Are You Losing Out On Links To Your Site?

This is a huge tip for webmasters out there who have not yet discovered the new 404 feature released in Google's Webmaster Tools.

Matt Cutts did an great review on the new 404 error page feature to outline the exact steps you can take to see if you are missing out on a slew of links from other sites that may be simply mis-typed or mal-formed.

I reviewed my 404 error stats and found I had close to 100 links pointing to various pages on my site that were not working due to case problems in the url, or other typo problems.

I was able to create a few redirect rules in my Apache httpd.conf to help point the broken links to the corresponding active pages on my site.  I used a 301 redirect rule so search engines would now start counting these links as legitimate, active links to my site.

After downloading the 404 error report from Google's Webmaster Tools I had fixed a majority of the broken inbound links within an hour.  

Probably my most productive hour I ever spent.  If you have not already explored this new feature, I would definitely recommend checking out Matt's blog and follow his steps to review your broken inbound links. 

How To Game Google SERPS

Disclaimer:  I do not  recommend you try this technique outlined below.  I am explaining it for the sake of demonstration, and I do not condone this type of search engine "gaming".   Hopefully the more cases like this we expose, the better Google can make their search results.

UPDATE:  The following site was finally busted by Google and removed from SERPs.  Good work Google!  It is great to see karma catch up with the bad guys for once!  Victory for us good guys!  =)

Yesterday I came across Eric Lander's post "Ranting: Google & Online Reputation Management".  In the comments section of the post an interesting discussion took off regarding the consumer complaint sites mentioned in his post, and how they seem to litter serps results much like Wikipedia does.

I decided to take a closer look at one of the sites Eric mentions, PissedConsumer.com.  

Within minutes I was able to identify a link farm created by PissedConsumer that seemed to consist of at least 50-100 domains, if not more (I grew bored of copying and pasting them).  In this link farm they consistently link back to their main site by using sub-domains (ie - dell.pissedconsumer.com, hp.pissedconsumer.com, geico.pissedconsumer.com, etc).  

Here are just a few sites in their link farm I found:

• writecomplaint.com
  
• upsetclient.com
  
• upsetshopper.com
  
• pleasedconsumer.com
  
• reviews-by-company.blogspot.com
  
• bankerreviews.com
  
• a380reviews.com
  
• anotherreview.com
  
• clientstory.com
  
• customer-story.com
  
• corpreviews.com
  
• financingreviews.com
  
• shopperstory.com
  
• healthrunner.com
  
• hithealth.com
  

The funny part is they actually start the link farm out from their own homepage… See their “Our Friends” section.

From there, each site links to a few other sites in the link farm.  And so on and so on.  I never reached the "end" of the link farm, so there could be more than 100 sites.

Interestingly they make no effort to conceal the fact that they are all pointing links back to the parent site, PissedConsumer.com.  Every one of these blogs has the exact same format/template, and every one of them links back to the parent site using sub-domain links.

To make matters even more interesting, all of these sites in their link farm reside on the same IP address (69.72.137.86).

If I was able to find all this in about 15 minutes, how is it that Google cannot figure it out? Perhaps there may be a loophole in their algorithm regarding links using subdomains?  From past threads I've read about how Google views subdomains as separate domains.  This may be the trick being used to get around their spam filter.

Another tactic they are using evolves around Blogger domains.  Here is just a small sample I found:

• home-design-review.blogspot.com
  
• internet-reports.blogspot.com
  
• appliancereports.blogspot.com
  
• travelreportsreviews.blogspot.com
  
• electronics-reports.blogspot.com
  
• carandtruckreport.blogspot.com

Each of these Blogger sites cleverly links EVERY keyword they are targeting back to their main site, PissedConsumer.com.  They throw in a legitimate link to the real site of the company they are targeting every now and then, but 99% of the links you find on these blogs all point back to PissedConsumer.com.

They are obviously doing something right, Quantcast claims they are pulling in 400,000+ visitors/month.  And for the handful of queries we tested, they seemed to always land in the coveted top ten of serps:

1. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=expedia+complaints
   
2. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=lowes+complaints
   
3. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=office+depot+complaints
   
4. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=home+depot+complaints

If the site was being penalized for gaming serps, they shouldn't be showing in the top ten for every search we tried in their niche. 

Seems like a problem when it is this easy to game the system.

Google Video Ads Have Arrived

Check out the latest online advertising idea from Google. Embedded video ads. I like how they went with a subtle overlay approach on the bottom of the video. I had thought they would have gone with the standard 10-15 second ad clip before the video, which I hate... and I think they realized folks hate.

The interesting thing about this ad format is it gives control to the viewer. The ad overlay only shows up for about 10-15 seconds during the viewing of the video clip. During that time the user can decide to click it and watch the ad, or ignore. It will disappear if you choose to ignore it. Very clever and user-friendly.

The only downside I see from the start is the size of the market for such ads. Since they are embedding video within video, it would appear you would need to have a budget to be able to create a video ad, which most of us small-timers don't have.

It would be cool if they would allow smaller advertisers the ability to just create overlay ads and when clicked they would launch a new browser window to the destination website. That would open the door for thousands of additional advertisers to utilize the technology.

This is only going to help grow their already dominant video market share (YouTube) by enabling amateur videographers to now make money on their viral videos. It is a great win-win situation. I'm thinking of doing more video stuff now because of this.

