I've had several folks mention that they believe the ratio of high-quality posts at SEOmoz has declined over the last several months. I'd like to get a determination from the community as to your opinions about the amount of content and the relative levels of value provided. As we roll out a new version in the next few weeks, we have some options about how to structure the content to allow you to control what you are exposed to, so it's a great time to vote in a poll on the subject and provide feedback.
After we've collected some information on this topic, I might post another poll asking about which kinds of content you most enjoy and what you'd like to see take a hike. Thanks for your participation on this post; we'll do our best to make the SEOmoz blog the best possible resource it can be.
Please give this poll your most honest answer and feedback, even if it's harsh - it's better that we get hammered now and feel a bit sad than keep producing content that our readers don't truly appreciate. Thanks, in advance, for your candor.
This is totally my fault; I've never said anything worth the pixels it's occupied at seomoz. I think it just may be me single handedly bringing down the quality of this blog? Should I just keep some of this crap to myself? Like that crap I said about beards, and that punch myself in the face comment the other day, who needs that kind of commentary? That’s not going to get anyone’s site to the top three in the SERPS.
Come on, only relevant SEO/work related comments on seomoz would be like SES San Jose without any parties.
I think of seomoz like the cool kids table in the lunch room in high school, but this time I got a seat.
Besides if the importance of SMO is teaching us anything it's showing us signal with no noise is overrated.
LMFAO! I feel the same way. SEO Cool Kids. O'Doyle RULES!
OK - new poll:
Was ANYONE who reads this blog part of the cool kids table at high school? This comment resonates so well with everyone who reads it, I have to ask. Just have a seat at this table and tell us... and isn't being part of this table much more interesting and valuable? After all, the members of the high school table are probably flipping your burger right now.
Not only was I not at the cool table, but I had certain very strong reservations to even walking by the cool table depending on it's inhabitance.
You hear that Amy Tillman, I could have loved you, I have lots of love to give.
Well said - I think a certain degree of fun is important in our blog.
Vital, i would say. No one want's to read a blog that's all work and no play. That's what makes reading Blogs related to work so tempting and enjoyable in the first place.
>What is Your Feeling on the Quality of SEOmoz's Blog Content?
Definitely high. Varied topics within the industry, interesting personal takes and no filler posts. Keep it up!
Rand,
While, I agree that there has been alot more noise here, I don't necessarily dislike the noise. I just consider them a welcome brain break (notice how that rhymes with procrastinate) from the articles I bookmark for later reading because they'll take more "comprehension time".
I think a good solution would be not to post everything on the first page, in the same way that Threadwatch does.
But, I have to saw, as a long time reader (though infrequent commenter) I've actually added this blog to my must read list in the last year. Sure there are info packed blog posts from before that that are still in my referential bookmarks list, like that interview with Ammon, your looks at patents and your coverage of SESNYC a while back, but there are a number of posts from this year such as the one one competitive analysis sources that have become a part of my referential bookmark list as well.
BTW: I voted "Mediocre - Between 40-60% of the posts are of interest to me" however I don't consider 40-60% to be mediocre. Compared to most blogs (Including my own) that is stellar percentage. So I hope you don't misinterpret the results. Maybe you should also ask people what percentage of total posts that are signal would they want to see... understanding that people have to work, have a life, etc.
I voted for "mediocre," though I think thats a tough word to call it. SEOmoz is my favorite blog because of clear and concise nature of the posts. I picked 4-6 posts as being relevant these days because I feel there are some fluffier posts that have intermingled the last few months. SEOmoz is far from being mediocre and is still my favorite SEO blog.
I'm definately in the middle. I think the content is mostly great - and the learning continues from everyone's comments. I simply only have so much time to devote, so I choose only to read/comment on posts that relate to me on that particular day.
I think you're all doing a stellar job.
I'd be willing to bet the "noise" posts recieve more comments than the signal posts, so you tell us. If Rebecca hadn't added the noise into her fascinating post about her internship with Ammon it wouldn't have been near as entertaining. Please don't get rid of the noise because then the signal won't be as strong.
From the perspective of a long-time lurker here... searchstudent already said it, but it's very true: you can't consistently please the majority of your community. I think the level of response typical on SEOmoz indicates high levels of user loyalty. If you focus on creating compelling content (which you have done very well, already) you'll continue in the right direction.
Don't overthink things. And don't overreact to input that 'you're falling off' and getting noisy. It's good to be responsive, but use that thick skin you've probably developed over the years to stay focused.
