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Thank you nurse but I’ll take over from here
By thehodge | February 18, 2010
Update, Web Creation UK have commented on the post and said they will be removing the blog and apologised,
Wow… Am quite shocked / pleased to have found this! Darren is simply an employee at WebCreationUK and no idea how he managed to get his link on the foot of our site and we are most certainly not affiliated with SEO Nurse in anyway. We actually barely carry out full blown SEO at present as we are far to busy with the web design side of things. We are looking to do this in the future but as a company where customer service is everything, we would not be looking to spam anyone. Apologies to anyone who may have thought we were somehow part of this. It will be removed from our site in the morning once i have spoken with tech. We will also request that he takes down the site. I have taken a look at some of the example sites listed about and the dodgy SEO work is certainly nothing to do with us. I notice one of the sites the “website design” link we usually put on has been removed so i assume the client has got another “SEO expert” in to look at the site. Lastly, Darren is not the director of WebCreationUK so clearly a few chats are required. We are not a “cowboy” company and currently have bits in .Net magazine and BBC focus which hopefully shows that we take our business seriously. Thanks
We thank them for this…
Original Article…
I am sick and tired of dealing with ripped off clients who’ve been promised the earth and told a pile of bullshit, now don’t get me wrong, SEO’s like to extend the truth every now and then and no one is whiter than white but there’s telling stories and then there’s talking shite.
Today’s focus is SEONurse.com, a blog set up by Web Creation UK… you wouldn’t know that though, its only mentioned 128 times on the homepage, its not the fact they have have a blog, we love blogs and all agencies should have one (unless your fucking boring, seriously no one gives a shit if you’ve had record profits this quarter.. stop filling blogs full of PR shit).
The website came to my attention as part of a conversation on the (SEO) Dojo, the URL had been spammed to one of the members and they were trying to work out if the site was a parody or not (to be honest we still aren’t 100% sure).
Reaching out from the Future!
I’m actually quite happy I was sent this site, I can learn SEO from the FUTURE!!! see the latest post… TUESDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2015 oh lordy.. well what does SEO have in store for us in the future? well nothing since its just links to twitter or company page (the comments however are FROM THE PAST!)
The next article is from October 15th..2010 and here we go the meat of SEO in the future..
1: Submit your domain name (URL) in Google – WebCreationUK perform this with every website designed and built by us!!!
Okay… maybe they mean via a sitemap or webmaster tools or something, I’m not quite sure.. personally I wouldn’t have put that as the number one tip but what do I know. I’m not from the future?
But.. they’ve won an award or two…
That’s correct, but I cannot seem to find that award mentioned anywhere other than on that site.. in fact after using some CSI type enhance tools (the “award” graphic on the SEO Nurse site has the domain at it’s bottom scrunched up) we found the domain name listed was http://thewebmanagers.com/ which now redirects to http://www.serversidedesign.com/… oh and would you believe it.. THEY have the same award! so somethings gone a bit wrong there but I’m not sure what.
Although THAT award, clearly isn’t an award at all. But an “SEO Ethics” seal. Clicking on it takes you to THAT company’s page where they describe the ETHICS they, themselves employ. And thus we have a problem, Nurse. Apparently, you’ve mis-represented yourselves a bit, wouldn’t you say?
They’ve also won a Google Award for the Best online Business plan but the only thing you can find on google for that is - http://younoodle.com/groups/queen_rania_national_entrepreneurship_competition_qrnec and that’s in India.
But.. look at the affiliates users and partners!
okay so lets have a look, remember we are not sure what the context of these things are – Google, overture, miva, yahoo,ask jeeves, msn… wait a minute, that image looks familier
Okay but they’ve got some high profile users, they’ve got the pirate bay and A9 and monst….oh hang on http://logoblink.com/2007/12/07/search-engine-logos/
So back to the articles, back to present day - http://www.seonurse.com/2010/01/top-seo-google-caffeine-tips-by-seo.html
Google Caffeine what could possibly be the top 5 tips for Google Caffeine..
1) fast loading website – yep, now were taling
2) get a twitter account – yep..wait what?
3) get a facebook account – now your just taking the piss
4) get an rss feed – okay yeah but usually you’d have some sort of blog
5) get a blog – I see what you did there
Other top tips
- Help your own website by asking your website developer / designer to add SEO Nurse (linking to http://www.seonurse.com/) on the bottom home page of your website. This may aid in adding weight to your overall Google Ranking and hopefully improving your Google position in www.google.co.uk/
Cheeky bastards
Looking Behind The Curtain
Now, the face of SEO Nurse is a gentleman by the name of Darren Earney who, according to the caption under his tuxedo wearing photo on the Nurse site, is “Sales Director to WebCreation UK and Advisor to SEO Nurse“. Okay – so he’s the sales director at WebCreation, and just an “ADVISOR” to SEONurse. SO if that’s the case, why is it DARREN’s photo on their Twitter profile? And when you look at the blog, every article at it’s bottom has “Author” as “SEO Nurse” but an “Email” for “Darren Earney”?
