Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:
Sorry folks, no more link yahtzee since someone at WikiAnswers was smart enough to change the answer to the question I linked to in my zero star section. Hooray for progress!
One star link:
- Apparently Microsoft may build a "copyright cop" into every Zune. See, Zune, this is why nobody wants to buy you.
Two star links:
- Shoemoney says that SEO has no future, which is a bit of a hater thing to say, but his exact words are "...in my opinion there just is no future in current SEO for Google..." I could agree with that claim (emphasis on current SEO) since SEO is constantly evolving, so SEO practices that work today may not be effective five years from now.
- Prepare to be horrified: manbabies.com. WTF, WTF, W.T.F.
Three star links:
- According to a blog post, "Google may be adding geographic information about brick and mortar stores and service companies to the algorithm along with reverse IP lookup to help boost site rank for regular results."
- Need a gift for your son or daughter? How about road kill toys? They're adorably squishy!
- Apparently Thursday at noon is the best time to post blog entries. Maybe I should have delayed publishing this by 3 minutes...damnit.
- Search Engine Land reports Microsoft Live Search's new design going live. Ooh, how very minimalistic!
- Joe Morin's new company, Storybids, now has a website that's live. According to the site, "Storybids is a simple yet extremely powerful website tool for media sellers and content buyers. We connect those with creative ideas for product placement with advertisers who want to place their products in user generated videos, mini-dramas and webisodes, music videos and online commercials."
- Lee Odden shares 5 new Twitter tools with us. Rand gives Summize.com his bearded seal of approval.
- My favorite SEO slash hardcore U2 fan, Matt McGee, is jobless. He provides some great tips on how to improve your SEO experience and knowledge and hopefully nail that SEO interview. Meanwhile, I'm starting a site called feedmcgee.com that will take donations (U2 schwag is acceptable) to ensure that our little small business SEM doesn't go hungry.
- Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the yottabyte, which is 1,024 zettabytes, which is roughly a crapload of exabytes, a buttload of petabytes, an assload of terabytes, and a shitload of gigabytes...scientifically speaking, of course.
- Although MySpace received 74% of U.S. social networking visits in April 2008, it's a -5% change compared to the same time last year. Facebook, meanwhile. experienced a 32% increase in market share from last year and had 14.8% of visits, and some site called myYearbook had a 475% year over year change from 2007, enjoying 1.33% of visits this year.
- Brian Cuban (Mark Cuban's brother who I pretend I know well because we're friends on Digg) wrote a post asking whether a competitor is devaluing your keywords. He opines that keyword suits like the Orion Bankcorp v. Orion Residential Financial case in Florida will become much more common over the next decade. For more information about the court case, check out Sarah's great post about how the court order on negative keywords won't break the Internet.
- Hey, check it out, the Google Analytics Blog defines search engine optimization. The eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Blog weighs in on their definition.
- Galen Ward provides an interesting argument as to why you shouldn't link to your trusted partners. We generally advise against linking to your competitors or to those within your niche using the same anchor text/keywords you yourself are trying to rank well for.
- I'm betting that most SEOs will love this t-shirt; Rand has probably ordered at least 50.
- Stephen Colbert has been awarded the Webby Person of the Year. Mission accomplished, Google bombers!
- This comic accurately portrays the evolution of virtually every college student's life ambition. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to resume fervently watching the clock until it's beer thirty pm.
Four star links:
- Last week's In the Trenches post at Search Engine Land highlights the benefits of a Google Campaign Report, recommends Nielson's Blog Pulse Trend Search as a great free tool, and drills through the main engines' paid search news.
- It's an oldie but a goodie: 12 Examples of Viral Content, and What We Can Learn From Them provides, well, 12 examples of viral content and highlights some takeaways and lessons learned.
- Speaking of viral content, this post shares 6 strategies for building viral content. They're some pretty sound tips. I recommend studying both the examples and the strategies before you venture off to create viral content of your own.
- Malcolm Gladwell (Mr. Tipping Point) writes an article for the New Yorker about the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery. Rand proclaims that the article is "so awesome, I think I just got pregnant." If you too would like to become pregnant, read the article so that you may also conceive a Gladwell baby.
- Barry Schwartz believes in the Google -60 penalty, and he provides examples to support his claim.
- Adam Audette has a great SEO guide to information architecture, and he also provides some nice advice on nofollow sculpting.
