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miercuri, 23 februarie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Link Building Training: Do You Already Have All the Links You Need?

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 04:36 PM PST

You've got all the links you need, right?

No matter how advanced an SEO you are, there are few people who can make that claim (in-house at Wikipedia, maybe?). For the rest of us, there's more to learn.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been working with our speakers to plan the sessions for the advanced link building conferences we are running in New Orleans and London. Keep reading for the full line up of speakers and sessions.

I have learnt a load of things just in speaking to all these experts during prep. I can't wait to hear the gems they are going to share in person. We're focussing on the advanced end of things - I've asked all our speakers to focus on teaching you things I don't already know. Our speakers are ready to deliver only the most up-to-date advice and implementable suggestions for taking your link building project to the next level. Further down on this page, we've got details of what each and every one of these experts will be teaching you.

In the meantime, here are the particulars:

London - 18th March 2011: (tickets cost £399 +VAT - or £299 +VAT with SEOmoz PRO)
New Orleans - 25th March 2011: (tickets cost $600 - or $450 with SEOmoz PRO)

Incidentally, remember that SEOmoz currently has a free trial promotion running for PRO membership. We're offering a PRO discount on the training. Yes, that means you just need to sign up for the SEOmoz free trial to get the discount.

This post is all about making the pitch that you should make the trip. The cities are worth it just for themselves - in the words of the everywhereist:

New Orleans:

"I suggest you put down whatever you are doing and go, immediately."

London:

"I am finding myself with the overwhelming desire to pack up my bag and hop on the next flight to Heathrow"

As well as all the serious learning, there'll be an opportunity to hang out with the speakers and attendees at after-parties in both cities. I can't wait.

Who is speaking?

The line-up is pretty damn cool - we only ask people to come and speak when we have seen them deliver the goods before and then we brief them to give the presentation of their lives. The goal is advanced tips and tricks. You know how the value is normally shared privately in the bar at conferences? We're trying to push that stuff on stage. Here's the line-up:

Rand Fishkin (you might have heard of him) - always pushing the boundaries of the next thing you need to know, Rand's presentations are always unmissable and we push him hard to bring his best material to these sessions
Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive - Wil is not only one of the smartest SEOs I've ever met, but you can't help but smile as you watch him speak. The man's a dynamo. I can't wait to hear some more of his stories.
Jane Copland of Ayima - many of you got to know Jane during her days at SEOmoz before she moved across the pond to Ayima. Few people have worked hands-on with the kinds of brands that Jane sees daily. She's bringing some great tips and I'm thrilled to have her speaking at another of our events.
Russ Jones of Virante - I have learnt huge amounts from Russ over the years. Back when I got started in SEO, we used to exchange views right here in the SEOmoz comments. He's one of those rare people who combines technical and marketing chops. The stuff he talked about when we spoke to plan his session was brilliant. A must-see speaker.
Chris Bennett of 97th Floor (US only) - Chris is not only a nice guy, he runs one of the most effective link building companies around and he's promised to share his secrets. I last saw him speak in London last year and I'm still trying to incorporate some of the lessons into the way we do things.
Martin MacDonald of Seatwave (UK) and Kris Roadruck of click2rank (US) - two guys who have taught me more than I sometimes want to know about the shadier arts. Both can play the whitehat game, but both know exactly what works and where the limits are. I'm pushing them hard to share the real secrets of their research so that those of us who work with clients and brands can learn appropriate tactics and amuse ourselves with tales of derring-do.
Not forgetting myself, Distilled's own Tom Critchlow and Paddy Moogan (UK only) - you probably know Tom and me. Some of you might not know that Tom is now in Seattle running SEO and content for SEOmoz for a few months and working with our US office. It's been great learning and growing alongside my bro over the last few years - I don't think it's biased to say that he has a lot to teach. Many of you will also know Paddy who is one of our more recent UK hires and team leads (if you don't know Paddy, I recommend reading one of his recent personal blog posts to get a feeling for the passion he brings to his work - he's one of the most effective SEOs I know).

What are they going to be talking about?

Link building mistakes - Wil Reynolds

I was as shocked as anyone to hear that Wil has made mistakes. Luckily he's man enough to tell us about them and help us avoid making the same ones. He'll also be calling out some of us (in a friendly way) with "link building mistakes made by advanced SEOs":

Common misconceptions
Mistakes made by advanced SEOs
Mistakes we've made and lessons we've learnt
Too much strategy = no actual links. Too little strategy = poor results. How do you find the right balance?

Getting actions from competitor research - Jane Copland

There has been plenty written about clever ways to see what your competitors are doing to build links. Jane is going to be showing us how you should build an actual plan based on what you see from your competitor research:

Why should you bother researching what your competitors are doing?
What should you do when you find different kinds of links and tactics?
What should you definitely not copy? - How to work out what is not actually helping other sites

Where to get the old "linkbait on digg" effect - Russ Jones

You remember when Digg could take your server down? Definitely happened to me a few times. Before Digg it was Slashdot (OK, I'm showing my age now). What works now? How should you go about getting links to your linkbait these days? Russ and his company are at the forefront of understanding this stuff and he has some amazing data and great insights to share. He's going to talk about:

Infographics and widget-bait on social media
How to use real-time analytics
Real-world statistics - insight into actual traffic from different sites
- Where are the up-and-coming traffic sources?
- Who's on the decline?
How do you actually get links from your linkbait [with real case studies and examples]

How to structure a major link building project - Tom Critchlow

You may have heard by now that Tom is in Seattle for a few months running SEO and content strategy for SEOmoz. He's already feeling the pressure of doing SEO under the microscope, so we thought we'd just turn that up a couple notches. He is going to present his strategy for getting SEOmoz the links they need (once he's worked out what those are!). Thanks to Rand and the team for their typical transparency in allowing Tom to talk about all of this publicly. The details of this session are TBC because Tom hasn't done the work yet (he landed in Seattle on Saturday), but I imagine it will cover:

Working out what links SEOmoz needs
Thinking about how to move the needle on a site with millions of inbound links
Building a link building ethos into the company (he's only there for a few months so it has to continue after he's gone)
What developers, product people, community managers and executives can do to build links

We're all pretty excited to see the results of this one, as you can imagine. It's a rare chance to see into the inner workings of a link building campaign.

Myths and case studies of outreach success - Paddy Moogan (UK) and Chris Bennett (US)

When I'm talking to people at conferences and answering Q&A, outreach is one of the topics that people find hardest to get their head around and make work consistently. Paddy and Chris bring different perspectives to this one, but both of them will be talking about:

Content that works
Great content != links
- Outreach for traffic
- Outreach for branding
- Outreach for links
Tips and tricks of what actually works in the real world

And that takes us up to lunch time! I feel tired already just thinking about it.

After lunch:

The future of link building - Rand Fishkin

We are increasingly seeing that off-site signals other than traditional followed links are critically important parts of any link building campaign. Rand called this before it was officially announced and I'm excited to hear him talk about the impact some of these new signals have on ranking as well as analysing some other recent trends to look into the future of link building:

Social media shares that aren't links
- Why you should care
- How to get them
The benefits of nofollow / private / emailed links
The impact of usage data
The future of search engines' link analysis
- Context / LDA
- Page analysis, chunking and position on the page

Lessons from the dark side - Martin MacDonald (UK) and Kris Roadruck (US)

Following the strategic, forward-looking session from Rand, we're going to head straight into some down-and-dirty 'effective' tactics. Martin and Kris consistently blow my mind with the information they share in private. I'm pulling them, blinking, into the light. I believe that every SEO should have an appropriate interest in darker tactics to really understand how everything works. You'd be amazed at the filthy tactics some of the whitest SEOs have experimented with on their own time.

