It’s Friday, the sun is shining, people are happy and our clients love us. Especially two of them.
Pathways Training and Brite White Teeth have both seen fit to send recommendations our way today who both, on the strong recommendations of their friends have signed up.
So at Net66 we want to say a massive thank you to our clients, and that
we love you too!
First of all, 20 domains different sites on 20 different domains is quite a lot. Like, really a lot. So why would you want to link them all together? See Matt Cutts’ video response here:
SEO Choices
Oh Dear Oh Dear I cannot make up my mind !
How many times do we all here that,and how many times do we all say that, and think that
Surely this conundrum has been around forever, and in this modern world we live in there is more and more choice about more and more things.
Linux vs Windows, Google vs Bing(no competition) , Libre Office(Open Office) vs MSWord, Apple vs PC, Organic SEO vs Pay per Click (PPC)
Was there ever a time when life was less complicated and we go about our business without a care, probably not.
For small businesses some of these choices are vital.
There is a compelling case for small businesses to use Linux, so as to save a small fortune sending license fees to Microsoft. Then again, unless you are a Linux fan, and have a tame Linux boffin you may be best sticking with Windows, as the world is full of Windows “experts”
The international space station now uses Linux and has moved away from Windows, so if it is good enough for them, it is more than good enough for the office
Libre Office , in my opinion is a good choice, I have used it for years and it has been a stalwart. And to back me up no less than the Australian Government has now standardised on the open source formats that Libre Office use
Now I need to declare an interest before I go on, as I am about to favour Organic whitehat SEO over PPC.
But now we are back to choice, it is more than possible to obtain best value long term results from organic SEO
But to do this you need to choose an SEO practitioner with care.
There are many to choose from, some good, some bad and some brilliant.
My advice is to talk to your SEO regular, and ask their advice. If you get the same old lines of sales talk, think again.
The practice of SEO is wide and varied, and there are no quick fixes, so if your SEO professional suggests new and varied strategies, this is because they are keeping up with the ever vigilant and innovative technicians at Google HQ
The relationship between an SEO company and the Webmaster should be a collaborative partnership, so to coin an old phrase “It is good to talk”
We focus a lot on White Hat SEO here at Net66, but as with all things understanding what goes through the anti-Net66 helps. So we keep up to date with the latest black hat techniques. Not that we would ever use them, we do this just so that we can see what Google will be penalising in the future.
Because with Google, the house always wins. You might have a good one, a great one in fact, but Google will find your black hat and will slam your website into the ground nose first.
I’m bringing this up because as an SEO I like to think I have a grasp of what’s good and what’s bad. But on a recent expedition into the other side, I discovered that just like White Hat SEO, Black hat SEO has it’s noobs (newbies – newcomers) as well. A realisation I was surprised at as I’d assumed all black hats had a handle on things.
But the question was this:
“If I put black text links on a black background, will Google find them?”
Any SEO worth their salt would tell them this is a bad idea and that’s exactly what happened (bar the trolls who told them it was a great idea). But there are rookies now in all aspects of SEO and it reminded me of me when I was just started out and asked perceived daft questions, often receiving daft answers.
So don’t be afraid to ask any questions as you can only learn from the answers you get.
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
After the fury that Edward Snowden caused by telling us all something that we probably already suspected that, our Governments are looking after us and are actively looking for the bad guys out there who want to do us harm, how does SEO fit into all of this ?
Google, and other search engines, have amassed a huge amount of technology in automatically reading absolutely huge amounts of text, and then somehow making sense of it.
Your average search engine can crawl through millions of webpages, index them and selectively serve them back up to us as and when we enter a search query, all within time scale of “two shakes of a lambs tail”
I do not know what goes on at Spy Central, but I guess a liberal use of the software and technology that search engines use is borrowed and adapted to find recurring key words and phrases in communications that fly around the world.
How much of the research and development and blue sky thinking that are put into making our search life easier is diverted to make our real lives safer, is anybodies guess
This is not the place to be political, there are many other other blogs that can discuss those matters so much better than I.
So next time I am toiling away in my office Manchester trying to SEO a phrase to death, and nothing bad has happened, and the lights are on as they should be, and the world carrying on as it should, I will spare a thought for all of the technicians and machines all over the world that are working to keep us all safe.
