Original Signal - Transmitting SEO

Opinion poll: do you like webmaster videos?

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:42:05 CEST

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you might not know that for the last few months we’ve been posting daily free webmaster videos on our webmaster video channel. That YouTube channel has over 100 videos on it now.We just finished up the most recent round of videos, and now the question is whether to

After One Month, Bing Reports Positive Trend

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:11:36 CEST

We’ve been reporting about various gains and milestones that Bing was able to achieve during its first months, all of them coming from third party data sources. With July’s site traffic performance kicking in, it’s just about the right time…Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.After One Month, Bing Reports Positive Trend

Q&A: How Does Google Treat Duplicate Content?

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:41:36 CEST

Unless your site is screaming "I AM A SPAM SITE", the duplicate content penalty is not gonna hit. And since you would have gotten hit anyway by that human reviewer . . .

A Giant Leap Forward for Link Intelligence Tools & Data

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:11:49 CEST

Posted by randfishIn the last 10 months, we've taken a number of dramatic steps to improve the link information available to webmasters & SEOs. Today, I'm pleased to announce even more progress in that direction, as well and cover the impressive store of data now accessible.Sections in this post: Linkscape's Web Index Over Time Upgrades to Link Data & Metrics Tools to View Link Information The Future of Link Data Linkscape's Web Index Over TimeWhen Linkscape first launched last October, it featured ~30 Billion URLs - impressive, but much smaller than the depth we've reached today. Today we're announcing our July index update (technically launched late last week) with 48.5 Billion URLs, slightly smaller than our last index, but with a greater focus on quality and less spam/junk.# of Links in Each Index - March-July 2009# of Pages in Each Index - March-July 2009# of Root & Sub Domains in Each Index - March-July 2009Perhaps not surprisingly, though, the more we crawl, the more it becomes evident that much of the web is fairly useless to index or serve. So while these numbers are to an extent meaningful, most of our work doesn't change these statistics (and some of it decreases them) yet this work still should be contibuting to improving the quality of our index.July Linkscape Update: Upgrades to Link Data & MetricsJuly's index is the first to feature several important upgrades:#1 - The "Via 301" Link FlagWhen requesting link data for a site or page, we'll now show you important links that are pointing to URLs that 301 redirect to that location. I still recall early feedback from Danny Sullivan, who was very upset that Linkscape didn't show him many of what he considered the "most important links" to SearchEngineLand.com. As it turned out, a large number of those pointed to www.searchengineland.com (which does 301 redirect), hence the confusion. For deciding 301 strategy, people sometimes run reports on a 301'ed url to see just the links through it. This still works. Just now in addition those links are also shown on reports for the target of the 301.#2 - MozRank "Evaporation" through NoFollowsThe mozRank algorithm now "evaporates" link juice through nofollowed links in much the same fashion that Google messaged their change to PageRank. For those wondering why the SEO world didn't notice the nofollow change, there's some fairly compelling information in the correlation data between mozRank & Google's toolbar PageRank:Note that due to mozRank's ability to show greater data refinement (e.g. 5.57 vs. just "5"), a "perfect" correlation would average 0.25. Thus, the MAE (Mean Average Error) is still remarkably close, but clearly changing the nofollow treatment had only a very slight impact.#3 - Canonical URL Tags Now IndexedAlthough this began in our last index, it's good to note that canonical URL tags are being picked up and indexed. We count around 35 million of them. But until it becomes more evident exactly how the different search engines are treating the tags we are holding off anything drastic, like always trusting the tag in our canonicalization code. This means unless URLs are canonicalized for other reasons, we still produce separate reports for different URL. But you may see some "canonical tag" links in a few places.#4 - Large Sites Have More Consistent Link DataAlthough we're still a few updates away from crawling as deeply as we'd like on large sites, this latest index shows considerably more and better data about "important pages" on "important domains." Some of our users noticed that although we often had a number of pages from large sites, they were frequently not the top-level or most linked-to pages - this fix works to address that. Future indices will multiply this capacity considerably.