Central Perk: 18 ian. 2012

miercuri, 18 ianuarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Ron Paul only GOP candidate to publicly denounce SOPA; What is SOPA and Why Won't it Work?
Greek Bond Talks Edge Toward 68% Haircut Deal; Will the Deal Be Accepted?
Finnish Minister Pours Cold Water on Merkozy Treaty; 4th Treaty Draft Underway; ECB Considers Alternatives to Bond-Buy Program; Unresolvable Questions
IMF Proposes Trillion Dollar Lending Expansion

Ron Paul only GOP candidate to publicly denounce SOPA; What is SOPA and Why Won't it Work?

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 08:06 PM PST

Yahoo! News reports Ron Paul only GOP Candidate to Publicly Denounce SOPA

GOP presidential candidate and Texas Rep. Ron Paul came out Wednesday in support of the "blackout" efforts taking place across the Web protesting pending anti-piracy legislation many have decried as an Internet censorship effort.

Paul made a statement through a Facebook status update, saying:

"My campaign, and the entire freedom movement, would not be as strong as they are today without a free Internet, and that's just one of the reasons why the establishment hopes to censor it with SOPA and PIPA. I'm proud to see so many taking a stand today. Contact your representative and senators and tell them to oppose these disastrous bills."

Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich – at least on Facebook and Twitter — were silent on the issue, and instead devoted their social media platforms to further campaign against one another.

Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, also came out Wednesday pledging to filibuster PIPA, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised to bring to the Senate floor on January 24.

What is SOPA and Why Won't it Work?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act. The name may sound nice, but here are some choice comments from Wikipedia.

Impact on Online Freedom of Speech

Opponents have warned that SOPA would have a negative impact on online communities. Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites such as YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China's Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar," she says. The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) warned that websites Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seemed likely to shut down if the bill becomes law.

Policy analysts for New America Foundation say this legislation would enable law enforcement to take down an entire domain due to something posted on a single blog, arguing, "an entire largely innocent online community could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority."

Additional concerns include the impact on common Internet functions such as linking or access data from the cloud. EFF claimed the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results[32] and on services such as Twitter.[33] Christian Dawson, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits.[34] The Electronic Frontier Foundation have stated that the requirement that any site must self-police user generated content would impose significant liability costs and explains "why venture capitalists have said en masse they won't invest in online startups if PIPA and SOPA pass."[35]

Weakening of "safe harbor" protections

According to critics of the bill such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bill's wording is vague enough that a single complaint about a site could be enough to block it, with the burden of proof resting on the site. A provision in the bill states that any site would be blocked that "is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation." Critics have read this to mean that a site must actively monitor its content and identify violations to avoid blocking, rather than relying on others to notify it of such violations.

Web-related businesses

An analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek stated, "The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges."

Internal networks

A paper by the Center for Democracy and Technology claimed that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content."

Impact on web-browsing software

The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern that free and open source software (FLOSS) projects found to be aiding online piracy could experience serious problems under SOPA. Of special concern was the web browser Firefox, which has an optional extension, MAFIAAFire Redirector, that redirects users to a new location for domains that were seized by the U.S. government. In May 2011, Mozilla refused a request by the Department of Homeland Security to remove MAFIAAFire from its website, questioning whether the software had ever been declared illegal.

Potential Effectiveness

Edward J. Black, president and CEO of the Computer & Communication Industry Association, wrote in the Huffington Post that "Ironically, it would do little to stop actual pirate websites, which could simply reappear hours later under a different name, if their numeric web addresses aren't public even sooner. Anyone who knows or has that web address would still be able to reach the offending website."

An editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News stated, "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."

John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society commented, "DNS filtering is by necessity either overbroad or underbroad; it either blocks too much or too little. Content on the Internet changes its place and nature rapidly, and DNS filtering is ineffective when it comes to keeping up with it."

Policy analysts for New America Foundation say this legislation would "instigate a data obfuscation arms race" whereby by increasingly invasive practices would be required to monitor users' web traffic resulting in a "counterproductive cat-and-mouse game of censorship and circumvention would drive savvy scofflaws to darknets while increasing surveillance of less technically proficient Internet users."

Never-Ending Witch Hunt

In short, SOPA is nothing but an never-ending witch hunt proposal that would allow the shutting down of websites, including mine, Zero Hedge, Max Keiser, Town Hall, ML-Implode, Calculated Risk, Naked Capitalism, Patrick, the Big Picture, and other alternative news sites on the most flimsy of reasons without doing anything to curb online piracy.

In the title to this post, I used the phrase "won't work" rather loosely. By "won't work" I meant the bill will not achieve the stated goal of stopping piracy. It may indeed "work" in the sense it would allow government to shut down sites for political reasons on trumped-up charges.

Close analysis shows the bill is really nothing but more "big brother" legislation and another attack on freedom of speech. Ron Paul is on the right side of this issue. Once again, he is the only one.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Greek Bond Talks Edge Toward 68% Haircut Deal; Will the Deal Be Accepted?

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 11:40 AM PST

Former ECB president Jean Claude Trichet said there would be no haircuts. There were. The first Greek haircut was 21% and it was insufficient. The second Greek haircut deal was 50% and that too was insufficient. On each failed attempt, the ECB and EMU poured more money into Greece.

There is now about €200bn of Greek debt held by banks, hedge funds and other investors up from about €50bn a couple years ago.

A third renegotiation is now underway, rumored to be a 68% haircut. Clearly there would have been far fewer ramification on banks if Greece would have defaulted long ago.

Such is the stubborn arrogance of ECB, and EMU officials.

Unless another haircut is approved Greece, and still more money is poured into Greece, it will default on March 20 when a €14.5 billion bond repayment is due.

The Financial Times reports Greek bond talks edge closer to deal

Talks broke down last week with holders of close to €200bn of Greek debt after some eurozone officials called for a sharply lower coupon, or interest payment, on new bonds.

The latest proposal called for a step-up coupon starting at about 3 per cent and rising to 4.5 per cent as the bond approached maturity, one banker said. Another said the average interest paid during the life of the bond would be 4.25 per cent, a rate "that the banks would be happy with".

The deal would amount to a 68 per cent loss for bondholders in net present value terms, according to people familiar with the talks.

Banks will be happy with a 68% loss? I rather doubt it.

Will the Deal Be Accepted?

