duminică, 7 iunie 2015

Seth's Blog : Holding the umbrella

Holding the umbrella

Harry Truman talked about where the buck stops.

For every project, for every organization that lasts, someone is holding the umbrella.

She's the one on the hook if things don't go well. She's the one who doesn't walk away from a problem, even if the office is closed. Most important, the person holding the umbrella decides what to do next.

It's fun to work on a successful project, and thrilling to invent, create and connect. But the real work comes when it's your turn to hold the umbrella.

It's entirely possible that you've let other people seduce you into believing that it's not yet your turn. Ignore them. There are lots of umbrellas just waiting for someone to hold them.

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sâmbătă, 6 iunie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Request Denied: Juncker Spurns Tsipras Request for Meeting; Exterminated from Within

Posted: 06 Jun 2015 11:57 AM PDT

Recap of Recent Greek Events

On Friday, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras cancelled a with eurozone officials in Brussels. He returned to Athens to address outrage from within his own party.

Tsipras then blasted the latest deal offer made by Jean-Claude Juncker in a rant to the Greek parliament. Tsipras said he was "unpleasantly surprised" by the proposal put forward by the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission during his visit to Brussels for talks with commission head Jean-Claude Juncker.

"I would like to believe that this proposal was an unfortunate moment for Europe, or at least a bad negotiating trick, and will very soon be withdrawn by the same people who thought it up," he said.

After blasting Juncker's deal, Tsipras picked up the phone and made a call to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They agree to meet in two weeks at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Greece also missed a debt payment to the IMF on Friday. That did not constitute default because IMF rules allow multiple payments within a month to be bundled on the last due date. That trick was last used by Zambia in the 1980s.

Exterminated from Within

Greek energy minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, ruled out a deal stating "I do not think that Syriza will accept for the country and its people to be exterminated inside the eurozone. A third consecutive austerity loan programme will be the most destructive option possible for Greece."

For a more detailed recap of Friday's events, please see Tsipras Talks With Putin; Energy Minister Rules Out Deal; Wordsmithing Extraordinaire; 16 Tons.

Juncker Spurns Tsipras Meeting

Given all the above, it's no wonder that today Juncker Spurns Tsipras Meeting.

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, asked to meet Jean-Claude Juncker on Saturday but was spurned by the European Commission president rankled by the Greek leader's denunciation of his efforts to broker a bailout deal.

According to a senior official with a Group of Seven delegation, which began gathering in southern Germany on Saturday ahead of a two-day summit of the leaders of the seven leading industrialised powers that begins Sunday, Mr Juncker believed Mr Tsipras' speech in parliament left little to discuss.

"Unless he seriously addresses the issues, there's no reason to meet," said the G7 official.

The G7 official said Greece's creditors were taken by surprise both by Mr Tsipras' outright dismissal of their offer in his parliamentary address as well as a decision to delay a €300m loan repayment owed to the IMF last Friday.

Mr Juncker's rejection of a meeting with Mr Tsipras returns the bailout talks to a point of stalemate just a week after creditors believed the talks were making progress for the first time in nearly four months.

Many officials believe a deal to release €7.2bn in desperately-needed bailout aid needs to be reached ahead of a June 18 meeting of eurozone finance ministers so that Athens has enough time to implement an agreed set of economic reforms in order to get the rescue funds before the bailout expires at the end of the month.

Best Friend and Advocate?

The European Commission, and particularly Mr Juncker, have long seen themselves as Greece's strongest advocate at the creditors' table, frequently clashing with the more hardline views of the IMF and the German finance ministry.

Mr Tsipras' speech Friday was the second time his government has publicly spurned Commission efforts, however. In February, Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic Greek finance minister, publicly revealed Pierre Moscovici, Mr Juncker's economic commissioner, had been quietly attempting to broker a compromise deal to extend Greece's bailout without Mr Dijsselbloem's knowledge.

With "advocates" like Juncker, who needs enemies?

Curiously, Greek officials deny Tsipras asked for a meeting today with Juncker, stating Greece's differences now lie with Berlin, not Mr Juncker in Brussels.

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

Seth's Blog : The Debate Channel

The Debate Channel

Watching the US candidates hustle and squirm about the upcoming debates shows a fascinating generational media shift, one that impacts all of us.

