miercuri, 1 iunie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog


The Tweet Effect: How Twitter Affects Rankings

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 06:30 AM PDT

Posted by dohertyjf

The advent of social media has brought a host of changes to the SEO industry, and online marketing as a whole. You would be hard-pressed to find a business with a decent online presence that does not have a Twitter account connected to their website, and at least one way to find that account.

Google and Bing recently alerted the SEO industry to the fact that they are using social media signals as a factor in ranking websites. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land wrote a post back in December 2010 talking about what social signals he thought the search engines are and will be using.

Here is an excerpt from that article:

Bing:
We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

Google:
Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article...

Jen Lopez of SEOmoz also wrote an article called A Tweet's Effects on Rankings. In this article, she mentioned how Smashing Mag had tweeted about SEOmoz's Beginner's Guide to SEO. After this tweet, the Beginner's Guide to SEO page on SEOmoz jumped to #4 in the SERPs for "Beginner's Guide." The ranking has bounced around since, sometimes on the second page. At the time of writing this post, when logged out of Google and using an Incognito window in Chrome, it sits at #4 still.

My Research

After these interesting studies and admissions by the search engines, I decided to do a study of my own, using both my own Twitter account and that of the website I worked on as an in-house SEO.

Study #1

I wrote an article on February 15th about the then upcoming Distilled Linkbuilding Conference in London. Tom and Will Critchlow tweeted the link to my article, which was on a relatively new domain at the time (my personal site), to their followers. Tom also posted a correction, with the URL still in place. Lynsey Little, the event manager at Distilled, retweeted Tom's correction and also my tweet about the post being updated to reflect the true state of the New Orleans Conference. Upon review of the Topsy.com summarization of the tweets, it listed both Tom and Will as "very influential." This was an "ah-hah" moment.

Since the post went live, it has been at #3 or #4 for the search "distilled linkbuilding london." It is in similar places for "distilled linkbuilding conference". "Distilled linkbuilding" returns around result #7.

Summary and analysis: The article URL was tweeted a total of seven (7) times, three times by influential followers. It was retweeted five (5) of those times. I surmise that the number of influential tweets, the number of retweets, and the fact that the search terms are not very competitive as the reasons why my post still ranks so highly.

Study #2

I worked for an online college portal website, which myself and two other SEOs worked on daily. We ranked well for some competitive terms, so I was interested to see what would happen if I started tweeting the phrase "accredited online colleges only" using the website's Twitter account. I also decided to retweet one of the tweets using my personal account, to see if that had any effect.

Here are the rankings before the tweets:
Bing: 2
Google: 5

Here are the rankings after the tweets:
Bing: 2 + 3
Google: 5

One week later, and after the Google Farmer/Panda content farm update, here are the rankings:
Bing 2 + 3
Google: 6

The page was already ranking on the middle of the first page for Google and in rank #2 for Bing. After the tweet from a non-influential account, no noticeable change occurred, except that two pages for the website began appearing in Bing.

Summary and analysis: The search term is a rather competitive term, so it is not a surprise that a couple of tweets from non-influential Twitterers would not affect the rankings. I do not know if the tweet had an effect on Bing's decision to show two results instead of one for the query.

Study #3

I wrote a summary of a New York Times article about the Fiske Guide, a list of colleges and universities on the Internet, developing an app for the iPad, which makes the guide interactive and useful for high school seniors and their parents. I titled the blog post "NY Times Summary: The Fiske Guide Goes iPad". After I wrote the article, I tweeted it using the work account. I also submitted it to StumbleUpon.

After the tweet and StumbleUpon submission, here were the rankings for the article for the search query "Fiske Guide", which I performed while logged out of Gmail, in an incognito window in Chrome, and using a Google location-independent query:
Google: 9
Bing: 56

Here is a snapshot of the traffic, which started from the first day.

One week later and after the Farmer/Panda update, here were the rankings:
Google: Page 13
Bing: 54

Summary and analysis: I think this one was caught by the Farmer/Panda update, because the ranking tanked after the update. Long-term ranking is inconclusive because of the algorithm update, but the trend holds true that an initial tweet helps a new article to be indexed and rank quickly.

Study #4

Now, here is where it gets interesting. In order to test if Twitter tweets had an effect on rankings, I decided to write another article called "What Is The Fiske Guide?" on the company blog. I then decided that I would wait a couple of days before tweeting it with the work account.

