Edificio de enlace de sombrero blanco de escala - escala de contenido

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The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Over the next two weeks, I'm speaking at our Advanced Link Building conference in London (18th March) and New Orleans (25th March). We are down to the last few tickets for London but there is definitely still time to book tickets for New Orleans to see this amazing line up of speakers give it up. Remember that the free trial of SEOmoz PRO means that anyone can get tickets at the discounted price of $450 (down from $600).

The topic of my presentation is scaling white hat link building.

Although SEO is one of the "free" organic marketing channels, there is no doubt that competing with the biggest brands and most aggressive web marketers is not going to be free. In fact, it could be very expensive. I won't be sharing ways to compete with the link buyers for free with no effort, but I will be sharing real strategies brands can use when they need to step it up a gear.

Today, I wanted to write about just one element of that presentation - partly to get my thoughts in order and partly to give something away to those who can't make it in person. The bit I have chosen is an element that has been front of my mind at Distilled for a few months now - namely scalable content.

If you haven't already read the article Wired wrote about how Demand Media operates, I can't recommend it highly enough. Even (or perhaps especially) in light of the recent Panda / Farmer update, I think it is important to think about how you would operate if you had to do it at this scale. Even more importantly, we should all look for the lessons we can learn that will make us better.

It strikes me that there are three particularly notable aspects to the Demand process:

1. Cost

"it's fast, cheap, and good enough(*)"

(*) Obviously, this was written before the recent Google update and was, in any case, debatable, but nonetheless, it's clear that there are major efficiencies to be had versus the process many of us use to create content

2. Scale

"Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year."

This is interesting regardless of what you think of the quality - it's an amazing feat and there has to be something we can learn.

3. Quality(**)

(**) for some definition of "quality"

"every algorithm-generated piece of content produced 4.9 times the revenue of the human-created ideas"

There are clearly things computers are better at than humans. One of these is mining data for patterns to see what is successful.

One of my long-running wishlist ideas is a database of great headlines - based largely on offline media categorised by their likely effectiveness. Have you ever stopped to look at the headlines on consumer magazines and compared them month over month? I feel like I should give credit for that tip - but I can't remember where it came from - perhaps Todd's suggestion of a headline "swipe file". Anyway, in a similar fashion to I'd love to be able to run something like:

select * from headlines where subject like "" and keyword like "" and successful = 1

While "links" are pretty easy to understand, "link building" is a phrase that actually covers many dozens of potential approaches and tactics. Across all these myriad different kinds of link building, the consistent themes are:

[WHAT] - a piece of content receives the link[WHO] - someone places the link[WHERE] - a piece of content contains the link

I would argue that there is not a single white hat link building technique that would not benefit from better content either in the what or the where. And for every link that is not the result of a very close relationship or exceptional piece of evergreen content / functionality, scaling will come from either creating greater volume of content on your own site or creating greater volumes of content to appear elsewhere.

I will leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to think about the various forms of "good" links that you could get more of if only you had a stream of great content.

Well, while we are trying to learn from Demand Media, I'm not necessarily talking about emulating them. Especially if we are creating content for link building, the bar is a little higher.

My research shows that on average, a piece of Demand Media content gathers links at less than 10% of the rate of a piece of BBC or New York Times content. I'll be sharing more of this research at the conference.

This story, for example has links from almost 4,000 unique domains...

So, we know we need to raise the bar, but the question is "how"?

I think this looks something like:

Using only great writersApplying quality control at multiple stages of the processAutomating what you canFilling the hopper intelligently based on what the linkerati really wantsNot being afraid to scale

I have been thinking about this not only to write my presentation, but also because we have been building out processes, systems and a network of writers to be able to scale this kind of service. The following breakdown is my opinion on some of the detail areas involved:

Using only great writers

We have some great writers on our team (in my opinion) but when we start talking about increasing scale, it doesn't always come with full time employees. My mantra for this is that we want to be a model agency for writers when we are doing this kind of work. Whereas many of the writing services I've come across seem to be more like marketplaces, we want to behave more like a model agency. Model agencies don't just take on anyone - there is a selection process to make sure they have the looks, attitude and skills to succeed. We don't just want people who can string a sentence together; we want people who can make words sing.

This does affect the cost part of the equation. You simply can't achieve this at the rates Demand are paying. By paying many times as much (as much as freelance journalist rates in many cases) we can create the selectivity and environment we are seeking. (Incidentally, if you think that sounds like you, of course we'd love to hear from you).

Quality control

A benefit of the "model agency" approach is that you can apply much of the quality control early in the process to the writer instead of the writing. Once you are confident in the skills of the writer, the quality control can become much more light touch. As high-profile journalists have proven, however, you can never give up quality control entirely. We think about three kinds of quality control

Automated (see below)"Second opinion" from another writerEditorial review from dedicated editor or consultant (or occasionally, client)

Automation

Much of the automation we have layered onto this process is driven from third party APIs that make it easy to do relatively complex things. We already have a workflow, plagiarism checking and a degree of automation in Google Doc creation. We are planning:

The ability of qualified writers to select jobs they wantGoogle Doc sharing based off the workflow / approval process

And future automation might include:

Additional quality checks (spelling, reading level, etc.)Headline suggestion / refinement tools for consultantsResource suggestion for writers (useful links, a la Zemanta, images, videos etc.) Better notification and alerting around the process and deadlinesAdditional services such as transcription

Filling the hopper

At the moment, this is probably the least-thought-out part of our system. In contrast to the apparently almost-fully-automated Demand system, we are still at the stage of having our consultants (in conjunction with clients and writers) suggest and decide upon the specific content to be written.

I'd love to hear some creative ideas (and any tools that already exist) that could help speed us up or make us better here.

Scaling

As I started thinking about how you scale content, one of my first thoughts was to emulate the industries that have been scaling content for decades. News organisations have been refining the systems and processes needed to:

gather ideas from a diverse set of sourceswrite copy using both staff writers and freelancersapply quality controlwrite compelling headlines

Particular lessons that I think we can learn from the masters include the following (my wife is a journalist and these are some of the things I've been most impressed by through her team):

It turns out that the people who are good at quality control are often good at writing headlines (they're called copy editors or sub editors)A small core team can manage a large volume of high quality output with a team of trusted freelance writersThe person writing the copy isn't necessarily the same person that decides the topic or the same person who writes the headline (and nor are these two necessarily the same person either)

However, I do think there are some things that I think many journalists could learn from the geeks among us - mainly web apps:

Version control - one of the first things I built into our spec was the ability to see who had made which change to a draft and when. I was amazed to learn that this simple feature (present in such ubiquitous software as Word and Google Docs) is not standard on news desks. I'm sure some have it, but it's common for plain text or untracked Word to be received from external writers and passed through the system until it hits the flatplan. At this point, many organisations take everything offline to work only in hardcopy.Project management apps - for similar reasons, there is often no end-to-end system managing the process of where everything is in the system. One of the things I wanted our system to have was a simple way for all the interested parties to see the status of everything - to my mind, this includes: Editor / owners being able to see all outstanding jobsWriters having their own dashboard to see what they are working onConsultants having project dashboardsFinance having reports on spend across the board and on specific projects

The short answer is "no". My role is largely R&D these days and a lot of what I described above is still at either the R or D stages in Distilled, but it's pretty much all in the pipeline and the early signs are that it is beneficial to our projects and our consultants. We're putting $10k / month+ through the system so far and it's holding up pretty well with relatively minimal management. Next step is to pare down the internal management requirement still further, but I'm pleased with how it's going so far.

If you like exploring this kind of idea, there is more of this as well as plenty of tips and tricks to come at the link building conferences over the next couple of weeks. As I said above, London is pretty much sold out (so grab one of the last few tickets if you'd been planning to come) but there are some tickets remaining for New Orleans. We're going to have a great time and I hope that if you can make it to the fun-filled South, we'll see you there.

Actualización de sitio Web de SEOmoz - haciéndolo Easier para obtener de aquí para allá

Como parte de una serie de esfuerzos de superación de SEOmoz, nos complace anunciar otra actualización al sitio! Como probablemente ya haya notado, acaba de lanzar un nuevo SEOmoz encabezado, pie de página y, con ellas, una navegación claramente nuevo. Navegación cambiante puede ser un tramposo y si hace mal, puede causar más daño que beneficio. Considera este riesgo al iniciar este proyecto, pero convino en que las limitaciones de la navegación existente tenían un valor de abordar:

Nuestra navegación antigua intentó apoyar PRO y escenarios de uso no-PRO y al hacerlo, no lo que bien. Nuestra navegación existente continuó a obtener exprimido como hemos añadido nuevas características. Necesitábamos un estilo de navegación que crecería con nosotros.Tenemos un montón de características importantes que fueron enterrados y merecen una oportunidad de ver la luz del día.Nuestros diseñadores había algunos grandes ideas y querían una oportunidad de hacerlos pasar.

Teniendo en cuenta todo esto, tomamos algunas decisiones importantes.

Crear navegaciones completamente diferentes y estilos para PRO frente a usuarios no-PRO, dirigidas a cada uno para los submenús activitiesSupport clave en nuestra navegación para que más elementos podrían ser accesible quicklyRethink el orden y organización de los elementos existentes en la navegación (sin arruinando las cosas que ya trabajaban bien) pensamos que la actualización resultante hace un buen trabajo de reunión nuestros objetivos. Usaré el resto de esta entrada para recorrer los cambios.Para los visitantes no PRO o fuera registrado creamos una navegación azul y oro de ancho completo. Este nav es mucho más representativo de un sitio SAAS y admite los tipos de actividades más comunes a los visitantes de primera vez o solicitantes de contenido libre o herramientas.  El pie de página también fue rediseñado para organizarse mejor y sirve para exponer algunas zonas más profundas del sitio, mientras todavía maintianing espacio para nuestro mensaje de marketing clave: para la transición a PRO, también actualizamos nuestra página de inicio de sesión, simplificación de la TIy agregando un poco más Roger: cuidado al introducir su información de inicio de sesión--Roger siente el dolor cuando se misremember la contraseña. ¡ D ' oh!:una vez iniciada la sesión, los miembros de PRO tienen una experiencia muy diferente. El encabezado azul y oro se sustituye por una barra de menús PRO centrado en ofrecer acceso rápido a los tipos de funciones de uso de miembros de PRO más.  Elementos de nivel superior incluyen el panel PRO, campañas, herramientas de investigación, comunidad y aprender SEO. En las comunidad y aprender SEO submenús, hemos surgieron muchos de los elementos frustrantemente difícil de encontrar, como seminarios, eventos y vídeos (tenemos a gente escrito en frecuentemente preguntando dónde encontrar estos). El pie de página para los miembros PRO se simplifica mucho, no para ser una distracción al centrarnos en tareas claves.Junto con la nueva navegación, hemos añadido algunas páginas de soporte. Haga clic en la comunidad de la navegación de PRO abre una nueva página de la comunidad, con un resumen de la reciente actividad fácil acceso a áreas clave de la comunidad de SEOmoz: también, nuestra antigua página webinars desgarbado ha sido reemplazado por un área de Webinar más utilizable. Yay!Una última área que quería llamar es una pequeña sección en la parte superior derecha de cada página. Usando la 'magia' de menús desplegables, hemos hecho opciones de cuenta y ayuda mucho más accesible. Por ejemplo, ahora es fácil de localizar y editar su perfil de usuario:y cuando encuentra un error o pensar esa característica asesina que desea compartir, puede enviar sus comentarios o acceder a nuestro foro de solicitud de función en el menú desplegable de ayuda: OK, que está sobre él.  Gracias por la lectura a través y por favor envían a lo largo de sus comentarios por lo que podemos seguir haciendo esto mejor!