Peter Tchir at TF Market Advisors had some interesting comments on the likelihood of the "success" of the PSI (private sector initiative) in his post Greek PSI - Headlines And Reality

The Greek PSI is once again (still) hitting the headlines. Here is what I think the most likely scenario is (80% likelihood).

Some form of an agreement will be announced. The IIF will announce that the "creditor committee has agreed in principle to a plan." That plan will need to be "formalized" and final agreement from the individual institutions on the committee and those that weren't part of the committee will need to be obtained. The headline will sound good, but will leave a month or so for details to come out. In the meantime every European and EU leader (or employee) with a press contact will say what a great deal it is. That it confirms that Europe is on the path of progress and that they are doing what they committed to at their summits.

The rating agencies will call it a DEFAULT, because it is. ISDA won't call it a Credit Event because it isn't. The EU leaders will call it a haircut or PSI, because they have an aversion to saying the word DEFAULT (and to the truth). There will be some concern that calling it a DEFAULT by the rating agencies will trigger some actions. It won't. The ECB will allow banks to overrule the declaration of the rating agencies. They will say that Greece remains current on some bonds, that Greece will make payments on new bonds, so this DEFAULT situation is temporary and can be ignored for purposes of accounting, mark to market, collateral, etc.. It will avoid the chaos that would ensue, so they will go with the flow.

Then all talk will turn to Portugal. Why should Portugal continue to pay on their existing debt, when Greece just cut a great deal? And Ireland? The reality that Greece will NOT be an isolated case, but will be the norm will hit, and we will see the market give back the gains and sink lower on the realization that the banks recognizing losses is just beginning.

The key to understanding the negotiation mess is private investors (hedge funds) who bought bonds at a steep discount and at the same time bought credit default swaps for protection have everything to gain by forcing a credit event.

Tchir suggests they will be bought out. Certainly they will have to be bought out or the deal will collapse.

If they are bought out, everyone who does hold out is far better off than those who accept the deal straight up. This is what all the tension is about.

Greek deal disrupted by bondholders gambling on default

It is often hard to tell which article is more current when reading conflicting opinions, but please consider Greek deal disrupted by bondholders gambling on default

"Significant numbers" of Greek bonds may have migrated from financial institutions participating in the voluntary Private Sector Initiative (PSI) to others betting that the country will default, throwing the negotiations into peril, a senior economist has warned EurActiv.

It is also impossible to gauge how much of this 'bond migration' has taken place since the PSI negotiations began last year – because of a lack of transparency on the markets – according to Sony Kapoor, the managing director of economic think tank Re-Define.

The deal on the table involves persuading creditors to turn in their bonds and receive new ones that have half the face value and mature many years in the future. The Greek authorities say €206 billion of bonds are subject to the exchange; if all the creditors agree, they'd get €103 billion in new bonds back.

But there is a conflict between those bondholders – represented in the negotiations by the IIF – who are serious about accepting a voluntary write-down, and others betting on a default.

Kapoor said that the interests of bondholders who are hoping to free-ride on a voluntary agreement [some of whom hold credit default swaps] – is irking the bondholders willing to participate in the agreement, and was a major reason for the breakdown in negotiations last week.

"It is a classic collective action problem," he said. "Collectively a voluntary agreement is in the interests of some of the bondholders. But if 90% of bonds were volunteered and 10% did not, Greece is not likely to default and these 10% may have a bumper payoff," Kapoor added, explaining why those willing to join the agreement are exasperated with the others.

A spokesman for the IIF refused to comment to EurActiv on speculation that bonds were migrating in significant numbers to institutions hedged with credit default swaps. The spokesman said: "The first priority now for the negotiators representing major institutional investors is to see if it is at all possible to do a deal. If there is one, then the next phase is to see if as many as investors as possible can participate."

Meanwhile, the Fitch ratings agency announced Tuesday that Greece would default on its debt, although it said that such a default was likely to take place in an orderly manner.

"It is going to happen. Greece is insolvent so it will default," Edward Parker, the managing director of Fitch's sovereign group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Stockholm.

Will the Third Haircut be Sufficient?

Whether the deal is accepted or not I side with that "Greece is insolvent so it will default". But did Fitch mean a "credit event" default or a "voluntary" non-credit event default?

Here is the deal.

The Greek economy is absolutely dead. Austerity measures are going to impart still more pain. Capital flight is underway. Few of the reforms Greece has agreed to have even been implemented. The idea that Greece will reduce its deficit under these circumstances seems silly.

Moreover Greek elections are coming up, possibly "sometime in April", according to the prime minister. Thus, whatever is agreed to now in terms of austerity measures, reforms, asset sales, privatizations etc. by this caretaker government will all have to be fought over yet another time.

Eventually, some politician or set of politicians will have had enough of this process.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Finnish Minister Pours Cold Water on Merkozy Treaty; 4th Treaty Draft Underway; ECB Considers Alternatives to Bond-Buy Program; Unresolvable Questions

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 08:39 AM PST

Inquiring minds are reading several recent articles on the EU Observer.

ECB Considers Alternatives to Bond-Buy Program

Please consider ECB mulling alternatives to bond-buy plan

The European Central Bank is exploring alternatives to its controversial bond-purchase programme but has yet to decide on any replacement policy tool, ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny told a German website in comments published on Tuesday.

Nowotny, who is also Austria's national central bank chief, said there was scepticism on the policymaking Council about the bond-buy programme "because we fear the market imperfections that we want to correct with this could emerge in another area."

"We are discussing possible alternatives. But this discussion is not so far developed that we can dispense with the SMP (bond-buying programme)," Nowotny told the Wall Street Journal's German website.

Bundesbank chief Axel Weber quit in protest at the programme last year and another heavyweight German ECB policymaker, Juergen Stark, also resigned over the plan.

The ECB more than tripled its bond purchases last week to the highest level since late November, spending 3.77 billion euros as a calm start to the New Year gave way to an intensification of the euro zone debt crisis.

The bond purchases face renewed scrutiny after Standard & Poor's mass euro zone rating downgrades on Friday, though the ECB has resisted political pressure from within and beyond the euro zone to step up the programme on a major scale.

Alternatives? There are No Alternatives

The ECB has a choice. Buy bonds or don't buy bonds. If the ECB continues to buy bonds, more and more of the risk will be put on the back of Germany.

However, if the ECB stops buying bonds, interest rates will soar.

This ponzi scheme will blow up sooner rather than later and that is precisely why the euro end-game is at hand. For details please see Time to Prepare for a Meeting of "Monetary Cardinals".

