iWebEarth

Posted by jennita

SMX West 2010 kicked off with quite a bang (or was that a yell?). Since Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer was the keynote, people arrived early to ensure good seats. The music playing before it started was amazing, it helped to create an excitement in the room that I really had never felt before a keynote before. I had attempted to save a seat for someone up front, but there was just too much demand and had to give it up. That’s the sort of thing that happens at a great concert, not a conference keynote.

There were quite a few live blogs of the event, but I had a few favorites from the interview that I wanted to call out.

1. He made it very clear that Microsoft is focused on the big picture and not just immediate goals. He spoke about continuing to move forward with a positive momentum and a differentiated point of view.
2. When the question came up of "Can you be #1 in the U.S.?" he essentially said "YES!" [and yes he said it with that exclamation] However he made it clear that it was a tricky question. If you say yes, you sound arrogant but if you say no you sound unsure of yourself. You don’t do things to come in second!
3. Danny asked "Is Yahoo! going to survive as a search player? You want to beat them aren’t you just going to kill them?" Ballmer could really only answer one way "No." He stated that they wanted Yahoo! to do a good job, that there was lots of flexibility written into their contract and there was advantage to having the power of 2 as opposed to the power of 1.
4. When asked whether he was going to get on Twitter he said "I’m more of a webpage than a bunch of short tweets." But then acknowledged that he did have a stealth Twitter account however only the people in his neighborhood followed him.
5. His favorite thing on Bing are the Bing maps. [completely agree here... the maps are amazing!]
6. What he thinks is the biggest opportunity in search: to "Help people get done what they’re trying to get done."
7. Oh! And he gave us all his personal email account. You’ll have to watch the video to get that though.

All in all it was quite enjoyable to watch, although I was a bit unprepared (although perhaps I shouldn’t have been) for the yelling. Ok, I don’t think in his mind he was yelling, he was just talking VERY LOUDLY. But sitting right up front, I think we all sat back in our chairs a bit when he got excited and started to get louder. You can see the full video of the keynote below.

Google’s Personalized Search Revolution

Now that personalization has become an opt-out rather than an opt-in, I was really interested in what this session had to offer. The only speaker, Brian Horling who works in Personalized Search at Google, first gave a very informative presentation, then fielded quite a few questions from the audience. I really enjoyed having just one speaker who was focused on the topic at hand. The top takeaways that I got were some of the differences between a logged out user who gets personalized search versus a logged in user. Let me break it down a bit.

First of all, both types of users are thought of as two different identities to Google. Let’s say you’re logged in, and then log out, they don’t view you as the same logged in person. At that point they do look at the cookies set on your computer which tell gives them information on what you’ve searched for previously, which results you’ve clicked on, etc. For signed in accounts, your web history is saved indefinitely, but your non-logged in identity is only saved for 180 days.

Every user using search has the potential of seeing personalized search in some way whether it’s geo-location, web history, social search, etc. Personalization occurs about 1 in 5 queries for a user and the changes tend to be restricted to only a few results.

How can you control the personalization of your searches?

• Use search details
• Disable it by appending &pws=0 on searchs (you can find the bookmarklet to do that here)
• Edit or disable your web history

If you haven’t looked at the "view customizations" link I highlight above before, you should definitely check it out. Pretty interesting what’s going on there.

One thing that came up in this session was how do you explain to a client that the results they’re seeing aren’t the same as what everyone else sees. Although in some cases that would probably be a good thing since they’re seeing better rankings since they search and click on their sites more often than the average user.

How do you feel about personalized search? After this presentation I found that I was much more open to the idea than I was previously. I think because I felt like I finally understood a bit better where the data was coming from and how to turn it off. But what about you?

And so on…

The other session I really loved was "Supercharging Your Descriptions With Sitelinks" but as I was putting this post together I realized that should really a be a post in and of itself. It was great to hear from a Google rep about how certain sitelinks show up and ways you can enhance your site to ensure proper sitelinks. I have tons of screenshots and examples, so I’ll put them into a full post. Plus I’d really like to get Jerry Dischler (the Google guy) to answer a few of my questions. So watch for that one!

The best swag of the conference goes to Yahoo! for not only giving away these awesome coffee mugs, but for setting up a full-on coffee shop with baristas to make us our much needed lattes!

I really wanted to show the videos from the SMX Ignite as that was one of my favorite parts of the day. But unfortunately the videos aren’t live yet. Here’s a link to where they should be. Maile Ohye’s "DateRank: PageRank for singles" was my personal favorite, although all the speakers were exceptional.

Dana Lookadoo and I interviewed a number of people in sort of a Jay Leno "man on the street" sort of way. We hope to have the interviews up tomorrow.

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Posted by randfish

This post is short and easy to follow, just like the tactic it recommends. Most everyone who optimizes for Google Local (aka Google Maps) is familar with David Mihm’s excellent and oft-referenced Local Search Ranking Factors. In that document, and in many places where local results are analyzed, it’s clear that getting your business/website into more listings, in a consistent fashion is a very good thing.

Yet, somehow, this obvious tactic has gone missing from many GG Local optimization recommendations. Either that or it’s so obvious that no one feels the need to mention it. Whatever the case, it’s available now

Step 1: Do Lots of Searches Related to Your Business & Region

Let’s say you’re working on local SEO for a Thai restaurant in Seattle, WA. Searches you might perform include:

• Thai Seattle, WA
• Thai Restaurants Seattle, WA
• Seattle Thai Restaurants
• Thai Food Seattle

You’re seeking results that show competing or closely related businesses, so get creative.

Step 2: Identify a Handful (or a Few Dozen) Businesses that Consistently Get Top Rankings

You could build a formal spreadsheet and perform tracking to identify these or start with gut feel and expand later on in the process. For less competitive listings, an informal approach may work just fine.

Step 3: Go to the Local Business Profile for Each of These

Don’t click the name of the listing itself. Instead, follow the links to the "reviews" about each of your competitors’ businesses. You’ll get a page with information about the business, reviews and lists of data that Google has found about them.

Step 4: Click on the Links to "More About this Place"

The "more about this place" section of the business listing shows brief snippets, titles and URLs where Google has found relevant information pertaining to the business. This is your potential goldmine for discovering listing sources.

Step 5: Go to those Sites & Get Your Business Added/Updated

 The domains that are listed are places where Google is pulling information about your business. This is where the Maps algorithm comes into play – it relies on not only the number of listings, but the quality of the sources and the consistency between them. You want every listing to perfectly match one another, right down the the suffix on the reservations phone number and the formatting of your suite number (e.g. 1221 E Pike Street vs. 1221 East Pike Street vs. 1221 E Pike Street Suite 200 vs. 1221 East Pike Street #200 are all DIFFERENT – don’t make that mistake).

As an example, I visited a link from Thaiku’s listing in the example above to Intuit’s Local Business Directory (I didn’t even know they had one until now) and could then add/edit SEOmoz’s listing:

In addition to the potential local ranking boost, a majority of these sources offer the potential to earn links! Even if you don’t care much about the local results themselves, this is a pretty terrific way to get some good quality, trusted sites linking to you.

Step 6: Repeat Step 4 & 5 for the "Reviews" and "User Content" Sections

If you’re hungry for even more sources, you can look at where listings come from on other competitors and/or go back to the business listing’s page in Google Maps/Local and choose from the "reviews" and "user content" sections for even more potential spots. Much like manual link building back in the late ’90’s, perseverance and careful attention to detail will take you far.

