Sugarrae » SEO

The Clueless, but “Whitehat”, SEO

Rae Hoffman — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:48:55 +0000

Almost three years ago I did a blog post as a response to Shari Thurow and a column she had written stating that Blackhats were worthless, shady criminals. In it she stated:

“Unfortunately, I have been an expert witness in legal cases involving SEO fraud. Clients were not fully informed about the SEO methodologies utilized to promote the site. One case in Europe involved the SEO firm stating (in writing) that they followed all of the terms and conditions set forth by the search engines.”

And I responded to that in my post – pointing out that hat color had nothing to do with talent and/or “bad” SEO:

Whoa there Shari. These are called crooks and criminals. Not blackhats. A blackhat is not defined as someone who lies to their clients or utilizes methodology without their knowledge and consent of a blackhat nature. Those are scumbag seo’s. And there are tons of them. There are plenty of talentless hacks charging companies shitloads of money for “pure whitehat” seo too.

Even further, there are talentless hacks being paid shitloads of money by clients in arenas where blackhat is rampant and they don’t even understand the techniques the competitors are using because they have no experience with them themselves, and not informing clients that it makes them a less effective seo for them. Some seo’s are shit seos and their fucking hat colors have nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, what we do is complicated and we have as many snake oil salesman in our industry as lawyers do. Clients come to us most times because they *don’t* know SEO, so it can obviously be an uphill battle at times for them to find a good one.

Even Google isn’t much help in finding a truly talented SEO, stating:

“While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site’s presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index.”

If I knew nothing about SEO, then what I got from that paragraph is that I simply need an “ethical” SEO [read Whitehat as we all know Google was referring to Blackhats in that paragraph] and things should go smoothly.

But the problem is that Whitehat does not necessarily equal knowledgeable and talented. In fact, sometimes a Whitehat SEO can do a lot of damage to your site and/or your budget. Even though they are following “the rules” laid forth by Google, that doesn’t mean they have a clue about the technical side of things or the ability to read between the lines/talent on the marketing [read getting links] side of things.

I have a friend who does mostly local SEO that sent me a recorded conversation between themselves (a Whitehat SEO who we will call the Clued In SEO) and a local competitor (also a Whitehat SEO who we will call the Clueless SEO). After hearing it, I’d take my chances with a Blackhat over the Clueless SEO any day of the week. I actually feel bad after hearing it that companies are fooled by these kind of folks every day into believing they know what they’re doing – and paying them for it.

And frankly, after years of doing highly competitive, national level SEO, I think I forgot just how little you need to know to convince someone with no knowledge of our industry to hand over their hard earned cash to you. I almost felt slightly ashamed to have the same career title as the Clueless SEO.

As soon as I heard the recording, I asked my friend if it would be okay if I transcribed it. Partly because it is funny [due to the lack of knowledge someone claiming to be an SEO had] to those of us who do this for a living and partly because I think it is alarming this person is an SEO with multiple clients. This is the ignorance we must fight against to keep our industry’s pride.

No names will be mentioned in the transcript below. I don’t know the legalities of it and it isn’t worth figuring out to me.

The back story on why this conversation took place is that The Clued In SEO’s client claimed to have received a call from the Clueless SEO claiming that the Clued In SEO’s firm “wasn’t doing anything” for the client and that any and all ranks they had were a result of having originally used the Clueless SEO’s firm – almost a year ago. [shakes head]

The Clued In SEO decided to stand up for themselves and call the Clueless SEO to confront them on what they’d done.

***All comments in [brackets] are by ME and were not a part of the call.

Here is what happened…

(Clued in SEO speaks with the receptionist of the company [this firm has enough clients to have a receptionist? sigh... you'll understand why this saddens me by the end] who puts him through to the Clueless SEO)

