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Our Latest Chrome Toolbar Update is Live! (and one more cool thing) Posted: 26 Jul 2011 08:56 AM PDT Posted by Karen Semyan Hi, I'm Karen, a new product manager at SEOmoz. On the heels of our Firefox toolbar launch in May, I’m happy to announce that we’ve launched our MozBar for Chrome. With this update, you’ll be able to research sites in your favorite browser--Chrome or Firefox--using a powerful toolbar that gets you quickly to the data you need most.   We’ve made a number of useful improvements, most suggested by you! Let’s take a look at  what you can do with the new MozBar. 1. Redesign for better integration with the Chrome user interface You can now access all functions, menus and tools in Chrome from an icon to the right of your address bar. This update incorporates the toolbar into the native design of Chrome, which intends to give you access to to extension menus and toolbars via icons tucked into your address bar to remove “clutter” from the browser window. The “toolbar” has become your analytics bar. You can move it to the top, bottom, or right side of your browser, or close it, easily at any time. We realize that while this design might be less intrusive, it also creates an extra click to get to some functionality and tools. That’s why we’ve rearranged the toolbar features to give you Page Analysis and country info on launch of the toolbar window. You’ll find all function buttons (Page Analysis, Highlighting, and Country info) positioned to the left in the menu. Tools, settings, SEOmoz quick links, and help menus are placed to the right.   2. More highlighting options for links and keywords With yesterday’s toolbar, you could easily highlight no-followed links. Now, you can also highlight followed, external or internal links, as well as keywords.  3. Define custom searches by search engine, country, and region/city Let’s say you own three Zum Uerige alt-bier pubs in Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany (you lucky duck), and you want to see how they perform in search results for those three areas. You can set up one or more search profile (and up to 10 total) for each area to monitor how they rank: Then, you can use the profiles to monitor and compare results between areas or compare their rankings between the major search engines: 4. Country flag/name and IP address at a glance You can view the country flag, and on mouse-over, country name and IP address. When you click the flag, you’ll be directed to full details for the first IP address listed for the site. and in the main menu, for at-a-glance access when you need it.   5. Subdomain metrics, plus one-click access to to Open Site Explorer We've added a subdomain metrics display alongside domain metrics in the analytics bar. 6. Run Keyword Analysis reports quickly You have one-click access to keyword difficulty reports for your search terms from a link in the SERP overlay. Thanks again to for your feedback and suggestions for improvements, and for helping us build this toolbar, one great idea at a time! And feel free to head over to our feature request forum and tell us how we can make the toolbar even better.     But wait, there's more! Adam just stopped by my desk and asked me to tell you about some updates to the Keyword Analysis report. By popular request, we've added two new features to the SERP Analysis: 1. On-page grades for each URL. Now with each report, we will analyze how well-targeted each page is for the selected keyword, and provide each with a letter grade. 2. Competitive URL. You can now add a URL that you want to compare to the top-10 ranking URLs for a SERP. Be sure to check out the new keyword analysis report. Do you like this post? Yes No

