It has been a week since we launched SEOmoz's new site design, and thus it's been a week since YOUmoz launched. We thought we'd offer up a "State of the YOUmoz Address" so that we can fully explain our intent behind creating a user-generated section on our site.
Rand wanted more user participation on our new site, but he felt that there are plenty of great SEO forums that already exist. We brainstormed YOUmoz as a way of allowing our loyal readers to author up their own blog posts and see them published on our site. We're looking for quality content that closely resembles something that we'd put on our main blog (in fact, if a user submits a post that knocks our SEOmoz socks off, we will move it over to the main blog).
So far, we've had a great flow of submitted posts. At any given time, we've had up to 10 posts sitting in our queue, each of them ranging in length, subject, and author. Any of the SEOmoz staff members can approve or deny a submission; don't assume, however, that each post we publish has earned our seal of approval. We've put a couple of posts up that weren't smack-you-in-the-face fantastic so that we could see how the readers would respond to them--this is, after all, a section devoted to you!
So, what posts have we denied so far? There have been a couple posts that weren't published because they were overtly self-advertising, which is not useful or beneficial information for our readers. We are, however, planning on adding some fields where you can enter your company's name, your job title, or your URL, which will serve as a byline of sorts when you author a post. That way, you won't have to pitch or plug yourself at the bottom of each post and run the risk of seeming pitchy or self-advertising.
Additionally, a couple of posts that hadn't been cleaned up or formatted properly (one huge paragraph, multiple spelling and grammar problems, etc) were also denied, simply because we have too much work to do to devote all of our time editing and cleaning up user-submitted entries. (We will make some small changes here and there, but don't expect us to re-write everything.)
Check out the Popular YOUmoz Entries to see which posts have been getting the most reader love. SearchStudent's "How to Game the New SEOmoz Voting System" is currently at the top of the list with 20 thumbs up and 3 down. Though his post isn't particularly insightful or chock-full of useful SEO tidbits, it's a fun read and is injected with personality. At the opposite end of the spectrum, rmccarley's "Super Advanced SEO Tip" post sits at #2, with 12 thumbs up and zero thumbs down. He gets brownie points for brown-nosing me and Matt, but his post also does a good job at grabbing the reader's attention. Rounding out the top three is roadies, who compared SEOmoz's Top Ranked Members list to Digg removing their Top Diggers list in his post "Digg Takes Users Down While SEOmoz Puts them On Top." His post is well-written and thought-provoking, thus garnering 13 thumbs up and one thumb down.
Peruse through the Popular YOUmoz Entries list and you'll see that the content of these posts vary; therefore, you don't necessarily have to be hilarious, controversial, or an SEOmoz butt kisser to get published. All you have to do is write about something that you think will interest or benefit our readers, whether it be a tool, breaking SEO news, tips, etc, and we'll definitely pay attention.
While YOUmoz currently has a small community of participants, we're looking forward to receiving entries, reading comments, and watching the participation grow. Happy reading (and writing)!
P.S. Regarding the criticism about rejecting posts that weren't broken up into readable paragraphs and had multiple spelling and grammar problems, I'd like to add that we didn't snobbishly glance at how the posts looked and then rejected them. I quickly read through these posts and found that the content wasn't stellar, either, so combined with the fact that if I were to publish them, I'd have to clean them up a lot, I decided to deny their publication. If I were to come across an "ugly-looking" post that had fantastic content, then it would probably be worthwhile to clean it up and publish it.
By: Rebecca Kelley
Here's Looking at YOUmoz
Moz News
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
I was wondering why my rankings were barely going up even though my posts were getting a ton of thumbs up...
I fixed the rankings, posts now count toward mozpoints.
Pimp! That put me up to #19 with 104 points! Thanks Matt!
Welcome to the top 100 Chris. I'm definitely looking forward to some more of your crazy posts.
I think its time for a pubcrawl again, to celebrate!
Well this is just sad. I think we have a fairly sophisticated audience here.
If someone's entry references some resource that they have put together is one thing, and even that should be able to be done low-key, but this sounds more like outright, blatant self-promotion.
And if someone's entry, even their comments, are intriquing enough, everyone's profile is just a click away. Hopefully these were new people who stumbled onto the site.
