Jul 7 2008
Jeremy Schoemaker

Wohl Optics New Advanced SEO Technique

By Jeremy Schoemaker 73 comments

In Wohl Opticals Terms And Conditions page located here:

http://www.wohloptics.com/terms.htm#external

External Links to the Site:

All links to the Site must be approved in writing by Wohl Optics, except that Wohl Optics consents to links in which: (i) the link is a text-only link containing only the name “Wohl Optics”; (ii) the link “points” only to www.WohlOptics.com and not to deeper pages;(iii) the link, when activated by a user, displays that page full-screen in a fully operable and navigable browser window and not within a “frame” on the linked website; and (iv) the appearance, position, and other aspects of the link may neither create the false appearance that an entity or its activities or products are associated with or sponsored by Wohl Optics nor be such as to damage or dilute the goodwill associated with the name and trademarks of Wohl Optics or its Affiliates. Wohl Optics reserves the right to revoke this consent to link at any time in its sole discretion.

How in the hell could they possibly enforce this?

What would happen if everyone linked to this post with Wohl Optics as the anchor text =P.

  1. Stuart said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    Wow, that would make me rebel from linking to them. :)

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  2. Gref said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    Shoe, I know you got approval in writing before posting that link.

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  3. Feed My Wii said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    wow that’s advanced seo right there. Or just really lame link strategy. Note to self never link to Wohl Opticals.

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  4. Felix said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    haha, me too

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  5. corey said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    Wohl Optics: We Own Hyper Linkings

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  6. Greg said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    Shoe, did you get permission to post that link? It’s not to the home page.

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  7. ddn said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    lolz

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  8. Beau Fernald said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    How clever of them to use reverse psychology! Get everyone to “fight back” by linking, Digging, Stumbling Upon, and blogging their site.

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  9. Kevin L said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    They must have had trouble with someone to get all lawyered up. I do not see how they can enforce it though. Links will happen.

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  10. Hustle Strategy said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    that is great stuff. i was going quote individual sections and lol them, but i would have to quote the whole thing.

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  11. Kevin Boss said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    haha, how cute

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  12. Tuppy Glossop from Job Is a Four Letter Word said on July 7th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

    Seeing as I’m an old, old man (IOW, I’ve been doing this about ten years now) … this used to be very common. Wohl is just being old school about it (or more likely, they haven’t updated their site for years).

    I used to run a content portal site for the Time Warner cable franchise in Minneapolis when they first started selling RoadRunner cable modem service. I remember having to go through corporate legal channels sometimes in order to link to certain media sites … and Time Warner owned the damn things in many cases … Time, CNN, Money, etc, etc. And heaven forbid you wanted to “deep link” to anything but the front page.

    So yes, this is completely insane … but let me tell ya, you young whippersnappers, back when the Internet was powered by steam and we had to carve html on stone tablets, this is how it was! And we liked it like that!

    Kids today, don’t know they’ve been born, tsk tsk … and stay off my lawn, you dang varmints!

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  13. Catfish SEO said on July 7th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    These guys are hilarious. Next they will say that if you don’t pronounce their name correctly, you must quit looking at the site.

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  14. Dave said on July 7th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    hahaha. This is great. 1) It’s great that they actually put this garbage in their TOS 2) if this post would outrank them for their own name 3) That shoe is using the idiocy of this company, along with the eagerness for this company to get smoked, to get linsk to his own blog. Brilliant I say!

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  15. Todd Mintz said on July 7th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    The work of a misguided lawyer who charged a large fee for a paragraph that people will laugh at.

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  16. Noviece SEO said on July 7th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    Want to see something really funny. Visit their homepage then scroll all the way to the bottom. See those dots?? Run your mouse over them………… hhhhhhhhhh What do you think??

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  17. Winning Startups said on July 7th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    This is bizarre. I’ve never heard of such a thing. How do you find this stuff???

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  18. Mitchell Blatt, JSB said on July 7th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Excuse me while I engage in some illegal actions:

    Wohl Newsletter
    Online Catalog
    TOC
    LOLZ~!
    Can I Use a New Frame?

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  19. netmeg said on July 7th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    I guess that means they don’t want to show up Google, Yahoo and MSN if their SERPS don’t appear in compliance with the above.

    The search engines oughta take ‘em up on that.

