From the combined efforts of Domain Boardroom (of which I am a proud member), Escrow.com, and myself, along with my buddy Elliot, victims of recent Oklahoma Tornado tragedy will benefit from money raised during an online auction. Several prominent members of Domain Boardroom have donated several very good domain names, Escrow.com has graciously donated their services, and I have decided to provide a full Search Engine Optimization Audit, as well.

In an effort to raise funds for the victims, Domain Boardroom and its members are sponsoring an auction on Elliot’s blog, and ALL proceeds will go to the American Red Cross’ Oklahoma City chapter, which is helping victims. Domain Boardroom members have donated domain names, gift certificates, and services towards this effort. (Big thanks to Donna Mahony for organizing this).

Here’s how the auction works:

Bidding for each auction lot will have a starting bid of $10, and bid increments will be $10. There are no reserve prices other than the minimum bid. Auctions will end on Friday, May 24 at 5pm EDT. At that point, the highest bid for each item will be deemed the winner.

You must go to this post here in order to bid by commenting on the post. To bid, post a comment on the post with your bid amount. You must use a valid email address, and if you are the winner, that email address will be used to start escrow.

I am really hoping that the price for the SEO audit goes high–I’ll be putting my full efforts into this SEO Audit, and the winner will definitely get their money’s worth this time. An SEO Audit of your website includes analyzing the website in depth (looking at all on-page as well as off-page factors), as well as looking at the website’s overall industry and competition. An SEO Audit typically includes all the recommendations for fixes on the site and recommendations going forward—-all based on the goals for the website that website owner provides.

Happy Bidding! Let’s raise a lot of money for the victims of the recent Oklahoma tornado tragedy.

In April 2013, Google’s web sites were still on top of the search market in the United States. In April 2013, Google had 66.5 percent market share, followed by Microsoft’s websites (Bing.com) with 17.3 percent market share–which is up 0.4 percentage points. Yahoo! then had 12.0 percent market share of the search engine industry, which is up 0.2 percentage points. The Ask Network accounted for 2.7 percent of searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.

In April 2013, 68.5 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 26.9 percent of searches were powered by Bing.

Here is some of the text from the press release that IGXE issued today. Essentially, they blamed someone else (network marketing companies) rather than themselves for getting penalized. They bought links, which is against Google’s acceptable Webmaster Guidelines. Google caught them, and penalized their website as a result.

WILMINGTON, Del., May 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — In January 2013, IGXE (www.igxe.com), one of the top in-game branding service websites specializing in MMORPG currencies, items, power leveling, and CD-keys, was punished by Google after IGXE took advantage of network marketing companies to improve its website ranking. When IGXE disappeared from the Google search engine, customers were left wondering why. Some even assumed that IGXE was closed. Others felt panic over their unused bonuses and vouchers. For this, the manager of IGXE marketing department, Vinson Hall, sought to assuage all concerns in an interview.

This punishment brought big losses to IGXE.com, as we lost lots of customers including our old customers. We learned a lesson. Vinson said that IGXE has already terminated its cooperation with network marketing companies. What’s more, bonuses or vouchers can still be used on IGXE. At any given time, IGXE will always protect its customers.

The whole premise for this press release (the reason behind it) is to blame some “network marketers” which I think honestly is a mistake. The problem mean “online marketers” or “internet marketers” rather than “network marketers”. The person who wrote the press release doesn’t appear to have a good command of the English language.

Rather than blaming some other company for your mistakes (buying links), then IGXE should only blame themselves. The company is ultimately responsible for all of their online marketing activities. If you choose to outsource your marketing efforts, then you must police those efforts and monitor everything that is being done.

There is absolutely no excuse for not knowing that you’re paying for links (which is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines). There are plenty of tools available for you to check the links to your website, and even some like Majestic SEO will give you all the data about your own website for free (as long as you prove you’re the owner of you site).

So, what happened?

