Digg banning domains - open to abuse?

Lee Odden has apparently had his domain banned by Digg.
According to a support email from Digg:

“When submitted stories are consistently reported as spam and users complain via our feedback email about submission spam, we ban the domain. The domain will not be unbanned. The domain would consistently get reported as spam [...]

Sometimes I just hate webdev work - part 2!!

Dealing with errors in Platinax is proving child’s play at present compared to a recent client site I’m redeveloping.
So far it’s a catalogue of miscommunications and misjudgements as I take a site built with .inc files in .asp to php includes in a Wordpress CMS.
I have never wanted to abandon any project as much as [...]

Sometimes I just hate webdev work!

Anyone with a home PC probably knows how infuriating computers can be at the best of times.
When you do webdevelopment work, you’re not simply working with ordinary desktop computers - you’re also working with servers and the whole HTTP she-bang.
And it is all *very* unforgiving, in that unforgiving computer logic sort of way.
Take last [...]

Bye bye Brian’s Business Blog

Platinax is currently undergoing redevelopment, and with that it’s time to say bye bye to Brian’s Business Blog.
The key reason?
It’s a crap blog.
I read various other blogs online, and the good ones are:
*fresh!
*informative!
*interesting!
I’ve managed to fail on all 3 here.
I have some excuse, though - since the last Platinax redevelopment I found myself separating the [...]

Google News for quality news sources

I wrote an article at SEOmoz about the usefulness of Google News for traffic and organic link development.
Shortly after, I submitted a news site to Google News - and had it immediately rejected, with the submissions reviewer clearly stating they weren’t going to explain why.
I figured there may be a misperception that I was advocating [...]

Another reason why MSN Search is failing

I casually use MSN Search - now Live.com search - for two main reasons:
Firstly, I report ranking positions for clients on MSN.
Secondly, I think the potential integration of MSN search with Windows users offers an exciting opportunitity for Microsoft to gain new users of its search business.
But…Microsoft are setting up unnecessary barriers for users.
The user [...]

How to turn trash into cash

Viewing the DigitalPoint and SitePoint marketplaces shows what an incredible amount of bottom feeding is going on for worthless sites and content.
So let’s take a quick tour of how you can turn your worthless websites into real moolah:
1. The forum
Set up a forum. Spend $100 getting 500 paid-for forum posts over 4 weeks.
1 month later, [...]

Google News for organic link development

I have a few news sites accepted into Google News - they’re genuine news sites, and to be perfectly honest they’ve always been built as news sites as news sites with no ulterior purpose - not even SEO. :)
However, it’s been very interesting to note how having a news site can be good for organic [...]

Google -30 filter

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about a so-called “30 filter” or “-30 penalty”.
At it’s heart it sounds like an advanced feature of Google Sandboxing - ie, a website that can only rank low, not simply for it’s own keywords, but even domain name.
The interesting point about this filter/penalty is that it’s very specific [...]

Platinax re-opens comments without requiring registration

After reading up further on Wordpress Plugins I’ve been applying a couple of key plugins.
The first is Did you pass math? installed across Platinax.
This means I can feel confident about re-opening comments to guests without requiring registration, after a pretty severe attack of spam a few months ago meant I had to close them off.
Hopefully [...]

Essential plugins for Wordpress

Michael Gray posts a great list of SEO plugins for Wordpress.
I’ve been referencing this over the past week to look for plugins I really should be using.
Namely because so far I haven’t been using any Wordpress plugins.
As I use Wordpress a lot as a Content Management Solution (including for Platinax) I definitely need use [...]

What to do with a PR7 website?

So Peter was right - Platinax is now PageRank 7.
I’m surprised - firstly because there’s no special link building program in play to try and increase the site’s PR value, and secondly, because I don’t think the site has done anything particular to warrant a PR7.
A couple of years ago I would have been overjoyed [...]

SEO predictions

A couple of years back in the Search Engine Watch forums I made various comments that Google was more interested in pushing to rate authority more highly and that we’d not only see this trend continue, but also that we’d see established websites abuse this.
And these things have come to pass.
So I’m going to [...]

Yahoo!s graphic indexing failure

I just checked up on the stats of one of my sites - CR - comparative-religion.com.
It’s the UK’s largest resource on world religions, run as an information website.
It’s not simply “white-hat”, but is also a key authority in it’s area - linked to by over 40 universities, plus a half-dozen UK government websites.
So why has [...]

Yahoo! - having serious problems?

Yahoo! seems to be having a lot of technical problems of late.
An update on July 21st has managed to downsize Yahoo! Search results and relevancy.
Frustrated with Google’s increasing irrelevancy, I moved to Yahoo! Search - not sure what the new update is supposed to have achieved, but in practical terms, it seems to have reduced [...]

Interesting link experiment

I posted an interesting link experiment at SEO Lab recently: When do duplicate links count?
I’ve suspected for some time that if Google sees two links for the same URL on the same page, it will only count one of the links.
What the experiment so far suggests is quite interesting:
1. When Google sees two links to [...]

SEO help on new blog

As a SEO, it’s all too easy to turn a general business blog into a “SEO blog + some other stuff”.
I’m constantly tempted to write SEO news and commentaries here, but try to hold off so as not to make it too specialised.
Anyway, I figure the best solution is to try and focus on general [...]

Facing bad publicity from a malicious user

So I had a disgruntled ex member of one of my forums turn into a malicious user.
Just been pointed out to me that he’s starting up a smear campaign against Tech Watch and Britecorp.
And he’s threatening to escalate it.
At this point there are two options available:

Allow this guy to escalate his hate campaign, and try [...]

Dealing with malicious users

Most of the people I meet online are pretty sound. Ordinary people in an extraordinary medium.
Luckily, I don’t meet bad apples very often, but last night it seems I crossed paths with a particular rotten one.
A member of Tech Watch was last night sent a warning for spamming his ads and links on the forum. [...]

Business means professionalism

I advertised for a webmastering service at DigitalPoint tonight.
Someone responded to offer their services.
The problem is, I’d already offered this same person similar work recently, but they had simply walked away from the project without telling me.
That small act of unprofessionalism just lost them a longer term contract.
We all forget things and overlook things, but [...]