SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

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Linkscape is Faster, Link Analysis is Improved & Other Goodies Posted: 23 Dec 2010 05:02 AM PST Posted by jennita Yea.. Kinda like this. Over the past few months our dev and product teams have been busy little bees working on some pretty exciting new enhancements and upgrades to the web app. Since it's the holiday season... we might even liken them to Santa's little elves building toys for all the good little SEOs around the world. We've been rolling out quite a few updates each week. Some you've probably noticed, like the Linkscape index being updated faster and faster (Three cheers to Chas and Bryce for that!), while others may have gone unnoticed like fixing some pagination issues. I wanted to take this time to talk about a few of the bigger items we've released recently (even today!) and a few features you should watch for in the future. Faster Linkscape Updates As I mentioned above we're all in a tizzy over here about getting the Linkscape index updated quicker. Bryce and Chas on the dev team have made some major improvements to speed, so be sure to thank them for your fresh new data. :) We just had the latest Linkscape update yesterday, check out the stats for index 35: 38,807,464,322 (38.8 Billion) Pages 360,354,116 (360 Million) Subdomains 107,159,213 (107 Million) Root Domains 393,701,245,290 (393 Billion) Links 2.11% of All Links are Nofollowed (up 1.4% since early December) 57.01% are internal (down from 57.66% in early December) 42.99% are external (down from 43.34% in early December) 6.51% of pages have rel=canonical 62.02 links/page on average Link Analysis Domain Report Remember when you used to click on the Link Analysis tab and it would look like this: Well today we're launching some amazing updates that will help you see in an instant how you're doing against your competitors. As an example, I have a campaign set up for my husband's photography site. Here's what the new Link Analysis tab looks like: You can visually see that the Photography for Real Estate site is obviously the larger domain of the 4 and clearly has more domain authority, mozTrust, etc. The interesting thing to note is that in local markets it doesn't always rank first. :) So, beyond this quick information about your site and each of the competitors, you can also do deeper analysis into the links: In this view I'm looking at the Linking Root Domains, similar to what you find in Open Site Explorer. But you can also see followed backlinks, top pages and anchor text information as well. I have only showed my site and one competitor in the screenshot but on the page you'll see all the competitors. You can quickly take a peek into all your competitor's backlinks on this one page! Plus, you can easily download a PDF report and/or export up to 10,000 links (or top pages, linking domains, anchor text) into a CSV file, all with the click of a button. Whee... Data FTW! Note: This is being launched today... so if you don't see it quite yet, don't get discouraged! Take a break, then come back and try again. :D Another Note: The top linking root domain to my husband's site is from seomoz.org because I linked to it from my profile. :) New Keyword Ranking Emails If you're using the web app, you've probably already received one of these sexy new Keyword Ranking Report emails. Now, you can quickly assess how well your keywords have been doing over the past week. Check out a sample email below: Now if that email doesn't send you into automatic geek email heaven... then heck I don't know what would. :D mozPoints Update You may have noticed... or have even been alarmed to see that your mozPoints are no longer showing up in the right nav of the blog. Plus the Top User page has been a bit, shall we say, vacant lately. Well please don't worry! Your mozPoints have not gone away, and they are still showing up properly on your profile page. We are making some enhancements to the mozPoint system which will make more sense when we release our new profiles early next year. We apologize that we didn't let everyone know ahead of time before we made the changes! We received quite a few tweets, DMs, PMs, emails and support tickets asking where their mozPoints, rankings and Top User information went. The bad news, you'll have to wait a couple weeks to see that information again on the right nav, but the good news is that there are exciting improvements coming soon! I know, I know, you all are going to ask to get more information about these improvements... I promise, all in good time. :) We have to keep some surprises around here! About Us! This is a super fun one. We've recently created a whole new About Us section that includes more information on how to contact us, more mozzers and our TAGFEE tenets, SEOmoz job openings, cool press and awards we've received, and upcoming SEOmoz events (where we're speaking + meetups and such). A Few Other Recently Released Nuggets of Awesomeness Firefox and Chrome toolbar update, with some fixes and position numbers added to the SERP overlay Improvement to the rankings overview/history to display previous ranking data during retrieval of new rankings New holiday Roger on the home page (can I get a w00t w00t!) Manual selection of URLs for On-Page reports Better canonicalization check at setup – will check for redirects as well as missing redirects Repaired the ailing Juicy Link Finder Stay On Top of What's New & Coming Soon Plus, we've recently added the PRO Feature Change Log which you can access at any time to stay up-to-date on what's coming up next, or what changes have been recently implemented. Plus we've added a "request a feature" button to this page and hope that you'll utilize it! This is the best way to get that feature you've been dying to see in the web app. Starting in January we have so many amazing new developments we're bursting at the seams over here! We hope you all have a very happy holiday season and can't wait to get the ball rolling in 2011. Be there or be square.  Do you like this post? Yes No

7 Predictions for SEO in 2011 Posted: 22 Dec 2010 04:56 PM PST Posted by randfish It's that magical time of year when all of us who foolishly assumed the mantle of clairvoyance last December check up on our abilities and repeat our arrogant presumption again. Not surprisingly, something compels me to try again, despite the odds, but I am feeling a bit whimsical tonight, so let's make a game out of the prediction practice.  For each prediction (mine and others), we can grade using the following points system: Spot On (+2) - when a prediction hits the nail on the head and the primary criteria are fulfilled Partially Accurate (+1) - predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality Not Completely Wrong (-1) - those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense Off the Mark (-2) - guesses which didn't come close The rule is - if the score is lower than +1, the blogger/industry leader/author isn't allowed to make predictions for the coming year. So let's mark up my 8 predictions from last year and see whether new predictions are permitted: This Real Time Search Thing is Outta Here (+1) - technically, it's still around, though far less prevalent. I said "In 2010, I think this fades away. Perhaps not entirely, but we won't be seeing it for nearly as many queries with the prevalence we do today," which, on the scoring scale, probably deserves a "partially accurate." Twitter's Link Graph is the Real Deal (+2) - my guess seems oddly prescient when compared to Google + Bing's interview a few weeks back. "Google's not going to just take raw number of tweets or re-tweets. I think we're already seeing the relevance and reputation calculations in their decisions of which tweets and sources to show in the real-time results, and I expect that algorithms/metrics like PageRank, TrustRank, etc. will find their way into how Google uses the real-time data." I wonder if my luck can last. Personalized Search is Here to Stay (-1) - The title of this guess would make you think I'd got it right, but the substance is lacking. I noted that "If it's proven that you can get organic benefits by attracting PPC clickthrough, this may be the new "paid inclusion" for 2010, and could drive bid prices up massively as companies compete not only for paid listing clicks, but for the chance to earn "organic" positioning as well." Personalization bias didn't go towards brand exposure, and it actually hasn't got much stronger (apart from the localization element, which I didn't predict). Technically, it's still around, but it didn't become the juggernaut I thought it would. It's Going to Be a Two-Engine 80/20 World (+2) - Google's market share of web searches sending external traffic is likely very close to this (although Comscore reports only 66%, those numbers are heavily biased due to non-web-search "search" activity counted in the figures). A far better source would be something like StatCounter's referral data from the 15 billion pageviews/month on 3 million+ websites, which reports 81.88% for Google, and ~18% for Bing/Yahoo!. Given that Ask.com, Cuil and Yahoo! all folded their search operations this year, and Facebook/Twitter/Somebody Else Big hasn't entered the field, I'm giving this a "Spot On." Site Explorer and Linkdomain Will Disappear (+1) - Linkdomain is gone (at least in the US, and soon in most other countries), but it appears we'll still have until 2012(ish) with Site Explorer, so I'm giving this a (possibly slightly generous) rating of "partially accurate." SEO Spending Will Rise Dramatically (-1) - This one depends on the meaning of "dramatically." SEMPO's data suggests that 43% of marketers "expect" to spend more on SEO, but this is down 2% from 2009's survey. SEOmoz's own survey unfortunately doesn't compare apples to apples (we haven't asked the same question multiple years in a row and thus can't compare well). As of now, no new sources have come forward with data we're aware of (Forrester + eMarketer being the usual suspects). Thus, I'll give a "not completely wrong," since we really don't know. 2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization (-1) - Again, I'm going to say this was "not completely wrong" but it's also very tough to measure. We've had more speakers on CRO at search and marketing events of all varieties. Anecdotal reports would indicate CRO is becoming a more common and popular practice for organic marketers, but without solid numbers, it's hard to know. We can presume, however, that if there aren't lots of studies and data reports touting it, this probably wasn't "the year." More Queries Will Send Less Traffic (-1) - Given the launch of