[_] Crap SEO
Samantha Mignano - Analyst
sam at beyondmetrix.com
Wed Jan 2 15:14:29 GMT 2008
HI Jon, If you ask 3 different people about this, you may get 3 different answers - one may even include some scare mongering story of some brother's sister's best friend's mate down the pub who got banned for doing it. ;-) I have been doing SEO commercially for 12 years now, and I use this css technique myself on some sites of ours for image replacement headings. I have seen no detrimental effects in those sites ranking on Google and other engines. But as with everything relating to SEO, best just to keep an eye on anything that changes in your ranking etc and then work out what might have caused it as nothing is a definite where Google etc are concerned and rules can and do change now and again. Hope that helps Sam Beyond Metrix Ltd ~ evolving business online ~ www.beyondmetrix.com Usability, Accessibility, Validation, Best Practice, SEO and online marketing. Need help with your website? Call us now for a free website audit consultation. 08456 44 88 54 A UK registered limited company. Company Registration Number: 5734561. VAT registration number 891 2460 17 -----Original Message----- From: Jon Free [mailto:jon at tangymedia.co.uk] Sent: 02 January 2008 13:53 To: underscore at under-score.org.uk Subject: Re: [_] Crap SEO Thanks to everyone that replied to this one. I wasn't aware that this could be such an issue and it will really help to be able to hand this info back to my client. There was one other practice that we do here that made me think could fall into this negative basket. It's the use of CSS to hide text in the page. Now don't get me wrong we don't hide huge chunks of text full of irrelevant keywords. We simply hide the H1 tag, usually because there is some image performing the header, company name etc of the page. We then set the H1 tag to something short and still relevant eg Tangy Media - Web Development. Any idea is this is massively detrimental or acceptable? -----Original Message----- From: Samantha Mignano - Analyst [mailto:sam at beyondmetrix.com] Sent: 20 December 2007 21:13 To: underscore at under-score.org.uk Subject: Re: [_] Crap SEO HI Jon, Links from "bad neighbourhoods" and/or link buying etc can do much damage, in extreme circumstances could even get your client banned from some engines. Its not just about an unfair deal for your client - its more about the potential damage that could have been done by this company. There are far too many "SEO specialists" out there who are actually clueless, and are selling something they do not understand. (but that’s a whole 'nother gripe of mine) At best, the links would have been pointless due to their irrelevance to your client's subject matter - but this could be the tip of the iceberg depending on how long this company has been pimping bad links, and also depending on whether they got flagged up in Google and other engines. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news this side of Crimbo. If you need further help or free advice on this, give me a shout. Sam Beyond Metrix Ltd ~ evolving business online ~ www.beyondmetrix.com Usability, Accessibility, Validation, Best Practice, SEO and online marketing. Need help with your website? Call us now for a free website audit consultation. 08456 44 88 54 A UK registered limited company. Company Registration Number: 5734561. VAT registration number 891 2460 17 -----Original Message----- From: Jon Free [mailto:jon at tangymedia.co.uk] Sent: 20 December 2007 20:21 To: underscore at under-score.org.uk Subject: [_] Crap SEO Hello all, I was hoping to pick the brains of those of you who are in to their Search Engine Optimisation. We have recently taken on a client who wanted their site redeveloping and updating. The client has mentioned that another company had already done or was doing some SEO work on the site to improve it's rankings. I managed to speak to the company who told me all they had done was to add links to the clients site from their network of over 1,200 sites. I had a look at their backlinks and found many of the sites he must have meant. Almost all of them were completely irrelevant to the clients line of work and many of them conveyed very little information of any use to anyone. They were in essence a load of little web craps. Anyway this to me seemed like a pretty unfair deal for the client and I was unsure that this actually made much difference to the ranking. I wanted to tell him that it was a load of rubbish and to end the contract with them. Would this be fair or is this kind of thing the norm and actually a good way of improving rankings. Any input appreciated. 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