Over at Matt Cutt’s blog there is a new handy tip about getting some free links. Well these aren’t technically new links but sorting out dead links. You maybe asking how you find these broken links? Well through webmaster central, that’s how. Matt goes into more detail, but the gist of it is, that you use the diagnosis section of webmaster tools to find out who is linking to dead pages or pages that never existed. Then you can e-mail these websites and ask them to change the link to an active page. What a simple yet great link building idea.

Matt Cutts

Team member Sam found this cool video with Maile Ohye from the Google team talking about some SEO things, it’s a long one so I will report back with important points later.

Well there seems to have been a Google PR Update, and the South West SEO blog is now PR 3!!! : ) Most people will already know what page rank is but for the people out there who are maybe new to the game, here is a great site explaining the theory behind page rank.

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, ever wondered how to check what pages on your site carry the most link juice for the main search engines? Well wonder no more, below is an example of how you can find your strongest pages on Google and Yahoo.

In Google and/or Yahoo simply type in site:addyourwebsitehere.com inurl:www and it will give you results as follows for our online seo blog - Google Results, Yahoo Results

Both results will probably vary due to their respective algorithms but it should give you an idea on which pages have more juice so that you can redirect it to pages that need it.

Here is a visual representation of the process we take sites through during their SEO Campaign

SW SEO PROCESS

We sometimes get clients asking us whether it is worth buying additional domain names with different TLDs. While researching some of the more obscure ones (.UY.COM?) I came across this website that lists most of the TLDs available and gives you additional information on them which may clear up any queries like I had.

Here at South West SEO we are whiter than white but if you want to risk playing with the dark arts here are some techniques that could get you banned.

1 - Using Hidden Text – This technique will see you get you in hot water very quickly. Usually it will involve white text put onto a white background, this will certainly get your site blacklisted.

2 - Copying content – Stealing other sites content and using it on your own will get you in deep trouble it’s as simple as that. If you want to remain in Google’s good books write your own!

3 - Keyword Stuffing – We all want our specific keywords to rank highly but overusing your keyword in your content will see you penalised. For example: Our Keyword here is one of the finest Keyword here in the market. If you need Keyword here information visit Keyword here.com for more info. This is the right way to go if you want your site blacklisted.

4 - Hidden Links – There are many website owners out there who think that they can use hidden links and that Google won’t notice. Try and hide a one square pixel on your page and the Googlebots will find you.

5 - Cloaking – A Black hat SEO technique that shows the user one page and Google another. When a sites user is found to be a googlebot (or other search engine spider) a server side script will send it a separate version of the web page. This page will contain different information to the one seen by a human user thus tricking the search engine into thinking the page is better than it really is. There are plenty of programs out there that can help you do this but if you do you’re asking to be banned.

One of the first things people want to do when they have created a new website is see it in the google search results. This can take time and patience as Google needs to find your site first. The main ways I currently know of are submitting the url via Google’s submission service or getting a backlink via an already indexed page. Has anyone else got any suggestions on how to get indexed quicker? Currently our South West SEO blog has not been indexed by Google, we have used both the submission and backlink techniques, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes.