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SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog 21 Nov 2008 at 1:20am Posted by great scott! This week one of our mad geniuses in residence, Ben Hendrickson, steps in front of the camera to discuss something a little different: Machine Learning.Ben is one of the folks that designed and built the technology behind Linkscape, so he's certainly studied this topic thoroughly. Here he'll talk about how and why advancements, findings, and theories that emerge from the larger machine learning field have significant relevance to search, and why paying attention to those findings can help show us how the engines may change and adjust in the future. SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Machine Learning from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo. And for reference, here are two of the papers Ben mentions in the video: "A Fast Learning Algorithm for Deep Belief Nets" by Hinton and Osindero. 2006. "A Machine Learning Architecture for Optimizing Web Search Engines" by Boyan, Freitag, and Joachims. 1996 19 Nov 2008 at 2:46pm Posted by Jane Copland Last week at Pubcon in Las Vegas, I took part in a session titled "5 Bloggers and a Microphone." Since then, we've heard a fair bit of feedback that people were disappointed in the session, mainly because the questions we were asked didn't allow us to impart any good blogging knowledge. As was reported in many different places, one attendee asked an in-depth paid search question which none of us were at all qualified to answer. The discussion often veered towards Twitter, and we spent the first portion of the hour talking about the U.S. election.From the perspective of someone on the panel, it was minorly frustrating not to be asked more challenging questions. Both panelists and speakers missed opportunities to get into difficult, controversial or interesting discussions. In the future, panelists should arrive with three or four key points that they'd like to discuss, and they should compare notes beforehand to avoid overlap. In Q&A-focused sessions, panelists often rely on the moderator and the audience to provide all the material: we're basically led to believe that this is going to satisfy up to ninety minutes of content. Sometimes it does, but when moderation, audience interaction or panelist-involvement fails, you're left staring at a room of tired conference attendees who want information and entertainment that you are ill-prepared to provide. Towards the end of the session, we received some good questions; however, there was plenty of room for improvement. It should take less than forty-five minutes for a panel to get going about such a hot topic. It would be a shame to write the panel off, as it has a lot of potential to be informative and entertaining. Unofficially, I suggest we be allowed to show up with a drink in hand... and is that such an odd request, given that it's Vegas'! Blogging certainly has its place in the SEO world. For better or for worse, many SEOs have found notoriety through publishing online. We've certainly seen big rewards from the activity on our blog, and we know that there are more opportunities to be had in the future. Despite the fact that many of the industry's best search engine optimisation professionals don't blog, we have a culture of online publishing. A successful blog is one catalyst to being recognised, respected and offered business. It is not, however, a simple task to maintain a viable blog and sometimes it's downright agonising. Here's what I would provide as discussion points or questions if faced with a panel of bloggers... And here are my replies, because I like talking to myself in an empty room! How on earth do you find new things to blog about every day or every week' There is so much back-scratching, in-fighting, speculation and repetition in all circles of bloggers. Surely your blog is no better than the next one, and in fact, it might be worse. It might be. As I said in my second session at Pubcon (Community Hacking: 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ), blogging has liberalised and liberated publishing to the extent that any idiot can do it. You may well be an idiot. I'm most likely one too. I didn't have to get a degree in anything to write online, and half the things I write probably mean that my English degree should be revoked. "Finding something to write about" rarely works for me. I either have something to say or I don't, and when I look at my inventory of posts here, I can clearly see when I wrote because I wanted to and when I wrote because I thought I had to. I am lucky in that, if I don't write, someone else here will. However, I understand the panic faced by blog owners who don't have multiple writers at their disposal. My best advice is that if you don't have anything to blog about, either don't write, or don't be afraid to write something humourous, personal or otherwise out-of-the-ordinary. I've attempted to pull good advice out when it's really not there to begin with. Works about as well as a stuffed meta keywords tag in the poker SERPs. How do you deal with trolls' Here's one no blog owner wants to touch. Calling somebody a troll is a dangerous game. People accuse bloggers and webmasters of covering their own shortcomings by singling out critics and labeling them trolls. The fact is, however, that offensive people do roam the Internet in search of trouble. We've banned people on this site before (and I'm not talking about spammers). It takes a lot of terrible behaviour to accurately label someone a troll: a lesson I've learned by doing it inaccurately a couple of times. Set rules for what constitutes trolling or offensive behaviour on your blog and develop a warning system. We've published our blog etiquette policies, and it's useful to have them "on paper." Personally email people who break your rules and kindly point out your policies. Employ an "x-strikes and you're out" rule and stick to it. Don't publicise the banning. It's not a medal of honour and you only invite the troll to return from a new IP. From my experience, both here and (more so) when hearing about other people's problems, trolls don't return after they've been banned. If they do, they don't stay for long. Don't celebrate them and give them reason to rejoin the discussion. Great, so I have a place to impart my undoubtedly incredible knowledge. What else is a blog good for' During Community Hacking: 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ, I was asked to talk a little about how we drive links and eyeballs to our site via the blog. It seems to come as a bit of a surprise to many people that blogs aren't just good for writing up advice. Some other things we've done with our blog include:
