Posts Tagged ‘seo’

A Right Royal Contradiction by DMOZ

Posted in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on February 12th, 2009 by admin – Be the first to comment

Today’s news features the rebranding / re-launch of royal.gov.uk

This site has 30,500 pages indexed by Google. The domain expires on 30th March 2009 (hope they remember to renew) and 4 other sites listed on the hosting server!

A Right Royal Contradiction by DMOZ
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Direct from DMOZ -

“How do I get my site listed in more than one category?
You should submit your site to the single most appropriate category that is directly relevant to your site’s content. Please only submit your site one time. The ODP editors reserve the right to use their editorial discretion to determine which category or categories your site will ultimately be placed.”

This is the statement given by DMOZ on how to get your website listed in it’s world largest and renowed hand edited directory.

So why then (and many website owners will be interested to know this if they have had issues with multiple site submission with DMOZ) does royal.gov.uk have 89 seperate DMOZ listings?

I’ve often seen forum postings by very frustrated website owners who have waited 3 years to get appropriate responses from this organisation!

In this instance there’s no excuse why there’s one rule for the rich and famous and one for the minions!


Google’s suicide act

Posted in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on February 12th, 2009 by admin – Be the first to comment

Here’s a lovely story of hypocrisy to have a laugh at.

For a long time, I’ve been an advocate of the integrity of Google’s policy thinking about SEO from the users perspective – always having their end goal in mind as searchers.  SEO fundamentally from Google‘s viewpoint and from SEMPO‘s conceptual model starts with providing the searcher with a quality response at the search engine interface. This is still a policy I adopt and follow too – it will always have my support, otherwise we would end up with the dire non-sensical index which is prevalent on live.com (aka MSN).

 

“This idea is the foundation block upon which

the Google Webmaster Guidelines are built”


According to this process of delivering quality SEO methods and techniques we are to assume that SEO is akin to a game of chess.  It’s a slow process of strategy, thought and intellect.  Each time your opponent makes his move, the whole game changes, you re-assess the board and you think of your next move.  I like this model! I like chess!

The last blog post I made was on the subject of trying to take shortcuts in SEO by buying in your links.  There’s a whole industry built upon this principle alone – which very soon is about to detract;  Not because of world markets and recession, but because of the core issue of integrity in delivering SEO.

SEO really aught to be about thought which then transposes into credible and honest actions and nothing else. It should not be about shortcuts, copying and duplication, it should hold fast a line of honesty if it is to be worthy and of merit to us all.

Millions of pounds wasted!

Global players in the digital marketing arena buy in links for their blue chip clients – major brands in the retail sector, on the high street, the car showroom and the B2B arena have all relied upon internet marketing agencies sourcing paid links – we’re not just talking a few thousand  – we’re talking millions of pounds being spent in this sector – and very soon this will be all for nothing.  Those millions will be wasted – and the agencies that delvered the campaigns will be struggling to find the “right” words to compensate thier blue chip clients.

Here’s the point – I have domains which are number 1 in Google – in sectors which are competitive – these domains (and there are three I can think of) are great examples of SEO keyword phrase rich portals which are set up with a specific need in mind.  They compete against domains with PR 4 and higher, they compete against domains with hundreds of links in but these domains win hands down in SERPS every single time and they have NO INBOUND LINKS!

Onsite or Offsite – which is best?

I get asked the question about which is best – onsite or offsite.  Neither is my answer – they both have a function, they have different qualities and they cannot be compared.  The objectives and the purpose is different.  The delivery and the scope is different.  Each is unique in it’s own right and each helps deliver a great SEO campaign for one of my clients.

Google’s suicide attempt!

Google has caught itself out by playing the SEO game using the shortcuts which it advises us all not to use!

Yes – Google’s introduction of reporting companies that have purchased paid links and those that have used them has gone full circle and landed Google Japan in the mire as they have followed the route of purchasing paid links in order to get themselves a few steps ahead in the search engine wars! Follow the full story here…

http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com/2009/02/google-gets-pagerank-penalty.html

 

 


Google Webmaster Tools Vs Paid Links!

Posted in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), SEO Tools on December 29th, 2008 by derbyshireseo.co.uk – Be the first to comment

Good move Google!

SEO Standards

I was reading this week an article about introduction of standards into Search Engine Marketing and the SEO Community by Chris Boggs.

I whole heartedly agree that the industry has attracted a number of new players into the market place that are inexperienced and poorly qualified – but then hasn’t every industry?  Each industry develops its own mechanisms and processes for weeding out the men from the boys or the sharks from the virtuous.

In a very natural way, pricing determines what you are going to get.

Anyway, this post is not going to follow the route of a full discussion on the quality assurance mechanisms for the industry,  I just wanted to demonstrate a move Google has taken to rid the market of “Paid Linking” practices.

Paid Links – A good way to go?

A colleague of mine was blogging recently and said, sure -what’s the issue with paid links? All links are good  -surely? and I declined to comment.  Had I had more time and the inclination I should have gone on to point out what the actual issues are.

Like everything else in life – there’s no shortcuts:  SEO done properley requires effort.  If you’re looking for a shortcut to traffic generation, you want PPC.

The foundation of SEO is built upon the user experience at the search engine interface and the user experience when they get to the website they choose to investigate – the former always has to come first, otherwise, we negate the need for SEO.

What’s important to the individual at the search engine interface is that they get back a SERPS set that demonstrates authority on a given subject (key phrase).  We have all been there, searching for something and all we get back is a range of dross and no matter how complex the boolean operators we use to query, we still get advertising portals full of adverts and nothing about our chosen subject.

My Ideal

My ideal for a search engine is to follow the fine example of indexing by the International Book Publishing Industry and Libraries Services – ISBN Codes and Dewy Decimal!  If I could tell the search engine that i’m not interested in commercial sites as part of my search, then I would get closer to the results I actually want. Technorati has made a move with Blogging to get users to assess authority and they also have a rank system for blogs. Quite a useful concept.

Anyway, I digress again – Google has introduced “Report Paid Links” into it’s Webmaster Tools.

Webmaster Tools

When you login to Webmaster Tools on the right hand side of the screen is an option to “Report Paid Links”. This is a direct move by Google to identify who has purchased links and who has sold them. Don’t think that you can nobble a competitor either by reporting paid links when thats not the case.  The software Google deploys can identify a true case of paid linking just in the same way it has the sophistication to identify duplicate content of a paragraph of text across billions of web pages!

google paid links 1024x357 Google Webmaster Tools Vs Paid Links! | SEO

Google Says NO to Paid Links

That’s a great move for improving the quality of SERPS provided by Google and great for the industry too.

Great Result for the SEO Community

When you come to doing your next search in Google it’s now more likely that the sites at the top have a natural authority for being there.

XML Sitemaps – How to:

Posted in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on August 21st, 2006 by derbyshireseo.co.uk – Be the first to comment

Understanding XML Sitemaps

There are two types of sitemaps.  One is a web page that people browse on a website to see an overview of the sites contents, the other is usually an XML file embedded into the root directory of the website (unseen to users) that assist search engines with what to index, how frequently and what priority to give to pages.

This website will tell you everything you need to know about the Sitemap XML protocol which has been recently agreed by Yahoo!, Google and MSN.

If you don’t have an XML sitemap, consider creating one and adding it to your website.

Everything you need to know about Sitemap at http://www.sitemaps.org.