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…]

We all want to track our Google search engine rankings. There are lots of search engine optimization tools out there that will help you perform search engine ranking checks. But there is one in particular that looks very promising, called SEOette. [Read more…]