Category Archives: SEO

 
07Oct

Big Mouth Media’s internal linking technique

Does any one else get annoyed by the internal linking technique on Big Mouth Media’s news / articles pages?

Basically every time they mention certain keywords the word links to a specific page on the site. Now don’t get me wrong, I know this is good for SEO, and it is not breaking any rules but they do it on EVERY key term in the article.

It actually looks ok on their site as the links are quite subtle but in Google reader there are blue links all over the gaff!

big mouth internal linking thumb Big Mouth Medias internal linking technique 

Perhaps they should look at Gab Goldenberg’s neat little Internal Linking building plug-in for ideas on how to implement the internal links a little better.

I do actually like how Big Mouth have implemented this system apart from the excessiveness of it. Though I am pretty sure it is recomended to use – over _ for the URLs ie http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/products_services/search_engine_optimisation/

18Sep

GoCompare link spamming again

In January this year GoCompare was hit with a penalty from Google for what would appear to be paid links. Once they had cleaned up some of the backlinks they the penalty was lifted in March.

The cause of the problem appeared to be latitude, the SEO company they employed, were paying for blog posts with links back to their clients sites. The quality of these posts was reported to be awful with the following snippet of a paid post:

“It needs insurance plans? That such to know Kwik-fit Insurance? There you it will be able to find one infinity of products and services that will become its more easy life. If you have a car,”

You would think GoCompare may want to tred a lightly after being Google slapped for questionable links. However yesterday I received the following email to one of my sites:

Hello. I`m Alex Jones, Website Manager at gocompare. com. We are one of the UK`s leading insurance comparison sites, with over 70 insurance companies on our panel.
We have an idea which I hope you will find useful – we originally found xxxxxx.co.uk by searching for terms related to home design but in fact we also have an expanding range of information and advice relating to motoring in general, together with household, buildings and content insurance. As such we are looking for good quality partners that have a motoring, automotive, general household or lifestyle theme.

We would like to have our editorial team research and hand write some content for you to add to a page on xxxxxx.co.uk. We will agree a subject with you that is relevant to both of our sites (it won`t be a sales pitch for us!) and will include a single simple text link back to a relevant content page on our site. The content will be uniquely written for you and will not be re-used elsewhere. It should be helpful to your visitors and of course the search engines, as will the presence of a relevant link back to us. Hopefully we will also benefit from the link in the longer term. We are not currently in the position of being able to exchange or return links so we thought this could be a good alternative.

Naturally there are no costs whatsoever for you.
If this isn`t appropriate for you, please accept my sincere apologies for having troubled you.

Hope to hear back.

Kind Regards – Alex Jones
Website Manager
gocompare .com

 

Now I realise this is not exactly the same as pay per post and in theory I would get some good content for the sake of one link. Unfortunately Google does not see it like that, this would not be editorial link as I have not chosen to link out to GoCompare and therefore would break Google’s guidelines.

To make matters worse the web site they contacted was a web design company and absolutely nothing to do with "home design". I am assuming this is an automated email so I can understand how this can happen however GoCompare are quite a large company I am sure it can’t be that hard to employ some student to vet the domains they contact to make sure it is reasonably on topic?

If they can’t even email the correct niche then what will the quality of the article they proposed be like!?

I am not sure if GoCompare are with Latitude anymore but the email was from gocompare@contentnowclients.co.uk  which appears to belong to ContentNow.co.uk who offer link building via reciprocal links and Content-for-links and this company appears to be owned by UK Offer Media Limited

21Jul

The future of nofollows?

Right I have decided all the nofollow malarkey is far to ambiguous. I mean people are getting so paranoid they nofollow everything. I mean some people are paranoid about reviewing a product incase Google perceives it as a paid review and therefore they nofollow. More and more blogs nofollow all comments, getting a link from a big authority site is nigh on impossible. I feel it is almost getting to the point if a link is not nofollowed it is perceived as spam.

So I think nofollows should change. People are flawed and it is likely people will nofollow links that don’t need it and vice versa.