- Slightly Shady SEO tells us why whitehats need to know blackhat SEO, and he provides some really solid, sound reasons as to why we shouldn't be turning our nose to blackhat SEO practices, but rather can actually learn from them.
- The redesigned NES. Hell. Yes.
Five star links:
- Aaron Wall discusses in great detail what a #1 Google ranking is worth. It is an extremely thorough article and is well worth reading.
YOUmoz entries:
- Something Weird is Happening at Google. xxclixx noticed some strange display URLs in Google's search results.
- Trip-Wire Marketing: Stealth and Position Create Explosive Results. Webwordslinger.com talks about "trip-wire" links and how they provide crawling spiders "more avenues to explore, keeping them on-site longer, leading to more complete and indexing faster."
- Your Chance to Win a FREE Conference Pass to Pay Per Click Summit. Kelly Larsen offers SEOmoz members the opportunity to win a free pass to the next PPC Summit and also provides a 10% discount code.
- Telegraph is Breaking News Before It's Happened. London Phil noticed that the Telegraph broke election news before every other news outlet, yet the link from Google's SERPs pointed at a 404. He wonders if the Telegraph got their headline into Google before everyone else by putting it up before it actually happened.
- Marketing Channels: Integration = Local Synergies. Webwordslinger.com discusses leveraging various marketing channels and integrating them into your marketing campaign, especially if you're a local business.
- Managing Customer Care: Keeping a Client vs. Finding a New One. Geez, webwordslinger.com has been busy with the blogging lately. This post talks about various ways to provide a positive customer experience and keep your consumer satisfied.
- YOUmoz Newb Pwns SEO Expert Quiz! Darren Slatten tears our SEO Quiz a new one by going through its flaws and by challenging some of the questions and responses.
Best of YOUmoz:
- Brent D. Payne gets all sappy and talks about his Five Favorite Things About Twitter. And, naturally, all of you Twits just ate it up. ;)
- You Got Us Traffic, But Where Are the Sales? from Sakis highlights how it's easy to forget that a lot of conversions actually happen offline, though your website still probably drove a lot of those sales. Lots of people come to your site and then make their purchase decision later.
New events added to the Events Calendar:
- Search Engine Marketing Roundtable in Singapore on May 13, 2008 at the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Center in Suntec City, Singapore
- Jane and Robot Meetup on May 13 at the Solo Bar in Queen Anne in Seattle, WA. Jane and Robot is a site created by Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia that focuses on search-friendly design for web developers.
Upcoming events:
- Search Engine Marketing Roundtable in Singapore on May 13, 2008 in Suntec City, Singapore
- Jane and Robot Meetup on May 13 in Seattle, WA
- Infopresse Day on SEM/SEO May 13 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Page Zero Marketing Seminar May 15 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- PPC Summit May 19-20 in San Francisco, CA
- International Search Summit May 22 in London, UK
- SEO Training Class May 23 online at highrankings.com/seo-classes
New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:
Featured job postings:
- SEO specialist in what appears to be Seattle, Texas, though I'm pretty sure that one or the other is incorrect (unless there actually is a Seattle, TX, in which case my bad)
- Director of eCommerce for a venture-backed startup in Cambridge, MA
- SEM strategist in Needham, MA
- VP of acquisition and retention for a telecommunications solutions company in Needham, MA
- Partner/affiliate marketing manager in Needham, MA
- Lead web developer/architect in Needham, MA
- Lead web developer/architect in Austin, TX
- Contracted Wikipedia link builder for LocalSEOGuide
- Senior web designer in Needham, MA
- Senior UI designer in Needham, MA
- Front-end developer in Needham, MA
- C# / ASP.net web applications developer in Needham, MA
- Full-time SEO/SEM and social media expert for a national alternative newspaper chain. We have worked with this company and highly recommend them--a great group of people work there and it is a fun work environment.
Featured companies:
United States/North America:
- Bluebonic SEO in Washington, DC
- SEO Services Group in Chicago, IL, and India
- Realicity Real Estate Marketing in Eden Prairie, MN
- Shimon Sandler, Inc. in New York, NY
- Clickexplosions.com in Largo, FL
- 3plains in Minneapolis, MN
- SEMLeader in the US, UK, Poland, and Vietnam
- Vortex Solution in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Asia:
- Predicate Logic Web Design in Dubai, India, United Arab Emirates, and Australia
- Valuebound in Bangalore, India
Featured resumes:
Happily employed:
- Zafar Ahmed is an SEO evangelist who specializes in Internet marketing strategy reports.
