To summarize, beer pig + crime scene + Jane's deviousness = delayed Roundup Thursday.
Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:
Three star links:
- Apparently money can buy you happiness...if you spend it on other people. So, if you want to be happy, just buy me a new car or something.
- Rand is interviewed by Search Feature. I'm highlighting it because he says nice things about me and other coworkers. :)
- Retire@21 also interviewed Rand. Sheesh, so many interviews lately!
- The Fame Experiment is a website that's trying to determine whether someone can become famous solely through Internet exposure. I think LonelyGirl15, the Star Wars Kid, and the Chocolate Rain singer would all say "yes."
- According to Hitwise, U.S. visits to question and answer websites increased 118% from last year. Of those websites, Yahoo! Answers dominates, with 75.05% of the visits as of March of this year (though that figure is down 21% from 94.25% in 2007).
- Coolest litmus test ever!
- Apparently the recession will hit the web. Darn.
- The NY TImes highlights the "blissful ignorance effect," where once you've committed to buying or consuming something, you want to like what you've bought so you end up doing a lot of self-convincing.
- Hey, Matt Cutts is doing link bait! And I just...linked...to it...ah, damnit, he got me.
- SEO ROI shows us how to hide a text link ad. Sneaky, though Rand points out that the link graph should still reveal the manipulation to Google's classifiers.
- Though this page ain't got no alibi (it ugly! hey hey, it ugly!), it provides 101 quick fixes to improve your website. It's without a doubt a handy checklist to have and run through.
- Why Am I Doing This? Goodroi points out that you should ask yourself that very simple question before taking on tasks like blogging, social media, video content, and making various business decisions.
- The Rise and Fall of PageRank: A Parable. David LaFerney talks about, well, the rise and fall of PageRank. And there's a picture of a gorilla!
- Page Title Optimization and Google's New Inline Search Box. Miketighe discusses organizing page titles with regards to readability and usability.
- What Comes First, the Meta Description or Content? Sarita asks us what we think of first and foremost when working on a website, the SEO or the content.
- Do Other Meta Tags Really Work? Petrosianii shares an interesting a post touting the various types of meta tags, and tried them out on his own website to see if they'd improve his rankings at all. (Spoiler alert: they didn't.)
- Taking [true knowledge] Out for a Test Drive. Carfeu tests [true knowledge], a new question-answering search engine.
- Link Building Through Cloaking? Click Magnet talks about a shady link building scheme he came across.
- A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to the Store Blog. Linda Bustos shares a "searchonsearch" result with us. The site delivered content to her based on the referring keywords. Pretty clever!
- I'm Leaving and I'm Never Coming Back... OldSchoolSEO shares some reasons why visitors may be leaving your site.
- 8 SEO Facts You Should Know Before Taking Up an SEO Service. Mukesh Mani provides some great guidelines for clients who want to hire an SEO.
- Use 'What Googlebot Sees' to Find Scrapers. Brent D. Payne suggests sneaking a peek at the "What Google Sees" section in your Webmaster Central console. It highlights sections of your site that you may want to consider nofollowing.
- SES NY and SMX West, Compared. Wrttnwrd compares the two most recent SEO conferences.
- Bees Attract Bees - Social Networking Over the Net. Anna Eliot provides an overview of various social networking websites.
- Slow Web Server Response is Eating My Homework. Maruschka complains how her web host is messing up her chances to win an SEO contest at work.
- What's Good for the WMC HTML Verification File Isn't Good For You. Brent D. Payne isn't happy about having to log into Google's Webmaster Tools every time he needs to supply the correct meta tag for a specific domain.
- Introducing...The Funniest Moz Comments of All Time. Tom Critchlow scrounges up some funny comments that were posted on SEOmoz.
- It's My Mozday and I'll Cry If I Want To. Vingold announces his one year anniversary on SEOmoz, shares his awesome cake decorating, and discusses some things he's learned about our community in the past year. Happy anniversary, Vin!
- Don't Be Too Clever When Marketing (especially in Miami International Airport). Hamlet Batista shares an amusing anecdote with us involving his SMX promotional t-shirts, a Googlebomb joke, and some very unamused airport security guards.
- There was a new event added but the Events Calendar appears to be down right now, so I'll update this post with the new event once Mel fixes it.
Featured job postings:
- SEO specialist for ESRI in Redlands, CA
- Lead developer for BootsnAll Travel Network in Portland, OR
- Full-time SEO manager for Point It! in Seattle, WA
United States/North America:
- WrightIMC in Dallas, TX
- ESRI in Redlands, CA
- Spritz Web Solutions in Chicago, IL
- Point It! in Seattle, WA
- Overit Media in Albany, NY
- McRea Site Development in Lemon Grove, CA
- CR Solutions Group S.A. in Jaco, Costa Rica
Asia:
- Shrushti Web Solutions in Vadodara, Gujar, India
- A1seo-services.com in New Delhi, India
- Navaneeth Kishor R is an experienced SEO/SEM with over four years of experience. He is currently looking for employment.
Respect due - after all that you still managed to pull through with another roundup!
I'm not sure what a beer pig is - what's that in Brit-speak? Anyway, I too bought some liquor and much to the confusion of my girlfriend decided it would be a great idea to fill her digital camera up with lots of tributes to Rishil as per the new avatar. I just couldn't seem to get the same effect lol!
Beer pig = small keg shaped like a pig, full of beer :)
Your profile picture is stunning, by the way. However, might I suggest that you have your girlfriend do the modeling instead?
