Even Google Can Get Penalized

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Apparently Google in Japan got a big penalty placed on them by Google themselves, taking their toolbar PageRank level from 9 to 5 (Search Engine Land posted an update about this on an earlier story they had).  This is a huge sign – one, that Google takes bad actions by any site (even themselves) very seriously.

Only now has the penalty been removed, although the toolbar PageRank is only up to 8 (not 9).  That’s almost a full year of penalization (11 months, to be precise).

The malady that Google Japan performed?  They paid bloggers to review a new Google widget.  This isn’t the first time Google instated a penalty on themselves – it does go to show that Google enforces their rules consistently, even against themselves.

It demonstrates that if you want to be sure to keep good rankings, you do have to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

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Web Design With SEO

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SEO, by its very nature, requires changes to the construct of the web pages in the site being optimizated.  Because of this it’s usually easier to integrate SEO with web design on the initial construction of the site.

By doing this in combination, the decisions of which pages to create can be more targeted from a marketing perspective, and this can make a well-ranked site look good instead of just “adjusted”.

The key to this is finding a web designer and an SEO expert that can work well together to make this process seamless.  Or else to find an SEO expert that also does web design (as TMO does).

Attention to these details was pointed out by Last Click News.

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Negative Attention Can Mean Positive SEO

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Most companies perceive getting negative attention or negative reviews as a purely bad thing.  However, any type of attention is good for SEO.  It will build up links, it puts eyes on the company.  And in the case that the bad review or bad attention is a minor part of what is overall a good reputation for the company, getting eyes on the company (even in this way) can be a very good thing.

Also, a balance of positive and negative attention tends to make a company look more legitimate, so this can also make this negative aspect bring positive points.

For SEO, any links that point back to the site (even if for negative reasons) will increase PageRank and sometimes may even affect keyword ranking in a good way.  I wouldn’t recommend searching for negative attention, but getting some is not always a bad thing.  SEO Consult in the UK has more details on why this is.

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How is SEO for Bing different?

Usually in the SEO world, Google comes first.  However, as Microsoft adjusts its approach, it seems that Bing is starting to get more ground.  So how is Bing different than Google when it comes to SEO?

Michael Carden-Edwards from Coast Digital explained it well: Bing needs a lot of the same things Google does, but just focuses on some key elements more heavily.  The primary areas that Bing checks are the following:

  1. Domain age – Bing likes well-established sites, it shows that there’s some experience behind the site.
  2. Quality links, both inbound and outbound – This is one area that differs from where most SEOs focus on, by looking at quality of outbound links as well as incoming links.
  3. Substantial content on each page – At least 300 words for any page that you want ranked on Bing.  It appears Microsoft is going to reduce ranking for shell pages that don’t offer much information.
  4. Title tags – This is the one major element that fits for all SEO, and stays the same with Bing.  Keep them relevant and with your keywords, it will help.

Even though Google is still king, Bing is starting to become a bigger source of traffic than before, and it’s worth knowing how to rank in their listings to keep traffic up.

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Duties of an In-House SEO Employee

As SEO becomes more prominent, more companies are turning to it to increase their rankings on the search engine results and to drive traffic to their site (to increase business).  The choice for these companies is to either hire a qualified SEO company or to hire an in-house SEO guru.

Unfortunately many companies still don’t realize the amount of work involved when asking one person to handle all of the SEO work.  Patricia Skinner from Search Engine Journal does an excellent job of outlining all of the responsibilities any in-house SEO will hold in this article.  She clearly shows that it’s something that does take time, and covers details on what to do for a company that wants quick results when you have work that isn’t always quick to show results.

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A Major Element of SEO: PageRank Explained

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Most people view PageRank as that value from 0 to 10 that’s in your Google Toolbar, showing how much reputation your site has on the internet. There are some details that you should know if you really want to understand PageRank. Read more

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Google Shows URLs Blocked by Robots.txt

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Yes, Google will still show pages even if you have set them up to be blocked in your robots.txt file.  Why exactly, you’re wondering, I’m sure.

Google is actually not crawling any of the URLs you have listed as blocked in your robots.txt file.  What they are doing is displaying the page, just not showing your description meta tag or any information from inside that page.  Matt Cutts gets into more detail about that here:

So to prevent Google from displaying your pages at all, you need to remove the page inside your Webmaster Tools or else use a robots meta tag with a noindex value in it for each page.  Then your page will not show up in Google’s results at all.

You can get more details on this information from Quick Online Tips.

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Brittany Murphy and… SEO?

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The tragic news of Brittany Murphy’s unexpected passing affected many.  However, there are some to whom this news affected in a different way – they saw a way to make a buck.

Personally, I think it’s rather sick, but there are some individuals who have taken this opportunity to take a hot news item and push spam and malware.  Quick dirty black-hat SEO methods can often get high results quickly, but then are found by Google and taken offline.  The issue is that even the short amount of time listings like these stay online can be enough to infect several machines.

Newer black-hat SEO attacks use news events to get attention to sites that pose as news sites, but act only to infect machines with malware schemes.  Be cautious when visiting unknown news sites that are “reporting” on hot news items.

The Tech Herald has more information on this particular attack, and F-Secure has more information on the specific malware details.

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Do Reciprocal Links Work?

This is a question I’ve had for a while.  I’ve gotten the impression that reciprocal linking doesn’t work at all anymore.  However, there are some cases where it seems like the best way to get a link to a high PR site is by putting a link in place.

Just as an experiment, I’m going to go ahead and test a few places.  The reciprocal links are here.  We’ll see how well it works.

— Start of random code snippets —

The site is listed among seo resources in the directory of seo links.

We’re featured Jenks SEO company in Oklahoma SEO firms directory at Finders – US SEO services directory

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The Death of SEO, as Predicted 12 Years Ago

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SEO is dead!  Come the cries from doubters, and they do vocalize it occasionally.  The latest is from a man named Robert Scoble.  He doesn’t exactly say SEO is dead, but he questions its validity.

Well, SEO (and internet marketing, in general) is not a static element.  There are always changes that fit into it.  For people who think SEO is just making some on-page tweaks, then that alone will not do a lot.  And as more people and businesses get online, that limited amount of result that pure on-page/on-site adjustments will get will only go down.

SEO has been questioned on how effective it truly is for years now, and many have said it wouldn’t last.  As long as 12 years ago.  Well, it’s lasted, and personally I think it will last – maybe not in exactly the same fashion, but it’s not going to go away.

Danny Sullivan had a lot of interesting points to say (as well as responding directly to Robert – check his post) in Search Engine Land.  Of all people, I think Danny is someone who is worth listening to when it comes to predicting the progress of SEO.  Check out his full post to see more.

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