info [ AT ] redcardinal [ DOT ] ie
Dresses Ireland
Ken points out that ripe.ie is the latest entry to the ever expanding Irish SEO industry.
Welcome ripe.ie. I’d love to say that I look forward to competing with you. Not that I’m terribly worried about your competing offering, but what really worries me is that yet another complete cowboy is claiming to be an SEO.
And as for that number #1 ranking for ‘dresses ireland’… Well given that the domain www.dresses.ie is an exact match for the query, and therefore ranking due to the likelihood that Google views the query as navigational, I don’t think it would last against a little competitive link building. Perhaps the owners of dresses.ie should ask ripe what other terms they rank for? How about ‘dresses Ireland’ or ‘fashion Ireland’? They’re obviously targeting those terms given the homepage title.
So what has ripe.ie done for their €1,950.00 + VAT? Well what would you pay for a link from ripe.ie? How does €325 + VAT per link sound? Because from what I can see that’s about all ripe.ie did for their fee: dressess.ie backlinks from Yahoo!
Ken – I’m even more frustrated now than you with this.
Claiming to be an SEO is one thing but actually charging clients for it is another. To many sharks in the Irish industry Richard and from what I’m seeing its only going to get worse.
He must be very confident by the looks of it, he’s not worried about url canonisation. Honestly, I cant really judge someone on such a basic issue though.
Comment by Gavin — September 13, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
Gavin
If there wasn’t an innocent third party here (dresses.ie) I’d set something up to outrank the site. Not that it would take a huge amount of effort…
Rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — September 13, 2007 @ 8:02 pm
Its a real shame the industry cant protect 3 parties against such cowboys, talk about feeling useless..
Comment by Gavin — September 13, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
[...] Uber design guru and Irish SEO expert call bullshit on another SEO “expert” coming along. Lions playing with their [...]
Pingback by Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » Fluffy Links - Friday 14th September 2007 — September 14, 2007 @ 4:34 am
How about organising an SEO showdown to sort the men out from the boys?
Two similar but not identical sites, a set of target keywords but pretty much fair game apart from spamming. Track the top result on google at 1 , 2 and 3 months out.
I’m not an SEO (apart from my own site), but it would be fun to watch (and learn).
Paul
Comment by Paul Browne - Technology and People — September 14, 2007 @ 9:29 am
Gavin – the only thing we can do is try to educate people about SEO.
Paul – nice idea, but could be fraught with issues. Very difficult to keep all other variables constant to do such a test. No 2 sites are the same. I’d be up for competing in something like this though (if I can find the time…)
Best rgds to both
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — September 14, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
[...] EDIT: Yet another pro in this business has a gRipe with Ripe…… Red Cardnial [...]
Pingback by » Another pro has a gRipe with Ripe » Tom Doyle :: TALK — September 14, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
Is it because of my IP address? I can’t see dresses.ie on the first place, they are 10th:
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=dresses+ireland&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryIE
Comment by rado — September 26, 2007 @ 6:16 am
Hey Rado
Try this.
They rank number 1 for exact domain match… oops, sorry they rank number 1 because of the fine job ripe have done (not).
Rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — September 26, 2007 @ 6:26 am
Richard, let me explain you how Ripe works. They did a very sophisticated linkbait strategy (translation: they did nothing). As a result, they got one quality link from http://www.themenace.com/blog/entry/?entry=95!
I gotta say “Well done, Ripe!”
** Joke **
Comment by rado — September 26, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
I see they changed the look of dresses.ie
Comment by mike — October 17, 2007 @ 9:26 pm
Tripe.ie
You have to hand it to the guy he is in business to make a quick buck. I have been in the same position as this guy before and I can tell you, 90% of people that see these templates don’t like them. He has stated he has done over 70 projects I would say most of these were updates to existing websites.
We need to highlight the templete issue on the web, why not put a warning up on your own website advising people that if they get a template customized 1000 other people will have the same design.
Comment by Derek — October 23, 2007 @ 3:02 pm
@Mike – I see you helped with that.
Do you want to disclose your relationship with ripe.ie?
@Derek – I could make many quick bucks, but I choose not to. I prefer to make lots of bucks supplying a quality service to my clients and partners. I think it’s up to the design industry to better police itself. I couldn’t design a circle, so I’m not the right person to do the policing
Rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — October 24, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
@ Richard – ex-employee
Comment by mike — October 24, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
I note that on Google.ie this page now ranks #8 for the term “dresses”.
Some nice short-tail work there Richard – are you converting all those dress enquiries?
Comment by Gavin Mitchell — December 3, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
Hi Gavin
Sorry for not modding your comment till now – been on hiatus…
Sad isn’t it? One blog post gets me into the top 10, while poor old dresses.ie ponnied up €2k for the privilege.
Thanks for dropping by (previously).
Rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — December 16, 2007 @ 9:37 am