According to IGXE, in January 2013, IGXE received a notice from Google (most likely via a message from Google Webmaster Tools) stating that there were unnatural links pointing to their website. Google also at the time apparently either banned IGXE from the search results or they severely penalized the site. for what it’s worth, IGXE is back in the search results now for brand-related keyword phrases.

What is amazing to me is that IGXE’s CEO is blaming Google for all of this. The company’s CEO is doing everything they can to blame someone else for this loss of revenue and “reputation”, and they’re not blaming themselves for doing something that is so very clearly against the search engine’s guidelines. Here is what IGXE’s CEO had to say:

It influenced our reputation significantly. Even now, some customers think that IGXE is closed. Besides, Google’s punishment affected IGXE negatively. As far as we know, we have already lost 30 percent of our old customers. Although we tried many other ways to reduce the loss, we still lost the trust of customers. This cannot be calculated.

Apparently IGXE has lost a lot of money and a lot of traffic. It even “influenced their reputation”. And they’ve already lost 30 percent of their customer base. IGXE apparently took a big hit in rankings and traffic when they were “caught” by Google buying links to their website. They are apparently now cleaning up the links. But, based on my experience, the site may not fully recover.

What’s my advice, here? Don’t buy links. But if you’re going to buy links (or participate in link schemes that are against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines), don’t blame someone else for something that you did. Don’t blame the network marketers. Don’t blame the SEOs. Don’t blame the online marketers.

And whatever you do, don’t blame Zac, the “famous” SEO specialist:

Zac, the famous SEO specialist, said that there many ways to cheat SEO including hidden links, link spam, paid links, keyword stuffing, and more.

Who the heck is Zac?

Can you tell that I’m disturbed by this? Well, I am.

Let’s take a very specific example and take a look. It isn’t normal that someone in the SEO community comes out and gives concrete examples, so take a look while it lasts. Take a look at the page, take a look at the backlinks to the page, and take a look at the search results (currently showing up on the 2nd page of results) for a Google keyword search for “wholesale sunglasses”. A highly sought-after commercial keyword phrase.

You’ll need to click on the screen capture above in order to see the larger version. In this case, there are two sites ranking in the top 20 for “wholesale sunglasses” that are some of the worst spam sites I’ve seen in a while. Visitors are redirected via javascript to another web site, something that Google supposedly took care of about 10 years ago. It’s a classic spam tactic and does NOT belong in the search results.

Furthermore, let’s take a look at one of the sites, why it’s actually ranking, as we can learn a lot from this.

First, it appears that the person doing this hacked a legitimate web site and put a page of content on the site without the site owner’s permission. Or, they may have bought the site and put up the old content. I’m not sure in this case, because I have not actually called the business to see if they are still in business or not.

Secondly, the actual content (shown below) is pretty low-quality. As low-quality as it gets. It is on-topic, though:

In this case, it’s this page: http://www.mykidsspending.com/wholesalesunglasses48.html which is ranking. If you click on the search result, it’s going to redirect to another site. If you have javascript turned off in you browser, it shows the content. This is what I call “poor man’s cloaking” at its finest. If you’re to cloak, at least do the cloaking at the IP level by using “IP Delivery” or some other product/script that identified Google’s IPs and only serves up the content to Google. But I digress.

What’s driving the actual rankings to that mykiddspending.com web page? It’s the links.

Links from Unique Domains: 1455
Links total: 11,801

There are a lot of links from a lot of unique domain names. That’s exactly what Google is looking for now–a lot of diversity. But take a look at the anchor text. This is the most colorful link anchor text that I’ve seen in a long while. And I see a lot of web sites’ backlinks.

So, we can definitely learn from this. Although the web sites (there are more than one ranking) are spamming and redirecting users to another site, and it appears that they’ve hacked other web sites in order to get the pages listed, the sites rank well. They rank well because of the diversity of links (lots of links from lots of unique domain names) as well as the diversity of anchor text links pointing to the site.

