I’ll be sharing best practices for assessing and recovering banned sites this next Wednesday at WebmasterWorld Pubcon Las Vegas.

It’s pretty hard to get ‘accidentally’ banned by Google these days. Either someone reports your site for a borderline technique or you are knowingly pushing the boundaries and trigger a flag with the engines. In both cases, there is intent.

We’ve been through the process of advising our friends and clients for the recovery of hundreds of banned sites. It’s not always pretty, but I’ll share what we’ve learned in the process.

In this presentation, I’ll show the most “mortal” sins, and those that generally fall in the “forgivable” category. I’ll share what tools to use to assess your situation and give you one of my own analysis scripts. We’ll end with a sample of an effective re-inclusion letter (modified from Todd Malicoat’s example posted on Search Engine Watch).

It’s sure to be a noteworthy panel with Aaron Shear, Roger Montti and Michael Gray weighing in. See you next week.

We wrapped up another SES conference by dragging everyone down to my house in Santa Cruz and feeding them pizza, pulled pork and wine. I did some of the cooking myself as you can see, and we also had help from a Santa Cruz Catering company named Life Style Culinary, who I rate very highly. Seems like people had fun, which is all that matters.

 

More pictures (taken by my friend Brad Haakenson) Continue reading

There was some surprise and discussion, and borderline witty banter, when I left ClickTracks. Perhaps some people thought that I was gone forever, never to share a Heineken at a trade show again. Well, you're not getting out of it that easily. Now that I no longer work for a vendor, I am free to pontificate, opine and rant at will. I will be developing the curriculum within Market Motive, and helping subscribers squeeze the maximum optimization out of their marketing. That means you'll be hearing plenty from me. My first speaking opportunity is SES San Jose