SEO Egghead Consulting Group

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Or is it search engine optimization?  It occurs to me that the publisher of our book, Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP, picked the title for us.  Usually I give more thought to titles.  The title does contain the key phrase "search engine optimization," but it's not clear to me whether we can target "seo" as well.  If not, which term is more desirable?  The book will be listed in Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.  It could make a difference! Here's what I've gathered:1. "Search engine optimization" is probably more desirable aesthetically on the book binding.  I've done no…

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Is this the tale of a copywriter who can't even rank for his name artfully link baiting some of the most widely read SEO blogs?  Who is in the 15-yard dash — us or him?  I deconstructed his arguments regardless, but you decide …I found Breaking SEO Myths Part One: The SEO Experts by Daniel Dessinger via this article on SEO-Scoop.  I feel Donna was too easy on Daniel.  Daniel is seemingly misguided, and his article is fundamentally flawed.  Perhaps he's bitter after getting burned by an unscrupulous SEO, or maybe he's just a daft individual.  Regardless, he unfairly…

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: This post is now (mostly) obsolete and replaced by WordPress SEO Pager — → WordPress SEO Pager I know of many architectural mistakes that can totally torpedo a web site's rankings — using URL-based session IDs, adding duplicate content for fun, etc.  But one thing stands out in WordPress blogs as a culprit.  I call it "death by pagination," and it's another way to screw yourself.It's common knowledge that pages buried deeply within a web site, for various reasons, will likely not rank as well as those that are linked from top-level pages.  Typically, the solution employed is a site map.  This…

I guess Google's adult-filter went on vacation with me this weekend, because there was a buxom blonde baring it all for everyone on the Google News homepage:

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable says:
"I see it myself, I took a screen capture and blacked out the offensive part."

I don't get it, what does he find offensive?

QuadsZilla's latest link bait experiment is going to read like a who's who on viral marketing (if it works). It's a bit cheesy, but cheesy tops the Digg front-page every day.  Mr. Black Hat may just rank for "viral marketing" and "link bait" soon …

I'll have the site reviews from last month done this coming week; I haven't forgotten

I guess I think like a hacker, because I thought of this before seeing RSnake's post about finding vulnerabilities with Google Code Search.

If you want to find lots of PHP-based web applications that are likely vulnerable to HTML injection, try this search out:

lang:php (print\(|echo)\s\$_(GET|REQUEST)

This says "Find all PHP code that calls 'print' or 'echo' to display $_GET or $_POST (likely) without escaping anything.  What a great way to find places to inject stuff!  This is useful to find XSS vulnerabilities as well.

Organizing the world's information is useful — for many things

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: If shoemoney can write how to stop spam, I can write how they're keeping it coming!  Don't get me wrong.  I hate spam — except when it makes me laugh or impresses me.  And as the days go by and more people read this blog, I've noticed that an increasing number of spammers are paying their respects as well. I've noticed a few things about the successful ones, though.  And I'm posting the best approaches I've seen so white hat bloggers can, 'ahem, understand them and deal with them more effectively:0. First, in response to Shoemoney's …

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: It's clear to me that advertising using someone else's trademark to promote a competing service or product is a violation of the law.  However, using only those words that are generic strategically in a title (and/or copy) is not.  This opens opportunities to ride on the coat tails of certain competitors effectively without violating any laws explicitly.  As to the actual morality, I cannot speak.  I am not God, and I am not here to judge you.  All I know is — this likely works.  It works especially well on trademarks that contain lots of generic words. For example,…