miercuri, 7 august 2013

Announcing the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors Results

Announcing the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors Results


Announcing the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors Results

Posted: 07 Aug 2013 01:16 AM PDT

Posted by David Mihm

I'm pleased to announce the full results of this year's Local Search Ranking Factors survey were published earlier this morning. (The pie chart below is just a teaser.)

Those of you who attended MozCon a couple weeks ago got a sneak preview of these results, but I'm guessing that few of you had a chance to fully digest them in the 14.2 seconds I spent on the slides in which I presented them. Let's dive in!

If this is the first time you've heard of the Local Search Ranking Factors, most of the background can be found on the results page itself. I'll highlight a couple of changes for this year:

  • As I was putting the survey together this year, I thought to myself, "You know, there's really no single 'local algorithm' at Google anymore" â€" if, indeed, there ever was one. This year is our group's first effort to help readers distinguish between the thematic signals that have more or less prevalence depending on the result type Google is showing (localized organic, pack/carousel, or maps).
  • Given that a large chunk of the audience for this survey over the years has been agency owners and agency representatives â€" at least judging by the emails I've received â€" I decided to try to cater to this audience a bit more this year. Guessing that most of you have already read previous surveys and understand the basics, I also asked the 35 experts to score the same factors according to what they felt made the most difference in competitive markets. So for those of you who already have the basics covered, pay attention to that second column of results.
  • I added personalization as a thematic signal to ask about this year. Frankly, I was surprised it wasn't considered a larger factor on mobile results. Of all the factors on the list, I think this one will be the most interesting to revisit in 2014, as searchers and experts alike become more and more familiar with the new Google Maps.

By and large, the primary factors seem to have stayed largely the same for the past couple of years:

  • Proper category associations
  • A physical address in the city being searched
  • Consistent, high-quality citations from sources that are:
    • Authoritative
    • Trustworthy
    • Industry-relevant
  • Your NAP information featured clearly on your website
  • Your location as a keyword in title tags and headlines
  • A smattering of reviews on both Google and third-party sites
  • A handful of high-quality inbound links

Though I wanted to give the other 34 experts "the floor" on the survey page itself, I do want to comment about a couple of responses I found particularly interesting:

  • Despite Google's massively-hyped integration of its Google Plus and Google Places platforms just over a year ago (a process that is far from complete, by the way), social signals still seem to play a relatively small role in rankings â€" just 6.3% overall. But the consensus seems to be that the place to begin would be rel=author tag implementation. This was suggested as the #22 priority in competitive markets, versus #34 as a foundational priority, and several experts mentioned it in their comments.
  • Perhaps the most surprising factor was that reviews from authority reviewers were rated the #3 competitive difference-maker. If you're in a competitive market, I'd encourage you to pay special attention to Google's City Experts program, and think about checking out this Twitter/Followerwonk strategy I detailed in January.
  • As we move into a world where maps are becoming the local search paradigm, it's remarkable to me just how little effect (less than 25%) the primary factors in traditional SEO â€" on-page optimization and inbound links â€" are judged to have on rankings.
  • Meanwhile, Google continues to emphasize these factors in its localized organic results (judged by the experts to be right around 50%), which should give businesses without a physical location some measure of consolation.
  • As far as negative factors go, call-tracking numbers and business name keyword-stuffing continue to be some of the most egregious offenses you can make in local search.

A couple of quick closing remarks:

Huge thanks to Derric Wise from UX/Design and Devin Ellis on our Inbound Engineering team for putting this beautiful-looking page together.

And, if you want to know more about this year's survey, I would encourage you to sign up for Local University Advanced at SMX East coming up in just a few weeks. I'll be speaking much more about tactics you can use to win on these factors in New York!

OK, that's enough out of me for this year's survey, anyway. As I do every year, I'm eagerly anticipating the discussion of the results in the comments!


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Giving a Voice to Your Brand

Posted: 06 Aug 2013 07:38 PM PDT

Posted by gfiorelli1

Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. More human than human is our motto.
-
Blade Runner

Those who had not heard of storytelling cast the first stone.

And those who are not thinking of it, or maybe have already begun to speak in-house or with their customers that it is necessary to give a voice to their brands, cast the second.

The question is, do we really know what "brand storytelling" means?

Do we really know why it is important for increasing brand recognition, optimizing customer retention, and (hopefully) attain that status of thought leaders in our niche that we all aspire to achieve?

Do we really understand why it is also important from an SEO point of view?

Finally, do we really know the rhetoric of storytelling â€" the laws behind a good narrative?

The truth is that everyone can tell a story, but only a few know how to tell it well and naturally. Fortunately, it is an art that can be learned.

