SEO | Web Hosting Plans

25Aug/100

Google Speeding Fine

To get to the top of the search engines you need backlinks – everyone knows that – but it is hard work- everyone knows that as well. So there is a massive industry out there now creating autoblogs, link wheels and automated backlinking software. There are even companies out there offering 50,000 backlinks for $50. It is all very tempting. There are a couple of things to be aware of – many of these are get rich quick schemes for the people who have made the software not you. So many of them have 1 page that you need to scroll for 25 minutes to get to the bottom of after reading 100 spun referrals from “ John Smith”. It is all very frustrating.

You might actually stumble upon one system that seems to work. Then before long the word is out and everyone is using the same method – then by magic it doesn't seem to work anymore. So the crowd moves onto the next one.

The warning here is that if you stumble upon something that works – keep it to yourself. If it seems to work too well then you might end up in the Google Sandbox – a speeding ticket!

So if you find the secret sauce then becareful… Is the proof of secret sauce being in a Google Sandbox. Is that the next marketing technique…” you wont find this product in the SERPS because it works so well we are all Sandboxed”

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Sand leaking out of Google Sandbox?

Holidays have been upon us and as a result the blogging died off a bit. One of the good things with the holidays is I don't get a chance to run the analytic tools we use every 5 mins. My holiday is always in a location where computers are rare and the internet simply does not exist.

So it is great to come back from holidays and get a screenshot from one of our clients showing that they are coming back out of the Google sandbox from the MayDay update. So they track 20 odd words where they WERE in the top 20 for most of them back in May - but all were in the top 100. Since the May update they had to change the settings to cover the top 1000 where there was nothing. However some of the slightly longer tail words are back on the screen at 60 and 250. These 2 words came back in the last 2 days. What an exciting screenshot that was to have in my mailbox when I got back.

Just for the record the reason we think that the site was sandboxed was mainly because of duplicate content. ½ the content was duplicate before they joined us and heard about what duplicate content is. Since that time back in December 2009 all new content has been unique. Also since May there has only been a very small amount of link building done to target other keywords (in case that was the reason) it made no difference. Also back in May the sites homepage was changed around a bit to see if it was an internal linking issues.

Finally no new content has been added and no old content has been changed since May. This site lost 90% of its traffic overnight and then was not worth the effort of rewriting.

So is this the start of a recovery? Has the rain washed some of the sand out of the Google sandbox?

WHP
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Paid directories for Dofollow links

Google makes it quite clear that you are not allowed to pay for links. We all know that. You are allowed however to pay for directory submissions where there is editorial control and the directories are not full of all the undesirable websites. Business.com was one of these that everyone knows. There are also about 20-30 that we typically register all our SEO clients for but not all at once. You don't want a speeding fine from Google. I will not list them all here because some of them are not picked up by other SEOs.

I will however say that this is one of the ones we use - V7N Directory - that is not on everyone’s radar but it gets enough attention to be in the top 20 but not the top 5. So there you have it I gave away one of the less obvious paid directories.

On top of the 20-30 general ones there are about the same again niche specific directories.

One of the ways of telling if the directory is “good” is to check its Page Rank. You can generally forget about anything below a PR4. Often if Google gives a penalty to a directory it drops its Page Rank from say 6 to 3. So we ignore all the PR3 and below. For niche directories this does not apply as it is often hard to get the high Page Rank when you are so specialized. There are also sites out there that have lists of directories and their Page Rank. So if you are not sure then search because a directory can go bad if it is sold. By looking at old lists you can see what its Page Rank was previously.

Only pay if……

Regardless of what directory it is the purpose of this post is to make sure you don't hand over money to be put in a category that is not indexed! You are not going to get any direct traffic from this directory anyway – you are only doing it for the dofollow link. So why would you do it if that category has never been crawled by Google? If they have never been there then you are not going to get the credit. Do you follow?

If your category is not indexed then don't pay regardless of which directory it is!

Ontop of that we don't submit to directories where the category we are going get listed in has not been cached by Google in the last month. If Google only visits your category every few months then put your money elsewhere!

If your category has a cached date in Google of older than a month then put your money elsewhere.

For some directories you cannot be 100% sure where you will end up… so there is a bit of a gamble in. Have fun with paid directories but don't throw your money away.

WHP
http://www.webhostingplan.com.au/blog Web Hosting Plans

Free SEO advice!