In this case, the system has announced that only the top 10 candidates in the polls get invited, which means that more than a handful won't make the cut, which of course feels like doom.

But TV isn't in charge any more. We each own our own TV broadcasting network—anyone who wants to put on a show, can.

If I were crazy enough to be running, I'd organize my own debate, challenging one or two of my competitors to an hour-long conversation, and then post it online. Even better, I'd challenge one of the candidates from the other party and have a substantive conversation. Bernie Sanders debating [pick your candidate]. It elevates both sides because each person had the guts to address the issues, to go head to head, to speak up and make a case.

The Debate Channel can't be far behind. No grandstanding, with chess clocks provided for fairness, no wasted time on moderators, merely conversations, some of which can't help but go viral and get ratings that would, in aggregate, compete with the TV variety.

Can you imagine a musician today who only performed on TV when asked to by Jimmy Fallon? No music videos, no online work...

And the rest of us? We can have our own debates. Debate patent trolling or which kind of activity tracker is best. Two brand managers or engineers arguing for their particular cloud solution. Or debate sous vide vs. grilling, your freelance skills vs. someone else's...

The game theory is clear: In a competition among many players, when two or three care enough and are brave enough to debate, everyone else becomes 'everyone else'.

The magic is the open nature of a billion-channel universe. The organization with an FCC license is no longer in charge, debates aren't something that happen to you, they're something you can choose to do.

Pick yourself.

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vineri, 5 iunie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Tsipras Talks With Putin; Energy Minister Rules Out Deal; Wordsmithing Extraordinaire; 16 Tons
Durable Goods Charts Seven Ways
Solid Jobs Report: Labor Force +397K, Establishment +280K Jobs, Employment +272K, Unemployment +125K, Unemployment Rate +0.1%
Another Twist in Greece

Tsipras Talks With Putin; Energy Minister Rules Out Deal; Wordsmithing Extraordinaire; 16 Tons

Posted: 05 Jun 2015 12:38 PM PDT

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras keeps hinting that a "deal is close" while publicly trashing every deal offer.

One seriously has to wonder if this is purposeful gamesmanship to string the Troika along and encourage the ECB to keep liquidity in place so that Greek citizens can pull their money out of the banks.

The more simple possibility is everyone truly believes the other side is likely to cave in at any moment.

Tsipras Won't Agree to Irrational Proposals

Repeating similar rants of the past, Tsipras said today: Greece will Not Consent to Irrational Proposals.

Greece cannot accept the "irrational" proposal made this week by the institutions overseeing its bailout, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said during an emergency Parliament session Friday, adding that any deal must also include some form of debt relief.

His speech came the morning after a surprise announcement that Greece would defer an IMF payment due Friday, and would instead bundle all four installments due in June — a total of 1.6 billion euros — into one payment at the end of the month.

Addressing lawmakers for the first time on the course of his government's troubled four-month negotiations with Greece's international lenders, Tsipras said he was "unpleasantly surprised" by the proposal put forward by the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission during his visit to Brussels for talks with commission head Jean-Claude Juncker.

"I would like to believe that this proposal was an unfortunate moment for Europe, or at least a bad negotiating trick, and will very soon be withdrawn by the same people who thought it up," he said.

Still, he said, he believes a deal is now closer than ever.

Wordsmithing Extraordinaire

Is it remotely possible Tsipras actually believed a better deal was going to be handed to him?

I strongly doubt it.

Please note that Tsipras did not say "he believed the deal will soon be withdrawn". He said he would "like to believe it will soon be withdrawn", a completely different meaning altogether.

What about his statement a "deal is now closer than ever"?

Quite possibly, that's technically true. If the deal was a mile away before, and there was an inch of progress today, the deal could indeed be "closer than ever" but at the same time "not close at all".

I am still amused at yesterday's wordsmanship.

Thursday morning, when asked by reporters whether Friday's installment would be made, the Greek prime minister replied: "Don't worry about that."

Thursday afternoon, we learned Athens to Delay IMF Repayment.

Of course "Don't worry about that" is quite different than "yes".

A skillful politician frequently appears to say something significant without saying anything at all. These last two days prove that Tsipras is a wordsmith master.