Martin and Kris have promised to share some of the tactics they know work that they'd normally only talk about over a beer. You'd never use these on a client or brand site, but in my opinion, you need to understand why they work and learn to apply some of the principles and automation to your day job:

Disclaimer [important!]
LinkSoup - the vital ingredients of a great link and how to mix them together
How to make links and influence the SERPs
Watch your back... links
Go big or go home - how to scale, automate and compete

Scaling white hat link building - Me

White hat link building tactics tend to be labour-intensive. If you really want to compete with white hat tactics, you need to think hard about how you can scale without access to all the automation and time-saving tricks of your greyer competitors. Some of this is sensibly learning from them where you can, some is accepting that you need to scale with elbow grease and thinking about how you can manage that. I will be covering:

Ways to scale
- Manpower
- Budget
- Automation
- Outsourcing
The role of scalable content
- Why and how
- Cost vs. quality
Incorporating brand and strategy

Expert Q&A and final tips

What's the point of getting all these experts in a room if you can't hear their biggest secrets? There will be Q&A at the end of each session for specific questions, but we'll also be wrapping up each day with a group session where each speaker gives up their top tip and all the speakers answer the audience's toughest questions.

In the UK, we will be dedicating this session to the memory of Jaamit Durrani who passed away at the end of last year and whose passion for sharing knowledge was unsurpassed. Some of his family and OMD colleagues will be there and the evening drinks will include a fundraising element in his memory.

If all of this sounds like your kind of thing, go book your tickets. Don't forget the PRO discount (go get yourself a free month's PRO trial if you need it to get the discount).

In addition to the unparalleled expertise we have gathered together, we have some social fun planned as well. The VIP dinners the night before the shows are now sold out in both venues, but there will be a chance to pick the speakers' brains and mingle with other attendees over drinks at after-parties in both cities.

I look forward to seeing you there.

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Let’s Talk about Keyword Density Graywolf's SEO Blog

Let’s Talk about Keyword Density

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:44 AM PST

Recently, I received an email question wanting to know about keyword density, asking questions like how do I deal with it, is it still a factor, and how important is it. As with most things in SEO, the answer is … it depends…

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to the Interwebz circa 2001 …

Page rank was the big magilla in the ranking algorithm. It didn’t matter how crappy your website was–with enough links from anywhere, you could get a page to rank. Trust and authority where unknown concepts in SEO. If you had a moderate to low competition KWD, you could rank without the word being on the page. If your KWD was moderate or harder you did need some on page SEO, and keyword density WAS a factor. At the peak of this zaniness I remember reading posts about the optimal keyword density being between 4.9% and 12.2%. The word had to be in the first sentence, had to be in italics once on the page, in bold once on the page, and in bold and italics once on the page. While not entirely true, there was a kernel of truth to be had somewhere in there.

That said, you shouldn't stuff the words on your page to the point where it becomes awkward to read …

Then in the fall of 2003 the shoe dropped. Google pushed out the Florida Update on a Saturday morning, and all hell broke loose. Trust and authority became leading indicators, and all those crazy keyword density formulas became the stuff talked about on the porch at the SEO old folks home. In short, the right anchor text from a trusted source could make a page rank even if the word wasn’t on the page. Copywriters who loved superfluous wordy adjectives reveled around the bonfire with high value link sellers. Of course things changed over the next few years, but people cling to old ideas, especially if they love them or if they make their lives easier or more enjoyable.

Back to the question: does keyword density matter … kinda. If you want to rank for the phrase [fuzzy blue widgets], you had better have the phrase [fuzzy blue widgets] on your page. In fact, it should probably be the keyword on your page with the highest density (excluding stop words).That said, you shouldn’t stuff the words [fuzzy blue widgets] on your page to the point where it becomes awkward to read. While I hesitate to give a number, if you have a keyword density that approaches or goes over 10% you should probably give it to a non SEO to make sure it reads like natural language. That’s not to say you should never do it but, if you do, have a damn good reason and make sure it passes the sniff test.

How do I check keyword density? I use the Scribe SEO plugin (see Scribe SEO Review). Scribe SEO is paid tool that does a few things, and one of them is checking keyword density right from the WordPress post panel. It’s incredibly easy to use. Before I publish a post, I run Scribe and check that the word/terms that I want to optimize for are the ones that have the highest density. I’ve been using it for several months now and am very happy with it. Here’s a screen shot of what it thinks of this post:

Keyword density via scribe seo

No discussion of keyword density would be complete without touching on LSI (latent semantic indexing). You can read about LSI in lots of places on the web but, simply put, it’s Google ability to understand synonyms–i.e., that [cars] and [automobiles] are the same thing. While Google says they aren’t using LSI and I agree, I do have to say that something similar to LSI is definitely at work. My proof? Do a keyword search for [mike gray]. The word [mike] never appears on my website, but Google ranks me for the term and highlights the word [michael], so they have some some idea the words are connected. However, in actual practice, I don’t see this all that often in the wild.

