WebProNews - SEOmoz

Are Your Online Marketing Efforts Breaking the Law?

Chris Crum — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:31:12 +0000

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz has a fascinating (and probably startling to some) post up discussing some new guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding online marketing. The post stems from SEOmoz's COO Sarah Bird, who is an expert on legal matters pertaining to marketing, and some things she revealed in a recent interview. WebProNews readers will recognize her from these WPN videos on various legal topics.

I will not regurgitate Fishkin's post here, but if you're concerned about laws pertaining to disclosure of paid endorsements, it's a must-read. He does offer the following takeaways to sum it up:

1. Most social media marketing is legal without disclosure.

2. Link builders don't have to disclose their relationships.

3. Google & the FTC have very different requirements about paid links.

4. Linkbait, viral content and microsites don't require disclosure (most of the time).

In the online marketing world, does not always cross our minds that there are legal boundaries that are being stepped on or even crossed in some cases. For the protection of your business, it is really an important thing to make sure you are abiding by federal regulations. These are only US guidelines though, so if you live in a different country, you will probably want to do some digging of your own to find out what the regulations are in your own government.

Read the FTC's guidelines here.

Top Web Brands and Parent Companies

Chris Crum — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:44:42 +0000

Earlier, we looked at the top domains and pages in terms of linking popularity among different linkers. Collectively, they are referred to as the most important domains and pages on the web.

Nielsen Online, however, has looked at the top online companies and brands for the month of March. This data looks at unique audience and time per person spent with each. Take a look at these charts from Nielsen:

"The parent level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single company or division," explains Nielsen. "The brand level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content."

Nielsen also looked at Internet usage in general for the month of March. There are some interesting statistics here as well:

I find it interesting that the average web page is viewed for just under a minute. This might be an interesting stat to advertisers displaying dynamic ads with different offers. This is the kind of information that can be considered when deciding how long to leave each offer displayed before moving on to the next one.

The Most Important Domains and Pages on the Web

Chris Crum — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:04:29 +0000

SEOmoz has a couple of very interesting charts showing the top 500 domains and the top 500 pages being linked to from different places. This paints a pretty good picture of what sites are held in the highest regards by content producers.

"The sorting is done in order, not of raw link counts, but of linking root domains - a metric that we've found incredibly valuable both for identifying broad popularity (vs. sites that simply earn lots of links from a few sites with many pages) as well as filtering spam (it's easy to get lots of pages linking to you, and even easy to get lots of subdomains linking to you, but getting a diverse set of root domains is considerably harder)," explains Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.

I'm not going to replicate both lists of 500 here. You can view them at SEOmoz, but I will provide a quick glance at the top ten of each:

Top Domains

1. Google.com
2. Yahoo.com
3. Blogspot.com
4. Adobe.com
5. Wikipedia.org
6. YouTube.com
7. W3.org
8. MySpace.com
9. Wordpress.org
10. Microsoft.com

Top Pages

1. Woredpress.org
2. Google.com
3. adobe/products/acrobat/r...
4. miibeian.gov.cn/
5. validator.w3.org/check/referer
6. statcounter.com
7. jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/chec...
8. phpbb.com
9. del.icio.us/post
10. yahoo.com

Graph by SEOmoz

You can get a look at all of the stats like linking root domain count, external link count, mozRank, mozTrust, PageRank, and change on the charts. Fishkin also provides some interesting highlights from the lists like top gainers and losers here.

From Link Centric to Well Rounded

Justin Boeckman — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:58:22 +0000

I am tired of so many new and old SEOs talk about linking, the importance of it and how your efforts will be wasted if you don’t embrace it. I like linking and believe it provides a good way to build credibility on the search engines, especially for new sites, but I put it last on my list. That’s right I said last. I may be old school but I have found I can cut back my dependency (time) on the number/quality of incoming links if I follow some basic principles.

Site Content I can go on and on about the content of the site but here are a few tips to get you started:

Know your audience spend time figuring out who your online audience really is and how they look for your services. How? I like to use Word Tracker and Aaron Wall's keyword suggestion tool but there are other tools you may like better, Keyword Discovery and Wordze are both highly recommended. Once you find your audience it is worth spending a little money on Adwords to find out which keywords give you the best conversion rate and target those particular phrases.
Know your competition - Once you know how people are looking for your goods/services spend some time finding out what the competition is doing. We have some custom tools to help us out with this but there are some free online tools that will give you the keyword density for each highly ranked page. Once you have the densities and number of words on highly ranked pages I suggest you go to Yahoo! Site Explorer and figure out how many links they have coming back to their site. The fewer links they have the less important being competitive on content becomes. You can also use SEO Quake for this research.
Be Competitive - After you have this information in hand you will have a general idea as to what you need to shoot for to be competitive on the SERPS. Spending more time on content will allow you the room to spend less time on building links.

Site Structure/On Page Optimization - having a well structured site is a basic fundamental of good overall usability and accessibility with new standards. Take a look at SEOMoz’s breakdown (an oldie but still relevant)

CSS If your site is still using tables you are getting close to being an entire decade behind the curve. If you're not a designer and don't plan on learning CSS you can find plenty of services who will handle this task for you. If you do plan on learning CSS you may want to start at W3Schools.
Title tags Make sure your title tags support the text on the page and that the text on the page is focused on a specific topic or set of keyword phrases. If you sell widgets don’t talk about your awesome new building on your widgets page. Remember your title tag is going to show up in the SERPs, so this is your chance to sell against your competition.
Keywords in the URL Change the URL of the page to contain keywords that represent what the page is about. You will be better off putting a "-" between the words than any other characters example: blue-hand-widgets.html.
Heading Tags Make sure to use heading tags (H1, H2, H3) to separate your thoughts. Using heading tags tell search engines what the most important items are on your page.
Keywords in links Your links should contain keywords and it is ALWAYS a good idea to use your own link juice to pass value from your internal pages. If you leverage your internal linking structure correctly you could drastically cut back your dependency on incoming links for internal pages, leaving you more time to focus on your homepage.

Hosting Atmosphere - make sure your hosting atmosphere is equipped to handle 301 redirects and make sure they aren’t hosting link farms or other sites that could potentially damage your ranking.

Duplicate Content - Make sure you are using 301 Redirects from your www to your non-www or vice versa and if you are using multiple domains. You need to choose one main domain and have the others redirect. This helps ensure you won't have duplicate content penalties. You may also want to look into CopyScape or other services that will check for duplicate content.
Bad Neighbors make sure you are not receiving penalties because of other people on your IP or IP block. This one is a little more complicated but should be considered and you can use Bad-Neighborhood.com for free.

Finally Linking now that you have created a well rounded site focus on getting high quality links.

Directories I will usually do a few directories just because they are the low hanging fruit. Submit Eaze has a great product that helps you automate the submission of your site to both free and paid directories.
Contact your Partners too often people forget they have affiliates and partners they can use a resources. Contact those people and ask them to place a link to your site. Also remember to give them the HTML to make it easier for them to implement.
Research your competitors Find out what links are coming back to your competitors sites and find out why they are linking to your competitors. Once you have this list you can start creating a plan to get listed on the same sites and start building your link credibility. You can use Yahoo! Site Explorer but I personally like using Link Harvester

These are a few tips that can help you to have a better site and get better rankings without spending tons of money or time building links. If you focus on the quality/content of your site you will begin to see more links and better rankings naturally. The link centric approach only leads to spending more time and resources to keep up without a well designed site.

SEOMoz Dishes On 'Give It Up' Secrets

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:59:30 +0000

Rand Fishkin blogged about the little bits of secrets discussed at a session of the recent SMX Advanced conference; the session centers on some of the tips and tricks that aren't widely known in search marketing.

Part of the deal with the 'Give It Up' sessions require attendees to keep silent on the talk for a period of time before blogging about it. That time passed for the latest edition of 'Give It Up' at SMX Advanced.

Fishkin said virtually all of his tips were of the 'white hat' variety, though other speakers talked about the grey and black hat tweaks available to webmasters who choose to take on their associated risks. He started his wrapup post with a look at link acquisition, and ways to track down links with various operators at search engines.

Searching links is not all about Yahoo's excellent Site Explorer, though it is the best out there. He noted other tools like Google Blogsearch, Exalead, and Technorati "Reactions" as ones to look at when tracking down those links.

Our readers in the small and medium business world should appreciate his list of Google Local ranking tips. Fishkin's list, one he compared to a later effort by David Mihm; both editions merit SMB attention, especially with major search sites presenting local results in universal search pages.

Reputation management occupied the wrapup of his presentation. Regular queries about one's brand at resources like Google, Technorati, Blogpulse, and Twitter's Summize all deliver what could be valuable and actionable intelligence about how others perceive a brand online.

The post comes at a good time, with another major conference, SES San Jose happening August 18-21, and the rapid approach of the fourth quarter holiday shopping season. It's a perfect time to review those tips and plan strategies to capture revenue during the all-important end of the year period.

The Battle For "SEO Trademark" Wages On

Jordan McCollum — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:28:03 +0000

Just when you thought it was over: May 19 was the deadline for the man who would be SEO trademark holder to respond to notices of opposition to his trademark application (which were filed by SEOmoz, Arteworks, Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, SEO.com, Jonathan Hochman, and Rhea Drysdale). Sarah Bird, Esq., of SEOmoz filed for default judgment in the case on Tuesday.

Ho ho! Gambert thinks he has them there (as was evidenced by a since-removed blog post on JasonGambert.com: entitled “Hardball Seomoz,” it was a picture of a pitcher and a baseball scoreboard showing Guests: 3, Strike: 2, Ball: 3. Sadly, you’ll just have to believe me here.).

In a 41-page filing, Gamber claims that SEOmoz’s opposition should be struck down because (among other reasons), they made a mistake and called him “James Gambert,” and SEOmoz is self-interested. Oh, and they’re a blog.

Setting aside SEOmoz’s self-interested blog (or my own post on the subject the following day), I’ll humor Gambert and take this first argument to task (as Sarah has done an excellent job of refuting several of his other arguments). Here’s what he says, listed as number 1 under “Applicants [sic] Highly Confidential Detailed Defense to Opposer’s General Allegations”:

Opposer [SEOmoz] goes on to describe “James Gambert” in reference to paragraph 1; spanning many classes, then describes the initial applications [sic] details. Opposer goes on to indicate Applicant’s [Gambert’s] first use is February 14th 2007. Please note application of Applicant explains dates of use “At least as early as February 14th 2007.” Please also note Opposer refers to Applicant as “James Gambert” and not “Jason Gambert.” Therefore Applicant motions Opposer’s claims to be barred by the doctrine of mistake and other applicable equitable principles.

Oooh, boy. The doctrine of mistake, eh? Well, there is, apparently, a legal doctrine of mistake . . . in contract law. And it doesn’t actually say that anyone who has ever made a mistake in a legal document should be automatically barred from making any argument whatsoever.

But, hey, if he wants it to mean that, I’ll even humor him that far. But, unfortunately, he’s made a couple mistakes himself. No one’s perfect, of course, but if making a mistake means that you can’t file a legal motion, well, pretty much the entire application should be thrown out. But to highlight only the most recent mistakes:

Missing the deadline is a big deal. Gambert says he prepared the filing on 19 May 2008. The obviously self-prepared filing (which, frankly, looks like a law dictionary vomited—believe me, Sarah, I watch a worrisome amount of Law & Order, and Gambert’s filings are NOT indicative the kind of legal thinking it produces!) was due on the 19th.

