Build Your Online Business Today

Whiteboard Friday - Why Linkbuilding and Landing Pages Don’t Mix

Posted by great scott! on Jul 31, 2008

Posted by great scott!

Anybody who has ever put together a killer piece of linkbait has thought about it: how could I get this kind of attention to my landing pages?  It's an obvious dilemma. You get a ton of traffic, a ton of links, all of the ranking boost that follows, how could you not want that juice directed toward your conversion-centric pages?  Well, there are reasons why the two tend to be mutually exclusive, and that's what Rand explores in this week's Whiteboard Friday.

Fear not! There are ways a good piece of linkbait can and will benefit your conversions and we'll explore several of them in this video.



SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-Why Landing Pages and Linkbait Don't Mix from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.


Let it be known that not all methods discussed are of the fairest shades of habberdashery, but that DOES NOT mean we advocate the dark side. Some of this stuff can get you in serious trouble. We discuss it only to educate and warn our readers of tactics they may see and be tempted to try despite the very negative ramifications that may result.

Do you like this post? Yes No

The Foolproof Method for Great Blogging

Posted by Danny Dover on Jul 31, 2008

Posted by Danny Dover

I don’t pretend to be nearly as prolific as people like Robert Scoble or Mike Arrington but I have had some notable success with blogging. In addition to the traditional blogging triumphs (links, notable mentions, social media), I have been able to help a lot of people and learn a lot. The following is my way of giving back to a community that has already given me so much. I believe that if somebody follows each of the steps listed below fully and honestly that they will become a substantially better blogger.

---

A note on blog content:

I like to compare blogs to mattresses. Every mattress needs to have the right softness to support ratio. I imagine top ten posts, weekly roundups and opinion pieces as the padding that makes mattresses soft. Meaty posts, research based pieces and posts announcing new important information are like mattress springs. The key to a successful blog is maintaining the right ratio. Just like different people prefer different mattress ratios, audiences prefer different blog content ratios. Both kinds of posts are a subtle art form and equally important, but the second type of posts are much harder to write on a consistent basis. The following method mostly applies to writing these more in-depth (spring like) blog posts.

Prepare yourself:

Don’t become an expert by acting like one - This might sound counter-intuitive but it really does make sense. Many inexperienced bloggers try to make their work sound important and reputable even when it is not. This is an easy mistake to make because emulating the industry leaders is a logical path to success. Don’t be fooled. Real success comes from distinguishing oneself in a useful way, not by pretending to be something one is not.

Avoid the temptation to brainstorm - Brainstorming is the gateway to poor posts. If you have to scrape the bottom of the pan to come up with a blog post idea, chances are the resulting blog post won’t be your finest. Great bloggers write what they feel they need to write. The resulting posts are the ones other people feel they need to read.

Know your audience - The best possible circumstance in blogging is when writing for your audience is no different than writing for yourself. A great blogger should ask themselves if they would pick their own blog post to read out of the hundreds of options presented to them daily. If they wouldn't, they need to figure out why not.

Bring something new to the table - Great bloggers know how to find or create information that no one else knows about. You should ask yourself if your intended post is simply restating something someone has already covered.

Technorati Tags

blogging, checklist, blogging method,

Do you like this post? Yes No

I Have A Question: The Best Of Q&A

Posted by Jane Copland on Jul 31, 2008

Posted by Jane Copland

There is a very large group of vocal, active members on SEOmoz whom we hardly ever see on the blog. Most of them rarely write YOUmoz posts. They comment infrequently. However, they spend a lot of time in the same area of the site where I spend the majority of my time: SEO Q&A.

Questions range from very simple and easy to answer to incredibly complex. Questions that I can't answer usually end up being assigned to Rand or to one of our developers. I give legal questions to Sarah, and the Distilled guys take on a fair number now too. In the eighteen months we've operated the service, I've at least read just about everything.

Thus I present to you The Best of Q&A. There is no way that I've managed to cover the entirety of our Knowledge Base, but this is at least a sample of some of the content that has made its way through the Q&A queue.

Topics come in cycles. For a while, many questions, both public and private, dealt with PageRank. It seems that, as people's understanding of toolbar PageRank, real PageRank and how it works improves, people worry less about what is shown in their toolbars.

It's hard to pick which topic comes up the most, but here are a few that are recurring:

1. What can is the most a website can get away with / how should a site serve different content to search engines than it does to humans without suffering any penalties?
   
   These questions come in all shapes and sizes, from those about age verification concerns, to whether it's okay to serve different content based upon cookies based upon returning visits. They can be difficult to answer because, as this post shows, there is plenty to debate about when this practice crosses Google's magical line. Matt Cutts' comment on that post seems to indicate that no cloaking is permitted. This isn't what I want to tell people, however, as they usually present situations where I know Rand's "pearly white hat" cloaking would be appropriate, would work and would never result in a penalty.
2. What can we put in our Hx tags for maxium impact?
   
   In my opinion, there is no point getting clever with links in H1 tags. Why? Because H1 tags are supposed to denote the important information on the page in question. Linking to another page with optimised anchor text suggests that the linked-to page is more relevant for that text than the page on which the link lies. So why put that in a tag that is designed to describe the current page's content? This comes up quite a lot, mostly phrased as a question about whether this will get a site "banned."
   
   Other questions deal with image replacement, stylistic concerns and how many instances of each tag are acceptable.
3. Duplicate content.
   
   In every way, shape and form. I don't care how many times SEOs and search engine reps claim that duplicate content is no longer an issue, it will always be a problem for a large number of sites and for a number of reasons. People have concerns about everything from whether trailing slashes create duplicate content (and whether search engines can work this canonicalisation issue out for themselves) to how to fix massive duplication problems in large e-commerce sites.
4. Internationalis(z)ation.
   
   Q&A often reflects the frustration of non-US based webmasters and SEOs who struggle with "international" problems. It frustrates the life out of them that Google representatives say things like, "I would recommend not redirecting users based on their location. This can be a bad user experience. It's better to allow a user to choose his version based on his searches" when, as Rand points, out, Google itself geotargets its home page and its results.
   