6 Razones por qué preguntas y un sitios pueden aumentar su SEO en 2011 (a pesar agricultor actualización de Google)

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A lot of SEO predictions for 2011 were published in the end of 2010, while not many marketers mentioned the increasing popularity of Q&A sites. I think that it could be a great opportunity to exploit this new rising phenomenon for our marketing efforts while it's still fresh.

Why shouldn't you worry about Google's Content farm update?

I'm pretty sure that you're already familiarized with the Google's recent farmer update, and might think that Q&A sites are useless now. But if you take a closer look, there are a bunch of quality Q&A sites that did not suffer at all and can still be used for your marketing efforts. It's important to use only these kinds of sites as part of the following techniques, to get the most value for your efforts.

I believe that Google (and other search engines) should try and fit their offering to users according to changes on the web, so completely ignoring a rising concept such as Q&A platforms will be like shooting themselves in the foot.

What's a Q&A site and how does it work?

Before diving into the endless marketing opportunities of this concept, it's important to understand what a Q&A site is and how exactly it works. The simplest definition can be found in Wikipedia:

"A Q&A website is a website where the site creators use the images of pop culture icons to answer input from the site's visitors, usually in question/answer format."

While this definition mainly refers to the traditional type of Q&A sites, the whole concept refers to the following four groups:

This table highlights the main purpose and value of each group, and we will see how we can use each group in a different way. The following article will mainly concentrate on the potential of the first two groups – social and standard Q&A sites. Also, the examples for each group include only general websites and not niche oriented (which are of course useful for the following techniques).

Now that we have clearer picture of the different kinds of Q&A sites, let's see the top seven reasons to use them, in order to improve our online acquisition efforts.

1. Recent Trend: people google more questions than generic keywords

It doesn't necessarily mean that the search volume of generic keywords is higher. But we can clearly see that there's an extreme increase in the search volume of question quarries, while at the same time a slight decrease in the search volume of generic primary keywords. The most interesting fact of this phenomenon is that it happens with keywords from the same topic.

To visualize this data, I chose some competitive generic keywords and related questions for those keywords. Than compared with Google KW Tool the difference between their search volumes in 2010.

For example, here's a comparison between the search volume of both generic and questions quarries for iphone keywords (it's "exact" search):

2. QA sites have become much more popular in the last year

Another evidence for this phenomenon, can be found in the fact that the traffic to QA and "how to" sites has been dramatically on the rise in the last year. Using Compete comparison, we can see the yearly change among some of these sites (unique visitors):

This is a very interesting trend, which can tell us a lot about the evolution of our search habits. What does it say about our web search psychology? How will this change impact the search engine's relevancy algorithm?

While the content farm update "erased" some of these sites, there will probably be new alternatives that will take their place (the next point can explain why).

3. Q&A pages ranked high in search results

It seems that pages from QA sites rank pretty well in organic search results. These pages are highly on-page optimized for the main keywords, well engaged by the users and are continuously updated by users. Here are some reasons why these pages might rank high:

Search results variety – For each query, Google tends to offer different kinds of websites and content in the organic results, in order to diverse it's offering for users. So for example, if we will search "Michael Jackson", the search results will include links to different kinds of websites and content: Wikipedia, videos, music sites, magazine/news sites etc. Therefore, we can think of QA sites as an independent group of content, which might be ranked high for many queries.Frequently updated content - people always love to share their knowledge by answering questions related to their area of expertise. Whether in forums, professional communities or QA sites. People will always add new comments/answers to such pages. And if new content is frequently generated – you can be sure that Google will be there to index it and prioritize it over "dead" pages. Another aspect that definitely contributes to the richness of the content is user engagement. Things like commenting, scoring and voting make these pages very valuable for users.Well on-page optimization – most of these pages include various elements, which are an essential part of the on-page optimization factors (e.g. title, meta description, related tags and text). First of all, each one of these elements includes the main keywords of the specific question. Also, the internal linking structure supports the optimization level (e.g. "related questions" in each question page, "Recent answers" in user's profile, recent questions in main categories etc). For instance, take a look at a question page from Pro Webmasters:

Knowing that, you can simply search for the most relevant questions related to your keywords and start dropping useful answers. Of course in addition to your answers, you can place links within the text in a relevant context. This way, you can drive some really targeted traffic and increase your backlinks profile. It's better to start with QA pages that are already ranked high in SERPs, since they already have existing and relevant traffic.

After dominating the 1st result page for your related terms, it's time to expand your sources by searching within the QA sites themselves. You can use Questionhub to save a lot of time. Questionhub is a giant aggregator that gathers questions from various QA sites around the web. Using Questionhub, you can find a lot of relevant Q&A pages in which you can leave answers and links to your site.

4. Great opportunity to diversify your backlinks profile

It's always recommended to include links from various kinds of websites in your backlinks profile, and not to concentrate just on one type (e.g. blogs, forums, news sites, social bookmarks/networks, static sites etc...). Basically there are two main reasons why you should get links from various sources:

Your campaign will look more natural – if all your links come from blogs for example, it definitely won't look natural. More likely to be flagged by Google. It's much more natural that people will link from various spots rather than only one type of sites.Chances to gain more trust - Barry Schwartz referred to a video, in which Matt Cutts talked about the value of links from different segments of sites. In this video, Matt does seem to imply that Google is valuing links differently according to the type of the site.

If you expect to find some dofollow links with anchor text, you might be disappointed. But it doesn't matter as they will still be counted by Google (you can see them clearly in your webmaster tools account). And in any case, like I said before, it's a great opportunity to diverse your backlinks profile.

5. Pages that people prefer linking to

Let's say you wrote some really nice piece of content about car insurance for your blog. Since you want to make it useful for your users, you will link from it to external sources in a relevant context. But which pages will you probably link to? Will you link to some pages from commercial/corporation websites, or to some Q&A or "how to" pages? Let's assume for example that both options have the same relevancy to your content, and both deal with a narrow topic that you can't find on Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that you will choose the 2nd option in such case.

Why do people prefer to link to such sources?

Psychology – The action of linking from our site to a corporate or commercial website may be interpreted as an act of solitude or identification between us and that said company. This might make us rule it out in at point blank, sub consciously. Therefore, there are high chances that Q&A pages will gain natural links.Value – referring to Q&A and "how to" pages is much more valuable for users. Imagine yourself reading an interesting article and suddenly bumping into a link – wouldn't you prefer that it takes you to a neutral source that can assist you and teach you something new (or will expand existing knowledge)?Easy to find – as I wrote before, Q&A and "how to" pages are ranked well in SERPs because of their high level of on-page optimization. The most common thing to do if we want to find the appropriate source to link to - is to search for it. If I want to link from a paragraph that deals with cooking thanksgiving turkey for example, I might search for "how to cook a turkey" and will probably get results from Q&A and "how to" sites.

Build your own Q&A asset and gain natural links

The best way to benefit from this behavior and attract links, is to establish your own Q&A property. This kind of asset can be built on a separate domain or on a subdomain/subfolder in your existing domain. There are a lot of free open source solutions for building such platforms, just choose one (it's pretty ironic that I naturally found the Q&A site which I'm linking to right now, using the same technique I've described in the previous paragraph J).

After establishing the platform, you should think about a keyword strategy that will assist you in focusing your content. It's better to have a targeted Q&A section with questions related to specific and narrow topics, rather than general ones. So for example if you have a hotel - website, focus your content only on this field by covering all related long tails. If all questions will be related to a specific topic, it will encourage users to use your platform because they will treat it as an authority source to get answers (will you prefer to ask about hotels in a dedicated or general source?). It will also encourage expert users to leave answers (ego?), especially if they have a business or a website in the hotel industry that they wish to promote.

Now that we know which keywords we should focus on, it's time to fill them with some initial questions/answers and spread the word. Here's a quick action items list that will assist you with this mission:

Publish about 10-20 initial questions that will include your main keywords. You can check in other popular Q&A sites what are the most common questions being asked, and imitate them. Also, it's highly recommended to concentrate on questions with low-middle competition in SERPs (only in the beginning of the process). A practical way to verify that, is to use the intitle:"your question" search operator in Google (more search operators that can help with narrowing your query).Leave detailed answers to these questions. But don't do it at once, use a couple of hours interval so it will look more natural. If you want it to look even more natural, you can use different identities instead.Drive traffic to your new section using social media (retweet new questions, share on facebook, email all your friends, link from your homepage, ask for reviews in forums etc). If it will bring value, I'm sure that shortly after launch, users will start asking and answering questions. And if the source will become an authority of a sort – links will soon follow.

6. Targeted traffic = better conversion

Imagine that you are a blackjack enthusiast, and next month you're traveling to Las Vegas for a vacation. Since this will be your first visit to Vegas, it's reasonable that you will search questions like "Which casino has the best blackjack game in Las Vegas". Chances are you will hit a Quora result:

In this page you will find some very informative answers from anonymous users, who describe various casinos in Vegas and even provide some blackjack tactics. In fact, this answer is so informative and insightful, that you just can't ignore it. I bet you also won't ignore the single link within the content, which refers to a blackjack strategy page:

Now when you click on the link, chances are high that you will also click on the affiliate banner in this blackjack website and the rest is history. Let's see how the funnel of this process looks like:

You can use this technique for both link building efforts and traffic generation. But if you are looking only for SEO benefits, you should concentrate mainly on getting such links. While these kinds of links may be worthless in terms of link juice as they are not followed, but  they do have an alternative added value:

Traffic – if you leave such detailed answers with links in more than one question, it can bring you some really nice and targeted traffic.Conversion – if the traffic is targeted to your niche, there are high chances that those users could become customers.Link from a Q&A site – although in certain cases they are not followed, they are still counted in the overall backlinks calculation. And like I've mentioned before – it's a great way to diverse your backlinks profile.

What is your experience with Q&A sites?

The techniques shared in this article can improve your SEO campaign, especially in a competitive niche. If all your competitors are doing pretty much the same – this is a great chance to be prominent and bring something different to the table.

Have you been using Q&A sites as part of your SEO tactics? How exactly? Or are you completely sure that these tactics don't have any value? Your thoughts are more than welcome.

Cómo crear enlaces con infografía

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The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

It should be no surprise that infographics aquire links. Although they’ve quickly become a saturated tactic, they still work. I like infographics, because they’re a great intersection between traditional marketing and manual link building. In this post, I’d like to walk through my process of creating and launching a successful infographic. I’m about to tell you exactly how I’ve gotten clients hundreds of thousands of content views, thousands of social shares, and hundreds of links. It's a long post, so grab some coffee.

I’d like to cover my “process” for creating an infographic. This might not be for everyone, but it works for me.

