joi, 3 februarie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog


State of the Community

Posted: 02 Feb 2011 02:13 PM PST

Posted by jennita

Every now and then it's important to take a good look at your community, see where you stand, remember where you've been and take a look at where you're going. Today I wanted to take the time to do just that. Over the next month-ish we have a number of changes and additions happening to the SEOmoz Community that I wanted to let everyone know about. I also thought it would be fun to take a look at our community from a numbers perspective.

So let's jump right in, take a look at the numbers, then meander through the upcoming community awesomeness. Who's with me!? Onward folks...

The Numbers

First things first, let's check out the SEOmoz Community in numbers (as of the time of publishing this post):

6,518 Active Community Members (any member who participated in comments, Q & A or YOUmoz in the past 6 mo.)

7,600 PRO Members (the Active Member list above isn't looking at tool/web app usage)

279,599 Total Members (PRO and non-PRO, active and inactive, plus free tool members)

13,321 comments in the past 6 months (you people write A LOT)

70 YOUmoz posts in the past 6 months

22 of those YOUmoz posts have been promoted to the main blog (nice work!)

26,924 Twitter Followers

7,325 Facebook Fans (or whatever they want us to call them these days)

83,971 RSS Feed Subscribers

Before I finish with the numbers, let's look at a few more fun facts. We hit 2000 PRO members on March 13, 2008 and 6000 on August 24, 2010. In May of 2009 we had just over 4,000 Twitter followers, which means in 18 months we've increased our Twitter followers by 624% simply by engaging with people. [That's a lot of percentages, yo.] I also found this fun post from 2008 asking the community what they wanted to see in our Twitter feed. What do you think, how are we doing?

Newsletter

Last month we kicked off our inaugural PRO Newsletter (thanks to Lauren!) and will be sending out a non-PRO one later this month. Each month you'll get all sorts of SEO and mozzy goodness right into your inbox.

SEOmoz newsletter

MozPoints

Most of the changes you're going to see outlined below actually have one major theme in common, MORE MOZPOINTS!! [Ok I got that out of my system. Whew.] As you'll read below, the new profiles, Q & A and YOUmoz changes are all bringing you more ways to earn mozPoints. At the same time, since we're giving you more ways to earn, we're also making a bit harder and giving you some sweet rewards.

mozpoint changes

Profiles

Perhaps you've noticed, or perhaps not, but our profiles have essentially looked the same for several years. It's time to kick them into overdrive. Not only are the profiles getting a whole new look, with more ways to promote yourself or company, you'll also earn mozPoints as you complete your profile.

New SEOmoz Profiles

Q & A

This is really the doozy of the bunch. Over the last few months we've been working on a whole new system for PRO Q & A. As our membership grows, it has become painfully clear that in order to keep up with the number of great questions coming in, we needed to rethink the system a bit. There will be a full post with all the details coming out soon.

The basis of the changes is to give PRO members the ability to:

  1. Ask more questions (we are often asked to increase this number)
  2. Receive responses faster
  3. Respond to other member's questions
  4. Earn mozPoints by answering questions well

Yes, that's right! We're putting the ability to answer PRO questions into your hands. The SEOmoz staff and Associates will still be in there answering questions and moderating. Essentially our roles won't change (at least not right away), but we're giving our users the ability to gain points for answering questions. You'll get more points for answering questions within the first 4 hours it was asked and if the answer is "SEOmoz approved" you'll gain even more points.

I know, I know, you have questions about Q & A [giggle] and we're happy to answer your questions in the comments below. Remember though that in the coming weeks you'll get a lot more info! Plus if you're quite active in Q & A right now, you may get an email in the next week asking you to be a beta tester. W00t!

Let's take a quick peek at some screenshots:


Your new Q & A Overview Page
 


This is the view when you go to ask a question
 


This is what an answered question will look like

Pretty slick eh?! You'll get your questions answered quicker and gain mozPoints at the same time. Plus you'll still be able to ask one private question per month which will be answered by the SEOmoz stafff or an Associate. hoorah!