Google Instant, the personalization and localization of results, increased ranking inconsistency and more universal/vertical results in the SERPs, I'm going to say this is possibly near the mark, but not definitively correct. Google Instant, in particular, appears not to have moved the needle much on search demand and queries sending traffic. In fact, the only reason this is "not completely wrong" is due to my clever non-prediction of how many queries would send how much less traffic. :-) Tallying the numbers, I'm seeing +6 and -4, for a total of +2, which means new predictions for 2011. I also invite you to analyze some of the many lists of predictions for this past year here. If my calculations are correct, Mashable and TechCrunch are out of the predictions business (the latter just barely) while the New York Times' Bits Blog should continue (though, like me, they made some pretty pansy predictions). Without further ado, my predictions for SEO in 2011: #1: Someone Proves (or a Search Engine Confirms) that Clicks/Visits Influence Rankings I'm taking a chance on this one, but I've been hearing from more and more SEOs that there's some correlation between earning clicks and moving up in the rankings. In 2011, we'll get confirmation, either through testing or an admission from an engine that click-through-rate from the SERPs, visit count outside of search (or diversity of sources), or other usage-based data is in the ranking algorithm (or a method they use to help ID spam). #2: Google Local/Maps Adds Filters and Sorting The big reason Yelp is so much better than Google Maps/Local for finding a good local "place" isn't just the reviews (which Google aggregates from Yelp anyway). It's the filters that let me sort by features/pricing/proximity/open status/etc. Google's been playing the silly game of forcing users to choose search queries to enable rough, imperfect filtering, but 2011 is going to see the search engine shift to a model that allows at least some important filters/feature-selection. #3: Social Search Will Rise There's power in social media search, and Google/Bing's efforts to date have been lackluster at best. I suspect in 2011, we'll see the nascent beginning of search that leverages Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn connections to find results from your friends. It's possible this will start niche-based only (search articles your friends have shared, ala Trunk.ly), but it could also be broader - possibly something from Facebook or Twitter themselves. #4: Rank Tracking Will Be Possibly Through the Referral String Google's been slowly growing the percent of queries that contain the numeric position of the result in the referral data. Given how much this information means to marketers (even those who realize it's frequently not telling the whole story), and how much automated scraping/requests goes through each day, I'd venture to guess that Google will increase this further and maybe even add some support for it in GA (why force your engine to work harder and your impressions counts to suffer unnecessarily?) #5: Mobile Will Have a Negligible Effect on Search/SEO For years, I've heard the prognostication that SEO and search are going to be flipped on their heads once mobile query usage takes off. I'll boldly predict that not only will mobile usage of search NOT skyrocket in 2011 on the long-awaited J-curve, but that the mobile and normal web browsing experiences will continue to merge toward a single experience, thus negating much of the need for mobile-specific sites and SEO. They'll always be mobile-related marketing opportunities in games and local (though these are hardly limited to mobile devices), but  mobile SEO will pretty much just be "SEO." _ #6: Software Will Become an SEO Standard For the decade I've been in SEO, software and tools have always been a "nice-to-have" and not a "must-have" (with the possible exception of web analytics). In 2011, I see several SEO software companies growing to critical mass based on the market's demand, possibly including: Raven Tools, Conductor's Searchlight, Brightedge, SearchMetrics, RankAbove, DIYSEO and/or GinzaMetrics. Hubspot, while more of a CMS/holistic marketing tool, will also likely fit in this group as their SEO offerings get stronger. Oh, and SEOmoz's Web App could do pretty well, too :-) #7: We'll Start to Move Away from the Title "SEO" to Something More All-Inclusive For years, I've prided myself being an SEO and embraced the title, the community, the positives and the negatives that come with it. But with the search engines expanding so far afield in the signals they consider and the verticals/media types they include, I have to face facts - SEO today calls for much more of a talented generalist than a pointed specialist. We need to be savvy about and good at so many facets of organic web marketing that to call us "SEOs" is less empowering and more limiting than in the past.   Now I'd love to hear some of your predictions for 2011 and see who's earned scores predicting 2010 that gives them the right to guess about 2011. p.s. I didn't take the obvious "Google's going to crack down on more link spam" or "Social's going to be even more important" prediction gimmes, because I just don't think I'd respect myself tomorrow morning. Do you like this post? Yes No

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