Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ Category

Bad SEO Services That Leaves Your Website with Duplicate Content

Monday, January 21st, 2013

I have the greatest respect for some of the SEO industries pioneers that I have come to know. There are some who I have gone on to build good solid relationships with through coming into contact with them via a variety of channels such as SES Conference meetings held in either London or New York. I tend to refer to most of those I know in this highest tier of our industry as the ‘trusted voices‘.

One of those trusted voices and a pioneer in Search Engine Optimisation who I like listening too and I follow regularly is Jill Whalen CEO of High Rankings. I first read about this lady in 1998 but Jill has been in the field since the early 1990s.

Because I am fixated on seeing people in the industry deliver on best practice ethical SEO it is always good around the end of each year in December to catch up with those who are at the top table of SEO and find out what they thought about things that took place during the year and their predictions for the year ahead.

In December 2012 Jill focused on the topic about Duplicate Content that is still very much at the forefront when it comes to doing SEO. Jill like me is still seeing many sites that show up with duplicate content when we do SEO Website Audits. One of the easiest ways to find out if duplicate content is affecting the performance of your website is by checking the HTML Improvements link in a tool from Google called Webmaster Tools. Yet it is amazing to find that many freelancers and agencies claiming to deliver SEO services have not set this product up for their client. Those that have set the product up have not done so properly. This is one of the reasons I took up the role of becoming a Google Engage Partner, especially to help the smaller businesses who just don’t seem to get educated about what tools they should be working with in order to improve the performance of their website.

Where duplicate content seems to be at its worse is within ecommerce wesbsites. One of the biggest problems small medium businesses have when commissioning an ecommerce website is not planning properly the sites categorisation. You can tell when an SME business has engaged someone who is simply a programmer or graphic designer to build their ecommerce website, it shows they did not spend time learning marketing to any great degree. You will find lots of DIY marketers who are not delivering best practice SEO but how will you the small business owner be able to identify a good person at this task from someone who does it badly?

Just this week I came across two UK websites where each freelancer responsible for promoting themselves have dedicated a page in their website to things like SEO Glenrothes (where I live).

Here you find a guy from somewhere in England who probably doesn’t even know where my town is located. But you check out his website and he has literally listed every town he can think of and has applied a list of link titles all on one page such as SEO Edinburgh, SEO Glasgow and probably even SEO Timbucktwo. What amazes me even more is, that when you land on each town or city landing page all the content is the same apart from where it mentions the location.

What I don’t understand when it comes to seeing this form of duplicate content listed in the likes of Google who has crawled this type of page and failed to identify that this is truly spamming at its worst. Yet these pages end up getting high rankings in the SERPS and the small uneducated business owner does not know they are about to click through to this persons website and engage in receiving unethical SEO services. And probably after spending their hard earned marketing budget they find out later their own website has a penalty against it from the search engines.

There is simply one word for these people promoting bad practice SEO – LUNATICS. And these are the types of agencies and individuals who say they will get you to number one in the search engines but don’t really know how to properly use or even setup some of the best search engine optimisation industry tools we have at our disposal today.

So, I encourage you to read Jill Whalen’s articles and then if you are a small medium sized business that wants to setup a website to promote what your company offers by way of products and services, then you will know where to turn and who to turn too if you want to plan for success and achieve Onlinexcellence.

About The Author: is Director of Online Marketing for ICTADVISOR Ltd. Brian is passionate about all things online marketing, including search, both paid and organic, usability,  analytics, social media and conversion optimization. You can also follow Brian on twitter, @ictadvisorltd and he continues to promote

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TOP GLOBAL SEO EXPERT VISITS SCOTLAND

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

Top global SEO expert Matt Bailey one of the top speakers at SES (Search Engine Strategies) conferences in both London and New York and many other SES event locations around the world is coming to Scotland and will meet with Scottish website owners in Glasgow.

Matt will address business owners from across Scotland who are serious about their website being successful online. The session scheduled for Thursday 17 February 2011 at the Allan Glen Campus in Central College Glasgow is expected to attract a large audience.

Every year the hosts of these MasterClass events OnlineXcellence Ltd work hard to secure visits from such high profile speakers such as Matt Bailey. Seminar attendees consistently rave about Matt’s conversational, entertaining speaking style and his ability to explain high-level search marketing concepts in a way that even “non-techies” understand. So Scottish business owners will not be disappointed and are guaranteed a very interactive session on the day.

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SES London 2010 Snippets

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

During the week 15-19 February 2010 the OnlineXcellence team was in London soaking up knowledge from World’s leading edge practitioners of online search marketing at the Search Engine Strategies Conference.

