Posted by randfishOver the past few months, Eytan Seidman, product manager for Live Search at Microsoft, and I have traded a few emails on the subject of an interview. At long last, we've got a visible product to show off :-) In this interview, I asked Eytan about the recent changes and updates to Live, his involvement with the search space and much more. Enjoy!Eytan, first off, thanks a ton for agreeing to participate - it's terrific to have you on the blog. Can you give us a little bit of background about yourself before you came to Microsoft, how you found your way to the Live search team and what your current position is?I came to Microsoft straight out of college. I interned at MS in the summer of 2000, loved it and came back right after I graduated in 2001. Since then I have basically worked on two products. From 2001 to 2003 I worked on Microsoft CRM which is an application that helps small and medium sized business manage their customers. Since 2003 I have been on search and worked on a variety of things. Initially I started out helping with the design and architecture of our crawl infrastructure which is what led to my being involved with SES and Webmasterworld. For the past 1.5 yrs I have been leading a team of program managers that drive two major efforts – relevance and relevance measurement. The first is everything we do at run-time to find the best results and the second area pertains to how we measure the relevance of our engine.You're one of the few folks from MSN/Live search who speaks publicly about the service. Will you continue to be a/the public face for Live or should we expect a bigger team in the near future representing Live to the webmaster and search industry worlds? Who might be a part of that team?We have had a number of folks beyond myself be the face of Live Search over the years. One of them is my manager, Ramez Naam who has spoken at SES and Webmasterworld on a number of occasions.  I won’t give any specifics or set expectations about folks from the team becoming more involved, but it is something we think about.Live recently upgraded many of its services, including core search relevancy and index size. I had some specific questions about that shift, the first of which is - how do you measure search relevancy for humans? Who tells you "hey, the users like this better and they feel their results are more satisfactory?" Do you find that satisfaction has gone up for all types of searches, or only for more "common" or "popular" queries?This is a great question Rand. We have a number of different mechanisms to measure search quality. While I unfortunately cannot get into the specifics of it we do look at multiple things including “blind” tests as well as data of how our users are engaging with our live site. In terms of satisfaction, the improvement is across the board. One of the things we highlighted at our recent searchification event is some of the neat work that we did around “query intent”. That is we are doing a ton of work to better understand what people really mean when they enter a query. An example of this on our blog is the query [nw coed soccer] and being able to understand that in this particular context [nw] means [northwest].  I mention this as clearly this is not a common query, but it is the type of thing you will see a lot of improvement on as you use the engine more.The new Live search results feature a lot of cool vertical integration from local, product search, instant answers, etc. - what are some of your personal favorites? What are the ones that you think are a considerable leap above what the other engines offer right now?I think all of them are really neat. The one I use the most is almost certainly what we call our Shopping Answer. This delivers instant answers for all things related to Shopping and specifically in electronics it really shines. A great example of this if you query Nikon D40x.  You will notice that right below the ads there is a relevant “instant answer” that gives you some price information and then lots of aggregated review information. If you click on “More Features and Reviews” you can taken to a detail page that gives more detail on the reviews. I think this experience is awesome and is truly a leap ahead of our competition. Try it for yourself.With the new relevancy algorithm, it appears you've been cracking down on a lot of spam in the index - can you talk about any of the techniques or tactics you've been able to defeat (even if it's just from a broad sense)?No comment :)Fair enough - how about this - in the fight against spam, what would you say is a current high priority for Live? What are some things you'd tell Webmasters and Site Owners to really watch out for, because you're seeing a lot of people engage in it and get penalized as a result?Still, no comment.With the rollout, it appears there's a fresh (larger) index of the web, new algorithm(s) and new results. This varies from a standard "update" or re-tooling of an index/algo - any reason you chose to go with a clean launch rather than iterative changes? Is this standard for Live, or should we expect that more consistent changes to the current system will continue to come each day/week/month?We are rolling out improvements to the live site all of the time. This release dubbed the “Live Search Update” was a culmination of a lot of big efforts and so we decided to release it all at the same time. Specifically this release had a lot of things that are hard to in a time of span of just a couple of months and so it made sense to bundle up.  I cannot comment on what we will do moving forward. We are very psyched to have an infrastructure that allows to ship improvements to our live site very easily. We will use that infrastructure to our advantage while at the same time being realistic about the time it takes to ship major improvements and game changing ideas.Live is now rolling out Webmaster Tools as well  - what are the big goals with that product? What is Microsoft hoping to achieve by providing access to this data?Webmasters are a critical piece of our success. Fundamentally it is webmasters who provide us the content that makes our engine useful to end consumers. We think that if we can forge a closer relationship with webmasters we can accomplish two things. First, we can help webmasters understand how Live Search is beneficial to their business and where they might be able to improve to get better results. For example, customers will be able to see details on what our crawler is seeing which may help them deal with issues more effectively. Second, we hope that we can build a relationship with folks so that we are able to get more of the content and get it faster. One thing that we noticed for example while mining our logs is that there are still a fair number of sites that specifically only allow Googlebot and do not allow MSNBot. If we can reach out to those webmasters and get them traffic by indexing their content we think that we will have done something that serves everyone well.Live's Neural Net - have you been happy with progress of this ranking system? Are you planning on sticking with it for the foreseeable future? Have there been major tweaks since it was first announced back in summer of 2005?Overall our core ranker, our net, has scaled very well. That is, even as we increased the size of our index by 4 fold and fundamentally made the job of our ranker more difficult we have continued to improve the relevance of our engine. I would say that we don’t hold anything sacred.  We are not married to any particular piece of technology. There are folks on the core product team and in MSR always looking to improve our Net or potentially replace it with something better and if we think that will deliver far more relevant results to our customers then we will move to it.Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that Neural Net can be "trained" to get smarter and smarter over time by showing it "examples" of what you want great results to look like. How far along would you say this process is? Are we seeing 10% of what Neural Net is capable of doing? 20%? 90%? (Maybe, an undisclosed percent under/over 50?)More data points can help our net learn more effectively and that is something that we are always looking to improve. I cannot, unfortunately, disclose details of where we think we are along that curve.The "related searches" on the side of Live.com's results - are those semantically related through term vectors/usage or "related" in that many folks who searched the given query also searched for the listed terms/phrases?The related searches are a combination of “more specific” and “broader”.  