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- 8 Ways to Buy Links Without "Buying Links"November 17
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Posted by randfish
This post is sourced from my presentation at Pubcon on the Linkfluence: How to Buy Links with Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk panel. Since it received such positive feedback and a lot of requests for sharing, I thought I'd do so in a more referenceable way here on the blog. If you'd like to download the slide deck, you can find it here in Powerpoint format.
8 Ways to Buy Links Without "Buying Links"
Matt Cutts' webspam team, a segment of Google's broader Search Quality division, has made their position on buying and selling links for the purposes of boosting search engine rankings reasonably clear over the past 3 years. The practice is anathema - viewed as unacceptable because it infringes on the engine's ability to use links as an editorial signal of importance for search rankings. Both manual penalties and algorithmic filtering are applied as solutions, damaging the rankings of sites that buy as well as the ability for sites who sell to pass on link equity.
Naturally, this has led many individuals, sites and businesses seeking higher rankings to employee tactics that are plausibly removed from the direct exchange of capital for links, and while link brokers and link sales still thrive, they do so in an ever-in
- Washington State Sues SEO Company Visible.netNovember 14
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Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire
May It Please the Mozzers,
The Washington State Attorney General announced in a press release yesterday that it was suing a Redmond-based SEO company, Visible.net. According to the Complaint, Visible also does business under the name WebMarketingSource.com, Caputures.com, and Captures.com (that's not a typo). The AG also names the owner of the companies, Gilbert Walker, as a defendant in the case.
The defendants sell website design, SEO, and other internet marketing services, along with providing e-commerce services to process online purchases for merchant customers. They promote their services through their website and by telemarketing. Packages include an initial startup fee of 3,749.99 up to $9,749.99, plus a monthly fee of $39.9 to $99.99.
“When it comes to Internet search results, every small business wants to pull rank,” Attorney General Rob McKenna said. “Merchants hoping to increase their online sales paid thousands of dollars to Visible.net and Captures.com but didn’t always receive the top listings and other services they were promised.” The Ag's Consumer Protection High-Tech Unit, said that AG's office and the Better Business Bureau have received nearly 90 complaints about the defendants, showing a pattern of recurring problems since at least 2005.
Wa - Lead Generator MostChoice Must Pay Competitor 4.8 Million Dollars For Creating Fake LeadsNovember 10
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Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire
May It Please the Mozzers,
A Jury awarded 4.8 million USD to NetQuote after finding that its competitor, MostChoice, submitted more than 3,500 false applications for insurance quotes to the NetQuote website.
The jury was so disgusted with MostChoice that it actually awarded double the punitive damages that NetQuote asked for in the lawsuit. Getting punitive damages is unusual; getting double what you asked for is extremely rare. After reviewing the allegations in the case, I'm not surprised that the jury wanted to teach MostChoice a lesson.
Both companies operate websites where consumers submit applications for competitive quotes on insurance. Each company then resells the lead information to insurance brokers, who then contact the individuals with an insurance quote. Obviously, the challenge for lead generators is to produce accurate, genuinely interested leads.
NetQuote filed suit in 2006 after receiving complaints from insurers that it was forwarding bogus leads. After investigating, NetQuote's attorneys discovered that MostChoice had hired a man named Brandon Byrd to submit false applications to NetQuote's website.
Allegedly, Byrd worked 20-30 hours a week over nine months submitting at least 3,500 false applications, thus polluting NetQuote's - Differential Diagnosis: A Broken Website Ranking Atop GoogleNovember 8
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Posted by randfish
As I was stumbling around the web today, building some slides out for my Pubcon sessions next week, I came across some search results I couldn't help but blog about. Have a peek:
Check out that fourth result from hugthecook.com. It's currently down, and has been that way since at least October 20th (when Google's cache shows the "invalid website" page). The last date I can confirm it was up and available is January of 2008, when Archive.org shows a functional site. What makes this more perplexing is that page's complete lack of inlinks, according to both Yahoo! and Linkscape.
The query "stand mixer review" might not be the most competitive phrase, but it's certainly not insignificant either, and there are a lot of what appear to be very competitive and robust sites and pages ranking in positions 5-20. So, in the spirit of my new TV addiction to medical myste
- Whiteboard Friday - What's PageRank Got to do With It?November 7
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Posted by great scott!
This week Rand discusses Google's PageRank metric: what it is, what it isn't, and how much it actually has to do with how sites rank. A lot of people (especially clients) tend to misunderstand what PageRank implies; either over or under valuing the metric. This video will help you get a better idea of how to consider PR in your SEO efforts.
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-What's PageRank Got to do With It? from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.