Mind your language, young lady. Or should you' We've used some choice language on here more than once. The person charged with writing the Bank of America's corporate blog (no, I doubt such a beast exists) shouldn't be cursing up a storm, but the odd swear word here and there isn't going to hurt. They say that swearing is a sign of a lazy vocabulary, but I tend to take great care with my choice of profanity and if it adds to the conversation, I'll use it. We do it very rarely (I believe Rand got, for want of a better term, a lot of shit for it once), but the rest of us have dropped in some language that our grandmas wouldn't like as well. However, unless the blog is supposed to be a Cracked.com-style catalogue of all things terrible, avoid using curse words as commas. Should you care about your audience' This sort of came up during the session, and I noted that audiences change a lot over time. Very few of our daily commenters from 2006 are still active participants now. It would be wrong to mourn the loss of these people, some of whom still visit and comment from time to time, but I agree that caring about a blog's audience is essential. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that it will change. Also, people who don't take part anymore aren't necessarily not reading, and their reasons for backing away aren't necessarily a negative reflection on you our your writing. Lisa Ditlefsen recently mentioned to me that she used to spend a lot more time reading and commenting on SEOmoz than she does now. However, it was her life and schedule that changed, not her respect for us or our content. Blogs, forums and other online groups worry that older members won't welcome new members, but blogs' ever-changing audiences suggests that this isn't a huge problem. At SEOmoz, people make themselves known pretty quickly and, aside from the aforementioned trolls, newly active members aren't ignored or rejected. Short version: yes, care about who reads the blog and recognise that they make your efforts worthwhile. However, realise that no audience is permanent. I really hope that Pubcon brings back the 5 Bloggers and a Microphone session again next year. The only thing it needs is some extra structure, both from panelists and moderators. If Pubcon wanted to really push the Q&A aspect of the panel, they should consider adopting an SMX-style question format where audience members email or text in questions. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that a room full of SEOs and online marketers would rather write down their questions than deliver them via microphone! Would extra structure and some better-conceived questions save this session' And what would you ask a table full of search marketing industry bloggers, aside from "what time is Search Bash'" 19 Nov 2008 at 8:02am Posted by randfish Well, not this time. New York-based advertising firm MediaWhiz, never one to worry about gray areas when it comes to advertising, has launched a new product today called InLinks. It’s fairly straightforward - advertisers who want their sites associated with specific keywords simply buy ads. Links to those sites are then added to publishers' sites whenever those words pop up in content. These aren’t ghost links like Kontera and others include in content - they’re full blown links without any notation (like a nofollow) that they are advertisements, meant primarily for SEO juice. I'm reminded, at times like these, of Brent Csutoras' crude, yet masterfully prescient words of wisdom on the subject of manipulative SEO & Social Media - Shut the @#$%! Up. If you're selling links, you want to be:
I suspect that Google will be watching the program extremely carefully and the effectiveness of these links will be limited. The value in thinking about a story like this is to realize that had they stayed "under the radar" to a reasonable degree, they wouldn't be "outed" on TechCrunch. There are plenty of link sellers who do just that, and earn a lot of money staying off the grid. If your product directly conflicts with the goals of an organization like Google, it's probably wise to expect that (in typical New Jersey analogy fashion) their guys are gonna make sure you don't walk no more. BTW - I could be wrong, but I think that the quote Arrington used by Cutts from the FTC and the UK Office of Public Sector Information only works if those organizations consider a link to necessarily be an endorsement, akin to an advertisement. I'm not sure, but I don't believe that's been upheld in a US court to date (will have to check with Sarah). 18 Nov 2008 at 2:55pm Posted by randfish The SEO world, particularly the blogosphere and forum chatter, is overwhelmed with talk of how to leverage social media sites for SEO value. Tonight, I'm curious - which types of social media platforms do you actually get the most direct SEO benefit from' Think classic SEO - higher rankings and more search traffic. Which slice of social media sites help you achieve this goal' Which Social Media Platform Has Helped You the Most with SEO' I'd love to hear your examples, too. If you said Wikis - how' What did you do on Wikipedia that resulted in more search traffic for keywords that bring you high quality traffic' 18 Nov 2008 at 12:57am Posted by rebecca Pubcon came and went last week in a red-eyed whirlwind (I can never wake up in Las Vegas without emptying a half bottle of Visine in each eye). I actually didn't attend any sessions except for the two panels I spoke on and the Five Microphones and a Blogger session, but I'll get to that later. First I want to talk about our booth we displayed.Boothin' It Up, Gangsta Style  Our booth and main demo screen The Pubcon expo hall seemed much smaller than last year. I'm not sure if it's due to current economical woes, but for whatever reason there seemed to be fewer exhibitors than in 2007. Nonetheless, Pubcon marked the 4th booth we've had at a conference and the 3rd one I've worked at (I wasn't at SMX East in New York a month or so ago), and while we're still booth noobs, I must admit that I think our Pubcon booth was the best one yet. I had previously written about our first booth that we had at SMX West last winter, and I think the main problem with our first booth is that we didn't really have a single focus--we primarily talked about our various tools and casually pimped our SEO Analytics in a half-ass way. We had no flyers and no "game plan" or definitive structure. That's not to say that the first booth wasn't great--it provided a solid learning experience and put us in contact with a ton of new folks and helped get the word out about SEOmoz PRO. Well, after a few trial and errors I think we've hit an all-time high this time around. We came to Las Vegas prepared, not just armed with Visine and aspirin for those late night drinking bouts, but with a solid setup of multiple demo stations, a primary focus, a specialized team, and flyers. Oh, and we didn't forget to bring the t-shirts either. For our booth this time we had a triangle set up of 3 demos stations, one on either side of our booth and a center demo area that was hooked up to a big TV screen; that way, we could run 3 demos at the same time and also display one demo large enough for curious passerbys to see. We also primarily demo'd our newest tool, Linkscape, thus maintaining a solid focus and reducing information overload. That's not to say we only focused on Linkscape--we were happy to demo other tools and talk about other aspects of PRO; in fact, I even gave a demo of every single tool that SEOmoz has built at the request of an especially curious conference attendee. After 30 minutes of non-stop talking, clicking, and an increasingly scratchy throat, the guy seemed satisfied...or maybe he felt sorry for me and let me off the hook. :P As for our booth staff, well, we were sure to bring a solid team that were confident to talk about every and any possible aspect of Linkscape: Ben, one of Linkscape's core developers, and Danny, our program coordinator who organized a lot of aspects of Linkscape. These two fools lived and breathed this tool for the past several months, so why not shove them in front of the hungry masses and force them to answer questions'  Judging from the puzzled look on this guy's face, methinks Ben discovered some porn links...  