There is technically not a single lie in any of the above statements. That's a remarkable achievement for any politician, especially one under the gun, both foreign and domestic.

Energy Minister Rules Out Deal

Lending credence to the theory that a deal is closer, yet not close at all, Greek Energy Minister Rules Out Deal with Creditors Who Want 'Pound of Flesh'.

The divisions within Greece's government were laid bare on Friday when a senior minister ruled out any agreement with the country's creditors, accusing them of demanding a "pound of flesh".

Panagiotis Lafazanis, the minister for energy and the environment, told the Telegraph that Russia might be an alternative source of "substantial financial" benefits to Greece, stressing there was no possible "convergence" between "our government and the institutions".

Promising to oppose a deal, Mr Lafazanis said: "I do not think that Syriza will accept for the country and its people to be exterminated inside the eurozone. A third consecutive austerity loan programme will be the most destructive option possible for Greece."

Mr Lafazanis, a former Communist, believes that enough is enough. Any possible agreement would, he argues, force Syriza to break its election promise to end austerity. He wants Mr Tsipras to end the negotiations and, if necessary, default on Greece's debts – or even leave the euro.

As for the chances of Mr Tsipras reaching a deal, Mr Lafazanis said: "It is obvious that given their demands, there can be no convergence between our government and the institutions."

Athens Looks to Moscow

Does the above rant sound like a deal is close? I think not. And what about Russia?

Please consider Putin holds phone call with Tsipras, agrees to meet in 2 weeks in Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has held a telephone talk with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday. They have discussed Russian gas supplies via Turkish Stream and agreed to meet at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in mid-June.

"Practical steps were discussed to implement agreements reached during the recent working visit of Alexis Tsipras to Russia, particularly the planned construction of the gas transport infrastructure across the territory of Turkey and Greece," the press service said.

The talks with the Russian president came hours before the Greek prime minister is due to address the country's parliament about the EU proposal.

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

In spite of (or because of) the above wordsmithing, we still do not know whom, if anyone is bluffing.

All we know for sure is that if a deal is worked out, Greece will sell its soul to the "company store" better known as Troika.

I offer this musical tribute.

Link if video does not play: Tennessee Ernie Ford Sings 16 Tons

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

Durable Goods Charts Seven Ways

Posted: 05 Jun 2015 10:25 AM PDT

Reader Tim Wallace sent a series of four charts on durable goods components. Each chart compares April of this year to April in prior years.

Durable Goods Shipments

click on any chart for sharper image

This is the first time since 2008 that April year-over-year shipments are down.

Durable Goods New Orders

This is the first time since 2008 that year-over-year new orders in April declined. New orders rose above the pre-recession high but are now slightly below the 2007 high.

Durable Goods Unfilled Orders

Unfilled orders keep climbing. They are at a record high.

Durable Goods Inventory

Durable goods inventory is near a record high.

The above charts show nominal prices, not adjusted for inflation. Adjusted for inflation, shipments and new orders are well below pre-recession levels.

Over time, shipments and orders should match unless there are cancellations.

Unfilled orders are a reflection on aircraft orders that have a very long lead time and are subject to cancellation. Here is a chart I created in Fred that explains unfilled orders.

Unfilled Orders Breakdown

Blue - Unfilled Orders Total
Green - Unfilled Transportation Orders
Red - Unfilled Orders Excluding Transportation

Unfilled orders except for transportation are meandering along.

New orders is the primary story.

To weed out the possibility that April of 2015 was some sort of outlier, let's look at some seasonally adjusted growth charts.

Durable Goods New Orders Percent Change From Year Ago

Durable Goods New Orders Excluding Transportation Percent Change From Year Ago

Durable goods orders are a volatile series, in large part due to huge transportation orders but conditions have been weak ever since November of 2014.

Durable Goods Growth From Year Ago

November 2014: -0.61%
December 2014: -0.77%
January 2015: +3.19%
February 2015: -3.24%
March 2015: -0.70%
April 2015: -2.80%

Durable Goods Growth From Year Ago Excluding Transportation

November 2014: +4.33%
December 2014: +5.63%
January 2015: +1.81%
February 2015: -0.44%
March 2015: -1.97%
April 2015: -1.63%

Excluding transportation, the numbers look better. Yet even excluding transportation, year-over-year new orders have been very weak all year.