There are automated services out there to help with this process, but I haven’t yet seen one I feel completely comfortable about. The biggest issue is the dramatic value of and need for consistency in the listings. When automated systems submit, they can mix in a suite number in the wrong place, cut off a phone number because the form doesn’t accept hyphens or confirm a URL that doesn’t match what you’ve submitted elsewhere. For now, I recommend playing it safe and spending the hours (even if that’s a dozen or two) to get those 50-250 listings correct. Google will reward you with local rankings and high quality traffic.

p.s. Next week I’m down in Portland for SEMpdx’s Searchfest and hope to spend time with some true local search experts and perhaps share some more cutting edge tactics

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Posted by randfish

We’ve been getting a lot of questions in Q+A and on the road at events like last week’s Miva Merchant conference, Online Marketing Summit and the YCombinator conference about how to properly paginate results for search engines. In this post, we’ll cover the dangers, opportunities and optimization tactics that can best ensure success. The best part? These practices aren’t just good for SEO, they’re great for usability and user experience too!

Why is Pagination an SEO Issue?

Pagination, the practice of segmenting links to content on multiple pages, affects two critical elements of search engine accessibility.

• Crawl Depth: Best practices demand that the search engine spiders reach content-rich pages in as few "clicks" as possible (turns out, users like this, too). This also impacts calculations like Google’s PageRank (or Bing’s StaticRank), which determine the raw popularity of a URL and are an element of the overall algorithmic ranking system.
• Duplicate Content: Search engines take duplication very seriously and attempt to show only a single URL that contains any given piece of content. When pagination is implemented improperly, it can cause duplicate content problems, both for individual articles and the landing pages that allow browsing access to them.

When is Pagination Necessary?

When a site grows beyond a few dozen pages of content in a specific category or subcategory, listing all of the links on a single page of results can make for unwieldly, hard-to-use pages that seem to scroll indefinitely (and can cause long load times as well).

Clearly, I need to log into Facebook more often…

But, usability isn’t the only reason pagination exists. For many years, Google’s recommended that pages contain no more than 100 links (internal or external) in order to make it easy for spiders to reach down deep into a site’s architecture. Many SEOs have found that this "limit" isn’t hard and fast, but staying within that general range remains a best practice. Hence, pages that contain many hundreds or thousands of links may inadvertently be hurting the access of search engines to the content-rich pages in the list making pagination essential.

Numbers of Links & Pages

We know that sometimes pagination is essential – one page of results just doesn’t cut it in every situation. But just how many links to content should the average category/results page show? And how many pages of results should display in the pagination?

There are a lot of options here, but there’s serious danger in using the wrong structures. Let’s take a look at the right (and wrong) ways to determine link numbers.

In some cases, there’s simply too many pages of results to list them all. When this happens, the very best thing you can do is to work around the problem by… creating more subcategories! It may seem challenging or even counter-intuitive, but adding either an extra layer of classification or a greater number of subcategories can have a dramatically positive impact on both SEO and usability.

There are times, however, when even the creation of many deep subcategories isn’t enough. If your site is big enough, you may need to have extensive pagination such that not every page of results can be reached in once click. In these cases, there are a few clear dos and don’ts.

Do:

• Try to link to as many pages of the pagination structure as possible without breaking the 100(ish) links per page limit
• Show newer content at the top of the results list when possible, as this means the most link juice will flow to newer articles that need it (and are temporally relevant)
• Use and link to relevant/related categories & subcategories to help keep link juice flowing throughout the site
• Link back to the top results from each of the paginated URLs

Don’t:

• Show only a few surrounding paginated links from paginated URLs – you want the engines to be able to crawl deeper from inside the structure
• Link to only the pages at the front and end of the paginated listings; this will flow all the juice to the start and end of results, ingoring the middle
• Try to randomize the paginated results shown in an effort to distribute link juice; you want a static site architecture the engines can crawl
• Try to use AJAX to get deeper in the results sets – engines follow small snippets of Javascript (sometimes), but they’re not at a point where this is an SEO best practice
• Go over the top trying to get every paginated result linked-to, as this can appear both spammy and unusably ugly

When in doubt, consider the directives you’re optimizing toward – the need for fewer extra pages of pagination, the desire to make the browsing experience usable (many webmasters mistakenly think users will simply give up and search, forgetting that some of us can’t recall the name of the piece we’re looking for!) and the importance of maintaining a reasonable count of links per page. Also note that although I’ve illustrated using 5-10 listings (for graphical space requirements), a normal listings set could be 30-90 links per page, depending on the situation.

Titles & Meta Descriptions for Paginated Results

In most cases, the title and meta description of paginated results are copied from the top page. This isn’t ideal, as it can potentially cause duplicate content issues. Instead, you can employ a number of tactics to help solve the problem.

Example of results page titles & descriptions:

Top Page Title: Theatres & Playhouses in Princeton, New Jersey
Top Page Meta Description: Listings of 368 theatres, playhouses and performance venues in the Princeton, NJ region (including surrounding cities).

Page 4 Title: Page 4 of 7 for Princeton, New Jersey Theatres & Playhouses
Page 4 Meta Description: Listings 201-250 (out of 368) theatres, playhouses and performance venues in the Princeton, NJ region (inclusing surrounding cities).

Alternate Page 4 Title: Results Page 4/7 for Princeton, New Jersey Theatres & Playhouses
Alternate Page 4: Description: -

Yes, you can use no meta description at all, and in fact, if I were setting up a CMS today, this is how I’d do it. A missing meta description reduces complexity and potential mis-casting of URLs as duplicates. Also notce that I’ve made the titles on results pages sub-optimal to help dissuade the engines from sending traffic to these URLs, rather than the top page (which is made to be the better "landing" experience for users).

Nofollows. Rel=Canonicals and Conditional Redirects

Some SEOs and website owners have, unfortunately, received or interpreted advice incorrectly about employing directives like the nofollow tag, canonical URL tag or even conditional redirects to help control bot activity in relation to pagination. These are almost always a bad idea.

Whatever you do, DO NOT:

• Put a rel=canonical directive on paginated results pointing back to the top page in an attempt to flow link juice to that URL. You’ll either misdirect the engines into thinking you have only a single page of results or convince them that your directives aren’t worth following (as they find clearly unique content on those pages).
• Add nofollow to the paginated links on the results pages. This tells the engines not to flow link juice/votes/authority down into the results pages that desperately need those votes to help them get indexed and pass value to the deeper pages.
• Create a conditional redirect so that when search engines request paginated results, they 301 redirect or meta refresh back to the top page of results.

The only time I recommend using any of these is when pagination exists in multiple formats. For example, if you let users re-sort by a number of different metrics (in a restaurant list, for example, it might be by star rating, distance, name, price, etc.), you may want to either perform this re-sort using javascript (and employ the hash tag in the URL) or make those separately segmented paginated results rel=canonical back to a single sorting format.

Letting Users Display More/Less Results

From a usability perspective, this can make good sense, allowing users with faster connections or a greater desire to browse large numbers of results at once to achieve these goals. However, it can cause big duplicate problems for search engines, and add complexity and useless pages to the engines’ indices. If/when you create these systems, employ javascript/AJAX (either with or without the hash tag) to make the pages reload without creating a separate URL.