Danny shrugging and saying, "Look dude, you gotta stop linking to that dancing baby. Get with the times!" They both did a fantastic job answering questions about Linkscape and patiently going through hundreds of demos. Even when the Internet would fritz out (and it often did) or if the tool got buggy, the Dynamic Duo plodded on and helped out. Great job, guys! As for Rand' Well, see if you can spot him:  Rand sitting in time out Yep, even Rand was giving demos when he wasn't busy running back and forth from various speaking gigs. Gillian was out and about as well, not only working diligently at our booth, but moderating sessions and organizing our Werewolf/Search Spam party (which was "affectionately" dubbed "Nerdfest" by a number of Pubcon attendees who enjoy busting SEOmoz's chops...thanks guys). We really put in a solid team effort at this conference, and it made me both excited and proud to work with everyone that week. Overall, I think the booth was the best yet. We had multiple demo stations, flyers (though I think they still need to be improved upon, but at least we had them this time!), t-shirts, and were even able to sign some folks up on the spot. We had people coming to our booth long after the t-shirts were gone, so hopefully that's a positive indication that we're doing something right. :) My favorite part of working at the booth wasn't just talking to attendees about Linkscape and our various tools and encouraging people to sign up for PRO, it was actually meeting and talking to existing PRO members. For example, Reid Greenberg from Davis Frame (they offer "authentic custom timber frame homes") and I talked about the PRO tools and I was able to pick his brain a little about which tools he's using more than others and why. It proved to be a great opportunity to learn more about our members and identify areas of improvement within our PRO suite. Reid was also nice enough to volunteer his site for review at the link building clinic I participated on with Rae Hoffman and Roger Montti. Thanks for being a good sport, Reid! Other awesome folks I met:
Bustin' Out the Beginner Love at Sessions Since I had committed myself to being at the booth all week, I barely got to see any conference sessions. The only ones I attended were two I spoke on (a link building site clinic and a panel about effective link building strategies) and the Five Bloggers and a Microphone session. I thought the site clinic I participated on was fantastic pretty much because of Rae Hoffman--if you've never seen her dissect a site's links and point-blank tell people what they need to improve upon, you're definitely missing out. I managed to add some tidbits of advice every now and then, but most of my contributions consisted of muttering "I agree with Rae" every other minute. The link building panel was okay, but I was a bit irked that one of the panelists and the moderator showed up late. Eric Enge went over some social media marketing case studies and did a great job of identifying topical, useful linkbait that yielded the highest, most relevant ROI. I talked about various link building tips and shared some tools I like. Greg Hartnett from Best of the Web cleared some things up about directory link building, and Roger Montti talked about link building in forums. Overall the session was fairly solid, but I'm bummed that virtually nobody asked questions. I think it was because the moderator took up the first chunk of Q&A time asking some questions to the panel, and by the time he opened up the floor to the audience, people had left or weren't interested in asking us anything. Bummer. The only actual session I attended was Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What's the Worst That Can Happen', and the worst thing that happened was that the session was extremely disappointing. I don't fault the speakers in any way--the panel was composed of Andy Beal, Lee Odden, Michael McDonald, Barry Schwartz, and Jane, all of whom are prolific bloggers in the SEO sphere. Rather, I think the session lacked organization and focus. There didn't seem to be a preexisting set of questions for the bloggers, so moderator Ken Jurina seemed to randomly asked everyone questions about the US Election and Twitter. The loads of Twitter questions were especially irksome and should have been saved for a separate, Twitter-specific session. Twitter is not blogging, yet it still monopolized most of the focus. When the questions were opened up to audience members, some guy stood up and asked a lengthy question about his PPC campaign (admittedly, it was pretty amusing to see the looks on everyone's faces as they all realized that someone was asking a paid search question to a blogging panel). I'd definitely love to see this session reprised at future conferences--I think it could be a huge hit if some really "meaty" questions were brainstormed beforehand. Of the session attendees I spoke to, most felt that the sessions were on a beginner level. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, as I met a lot of folks who were attending Pubcon in order to learn more about Internet marketing and improve their websites. I met people who were a one-man SEO team for their company. People who were tasked with increasing conversions while juggling conversations with outsourced web designers. Folks who need to know the basics, who maybe need an introduction to the SEO industry, who need advice on which blogs to read, which companies to reach out to and hire, which tools to use (cough). Sure, a lot of us SEOs who have been to conference after conference may roll our eyes at the "noob focus" of Pubcon sessions, but I've found that sessions are typically most beneficial to a beginner-level audience. Advanced SEOs learn by doing, by execution, by bouncing ideas off their fellow advanced colleagues. Hell, even SMX Advanced has gotten mixed reviews (though I suspect it'll get better each year). Honestly, if you're an intermediate or advanced SEO, I'm not sure how beneficial large scale conferences like Pubcon are to you. I'm not an expert by any means, yet I've seen the same variation of the same presentation at every conference I've attended. And that's fine--there are hundreds of new people at each conference who haven't seen these presentations and don't know the material. These conferences are for them. And Finally... I must admit to Daron and Brandy Babin from Webmaster Radio that I've never been to a party as...let's say interesting, as Search Bash. You definitely provided some memorable moments, from the silver painted, Hellraiser-dressed, Predator-looking acrobatic dancers to your Neo/Trinity outfits, from an awkward comedian that had to do stand up in front of hundreds of drunk search marketers to a 2007 Playboy Playmate smiling politely whenever her photo was taken, from one debaucherous moment to the next (and believe me, I saw several...), thank you for throwing one unforgettable party.  Matt Inman and a Predator dude on stilts. I'll let you guess which one is "one ugly motherf*cker"...  Pat Sexton, a Playboy Bunny, and me. Pat's easily the sexiest one in this photo. 