How To Remove Links & Remove Yourself From a Blogger’s Christmas Card List at the Same Time

I awoke recently with an email in my inbox asking me for a link removal. Whilst no longer an SEO, I still have a lot of friends and interests in the field, including a couple of sites that are slightly dodgy, including a Bid Directory that was for a long time my biggest earner. It is woefully black hat, but meh. It is just there for the sake of being there. But rather than the link removal being requested for one of my dodgy sites, it was actually aimed at a site that had a pretty good link profile and editorially approved content (albeit dormant) – Blogging Dojo.

Here is the email in full.

Dear Sir / Mam

Our Website XXXXXX has a link from your website. We request you to remove that link at earliest because the backlink is hampering our website ranking and seo very badly.

Page where our link is placed:

XXXX

We also understand that your website integrity isn’t in question here but the penalty from google is severely affecting our business. The link has already had a very negative effect on our website SEO and business.

We believe that you would take action over it immediately or in case of no action within 24 hrs, we are going to have to file a “Disavow Link” report with Google. If we do this, it may affect your site’s Google rankings…

We would greatly appreciate your help with resolving this problem.

You can also let us know once the links have been removed by return email.

If you need any more information from us, please email me and I will be happy to assist.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you and do appreciate your help.

Thank you and Regards,
Joshua Bender

Interesting huh? There were a few things that irked me about this email.

We Are Not Saying Your Website is Crap But Your Website Is Crap

Lets start at the beginning, this doozy.

We also understand that your website integrity isn’t in question here….

Yes you are! The next line is this!

The link has already had a very negative effect on our website SEO and business.

So you admit to saying my website is crap, and that being linked to me is harming your business. Effectively with this line you are saying you don’t want to be linked with me? Okay, you’re saying my website, but as most bloggers put their blood, sweat & tears into blogs, it’s often difficult to say when a site ends and a person begins – case in point being The Wolf Within Me, which is written by Cass on her Lupus. By shitting over sites you’d be happy to be a part of mere months earlier, you don’t exactly endear yourself to the group that probably made your business in the first place.

Timescale

We believe that you would take action over it immediately or in case of no action within 24 hrs…..

SEO is a slow game, with work taking months to have any sort of effect, and as such by posting this timescale for link removal to us we’re stressed. I mean, why have you gone for this timescale? A self imposed deadline by the client? In which case it’s you who have screwed up by not managing client expectations well enough. Let me guess, the client bought on your “insta-SEO” packaged that “Guaranteed #1 Listings”, and this is it unraveling all around you.

The fact is, bloggers generally don’t operate on a 24 hour scale, but usually a few days or more. Take for example outreach, I know when I did it I’d often get replies a week or two later for some blogs. I try and operate on a 24 hour turnaround, but on occasions such as this I couldn’t (I headed out after work, and no I’m not sacrificing my personal life for free because you screwed up). And it had me stressed, largely because of my last point.

Outright Threatening of Bloggers

This was the kicker for me.

we are going to have to file a “Disavow Link” report with Google. If we do this, it may affect your site’s Google rankings

Sorry, but that is utter bullshit.

I just thought this left a sour taste in my mouth. There are ways to do things, and quite frankly, outright threatening people is probably not the way to do things. Even when I was at my most shadiest as an SEO, I treated the people I dealt with with respect, and even my competitors. After all, I was taught to treat SEO as a bit of a game (hell, you ‘game’ the search engine), and whilst I compete against fellow SEO’s, I treat them with respect.

By threatening me, you’re effectively saying that you are willing to sabotage me and my hobbies (or business) in order to get your business back on the straight & narrow, a path deviated from by yourself, not by me. To me, that is a monumentally dickish move.

I reached out to a few SEO’s following receiving the email (and me be absolutely fuming because of it), and Will O’Hara pointed me in the direction of this link – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604774?hl=en – which seemed to suggest that even if an SEO “Disavows” you, then by and large you are unlikely to yourself receive a penalty. That was the general consensus from the people I spoke to as well.

The Shape of Things To Come?

The inherent problem of disavow is that people take a chainsaw to a problem where a pair of scissors is probably all that’s needed. By removing links (which, in this occasion, was okay), you also remove the factor that ranked you in the first place. You’re going to have to get these links back in some way using natural methods. Those links are probably going to come from bloggers – if you threaten bloggers, they’re probably not going to link to you.

I’m just worried about what the average site owner is going to think. I mean, I’d like to think I have some SEO knowledge left in me, and I wasn’t sure the intricacies of Google’s wondeful disavow tool. Imagine what bloggers without the experience or connections that I have would do when they receive such an email?

I just think if you take the approach above, you’re biting on the hand that feeds you, and then shitting all over it. Not cool, folks.

30 Books That Will Make Marketers improve Their Skills on State of Digital

Recently, I contributed to a post on State of Digital as I picked a book that was listed on their 30 Books That Will Make Marketers Improve Their Skills. The book I chose was the rather excellent Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holliday. This book completely defines the whole “It’s better to Beg for Forgiveness than Ask for Permission”, and well worth checking out.

