Five MORE Reasons Your Site Might Have Been Google-Banned
Mar 12th
Despite all of your web marketing genius – you’ve carefully paced your link building activities, kept your keyword density to the minimum of the effective range and been checking for duplicate content every second day – Google still got the stick out and whacked your site. Why, oh why … oh WHY? Here are five more possible explanations.
1. Doorway pages
Google doesn’t like doorway pages. These pages are usually optimised to rank well for a particular keyword, but are ‘hidden’ from the navigation of the main site. Someone would usually enter a doorway page through a search engine result, but if they bookmarked your home page, wouldn’t be able to find it again. You see this often when companies service a sizeable physical area and want to optimise for several locations – “removalists Melbourne”, “removalists Coburg”, “removalists Northcote”, “removalists Brunswick”, for example. If you want to use doorway pages, make sure they’re accessible from the main navigation.
2. Redirect pages
You can redirect pages to other ones legitimately in Google, for example if you choose to change your domain name. However, the pages that come in groups of between 5 and 500, all targeting similar keyword phrases, and contain no content except links to other pages in the family, AND THEN redirect you to a different page when you click from search results, are a Google no-no.
3. Buying links
Google is keeping an index (funny, that) of all the sites that sell links to other sites, and is devaluing the links from those sites. You will end up paying for nothing – and probably getting slapped with a Google-fine, as well.
4. Linking to spam/bad neighborhoods
We’ve talked in a previous post about linking to spam and bad neighborhoods – Google doesn’t like it, and if you don’t keep on top of your checks you may find that previously reputable domains have expired and been bought out by spammers.
5. Code swapping
If you optimise a page for good rankings, and swap the content there once it is ranking well, Google will often penalise you when they crawl that page again.
Five Reasons Your Site Might Have Been Google-Banned
Mar 11th
Much like the God of the Old Testament, Google’s ways are mysterious. Also much like the old God, they are not always fair … sometimes they’ll smite a website that yea, verily, was practicing pure and innocent SEO 
. If you’ve been a victim of Google’s megalomaniac streak (or just their inability to actually check and assess every site that gets banned from the index, I suppose), here are the top five reasons why it might have happened.
1. Check Robots.txt
If you have an SEO company looking after your site, they have probably done this already. If you don’t have a consultant already, check this before calling anybody. It’s the website equivalent of calling the TV man to find out why your set won’t turn on, only to have him put the plug in the wall, charge you $100 and leave.
2. Duplicate content
It really sucks that Google penalizes both sites when duplicate content is discovered – because another site could steal your content without your knowledge quite easily. It like when your big brother hits you, and your Mum comes and puts you both in the corner. Big meanie! Regularly check that no other site is using your content. If you find they are, write to the owners and ask them to take it down … but change yours in the meantime.
3. Cloaking
If your pages are set up to deliver a different version to the search engine than to a real user, Google considers it cloaking and will permanently ban you. There are some legit reasons for cloaking – but if Google finds out, they won’t care about the reason. That big red, blue, green and yellow hammer will come down mercilessly.
4. Hidden text
Making your text the same colour as the background was previously thought to be a good way to get more keywords onto your page, without making your actual copy sound unnatural to visitors. Then the search engines figured out the trick, and the party ended.
5. Keyword stuffing
Even if visitors can see it, Google still doesn’t like keyword stuffing. You will certainly NEED to use keywords to help get your page in front of the people that want it – but Google is getting better at semantic interpretations, so you can use variations of your words quite safely, without hurting rankings too much.
Stop Your Outbound Links Murdering Your SERPs!
Mar 10th
We all know that both on-page and off-page internet marketing tactics can help boost your Google rankings. We also know that there are on-page factors that can get you banned from Google – things like copying someone else’s content, keyword stuffing, etc. Did you know, though, that there are off-page factors that can also get you kicked off the world’s biggest search engine? If you link to ‘bad neighborhoods’ … even if you link at a time when the web page is perfectly respectable, but the domain later gets marked as a link farm, a spammer, a keyword stuffer, etc, you could get banned by Google. So how do you find these nefarious sites that could undo all your good SEO work? Follow our guide.
Those nefarious site links can really make your rankings hurt...
1. Check out Bing.com
The lord and master of most of our computers, Microsoft, has created an awesome tool for checking whether you’re linking to spam – if you use it with a bit of ingenuity. You can use the ‘linkfromdomain’ command (without the apostrophes) to check whether links that originate in your domain point to spam.