17 Nov 2008 at 8:49am Posted by Jane Copland I always feel the need to reintroduce myself after an extended period away from the blog. I'm Jane and I work here. For the last three weeks, I've done a lot of traveling and attended three vastly different conferences in London and Las Vegas. You may have heard of one of them a little more than you'd have liked to.I also don't often know how best to recap conferences because the meat of the sessions is summed up so well by bloggers who are far more on-the-ball than we are. In regards to the live-blogging fiasco that erupted surrounding this installment of SEO events, I have little to add aside from to say that I'm not cut out for it. I lack the ability to listen and write at the same time, which means that I really should turn off Twitter and instant messenger... I respect that live-blogging anything takes a lot of concentration and that the writer has to concentrate virtually from nine in the morning until after five whilst everyone else complains about their hangovers and scribbles down bullet-point notes. However, I don't read live-blogged SEO coverage unless I'm writing a recap and can't remember what happened. Um. So, instead of typing out my notes, I figured I'd write a personal account of the three conferences I went to instead: why they were worthwhile, what was less helpful and what I got out of each of them. Few of you have probably heard of the first event I attended. At the Hilton Tower Bridge in London, the Future of Social Media show contained exactly what was on the tin: speeches about the future of social media. I spoke about how social media liberalises big businesses' advertising efforts: a good viral campaign, even if it begins as a television commercial or piece of print advertising, can cost far less and be far more engaging and effective than safe, traditional advertising efforts. I also managed to talk up Transport for London's initial viral campaign, managed by Ciarán's company, not knowing that a representative from Transport for London was in the crowd. He was quite pleased!  The Hilton Tower Bridge One thing that struck me as odd from the conference was the talk given by Ian Pearson, a "Futurologist" whose ideas made me go between feeling like he was absolutely out of his mind, to thinking that I'm boring and close-minded. Some things he said made a lot of sense. For example, the online world (which, in 1999, we called "Cyberspace"), the geographical world and the "human" world are separate, but are coming closer and closer together. I relate to this on a number of levels and I think that anyone who has seen the three come together will know what I'm talking about. However, I didn't relate to the idea that we were all going to have contact lenses that will let us see the online profiles of the people we meet in the street. I do recognise that mobile technology has blended several forms of communication together: once upon a time, there was a distinct difference between email, text messaging and phone calls. In more recent times, we've added mobile Facebook applications, mobile Instant Messenger and Twitter to the mobile mix. We've also added Skype to computers. With my BlackBerry and with many "Smartphones," the difference between SMS, email, IM and all those other forms of communication is very blurry. I've heard many people say that they've dropped their text message plans because free mobile applications for email and IM have made costly SMS plans obsolete. This said, I don't see a point in the near future where I'd want people accessing my information by looking at me. My face tells enough stories about what I'm thinking as it is; I don't see a point where I'd like to disclose my favourite quotes, taste in music or political affiliations to someone with the right contact lenses. At one point, I will admit to thinking, "How much would you have to have smoked to think that that's likely'" and then wondering if I was the 2008 version of the people who said the Internet would never take off. When Rohit Bhargava gave a U.S. example of an unintentional reputation management conundrum involving the Olive Garden chain of restaurants and Kendra Wilkinson of Playboy fame, I was reminded of SMX Sydney. This European audience didn't know who Kendra Wilkinson was and they hadn't heard of Olive Garden. Never mind, London; you'll live without endless bread sticks. He called this the phenomenon of the "accidental spokesperson": Olive Garden bill themselves as a family restaurant and don't necessarily want to be associated with a woman who takes her clothes off for a living. To my mind, this disconnect between an example and an audience highlighted the remaining disconnects between the online and geographical worlds. At SMX Sydney, some of Rand's (funny!) jokes fell flat on an Australian audience. However, a week later at SMX London, one piece of news was truly international in all worlds, on and offline. The conference began on November 4, Election Day in the United States. From the attention it was given in the UK, we could have been in a US city. Whilst it stands to reason that other countries are going to pay attention to the United States' elections, given the impact our government tends to have on the rest of the world, the Internet obviously played a huge part in this particular election. In almost every session I went to, someone made mention of the election--and these weren't always the American speakers. On that first day, I teamed up with Andrew Girdwood and Ciarán to speak about various facets of social media. I detailed how the "rules" of viral marketing and social media marketing have changes in the past twelve months, due in part to widgetbait and fakebait. As per usual, a dodgy internet connection ruined everyone's videos and I was difficult and showed up with an OpenOffice presentation instead of PowerPoint. As seems to be the norm at quite a few non-American search conferences, there was a heavy focus on "international" SEO. Honestly, this should send a message not to SEOs but to search engines. When speaker after speaker has more and more information on the things you can do to geo-target content (and when that information contradicts itself or comes from search engine reps' unofficial statements), it's time to provide some real non-US options that we can count on to work. I recognise that "international" SEO got off to a bar start when ".com" was recognised as an international yet US-centric TLD, whereas .us was hardly used. At the same time, everyone else was meant to use their ccTLD and / or host in the correct place. However, surely it's time for an official document detailing all the best internationalisation practices. Despite the trouble that international problems can cause, SMX London had some great speakers tackling the issue. During the time between the Future of Social Media and SMX, I stayed in Surrey with Base One Interactive's Lisa Ditlefsen. She did a great job on the European Search Marketing Challenges panel, along with our fellow SEO Chick Judith Lewis. Later in the show, I would see Lisa's fiancé Jon Myers working frantically on his laptop during a session. "What are you doing'" I asked. "I'm finishing my presentation. I'm up next!" he replied. Later that evening, I got to attend my second LondonSEO party, although I feel like I've been at all of them due to the text messages I often receive when a LondonSEO event takes place! Many thanks to Rob Kerry of Ayima for the work he does in putting those events together: in my opinion, he's helped create a very positive, friendly atmosphere amongst UK SEOs in general, but especially those in the greater London area.  Rob and I at LondonSEO Obviously, the US election results were pouring in during the event, and we were all into our BlackBerries and iPhones in search of updates. Ciarán and I encountered an epic Google fail when we tried to search for election results on a BlackBerry and were presented with a BBC link. Clicking it, we began reading details of a difficult night for the Democrats, only to realise that we'd been given a link to a page from November 2, 2004. Query Deserves Freshness obviously wasn't working all that well that night (or else, we'd provided a terrible query, but I'm blaming this one on Google). I fully believe that Blow Your Mind Linkbuilding Tactics was scheduled for 9:00am on Day Two for a reason: The organisers knew that a fair number of people would both attend LondonSEO and stay up late watching the election results, and they wanted to give everyone a good reason to show up. Putting Jay Young, Lyndon Antcliff, Tom Critchlow and Wiep Knol on a panel about links was a pretty good one.  