   It is fantastic to have the Distilled team around to look at questions like this, as they have often dealt with the issues in real life.
5. Confusion over what type of links need to be nofollowed and whether one should link at all.
   
   The FUD over paid links has made people paranoid. You knew this. However, it still surprises me what people have convinced themselves of and how much misinformation and misunderstanding flies around about links. I have had people fret about being picked off for banner advertising (which is in no way a direct, crawled, PR-passing link). In many ways, I believe last year's crack down on paid links did more to strike fear into the hearts of regular webmasters than it did cut down on spam. Of course, it was never Google's intention to make people fear linking. The search engine would be ineffective without links. However, the process of inflated, exaggerated information and hysteria convinced a lot of people that they were constantly on the verge of a penalty.
6. Best practices for robots.txt and meta noindex, a.k.a. epic exclusion misunderstandings.
   
   The differences between different meta robots tags and robots.txt is widely misunderstood. Many times, people can't work out why search engines aren't doing as they're told, given a set of exclusion instructions. Pages excluded via robots.txt can still show up in some engines' search results as URLs.
   
   If a page is excluded via robots.txt and if a robot does its job properly, it won't visit the content of that page but could still index it as a URL. Thus, any instructions a webmaster has left therein are at risk of being ignored / not seen. If a page isn't excluded via robots.txt but contains a meta noindex tag, its contents, including its links, can be visited and taken into account by search engines, but its URL won't appear in search results. This is why it's still necessary to nofollow links on pages that are noindexed if you don't want the page to pass PageRank, either at a link level or a page level.

I've had a few "back away from the keyboard" moments, such as when I came across a question from [very competitive, enormous website] about their money-page that ranked for [one of the web's most competitive keywords]. I'd liken that feeling to showing up at the swimming pool and having Michael Phelps ask me for training advice.

On occasion, we receive some incredibly amusing quotes and questions as well. What follows is a small collection of exerpts from some hilarious things we've been asked / told over the past eighteen months. Ninety-nine percent of the time, questions are serious, but I absolutely love the ones that also make us laugh out loud:

I want to make sure that this site NEVER GETS PICKED UP AND INDEXED, CRAWLED, SPIDERED OR FONDLED IN ANY WAY BY ANY SEARCH ENGINE.
It took me a while to compose myself after thinking about what it would be like to be fondled by a search engine. My immediate mental image involved Googlebot tugging on the leg of my jeans and making suggestive comments.

Hi there. Can you recommend an attorney who knows technology and the Internet? Someone with tech patent experience is a must, so please don't suggest your Uncle Buck.

I have a client who knows enough SEO to get me into trouble.
A little knowledge is far more dangerous than none at all.

We'll impatiently look forward to your opinion!
We try to get to questions pretty quickly (and we're sorry when we get behind), but this certainly made me hop-to.

We usually get visited by the G-force about once a week. BTW her indoors says that if I do not stop reading SEOmoz Tips & Tricks at gone midnight, she will sue for divorce. Great work!
Submitted just yesterday, we are a bit concerned about contributing to divorce rates, but we're delighted to be considered essential reading!

I've taken a photo, chopped the person's head off in Photoshop and put mine on it. I think it's an improvement, but I'm wondering about the legal implications.
Undoubtedly, but I referred this one to Sarah.

And finally, one of the most intriguing question ever submitted, from one of the better SEOs in the business. I was a bit worried when I saw that Rob Kerry had submitted a query, as his SEO knowledge is pretty scary:

If SEOmoz had a pet, what type of animal would it be and what would you give it for a name?
This one had me stumped. Any suggestions?


We're constantly trying to streamline and scale the Q&A section, and there's definitely still room for improvement with speed of response (although, with Distilled on board, we're getting better). That said, I should really get this published and look at today's responses and submissions :)

Do you like this post? Yes No

Content and Marketing Lessons Learned from The Dark Knight

Posted by rebecca on Jul 30, 2008

Posted by rebecca

For the four of you who aren't aware, The Dark Knight is a pretty big deal for a multitude of reasons:

• It was the first movie to film large chunks of the film with IMAX cameras.
  
• It debuted on the largest number of screens in cinematic history (4,366).
  
• It also debuted on the largest number of IMAX screens (94) and broke IMAX debut records ($6.2 million).
  
• It beat the record of most money made from Friday midnight shows ($18.5 million).
  
• It holds the record for the best opening day/single day ($66.4 million).
  
• It made a record-shattering $155.3 million its opening weekend.
  
• It has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes ranking.
  
• Fandango reported that 64% of the people who have seen The Dark Knight plan on seeing it again in the theater (I've seen it twice).
  
• And, of course, the film marked what could be Heath Ledger's final performance, which is so engrossing that there is buzz that he could be the seventh person in history to receive a posthumous Oscar acting nomination (and if he were to win, he'd be the second person to win after death).

Whew! That's a lot of stats I just threw at you. Sorry about that. I just wanted to convey the magnitude of this film's success. You can argue that plenty of other films have made lots of money, but many of these movies are specifically targeted (e.g., big budget action flicks that skew overwhelmingly male), overly stylized/injected with CG, or just not very good (making money but disappointing movie critics). But how many times do you see a film that's critically acclaimed make serious bank at the box office, have strong holding power, appeals to various demographics and both genders, and generate substantial awards buzz?

Not very often, which is why when you do have the fortune of catching lightning in a bottle, you better figure out the reason behind its success. I think The Dark Knight had a lot of things going for it, and these positives are all things that can be translated over to your site's content and marketing strategies.

1. Have a Good Product/Idea

This seems like a no-brainer but is nonetheless often overlooked (ahem, Flooz.com and their "online-only currency"). Batman is a good product, and he always has been. He's a regular guy (okay, a billionaire, but hey, he has no super powers) who just wants to make his city a better, safer place. We can all relate to that, right? A successful product or service is one that appeals to its audience. We need it. It triggers nostalgia. Makes our lives easier. We identify a fun aspect to it. We feel that we can't live without it. Great products and services trigger these emotions, this sense of urgent "I need this, and I need this NOW."

