Click Sentry Blog

I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately and to be honest, it can make your head spin. I am “fortunate” enough to know some people that, let’s just say, are on the cutting edge of programming and web based technologies.  What this has made me realize is that just about every system out there today is relatively easy to manipulate. Of course, I never really thought about using these tactics much before I met them and started talking to them.   Of course, it makes me wonder about the *SEO industry* a bit.  For instance, what percentage of *SEOs* are really able to understand this type of stuff? Of that number, how many are using these tactics to improve their clients’ rankings?

What I think is that most of the *SEO* community doesn’t know much more than what they get from the SEO forums and chat rooms.  That translates into trading links, buying links, soliciting links from other sites.  These are all good tactics, but they are unlikely to get you to the top of a competitive market.  I don’t know what I am trying to say I guess. Just thinking out loud a bit.

tags: black hat, marketing, sem, white hat, seo

Graywolf has pretty much been on the Google Smokescreen rant for the past couple of days and I am glad to see it. I usually chuckle a bit when people get their panties in a bunch every time Google *applies* for a new patent. People think that a patent application translates into Google using everything they are asking for a patent for in their technology today.  It is just plain silly to think that. If anything, Google has realized that there is a tremendous amount of money to make in patenting itellectual property.  There have been vast fortunes made (which I won’t get into here) in the technology world by patenting silly little things and processes.  I have seen people come rushing into a forum to post about Google’s latest patent application and rant about how things are going to change. Pretty funny if you ask me. Seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same with SEO, to me.  Put yourself in Google’s shoes. If you wanted to reduce spam and crap in their index, what would you do? If you were smart, you would probably realize that perception is 9/10ths of what people believe.  Most “SEOs” are not very technical people and they rely on the information they receive from others. Most real SEOs are out there hacking and testing every little thing out and learninng what works and what doesn’t work for themeselves. But, as I said, these people represent a huge minority in the SEO world. So, I would basically put the smokescreen out and see how many people I could throw off of my scent if I were Google. And, clearly this is a tactic they are using…if you are paying attention. Anyone home? Is this thing on? Herro?

Technorati Tags: SEO, Google, Marketing, Graywolf, Smokescreen, Deception

tags: deception, google, graywolf, marketing, seo, smokescreen

I have to laugh at this one.  Well, I actually laugh at most things even when they are not really that funny. But, Dave Naylor points out a great way to get yourself fired, if you are an SEO firm, and to get your client’s site banned from the search engines. Just take a look at the Google cache for Diamonds.com and you will see that the “SEO company” that is running the show for diamonds.com has their hand in the cookie jar.  I wonder how long this tomfoolery will continue…I give it about two days.  If you are looking for a good SEO gig, you might want to put a little presentation together and show the people over at Diamonds.com what is going on and who they are linking to.

tags: black hat seo, dimonds.com, spam, seo

Since I can’t seem to get over here to post every day, I figured I would post on some of the cool webmaster and SEO related stuff that I came across this week:

Rand commented on some of the “more important” elements of the recently released Google Web Authoring Statistics Study conducted by the hackers over at the Googleplex.

I listened to the weekly podcast by Jeremy and Tim who did a great interview with Kevin Burton of TailRank.com. TailRank is a pretty cool RSS aggregation “filter” that tries to cut down on the noise associated with a given story in the blogosphere…bringing you the best “signal.” If you are into blogging, RSS and/or Web2.0 then you will want to listen to the interview and add Kevin’s feed to your RSS aggregator. Probably one of the best shows (podcasts), as far as content and moderation goes, that I have listened to.

Graywolf deserves some props for his full on assault this week on his Graywolf’s SEO Blog. He finished up his three part “Maximizing Profits with Website Design and Layout” series this week with part 2 and part 3. And, he wrapped it all up with some SEO leftovers today….which I thought tasted great. This is how you get links from making great blog posts/create great content folks.

Jim Boykin pointed out some high-quality (read: useful) SEO tools that are free-to-use at Aaron Wall’s SEO tools site. Good stuff there. I wish I had time to use them.

Last, but not least, Philipp Lenssen has been busy over at Google Blogoscoped this week, with a number of great posts. Google’s PR team has been busy this week with the request from the U.S. government and the China censorship issues.

-JG

tags: adsense, blogging, marketing, seo, tools, web, webmaster, google

In case you have been living in a cave, you don’t care or you don’t have a blog, then you have surely noticed that search engines like Yahoo! are showing links to sites that have the “link condom” or rel=”nofollow” attribute on them.  This has been going on for some time now and there is just starting to be some chatter here and there about it.  It is kind of a shame and a blessing at the same time. I think that the blogging community, aka the blogosphere, has really benefitted and showed the rest of the web how things should be. You link to something because it has value and is probably related to what you are writing about. Since traditional webmasters and SEO types became aware of Page Rank and how it can affect a site’s rankings or juice, linking out has become more and more guarded. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Google stopped showing realtime toolbar PR (I am sure there are a bunch of reasons).  Removing some of the incentive webmasters have to link out to other sites and resources on the web. Of course there are going to be sites that are unrelated to yours that you link to, but is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. A vote is a vote and now that the webmaster community at large is more educated with regards to how search engines like Google use the power of links and anchor text to help something rank, I think we are all better off. This is why I think forgetting about the nofollow attribute is a good thing. But, there is also a downside.

