Random babble by Paulh

There are SEO agencies that consistently land big name clients.

Do they get results? Yes!

Do they offer value for money? Debatable!

Is their SEO any better than average? No!

Do they only use white hat SEO? No chance!

 
So what do these BIG agencies do for their money?

• Article submissions
• Directory submissions
• Paid links in footers
•  Paid links in sidebars.
• Paid hidden links
• Networks

Sound familiar? it’s exactly the same basic stuff anyone can learn from a quick read of a few forums. It’s also the stuff that would get your average site banned by Google, but when you do SEO for big brand firms it actually gets easier to get away with higher risk techniques.

Google don’t care, people expect to see these big brands in the results. So just because it works for brandx don’t think you can do it on your site. Your average site owner has to play by different rules, you’ll need to get smarter and more resourceful to compete with the big boys or start advertising on TV so your brand is well known and you too can spam.

Search Engine Serious, a real ‘old’ timer :), has news on this years SEO Roadshow .

The previous roadshow is the best seo event i’ve been too. It’s basically an invitation only, informal weekend meet up at a hotel. Lots of dirnking, lots of eating, and some very knowledegable people… Spammers, CEO’s, blackhats, whithats(not many of them to be honest), entrapenours, bedroom seo’s to head’s of search of multinationals.

This years event looks like it will be held in September/October, possibly Ireland. To get an invite you need to find someone who has already been invited.

See you there

For the 3rd time in week i landed at Slightly Shady SEO and spent the last half hour reading a dozen posts; quality info, already given me some new ideas on what to add to my own toolbox. Now i know i have at least 2 readers here, so rather than msn’ing them a link i thought i would give Slightly(very) Shady seo a link too.

To be honest i was hoping my poor excuse of a blog would be more like http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/ but i can barley write - think i just lost my only 2 readers by sending them somewhere else 

Several months ago when working on a tool I noticed an exploit for capturing live domains.

With only a small days worth of test data containing 100,000 whois records I noticed about 1% of the domains were registered to hotmail accounts. Being bored and curious if people were really this stupid I tried to register some of these hotmail accounts. I immediately found hotmail accounts that were no longer used and took ownership. Worked out about 1/30 hotmail accounts in my listed were dead.

So back to the whois data and to find out who the registrar is. Goddady was the first one I tried, instead of login, go to the forgot password option and give them your new shiny hotmail address. You now have full control of a Goddady account with at least one domain. This isnt unique to goddady or hotmail. Hotmail was just the easiest one to try on mass. Guessing I still have control of these few example domains, would like to give them back but I lost the list. Oops!

Moral of story, whether its hotmail or our own domain never let the email address you use for online accounts expire. Some devious arse stands a chance of capturing that email address. They can simply watch what email comes in to that address and retrieve the passwords for online accounts you have, not just for domain registrar accounts.

Might have just discovered the name of the company I now work for. Doug has so many sites it hard to keep track, but looks like I work for “ASAP Ventures” who made the news last week when the sale of www.recycle.co.uk went through for for a record £150,000($300,000)

 Looking forward to working on recycle, but probably be several months before i am finished with other projects.

Following on from ways to get links here are some blackhat nasty ways i have seen people use.

The people who use these techniques wont use them on a domain they can’t afford to lose; some of these techniques may be long dead, and some are illegal in most countries.

1. Hijack domains at the registrar level
2. Refer spam
3. Comment spam anything that allows comments, not just blogs
4. Hack sites and insert hidden links in the html
5. Become a host and cloak links within customer pages
6. XSS injection
7. SQL injection
8. Find exploits in well known scripts
9. Find demo accounts, default passwords, or unpassworded accounts to a CMS
10. Bait and switch
    • Eg. frame/proxy a quality site, get links in the ‘white hat way’, then switch to own money making machine that no one wants to link to

11. Buy domain similar to competitors, frame or proxy competitor site, contact places where competitor has backlinks and tell them to link to new url since you are moving domains for X reasons.
12. Lie – eg. Make out it was you who placed a backlink to a site and request they link to a 3^rd site of yours
13. Redirect domain to high PR site, when PageRank changes start a link exchange frenzy before it disappears
14. Give away scripts with backdoors or hidden links
15. Give away templates with hidden links
16. Join a link exchange program, and cloak the links on your site from search engines
17. Capture abandoned free hosting
18. Capture expired domains

This was going to be 25 nasty ways -  but a few scumbag hacker types had objections.