After the article was publish and no tweet was given, here were the rankings two days later for "Fiske Guide", using the same search terms as above:
Google: not found
Bing: not found

I then decided to tweet the article to see what might happen After the "no tweet" article was tweeted, here were the rankings:
Google: 35
Bing: n/a

One week later and after Farmer Update, the rankings had changed a bit:
Google: 8
Bing: 58

Summary and Analysis: I purposefully did not tweet out an article that I thought had a better chance of ranking than the first article. I let the article sit for two days, and it was not to be found in the search results. After the article was tweeted, it took a bit of time, but the article eventually made its way onto the first page of the Google search query "Fiske Guide."

Study #5

Once again, I needed to test and see if my suspicions were correct about social media signals helping articles to get discovered initially. I wrote a blog post called "Top 15 Inspirational Business Quotes", which I then tweeted.

It was published on Friday. After 4 tweets, which were comprised of one (1) from us, one (1) from a follower, and then retweets from two (2) of her followers, here were the rankings:
Google: 1
Bing: 2

And here was the organic traffic, which started on the day of publication:

Six days later, on a Thursday, the rankings were the same:
Google: 1
Bing: 2

The blog that I was writing on is fairly high-traffic, so Mr. Googlebot crawled it frequently. I noticed, however, that when I did not tweet an article, it would often take 2-3 days before it is crawled. When I did tweet the article, I received a Google Alert (I have one set up for the website) a couple of hours later, which showed that it had been discovered and indexed by Google.

Study #6

"Domain Trust Factors" (more competitive)

I wrote an article entitled "Four Factors that influence Domain Trust" and tweeted it to the world. I tweeted the URL three (3) times, and it was retweeted twice.

After the tweets from me and 2 retweets, here were the rankings for "Domain Trust Factors":
Bing: not found
Google: 48

It currently resides somewhere in the middle of the 5th page on Google. It was not found on Bing for a while because issues with my CMS.

Analysis and Conclusion: The article was indexed quickly, but it did not and does not rank well. From the previous examples, the ranking trend makes sense, because the term is more competitive, and the indexing trend also holds true.

Conclusion

I have come to believe that tweets, and possibly other social media signals, are becoming increasingly important for the search engines when trying to discover new material on websites. This has held true for the couple of websites that I administrate.

When new articles are tweeted, they are discovered and indexed quickly. When they are not tweeted, it takes the search engine bots more time to find and index them. This leads me to believe that search engines are watching Twitter feeds for indexation purposes, and when tweeters or retweeters are influential, they are using that information for ranking the articles.

The number of tweets and the number of tweeters, however, seems to make a difference for ranking. Articles that were just tweeted one time have reached a maximum of result #8. The two that were tweeted more times have ranked and are ranking higher. From this I think we can assume safely that the more times a new article or page gets tweeted, the better chance the target URL has of ranking well.

Three Takeaways 

  • Always post the link on Twitter when you publish a new article. This is common sense for SEOs, but we should also recommend this to clients.
  • If possible, have 2-3 or more people who will always tweet your links. Since my findings show that the number of tweets may positively affect rankings, the more tweets you have guaranteed, the better chance your article will have of ranking, even for only a short period of time.
  • To bump an established link up in rankings, it seems necessary that the tweet come from a well-respected, influential, and relevant Twitter account. Of course, when the tweet comes from a respected account, it will often be retweeted numerous times (126 at last count, according to Topsy) and clicked many times (over 9,800 at last check).

 

If you have done any testing into a tweet's effect on rankings, please leave your findings in the Comments section below!

About the author: John Doherty is the newest member of Distilled NYC. You can find him on Twitter: @dohertyjf.


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An SEO's Guide to HTTP Status Codes (An Infographic)

Posted: 31 May 2011 11:56 AM PDT

Posted by Dr. Pete

A while back, I started thinking about how the different status codes and redirects (301s, 302s, etc.) might look visually. I started drawing up some ideas for what was going to be an illustrated blog post, but then it suddenly dawned on me that I was slowly creating an infographic. I then proceeded to have a conversation with myself about how I could never create an infographic and was probably doomed. Depression turned into mania which turned into depression - this happened about 47 times between 9:00 and 9:14am. Actually, that's the start of my typical day.

I could go on, but I'll just cut to the chase. I took the most useful HTTP status codes, from an SEO perspective, and illustrated how they work. It's half cheat-sheet, half-infographic, and mostly just an excuse for me to have some fun. Hopefully, somebody learns something. This is completely my fault, so if you gouge your own eyes out with a spork to escape the horror, don't sue SEOmoz.

Click the image to see the full-sized version. A few technical notes:

  • As I mention about 301/302, I've abbreviated some of the official names for design purposes.
  • The visual format required a black-and-white interpretation. Search-engines handle 302s inconsistently.
  • Rel-canonical is obviously not a status code, but it's a functional relative that I felt should be included.