I think it would be milking it a bit to claim that all SEOs are heros, but all of us who practice the noble art of SEO have made a contribution, however small
Ps If you are a machine in Spy Central and you are reading this “Good day to you”
Manchester – Home of Digital Enterprise
Call me biased, and you would be right, I am Manchester born and bred, and proud of it.
Ok, I have spent my life wondering when it going to stop raining, and recently cannot understand why the Manchester scallies always talk through their nasal passage( yes I said nasal , although I have heard some talk other ways)
But what a City, what a history of inventions and innovation!
The device you are reading this is on a distant offspring of the first computer to store its own programme which was built and developed at Manchester University by Alan Turing. Henry Royce made his first car luxury here, Coronation Street is made here, the Trades Union Congress was formed here mainly because Manchester was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution.
We also have some top drawer footie teams in Manchester City and United.
And now we have the BBC.
OK, most of those media types had have a general anaesthetic before they came “Up North” but some of them have woken up and realised that there is something going on up here.
Now we have a vibrant and lively digital community, springing out from the Manchester Technology Park.
Graphics, Design, Development and SEO, are all being being pushed to the limits by a whole community of boffins.
SEO in Manchester is being developed and adapted in the way that Mancunians have always done, pushing the boundaries of Search Engine Optimisation in inventive ways
There is a healthy competition between all of the SEO technicians in Manchester and that can only be a good thing as we all compete to get the best search results for our clients
Yes I am biased and I love Manchester, and yes I am biased and love my company Net66, so if you do need any SEO I wholeheartedly and unashamedly recommend you come to us in the Northern Quarter of this fair city
In the interest of fairness → Other Cities and other SEO companies are available
Before I go any further, I want to say what a great job Google Search Engine is doing in difficult circumstances
Judging by the amount of emails I get from our SEO colleagues in the far east, and thinking about the UK SEO community, worldwide there must be hundreds of thousands of SEO’ers spending millions of hours trying to promote various websites for various phrases.
Has Google crumbled, not a bit of it. But what they have done is fall into a trap of unintended consequences ( in my humble opinion)
Quite rightly, the boffins at Google HQ are always trying to be one or two steps ahead of us SEO workers, and that is how it should be, but I think the last Penguin update wilhave a curious effect.
I can imagine the guys at Google HQ having brilliant idea.
“Lets favour those sites that generate a bit of interest, those sites that start of slowly, and because real people like them, they get visitors and comments and blog posts and links from multiple social media accounts”
What could possibly go wrong?
On the face of it, it is probably what we all would have done
SEO practitioners worldwide, out number Google by at least 1 million to one, (maybe more) and nearly all of those have now created at least one blog, 3 social media accounts and submitted paragraphs of text to another 5 directory s for each of their many clients, and are now adding keyword rich relevant content to all of those accounts on a regular basis.
Multiply that by the number of clients we all have, and the numbers of erroneous and completely made up articles that are being published every week and the amount of words to be read by the ever vigilant googlebot can only be measured in light year numbers
It is a common “well known fact” that there is now more data being stored right now, than the whole of the human race has amassed in in our entire chequered history.
Most of this data is probably backups of backups, multiple photos of drunk friends on Social Media sites and stored emails that were never read in the first place.
Now this data mountain will added to by millions and millions of articles. Written daily by SEO bods around the world, all trying to emulate the gradual organic growth of genuinely interesting sites on websites about “left handed widgets” and the like
There is a need for “left handed widgets” and there is a need, as and when we need them, for all of us to be able to find them. I think that task will now become harder and harder for search engines as the “needle in a haystack” effect gets more intense
Google has now got to read all of these and try and make sense of them all, so good luck to them, and although it will not happen anytime soon, they are going to have to find an easier way of doing things.
Being an old codger myself, I think we should go back to the simple times when “meta tags” were king
How to choose an SEO reliable and cost effective practitioner
SEO is one of those things that all websites need, and that a lot of website owners do not fully understand the complexities of, and where there are an awful lot of company who are selling “SEO” and providing a poor and sometimes non existent service.
There are a many many companies doing an absolutely great service and are being tarnished by the bad practice ehics from the Black Hat SEO companies.
So if I run a website, and I am not an SEO Technician, how can tell the good stuff from the bad stuff ?
