sâmbătă, 9 februarie 2013

SEO Blog

SEO Blog


Many Benefits of Hiring White Label SEO Service Provider

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 11:42 PM PST

It is pretty evident that search engine algorithms and guiding principles are going through continuous dynamic changes which has raised the quality of expertise required for handling the whole SEO concept. With regard to continuous upgradation in the online marketing industry, marketing firms, PR firms, SEO service providers, web developers...
Read more »

9 WordPress Plugins for Image Performance and Optimization

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 11:36 PM PST

The beauty of the WordPress platform is its openness to plugins. You can improve almost any feature using plugins on WordPress. Examples include; plugins for social media buttons, plugins to optimize your site for speed and performance, plugins for security, managing mailing list etc. Image are important in blogging, apart...
Read more »

Taking Your Business From Local To Global

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 10:34 PM PST

If your New Year’s resolution is to expand your business, then maybe you should be thinking about going international. Doing business on an international scale is not just for multi-nationals. The use of technology has meant that today, small businesses are able to do business internationally. Many small companies are...
Read more »

Rev Up Your Business Reputation!

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 10:25 PM PST

When you are running any kind of business, one of the most important things you will need to keep an eye on is the kind of impression that your customers get about the company. When you have a bad reputation for any reason, this normally has far reaching effects on...
Read more »

Going Beyond Moz Metrics to Answer: "Why is this Site Outranking Me?"

Going Beyond Moz Metrics to Answer: "Why is this Site Outranking Me?"


Going Beyond Moz Metrics to Answer: "Why is this Site Outranking Me?"

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 03:56 AM PST

Posted by matt @ highonseo

(This post is aimed at business owners and new Moz users studying search engine optimization, not full-time, experienced SEOs. This is an in-depth answer to a frequently asked question in the Q&A forums. If you are a full-time SEO, this is one post you can easily skip.)

Regular readers of the SEOMoz Q&A forum will likely notice that the “general” SEO questions come up again and again as new users struggle with the same questions we have all asked at some point.

  • “What am I doing wrong on this page?”
  • “How can I improve my SEO?”
  • “What/where can I do link building?”
  • “Subdomains or Subfolders?”

And the one we will address here:

“Why is example.com outranking me for X and Y keyword, even though...?”

This question has been posted in various forms many times in various forms lately on Q&A. Here are a few:

Non-SEOs, mostly small business owners, come to SEOMoz to learn a bit about SEO and hopefully improve their site. You learn about Domain Authority and Page Authority and work hard to improve your MozTrust and MozRank. Those metrics are readily apparent and easy to track with the SEOMoz trial.

So you sign up for the trial, run your brand new SERP overlay tool and see this:

SERP overlay

The Keyword Difficulty score for “credit card debt” here in Australia is 53, which is rated “highly competitive.” Is debtrescue’s very high ranking an aberration? Maybe this keyword is an anomaly and other sites do not “make sense” based on metrics, either. But that is not the case. In fact, this ranking (debtrescue is 2nd on my search, 4th by the Keyword Tool’s search) has the lowest Domain Authority by over 15 points and the 2nd lowest Page Authority by 22 points.

keyword difficulty PA and DA - click to open full size

This is not really close – by the stats, debtrescue.com.au has no business ranking on page 1. Just for information, the 9th site (95 DA, 1 PA) is a .gov site so we know why this particular “PA 1” ranks this well.

So you own a business and you are new to SEO. You have looked at the SERP overlay and it makes no sense. You look at the DA/PA chart on keyword difficulty and it is fairly clear that this site does not rank based on metrics. Let’s pull just one more set of data to make the point.

Moz metrics

Our target site has nearly the lowest mozrank, by far the fewest links of the non-.govs, the lowest subdomain mozrank by a lot, the lowest Page authority by a wide margin and the lowest domain authority by a mile. The page 2 results for the same search shows a trusted bank site – NAB.com.au – they have a DA of 82, PA of 44. They have 300,000 links.

So our question is clear now – how can a site like debtrescue outrank anything else on page one or NAB on page 2? The metrics all say these other sites should be winning handily.

So what is the magic answer?