Finnish Foreign Minister Pours Cold Water on Merkozy Treaty

Please consider Finnish minister pours cold water on fiscal treaty

Criticising the EU for its "terrible hurry" to sign and adopt the new rules and for circumventing "all the normal parliamentary procedures," Tuomioja wrote in his blog on Monday (16 January) that the treaty will overlap with existing EU laws on economic discipline - the so-called 'six-pack.'

The new treaty will "just confuse decision-makers, undermine the EU commission's role and create new divisions within the EU" he said.

"The whole contract is at best unnecessary and at worst harmful, and Finland has reason to oppose the whole treaty and at least remain outside it."

One of the measures to be applied by the new treaty - a "structural deficit" of 0.5 percent of GDP - would be a "completely nonsensical straitjacket" that would only deepen recession and increase unemployment, he added.

In his opinion, the whole agreement is a concession made to Germany so that the EU's paymaster lets the European Central Bank intervene more forcefully to stem sovereign debt problems from spreading to more euro-countries.

"We should not be taking orders from anybody," Tuomioja said.

The article points out that Tuomioja is a "junior member in Finland's ruling coalition and his views do not reflect the position of the whole government". However, I point out that should the proposal be put to a voter referndum, it would fail.

Politicians, acing in their own best interests are likely to ratify the treaty.

4th Treaty Draft Underway, Numerous Questions Remain

Please consider Handful of questions remain on EU fiscal treaty

A fourth draft of the slim document - meant to copperfasten budgetary prudence in the EU - is to be circulated on Thursday (19 January), but most of the outstanding issues have been left for finance ministers to sort out in the hope the pact will be ready in time for an end-of-the-month EU summit.

One open question is determining the link between the permanent bail-out fund (the ESM) and the new intergovernmental pact. Germany - the main driver behind the treaty - is keen to have the intergovernmental agreement say only countries that have ratified it will be permitted to make use of the fund.

But according to an account on Monday evening (16 January) by Italian Socialist MEP Roberto Gualtieri - one of the European Parliament's observers at the negotiating table - other countries fear this would once again create uncertainty in the markets.

Also open is how many euro countries need to ratify the treaty before it enters into force. The number has yo-yoed from the initial suggestion of nine, then to 15 and then back to 12. Germany wants a high number so that all struggling eurozone countries get on board.

On top of this, there is disagreement about wording in an article on economic policy co-ordination (Article 9). Opposing camps differ on whether to make mention of growth-enhancing measures and if so, on the nature of the reference.

Member states are also at odds on future eurozone summitry. An eternal question in EU politics, it concerns who has a right to be in the inner circle. Wording on the role of the European Parliament, the president of the European Commission and non-euro states still needs to be finalised.

"It's a very important point which has been left open," Gualtieri noted at an EU parliament hearing on Monday.

MEPs will be looking for the fourth draft to mention eurobonds in the introduction to the document - EU deputies are keen on the idea of mutualising eurozone debt, but it is fiercely opposed by Germany.

"There is a proposal by the commission - if it is accepted - of making reference in the recital of a path toward stability bonds. This would be at least an improvement in respect of a text that [is] only concentrated on fiscal stability without anything on growth and solidarity," Gualtieri added.

Unresolvable Questions

Excuse me for pointing out the obvious but that is one hell of a lot of issues to be decided at the last minute. One has to laugh if not loudly mock the idea that Eurobonds under a new name of "stability bonds" are going anywhere given Germany's stance.

As for the number of nations it takes to ratify the treaty, pray tell why isn't the number 17, the exact number of nations in the Eurozone. Can someone point out a ratified agreement that "majority rule" dictates such matters? If not, then why does not every nation have to agree to such a change?

Would such a treaty change pass in a German referendum? I think not because it would open the door for majority rule eurobonds.

By the way, the above discussion explains why Merkel wants a high number as opposed to a simple majority. Even still, there is no guarantee every other country would not someday vote against Germany, just as 26 nations voted against the UK in a recent proposed change to the EU treaty.

Merkel is bright enough to understand this. However, like all politicians she does not really care about governance. She is more concerned about her legacy. She does not want the Eurozone to collapse under her watch.

Understand that and you can easily understand the horrendous compromises with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that she has made, as well as her pathetic agreement to a proposal that risk's selling Germany down the river later via a majority rule construct.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

IMF Proposes Trillion Dollar Lending Expansion

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 03:14 AM PST

Here's a dead on arrival proposal: IMF Proposes Trillion Dollar Lending Expansion

Most European stocks rose, erasing earlier losses, as the International Monetary Fund was said to propose a $1 trillion expansion of its lending resources. Asian shares and U.S. index futures advanced.

The IMF is proposing an expansion of its lending resources to safeguard the global economy against any worsening of Europe's debt crisis, according to an official at a Group of 20 nation. The lender is pushing China, Brazil, Russia, India, Japan and oil-exporting nations to be the top contributors, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

China Rejected Bailout Request Already

For starters, China already rejected bailout requests by Europe.

China's vice foreign minister has ruled out using the country's vast foreign exchange reserves to bail out Europe, as the debt-laden continent tries to stave off the risk of a massive default.

"The argument that China should rescue Europe does not stand," vice foreign minister Fu Ying told an EU-China forum.

"We cannot use foreign reserves for... rescuing foreign countries. We need to ensure safety, liquidity and profit for the foreign reserves."

Moreover, Brazil, Russia, India, and Japan have their own problems. The US is not going to contribute more and was not even asked.

Nonetheless S&P futures spiked about seven fast points overnight on the news.

That the IMF feels the need to make such a request should not be anything to cheer about. Indeed, there has been so much orchestrated "good news" that I can't help wondering if the bottom is about to fall out of the market.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Seth's Blog : Good news about Amit (thank you!)

Good news about Amit (thank you!)

My colleague Amit Gupta found a 10/10 marrow match. There's still a long and treacherous road ahead, but thanks to you, and to people like you, and the ability to spread the word among the tribe, a match was found, something that was impossible just a few years ago.

Thank you.

• Email to a friend •

Damn Cool Pics

Congress Can You Hear Us?

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 02:17 PM PST

Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA. The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: google

10 Commandments of Affiliate Web Design Graywolf's SEO Blog

10 Commandments of Affiliate Web Design

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 10:39 AM PST

Advanced SEO Book cover This is a guest post by Gab Goldenberg, author of the advanced SEO book. Get a free chapter on link building here and check out his book affiliate program – the site boasts a 5.5% conversion rate to sale!

