Google Local - Out of Date, Riddled with Spam But Absolutely Worth It »

Posted by Tom_C

Hello hello, today I’m going to talk a little about Google Local. The things I’m talking about aren’t necessarily new or ground-breaking, but I think it’s important to expose them to the Moz readership as Local isn’t something that’s talked about all that often on here and there are quite a few intricacies which you should be aware of when dealing with local optimisation, particularly for clients who have many locations and who rely on using a bulk upload to Google Local.

Before I go any further, there’s some really, really smart people who talk about Google Local optimisation and I’ve been chatting with them recently - I strongly recommend that you check out the further reading at the bottom of this post as they go into a lot more detail about a lot of this stuff than I do (and they probably know more about it than I do too!).

Why Do You Care About Google Local?

There are two reasons to care about Google Local. The first is unbranded traffic. The second is branded traffic.

1) Unbranded Traffic

Over the past 6 months or so Google has become incredibly aggressive with displaying local results in the main listings. These almost always come in the form of a 10-result one-box (kind of like a 10-box, I suppose). It used to be the case that you had to refine your query with a location before you saw any Google Local results, such as Hotels in Leeds:

Notice how this 10-box is the very first result that users see - even appearing 3rd or 4th in the 10-box can generate more clicks than a #1 ranking in the organic results just below. That’s pretty staggering. That means that for these super competitive travel queries, if you want traffic you need to be optimising for the 10-box before you think about optimising for the regular organic listings.

But wait, trouble is on the horizon because Google is becoming even more aggressive with its 10-boxing and it’s starting to display 10-boxes on regular search results without a geographical modifier if Google knows where you’re searching from. Take, for example, a search for ‘IT support‘ which generates the following result for me:

Notice that handy 10-box slipping into the results without me specifying my geographical location? Scary, huh. So in short, generic competitive queries are generating 10-boxes. If you want to grab that head traffic then you’d best go about some Google Local optimisation pretty quick.

2) Branded Traffic

Ok sure, generic queries are generating 10-boxes so that gives me some potential to aim for, but surely my navigational branded search queries are safe, right? Right?! Unfortunately not; take a look at this search for "napoleons casino leeds" (one of my old poker haunts), which generates a local listing above the regular organic result:

Well that’s ok, right? Surely that local result is controlled by me? You would think so, wouldn’t you, but actually in many cases that’s not true. Keep reading below for examples of when this goes wrong.

So that covers WHY you should care about Google Local - now let’s cover some of the issues.

Issues with Google Local

Here are a few of the common issues I have come across dealing with Google Local

Spam, and Lots of It

I recently did an analysis of the top 10 hotel searches in the US as determined by the Google Search Suggest (I know, pretty unscientific but I wanted a random snap shot):

I then analysed the 10 results in the 10-box for each search result - a total of 100 local results - and found that 15 of them were spammed in one of the following ways:

Spam in the main index:

Take a look at this 10-box from ‘hotels in boston’. Can anyone spot the odd one out?

Yeah, of course the last one, which is a locksmith rather than a hotel. Easy. The real question is, how many of you spotted the other odd one out? Look at D carefully - you see that the listing appears correctly - it’s for the Club Quarters Hotel, which is indeed located in Boston, but the URL actually sends you to www.elephantcastle.com (which, incidentally, is a chain of bars which has a location in Boston; it’s not the website for the tube station in London).

The reason for this occurrence is that the Elephant & Castle bar and the Club Quarters Hotel have the same address - and Google is trying to merge the listings and doing a pretty poor job of it.

Spam in the details of the Google Local Index:

Take a look at result C - you see that the hotel listing appears correct but the URL is www.cheap-hotels.usa.net. This certainly isn’t a case of merging listings since the www.cheap-hotels-usa.net URL isn’t a genuine site. So why does this spam happen? Well, it gets even worse - click through to the details (by clicking on the reviews link) and you see this:

It’s a pretty strange listing - not only is the official website not listed, neither is the cheap-hotels-usa site. Instead, it’s now linking to a spam blog on blogspot. Why is this? Well, the reason is that there’s an edit button on the listing. And that leads to a free text edit of the Google Local information, including the URL. I’m really not sure why Google allows this free edit - in the past they’ve come out and said that the majority of edits are genuine and that may be true for niche small stores, but for the main competitive terms it’s just overrun with spam. There’s a few weeks delay on the data that gets edited here feeding back into the main Google Local index which gets displayed in the 10-box, which is why the cheap-hotels-usa URL is still being used in the 10-box.

Here’s the shocking part - if you own a hotel chain and submit a bulk upload to Google Local, this bulk upload isn’t trusted enough to prevent this free text edit function being displayed for your hotel.

Language

So Google Local, which you’d think would be designed to handle local queries, actually sucks really badly at local language searches. The problem is that, as far as I can see, there’s only one Google Local index worldwide compared to all the local indexes you get for google.co.uk, google.fr, google.com, etc. This manifests itself in a few ways, but the most important one is this - only one language version of a page can be listed in Google Local. So if I search for "madrid hotel" in google.co.uk:

And google.es:

You see that I get a combination of .com (English) and .es (Spanish) results. This is handled reasonably well because there’s a leaning towards .es sites in google.es. Cool! But the problem comes when you have two versions of the same content in different languages; whether it’s on a subdomain, subfolder or local TLD, it doesn’t matter to Google Local — you can only have one listing for one location. So the Hotel Regente in the above example (which has multiple languages on the site) can only ever rank with the Spanish homepage, even for searches in the UK, in English. That sucks, right? I really wish there was a way to fix this - Google is really good at detecting this in the regular SERPs, so it’d be great to roll that language/geotargeting detection into the Google Local indexes as well.

Verification

This is the third issue and it relates to the above issues. If you have a large number of geographical locations (physical stores or hotels, for example), then registering them individually can be a real pain. Imagine having to coordinate hundreds of different local verifications all with consistent data and accurate information. But you don’t need to do that, right? Surely you can just submit a bulk upload? Well you CAN, but as shown above a bulk upload just isn’t that trusted by Google, so the only option is to verify them individually which is nigh on impossible if you have many, many locations…

Advice

So what’s the point of this post? Well, it’s two-fold. Firstly, it’s to highlight some of the issues Google Local is facing at the moment so that you can understand better how to optimise your site (or your client’s sites). Secondly, it’s to offer a few tips which you can start mulling over and hopefully put into practice:

1) Don’t rely on a bulk upload unless you have to

Given the ability of webmasters to edit local listings and given the relatively untrusted nature of the bulk upload, I urge you to try and register individually the locations/properties you want in Google Local.

2) Only create one listing for each individual location

Even if you have multiple language pages or multiple properties at the same location, ensure that only one of them is registered with Google Local. At the moment they’re not good at handling businesses with the same address.

3) Think about using KML Geositemaps if you have many locations

If it’s unfeasible to register all of your properties individually (or even while you’re putting that process in place), consider using a Geositemap since this should be more trusted than the bulk upload, as it relies on the same sitemap file verification process which is intrinsically more trusted than the upload process since it’s tied to your domain.

Further Reading

And last but not least, if you want to know more about Google Local, consult these resources as they cover a lot of the issues I’ve touched upon in a lot more detail!

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May 31, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

An Unfortunate Series of Server Events »

Posted by randfish

It’s late night Sunday and rather than bringing you exciting news from the world of search and SEO, I’ve got some explaining to do. For those who hadn’t noticed, SEOmoz has some serious downtime and errors this weekend. Starting early morning Saturday and running through to Sunday, many parts of the site were inaccessible due to either A) an exceptionally unlucky set of simultaneous hardware/software failures on our host and backup servers, or B) the act of a vengeful Norse god (Odin, we’re looking in your direction).

In any case, this catastrophe was exacerbated due to our recent hosting move - whenever you’re shifting host locations, there’s a certain amount of finger crossing to be done, particularly with relation to data backups. Jeff & Mel did a great job here, but this unlucky strike had a few casualties which couldn’t be recovered.

  • Most significant was the loss of the last two weeks of stored data from the Rank Tracker tool. We will again migrate all rankings saved before the Rank Tracker launch, but rankings and settings stored after the launch are not retrievable. We cannot apologize enough for this loss and have taken steps to ensure that this will not happen again.
  • The Rank Tracker tool itself is still down while the migration completes, but should be back up in the next 24 hours. When the service returns, you will find significantly increased limits for manual rankings run per day and for automated rankings as well.
  • A smaller data loss may be noted for saved Linkscape advanced reports. Some reports run in the last day or so may not have been saved. We have added 5 Linkscape credits to all accounts to accommodate this.
  • Blog posts, user profiles, Q+A questions, marketplace profiles and any other database-reliant content created between Saturday afternoon (when the site briefly recovered) and Sunday midday (when our last round of failures/attacks occurred) is irreparably lost. Again, we’re taking steps to ensure that backups will be secure and solid for the future, hopefully making this a one-time only event.
  • Other fragments of data, including some Q+A questions, blog post & YOUmoz images, profile pictures and other database elements from the past 2 weeks may also have suffered. We’ve recovered nearly everything (and possibly got all of them), but if you notice some oddities, this is most likely why.

For PRO members, we’re doing our best to make up this weekend’s events to you with greater access to those tools hit hardest. We’ll also work tirelessly this week (despite the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle) both to prevent future mishaps like this and to provide a high level of support for anything you need.

To our readers, visitors and regulars - I offer my personal apology. I know that you like to read and use SEOmoz on the weekends, and I’m sure this interfered with your regular course of business. We’ve got a great team of developers here at SEOmoz, and I’m incredibly proud of their performance under fire over the last 48 hours. Rest assured that all of us will put our shoulders to the wheel to make data integrity and uptime priorities over the weeks and months to come.

