We're rolling out with some new blog theme days at SEOmoz. As Jane mentioned yesterday, Wednesdays will now feature a
social media post, and the rest of the week is as follows:
- Legal Mondays (courtesy of Sarah Bird, Esquire and Polly Pocket Litigator)
- SEM Tuesdays (we'll do our best to discuss PPC, conversions, landing pages, and the like)
- Social Wednesdays
- Recap Thursdays
- Whiteboard Fridays
This being Thursday, I thought I'd unveil our first official Recap Thursday post (we've sporadically done some in the past, but now it'll be a regular feature) and link out to interesting stories, news, and other tidbits that popped up throughout the week:
- First Frank Watson complained about his less than stellar experience at the Wynn, and now Scott Orth chronicles his bad experience at the Wynn in Las Vegas. You'd think that five stinkin' diamonds will get you more courtesy, cleaner rooms, and prompt service, not automatic mini-bar charges, ridiculous gym access fees, and subpar cleaning service.
- GSINC has a poll where you can vote for who you think were the top 5 people of search in 2007. You can pick from a list of 40 individuals (including our very own Rand Fishkin), and the person who receives the most votes will have $500 donated to his or her charity of choice.
- Earlier this week on Search Engine Land, Vanessa Fox wrote an informative and thorough post about how changes to the way Google handles subdomains impact SEO. She does a great job of explaining the difference between main domains and subdomains, and when to utilize which.
- This blog post compares Facebook to a night club, and building a Facebook application is akin to building a sound system you can never take out of the club. It's an interesting read about the smartest way to leverage your applications.
- Rand chats with Matt Foster, president of Arteworks SEO, about Google's paid links policy. Check out the video of their discussion (and also to see Rand's "listening intently" face).
- It's like Hot or Not for websites! Subjectively pick which website you like better and see how your rating matches up with everyone else's. Rand pointed out that "It's a great way to prove to bosses obsessed with look and feel that those things matter, but only in a qualitative way and not in an 'what you like is what everyone else will like' sort of way."
- Via cNet, a study found that 95% of all email sent in 2007 was spam. Rand's comment: "And what percent of all websites with Adsense on them are spam?"
- More Facebook stuff coming your way: Freezing Hot brings you some nifty Facebook stats (is it me, or does the first graph look like a middle finger?). 18-24 year olds dominate the site, with 25% of all users currently being enrolled in college. Females, liberals, and single people use it more, too.
- Skelliewag tells us why traffic, your subscriber count, and money don't matter. There goes SEOmoz's business plan...I guess from here on out we'll only feature pictures of dogs hugging babies.
As always, discussion of these stories (and of any other stories you'd like to share) is warmly encouraged. Be sure to tune in to next week's Roundup Thursday post, when we'll unveil a neat and not-at-all nerdy rating system of what we think are the week's coolest (and lamest) stories! We're redefining roundups, baby!
About rebecca —
Rebecca Kelley is the content marketing manager for Intego, a Mac software company. She also guest-blogs/freelances at various places and runs a couple hobby blogs for shits and giggles.
I dig the theme/day idea... (sucks that everytime I use "dig" now, I have to think if people are gonna think I mean "Digg")
Sucks for Frank & Scott. My experience at the Wynn was quite pleasant, but I did realize that I needed to pull on my door quite hard for it to lock (kinda like when your car door is partially latched, but not shut all the way, so you have to push your ass against it).
Not to mention, it seriously took me like 10 minutes to figure out how to open the door in the first place...
Dogs hugging babies? Rebecca, have you been possessed by Lisa?
"First flatten the baby"
funny
That link was actually featured in a BC Friday Recap once upon a time...don't tell Lisa or she'll erroneously assume I'm copying her.
I gave a vote to Rand as a top 5 person of search for 2007. You were the only one of my votes that I hadn't met in person before, strangely enough. I'll have to catch up with you at a conference sometime to cross you off that list.
And on a related note, is it just me, or has anyone else never even heard of a couple of the people on that list? Uh oh, by even saying that, does that take away my SEO street cred?
Thanks for the link, much appreciated!
You're welcome! Thanks for the neat post!
Good idea to have multiple themed days. But then I would say that. Great minds.
Your wish for PPC Tuesdays is my command! (Actually, that was just a lovely coincidence, but you can pretend I did it just for you, Will.)
Yay. Mobile Mondays? Any chance? :)
Hmmm, well, we'd have to know something about mobile search before offering up Mobile Mondays... ;P
Dammit. I'm not looking for you to be right, just entertaining :)
Excellent round up. I don't have time to "round up" all of these up so I'm glad your team is on this of us all. Thanks Rand and team. My Google alerts will let me know if you stay on task (lol).
95% from 5% in '01? Quite the jump! I always knew there would be trouble with just the wording of 'Can' in the title of Can SPAM. The change in algorithm for subdomains had particular interest for me this week, professionally speaking, and i'm still watching that one.
Great idea to have these themed days, now i know i can get all caught up on Thursday, just before WB Fridays.
I'm excited about this whole "blog theme day" thing, but I just wanted to check something -
Monday: Legal
Tuesday: SEM
Wednesday: SMM
Thursday: Recaps
Friday: WBF
Ok, so we know all the above make up search engine marketing as a principle as a whole, so I'm not complaining about that, but given the break-up of themes, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of time set aside for pure SEO, as in on-page etc. Would the WBF's largely be dealing with this, or is this a move away from original content on on-page SEO, and will it purely be dealt with in the "recaps" posts of others?
Gah. Not explaining myself very well here, but hopefully you get the gist of what I'm saying :)
Burgo, since our blog is primarily SEO in nature, all of our other posts will pretty much be SEO-centric--it's just that we wanted one theme post per day so you folks can have something to look forward to. :)
Yeah - All my stuff will continue to be primarily SEO focused, as will Lucas' who will hopefully be contributing to the blog more regularly in the near future :)
Sorry mate. It is customary in Australia to stop working once the weather hits 25 degrees celsius (80 fahrenheit).
That's like December to February. See you then!
That's ok - we're not interested in hearing from you unless you are somewhere cold and rainy...
NOTE - These new theme days don't mean that my blogging will stop - I'll still be contributing regular SEO-focused features 3-4X a week (at least). Also - I loved Pat's idea for "Wasabi Wednesdays" so I think we might use that for the social pieces that Jane/Rebecca create.
The Facebook demographics dsitribution charts are really damn cool, as are some of the other links. And yeah - although I had a nice time at the Wynn, I definitely thought they misfired on a LOT of the little things. Hopefully they're working on making many of those better, as the facility itself is second to none.
The FB demogs are interesting, but not all that useful for anyone outside the US (obviously). And with London the biggest single network, and the UK one of the most actively social populations, I'd love to see the same stats for the UK.
My guess is that the users are much more in the 25-34 bracket.
I think Thinking Cap Thursdays would be better.
Thanks for the solid roundup. Will check some of these out later on tonight.