We thought this post should signpost you to a number of comments made by those who were in attendance.

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz who presented on the Monday and Tuesday before having to return to Seattle on Wednesday has put his thoughts together by commenting on his blog about some interesting tips and tidbits he picked up during the conference.

Jaamit Durani over at Fresh Egg done well in capturing like a true journalist what was being said during some of the presentations Avinash Kaushik is one of the smartest people in Analytics and the OnlineXcellence team are testimony to this having been able to spend some time in Avinash’s company when we were last at SES New York.

Read what Avinash had to say in his keynote speach as captured by Jaamit when he opened the SES London 2010 conference.

Jaamit also neatly captured the debate of SEO vs PPC where in the blue corner the SEO proponents we had Rand Fishkin, Dave Naylor and Ralph Tegtmeier against those in the red corner the PPC evangelists Andrew Goodman and Paul Mead.

And if you really want to see the power of social media marketing then we have to give a thumbs up to Jonathan Allen over at searchenginewatch. Jonathan’s has put together an excellent blog of statistics on the impact blogging had covering SES London 2010.
As we come across other useful links from what has been hailed as another fantastic event from the SES Strategies team, then we will post them here at the OnlineXcellence blog.
Why not consider signing up for the OnlineXcellence program where you can learn how to accelerate your business growth online. And, we can guarantee you will end up joining us in attending the best conference event in the Search Marketing calendar.

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TOP SEO Rand Fishkin impresses Scottish Business Community

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

TOP SEO Rand Fishkin visited Scotland for the first time on Friday 12 Feb 2010 at the invitation of the OnlineXcellence team to help them launch a new initiative that set out to help Scottish companies with online business growth.

Business owners from across Scotland who were either considering having a website or were already in engaged in either offering goods or services online learned what they need to do with their websites to satisfy the major search engines.

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz based in Seattle is one of the top 10 most influential search engine optimisation professionals who is well versed in online search marketing tactics. Normally business owners would have to travel to London, New York, Chicago or other major locations and attend events such as SES Strategies or the SMX Conferences to hear from such top online marketers in the industry.

Online business growth professionals Brian Mathers and Adrian Bereziuk who are behind the OnlineXcellence program to assist business owners gain better leverage from their websites were honoured that Rand Fishkin agreed to visit Scotland and help them launch OnlineXcellence.

During the course of the day MDs and those responsible for the day to day marketing of their website were given an insight into understanding how search engines work and what it takes to build successful websites. Rand also gave his predictions on the strategies businesses would have to consider during 2010 if their websites were to achieve any degree of online success.

Now other influential speakers in the world of online marketing are gearing up to come to Scotland’s first OnlineXcellence centre at Central College Glasgow that will exclusively serve businesses located in the greater Glasgow region.

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Ways to recognise a bad SEO Company

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

OnlineXcellence is regularly talking to its colleagues and peers around the globe who are working hard to maintain goood search engine optimisation standards. And the most important task right now in 2010 is trying to educate the business owner in achieving onlinexcellence with their website. Lets prevent website failure and see businesses especially the smaller ones get a slice of the billions of pounds being spent a month online. But – you have to be serious if you want your site to succeed.

To recognise a bad SEO person or company you need to be educated towards understanding and following the rules. So that, your website gives you better miles to the gallon and you stop getting penalised for getting your SEO so wrong.

An SEO article written by Eric Enge in 2008 still stands true as we trundle into 2010. Eric is president of Stone Temple and of course is the 27th most influential marketer by readers of the Invesp blog. I know a few other good people on that list that I could recommend, but I suggest you read Eric’s article and leave him your comments.

There are tons of good interview articles on Eric’s site and so another interview we want you to read on Eric’s site is the one he did with Ken McGaffin of Wordtracker.com.

I have known Ken for a very long while now and I am already looking forward to our time together next week at the SES London Conference.

Read Ken’s article over at Stonetemple.

If you can’t make it to London on the 15 Feb 2010, for what will be a fantastic week filled with wealth, knowledge and the best search marketing talent on the planet, then read on………..

We have something special to tell you about here, why not get yourself to Glasgow for Friday 12 Feb 2009 and here about what you should be doing to your website by using best practice SEO techniques. World class top 10 SEO professional Rand Fishkinof SEOmoz.org is joining me for the day to launch the OnlineXcellence initiative. Come along, as you will not be disappointed. It all kicks off at 1000 inside Central College next to Queen Street Station.

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