Since I decided to set up my own blog over 2 years ago I have put this site through many changes, factors & designs. During its first incarnation as www.goosh.co.uk the site was used as more of a personal blog just detailing the odds & sods of my life. As of the 15th November 2006 I literally dumped the content on www.goosh.co.uk and moved the site over to its current incarnation, www.kevstrong.com , with a 301 http status code redirect on just the domain and here we are today.
I can safely say that I have not aggressively targeted any keywords or keyphrases (short or long) but it’s coming up to a year since the inception of www.kevstrong.com and I got a little curious as to how the site has performed in the SERP’s. I was a little surprised at the actual results and even more surprised at how slack some of the actual Search Engine’s are with their results.
>> Read more about My own long tail keyword rank review
Since I reported on the whole Volkswagen saga that has caused a bit of fuss it set something off in my mind with regards to stuffing and javascript cloaking & redirects.
Now I will be up front and say that my javascript suck's hard! So I may be completely wrong with this post, however it struck me as a bit odd so I thought I would post about it.
I was recently shopping for a wireless router online and decided to check out some of the UK retailers. Once particular site I ran across was Currys.co.uk, a very well known PC retailer owned by DSGI Group who also own PC World & TheTechGuys.com. All seemed fine and dandy on the site. The site was clean, smart and fast in their queries (even though they used tables!). I was looking at the Netgear Wireless Router and somehow managed to press CTRL+A (select all on the page) as opposed to CTRL+C (I know, how far apart are they!) and I was faced with this image below (using Firefox 2.0):
>> Read more about Are Currys doing a Volkswagen
There's been a great post over at SEO Roundtable detailing a collection of Page Rank verification tools that I would recommend bookmarking. They'll come in handy when you are looking at Page Rank's for potential reciprocal link candidates or when you are purchasing links etc.
>> Read more about Page Rank verification
Working in an SEO oriented business, and also having an interest in it, offers such an interesting insight into the world of Search Engine Optimisation. Simply doing a search in your local area for SEO offers an array of results and makes you aware just how large it is as a sector. What separates most of the SERP's is the content and the inbound links. There's nothing more to say other than that. Then once in a while a site will pop up that makes you say out loud "Your having a laugh!".
In some area's SEO, or even Web Design, are so strongly fought between company's with regards to rankings that getting a step above them in the SERP's is like dealing a crunching tackle from your central defender. They aren't anywhere near as vicious as area's like Viagra, HGH, Ringtones, Mortgage's etc, but they are still a competitive battle ground.
Sometimes company's take risk's and employ a shady SEO who is no more than a snakeoil salesman and instruct them to do whatever it takes to get the top of the rankings irrespective of the rule book. Sometimes the SEO company's themselves flout these rules and go ahead and employ tactic's such as keyword stuffing that they think will help them get that step above the competition.
I don't monitor my local SERP's on a regular basis, I just like to check the rankings for the local firms etc to see if anyone has been "moving & shaking", but recently doing a search for Pay Per Click Newcastle threw up a result for a company called TS4B.
After taking a little look into their site I noticed a few sign's of blatant underhanded tactic's being employed (NB: It seem's like I wasn't the only person to spot this site. These guys have since been removed from the SERP's)
>> Read more about Why risk your site with egregious keyword stuffing
It's kicking off this weekend, that's for sure! Matt Cutt's made a post on his blog about hidden links and how they are spotted by the trained eye. Fair post because it's obviously a nono with regards to the Google Webmaster Guidelines. But here's where the battle lines were drawn:
As long as we’re talking about links, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to talk about a simple litmus test for paid links and how to tell if a paid link violates search engines’ quality guidelines. If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines.
Paid link's are a big part in getting those quality, relevant, inbound links that Google love's so much. I personally don't see the problem with this as it's just another targeted way of gaining exposure in the SERP's (
). It's also an out-in-the-open way of gaining links for cash. Do Google really think that trading links to create reciprocal link's with "site's like your own" doesn't involve cash at some point. In business there is always someone out there trying to make a quick buck so-to-speak.
>> Read more about Matt Cutts throws down the gauntlet on paid links
There are alot of people getting involved in SEO nowadays. The big marketing & media firms are slowly but surely getting involved in the realm of SEO taking business away from smaller web firms but then outsourcing it back to the smaller firms for a larger profit margin. Hey, it's business and no-one is out there to make friends are they?!
Being the friendly guy that I am, I had decided to write an explanation document on Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This was mainly to help out my co-workers understand Google a little bit more in depth, but also to provide information to people who are new to the SEO game since Google is the big dog in the search sector.
The reasoning behind my idea was purely based on the amount of information available out there. There's alot of depth to cover in the SEO game, especially when starting out, and I get asked so many questions about the basic thing's over and over again that I had wanted to condense it down into a suitable handy guide that people could refer to but contain enough information that would solve alot of questions; much like Aaron Wall's excellent SEO Book; Only smaller :)
Armed with this task I had decided to explain each and every section of Google's Webmaster Guidelines with explanatory text that anyone could follow but much to my surprise someone has already done it: That someone is Patrick Sexton.
How to follow the Google webmaster guidelines with www.feedthebot.com is quite possibly the most in-depth Google Webmaster Guidelines information guide I have seen. This is the kind of guide I had planned to write tonight but here it is; already in a form that is concise and easy to read.
It now look's like my evening is now free to rock out to some Guitar Hero II on the 360 :)
>> Read more about Understanding Google Guidlines
Google's complete inbound link list to your site has been around for a couple of weeks as detailed here at the official google webmaster blog. When it got released I loved it :) But who would have thought I would be giving google another hug so soon.
Get a more complete picture about how other sites link to you posted on the same blog last week made me very curious, and once again Google have come up trumps! This nice little addition in Google Webmaster tools allows you to see what anchor text people are using to link to your website!
This saves you going through the inbound link list and checking the anchor text is perfect on all the inbound links you have created and gathered simply by showing you the rogue ones that you have (more than likely links you have no control over). Unfortunately that task is the harder part by trying to figure out which link it is ;)
Anyways, I would seriously suggest anyone with a slight little inkling as to what people are using in their anchor text to link to your site should sign up for Google Webmaster Tools if you have not already.
>> Read more about Loving Googles inbound links tracker
Yes, you read the title correct. Microsoft. Of all people.
They've taken a bashing recently with their www.live.com search engine but Monte Enbysk over at MSN has wrote about how to Be friendly to search engines: 8 ways.
Worth a read :)
>> Read more about 8 Ways to be friendly to the search engines by Microsoft
For years people have strived to get those all important ranks in the SERP's just intime for the money spinner that is the festive period!
Well, Jaimie Sirovich has cracked it, and has actually let slip on HOW! It's had me in kinks today, and I couldnt wait to rush home and add these excellent little touches!!
Needless to say, Using Jaimie's FaithRank tool I have been awarded:
Nice one Jaimie!
>> Read more about Search Engine Optimisation for Christians
At SES Chicago Google held a variety of sessions and one of the sessions was discussing Images and Search Engines.
>> Read more about Google clarify image use in SEO results
Google's Sitemap protocol seems to be catching on. Google, Yahoo & Microsoft have announced their support, along with a new site, http://sitemaps.org. The rumour mill is rife that Yahoo is already accepting submissions, although this is not clear from their Site Explorer submission screen. Microsoft, as always the runner up, is still testing sitemaps internally.
>> Read more about Joint Sitemap support by the three main search engines
