Canoe Man: The Link bonanza that never was
On December 1st 2007 John Darwin, a canoeist missing for five years and presumed drowned, walked into a London police station claiming to have no memory of anything since the remains of his red canoe washed up on a Hartlepool beach.
Yesterday a photograph surfaced in a UK national newspaper that appears to reveal him to be a fraud. The picture shows John, 57, and his wife (who, on the understanding her husband was dead, pocketed a large life insurance payout) posing last year with the owner of a real estate agent in Panama.
The photo found its way on to the Move to Panama website of real estate agent Mario Vilar and eventually came to wider attention when someone suspicious over Darwin’s disappearance searched Google for “John, Anne and Panama”.
A remarkable story I thought, and a great piece of publicity for Move to Panama. Being so closely connected to a news event of such magnitude is a link builder’s dream.
So, since the story broke has Mario’s site been deluged with traffic? Probably. Has his number of inbound links exploded? Nope. So what went wrong?
The story of John Darwin was, and still is, a huge news item in the UK. It was picked up by every major news outlet, everyone from the BBC and Sky News to all of the newspapers and their associated online equivalents. It has been a big talking point and is being debated on a fairly extensive selection of British blogs.
How is it possible that Move to Panama hasn’t been able to capitalise on all this interest? After all, the picture that created such a stir was on this website; without the picture no-one could have proved anything and a potentially huge fraudster would’ve gotten away with it and now be relaxing in Panama with a cold beer. According to backlinkwatch.com, Move to Panama now has 160 inbound links, which if my quick analysis is anything to go by is almost precisely what they had before the story broke.
No link love from the media
One reason is simply because the media didn’t play ball. Not one of the many articles that I’ve come across from the major news organisations included a link to the website at the root of the current police investigation. Mario could consider this a tough break; it is fairly common practice for sites like BBC News and Guardian Unlimited to include links related to the story.
These links might not have carried a great deal of ranking weight - or link juice - but I’m sure they would have been welcome all the same. As the source of the story, any subsequent syndication or blog posts would also have been more likely to include links to Move to Panama (and as the name of the company is related to their important search terms they were practically assured of the links coming with some useful anchor text).
The proactive link builder
I can’t help but feel that Mario could have made so much more of his company’s five minutes of fame. No Max Clifford-esque skills would have been required to play the media; a simple article on his website with some kind of response would have been a fantastic piece of link-bait.
It wouldn’t need to be a ‘How Move to Panama helped bring Canoe fraudster to justice’ exposé. A simple statement would alone probably pull in a few links when people referenced it. Anything a bit more substantial would probably prove to be social media dynamite.
It just feels like they have missed a trick on what could have been a great opportunity.
| 