And a little noise never hurt anyone, anyway. (Like the blog entry from your girlfriend - top reasons you know you're dating an SEO...?) :-)
This is my second favorite blog to read. Keep up the good work. I would just be a little careful, however, of giving the employees at SEOmoz the impression that they "must" post a blog entry. I'm not sure if this is the case, but some posts (I won't give any examples so nobody gets singled out) give me the impression that the SEOMozer just felt like he/she had to post something - anything - and these sorts of posts are the ones that I think of as "noise". Overall though, there aren't many blogs out there as good as yours so I really have no complaints.
Didn't vote for all the reason laid out above, it will only give you the wrong impressions.
As for the quality of the posts. I do think that there are not that many changes in the SEO world, therefore if you would only write down those highly valuable posts, it would mean only 1 or 2 posts a week.
This in turn would mean that you loose the community feeling and we, the visitors, would go elsewhere because we want to read something. Offcourse with the goal to learn something, but mostly we just want to read, IMO.
A good strategy could be to find some new ideas for recurring quality posts. The idea by Mintyman sounds awesome!
In-depth website reviews!
Only that means you have to invest alot of time and energy into it and I can very well imagine that you don't have the time for that. Also it would mean given free advice, advice for which you could have asked alot of money and the people who's website you don't review would probably feel left-out. It's just hard to please everyone, but overall I very much enjoy the blog and it's actually the only one I read front to back. Amongst those reasons is that you have to give yourself a break sometimes and the humorous posts from Rebecca do just that! Do not ever let her go! (go ask for a raise Rebecca :))
Quality posts from G-Man and Egol are always very welcome as well.
Overall I still think it's a very good mix you have, probably even better now than it was in the beginning.
Now if you could use the back button (and end up where you left off) and the server would be just as fast as before (recenly it has been taken quit a while for the main page to load) it would be close to perfect, as far blogs can be perfect.
Rand's posts are consistently good, others less so.
Thanks, Rand, for writing and running a truly excellent blog. What I read on here is a major inspiration to me. You all encourage me think big, write fast, and keep a high standard of honesty and excellence.
My brutal take:
I most appreciate the posts from seasoned, veteran search experts. I also like a bit of gutsy street reality about blackhat, pay-per-post, exploits and link voodoo that the squeaky clean, Matt Cutts-fearing blogs won't cover.
The posts from the assistants, techies, girlfriends and new mozzers are funny and well-written enough... but maybe they can fluff up the rock-solid coverage on here.
If I had an extra hour in every day, I would enjoy reading what the whole gang has to say - comments and all. But like most of us, I'm flipping through 20 open windows at once and answering seven e-mail accounts for 16 hours a day - so maybe a little less is more.
I'd like to be able to read everything on SEOmoz - so perhaps three or four rock-solid posts a week would be better than 12 mixed ones.
I'm not complaining - I get plenty from this blog as it is. But since you asked...
It is not possible to write everyday about search engines. There are not relevant news!
Your blog together with Seroundtable is one of the most updated, and I feel better when you don´t say anything relevant: Nothing important happened, I can read an Oscar Wilde book.
Great job.
I agree. While an interesting industry, absolute gold cannot be written all the time. I love reading the blog and I love the advice, but we understand if posting frequency goes lower as long as the post quality remains high. :)
I voted "High" primarily because the posts that are good are usually really good, as are the comments related. IMO its good to have a mix of posts based on subject material and topic, but that is a debatable topic in terms of what would be deemed a quality post/content.
Rand, as others have stated, the survey questions are faulty and thus are giving you erroneous results.
SEOmoz covers a variety of topics, not all of which your readers may find of interest. For that to happen, you'd have to cut pretty much all of the personality out of SEOmoz, and cover only a tiny niche that would be interesting to all readers (all, that is, who remain after you cut out anything they're not interested in). Thus, a question that asks what percentage they find of value, and then attempts to interpret that percentage in terms of overall worth -- regardless of the quality and value of what they *did* read, which likely varies from one person to the next -- is going to skew the survey results something awful.
As is happening here. If you're going to depend on surveys, I'd ensure that the survey questions will actually answer your questions and don't themselves skew the results.
Signal/Noise ratio is still pretty decent for me - keep up the SMASHING job!
SEOmoz is the best blog right now out of all "conglomerate"/newsy non-personal SEO blogs out there (e.g. V7N, SER, SEW, Threadwatch). SEOmoz doesn't just report (SER: "Yahoo to Reorganize"), regurgitate what's already out there (V7N: "SEO is Bullshit?"), or spread obviously-false rumors for traffic (Threadwatch: "Google Using Adwords title in Organic SERP). A good percentage of SEOmoz posts are link-starters, not a link buried somewhere in the linkbait chain.
Having said that, I voted mediocre. Life is tough :)
I've been reading the blog regularly for probably two years, and I do think the quality of the entries has gone down a bit since then, and I attribute it to the following:
Rand has done a wonderful job growing his business to the point where it's hard to find the time to scour the web and to put as much detail into each blog post as he did BN (before newsweek). It's the nature of any business that's growing.