Instead of the nofollow we should describe what the link is and then Google in all thei great wisdom should decide what to do. Some example maybe

  1. Rel="advert" – Someone paid me to place this link. Don’t follow or pass any juice
  2. Rel="Review" – This link is for a review. Follow if the review appears natural. Doing 10+ reviews a day all positive in non relavent niches then no follow
  3. Rel="Friend" – Linking to a friend, it should be followed but it is not actually a editorial vote.
  4. Rel="charity" – This person donated money for a good cause. Pass a small amount of juice.
  5. Rel="block" – 100% block this link. I am linking to a bad person.
  6. rel="employer" – I work for this person, I have no option but to link to them. Don’t pass as much link juice.
  7. rel="beer" – I once got drunk with this person, he bought me a beer at some point during the night. I don’t think this is a paid link but I will let you decide Mr Googlebot
  8. rel="sex" – We had sex once, I didn’t pay her, she didn’t pay me, its all good isn’t it? Your decision again Google.
  9. rel="smalltalk" – We met once, had small talk, is this an editorial vote or not?
  10. rel="digitalpoint" = This link belongs to the digital point co-op. Nofollow it unless it is pointing to Money Expert, Ocean Finance or Money Web
18Jul

Is it a paid link if…

The owner of a website, lets say bluewidget.com, hires an SEO company that has builds links for them and advertised link building as a service?

Money has changed hands and it is guaranteed that not all the links will be an editorial vote, after all they are being paid to artificially increase the links.

Surely the only way an SEO company could try and build links is just working on the content?

Yes this is just an argumentative post :)

15Jul

Is article syndication worth it? And how to maximise its potential.

We all know that article syndication and directory submissions are the staple diet of some cheaper SEO companies, and most of us know that both techniques are somewhat outdated and devalued.

However a lot of people still do article syndication. In fact I do it myself. While they are not the best links for the time being it does not look like they will get me penalised unlike many other link building techniques. A lot of SEOs even recommend it still, I recently downloaded the link building 101 PDF from Prospectmx.com. It is quite a nice chart of the various link building techniques, it will make a handy reference for people learning the trade. In this PDF they say that while article syndication is not that effective it is still worth doing 5 – 10 articles a month submitted to several good article directories such as:

  • ArticleCity.com
  • Buzzle.com
  • EzineArticles com
  • Articlebiz.com
  • EasyArticles.com

Now even though I still do it to some extent the problem I have is that it is either done cheap and nastily or it really is not an efficient use of time.

The first option is to pay some foreigner to write the article for $5-$10 and then submit to the above sites. However this is the technique that most decent SEOs cringe at and it is really not recommended.

The correct way to approach this technique would be to write a decent quality article about the niche that you would like to link too. If it is for a client it is probably safe to say it is not a niche that you can just churn out interesting information from the top of your head. So therefore the will be at least a small amount of research required for this.

So lets say I produced 5 articles in 1 month for an interior design company I would estimate it would take at least 2 hours* for a 500+ word article if we included research. So that is 10 hours worth of work.

Then if we submit these articles to directories I would guess it is at least 2 mins per article per directory. It shouldn’t take long but you need to scan over the article and make sure everything is laid out properly, you also need to get the correct category, keywords, author box etc. Therefore 5 Articles * 5 Website’s * 2 mins = 50 minutes. Call it 1 hour.

That is 11 hours work so far. Now if we really want to make the most from our links ideally we really need to record each article per website so that each article is unique and not completely duplicate. Therefore I would estimate that reworking / rewording 1 article into 5 unique articles would take around an hour per article. This therefore you could add another 5 hours to the job.

In total (a very rough guess) I would guess that is 16 hours worth of work. Now if your an SEO company charging for your time that can be quite a lot of money to the client. 2 days worth of work (16 hours) can easily cost £600 – £1200 + worth of work, which I would say is a rip off if the SEO company had only syndicated 5 articles.

I personally think even a less experience SEO would achieve much better results spending that 16 hours of time on the site creating excellent content that generates links. It also can help improve the long tail rankings for your site if you have lots of relevant unique content on individual pages. If this content is added to a blog it is also very easy to syndicate this content via the RSS feed to build up your links this way. You can also easily syndicate this content on various hubs such as Squidoo or Hub Pages, though I am not sure how much value Google would give the links within this syndicated content.