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

Solid Jobs Report: Labor Force +397K, Establishment +280K Jobs, Employment +272K, Unemployment +125K, Unemployment Rate +0.1%

Posted: 05 Jun 2015 09:07 AM PDT

Initial Reaction

Today's job report (for May) showed good numbers for the labor force, establishment jobs, and household employment. In contrast to April, this month's report was not marred by huge growth in part-time employment.

Household survey employment rose by 272,000 while unemployment rose by 125,000. That means more people actively seek jobs. They are back in the labor force. As a result, the unemployment rate rose by 0.1% to 5.5%.

Let's take a look at all the key numbers.

BLS Jobs Statistics at a Glance

Nonfarm Payroll: +280,000 - Establishment Survey
Employment: +272,000 - Household Survey
Unemployment: +125,000 - Household Survey
Involuntary Part-Time Work: +72,000 - Household Survey
Voluntary Part-Time Work: -95,000 - Household Survey
Baseline Unemployment Rate: +0.1 to 5.5% - Household Survey
U-6 unemployment: +0.0 to 10.8% - Household Survey
Civilian Non-institutional Population: +189,000
Civilian Labor Force: +397,000 - Household Survey
Not in Labor Force: -208,000 - Household Survey
Participation Rate: +0.1 to 62.9 - Household Survey

March 2015 Employment Report

Please consider the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Current Employment Report.

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 280,000 in May, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 5.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and health care. Mining employment continued to decline.

Unemployment Rate - Seasonally Adjusted

Nonfarm Employment

Click on Any Chart in this Report to See a Sharper Image

Nonfarm Employment Change from Previous Month by Job Type

Hours and Wages

Average weekly hours of all private employees was flat at 34.5 hours. Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees was flat at 33.4 hours.

Average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory private workers rose $0.06 at $20.97. Average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory private service-providing employees rose $0.06 at $20.77.

For discussion of income distribution, please see What's "Really" Behind Gross Inequalities In Income Distribution?

Birth Death Model

Starting January 2014, I dropped the Birth/Death Model charts from this report. For those who follow the numbers, I retain this caution: Do not subtract the reported Birth-Death number from the reported headline number. That approach is statistically invalid. Should anything interesting arise in the Birth/Death numbers, I will add the charts back.

Table 15 BLS Alternate Measures of Unemployment

click on chart for sharper image

Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.

Notice I said "better" approximation not to be confused with "good" approximation.

The official unemployment rate is 5.5%. However, if you start counting all the people who want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.

U-6 is much higher at 10.8%. Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.

Some of those dropping out of the labor force retired because they wanted to retire. The rest is disability fraud, forced retirement, discouraged workers, and kids moving back home because they cannot find a job.

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

Another Twist in Greece

Posted: 05 Jun 2015 12:24 AM PDT

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras was confident just yesterday of working out a deal with the Troika.

Thursday morning, when asked by reporters whether Friday's installment would be made, the Greek prime minister replied: "Don't worry about that."

Thursday afternoon, we learned Athens to Delay IMF Repayment.

Of course "Don't worry about that" is quite different than "yes".

Grounded by Dissent

Friday morning we learned Alexis Tsipras Grounded by Dissent from Within Syriza.

After four hours of discussions with EU leaders in Brussels on Wednesday night, Alexis Tsipras was planning to return on Friday in hopes of at last sealing a bailout deal with creditors.

But the Greek prime minister has been grounded by a torrent of anger and resistance from his Syriza party. Instead of flying to Brussels, he will on Friday be appealing to a restive parliament in Athens with his government — and the country's financial future — on the line.

"The overwhelming sentiment in the [Syriza] parliamentary group will be one of rejection," Antonis Kamaras, a Greek political commentator, said of the bailout terms being offered by creditors. "It's hard to see how the leadership can prevail."

Mr Tsipras had called Wednesday's talks "constructive and friendly." But a senior Greek official said the International Monetary Fund, which was not represented at the meeting, had imposed new conditions that had not been tackled in earlier negotiations in Brussels.

Sitting in a cramped office at party headquarters, Alecos Kalyvas, Syriza's economic strategy chief, captured the mood of the party's mainstream. Greece faced big problems and "time was running out", he said, but he "cannot accept" more pensions reductions, energy price rises and public sector job cuts.

