Last week I blogged about unethical search engine optimization practices we uncovered while getting a new SEO client going. Actually, it was more SEO fraud, as the “service provider” was charging their client but actually sabotaging them. Fraud’s more the word for it.

Anyhoo, today we established a new relationship with a local modular home builder. We’ll be taking over their website maintenance and search engine optimization. Heck of a great guy, the owner, and I look forward to a long and mutually rewarding relationship.

His current site is terrific, his previous webmaster did a fantastic job of building a great site. Good usability, great on page seo, nice clean design. Just wonderful.

Except… the previous guy built a directory site “on his client’s behalf” - “to optimize the client’s site.” Except, the webmaster owns that site himself. And it outranks the client’s site. And it’s monitized.

Sorry, but I smell a rat.

Rebekah and I have daily conversations about our “high bar” approach in one way or another. I’ve been told plently of times that I leave money on the table by not running with stuff other web developers would.

But I have to sleep at night.

I’m sorry, but using the knowledge you gain in an industry, while being paid by a client, developing traffic network sites for fee… You just DON’T turn around and take that to outdo your client. Maybe the laws haven’t caught up with technology for now, but to me it’s fraudulant.

High bar or not. I sleep well.

Adwords used to be easy. It used to be what people did to short cut around great white hat SEO.

No more.

It all started to unravel in July of 2006, and progressively Google has tightened the standard of their Adwords advertisers to the level that great the ethical SEOs have to deal with. Many folks call it Google “slap” and it seems illogical to most businesses. Why would Google smack advertisers who spend thousands of dollars a month? Don’t they want that ad spend?

Maybe not.

Google has a singular mission of a utopian web search.

That’s what launched them, and what sustains them. It’s way too much to get into here, but it’s the End All and Be All of Google as I see it. If you understand this, truly “get it,” then you get Google, and have “white hat” SEO in the bag.

But what does that have to do with PPC and Adwords? Well, it seems that Google has decided that they want their Adwords advertisers to be as “high quality” as their search results. So they RAISED the bar quite high.

The bad news: no more short cuts.

The good news (to the real players!): no more short cuts.

For search engine optimization, I’m always preaching having great inbound links. But I have to admit I’m a little bit of a hypocrite. I’ve actually not spent very much time going after links to my own company’s site. However, I do have a slight advantage that I do use…

I’ve done sites for some quite famous online marketers. And a simple footer link, with great anchor text can work wonders. (Anchor text is the words that are the actual link to your site, and they’re really important.)

Case in point. When we developed Ed Dale’s Underachiever Blog at tubbynerd.com, I placed a link to us in the footer. Having the ability to control the anchor text, I used “blog customization.” Ed’s site has taken off, duh! And his page rank grows and grows, and he passes some of that link love on to me.

So, tonight, a Google search for blog customization shows that out of 3,400,000 pages containing those words, BeersDesign.com ranks #5 and #6 for the term. Not too shabby at all!

There’s quite a bit of buzz about Google’s supplemental index, and exactly what it means to have pages from your website in that index. Here’s some information to help you understand the supplemental index.

The supplemental index does NOT mean that you are penalized. It simply means that Google feels it has better sources (pages) to pull from to provide searchers with the results they want. It will use pages that it trusts the most, that has the most (and best) links to it, pages on sites with great page rank.

If you have pages in the supplemental index, it does not indicate being banned, just that Google thinks other sites are better. Now a days, most sites have some pages in Google’s supplemental index. That’s ok. Just don’t have most of your pages in supplemental , and continue your efforts to raise your profile with Google and you’ll win the battle.

Here’s what you do –

Make sure your on page ranking factors are executed 100 percent. Unique, specific, and intentional title tags and meta tags for every single page. I’ve seen sites with pages in supplemental index simply due to all of their title tags being the same. I’ve seen the addition of unique and relevant meta tags bring pages out of supplemental. So much for the death of meta tags huh?

Get more and better links! Incoming links are pivotal to great rankings on Google. Yeah, it’s true, Google is like high school all over again. The more “votes” (links) you get the better. BUT - ah, hem - not all links are equal. Links from high profile, trusted sites count more. (Think: homecoming votes from the football team and cheerleading squad count 3 times each, votes from the band count twice, votes from the general population count once, votes from the “scuzzie” kids take away one. Yeap, it’s high school all over again. Ugh.)

The bottom line is - don’t fret about supplimental. It’s not “banned.” There is a way out. But you have to get your on page factors right. And you have to intentionally build great links. Easy, but lots of hard work.

If you’re interested in improving your rankings, contact us about how we can help. We’ve got packages for SEO, and we’re developing a course for the DIYer’s out there. Click here to contact us about SEO.

Today Rebekah and I were working on a SEO client’s website and made some very startling discoveries. Our client had been previously paying another person for optimizing their site. Obviously the client was not getting good results, which is why they are now with us.

This person who they had been paying actually built and manages multiple sites in the same niche, and is being paid to optimize them all. The original site ranks #1 for the top keyword phrase.

