Go the extra mile or just shut my mouth and take the money?

Posted by stuart as seo, search engine optimization, copy writing

I wrote the other day about a graphic designer I do some site development work for here in my home town.

Another job I do for this designer is a bit of copywriting and proofreading (I worked as a proofreader in the printing industry many moons ago - although you wouldn’t know it by reading this blog ;-))

The proofreading seems to be more like copywriting, the client writes what they want on their website, I re-write it so it flows a little better and makes sense, the client gives me some money, and everybody’s a winner.

My quandary is this: When I re-write this copy, I generally give no thought to SEO. I just make it sound nice, and that’s the end of it. I die a little inside each time I hand over the copy, knowing so much more could have been done with it in an SEO sense, but the client isn’t paying me to do keyword research or write SEO’d copy.
The situation is the same with the website development I do for this designer. I just create the site so it looks as nice as possible given the Photoshop template that the designer gives me. I don’t worry about styling H1, H2 tags etc, I don’t worry about having keyword rich title tags, or having catchy page descriptions. I just make the site how the client wants it, and hand it over. Once again, it pains me to work this way, but given the budget constraints, I have little choice.

The problem is, that if I offer these services to the client, I don’t want to give them unrealistic expectations. Yes I could offer to charge a little more to the clients who are happy to pay for some keyword research, some extra time writing the copy, and the extra time to create an SEO friendly website, but unless they’re prepared to pall for a full SEO campaign (link building, link baiting etc), this would simply raise their expectations with the real risk of seeing little in the way of results.

So what to do?

Do I offer these services to these low value clients? Or do I just keep collecting the money for doing the work that I do?

My lifelong dream has been realised

Posted by stuart as seo, search engine optimization

Well, the lifelong dream I’ve had since about Saturday afternoon when the thought occurred to me

I’ve been of the firm belief for some time now that the blog you are now reading, Pimp My PageRank, was probably the best SEO blog in the world.

Well now I have vindication, but don’t take my word for it, luminaries such as Yahoo and Google agree.

See for yourself:

• Ask Google which is the best SEO blog in the world
• Ask Yahoo which is the best SEO blog in the world

I’m just so proud!

Exhausted your link sources but still not ranked number one?

Posted by stuart as linking, link love, seo, search engine optimization

I’m doing some SEO work for a friend of mine at the moment. It’s been an ongoing thing, the site’s been optimised as best it can be for the keywords in question, I’ve exhausted my list of around 1,000 directories (yes this does work), written and submitted articles to all the worthwhile article directories (this works too), yet he’s still not ranked number one for his main keywords. First page, no doubt, but yet to grab the number one spot.

So what to do? Give up? Sit and wait?

I don’t think so.

We’re obviously on the right track, we wouldn’t be on the first page of results if we weren’t, we’d struggle to improve the on-page or on-site SEO, so it just comes down to links. There’s not a whole lot of other places for us to drop links. This is a particularly competitive industry, so none of his competitors are going to pony up a some linky goodness.

Do we just start buying links? I think not, this is no long term strategy, as we don’t want our ongoing rankings being held to ransom by some random webmaster.

There is one thing we can do though, which can help immeasurably. Whilst we may have used up pretty much all of the places we know of to drop links to this site, we can create another site and do it all over again.

“What, so you can have two sites in the top ten, but neither of them in the number one spot?” I hear you ask?

Well, you’re half right, and half wrong. I know we can move a second site into the top ten for his keywords, we’ve done it once, there’s no reason we can’t do it again. But doing it again gives us one distinct advantage.

We have an authority site to link from.

Whilst I’m a firm believer that a shitload of links is a good way to get a site ranked, there’s also a lot to be said for a single link from an authority site in the same niche. Google obviously thinks our existing site has some sort of authority, or it wouldn’t rank it in this quite competitive local niche.

So we’re off to create a second site. This is a particularly long term strategy, I wouldn’t recommend it for an affiliate or AIS site. The site we’re doing this for is a bricks and mortar business where long term rankings will be particularly beneficial.

This second site won’t simply be a second site for his business, I believe that search engines are smart enough to pick up on things like two websites in the first page of results having the same contact details, addresses etc. This site will simply consist of half a dozen well written and researched articles on the niche in question, with no outgoing links.

The important thing to keep in mind whilst building this second site is to keep it completely un-connectable to the first site. This means:

• Don’t use the same registrar to register the domain name
• Don’t use the same contact details to register the domain name (private registration with a different registrar is good)
• Don’t use the same Google Analytics account to track the site’s statistics.
• Whilst you could probably get away with hosting the site on the same IP as the original site (resellers host thousands of sites on the same IP, so the search engines can’t be sure that sites of a similar subject on the same IP are owned by the same person), it’s probably better to host this site on a different IP or hosting account from the original.
• Try to avoid using the exact same anchor text as you’ve used for the original site when gathering links.
• Don’t use the same web template as you used on the original site.
• Don’t place contact details on the second site.

