Category: Announcements

In order to prevent botnets from hacking this site last year I disabled the “wp-login.php” script for SEO Theory. Anyone who has registered a WordPress user account in the past for the sake of posting a comment has been unable…

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Writing a weekly newsletter that is packed full of detailed “how to” articles takes up a lot of time. Feedback from subscribers has ranged from enthusiastic to requests for more. Here is a brief update about the newsletter and how…

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Google has been highly critical of the US government’s monitoring of Internet activity, a practice that is only intended to protect us against Al Qaeda’s secretive communications. Regardless of whether you feel the governments of western nations have taken their monitoring too far, I am deeply alarmed by the apathy that people have expressed toward the far more invasive and manipulative monitoring of your Internet activity that Google and other advertising networks regularly engage in for the sole purpose of making a profit. While every business has the right to seek reward for its services, any advertising company that tracks user behavior and structures its technologies so as to manipulate consumer interest and consent has no business telling governments what they should or should not be doing on behalf of citizen privacy. Google has in fact said in court that its users have “no legitimate expectation of privacy”. If that is the case, then there are no limits to what Google could do as it monitors your every move and engages with you through technologies that are designed to enhance its profits. Google’s oversight of these technologies has been called into question by consumer advocates, business rivals, and government agencies. […]

This Friday only, you will be able to use a special order button to be posted on Reflective Dynamics’ blog, to purchase an hour of consulting time with both me and Randy Ray at a steep discount. The special blog post will be removed after a short period of time (this post will, too, to prevent confusion). The discounted consulting time will cost you $99. We’ll make arrangements with you to speak sometime in December either by Skype or by telephone. If you live outside the United States the only available option is to consult by Skype. Randy Ray has been active in search engine optimization, online marketing, and Website development and management for more than a decade. He has worked with some of the best affiliate marketers, managers, and programs available. He’s also an incredible writer (in my opinion) and knows how to publish top-grade content. Randy has extensive experience as an editor for large Web directories, too, so he has reviewed thousands of Websites over the years. My work with search engine optimization began in 1998 but I have been developing and promoting Websites since 1996. In addition to managing my own Website campaigns I have developed and […]

As many of you know, we have been dealing with ongoing botnet issues all year long. Most of the botnet problems have now been blocked as well as they can be but we’re still being hammered in one area: blog comment spam. One of the protections we have put in place is the Stop Forum Spammers plugin, which as hundreds of you found out this year blocks people for various reasons. I say “hundreds” because I am scanning the White List Requests and see hundreds and hundreds of them going back a few months. I apologize for not getting into the list sooner but I’ve had to devote a lot of time to working on other parts of the problem. Working backward from the most recent requests I am white listing some of the people who seem to be okay. But I will only do this for a few people as I don’t have time to go through the entire list. I will then clear the requests file and start over. We believe the SFS plugin may be the reason why the server crashes every morning. Spammers schedule their scripts for certain times of the day (well, some spammers do). […]

3Q Digital, formerly PPC Associates, has invited me to participate in a Webinar next Thursday, September 26, at 2:00 PM Eastern time on their BrightTalk channel. The Webinar is titled “Guide to Linking: Acquire Passive Links and Remove Toxic Links”. I will be covering the Passive Linking and my friend Kent Yunk (who is now the Vice President of SEO for 3Q Digital) will be covering how to Toxic Link Removal. In the wake of all of Google’s anti-spam activity this year many people are now afraid to acquire links. Those fears are misplaced. It’s not the acquisition of links that burns you, it’s how you do it, how much you do it, and why you do it. We’ll cover legitimate linking practices that can help you grow your Website’s traffic and stay on the right side of search engine guidelines. Toxic links may or may not be hurting your site. How do you figure out which links are toxic? How do you find them? That’s an important question for many people who went down the wrong marketing path. Kent will walk you through the process. The presentations will last about 40-45 minutes and there will be a question-and-answer period. […]