If you still feel the need to syndicate articles then possibly the best option would be to reduce the number of articles, lets say to 1 or 2 but make them great. Then use these articles on your blog to create your great content. Let Google index it, maybe use social bookmarks and social media (though digging, or whatever, your own content is a bit lame) to drive some traffic and links. Then heavily rework the articles, maybe just re-write the whole article but on the same subject area so at least the research is already done, and finally submit to the quality directories. It may still be time intensive but it should provide better results than generic article syndication. I may also be inclined to only create a couple of versions of the article rather than 5 and submit them to 2 good directories. Then next month use 2 different directories, at least then you are getting links from separate domains.

*It could be less, but it could be a lot more, I am awful for not tracking time.

08Jul

Why outsourcing SEO sucks pt2

I posted previously about why I do not think an SEO company should outsource its SEO services.

If you are an SEO I am sure you will get dozens of offers per week to outsource link building or complete SEO services. I personally think this could be a disastrous mistake for an SEO to make.

I recently had a couple of domains penalised by Google and I did kind of deserve it, I knew I was pushing my luck and I guess it got to the point where I pushed too far. This was obviously a stupid mistake on my behalf, but I know what I did wrong, I will work hard and fix the problem. I was also (probably) not do the same mistake again.

The problem when you outsource your SEO work to cheaper / offshore companies is that you quickly lose control of what exactly is going on with your site. It maybe reasonably easy to police the work that is done on-site but when it comes to things like link building by the time you realise the techniques the company is using are dubious it maybe too late.

From my experience the sort of link building techniques these companies use include

  • Low quality directory submissions
  • Low quality mass article syndication
  • Blog spam
  • Forum spam
  • Buying up old domains and using them for link farms
  • Digital Point Co-op
  • Other cheap link sponsorship techniques

The problem with the above is that Google appear to becoming stricter and stricter with link building techniques. If you backlink profile increases dramatically and consists of low quality spammy links there is a serious risk of penalties being applied.

These companies often have little motivation to avoid these issues, if they get 500 clients they are not too bothered if 25% of these sites get penalised or dropped by Google, as long as they have a handful of successful clients for their testimonial then they are happy.

02Jul

Avoid Google tracking your IP / Cookies part 2

Right well we have discussed Google using search logs to catch out webspam (source), how to clean up your cookies and the various privacy options available.

In this post I am going to discuss how to set up FoxyProxy (recommended by Dave Naylor) with either Tor or a normal Proxy.

If you are planning on using Tor first of all you should install the Tor/Vidalia/Privoxy software bundle. The installation procedure should be quite easy if you follow the instructions from that link. Once installed your system will be able to use Tor as a client (meaning your traffic can go through Tor), you can also set it up to work as a relay (allowing other peoples encrypted traffic to pass through your computer).

Once installed you need to install the FoxyProxy plugin if you have not done so already. Once installed it should start the Tor setup wizard. If not then single click on FoxyProxy in your status bar on Firefox – File – Tor Wizard. Then:

  1. Click yes to setup Tor.
  2. Click with for the Privoxy (though this is not required for Firefox 1.5+ but should still be beneficial)
  3. Click yes again for Privoxy
  4. Enter the port number which privoxy is listening too (this should be port 8118)
  5. Click yes to make DNS requests go through Tor. Though I suspect if you are just interested in avoiding Google log your IP you can use the DNS servers provided by your ISP or OpenDNS. This probably would make browsing faster. If you run your own DNS like TreeWalk then I would recommend going through the Tor DNS as TreeWalk uses your own IP for the DNS it might let Google know it as well. These are only my thoughts though, I am not an expert on that matter so I could be very wrong.

Now you need to define the URL patterns to use. This will basically tell FoxyProxy when it should use the Proxy/Tor and when it should not.

As the main cause for concern is Google, and in my case Google.co.uk then this is the main domain we need to route through Tor.

  1. Click Add New Pattern
  2. Enter an appropriate name eg Google
  3. The URL pattern I used is *www.google.co.uk/*
  4. Select Whitelist
  5. Select Wildcards

The URL pattern used above tells FoxyProxy to use Tor when the URL string contains www.google.co.uk/ regardless of what is before or after it. You could also use *google.co.uk/* and a second rule *google.com/* regular expressions to be a little more accurate with the rules though I suck at regular expressions so it is easier just to use the Wildcard rules.