Asked if a deal would be reached before the current bailout extension runs out at the end of June, Mr Kalyvas responded: "I'm optimistic but only moderately."

Before Mr Tsipras flew back from Brussels, members of Syriza's extreme left faction urged him to call an immediate general election if the talks resulted in an ultimatum from bailout monitors.

John Milios, the party's previous economic strategy chief and leader of a new far-left faction, the Red Network, called for Greece to halt payments to the IMF and impose capital controls.

Panayotis Lafazanis, the hardline energy minister and official leader of the Left Platform, insisted that electricity prices would remain unchanged and that impoverished households would continue to be supplied with free electricity.

"This agreement isn't in compliance with Syriza's progressive platform and it's not going to happen," Mr Lafazanis said. "We're a government of principle and we won't be responsible for doing such great damage to the country."

What's the Game?

Ever since Alexis Tsipras won the Greek election and appointed finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, an expert who wrote a book on game theory, it's been extremely difficult to determine who is bluffing and who isn't.

Heck, it's very difficult to determine what most of the players really want. German chancellor Angela Merkel is one notable exception. She wants Greece in the eurozone, but not if it costs her too many political points. How many points is too many? Ask Merkel, but she won't tell you.

Does Alexis Tsipras want Greece out of the eurozone?

The possible answers are yes, no, yes provided he can blame the Troika, yes provided his party goes along, yes provided he can stay in power, etc.

The only way to know if anyone wants a deal is if there is a deal.

If Tsipras' goal all along was to default and place the blame elsewhere, he played his hand masterfully well. He can blame the Troika, Germany, his own party, or coalition partners. And months of delays gave everyone a chance to pull deposits from Greek banks.

On that note I have a strong recommendation: If you have money in Greek banks, you are begging for a haircut. Get your money out of Greek banks immediately, and keep it out even if a deal is announced.

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

Nightlife travel, Vines and other interests to follow

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Nightlife travel

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US presidents

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Should I Use Relative or Absolute URLs? - Whiteboard Friday - Moz Blog

Should I Use Relative or Absolute URLs? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by RuthBurrReedy

It was once commonplace for developers to code relative URLs into a site. There are a number of reasons why that might not be the best idea for SEO, and in today's Whiteboard Friday, Ruth Burr Reedy is here to tell you all about why.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!

Let's discuss some non-philosophical absolutes and relatives

Howdy, Moz fans. My name is Ruth Burr Reedy. You may recognize me from such projects as when I used to be the Head of SEO at Moz. I'm now the Senior SEO Manager at BigWing Interactive in Oklahoma City. Today we're going to talk about relative versus absolute URLs and why they are important.

At any given time, your website can have several different configurations that might be causing duplicate content issues. You could have just a standard http://www.example.com. That's a pretty standard format for a website.

But the main sources that we see of domain level duplicate content are when the non-www.example.com does not redirect to the www or vice-versa, and when the HTTPS versions of your URLs are not forced to resolve to HTTP versions or, again, vice-versa. What this can mean is if all of these scenarios are true, if all four of these URLs resolve without being forced to resolve to a canonical version, you can, in essence, have four versions of your website out on the Internet. This may or may not be a problem.

It's not ideal for a couple of reasons. Number one, duplicate content is a problem because some people think that duplicate content is going to give you a penalty. Duplicate content is not going to get your website penalized in the same way that you might see a spammy link penalty from Penguin. There's no actual penalty involved. You won't be punished for having duplicate content.

The problem with duplicate content is that you're basically relying on Google to figure out what the real version of your website is. Google is seeing the URL from all four versions of your website. They're going to try to figure out which URL is the real URL and just rank that one. The problem with that is you're basically leaving that decision up to Google when it's something that you could take control of for yourself.

There are a couple of other reasons that we'll go into a little bit later for why duplicate content can be a problem. But in short, duplicate content is no good.

However, just having these URLs not resolve to each other may or may not be a huge problem. When it really becomes a serious issue is when that problem is combined with injudicious use of relative URLs in internal links. So let's talk a little bit about the difference between a relative URL and an absolute URL when it comes to internal linking.