Adding a byline section though will certainly be a nice touch and hopefully satisfying the self-promotion urges.
The online world has certainly done damage to spelling and grammar and it is easy to get sloppy. Since no one is being forced to post in YOUmoz and everyone can decide for themselves whether they feel there is value in doing so, I think it is perfectly acceptable and even expected that SEOmoz should establish at least some levels of acceptability. I would imagine that anything that was felt to be worthwhile content but failing harsh enough in these other areas might at least prompt a "hey this is great, accept..... if you could just touch it up a bit and resubmit...."
After all, anyone could come along and read a YOUmoz post without truly understanding that the author doesn't represent SEOmoz directly, and at the point, they are represeting SEOmoz indirectly. Obviously most people have a better understanding that comments often come from anyone and anywhere.
Looking forward to more great YOUmoz content. I wasn't quick to hop over there, and there is mix of content, but all in all, I'd encourage anyone who hasn't made the journey. I think it will prove to be an interesting area.
... the only problem is now trying to keep up with all the content!!
Great comment, identity--you really hit the nail on the head!
Very well said Brian,
As a user I really do demand a certain level of professionalism on SEOmoz. If they started allowing hastily thrown together articles on Youmoz, I would definitly speak up.
I think it is ok to be a tad bit loose right now, as things are just warming up. But as the posts increase I would expect the quality to improve as well.
I think adding the company field is a great move towards encouraging more professionals and companies to get involved. While at the same time setting solid guidelines as to where it is acceptable to make a plug.
Good stuff!
The problem with the current setup is this. If you could write compelling well written SEO articles it would be in your best interest to syndicate them somewhere like Webpronews in order to receive maximum exposure (people do read them) and links.
I don't understand why you would write a powerful professional article and put it on a site that doesn't even give you a valid link back until after you post / comment many times. Sounds like a bad market strategy to me. If you enjoy it and working for free is fun for you, then that's one thing, but to expect well written articles and posts when you offer very little in return (as compared to other distribution sources) is naive at best, arrogant at worst.
People like this community and this website - so they may choose to work for free and continue to push SEOmoz to the top of the serps and thereby making it even harder for themselves to rank (time invested in other people's content.)
Soloman, is writing valuable content and participating in a community ALWAYS about getting your rankings up? What about writing youmoz entries so you can teach others a cool SEO trick you learned? Or what about writing youmoz entries so you can get feedback and ideas on something?
Also, SEOmoz already has a built in audience. While ultimately you'd want your brand to exist on your own site or blog, authoring a killer entry on an SEO site that gets thousands of visitors a day is a great way to get in the game. If you wrote that entry on your own small blog the likelihood of it being noticed (at least in the beginning) is much lower.
It's not ALWAYS about getting higher rankings, but unfortunately SEO is a competition and everyone has very limited resources. If you like sharing SEO tricks and writing, that's great, but why not write about SEO and use it to improve your online presence at the same time. In a way seomoz could do that for you, but I was just pointing out how you expect a lot when you're on the low end for returns. Search Engine Optimization is competitive, by promoting you I'm hurting myself unless I'm going after a different market segment or I'm able to promote myself as well.
At the very least I would want a live link in the bottom of any article I wrote or contributed to seomoz. That's not too much to ask and many other sites with powerfully rankings and promotional value will give me that. Beyond the ranting comments, I can actually write, but I need to get something out of that effort, like a link at the bottom of the contribution.
I think you need to think outside of the box a little. Perhaps a nofollow link from an SEOmoz article won't bring you rank, but it will bring you highly qualified and targeted visitors if done correctly.
For example, look at this post by CarstenC. He wrote an informative piece and linked to a tool that he built. The visitors read the article, click the link and try out the tool. He wins because he gets the visitors and exposure, SEOmoz wins for getting an informative piece of content, and the users win with a new tool to add to their repository.
As for me personally, my posts so far haven't been about SEO at all. They've been about YOUmoz (I'm easy). I wouldn't really want to add that to my blog or to a forum because the audience wasn't right. If I do get an itch to write an SEO article, I'll probably post it here too because my own blog is becoming less and less about SEO (by choice) and my other sites are all about other niches.
I haven't looked at everyone who is posting on SEOmoz, but at least speaking for myself, I can't really say that I'm competing with SEOmoz, or at least that SEOmoz is competing with me. Saying so would certainly be an insult to one of us, but I won't say who ;)
So why post in YOUmoz?
