Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:
Zero star links:
- My second-ever zero star link goes to Steve Rubel for audaciously claiming that many marketers pollute the web. His post comes off as being pure link bait with no substance to his argument. Pretty lame, if you ask me
Three star links:
- Hey, it's a real-life Cookie Monster! COOKEEEEEEE, OM NOM NOM NOM.
- The Guardian follows a couple of working moms who try and bring their babies into the office. They quickly find out that yes, it's just as annoying as you'd think.
- The Scientific American talks about how self-stereotyping can lead to either success or failure.
- Evisibility posted a follow up to my social media titles and descriptions post and talk about how a lot of people still don't understand social media.
- Marty Weintraub joins in on the headline and description fun and posts over at aimClear about how to tweak an article's existing title and add a compelling description when submitting to social media sites (such as Sphinn, in his examples).
Four star links:
- Distilled brings us interviews with local SEOs about geolocation and geotargeting. The SEOs provide some great tips, so check it out if you get a chance.
- Ever wondered why you never got a callback for that job you applied for a while back? Maybe Not Hired can provide some closure! This site shares snippets of resumes and cover letters that, uh, didn't quite make the cut.
- Patrick Gavin shares an old image of a SERP's clickthrough rate and reiterates that the difference between the #1 position is 4x the clicks as the #2 spot.
- Wow, Yahoo bought IndexTools. This seems to be a positive deal for both parties.
Five star links:
- Discover Magazine has an incredible story about a man who battled both cancer and identity theft. It's a really compelling, gripping read, and it's quite inspiring, too.
- The Sting of Poverty is a really good article about how traditional economics doesn't apply to the poor.
YOUmoz entries:
- Geographical Targeting: Factors You Can't Afford to Overlook. Pulkit007 talks about geotargeting issues and possible ways Google determines the nationality of a website.
- SEO By Google. Anna Eliot talks about Google selling Performics in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
- Tyler Shears on Finance SEO, SMM, Personas, and SMX. Bookworm SEO interviews Tyler Shears from Databang.
- Locally Registered and Hosted Sites, and How Links from Abroad Affect Them. Svetoslav discusses how links from .com sites helped his .co.uk site rank better in Google.com. He's planning on doing some more experiments.
- Web Site Design and Hosting: Pros and Cons. Epurplemedia shares some benefits and disadvantages of using an inexpensive hosting service for your website.
- How to Get from Biz to Buzz: Part 2 - Drowning in "Success". Jkellygarrett takes us through a case study where he helped a company who had some technical SEO help but didn't know how to bridge the "biz to buzz" gap.
- How's an SEO to Advertise SEO Training on AdWords, For Crying Out Loud? Bookworm SEO shares with us a discussion he had with an AdWords support person and talks about his frustrations with their quality score metrics.
- Group Dynamics at SEOmoz.org. Thetjo puts on his Freud cap and analyzes the SEOmoz community, identifying role and status differentiation and other factors.
- Colloquial Copy: When Perfect is Wrong. Jkellygarrett talks about how SEO-friendly copy on your site doesn't do any good if it's not targeting your core audience. His post makes some very good points, so be sure to check it out.
Best of YOUmoz:
- Identity's "SEOmoz is Clueless" post talks about the general failure of Google Images and uses one of my roundup posts as an example. For some reason "seomoz roundup" pulls up a picture of the Clueless movie poster, thanks to Rishi linking to it in the comments. Identity's post is really thorough and provides many examples of various searches pulling up sucky search results in Google.
New events added to the Events Calendar:
- SMX Sydney April 10-11 in Sydney, Australia
- Mobile Social Networks & UGC July 2-4 at the Moevenpick Hotel, Amsterdam, Netherlands
New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:
Featured job postings:
- Link building contract for BuyBigTires in Raleigh, NC
- Senior technical SEO specialist for Venere.com in Rome, Italy
- Search engine marketing strategist for Human Capital Consultants in Needham, MA
- Part-time virtual in-house SEO/SEM/social media guru for Swimwear Express in Miami Beach, FL
- Junior/Trainee SEO for Dolphin Promotions in Blackpool, Lancs, UK
- SEO manager for Classmates.com in Renton, WA
- Contracted PPC guru for a 10 hour consulting project in St. Louis, MO
- SEM manager in Downers Grove, IL
Featured companies:
United States/North America:
- SlickRockWeb in St. Paul, MN
UK/Europe:
- MesterWeb AS in Norway
Asia:
- Webman Studio in Shanghai, China
Featured resumes:
- Kiowa Jackson is an accomplished online marketing specialist who is currently looking for employment.