#5 - Blogscape's Data Helping Linkscape Stay FresherOne of the best features of newer Linkscape indices is their inclusion of fresher link data from the blogosphere and "fresh web" (social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, web forums and others that push data out via feeds). Linkscape is now sucking down link data from Blogscape's fresh crawl of the web (updated from 10 million+ feeds every 3 hours) and pushing that out in index updates. Linkscape still has the delay between updates, but the link data produced is now considerably better at showing important links from the fresh web.Tools to View Link InformationThis may be a bit overwhelming, but it's also very, very cool :-) As you probably know, Linkscape data is infiltrating all sorts of tubes on the Internet. Here's a smattering:Quirk's SearchStatus BarThe good folks over at Quirk.biz have baked mozRank into their SearchStatus Firefox extension:SEOmoz's MozBarIf you haven't yet installed the MozBar, I highly recommend it. I'm also very, very excited for the upgrade coming out a few weeks from today. In fact, I'm so excited, I'm leaking a spliced up screenshot (because the 800 pixel wide bar won't fit in this 600 pixel wide post):As we noted above, knowing the number of linking root domains is critical to SEO link analysis, so we're packing it into the new release. That "analyze page" button is going to be seriously awesome, too. Sadly, as I mentioned in my previous post about SEO operators, we've been asked by Google to remove PageRank from our toolbar, but there's lots of other third-party extensions that can provide it, like the above SearchStatus bar.The Free Linkscape APIOur free API serves millions of requests every month, spreading link data far and wide. If you have an application, an internal tool, or hate manually importing data (like I do), check out the API and Nick's post on the subject.Top Pages on a DomainOne of my very favorite tools on the web for SEO (and Richard Baxter's too!), Top Pages lets you enter any domain or subdomain and see the pages on it that have received the largest number of links from unique root domains. The signal to noise ratio is fantastic and it's remarkably useful for both internal analysis (Do I have opportunities I'm not executing on? Where do I have some spare link juice? What pages might perform best for given keywords?) and competitive information (What is my competition doing that's bringing them links?).Smashing Magazine has done some serious Linkbait!Backlink Anchor Text Analysis ToolWhen you need to see anchor text distribution across thousands of links in a few seconds, there's nothing else like the Backlink Anchor Text Analysis tool. Upgraded this Spring to show Linkscape data, it features sub-30-second runtimes and phenomenal comprehensiveness.Poor Dave... His friends aren't using good keywords to link to him. Here you go, buddy - UK SEOIf you'd like even more functionality (particularly the ability to choose a subdomain, root domain or individual URL), the labs version of this tool is also quite excellent.Linkscape Data Visualization ToolThe most recent addition to the Labs family, Nick's amazing visualizer tool helps show exactly where strengths and weaknesses exist by comparing many of the data points Linkscape calculates on a scale using Ben's preliminary rank modeling:Everybody loves a good radar chartBasic Linkscape ReportsThe classic Linkscape reports still provide a great depth of data and metrics, but you need to know where to look (we obviously have some usability work to do). The juiciest stuff is in the "data detail" tab:Wow... Twitter gets a LOT of linksAdvanced Linkscape ReportsFor digging deep into the links that point to a page/site and the associated metrics, advanced reports are still the best source of access.I've got more to write about Oyster.com in the near future (and not just because their namesake is delectable)The Future of Link DataThere's clearly been a lot of exciting progress made, but it doesn't hold a candle to what's possible. Marketers need data - and SEOmoz's obligation (and mission) is to answer that call. What's been done to date hasn't been easy, and what lies ahead is even harder; particularly making many pieces of incredibly complex information simple and actionabel, but if we wanted easy, crawling the web and building query-independent search ranking metrics probably wasn't the way to go :-)Some of the biggest things we're thinking about for the future include: Crawling deeper and producing more frequent index updates Showing historical link information (this one is especially challenging because of index and web size fluctuations) Illustrating more about internal link architectures on a site and providing recommendations for improvement Building ranking models that predict actions that will drive up organic rankings Visualizing important data about links, pages, keywords and global metrics Again, I'll share a brief taste of what's ahead (remember, these are just concept wireframes):The future looks bright indeed.As always, we rely on the feedback of our members and the SEO community to help us improve the information provided. Please leave any requests or questions in the comments or send them over to sitesupport@seomoz.org.Do you like this post? Yes No

Microsoft Fights Google Apps With Free, Web-based Office

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:41:34 CEST

Watching Google and Microsoft lately has been like watching a tennis match: Each company seems to be taking turns hitting back at the other with new announcements, new products, and so forth. The latest volley isn’t strictly search-related, but it’s very notable: Microsoft announced “lightweight” versions of its Office products that will be free and ....