Thanks for your patience and understanding,
Rand Fishkin, CEO

p.s. Our thanks also to ex-mozzer Jane Copland, whose quick eye and catlike reflexes over IM brought the site issues to the attention of our dev team very early on and probably saved us additional heartache.

p.p.s. A few other areas are affected - Labs, Q+A Search & our RSS feed. We’re working to get these back online today as well. If you find anything else, please post in the comments; we appreciate all the help!

UPDATE 2: We’re going to go down for a couple hours around 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern today in order to secure our data in additional locations. We hope to be back up by 3-4pm Pacific this afternoon. You can follow the SEOmoz Twitter account for the latest on this front.

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May 31, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

7 Reasons Why You Might Not Be Making Money As An SEO »

Posted by JoelJonathan

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony because I just don’t even know where to start with this one. Let’s just go for broke and see what happens:

  1. You Can’t Manage People – Even if you think you can “out-SEO” Rand, Rand, Aaron Wall, and Wikipedia to boot while riding a scooter down a hill with one brain tied behind your back as you make fun of Matt Cutts’ momma to his face, then guess what? You still need some skill managing people if you ever want to scale your income up dramatically. After all, even multi-millionaire, 1 hour a day worker Markus Friend pays people to do all of the tedious tasks that he needs done for his mega popular and mega profitable dating website.
  2. You Aren’t Organized – You can only let your list of link partners’ contact info that you should have kept up to date go stale for so long or forget to pay your copywriter for so long or spend too much time trying to find the password for your client’s site for so long, etc. etc. before you begin to see a serious increase in stress and a serious decrease in your productivity and ultimately your money making potential.
  3. You Spend All Day on Forums/Blogs – If the majority of your time is spent reading about SEO instead of doing SEO, then your income will never be what it could be. Of course, I am not saying that reading and learning about SEO is not important, and in fact it is extremely important to always be learning, but you and I both know that it can be easy to justify what is really just mindless browsing as “SEO training”.
  4. You Have No Process – The value of your time decreases if you have to keep repeating and trying to remember steps that you should already have documented. Call it an SEO cheat sheet, call it a list of steps for researching a new niche, call it whatever you want to call it, but write it down and document what your plan of action is so you don’t waste valuable time thinking about what to do instead of thinking about how to best do what you need to do.
  5. You Don’t Take Risks – Whether this means striking out on your own to start your own firm to do SEO work for clients ($ potential if you are good but also some risk) or whether it means getting serious about spending some time and money to do in house SEO for your own website(s) ($$$ potential if you are really good but of course some risk as well), you have to take some risks in order to really maximize your SEO earning potential.
  6. You Are a Cheap Son of a Gun – If you don’t believe in yourself enough to invest in tools that will make you a better SEO, then good luck because that is all you have – luck. Think of yourself and your SEO education as an investment. Pretend you are putting yourself through “SEO School” and spend some money all the while realizing that this investment in yourself will pay off in with a higher future earning potential.
  7. You Treat SEO as a Hobby – I’m going to tell you something that you may not enjoy reading… SEO is work. There, I said it and now I feel better. SEO has fantastic opportunities to make a great deal of money if you are smart, willing to learn, and you work hard. However, the same principles for offline business success hold true online in the SEO realm as well. There is no magic elixir that shoots through your cable modem into your PC and right through your mouse into your fingers that makes any halfhearted lazy SEO effort you might muster up instantly fill up your bank account. Work smarter AND harder and SEO can make you a lot of money. Treat SEO as a hobby at your own risk if your goal is to make money and not just have fun.

I run a domain name tools website and I see a lot of awesome risk takers that work long hours and research domain names until they are blue in the face, and then they pounce on great domain names that will likely make them quite a nice sum of money in the future. On the other hand, there are some who maybe don’t put in the necessary research and just snap up what-ever.info piece of junk domain name they come across that strikes their fancy, hoping that their domain name “lottery ticket” will pay off big in the future.

Be someone who is dedicated to working hard and making a lot of money as an SEO. Hopefully these 7 reasons are a help to you as you strive to be the best SEO you can possibly be and make the most money possible.

 

BONUS REASON: “7 Reasons” just sounds better than “8 Reasons,” but maybe even the #1 thing that can hold back your long term SEO money making potential is a Short Term Focus. A long term focus wants to provide loads of quality content and offer an enjoyable user experience while a short term focus is concerned only with “gaming” the search engines or exploiting flaws in the system with no regard for long term user loyalty. Concentrate exclusively on the short term to your own money making detriment.

DISCLAIMER: I love SEO and think that SEO is a lot of fun. Money is, of course, not everything, and there is nothing wrong with doing SEO purely for enjoyment or as a hobby. That being said, making a lot of money doing SEO is also a lot of fun.

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May 29, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Whiteboard Friday - Path to Conversion »

Posted by great scott!

Acquiring users and getting them to take an action on your site is the absolute core of web marketing. Whether that action is making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a demo…it doesn’t matter, if you’re doing business online, your job is to acquire users and get them to take an action.

There are a million ways to go about this process, but it’s crucial for yourself and your clients to understand the funnel (particularly in terms of search patterns) that takes a potential customer from a vague notion of a want/need to converting on your site. You’re probably thinking that you already know your highest converting search terms, but you may be surprised. Watch this week’s video to learn about some important steps in the conversion funnel that you may have overlooked.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Path to Conversion from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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May 28, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Rewriting the Beginner’s Guide Part X: Measuring and Tracking Success »

Posted by randfish

I’m currently working on re-authoring and re-building the Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, section by section. You can read more about this project here.

Where to Start with Web Analytics

That which can be measured can be improved, and in search engine optimization, measurement is critical to success. Professional SEOs track data about rankings, referrals, links and more to help analyze their campaigns and create road maps for success.

Recommended Metrics to Track

Although every business is unique and every website has different metrics that matter, the following list is nearly universal in appeal. Note that we’re only covering those metrics critical to SEO - optimizing for the search engines - and as such, more general but still important metrics may not be included. For a more comprehensive look at web analytics overall, check out Choosing Web Analytics Key Performance Indicators from Avinash Kaushik’s excellent Web Analytics Blog.

#1 - Search Engine Share of Referring Visits

Search Engine Traffic Share

Every month, it’s critical to keep track of the contribution of each traffic source for your site. Broadly, these include:

  • Direct Navigation (type in traffic, bookmarks, email links without tracking codes, etc.)
  • Referral Traffic (from links across the web or in trackable email, promotion & branding campaign links)
  • Search Engines (queries that sent traffic from any major or minor web search engine)

Knowing the percentage and exact numbers will help you identify strengths and weaknesses and serve as a comparison over time for trend data. If, for example, you see that traffic has spiked dramatically but it comes from referral links with low relevance while search engine and direct type-ins fell, you’ll know you’re actually in much more trouble than the raw numbers would suggest. You should use this data to track your marketing efforts and to serve as a broad yardstick for your traffic acquisition efforts.

#2 - Visits Referred by Specific Search Engines

Search Engine Share

Three major engines make up 95%+ of all search traffic in the US (Yahoo!, MSN/Live & Google), and for most countries outside the US (with the notable exceptions of Russia, China, Japan, Korea & the Czech Republic) 80%+ of search traffic comes solely from Google. Measuring the contribution of your search traffic from each engine is critical for several reasons:

  • Compare Performance vs. Market Share - By tracking not only search engines broadly (as the screenshot above shows), but by country, you’ll be able to see exactly the contribution level of each engine in accordance with its estimated market share. Keep in mind that in sectors like technology and Internet services, demand is likely to be higher on Google (given its younger, more tech-savvy demographic) than in arenas like cooking, sports or real estate (where the percentages might be closer to the estimates from firms like Comscore).
  • Get Visibility Into Potential Drops - If your search traffic should drop significantly at any point, knowing the relative and exact contributions from each engine will be essential to diagnosing the issue. If all the engines drop off equally, the problem is almost certainly one of accessibility. If Google drops while the others remain at previous levels, it’s more likely to be a penalty or devaluation of your SEO efforts by that singular engine.
  • Uncover Strategic Value - It’s very likely that some efforts you undertake in SEO will have greater positive results on some engines than others. For example, we frequently notice that on-page optimization tactics like better keyword inclusion and targeting has more benefit with Live & Yahoo! than Google, while gaining specific anchor text links from a large number of domains has a more positive impact on Google than the others.If you can identify the tactics that are having success with one engine (or that are failing to succeed with others), you’ll better know how to focus your efforts.

If you find your site underperforming at one of the engines (based on broad market share numbers), don’t immediately panic. Remember that search engines have demographics and biases just like any other referral source. For example, in the US, Google’s market share is supposedly between 65-70%, yet the vast majority of sites we’ve ever worked with (and those reported by our friends and colleagues in the search marketing industry) show that 80-85% of traffic share from Google is actually far more common. A number of theories exist to support why this happens:

  1. Yahoo!’s top queries are navigational (their number one query is Google, for example), while Google’s queries are more informational
  2. Many experts believe (and some have private data to suggest that) Yahoo! has a preference for sites participating in their paid inclusion program
  3. Yahoo! refers a large amount of traffic to Yahoo!’s own properties (Google, meanwhile, seems to have a similar love affair with Wikipedia)

Don’t just rely on Comscore, Hitwise or Compete.com data to tell you what percentage of share an engine should provide - make sure to investigate. You can do this by running PPC ads on the various engines (and comparing impression data), checking rankings across the engines (if your Yahoo! rankings are just as good or better than your Google rankings, it’s not missed opportunity, it’s lower volume), and making sure you haven’t made any dumb mistakes (blocking other engines’ spiders, using the meta robots NOODP to control listings at Google, but forgetting to use NOYDIR at Yahoo!, etc.). 

#3 - Visits Referred by Specific Search Engine Terms/Phrases

Top Referring Phrases

The terms & phrases that send traffic are another important piece of your analytics pie. You’ll want to keep track of these on a regular basis to help identify new trends in keyword demand, gauge your performance on key terms and find terms that are bringing significant traffic you’re potentially under-serving (e.g., you rank well and get visits, but don’t have content that helps the searcher accomplish their goal).

You may also find value in tracking search referral counts for terms outside the "top" terms/phrases - those that are important and valuable to your business. If the trend lines are pointing in the wrong direction, you know efforts need to be undertaken to course correct. Search traffic worldwide has consistently risen over the past 15 years, so a decline in quantity of referrals is troubling - check for seasonality issues (keywords that are only in demand certain times of the week/month/year) and rankings (have you dropped, or has search volume ebbed).

#4 - Conversion Rate by Search Query Term/Phrase

Conversion Rates of Various Search Queries

When it comes to the bottom line for your organization, few metrics matter as much as conversion. However, analytics often misstates the impact of conversion rates from the last referral, clouding the true picture of what brought a visitor who "converted." For example, in the graphic above, 4.46% of visitors who reached SEOmoz with the query "check backlinks" signed up to become members during that visit. What we don’t know (at least, from this simple analysis), is how many of those visitors had already signed up, how many signed up during a later visit, or even what percentage of those visits were first-time visitors.

The real value from this sort of simplistic tracking comes from the "low-hanging fruit" - seeing terms/phrases that continually send visitors who convert and increasing focus on both rankings and traffic from that keyword referral as well as improving the landing pages that visitors reach. While conversion rate tracking from keyword phrase referrals is certainly important, it’s never the whole story. Dig deeper and you can often uncover far more interesting and applicable data about how conversion starts and ends on your site.

#5 - Number of Pages Receiving at Least One Visit from Search Engines

Pages Getting Google Traffic

Knowing the number of pages that receive search engine traffic is an essential metric for monitoring overall SEO performance. From this number, we can get a glimpse into indexation (how many pages the engines are keeping in their indices from our site), and, more importantly, watch trends over time. For most large websites (50,000+ pages), mere inclusion is essential to earning traffic, and this metric delivers a trackable number that’s indicative of success or failure. As you work on issues like site architecture, link acquisition, XML Sitemaps, uniqueness of content and meta data, etc. the trend line should rise, showing that more and more pages are earning their way into the engines’ results. Pages receiving search traffic is, quite possibly, the best long tail metric around.

While other analytics data points are also of great importance, those mentioned above should be universally applied to get the maximum value from your SEO campaigns. Additional sources to read on this topic include:

Free Analytics Software

Many very high quality analytics products are available entirely for free. These can be installed either on your web server to collect and analyze log-file based data or in the code on your pages (as javascript) to capture individual visit data. Without software, you’re up a creek - raw log file analysis is extremely tedious and time consuming and many organizations don’t even have the ability to access their logs. Use software and track - and don’t worry - the free options are not only better than nothing, they’re pretty darn good.

Recommended free analytics software packages include:

While choosing can be tough, at the time of publication, our top recommendation is for Google Analytics (so long as you have few privacy concerns and don’t mind the brief data delays), followed closely by Clicky. Once the Yahoo! Web Analytics beta opens to the public, that would also be a top suggestion (and SEOmoz itself has run on Indextools/Yahoo! for the last 3 years). If you cannot use tracking code on your web pages and need a log-file based solution, AWStats is our top recommendation, though any log file based tracking will suffer from the inability to track clickstream paths, first time vs. referring and other important metrics as accurately as cookie/session based software.

Paid Analytics Software

There are dozens (possibly hundreds) of paid analytics solutions, but for the purposes of this guide, we’ll list only the most popular services:

Unfortunately, we don’t have enough experience to recommend one particular package over the others, but you can read some very good analysis and comparisons, including:

Metrics for Measuring Search Engine Optimization

In organic SEO, it can be difficult to track the specific elements of the engines’ algorithms effectively given that this data is not public, nor is it even well-researched. However, a combination of tactics have become best practices, and new data is constantly emerging to help track direct ranking elements and positive/negative ranking signals. The data points covered below are ones that we will occasionally use for our clients’ campaigns and have proven to add value when used in concert with analytics.

Metrics Provided by Search Engines

We’ve already discussed many of the data points provided by services such as Google’s Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft’s Webmaster Tools (in part 8: Search Engine Tools & Services). In addition to these, the engines provide some insight through publicly available queries and competitive intelligence. Below is a list of queries/tools/metrics from the engines, along with their respective applications:

  • Google
    • Google Site Query - e.g., site:seomoz.org - useful to see the number and list of pages indexed on a particular domain. You can expand the value by adding additional query parameters. For example - site:seomoz.org/blog inurl:tools - will show only those pages in Google’s index that are in the blog and contain the word "tools" in the URL.
    • Google Link Query  - e.g., link:www.seomoz.org - unfortunately, in 2004, Google removed most of the value from this query by changing the results to show only a sample (and not even a relative or consistent pattern sample) of links. These can include nofollowed links as well, and are not ordered by importance. We don’t recommend employing this query.
    • Google Trends - available at Google.com/Trends - this shows keyword search volume/popularity data over time. If you’re logged into your Google account, you can also get specific numbers on the charts, rather than just trend lines.
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      Google Trends SEO vs. PPC
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    • Google Trends for Websites - available at Trends.Google.com/websites - this shows traffic data for websites according to Google’s data sources (toolbar, ISP data, analytics and others may be part of this). A logged in user account will show numbers in the chart to indicate estimated traffic levels.
      _
      Google Trends for Websites
      _
    • Google Insights for Search - available at google.com/insights/search - this tool provides data about regional usage, popularity and related queries for keywords.
  • Yahoo! 
    • Yahoo! Site Query - e.g., site:seomoz.org - note that a standard site query will automatically redirect to Yahoo!’s Site Explorer, but advanced queries that include additional parameters such as site:seomoz.org inurl:rand will show Yahoo!’s standard results format. You can use these much in the same way as the Google site query to see the number and list of pages Yahoo! has in their index for a particular site.
    • Yahoo! Link & Linkdomain Queries - e.g., linkdomain:seomoz.org - as with site queries, these will redirect to Yahoo! Site Explorer unless additional parameters are employed. For example, to see only links to SEOmoz.org that have the word "google" in the title tag, you’d use the query - linkdomain:seomoz.org intitle:google. Yahoo!’s link queries are the most robust and accurate of the major engines, but do include nofollow links (and don’t separately mark these, which can cause trouble separate value-passing links).
  • Microsoft
    • MSN Site Query - e.g., site:seomoz.org - just like Yahoo! & Google, MSN allows for queries to show the number and list of pages in their index from a given site. Unfortunately, MSN’s counts are given to wild fluctuation and massive inaccuracy, often rendering the counts themselves useless.
    • MSN IP Query - e.g., ip:216.176.191.233 - this query will show pages that Microsoft’s engine has found on the given IP address. This can be useful in identifying shared hosting and seeing what other sites are hosted on a given IP address.
    • MSN AdCenter Labs - available at adlab.microsoft.com/alltools.aspx - a great variety of keyword research and audience intelligence tools are provided by Microsoft, primarily for search and display advertising. This guide won’t dive deep into the value of each individual tool, but they are worth investigating and many can be applied to SEO.
  • Ask.com
    • Ask Site Query - e.g., site:seomoz.org inurl:www - Ask.com is a bit picky in its requirements around use of the site query operator. To function properly, an additional query must be used (although generic queries such as the example above are useful to see what a broad "site" query would normally return).
  • Google Blog Search
    • BlogSearch Link Query - e.g., link:www.seomoz.org/blog - Although Google’s normal web search link command is not particularly useful, their blog search link query shows generally high quality data and can be sorted by date range and relevance.

Employing these queries & tools effectively requires that you have an informational need with an actionable solution. The data itself isn’t valuable unless you have a plan of what to change/build/do once you learn what you need to know (this holds true for competitive analysis as well).

For more detail, see the Professional’s Guide to Advanced Search Operators, an extremely detailed and thorough resource on this subject.

Applying Data to Your Campaigns

Just knowing the numbers won’t help unless you can effectively interpret and apply changes to course-correct. Below, we’ve taken a sample of some of the most common directional signals provided by tracking data points and how to respond with actions to improve or execute on opportunities.

Fluctuation in Search Engine Page & Link Count Numbers

The numbers reported in "site:" and "link:" queries are rarely precise, and thus we strongly recommend not getting too worried about fluctuations showing massive increases or decreases unless they are accompanied by traffic drops. For example, on any given day, Yahoo! reports between 800,000 and 2 million links to the SEOmoz.org domain. Obviously, we don’t gain or lose hundreds of thousands of links each day, but the variability of Yahoo!’s indices means that these numbers reports provide little guidance about our actual link growth or shrinkage.

If you do see significant drops in links or pages indexed accompanied by similar traffic referral drops from the search engines, you may be experiencing a real loss of link juice (check to see if important links that were previously sending traffic/rankings boosts still exist) or a loss of indexation due to penalties, hacking, malware, etc. A thorough analysis using your own web analytics and Google’s Webmaster Tools can help to identify potential problems.

Falling Search Traffic from a Single Engine

If a single engine is sending you considerably less traffic for a wide range of search queries, a small number of possibilities exist:

  • You’re under a penalty at that engine for violating search quality or terms of service guidelines. Check out this post on how to identify/handle a search engine penalty.
  • You’ve accidentally blocked access to that search engine’s crawler. Double-check your robots.txt file and meta robots tags and review the Webmaster Tools for that engine to see if any issues exist.
  • That engine has changed their ranking algorithm in a fashion that no longer favors your site. Most frequently, this happens because links pointing to your site have been devalued in some way, and is especially prevalent for sites that engage in manual link building campaigns of low-moderate quality links.

Identify the problem most likely to be the culprit and investigate. Forums like Cre8asit Forums, HighRankings and Google’s Groups for Webmasters can help.

Falling Search Traffic from Multiple Engines

Chances are good that you’ve done something on your site to block crawlers or stop indexation. This could be something in the robots.txt or meta robots tags, a problem with hosting/uptime, a DNS resolution issue or a number of other technical breakdowns. Talk to your SysAdmin, developers and/or host and carefully review your Webmaster Tools accounts and analytics to help determine potential causes.

Individual Rankings Fluctuations

Gaining or losing rankings for a particular term/phrase or even several happens millions of times a day to millions of pages and is generally nothing to be concerned about. Ranking algorithms fluctuate, competitors gain and lose links (and on-page optimization tactics) and search engines even flux between indices (and may sometimes even make mistakes in their crawling, inclusion or ranking processes). When a dramatic rankings decrease occurs, you might want to carefully review on-page elements for any signs of over-optimization or violation of guidelines (cloaking, keyword stuffing, etc.) and check to see if links have recently been gained or lost. Note that with sudden spikes in rankings for new content, a temporary period of high visibility followed by a dramatic drop is common (in the SEO field, we refer to this as the "freshness boost").

Don’t panic over small fluctuations. With large drops, be wary against making a judgment call until at least a few days have past. If you run a new site or are in the process of link acquisition and active marketing, these sudden spikes and drops are even more common, so simply be prepared and keep working.

Positive Increases in Link Metrics without Rankings Increases

Many site owners worry that when they’ve done some "classic" SEO - on-page optimization, link acquisition, etc. they can expect instant results. This, sadly, is not the case. Particularly for new site and pages and content that’s competing in very difficult results, rankings take time and even earning lots of great links is not a sure recipe to instantly reach the top. Remember that the engines need to not only crawl all those pages where you’ve acquired links, but index and process them - given the almost certain use of delta indices by the engines to help with freshness, the metrics and rankings you’re seeking may be days or even weeks behind the progress you’ve made.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, the Beginner’s Guide content is complete! Actually, I still need to write up the very important appendices, including the glossary, list of links to other resources, and credits, but I’m hopeful to get this done soon (and it’s about time - I started way back in October of 2007!).

As always - comments, criticisms and recommendations are greatly appreciated.

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May 26, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Internet Marketing in the Movies: Are People Starting to "Get" It? »

Posted by rebecca

Since I’m a movie buff and an Internet marketing nerd, I often notice Internet marketing and search mentions in various movies, and I always pay attention to the movie URL shown in trailers (my two recent favorites: the URL for Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming Bruno film was www.meinspace.com/bruno, but it looks like now it’s redirecting to MySpace.com, and the URL for I Love You, Beth Cooper is www.iloveyoubethcoopermovie.com, making me wonder why they had to append "movie" to such a specific URL). Recently I came across two examples where the movie industry referenced or directly utilized Internet marketing/social media marketing, and it got me wondering if Internet marketing is finally starting to become more mainstream (meaning fewer people will look at you with blank faces as you try to describe what you do for a living).

The first example comes from Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, The Girlfriend Experience. Available in theaters and via Comcast On Demand, the movie is about a high-end escort in NYC and her relationship with her boyfriend and her clients and their stresses about the current economic crisis and financial instability (the movie takes place right before the 2008 Presidential elections). In one scene the main character is having a conversation with a web developer/designer about her website, and one of her questions is "How do I get my site to appear high up in search engines?" His answer is so-so–he mentions that she has to submit her site to a lot of directories and other sites, which is a "well, yes and no" response–but he does sum up the conversation by telling her that she’ll need a lot of links, which was a pleasant surprise (I’m used to hearing a lot of really appalling search misconceptions).

I was pretty geeked to see that Steven Soderbergh kinda-sort of addressed SEO in one of his movies. Internet marketing isn’t really something you see in commercials or movies–I mean, there’s really nobody buying commercial space to advertise their marketing services, and you never watch a movie about the cute hipster Internet marketer who’s trying to woo the unattainable hot girl, only to find out that his nerdy best friend is actually the girl he’s in love with. Could the mention of SEO, albeit brief and a wee bit inaccurate (well, maybe not "inaccurate" so much as "requires more explanation"), be a step in the direction of mainstream notoriety?

My second example comes from the Cannes Film Festival. A movie is making the rounds at Cannes this year and attracting a ton of buzz. Not only is it a zombie movie (which is awesome in its own right), but it was made for a mind blowing $70. The movie, called Colin, is a zombie film that takes place from the zombie’s perspective, and it cost less to make than most DVD box sets. The filmmaker was able to put it together by utilizing Facebook and MySpace to round up movie extras, helpers and all sorts of people who wanted to be involved in the making of a zombie flick. This movie is a ridiculous example of how you can use social media marketing and networking to benefit your brand. Not only was he able to get volunteers for his movie and make his dream a reality, he generated buzz by building brand evangelists and by getting fans involved and having them spread the word.

If people nowadays are able to make a movie and promote it primarily through social networking and social media marketing, shouldn’t that reinforce the benefits to your clients or to your own team of marketers? You could argue that if it’s becoming more mainstream and commonplace to do SMM since it’s "all the rage" right now that it’s going to get too crowded, but I just think that means you have to ensure that your marketing efforts are that much more clever and better than everyone else. It’s certainly what this guy did–tons of people promote their bands and movies and comedy acts and whatnot via MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, etc., but not everyone succeeds. It’s a mixture of having the right product, clever and persistent marketing, and properly utilizing your social networking channels that equates to a great viral campaign.

So what do you guys think? Can you recall any examples from movies, music or television that lend credence to the notion that Internet marketing is becoming more "mainstream," or do we nerdy marketers still have to huddle in a corner to have our geek conversations while the masses go about their lives dishing about Jon and Kate’s imploding marriage and what Tom Hanks’ hair looks like in his new Robert Langdon movie?

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May 26, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

If I Could Go Back In Time & Give Myself Some Advice, This Would Be It »

Posted by randfish

Dear 2007 Rand Fishkin,

Hi there - it’s me - your 2009 self. I know it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever get this email, but who knows? The flow of time could chaotically spasm and somehow drop a printed copy of this on your lap - stranger things have happened. And, in that unlikely event, here’s a few quick things you should know:

  • Take the VC Money - it’s going to make you a better entrepreneur, a more serious company and fund some very exciting technology.
  • Don’t Turn Down the Extra Funding - $1.1 million will get you through fine, but 2007 valuations were awesome, and that extra million they’re offering will make great things happen even faster.
  • Build Linkscape, But Make Usability, not Features & Data, the Focus - the technology is amazing, sure, but most SEOs and Internet marketers have a very tough time understanding how to apply the information. You don’t have 20 minutes to explain it in person to everyone, so make the interface as simple, intuitive and usable as possible (and rely on existing nomenclature wherever possible).
  • Start Using Email Marketing ASAP - You have no idea the power of a well-crafted email campaign.
  • Learn to Delegate Better - Hire people who can do the things you’re spending your time on now. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should be doing it. Your job is to lead, to craft the vision and to evangelize. Whatever you’re doing now that isn’t those three things, stop and recruit someone who’s better at it than you are.
  • Remember What SEOmoz Is - at its core, your company is about making something complex & mysterious into something simple & understandable. That’s what the tools, resources and services in PRO should do.
  • Development & Scalability are Your Big Challenges - concentrate on hiring great devs and build small, nimble, self-sufficient teams
  • Hiring Friends Works - Gather the smartest people you know, trust and like and bring them aboard; it doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s working great for you.
  • Get Religion About Conversion Rate Optimization - Design, launch, test, measure, improve and repeat for every aspect of the conversion process on the site, from blog page landings to the last step of signup.
  • Don’t Invest in Marketing via Booths at Events - The ROI just isn’t there, and the cost is tremendous.
  • Do Invest in Your Affiliate Program - There are a lot of Internet marketers serving SEO-style content who don’t have great ways to monetize it. Just putting a link in your footer is not going to get them excited.
  • Learn Relentless Focus - Find the most critical things the business needs for the next six months, make them the everyday focus of every person and hour you can spare and cut out everything else to the point where it hurts at least a little. Only then will you have the focus you need. 
  • Buy a Scooter to Commute to the Office - Just make sure you buy some motorcycle pants to wear on rainy days.
  • You, Rand, Are Not the Customer - Get over it, and build products that someone who just learned SEO last week can use.
  • Establish Guiding Principles Now - Don’t wait; just write them down, work on them until they make sense and post them on the wall in big font.
  • Last, and Most Important; Get Married - It’s unbelievably excellent in every way.

And now, in a rarely used tactic, I’m pinging some friends from other web startups to ask them what they’d like to tell their past selves. Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot, Richard Zwicky from Enquisite, Seth Besmertnik from Conductor, Will Critchlow from Distilled, Kelly Smith from Inkd, Glenn Kelman from Redfin, Ethan Lowry from Urbanspoon and Chris Winfield of 10e20 - can I convince you to write an advice letter to your former incarnations?

p.s. Anyone interested in more on this topic should check out my recent interview with the gang at Wildfire Marketing for Thought Leader Thursday.

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May 25, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Get More Visitors to Your Website Without Ranking Higher »

Posted by RobOusbey

At this week’s SMX, Rand made a comment about two big brands that ranked at #2 and #3 for their industry’s generic keyword behind an exact match domain. Referring to SERPs Click-Through-Rate data, he suggested that you could calculate how much more traffic the larger brand could receive from the keyword by moving from position 2 to position 1.

At the risk of getting a stern talking to, I’m going to have to ask: really? I’m confident that where you see a well-known brand’s site next to an anonymous brand, the recognised name will get a disproportionate number of clicks. The location of each user’s click can’t be modeled by some exponential decay function; the titles, descriptions and URLs (including the goodwill associated with a strong brand) will have a significant effect on click through rate.

So, there’s our opportunity to stack the odds in our favour. If it’s true that more than 50% of people click on a result other than number 1, this means that most people disagree with the search engine’s judgment as to which page best satisfies their query. And what about all the searches that don’t result in any clicks at all?

Quite a few sites appear to be thinking creatively to improve the number of clicks they receive, so here are some tips you can implement in order to get more visits from any keyword, without having to improve your ranking.

Use language that sells

Use compelling language in the snippet where possible, by placing sales-orientated text near the first occurrence of the target phrase. For example, in the screenshot below (and overlooking any brand loyalty that people may have to Amazon or Game), the idea that a Wii Remote has free delivery is more compelling than knowing it can be used as a sword AND a paintbrush.

If you’ve got a strong brand, use it

Remember that sometimes there’s no competition for clicks when the user has their destination in mind before seeing the results. For instance, a user may know they want to go to Wikipedia when they search for "The Shirehorses" and head there despite it ranking at #3.

A very similar thing is likely to happen for product / shopping searches, where the searcher has brand loyalty to a particular retailer. I imagine that Amazon receives a similar amount of traffic (if not more) than Canon does for the search ‘canon 400d’ - this might still be a destinational search.

However, in this situation Canon could get the clicks from people who are researching the product as well as those about to buy if they manipulated their snippet to say something like, "See full details for the Canon EOS 400D, and buy it direct for the best online price."

Prove that your site is going to be useful

Get listed in Google Local, and get a map and reviews next to your branded search results. OK: you’d hope not to ever lose clicks from your branded search, but a result like that below gives real trust to the visitor.

To see an example where users might avoid the official site in a branded search, consider another London venue: is it easier to find the opening hours on the official Sketch site, or on the View London page?

Cover all the bases for organic DKI

Fake your way into using dynamic keyword insertion for organic search. Although Google still prefers to use the meta description of a page as the snippet when possible, in a search of more than a couple of words, it often needs to pull a quote from the page in order to show text relevant to the search. By using the exact match of popular variants of your search terms (particularly ones with valuable searcher intent) within your text, you can have the search terms highlighted in your snippet in order to demonstrate high relevancy. (Of course, you should be doing this anyway if you want to target those particular terms.)

The example below shows three of the UK results for ‘choose an engagement ring‘. The user doesn’t want to know how to buy one, doesn’t want to know the etiquette, but wants help choosing one - the third link is likely to get the click.

Don’t give everything away too early

Let’s say a searcher needs to know the height of Mount Everest in inches, or can’t remember the order of parameters in PHP’s strrchr command. They might see the following results in Google:

There’s no need for them to click through to the results. Using a variation of the earlier advice, make sure the ‘answer’ on the page isn’t right next to the first mention of the search term if you want to get people to actually visit your page. These similar examples (’height of mount everest in yards‘ and ‘str_replace‘) don’t spill the beans too early.

If you’ve being using similar techniques, or have seen sites that you think should be getting more clicks from their search results, please do share them in the comments.

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May 22, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Whiteboard Friday - Embedded Content & Linking »

Posted by great scott!

This week’s Whiteboard Friday comes to you courtesy of a few friends from the Twitterverse. We had Lindsay put out a call for WBF ideas via the @SEOmoz Twitter account and, among the suggestions, a few of our followers asked for tips on linking strategies and embedded content, so here we are, thanks to @mattlambert, @khughesrise and @seoaudiore (thanks, too, to everyone else who tweeted suggestions - we’ll try to follow up on many of those in the weeks to come, too).

Creating embeddable content like widgets, badges, or videos can be a fantastic link-building strategy for many reasons. In this video we’ll cover some of the big benefits to embed-based linking, as well as some of the challenges you may face in trying to get your embeddable content out there.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Embedded Content & Linking from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

 

Rand references several embedded content worth looking at, including this set from Twitter, Vimeo’s strategy (which you can see in the video above itself) and Zillow’s real estate widgets.

Oh yeah, since we mentioned Twitter, I was stuck at 299 followers yesterday, so if you’d like to join the ‘Help Get Scott Over 300′ campaign, follow me @great_scott. Thanks!

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May 21, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Lessons Learned from 3 Years of Blogging »

Posted by rebecca

The beginning of this month (May 2nd, to be exact) marked my 3 year anniversary as a blogger. My first post on SEOmoz was a paragraph long and consisted of asking our readers if they know of any Spanish-language SEO blogs. It attracted 18 comments. Huzzah! Since then, I’ve published 241 more posts, with this one being #243. I thought I’d reflect back on my three years of blogging and share the good, the bad, the downright ugly, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.


Phase I: Asking Questions
I wrote 4 posts in May of 2006, and each of them centered on a question posited to the community:

  • "Know of any Spanish SEO blogs?"
  • "Is there such a thing as too much website usability?"
  • "What do you think of the (then-new) ‘I’m a Mac/I’m a PC’ commercials?
  • "Is cyberspace a Googlocracy?" 

At this point in my long and storied career at SEOmoz, I had been occupying a desk within the company for 4 short months (3 of which were as an intern), so I still had a lot to learn about SEO, Internet marketing, and, actually, about the Internet in general. I didn’t feel confident enough to blog about something as an "expert" or provide my input/opinion on a topic, so I resorted to asking open-ended questions in order to get feedback from our blog audience and establish a connection with them.

Lesson Learned:
The biggest lesson I learned with my first few posts was that you don’t have to be the expert when you blog, especially when you’ve got a good chunk of readers. It’s important to ask for feedback and reach out to your community for their input. I think they respect you more when you admit that you have limits and appreciate them for their opinions and level of expertise.


Phase II: Editorializing Existing Articles
My blogging evolved into me finding an article or blog post and talking about it (and, of course, ending with a question for our readers). With these types of posts I was able to inject a bit of personal interpretation and my input into them. I still wasn’t touting my knowledge level or expertise, but providing opinions about other people’s blog posts allowed me to step forward a bit and let my voice be heard.

Lesson Learned:
If you can’t think of anything to blog about or still aren’t confident in your "expert" abilities, there’s always an article or some news that you can highlight and add a personal spin to.

Phase III: Establishing a Voice
Once I got a handful of posts under my belt, I started to feel more comfortable sitting at a keyboard, Doogie Howser-style, and I was able to add my personality and voice more freely to my blog posts. I’ve always had a knack for writing, so I really enjoyed (and still do) injecting a little bit of myself into the posts I authored. I think that if someone were to remove the authors from a bunch of different posts and ask "Which one did Rebecca write?", you’d be able to identify mine pretty easily. :)

Lesson Learned:
At this point, even though I was still learning and considered myself to be a beginner SEO, I was comfortable enough with our readers and my coworkers that I could start being myself and letting my posts reflect who I was as a person. I think that’s one of the most important lessons learned when it comes to blogging. The thing that separates the good bloggers from the bad is their voice. What makes you read one blog over another? Sure, a lot of factors come into play, such as the frequency of updates, the quality of information, the level of expertise, etc. But for me, the thing that makes one blogger stand out amongst the throngs of everyone else is his ability to inject his personality into what he’s writing. I’m still no SEO expert, and I don’t pretend to be. Nonetheless, people still enjoy what I’ve got to say because I say it differently than anyone else, and that uniqueness I bring to the table is what defines me and makes me interesting.

Now that I’m at Phase III (profit!!!), I thought I’d share some other blogging odds and ends that I noticed after perusing through old posts.

Recurring Blogging Traits

1. Using punny titles that usually work in a movie, music or pop culture reference

  • I Used to Care, But Things Have(n’t) Changed
  • Sometimes Sites Don’t Look Like They Should…They Make It…Hurt So Good
  • Marketing Sherpa States That SEM Clients Aren’t Multiplying Like Wet Gremlins
  • London (and Worthing) Calling
  • An American in London
  • Overheard in (SES) New York
  • Wordze to Yo Mutha

Lesson Learned:
Constructing a fun and eye-catching title is a good way to attract attention to your posts. Since I’m a huge dork, I like working in some sort of pop culture reference–it’s a good way to identify fellow nerds who march to the beat of the same drum as I do. :)

2. Feigning abuse at the hands of Rand

  • "…I thought I’d take my boss’s ‘Post blogs while I’m gone or you’re fired!’ threat seriously and attempt to bring something to the blog table."
  • "Rand has chained me to my desk and ordered me to summarize the next set of videos released by Matt Cutts."
  • "You don’t know what Rand Fishkin is really like. He made it explicitly clear that if I don’t keep summarizing your videos, I won’t live past my birthday."
  • "Rand took a trip to both Houndstown and Badgersville to constantly bug me to finish this damn thing…"
  • "In order to please the masses, Rand once again chained me to my desk and ordered me to do a recap of SES London in an amusing comic book fashion."
  • "My ‘Don’t Fire Me Rand’ Recap of SES New York"
  • "…okay, sometimes when I ask him non-work stuff (’Hey, how was your weekend buddy?’) he barks "Go write a blog entry!" at me…"

Lesson Learned:
Sometimes it’s good to take a lighthearted, joking tone: it makes the post more fun to read, and if you can find a way to identify with the audience (by, say, pretending the leader of the company you blog for is a sadist), they’ll enjoy your blogging even more.

3. Writing completely useless blog posts that people somehow nonetheless seem to like

Lesson Learned:
A little humor goes a long way. Sure, the posts are off-topic and have little to no actual marketing tips, but it’s nice to take a break from the usual blogging schedule and present something fun for your readers. Plus, they seem to like it–the latter two posts I listed are among the most popular ever on SEOmoz, and they’re certainly two of the most popular posts I’ve authored.

4. Using personal interests as an analogy or direct example (with food, movies and training/exercise being my most frequent go-to subjects)

Lesson Learned:
I like using analogies and examples that I know/care about. Analogies and examples strengthen your point and make your post more understandable and relatable for your readers. If you use examples that have a close personal tie to you, you’re more likely to be excited about blogging. Plus, your readers will get to know you and will establish a personal bond, which will bring them back to your blog again and again.

Random Stats:

Most popular blogging categories:

  • Roundups (53ish): you jerkwads sure do love your roundups!
  • Events and Conferences (around 42): I’ve blogged about SES Latino, SES San Jose, SES Chicago, SES London, SEMpdx’s Searchfest, SES New York, SMX Advanced, SES Toronto, SES Travel, Shop.org events, SMX Social Media, SMX West, the eCommerce Summit, and some local Seattle meetups.
  • Miscellaneous (23): this category houses most of my off-topic/silly/useless posts. :)
  • SEOmoz news (15): we’re a growing company, so it’s only fitting that I announce the occasional company-related news to the masses.
  • Google (16): in comparison, I’ve blogged about Microsoft and Yahoo! two times each. Cue the sad trombone.
  • Social Media (13): one of my favorite topics.
  • Search Community (12): there’s always something interesting to blog about with regards to our industry’s community.
  • Web Design/Usability (11): I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess I’m more interested in usability than I thought.

Number of posts about Matt Cutts: 10, 7 of which are video transcription posts, and all of which make fun of him in some capacity.

Number of posts I published but didn’t write: 6 (they were written by our six hiring candidates)

Posts with the most thumbs (since the thumbs system has been implemented):

Favorite Posts:

Lessons Learned:

  • Try to find value in everyday situations. Think of how you can shape an experience you’ve had into something interesting and useful for your audience.
  • Not every post has to be planned out ahead of time–sometimes a great idea can just come to you or you can be inspired by a random occurrence.
  • If you put a lot of time and effort into a post and worry it’ll never pay off, don’t worry, oftentimes it will and you’re just being paranoid.
  • Use examples in your posts (websites, screenshots, movies, whatever)–they really help!

Least Favorite Posts:

Lessons Learned:

  • There’s a fine line between bitching with a point and just plain bitching. You don’t want to come across as a whiner.
  • Also, if you’re blogging about a topic, you should do a bit of research beforehand just so you don’t make a fool out of yourself (unless that’s your intent).
  • Oh, and don’t try too hard to be witty, clever, smart, etc. It often falls flat and is embarrassingly obvious to your readers. Just be yourself!

Polarizing Posts:

  • All the Female Bloggers Say Heyyyy!…Hello? Ladies? This post inadvertantly turned into a bit of a gender war. Kim Krause Berg had blogged about the lack of recognition for female tech bloggers, and I said that it’s because there aren’t that many so there are very few to recognize. This post was pretty tame in terms of how much ire it raised, but nonetheless it was my first foray into taking a stance on a topic that had dissenting viewpoints. 
  • Hey, I’m Blogging! Pay Attention to Me! This post has the dubious distinction of attracting my first ever thumb down. Apparently some of our readers/bloggers didn’t care to hear me call them attention whores. Oh well. I still think that bloggers (including me) are attention whores. Deal with it. ;P 
  • A-List vs. Blue Collar Blogging. This is one of my favorite posts in that it received 17 thumbs up and 13 thumbs down for a net gain of 4. That’s pretty impressive. I still stand by my core message, which is that "A-List" bloggers do exist, and that not every blogger can become one in 90 days. I do feel a bit dumb for getting baited by Jason Calacanis, but then again, he was pretty good at getting attention (be it good or bad) back in the day (he seems to have quieted down more recently–maybe he’s busy trying to de-suck Mahalo).  
  • Ron Paul is the Snakes on a Plane of 2008. Never fails–you talk about politics and end up stirring the pot, especially when you compare a popular politician to a B-grade movie about deadly snakes aboard a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles.
  • Generation Google a General Disappointment. This one’s a bit tricky. While I still maintain that the panel could have been much better than it was, looking back I realize that I was too harsh to Danny Sullivan, Rand and his brother, Evan. Belated apologies–I could have gotten my point across without pouring on quite as much Haterade as I did, so I’m sorry. (Hey, better late than never, right?)
  • No, Unfortunately Digg Doesn’t Know Who You Are. I think this post got a lot of backlash partially because of the harshness of the original title and because some of the examples I highlighted were taken from actual user accounts, so they felt embarrassed to get called out. Again, I probably could have made my point without being quite so harsh, which is definitely an important takeaway. Nonetheless, I still like my post and stand behind it as an important thing to remember when doing social media marketing.

Lessons Learned:

  • Controversy attracts eyeballs, but you have to be prepared to take the good with the bad. If you can dish it out but your skin is too thin to take what gets bounced back at you, you probably shouldn’t take such a harsh stance on things. (Thankfully, for the most part I’ve got a pretty thick skin. That’s what you get when you grow up with two teasing older brothers.)
  • Don’t be afraid to stick up for yourself or defend your stance, but also know when to admit you’re wrong. After looking back at some of these posts, I was able to identify moments where I crossed the line and should have checked myself before I riggity wrecked myself.
  • This has more to do with a business blog, but try to stay respectful even when disagreeing with someone. I’ve sloooooooowly learned that over the past few years, and now I’m a bit more tempered than a couple years ago. I don’t get as worked up or dragged into ridiculous wars between bloggers/marketers, and as a result it’s made me a better employee, blogger and human being.

Well, that about wraps up my retrospective on my three years of blogging here at SEOmoz. Blogging for this company has pretty much shaped my career and my image into what it is today, and it’s opened countless doors for me professionally. I can definitively say for a fact that blogging can be an invaluable asset if you know how to approach it. I’ve learned a ton about blogging and about myself in the past few years, and I hope the lessons I’ve shared can be of some benefit to you too. In the meantime, here’s to many more years of blogging about movies, marketing, and the wrath of Rand. ;)

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May 21, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Ten Resources That Changed How I View the Internet »

Posted by Danny Dover

I can always pick out a fool when I hear someone claim they fully get the internet, whether it be a social media snake-oil salesman or a Twitter user with too many followers. The fact of the matter is that while it’s possible (and exciting) to understand one sub-sphere of the internet, there are simply too many spheres for one person to really understand all of them. I simply don’t think it is possible.

By the same logic, my understanding of the internet is flawed as well. I have had many times when a light bulb goes off in my head and for a split second the universe suddenly makes sense. While these moments are awesome (in the truest sense of the word “awe some”), they are temporary. Nonetheless, they have helped shaped my view of the internet and, to a certain extent, the world.

The following is a list of the resources that have substantially changed my view of the internet.

Embracing the Wisdom of Crowds

Wikipedia TED Talk - Wikipedia is the bane of every SEO’s existence. It ranks for everything (#3 on my computer) and is difficult to replace. I shared this hatred until I came across Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ explanation of why Wikipedia works. Frankly, the entire is process is quite beautiful.

Why Paris Hilton Is Famous - Just the mere image of Paris Hilton bothers me. That said, after reading the following article, I respect her unprecedented ability to market herself both online and offline. Although I think the author gives her too much credit, his outlook on her is both refreshing and inspiring.

Paris Hilton
Why Paris Hilton Is Famous

The Wisdom of Crowds - For most of you I imagine this book is not new. The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki changed how I view people. His research showed me what I should have seen all along. It is silly to think that an individual person would be better or smarter than the combined wisdom of a group. This book made me realize this.

The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wisdom of Crowds


A World Wide Web of Opportunity

A Speech by David Heinemeier Hansson - In 2008, David, of Ruby on Rails and 37Signals fame, gave a speech at Y combinator’s Startup School. In his speech he described what he believes to be the reason why so many internet companies fail. Without spoiling it for you, the link is below.

David HH

YouTube Founders Video - Can you imagine the feeling of securing the financial future for yourself and all of your loved ones simply by signing a piece of paper? It is the feeling that entrepreneurs dream of, and Chad Hurley and Steve Chen finally had it after selling YouTube to Google for $1.65 Billion. This video was taken right after this happened. No wonder they are so giddy!

Stop Following the Leaders:

Fortune 450-500 - I recently had an extremely eye opening lunch with a prominent technologist in Seattle. While discussing the role of education in technology, I foolishly brought up the stale examples of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropping out of school. Quick to the draw, my lunch mate advised me to stop studying the leading Fortune 500 countries and start studying the Fortune 450 through 500. While the leaders relied on hard work to get to where they are, they also were given tremendous good luck. This is not always the same for the companies lower down on the list.

Fortune 401-500

Fighting Information Overload

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug is undoubtedly the best book ever written on web usability. His clear and well thought out explanations lay out what every web developer should know about doing their job. After reading this book, I literally made it a requirement for anyone who builds websites with me in my personal life.

Don't Make Me Think

Don’t Make Me Think

Remembering My Place in the Internet’s Evolution

The Computer for the 21st Century - Back in February of 1991, Mark Weiser wrote this article in Scientific American. In it, he outlines a vision for ubiquitous computing that we are still working to achieve today. After reading this, I understood my proper place in computing for the first time. The cutting edge that we live on today is merely the foundation for computing tomorrow.