(the Google Analytics interface allows users to choose the number of rows shown, though they don’t have to worry much about crawlability or search-friendliness)

Also remember that the "default" number of results shown is what the search engines will see; so make that count match your goals for usability and SEO.

Additional Resources

• A Gallery of Pagination Examples and Recommendations from Smashing Magazine
• A Farewell to Pagination from SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday series
• The SEO Pager Plugin for Wordpress is a highly customizable set of options that allows you to create search-engine friendly pagination in Wordpress’s CMS from SEO Egghead

If you have any thoughts or recommendations to share in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!

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Posted by RobOusbey

This is a graph of organic traffic for a theoretical site – they might be in an industry such as print advertising, construction equipment or VHS rental. The decline in traffic is pronounced and serious.

A critical distinction when looking at a graph like this is whether the site’s performance is increasingly worse than the competitors, or whether the whole industry is in decline. In this post I want to recommend some metrics that can be tracked to benchmark your site against competitors (independent of market behaviour) and to check the health of the industry. I’ll then make suggestions for finding opportunities to slow or reverse the trend of dropping traffic.

For the benefit of the time-poor, the post ends with a three point checklist / summary.

Competitors and Benchmarking

There are a couple of different metrics you can use track, which will demonstrate the more direct outputs of your SEO work, and expose your performance amongst competitors.

This chart tracks the Site Authority of the target domain (and some competitors) through time.

To date, trying to chart Linkscape metrics has been a bit misleading: the rapid increase in the reach of Linkscape and modifications of the tool’s algorithms have meant that month-by-month reporting of a site’s Authority wasn’t always a fair comparison. However, Nick tells me that the team are currently putting effort into tackling the challenge of tracking this data. Though you’ll have more confidence in drawing a trend chart such as this one soon, I’d still recommend collecting numbers right now to get a snapshot of where your site is amongst the competition.

Obviously, this assessment of site strength is query independent; differences in site architecture, on-page term targeting and the anchor text of external links will have a significant effect on each site’s performance and number of keywords.

In many ways, the next graph address this. The line for the target site is an ‘average ranking position’ – I’d recommend creating this by taking around twenty non-branded, representative keyphrases (eg: ten which you’re specifically targeting and ten which send a significant amount of traffic) and finding the mean of the site’s ranking for each phrase.

The competitor lines should be calculated by finding the mean ranking position of that site, for each of these keywords where the site ranks in the top 20. (We do this so that the mean isn’t artificially dragged down by keyphrases which the site isn’t trying to compete for, and where it ranks very poorly.)

Even a single month’s data points on these two graphs will provide a snapshot of your site’s position amongst the industry’s other players. Tracking the data each month will demonstrate how your standing has changed, and can directly show the impact of your SEO work – both on-site and off-site.

Industry Assessment

If you have been collecting ranking data in the past, then it can be useful to identify a term for which you’ve had a relatively static ranking over the last year or so. If your traffic from this term has declined over the same period then this provides a useful example of how market behaviour outside of your control is having an effect on the business.

If you don’t have historic ranking data, but suspect that your industry is in decline, you should compare search volume trends to organic traffic sent by some specific terms. In the example below, the site sees a decline in traffic for the single keyphrase ‘football tickets‘ but comparing this to the search volume for the term shows that the site’s performance has actually improved – they are increasing their share of that traffic.

If the industry really is declining and search volumes for all the typically valuable phrases are unlikely to return, then there can be a serious consideration about even continuing to operate in the market. If your core business was VHS rental, consider offering Blu-Ray; if you rank well for house and holiday insurance but are suffering from the decline in these markets then consider adding pet insurance  – a steady / growing market. (Check out this Google Insights data for UK insurance markets.)

Of course, these are extreme examples – and if you’re in these particular industries then you shouldn’t need a blog post to make these suggestions – but they remind us that there are some markets where a time comes to look for business from elsewhere.

Actions

As we did in the graph above, you must begin by looking at the organic traffic trend for keyphrases individually. A lot of information is lost when data is aggregated (such as in total organic traffic.) Go back and look at your highest volume keyphrases from a year or two ago, and compare these to your current highest volume keyphrases, by charting the monthly volume of traffic they sent over that period. It may quickly become clear that whilst your keyword portfolio has been dragged down by some dogs, there are some stars (or problem children) that are contributing a great deal to the overall traffic.

If you last did keyword research 12 or 18 months ago, user behaviour may have changed significantly – even for people looking for exactly the same product. Whilst the metrics mentioned above may bring you to the gloomy conclusion that search volume in your industry is substantially down, it’s possible to overlook the fact that there’s simply been a change in searcher behaviour.

Examples of such changes that have happened in different geographic regions:

• searchers are using more direct queries (‘cinema‘ & ‘film tickets‘ are steady or down, ‘film times‘ is way up)
• searchers are moving from long tail to head terms (‘internet marketing‘ & ‘website promotion‘ are declining but ‘SEO‘ and ‘SEM‘ are up)
• searchers are moving from head to long tail terms (‘currency exchange‘ is down but specific terms such as ‘dollars to pounds‘ are up)

The message here: don’t miss out on opportunities to compete on the emerging keyword groups.

I promised you a checklist.

Please take away these three points:

1. If your organic traffic is down, either for particular keywords or as a whole, be clear whether this is because your site is under-performing, or because the search volume for a keyword / in an industry is descending.
2. Benchmark yourself against competitors by regularly recording the Authority and/or rankings position for relevant keyphrases of your site and theirs
3. Revisit your keyword research – a year is a long time on the internet, particularly given the current state of flux that so many industries are experiencing.

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Posted by great scott!

This week, we’ve got a couple of newcomers to Whiteboard Studios! Our very own Jen Lopez and Danny Dover (whom you should know well thanks to Jen’s Meet the Mozzers post) are pinch-hitting for our globe-trotting CEO. Let’s all give them a big welcome.

We did a PRO Site Review Webinar last week and noticed a few SEO issues that are all-too-common. So, in this week’s Whiteboard Friday, Jen and Danny will walk you through five common areas where people often make mistakes, and explain quick fixes that can help you improve, including bot blocking, courting the Linkerati, identifying problems using Top Pages, analyzing conversion rate, and addressing canonicalization.

Here are the charts Danny referenced in the video:

     
                                                                                       Courtesy of WebsiteOptimization.com

Also, if you’d like to learn more about tracking first-touch attribution in your analytics, Whiteboard Friday alumnus, Will Critchlow, wrote about it here.

Addition: Rand wrote a more in-depth post about the use of robots.txt vs. meta noindex, follow here, which can help shed some light on the subject.

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Posted by randfish

Historically, I’ve been fairly narrow in what I read in the blogosphere and tech arena (almost all SEO-centric stuff). You can see my Firefox sidebar list here, which  hasn’t changed much since 2008 with the exception of the blogs and news sections. But, over the past 6 months, I’ve been broadening out considerably and found that it adds a great deal to the conversations I’m able to participate in and contribute to, especially as SEOmoz itself has expanded from the SEO world to the larger technology and startup world. For the New Year, I thought I’d share some of the sources that have contributed most on this front and some of my favorite posts/contributions from those sources.

#1 – Hacker News

(http://news.ycombinator.com)

I find more good stuff here than anywhere else, and the diversity is impressive, too. Tragically, Hacker News is also a place for lots of misinformation, fear, and loathing around SEO, but it’s good to get a sense for how the rest of the technology world still views our niche. The signal to noise ratio is higher than on places like delicious/popular, the tech subreddit or Digg (which has become largely useless to tech professionals as its moved away from its roots).

