Widgets and paid links

Well, as you can see from the side of htis blog, I've been amusing myself lately with adding tools and widgets to my blog. I think that I might have gone a little overboard with them however especially providing the option of changing it into several different languages! We have mostly been into training this month after the launch of www.finditinsandwell.co.uk. trying to catch up on what we missed out on whilst our noses were firmly on the grindstone. We have a few large SEO clients on the horizon and I've been doing my preliminary keyword research using my usual SEO software alongside wordtrackers new UK database which I like more and more the larger it grows, the data it gives out seems to feel more relevant to most of my clients as they're UK based and I'm quite enjoying using it despite the poor interface. I've met the staff behind the product a couple of times now at various events and I have to say they're spot on and a lot more knowledgable than some of the other keyword research companies.

I have also had chance to go through some of my blogs since we've slowed our pace down a bit and was amused at the amount of anger that has come about for Google (I won't give them another link here as they've got enough page rank). Asking people to report sites that have paid links pointing to them has certainly raised the heckles of the SEO community and it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about it at SES Miami in June, I missed the New york event this time round due to workload so have yet to catch up on all the goings on there.

I would be a liar to say that I haven't used paid links before to get a new domain noticed a little quicker. My suggestion to Google is that if they keep on giving precedence to the older sites with DMOZ listings then people with new domains and fresh ideas using the latest languages are going to be bound to be frustrated and try to climb the rankings by any means. You only have to look at some of the ancient, horrible pages that Google regularly throws up as its results to see that it is doing its best to keep the web firmly in 1.0 by not letting the newer sites through and so the only options left for us are to buy old domains or buy links. My final suggetion on this is that if people are willing to pay to get links to their site then they obviously have spent some time and money on their site (or will do in the future) in order to retain the (expensive) visitors once they get there.. food for thought.. In the meantime I suggest a campaign against all those who start snitching on paid links!!