Storytelling

Stories and irrational impulses are what change behavior. Not facts or bullet points.
-
Seth Godin

One of the things that surprises me most when it comes to us, the internet marketers, is that we still often tend to think analogically:

Having A, doing B, performing C, I will obtain D.

I have a product, I write some "great content," I promote it, and people will come like bees attracted to a field of flowers.

Unfortunately, things are not so anymore. To tell the truth, they were never so.

Our mistake, paraphrasing Seth Godin, is that we tend to create nothing but bullet points and present nothing but facts. We forget that our audience reacts to everything specifically because of its emotions, so we don’t really work on those emotions, which are rationalized in just a moment.

The secret of storytelling is not in its final expressions (so many in a digital era) but in the act itself of telling a story.

Telling stories is what helps human beings rationalize and understand emotions, and thus accept or refuse a statement.

For this reason, humankind has told stories since it was living in the caves of Altamira or Lascaux. Culture was transmitted though stories, legends, and myths; religions and states have been founded on stories.

The 300 Spartans fought against the immense Persian army at Thermopylae not just because Leonidas guided them or because they were the bravest warriors of ancient Greece, but especially because a mythology composed by hundreds of stories assured them they were the descendants of Heracles.

Citing the Big Fish character of Wil Bloom, "a man tells so many stories that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal."

For this reason we love family stories, and for this reason we relate to brands with stories we lived while using and enjoying them.

Think for a moment about your youth, and you will notice how you can write down a never-ending list of brands you remember because of the emotions they helped you feel. Personally, if I think to when I was a teenager in the '80s, I cannot help but remember brands like Commodore, Atari, Saba (the first color television my family bought) and many others.

Neuroscience explains quite well how evolution has wired us for storytelling, as Leo Widrich of Buffer explained so well on LifeHacker.

But the most interesting conclusion neuroscience offers to us is that the brain of the storyteller and the brain of their listeners start acting in synchronization when a story is told, as the same areas of their brain start being used.

There are other interesting theories, including Jung's conclusions about archetypes and myths, and if you want to dig into how to use literary modes for internet marketing you can read this post I wrote a few months ago.

Brand storytelling

Storytelling, then, is possibly the best way to convince a person of something, whether it be voting for a candidate for president, choosing one religion over another, adhering to certain moral conduct, or buying one product rather than another.

I can already hear the distant murmur of a thousand voices saying, "But the product that I have to sell is a bolt!"

Once again, that's the shortsighted mistake of seeing only the end result and forgetting everything that led to its creation. We stop ourselves at the what and forget the why and the how.

What do you think of when I mention Red Bull? I am sure that you think about adventure, extreme sport, and a crazy guy who skydived from the stratosphere. And what if I mention Lucozade? Maybe if you are into energy drinks you know of it, but I am quite sure that many of you, as was my case, have just now heard its name for the first time.

The products are practically the same: bottles and cans of energy drinks. Red Bull, though, has been able to create stories around its brand while Lucozade has not. And people love stories that respond to their needs, desires, and dreams.

As reported by Ty Montague on Medium, Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull, explained the reasoning behind the tagline Red Bull gives you wings: "[it] means that it provides skills, abilities, power, etc., to achieve whatever you want to. It is an invitation as well as a request to be active, performance-oriented, alert and to take challenges. When you work or study, do your very best. When you do sports, go for your limits. When you have fun or just relax, be aware of it and appreciate it."

Red Bull, hence, proposes itself as a lifestyle and not just an energy drink. For that reason, its Brand is far more memorable than Lucozade.

Where to start

There is a world of stories hidden in the About Us and Mission pages (it's a shame that those are usually hidden in the footer menu).

The biggest mistake a marketer can make is not understanding that brands are the final expression of a company, and that a company is just something real people created in order to achieve something (which usually isn't "making money").

Let's check out a few examples:

  • Moz was founded because Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig had the vision of helping people doing better marketing.
  • People, who were convinced there are ideas worth spreading, have created TED Talks.
  • Patagonia has as its mission to "build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis."
  • Betabrand's mission is to "design, manufacture, and sell a stylish array of anti-nudity equipment known as "clothing."
  • REI's mission is to "inspire, educate, and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship."
  • ZenDesk's is to "help you deliver exceptional customer service."
  • Fitbit's mission is "to empower and inspire you to live a healthier, more active life."
  • Nike wants "to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world." And, one of its mottos is, "If you have a body, you are an athlete."

Missions are an expression of the values that guide a company and are the ethical basis of its stories (the how). The protagonists of those stories are not only the company's products, but also (and especially) the people who use, live with, and make those products their own.

The Blues Brothers had a mission. What about you?