Getting Stuff Done by Video Posted: 25 Jul 2011 05:34 PM PDT Posted by PhilNottingham Hi SEOmozzers! I’m Phil Nottingham and I've recently joined Distilled as an in-house pirate. This is my first SEOmoz post and I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments!   The Conundrum   Creating detailed and actionable client reports has become a vitally important skill for any agency SEO to hone. Often we’ll spend 20-30 hours composing a veritable treat of a read for our clients, a hand crafted sluice for a torrent of brilliant ideas, delegations, and requests that will certainly lead to a better performance in the SERPs once put into practice... but, as we’re all painfully aware, sending over these floods of text and screenshots often fails to get stuff done. It seems that often these reports get stuck in the quagmire of uncompleted items lurking at the bottom of our clients inboxes for weeks; to end up competing with a perpetual inundation of other requests, constantly clamouring for attention and requiring immediate action. And it’s no surprise that these reports often fail to make the impact we have in mind for them.   Consider a typical reading list for a web marketing type on a Monday morning. It’s probably going to look something like this:   Emails Blog feeds Google Reader – News & Articles. Twitter Facebook If you’re anything like me, this list is going to feature well in excess of a hundred items, the vast majority of which you will only skim read and deal with quickly. As technology thunders on, accelerating global connectivity and productivity on an exponential scale, this brevity and superficiality of attention span is likely only to expand; threatening the practical viability of our beautifully crafted and detailed client reports.   How Can We Communicate Detailed Concepts and Suggestions to our Clients More Effectively?   The obvious answer is to do more phone-calls, lunches, video-conferences and direct face to face communication with the client so you can explain things and answer questions when you have their full attention available. However, most clients are typically busy and over-loaded people like us, sometimes based in different time-zones, making this approach rarely feasible.   At Distilled, client reports were taken to the shearers a while back. It’s now company-wide policy to send out succinct, simple, bare-bones reports a maximum of 3-4 pages long, which focus purely on the actionable and achievable aspects of all the findings from our 20-30 hours of research.   But just recently, we’ve also started trying out a more creative method of communicating complicated tasks and ideas to our clients and colleagues – demonstrating our thoughts and suggestions through recorded video.   Without going into too much detail, below is an eloquent summary of our findings so far from my colleague Tom Anthony:   Written reports - 20-30 pages = very little shit gets done Distilled reports - 3-4 pages of actions = lots of shit gets done Video report  - video(s) + 1 page summary w/checklist = masses of shit gets completely annihilated     Why Go To The Effort?   There are some unique benefits of using video to communicate with clients as a supplement to email and telephone calls....    1. It’s different and fun Video doesn’t feel like as much of a chore to plough through as emails or reports and this helps it to stick out from the remaining mass of inbox clutter and generate interest.   2.  It’s a great teaching environment If you’re client is not particularly SEO savvy, video is an efficient and easy way to practically explain some of the basic principles driving the ranking factors.   3.    Clients can’t skim read a video You cannot skip through a video as innocuously as you can skim through an email or document; it requires conscious effort to avoid.   4.     It's easy and quick to make If you become practiced and efficient at making videos, it can be an extremely fast process and take less time than composing a long email.   5.      You can demonstrate complicated technical issues as if explaining them in person It can be easier to explain complicated design and technical considerations with screencasts and diagrams, rather than through extensive writing and annotated screenshots. Problems with UI and design are often better looked at than talked about.   6.      It can be edited As with an email, but unlike a phone-call or video conferencing; a video allows you time to consider your response and suggestions before sending it.   7.      It lives on after it’s been created Unlike a phone-call or VC, videos can be watched back by multiple people at their leisure. This can be a great way to help clients and as can keep the video for future reference, as well as showing it quickly to colleagues.   8.      It can be rapport building Videos can also be a fantastic tool for building rapport with your client.  If they happen to live a long way away and are on different time zones, so you’ve never met, allowing them to see your face and hear your voice on a regular basis is a great way of building trust and mutual understanding. You can also convey emotion through video where you would struggle in formalised written word.   9.    