Why You Need to Attend SMX East - and Why You Should Register Today!

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:11:35 CEST

October: crisp days, cool nights, apple cider, changing leaves. And time to learn and implement the latest traffic-driving SEO and PPC tactics to power holiday sales. Join us at at Search Marketing Expo - SMX East in New York City October 5-7, and we’ll show you how!Register for SMX East today and get the lowest ....

It is Time to Regulate Ignorant Anonymous Guest Posts on TechCrunch

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:41:39 CEST

TechCrunch published an anonymous attack piece on search engines...both the organic and paid side. Lets deconstruct some of it, shall we?techcrunch.com/2009/07/13/the-time-has-come-to-regulate-search-engine-marketing-and-seo/"It’s now conventional wisdom that search engine optimization, representing the organic result sets on any search query, is more voodoo than science."And it was conventional wisdom that you needed to own tech stocks because "this time it is different". And it was conventional wisdom that housing goes up forever. We didn't care when fraud was looting trillions of dollars, but now you need to be compensated for your own intellectual sloth & laziness? Please.Most of the market is willfully ignorant and mislead. Just like in most big money markets. Nothing new there.What about public relations and branding and other forms of marketing? Most people are ignorant of the influence, so should we just ban marketing? Without marketing do consumers get more or less choice in the marketplace?To most people rocket science and evolutionary biology are more voodoo than science...does that mean we should shut them down? Shall we run society based on the will of the handicapper general? "In addition, consumer behavior dictates the top three results on any search page are all that matter. "They may be most important, but you can still build a real business by ranking a bit lower on the search results. Also people search for billions of unique search queries each month, so its not hard to rank in the top 3 for something. Keep a lean business if you want to use search as your primary distribution channel. Invest in slow sustainable growth as opportunities present themselves.The line "all of your eggs in 1 basket" also comes to mind. If search bounces around then try to offset that risk by building other distribution channels including offline, word of mouth marketing, repeat customer sales, affiliate marketing, building a strong brand, etc."And at any one time, the controller of these borders (that is, the search engine itself) can change and manipulate those rules – and that can substantially decrease or destroy all organic traffic coming to your website, without notice and without your knowledge."Use analytics to track your search traffic. If your site has its rankings destroyed and you do not notice then you either didn't have much of a business, or are not investing properly in knowing your market. Either way you would deserve failure if you were reliant on a traffic stream and were not actively measuring it."Because the rules of organic and paid search change frequently – and remain undefined — agencies and other traffic brokers can win big; through their experience, they’re capable of reverse-engineering these rules. This means that, as this market matures, individual businesses have a diminishing chance to actually compete and gain search market share. That, in turn, puts them in a position of not only needing to hire an agency in order to find any traffic, but also making it more expensive overall to build businesses on the web."The same analogy could be stated for businesses buying up key real estate locations and building efficiencies into their supply chain model - like a Wal Mart or a McDonalds. The same analogy can be made for huge online networks that cross promote new sites. The same can be said for banks that are too big to fail while smaller ones are slaughtered off and sold to the big ones.If business owners are too lazy or cheap or ignorant to invest in one of the highest ROI business functions of the last 100 years then how can anyone have sympathy for them? There are millions of dollars worth of tips on this site shared freely. And people can get direct help with their site for as low as $100. If they can't afford that, then they should not be on the COMMERCIAL web."The only real solution is disclosure. Transparency. Those traffic generators that use rule-based algorithms to determine result sets must publicly disclose their methodologies. That is the means by which all businesses can compete freely in the organic and paid search marketplaces."Except this is not true. For numerous reasonsas the algorithms grow more complex, the transparency of them would still only benefit a few key players while setting a high barrier to entry for small businesses. all this would actually do is drive small businesses out of the marketplace faster. we outrank corporations worth $10s of billions of dollars for keywords that are important enough that they target them on their homepage titles. make the algorithm transparent and there is no way we could compete at that level.if algorithms were transparent automation and testing would be abused by larger established trusted websites. some news companies already use robots to write content. give them a high PageRank, offline distribution, algorithmic immunity, and the source code to the algorithm and I can't imagine how I would be able to compete against them.media and marketing are rarely if ever transparent. and when they are it often backfires because people feel they were influenced and/or used. manipulation in the traditional media world goes on all the time. I suppose it is time to write another post about media transparency