First, focusing on the "what's in it for me view".... which is respectable, I think we all look at most things with a bit of that view...
Again, I imagine for some, it may be a way to get more attention than through other channels.
Knowing that this is an active audience, primarily of peers, though not limited to that, this may be as much an opportunity to connect and partner as it is to "win" new business.
Now the other point of view, "why should I"....
SEOmoz, as Rand tells us, is all about transparency. Most of us have gained in unmatched view inside the industry, revealing a lot of information that simply wouldn't be revealed otherwise.
SEOmoz has also been generous in presenting a lot of "how we do it" in an industry overflowing with "why to do it" information. I for one am grateful for having a resource that I can trust, as well as enjoy, that spends as much or more time teaching than selling.
I have a feeling many others might share this feeling and would consider making a few contributions to YOUmoz a bit of payment in kind.
Hey Matt.... shouldn't that be YOUmoz? ;)
Hello Solomon,
If you are in direct competition with SEOmoz it might not make sense to post an article on Youmoz rather then posting it on your own site.
But there are many times when it would.
For example. I have my own link building company, and Rand and the boys are pretty dam good at what they do. You might then ask, why would you post an article on Youmoz Jarrod?
Here's a few reasons why:
You also mention that it would be good to get at least a link out of it. Not sure if you had saw the section about them adding that, but they do plan on it.
It's not that hard to get a (nofollowed) link right now anyway, just get 100 thumbs up.
Ya, I've gotten almost 100 mozpoints just this week alone. It doesnt take that much.
100 thumbs up seems easy, as I already ahve 36 from a few comments over the last month I've been reading this blog. It seems a few people in the community really fired back at some of my comments. I'm happy for everyone who's getting benefit out of this community and is willing to participate for the exposure on this site.
I just gave you one more point Solomon ;)
We would love to have you participate even more!
Constructive criticism is always needed. A lot of us are pretty passionate at times, but it goes to show how tight of a community it is.
I didn't add it to my list, but there is no doubt that I spend so much time on here because I really enjoy the crowd. And it's one of the few places I feel totally comfortable with being myself while still talking shop.
When I do write an article it will be just as much for the communities benefit as it will be for mine. Anything I can do to give back to such a wonderful community, that has tought me so much, will be reward in of itself.
I read 200 blog posts a day, so I'll be around. I'm still not convinced it's worth posting a blog entry here instead of on my own blog which is already syndicated by Webpronews, but I do enjoy reading the opinions of like minded individuals. I'm actually VERY hard at work preparing the launch of a search marketing video blog that I believe will really get some attention. No one in the SEO world knows me as of now, but I don't plan on remaining silent very much longer. Thanks for the thumbs up!!
I sound like an SEOmoz recruiter... LOL
There are lots of people who post lots of content on lots of forums and never give a thought about a tangible return.
To some of them, just the idea that their posts might be helpful is enough of a reward to motivate a significant content contribution. And, often when you post, the brainstorming and comments that others send back are a far more valuable education than what was contributed to launch the discussion.
There are few other places where a person can throw up an idea and get feedback or thumbs down from folks like Rand Fiskin, Jarrod Hunt, Jim Boykin, Matt Cutts, Dazzlindonna, Kim Krause Berg, McCarley, Russel Jones and many others (I missed a lot of you but these people were in the last few posts that I read). And if you go to cre8asiteforums you can read a lot of fantastic content freely given by Bill Slawski, who I place right up there with Rand Fishkin for being among the most generous and knowledgeable people on the web.
I think that the folks at SEOmoz in particular hold the concept of generosity and sharing as an important personal compass. They could spend all of their time working for clients but instead they refer away good money-paying biz so they can post on this blog, design it from scratch and try to come up with a few little perks like MozPoints.
So, I don't think that taking a little time to type out a few ideas and spell check them is a high price at all for what you get back.
Sorry, this comment as not related to the topic, but is a questions for Matt - the threaded comments are getting narrower as more people "Reply to XYZ". Does anyone else find it harder to read, with too much scrolling? I know you just redesigned the site, but maybe the threaded conversation layout could be improved? You can position user photo within the grey area of a comment, allowing the text to occupy a wider area and/or wrap around user photo (float:left; ?). Just a gentle suggestion, hold your flames.