At this stage, I’ll pull the whole project team together for a brainstorm. I may start with a seed set of ideas, but this is a wide open brainstorm, anything goes. We’re looking for ideas that are: interesting, appeals to the linkerati / socialrati, has real data, and some type of unique hook. An idea may come directly from a specific niche we’re targeting, or may go along with an event, such as a holiday. Try to look for angles that people don’t normally take or to present boring/common info conversely or in a off-colour way. Geoff, here at Distilled, is a beast at coming up with ideas.

I may only walk from the brainstorm with a vague concept and the target audience. From this point, I’ll start to research for data that can be used to form an infographic. I have a few goals for research.

Find information that can be organized.Find information that can be visually represented.Data does better than just information.Focus on verifiable statistics I can cite.Focus on chunkable, tweetable statements.Focus on content that triggers an emotional response.

The output here is a Word document of information and URLs to its source.

Unless you’re a creative genius, you’ll find value in crowdsourcing for ideas and selection of data. I will send the results of the research to the entire office and collect input on best stats, how those stats can be represented, or any other cool ideas. My job is collect this input and distill it down.

Next up, I’ll start developing a concept. This is when you put your creative marketing hat on.

Things to consider:

How your data can be visually representedColor themes (consider you topic and target market)How to visually create an emotional responseWays to add humorCreating “sharable” chunks of info for easy sharing and tweetingMedia to be added, such as images and graphs

This is a choke point where infographics can fall short. Yes, you have a cool concept, you have the data, and maybe you even nailed your title. But what I’ve seen that works, is really catering to your target market(s) in the content of the infographic. Give them very specific, for lack of a better phrase, “Easter eggs” that will be meaningful for them. This might be a meme or a concept unique to their market. Try to play on a person's ego or emotions, or to build some form of relationship with them. This goes back to marketing and understanding the target market.

I’ll pass over all the information to our designer. I’ll touch on this more in a moment, but I’ve learned to be very clear in this communication. Working with a designer in the UK, in another time zone, whom you’ve never met, creates a unique work relationship. I think our process here though is valuable for any SEO working with a designer.

This should be simple, but likely won't be. After getting the first draft of the design, it’ll be passed around the office for feedback. This may include typos, content errors, or design considerations. If you don't fix, then mistakes in your graphic will be caught, and social media can be relentless in pointing them out (especially Reddit). Find the most detailed oriented person in your office and get them involved.

Next, send it off for review from your client (or boss).This is the point where your skills in getting s#!% done can make or break your linkbait. Your job is to know your client (boss) and have built enough trust with them that you can manage any pushback. Getting close to your client can be the difference between a piece of linkbait that “ok” and “awesome”.

Infographic design is a choke point. Concepts can fall apart during the design process if not effectively managed. Tucker Cummings, at Blue Glass, recently wrote about what makes a “good” infographic. She said “if it doesn’t make you say “Wow” when you look at it, it’s probably not attractive enough”. Although an infographic needs to look good, I don't want design requirements to scare you off. As long as the design is good, fun, and interesting - I'm more concerned about the content.

My goal when working with a designer is to get something the client will like, with minimum revisions, and without annoying the designer. This is done by doing one thing.

Communicating well.

To assist in this communication, I send my designer two documents (these are actually the headings used in my last brief).

Infographic brief.docx

Client Information

Infographic WidthTarget AudienceClient ExpectationsDeadlineHours

Infographic Information

OverviewPurposeDataTitleThemeImages & Files

Infographic content.docx - Just the text in the infographic.

Get them involved early. I send over an email after the first brainstorm. I want them to be a part of the team, not just a tool I leverage to produce the graphic. I want them excited about it and feel a sense of ownership over the project as well.Don’t hinder their design. This is their job, it’s what they’re good at, so just step back and let them do it. Trust that they’re an expert at what they do (this means you have to hire a good designer in the first place.)Communicate clearly. Most issues can be solved with clear communication. I promise you this is important when the designer comes in while I’m asleep.Remember you’re a marketer. Trust your designer, but you know the market. Feel free to provide feedback to your designer if you feel the design won’t engage your audience appropriately.  I've had a designer change the color scheme on a graphic, because I didn’t feel it’d engage the target audience in the way I wanted. I think the revision made it a lot more effective at producing an emotional response.

Everyone has their own way of launching an infographics.

The (almost) amazing example

Around Valentine’s day, I saw what I think was an amazing infographic setup, minus one small thing. This infographic was the Valentine’s Day Spending [Infographic] by DegreeSearch.org.

This setup did a lot of things really well. It allowed the graphic to be published on the blog, but allowed them to promote it with a special landing page as well. This landing page removes almost all distractions, except for engaging with the content via social or embedding. It links back to the post and the site’s homepage. There is this wonderful share bar at the top, which allows visitors to easily share the graphic. It even sticks at the top as the user scrolls down the page.

If there is one place this page may have gone wrong, it’s right here:

After the infographic, they’ve embedded Facebook comments, but placed the link embed code below it. Every time someone comments on Facebook, the embed box is pushed further down the page, to the very bottom. Since the Facebook comment box is at the bottom anyways, I would have placed the embed above the Facebook comments (unless of course the graphic's goal was to increase Facebook interactions).

My Setup

Typically, I’ll publish an infographic as a blog post and use the following setup.

Features:

Infographic with good file name and alt attributeShare buttons (I like the style shown above the most)Embed code box, with JavaScrpit to auto select all (will show, one second)Embed code with good image name and alt attributeEmbed code links image to post and has a secondary branded link after the graphic

There are three goals: 1) ease sharing 2) ease embeding 3) make sure the embed code gives good links.

Protip: When making your embed code text area, make it autoselect all the code for easy copying. Like this:

textarea style="font-family: monospace;" onclick="this.select();"

You can see this in action over at eLocal, where my friend Adria works, on their home improvement trends infographic.

Everything so far is preperation for the meat of the campaign, getting the links. Infographics depend on the success of the content's creation, but I won't pretend that good content gains links all by itself.

However, good content is key. Good content, like an infographic, paired with strong outreach, can produce amazing results. But enough with the content talk, let’s get to links.

I use social media advertising to help seed infographics. Facebook ads work, but I highly recommend StumbleUpon Ads. These are cheap social oriented eyeballs and you can put yourself in front of a lot of them quickly.

Do not expect much from this traffic. It tends to bounce quickly and doesn’t convert in my experience. However, once in a while, you get in front of just the right person at the right time. On my last infographic, we spent about $500 to help seed, which lead to 10,000 paid views, but we ended receiving about twice as many SU views as that due to free stumbles.

From my experience, SU ads can drive tweets and likes, which I’ve seen from running ads after tweet volume has died off.

You’ll want to submit to relevant social media sites, but put thought into these submissions. For example, Reddit has a large number of subreddits which may work better for specific types of content. Pay attention to how you tag posts on StumbleUpon. Also you can use accounts at your disposal to seed these submissions with strong early votes where possible. There may be times when you need to call in favors.

Just like other social sites, you’ll want to promote through Twitter. Leverage relationships to get tweets from prominent Twitter users.

Find twitter users for outreach, it’s pretty easy:

Lastly, you need to do traditional link building outreach.

You need to do outreach.

The type of sites I’m reaching out to will be decided in the first full team brainstorm. I’ve already identified that market, and need to contact them for links. Outreach is an art and a science in its own right, but there have been several posts written on the topic.

Don’t be afraid of outreach. It’s a lot like dating. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. Now, if only I was as good at dating as I am link building.

At the start of this post, I said I’d tell you exactly how I get links with infographics, but that’s not entirely true. I left out two parts, but that’s because I can’t teach you those, but I can tell you what they are.

Good contacts can make or break your content promotion. Do you have a PR team? Do you maintain relationships with major bloggers / journalist that can publish your content? Did you start nurturing relations with niche bloggers prior to pitching? We do.

I can’t emphasis enough the value that a handful of useful contacts, who actually reply to your emails, can have on your promotion.

I believe hustle is my most valuable skill, in both SEO and life. Tom talks about the concept of hustle as a meme on Hacker News in his post on OnStartups about Distilled culture. Hustle is something that’s hard, maybe impossible, to teach. It's the willingness to “do whatever it takes” to get what you want.

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle"
- Abraham Lincoln

Success often means getting lucky, but I do believe “luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. You have to be out there hustling to find those opportunities. You have to be willing to do the work. The lengths I’ll go in outreach often result in rolled-eyes and chuckles around the office, but I get links. I get lucky with a lot of links, but I'd miss them if I wasn't out there working the process.

If you'd like to talk more about link building, you can find me on Twitter or see me in person at SMX West this week. I'll be speaking on Actionable Metrics and Diagnostics and moderating a Birds of a Feather table on link building (where you can grab lunch with me and chat about links).

¿Qué palabras clave clasifican para?

Puestos del autor son totalmente su propia (excluyendo el improbable caso de hipnosis) y no siempre pueden reflejar las opiniones de SEOmoz, Inc.

Como iniciar su ranking de seguimiento y tomar más en serio el SEO, seguro que la pregunta (y lo escuchamos mucho): "¿cuáles son todas las palabras clave que mi sitio califica de"? Suena bastante simple, pero resulta que esta cuestión no es sólo complicado, es probablemente imposible de contestar.

Me voy para guiarle a través de, por eso es una cuestión tan difícil, discutiendo dos mitos que nos llevan a pedirle que en primer lugar. A continuación, voy a intentar al menos dar una respuesta parcial – quizás no todos, pero lo suficiente como para mantenerlo ocupado durante mucho tiempo.

Si tiene experiencia en programación, bases de datos o incluso sólo Excel, es muy fácil imaginar Google como una especie de tabla de clasificación gigante. Puede parecer algo como esto:

Mientras que este enfoque podría trabajar para un sistema muy básico, cerrado (como una base de conocimiento interno), no es práctico remotamente en la escala de algo parecido a Google. El gran alcance de datos, la velocidad deslumbrante que se actualiza y la forma en que los datos debe distribuirse entre conjuntos de servidores (formadas por miles de servidores), significa que la búsqueda moderna es esencialmente un cálculo en tiempo real. No hay ninguna tabla maestra.

¿OK, así que no es una tabla, pero Google todavía sabe lo clasificar para o podrían entenderlo, derecho? Mientras Google definitivamente tiene un montón de datos que no vamos a ver, algunas cosas son misterios incluso para ellos. En 2007, VP de ingeniería de Google, Udi Manber, conmocionó a la comunidad de búsqueda sugiriendo que 20-25% de todas las consultas de Google fueron las consultas que nunca habían visto antes. Digamos que son nuevos, como 1/4 de todas las búsquedas de Google. Google más tarde aclaró que esto está dentro de una ventana de tiempo (no todos de la historia de la búsqueda), pero el número sigue siendo sólidamente alto.

Mucho de esto tiene que ver con el hecho de que las consultas naturalmente son cada vez más y más específica, con más de la mitad de las consultas de búsqueda en 2010 está 4 palabras o más. Como personas obtener más cómodas con preguntas detalladas, lenguaje natural, sólo esta tendencia va a continuar. Una forma u otra, su sitio es ranking nuevas palabras clave cada día, y algunos de ellos son una sorpresa incluso a Google.