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  20. Zak Show said on July 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    WTF is that?! is the first time when I knew about this, Weird!

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  21. Stefanie said on July 7th, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Working in retail, I’ve actually seen a number of companies that require you to agree not to optimize for certain words if you become one of their retailers - and not just trademarked stuff, either. I’ve seen documents that say you can’t use certain phrases on your product page, your meta tags, your Google AdWords…

    …but this is easily the most obnoxious search-related policy I’ve ever seen, given that it appears to apply to anyone who happens upon their site.

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  22. Tom said on July 7th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    It looks like there server could not handle the load. It is down as of 4:48 pm Eastern.

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  23. Joe said on July 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    Everybody reading this comment is allowed to send me money; however, it must be in cash (large bills only), in a sealed yellow envelope with my first, middle, and last name on it, and delivered to me at home on Tues only between 2:45-3:00 pm.

    Paypal, checks, money orders, wire transfers, and credit cards will not be accepted. I appreciate your business.

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  24. Goran Website said on July 7th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    A great way to get bloggers talking about them, and maybe just linking to them “because”. Interesting strategy.

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  25. Goran Website said on July 7th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    Exactly that Beau, its brilliant.

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  26. Goran Website said on July 7th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Not sure what happened but when I go and check out their site I get a 500 server error, lol.

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  27. RacerX said on July 7th, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    Great find…that’s funny!

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  28. Paul said on July 7th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Well what ever they have to do I guess. It is a new internet, so get with the times.

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  29. Mike said on July 7th, 2008 at 6:00 pm

    This is the anchor text of a link to a non-existent page at Wohls. Take that!

    Hope I didn’t just violate some 404 law that I’m not aware of. :P

    Maybe those jackasses are onto something… I think I’ll either start charging people $10 each to link to me, or maybe just start killing anyone that links to me. I guess it will depend on my mood at the time. ;)

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  30. Ruslan said on July 7th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

    Thank you, it was new information for me

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  31. marhgil said on July 7th, 2008 at 9:32 pm

    sounds like LOL Optics :)

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  32. Jimmy Daniels said on July 7th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

    Hah, this page is already number 5 in the rankings.

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  33. Working Man Design said on July 7th, 2008 at 11:58 pm

    Who wouldn’t want link love? Weird.

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  34. Bradford Knowlton said on July 8th, 2008 at 2:11 am

    Something is fishy…

    If you goto the opening page of their site, and review the source code there is approx 1/2 dozen links, with the anchor text of “.”, now why would an optical website be linking to any of these sites:
    http://www.LongIslandSewer.com
    http://www.nassaurubbish.com
    http://www.lirubbishremoval.com

    Something doesn’t make sense. I’m wondering if either the site had a recent SEO overhaul and the seo company traded in some links or it was hacked by an SEO firm? None of the pages which it links to seem to have any links back to the optical site?

    I hate to say it, but I wonder if this is either a paid post by the company or a publicity stunt by Shoemoney Media to promote this site as their client?

    Puzzled,
    Bradford Knowlton
    http://x86v.com

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  35. Wilson said on July 8th, 2008 at 4:41 am

    You are right, but a little Javascript (or PHP) code on your pages can prevent people from using your content in a frame to. And with better results I guess …

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  36. shamess said on July 8th, 2008 at 6:29 am

    I think it’s a common clause to put in TOSs. I don’t know if they still do, but Neopets’ used to say that you couldn’t link to any of their web pages except the front page. They obviously don’t enforce that though; there are dozens of help websites linking to all sorts of pages.

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  37. Ryan. said on July 8th, 2008 at 6:57 am

    Haha, that’s hilarious. How can hey enforce that?

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  38. Hustle Strategy said on July 8th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    i hope you have written permision…

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  39. Geiger said on July 8th, 2008 at 11:33 am

    That’s like saying, You can’t talk about us without you telling us it’s ok.

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  40. nate said on July 8th, 2008 at 11:58 am

    Pretty clever on their part. For the record…none of you are allowed to link to me either. EVER. Just DON”T DO IT!

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  41. nate said on July 8th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    Pretty clever on their part. for the record, none of you can link to me either. EVER. I’m telling you, DON’T DO IT!