2. Make a list of probable spam terms
Start off with drug names, pharmaceutical misspellings (like viagar and viegra, viox, sialis, etc), porn, sex, casino, poker, insurance deals, home finance, home equity, 4u, bllogspot, etc. Check out the lists (1 and 2) of words that trigger spam email filters to create a more extensive list.
3. Search for two or three words in conjunction with the linkfromdomain command
So you might type “linkfromdomain:webmarketinngexperts.com.au gambling casino poker” into Bing. Starting off by targeting several words at a time helps cut down the sheer number of pages that might use the term innocently.
4. If you’re concerned, do individual word searches
Alternatively, you can also search for individual terms that are far less likely to ‘innocently’ appear on web pages. Spam filter words like ‘Shemale’ or ‘lesbian’ are good examples.
5. Check out the sites and decide whether you want to keep the link
In many cases, instances of these words will be innocent. In some they will not – and better you find out than Google! Get rid of anything shady looking ASAP, or you could face an uphill battle to get your Google ranking back.
DIY SEO: Listing in Google Local
Mar 8th
If you own a local business and are doing web marketing, but haven’t yet looked at your own listing in Google Local … go do it. Right now, before you read any further. Drill Sergeant Pepper says go go go!
Now that you know your starting point, we’re going to show you how to make that listing prettier, help make sure that those reviews that show up are mostly positive (without cheating), and generally draw more customers through your sliding door. Here’s how to edit your Google Local listing, and what it could do for your business.
1. Go to www.google.com.au/lbc and add a new business
Most of this information is fairly straightforward, however close to the bottom of the listing page (as it stands currently) you’ll have to enter a description and category for your business. These will be critical in driving traffic to your site through Google Local. Make sure your description contains a variety of your keywords (don’t use word order variations, or singular AND plural versions). Choose your category carefully as well – use this list, and search the page with Ctrl+F to find your keywords and their associated category.
The other field you should take note of is the business name – it is likely that Google uses this to help rank you and display your results as well. If your official business name is ‘Making the Cut’, and you are a hairdresser, we advise you to list your business name as ‘Making the Cut Hairdressing’ in Google Local to have the best chance of being found.
2. Enter information
Throughout the rest of the process, enter as much information as possible about your business. Tell people how they can pay, tell them when you are open, tell them everything. Add photos, add videos, add all the additional details you can think of. The internet is there for information, and while some businesses have a competitive aversion to telling others what they do, customers expect it … and appreciate it.
3. Reviews
Check out where your competitors are getting reviews from in Google Local, and put up a physical sign in your shop asking people that had a good experience to post a review of your shop on that site. You will inevitably get some bad reviews as well – don’t worry too much about them. If you have a good business, you will get mostly good reviews.
Is Google News for Yews?
Mar 4th
Google news sends almost a billion visitors to publishers worldwide … in a month! If you are doing internet marketing for a site with ‘newsworthy’ content, it is well worth investigating how you can start having Google news index your content. You can start your investigations on the very next line!
Artist's conceptulaization of the Google bot discovering news
Why publish in Google News?
Apart from the whole ‘be part of the billion clicks’ thing, there are very important SEO reasons for getting published in Google News. If your news article is highly relevant to a search, it automatically gets excellent real estate on the Google front page, via the ‘news results for xxyyz’ box. Additionally, if you have a highly trafficked article, you may get to the iGoogle news widget box, and get clicks from everyone that uses this widget on their iGoogle home page.
Getting content indexed
You can just leave your content there to be discovered … but considering the whole point of news is to be fresh, and Google might take up to 30 days to get round to your site again, submitting a Google News sitemap is a much better strategy. There is a Wordpress plugin for this purpose, or you can follow the guidelines from Google itself.
Using categories and subfolders
Google uses your own categories and subfolders, as well as the URLs they create and the keywords that naturally occur on your site, to decide what your content is about. You don’t want to keyword stuff (although do use keywords instead of referential phrases like ‘it’ or ‘them’).
If your news content is more of local interest, put it into a ‘State/Region/City’ subfolder on your site to help the dear Google bot.
Use static URLs
Otherwise you’ll destroy your Google ranking everytime it is refreshed. Create a permanent and unique URL for every story, and include ‘articleID=’ in the string to help Google identify it as news.
Put the date into the text
Placing it between the title and the body text helps Google News know the proper date of publication, as well as identifying it as news rather than ordinary HTML.
Don’t break up the text
If you ordinarily have advertisements in the middle of an article, or links to related posts at the bottom of the fold, take them out on your news pages.
And of course, don’t forget Yahoo News – still a significant source of traffic.