Sure, many businesses believe that getting a website will usually involves a large investment and involve too much time just to keep it updated. Years ago, that statement may have been true…but in recent years technology has advanced to the point that you can now setup your website with very little start-up costs and in about 30 minutes time.

For those who are still hesitant to come up with their own website, we should always try to remember that with making a step, you will never make and finish it. As simple as it is today, your first step will be acquiring web hosting and a domain name. Depending on which provider will you get your hosting, your cost for this domain can be as cheap as a couple of dollars. Hosts such as GoDaddy.com offer inexpensive domains that can be transferred to whatever web host your desire.

Web hosting is immensely cheaper now than it was a couple of decades ago. Now the average cost of web hosting is just under $10 a month. If you are able to commit to a long-term contract up front, that cost can drop to as little as $5 or $6 a month depending on the host. When setting up using a web hosting provider, a couple of things you will want is a site that has unlimited data and bandwidth as well as the ability to host multiple domains.

Once you have setup your web hosting, you are ready to install your website. In the past, this would involve hours or even days of straight coding. Now, thanks to WordPress, all you need to do is install the WordPress application on your server and you are ready to go. Some hosts such as Hostgator actually have an easy WordPress install built into the host that will get your site online in a matter of minutes. Best of all, WordPress is completely free to download and install with no monthly cost to use.

By using WordPress, your total cost to setup your very own website can be less than $20 and then less than $10 per month to maintain. You can completely manage your website in regards to content and media via WordPress and you can find out more on how to use the app by checking out this easy step-by-step video on how to make a mobile friendly WordPress site. Once you learn the ins and outs of using WordPress, you will be ready to make your prescience known on the web and at a cost affordable to most any budget.

So go ahead, put your business up another notch and plan your ways on how your future WordPress website should work. With a little bit of effort and a little more tweaking using optimization and social media integration, it wouldn’t be long before you can see your site growing with a lot of visitors and consumers that are targeted specifically for your product or service.

In the process, they had a total disregard for the complainant’s financial safety and security. In the findings documents, the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center scolded Godaddy but went on to publish the complainant’s credit card number.

This is from the document published here:

The Complainant once took online payment service on July 2010 card No: 4392XXXXXXXXXXXXX. Considering user safety, Godaddy
should take more complicated info verification procedure when user wants to do any changes in the account. The Complainant
tried to reach the current holder, but failed by invalid phone number and no feedback via email.

This is a totally unacceptable. the ADNDRC talks about safety and mentions Godaddy, and they have the guts to say that Godaddy should be more cautious. But then the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center ADNDRC themselves publishes the complainant’s credit card number in their official documents about the findings!

I realize that the dispute over this is apparently in regards to a stolen domain name, but how could the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center publish someone’s credit card number in their official findings?

Hat tip goes out Brad Mugford at www.DataCube.com

Just like Google Authorship, companies that have verified their Google Publisher status using Rel=Publisher as well as set up their Google Plus business page, you’ll start seeing your company logo alongside your website in the Google search results.

I have been in touch with Barry from Search Engine Roundtable, and as of this post, they have not yet confirmed officially with Google whether or not they’re going to be rolling out logos for rel=publisher.

But, based on my experience, I am pretty sure that this is going to be the case, It’s my gut feeling, since it’s a logical next step in the who authorship / publisher / Google Plus verification and transparency thing.

I first saw Kahena’s post about the company logos appearing in the Google Rich SNippets testing tool, I then wrote about it on the Standing Dog Blog, titled Google to Show Company Logos in Search Results.

The following is a screen capture of the Google AdWords ads that Vizion Interactive is currently running (as of the posting of this post):

Originally posted on Jeremy Schoemaker’s Facebook page, Mark Jackson, the President and CEO of Vizion Interactive, had this to say about why they are running Google AdWords ads targeting Blueglass:

I’m the President of Vizion Interactive and thought I’d provide a perspective on this. I am friends with Richard Zwicky and had a lot of respect for what the folks at BG were able to do. That said, as you are – I’m sure – aware, BG has not provided any direct notice to their clients that they have shut down. And, in case you weren’t aware, even employees of BG have received no formal notice and have no idea (for example) if they still have healthcare insurance.