As Rand has plugged in new employees to fill the blog space, the expectations are that they are Rand-equivalent posts. And let's face it; few across the SEO community can put together posts like Rand, so while the expectation that all Rand's peeps blog to the same level as Rand may be unrealistic, it's my expectation nonetheless.
The pace of change in the SEO world seems to be slowing, which makes manufacturing interesting content harder and harder (SEO or otherwise - which BTW, I enjoy equally posts about SEO and non-SEO).
But truth be told, when I check my feeder for new entries, I'll usually read Rand's and skip over the rest. I realize that'll hurt some feelings, but if honest feedback is what's going to give you the tools for change, then I oughta at least provide that as a partial payment for the knowledge I've gained here.
Ok one thing I would suggest is you guys need to work on your surveys. When you post a survey (poll) in a post, it should not have five radio buttons for four options (as it is showing to me in Firefox). Furthermore, you should do some research about the topic of your poll because that will make it easier for you to define choices, and easier for people to vote. What you've defined as mediocre, as I said above, is not actually mediocre to everybody. There is no blog in the world that is 80% or 90% or more interesting all the time to every person.
I agree with Pete. It all depends on what you want to get out of it. For me, I don't work in SEO per se. I use SEO in my job as a webmaster for one specific company. As a result, I am interested in educational or 'how-to' posts on SEO. While I do find the personal, humorous or plain off the wall stuff fun to read, it's not the main reason i'm here.
One idea you might (or might not) want to think about that I think would work would be an extension of a post you did recently asking people to post their site for a quick review. You could choose one reader per week/month based on number/quality of blog comments and give them a free mini site audit? Tht way, you pull in extra readers. I would find it very interesting to see real world examples of SEO amongst your readers.
I think this is a great idea. Kind of like throwing your business card into the fishbowl at the Chinese restaurant to win a free lunch.
Although we won't send you junk mail once we get your contact information.
It seems to be a general consensus that this is one of the premier SEO blogs. That said, it is going to be nearly impossible to please everybody with every post.
Think about it like this... a lot of us are conference goers. When you ask people at any given conference "did you learn anything?" 9 out of 10 will say "I picked up one or two nuggets this week"
1-2 in a week? Why spend 5k to get 1 or 2 nuggets? Because most of us already know most of this stuff, and every 1 or 2 nuggets is hugely valuable.
My feeling is some wiley veteran who you schooled on social web via this blog complained about the new writing that is not all about 2.0 or digg gaming because when those topics were pre-hot, this was the place. Now that SEO is stale (has been for some time, very few changes) it is harder to find more angles to be on the edge. We're all already there.
SEOmoz is still the highest on my feed reader. Even if I don't read every single post, it still has a higher signal to noise ratio than any other blog... but the that's because my definition of "noise" is any post I don't like, not any post that is not relevant or bleeding edge.
I've not really been subscribed to your rss feed for long enough to notice a change in post quality but if I ever get around to culling the rss feeds I subscribe to seomoz would be one of the least likely to be dropped at the present time.
Also, as frak has previously pointed out the vote option seems to be still enabled even though I have already voted.
Hmm. It looks like we can vote more than once?? (I haven't but notice the vote button still active)
I voted 40%-60% read, however I don;t call that mediocre. I do have limited time and so tend to skim headlines looking for things. In my case you could improve my readability by working on headlines because when I do read the articles they are rarely anything but interesting.
If you are concerned about people being turned off by some of the posts that are not about the segment of SEO they are interested in, or are more personal in nature, then I would make this suggestion:
Feature the RSS feeds with different categories. So if I only wanted to read about WH SEO tactics then I would subscribe to that.
If you are really doing a "revamp" then you could allow people to create a personal feed by picking topics into a personal "mix" - though I personally think this is too much work for the return.
Also if you do create separate feeds please keep the combined one for me to read ;-)
Cheers
Oh - and to answer your initial point, I do NOT think seomoz is going downhill in terms of posts.
They have been and still are of high standard in my opinion. Otherwise I wouldn't still be here ;-)
Ditto on the 40-60% - to me that's far from mediocre; if you're getting me to read almost two-thirds of your posts, you're in the upper tier of most blogs.
Very often the gems are in the comments - there is a huge number of very knowledgable folk here (thanks!).
I have to admit that I rarely have time to read the comments :(
I think it depends on what people are after. Personally, I enjoy the personal posts, as well as the random things that get posted, not just the "how SEOMoz does it's thang" ones. SO for me, I'd be happy pretty much whatever you guys posted :p
However, I realise that I'm probably not in the majority on this one, as a lot of people are going to be coming to learn more about SEO. But I guess we'll see...
