Ok maybe I’m been a little harsh here, over the weekend I did a quick search on Google for”Armani Suits Harrogate” clicked on #1 ufindus and been an SEO instantly thought hmmmm what going on here then.

so is this bad or good practice.

http://www.ufindus.com/fashion_clothing_shops/harrogate when I went to this page, I notice that the word Armani wasn’t visible that I had search for.

So a quick view source and Ctrl-F for Armani I found the text in the meta and in a Div

class=”category_desc_header” id=”catDesc” style=”display: none”

hmm the ok so “Show Category Description” display the text

“Are you looking for fashion clothing shops in Harrogate? Choose from a range of designer labels bringing you the freshest fashionable clothing. We have a choice of fashion clothing shops stocking a variety of designer labels in Harrogate today. Fashion clothing can be found to suit all occasions and tastes. If you are looking for suits and evening wear there’s a great choice of designers to choose from. Suits and evening wear for men and women are available from well known names such as Armani, Paul Smith, Yves Saint Laurent, Dolce and Gabbana and many more. Even casual wear can be spruced up a little with a choice of casual clothes from designer labels. Great for nights out or dress down days at work designer casual wear is great for when you want to look smart without putting in to much effort. Casual designer fashion clothing is available from brands such as Diesel, Firetrap, Ringspun, Sonetti and Teddy Smith. If you want to fit in at the coolest parties and hippest clubs then designer streetwear is the choice for you. Fashion clothing from streetwear designers allows you to relax in comfort whilst creating an effortless style. Designer streetwear is available from brands such as Ecko, Akademics, Rocawear, LRG, Addict, Carhartt and Zoo York. Find fashion clothing shops in Harrogate with the results below.”

I wouldn’t class it has been hidden text more misleading text, but adding paid listings from Overture for the keywords like “Fashion Clothing Shops” so I get ..

Fashion World UK
Top ladies 2008 fashion in sizes 12-32; Save 10% on your first order.
www.fashionworld.co.uk

Celebrity Style at ASOS
The leading online fashion store Buy now for next day delivery.
www.asos.com

which neither sell Armani and neither are in Harrogate, which means if you live in Harrogate and need a suit quickly, drive to Harvey Nichols in Leeds

DaveN

after a meeting last week I decided that a client had enough reasons to start using sub-domains on a city level,

I still feel you have to be careful thou, take when google killed all the “uk.com” sub-domain websites, sites that used to rank for #3 fireworks (fireworks.uk.com) just died overnight, they went on and decided to rebrand and rebuild by the looks of it.

Then you had AVON that didn’t rank for avon because they where on avon.uk.com they do now of course, but while Google was killing the UK.com we had Craigslist doing this http://www.google.com/search?q=talent+gigs craigslist.org have 195 of the 200 listings in google is that right ? in fact they have had this market share since 7th July 2006 see looking for a talent gig

so what’s the opinion on sub-domains good or evil ?

Dave

Further to Dave’s post on checking backlinks maybe it’s time to make a stand on effective link building. In my eyes there certainly seems to be too much fear about who is linking to who and why. You are looking at launching an effective link building strategy yet your initial thoughts are I’m not going to bother with the lower PR sites as they wont help my website. WRONG. Starting out with this mindset won’t help your campaign.

How about thinking of site relevance and actively promoting your own website by thinking of sites that may be a valuable resource to your visitors? OK, i know that sounds like a textbook quote, but are you afraid that if you link to someone else your site visitors will suddenly decline and favour the other persons website over yours?

Seems to me there is way too much focus on how sites are ranking, also fear of approaching a competitor about links. The expression keep your friends close and your enemies closer springs to mind here.  There are of course many ways to make your site linkage effective.

Dan Horton SEO

It’s the age old problem. Explaining to clients that SEO takes time. Many watch their rankings on a daily basis, they may have dropped 3 places in Google. Our answer is always the same… How are your sales? How many people contacted you about using your services? What’s new about your site ? Have you extended your service portfolio recently?

