Seo Kung Fu Lessons

SEO Kung Fu Lessons

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

State of the Search Industry

• Nothing special happened with google in the last year

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

except the fact that• Google recently pumped up

the results for large corporations

• to get them out of the crysis

• and confuse the f$%*k out of SEO guys

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

and personalized search.

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

The idea was pretty nicely explained• by Joseph Pine (TED) who states that we evolved from• goods -> services -> experience• The same (shitty) results now come with an experience

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

experience that had long been inventedby social networks

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Lesson One: Defense

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

1.1 OnSite SEO is kinda like holy water• You prepare yourself, which is good, but it’s not a

strategy

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

1.2 Mr Miyagi style…• “Wax on, Wax off” not really insightful

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

1.3 Who can train you?

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Sensei Matt Cutts

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Sensei Rand Fishkin

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Sensei Aaron Wall

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Sempai Mihai Gheza :)

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Cheat Sheet on my Blog

Lesson Two: Attack!

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

SEO is pretty personal stuff• You don’t just want to get on the first page, you

want to specifically outrank “the guy who’s there on the first spot on google”

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

2. White Hat or the Right Hand Path

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

2.1 Link Building is just like in the real world

• Important, authoritative people have to say something about you

• As many people as possible

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

The governor of the Romanian National Bank talking about the GDP

2.2 Who should say what about me?

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

2.3 KeyWords Research

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

2.4 Competition Research with Linkscape

• Advanced reports cost 79$/month• If you’re in a hurry, it’s worth it• You get to audit 20 websites (your competitors)• And you find out which of their backlinks carry the most juice• Plus a ton more

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

* I am not affiliated in any way with SEOMoz

2.5 Competition Research with…patience

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

• Advanced search operators• Mixed with a PageRank reporting tool• And a lot of caffeine• Beware of “nofollow”

2.6 And then?

• You start spreading your link to websites that have the most relevancy&PR and who

• agree to place your keywords in the anchor

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

2.7 Try doing it social

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

• send more traffic than google• just for some specific websites, according to a recent stat

2.8 But… • Twitter’s tinyurls don’t pass PageRank. • and you risk becoming…

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

2.9 And eventually…

• what does social mean for a company?

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Screenshot from a cheap amateur Romanian TV show

3. Black Hat or the Left Hand Path

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

3.1 Techniques• XSS• Tattling• Google insulation• Copyright takedown notices• Duplicate content• Denial of service attack• Click fraud• Google Bowling• Link Farming & Redirecting

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

3.2 All are just harrasment and are possible

• due to an exploit in GoogleBot

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

3.3 The most dangerous (IMHO)• Out of the 40some websites who entered the GPeC cotest

(Romanian eCommerce Awards)• more than half have an interesting “feature”:• different URLs show the same product as long as you don’t change the ID

• mobila-online.ro/scaun-electric-REL-405-id553.html• comenzipc.ro/laptop/cu-pedale-esprimo+mobile+v6535-cpc13756.html• usbmania.ro/cadouri-usb/vibrator-pe-usb-pr-16147.html• vexio.ro/apple/nu-ma-cumpara-ca-sunt-scump_P5504• sensis.ro/Sapun_NAOMIE_cosmetice_naturale-sau-nu.htm• kadoly.ro/cadouri/cadou-lenjerie-kinky-p1273.html• fanmusic.ro/Tudor-Gheorghe-Orgia-cu-taraf-Vol1-p-17330-p.html• magazinultau.ro/lcd-tv-lg-porno-26lg3050-26-inch-hd-ready-p-57212.html• ^ silly URLs in Romanian, available on the 28th of March 2009

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

3.4 Happens with bigger players also

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

emag.ro/sisteme_operare2/windows-vista-is-a-catastrophy-buy-XP-instead--p66J-07148

eMag is currently the largest IT retailer in Romania

3.5 How can this hit me?• mystore.com/original-real-product-description-URL-with-ID-123.html• mystore.com/non-existing-product-no-1-but-the-same-ID-123.html• mystore.com/non-existing-product-no-2-but-the-same-ID-123.html• mystore.com/non-existing-product-no-3-but-the-same-ID-123.html

• …• mystore.com/non-existing-product-no-999999-but-the-same-ID-123.html

• Indexed on several SPLOGs ->• Google thinks that

– you‘re trying to bring in traffic– but you’re fooling your customers ->

• Google takes out all the links from SERPs • Including your original product!

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

3.6 How do I defend myself?

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Proper 404 Header Response for non-existing URLs

3.7 Funny Harrasing (or not)

Several random porn blogs with the snippet:

<!-- START Google Analytics -->...

<script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-COMPETITOR’S-CODE");

...

Easily avoided with a domain filter in the Analytics Settings

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

Grey Hat…There’s no such thing. Don’t toy around with this!

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

SEODO or The Way of the SEO Samurai

• Proper On Site SEO• Watch your stats referrers

• Place filters in Analytics• Give 404s for non existing URLs• Protect yourself from counterfeiters with copyscape.com

• Do research and organic link building • and you will become a…

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

SEO Ninja

SEO Kung Fu - Mihai Gheza

May the Force be with You!

Mihai GhezaCreative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.