Ok i don’t usually complain publicly about bad experiences with companies but for Just Host this will be a massive exception!
Roll back 12 months, created an account with Just Host to host a number of sites for both myself and clients of my web design business and as of the 9th December 2011 no issues at all.
My domain was up for renewal on the 8th and the auto PayPal subscription didn’t work so i logged into my Just Host account and paid the subscription, site still working fine.
9th December my site goes down, now no problem at first as i understand the domain may have slipped through the renewal net but having received a payment notification email through all good.
NO!
Just Host’s “automatic domain holding page” gets switched on leaving my site down. So i see that they have 24/7 technical support which i raise a ticket to and subsequently call Just Host to raise the problem.
Just Host apparant 24/7 tech support
Now i’m speaking to Just Host on the phone and whilst the technician was polite he then advised i call billing as they will be able to switch off the Just Host holding page affiliate cash generating page at my expense.
I re-dial and Just Host billing is closed, ok support are in the USA so time difference a factor here, i then call back 3 hours later and to my shock and horror, billing are closed on a weekend!
I then speak to support at Just Host and ask what they will do about it and the technical support say they can’t do anything about it until billing open up on Monday!
I then re-raise my Just Host support ticket to make sure they have it in their inbox to action
Now Monday comes, site down for over 72 hours, Google have now removed me from the SERP’s for my brand terms for my site and i receive an email:
Just Host Support email
Just Host apologise and basically they will refund me my hosting costs. Fine, but i now have to backup all the sites on my account and move them to my new preferred host – Vidahost.
I am now going to formally complain at the poor experience with Just Host and the time it has taken for my site to be re-instated and loss of potential bsuiness.
So it begins, Google to kill off organic data to webmasters for logged in users, I won’t re-hash and rant as there are plenty of useful posts out there.
I will provide a quick summary though, the data is still there but Google only offering aggregated data through Webmaster Tools but as mentioned by Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, it’s not that accurate. So begs the question is the data now being sent to webmasters useful?
So for more information on this topic here are a few useful posts:
After conducting some research for SEO companies as a project, it seems like there are some dodgy SEO’s out there that claim to be able to “guaranteed page one results in Google”
Absolute bull! If you are approached by such a company/individual then as the title says, run a mile! You may hear things like:
We have a relationship with Google
We can prioritise submission to Google
We can guarantee ANY search term will reach Page 1 of Google
It really boils my blood to hear and even see these statements, i have had the joy of rescuing an SEO campaign from one of the “guaranteed page one” companies.
SEO as a practice is not a set your campaign up and leave it, SEO requires constant work to maintain and grow rankings and for a quality service the likes of the £50 per month scam artists needs to be looked at in great deal before deciding this is right for your business.
Google themselves have their own SEO guidelines that states “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
I have been working on SEO campaigns for 3 plus years and still gets under my skin seeing these modern day Dick Turpin’s operating.
So in short, don’t trust ANY company or person that offers “guaranteed page one results“!
As a business owner with a website, one of the most important things to consider is visibility. SEO also known as search engine optimisation, is a daunting project if not approached correctly.
There are many ways to tackle SEO such as content creation, link building, keyword research and many more.
The danger of doing SEO without any prior knowledge can be detrimental to your website as many tactics that can be used may end up getting your site penalised.
Building Blocks
When beginning any search marketing campaign there are processes to address, firstly keyword research.
Without in depth keyword research a campaign can fall at the first step as identifying the correct keywords/phrases is vital to any success.
Once a defined list has been agreed the next phase is to then look at the website from an on-page and technical perspective.
This can identify any structural issues with the website as well identifying areas to improve.
Content is also a vital part of on page work to undertake, make sure your content is unique, not to keyword heavy, a reasonable amount of keywords to mention is perhaps 1-2 per 200 words, make the content useful for the user as conversion is the main goal for any website.
Patience
Once the website has then been ‘optimised’ for the SERPs (search engine results pages), patience is the next important part of SEO as it’s not a quick fix.
It can take the search engine’s time to re-crawl your updated site so a handy tip is submitting an updated sitemap.xml file to the Google Webmaster Tools console (account setup and verification needed). This can help inform Google of changes and new pages to crawl.
Now a little bit of time has passed and your newly optimise site is appearing for your researched terms in the SERP’s what next?