Affiliate web design is not only unique because it’s purpose is to generate conversions – in contrast to providing an outlet for frustrated artists – but it has to do so in a limited environment where the conversion has to happen on a third party site. Here are the 10 key web design rules for affiliates.

10. Problem: You need to send the traffic onwards, with minimal bounce rate on the merchant site.

Solution: Therefore, prepare your traffic by including visual elements of the merchant’s landing page on your own site.

Logos are a minimum, but try cropping the hero shot and using that or some stock photo face that’s on the lander… use things people will recognize after clicking through and reassure them this is what they clicked through to see. Only using text links is lazy and less likely to work.

Similarly, either repeat or paraphrase the merchant’s headline with your headline and call to action.

9. Problem: Merchant sites don’t show shipping costs [or other costs, ex.: book clubs, hidden fees] easily. This means people will abandon the cart in higher rates.

Solution: Gather the info yourself and inform your visitors exactly of all charges ahead of time.

8. Problem: Visitors care about the merchant/ the merchant’s product. Not you.

Solution: Provide a value add that encourages people to refer their friends to you. Are your reviews updated periodically? Do they get a bonus if they buy through your affiliate link? (E.g. similar to cashback affs, but you can offer bonuses like info products, tools, stickers, support etc) Do you have some unique value add like BBGeeks.com‘s reviews of network coverage organized by geography?
7. Problem: Your design is intended to yield a sale, once, and once-only.

Solution: It’s OK to start with pushing your traffic to convert right away, you’re only ever going to get value from that customer once… so you should figure out how to get that traffic into an email (or phone, direct mail, personal contact) list you can monetize repeatedly. Generating leads for the aerospace field? Why not invite leads to your aerospace summer retreat?

6. Problem: Your claims aren’t credible.

Solution: Substantiate them with pics and video. Did you really buy that top fom the Gap? Show a picture of yourself in it with the matching bag. Weight-loss product really work? Show before/after or record yourself doing it, and prove the dates are real with newspapers in your vid.

5. Problem: You’re too enthusiastic about the affiliate product. Every reference to it on your site is linked, the “negatives” in your review are that the merchant is too helpful and generous etc… skeptical consumers don’t click.

Solution: Use one call to action above the fold, and one for every scroll of screen real estate downwards. How many pixels to a scroll? Check your analytics for visitors’ most common screen resolutions.

4. Problem: You overestimate how much persuasion people need and have too much copy.

Solution: Short copy vs long copy depends on several factors, chief amongst which is price and second degree of need. You can get names and emails with a title, picture and 2-3 bulleted benefits. (I once wrote a sales letter with 20 reasons to subscribe to my free RSS feed. Ooops.)

Note: Price includes total price, because people aren’t stupid and get that a $50 monthly subscription is a helluva lot more than a one-time $50 purchase.

3. Problem: You’re starting with visuals/templates as opposed to copy.

Solution: Form serves function. Figure out what you want to do, and create a page (or find a template) that matches that. Don’t start with visuals and then try to fit your copy/ purpose into it. For example, I’ve seen complicated SaaS software trying to sell me on a $50 subscription with hardly any copy on the landing page, because the lander featured a big spot for a hero image / video (which was meant for newbies very unfamiliar with the category of product, and thus didn’t help me) and then some horizontally aligned features with 3 lines of adwords-length copy each.

2. Problem: Your blog posts lack email subscription forms. I don’t mean in the sidebar or in a dhtml overlay-popup. I mean in the post.

Solution: Scott Brinker from IonInteractive.com (no association, though I did get a free review copy of their CRO book Honest Seduction) showed a brilliant type of landing page at Pubcon 2010. He featured a full length article featuring X ways to do Y… and then there was an opt-in form above the fold embedded in the copy, right-aligned, saying “Get 10 more ways to do Y”…

Obviously you can’t do that for every blog post, but your popular posts should have that sort of integration so you get max value out of each post. On the backend, you can need to figure out how to send a custom initial autoresponder if you want all these people on the same list, or you can create multiple duplicate lists.

Another more general way to do this is to have your forms tied to your blog post’s category or tag, in which case you have a general free report for the “seo” category” and another for the “affiliate” category.

1. Problem: Your landing page is leaky. Yes, affiliates have leaks too, not just merchants.

Solution: Get rid of all the extra junk on your landing page. Standard navigation on your product review blog post? Use a WP custom post type with a blank sidebar or comment it out for that page. Use Google Website Optimizer to test the two and watch CTR soar on the nav-free page.

p.p.s. Problem #11: WordPress is your default landing page creation/testing engine. Even using something like Thesis or Affiliate Theme, you’re strongly limiting your ability to test graphics, in terms of layout, hero shots, and more. Either use purpose built testing software that has a built-in landing page creation/editing, or get some graphics and html. I use Bharce for graphics and PSD to HTML/CSS for slicing.

photo credit: Shutterstock/SSGuy

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10 Commandments of Affiliate Web Design

A Peek Under the Hood: How we Manage the SEOmoz Community

A Peek Under the Hood: How we Manage the SEOmoz Community
58 billion URLs in the Latest, Largest Linkscape Index Update Yet
How To Handle Downtime During Site Maintenance

A Peek Under the Hood: How we Manage the SEOmoz Community

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 04:39 PM PST

Posted by jennita

Have you ever been a part of a community and wondered, “How does it all happen?” Well today is your lucky day! In the spirit of TAGFEE, I've decided to lift the Moz hood and show you what it takes to manage a large community. In fact, this is just the first post in a series of posts on Community Management.

Today I'll be explaining the who, what, when, where and how of how we manage the SEOmoz community. It's important to know who are the people behind the scenes, keeping the community in order and running smoothly, just as much as it is to know what exactly we consider the community to be and how we do it.

In the next posts, I'll dig deeper into subjects such as how we deal with negativity, how we gained over 100k Twitter followers and what we're planning to do for our Google+ strategy. For now, let's jump into the SEOmoz community and see how it's done.

Who Are We?

Over the last couple years, the community has grown immensely. It quickly became imperative to build a team to help take care of different aspects of the community. I simply couldn’t handle all aspects on my own anymore. So, before I jump too far into the what, why and how we manage the community, I’d like to introduce you to the “who.”