The schema of brand storytelling

Even the simplest story has very sophisticated mechanisms working behind the scenes. The listeners don't always see them, but they know them and expect them to be present. If they aren't present, they won’t laugh when they are meant to laugh or cry when they are meant to cry.

In his essay Ars Poetica, the Greek philosopher Aristotle described the six elements of every story:

  1. Plot
  2. Character
  3. Thought
  4. Diction
  5. Song
  6. Spectacle
In more modern terms, we can translate "thought" as "theme," and "song" as "rhythm."

Plot

It is thanks to Aristotle that we usually say a plot must have a beginning, middle, and an end, and that events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being either necessary or probable. Most importantly, a plot must arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience.

In this simple scheme, the middle is especially important, because after the status quo is introduced in the beginning, during this phase we have:

  • The accident, which is what imperils or upsets the status quo;
  • The anticlimax, which is the lowest point of the story, when everything seems as if it won't be solved;
  • The climax, when someone or something happens that turns things around, helping the hero find a solution

After those events, the end usually represents the establishment of a new, better status quo.

From a brand storytelling point of view, the plot is the how, as in how the values of the brand (its why) responds to the needs of its audience.

For instance, using Moz as an example, the mission of helping people do better marketing is fulfilled by the creation of tools built under the spirit of the mission tenets (the TAGFEE principles), which respond to the needs of every kind of internet marketer. The community, whose knowledge encompasses every discipline of inbound marketing, responds by using those tools. This is the main plot line of Moz.

Characters and theme

Intrinsically related to the plot are the characters and the theme.

The main characters are the heroes of the stories, whose actions determine the plot of the story. The secondary ones are those who provide the main characters with information, materials, goods, services, or whatever is needed to advance the plot.

Using Moz as an example again, the main character is the user â€" maybe someone who has just started her adventure in internet marketing â€" while the secondary characters are the products and (this being the characteristic of every business with a strong, active community) the Mozzers.

Users and brands, therefore, are the characters of every brand story, with the users being the main characters.

With the users as the main characters, it is then easy to understand how important is to know them as well as possible before, during, and after the release of a product. Hence the strategic importance of personas, audience targeting, the continuous feedback from the users, and the post-sale follow-ups and growth hacking.

The theme is the universe where the plot takes place, and the laws governing that universe in brand storytelling are the tenets (for instance, the TAGFEE tenets), which make the rules with which the mission will be achieved explicit.

This universe is usually an ideal world the users would love to live in, because it offers the answers to their needs, and it is a universe that only the brand can offer them.

The brand universe can be totally mythical â€" a representation of reality as we want it.

Diction, rhythm, and spectacle

Once the plot, the characters, and the theme are set up, we can start thinking about the diction, rhythm, and spectacle.

Diction is the expression of meaning in words, and it is a consequence of the tone and style.

In brand storytelling, and here SEOs may play a great role, diction is not just how the brand talks to the users, but also the creation of brand language where the language spoken by users is enriched by those that Dan Shure brilliantly defined as Propwords.

MozCon, MozBot, Roger, Whiteboard Friday, Mozinar, Mozzers, and many others are the propwords of Moz, which are immediately understood and appropriated by the users.

Diction is what helps create a indissoluble relationship between keywords and the brand, creating the so-called branded keywords.

Rhythm is usability. When we narrate a story we always use an underlying rhythm, which helps the story flow so the listeners won't notice the rhetorical mechanisms behind the story itself.

Finally, spectacle is the organization of appearances that are simultaneously enticing, deceptive, and superficial.

The web expression of spectacle is graphic design.

Examples of brand storytelling

Dumb Ways to Die

The Metro Trains public company of Melbourne (Australia) had one thing clear: people don't pay attention to signs and recorded messages.

So, in order to ensure its message about how we all must pay attention when in the metro station was heard, and thereby diminish the cases of accidents due to distraction, Metro Trains decided to produce a song â€" Dumb Ways to Die â€" and launch it on YouTube.

What happened after is the story of maybe the best case of transmedia brand storytelling ever created until now.

Spread the TEDx, Buenos Aires

We all know about TED Talks, and maybe many of you have attended one of the community-generated events called TEDx.

Well, TED Talks had a problem in Buenos Aires: Not many people there knew what the heck a TEDx was, simply because no one had the ability to explain it to them.

So, consistent with its mission that there are ideas worth spreading, TEDx decided to use what could have been its best brand ambassadors, the taxi drivers:

NIKE â€" Find Your Greatness

NIKE has done brand storytelling since before the existence of the internet, but its "Find Your Greatness" campaign was the first held entirely without buying classic television ad spaces. Instead, it used all the possible digital channels could to make its story, based on its "if you have a body, you are an athlete" principle, touch its audience.