So if you search for [Eytan] it turns out that a fair number of people who looked for that are specifically looking for [Eytan seidman]: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=eytan&form=QBRE.  I swear that was not gamed.  There are also scenarios where we think people might want to search more broadly. For example, if you search for [Perl] then we show as a related search [Php] as that tends to be broadly related to [Perl].How does Live's News search work - are the news sources editorially selected? How can an aspiring news site join in?Yes, the sourcesare editorially selected. Fair question. We don’t have a formal mechanism to accept nominations although it is constantly reviewed. If you have one you would like to submit send it to me and I will get it to the right folks.Are there forums/groups/blogs that the Live team regularly reads? Any you particularly like or find valuable? Any that the Live folks plan to participate at in the near future?We all read almost all of the technology and search related news out there – SEOMoz (of course!), Techmeme, TechCrunch, Webmasterworld, Searchenginewatch, Battelle, Searchengineland, Sphinn and others.  Right now we participate on Webmasterworld.  What we participate on is really a function of ensuring that once we start participating we can be as consistent as possible about always doing so. Over time, my hope is that will increase as we have more bandwidth to so. We are also posting to our team blog on a much more frequent basis covering topics that we hope our readers will find interesting.Sebastian (Gard - his blog) spoke to us about Microsoft's use of a quality panel of raters and it was noted at Searchification (see this slide). It's also something that seems to be common in Live press discussions( i.e. our rating panel gave us feedback X, Y or Z). From talking with Sebastian, we noted that all of the engines do it, but only Microsoft publicly discusses its human search quality rating team (although to my knowledge, all of the engines - see Google-  have human raters) - two questions - why do you think the other engines try to keep their human, editorial input quiet and what value do you see human raters providers? Where do you get the most help from a large focus group, rather than teams of engineers and machines?It really is not a super interesting topic :)Among major web search properties, Live is among the least active in the social media space - is that going to change? Does Microsoft see value in "Web 2.0," user-generated content, web-as-a-platform, etc. or feel that it's all a fad?I really don’t know what Web 2.0 means anymore. Seriously. I think Rich Barton has it largely right in terms of denouncing what some might view as the definition for Web 2.0. See the article here: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archives/122180.asp. On Live Search we do believe in User-Generated Content in a non-trivial way. Let me give you a couple of examples. First Local Search. If you search for [Kisaku Seattle, WA] and click on the Local Instant Answer you will be taken to the following page. 21 customers who have collectively given it 4.5 stars. User Generated Content.  That data then flows through to our Live Search Mobile application. If you use it on Windows Mobile or Java enabled phone you will see that same data come across which can be hugely helpful when you are looking for a restaurant in some random place. Those are just a couple of example of how we will use User Generated Content and user data asit is helpful.Another example is the work we have done with collections on Live Search Maps. You can build collections, share them and even create a 3D movie of the collection. We announced this at Searchification and it is shipping the week of October 15th.MSN/Live was one of the first to release research about vision-based page segmentation - is that something you've found usable and useful in applying to the ranking algorithm? Some folks speculated that it was simply too load-intensive to be applied to the billions of web pages that have to be crawled. See both - http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?tr_id=690and http://www.searchengineguide.com/articles/2005/0301_rc1.htmlThis technology is definitely important to us. When you think of something like News and doing a query on that it is really critical to be able to separate navigational text from other text. If you look at our news results and descriptions (http://search.live.com/news/results.aspx?q=seattle&FORM=BNRE) you will notice that we tend to pull summaries fairly well from just the core article.More broadly I would say that MSR does a tremendous amount of research in the area of Web Search and they are totally free to publish it. There are numerous folks across MSR that we work with closely. Depending on where they are at with their research it might be something that we go and immediately integrate into our product or it might be something that they work on for a little while longer as it matures. In terms of computational power we really don’t think about those things too much. If something can help improve the experience in a dramatic way then we want to leverage it. You can read more about our massive investment in computational power in these articles: http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/04/19/microsoft-builds-giant-datacenter-in-quincy-washington and http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Jan/19/microsoft_confirms_huge_san_antonio_center.htmlWhat are your thoughts about search "fracturing" in the future? Do you think that vertical search, mobile search, local search, etc. could eventually all have individual properties serving them or will the "major" engines retain control of those niches?I am not a deep visionary about what will happen. I think, however, that if you look at why the engines and specifically Live Search are building up expertise around things like Shopping, Local, Entertainment and Health it is because customers are asking us those questions.  That is, we are building up deep domain experiences specifically in response to customer needs so clearly we see the demand.Have to ask - with regard to paid links, Google has a very public and oft-discussed policy that suggests that site owners who engage in paid links of any kind should use "nofollow" or risk having their websites penalized in some form or fashion. What is Live's position on paid links? Do you see a difference between links that are primarily advertising and those that are meant to manipulate search engine rankings? Will Live take action against sites it suspects of buying or selling links and if so, do you have concerns that this could create a "Live-Bowling" type of competitive environment? I'm interested in both philosophy and your practical application - how does the Live Search Team think about paid links? Are they always evil? Are there degrees of evil? Can some paid links be good and relevant and others be untrustworthy? Do webmasters or websites risk getting banned for buying links? For selling links? Are you concerned that penalizing link buyers could result in competitive link buying (buying links and pointing them to your high-ranking competition in order to get their sites hurt)?The thing I think about most in this space is relevance and objectivity of links. The reality is that most paid links are a.) obviously not objective and b.) very often irrelevant. If you are asking about those then the answer is absolutely there is a risk. We will not tolerate bogus links that add little value to the user experience and are effectively trying to game the system. Is there a small gray area of people that use paid links in a totally legit manner? Yes, however, it is a small percentage of what we see.Finally, I wanted to come back and ask a personal question - what drives you to be in search? What are the specific elements that make you passionate about the work that you do?There are really three things I love about search. First is the task of search. I think that web search, specifically, is at the leading edge of transforming the way people seek and find information and to be in the thick of that is really exciting. Second, is the technology.  We work on some super interesting technical challenges day in, day out.  