A few items I’ve found via Hacker News include:

• Why everything you think about User Centered Design in Wrong
• On Self Promotion
• The death of the boring blog post

#2 – A VC

(http://www.avc.com)

Fred writes compelling pieces consistently, almost never gets preachy, is self-promotional in a highly credible and useful way and brings up topics I wouldn’t have thought about without him. Most of us can’t have Fred on our boards or as an investor, but we can get into his head via his blog and participating more in the comments there has been a priority of mine for a while (he’s built a remarkable community in the comments).

Some favorite posts:

• Tenacity
• The "We Need to Own" Baloney
• Ten Characteristics of Great Companies

#3 – Chris Dixon

(http://cdixon.org)

Chris, like Fred, delivers crystal clear value propostions with his posts. And IMO, he’s even higher signal to noise than Fred. I don’t always agree with him on everything, but I like the way he thinks about problems, I like the ones he brings up and I think he has his finger intensely on the pulse of what startups and technologists (and technical marketers like SEOs) are thinking about and dealing with. It’s a pleasure to see a new post from Chris – here’s to hoping he makes many more in 2010.

Some favorites include:

• Why the web will continue to grow rapidly
• Man and superman
• Software patents should be abolished

#4 – Techmeme

(http://techmeme.com)

Techmeme is an obvious choice, but it’s also critical to the list. If it weren’t for Techmeme, I’d have to wade through ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and Techcrunch post-by-post, every day. Don’t ever leave us, Gabe.

No specific posts here – there’s far too many to name, and the site updates much too quickly for me to even recall all the great stuff I’ve found here. However, I will say that I highly recommend m.techmeme.com for mobile browsing. It’s been a joy to scroll through every time my wife takes extra-long in the dressing room at Anthropologie.

#5 – Answers On Startups

(http://answers.onstartups.com)

Launched just this past October, Answers On Startups has become a haven for learning more about the challenges, issues and questions entrepreneurs face in the technology world. I’ve recommended it before, and early on participated heavily (and I’d like to do more of that in the future), but if you’re seeking answers from highly authoritative folks in a scalable fashion, this is the spot. I’m really impressed by the quality of many contributions there - the signal to noise is pretty exceptional.

Some of the best include:

• What’s more important: release fast or getting it right?
• Free Trial vs. Freemium
• Qualities/skills of a CEO

#6 – Daring Fireball

(http://daringfireball.net)

In my ideal world, 5 years from now, when I’ve been put out to pasture by someone smarter and more capable, or bought out I’d have a blog like this. Some entries are just links, some are lengthy and thoughtful and all are interesting and worth reading. Author John Gruber also brings a remarkably diverse range of topics to the site and yet somehow, signal to noise remains high.

A few recent picks:

• Google’s Meaning of Open (a short, but flawless skewering)
• The Next iPhone
• A Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs

#7 – Steve Blank

(http://steveblank.com)

A few of Steve’s posts are not only relevant, but serve to actually change direction in the executive ranks here at SEOmoz. That’s high praise, but if you read the blog, you’ll see what I mean. Steve’s been there, and his experiences run in shocking parallel to the issues we face or worry about on a regular basis. Even when I disagree with points, the logic and thought he puts into the post makes for a great read and a hard think.

Some of his best:

• The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas are No Longer Free
• Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves
• Good Enough Decision Making

#8 – NYTimes Most Emailed

(http://www.nytimes.com/gst/mostemailed.html)

Despite the financial and institutional problems they face, the NYTimes still puts out absolutely phenomenal content on nearly every area of life. From cooking to politics, travel to health, there is amazing material to be found in the Grey Lady, and the Most Emailed list is the place to find the best of the best.

Some favorites:

• Twitter Chatter During the Superbowl (I love their interactive graphics)
• Using Menu Psychology to Entice Diners
• Google Keeps Tweaking its Search Engine
• 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)

#9 - Venture Hacks

(http://venturehacks.com)

 When I was out trying to raise a second round of VC this summer (big mistake – more on that in a future post), Venturehacks’ historic content was invaluable. However, visiting the site made me realize how much good stuff there is that doesn’t apply only to those currently raising money. They’ve got some seriously great writers/contributors, invaluable interviews and tackle tough subjects.

My personal favorites recently included:

• 10 Skills I look for before writing a check
• How to develop your customers like you develop your product
• The Arrogant VC: Why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs

#10 – Twittersphere

(http://twittersphere.com)

Since they don’t publish archives (the most frustrating feature), I’m unable to show off just how cool this site is and has been over the last few months, but just try visiting a couple times a day for the next few weeks and you’ll see. It’s remarkable how much good stuff gets re-tweeted (and how much junk – signal to noise is about 15%, which is still decent since it’s easy to skim and consume at will). You can also get a sense for how important Twitter’s link graph is to the engines through Twittersphere – a lot of pages that have 0 links will have thousands of tweets pretty fast.

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Posted by Sam Niccolls

• Bing’s Twitter Search & Google’s Defensive PR:
  On the heels of Bing’s Twitter Search announcement, Google’s PR team put their Annie Oakley shades on and announced some upcoming social media moves of their own.

• Google Analytics’ New Features:
  There are some fantastic features in GA’s latest release including customized alerts, threshold goals (i.e. for time on site and pages per visit), advanced table filtering, mobile traffic reporting, more robust user defined variables, and unique visitor segmentation, just to name a few.

• Why SEO Matters:
  Derek Powazek’s blog posts aside, About Online Matters’ thoughtful reflection provides some great reminders about the value and importance SEO.

• Business Week Best Under 25:
  If you’re inspired when you see those 13 year old figure skaters win Olympic gold, Business Week’s list of top 25 young entrepreneurs will have you looping and lutzing in no time.

• Please Remove Your Site From Google:
  This e-mail from a hopelessly confused webmaster to a competitor is worth its weight in gold.

• SEOmoz News – Lindsay Perkin Wassell Announces Departure:
  In her post last week, SEOmoz’s consulting lead reminds us that not all duplicate content is bad. And though we feel bad for the non-canonical twin, we couldn’t be happier for Lindsay and her husband. Many congrats, Lindsay!

• Wolfram Alpha Launches $50 iPhone App:
  In a month where a search engine launches a $50 iPhone app and Adobe rolls out a free Photoshop app, doubts could be raised. But to the best of our knowledge, the world is still round and pigs are still unable to fly.

• Conde Nast to Close Gourmet Magazine:
  At the beginning of the month, Conde Nast made their not so savory announcement that they’re closing Gourmet and two other magazines.

• New Q & A: Bing Continues to Improve for Webmasters:
  Bing made a solid addition to their webmaster suite with the addition of a new Q & A section.

• The Evolution of Zuckerberg & Facebook:
  VentureBeat’s under the hood look at the evolution of Zuckerberg provides an interesting news feed on Facebook’s company history and culture.

• Germany’ Best SEO Resources 
  We love that Germans love SEO here at SEOmoz. If you’re a German SEO, or you spreken a little Deutsch, you can cast your votes for Germany’s best on SEO United’s site. (Note: If you do not speak German, referring traffic source is a great way to pick your vote for "Best SEO Blog.")

• People Are Less Happy on Mondays:
  Facebook status updates confirm the brilliance of Bill Lumbergh; We’re all prone to catching cases of the Monday’s… mmm-kay, great.