¿Por lo tanto, es averiguar lo clasificar para tan difícil como los unicornios en mi tabla? Afortunadamente, no. Si bien nunca sabrá todas las palabras clave que clasifican para, definitivamente puede encontrar una pila sólida de datos. Su mejor, primer destino es su propio analytics – aquí es un ejemplo de Google Analytics (vaya a "Fuentes de tráfico" > "palabras clave >"No pagados"):

Por supuesto, estas son sólo palabras clave que condujo a clics, pero para mi sitio esto representa frases clave de 1.435 en sólo 1 mes. Mi blog es apenas excepcional – obtiene unos 200 visitantes por día. Así que antes de despedir a su análisis porque ellos no mostrar todo, pregúntese si llegó incluso a utilizar los datos que proporcionan.

El segundo lugar para buscar palabras clave que está clasificación para es Google Webmaster Tools, que es uno de los únicos lugares para ver datos de palabras clave que impulsan las impresiones de búsqueda pero no clics. GWT, vaya a "Su sitio en la web" > "Consultas de búsqueda" y se verá algo como esto:

La columna "Clics" sólo va hacia abajo a "<10", so="" it's="" difficult="" to="" tell="" exactly="" which="" keywords="" drove="" no="" clicks,="" but="" comparing="" this="" data="" to="" your="" analytics="" data="" can="" help="" fill="" in="" some="" of="" the="" holes,="" if="" you="" really="" want="" to="" see="" the="" big="">

Por lo tanto, ¿qué sucede si desea encontrar palabras clave que no está buscando gente para sino para que potencialmente podría clasificar? Un lugar que podría ser es el texto del delimitador que sitios externos utilizan para vincular a su sitio, especialmente las frases de cola más largas. Por ejemplo, en nuestro propio Site Explorer abierto, haga clic en la ficha de "Distribución de texto ancla" y obtendrá una lista completa de las frases o sitios externos de términos utilizan para vincular a usted (exportar a excel para resultados hasta 10.000):

Por ejemplo, estarían # 1 para "muppet pasante yoozer", si en realidad nunca nadie ha escrito esa frase (antes de que hice hoy). No estoy seguro de lo me ayuda, pero al menos conceptualmente, viendo lo que frases personas utilizan para vincular a usted puede darle un sentido de lo que tiene la capacidad para clasificar, incluso si esas frases actualmente no conducir búsquedas.

Por lo tanto, tal vez no se puede encontrar todas las palabras clave que nunca clasificar, pero ¿y qué? Mediante estas técnicas y extrapolar un poco (poner en algún tiempo de calidad con Excel), fácilmente puede generar una lista de cientos o miles de palabras clave que usted ya sea actualmente o potencialmente podría clasificar para. Esto debería mantenerse ocupado por un tiempo.

Prevención basada en vínculos penas - pizarra el viernes

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 At the end of February, Google announced that it was updating its search algorithm to serve higher-quality results to searchers. The update has since been dubbed the "Farmer Update" due to the algorithm's new bias against what Google considers "sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful." Translation: if you own www.how-to-rank-better-by-reading-these-articles-i-stole.com, things aren't going to be looking as peachy-keen as they may have been beforehand!

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows how to avoid being penalized by Google for suspicious linkage and having your rankings slip or completely disapparate as a result. He uses the example from the SEOptimise blog of What Happens When You Build 10,00 Dodgy Links to a New Domain in 24 hours. Hint: if you do own the aforementioned domain, you may want to reconsider your users' needs - for at least a couple of reasons.

Howdy, SEOmoz fans! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're talking about preventing link-based penalties. So, a lot of you have likely experienced the kind of thing that I am talking about. Whether you are a consultant or you are in-house, you're working at an agency, or you're just kind of tuning on your own site, you've seen this problem of the temptation to build, buy, borrow, beg, steal lots of links that are questionable in quality and value.

I want to share with you a quick story before we get started here. The blog SEO Optimize wrote a great piece about an experience they had in building these types of links. They started with a traffic graph of what had happened with their site. They put the new site on the Web. It's a relatively new site. They were growing sort of slowly and steadily. The spikes were a little bit lower than the valleys every week. They were sort of growing and growing. Then they decide, you know what, why don't we buy/build 10,000 dodgy links. I love the British because they use much better -- hi, everyone in London -- they use much better language. So, they go to these dodgy neighborhoods, maybe the East End, that's where it's dodgy, right? They build some links. They built 10,000 of these links. That's a lot. I think I should put a "whoa" there. Spell whoa. So, they build 10,000 dodgy links in this period, and what happens to their Goggle traffic? Shoots up. Skyrockets. Look at that. Insane growth. They, in fact, more than 5Xd their Google traffic, at least according to the graph that I was looking at on their blog post. You can see that it actually stayed like that for a few weeks. Google clearly not catching these links. I love the description that the blog post has. What he says is, "Just as I was beginning to worry that Google couldn't recognize this kind of crap, pow." It just drops down. It dropped down to a level so low that it was below the prior level of traffic, and essentially all they were getting here is branded terms, so people literally searching for that website itself. They're not ranking for any of their old keywords. These links aren't just not helping them, they are actively hurting them and preventing them from ranking, and it has been going on like that.

The moral of the story is invest in low quality links and temporarily you may see some benefit, but for the long term it can be quite harmful. You might be thinking to yourself, wait a minute, if this is the profile of how Google operates, couldn't I just build 10,000 dodgy links to all my competitors? Let's back up in time and remember that this is a new site. This is a new domain. They are likely looking at the profile of this site and saying, "Hey, they haven't built up a reputable, important, powerful brand yet. So it is much more likely that links can hurt them dramatically than it is a site that's been around a little while." That being said, there's likely many of you, possibly some of you even watching this video, who have sites like this or have friends with sites like this, clients with sites like this, and so you are wondering how can I prevent this kind of potential if I have seen that they did acquire some dodgy links, I did maybe acquire some dodgy links, I am considering it, or I am worried that my client did, I am worried the previous SEO did -- remember the case study with JCPenney and losing all their rankings because of the ins and outs of how Google measured them. You might want to be thinking, boy, I am in this period right now, maybe I am in that grace area. How can I prevent this from happening to me?

The first thing that I want to ask you to do is to ask yourself why. Not why are you going to get penalized. Why do you deserve to be ranking number one? Why do you deserve to be in the top few sites for these particular queries? Is it that you have the best product out there? Do you have the most innovative UI, the most usable format for it? Do you have the highest quantity of information? Are your user reviews the best that they could be? Is it the fact that you have access to data that no one else has? There has to be a unique value proposition for any given business and that includes a web-based business model. If you don't have this, then, yeah, you're only option to get links, to get references, is to go to those dodgy neighborhoods because no one is going to organically want to link to you editorially and say, "I endorse and recommend this particular business."

Once you have answered that question, I need you to focus on content. Well, I don't need it. You need it. You need you to focus on content because content is where those links are going to come from. In the absence of a reason apart from money or manipulation or some type of a personal relationship, the only way to get good reference links, good editorial links on the Web is to be the best resource for that particular query. Being that resource means content. I don't just mean text. I mean everything. I mean images and video. I mean other forms of content like user generated material. I mean things like the interface that you're putting on it, the UI that surrounds it. I even mean things like the humans, the people in the real world that are associated with creating that content. Having the authority and the credibility that comes from a big name in your particular field, which could be a very small field and a very unknown person to most of the rest of us, still matters quite a bit.

The third thing that I would do is go look at the top link sources to brands. So, where a lot of SEOs get into trouble is that you go and you look at the links that are pointing to the people who are ranking number 1, number 2, number 3, maybe top 10. A lot of them might be in this neighborhood. They might be the type of people who have built links for the short term, and they are ranking in the short term and Google is eventually going to catch up with them, which is why I encourage you to go find the brands. Those particular sites/pages that have built up authority, not just in the search results through links but in the equity that is built through mindshare, through branding, through knowledge of that website, and those brands will often have references to them that come from very good places. If you look at their top links using Open Site Explorer, using something like the Link Intersect tool, if it is a local site you could use Ontolo Whitespark's Link Finder, which I think is a great tool as well, even doing searches like, if I do a search query, let's say that I see a brand like O'Neill who makes surfboards and surf equipment and that kind of stuff, right. So, I might do a search like, "Where is O'Neill - site: O'Neill.com?" What I am doing here when I am searching Google like this, is I say, "Show me all the places where this brand is mentioned that is not on their website." That will show you a bunch of places that are talking about that brand. Those types of mentions often lead to links, often lead to references, build that brand's equity, build that brand's awareness and knowledge. Those are probably really good places to get links.

Number four, finally, and this one might even be a priority depending on how nervous you are that this is about to happen. You want to clear out the worst links. This means digging into your link profile and identifying anything that looks especially manipulative. Sometimes those huge long lists of reciprocal link pages, where you're pointing to everybody else and they're all pointing to you, that might be a good thing to clear out. You might want to e-mail your link partners and say, "Hey guys, sorry, but I think Google might really jump on us about this. I need to get rid of those." You might want to go and dig through any link brokers or buyers that either you have engaged with or the client previously engaged with or who knows, whoever was working on the site before you engaged with, your evil alter ego fight club style Tyler Durden worked on. You know, a guy gets up in the middle of the night, never know what he's going to do. Finding those links. Clearing them out. Getting rid of the ones that you can. Don't panic. Bad links aren't always going to hurt you. Everyone on the Web has some bad link pointing to them. Scrapers. Back in college, I built some bad links when it was late at night. That happens to everyone. It's okay. But, if you can find the worst of those, you are going to prevent some of these penalties. If you can find those really good ones, you build up that profile that protects yourself from some of this negative stuff.

All right everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday and hope we'll see you again next week. Take care.

SEO orientado a la conversión: Cuando SEO casa UX

Hola Mozzers! Me complace estar aquí por primera vez! Bien, como todos ustedes saben, SEO es la conversión y conversión es dinero, bebé! Si tiene un gran trabajo SEO en su sitio Web, pero una mala usabilidad, tendrás mal rendimiento de la inversión. Si tiene un gran trabajo SEO además una gran facilidad de uso definitivamente tendrá visitantes fieles y gran retorno de la inversión. Período. Lo que todo el mundo debe entender es que SEO no termina en el clic. Siempre hay algo más que ese rango de Google soñado. Y, en mi humilde opinión, la clave está en la página y cómo verán los usuarios. Por lo tanto, vamos a echar un vistazo a ver cómo podemos casar SEO buena usabilidad.

SEO + UX. Let's get comenzó. Lo mejor para hacer es pensar en el proyecto sobre la facilidad de uso, pero si no, después de hacer todo lo que grandes cosas, SEO como en la página, la construcción de enlace etc. y obtener un buen rango en las SERPs, debe empezar a pensar acerca de los usuarios, haga clic en el vínculo. ¿Cómo van a actuar en su sitio? ¿Va simplemente hacer clic y dejar? ¿Puede mantenerlos allí? ¿Realmente van a convertir? Cuando pensamos en la conversión, muchas cosas pueden venir a nuestra mente: vincular la construcción, PPC, contenido, colores, etc.. Pero, antes de todas estas cosas, lo primero que hay que averiguar es lo que quieren los visitantes.

1. Cuestionamiento

¿Cuál es el objetivo de su sitio Web?¿Quién es su audiencia?¿Es útil su sitio Web?¿Son capaces de encontrar lo que necesitan los visitantes?

