Does Google Like It When You’re Fresh? »

Posted by Dr. Pete

Warning: This post contains tactics that may be considered black-hat. SEOmoz does not condone these practices. I have simply done something dumb to my own website to prevent you from doing something dumber to yours.

If you believe the rumors, we all now live in something called the real-time web. The once steady trickle of user-generated content became a torrent, and search engines face the difficult task of drinking from a fire hose without drowning. It only stands to reason, then, that fresh content is becoming more important, and anecdotal evidence seems to back that up. Every day, blog posts and Tweets seem to get indexed and ranked a bit faster.

Freshness seems important, but what signals does Google use to determine freshness? Beyond the original cache date, do the spiders pay attention to on-page signals, such as dates in body content or URLs? I thought it might be fun to try and find out.

1. Manipulating URLs (non-301)

My plan started out simple: manipulate a URL on my blog and rename it to use a date-based format (as some blogs do by default). So, for example, a URL that normally looked like this:

http://www.mysite.com/topic-goes-here

…became something like this…

http://www.mysite.com/2009-09-01-topic-goes-here

I chose a blog post that was recent enough to still be archived and spidered but not so recent or popular that it was likely to attract new inbound links. I chose 3 long-tail keyword phrases to track for that post, and then flipped the switch and changed the URL. In part 1 of this experiment, I did not 301 the old URL to the new one. By not 301’ing, I was hoping to nudge Google into updating the original cache date. The graph below shows what happened:

The rankings axis is inverted to show low rankings at the top, with 1 line for each keyword phrase. Here’s where things got weird. Even after spiders indexed the new URL, that URL showed up in rankings on 3 different days for the 3 phrases (indicated by the gray, dotted lines). Some rankings dropped before the new URL appeared, others after, until they eventually stabilized slightly lower than the original URLs. Oddly, the one keyword that hit #1 after the switch also managed to cache the 404-error (so, that ranking was completely useless).

2. New URLs, Take Two (301)

Of course, outright changing a URL without 301 redirecting it is a bit unusual, and would mean that I lost whatever inbound link juice I had flowing to that page (it wasn’t much, but it still can’t be ignored). So, not generally one to learn from my mistakes, I tried again, this time with a new blog post but with a 301 in place.

Not surprisingly, the spiders were a bit better behaved, with all 3 rankings reflecting the new URL on the same day. Somewhat surprisingly, though, some keywords lost ranking, some gained, and the overall average ranking change was roughly a wash. Not a promising sign for my URL-based freshness theory.

3. Mad Science Is Science, Too

So, what can we learn from my little experiment in freshness? I’m not entirely sure, but I’d like to offer a few takeaways to trick you into believing that reading this post was a good idea:

(1) Google Isn’t That Dumb
If you were considering changing all your URLs to trick Google into thinking that your posts are brand, spanking new, here’s some advice: don’t.

(2) Always, Always 301
Although I had my reasons for not using 301s in the first experiment, don’t ever rename an important URL without redirects in place. If nothing else, Graph (I) should be a lesson in what can happen if you do.

(3) Proceed With Caution
Even if you do rename your URLs for a perfectly good reason, and you put 301s in place, expect some short-term consequences. Rankings may fluctuate, and where you end up when you’re done might not be exactly where you started. Changing your URL structure is a big job – sometimes, it’s necessary, but don’t do it just to make a minor SEO tweak.

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10 Valuable, Actionable, Take-Aways From the SEOmoz Pro Training Seminar »

Posted by Whitespark

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.

Whitespark is an Edmonton Search Engine Optimization and Web Design Company in Canada

Having recently returned from the SEOmoz Pro Training Seminar Series, I wanted to recap a few of the things I learned, and create a list of actionable items that I need to start implementing in my SEO business. I’m writing this for my own reference, but figure that I might as well write it as a YouMoz post as it could be useful for those of you who couldn’t attend. Of course, what I found valuable and actionable may be different from what other attendees found valuable, so if you attended the seminar it would be great if you could share your top take-aways in the comments. The conference was packed with a ton of useful information, and this list focuses on the items that I’m currently excited about.

Take-Away #1 - Ask For A Link In Order Emails (And Other Customer Communications)

Tom Critchlow suggested asking for a link in your order emails. It’s a genius tactic, and I’m ashamed to say that I have heard this tip a few times before, but haven’t implemented it yet. That’s no good. This is so simple, so easy to do, and potentially so valuable that there is no excuse for not doing it, right now.

If you control the code on your e-commerce sites, then stop reading right this minute, fire up your code editor, and add some kind of version of this text to your outgoing order confirmation emails:

Do you have a website or blog? Link to us! Just copy and paste this code: <a href=http://www.oursite.com>Subtly Optimized Anchor Text</a>

If you don’t control the code, then stop reading right this minute and fire off an email to your dev team.

I just did this on five different e-commerce sites I manage and it took me exactly four minutes and 12 seconds. You do the math and figure out what the ROI is on that, even if it results in just a few extra links.

While you’re at it, think about other places this could be added to. Put it in the footer of your email marketing, put it on your website somewhere, maybe even put it in your email signature. You’ll be surprised what people will do when you tell them to, and "link to us" is a clear and direct call to action.

Take-Away #2 - Use The Top Pages Tool To Identify Your Competitors’ Link Bait And Learn From It

Rand pointed out that you can use the Top Pages Tool (Pro only) on your competitors’ sites to see the pages that have earned them the most links. Run this on a good set of sites in your industry to learn about what kind of link bait content will likely be successful for attracting links to your own site.

Take-Away #3 - Use The Google Adwords Keyword Tool To Identify Keywords That Have High Search Volume, But Low Competition

Ken Jurina from my home town of Edmonton, Canada showed how you can run your keywords through the Google Adwords tool and then sort the columns to identify high search volume keywords that have low competition. Optimize a page of your site for these terms for some easy pickings in the rankings!

Take-Away #4 - Use The Top Pages On Domain Tool To Find Linked To Pages On Your Domain That Should Be Redirected

This may be old news for many of you, but somehow I missed a great YouMoz post from Richard Baxter where he describes a sweet side-effect of the Top Pages Tool. You can run your domains through it and it will show you all the pages that have in-links, but that are now 404ing. Redirect them and keep that link juice flowing through your site!

You might be thinking that you can identify these cases in Google Webmaster tools, but there are a couple scenarios I can think of where you might not be able to:

1. You’re analyzing a site for a prospective client where you haven’t been given access to their Webmaster Tools.
2. When the old domain has been redirected to a new domain. Webmaster tools won’t show you the data if the entire domain has been redirected (I think), but the Top Pages tool will. This is the case that Richard points out in his post. This is awesome because now you can 301 those "lost" pages too.

Take-Away #5 - Use The Competitive Link Finder!!!

Nick just posted about this hot new SEOmoz tool, so maybe you’re already aware of it, but I saw this for the first time at the Pro Training Seminar and it is crazy awesome. Looking for some links? This tool makes it so easy! They have officially called it the Competitive Link Finder, but I like to think of it as the "Link Intersect Tool". You punch in your domain, and your competitors’ domains (works best with 3 or more competitors), and the tool magically shows you the pages that link to multiple competitors. If they link to a couple of your competitors, then chances are good that you can be included in that list too with a carefully Nick just posted about this hot new SEOmoz tool, so maybe you’re already aware of it, but I saw this for the first time at the Pro Training Seminar and it is crazy awesome. Looking for some links? This tool makes it so easy! They have officially called it the Competitive Link Finder, but I like to think of it as the "Link Intersect Tool". You punch in your domain, and your competitors’ domains (works best with 3 or more competitors), and the tool magically shows you the pages that link to multiple competitors. If they link to a couple of your competitors, then chances are good that you can be included in that list too with a carefully crafted email.

Take-Away #6 - Optimize Your Google Local Listings With these Tips

David Mihm is a great speaker and his talk was full of great info. Here are some of my highlights from it:

• It’s better to claim your listings manually, even for multiple listings. Google trusts these more as bulk uploads are susceptible to spam.
• Use Keywords in the Business Title, but don’t overdue it. (I can say from experience that this is a huge LBC ranking factor.)
• Adding custom categories can be a helpful ranking factor. Use the maximum # allowed. (I have also found this to be a big factor in my own Local rankings.)
• "Citations" are the links of Google Local rankings. Get listed on Localeze, InfoUSA, Openlist.com, etc. Americans should check out this list of places to get citations. Others should check out David’s guides to citations in Canada, UK, Australia, and Continental Europe.
• You can also identify citation sources by checking the "Web Pages" tab of your competitors.
• You can use the search engines to find even more citation sources:
  • yourcity, st blog
  • yourcity, st directory
  • yourindustry, st blog
  • yourindustry, st directory
  • yourindustry yourcity, st blog
  • yourindustry yourstate directory

Take-Away #7 - Use the Google Adwords Content Network To Find Sites To Buy Links From Directly

Tom Critchlow mentioned this tip in his talk. Building links can be hard work. If you have more cash than time and want to just buy some links, this is a great tip for identifying potential link sellers. If they are trying to make money on their sites with Adsense ads, then chances are good that you could contact them about "purchasing some advertising". If you’re willing to walk a grey line, well, then this could be an interesting tip for you.

Take-Away #8 - Enjoy Some Serious Link Love By Becoming A "Green" Business

Also from Tom’s talk, "going green" can be a great way to get some authoritative links! There are a ton of sites out there that will list your business if it’s "green". Ethical Directory, EcoFirms.org, Guide Me Green, etc. If you’re not green now, then figure out what you can do to be more earth friendly in your business, get a badge and info up on your site about it, and then contact all these sites that list green businesses.

This tip got me thinking about other angles for this. I can imagine plenty of link opportunities for a shoe store that sells "vegan shoes". I can imagine a pet supply company that donates a portion of its profits to animal shelters. I can probably think of something along these lines for almost any business.

Take Away #9 - Use Seth Besmertnik’s Market Opportunity Calculator To Help With Your SEO Sales Pitch

Seth Besmertnik’s talk was super funny, and super valuable. One of my favourites of the seminar for sure. He showed us how to demonstrate the value of SEO, and how to keep an SEO project on track.

You can download his presentation and a number of useful spreadsheets here: How to Win SEO Budget and Influence your CMO. One that I particularly like is the Market Opportunity Calculator. All you have to do is this…

• Input the list of keywords in Column  B
• Input Current Rank in Column C
• Input Global Monthly Search Volume in Column D
• Input Conversion Rate in Column R
• Input Average Value per Conversion in Column S

… and the Excel template will produce stats on what your current market share is for those terms, and what your potential market share could be if you had top positions. It also gives you a great looking pie chart that should make the serious ca$h value of SEO very clear to your potential clients.

Take Away #10 - Start Working On Your Conversion Rate Optimization Immediately

Is it just me, or do many of you also suck at Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? After seeing Ben Jesson’s presentation on CRO, I felt like I had just received a serious wake-up call to remember why I’m optimizing websites in the first place. I’ve been so caught up with increasing my clients’ ranking and traffic, that I have not been giving nearly enough attention to making sure that the visitors we do get become customers. Sure, I have dabbled in this a little bit by removing extraneous text from my forms, moving the important stuff above the fold, and dropping in a few starburst graphics to get attention, but damn, I have a lot to learn. Fortunately, Ben’s presentation was full of great advice and direction.