It is a BIG MISTAKE to hire someone that’s already working for all of your main competitors, who has longer relationships and more loyalty to those competitors. Really, that should be common sense. Our client told me they were paying over twice as much as the others, and that while the others were bunched up in the top 10, they were way below that. He was flabbergasted as to why that could be. Really, so was I.

I knew that the fella doing their optimization had to be up to something, and boy was he. Despite the hundreds of dollars a month being paid to him, I have found no evidence he did anything good. And worse, I found evidence he was doing BAD stuff. No, uh uh, not black hat even. I mean he appears to have been actively sabotaging the client!

1st - the most basic onpage optimization was not fully executed on the client’s website. Strike one.

2nd - there were very few links to the site. Actually around 50, and the other sites had hundreds. Strike two.

3rd - funny business in the .htaccess file. This server file was set up to redirect traffic AWAY from the client’s website if it were coming from any number of sources, including some small search engines, directories, and even myspace.com. We seriously think that any time the “SEO service provider” found a backlink into the site, he must have gone into the .htaccess file to discount it.

This whole thing made me feel sick to my stomach. On the other hand, we now have even more of a burning desire to blow the others away in the SERPs (search engine rankings). And the jerk who was ripping off our client, we can’t wait to KICK HIS A$$!

Today I saw something else that frightened me on another website. It was a copyright infringement notice on the top, most prominent part of their home page. Instead of telling their visitors why they would benefit from their services, they were, in essence, saying:

“We hate you and think you are a thief!
We’ve got the law on our side,
screw with us and you’re dead!

Oh, but welcome to our website.”

Folks, don’t make your main message hateful! Sure, there are lots of folks that ignore copyrights, but don’t make the mistake of treating all your site visitors like criminals. Always look at your message through the eyes of the customer you want to have.

Or another title for this post is: Scary Stuff on your website

Yesterday we received an email from a client who had discovered an extremely creepy image down on the sidebar of their blog that we built for them. When I went to check it out, I had quite a shock, and honestly am amazed that I did not have nightmares last night as a result of seeing the scary image.

The image was displaying where an icon for del.icio.us should have been. That icon was an image that did not live on the client’s website but was being called in from another site. Obviously, this other site had gotten hacked, and the hackers had replaced an image they knew was being used by sites all over the internet with one designed to startle unsuspecting web surfers.

I immediately change the link and fixed the problem, and then went about checking each blog site we’ve developed to make sure no others were effected. Only one was, and I promptly fixed it too. This second client never even knew there was a problem.

So, crap happens. There are bad people on the internet, looking to create havoc. Sometimes servers that host websites have problems. The internet’s not a perfect place and it never will be. Sometimes, crap happens.

This makes it even more critical for website owners to have a dependable and responsive web design company that they can count on. I hear far too many horror stories about folks who call themselves web developers but do not have an actual, viable business. Some are just trying to earn an extra buck by building websites on the side, the way a high school kid cuts grass on Saturdays. Others are making a go of having their own business, but don’t make it. (And let’s face it, most businesses that are started don’t last.)

But the people that are hurt by these folks are the people who buy websites from them. Later, when they need help, their “developer” is out of business, or has disappeared completely.

We’re proud to be an eight year old healthy and growing company, that’s very good for us.

BUT, it’s also very good for our clients.

We’ll be around in the years to come, to fix any problems that do come up, and hey - we”ll even fix problems our clients don’t even know about.

Now that’s not too scary.

Rebekah, who works with me here at Beers Design, sent me this email tonight with an excerpt from Matt Cutts’ blog. It’s about how people can report sites to Google that sell links on their pages. Here’s the except:

How to report paid links

April 14, 2007 @ 3:18 pm · Filed under Google/SEO

One thing I heard at SES London was that people wanted a way to report paid links specifically. I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I ’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing
algorithms. Google may provide a special form for paid link reports at some point, but in the mean time, here’s a couple of ways that anyone can use to report paid links:

- Sign in to Google’s webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight. - Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.

As far as the details, it can be pretty short. Something like “Example.com is selling links; here’s a page on example.com that demonstrates that” or “www.shadyseo.com is buying links. You can see the paid links on www.example.com/path/page.html” is all you need to mention. That will be enough for Google to start testing out some new techniques we’ve got — thanks!

——

This is unreal and I’m curious to see where this goes. Hopefully they won’t penalize for “paid links” but just not count them in your favor for ranking factors. Reason being, some people legitimately buy links for TRAFFIC not seo purposes and that is undesputably legit, even if google has a problem with people buying links for seo reason alone. Interesting…

I’ll be curious to see how this develops.

OK, before I start… I’m not “girly” girl, and I don’t even like malls. However, I do have pretty hands (thanks to my Mom) and pretty fingernails (thanks to a local business that does great nails). So, for all the guys out there, “the Nail Shop” is that place that we women go to get our fingernails done. [although I’ve been seeing more and more men going in lately too!] That being said…

Wow. Any business can learn A TON from this customer.