Category: Link Building

Tut tut… http://www.searchbrat.com/buying-high-pr-sites-to-get-some-link-juice/

It is a competitive niche, and there is a lot of money to be made over there, so I’m not entirely surprised. Apart from the fact that they could have moved a bit more quietly? I’ve written about conversion optimisation in the insurance niche and car insurance area a few times before.

But in fairness, we had a fantastic 2 threads over on EI board recently:
http://news.enterprise-ireland.com/read/messages?id=17184
http://news.enterprise-ireland.com/read/messages?id=17169

In that second John Ring made a very valid point about buying rankings. It does happen, but sites will also run the risk of doing so. Mick from Voodoo made some great points in the first thread. Both threads well worth reading, and some of the better discussions on EI I’ve seen in a long time.

BTW – I’ve been looking for new Irish blogs to read. Kieran Flanagan’s SearchBrat.com and Leo Fogarty are both worth adding to the reader IMO (Leo reminds me a whole lot of Dave). If anyone know’s of other new Irish guys in SEO/conversion who are blogging I’d love to hear about them.

UPDATE: GoCompare are no longer ranking for their brand name

Link building is tricky. I’ve worked in some farily competitive niches, and link building does become more and more difficult as you ascend the competitive ladder. One niche I do like to watch (primarily due to the wonderful Insider’s View blog) is the UK insurance/financial services market.

Here’s an email that arrived from one of the largest comparison sites in the UK, GoCompare.com:

Hi – I`m Alex Jones, Website Manager at gocompare.com. We are one of the UK`s leading insurance comparison sites, with over 90 insurance companies on our panel.

I was searching the web and came across ******.TLD. We have a constantly growing range of information and advice surrounding insurance and repair themes. This relates to both motoring and household insurance. As such we are looking for good quality partners that have a motoring, automotive, general household or lifestyle theme . . . so I have an idea which I hope you will find useful.

We can have our editorial team research and hand write some unique content for you to add to a page on ******.TLD. We will agree a subject with you that is relevant to both of our sites. The content will contain a single unobtrusive text link in it back to a relevant page on our site. You would benefit from some unique, relevant content to which the search engines seem to be attributing ever more value. We would probably obtain some long term benefit from the link to us — which, as a relevant outbound link, would also be potentially helpful to you from a search engine perspective. We are not currently in the position of being able to exchange or return links so we thought this could be a good alternative.

There are of course absolutely no costs for you in us producing this content.

*** IMPORTANT – GETTING A QUICK RESPONSE ***
I have found that email isn`t always as reliable as everyone thinks plus I`m either out or in meetings most of the time. We have therefore created a simple and quick-to-use response page that provides detailed information and answers to questions on the various options and allows you to send messages to our team . . and much more! You can access it here:-

Page: http://www.gocompare.com/secure-reply.aspx
Your Access Code: ******

Of course I know that some people prefer to reply via email which is absolutely fine and I`ll reply as quickly as possible.

REMOVAL
If you feel I should not have sent you this email, I`m really sorry – please just reply with REMOVE in the subject.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks and kind regards – Alex Jones
Website Manager
www.gocompare.com

I’ve redacted any info that could identify the site. So what’s wrong with this?

Sneaky Link Building at Site Owner’s Expense

Link building is extremely tough in competitive niches. I’m generally pretty white-hat when it comes to SEO, but when you’re heavily involved in SEO you know the reality of competition – all the sites in this niche are up to no good. Take a read of Insider’s View and you can see how often sites get penalties and bans. You’ll also learn just how much money we can be talking about, and why the returns often justify the high risks taken.

Caveat Emptor

I have a problem with GoCompare.com’s email. They are preying on site owners who wont realise the risks of adding this “unique content”. GoCompare’s risk is negligible, while the risks to publishers are high. Alex Jones is disingenuous when he writes:

You would benefit from some unique, relevant content to which the search engines seem to be attributing ever more value. We would probably obtain some long term benefit from the link to us — which, as a relevant outbound link, would also be potentially helpful to you from a search engine perspective. We are not currently in the position of being able to exchange or return links so we thought this could be a good alternative. [Emphasis added mine]

What utter shite. Of course Alex fails to mention that such content on your site goes against Google’s TOS and risks a penalty for the publishing site:

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Worse still – site owners aren’t even offered payment for selling links to GoCompare. “There are of course absolutely no costs for you in us producing this content.” I actually had a good laugh at that. Site owners take all the risk while GoCompare take all the benefit. But then again perhaps GoCaompare learnt from previous bans that it’s better to pass the risk to someone else…

GoCompare banned from Google

When I started this site I made a semi-conscious decision not to be overtly commercial. Sure I have a link on each page to my sales ‘pitch’ page, but generally most of my work comes through word of mouth.

There is one thing on my sales page however that maybe flies a little too low on the radar. It has been there on that page since it was first published, and it is this:

If you are a registered charity and would like some advice or assistance I am very happy to donate a few hours when available in return for a simple thank you :).