There are many things you can and should be doing to better understand your customer’s needs so that you can properly address them on your website. If I had to pick out a few pieces of wisdom from the presentation for you, it would be these:

• Implement tools on your website to learn from your customers. Find out what their objections are to buying your product, signing up for your service, subscribing to your e-newsletter, or whatever conversion goals you have, and then make sure you address those objections clearly on your site.
• Get some unbiased feedback on your website (not from your friends or family.) Ben’s tip: ask someone at a café if they wouldn’t mind giving you some feedback on your site. Tell them you’ve just had it redesigned and you’re just not sure about it. Offer to buy them a coffee. One of the best quotes from the seminar was when Ben said something like "The sign of a good usability test is when you’re holding back the tears because they told you the truth about the problems with your site."
• Here is a list of good tools for learning about your customers
  • GoogleTalk Chatback (I just added this to my site and it is super easy to implement)
  • Tell-a-Friend-King
  • Kampyle
  • iPerceptions 4Q
  • Distilled Reputation Monitor
  • CrazyEgg (I have used this, and it rocks)
  • SurveyMonkey
  • Ethnio
  • ClickTale
  • Google Website Optimizer
• Long sales pages are ok when done right. In fact, they are often necessary to be able to address all the different objections your customers might have about your products or services. Check out the Conversion Rate Experts optimized SEOmoz Pro Page, or the Conversion Rate Experts optimized SEOmoz Pro Page, or the Amazon Kindle Product Page for two very successful examples.

Conversion Rate Optimization has a massive return on investment. Get started on it right away!

Check out these great articles on the Conversion Rate Experts website, and also sign up for their newsletter. I have been on their list since January, and they do not spam you. They just send you an occasional email every few weeks that is full of good tips.

Well, that covers the top take-aways I can think of at the moment. I am certain that I forgot a few gems, so please, if you attended the seminar, it would be great to get your additions in the comments. Hope this post is helpful to you!

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5 Common Pieces of SEO Advice I Disagree With »

Posted by randfish

Over the years, I’ve heard a number of recommendations for SEO given out that I simply don’t understand or find logically flawed. I thought it might be interesting to share some of these and hear more perspectives. It could be that I just don’t comprehend the reasoning or haven’t thought things through, but I personally don’t always recommend these, so it’s worth at least a discussion.

#1 - Succesful SEO Copywriting = Keywords & Content Structure

Here’s an example of two pages upon which different kinds of SEO has been performed:

I struggle with the fact that 90%+ of the SEO copywriting advice I see on the web or hear at conferences relates to the use of keywords and the content structure (I’m guilty of this myself sometimes, but have been trying to break that habit). While those things may add value from a technical algorithmic ranking perspective, the value of even one additional external link, at least in my opinion, dwarfs the value of having the keyword repeated in the H2 tag the correct number of times.

It seems to me that if and when copywriters are given the knowledge to understand the web’s ecosphere around their content arena, and asked to target those who share and spread content on the web, their SEO work is likely to add far more value. That shouldn’t stop SEOs and writers from employing good keyword usage practices, but I wish I saw more about how to "write for the Linkerati" and leverage the emotions that make people link.

#2 - Never Exchange Links with Other Sites

There’s been so much fear pushed around the web about reciprocal link exchanges and link trading programs that the message has been muddled up into the completely nonsensical "never link to someone who links to you." To my mind, that’s a touch of lunacy. The web’s link graph is meant to be representative of the connections, endorsements and relationships of the real world. Artificially manipulating it, even when you’re doing so because you think Google wants you to, doesn’t make much sense.

The advice holds true when an offer comes via email suggesting you link to a site with which you have no relationship and, in exchange, they’ll link to you.  It holds true when a directory wants you to link to it in order to get a link out. It doesn’t hold true when some blogger has said something you care about and linked to you, or when a business partner has endorsed your work and is hoping you can reciprocate. I created a handy little risk chart to help explain my positions on "reciprocal" links:

For example, there’s nothing wrong with SEOmoz linking to Distilled’s website - our partners in the UK - and likewise, getting a link back from them. If, however, we weren’t actually partners but only linked back and forth in order to artificially inflate one another’s link popularity, it’s a different story.

#3 - Rewrite the H1 Headline to Be Unique from the Title Tag

I’m not sure exactly where this advice originated, but I’ve heard it from some SEOs I really respect, including my good friend Todd Malicoat. Still, I’m highly skeptical. I’ve tried it a few times in test environments and looked at some rough correlation data - both of which suggesting that there’s no particular benefit to having unique titles vs. H1s.

The big reason I’m against it is that H1s are intended to be the "headline" of a page, and if you click on a search result, then see a different headline on the page itself, it’s a very off-putting experience. This is one of those times when, even if it was good for SEO, I think the usability argument might trump. The expectation created by a title is that the article will be that precise piece. I have trouble imagining search engineers deciding that disparity between the two should result in a higher ranking.

#4 - Never Spam Report Your Competitors

A number of arguments are made against spam reporting the competition when they’ve employed tactics that violate the search engine guidlines. Some operators in the field want to make this a moral or ethical issue (AKA - the "thieves pact" made by being an SEO must be honored). However, since there’s no way to verify whether a particular SEO does or does not submit their competitors’ manipulative tactics to the engines, it could easily be that those most vocal about rejecting it as a path to success are actually the same ones who employ it most. Nothing stops an SEO from claiming to adhere to the "no outing" code while quietly turning in all of his/her cohorts.

This paradigm makes one path obvious - don’t say, at least publicly, that you report spam. Vocal parts of the SEO community are vehement about making examples of (and socially shunning/shaming) those who violate this "code of silence." However, from a practicality standpoint, it may still be valuable to your business to call out spam to the search engines so your site/page has a more level playing field from which to operate (as a white hat, competing against spammers is no fun). The vast majority of smart SEOs I’ve ever encountered expect that their sites are being consistently spam reported and thus engage only in tactics that are either 100% white hat or which they feel confident the engines will be hard pressed to discover (to my mind, the former makes far more sense).

Talking to lots of friends in the field, there seem to be a number of arguments in favor of spam reporting:

• You may be able to improve your own ranking by removing a competitor
• It’s a very low time/cost activity and typically a valuable learning experience (even those against reporting still strongly endorse researching and learning from those who do use black/gray hat tactics)
• You may gain trust in the eyes of the search engines (so long as you are 100% clean yourself)
• The spam you report may make its way into the index in a scalable way, pushing out multiple manipulators and thus leaving more room, on a macro scale, for your site to perform positively
• You can get a better sense for what the engines do/don’t tolerate and to what degree by seeing which tactics warrant immediate penalties vs. long delays or no action at all
• You may help the engines provide better search results for all users, thus increasing the overall value of the web

And a few reasons against:

• You may inadvertently hurt your own site’s rankings if you’ve engaged in (or unknowingly benefitted from) particular types of spam
• Reporting spam may hurt your fellow SEOs (gray or black hat though their tactics may be) and is thus unethical

The ethics argument against is certainly the most compelling, and as SEOmoz prides itself so highly on the ethics and values we adopt, I thought a quick review of the subject was in order. Thus, I checked out some great works on ethics from the Markula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. In particular, I found it valuable to read What is Ethics, as well as Whistle Blowing in the Public Sector. My basic takeaway is that If you believe that search engines are an oppressive (or potential oppressive) entity that does not have the best interests of the web or its users in mind, then complying with their request to help punish abusers has some ethical concerns. Likewise, if you feel that those who spam or manipulate the engines’ indices are removing value from the web’s usefulness, you may have similar ethical concerns staying quiet. Similar to reporting criminals for violating unjust laws (or turning them in to a corrupt, oppresive regime), the ethics of the situation depends greatly on your view of the engines and those who violate their guidelines.

#5 - A Site’s Age is Indicative of Ranking Ability

This is one area where I worry considerably about the value of correlation data. While sites that have longer history may indeed have a greater proclivity for high rankings, I don’t personally believe that the engines use a raw "age" metric or even an "age of links" metric to inflate potential rankings.

The "age of site" or "age of links" argument relies on the idea that search engineers believe age to be equated with higher quality. While there may certainly be value in analyzing the temporal nature of links and content, I struggle to think that older universally (or even mostly) correlates with a better result and better user experience. Age may have some bearing on certain kinds of rankings in specific scenarios and could play a role in trust/spam analysis as well, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a positive metric for judging overall potential performance.

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Whiteboard Friday - Generating Unique Content »

Posted by great scott!

It’s a common dilemma: When the engines constantly cry ‘content! content! content!’ you can start to wonder, "just how am I supposed to keep generating all of this unique content?"  A daunting challenge to be sure, especially for large sites with high-volume pipelines to fill.

In this week’s Whiteboard Friday Rand takes a look at the three major content classifications - editorial, machine-built, and user-generated - to help you understand what exactly qualifies as "unique" content, why it’s important to your site, and strategies you can use to generate it. Enjoy!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Generating Unique Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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This Week in Search for 8/26/09 »

Posted by Sam Niccolls

Before delving into industry news from the last two weeks, inspired by a pickup line used last night at the SEOmoz Training Seminar after party, I felt compelled to kick things off with a list of the five worst SEO pickup lines that no attendee of the SEOmoz Training Seminar in London should use this October.

• Jobs that Leave you Friendless: You saw the bozos (er-um journalists) at Fox News published a list of ‘Top Online Marketing Jobs to Leave You Friendless.’ And yes, amidst telemarketers and spammers, SEOs were atop the list. But if you didn’t catch Danny Sullivan’s response, it’s worth a read, too.

• Click, Drag, & Share on Social Media: Meebo’s slick tool makes it that much easier to share. Whether or not this functionality is right for your site, it is worth taking a look at how this works by mousing over an image on MobileCrunch or reading more about the technology. 

• Why Google is the New Microsoft: In a thought provoking article, Estately CEO Galen Ward, delves into the similarities between where Microsoft was in the 90s and where Google is today.

• The Demographics Driving Twitter’s Popularity: The New York Times article describes how an older demographic is the primary force behind Twitter adoption, but eMarketer also came out with two Twitter studies showing how marketers use Twitter over Facebook and how most people tweet about useless babble.

• Oprah’s Affiliate Smackdown: Last week was not a good time to be among the acai berry affiliates using images of Oprah or Dr. Oz without their endorsement. Both Oprah and Dr. Oz filed lawsuits against 50 online marketers who were using articles, video, images, and other such content to increase click through rates and sales.
• Why Craigslist is a Mess: Craig Newmark may be content with a small home and a bird feeder, but it’s hard to look at Craigslist’s "ambiance of neglect" and not wonder why the classified giant hasn’t done more to improve over the years. In his recent article Wired’s Gary Wolf takes a behind the curtain at Founder Craig Newmark, CEO Jim Buckmaster, and the inner workings of the company.

• Rock Out with your Stock Out: In addition to the digital distribution deal struck between INgrooves and Universal, social music service iLIke, perhaps best known for their successful Facebook app, was also bought by MySpace for $20 million.

