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Even HTML Websites Can Be Hacked – A Case Study

We all know that WordPress websites and blogsites can be hacked and can actually be targets for spammers, but did you know that regular websites can be targets too?

Here’s something I just saw recently that was very concerning to me.

A customer came to me recently and said that his daughter was reading his website and noticed a few funny words like biking in his kitchen spice selling website content. He asked me to take a look. This is what I found:

  • The stylesheet on the website had been changed to override all underlines and colors on the links.
  • Keyword dense anchor text had been scattered throughout the website and links to biking and travel sites inserted randomly in the content.

The links were were difficult to find in the content as one, there were not that many, and two link underlining had been turned off globally.

What is very concerning to me is that this was a silent attack, very subtle, small, and did not impact overall readability or appearance of the site. Most of all however was the site was just a five page regular HTML site.

This means that any website can be attacked for spammy purposes. The biggest key to identification is if link underlines are turned off and colored to match the rest of the text. Although this can be done for separate links and not globally, keeping an eye on your website big or small, HTML or WordPress is definitely now in order.

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Understanding Google AdWords Express

Nancy McCord, of McCord Web Services, (a Google AdWords Certified Partner) explains when you would want to use Google AdWords Express. This streamlined automated version of Google AdWords is a great platform for local selling business owners who have a low click budget and do not want to hire an AdWords account manager.

 

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Big Brands Violate Traditional SEO Practices and Still Get Organic Placement

Google’s Panda and Penguin updates have turned the web upside down leaving SEO experts struggling to understand the what it takes to now earn top organic placement. In this recent article from Website Magazine (a publication that I really like), some tips are revealed that may help you to update your SEO strategy.

First, it appears that big brands are breaking all the rules and getting or retaining organic placement. There are some important take-aways we can glean from the research done for this article.

1. Size and authority of your website are key for organic placement. A 5 page website will never be able to garner organic placement when competing with larger well placed website. Blogging remains the very best way to quickly build authoritative content for small to medium sized businesses who want to compete with big brands.

2. Facebook shares will impact your organic placement. Twitter activity is down the list to number six for impact, but Facebook social signals remain a key indicator of success in placement on Google. That means not just posting on Facebook but having people share your posts that contain links.

3. The content in the <h1> tag and the volume of content on a page for big brands do not appear to impact organic placement.

“Surprisingly, the data show a negative correlation between these factors and rankings – contradicting traditional SEO theory,” explains Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics’ CTO. “So, not having keywords in headlines or having less text on a page seems to be associated with sites that rank higher.”

That’s interesting news pointing out that authority of a site actually counteracts the keyword density and using keywords in the <h1> tags for big brand sites. However, that does not mean that smaller brands cannot and should not optimize their page code, but do it smarter and in a natural readable format.

4. Too much advertising on a page even for big brands appears to impact organic placement. This is a direct impact from Google’s Panda and Penguin updates. It doesn’t mean you cannot have ads on your page, but need to not have your page all about ads.

In a nutshell, here are the factors Website Magazine says are important. Make sure to read the full article as it is really pretty helpful.

  1. Facebook shares
  2. Number of backlinks
  3. Facebook total
  4. Facebook comments
  5. Facebook likes
  6. Tweets
  7. Percent of no-follow backlinks – interesting this is a factor too!
  8. Keywords in domain name.
  9. Percent of backlinks with keywords – you’ll take a hit for too many with SEO anchor text

 

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Bing Webmaster Tools Offer Real Help for Understanding Your Website

In the last few weeks Bing has upgraded its webmaster control panel from insignificant to significant. In fact, in many ways Bing Webmaster Tools make Google Webmaster Tools appear superfluous.

In the new Bing interface here are some new things you can now do:

  • Link Explorer. You can now review backlinks for your own Bing verified site or for pages on a competing website.
  • SEO Analyzer. Get real page specific help highlighted for you with recommendations.
  • SEO Report. Bing will even create a report for you of which pages in your site need code help for better optimization.
  • Canonical Alerts. Bing will let you know if it finds a problem in your message box.
  • URL Removal tool. Don’t like a URL? Get rid of it from the Bing index tied to your site.
  • Keyword Research. Bing integrates a keyword search tool in their site helping you to focus on optimizing your website for better search terms.

Personally I find many of the tools very user friendly and helpful. I think Bing has done a wonderful job at integrating these new tools into their webmaster control panel and making them highly understandable and helpful for website owners and site webmasters.