Comments are welcome. Did I miss any of your favorites? There are dozens, of course, but many are similar or almost never used. The 400-series alone has dozens of status codes, actually, most of which I had honestly never heard of in 13 years of full-time web work.

When I was about 90% done with this infographic, I found out that fellow SEO and Moz friend Richard Baxter created a status code diagram earlier this year. It's pretty cool, too, and you should check it out.


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Open for Questions: 30 Years of AIDS

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
 

Open for Questions: 30 Years of AIDS

Today, June 1, 2011 at 3 p.m. EDT, Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin, Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy Jeffrey Crowley and Director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, Dr. Carl Dieffenbach will be hosting a special live discussion on the 30th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic.

Submit your questions in advance and tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/live to watch the discussion.

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day 

President Barack Obama talks with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and John Bryson in the Ground Floor Corridor of the Residence at the White House, May 31, 2011. The President nominated Bryson to replace Secretary Locke, who was nominated to serve as Ambassador to China. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog.

President Obama Nominates John Bryson to be Our Nation’s Next Commerce Secretary
The President announces his intent to nominate John Bryson as the Secretary of U.S. Department of Commerce.

Champions of Change: Immigrant Integration
Felicia Escobar, Senior Policy Advisor for the Domestic Policy Council, describes a White House roundtable on immigrant integration.

President Barack Obama Fills Out His New National Security Team
The President nominates Gen. Dempsey to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Winnefeld to be Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. Odierno as Army Chief of Staff.


Today's Schedule 

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

10:00 AM: The President meets with the House Republican Conference

10:50 AM: Vice President Biden makes a joint statement to the press with the Italian President WhiteHouse.gov/live

11:30 AM: The President receives the annual briefing on the forecast for the 2011 hurricane season

12:30 PM: Pressi Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WhiteHouse.gov/live

2:15 PM: The President meets with senior advisors

4:00 PM: The President meets with Secretary of State Clinton 

WhiteHouse.gov/live   Indicates events that will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live

Get Updates 

Sign Up for the Daily Snapshot 

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Can Small Businesses Really Do Their Own SEO Graywolf's SEO Blog

Can Small Businesses Really Do Their Own SEO Graywolf's SEO Blog


Can Small Businesses Really Do Their Own SEO

Posted: 31 May 2011 10:41 AM PDT

Post image for Can Small Businesses Really Do Their Own SEO

Recently, during the Q&A part of a conference session I was attending, someone asked, “Can small businesses do their own SEO?” It’s not an easy question to answer but, in a post Panda Update world … I think the answer is no.

There are lots of things small businesses can do. I’ve mentioned some of them in ways to promote your small business for free and promote your small business for $888. But once we get past the basics, unless the small business owner has time to devote themselves to learning and implementing SEO, it’s almost a necessity to have someone on staff or to hire a consultant.

Probably the biggest hurdle for most small businesses is site design and site architecture. They will choose a web designer who is, at best, ignorant of SEO best practices or who, at worst, gives them bad or outdated SEO advice. I can’t tell you how many visually stunning small business websites I’ve seen over the years that are so image heavy, they are invisible to search engine spiders or, worse, are completely uncrawlable, And let’s not even bring up the subject of flash.

For small business owners with limited time resources and/or limited budgets who can’t hire a full time consultant to work directly on their project, my advice is to arrange a telephonic consultation with someone. Find a consultant who will have a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly call with you and your team (hopefully with someone who can make the changes needed). The arrangement should include an initial review or site audit. Every call should include a review of the last call, any changes to be made, and a review of any new development or changes in the SEO world. Lastly, the call should include discussion about plans for the future.

What types of future planning should your consultant talk with you about?

  • Content creation: Blogging, how-to articles, Linkbait, etc.
  • Link building: What are you doing to build links, how can you target higher quality links.
  • Social Media: Social media is filled with opportunies for small businesses.
  • Media,Press, and Public Relations: These are all part of your overall marketing strategy, and your SEO should give you recommendations about how to maximize the SEO value from it.
  • Technical Issues: Hopefully after the initial review these will be minimal, but things do crop up from time to time.

photo credit: Photospin

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Can Small Businesses Really Do Their Own SEO

SEOptimise

SEOptimise


How to Get Links by Creating Content People Actually Want to Link To

Posted: 31 May 2011 07:11 AM PDT

*

Most of traditional SEO link building is still centered around the idea of actually building the links as if on a construction site. The idea or metaphor that links are like bricks and you can use them for building has been successfully contested recently by Ross Hudgens in his essay “Please exit the link building“.

It was an excellent write up, but in the end it failed to offer a solution that is not really about building links. The alternative to link building is of course getting links.

Getting links implies that you do not manually build the links like a house in the real world, but people from outside who you may not even know link to you.