With an absolute URL, you are putting the entire web address of the page that you are linking to in the link. You're putting your full domain, everything in the link, including /page. That's an absolute URL.

However, when coding a website, it's a fairly common web development practice to instead code internal links with what's called a relative URL. A relative URL is just /page. Basically what that does is it relies on your browser to understand, "Okay, this link is pointing to a page that's on the same domain that we're already on. I'm just going to assume that that is the case and go there."

There are a couple of really good reasons to code relative URLs

1) It is much easier and faster to code.

When you are a web developer and you're building a site and there thousands of pages, coding relative versus absolute URLs is a way to be more efficient. You'll see it happen a lot.

2) Staging environments

Another reason why you might see relative versus absolute URLs is some content management systems -- and SharePoint is a great example of this -- have a staging environment that's on its own domain. Instead of being example.com, it will be examplestaging.com. The entire website will basically be replicated on that staging domain. Having relative versus absolute URLs means that the same website can exist on staging and on production, or the live accessible version of your website, without having to go back in and recode all of those URLs. Again, it's more efficient for your web development team. Those are really perfectly valid reasons to do those things. So don't yell at your web dev team if they've coded relative URLS, because from their perspective it is a better solution.

Relative URLs will also cause your page to load slightly faster. However, in my experience, the SEO benefits of having absolute versus relative URLs in your website far outweigh the teeny-tiny bit longer that it will take the page to load. It's very negligible. If you have a really, really long page load time, there's going to be a whole boatload of things that you can change that will make a bigger difference than coding your URLs as relative versus absolute.

Page load time, in my opinion, not a concern here. However, it is something that your web dev team may bring up with you when you try to address with them the fact that, from an SEO perspective, coding your website with relative versus absolute URLs, especially in the nav, is not a good solution.

There are even better reasons to use absolute URLs

1) Scrapers

If you have all of your internal links as relative URLs, it would be very, very, very easy for a scraper to simply scrape your whole website and put it up on a new domain, and the whole website would just work. That sucks for you, and it's great for that scraper. But unless you are out there doing public services for scrapers, for some reason, that's probably not something that you want happening with your beautiful, hardworking, handcrafted website. That's one reason. There is a scraper risk.

2) Preventing duplicate content issues

But the other reason why it's very important to have absolute versus relative URLs is that it really mitigates the duplicate content risk that can be presented when you don't have all of these versions of your website resolving to one version. Google could potentially enter your site on any one of these four pages, which they're the same page to you. They're four different pages to Google. They're the same domain to you. They are four different domains to Google.

But they could enter your site, and if all of your URLs are relative, they can then crawl and index your entire domain using whatever format these are. Whereas if you have absolute links coded, even if Google enters your site on www. and that resolves, once they crawl to another page, that you've got coded without the www., all of that other internal link juice and all of the other pages on your website, Google is not going to assume that those live at the www. version. That really cuts down on different versions of each page of your website. If you have relative URLs throughout, you basically have four different websites if you haven't fixed this problem.

Again, it's not always a huge issue. Duplicate content, it's not ideal. However, Google has gotten pretty good at figuring out what the real version of your website is.

You do want to think about internal linking, when you're thinking about this. If you have basically four different versions of any URL that anybody could just copy and paste when they want to link to you or when they want to share something that you've built, you're diluting your internal links by four, which is not great. You basically would have to build four times as many links in order to get the same authority. So that's one reason.

3) Crawl Budget

The other reason why it's pretty important not to do is because of crawl budget. I'm going to point it out like this instead.

When we talk about crawl budget, basically what that is, is every time Google crawls your website, there is a finite depth that they will. There's a finite number of URLs that they will crawl and then they decide, "Okay, I'm done." That's based on a few different things. Your site authority is one of them. Your actual PageRank, not toolbar PageRank, but how good Google actually thinks your website is, is a big part of that. But also how complex your site is, how often it's updated, things like that are also going to contribute to how often and how deep Google is going to crawl your site.

It's important to remember when we think about crawl budget that, for Google, crawl budget cost actual dollars. One of Google's biggest expenditures as a company is the money and the bandwidth it takes to crawl and index the Web. All of that energy that's going into crawling and indexing the Web, that lives on servers. That bandwidth comes from servers, and that means that using bandwidth cost Google actual real dollars.

