SpamFlag – Plug

Ok, so I don’t normally do this, but it’s a nice little tool so why not.

Basically what SpamFlag does is help with the link auditing process, which as anyone in the SEO field will know is the most soul crushingly dull task that our industry has to offer.

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Saving a sinking ship: how to identify and survive a Google penalty

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN GPWA MAGAZINE  – I’ve linked to the online version.

Manual, algorithmic, Penguin, Panda…You’ve probably heard one or two of these terms used in conjunction with ‘Google’ and ‘Penalty’ in recent times. In fact, there is currently so much confusion and misinformation about penalties – especially their diagnosis and removal – I thought it was high time I got to grips with the issue in these pages in the pages of GPWA.

 

So you think you have a penalty? What next? Unfortunately all penalties were not created equal, and understanding how your site has been affected and why is key to rectifying the problem.

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SAScon – International Search Panel

So I’ll be on the international search panel at SAScon, not really too much more to say about that.

http://www.sascon.co.uk/sascon-uk/about/speakers/mike-litson/

Other than SAScon is obviously a great event, long standing in the industry and I look forward to seeing Read more

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Special Spam Report

Sooooo Mr Cutts has given us a “special spam report” probably because penguin 2.0 was essentially a steaming pile of cr*p which if anything made the search results worse.

So once again Google are asking us to do their job for you and this

is of course in no way open to abuse……

Oh wait what am I saying of course it is. So assuming they use this data and you just scraped through penguin not for long.

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InterFlora

This is a quick post, but I’ve heard a lot about this recently and whilst http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/interflora-what-really-happened.html offers some interesting information on the matter and I’m hugely inclined to agree that the volume of advertorials here was just insane. That is NOT the only cause.

The fact is their backlink profile was pretty poor anyway. See below

 

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Mobile SEO in Bullets

Once again this is another post meant more as a quick cheat sheet for myself and some people in the office, although it may be useful for relatively experienced SEOs who are a little fuzzy on the details of mobile SEO.

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Future Proofing Your SEO – GPWA Article – Mike Litson in Print

Keep in mind this was actually written quite a while ago for GPWA‘s Magazine, but was relatively recently published, (pre link disavowal tool).

Still some good actionable tips in this though.

SEO: Think Ahead

Before writing this article I asked myself what is the most common question that I hear  from clients, affiliates and pretty much anyone I meet in the online marketing sector that wants to pick my brain about all things SEO. The answer that I came up with was the inevitable, how can I future proof my SEO? Sure I’m doing great now, but what about in 12 months’ time? The answer to this question is by no means a simple one, and some of it may not be pleasant to hear if you’ve been working with some “grey” to “blackish” tactics in the past. However I’m going to try to cover the key points that you can implement to help secure your sites position in the SERPs and avoid penalties/the devaluation of your work down the line.

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The Link Disavowal Tool Will It Be All That We Hoped?

Well, I recently sat on a panel in Barcelona with Dave Naylor and we had something of a spirited discussion about this, now he had a little bit more info on this one than I did having been a Beta tester. I was actually a little sceptical as to whether or not we’d ever actually see the thing, he on the other hand granted knew better.

And now that it is here I have to wonder whether or not we will see any real changes from this, the tool itself in my eyes is not going to be our silver bullet, it will most certainly not be a get out of jail free card.

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An Idiot’s Guide to Affiliate Social Mentions – Mike Litson in Print

I’ve been in print in this issue IGB Affiliate Magazine. You can read this article and many more over at their website as well as below.

After saying over and over again that affiliates NEED to move into the social sphere and time and time again hearing stories of failures or lack of ideas I thought I’d run through some basic strategies that should be within the budgets of most serious affiliates. The idea of this post is about being cost effective as much as being big, we don’t need to generate millions of shares, but we should generate enough to justify link profiles.

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Glossary of Basic SEO Terms

This is purely for very new starts with no experience so this is the basics that new staff doing the manual low level tasks needs to know.

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