• Google Patents Trust Rank:
  Bill Slawski talks about how the trust rank in Google’s recent patent is different from the trust rank described in Yahoo’s 2004 paper and he shares some possible reasons for the patent. In related news, the Google Webmaster Tools patent on crawl rate filed by Vanessa Fox and several others in 2006 was also accepted this month.

• Using Google Analytics  to Find Links to Your Non-www:
  Luna Metrics has a wealth of useful blog posts on web analytics. And though limited to link data on your own site, Jim Gianoglio’s method for finding links to your non-www URLs is a creative, SEO-related use of Google Analytics.

• Video – Aaron Patzer Talks About Mint:
  The presentation given my Mint’s CEO about the company’s history is an entertaining watch for startup entrepreneurs and tech junkies alike.

• Back in the eCommerce Day:
  Get Elastic’s Linda Bustos share’s a wayback machine style look at 9 old school eCommerce website designs.

• Surprising Web Analytics Usage Data:
  The Google commissioned Forrester study uncovers some statistics you might not have guess about enterprise usage of free analytics tools, as well as how ineffectively most people use their web analytics tools.

• Video – Matt Cutts Gets His Herr Did:
  Members of Matt Cutts’ team shave his head as the camera rolls.

• 20 Conversion Rate Optimization Resources:
  Wordstream’s compilation of conversion rate optimization focused blogs, books, and podcasts is worth a look through. It has several resources you might be familiar with, as well as a handful that are probably new.

• First Link Checker Tool:
  Based on the idea that Google only considers anchor text for the first link on a page to be relevant, BusinessOnLine launched an early version of a tool that identifies multiple links on a page with the same destination.

• 10 Worst Money Making Business Ideas:
  Neil Patel’s list of bad business ideas is both humorous and reprehensible. So yes, his Homer Simpson graphic is more than appropriate for the post.

• Using Google’s Chart API for Map-based Linkbait:
  I’m a big fan of Epicurious’ Seasonal Ingredient Map, as well as Travel Pod’s Traveler IQ Challenge, but Google code offers some pretty slick ways to implement customized maps for linkbait on your site.

Highlighted by two great posts from Casey Henry, each of which were promoted to the SEOmoz Blog, there have been a bevy of bookmark-worthy reads this October on YOUmoz.

Top YOUmoz entries:

1. *What Makes a Linkworthy Blog Post by chenry 
   

2. *Track Your Mozpoints by chenry
   

3. Google Universal Results in Brazil by Fabio Ricotta

4. Using WordPress Automated Keyword Insertion for the Long Tail by MOGmartin

5. An Attempt to Understand Local Ranking Factors by riseandshineseo

6. White-Hat Linkbuilding by deckers

7. Planning Your Internal Linking Structure by zoicaremus

8. Domain Authority: Is it a ranking factor? by BenRush

9. True or False: Organic Traffic Converts Better than PPC Traffic? by drummerboy9000

10. Determining Keyword Value by eslobrown

* Indicates blog post was promoted to the SEOmoz Blog

• SEOs Are Spammers, Evil Doers and Opportunists:
  And yes, you should read the exchange between blogger Derek Powazek and Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan. If you missed it, the back-and-forth went a little something like this… Powazek made a post disparaging SEO, which sparked a reaction across the industry. Danny Sullivan responded to Powazek’s post. Then, Powazek responded to Danny’s response and Danny followed up again in response to Powazek’s response. There were also a myriad of tweets and blog posts, but that’s the basic gist of the blogger-mama-drama that was.  

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Sam Niccolls

• Bing’s Twitter Search & Google’s Defensive PR:
  On the heels of Bing’s Twitter Search announcement, Google’s PR team put their Annie Oakley shades on and announced some upcoming social media moves of their own.

• Google Analytics’ New Features:
  There are some fantastic features in GA’s latest release including customized alerts, threshold goals (i.e. for time on site and pages per visit), advanced table filtering, mobile traffic reporting, more robust user defined variables, and unique visitor segmentation, just to name a few.

• Why SEO Matters:
  Derek Powazek’s blog posts aside, About Online Matters’ thoughtful reflection provides some great reminders about the value and importance SEO.

• Business Week Best Under 25:
  If you’re inspired when you see those 13 year old figure skaters win Olympic gold, Business Week’s list of top 25 young entrepreneurs will have you looping and lutzing in no time.

• Please Remove Your Site From Google:
  This e-mail from a hopelessly confused webmaster to a competitor is worth its weight in gold.

• SEOmoz News – Lindsay Perkin Wassell Announces Departure:
  In her post last week, SEOmoz’s consulting lead reminds us that not all duplicate content is bad. And though we feel bad for the non-canonical twin, we couldn’t be happier for Lindsay and her husband. Many congrats, Lindsay!

• Wolfram Alpha Launches $50 iPhone App:
  In a month where a search engine launches a $50 iPhone app and Adobe rolls out a free Photoshop app, doubts could be raised. But to the best of our knowledge, the world is still round and pigs are still unable to fly.

• Conde Nast to Close Gourmet Magazine:
  At the beginning of the month, Conde Nast made their not so savory announcement that they’re closing Gourmet and two other magazines.

• New Q & A: Bing Continues to Improve for Webmasters:
  Bing made a solid addition to their webmaster suite with the addition of a new Q & A section.

• The Evolution of Zuckerberg & Facebook:
  VentureBeat’s under the hood look at the evolution of Zuckerberg provides an interesting news feed on Facebook’s company history and culture.

• Germany’ Best SEO Resources 
  We love that Germans love SEO here at SEOmoz. If you’re a German SEO, or you spreken a little Deutsch, you can cast your votes for Germany’s best on SEO United’s site. (Note: If you do not speak German, referring traffic source is a great way to pick your vote for "Best SEO Blog.")

• People Are Less Happy on Mondays:
  Facebook status updates confirm the brilliance of Bill Lumbergh; We’re all prone to catching cases of the Monday’s… mmm-kay, great.

• Google Patents Trust Rank:
  Bill Slawski talks about how the trust rank in Google’s recent patent is different from the trust rank described in Yahoo’s 2004 paper and he shares some possible reasons for the patent. In related news, the Google Webmaster Tools patent on crawl rate filed by Vanessa Fox and several others in 2006 was also accepted this month.

• Using Google Analytics  to Find Links to Your Non-www:
  Luna Metrics has a wealth of useful blog posts on web analytics. And though limited to link data on your own site, Jim Gianoglio’s method for finding links to your non-www URLs is a creative, SEO-related use of Google Analytics.

• Video – Aaron Patzer Talks About Mint:
  The presentation given my Mint’s CEO about the company’s history is an entertaining watch for startup entrepreneurs and tech junkies alike.

• Back in the eCommerce Day:
  Get Elastic’s Linda Bustos share’s a wayback machine style look at 9 old school eCommerce website designs.

• Surprising Web Analytics Usage Data:
  The Google commissioned Forrester study uncovers some statistics you might not have guess about enterprise usage of free analytics tools, as well as how ineffectively most people use their web analytics tools.

• Video – Matt Cutts Gets His Herr Did:
  Members of Matt Cutts’ team shave his head as the camera rolls.

• 20 Conversion Rate Optimization Resources:
  Wordstream’s compilation of conversion rate optimization focused blogs, books, and podcasts is worth a look through. It has several resources you might be familiar with, as well as a handful that are probably new.