Writing fresh content also seems to be an area that many websites struggle with, therefore promoting the companies services can be a lot harder for the SEO. I often find it difficult to understand why people who have a site struggle to tell people what service they are providing and indeed what the website is all about. Put itthis way if a website has just two sentences on your services how can you rank for that topic area?

The focus on what the SEO role is all about sometimes gets lost in building the initial foundations of the site, the really simple stuff.

Dan Horton SEO

I think the big 3 search engines have done a great job at stopping normal SEO’s and web masters checking out back links.

First off Live.com well they just pulled the link: and linkdomain: a while ago, hopefully they will add it into the webmaster.live.com

Google hasn’t for years shown real link data and yahoo show’s nofollow links and historical links that have been removed months and months ago..

so let’s look at some numbers for www.davidnaylor.co.uk which we can get

Google Webmastercentral returns 34,903
Google “link:www.davidnaylor.co.uk” 1,730 pages
Google “davidnaylor.co.uk” = 9,560 pages ( shows occurrences )

Yahoo siteexplorer UK version Inlinks (8,348)
Yahoo siteexplorer US version Inlinks (134,594)
Yahoo search for davidnaylor.co.uk -davidnaylor.co.uk returns 1500 ( shows occurrences -my site )

Of course you can only get around 1000 results unless you are the site owner, so what can we use other than the commercial competitive analysis tools like Hitwise, Syntryx etc etc ..

DaveN

Ok so Mel Carson has finished the London Marathon, way to go Mel. So I was looking for a new cause then I remembered Tomima Edmark’s blog. Her site was covered in SES NYC (the bouncing sports bra one hehehe). Anyway her website Herroom, which sells everything from panties by Calvin Klein to ladies shapewear by Spanx, also runs the Undies awards. Last year they got over 12000 votes , this year they have pledged to donate 25cents for each individual voter (up to 100,000 voters) to www.cervicalcancercampaign.org.

Once the voting process is complete the voter can click the Count Me In! And Tomina Donates 25cents. This isn’t just for you Seo Chicks, they have a Mens section too! So get over to the Undies Awards and vote and tell as many people has you can for this worthwhile cause.

DaveN

yes as the rest of the world shout about how great the new live maps are .. in the UK we only get MultiMaps.. on the plus side multimaps is a better mapping solution for the UK anyway,

DaveN

I just had a client send me a password, which I have told them they need to change, what made me laugh was Becky my wife said “it’s better than the old password” which was password .. lol, then that reminded me of the top 10 passwords ..
darkreading had these top 10 passwords :

1. (username)
2. (username)123
3. 123456
4. password
5. 1234
6. 12345
7. passwd
8. 123
9. test
10. 1

Threadwatch had in 2007

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (your first name)

modern life is rubbish has a UK List in 2006 :

1. 123
2. password
3. liverpool
4. letmein
5. 123456
6. qwerty
7. charlie
8. monkey
9. arsenal
10. thomas

But across europe the top 10 is still

1. Password
2. 12345
3. Football Club
4. Partners Name
5. letmein
6. Monkey
7. Own name
8. 1234
9. Qwerty
10. First school or Colour

and people wonder why their Blogs get hacked !!

DaveN

Yahoo is said to be in the final stages to carry search ads from Google. it’s report that the 2 week test which be limited to around 3% of the US traffic will be part of a test that could lead to a much bigger partnership.
this test is designed for the 2 sides to evaluate the potential revenue.

I really can’t see how this benefits the search industry, but maybe it’s part of a the master plan from Microsoft, I mean Microsoft is a veteran with it’s long-running anti-trust case and are well aware that competitors don’t win anti-trust case, Governments do !

DaveN

NO NO NO I was reading soloseo and this quote I disagree with and agree with !

One aspect of doing International SEO is having your content available in other languages. Hiring a translator to translate your blog is cost prohibitive for most bloggers, running $50-$250 for each language per post

yes the cost can be prohibitive, but don’t call in translators all my experience tell’s me bring in an Interpreter

Dave say’s “he had been bloody stupid”

Translated by Google “Hij was bloedige dom”

Joost Says “hij was ontzettend stom geweest”

Translated by Google : He had been extremely stupid

you see the Dutch tend not to use bloody the way the Bloody English do ..

DaveN