It is rather narrow, I'll try adjusting it a bit.
Add another one to your up column from me as well.
When you think about it, 100 is almost a joke, but I think it reinforces SEOmoz... it is really saying that they want to reward everyone for participating, and if it is your goal to reach 100, it is easily attainable, but it is also keeping people honest to hopefully keep away the blog-spammers.
You've hit on and demonstrated one of the best things about coming here, it is a close knit, and feeling closer and closer all the time, community where it is easy to express your views, whether they are in agreement or not, and you know they will be accepted and respected.
I'd like to give one big thumbs up to YOUmoz in general. It's funny because I used to have a hard time keeping up with all the posts on the main blog and now I'm checking in more often and wondering when there will be something new on YOUmoz.
I don't think I've gotten more then 4 hours of sleep since they launched the new site ;)
Of course trying to keep the servers running after 2 Diggs, 1 SuperProposal, Frontpage of Seattle Times, 1000 new incoming links, and a flood of new users, all within a 24 hour period has kept me up for at least a few minutes the past week :) . (Poor Matt and Jeff have slept even less)
I can't wait until Rand shows some of the stats!
I'm very, very happy with how youmoz has been turning out. Initially I was concerned that the scoring system wouldn't work very well, either a post would get a couple of thumbs up or none at all and the overall scores wouldn't be very indicative of popularity. This has not been the case, I've seen some posts getting tons of thumbs up and some posts actually going into the negative. I'm happy that the thumb-ocracy is working like it should.
I'm also happy we have readers who are so willing to contribute. I think this community has the potential to really take off.
Your website traffic is outstanding and this site is designed beautifully (functionality wise and aesthetics.) What exactly is your goal with this site anyways?
My question is meant in an informal way as I already know your mission statement.
Put simply, this site is meant to:
Wow, Matt. I couldn't have said it better myself. Brilliant in its simplicity.
This is why he gets the big bucks! ;)
...and the new site has definitely helped with that :)
The whole ranking thing really creates in a friendly level of competitiveness, and the YOUmoz section helps to give more of a sense of community, in that everyone can participate (all I have to do now is find some time to write something, and hope I catch Rebecca in a good mood) ;)
If I'm in a bad mood, just schmooze Rand or any of the other Mozzers :)
Rebecca in a bad mood? I didn't know that was possible. You do a good job putting on a smile for your fans.
some posts actually going into the negative.
Oatmeal, I'm glad that I could help you out in that department.
Overall, I think you guys did a really good job with the new site. It keeps you hooked.
Nah - mine for sure!
On a serious note, I think that what YOUmoz does incredibly well (at least from my point of view) is gives me a forum to post about what I do for a living as I don't have my own SEO blog and I barely have the time to blog about what I love, let alone what pays the bills.
It's nice to get recognition for a post that people agreed with, or thought made some good points, especially on a site that I personally consider to be the best of all the SEO blogs (is that enough butt-kissing?!)
And with regards to the grammar - I'm a grammar Nazi too (and I have to put up with you guys calling it search engine optimization instead of optimisation for God's sake!) - what I would say in defence of the YOUmozzers though is that some sort of spell-check system in the post a blog tool would be nice.
I don't like writing in Word and copying & pasting, and once I've written in the YOUmoz tool there seems no way of copying back into Word to spell check. Unless I'm being incredibly thick of course.
But basically, I love it!
Hi Ciaran,
About the spell checking. A simple work around for now is to use Firefox's built in spell checking. I dont think Matt is going to be implementing spell checking anytime soon since he is Using TinyMCE for the editor, and it doesnt support it.
In order to spell check a text field in Firefox 2+ you need to right click on the field and then select the option "Spell check this field".
Hope that helps. It's a common "suggestion" that a lot of people are making.
And if you don't have Firefox 2.0, there is a spellcheck extension for Firefox 1.5.
TinyMCE does have a spellchecker I just can't get it to work. If I make any progress I'll let you guys know.
All I ever wanted was to be the guy known as the "SEOmoz butt kisser". My life is complete.
BTW grammar Nazi, shouldn't it be butt-kisser? ;-)
Rebecca,
There are a couple questions/comments I have myself, and have seen posted elsewhere.