It's a half of a pony keg. 2.25 Gallons or 8.5 Litres. It was delicious.
So a pig is half a pony?! This is messing with my mind.
Are there any other animals?
Lindop - thumbs up for the avatar. That's hysterical.
Classic - thumbs up.
If this avatar doesn't put you off of drinking Jack Daniels - then nothing will.
Well done Lindop.
It's interesting how an attractive girl can lick a bottle of JD and rake in the thumbs - but when some anonynous good-looking Adonis SEO tries it, the whole marketing tactic seems to fail miserably !!! I must be doing something wrong :)
Jane's got the right idea, I should get my girlfriend to earn me some thumbs.
I'll save you the ongoing horror of my tongue soon and replace it with something more respectable, but in the meantime you can all think on how terribly superficial you've been :)
I am not sure how I missed this thread - but see my new pic - bottle of vodka and black label... at the same time... now if that isnt a reputation management horror, thenI dont know what is!
p.s lindop... immitation is the best form of flattery - I owe a lot to the person who thought of my original avatar... lol
Agreeing with Rishi on the Funny Comments post, the intro to this is also by far the oddest yet best excuse I've ever seen for a late blog entry. "We drank at lunch, I wiped my post, I went to the liquor store, someone tried to steal a car and then Jane linked to something on the Internet that almost made me lose my dinner."
That was a good link though. Can't believe you didn't include it here.
This is what happens when I leave town... I can tell that April and May are going to be very productive :)
Ooh. Hi Rand.
Rebecca and Jane - If you guy's don't think you have the world's greatest boss:
Rand to Rebecca:
What the hell's going on? I'm out of town for a few days and now we're posting Thursday roundups around midnight?
Rebecca:
Hey boss, cut me some slack. Since you were out, we all decided to go out and get drunk at lunch. Then, because I was so wasted, I ended up wiping my post. Well, by that time I had to hit the liquor store to prep for the weekend and some assbag tried to steal my car. To top it off, Jane sends me this link that made me practically puke on my keyboard. You should be thankful I even posted the damn thing.
Rand:
Wow. I didn't know that.
Rebecca:
Well, next time try being a little sensitive before you start spouting off at me.
Rand:
Alright - I'm sorry.
2 things:
1. We didn't go out to lunch, the beer came to us.
2. It wasn't my car that got stolen. Our car just got swept up in all the madness.
Just kidding. I was taking from Jane's comments. Things always sound more humorous when they're either greatly exaggerated or extreme liberties are taken. I thought your intro was quite funny.
That'll teach you to hire nice responsible people to work for you Rand. :-D
drunk at lunch? you all hiring?
B-b-b-but you hate Seattle!
I think you should only post the YOUmoz entries that were posted as of Wednesday of the week.
Tom's post on the best YOUmoz comments is quite a nice little stroll down memory lane, but because it was posted on Thursday it didn't have enough time to gather any real thumbs.
Yet, as of now it already has more net thumbs up than either mine or Hamlet's posts.
Now that he's been included this week, will he be overlooked next week? Or can we include him again?
I'm just sayin.
Hmm, good point. I'll keep that in mind for next week.
I'm wondering what the 'something horrible' was that Jane showed you that distracted you so?
No post about the horribleness that so threw you off your groove? I'm disappointed...
Haha, it's so not appropriate for the blog. Or for human eyes, for that matter.
No one would be pleased if we actually linked to it :)
You guys are such a cool team. Thanks a lot for the interview, Rand.
Who wouldn't want to work for you guys, even if the drunk at lunch comment was a joke. ;)
~ Mike Dammann
(To the lady I first spoke to: Yes, that is my real name :) )
Search Feature
You also forgot to add how I distracted you for two hours when my Facebook account apparently disappeared.
The introduction to this post brings up a little issue I have working with user generated content (UGC) and content management systems (CMS). It is extremely frustrating writing a thorough blog post, comment or finishing that perfect eCommerce product listing just to realize your time has expired and you lose all your work when you go to save, submit, etc. Some websites do a good job of getting around this, but most don't. Some will try to use OpenOffice or MS Word and then copy and paste. That's great if it doesn't affect formatting or you know how to use the clean up your code buttons, but some don't even know what that little brush is for.
We are working on creating desktop applications to integrate with web based applications for eCommerce, blogging and more. Adobe has platforms for this and eBay has been using this technology for some time. Let's see some innovation in this direction from SEOmoz if you guys can find the time.
>> Sorry this roundup is delayed. I had the damn thing about 60% completed >> earlier today, but then Mel brought in a pig full of beer,
Very Inspiring.
Am I the only one who thinks all these references to partying and drinking - as in "we were totally wasted and we're pround to announce it on the blog" - feel somewhat immature
So many posts from conferences contain them.
Well, anyway, I love SEOmoz.
Too bad I can't upgrade my account. I'llhave to cancel this one and open up a new one.
To be clear, we didn't get drunk at lunch, we just had a couple of beers. I figure that Roundup Thursday posts are kind of noisy as it is, so that's why I included the amusing anecdote.
We'll try to "couth" it up on the more "signal" posts. Sorry.
you weren't drunk? you just totally lost all your street cred. now you're gonna' have to hit Luis Guzman in the face with a bottle.
I love link posting days, so many links that for some reason I failed to find throughout the week, thanks. Sorry it was so much trouble to do beer and blogging, pooooorr thing :)