19 Comments so far

1. mrwhite on June 23, 2008 3:06 pm

   If there’s one thing we like at SEOview it’s chatting about SEO, especially all these companies using black hat techniques, we’ve started a series of case studies on the most extreme offenders with more to come soon.

   We’d love to hear the views of those who follow insiders-view.

   George, Ernest, keep those SEO posts coming and if you fancy dropping by for a comment or two our door is always open.

2. Ernest on June 23, 2008 4:46 pm

   @mrwhite, a nice bit of self promotion there We’ll keep producing the SEO posts but we’re looking a bit of colour.

3. Henry on June 24, 2008 10:21 am

   I am an in house SEO for a financial comparison website, so I am interested in both the SEO and insider posts. However, I can only really respond with any competancy on the SEO side of things.

   I think you should keep going as is, but expect that SEO posts will be far more popular. Though possibly shy away from the ‘are paid links wrong’ argument.

4. James L on June 24, 2008 10:50 am

   I enjoy hearing the insurance specific news. SEO specific stuff is covered very well elsewhere. The mix is probably right at the moment, as it’s certainly an important aspect.

5. mrpurple on June 24, 2008 12:29 pm

   @Ernest

   What colour would that be then, black, a few shades of grey perhaps? There’s plenty to choose from.

   Keep up the good work!

6. Brook on June 24, 2008 5:13 pm

   A few ideas:

   What is the fall-out from Google’s brand bidding change?
   What is the potential of cashback sites?
   Was Gocompare’s decision to affiliate itself with BIBA a good move?
   Why is Debbie leaving Confused?

   That kind of thing …

7. Aggie on June 25, 2008 10:10 am

   More insurance specific news and price comparison news please!

8. Ernest on June 25, 2008 10:38 am

   Good to see a few new names coming forward - keep them coming guys.

9. PPCblogger on June 27, 2008 8:29 pm

   Hello.

   You could at least get a RSS feed together.

10. Ernest on June 27, 2008 9:39 pm

    @PPCblogger - nice introduction!

11. George on July 1, 2008 4:02 pm

    @PPCblogger
    1. Let us know how you get on with the RSS feed. After a few idiot HTML moments, it should be visibile and working now.

    2. You’re going to have some tough competition now that Aaron Wall has started http://www.ppcblog.com

12. PPCblogger on July 2, 2008 4:54 pm

    Looks good to me, added to my reader.

    With regards to Aaron - What does he know about search

    The positive side, I can let him do the hard work and i’ll take a good percentage of the brand traffic.

13. Penfold on July 3, 2008 2:27 pm

    SEO Posts rock.

    hers one for you - http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=yes+insurance&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

    Discuss….

14. An insurance seo guy on July 4, 2008 11:56 am

    I’m interested in the SEO style posts, (it seems the authors have intimate knowledge of the area as well ) but I’d like to see more talk on how to move the industry forward.

    Yes paid text links and ad networks are bad, so wouldn’t this blog with all its very qualified readers around the insurance/SEO industry be the perfect place to brainstorm ideas to move forward? Whats the future going to look like?

15. David B on July 8, 2008 11:22 am

    Hi everyone, first of all I’d just like to say that I’ve posted a few times on here before under the name of “David B” but I’d like to divulge my real identity as the head of technology at Bullhorn.co.uk which is a small comparison site - I know it’s not GoCompare or Tesco Compare but we’re one of the few actually truely independent comparison sites out there for car insurance.

    At the time of writing this post we currently rank somewhere around 100th for the term “car insurance” which is the result of a penalisation by Google for buying links - I know it’s naughty but it wasn’t my decision.

    The site was re-launched in January 2008 at which point we ranked on page 3 for the term “car insurance” and we were climbing. It was at that point that we decided to start purchasing links in bulk (before the GoCompare and Kwik Fit ban). In fact if you goto market leap you can see that there are a few huge leaps in the number of our backlinks.

    Anyway, a few weeks after the GoCompare ban we too were penalised and started ranking on page 8, a month or two later we started ranking on page 11 - and then we pretty much dissappeared.

    For most of our other terms we still ranked well but we had done a multi-link banner across a few sites which was similar to how “BestDealInsurance” used to have their banners. For all the terms we used in that banner we got penalised, so we quickly concluded that the ban was due to that banner so it got taken down a few days after the ban. We also removed all of the purchased links at the same time.

    So my question is this, how long can we expect to be penalised for? Since the ban we’ve had to shift the focus of our company to concentrate on other insurance products coupled with cashback, so ranking for the term “car insurance” isn’t of major importance to us, but it would be nice to understand when Google is going to have us back, or if it’s permanently given us the cold shoulder.

16. George on July 8, 2008 12:58 pm

    @David B
    Good to here from you!
    Short answer: about 1month provided you’re a good boy.
    Long answer:
    A few things first: your site has not been banned (even though here we like to use the term ban for dramatic effect!) as results still appear for the query:
    site:www.bullhorn.co.uk

    To get reincluded
    1. Clean up your blackhat techniques
    2. Apply to Google for reconsideration Google Reconsideration
    3. Contact Google via the webmaster console
    4. Sumbitting a Google sitemap can help.
    Further info here: Reinclusion How To

    This should remove the penalty but now you need to start ranking properly, providing good content, a service to customers, natural inbound links etc.

17. David B on July 11, 2008 1:43 pm

    Hi George

    Cheers for your help and advice - although it’s all sound advice we’ve already done all that. And it’s now been 3 months since the penalisation, in fact there was a point where we disappeared altogether but now we’re back at around page 10.

    We did very sharply decide to go down the white hat route soon after penalisation, so that meant that all bought links were cancelled, removed or redirected - and the multi-link banners were taken down.

    As far as I understand, that’s pretty much what GoCompare did - they simply played nice with Google and then after 3 months everything was ok. But our penalisation was just short of 3 months ago but there are no signs from Google that it’s about to play-ball.

    Is there anything else we’re missing? And if you need any info about this penalisation then just ask - that way we can all probably understand the pattern of penalisations more.

18. Adam on July 18, 2008 1:30 am

    Just keep up with the insurance/finance specific seo angle.

    It’s not covered that much and your blog is probably the most interesting on the topic I’ve seen.

19. Andy Leadbetter on October 4, 2008 4:36 am

    i’m an avid reader!