WebProNews - Sphinn

Sphinn Takes On Upcoming Spammers

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:02:33 +0000

The SEO-friendly social media site Sphinn may have been a little too friendly with submitters, something they addressed with a recent site change.

Placing a link in Sphinn's list of upcoming topics, where others may vote it up for promotion or down to be ignored, became something of a safe haven for aggressive spammers.

Those links picked up valuable 'link juice' immediately, passing the page rank of Sphinn along to the destination, whether it deserved such a merit or not. Spamming and its consequences caught up Edward Lewis of PageOneResults; his lengthy interaction with spam on Sphinn led to his banning from Sphinn and a lengthy account of the issue.

Sphinn looks like it's ready to move on from this minor tempest. Gab Goldenberg noted, on Sphinn, how the site began adding nofollows to outbound links from upcoming stories.

Rob Kerry noted in another Sphinn thread how the site's organizers arrived at the decision to make this change:

The topic of nofollow'ing submissions in What's New was discussed at the beginning of June during a Third Door Media meeting. After discussion with our moderators, we decided to roll out nofollow attributes within this section of the site for the last update release. I sometimes see some good posts just miss the "Hot" requirements despite deserving traffic and a direct link, so we may also trial allowing posts with X number of Sphinns to have nofollow removed in future.

A topic that catches the eye of the community, and its corresponding votes, loses the nofollow attribute with its promotion. That serves as a reward for better than average content creators, who benefit from the increased reputation with the search engines.

CNN's New Domain and Other Topics

Bill Hartzer — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:44:44 +0000

There is a lot going on this week and it is only Monday, January 21st 2007. I thought I would catch you up on some of the interesting, totally unrelated things, not in any order of importance. I considered covering each of these items today, but

CNN Markets Domain Name but Fails to Turn It On

Yes, you’re reading that right. CNN bought iReport.com for $750,000 and according to sources they’re actually running commercials on CNN.com telling people to go to iReport.com. But apparently the marketing department failed to tell the IT department to actually change the DNS and make the site live. OOPS! Take a look at the screen capture below:

So much for getting a website live. Last time I tried, I had a domain name purchased and up and running with content within 15 minutes. At least you could redirect it to CNN.com in the meantime. Sheesh!

Oilman Todd Friesen Leaving Range Online Media
Todd Friesen has announced that he is leaving Range Online Media and going to Visible Technologies. That’s big news in the Search Marketing community.

11 Must Read Social Media Blogs
SEO 2.0 is out with a great post about 11 social media blogs that you need to read. What’s interesting is that I, too, am seeing that many blogs are now changing their focus.

Match.com Goes Grey Hat

Courtesy of Mr. Wolf, Match.com has noticed that there’s a bunch of old-style text on the homepage of Match.com. Wow, that sure does bring back memories of SEO circa 1997.

Watching Sphinn

Maybe it’s just me, but someone has too much time on their hands if you’re spending time watching Sphinn. Sure, it’s useful information to have, and I probably will use the data that they’ve outlined here. I, like the other SEOs, like Sphinn. I guess if you’re going to sphinn something then you ought to be doing it on Thursday.

Comments

Google Directory Updated from DMOZ Data?

Andy Beard — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:56:17 +0000

I know a segment of my readers are sick to death with anything to do with Google PageRank updates, and I haven't even bothered mentioning the most recent update up until now… there wasn't really anything newsworthy in it.

I just spotted a story on Sphinn that will likely get deleted because it is all in Russian - the Google Directory has apparently been updated from DMOZ data from 08/01/2008 (European date notation)

That wouldn't be significant other than Google lists pagerank alongside the listings in their version of DMOZ

I have highlighted a few sites that as far as I am aware still have a manual PageRank penalty for what Google might consider selling PageRank Passing Links, including this one.

If you look carefully you will notice that the values shown in the Google Directory are considerably higher than those shown on the Google Toolbar.

It seems Google used their real dataset for PageRank for the Google Directory export, forgetting that they are telling their millions of users lies on their toolbar with manual penalties, which until now had no visible proof.

Google have the right to do whatever they like with their search engine, but this is another major demonstration of how Google are manipulating public and advertiser opinion. They still state that the toolbar PageRank displayed is:-

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google assesses the importance of the page you're viewing.

It seems my listing which was previously as a PR5 has moved up a number of places, so there is a good chance I am now on the bottom of the PR6 sites listed.

Lets be clear, even though I am most likely a PR6 site, I am not selling PageRank when I write reviews, they are editorial links.

Comments

*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

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."