YOUmoz

Hopefully you've already noticed that YOUmoz is KICKIN' so far this year. It's mostly because the posts submitted are just phenomenal, but we've also raised our standards. Not that we had "low standards" previously, but it's beneficial to everyone if the posts published there are of high quality.

In the near future when you go to submit at YOUmoz post, you'll be asked to first read through the guidelines and accept that you've clearly read them. You'll also see tips on creating a good post. Some of the items you'll see on this page are:

  • Have you added useful images/charts/screenshots? It is so important to format a post well (as well as possible in our WYSIWYG editor) and make sure that you include relevant screenshots, images, charts, any sort of visual that will add depth to your post.
  • Don't forget your Title! So many times posts are submitted with mediocre titles. There have been times where a post was almost skipped because it looked like spam.
  • Does this post already exist on the web? If it does, please don't submit it. We only take unique posts and it wastes everyone's time to submit previously published posts. We do a search on every post before publishing.
  • Check your spelling and grammar. I fix spelling and grammar in each and every post (even on the main blog), but having a post free of these issues will likely get your post published sooner.

Having these guidelines in place will also help me to explain to an author why a post wasn't published. We read through every single post submitted, do a search for duplicates, plus check for spelling and grammar so it can take a while to get published. Before you submit a post, just be sure to read it through carefully and put the same time and energy into the post that you would on your own blog.

Keep up the great work YOUmoz authors. As I stated before, this has been an excellent year so far for posts and by the looks of the queue right now, it's only getting better.

Navigation

Whatever you do, don't freak out! When we first started talking about changing the navigation, my biggest concern was how the community was going to react. Any time you make changes to what people are used to there is an uproar [hello Facebook & Digg, I'm talking to you here]. So we wanted to give you a quick preview of what's to come in the next month.

The main difference you'll notice right away is that there will now be two versions of the navigation, PRO and non-PRO. When you log in as a PRO member your experience will be geared toward using the web app, tools and other PRO features.


The non-PRO and logged out version
 

new SEOmoz PRO nav
The PRO navigation

Note: These aren't the finalized versions. :)

Community

Remember earlier when I talked about freaking out... yea you should have all seen me when we first started talking about having a Community section in the top nav. It was truly a combination of elation and mind-numbing fear. Picture this conversation that went on my head if you will:

I really wish I could tell you that conversation didn't happen, but it did. :) I'm super excited about the addition of a Community section and although the screenshot below doesn't show all the goodies (such as the Mozzer Spotlight, Top Comments of the Week and Top Users for the Month), I think you too will start to get excited as well!

Ok, so now I've spilled the beans on some of the new Community changes happening over the next month, I'd love to get feedback on what you see here. Again, as each one of these launches we'll have more detailed information about them. I wanted to give the community plenty of time to soak in all this cool stuff before we just threw it at you. :) I can't wait to hear from you!


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White House White Board: Startup America

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, Feb. 3,  2011
 

White House White Board: Startup America

In this edition, Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains how the new Startup America program will help entrepreneurs overcome what’s often called the “valley of death” on the way to success.

Watch the video.

In Case You Missed It

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

The New START Treaty: Signed
The President signs a landmark nuclear arms treaty with Russia, New START, which will advance our security, our relations with Russia, and our progress toward a world not imperiled by nuclear weapons.

On the Road to Energy Efficiency
The President's Better Building Initiative will reduce energy costs for American businesses, and encourage innovation to create a new wave of energy-efficient technology and design.