So Google is incentivized to crawl as efficiently as possible, because when they crawl inefficiently, it cost them money. If your site is not efficient to crawl, Google is going to save itself some money by crawling it less frequently and crawling to a fewer number of pages per crawl. That can mean that if you have a site that's updated frequently, your site may not be updating in the index as frequently as you're updating it. It may also mean that Google, while it's crawling and indexing, may be crawling and indexing a version of your website that isn't the version that you really want it to crawl and index.

So having four different versions of your website, all of which are completely crawlable to the last page, because you've got relative URLs and you haven't fixed this duplicate content problem, means that Google has to spend four times as much money in order to really crawl and understand your website. Over time they're going to do that less and less frequently, especially if you don't have a really high authority website. If you're a small website, if you're just starting out, if you've only got a medium number of inbound links, over time you're going to see your crawl rate and frequency impacted, and that's bad. We don't want that. We want Google to come back all the time, see all our pages. They're beautiful. Put them up in the index. Rank them well. That's what we want. So that's what we should do.

There are couple of ways to fix your relative versus absolute URLs problem

1) Fix what is happening on the server side of your website

You have to make sure that you are forcing all of these different versions of your domain to resolve to one version of your domain. For me, I'm pretty agnostic as to which version you pick. You should probably already have a pretty good idea of which version of your website is the real version, whether that's www, non-www, HTTPS, or HTTP. From my view, what's most important is that all four of these versions resolve to one version.

From an SEO standpoint, there is evidence to suggest and Google has certainly said that HTTPS is a little bit better than HTTP. From a URL length perspective, I like to not have the www. in there because it doesn't really do anything. It just makes your URLs four characters longer. If you don't know which one to pick, I would pick one this one HTTPS, no W's. But whichever one you pick, what's really most important is that all of them resolve to one version. You can do that on the server side, and that's usually pretty easy for your dev team to fix once you tell them that it needs to happen.

2) Fix your internal links

Great. So you fixed it on your server side. Now you need to fix your internal links, and you need to recode them for being relative to being absolute. This is something that your dev team is not going to want to do because it is time consuming and, from a web dev perspective, not that important. However, you should use resources like this Whiteboard Friday to explain to them, from an SEO perspective, both from the scraper risk and from a duplicate content standpoint, having those absolute URLs is a high priority and something that should get done.

You'll need to fix those, especially in your navigational elements. But once you've got your nav fixed, also pull out your database or run a Screaming Frog crawl or however you want to discover internal links that aren't part of your nav, and make sure you're updating those to be absolute as well.

Then you'll do some education with everybody who touches your website saying, "Hey, when you link internally, make sure you're using the absolute URL and make sure it's in our preferred format," because that's really going to give you the most bang for your buck per internal link. So do some education. Fix your internal links.

Sometimes your dev team going to say, "No, we can't do that. We're not going to recode the whole nav. It's not a good use of our time," and sometimes they are right. The dev team has more important things to do. That's okay.

3) Canonicalize it!

If you can't get your internal links fixed or if they're not going to get fixed anytime in the near future, a stopgap or a Band-Aid that you can kind of put on this problem is to canonicalize all of your pages. As you're changing your server to force all of these different versions of your domain to resolve to one, at the same time you should be implementing the canonical tag on all of the pages of your website to self-canonize. On every page, you have a canonical page tag saying, "This page right here that they were already on is the canonical version of this page. " Or if there's another page that's the canonical version, then obviously you point to that instead.

But having each page self-canonicalize will mitigate both the risk of duplicate content internally and some of the risk posed by scrappers, because when they scrape, if they are scraping your website and slapping it up somewhere else, those canonical tags will often stay in place, and that lets Google know this is not the real version of the website.

In conclusion, relative links, not as good. Absolute links, those are the way to go. Make sure that you're fixing these very common domain level duplicate content problems. If your dev team tries to tell you that they don't want to do this, just tell them I sent you. Thanks guys.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Your Daily SEO Fix: Week 3

Posted by Trevor-Klein

Welcome to the third installment of our short (< 2-minute) video tutorials that help you all get the most out of Moz's tools. Each tutorial is designed to solve a use case that we regularly hear about from Moz community members—a need or problem for which you all could use a solution.