Recuerde: si algo es fácil para usted, no significa que es fácil para todos! Por lo tanto, es necesario investigar, ejecutar encuestas (personal! venderlo como si estaban vendiendo sus productos!), pruebas de usabilidad, etc..

2. Conocer los datos de análisis también debe saber que su visitante es, por donde es, qué tipo de tecnología que utiliza, etc.. Definir objetivos y embudos definitivamente hará su vida más fácil!

3. Recopilar datos después de hacer su investigación detallada con los datos de análisis y los visitantes, es tiempo de armar todo y divertirse! Mi primer Consejo aquí es crear una nube de palabra con los principales términos que consiguió en su investigación. Una gran herramienta es wordle.net.

4. Preparar sus páginas de inicio en SEO, cualquier página del sitio Web puede ser una página de inicio. Usted debe estar preparado para ello. Scott Brinker tiene un muy buen concepto acerca de las páginas de inicio y creo que se puede aplicar para nuestra realidad aquí. Es el marco R.E.A.D.Y.:

Romitidoengagingauthoritativedirectionalyampo óptima

Realmente resume cómo es la página de inicio perfecto!

4.1. El diseño
En tiempos de Vista previa instantánea de Google debe tener un buen diseño!

Patrón: utilice los mismos colores, logotipo etc. en todas sus campañas (correo electrónico marketing, sin conexión, Web,...)Errores - no asegúrese de que no hay errores de código y estilo o incompleto contenido en las páginas de inicio

Según el beso métricas Color psicología estudio, 42% de los usuarios basar su opinión sobre el sitio Web en diseño de conjunto y 52% no regresar debido a la estética general.

4.2. El sitio Web velocidad
Compruebe el tiempo de carga de su sitio Web para asegurarse de que no es demasiado lento. Los usuarios no son pacientes! Por lo tanto, asegúrese de que pueden finalizar sus compras o cargar su infografía, por ejemplo. Es más rápido de su sitio Web, más vende.
Y no olvide: tiempo de carga de página es un factor muy importante de clasificación de Google!

4.3. El mensaje
Siempre es importante contenido relevante. Ser único, específico, actualizada, hablar de tal manera que los visitantes puedan entender le!
Utilizar números, datos de la tabla, infografías, etc., para justificar todo racional (pero ser honesto!). También puede mostrar credibilidad en detalles como imágenes de sus productos, beneficios, testimonios, etc..

4.4. Llamado a la acción
Mostrar siempre el objetivo final en cada página y también utilizar las descripciones explicando por qué es buena tomar esa acción.
En el caso de los formularios, quitar campos innecesarios y hacerla no demasiado largo. Si es necesario, separarlo en pasos, mostrando al usuario donde está.
El mensaje de la CTA es también muy importante. Dejar claro, sin ambigüedades y, como el nombre dice, un verdadero llamado a la acción! No como los aburridos "ir", "Enviar" o "suscribirse".

El diseño del botón CTA necesita algunos "tratamiento" así! Abuso de espacios en blanco para que sea claro y evidente. Y el color del botón... AH, el botón color... siempre hay muchos puntos de vista al respecto! Algunas personas dicen verde es mejor, algunos dicen naranja... Pero mi opinión es: utilizar colores contrastantes y usted obtendrá un #win! lol

Algunas herramientas que le ayudarán a iniciar

Pruebas de uso remoto:

Encuestas:

Análisis:

Conclusión
SEO orientado a la conversión, el contenido sigue siendo el rey, pero la usabilidad es la reina!

Es el gran secreto: no hay ninguna regla o trucos! Debe probar todo en su sitio Web y, cuando haya terminado, empezar otra vez!

Espero que les guste! =)

Diversidad de fuente de tráfico es esencial para el éxito de SEO

Recientemente he creado algunos filtros personalizados en Google Analytics para ilustrar el tráfico de SEOmoz en los últimos 12 meses:

_
Datos desde el 15 de marzo de 2010, el 14 de marzo de 2011

Aquí está el desglose en porcentajes:

Búsqueda (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Baidu, etc.): 36,0%directo (marcador + tipo-en): 27,7%piensos (RSS vía Feedburner): 7,9%sociales (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker noticias, StumbleUpon): 5,9%socios destilada, abrir sitio Explorer (WebsiteGrader): 2,5%Blogs (SELand, SERoundtable, etc., AVC):foros del 2,0% (WebmasterWorld, Webmaster de Google gruposetc.): 0,7%PPC (AdWords): 0,2%otros (general + todo lo demás): 17,3%

Como SEOs, sabemos que el tráfico de búsqueda tiene vulnerabilidades y las fluctuaciones que están fuera de nuestro control. Los ejemplos recientes de sitios que involuntariamente se vieron afectados en la la actualización de agricultor/Panda es un buen ejemplo, pero hay cientos de posibles problemas, tanto de nuestros esfuerzos y los de los otros (los motores propios, nuestros competidores, etc.) que pueden afectar las cosas fuera de versiones algo a gran escala.

También hemos sentido los motores de búsqueda moviendo en una dirección más "integral" y que buscan funciones que han "marcas", pero no sitios genéricos para premiar el primero en su clasificación. Hice una presentación sobre este tema en el Asistente de ser reciente! Evento de San Marino, incluida a continuación:

Es mi sentido que el aumento de la diversidad de fuentes es un excelente camino para los vendedores en línea tomar, sobre todo en este cruce, porque:

Motores de búsqueda que desee sitios de recompensa que "naturalmente" atraen tráfico de otras fuentes - quienes reciben clics en los enlaces que apunten a ellos, que tienen los medios de comunicación social reparto aroud pasando su contenido y que no son simplemente una "granja" para visitas de búsqueda.El mundo en línea es diversificar en un clip mucho mayor en los últimos 3 años que en cualquier momento desde mediados de los 90. En lugar de consolidación, estamos viendo expansión como sitios como Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, YouTube, etc. todos ampliar su alcance y los recién llegados como cuadrangular, ruta, Quora, StackExchange, Groupon, LivingSocial y muchos otros se convierten en factores de tráfico sustantivo. Los sitios que no se pueden reproducir en estos nuevos ecosistemas probablemente perderán a sus competidores de principios-adoptante-amistoso.Ninguna fuente de tráfico es totalmente "segura", pero una cartera diversificada tiene mucho menos riesgos asociados.Diversificación de las fuentes de tráfico significa experimentar con nuevos canales posibles para el tráfico, y que significa potencialmente encontrar fuentes que enviar grandes visitas, enlaces, citas, acciones, etc..Llegar a un nuevo canal antes de que un competidor puede ser clave para los dueños de reconocimiento de los clientes y el tráfico de la fuente.Diversificación hace menos probable que una protuberancia de carretera en cualquier canal solo puede tener un impacto de devastadores en su negocio. Una cosa que estoy muy agradecido por es que SEOmoz sólo obtiene ~ 30% de su tráfico de Google. Debe nunca (intencionadamente o no) alterar nuestra capacidad de realizar, no estaremos en el agua (a diferencia de muchos de nuestros compañeros en espacios similares).

Por supuesto, saber lo que tenemos que hacer es la parte fácil. Ejecutar en es mucho más difícil. Eso es por qué, en los próximos 18 meses, es mi objetivo para comenzar a invertir más energía en la investigación, estudios, contenidos de caso y, por supuesto, el software, para ayudar a. Para ganar en SEO, vamos a necesita ganar a todos de marketing entrante, y por suerte, los efectos secundarios son increíblemente beneficios, demasiado.

Marketing entrante atrae a millones de Google, Salesforce y Sequoia

Hoy, Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital y Salesforce.com hizo una inversión masiva - 32 millones de dólares, en Hubspot, la compañía a la vanguardia del movimiento entrantes Marketing. Hubspot tuvo un crecimiento impresionante, llegando a más de 4.000 clientes en sus cuatro años en el mercado. Los fundadores, Brian + Dharmesh, autor de un best-seller NYTimes en Marketing entrantes, y la serie de evaluador de herramientas ha sido utilizada por millones.

Para ver estos tres inversionistas, particularmente Google Ventures, poner un gran respaldo subyacente a la potencia de la SEO, medios de comunicación social y comercialización contenido (las tres piedras angulares de Marketing entrantes) es inspirador. Me sugiere que estamos avanzando más allá de la era de estas prácticas de comercialización existentes sólo para tempranamente hacia un mercado más maduro. Es una gran cosa para los profesionales como normalmente significa muchos años de crecimiento, empleo, salarios más altos y creciente adopción. También, sin embargo, augura una mayor competencia.

En caso de que no esté familiarizado, éste es un diagrama que ilustra las técnicas que el paradigma entrantes Marketing:

Marketing tradicional, y probablemente lo que Fred Wilson hablaba cuando llamó a la "comercialización" como una pobre inversión es lo que llamaríamos "salidas". Se basa en publicidad, pagado branding, vendedores, llamada fría, etc.. Marketing entrante es lo que casi todo el mundo que lea este blog prácticas - es obtener tráfico de motores de búsqueda, de contenido (blogs, artículos, videos, infografías, white papers y webinars) y de medios de comunicación social (Twitter, Facebook, blogosfera, foros y sitios de noticias sociales).

Porque "Entrantes Marketing" es real. Tanto de Salesforce CRM y Google (a través de un millón de fuentes) tienen un montón de datos sobre qué unidades de tráfico y las conversiones en la web, y creo que ambos están viendo los signos todos apuntando al Marketing entrantes. Hubspot es la opción más natural, como muy pocas empresas a escala están alcanzando sus números o penetración.

Tengo uno, hueso rápido para seleccionar la tabla superior derecha - los competidores elegidos; Eloqua, Marketo, genio, Pardot, Manticora, Neolane, etc. están en la automatización de marketing, seguimiento de plomo o plomo cultivar los campos, que no es realmente el espacio en que Hubspot jugando. Su producto puede tener cierta superposición con estos, pero ninguna de las otras empresas que figuran son filosóficamente en "comercialización entrante," están en ayudar a los clientes realizar un seguimiento de clientes potenciales, sin embargo, vienen. De Hubspot renunciará el poder de estas nuevas fuentes de tráfico y enfoca su software de medición y mejorarlas.

Yo diría que una lista de jugadores de mercado más exacta incluiría empresas como PostRank, Klout, compendio, Optify, Buddy Media, Hootsuite y, posiblemente, SEOmoz. Las funciones no coinciden, pero el objetivo - para medir y mejorar los canales de entrada de búsqueda, comercialización social + contenido - me parece más precisa.

No me sorprendería ver comentarios sobre algunas de las publicaciones de industria de la tecnología denunciando una inversión por Google en una firma de software que ayuda a rango de sitios mejor. Sin embargo, creo que esta inversión es algo mucho más amplio que la escalada de la clasificación - se trata de reconocer un cambio en el consumo y comportamiento de compra de negocios y querer desempeñar un papel en ese mercado.

Salesforce es realmente un corolario excelente y una elección inteligente como inversor. Interrumpió la comercialización software mundial la primera vez, cuando las empresas pasó de adivinar acerca de cómo seguir + optimizar un embudo a la aplicación de software que hizo trabajar. Hoy, el campo del software CRM (gestión de relaciones de cliente) sigue siendo dominado por Salesforce (aunque arriba-y-comer Infusionsoft y los competidores tradicionales como SAP, Inuit y Ley de trozos de Niza).