Oreo Daily Twist

Oreo is the classic brand that we tend to associate with little memorable moments of our daily lives. It reminds us of when we were kids and having breakfast, and the simple emotions attached to those memories is able â€" because of the way our brain works â€" to make us remember other unrelated events.

Based on this simple idea, Oreo created the Daily Twist campaign.

Conclusions

When doing brand storytelling, if we follow the principle of narrative described above, we will be able to design an ongoing conversation with our users, who â€" and this is the great difference between analogical brand storytelling and digital one â€" will start creating new stories related to the brand.

Here is where inbound marketing, in its core meaning of creating brand stories and presenting them to the right audience in the right place and at the right time, gains a bigger meaning.

And here is where branding and SEO collide, because all the stories we tell will compose our story, and all the stories we tell will help us create our unavoidable existence as an online entity (and you should already know what that means in the eyes of Google, both right now and in the future).

As Tracey Halvorsen put very well: "Today, more than ever before in the history of modern civilization, individuals [and brands â€" my annotation] are empowered with the tools to be storytellers and the technology to see their stories spread far and wide in the blink of an eye."


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A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization

Posted: 06 Aug 2013 02:27 AM PDT

Posted by randfish

How do I build the perfectly optimized page?

This is a challenging question for many in the SEO and web marketing fields. There are hundreds of "best practices" lists for where to place keywords and how to do "on-page optimization," but as search engines have evolved and as other sources of traffic â€" social networks, referring links, email, blogs, etc. â€" have become more important and interconnected, the very nature of what's "optimal" is up for debate.

My perspective is certainly not gospel, but it's informed by years of experience, testing, failure, and learning alongside a lot of metrics from Moz's phenomenal data science team. I don't think there's one absolute right way to optimize a page, but I do think I can share a lot about the architecture of how to target content and increase the likelihood that it will:

  • A) Have the best opportunity to rank highly in Google and Bing
  • B) Earn traffic from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.
  • C) Be worthy of links and shares from across the web
  • D) Build your brand's perception, trust, and potential to convert visitors

With the help of some graphics from CreativeMarket (which I highly recommend), I created a number of visualizations to explain how I think about modern on-page optimization and keyword targeting. Let's start with a graphical overview of what makes a page optimized:

elements-optimized-sml
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In the old days of SEO, "on-page optimization" referred merely to keyword placement. Search engines liked to see keywords in certain locations of the HTML code to help indicate a page's relevance for that query. But today, this simple approach won't cut it for two key reasons:

  1. The relevancy and keyword-based algorithms that Google and Bing use to evaluate and rank pages are massively more complex.
  2. Gaining a slight benefit in a keyword placement-based algorithmic element may harm overall rankings because of how it impacts people's experience with your site (and thus, their propensity to stay on your pages, link to you, or share your content socially â€" all of which are also directly or indirectly considered in ranking algorithms).

Below is a pie-chart breakdown of how the 128 SEO professionals surveyed for Moz's annual ranking factors project rated broad algorithmic elements' impact in Google:

rank-factors-pie-2013
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If <15% of the rankings equation is wrapped up in keyword targeting, no wonder smart SEOs in the modern era have evolved to think more holistically. Personally, I'm happy to sacrifice "perfect" keyword placement in the title element or a URL for better user experience, a higher chance of having my content shared on social networks, or a better click-through rate in the search results.

But, for the purposes of this post, let's put some of those caveats aside and dive into the best practices for each element of a page. It may be unwise to optimize all of these purely towards search engine-based best practices, but we can temper the advice with notes on usability and user experience for visitors, too. Below, I've attempted to go tag by tag, and element by element through the keyword targeting and on-page optimization canon to expand on the more basic advice in the "Elements of an Optimized Page" graphic above.

Uniquely valuable

An optimized page doesn't just provide unique content, but unique value. What's the difference?

  • Unique content simply means that those words, in that order, don't appear anywhere else on the web.
  • Unique value refers to the usefulness and takeaways derived by visitors to the page. Many pages can be "valuable," but few provide a truly unique kind of value â€" one that can't be discovered on other pages targeting that keyword phrase.

