Black Hat SEO reality check

Problem

Lately one of our main websites, Dell webstore http://shop.it.ee/ disappeared from the Google index. This is quite a tragedy, as significant part of customers are coming via Google search. We have been optimised our webshop to google and were quite upset when it all happened. Checking Google Webmaster Tools didn't make us any wiser. No glue of any severe violation of Google rules whatsoever!

Investigation

Few days later we got info, that our CMS (content managament system) parner www.sisuhaldus.ee had done some Black Hat actions in another project. And voilà! I appeared, that our IT Grupp corporate website, http://www.it.ee/, whitch was not earlier constantly monitored by Google Analytics and SEO Tools, contains hidden links, seeded by our CMS partner. Why We didn't monitor it? Cause Corporate websitee is not our sales tool and we really expect only few visitors to this site. Appeared, that Google banned all ???.it.ee domains, also our web-commerce site http://shop.it.ee/ .

Hidden code was inside of CMS:

background="gfx/it/box_bottom_bg.png" width=100% class=small style="padding-left:61px"> class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">size="2">IT Grupp on terviklikke IT-lahendusi pakkuv infotehnoloogiafirma. Meie eesmärgiks on olla oma klientide jaoks parim IT partner. size="2">Meie teenused katavad it infrastruktuuri e. riistvara ja tarkvara müügi, infotehnoloogia hoolduse, it alased ärikonsultatsioonid. Meie missiooniks on tõsta kliendi konkurentsivõimet infotehnoloogiliste lahenduste abil võimaldades tal keskenduda täielikult oma põhitegevusele. IT Grupi eesmärgiks on aru saada kliendi äriprotsessidest ja vastavalt sellele tarnida lahendus. href="http://www.kaust.ee/">style="font-size:5px;visibility:hidden">Mündid href="http://www.sisuhaldus.ee/?go=sisuhaldustarkvara">style="font-size:5px;visibility:hidden">Sisuhaldustarkvara href="http://www.parim.ee/?go=post">color="#ffffff">style="font-size:5px;visibility:hidden">postiindeksid

So, problem detected, how to get rid of it?

1. add Your site to Analytics and Google Webmaster SEO Tools

2. remove all incompliances

2. report to Google

3. monitor Google Analytics and SEO tools

Aftermath

We lost customer traffic from Google from July 17 to August 17, exactly 1 month. First week we just didn't know that we have such problem. About two weeks we identified the problem and removed prohibited code, 1 week was Googles time to react to our allication.

We knew, that hiden code is often in free Wordpress templates and other free templates, but We really did't expect such a mis-behavior from our web partner www.sisuhaldus.ee. Not recommended by us anymore.

Lately I have been busy

Lately I have been busy bilding my personal supercomputer. Currently I broke 5 TFLOPS barrier, but many new challanges to overcome:

Estonia Donates Folding@home supercomputer

Link exchange

I watched SEOmoz education video about their Linkscape page ranking software and was surprised, that in their example one link exchange page got good credit. So, I joined this exchange program and follow, how Google is indexing it. Pity, that it takes so much time...

Link Exchange test

This post is purely for testing purposes

Link2Me Link Exchange Directory - The Best Link Exchange for SEO Professionals
Quality directory of webmasters actively seeking link exchange. Improve your search engine rankings and link popularity the easy way. Work clever not hard.

Online Computer Shopping, Buy Computer
Online Computer Shopping, Buy Computer, Notebook, CPU, MP3, Apple, Monitors, Printer

Nofollow parameter

Three most important factors to gain better page rating: (1) backlinks, (2) backlinks, (3) backlinks.

What one think's is backlink building, other may say it's spambexing. On 2005 Google invented rel="nofollow" attribute. It blocks link juice transfer to linked site and changes visually functional link to no-value link in the eyes of search engines. In practice it means that Your link, provided in blog comment, doesn't count as backlink and doesn't pass any link juice.

Recognizing "nofollow" sites

How to recognise weather the link is "no-rmal" or "no-follow". Problem (or actually its not a problem, but blessing) is thas some blogs, forums and article site use "nofollow" as default and others are not using this blocking measure.  Easyest way is to open comment page and view source html. If You find one of following links:

A. Enjoy my < href="http://seoapplied.blogspot.com/"> SEO blog < / a > and learn new tricks!

B. Enjoy my < href="http://seoapplied.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow"> SEO blog < / a > and learn new tricks!

A is normal link and B is nowollow link. So, posting comments in A environment is good idea from the perspective of getting backlinks. Posting to B environment is good idea from the point of traffic, but not backlinks. 

Tip of the day

Tip of the day is about anchor text in blog comments. As we know, blogs are one way to get free backlinks. My tip is about the blogs, what have at least 4 fields: Name, website, e-mail adress and comment. In these cases Your name will be linkable to website provided. My tip is:

Instead of Your name, use Name + relevant keyword

For example:

Name: Jack SEO consultant

Website: http://seoapplied.blogspot.com/

E-mail: jaak_ennuste@hotmail.com

Comment: Asdf asdf asdf ...

So, in the comments Name field is anchor-text linked to promoted website. When search engines find SEO and consulting in the anchor text, they may think that Your SEO blog (promoted website) has valued SEO content.

Always use value-added comment with Your original view, giving new information to readers. In most cases its usless to spam website into comment text, as its not linkable. Even, if its linkable, it's still only URL, what is not highly valued by search engines. Only in very few blogs comments may contain links with anchor.

Example:

Please notice, that this blog uses nofolliw argument and my ancor text actually doesnt work, despite of nice anchor-text link created.

Blog: http://www.dilipshaw.com/blog-marketing/how-to-create-a-blog/#comments

Comment box:

Page source:

class="gcomment">href='http://seoapplied.blogspot.com/' rel='external nofollow'>Jack SEO consultant Says:

Fast, faster and fastest

When I started blogging less than a month ago, I also set up SEO measurement table. Among other parameters I started to write down each day following parameters:

GBL - Google backlinks

YBL - Yahoo backlinks

MBL - MSN/Live backlinks

About a week nothing happened. Then, on the eight day Yahoo indexed first backlink and some pages. Day later MSN found backlink. At last, 19 days after setting up this site, Google indexed first backlink. During that time, Yahoo and MSN had indexed already 200+ and 400+ backlinks.

This test shows once again, that Google is extreamly picky about backlinks. Mostly my URL is in social networks, blog profiles etc. Practically no fixed anchor-text links on proper pages. Google is picky, 3 weeks later I have only 6 backlinks by Google, more than 50 times less than from other search sites.