Category Archives: Google

Google, Internet, Just Search, SEO

How to become an authority website in Google

Leave a comment

Ever wondered how to become an authority website in Google? No? Ah, I was kinda counting on you actually wondering that. Oh well, I’ll tell you anyway. I did an Interview for .Net magazine a while ago on the subject, and the whole article has just been published in full on Net Imperative.

The article starts off with the intro:

Natural SEO isn’t just about editing tags on your website, inserting some well chosen keyphrases and building up links. The most successful websites on the Internet, the ones Google consider authorities in their fields, all have similar things in common. Many of them don’t even use conventional SEO practises, yet they rank above seemingly better optimised websites for relevant searches.

Then it proceeds to tell you just how to do it, in five simple steps. Have a read and see what you think; it works too 😉

Google, SEO

Number one on ‘The Google’

Leave a comment

Anyone in the SEO industry who’s had to speak to a client who knows nothing about SEO will know it’s much better than speaking to a client who knows a little. This video from YouTube is a classic example, albeit intentional, of a client who knows a little SEO.

He wants to be number one on ‘The Google’.

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

Anyone actually had clients like this? Betcha have!

Google, Internet, Michael Jackson, SEO

Universal Search for Michael Jackson

Leave a comment

I wrote an article recently for a media publication on how to optimise for Universal Search within Google. universal Search is relatively new within SEO circles and had been fully utilised by Google of late. When you search for something in Google, and it’s a popular search term with a lot of media, you may get videos, images and news results appear on the front page.

This makes regular SEO much harder, because you’re competing with other factors for first page placement. For example if your website used to rank at #8 on Google for your main keyword, and that keyword now shows results from Universal Search, you’ll be pushed down to the second page.

Ah, the horror!

However, it does open up new opportunities in SEO (as I wrote in the article) as SEOs are now able to optimise for Universal Search specifically, with the use of images, video and even Google News.

An example of this is one of the key phrases I’ve been receiving a lot of traffic for recently, ‘michael jackson thriller costume’. Not very competitive, but with Halloween not that far away it will start bringing in the numbers. Searching for this phrase in Google shows up some images on the front page, with my own personal Thriller jacket there too.

You can see Google’s SERPs for ‘michael jackson thriller costume‘ here.
Michael Jackson

Universal Search is something worth experimenting with if you haven’t already. You can see my original post, the one that ranks in Google’s Universal Search, here.

Google, Internet, Just Search, Magazine Articles, SEO

I’m in this month’s issue of dot Net magazine

2 Comments

dot NetFar be it for me to boast, but I’m in this month’s issue of .Net Magazine with an interview about how to make your website an authority site within Google. It’s quite a good read, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. The golden rule is content, content and more content.

It’s one of the reasons that this website ranks for so many different phrases and gets traffic for the most unlikely of search terms. If you write about it, they will come (simply building it is no longer effective enough).

Anyway, you can see the magazine on the .Net website here.

Here’s a shot of the extract, but to read it properly you’ll need to buy the magazine 😉

dot Net

You can read more tips like this at Just Search’s website, which features a daily blog about SEO and Internet Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing, Google, Internet

Play.com miss the point with PPC restrictions

Leave a comment

Today sees Google changing the rules with regards to brand bidding on its Adwords platforms, meaning that you can now bid on terms such as HMV, WHSmith and Play.com… should you wish to.

So what does this mean? Well, for one it means that you’re likely to get clued up companies bidding on the brand names of other companies, so for example Tesco may bid on the keywords ‘Asda’, ‘Sainsburys’ and ‘Morrisons’, meaning they’ll get search traffic for people looking for their competitors. There’s nothing the other companies can do about.

Or is there? What they could do is allow their affiliates to bid for them. You see, now that there are no restrictions on brand bidding, there’s nothing stopping HMV, GAME, WHSmith and everyone who sells games and DVDs bidding on the Play.com brand. Therefore, Play.com will be losing a lot of traffic and sales to their competitors. If they were smart, they’d allow their affiliates to bid on their brand name as well, meaning the affiliates would be shouldering the PPC costs for them, in exchange for the commissions. Then, anyone looking for Play.com, rather than finding their competitors, they’d find Play.com through the affiliates.

That’s if Play.com were smart. Sadly, they’re not. They’re quite stupid. They, and a great many other retailers have panicked at the change in Google’s brand restrictions and have sent out this email.

Hi Darren,

Bearing in mind the Google changes on brand bidding which come into effect on Monday, we would like to take the opprotunity to draw your attention to Play.com’s PPC restrictions:

“Unless specifically agreed in writing with Play.com, Affiliates must
not:

i) purchase, license or operate any domain name which is confusingly similar to ‘play.com’;

ii) bid on the ‘play.com’ keyword, or any of its misspellings, on any of the search engines that currently operate web services; possible derivatives of the brand term are:

Play.com
Play
Play .com
Www.play.com
Play.com uk
Play com
www play com
www Play
www.play
play dot com
playdotcom
play .com uk
Play.c
Plya
Play co
Playcouk
Play.co.uk
www.play.co.uk
play uk

and also:

Playusa
Playusa.com
Play usa
Wwwplayusa
www.play.usa
www.playusa.com
ww.playusa.com
playusa.com
play usa com
playusacom
play.usa.com
playusa.com play usa

iii) use the keyword ‘play.com’ to perform paid search activity across any search engines that operates web services  and to that effect, Affiliates must add the ‘play.com’ keyword and its derivatives as above as negative matches to their PPC campaigns.

iv) use the term Play.com or its derivatives in the Affiliate’s ad text for driving traffic from Play.com’s competitors’ brand terms to Play.com’s site nor the affiliate’s sites.

v) drive paid or unpaid traffic from search engines directly to Play.com pages or the Play.com site overall. The affiliate has to use their own sites for traffic from search engines.

