Anyhow I notice today there is a new player when you Google SEO Services. Number one is a company called Web Dynamic. They have a really good looking professional site, but scratch the surface a little and it’s no so professional.

If you click the first link you’re taken to a page titled SEO Services, still looks good, you’re in the Search Engine Marketing group, you click the tab and you’re taken to an equally as nice page talking about search, you can’t see a link back to the page you just came from, but that doesn’t really matter does it? Well, yes.

This is a well designed site, it doesn’t look like the kind of site that forget about a link. So a bit of investigating discovers there are more than 13 orphan pages all dedicated to the same subject:

1. SEO
2. SEO Australia
3. SEO Services
4. SEO Services Company
5. Search Engine Optimisation Provider
6. Search Engine Optimistion Consultant
7. Search Engine Optimisation Strategy
8. Search Engine Optimisation Company
9. Search Engine Optimization
10. Search Engine Optimization Services
11. Search Engine Optimisation Australia
12. Search Engine Optimization Australia
13. Search Engine Optimization Specialist

See them all live on Google and on their page, www.business-directory-online.com.au, where the SEO person obviously just got bored and just posted everything. They all contain pretty much the same content, just re-written in different ways and prominent use of the keyword.

I hear what you’re saying – it’s not spam and it’s not against Google webmaster policy to write the same page more than 13 different ways (I got bored of counting all of them). But, wait – there’s more!

These pages all have inbound links. From crappy domains. The spammy domains:

http://search-engine-optimisation.org.au/

http://web-designer.org.au/

http://online-marketing.org.au/

http://website-optimisation.org.au/ etc – there’s rather an impressive collection of .org.au’s.

All of these domains are registered to the same guy who has registered the webdynamic.com.au domain.

Whilst they may not have breached any guidelines what they are doing is filling the web with spam, actually no, they have breached, just looking at the Google Quality Guidelines – basic principles:

“Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Mmm…I think not.

p.s. I’m not being a bitch – it’s all part of learning what makes a quality page one result. This ain’t it.

I think their site must be fairly new, the archive is only bringing up a Plesk page from last year so perhaps they are just hanging out in the sandbox…nothing’s going to happen to them for a while so recheck in a few months to see how the keyword stuffing is working out for them.

Find out more from one of the discoverers, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-dangers-of-cloaking-revealed-at-smx-sydney-4086#jtc55210

Update: Flight Centre has posted a response and explanation on Neerav Bhatt’s blog here

For those of you who are too lazy to click on the link, let me show you their first two paragraphs, I’ve gone to the effort of highlighting their keywords, just in case they don’t stand out for you:

Melbourne website design & search engine optimization services are just a few of My Website Designer Australia's award winning website design services.

We have worked with Melbourne website design clients, Sydney website design clients, Brisbane website design clients & International website design clients to create beautiful, easy to use, Google friendly websites that can help your business succeed online.

They’re offering search engine optimisation, which I’m sure includes their excellent copywriting services.

OK, the way Google’s ranking at the moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were on the first page. I’m going to monitor these guys and report back…soon…

Microsoft Award Team
20 Craven Park, Harlesden
London NW10
United Kingdom
FILE REF: HL/5564/06/07/MICS
BATCH: MC11/834/5PDH /EU  
OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION

The prestigious Microsoft and AOL has set out and successfully organised a Sweepstakes marking the new year anniversary for 2008, we rolled out over ?450.000.00 (Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand pounds sterling) Draws. Participants for the draws were randomly selected and drawn from a wide range of web hosts which we enjoy their patronage. Your email address as indicated was drawn and attached to ticket number 008795727498 with serial numbers BTD/9080648302/06 and drew the lucky numbers 14-21-25-39-40-47(20) which subsequently won you ?450.000.00 (Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand pounds sterling) as one of the jackpot winners in his draw. You have therefore won the entire winning sum of ?450.000.00GBP (Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand pounds sterling)  
These are your identification numbers:MCS-26799/097 CATEGORY NO.OF WINNERS WINNING PRIZES
1st. 2 ? 450,000.00 pounds each
2nd. 8 ? 350.000.00 pounds each
3rd. 13 ? 250,000.00 pounds each
4th. 27 ? 170,000.00 pounds each CLAIMS REQUIREMENTS:
1. Full names:
2. Residential address:
3. Phone number:
4. Fax number:
5. Occupation:
6. Sex:
7. Age:
8. Nationality:
9. Present Country:
10.Next of kin name/address: Mode Of Price Remittance. (1)Cash Pick-Up (You coming Down to Uk Personally to Pick Your Price). (2)Courier Delivery Of your Certified Winning Cheque Name and other Winning Documents safely to you. FOREIGN TRANSFER MANAGER
MR:LIQIN TIAH
MICROSOFT SECURITY DEPARTMENT (UK).
E-mail:dr_liqintiah@hotmail.co.uk The Microsoft Internet E-mail lottery Awards is sponsored by our CEO/Chairman, Bill Gates and a consortium of software promotion companies. The Intel Group, Toshiba, Dell Computers and other International Companies. The Microsoft internet E-mail draw is held periodically and is organized to encourage the use of the Internet and promote computer literacy worldwide. Once again on behalf of all our staff, CONGRATULATIONS! Sincerely,
MR.GERY BROOK
M.S.PRO. ZONAL COORDINATOR. 

