Category Archives: Google

P-P-Pick up a Penguin Penalty in Google

Are you looking for a way to destroy your website’s rankings in Google? Have you heard about this ‘Google Penguin’ thing and thought to yourself ‘I need that to hit my website too’?

You have? You’re in luck; Paolo Lorenzo Milardi has just what you’re looking for. He emailed me today and offered some paid links using keyword anchor text. His offer is great – completely screw up your website in Google for a small fee.

He says he already does this for other SEO agencies… so some lucky clients out there are Continue reading P-P-Pick up a Penguin Penalty in Google

drivinglicence.uk.com Scam – the DVLA Con

A friend of mine emailed this week asking if I heard of the website drivinglicence.uk.com as they had just paid them for, what they believed to be, a driving licence for their daughter. They Googled DVLA, as you would, and found this website at the top of the search results – the sponsored search results.

drivinglicenceukcom-website

They filled in the form, paid their money and waited patiently for the driving licence – only to be sent a form which they then needed to forward onto the DVLA and pay AGAIN for the driving licence they thought they had already paid for. In effect they have to pay twice for the driving licence, all because they fell for this awful trick.

So how did this happen?

The sad truth is most people who don’t work online don’t know the difference between Google’s organic results and the paid results, which is where sites such as this manage to fool people. Where the DVLA website ranks #1 in Google for a search on DVLA (as it should) and it also ranks #1 for many associated search terms, it’s only sites like drivinglicence.uk.com which pay for sponsored listings and thus ‘appear’ to rank #1 to people who aren’t quite so Internet savvy.

drivinglicenceukcom

In good faith these people will click on the first result and pay their money for what they believe is an application for a driving licence, when what they’re really paying for is a ‘checking service’, one which isn’t needed in the first place. The website simply checks the data you’ve entered to make sure you’ve filled in the right boxes, and charges you for the privilege. So you’re paying for nothing.

So how is this even legal?

The website says on its homepage:

The checking service we provide can be obtained from a DVLA office directly at a reduced fee or you can apply without a checking service where there will be no checking fee payable.

It’s this statement which keeps this website on the side of the law, but a statement many people won’t read or even notice. They’ll simply see the site ranked at the top of Google, click ‘apply’ and pay their money, as all of these people have done, and these people.

As you can see from the comments on the site, many have telephoned to make complaints to drivinglicence.uk.com (as my friend did) but few receive a satisfactory answer, with some even being cut off from the call. The company knows it is conning people who believe they’re paying to renew their licence, and it doesn’t care.

There are many website such as this charging people for services which are otherwise free, such as the many PPI claims websites and companies charging people a percentage of their winnings for simply sending a letter – a letter you can send yourself for free. They’re parasites sucking money from people who are fooled by their tricks.

My advice is to avoid websites such as this and ensure, before you enter any payment details, you’re on the official site for whatever it is you’re trying to do and you carefully read what it is you’re going to get. Under the Distance Selling Regulations you can demand your money back from scammers such as these, but they don’t all play by the rules or the law, so you may find that’s a dead end.

Is this the worst SEO email?

I’ve received a few emails over the years offering ‘SEO services’ for different websites. Actually, I’ve received a few emails today, the use of the word ‘few’ was a serious understatement, but never mind.

Anyway, I received one today and was shocked at, firstly, the poor grammar and, secondly, the fact that the email offers ‘copywriting’ services – at least it would, if the illiterate imbecile who put finger to keyboard to scribe this dross knew the difference between ‘copywriting’ and ‘copyright’.

Check this out:

SEO| Internet Marketing| Website Designing

Hi

We are leading SEO service provider and web Development Company. We are expert in PHP,.NET, and many open sources like Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Oscommerse ,Zencart and Blog Management. We offer best of quality work to our clients at the lowest possible prices. We can quickly promote your website.

We can place your website on top of the Natural Listings on Google, Yahoo and MSN. We do not use “”link farms”” or “”black hat”” methods that Google and the other search engines frown upon and can use to de-list or ban your site. . Price is never a constraint with us because we take pride in handling challenging work.

We would be happy to send you best fit proposal for web development and designing and if you have a SEO requirement we will send you a proposal using the top search phrases for your area of expertise.

In order for us to respond to your request for information, please include your company’s website address (mandatory) and /or phone number.

Sincerely,
Aden Clark
clarkaden634@gmail.com
COMPLETE INTERNET MARKETING SOLUTION
SEO – Link Building – Copyright – Web Designing – PHP

He’s offering ‘copyright’ services? What, he’s offering to secure a patent on something for me, to register a trademark? What?

Can someone please offer ‘copywriting’ services to the idiots that offer ‘copyright’ services via unsolicited emails?

Also note the use of a ‘gmail’ email address. They do this so that no actual SEO company can be immediately linked with the sending of spam emails. If I were to reply to this moron (who, admittedly, probably doesn’t exist anyway) I would receive a reply from a different email address, from someone who would say something along the lines of ‘I am taking over from Aden’…

It frightens me that some people would actually fall for this. No wonder the SEO industry has a bad reputation.

