Musings of a Professional UK SEO Consultant

It’s been ages since I last wrote a post, have been a bit ill and am about to go on hols, so thought it would be a good time to write a short post on DMOZ (ODP – Open Directory Project).  I am still seeing lots of comments in forums claiming that a DMOZ listing is the be all and end all of link building and a must have link.

DMOZ is a Submit & Forget
Essentially Dmoz is and has been for a long while a submit and forget site, sure it’s still on my list of places to submit too but once I have submitted I move on.  I don’t go back and check if the link is present yet I just move on and get on with my life.

This from a post I responded to on the Sitepoint forum:

“Submit to Dmoz and forget it, move on, do other things, play with yer kids, get a life, many more fish in the link building sea.

This is the third post (on different forum) that I have made today alone about Dmoz, will stop eventually and let people obsess in their own little groups.

Speaking as an EX Dmoz editor and person who despite Dmoz listing still achieves good SEO results.”

Source: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4397972

DMOZ has been going through some difficult patches for a while now see: The Life and Near Death of DMOZ so the submit and forget advice is perhaps more relevant than ever before.

The need to keep updating your business site, and participate in the on-line community grows as Goggle launches a major new update to its main search page today.

Here is Googles’ official line:

A lot of these options have been present (but somewhat hidden from view) up until now:

The new design really pushes the options making the Google SERPS look similar in style to Yahoo or Bing.

One of the most notable additions is that Google are now pushing the so called social search and real-time search results (see the screenshot below) which details a search for Gordon Brown (the morning after the night before) and shows the relevant Twitter updates.

New Google search for Gordon Brown shows Twitter updates

What this means for businesses:

• Businesses will have to update their sites and offsite content so that they appear under as many filters (options) as is reasonably possible including blogs, videos etc.
• Businesses will have to participate in the online community; it’s getting harder and harder to ignore Twitter by the day.

Following on from my post entitled “Some Local Business Listings Disappear on Google Maps” [http://www.justinmarch.com/blog/some-local-business-listing-disappear-google-maps/] it now seems that what I thought was a blip, wasn’t a blip at all.

In early November 2009 I noticed that the Google Maps listing were no longer appearing under some of the phrases where my business listing previously appeared, I first spotted this under a search for “SEO Cheltenham”. I checked the same searches within google.co.uk and google.com and signed in and out of my Google profile all with the same result.

I noticed that it wasn’t happening for searches such as “SEO Bristol” and that it wasn’t anything to do with the Cheltenham area either as a search for “Carpet Cheltenham” confirmed .

Finally an answer from Web Pro News “Google Ditches Local Listings for SEOs and Designers”. Essentially then if you change the search from “SEO location” to “SEO in location” (obviously replacing the word location with your location) the results will magically reappear, this works for “SEO Bristol”, “SEO Cheltenham” and other “SEO” and “Web Design” related terms.

Not all areas seem to be effected but many web designers and SEO’s are up in arms, will this change back after Google have had a chance to go through and eliminate the huge amount of Spam in Local Business Center, only time will tell…

Choosing a Copyrighter to write appropriate text for your site is a minefield, you only have to post a request on a forum to be inundated with responses from a vast array of people offering this service.   You will then have to pick from a range of service providers; some highly qualified, some less than qualified and some over qualified for your needs.

The prices of the UK based freelance writer can vary dramatically from £15 (I’m not joking) to £300 for around 500 words but what can you expect when you hire these writers?  Obviously the quality of the text will vary greatly but not in my experience as greatly as one might suppose, the real factor in terms of the quality is down to the amount of research required to write a piece.  For highly technical pieces the text will not flow as freely, sources will need to be researched and correctly cited and some writers (even the more expensive ones) will avoid this work like the plague.  Other writers gravitate towards writing a string of keyword stuffed meandering sentences in a misguided attempt to cynically manipulate the search engines or their clients.

Now don’t get me wrong there are copyrighters that produce great work for £25 per 500 words but these writers tend to choose subjects that they are familiar with.  This article for instance comes easily to me I am hardly pausing between paragraphs and actually quite enjoying the process consequently it’s taken me about 45 minutes to write the above text, which is not a great deal of time and therefore more cost effective.

Guidelines for hiring a SEO Copywriter or Copywriting Service
So after some thought I have prepared the following guidelines for hiring an SEO Copywriter or Copywriting Service:

Write a Brief or Specification
Write a detailed Brief or Specification communicate what type of written work you require, the easier you make the process for the writer the better the price and the value that you will get back.

Get a Recommendation & View their previous work
Source your writer via a recommendation if possible and make sure that you have seen their previous work, is it similar to the content that you require, is it of a high enough standard?  If you can’t get a recommendation source a number of potential writers send them a full brief or specification and start the process of eliminating the unsuitable candidates.

Match the Subject to the Writer
Given the choice it is always best to match the subject to the writer not push an unfamiliar subject on to a reluctant copywriter or service provider.  If I wanted to write about Gloucester or Cheltenham I would hire a writer from these areas, if I wanted an article about cars I would talk to writers who are car enthusiasts.