The email comes from Microsoft Window XP Award, which is ligintiah_101@yahoo.co.uk – really – they let Microsoft employees have yahoo email accounts? I know there are talks of impending merge, but the least he could have done is have a hotmail address, like he does at the bottom of the email.

The grammar, well, let’s not get started, but can I just point out (You coming Down to Uk Personally to Pick Your Price).

Does that mean I get to pick the price? I’ll have 450,000,000.00 pounds please .

So I went to my competitor’s home page to have a look at his site without the style sheet. It looked really good. But it wasn’t using the same copy that Me as a human saw from the home page…

Here’s what their page looks like without the stylesheet: Obviously without the blur – and no, I do not have a hangover.

And here’s their offending code:

/* HEADINGS (HIDDEN) */

H1 {margin:245px 18px 0 18px;

padding:0;

text-indent:-9999px;

font-size:1px;

line-height:1px;

overflow:hidden;

}

/*HEADINGS (HIDDEN) END*/

The way they’ve linked their style sheets makes me think Google can’t index them. “Headings (Hidden)” -isn’t that just like waving a red flag, jumping up and down and launching mini missiles?

<style type=”text/css“>

@import url(’Styles/DropDown.css’);

@import url(’Styles/Home.css’);

@import url(’Styles/TabbedContent.css’);

</style>
This is one of the country’s leading online marketing/seo agencies that recently sold a considerable share to an overseas investor…. Is this really how we have to play this game? Shame on you Online Marketing Agency, shame.

Rule of the day: Sometimes you shouldn’t share all your secrets as your competitors might use them against you.

Today’s case particularly peeved me as we’ve been sitting on the first page for a good six months for “SEO Sydney”. Today I see we’ve been bumped to page 2 by some charlatan using hidden CSS. Only they haven’t called it hidden, they’ve called it “unshown“. Here’s their html:

<body onload="set_height(); MM_preloadImages('images/submit_on.jpg');externalLinks();">

<div id="scroll"></div>

<div id="unshown"><h1>Web Design Sydney</h1>

<p><a href="web_site_design/index.html">web_site_design</a></p>

<p><a href="seo_sydney/index.html">seo sydney</a></p>

<p><a href="web_design_sydney/index.html">web_design_sydney</a></p>

<p><a href="web_development_sydney/index.html">web_development_sydney</a></p>

</div>

and here’s their offending css:

#unshown {

 position:absolute;

 left:-1000px;

 top:-1000px;

 width:999px; height:999px;}

These guys even have supposed Microsoft Certification. I wish they had some more text on their website so I could make fun at what they’re really good at, only they don’t. They’re playing they mystery card…

search engine optimization seo

Afraid it’s not so. Do a search on graphic design sydney, a fairly competitive term wouldn’t you say? Page 2 3 results you see a Sydney Website design firm offering graphic design. So you click on their graphicdesign.htm and you are taken to their home page, via this lovely page full of spam. You only get to see this page for a second, but it’s enough to make you reminisce…

Do you know, they also offer search engine optimisation. I bet they’re really good at it.

Shame on you.
seo search engine optimization

So, I went to visit www.mbnetvertise.com/english.htm. Mmm…yes, I see how they were fooling their customers with stunning design, valid code, massive killer portfolio, compelling content – shall I go on? Really, people actually paid $160,000 for these people to make websites for them? You’re ‘aving a laugh…

A few months ago I did some work for Google. It opened my eyes to the stupid things agencies do to trick search engines. Since then I can’t stop checking out “what’s under the hood” so to speak. I always looked at other designers code to see how they did things, what makes their page rank highly and just because I’m nosy. But now I’m a super sleuth.

If you feel like being a sleuth make sure you use the Spam Report on Google.

I haven’t decided if I’ll out them here – I’m not sure how ethical that would be? But thought I’d show you what one large web design agency in Sydney has under their hood if you disable javascript in your browser.

If you view into this you’ll be able to read about how good they are at web design and how they are the number one professional agency in Sydney – really???

These people have used this method of “SEO” on at least one of their clients. Shame, shame, shame on you.

I am pleased to see they no longer take up valuable search engine results.

Have you seen an sneaky SEO cheaters lately?

(the Found Agency don’t count – whilst their inbound links were sneaky, they weren’t actually cheating.)