Peter Meyers (aka Dr. Pete)

Essentially Dr. Pete has been around the Moz community for about as long as Rand himself. :) No, really. He’s been an essential part of the community long before we even called it a community. Rand made the smart move long ago to bring Pete on board as an Associate.

Pete spends much of his time answering questions in Q&A (you’d be amazed at how much stuff this guy knows!) and writing on the blog. In fact he’s written some of top content on the blog for the past three years. He pretty much makes the rest of us (ok except maybe Rand) look bad at our unworthy content.

While he’s not helping manage the chaos of Q&A, writing on the blog, or being one of the funniest guys on Twitter, he runs User Effect, a successful usability and CRO company. Oh and if you’ve ever wondered if he’s a he’s a real doctor, read more here.

Casey Henry

Many of you may remember Casey from his excellent YouMoz posts that he wrote as a member of the community. The fact is, his community activity caught our eye and in 2010 we made him an Associate. At that time, he helped kill spam, answer questions in Q&A and did some dev work for us as well. It didn’t take long to realize that he was a great fit for Moz, so we hired him & moved him and his wife to Seattle.

As the resident Marketing Ninja, he manages many marketing projects as well as a number of dev responsibilities. His part within the Community Team is to help keep track of, and kill spam, spammers and scammers. Whether that’s through comments, PMs or otherwise, he’s the man on the case. He’s also quite active in Q&A and can “woot,” “whee,” and “beep” with the rest of us on the SEOmoz Twitter account.

You’ll often find him replying to Tweets to the SEOmoz account from his personal account, fixing link issues, answer questions and being an awesomely helpful guy. Aww.

Keri Morgret

Keri is well known in the industry as one of those amazing conference live-bloggers, and speaks about using negative keywords effectively for PPC. Having managed many forums and community sites in the past, including being a moderator at Sphinn, she is perfectly positioned to be a part of the Moz community team.

Currently Keri works out of her home near San Francisco as a (mostly) full-time Associate and runs her business Strike Models (go check out the site, it’s super cool) with her husband. She has quickly become an integral part of the team as well as the community in general. As the main Mozzer leading YouMoz management as well as Q&A she interacts all day long with community members. Talk about stealth, you may not realize it, but Keri pretty much knows everything that’s going on all the time. You think I’m kidding… I’m not.

Not only does she spend her time managing some of the on-site areas but she often helps out with the SEOmoz Twitter account as well. It can be a daunting task knowing that over 100k people will see your tweets (ok, in reality the number to actually see the tweets is quite less, but you get the point), but Keri jumps right in there. :) She’s also a huge help by cleaning out the Twitter “inbox” (more on that below) for me each morning.

If you’re ever curious about what’s going on at any particular time within the Moz Community, Keri is your woman.

Erica McGillivray

When we found out Erica was a founder as well as the President and Marketing Director of GeekGirlCon, we just knew she’d fit right into our community. :) With a background in SEO, Social, Email Marketing and event planning (pretty much marketing awesomeness) she easily jumped into the role of Community Attaché.

Erica can essentially do anything and everything that has to do with managing the community. A ninja in her own right. On any given day, you’ll find her managing our email marketing, answering questions in Q&A, reading through YouMoz posts, Tweeting from the Moz account, setting up webinars and organizing the upcoming MozCon.

Oh, and did I mention she’s a badass SEO? I’ve always felt strongly that you can’t manage a community unless you’re a part of the community yourself. Well Erica can talk the talk and walk the walk. Just be sure not to make her mad, she might pull these out.

Jen Lopez

Oh hi! That’s me. :) Just a quick background, I have a degree in Journalism, emphasis in Public Relations, but spent 10 years as a web developer before I turned into an SEO. Got hired as an SEO Consultant with SEOmoz in early 2009, then in January 2010 we gave up consulting. Doh! Hello Community Management. It was at that point that I created the position and over the last few years it has grown into a real job.

So what will you find me doing on an average day? I find myself Managing Twitter, Facebook & Google+, combating spam, answering questions in Q&A (usually that Keri or Erica assign me ;)), managing the blog schedule and content, responding to help tickets as needed, commenting on community posts outside of SEOmoz, and any other random thing that comes up during the day.

The truth is, my job rocks. Sure I deal with trolls sometimes, but that’s what makes the job interesting.

Mozzers

That’s you, you and YOU. Whether it’s Gianluca responding to a Tweet about SEOmoz while us West Coasters are sleeping or Ryan answering a question in Q&A about a technical PRO issue, you guys help us every day to manage the community. This is a very important aspect of the community and one that makes people want to be a part of it. It’s not just one person managing everyone else with an iron fist (OK I admit sometimes I have dreams this will happen ;), it’s all the Moz staff and community helping each other out. Holy. geeky. happiness.

What Do We Do?

Obviously there’s no way to really describe everything that we do in one blog post. When you work with a community, your day can change in an instant. Sometimes an issue comes up and you’re helping to manage an issue since you’re the public “face” of the community on the social sites. Other times you wake up to a hashtag being created and hundreds of posts being written about you. *huge grin*

Let me take a few moments to walk you through the major aspects of managing the SEOmoz community. This really is only a high-level look at we do each day. The plan is to expand on many of these areas as separate blog posts. For now, here are the what, when how and who of what it means to manage the community.

Blog

When Rand started the SEOmoz blog years ago, I’m sure he never quite imagined that it would be the base of such an expansive and amazing community. It really has become the center of everything Moz. Think about this; an average blog post gets around 40 thumbs up, 50 comments and 800+ Tweets. That’s a lot to keep up with each day!

What
Since you’re already here you probably know that we post content not only about SEO, but about Inbound Marketing in general. We focus on creating actionable takeaways and look for authors who can bring something new to the community. We like to cover hot topics in the industry but we don’t necessarily cover them as “news.” We’ll also post new updates/improvements/issues about the PRO product on the blog as well.

When
We have at least one new post each day, and sometimes publish a second one during the day (Pacific U.S. time).

How
We have a custom blog editor that we use to create the posts. When it comes to managing comments, we have a system that helps us to moderate them if they meet a certain criteria. This way we don't allow a comment to get published if we suspect that it's spam, and one of us has to approve it.

When it comes to comments and how we handle them, we take the community very seriously and will ban users if they don't "play by the rules." This is an area that I'll dig into a bit deeper on another post, but essentially, you're in our home and we request that you handle yourself as a professional.

