I’m probably just super-paranoid, but some times I feel like Google is watching my every move and removing opportunities that would be available to someone who didn’t publicly admit they were an SEO.
Prior to the last PageRank update I felt it was appropriate to submit this blog to a few quality web directories. Before submitting, I qualified these directories based on a number of factors. One factor of course was how much PageRank was displayed when viewing the category I was submitting too. In this case they had a PageRank 0, 3 and 4.
The first one was a newly discovered directory that allowed free blog submissions, and the following two were directories I regularly recommend and that have been around for a very long time.
After I submitted my blog to the first one for free, I noticed Matt Cutt’s blog was the very next approved submission. Now Google is no longer caching the page I’m listed on. The category I submitted to in second and third directories used to have visible PageRank, but as of the last PageRank update those categories now show a PageRank of zero too. However, the PageRank of their home pages went up.
During that time, another free resource I’m always able to squeeze out a PageRank three company profile for my client and personal websites is also now showing PageRank zero for all company profiles listed in the same PageRank 5 category my company is listed in. I’m certain they should all have a PageRank 3.
Also, I took on a new client during this time and submitted him to two of these quality directories. Beforehand, the categories I submitted him to had a PageRank 3, PageRank zero, and were cached by Google. Now neither one of them are cached, and both show a PageRank zero.
Coincidence or manual edit?
I’m probably just being paranoid because I haven’t done anything “wrong”, but it sure has me wondering if I should stop using so many of Google’s free tools.
Paying to get listed in web directories is probably one of the most controversial issues when it comes to SEO. I’ve recommended a few quality directories on this website for awhile. Since I still get so many people asking if it is “really” okay to submit to directories, I thought it would be helpful to let you hear directly from Google that not all directories are not considered bad and some business directories do actually carry weight!
So what makes a quality directory?
Here’s a video with Matt Cutt’s giving advice on what to look for:
I know of several SEOs who say all directories are bad, and you’re bad if you submit to them. But you can see from this video that is simply just not the case. What’s bad is the number of “experts” blogging about things that just aren’t true.
From the video:
How to Identify a Quality Web Directory
They also seek out quality websites rather than just waiting for submissions
Strict editorial guidelines
High Standards
Cost of directory
Offer value-added
What is a Low-quality Directory
Everyone gets in
Whatever anchor text you want
Automatic approval process
Now you have it directly from the horse’s mouth – when looking for link sources, a few high-quality web directories such as Yahoo! and BOTW are okay by Google, and can even help increase your search engine rankings.
A few months ago I bid on an SEO project for a local contractor in the Seattle area. We had agreed on some terms and planned on moving forward. He seemed committed to the project, but for whatever reason I never heard from him again. I followed up a few times but then wrote it off as a dead lead.
A few weeks ago I decided to check out his website. He had a new one, plus at least four more nearly identical ones.
Clearly someone else got the job.
Too bad for him, though. The “SEO” who has been hired to do the work obviously is just in it for a quick buck. This “expert” has talked his new client into buying several keyword rich domain names, made near duplicate sites using the same WordPress template and linked them all together in the footer.
This hired “SEO” is a real gem. He is so cheap he didn’t even use private registration. Not that I condone this practice, but if you’re going to be so black hat you could at least try to cover your own tracks. It took me all of ten seconds to check the whois record, and a quick Google search to verify who this ripoff is.
All of the sites used appear to be brand new (never registered before) domain names, were registered less than two months ago, and some are already ranking on the first page of Google for exact matches of the keywords in the domain names. However not for any of the keyword variants or when the keywords are out of order. And the company’s main website is still nowhere to be found.
www.companyname.com – original
Created On:18-Feb-2010 00:33:14 UTC
www.yyyybuilderseattle.xxx
www.yyyyyyycontractorseattle.xxx
www.seattleyyyyremodel.xxx
www.seattleyyyyremodeling.xxx
I didn’t want to disclose too much information, because even though I would like to expose this shady SEO, I would hate to see the client get penalized for what his consultant did. I don’t think it’s his fault he picked the wrong guy. He went with the cheapest, and that’s exactly what he got!
I’m starting to see a ton of duplicate content websites in the SERPS, mostly companies doing this very thing. I can see how it might be appealing to some – it took this kid less than two months to get first page ranking by linking handful of new sites together and pointing another cluster of spammy links at them. Even so, he didn’t do a very good job. I could have got him ranking for a lot more keywords. There’s also a well-known attorney in the Seattle area who has about twenty duplicate websites, and he ranks well for most of them – at least the last time I checked. I still don’t think it’s very effective overall, though.
