SEO News - Newspapers jump on the blackhat bandwagon

I've noticed recently that newspapers are popping up intermittently for searches related to SEO. It started with an article in a UK newspaper. News and UK sites often appear in Irish searches - more so in Yahoo! where UK sites (with .co.uk Domain names/ccTLD's) often outrank Irish sites even in "Pages from Ireland" only searches.

I noticed the first article appearing late in 2009. The newspaper (I think it was the Guardian) lamented that its journalists had somehow sacrificed their writing in favour of adopting SEO techniques. Rather, that they were trying to use popular search words and other "SEO" techniques to get more traffic - as traffic was thought to be the equivalent of readership. Which its not really. Readership is a subset of traffc, as we really know.

Today I balk at the snippet above - the Belfast Telegraph have created a post with words quite unrelated to their article. It could have been called "Blackhat online Marketing Techniques" - but instead they went for big hitter search phrases.

I quite agree with the debate around spam and online marketing. Its getting very big. We get hundreds of requests every month from (mostly) Asian based link-building sweatshops with assembly line style link bulding in 0 authority link farms. These shops turn out tens of thousands of rubbish back links. If you're a blogger or a website owner, this is probably where you're getting all those junk e-mails and rubbish posts on your blog. One dodgy Irish SEO even extolled their virtues recently on the Irish Web Master Forum, but thankfully the rest of the Irish web industry wasn't impressed.

Sound good - tens of thousands of inward links to your site? Don't be fooled - a page with 100 outbound links on a "farm" of 100,000 pages with millions more isn't going to impress users or Google. People who buy these links are probably guilty of adding to the growing web of spam building up. More on this in the next post.

Google Analytics - Faster new Asynchronous Analytics Tracking

Google have announced a new Asynchronous Tracking script for Analytics. The new snippet decreases a webpage's loading time over the previous urchin/script as it is inserted higher up the page source thus not slowing down the page load on the client side (rendering). This is a nice feature as the Google Analytics code can add significantly to the time between page download (request) and the time it takes for the user to see the page (rendered).


New Script example:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(ga);
})();

</script>

Read more here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTracking.html

New websites & Projects

Congratulations to Tynan & Co, the 100 year old firm of Limerick Solicitors, who have just launched their new website. Tynan & Co. have just entered the digital age with their first ever web presence - and we're delighted to be working on their SEO and Web Marketing programme.

We've also started the launch of the first website for the new Connect Limerick website. Connect Limerick are a business networking group in Limerick and are seeking to promote and encourage business networking in the Mid West. Primary Position is delighted to be a sponsor and member of the group and website.

Quick updates....

We're working with

Google Personalised Search

Google's new personalised search now works even if you;re not logged in. I never used personalised search before and found it highly annoying, so I haven't been looking forward to the public one. You don't really have much of a choice to opt-in - you're co-opted in automatically just by using Google (which on principle I really hate). You have to opt-out (repeatedly even) - so there's no respect for your personal wishes.

Here's my big question: if you always got back the same results from the same sites you already know of - what do you need Google for? I'm guessing the impact of this will be low and that it may even be pulled/easier to opt out of than it currently is.

One of the first times we came across personal search issues was shortly after it was launched more broadly sometime last year. A friend of ours in Dublin was doing a demo and discussing SEO with a client of theirs. The client wanted to check where we ranked but we didn't show up anywhere. My friend rang me and they were quite curious - we eventually clicked that they were logged into Google and they were seeing personalised search. And it's been a big problem since then, so I'm wondering how much of a problem will it be going forward.

A couple of people have raised the idea that Google may be doing this to push their own AdWords sales and to be honest, I'm wondering myself.

Initial Verdict: Google may be a very successful search engine - but thats because they were so clever and user focused at the start. Now they're changing quite radically. If open personalised search is the future and in the best interest of the user - then I can only agree with it. But I'm still not so sure....watch this space!

How my network with twitter has expanded....

I signed up to twitter a little over a year ago. So, like most people, this is what I get asked most often by people: what has meant to you and your business? Many people are much more blunt: "How has it affected the bottom line?" I'm not sure I can answer that entirely and it's going to be very different for different people but here's what's happened for me since  February:

Through twitter I got introduced to a whole new group of Limerick based entrepreneurs, technologists, consultants and generally, a good group of business people. James Corbett, Keith Kennedy, Paul, Patrick, John Kennedy - lots others. People I still meet every month and some I even do some work with

From this group we organised Bizcamp Limerick, a truly great and first of its kind event in Limerick. The event was organised by a wider of group of people connected via twitter and/or LOCC. The group included (but not limited to) Stephen Kinsella, Shane McAllister, Mark Cahill, Ger Hartnett, Gabriella Avram, Joe Correia. Apologies if I've forgotten anyone, old age etc! I also met David Hickey from Limerick Self Storage and from that I've been working with the Irish Self Storage Association.

Another member from LOCC and speaker at Bizcamp and someone I've done lots of work with, is top chap Ted Vickey (who had the gym at the White House). Ted writes about Golf fitness and entrepreneurship and things like this. Ted also introduced me to Pauric Logue, who recently setup Wiseloads.com, an online courier and parcel delivery service. Pauric knows everything there is to know about logistics and parcel delivery, and is really working hard to deliver a better service for Irish businesses, especially those trading online.

I also met Sian Maloney, who became a new business partner when I joined her business, Irish Gift website, Giftsandvouchers.ie. We also setup Ireland's first dedicated shopping forum, talkshop.ie. We've also been working on some other projects, like the Irish Self Storage site.

I've also meet a whole new group of business friends - Grainne from Local Discounts, Elaine from Seefin Coaching (who recently setup the first Mallow Open Coffee Club - and from that even more nice people), and Sian from online directory, WhatsWhat.ie.