Do you know what a search marketing scam looks like?

The email read:

Thanks for your time. Once again this is guaranteed first page placement in the sponsored links on GOOGLE 24/7 in The US at flat rate pricing.
There is a onetime set up fee of $79.95. There are NO Contracts. Keep in mind once this placement is sold I cannot sell them to anyone else. I can get you online the same day.

A client had forwarded me this email he had received. He wanted to know if it could be this easy. Could there really be some search engine ranking cheats that would allow his site to appear at #1 for any word for the low, low price of $79.95? Certainly sounded a lot easier then all this content work and this link building drudgery.

I explained that this was a classic search marketing scam. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know what a canonical issue is?

If you are relatively savvy about SEO, you know that your site should have a robots.txt, a human site map and a sitemap.xml. These are considered to be basic elements that you add to a site for SEO purposes. But did you know that you also need a canonical redirect?

Fixing canonical issues is important. A canonical issue can wreak havoc on your site in the search results. It can cause the search engines to penalize your site and remove pages from your site from the results. And all it takes is a simple oversight on your part with your site.

Is your site susceptible to a canonical issue?

Read the rest of this entry »