If you wish to route all of Google’s services through Tor or your proxy then I would recommend setting up patters for:

  1. *google.co.uk* (or your local TLD)
  2. *google.com*
  3. *googleadservices.com*

To check FoxyProxy was working correct and what my current IP was when using Tor I also created a pattern for ip-lookip.net so I would be routed through Tor when visiting this site.

One word of caution as mentioned in the previous post. You are sending your traffic via someone else’s computer. I personally would not recommend logging into any services when on the tor network, certainly any sites that contain important data like bank accounts / adwords / adsense. Again I am not expert so you could be safe but it is just a word of warning.

If you want to setup FoxyProxy using a Proxy instead of Tor you first must find the Proxy you would like to use. The following sites will get you started

  1. Rosinstrument
  2. XRoxy
  3. SamAir Security
  4. Proxy4Free

Setting up the Proxy is quite easy:

  1. Get all the proxy details you need
  2. Click on FoxyProxy in the status bar of Firefox
  3. Click Add New Proxy
  4. Give it a useful name
  5. Select the proxy details tab
  6. Input the Hostname or the IP for the proxy. If the IP address provided is in the format of 123.123.123.123:80 then the number after the colon is the port and the numbers before the colon is the IP address.
  7. Input the port number the proxy uses
  8. Most of the proxies used in the above sites are HTTP proxies but if you have chosen a SOCKS proxy then tick SOCKS and select which version of SOCKS
  9. Select the patterns tab and use the patterns in the same manor as the Tor settings.
  10. Click OK and start browsing the net!

That’s it, you should now in theory be able to avoid Google’s prying eyes. Though don’t forget all the above is pretty much useless if you stay logged into your Google account while doing all your keyword searches.

I am not sure how needed all the above is really either. If you are very pro WhiteHat then maybe it is not worth it. If you are creating hundreds of MFA sites a week or buying millions of links then yes it probably is worthwhile. If you are somewhere in between then the paranoid voice in my head would still say it is probably worth it, after all there is no need to give Google any more ammunition when it comes down to penalising people.

02Jul

Paranoid about Google tracking your search logs? Here are some tips to avoid detection Part 1.

Google recently announced that they use data from search logs to fight webspam

Data from search logs is one tool we use to fight webspam and return cleaner and more relevant results. Logs data such as IP address and cookie information make it possible to create and use metrics that measure the different aspects of our search quality (such as index size and coverage, results “freshness,” and spam).

Whenever we create a new metric, it’s essential to be able to go over our logs data and compute new spam metrics using previous queries or results. We use our search logs to go “back in time” and see how well Google did on queries from months before. When we create a metric that measures a new type of spam more accurately, we not only start tracking our spam success going forward, but we also use logs data to see how we were doing on that type of spam in previous months and years.

The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this–log data, IP addresses, and cookie information–makes your search results cleaner and more relevant.

Source: Google Blog Post via: Dave Naylor

In Dave Naylor’ post he pointed out some techniques to try and avoid detection these included

  1. Make sure you purge your cookie on closing your browse
  2. Install, foxy proxy or another firefox proxy plugin

The first part is quite easy you just need to go into the Firefox options – Privacy Tab – Then keep cookies until I close Firefox. Also I would recommend that your clear your private data when closing Firefox (this can include cookies as well). I typically clear my cache, cookies and authenticated sessions.

Dave also mentioned you can block Google altogether from Cookies but this prevents you using some of the Google services so I would not bother too much with it.

The next step is preventing Google from obtaining your IP freely. I am not a privacy expert and I am relatively new to the whole proxy / vpn game so the following information may be a little inaccurate or there are probably better services out there.