The list contains 29 other luminaries of the digital world, and it’s a great reading list. Well worth checking out and bookmarking!

You can read the post here.

Does Google Need To Make Their WordPress Plugin Better?

I was listening to a recent episode of the excellent WordPress Weekly Podcast of WP Tavern (episode 134), which covered WordCamps.

One thing that piqued my interest was the discussion of the first plugin released by Google in the repository. On it, one of the panelists (I didn’t quite get who) mentioned that it “sucked”. Which is something I actually agree with.

The reason I believe it sucked was that it only did two things: Webmaster Tools verification and allowing to add Google Adsense to your site, both of which had a lot of plugins in the repository. The panelist then went on to discuss the number of other technologies that Google have that are criminally underrated in the WordPress Repository: Google’s two factor authentication (incidentally, I’ve been using Rublon recently, and it’s pretty good), and Schema implementation are both pretty under-represented, surely it would be better if Google focused on one of those plugins?

In two words, probably not.

To play devil’s advocate, I think the reason why Google’s first plugin is Adsense’s focus is that their core business revolves around advertising. It make sense that they become to the go to plugin for people wanting to put Adsense on their site.

Yes I wish it was more advanced and I believe there would be better things for Google to work on for WordPress Sites, but remember Google doesn’t owe you anything, from rankings, to mail client, to even what is in their WordPress plugin.

Such is the beauty of WordPress that the plugin’s open source nature that anybody can take the plugin to make it better (something I’ve been messing around with). So yes: as I recommended at my MWUG Presentation on SEO for WordPress: listen to Google, but question them.

Speaking at MWUG on 15th January 2014

So as announced on my Goals of 2013 post, one of the goals – start speaking – was a semi pass/fail, largely due to the fact that whilst I didn’t speak in 2013, I did book to speak in 2014.

This Wednesday, I’m speaking at Manchester WordPress Users Group on Wednesday evening at 6:30pm ish on an introduction to SEO with WordPress. The talk will cover some of the lesser known features of WordPress SEO, on how to improve your site in the eyes of search engines, and a very brief introduction on how to build SEO Friendly themes.

It won’t be the most polished talks, as it’s my first one, but I’ve been practicing and learning, if you want to attend it’s free to do so, and in MadLab in Manchester’s Northern Quarter (opposite Common). You can read more the agenda for the meetup here or subscribe to the Meetup here.

Hope to see you there!

Goals For 2014

Happy New Year Everybody! It’s a new calendar year, and whilst I don’t like having resolutions, per se, I do like setting goals. Goals that hopefully I will achieve in the upcoming year. It was quite nice looking back on my goals for 2013 – in the fact I did better than I thought I did! Anyway, here are my goals for 2014:-

Start a Pension

This goal for me was left over from 2013. Yeah I’m not exactly thrilled I didn’t achieve it, so it’s my #1 goal for 2014! I’m nearly 30, and kind of really should be thinking about responsible stuff – as much as I love doing what I do, I’d quite like the option to retire at some point, lord knows I cannot rely on a state pension. So time to start being a little bit more responsible and get a pension.

Get More Premium Plugins/Themes Out There

WP Email Capture has served me well, incredibly well, but I feel like I should be diversifying my income a little bit. Sales from WP Email Capture account for nearly 50% of my income from my personal ventures, and also residual income from WP Email Capture accounts for nearly 80%. Whilst I am happy for this, I feel I should diversify a little more.

So I’ve decided over the Christmas break to put development of new features on hold for WP Email Capture. I am happy with how it is doing, and I don’t think working much more on it on features will improve it more. Of course I’m going to continue keeping everything bug fixed and working, but the work to do some of the features I wish to implement, along with maintaining them, I cannot see a benefit.

This of course is up for review, and will probably still add to it, but for now I’m going to increase the number of products I sell, rather than focus on one or two.

Get My Name More Out There in the Community

The biggest change professionally for me was that I’m pretty much no longer an SEO anymore, but instead a full time developer. It is a good move for me and I’m glad I made it, but I don’t know that many people in the WordPress Community, certainly on a chatty way similar to how I am with the SEO community. As such, I’m keen to get out there a little more in the WordPress Community, and connect with a few more people. As such, I’m looking to attend a few more WordCamps and WordPress meetups, along with maybe posting a few guest blogs elsewhere, just to get my name out a bit.

Own A Property (or have enough for a deposit)

Okay, this is the big one for me.

As alluded to earlier, I turn 30 earlier on this year, and I’ve recently been thinking about getting a house. Turns out that it isn’t that far out of my reach. I’d love my own place and to get on the property ladder.

I’ve a little money saved up, but feel with a year or so saving I could probably easily save enough for a deposit on the house, maybe even buying a house. But yes, this is my next big goal. Hopefully it’ll be 2014, definitely in 2015!

I hope everybody has a great new year! What are your goals?