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  42. Ranked Hard said on July 8th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    Don’t link to our deep pages. Of course not, why would they want people to do anything that might help their SEO?

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  43. Ranked Hard said on July 8th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    Put a deep link to them on your site and find out. They’ll call you up kicking and screaming and spazing until you take it down. Trust me, I’ve done it. They scream at you until their heads pop off.

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  44. Make Money Talks said on July 8th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    Can i put that link in my comment :)

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  45. Popular Wealth said on July 8th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    Simply put, they cannot enforce it. Why? Because nothing makes me agree to those terms.

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  46. Elisha Terada said on July 8th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    Would SEO matters so much? I had a blog which got most access from google search. But apparantly, most people did not stay for long time for the quality of contents. Since then I started to focus more on providing better contents.

    http://www.marketingnavi.com

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  47. Eva White said on July 8th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

    I wonder why they put up such a policy if they know that they can’t enforce it and it is almost illegal. Is it for the publicity?

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  48. Popular Wealth said on July 9th, 2008 at 1:08 am

    No, unfortunately they are serious and at least ONE individual has successfuly enforced a ruling against someone linking to the company site (later overturned). It’s most likely a ploy to potentially defend against a competitor.

    “Our prices are WAY lower than Whols” is what they don’t want.

    Google would be out of business if a judge stops linking.

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  49. How -To Squidoo - Best Lens for Website Promotion said on July 9th, 2008 at 1:40 am

    LMAO……OHNO!!! You just broke the TOS!!!!!!

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  50. Amir Ahmad | MindValley Labs said on July 9th, 2008 at 2:32 am

    Hehehe, that’s just hilarious!

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  51. Berry said on July 9th, 2008 at 3:50 am

    I just wonder what they are going to do with that !

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  52. vitalis said on July 9th, 2008 at 7:02 am

    you are 100% right

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  53. Brad Blogging.com - Personal Blog Tips And Blog Help said on July 9th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    I wish them the best of luck with their absurd TOS. ;)

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  54. Affiliate Marketing Blog said on July 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    :-o! I am reporting you to the FBI sir!!! Hahahaha…

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  55. Zak Show said on July 9th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    Yes, me too! Weird!

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  56. Dick said on July 10th, 2008 at 6:35 am

    Haha…
    They are funny guys

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  57. jim said on July 10th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    It’s amazing how foolish old school companies are… to think you can enforce this is amazing.

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  58. Forumistan said on July 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

    Thats just hilarious…

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  59. IMFreakz said on July 10th, 2008 at 10:46 pm

    :LOL:
    How do you find this stuff?

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  60. Web Marketeer said on July 11th, 2008 at 1:55 am

    A touch of linkbait here, courtesy of Jeremy. Dunno how effective this strategy will be in the long term though!

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  61. Web Marketeer said on July 11th, 2008 at 2:03 am

    Gotta love them lawyers….the world will be such a better place without them and their expensive pieces of paper…hahahaha

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  62. Web Marketeer said on July 11th, 2008 at 2:05 am

    I smell fish too….could it be the Rand variety….LOL

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  63. PPC said on July 12th, 2008 at 7:35 am

    Why not? I dare you to!

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  64. PPC said on July 12th, 2008 at 7:36 am

    Make that me three….what kind of a comment was that?

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  65. PPC said on July 12th, 2008 at 7:38 am

    I must be honest and say that I smell a rat here….seems like choice linkbait to me. How did you across this Shoe?

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  66. petnos said on July 13th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    this men are crazy, i think:)

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  67. Rasim said on July 13th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    The idea is that if you tell people not to do something, they do it more. :)
    I wonder if they try to measure how many weekly emails they get and see what kind of websites want to link to them.
    As for enforcing, there is not much they can do, except run a regular “link:” query on google and figure out who links to them without the “permission”. :)
    This may be a move to just tell google “hey, why did you penalize our pagerank? Look at our TOS, they linked to us without permission.” :)

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  68. Affiliate Confession said on July 13th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    Srsly lame!

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  69. Robert said on July 14th, 2008 at 9:21 am

    Pretty funny.

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  70. Godaddy Coupons and Promo Codes said on July 17th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

    Only one way to find out. Lets do it!

    [Reply]

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  73. How to Get Designer Eyeglasses, CHEAP at Dellanave said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:01 pm

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