As it wasn’t received until the 27th, it’s too late to actually count as a response to the notice of opposition. The Trademark Office officially classifies this document as a “Paper received at TTAB” (Trademark Trial and Appeal Board). While they might be so kind (and well stocked with migraine medication) as to read it in its entirety, the court has no obligation to do so, nor to take any of his arguments under advisement.

Proofread everything. I’ll ignore the irksome spelling, punctuation and sundry grammar errors, fine. But if SEOmoz accidentally referring to him as James instead of Jason and using the only date that he had provided in his application should disqualify their notice, it would have been a good idea to be extra, extra careful in everything he wrote in the filing. Page eight of the PDF of his filing basically did it for me:

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I herby [sic] certify that a true copy of the Confidential Motion to Strike for the Notice of Opposition91183449 was deposited as First class mail with the United States Postal Service on May 19th, 2007, to Counsel for Opposer at the following address: [Sarah Bird c/o SEOmoz]

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. We have just come across something way more important than SEO here. Never mind the fact that Sarah has only worked at SEOmoz since November 2007—Gambert has the secret to time travel! How else could he have mailed a response to the NOO a year before SEOmoz actually filed it? (At the end, he repeats the above statement, only this time he only traveled back to November to send it to SEOmoz.)

By his definition of the doctrine of mistakes, I move that his “paper” to the TTAB be burned.

Know the law. The legal doctrines he refers to (and some, I’m convinced, which he creates out of whole cloth) don’t apply to these cases. And in fact, every Gambert filing which I’ve read or read about demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of trademark law and the law in general. Ignoratiam neminem excusat est. That’s a real legal doctrine; look it up.

Tell the truth. Ignoring, once again, Gambert’s apparent sock puppetry as well as Gambert’s harassment of one opposer’s clients, the fact of the matter is that he has filed the notice telling the government one thing and telling the SEO industry another. Attempting to defraud the trademark office is supposed to result in an automatic rejection of the application.

The best part of the filing may be the part where Gambert claims that because of the doctrine of unclean hands (thus alleging that SEOmoz has engaged in unethical and deceptive practices; which, BTW, must be proven to be accepted by the court), SEOmoz should be disqualified from filing opposition. But apparently it’s not unethical and deceptive to tell the government one thing and the industry another.

Further mistakes: he repeatedly instructs the trademark office to turn to Google to verify his claims (including, for some reason, an instruction to “Google ‘Internet’” to verify the reality of the Internet…), but refutes Sarah’s similar usage. He is apparently operating under the belief that Google.com having been registered Sept 15, 1997, Google is incapable of indexing any document created prior to that date. He also claims that if consumers are able to read a dictionary (yes, really), they won’t be confused by the SEO is a service/process debate (which he declares decided by Wikipedia).

Believe me, though, his arguments do get better. In entertainment value, anyway. My favorite is his claim that he received a spam email offering SEO services the day after the term was coined in 1997, thus showing his use of the mark in commerce.

Apparently, the other NOOs weren’t worth his time, but I for one and highly reassured that even if his “paper” is granted (and if it is, it’s because there wasn’t sufficient migraine/motion sickness medication available in the trademark office that day), there are good legal arguments against his application.

Comments

Man on his Way to Trademark "SEO"

Abby Johnson — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:49:00 +0000

Sarah Bird, Esquire, of SEOmoz, Inc., happened upon the applicant’s request as she was working on some trademarks for SEOmoz. Not only is the applicant actually trying to obtain a trademark for the mark “SEO,” but he is also already on the way to the publication process.

Obtaining a trademark is a very detailed process that can be tedious. Sarah Bird says: “…in order to qualify as a trademark, it must be distinctive and you must be the first to use it in your industry/area. The TMO [Trademark Office] often rejects marks that are merely descriptive.”

A man named Jason Gambert of Modern Consulting Solutions applied for registration of the mark “SEO” on May 2, 2007. From all indication, it seems as though he is attempting to own “SEO.”

The Trademark Office rejected his application on August 15th and two additional times before granting approval. Gambert’s request was being rejected for several reasons, but primarily because the TMO thought (1) his definition of Goods and Services was too broad and (2) dispute over the proposed mark of “SEO” being descriptive.

According to the Trademark Applications and Registrations Retrieval (TARR), goods are defined as products and a service mark must have the following qualifications:

Must be a real activity
Must be performed to the order of, or for the benefit of, someone other than the applicant
The activity performed must be qualitatively different from anything necessarily done in connection with the sale of the applicant’s goods or the performance of another service.

On his first request, Gambert defined his Goods and Services as:

“Search Engine Optimization, Hosting, Webdesign, Software, Hosting, Domain Name, Software Development, All Computer Related Development and Marketing plus what is listed; Computer Software, Computer Hardware, “SEO” Letters to be trademarked in “All” Computer related areas.”

He also argues that “SEO” is a “process not a service” and that his “SEO” is different from the generic acronym of search engine optimization.

After four attempts and much tweaking of his application, Jason Gambert received approval of his service mark on the condition of amending his Goods and Services again.

Gambert’s final Goods and Services read:

“Marketing services in the field of computers in the nature of providing marketing servcies for the benefit of others by compiling advertising campaigns, promotional services, and consulting for its customers.”

The reviewing attorney at the Trademark Office removed her objections and on January 17, 2008, permitted the application to continue to publication.

Once the news became public, the online community has not been quiet. While Gambert does have some supporters, the majority of responses have been against Gambert’s actions.

Gambert issued a special response to the online community on April 9th stating that he is “happy” about the success of the proceedings up to this point. He says he is “helping the search engine marketing community establish an approved SEO process…”

The publication process was scheduled to begin March 25, 2008. Once the publication process begins any opponents have up to 30 days to file a Notice of Opposition or ask for an extension in time. (For more information on how to start your filing process, click here.)

To find out more about Jason Gambert and his “SEO” trademark and how to file a Notice of Opposition, check out the full report in the WebProNews video.

Here are few other articles regarding this story:

PageTraffic Blog

Marketing Pilgrim

BusinessOnLine SEO Blog

BlawgIT

Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Roundtable

Utilizing Social Networks to Make Your Posts Viral

Janet Meiners — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:56:06 +0000

This article talks about how social networks can make a post go viral - or spread like crazy.

It focuses specifically on the biggest social networks - MySpace and Facebook. Facebook tends to be a bit more technical - allowing you to utilize apps to spread the word. They also attract different types of people.

Social networks and related sites can be an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog. Twitter alone has sent a lot of traffic my way and I think it’s the easiest to use. Once you build a network of friends, just craft a compelling headline and link to your post. It takes a bit of dedication (time) but it can build your trust, visibility, and reputation along with links to your blog.

5 Ways to Make your Blog Posts Viral with Social Media.

1. Contribute, don’t Spam.

Warning sign: if you’re pushing your story or product rather than sharing it then you’re stepping over the line. Also, send the post to your network (or friends), not to everyone everywhere (that’s spam). I liked how I heard this explained.

Avoid thinking that because there is a crowd gathered it’s a good time to promote yourself. This is applicable in the offline world too. Once I heard someone announce their store’s grand opening at a church meeting, which was in very poor taste. We can probably all think of our favorite network marketer who manages to weave information about their products into every conversation. Keep it relevant.

Remember this, from Rand Fiskin of SEOmoz:

“…People are more likely to be your friend [when] they believe you are offering them good, trusted content from which they can benefit.”

2. Create your own Facebook Application.

I haven’t heard of this but there is a new Facebook App Creator for Bloggers from BlogFuse. It walks you through the process of creating an app that feeds your blog posts onto your profile. It’s not free though - prices start at $5/month, but it has a free trial.

3. Join Related Networks & Groups.

If your product or blog is regional, make sure your Facebook network is set to the city you want to target.

For example, I know someone who owns a web site for tourists in Wisconsin. Even though he doesn’t live in Wisconsin, his Facebook page could be targeted to Door County. He also found a group of people from Door County so he introduced himself on the group’s wall with a link to his site. This way you can leverage an existing network of like-minded people and it will help expand yours. MySpace also has groups.

4. Create a Profile Page for your Blog.

Then promote the page on your blog or web site. Here’s yours truly - Marketing Pilgrim’s MySpace profile.

5. Create Quality Blog Posts.

Brent Csutoras suggests these ideas for creating posts that everyone loves to share:

Top 10 lists

How-To tips

Current events

Offbeat or Extreme content (make it edgy)

Humor

Tools

Here are more ideas for creating quality posts. If you want even more, download Brent’s slides about creating great blog posts, from the SMX Social Media conference this past November.

Comments

PubCon - Multivariate Testing, Conversion Tweaking

Navneet Kaushal — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:23:20 +0000

Getting traffic to your site is an important step. The finishing part of the picture is getting your site to convert those visitors into customers. This panel will look at ways that you can increase your site performance.

Moderator:

Gillian Muessig

Speakers:

Tom Leung, Product Manager, Google
Glenn Alsup, President, Viewmark
Philippe Lang, General Manager, SMB Solutions, LivePerson
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz

First speaker, Glenn Alsup, the president of Viewmark starts discussing about qualitative vs. quantitative data.

Qualitative researchers:

Reject the thought of social sciences being studied like natural or physical sciences
Qualitative researchers (Ql R) believe human behavior is always bound to the context in which it occurs
Human behavior is personal and subjective

Quantitative researches: Believe that both natural and social sciences are testable and confirmable theories.

Glenn says Ql R is Gods Fuel:

Qualitative Researchers look at

Goals
Overview
Description
Scenarios

They Find:

Finding
Usability Issues
Effects on Goals
Lessons Learned

How is it effective?

Look at it as a sales funnel
Identify all your drivers – Offline, Online, Explicit and Extract
Take the data and group attributes based on filters

Stages in the funnel

Weight them by the value of that event
Downloading a white paper is more valuable than looking at a banner
Identify when the action took place
When you convert, those drivers are calculated in different ways
You want to increase conversions by identifying the right mix of marketing drivers

Next up is Tom Leung, Product Manager, Google who will discuss Google's Web site optimizer.

Tom asks the audience what they'd do after visitor lands on site and what will they do to convert them? Apparently, Driving traffic is just the beginning.

Invest in SEO and SEM resources for 100 percent of visitors
Your pages may lose more than half their visitors in seconds
A majority of those who stay do not convert

Steps to take:

Evolve with continued improvement
Drive appropriate traffic to your site
Measure & analyze site activity
Test changes and implement winners
Repeat steps 1-3 until conversation rate is 100 percent

How does testing work?

When visitors reach your site, they see a random version of your site and the testing tool will tell you what percentage of users converted based on what version of your page.

Tom states the example of Picasa. The homepage has many images and uses the word 'free' a lot. The second page is much cleaner and offers a trial button. Also, it says a clear value of 30% conversion.

How to set up a test?

Copy and paste a piece of JavaScript
The control on top showss you that someone is trying to load the page
The tracking script on the bottom tells you that they saw the page, and then you have another code on the conversion page which tells you they converted and what version of the page they were looking at

If you perform a test, each version of the page has a unique sticker for you to identify it by. After the test runs for awhile, Google will populate reports for you.

Best testing practices:

Test a small number of variations
Test big changes. If you don't notice the difference between 2 combos within 8 seconds, visitors probably won't either
Consider early indicators if you don't have enough conversions
Don't jump to conclusions. Tom says that less than 2 weeks is no good, focus on absolute conversion difference, don't get too excited by sliver of green.