Get the writer to suggest titles
Send the writer a selection of keywords and ask them to come up with titles and section headers so that you can then evaluate the potential before seeing the final written piece.

With SEO Copywriting Best Value is often the Key
You don’t need a battleship to sink a bathtub, and you don’t need an expensive writer to write about familiar everyday objects or services, the key is to source a writer who can offer you the Best Value for each project.

Quality over Quantity
One thing is for sure when writing online there are rules and the main rule is that it’s quality over quantity every time.   Rank chasing is not what good SEO is about, if your site ranks high up on the first page for a given search phrase so what if people click through to read the gibberish, will these people trust your site or end up buying from you?

This article is about 600 words long and took me around 2 hours to complete including the all important title tags and description some previous research was required.

What’s the ratio of Google.co.uk to Google.com traffic within the UK?  I have been searching for the answer to this question for weeks now.  I have conducted exhaustive searches on Google (which took all of 10 minutes) I even posted a question within the Google Support Forums and now at last I have found some data that goes some way to answering the question.

From experience I know that most UK based users are redirected to Google.co.uk by default, but I also know of other UK based users who have been using Google.com.

Finally my question in the Google Support Forums has lead to an answer supplied by Hitwise.

And the answer is:

Source: Hitwise

So what makes an Ethical SEO Company Ethical? Perhaps one can find an Ethical SEO by searching for “Ethical SEO” in Google or perhaps by searching for “Professional SEO” the reality is that these are often just words, targeted because they have a relatively low level of competition when set against the number of historic monthly searches.

Now I’m certainly not saying that the companies that rank for the above phrases are in any way unethical or unprofessional the fact that they have selected these phrases at all is to their credit.  And yes I get the hypocrisy; this post including the title tag, page title and content are obviously focused on optimising it for the phrase Ethical SEO Company.

What I’m trying to get at here is that Google has no way of telling how a company operates or conducts itself, it simply returns the best results that it can given the available parameters.  Broadly speaking (and greatly simplified in order to explain my reasoning) there are 2 factors that dictate how search engines rank pages:

1. Onsite/Onpage SEO (Which can include Domain Name Selection as well as Optimised Title Tags, Internal Links, Visible on Page Text, Page Titles etc).
2. External Inbound Links (that are pointing at the site pages hopefully, but not always from relevant, respected or trusted websites)

The first factor is completely in the control of the webmaster in question; all it takes is knowledge of SEO to put the content in place to fulfil this part of the site optimisation.  The second factor is the external links coming into the site pages, to put it simply Google and the other search engines look on these links as one site voting for the other.

In an ideal world a company would set up a website, call themselves an Ethical SEO Company and create the onsite content that makes web site owners want to link through to them. In reality most companies (even ethical ones) will find it difficult to achieve this type of inbound link. Most companies have to build quality content and even then work on building links to their site.

So what makes an Ethical SEO Company?
Answer: “Some of the Above”

To find out what makes for Ethical SEO have a read of the following pages, these are Guidelines set out by the Search Engines to tell webmasters and site owners how to follow (or should I say how not to break) the rules:

Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html

Google Webmaster Guidelines:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guidelines:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Bing Webmaster Center Help:
http://help.live.com/help.aspx?mkt=en-us&project=wl_webmasters

Dmoz Guidelines:
http://www.dmoz.org/guidelines/

If you want to hire an ethical SEO then do some research, you have been told that the company you have contacted is ethical (and they may well be) but don’t just take their word for it, understand what you are paying for.

“Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you.” SOURCE: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Plagiarism is a menace online, with disreputable web masters copying and using other people’s site content left right and centre without crediting the source. On the one hand I hate people passing my content off as their own work on the other there are countless articles online about duplicate content and the potential adverse affects of this content on search engine results. OK so Google don’t seem that great when it comes to picking up duplicate content, but I still hate the idea that the actions of others could have an adverse affect on my site.

Searching for segments of text from the source article is one way to seek out copied content; however I often find that parts of the text or titles have been changed and other times only a small section of the text has been copied.

So, what’s an honest webmaster to do?

If you haven’t done so already it’s important to add appropriate notices to your site to set out your position regarding your content see: businesslink.gov.uk and creativecommons.org

In addition to the above there are two websites that I use in an attempt to eradicate plagiarism as much as possible. Copyscare.com which can help you track down the plagiarised content and Tynt.com which can help you monitor and possibly gain a link back from others copying your site content. The real plus, is that in their basic form, both of these sites are free to use.

Detecting Existing Plagiarism with Copyscape

Detecting Copied Content & Existing Plagiarism with Copyscape

Copyscape is simple to use, just copy and paste the URL of the page that you want to investigate into the Copyscape toolbar and click search. When you look down the results and click thru to the pages you will see that Copyscape scans not just the page title, but also reports back pages containing smaller portions of text that are identical to the original.