Many of the problems we work on involve mining petabytes of data, using 1000’s of machines to do so and just doing things at a scale that is hard to almost anywhere else. Last, but definitely most importantly are the people. I think that even if you like the technology you work on if you don’t get along with the people you are never going to love your job. I love my job because of the people I get to interact with on a daily basis.  On the engineering side we have some of the smartest folks around that I learn a ton from. From a management perspective we also have folks that are just outright awesome to learn from and so this really creates an environment that I enjoy a lot.Many thanks to Eytan and the Live team for participating here. I'm currently in the process of running some screenshots by some of the folks who have launched the Live Webmaster Portal Beta and hope to have those on the blog sometime later this week.Rand & Eytan Enjoy Cigars at Microsoft's Party during SES NYC 2007BTW - For more on the updates to Live Search, check out this post on relevance, this one on product searchand this latest one on the upgrades to Live Maps. There's some busy engineers out in Redmond.In the next few weeks, I'll be visiting the Live team over in Redmond to look at version 2 of the Live Webmaster Portal. Hopefully, I'll get permission to leak some of these . In the meantime, Barry Schwartz posted screencaps of version 1 here.p.s. ALSO - Don't miss Eric Enge's recent chat interview on some more technical subject matter with Live's Ramez Naam. I know, I know, it's an interview bonanza this week - what can I say, when it rains, it pours :)Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by great scott!Hey Gang,This week, Rand discusses how search engines are using historical linking and reference patterns to help determine, and reward, primary source material in blog and news searches.  Could this bring implications in keyword searches? Will the time come that link volume isn't a key factor, but rather the engines place a stronger emphasis on where and when a story or trend breaks? Check it out and weigh-in with your thoughts on what may one day be called the Bloodhound aspect of the algorithm.Technorati TagsSEOmoz, SEO, Rand Fishkin, Google, Canonical, Blog, News, Whiteboard Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by JaneCoplandIn a couple of hours, I'll leave for Heathrow after attending the inaugural SMX Londonand speaking on my first session, Linkbait and Viral Marketing. And only twelve hours after I'd finally acclimatised to the eight-hour time difference between Western Europe and the U.S.'s West Coast. That's a tough one to get used to. I did everything in my power to stay awake upon arriving in London, including drinking coffee with Gillian and swimming in the Hilton Metropole's rather neat pool; however, I lasted until 6pm and slept for twelve straight hours.Conferences are different when you know you're going to speak, especially for the first time. You watch presenters in a different way, figuring out what makes them good speakers and what looks bad from the audience. I decided quickly that "chatting" with the crowd seems to be the way to go. People who appeared to be having a friendly discussion with their audience generally came across very well.My first day in England, after the twelve hour sleep that made little difference to my internal confusion about what time it was, included a trip to Altogether Digital's offices to practice my presentation with fellow panelist, Ciarán Norris. Of course, we promptly decided that our presentations were wonderful, but not before I made Ciarán take me to Soho's best fish and chip shop for lunch. There are few meals better than genuine fish and chips!I missed two sessions while I was out feeding my inner fat person and practicing for the next day's session. Upon returning to the hotel, I ran into Lisa Ditlefsenwho was outside the front entrance, nursing a post-speech cigarette. We went back down to the conference halls to catch Cutting Edge Linking Tactics, where Ken McGaffinwas already speaking. Sorry about sneaking around the back of the room, Ken!Some highlights from the session? Ken spoke about looking out for emerging markets and establishing your position early, pre-market saturation. He also pointed out the importance of figuring out whether or not the market really exists, suggesting it best to plan twelve months in advance instead of flying by the seat of your pants. Well. He put it a little better than that. My conference notes tend to translate things into "Jane Speak," which is sometimes a little more colourful.Dixon Jonestook the stage after Ken, expressing the idea that linking is even more valuable nowadays than it was a few years ago. Getting into Google and being indexed, he said, is the easy part. Google is very good at that; it's the links that are harder to find, maintain, and have credited in your favor. Dixon explained the difference in quality traffic certain types of content and links will attract to a website. Content and sites that are easy to develop and come with a slew of bad links will attract low-quality traffic.After a brief discussion about the joys of exploiting the Images Google bomb, Dixon spoke briefly about internal linking: many sites have made sure to link their pages in someway, but rarely do we see them linking in a way that breaks a site down into categories and makes sure the links actually relate to each other, especially in the "eyes" of a search engine.Rob Kerry, aka evilgreenmonkey, took the stage after Dixon. After the recent directory and paid link crisisthing that I'm not going to get into any more, Rob talked about the values of mature, authoritative directories that come with strict moderation. He cited BOTW, DMOZ, the Yahoo Directory, etc., and directories that have a real value. Rob also covered some of the bad, strange, and ugly ideas people seem to get when linkbuilding, such as creating "Made for Search Engine" websites and noting "premium links." The ugly tactics included faking PageRank by buying old domains (and thus charging for links from the faked PR sites), promoting link exchanges, and accepting all sites' links.Amusing us with stories of creating fake personaein order to ask for links (I guess being evil, green, and a monkey doesn't do you any favors when digging for link juice), Rob talked about the footprints paid link schemes leave, how "Sponsored Links" and links.html pages are the kiss of death, and how you're perfectly entitled to be stubborn about the placement of your links. During Q&A, Rob elaborated on the "footprints," showing how many link brokers use the same CSS styling on all links so that no matter where they are, the links all look the same.Another Q&A gem? The panel agreed that old school PR agencies can be a fantastic source of links, as they often have contacts within the BBC, CNN, and other news networks. Even if your link is only included on one of these networks' websites once or twice a year, those links are like gold.The next more entertaining session of the day included Dave Naylor, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Kristjan Mar Hauksson, and Dixon, who were meant to be discussing What's New with the Algorithms, but spent their hour generally entertaining the crowd, picking on Google, directing questions to Microsoft reps, and ignoring Yahoo. Upon being questioned as to where he'd like the SEO industry to be in five years, Dave decided he'd like to ask the crowd, "Who remembers Google, yeah? Hands up. No one? Ah, good."Later that night, Gillian, Dave, and I went to dinner with Nathan Buggiaand Mel Carsonfrom Microsoft. The five hours of sleep I managed to get that night wasn't so much due to staying out late (I was home by midnight, Rand!), but was because of being wide awake at 5:15am and deciding to go swimming again. Gosh, how I love hotels with swimming pools. Gillian's session, Search Marketing for Financial Services, took place at 9am and was interrupted by Rebecca, who'd just returned home from bar trivia in Seattle and wanted to chat on Gtalk. I told her that I was insanely busy and to go away. [Note from Rebecca:You're such a liar, Jane. I got a real-time update of Gillian's presentation from you, and Ciarán can attest to that!]I'd like to say that, being a naturally gifted public speaker with nerves of steel, I didn't practice my presentation at all before I gave it, but I actually went through it a couple of times in my room, presenting it to my own reflection and to the pictures on the wall behind my head. I'm glad I did. It helped a lot once I got down to the conference hall.For a first time speaker, the lighting situation was wonderful. The bright lights meant that I couldn't really see the audience at all. Or maybe I just have crappier eyesight than I like to imagine, but I couldn't see any of you, sorry. I felt like I got a pretty good reaction from the audience, although I was trumped by Ciarán, who came armed with a video of a girl in a bra, playing the drums. No amount of screenshots can top that! Ciarán should really have tried to look less blurryI was a bit worried that Q&A would be littered with questions such as, "I have a site about [industry that's really boring]. What can I do for linkbait?" While I think I'm quite good at thinking up appropriate yet effective linkbait for [boring industry] sites, I knew it would be hard to think things up on the spot. However, we didn't get questions like that; the questions and comments were some of the best I've heard from a linkbait audience.I knew the adrenaline and lack-of-sleep crash was coming. You get all wound up about something like that - speaking for the first time - and then once it's over, you're pretty much done for. I went upstairs and slept for a couple of hours before Rob Kerry's awesome LondonSEOparty at the Harcourt Arms.Lisa Ditlefsen and I celebrate a conference well done!I had one extra day in London before flying home to the U.S. (in case you were interested, I've now left my hotel and this is being composed in a cafe at Heathrow...), so Lisa Ditlefsen took me out on Saturday for a tourist day in town. I couldn't very well have gone to England and not seen the Tower Bridge, the London Eye, the Tower of London, and Big Ben. That evening, Tom Critchlow and Duncan Morris from Distilledtook me out to a Scottish restaurant, where I ate haggis for the first time. My grandmother, born in Stirling, will be very pleased. I have to agree with Rebecca, Scott, Gillian, and everyone else who's ever tried haggis: it's delicious! Much like some sausages, you just have to not think about what it's made from!Don't we look pleased with having eaten haggisWhile I was In England, I came across plenty of fun oddities. The beer bottle opener in my room is mounted in the bathroom cabinet, next to the bathtub. It seems that the English like to party in style. Cab drivers can't be trusted to take you to where you want to go. After saying, "Hilton Metropole. London Hilton Metropole at 244 Edgware Road" twice, this guy apparently thought I said something completely different and took me two miles in the wrong direction. British immigration officials are muchnicer than their American counterparts. After asking me why I was coming to England and when I'd be leaving again, the officer stamped my passport. I almost felt like asking, "Really? That's it?"If this reaches your Internets before I get home, it's because Heathrow's wireless network has kept me connected for long enough in order to post. To all you London SEO people: thanks so much for helping make this a fantastic trip. I'll see many of you at Pubcon... those of you who aren't coming to Vegas in December, I hope to see you again soon thereafter!Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishToday marks the completion of our first ever external funding - $1.1million (sorry, no Shoemoney shothere). I wrote about this move twice before, asking in August for your feedback on whether to take venture capitaland in September about our decision to move forwardwith the deal. At that time, I also promised that we'd have a recap of our financials for the year-to-date, much as we did for 2006. Sadly, this will be the last time I'm able to share this much about the inner workings of SEOmoz this publicly. However, we're moving away from the traditional consulting model and thus our numbers are probably less relevant and interesting than, say, Jim Boykin's(just saying, Jim, if you feel like sharing, I'm sure the folks would appreciate it). And, in good news, talking with Michelle today (with the Seahawks game on pause), we will still be sharing lots of cool stats and keeping true to our moz-ethos post-investment. This means the sharing certainly isn't over, it just probably won't be this all-encompassing again (with regard to finances, that is. We'll still reveal way too much about everything else).Without further ado, here are our financials from January 2007 - November 16, 2007. Don't forget that these are estimates, not audited numbers and should be taken with a grain of "~."Current Status (pre funding):Cash in the Bank: $80,000 (not counting the investment, obviously)Full time Employees: 7 Contract Employees: 4 (and Mel should be full time in just a few short days) Interns: 1 (go Danny!) Clients Served in 2007: 16 Pitches Made in 2007: 8 (other clients were from pre-2007)Clients Referred to the Recommended List: 225 Clients Referred to the Marketplace: 20 (and it's only been live for 10 days!) Earnings from Referring Clients: $0.00 (we've never taken kickbacks and we never will)Having your fiancee call you the "golden boy of SEO": pricelessNumber of Premium Member Signups by Month:January - n/a February - 61March - 116April - 205May - 244June - 261July - 370August - 290September - 260October - 263November (16 days) - 152 (USA! USA!- MG; "I don't think our international readers will appreciate that" - Rand)Content Currently in SEOmoz Premium:10 SEO ToolsTerm TargetGeo-Targeting DetectionBacklink Anchor Text AnalysisPopular Searches ListJuicy Link FinderRank CheckerTerm ExtractorPage StrengthCrawl TestKeyword Difficulty<Burgundy> Are You a Monkey Quiz</Burgundy>646 Posts in the Q+A Knowledge Base4 Premium GuidesSocial Media Optimization StrategiesThe Illustrated Guide to Building a Search-Friendly WebsiteThe Professional's Keyword Research GuideThe Professional's Guide to Link Building125 Sources in the Link Directory13 Providers of Services in the Discount Store63 Entries of Strategies & Tactics in the Premium Tips List2007 Earnings:SEOmoz Premium Content: $401,187SEOmoz Seminar: $32,977 (123 paid attendees) New Clients: $187,000 Clients from pre-2007: $140,000 Total Earnings (YTD):$761,164Breakdown of Expenses (through Sept. only):45% - Salaries12.5% - Travel (oh those SMX shows)11% - Outsourcing 8% - Rent 5% - Utilities (incl. hosting & analytics) 5% - Events (SMX Seattle After-Party + SEOmoz Seminar) 5% - Marketing/Advertising4% - Miscellaneous (i.e., Pixie Stix. Lots of Pixie Stix)2% - Medical1.5% - Legal1% - Supplies, Hardware & SoftwareAdditional Points of Interest:Total Number of SEOmoz Members (free & premium): 53,439The New SEOmoz Marketplaceis rocking after only a week in operation - case in point:Number of Companiesin the Marketplace: 173Number of Job Postsin the Marketplace: 32Number of Resumesin the Marketplace: 34Number of People who've already emailed me because they got contracts from the Marketplace: 3Number of People who've already emailed me because they filled positions from the Marketplace: 2Outstanding Debt: $0 (woo hoo!) Rand's Total Personal Earnings (through November, including bonuses): $41,000 Rand's Single Largest Expenditure: An Engagement Ring(Best. Bullet point. Ever.)A few more notes on the investment and on SEOmoz's plans for the future:As I've mentioned in the past, the focus of the investment is to grow the premium content module by offering more tools, features and content. Stuff coming soon includes 7 hours of video footage from our training session here in Seattle (broken up into 7 modules), a complete redesign of premium (including visual graphics to accompany the tools), 3 new premium guides (on linkbait, legal issues in search, and blogging) and our super secret project, which has a beta launch just in time for Christmas. Stuff coming later (March and beyond) includes a few new tools, downloadable legal contracts & forms, rank tracking and smaller additions like comments in premium Q+A and tips, thumbs in the premium content sections, & literally hundreds of new ideas. At this time, the board of directors will include only myself, Michelle, & Gillian. Vanessa's plenty busy with a million other things. We're planning to have our first ever booth at SMX West in Santa Clara. Scott will be posting more on that in the future to help us solicit ideas of how to make it as fun and interactive as possible. We'll be growing to ~15 people over the next 6 months, and probably more after that, but we'll be