Links
Link building is an important part of SEO as links to your site count as a ‘vote’ but be careful when trying to attract links to your site as there are key factors involved to ensure a link to your site will be beneficial.
Relevancy is key, if your site is about and a site about laptops links to yours there is no relevancy between the 2 and therefore could be viewed as spamming which if this technique is adopted can lead to poor results.
Quality Over Quantity
Ensuring that the quality of a link is relevant to your site topic can lead to greater results 1 link from a highly related website will have more benefits than having 10′s to hundreds of unrelated links which could lead to a penalty.
End Results
SEO is a steady progression and making the wrong choices on a small budget can cost SME’s a lot more in terms of money if the wring strategy is adopted.
UPDATE
As SEO Account Director at MEC Manchester SEO Operations manager for Latitude Digital Marketing‘s I have seen businesses that use ‘black hat seo’ techniques as well as poorly planned strategies come a cropper compared to a professional and well planned campaign that reaps rewards.
Ok i’ll get straight to the point of my +1 post, i won’t bore you with will it kill SEO or how cool is it?
I have been playing around with this new social tool and spotted a couple of observations when a site has been +1′d:
When using the preview option for a +1 site, you get a little snippet from the site, in this example a description and contact details, quite handy if you want to contact a site without trawling through to find the information:
Quick post, it has been announced that a Google algorithm update is to happen in the US only for now but the recent Chrome block sites extension has helped identify 84% of blocked sites match in the algo.
What does this mean?
Potentially for UK SERPS in the future sites that may be marked as link selling or spam sites may have their external links discounted further and pass no weight.
No indication of the release in UK yet but keep an eye on your site or clients rankings as if the drop a cleanse if backlinks will be required.
SEO Tramp – Now with those extra optimised recipricul 3 way links and shit.
Scene 1: An office somewhere. An email is opened.
Search Editor (no I don’t know either): “There have been discussions from higher up in our organistaion questioning the value of SOE..”
I could go on but I’ve wasted enough time already (my cans are getting warm thanks to fat Mary).
SEO Tramp; “F&cking c*nt. Eh?”
In a room somewhere I feel my ears burning about the disatisfaction of performance, my role, my work and what can be done i.e. another round of un-deliverable deliverables for appeasement is required.
A meeting is arranged. How to defend yourself against pointless accusations and your position, justify your value. Various floppy randoms are present.
Some eejit: “So we’re all here on Christmas Eve to discuss what value your organistation and SEO is currently providing”
This statement is then followed by a 20 minute conversation between the floppy randoms about pointless shit and how they’re not making money. Worrying about funding and the price of the coffee I’ve been graciously provided.
‘Search Editor’: As a business…”
SEO Tramp: “Right you c*nt. Listen and listen well. 1) Although we’re about 1 month late with deliverables (the fact that a) your website’s a bloody mess and you keep changig your mind about things) here are your recommendations. So why didn’t you raise this earlier with us instead of letting fat gobsh!te getting involved?”
‘Online Marketing Senior Executive in charge of pencils’: “Well. We’ve been discussing a lot of things internally to people who don’t listen and never communicate. The upshot is you’re in the shit.”
SEO Tramp;”What you’re doing isn’t good enough. You need to do better. Why do I say that? Because, despite the fact that we are about 1 month behind on current deliverables (keyword density percentages are a very fine art – 13.6%) you’re about 6 months behind on the recommendations that have already been provided. Which you still haven’t implemented. Becuase you can’t. Because you’re a bunch of freaking upper middle class twits. Your KPI is 3,000% uplift in natural entry visits. I can’t even get the bloody data off you to show you the uplift in organic traffic without running some bloody formula. You know what. One word. ‘Megatrffikzzz’”
Senior Director of Sitting About and Not providing anything of any importance (probably went to a private school. looks down on everyone. Has a very small penis and a disatisfied wife. Kids have drug problems again. And he’s out of port and stilton).: “We feel that there has been no siginificant organically optimsed data benefit regarding the KPI’s and SLA’s put in place to optimise our alt tags and move momentum through the elephant in the room. From you. Despite the fact that we can’t (internally) actually do anything. Are those my slippers?”
SEO Tramp:”So aside from the fact that you’re done NOTHING with the advice we’vew provided. Aside from the fact that you all clearly have no idea about your business and how to run it (SPEAK TO EACH OTHER) or even make money (do we need a conversation about traffic vs conversion. Don’t answer that). I cant do any PR, Link building or anything. Yet you want to be no 1 for “twat insurance” – and lets be honest, it’s quite a competitive vertical.”