• Continued Focus on Local Search: David Mihm and others received a myriad of questions at the SEOmoz Training Seminar this week, but mozzers are not alone with their interest in local search. MSNBC will soon weave more local search results into their site through the acquisition of EveryBlock, a site founded by ChicagoCrime.org founder Adrian Holovaty.

• DaaS Companies are Emerging: Wall Street Journal’s article goes into the successes of companies such as Open Table and talks about how data mining can be incredibly lucrative for data as a service (DaaS) companies who do it right.

• Meet Sheryl Sandberg: She narrowly missed Forbes’ list of 100 most powerful women, but Harvard graduate, ex-Googler and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is playing an instrumental role in balancing data protection with advertising revenue. And with Facebook lagging MySpace to the tune of hundreds of millions in annual revenue, it’s an area where the social network has room for improvement.

• 14 Reasons Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail: We might learn more from our failures than from our successes, but with any luck this list of why enterprise 2.0 projects fail can prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from falling into common pitfalls.

• PR Firm Reverb Communications Creates False Reviews: Any PR is good PR, right? What about bad PR for a PR firm? Well, after being exposed for hiring dozens of interns to write fake reviews at the Apple App Strore, Reverb Communications now knows a thing or two about the absolute value of PR.

1. US Websites Break into UK SERPs by John Sparks
2. Increase Google AdWords Quality Scores by Enhancing User Experience by RandyP
3. The Importance of NoFollow Links by Junseth

–

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Competitive Link Research with the Linkscape Index »

Posted by Nick Gerner

Just before the SEOmoz PRO Seminar, over the weekend, we updated the Linkscape index.  This is great timing because we’re also unveiling (to PRO members only, sorry free members) the prototype for a new tool!  We’re calling it our competitive link finder, powered by Linkscape.  But Tom Schmitz was good enough to explain things in a blog post some weeks back.

But before I dive into the new tool, as is traditional, some numbers:

• URLs: 39 billion
• Root Domains: 55 million
• Subdomains: 208 million
• Links: 443 billion

The sharp members of our audience will recognize that this index is, in fact, smaller than our last.  Our index size is varying from update to update as we tune quality vs coverage.  And this creates some issues around historical tracking.  Believe me, we are working on the issue, stay tuned for more information around this scenario.

More interesting is an Index Quality Study we finished just before this update.  From that study two things are immediately interesting to me. 

First, we estimate that between 60 and 70% of what Y!SE might give you (including no follows, duplicate links) are in our index today (the small one, remember?).  Moreover, we estimate that nearly 50% of what Y!SE will give you, we could too, but we filter out as duplicates, nofollows, or otherwise less important than other data we’ve got in our top 3000 links.

Next we’ve gotten a lot of feedback about how mozRank matches intuitive understanding.  Sure it’s a 10 point scale, similar to Google Toolbar PageRank, but often people are finding it’s off from what they’re expecting.  This is because of the data we’ve been optimizing our index for:

In the past we’ve been concentrating on a more or less random sample of pages users might care about (the red bars).  As it turns out, you guys care a lot more about important pages and want mozRank to be focused at describing the authority of these pages (the blue bars).  So we’ve dramatically shifted the focus of mozRank toward these pages.  Hopefully you should get a better experience out of mozRank and mozTrust for these high authority pages and sites.

We have more data for partners and power users.  PM me if you’re interested.

Finally, here’s the new competitive link tool. (I know you guys already took a peek at it!)  The idea is to identify authoritative sites and communities you could get links from, but don’t already. 

What we do is take your site, and up to five related sites (maybe competitors).  From those we find all the links the related sites have, and find the common ones.  From that we create a check-list.  These are the big important sites your industry is engaging with, but you aren’t. 

Of course, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to get some of these endorsements too.  I mean, you’ve got great content, products, tools, and services.  Users want that stuff.  Google, et al. want to deliver those search results.

So go check out your latest updated data, our new tool, and stay tuned for a Linkscape FAQ adapted from my PRO training slides.  That’s a little something for those of you who couldn’t make it to the seminar :)

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Project Management for SEO »

Posted by Lucy Langdon

Coming up with the right SEO answer is just one part of improving your website’s performance online. The strategy you devise then needs implementation and, more often than not, project management. The purpose of this post is to share what I (and a few others) have learned about managing SEO strategies over the years. There isn’t much hardcore SEO though- I suggest you take a look at this if you want some of that!

Goals/Objectives

If you’re developing an SEO strategy for a website, you need to make sure you have some objectives in place. A simple, ‘increase traffic’ or ‘rank better’ is not specific enough but, having said that, creating goals that are so specific they exclude any recognition of improvement across the board are similarly limiting.

Applied to SEO
You’re an in-house SEO for a website that sells cheese online. Your overall goal is to increase conversions on your site. Your strategy goals are threefold:

• reduce bounce rate by about x%
• increase the number of new visitors by about x%
• increase conversation rate by about x%

It’s a painfully obvious thing to say, but having aims in place like this will really increase your chances of creating a successful strategy; everything that goes into it has to have a motivation. Recommending a Twitter account? Is that because you think it’ll increase the number of new visitors by x% or because you quite like Twittering? By giving every task you outline a definite purpose, you’ll reduce the risk of wasting time on tactics that don’t work.
 

Getting everyone on board

These goals and objectives need to be developed in partnership with whoever you’re creating the strategy for, whether that’s a client or your boss. It really helps if you can demonstrate to this person why you’ve chosen these goals and, once you’ve come up with the strategy, how you’re going to achieve them. One of the main reasons for this is that you’ll probably need their help at some point along the way.

Applied to SEO
SEO isn’t rocket science but if your client’s/boss’s expertise lies elsewhere then it’s really worth making sure they understand what you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. Make sure someone (and it can be you) really believes in the strategy and can champion it to whoever needs convincing. It’s important that this person can communicate the overall idea as well as go into the specifics. We’ve found powerpoint, graphs and the odd screenshot of a ‘moz tool helps with this. (My post about using ‘moz tools in the sales process talks a bit about this).

In terms of implementation, if you can show (preferably with diagrams) how changing that title tag or contacting that partner site is crucial to the strategy then you’ve won half the battle.

Develop Indicators

If you’re putting together a strategy that’s going to last for more than a week or two, you want to be able to check up on it along the way. One of the characteristics of a ‘holistic strategy’ could well be that it won’t start showing results until you’re quite a way in (eg. if you start by making a load of techy changes to the website that will only affect rankings once you start linkbuilding), so you need to come up with a way to show the plan is working before it actually is! Sound challenging? It is, but it’s definitely worth it.

Applied to SEO
"Leading indicators and signature analytics" are the buzz words of the moment. The idea is to think of the stuff you can spot that indicates something is working. For example, if your overall objective is to improve the performance of a certain few search terms and you decide that one of the ways to do that is to increase domain diversity, then your leading indicator is simply to monitor the number of domains linking to you. If your aim is to improve the longtail traffic to your site, then your signature analytics could be to monitor the number of 3 or more word keyphrases that are driving traffic to your site.

Delegate tasks

Once your strategy, goals and indicators are set up, it’s time to start delegating some tasks! Personally, I love this bit, but I know lots of people find it hard to handover tasks that are intrinsic to the success of a strategy. Unless you personally have infinite time and resources, the project will probably suffer if you try and do everything yourself.

Applied to SEO
A nice spreadsheet with a list of tasks, due dates and who’s responsible for what will do wonders here. Whatever works though, just make sure everyone’s up to date and ready to go.

Actions

No matter how convincing and attractive a strategy might look, it really won’t work unless it’s actionable and then actioned. As long as all your tasks are created, handed out and acted upon from day one you can’t fail. If only it was that easy….

Applied to SEO
In reality, fitting your SEO strategy in alongside all the other challenges that the website you’re working for faces can be really difficult. How can you decide between a bug fix or a new widget for your limited dev resource? This is where an ability to prioritize comes in very handy. There will be actions within your strategy that are more important and time-sensitive than others but spotting which they are is hard; you often have to make calls on the potential benefit of future actions. Your strategy must be grounded on solid SEO concepts that you can see working on other sites. If it is, then you should have no problem making a call on the potential benefit of one action over another.

Reviews

Regular catch ups with whoever the strategy is for are essential throughout the project. People forget things, the market changes, stuff doesn’t work… this all needs to be discussed and accounted for. If your goals need to be tweaked half way through a strategy, for whatever reason, you need to be able to adapt quickly. It’s also important to tweak the expected results and leading indicators accordingly. A regular review is also a really good time to check that all those tasks you delegated are being completed in the best possible way.

Applied to SEO
How you go about these reviews obviously varies hugely from case to case but put something in the diary and keep to it! I’ve found it’s worth keeping this kind of catch up quite formal- sort out an agenda and try and stick to it. These catch ups are also an excellent opportunity to help keep you on track. Most folk would rather be building a Twitter network than digging through a list of niche directories to spot any missed opportunities. A good catch up that lets you check off what’s been done and what still needs doing will remind you which actions will actually make your strategy work.

Things to bear in mind

Quick wins vs. diminishing returns - Implementing an SEO strategy often involves picking off the low-hanging fruit first. For example, if there are problems with the indexing of the site you’re working for and your improvement of the navigation fixes these problems and suddenly allows new pages to rank, you’re going to look pretty good in month one. However, this kind of quick win approach can’t last forever; you should think about whether your client or boss will understand this. Two things will help with this:

• Work the concept of diminishing returns into your strategy as a positive thing- ie. make sure your boss or client understands that, although the value you’ll be adding month on month will be worth the investment, the value you add in the first few months might well blow them away.
• A strategy is a cumulative project so make sure you always look at the progress the site has made from the day you started, not just from the previous catch up.

Know your resources - As I mentioned above. an SEO strategy with no actions is terrible- as bad as a kitten in a box with no videophone on standby to capture the magic. However, an actionable strategy with no-one to actually do the work is so much worse. (If anyone can work out how to bring in Schrodinger here I think that would be great. Something along the lines off ‘if an actionable strategy has no-one to action it, is it a strategy at all?). Know thy minions and what they are capable of and remember, if the rules change half way through the game, then you should rethink what a ‘win’ will look like.

_________________________

Before I sign off, last week Will ran a popular conference call about how we use SEOmoz tools at Distilled. A recording of the call and the notes are now available online. If you would like to hear about future calls (and get future recordings) you can sign up on that page too. There was particular enthusiasm for one about advanced Excel (especially PivotTables) - watch out for that coming soon.

(My thanks to Tom and Will Critchlow and Stephen Tallamy for their advice about Project Management for SEO)
(Thanks to modenadude for the image).

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SEO Training Series - First Day Wrap up »

Posted by jennita

We just wrapped up the first day of our Pro Training Series 2009, and what a day it was! I think most people would agree with me when I say that the speaker line-up was absolutely amazing! Every single one of them brought their A-game and provided attendees with wickedly awesome information. I know, I know I’m a little biased eh? But I’ve seriously been in awe all day long, watching some of the best presentations I’ve ever seen.

Throughout the day I’ve had my eye on the Twitter stream, responding, retweeting and keeping people up to date one what’s coming next. Almost every single tweet has been positive except for the fact that it’s freezing in here (but really, what conference isn’t cold?? I freeze at every single conference I go to). As with SES San Jose, I’ve put together a compilation of all the amazing information that attendees have been coming away with and tweeting.