Lyndon speaks about "Psycho" link building at SMX London... at 9am the night after the election and LondonSEO ;) For the most part, the audience seemed fine with the tactics presented... although there was one question about the risks of being sued by clients if buying links went wrong. In my opinion, the panelists' answers reflected the thoughts of many SEOs: sometimes, buying links isn't an "option." Either it's appropriate and necessary or it isn't. In a field where link buying reigns supreme, it's likely that a company will have to buy links also (pending extraordinary circumstances). However, it's a bad idea to do it out of laziness or greed when no one else is doing it and the footprints will be extremely easy to track. Later that day, the Search 3.0: Local and Blended Results panel (featuring Jon Myers again, whom I can only assume finished his PowerPoint presentation over lunch ;) ) presented both some UK and international perspectives on local blended marketing, much of which panelists at Pubcon would repeat and add to. It seems that we often focus too much on the blended listings and forget about the real estate on the rest of the page, some of which is always taken up by directory listings. Entering those directories leaves a site with the opportunity to be listed in a blended result, with their own domain, and in a directory. Three links, obviously, is better than one. And then we had the Expert Site Reviews panel. Everyone loves watching someone's site get torn apart, don't they' Especially when one Live representative (Nathan Buggia) and two Googlers (John Mueller and Matthew Trewhella) are the panelists. Unfortunately, the panel ran out of volunteers half way through the session and Vanessa Fox decided that SEOmoz should be up for review. Sh*t!  Vanessa hands me the mic as three search engine reps take a close look at SEOmoz.org. Thanks to Rishi L for the picture! Luckily, they didn't find terribly much wrong with our site, aside from the fact that we're linking to a couple of not-so-clean neighbourhoods in a few blog posts and that all of our alt tags on our About page photos said "Arden." The panel had some great suggestions about our video optimisation, as well as a few ideas about our title tags and whether "SEOmoz" should be placed before or after the title of the page. There are arguments on both sides of that one: as an established brand in the SEO industry, seeing "SEOmoz" at the beginning of the title tag may draw people in. However, this could have the opposite effect for people who've never heard of our company, so we could be disuading new readers from clicking on our links in search results. I flew back to the US just in time to learn a lot about jet lag and fly directly to the one place you don't go to get over jet lag. Pubcon Las Vegas is set against a slightly different backdrop than the New Connaught Rooms of Covent Garden or the Tower Bridge Hilton, but most conference halls look similar and the only real difference at Pubcon is its size. Even though it seemed as though the conference was smaller this year than last, Pubcon is still an enormous event. The fact that we showed up at the wrong part of the Las Vegas Convention Center on the first day didn't help me find my Pubcon feet, either. I maintain that they should keep Pubcon where Pubcon has always been (at least since 2006)! I hate to bring up the "advanced SEO" discussion again (but I just did, of course!): it just struck me as odd that the Top-Shelf Organic SEO panel began with a very introductory "what is SEO" discussion from Jill Whalen. Having also been a speaker at Pubcon, I know that speakers are provided with quite a lot of preparatory material and that Jill was likely asked to speak about some very elementary stuff. However, I wonder when speakers and organisers alike will stop bringing basic material into advanced sessions. The session was billed in a strange way: the description managed to call it a 101 panel and an advanced panel at the same time. Is that really the best idea' Shouldn't "super-advanced" and basic strategies be broken up a little more' One thing SEOmoz had never done before at Pubcon was to bring a booth. With tools like Linkscape, having a booth was good for both answering questions about the product and demonstrating it live.  The SEOmoz booth is swamped with attendees. Danny and Ben rock the green shirts. Thanks to toprankblog on Flickr We have only previously had booths like this at SMX shows. I found the crowd at Pubcon very different to that at SMXes: at SMX, many people already know who we are and are more interested in finding out more about the company than they are interested in being "sold" a product. We expected this before we went to Las Vegas, but Pubcon attendees were a tougher crowd. Most of the people I talked to about Linkscape wanted to know why they should purchase our products and services above someone else's (and they'd name who else they were considering). A lot of people also asked about how Linkscape can be tied into our other tools, which I think is an excellent question. It adds to the evidence that we should write a guide to our toolset. I enjoyed Pubcon's Local and Mobile Search panel, although I thought the speakers overlooked a large feature of mobile search: that of the mobile browser wars. The panel spoke a lot about iPhones and the (fascinating) optimisation tactics for that particular device, but as a rabid BlackBerry user, I think there is plenty to said for non-iPhone products and the full-web experience people expect from third-party browsers. I use Opera Mini on my BlackBerry Curve: the browser that comes with this BlackBerry is a terrible piece of software, but Opera Mini allows me to view entire web pages and zoom in on the part of the page I want to see. There was so much talk about devices, but I really think that the panelists missed out on discussing how different browsers will change the face of mobile search as much as mobile-optimised websites and search engines. This isn't to say the panelists didn't have good information: Shailesh Bhat, Senior Product Manager for Yahoo! Local, covered basically everything I never knew about Yahoo!'s local capabilities. He mentioned that people on mobile devices aren't looking for links: they're looking for information. I believe this is especially true on more limited devices. Before Opera Mini, I didn't want to click through from a results page on my mobile because I had no idea whether it was going to load properly. I wanted the answer to appear within the search results. Yahoo!, at least, wants to provide those answers in their mobile results. Another rather interesting point' Mobile search queries show a high level of local intent, although not always explicitly. Queries like "travel," "weather" and "movies" often appear without a geographical specification but are inherently local. This is where sites and mobile carriers / devices have to work with search engines to show their location, and search engines must deliver local content when a user doesn't help them with a localised query. Alex Porter from Location Three Media brought up the idea of local-specific search engines, as opposed to the local options provided by the Big Three. People do use these sites and they