Dim Head of Unlinking Internal Marketing Campaigns: “Weeeeellllllllll. Realllllllllly Iiiiiiiii thinnnnnnnk thhaaaaaaat weeeeee shhhhhhhhooooooouuuullllld beeeeeee. (Pause for 20 minute internal conversation about how none of this conversation is feasible). Soooooooo maaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyybbbbeeeeeeee yyyyyyyoooooooooo shhhhoooooooollllldddddd….”
SEO Tramp is found several (w)hou()r(e)s later. Screaming at the sky about conversion and why he has to deal with people in knit wear.
“The main channels of information available to the guerillas are newspapers, leaflets, radio, word of mouth. Other methods may be worked out and new ones invented…All the means of winning the confidence of the people must be utilised. The ideas of the movement must be so popularised that no one is in doubt – least of all the enemy – that it will win eventually.”
There are various methodologies used to describe the practices of search engine optimisation (SEO) and they generally are colour based, the main 2 are “White Hat” and “Black Hat” techniques.
Whilst believing that black hat SEO techniques might have some short term positive effect, the long term implications can be disastrous for your website and in turn your business.
Black hat SEO isn’t just about buying paid links as there are various techniques that can give a website a short term boost but as mentioned can have a detrimental effect on your website, such as ranking penalties, Page Rank penalties and being de-indexed altogether.
Let’s take a look at a few methods for both White and Black hat SEO in more detail:
BLACK HAT SEO TECHNIQUES
1. Bulk Link Purchasing/Link Farming
Buying a large volume of links in a short period of time will alert the search engine’s to unnatural linking behaviour and could see penalties imposed.
Known public networks are generally used to place links on a site within the network but generally placed in “bad neighbourhoods” i.e. a link for a keyword relating to a blue widget site being placed on a gambling site with a high page rank.
2. Keyword Stuffing
There are 2 meta tags that are used to inform search engines of content on the page, they are the description and keyword tags.
Meta Description is used to describe the page to a user and is usually a descriptive paragraph of 1-2 sentences.
A common black hat technique is to overload the description and keyword tags with just keywords that are being targeted for rankings.
3. Hidden Content
Hidden content comes in many guises but the basic principle is that content is “stuffed” with keywords within the code of a website site, this content will not be visible to the end user of the site but can still be read by the search engine’s when crawling the site. Examples of this as follows:
1. Comment Tags
2. The use of the tag
3. JavaScript
WHITE HAT SEO TECHNIQUES
1. Keyword Research
Research keywords and key phrases you think people might useful to find your site, multi-word phrases that are much more specific to your product/service and you’ll be targeting end users that are much more likely to want what you are offering.
Use the keywords and key phrases you’ve identified effectively throughout your website. Assign each page 2-3 of the keywords you’ve identified and use the keywords throughout all the important elements of the page. Those are:
• Title
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Heading Elements
• Text
• Alt Tag
• Links
2. Link Building – Quality vs. Quantity
It is important to look at the ways to link build in a natural way as to not just grow the back link count to help with rankings, A A good approach to link building for campaigns to look at quality, relevant links that will pass benefit to a keyword so rankings may improve for a keyword where just a small number of relevant, on-topic links will impact greater than bulk buying links on un-related websites. The amount of quality inbound links to your site therefore have some relevance on where in the search engine your site is placed.
3. Quality Website Content
There is nothing more valuable than to optimise your site for search engines by offering unique, well written content. A search engines aim is to provide what it believes to be the most appropriate website for any given search term to the end user.
4. Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
Providing pages with proper titles and meta data is an essential part of on page optimisation. As discussed in the black hat SEO techniques section the meta description and keywords tags have been so misused in the past that search engines place less importance in using them in the algorithms for search rankings, but it’s still important to ensure that the information given is correct and used in an appropriate way.
5. Semantic HTML Structuring/Internal Linking
Structuring HTML mark in a semantic way helps search engines understand the content of your webpage. Make proper use of heading elements is essential because search engines give more weight to the content within the heading elements.
Using CSS to separate the design elements from the content makes for much leaner code and makes it easier for search engines to find what they’re looking for.
Creating an internal linking structure is essential to help both users and search engines traverse your website.