The sessions and tweets are listed in descending order, in other words: select * from session order by session.time desc. Also you may be wondering where the Q & A session is… I felt it needed a post of it’s own, so stay tuned!

(Please excuse my horrible images, I had to use my cell phone.)

Good Vs. Great: Why Some Startups Make the Leap and Others Don’t

Dharmesh Shah

fabioricotta

this was the best "startup" presentation I’ve ever seen… congratz @dharmesh and @seomoz

fabioricotta

we (SEOs) are web ninjas and maniacal about data - said @dharmesh xD #seomoz

davidmihm

@dharmesh "successful entrepreneurs try things and fail very rapidly" iterate CONSTANTLY #seomoz

barbjacobucci

@dharmesh has our attention at #seomoz. talkin’ startups.

barbjacobucci

if you aren’t completely embarrassed by your new product,you waited too long - @dharmesh #seomoz

timpoindexter

an entrepreneur’s goal is to take their awful idea and make it suck progressively less over time, says @dharmesh at #seomoz

conradsaam

"You will have many chances to screw things up." #seomoz

cassy82

Financial Risk: 100% of $20 million VS 10% of $200 million (by @dharmesh) #seomoz

MCrites

@dharmesh the best feedback 4 startups is when people start paying you money. The second best feedback is when they STOP paying you. #seomoz

conradsaam

@dharmesh "Write a blog, not a business plan". #seomoz

carriehinkle

Listening to a great presentation from @dharmesh about building a successful tech startup @ #seomoz. "Recruit superheros in the making"

PPCSummit

From @dharmesh, the best startups grab the customers that are sitting on the sidelines and not yet in the game to sell to. #seomoz

The Pacman Chunk of the Piechart: Getting Links

Tom Critchlow

SEOmom

#SEOmoz Seminar. Tom Critchlow covers link bldg w/your Unique Selling Proposition… + pic of Rand as Dr Evil.

fabioricotta

Good points on how small brands can beat big brands - by @tomcritchlow at #seomoz seminar

fabioricotta

good point by @tomcritchlow - "identify successfull strategies" - you can begin by using SEOmoz Top Pages tool! #seomoz

cassy82

Competitor Analysis: There are basic links in each niche Get them all. Reverse Engineer your competitors! #seomoz

cassy82

Great Phrase "Competitors are people who rank" by @tomcritchlow #seomoz

fabioricotta

Good tip by @tomcritchlow - Investigate the links to sites already listed in niche directories #seomoz

Ed_Reese

Just realized Will and Tom Critchlow are not the same person. Thought Will reverse aged somehow since last year. #seomoz

MCrites

@tomcritchlow is killing it with linkbuilding tips… love the idea of broadening link sources across niches #seomoz

fabioricotta

@tomcritchlow is blowing my mind with all fast tips he is giving at #seomoz seminar

Ed_Reese

Use Google’s Content Network to find companies open to linking back to you. Great tip from @tomcritchlow #seomoz

cassy82

Linkbuilding Requires Resource: Business Development Managers, Community Managers, Developers #seomoz

MidiaDigital

uma das melhores palestras de seo que eu já vi. Estratégias avançadas de lkb em inglês britanico e em 45min hehehe #seo, #seomoz

Sustain Verticality for 3 Rounds

David Mihm - Local Search

SEOBoy

Google local business center (LBC) best to approve listing manually to maximize Google’s trust. By David Mihm at #seomoz.

Ed_Reese

@davidmihm & Google Local. Check out his incredible Local Ranking Factors for the complete details: http://bit.ly/HQPPF #seomoz

fabioricotta

you should use microformats to improve your local search rankings - by @davidmihm #seomoz

cassy82

Location Page Optimization Tips-> Submit your location page for each location as your LBC Url, use geographic kwd in Titles #seomoz

Ed_Reese

Per @davidmihm Link out from your contact page to main citation sources and YouTube videos to increase rankings & reviews. #seomoz

MidiaDigital

David Mihm e Matt Brown falando sobre busca local e universal search: ambos falam da importância dos microformats. #seo, #seomoz

Matt Brown - Image & News Search

Ack! twitter glitch… no tweets coming through. Matt’s giving us awesome information! Tips for optimizing news - which is easier than image optimization. How do you get image search to turn into money?

• Alt attribute is the highest ranking factor.
• Keyword in the filename
• Differentiate alt text - don’t want all the pictures on a page with the same alt text

Ed_Reese

Arrrgh. Twitter down right in the middle of the #seomoz conference.

ThunderSEO

Optimizing your image alt tags can help your search engine rankings #seomoz (via @matthewjbrown)

cassy82

News search mistakes to avoid: registration walls, changing URLs, changing headlines to update story, bad relateds #seomoz

Make SEO Tools Work for You

Nick Gerner - Linkscape and other SEOmoz tools

dharmesh

At the #seomoz seminar. @gerner totally rocks. He’s one smart freakin’ dude.

seomoz

Woot! @gerner talks about the value of #seomoz Q & A and how to find answers to questions already answered plus get specific answers

cassy82

You Want to Be here ->mR = mT! #seomoz

fabioricotta

@dannydover citou o bit.ly como ferramenta para monitorar links de competidores… #seomoz

Tools from Across the Web

Danny Dover

davidmihm

@dannydover presenting @seomoz ‘how to make seo reporting sexy’ obviously step one is to grow KILLER facial hair #mozinar

Ed_Reese

Add a "+" to the end of any bit.ly link to get almost real time analytics. "Sweeeeeet!" #seomoz

SEOBoy

SEOs need to better understand the web developer world to improve overall campaigns from @DannyDover at #seomoz

First you Get the Keywords, Then you Get the Money

Ken Jurina

Enquisite
Linkscape

Ed_Reese

Enquisite mentioned as tool for long-tail keyword research. It’s a good anlaytics tool. Worth checking out. #SEOmoz #mozinar

ThunderSEO

Use Google Insights, Trends, and AdWords tool & IceRocket, ScoutLabs and Twitter to find low-competition keywords #seomoz

cassy82

Usando O Google Keyword Tool, Volume alto de busca, e pouca competicao, eh hora de atacar! #seomoz

SEO is Nothing without Content

Structurally Sound: SEO for Site Architecture

Jeremy Dearringer

@Rand at @seomoz training "Links, Links, Links!" http://yfrog.com/4zqa7j

MCrites

SEOmoz Pro Training Seminar Word of the Day: "automagically"

cassy82

Se o nofollow esta funcionando em seu site, para que remove-los? #seomoz

grav

At SEOmoz training - let your privacy policy get crawled - don’t block in robots.txt, use rel="noindex, follow" instead.

mpvanwinkle

SEOMOZ Rand Fishkin notes that for content-driven sites, sharing is your most important call-to-action. make is a priority in your design

cassy82

How to earn links to UGC -Make it Easy to Share -Reward Links with Trackbacks -Make Sharing functions a Call To Action #seomoz

briancarter

SEOmoz 2009 Tips & Tricks Seminar Kicks Off http://bit.ly/9wP6L #seomoz

See you all tomorrow for more great tips, tricks and information!

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SEOmoz’s Biennial Ranking Factors 2009 Released »

Posted by randfish

I’m thrilled to announce that after months of hard work, SEOmoz’s biennial Search Engine Ranking Factors is finally launching. Every two years, we survey 100 of the industry’s top SEO minds. In 2009, 72 SEOs participated in the data gathering process, answering survey questions that consumed hours of time. The resulting document is an amazing aggregation of data about how search engines rank documents and, at least in my opinion, should be read by anyone serious about practicing search engine optimization.

The document contains five important sections:

• The Overview - offering the most high level view of the ranking elements
• Ranking Factors - the raw data, showing the importance and level of consensus for each factor; this year also includes a set of opinions on how geo-targeting across countries is perceived.
• Link Building - this year, we’ve also added a section asking our SEO participants which methods they find most effective for link acquisition. I think this data is tremendously valuable and interesting for anyone seeking to engage in link building campaigns.
• Additional SEO Data - we asked a few specific questions around SEO to gauge the opinions of the experts; lots of cool stuff in here, too
• Contributors - a list of those who participated in the survey and details about who they are and where you can find them on the web

My great thanks goes out to Timmy & Sam here at SEOmoz, who helped create this year’s document and to all of the generous participants from across the SEO world. Practitioners in more than a dozen countries around the world, all of whom have extremely busy schedules, gave up their time to help those learning SEO get a better view of the subject - please join me in thanking them.

If you’ve got questions, feedback or want to bring up interesting topics, feel free to do so in the comments on this post.

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Whiteboard Friday: 10 Disturbing Similarities Between Dating & Raising Venture Capital »

Posted by great scott!

Straight from the Seattle Lunch 2.0 meetup at SEOmoz on August 14th comes this light-hearted look at raising venture capital.  SEOmoz CEO, Rand Fishkin, shares his experiences with raising capital with an amusing (but strangely appropriate) comparison to the dating scene.

SEOmoz emerged from our first round of VC funding with a profitable and growing business. Now seeking a B round, we get to see how things change with company size, shifting market dynamics, and a different pool of interested investors.

If you’ve ever wondered what the VC process is like for a small business, this presentation will give you a good idea of what to expect should you ever go on the hunt for capital.

SEOmoz: 10 Disturbing Similarities Between Dating & Raising Capital from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Postscript From Rand: This presentation is much longer than our typical Whiteboard Friday (about 22 minutes), but is fun if you’re interested in the VC world. I also wanted to note that if you’re interested in exactly what SEOmoz is up to on the VC front, this blog post is helpful to read. Once we wrap up the process (and, as noted, we may not end up taking capital if we don’t like the deal terms), I’ll be sure to give lots more insight into our experience. As I note in the video, it’s a rollercoaster ride, it takes up incredibly amounts of time and it’s massively stressful, but hopefully, at the end of the day, worthwhile.

For some additional good reading on the topic, see Paul Graham’s "Ramen Profitable" as well as Fred Wilson’s post on why the VC world is due for some potential shrinkage.

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10 Reasons to Submit to YOUmoz »

Posted by jennita

Have you been thinking about submitting to YOUmoz lately, but you’re not sure what the benefits are? Or perhaps you have a killer post in your head but are afraid to take the next step. Whatever the reason is that you’ve been holding back, I have 10 reasons why you should get yourself in gear and get that post written and submitted!

1. Reach tens of thousands of SEOs
   Our subscribers for both the main blog and YOUmoz continue to climb. Every month the numbers grow, just think about how many people will see your work. This is a great way to make yourself known in the industry.
   
   

2. Get great feedback
   People will leave comments and help/suggestions about your issue, or even ideas you hadn’t considered before.

3. Good posts get page views
   If you write a successful post, it can generate lots of traffic. For example, the great post that Aaron Hunter wrote Aaron Hunter wrote comparing Joomla and Wordpress is still getting over 1,000 page views a month and he wrote the post over a year ago. 
   • 6,959 page views from January through July.
   • 11,468 page views since date of post (January 2008)
     

4. Get smart SEOs visiting your links
   SEOmoz visitors clickthrough rate is tremendously high compared to other blogs and sites in the field. When we link, people click, so if you want eyeballs, make something compelling. Check out how many members we have on our site, that’s a lot of people looking at your work!
   