Web developer friend of mine recently asked how he could get links so here you go Stu…

Ask for links

• Get a link from the local chamber of commerce
• Call webmasters on the phone and ask for links
• Email webmaster and ask for links
• Ask friends and family to link to you
• Ask to be listed on governmental resources
• Find articles in your niche and ask them to link to you
• Find sites in your niche linking to dead sites, ask them to link to you instead
• Find sites in your niche linking to inferior sites, ask them to link to you instead
• Find hubs/authority sites in your niche
• Analyze competitors back links - Ask to be listed on there too
• Back a cause and produce something useful for it, contact organizers and let them know

Link Networks

• Create own private networks
  • Create authority hubs - sites that link to your own and competitor sites
  • Create multi tired networks, that feed links into your own sites
  • Build real value niche sites, cross link to other relevant sites in your network
  • Create a public link network
    • Let people trade links
    • Favor your own sites

  Directories

  • Submit to paid directories
  • Submit to free niche directories
  • Submit to the big free directories
  • Submit to free general directories - avoid directories with no editorial process.
  • Create your own directories
    • Link to your own sites
    • 3 way link exchanges
    • Create niche directories, become the authority in that niche.
    • Create general directories - charge a minimal fee to cut out junk

  Buy links

  • Pay for blog posts
  • Pay for reviews
  • Make donations - get listed on charity sites, open source projects
  • Send bloggers freebies
  • Offer bloggers cash
  • Offer DMOZ editors something for a fast review
  • Offer forum moderators cash or freebies for a mention
  • Give away merchandise for links - USB, beer, t-shirts
  • Buy whole sites - monitor places sites are often sold
  • Buy a word in an existing article
  • Become a link broker -pick the best for yourself
  • Sponsor a student project

  Give away stuff

  • Give away tools and geek stuff
  • Templates
  • Plugins
  • Code snippets
  • Stat counters
  • Logos
  • Contribute to open source projects
  • Branded merchandise
  • Offer discounts to people placing links on their site
  • Release an extension or plugin for browsers and other popular software
  • Build a website for a local charity, or university group that can attract quality links - Spend some time getting them links too

  Distribute Content

  • RSS feeds
  • Give away articles
  • Submit an article to industry news site
  • Write for other sites for free
    • ezinearticles.com
    • goarticles.com
    • isnare.com
  • Write for other sites and get paid
  • Publish a distribute white papers
  • Become a guest blogger
  • Become an editor
  • Get listed in Google news
  • Get listed in Yahoo news
  • Create press releases
    • prweb.com
    • internet.com
    • businesswire.com
    • prnewswire.com
    • bacons.com
    • e-releases.com
    • prfree.com
    • pr.com
    • webwire.com
    • marketwire.com
    • 24-7pressrelease.com
    • pressreleasenetwork.com
    • i-newswire.com
  • Track who picks up our articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.
  • Publish ebooks laden with links and encourage people to distribute for free

  Exchange Links

  • Join link exchange networks
  • Contact webmasters directly
  • Start a link exchange network
  • Start a webring(come up with a web 2.0 name but don’t call it a webring)
  • Join a webring

  Forums

  • Links in signatures
  • Links in profile
  • Links in posts
  • Post yourself
  • Pay people to post often
  • Ask people you know
  • Entice established members
  • Swap signature links with others

  Reviews

  • Leave testimonials on other sites
  • Review and recommend local businesses and ask for a link back
  • Review products services and ask for link back
  • Provide graphic. Eg. Voted best website 2007
  • Get your own site and products reviewed by others

  Blogs

  • Become an expert
  • Give interviews on your industry
  • Interview well known bloggers
  • Leave real comments on other blogs
  • Leave feedback without spamming or trying to sell.
  • Point out helpful errors
  • Make suggestions
  • Flatter someone on their success
  • Compliment someone on a great post
  • Link to people likely to link back
  • Trackbacks

