Dead Site

A story that is on the front page of Digg a couple of days ago is about the State of Washington suing an SEO firm. The lawsuit centres around the following points.

• Misrepresenting the ability to significantly increase traffic to customer Web sites by achieving top search-engine rankings and failing to deliver other promised services.
• Falsely claiming an affiliation with other marketers including Specialty Merchandise Company, a so-called drop-ship wholesaler.
• Claiming that its customer service representatives can be reached at any time when, in fact, customers are often unable to reach representatives and sometimes do not receive return calls.
• Failing to provide refunds or honor cancellation requests.
• Continuing to bill the credit cards of some consumers who have attempted to cancel and submitting alleged debts to collection agencies.
• And, failing to register with the Department of Licensing as a commercial telephone solicitor and failing to provide written confirmation of a consumer’s rights under the Commercial Telephone Solicitation Act.

So with that said, what really should you look for in an SEO company. I asked around the office (being a web marketing firm ourselves), and these are what we came up with.

“Guaranteed Listings” - AVOID
Nothing is guaranteed in this world, and Google listings is definitely one of those things. To say that they can get you to the top, or even page 1 of Google, is a myth. Sure, with hard work and the right sort of traffic, you will get there. However, if anybody who offers you Guarenteed Listings, run.

Usually the unscrupulous SEO’er would justify his “Guarenteed Listing” by ranking you at number 1 with the phrase “Edwardian Goobledygook“, rather than anything useful.

“Instant Results” - AVOID
Again, SEO work takes time. It has taken us about a year to get to the bottom of page 1 for a one word keyword we were targetting in a fairly busy niche. And we’re delighted with that result. Change it from the plural into the singular, and we’re on page 5.

Is the client worried? No, because we said that these things do take time. Only now, about a year after the work has started, is the client getting a serious return on their investment.

Of course, now we’re there, growth should be relatively straightforward, so once you achieve your listings, then you shouldn’t stop, just keep doing what you are doing.

“Increased Traffic” - BE AWARE
What would you rather have? Increased traffic or increased sales? There are methods out there to buy traffic, some of the less reputable SEO Firms have gone out and bought 100,000 hits (which you can get on forums for around $20).

However, increased traffic can (and very often does) come from an SEO campaign. However, there have been cases where traffic has dropped, but sales have risen. Which would you rather have?

What To Look For
So, what should you look for?

1. Proven Track Results
Often, SEO’ers will give you a list of companies which they have done work for, and their keyword results. First thing you should do is check them. Check them in google, ring up the companies, and ask them. Some may respond, but it’s a good way to refer to what SEO’ers can do to your business, rather than appearing in a search engine in some arbitary place.

2. Easy To Contact
A bit of an obvious one, and something that SEO’ers are generally all over the place in doing. Can you speak to the SEO’er who is doing your work? Do they send you reports? Do they ring you? SEO is considered by many to be a dark art, so if your SEO makes it as bright as possible, then that’s great.

3. Working With You
You know your business better than anybody else in the world, so why should your SEO take over your site? A good SEO will work with you, in finding out what your keywords should be, may even ask for you to provide content for blogs & pages on your site. It’s not done because they are lazy, it’s done because you can create things for your website to make it stick in people’s minds. If prospective customers will love it, then the search engines will follow.

What about yourself? Any tips you can help people find good SEO companies?

How about if you yourself are an SEO company? What do you push?

SEO Quake is one of my favourite Firefox addons to help with SEO (will write down a page with all my favourites shortly). It’s a great way of checking your inbound links, Alexa Rank (which is incredibly important), keyword density (which is also incredibly important), directory listings, whois and all sorts of things I spend a large proportion of my day doing.

Anyway, I saw that this site had 4 backlinks from Google (which is great! Usually I use Yahoo Site Explorer to find backlinks, as it indexes a lot more a lot quicker - though not as quick as being on my RSS feed, thanks to SEO 2.0 for listing me as one of the 10 Must Read SEO, Online Marketing & Web Development Blogs), so - clicking on the link button, I tried to explore the links.