Whenever I advise marketers on crafting pages, I ask them to put themselves in the minds of their potential visitors, and imagine a page that provides something so different and functional that it rises above everything else in its field. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

  • The Baby Name Wizard â€" a terrific page that provides clear value above and beyond its competition for searches around baby names.
  • How Much Does a Website Cost â€" Folyo surveyed their designers to create a distribution of prices that accurate, credible, and massively valuable to those seeking data on pricing.
  • Scale of the Universe â€" this interactive feature will take you from the tiniest parts of an atom all the way to universe-scale. No wonder it ranks for such abstract queries as "the size of things."
  • The Best Instant Noodles of All Time â€" The Ramen Rater has tried literally thousands of packets of instant noodles and determined these ten to be the outstanding few. I'm actually excited to try them :-)
  • Top Social Networks by Users â€" Craig Smith puts together an update to this list every month or two, and has compiled this invaluable resource to help those of us wondering just how big all the networks are these days. I've personally used this for numerous posts and presentations â€" it's an excellent example of creating unique value by aggregating data from varied sources (and it, deservedly, outranks stalwarts like Nielsen as a result).

Unique value is much more than unique content, and when you have a page that rises to the level that these do, social shares, links, and all the other positive associations, branding, and ranking signals are apt to follow.

Provides phenomenal UX

A user's experience is made up of a vast array of elements, not unlike the search engines' ranking algorithms. Satisfying all of these perfectly may not be possible, but reaching for a high level will not only provide value in rankings, but through second-order impacts like shares, links, and word-of-mouth.

At the most basic level, a great UX means the page/site is:

  • Easy to understand
  • Providing intuitive navigation and content consumption
  • Loading quickly, even on slower connections (like mobile)
  • Rendering properly in any browser size and on any device
  • Designed to be visually attractive/pleasing/compelling

Smashing Magazine has my favorite article on the subject: What is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools, and Resources.

Crawler/bot accessible

Search engines still crawl the web using automated bots, and probably will for at least the next decade or more. While there have been plenty of leaps in the sophistication level of these crawlers, the best practice is not to take chances and follow some important guidelines when building pages you want engines to crawl, index, and rank reliably:

  • Make sure the page is the only URL on which the content appears, and if it's not, all other URLs canonicalize back to the original (using redirects or the rel=canonical protocol)
  • URLs should follow best practices around length, being static vs. dynamic, and being included in any appropriate RSS feeds or XML Sitemaps files
  • Don't block bots! Robots.txt and meta robots can be used to intelligently limit what engines see, but be cautious not to make errors that prevent them from crawling and indexing your content.
  • If the page is temporarily down, use a status code 503 (not a 404), and if you're redirecting a page to a new location, don't go through multiple redirect chains if possible, and use 301s (permanent redirects), not other kinds of 30x status codes.

Geoff Kenyon's Technical Site Audit Checklist is still one of the best resources for those seeking more in-depth information about crawler-based accessibility.

Keyword-targeted

As I mentioned in the opening of this post, it may be the case that perfectly optimized keyword targeting conflicts with goals around usability, user experience, or the natural flow of how you write. That's OK, and frequently, I'd suggest leaning in those more user-centric directions. However, when it's possible to optimize keyword usage, you'll need some ammunition. Here's a look at the most important elements as we've observed them through time, testing, correlation, and listening to the engine's recommendations, too.

7 important keyword targeting elements (and 1 not-so-important element)

#1: Page title

Using the primary keyword phrase at least once in the page's title, and preferably as close to the start of the title tag/element as possible is highly recommended. Not only are titles key to how engines weigh relevance, they also dramatically impact a searcher's propensity to click.

Above is an example comparing some title elements for the search query "lip balm." The tag for allure.com is more compelling from the perspective of fulfilling the searcher's intent (which is likely to compare multiple blams vs. find a specific one), but it also puts the keyword in prime, eye-catching real estate on the results page. We have seen evidence and heard the engines themselves discuss the value/importance of earning clicks and preventing "pogo-sticking" (the bouncing of a visitor back to a search page after clicking a result). Optimizing for both keyword prominence AND user intent/visibility is an excellent idea.

#2: Headline

While we've seen mixed results over the years with using the H1 tag specifically for keyword placement, it's almost certainly the case that a searcher who's just clicked on a results expects to see a matching headline on the page they visit. Failure to do so may increase the odds of pogo-sticking, and our most recent rank correlations suggest that a topically relevant H1 is associated with higher rankings.

I wouldn't always require a match between the title and the H1 precisely, but they shouldn't be so dissimilar as to drive anyone who's clicked away from the result.

#3: Body text

It should come as no surprise that using your primary (and secondary, if relevant) keyword phrase(s) in the content of the page are important. Our research suggests that it's not just about raw keyword use or repetition, though. Search engines are almost certainly using advanced topic modeling algorithms to assess relevance and perhaps quality, too.

This means it's wise to make your content comprehensive, useful, and relevant as possible, not just filled with instance of a keyword. In fact, we've observed plenty of cases where the overuse of keywords resulted in a negative impact on rankings, so be judicious. If you asked a non-marketing friend to read the page, would they get the sense that a term or phrase was suspiciously prominent, sometimes needlessly so? If that's the case, you're probably overdoing it.