Announcing ConsumerFinance.gov
Elizabeth Warren announces the launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new website, ConsumerFinance.gov. Check out a quick video introduction to the CFPB narrated by Ron Howard and join a conversation on their new site.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

8:00 AM: The President delivers remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast; the Vice President and the First Lady also attend WhiteHouse.gov/live

9:30 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:05 AM: The President departs the White House en route Andrews Air Force Base

10:20 AM: The President departs Andrews Air Force Base en route University Park, Pennsylvania

11:05 AM: The President arrives in University Park, Pennsylvania

11:30 AM: The President tours labs at Pennsylvania State University

12:00 AM: The President delivers remarks on innovation WhiteHouse.gov/live

12:45 AM: The Vice President delivers remarks at a lunch for the Global Chiefs of Mission Conference

1:20 AM: The President departs University Park, Pennsylvania

2:05 AM: The President arrives at Andrews Air Force Base

2:20 AM: The President arrives at the White House

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

Get Updates

Sign Up for the Daily Snapshot 

Stay Connected

 


 
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How Mobile Friendly is Your Website Graywolf's SEO Blog

How Mobile Friendly is Your Website Graywolf's SEO Blog


How Mobile Friendly is Your Website

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 07:44 AM PST

Post image for How Mobile Friendly is Your Website

In late 2010, the New York Times published an article titled 2010 the year of the Tablet, or iPad. In 2010, Apple sold 14 million iPad units. In the 4th quarter of 2010 they sold more iPads than they did Macbooks, and 2010 had Apple’s highest Macbook sales ever. With the iPhone coming to Verizon in early 2011, that’s even more mobile devices ready to hit the streets. And it isn’t just iPhone Blackberry sales that are strong–Android is serious mobile contender, and Windows is at least trying to gain a foothold. As a publisher, it’s time to ask yourself  … How Mobile Friendly is Your Website?

While it’s obvious that mobile is growing, a lot of website owners think it’s something they don’t have to deal with now, especially if they run an eCommerce website. I can tell you that I did the majority of my shopping on my mobile devices this year and, looking at this tweet from Brent D Payne, I wasn’t the only one …

Brent D Payne Christmas Shopping on his iPhone

Recently Matt Cutts of Google posted a video on Mobile SEO.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The one issue I’m going to disagree with Matt on is implementation. Using an m.example.com implementation is an incredibly bad idea. It creates an extra maintenance point, flirts with usability issues, and introduces the possibility of crawling and link equity problems (see The Dangers of Having Multiple Website Versions). Instead, I suggest detecting based on user agent and serving content/styling appropriately.

If you have the programming resources and expertise, developing native apps is one way to go. Apps will always be more elegant and sophisticated than mobile websites. If you’re looking for some suggestion about how an app should run, take a look at the Amazon shopping app and Apple shopping app, both of which I have used and are excellent. That said, you will still need a mobile website version to cover devices without app capabilities.

IMHO if you don’t have a mobile version of your website in 2011, you will be missing out on a growing market of customers. The number of people with mobile browsers is only going to increase and, without a mobile website, you run the risk of alienating those users and customers … or allowing your competition to serve them better. It’s something to think about.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Hello Turkey Toe

tla starter kit

Related posts:

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  2. A Look at Full and Partial Feeds in an Increasingly Mobile World I’ve long stated that I prefer full feeds over partial...
  3. The Dangers of Having Multiple Website Versions With the proliferation of smart phones of varying screen sizes,...
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  5. Environmentally Friendly Link Bait One of the problems people have with linkbait is thinking...

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

How Mobile Friendly is Your Website

SEOptimise

SEOptimise


A Natural Link Profile and Nofollow as a Ranking Factor or Signal

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 04:49 AM PST

link profile
SEOptimise link profile on Blekko.

Every site owner engaged in SEO has to strive for a natural link profile. Just as you want to have natural-sounding copy on your page without keyword stuffing and other antique spam techniques, so you want to have a link profile that does not look like one powered solely by artificial SEO.

A site having only

  • comment
  • directory
  • footer links

most probably from link exchanges does not have a healthy link profile, while a site having links of all kinds from all kinds of sources has. ​While it’s difficult to have a 100% natural link profile, where you don’t build links at all and get all your links from webmasters voluntarily without contacting them,​ you can still have a natural link profile.