3Q Digital, formerly PPC Associates, has invited me to participate in a Webinar next Thursday, September 26, at 2:00 PM Eastern time on their BrightTalk channel. The Webinar is titled “Guide to Linking: Acquire Passive Links and Remove Toxic Links”. I will be covering the Passive Linking and my friend Kent Yunk (who is now the Vice President of SEO for 3Q Digital) will be covering how to Toxic Link Removal. In the wake of all of Google’s anti-spam activity this year many people are now afraid to acquire links. Those fears are misplaced. It’s not the acquisition of links that burns you, it’s how you do it, how much you do it, and why you do it. We’ll cover legitimate linking practices that can help you grow your Website’s traffic and stay on the right side of search engine guidelines. Toxic links may or may not be hurting your site. How do you figure out which links are toxic? How do you find them? That’s an important question for many people who went down the wrong marketing path. Kent will walk you through the process. The presentations will last about 40-45 minutes and there will be a question-and-answer period. […]

If you received an email from me yesterday via the SEO Theory blog, and you know you did not subscribe for email notifications, please accept my humble apology. I used the SUBSCRIBE2 plugin to manually send a message. Because of changes made to the SEO Theory user/subscriber database in 2012 two groups of user/subscriber accounts co-exist side-by-side. The older group, which SUBSCRIBE2 designates Registered Subscribers, was bulk-modified to OPT OUT of receiving emails. That is, if you ever registered (through WordPress) as a user on SEO Theory (to leave a comment), you are in the older Registered Subscribers group. You can log into the blog at any time and change your email notifications (OPT IN or OPT OUT) on your user dashboard. The newer group, which SUBSCRIBE2 designates Public Subscribers, consists of all the people who have signed up (OPTED IN) for email notifications from the blog. These people are NOT WordPress users and do not have dashboards. These SUBSCRIBE2 accounts can only delete themselves from the mailing list. (NOTE: It is no longer necessary to register to leave a comment.) Yesterday I wrote How Google’s Disavow Tool Works with the Penguin Algorithm for the Reflective Dynamics Blog. This very […]

Since I launched the SEO Theory Premium Newsletter last year I have published over 60 issues (approximately 1 each week) and over 350 articles (including the articles going out in the next issue). Although I haven’t promoted the newsletter as much as I should, it has done pretty well despite the setback of having the original distribution service (LETTER.LY) close up shop. The original service required you to pay for your subscriptions through Amazon Payments. Now subscribers pay through PayPal (and you do not have to have a PayPal account if you have a standard credit card like a Mastercard or Visa). To date the newsletter has included over 40 Tech Tips articles covering topics like “Managing WordPress Plugins”, “IP Address Mapping”, “Hotel Internet Service Upgrades”, and “Fast Cleanup for Old Web Design” among others. More than 60 detailed SEO questions have been featured in the newsletter as well, dealing with subjects like “How Can I Differentiate My Listings?”, “Examples of Possible User Engagement Signals”, “Does Infinite Scrolling Hurt SEO?”, “Does Google Prefer Deep Content for Questions?”, “How to Reduce Main Navigation on a Large Website”, and “Is It Worthwhile to Update Old Links?”. The questions keep on coming. One […]

During a routine purge of old unconfirmed subscribers to our ONCE DAILY DIGEST email notifications 25 active subscribers who signed up in NOVEMBER 2011 were accidentally deleted from the database. These 25 subscribers will no longer receive emails from SEO Theory’s ONCE DAILY DIGEST until they resubscribe. When you subscribe to the ONCE DAILY DIGEST email notification using the form in the “FOLLOW SEO THEORY” widget in the right-hand side of the page, you will be sent a confirmation email. You MUST click on the link in that confirmation email to begin receiving the ONCE DAILY DIGEST for SEO Theory so that you will be notified when new articles are published on this Website. Every few months we delete the UNCONFIRMED subscribers. This administrator inadvertently selected all listings from the 1st page of a different query of the subscriber database for subsequent deletion. We regret the error and apologize for the mixup. Disclaimer: No members of the SEO Theory blogging team were executed in the production of this apology and notification but a few were considered for severe sentences with no chance of reprieve from Google or Bing.