Looking for employment:
- Mike Young is an international link building and SEO specialist with proven leadership and interpersonal skills.
Great roundup as usual Rebecca.
I don't know... all the "SEO sky is falling" linkbait posts get a little old. Especially when they talk about the demise of the SEO industry or similar, based on the engines being more savvy, or this or that tactic not working.
I guess if you take a simple-minded and incorrect view that SEO = web spam, well, then I guess you can think whatever... doesn't make it any more correct.Things have shifted... in my mind at least. SEO isn't really an industry any more anyway, it's a toolset. Search Marketing is the industry, and SEO is just one such tool, as is SMO/SMM, PPC, etc.
SEO is a tool that can be employed in any number of ways. I can take a hammer to a screw or the handle end of a screwdriver to a nail. That doesn't make these good or bad tools, or any less tools for that matter, just poor and incorrect usage (though at some point in time, most of us have probably resorted to one or the other). No worries Craftsman & Stanley, I certainly won't be proclaiming that tools have no future.
SEO as a toolset and Search Marketing as an industry will continue to evolve...hopefully linkbait will too.
btw/ Rebecca, looking forward to seeing you again and kicking back with the rest of the Mozzers at SMX Advanced. Feels like I just came back from SMX West... but I think I've just been too busy to notice the last two months pass by.
That Gladwell article justified all of your roundups for the rest of the year, IMO. I love reading about cross-disciplinary invention; I have this pet theory that our American skepticism has reached a point where it's gone from being critical thinking to a destructive influence exploited by a status quo that doesn't want us to invent. Ok, that was a little wordy. Anyway, fantastic stuff.
I agree, the Gladwell article was good. Better than Man Babies by at least a smidge or two.
I'm a big believer in "inevitable discovery".
And even though its not a real theory based on anything real - I'm also a big believer in the Hundredth Monkey Effect (which is an example of "inevitable adoption").
Whether you're talking about the invention of the telephone and calculus or the widespread adoption of an online or offline meme or fad - something paranormal is at work.
Not X-files paranormal, but paranormal in the sense that we don't really have the understanding to even understand it.
I keep waiting to inevitably discover something important while I'm catching up on TiVo, but it hasn't seemed to happen yet :)
I have this nagging idea that we should be able to better tap the combined cognitive power of people over the internet, in a way analagous to grid computing, but no one has been able to make it happen (crowdsourcing may be the closest we've gotten). Most of the time, the more of us that talk about an idea online, the dumber the outcome, or at least that's how it seems on my crabby days.
A Best Of Youmoz Tie! WTF????
I don't get it. No offense to Sakis, but if you look at the numbers, Brent had Sakis beat in both the popular vote and Super Delegates.
On the other hand, Brent's delegate counts are marginalized when you throw in the ugly factor, so I guess it does kind of even things out.
Okay - nevermind. A tie works for me.
the yottabyte, which is 1,000 zettabytes.....
I am shocked that the person who wrote that article didn't know the rule of 1024. That each level of byte is 1024 of the previous level. It should have said:
the yottabyte, which is 1,024 zettabytes...
Thanks for clarifying. I fixed it in the post.
Some nice stuff there Rebecca - thanks for gathering it all together so that the rest of us lazy buggers don't have to.
I was particularly interested by the viral posts and have two thoughts.
When I swore on the blog a few months back, I got a lot of feedback (both positive and negative). I'll be interested to see how you fare with it, Rebecca :)
You get feedback for swearing Rand because you try so hard to be politically correct most of the time. You never have a knee jerk reaction to something. We know what to expect from you. You are more of a 'big company' feel so when you break that image . . . it's shocking!
Rebecca is different. She doesn't have this 'big company vibe' that you give off. She is more like the rest of us. She is the person next door, the person at the coffee shop, the one that if she drops an F-bomb people aren't shocked because she is 'one of us'.
It's hard to explain. She is just more herself and more free than you are . . . or at least she comes off that way.
You both have your place but . . . I doubt anyone is going to be shocked or care that Rebecca dropped the F-bomb.
We'll see how it plays out.
Brent D. Payne
Yeah, I figured most people wouldn't be that surprised. :)
I like to think that if I stopped by the SEOmozplex you be a character similar to Matt Groening when Troy McClure treated loyal viewers to a behind these scenes look into the Simpson world, maybe without the eye patch...