shouldn't be ignored. This also ties back to the idea that directories and local search engines can show up in Yahoo!, Google and Live's regular results and provide a company with more domination of regular search results pages. Alex also spoke about measuring what results a site is getting from its mobile efforts, as it seems that many people don't know exactly how much traffic or how many conversions they get from specific local queries and results. Things like specific landing pages and phone numbers go a long way to keeping better track of local activity. But enough about them. Let's talk about me. I spoke on the Five Bloggers and a Microphone panel on the afternoon of Day Two. Here I am, watching Twitter on my BlackBerry instead of listening to Mike McDonald:  I actually wished that we'd been asked some more controversial or challenging questions during the session... things seemed to veer towards the US election (remember that from about 2,000 words ago') and Twitter. And then there was the person who stood up and asked a rather detailed question about PPC, to which this organic SEO and her fellow blogger panelists stared dumbly back. I have actually never been in a conference session before where the moderator actively un-asks the question. That said, the audience seemed to agree with the decision. I really like the Q&A format of sessions like that blogging panel. They're easy to listen to (I was in the audience for the same session last year) and they're equally easy to take part in. I only have two requests for next year: can I be on it again, and can someone ask some difficult questions ;) Later that evening, SEOmoz staged its second SearchSpam / Werewolf party at the convention centre. Thanks to Juliano Motta for some of these great pictures.  Rand and Danny moderate the game.  SEOs (and Matt Cutts) with their heads on tables.  Demonstration of werewolfiness from Rand.  I get caught playing with my phone again. I'd have thought that the hard night out in Vegas would have deterred people from showing up before lunch time the next morning, but Twitter will confirm that it really was standing-room-only in Rand's Linkfluence: How To Buy Links with Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk session on Thursday. The problem with sessions like this--at least from an SEO's point of view--is that you know Matt Cutts is sitting in the back (right behind me, as it turned out) and that he's got that book on his lap. That book is a vortex of fear. It has swallowed more websites whole than 2001's dotcom crash and the Digg effect combined. He sits back there, on the floor due to a lack of chair space, noting things. Everyone knows that the panelists aren't going to reveal their best paid link building tactics, only to watch them disappear, character by character, into an SEO black hole. It was during this session that we all managed to break Twitter: "#pubcon" was the highest trending topic in its search engine and I saw numerous requests that we all give it a rest, as the site went down in flames at about midday. We didn't, of course. Then we'd have had to start listening to Rand. That afternoon, I sat on the Community Hacking: 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ session, although it honestly took jokes about drunk blogging to get a laugh out of a crowd who looked like The Vegas had them in its grasp and wasn't letting go. It's a tough gig when it's 3pm and you're speaking to a room full of people who've probably averaged four hours sleep every night for the past three days. This said, people told me that they found my information useful: I spoke about the various things we've done on this blog to gain links to our site. Whether approvingly or not, we're known for it. However, we use the blog for more than "linkbait": I want to coin the rather awkward "content-based link building," as linkbait has such a controversial past and bad name. We do quite a lot with the blog that drives links to other parts of our site... according to the search engine reps at SMX London, we don't do a bad job of it either! When everyone leaves the convention centre, Pubcon is only half over. That night, Microsoft and Webmaster Radio staged a bloody fantastic Search Bash at the Rain nightclub inside the Palms. There were sparkly wrist-bands and glow sticks. There were acrobats. There were hosts Darren Babin and Brandy Shapiro Babin dressed as Neo and Trinity.  Kate Morris, Kristy Bolsinger and I look through dry ice with our glow sticks... They say that Pubcon is a four-day conference, and of course they're including Friday's "pub" event in that number. This was my third Pubcon and I can safely say that 2008's Friday was far better than in 2007 or 2006. They do a great job in Las Vegas of providing a wonderful conference and a great week, but slowly wearing away at your soul so that you're absolutely delighted to leave the town at the end of it all. It's been three weeks on the road for me now, and after emptying a suitcase that smells like an ashtray, I hope to not live out of it for a little while. Thank you so much to all the conference organisers, my fellow speakers, conference attendees and my random friends all over the world for making the last twenty days so great. Of course, I could write ten blog posts (or novellas) about what I've done and what I've learned in the past few weeks, but if you've read this far, you're probably dying for me to stop. I'll see you all again next year :) 17 Nov 2008 at 1:59am Posted by radcotton As the SEOmoz team have been away at Pubcon I've been asked to fill in with a blog post. I'm Richard Cotton and I work for Distilled as their paid Search marketer.One of my colleagues sent me a link to a fun little tool that he had been using from Wordtracker Labs, the people who brought you the fantastic keyword suggestion tool. You type in a word and it tells you what questions people have been asking on their partner search engines within the last 140 days containing that word. A lot of people have been talking about the benefits for SEO work that a tool like this can provide, and there is no doubt that that is the case, but there is also one massive benefit for anyone running a Paid Search account. For PPC this is a great source of potential negative keywords, particularly for those broad match terms that you can’t switch off but you know produce unspecified quantities of irrelevant traffic. After all, most of these will never click on your ad so they will not show up in the Search Query Report and will allow you to easily eliminate them with negative keywords. If you are running a PPC campaign for an online bed shop, for example, typing in ‘bed’ gets you 100 results that immediately produce potential negative keywords. Some you will no doubt have already thought of this, but there are always new (and ridiculous) questions for you to create negatives from. In this list of 100 questions about ‘bed’, only 1 was about someone wishing to purchase an item and that was for a pillow. The list of potential negatives includes the usual internet preoccupation with sex:
 Quirky:
 And also the downright wrong (and yes, “wetting the bed on purpose” guy is quirky compared to these – read on):
16 Nov 2008 at 5:52pm Posted by randfish This post is sourced from my presentation at Pubcon on the Linkfluence: How to Buy Links with Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk panel. Since it received such positive feedback and a lot of requests for sharing, I thought I'd do so in a more reference-able way here on the blog. If you'd like to download the slide deck, you can find it here in Powerpoint format.