The Computer for the 21st Century

The Last Question - This is my favorite short story of all time. Written in 1956, Isaac Asimov eerily predicts the creation of a tool like Google. It’s chilling, humbling and has a ending that has stuck with me since first reading it several years ago.

The Last Question

The Hacker’s Manifesto - My experience as an internet marketer skews more toward the internet and development side of internet marketing. This article written in 1986 by  +++The Mentor+++ taught me how little the spirit of hackers has changed. It is as relevant today as it was 23 years ago.

Tron Guy
The Hacker’s Manifesto
If you have any other resources that you think are worth sharing, feel free to post them in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. If that’s not your style, feel free to contact me on Twitter (DannyDover) Thanks!

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May 20, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects - How Does It All Work? »

Posted by jennita

URL rewrites and 301 redirects… you talk about them, you recommend them, but do you truly understand how they work? Sure, you know that rewriting a URL means that the URL displayed in the browser changes to be more SEO (and user) friendly. And you know that a 301 redirect is a permanent redirect. But let’s dig a little deeper, and explain how they work together.

As a developer, my very first SEO project was the task of rewriting a massive number of URLs and ensuring that the old URL redirected to the new. It was a daunting task at first because I didn’t have a clear understanding of how it all worked together. I was sure I’d have to rewrite pages and pages of code, and spend weeks if not months on the project. But once I figured it all out, the light bulb went on, and it literally took just a couple days to get it right. Yep! Days.

URL Rewrites

Rewriting a URL means changing the way the URL is displayed in the browser. When a user lands on a page with a rewritten URL, the code behind that page doesn’t change. In fact, the server still reads the original URL.

URL Rewrite Process:

  1. User lands on new SEO’d URL
  2. Using mod_rewrite, ISAPI_Rewrite, etc. new URL points to old URL on the server
  3. Server calls the code from the old URL
  4. Page is displayed in browser, displaying the new URL
URL Rewrite explained

From the server’s perspective, nothing has changed. The code is still the same. For example, if a developer had built a site using URL variables, there’s no need to change any code. Now, there are always cases that could contradict this. But at the basic level, there shouldn’t be a need to change code on the page.

301 Redirect

Once the URL is rewritten, you want to make sure that the old URL 301 redirects to the new. This tells the search engines that any link juice the old URL had should now be given to the new URL. It also makes for a good user experience, rather than showing a 404 error page. The server is told URL A should now be URL B.

301 Redirect Process:

  1. User lands on original URL
  2. Using code, mode_rewrite, etc. the 301 redirects URL to the new one, literally changing the URL that is displayed in the browser from the old to the new
  3. URL Rewrite process begins again
301 Redirect and URL Rewrite

Using the rewrite and redirect together brings the solution full circle. I’ve trained many developers on SEO standards and specifically how to implement and understand the workings of the rewrites and redirects. It takes a bit to wrap your head around it, but it’s all really quite simple.

For more detailed information on rewrites and redirects, check out the following sites:

Personally, I find it fascinating and enjoy helping SEO’s as well as developers "see the light," as I like to call it. It’s that "aha" moment when they realize how simple it all is, and how easy it is to make your site SEO friendly. The best part is that rewriting URLs also helps to improve user experience. I’d love to hear if you have something to add, or how you go about explaining how these functions work together.

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May 19, 2009 | Posted in News, SEO | Read more »

Headsmacking Tip #13: Don’t Accidentally Block Link Juice with Robots.txt »

Posted by randfish

A very simple return to the headsmacking series this week (as it’s late here in London and I’ve been up my usual 40+ hours traveling).

We’ve been noticing that a number of websites seeking to block bot access to pages on their domain have been employing robots.txt to do so. While this is certainly a fine practice, the questions we’ve been getting show that there are a few misunderstandings about what blocking Google/Yahoo!/MSN/other search bots with robots.txt does. Here’s a quick breakdown:

  • Block with Robots.txt - do not attempt to visit the URL, but feel free to keep it in the index & display in the SERPs (see below if this confuses you)
  • Block with Meta NoIndex - feel free to visit, but don’t put the URL in the index or display in the results
  • Block by Nofollowing Links - not a smart move, as other followed links can still put them in the index (it’s fine if you don’t want to "waste juice" on the page, but don’t think it will keep bots away or prevent it from appearing in the SERPs)

Here’s a quick example of a page that’s blocked via robots.txt but appears in Google’s index:

About Robots.txt file

(note that this robots.txt is the same across about.com’s other subdomains, too)

You can see that about.com is clearly disallowing the /library/nosearch/ folder. Yet, here’s what happens when we search Google for URLs in that folder:

Robots Disallowed URLs from About.com in Google

Notice that Google has 2,760 pages from that "disallowed" directory. They haven’t crawled these URLs, so they appear as mere address strings (no title, description, etc - since Google can’t see the pages’ content).

Now think one step further - if you’ve got any number of pages you’re blocking from the search engines’ eyes, those URLs can still accumulate links, accumulate juice and other query-independent ranking factors, but they have no way to "pass it along" since their own links out will never be seen. I’ll illustrate the situation:

Google Can't See Robots.txt Disallowed Pages

There’s two real takeaways here:

  1. Conserve link juice by using nofollow when linking to a URL that is robots.txt disallowed
  2. If you know that disallowed pages have acquired link juice (particularly from external links), consider using meta noindex, follow instead so they can pass their link juice on to places on your site that need it.

Looking forward to seeing folks at SMX London tomorrow (and for Will and my big showdown on Tuesday, too)!

p.s. Andy Beard covered this topic previously in a solid post - SEO Linking Gotchas Even the Pros Make.

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May 17, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

Weekend Roundup for the Week of 5/10/09 »

Posted by rebecca

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

YOUmoz entries:

Best of YOUmoz:

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

Featured companies:

United States:

Canada:

UK / Europe:

Asia:

Featured resumes:

Currently looking:

  • Punit isn’t much for words, but he apparently knows how to do web design and how to attract traffic to websites and blogs.
  • Digital marketer is available on demand in London, UK.
  • Rodion Matveev is looking for an SEO/SEM position at an authority Internet marketing company.

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May 15, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

Whiteboard Friday - Link Farming »

Posted by great scott!

"Old McSpammer had a farm, e-i-e-i-oh,
And on that farm he built some links, e-i-e-i-oh

With a backlink here, and a backlink there,
Here a link, there a link,
Everywhere a link, link…"

You get the idea. Back in the day, building your own network of sites designed to link to each other and build link popularity was an easy way to help boost your rankings. Nowadays though, link farming is an almost surefire way to get yourself into some big trouble with the engines.

Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday to learn why link farming is a bad idea, and how the engines are so quick to identify it.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Link Farming from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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May 14, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

You Won’t Get Away That Easy, Critchlow »

Posted by randfish

(Intro: For those who aren’t aware, last week I challenged Will Critchlow to a presentation-off during SMX London).

I see how it is, Will. Don’t try to deny it.

You can’t win on points, so you think you can send some army of torrential British micro-water soldiers (colloquially called "rain") to stop me?

Think again, muchacho. I’m coming for you. 

And no scooter accident, banged up body, scratched up leg or bruised hand can stop me. I’ll see you in London - cane in one hand… actually, nothing in the other, cause it kinda hurts, but Vicodin in my pocket.

Rand in the ER after his Scooter accident
I will defeat you, Critchlow!!

I may be down, but I’m not out. Come next Tuesday, we gonna rumble.

p.s. blogging and email may be slower the next few days due to my less-than-fully-agile left hand.

p.p.s. Really, I’m OK, but let me highly recommend to anyone on two wheels going down hills during the first rain in a while - start braking early. Thanks to all the friendly people who stopped to help me, the ridiculously good looking staff at the UW emergency room, Ben Plehal of evogear who came to get me after the accident, all the kind Twitter replies and my lovely, amazing wife, Mystery Guest - I’m sorry I scared you, honey.

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May 13, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

Upcoming Spring 2009 Search Conferences »

Posted by rebecca

The weather’s getting nicer, the days are getting longer and Rand’s barely in the office. You know what that means: it’s conference season! Since there are so many conferences right around the corner, I thought I’d list some upcoming events in case you’re thinking of attending a show but aren’t sure which one to book.

SMX London in London, UK: May 18-19, 2009

SMX London is next week in jolly ol’. I won’t go into too many details since Rand covered 10 reasons you must attend SMX London, but I will say that PRO members receive a 10% discount on event registration. Also, you should go because in London you can eat pasties and drink bitters, and that alone should be worth the traveling costs.

IMC Stockholm in Stockholm, Sweden: May 26-28, 2009

I’m speaking at IMC Stockholm at the end of the month. Day 1 of the conference is dedicated to affiliate marketing, while Day 2 is the main conference day and Day 3 is full of various workshops (Google Adwords, social media, conversion optimization, customer experience management, and more). I’ll be speaking on a panel about Cost Effective Online Marketing, and there are a lot of other interesting session topics, such as the Top 12 SEO Tips for 2009, How to Use the Six Conversion Rate Factors to Lift Your ROI, Making Social Media Profitable, and Recession-Proof Online Strategies. I’m really looking forward to attending and speaking at IMC Stockholm–the agenda seems very practical, there will be a lot of  new people to meet, and, of course, I get to explore Stockholm for a week. If you’re interested in attending, you can receive a 20% discount off the registration cost by using the code imc-speaker. Hopefully I’ll see you there!

SMX Advanced in Seattle, Washington: June 2-3, 2009

SMX is hosting their third advanced conference in Seattle, and it’s right in SEOmoz’s backyard. Having attended both previous Advanced conferences, I can say that the event gets better each year, and I’m sure that this year there will be a lot of great, valuable information for intermediate to advanced SEOs. The Give It Up session alone should be worth the cost of admission. Also, if you attend you’ll get to meet several members of the SEOmoz team as we’ll be showcasing our suite of PRO tools at our Expo Hall booth. And you may run into us at various networking functions in the evening. ;) PRO members receive 10% off registration costs, so register today and we’ll see you in a few weeks!

