Search Engine Spam

Over the past few weeks, I've had a few run-ins with plagiarism in various forms and thought I'd take the opportunity to have a little rant about it. My hope is that by discussing it, people will become more educated about the issue and perhaps it will become a little less rampant online. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Google's Matt Cutts has informed us that they've improved many things in their SEO documentation, including what they've written about robots.txt, IP delivery/geolocation vs. cloaking, the nofollow attribute, doorway pages and more. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

When the term "linkbait" first appeared on the search marketing scene a few years ago, I wasn't too keen on it because it has a lot of negative connotations. In fishing, bait is not really a good thing (to the fish). One minute the fish thinks he's going to have a tasty meal, and the next minute he IS the tasty meal! Works out nicely for the fisherman, however. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a client who has 2 domain names: namehere.com and differentnamehere.us pointing at the same IP address. Is it bad SEO to have multiple domain names for the same site? And will this negatively impact search engine results for each? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Here is the scenario: I had a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with 9 websites on it that were all interlinked. It worked great for awhile. Then in Nov. 2004, Google did a big adjustment, and all 9 of my sites dropped out of sight. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I recently read an interesting article by someone who goes by the name of "slightlyshadyseo" regarding negative SEO, and asked our High Rankings Forum members what they thought about it. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have plain html pages that describe the various health-related products that I recommend. If one of my readers wishes to purchase a product, they click on an "order now" button, which takes them to the desired product at my shopping cart.

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

A lot of my clients pull data/products from semi-public databases to populate their websites, similar to how real estate agents show listings of homes on their sites. I've been ensuring that each client has unique valuable and professionally edited content whenever possible on the rest of the site, but I’m afraid that if I make the portions of the site that use the semi-public data accessible to the search engines, they will find duplicate information on other sites and my client site(s) would not be indexed. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

The SEO world is abuzz today with Google’s smack in the face to a number of websites that are selling obviously paid-for, keyword-rich text links. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a plastic surgeon client who specializes in many procedures and has spent a fortune on developing a very nice site that has been done in Flash. In efforts to get him some traffic, we are doing a double campaign, one with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and one using SEO tactics. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

High Rankings Forum Thread of the Week Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a really quick question I hope you can help with. There is a small business in town that is paying $200 a month to have another company make sure it stays at the top of the ranking lists in search engines. Now if there is no new competition, except maybe a new office every few years, is it necessary to pay them, or could they do it themselves with the guidance you offer on your website? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Hey everyone! I’m back from vacation and the conference and raring to go. Today’s article is an updated version of one I wrote back in 2004 on the art of SEO. I recently reviewed it and was surprised at how accurate it still is today. I figured there are many of you on the list who never read it the first time around, and for those who did, you’ve probably forgotten it by now. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Forum member "Brandon C" asks, "I want to be able to offer a true breadcrumb for customers in an ecommerce store, but I am afraid that the product page will get penalized for duplicate content if I'm not careful." Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have to create some pages for a client. They are full of images and little to no content and have no title tags…however, they still want SEO services…*groan* Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Forum member "Angelina" wonders about an unsolicited email she received from a so-called SEO company saying that her optimized site was actually unoptimized. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Forum member "stacykan" tells the group that she filled out a recent spam report on one of her competitors, which apparently resulted in the site being penalized/banned. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I started answering this question with the usual answer, but as I looked at the site in question, I realized there was more going on than meets the eye. Please read through the entire question and my response to see what I mean! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Did you know that Google supposedly doesn’t crawl nofollows? My understanding was that they are to be used for untrusted links, not to keep Google’s spider out of places. (There are already tags/attributes for that.) However, Google seems to keep changing what they want to use the nofollow attribute for. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Back in June, Jill and I were front and center at SES Toronto listening to Seth Godin, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and marketing guru. He is as excellent a speaker as he is a writer! Seth delivered a thought-provoking as well as motivational keynote speech, and if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, it is a truly remarkable experience! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

As you know there are a lot of so-called SEO/SEM experts/gurus claiming all
sorts of things. The analogy to me is like "quack" doctors compared to the
genuine article.

Are there 6 or a dozen questions that would expose those purporting to be
experts? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Do you have a page that used to rank #1 in Google that is now suddenly ranking #31? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Forum member “arteworks” noticed a competitor site that had a keyword phrase
in a comment tag wrapped with an H1 tag.  Is it spam or just stupid?  (Or
perhaps both!) Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Related Forum Posts >>

To go along with today’s featured article on trust, we also have a forum thread on a similar theme. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

New forum member "norty911" asks fellow members if anybody knows of a place where he/she can find a copy of an SEO disclaimer that says he/she cannot be held responsible if there is not a significant increase in rankings for his/her clients' sites. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>