Instead I got this.

Has Google banned SEO Quake? I hope not, as I do love it (I will give a guide on how to use it effectively later!). Anybody else had this problem? I’ve managed to replicate it on two different computers. Hopefully it’s only a temporary thing.

Furthermore, I’m I right in assuming that Google in general don’t like these things, because it increases server load etc.?

photo credit: Viernest

A common belief (one which I personally don’t agree with) is that Google can detect where a link is on a page and discount it. Sure, ideally I would love my link within a post on a content rich blog, but that’s more for traffic, than SEO purposes. However, Google has taken a few measures in the last few years to discount links from things such as directories and blog comments.

Question is - will Forum signatures be next?

Depending on the script, they’re usually google followable links. Big forums have suffered under the weight of spam. Sitepoint is creaking but they’re looking to stop it. Digital Point is, quite frankly, Digital Pointless. Even on a couple of my forums now I’m getting people with sensible names with signatures I don’t particularly appreciate. So far, they’ve been on topic, but I’m keeping an eye out for them.

So will Google smack down Forum signature links soon? It seems like the most obvious. And quite frankly, I don’t care.

You see, I and a lot of other people realise the value of blog commenting and forum posting. It’s not done to build links, but to build your reputation within the community. There’s a great post here on why most SEOs fail at Social Networking. You can apply the same to Blog Commenting and forum posting. I have exclusivley used blog commenting and forum commenting to push this blog so far. It’s going pretty well, as forum signautres and blog commenting bring traffic. Traffic leads to readers, and readers link to people commenting, subscribing, submitting content to social network sites, and linking back.

Which is much more important than having a link in the forum signature. SEOs will complain, but I can honestly see Forum Signatures go the way of directory submission & blog comments in terms of useful linkbacks.

Thoughts?

A quick post on Baiting for blogs. This won’t be a guide, for a good reason. I am Rubbish at it. I can do one method okay, which I will cover here, but it’s probably the only method I can do to some measure of success. I will discuss the other forms here as well.

1. To Linkbait -  Link Out
For your average link baiter, the best way to link bait is by aggressively linking out to various sources. Find 5 or 10 blogs related to a post you are writing, and bonus points if you can link it into a topic you are writing (for example, is there a world cup soon? Why not list your favourite blogs from each country participating). Check my previous post on BBC Go & SEO for a (fairly) good example of tying in a news event to blogs.

2a. It’s Nice To Be Important, But It’s More Important To Be Nice? Nah.
Something I don’t agree with is a post that was on Problogger’s blog - which I used to push my BBC Go & SEO post mentioned above. I put a link in my post, and - considering the popularity of Darren’s blog, and the relevance of the comment, I thought I’d get at least one comment that wouldn’t find itself into the Akismet spam list.

Alas, no.

Not entirely sure why I did. Worse of all a comment that was actually heavily critical of a blogger resulted in a couple of posts linking back to said blogger. Maybe I should just make unfound

2b. So To Comment Bait, Don’t Go For The Big Boys
Unless you believe that all traffic = good traffic, and have skin thicker than the Berlin Wall (when it was standing), go for smaller blogs. I love comments, and do read each and every one of them on my blogs, and I’m sure Darren - being a father, business owner and god knows what else - doesn’t. You’re more likely to get a response.

3. The best way to bait bloggers - Twitter!
Seriously. It’s great way to attract readers. Why? Because I believe people are more human on there. I usually automatically follow people who are from the local area, and my first twitter is usually about the weather in the morning. My usual twitters will be about things I don’t cover on here, and many of other people’s are. Sure, it’s not exactly the greatest way of getting instant sticky traffic, but over time, you’ll be seen as a human, which will attract other bloggers who - last time I checked - just so happened to be human.

What’s your methods of baiting bloggers?

A bit of a tiff has developed around the BBC website, regarding their way of linking out.

Instead of being direct links, they link via a “tracker” (called “go”). This has caused a little bit of a hoohaa (so much so that one slightly sensationally-titled blog post at Blogstorm has got a response from the BBC itself), as the links from the site do not pass SEO benefit.