One of the services I have used over the past 12+ months is Xerobank. This is an encrypted virtual private network that is designed to completely hide your identity from the Internet. It basically works by you connecting to their network (via OpenVPN)and all the traffic is routed through them. Unlike proxies it actually routes all your data through their network rather than just your browser requests. It is not the cheapest option out there at $35 a month but I find it has excellent performance. I can enable the VPN and browse the Internet with little if any noticeable difference in speed. Apart from just using the OpenVPN software they also offer the xB Browser which is a free open-source anonymous web browser, that can be installed on your PC or run directly from a USB drive. I have not really used the xB Browser but if I remember correctly it is a modded version of Firefox that incorporates all the Xerobank privacy feature. I think it is also allows you to use Tor.

The next option is Tor (The onion router). This is typically implemented via plugins such as FoxyProxy and Torbutton. Tor seems to be quite a popular option, and I can see why it is free and very secure (depending on who’s viewpoint you believe). Tor basically operates by using each computer on the network to route encrypted traffic from the start node to the end node. The traffic takes a random route across the network and to any observer the traffic will appear to originate from the end node. I the problem I personally find with Tor is that it’s greatest strength is also is greatest weakness. The onion routers are operated by volunteers using their own bandwidth at their own cost and the performance of Tor is reliant on the routers your traffic is passed across. If any one of them routers is running very slowly then the performance will be greatly reduced. I am unsure how many routers the traffic passes across but it only takes one router to make browsing the net run very very very slow. Which it frequently does.

**Edit** I have just installed Tor and tried it out for the first time in ages. It is not exactly blazing fast but it appears to be running at an acceptable speed. FoxyProxy does warn that if the pages don’t load it will be the Tor network being slow/down so I expect it will still have issues.

Another option is to use a normal proxy server, these can be set up again with FoxyProxy, QuickProxy, SwitchProxy or you can input the settings directly into Firefox via Options – Advanced – Network – Connection Settings. There will be similar options for IE and Opera. If you are using Firefox I would recommend one of the plugins as it will allow you to switch the proxy on and off quickly and easily. Proxies work more or less the same as the above 2 techniques, though only your web traffic is routed through the proxy unlike the VPN option and it is normally only routed through one server/router unlike Tor.

There is a large number of proxies available to use, many/most of them being free. Proxies can provide different levels of anonymity with some being classed as transparent, anonymous, or high anonymity. Anonymous and High Anonymity should be the ones to chose if you are trying to hide your IP. As with Tor the large problem with Proxies is that the free ones are susceptible to run very slow, or go completely down. This is because they typically have a large volume of traffic passing through them while only having limited bandwidth. There are also paid for proxy services which should offer more reliable and faster performance however I have not tried any of these so can not recommend any specific ones.

There are some other issues that need you need to be aware of with all the above solutions. Your traffic is being routed via another machine so if you are based in the UK like myself then Google or whoever looks at your IP may perceived you as being located somewhere else. In the case of Xerobank I believe the IP address will be located in Germany. With Tor I think your IP could end up being located absolutely anywhere, and with the proxy the location is dependant on the proxy you choose. Then there is the issue of the actual security of the data. It is impossible to know if the proxy you are using is spying on your data themselves and for this reason I would only recommend using proxy services for normal browsing habits. Anything you log into I would recommend just going through your ISP. I believe Tor is a little safer as someone looking at the traffic does not actually know where the traffic originated from, however I would still not recommend logging onto your bank account while on Tor. Finally there is also the issue of Google tracking you via the proxy/vpn you are actually using. I am not 100% if Xerobank issues different IPs each time but if it is the same IP every time then there is only limited benefit to routing your traffic via the VPN. With a proxy I would recommend keeping a list of reliable proxies and using different ones on different days. FoxyProxy should allow you to use multiple proxies.

In my next post I will explain how to set Tor/Vidalia and setting up FoxyProxy

18Jun

9 Great Firefox Extensions

Ok sorry this post has been done a billion times before, though someone was asking me what extensions I have so I thought I’d do a quick post. Some of them are very obvious that I think most SEOs use.