Hay un montón de paralelismos entre lo que hizo Salesforce en CRM y lo que pretende hacer en marketing Hubspot. El salto cognitivo entre medición tradicional análisis y recomendaciones de verdaderas es precisamente lo que Hubspot quiere llenar. En palabras del propio de Google Avinash Kaushik "google Analytics (es) principalmente un puker datos glorificado."

Como el gráfico anterior muestra, no demasiado cutre. Pregunté Dharmesh para compartir algunos datos adicionales y fue capaz de proporcionar algunos puntos de datos interesantes:

Hubspot, ni sus clientes vieron cualquier impacto de la reciente UpdateTwitter de agricultores de Google es fuente de tráfico de sus medios de comunicación social de # 1, pero LinkedIn envía la trafficFacebook best-converting es # 2, pero en los últimos meses, ha enviado Twitter ocasionalmente eclipsada en búsqueda de sentOrganic de tráfico 67.000 visitas en febrero

Y un gráfico que muestra que está bebiendo su propia ayuda de Kool (obtener tráfico principalmente de Marketing entrantes):

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Nota: Este gráfico muestra el tráfico de Hubspot Blog sólo

Aquí hay algunos datos de Google Insights:

Y aquí es un gráfico de SimplyHired muestra la tendencia de "marketing entrante" en ofertas de trabajo:

Puede ver desde LinkedIn que cargos entrantes Marketing y posiciones abiertas son sustantivas. Básicamente, estoy dibujando la conclusión de que este meme tiene las piernas.

Mi opinión es que es un buen día para Hubspot (que ahora aumentó 65 millones de dólares!) y un buen día para todos nosotros en el ecosistema entrantes Marketing. Próxima vez que alguien le pregunta si este SEO, medios de comunicación social + blogs cosas es real, usted puede decirles es realmente suficiente que Google Ventures, Salesforce y Sequoia puesto 32 millones de dólares de sus propio dólares de inversión detrás de él.

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Gráfico a través de Geoffrey Moore de cruzar el abismo

Sólo echa - como se pasa en la mayoría temprana con Marketing entrantes, va de la competición a calentarse y comercializadores mucho más están probables que se encuentran respaldadas por buen software.

p.d. Dharmesh escribió un gran post en OnStartups sobre cómo van a utilizar los fondos, razón por la plantearon, etc..

¿Qué palabras clave clasifican para?

Puestos del autor son totalmente su propia (excluyendo el improbable caso de hipnosis) y no siempre pueden reflejar las opiniones de SEOmoz, Inc.

Como iniciar su ranking de seguimiento y tomar más en serio el SEO, seguro que la pregunta (y lo escuchamos mucho): "¿cuáles son todas las palabras clave que mi sitio califica de"? Suena bastante simple, pero resulta que esta cuestión no es sólo complicado, es probablemente imposible de contestar.

Me voy para guiarle a través de, por eso es una cuestión tan difícil, discutiendo dos mitos que nos llevan a pedirle que en primer lugar. A continuación, voy a intentar al menos dar una respuesta parcial – quizás no todos, pero lo suficiente como para mantenerlo ocupado durante mucho tiempo.

Si tiene experiencia en programación, bases de datos o incluso sólo Excel, es muy fácil imaginar Google como una especie de tabla de clasificación gigante. Puede parecer algo como esto:

Mientras que este enfoque podría trabajar para un sistema muy básico, cerrado (como una base de conocimiento interno), no es práctico remotamente en la escala de algo parecido a Google. El gran alcance de datos, la velocidad deslumbrante que se actualiza y la forma en que los datos debe distribuirse entre conjuntos de servidores (formadas por miles de servidores), significa que la búsqueda moderna es esencialmente un cálculo en tiempo real. No hay ninguna tabla maestra.

¿OK, así que no es una tabla, pero Google todavía sabe lo clasificar para o podrían entenderlo, derecho? Mientras Google definitivamente tiene un montón de datos que no vamos a ver, algunas cosas son misterios incluso para ellos. En 2007, VP de ingeniería de Google, Udi Manber, conmocionó a la comunidad de búsqueda sugiriendo que 20-25% de todas las consultas de Google fueron las consultas que nunca habían visto antes. Digamos que son nuevos, como 1/4 de todas las búsquedas de Google. Google más tarde aclaró que esto está dentro de una ventana de tiempo (no todos de la historia de la búsqueda), pero el número sigue siendo sólidamente alto.

Mucho de esto tiene que ver con el hecho de que las consultas naturalmente son cada vez más y más específica, con más de la mitad de las consultas de búsqueda en 2010 está 4 palabras o más. Como personas obtener más cómodas con preguntas detalladas, lenguaje natural, sólo esta tendencia va a continuar. Una forma u otra, su sitio es ranking nuevas palabras clave cada día, y algunos de ellos son una sorpresa incluso a Google.

¿Por lo tanto, es averiguar lo clasificar para tan difícil como los unicornios en mi tabla? Afortunadamente, no. Si bien nunca sabrá todas las palabras clave que clasifican para, definitivamente puede encontrar una pila sólida de datos. Su mejor, primer destino es su propio analytics – aquí es un ejemplo de Google Analytics (vaya a "Fuentes de tráfico" > "palabras clave >"No pagados"):

Por supuesto, estas son sólo palabras clave que condujo a clics, pero para mi sitio esto representa frases clave de 1.435 en sólo 1 mes. Mi blog es apenas excepcional – obtiene unos 200 visitantes por día. Así que antes de despedir a su análisis porque ellos no mostrar todo, pregúntese si llegó incluso a utilizar los datos que proporcionan.

El segundo lugar para buscar palabras clave que está clasificación para es Google Webmaster Tools, que es uno de los únicos lugares para ver datos de palabras clave que impulsan las impresiones de búsqueda pero no clics. GWT, vaya a "Su sitio en la web" > "Consultas de búsqueda" y se verá algo como esto:

La columna "Clics" sólo va hacia abajo a "<10", so="" it's="" difficult="" to="" tell="" exactly="" which="" keywords="" drove="" no="" clicks,="" but="" comparing="" this="" data="" to="" your="" analytics="" data="" can="" help="" fill="" in="" some="" of="" the="" holes,="" if="" you="" really="" want="" to="" see="" the="" big="">

Por lo tanto, ¿qué sucede si desea encontrar palabras clave que no está buscando gente para sino para que potencialmente podría clasificar? Un lugar que podría ser es el texto del delimitador que sitios externos utilizan para vincular a su sitio, especialmente las frases de cola más largas. Por ejemplo, en nuestro propio Site Explorer abierto, haga clic en la ficha de "Distribución de texto ancla" y obtendrá una lista completa de las frases o sitios externos de términos utilizan para vincular a usted (exportar a excel para resultados hasta 10.000):

Por ejemplo, estarían # 1 para "muppet pasante yoozer", si en realidad nunca nadie ha escrito esa frase (antes de que hice hoy). No estoy seguro de lo me ayuda, pero al menos conceptualmente, viendo lo que frases personas utilizan para vincular a usted puede darle un sentido de lo que tiene la capacidad para clasificar, incluso si esas frases actualmente no conducir búsquedas.

Por lo tanto, tal vez no se puede encontrar todas las palabras clave que nunca clasificar, pero ¿y qué? Mediante estas técnicas y extrapolar un poco (poner en algún tiempo de calidad con Excel), fácilmente puede generar una lista de cientos o miles de palabras clave que usted ya sea actualmente o potencialmente podría clasificar para. Esto debería mantenerse ocupado por un tiempo.

Prevención basada en vínculos penas - pizarra el viernes

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 At the end of February, Google announced that it was updating its search algorithm to serve higher-quality results to searchers. The update has since been dubbed the "Farmer Update" due to the algorithm's new bias against what Google considers "sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful." Translation: if you own www.how-to-rank-better-by-reading-these-articles-i-stole.com, things aren't going to be looking as peachy-keen as they may have been beforehand!

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows how to avoid being penalized by Google for suspicious linkage and having your rankings slip or completely disapparate as a result. He uses the example from the SEOptimise blog of What Happens When You Build 10,00 Dodgy Links to a New Domain in 24 hours. Hint: if you do own the aforementioned domain, you may want to reconsider your users' needs - for at least a couple of reasons.

Howdy, SEOmoz fans! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're talking about preventing link-based penalties. So, a lot of you have likely experienced the kind of thing that I am talking about. Whether you are a consultant or you are in-house, you're working at an agency, or you're just kind of tuning on your own site, you've seen this problem of the temptation to build, buy, borrow, beg, steal lots of links that are questionable in quality and value.

I want to share with you a quick story before we get started here. The blog SEO Optimize wrote a great piece about an experience they had in building these types of links. They started with a traffic graph of what had happened with their site. They put the new site on the Web. It's a relatively new site. They were growing sort of slowly and steadily. The spikes were a little bit lower than the valleys every week. They were sort of growing and growing. Then they decide, you know what, why don't we buy/build 10,000 dodgy links. I love the British because they use much better -- hi, everyone in London -- they use much better language. So, they go to these dodgy neighborhoods, maybe the East End, that's where it's dodgy, right? They build some links. They built 10,000 of these links. That's a lot. I think I should put a "whoa" there. Spell whoa. So, they build 10,000 dodgy links in this period, and what happens to their Goggle traffic? Shoots up. Skyrockets. Look at that. Insane growth. They, in fact, more than 5Xd their Google traffic, at least according to the graph that I was looking at on their blog post. You can see that it actually stayed like that for a few weeks. Google clearly not catching these links. I love the description that the blog post has. What he says is, "Just as I was beginning to worry that Google couldn't recognize this kind of crap, pow." It just drops down. It dropped down to a level so low that it was below the prior level of traffic, and essentially all they were getting here is branded terms, so people literally searching for that website itself. They're not ranking for any of their old keywords. These links aren't just not helping them, they are actively hurting them and preventing them from ranking, and it has been going on like that.

The moral of the story is invest in low quality links and temporarily you may see some benefit, but for the long term it can be quite harmful. You might be thinking to yourself, wait a minute, if this is the profile of how Google operates, couldn't I just build 10,000 dodgy links to all my competitors? Let's back up in time and remember that this is a new site. This is a new domain. They are likely looking at the profile of this site and saying, "Hey, they haven't built up a reputable, important, powerful brand yet. So it is much more likely that links can hurt them dramatically than it is a site that's been around a little while." That being said, there's likely many of you, possibly some of you even watching this video, who have sites like this or have friends with sites like this, clients with sites like this, and so you are wondering how can I prevent this kind of potential if I have seen that they did acquire some dodgy links, I did maybe acquire some dodgy links, I am considering it, or I am worried that my client did, I am worried the previous SEO did -- remember the case study with JCPenney and losing all their rankings because of the ins and outs of how Google measured them. You might want to be thinking, boy, I am in this period right now, maybe I am in that grace area. How can I prevent this from happening to me?