“]”]

LSI or something else ... [mike gray

So what are the takeaways from this post:

While keyword density isn’t a primary factor, it isn’t something to be ignored
Make sure you are emphasizing the keywords you want with a KWD density tool
Scribe SEO provides keyword density inside the WordPress post screen
If you have a high density, make sure you are doing it while still sounding natural
Don’t depend on Google to use LSI or understand synonyms, even though they may be trying to

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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.

Let’s Talk about Keyword Density

HootSuite Review

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 03:44 PM PST

Late last year, the solution I was using to post and (more importantly) to schedule tweets was having problems. Specifically, it did not post at the times specified, bunched up, and duplicated tweets. After trying a few different tools, I settled on Hootsuite as being the best match for my needs.

I’m going to post some screen shots. I apologize for the redacted blocks, but there are some accounts that aren’t public and need to be kept confidential. Hootsuite has two levels: a free level and a paid level at $5.99 a month. The paid level gives you unlimited account connections, unlimited stat history, Google Analytics integration, Facebook Insights integration, and removes the advertising. I’m all for free tools but at $5.99 Hootsuite is extremely affordable and price shouldn’t be an issue at all.

When you log in to Hootsuite, it asks you to connect your social networks in Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare. It will create a tab for each account along the top, and place icons for the accounts on the top right. While I do keep the tabs for each account, I found it helpful to create custom tabs for all of my “@” responses and all of my Scheduled tweets.

Hootsuite Dashboard

You can create tweets for any account using the entry form along the top of the nav. You can push them out to multiple accounts (be careful) and schedule them. They have also recently added the ability to submit scheduled tweets in bulk format, which is pretty handy. The ability to schedule tweets for multiple accounts is a mission critical item for me. In addition to being able to do it from the dashboard, you can do it from any page you are reading using the Hootlet Bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet adds a little icon to your browser. Click when you want to post something and a window pops up. You can edit the tweet, Facebook post, Foursquare post, tell it which account(s) to post to, and schedule or post live. That’s all there is to it. It creates a shortened URL automagically for you.

Hootlet

The custom shortened URL is one of Hootsuite’s cool features: it gives you much better stats on who clicks your tweets or Facebook posts,

Hootsuite Stats

stats on popular tweets you made,

Popular Tweets

and insight into influential users who have tweeted with you or retweeted you.

Influencers Tweets

You also have access to Google Analaytics and Facebook Insights from Hootsuite.

Hootsuite also has mobile apps, meaning you can access Hootsuite natively on your Android, Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad.

iPad Hootsuite

One thing that’s lacking is the ability to save your tab configurations on these mobile devices. For some reason, Hootsuite did an update and I lost all my tabs. The problem didn’t effect everyone, but it did effect enough other people that I got some sympathy tweets, so… Hey, Hootsuite, how bout adding it? The other feature I’d really like to see added is RSS reader capabilities. It would just make my workflow of posting and scheduling items a lot easier. So far, Hootsuite is opposed to the idea even though it has some support.

The one aspect I didn’t mention because I don’t use it is the ability to add other people into your account. So if you are running as an agency with multiple users, this feature is pretty handy. It does cost $15.99 to add each additional user.

The things that I really like about Hootsuite are first, its ability to add/schedule tweets reliably directly from the browser; second, its ability to see the Twitter activity for multiple accounts all in one place; and finally, its ability to show you states that measure how well your social interactions are doing. If this sounds like something you are doing, Hootsuite might be a good fit for you.

To be clear, I am a current paying customer of Hootsuite. If you sign up from my link I will get a commission. This is a product I have been using for a few months and have been happy with and I am comfortable recommending Hootsuite as a social media management tool.

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Advertisers:

Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
Glass Whiteboards - For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
Link Building- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295
KnowEm - Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

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

HootSuite Review

Listening to Small Businesses in Cleveland and Across the Country

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama drops by the Youth Engagement Roundtable at the Winning the Future Forum on Small Business at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 22, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)