Additional Testing Ideas:

Conversion Cocktail
Trust seals
Which testimonials
Inspirational or fact-based pitch
YouTube video
Navigation bar

Next up is Philippe Lang, the General Manager of SMB Solutions, LivePerson.

Philippe suggests using a lot of information from analytics to know more about the visitors who come to your site. There's a catch, as valuable as the data is, it can be tough to understand. Talk to your customers and ask them for their honest feedback.

Points to watch out for when you monitor your Web site
Keep an eye on visitor referrer information such as
Search engine used
Marketing campaign
Geolocation
Navigation behavior (page views, shopping cart content, and shopping cart abandonment)

Combine both real time monitoring and feedback data by involving your customers into a chat. Keep a watch on the patterns or trends.

Ultimate Feedback Look

Begin by monitoring the visitors who come to your site
Identify visitors who have unexpected behaviors
Involve visitors by listening
Translate customer feedback into action
Refine and optimize your Web site

Philippe has 2 case studies.

1: Online University degree

Challenge: High abandonment rate in the online inquiry form

Reason: Customers did not appreciate the question about age of applicant. This led to customers leaving the form

Solution: Question deleted

Result: 20% increase

2: Outdoor gear retailer

Challenge: Sunglasses faced low conversion rates

Reason: Customers confused over size chart

Solution: Size chart redesigned

Result: 25% increase in conversion rates

If you know what's wrong, you can fix it! Testing is great as it

Heightens conversion rates
Improves the sales process
Increases average order value
Forms relationships with customers

Finally, it's Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz. He starts by mentioning the landing page contest his website had where readers could submit landing pages. After scouring through many submissions, the ended up testing 10. after going through all of them, one finds out that the page where you had to scroll down to get to the bottom of the page had the best conversion scores.

After the competition, he and his team tweaked the winner's landing page to convert even better.

Takeaways

If you think it will work, it probably won't
Landing page design is not universal
Testing is the only way to improve
Doubling your conversion rate is far easier than doubling your traffic

This was followed by a Q & A round where some of the most exciting things said were:-

Rand:- "conversion testing is a legal form of cloaking…"

Comments

7 Questions About Professional Blogging

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:09:38 +0000

At PubCon in Las Vegas, the Search and Blogging Reporters Forum fielded questions about an array of topics, from blogging to SEO, to videos and RSS feeds.

Blogger Reporter Panel

The expert panel consisted of SEOMoz's Rand Fishkin, Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal, TopRankResults' Lee Odden, and WebProNews Managing Editor Mike McDonald.

On Blogging vs. Journalism:

The panel saw little difference between blogging and journalism. Even if journalists criticize bloggers for not always getting the story right, members of the panel were quick to point out that the mainstream media often makes mistakes as well. For a newspaper, this is handled via a correction box.

On Starting an SEO Blog to Promote Yourself:

Rand and Lee agreed that people trying to break into the SEO industry tend to get a little too open with their blogs. Though the idea of a blog is to showcase your skills, you don't want to give away the cow. Andy disagrees. "Personally, I don't hold anything back," he said.

On Whether a Blog Should Mix Business and Personal Elements

Andy uses Robert Scoble as an example, who blogs about both personal and business topics. "I don't think there is a certain rule you have to follow. But I would recommend separating them." Beal says to be consistent; if you start out as business only, stay business only.

Lee recommends having multiple RSS feeds, one for personal posts and one for business posts.

Corporate blogs done right can get more links and traffic than personal ones, but nothing says people within the company can't have personal blogs linked to from the main page.

On Using Full or Partial RSS Feeds

The panel was split on this subject. On the one hand, a full RSS feed can help more people to be aware of you and your content without them having to visit the site. But a partial feed helps ensure more people visit your site, so it may depend on what your goals are.

On Videos:

Rand says people aren't consuming as much video as they are text, as it's more difficult to access video from a mobile phone or without headphones at work. The interaction video provides, however, is good for branding.

Lee says videos are very good at drawing attention and creating relationships with other people.

Mike says that video can be complicated or simple. It depends on the amount of time and effort you want to put into it. Editing is the hardest part, with the audio, rendering, etc. He agrees video also helps the branding aspect, as long as your icon or logo are there to remind people where the video came from.

On the Pitfalls of Bloggers Taking on Advertisers:

Rand said, "I felt like taking on the advertising was hurting my ability to write about those companies. It is very effective to monetize blogs, but you have to have the audience first.

Andy advises that bloggers have a disclosure policy for readers, and that they should let advertisers know there is a line between editorials and advertisers. He recommends charging on a flat-rate basis. There are no expectations of set numbers of impressions or click-throughs.

On How Many Social Media Buttons Are Needed:

The panel recommends beginning with an array of social media buttons, measuring to see which ones are most popular and then narrowing them down. People will become blind to them after a while, so one tactic to combat them is to put them up only every so often so that people will pay more attention. Or, you could add a button when traffic starts to pick up for a specific article.

PubCon - The Social Marketing Playing Field

Navneet Kaushal — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:17:19 +0000

This panel is an introduction about getting up to speed with the major social marketing sites. This panel of SMO promotion experts will take you from newbie to advanced in short order. Do your homework before you hit this session though. Study the basics of Reddit, Netscape, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Moderator:

Joe Laratro

Speakers:

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz.
Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services, Inc.
Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service.
Cameron Olthius, CEO, Factive Media.

With social media, booming at a staggering rate, everyone wants a piece of the pie. Knowing this, the experts came to give us their two-bits on how to further businesses. First to speak was Rand Fishkin, who kicks off the second day by showing two presentations.

Social Media 101
60 websites worth watching (more advanced)

Social Media 101. Listed below are websites in a random order:

23hq.com
adultswim.com - message board
babblz.com
ballhype.com – Digg-based sports portal
bloggoggle
blogs4god.com – Religious portal

buzzflash.net
care2.com
chipin.com
comagz.com
couchsurfing – Leave your links there
deviantart.com – Drop your opinion, has live links
dfinitive.com - social bookmarking site
dnhour.com – add a link to your profile
fanpop.com - profiles come with links
flickr.com
hugg.com – eco-friendly community

memeorlame.com
mixx.com
photographyvoter.com – as the name goes

pixelgroovy.com
plugim.com
qoolsqool
scoreguru.com
showhype.com
sk-rt.com – profile's come with links

smallbusinessbrief.com
sphinn - live links
tweako - social bookmarking site
videosift.com

Some of Sites

Next is Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service who says that two important things to remember before starting on these are sites are:

You have to think long-term, so act and perform accordingly.

The story you publish should be about how relevant it is to the site. Examples are:

digg.com: How to paint the social bookmarking site's logo on your wall
hugg: how to pick an eco-friendly paint
lifehacker: This is where you learn how to paint your living room in a weekend
propeller.com: Find out what the color you use reflects about your personality

Important Pointers:

Back to school
Spring time
Tax time
Use calendar and current events
Fall: save money on heating bill
Winter: last minute tax saving

Rands puts up a presentation about a new website which received over 120,000 visits within a span of two months. Next, he shows a graph about blog subscribers, which shows an upward movement. Apparently, social media is about owning a crowd/audience that isn't search engine-dependent. Also, your site must have regular link growth (refer to Google patent). The stories you have should be connected to other parts of the site. Create brand awareness, repetition is key here. So, it will take about 7-8 times before your audience remembers it. The audience you create should know how to use social media as if they like your stuff they will finally do the work for you. Join a community and be part of it regularly, don't do a half-hearted job. Don't be shy about linking to other blogs.

Rand's 10 Tips for Social Media-

Titles must be eye-catching

Site should be and have images

Content should be short, simple, witty, easy to scan content

Don't make the page deadends

Share links

Stay topical and keep an eye on trends

Find a solution to someone's problems

Incorporate buttons and widgets to encourage voting

Use less ads and target links

Everyone loves top 10 lists - break some rules and make yours go to 11

Next up is Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services, Inc, who discusses the 'Dark side of social Media.'

Pay for votes - Apparently, it has worked for Neil, whenever he used pay sites
Social media rings -
Have a long e-mail list and make your friends vote.

The bigger the ring, the better

Be a part of multiple rings

Don't vote right away

Don't vote on just about everything

Never abuse the ring

Use hxxp instead of http - helps block the referral
Social media apps.
Add friends

Vote on stories you like

Ask a developer to build you an app
Forced Actions-
Use iframes to vote/add a friend/subscribe to something
The dark side. Think of the best stuff. Don't think it loud. Think dark and shady and it will come out sooner or later. (Audience loves it)
Light reading. 10e20.com Brentcsutoras.com Seomoz.org/blog

Next up is Cameron Olthuis, CEO, Factive Media, who talks about linkbait. Cameron suggests using 'remakeable content,' that will compel people to link to you from their site.

Methods:

Be informational

Be controversial: Jason Calicanis

Add humor

News: Try to be the first one to break a story

Tools: Include tools like widgets, calculators etc.

Benefits of Linkbait:

Links

Link profile

Traffic

Branding

Bookmarks

Media publicity

Cameron next brings out a Case Study: Sobercircle.com

Research. Go though social media sites and find out what people like. Use Digg and Del.icio.us to know what different audiences like. With Del.icio.us, you get associated tags that is beneficial in giving you more ideas. Also, you learn what is popular.
Brainstorm. Try to find as many ideas and suggestions as you can. The more the merrier, in a while you can lessen it down after a while.
Create the content. SImplicity is key. Moreover, most of the readers are channel surfing.
Format lists. Easy to scan, add images and videos.

*Cameron shows the audience an example*. The site is about a drug. His slide shows 1001 Diggs, page has a video, image, and a good amount of content.
After content, comes seed.
- Submit the site and select the topics and tags.

- Use a Power Account

- Use Witty titles & descriptions - Titles can make or break you

- Categorise and tag properly. Don't go with what is popluar, go with where it belongs

- Target sites

Results:

1000 diggs

150 comments

800 links

Wikipedia link

read/write web found the page and gave it more exposure

Takeaways

Research your target audience

Content should have appeal

Must have aPower account

Test test test

Use good titles and descriptions

Keep your server up!!!!!

After this came a Q & A round, where some of the best questions were:

How much traffic can you expect? What type of servers?

Cameron: 5-25k vistors from reddit. Digg can do 100k+.

Graywolf: Call your hosting provider before hand

Rand Fishkin: for images use flickr and other sources. If your page uses a DB, make the page static and it will help you. The Database could really hurt you so just make it static.

Neil Patel: CPU somewhat matters, its the memory. Have 4GB of memory and use Memcache.

How do you get access to power users?

Rand Fishkin: the power users are for sale. Find the users and befriend them.

GrayWolf: Vote on their stories early so they see you. Really pay attention to stories they are interested in.

What are some other measures of success?

Rand Fishkin: Hard core tracking. Track your brand name in the results. Blog Search in Google reports accurate links, or use Yahoo Link. Watch your referring stats, where did it come from? watch your repeat visitors.

Neil Patel: Track your PR. Watch magazines, web sites, and other press contacts. Rand suggests using Google/Yahoo news to see how often your brand was mentioned.

How many man hours goes into an idea?

Neil: as little as possible (gets laughs) The hardest part is the idea

Rand: As little as a day, as long as 60 days (it took Jane 60 days to put together the Web 2.0 awards and get the votes)

GrayWolf: 2 Sides: Maintaining the Power Account and then creating the content/idea.

Cameron: No cookie cutter approach.

