SEO article: "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search" | Increase Traffic | Forum

Just a quick intro before launching into my reply – I'm Chloe, I own campinginheels.com, and I'm new here (please be gentle). Been blogging on a couple of .blogspot and .wordpress domains since 2005, but I only recently made the move to my own domain name. I work in SEO too (please don't throw things at me), but I'm very, very slack in applying the principles to my own blog – the last thing I want to do when I come home is more SEO. Still, I'm trying.

So, hi :)

This is a great little article, all us SEOers had a good giggle when it came out. By all means, it exposes some of what is involved in black hat SEO, but they really have used an extreme example here. The JC Penney fiasco – well, it made everyone think about how the SERPs are being manipulated every day, and yes, Google finds out – but not always. They definitely know a lot more than what they can take action on – I'm guessing they made an example out of these guys for their blatant disregard for Google's 'rules'. 

It's amazing how different backlink analysis tools give you different figures. Have a look across Google, Opensiteexplorer, MajesticSEO – and then, if you can be arsed, download the seobook toolbar and have a look at what yahoo has to say. Interesting stuff.

Look forward to getting involved in some of the conversations happening around here. Just a heads up – while I work in SEO, I'm here for my personal blog only. So don't worry about me trying to hassle you for any work-related reasons! :D

Chloe