Overall, the Topics are consistantly insightful and relevant.
The writing styles are clear, concise and good natured.
Sometimes, there are OBVIOUS attempts to get another Digg homepage (and who could blame you) - but even those topics are frequently entertaining.
The Blog appears to attract polite repliers - who are hear to learn and contribute with a professional tone. It does not seem to attract the bad attitude or rude types - which is interesting.
The only flaw is the inability to add a Homepage Linked-Signature to one's comments. This would be helpful.
I agree about the homepage links in the comments. It makes a huge difference in easily seeing who is behind a comment when you don;t have to go via the profiles.
And if you are no-following them anyway it will make no difference to your link profile as site, right? Though naturally those links would be more valuable in terms of traffic if not "link juice" there would be a constructive reason for the extra traffic to a poster.
Dude, get a homepage and sign it.
I would find this site of far LOWER value if it was full of links out to sites created by, well, people like you.
If I had even the remotest interest in you, I know how to use a frikken search engine to find you - as do ANY of the audience of SEOmoz.
Stop whining and go spam elsewhere if that's what is important to you.
I agree with Ammon.
I rate it somewhere between bland and sterile. It's worth a daily pass-by but it's not on my must-read list.
rc - can you point me to some of the blogs that are on that "must-read" list and some of the posts here that you DO find worthwhile. I'd really value your opinion.
no, you shouldn't value this opinion! it's wack!
I voted high, or I intended to given that there are four options and five buttons. I often bookmarks SEOmoz's posts for perusal later in the day (Targeting European online markets most recently.) I also often pause to pay special attention to your feed in my cluttered Bloglines account. In addition to your high-quality posts, I think you've got some of the most thoughtful commenters in the industry.
Does that mean that people are complaining about the Digg attempt posts? Are people complaining about Rebecca's posts? The fact that she has posted more over the past couple months is the only thing I can think of that's really changed. Personally I have no problem with her posts or the quality of the posts here the past few months. Not every post can be some technical guide to SEO. There are tons of (mostly useless) SEO blogs out there and for me this is the only one that regularly has worthwhile content.
All that being said, for me the ratio of high-quality posts over the past few months has skyrocketed thanks to the departure of Michael.
This is a great place to learn, and that is probably the biggest reason most of us are here...
that said, this is an industry, as is anything web related, that is constant learning.
It's also nice though to once in awhile take a step back and share some off-thoughts, ponder some crazy even silly ideas, remind ourselves that we shouldn't take everything too seriously, and it is nice to connect once in awhile on a more personal level.
And as they say, try to please everyone and you'll end up pleasing no one... or delivering nothing worthwhile in the process.
I accidentally voted the wrong thing. I accidentally voted for exceptional because I thought it was a fifth option that wasn't showing. But my view is that 60 to 70% of the posts interest me. Do I feel that this makes SEOmoz mediocre? No.. because only one out of thousands of blogs will ever have my 100% interest. According to your poll, I would rank SEOmoz mediocre because only 60% is relevant to me. But according to my own views, and expectations of blogs, 60% relevance does not mean the other 40% is noise. I would rank SEOmoz "high" instead, because most posts are very interesting, informative, and educational, even if a few posts here and there are clearly pointless or irrelevant.
Overall I just can't complain. I'm not going to be interested in everything you write, but you can't please everyone. The things that interest me enough to read, which is a good deal, are very high quality.
Not everything is useful, but I feel that it is the consistently most useful AND enjoyable of all teh SEO related blogs that I subscribe to. And it's the enjoyable bit that keeps me coming back as much as the usefulness - that doesn't mean that you need to start throwing jokes at stuff, just that the personable, well written style your bloggers have is very engaging.
I think the level of quality posts as only dropped slightly.
I know on Shoemoney's site, his post have declined a lot. I think he doesn't give away as much info as he used to - but on the other hand he does give a lot of info away on his radio show which is great!
Rand, when are you going to start podcasting?
I believe "Top Ten Reasons Why..." posts are of low quality no matter where they are posted. =P
I voted "medicore" but that's because I'm a designer not an SEO professional so I'm naturally not going to want to read everything on the topic. I find your blog to be a great source for someone like me and often refer people here when they need to learn more about SEO.
You are publishing quite a lot lately (great!!) but I find it hard to sort through it all. Right now there are 6 unreads in your RSS folder. It would be helpful for me if titles were as clear as possible and the first paragraph had a very specific description of what the post is about. I'd like to see each post start with a summary actually. This would help me to decide whether I need to take the time to read the post or if I can move on.
To be honest, I could have done with out the name dropping posts from the conference this week :) But I don't know who most of these people are so maybe that's just me ;)