First of all remember that old phrase that all consumer programs and magazines keep repeating, “If it seems to good to be true, it is to good to be true”
A reputable SEO company will be honest and up front that it cannot guarantee that it can make Google do anything.
Google is a massive and hugely clever organisation, so no matter how insistent anyone may be, they cannot make a call to Google HQ and say “Put this website on page 1 for this phrase”
Good companies will ask more questions than give you the hard sell.
What is it you want to achieve, what are your products, what is your market, what is your budget, what is your area for expansion.
Unless an SEO company can get a handle on your business and ambitions for your website, it cannot tailor the service to the best results
Talk to your chosen company, you will get an idea of are they just trying to “Close an order” or are they genuinely trying to help you
Call me biased and prejudiced, but I would recommend Net66, we are an SEO company based in Manchester City Centre, and I here you thinking “He would say that wouldn’t he”
We want to understand how your business and your website work together
How your customers come to your website
What they are looking for and why they should buy your product or service rather than your competitors
then we can give you the Biggest Bang for your Buck
Ring us on 0161 820 5471
Navigation is one of the most important factors that needs to be considered when building a new website. Your menu bar opens the whole of your website up to your visitors so needs to be as clear, concise and easy to use as it can be. When Designing your menu bar you need to make sure that it is both search-engine and user friendly. This way the structure of your menu will help boost your rankings, and when visitors arrive on your website, your menu can make your user’s visit a pleasant experience. The user will be richer for the experience and be more likely to visit you again to purchase an item or service.
Your root domain and all subsequent pages are highly important to your website’s performance in the Search Engines as well as User experience. For example, which URL would you be more likely to click on:
https://netsixtysix.co.uk/internet-marketing/ or https://netsixtysix.co.uk/?pageid=188 ??
You’d click on the link you understand, of course you would. Page Id 188 holds no meaning for you so you may not wish to click it as it could be misleading.
Images do matter in SEO and humans need to be swayed by good looking images. Here are the main points in optimising images:
Follow these tips and you should have a great website to work with from the off of your SEO Campaign.
Firstly , lets say “Hats off to Google “ They have to be one of the cleverest companies in the world. Look at what they have achieved,
Google the Search Engine is a huge , no huge does not even come close, humongeous is nearer the mark, achievement.
The statistics are astounding, billions of web pages read, inspected, indexed and sorted every month
Google Earth
They have a picture of my house, my street, my neibourhood and I can “virtually” drve up and down my street and go around town. I can visit Buckinham Palace, The Sidney Opera House, The Whitehouse, and more amazeingly if I were to put and address of almost anywhere in the world I could visit there. Millions if not billions of images all linked seamlessly together
Google Books
They are in the process of copying and putting online all the books in the world, yes ALL the books in the world. From Ancient manuscripts that may have been written when at the time the Pyramids were built, to todays bestsellers and all of the books that have ever been published
You Tube, Google Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and there achievments go on and on.
So if you have got a website, and want to try and hoodwink Google into listing it above where it merits, you will have to , as my Grannie used to say, ‘Have to get up very early in the morning’
So if you have a website, and want potential customers to find your website and become real life customers, give us a call at www.net66.co.uk
Much more than a few design tweaks here and there, we’ve completely redesigned our whole website with lots of new features and information available.
For instance, you can now view our website History. Look at all the old Net66 faces of the past and pick your favourite. You can see how much has changed in web design from the very first blue (I know) website, to the beautiful red delight you see before you now.
There’s also plenty of information on How Google Works. We take an in depth look at the Algorithms, Links and other factors that Google looks into when deciding how to rank your website so you can see how it all works for yourself.
We’ve also updated our portfolio and just our web portfolio either. You can now see our SEO, Web Design and Ecommerce portfolios accompanied by our new Case Studies section. Take a look at our clients who have earned large contracts or developed their business exponentially with our help. Such as Winton Flooring, who got a large contract from the Olympics to lay the flooring down the “Fast Walk” event at the London 2012 Olympics.