Clueless SEO: Hello?
Clued In SEO: Hi. What’s your name?
Clueless SEO: *states name*
Clued In SEO: Hi *name*, my name is *states his name*. How you doing?
Clueless SEO: Good.
Clued In SEO: We just had a meeting with one our clients *says clients name* and he told us someone from *Clueless SEO’s company*, I’m not sure who, had called him and told him that our company had done zero work for him since we started with him last year. And I’m just calling to see if that’s something you guys said, or if he’s mistaken?
Clueless SEO: Well, I don’t think that really matters at this point.
Clued In SEO: Well it does matter. If a company is going to go around and slander our company. It does matter. To us obviously.
Clueless SEO: Listen, if you think you’re going to call and harass my company, I’m gonna tell you something. You didn’t do anything for him. If you wanna tell me one single thing you did for him him, I’ll be happy to tell him.
Clued In SEO: Ok, are you familiar with…
Clueless SEO: Look, he told us you rewrote 30% of our code.
Clued In SEO: Who told him that?
Clueless SEO: He told me you said you rewrote 30% of our code.
Clued In SEO: You know when clients try to talk geek speak, they tend to not accurately say what was actually said.
Clueless SEO: All I’m saying is that everything we did for the SEO for the website… we had him ranking on top. The reason he dropped down a little bit [when the client was with the Clueless firm] is because we changed it from *states old title tag* to *states the new title tag they had put in place*. Everything that has been done in there – we did. All I did was reiterate to him that I did not see anything from the SEO standpoint as far as optimization on the website that had been done.
Clued In SEO: Ok, do you consider…
Clueless SEO: I don’t know what you did, but, from a standpoint of SEO the pages and what you did to the sitemaps ain’t been working. There were pages that had been changed to pure HTML that we said had to be changed back to PHP.
Clued In SEO: For what SEO…
Clueless SEO: I don’t really know what you did. I don’t know what you charged him. I really could care less. That has nothing to do with me. Ok? I’m just telling you, he asked me about this… he asked me about the rankings… he asked me what was going on and I told him what I saw in the website. That I did not see any code at all changed.
Clued In SEO: You’re well aware that links are a big part of SEO, probably the biggest part of SEO, and that it’s not just code right?
Clueless SEO: *silence*
Clued In SEO: Are you familiar with…
Clueless SEO: I… I… We’ve been in business twelve years, ok?
Clued In SEO: Yeah, everyone has. Listen, are you familiar with external link development?
Clueless SEO: Ok, you know what? I’ve been doing this for a long time. I don’t need you to call me in this context. It’s not your client. This guy has been our client for ten years. Ok? I know him.
Clued In SEO: It’s not your client. He is our client. He’s been our client for almost a year and will continue to be until that year is up. I’m just correcting you.
Clueless SEO: I’m just telling you, he asked me a question and I told him what I saw. Ok? I don’t know what you did for him and I don’t care. I really don’t.
Clued In SEO: If you don’t know what we did for him… (Clueless tries to talk over him) Excuse me, Sir, if you don’t know what we did for him you probably shouldn’t say we did nothing for him if you don’t know what we did for him.
Clueless SEO: I never said that. I never… I never said that.
Clued In SEO: Ok so you didn’t tell him that we haven’t worked on his site since obtaining him as a client. So, he’s misspeaking?
Clueless SEO: *silence* From an SEO standpoint, as far as any type of code that has been changed on there, on the website itself, to help with the rankings, I see nothing that has been done, that is all I told him.

[Here's where it gets downright hysterical and sad, all at the same time...]

Clued In SEO: Did you look at the link growth? The links pointing to the site since we took him over and the growth of those links.
Clueless SEO: The links to what site?
Clued In SEO: To his site.
Clueless SEO: From where?
Clued In SEO: Are you familiar with link building? Inbound links? Is that anywhere in your SEO…
Clueless SEO: Inbound links are useless.

[blinks... is... is this guy serious?]

Clued In SEO: In… bound… *Clued In sounds like he is in a state of shock as he says this*
Clueless SEO: I mean anybody can read Google, inbound links are useless, especially if they weigh less than…
Clued In SEO: Do you know who Matt Cutts is?
Clueless SEO: I don’t know and I don’t care.
Clued In SEO: *laughs*
Clueless SEO: Read Google material.
Clued In SEO: From like 1993 or from 2010?
Clueless SEO: First of all, inbound links don’t mean anything. Only reciprocating links have weight.
Clued In SEO: Oh my god… I’m sorry man…
Clueless SEO: The only time it is going to have weight is if it weighs more than your website.

[I feel bad being called an SEO at this point]

