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martinibuster
So will applying for a free report on our own sites result in guaranteed inclusion in your database, which in turn can be sold to our competitors? Is everyone's ass up for grabs, or do we get safe harbor from competitors once we pay you?
Also, do your bots obey robots.txt? Can we keep you off our websites so our competitors can't access our information through your service? Or does your bot not obey the robots protocol?
Does Ann Smarty think through the implications of the tools she is recommending? Do you really want to support dropping your pants and bending over for this service? Come on folks, think this through all the way to the bitter end. Do some critical thinking.
If our site is not in your database, will applying for a free report trigger a complete backlink analysis and thus provide intelligence for our competitors?
I refuse to read yet another top ten list because most top ten lists are devoid of original thought and are only aggregating what's been said elsewhere. No more top ten lists for me. :)
Exactly Nick, you hit it on the head. Perhaps there is a place for lists, but man it gets hard to look at a feed reader or whatever and it's a wall of Top Ten Lists. Sorry I posted the comment on your post as your posts are top quality and do not deserve to be lumped with the rest of the top ten crap. But I'm so tired of the top ten format I'm just refusing to read them no matter who writes them.
The blogger writes:
>>>I hate the term “target audience” as I’m not gonna shoot at anybody, I rather say “preferred audience“.
Then goes on to use variations of the phrase five times throughout the article while using "preferred" just once. :)
1) ...they could represent the same list. Just the “target audience” differs:"
2) So what audience is a “target audience” for a SEO blog...
3) ...you will end up with a much smaller but probably more targeted audience..
4) So you really have to decide, are you targeting these 5 people...
5) To be honest I also targeted the real experts of our industry...
Are you sure you hate that phrase? :P
Thanks for writing the article, for now I know that Sphinn can bring me lots of visitors.
WebmasterWorld has had an Accessibility Forum for a couple years, too.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/accessibility_usability/
Thanks Ann for touching on the topic because, sadly, there are probably many for whom this is new stuff. Visiting creatasite or wmw and going through every forum and peeking at the top posts should be obligatory reading for everyone new to the industry.
I don't pretend to build strictly accessible websites, however at the very least, I try to keep as much noise down as possible for people with screen readers.
Story: Unintended Consequences
I'm a bit reluctant to post a comment here because I'm a mod of three forums over at WebmasterWorld and I don't mean to presume to teach the mods over here how to do their job because I respect the job they do and the experience they bring to it. However, I also think a mistake was made and it's hard to keep my mouth shut on this because I'm a part of this community too. I have contributed several bug reports to help out when Sphinn was getting off the ground and contribute in the usual way as a community member. So please don't take offense if I offer some constructive criticism. It's good to listen to what your own users are telling you.
>>>The Sphinn mods did a great job of handling the situation swiftly and appropriately
Edward came here to help and he did. He exposed bots and rogue activity and he has subsequently documented a security flaw in pligg (which means Sphinn, too).
Now here is my constructive criticism, offered in the spirit of helping: Seems like there was an overreaction and the messenger was shot.
Story: Unintended Consequences
SEOaly, I didn't read Ed's comment, but looking at your blog... well whatever. I can't think of a polite way to state what I want to state so I won't say it. The point is that whatever it is he told you, instead of being insulted by it you should feel fortunate that someone of his respected stature in this industry reached down to your level and gave you his opinion.
Good for you, but please don't be offended if someone gives you advice to help you along, especially a well respected giant of the greater SEO community like Edward. You should feel blessed.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-51,GGLD:en&q=%22The+7+Habits+of+Highly+Effective+Marketers%22
Might want to add #8: Create Original Title.
Google has always bid for placement for phrases where they have a competing or relevant product. They promote Picasa and Gmail in this manner. It's a bummer because they have deeper pockets (hehe). But then it's not always necessary to place #1.
They are measuring traffic, not conversions.
>>>...while the results are not conclusive, it does seem that plural terms are better at sending traffic to retailers than singular terms.
The article discovers traffic differences between singular and plural. Ok, most of us already know there are differences. What's lacking and would make the report meaningful is the conversion data.
>>>They don't rock. They're nauseating.
Everything has it's place. What's really silly is when people post top ten lists for SPHINN readers who are already in on the joke. I mean, come on... hehe. LOL
Well Bill, don't flame me to a crisp for saying this, but that's a bit harsh. :P
Certainly, it's a commonplace for many years now that Top Ten Lists float to the top at Digg. But I get a sense that it's missing the point, or at least a little bit artless to do it over and over and over again at Sphinn because Sphinners are expected to be in on the technique. So I don't believe it resonates quite the same way it's meant to as a technique for spamming Digg.
That said, a top ten list can be helpful and useful. I don't have anything against it, and have read some great ones referred from Sphinn.
We need a top ten list of ways to make it to the top of Sphinn without resorting to top ten lists.
hehe.