That elusive magic answer …

I could give you twenty, maybe fifty possible answers. Unfortunately, I could give you twenty and the right one for your situation may be #21. So let’s ask the question again and then reword it so you can see the problem clearly.

“Why is example.com outranking me for X and Y keyword even though _________?”

The real question is this:

“Aren’t these Moz metrics what count?”

That leads us much closer to the answer: these metrics count, but they don’t come close to telling the whole story.

According to the 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors on SEOMoz, many SEOs think Page Level and Domain Level Link Metrics account for roughly 43% of the algorithm. Over half of your total ranking is determined by factors other than Page and Domain link metrics.

SEOMoz Ranking Factors

Are you starting to see the bigger picture? How sites rank on Google depends on many factors other than the few you are introduced to when you start learning about SEO. Pagerank, number of inbound links, and the main Moz stats tell a story about your site. Unfortunately, it is like a two-part season finale of your favorite show. You didn’t know there was another part next week and now this?

So what is the rest of the story? What else matters?

If you ask 100 SEOs for the top 50 ranking factors, you will get back 100 completely unique lists. The fact is, we don’t know the whole story. Google can’t come out and tell us the whole algorithm because people would take advantage of that information to rank poor quality sites simply by manipulating the ranking factors and focusing on nothing else.

Here is what we know: Google tracks certain data. You should believe that Google tracks data it finds relevant and reliable. So what can you find in Analytics and with a bit of testing?

Visit duration matters. This metric tells Google that someone found your page and enjoyed it enough to stay on site longer than when they went to your competitor’s site. Duration is a sign of the page’s overall quality and usefulness.

Pages per visit matter. If a user searches for “credit card debt” and visits just one page on the #1 site then seconds later bounces back and goes to #2 where they spend 15 minutes and visit 3 pages, any guess which site Google thinks matters more to that search query?

On page factors matter. The days of putting your keyword keyword keyword on the page three keyword times are keyword thankfully over. This will rarely help you and can actually penalize your site. However, having accurate and descriptive titles that match the content of the page and the user intent of a search? That does matter!

Algorithmic and manual penalties matter. If you put that keyword fifty times on your page, as we discussed above, you will run into an algorithmic penalty. This means Google knows you have “stuffed” the page and will take a bit off your ranking. Do it repeatedly and you’ll get a much larger penalty. If a Google manual reviewer catches you doing this, or a competitor reports you for it, you may get a manual penalty. You will get a notification in your Webmasters Tools about this one and you do need to fix it or suffer a harsh penalty.

Social Share Metrics Matter. Some SEOs believe social metrics matter very little. We have tested these ourselves and found that social metrics matter “some.” If you get three retweets on your link, no, it won’t help you very much. You won’t notice a bump. Get 200 retweets on that same link, have it shared 50 times on Facebook and now it is pinned 8 times? Yes, that will affect your ranking.

Anchor text matters. Don’t misunderstand what I am saying here. Anchor text can be positive *and* negative. If you over-optimize a handful of keywords, it will be a negative effect. If you balance these, include branded anchor text across a variety of link types, it will have a positive effect.

301 redirects matter. Your competitor with the poor metrics may actually have fantastic metrics – on another site. They may have changed domains and redirected all that great SEO juice over to the new site, which looks like it has no value but is absorbing a lot of the value from the previous domain.


We could keep playing this game for a while but we won’t. You should understand that the metrics you start with are a small part (less than half) of the overall picture. We also know of certain “exceptions” to all these rules, such as the ranking bonus new sites get when they first appear on the SERPs. You can’t control how Google sees other people’s sites so try to stay focused on what you control.

For even more information, be sure you go back to Eppie Vojt’s phenomenal “How Garbage Ranks in the SERPs: A Case Study

Eppie posited that manual penalties may occur because “Google just can't allow low quality sites to outrank billion dollar brands for high visibility terms” and I tend to agree with him. Sites that do not “deserve” their ranking often fall off quickly or get manual penalties. Ask yourself if this site was there a month ago – and then check whether it still ranks in another month.