With The Dark Knight, the film built itself around a good product: Batman. Bruce Wayne. Gotham City. Evil villains. Delivering justice. And who finds that appealing? Well, naturally the built-in audience of comic book fans and graphic novel readers--folks who are most familiar with the product. Even people who aren't hardcore Batman geeks are attracted to the product if they saw previous Batman films and had a positive experience (excluding Batman and Robin, of course--nobody had a positive experience from that rubber nipplefest). When it comes to marketing your product or services, success will come much quicker if you actually have something good to offer.

2. Focus on Stellar Content, Not Necessarily on Dazzling Effects

A lot of big budget summer action flicks try to dazzle you with millions of dollars' worth of CGI, special effects, gigantic explosions, and bullet-time this and green screen that. However, oftentimes these films over-rely on special effects and use them as their main selling point, and unfortunately special effects can't replace a poorly written script or a ridiculous plot.

Compare The Dark Knight to Spiderman 3. The third Spidey movie was a CGI barf-o-rama: you had the Sandman, some Venom scenes, Spiderman's wall climbing--the list goes on and on. And guess what? That movie freakin' sucked because while everyone was off rendering effects over at ILM, nobody realized that the script was horrendous. The Dark Knight, in comparison, doesn't build its movie around computer generated images, it uses CG to supplement the story. Many of the big action scenes were even done the good ol' fashioned way (meaning "no CG effects"), and the non-action scenes hold up on their own because the script is very well-written. As a whole, the movie's plot is realistic, compelling, entertaining, tragic, and exhilarating.

What about your website? Well, think about it. Do you need intricately developed games and widgets and this mega-huge budget and whoozits and whatsits in order to rank well and drive traffic? Well, no, not necessarily. There are tons of bare bones sites that enjoy mass appeal because they offer great content. Clever ideas like Postcards from Yo Momma, Stuff White People Like, and GoFugYourself attract readers, no matter how simple the layout. So, the next time you see a flashy (or Flash-y) website that has impressive-looking features, don't instantly jump out of your chair and exclaim, "I need that too!" You don't. A cheaper option is good copy, plain and simple. Start with that. Good copy is indexable, too!

3. Be Topical

This applies more to the content side of things, though it can go for products as well (I don't see too many beeper product sites popping up right now...unlike what the Beeper King says, technology isn't cyclical). The Dark Knight addresses some real-life concerns that are plaguing many Americans today, such as terrorism. Likewise, if your site can offer a product or some content that ties in with current events or the latest trends, it can capitalize on what's popular nowadays. This doesn't necessarily mean, however, that you should exploit an opportunity...which leads me to my next point...

4. Don't Be Shameless

Obviously, the studio and producers behind The Dark Knight could have gone the shameless route and capitalized on Heath Ledger's sudden death by touting it as "His final performance!" and milking his passing for all it's worth. They didn't, though. The marketing department approached the subject very delicately, consulting with Ledger's family on how to appropriately market the film. Some movie posters displaying the Joker were removed or edited/blurred, and it seemed like the studio did an admirable job of focusing on promoting the film as a whole rather than highlighting an unfortunate incident.

Your website can have controversial content or take a ballsy stance on an issue in order to attract links. As you're likely aware, being the "villain" is a good link bait tactic. But are you willing to compromise your integrity in order to gain some exposure? Do you want to hurt your company's reputation? Is it worth it in the long run? Would you rather have users say "Oh, that site has an awesome blog" and "I love your company's products," or do you want to hear "Yeah, I know that blogger. He's a real asshole" and "I'm not familiar with their products, but I know that the CEO is a jerk"?

5. Widen the Appeal

Think about how you can widen your site's appeal. Obviously, many sites have a target demographic. Imagine, however, if some sites and companies tried to open up to other audiences. Do guys like pink iPods and red Dell laptops? Some might, but the colors are probably more appealing to women. Think of little tweaks you can make to your site or products in order to widen their appeal. The Dark Knight skewed 48% female. Pretty damn good for a comic book movie, right? How'd it attract the fairer sex? It could be a number of factors. Maybe these ladies were comic book nerds too. Or maybe they were curious about the buzz gathering around the film and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Or maybe it's because Christian Bale and Heath Ledger are both, well, hot, and have also appeared in dramas that are appealing to women, and thus they've built up a female fanbase. Either way, the movie clearly did something right because people young and old, male and female, geek and non-geek flocked to the theaters in droves.

6. Don't Insult Your Userbase

The Dark Knight didn't try to dumb down the plot or pull any Fantastic 4 bullshit. Its plot was dark and often depressing and tragic. There was no happy ending. And you know what? Audiences seemed okay with that. They applauded the film's realism and appreciated the fact that "comic book movie" doesn't have to equate to bubblegum bright colors, bad guys being vanquished, and good guys saving the day and getting the gal. The movie didn't insult the audience's intelligence, and you shouldn't insult your users', either. That's not to say you shouldn't provide good, intuitive usability; rather, you should offer quality products and content that your users expect.

7. Don't Neglect Your Early Adopters

One thing that irked me about the X-Men movies (let's not even talk about the embarrassment known as "the Brett Ratner fiasco") was that many character origins and original plot points from the comic books were ignored or changed entirely for the movie. Tweaks like these irk comic book purists and early adopters. The Dark Knight kept the character's integral points intact and as a result kept die-hard Batman fans happy.

Think about your early adopters. What about your site, its products, or its content do these folks love? What features do they adore? Why have they stuck with you for so long? You should appreciate your long-term users and customers because if it weren't for them, you wouldn't be where you are today. Listen to their feedback and suggestions. Deliver (within reason, of course) things that meet or exceed their expectations. Acknowledge and thank them every so often, for they are your die-hard fans, and there's nothing worse than a lover scorned.

8. Be Smart with Your Launches/Product Debuts

It wouldn't have been smart if The Dark Knight debuted in theaters in January or February. It's a huge budget Hollywood blockbuster--why would it be released during the slowest box office time of the year? Big budget action flicks and other movies that aim to rake in the benjamins are typically released over the summer, which is when box office earnings are at their highest.