There’s no denying that the BBC (and other mainstream media websites) get hundreds of thousands of views an hour, so if your page is linked to, you will likely get monumental visitors. If some of those link to you from their website (and - from my experience - they usually do), plus new readers & people aware of your blog/business or service, then that’s a good thing, surely?

I had a look at a few links from two mainstream media sites - The Independent & The Sun respectively, and whilst the former did give us a normal link, The Sun didn’t, slapping on a “Nofollow” tag. Not entirely sure why, my guess is that The Sun has more advertisers & sponsors, they don’t want to be giving Google Juice to companies that don’t advertise (It’s a horrible conclusion and totally inaccurate, largely because the adverts on The Sun’s site are in flash), but the BBC, The Independent & The Sun have more responsibilities to journalists & sources - they have responsibilities to their advertisers. Martin Belam explains this perfectly in this post.

However, it could also be argued that websites such as the BBC can “steal” stories, so giving something back wouldn be fair. Suppose if I wrote a blog about something newsworthy - say an initiative I’d pioneered had some council trouble and I blogged about it - the BBC would probably rank above me in that story on Google.

I believe the above cases are rare though. 99% of webmasters would take a link hidden to everybody but Internet Explorer 1 visitors viewing the website on a 320×240 screen at five past 3 in the morning from the BBC. Not because of the SEO benefit, but because the traffic (and the associated benefits associated with that traffic) is so great, that the residual benefit to your site (both non SEO & SEO ways) would definitely be worth it.

What side of the fence do you sit on? Should mainstream media sites provide searchable links or - from large sites - any link is a good link?

An interesting post on sitepoint caught my eye - the post was about a member there, who’s blogged about how a post written about the Johnathan Ross/Russell Brand Non News Fiasco was receiving huge traffic because the post is located on page 1 of google, surrounded by the likes of Youtube & Newspaper Stories.

News based traffic is great to get, however, the top spots are usually monopolised by the big sites. The only way to get there is to predict the story before it happens.

Surprisingly, it’s not the hardest thing to do.

Events
The easiest thing to do is to look at the events calendar for sports, awards ceremonies & big music gigs. Who are the big performers at these events? Are they training yet? Maybe write a post about it, that way, should they have a good run in the sporting event/controversial gig you are already established.

Why not give a guide to the rules of an unusual sport in the Olympics? Or maybe a post on how training is going for an athlete? Just be creative & original.

The Russel Brand/Johnathan Ross Prank (Or, being in The Right Place, at The Right Time)
To the above story, it took three weeks from the show airing to the scandal that brewed in the last week or so. So, using careful judgement, you may be able to pre-empt controversy. Of course, this is incredibly tricky to do, so I wouldn’t worry so much about it.

SEO, SEO, SEO!
Yes, those three letters again. However, with both the tactics mentioned above, you will only manage to target specific phrases, rather than general phrases, so work at being high for one phrase, then concentrate on the next.

My advice wouldn’t be worrying to much about beating the big boys for newsworthy content, and concentrating on producing timeless content, but if you want to give it a go, those are my three tips for beating the large news agencies at their own game.

Any tips from you?

I often see posts on large webmaster forums such as Digital Point, Sitepoint & UK Webmaster World about “Is What I’m doing Illegal or Unethical?” when it comes to SEO. I think I should explain what each one is.

Illegal is when you break the law. This is when what you are doing goes against the traditional law of the land you (or your website) is in. Nothing SEO wise directly could be classed as illegal, however certain aspects of web marketing or obtaining an income online could be. For example, if you are running Google Adsense ads, and you can get ways to click on the ads, then yes that is illegal (as it’s fraud).

Unethical is when you don’t break the law, but you go against moral standards. One such example could be going out of your way to damage a competitor in the SERPS. Generally you don’t do such a thing online (you improve your own SERPS), and it’s tricky to prove that you were responsible in damaging them. However, it wouldn’t necesseraly be illegal.