  Too lazy to categorize

  • Hire a link building expert
  • Start a flame war
  • Become an official partner
  • Build a list that others will link to
  • Get paid to build a website and get a link back
  • Submit great designed sites to web and css galleries
  • Perform surveys and studies
    • Publicize survey results - Publish several articles from same survey, controversial or unusual results
  • Become and editor of DMOZ and other sites
  • Make media contacts, provide stories for links
  • Find sites doing website of the day, recommend your site
  • Find top site lists and submit get listed
  • Get financial sites listed in Google finance
  • Cartoons - include link code
  • Sponsor events - small meetings, put money behind the bar - Others will blog and thank you
  • Set up a Squidoo page
  • Provide web hosting for a link
  • Provide web software for a link
  • Join an organizations and associations and get listed a member
  • Become an expert. Contact editors and writers, and let them know you are available as a source
    • Try and a link on each article, or each time you are quoted
    • Try to get your own bio page
  • Drive affiliate links to your own sites
  • Make it a requirement to link to your site in all contracts with:
    • resellers
    • partners
    • subcontractors
    • vendors

  Photographs

  • Of yourself with celebs
  • Of something stupid
  • With well known people in your industry
  • Be the first to post pictures of an event or product

  Social

  • Create diggable stories often and submit to social sites
  • Study what works for each social sites
  • Give your story a push from friends
  • Entice top members
  • Create bogus accounts and push your own stuff

  Link bait

  • David and goliath
  • Taboo, sex
  • Outrageous
  • Unusual
  • Tell a secret - Be the first with the news
  • Humor
  • Lie - make up a number like 1002

  Link building is a constant ongoing task even for sites that are already number one. Keep record of all efforts, sites submitted to, people contacted etc.

  Lot of this list comes from other sources, mostly arron walls, and Brandon Hopkins To be honest i dont remember where some of these came from, so if i have stolen your ideas then let me know.

Well I still haven’t fully recovered from this weekends in SEO meeting in Manchester.

Arrived in Manchester, from Malaga on Friday afternoon with Faye from casino.com, was her first SEO event and I have a sneaky feeling she was expecting it to be quite boring and full of geeks, although she denies this

Arrived at the Britannia hotel in the centre of Manchester around 5ish, bumped into 4eyes, DaveN, Serious, and NFFC in the reception. Was looking like this would be good event!

Came down to the hotel bar after checking a few emails, and started to introduce Faye to people and enjoy the cheap beer prices in happy hour. Then made our way to the restaurant. Managed to squeeze a seat between the 2 ex-party gaming guys, Mike and Rob, while Faye squeezed herself between JasonD and BroadProspect. Food was great, and much wine and beer was drunk. Was really good to meet mike and rob, very funny sound guys. Got back to the hotel, had a few more drinks and staggered to bed about 1am – shockingly early but I had an hours jet lag and had been traveling all day.

Saturday, I stayed in bed for as long as I could, until Faye phoned wanting to go for breakfast, so off we trotted to the nearest pub and had a few beers(shandies) with an English breakfast. Met up with some others, who soon started spilling food down themselves so me and faye decided to escape to the Manchester wheel, and then another pub.

Met up for lunch with everyone else at yet another pub. Then back to the hotel, quick nap, and then off to another restaurant for more beer and food. By the time I got back to the hotel I was knackerd, could not drink anymore so sneaked off to my room at 12ish.

Was great to meet with friends, and meet so many new faces. Just wish I was better at getting round to chatting with everyone. Made some new contacts, met some very bright people, took some incriminating photos for future blackmail, and also met the competition and stole their ideas.

Some photos

Robert Kerry aka Evilgreemonkey and Mike Nott join forces at Ayima Search Marketing for global domination of the SEO world.

Both have a reputation for blackhat techniques, and have bundles of experience in highly competitive markets, having both worked for PartyGaming. Joining them is a talented coder and blackhat called esrun who has released some great blackhat tools over the years.

Hope to see them all soon at the upcoming Manchester seo meeting on the 14th of September

The company I used to consult for added to their portfolio of domains this week by buying www.fly.co.uk for £87,500 at auction. Some of their other domains include www.asap.co.uk and www.carrentals.co.uk

Hmmmm tempting to go back and work for them