Similarly, think about appropriate times to debut new products or tool launches. Maybe you should wait for a major industry conference so you can unveil a new tool or feature in front of thousands of people. If you have a great new product coming out that would make for a perfect gift, think about promoting it during the holiday shopping season. Got some romantic products? Unveil them leading up to Valentine's Day. Have a great blog post? Don't publish it on a Friday night! If you think about it, there are lots of ideal times to debut new material.

9. Make Your Ads Stand Out

The Dark Knight did a pretty damn good job creating compelling movie posters that pop out and attract attention. They also had some really great movie trailers and teasers, and they even aired the first seven minutes of the film at IMAX theaters before other attractions. The studios' efforts paid off: these marketing tactics generated buzz and created anticipation for the film. Likewise, think about how you can make your ads stand out. If you have banner or display ads, brainstorm how they can stand out among the other ads being displayed. Use different colors or font sizes or a compelling graphic. For your organic and paid search results, consider your title tags, meta descriptions, and ad copy. How will you get searchers to click through? What can you do to make yourself stand out among your competitors?

10.  Handle Negative Press Promptly and Professionally

Shortly after the film was released, there was stunning news about how Christian Bale was arrested for allegedly verbally assaulting his mother (apparently you can get arrested in the UK for "verbal" assault, which is pretty frickin' odd). This scandal could have potentially hurt the movie's positive buzz and Bale's squeaky-clean reputation, but the film and the actor's publicists handled the situation well. Bale cooperated with authorities and official statements were made to the press, and there was no ugly behavior, screaming arguments, or diva demands.

What if someone gives your product a negative review? Or if a blogger writes a nasty post about your site? Negative press can be handled appropriately if you act fast and diffuse the situation. Acknowledge the blogger or the user's concerns and see if there's some way you can extract some constructive criticism. Kill the meanies with kindness and let them know that you appreciate the feedback. If you take the higher ground, you'll do wonders for your reputation.

Okay, this post ended up being way longer than I wanted, but hopefully you stuck with me and were able to see the parallels between the movie and a great content/marketing strategy. As always, weigh in with your thoughts...or you could just say, "Eff this, I'm going to see the movie now!", which is, of course, a viable option as well. :)

P.S. This is my 200th blog post at SEOmoz. Bust out the champagne!

Do you like this post? Yes No

Comparing Search Engine Performance: How does Cuil Stack Up to Google, Yahoo!, Live & Ask

Posted by randfish on Jul 29, 2008

Posted by randfish

This week marked the arrival of Cuil on the search engine scene. Being a huge fan of search technology and how search engines work in general, I've been spending some time playing around with the new service and thought it would be valuable to expose my data on how the classic market leaders - Google, Yahoo!, Live & Ask compare to the newcomer.

When judging the value and performance of a major web search engine, there's a number of items I consider critical to the judging process. In order, these are -- relevancy, coverage, freshness, diversity and user experience. First, let's take a quick look at the overall performance of the 5 engines, then dive deeper into the methodology used and the specific criteria.

Interesting Notes from the Data:

• I'm not that surprised to see Yahoo! come out slightly ahead. Although their performance on long tail queries isn't spectacular, when you weight all of the items equally, Yahoo!'s right up there with Google. There's a reason why people haven't entirely switched over to Google, despite the far stronger "brand" they've created in search.
• Google is good across the board - again, not surprising. They're the most consistent of the engines and perform admirably in nearly every test. To my mind, despite Yahoo! eeking out a win in the numbers here, Google is still the gold standard in search.
• Ask has some clear advantages when it comes to diversity and user experience, thanks to their 3D interface, which IMO does provide some truly excellent results, particularly in the head of the demand curve.
• When it comes to index size, Yahoo! appears to have the win, but I think my test is actually a bit misleading. Although Yahoo! clearly keeps more pages on many of those domains indexed, I suspect that Google is actually both faster and broader, they simply choose to keep less in their main index (and that may actually help their relevancy results). Google's also excellent at canonicalization, an area where Yahoo! and the others all struggle in comparison.
• The biggest surprise to me? Microsoft's Live Search. I'm stunned that the quality and relevancy of Live Search is so comparatively high. I haven't done a study of this scale since 2006 or so, but the few dozen searches I run on Live each month have always produced far worse results than what I got this time around. Clearly, they're making an impact and getting better. Their biggest problem is still spam and manipulative links (which their link analysis algorithms don't seem to catch). If they fix that, I think they're on their way to top-notch relevancy.
• Cuil doesn't permit a wide variety of very standard "power" search options like site:, inurl:, intitle:, negative keywords, etc. making it fairly impossible to measure them at all on index size (though the lack of any results at all returned for terms & phrases where the other engines had hundreds or thousands speaks volumes). It also put their technical and advanced search scores in the doldrums - none of the "technorati" are likely to start using this engine, and that's an essential component of building buzz on the web Cuil's missed out on.
• Cuil was foolish to launch now. Given the buzz they had and the potential to take market share (even a fraction of a percent is worth millions), they should have had lots of people like me running lots of tests like this, showing them how clearly far behind they were from the major engines. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and theirs was spoiled. I won't predict their demise yet, but I will predict that it will be a long time before Michael Arrington or anyone in the tech or mainstream media believes their claims again without extremely compelling evidence. Their index, from what I can see, is smaller than any of the major engines and their relevancy is consistently dismal. I feel really bad for them, personally, as I had incredibly high hopes that someone could challenge Google and make search a more interesting marketplace. Oh well... Maybe next time (assuming VCs are willing to keep throwing 30+ million at the problem). 

Methodology: For each of the inputs, I've run a number of searches, spread across different types of query strings. This is an area where understanding how search engine query demand works is vital to judging an engine's performance. Some engines are excellent at returning great results for the most popular queries their users run, but provide very little value in the "tail" of the demand curve. To be a great engine, you must be able to answer both.