In the end, the best cam from Cameron Olthius who said, "No cookie cutter approach."

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SMX: Micro Communities

Navneet Kaushal — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:33:25 +0000

Pick an interest area, and there’s probably a social media site that’s serving a community around it. These sites might be "micro" in size compared to some of the large, well-known services, but they have passionate members who might also be a more targeted audience that you wish to reach. This session tours some of the many smaller communities out there.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speaker: Liana Evans, Director of Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz

Speaking first is Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz on An Introduction to Micro Communities in Social Media. Apparently, he says he always seems to get to cover "overview"-type presentations.

What exactly are micro communities? These are basically verticals with social networking and media functionality. Eg: Llamaland.com is a community created by a Llama-loving micro community. The unknown thing is that micros communities have the potential to promote your brand. Why Micro? This i all due to traffic versus relevance (the battle between quality and quantity).

Either try to reach a lot of users (Digg). Some of them might like Llamas, else you can boost a more compact Llama-centric community. Micro communities have more accessibility as your voice can be heard easier here. These also boost brand building opportunities. Members of a micro community are also connected to other people of similar interests.

How does one find micro communities? Search engines. Use keywords that are related to your brand. Even though your may not see one community/site not ranking No.1 at all times, its good enough to go with the community that has a consistent ranking as that might be the leading community or site in that field. Social media discovery blogs are another place where you can find micro communities.

How do you know if one community is good for you or not? Check out the membership numbers. Also, go through the community's topical focus, relevance, and "leverage-able" features. If there isn't much you can do with them, you will have to get busy with offline networking. Rand uses care2 to show how many functionalities one micro community can provide.

Next, he talks about WebMD, a community that makes you manage your own blog, take part in message boards, tag items you want to. This is a great micro community for medical personnel.

Next up, Rand brings up Library Things, a micro community for budding authors, publishers and marketers who have published their own books. After which, Rand shifts to Yelp! Which reviews local products and services. Next example is that of real estate community, Trulia which is similar to FaceBook/ Yahoo! Answers and has blog features. Trulia is pretty big within the real estate community. Rand emphasizes that micro communities are not necessarily a place where you can find customers but like-minded people who can spread awareness about your brand. Next up is Peer Trainer, a micro community on fitness where you can guide peers or become either trainer and vice versa. Not necessarily a site for body builders but regular folk like Danny (read: Sullivan). Trainers, gym owners will also like this community. Another one is called DonorChoose where educators and students can blog, review, post comments etc. Another micro community is Minti, specifically for parents.

DeviantArt, a great micro community where artists have online portfolios. Some other micro communities that Rand Fishkin mentioned include RealEstateVoices, Threadless, Corkd, imbee, Virb, Wayfaring, CouchSurfing, Wikihow, Helium, Etsy, Avvo, Urbis, BakeSpace, FoodCandy, and Sphinn. This is also a great place to hire artist. After many other micro community sites Rand is finally done.

Next up is Liana Evans, the Director of Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance who will discuss about marketing to your audience.

Unlike the olden days, marketing space is getting cramped. However, available also are more ways to market and sell your products and services. As competitive markets are too packed, the question now becomes where to find markets. Some of the case studies include: diet client, diet foods. PPC was done. SEO is tough with ranking. It was a tough market. The client's product only ranked for brand name. Within 3 month's time, for PPC alone they spent 40,000. They received less than fifty requests, no returns whatsoever and spent a sum of $800 per lead. Very bad. They then focused their energies on Micro communities.

Liana says that Micro communities are all about “fishing where the fish are”. This is why she suggests initiating the conversation. Feed the community. Find out where they buy their products and go there. They paid attention to networks, boards, communities. However, this si not the same as FaceBook or Digg. Liana mentioned Cre8asiteforums who found bloggers they wanted to talk to. Take a note of readers, readability, reach, depth etc. once again, don't make your sales pitch too salesy.

Liana worked keeping in mind WOMMA's guidelines, in order to stay honest, ethical, and transparent. Liana says that the Walmart flog story should be taken as a cautionary example of what occurs when you are dishonest and not transparent. All in all, it brought in $600 in sales, a boost in brand exposure, traffic increases, and SEO benefits.

- How can you take your clients and apply MC's to your marketing strategies.

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SMX Social Media: Hi, Linkbait Chum

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:36:37 +0000

At the SMX Social Media conference in New York City, panelists discussed the murky topic of social media sites, and how to draw traffic from them to your site. A well-crafted story can bring approval and loads of profitable traffic from social media destinations like Digg, Reddit, or Delicious. Rebecca Kelley of SEOMoz wanted attendees to think links, in a big way.

It's all about traffic, and even the temporary after-glow of a server-melting influx of visitors will help in the long run. Rebecca believes traffic from that rush, though temporary, should help boost long-term traffic afterwards.

Getting the attention of the social media audience means being clued in to what is current. Rebecca suggested looking at Digg, Google Trends, and industry peers as potentially solid resources. Delving into authoritative, related blogs could be a gold mine of ideas too.

Brent Csutoras suggested the ever-popular idea of lists as an avenue to attract the social media crowd. They don't always have to be a top ten, and they don't always have to be positive lists, either.

Lists should be numbered, with simple, strong, focused points for each item. The viewer should benefit from the titles of the list just as much as the descriptions.

The how-to article has proven popular too. It shouldn't be a massive, lengthy block of text, and in a time where images, audio, and video can be placed online easily, people expect more out of a how-to than an endless stream of words.

Cameron Olthuis of Factive Media reiterated the importance of categorizing one's linkbait; tagging accurately helps here, too.

When reaching out to the social media crowd with a submission, it's important to target it to a receptive crowd. The offbeat approach can work, as Cameron referenced the online game he helped make, Search Engine Smackdown, where the player could pummel search geeks like Google's or Yahoo's co-founders.

The referee will look familiar to SMX Social Media attendees, as it is none other than conference organizer and panel moderator Danny Sullivan.

WebProNews Video anchor Kara Ratliff contributed to this report.

SEOmoz Takes Cash, Plans Changes

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:18:13 +0000

Rand Fishkin disclosed he is giving up a small percentage of SEOmoz in exchange for a venture capital investment of $1.25 million from a pair of investors. Rand said in a recent post to SEOmoz that they have decided to seek outside investment for his popular SEO site and services.

"We literally have a hundred different ideas for tools, search analytics, tracking, guides, resources and more and we're in a position to recruit help from the best and brightest the industry has to offer... but, we can't do it alone," Rand said in his lengthy discussion of the news.

Ignition Partners and Curious Office will be the entities partnering to infuse SEOmoz with venture capital. Rand promised to discuss both VCs in future Whiteboard Friday posts.

The various investment processes, including due diligence, should be over by October, according to Rand. During that time, SEOmoz will formalize, with a board of directors that could include former Google Webmaster Central guru Vanessa Fox, now part of real estate tracker Zillow.

Prior to starting the VC process, SEOmoz's site architect Matt Inman decided to leave the company. Rand said his departure and the forthcoming venture investment were unconnected.

By the numbers, Rand noted SEOmoz has over 1,200 premium members who access the kind of content the investment should help the site continue to develop.

"While we're planning to be conservative with the investment (none of the standard, blow-through-the-money-in-6-months then ask for more), we will be able to take some risks and invest in projects that don't have a guaranteed outcome," Rand said.

SES - SEM Pricing Models

Stoney deGeyter — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:01:59 +0000

Industry Track, Wednesday 3:15 - 4:30 PM
SEM Pricing Models

Moderator: Misty Locke, President, Range Online Media
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Lance Loveday, President, Closed Loop Marketing
Ken Jurina, President & CEO, Epiar
Mike Murray, Vice President, Fathom SEO

Rand Fishkin started the session off running through the different pricing models available for SEO and SEM agencies He didn’t do too much commenting on each, just providing a basic synopsis of how each might work. Rand then provided some samples of pricing that he’s done for some of his clients. Most were for short-term work, consultations and training. I enjoyed the honesty Rand provided discussing some of the pricing issues he’s struggled with. He noted that you can benefit more by selling SEO “products” rather than just services.

Lance Loveday talked primarily about pricing models for PPC. The goal of pricing is to minimize the downside and maximize the upside, but ultimately do what works best for the client. Simplified pricing models are best. I like what both Rand and Lance said about the pay-for-performance or CPA model, in that you are put in a position of having to do your client’s accounting and rely solely on the quality of the tracking mechanisms in place. Not a good place to be. Lance tends to do fixed set-up fees and percentage of spend.

Ken Jurina answers the question, how should you be charging for SEM work? The answer is the way that makes you the most profit and provides the client the most value. Ken does not recommend trying to do all things, but to focus on a niche that you enjoy and are good at. If you’re established you can price based on what the market can bear. If you’re new, price to survive. He noted something that we have noticed over the years is that as pricing goes up, the client pettiness goes down. Ken recommends being very open with your clients with what you are doing for them. Keep the lines of communication open.

Mike Murray gave some great examples of bazaar pricing models and then delved into some of the pricing models already discussed providing pros and cons. They rarely do custom pricing models just because they lack consistency in both the plan and the profits. He likes posting prices so visitors can see and save the call if it’s out of range.

This was a great session, very informative. Leaving here I’m more pleased with the pricing models we have than before (not that I wasn’t happy with them before.) It’s nice to get that kind of affirmation!

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Can You Answer Rand's SEO Questions?

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:01:33 +0000

Rand Fishkin thinks a competent SEO firm ought to be able to handle ten questions about the search industry, and an eleventh if they are really knowledgeable about their work. If you're at a search firm, big or small, Rand has a little quiz for you at SEOmoz. They also serve as questions he thinks a prospective SEO client ought to be asking when considering such a firm.

"I believe that in the current search marketing environment, less than 30% of companies that spend money on organic search ranking services are getting a good deal," he wrote as a lead-in to his challenge.

His list of questions includes a real scorcher at the end: 'Name twelve unique metrics search engines are suspected to consider when weighting links and how each affects rankings positively or negatively.'

Rand illustrated an interesting point beyond just knowing answers. It's the idea of understanding the questions one should ask of a company that will gleefully take an entrepreneur's money for SEO, and getting answers that indicate the investment will return good value.

An informed businessperson should outperform competitors who aren't so well-advised. The competition tends not to stay uninformed, so having a little grounding in SEO before contracting a firm should benefit both sides. It's much easier to do quality work for an informed client, and to profit from that work.

Consumers Taking 34 Hours to Convert

Jordan McCollum — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:43:49 +0000

MarketingSherpa reports that on average consumers are taking 34 hours from click to conversion. That’s up from 19 hours—180% as long as their original study in 2005 indicated. The full report on time to conversion is expected tomorrow from ScanAlert.

As MarketingSherpa President Anne Holland noted, this finding indicates how important it is for marketers to mearsure longer conversion cycles than just click-buy.

Noting that every page is a landing page these days, MarketingSherpa also offered four suggestions to improve the conversion cycle:

Add “About Us” blurbs to every conceivable entry point

Grab emails early on — before the shopping cart

Content: give more product info than the competition does

Exclusive here-only bonuses

Oddly enough, some of these suggestions contravene conventional landing page advice, especially #1. Just today, the Copywriting Maven (writing on Copyblogger) did a copywriting makeover on SEOmoz’s Premium Membership page. Her first recommendation?

1. Remove all the extraneous material from the most valuable real estate on your landing page - the area “above the fold”, the visitor’s first screen view.

