According to Google Webmaster tools, an affiliate site of mine has over 26,000 links from several hundred different domains. That sounds great, doesn't it? One problem though - the majority of the links don't seem to actually exist, and I have no idea where they came from! I swear, I've been up to nothing fishy with this domain, (really!) but the vast majority of these links are coming from spammy sounding subdomains, and I can't figure out what's going on. Is someone trying to "linkspambomb" Read more [...]

December 8, 2009 - Tuesday night’s SEMpdx educational event with CMD Agency’s Darcie Meihoff and Dean McBeth provided a wealth of great information, not only on how to integrate search and PR but how to avoid some pitfalls along the way. Darcie shared some SEO best practices that PR professionals should adopt.  She emphasized several key points including writing for users rather than search engines, which will make your content more attractive.  Another vital point she made was to focus Read more [...]

SEMpdx is an "all volunteer" organization, and cleaning up comment and forum spam comes with the job. However, when these time sucking wastes of pixel space come from someone that is supposed to be "in the industry", it really ticks me off. Sifting through several hundred morning e-mails Thursday, I ran across two newly submitted forum posts awaiting approval. One was supposed to go in our Portland "local search marketing jobs" forum and one was slated for the SEM business forum. As soon Read more [...]

Blu Drobushevich's "Back to Basics SEO" presentation from SEMpdx's October 14 Hot Seat event is now posted on Amplify Interactive's site. Here's a link to the Back to Basics SEO presentation. Thanks to all those who attended - that was a great turnout and we hope to see more of you at the next event! Read more [...]

Link building has changed forever as we know it, and it's time to either adapt to the new relevance, or flounder at the bottom of the SERPS. When I first started offering search marketing services, I would guarantee a certain number of links per month to clients, because it seemed to me that it was all about volume. The websites that were at the top of Google for any given phrase typically had the most links, and as you worked your way down the page, the number of inbound links going to each Read more [...]

Do you even know what Google Notebook is? Even if you do know what it is, you probably aren't using it very much, but you may want to start, because not only is it a handy tool, it might start to affect rankings. According to this article by Bill Slawski, there may be a new Google ranking factor coming soon. It's probably already on your computer, and if you're like me, you rarely find yourself using it, although I did play with it extensively for about two weeks over the summer, while I was Read more [...]