For the avoidance of doubt, the above restrictions or the specific terms of agreement regarding authorised PPC activity shall supersede any conflicting provision that may be found in any section of this Agreement.

These rules are effective immediately and should the Affiliate not comply They will be banned from the Play.com affiliate programme with immediate effect and also face potential lawsuit. “

‘Face a potential lawsuit’? What are they thinking? How stupid are they?

I worry for the sanity of these people. All that will happen now is they’ll lose business to their competitors, and I hope they do. I hope they lose a lot of business. Come on GAME, HMV, WHSmith and everyone else… bid on Play.com and the rest of the keywords Play have listed above. Take the customers from them. As they won’t let affiliates bid on the terms you’ll find them quite cheap too!

Happy bidding.

Google, Internet

Christians threaten Google with legal action

4 Comments

This is why I hate religion, it’s the cause of all arguments. Christians in particular make me sick, they’re always trying to ram their own beliefs down the the throats of everyone else. This time the pompous bastards are trying to force Google to spread their own brand of stupidity via Adwords, but Google quite rightly has said no.

Google has rules on advertising on Adwords that states that you cannot advertise a website that is irrelevant to the chosen keywords. The Christians want to advertise their own Christian institute website on keywords for abortion, so that they can spread their views on abortion.

It’s WRONG! say the Christians. Google has said they can’t do that because their website, a religious website, has nothing to do with abortion. In the true tradition of Christians being meddling, interfering tossers they’ve threatened to take Google to court over it.

Er, Google can do what it likes. It’s Google’s own website, if they don’t want you opinionated, self righteous morons spreading your waffle on irrelevant searches, then they can do that.

The evil Christians have even roped in bible bashing MP Anne Widdecombe.

It does seem to me to be the most appalling and blatant case of religious discrimination.

Religious discrimination? Stupid woman.

You can read the full story on the GetUpdated website.

Google, Internet, SEO

Seomul Davis knows nothing about SEO

Leave a comment

Today I received one of those awful spam emails trying to tell me how to SEO a website. I usually delete them, but occasionally read a few extracts just to see what the gist of the message is. The one I received today had me in hysterics. It’s from some idiot called Seomul Davis, and it’s blatantly clear he knows absolutely nothing about SEO.

He’s written an article on the top ten myths in SEO, and some of his ‘myths’ are quite frightening. Let me begin…

From: SEO News [seo@seo-news.com]
Subject: Organic SEO Top 10 Myths

Organic SEO Top 10 Myths
By Seomul Davis (c) 2008

There are many SEO myths circulating on the Internet. These misconceptions are often crazy and while some are based on partial reality, others have spread due to the lack of being proved wrong.

OK, fair enough start. There are a lot of myths on the Internet about SEO due to people not knowing what they’re talking about… sadly Seomul Davis is one such person.

Organic SEO Myth 3: For higher rankings, update your website regularly. Regular updating of your content pages may certainly increase the crawl rate for search engines, but not your website rankings. Only update your website content if it is necessary and not because search engines will like it any better. As a matter of fact, the highest ranked websites on Google are those that haven’t been updated in years!

Oh you have got to be kidding me? You couldn’t be more wrong, you could try, but you’d fail. Content is the single most important aspect to SEO. Fresh, original, unique content. Anyone who listens to this idiot will find themselves nowhere, more importantly no one will find them… in Google at least.

What’s more interesting is that Seomul Davis contradicts himself in an article he wrote here:

If rising high on the SERPs is your goal, then update your content as often as you can, but on a regular basis. Google, MSN, and Yahoo! reward regular updating with higher SE rankings.

So which is it? Does content increase your rankings, or does it have no effect? I know the answer, you obviously don’t.

Organic SEO Myth 7: Header tags or H1 should be used to ensure high ranking. There is no evidence to prove this. However, this is one of the most common myths. You can reach top Google positioning without H1 but they certainly don’t hurt so use H tags correctly.

There’s no evidence to prove that H1 tags help your ranking? OK mate, you believe what you want. I hope no one else believes you, for their sake.

Organic SEO Myth 10: Your pages should be optimized for the long tail keywords. This is not true. Nowadays, long-tail keyword phrases are no longer effective as not many pages use them and not many people search using long tails. You can include these keywords in blogs or even an article, but that is not really optimization.

Long tail keywords are no longer effective? Oh for fuck’s sake. This guy is a fucking muppet. Long tail keywords are vital for SEO, not least because you get a higher conversion rate with them. Seomul Davis… you’re a moron.

I absolutely loved this last paragraph though.

Remember don’t go spreading any SEO myths that you believe may be true. Test it yourself several times on different websites before reaching any conclusion as there are other factors involved as well.

No, you’re right there. Don’t go spreading myths that you believe to be true. Shame you don’t take your own advice, idiot. If you want to spout your shit on your own website then fine, but don’t email this crap to me.

Google, Internet

Pub Quiz, nerd style

Leave a comment

This evening I’ll be going to the (not so) local pub for the pub quiz. A quiz that when I last went we finished dead last. This time however is going to be different as I aim to cheat like a Mexican.

I’ll be taking my Ipaq Smartphone and ensuring that Team Google wins the day.

Now I wouldn’t normally cheat you understand, but when we finished dead last before it wasn’t due to our intellectual superiors defeating us, or because anyone else cheated, it was because the quiz focused on the topical subjects of TV, which pop star was shagging who and what happened on the last series of Big Brother.

You know, useless shit.

I resented losing to someone who managed to spell every single word on their sheet incorrectly. It was a bloody embarrassment. This time will be different.

Though I imagine I’ll just get pissed and forget to Google anything.