Four Things You Should Know About SEO in a Personal Search World
Mar 3rd
The launch of Google’s personalized search function in the not-too-distant past is still impacting the world of SEO. There are a lot of people panicking, probably equal numbers of people saying that they aren’t concerned, and many, many more that are simply oblivious. Today we are looking at some of the things that (as a business owner engaged in web marketing) you should know about Google’s personalized search.
1. People that don’t remain signed into a Google account don’t get it … to the same extent
Personalized search gives preference to results that you have visited before, and in order to do this it stores information about your surfing on its database, under your account. If a person doesn’t have a Google account, they don’t get the same level of personalized search – however you will still see results from your home region preferentially displayed, in most cases.
2. Google says … “pws=0″ turns personalization off
If you want to see what the results would look like without the personalization, Google says that you can add pws=0 to the end of your search term, and get an ‘unbiased’ search.
3. Tests say … not true
It seems that including pws=0 doesn’t completely change your search results as much as simply going to a different computer. SEO tests show little difference between a logged-in query and a pws=0 query.
4. The ultimate measure of success will always be the bottom line
All the debate over personalization is really starting to bring home the fact that it is the quality of your information and website that will really help build your bottom dollar. Ironically, this is exactly what Google wants … damn them!
The Life and Times of Google, continued
Feb 25th
A day on which a person living in Australia, America, the UK or Europe doesn’t interact with Google is a rare day. Most of us depend heavily on our computers, our internet connections, and Google. Google is the giant of the SEO world, driving the overwhelming majority of search traffic, and therefore creates a livelihood for businesses worldwide. In that spirit, today we’re continuing our Google gossip-fest from yesterday, checking out the ins and outs of Google’s relationships for our own voyeuristic gain 
Google buys Remail
Remail created an email search application for the iPhone … and as soon as Google saw the word ’search’ in a product that it didn’t own, that credit card in it’s ginormous wallet really started to itch! It has now bought Remail, and seems close to closing a deal with on2.
Real time search now to include MySpace
Previously only Bing included MySpace status updates, and there was some balance to the world. Now Google’s real time search includes MySpace status updates, Facebook updates, tweets and news results.
Google and Yahoo raise doubts over Conroy’s filter
Stephen Conroy’s controversial internet filter, which would attempt to remove content that has been ‘Refused classification’ by the Classification Board, has taken a hit from Google and Yahoo. Both search engines have said that the filters ‘would not effectively protect children’, and noted that it is the chat rooms and message boards that usually feature material relating to child porn … and these are not usually indexed by search engines anyway.
Google looks to bring 1G per second broadband speeds
It’s the way of the future – Google is now working on bringing internet connection speeds of up to 1G per second to thousands of households. Unfortunately, they are currently located only in America.
eBay Exec is new Google VP of Commerce
The hiring of Stephanie Tilenius of eBay as Google’s VP of commerce has raised talk that Google might be upgrading their checkout process or other ecommerce initiatives.
Facebook more important than Google?
People are more often getting product recommendations and referrals from Facebook than Google, according to the San Francisco Chronic. Of course, this will not outstrip demand for general search information on Google, Bing or Yahoo anytime soon.
MS Uses Google’s own platform to take a swipe
Microsoft has recently uploaded a series of videos to Youtube – hosted by Google – attacking Google Docs and Google Apps. The videos suggest that the applications don’t have the security or on-premises flexibility that most businesses need.
The Life and Times of Google
Feb 24th
If you depend on internet marketing for the success of your business (and there are all sorts of businesses, from eBay to Ricardo’s Hairdresser around the corner, that do), then you will also be very interested in what Google is doing. Every little movement has an immense impact on the search environment … at least, when you are as big and as fat as Google is! So today we turn all gossip rag-ish, and in a testament to the quality of publications like ‘New Idea’ and ‘Famous’, take an intimate look at Google’s life details over the past month or so
Google Buzz - Saving the World?
Google Buzz gets launched to mixed reception
Most gossip journalists concur that Google Buz has been getting buzz in the press for the wrong reasons … the main one being the default privacy settings. In some cases, people feel that their physical safety has been horribly compromised by Google’s Buzz introduction. However, there are some real advantages to Buzz, not the least of which is the opportunity to set up a Google profile and get followed links to websites from a PR10 site.
Electronic Privacy Info Centre complains to FTC
This US based group, concerned over the privacy breaches engendered by Google Buzz, wants the FTC to investigate and consider forcing Google to make Buzz an opt-in feature, rather than opt-out.