One question is about Youmoz points for user submitted articles. Chris (searchstudent) was a bit suprized I think that the votes he recieved for the article he published, didn't go towards his mozpoints.
Is there any plan to give mozpoints to article publishers? I can see the reasoning behind the moz staff not getting points for publishing on the main blog, but should there be some sort of mozpoint incentive for publishing an article?
Perhaps not 1 point per vote, but something else?
The other question I have is whether SEOmoz is going to have a policy on submitting duplicate content? Is it ok to publish articles that have been listed elsewhere? too what degree?
I can see some articles that have been published already listed in other places. I think thats probably ok if is just on the article writers site, but what if that article is submitted and published on a bunch of sites...
This is a very good point. Although I assumed that YOUmoz was for new content only, I wondered this exact same thing.
CopyScape might have an API to scrub for duplicate content. It wouldn't be too hard to do at the moderation stage.
Matt said that YOUmoz votes should be counted towards mozpoints, and that if it's not then it could be a bug.
As for a policy on submitting dup articles, we'll have to get Rand's input on that...
The YOUmoz section ROCKS. But there may be a little bug. When I posted my first YOUmoz, I had 79 MOZpoints. The article got 20 thumbs up and 3 down so far, totalling 17 up. My MOZpoints now are at 83, so it seems the articles themselves do not pass points.
Either way, I post here for the fun. MOZpoints are cool and I want more than other people just for the cool factor, not for a backlink ;-)
SEOmoz 4 LYFE!!!
Points - users who submit content should be receiving one point per "up" vote, so it's just like comments. If that's not the case, it's a bug and we'll be straight to work on it.
Duplicate content - unless it's coming from SEL, SEW or WebProNews, I'd be worried that Google and the other engines might perceive the SEOmoz version as the canonical source compared to smaller sites, so it's wise for submitters to make sure they're at least changing a significant portion of how it's written, if not the content itself. Submitters should, of course, always feel free to reference any links.
Sorry I've been so absent from the blog - I should be almost through my 600+ backlogged emails fairly soon and back to bloggin'!
I guess being on every tv show, radio show, and magazine has been taking up your time this week? Don't worry, we do miss you, but enjoy being a celebrity (although you will ALWAYS be an SEO celebrity) while it lasts and congrats again.
I've been thinking the same thing about YOUmoz points for the submitted articles. If anything it takes a lot more work to write an article that gets published and then gets some thumbs up than it does to write a comment.
I think a thumbs up on an article is worth more than one on a comment, but I think having them count the same is probably the best way to go.
I second that.
This is just my opinion but as Seomoz is not an article repository site it should not be used for "dumping" your articles at. If I start seeing the same articles here that I see everywhere else it will become less interesting.
Thanks for this post. I was wondering what criteria a youmoz post should have. Good to know about the dup content idea.
Great initiative. But I'll consider posting with more care the next time around. :)
I am new to this site as well as the design. But the new design is something that attracted me to this site. It is rare to see a well designed site that has a solid SEO foundation. Very nice work and hope to be a frequent member of this site.
I really like the whole YouMoz idea along with the thumbs up and down, points, community feel etc. Is this all functionality that you custom-coded for your site or is there a pre-existing platform (open source or otherwise) that you used to make it happen?
I orginally thought this setup may have been a custom wordpress job, but aparently it's completly 100% custom designed.
Impressively executed indeed.
I agree. I added this site in particular to my list of favorite designs both aesthetically and functionality wise.
We've put a couple of posts up that weren't smack-you-in-the-face fantastic so that we could see how the readers would respond to them--this is, after all, a section devoted to you!
Gulp! Hopefully, none of those articles were mine...
Rebecca,
In order for the post to be approved, does it have to be "new content" or can a blogger pick one of his/her most popular posts from the past and submit it to YOUMoz?
Even though I like this community ... one thing that kind of alerted me in this post was that you were critical of "grammar" whenever looking over the articles submitted. My question is ... if people understand it, why become an "English teacher" and reject those that can't write as well as others?
Isn't it all about search and quality of the content?
If it's a spelling mistake ... those spell checkers take few seconds to fix things up. And if it's grammar ... hey if you understand it ... why not let it be? Isn't YOUMoz a community "section". Imagine if Forums start rejecting posts if they are not properly written?