And when you see, under Darren’s photo on SEO Nurse, a reference to HIS Resume’, there’s a link to his “Curriculum Vitae” – which is higher education speak for his detailed background in business. And of course, since he only ADVICES SEO Nurse, having that link makes PERFECT sense. To a fucking 3 year old maybe.
But oh – look – that links to Darren’s LinkedIn profile. And on that, he has three links listed. HIS Company (Web Creation UK), HIS Web Site (SEONurse) (WTF?) and HIS RSS Feed (which, of course, is a Feedburner feed labeled “SeoNurse – UK Search Engine Optimisation, Optimization – WebCreationUK”.
What the Hell? Now, we don’t claim to understand every aspect of business relationships in existence. So we may be misunderstanding something here… But please – Darren – help us understand this relationship. Are you just an ADVISOR? or are YOU the SEO Nurse? And if you ARE the SEO Nurse, why claim to only be an advisor?
A Blog about SEO that claims to Partner with a Design Company that happens to offer SEO, and where that company’s site has a link at the bottom to OUR BLOG that oh – look – links back to SEO Nurse…
A “Partner Blog” by Any Other Name
Just take a few minutes to look at the SEO Nurse blog. Note how every single page is just chock-full of promotional statements like “Need a Free Quote for a Website” “Email darren@webcreationuk.com or call WebCreation UK on 0845 054 0060 and ask for Darren Earney”.
Or “SEO Nurse Recommends WebCreationUK for SEO” (Oh that makes PERFECT sense as far as the relationship goes huh?)
Claiming Skills You Don’t Have
One particular entry states
“It would be very easy for us to follow suit and repeat the same marketing tactics that our competitors use. Instead we simply ask that you carry out a search on Google for our industry’s top keywords, website design, website designers and web designers…Were on page 1 every time!”
Well a quick check of Google.co.uk shows they do come up (at least from an initial test). But wait. How does that prove they’ve got the SEO chops they supposedly offer their clients? The fact is that they’ve churned out what appears to be a LOT of sites over the years. And thus, with links back to their site from every one of those clients sites, they’ve built a HUGE inbound link set. In fact, Yahoo reports that they’ve got 79,676 inbound links. :-)
A quick check of some of those links shows yes, they’re from sites the company built. Figure a bottom footer link on every page of every site they’ve built, that’s probably most of those links.
But here’s just a taste of others: A text link that is not no-followed, of course, on OpenSourceTemplates.org (WAIT – they claim to NOT use templates. That every site is custom designed… but that’s another story for another day…)
And then there’s the text link (not no-followed) over at webdesign.org under their “featured resources” box at the bottom of the site… So they clearly know what they’re doing as far as promoting their OWN company from a link strategy. That they either pay for AGAINST Google guidelines, or they’ve got some insider connection at those sites and were able to get the exclusive on those links, out of the kindness of those site’s owners hearts. How nice!
But What About On Site SEO?
According to their site’s SEO Process page,
“This would include introducing meta-tags, headers, descriptions, title tags, and Meta names as well as a website description, that all helps search engines find your website. “.
Wait.
Meta Names? Like “Meta Name=”Name” content=”Name” ??? WTF?
No – seriously – they refer to the most basic SEO. But as communicated earlier in this article, there isn’t one single high quality thing about them that says they know proper SEO as far as their CLIENTS goes. But let’s have some fun. The very first client site they showcase on their portfolio is a site called Jewellry.me. Nice design. Oh – Look – home page Meta Description:
Designer Jewellery including Charm Beads, Bracelets, Rings, Bangles and more. We also sell Lola Rose, Hultquist, Angie Gooderham and Fiorelli Jewellery including Silver Charms, Stacking rings and Stacking bracelets. Free UK delivery.
YES That’s the META DESCRIPTION.
And the Meta Keywords field is used, because we ALL know how important that is these days.
Angie Gooderman, bangles, bead, Beads, bracelet, bracelets, charm bead bracelets, charm bracelet, charm bracelets, charms, compatible, costume jewellery, designer jewellery , earrings, fashion, fashion jewellery, Fiorelli, gems, Glass beads, gold, Hultquist, jewelery, jewellery.me, jewelry, jewlery, jewlery me, Lola Rose, pendant, rings, silver jewellery, silver jewelry, silver, Silver beads, silver bracelet, silver bracelet beads, silver bracelets beads, Silver jewellery, silver jewelry, silver necklace, sterling silver , jewellery.me, me, silver charm bracelet
Sadly though, we couldn’t find ANY Meta NAME element. (see earlier sarcasm about their promoting the Meta NAMES element).
When we click into the site, to the “Charm Bead Bracelets” product category, the page title does change. To “Charm Beads, Bracelets, Rings, Bangles, Necklaces at Jewellery.me”
Because we all know how important it is to associate the phrase “Rings” or the phrase “Necklaces” to a page that only has BRACELETS on it right?
Now, this site has a copyright of 2009 in the footer. So we have to assume it’s not this much of an SEO Train Wreck due to being an old, outdated site, created before the SEO Nurse was involved with the company.