Once we’ve written our articles and published the site, we start promoting the site in exactly the same way, in exactly the same places where we promoted the original sites:

• We write half a dozen more good quality articles and submit them to article directories
• We hit up our 1,000 or so link directories and drop our links on them (this is a good one to outsource - 1,000 submissions can be bought for around $70, but I find that they can be a bit hit and miss as far as accuracy goes)
• We hit up all the same blogs we did with the original site and start commenting on them using the new site as our URL

Over time, when our page reaches the first page in the search results (or even the second page), we drop a single, good anchor text sitewide link to our original site.

……and wait and see if this link is enough to tip us over into the top spot in the rankings.

Keyword stuffing is alive and well in the SEO industry

Posted by stuart as stupid, spam, seo, search engine optimization

I was doing a little research today in my quest to rank first page in Google for SEO related terms in my home town , when I came across a page that was ranking first page for the term “Adelaide SEO”, but appeared to have no mention of the term in the copy of the page itself.

Cloaking? I wondered….didn’t seem to be.

Then I scrolled down the page. Down, and down, and down some more…..

Wow! This is what I found:

===========================================

Adelaide Web Design

Web Design Adelaide

Adelaide Website Design

Website Design Adelaide

[Company name] specialise in Adelaide website design and are arguably the most recognised Adelaide web developer with Adelaide web design awards [Company name] Website Design is also the adelaide City and Eastern Adelaide Web Design Finalist/Winner of the 2002, 2003 & 2004 Small Business Awards, for Communication Services. Intrinsic with web design and website design is the ability to be found in search engines and not only are we (arguably) the best Adelaide Website developer and Adelaide graphic design house we are also considered one of the most successful adelaide search engine optimisation and/or adelaide search engine marketing exponents.

Adelaide Website Design

Website Design Adelaide

Adelaide Web Design

Web Design Adelaide

Search Engine Marketing Adelaide or Search Engine Optimisation Adelaide, it goes by many names including Adelaide SEO, Adelaide SEM, SEO Adelaide, SEM Adelaide - there are many ways to describe the practice of search engine success.

But what we mean can be summed up in the sentence - there’s little point in building a website if nobody visits. So if you want to be seen online consider [Company name] Australia for website design Adelaide and search engine visibilty.

When you are after website design in Adelaide you can find us online with the following terms:
adelaide website design, adelaide websites, websites adelaide, web design adelaide, website design adelaide, adelaide design, website design adelaide, web site adelaide, adelaide web developer, adelaide website developer, web developer adelaide, website developer adelaide, adelaide webpage, adelaide webpage design, adelaide webpages, webpages adelaide, webpage design adelaide, webpage developer adelaide

When you are after website graphics in Adelaide you can find us online with the following terms:
adelaide web graphics, adelaide website graphics, adelaide webgraphics, webgraphics adelaide, web graphics adelaide, webgraphics design adelaide, adelaide graphic design, adelaide design graphics

However when you want your website to be found try using the following terms:
rank success, rank success adelaide, adelaide seo, adelaide sem, adelaide online marketing, adelaide web seo, adelaide web marketing, web marketing adelaide, online marketing adelaide, adelaide search engine success, search engine success adelaide, seo adelaide, sem adelaide, australia seo, australia sem, australia online marketing, australia web seo, australia web marketing, web marketing australia, online marketing australia, australia search engine success, search engine success australia, seo australia, sem australia

We specialise in:

Adelaide Web Design

Web Design Adelaide

Adelaide Website Design

Website Design Adelaide

=================================================

This is one of Adelaide’s most respected Web Development houses, flagrantly using, getting away with, and ranking with, an SEO tactic that is sooooo 1997 that you’d think that google would be all over it.
I feel sorry for any of their prospective SEO clients. If this is the tactics that they use on clients sites, there may well be website owners wondering why they paid good money for rankings worse than what they started with.
For shame….

It would appear I was wrong all along about anchor text!

Posted by stuart as seo, search engine optimization, search

I’m currently trying out some paid directory submission services, to see what type of service is available for the ridiculously low prices our sub-continental friends charge.

Whilst I understand that directory links are probably not worth that much, at $20 for 300 submissions, I figured that that was still pretty good value. And before anybody mentions it - poor quality backlinks can’t hurt your site, if they could, I could unleash a bit of php to nuke your site into oblivion with about a million dodgy backlinks in fifteen minutes.

Anyhoo, so I’m wading through a plethora of “Confirm your submission to our directory” type emails, which generally have anything from spammy links in them to random SEO advice etc, and I come across this little gem:

Thank you! for your link submission in [directory name] Directory. If your link is approved it will be notified to you by
email. Here are some free seo tips for you. Its important that while
submitting your site to directories you must use your company name or
site name(domain name) in anchor text while giving title. Putting a
keyword in anchor text is a black hat seo and directories taking
keyword in anchor text of a link are getting penalized.

Yeah, those links with your keywords in the anchor text will get you every time!

Sheesh!