• First Link Checker Tool:
  Based on the idea that Google only considers anchor text for the first link on a page to be relevant, BusinessOnLine launched an early version of a tool that identifies multiple links on a page with the same destination.

• 10 Worst Money Making Business Ideas:
  Neil Patel’s list of bad business ideas is both humorous and reprehensible. So yes, his Homer Simpson graphic is more than appropriate for the post.

• Using Google’s Chart API for Map-based Linkbait:
  I’m a big fan of Epicurious’ Seasonal Ingredient Map, as well as Travel Pod’s Traveler IQ Challenge, but Google code offers some pretty slick ways to implement customized maps for linkbait on your site.

Highlighted by two great posts from Casey Henry, each of which were promoted to the SEOmoz Blog, there have been a bevy of bookmark-worthy reads this October on YOUmoz.

Top YOUmoz entries:

1. *What Makes a Linkworthy Blog Post by chenry 
   

2. *Track Your Mozpoints by chenry
   

3. Google Universal Results in Brazil by Fabio Ricotta

4. Using WordPress Automated Keyword Insertion for the Long Tail by MOGmartin

5. An Attempt to Understand Local Ranking Factors by riseandshineseo

6. White-Hat Linkbuilding by deckers

7. Planning Your Internal Linking Structure by zoicaremus

8. Domain Authority: Is it a ranking factor? by BenRush

9. True or False: Organic Traffic Converts Better than PPC Traffic? by drummerboy9000

10. Determining Keyword Value by eslobrown

* Indicates blog post was promoted to the SEOmoz Blog

• SEOs Are Spammers, Evil Doers and Opportunists:
  And yes, you should read the exchange between blogger Derek Powazek and Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan. If you missed it, the back-and-forth went a little something like this… Powazek made a post disparaging SEO, which sparked a reaction across the industry. Danny Sullivan responded to Powazek’s post. Then, Powazek responded to Danny’s response and Danny followed up again in response to Powazek’s response. There were also a myriad of tweets and blog posts, but that’s the basic gist of the blogger-mama-drama that was.  

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Posted by randfish

(NOTE: This post is written by Ben Hendrickson and Rand Fishkin as a follow up to Ben’s presentation at the Distilled/SEOmoz training seminar in London this week)

Our web index, Linkscape, updated again recently, and in addition to provide the traditional stats, we thought we’d share some of the cutting edge research work we do here. Below, you’ll find a post which requires extremely close and careful reading. Correlation data doesn’t have all the answers, but it’s certainly very interesting. Likewise, the ranking models data provides a great deal of insight, but it would be dangerous to simply look at the charts without reading the post carefully. There’s a number of caveats and information – raw lines can mislead by themselves, so please be diligent!

[UPDATE Oct 26, 2009: There used to be a mistake.  Below there is a line showing showing correlation between unique domains linking and SERP order.  That line was previously incorrect.  Instead of being the number of unique domains linking to the target page, it was the number of unique domains linking anywhere on the domain of the target page.  The corrected line shows unique domains linking to be much more important, so I also added this line to the combined über score vs individual features chart.  My apologies for the error.  -Ben]

First, some stats on the latest Linkscape index:

• Release date: Oct. 6th, 2009 (exactly 1 year after our initial launch)
• Root Domains: 57,422,144 (57 million)
• Subdomains: 215,675,235 (215 million)
• URLs: 40,596,773,936 (40.5 billion)
• Links: 456,939,586,207 (456 billion; if we also include pages that 301, that number climbs to 461 billion)
• Link Attributes:
  • No-follow link, internal:  6,965,314,198 (1.51% of total)
  • No-follow links, external: 2,765,319,261 (0.60% of total)
  • No-follow links, total: 9,730,633,459 (2.11% of total)
  • 301′ing URLs: 384,092,425 (0.08% of total)
  • 302′ing URLs: 2,721,705,173 (0.59% of total)
  • URLs employing ‘rel=canonical’: 52,148,989 (0.01% of total)
• Average Correlation between mozRank + Google PageRank
  • Mean absolute error: 0.54
• Average Correlation between Domain mozRank (DmR) and Homepage PageRank
  • Mean absolute error: 0.37

Now let’s get into some of the research around correlation data and talk about how we can use the features Linkscape provides to produce some interesting data. These first charts use raw correlation – just the relationship between the ranking positions and the individual feature. As noted above, please read the descriptions of each carefully before drawing conclusions and remember that correlation IS NOT causation. These charts are not meant to say that if you do these things, you will instantly get better rankings – they merely show what features apply to pages/sites ranking in the top positions.

Understanding the Charts:

• Mean Index By Value:  These are used for the y-axises of many charts.  Instead of averaging the raw values, we average it’s relative index in the SERP if ordered by this value.  So if there are 3 SERPs, and the page in the first position has the 4th most links, the 2nd has the 1st most links, and the 3rd has the 10th most links, the mean index by # of links for the first position would be (4+1+10)/3 = 5.
• Mean Count Numbers – these numbers appear on the y-axis of the first chart, showing averages of link counts.
• Position:  This is used for the x-axises of many charts.  For these charts, this is specific to the organic position in Google.com, excluding any vertical or non-traditional search results (local, video, news, images, etc.)
• Error Bars: The bars that bound the trend lines in our charts can show the confidence of two different things.  On some charts, they show the 95% of confidence of where the mean will be if we had infinite analogous data.  These error bars show how confident we are in the line, and frequently have the word "stderr" in the title.  On other charts, they are our confidence of what any given SERP will look like.  These error bars are much wider, as we are much more certain of what the average of many SERPs will be than we are what any given SERP will look like.  Charts with these error bars are frequently labeled with "stddev" in the title.

The data below is based on a collection of 10,000 search results for a variety of queries (biased towards generic and commercial rather than branded/informational queries) and 250,000 results.  Some results were excluded for errors during crawling or returning non-html responses. Results are taken from Google.com in the US from October of 2009.

Are Links Well Correlated with Rankings?

Common SEO wisdom holds that the raw number of links that points to a result is a good predictor of ranking position. However, many SEOs have noticed that Yahoo! Site Explorer’s link numbers (and even Google’s numbers inside services like Webmaster Tools) can include a dramatic number of links that may not matter (nofollowed links, internal links, etc.) and exclude things (like 301 redirects) that matter quite a bit. Using the Linkscape data set, we can remove these noisy links and use only the number of external, followed links (and 301s) to run in our correlation analysis.

This first chart certainly suggests that correlation exists, but the spikiness is a bit frustrating. Through deeper analysis, we found that this is largely due to results that have ranking pages with massive (or very tiny)  quantities of links. Thus, it made sense to produce this next chart:

Here, we can see what would happen if we force-rank the results by number of links. This means we’ve taken each set of results and assigned a number (1, 2, 3, etc.) that corresponds to the quantity of links they have in comparison to the other pages ranking for that result (e.g. the page with the most links is assigned "1," the second-most links gets "2," etc). The smoothness of the line suggests it is fairly accurate, but we can be precise about our accuracy.  The error bars below show the 95th percentile confidence interval for estimates of the mean.

We’re looking good. The correlation is quite strong, suggesting that yes, the number of external, followed links is important and the standard error is low, so we can feel confident that the correlation is real. Clearly, though, comparing with the perfect fit line, links are not the whole picture. Having the most links out of your peers in the results is likely a very good goal, but it can’t be the only goal.