Clued In SEO: False. You’re absolutely false. I’ve been to four SEO conferences in the last year. The best in the industry… Matt Cutts speaks at these. Matt Cutts is the head of Google Web Spam.
Clueless SEO: Ok, you know what? I’ve been to the SEO conferences, all the SEO stuff, about 99% of it is a bunch of BS.
Clued In SEO: Ok. *laughs*
Clueless SEO: We read directly from the uh… sources. Read Google. Google will tell you inbound links are useless. The only way a link works is if it weighs heavier than your website. And weighs substantially more, it can help your website. So, you’re telling me just linking out to a bunch of people and that will help? And just links going out to a bunch of people? I mean it has to be relative as well. The information has to be relative for that link to have weight.
Clued In SEO: Not relative. Relevant. The link has to be relevant.
Clueless SEO: Well, look…
Clued In SEO: And I’m saying inbound links. Not outbound links. Not from the website to others sites. I’m saying from other websites to your site.
Clueless SEO: Where are the inbound links coming from?
Clued In SEO: From other relative sites. Relevant. Dang it, you’re screwing me up now. Other relevant sites.
Clueless SEO: *laughs* Alright well listen…
Clued In SEO: Listen, I want a quote… so you’re saying inbound links don’t help in SEO?
Clueless SEO: I appreciate you calling…
Clued In SEO: *laughs* Alright man – good luck.
Clueless SEO: Like I said, I don’t know if you’re having an issue with the client. You can call him and speak to him.
Clued In SEO: I definitely will. I just think it’s poor business practice to go around telling people slanderous things about a company when you’re not even aware of what the company does. Like if you honestly had in front of you all the work we’ve done or not done and presented it to him and said “hey we can do better” then that would be…
Clueless SEO: Don’t call me. Show it to him. Tell him.
Clued In SEO: I’m calling to verify that was the case, that you said that, before I talk to him.
Clueless SEO: Call him and talk to him. I don’t care what you’ve done for him. You know, I’m not calling you to tell you anything, so don’t call us and tell me anything.
Clued In SEO: You can call me anytime.
Clueless SEO: I told him what I felt like I saw, okay?
Clued In SEO: When we got him almost a year ago, he was ranking number four and five on his keywords of interest. Today he ranks number one on almost every single keyword. We’ve got about twenty five keywords that we’re focused on. He ranks number one on almost all of them naturally and in the local box. Are you saying you’re responsible for that from when you had him last year?
Clueless SEO: Absolutely. He was ranking that way before you took him over.
Clued In SEO: We have screenshots and we have tracking systems that prove otherwise.
Clueless SEO: I’m not talking about that. He dropped a little when we changed the name of the site.
Clued In SEO: Ok, so you changed it and then you…
Clueless SEO: You even told him you did the redirect on it. You didn’t do the redirect on it.
Clued In SEO: A canonical redirect. Do you know what a canonical redirect is?
Clueless SEO: Well, look, I’m just saying…

[headdesk]

Clued In SEO: No, you don’t.
Clueless SEO: I just told him what I saw, ok?
Clued In SEO: Fair enough. I’m not trying to belittle you. I just find it very offensive that…
Clueless SEO: *laughs loudly* You won’t. Trust me. *laughs*
Clued In SEO: I know, you’re an SEO God. I’m sure.
Clueless SEO: But look, if you have any issues with anything that was done on the site, talk to him about it. That has nothing to do with me. You guys can discuss whatever you want. Okay? Have a nice day.
Clued In SEO: Thank you so much. Have a good day.

(Both hang up)

If you’re a small company who doesn’t understand SEO? Read about Small Business SEO and What to Look for in an SEO Firm before you hire anyone. Please. For your own sake and for ours so that firms like this have less of a chance to put a shadow on our industry as a whole.

Oh, and Matt? Maybe it’s time to redo those “how to hire an SEO” tips to be more clear that you’re not just looking for an “ethical” [read Whitehat] SEO… you’re looking for an SEO that actually knows what they’re doing [oh, and insult to injury? "Google Certified" is plastered all of the Clueless SEO firm's site - y'all should really update how Adwords certification can be displayed as well]. Because in my opinion a Whitehat who doesn’t have any clue what they’re doing can actually be the most dangerous SEO of all.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

The Clueless, but “Whitehat”, SEO

You Don't Need SEO to Rank in Google

Rae Hoffman — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:54:07 +0000

I’m sure you’ve no doubt heard that getting indexed and ranked well in Google is all about Pagerank and links.

While Google search engineer Matt Cutts may have confirmed that statement almost three years ago, it doesn’t mean things never change and/or that Pagerank and on page signals (aka SEO) are the only factors that matter when it comes to ranking in today’s search engines, especially Google.

It’s not all about SEO anymore. SEO is simply the process of optimizing your site to get the most benefit out of the rankings you earn via marketing and traffic development and is not necessarily required to achieve the rankings themselves. SEO is still valuable. SEO is still important. But it doesn’t run the show.

A look at what pure traffic can do

A few weeks back we launched a little site called Tweetwasters. It wasn’t a “serious effort” or anything we planned to monetize. It was a quick dip into the world of Twitter applications. But it also gave me some actual hard data back up what I had known in my gut to be true for a long while… traffic can have a direct impact on your indexing and rankings.

How can I be so sure? Because within a matter of two hours, Tweetwasters had achieved the following:

the homepage was indexed

while considered a misspelling, Tweetwasters ranked #1 for the term “Tweetwasters” – over my own blog, which is pretty strong

However, what really was interesting was what happened over the next two hours (so, within four hours of launch):

the site had over 300 pages indexed

the word Tweetwasters was no longer a “misspelling” as far as Google was concerned

Within 24 hours the site had managed to hit the Alexa “what’s hot on the web now” list, though it only remained there for an hour or two. The site’s growth and strength in Google continued get stronger:

the site had over 600 pages indexed

the user profile pages began ranking top ten for folks without a lot of competition for their name and top 100 for those who did

the site was now ranking #1 for the word “tweetwasters” above many other sites discussing it, and not only my own

Nearly 48 hours after launch, TechCrunch gave us a mention and over 20,000 profiles had been checked at least once in the system. The site had over 1000 profile pages indexed and had received over 10,000 links (also proving that there is no “getting links too fast” issue PROVIDING YOU HAVE THE TRAFFIC PATTERNS TO MATCH YOUR LINK GROWTH).