  1. British English Dictionary – Not really a proper Extension I guess but my spelling is awful and I need all the help I can get and I am English and I hate American spelling.
  2. FlagFox – Not seen this one mentioned very much. It is a nice little tool showing the flag of the physical location of the server. It is useful for quickly identifying a problem when a client with a .com and US server moans about crap UK rankings.
  3. FoxMarks Synchronizer – Social bookmarking is ok for bookmarking some things, but I tend to bookmark all sorts of crap and I work on 3+ computers so having access to all my bookmarks on each computer is quite handy.
  4. GreaseMonkey – I don’t actually use this that much, I have some of Joost de Valk’s Scripts installed and that’s it. Still it is handy to have there. I just need to find some more useful scripts.
  5. NoScript Plus – This is more for security purposes though I find it quite useful for seeing what sites are un-usable without JavaScript, or what sites are using some naughty NoScripts. It is also useful to see just how many JavaScript applications/widgets etc people add to a site. It is not uncommon for me to have to enable 10+ URLs in NoScript for a website to work properly.
  6. SearchStatus – Nice little plugin that shows PageRank, Alexa and Compete info. I know they are all pretty useless but still, they are still nice to know. You can also use it to find incoming links etc
  7. SEO for Firefox – Everyone seems to love this one. I don’t personally use it that much as there too many things it displays. I tend to keep it down to Google Cache Date, Age, and Whois.
  8. SEOpen – I probably use this one the most. There is easy access to loads of functions via a right click. I am always using this to check backlinks, Whois, In Index, HTML Validation etc
  9. Web Developer – Don’t use it that often but it has loads of functions that are useful. Viewing Source, Validation, Outlining Headings etc
02Jun

Stupid Anti-SEO Argument

Recently I read a comment on UK Business Forums regarding SEO. Someone replied with a post saying (summarised)

I’m very anti SEO as a service that has to be paid for.

Supposing I ran a hotel in London and decided to employ the services of an SEO company or consultant to get me up there in the rankings. And then supposing the other 1246 hotels in London all did the same. There is only one ‘first page’ – so how can I be reasonably assured at the outset I can achieve a decent ranking for my considerable outlay – and even hope to stay there?

When a client engages me the deal is simple – for every £1000 you pay me I’ll deliver £10,000 back or I’ll refund the £1000. You’ll never see that guarantee in SEO because ROI cannot be guaranteed. That’s why I’m anti it.

Granted it is not actually a stupid argument I can see where the person was coming from. The problem is I don’t see how you could not use SEO. Just because you have competition does it mean you just don’t bother? Unfortunately in business if something is profitable you will find competition picks up fast and at the end of the day the as long as the income exceeds expenditure enough then it should be worth it. So basically it is all about the ROI as mentioned but what industry offers a guaranteed ROI? Look at the quote used, if I paid the person £1000 and he delivered 10 fold back or a refund then surely all I would have to do to become a millionaire would just keep giving him money? Or worst case scenario I just get a refund.

If I use a slightly un-realistic over simplified example if I had a street with 10 empty hotels on it and I decided to lease on of them I would probably get it very cheap seeing as there is lots of choice and it would be safe to assume a street with 10 empty hotels is a bit of a shit area. However if I then started to earn a decent wage from it, it would be safe to assume other people would start taking up the hotels until they are all leased. As each hotel is bought up and people realise there is demand for hotels there it is safe to assume the cost to lease will increase, and it would probably increase exponentially if people thought there was enough money to be made. So when all the hotels are leased and my lease comes up again it is very likely that the owner would not want to lease the hotel at the same price, at the end of the day I am making shit loads of money and there is a large demand for the area now so I would have to pay significantly more. These prices would probably continue to increase until the return on investment is not worth it.

It is almost the same with the online market, if you manage to come up with a brilliant niche idea it will hopefully prosper, however other people will see your success and they will try and replicate and better it making it harder for you to profit. The niche will likely become saturated as everyone jumps on the bandwagon and a select few may earn a lot of money others may lose a lot of money.

I am pretty sure no-one can guarantee a return on investment in anything, there are normally to many variables to consider and most ideas/companies are only as good as the weakest link. SEO is a mixed bag of people there are a lot of scammers out there but there are a lot of gems out there that will help maximise your ROI and the good ones should be able show you this from previous clients ROI and statistical ROI figures from the SEO industry as a whole.

From my experience SEO has some of the best ROI out of all the marketing techniques used online however it is largely down to the SEO employed and a realistic investment budget.