In most instances, I've used search terms and phrases that mark different points along the query-demand scale, from the very popular search queries (like "Barack Obama" and "Photography") to long-tail query strings like ("pacific islands polytheistic cultures" and "chemical compounds formed with baking soda") and everything in between. You can see a full list of the queries I've used below each section. During the testing, I used the following scale to rate the engines' quality:

Now let's dive into the lengthy data collection process...

Relevancy
--------------------
Relevancy is defined by the core quality of the results - the more on-topic and valuable they are in fulfilling the searcher's goals and expectations, the higher the relevancy. Measuring quality is always subjective but, in my experience, even a small number of queries provides insight into the relative value of the engine's results. To collect relevancy, I simply judged the degree to which the top results resolved my inquiry, and weighted those that provided the best answers in the first few positions higher than those that had better results further down.

The following are the queries I used to judge each of the engines on performance:

• Top Buzz: gas prices, iphone, facebook, dark knight,  barack obama
• Popular: laptops, photography, rental cars, scholarship, house plans
• Mid-Range: fire prevention, calendar software, snow tires, economic stimulus payment, nintendo wii games
• Long Tail: pacific islands polytheistic cultures, chemical compounds formed with baking soda, genuine buddy 50 scooter reviews, google toolbar pagerank formula, getting a novel published
• Technical: metalworking inurl:blog, cricket -site:.co.uk -site:.com.au, dark crystal site:imdb.com, top * ways, definition sycophant

Coverage
--------------------
Coverage points towards a search engine's index size and crawl speed - the bigger the index and faster the engine crawls, the more pages it can return that have relevance to each query. To judge this metric, I focused on the coverage of individual sites (both large and small) as well as queries in the tail of the demand curve.

Queries used for evaluation:

• Large Sites: site:government.hp.com, site:research.ibm.com/leem, welsh rugby site:bbc.co.uk, search engine optimization site:w3.org, tango tapas seattle site:nytimes.com
• Mid-Size Sites: site:seomoz.org/blog, site:news.ycombinator.com, site:education.com/magazine, bumbershoot site:thestranger.com, snowboards site:evogear.com
• Small Sites: site:downtownartwalk.com, site:amphl.org/, site:totebo.com, dockboard site:loadingdocksupply.com, site:microsites.audi.com/audia5/

Freshness
--------------------
Although coverage can help to indicate crawl speed and depth, freshness in results shows a keen effort by the engine to place relevant, valuable news items and other trending topics atop the results. I used a number of queries related to recent events both popular and long tail (including new pages from relatively small domains) to test the quality of freshness offered by the engine's index.

Queries used for evaluation:

• Top Buzz: los angeles earthquake, obama germany, gas prices, ted stevens, beijing olympics
• Popular Queries: new york city weather, dow jones average, seattle mariners schedule, cuil launch, nasa news
• Mid-Range Queries: warp speed engine, unesco world heritage, movie times 98115, comic con 2008, most charitable us cities
• Long Tail Queries: melinda van wingen, over the hedge comic 7/28, seomoz give it up blog, scrabulous facebook, internet startups that failed miserably

Diversity
--------------------
When search queries become ambiguous, lesser engines often struggle to provide high quality results, while those on the cutting edge can serve up much higher value by providing diversity in their results or even active suggestions about the query intent.

Queries used for evaluation (I've only used 3 queries per level here, as more ambiguous query strings are very challenging to identify):

• Highly Ambiguous: mouse, ruby, drivers
• Moderate Ambiguity: comics, shipping, earth
• Relative Clarity: ibm, harry potter, graphic design
• Obvious Intent: seattle children's hospital map, color wheel diagram, great gatsby amazon

User Experience
--------------------
The design, interface, features, speed and inclusion of vertical results all play into the user experience. An engine that offers a unique display may rank well or poorly here, depending on the quality of the results delivered and whether the additional data provides real value. Rather than separate queries, I've judged each of the engines based on their offerings in this field (using both the data from the previous sets and my own past knowledge & experience).

User experience was based on each of the following:

• Query Speed - the average time from hitting the search button to having a fully-loaded results page
• Results Layout - including the organization of results, ads, query options, search bar, navigation, etc.
• Vertical Inclusion - the inclusion of valuable vertical or "instant answer" style results where useful
• Query Assistance - the use of disambiguation, expansion, and similar/related queries
• Advanced Features - the ability to conduct site specific searches, search for terms only in specific URLs or titles, and narrow by website type, a given folder on a domain, etc.  

---

For those who'd like to provide their own input about how to judge a search engine, Slate.com is running a reader contest to ask How do we know if a new search engine is any good? - I'd strongly encourage participation, as I know the audience here can contribute some excellent insight :-)

If you're interested, here's a screenshot of the Google Docs spreadsheet I created to conduct this research (and I've published the doc online here):

This kind of thing is a lot of work, and although this isn't scientifically or statistically significant, and clearly biased (as I'm the only one who did the judging), I think the results are actually fairly useful and accurate, though it would be fascinating to run public studies like this on a defensible sample size.

p.s. Want to use any of the images or content from this post? Go for it - just please provide a link back :-)

Do you like this post? Yes No

My “Give It Up” Presentation from SMX Advanced in Blog Format

Posted by randfish on Jul 28, 2008

Posted by randfish

In June of this year, I presented on the "Give It Up" panel at SMX Advanced. Although some of the material shared by panelists during that session was gray and black hat, my presentation was nearly entirely white hat, and I think that these tips should prove valuable for anyone in the SEO industry. This presentation was broken into 3 parts, and I'll maintain that segmentation here on the blog.

#1) Searching for Links
In this section, I walked through many query parameters and operators, along with advanced combinations of searches to illustrate how they could be applied to a link acquisition campaign.