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 13, 2009

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:11:42 CEST

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

Bing’s Impact: 3 Things Search Marketers Need To Know

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:11:37 CEST

Bing has made a splash in the media recently – but now that the hype has faded, what will be the real impact of the new search engine for search marketers in the trenches? Most professional search marketers are now used to the perpetual changes in algorithms, bidding systems, performance metrics, and ad center tools ....

Using User Generated Content To Enhance Conversion-Driven SEO

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:11:37 CEST

p>Following a series of presentations on eMetrics Summit about ‘Measuring the Voice of the Customer’, I will give some examples on how User Generated Content can be used to both improve the organic results and the conversion rates of a website. The idea behind using UGC in a website is a two-sided effort that can improve both conversions rates and SEO (see other examples in this previous conversion-driven SEO post).....

At One Month, Bing Says Unique Users Up; Compete Says Barely Any Gain In Searches

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:41:39 CEST

A second major ratings service, Compete, has now released search engine share figures for June 2009 showing Microsoft’s new Bing service making a tiny gain. That, following Hitwise’s mixed stats from last week, keeps Bing in “it’s too early to say” territory. Meanwhile, Bing itself says at one month old, unique ....

Running a Business from Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:11:48 CEST

Over the past couple of months, after merging Search Engine Journal and Search & Social, my business life as an SEO and online marketing consultant has changed a bit from the behind the scenes copy, coding and linking world, to…Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.Running a Business from Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Best Practices For Auditing An SEM Account

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:11:40 CEST

The big take-away from this is an understanding of how match types can work together. Match type optimization is the first step in the process to minimize costs without reducing click volume - and is the simplest step to execute.....

Twitter Tip: Utilizing RSS & Yahoo Pipes

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:41:51 CEST

I have always been a huge fan of RSS. More specifically, I have been a fan of XML. Quite a few of the projects I have worked on past and present have utilized XML to standardize data.RSS really is…Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.Twitter Tip: Utilizing RSS & Yahoo Pipes