staying right here in Seattle at the mozplex on Roosevelt Way for at least the next year, which means I still get to walk to work (yay!)Although the switch to premium content has made us less active in taking on clients, we're not planning to completely stop consulting work. This decision is primarily to make sure we never lose our edge or our ability to relate to the job of SEOs. However, we'll probably be taking on only 1-2 new clients every 2-3 months.As ever, I owe a great debt of gratitude to the incredibly gracious search community. This industry continues to attract not only an incredible level of talent, but a remarkable group of open, friendly, generous people and it's these qualities that make me proud to be counted among the ranks of search marketers. Hopefully, this information can serve to once again provide knowledge and value to others in the world of search marketing consultations & services.p.s. Anyone want to bet a million dollars that no fewer than at least one "respected" journalistic publication will make drastic errors when covering this information? No, seriously - we can bet that much now :) (Glad to see you are using your newfound resources wisely.)p.p.s. In anticipation of a few questions around the numbers, I figured I'd provide some background. If you love addition, you'll note that we've actually had 2222 signups for premium content, yet only have 1580 current members (I'm really bad at math. I think my brain just exploded). Some of those are obviously folks who sign up for only a month or 6-month stint, but our cancellation rate is still higher than we'd like.  However, when we actually studied these folks, we found, remarkably, that more than 50% of those who canceled their membership have renewed again with 4 months (obviously this only counts the months for which we have this data). You might also wonder why July was such a stellar month - that's when we raised the costof premium membership. Finally, the expenses numbers only ran through to September, so 3 current SEOmoz staffers aren't included (and thus the percentages are off a bit).UPDATE: Mystery Guest was feeling cheeky tonight, so she's added her comments to this post in burgundy.UPDATE FROM MYSTERY GUEST: This doesn't change things. I maintain my "I'm not posting anymore, dammit" stance. I just added comments to steal the computer from Rand in order to look at shoes.Technorati Tagsventure capital, seomoz, financials, funding, seo toolsDo you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishThis weekend, Mystery Guest, Vanessa, Todd& I all hopped a flight from Seatac up to Edmonton, Alberta at the request of our dear friend, Ken Jurina. Ken's companies, Top Draw& Epiarwere celebrating not only their combined 21 years in business, but their many clients and recent spate of successes. At 32, Ken's been able to achieve amazing things - I've written about Ken's companyhere on SEOmoz in the past, and their technological prowess, particularly in the realm of automating keyword and topical research, has grown impressively even since that time. You can get a small sense for some of the value Epiar's able to provide to clients (and its own properties) from their blog posts, including this recent one on Presidential Candidates and ROI.The party was themed Moulin Rouge, but black tie attire was requested, so all of us donned our finest:_Left:Ken Jurina, our gracious host, with Todd Friesen. Right:Vanessa & I in front of the sushi bar._Left:I give Ken's lovely wife, Kim, the traditional SEOmoz greeting. Right:Curtis Dueck, Bonnie & I dance in front of the 10-piece live band._Left:An oyster bar made of ice. Right:Mystery Guest finds me a hat._Left:The night's events were masterfully coordinated by Matthew Glass. Right:Yes, they even had pole dancers.Now, admittedly, flying up to Edmonton, while only a 90-minute hop, is still exceptionally extravagant for MG and I, but Ken simply wouldn't take no for an answer. I must say, despite the whirlwind trip, it was the best party I've ever attended, period. And, while this might look like a bit of dot-com boom era extravagance, Ken sourced a remarkable amount of the food, entertainment and decorations from local firms that he knows or works with (even some of the scantily-clad dancers were local med students). Besides which, Ken has built something exceptional with his two firms - international quality software and services with the recognition of an organization 20X their size (together, Epiar & Top Draw have under 20 employees!) and I can't think of a better way to reward the people who've helped bring them to where they are. Ken's generosity is dwarfed only by his humility - if you see him at Pubcon, make sure to offer your congratulations.As Mystery Guest said after we returned to our hotel room, "There's nothing better than seeing someone so deserving have such great success." May the years ahead be as exciting as those behind you, Ken, and may your party invitations never cease :)And now, on to the week's roundup.Yes, Amazon's new Kindlemay be a bit ugly, but it (or a more beautifully skinned clone) is going to change the way we read. I actually want to order one right now, and I won't even buy an iPhone... Not to be missed - MadKastis a blog sharing widget that's actually remarkably usable. In the next-gen search space, Lijit is a cross between personalized search and social sharing that's got me thinking "Google acquisition."Darius shows off how online tech blogs played the telephone gamewith Nissan's color-changing paint. Is fact-checking really so difficult?166 comments and counting on what's surely one of Aaron Wall's most generous blog poststo date.Jon Mendez tests out Facebook adsand reports back with real numbers. And, speaking of Facebook, Rae has a ton of videos about the social sitethat I'm sure Rebecca and Jane will be digging through tomorrow.Andrew Goodman says the paid search recession is a farce. I agree - Steve Rubel just doesn't spend enough time in the space to have a solid grasp of when the ceilings on PPC value are reached. Andrew does.Andy Hagans has a killer list of valuable social media niche sitesto use for all your SMM campaigns.Ahmed at Performancing gives a good list of networking tips for non-US bloggers. Good stuff, and sorely needed.Get your site ready for the holidays with these three posts:Grokdotcom - Screencast: Guarantee Holiday SalesIan Lurie - 8 Ways to Get Ready for Cyber MondayMarketing Pilgrim - 8 Good Holiday Season Statistics for Internet RetailersAs always, if you've got other news, feel free to link in the comments.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishBiased manipulation runs wild on Wikipedia, and the extent to which it influences the pages of that site will probably never be known. In the field of SEO, whereevery link counts, Wikipedia's reference links at the bottom of articles and their external links in the body text of articles were once considered search engine ranking gold. Early this year, Wikipedia moved to institute nofollowon all outbound links, and many presumed the controversy would die there. It hasn't.I think the best way I can illustrate this massive problem is to attack the most common questions that come up around Wiki-hacking (yes, I'm inventing a moniker so I don't have to say "editing Wikipedia from a biased perspective in inaccurate, misleading or mis-representational ways" every time). Those who frequent Wikipedia would probably consider these edits to be "vandalism," but that's a very inaccurate representation of the actions that are actually happening. Vandalism refers to intentional destruction or damage of property - in the offline world, think graffiti or bricks through a window. These Wikipedia edits are, primarily, intended never to be detected by other Wikipedia editors or the outside world - a better analogy might be the subtle manipulation of a news report to slant in favor of a political party or candidate.Some major questions and issues:Why Edit Wikipedia Pages if There's No Link Juice?Reputation Management- if Wikipedia has bad things to say about a topic, there will almost certainly be someone who wishes to see that information removed. Link Traffic- Wikipedia articles, due to their phenomenal overrepresentation in search engines, can drive a remarkable amount of traffic, so many wiki-hacks are simply attempts to boost click-throughs Promotion- If you were a cellphone company, you might seriously consider editing the Wiki article on cellphone retailers, possibly