• Basic searches applied to link acquisition:
  • The related command at Google
    Use to identify sites that are most connected with your own, or, more valuably, your competition.
  • The intitle parameter
    Find sites and pages that focus directly on your keywords (or include phrases like "add url," "suggest a site," etc.)
  • The inurl parameter
    As above
  • The intext parameter (and how it's possibly broken)
    I showed a few screenshots here to illustrate a query that returned a single result for the "intext" search, but then said that the terms were only found "in links pointing to the page." When I tested without "intext," pages appeared that had the terms on the page... Who knows? This inconsistency of this parameter lead me to believe it's not particularly accurate or useful. 
  • The inanchor parameter
    Sadly, as with intext, it appears that inanchor produces inconsistent and generally useless results
  • Using the "allin" series
    To save time with multiple intitle/inurl queries, you can use allin, but beware because it won't combine with other parameters
  • Wildcard usage in searching
    Using the * in queries serves as a wildcard, so you can see all the pages that contain a particular phrase missing a keyword, e.g. top * ways to, the best of *, submit your *, etc.
  • Temporal based seraching
    I really like temporal searches in Google for competitor brand names, and for link submission searches like "suggest a site" site:edu for the past 60 days.
  • Linkfromdomain on MSN/Live
    Using this query, you can see all the domains that a given domain has links out to - linkfromdomain:seomoz.org
• Competitive links searches:
  There's a false assumption that only Yahoo! Site Explorer offers link information - not the case! There's a number of sites that show link data (granted, Yahoo!'s still the best).
  • Yahoo! Site Explorer - example
  • Yahoo! Link & Linkdomain - example 
  • Google Blogsearch Links - example
  • Exalead Links - example
  • Alexa Links - example
  • Technorati "Reactions" Links - example
  • Link searches with a specific region - example (you can also use europe, africa, asia, centralamerica, downunder, mediterranean, mideast, northamerica, southamerica, southeastasia) credit to Ann Smarty for the list.

• Experiments in Advanced Queries:
   
  • LinkfromDomain + Linkdomain
    First use linkfromdomain at MSN/Live, then to find where those links are coming from on the domain, use a linkdomain:domain.com site:sourcedomain.com - example.
  • Pages in order of importance
    We've talked about this in the past, but using a query like inurl:www site:seomoz.org will give you list of pages ordered generally by importance (it's not perfect, but still good for finding important pages on the domain). You can also try inurl:tld (like "com" or "org) +site: and you should always use &filter=0 in the URL string on these to get accurate results.
  • Brand mentions with no links
    At Yahoo!, try a brand search plus a negative linkdomain, e.g. "seomoz.org" -linkdomain:seomoz.org to find people who've mentioned your brand/site but haven't provided a link.
  • Linking to multiple competitors but not your site
    This is one of my favorites - you can see who's linking to 3 or 4 competitors on a single page, but doesn't have a link to you. Oftentimes, these are prime spots for link requests or submissions - example.
  • Competitor domain + "add url" style searches
    Who's linking to your competition and also has the text "add url" or "suggest a site" on their page - those are probably prime targets for link building - example.
  • Keyword + inurl "directory" style searches
    If the word "directory," "resources," or "links" is in the URL, your chances for finding a link opportunity are pretty high. Adding your keyword just enhances the chance of an on-topic link source - example.
• Shameless Plug:
  If you haven't tried SEOmoz's Juicy Link Finder Tool, it's pretty darn good for this kind of thing. You can use basic searches or try some of the more advanced ones above (particularly those that are likely to produce results where you can submit or suggest a link) and get a list that can be re-ordered by domain PageRank or domain age, then be taken to SERPs that contain likely link sources on those sites.
• Tracking Manual Link Building Efforts:
  My favorite tactic here is to create a new, nonsense word or use a phrase ordering that's particularly unique and drop that wherever I perform manual link building. I can then search for that term/phrase-in-quotes and see all the pages that each of the engines have spidered that contain my link building efforts. It's a very handy way to show off your link building work in an SEO contract, too.

NOTE: My blog posts - A Long List of Link Searches and the older A Long List of Competitive Link Searches are both good fodder to continue along this route.

#2) Google Local Ranking Tips
In this segment of my presentation, I went through a list of factors ordered by personal opinion of most important to least important for earning high rankings in the Google Local SERPs.

• Register with Google Local (and use your business type in the name you register with, e.g. "Cascadia Restaurant" rather than just " Cascadia")
• Be "close" to Google's perceived "city center"
• Have a high number of local reviews (in Google Local itself)
• Get Links from other local sources (other sites/directories in your area code)
• Have a local phone number
• Participate in online menu services (for restaurants - the ones Google uses most appear to be Zagat, AllMenus, Menutopia & Menupix)
• Get good ratings in your local reviews (surprisingly, though, more reviews, even with low ratings, appears to carry more weight than good reviews but few ratings)
• Get your city name included in the anchor text that points to your site
• Get listed in the non-Google directory sources the engine uses (Gayot, Zagat, Citysearch, Lilaguide, Superpages, etc.)
• Include your address on your site's pages in spiderable, HTML text
• Use your keywords/city name in your business name
• Build up domain authority and PageRank

NOTE: IMO, this was a poor man's version of a project David Mihm (who was in the audience and probably thought my advice was amateurish compared to his vast local ranking experience) completed a few weeks later - The Local Search Ranking Factors.

#3) Reputation Tracking Queries
These are the actual queries I use on a regular basis (not as regular as I'd like, but I'm trying) to keep up with who's talking about or linking to SEOmoz on a daily basis. I think that taken together, they give you remarkably good insight about where your brand is going on the web and how it's being perceived.

• Google Web Search (with 24 hour temporal specificity) - example
• Google Blog Search (ordered by date) - example
• Google Blog Search for links - example
• Google News Search - example
• Technorati Broad Search - example
• Technorati Link Search - example
• Shameless Plug #2: SEO Analytics is a really good service for watching the counts of these types of queries as well as indexing and link numbers over time (and all you have to do is plug in the sites you want to watch).
• Summize/Twitter Search - example
• Blogpulse Search - example

Whew... I covered a lot in 7 minutes on stage, eh? Actually, to be fair, I think I took almost a full 10, even though I boasted that I'd be through within the time limit (oh, that cardinal sin of pride).

