Comments on: I Do Not Like Green Eggs with Spam

By: Gill Mullis

Gill Mullis — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:26:28 +0000

This has made very interesting reading. I thought when you hired a web master, they were more than someone who was good on a PC. They were the Masters at their craft. I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on my Google placemnet and my commitment to my web masters expertise. Wow! I wonder how I can continure to trust the eexpertise of a company that I held in such high esteem. It has cost me my web site, that I did not wish to loose, It has cost me my ranking of that site, and it has cost me my faith in business professionals that I need to trust for information that I do not fully understand.
Thank you for your posting.
Regards,
Gill Mullis

By: admin

admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:34:46 +0000

@Mark Bailey Kudos to you for doing the right thing, and for being so transparent about it. Few people in this situation would have the courage to admit they made a mistake and even fewer would act so quickly to rectify it. Cheers Mark, and hopefully there’s no hard feelings

By: Mark Bailey

Mark Bailey — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:27:12 +0000

Thanks Jeff, I appreciate it. As mentioned I’ve rid the sites of the pages in question. Thanks for your clarifying remarks.

NJK I don’t know how fixing a mistake is ‘covering my tracks’, I’m taking the advice of an experienced SEO–and even went so far as to contact Google, relay the mistake, and let them know I was fixing it. The site that still has the page you linked to I no longer control (all of these pages in question were created years ago) but I have contacted the new webmaster to have it removed.

Jeff, I am working on a big project I my need your help with, I will contact you down the line when we are further ahead.

Cheers,

Mark

By: njk

njk — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:05:52 +0000

Those links are now gone (as of 1pm Sat Mar 7) as is most of the other links, with the exception of http://guelphrealestatecentre.com/seolinks.htm

Only the guilty try to cover their tracks!

By: admin

admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:49:03 +0000

@Mark Bailey My post wasn’t meant to be a personal attack against you, and I apologize if it came across that way. It was meant to highlight the dangers of contracting out SEO and internet marketing to inexperienced design companies. If you aren’t aware of Google’s quality guidelines, you should not be offering SEO as a service to your clients. It’s really that simple.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:47:33 +0000

@Question I wouldn’t go as far to call that questionable SEO; outdated perhaps, but certainly not deceptive. Reciprocal link exchanges were considered a standard SEO practice back in the day. Today, it’s pretty safe to say they do more harm than good. My advice would be to kill those link pages off, and work on acquiring quality, one-way inbound links. If you need some help, feel free to contact me via the contact form.

By: Mark Bailey

Mark Bailey — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:27:34 +0000

Hi there, thank you to everyone for pointing out the grey area associated with designing pages specifically for Google’s eyes only. Jeff, although you mention you had to do a search down to the 3rd page in Google to find the page in question, I had always linked to the Search Engine Optimization page in question directly off my index page (it was formerly called Client SEO and is now called Links). I never tried to hide or disguise these pages.

I’ve had a chance to visit Google’s guidelines pages (thanks for the link) and note that “Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”" I will use this as a rule of thumb from now on.

I do hope that those who know me, and the work I do in Guelph to promote alternative energy, neighbourhood groups, and public education will give me the benefit of the doubt on this one. I do a lot of work to maintain my client SEO positioning, much much more than a handful of links pages. Although I do admit that I experiment in an effort to learn more, I do keep content the king. I also admit that I will have to be more careful how I set up link structures from now.

Jeff, I wish only to finally point out that I never had the opportunity to work for a company like Geosign–I’ve learned everything on my own reading and experimenting online. Although I may deserve the criticism you’ve posted, I’m quite sure I am not the first to make mistakes in an area only a handful of Google employees truly understand.

That being said, I do appreciate you pointing this out to me so that I can provide my clients with the best and safest SEO services they expect of me.

Mark Bailey
Owner
OTI Multimedia

By: Question

Question — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:45:08 +0000

I am not up on this stuff either, but is what this site does questionable also;

http://www.rlproyalcity.com

On the footer there are two links “Guelph Ontario Real Estate” and “Guelph Homes for Sale”

If you drill down, there is a link called resources and when you click on that it goens to a ton of links. Does this fall into your cateorization of questionable SEO?

By: admin

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:45:58 +0000

Hi Chris, and thanks for stopping by. Linking out to your partners, suppliers and associates is not a bad thing, unless you do it in a way that is intended to deceive the search engines. The examples noted in my post are blatantly deceptive. I hope that helps to clarify the situation for you, mate.

Thanks to everyone for your comments and for sharing your experiences

By: Chris Bisson

Chris Bisson — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:13:07 +0000

I was surprised to learn that putting a related business person’s web-site link on my site may actually be a bad thing for me…or perhaps I am missing the point of the article.

If someone can clarify for the non-technical guy it would be appreciated!

Chris