Of course, this means that comment spam is going to become more and more of an issue in the near future.  Clearly, many of these types have been aware of the apparent lack of use of the nofollow attribute for some time as comment spam seemed to pick up a bit about two months ago for me. Clearly, the brilliant minds behind these schemes knew about this before most of the world.

I for one am glad to see the nofollow attribute fall out of favor.  People should be free with what they link to. If you like it, link it. My 2 cents.

tags: no+follow, seo, spam, blogging

Ok, so you will never guess what showed up in yesterday’s mail.  I will tell you. It was my brand new, embroidered, Shoemoney seat cover for my leather desk chair. This is when you know you have a true friend. When they send you your very own embroidered seat cover. I mean, what can I say? Thanks J-Dog.

tags: seat cover, shoemoney, t-shirt

Here is a great article on creating articles for high-quality link building. If you are in this for the long-term, then forget submitting your site to free directories and get on creating quality content in the form of articles and submit them to some of the free article submission sites on the web. Again, quality is better than quantity. Take the time to create an article that someone who is interested in your products, services, or market segment would *want* to read.

What to Write About

Most people lose interest or don’t even start on an endeavor like this because they can’t figure out what to write about. Here are a couple of ideas on things you can write about, no matter what the subject is:

1. User comments and questions. If you have an existing website/blog, look at what your userbase/visitors have asked you about in the past. Use those questions to create an article answering the most asked question(s) in some detail. If nobody has commented or asked you about anything ( ) then look at the pages/posts most frequently viewed to get an idea of what people are looking at when they get there. Use those topics as a starting point. Then think about what your first questions were when you first started learning about that particular subject.
2. Visit the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool or Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool and type in the main keyword people have used to find your site (or the main keywor(s) for your site). Most of the time, you will see queries that are clearly questions people are looking for with regards to your keyword. Using the methods in Step 1, take these questions and write a quality article answering/addressing this or a combination of this and other questions.
3. If all else fails, search for your top terms on Google, Yahoo, and MSN and see what the top-ranking sites write about. This will give you an indication (hopefully) of the major areas of interest for your particular market. Write a well-informed article or resource for people interested in that area.

Do’s and Don’ts

Spend some time researching your topic and resources on the web. It is always a good idea to cite other works on the web that can expand on a particular topic or area of focus. Don’t plan on creating a quality article in 10 minutes, submitting it to 50 article submission sites and expect that the traffic will come-a-runnin’ in a day. You create crap, you get crap. Have someone else read over your article. It is always a good idea to hear other people’s opinion even if they don’t know anything about the subject. Other people’s input is invaluable.

Okay, ready to begin? Check out the article I posted at the beginning. Then get crackin’. Here are some other resources:

• List of free article submission sites
• Search for “article submission” on Google

tags: article submission, link building, seo

Well, it appears that neither the Simpletags Plugin, nor the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin will work with the bSuite Plugin, which is a bummer. I wish the UTW one worked as it has some crazy features and is the mother-of-all tagging plugins that I have seen.  But, bSuite has some great stuff that I would rather have…so, I am going to post via the Performancing.com FireFox extension for now. I believe the tags that this generates work fine with bSuite and that is fine with me. So, here goes nothing.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, Plugins, Tagging

tags: plugins, tagging, wordpress

Trying to get the bSuite plugin, which has some really great “recent” features and a tagging plugin like Simpletags to work together. I have been using the Ultimate Tag Warrrior plugin, but it doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with bSuite. bSuite is not able to discover the tags for some reason, so it is time to try Simpletags.

tags: blogging, simpletags, ultimate tag warrior, wordpress, bsuite

Ok, so I have not been blogging here that much in the past few months, but that is not to say that I have not been keeping abreast of all that is SEO. As a matter of fact, I have simply been overwhelmed with things to do. I have really had a bit of an epiphany and that has translated into unlimited amounts of work. But, I do like to write, even if nobody likes to read what I write. I did manage to change our blog platform over from the lackluster Blogger.com setup to the brand new Wordpress 2.0, which has a built in Import Wizard which makes the changeover a breeze. Just make sure that you have the CURL module for PHP enabled on your server. Otherwise, the only other thing you need to know is your Blogger.com login. I should be posting here 4 to 5 times a week now, so brace yoself.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, SEO, Blogging