At the end, I also gave one entirely black hat tactic, though I think it could be useful to know as a white hat. I noted that by pointing the DNS of a very naughty/banned site to another domain, that site on the receiving end would sometimes inherit the penalty and be tossed out of the index (or made to rank at the back of the results for most every query). The folks who showed this to me noted that it only worked some of the time and only when the domain being pointed to was relatively low on the domain authority scale (few inbound links, not much trust, etc). When I observed it in action, I got the same sense. Also - since it's passed the 30-day window after SMX Advanced, it's entirely posssible that Google has closed this loophole.

Hopefully this has been valuable - I know I talked pretty quickly up on stage, so perhaps this can serve to help all those who gave up on taking detailed notes :-) For those who are interested, here's the downloadable PDF file (warning - it's 5.5MB).

Do you like this post? Yes No

Why You Should Give Yourself the “Opportunity To Cure” In Your SEO Consulting Contracts

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire on Jul 28, 2008

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

Here is SEOmoz's standard language:

Opportunity to Cure. Prior to any claim for damages being made, you must provide SEOmoz with reasonable notice of any alleged deficiencies in performance and SEOmoz shall have a reasonable opportunity to cure any alleged defect in performance.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Information Architecture - a site review is nothing without it.

Posted by Duncan Morris on Jul 27, 2008

Posted by Duncan Morris

Will and I have a recurring argument about what should and shouldn't be in a site review. My argument has been, and remains that before you can do a proper site review you need to do keyword research, in order to validate that the site architecture is correct. Whereas Will says his argument is that you can separate a "site review" into two separate parts: technical review and keyword targeting review - which could be separate deliverables and for only the second of which do you need keyword research.

I have been doing a fair few site reviews recently and one thing has stuck out. Yes, almost every site I've ever looked at has technical issues that should be fixed. Yes, people are still using font tags in a deliberate attempt not to pass semantic information to the search engines , and yes some people still insist on creating a hideous flash monstrosity. However, the biggest issue (ignoring the hideous flash monstrosity which deserves everything it gets) is not something that can be fixed by tweaking a template here, or adding a mod re-write rule there.

I'd love to stir this up into a big issue, but unfortunately it really isn't. You see, Will knows i'm right but never likes to admit he's wrong. Will wants us to first do and send the client a technical site review. After that he argues we can look at the keyphrase research and information architecture. I'm a firm believer that step one should be keyphrase research which can then feed into a site review which not only looks at if there is a h1 tag on the page, but whether the keywords in the h1 tag are the right keywords.

I see a correlation between big sites and fairly few or fairly small technical issues. However, the opposite is true of site architecture, where the bigger the site the more site architecture problems there tend to be.

Site, or Information architecture issues fall into a number of camps. duplicate content, keyword cannibalisation, and a distinct lack of keyword targeting. All of which in my opinion are a bigger hurdle to ranking than most of the issues that are picked up in a technical site review.

As an example, I was looking at a site the other day that is one of a number of trusted cisco partners, providing cisco training. Technically the site was ok (ish), but whoever wrote the content of the site certainly didn't have the search engines in mind, come to think of it, i'm not sure they had anyone in mind.

They had a page linked from the homepage of the site talking about the training they offered. The title tag of the page was Company Name | Training. The header of the page was Training with Company Name, and the page didn't mention Cisco once.

<not very subtle jibe>Obviously Will understands, just as well as you all do that updating a header (coded in a font tag) to a h1 tag won't make the slightest bit of difference if the keyword isn't in the header.</not very subtle jibe>

With this issue in mind, I'd like to propose the following methodology for a full site review, and see what you guys think.

Step 1 - Keyphrase research. I think its vital to get this done as early as possible in any process. Keywords drive seo, so you want to know these as early in the process as possible. I'm as guilty as anyone for thinking I can get by without keyword research. Keywords are obvious right up until the point that someone point out you are wrong.

At this stage if you can end up with more than just a list with search volumes you are on to a winner. Try to spot patterns in the way people search. You want to start with short tail keywords and find a hierarchy leading you to your pages.

Step 2 - Site Architecture. This step is, in my opinion where the big bucks are earnt. Coming up with a site architecture can be very tricky. At this stage you need to look at your keyword research and the existing site (in order to make as few changes as possible). You can think of this in terms of your site map. You need a hierarchy that leads you to each of your "money pages" (ie those pages where conversions are most likely to occur). Obviously, a good site hierarchy allows the parents of your money pages to rank for relevant keywords (which are likely to be shorter tail).

Most products have an obvious hierarchy they fit into, but when you start talking in terms of anything that naturally has multiple hierarchies it gets incredibly tricky. The trickiest hierarchies in my opinion occur when there is a location involved. In London alone there are london boroughs, metropoliton boroughs, tube stations and postcodes. For you fact junkies out there, London even has a city ("The City of London") within it.

In an ideal world you will end up with a single hierarchy that is natural to your users, and gives the closest mapping to your keywords. Whenever there are multiple ways that people search for the same product it makes coming up with a hierarchy that much harder. Rand touched on this (relating to blogs) when he was talking about solving indexation problems

Step 3 - Keyword mapping. Once you have both a list of keywords and a list of pages, spending the time mapping one to another is well worth it. It suddenly becomes a very easy job to spot pages that aren't targeting a keyword and arguably more importantly keywords that don't have a page.

Its worth pointing out that between step 2 and step 3 you will remove any wasted pages. Rand covers exactly this problem in his 2nd Headsmaking tip. How to come up with top level navigation naming conventions.

If this stage is causing you issues, I suggest you revist step 2. Your site architecture should lead naturally to a mapping that is both easy to use, but, importantly for the search engines includes your keyphrases.

Step 4 - Site review. Once you are armed with your keyword mapping a site review becomes a lot easier. Take a look at Tom in whiteboard studios who talks you through a site review process. Now when you are looking at title tags, and headings you can refer back to your keyword mapping and not only see if the heading is in a h1 tag, but also if it includes the right keywords..