Now here comes someone and asks me about nofollow and whether it is a ranking factor or signal.

Usually I don’t care about nofollow and whether my links are nofollow or not. The nofollow attribute is usually a topic only low quality manual link builders care about. I always aim for editorial links by real people; that’s why I blog and socialize so much. This way, I don’t even have to care about the nofollow attribute.

Still, there are niches where there are not as many blogs or ​people to socialize with. So you might still be in the position to actually care about manual link building – that is, actually visiting sites yourself and submitting your link there or asking for a link.

Before you engage in manual link building and focus on things like so-called “dofollow blogs” or “dofollow directories” you have to consider the bigger picture. You have to think about your link profile carefully. Also, you might want to start using Blekko to take a look at your actual link profile.

While I have no proof of course, I’m quite sure that Google engineers are smart enough to consider your link profile in their ranking algorithm. We know that the geographic location of your links has a visible impact on your rankings. For instance, having links from the UK is more likely to make you rank in the UK than, say, in Australia.

Likewise, other parts of your link profile will most probably have an impact. Google can determine whether a link is a comment link, a directory link or a footer link as well.​ I’m not saying these links do not work anymore, but they do at least count less. Furthermore, having only these links is most probably a negative ranking signal.

According to Matt Cutts and Rand Fishkin, nofollow links are just a tiny percentage of the overall number of web links. I can’t remember the exact number, but it’s allegedly something between 1 and 2% of them.

So can having more than 2% of nofollow links in your link profile have a negative impact on your rankings?

Well, it’s not that simple. Every niche, type of publication and country has probably slightly different numbers here. I assume that blogs, for example, have a far higher number of nofollow links than other sites, as bloggers socialize among themselves and link to each other. As most blogs have nofollow enabled in their comment section by default, whenever you comment on such a blog or ping such a blog you end up having a nofollowed link.

Now consider some of the tools and data Google has and offers: Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools. Using them, you can compare your data to the average of websites in your industry in GA or all websites when it comes to website speed.​ Google will most probably check all kinds of data in a similar manner. ​The algo will compare your site to the industry average. Furthermore, your link profile will get compared. So when everybody has 10% nofollow links and you have 1% or 20% this might appear strange. So nofollow might work as red flag.

Other red flags in connection with the nofollow attribute can be:

Internal links use nofollow​ in the so-called (obsolete) practice of PageRank sculpting. ​Red flag:  this site is “over optimized”.

External links use nofollow as above or for other reasons. Red flag:  this site either has lots of low quality (user generated) content, paid links​ or links out to untrustworthy websites.

Even worse is extreme usage of nofollow. Some sites use nofollow on all external links for example. Just because it works on Wikipedia doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. ​So make sure your link profile is a healthy, natural one with lots of “organic” links of all kinds, nofollow links included. Otherwise red flags – such as too many or too few nofollow links – will make your site vulnerable in the Google search results.​

© SEOptimise – Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. A Natural Link Profile and Nofollow as a Ranking Factor or Signal

Related posts:

  1. Does a Perfect Link Profile Look Too Perfect? Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Nofollow Links!
  2. Nofollow: Twitter Now Distrusts Everything You Say
  3. 10 Ways to Use Google Buzz for SEO & SMO

Seth's Blog : The space matters

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

The space matters

It might be a garage or a sunlit atrium, but the place you choose to do what you do has an impact on you.

More people get engaged in Paris in the springtime than on the 7 train in Queens. They just do. Something in the air, I guess.

Pay attention to where you have your brainstorming meetings. Don't have them in the same conference room where you chew people out over missed quarterly earnings.

Pay attention to the noise and the smell and the crowd in the place where you're trying to overcome being stuck. And as Paco Underhill has written, make the aisles of your store wide enough that shoppers can browse without getting their butts brushed by other shoppers.

Most of all, I think we can train ourselves to associate certain places with certain outcomes. There's a reason they built those cathedrals. Pick your place, on purpose.

 

 
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