Spam

OK, this isn't strictly speaking a Taekwondo topic. Ever do a Google search and end up looking at a page that doesn't help you at all and is just there to show you a bunch of ads? Since redesigning the site, traffic has dropped right off, and it seems to be falling lower and lower for the keyword "taekwondo" in the Google results pages. It did get as high as page two, but the redesign has obviously had an affect as I'm now hovering at about page 6. Nothing to worry about - I fully expected a drop in SERPS as a direct result of completely remaking the site; things WILL improve when I finish getting the site put together and then work on a few more important backlinks. I also made the mistake of getting too many backlinks too fast when first putting the site online (sounds mad, but that's how it is - Google punishes "obvious" attempts to get high positions in it's index for competitive keywords).

What's bugging me is two of the sites that Google returns on page one for a search of the keyword "taekwondo". The taekwondo.com isn't a website at all - it's just ads and no content whatsoever. A real shame that the domain is in the hands of a spammer when someone could make good use of it. The taekwondo.net site also lands on page one. At first glance, it looks to be a fairly relevant result. An online community for Taekwondo practitioners. Looking at it with a critical eye though, this looks like a commercial venture, rather than a legitimate attempt to provide a useful service to worldwide Taekwondo practitioners. There is nothing on the site to let you know who is actually running it, and what affiliation they have with Taekwondo. My guess is that there isn't any. The WHOIS info for the domain is hidden - I wonder why. The site itself encourages people to basically populate the site with Taekwondo relevant information, which in turn will presumably strengthen it's page one position on Google, keep the hits and (more importantly of course) the AD revenue Dollars rolling in. A close inspection of taekwondo.net revealed it doesn't allow you to backlink to you own website/blog either on their forums, or even in your profile page. An important consideration as basically they will only get links in, and never link out. From a Google perspective, this adds weight to the value and relevance of the site. Wikipedia basically works that way (although I am NOT saying Wikipedia is an irrelevant result for any search engine to show on a topic).

While I'm on the "internet" thing...this Blog page is a pain. I can get every other page of my site to validate on the w3 validator except the blog. Blogger be damned, sort out your code!