Category Archives: SEO

Google, Internet, SEO

SEO company ‘Digital Spark’ using Spam link tactics

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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.

Google, Internet, SEO

SEO company demonstrates distinct lack of SEO

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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.

Google, Internet, SEO

How to optimise title tags for SEO

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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.

Internet, Rants, SEO

Amos Web Designs

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A few weeks ago I received a comment on one of my posts from Thomas Amos, of Amos Web Designs. It’s always nice to hear from fellow Internet professionals – well, it’s almost always nice, Thomas’ comments were the exception to the rule.

Thomas took offence to a post I made about Computeach. Thomas believes, for some strange reason, that I actually work for Computeach, and he gave me his opinions wrapped up in a torrent of abuse.

Now, having spoken to the owner of Computeach on the phone about the nature of some of the comments on that particular page I can confirm that I do not work for Computeach, and have never done so. If I did work for Computeach, I might perhaps have been more selective over the comments on that page. Anyhow, Thomas Amos, from Amos Web Design, had this to say:

Mr Daz Your a complete prick. You are blantently working for computeach. I have been completly ripped of on my course and I am going to get every penny back from them robbing cunts. I done the first module and am on the second and have not got one thing that I was promised yet. What a joke. People If you want a carear in IT go to colleage or university night school but what ever you do dont go to a long distance pretend education centre.

Now, I would normally pick at his obviously low intellect and lack of attention to detail in what he has written – but he was clearly upset and it is just a comment on a blog. He can be forgiven for writing dross, making up words and generally having a distinct lack of understanding of the English language. Instead, let’s have a look at his own website, where he offers his web design (and SEO) services.

I can’t help it – sorry.

Amos-Web-Designs
Amos Web Designs

On this page of his beautifully designed website (a real showcase of his talents) he promotes himself thus:

Our prices are reasonable, wont break the bank and to your needs.

There is a distinct lack of punctuation and cohesion there – probably how he can promise that his services won’t break the bank – he’s saved on the apostrophes and non essential words. He goes on to promote his own ethics, which is a laugh.

Were reliable, honest and professional in everything We do.

They ‘were’ reliable, but presumably not now? At least he’s up-front about it, stating that he used to be reliable, honest and professional.

Guess copywriting isn’t one of his services.

Anyhow, thanks for the comment Thomas, Thomas Amos, from Amos Web Designs. I do hope you sorted your problems with Computeach and you managed to forge out a decent ‘carear’ in a ‘colleage’ somewhere.

Internet, Magazine Articles, SEO

How to know when you’re being fleeced by an SEO salesman

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If you’ve managed to get hold of a copy of the Internet and web designer’s bible, .Net Magazine, this month you may have noticed my cheery mug staring at you from with its wisdom laden pages. That’s because yours truly provided a column on how to spot when someone is talking through their proverbial in their efforts to sell you SEO.

It’s a common problem with business owners, website managers and even new start-ups as search engine optimisation, despite the efforts of some companies to bring transparency to the industry, is still steeped in the mire of underhand tricks and perceived dark arts because of the actions of many. Therefore, when people look for SEO services for their website they’re often confronted with someone spouting techno babble, half-truths and out right porkies in an attempt to get their business.

Anyhow, have a look at the article and be sure to pick up .Net this month if you get the chance. It’s not just great because I’m in it – although that is a solid enough reason!

dot NET-Magazine December issue

British Telecom, Internet, SEO

Getting British Business Online offers free websites

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Getting British Business Online (GBBO) offers free websites and domain names for businesses in the UK – but are they any good?

I remember when I first discovered the possibility of owning a website. It was, I believe, back in 1997 and someone at university suggested that I should get a website for a film that I was working on. His idea intrigued me, as I would be able to create a ‘website’ for this film, showing photographs and screening dates, and host it on the World Wide Web for anyone to see.

However, my initial excitement was tempered when I realised that I would have to pay for this new privilege. I would have to pay for a domain name (which back then was a lot of money for a student), I would have to pay for a hosting account and I would have to, most likely, pay one of the interactive arts students to show me how to use a web authoring program – and who knows what it would have been back then, probably MS FrontPage or some equally tripe rubbish.

So the idea sort of died a death, which was a shame. I eventually did create the website for the film, but it was about a year or so later – too late for the film’s big screening. Now, if I’d had the opportunity that the GBBO offers now I would have snapped their hand off, as a free domain name and free website would have gone down a treat for me back then.

The trouble is of course – the type of websites offered by the ‘Getting British Business Online’ initiative are actually circa 1997 anyway, if the designs I’ve seen are anything to go by. You see, while getting a free website back in 1997 would have been a big boost to my then business efforts, the web has evolved a long way since then. Now, in 2010, you need more than a basic template with some free images to make a website successful – and I’m not talking about a professional design here either.

No, for a website to be successful these days you need a sterling SEO campaign, one utilising the latest techniques in terms of link building and content – and the sorts of websites offered by the GBBO simply don’t allow for that level of on-page SEO work. Plus, when you consider the sorts of prices you can pay for hosting these days, the ‘offer’ of a free domain and free website isn’t exactly the huge boost it would have been 13 years ago.

With a registrar such as 123-Reg (who I would in no way recommend using by the way) you can pay around £5 for a .co.uk domain name for two years. That’s peanuts in the grand scheme of things. Then there are hosting companies offering hosting for just a few quid each month. That is again nothing, comparatively speaking.

Of course creating the website could be tricky – but when you consider the fact that CMS systems (content management system – systems) such as WordPress and Drupal are free, and each has thousands upon thousands of free templates, you can easily create your own website, without any knowledge of coding, in a few minutes – a website with cleaner code, and a far better starting point from an SEO point of view, than anything offered by the GBBO.

The worst part is perhaps the fact that when people register their ‘free’ domain name with GBBO, and decide that the website they’ve been given isn’t suitable, they then can’t transfer the domain away from GBBO for at least 60 days!

Getting British Business Online is a good idea, but one that is probably a decade too late and one that has been implemented very poorly. Any business that relies on one of their free websites for its business site is going to find it very hard to compete in the marketplace – especially as that marketplace gets even more crowded as a result of new business start-ups brought about by the recession.

Google, Internet, SEO

SEO Ellesmere Port

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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.

CSA, Internet, Podcasts, SEO

CSAhell.com on local radio

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Last week I appeared on local radio here in the North West talking about the website CSAhell.com, and how it has helped people dealing with the Child Support Agency. I was approached for the radio talk show because the researchers found the website in Google when they searched for phrases such as ‘CSA Advice’, ‘CSA Mistakes’ and even ‘Child Support Agency’ – proving how SEO can not only benefit your website’s rankings and traffic, but how it can also lead to offsite promotion such as local radio.

I recorded the segment and have uploaded it as a podcast, but must apologise in advance for the poor sound quality and additional commentary because the program I used to record it also recorded ambient sound from within the room.

Very useful!

Anyhow, have a listen and do let me know what you think.

Darren Jamieson on Radio City - CSAhell.com [ 12:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2674)