SMX Madrid in Spain: June 3-4, 2009

¿Hablas español? ¡No problema! SMX Madrid is happening right after Advanced in lovely Madrid, Spain. The conference is in Spanish and offers both basic and advanced tracks. Yo estoy triste que no puedo asistir la conferencia, pero ojalá que algún día pueda visitar a España y conocer algunos vendedores españoles.

SES Toronto in Toronto, Ontario: June 8-10, 2009

For our neighbors to the north, SES Toronto is next month. Organized by smartypants SEM expert Andrew Goodman, the conference is broken into 3 fun tracks: Nuts & Bolts, Corporateville and the Geek Track. I spoke at SES Toronto two years ago about link bait and viral marketing, and I really enjoyed the sessions and ran into a lot of great marketers. Looking at the agenda, it seems that this year there are a lot of new approaches to traditional topics (which is nice–I hate it when a conference series rehashes the exact same agenda in every city).

Affiliate Convention in Denver, Colorado: June 17-20, 2009

Both Gillian and our very own Jenny from the block will be speaking at the Denver Affiliate Convention next month. Designed "specifically to meet the needs of affiliate marketers," this conference is free for all working affiliates (how nice!). It focuses on how to run and improve affiliate marketing campaigns. Jen will be covering Alternative Search Engines and Marketing Venues for Affiliates, while Gillian is talking about Industry Trends for Travel in the Current Economic Market. If you’re affiliate and plan on attending, be sure to stop and say hello to the SEOmoz crew!

I’ll post a separate entry soon about upcoming summer conferences. In the meantime, feel free to share any other spring events that are coming up, and let me know if you’re planning on attending any of the aforementioned conferences–we’d love to hear your input on the shows!

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May 13, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

Did Google Change SEO Yesterday? »

Posted by randfish

Search marketers have a good bit of reading to do today. Personally, my list of top articles to read around the changes (and directional focii) Google brought up yesterday is:

  1. Vanessa Fox’s coverage of Google’s Support for Microformats and Rich Snippets in Search Results
  2. Matt Cutts on Search Options & Google Squared
  3. Both SELand’s Live Blogging of Searchology and VentureBeat’s Blow by Blow of Searchology are worthwhile for those seeking to parse exact meanings
  4. The Google Webmaster Central Blog’s coverage their Design Refresh of Webmaster Tools

Basically, if you’ve been reading news about search & technology for the past 6 months, you know that the web world and some of the mainstream press has made stories out of threats Google faces from:

  • Structured data engines like Wolfram Alpha
  • Real-time search like Twitter
  • Social search & the social graph from a variety of sources (Facebook is usually the one mentioned)

With the updates announced today, Google’s showing how it’s fighting back against these potential/perceived competitors.

My question, though, is how does this change SEO? I go back to my post from last November - Oh My God! Search is Changing Forever! SEO is Doomed! Run for the Hills! Do the changes announced yesterday fundamentally change SEO? Are the new options around structured data worth investing in right away? Are richer SERPs, public comments on results and Google Squared going to make a big difference?

Let’s discuss in the comments, as I think your opinions will be more valuable than mine. As always, please reward intelligent and valuable discussion with thumbs.

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May 12, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

The Real Power of Twitter »

Posted by Dr. Pete

I’ve been suppressing the urge to write this post for a while now. It’s not that I don’t love Twitter (I suspect my wife is a few days away from scheduling my intervention); it’s just that I’m saturated by it. It’s not the tweets themselves, but the incessant whining noise made up of every second-rate media personality in the world "discovering" Twitter on a daily basis and every self-declared "social media guru" regurgitating the same How to Twitter post a thousand times a week.

So, why am I still writing this post? I’m writing it because I’ve experienced something with Twitter that I don’t hear many people talking about. The real power of Twitter isn’t in easy mass-marketing, driving a few more links, Diggs, Stumbles, or Sphinns, or even in branding and making a name for yourself. The real power of Twitter is in transforming online connections into real-world relationships. For me, Twitter has become the most powerful tool at my disposal to bridge the professional/personal gap and drive offline relationships.  If you haven’t experienced this, let me share a few tips (and a story or two):

virtual handshake

(1) The Mundane Matters

It’s easy to make fun of Twitter for the constant life-streaming, but I think it’s one of Twitter’s greatest strengths and the key to why Twitter makes the boundary between professional and personal so easy to cross. As you notice your professional contacts talking about their kids, being home with the flu, having a bad day, etc., it’s hard not to relate and feel like you know them a bit better.  Of course, that’s a two-way street. If you’re sincere, it’s a lot easier to start conversations with strangers on Twitter than on a platform where a professional obligation is implied (like LinkedIn).

(2) Harmonic Convergence

Twitter is not only a great place for keeping tabs on your local scene, but it’s also great for letting you know when people are in your neighborhood. A while back, I saw a tweet from my favorite itinerant SEO, Pat Sexton, that he was in Chicago for an event. Now, if you don’t know Pat, you have to understand that outside of conferences, he’s a hard man to find (mainly because he lives in a remote hut in Hawaii and only talks to monk seals). When I noticed Pat was in Chicago, I replied back on Twitter, and found out he was just a few blocks away. Two hours later, we were catching up in a local bar. Without Twitter, I would never have known he was just down the street.

(3) Cross the A-List Chasm

Everyone seems a little bit more human on Twitter, and this has a way of leveling the playing field between the "A-List" and the rest of us. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should follow every industry celebrity and virtually foam at the mouth every time they tweet, but there’s nothing wrong with sincerely replying to a big name when you have something relevant to say or re-tweeting them when you think it’s worthwhile. Of course, like any networking activity, it’s easier if the A-Lister is only one or two steps removed from you, relationship-wise. Eventually, you may get a reply or two, and down the road, some real opportunities.

(4) Round Up a Posse

One of my first experiences with bringing Twitter relationships into the real world was also one of the most powerful. Before last year’s SEOmoz advanced training, I sent out a couple of tweets saying that I’d be in town the night before and asking if anyone wanted to grab some dinner. With little or no effort, I managed to round up a group of 6, most of whom I’d never met before, and we accidentally bumped into 3 more folks from the seminar. Not only did I get to meet new people, but this little group became my unofficial conference "posse," rounding up other new people and making the networking experience one of the best I’ve had at an SEO event.

I should point out that I’m not naturally inclined to do this sort of thing. I’m a bit of a wallflower, truth be told, but the personal nature of Twitter and the low risk of sending out a tweet that goes unanswered made a potentially awkward situation easy. I used the same tactic at PubCon last year, and had a similar positive experience, meeting another group of new people that I previously only knew online.

(5) Don’t Be Shortsighted

With time and patience, these online-offline relationships become cyclical. Once you meet someone in person, you return to Twitter knowing them a bit better – they’re more likely to reply, retweet, and generally engage with you. This can be a powerful cycle, turning people you might only see once or twice a year at conferences into people you correspond with on an almost daily basis.You’ll miss out on all of this, though, if you take a short-term view. Instead of obsessing about getting out today’s link, or pushing for a reply or retweet, take the time to get to know people. Real opportunities come from building real relationships, and Twitter is a uniquely powerful touch point in that process.

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May 12, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

A Brief Letter to Startup CEOs, CPOs & Founders »

Posted by randfish

Dear Startup CEOs, CPOs (Chief Product Officers) & Founders,

I know your time is valuable, so I’ll be brief. If you currently have or are in the process of developing a business/marketing plan that includes the phrase "traffic from search engines," please peruse the following diagram:

Pie Chart of Ranking Algorithm

The percentages are rough guesses, but they represent the collective wisdom of many experts in modern SEO. You certainly need to get the on-page factors right, but these are easy. Information from alternative signals (like click-through rate, toolbar usage, analytics, etc.) is still relatively insignificant. Rankings, particularly for competitive queries, are largely governed by links. The ability to rank for large amounts of less competitive keywords (long tail queries) with your content (by getting those pages crawled and kept in the main search engine indices) is also reliant on links.

Have a look at just one more visual:

Pie Chart of Link Metrics

That Pacman size chunk of the pie chart has been broken down into three important sections (again, the percentages are a rough guess). Taken together, these illustrations and the logic behind them should give you a solid foundation for understanding SEO. Get the on-page stuff right - that’s easy. Target the right keywords - again, easy. Earn large numbers of links from diverse, high quality sources with descriptive anchor text - that’s crazy hard.

Great SEO - the kind of SEO that can actually build a business by exposing a new company to thousands of targeted customers every day - isn’t done after the product launches. It’s not even done during the website design & architecture phase. Great SEO happens during product design. I know product is hard - maybe even the hardest part of building a great startup - but you have to add this step if you want to win.

Incentivize large numbers of diverse website operators to link to you. 

Think about it right now - what is it that your product/service/website/company does that’s going to make people link? How are you going to convert a higher percentage of the visitors to your site into productive, value-adding links than your competitors? What emotions do you leverage that inspire a visitor to link to you (not just Tweet about you)?

We work with a lot of startups, and I can count on one hand the number of companies who thought about this during the product design phase. In the future, more companies are going to think about this and execute on it. They’re going to get the top rankings. Those who don’t will have to compete in spite of the fact that their competition has thousands of targeted, interested visitors showing up on their website every day. Be a part of that first group - think SEO when you’re designing your business, not after.

Sincerely,
Rand Fishkin, Startup CEO & SEO Addict

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May 11, 2009 | Posted in News | Read more »

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