Jill Whalen -- The SEO Bitch

On this page we will illustrate from a variety of sources some of the erroneous and false information that she passes off as the gospel. Unfortunately, through some clever branding she has established a fairly large following of web masters and SEO novices. She claims to have 27,000 people on the distribution list for her frequent newsletters.

The Counter Claims

We feel a duty to the SEO profession to counter some of these false claims and assertions. We will post articles from, and links to, some of the best SEO brains in the business on this page. We are confident that the logic presented in these arguments will help our readers to see the folly of Jill's absurd claims and lead our readers to valid Search Engine Optimization techniques.

Content is King versus Linking is King

I'm going to try and explain the background of the debate about Jill Whalen's Search Engine Optimization claims and the heated disagreement from many other members of the SEO industry.

Jill is generally acknowledged as the oracle and chief proponent of what has become known as the "content is king" school of web site optimization. Her advice can be capsulated as follows. Do carefully keyword research. Include the keywords in the page title. Write approximately 250 words of keyword rich content on the site. Use the keywords judiciously in headings and in the alt tags of image links.

She then proceeds to minimize all other forms of Search Engine Optimization. She acknowledges that links are ok, but criticized and derides any aggressive linking scheme including reciprocal linking.

She vehemently denies that hyphenated domain name can have any value. In fact she characterizes them as spammy and has publicly stated that if she were Google she would do extra scrutiny of any site using them on the grounds that they must be spamming the search engines.

Because of her fierce protection of her own limited set of optimization tools a dichotomy has grown up and now it appears there are people saying that content has no value and only linking matters.

This of course is not strictly accurate either. You can find websites with no keyword rich content that have good rankings as a result of their links. And you can find pages with very few links that rank well for the keywords in their title or content. The truth of the matter is that a good site will have both content and lots of links.

Jill has invited much of this upon herself because long before this site existed, she publicly insulted and berated anyone who dared to suggest that there was either more than content or that things other than content might carry more weight.

Listed in this section will be many articles written by a number of respected and successful SEO practitioners that will challenge and often ridicule Jill's limited view of SEO. I invite you to read what these people have said and come to you own conclusions.

This article is by John Scott of Internet Marketing Research

Keyword & Descriptive Domains for SEO

I would estimate that over 95% of all websites on the Internet are operated by small one-man shows. The majority of websites on the Internet do not have the financial resources to launch a million dollar advertising campaign. And with hundreds or thousands of websites competing for any given set of keywords, these folks need to use every SEO tactic in the book if they want a decent amount of exposure.
One of these tactics is to use keyword - or "descriptive" - domains.

Anchor Text

Google at present puts the most weight on anchor text. Page-elements SEO proves itself ineffective day in and day out. H1 tags, page titles, and keyword density are feather-weight in comparison to the power of anchor text.

How does a keyword domain benefit from the weight Google puts on anchor text? It's rather easy:

1. You choose a keyword domain. For example, Hosting.com.

2. Whenever others link to your site using the domain, site name, or URL as link text (www.Hosting.com, Hosting.com or http://www.hosting.com/) you benefit from the optimized anchor text.

How People Link

One high profile SEO has stated that the powerful anchor text benefit can be had without using keyword domains. "Just ask those people linking to you to use your keywords in the link text." What an absolutely fantastical statement! If I ask the Open Directory to link to my sites using my keywords in the link text, does anybody actually suppose they would comply with my request? And, directories aside, does anybody have time to go chase down every link and beg the webmaster to change the link text?

The fact is, the vast majority of website owners link to other sites using the domain as anchor text. Of 94 pages linking to iPowerWeb, the majority used the link text "iPowerWeb".

# 47 used the link text iPowerWeb
# 17 used the link text iPowerWeb.com
# 13 used the link text http://www.ipowerweb.com
# 10 used banners
# 2 used the link text click here
# 1 used the link text iPower
# 1 used the link text Powered by IpowerWeb.com
# 1 used the link text IpowerWeb Hosting
# 1 used the link text Hosting IpowerWeb.com
# 1 used the link text 500 MB eCommerce Hosting

In a forum, we asked if webmasters would be willing to link to iPowerWeb using the link text "Cheap Web Hosting". None of those who responded were willing to link to to iPowerWeb using the optimized link text:

# I would use "iPowerWeb" and if they don't like it, they can shove it.
# I would use "iPowerWeb" because it's the name of the website/company.
# "iPowerWeb." Last I checked they weren't really cheap.
# The name of the link should be the name of the company. If they want the "cheap web hosting" part it can be in the description next to the link/company name.