5. Badge of Honor
   Our bar is set high - just to make it to YOUmoz is tough; getting on the main blog is a real challenge. Our readers’ expectations are high and we reject 10 submissions for every 1 we accept. It’s a badge of honor and, in many cases, resume-worthy, particularly in the search world.

   As an example, check out chenry’s post on chenry’s post on CAPTCHAs’ Effect on Conversion Rates. It was so popular, it was moved to the main blog, and ended up with 58 thumbs up, 0 thumbs down (a feat I never manage myself!) and 73 total comments.

   His entry isn’t super long, but it is to the point, he shows graphics and pulls the reader into the post quickly.

6. Get a job!
   Yes, people come to SEOmoz looking for SEOs to hire (see the marketplace, for example). If you can show your knowledge through written word, you are likely to get some calls/emails.

7. mozPoints 
   When you reach 100 mozPoints, the nofollow is removed from your profile and if you reach 150+ within one month you could get a free SEOmoz PRO membership for a month!

   YOUmoz is the best way to earn those points because content gets more thumbs than comments (most of the time). Plus every time your YOUmoz entry gets posted on the site, you get 10 mozPoints, plus whatever thumbs up that post receives. AND if your post gets promoted to the main blog, you’ll get an additional 15 mozPoints.

8. Beat Rand!
   Many of the best YOUmoz writers have authored posts with more thumbs than Rand’s posts - just think how you can flaunt it in his sad, bearded face!
   

9. Rank!
   If you want to get top rankings in the engines with a piece of your content, but don’t have the appropriate domain for it, SEOmoz has a lot of juice and ability to compete. While we don’t allow parasite hosting, we do have YOUmoz :-)
   

10. Umm… you get a frickin’ live link!
    We have some serious sweet link juice floating around these pages, why not take advantage. All submissions are subject to our editorial approval of course (more on this below). :-)

What we’re looking for when reviewing YOUmoz entries

The fact is, if you submit a post that is clear, concise, well written and thought out, your entry will more than likely be approved. We are happy to post beginner articles along with more seasoned posts. Often times if a post is good, but needs some extra help to make it great, we’ll work with you to get the post just right.

Use images!
Photos and images break up the content and help make it more readable. They give your post more “oomph” and  can help you make your point more clear. Plus, great posts with graphics do really well.

For example, just look what feedthebot did back in 2007: feedthebot did back in 2007: How to put Google custom site search into your current website design. He wrote a post about integrating Google custom site search with your current web design and included some great visuals, which made the post engaging. As a result, since the post was published in May 2007, he has gotten over 38,486 page views.

Come up with some sort of unique and relevant image that goes with your post. If the post is short, then one image will do, but if it’s a big longer,  break it up with multiple images. Some examples:

• Screenshots with areas highlighted
• Charts or graphs
• Illustrations
• Photos

Here are a couple recent examples of good use of images/graphics in a post:

Unique Content
We search for duplicate content and if we see the same post on another site, your entry will be automatically rejected.  So it’s more beneficial for you to only submit unique content.

Spell check and Grammar check
We read through every entry and will make changes as needed. However if the post is filled with misspellings and grammar changes that would take us a long time to fix, then your post probably won’t get approved. Depending on how good it is we may send it back to you and ask you to redo it, but only if it’s “knock your socks off” good.

When it comes down to it, have fun with your post and don’t hold back. It’s great to have posts that cover a mix of subjects, just keep them relevant. They don’t have to be specifically about SEO, but the general topic of search marketing usually hits the mark! If you have questions feel free to email or send me a private message. I’m happy to help get your entry posted! And don’t forget…

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Early Detection: How Social Media May Save The World »

Posted by Danny Dover

 It is a typical Tuesday afternoon in suburbia California. Jenny, a sixteen year old girl is taking a sick day from school. With a runny nose, she sits idly on her bed surfing Facebook. At the same time, 2,000 miles away in Seattle, a twenty-two year old ambitious college drop-out named Kevin is on Twitter complaining about his sore throat. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a 40 year old single mother in London searches Google on her phone for the location of the nearest Boots drug store so she can buy cold medicine.

Photo Credit: aldo

If a human from 200 years ago were to look at our planet today, it would appear completely alien. Culture shifts and technology improvements have drastically changed our perceived landscape. One tiny part of this is the use of social media and search engines. More than ever, teenagers are complaining about their parents joining Facebook and parents are complaining about their children interfering with their online social lives. Together they are sharing small events like sore throats, runny noses and big events like floods and hurricanes. Communicating online has become intertwined with our lives and has now become deeply integrated with our work, education and entertainment.

But how did this happen? While I don’t know for sure, I do recognize the patterns. For companies like Twitter, Google, Digg and Facebook, it started with a small group of entrepreneurs in California whose great ideas eventually went viral and spread around the globe. This word ‘viral’ describes a pattern and has become a buzzword. It is usually used to describe the virus like spread of ideas and technologies. The amazing idea behind a virus like spread is it expands exponentially. Once it starts, it multiples and multiples until nothing can stop it.

Photo Credit: will-lion

It is the great irony I see in this buzzward that prompted this post. I believe the viral nature of social media and popular technology companies is what will paradoxically allow us to prevent the viral spread of real viruses and pandemics. This is not a new idea. Many vaccines are in essence inert viruses fighting would-be viruses.

In 2006, a man by the name of Dr. Larry Brilliant won the TED prize for calling for a new global system that could identify pandemics before they spread. Dr. Brilliant (you can’t make this stuff up) is world renowned for his efforts in successfully eradicating smallpox from the planet. Before winning the TED prize, he had been inspired by the potential of a Canadian system called GPHIN. GPHIN is a system of web crawlers and analyzers that scour web based content looking for trends in keywords like ‘fever’, ‘cough’, ‘tired’, ‘sick’ and ‘flu’. Using this methodology, GPHIN was able to detect a would-be SARS outbreak six weeks before any other system (including the systems used by the World Health Organization). Quick responding officials were able to isolate the outbreak and prevent a global pandemic. Dr. Brilliant later said that this possible for two reasons.

1. Early Detection
2. Rapid Response

Shortly after his major call for action, Dr. Brilliant was hired as Executive Director of the then newly formed Google.org. This new philanthropic arm of Google was funded by 1% of all Google profits. Dr. Brilliant eventually used these resources to build an early detection system that is used today to help predict flu trends. He built the system he called for and the world has been better off because of it.

Unfortunately, this is not where the story ends. Larry Brilliant has since left Google for other endeavors. GPHIN and Google Flu Trends continue to save lives but they are only the tip of the iceberg. Google is now falling behind new competitors that dominate the ever growing real-time web. Status updates from Twitter and Facebook are being produced and becoming obsolete so quickly that Google’s index can’t keep up. We saw this with Michael Jackson’s death and we will see it again in the future.

Social media has the potential to become the greatest early detection system that the world has ever seen. It is faster, nimbler and has more access to user data than any traditional search engine. Not only does Facebook have the data necessary to see who is suffering from an illness, it has the data necessary to predict who these ill people will most likely come in contact with. Twitter has the data to make similar predictions (although less accurately because people don’t physically spend time with Twitter friends like they do with Facebook friends) but enjoys the added benefit of being accessed and updated from any place with mobile phone or WIFI service. (90% of Twitter requests are made to it’s API, whereas only 12% of Facebook users access Facebook through it’s mobile apps).

These two social media platforms by themselves have the ability to enable ordinary people to report their symptoms in real-time. Specialists like epidemiologists and statisticians could then identify threats (early detection) and use these same communication channels to direct aid workers (rapid response) on how best to isolate viruses before they become pandemics. If the features of other social media platforms and modern search engines were added to this theoretical system, specialists could for the first time ever educate the global community in real time. (Think about how many people read stories on Digg or about the much larger amount of people who read Google Adsense ads every day.)

Theory and predictions are helpful but just like verbal contracts, they are only worth the paper they are written on. Luckily for us, this theoretical system is already becoming reality today. People are already reporting their symptoms on Twitter and on Facebook. Likewise, disease experts and aid workers are already using social media to organize relief efforts. Although a unified, non-government controlled system for monitoring these platforms doesn’t currently exist, all of the pieces are in place. Dr. Brilliant said that there are two steps necessary for preventing pandemics. Social media is completing the first step (early detection) to a degree that even he couldn’t imagine. Better still, this is not costing the public a dime.

The world is changing in parallel with the internet. Next time you hear someone complain about "pointless" status updates, take the time to explain it to them. Social media is powered by all of us individually. Because of this, you have the ability to make a positive difference.

UPDATE: There has been some very healthy discussion in the comments that I would like to address here. Thank you 0lly and Bludge for bringing this up.

What about false alarms? Clearly, social media will have a lot of noise mixed in with legitimate concerns. Just like good ideas, bad ideas can spread virally as well. Paranoia and misinformation run rampant in the media and online.

So how do medical professionals use a system that will likely have a lot of misinformation and noise? The key is acknowledging that limitation and designing the system to account for it. The reason that GPHIN was so successful, was not that it sent an e-mail directly to health authorities every time someone mentioned "cough", instead it was so powerful because it used aggregate information to identify real trends. Real people, including doctors, look over the information and decide if it is worth pursuing or not. It is natural to assume the front end of a system like this might look something Twitter search with has every relevant Tweet visible. This is not how it works. Instead I think a more accurate representation would be that of Google Flu Trends (aggregate information) with trends that can be broken down by location and with the help of social media, broken down into social groups.

I am not and do not claim to be a medical or disease expert. If you are, I invite you to help me make this post better. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. If you would rather not do that, feel free to e-mail me. All of my contact information is available on my profile: Danny Thanks!

Twitter: Growing Virally But Can It Stop Viruses? - Chris Thorman writes a very compelling post that adds the use of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) to the discussion. From the article "The combination of social media and EMRs, in some form or another, will undoubtedly be part of the future of tracking disease outbreaks. The how and when of that process remains complicated, dependent on health agencies, governments and the doctors themselves to implement the appropriate systems."

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Link Building for Small eCommerce Sites »

Posted by RobOusbey

Link building for small ecommerce sites can be amongst the toughest SEO challenges - but also the most common. I’d like to share a few bits of advice for anyone rising to the challenge - whether you’re working in-house or as an agency.

These are targetted at small companies, probably with limited internal resource or a small SEO agency contract, and who don’t have a PR firm able to get them into newspapers or an advertising budget that will put them in magazines, on radio, etc.

Tip 1: Reviews

If you sell huge ticket items this doesn’t work so well, but for sites where a typical item or purchase is in the right ballpark (e.g.: £10 - £40ish, depending on how much you’d value a link) then asking people in the right niche to review your products can be very valuable.

Specifically, I’ve found the following to work well:

1. Find sites / blogs roughly in the niche of your product (I’ve mentioned Blogged.com and dir.Blogflux.com but there are others)
2. Check that each site is indexed (and not penalised, etc) and based in a particular geographic region, if that’s important to you
3. Grab their contact details off the site and fire them an email (see the example below)
4. Do email from an email address at the site; if you’re working as an agency, ask the client to set up an email account in your name
5. Find out what they’d like, and send it to them
6. They write a review on their site and link to you
7. You email to thank them for the review, and ask them to update the anchor text to something with a keywords in it.