Who
I manage the blog schedule and make sure we have a post going up each night. The idea is to set the schedule at least a couple weeks out, with openings here and there for hot topics or new authors we want to introduce. All of us watch for spam comments throughout the day and Casey set up a way to moderate and kill spam before you guys ever even see it. :)

The entire team helps manage the comments, detect spam and make sure things aren't getting out of hand anywhere.

YouMoz

Writing a post for YouMoz is a great way to get your name out in the community (remember above I mentioned Casey started out as a YouMoz author!), plus you get a nice link. ;)

What
Similar to the main blog, the community loves to read actionable posts. However, in YouMoz we do have a little more leeway than we do on the main blog. We’ll publish posts on topics that we don’t normally cover on the blog. The best part about that though is that if the post does really well in YouMoz and gets promoted to the main blog, then we see more diversity in the subjects.

When
We try to post at least one YouMoz post per day and some days we even have two. It used to take 6-8 weeks to get through the queue and now it’s only two weeks, tops! (A HUGE thanks to Keri for cleaning this up.)

How
Any member can create a blog post using our blog editor and submit it to be read by our editors. If it’s approved, it gets published to the YouMoz blog. We recently added a “Read Me First” page that has helped us to get higher quality posts submitted.

Who
Keri is the main point of contact when it comes to YouMoz. She’s done an excellent job cleaning up the queue and making it easier and quicker for authors to get their posts published. Whenever necessary, Erica and I also jump in and help by editing and approving content, declining posts, etc.

When it comes to promoting YouMoz posts to the main blog, I’m usually the one that makes that decision. There is no “golden rule” on how to get promoted and it sometimes depends on whether there’s a spot open on the main blog. When it’s good, and the community likes it, it will get promoted. :)

Q&A

When we launched the new Q&A system last year, we honestly weren’t quite sure exactly how it would be received. We were pleasantly surprised to see how much people loved to both ask and answer questions! It took us a few months to get the hang of managing it properly, but with the help of the team, we’re quite happy with this PRO feature.

What
You’ll find pretty much any and every kind of content related (sometimes barely) to internet marketing. Since it is for PRO members only, it’s fairly easy to keep spam in check since they usually don’t like to pay money. What we mainly look for here is to make sure that people are keeping in line with our Community Guidelines.

When
Twenty-four hours a day the community is asking and answering questions. Plus since many of our Associates who answer questions live in London and other “across the pond” cities, we’re able to have coverage all day long. Whee!

How
This all happens through our own proprietary Q&A system. We get asked quite often if we built this ourselves or used an out-of-box solution. This is 100% a homegrown system, which does have its own set of bugs. :) This system is only about a year old and is about 500% better than the old Q&A.

Who
While Keri manages both private and public Q&A, Dr. Pete and Erica also play a heavy role here. Keri makes sure your private questions are answered by our team of staff and expert Associates. Dr. Pete and Erica are usually in there answering questions for a few hours each day as well. Many of our Associates play a role in Q&A and you’ll see a number of them answering questions and endorsing answers every day. Even Rand goes in quite often and replies to questions personally, even ones asking how to contact him. :)

Social Community

Over the past couple years our community has grown by leaps and bounds through the help of social media sites. You may have noticed that we engage quite heavily on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. It’s not that we’ve ignored other sites; we just tend to focus our energies on these four.

Since many of our members follow us on these sites in addition to the blog, we had to figure out a way to be somewhat unique in all areas. Nothing worse than content overkill (ok, yea yea there really are lots of things that are worse, but you get my point.) Here’s a quick walk through of how we manage these four social media sites here at SEOmoz.

Twitter

Twitter is a bit of our “catch-all” and has the biggest following. With well over 100k followers, as expected this channel is used for customer service, SEO advice, content promotion and other forms of marketing.

What
We tweet about SEOmoz content, PRO membership updates, site outages, tool issues, tool upgrades/improvements, YouMoz posts, and anything related to the SEOmoz community. Additionally you’ll see a ton of replies to customer service type inquiries, issues, problems, questions, kudos, high-fives, etc.

We keep the tone of the tweets as Mozzy as possible, and speak as if we are Roger. It makes may day when someone tweets to us saying “Hey Roger, thanks for great app” or something along those lines. It’s all about Roger!

When
Our community is very international, so we can’t just tweet from 9am-5pm Pacific time. We need to be available as often as possible to respond to questions, requests and such. While we do need to sleep at some point, you’ll notice that we have people covering Twitter from about 7am until around 11pm Pacific.

Keri helps in the morning since she works from home and can jump right in. Then when I get into the office I take over for the day. She again takes over from about 5-8pm, when I jump back on.

We also schedule tweets of our content to go out during “on” hours for many in our community. While we don’t schedule tweets that ask questions and specifically ask for engagement, we do need to schedule them to promote our content. On a side-note our most retweeted tweets usually happen between 2-4am Pacific. Whee!

How
We use CoTweet to manage Twitter, which allows multiple users to manage multiple accounts. It makes it easy to assign tweets to others plus you can tag tweets and set up extensive searches. I wrote a bit more about it here on Marketing Pilgrim.

Who
While I’m the main person managing the account, at any time throughout the day you may find Keri, Erica or Casey tweeting as well. I also encourage staff to reply to tweets if the see them and simply cc: @SEOmoz so we know it’s been handled. For example, Rand will often do this. He’ll see a tweet before we do and will respond plus let us know it’s been handled. It’s a great way to give people direct interaction with Mozzers as well!

Facebook

As I mentioned before, we wanted to figure out a different approach to Facebook so it wasn’t just the same ol’ content as Twitter. So we decided to make Facebook, the “face” of SEOmoz.

What
Yes, we do post all of our content on Facebook, the same as we do on Twitter but in addition to that we’ll post fun things about the company or publish photos of events. One thing I love to do is get photos from a Meetup or conference and post them to Facebook. We find that by tagging people in photos and having them tag themselves and others, we get a boost in “likes” each time.

Additionally, I love to ask questions of the community here. People love to add their opinion and Facebook is a simple and easy way to do it. With so many people logged in all day either on their computers or through their phones or tablets, it’s very easy to get people’s attention on Facebook.

We also love to change Roger’s outfit and add some “life” to him.

When it comes to comments and wall posts, we manage them just as we would manage comments on our site. If it’s spam we remove it, if it’s obscene or someone cusses, we remove it. Essentially, as long as you’re on-topic and not a jerk, we keep your posts. :)

When
The timing of Facebook is somewhat similar to Twitter however we don’t schedule Facebook posts. We haven’t quite nailed down a science as to what time is best to post for us yet, but it’s something we’ll probably focus on this year.