Insofar as we know that Google attaches the most weight to the anchor text of inbound links, we can be assured that iPowerWeb has successfully secured the top position for the search phrase, "iPowerWeb". Unfortunately, that search term does not drive a lot of traffic, so iPowerWeb is forced to spend literally hundreds of dollars every day on pay-per-click search engines.

If they had used a descriptive keyword domain along the lines of "Hosting.com", more webmasters would likely link to the site using the link text, "Hosting.com", and they would be able to more successfully target search terms which include the competitive keyphrase, "hosting".

"But," you say, "Monster.com is #1 for the search term Jobs and that site doesn't use the word Jobs in the domain. If they can do it, so can I!"

Are you Monster.com? Do you have the financial resources of Monster.com? Do you have the kind of market saturation Monster.com has bought with millions of dollars? If the answer is no, you might want to consider making SEO easier for yourself and using a descriptive domain name.

The Keyword Domain Myths

The myth of keyword-rich domains not being conducive to SEO purposes has been perpetuated for way too long, and quite frankly I'm tired of seeing it written about in forums by SEO pretenders.

A simple understanding of how search engines use anchor text in ranking is enough to dispel these myths.

Keyword vs. Branding

Keyword or branded domain? It's a question that makes no sense. Brand is credibility. To say that keyword domains/ descriptive domains cannot be credible is ludicrous.

Pets.com is a keyword domain. WebmasterWorld.com is a descriptive domain. Internet.com is a keyword domain. Branding has nothing to do with the domain. Amazon could set up shop on some silly domain like Hey-Dudes-We-Sell-Stuff.com and they would still retain their credibility and brand worth.

The Keyword Domain Penalty Myth

This is more wishful thinking than rational thought. It is a theory attributed mostly to Jill Whalen, unofficial spokesman of incompetent SEO's everywhere.

This theory states that Google will "wisen up" to the evil SEO types using keyword domains to grab top rankings on competitive keywords. The proposed wisening up involves Google implementing an algorithm which will prevent a keyword domain from benefiting from anchor text attributed to the keyword domain.

For an example, take the domain Webmaster-Forum.net. Because the domain contains the keywords Webmaster and Forum, those two words would automatically be marked as non-creditable, and the any anchor text bonus seen in the search engine ranking would be removed. If one were to link to the site using the anchor text SEO Forum, the anchor text SEO would count; but the anchor text Forum would be nullified.

As I mentioned, this is a theory expounded by dim-witted SEO’s. There is absolutely no credibility to this theory. In fact, if Google were to implement this entirely impractical theory, Google.com would not rank #1 in a search for "Google"; Yahoo.com would not rank #1 in a search for "Yahoo"; Netscape.com would not rank #1 in a search for "Netscape" insofar as those sites contain those words in their domains. Google would still rank #1 in a search for "search engine", but not for the keyword contained within its domain.

The Phone Test

Another issue often brought up by amateurs who don't understand the benefits of keyword domains is the phone test. One learning-impaired SEO asked me:

Do you want to answer the phone by saying, "Hello, this is John from stupidkeyword1-stupidkeyword2-stupidkeyword3.com."?

Common sense will tell you that my web hosting staff answers the phone with, "Quality Web Hosting. How may we help you?"

The Impaired CTR Myth

Another theory put forth by the ever imaginative Jill Whalen states that consumers are less likely to click through to a keyword domain based site. According to this theory, in the consumer's mind a keyword domain is a bad thing and a non-keyword domain is a good thing.

Wishful thinking at best.

Everyday thousands of searches are done for keyword domains, even when no functioning site exists on that domain. Monster.com holds and maintains Jobs.com specifically for this reason; even though Jobs.com is a simple doorway to Monster.com, thousands of searches are done for Jobs.com every month, and thousands more are typing the domain directing in their browser's address bar.

Some of the most profitable sites on the Internet are keyword domains; the inherent value of a keyword domain will endure no matter who owns it.

Not even a hyphen deters the average consumer from clicking through. Concrete-Home.com, Webmaster-Forum.net, Suzuki-Bikes.com are just a few hyphenated domains which achieve impressive traffic.