How Do 6 SEOs Miss The Obvious?
I used to spend some time looking at sites people posted up on Google Group Webmaster Help as a form of recreation. I enjoyed looking at real examples instead of listening to assertions on WMW people could not back up. So when I read Search Engine Journals 6 SEOs-of-caliber write their take on techsmith.com, I was hoping to be amazed. Its kind of like the SEO-version of American Idol, where 6 expert judges look at your site and tell you what’s hot, what’s not, and what you can do to make it better. It’s potentially a huge plus for site owners looking for SEO advice and a huge plus for the SEO community as well which has been defending itself recently against badly-uninformed claims that SEO is bullshit.
By the time I was done reading, I thought to myself “these guys got it covered.” In fact, Michael Martinez commented: “That was one of the most thorough, informative online analyses I have read in a very, very long time.” That’s like hearing Nancy Pelosi say something nice about the Bush Administration.
To be frank, I wasn’t too impressed with the ALT tag and H element suggestions, because those are not the prime on-page factors (keyword frequency and keywords at the beginning of TITLE is all you need), but otherwise my initial reaction was that the article was spot on.
But that was before I ran a link: search on techsmith and found several major domains like snagit.com and camtasia.com 302 redirecting into techsmith.com. Now 302 redirects are useful for linking out to affiliate sites, but if you’re trying to transfer link juice from an old domain to a new directory, you should use a 301 redirect instead. Because they’re using a 302, that link juice isn’t getting transferred and the target urls aren’t benefiting from the redirect.
More importantly, when I dug up techsmith.com’s outlinks, I was a little baffled to find this:
That’s right. Outbound blog links to porn spam. And yeah, those links are linking without protection. The URL isn’t cached yet, but the directory isn’t noindexed via robots.txt either, so the links will do some harm once the page gets indexed.
Am I the only guy who bothers to look at the outlinks of a site to make sure a site isn’t accidentally linking out to a bunch of crap? To be fair, the site does have a load of outbound links, but it only took me a few seconds to find these links, and there’s enough links on that post its not like looking for a needle in a haystack. Anyway, I’m mostly impressed and a little disappointed, which reminds me I wanna watch American Idol tomorrow night, but I’ll probably watch Friday Night Lights instead.
Just shows that you know a lot more than you claim.
seo4fun? Meh seo4real :)
Richard Hearne said this on March 7th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Hi Halfdeck,
Probably more an issue related to coordination of efforts rather than lack of competitence. Other suggestions probably could have been made too, that would benefit the site from an SEO stance, but I think that they received a very good kickstart in that direction. Loren did note at the end of the post that other comments and suggestions for Techsmith.com were welcome, and if you wanted to add something about those outbound links, and the use of 302 redirects, I’m sure that they would be appreciated.
Bill said this on March 7th, 2007 at 9:33 am
@Richard,
Nah, the guy happened to be targetting paysite names and I just happened to recognize them all.
Hey Bill,
“I think that they received a very good kickstart in that direction.”
Agreed.
“Loren did note at the end of the post that other comments and suggestions for Techsmith.com were welcome”
That’s very true Bill. I decided to write this after I commented over there and got frustrated over leaving repeated typos. To grab people’s attention, I went for a provocative title and I did add a bit of an edge to this post, but I hope I didn’t come across as being mean spirited.
Halfdeck said this on March 7th, 2007 at 9:59 am
you got us there mate :)
As Bill said - coordination was one issue, focusing on the obvious problems (on-page issues and lack of deep links to product pages) because of self-imposed time limits was another.
Thanks for pointing this out, as things go along we’ll get better.
And as Richard said, you probably know more than you let on :P
Ahmed Bilal said this on March 7th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Good catch.
Even more important, though, why wasn’t Friday Night Lights on tonight? :P
kid disco said this on March 8th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Seriously, its the best show this season.
Apparently, both Heroes and FNL are on a brief intermission. I hear next show’s back on Mar 14 8/9c.
NBC got a break when Dancing with the Stars ended, but now with American Idol dominating late night TV, they’re up a creek without a paddle again. Hopefully at least they won’t cancel the show.
Halfdeck said this on March 8th, 2007 at 2:17 am
The 302 redirects were mentioned. Did they not make it into the final post or did I read my emails wrong? Anyhow, Ahmed already mentioned that coordination was a little challenging. We are working on improving that. Also a note on the side. There where a lot comment made that did not make it into the post. Not necessarily because they were irrelevant, but for a number of other reasons. I sent some source code in ASP for example for managing redirects including comments how to tweak it for the domain redirects.
Regarding the keywords up. I don’t think that it made it into the post. It was suggested to tweak the CSS to move the navigation and stuff at the top to the end of the page source code. = pushing the relevant content up to the beginning of the page.
Nobody noticed the outbound link though. If it did not show anywhere yet, how did you find it?
Overall was it a good start. Improvements are still necessary to get stuff coordinated and organized. The 6 of us did never work together before and we cover over 15 hours of time zones which makes conversations also a bit tricky hehe.
Thanks for the pointing out of things that were missed. Those type of posts are much more helpful than the “yeah, great, check it out” posts.
Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski said this on March 8th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
I haven’t gotten into Friday Night Lights yet but have enjoyed Yo Mama and Bad Girls Club. I try to watch Bad Girls Club before hitting the local hotspots because it reminds me that the girls at the clubs are just little rabbits, and I got bear claws…
Anyway, Halfdeck, thanks for the commmentary. Although the correct title should be “How DO 6 SEOs Miss the Obvious.”
We actually discussed 302’s in our internal emails but really thought that bringing them up may confuse beginners and TS peeps a bit. And for the porno links, yeah, that is bad, but I think that given the paid link & nofollow debates that those outbound links would not hurt the ranking of TS, but its ability to pass GoogJuice. Regardless, they should find a way to get rid of them.
Thanks again. Oh yes, WildBoyz is my favorite TV show :)
Loren Baker said this on March 8th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
“Although the correct title should be “How DO 6 SEOs Miss the Obvious.””
And here I was thinking I left my bad grammar and spelling errors back on your blog :) Thanks, fixed.
“Nobody noticed the outbound link though. If it did not show anywhere yet, how did you find it?”
Xenu.
“Thanks for the pointing out of things that were missed. Those type of posts are much more helpful than the “yeah, great, check it out” posts.”
You’re welcome Carsten. Actually, I first thought of just leaving a “good job guys” comment, but I felt that didn’t add much to the discussion. But it was an enjoyable post and I wanted to say something, so I took a look to see if there was something I could add.
Halfdeck said this on March 8th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
“I felt that didn’t add much to the discussion. But it was an enjoyable post and I wanted to say something, so I took a look to see if there was something I could add.”
and that is very much appreciated. Thanks again and I am looking forward to your review of our next site clinic.
Cheers!
Carsten
Carsten Cumbrowski said this on March 10th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Btw. Xenu’s Link Sleuth rocks. Best checker tool I have seen yet and the best thing is that it is free. Not to mention faaaast and detailed. Thanks again for the tip.
Carsten Cumbrowski said this on April 29th, 2007 at 2:59 am