But what’s saddest about this particular story is the client probably thinks his SEO is great because he is already ranking for exact matches of the targeted key-phrases, i.e., the domain names. Not with the actual company website still, though. Obviously it is a little too easy to rank keyword-rich domain names. Some of these duplicate domains are .net, .org, .com or whatever the so-called SEO could match the targeted keywords with. There is no consistency.
The client already had an aged domain name, it would have been pretty easy to rank him for all of those keywords with just the one domain. Plus a lot more professional and a much better strategy for the long-term. The tactic used in this example really only benefits the SEO – potentially making him a quick buck or two. By the time the client gets penalized for these duplicate websites, the SEO will be long gone, and the client will be stuck starting from scratch.
Part of me feels like I should report this SEO and to say something to the site owner. But I figure I didn’t get the contract, and I don’t know the prospect any more than that, so It’s really none of my business. I guess maybe the best thing I can do is just not say anything at all?
I’ve been meaning to write this post for almost a year now, but I just keep coming up with other things to write about.
For those of you who do SEO on a daily basis, you probably already know how much easier an SEO toolbar can make your job. But if you’re not using one, then I definitely recommend you try this one out. For the longest time I worried about how much time I’d lose every day if I couldn’t use the toolbar from SEOBook. That was until I remembered about SEOquake’s Toolbar.
Thank goodness the SeoQauke toolbar is very much like the tool bar from SEOBook. I really like most of the features on both of these. There are a couple of default features on the SeoQuake toolbar not found on SEOBook’s that are interesting, such as how many pages are indexed by Bing and the number of internal and external links are on a page. I can’t say either on of those is really all that important, though. In replace of those, SEOBook has a few other features that I’ve grown to love, like the DMOZ and Yahoo! listing checker, Compete uniques, SEO X-Ray, and a better nofollow link checker. Other than that, everything else is almost identical when viewing a web page.
SeoQuake also has an SEO toolbar for the Google chrome web browser.
SeoQuake definitely ranks a close second, just below SEOBook’s in my list of the best free SEO Toolbars. Next is SEOmoz’s MOZbar, and Bruce Clay’s SEO Toolbar. I haven’t tested SEOmoz’s toolbar in a long-time nor have I used Bruce Clay’s recently either. Both of those may be great toolbars for your needs, since they do offer numerous other metrics not included in my top two. But last I checked, they lacked most of the free features I found most useful for my business. I have never tested their paid versions.
It had been several months since this last happened and I thought the problem had been fixed, but apparently it is not because last week some time ALL of my Backpage ads were “community removed”!
I have been using Backpage.com’s free classifieds for a couple of years now, so I am well-versed in their “terms of use”; and I don’t believe any of my ads were in violation. But even so, they were all removed again.
There were actually several more than just the ones shown in the image above.
I’ve dug through the forums, but mostly there is just a lot of SPAM and people giving each other a hard time in there. I also emailed support a few months ago, they replied asking for additional details, but after providing the details I never heard from them again. So I figured I’d write this post to see if anyone else was having the same issue, and maybe together we can figure it out collectively.
Beyond some of the typical tactics that would get you banned from any website(which I wasn’t employing), here were some of the site specific reasons given in the forum for an average user who might get their posting removed:
Don’t post an ad multiple times within a 7 day period
Don’t post the same ads in multiple cities
Posting advertisements in the wrong categories
It couldn’t have been the first reason because I only post my ads once every two weeks just to be safe. There is a possibility it could be the second reason since I did post similar ads in multiple cities, but only one ad ever two weeks. Meaning if I posted an ad in Seattle this week, I waited two weeks before I posted a similar ad in Tacoma. So that doesn’t seem like a very logical reason to me. And last all of my ads were posted in the appropriate category, as far as I can tell.
The one thing I did different this week was post a commercial add in the clothing for sale section. I wasn’t sure if this was appropriate or not, but after seeing about 90% of the ads in there were commercial listings, I figured it must be okay. Most of the ads listed there now are for commercial websites too!
According to this line under User Conduct:
17. Posting free ads promoting links to commercial services or web sites except in areas of the Site where such ads are expressly permitted;
All of these ad postings could be in violation of their Terms of Use. However, I don’t see where on the site it says commercial ads are or are not permitted, do you?
In any case, and whatever the reason, I don’t see why that would cause all of my ads to be “community removed”? Shouldn’t only the one ad and any “duplicate” ads be removed? Many of these ads were completely unrelated. Plus how would the community know which ads I had since always selected the radio button “No, do NOT show links to my other postings”?
And it definitely wasn’t link-SPAM, it wouldn’t help anyway now that Backpage has added NoFollow to free advertising links.