Several weeks later, our fifteen minutes of fame are up and the massive traffic on the site has become a trickle.

While we still rank number one for “tweetwasters”, the amount of pages the site has indexed has dropped to less than five hundred and my profile page no longer ranks top 100 for “sugarrae” (it isn’t even indexed anymore at the moment, even with a range of site link from my sidebar – if you’re smart, you’ll take something home from that too).

What this says to me is that while you can use your looks (in this case traffic) to open doors, you need to be able to back it up with some substance (keep people engaged, keep them coming back, keep them passing along your links) if you expect to last.

This has long been apparent to me when sites with some of the most horrid architecture and on page SEO I’ve ever seen, like Perez, are able to rank and rank well for highly competitive core terms. Watching Tweetwasters go from zero to sixty in terms of both traffic and the search engines simply allowed us to document an extreme case from beginning to end.

Could a talented SEO double the traffic Perez Hilton receives? They sure could – easily. But the lack of a competent SEO has not stopped their “SEO ignorant” marketing machine from obtaining rankings for all of their core terms.

Learn to major in marketing and minor in SEO

Three years ago, I did a post at WebmasterWorld on how I saw the tides changing:

“Stop aiming for the engines and aim for real, live human beings. Aim for obtaining traffic and not backlinks. Aim for obtaining attention and not pagerank. Stop aiming for the affections of a mathematical computation and aim for commendations from breathing individuals.”

Good core marketing and the occasional yet regular viral success (it doesn’t need to be large scale, especially if your industry isn’t) – both of which amount to driving traffic at the end of the day – can get you good rankings with or without SEO.

Mimicking valuable links with bullshit links obtained merely to game the engines won’t have a lasting effect. My nofollowed link from Twitter is more valuable to me than my dofollow link from TechCrunch because it sends me traffic on a regular basis that sends the right signals to Google while bringing actual human beings to my site.

SEO simply helps you leverage them to their fullest potential. SEO is no longer the sole key to good search engine rankings. Adapt and survive or deny and die. Remain a small component of an online marketing campaign or learn to run one. It’s your choice. 2009 will be the year of sharing tactics to market and brand websites from blogs to affiliate sites to regular business websites here at Sugarrae.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

You Don't Need SEO to Rank in Google

Creating Firefox Quick Search Bookmarks

Rae Hoffman — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:10:38 +0000

If you’ve ever seen me do a site clinic at a conference on my own computer, you’ve likely noticed that I have a series of shortcuts to do searches via Firefox that are very repetitive to my daily routine. If you’ve seen me do a site clinic without my own computer, you’ve likely seen me *try* to do one of these searches and give the “I so wish I had my laptop for this” look.

Earlier today, doshdosh started a conversation on twitter about adding search bars from multiple engines to Firefox. This caused myself and Chris Garrett to start mentioning our personal arsenals of quick searches we’ve built into Firefox. The Twitter whore suggested I create a post explaining quick searches, so here it is, along with a file of some of my seo related quick searches you can simply download and import into your bookmarks.

If you’re not quite sure what the hell I’m talking about… a quick search is something that allows you to perform searches on sites directly from your address bar. So, you can search Google by typing in “google [keyword]” without having to actually *go* to google.com and then type in the search query (or have a Google search box installed in your browser).

There are some quick searches in the base install of Firefox, but you can really customize them to do a lot more than simply search Google or Amazon. I’ll give you an example…

If I type “ww link development” into my address bar and hit enter, I am automatically presented with the results here. The “ww” is a quick search telling Firefox that I want to do a site:webmasterworld.com search on Google for this keyword and have it show 100 results at a time (this is a work around to searching webmasterworld, which if you’re not aware, has no decent search feature – ironic, I know).

Creating this quick search is a fairly easy thing to do (that said, below is my very layman explanation of how to do it). All you need to do is go to bookmarks > organize bookmarks and then click on new bookmark. Once you do that, a window will pop up and you fill in the following information…

The name is simply what you call the shortcut “formally”… for me, that is WebmasterWorld Search. Location refers to where the search should be performed. To figure out this address, go to google.com and do a search for “site:webmasterworld.com keyword” and you will get the following results.

Next, click on advanced search on the top of the Google webpage and change the number of results showing from 10 to 100 and click “google search” next to the dropdown. This will take you to this results page.

Copy that url and paste it into the “location” field of the bookmark screen. Then, take the search term you used – in this case, we used keyword and replace the word “keyword” within the url string with “%s” (no quotes).

