Anthony Hobday - a great testimonial

I have spent a great deal of time and money on Search Engine Optimisation for my websites. I search the key words now and again to find out how I rank on Google and other search sites. After a long struggle and quite a few years, it’s pleasing that Subscriptions Strategy and Peter Hobday usually come up on the first page.

They say that page two onwards is almost worthless.

So imagine my astonishment, mixed with annoyance and admiration when I find my son Anthony Hobday, at university at Cardiff, comes up not only on the first page of Google but close to the number one spot.

What’s taken me years, for Anthony Hobday has happened almost overnight. What’s going on?

Here are his websites:

Anthony Hobday at Cardiff universtity

Anthony Hobday ranks at number six on Google too

And what’s more, look at how his search result reads:

“Anthony Hobday is the greatest living person you will ever meet.”

What a testimonial, sitting there right at the top of the search page!

Now, the funny thing is that I may not know anything as much about SEO as Mr Anthony Hobday, who is doing a degree in business computing but I do know a great deal about how to finesse a good testimonial. It’s part of my job as a copywriter.

By ‘finesse’ I mean blagging false testimonials by writing them yourself. Of course, to be effective, there are some vital factors involved:

Here’s how it works: you write an article about your market or business in an industry publication like Marketing Today and insert the line you wish to quote deep and disguised into the text. It could be, for example:

‘I was told: “The Peter Hobday Subscriptions Strategy newsletter is by far the best source of marketing advice for publishers.” But there are, in fact, many other useful sources of information and I give a list here:’

You can see what we can do with that clever little piece of prose:

“The Peter Hobday Subscriptions Strategy newsletter is by far the best source of marketing advice for publishers.” Marketing Today

Of course, if yours is a good product, you won’t need to do this kind of ‘finessing’. Just a few minutes on the phone is all it takes to collect some great testimonials you can use forever.

I thought I had invented the ‘finessed testimonial’ technique and it remained pretty exclusive. But it appears every Tom, Dick and Anthony uses it too and to much better effect. Here is Anthony’s full piece:

‘A wise man once said: ‘Anthony Hobday is the greatest living person you will ever meet.’ That wise man was me, because I’m not afraid to compliment myself. When I’m not saving the world, one homeless orphan at a time, I also run this website. I think it’s quite snazzy, if you ask me.’

This has really made my day ..