- Jing Zhao is a multilingual SEO who specializes in e-commerce and is currently looking for employment.
Rebecca, I was expecting 0 stars for that post, I guess premium SEOMOZ membership really does have its privileges :)
Hey, it's an oldie but a goodie. :)
The article about cancer and identity theft left me wiping away the tears. I never would have found it unless you took the time to list it. It's inspired me in other ways, too deep to share here.
The final sentence a huge take away: “We are not victims. We’re not being blown around like dust in the wind. We have control over our destiny.” What an inspiration!
I think you should do a bi-weekly link round up so you don't have to go off topic with your links. I read this blog for SEO news, tips, opinions and advice. Over the last few weeks, I've seen less Search releated links and more off topic links - It's like your just adding the off topic links to "fill" a post.
I've been an avid reader of SEOMoz for years and love the work you guys produce... so please don't take this to heart :)
Hmm, appreciate the feedback. Rand had stated earlier that he wanted our roundups to encompass stories across the web and not necessarily having solely to do with SEO, since so many other SEO blogs do a great job of breaking various industry news and information. I'll try to keep other posts relevant, especially since Rand will be light on blogging for the next couple weeks. Are there any topics you'd like to see us cover?
I'm not disagreeing with absorbingtheworld but in my opinion I don't mind non-seo links.
Perhaps a way of tying it back into seo would be to post links you found through social media - that way at least there's some relevance to seo?
Dunno - just my $0.02 personally I don't mind a weekly post of an internet-wide roundup but I realise others might disagree
Actually I do like the offtopic links too - but thinking about the other 20000 odd feed subscribers, it may be that people do subscribe to know more about seo/sem stuff.
Considering SEOmoz targets SEO noobs - the point raised is probably worth considering - sme people may be relying just on this site and not really subscribed to all the other sem round up sites.
Just wondering if this could be balanced out by the introduction of reader submited news stories in maybe a new section? These stories would have editorial discression - and wouldnt need to then be included in the round up, which is more of a post rather than an SEO/M update?
I'm inclined to agree. I think that most of us read, or at least scan, a LOT of SEO blogs on a daily basis. I get enough SEO writing pumped into me (OK, never enough, but still). SEOmoz tries to be something a little more than just an SEO blog, it tries to be a community, and I don't think that any successful community can be entirely on-topic. This little collection of links, useful, but with some fun mixed in, is a great thing for me, at least. I don't feel like I'm slacking off reading this post (well, not entirely), but it's the sort of half-slacking that we all need from time to time.
i think the best part is the off topic links. like the not hired link, that was fun for a few laughs on friday and i wouldn't have found it otherwise as i'm busy doing seo and reading about seo all week long. just my pennies.
Holy crap. Are you sure that's not Princess Fiona and Jesse Ventura?
Another great wrapup, except that you short-changed yourself. Your titles & descriptions / social media post was at least four stars. Best of the week for me.
Hah, I wasn't linking to my post as a 3 star link, I was linking to Evisibility's post and wanted to mention my post as a precursor for those of you who haven't read it yet. I'm not that conceited. ;P
That monster is really scary, imagine seeing it at night in your bedroom!
I loved how you gave Steve Rubel the "Pretty lame"-link, btw. ;-)
so I am to blame if your roundups are clueless?
yep - it still shows - that pics going to haunt seomoz... lol
Great links...yes the off topic ones are certainly great for those moments where you just NEED to get away from the work stuff!
Going to hit up a lot more links once I arrive home :)
Thanks for the link Rebecca :-)
Love that nothired link - some funny stuff out there! And that cookie monster is pretty scary - what's with the hair?!
Muchas Garcias for the link!
Time to go eat some rolled tacos in celebration!
Rebecca, I think that's an elephant ear... pretty common at Scandinavian festivals and Oktoberfest.
I know what elephant ears are, and they're delicious. Still, normally people rip at them rather than devour them like a gigantic cookie. ;)
Which, I think, raises an important question: leaving aside the elephant ears, we've got cookies, and we've got cookie cakes. At what point does a cookie become a cookie cake? Is it the act of cutting it up and serving it as pieces that makes the difference? Is there a size limit? Do I think about these things way too hard?
Probably. :D
Just to say thanks for the link (as Tom said above), and to say thanks to the people who contributed their thoughts to our article (which was written by our newest SEO recruit, Lucy - giving credit where it was due!).