8 Ways to Buy Links Without "Buying Links" Matt Cutts' webspam team, a segment of Google's broader Search Quality division, has made their position on buying and selling links for the purposes of boosting search engine rankings reasonably clear over the past 3 years. The practice is anathema - viewed as unacceptable because it infringes on the engine's ability to use links as an editorial signal of importance for search rankings. Both manual penalties and algorithmic filtering are applied as solutions, damaging the rankings of sites that buy as well as the ability for sites who sell to pass on link equity. Naturally, this has led many individuals, sites and businesses seeking higher rankings to employee tactics that are plausibly removed from the direct exchange of capital for links, and while link brokers and link sales still thrive, they do so in an ever-increasingly paranoid & underground realm so as not to risk discovery and devaluation. In this post, I'll walk through examples of some of the more valuable and directly applicable methods to leverage finances for link growth while dodging Google's webspam edicts. #1 - Event Sponsorhips Principle - Sponsor an event, online or in-person, and receive a link from the event's website, and possibly those bloggers/site owners in attendance. Process - Locate events with geographic proximity or topical relevance (search engines are useful, but events calendars like those on Upcoming.org & Craigslist.org are valuable, too). Get in touch directly and offer sponsorship. Depending on your level of aggressiveness, you can directly ask for a link or simply cross your fingers that some will appear. In my experience, if the audience/attendees are relatively web savvy, links are very likely. Even if you don't get a link, or it's devalued, the side benefits of networking, goodwill and branding are valuable on their own. Example - SEOmoz sponsored a local Startup Weekend event here in Seattle this year, and received a link from the "thanks to our sponsors" post, as well as several related blog posts. #2 - Charitable Donations Principle - Donate to a charitable or non-profit organization and receive a link on their website. Process - Find nonprofits/charities online - Charity Navigator and the BBB's Accredited Charity Directory can help, though greater specificity through topical relevance and geography is wise. Locate the charity's list of donors and see if they offer links. In general, it's better to get in touch directly, rather than using any online forms if you're seeking a link in return. As an added benefit, you're doing a good thing by helping organizations make positive impacts, and the donations are typically a tax write-off as well. Example - Google themselves donated money to the FreeBSD foundation and earned a link from their donors list page. #3 - Website Purchases Principle - Acquire other websites and you're free to make them link or redirect to the URL(s) of your choice. Process - Find relevant websites to buy and negotiate ownership. This is a complex process which requires far more detail than this post will cover, but good resources on the subject are here and here. Once the website is in your control, decide whether you want to use a 301-redirect to move the site's content (and link equity) over to a domain you control or simply maintain the domain and point links out to areas in need. Example - Conde Nast publications purchased Reddit.com, which now links to both Wired.com and Howto.Wired.com on every page. #4 - Content Acquisition Principle - Find content that ranks well or has earned considerable link popularity on a topic, purchase it from the owner and move the content to your own site. Process - The easier, but more expensive path is to find content that's already earned significant link equity, make an offer, and have the owner 301-redirect the page(s) over to your domain. This is, in essence, like buying a small part of a site. A more time intensive but cheaper method is to find content you expect would earn high amounts of links and rankings if given the proper SEO & marketing effort, purchase it and promote. Example - BuddyTV.com acquired the content on OnlyWentWorth.org and re-points it to their page on the actor. #5 - Advertising to Viral Traffic Principle - Buy advertising that gets "Linkerati" in front of your viral-worthy content in an effort to attract more natural links. Process - Create viral and link-worthy content on your site. Leverage the audiences at "Linkerati" heavy portals like Digg, Techcrunch, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Techmeme, Memeorandum, Facebook and others with advertising. Once attracted, use strategies like badges, embeddable widgets, tools, interactive content and emotional hooks (humor, conflict, etc.) to encourage sharing. Example - Farecast.com (prior to its acquisition by Microsoft) used StumbleUpon's advertising program to help attract bloggers, forum posters and journalists likely to write about the service and link to it. #6 - Blogger Product Reviews Principle - Put your product/service in front of bloggers in a direct, personal manner to encourage them to take interest, review and link to your site. Process - It helps to first establish relationships with bloggers. Meeting in person at conferences is a terrific way to build trust, but even a casual email exchange or phone conversation can help pave the way. Once you've created rapport, request a review (if you're aggressive about link acquisition) or simply provide a free product or access to your service and request their feedback. In the latter scenario, it's been my experience that a high percentage will still make mention (and link) on their blogs. Example - The authors of Web Design for ROI sent a copy to SEOmoz, where Rebecca reviewed it and posted several blog entries with links. #7 - Content Partnerships Principle - Forge content and link sharing relationships, ostensibly with high audience relevance. Process - Identify sources that could use your site's content. Pitch them on the concept that they can earn more traffic, clicks and page views with your content. If you're running into a wall, you can even offer to pay them to feature your work. Make sure to earn links back to the originals (unless you're willing to risk losing the SEO traffic to those articles/posts). Example - The NYTimes.com licenses and links to content, including the homepages, of both VenturBeat.com and ReadWriteWeb.com on their Technology homepage. #8 - Blog Incubation Principle - Grow your own blogs by seeding writers, hosts, platforms and material. Process - Put out ads for bloggers and have your development team custom-build or assist them in building blogs they can own and operate. Give the bloggers marketing plans and training so they know how to broaden beyond an insular ecosphere and earn link juice and rankings of their own. Create an agenda for blog posts, links and messaging and launch the sites. Example - According to a Columbia Journalism Review article, 2008 presidential candidate John McCain's campaign used this strategy to seed a number of bloggers who could help to create buzz around certain topics and build stories that the mainstream press would then cover. These bloggers would write about and link to stories to help spread the campaign's message (and grow their search rankings).
These tactics have proven valuable for others but should be done relatively discretely. Virtually any strategy where SEO, and specifically link equity growth, is disclosed as the primary motivation for the transaction/relationship carries some (typically minor) inherent risk. If you have other methods to share on how to acquire links with money indirectly, please do share! p.s. Jane's comprehensive review of Pubcon should be out tomorrow for those anticipating release. 14 Nov 2008 at 3:15am Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers,The Washington State Attorney General announced in a press release yesterday that it was suing a Redmond-based SEO company, Visible.net. According to the Complaint, Visible also does business under the name WebMarketingSource.com, Caputures.com, and Captures.com (that's not a typo). The AG also names the owner of the companies, Gilbert Walker, as a defendant in the case. The defendants sell website design, SEO, and other internet marketing services, along with providing e-commerce services to process online purchases for merchant customers. They promote their services through their website and by telemarketing. Packages include an initial startup fee of 3,749.99 up to $9,749.99, plus a monthly fee of $39.9 to $99.99. “When it comes to Internet search results, every small business wants to pull rank,” Attorney General Rob McKenna said. “Merchants hoping to increase their online sales paid thousands of dollars to Visible.net and Captures.com but didn’t always receive the top listings and other services they were promised.” The Ag's Consumer Protection High-Tech Unit, said that AG's office and the Better Business Bureau have received nearly 90 complaints about the defendants, showing a pattern of recurring problems since at least 2005. Washington filed the lawsuit on behalf of consumers and accuses the companies and their owner of violating state consumer protection and telemarketing laws. The complaint makes the following claims:
