SEO

23 July 2013
In SEO
By Usama

Another Reason to Avoid Building Spammy Links

Most of us know the risks involved with buying links, automating link building through spammy tools and using the likes of Fiverr.com for link building. It can often be looked at by webmasters as a cost effective link building strategy, and if I’m honest, it can work great for a couple of months. It’s not exactly a long-terms strategy though.

A New Opportunity for Spammy Webmasters

Whilst working on a recent Google Penalty Removal project, I found that some webmasters have been trying to squeeze every last penny out of their websites by demanding payment for link removals. Here’s one of the replies I had from a webmaster asking for $100…

Thank you for contacting us.

Since the software we are running does not allow to simply search for the link the search has to be done manually.

Do to the amount of time this takes we charge $100 per link removal.

Please make a paypal payment to XXXX@XXXX.com and your link will be removed within 24 hours.

Best Regards

We actually sent them a full list of the exact link locations on their website (http://www.poetic-dictionary.com/), so I’m not sure about what manual work needs to be done here. We have had a few directories come back to us in particular; some of them only asked for a small amount of around $10, which we accepted when there was genuinely some time involved on their part.

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18 July 2013
In SEO
By Usama

The Comprehensive List of Free SEO Tools

I looked around the internet and throughout Google, I found a lot of list based posts on free SEO tools but not a full comprehensive list that gets updated regularly with new finds!

I decided to go about creating this full list of Free SEO Tools, so you guys don’t have to go crawling through the few million results you’ll get for free SEO tools!

Last Update: 18/07/2013

Keyword Tools –

Keyword Suggestion Tool by iWebTools

UberSuggest by Alessandro Martin

Keyword Density Analyzer by IMN

Adwords Keyword Tool by Google

SEO Cloud by SEO Chat

URL ReWriting by SEO Chat

Keyword Optimizer by SEO Chat

Keyword Stripper by SEOBook

Keyword Wrapper & Negative Keyword Wrapper by SEOBook

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12 July 2013
In Search Engine Weekly Roundup, SEO
By Usama

Search Engine Weekly Round-up #33

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week looks at the value of long-tail keywords, tools mentioned at Mozcon, the results of a link building survey and alternatives to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

The Value of Long-Tail Keywords
Tom Roberts

Whilst a lot of SEOs put plenty of effort into going for the big terms in order to bring in traffic and conversions, Tom Roberts tells us how targeting long-tail keywords can prove to be much more efficient in the long run. Though a long-tail term will bring in a fraction of searches as opposed to what a short-tail term brings in, as Tom states in this post, they’re much easier to rank for, and can be done on a much larger scale, and can certainly convert.
This post looks at the conversion funnel, a seasonal example of how targeting a long-tail term is infinitely quicker, easier and overall better than targeting a similar short-tail term as well as how you can find these long-tail terms through tools such as Ubersuggest.
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9 July 2013
In SEO
By Usama

An Unbiased Review of Rank Ranger SEO Software

The Rank Ranger tool provides you with the ability to track keyword rankings (yourself as well as competitors), run domain and backlink analysis, find keyword ideas, view the analytics of your site, all aided by the integration of Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools, MajesticSEO, Moz and Ahrefs, as well as access to hundreds of search engines.
With all of this information that is provided, you can use it to create customised white label reports.

After having used this tool for a little while now, I’ll be going over the specifics of what this this tool has to offer, as well as providing some thoughts from my experience with the Rank Ranger tool.

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5 July 2013
In Search Engine Weekly Roundup, SEO
By Usama

Search Engine Weekly Round-up #32

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week focuses on evergreen content, experts’ link building thoughts, some link cloaking and fake branding.