It's not Rocket Science  While is fantastic to have a top-of-the-range camera and microphone to work with, you can still create relatively high quality videos with modest resources.   This...     Was recorded and uploaded using this...         Common Pitfalls When Making Videos    Although videos can be an incredibly useful resource when integrated into a holistic approach to communication, it is incredibly easy to undo the potential benefits videos offer...   1.   Thinking Video Can Work for Everything   I'm not suggesting here that video is an all an out solution for all communication, but rather that it works when included in a holistic approach encompassing email, phone-calls and traditional reports. Video is particularly valuable when you don't have the opportunity to meet with your client and explain things to them in the flesh, such as with International SEO, but it doesn't replace traditional methods of communication.   2.   Lack of Clarity The best thing about email and reports is that they can be edited down to succinct actions points, which cut out the prognostication and deliberation populating everyday phone-calls and conversations. To make effective instructional and informational videos – always stick to the point at hand and avoid meandering tangents. Videos are only valuable in as much as they maintain an audience’s interest.   3.      Inability to hone in on specific points If you’re going to end up putting your video on YouTube, then an interactive transcript can be used to allow your client to skip to relevant points within the video. If not, then creating a contents list with corresponding time-codes for your video can be a great aid for efficient viewing.   4.      Low Quality Having good picture quality and clear audio is essential when producing a video. Especially when discussing complicated technical processes, there cannot be any compromise on this. Ensure you record all content at high resolution and avoid microphone interference.   5.      Difficult to work out actionable tips Clients aren’t going to want to watch through your videos multiple times and transcribe the point you make in order to ascertain appropriate action points. Whenever you send a video, ensure it comes complete with a list of jobs to be undertaken, which you’re client can study while watching your presentation. This will focus their mind to the practical essentials of what you are trying to say and ensure stuff gets done.   How to Convert a Written Report into a Video Report    Decide the form appropriate form the different parts of your report should take – which bits are best shown through a screencast and which bits would work best with a whiteboard Friday style talking head presentation? Convert your report into a script, removing any descriptive passages which can be displayed visually – If it makes sense within the context of your report; write a script for multiple videos covering a single subject on each one. Six 5-minute long videos are easier to digest than one 30-minute video. Practice speaking through your script in time with your screencast a couple of times before recording, ensuring you cut out any “umms” or “likes” opting for pauses any time you are unsure what to say. When recording, always talk slightly slower than you would in everyday conversation, as the nuances of corporeal expression are inevitably lost through the cables of a microphone -- Speak at the speed where it just starts to feel uncomfortably slow. In most cases, when you listen back to your recording, you’ll be surprised how slow it doesn’t feel. For any talking head passages of your recording, always look straight into the lens of the camera. After recording, trim out any sections which lag or feel unnecessary to make the overall points. Add zooms, markers and annotations where necessary. Export your content to video and upload to a cloud hosting service if necessary. Creative an executive summary of the key points in text and create a contents checklist for your client to use to navigate to relevant points in the video(s). Examples:   Last week Rand published a blog titled The Best Kept Secret in the SEOmoz Toolset, which explains how to access the new SERPs analysis tool. I've taken the process he explained through text and diagrams and put together a tutorial video which works towards the same purpose. Using Rand's post as a script, this video took roughly 10 minutes to make using Camtasia for Mac.      Do you find it easier to watch through the video or read through the post? Please let me know your thoughts! If anyone would like to see further practical demonstrations of turning a written report into a movie, then i invite you to email me over your content (phil.nottingham@distilled.net) and i will use the above formula to convert it into a video and share it in the comments section.   If you’re interested to know more about the practical process for making awesome videos, please check out a post I created a the Distilled blog last month -  Creating Awesome Videos for SEO.     Do you like this post? Yes No