Ask is becoming a married women's vertical focusing on housework, cooking, and children according to their latest statements.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/03/04/financial/f170722S36.DTL&tsp=1
;)-Y
Crazy Egg has been around for like two years already. I've been using it for about a year and a half.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/13/see-what-your-website-visitors-are-doing-with-crazy-egg/
http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/08/25/crazyegg/
>>> the notion of "will it pass a hand check" only instills a permanent incertainty and anxiety about Google... So your advice can perhaps be paraphrased as "Be afraid, be very afraid".
Not at all. What I am advocating is "Be aware, be very aware."
What I am advocating is to do an objective accounting of your risk, and judge whether or not you are ok with burning a domain should a particular series of actions on your part come under scrutiny. Justifying your actions on the basis that everyone else is doing it is a mistake, remember the real estate sites.
IF you want to proceed in a safer manner, do them in a way that will not raise flags. There are better ways of buying links, wheel has mentioned these recently. There are better ways of distributing your articles rather than going the lazy way like everyone else does.
A few years ago I received heated responses when I asserted that reciprocal linking was not a white hat method of building links. Not too long ago it was commonly accepted that reciprocal linking was white hat and Google approved. Pretty laughable. Of course today, more and more people are slowly and painfully slowly learning there are limits to what will pass a hand check in terms of a reciprocal linking strategy.
I've done enough site reviews and have been around the search engineers enough and have had years of experience where I'm quite confident of what will or won't pass a hand check. If you need it spelled out, well there are a number of great posts on WMW and elsewhere to help move along your understanding. Basically, use your common sense.
If you truly do not have even a clue of what will or won't pass a hand check, then you may need to reconsider how much you think you know. Beyond that, don't use what others are getting away with as a metric for what will pass a hand check. That's what got the real estate people in trouble.
Cheers.
>>>Common sense would tell me that a hand check is applied to find things done in bad faith.
I ask you, do you really believe Google will allow you to game their rankings dependent on whether they can guess if something was done in bad faith or not? That's rationalization, and it's not a road you want to go down. You have to be more objective. Remember the real estate guys cross linking back and forth? One of those guys admitted he knew it was bad, but everyone else was doing it and getting away with it. That's rationalization and it's not a good practice to get into. Don't go there.
"linking back and forth to another site in a related industry from your navigation bar may not pass a hand check"
Some of what occurs in a hand check is subjective. That word MAY means that this situation may lead to a negative impression. You have to ask, Should Google give credit for that ROS link? If it's between two sites that are under different ownership, this may give a negative impression. Use your common sense.
What caused the hand review? Did someone file a spam report? Or is the site ranking well and came under the eye of a QA checker? Do spam reports work? Absolutely. I don't file spam reports. However I know some people who do and the sites they report are usually whacked sooner rather than later.
Also wanted to add that I didn't pull that scenario out of thin air. It actually happened to someone.
Great post by Greg.
>>>It takes a lot of balls to stand up in public and declare to the world that your shit doesn't stink, even when so many people know it does.
Sometimes you can point out the flaws in a site and the owner will still deny it's connected to their penalty. I don't know if it's a short circuit in their ability to see clearly or willful insistence in spite of the truth (also known as lying) that makes some react this way. It's certainly more graceful when people admit they effed up.
As always, when creating a link strategy, understand the risks involved.
Blog says:DO NOT: Go through a broker to buy your links
That statement is incongruous with the ad for Text-Link-Ads on the top right hand corner of the blog. Does Brian recommend TLA or not? Brian Chappell needs to get this message straight because the ad and his recommendation cancel each other out.
iBrian says:
>>>a number of so-called "don'ts" are perfectly reasonable for link development.
I agree. Some of what Brian lists as a DON'T occurs naturally with unpaid/unsolicited link citations and from my personal experience does not induce penalties, quite the opposite.
>>>Would you expand this logic... to websites that are not directories?
Good directories exist as gateways to high quality websites for users who visit the directories. A site about recipes does not exist as a resource to high quality sites about travel. That's advertising at best and link manipulation at not-best, take your pick.
Yahoo was founded as a gateway to the Internet and continues to be a relatively fine one. In fact, Yahoos founder just yesterday underlined their mission to remain a "starting point" for the web when announcing job cuts to serve that goal. When a site about various topics accepts paid links, is it diverging from its mission as a source of information? Or do the paid links transform it into a hybrid of a directory/info site? Or is it simply a case of going through contortions to call a paid link anything but what it is, a paid link?
Blog Rage
The problem with outing these things is that you risk becoming an object lesson. Doesn't it make more sense to remain businesslike instead of reacting with a blog rage post?
Everyone loves a spectacle, but isn't it better to treat business matters in a businesslike fashion and leave the horn honking and bird flipping behind?
;)
I know where you're coming from, I'm DMCA'ing some guy in another country over a ripoff of one of my sites. No question it pisses me off, but if I let them get to me I'd eventually end up in the hospital for busting a blood vessel. The best response for my mental and physical health is to not let it get personal, just DMCA them and move on.
Cheers,
mb
Story: Majestic Seo: Most Advanced Backlink Analysis Tool