A quick check of another site they are responsible for shows a Meta Description of:
Little Scruffs Pet Boutique, Designer Dog Collars, Cat Collars, Leather Dog Collars & Dog Clothes UK. : Leather Cat Collars – Leather Dog Collars Designer Dog Collars Dog Leads Dog Clothes Cat & Dog ID Tags Pet Bowls Bedtime Dog Accessories Cat Collars Cat Accessories Catnip Cat Toys Leather dog collars, designer dog collars, diamante dog collars, large dog collars, small dog collars, cat collars, cat collars uk, cat safety collars, dog leads, dog leashes, dog collar and lead sets, pet carriers, dog carriers, small dog carriers, cat carriers, dog id tags, cat id tags, pet id tags, dog bowls, cat bowls, pet bowls, dog toys, dog clothes, dog clothes uk, dog clothing, dog accessories, cat accessories, bon ton, little scruffs pet boutique, little scruffs, grooming sets, dog beds, cat beds.
Again, that’s the META DESCRIPTION. :-)
Benefit Of The Doubt
Let’s assume though, that Darren has no control of the actual SEO on those sites. Or that he doesn’t REALIZE how the SEO Nurse blog is just a cluster-fuck of spam for the design company, since hey. Heck – maybe they’ve got a boat-load of clients they’ve gotten to the top of Google’s organic listings. None of which they have actually mentioned anywhere on the SEO Nurse site or the Design site.
Amazingly, the Nurse does offer an SEO Testimonial. From a client that does piano tuning. The site, www.iain-gordon.co.uk that apparently went from page 100 in Google to page 1 in a matter of months for specific industry phrases.
A check of a handful of phrases shows that yes, they’re on the 1st page of results for Steinway piano restoration London, as well as piano servicing London, and Steinway piano Sales London, though if you drop the Steinway from the first or third phrase, they drop out of site, and if you drop London from any, they’re nowhere near the first page either. And don’t bother trying to find them for Piano tuning London…
So apparently there’s some SEO skills there after all.
Yet Not Quite
Oh – wait. That site has Duplicate Content issues (www and non www along with index.asp and non index.asp versions of the home page). And all you have to do is a Site: function to learn that Google actually has both the index.asp and the non index.asp versions indexed! And while there’s no robots.txt file, there is a sitemap.xml file – how nice! Except an auto-generator must have created it, since both the index.asp and non index.asp URLs are included, and all pages are set to a changefreq of Daily, which makes perfect sense, right?
Home Sweet Home
How about we go to the Design site’s SEO? WebCreationuk.com – which you can get to with, and without the www. AND at newsite.webcreationuk.com AND at all of them with the index.php and WITHOUT the index.php.
Of course, their “Portfolio” link actually goes to the “index.php” version of the home page. Because it’s important to do that. For SEO. And oh – odd – there’s not even a robots.txt file on your site, which kinda sucks, since there’s no way to verify if you have a sitemap.xml file, since none is found at webcreationuk.com/sitemap.xml…
Not Asking For Miracles
Look- we all know that we can’t control the SEO completely on every site – especially if you’re really in the business of churing out low cost sites using offshore people. And for a good majority of them you’ll even do good work and have the client screw it up. We’ve all been there.
So we’re not asking for miracles Darren – it’s not like, having seen your TWITTER profile that we think you’ve got any SOCIAL MEDIA chops to speak of, either. But you sure do boast a lot about your SEO skills and how you offer SEO for FREE to your web clients.
We’d love to give you the opportunity to explain how your FREE SEO is enough to do the trick for anything but highly niche sites using highly refined keyword phrases. Or maybe it’s really a SHAM offering. Which is designed to set up your clients so you can then pitch them your premier Search Engine optimisation” services at £175 + VAT per month.
You know – the ones you say involve OFF Page optimization, link building, blog creation, entries within forums… you know – the very scuzzy things that YOU’VE done to get your OWN site plastered all over the web… But where you don’t mention that on the Web Creation site, and only include it in a cheesy blog article on that horrific SEO Nurse blog. The one that’s just a front to promote your other offerings…
So for crying out loud Darren. Please either clean up your SEO blog and learn how to use Twitter for anything OTHER than spam. Or maybe you might want to shut down your SEO Nurse forum – the one that’s polluted with SPAM LINKS and nothing but SPAM LINKs. http://seonurse.mybb3.org/search-engine-optimisation-by-seonurse-f2.html-sid=919bc82d899193d6643dd9d7f84ecf77
At the end of the day, fair play to them, they seem to have 5000 projects completed, 100 staff members (15 based in the UK) and they seem to be doing alright for themselves… but as far as the SEO is concerned… its Bullshit..
So here’s an award for them..that they can genuinely have on the website… the SEOBullshit award
Oh and just to let you readers know, during our research the team found an open Mysql access point, we informed them of this and it has since been fixed… while we may think there seo blog is bullshit… hackers and crackers aren’t part of the deal.
Topics: Notable Nut Jobs | 36 Comments »
Posted on 18 February 2010 by Dom Hodgson
Dom Hodgson is a Blogger, Podcaster, Conference Organiser and SEO, he also enjoys long walks on the beach, getting caught in the rain and making cookies.
thehodge has written 1 articles for SEO Bullshit
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