Internet Building Codes Blog

SEO malpractice is rampant these days.  It’s everywhere you look.  I see blatant examples of SEO malpractice everyday, but fortunately, the majority of it is the result of ignorance, rather than intentional harm.  So what are some of the most common issues?

I don’t see a lot of the old-school mistakes any more, like white text on a white back ground.  But that used to work pretty well, until Google caught on to it.  If anyone’s still trying that trick, they’re either a fool or are just trying to ruin your search ranking forever.

While I’m not seeing a lot of those types of tricks any more, I am still seeing a lot sites that just seem to miss the point of SEO.

It’s not just about filling your pages with keywords.
It’s not just about using keywords in your headlines or titles or even in the meta tags.
It’s not just about using your keywords in the right location on the page.

It’s about doing it in a strategic, calculated way.

It’s not just about getting lots of sites to link to your site.
It’s not just about creating lots of hyper links within your site.
It’s not just about bolding your text or using footer links.

It’s about doing it in a strategic, calculated way.

It’s not just about building a huge set of thousands of keywords.
It’s not just about finding words that get lots of traffic.
It’s not just about writing compelling headlines.

It’s about doing it in a strategic, calculated way.

It’s about aligning all of your efforts at the same time.  If you get 50% of the things right, that’s not going to get you top rankings.  You have to fire on all cylinders.

So how do you do that?

Align everything.  If you’re focusing on a particular phrase, optimize a page for that phrase.  Then point hyperlinks on other pages of your site to that optimized page using the keyword as link text.  Re-read that last sentence until you get it.  Inexperienced SEO companies neglect that simple point all the time.  They create silly links that say things like “click here” as the link text.  All that does is help your page rank better for the phrase “click here.”

Then build links from other sites into your site, using the keyword as the link text, pointing to the optimized page.

Don’t optimize a page for something like “New York City Vacations” and then point links to the page that say “Things to do in New York.”  That’s not aligned.  An aligned site would use links that say “New York City Vacations.”  That reinforces the content on the optimized page and let’s Google know that an outside source have confirmed the content on the page.

Hope that helps.

Chadd Bryant

It’s ironic that as I was sitting down to write this post, I just received an email from someone asking for assistance. Unfortunately, their company purchased a website from one of the nations largest, and well-known web development companies (also known for their SEO services), but the site was a disaster. If you had a chance to read yesterday’s post about keywords, you know now that using the same list of keywords on every page is a no-no. Well, that’s exactly what this so-called SEO firm did. Now this poor company has spent tens of thousands of dollars and has a site that’s programmed poorly, has keywords that are potentially harming it in Google’s rankings and frankly, looks like trash too.

They’ve come to the IBCC looking for assistance as they begin to fight the invoices that keep arriving. They’ve paid everything except for the final bill, but now that they have the website in hand, feel that they shouldn’t have to pay the final bill because they are going to re-do the whole site.

The IBCC generally doesn’t get involved in litigation matters but this case seems blatantly negligent. This company has definitely become the victim of SEO malpractice and needs our assistance. I’d welcome your thoughts as to whether or not a company should be held responsible for final payments if they are dissatisfied with the final product. Is the web development firm responsible to assure that the client is satisfied before they send the final invoice. Let me know your thoughts.

Until tomorrow…

Do you ever feel like when you get a proposal, it spells out exactly what you WILL get but never tells what you WON’T get?  Here’s a quick list of things to be sure to steer clear of when designing your site.