#4: URL

A good URL has a few key aspects, but one of those is keyword use. Not only does it help with search engine relevancy directly, but URLs often get used as anchor text around the web (mostly through copying and pasting). For example, if I link to this post using its URL, e.g. http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization, the phrases "keyword targeting" and "onpage optimization" appear right in the text.

For more best practices on URLs, check out our learn article on the topic.

#5: Images and image alt attributes

Having images on a keyword-targeted page is wise for many, many reasons, not least among them is that these can help directly and indirectly with rankings. Most directly, your image has an opportunity to show up in an image search result. Granted, Google's new interface has dramatically lowered the traffic from image search, but I still find great value in having your brand name/site associated with production of useful graphics, photos, and visual elements.

For search engines, the image's title, filename, surrounding text, and alt attribute all matter from a ranking perspective. In particular, those doing SEO should know that when an image is linked, the alt attribute is treated similarly to anchor text in a text link.

#6: Internal and external links

A good page should be accessible through no more than four clicks from any other page on a site (three for smaller sites), and it should, likewise, provide useful links to relevant information on any topics that are discussed.

Some SEOs have, in the past, questioned whether linking externally, especially to sites/pages that might compete for a visitor's time/attention or a search engine's rankings is wise. I believe the nail in that coffin was delivered by Marshall Simmonds in his Whiteboard Friday Interview noting the value the NYTimes saw from their implementation of external links. Since then, search engine representatives have subtly hinted on multiple occasions that there are elements in the algorithm which reward external links to quality sites/pages.

#7: Meta description

A page's meta description isn't used directly in search engine ranking algorithms (according to representatives from Google and Bing), but that doesn't mean they're not critical. The meta description tag, if it employs the keyword query, usually shows up in the search results, and is part of what searchers consider when deciding whether to click.

As you can see from the snippet above, when keywords appear in the meta description, they also get bolded, which can help with visibility. The primary goal of a meta description should be to earn the searcher's click. Think of them like ad copy, and work to make searchers care about your page.

#8: Meta keywords

Notably absent from this list is the Meta Keywords tag, which Google does not use in rankings, and we, along with many others (including SearchEngineLand) recommend against employing on your pages.

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The reason it's so important to balance these keyword-targeting demands with other attributes of on-page optimization is illustrated below:

google-correlations-13sml
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As you can see, while on-page features like keyword use in titles, keywords, and body text (even when measured via a more sophisticated and higher correlating model than just raw usage like our data science team did in the ranking factors) have reasonable correlations given the complexity of Google's rankings, other elements are found much more often in higher- vs. lower-ranking pages.

If social shares, brand mentions, links, and domain authority all potentially trump keyword-based factors as differentiators, marketers need to make sure we're hitting the basics of on-page, but never extending in such a way that interferes with our ability to succeed in these other avenues.

Built to be shared through social networks

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, and dozens more social networks that are niche-focused can help earn signals that help rankings directly and/or indirectly (often through exposure to folks who might link to them).

A well-optimized page should help to make social sharing as easy and seamless as possible, including:

  • Using obvious social sharing buttons that are targeted to the page's audience. Don't just list every network on the web â€" be empathetic and predictive of what your visitors are likely to employ.
  • Craft URLs that are short and descriptive so that copying/pasting (for those who prefer) is painless, and whenever/wherever those links appear they provide a good UX for those seeing them. This is particularly important across more niche social sites, forums, and Facebook/Google+ (which use full URLs if the length is short rather than the condensed versions that Twitter uses).
  • Make content that has inherent viral value. Think about a social influencer and ask yourself, "would I share this page if I came across it?" Find ways to make that answer yes. One of the best is to build pages that will make social sharers themselves look good to their audiences (either because the page helps promote them directly/indirectly or because the unique value is so compelling, their followers/fans will be indebted to them for finding it).
  • If possible and relevant, employ features like Twitter Cards and Facebook's OpenGraph markup to get the additional benefits on those networks.

Given how the reach of social networks have grown, how well social shares correlate positively to higher search rankings, and how those correlations have risen over time, there's a lot of value in making sure your pages have an opportunity to perform socially.

Multi-device ready

Although it was called out in the UX section, this principle is worthy of its own headline due to the increasing diversity of devices, browsers, and screen sizes. Mobile use isn't just critical for users "on the go." Many are using mobile or tablets to browse at home, at work, and as a replacement for laptop/desktop. And they're not just consuming â€" they're sharing! Social sharing in particular is a huge part of mobile & tablet functions, which means that if you're not optimized for all devices, you're missing critical opportunities for amplification to a broader audience.