Eliminate all the sign-ins, search and navigational links. They are all reasons and exits from the landing page and your message.

(I do have to insert here that I’m such a such a spelling stickler that putting a capital ‘M’ in SEOmoz probably bugs me more than it does Rand Fishkin.)

Who’s right?

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Shocker: Writing Quality Important To Blog Readers

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:45:15 +0000

People have debated whether content is really king for some time, and for content producers, it seems a no-brainer: create quality content and the audience will come. That's the way it's always been, that's how it will remain. A survey about blog readership conducted by Vizu confirms that mantra, and reinforces the importance of good writing.

Admittedly, I'm biased. I'm a content producer. I call myself a writer and an artist. Take what I say with the appropriate amount salt, but it's always nice to have your qualitative biases reinforced through quantitative means, especially in an age where it seems the language is under assault, where grammar, spelling and skill are deemphasized.

Just open up a word processor and type – that ain't writing anymore than throwing a line in the water is fishing. No bait, no bites; nothing good to read, no reason to come back.

Rand Fishkin was bragging on Monday about how SEOMoz scored a million links. His explanation, in a nutshell, include originality, timeliness, usability, aesthetics, and writing quality. That last one, you can image, got my attention. I assumed that good writing was important, but now I've got numbers, courtesy of Vizu Corp.'s Blog Readership Report, and I'm not above obnoxious victory dances.

Quality of writing was the number one response to three survey questions:

How do you choose the blogs you read regularly? 43.9%

What factors convey blog quality to you? 56.3%

How do you assess the credibility of the blogs you read? 51.5%

"Quality of writing" counts for a lot – driving readers' choices of which blogs they will read as well as helping them to determine which blogs are credible and high quality.

So yes, with an air of smugness, I still say content is king.

Some of Vizu's other findings:

2/3 of blog readers read more than three blogs regularly

Community rules: Blog links and recommendations are used more than search engines to find blogs.

Personal interest and entertainment are more popular than business or education.

Niche information and rumors/gossip are the most sought-out material.

SEOmoz Becomes A Link Millionaire

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:22:02 +0000

Rand Fishkin celebrated a big number showing up in Yahoo Site Explorer, one that plenty of search optimization-minded folks would love to see. SEO professional and occasional WebProNews video host Rand Fishkin picked up seven digits of hot link love from Yahoo. He's hit the million-link mark after 33 months of blogging.

He's so happy, Rand shared the secrets of his achievement:

Actually, there were three keys to our linking success - Content, Community and Timing.
Content: Our blog, articles, tools & antics follow less of a link "bait" formula and more one of link "appeal." The content we put out isn't just designed for a link - it's really designed to make our readers into raving fans.
Community: I've personally met and interacted with between 2-4 thousand people over the last 3 years - shaken hands, shared meals and drinks, held conversations and exchanged business cards. As much as the online world connects us, the real world ties the knots in those binds.
Timing: When SEOmoz started writing about search marketing (way back in 2003, though we didn't start the blog until October of 2004), there was relatively little competition. SearchEngineWatch didn't start their daily blog (in a blog format) until August of 2004 and with the exception of the major forums and fewer than a dozen other popular sites in the niche, we were ahead of the curve.

While matching Rand's timing would require the invention of a time machine and solving a slew of temporal paradox issues, other bloggers in and out of SEO can work on content and community. As with any creative venture, talent, persistence, and a little luck will be the difference makers today.

SEOmoz Simplifies SEO

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:58:49 +0000

Now that the SMX Advanced conference has faded into memory, Rand Fishkin has posted something for those who may not be advanced enough for SMX topics. This will be a shock for those who understand 301 redirects, but not everyone knows how to use them properly.

Fortunately, Rand's 'Mystery Guest', aka Geraldine, has a gifted beginner's handle on the basics, and a deft hand on the keyboard. Her recent post at SEOmoz offers a beginner's guide, garnered through her experience gained from being asked about search optimization at her day job.

Her list of eight ideas tends to come back to one concept: clear communications. Even the brightest of people don't know everything, i.e., her boss doesn't understand how spam works. The vagaries of topics like redirects or SERPs need to be explained, not tossed off without enlightening the listener.

"I have no idea why the hell Ask.com ads mention an algorithm," she wrote. "I can't imagine anyone outside of the SEO industry knowing what that means."

People don't want to risk looking dumb, and sometimes will nod in understanding rather than asking questions. Those SEOs who want to do well by their clients should make Rand's Mystery Guest happy and provide answers up front.

Education given is just as valuable as education gained. Anyone competent enough to be doing effective SEO work should have no problem communicating and teaching along the way.

Rank Checker Tool from SEOmoz

Stephen Pitts — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:39:23 +0000

SEOmoz has many tools and information that is extremely useful for SEOs. They have added another valuable tool for your rank building efforts, it is called Rank Checker.

You do have to be a member of SEOmoz to use the tool, but there is free registration for those interested in trying out the tool.

Here are some details about the tool’s functions:

Supports Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask

Allows you to check rankings on all the foreign TLDs on the major SEs (google.co.uk, de.yahoo.com, etc)

You can either be forwarded to the actual SERPs or simply have the tool report back the rankings it found

Rankings can be added to your rankings archives

Ranking archives can be viewed, sorted, and downloaded as a CSV file

When rankings are found it reports whether they have increased or dropped (when compared to previous rankings) and this change is stored in your archives

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SMX: SEO, Meet SMM

Jordan McCollum — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:48:53 +0000

Ready to get more out of social media? The leaders in social media marketing dish on how to get in on the action–everything from why to where to how.

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz

SMM	vs. Viral Marketing
Creating profiles on web 2.0 sites	Building content targeted to linkerati
Building friends and relationships.	Attract links & traffic

Social media is about making these communities work for me. It’s our job to do this with Google, now it’s our job to do this with others. Viral marketing is about stylistically different communities.

What can SMM do for you? You can rule the SERPs, control your brand, earn link love, show the community you’re a participant (more link love), get traffic, and influence traditional media.

Social media sites in order of value: #1 YouTube—not directly influential in SERPs/rankings. You do get the potential for millions of views (his example had 22 million views in 5 months).

2. Wikipedia (Rand evokes Walt Whitman as he declares, “I will contradict myself.”)

3. Yahoo Answers

4. Yelp (disclosure: they’re an SEOmoz client)—for West coast local reviews, they’re the most popular

5. LinkedIn: personal networking source

6. Flickr (comments not nofollowed. Rand evokes Paris Hilton by declaring “That’s hott!”)

7. craigslist: highly temporal, but best of craigslist is good. Write cool material and get lots of votes.

8. Facebook

9. Amazon (especially for authors, who can have blogs) lists, reviews, etc.

10. MySpace

11. Technorati: People ask if you should be tagging your content? SEOmoz, for the right tags (and tags where Technorati is ranking well in SERPs), it’s good. Their links are not nofollowed.

12. Judy’s book (like Yelp)

13. Newsvine (Good for seeding stuff)

14. Twitter—is not useful. I’m skipping it. Unless you have a community. Danny says it sends you a lot of traffic.

15. CitySearch—a local directory; features user reviews and comments

16. Wikihow

What can viral media marketing do for you?

In Dec 05, what happened that make YouTube the most popular? Lazy Sunday

Viral media = branding (even people who don’t regularly watch TV recognize the Mac/PC ad)

Viral media = search rankings. Why? Write something really good, incredibly valuable: I’ll get something Dugg. Target your keyword in the title.

Viral media = growing your fan base. Linkbait = subscribers.

Where should you do this?

1. Digg

2. Reddit: more politically focused, more real-content-focused

3. StumbleUpon has 2.5 million users: sends traffic and phenomenal links

4. Del.icio.us.

5. Netscape features more serious news

6. TechCrunch: hard to get on unless you can give Mike Arrington something phenomenal traffic: 400-500 links

7. Newsvine

8. BoingBoing

9. Fark. Not very serious: immerse yourself in the community first

10. Engadget

11. Techmeme

12. Lifehacker—fantastic traffic

13. Yahoo Picks.

Viral Media Marketing = power

Neil Patel, Author, Pronet Advertising

Rules of social media

From the terms of service: no paying for votes (gaming the system), creating multiple accounts from same IP address, submitting illegal content (porn, how to get free DirecTV/Dish, etc.).

Breaking the rules: Neil did it so we don’t have to

He submitted a story on how to get free Pay-per-view, created 30 accounts on the same IP address, and paid for votes. Digg banned him within hours.

The social media audience is like a baby with a mohawk: they have an attitude, they’re arrogant, you don’t mess with them. Immature to the point of arrogance. The young audience is in early high school. The “middle age audience” is in their early 20s (laughs and groans from the audience). The older audience is 28, 29 maybe 30. Rarity—40s.

Unwritten rules of social media:

No self promotion (submit your own stuff); don’t add biased info (bad title/description); don’t ask friends for votes.

Users are quite rude (he gave an example of Digg comments), especially if you violate these rules.

Neil’s Golden Rules for Social Media

Add tons of friends (people who are interested in things you’re submitting)

Participate in the community (not just submitting/voting: leave comments, interaction: GET INVOLVED. Email, IM)

Become a top user (yes, this is time consuming, you might be able to get away with self submission)

Use their features against them (friends, comments, etc.)

Create a social brand (create a fake name to self submit. Get icons, brand your user name that way.) For example: Neil’s a top Digger and people on Netscape recognize his name and vote for his submissions.

StumbleUpon example: “send to spam (it’s not spam, it’s actually just sending a message)”: using their features against them. If you send a page to your friends, that will be the first thing they’ll see the next time they Stumble: there’s no way around it.

Conclusion

Do what is ethical (you don’t want to do spammy stuff because you’ll have a hard time sleeping—unless you get tons of traffic and links)

Don’t jeopardize your brand

Think long term. It’s not a drug (quick fix). It can take week, a month, or 1-2 years.

Slides

Todd Malicoat, Internet Marketing Consultant, Stuntdubl

He’d just been reading a book that quoted a Rudyard Kipling story about self-made shipping tycoon. On deathbed he said of his competitors:

They copied all they could follow,
But they couldn’t copy my mind,
So I left them stealing and sweating,
And a year and a half behind.

Social media can leave your competitors that far behind.

Social media for strategic linking (outside of linkbaiting)

Benefits

Control over anchor text, body copy, theme

Lots of opportunity for links from trusted sites

Increased rankings, traffic and sales

Example: Todd’s Squidoo page has lots of links to many areas of his site

Caveat

The can use an “invisible” nofollow: a “hand job.” Doesn’t pass PageRank.

Any search engine will tell you: “Spam is determined by intent and extent.” (Apparently, this was emphasized by the search engines in the Penalty Box Summit very next day.) “Bots are stupid, but engineers aren’t.” If you do these maliciously, they’re not gonna work very long.

If you’re a large brand, you can get away with a lot more than if you’re a small brand:

Big brands get away with it. Determine strategy on how big you are & if you can handle the fall out

Strategies

Build reputation neighborhoods: reputation management. Create something positive, if it’s justified & unique content

Building hubs with social media links

See Gray Wolf’s tips for controlling the top ten.

Test the sites

If they pass PageRank, get some links

Build a neighborhood of sites

Interlink them within reason

Vary anchor text and copy

Can be used for person, company or products

Sites: Squidoo, Naymz, Netscape, LinkedIn, Tagalag, Bill Hartzer’s 130 social media sites on WebmasterWorld (sub req).

Building a hub on a social media site works well for movies and timely content.