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How to Tweet From Your Archives Without Pissing People Off Graywolf's SEO Blog

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How to Tweet From Your Archives Without Pissing People Off Posted: 26 Jul 2011 10:30 AM PDT The following is part of a series on automation. In this post, we will look at using the tweet old posts plugin. To be honest, this is an extremely effective tool for automating your Twitter stream; that said, it is also one of the most controversial. Most people are content to simply turn this plugin on and let it run. They’re making a mistake. IMHO you need to either curate your blog to create a group of your best posts to retweet or you need to exclude the posts that aren’t evergreen from your archive tweets. Step one. During your yearly content audit,  decide if you will use a “best of” category or create a category to exclude. On this blog, I have multiple exclusion categories: one of posts not to tweet, one of posts not to appear in the carousels,  and one of posts not to be included in the popular posts page  or sidebar display. Sometime it’s because they are date sensitive and won’t be important in a few months, sometimes it’s because the posts rank for non SEO centric topics, and sometimes it’s just an editorial decision. Next visit the plugin settings page and check/uncheck the categories you want to tweet or not tweet. screen shot of categories to not retweet Look at your total number of posts, subtract the excluded posts, and you’ll know how many posts are eligible for “archive tweets.” Count of how many posts are excluded Depending on how many posts you have, determine a frequency for retweeting your archives. If you only have 300 posts and tweet three a day, you will repeat your tweets 3+ times a year. IMHO that’s a mistake. You should really have enough posts and determine a frequency that doesn’t tweet them more than twice a year. There are exceptions to this rule that I talk about in how to use hootsuite and bufferapp together. If you are unsure about how often and when to tweet, I suggest you look at tweriod  (see What is the Best Time of Day to Tweet). Additionally, take a look at some information on social scheduling. Basically speaking, you want to tweet when the most people will see your tweet, click on the link, read it, and hopefully retweet it. Retweeting it at 2 AM, when most people are asleep or at when it’s likely to only be seen by bots, isn’t doing you any good or driving any traffic or attention to your website. The last part of making the most out of tweeting old posts is fine tuning. You may have to adjust your frequency or remove the odd post that is in the retweet pool. If I see a bad “archive” tweet, I kill it on the spot and flag it not to retweet. Other than that, I review my archive tweets once a week to make sure the quality is as high as I can make it. Since I work in the internet marketing space, my followers have a lot of overlap with social media fans, experts, and consultants. To be honest, many of them are not fans of the archive tweets. First off, let me say that social media experts are like locusts cross bred with an ADHD adult gone off their meds. They will consume content like a plague of locusts consumes a crop, and they expect to be entertained with fresh new content the way a three year old hopped up on too much soda and birthday cake  expects to be entertained during a birthday party. They are a mutant aberration and, unless they are your audience, you can largely ignore them … Or at least ask if they want some cheese with their whine … That said, there is a fine line between being whiney and offering up constructive criticism. It’s often hard to tell them apart. Look for the nuggets that ring true, are really problematic, or present an opportunity for you to improve. Don’t pander to the great unwashed masses or allow them to dictate what should or shouldn’t be in your stream. It’s your stream, and they are free to unfollow whenever they want to. While I have made adjustments based on some suggestions, I think they are just jealous that my robo-tweets get more attention than their lovingly hand crafted ones … but you know what they say.  Haters gonna’  hate … So what are the takeaways from this post: Set up a “best of” or “exclusion” category so that you only retweet your highest quality posts. Study your followers’ behaviors to find the optimal time to retweet old posts. Find an interval and frequency that keeps you from being too repetitive. Fine tune your “best of” or “exclusion” list regularly. Isolate the constructive criticism from whiners and haters. Adjust your strategy as needed. Epilogue This post itself was conceived in response to a tweet that Scott Straten (aka Unmarketing) made about how how archive tweets are bad. Scott Stratten Doesn't Like Archive Tweets I like Scott. I’ve met him at pubcon, he’s a great guy and, if you ever have the opportunity to see him speak, you absolutely should. He’s very inspirational. Additionally, his Ted talk is amazingly heartfelt. Click here to view the embedded video. That said, I disagree with him about automated tweets. He falls onto the “social media is a conversation” line of things, and I simply disagree. I don’t think most people or companies need to spend all day on Twitter. In fact, I think that’s a horrible idea, with very little ROI. However, I understand my strategy is not the strategy for everyone or every situation, so my objective here is to provide balance with a different opinion and implementation. photo credit: Shutterstock Related posts: What is the Best Time of Day to Tweet Once you have gotten past the hurdle of getting followers... Why It’s OK to Offend People in Social Media Recently, Kenneth Cole took a bit of criticism in the... How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Tool with Tweet Pro So my friend Cesar Serna launched his new site this... People like Remixed Blogs! So I’ve mentioned before I’ve had people subscribe to feed... How to Create a Local Twitter Account Most of the the tutorials on the web dealing with... 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! Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks Links From PR9 Sites - Get In Top 3 Google ASAP RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network Limited time offer! World's #1 SEO toolbox at 63% off: Get Your Copy Now 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. How to Tweet From Your Archives Without Pissing People Off

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President Obama: 'The entire world is watching"