How
Although I could use an outside app to manage Facebook, I choose not to. Facebook seems to not show posts created from outside apps as much in people’s feeds as they do posts directly from Facebook. I want us to show up in those feeds as often as possible. Plus I just like to know I’m seeing what users are seeing on our wall.

Who
Again, I’m the main person to manage the Facebook page, however Erica, Casey and quite a few others not a part of the official “Community team” others also have admin rights.

Google+

As soon as Google+ brand pages came out, we jumped right on it. It has taken us a couple months to shake the bones out and figure out a strategy, but I think we’re going on a nice track now.

What
In order to not seem like drones showing the exact same content over and over, on our Google+ page we not only promote our own content, but we like to promote other’s as well. This is a great place for us to introduce our readers to hot topics or content on our sites that we think they’d be interested in.

However the hottest content we’ve found, is our “Whiteboard+” video series. Essentially, it’s a Whiteboard Friday type of video, but is only posted to Google+. We’ll keep testing this and see what works best, so you might find some new content on there soon as well. J

When
Right now, since it’s so new we don’t have a specific schedule for posting to Google+. Over this past weekend we posted a special Whiteboard+ video on Friday night at 8pm Pacific and it went crazy! It currently has 353 pluses, 382 shares and 101 comments. And most of this happened over the weekend! I think we may be on to something here…

How
As far as I know there aren’t any third-party apps out there that let you set up Google+ posts, so I’m logged into Google+ all day long. I’m very happy that they started showing alerts when we get a new follower, comment, plus, etc. It makes it easier to manage than hitting refresh and scanning the page (like I did at first).

Who
Well since the account right now is connected to my personal account, I’m the only one to manage it. I sincerely hope that they allow the ability to add more users soon. A gal needs a break sometime!

Ahh LinkedIn, the stepchild of our social efforts for far too long! Luckily we’re in the middle of building out our strategy, since so many people from the community are there.

What
As with the other social sites, we’ve set up our RSS feeds from both the Blog and YouMoz to show up on our group page. Additionally we’ll post updates about our tools, webinars coming up and other information the group may be interested in.

We also manage people joining the group and as with the other sites, we manage comments and posts the way we manage our own blog. There is daily management on clearing out spam and keeping it clear of sales pitches.

We’re also trying new things, like creating a book club and keeping the community connected in other ways.

When
We usually update LinkedIn during “regular business hours” on the West coast.

How
LinkedIn actually has some pretty good management features for letting you decline users and keeping out spam. Erica manages all this through LinkedIn directly.

Who
Erica manages the LinkedIn company page and group. Others on the team have admin access and can jump in at any time. But honestly Erica does such a great job, we haven’t really had to!

Whew.

Whether you're a member of the Moz community or you manage a community of your own, I hope you've found this insightful and gives you a better understanding of the community management process. Honestly, this just barely touches the surface of what happens behind the scenes. I look forward to getting more in-depth on many of these topics. If you have specific topics you'd like to see covered as it pertains to managing a community, running Social Media sites or even dealing with unruly members, please let me know in the comments. I'd love to cover topics you are interested in.

Oh and around here, our motto is "If all else fails, eat ice cream."

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58 billion URLs in the Latest, Largest Linkscape Index Update Yet

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 08:01 AM PST

Posted by randfish

I've got good news. Today marks a new Linkscape index (only 14 days after our previous index rollout) which means new data in Open Site Explorer, the Mozbar, the Web App and the Moz API. It's also more than 60% larger than our previous update in early January and shows better correlations with rankings in Google.com; I'm pretty excited.

For the past couple years, SEOmoz has focused on surfacing quality links and high quality, well-correlated-with-rankings metrics to help provide a link graph that shows off a large sample of the web's link graph. However, we've heard feedback that this isn't enough and may not be exactly what many who research links are seeking (or at least, it's not fulfilling all the functions you need). We're responding by moving, starting with today's launch, to a new, consistently larger link index.

Today's data is different from how we've done Linkscape index updates in the past. Rather than take only those pages we've crawled in the past 3-4 weeks, we're using all of the pages we've found since October 2011, replacing anything that's been more recently updated/crawled with a newer version and producing an index more like what you'd see from Google or Bing (where "fresh" content gets recrawled more frequently and static content is crawled/updated less often). This new index format is something that will let us expose a much larger section of the web ongoing, and reduces the redundancies of crawling web pages that haven't been updated in months or years.

Below are two graphs showing the last year of Linkscape updates and their respective sizes in terms of individual URLs (at top) and root domains (at bottom):

Linkscape Index Size Over Time

As you can see, this latest index is considerably larger than anything we've produced recently. We had some success growing URL counts over the summer, but this actually lowered our domain diversity (and hurt some correlation numbers of metrics) so we rolled back to a previous index format until now.

This means you'll see more links pointing to your sites (on average, at least) and to those of your competitors. Our metrics' correlations are slightly increased (I hope to show off more detailed data on that in a future post with help from our data scientist, Matt), which was something we worried about with a much larger index, but we believe we've managed to retain mostly quality stuff (though I would expect there'll be more "junk" in this index than usual). The oldest crawled URLs included here were seen 82 days ago, and the newest stuff is as fresh as the New Year.

Despite this mix of old + new, the percent of "fresh" material is actually quite high. You can see a histogram below (ignore the green line) showing the distribution of URLs from various timeframes going into this new index. The most recent portion, crawled in the last 2/3rds of December, represents a solid majority.

Histogram of crawl for Index 49

Let's take a look at the raw stats for index 49:

58,316,673,893 (58 billion) URLs
639,806,598 (639 million) Subdomains
135,392,083 (135 million) Root Domains
617,554,278,005 (617 billion) Links
Followed vs. Nofollowed
- 2.10% of all links found were nofollowed
- 56.50% of nofollowed links are internal
- 43.50% are external
Rel Canonical - 11.79% of all pages now employ a rel=canonical tag
The average page has 87.36 links on it
- 73.06 internal links on average
- 14.29 external links on average

In addition to this good news, I have some potentially more hilarious and/or tragic stuff to share. I've made a deal with our Linkscape engineering group that if they release an index with 100+ billion URLs by March 30th (just 72 days away), I will shave/grow my facial hair to whatever style they collectively approve*. Thus, you may be seeing a Whiteboard Friday with a beardless or otherwise peculiar-looking presenter in the early Spring. :-)

As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated on this new index. If some of the pages or links are looking funny, please let us know.