Inclusive of authorship, metadata, schema, and rich snippets

There are a vast array of options that provide additional markup that engines may employ in their listings. Rather than try to list all of them, I'll link to resources with more information on each:

Moz's marketing scientist, Dr. Pete, recently put together a slide deck showing 90+ unique forms of search results, many of which leverage rich forms of markup (though only a few of these are in the control of the marketer/creator).

My recommendation is to apply those that both match the opportunities provided by the engines and the techniques that will give value to your potential visitors. Be cautious of going overboard â€" there's a bit of rich snippet spam that serves only to leave a bad taste in searchers' mouths and may hurt your reputation or rankings with the engines themselves, too.


Choosing how to optimize

One important takeaway from this post should be that modern on-page SEO is about juggling competing priorities. In general, my recommended ordering of those priorities is as follows:

  1. Create a page that is uniquely valuable to your targeted searchers.
  2. If at all possible, make the page likely to earn links and shares naturally (without needing to build links or prod people).
  3. Balance keyword targeting with usability and user experience, but never ignore the critical elements like page titles, headlines, and body content at the least.
There's no such thing as a "perfectly optimized" page, but I took a stab at drawing up the mythical beast anyway:

perfectly-optimized-page3

Over time, what's "perfect" might change, and new services, platforms, and areas of optimizational opportunity could arise. But for the past few years (notwithstanding some newer tactics like Google's rel=author), the model described in this post has held relatively stable. The "O" in SEO is getting broader, and I think that's a wonderful thing for marketers of all stripes. Targeting an algorithm instead of people is far worse than hitting both birds with the same handful of optimization stones.

p.s.: If you have feedback or suggestions on items to include, please feel free to suggest them in the comments.


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Seth's Blog : "Oh, that's just a hack someone put together..."

 

"Oh, that's just a hack someone put together..."

Just about all the big decisions, innovations and perfect solutions around you didn't start that way.

They weren't the result of a ten-person committee, carefully considering all options, testing the reasonable ones and putting in place a top-down implementation that went flawlessly.

[The idea behind Amazon, the Mailchimp logo, the medical approach to childhood leukemia, the cell phone, the microwave oven, ethical email marketing, Johnny B. Goode, the Super Bowl, Kiva, Buffalo chicken wings...]

No, they were the result of one person, a person in a jam or a hurry or somewhat inspired. One person flipping a coin or tweaking a little bit more or saying, "this might not work" and then taking a leap.

Inventing isn't the hard part. The ideas that change the world are changing the world because someone cared enough to stick it out, to cajole and lead and evolve. But even though the inventing isn't the hard part, it scares us away.

Before you tell yourself you have no right to invent this or improve that, remind yourself that the person before you had no right either, but did it anyway.

       

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Army Will Not Suspend Contracts with Al Qaeda-Tied Companies, Citing "Due Process Rights"

Posted: 06 Aug 2013 09:40 AM PDT

As amazing at it may seem, the US army will not suspend contracts with Al Qaeda-Tied Companies if the ties are based on classified information.

Here are the key paragraphs straight from the SIGAR Special Inspector General Afghanistan Reconstruction Report for July 2013.
A continuing problem is the Army's refusal to act on SIGAR's recommendations to suspend or debar individuals who are supporters of the insurgency, including the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and al-Qaeda. The Army suspension and debarment official has taken the position that suspension or debarment of such individuals and entities would be a violation of their due process rights if based on classified information or if based on findings by the Department of Commerce which placed them on the Entities List.

SIGAR has referred 43 such cases to the Army, and all have been rejected, despite detailed supporting information demonstrating that these individuals and entities are providing material support to the insurgency in Afghanistan. In other words, they may be enemies of the United States, but that is not enough to keep them from getting government contracts.
The above link is from the Fox News story Army won't suspend contracts with Al Qaeda-tied companies, citing 'due process rights'
In a scathing passage of his latest report to Congress, Special Inspector General John Sopko said his office has urged the Army to suspend or debar 43 contractors over concerns about ties to the Afghanistan insurgency, "including supporters of the Taliban, the Haqqani network and al Qaeda."

Sopko wrote that the Army "rejected" every single case.

Sopko pointed out the apparent disconnect between one part of the Army that is killing insurgents and the other part that allegedly is doing business with them.

"I am deeply troubled that the U.S. military can pursue, attack, and even kill terrorists and their supporters, but that some in the U.S. government believe we cannot prevent these same people from receiving a government contract," he wrote in a letter attached to the report.