Finding and Using Niche Blogs

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:41:47 CEST

Posted by Lucy LangdonWhen I talk about 'niche blogs', I mean blogs that are regularly updated and focus mainly, but not exclusively, on a certain subject area like, for example, crocheting or tea. More often than not, a blog with a specialty will be of a much higher quality than your average 'rambling and musings of x' site. However, with a zillion new blogs published per hour, it's getting increasingly difficult to ferret these quality blogs out, particularly if they're not in the business of being found. That makes it sound like I'm talking about underground crochet blogs. I'm not. I just mean blogs that aren't particularly well optimised for the search engines and don't know an awful lot about things like title tags or keyphrases.Why do you want to find niche blogs?There are a few good reasons but the main one is links. There is almost certainly a blogging community around something that your site offers (granted, you might have to get a bit creative here). Building a relationship with other websites that cover the same topic is a great way to get genuine quality links from a diverse range of domains- all good things in the search engines' eyes.A second reason is plain old simple traffic. A good niche blogger will have a dedicated following and will probably be linked up with several other niche bloggers, each with their own respectable readership. Getting an editorial link from this kind of blog should drive well-converting visitors to your site. Lastly, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that this niche blogger knows more about their subject area than you do. If you build up a proper relationship, you could gain more than links and traffic, you could also benefit from their expertise.Why it's difficult to find themThey're niche, so while they may be top of their game, they're not necessarily going to make it any 'top x' lists. As mentioned above, there are also a lot of blogs and although the best will usually make themselves known in one way or another, finding and assessing their value to you can still be a frustrating and time-consuming business. How to find themBefore you even start looking, have a creative think about which 'niches' your site fits into. A spot of brainstorming and keyphrase research can help with this. For example, if you have a craft site, don't just start by looking for 'craft blogs'- think about going both broader and more specific: sites that talk about design, creativity or children's/kids' activities might have a regular spot for craft; focus in on knitting, crocheting, sewing, embroidery, lace, patchwork, applique, quilting.... the list goes on. Here are a few things you can do once you've got this long list of subject areas: swing by a few blog directories. Technorati's a good place to start, but check out this post for a fuller list of directories. Where it all gets a bit rabbit hole-esque is when you get to the niche blog directories. When you're searching through any of these directories, be aware that they won't necessarily categorize everything in the same way. All those blogs you found under 'crafts' in one directory might be in the 'arts' category in another. This is where that list of keyphrases comes in useful. it's also worth sticking those keyphrases into Wordpress tag search. I'm not really sure what 'most relevant' means here, but it seems like a sensible enough list! once you've found a few decent looking niche blogs, take a good look at their blogrolls. If the list isn't too long, have a hunt through and pull out any decent looking sites. If the list is too long, pull out all the blogrolls, stick them in a spreadsheet and highlight any duplicates. Google's Blog search is pretty good- particularly the 'Related Blogs' bit do a few creative searches in Google. If you're after links, try something like "intitle: guest post". A blog that's been open to guest posts in the past, is much more likely to be willing to engage again. I've run through each of these tips with my craft example: blog directories: you'll have to change the setting slightly in Technorati, but check out this page for some useful information. There's a list of really high (Technorati) authority blogs, each closely related to my search term. The related tags box on the right is also useful for expanding that keyphrase list. I also looked through the blogs on BOTW, which has a craft category and a dedicated knitting and crocheting subcategory. It's not easy to get listed in this particular directory so I'm confident that this list would be worth spending time exploring. the Wordpress tag search brings up a long list of knitting blogs. The list is date-ordered and there aren't any options to change this, so I would advise the strength of this list would be to strike while the iron is hot and contact bloggers while the post they've written is still at the forefront of their mind. blogrolls: this knitting site (listed in the top ten of the knitting blogs in Technorait) has this useful 'Blogs I read' page, as does this blog, this blog and this blog. You helpful knitters you! Google Blog Search results. Have a look at those Related Blogs- a couple aren't really relevant, but this knitting parlour blog looks pretty engaging. Creative search in Google- some great results!How to chose your target niche blogsThere are lots of ways you could order this list of blogs, but a lot of the choosing just comes through common sense. For example, there's no point putting a blog with three posts into the list in the first place, or one that hasn't been updated in 6 months. If you've got the mozBar, it's easy enough to rule out any blogs with no DmR (or, if they're on a platform, no mR on any pages).Once you've narrowed down your list, you need to find contact details. If this proves difficult, the bloggers probably aren't down with being contacted like this so it might be best to take them off the list at this point.What next?Don't spam them! These are quality blogs that value the area you work in- caution and respect are wise bedfellows. Here are a few ideas: We've had great successes asking for reviews of products as long as we lay our cards on the table from email numero uno. If your site sells something inexpensive and reviewable then this might be the route for you. Sending some linkbait round a few of your favourite niche blogs is a great way to get that first wave of interest. You can incentivise this by giving one or two blogs a headstart and letting them know about your latest linkbait a little before everyone else. As I mentioned briefly above, guest posting is a really good way to get featured on a niche blog, particularly if you have some clout in your industry. Again, offer something that makes the blogger feel valued- an exclusive interview with the CEO of your company or some stats from your analytics.This post has some great advice for contacting blogs. It's meant for artists trying to showcase work, but it's applicable to this endeavour too.Any other ideas about how to find, evaluate and otherwise make the most of niche blogs would be much appreciated in the comments. Thank you.(Thanks to Chiszeo for the cute image)Do you like this post? Yes No