This morning we had a client lose all of the hard work we’ve applied for the last four months. This client was making their way up the rankings for a number of competitive keywords and were sitting at page two in Google, about to make it into the first page. Then disaster. Not on page two, three, four or five, but relegated to page six, and for some terms, past page ten!

It smelt like a Google penalty, in particular a -50 penalty. But I didn’t understand, we hadn’t purchased any links, all of the links we obtained were on topic, relevant, using a range of anchor text. So I went to the source to see the outcome. Googling the clients URL I discovered they had over 600 links, amazing since we’ve only created about 60 for them, six months ago they had about 70, so something odd was going on. Close inspection of the sites linking to them revealed a heap, I’d be guessing at least 500 sites, were other Australian businesses with links pages.

And then it twigged. I’d remembered the client was involved in the Traffic Accelerator Program last year. They hadn’t created a links page themself, but every month they were emailed a list of websites to link to, including the anchor text and description.  So presumably, all the other companies involved in the program had also been emailed my clients details and asked to add them to their links pages.

That means about 500 sites are linking to my client with exactly the same anchor text and description. Clearly Google doesn’t like that, so they’ve updated the algorithm.

These pages are spammy, but more importantly they are just not useful – they add no value for anyone! The title on the pages is either links, resources, useful links, useful websites, or some other red flag that says to Google “I am spam” or something to that effect. They link to other websites that are completely unrelated to each other and provide no value to the user whatsoever. If you Google the URL of any of the sites in the Netregistry Traffic Accelerator video you will see the what I mean. Obviously for the companies that appear in the video their sites are strong enough to take take the penalty, which indicates they have a number of links that outweigh the spammy links, but for most in the program, these links would be all they had.

I’ve always maintained links pages and reciprocal linking are a waste of time. Now it seems they are detrimental.

Today we’ve launched a new online shopping directory for Australians. The directory comes from my personal hobby of online shopping and started as a way to keep a list of all the sites I like to use I thought it might be useful for everyone to have a place they can find shops that deliver to their area. I’ve also enabled voting so people can rave about really good service. The directory is still in early stages and for all intents and purposes lets call it the beta version.

The aim of the directory is to be able to drill down to your local area, so either Sydney, or Northern Beaches for example so you can find sites that deliver specifically to your area, such as butchers and green grocers. If you have an online retail shop and you service Australia, go ahead and list your business for free for the first year.

Visit Online Shopping Directory

It felt like only a few blogs ago we were blogging about the expensive shipping fees with the launch of JC Penney and there was some hefty discussion about this issue. So it’s sad that already they’ve closed their doors after only two months in Australia.

I’m sure it wasn’t the hefty shipping fees, but the miserable Australian dollar that played the biggest part in the demise of JC Penney.

I’m hoping now DJ’s and Myer don’t think they don’t have to play in this online space. There really is a niche there, but it needs to be onshore so postage is ridiculous and doesn’t take weeks. All online retailers should take a leaf out of Zodee’s book. I ordered some products over the weekend and they arrived on Monday – less than a day later. That’s the most impressive online experience I’ve had in a while…

Myer, David Jones and Target have been beaten to the world of online shopping by an overseas department store. JCPenney, the US department store, has setup shop in Australia – not physically but online.

It’s an odd move, considering they don’t have a bricks and mortar shop here, and even more odd is all their sizing is in inches. What the? Having obviously spent a considerable sum of money on an Australian online store they couldn’t scrape together another $10 to convert the sizing to centimeters?

Anyway, I’m going shopping now … www.jcpenney.com.au

p.s. Actually not, the shoes I want are $18, the freight charge is $29 and the handling charge is $10. Mmm…how do all those people on eBay do it?