I spend a few hours each day helping site owners and business owners recover from the dreaded Google Penguin algorithm update. I thought that I had received crazy emails from site owners who don’t know how to update their website. But it’s also amazingly hilarious to me when I run into a site owner who doesn’t even know that certain pages exist on their website. [Read more…]

There’s a search engine optimization company out there that is requiring that you pay for removal if you want your link removed from their directory. This same SEO company built these web directories several years ago, touting the fact that they would help your search engine rankings if you were to get listed. Now they want payment for removal of your link.

If you have a link on one of these directories, then expect to pay $25 for each link to be removed: [Read more…]

Dear Shady SEO Firm:
Would you please stop, immediately, from spreading false and untrue rumors about the Google Disavow Tool? By spreading false rumors, you’re hurting the SEO industry as a whole and making it even more difficult for us honest, Google-Webmaster-Acceptable-Guideline-Abiding SEOs to get our jobs done properly. And don’t even think about threatening website owners about removing links to your client websites. That’s just flat out wrong. [Read more…]

Google has launched an improved URL removal tool that will make it easier to request updates based on changes on other people’s websites. But there is actually another use for this tool: it can be used to aid in a website’s Google Penguin Recovery if your site has been hit by Google Penguin. [Read more…]

If you have ever received a manual penalty from Google, then you most likely have received this message in Google Webmaster Tools that could be an unnatural link warning, similar to this one that my client received: [Read more…]

There are so many companies out there, some calling themselves a Link Building Firm, that claim to offer natural link building services, which is an interesting type of service. Think about it for a minute. If your company offered something called “natural” link building services, then the links that you get to your website uh, well, would NOT be natural? [Read more…]

In a post Google Penguin world, it is still okay (an natural) to link out to other websites. Here in June of 2013, I am horrified that I actually have to have this conversation with other website owners and bloggers. I mean, really. Why would it possibly hurt your search engine rankings if you linked out to a company’s website when you mention them in your blog post? [Read more…]

If your website is banned in the Google search engine or if your website is penalized, then I don’t recommend writing and distributing a press release about it. IGXE the Internet Gaming Exchange, a company that specializes in selling MMORPG currencies, items, power leveling, and CD-keys, such as World of Warcraft gold, apparently got penalized in the Google search engine for buying links. As a result, instead of admitting that they did something wrong, they issued a press release telling others that they should not hire network marketing companies. [Read more…]

Breaking News: It is still possible to game the Google search results, even for commercial keyword phrases. In fact, you can even put up low-quality, low-content, spam web pages and get them to rank well in Google. Not only that, it is still possible, even when the Google Penguin and Google Panda have been in full force, to rank well with that low quality spam content and redirect visitors using a javascript redirect to another website. [Read more…]

A UK-based online marketing agency named datadial recently received a threatening letter (a Cease and Desist letter) from Fox Williams LLP demanding that a link on their website be removed. The link in question was pointing to Shopzilla’s website. [Read more…]

The first-ever online marketplace for buying and selling links in articles and blog posts based on Google Authorship and Klout score has been launched. Buying and selling links based on Google’s PageRank has long been a controversial topic, as well as a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. AuthorLinks is a marketplace for buying and selling links based on a web site owner’s Google Authorship and overall Klout score. [Read more…]

Way to go, Google. This just goes to show that the employees who work on your Google Webmaster Tools don’t talk to your Google Docs employees. Nothing can be more frustrating than using two Google products that don’t work with each other very well. Such is the case with Google Webmaster Tools and Google Docs. [Read more…]

Google has a lot of webmasters scared. Seriously, they really do. Webmasters are so scared now that they are randomly and blindly emailing all the sites that they know about that link to them–and asking for links to be removed to their website. [Read more…]

I think the title of this blog post says it all. Really. Here we are in the beginning of 2013 and many respected experts in the Search Engine Optimization industry offering their predictions for the year. I purposely have decided to not offer any predictions for the year. Rather, just go ahead and change my whole entire attitude and way of thinking when it comes to SEO, web site marketing, internet marketing, online marketing, whatever you want to call it these days. What is the change I’m making? [Read more…]

Google has released their Google Disavow Tool, an online tool part of Google Webmaster Tools that allows web site owners disavow links to their web site. You really only need to use this tool if you’ve been unsuccessful in getting bad links or over-optimized anchor text links to your site removed. [Read more…]

If you have what Google calls “unnatural links” that hare pointing to your web site, then Google will notify you. They do these notifications via Google Webmaster Tools. In order to receive the messages, web site owners must go through a verification process to “verify their web site” and prove that they are the web site owner. Consider yourself lucky–or doing something right–if you have not received any of these “detection of unnatural links” messages. [Read more…]

As a courtesy and value-added service, American Express is building links and doing search engine optimization for many of their small business clients. [Read more…]

Home Depot, the home improvement “big box” retailer, has been caught promoting what I call “questionable” link tactics and providing false information to their vendors. In an email to their vendors (specifically those who provide installation services), a representative from Home Depot encourages their vendors to link to specific pages on Home Depot’s website using specific anchor text–and then encourages those links to be “hidden”. Furthermore, Home Depot’s email tells the vendor that linking to Home Depot will essentially increase their website rankings in the search engines. [Read more…]

As a search engine optimization expert, it seems as though I have been getting a lot of unsolicited emails from people in India and other countries outside the United States wanting me to outsource link building to them. There are a lot of reasons why I will not, ever, outsource search engine optimization work (or outsource link building), not to mention the fact that I have tried it before–and the work was inferior. Not to mention the fact that I can honestly tell you that it actually hurt some SEO efforts, not help them. But I digress. [Read more…]