If you missed the previous roundups, you can find 'em here:

Week 1: Reclaim links using Open Site Explorer, build links using Fresh Web Explorer, and find the best time to tweet using Followerwonk.
Week 2: Analyze SERPs using new MozBar features, boost your rankings through on-page optimization, check your anchor text using Open Site Explorer, do keyword research with OSE and the keyword difficulty tool, and discover keyword opportunities in Moz Analytics.

Today, we've got a brand-new roundup of the most recent videos:

How to Compare Link Metrics in Open Site Explorer
How to Find Tweet Topics with Followerwonk
How to Create Custom Reports in Moz Analytics
How to Use Spam Score to Identify High-Risk Links
How to Get Link Building Opportunities Delivered to Your Inbox

Hope you enjoy them!

Fix 1: How to Compare Link Metrics in Open Site Explorer

Not all links are created equal. In this Daily SEO Fix, Chiaryn shows you how to use Open Site Explorer to analyze and compare link metrics for up to five URLs to see which are strongest.

Fix 2: How to Find Tweet Topics with Followerwonk

Understanding what works best for your competitors on Twitter is a great place to start when forming your own Twitter strategy. In this fix, Ellie explains how to identify strong-performing tweets from your competitors and how to use those tweets to shape your own voice and plan.

Fix 3: How to Create Custom Reports in Moz Analytics

In this Daily SEO Fix, Kevin shows you how to create a custom report in Moz Analytics and schedule it to be delivered to your inbox on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Fix 4: How to Use Spam Score to Identify High-Risk Links

Almost every site has a few bad links pointing to it, but lots of highly risky links can have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. In this fix, Tori shows you how to use Moz's Spam Score metric to identify spammy links.

Fix 5: How to Get Link Building Opportunities Delivered to Your Inbox

Building high-quality links is one of the most important aspects of SEO. In this Daily SEO Fix, Erin shows you how to use Moz Analytics to set up a weekly custom report that will notify you of pages on the web that mention your site but do not include a link, so you can use this info to build more links.

Looking for more?

We've got more videos in the previous two weeks' round-ups!

Your Daily SEO Fix: Week 1

Your Daily SEO Fix: Week 2

Don't have a Pro subscription? No problem. Everything we cover in these Daily SEO Fix videos is available with a free 30-day trial.

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Should I Use Relative or Absolute URLs? - Whiteboard Friday - Moz Blog

Should I Use Relative or Absolute URLs? - Whiteboard Friday

Let's discuss some non-philosophical absolutes and relatives

There are a couple of really good reasons to code relative URLs

1) It is much easier and faster to code.

2) Staging environments

There are even better reasons to use absolute URLs

1) Scrapers

2) Preventing duplicate content issues

3) Crawl Budget

There are couple of ways to fix your relative versus absolute URLs problem

1) Fix what is happening on the server side of your website

2) Fix your internal links

3) Canonicalize it!

Your Daily SEO Fix: Week 3

Fix 1: How to Compare Link Metrics in Open Site Explorer

Fix 2: How to Find Tweet Topics with Followerwonk

Fix 3: How to Create Custom Reports in Moz Analytics

Fix 4: How to Use Spam Score to Identify High-Risk Links

Fix 5: How to Get Link Building Opportunities Delivered to Your Inbox

Looking for more?

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

duminică, 7 iunie 2015

sâmbătă, 6 iunie 2015

vineri, 5 iunie 2015

Let's discuss some non-philosophical absolutes and relatives

There are a couple of really good reasons to code relative URLs

1) It is much easier and faster to code.

2) Staging environments

There are even better reasons to use absolute URLs

1) Scrapers

2) Preventing duplicate content issues

3) Crawl Budget

There are couple of ways to fix your relative versus absolute URLs problem

1) Fix what is happening on the server side of your website

2) Fix your internal links

3) Canonicalize it!

Fix 1: How to Compare Link Metrics in Open Site Explorer

Fix 2: How to Find Tweet Topics with Followerwonk

Fix 3: How to Create Custom Reports in Moz Analytics

Fix 4: How to Use Spam Score to Identify High-Risk Links

Fix 5: How to Get Link Building Opportunities Delivered to Your Inbox

Looking for more?

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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