You can then deal with any issues that Copyscape highlights using the information found here: copyscape.com/respond.php

Monitoring & benefiting from Copied Content with Tynt Tracer

You will need to register to use the Tynt Tracer by visiting Tynt.com. The tracer works by providing you with a piece of code that you insert on any web page that you want to monitor, you will need to add the code just before the </body> tag.

Once the code is included anyone copying even a small portion of your page content will add a link back to your original page each time that they paste that content into a blog, another web page or even an e-mail (see screenshot below). The link can include the most appropriate Creative Commons License to help reinforce the point that you need credit for the content.

Copied Text Showing Tynt Tracer link with Creative Commons License

The resulting links can be great for the search engines (if posted on blogs or webpages) but more importantly they provide you with an appropriate credit for your hard work.
For a real world example of how the Tynt Tracer works see the following video:

The Search Engine Results in Google are becoming more and more influenced by efforts to personalise the results for the searcher. This is nothing new but I thought that the video below contained some interesting detail that many would be unaware of.

It now seems possible for UK businesses to submit to a third party site and thereby gain a local listing in Bing.

Bing Local Listings are similar to Google Local (or Google Maps) in that they can come up above the algorithmic (organic) search engine results when a searcher includes local place names in a search query, for example: “SEO Company Cheltenham” rather than just “SEO Company”.

Up until now I had assumed that Bing Local listing submissions could only be completed by US based companies, with the few UK based local search engine results being cobbled together from the listings on third party business directories.

All that changed after I read Matthew Elshaws’ Blog on ineedhits.com entitled “How to Setup a UK Bing Local Listing” where he talks about Daniel Dutton who has identified where Microsoft gets UK local business listings from, in his blog post entitled “Get Listed in Microsoft UK’s Bing/MSN/Live Business Directory”.

Anyway long story short if you are based in the UK and want to see if it works go to http://www.marketlocation.com/changereq/ and enter your company details.

Please note that this is rather speculative and it will probably take some time for results to be seen, so please no e-mails.  I have submitted my own site and put the word out about this and will let you know the outcome.

Justin March offers this set of instructions as ‘Guidance Only’. Therefore, Justin cannot be held responsible for any work carried out by YOU and/or ANY third party using the instructions.

Having started up this blog only a short while back, I am still in the throes of adding quality content to get the blog up and running properly. I am enjoying the process and writing is fun but… as the floodgates begin to open, the spam starts rolling in…

Obviously this Blog is moderated and I delete blatant spam as soon as it appears, the trouble is I’m getting a lot of comments that are in between being blatant spam and being insightful.

I have therefore been struggling with the nofollow / dofollow question and whether I should apply these tags to the post comments on this Blog.

What are Nofollow / Dofollow tags?

A link with a nofollow tag will appear the same to the general web going public as a link without the tag, but by implementing the nofollow tag the Blog or Forum owner is telling the search engines that this link has not been checked (or is not from a trusted source) and that the link should therefore pass no link juice or power to the resulting page.   At least that is the official line; there is some debate as to how the tag is really being dealt with by Google and the other search engines.  Tests have been run that prove that the Search Engines at least follow the nofollow links to their destination whether the resulting pages receive any link juice is open to debate.

Nofollow tags are implemented as follows:

Visit my <a href=” http://www.justinmarch.com/cheltenham-gloucester-web-design-seo-offer/”>SEO Company Cheltenham</a> site.
Which would look like this: SEO Company Cheltenham

Applying a nofollow tag, the comment would be transformed to:

Visit my <a href=” http://www.justinmarch.com/cheltenham-gloucester-web-design-seo-offer/” rel=”nofollow”> SEO Company Cheltenham</a> site.
Which would look like this: SEO Company Cheltenham

As you can see both of the above links look exactly the same to the casual observer.

NB: There is no dofollow tag; essentially dofollow is simply a “normal” hyperlink (or the absence of the nofollow tag).

Find out more about the background of the nofollow tag here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

See David Leonhardts’ blog post for even more insight into this debate.

So what to do about Nofollow / Dofollow tags on this Blog?

I act to prevent spam as much as possible but am also willing to reward insightful comments with a dofollow link, the trouble is I’m getting a lot of comments that are in between, they aren’t blatant spam and they aren’t quite as insightful as I would like.

The problem  is it’s a trade off, I don’t want to put people off, and I don’t mind a bit of banter as it helps to humanise my Blog, on the other hand I don’t want to necessarily reward banter with a dofollow link.

Option 1:

• delete the spam
• nofollow the in-between comments
• follow the insightful comments

Option 2:

• delete the spam
• delete the in-between comments
• follow the insightful comments

Option 3:

• delete the spam
• follow in-between comments
• follow the insightful comments

Conclusion

For the moment anyway I think that option 1 is the most ideal I will just have to put up with the questions relating to why some comments are assigned nofollow where others are given normal link status.

I look forward to pleanty of insightful comments on this below…