An SEO Company

Google Webspam Update. Have you lost rankings?

Bob Jones — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:59:28 PDT

Google has rolled out a new update which is meant to improve the quality of search results. I won’t go in too much broad detail because the good people over at Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch have already covered quite a bit of it.

I’ll be sharing some observations I’ve made regarding my own niche and most competitive key phrase, SEO Perth.

I’ve never really tried to rank for the term, simply because I am already getting enough enquiries with other terms and long tail searches. Last time I checked, I was sitting pretty steady on page two. After the algo update yesterday (aka Webspam Algorithm Update), I’m now on page seven! Ok fine, either Google doesn’t seem to think I’m relevant enough as a Perth SEO Company to show up for the term SEO Perth, or I’m getting penalized for the term, OR Google’s new algo update isn’t quite working out as they had designed it.

When I look at the page one results, a few things that stand out are the following:

The backlink profile of a lot of the sites listed one page one is very unnatural. Loads of irrelevant footer links (designed by SEO Perth etc).
Very high percentage of identical anchor text used for the links.
Still plenty of empty shell pages created purely for backlinks and spun articles on irrelevant and low quality blogs.
Also loads of “hi, nice blog” comment spam links.
A decent amount of (relatively) new Wiki article spam purely written and spun for backlinks.
Besides basic keyword stuffing, other old techniques such as adding text links so small that a human can’t read them on the bottom of pages also still seems to work!

If you’ve seen your ranking tank, my advice is to sit on it for a few days. Let’s give the Google Webspam Update some time to work itself out. Any changes you start making right now as a knee-jerk reaction might influence your rankings negatively if the update has sorted itself out.

More Free Adwords Credit – $100 Coupon

Bob Jones — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:24:08 PST

Like I mentioned in previous posts, I get loads of Adwords coupons and I don’t have much use for them. That’s why I’m giving away a new $100 Adwords voucher this week. All you have to do is leave a comment why you should get the $100 free Adwords advertising. Tweet and like the post to increase your changes. Expires on the 5th of March, 2012. Good luck everyone

Free Google Adwords Credit

Bob Jones — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:57:57 PST

From time to time I receive Adwords coupons (or vouchers) to start a new advertising campaign. I’ve currently got a spare $75 Adwords code for anyone who wants it. Just leave a comment telling me why I should give it to you. Best comment by the end of the week wins.

Google Pagerank Update 7 February 2012

Bob Jones — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:15:46 PST

Once every three months Google updates the visible pagerank you can see on tools like the SEOBook Toolbar.

What is Pagerank? – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
What is Pagerank good for? – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-pagerank-good-for-anyway-statistics-galore
Is Pagerank Important? – http://www.google.com.au/search?q=buy+high+pagerank+links&pws=0

Has your Pagerank improved?

Irony. Can you see it?

Bob Jones — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:57:40 PST

Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you.

Stop SOPA and PIPA WordPress Plugin

Bob Jones — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:52:36 PST

With all the commotion around the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US Senate and House, I thought I’d make a small contribution in the form of a WordPress plugin, which will allow you to schedule a date and timeframe in which ALL incoming traffic will get redirected to http://americancensorship.org/ where people can sign the petition against these bills.

(Download here)

Screenshot:

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the internet censorship bill on Tuesday, January 24th, and unless we can find 41 senators to block the vote, it is going to pass.

Watch the video down below to get a better understanding of how these bills threaten the Internet as we know it.

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

You can find more news about sites protesting against SOPA/PIPA down below:

Sites using the Stop SOPA and PIPA WordPress Plugin (let me know if you’re using it so I can add you to the list):

If you want to contribute to the cause, but not redirect your traffic for a while, you can always place a less radical Stop SOPA ribbon on your WordPress Sites.

SEO Resolutions for 2012

Bob Jones — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:25:30 PST

It’s been a busy year for me, and that means I didn’t get around to do all the things I wanted to do. So here’s a 2012 resolutions list to remind myself what I want to achieve in the new year.

Become Google Adwords Certified because Adwords seems to become a bigger part of my business. More often than not, new clients not only want an SEO solution, but they’re also looking to get their Adwords campaigns managed. While I do have good working knowledge of the Adwords product, I’m sure that getting a certification will help me tremendously in creating fully optimised Adwords campaigns for them.
Get the Google Analytics Certification for the same reasons as above. I know my way around Google Analytics, and I am comfortable enough with it to get all the data I need from it, but I think that there’s a lot more power behind analytics. It will be especially important to give my CRO (conversion rate optimisation) skills a boost.
Get an article or two published on the front page of SEOmoz. No particular reason – I just think that’s the fastest way to get to 1000 mozpoints, which equals a free SEOmoz t-shirt.
Attend an event such as SMX, Search Love or Mozcon. Unfortunately, I live in the most remote city on earth, so the time and money involved in actually attending one of these is going to be a significant investment.
Improve my coding skills beyond the current copy-paste-cross-fingers-it-will-work level. Perhaps I too can come up with a handy SEO tool such as SEO Spider or an SEO WordPress plugin.
Increase my Klout score to 50+ Not because anyone cares, but secretly it makes me feel good about myself.

to be continued…

New Youtube Design adds Nofollow

Bob Jones — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:01:03 PST

Just a little something I noticed. Youtube channels used to have one followed link on a user’s channel, but after the redesign last week, they have now implemented the rel=nofollow attribute to those links. Is Google sculpting pagerank with their new design?

Anyway, if you want to get the nofollow removed, just change your channel back to the old look via this link (when you’re signed in)

Thanks (in advance) to Wil Reynolds from Seer Interactive for letting me use his Youtube channel details without permission

Are Long Tail Keywords Still Worth It?

Bob Jones — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:06:19 PST

An interesting infographic from Aaron about how Google killed the long tail.

Infographic by SEO Book

Google makes money from pagerank sellers

Bob Jones — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:07:01 PST

It appears that the Adwords team wasn’t paying attention when Google said that selling links for pagerank was naughty and that it violates Google Webmaster guidelines.

Tsk Tsk