OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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If you’re not a subscriber of McAfee, you probably don’t see the little green, grey, and red icons that appear next to your website in Google’s search results pages.

Green means you’re a good site.

Grey means they haven’t a clue about your site.

Red means you are a bad site or connected to a bad site.

Well…

We were getting about 1,000 unique organic hits per week for one of the Overcome Everything sites, and like a stone, it plummeted on the page and in hits. When I checked the site out on Google, I saw the BLASTED red X. It really threw me.

I mean, the site is an ADD site, and it’s a PR5. Quality site. No nastiness.

So, I clicked on the X, and found that we’re being penalized because we use HyperTracker.com for tracking links. Well…

That’s just crap.

We had to remove all the links from HyperTracker and are waiting to get our green X back.

If I were HyperTracker, I think I’d sue. McAfee is losing customers for HyperTracker, and their service isn’t 100% but it’s pretty good. Now, we fear to use it at all for the bad connotation. Will Google eventually see that red X, too, and say that our site is in a “bad neighborhood” and lower our page rank and lose our first page position, as well? Better not happen.

As an SEO, I think it totally sucks. McAfee is targeting the wrong sites and I plan to write them a long letter explaining how they’re mucking things up. I’ve been a customer since I’ve been online, and that’s 12 years now, and I’m thinking of switching services.

I hear the free virus scans are good.

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