adding a link to a list of "highest rated" stores by consumers according to a bogus study you host on your site (or another site) and then copying that list in short-format on the Wikipedia entry. Other promotional tactics are less obvious, but often more difficult to identify. And, yes, that story is a modified version of a true instance of Wiki-promotion. To Spite- If your competitor is ranking ahead of you on Google, or kicking you around in sales, you might find that Wikipedia is an excellent place to create a page on their company and detail the long list of terrible misdeeds they've committed. What's great (or horrible) about this practice is that generally, they'll be the ones who later come in and look like spammers for erasing the content or trying to have it removed, which actually helps to bolster the veracity of information in the eyes of other editors or administrators. It's a dirty but highly effective tactic to leverage against an opponent. I've even heard a story about using this technique for blackmailing the company referenced in the negative article, and pretending to "switch sides" in the editorial debate on the talk page once the money had been paid (it's DMOZ all over again!). For Link Juice- Wait, I thought there was no link juice on Wikipedia... Well, not directly. But, Wikipedia is such a reference resource that if your site earns links on popular pages, you'll find that those links find their way into forums, blog posts, articles, and journalistic publications more often than not. This is probably one of the most clever ways to use Wikipedia, because you'll need to link to something worthy of being spread, anyway, which probably means that even a heavy-handed Wiki-editor won't remove it, as it's typically relevant enough and interesting enough to belong there. One might even argue that this isn't Wiki-Hacking at all (perhaps it's the linkbait of Wikipedia?). To Earn Credit- The Wikipedia hierarchy rewards frequent, positive edits, and for many Wiki-hackers this is a great way to build up a solid, respectable-looking profile and potentially even be rewarded with administrator status. Wiki-Jacking- Since I've written about this topic previously, I won't cover it again in-depth. How Do Malicious Edits Happen?Anonymously- As of now, users can still make edits anonymously without logging in. Granted, Wikipedia will record your IP address, but you don't have to provide any personal information (not even fake stuff). Through Proxies - When one anonymous account just won't do, or you don't want the anonymous account to have any connection to your other account(s), using a proxy IP address lets you connect through to Wikipedia largely undetected (so long as the proxy provides solid anonymity). Through Trusted Accounts- For the more experienced Wiki-Hackers, a trusted account is a must have. Trusted accounts that make dozens of edits each day are much less likely to be accused of manipulation or have their content modified by another editor, even if complaints arise. Via Multiple Accounts with History- The savviest of Wiki-Hackers I've talked to runs more than a dozen unique, trusted accounts with positive history, and can use these What are Some of the Best/Worst Stories I've Heard?The Sock Puppet Betrayer- This is second-hand, so the details might be fuzzy, but the basic approach was sheer genius. Basically, this Wiki-Hacker created several accounts on different IPs, then vandalized a number of pages, mostly small and under-the-radar, appearing to look like a competitor (adding links, references, promotional content, etc). He then "investigated" these pages through his trusted account, "found" the "spammers," removed their content, and was praised by some other community editors. Later, he used the newfound trust to create subtle, but effective references for his own client. The Account Buyer- Supposedly, this fellow has been tracking down Wikipedia editors and offering to buy their account user names and passwords for the "trust" they've earned. According to him, he's only got 4 so far, but these have all been used effectively to help create and then "back up" favorable changes to a number of pages in a specific vertical. The Talker- One of the smartest Wiki-Hackers, in my opinion, is barely an editor of content at all, but simply uses a well-liked editorial account on Talk Pages, helping to sway the discussion in favor of keeping/removing links & content. On rare occasion, rather than actually making changes, the Talker will simply suggest that certain edits be made, then use a secondary or anonymous account to complete them if there's no pushback. The Bad Mouther - This particular Wiki Hacker got caught by another editor and in order to save himself, dug through every edit his accuser had ever made, and ended up being able to keep not only his account, but his edits by making it appear that the accuser was actually an "SEO," whose perspective and judgment were biased. Why Don't Administrators Stop this Behavior?They do, actually. You can see this popular project page called WikiProject Spam, where a "spamstar of glory" (yes, seriously) is awarded for stopping spammers on Wikipedia. A fairly immense to-do list exists on this page, and it's actually one of the Wiki-Hackers' most feared pages. Unfortunately, it's also a tool - Wiki-Hackers who want information removed or who want to build up the "trust" of their own accounts will actually become spam investigators and reporters. One of the best ways to reach administrator level is actually to catch some of the "trusted" accounts that are actually other Wiki-Hackers, and thus the community of Wiki-Hackers is not on particularly good terms with one another. Turning in other hackers puts you above suspicion in a way that few other actions on Wikipedia can, and thus, it's one of the holy grails of the infiltrator-style hackers.How do You Know All This, Rand?Two ways, really. First, I've played around first-hand with some of the pages with Wikipedia. In fact, prior to the "nofollow" implementation on links, I personally had a few editorial accounts through proxy IP addresses, though I probably haven't actively edited Wikipedia pages in the last 9 months. Instead, I've been connecting over email and in-person with a lot of folks who run reputation management and link building campaigns that do leverage Wikipedia. The number of stories, depth of detail, and actual examples (which I obviously can't share without betraying a lot of trust), including the stories I've recounted above, paint a fairly dark picture of what's actually happening at Wikipedia.Granted, because of my profession, I'm almost certainly getting an overrepresentation of the more manipulative aspects of what happens on Wikipedia. It's only natural. While lots of experienced Wiki-Hackers love to share their favorite stories of manipulating the site, very few of the truly quality editors are A) ever going to meet me at a party or go get some drinks with me at a conference bar, or B) boast about the terrific article they created about 70s-style tube socks as fashion accessories.Please do note that the specific stories I've recounted above have had details removed or even slightly modified to keep the identities of my sources anonymous. A couple, as I noted, are second-hand, as well, so I'm guessing some details may be missing. However, even with the details missing, you can still get a sense of the tactics for manipulation and the extent to which people are willing to go to in order to change Wikipedia in their favor.One Quick Example from the SiteThis comes from two friends at Wikipedia who really are legitimate editors and spam fighters, Jon Hochman(one of the foremost authorities on Wikipedia & SEO) and Durova (who spoke at SMX Social in October and had this terrificly informative interview over chat with Jim Hedger). From Durova's Talk Page Archives:I just spent 50 minutes playing cat and mouse with a vandal, and WP:AIV still hasn't acted on my block request. I guess its time to ask for the tools. What do you think? Jehochman (talk/contrib) 04:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Done, 24 hour block. Sometimes it feels good to have the tools. Thanks for the heads up. Cheers, DurovaCharge!04:48, 14 May 2007 (UTC) This one is using proxies. He's over here now: 142.179.62.0 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)Jehochman (talk/contrib) 04:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)I think we are dealing with a