The first thing that I want to ask you to do is to ask yourself why. Not why are you going to get penalized. Why do you deserve to be ranking number one? Why do you deserve to be in the top few sites for these particular queries? Is it that you have the best product out there? Do you have the most innovative UI, the most usable format for it? Do you have the highest quantity of information? Are your user reviews the best that they could be? Is it the fact that you have access to data that no one else has? There has to be a unique value proposition for any given business and that includes a web-based business model. If you don't have this, then, yeah, you're only option to get links, to get references, is to go to those dodgy neighborhoods because no one is going to organically want to link to you editorially and say, "I endorse and recommend this particular business."

Once you have answered that question, I need you to focus on content. Well, I don't need it. You need it. You need you to focus on content because content is where those links are going to come from. In the absence of a reason apart from money or manipulation or some type of a personal relationship, the only way to get good reference links, good editorial links on the Web is to be the best resource for that particular query. Being that resource means content. I don't just mean text. I mean everything. I mean images and video. I mean other forms of content like user generated material. I mean things like the interface that you're putting on it, the UI that surrounds it. I even mean things like the humans, the people in the real world that are associated with creating that content. Having the authority and the credibility that comes from a big name in your particular field, which could be a very small field and a very unknown person to most of the rest of us, still matters quite a bit.

The third thing that I would do is go look at the top link sources to brands. So, where a lot of SEOs get into trouble is that you go and you look at the links that are pointing to the people who are ranking number 1, number 2, number 3, maybe top 10. A lot of them might be in this neighborhood. They might be the type of people who have built links for the short term, and they are ranking in the short term and Google is eventually going to catch up with them, which is why I encourage you to go find the brands. Those particular sites/pages that have built up authority, not just in the search results through links but in the equity that is built through mindshare, through branding, through knowledge of that website, and those brands will often have references to them that come from very good places. If you look at their top links using Open Site Explorer, using something like the Link Intersect tool, if it is a local site you could use Ontolo Whitespark's Link Finder, which I think is a great tool as well, even doing searches like, if I do a search query, let's say that I see a brand like O'Neill who makes surfboards and surf equipment and that kind of stuff, right. So, I might do a search like, "Where is O'Neill - site: O'Neill.com?" What I am doing here when I am searching Google like this, is I say, "Show me all the places where this brand is mentioned that is not on their website." That will show you a bunch of places that are talking about that brand. Those types of mentions often lead to links, often lead to references, build that brand's equity, build that brand's awareness and knowledge. Those are probably really good places to get links.

Number four, finally, and this one might even be a priority depending on how nervous you are that this is about to happen. You want to clear out the worst links. This means digging into your link profile and identifying anything that looks especially manipulative. Sometimes those huge long lists of reciprocal link pages, where you're pointing to everybody else and they're all pointing to you, that might be a good thing to clear out. You might want to e-mail your link partners and say, "Hey guys, sorry, but I think Google might really jump on us about this. I need to get rid of those." You might want to go and dig through any link brokers or buyers that either you have engaged with or the client previously engaged with or who knows, whoever was working on the site before you engaged with, your evil alter ego fight club style Tyler Durden worked on. You know, a guy gets up in the middle of the night, never know what he's going to do. Finding those links. Clearing them out. Getting rid of the ones that you can. Don't panic. Bad links aren't always going to hurt you. Everyone on the Web has some bad link pointing to them. Scrapers. Back in college, I built some bad links when it was late at night. That happens to everyone. It's okay. But, if you can find the worst of those, you are going to prevent some of these penalties. If you can find those really good ones, you build up that profile that protects yourself from some of this negative stuff.

All right everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday and hope we'll see you again next week. Take care.

Duane Forrester de Bing sobre herramientas de Webmaster, mediciones y umbrales de calidad de mapa del sitio

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 This week we are thrilled to have a special guest joining us for Whiteboard Friday: Duane Forrester, a top-of-the-line SEO who went over to the other side of the fence and now works at Bing's Webmaster Project as their Senior Project Manager. Duane's the one you'll see throughout their blog, and if you have a feature request or any questions about Bing's Webmaster tools, he's your man. Duane joins Rand to discuss a multitude of search topics, including Bing's Webmaster Tools suite, the metrics used and displayed in their tools, and some exciting and extremely important news about Bing's use of quality thresholds for sitemaps. Check it out, and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Rand:    Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I have another very special guest for you. Duane Forrester used to be one of the chief SEOs for Microsoft, architecting all the things that Microsoft had to do about SEO. Duane, you felt the webmasters' pain, you felt the SEOs' pain, and now they handed you the keys to the Ferrari and you are running Outreach for Webmasters for Bing, the search side of things. You switched sides. It's amazing.

Duane:    Yeah, totally.

Rand:    First off, thanks for being here. I really appreciate having you.

Duane:    Thanks for having me over.

Rand:    Second, tell me what this change has been like for you, to go from SEO guy to search engine guy.

Duane:    Yeah, it's been kind of intense. I spent over a decade of my life as an in-house search SEO, and this is a dramatic change. Seeing things from the other side gives me an entirely new perspective. Some things are very validating. Other things, I'm slightly embarrassed by.

Rand:    That's a good combo.

Duane:    Yeah, and it's humbling is what it is. So, part of what I'm keeping in my mind as I go into work every day and I work on Webmaster tools and I work on bringing new ideas and content forward is this idea that I was there, and the people that are there now are fulfilling a very important role for their business. They need as much help as they can get. So I truly am the eyes and ears of it. It's amazingly exciting.

Rand:    It's great for you to have that background rather than . . .

Duane:    Completely.

Rand:    . . . an attitude of antagonism potentially towards people doing SEO. You've got one of empathy. I think that's wonderful.

Duane:    No, my antagonism is directed internally toward everybody I work with because I want all this stuff and they keep bringing me in.

Rand:    So on that front, let's talk about some of the stuff that you've already gotten into the product. The last six months have been phenomenal. I just logged in for the first time in about 30 days, maybe 20, 30 days, and there's tons of sweet new stuff. Talk to me first about this Index Explorer thing. This is kind of spiffy.

Duane:    So, Index Explorer for you Mozzers who have been watching, you'll know this. Index explorer is an area, if you come into Webmaster tools and you actually look at the tab called Index across the top, on the left-hand side at the top of the navigator, you'll see Index Explorer there. I've known about Index Explorer for a few years now because it's something that I can use as an internal employee to kind of peer into Bing's index and see what's there.

It's a really handy thing for us, because when I was SEO for MSN, it was at vast scale. So, if I had an indexation problem, it was a magnitude of orders. Now, actually everybody who has access to Bing Webmaster tools sees a version of that, applicable to their own domains.

Rand:    So this is like the internal tool pointed externally and you can see the stuff that applies to you.

Duane:    Right.

Rand:    So, I can go in, I mean we just did this with SEOmoz.

Duane:    Yeah, exactly.

Rand:    We looked at, here's SEOmoz.org and you click this little drop down and it's got all the folders in there. So now I can see slash blog. Then I can see any individual page, for example, post.html. That's not actually our structure. Then if I click on this, it pops up a little box and I've got links and I have anchor text.

Duane:    Exactly, yep.

Rand:    I can export that.

Duane:    There are actually a couple of really neat features in here. So, what we do is in this area we give you the ability to come in and take a look at something. Maybe you're looking at and you're saying, "Jeez, you know, I had a duplicate content issue there, and I've since installed a rel=canonical to solve my issue. But that's still in the index, so I need to remove it." You can actually click a button right here and block that. That tells us, "Hey, you know what? You shouldn't bother with this anymore." Thank you very much. We move on from there.

Rand:    How does that act? Does that act like a robots.txt blocking?

Duane:    Essentially, it basically tells us that, okay, if you, the site owner, are saying don't go there, then we're going to honor that, because, quite frankly, if everyone took that kind of care and attitude toward maintaining the website, it lessens the resource load on us.

Rand:    Cool.

Duane:    By allowing this little button, this little button . . .

Rand:    That little button right there.

Duane:    Now orange. It makes a big difference for us. And we give you the option, you can block an individual URL, or you can block a folder if you want. You may look at that and say, "Oh, you know what? I don't need anything in this print folder. Block that."

Rand:    And now I don't have to write to robots.txt if I don't have access?

Duane:    You still should be writing to robots.txt. However, there are cases where people won't have access to it, and this is an opportunity for them to still communicate the need.

Rand:    Sure, absolutely.

Duane:    Another area that's in here that's really cool is we're going to show you how many links there are to this particular URL. You'll see a little number here. The one we looked at was 198. And then if you actually click on where it says "pages linking to this page," click on that, it opens up this really nice, beautiful pop-up, and that actually contains all of the URLs, the domains that are linking to you, the URL that it's on, and the anchor text that's being used to provide all those 198 links to this individual URL on your website.

Rand:    And you're showing these, if I recall here, you're showing them in sort of a date order of crawling . . .

Duane:    Right.

Rand:    . . . and you're showing up to 20,000 per URL.

Duane:    Exactly, exactly.

Rand:    That's a lot of link data.

Duane:    That is a lot. For most small, medium, and even a lot of large websites, that is going to be far in excess of what they're going to need. That is on a per URL basis, so it's not 20,000 overall. It is 20,000 applied to this individual URL. The next URL gets another 20,000, and another 20,000 and so on.

Rand:    This is potentially a lot more data than I can see from any existing source at least about my own site.

Duane:    Exactly.

Rand:    Because Webmaster tools in Google has a sort of a limit on, a smaller limit and it's across the whole site.

Duane:    Right, exactly. This right here, I am super excited about Index Explorer simply because of the detail it lets you get into. So, now let's say, you're really trying to figure out how to build out a proper link building program, and you're looking at this going, "All right. We have good links. How do we maintain this? How do we optimize these things?" This is a blueprint for who's linking to you and what they're saying about you. This is an opportunity now for you to contact the websites and say, "Hey, I notice you're using this anchor text to link to me. Instead of click here, can you actually put my product name in there? Here's a sentence I've written for you that incorporates that. All you have to do is copy and paste it in place for me. Thank you very much." If people are wondering how you tracked it on the website . . .

Rand:    How much do you have to pay these people to have them do that for you?

Duane:    Oh, dude, that's between you and them, right? Personally, I don't pay anybody anything. My own website? If you're going to do it, I love you for it, and I will show you the love later on. If you're going to ask for a handout for it, it's not really how it works.

Rand:    Right, yeah. I was going to say, and Bing has been pretty good about penalizing a lot of the links that look manipulative on the Web too.

Duane:    Yeah. It's a natural part of keeping things clean, right? At Bing, we are very keen on having a quality driven index. So, the main focus we have is making sure that everything that gets in is a good resource, when someone makes a query they get a realistic answer that is actually an answer to their query. Not, here's some shallow depth data. I'm going to click on it, and then oh, it's not really what I want. I go back and I try it again. We're trying to shorten that number of searches to get to the final answer.

Rand:    So, a question that a lot of people have around Bing is often, I've launched my site and I've seen maybe some other search engines pick it up, but I haven't yet been crawled as deeply, or I've been crawled but I haven't indexed. Can this help to answer that question of why that's happening?

Duane:    Well, what it will do is, over time, first off you've got to get in the index. If you're not in the index, nothing's going to show here. So what you want to do is make use of the submit sitemap feature we have in here. You know what, I was going to do a blog post on this on the Webmaster Blog but I'll just tell Mozzers, you guys are hearing it here first. We have a quality threshold on our sitemaps. When you build a site map for us, we want it to be clean. When you put a URL into our site map, what I don't want to see in there is any URL that's a 404, 302, 301, anything at all. I want the end state URL only.