I know SEOMoz is a private company and not a government. You don't have to do things you don't want, nor do you have to try to please everyone. This comment is just a suggestion or I guess food for thought.
P.S. Rand .... congrats. Great video.
I dont want to put words in Rebecca's mouth but I'm sure that they wont reject an article if it only has a few mistakes.
As just one example, Chris's article about how to game the system, had at least a dozen grammar errors, but his personality made it a great article none-the-less.
I'm a grammar Nazi, but I'm not going to go crazy and start injecting commas into each post that's submitted. However, we have received several entries that weren't spell-checked at all--there were numerous typos throughout the post that make it difficult to read through and distracted from the content. The same goes for general readability--if sentences are worded awkwardly, thus making the post difficult to read, it's not going to make for a positive user experience.
Keep in mind that this is a blog section, not a forum. If it were a forum, we wouldn't look things over for spelling or readability. Because users are submitting blog posts, however, they should keep the general guidelines in mind (concise paragraphs, bullet points/numbered lists if applicable, run a spell check, etc). I don't think many members would stick through a post that's one huge paragraph and is littered with errors.
The bottom line is that presentation matters. Would you accept a resume if it were written on torn, stained paper that looked like it had been dropped in several puddles and was used as toilet paper, even if the applicant potentially had great credentials and experience? The same goes for YOUmoz--if you sloppily throw together an entry, we're less inclined to give it the same attention as someone who took his or her time to proofread and format what he or she wrote.
Passion, content, and talent matter a lot mroe then the ligistics of presentation. If I decide to give content away for free I may or may not decide to spend very much time editing and rewriting it. I write so much that it gets hard to keep up after awhile. But hey, if you're a grammar Nazi, why not edit the entries submitted that help promote your site.
Actually - if anyone wants to submit free content for me to publish I'll edit it for you!. I'm half way kidding.
PS. I read your blog and will probably contribute a few entries eventually, despite all my BS comments.
Uh, because contrary to popular belief, my job title doesn't solely consist of me writing for and monitoring the blog here at SEOmoz...
Rebecca,
I fancy myself a Grammar Nazi as well. However, it is much easier to see errors in other people's writing. I'm somewhat blind to my own mistakes...
Ah man, I should have read your post before posting my latest butt-kissing story. ;)
It's interesing to hear about what happened to the denied posts, and why they were denied, as well.
Hey roadies, just a quick suggestion: Don't actually write out the <blockquote> tags, just click the "indent' button in the wysiwig window to quote something. Thanks :)
ah ha! Thanks for the tip Matt. My "submit and run" style has just caught up to me.
The "indent" term threw me off. Shouldn't it be "quote"?
Matt,
I'm ashamed to say, that I too, did not think to use the indent button for blockquotes.
Yeah, but tinymce (our wysiwig) calls it "indent," so that's what the button is named.
Hey, this young dogg got no problems with learning the new trickz. LOL
Sweet. Was wondering 'bout that. Thanks Matt.
I think this is a great feature you have added and I look forward to seeing what the readers have to say.
If i post something on my blog and repost it on here is that frowned upon?
I may have to indulge in a rant or two and submit them to Youmoz for approval, but I'm not convinced it's wroth my while yet. First the rel="no" needs to be lifted off my profile. Although currently with just a few random comments here and there SEOmoz sends me between 5 – 10 visitors a day, so maybe it would be worthwhile. Of course outside of market manipulation, it may be fun and worth while it no matter what, which is probably the attitude seomoz is most interested in perpetrating. Although all that free content is great for your SEO, especially with all those rel="no" links.
People go overboard pointing out grammar errors. I pay attention to grammar when it counts, but that wouldn't include comments or free content for other sites. Although, if it's part of an ongoing campaign or a great way to snake a few good links I'll take extra care.
Probably the best way to get rid of the nofollow on your profile link is to submit good YOUmoz content. A few dozen thumbs-up for a quality post will get you a whole lot closer to getting some link juice from SEOmoz.
To that end, I'd recommend you give any posts you want to submit at least a good once-over for grammar and spelling. As Rebecca mentioned, none of us have the time to do extensive editing, although we'll happily fix minor mistakes.