Posts

Time kills effort 17th July 2013 4:48 PM
“Hi Steve

So some anchor text is still OK ... Any advice please (from anybody!) on the proportions of anchor text to non-anchor text we should now be aiming for?

Nice to hear from you again, Lina ...”

Hiya Linda.

I only SEO our sites, so it's only my opinion and professional SEO peeps may very well disagree, but the key thing is a Natural linking profile.

We have lots of anchor text that says My Local Services, this is fine as it's our site name. If someone links to your site, what would they link as (assuming a normal text link). It's unlikely to be keyword rich or salesy. Most of us have plenty of historical keyword anchor text, it's just about balance.

Looking at yours it doesn't seem to bad, your most common ones are careers partnership uk and careerspartnershipuk

You can check it yourself from tools such as Open Site Explorer
Time kills effort 17th July 2013 1:56 PM
Hi Lina

I think a quick look at your linking profile holds the answer. In a nut shell, it's anchor text.

What worked really well before, keyword rich anchor text is now frowned on. Mr Google wants everyone to have a completely natural linking structure, where people link because they have found a genuinely useful resource. In that situation, someone coming across your site is unlikely to use an anchor text of "Hairdressers Milton Keynes". More likely it will be your URL, or business name.

It's frustrating, but Google has been saying for a long time now, keep your linking structure natural, it's only recently that they have really enforced it with these Penguin updates.

From 9,602 links, it looks like a lot were site wide links (eg people have it in the footer), and this then breaks down to 240 different domains.

Of these, 80% have keyword anchor text:
Hairdressers Milton Keynes
Wedding Hairdressers Milton Keynes
Hairdressers MK
Hair Stylist etc.

You're not alone, and most of us played the keyword anchor text game at some point, but you had to vary it, to make it appear natural.

As with others, I'm slow time removing a lot of low quality or dodgy links with things like "free advertising", after historical forays into SEO outsourcing which, to be fair worked a couple of years ago (we were P1 for Free Advertising and now about page 20 ), but those days are well and truly over.

Sit down, review your strategy, and analysis everything you used to do. Things in the SEO world have changed dramatically, and are set to change even more so over the next 12 months...
Customer Service vs Compensation 17th July 2013 10:12 AM
Big companies/institutions (or at least here in the UK) are normally quick to offer compensation, and to be honest it's a good way to easily pacify disgruntled customers.

Business will always have issues and problems, but if you can nip it in the bud by offering an extra month free, or refund of a set up charge, then I think that's pretty good customer service.

Obviously if a company is having the same repeated problems, and is only offering compensation rather than investing in resolving the problem, then thats a different issue!

Our man Clive has gained countless payments from our bank over the years for different issues, and our hoster has just compensated us after a delay in some new hardware going live. Delays happen, components fail, but instead of grumpy, I'm now a happy punter again
Telemarketing - Good or Bad? 16th July 2013 2:26 PM
“What our government basically told us was that they use this new system to track criminals, which would help lower crime rates, yada yada.... The minute you buy a new sim card, it needs to be registered, regardless of which network you're using. If not, the sim is locked and you can't use it.”

Blimey! In theory, sounds like a good idea, but I guess your argument is that personal data is leaking out, which then undermines the whole system.
It's interesting, with Panda and Penguin algorithms and a backlash of web masters, now privacy issues and end users asking questions, is this not the time for Bing to come blasting through with a slick marketing campaign and making quick political capital and grabbing some market share?

Instead they sit back and watch.

What we need is a genuine choice, then Google will have to rethink some of it's more aggressive policies as people vote with their feet.

Maybe we'll have an Apple search engine soon? I've given up on waiting for the Facebook one
Link Building Method After Penguin. 15th July 2013 10:22 PM
“Websites with rich content are still desperately trying to compete with others which offer minimal content but still manage to be in the top positions in G.”

Unfortunately the link still seems to be the king and not necessarily the content, but when it comes to obtaining links, generating decent content that auto builds natural links over time can only be a good thing.

As new versions of the Penguin algorithm get rolled out, the situation is slowly changing, but for every positive effect, there are plenty of negative examples or sites caught in the crossfire.

It's a stressful time to be working in SEO at the moment with so much flux and change if you are looking after your own site, but its also pretty interesting!
Telemarketing - Good or Bad? 15th July 2013 10:14 PM
“What I would love to know is how they get our numbers if our Telephone company is the only people who know it? We also have a new law passed a while back where our sim cards need to be RICA'd otherwise we cannot use them.”

What's RICA mean?

There has been countless cases of rogue employees working in banking or mobile phone call centres flogging personal information. Regardless how much you protect your personal data, there's always some scumbag that's happy to sell it on.
G4S Tag Dead People 15th July 2013 9:46 PM
The question is, does G4S pay more than the probation service? If so jump ship quickly With your experience, in 12 months you'll be a director
“so I am wondering if there is a problem with my browser - Mozilla or it is from the forums ? Can you help me please, as it is quite annoying ”

There's nothing that I'm aware of, but is it possible to screenshot the issue at all, so I can have a nose?
Web 3.0 and Semantic Search 3rd July 2013 2:42 PM
This is a good basic introduction and understanding of the Semantic Web, and it's the first time I've seen a clear definition of web 3.0

“Web 1.0 was