black hat SEO who may be using some sort of script. I see a pattern in the edits. My suspicion is that they want one specific reference gone, and are attacking all of them to create confusion. Can we semi-protect the targeted articles, starting with Traffic Power? Jehochman (talk/contrib) 05:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC) Am I caught up on the blocks? Keep me apprised; I'm working on a complex investigation with another editor atm. DurovaCharge!05:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC) Semi-protecting. Give me the full list. DurovaCharge!05:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Blocks are good. Here are the targeted articles. I think he'll be back soon. Jehochman (talk/contrib) 05:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Obviously, this example above is a very amateur attempt, and Jon & Durova are all over it. Professional-level Wiki-Hacking is much more difficult to rat out.The most frustrating part for Wikipedians has to be that they themselves receive no financial reward for their efforts, yet their opposition, the Wiki-Hackers, benefit monetarily and directly when they have success penetrating the spam police.Do all of these Wiki-Wars Really Matter?The most accurate answer is probably "it depends." It's very hard to gauge how much the public trusts information on Wikipedia. My gut tells me that, sadly, a lot of people simply accept whatever Wikipedia says without checking real sources of information (yes, I'm saying that Wikipedia by its very nature is untrustworthy, even if 95%+ of the information there is factual, which is probably a big stretch). However, I can say with some certainty that businesses and individuals get a great deal of value and suffer a great deal of loss when Wikipedia contains positive/negative information about them (very similar to Google or other search engines). Thus, a secondary "black" market will always exist to exploit the site and attempt to change information. Even if Wikipedia went into immediate lockdown mode, there would be auctions for trusted editorial accounts, devious manipulation, and, probably, an even higher price on all of the Wiki-Hacking style activities.There's no real solution to the cat-and-mouse game, unless Jimbo wants to turn Wikipedia into some sort of Mahalo-like resource, where only those invited can edit (and even then, I'm guessing it will just mean higher prices, not an end to hacking).p.s.Yes, the nofollows on all links to Wikipedia are intentionally "nofollowed." Someone should create a blog plug-in to auto-nofollow Wikipedia links so the site stops ranking atop every query in existence.p.p.s.None of the content in this post is intended to suggest that I don't respect the project, its aims, or the lofty aspirations of many of the hardworking people trying to make it a good resource. In fact, I believe quite the opposite - that folks like Durova, in particular, and others like here have a noble, self-sacrificing streak that's both rare and praise-worthy. But, depending on your view of Wikipedia and black/gray hat social media practices as a whole, you might find some of her opponents equally admirable, or at least, impressively creative.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by great scott!Missed SMX London, or just got a taste of SEO and hungry for more? Can't make it to Pubcon, but still want a business write-off in December?  Don't fret! Our good friends at London SEO firm, Distilled are hosting a very unique, very affordable and sure to be very worthwhile training seminar covering the basics of SEO, PPC and Analytics.Will, Duncanand Tomfrom Distilled are not only top-notch at the SEO game, they're about the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet.  They'll be presenting this three hour seminar in London on December 5th, and attendance is extremely limited (I hear there are only about five spots left).  The seminar will not only offer in-person training aimed at business owners, webmasters, and beginning SEOs, but you'll have a chance to get answers about your individual website, a guide to useful resources online as well as a copy of Avinash Kaushik's book, Web Analytics in an Hour a Day, a definite must-read.You can learn more details and register for the seminarat the Distilled website.  As a special bonus, the guys have offered take £20 off of the normal price of £120 for SEOmoz Premium Members.  This makes for a truly outstanding bargain.  If you're going to be in Jolly Ol' in December, and you're looking to expand or refresh your general SEO knowledge, you'd be silly to pass this up.UPDATE FROM RAND:Also - if anyone is going and would care to cover the event with writeups, photos, etc for the YOUmoz/SEOmoz blog, we'd be very appreciative!Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by JaneCoplandI'm going to blatantly copy my fellow SMX London Linkbait and Viral Marketing presenter Ciaránand post my slides and notes here for you guys. What can I say. Imitation is flattering, isn't it? And the posts are a good idea: it means that you all get to hear what I said about all the slides and you don't have any irritating PowerPoint presentation to download. Because I know you all secretly believe that downloading massive .ppt files will take far too long and will crash your browsers.Apologies for the strange little boxes on either side of the SEOmoz.org logo. Photoshop thinks they're a different colour than PowerPoint would have you believe.The introductory slide. Brilliant. I think I started well; don't you? You have to love that font, and the way "Linkbait" is a bit bigger than "and the Real World."I had a hunch that most of the audience knew the basic definition of linkbait. If you've made it as far as a Linkbait and Viral Marketing panel, you've probably read at least one article about the subject. However, just in case, I briefly defined the concept and tried to shoot down some misconceptions you'll hear about linkbait. I believe that linkbait's name hurts it in terms of reputation because it implies a manipulation of people's intentions. However, people will always link to good stuff and abandon poor-quality content: if you can create this good content and benefit your business, go right ahead.Before I jumped into the actual content of linkbait, I went through some of the ways linkbait is spread... and tried to point out that Digg isn't the sole source of all social media traffic. My goal was to say "Digg" only once or twice in the presentation, but when it comes to linkbait, that's like trying to completely eliminate words like "um" from your vocabulary, no matter how much you'd like to.For some reason, people who use particular blogging platforms seem to like linking to others who share their interests and use the same service. Livejournal actively promotes communication between people with common interests. Communities such as http://community.livejournal.com/libraries/allow everyone who is interested in libraries to get together and chat. And you know, even to an English major, libraries can be pretty boring. Do you have library-industry linkbait? Let these guys know about it.Similarly, your Jeep linkbait can spread quickly through sites like JK Jeep Forum. The traffic mightn't be enormous, but it's targeted. General forums like Gorilla Maskand Farkcan send massive amounts of traffic to less targeted linkbait.Of course, you have to mention Digg and its esteemed counterparts. You also have to mention Sphinn, since it's SMX. The difference between industry-specific social news sites and the mainstream heavy-weights is similar to that of forums. Reddit isn't the place for Internet Marketing news; Sphinn is.If you've ever looked at the front page of Reddit or clicked Stumble, you will have noticed what becomes popular.  