Central Perk

marți, 12 iulie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 07:10 PM PDT

These pictures showcase how far families will go to display their love for one another, with captions written by the editors of Awkward Family Photos, a website that celebrates when the formal family portrait goes terribly, terribly wrong.

More Awkward Posts:
Awkward Family Photos
Awkward Family Photos - Part 2
Awkward School Pictures
Awkward Family Photos with Pets
Awkward Family Photos with Pets - Part 2
Awkward Christmas Photos From 1992
The Most Awkward Moments from Middle School Dances Times

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded

Posted: 11 Jul 2011 04:54 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

When I started in the SEO field (circa 2003), the job responsibilities weren't easy, but the list was relatively small. Over the next 5 years, those responsibilities increased, but it was primarily in tactical and knowledge sorts of ways. A 2003 vs. 2008 rundown might look something like:

SEO Responsibilities 2003-2008

(Notes on image above: There's some over-simplification in this list, and some items cross the artificial 2003 barrier a bit)

The last 2.5 years, however, have made for some fairly substantive changes. We're facing large-scale, industry-shifting trends that have upset the classic model for search engine optimization, including:

Google's Vince update and others like it where search engines are biasing toward brands over smaller, lesser-known sites.
Panda and the focus on user behavior, trust and authority of sites based on their look/feel/content style/etc. has changed what it means to do SEO, just as the Florida update did at the end of 2003.
The shift in web user behavior toward social media - more than 20% of our time spent online is spent on social.
Fragmentation of the social media market: LinkedIn just passed MySpace to become the #2 social network in the US, and Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, StumbleUpon (and soon, Google+, IMO) all have 10million+ active users. FourSquare also just passed that mark.
The powerful increase in content creation as a marketing tool for businesses. 57% of companies in Hubspot's recent survey run an active blog!
An overwhelming increase in mobile and, thus, local search/web usage leads to portals like Google Maps, Bing Maps, Yelp, Citysearch, UrbanSpoon, FourSquare, etc. offering massive potential value to local businesses and service providers.
The recession in 2008 caused a massive change in how businesses think about employment - human resources are nearly the last thing companies will add to their costs, and while that's generating amazing profits, it's having a rough impact on employment. As a part of this trend, SEOs have been asked to shoulder many new and heavy burdens.

Thus, we're faced with a picture where the responsibilities of SEOs looks more like this:

SEO Responsibilities in 2011

(Note: Some of these are due to changes in SEO itself, and others due to the additional expectations placed on those performing SEO)

If you're in the SEO field, this shift is both a positive and a negative. If you can keep up with the workload, manage all the metrics, reporting, data and platforms AND perform effectively in all of these spheres, you're likely able to charge outsized fees (or earn a much higher salary). If you remain tactical and niche, you're either going to be undervalued or you'll need to find ways to make that specialization and the ROI you can earn visible to your clients/managers.

The job of an "SEO" is so much more than what we think of and talk about as the basics of classic "Search Engine Optimization" that it almost feels as though we deserve a new title... and probably a raise :-)

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President Obama on Deficit Reduction: "If Not Now, When?"

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, July 12, 2011

President Obama on Deficit Reduction: "If Not Now, When?"

Yesterday, the President held a news conference in which he addressed the ongoing efforts to find a balanced approach to the budget and fielded questions from reporters. President Obama continues to work daily with Congressional leaders from both parties.

Watch the full press conference from yesterday or read the highlights.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama is briefed before a phone call with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia in the Oval Office, July 11, 2011. (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 on Tackling our Debt and Deficit
Here are a few highlights from President Obama's press conference.

The President’s Executive Order on Improving and Streamlining Regulation by Independent Regulatory Agencies
President Obama issues a new Executive Order asking the independent regulatory agencies, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to take new steps to ensure smart, cost-effective regulations, designed to promote economic growth and job creation.