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=keyword&hl=en&num=100&btnG=Google+Search
&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&cr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=
&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=webmasterworld.com&as_rights=&safe=images

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%s&hl=en&num=100&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq
=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&cr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&
as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=webmasterworld.com&as_rights=&safe=images

The keyword field on the bookmarks screen refers to what you’ll type into the address bar before your search term to initiate the search. In this case, I’ve used “ww” since it is short, easy to remember and makes sense. The description field is simply where you explain what the quick search does and how to make it happen. Click “ok” and your webmasterworld quick search shortcut should now work.

I have a ton of shortcuts I use in my day to day work in the seo field, as well as a ton of personal quick searches.

I’ve created a small sample selection of some of my SEO ones that you can download here (to download them, right click on the link and choose “save as”). Then just import them to your Firefox bookmarks and they’ll be ready to go.

You can change them as you see fit and if you sit and think for a little bit, you’ll figure out a *ton* more to add. Basically, if you do a search more than once or twice a week, I’d create a quick search for it. If anyone wants to add to the possibilities in the comments, feel free to do so…

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Creating Firefox Quick Search Bookmarks

Monkey Balls In Louisville Kentucky

Rae Hoffman — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 02:27:28 +0000

I really don’t have much to say in this post except that it’s an experiment to prove something I already know, but to be able to at least have some tangible evidence of it other than simply knowing because I’ve been in this game so long. So, you want to rank for phrases like “Monkey Balls In Louisville Kentucky” but are unsure of how to do it… well, well, well… rustle up some monkey balls and prepare to take notes!

Well, here’s where SEO comes in! Now those of you retailing monkey balls (be they blue monkey balls or yellow monkey balls) in Louisville Kentucky can find your normally non competitive serp to be a bit more competitive. Aaron (no, not that Aaron) has already shown you the way to lasting monkey ball ranks you can treasure for years to come with monkey balls seo.

I wonder if Google Knol will have a section on balltastic monkey nuts – especially the rare type you’d find in the Louisville Kentucy area. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, here are some monkey balls – straight from Kentucky – to keep you warm.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Monkey Balls In Louisville Kentucky

Some Fun YouTube Testing

Rae Hoffman — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:25:51 +0000

The curious, paranoid whore and I are doing a little something that resulted in the video below… feel free to ignore this post… but I am have some curiosity to be satisfied. There really is no more to see in the video below than there was in the video over here but gian asked me to post this anyway.

Sad part is, even though I have stated there is nothing to see, some of you guys are going to click the button and watch it.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Some Fun YouTube Testing

Googlebot Gone Wild on WordPress Backend Files

Rae Hoffman — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:45:10 +0000

I’ve been noticing a problem on several of the blogs I’m running lately in regards to their indexing at Google. Granted, I’m not a big one for running wordpress as most of my sites run on a custom built CMS system, but I’ve been running a few for quite a while and what I’m seeing lately in regards to their indexing seems odd to me.

The problem is that Googlebot has begun indexing the backend files of the blog. Some example urls I have begun finding indexed (and yes, I checked to make sure they had no inbound links and according to Yahoo, they don’t) are:

/wp-content/plugins/webprof-delicious/webprof-delicious2.php
/wp-content/cache/wp-cache-cdecddb6bcc0b95b96cdcb347.meta
/wp-content/cache/wp-cache-cdecddb6bcc0b9b4dcdcb3427.html
/wp-content/themes/default/

And all those urls have some great title and description tags like:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_header() in /home …
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_header() in /home/username/html/wp-content/themes/default/index.php on line 1.

Warning: main(ABSPATHWPINC/rss-functions.php) [function.main ...
Warning: main(ABSPATHWPINC/rss-functions.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in …

The indexed cache pages of course have dupe titles, descriptions *and* content as their non cached counterparts. But, hey, there is no duplicate content penalty right? [sarcasm]if my pages can’t be found as a result of it, you can call it a penalty or a “spoonful of love” – it has the same meaning to me[/sarcasm]

1. What the hell is Google doing crawling these pages and files?

2. Anyone else seeing this (there are millions of pages indexed, so someone else must be) and if so, for how long have you been seeing it?

3. If by some chance, this was coming from toolbar data, wouldn’t they think to set up an exclusion for one of the largest blog platforms in existence to not have these pages indexed and wasting space?

4. I’m not seeing the toolbar as an explanation in all honesty because I’ve never visited some of these urls in the backend – they’re not even “navigatable” … so how the hell is Google “finding them” to begin with, considering the whole point of “crawling” for urls?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Googlebot Gone Wild on WordPress Backend Files

Google Supplemental Weirdness

Rae Hoffman — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:51:19 +0000

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t kept on top of the way supplemental issues the way victoria secret lotion keeps on top of a stripper – hey, laugh if you want, I swear they *all* wear it. But, in the last week or so, I’ve been taking a closer look at it, after stumbling onto something on “accident”, and figured I’d share the weirdness I’m seeing and see if anyone else has some weirdness to share.