Movies have begun advertising their MySpace pages. This gets them on SERPs faster than starting their own site (http://www.myspace.com/johntucker versus johntucker.com)

How to find social media sites

Search Google dorks for examples of creativity, using different Google commands to find different types of sites. Use keywords “profile,” “web 2.0.” Go to directories: http://www.go2web20.net .

Testing sites

Is it indexed? (The site and its pages.)

Do the pages rank?

Is the theme good?

Placement (how many links?)

Does the page pass link juice? Most difficult to test.

Methodology

Run a site: command search on similar pages on the site. For example, site:myspace.com — profile pages are indexed

Build a page on the social media site filled with nonsense

Link to another nonsense page on your site

(see case studies on Wolf-howl)

Conclusions

Benefits: Social media is another tool for linking. Know how to use it and know what’s best for your goal.
Caveats: Size matters, as do intent & extent.

Use techniques and strategies.

Cindy Krum, Senior SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works Inc.

(This one is almost entirely what was on her slides, since everything was written out there!)

Social media for brand awareness and brand management

Observations:

Ubiquitous web adoption demands a higher level of interaction with brand

Social media is the fastest way to move brand forward, or change its image

Social network advertising spending is expected to triple by 2011 but the cost for participation on social networks is expected to remain free

Social media provides a unique opportunity to encourage customers to incorporate your brand with their identity both on and offline.

Appeal to a peer set which then influences people.

Securing your social presence

Research relevant social networks: major social sites, niche/vertical social sites

Social local sites (like localguides.com)

Blogs & forums, wikis

Identify existing networks for your brand or your industry

Have a strategy: how many profiles do you need? Where should you direct traffic?

Determine who gets social profiles: brands, products, company icons (people/mascots)

Consider social profiles as portals to your brand

Fosters a sense of shared experience & belonging

Spend time on design & maintain brand standards

Keep info fresh—weekly updates

Manage multipile social profiles in centralized locations: photobucket/flickr for images, centralized control panels like fidgt.com (but you do want to have some unique content on each profile)

Leverage email functionality, blogs & billboards

Create SEO’d profiles

Follow traditional SEO best practices

Focus on brand keywords (maybe ones that aren’t “okay” on your main site)

Interlink brand profiles to one another, and to the main site

Initiate friending campaigns

Drive traffic to the profile: natural search traffic, from your main site, PPC (complicated), PPP, banners, offline

Good MySpace profiles can pay to be featured profiles (ex: True dating service profile)

Manage your reputation

Use SEO to push detractors out of top positions

Send traffic to positive press

Participate in forums & groups for detractors & supporters: diffuse adversarial rhetoric, move conversations to a private sphere
Prevent problems: preemption, engagement, diplomacy

Address problems: transparency, candor, humility

Empower Brand Evangelists

Give them cool stuff: widgets, layouts, desktop themes, graphics, games, videos, podcasts, interactive surveys, customizable HTML & brand apps, promotional codes & deals, info on brand

Examples of MySpace layouts: Starbucks, True & LOST. There’s already a community in place for these brands. They’re building on that.
Starbucks features a widget to invite someone for coffee, desktop layouts, location finder, monthly featured beverages.

True has fun games (create-a-date, mixboard for love music) and a fortunes widget

LOST has wallpapers, skins, secrets from shows, interviews.

Embrace Convergence

Leverage existing marketing efforts

Overtly send TV, radio print traffic to profile pages

Release, promote & link to commercials on your profile pages: submit TV commercials to YouTube & other video sites; submit TV/radio to SingingFish or MySpace music

Link to information/press about the campaign from the profiles

Use profiles to get feedback.

Direct social network traffic

Direct traffic offline: host local meet-ups, in-store only coupons, use social profiles and integrate offline & online brand interactions: video uploads, scavenger hunts & offline games. Get people to participate in offline communities around your brand. Have them post results online & link there.

Direct traffic online: create a social media section of your main site. Link to all profiles from main site. Encourage visitors to add you as friends on your main site, encourage visitors to participate in forums & groups. Send them to your site to get promotions.

“Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store. After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about a brand forever.” (Laura & Al Ries)

Q&A

You’ve shown the profiles for those companies, but the LOST one was by Sky1 (UK television channel that it airs on). If you’re a reseller, would it be possible/ethical to “hijack” the community?

Rand: Riding on the coattails of a brand is fine. Hijacking, maybe not. This is subjective, but it’s potentially dangerous. For example, if I made a “Rand’s speaking at SMX” MySpace page: that’d be dangerous, if I were successful. There are legal ramifications, as well as partnership ramifications.

Cindy: On the other hand, people can create branded profiles out of enthusiasm for the product.

Neil: Make it the “unofficial” profile.

Todd: It’s the intent/extent thing. If you do it, don’t let it work too well. Then people will copy you & it will tamper your success.

If I were to promote my most bizarre content, that would get the most links/love? (a product reviews site)

Rand: When you start this process, you have to ask how are you going to use social media. I tell my clients, before you start submitting stuff, you are required to spend 2 weeks there reading what they submit. Understand the community; know what they promote and like. If you invest that time, it’s the best time to figure out the space. I wish we could just tell you what to do.

Neil: Bizarre is better for the young audience, but older audiences (Netscape, Newsvine) like appropriate reviews better.

Todd: Even if you’re getting bad press, the anchor text can great (“worst product reviews” has 2 good words…)

Neil: It’s not necessarily your real title: it’s submitted title. Make sure your website title has keywords, though.

Cindy: Plan ahead if you’re using the bizarre stuff. It’s not just what you do, but think about the next step.

Rand: A lot of people shy away from the space because it can’t be controlled. But the good thing there is that we, the small marketers and small and medium brands can own that space. We can outrank them there.

Would you equate social media to old school forum links?

Rand: It’s similar. You remember the Slashdot effect? Well, now you get tons of links because of blog proliferations in addition to traffic.

Neil: Like with the forums, you don’t really care about that direct link, but what you care about is the traffic and the people that will link to you.

If you have a fan that’s built a fan profile, does it behoove the company to build an official site? Or should they feed the fan site?

Cindy: Evaluate the quality of the profile and the person keeping it up. You can get burned either way. If you endorse them & they become official, you have less control. But if you try to displace them with an official site, you could offend the existing community. It’s a face-to-face, one-on-one thing.

Rand: Let’s say there’s a crazed, rabid fan who’s going wild over your brand. I think that, yes, it pays you to create your official page and also to link to them. Say, “Man, we love this.” That fan will be so encouraged. You don’t’ even have to be a big brand. Endorse them, leave blog comments, etc. This is thrilling to them.

See the Barack Obama affair for an example of how it can go wrong.

Cindy: Having the “unofficial” fan site and your official version can be good for SEO; interlinked profiles.

It seems like a lot of the conversation is focused on links. What about widgets? What do you see as opportunities on Facebook platform? Isn’t that the better way to get distribution?

Todd: With us, it’s always about the links. The indirect benefit: relevant targeted traffic from SERPs. Links-traffic-sales. Now it’s one step further: social media-links-traffic-sales. I think there’s huge opportunity for widgets-links-traffic-sales. I’m all about the little guy.

Cindy: The widgets are cool and get the links, but they also get you brand recognition. That’s just so viral.

Neil: Links are great and all, but it’s very effective for branding. If it’s repeatedly popular, lots of people come back to your site and become readers. Make widgets hot somehow and use social media to push it out & get more visibility.

Rand: With widgets, think about why a user would do that. You need to have something a user would want to share. Best examples: something that people want to proclaim. How can I do this? An example: the SEOmoz Page Strength Tool badge. Play into people’s desire to proclaim their own greatness. (Also, the Web 2.0 Awards.) Lulu linked back to us in their header—now it’s on every page of the site. They’re proclaiming “That’s me!!”

There’s a rumor that Digg’s getting harder to linkbait. Why? Where should I go?

Todd: You should be genuine when you linkbait. If you do it a lot, people say that you’re linkbaiting constantly. Like I was hacked a while back and people said I did it as linkbait.

Neil: I’m personally a whore. You can’t target all of them with one piece of content. Network with top users and craft content specifically for their community. Make it useful content, enduring content.

Rand: if you can build up good relationships with prominent bloggers. they’ll put great content out there about/for you.

Shouldn’t it be related to your business?

Rand: I wish that it could be. That’s very traditional media. Now you have to think about also how can I get people who’d link to my site to my site. You’re getting it for branding and for links. That Apple campaign is a great branding campaign. It’s small, targeted, local businesses.

Who are these people and what have they got to do with my clients’ and customers?

Danny: Quick poll: How many of you equate social media marketing with Digg? How many of you use MySpace profiles? How many are totally hip—you use everything? (A few raise their hands each time.) There is a spectrum that’s out there. We’re getting more and more specialized social media sites. Shouldn’t Petco want to participate in Dogster? (Someone says they are.)

Neil: Social media can work for B2B, even Digg. You’re not trying to relate to those audiences, that’s okay. You don’t have to feature it on your site. I’ve been on Digg many times and even if 0.01% of that traffic/those links is/are actually on target, you’ll still get enough traffic and sales from that.

Todd: Digg’s not my audience, but if these young techie males can enjoy this content, I can get the links I need to bring my content to the correct audience.

Comments

Chossing Between SMX & SES

Manoj Jasra — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:12:50 +0000

A post from Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz says that Incisive Media (guys who run Search Engine Strategies) wants to introduce a speaker exclusivity agreement.

This would mean that if you speak at SMX, you cannot be an SES speaker, and likewise, if SES gets you as a speaker, they'd require that you don't also speak for SMX - SEOMoz

However, a comment from Kevin Newcomb (editor of Search Engine Watch) on Rand's post assured that rumor was false.

If this was true it would be pretty big news because there is SO much overlap in terms of speakers. Strategically, it maybe one of the options Incisive has in order to keep the SES shows competitive. Speakers would potentially have to select whether to speak at SES where the content is a lot less advanced but there is more opportunity to network with potential clients OR SMX where you're dealing with advanced topics, new age tactics and practitioners from the industry.

Comments

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Shoemoney & SEOmoz Debate Link Disclosure

Kevin Gibbons — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:04:31 +0000

This week everyone seems to be talking about the debate between Shoemoney and SEOmoz following Rand Fishkin's post last week about disclosing paid blog recommendations. This continued when Shoemoney and Rand Fiskin discussed their opinions today on Net Income.

Here's a bit of background into both of their views, Shoemoney say's you should assume every recommendation on his blog has some sort of method of making cash behind it:

"So yea you should not trust me… or Rand… or Andy Beal… or John Chow… Or Darren Rowse… OR ANYONE like we are Jesus Christ who you should do whatever they say and not use your own head. you should try EVERYTHING and let the money show you what works the best."

While Rand believes that he provides users with a more honest review by not taking payment for posting a link about a product or service:

"Even Indextools, which I love, and am very fond of talking about, doesn't give us anything beyond the usual free account for re-sellers and discounts for having many clients with them. When I link to them, I never use an affiliate link or have them track that traffic. I like their service; I share my experiences honestly; end of story."

The main argument is about the disclosure of whether a review is paid for or uses an affiliate link, Jeremy Schoemaker has an affiliate marketing background and if he promotes a ringtone affiliate I don't think there is any need to state that a commission will be taken from each sale, it's probably assumed by the user as the main purpose of the site is to make a profit. It's a bit different however with a news or blog site, both Shoemoney and SEOmoz have built up a very large reader base who respect the opinions posted and in this case I agree that it's important that users know the link you are reviewing is paid for.