I'd totally scream unintelligible gibberish and shoot my pistols at you, too. ;)
Brent, I think you captured the sentiment of everyone pretty well.
Good job.
I get a little smirk every time I see Shoe's flame bait get another link. Heck, I even chimed in. Still, SEO is one of those VERY nebulous terms and does receive negative connotations from time to time which makes it easy to call it dead. I think the idea that there are these behind the scenes changes that make a difference in a web page that can appear unchanged make it difficult to trust SEO. I know I got a "ooh nifty" rush when I saw DaveN's new header display tool, which--yes--makes me a nerd, but also speaks to this problem. Ask any web user what the header is on a web page and you might get the right answer once... maybe... if you're in a server room. Ask a search engine and they really care.
shoemoney is way off the mark. if you accept his definition that "most SEO" is trying to get a site to show up higher in the SERPs than it deserves, then you're actually talking about something gray or blackhat, and yes, Google is getting much better at counteracting those practices. but that's not "most SEO".
a lot of times, i try to educate my clients that a big part of an SEO consulting engagement should be considered "web development best practices to facilitate good ROI from online marketing efforts". not exactly a catchy slogan, but accurate.
i'm working with a big fortune 500 right now that's trying to build a strong online presence. if they had gone ahead without the services of an SEO consultant, they would have ended up with a big, expensive, pretty-looking site that would have been absolutely incomprehensible to search engines.
in what universe does helping a client get good ROI "have no future"? that's just stupid.
LOL! Freakin' hysterical, RK - thanks. And I notice that someone in Germany has already registered feedmcgee.com - ha!
Aw, damn Germans! Foiled again!
That Aaron Wall article should be required reading for anyone doing Internet Marketing. I've gone back to it twice this week for another re-read.
I'm with ChuckAllied. I'm a big fan of Shoemoney, but you would figure after all these years we'd stop going after his link bait. When will we ever learn?
His post didn't make me mad, and I don't like to think that I was duped into linking to his post. I like Shoemoney--he's a great guy.
Yeah. Likewise, his post made me snicker versus get angry. I think SEOmoz is filling a great niche with helping to define the term SEO via education. The blog article here on the vices of Internet Advancement still gets posted to regularly and serves as a good example of helping people separate the cons from the pros. Also, the upcoming Whiteboard Friday will have Rand going into more detail about the importance of making a certain amount of SEO knowledge common place. As far as the Shoemoney post, I think he just went big with the title, and didn't go into the many shades of gray in SEO.
BTW - I don't understand how these roundups don't get more thumbs up. I think it's one of the best collections of important stuff I read all week. I know I'm biased, but I get so much value out of these, I just feel like I can't be the only one.
And - just as an aside - I think this was one of the best ones so far. A lot of really good material. I consumed it all during lunch in front of my computer today. Thanks Boowrecka!
It must be their length. I heard people only read 100 words or so, and then forget all about thumbs.
Yeah, I'm always surprised when someone thumbs down a roundup post--it's all substance and not much opinion, so there doesn't seem to be much to object to. Maybe it was the f-bomb?
I'm sure it had to be the f-bomb. How someone can get offended by a woman dropping an f-bomb is beyond me? `:{|
I find it quite expressive, often hilarious - and encourage my children to incorporate the word into their language on a daily basis.
(Just kidding Austin PTA. Please don't send Child Protective Services).
I agree with Rand. You'd think you would start with at least 50% as many thumbs as you give links and go up from there with a:
"Hey - thanks for the F'ing cool links F'ing Rebecca! F'ing thumbs up!
I don't understand the thumbs down, but I think there's a certain roundup fatigue in the industry. We all have so many information sources to digest that reading summaries almost seems like a burden instead of an aid. If my RSS feed was full of roundups, I'd have 100s or 1000s of articles to read every day instead of dozens, and my head would explode. That's my reaction, anyway, which has virtually nothing to do with the actual content or quality of the roundups.
WHAT? T! F! no excuses or delays today? You are slipping Rebecca. Lol.
Excellent round up and wicked find on that Tshirt... (although I think shady's podt deserved 5 stars...)
She lost a couple of updates for the post, too, after being signed out of her account whilst trying to save drafts. Thursday Roundups like to give Rebecca trouble :P
I know. Thursday Roundups pwn me once a week.
You are hilarious! ;-)
Brent D. Payne