SEO company ‘Digital Spark’ using Spam link tactics

When you hire an SEO company to work on your website you need to ensure that they know what they’re doing, they’re ethical and they don’t do anything to endanger your website in Google. Sadly, many SEO companies (including some UK based ones) engage in spam linking tactics, such as spamming the comments of blogs with badly written copy in the hope of building links.

For example, the following ‘comment’ was left on one of our sites recently (today actually, on a Saturday) using an IP address based in Asia. As you can see, the comment is asking for a link to the client’s website (an ‘SEO’ company based in London) and has been written by someone who clearly has English as a second language. The line: ‘There is following our link details once you will add then confirm the same’ demonstrates the poor use of English.

Have a read of the comment we received:

Author : smith (IP: 110.172.26.20 , 110.172.26.20) E-mail : smith.adairs@gmail.com
URL : http://www.digital-spark.co.uk/
Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/110.172.26.20
Comment:
Dear webmaster,

I just visited your website. After reviewing your website, I thought you would be a great resource for exchanging link.

There is following our link details once you will add then confirm the same.

By using following details:

Title: seo company
URL: http://www.digital-spark.co.uk/
Description: SEO Consultant London – Digital Spark

Awaiting for your response

Thanks & Regards,
Link Exchange Expert

This type of spam link building doesn’t do a website any favours, and merely serves to highlight the unethical practices of the SEO company involved. The fact that these links are FOR the SEO company makes matters even worse.

You shouldn’t spam websites for links using poor quality, broken English.

SEO company demonstrates distinct lack of SEO

One of the things that’s always bothered me about the SEO industry is how just about anyone can claim to be an SEO specialist, and offer search engine optimisation services to unsuspecting clients regardless of their actual knowledge of the industry.

The people that do this, without any real knowledge of SEO, tend to be web designers (or sorts) who have realised that their clients now want SEO and, rather than pass them on to a credible SEO agency, claim to be able to do it themselves. They’ll often charge a flat rate for one off work too, because, let’s face it, they don’t really know what they’re doing anyway so what difference does it make how they do it?

Whether you’re a plumber in Cheshire or a national accounting firm, whether you’re going after geographical keywords or generic keywords, they charge the same… because they have little or no idea of how to rank a website anyway, why the heck not?

I was looking at one website this last week and noticed they’d had SEO done (kind of) but there were a few, shall we say, glaring errors. It was apparent that whoever had performed the SEO wasn’t an expert in their field, and had more likely cribbed off some notes from a blog or forum before attempting the work. For example, they’d even spelt the word ‘Stockport’ wrong in the client’s Title tag!

So, I looked at the website for the company responsible and found that they were in fact a rather well known design agency in Chester… a design agency also offering ‘SEO services’; well, who doesn’t these days?

A quick look through their site and I could see just how they’d have made a mistake with the client’s website; their blog didn’t even feature a Title tag… on ANY of the pages. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of SEO will tell you about the importance of a Title tag, yet this SEO company didn’t even have one, on any of the blog’s pages. The Title tag was blank…

Chester-SEO-Company

I presume this was an oversight; perhaps someone was updating the template and forgot to put the Title tag generator back in? Whatever the reason, it wasn’t checked and the rankings of the website will be affected as a result; just like any website’s Google rankings would be affected if similar errors were made while optimising a website.

When you let someone loose on your website for SEO, make sure they know what they’re doing.

Oh, did you want to know who the SEO company in question is? Sorry; I’m not tipping them off 😉

See, I’ve grown as a person.

How to optimise title tags for SEO

StuckOn’s new website launched this week, and with our new YouTube channel which will offer advice and tips on SEO. The first SEO advice video on the channel is all about optimising your Title Tags for search engines.

Title Tags are one of the most important on-page factors for SEO and, even though a simple tweak to a Title Tag can make all the difference to a website’s rankings, some websites even leave them off altogether. This video offers five top tips to formatting your Title Tags to increase your website’s rankings in the search engines – and it’s under a minute in length!

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

You can also watch the video on SEO advice here.

SEO Ellesmere Port

Using geographical keywords in search engine optimisation is one of the most difficult to things to make natural, and something that many inexperienced SEOs fail to do quite spectacularly.

The use of geographical keywords is help your website rank for searches on specific services in conjunction with locations, so if someone is searching for ‘SEO’ and they’re located in Ellesmere Port, they would most likely search for ‘SEO Ellesmere Port’. Of course, in order to rank for a phrase such as this you need to use the phrase in your content, but ‘SEO Ellesmere Port’ is not grammatically correct – you would have to use a stop word such as ‘in’, making the phrase ‘SEO in Ellesmere Port’.

However, if you want an exact match on your SEO keywords, you’ll want to try to get the phrase into your content without the stop word – but doing that while maintaining the integrity of your content can be difficult. There are ways to do it though, as you can use punctuation instead of stop words. For example:

One of the most important marketing services is SEO. Ellesmere Port companies often look for…

You can use the Internet to look for local companies offering SEO; Ellesmere Port for example has several of these companies.

By using punctuation such as this, you are able to use geographical keywords and make them read naturally.