There are so many things I need or would like to change on my site. Making that offer far more prominent is on that list.

To date only two charities have approached me. Today good ole’ Grandad tagged me for the charity link meme which arrived on Irish shores via Gavin’s blog.

The Charity Links

These are the links I’m adding

• Oxfam Ireland – Oxfam Ireland Shop – buy gifts, help charity
• Rescue A Kid – Helping orphaned and disadvantaged kids in the Third World
• Headline – Irish Mental Health and Suicide

to the current list:

• Bubblegum Club – Children In Crisis
• Autism NI – Autism Northern Ireland
• Adoption Ireland – Irish Adoption Charity
• Ireland Funds – Peace and Reconciliation In Ireland
• Dublin Simon Community – Combating Homelessness in Dublin
• The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity – Polish Charity
• CPR For Schools Across Poland – CPR Training
• Program of Insulin Pumps in Diabetic Children Therapy – Insulin Pumps For Children
• Non-invasive Neonatal Breathing Support – Infant Flow
• Program of Universal Neonatal Hearing Screenings – Neonatal Hearing
• American Red Cross – disaster relief
• Raleigh Rescue Mission – homeless raleigh
• SOS Children’s Villages – sponsor a child
• Samaritan’s Purse – emergency relief programs
• St. Jude Children’s Hospital – cancer research
• Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders – Humanitarian Relief
• American Red Cross – Emergency Preparedness
• AMREF – African Medical & Research Foundation – African Health Development
• DOROT – Programs for Elderly
• Feed the Children – Protect Children
• Service International – Disaster Relief
• Pujols Family Foundation – Children with Down Syndrome
• National Alliance to End Homelessness – Homelessness
• The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research – Parkinson’s Research
• Ronald McDonald Care Mobile Program – Child Healthcare
• Aids Research Alliance – Aids Research
• Wildlife Conservation Society – Wildlife Protection
• Cancer Research Institute – Cancer Research
• Second Harvest – End Hunger
• AARP Foundation – Helping Senior Citizens
• Jack & Jill Childern’s Foundation – Jack & Jill Childern’s Foundation
• Irish Guide Dogs Association – Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind
• Simon Community Cork – Sign Up for Simon
• Trócaire – Irish Charity & Development Agency
• Cancer.ie – Irish Cancer Society
• Royal National Lifeboat Institution – RNLI
• Barretstown Castle –Barretstown Castle [Hole in the Wall] Camp

Here’s the text file.

And I’m passing this on to some other SEOs:

1. Mr. Davis
2. Mr. Roe
3. Mr. McDermott
4. Mr. Stanley
5. and lastly, because he needs some extra link love himself Mr. Mulley

And lastly

If you are involved in a charity and would like some of my time for free please fly me a mail. I can’t guarantee any set time frames, but I will help out as and when my schedule allows.

PS – @Grandad – if you ever want some help with Jack and Jill give me a shout 😎

Hyperlinks are the glue that holds the Internet together. Users traverse links to get from one resource to another. Search engine bots crawl links to discover new resources. Algorithms use links as a primary signal of quality and relevance in order to display search engine results. So links benefit everyone.

So if links benefit everyone why would you want to curtail peoples’ ability to link to your site by publishing something like this:

Whoever drafted that form does not understand the Internet. Period.

Oh, and just to make a point purple monkey dishwasher.

Well done Donncha for discovering this. (Was that link OK for you Donncha?)

Or was it Frank? Well I know that Paul has been discussing it. Please send all linking complaints to the linking manager. By Fax.

[Update] Lar has rewritten this into a user-friendly linking policy that ICS could adopt. Free advice from Ireland’s leading accessibility and usability experts is surely hard to turn down.

Yes, you heard me right – I hope Buddha forgives me. He’s actually a pretty cool guy, certainly the best God I’ve ever read about.

But I digress

Right, first off I have never had a blogroll here. Yes, yes, I should know better – if you don’t show some link love then why would you expect any back?

Well I’ve been very fortunate and lots of kind people have linked to my humble blog. Thank you everyone who has linked here 😀

But one thing that’s really pissed me off is when I take a peak at Technorati. Occasionally I see links coming at me from guys who I know here in cyberspace, some of whom have this rather lonely message after their blog name:

So here’s some links to take away that horrible text:

First off…

If you asked me who were the best Irish Internet marketing/monetising people I would probably say ‘not the one’s who advertise it’. The cutest guys and gals are the ones who actually just do it. I reckon Gavin at Ireland SEO Marketing is one of those, and his blog is worth a read because he’s at the coalface and knows how to work the system.

Those bloody awards again

While I am quite outspoken about a certain Irish awards ceremony, there is one winner who I think deserved to get that golden thingie. So if you’re looking for a web designer in Navan, that link brings you to such a person’s blog from which his website is just a click away.

Really slick design

Last link this time around points at a site whose design spoke volumes the first time I stumbled upon it. I’m not sure how I found Stuart Curry’s design website, but I can say that it’s very hard to knock his design skills. Really sweet. And I think he’s for hire.