When writing the request in stage 3, keep it short and to the point. Explain why they were relevant - the reason you chose to write to them - and what you’d like them to do. An example might look like this:

Tip 2: Non Commercial Content

Without substantial SEO resources, you may be put off from the idea of linkbait, given that you can put a bunch of work in, and it’s not guaranteed to result in loads of links.

Instead, consider creating link-worth resource-type content (it doesn’t even need to be anything as organised as a regular blog) and then manually spreading this to appropriate places. Aim for content that doesn’t have a great resource at the moment. Example might be:

• how to install a blue widget in a Thingamy X-1000
• the history of blue widget production
• 10 point checklist for setting up your own blue widget society
• how to use a blue widget to help you through university
• how to get a graduate job in the widget business.

The places to try and share this content might include:

• any of those niche bloggers you found earlier but you haven’t talked to you
• university & college student with their .edu / .ac.uk sites
• people in very similar but non-overlapping industries
• sites which aggregate and link to useful content from a particular niche or topic
• customers who’ve indicated they have a website / blog / social media account (you do ask this in your customer satisfaction surveys, right?)

I don’t beleive that there’s a single eCommerce site which couldn’t produce some useful content like this, and get links out of it by spending some time talking to people and explaining what they’re making available.

Tip 3: Business / Industry Friends

I love how many small sites there are out there which have heard of SEO, let alone tried to do any, so they have really old domains names, with a bit of good content, and have only really strong, genuine links pointing to them.

Just because it looks like that, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have mozRank.

There’s a fair chance that some of your suppliers, clients, partners, etc have great sites like this. There’s every chance that if you ask them for the favour in the right way, they’ll stick a link on their site to you. Alternatively, you could offer to write a testimonial to stick on their site, which will then link to you.

For small companies that don’t cover a whole country, you could try asking businesses that are similar to yours but elsewhere in the country. (eg: On the Glasgow Widget Shop’s website, you could get: "If you want widget repair in Lancashire, we recommend our friends at The Bolton Widget Shop") - I’m pretty sure that even if you want to send them a bottle of whisky to say thank you, Matt Cutts won’t really give two hoots.

If anyone has tried the ‘reviews’ tip mentioned above (or is inspired by this post to go out and try it) please do drop a comment below, and let us know how it goes.

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The Good, the Bad and the Funny - SES San Jose 2009 »

Posted by jennita

This past week at SES San Jose 2009 gave me the most mixed emotions of any conference I’ve attended yet. There were parts I loved and parts I was disappointed in. Add that with trying to complete regular work plus cover the conference for SEOmoz, believe me it was a bit crazy. Some of you may have also heard about the rough start I had to the conference… I booked the wrong flight home, had to find a hotel last minute, wasn’t on the list for a press pass (which they fixed right away), the list goes on and on really. Still, I didn’t let this stop me from learning new things, meeting new people and on the last day (after 2 full days of stalking), I nabbed an interview with Matt Cutts. ;)

As with anything in life really, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. This is true for search marketing conferences and for SES San Jose, it was no different. Whenever I attend a large conference or even small meet-ups, I’m in awe of the people who organize the event. It can’t be easy to coordinate everyone from speakers to attendees, from booth setup to making sure everyone is fed (more on that below). You would have to know that as you’re working your butt off to get everything done, that there will be people who love and others who hate certain aspects of the event. For me, that is the beauty of it, I mean how boring would it be if we all loved everything all the time? So please, follow along, as I bring you the good, the bad and the downright funny from the conference.

The Good

The types of speakers you have in any given session can either make or break it. The topic could be something as exciting as Black Hat vs. White Hat but if the speaker is as dull as dishwater then the entire session comes to a screeching halt (and people fall asleep in the first row). However on the flip side, when a speaker is so dynamic that he or she can keep a crowd of several hundred people interested in analytics right after lunch, then you have a winner in my book!

If you’ve ever seen Avinash Kaushik from Google speak, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Right after lunch on the first day, Avinash spoke at the session "How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine." This is one of those sessions where you know you’ll probably learn some good information but only if you can keep yourself awake long enough. Not in this instance. Avinash started with great one liners like "Life is not a one night stand" and one of his slides was labeled: "Sexy: Search + Display." He knew exactly how to keep the audience interested and laughing the entire time. The biggest take-away by the audience seemed to be when he was asked what tool he used to find all his data, and he said he used Google Ad Planner. I’m pretty sure Google saw a spike in usage soon after!

I went to the "SEO Tools of the Trade: What’s in your Toolbox?" session a little miffed that SEOmoz wasn’t represented and was ready to ask the speakers about it. With six speakers plus the moderator there wasn’t time to ask any questions (see "the bad") but I made sure I made myself known by sitting right up front with my SEOmoz T-Shirt on. :D Although not one of the speakers mentioned SEOmoz (boooooo) I actually walked away with a few additional tools in my toolbelt because of it. It was interesting because many of the speakers had tools of their own, and most pitched them. What I liked though was that Bruce Clay spoke about what to look for in a tool and what kinds of tools to look for. He didn’t preach about how awesome his tools were, but gave excellent, useful information about finding the right tool (it would have been even better had had the chance to explain how we have a tool for every one of the points he made. ;-)

In the "Search: Where to Next?" session, I loved that Chris Boggs mentioned SEOmoz as one of his favorite blogs. Woot!

Although the speakers can make the sessions, there were a few other gems that made my "thumbs up" list. As usual, the exhibitors had great schwag. I loved that the first two rows in each section were reserved for the press. This allowed all the live bloggers and others to have a place to sit and type their hearts out. I’ve seen many people trying to live blog with their laptops in their lap. And speaking of live bloggers I have to give a shout out to my roommate Keri Morgret who I coined the name "best roommate ever" for bringing chocolate muffins, coffee and other yummies to the room.

I can’t forget to mention the great networking and evening events that took place. For me, networking was one of the most valuable aspects of the conference. Searchbash that was put on by WebmasterRadio.fm and the IM Charity Party were great fun and I loved meeting new people and spending time with friends.

The Bad

Every conference has its issues, and let’s be honest here, you can never please everyone. SES San Jose had a few "thumbs down" in my opinion. There were the poor people at the superpages.com booth who had to wear bright yellow capes (as torture of manning a booth for two days). Or the very nice lady at AOL who stood alone while most of the other booths were packed with people. I hate to even mention the food since really I’ve seen many blogs already talk about this… but sheesh! They served us the SAME FOOD for 3 days in a row. It was also strange that around 11am every day, the coffee seemed to disappear. Uhm, hello! We need coffee to keep us going through the full days (and some to get over that hangover).

Then there are the speakers. Often times in a tech oriented industry you’ll get a speaker who knows her business but come on, she really has no right speaking to large audiences. Other times you may find someone who knows his information so well he seems to get lost in the speech and forgets he is supposed to be talking to the audience and not just within his own head. Or what about the moderator who feels she has to ask each speaker a question after their presentation to ensure everyone knows she paid attention? This conference also seemed to have more speakers than most sessions could handle and several times there was no time for Q & A, which in my opinion is usually the most valuable aspect.

There were a few who seemed a bit nervous and others who read straight from the Powerpoint presentation (this is when the afternoon coffee would have come in handy). I can definitely understand being nervous; speaking in front of hundreds of people is quite nerve racking, even if you know the topic inside and out. But one thing I had a hard time with was hearing a speaker give outright bad (or at least, incomplete) information.

Now, I’m far from perfect, and I’m positive I’ve lead people down the wrong track before so I’ll give Stoney deGeyter from Pole Position Marketing the benefit of the doubt that perhaps I misinterpreted him. However in the "Search on a Dime" session he told the audience that the meta description was not valuable, and that if they didn’t have time to do it to just let the search engines find the content of the page and determine what to put there. EEK!

This was said to a group of small business owners who were looking for ways to rank well without spending a ton of money. They should have been told how the meta description is unimportant for ranking factors but that it is UBER important for the ever-important click-through! Small business owners should know that having unique meta descriptions is essential and making sure that they’re created to entice users to click that link in the SERP and pull people into their site. The idea that leaving anything up to a search engine seems rather ridiculous. (It also didn’t help matters that when asked how he suggested getting developers to make the necessary changes on the site his answer was "Tell them to make the change and if they say no, fire them." As a former full-time developer this really left a bad taste in my mouth.)

By the way, the entire session wasn’t bad, in fact David Mihm’s presentation was spot on. He gave us excellent information about local search without so much as pimping out his ridiculously awesome site GetListed.org. Even Matt Van Wagner showed us step by step how he put together a local search campaign, although I wasn’t too sure how that related to search marketing on a budget, but it was still good information.

The Funny

There was one particular quote that seriously made me laugh out loud. It really tickled my funny bone when Pavan Li from Microsoft was trying to get something to work on her computer while she was taking questions and she said "We’re used to making simple things complicated." The room lit up with laughter after that one!

Later that same day, after Avinash had explained how rich old men search for Paris Hilton more often than other groups, Mike Grehan the moderator, took the mic to announce the next speaker and said "I’m just an average guy looking for pictures of Paris Hilton."

The highlight on the last day, was the "Extreme Makeover: Live Site Clinic." With Matt Cutts, Greg Boser, Elisabeth Osmeloski, Tiffany Lane and Vanessa Fox reviewing websites, it could have been pretty straightforward and down to business. However the session started with a review of mypleasure.com and ended with hookah-shisha.com. Let’s just say there were many blushing faces throughout the entire session and at one point Vanessa said, "and I would listen to what Matt says because he started in porn" to which Matt responded (after a few seconds of the audience laughing), "What Vanessa means by that is the first thing I did at Google was that I worked in safe search…" Hah!

I’m sure there were many more funny moments but as a one woman show I couldn’t be in all places at one time. With that, I’ll end with my favorite quote which came from Chris Boggs on the first day, "SEO is alive, long live SEO!"

PS: Most images courtesy of Dana Lookadoo, Search Marketing Optimizer, Yo! Yo! SEO. (She took tons of great photos at the conference)

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Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization »

Posted by randfish

How Do I Build the Perfectly Optimized Page?

If you’re in SEO, you probably hear this question a lot. Sadly, there’s no cut and dry answer, but there are sets of best practices we can draw from and sharpen to help get close. In this blog post, I’m going to share our top recommendations for achieving on-page, keyword-targeting "perfection," or, at least, close to it. Some of these are backed by data points, correlation studies and extensive testing while others are simply gut-feelings based on experience. As with all things SEO, we recommend constant testing and refinement, though this knowledge can help you kick-start the process.

HTML Head Tags

• Title - the most important of on-page keyword elements, the page title should preferably employ the keyword term/phrase as the first word(s). In our correlation data studies, the following graph emerged:

  
  Clearly, using the keyword term/phrase as the very first words in the page title has the highest correlation with high rankings, and subsequent positions correlate nearly flawlessly to lower rankings.