When I first noticed it, I mentioned it to the supplemental whore and he had mentioned to me that he had been seeing the supplemental oddities here and there for a while, but had seen a lot more of them since the last ~~update~~ noticeable tweak to the Google search results.

I have a particular site that is extremely popular in its niche and does very well across all three engines (aka defensible). I really have never bothered to “scour” its listings in Google because there has never been a reason to. But, last week we added a new section to the site and some new pages. Now, the new section was heavy on pictures that the writer had taken for the task and lower on word count. So, I was making sure the pages got indexed and weren’t suffering as a result. I was a little surprised by what I found…

First let me preface by saying I’ve always agreed that a supplemental query was keyword specific and not site specific, but after what I’ve been watching this week, I no longer believe that to be the case. Also note that I will be using the term widget.com in place of the real site name I was looking at and the term “widget installation section” for the new picture heavy section we had launched. I’d use the real site, but some people seem determined to believe I’m still on the dark side. ;-)

So, I’m checking the indexing of widget.com and find that the new installation section has been indexed, along with five new main site pages we had put up – one four days prior and four the day before. The installation section, again, mainly consisting of pictures on each page is listed in supplemental as are all five of the new content pages.

Now, since supplemental has always acted keyword query specific, often times pages that showed supplemental in a site search would do fine in the main index – and that of course, is the only real concern. But, the only way I could get this page to show up was to do an exact search in quotes. And even though my page was the only listing for the sentence searched, it still had that nice “supplemental result” tag sitting next to it. The page was truly supplemental. A few more tests and sure enough, every page from the site that was listed as supplemental in a site query truly was supplemental in the search results.

My first thought of course is that Google had changed how it was showing supplemental in the results – it damn sure seemed to be a site specific query now. But, my bigger concern was how 14 brand new pages, five of which were of high quality, lengthy and conceptually unique (again, the others were quality as well, but contained little text, so I could see Google getting confused as to their value) were being labeled and treated as supplemental by Google.

I decided to think on it a bit and assigned the writer to transcribing the images into text for the installation guides. The next day, I get on the topic again with the Jason Calacanis whore – I am so getting my ass kicked for that one – and go to show him the issue with widgets.com. But, this time, there have been a few changes…

The first was that two of the installation guide pages had magically popped out of supplemental. Additionally, the content page that was launched several days before the other four had also escaped supplemental. For a “condition” often referred to as supplemental hell by webmasters because of the work that goes into escaping it. I found it a little odd that my pages, which had gone untouched in the interim, were escaping it on their own.

I start checking a few more sites that are continually having new pages added and am seeing the same issue. I’m seeing it on old pages as well, but I’m seeing it on ton of brand spanking new pages and that is what has my mind going. Mind you, the supplemental query on the older pages is also odd, because they’re full of great content.

So, that leaves me with several thoughts swirling in my head… and wondering if anyone else is seeing supplemental weirdness. I’m going to keep an eye on widgets.com over the next few days. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing more of those new pages escape supplemental without any intervening on my part. The older pages in supplemental from some of my other sites – well, I’ll be running some tests on those too.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Google Supplemental Weirdness

Cool Design Feature or Accident Waiting to Happen?

Rae Hoffman — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:49:51 +0000

So, a friend and I were having a conversation after I mentioned dealing with several clients in the past using css layers on their sites and I thought I’d open it up for opinions, since we couldn’t seem to come to an agreement on the topic…

Here’s the deal… the specific site we were looking at as an example is an e-commerce site and it uses css to make their site “pretty”. They have a square box with tabs on the top and every time you click a tab, a different set of text comes up utilizing css layers (product information, shipping information, guarantee… the usual).

Now, the friend (who asked to remain an anonymous voice – chicken shit) had immediate concern that this use of layering might be seen as hidden text to the search engines – not under a hand review of course, but rather as part of an automated process to detect people doing evil things with css.

My instinct/opinion was (and is) that it isn’t an issue at all – it’s a design concept gaining more and more popularity and the thought of a site being banned or penalized for utilizing css layers without it exuding other “red flags” to the engines in addition to the layers just seemed, well, dumb.

Now, I’m not saying the engines don’t do dumb things, I’m just saying that this seemed a little “extreme” on the dumb meter.

I went in search of official statements from the engines on the topic and saw this post on Captain Sprite’s blog – who thankfully has thick enough skin to be the target of my humor for the day – where he mentioned evil css doings and saw several people ask questions about using css layers legitimately and what Google’s stance was on it. The only comments Matt made on the entire post were:

Comment – Search Engines Web, you said that ‘That site has a perfect right to use that “invisible” text and the h1 tags’. I agree. In turn, Google has the right to decide not to return that site in our search results, because we feel that hiding text that is not visible to users is deceptive.