Visible.net has not yet issued a statement about the lawsuit, but a representative said that they will probably post something on their blog. UPDATE: Visible.net posted a response on its blog. They deny the AG's allegations. I'll keep you updated as the case develops. Best Regards, Sarah L. Bird Hat tip to Ryan Todd for bringing the case to my attention. Other coverage: Networkworld.com |
Search Engine Roundtable 21 Nov 2008 at 3:00pm 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. 21 Nov 2008 at 10:08am
Jerry Yang, Ex-CEO of Yahoo Google's SearchWiki: Really' Google Results Going Berserk Again Google's Search-Based Keyword Tool Launched Google AdSense Publishers Requests Yahoo Search Marketing: 500 Domains Blocked! Google Ads EVERYWHERE Yelling about Yelp Link Debate Brawl over Text Link Ads Inlinks Program Have You Noticed Subdirectory Sitelinks' You Compete Better with Video iPhone Voice Activated App from Google 21 Nov 2008 at 8:44am On the Microsoft Office Live Small Business Blog (and even in a second post), Senior Product Manager Skip Chilcott writes that link exchanges are a "popular way to generate more links." Blogger Saad Kamal has a problem with this. Citing several guidelines from Google, Yahoo, and even Microsoft itself, it's apparent that link exchanges to artificially inflate rankings is frowned upon. But Saad Kamal goes further to say it's black hat SEO. Really' The idea that it's "black hat" might be a stretch; link exchanges themselves are sketchy. Most would consider black hat SEO to be a lot worse than a simple link exchange that thousands of webmasters do daily. I'm sure they'd argue that black hat SEO is a practice that only a fraction of webmasters even knows about and thus employs. But while being equated with black hat endorsements, Danny Sullivan considers this "embarrassing" because the Microsoft Office Live team doesn't seem to be on the same page as the Microsoft Search team. I guess it's hard when Microsoft's initial project and core goal isn't search whereas a company like Google or Yahoo emerged out of their search services. In the latter case, the idea of search appears to preside over the entire company. Forum discussion continues at Sphinn. 21 Nov 2008 at 8:02am A new Google AdWords interface may be coming to an account near you. At Search Engine Land, Barry provides screenshots of this greener interface that looks like it's sporting a new green type of Gmail theme. Here are some screens:
If you want to be considered as a test user, you should read Google's blog post announcing the test interface and sign up with the instructions. Whatcha think' Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld. 21 Nov 2008 at 7:50am Want some industry information about getting the most of your Google AdWords budget' Check out the Google Optimization Center, which gives you some great strategies depending on the type of industry you're in. PDF files are offered in each individual sector. Areas covered include automotive, education, health care, retail, travel, technology, local, finance, and business and industrial markets. AdWordsPro Sarah explains how these documents can be used. [I]f you run a travel site, you could download the travel optimization PDF for tips on ways to increase the ROI on your top trips.What else can you get out of this' You'll know when to better target your campaigns (as Sarah says, there's no "one size fits all" method for advertising) and how to do it. Forum discussion continues at Google Groups. 21 Nov 2008 at 7:38am The blogosphere is buzzing about Google's announcement that they have made Google SearchWiki the default for users who are signed into Google while searching. What this means is that users will see features to promote, delete and comment on search results. This is advanced searcher stuff. I am really a bit surprised Google pushed this to every Google account user as the default. Why' (1) As Arrington said, it wasn't broken originally - well, some would disagree with that. (2) It is confusing for the average searcher, no' Do you think the average searcher is ready for it' Take the poll directly below this line: Okay, so some basics that might not be clear to every reader of this site:
For SEOs, will this impact the future of search' Well, yes and no. Clearly, people can now promote and remove sites, so you may benefit or not from that. But will Google use this data to improve their overall algorithms' I would suspect so, on some level. But with any Wiki-like system, it can be spammed, so I doubt Google will rely on this data too much. That being said, let's get our SEO and promote me higher. There is this other Barry Schwartz who uses Barry Schwartz in his title tag. He wrote some books to play with people's heads. He is much older. He spoke at Google. He is much cooler. But I am in the SEO crowd, so I should rank #1. No' Here is the current default results for barry schwartz in Google:
Now, go down to my personal blog, CartoonBarry.com and promote it.
It will then pop up this window, say "yes."
It then should put my blog at the top for you:
Click on the comment bubble on the right of the result and leave me a witty comment:
Thank you! Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums, WebmasterWorld, Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums. 21 Nov 2008 at 7:29am Google Maps Guide Tom replied to a Google Groups thread requesting Google to bridge the data between My Maps and Google Mobile Maps. Typically, a Google representative would say, thank you for your feedback and leave it at that. But Tom said, "keep checking back for updates!" That implies to me that this feature might be coming in the next release. So soon, if you save maps on My Maps, then you might be able to take them with you on your Mobile device. As an FYI, the new iPhone 2.2 update has new map features such as street views, new pin placements, walking and transit directions and more. Forum discussion at Google Groups. 21 Nov 2008 at 7:25am For those Google AdWords API developers, you should be aware that currently any requests sent over the SOAP protocol to the API Sandbox will return an error. A Google Groups thread has one developer complaining and an official Google representative confirming the issue. Jeff Posnick from the AdWords API Team said: I can confirm that the Sandbox is returning "internal error" SOAP faults for all requests right now. I've let the engineering team know and they're investigating the root cause.Typically, sandbox errors are not fixed as quickly as production errors. But since the API is returning errors for all SOAP requests, I have a feeling this will be fixed faster than an normal sandbox bug. Forum discussion at Google Groups. 21 Nov 2008 at 7:15am Sam from OhNuts informed me that Google is having some major issues with Google Base feeds. Google Base feeds are used to send data from your site to Google Product Search, amongst other places. A Google Groups announcement thread says the issue will slow down the normal time it takes for your updates to be seen on Google Base and Google Product Search results. There is nothing a webmaster can do here but wait for Google to fix the issue. So do not bother resubmitting your feed, cause it won't help. Google did fix the processing delay for smaller feeds, but feeds that are larger than 1 MB are still affected. The Google Base Guy, the official Google representative, said: Thanks again for your patience and I will get back to you with more updates.Forum discussion at Google Groups. 20 Nov 2008 at 3:00pm 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. 20 Nov 2008 at 9:19am Ever wonder what a link on Google's homepage would bring in terms of traffic' Let's take this G1 link:
The Compete blog gives some detail into the number of clicks that link had while it was extremely visible on Google.com. First, some background. Google planned on running this between the 22nd and 29th of October. It was for Google's new phone with T-Mobile. What's was the value of the traffic to T-Mobile' Well, the visibility of the link did some incredible things: * More than 800,000 unique visitors | |
Happy week before Thanksgiving! What are YOU doing next Friday' (Chances are, I'll be here blogging!) This week, we saw the biggest news of the month (or so I think), and that's where I'm going to start.