Certain things written on forums use these two words interchangably. One of the biggest one is when it comes to paid links. Paid links can be viewed as unethical, if you are solely trying to game Google, but in no way are they illegal. There is nothing stopping you buying and selling paid links. You won’t be thrown in jail, and I even question the unethical nature people hold over paid links.

So, you’re completely fine to buy and sell paid links.

However, don’t expect Google to like you.

So, what’s the first thing you should do when beginning SEO?

• Submit to DMOZ? - Before That
• Inform Google that your site is up? - Before that
• Optimize title tags & Page keyword density? - Before that

The first thing you should always ALWAYS do is stick up a holding page for the client*. The reason for this is simple, if your site gets found quickly (and, if it’s a business that has other interests, then chances are it might), then chances are they will appear highly in the SERPS for it’s business name, particularly in local listings.

What should a holding page include? Well I include three things:-

• The Business Name
• The Business Contact Details
• A “Bookmark This Page/Subscribe To This Page” Button

There’s no point in getting ranked for “Curry House London” just yet, but hopefully the name & contact details (the name in the title bar as well as a rough geographical area) should do enough to get you listed for “Bengal Tiger Curry House London”, for example.

The “Bookmark This Page/Subscribe To This Page” information? Well it’s something I like sticking on. It gives people an incentive to come back - they’re interested in what you have to say. I like the subscribe feature because a quick one off email shot of “please visit our site”, maybe tying it in with a promotional voucher, can have a great effect on your website and business.

What do you stick on your holding pages?

* Of course, if said client already has a site, don’t stick a holding page up, start on the On Page Optimization

Recently, Matt Cutts on his blog suggested a way of getting free links on your site quickly and easily, using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Google’s Webmaster Tools contains links to pages that people have pointed to, but they’re not on the server (404 errors). So say if somebody created a page to deadsite.co.uk/itisnothere.htm, and you either removed that page (or, more likely, they mistyped the URL), so how do you create them into good links?

Way 1 (Poorest) - Meta Refresh
The first way is to use a HTML meta refresh such as this:-

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.target.url/"/>

Put that line of code inbetween the <head> tags, and save it the name of the link that is mistyped. This is one way to do it, but it isn’t the best. For one there’s no search engine benefit, and secondly it can be misleading at times, especially if the user pays particular attention to the address bar. They’d think they’d gone to the wrong page!

Way 2 (Better) - PHP Redirect
A better way is to do a PHP redirect, using similar code to this:-

<?php

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header( 'Location: http://www.target.url/' ) ;

?>

This works, as it tells the search engine that the page it was linking to isn’t there, and it passes on search engine ranking. However, it can confuse users at times.

Way 3 (Best) - Informational Page
The best way however is to create an informational page. This can either be done manually for all the dead links you have, or you can create a fancy script (or find one!) that informs the user of their mistake, and what they can do instead (as well as push more posts, maybe a bit of adsense too!).

What this does is that it creates a little bit of Search engine benefit, but more importantly informs the user of their mistake. In an ideal world, the user who clicked on the link either manages the website, or writes to the manager informing of their mistake. Either way, it helps build trust in the users.

So, instead of blindly chasing links, why not check out the ones you’ve already got?

I love hearing people talk about SEO, it’s one of those things that’s still considered to be a holy grail - that can (and does) make a lot of people a lot of money, so it’s no surprise that a lot of people are in the market.

However, as a group of people that have being practising SEO, it makes us chuckle a little bit to see what people list in their “SEO Strategies”.

Look at the name - Search Engine Optimization - this means optimizing your current message, which is usually a case of meta tags, title tags & content rewriting.

It doesn’t involve link building - this is search engine marketing in our eyes.

In the olden days, SEO was enough to get you highly placed in google for key phrases (I’ve got blog posts for example that rank stupidly high for completely unreleated, high traffic keywords). Now a combination of SEO, SEM & Offline Marketing is needed to help your website grow, especially in highly competitive niches.

However, as SEO has become the default term for “getting your website to the top of google”, it’d be stupid not to optimize or even market for it.

Care to disagree with me?