If someone told me 6 years ago when I started out in SEO that by 2013 I’d be doing a project to remove all the directory links I was building at the time, I’d tell them to shove their career when the sun don’t shine! Anyway, here we are and the reality is I’ve had a few projects, inherited from agencies who shall remain nameless, where there’s been no getting away from the need to do a cleanup operation on their link profile.

Its a horrible job and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but if you do find yourself doing one of these link removal projects here’s a quick tip I’ve picked up that I haven’t seen in every other long boring blog post on the link removal subject. Read more…

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Raven Tools Remove Rank Tracking

December 8, 2012

I started typing this as a comment on this post but the comments there are getting a bit overwhelming so I’ve moved it to my blog so I can have a proper rant, and also direct my clients to this page. Yesterday afternoon myself and thousands of other Raven Tools customers got the message below, [...]

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Google Start Showing Points of Interest Visually in Web Search

September 27, 2012

Not sure if this is new or not but its certainly the first time I’ve seen it. Google seem to be testing displaying ‘points of interest’ in an interesting way visually on the top of some search results. Here’s how a search looked for ‘things to do in Derby for me today (click to enlarge). [...]

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A New Way to Fake PageRank?

August 17, 2012

Lately I’ve noticed a few sites coming up for sale and selling link with ridiculously high Google PageRank. Most recently this PR10 on Flippa (copy of that page here for when the auction ends). Now obviously the PageRank of virginia11.info is fake. It has virtually no links, was only registered a few months ago and [...]

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The blog network debacle and SEO misinformation

March 27, 2012

A few people have been asking me about this so I though I’d throw my opinions into the ring for what they’re worth (i.e not much) I’m sure by now you know about all the ho-rah around build my rank et al getting de-indexed so I won’t bore you by regurgitating the details. All I [...]

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How to de-localise new google results

March 1, 2012

Just a quick post on the latest algo updates you’ve probably noticed/ read about by now. To cut a long story short Google has started serving up localised results in normal SERPs (not places) on generic queries.

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Are Your Rich Snippets Breaking the Law?

February 14, 2012
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You’ve probably noticed by now that its become very easy to get star rating ‘rich snippets’ to show up in organic search results. It used to be a select few sites which would get approved for rich snippets but recently that seems to have gone out the window and you can now see star ratings [...]

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How to get 9000 free links on autopilot

November 15, 2011

How’s that for a spamtastic title! This is going to be a fun post about how I accidental built 9000 links from over 400 domains with virtually no work. You probably won’t want to do it for yourself but you might just learn something. About a year ago in the early stages of setting up [...]

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Optimising Internal Link Anchor Text with WordPress Menus

November 2, 2011

One of the points I suggested in my post on SEO theories which I can’t prove was that “Internal links are more important than external links” In this post I’m going to show you how to get much more value out of your internal linking using a simple technique, but first let me put some [...]

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My BrightonSEO presentation on Building Private Blog Networks

September 13, 2011

I spoke at the BrightonSEO conference last Friday on the slightly controversial topic of building blog networks for your link building campaigns. I have included my slides from the presentation below: Building a private blog network – Brighton SEO – John McElborough View more presentations from johnmcelborough. I really wanted to make this session as [...]

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How to Beat A Panda

April 19, 2011

Run for your lives it’s another post about the panda update! I don’t usually blog about SEO news and algorithm shifts for a couple of reasons- firstly it’s boring and other sites will always be better for that sort of thing. Secondly because of the approach I take to SEO I rarely get effected by [...]

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Yahoo directory listing- is it worth the money?

March 14, 2011

The Yahoo directory has long been part of the staple of many a link building campaign. A lot of SEO’s still seem to recommend it (although I doubt many have tested it properly) but is one directory link really worth $300/ year? Sometimes but usually not is the short answer, read on for the long [...]

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What keywords should I optimise my homepage for?

February 22, 2011

If you’re doing SEO for a big ecommerce site which sells everything including the kitchen sink – department stores, catalogues that sort of thing this is a question which will undoubtedly come up… We’ve got 1,000,000 products in 5,000 categories – what keywords should we optimise our homepage for? Usually the homepage’s of these mahusive [...]

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How to beat Q & A sites at their own game

February 9, 2011

Another quick post today… I really hate Q & A sites, they’re 95% morons asking questions and other morons wasting their time answering them (if you’ve got that much time on your hands get a blog and make some money people!). However I can’t deny they have something of a magic formula when it comes [...]

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Quick SEO Wins!

January 28, 2011

There are parts of internet marketing which take a lot of time. I’m a big advocate of doing things properly, especially when it comes to link building. However sometimes the quickest things actually have the biggest impact. So clear a couple of hours in your day and run through my list of the best SEO [...]

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