When you are done with Eppie’s excellent article and you want to learn even more about how truly bad sites rank, continue your education with Wil Reynolds' “How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO

I hope this explanation helps some of you who are just learning and starting your SEO journey. I also hope the more experienced SEOs jump in and give a few of their ideas on ranking factors, why some sites rank well despite their average or even poor Moz metrics.


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Weekly Address: Averting the Sequester and Finding a Balanced Approach to Deficit Reduction

The White House Friday, February 8, 2013
 

Weekly Address: Averting the Sequester and Finding a Balanced Approach to Deficit Reduction

President Obama urges Congress to act to avoid a series of harmful and automatic cuts — called a sequester — from going into effect that would hurt our economy and the middle class and threaten thousands of American jobs. The President urges Congress to find a balanced approach to deficit reduction that makes investments in areas that help us grow and cuts what we don’t need.

Watch this week's Weekly Address.

Weekly Address: Averting the Sequester and Finding a Balanced Approach to Deficit Reduction

In Case You Missed It

Here’s a quick glimpse at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov:

Common-sense Reforms: On Monday, President Obama traveled Midwest to Minneapolis to speak with local police, community leaders and folks who have experienced gun violence in their family. The President firmly believes “law enforcement and other community leaders must have a seat at the table.”

With mounting support for universal background checks, President Obama is driving Congress to listen and take action. While pressing for background checks, the President did not let up.

“We shouldn’t stop there. We should restore the ban on military-style assault weapons and a 10-round limit for magazines,” said President Obama. “And that deserves a vote in Congress -- because weapons of war have no place on our streets, or in our schools, or threatening our law enforcement officers.”

Watch the full speech here and read our blog post tracking the two weeks since President Obama released his plan for reducing gun violence.

Sequester Delay: On Tuesday, President Obama talked about the sequester and urged Congress to act before automatic spending cuts are put into place starting March 1. If a new deal is not struck by March 1, automatic spending cuts, which are known as the sequester will begin.

Billions of dollars in cuts would hinder education and research, along with defense spending to name a few. President Obama called for “a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms” as he is prepared to work with republicans to strike a deal for the American people.

Newest Cabinet Nominee: On Wednesday, President Obama nominated Sally Jewell to head the Interior Department. If the current CEO of the outdoor retail giant REI is confirmed, she will play a critical role in protecting our country’s land and natural resources. Along with an enthusiasm for the outdoors, she carries with her experience as a former oil engineer and commercial banker, which will be vital in dealing with our energy sector and creating jobs for Americans.

Jewell is very excited to work with the Interior and “sharing their hopes and their dreams for our public lands, our resources, our people -- especially our first people -- our history and our culture.”

Revamped Immigration Page: On Wednesday, the White House released a new issue section laying out what is at stake for comprehensive immigration reform. The President’s proposal calls for the strengthening of our borders, cracking down on companies that hire undocumented workers, creating a path to earned citizenship and streamlining our legal immigration system.

National Prayer Breakfast: On Thursday, President Obama attended the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton. Citing the importance of faith in his life, the President discussed the comfort Scripture gave President Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I thought about their humility, and how we don’t seem to live that out the way we should, every day, even when we give lip service to it,” said the President.

The biggest hope from the breakfast was Americans, especially our public servants, should embrace cooperation and humility to avoid the constant bipartisan rhetoric in Washington. Watch the full speech here.

SOTU Preparation: This Tuesday, the President will speak to the country through the annual State of the Union address. President Obama will discuss the most demanding issues facing our country and offer solutions to tackle these challenges. On February 12, at 9 pm ET head to our State of the Union page to watch a live enhanced version with charts, graphs, and data to coincide with his address. Before Tuesday, check out our page to view the 2012 enhanced version and discover new ways you can participate in this year’s State of the Union.

Get Updates

Sign up for the Daily Snapshot

Stay Connected


This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com
Sign Up for Updates from the White House

Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy

Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

 

Seth's Blog : The roller coaster of shipping

 

The roller coaster of shipping

Perhaps something like this has happened to you. Here's an annotated graph of what it's like to make a book, with 'joy' being the Y axis with time along the bottom (click to enlarge)...

Rollercoasterofshipping2
1. The manic joy of invention. The idea arrives, it's shiny and perfect. I can't wait to share it.

