A fairly lengthy post by Chris Silver Smith at Superpages in response to my critical post of his ‘local SEO’ techniques.
I’ll respond to a few points he made:
First, they can limit this effect by requiring that listings in their directory might only display their legally-licensed business names. Second, if a business has legally created a name with the gobbledygook he so dislikes, what exactly do they propose to do - disallow the business from being listed under their legal name?!?
Uh, yes. Directories are for users, not businesses.
Google removes websites from their index all the time because the believe those sites degrade the quality of their user’s experience. I have no qualms in preventing “A A A A A A A A A A A A A A H Drains For Less”(yes, this is a real listing) from making it into our directory.
He also came down hard on the concept of getting a listing for each city in which your business provides service. I’d counter that if a plumber provides service in that city, he should be allowed to be listed in that directory, and I do not see that as any sort of a detractor for users. Users should be given the choice of all businesses that provide service for their area!
Yes, online directories should show all of the service providers that provide service in a particular area. However, there is no way that the user experience is improved by the plumber that makes up shell listings in each town within a 50 mile radius. The business that lists itself as ‘Newton Plumber’, ‘Wellesley Plumber’, ‘Belmont Plumber’ is spamming the directory.
‘Doorway pages’ is the term used to describe this activity online and can result in getting a website kicked out of Google’s index. These should probably be called ‘doorway listings’, and I would expect similar results in directories.
It’s doubly ironic that Dave would accuse me of causing “spamming”, since he actually has mentioned some SEO tactics that he apparently admired which are completely black-hat, and are terribly bad advice for any webmaster to pursue.
I love being quoted out of context ;). He’s referring to this post I wrote after finding bluehatseo’s site for the first time. I agree with Chris, that the techniques are terribly bad advice for legit webmasters to pursue, and I was fairly clear that the techniques weren’t appropriate in my post (I could have been more clear though and will clarify). I even joked around and suggested techniques to improve on bluehatseo’s ideas (I did the same thing for Chris’ techniques).
However, the author is a critical thinker, fairly humorous and well aware of the fact that he is operating on the black side of SEO. White hat webmasters need to know what the darker side is doing, so for example, they don’t fall into the trap of reporting the wrong site.
I was angry at Chris’ post, but not at bluehatseo? Chris works for Superpages and small businesses will listen to him. If he were at ‘yellow hat seo’ and not Superpages, I probably would have written a different post.
He apparently feels that some of these tips could result in “spamming” online directory listings. I beg to differ, of course. (Not to be too pedantic, but his use of the word, “spam”, is inaccurate because spam is the mass-mailing of unsolicited email notes of a commercial nature. My posting had nothing to do with email. Heh!)
Um, no. I think he might be joking in his comment above, but since I’m busy blockquoting and responding I’ll just include the Wikipedia link.
Chris, all of your techniques are clever. Some are amusing (in a bluehatseo kind of way). I just think you need to be more cautious about suggesting them given the company you work for. I worry that local businesses will take your advice thinking that they are operating entirely above board. And much like the taking the advice of a black hat seo they may find themselves dropped from directories.