I think something else is going on. Maybe it’s just that their software is buggy, I don’t know.
Is anyone else having the same issue or know what is causing this?
Right now there seems to be a mad rush to get listed in free local listing services like Google Maps and other location-based search service websites. If you’re like most people, you probably get a little overwhelmed trying to figure out which of these online websites to submit to too. Of course there is likely some benefit to submitting to them all. While many people have written off Yellow Pages websites in search of the next hyped up social search service, I have found some of the “old school” platforms still offer remarkable value for location-based businesses.
SuperPages is one of the websites on the top of my list. Here are a few reasons why I recommend submitting your business to SuperPages:
Your Business Listing Will Appear in Multiple Web Resources
SuperPages.com
Yellowpages.lycos.com
TrueLocal.com
SwitchBoard.com
LocalSearch.com
Just to name a few of them.
No Aggressive Sales Calls Following Your Submission
Many of the online Yellow Pages require you to speak to someone before they will approve your listing, and try to confuse you with several paid offers during the submission process. That is not the case with SuperPages.com. There are some offers, but it is pretty straightforward, and I can’t recall anyone following up with a high-pressure sales call after my submission.
Quick Approval. Quick Indexation.
Some SuperPages competitors take months to approve your listing. All of my submissions to SuperPages have been approved within a or two day, and the listing was index in Google within another day or so. Many of the other Yellow Pages business listings never get indexed by Google at all.
Helps Your Google Maps Listing
Someone else who uses SuperPages may submit a review to your SuperPages listing, that review will get picked up by Google and show it in Google Maps. As you know this helps with your ranking in Google Maps.
There are also several other features available for your free listing, and some paid services too. So you might want to check it out. Unfortunately the website link in your listing doesn’t pass any PageRank, so it’s not going to help your business website rank in the organic search results. Even so, getting listed there is still well worth the few minutes it takes to submit your business.
Figuring out where to submit your listing can be a bit confusing, because there is also the social side to the site with a separate login. You will need submit your free business listing here, then it will show up in SuperMedia’s network of websites including SuperPages.com.
Good luck. I hope you found this review useful, and benefit from their free service!
I don’t know about you, but I stopped worrying about using XML sitemaps on most of the websites I manage a long time ago. Frankly, I felt It was a complete waste of my time trying to keep them updated regularly. There was no noticeably difference in the way Google crawled each website, or indexed the updated pages. So I DON’T agonize over them anymore.
I think site-maps are a great idea, and maybe they’ll be better in the future, but I honestly feel like site-maps have been more of a nuisance than anything. They give a false sense of security that a page will be indexed or updated in a timely manor. And from my experience, an XML sitemap submission does not guarantee much of anything.
If you have a website or pages you want to get crawled frequently, here are a few things you might want to put your focus on before you worry too much about your XML sitemap.
Add a blog to your website! I can’t emphasize this enough. If you have a website, you need a self-hosted blog. Twitter is great, and so is facebook, but a blog brings people and the search robots to your website. Update it weekly, and you’ll establish yourself as an authority, attract readers and links, plus Google will crawl your website for updated content more frequently.
Link to your important pages! Do you have several “important” pages many clicks into your website? If so, you need to bring them closer to your home page. If you have several links on your home page to the less important pages, you may want to rethink your navigation structure.
Get more links! If your website isn’t being crawled very frequently, maybe you need more links. Link-building is still as important as ever. Don’t ever underestimate the power of link-building.
Create a static HTML sitemap. A static sitemap is great because it helps users find the most important content on your website. Obviously, it will do the same for the search engine robots too.
Even if an XML sitemap helps get your pages indexed, it’s not going to help much with your rankings. An important page that wouldn’t have been indexed otherwise, isn’t going to show up in the top of the search results if it isn’t getting any PageRank. Don’t get too excited about getting your pages indexed. Indexation doesn’t equal ranking.
If you use a content management system like wordpress, you can try a sitemap generator. I haven’t used it myself, but this one has over a thousand reviews, most of which are very positive.
In conclusion: If rankings are important to you, then finish optimizing your website before you worry too much about your XML sitemap.
What has your experience been like using an XML sitemap? Has your experience been different than mine, or about the same?
As you probably already know, getting reviews for your business is the best way to increase your rankings in Google’s local business center – Google Maps. Surprisingly, one of the most common questions I get is how to submit a review for a business listed in Google Maps. So, I’ve created this video and even written the steps below to assist with that explanation in the future.