So, to help finish my debate with Will, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you go about a site review. Do you prefer to send through one document with everything included, or would you rather send multiple documents over time, but with the first technical site review being delivered earlier?

Do you like this post? Yes No

Exposing Gray/Black Hat Information - What Should SEOmoz Do?

Posted by randfish on Jul 26, 2008

Posted by randfish

For a long time, I've held the personal belief that to be the best search marketer you can be requires knowledge of a vast information set. This includes black hat tactics - the unethical, the illegal and those that merely violate a website's TOS or search engine's guidelines (or walk that fine line). Naturally, the SEO blogosphere has a number of places where this material is discussed, from forums and blogs to wikis and articles, but my stance has historically been to never suppress this type of content on SEOmoz, and in fact to encourage discovery and discussion. I've found that at least for me, the more I know about what black hats do and what tactics exist, the better I am at every aspect of my job - from advising clients to protecting sites to identifying manipulative competitors and knowing which boundaries to cross and which to avoid.

However, a series of experiences provided a catalyst to re-examine my position regarding our publication. In the spirit of transparency, I'll describe them as best I can, to help provide an accurate perspective:

• We've received some harsh criticism from those who engage in black/gray hat practices and been asked to STFU about these topics. Spam, obviously, succeeds more when less is known about it, so its natural for those with a potential interest to keep it close to the vest.
• We've gotten some very angry comments/emails/posts written about exposing specific sites that engage in manipulative practices as well, both from the site owners themselves and from those who don't think "outing" spammers is an appropriate practice for those in the SEO field.
• Several folks who work for search engines have expressed disappointment and frustration in our open discussions of these topics, both because they're worried that our coverage will appear to be an endorsement and because they feel a wide audience with knowledge of this material, even when accompanied by an appropriate warning, may attempt more abuse of their systems (and perhaps for other reasons that I haven't heard as well).
• We recently lost a very large, very important contract due to the client asking a respected source in the search community about our work and hearing that our work is "black hat and could get them banned from the engines." Apparently, this association came not from any "black hat" work we've done, but from the blog post content :(
• In our upcoming Expert Seminar here in Seattle, we mentioned that search engine representatives would not be present, and despite my specific announcement that the seminar would contain no black hat material, this was seen as a sign to some that we'd be going into gray/black hat territory. The real reason we don't have search engineers is that we have a partnership with Third Door Media (who runs the SMX conference series), and we wanted to be as careful as possible to position our "training" as true "training" with none of the conference elements (blogging, search reps, multiple panels, expo hall, keynotes, etc). In hindsight, I should have made this crystal clear from the beginning. Let me be 100% clear now - the reason for no search reps at the show has NOTHING to do with presenting black hat material. We honestly wouldn't even know how to give high-level material on that topic, as none of us have ever run spammy, manipulative (or even affiliate) sites. We did this to differentiate the seminar from the format of shows like SES San Jose and the SMX series. To be bluntly honest, if it weren't for this concern, I would have gladly invited search engine reps and been honored if they would have accepted. It would be good for the seminar, the attendees and the SEOmoz brand to have them present.
• In that same conference, we also gave the horribly misleading title of "Black Hat Tactics & Search Engine Penalties/Dodging Spam Detection" to Nick Gerner's presentation. Although the descriptive text below does a good job explaining what Nick's actually presenting on, a far more accurate title - "Avoid Being Labeled a 'False Positive' - How Black Hat Tactics Impact White Hat Websites" should have been given from the start.
• Blog posts such as our WB Friday Give it Up and White Hat Cloaking suggested that we might be endorsing or recommending black hat tactics. I believe this is due to misinterpretation or a careless reading/listening to the caveats and warnings we provided, but it's true that particularly on the web (but nearly everywhere in life), content often comes through with a very different perception than how the message was intended.

Now, naturally, there are literally thousands of topics we could cover on the blog, and while we believe in diversity of information and I personally believe in sharing white hat, gray hat, black hat and every other kind of known method that Internet marketers conduct business, I feel that perhaps the SEOmoz community would rather we expend effort on content that any and every website can use, and can/will turn elsewhere to learn about black/gray hat tactics.

So today, I'm bringing this issue to you, our community, as a pointed question: Do you believe SEOmoz should continue to share gray/black hat tactics & content via the public blog & articles?

 

 

Your feedback here is greatly appreciated, and we will take it extremely seriously.

BTW - For those wondering how black hat SEOmoz really is, the truth is that we're pansies. While I'm fascinated by web spam and all the subtleties and fine points that surround it, we've never recommended anything more gray hat than some user agent cloaking to get rid of duplicate content (which, according to Stephan Spencer's post, all the major engines endorse) and some link buying (which, while it does violate search engine guidelines, is, IMO, a necessary part of many link building campaigns and very light gray on the hat scale). We've never had a client's site get banned from the engines, never had a person who got advice from us in Q+A report back that our suggestions got them into trouble and never had to hide a client or site we worked on out of the fear of being penalized. Matt Cutts noted on his blog years ago that one of our clients bought a link from the Harvard University student newspaper - that's as far as I can ever recall pushing the guidelines. And long before that, pre-SEOmoz, I personally engaged in some foolishly underhanded link trading (apology is here).

For those who are interested in my personal take on search spamming as a general practice, read this black hat vs. white hat search spam debate I participated in with Mick Sawyer in June of 2005 (still surprisingly relevant & enjoyable!).

Do you like this post? Yes No

Whiteboard Friday - Users vs. Experts

Posted by great scott! on Jul 25, 2008

Posted by great scott!

Mozzers and Mozzerettes! Today, for your Whiteboard Friday enjoyment, a battle of two heavyweights in the online information aggregation arena.  In the blue corner, the reigning champion, User Generated Opinion!! And in the red corner, a long-standing brawler who some (such as Rand) view as the future of this niche, Aggregated Expert Opinion!!

Let's get ready to Ruuuuuuuumble!



SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Users vs. Experts from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Web Hosting Geeks    Best Blog Hosting    Top WP Themes

YourInternetMarketingReporter is proudly powered by WordPress    Theme by: Free Wordpress Themes