To a certain extent I agree with Shoemoney but Rand's reasoning makes more sense to me and I think you have to admire his integrity by not accepting payment for reviewing a product or service. By doing this SEOmoz readers should be able to trust the website's being linked to without questioning the honesty of a review. I don't actually think there is a one-fits-all answer for this as in my opinion it depends on the circumstances, the example made on Net Income about CNN accepting payment to mention a pharmaceutical company was a good one as there are some sources you need to trust 100%. Personally I don't have a problem promoting affiliates or writing paid reviews providing I think the advertised product is of interest to the blog's readers and of a high enough quality so that if it did refer new customers they're unlikely to be disappointed. For example I've just wrote a review about Search Marketing Standard magazine, this is unpaid but does contain an affiliate link, I thought the magazine was very useful and I feel that most people reading this blog would probably agree so I don't see a problem in using this link, if they didn't have an affiliate program I would still have wrote the same post. The URL clearly shows an affiliate link was used, I'm not sure if it's necessary to clearly state this as well as it's not like I'm hiding the fact by cloaking or using an internal redirect.

I also think it depends upon the type of product reviewed, I don't feel as strongly as Rand about this and as a reader I wouldn't mind if an affiliate link was used to promote IndexTools if I genuinely believed the review. I probably wouldn't feel the same way however if a direct payment was received instead though as I think this comes across as more of a bribe. I also think the amount of products recommended is important if the SEOmoz list of recommended companies contained two or three affiliate links I would question why they were in there if others didn't have this and at the same time if there was a large list of only affiliate links I'd probably ask which companies should be listed but didn't have affiliate programs. While a single affiliate link based on a positive experience wouldn't raise as many questions into the reasoning behind a review, at least in my opinion anyway.

I think a lot of this has got blown out of proportion a bit as they both probably agree on a large part of this too. Shoemoney has previously said he turns down most offers for paid blog reviews as they wouldn't be of interest to his readers so it's not as if he's promoting everything possible, just perhaps not always being clear on what he's getting paid or making a commission upon. It would be good to hear what everyone else thinks? Is there a standard yes or no/SEOmoz or Shoemoney answer to this?

Comments

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SES Says No Speaker Exclusivity Planned

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:43:47 +0000

Whispers about potentially requiring speakers at Search Engine Strategies conferences to not speak at competitor shows have been dismissed as untrue. Rand Fishkin shook up the suits at Incisive Media, which owns the now-Danny Sullivan-less SES conference series. In a post at his SEOmoz blog, Rand said changes could be coming to SES for its speakers:

(T)wo sources that I trust told me independently that last week, the folks who run the Search Engine Strategies conference series, Incisive Media, were planning to institute a speaker exclusivity agreement following SES San Jose. This would mean that if you speak at SMX, you cannot be an SES speaker, and likewise, if SES gets you as a speaker, they'd require that you don't also speak for SMX. Obviously, there's some politics involved, but I think it's probably secondary to the business strategy on the part of Incisive, who doesn't want the increased competition form Danny's new SMX venture.

Kevin Newcomb of Search Engine Watch, also owned by Incisive and equally Danny-less these days, said the rumor simply was untrue:

In most cases, I'd rather let rumors lie and let them fall by the wayside. But I think it's important to clarify something on behalf of our Search Engine Strategies team.
Let me assure you that Incisive Media (parent to both SEW and SES) has no such plans. There have not been, nor will there be any plans to institute any kind of exclusivity agreement for speakers at any of our events.
Hopefully, this will dispel any rumors, and put the idea to rest.

We're hoping the rumor fades away now. Incisive Media would be astonishingly short-sighted if it were to try and divide the pool of potential speakers in this manner. If they want to compete better with Danny's SMX and WebmasterWorld's PubCon, Incisive should do so with varied, quality content.

Yahoo Site Explorer Figures Jump

Kevin Gibbons — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:01:19 +0000

It looks like there's been an update to Yahoo Site Explorer links today, I've noticed a large increase in inbound links for a number of different sites.

I first found that seoptimise.com had increased to 12,779 from around 10,000 which is great! :) But I'm not the only one, last week I noted down the total number of links for Digg, SEOmoz, Pronet Advertising and Tropical SEO and they have all received substantal increases too:

Digg: 80,581,285 -> 96,274,838
SEOmoz: 512,025 -> 700,970
Pronet Advertising: 198,313 -> 225,616
Tropical SEO: 13,803 -> 17,600

I just noticed that for all link searches you can only view the first 1,000 inbound links, I don't think I've ever checked that far down before though so not sure if there's always been a limit to this.

Comments

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Use Your Blog to Build Trust

Eric Enge — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:48:33 +0000

Rand just put up a post about The Vast Ocean Between Shoemoney & SEOmoz and Why You Should Be Able To Trust Blog Links. Other than the fact that he singled me out in it, I think it’s a great post. I started to write this post as a comment on SEOmoz, but it just got way too long. If you want to read about this topic, read Rand’s post, and then come back to this one.

I do think there is a balance between the time you invest in blogging and content development, and making a living.

When I look at SEOmoz, I see a CEO, and a company, committed to reputation building through offering a wealth of free information offered up with nothing asked for in return. I know of no one who has shared more about their company. Reference SEOmoz’s sharing of it’s 2006 financials (in detail) and more data, such as this post: More SEOmoz stats than you can shake a stick at.

This level of openness builds an enormous amount of trust, and deservedly so. I can tell you from my personal experience that this openness is something that is quite evident when dealing with Rand in person.

Ultimately, that reputation and trust should help SEOmoz build up its premium subscriber base, and, it’s ability to get high value clients. But speaking for myself, I can tell you that I don’t regret a single penny that SEOmoz makes, and I was personally dissappointed that SEOmoz did not make more than they reported in 2006.

So now, the other side of the coin. Lack of disclosure and lack of openness builds mistrust. You become unsure about how to value the information you are receiving. You get uncomfortable with a person when you know they are not telling you something. This is not somewhere you want to be in this social web of ours.

The social web is far too efficient at spreading this type of reputation and trust information around. And, it gets more efficient every day, so this trend is going to continue for the forseeable future. In other words, the genie is out of the bottle, and has no intention of going back in.

So I agree wholeheartedly with Rand’s positioning that bloggers should be open about how they are being compensated (saying “I’m getting paid”, for example, is enough detail), and that readers deserve that, but I also think that it’s in the blogger’s self interest to be open. There is a BIG difference (should I say vast ocean?) between being paid to write a review, and getting compensated for your efforts in the way that SEOmoz does.

FYI - all of the content development efforts of STC are uncompensated (in the direct sense). This includes answering questions in comments, and in emails I receive from people, without there ever being a chance of getting a penny out of it. I really enjoy doing it (that’s compensation too!), and we do have companies that have become clients as a result of our efforts.

Comments

Increasing the the SEO Industry's Profile

Brian Vuyk — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:26:15 +0000

A recent post at SEOmoz once again brought up consider the plight of the Search Engine Optimization industry; as effective and needed as SEO consultants are, blackhats and webspammers have given the industry a black eye.

People see the search community in two camps: Search Engines (good) and Spammers/SEOs (bad). The way they see it, the search engines work diligently to reduce spam, and show the most relevant results for their queries. On the other side of town you have the SEOs and spammers, who try to make sites rank for their own ends, therefore throwing off the good, pristine search engine results.

What the public needs to realize is that real SEO isn’t about making pillspam or other useless garbage rank - SEO is about ensuring that relevant content ranks in the SERPS for related queries. For most site owners, there is little or no value in ranking for non-relevant queries. Often, the pursuit of rankings by SEOs forces them to review the content, make it more relevant and of better quality to induce links, and all around creates better websites and an overall better user experience on the Internet.

I think the SEO community needs to reach out to the public in some way to raise our profile in the public eye, differentiating ourselves from the communities of webspammers and other devious characters. We need to present ourselves as a legitimate, valuable industry. I think that we are on the right track as far as it goes, but more has to be done.

Does anyone have any suggestions how to better clean up the SEO image? I would appreciate your thoughts.

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The SEO Playbook (Welcome to the Rabbit Hole)

Todd Malicoat — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:55:51 +0000

SEO is about more than meta tags, title tags, and targeted anchor text. Call it "competitive webmastering", "SEO", or any one of a slew of other titles - it is the thought process of lateral thinking and understanding of website creation and marketing combined that matters most.

It is a line of thinking that necessitates doing what is optimal: when to balance user experience with "bot experience" to create a site that will harvest any legitimate traffic without detriment to conversions, or without venturing into areas beyond the given risk threshhold for the project.

Technology and marketing were formerly unique disciplines with very different types of people. SEO’s are the folks in between. In my mind, the reason SEO goes well beyond just search marketing into most areas of business is because search engine marketing IMPACTS many of the decisions that are made in a business. Marketing, infrastructure, customer relations, analytics, accounting, human resources can all directly impact search marketing and vice versa. SEO has become more and more of a strategic vision as top rankings become more competitive, and more valuable. SEO is in large part the communication gap between marketing and IT, combined with top level executive strategy (The only good SEO’s that leave the field at this point, do so to become CEO’s - visual illustration).

This is intended to be an "advanced beginner’s guide" - which is a bit of a paradox, but the idea is that even the most proficient of SEO’s often revisit the basics, and that execution on simple solutions can be very elegant and effective. It will also help to cover many of the things that all too often get overlooked. Executing on basics is the most advanced play in the search engine marketing game. A little secret I’ll let you in on - Even the "SEO Pros" go back to basics - content and links. They’re only pros because these two critical elements have become second nature, and nearly every waking thought is based around how to create mo’ betta content, or get some new links in creative ways.

Even if you understand every single technique available - no matter what play you call - you still have to block and tackle to reach the endzone and score your top rankings. The most proficient SEO’s realize that search ranking, branding, marketing strategy, conversions, and postive conversations consist of two major elements - CONTENT and LINKS.

Content

User Experience and content organization

The user experience should be concise, and simple. Simple is elegant. You can have multitudes of functionality locked within a extremely simple streamlined interface. Read Don’t make me think, and the Big Red Fez.

Key tips with site architecture:

1. User architecture and bot architecture don’t need to be identical. A bot will determine the heirarchy of a site through it’s link structure. A user will determine the heirarchy of a site through the placement of the main navigational elements.

2. Search engines are becoming extremely proficient at incorporating semantics into link structure. Keeping a site sectioned into themes is extremely important. The importance of internal anchor text to this factor is rarely over-rated.

3. Internal search is incredible for gathering data on your site.

Resources for understanding information architecture, and balancing the user experience with the bot experience:

User expectations for common ecommerce elements

Search engine theme pyramids

Content Creation

Keyword based content

Creating content specifically to rank for keywords. This is a borderline practice, depending on the intelligence level of the content. A thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters could lookup and change content based on a set of words.

User generated content

The beauty of web 2.0 - people decide to connect together to do something. Whether it’s worthwhile or otherwise, two heads are very often better than one, and conversation is the backbone of the web.

How to content

Everyone loves to know how to do something. I really wish I could download things like "how to do your own plumbing", and be able to figure it out. Someday, perhaps a well optimized and informative video will be able to do that.**

**after publishing Rob pointed me to these installation resources on Vintage Bath and Tub (who have some cool clawfoot tubs) - great examples of howto content

Blog content

Write what you know. Talk about a relevant, cohesive topic.

