…But I won’t tell you my strategy, because its proprietary… This post appeared in my FaceBook feed, and sparked some discussion: From the outset, lets be perfectly clear, there is no SEO strategy worth engaging with that you shouldn’t, or can’t share with clients. If your agency, consultant, or SEO specialist is telling you this, … Read more
I was asked earlier whether using badges for building links is a good idea. Its certainly not a new concept, enterprising SEO’s (myself included) had used this technique, or variants of it, for years. In the spirit of full disclosure, I also talked extensively about this practice and my experiments in avoiding penalties by rapidly varying … Read more
UPDATE: Please check the end of this post for some final notes, following communications with Google. Rand Fishkin published a post yesterday saying: “webmasters are forced to police their own links through webmaster tools, and be in constant fear of negative SEO“ (I’m paraphrasing, the full post is here). Rand goes on to call on … Read more
I’ve been contacted a handful of times over the past two years by webmasters complaining about Expedia outranking them, or for having some links of questionable value. While I never put myself forward as the Spam Police, when you’re a high visibility member of staff on social networks, and SEO is in your job description, … Read more
I am bothered by comment spam as much as the next person, but in the pursuit of science (honest) I also like playing about with the latest spamming tools. They all work roughly the same way, some better than others, but its all pretty standard… The recipe is simple, you spin some comments, submit them … Read more
Google have done an incredible job of portraying itself as a friendly, warm & fuzzy. A kind of anti-corporation if you will. From their regular Google Doodles through to hollywood family comedies, it’s marketing and PR departments have really sold us the idea that it can “Do No Evil”. The problem is, now more than … Read more
Negative SEO has been a hot topic for a number of years now, and we all know the typical routes to demoting your competition: 1) buy loads of crappy links (ie. xrumer/fiverr blasts) 2) duplicate the target site across hundreds of other domains, (squidoo lenses for instance) 3) breach GWMT security and de-index 4) manipulate … Read more
SEO is an interesting game, we know how big brands (like Interflora) sometimes get it totally wrong and buy links resulting in google penalties – and you really shouldn’t play with fire unless you’re either: a) an experienced professional SEO or b) comfortable with having your site removed from Google. I’ve seen a case today where Santander … Read more
Yesterday evening, well known florist brand Interflora was wiped off the face of the internet. Well, in search marketing terms anyway… Searching for the terms [Flowers], [florist], [flower delivery], [flowers online] and hundreds of other related search terms yielded the interflora.co.uk domain in first place – until yesterday afternoon. Now the website does not even … Read more
Hey folks, a bit of a quick and dirty post here, very little prep has gone into this, and the whole point is that I have to have a “give it up” tip at MozCon 2012, and as I didn’t speak about any nefarious or blackhat techniques, here it is! How to get 100k (real) … Read more