Your site should NOT:

1.    contain Java applets
2.    exceed 7% keyword density
3.    link to “bad neighborhoods”
4.    use meta refresh tags
5.    contain poison words or phrases
6.    use excessive cross linking within the same C Block
7.    use duplicate content
8.    target more than five keyword phrases per page
9.    use cloaking techniques
10.    use session IDs
11.    use Flash menus
12.    use frames
13.    use single pixel links
14.    use invisible text
15.    use keywords in the meta tags that don’t appear on the page itself
16.    generate inbound links through image maps
17.    generate inbound links through Javascripts
18.    pay for links
19.    contain broken links
20.    have any misspelled words
21.    produce browser errors
22.    contain more than 100 external links per page
23.    exceed 100 characters per URL
24.    bury site files deeper than two directory levels

I see sites every day that make the mistakes above.   While the majority of the mistakes, are just mistakes, some of them are truly negligent.  Even if your web developer isn’t trying to harm your rankings intentionally, it’s still SEO malpractice.  Stay tuned to discover more things to avoid so that your site doesn’t get penalized by Google’s strict rules.

To your online success…

Chadd Bryant

Just a quick little tip today.  This one is quite funny.  Did you know that you may have words on your site that may be harming your position on Google?  You may have a site that’s completely clean, but Google sees your content and thinks you’re trying to trick the search engines.

Here’s what I mean.  You have to look at your content with a “dirty mind.”  Read through it and see if other people would take it to mean something else.  Are there words in there that have double meanings?  That’s the biggest mistake people make when writing their content.  If you have anything that sounds dirty, you can be banned from “clean searches.”

Here’s a funny example.  A site for preschoolers may say “Kids l0ve ju1ce and cookies.”  That looks pretty clean.  How could that possible be turned into something dirty.  Look again.  You see, the proximity of the words makes the difference.  See where it says, “l0ve ju1ce.”  Now use your imagination and you can figure out what kinds of sites might be putting something like that on their sites.  Also, note that I didn’t type those words out using letters.  I substituted in a few numbers so that Google doesn’t think I’m talking about fowl things in this blog.  That would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it?

So if your site contains innocent things like the phrase “Kids l0ve ju1c and cookies” you could be penalized in Google’s search results.  If you’re webmaster wrote your copy but neglected to scan the copy for potential things that could harm your rankings, that’s SEO malpractice.

Until later…

Chadd Bryant

Yesterday, we started talking a little about SEO Malpractice and the use of “Black Hat” techniques.  So today we’re going to begin getting into what some of the most common techniques are.  If you’re just tuning in, please note that these techniques are bad.  I’m not condoning them.  I’m simply hoping to educate you so that you know them when you see them and you can steer clear of any company that’s offering them to you.

So first off, let me give you a quick background.  It’s important that you understand why Google has had to clamp down and de-list sites for cheating their way into the rankings.  Google’s mission, as stated on their site, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  That includes providing relevant results when you search for something.  I remember when Google first came onto the scene, you’d be searching for recipes for dinner and you may wind up with the first 5 listings containing porn.  It was very disturbing for those of us who are trying to keep our nose clean.

The porn sites hoped that the temptation would be so great that you’d click on the links when they were presented to you, despite the fact that you were looking for recipes.  They were right.  Sex is a very powerful thing and the porn industry grew faster than ever.  However, Google and their users eventually became upset because the porn was quite distracting.  After all, how could people get anything done, not to mention that it was a horrible thing for children.

Google had to figure out why the porn sites were coming up in the search results when people searched for just about anything and how to stop it.  You see, the porn industry webmasters had figured out that all you had to do was make a page that talked about recipes and then put porn it.  But that looked a little funny to have porn next to a recipe for fried chicken so they discovered that you could hide the stuff that you didn’t want the viewer to see.  That way Google would see it, and be tricked into thinking that it was a page about fried chicken.

The most commonly used technique, early on, was to hide text.  Just put white text on a white background and it was invisible to the reader.  Google didn’t know that the text was unreadable because their computers were just reading the code and were not physically looking at the site.  Google caught on to that one and began comparing the text color to the background color to make sure that there was sufficient contrast.  That stopped the porn industry for about 5 minutes until they figured out the next sneaky trick to cheat their way into the listings.