• Meta Description - although not used for "rankings" by any of the major engines, the meta description is an important place to use the target term/phrase due to the "bolding" that occurs in the visual snippet of the search results. Usage has also been shown to help boost click-through rate, thus increasing the traffic derived from any ranking position.
• Meta Keywords - Yahoo! is unique among the search engines in recording and utilizing the meta keyword tag for discovery, though not technically for rankings. However, with Microsoft’s Bing set to take over Yahoo! Search, the last remaining reason to employ the tag is now gone. That, combined with the danger of using keywords there for competitive research means that at SEOmoz, we never recommend employing the tag.
• Meta Robots - although not necessary, this tag should be sure NOT to contain any directives that could potentially disallow access by the engines.
• Rel="Canonical" - the larger and more complex a site (and the larger/more complex the organization working on it), the more we advise employing the canonical URL tag to prevent any potential duplicates or unintentional, appended URL strings from creating a problem for the engines and splitting up potential link juice.
• Other Meta Tags - meta tags like those offered by the DCMI or FGDC seem compelling, but currently provide no benefit for SEO with the major engines and thus, add unnecessary complexity and download time.

URL

• Length - Shorter URLs appear to perform better in the search results and are more likely to be copied/pasted by other sites, shared and linked-to.
• Keyword Location - The closer the targeted keyword(s) are to the domain name, the better. Thus, site.com/keyword outperforms site.com/folder/subfolder/keyword and is the most recommended method of optimization (though this is certainly not a massive rankings benefit)
• Subdomains vs. Pages - As we’ve talked about previously on the blog, despite the slight URL benefit that subdomains keyword usage has over subfolders or pages, the engines’ link popularity assignment algorithms tilt the balance in favor of subfolders/pages rather than subdomains.
• Word Separators - Hyphens are still the king of keyword separators in URLs, and despite promises that underscores will be given equal credit, the inconsistency with other methods make the hyphen a clear choice.

Body Tags

• Number of Keyword Repetitions - It’s impossible to pinpoint the exact, optimal number of times to employ a keyword term/phrase on the page, but this simple rule has served us well for a long time - "2-3X on short pages, 4-6X on longer ones and never more than makes sense in the context of the copy." The added benefit of another instance of a term is so miniscule that it seems unwise to ever be aggressive with this metric.
• Keyword Density - A complete myth as an algorithmic component, keyword density nonetheless pervades even very sharp SEO minds. While it’s true that more usage of a keyword term/phrase can potentially improve targeting/ranking, there’s no doubt that keyword density has never been the formula by which this relevance was measured.
• Keyword Usage Variations - Long suspected to influence search engine rankings (though never studied in a depth of detail that’s convincing to me), the theory that varied keyword usage throughout a page can help with content optimization and optimization nevertheless is worth a small amount of effort. We recommend employing at least one or two variations of a term and potentially splitting up keyword phrases and using them in body copy as well or instead.
• H1 Headline - The H1 tag has long been thought to have great importance in on-page optimization. Recent correlation data from our studies, however, has shown that it has a very low correlation with high rankings (close to zero, in fact). While this is compelling evidence, correlation is not causation and for semantic and SEO reasons, we still advise proper use of the H1 tag as the headline of the page and, preferrably, employment of the targeted keyword term/phrase.
• H2/H3/H4/Hx - Even lower in importance than the H1, our recommendation is to apply only if required. These tags appears to carry little to no SEO value.
• Alt Attribute - Surprisingly, the alt attribute, long thought to carry little SEO weight, was shown to have quite a robust correlation with high rankings in our studies. Thus, we strongly advise the use of a graphic image/photo/illustration on important keyword-targeted pages with the term/phrase employed in the alt attribute of the img tag.
• Image Filename - Since image traffic can be a substantive source of visits and image filenames appear to be valuable for this as well as natural web search, we suggest using the keyword term/phrase as the name of the image file employed on the page.
• Bold/Strong - Using a keyword in bold/strong appears to carry a very, very tiny amount of SEO weight, and thus it’s suggested as a best practice to use the targeted term/phrase at least once in bold, though a very minor one.
• Italtic/Emphasized - Surprisingly, italic/emphasized text appears to have a similar to slightly higher correlation with high rankings than bold/strong and thus, we suggest its use on the targeted keyword term/phrase in the text.
• Internal Link Anchors - No testing has yet found that internal anchors are picked up/counted by the engines.
• HTML Comments - As above, it appears the engines ignore text in comments.

Internal Links & Location in Site Architecture

• Click-Depth - Our general recommendation is that the more competitive and challenging a keyword term/phrase is to rank for, the higher it should be in a site’s internal architecture (and thus, the fewer clicks from the home page it should take to reach that URL).
• Number/Percentage of Internal Links - More linked-to pages tend to higher rankings and thus, for competitive terms, it may help to link to these pages from a greater number/percentage of pages on a site.
• Links in Content vs. Permanent Navigation - It appears that Google and the other engines are doing more to recognize location on the page as an element of link consideration. Thus, employing links to pages in the Wikipedia-style (in the body content of a piece) rather than in permanent navigation may potentially provide some benefit. Don’t forget, however, that Google only counts the first link to a page that they see in the HTML
• Link Location in Sidebars & Footers - Recent patent applications, search papers and experience from inside SEOmoz and many practitioners externally suggests that Google may be strongly discounting links placed in the footer, and, to a lesser degree, in the sidebar(s) of pages. Thus, if you’re employing a link in permanent navigation, it may pay to use the top navigation (above the content) for SEO purposes.

Page Architecture

• Keyword Location - We advise that important keywords should, preferably, be featured in the first few words (50-100, but hopefully even sooner) of a page’s text content. The engines do appear to have some preference for pages that employ keywords sooner, rather than later, in the text.
• Content Structure - Some practitioners swear by the use of particular content formats (introduction, body, examples, conclusion OR the journalistic style of narrative, data, conclusion, parable) for SEO, but we haven’t seen any formal data suggesting these are valuable for higher rankings and thus feel that whatever works best for the content and the visitors is likely ideal.

Why Don’t We Always Obey These Rules?

That answer is relatively easy. The truth is that in the process of producing great web content, we sometimes forget, sometimes ignore and sometimes intentionally disobey the best practices laid out above. On-page optimization, while certainly important, is only one piece of a larger rankings puzzle:

(FYI - The new ranking factors survey data is set to release very, very soon)

It most certainly pays to get the on-page, keyword-targeting pieces right, but on-page SEO, in my opinion, follows the 80/20 rule very closely. If you get the top 20% of the most important pieces (titles, URLs, internal links) from the list above right, you’ll get 80% (maybe more) of the value possible in the on-page equation.

Best Practices for Ranking #1

Curiously, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experienced SEOs, the truth is that on-page optimization doesn’t necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first position would look something more like:

1. Accessibility - content engines can’t see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability is foremost on this list.
2. Content - you need to have compelling, high quality material that not only attracts interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virality of content is possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing).
3. Basic On-Page Elements - getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles, URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page to perform well.
4. User Experience - the usability, user interface and overall experience provided by a website strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits.
5. Marketing - I like to say that "great content is no substitute for great marketing." A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the power to attract far more links than content may "deserve," and though this might seem unfair, it’s a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable (just look at the political spectrum).
6. Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization - applying all of the above with careful attention to detail certainly isn’t useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a reason; in our experience, it doesn’t add as much value as the other techniques described.

As always, I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences about the specific recommendations above and the general concept of the "perfectly" optimized page.

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Whiteboard Friday - Matt Cutts on NoFollow »

Posted by great scott!

This week we’ve got a special treat! Live from the halls of SES San Jose, our own Jen Lopez sits down with the one-and-only Matt Cutts to discuss NoFollow.

As we all know, there was some controversy about Google’s shifting views on nofollow earlier this year. So now that some time has passed and Big G has refined their position, what would Matt recommend to sites that have lots of nofollow tags already in place? Watch this exclusive interview to find out.

From Jen:

This has been a great week at SES San Jose 2009. There were lots of great sessions, informative tweets, fun swag and I’ve personally met many of our Pro members! My favorite session of the week was "Extreme Makeover: Live Site Clinic" where Matt Cutts, Greg Boser, Elisabeth Osmeloski, Tiffany Lane and Vanessa Fox (unofficially :)) reviewed several websites in front of hundreds of people. The use of the rel=nofollow for PR sculpting came up in the review (imagine that). Matt Cutts recommended to a site owner that he remove all the nofollows from his site, even to non-necessary pages.

This is a subject that comes up time and time again on the SEOmoz site whether it’s in the Q & A section, or in the blog and comments. So I wanted to find out directly from Matt, what he would recommend to our users moving forward. This afternoon I sat with Matt and got his take on the conference in general as well as the use of rel=nofollow and PR sculpting. (Oh yea! And if you haven’t seen the tweets and read the posts yet, Matt got a new haircut. :)

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Matt Cutts on NoFollow from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Whiteboard Friday - Matt Cutts on NoFollow »

Posted by great scott!

This week we’ve got a special treat! Live from the halls of SES San Jose, our own Jen Lopez sits down with the one-and-only Matt Cutts to discuss NoFollow.

As we all know, there was some controversy about Google’s shifting views on nofollow earlier this year. So now that some time has passed and Big G has refined their position, what would Matt recommend to sites that have lots of nofollow tags already in place? Watch this exclusive interview to find out.

From Jen:

This has been a great week at SES San Jose 2009. There were lots of great sessions, informative tweets, fun swag and I’ve personally met many of our Pro members! My favorite session of the week was "Extreme Makeover: Live Site Clinic" where Matt Cutts, Greg Boser, Elisabeth Osmeloski, Tiffany Lane and Vanessa Fox (unofficially :)) reviewed several websites in front of hundreds of people. The use of the rel=nofollow for PR sculpting came up in the review (imagine that). Matt Cutts recommended to a site owner that he remove all the nofollows from his site, even to non-necessary pages.

This is a subject that comes up time and time again on the SEOmoz site whether it’s in the Q & A section, or in the blog and comments. So I wanted to find out directly from Matt, what he would recommend to our users moving forward. This afternoon I sat with Matt and got his take on the conference in general as well as the use of rel=nofollow and PR sculpting. (Oh yea! And if you haven’t seen the tweets and read the posts yet, Matt got a new haircut. :)

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Matt Cutts on NoFollow from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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This Week in Search for 8/13/09 »

Posted by Sam Niccolls

‘This week in Search’ is a compilation of some of the most interesting, newsworthy, and useful stories in and around the world of search over the last 1-2 weeks. If you have articles on your own blog or think something is worth mentioning in next week’s post, send me a direct message to me on Twitter  (@samniccolls) or tweet it and include @seomoz #thisweek in your tweet.

• Humble Startup Beginnings: In a post that shows pictures of the offices where Google, Facebook, eBay and other web giants started, Income Diary reminds entrepreneurs (and aspiring entrepreneurs) that every business has to start somewhere.

• Is your site used every day? LinkedIn does not incentivize daily visits from members, but they aren’t not alone. Many companies who do not have applications which are used daily have business models dependent on every day usage. Sadly, paraphrased versions of the closing remarks can be applied to many companies, not just LinkedIn — "Until they can make their users better at what they do, it won’t be an every day app."

• Email vs. Social Media: According to Forrester, over three times more US adults use e-mail each month than use social media sites (165 million to 66 million). So there’s no debating that e-mail remains a cornerstone of one-to-one marketing, but brands are increasingly turning from e-mail to sites like Twitter and Facebook for customer acquisition and retention. Similarly, forward-to-a-friend (FTAF) still remains four times more used among online retailers than share-with-your-network (SWYN).