Comments

Tag:

Hostility Greets News Of Calacanis At Search Event

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:37:46 +0000

The Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media/SES Local event in Los Angeles in November will feature a keynote conversation with Jason Calacanis, whose critical views of SEO have earned him few friends in the industry. If anyone needs to fully understand why Peter Krasilovsky from the Kelsey Group personally invited Calacanis to chat before what will likely be, at best, a neutral audience, the reaction to that news being posted at Sphinn should prove instructive.

Calacanis has become something of a lightning rod with his opinions on SEO. He even managed to provoke this reaction from Danny Sullivan back in August:

Want to be like Robert -- and Jason Calacanis -- and keep equating SEO with spam? Then fuck off.
I don't think I've ever used the F-word in any of my writing, and my apologies for being so crass. But I've had enough of people trying to advance their own personal agendas (Jason hoping someone will care about Mahalo; Robert hoping someone will watch his videos) on the back of an industry that is full of plenty of people who do good work.

Krasilovsky justified the invitation in his comment response on the Sphinn story, saying, "if Jason can invite his harshest critics to debate him on his own blog -- and they all seemed to have come and participated -- why can't we invite Jason to speak to our audience?"

But no one is telling Krasilovsky what he can and can't do; as far as we know he can invite whatever personal pals he likes to chat. Calacanis should be something of a draw in the way Rush Limbaugh is today to people who don't share his views.

If that gets a few more people to attend, that works out well for the Kelsey Group. Conferences are a business first, and stirring up interest ahead of the conference by inviting Calacanis looks like a good decision right now.

AjaxNinja Whips Shurikens Into Digg

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:09:13 +0000

If you've been in a situation like Lee Odden was this year, on the outs with social media site Digg, you've probably wondered if there are better places to try and get a site noticed.

AjaxNinja Whips Shurikens Into Digg

AjaxNinja doesn't have a cheeky video series like some other ninjas we know. What Aaron Stannard does have is an interesting post on finding a flood of niche portal traffic rather than pursuing the sometimes-hostile Digg audience.

That hostility supports his first reason for looking for more supportive communities than what Digg has to offer:

Small communities are filled with passionate users who are genuinely interested in the specific subject covered by that site; Digg users are interested in a wide variety of topics, and if your article doesn’t meet their quality standards (or more accurately, your title; many of them never read the article), it’s the bury button for you.

He also touched on matters of power user ego, overly broad categories, and the high volume of stories that push an item off Digg's home page in short order. Stannard wrapped up with another angle that many people probably don't consider when looking for Digg love:

A lot of SEO sites out there recommend building “power accounts” on major social media sites like Digg and Reddit. While I believe that networking with other people with similar interests is a great thing (it’s actually one of the things I enjoy most about StumbleUpon), I don’t believe that bloggers, companies, and website owners should have to invest HOURS into using Digg like it’s World of Warcraft.

On the SEO side of the equation, that audience might consider Danny Sullivan's social media site, Sphinn, which Stannard also referenced. If anyone with an SEO topic is going to feel at home posting a story, Sphinn is in that niche.

Sullivan, Berg, Spar On Sphinn

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:11:31 +0000

Just because a website can be optimized and marketed for prime search success doesn't mean that it should.

Sullivan, Berg, Spar On Sphinn

An above-the-fold placement in Google's search results should be a part of the website equation, rather than the whole reason for reworking a website. Kim Krause Berg puts a word in for usability on her Cre8PC blog.

In making her point, Berg also took a shot at Sphinn, a Digg-like social media site launched by Danny Sullivan's Third Door Media:

The focus is strictly on search engines, search optimization and marketing, and social media. There is no welcome mat for people in the industry, such as myself, who support SEO/M efforts by taking web sites and Internet applications to the next step. The emphasis at Sphinn is on search results, not customer results.
There’s an “Other” category, but I refuse to be an Other. There are those few of us tied to the SEO industry whose skills work user centered design, usability, persuasive design (i.e marketing), accessibility and site functionality (software testing) into web sites that are optimized for search engines.

She doesn't plan to take in the SMX conference series either, as an extension of the SEO versus SEM orientation Berg possesses. After criticizing Sullivan for having usability in his programs at the SES conferences and not SMX, he responded in the comments:

On SMX versus SES, frankly, you are unfair. You like the usability programming at SES? And who has been doing that programming? That would be me. But you somehow think I’d ignore usability for SMX. Don’t mistake a focused show like SMX Advanced for what we will do in the more broadbased general show. Geez, you condemn an entire conference series based on two focus shows? Just unfair.
I know the concern that usability seems second to search at many shows. The reality is that usability is so important that you can and people do have entire shows about it. And guess what? Those shows don't dive into search in depth because they don't have room to do both deep. Yet I don't recall rants that they ignore search

The usability issue sounds more like a separate design/development concern than either search optimization or marketing, though it's easy to see how solid usability could enhance the conversions coming from search placements, paid or unpaid.