An Evergreen Content Case Study
Christopher Fielden

Evergreen content refers to a piece of content which is essentially timeless, and will continue to remain relevant to your niche/audience, as opposed to a piece of content on a topic which will see interest fizzle out.
The first post in this round-up takes a look at evergreen content, as Christopher Fielden has written up an in-depth case study on the matter, proving how effective some top-drawer evergreen content can be for your site. Christopher goes through his entire process of creating this content, which ended up being a list of short story writing competitions.
This post looks at the research that went into the creation of this post, the actual content, the links that were used, et al, and finishes by running through the metrics which prove that evergreen content is greatly beneficial.Tweet Chris’ blog:

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21 June 2013
In SEO
By Usama

Search Engine Weekly Round-up #31

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week, all from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week focuses on two posts which take a different look at link removal, as well as posts on why BuzzFeed doesn’t need Google and why SEO won’t die.

Link Removals – You’re At Risk
Craig Addyman

The first post in this week’s round-up looks at a particularly interesting take on link removals, as Craig Addyman discovered just how alarmingly easy it is to get links removed. After creating a dummy Gmail account, he set about sending out some link removal requests, and has reported his findings in this post.
The alarming nature of this is that 39% of the replies he received were simple confirmations of the removals of the link(s), no questions asked, no further action. As well as this, only 4% of these replies asked for confirmation from the client that it was indeed them. This could mean that requesting link removals via a non-branded email could become an underhanded way to get one up over the opposition.
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14 June 2013
In Search Engine Weekly Roundup, SEO
By Usama

Search Engine Weekly Round-up #30

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week, all from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week looks at the confessions of a $100/month client, the best AdWord features, growth hacks, and excellent content promotion.

Confessions of a $100/Month SEO Client
Andrew Shotland

The first post in this week’s round-up is an interview provided by Andrew Shotland. Now, most interviews that are posted online are usually of industry leaders and such, but this is an interview with Paul Breaton, owner of a small business in San Ramon, California. The interview looks at the company’s best source of leads, Paul’s history with marketing, as well as his thoughts on social media and the value of keyword rankings. Andrew mentions at the end of the post that having a small business as part of your clientèle can be tough, as they don’t have the time or budget to be provided with anything substantial.
Have any of you worked with small businesses? If so, has your work proved fruitful?
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7 June 2013
In Search Engine Weekly Roundup, SEO
By Usama

Search Engine Weekly Round-up #29

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week, all from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc.
This week looks at the effects of Google Authorship on CTR, the metrics that matter, Penguin 2.0 “recoveries” and why you should re-purpose content.

How Does Google Authorship Affect CTR? 
Justin Briggs

The first post in this week’s round-up looks at Google Authorship and its affect on CTR, which has certainly been debated recently. After somebody posting on their blog about Authorship being responsible for a sizable drop in their CTR, there has been plenty of discussion on the topic. Matt Cutts has also had his say on the matter, claiming that the Penguin update was responsible. This post on Justin Briggs’ eponymous site talks about social annotations, how user behaviour is changing, analysing how users scan the SERPs, et al. It’s really fascinating to read how things are changing, plus the analysis of how people scan the results via heatmaps is particularly interesting.
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24 May 2013
In Search Engine Weekly Roundup, SEO
By Usama

Search Engine Weekly Round-up #27

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week, all from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week looks at the latest Penguin update, utilising remarketing, how somebody lost 80% of organic traffic, and link building for your blog.

Penguin 4, With Penguin 2.0 Generation Spam-Fighting, Is Now Live
Barry Schwartz

Well, here it is ladies and gents – the latest penguin update has been rolled out. Matt Cutts announced the release of this update on the 22nd of May via his blog, stating that 2.3% of English-US enquiries have been affected, and that Penguin 2.0 has been fully rolled out in other languages as well.
One extra item to note is that there is now a Penguin Spam Report, where you can report Spammy sites that this update hasn’t noticed.
If you want to find out more about what may have been affected in this 2nd algorithm change, we’ve got that covered here. So, have you noticed anything in your rankings after this update? Feel free to leave your comments below.
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