The last piece here is to examine the standard deviation. This can tell us how much an individual page might vary from the averages.

This chart tells us that variation for any individual set of results can be quite large, so getting more links isn’t always going to be a clear win. It’s notable that in this chart, standard deviation here is shown for the 95th percentile confidence, which is actually 1.97 standard deviations away from the mean. On the whole, # of external, followed links is clearly important and well correlated, but we’re going to need to get more advanced in our models and broader in our thinking to get actionable information at a granular level.

Can Any Single Metric Predict the Rankings?

Boy, that sure would be nice… We’ve looked in the past at the quality of metrics like PageRank, Yahoo! Site Explorer’s Link Counts, Alexa Rank, etc. The short answer is that they’re barely better than random guessing. Google’s PageRank score was (around February of 2009) approximately 16% better than random guessing for predicting ranking page (N+10 aka ranking page 1 vs. page 2) and less than 5% better than random guessing for predicting ranking position (N+1 aka ranking position 1 vs position 2). The chart below shows correlations for a number of popular SEO metrics:

Since then, Nick, Ben and Chas have all been hard at work on improving the value and quality of Linkscape’s index as well as the usefulness and signaling provided by the metrics. This next chart shows how we’re progressing:

The correlations above map in the 35-50% better than random guessing range (though it’s not a 1-to-1 comparison with the numbers above – watch for that in a future post) for the first result.  Looking at this graph suggests that external mozRank (which represents the quantity of link juice to a page from external links) and external followed links correspond well to current rankings is interesting and certainly lends an additional data point for link builders. This correlation line might, for example, suggest that in the "average" rankings scenario, earning links from high mozRank/PageRank pages with few links on them (so the links pass more juice) as well as higher raw quantities of external, followed links are both very important.  But even more, this chart supports the idea that earning links from unique domains is paramount. 

[UPDATE (Oct 26, 2009): Previously there was a paragraph speculating why the above result for the importance of unique linking domains was so much lower than we previously calculated.  As noted at the top of this post, this was because I used the wrong datapoint for unique domains linking.  Correcting this made the discrepancy with earlier results disappear.  The chart above is now correct.  -Ben]

The frustrating part about this data is that it’s not telling us the entire story, nor is it directly actionable for an individual search query. As you can see below, the standard deviation numbers show that for any given search, the range varies somewhat dramatically.

When we see this effect, just as we did above, takeaway for an SEO doing work on a client project and attempting to achieve a particular ranking position is unclear. Employing these metrics as KPIs and ways of valuing potential links is probably useful, and building competitive analysis tracking with these data points is likely to be considerably better than using more classic third-party metrics, but it doesn’t say "do this to rank better," and that’s the "holy grail" we’re chasing.

How Do "On-Page" Factors Correlate with Rankings?

This post has dealt very little with on-page factors and their correlation to rankings. We’ll look at that next.

Google recently announced that they ignore the meta keywords tag. This data, showing a line that’s very spiky and error bars showing stderr (standard error) all within the horizontal at "13" certainly supports that assertion. Employing the query term/phrase in the meta keywords is one of the least correlated signals we’ve examined.

Title tags that employ the query term, on the other hand, appear to have a real correlation with rankings. They’re certainly not perfectly correlated, but on average, this chart tells us that Google has a clear preference (though not massively strong – note the smaller range in the y-axis) for pages that employ the query term in the title tag.

We’ve examined H1/H2/Hx tags in the past and come to the conclusion that they have little impact on rankings. This graph certainly suggests that’s still the case. Employing the query in other on-page areas such as the body (anything between the <body> tags) and out anchors (employing the keyword in the <a> tag whether internal or external) have significantly greater correlation with rankings, while H1-H4 tag keyword use appears almost horizontal on the graph (suggesting no benefit is derived from its use). It’s not as bad as the random effect we observed with meta keywords (the lines all start a tiny bit below 13 and end a tiny bit above), but the positive correlation is low and the horizontal is mostly inside the error bars.

This graph is the clearest illustration yet of why it’s so important to build systems more advanced than simple, direct correlation. According to this chart, employing the query term in the path or filename of the URL is actually slightly negatively correlated with ranking highly, while the subdomain appears largely useless and the root domain has strong correlation. Granted, all of these (except the root domain) are on a very narrow band of the x-axis, but SEO experience tells us that using keywords in the name of a page is a very good thing, for both search rankings and click-through rate. Whenever we see data like this, a number of hypotheses arise. The one we like best internally right now is that the URL path/filename data may be skewed by the root domain keyword usage. Essentially, when a root domain name already employs the keyword term, the engines may see those who also employ it in the path/filename as potentially keyword stuffing (a form of spam). It may also be that raw correlation sees a large number of less-well URL-optimized pages performing well due to other factors (links, domain authority, etc.). It’s also true that most sites that employ the keyword in the path/filename don’t use it in the root domain as well, so the negative of the one may be mixed-in with the positive of the other.

Whatever the reason, this is a perfect example of why raw correlation is flawed and why a greater depth of analysis – and much more sophisticated models – are critical to getting more value out of the data.

Can We Build a Ranking Model that Gives more Actionable Takeaways?

To get to a true representation of the potential value of any given SEO action, we need a model that imitates Google’s. This is no easy undertaking – Google employs a supposed 200 ranking factors, so while we’ve got lots of data points (on-page and link factors, plus lots of derivatives/combinations of these) the complexity is still a dramatic hurdle.

The "uber" score (red line in the graph above) is built by taking all of these features we have about webpages, domains and links from both on-page analysis and Linkscape data. We (well, technically, Ben) run them through a machine learning model that maps to the search results and produces a result that’s considerably better correlated with rankings than any single metric. You can already see that in the top 10 search results, the slope of the line is looking really good – an indication that our metrics and analysis function better for predicting success in those areas (which, luckily, are the same positions SEOs care most about).

These machine learning ranking models let us take a much more sophisticated look at the value of employing a keyword in any particular on-page feature. Instead of going off simple correlation, we can actually ask, based on our best fit model, "what’s the impact of using the keyword here?" Let’s use the example we struggled with above showing negative correlation for keywords in path/filename: 

As you can see, this model suggests that, once again, subdomains are largely useless places to put keywords, but the root domain is a very good place to employ it. Path and filename are slightly positive, which also fits with our expectations. It’s also important to note that on this chart some lines dip below 0 on the "mean derivative of uber" y-axis in the 20-25 ranking position range. This suggests that for those results, the keyword use may actually be hurting them. Looking into some sample results, we can see that a number of the URLs in that 20-25 range seem to be trying too hard. They’re using the keyword multiple times in the domain/path/filename and fit with what many SEOs call "spammy-looking." It could certainly be a weakness in our model’s accuracy, but we think it’s also likely that a lot of pages would actually benefit from being a bit less aggressive with their URL keyword stuffing.

In this next chart, we can see the standard deviation error bars. You can see that we’re more confident that in the top results, employing keywords in these URL features won’t hurt and is likely to help, while in the latter portion of the results, we’ve got a bit less confidence about the negative effects.

Let’s turn our attention to those pesky H(x) tags again, and see if the ranking model has more to say about their impact/value.