Eventually, Google was forced to strip the power from the webmaster almost completely and give the power to the public to determine which sites were listed at the top.  Linking became the primary means for ranking sites and still is the most important criteria.

It’s basically like a popularity contest.  The site that has the most, or best sites linking to them wins.  I like to think of it like a high school party.  Which would be considered a better party, the one where the cheer leaders and the football team showed up, or the one where the math club and the debate team showed up?  You could have a party with 30 of the most popular people show up and it would be talked about all year, and the math club party with 50 people wouldn’t go down in history as one of the greatest parties ever.  The same is true with the linking game.  You have to get people to link to your site who also have popular sites.  Getting 50 links from unpopular sites won’t do much for your site’s status.  You’re actually better off getting fewer links from better sites than you are getting links from lots of unpopular, no-name sites.

But back to how to avoid SEO Malpractice…

I know that seemed like a long divergence from the topic, but here’s my point, Google is now looking at the sites that you’re link with and determining if they are worthy sites and letting that control your position in their ranking.  If you trade links with sites that have a bad reputation then your site is likely to be penalized.  It’s called linking to bad neighborhoods.  Stay clear of anything that appears to be malicious, dangerous, obscene or otherwise bad.  You can’t help it if they choose to link to you, but NEVER EVER link to them.  That can get your site banned too.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk a little more about linking and then about something that can be perceived as completely harmless, but can hurt your rankings seriously.

Until then…

It seems that more and more people are becoming the victim of SEO Malpractice.  What is that?  It’s when you hire a web developer or SEO company who untimately harms your position on Google.  There are techniques that Google openly discloses as “black hat” techniques.  These techniques, while they may help to rapidly shoot your site to the top of the major search engines, can potentially cause your site to be delisted from Google.  That means that they’ll totally remove your site from their database and your site’s traffic will plummet.

So, over the coming weeks, we’ll be discussing some of the techniques that are used by the “cheaters” and how to avoid becoming a victim yourself.

Until tomorrow…

SEO malpractice is everywhere.  Since more than 96% of all web sites have never even been read by anyone other than the owner of the site, millions, if not billions of dollars are wasted every single year on web design and development.  That same money might as well be flushed down the toilet.  With the rapidly growing number of so-called website design experts, amateurs-turned-expert are everywhere.  Perhaps it’s the ease of entry into the field.  Pick up a book or two on Amazon and you may think you know all you need to know.  Unfortunately, that’s how most web developers got their start.  While web development doesn’t require an 8-year academic degree from Harvard, it does require lot and experience to do it right.  And all of you who have paid for websites that have failed to perform, you have been the guinea pigs for the web masters in training.  Essentially, you paid them to learn how to do it.  That’s so backwards.  The web masters should have been paying for their education but instead, they were paid by you to get their education.  And the real cost to you was probably far greater than just the money you paid the novice web master.  When you stop to consider the years of lost business and the loss of market share and the cost of regaining market share it’s a staggering number.  If 5 years ago your competitor found a competent designer and you wound up with a novice, your competition has likely been growing each year while your online sales have been flat.   They now have a 5-year jump on you in SEO, not to mention a larger loyal customer base.

So you may have saved a couple hundred or even a few thousand dollars by using the cheap guy, but what did it cost you in the long run?  Now you’re gun shy, and rightfully so.  You’re afraid to hire another guy to fix it or even re-do the whole site because it’s hard to know if Mr. New Web Guy knows his stuff or not.  After all, you trusted the last guy and thought that he sounded like he knew his stuff.  He sure knew a lot more than you did so you fell for it.

As the adage goes, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  You’re not about to let that happen again.  But considering that 96% of websites pretty much suck, how can you find the small number of web developers who know their stuff?

Over the next few days and weeks, we’ll be developing a series of blog posts designed to help you avoid SEO malpractice, so you can find the right developers who know their stuff.  So stay tuned.  I hop you enjoy.

Chadd Bryant