Musings of a Professional UK SEO Consultant » Google

Is a DMOZ listing still important to Google?

Justin March — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:55:50 +0000

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.

Updates to Google Search – Businesses will have to Participate to Survive

Justin March — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:52:07 +0000

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.

What makes an Ethical SEO Company Ethical?

Justin March — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:24:47 +0000

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:

Onsite/Onpage SEO (Which can include Domain Name Selection as well as Optimised Title Tags, Internal Links, Visible on Page Text, Page Titles etc).
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