Since the “shut down”, I have interviewed many former BG folks (wonderful people) and while we may be marketing ourselves to former BG clients, we are also trying to bring on board former BG employees. To me, this is not a “bad thing”. I have witnessed my fair share of “bad” in our Industry and try to be part of the solution; not the problem. I didn’t create this mess. However, if I can, in some small measure, help folks find work (I’m told that 35 employees and as many as 35 F/T contractors were affected), I’m gonna do that.

The big question here is really whether or not bidding on a competitor’s keywords (or, in this case, the competitor’s brand name) is acceptable, and whether or not you should bid on a competitor’s brand name when that company is losing customers? Essentially, one could argue that Vizion Interactive’s motive is to “poach” clients away from Blueglass, a company that so publicly is failing.

To be fair here, I have to disclose that I formerly worked for Vizion Interactive.

Update:
Vizion Interactive apparently launched this campaign the day after the news about Blueglass broke.

Vizion Interactive is one of the companies rallying around Blueglass to hire their employees, as they were terminated from the company in mid-April 2013.

Times have changed. Now, when you do just about anything that’s automated, it’s consider spam, and can get your website banned from the search engine listings.

I am still amazed that companies still feel that they can believe it is acceptable to send Unsolicited Commercial Email (SPAM) to garner more business. And, it’s even more outrageous when someone sends spam to get more SEO business. What’s even worse? A company like the one below who sent me spam trying to get me to hire them to do automated SEO (even more spam).

No wonder so many companies and firms do not like SEOs.

Here’s the horrible spam email I got today. You just gotta love the grammar.

—–Original Message—–
From: consett67891@gmail.com [mailto:consett67891@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, April 26, 2013 5:19 AM
To: seoexpertus@ibibo.com
Subject: Re: Google Rankings Issues For Your Website

Respected Website Owner,

Just for information google has updated its algorithm 5 times in last month and these changes can result in bad rankings for your website. To prevent your website getting affected by all these new updates coming from google it has to be handled by professional SEO Experts who understand how these algo updates work and how they will effect your website.

This is Mandy I working as a seo professional for last 5 years for our company TOB. We rank number 1 for one of the most competitive keyword ‘online seo company’, if we can rank ours we can rank yours.

We are working with 1000+ website owners and all enjoy top 10 google ranks. We have client retention rate of 95% in last one year and we are one of those few SEO companies that have helped their clients go through all recent google updates with ease.

Email us back if you would like us to rank your website on major search engines like google, bing and yahoo. We offer a no cost 15 days trial to start with so that you can experience the service before you start paying for it. There are no set up fee, no long term contract.

Try our 15 days free SEO trial and see your websites ranking move up.

Looking ahead for your email

Mandy I
Online SEO Expert ( TOB )

B 7 Green Ave,

ASR – 143001

Sure, for some reason, they’re ranked well for “online seo company” in the Google search results. I don’t know how many people really search for that phrase, but I digress. And really. This person’s last name is “I”? I don’t know anyone whose last name is a single letter.

Let’s take a look at their ranking for that keyword phrase:

You don’t even have to click on the search result and go to their website. The name of the company makes me stop right there and cringe: “The Outsource Bot” in their domain name says it all.

I want a human doing my SEO and online marketing. Not a bot.

It’s interesting that they’re offering a free 15 day trial, though. Perhaps I should use some of their free services to get better rankings for my competitors?

According to the letter from Fox Williams LLP on behalf of Shopzilla, there were legal grounds for removing the link:

– Trade Mark infringement

The Infringing Website contains a link to our client’s website, http://www.shopzilla.co.uk, creating an unauthorised association with our client and their Trade Mark. Your use of the link on the Infringing Website is:

– Causing detriment to the distinctive character of the Trade Mark;
– Causing detriment to the reputation of the Trade Mark by creating an undesirable association with the Infringing Website; and
– Taking unfair advantage of the goodwill attached to the Trade Mark.