This is of course the logical way to get links, and was the way the Internet worked even before link building was considered to be part of SEO.

In the early days it was assumed that search engine optimised sites are, by definition, keyword stuffed pages which no sane human would link to. Thus you had to artificially inflate their link popularity. Much of link building today is still marred by this absurd dogma, despite the Web being quite a different place in the second decade of the 21st century.

Today the work of the link builder is to a large extent about earning the links while not actually touching the pages that are linking.

So it’s actually the content creation part of link building that takes most of the time and effort these days. Whole teams work on infographics, widgets or other content-driven link baiting campaigns.

Getting links does not require a whole team though; I do it myself all the time. It’s better to have a team, but one dedicated person can achieve quite a lot as well when it comes to creating linkable content.

Before you actually get links, or rather before you create the content to get links to, you have to ask yourself a few questions.

  1. What links are you after?
  2. Who will link to you, and from where?
  3. Why will these people link to you?

If you can’t answer all three of them without flinching your linkbait article, your whole campaign to get links will probably fail. You may get the wrong links by the wrong people for instance, or you may get no links at all.

What kind of links are you after?

What do you mean, what kind of links? Aren’t links all the same? Well, there are:

  • Natural links and optimised links
  • UGC links and editorial links
  • Nofollow links and “dofollow” links
  • Site-wide links and page-level links
  • Footer links and in-content links
  • Low quality links and authority links
  • Static links and social media links
  • Likes, tweets or HTML links.

I always combined a contrasting pair to make the meaning of each a bit more clear.

Who will link to you and where from?

A clear goal would be to get high authority editorial in content links from a list of bloggers, to answer the first two questions. Then the third answer could be “because you write a flagship blog post for them as a guest blogger”.

Another typical goal, one that is easier to accomplish, could be to get natural UGC links with the nofollow attribute to get social ranking signals and a healthy backlink profile. In order to do that you have to target certain social media outlets, not necessarily Facebook and Twitter, as you do not go after likes/tweets as part of this goal.

In many cases, niches and countries you would try to contribute to forums and similar communities.

Why will these people link to you?

You still have one question left:  why would forum users would want to link to you?

Real communities are always self conscious; that is, when you write about them you’ll get members to notice and get interested in you. Unless of course there is no real community or it is not web savvy enough to notice by itself. Then you have to actually tell them. An article “Why community x is the best place to go” is the easiest way to win hearts, unless of course you lie and it isn’t that great. People may notice and a backlash may even ensue.

A good way to approach a community is to do something that is specifically of use for them.

Some competitive niches require high quality authority links, while you dominate others with less effort.

Your link profile also needs all kinds of links, so it’s never a mistake to use simple ways to get more links even if these are low quality. By low quality I mean not spammy on purpose, but simply of lower quality than an editorial link at a well-known publication. For example, you can publish a blog with a full RSS feed and declare the content to be under a Creative Commons License. So people would copy it and redistribute your links along with it.

This works even without a CC license, as a lot of aggregators, social sites, scrapers and content thieves republish it elsewhere or at least snippets of it. Indeed, Google and Facebook are the biggest content thieves as they copy whole articles and reuse them on their sites.

The Link of Attraction

So in short you have to ensure that you attract the people who can bring you the links you need and give them a reason to link to you. That reason is your laser targeted content created especially for the audience that has to link to you. You attract the people you have chosen to attract and give them what they want.

 

* Image: abandoned building site by 2xtrouble

 

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. How to Get Links by Creating Content People Actually Want to Link To

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  3. 30 Link Building/Link Baiting Techniques That Work in 2011

Seth's Blog : "Don't tell me what I can't have" (unraveling a paradox)

"Don't tell me what I can't have" (unraveling a paradox)

In the USA, it's quite alright for media to talk endlessly about all the things the typical person can't possibly afford. Cribs, jets, jewels, dinners with Jennifer Aniston.

At the same time, you're guaranteed to get negative feedback when you talk about things people have chosen not to have. If you tout a great product that only works on a Mac or a Kindle or on Android or in Norway, all the people who have chosen to use a different piece of tech or live in a different country get angry, that special kind of angry that belongs to the pampered. It's not that they don't want to buy it, it's that they don't even want to know that it's for sale.

The reason, I think, is that you're reminding people of a decision they made, a decision that might have felt right at the time, but when they made it, they didn't know about what you've got on offer. They actively decided to take themselves out of the running for this magic event, this extraordinary product, and marketing it to them belittles their choice.

The market tells us that there's a big difference between "don't tell me what I can't have," and "don't tell me what I've chosen not to be able to have."

Dreaming of winning the lottery is fine, apparently, while experiencing pangs of regret over a decision is not.

 

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