Archive for the ‘Hall of Shame’ Category

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Leading Australian Online Marketing Sham

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

I’m sitting in webinar being given by one of my competitors. He’s raised some interesting points, one of which I’ve never done before. He advises turning off the style sheet to view your website as google does. I looked at my site and it’s a bit crap – I’ve been meaning to move my menu so it appears beneath my content in the source code.

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:Online Marketing Hall of Shame 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.

 

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SEO Sydney – A search full of professionals

Monday, July 16th, 2007

OK, sometimes I feel I do harp on a bit about the search engine landscape in Australia and the basic crapness of it. But we’re a tiny market compared to the US and UK and still “professionals” resort to sneaky tactics to get on the first page of Google.com.au.

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…

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Is this 2007?

Monday, June 18th, 2007

I only ask because I’ve stumbled across another leading Sydney web design agency using a javascript redirect full of spam. I thought that kind of thing was so 2003, in fact I thought it was so 2003 that Google was on to it and subsequent users were chucked out of any decent results.

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…

Graphic Design Spam

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

Shame on you.

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Crimes against design

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

I was just reading over at MarketingVOX how the FTC have banned an SEO firm for life. The company, Netvertise, have been banned from promoting or selling franchises or any other business activity. Apparently they’ve been selling their services by making false claims.

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…

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The good, the bad and the ugly

Friday, May 18th, 2007

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to highlight good and bad web design and sneaky SEO tactics. I spend maybe 12 hours a day on the internet so I visit a lot of websites. The good, the bad and the ugly.

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.

SEO Cheater

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.)

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