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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clark, 1972

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The Rank Magic Blog

Dealing With Disgruntled Web Sites

Disgruntled web siitesJune 23, 2007 ::: Now that everyone uses the Web, people are learning to use it to their advantage to disparage those they're got a grudge against. On the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men, they talk about a web site put up by Charlie Harper's jilted girlfriends, at www.CharlieHarperSucks.com.
 
Not every such web site is quite so personal, but they can be pretty inflammatory. There's www.PayPalSucks.com ... www.OReilly-Sucks.com about Bill O'Reilly... www.Cap1Sucks.com about Capital One ... www.PanasonicSucks.org about, well, Panasonic ... www.CompaqSucks.com ... www.MyChryslerSucks.com ... you get the idea.
 
Quite obviously, Panasonic would be distressed if a Google search on "Panasonic" brought up www.PanasonicSucks.com as one of the first listings. Now there's a company that deals with just that problem.
 
Reputation Defender employs marketing and SEO skills to create bunches of web sites that are relatively flattering about the maligned company or product, and works to get them high rankings in the search engines. The goal is to displace the objectionable web sites so they're further down the list.
 

Avoiding Low-Quality Links and Link Networks

June 13, 2007 ::: When you're seeking inbound links to your web site to improve your link popularity and search engine reputation, beware low quality links. They can have a deleterious effect on your TrustRank and on your overall reputation. The least effect these links will have is no effect on your link popularity -- they simply won't be counted. Then, any time you've spent obtaining these links will have been wasted.
 
Justilien Gaspard has a good article in Search Engine Watch in which he outlines the signs and signals that should tip you off that a site is not worth requesting a link from:
  • A member of a network of sites, all with a common owner
  • New sites with few backlinks (he cautions against using PageRank as a measure of this)
  • High density of keyword-rich links
  • Low quality of other links on the page that would link to you
The point is that all links are not equal, and the search engines are aggressively identifying and devaluing low quality links. As we do link building for our clients, we're seeing link counts for our clients' competitors dropping precipitously as their low-quality links get eliminated form the search engines' link counts.

Make Your Site Search Engine Friendly

search engine friendly web sites rank bestJune 8, 2007 ::: A critical key to good rankings in the search engines is making sure the search engines can easily spider your site and index its content. We wrote about that for Entrepreneur Magazine 2½ years ago, in our article 5 Search Engine Mistakes Not to Make - critical errors that can make your site invisible on the web.
Being search engine friendly is no less important today.

The two most important questions that impact your web site's spiderability are:
  1. Are all links true hyperlinks that the spiders can follow?
  2. Are all pages on your site reachable within 3 clicks from your home page?

John Buchanan has a worthwhile article on this in Site Pro News.

9 Ways to Improve Bad Website Design

June 3, 2007 ::: Your website reads well and you're proud of it, but, you're waiting for rave reviews but haven't gotten any. No worries - you're not alone. Check out some simple ways you can improve your website and get it into better shape courtesy of Site Pro News.

  1. Balance your page between text, white space and graphics.

  2. KISS -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. Eliminate unnecessary visual distractions.

  3. Fix your fonts. On paper, serif fonts are easier to read, but on a computer monitor, sans serifs are easier. Keep the font size reasonable -- between 10 points and 14 points.

  4. Clean up your background. Heavy textures make text hard to read. And makes sure there's enough contract between the background color and your text.

  5. Graphics - avoid clutter. Use graphics when they serve a real purpose, like illustrating a difficult concept or breaking up dense sections of text.

  6. Make Navigation Intuitive. People look for navigation links across the top and down the left side of the page. And make sure it's obvious where a navigation link will take someone.

  7. Make your text readable. Aside from font choice, break dense text up into short paragraphs. Use bullets. Don't mix and match too many fonts. Use headings and sub-heads.

  8. Avoid Scrolling. Vertical scrolling of the page si ok. But don't have a fixed height box of text with a separate vertical scroll bar. And never, never, never allow horizontal scrolling. Never!

  9. Make it quick. If your web page takes too long to download, people give up on it and go somewhere else.  Eliminating graphic clutter will help a lot here.

June
2007

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