Open for Questions: Live Chat on Improving Federal Websites
On Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 4:00 PM EDT, join Administration officials for a live chat to discuss ways to improve the online experience with Federal websites.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

10:00 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:30 AM: The President meets with senior advisors

12:30 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney

2:15 PM: The President awards Sergeant First Class Leroy Arthur Petry, U.S. Army, the Medal of Honor; The Vice President also attends

3:15 PM: The President and the Vice President meet with Congressional Leadership

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

Get Updates

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SEOptimise

25 Must Follow Trunk.ly Users Who Get You the Latest SEO Nuggets

Posted: 11 Jul 2011 05:47 AM PDT

Trunk.ly is the killer app nobody really talks about. It deserves the hype of Friendfeed or Quora, but barely anybody notices the huge impact it may have in future and it’s only rarely that someone explains how useful it already is. A few articles urge you to use it, but

Trunk.ly is indeed the solution for half a dozen Web-related problems almost everybody faces.

First and foremost, it get rids of all the fluff and chatter and lets you follow your favourite friends and influencers holistically on the Web. Trunk.ly simply collects all the links a person shares throughout the Web. This might sound a bit like the aforementioned Friendfeed, but it lacks the annoying and time-wasting features of the former.

I’ve been using Trunk.ly ever since it seemed that Delicious would be killed off completely by Yahoo. Thus I frantically tried several Delicious alternatives. Trunk.ly was the best of them. Meanwhile, I’m using Delicious again but I also use Trunk.ly for other reasons than just social bookmarking.

Delicious is great for organising your own bookmarks. It never was a good place to share or even overview your friends’ bookmarks.

It has some features for that but they are too hidden and too many clicks away. Also, most of the link sharing these days happens on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the like.

On Trunk.ly it’s far easier to follow how popular a particular post is. I can see who the people are who share the link, no matter where they share it. I can follow the shared links from people I respect on the Web as a whole. So who are the people you want to get the links served from when it comes to SEO, search marketing and social media optimisation?

Here are 25 must follow Trunk.ly users who get you the latest SEO nuggets:

Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing
Justin Briggs aka seozoombie, independent SEO consultant
Bharati Ahuja – WebPro Technologies
Andrew Doyle of Crafted Media
Todd Mintz, an SEO blogger who contributes everywhere
Alex Moss of Pleer SEO
Matthew Edward of Springboard SEO
Richard Baxter of SEO Gadget
Aaron Chronister aka TheMadHat
Tad Miller from Search Mojo
Wayne Barker of Hallam
Gabriella Sannino alias SEOcopy from Level343
Dawid Iwanow of The Lost Agency
Aleyda Solis, spanish SEO
James Zolman alias jameszol of Familyhomesecurity.com
Gianluca Fiorelli of Italiaseo
Dobata
Tom Demers of Measured SEM
Samir Balwani
Marc Levy of Matan Media
Christoph Cemper of Cemper.com
Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide
Eric Enge aka stoneteple from Stone Temple Consulting
Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link
Courtney Seiter from Raven

As you see, these people are not just the usual suspects or the SEO industry giants.

These are the curators who provide the links you want to know about and can with the help of Trunk.ly.

You just get the links – nothing less but also nothing more, so there is no typical social media time-wasting going on here.

Just go to your timeline aka “Friends’ links” and see what people share almost in real time. The number of people who share a link are displayed as well, so you see whether it matters to more than one person. For example, just now I see that “5″ people have shared a post by Claire Carlile on targeting the right keyword phrases I appreciate.

Of course there may be even more great Trunk.ly users from the SEO industry you want to recommend. Please do it in the comment section!

If you don’t have the time to follow all the people above, you can try checking out the SEO experts group instead. This is OK but contains mostly links for SEOMoz and Search Engine Land. For hidden gems you have to follow my route.

* Image by Larissa Sayer

Seth's Blog : The invisible crossroads

The invisible crossroads

In Career World, crossroads don't happen very often. Should I go to college? Which one? Should I quit this job? Where should I apply...

In Project World, on the other hand, every day offers a choice that could change things. Should you start a new project? Organize a conference? Open a new channel of social media? Quit something you're doing right now to make time for something else?

It's easy to get stressed and excited about the infrequent crossroads. It's just as easy to ignore the daily opportunities you have to change everything.