Google Books saga comes to an end
In 2005, Google was sued over copyright infringement by a group of authors and publishers, because of the preview feature on Google Books. It seems likely that the lawsuit will be settled in the next week or so, and if it is, Google will be able to create a subscription library for its collection of over 12 million books, sell books direct from its site (bye bye, Amazon!), and display portions of books for free.
Google works on creating real-life Babel fish
Before the Altavista Babelfish search engine (and its AMAZING accuracy … not), it seemed incredible simply that computers could translate between different languages. Now Google is working on creating a more realistic ‘Babel fish’, with Google Goggles. They would use OCR, Optical Character Recognition, to pick up what a text is saying, and then run it through Google Translate, and spit it out in comprehensible form.
How NOT to Get a PR10
Feb 23rd
Ironically, the site pr10(dot)com ranks extremely highly for search terms like “how to get a pr10″. This would be unsurprising … if it weren’t for the fact that every piece of ‘web marketing’ advice on the site is very, very thickly veiled sarcasm. I would almost think the authors deliberately wanted to drop the Pagerank of every site other than their own by using these tactics! So, in retaliation (and courtesy of pr10(dot)com), here is how NOT to get a pr10. Optional subtitle – How to get dropped off the Google index.
Google - not as antiquated as they once were
1. Use hidden text on your site
The suggestion is to colour code your text so that the text is either the same as the background colour, or visually very close. The example given is to use 00FF33 and 00FF66, so that Google will index your keywords on the page but humans can’t see them.
2. Use full stops as links
Put full stops down the bottom of every web page, each one linking to Google, to Yahoo, and to your own site.
3. The ever-increasing non-magical Pagerank
Sorry, this tip is so ridiculous that I have to quote directly from pr10(dot)com:
“This tip is probably the most powerful one on here. Make at least three pages on your site and link them as follows:
Page 1 >>>>>> Page 2
Page 2 >>>>>> Page 3
And this is the kicker
Page 3 >>>>>> Page 1
Google will give points to page 2 from page 1, then to page 3 from page 2, and then – if you link it back to page 1 – it starts all over again. I can’t even count how many points this will end up giving you. Just don’t abuse it too much – or the big sites will complain you are taking too much PR from them.”
4. Use lots of meta keyword tags
Having your meta keyword section stuffed with your keywords may have helped several years ago (and to be fair, the pr10 site is copyright 2002), but nowadays the technique does little to nothing. You won’t get de-listed, but you will have wasted your time.
5. Link to a Google page that contains all the inbound links to your site
This supposed magic trick just doesn’t work! The in vitro data is not supported by in vivo testing. You are supposed to link to pages that link to your sites using “link:www.whatever.net”, thus listing all of the inbound links for that page and pushing up their Pagerank, and therefore your own.
If these tips didn’t seem so much in earnest, I would laugh at them … as they are published on the net, I certainly worry that they’ve irrevocably hurt many people’s SEO rankings.
5 Acceptable SEO Techniques to Learn From the Black-Hatters
Feb 22nd
One thing that few self-service style SEO guides make clear is the distinction between white-hat and black-hat tactics. SEO is a tool that can be used in a variety of different ways … so while a fork can be used to pick up food, it can also be used to stab somebody. Google is trying to avoid being stabbed with the forks they hand out, in the form of the reward that their algorithm provides to different sites! However, every current black-hat technique started out as a legitimate way for Google to differentiate between sites for relevance. So how can you get back to basics, and safely use those ‘black-hat’ style techniques?
Black and White Hat SEO are opposite sides of the same thing...
1. Hide your text
Black hatters use hidden text for nonsensical keyword stuffing. Legitimate sites can still get the benefit of any keywords that may be located in hidden text, but without cluttering the page itself, using JQuery effects like mouseovers to make text appear, etc. Here is a legitimate example (text in the question marks).
2. Mis-spelled terms
It is a popular black hat technique to try and rank for misspelt versions of popular terms, for example, ‘credtit report’. If you have a common misspelling in your industry, define it somewhere on your page, and let visitors know the correct version.
3. Grow your own farmed links
Create a network of related blogs in house, each focusing on a niche within your company or industry. A single person should be able to manage four or five, still very professionally.
4. Pay for your links
But not in the standard black hat way – donate to charitable organizations or community organizations that have a ‘Sponsors’ page with followed links.
5. Do some brand jacking
Do you have a legitimate tale of disappointment from a corporation? People love to complain, and they love bad news, and they love to hear about how terrible a place is before they do business with them. It is a legitimate purpose – just don’t overdo it, your site will develop a negative ‘aura’!