a cautionary tale of aggressive seo @ boston joomla world conference 2013

Tweet with hashtag #jwc13 and @offordscott to participate on Twitter.

A Cautionary Tale of Aggressive SEO

How to Avoid Penalties and Fix Things When They Go Wrong

Tweet with hashtag #jwc13 and @offordscott via Twitter.

A Cautionary Tale of Aggressive SEO

!

• Techniques and tools that will help your website gain rankings in the search engines, how to avoid

crushing penalties from over-optimization, and how to recover

when things go wrong.


Hello, My Name is Scott

• • Not a Web Developer any more

• • An Internet Marketer

• • Google Analytics & Adwords Certified

• • Partner at Orion Group

• • President of Meetupery

• • Husband to Stephanie

• • Owned by “Squiggles”, a Great Dane


First... A Little About Search Engines

• Most Searchers Use GoogleMost%People%Use%Google%


Being on Page One of Google is Important

Most searchers stay on the first page

Some might look at the 2nd or 3rd page of search results


Top Ranking Factors

!

• Keyword Use Anywhere in <title> Tag

• Keyword Use in Page Content

• Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from External Links


Top Ranking Factors!!

• External Link Popularity & Diversity of Source(quantity and quality of external links)

!• Trustworthiness of Domain

(based on distance from trusted domains)


One thing to Keep in Mind!

Search Engines Constantly Evolve

Algorithm changes leave many webmasters wondering what they can

do to ensure their websites remain visible in the search engines.


My Black Friday Story



!

• Seeing an interesting niche and recognizing an opportunity to make a lot of money…

• I created ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com



!• The site gives visitors early intel on the

Door-busters and early-bird sales and get a sneak peek at the Black Friday ads before they are printed in the Thanksgiving Day newspaper



• I wanted to be #1 in the search engines.

• After my first successful season, I knew I could do better and so...

• I set off on a quest to gain backlinks for my most important keywords


Google Analytics (November 2011)


5.9 million pages to 413,458 visitors

Between November 1st-30th, 2011. Served up to 590 concurrent users 900 pages per minute.


Adsense Earnings (November 2011)


Unnatural Inbound Links Detected

!ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com

received a penalty


How to Troubleshoot


How to Troubleshoot

• Confirm the date you got hit

• Was it really a penalty or was it just an algorithm update?

• Review Google Webmaster Tool data • Was a ‘Manual Action’ taken?


How to Troubleshoot

!

• Confirm if it is site-wide or a page-specific problem

• Review Google Analytics data


There’s a Difference Between An Algorithm Update and a Penalty


Google ‘Penguin’ Updates

!

• Over-optimization of anchor text is bad

• Low-quality off-topic links are bad

• Keyword stuffing is bad


Google ‘Panda’ Updates!

Many content farms, article directories, sites with high ad-to-content ratios were hit and are no longer as highly-visible

in the search engines.


Who Gets Hit By Penalties?



!

• Websites found to be in violation of a search engines Terms of Service !

• Websites with an unbalanced backlink profile



!

• Websites with backlinks from low-quality sites or sites containing over-optimized, exact-match anchor text

• But… was it really a penalty or was it just an update to Google’s algorithm?


My Black Friday Story, Continued…


My Black Friday Story, Continued…!

• Started in 2009 on a shared Godaddy server, it couldn’t handle the load, so the website went offline on Thursday evening, the night before black Friday.

!• Started link-building through article

marketing, and leaving relevant comments on various blogs.



• In 2010, I created forum signatures, performed profile creation and distributed press releases

• In 2011, article marketing, spam comments, forum signatures, profile creation, paid link placement in “blogrolls” (sidebars) of sites that had high PageRank

• In July 2012, received an “Unnatural inbound links” warning via Google Webmaster Tools



!

!

Organic traffic was down 95% over last year due to the penalty

received by Google.



• Apologized for being spammy

• Requested webmasters to remove bad links

• Uploaded a disavow list to Google Webmaster Tools



• Removed more spammy links that I had control over

• Resubmitted the site for reconsideration to Google Webmaster Tools



Google wouldn’t budge and wouldn’t tell me how

to fix the problem.



I needed to figure out what to do. !• Transfer the content to a new domain name

and start building rankings again?

• Continue removing more bad links to the existing site?

• Give up altogether?



So, I changed the domain name…

From:

ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com

To:

ThanksgivingBlackFriday.com


Tools for Diagnosing SEO Issues


Tools for Diagnosing SEO Issues

• Google Webmaster Tools • Moz.com • OpenSiteExplorer.org


Other Tools For Competitor Research

• Google Analytics – Keyword Performance – Bounce Rates & Pageviews – Visitor Segmentation

• Moz.org – Link Analysis – Ranking Reports – Keyword Research !

• Open Site Explorer – Anchor Text – External Links – Domain Authority

• Google Trends – Industry Insights – Top Related Searches – Geographic Hotspots


How to Avoid or Recover From a Penalty


Avoiding or Recovering From a Penalty

!

• Vary the anchor text of links that point to your site.


Diversify Your Backlink Profile

• Naked URLs – “www.scottofford.com” – “http://www.orionweb.net”

• • Branded Anchor Text – “Orion Group, LLC” – “Joomla World Conference”



• Brand / Keyword Hybrid Anchor Text – “SEO Blog at Search Engine Journal” – “Search Engine Journal, a blog about search”

• • Universal Anchor Text – “click here” – “visit this website”



!• If you are a roofing company in Boston,

instead of using “Boston roofing company” as your backlink’s anchor text, try using:

• “a roofing company in the Boston area” • or something like: • “Apex, LLC ~ Roofing Contractor in Boston”

Any questions?

Tweet to @offordscott and use hashtag #jwc13 to say hello.

a cautionary tale of aggressive seo @ boston joomla world conference 2013

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