Our client is entitled, at its own election, to damages or an account of profits for use of the Trade Mark.

The letter (which was sent via email) also included the following reason why the link to Shopzilla should be removed from the online marketing agency’s website:

Passing off [Fox William’s LLP’s] client’s goodwill

Our client has invested significant time and money in developing the Shopzilla® brand making it instantly recognisable amongst the public as a trustworthy and reputable online comparison shopping engine. It is highly likely that the average consumer will be confused, believing that our client is in some manner connected with the Infringing Website, either through ownership and operation or through a commercial relationship or endorsement with the operator of the Infringing Website. Such connection is causing our client damage. As such, your use of Shopzilla® in this way constitutes passing off.

And, apparently, copyright infringement was also mentioned. I’m surprised that simply linking to or mentioning another company or another website constituted copyright infringement. but, nonetheless:

Copyright Infringement

The use of the Infringing Website of text and graphics taken from our client’s websites is an infringement of our client’s copyright. You have copies and communicated the copyrighted work to the public through the Infringing Website.

The use of the copyrighted work has occurred without the consent of our client, the copyright owner. We put you on notice that any continued use of our client’s text and/or graphics (in whole or in part) on the Infringing Website will constitute and infringement of our client’s copyright. This is without prejudice to our client’s position that you already have the requisite knowledge to establish such liability.

datadial posted on their blog about being sued by Shopzilla. Honestly, this is a classic case of “link bait” if I have ever saw one. Sure, they got an email from Shopzilla’s attorney. but really–they’re technically not getting sued (yet), as I bet that Shopzilla’s attorneys have not filed any paperwork with the court. The email that the online marketing agency received was just that–an email requesting a link removal.

It turns out that David Bixler from Shopzilla replied in the comments of the blog post:

I’m terribly sorry you received the letter from our attorney’s office. We appreciate that your site is not a spam site and is not mis-using our trademark. We flag up thousands of backlinks that are potentially spam and unfortunately your site slipped through our filter. Please disregard the notice and let me know if the wine was red or white…I’m sure I can find some twix as well.

Kind regards,
David Bixler
VP, Operations – Shopzilla Europe

Shopzilla is using threatening emails to identify spam (or bad) links to their website in order to try to get them removed.

Did the email really request a link removal properly? Absolutely not. In order to clean up links to your website properly, you have to do the following things:

– Identify the bad links. There are a lot of links pointing to Shopzilla. You have to go through every single link and determine if it’s a bad link or a good link. To me, it sounds as in this case someone did not know what they were doing when they sent out all these emails to site owners trying to get the links removed. 99 percent of the work during link cleanups are identifying the bad links from the good links!

– Contact the site owner. You absolutely have to find the right owner of the site, and this is a manual process. You cannot just send out an email to anyone who you think is involved with the site–using some tool to identify site owners.

– Send the right message. The message sent here from Shopzilla was the WRONG THING TO DO. You have to be kind to people, be courteous to website owners and ask them to remove the link or make it a “nofollow” link. I don’t recommend being nasty with people or threatening. At least not in the first email or contact you make with them. It can come back to bite you–what if the site owner got mad and started doing even more negative SEO to your website? I’ve seen it before. It can happen.

– After your link removal requests you need to then decide whether or not you need to actually do a link disavow with Google and Bing. In many cases, when I’ve gotten links removed (the right links removed), a link disavow is NOT needed.

Link removals take time and they’re mostly a manual process. There are some great tools out there link Link Research Tools that will help you identify suspicious and toxic links to your website. But just using a tool is only half the battle. You have to go through each and every link in order to figure out which are bad and which are good, healthy links. And which links aren’t worth chasing.