SEO Egghead Consulting Group

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Excerpt: The NY Bar has a new set of rules for lawyers floating around.  Apparently, they got wind of the blatant cheeseball spamming lawyers are employing to solicit clients on the internet.  I'd cite examples, but they'd probably get me sued :(  They responded in spades, though: 1. "… content …shall be predominantly informational, and shall be designed to increase public awareness of situations in which the need for legal services may arise … "  In other words, keyword stuffing and landing pages are out.  It always amazed me that law firms posted this crap to begin with.  A "Juris Doctor"…

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Excerpt: It's now pretty clear that companies must monitor their online reputations.  It's also not such a great idea to tick off bloggers in the first place.  News is likely to spread, and fellow bloggers may send links freely.  Reporting something stupid is great link bait!  As a result, a small company may suddenly find flaming on page 1 of the SERPs for brand-related queries.  "Fixing" that can be frustrating.  Let's take a look at some blatant spam that someone working for a company posted on my blog — here:"Data is not real time is delayed by 15-20 minutes depending on…

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Excerpt: I'm friendly with some spammers.  Most of them are pretty nice guys.  I don't spam, and I never will — but I keep in touch. Since most spammers are really just out to make a buck and not hurt anyone, I would never expect them to mock and laugh at a spam victim.  But sadly, that's exactly what "white hat" Rand Fishkin and the "professionals" at SEOmoz did.Let's have a look:G-man writes on their blog:"you've got to understand what I currently do for a living…I scrape the search engines and create the "crap" that they really don't like to see…

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Excerpt: Search engine marketers loved SnapNames.  Expired domains used to evade the dreaded "sandbox" aging delay.  I loved SnapNames too — but for a different reason.  I like domain names that don't stink.  The domain aftermarket is a boon for people searching for domain names that don't look like this:my-domain-name-idea-was-taken-so-i-registered-this-monstrosity-i-hope-you-like-it.comOK, so that's a slight exaggeration, but everyone gets the point.Google put a stop to this sandbox loophole awhile ago, and now it seems to be quite the opposite situation.When you snap a domain name, keep in mind that it may be subject to a penalty.  Such was the case for a…

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Excerpt: I was playing around with the What is Hosted on that IP? tool I just published, and some of what I found is a bit scary.  I see cases where there are a few relatively legitimate sites nestled on the same IP with hundreds of spammy sites.  Needless to say, this is a liability.Suppose I am a devious SEO who does not like my competitor very much.  My competitor is also a big cheapskate.  He uses the "Beginner Hosting" package from some fly-by-night web hosting company that, like everyone else these days, oversells.  He pays $2.95 USD per month.  That's…

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Excerpt: RSnake of ha.ckers.org documents in this post how to conveniently obtain all the subdomains of a domain using a search engine.  This can help you isolate some spammers.  He later says " … wouldn’t it be nice if we could somehow get access to all the IP address to hostname maps?"  I agree, and here is a partial solution to that request leveraging a search engine — this time MSN Search.  Use the "IP" command to find all hosts located on a certain IP address like follows:IP:xxx.xxx.xxx.1You can join them to locate all hosts located on a range of…

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Excerpt: I have never seen such horrible irrelevent link exchange requests from fellow webmasters since Axandra's Arelis product caught on in a big way a few years back.  The site is called LinkMetro, and it stinks.Google finally squashed the 2-way link exchange as the SEO-currency; but now LinkMetro is here to facilitate and promulgate the worthless practice despite its decline in usefulness these days.I get approximately 5 emails per day like this:"A LinkMetro member has requested a link exchange with 1 or more of your websites (MY-SITE <> SOME-SPAM-SITE). You may accept or decline this link request by clicking the link…

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Excerpt: I said awhile back in my post, Google Violates Computer Science that people have too much faith in Google.  I said that even light obfuscation of Javascript redirect code, such as rot13ing the offending code would likely trick even the formidable Google.  I may have changed my mind.  This stuff may work near-term, but I have my doubts as to the future.Interestingly enough, Microsoft is experimenting with a new technique whereby they target certain areas known to be spam "paradises," and use actual redirection as an indication of spam.  The project is called Strider Search Defender.  To implement this, they actually…