* 20th century European dictator mustaches excluded

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How To Handle Downtime During Site Maintenance

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 03:30 AM PST

Posted by Frederik Hyldig

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

In this post I will explain how to handle cases of planned downtime. That is, a short period of time wherein you purposely make your website inaccessible. This can be due to significant changes to the site or because of server maintenance.

It should always be the last resort to make the entire website inaccessible, but in some cases it can be necessary. Below you will find suggestions as to how to proceed with SEO in mind.

Tell both humans and robots that it's only a temporary shutdown.

In the case of a temporary shutdown, one should always inform both humans (visitors) and robots (search engines) so that they are aware that it is a planned closure, and that it is just temporary. If possible one should also state when the website is expected to be back online. This will ensure that both humans and robots will return at a later time to find what they expected to find in the first place.

There are two mistakes often seen when a website is made temporarily unavailable:

Mistake 1 - All files are removed from the server.

When both humans and robots attempt to find the website, it will result in a 404 error, which means that the requested page cannot be found. This informs neither humans nor search engines on what is actually happening. One will typically be shown a page that looks something like this:

The worst case scenario is that people will think the website no longer exists, and will therefore give up trying to find it again. Search engines handle this situation in a similar fashion. To them, a 404 error means that the page no longer exists, and it will in time be deleted from their index.

Mistake 2 - A simple page is put on the server with a short message explaining the closure.

An alternative solution to the one above is to remove all files and then put one very simple file on the server that explains why the website is closed in one or two sentences. All the old pages are then redirected to this file.

This method may tell humans what the problem is, but it still makes no sense to the search engines. The search engines can in fact become so confused by this that they believe that the temporary state of the website – the few sentences explaining the problem – is the permanent website in future.

Depending on how the redirection of the other pages has been carried out, one also risks the search engines thinking that all the other pages of the website have been (re)moved, and that only the front page is to be ranked in search results. This is a sure way to lose rankings.

Briefly on HTTP Status codes

Every time you visit a website your browser receives a message from the server that hosts the website. This message is called a HTTP Status code. As a SEO it is necessary to understand what the most important codes mean.

200 OK - The request has succeeded. This is the standard response for successful HTTP requests.

301 Moved Permanently - The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent location. This and all future requests should be directed to the given location. This status code is used for 301 redirects. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website. A 301 redirect will pass most, if not all the linkjuice from the original location.

302 Found - The requested resource resides temporarily at a different location. By using a 302 redirect instead of a 301, search engines will know that this is only a temporary state. No appreciable amount of linkjuice will be passed.

404 Not Found - The server has not found anything matching the requested location. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. In time, the page will be removed from the search engine's index.

503 Service Unavailable - The server is currently unavailable (this could be due to overload or maintenance). Search engines will know that this is a temporary state. This status code should be used when taking down a site for maintenance.

You can read more about HTTP status codes here. Also check out this infographic on HTTP status codes by Dr. Pete.

How to inform search engines that the downtime is temporary.

If you take down your website temporarily, you must inform search engines such as Google. As you could read above, this is done by utilizing the HTTP status code: 503 Service Unavailable, that informs the search engines that the server is temporarily unavailable. To do this one must first create a file that returns a 503 status code on the server. When the search engine sees this, it will understand the situation. This can be done by copying the four lines below into Notepad (or the like) and saving it as 503.php. You must then place this file in the root of your server.

The first two lines tell us that it is a 503 status code, and the last line is used to tell when the website is expected to be online again. Google understands this message, so it is possible to tell Google when to visit the website again. You must either provide a number (seconds) or a date. If you live in Denmark like I do and you expect to return on the 5th of January 2012, at 14:00, you must put down:

Notice that I wrote 13:00:00 in the code, even though I wrote 14:00:00 above. This is due to the fact that the time must be provided in GMT/UTC, which is, in my case, 1 hour behind local time.

But it is not enough to just put a 503 message on your server. You will receive visitors (Google included) from many different sources and to all sorts of pages of your website. They must all be redirected to the message explaining that the website is temporarily closed.

On an Apache/Linux server, this can be easily solved by using a .htaccess file to redirect all the pages towards the 503.php file. The .htaccess file is often used for 301 redirects, but that is not our purpose here. We will use a 302 redirect. You may have been previously warned about using this sort of redirect, and for good reason. It can do a great deal of damage if not used correctly. But in this case, it must be used, and in fact a 301 redirect would be detrimental in its place.

Save the 6 following lines as a .htaccess file and place it in the root of your server as well.

The 'R' in the last line indicates that this is a 302 redirect. R is 302 by default. To create a 301 redirect, it would have said [R=301, L]. The clever thing about this file, however, is that we can give ourselves access to the site and simultaneously show everyone else a 503 message. Let’s say you have the following IP address: 12.345.678.910. You then put the numbers in line 4 as shown below:

When you have placed the two files (503.php and .htaccess) on your server, you’re done. You now have peace and quiet to tinker with your website, as long as you leave those two files in the root of your server – and if Google visits, they’ll know that the site will be back later, and you’ve even let them know when to try again.

But what about passing on the message to your visitors?

How to tell your visitors that the website is only closed temporarily.

With a few additions to the 503.php file, which we made just before, we can pass on a message to visitors:

The above will result in the following message when one visits the website:

And if we look at the response the server provides Google with, with a tool such as FireBug, Web-Sniffer.net or the like, we get the following:

Now you have informed both humans and robots to come back later. This is the best way to handle server maintenance in order to prevent Google from indexing the temporary version of the website.

It should be possible to get through a temporary closure without the website’s rankings suffering serious consequences.

A Quick Note about SOPA Protests

Keri from SEOmoz here! This post is also helpful if you're wanting to protest SOPA tomorrow (January 18th) and want to minimize the effect on your rankings. Pierre Far from Google shared a a post on Google+ called Website outages and blackouts the right way that you might want to check out for some information straight from Google.

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miercuri, 18 ianuarie 2012

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Who Are We?

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What Do We Do?

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Twitter

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Whew.

Tell both humans and robots that it's only a temporary shutdown.

Mistake 1 - All files are removed from the server.

Mistake 2 - A simple page is put on the server with a short message explaining the closure.

Briefly on HTTP Status codes

How to inform search engines that the downtime is temporary.

How to tell your visitors that the website is only closed temporarily.

A Quick Note about SOPA Protests

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