Steps for submitting a review for a business listed in Google Maps:
Type in the name of the business and click on “Search Maps”
Locate the business you would like to submit a review for and click on “more info >>”
Verify it is the correct business, then scroll down and click on “Write a review” in the center of the page
Log-in with your Google Account or create a new one
Takes you directly to the review submission form where you can start by filling in a title for your review
Rate the business
Write your review
Hit save!
That’s it! Your review should be live within a few hours, if not immediately. If you are having issues you can visit: http://maps.google.com/support/, or you can ask me question in the comments section below.
P.S. This is the first video I made using Microsoft Expression Encoder 3 Screen Capture, and I would really like to improve the quality of future videos. If anyone has any recommendations, please leave your suggestions in the comment section below. Thanks, I really appreciate it!
Recently I added a few affiliate links to this website. One of which is BOTW.org, which requires no additional affiliate code to track referrals. Technically speaking, it should be getting its full share of link juice. I have always recommended Best of The Web Directory to my readers and my clients, and was blogging about them in a positive light long before I ever added them to the sidebar. So here’s my question for you: should I fear being penalized if I don’t use NoFollow on the outbound link?
Using the NoFollow attribute is unnatural for me. I have never recommend a company to my readers that I wouldn’t use myself. I think the only NoFollow attribute I use is in the comments and in the footer of this blog; and that is only because I don’t know much about the company who created this template. However, at the same time I feel kind of bad about that because in my eyes they’ve earned a DoFollow link by creating the very template that i like and use for my website.
I don’t actively sell links on this blog, and when anyone has contacted me to add a DoFollow link to their website through a product reveiw or similar, for compensation, I have denied. In some cases, if they had a product that I felt might be a good fit for my readers, I have offered to let them write a guest post with a DoFollow link as long as the post was informational and not promotional, and the links complimented their message. Also I’ve said they could put one non-promotional link in their author bio at the end of the post.
What are you’re thought on using NoFollow? When and where should it be used when putting advertisements on your website? Am I doing it properly on this blog?
I’d love to hear your experiences and opinions. Thanks!
It looks as if Google is really cracking down on blogs selling links ads. For instance, a little while back I noticed several popular city-blogs in my area which lost Google PageRank on most of their pages except the home page and maybe one or two others that I missed. These are well-respected blogs in their community. The thing all of these blogs have in common is that they have DoFollow links in the sidebar and throughout the site where advertisers are linked to through either a text link or a banner link.
Two example blogs are the West Seattle Blog and the B-Town Blog, which used to have Google PageRank visible throughout their sites, but now show a PageRank of zero on nearly every page except the home page. I haven’t paid close enough attention to say for sure whether those websites have actually been penalized in any way other than not showing PageRank in the toolbar, but I bet they aren’t very happy about it and it definitely doesn’t look too good.
Part of me thinks it is great that Google is cracking down on them because I feel like most bloggers or businesses outside of the SEO industry can get away with selling frowned-upon type services, or manipulating the search results for their own websites as long as they play ignorant. Whereas someone who acknowledges themselves as an SEO is likely have their every action scrutinized. It would be nice to have a more even playing field. But on the other hand, it is obvious most of the major websites with bigger pockets are still free to do what they want. Which furthers my conclusion Google is getting even worse about showing favoritism towards the already wealthy major brands. Thus making it even more difficult for most of us to compete with them.
I know of several of these brands, or brand-backed investor websites that can get away with just about anything, and I’m sure Google does too. But, I’m not sure I want to start outing anyone specifically just yet, on this blog. It’s not going to help me any, and will probably only hurt my reputation and my business going forward. So instead of telling you who’s getting away with what, I think my time is better spent sharing what has worked for me, and what I watch out for. In this case it appears the smaller guy really has to go by the book, whereas the brands don’t really have to fear being penalized for the same things. Which is notable – by recognizing how you fit into these categories can be a total game changer regarding how you’re allowed to practice SEO and operate your website, without fear of being penalized by the search engines.
Do you think it is good that Google is cracking only down on these “smaller” websites and blogs? Have you seen this with any of the larger brands too, or do you think Google is playing brand favoritism?
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I’m probably just super-paranoid, but some times I feel like Google is watching my every move and removing opportunities that would be available to someone who didn’t publicly admit they were an SEO. 
Right now there seems to be a mad rush to get listed in free local listing services like Google Maps and other location-based search service websites. If you’re like most people, you probably get a little overwhelmed trying to figure out which of these online websites to submit to too. Of course there is likely some benefit to submitting to them all. While many people have written off Yellow Pages websites in search of the next hyped up social search service, I have found some of the “old school” platforms still offer remarkable value for location-based businesses.
Recently I added a few affiliate links to this website. One of which is 
It looks as if Google is really cracking down on blogs selling 