The cost is going to be set right now to $20 CPM (cost-per-mil, or more informally how much you pay per 1000 ad impressions). I wonder how they came to this number? I would have to guess the CPM payout would be higher than standard since you are guaranteeing prime placement in the viewing area... where on a web page you really are not sure what you are getting in regards to placement. In this new embedded model you get the users focused attention, since they actually requested the ad play.

Lots of money to be made. As always, good work Google.

Google Cleared Of Defamation Suit By KinderStart

When I first read about this lawsuit last year, I thought it was a joke. This company (KinderStart) had the nerve to think they could sue Google over lost ranking in GOOGLE'S search engine...

They claimed Google "severely" harmed their business by dropping their site to a page rank of zero. Well KinderStart got what they deserved. If you try to game the system, the system will bite back. Next time be grateful when someone gives you something for nothing..

Read the full story here...

New External Link Analysis from Google Webmaster Tools

Just discovered this great new external link analysis tool offered in the Google Webmaster Tools site. I heard about it over on Webmasterworld.

If you haven't signed up to use Google's Webmaster Central already, you should really check it out. A great way to see where you stand in the #1 search engine in the world. They even offer a re-inclusion link for those of you having trouble staying in the index... =)

Anyway, back to the this new external link tool. I love it! I could see instantly who and where was linking to my site's homepage, or any of my internal pages. In 10 minutes of browsing the links I learned so much about my online presence that I never knew before. I learned of a guy who started a site to pretty much blog about my site and my posts. He quotes snippets from my site, and always includes links (thank you!). I found tons of other interesting content and sites, all of whom were gracious enough to link to me.

Along with external links, the tool can also analyze your internal links. Pretty cool. You can see which pages are getting the most internal bling from your site. Helps you realize the importance of internal linking when you see those pages doing well in Google.

If you have not already checked out Google's Webmaster Central, you can find it here:

Google.com > About Google > Webmaster Central (For Site Owners Section)

Google xmas gift comes early this year...

My first year I got a cool light radio thing. I had only earned about 10k that year with Adsense. The next year, I doubled my earnings and didn't get anything... Broke my heart coming home from work every day leading up to Christmas and finding an empty doorstep. Not even a card. Sigh...

This year Google made good on years past with the following cool digital picture frame. You can store and play images,
MP3s and videos. The software that runs on it is bit quarky,
but it is still cool...

Thanks Google!

PubCon Recap Day 3 - Spam Hunt

This being my first PubCon, I did not know what to expect from the much talked about dream panel of Matt Cutts (Google), Tim Mayer (Yahoo), Danny Sulllivan (SearchEngineWatch.com), Greg Boser (WebGuerrilla) and Todd Friesen (Range Online). They participated in a session called "Interactive Site Reviews and SERPS Quality Control". I discovered this was basically code for "spam hunt"...

Folks from the audience would submit business cards with their websites on them. The panel would then randomly select sites to review and provide feedback. Matt Cutts was most entertaining as he ran his toolkit of secret Google programs to uncover the dirt on any and all sites that got in his path. Site owners were given the microphone to introduce their site and what they are looking for help on. The panel in turn would offer suggestions and then, in most cases, expose hidden blackhat tactics on almost all the sites... It was all done in good fun and I found it by far the most enjoyable session.

Some learnings I took away from it:

1. Yahoo Penalty - If you have a penalty assigned to your site, Yahoo may not show the "cache" link of your pages, and the titles may appear in lower case. Both are a sign that you may want to consider evaluating your site for any problems.

2. Dashes in a URL are better than underscore. Not sure how important this is, but Matt Cutts did make this comment as a recommendation during one of the site reviews.

3. Yahoo Deep Crawl - Having an authoritive inbound link will encourage Yahoo to deep crawl your content.

4. Google Supplemental Results - One audience member asked about their pages showing up randomly in the results. Sometimes there, sometimes not. Matt Cutts theorized that they were most like on the fringe and jumping back and forth between supplemental and regular results. He mentioned the solve the problem, just get your pagerank up (more quality inbound links) and that should push you out of the supplemental.

Gotta run and catch my flight!

PubCon Recap Day One: SEO Advice From Google

Well the first day of PubCon is over. I must say I learned quite a bit more than I thought I would. The most memorable take-away was during my first session. The topic was Big SEO and Search Engines.

Google had a representative there who spoke last, after AOL and Yahoo bored the crowd to sleep. Google's Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik gave a brief 10 minute overview of what he thought "mattered" when it comes to site design for making Google happy. He called it the SNACCC approach:

S: Speed counts. Slow site response times can hurt you in rankings. People don't like them and neither does Google.

N: Navigation. Ease of navigation from relevent content is very important. Make sure you navigation is self-explanatory.

A: Accessibility. Reasonable URL lengths. Alt tags should contain useful information. A good test: How would your site translate in a audible-translator for vision impaired?

C: Clarity. All links should be easy to see and underlined. No two links on a page should go to the same page.

C: Comfort. Text is easy to read. All images include a height/width specification. This helps avoid jumpy images when a page loads.

C: Consistency. Google loves consistency. Read into that what you like...

Last but not least... Keep all your related content under one domain! Sub-domains are okay, but don't go breaking it out into 10 different domains/sites. Your site will build up more value and trust if you keep all the content under one umbrella.

Next up... my recap of day two.