I’ll let you finish reading now, I know you’re eager to poke around our site, but for our website at a glance take a look at the screenshots below:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Even Pre Penguin there was a large buzz on the internet about what will work, what wont work, what you should remove, what you should add. But now that the dust has (seemingly) settled, it’s becoming apparent that certain ways to build links are not only ineffective, but will actively hurt your site’s performance in the SERPs. Here’s some things NOT to do when you’re link building now:
Quantity over Quality
Sure, having a link profile with hundreds linking root domains might look good, but it’s not all that effective if the hundreds of domains that are on there are low quality sites with little relevance to your own. I’ve often said this and will continue to say it, relevance is key! I would take one relevant, good quality website than one hundred links from irrelevant, poor quality websites. A whole afternoon’s work can be classified as a success even if you get 1 good link. If your boss get’s on your case for so few links, educate them.
Ignoring Your Own Site
People get hung up on guest posting and will reserve the best content to give to other blogs as this increases the likelihood of the other blog accepting and publishing your content, providing you with a link from a relevant blog. But why? I know you get a great link from it, but what about the links the content attracts for the blog where it’s published. If the content is that good, it’ll be worth linking to and will benefit that blog. You’ll get some secondary link juice from this, but not a lot. So why not publish that content on your own site, and receive all the organic links to it yourself?
Anchor Text Angst
OCATD. Obsessive Compulsive Anchor Text Disorder. People would spend so much time searching for that one link they could get where they could insert their own anchor text and manipulate this to boost rankings. With the advent of Panda, this is no longer going to work. It’s going to work against you in some cases, especially if your Link Profile is skewed so much that it has over 50% keyword anchor text. Think about it, if people were organically linking to your site would they choose to link to you with a keyword? And if so, what are the chances that you have a whole bunch of people all miraculously choosing the same phrase. Strikes me, and now Google thanks to Penguin, as a little odd.
No News is Good News
People publishing monthly/bimonthly press releases are either gifted with an incredibly high amount of foresight, or they’re actually fabricating “News” to release. The bottom line with this one is, if you have no news to report, you have nothing to report. You shouldn’t seek out the tiniest little thing and publish a press release, Google will get wise to this as press releases are usually reserved for Product launches, Re-branding and other such large projects. Not the fact that you’ve added a new page to your website.
There are so many other habits that people are finding hard to kick but as it stands these top the pile on my most seen poor link building practice podium so far.
What are yours?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
No not a mine as in the Chilieans or Moria. But Google Mine in the possessive sense. Google’s system blog has recently been giving out information on a service/app that could be used to display your possessions online.
I was a bit wary at first wondering why anyone would want to list their entire life on the internet as a virtual shopping list for anyone unscrupulous enough to want to relieve you of those possessions without your consent. But then I realised no one would want to do this if this is the case so I delved deeper.
It seems by adding certain tags to certain posts, much like meta tags are added to blog posts to describe authorship, will enable you to say whether the item you’ve just posted is for sale, a review or something else.
It’s like a big social soup of ebay, review sites, social media and Gumtree all in one place. You have to admit as well that most people aren’t currently active users of Google+, and that Google need to do something with Google+ to make it worthwhile keeping it going.
I know there was a big recent redesign of Google+ and yes, on face value it’s gorgeous, but it’s still failed to entice the masses. So will Google Mine be the thing to really put Google+ into the mainstream?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
This has been one of the most talked about topics since the birth of Penguin 2.0 and that is, do we have to be afraid of the Disavow Tool or can it be trusted to recover penalised sites? Well Google’s own Matt Cutts (Head of the Web Spam team) came out and answered publicly on Twitter to a question, stating that the Disavow Tool can help with a Penguin impact.
This has been a big relief to many webmasters out there who have been impacted and can now safely use the tool without hesitating. The only problem is that we still do not know for sure how long it would take for a website to recover from a penalisation after using the disavow tool. My personal option would be to use the disavow tool to remove low quality and irrelevant links pointing to your website and then submit a reconsideration request to webmaster or selecting the fetch as Google option and pinging to get your website read as quick as possible.
If the disavow Tool works according to Matt Cutts then this cannot be ignored and using the tool effectively could be the difference between a successful recovery or a further penalisation by the panda update which is now a rolling update. It will also benefit your website in the long run, as Google could come out and roll out the Penguin update at any time and this time if you have removed the links which are harming your site in theory you shouldn’t be affected.
Although some people do not believe what Matt says most of the time, it is clear in what the message is he is trying to get across to webmasters which is; Google rewards high quality websites and penalises websites to be considered as spam. Hence why Google released this tool to help us recover and realise what we have done wrong.