• Google Website Optimizer Case Study:  David Booth of WebShare shares a case study on split testing. Specifically, he delves into Google Website Optimizer results that show a split test they ran for the Gyminee homepage, which resulted in a 20% conversion rate increase. For those looking to run tests themselves, Booth includes several actionable takeaways in the post.

• This Business of SEO by Todd Friesen: The business of SEO consulting may have changed, but the art of SEO is not lost. Todd Friesen sheds light on these issues with a brief introspection and an apt analogy. And even though I agree with Todd’s sentiment, I like to think that good SEOs will have more longevity than their printing press technician brethren. 
• Evolution of the Pepsi Logo: Though Rand tweeted about the funniest Pepsi logo, Zac Johnson’s also wrote a post giving a snapshot of the Pepsi logo’s progression over the years. For a deeper dive into the evolution of other corporate logos, check out Instant Shift’s more detailed post.

• Associated Press Tries to Catch up with Wikipedia in the SERPs: In an attempt to make up some ground with Wikipedia, the Associated Press is doing something the New York Times did last year: aggregate content around subject areas in order to make topical roll up pages more competitive on higher volume search terms. 

• Kids Search for Porn: Based on a data set of 3.5 million searches made by kids over a six month time period, OnlineFamily.Norton recently reported that kids exhibit two search trends. The first trend is that they tend to bypass the URL field and type URLs into the search field . And the second, more disconcerting trend is that they search for porn at a rate that’s on par with adults. Both ’sex’ and ‘porn’ were among the top 6 search terms made by kids.  

• Attribution Modeling: Piggybacking on a recent Forrester study about the tracking and value of display advertising, Michelle Stern dives into how you should look at more than just the last click to track conversion rate and cost per acquisition in your marketing channel reports. 

• Where Did the Money Go?: Based off of Department of Labor survey data, Visual Economics created a great visual diagram of how people in the US spend their money. In addition to being a great linkbait image, the diagram provides a detailed breakdown of annual consumer expenditures. 

• How Much Crack is in a Crackberry?: Well, perhaps none, actually, but recent research shows that there are physiological factors that make you addicted to your smartphone or laptop. In fact, the effect digital stimulus has on your brain’s dopamine circuits is shown to be similar to that of cocaine.

• Microsoft Patent Issues: On Tuesday, in a patent verdict that will likely be overturned, a Texas judge ruled that due to a patent infringement Microsoft would have to pay $290 million in damages to Toronto-based i4i Inc and that they are not allowed to sell Word. Microsoft will no doubt appeal the verdict.

• 20 SEO Tips That Every Developer Should Follow: Though Theme Forest’s list is not devoid of good advice, they set a good example of how not to create a top ten or a top twenty list. If you are going to provide actionable industry specific takeaways, in a topic other than the one you specialize in, you should verify that the information you include in your list is accurate. As shown by Theme Forest’s unordered list of 20 SEO tips that prominently features W3C validation atop their list of SEO tips, they clearly did not do all their homework and follow up with folks in the industry.

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Best Thing About Search Conferences »

Posted by jennita

Every search conference is filled with sessions, keynotes, site reviews, clinics, and the like. If you’re not at the conference you can follow the blogs and Twitter to get your daily dose of conference fare. These help keep you up-to-date on the sessions and general goings on.

The unfortunate part of not being here is that you miss out on the social aspect of the conferences. For me one of the biggest draws of these conferences is the chance to network and get to know people within the industry. (Plus, no one knows who I am so I can roam around fairly incognito without having to shave my head to do so.) Last night at SearchBash (from WebmasterRadio.fm - great party by the way!) I had several Pro members approach me to tell me how much they enjoy our tools and feedback. How much does that rock?! Yep. A lot.

But when it comes down to it, what is REALLY the most important part of coming to a conference? Is it the sessions or the excellent networking? Although both are extremely valuable, the one part of the events that seems to get overlooked is one of the most important (or at least the most fun) aspects of the conference. The Free stuff people! FREE stuff! If a company does it right, then they have hundreds (thousands?) of people walking around with their T-Shirt on, or sanitizing their hands with their branded sanitizer (heh, yep).

So let’s take a walk through the SES San Jose Expo Hall to see who stands out…

Do you like how I made sure to not stand with the finger pointing my way? Stupidsem.com is the clear winner in the awesome T-Shirt department. Today I’m walking around with 4 T-Shirts and I don’t even wear T-Shirts! So I’ll probably give them away to other people, who will prominently wear these shirts around town as a walking ad campaign for the company. Smart move, people.

Great giveaways from Website Magazine and Orange Soda

These were my two favorite giveaways. Most people might think that the iPhone was the true winner here, but really check out that bike! It’s saweeeet, with the big bucket seat and well it’s orange. Who doesn’t want to ride around on a big orange bike that they had to pay $100 to ship back to their home town? :) Website Magazine was giving away the iPhone and Orange Soda had the great bike.

Fun Stickers from PixelSilk

Pixelsilk had various stickers with different names and roles on them. I noticed people stuck these all over the place. I saw them on backpacks, on people’s clothes, on their head, their pants, on computers and anything else you can think of. This is such a fun way to get your name out there and have people take a double look at your site.

The Rest!

This is just a collection of the free giveaways I grabbed over the past couple days. I guarantee that many of my friends who are addicted to Facebook would LOVE to have a FB thumbdrive of their own. These freebies are excellent ways to get your brand out there and if you find the right product or niche you may just go viral. Heck one company was giving away free screwdrivers before noon, and I’m not talking about the kind you use to fix the hinge on your door. The ladies with the "I’m with Stupid" T-Shirts seemed as if everyone wanted their picture taken with them. It was obvious that they had hit the mark, the question really is whether it pays off in the end.

It’s interesting here at SES San Jose, many people come to this conference every year and have the T-Shirts to show for it. Many people show their badges of honor by wearing past conference T-Shirts and talking about their favorite Yahoo! pen or that tiny mouse that PixelSilk gave away last year. Why do these products mean so much to us? Is it that it gives people bragging rights, or is it just plain old fun? What is your favorite freebie from a conference? And do you keep it in a conference box in the basement like one attendee confessed?

 

(By the way my husband is an amazing photographer and is going to KILL me for these horrible photos.)

 

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SES San Jose Day 2 - Overheard on Twitter »

Posted by jennita

The second day of SES San Jose is wrapping up, so it must be time for the Twitter roundup! There were a number of debates, someone was found sleeping in the first row drooling and another person claimed that most people at the session were probably already following him on Twitter. Fun times! :) Once again, I watched the stream throughout the day and pulled out tweets that had a call to action with useful information.

Enjoy!

Keywords & Content: Search Marketing Foundations      

matthacker: "Every keyword you select should drive meaningful traffic to your site." #sessj  

Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy

lookadoo: Social Media is not easy! A lot of followers is not enough. You have to have something good that people want. @gregfinn #sessj      

Credit Crunch: The Death of Last Click Attribution and its Impact on Paid Search Advertising      

balibones: #SESSJ In Death of Last Click Attribution session. Tracking, gathering data and analyzing it is going to get much more complicated. Damn.   

Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues      

InboundMarketer: A little more than a 1/3 of the web is dup content according to yahoo-wow #sessj 

suzukik: Does canonical tag work across hosts: Yes #sessj 

Igniting Viral Campaigns: Leveraging Consumer-Generated Content

balibones: #SESSJ - Viral campaign session lesson #1: Don’t polish turds. 

Google Convert Your Visitors to Customers

PacificWebDept: per Google worst experience you can give to users in search is zero search results, pay attn to your analytics #sessj

Landing Page Testing & Tuning

schachin: Sweet spot for long form sales letter are self-help products for under $30. Frm @Tim_Ash at #sessj 

schachin: Put txt lnk below btns 2 avoid ‘button blindness’, btn color only matters if brand color, txt should answer ‘I want to’  @tim_ash #sessj 

imeldak: What’s the best way of testing your landing page? Ask your audience #SESSJ     

sagerock: Tim Ash: "Your web site visitors should design your landing pages." #sessj

Facebook Ads: Reaching Prospects Earlier In The Decision Cycle

pixum_affiliate: Facebook targeting: Think about the interests of your potential customers #sessj  

jennstafford: promo codes or discount mentions have been shown to work better than % off for fb ctr #sessj  

mediafortemktg: #sessj Reaching target audience through Facebook, they now have great reporting and testing tools, create tracking URL for conversion

Four Paths to Success in a Tough Travel Economy    

jennstafford: link to benu’s travel industry presentation: cli.gs/sessj09 #sessj #ses 

mariacorcoran: Key for Hotels in this economy, don’t drop rates rather create perceived value promotions and promote those on the site & Paid Search #sessj  

Hallie_Janssen: Hotel and Travel Session: Get name and contact info before you give them rates. Then remarket to them later if they don’t book #sessj

adamcohen adamcohen: Low hanging fruit: Look for little things that matter to your customers, these are the things they’ll talk about. Ex: Wifi in hotels #SESSJ 

Omniture You are Multi-Channel, but Your SEM Vendor Isn’t!     

mikedelgado: Use negative keywords when using broad match terms in your PPC campaigns (especially w/ keyword insertion) #ses #sessj #omniture  

Social Media: Managing Conversations and Reputations When the User Is In Control

imeldak: Yesterday, search was king. Today, social media matters. Use these together to play a part in success & drive traffic to your site #SESSJ  

JanetJoz: clik to purchase is very rare in soc media…other measures needed-referral traffic/RSS, community subscription, UGC good & bad #sessj

Hallie_Janssen: What’s the ROI of social media? What’s the return on ignoring? Nicely said! #sessj
   

The BuyerSphere Project: Understanding B2B Buyer Patterns      

JanetJoz: in B2B buying there is NO REWARD it’s just about risk avoidance; the more risk the more trust you need to build FACE TO FACE #sessj

Real World Multivariate Testing      

mikedelgado: Jim McDonald, Online Marketing Manager at Match.com says that in 1 month of testing they received 10% lift in subscription #sessj   

Social Media: White Hat vs. Black Hat

waworld: User generated content is huge because consumers sometime know more about products than employees do #sessj  

florian_ferras: ghost writing can be dangerous: imagine a ceo is asked about a comment he ‘wrote’ on twitter and he never did #sessj

waworld: The role of social media in PR has doubles their workload, however PRs need to increase level of knowledge of their client’s business #sessj    

MarkJackson: White hat black hat social media. Seems the more we discuss SEO and SMM, it all boils down to content. How many copywriters at #SESSJ ?  

balibones: #SESSJ - Social Media whitehat VS blackhat - So far lesson is that the truth is much more gray. And that’s OK as long as you DISCLOSE.  

schachin: "Some things are not Black Hat or White Hat - they are just dumb!" lol ! #SESSJ

Twitter was a bit whacky today. At one point the search was running about 45 minutes behind, which doesn’t help when you’re trying to put together a Twitter roundup. :) That aside today was a great day for tweets, and I’d love to hear if there was one that stood out for you. Also, do you find that the tweets represented the session accurately (if you were there that is).

See ya’ll tomorrow when I’ll have information on the best part of going to a search conference!

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