husband and I were home at the time of the quake and could only watch helplessly as plate-glass windows shattered, doors fell off frames and concrete walls tumbled outwards while the floor beneath our feet slid from side to side.

The feeling is hard to describe, but it was as if a clumsy giant had mistaken our house for a toy snowglobe and was shaking it as such. I was sitting in the dining room when it hit and I have matching bruise strips across my thighs from where I was repeatedly thrown up and down in my chair against the dining table. Just one or two plates remained in the kitchen cupboards after the quake – everything was upended onto the floor – food, crockery, glassware, the lot.

We had yet to learn of the deaths and devastation in the CBD, but my husband and I knew immediately that it was going to be bad. With a wrecked house, a scared 7 year old and having already put up with the stress from the first quake, followed by 6 months of aftershocks, we looked at each other over the shattered crockery and agreed that we were done. The decision was made to leave Christchurch and move back to the solid ground of Australia, my country of birth.

Within a week, my husband secured a new job in Darwin, so we packed up what was left of the house, left the keys with friends and boarded a plane to Australia on 10 March. We are among the lucky ones with a portable business, enabling us to live anywhere in the world. But many of our friends and colleagues must remain in Christchurch and endure whatever hardships the next few years will bring.

As far as Jordan Consulting Group / Search Engine College goes – it’s business as usual. Most of our staff telecommute and I am working from temporary premises here in Darwin until we can locate a suitable office space. Very enjoyable temporary premises, I might add (see picture).

We’ll be facing some big challenges over the next few months, but hopefully some even bigger opportunities.

Thanks for all your emails and continued support during this transition phase and I hope to be back to regular blogging duties shortly.

I don’t want to go into detail, there are hordes of media here providing that. But put it this way: my city has pretty much collapsed and I can see the quake epicentre from my house.

Will try to recommence posting regularly when life returns to some semblance of normality.

Thanks for your patience.

I’d also like to say thanks to my trusty guest bloggers Andy and Pete who have been helping me answer Q and A’s when I’m inundated.

I’m taking a well-deserved week off from writing duties, but will be back in the New Year with lots of tricky search engine questions to answer and juicy industry gossip.

See you all in 2011!

I am trialling social bookmarking submission sites. I just installed Only Wire to find it does not actually really work. I though this was a good one and now I have lost my faith a bit in using an automated service to achieve this objective.

I see you have a list of icons at the bottom of your blog. Have you manually put them there or do you use a piece of software or an online tool for that? I want to start using the power of submission to social bookmarking sites.

What is your view on that? How will it help rankings and how much time should we put into this effort? Can you suggest one that does work well?

Jen

Hi Jen

I decided to answer your question via video today. The plugin that I mention in the video is Sociable for WordPress.

To learn more about social bookmarking for your blog, please view my video answer below:

If for some reason the embedded video doesn’t work, you can view the video on YouTube.

Wikipedia defines comment spam or blog spam as:

“Spam in blogs is a form of spamdexing. It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards.”

Being a WordPress user, I find that most spam is caught by WordPress’ built-in anti spam plugin Akismet, but sometimes a few gems make it past the filter and into my comment review list.

Most comment spam is completely non-sequitur to the post it is dropped on, making it highly amusing. Having chuckled on a daily basis at the comment spam received on this blog, I thought the comments deserved a blog of their very own. Therefore, this week I launched Comment Spam Comedy.

The goal of Comment Spam Comedy is to publish the most amusing non-sequitur blog comments posted across the web. I welcome submissions so if you have a worthy contender for publishing, please contact me via the site or via the Twitter account.

When you submit your comment spam, please include the commenter’s name, the URL he/she link dropped and the URL of the post it was dropped on.

Enjoy the randomness!

After spending the last few weeks providing SEO coaching to small businesses here in New Zealand, I realized that many of them are relying more and more on WordPress-based web sites for their business.

Now I don’t have a problem with this at all – I’m a huge fan of WordPress and so are search engines. It’s really easy to use the blogging platform to build a decent looking, search engine friendly web site. But where people are coming unstuck is in how to optimize their WordPress site when they were previously used to dealing with raw HTML code.

I have started a little checklist for WordPress users, just to remind them of the key SEO tweaks they can make to their blog pages and posts to ensure they are as visible in search engines as possible. I hope to publish the checklist here and also make it available to Search Engine College students as a downloadable PDF.

Here’s where you guys come in. I know many of you use WP on a daily basis and are also busy optimizing your sites for Google and other search engines. I would LOVE for you to share your best tip on how to optimize WP sites so I can add it to the checklist.

Unless you wish to remain anonymous, all tips used will be acknowledged via name and link in the finished document.

Got your tip ready? Please add it in the comments on this post. Thanks so much!

Sorry about that. Life has gotten in the way lately, as has setting up a brand new office and losing broadband for 3 days straight.

I do have a series of articles lined up to post here, as well as some post SMX Sydney Conference observations to make and a newsletter to publish.

Thanks for your patience and normal blog broadcasting will resume shortly.