There are so many SEO blogs out there and if you read them all, threw away the rubbish and picked up the best of everything out there you then might have a clue about what works in SEO land. But really we could fill this blog with all the standard stuff like get links, optimize your page, descriptions etc but we (and everyone else) are not going to put out our hot tips of what works today on an open blog. Even if you hire an SEO you are not necessarily going to learn all the tricks because you could then just do it yourself. Some places like SEO Book where you pay to be a member you will get 90% of the information you need, but let’s be honest if we knew that by getting a link with xyz text from xyz site was the secret ingredient, then everyone would go and get links from there and then 5 minutes later all the “bad areas” of the internet would have polluted the source and destroyed the value.

Why would we or anyone else give out that information on an open blog?

There are a lot of tips out there the building blocks and if you don't have those right then the secret sauce won’t help. That's where all those free guides do come in handy but they are all just a copy and paste of each. Maybe we should do it as well?

If you want to get to the top then you need to pay or work really really hard and have the ability to filter out the noise. You will also need to read the 100,000 SEO blogs and hope that by reading between the lines you can learn a secret or 2. Most blogs are writing to sell something and to stand out you need to say a bit more than your neighbor but you can’t give away the secrets – not that there are any anyway. Most blogs are still pushing ideas that don't work anymore. At least that's what we see from the comment spam we get!

Move on it is 2010.

WHP
http://www.webhostingplan.com.au/blog Web Hosting Plans

a bit about SEO and the plan for the blog

Our blog title is “all about the web”. We plan to talk about whatever is on our minds and at the same time to do some projects of interest. This will all be about the web and whats happening on the web and how you can make the most of it in which ever way you want.. knowledge… money etc.

We will be talking about SEO and what that means and how to make your web page stand out above the rest but only at a basic level. We will only be giving you the information which will help you to get to a Page 3 Ranking in 6 months or so. Everyone here has done it and everyone who will be writing about it has done it. A Page Rank of 3 is achievable within 6 months if you are happy to do the work! We have 2 sites that are actually 5’s but that's not easy. It is almost like the Richter scale in terms of going from a 3-4-5 and beyond. We will help you get to a Page Rank 3 for free – give you the information to get yourself to a 4 but not tell you any of the tricks. They cost and we are not here to sell those and at last count this site was not there yet. Not surprising since it is only 1 month old. We are here to just help your webpage go in the right direction. Don't forget that Page Rank really does not mean anything. It is just funny how obsessed we were with it at the start of our career with Page Rank. It is like a score but after you get to a 3 you will stop following it. Your logs and statistics will be more important. Your conversions rates as well.

We are not just going to be talking about SEO because at last count there were 2,000,000,000,000,000 blogs (almost) on the topic with everyone claiming they know the secrets. Let’s be honest go to Google.com or you local Google and type in SEO or Search Engine Optimization and you will get the people who REALLY KNOW. If you can get into the top 10 for that search in Google then you know what it is about the 1,999,999,xxx,xxx other people might know what it is about but are not the best at it!

The team at Web Hosting Plans
http://www.webhostingplan.com.au/blog

a Dofollow blog

This blog is a “dofollow” blog using link love of the Hobo variety. That means when you comment to posts you will see just your name and the comment until you have posted enough times. Once you have posted enough times you will then see your link for your name and there will be a “dofollow” – or rather there won’t be a “nofollow”. So the page rank or link juice will flow to your site. We want you to comment and we are happy to reward you. Why else would you bother? That's easy isn’t it? There is a catch or two however

To get this reward you have to add “value” to the post.

o This can be in the form of finding mistakes ( you do this and you will get instant link love!).

o Adding words to your post that Google will love to pick up on! So in that way it does not have to be a long post.

o You can link to it from your website if you think it adds value (link love will instantly flow)

o Spending more than 1 minute thinking about what you are writing where OTHER people would like to read it.

o This blog is here to help you and the comments need to help other people. If we feel they don't then they won’t get approved it is as simple as that. We would prefer to have no comments than 2000 full of spam.

Posts that say things like “great post” or thanking me for this post will not even appear. You can thank me in the ways listed above rather than saying so.
If you hate the post and add value like above it will get posted.
If your webpage is in “bad neighborhoods” as defined by Google or Web Hosting Plan on the day then we won’t approve the comment. Generally we are not interested in gambling, Viagra, free money, scams etc. We am more interested in the honest, hardworking businessman and you will get rewarded.

Enjoy

The team at Web Hosting Plans
http://www.webhostingplan.com.au/blog

Web Hosting Plans – blog Its all about the web

Google Speeding Fine

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Sand leaking out of Google Sandbox?

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Paid directories for Dofollow links

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Free SEO advice!

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a bit about SEO and the plan for the blog

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a Dofollow blog

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