Ok, well, that’s what Matt thinks of a users “right” to hide text…

Comment – If you’re straight-out using CSS to hide text, don’t be surprised if that is called spam. I’m not saying that mouseovers or DHTML text or have-a-logo-but-also-have-text is spam; I answered that last one at a conference when I said “imagine how it would look to a visitor, a competitor, or someone checking out a spam report. If you show your company’s name and it’s Expo Markers instead of an Expo Markers logo, you should be fine. If the text you decide to show is ‘Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo Markers sale …’ then I would be more cautious, because that can look bad.”

Common sense 101 – treat css under a graphic the same as you are *supposed* to treat an alt tag.

I’m starting to lose interest, and then I see Jennifer Sullivan state:

Comment – What Matt said earlier guys, is that hidden CSS layers are not penalized, UNLESS they are intent to deceive.

Now I’m thinking in my ~~boredom~~ due diligence I missed an actual definitive statement on using css layers to hide larger blocks of text (as opposed to in place of an alt tag)… go back, check… nope. So, looking to the official voice of Google didn’t reveal anything (I know, I’m shocked too).

So, without an “official” statement on using css layers in the manner I specified in the example site above… I go to those who know the engines best… what’s your theory? Perfectly acceptable design implementation or risk of being penalized? And for added fun, do you think Google is capable of determining the difference between “Expo Markers logo” and “Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo Markers sale” algorithmically?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Cool Design Feature or Accident Waiting to Happen?

What Makes You Follow and Trust Someone in This Field?

Rae Hoffman — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 19:39:13 +0000

So, I was reading the social networking whore (I have vowed to use the word whore in his anchor text for at least six months) the other day and saw him make a comment that he had trust for several people in this industry and I was listed as one (thanks babe, feeling is mutual). Then, I found the new Tropical SEO blog and saw a post of his where he mentioned a few names from his “trusted 25” of which I was also listed (thanks again).

After reading these two mentions and thinking of other allusions to trust given in various forms, like Rand’s list of the best fifty blogs in the search space, I got to wondering…

Why do you follow or trust those that you do?

- Does trust come from conversation and friendship, online or off?
- Does it come from meeting someone in person and gaining a “vibe”?
- Does it come from reading various works by the person and finding them to be in sync with your own beliefs?
- Does it come from transference (meaning that someone you follow also believes strongly in another person and the trust simply transfers)?
- Does it come from perceived celebrity status (everyone always talks about the person, so they must be good)?
- Does it come from credentials held (speaking at conferences, moderation at forums, articles published)?

So tell me… Why the hell are you here reading this post? And why are you reading everyone else you read? How did you end up finding your favorite people to read and what made you decide to follow, read or trust them on a regular basis?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

What Makes You Follow and Trust Someone in This Field?

Before You Launch that Local Small Business Website

Rae Hoffman — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 01:27:11 +0000

I was approached to do a speaking gig to a group of local small business owners who owned brick and mortar businesses and wanted to launch websites to use for local and online marketing purposes. I figured since I was writing a presentation up for that, I would condense it into a shorter version and throw it up here.

This post is not for experienced search marketers or professional webmasters. This is aimed at the small mom and pop that doesn’t make their living online, but rather would like to gain a few leads here and there from generally non-competitive geographical + keyword combo terms by putting up a website consisting of a handful of pages – in addition to providing useful information to all visitors to their sites – whether they come from search engines or local offline marketing efforts.

Believe it or not, not everyone who reads my blog is big into search engine optimization – I get a lot of emails from small business owners asking about what may seem like “remedial topics” to those of us who make our living in the industry. So, this post is for them. ;-)

Getting started:

1. Get your own domain name and register it for several years. With a successful business, spending 50 dollars to register your domain for the next five years is a no-brainer.

2. Get a decent host – for a local small business website that doesn’t envision mounds of traffic or a complicated website setup, you can find a ton of affordable and reliable hosting options for less than 10 dollars per month. Pay the 1-2 dollars extra per month for a unique IP address (your host will know what that means).

3. Set up an email address using your domain. Your hosting plan will come with a minimum of one free email address and your host should have instructions on how to setup and configure your mail client to check that email. me@mybusiness.com looks much more professional than me432@yourisp.net.

4. If you don’t know how to make a “great website” either hire a web designer (for a small site spanning only a few pages, the cost should be quite nominal) or keep it simple with a basic background color, fonts and real life pictures (if applicable). I’d recommend the web designer for a nominal fee. Remember, the website will be the first impression of your business to online users.