Your Daily Snapshot for Tuesday, July 26, 2011   President Obama: "The entire world is watching" Yesterday, the President addressed the nation on the consequences the stalemate in Congress could have on the stability of our economy. He impressed upon the country the urgency of the negotiations, and also remarked on the best approach to avoid default and cut the deficit. Watch the video, and read some of the remarks. In Case You Missed It Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog. President Obama Welcomes the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants President Obama met with the 2010 World Series champs, the San Francisco Giants, at the White House Congressional Inaction Halts Aviation Projects Across US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood emphasizes the large number of American jobs at stake in the Nation's aviation infrastructure, and urges Congress to revisit and pass a Federal Aviation Administration bill. Introducing the Joining Forces Community Challenge First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr Jill Biden announce a new initiative to recognize and celebrate Americans who make a difference in the lives of military families. 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 3:15 PM: The President and the Vice President meet with Secretary of Defense Panetta Get Updates  Sign Up for the Daily Snapshot  Stay Connected     Facebook Twitter YouTube Flickr iTunes        This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com Manage Subscriptions for e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com Sign Up for Updates from the White House Unsubscribe e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com | Privacy Policy Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

Seth's Blog : Defining quality

Defining quality

Given how much we talk about it, it's surprising that there's a lot of confusion about what quality is.

What's a higher quality car: a one-year old Honda Civic or a brand new top of the line Bentley?

It turns out that there are at least two useful ways to describe quality, and the conflict between them leads to the confusion...

Quality of design: Thoughtfulness and processes that lead to user delight, that make it likely that someone will seek out a product, pay extra for it or tell a friend.

Quality of manufacture: Removing any variation in tolerances that a user will notice or care about.

In the case of the Civic, the quality of manufacture is clearly higher by any measure. The manufacturing is more exact, the likelihood that the car will perform (or not perform) in a way you don't expect is tiny.

On the other hand, we can probably agree that the design of the Bentley is more bespoke, luxurious and worthy of comment.

Let's think about manufacturing variation for a second: Fedex promises overnight delivery. 10:20 vs 10:15 is not something the recipient cares about. Tomorrow vs. Thursday, they care about a lot. The goal of the manufacturing process isn't to reach the perfection of infinity. It's to drive tolerances so hard that the consumer doesn't care about the variation. Spending an extra million dollars to get five minutes faster isn't as important to the Fedex brand as spending a million dollars to make the website delightful.

Dropbox is a company that got both right. The design of the service is so useful it now seems obvious. At the same time, though, and most critically, the manufacture of the service is to a very high tolerance. Great design in a backup service would be useless if one in a thousand files were corrupted.

Microsoft struggles (when they struggle) because sometimes they get both wrong. Software that has a user interface that's a pain to use rarely leads to delight, and bugs represent significant manufacturing defects, because sometimes (usually just before a presentation), the software doesn't work as expected--a noticed variation.

The Shake Shack, many New York burger fans would argue, is a higher quality fast food experience than McDonald's, as evidenced by lines out the door and higher prices. Except from a production point of view. The factory that is McDonald's far outperforms the small chain in terms of efficient production of the designed goods within certain tolerances. It's faster and more reliable. And yet, many people choose to pay extra to eat at Shake Shack. Because it's "better." Faster doesn't matter as much to the Shake Shack customer.

The balance, then, is to understand that marketers want both. A short-sighted CFO might want neither.

Deming defined quality as: (result of work effort)/(total costs). Unless you understand both parts of that fraction, you'll have a hard time allocating your resources.

Consider what Phillip Crosby realized a generation ago: Quality is free.

It's cheaper to design marketing quality into the product than it is to advertise the product.

It's cheaper to design manufacturing quality into a factory than it is to inspect it in after the product has already been built.

These go hand in hand. Don't tell me about server uptime if your interface is lame or the attitude of the people answering the phone is obnoxious. Don't promise me a brilliant new service if you're unable to show up for the meeting. Don't show me a boring manuscript with no typos in it, and don't try to sell me a brilliant book so filled with errors that I'm too distracted to finish it.

There are two reasons that quality of manufacture is diminishing in importance as a competitive tool:

a. incremental advances in this sort of quality get increasingly more expensive. Going from one defect in a thousand to one in a million is relatively cheap. Going from one in a million to one in a billion, though, costs a fortune.

b. As manufacturing skills increase (and information about them is exchanged) it means that your competition has as much ability to manufacture with quality as you do.

On the other hand, quality of design remains a fast-moving, judgment-based process where supremacy is hard to reach and harder to maintain.

And yet organizations often focus obsessively on manufacturing quality. Easier to describe, easier to measure, easier to take on as a group. It's essential, it's just not as important as it used to be.

 

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