Blog Post by Jordan Whitehead
Last night, the SEO world was given a different look at how Publishership could affect websites rankings. Reported on several other SEO Blogs, travelstart.co.za began to display an authorship profile (see below). As you can see from my own blogs, tagging yourself as rel=”author” allows for your Google+ profile picture to be displayed in the Search Engine Rankings pages.
Ok, so authorship in a blog isn’t an uncommon thing these things, but what was different about this page was that it contained no Google Authorship Markup. What else became apparent was that there was also no Publishership Markup in their either. So how is this website displaying the Google+ Profile Picture?
It seem’s to be stemming from the Google+ page itself. Because you need to verify you own your website on your Google+ page first, Google could be drawing this information and using it to enhance their search results. Strange though that there is no Mark Up for Authorship or Publishership.
Apparently, shortly after getting noticed, Google pulled this feature from the search results and the website stopped displaying its Google+ profile picture in the results. So this was either a very strange bug in Google’s architecture, or this was Google testing something out.
What do you think?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Well as I’m sure you all know by now Google has yet again been making big algorithm changes to the way they rank the websites, or should I say YOUR website.
The most recent being the penguin update. In short (risking over simplifying it) the manual checking, where people were hired to view websites, had finally come to an end. Google finally was able to take that information which they had gathered form this manual reviewers and put it into a computer program; now all websites can be automatically “critiqued” without a human eye even glancing over your page. I’m sure there are still some manual reviewers, but they have been cut down by a large amount, so once again the algorithm rules the roost!
So whats new?, how have these big penguin and panda processes now being put into the algorithm itself changed things?
Well if we go back 18 months to 2 years ago the internet was full of all kinds of rubbish, or spam you might call it. People were throwing out “Auto-blogs” which automatically “scraped” the internet looking for content which suited a keyword they were programmed to search for, then it gets posted automatically to their website, it worked very well for some people aswell!
However the panda update put an end to that. To sum up the goal of the panda it was created for the main purpose of cutting out any pages or posts which offered no value. This meant no duplicate content, no “thin” pages or websites. Basically, if what you was submitted wasn’t yours, or wasn’t benefiting the user then you’re “outta there!”.
There theres the Penguin update. Once again to sum up the objective of this algorithm change, Google went after backlinks. By now Im sure they are fully aware what natural looking backlink profiles look like. Im sure every niche and every market has its own little quirks, but Google probably has the information which all websites must adhere to.
If your not behaving in a proper manner in terms of how you market your website, this means collecting backlinks “genuinely, or if your not backlicking to any other websites with any weight or relevance, than you to risk being “slapped or penalised. Pengiun wanted ot make it harder for the average person to buy a backlinking tool and throw out hundres if not thoussands of backlinks to their website, (getting nearer the end of grey hat and black hat ways) and they have certainly succeeded!
So you may think, game over! We can never rank for anything now, the bar has been raised to high!
You know what I say?? Good rid-dense! We have just come across a time in Googles existence where I see opportunity. Chances are the competitors who you would be competing against have either slipped down the rankings or have dissapeared completely. So to capitalise on this, all you really need to do is follow the rules. Don’t try and con Google, itll never work, write for the user and let Net66 worry about getting you ranked…That my friends will give you the best possible chance of succeeding whatever market your in.
Google’s Matt Cutts has given us an update on the latest Algorithm Changes. In a tweet responding to an SEO company that had highlighted what appeared to be unnatural linking practices, Matt Cutts stated:
On the face of it that’s a pretty big update. But thinking even deeper, this algorithm has to be pretty big considering they’re having to roll this out over several weeks. This doesn’t really surprise me to be honest. There’s been a lot of talk in the SEO community about strange changes and fluctuations in Rankings and Traffic. One of the strangest claims to be rankings moving up in the SERPs but traffic reducing, which defies logic.
So what do you think these new updates are for? Is this the new Soft Panda algorithm update? Have they released another anti spam update?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Today Google maps has reached a definite highlight in it’s service. It has now, not only taken street view for it’s first Skyscraper, it has chosen the tallest Skyscraper in the world. Check it out below:
Clicking and dragging the street view man on the left hand side of the map to view the maps closer in.
You can view various different floors on the building as well gaining a beautiful vista of the city of Dubai.
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