In the wake of the report, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill aimed at restricting U.S. agencies from awarding contracts to supporters of extremist groups in Afghanistan. The bill would give the inspector general's office the authority to suspend Afghanistan contractors when agencies fail to review companies the office has flagged.
Pressure Cooker Threats

I invite the reader to compare what the US Army can or cannot do regarding military contracts with the targeting of journalists, and how an innocuous online search for a pressure cooker can lead to a knock on the door from the terrorism police.

In case you missed the above story, please consider NSA tool collects "Nearly Everything You Do On the Internet"; Targeting Journalists; What Google Knows About You; Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Upheld .

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

Reader Question: Does the Fed Balance Sheet Properly Reflect QE Announcements?

Posted: 06 Aug 2013 08:19 AM PDT

Reader Richard writes ...

"Hi Mish I hope you can explain something. Everyone talks about QE of $85 billion per month, but where does the alleged money go?  The fed's balance sheet doesn't reflect it.  The balance sheet was up $720 billion from Aug 1, 2012 to Aug 1, 2013 ($309B in treasuries and $393B in MBS) but that is only $60B per month.  Where is the other $25B per month everyone talks about.  And from Aug 1, 2011 to Aug 1, 2012 (give or take a day or so), the Fed balance sheet only went up $9.997B in treasuries and went down $43.862B in MBS. So if QE is $85B a month, where is it and why doesn't it show up in the Fed's balance sheet."

Fed's Balance Sheet



QE History

Here is a bit of QE History from Wikipedia.
Quantitative Easing 1 (QE1, December 2008 to March 2010)

"On November 25, 2008, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase up to $600 billion in agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and agency debt. On December 1, Chairman Bernanke provided further details in a speech. On December 16, the program was formally launched by the FOMC. On March 18, 2009, the FOMC announced that the program would be expanded by an additional $750 billion in purchases of agency MBS and agency debt and $300 billion in purchases of Treasury securities.

Quantitative Easing 2 (QE2, November 2010 to June 2011 )

On November 3, 2010, the Fed announced that it would purchase $600 billion of longer dated treasuries, at a rate of $75 billion per month. That program, popularly known as "QE2", concluded in June 2011.

Operation Twist (2011)

The Federal Open Market Committee concluded its September 21, 2011 Meeting at about 2:15 p.m. EDT by announcing the implementation of Operation Twist. This is a plan to purchase $400 billion of bonds with maturities of 6 to 30 years and to sell bonds with maturities less than 3 years, thereby extending the average maturity of the Fed's own portfolio. This is an attempt to do what Quantitative Easing (QE) tries to do, without printing more money and without expanding the Fed's balance sheet, therefore hopefully avoiding the inflationary pressure associated with QE. This announcement brought a bout of risk aversion in the equity markets and strengthened the US Dollar, whereas QE I had weakened the USD and supported the equity markets. Further, on June 20, 2012 the Federal Open Market Committee announced an extension to the Twist programme by adding additionally $267 billion thereby extending it throughout 2012.

Quantitative easing 3 (QE3)

On September 13, 2012, the Federal Reserve announced a third round of quantitative easing (QE3). This new round of quantitative easing provided for an open-ended commitment to purchase $40 billion agency mortgage-backed securities per month until the labor market improves "substantially".

The Federal Open Market Committee voted to expand its quantitative easing program further on December 12, 2012. This round continued to authorize up to $40 billion worth of agency mortgage-backed securities per month and added $45 billion worth of longer-term Treasury securities. The outright Treasury purchases as part of the augmented program continued at a pace comparable to that under "Operation Twist"; however, the Federal Reserve could no longer sell short-dated Treasury securities to buy longer-dated ones since they had insufficient holdings of short-dated Treasuries.

Timing Issues

It appears most of the discrepancy is a timing issue. It was not until December of 2012 that the Fed authorized up to $85 billion in asset purchases per month, adding an additional allocation of $45 billion per month of long-term treasuries.

Other Issues

Nonetheless, I bounced the question off Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog and he cited some additional factors that may cause discrepancies in Fed Balance Sheet reporting.

  • Delayed settlement of MBS buys (i.e. the  payments and balance sheet increases tied to mortgage backed securities occur with a delay)
  • Balance sheets adjustments due to unamortized discounts on securities held
  • Fluctuations in repo balances
  • Shrinkage in outstanding currency swaps
  • Fluctuations in the treasury's cash balances with the Fed
  • Declining balances of the Maiden Lane portfolio
  • Changes in non-reserve bank deposits with FR banks
  • Valuation changes in foreign currency assets
  • Declining face value of mortgage backed securities as underlying mortgages are paid back

In essence, the Fed's balance sheet does reflect announcements (and of course the absurdity of those announcements).

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