SEM Bogus for Sites That Don't Function

Kimberly Krause Berg — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:26:54 +0000

While there are bugs in the Beta version of Sphinn, that doesn’t seem to be stopping search engine marketers from racing over to try Danny Sullivan’s Sphinn.com I visited twice and haven’t joined because I’m disappointed there’s no place for me there.

The focus is strictly on search engines, search optimization and marketing, and social media. There is no welcome mat for people in the industry, such as myself, who support SEO/M efforts by taking web sites and Internet applications to the next step. The emphasis at Sphinn is on search results, not customer results.

There’s an “Other” category, but I refuse to be an Other. There are those few of us tied to the SEO industry whose skills work user centered design, usability, persuasive design (i.e marketing), accessibility and site functionality (software testing) into web sites that are optimized for search engines. Our goal is to not only make web sites that are found and rank well, but when visitors click into them, they don’t run screaming, feeling betrayed by pages that aren’t designed to work for people.

This is the reason I don’t attend, or plan to attend, the new SMX Expos. The focus is limited to search marketing, but the human factors side of web and persuasive site architecture and how these are married to marketing have not been included in the covered topics (so far).

By contrast, Search Engine Strategies has included this arm of marketing and continues to teach attendees how to code, plan and design web pages that work for search engines and people. (As noted below in the comments, I neglected to say that Danny Sullivan handled programming for SES and now the new SMX. Some SES conferences had at least 3 usability related sessions, approved by him.)

I’ve never understood a disconnect between search engine marketing and usability when so many companies and government agencies are clamoring for usability and persuasive design help. Thank heavens there are some leading search marketing companies and even smaller local ones that reach out for usability assistance because their clients need it and there’s a strong, growing demand for usable web sites that convert visitors to customers, accounts, readers, community, etc.

With the growing number of “in-house” SEO/M’s, whose responsibilities are marketing their company’s web site interests to Internet users, it makes sense to also instruct them on making sure pages are built to meet requirements and how to track, test and implement changes based on human usage data analysis that goes beyond keywords and links.

My personal experience is some top search marketing companies will not accept new clients without first having a usability audit performed on the site or it is included in with their quotes because they know it enhances their services and provides a better long-term ROI for their clients.

Case in point, I’m working on a site in a highly competitive industry. It’s not optimized well for search engines and could use some help. They could simply hire a search engine marketing company to make the site rock in search engines and call it a day.

However, I spent nearly 10 hours trying to get their web application to DO SOMETHING! It doesn’t work. It’s hard to understand, but worse, it simply doesn’t function. Since the application is the bread and butter of the site and their leading tool for conversions, all the money they spend on marketing is going down the tubes.

To not talk about this in the search engine marketing industry just floors me and worse, their clients suffer.

Maybe client satisfaction doesn’t matter to some search marketers.

I wouldn’t hire them if I knew that.

Cre8asiteforums discussion in the SEO Forum - Is Usability Part Of The New Seo? Kim rants, Danny listens

Comments

Danny Sullivan Goes Digging With Sphinn

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:16:51 +0000

The search maven has launched a social community site with a Digg-ish feel and a search engine focus.

Danny Sullivan Goes Digging With Sphinn

Bryan Eisenberg took a peek behind SearchEngineLand's 'don't click here' button and found out what Danny's been keeping back there.

"Will Sphinn be the new Threadwatch?," asked Eisenberg. Good question, now that Threadwatch has been shut down. A better question: what is Sphinn?

The easy definition is a SEO-friendly version of popular/SEO-averse social media site Digg. Categories for story submissions on Sphinn include the ubiquitous Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft topics, along with ones for search marketing, social media, online marketing, and searching.

Sphinn's About page discussed the rationale Danny and his Third Door Media have for Sphinn, as well as the genesis of the name:

We liked the idea of a place where marketers could put their own spin on news by commenting on stories or having discussions. But spin.com was taken, as was spinn.com and sphinnn.com was a N too far, we felt. So we went with sphinn.com, pronouncing it "sp-hinn."

Folks like Lee Odden, Vanessa Fox, and Danny among others have posted items to the new site. It's very much at the ground floor, with only a handful of Sphinns needed to boost articles to the front page. Danny's reputation and a little word of mouth should remedy that in short order.

WebProNews - Sphinn

Sphinn Takes On Upcoming Spammers

CNN's New Domain and Other Topics

Google Directory Updated from DMOZ Data?

Top Ten Sphinn Posts for the Year

PubCon - The Social Marketing Playing Field

Hostility Greets News Of Calacanis At Search Event

AjaxNinja Whips Shurikens Into Digg

Sullivan, Berg, Spar On Sphinn

SEM Bogus for Sites That Don't Function

Danny Sullivan Goes Digging With Sphinn