Rand:    You don't want rel=canonicals.

Duane:    Only end state URL. That's the only thing I want in a sitemap.xml. We have a very tight threshold on how clean your sitemap needs to be. When people are learning about how to build sitemaps, it's really critical that they understand that this isn't something that you do once and forget about. This is an ongoing maintenance item, and it has a big impact on how Bing views your website. What we want is end state URLs and we want hyper-clean. We want only a couple of percentage points of error.

Rand:    The best of the best 200s.

Duane:    Right, because if you start showing me 301s in here, rel=canonicals, 404 errors, all of that, I'm going to start distrusting your sitemap and I'm just not going to bother with it anymore. If the way that you're communicating to me that you have new content is to submit the sitemap through the functionality in Webmaster tools, instantly you're submitting me something that I've learned not to trust because its cleanliness is in question. It's very important that people take that seriously. It's not a fire and forget. Don't just go and grab some random tool when you do a quick search and saw, oh, here's a sitemap generator. It will go crawl my site. Blah, there you are. Forget how many links that actually misses. Seriously, be thoughtful when you build your sitemap. We don't want every single page from every single website. We want your best quality pages and content. So, you as a site owner . . .

Rand:    Are there content thresholds that I should be thinking about around this too?

Duane:    There are probably are, but those are buried so deep in so many different layers and there's a lot of other influences too. I mean, you can have variations and orders of magnitude and still rank well.

Rand:    Okay.

Duane:    It's not something that I would really say to folks, look you need to lose sleep over that. This, you should be thinking about and investing in.

Rand:    So any of these codes, you really need to worry about.

Duane:    Right, exactly. I love this idea, Rand, this whole pick your top 200, whatever the number happens to be for you, pick it and run with it. You don't need everything indexed. Pick your best stuff and make sure that's in there. Make sure your quality content is in there, right? Be sure that you look at the site and say, "What's the goal of this page? Is it to monetize ads? Is it to convert somehow? What is the goal of it? Is it optimized properly to do that? If it is, I want that indexed in the search engine ranking well."

Rand:    Duane, are you telling me that we need SEOs?

Duane:    Funnily enough, it works.

Rand:    Along with this, there's another really cool tab and we're not going to go all through it, but I want to talk about the traffic tab because there's cool stuff in there right now. It will show the rankings data for Bing.

Duane:    Exactly.

Rand:    It shows something called average rank and average impression rank.

Duane:    Exactly.

Rand:    So per-click rank and impression rank, what are the difference between the two?

Duane:    The way it works out is, because of the volumes that a search engine deals with, like millions of things every minute, essentially, what we're really showing you here is we're saying, when someone did query, the average impression -- where you showed -- is this position. It could be that the average works out to 3.2. So you were roughly the third position for all these queries. The next line over will show you what the click-through rate was. The average click-through rate for you may have been 9.8%, which pretty much falls in line with what we kind of all know and understand.

It's a realistic thing, right? Then the next column over is actually going to show you the average position you were in when that click happened. Now, here's where it gets really exciting for an SEO. If you know that you're in third place most of the time and your click-through rate was 10%, we'll say, but the clicks happen when you're in the first position, how does that 10% that you're getting being in the first position potentially compare with other people who may be in the first position? Now, we don't show you the competitive data, but it should get you thinking about this. Is 10% for me in the first position on this query a realistic amount?

Rand:    So, I can look at those numbers, and then I can say to myself, "Wait a minute. This doesn't match up with some of my better click-through rates.

Duane:    Right, exactly.

Rand:    I should be thinking better title . . .

Duane:    Meta description, title, all that, exactly.

Rand:    URL string, rich snippets.

Duane:    Totally. Speaking of rich snippets . . .

Rand:    The stuff that Stefan was showing us, and it just rolled out is pretty slick. You've got that nice sort of box, and there's the guy and he's cooking up some piaya in there, whatever he's got. Then there's the title listing and the meta here.

Duane:    Yep.

Rand:    I mean that looks really slick.

Duane:    It is. I don't know what to say, other than if you're thinking about rich snippets, do it. It's very valuable to a search engine, which means it's very valuable to you and your content.

Rand:    What's the how of this? Is there stuff in Webmaster tools now or will there be?

Duane:    Not yet. Just as we were prepping for the session, we were talking about future looking things. Rich snippets is one of those still kind of floating for me ideas. I have to find the space for it. I have to understand what the value prop is, what the likely cost is to you, as a business owner. It's one thing if somebody has . . . if there's anybody out there who does plug-ins for WordPress and wants to make a rich snippet plug-in, might be useful to people.

Rand:    All right. Rich snippet plug-in . . .

Duane:    Because, I mean, you think about the plug-ins we have for WordPress already . . .

Rand:    Is Joseph watching this?

Duane:    I'm guessing there's already one out there, because rich snippets is a concept that's been around for a while now. So my money is on there's already one there.

Rand:    The question is, is the format that you're using the same format that I would use when I am submitting rich snippets to Google, or is this slightly different?

Duane:    It's a little bit different, but we're essentially looking for the same kind of points, right? We want this meta markup data to be able to help us understand exactly what this piece of content is. In a lot of cases, it's not going to matter because it's a regular content page . . .

Rand:    What is this image? How does it related to this page?

Duane:    Right, for that kind of thing, that's really important to us, because, yet still, even though it's 2011 and we are technology advanced, although we're still flying the space shuttle today, search engines still can't actually look at a picture and say, "Ah, that is a fat chef with piaya."

Rand:    Must be good.

Duane:    Right, exactly. Eats well.

Rand:    Awesome. Before we wrap up, there are three questions that I know webmasters should be curious about. You may not be able to give us a ton data about what's happening with Yahoo Site Explorer.

Duane:    I'm actually going to not quite pull a no comment on this one, but Yahoo Site Explorer is a Yahoo product, and we don't comment on their product pipeline or things they're working on. What I will tell you is, if you're looking for external link data, it's right here. So we have it for you, right? It's a similar product. We power it.

Rand:    Is Bing thinking about some way of showing competitive linking, so like I can go see the links to anyone? Or is that not a product that you're interested in at this point?

Duane:    I, personally, have a great deal of interest in it. Bubbling that up to what we can actually bring forward, there's a lot of layers to get through on that. Conversations like that, very nascent at this stage, meaning it's on my whiteboard. However, I am influenced by the greater user population. So, as people have feedback, I'm going to be at SMX in a couple of weeks, I'll be at South by Southwest, SES New York, specifically looking for feedback from people.

Rand:    Fantastic and in the blog comments.

Duane:    Exactly. If we have like . . . you mean I'm supposed to come to the blog. Oh, you didn't tell me that.

Rand:    What? You give up SEO and now you don't come and visit anymore. What's up with that?

Duane:    No. Seriously, if people do have feedback for it, right, I capture all of that data because that is a tool that I can use with our product planning folks to say, hey, look, we reached x number of thousands of people with this and the percentage that got back to us was like 18% said they want "A"'.

Rand:    So, you're telling me if I throw up a little survey on the blog and I ask people what they most want from Bing's Webmaster tools people . . .

Duane:    I will buy you a martini.

Rand:    All right. It's done. It's going to happen.

Duane:    There you go. There we go.

Rand:    Then, static rank, you know people . . .

Duane:    Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Rand:    Well, MSN and then Bing had this for years, this static rank rate, which my understanding is it has some of the logic of page rank, but a bit more advanced in terms of what it analyzes and what it looks at.

Duane:    There are a lot of signals that goes into calculating that, as I am sure there are for page rank. Now that I've kind of come inside . . .

Rand:    You can see those.

Duane:    . . . I get it now.

Rand:    So static rank, we sort of talk about like, hey, Bing wants more webmasters paying attention. They want more people downloading and installing their toolbar. What do you think about putting static rank in a toolbar or in Webmaster tools?

Duane:    Personally, I see a great deal of value for people in it. There's even the entire conversation about gaming and all that. We're kind of at the stage now where we're kind of really getting beyond all those things. Like the ability to deal with people trying to game something has evolved immensely. It's . . .

Rand:    Showing them a little one through twenty radiated bar isn't going to make them more . . .

Duane:    From the company's perspective, however, there's a lot of personal or I should say proprietary investment in this concept. So, what would make it out is got to go through a lot of layers again. However, in your poll . . .

Rand:    Put in static rank.

Duane:    Why not?

Rand:    All right. It's in there.

Duane:    I mean, seriously, if there's any tools people think they might want, let us know. I'd be surprised if we didn't already have a version of it floating around the ecosystem somewhere. Part of my job is to bring that all to one spot that's useful.

Rand:    I was going to say, you've done some cool stuff to bring Index Explorer into the public facing tools.

Duane:    Exactly.

Rand:    Last question, and this is around less Bing focused stuff or tool focused stuff, but we have this big content farms update, the farmer update that's coming out from Google, and there's been this discussion ongoing for a while around, hey what's up with people like Mahalo and eHow and Answers.com, who are essentially producing a page for every search term they can possibly ever find. Sometimes of okay quality, other times of really low quality. What's your opinion of how, if you were in charge of the algorithm of Bing and how it got handled, what would you do?

Duane:    I'd be looking, and this is the toughest part of it, is separating the wheat from the chaff. These guys seriously have some depth in areas that are legitimate answers to questions. How do you, you can't look at a domain level solution and say, okay, if you're this domain, there you go. It's incredibly hard to crack it. I'd be seriously looking at talking with these businesses and making sure they understand the value and what their role is in the ecosystem.

Rand:    I was going to say, could the same thing that you were talking about with sitemaps apply here, where it's like, hey, you guys don't do a good job of curating the content you produce. You're trying to game things. We don't like that.

Duane:    I'm working, right now, on my whiteboard, it's this size and it's absolutely full, chock full with content that I have to write, I have to produce. If people who were actually producing shallow and non-relevant content read the basic, the top five points of it and just adhered to that, they wouldn't have an issue. This is my biggest takeaway. Having run the SEO side of something and then come over to Webmaster and I'm kind of looking at it from another point of view now, is seriously sweat your content, sweat being an authority. That's what you have to invest in. If you think there's a short cut to get there, I can almost guarantee you there's not. It takes hard work.

Rand:    And it's weird too because I think that a lot of these businesses look at what the algorithms are doing and they say, "But I'm clearly getting away with it. Why wouldn't I take advantage of this in the short term?" Well, maybe you can bring it back to your team. But I would love to hear maybe some content from you guys in the blog in the future like, look, we gave you another 90 days to get your crap out of our index before we do it for you and you're not going to like what we do.

Duane:    That's a legitimate approach too. It's our index. We've got to keep it clean and keep the users happy.

Rand:    Duane, this has been fantastic. I think folks have likely learned a lot. We're going to grab some screen shots from some of the things that we talked about, put them in here. We're going to run a poll next week and ask people for some suggestions on Bing.

Duane:    Awesome.

Rand:    We hope that you'll come back and join us again.

Duane:    Absolutely.

Rand:    Thank you so much.

Duane:    Great. Thanks for having me.

Rand:    Take care everybody.

Duane:    Thanks Mozzers.