Have you ever seen that “moment of clarity” or “awakening” in someones eyes? So often when trying to tell people what they need to do they just don’t get it, they don’t get that moment of clarity. We know that links are on Google’s hit list don’t we. Just the sheer amount of Googlers that were asking me in San Jose, if I had seen a down turn, had me thinking that if their attention and focus is linking buying, where are they becoming weak, so I and had quick peak and

I still see spam, good old BH spam leeching off authority sites,

I still see cross linked networks working,

I still see article and directories propping up sites working,

…. so where are Google winning, well in fairness LINK BUYING, but at a cost. I remember ages ago that Matt Cutts answered a Question about link buying to your competitors, He pretty much said why would you take the risk of lifting your competitors. I always thought that if the competitor was above me already what difference would it make anyway .. lol

Well it’s seems like some people have had an awakening, it seem that they are offering good money for people to build a sites about an industry and they will give you a link budget (£5 - 10k a month) and they will also supply link lists you have TO try and buy from. When I ran this though my tools and datasets, the findings were a “moment of clarity” the two things that I thought were

A) Building authority, my guess later to be used as lead generation or IBl’s

B) Totally poisoned the competitor back links, if they had 10, 50 or 100 of these sites I’m pretty sure that the link profiles could bring down all these sites and competitors, in fact they would be worth reporting their own sites just to bring the network to light lol.

DaveN

Site maintenance may well be made easier by using relative URLS and indeed transferring the domain is easier than if you absolute URLS too. Whilst the absolute URL method may take more time in terms of updating links on each page the reasons for its usage are strong.

Google for one may well miss some relative links, but from an seo point of view and security absolute URLs win hands down. Absolute URLS are much more secure when implementing a CMS change  and less succeptable to hijacking.

Stick with the complete address, giving an entire path  to the file is the way to go when possible.

If you missed it unlucky, if you want more insight into that day .. Jen Slegg wrote pretty much up to the minute before the session, SEO mfg, joeduck both covered the session, Lisa Barone did the best write up I have found by far  and Kevin Ryan did a follow up, so all in all a good days work I guess:)

For all the Kevin Ryan haters out there, personally I don’t think Kevin did a great job but I have seen worse lol , but remember he got landed the panel 5 minutes before the session started so I actually think he came out the other side ok.. for the DaveN haters .. BOOOO.. what do you want me to say, yer here is all my Data take it, and to questions like “why don’t we get any BH hat tips!” because if I mention anything like BH on my blog or speak about it openly it’s get closed down quickly ! then I get BH haters on my case and not wannabe BH Haters :)

DaveN … oh btw Haters :P

Every conference I speak at I tend to get a site clinic, but it still surprises me how many times I see the same old mistakes,

Title Tags: Greg Boser calls it the wish list I call it the 1 out of 3 rule. Basically it’s when you stick all the keywords you would like to rank for,

WeSellFlowers.com Buy Flowers, Plants online, buy flowers online

Please I wouldn’t even click on that title try to structure them well for User first then search engine, it’s no good ranking if you are losing 20% clicks because you title looks poor..

Buy Plants and Flowers online today from WeSellFlowers.com

Also unless you are Ebay or IBM put your brand at the rear, most people won’t have heard of you before so don’t waste that precision real estate,

The Homepage: this is my personal favourite the www or the NON-www pick one and stick to it and 301 the other, I saw more than one of these at SES San Jose in my site clinic, btw you are leaving Page Rank on the table and may cause dupe content issues if you site is down for any period of time, also don’t link back to you home page with index.php root is fine, in the last site clinic I had the worse example

domain.com resolved Pagerank 3
www.domain.com resolved with Pagerank 5

The homepage had 2 links, www.domain.com/default .php and www.domain.com/Default.php , just keep it consistent search engines tend to get this right for you but I have seen case where they don’t and it just all falls apart.

Images: Think load time people, if I have to make small talk in a site clinic becaue your site is taking so long to load (even on a crappy connection people still have those!), Think what a PPC click is going to look like I would hit the back button so fast if it’s taking an age to load. also think Quailty score issues.

Relative URl V Absolute URL : this is a no brainer for me Absolute Absolute Absolute.. just think proxies, what if a proxy hits your site at least your Absolute URL will get you a back link, if you use relative links you get dupe content.

Images that look like banners : nothing to do with Seo more to do with usability, the time that i see people stick special offer banners that look like they are affialite banners never ceases to suprise me

It’s not always that easy to manage a clients portfolio of sites. Especially if there are many people chopping and changing the collection of sites at the same time. I’m wondering just how much “Google Juice” is lost through temporary redirects or simply not directing old site pages to the new site ?

Keep a watchful eye on your  Http Status codes.

well I’m a SEO, so I should know and this is how the internet was destroyed.

