With just four more sleeps until Christmas day, there is not much time left to get everything prepared for the big day. That includes any last (LAST!) minute shopping and getting enough food, wine and supplies for the family Christmas dinner. In this blog we will give you a checklist of everything that you could ever possibly need to do or have done by the big day, this checklist includes preparing for the Christmas day dinner (whether you are hosting it or not!)

• Tidy house, as to avoid snooty Aunt or mother-in-law commenting on dusty skirting boards!
• Make sure that you have enough cutlery, crockery, seating, and table space space for the Turkey, vegetables and guests!
• Ensure white wine, beer and soft drinks are chilled thoroughly, red wine is ‘breathing’ and spirits are easy to hand!
• Tidy house again.
• Hide any valuable ornaments, expensive presents or anything you do not want breaking!
• Replace crystal glasses with plastic cups.
• Get kids to decorate the dining table.
• Check dining table.
• Re-do dining table.
• Prepare smile for greeting guests.
• Ensure children’s manners are fully functional for greeting guests and for taking coats .
• Have a healthy supply of ‘Hi, how are you?’ or ‘ Yes, I’m very well, Thank You!’.
• Wear the garish new jumper bought by the Aunt that you see once a year, just to make her happy.
• Ensure ‘normal’ jumper is at hand to replace garish jumper as soon as Aunt leaves.
• Mops, brushes and bin bags should be close to hand to clean up any spills, accidents or breakages!
• Remember exactly who has bought you what for Christmas and what you have bought everyone else, to avoid any embarrassing mix ups!
• Have enough anecdotes, witty stories and polite chit chat for Christmas dinner
• As soon as the dinner is finished, put the turkey in the fridge, for boxing day lunch/ hangover sustenance.
• Tidy the table and ask if the food was OK, respond politely to the ‘Oh yes dear, it was lovely’.
• Offer around port, sherry, wine, beer, tea, coffee, mince pies, cheese or any other festive goodies.
• Say farewell to Aunt.
• Remove garish jumper.
• Put latest Christmas Number One on. Watch uncle and children dance around (ridiculously).
• Bid farewell to guests.
• Sigh relief, estimate damage and clean up time.
• Send kids to bed, despite their want to play with their toys and party poppers!
• Go to bed yourself and sleep- You’ve earned it!

We hope that you find this checklist of some use. Position Gold try to make everything run as smoothly as possible, even though Christmas never ever goes to plan (ours don’t anyway!). Good luck with the last minute preparations!

Within this entry to the SEO Manual (Search Engine Optimisation) we will discuss why the technique known as Link Laundering is unethical and considered unfair.

With all Black Hat techniques they try to ‘trick’ the search engines into believing that the website in question deserves to be ranked higher than the ones below as it is the most relevant. Laid out in Googles Webmaster Guidelines it states that anyone using unethical techniques to gain an advantage over someone else in the SERP can potentially be penalised or banned.

So why exactly is it bad?

The main reason link laubdering is unethical is because it dupes the search engines into thinking that the website is more relevant and beneficial to the users searching for a particular keyword than all the other websites. Depending on the niche targeted the SERP’s can get diluted with websites that are only ranking because of Black Hat techniques; quite annoying really when tryinf to find legitimate information, products or services.

The fact that the owner of the legit website can most likely be the owner of thousands of other spammy sites used to send links to and from means that the whole internet is getting full of irrelvant junk that affects a users experience whilst browsing and searching.

Many Black Hat methods are used by owners of MFA (Made For Adsense) websites which generate money by having users click on adverts. These especially are cropping up a lot around the web as webmasters try to earn an extra bit of cash whilst not costing much these days to start your own website/s.

Penalties

If Google finds out that you have been using unethical techniques to gain an unfair advantage the website in question will most probably be penalised. This may be a few places dropped or it may even mean a ban from being indexed. This means the website will never show up again in a Google search.

Once baned many Black Hat SEO’s don’t mind as they will have many other websties; but if it happens to a legit site then all forms of Black Hat SEO must be removed and a reinclusion request sent to Google.

Summary

The use of any Black Hat technique is unethical and can incur penalties. With Link Laundering especially links can sometimes be traced by to the legit site; especially if you know how to look for the links with internet tools such as SEO toolbar.

Penalties are dished out and it is ignorant to think that a website can get away with it.