How Long Does SEO Take to…
Wondering how long does take SEO to have an impact? With many conflicting answers out there, we give you all the data, so you know what to expect (and when)
Case Studies
Is Direct Traffic a Ranking Factor?
Yesterday, SEMrush released an updated version of their June 2017 ranking factors report, again placing Direct Traffic right at the top of the list – stating that its the most important ranking factor for Google. You can (and should) download it here. For those that may not be familiar with SEMrush, they provide an … Read more
Most SEO Studies are Basically Pointless
For some years now, the industry has had an unspoken problem with most SEO studies published. Sure, they pretty much always reveal the same factors (as long as the data is interpreted correctly), you need Content, Links and structure. Pretty much in that order. There are two main categories, those backed with proprietary index data … Read more
Scraping Google to Build Massive Datasets
Scraping Google for keyword rankings is a tricky business, they don’t want you to do it, and have gone as far as calling applications that do it “Black Hat”. Let’s not forget, they’ve also said which ones they perceive to be accurate, so lets ignore the Black Hat bit and build our own! (sorry Google). … Read more
Sorry: Negative SEO Does Exist
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
Speed up WordPress: Peadig Framework
If you’ve visited the blog before you will probably notice a few key differences today. It looks pretty similar to the old design, and while its still a work in progress I feel the whole site is quite a bit cleaner than before. The main difference that you will probably pick up on though is … Read more
We can’t stop Spam, we CAN save Polar Bears
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
Buying a website? Audit a Flippa Listing in Minutes
Buying and selling websites is a hobby of mine, and the busiest marketplace is Flippa. Before you buy any site though you should spend a few minutes auditing whether the site is what it purports to be, and whether its a good deal. Luckily this can be done easily and for free using nothing more … Read more
Negative SEO vs. MattCutts.com
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
Digg banned from Google?
Something interesting has just come across one of my networks (hat tip to datadial), just a few days after Digg have announced that they are building a replacement for the much loved Google Reader, they have (coincidentally?) disappeared from the primary google index. Is it an SEO penalty for links? That seems to be the … Read more