Quite a few years ago now before I became the SEO I am, I used to be like everyone else, I would go to a Search Engine, type in what I wanted clicked a few blue links and either bought something or was informed about what I was searching for, it used to take a few seconds and I was Happy, But today things are so different.

So now when I search, I still click a few blue links but do I buy or get informed NO.. I look at the links on the page I have just landed on, but I don’t see them as links, I see NoFollow and Followed links, if I landed on a page with five links and 1 is followed and the rest aren’t , I think that the followed link was a purchased link or just part of this webmasters network ( I would spend 10 - 20 minutes to prove that ) and the nofollow links are affiliate link or just wasted links. and if it was a high pagerank blog, omg I need check to see if the comments are followed or not ..

but it gets worse I have to find the H1 then copy it, and see if page ranks #1 in Google for that phrase then I start deleting words to see how it ranks for shorter tail version of it’s H1, so what’s that all about, I have even found myself shouting at my laptop, can’t you see that the Title and H1 are not SEO synchronised what is this webmaster doing….

But it doesn’t stop there I have an IP to country plugin to show me where the site is hosted, so that I can also check to see if the page I have just found also ranks just as well in the local Serps.. why I have found the page already, just Buy something or be informed I hear myself say, obviously if the site is ranking well for long and short tails queries, in both .com and localised search then have to check the back links out, I have to find the authority links. but by the time I have done all this seriously, I have forgot what I was looking for or why I was searching in the first place, but hell I know why that page was ranking so well..

Then I remember what it was I looking for, not to fall into the same trap I use a different keyword phrase, and sure enough I hear myself swearing under my breath #1 the WIKI the next 3 sites are MFA’s or comparison sites, so I get on my MSN messenger ping a friend and ask them !! and that’s why SEO destroys the internet

What are the Top Seo Blogs in the UK.,, According to Google Trends thats is..

I have been playing a little today, at the Moment It’s Davidnaylor.co.uk and Blogstorm.co.uk are the front runners.. andybeard.eu is third at the moment

I have tried redflymarketing.com, cornwallseo.com, timnash.co.uk, distilled.co.uk

so any ideas make a list of who I should check

DaveN

A website’s size can often be overwhelming especially when there are so many aspects to consider SEO wise. That’s why it’s important to have a clear focus as to what the client really wants from you even if your main role is to lead with knowledgeable direction to site architecture and indeed SEO strategy.

Here we find that bite-sized chunks usually work in terms of offering guidance to the SEO client. We focus on specific areas that really matter to the client. This isn’t always easy and this week I found myself somewhat distracted by the sheer size of the website, so much so in fact that Dave had to pull me back into focus. His guidance was simple “What is it the client is asking you for and what are you actually looking at ?” he told me to forget about the size of the site and concentrate on the task in hand. (This was shortly after I had done analysis on all pages indexed lol)

Dan Horton SEO

Do you really know who you work with ? Well, I’d like to think so. DaveN and I were just having a discussion on the matter of trust. One of the reasons for example that Bronco is successful is that the staff not only work as a team but play as one too, everyone shares an interest in each other. ( OK sorry if this sounds cheesy but it’s true) In amongst all this is Becky, Dave’s wife who keeps everyone organised.

We don’t always get on, that’s true also, but usually a disagreement occurs because someone is exploring a new idea and is highly motivated by it.

We have all heard the saying it can take years to build a reputation, yet seconds to loose it. Possibly trust can work the same. Why am I blogging this ? well if someone asks me something I will ALWAYS run it by DaveN first, Why ? Because he is experienced and is also my boss and has never let me down before. If I am asked to work on a project, I will ALWAYS ask DaveN.

If a client asks me to do something, I will ALWAYS ask DaveN. The reason for asking is not that I can’t think for myself, it’s because ( I hate to admit it) he is usually right.

What if someone asks me to do something on the grounds Dave may not be pleased….. I run it by him too :0)

I have learnt quite a lot this week, particularly that I am more trusting than Dave is and sometimes this leads to situations where I need a hand out of the trenches. So even on a non- work level, I’ll ask DaveN.

Now here is a statement, If someone offered me twice the salary that Dave pays I wouldn’t move. Why? Because strangely it’s not all about money. Could you put a price on learning something new every day…?

OK SEO experts, do you ever admit to asking others ? Whats the trust level like in the organisations you work in or indeed the clients you work for?

Many hosts offer supposedly “advanced techniques” for interaction with the search engines. But what real benefit do these add-on packages and features really have ?  Whilst I accept unreliable connectivity and lack of basic hosting capability can have massive impact on website success, I would still be dubious about hosts that offer “instant ranking success and a head start in Google”.

Its big business these days dedicated SEO servers and packages once only offered by SEO consultants are the norm with special “SEO hosting Packages”.  With recent talks on geographic targeting and localisation many will be reviewing their hosting options.