When is SEO not SEO? February 25, 2010
Anyone who keeps an eye on the organic rankings for the term “SEO” will not have failed to have noticed this site in the top 3…www.seo-london.com. At first glance it looks from the name of the domain like an SEO company based in London. However a further inspection of the site shows that it is an organisation that offers nothing to do with search engine optimisation but instead places graduates in internships in prestigious industries as well as offering training programs. The reason why the site is ranking so highly for the phrase “SEO” is that the site has good authority, good PageRank and some orthodox SEO links pointing at this site… such as this one
The site also has a link from http://directory.searchnewz.com/ct-13-seo-companies.html which even gives a short blurb thinking the seo-london site offers something related to SEO..”Learn more about SEO London Get to know SEO & the City Making a Strong Application Preparing for SEO Interviews SEO Alumni & Philanthropy SEO Global Alumni Network Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) London is a not-for-profit organisation that.”
Again, here, there is a link to the site in this list of top SEO companies…. So perhaps seo-london.com used to be an SEO company and the new business bought the domain? Well after checking the way-back-when machine at each point of reference in the past, the site has been with it’s current owners. So the question is why are they being linked to as an SEO company, when they don’t offer SEO? You can hardly blame Google’s algo for putting them in a prime position given this fact?
The ranking table for seo-london.com was from over 3 years ago, and I scraped ranking positions from the serps back then without propervalidating the site – so that’s how it slipped through, it was just a bit of fun linkbait and not to be taken seriously, although some people within the industry did and that’s why I binned it. Hope this helps explain why I linked out to them : laziness really
Paul
Cheers for the explanation! ;o)
Having said all this though.. to turn this into a cautionary tale should it perhaps end with the simple advice that having the most sought after vanity keyword in your market for a domain name (even if you are an authority site with some good links) is not the B all and end all of conquering the web. We know that it helps.. but there are far too many businesses who will think that because they are Top 10 i.e. for; ‘Builder in Kidderminster’…because their domain is ‘kidderminsterbuilder.co.uk’, that they will receive all traffic for anyone who wants a building job done in Kidderminster.. when clearly they aren’t found for “reliable bricklayers near kidderminster” or “Qualified Bricklayers in Kidderminster” and not because they aren’t all those things, but because their site doesn’t have enough content to help it to be found for much else other than it’s ‘name’. Just like with your seo-london.com example where they aren’t anywhere to be found for ‘search engine marketing London’ or ‘Search engine optimisation London’ – because, rightly so there is no organic content about SEO on their site.