What to put on your homepage:

1. Make sure your business name, what you do, where you do it, who you do it for and why you’re the best at it all appear on the homepage in text. Be short and sweet (they can visit other pages of the site for in depth information on those topics) but also be descriptive.

2. Your address, phone number and email address should appear on every page in text. Be sure to list this information in full, including street address, city, state and zip code. List the phone number with area code.

3. Hours of operation.

4. Cities you serve in your local area.

Other pages you should have at a minimum:

1. About page – This is where you go in depth on your company. Give a detailed, but not too long (think essay, not thesis), explanation on what you do, how long you’ve been doing it, what makes you the best at it and why customers should choose you above the competition.

2. Services or Products page(s) – Tell them what you do and what you can provide to them. Add pricing information if you feel it is appropriate. If you do something that has a “finished result” such as landscaping, pool construction, paint jobs, room additions, etc. consider adding pictures of past work – as they say, pictures (that are resized properly using a graphics or photo editing program) can be worth 1000 words (but be sure to add descriptions of what the pictures show in text).

3. Contact page – Tell visitors how to get a hold of you. This includes your full address, phone number, email address, fax number, additional locations (if applicable with all of their pertinent information as well), hours of operation, a map (you can easily get one online via major mapping sites) and directions from one or two major roads in the vicinity. Be sure you list a privacy policy on the site if you have any forms for users to fill out telling them what you will and won’t do with their information. Make sure you check emails often and are timely in responses to inquiries.

4. Coupon page (optional) – If you want to know when new referrals are coming from your website, tell people to mention that they found you via your website for a nominal discount.

Making your new website search engine friendly:

1. Make sure the titles tags on each page are unique and include some keywords you think people would type into a search engine while trying to find your site. I.e. if you do landscaping in Clearwater, Florida your homepage title tag might be: be: “Professional Landscaping Services in Clearwater, Florida – Your Company” (no quotes). Every page on your site should have a title tag that reflects the content specific to that page.

2. Make sure the meta description tag on each page contains a sentence that serves as a mini-advertisement for your company that makes people want to find out more as it may appear at times under the title of your website in Google and other search engines. Be sure the description is not only promotional, but informational about your company and website.

3. Make sure the designer doesn’t use flash (for the entire website) or JavaScript links to navigate your site. For a myriad of reasons you don’t care about, I assure you this is very bad if you have any hopes of people finding your website in the search engines.

4. Add some links to your website that are useful to people looking for information about your services. I.e. if you belong to an association (like an attorney would to the bar), if you have a partnership with a related business (you build pools, so you list a few recommended pool maintenance companies), if you can refer people to sources of additional information (such as an accountant pointing to various documents on the IRS website that may be helpful to consumers) – these are all great links to add to your site. You can work these links into your regular pages or create an additional page for resource links.

Online promotion of your new website:

1. Get your business listed with Google maps (free):
https://www.google.com/local/add/login

2. Get your business listed with SuperPages.com (free and fee options):
https://my.superpages.com/spweb/products/business-listing

3. Update your business listings with infoUSA.com and Acxiom (find out why you should here):
http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm
and
http://bcb.acxiom.com/start.pl

4. Get a listing in Best of the Web in their regional section (fee):
http://botw.org/top/Regional/United_States/ (click submit site at the top right of the page once you find your proper category)

5. Get a listing with Yahoo Local (free and fee options):
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/local/business.php

6. Find the category that matches your business and get listed with Dmoz.org (free):
http://www.dmoz.org

7. Get listed in MSN local via localeze.com:
http://www.localeze.com/manage/

8. Get listed with citysearch.com (also powers the Ask local search) for a fee:
https://selfenroll.citysearch.com/

9. Get listed with local.com (free and fee options):
http://www.local.com/advertise.aspx

10. Get listed with yellowpages.com (free and fee options):
http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/advertise/

11. You might be able to save yourself some time with RegisterLocal.com:
http://www.registerlocal.com which offers to keep your business profile information up to date with various yellow page, local search providers and data companies who provide information to various local outlets.

12. Register yourself with the local search engine over at BOTW: http://local.botw.org (free for basic profile, upgrade enhancements available for a fee)

13. Talk with friends, family, businesses you have partnerships with that have websites and any associations you may belong to (such as a chamber of commerce) to see if they would be willing to link to your website to help promote your business.

Remember to promote your site offline as well by mentioning it on all your marketing materials and to current customers. And then get back to doing business. Your website should be positioned well in the coming weeks on specific search terms to your local market and service as well as being visited from local people following your offline marketing efforts and finding the information they’re looking for on your website.

Note: This post has been edited to add RegisterLocal.com, a service offered by LocalLaunch, as I stumbled upon it after this post was published and it seems like a great way to save some time.

Second Note: Post was edited again to add in the information for the new BOTW Local Search.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Before You Launch that Local Small Business Website