Linkbait content

Make a GREAT idea even better. Be remarkable.

Commodity content

Sometimes cheap content is better than no content. Don’t be lazy.

Content Resources:

10 Web Tools to Help Generate Blog Content Ideas

Adding content pages - 78 possible topics - Jim

Can your content pass a hand check - Martinibuster_

Content Planning for Search Engine Optimization - SEO by the SEA

Content to create links - SEW

Read Copyblogger through twice

Directory of Government RSS Feeds _ Threadwatch.org

Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing - lifehack.org

Search’s Long Tail

The Long Tail_ SEO Tips

When Unique Content Is Not “Unique” - Sugarrae

Finding Hidden Content - Content idea - RogerD’s notebook

Editing Press Releases

Writers' Block_ Breaking Out With Ten Simple Ideas

WebmasterWorld Supporter’s forum:

63 Questions to Ask Prior to Building a Content Site

Content creation What do you know about writing for the web

Providing Decent Content vs Providing Crap Content

Content Structure:

Duplicate content thinking

LINKS

The "Bot Experience"

"Create a site with your users in mind" has become an oft-quoted mantra of search engine representives when asked about how to rank better in search engines. While the logic is sound, it is also somewhat incomplete. The "experience" that a bot has when visiting your site will often determine the initial experience that a user has with your site as well. Controlling where the bot enters the site, and how the bot "sees" the site is of paramount importance to determining how users will find and navigate through your site.

Information architecture is one of the most overlooked areas of good search marketing. Mainly because it is one of the most difficult areas to retrofit on a site, and it’s extremely difficult for consultants to demonstrate the value to justify the workload needed to overhaul a site.

Link Development

Old is good - Old sites are trusted. Trustrank is a part of the game, and if you don’t believe it you’ve been sleeping. There is no sandbox, there is only the trustbox, and the trustbox emphasizes old, aged links that are on trusted domains that are relevant to your targeted query.

Link equity is the new brand building. Perhaps I’m a bit wrong - link equity, strategy, and development is the new brand building. Brand building and link building should coexist peacefully. Those folks out there that you’re paying $10 - $20 per hour for link building, are building your brand for the future. Why? because a brand is only a google search away these days. If I want to know how strong McDonald’s brand is - I do a google search. Perhaps I’m ahead of the curve, but even Joe sixpack isn’t that far behind me. He knows that google is a verb, and he’ll soon figure out how to change his default search application from windows live to yahoo or google. New brands don’t underestimate the intelligence of their consumers. Default search doens’t "WOW" anyone. Relevance, and information quality does.

Types of links and how to get them. Learn what they are, and how they apply to you. 12 types of links and how to get them.

Article link development

Write articles - submit to various sites based on automation for quantity or personal contacts for quality.

Press link development

Write articles - see above.

Partner link development

Network at conferences, through IM, or email, and make nice with friends.

Affiliate link development

Start an affiliate program with a service that is in the know. Redirect appropriate pages.

Paid link development

Buy text links on relevant sites

Viral link development

This one is probably among the toughest because it is becoming increasingly difficult to do something remarkable that people talk about.

Try learning what linkbaiting means.

Directory link development

Proceed with caution - you don’t need many.

Reciprocal link development

See above.

Link Development Resources:

Graywolf’s Linkbuilding roundup on TW

10 steps to getting links to your site from M$ employee

101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 _ SEO Book.com

Advice_ Increase Email Response Rate _ Justilien.com

All links are paid - More No-Follow Fallout

Are You Guilty of Stinkin’ Linkin’ Thinkin’_

7 Even More Effective Ways to Build Links SEO Black Hat

Building an outsourced team of link builders

Buying Links - O’Reilly In Debate Over Link Selling

CSS Redesign list - How-to increase your links through a redesign

Delegating Link Development_ Outsource or In-house_

Determining the Value of Links from Link Renting

Does Your Site Have Link Building Potential

Doing SEO in a Vacuum - natural link development

Email is Still the Key to a Successful Link Building Campaign - seomoz

Filthy Linking Rich by Mike Grehan

Finding Most Relevant Powerful Page for Link from Jim

Getting Links 1 of 5 - Neil ACSEO

Google s New Link Filter

How to Request Links From Picky Sites - mm - seomoz

Increase Your Link Request Conversion - Don’t Do This!

Interview of Patrick Gavin

Jump-start Your Link Building (without Getting Sandboxed) by Andy Hagans

Link Building 101 - SEW

Link Building for Blogs Online Marketing Blog

Link Building Guide - jim westergren

Link Building Services - How much $$ per link_

Link Building Strategies - Who To Link To

Link Building Wiki - Main - Link Building Wiki

link building with affiliate programs — does it work_

Link Building with Landing Pages_ a basic guide

Link Popularity and Link Building Basics-Linking101.com

LinkHounds - Great Link Building Tips & Link Popularity Tools

Linking Strategies that work in 2005

Linking Strategies, items 1 to 50

List of Searches for Link-Popularity Building

Natural Backlinks - Getting backlinks without even asking. - Jim Boykin

Natural link paterns - How “Internet Phenomenon” Gain Links Over Time

Recommendations on Content to Attract Links
Secrets from Debra M

SEOmoz - Unconventional Link-Building Ideas

SEOmoz Blog _ 5 Rare & Valuable Link Building Tactics

SEOmoz Blog _ Long List of Link Searches

SEOmoz Blog _ What a Good Link Request E-Mail Looks Like

S eth’s Blog_ What makes an idea viral_

The Link Building Knowledge Base by Andy Hagans @ www.linkbuilding.info

Threads of the Web - Linking for Success

Threadwatch to Build Killer Link Analysis Tool

Linkbaiting

21 KEYS TO LINK BAIT SUCCESS

Blogger Relations 101 - Lee - How to pitch a blogger

How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic The Ultimate Guide

I Just Hired A Billion Linkbuilders _ Scoreboard

Link Bait - jim westergren

Linkbaiting or Link Baiting Strategies - Aaron Wall

Linkbaiting or Link Baiting

Linking The Unlinkable_ When Digg Won’t Work

Viral Marketing With Blogs _ Copyblogger

What is Linkbait

Webmasterworld Link Development Threads

Bad Webmaster - No Donut for You!

Basic Link Dev Strategies

Buying text links

Confessions of a Link Building Casanova

Explaining to Clients How to Get Links

How can I get inbound links

How much to quote for link building_

It's time to get some new links!

Link Development in the Blogosphere

Link Development Persona_ Male Versus Female

Link Development Post Toolbar PR

Link Development Strategies In the Age of Sandbox

Link Development vs. Traffic Development and Staying with the Times

Link Strategies To Build Presence and Gain Exposure

New Link Spamming Technique

Promoting deep linking

Quality Content as Passive Link Development

Research your Competition

The Art Of Persuasion in Link Exhange Requests

The Dark Side of Exchanging Reciprocal Links

Buying Links - 'Staying under the Radar'

Supporter’s Forum (worth every penny of membership)

How many new links per month to be on the safe side

Things to watch out for when outsourcing link development

Tips For Attaining One Way Inbound Links

If I was a search engine, part 1…

"Triangular" link exchange

Brainstorm On How To Get One Way I.B. Links

Employing Link hunters

Hints from Search Engine Engineers about Links

Link Patterns

The text link market

They Handy Dandy [Sponsoredy] Linky Getting Guidy

Paid Links - Is it time to take it seriously_

Part 2 Explaining to Clients How to Get Links

Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice - Resources for those figuring out what SEO really is.

You can take the blue pill or the red pill. The blue pill will take you back to your cozy desk job coding for the man, and the red pill might lead you to insomnia induced by ideas of how to turn your startup into a real company using only your laptop combined with some technical and marketing skills, and a realistic gameplan to pull it off. Or you might end up going from self employed to unemployed real quickly.

The first converstation I have with folks generally consists of them asking some questions about what SEO is. If they are REALLY interested, and get beyond thinking about the fact that I tell them meta tags generally don’t matter much, I would guess it feels a bit like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I am still overwhelmed with information overload on a daily basis, and this is after over about 6 years of studying and experimenting with SEO techniques on a daily basis. I think the information overload stems from having so many opportunities to apply the information, as well as trying to keep up and evolve process with emerging opportunities. Digesting, managing, and even thriving on the information overload is extremely important in a business built on timely, relevant information.

Here’s where to start with your SEO Training if you’d prefer the red pill:

SEO Glossary

SEO Beginner’s Guide

Google hot topics (Tedster is truly amazing)

Search Engine Ranking Factors V.2

SEO Tools

SEO Tools 2

SEO Manifesto

Jim Boykin’s best posts

If that’s not enough, check out Lee’s list of SEO/SEM blogs, or Search through them.

More resources on site strategy: 18 questions your CEO forgot to ask when building your website

Practice your blocking and tackling every day. Read these long enough, focus on refining tactics, and experimentation, and you’ll always have a team to play for; your clients, vendors, employer, or partners will be dumping the gatorade all over you for being the one that "made it rain".

What resources do you use for your SEO Playbook or your SEO blocking and tackling?

Comments

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A Conversation With Google's Vanessa Fox

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:57:16 +0000

Nobody stands up Mike McDonald. Nobody, not even Google's Vanessa Fox. Back on a cold December day amid the howling Chicago winds, poor Mike sat alone, waiting for Google's Webmaster Central product manager. Alas, but all is vanity, and SEOMoz.org's Rand Fishkin stole the show (and the interview).

Well this time, it's payback, and it's for real. Vanessa agreed to an interview with Mike at SES New York, and guess who didn't show up this time. And since Rand already proved that video interviews were so easy a caveman could do it, Mike got his absent revenge and Rand got another shot at pinning her down.

Ahem. Pinning her down on Webmaster issues, I meant. Meanwhile, Mike looks for his lost Nokia N93 digital video camera phone…in New York, where it's probably already been sold out of the back of someone's truck.

Some quotables you'll want to listen for:

Vanessa: Is Mike gonna come over and kill you?

Rand: I should have tied those ropes tighter.

And there was something about Rand and pole dancing, just so you're warned.

Otherwise, Rand brings up some great questions, and Vanessa has some great answers. One of the most useful tips is deep into the video, so it's a good idea to highlight it here.

The burning question: When a webmaster moves an entire site, what's the best way to handle the dip in the search engine rankings while that transition is made?

The (suddenly) common sense answer: Fox stressed that it was a bad idea to simultaneously move a website to a new domain and redesign the whole thing. Instead, she says, take the pages from your old site and put them on your new site exactly as they are. Redirect the pages one at a time, carefully mapping on a one-to-one basis.

"What I see people do a lot when they do this move," she said, "is that they restructure the content of their pages instead of having this one-to-one mapping."

It's easier for the folks at Google and the robots working for them to know that this is the same site as before, just in a different place.

But it's also easier for the Webmaster if he or she does approaches moving by doing it one thing at a time. When the inevitable dip in ranking comes, the one-thing-at-a-time approach makes it easier to pinpoint what's causing it.

Other Important Questions To Listen For:

Is there a way to use Google Base to increase visibility in the main search engine results pages?
What's the secret formula to get my headline or image into Google News?
Is there going to be additional functionality in Webmaster Central?
Will Google try to compete with Alexa?
What about that pesky alphabetized link sorting in Webmaster Central?
How does Webmaster Central impact supplemental results?
Are supplemental results as bad as we think they are?
Is there a penalty for buying links from well-known link networks?
What is Google doing about comment spam and "parasite hosting" on .edu domains?