2. The first trough of reality. Now that I've pitched the idea to someone (and I'm on the hook), the reality of what has to be done sets in precisely as the manic joy of invention disappears.

3. Wait! The epic pause of reality. It's not quite as bad as I feared. I can see a path here, maybe. I'm still in trouble, sure, but perhaps...

4. The horrible trough of stuckness. The path didn't work. The data isn't here. Critical people have said no. People in critical roles have said no. I can't find any magic. Sigh.

5. Flow. This is why we do it. The promises made as a result of #1 pushed me through the horrible trough, and the lights are coming on and my forward motion, my relentless forward motion, may just be contagious. Let's not talk about this, because I don't want it to dissipate.

6. The pre-publication lizard-brain second-guess. I see the notes that have come back to me, all that red pen, the not-quite-ebullient look on the face of a trusted reader. I am sniffing everywhere for clues of impending doom, and yes, there they are.

7. The realization that it's good enough. This is the local max, but not the universal one. Optimists welcome. It's not perfect, but it's going to ship, and good luck to it.

8. Post-partum ennui. "Why haven't you read my book yet?"

9. Life. And this is the long haul, the book in the world, the hearing about a book you wrote ten years ago that's still impacting people. The crepe paper grand opening bunting has been taken down and there is no one left to write a snarky review, because the book is on its own, touching, spreading and being.

And then, sometimes, #1 happens again. Or not. 


More Recent Articles

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.




Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498

 

vineri, 8 februarie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Japan Posts Second Consecutive Current Account Deficit; 2012 Account Surplus Lowest on Record

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 08:25 AM PST

Bloomberg reports Japan Posts Back-to-Back Current-Account Deficit in December.
Japan posted back-to-back monthly current-account deficits for the first time since 1981, highlighting challenges for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's campaign to revive the economy.

The shortfall in the widest measure of the nation's trade was 264.1 billion yen ($2.8 billion) in December, the Ministry of Finance said in Tokyo today. The median estimate of 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a deficit of 144.2 billion yen.

Weakness in global demand, a spat with China and increased energy imports because of nuclear plant shutdowns are weighing on the world's third-biggest economy as Abe pushes the Bank of Japan to end deflation and spur growth.

China Dispute

Exports to China in 2012 fell 10.8 percent from 2011, as slower Chinese growth and a territorial dispute affected a merchandise trade relationship worth 26.5 trillion yen in 2012, according to ministry data.

BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said Feb. 6 he would step down on March 19, almost three weeks before the end of his term, accelerating a leadership transition that may boost Abe's campaign for aggressive easing.
Record Low Surplus for 2012

Reuters reports Record low current account surplus shows Japan's challenges
Japan posted its smallest annual current account surplus on record in 2012 as exports weakened and energy imports grew, a signal to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that economic revival needs more than just a weaker yen and extra spending.

The current account surplus is likely to continue shrinking as energy imports rise due to the closure of nuclear power plants and as Japanese exporters lose out to more competitive Asian rivals, economists say.

Japan's current account surplus was 4.7 trillion yen ($50.4 billion) in 2012, Ministry of Finance data showed, a figure that seems impressive. But it was less than half the surplus recorded a year earlier and the smallest since 1985, when Japan started compiling comparable data.

The deterioration was most marked at the end of the year, with Japan posting consecutive monthly deficits for the first time as the December shortfall hit 264.1 billion yen, more than 80 percent bigger than the median forecast in a Reuters poll.

"Energy imports and higher energy costs are structural factors that will cause the current account surplus to decline further," said Hiroshi Miyazaki, chief economist at Shinkin Asset Management Co.

"Currency moves can only go so far in improving corporate competitiveness. There are other areas like corporate taxes or incentives for business investment where Japan is lagging."

Data last month showed Japan posted a record trade deficit of 6.9 trillion yen in 2012, as exports fell in annual terms through the second half of the year.

The theory is that a weaker yen will reignite the export engine in coming months, but that assumes there will be demand -- something Japan's once-dominant electronic makers are struggling with.
As I have said, this is a case of be careful of what you wish, because you may get it. Inflation is not going to do Japan any good at all in my estimation. Japan's demographics and energy imports make the situation much worse.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com