We’re still getting mostly similar results. It appears that H1-H4 tags are not great places to use keywords.  As with the URL features, they seem to help a tiny bit (even less than URL features, actually), then have a very tiny negative – flat effect in the latter SERPs. Even with the error bars, this is fairly convincing evidence that H(x) tags just don’t provide much value. A best practice might still suggest their use, but there are probably far more valuable places to use your keywords.

Our link measurements also get more sophisticated (and tell a more nuanced story) when we use the ranking models. You can see above that improving mozRank in the top results appears important, while raw # of links may be less valuable. However, when we look further back in the results, you see the negative dip, suggesting that some pages may be over-using mozRank and external links (quite possibly from less reputable/spammy sources). This graph doesn’t have a ton of actionable data (as controlling the amount of mozRank or even the number of external links you get is probably not wise), but it does fit fairly nicely to a lot of the things we know about SEO – good links help, bad links might hurt.

The last graph shows some of the more interesting on-page features from our dataset. The big one here is the consistent suggestion to use images with good alt text that employ your keyword term/phrase. That green line is one of our highest correlations for on-page keyword usage. Putting keywords in bold, in body text (anywhere) and even in out anchors (remember, these are any anchors, not necessarily external links) has the same type of positive impact at top SERPs and slight negative in the 20-25 range that we’ve seen previously. This shouldn’t surprise us at all is we suspect that spammers/keyword-stuffers are playing more heavily in those result numbers.

Conclusions & Take-Aways:

I know this is a lot of data to parse, but it’s also pretty important to understand if you’re in the SEO space and want to bring more data credibility and analysis to your projects. We suspect that SEOmoz isn’t the only firm working on this (though we may be the only one willing to publicly share the data for now), and you can bring a lot of credibility to a client project or in-house effort with these data points showing the importance and predicted value of the changes you recommend as an SEO. There are plenty of people who malign our industry as being based on hunches and intuition rather than strong data. With these analyses, we’re getting closer to closing that gap. We don’t want to suggest that this data is perfect (the error bars and accuracy analyses show that’s obviously not the case), but it’s certainly a great extra piece to add to the equation.

Things the data suggests that we feel good about:

• Links are important, but naive link data can mislead. It seems wise to get more sophisticated with link analysis.
• No single metric can predict rankings (at least, not yet)
• H1s (and H2s-H4s) probably aren’t very important places to use your keywords
• Alt attributes of images are probably pretty important places to use your keywords
• Keyword stuffing may be holding you back (particularly if you’re outside the top 15 results and overusing it)
• Likewise, overdoing it with (not-so-great) links might be hurting you

We’re definitely looking forward to comments and questions, but Ben & I are in the UK and may not be back online for a while (Ben’s plane leaves in a few hours for the US and British Airways doesn’t yet have wifi in-flight).

p.s. A shoutout to Tim Grice from SEOWizz, who put together this correlation analysis a few weeks back.

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Posted by jennita

Have you been thinking about submitting to YOUmoz lately, but you’re not sure what the benefits are? Or perhaps you have a killer post in your head but are afraid to take the next step. Whatever the reason is that you’ve been holding back, I have 10 reasons why you should get yourself in gear and get that post written and submitted!

1. Reach tens of thousands of SEOs
   Our subscribers for both the main blog and YOUmoz continue to climb. Every month the numbers grow, just think about how many people will see your work. This is a great way to make yourself known in the industry.
   
   

2. Get great feedback
   People will leave comments and help/suggestions about your issue, or even ideas you hadn’t considered before.

3. Good posts get page views
   If you write a successful post, it can generate lots of traffic. For example, the great post that Aaron Hunter wrote comparing Joomla and Wordpress is still getting over 1,000 page views a month and he wrote the post over a year ago. 
   • 6,959 page views from January through July.
   • 11,468 page views since date of post (January 2008)
     

4. Get smart SEOs visiting your links
   SEOmoz visitors clickthrough rate is tremendously high compared to other blogs and sites in the field. When we link, people click, so if you want eyeballs, make something compelling. Check out how many members we have on our site, that’s a lot of people looking at your work!
   

5. Badge of Honor
   Our bar is set high – just to make it to YOUmoz is tough; getting on the main blog is a real challenge. Our readers’ expectations are high and we reject 10 submissions for every 1 we accept. It’s a badge of honor and, in many cases, resume-worthy, particularly in the search world.

   As an example, check out chenry’s post on CAPTCHAs’ Effect on Conversion Rates. It was so popular, it was moved to the main blog, and ended up with 58 thumbs up, 0 thumbs down (a feat I never manage myself!) and 73 total comments.

   His entry isn’t super long, but it is to the point, he shows graphics and pulls the reader into the post quickly.

6. Get a job!
   Yes, people come to SEOmoz looking for SEOs to hire (see the marketplace, for example). If you can show your knowledge through written word, you are likely to get some calls/emails.

7. mozPoints 
   When you reach 100 mozPoints, the nofollow is removed from your profile and if you reach 150+ within one month you could get a free SEOmoz PRO membership for a month!

   YOUmoz is the best way to earn those points because content gets more thumbs than comments (most of the time). Plus every time your YOUmoz entry gets posted on the site, you get 10 mozPoints, plus whatever thumbs up that post receives. AND if your post gets promoted to the main blog, you’ll get an additional 15 mozPoints.

8. Beat Rand!
   Many of the best YOUmoz writers have authored posts with more thumbs than Rand’s posts – just think how you can flaunt it in his sad, bearded face!
   

9. Rank!
   If you want to get top rankings in the engines with a piece of your content, but don’t have the appropriate domain for it, SEOmoz has a lot of juice and ability to compete. While we don’t allow parasite hosting, we do have YOUmoz
   

10. Umm… you get a frickin’ live link!
    We have some serious sweet link juice floating around these pages, why not take advantage. All submissions are subject to our editorial approval of course (more on this below).

What we’re looking for when reviewing YOUmoz entries

The fact is, if you submit a post that is clear, concise, well written and thought out, your entry will more than likely be approved. We are happy to post beginner articles along with more seasoned posts. Often times if a post is good, but needs some extra help to make it great, we’ll work with you to get the post just right.

Use images!
Photos and images break up the content and help make it more readable. They give your post more “oomph” and  can help you make your point more clear. Plus, great posts with graphics do really well.

For example, just look what feedthebot did back in 2007: How to put Google custom site search into your current website design. He wrote a post about integrating Google custom site search with your current web design and included some great visuals, which made the post engaging. As a result, since the post was published in May 2007, he has gotten over 38,486 page views.

Come up with some sort of unique and relevant image that goes with your post. If the post is short, then one image will do, but if it’s a big longer,  break it up with multiple images. Some examples:

• Screenshots with areas highlighted
• Charts or graphs
• Illustrations
• Photos

Here are a couple recent examples of good use of images/graphics in a post:

Unique Content
We search for duplicate content and if we see the same post on another site, your entry will be automatically rejected.  So it’s more beneficial for you to only submit unique content.

Spell check and Grammar check
We read through every entry and will make changes as needed. However if the post is filled with misspellings and grammar changes that would take us a long time to fix, then your post probably won’t get approved. Depending on how good it is we may send it back to you and ask you to redo it, but only if it’s “knock your socks off” good.

When it comes down to it, have fun with your post and don’t hold back. It’s great to have posts that cover a mix of subjects, just keep them relevant. They don’t have to be specifically about SEO, but the general topic of search marketing usually hits the mark! If you have questions feel free to email or send me a private message. I’m happy to help get your entry posted! And don’t forget…

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