Web Site Hackage

I just read a blog post about a guy's web site being hacked. No. It is not what you think. The hackers added subtle changes to the pages on the web site. They put invisible (hidden) links in the text of each page. I guess these hackers thought they would try to boost their page rank the old fashioned way.

The joke might be on the hackers. That's because Google probably takes into account that the links were hidden, and either ignores them, or penalizes them. There are no short cuts here people. Do your due diligence. Don't try the easy way with some weak hacks. You have been warned.

According to Matt Cutts

I have Matt Cutt's blog in my Google reader. He is not an official spokesman for Google. But I think of him that way. He recently went over how to do SEO for blogs there. I ate the stuff up. Here is a summary.

You should name the directory on your server which hosts blog information "blog". Make sure you place your keywords in the URLs you use. Dashes in the URLs are the best way to separate words.

Make sure you have alt tags for images. You should also make it easy for the post creation dates to be seen. Creativity in the content is important. You might also consider stirring up some controversy. And as always, you can't lose if you make lists. I should take Matt up on some of this advice.

Massive Link Back

Here is an idea to get a lot of good links back to your site. Create blogs yourself that link to your main site. This will not cost you much. Thee are free blogs all over the place. You should mix it up. Don't just use blogger to do the dirty work.

The goal is to slowly generate many links over a long period of time. This will be a massive investment in your time. It is even more difficult than keeping up your daily blog posts. You could create a new blog per day.

This is sometimes difficult as you need to figure out how to sign up to free blogs, which each do things differently. Watch out for blogging that make you post a bunch before you can link out. Not a good use of your time.

Page Rank for People

I just read about a bold new idea. It is Page Rank for People. Instead of assigning a rank to web pages like Google does already, somebody could assign and track ranking of individuals. This is a type of reputation ranking. The best part of this idea was all the comments people wrote on the topic.

Many thought this would be very hard to implement. Others thought you could mimic a lot that is already being done for web page rank. Obviously you need some type of secure ID to prevent impersonators. A technology called Calais already parses web pages to find people on them. This might be an extension of that idea.

There are a number of issues involved. Consider the fact that many people have the exact same name. The goal of this technology would be to bridge web pages with actual people. For all we know, Google may already be working on this technology in stealth mode.

You would need to detect false networks to get this to work correctly. Nobody wants to trust a score that can be easily gamed. Another issue might be the use of ghostwriters. You may have to alter your people rank accordingly for them. However this is probably no different than somebody else writing your web pages for you.

All in all, it is a very interesting idea. I await the first implementation. Perhaps it will be done by Google. Or it might be the event that marks the decline of Google as we know it.

Rebecca Has Left The Building

Rebecca Kelly has left the SEOmoz staff. She is off to some undetermined new job. Her new blog is Fresh Edge Media.

And now I have a confession to make. Seeing Rebecca on SEOmoz made me coming back to the sight for more. Now she is gone. Bamm. SEOmoz gets dropped from my reader.

Good luck you you Rebecca. We all know success will follow you. Peace out.

Article Distribution

The information for this post comes from an article I read in Website magazine. It talks about the history and details of Article Distribution. In the past zines got put online and became ezines. These ezines in turn morphed into Article Distribution (AD). AD is like a supermarket. You upload your article. It is made available to other web sites. The article is free for use. You then get exposure. In other words, you get an audience.

Guest authors on blogs are normally experts. Therefore to be successful with AD, you should produce quality articles. It is best to have a very specific topic. You could share unknown information, or explain a difficult topic. Part of getting you material read is to generate great headlines. This means you should use numbers, be specific, and use power words. This all goes for writing normal blog posts as well.

Some well known article sites are ArticleDashboard and SearchWarp. Some such AD sites have you post a link on them which points to an article hosted on your own site. An example of this is Digg. That is, Digg has huge lists of links to articles located on the web. Other sites which deal with links like this are Sphinn and Mixx.

Your articles normally will have a bio section at the end. This is where you share a little bit about yourself. More importantly you include an anchor link in the bio section directing the reader back to your site. The goal is for other sites to link back to you. This sounds like an interesting way to get readers and back links. I have not tried it yet. However I am willing to attempt other technique to grow my blogging business and page rank.

Weird Ads

Recently I have been seeing a lot of ads on the Internet for teeth whitening. This subject by itself is not unusual. However the placement of the ads on sites seems very much out of place. What does teeth whitening have to do with Software Development for example?

Things started to make sense when I read a blog entry on this very subject. Apparently it is not just teeth whitening ads that are on the uptick. There are also an influx of flat stomach ads, as well as government grant ads.

Here is how this scam works. The ads have pictures. When you click on the ads, you get to a web site with testimonials. You are supposed to be able to order the product for free. However you must give a credit card number to receive the free product.

What this actually does is start a free trial. Then you get billed monthly for more of the product. Guess what? It is almost impossible to cancel the subscription. How in the world can this scam continue? Obviously some people must be getting duped, because I keep seeing the ads being displayed. I have a good mind to block these ads from my own sites. Although I like to make money, I don't like to do it at some poor schmuck's expense.

Here is the industry behind these ads. Vendors of the product have affiliate programs. The affiliates create landing pages for the product. They throw up some bogus testimonials. It is very easy to do this. You can even copy other sites. The affiliates then buy advertising to get suckers to click through. Ad networks such as Google AdSense think the landing pages look good. These networks say that they depend on users to report abuse.

Everybody except the end user seems to make money on this scheme. The vendors get new people to bill. The affiliates get their cut, as well as the ad networks. Who is going to crack down on these scams when everybody is making out like a bandit? This feels like the dark side of Internet advertising.

Good Place to Start

There are many myths about what SEO can do for your web site. One thing is for sure. It will not immediately get your site ranked first in the search results. But some small changes can go a long way in rising your site up in the SERPs. Here are some things I have heard over and over about good SEO practices.

The most common sentiment is to make sure readers of your site are happy and want to come back for more. That will take you further than any SEO hack. Now with that being said, there are some other small SEO changes which can help you out. You should have a unique title on each web page. The title should also be short and concise.

When you do generate URLs, put meaningful words in them that relate to your subject. Lower case URLs are preferable. The text you write should be easy to read, and have top notch content. Yes I know that is a tall order to fill. But you must strive for it. It is best if the content is 100% unique. That will get you extra points.
I have heard people caution you against using too many images. I err on the side of too many images myself. There should be an ALT attribute for images. You never know when somebody is going to read your site with a text browser. The search engines like this as well.

You can link out to other sites. But you should add a rel value of nofollow. This is usually not a problem on my pages. I link mostly to my own sites. However when I do link out, it is for good cause. So I don’t mind losing a little link juice for a worthy cause. Finally you should list your URL on your business cards. I know my cards prominently display my web site URL.