Some of the content is inappropriate, inane, or a dreadful combination of both. The winners of the "I Look Like my Dog" contest are pretty funny. Look at that grey-haired woman. Hilarious. But your client, who provides large mortgages to people who want to build apartment buildings, mightn't agree. Nor may your client like the "In case of zombies, break glass" gun. I have just realised how many mentions of zombies I made during this presentation...An example of a site where "anything goes" is Cracked.com. Has there ever been anything posted on Cracked that has received less than 1000 diggs? The slide is small when posted here, but the example content on Cracked's front page is the "5 Mental Disorders That Can Totally Get You Laid." Awesome linkbait. The health insurance company you're doing SEO for will totally love it.I provided an example of some linkbait former SEOmozzer Matt Inmanhad produced for Avatar Financial Group. Avatar Financial is a hard money and bridge loans firm, based in Seattle. Matt's piece, "21 things I learned about CakePHP," attracted a good number of links to the site, none of which were relevant to the financial industry.One of the tactics I use when dreaming up linkbait is to think about the problems, oddities, and quirks of the industry in question. The graph shows a painstakingly scientific (i.e: Wikipedia-based) research experiment we did to figure out how many American citizens wouldn't qualify for Green Cards (permanent residency) if they had to. Which they don't. And which Digg was quick to point out. The title of the Digg entry was slightly mis-worded and the concept of hypothetical situations was lost of most of the Digg crowd, but they still granted the piece 764 diggs. We weren't too upset with that total, given the fact that the content wasn't about Ubuntu, Ron Paul, or a video game.Some of the graph's features were more controversial than others (and some require some serious explanation). The graph is far from 100% accurate. Although the post itself explained all its omissions and oddities, few people actually read the surrounding text. This piece would have been a fantastic piece of linkbait for an immigration attorney. Unfortunately it wasn't, but it shows some of the neat things you can do in such an industry.Secondly, keep in mind the problems faced by your potential clients. What are they interested in? Student loans companies can consider using the ways people waste their money during university. They can pitch their content to Freshmen (first year students) and high school seniors, since the majority of the people looking for loans are of that age. Companies that specialise in refinancing student loans can pitch their content to university seniors in much the same way.Everyone wants to be linked to with the right anchor text. It helps a lot. "Click here" links are still links, but "student loans refinancing" links are even better. Unless your linkbait's subject matter is quite different from some of your keywords, attempt to use them in titles, descriptions, and the like. You can't control how people link to you (Rebecca's rocket ships?), but you throw them some hints.Dutch site Hema.nl produced this neat Flash presentationof their... um... products page? Product highlights page? No, I don't really know what it is, because I don't speak Dutch. But I linked to it because it's really cool, as did a whole lot of other people who don't speak Dutch and who didn't link to Hema.nl's Dutch competitors. And that's the point.While I don't recommend "hiding" linkbait, there's no need to have it splashed all over a corporate homepage. You don't even have to link to it from the homepage if you don't want to. But it's generally a good idea to have the content link back to the most important pages on the site! Remember that very popular pages within a site can appear as indented results for some searches, such as a brand or company name. You're unlikely to successfully "hide" anything popular.Here, I provide a "real life" example of someone else's linkbait that exemplifies bait for a boring website. Not that I'm saying wedding invitations are dull. If you're getting married, I suppose they're mightily interesting. Here, WeddingPaperDivas.com provide some "geek weddings" bait, featuring wedding parties dressed as super heros, Star Trek characters, and zombies. For those of you keeping count, that was zombie-mention number two.This piece of content links to all the site's important pages via its navigation template, but there are no links to the bait from the homepage of the site. Their linkbait is on-topic and highly appealing.I used the "Are you a Rebel or a Yankee" test to highlight a piece of linkbait that could have been more beneficial than it really was. This test - and others like it - were quite popular around six months ago, but this version of the test only provides a final result and a "send to your friends" link. For my third and final zombie reference, I provide an example of a cool badge that the quiz-makers should have made, so that I could show everyone that I have both a 67% chance of surviving the zombie apocalypse, and a 57% Dixie accent.This is a recent example of the ever-so-easy but slightly unethical practice of Bait and Switch. For Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, we have pictures of limousines that have decided to drive over steep hills in towns like San Francisco. Who doesn't like high-centered limousines? Everyone gets a chuckle out of that. I linked to the limousines in a previous SEOmoz blog post. Upon re-visiting the blog post to find an example of good corporate linkbait, I find that the page now redirects to the company's Miami limousine rental page. Miami is probably their most profitable market. Most of the links that point to the page will contain the words "limo" or "limousine."While I'm not promoting the bait and switch, as it is a bit unethical and does result in people linking to something that they did not intend, it's an option that many sites seem to use once they're received a lot of links to a piece of popular content.There are three quick points about linkbait that you'll want to keep in mind.Negative commentary is normal in all arenas of social media, but you're well advised to turn on comment moderation before launching a piece of content. You can't control what people say on social news sites, forums, or blogs, but you can control the commentary on home-turf.The "real life" examples are being done right now. It's not impossible - and not even too difficult - to create linkbait for "regular" clients.(Yes, I know you can read the slides...) Linkbait sometimes fails to garner a lot of links, votes, or attention. Oh well! You've still created fresh content and it's likely that your practice will pay off in time. You'll learn what works, what doesn't, and exactly where and how to market that which you create.This is the point at which I thanked the crowd and stopped talking, and thankfully, they honoured the fact that I was finished by clapping. It would have been embarrassing if they hadn't. Again, I've uploaded the presentation hereif you'd like to have it for yourself and play it repeatedly!Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishThis week, as Scott heads off on vacation for Thanksgiving, I'm posting our latest Whiteboard Friday on the concept of links as votes of importance from the search engines' perspective and how link juice passes. Below the video itself, I've created a few helpful graphics to better illustrate the phenomenon I'm discussing:  There are two big topics from the video that would benefit from additional explanation, and I think visual representation is probably the way to go (particularly since these are supposed to be for our more visual learners in the blog audience):How Links Pass Importance from one Page to Another:How Advanced SEOs Can Control the Flow of Link Juice:A word of warning - I don't say "advanced" lightly. We've had plenty of experiences where implementing what we thought was a smart nofollow strategy to control link juice has either backfired and cost us traffic or had little to no visible impact. The best way to implement strategies that rely on link flow control is, in my opinion, to start small, test, then refine and push out to the site as a whole. It's most effective in our experience on large domains with tens of thousands to millions of pages and lots of pages in "supplemental." When used properly, link flow can help to get these into the main index.Also - since raw link juice (aka global link popularity, aka PageRank) is one of several hundred factors in the algorithms atthe major engines, don't be surprised if this tactic has little impact on competitive rankings. We find it to be much more valuable and effective in pushing up the visibility of very long tail material.Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! We will most likely not have a blog post up between now and Cyber Monday, so please enjoy a few days off (or, you know, go check out all the cool stuff inside premium you've been neglecting to read).p.s. Note that the images I've created are not to scale and don't correspond to any given percentage or amount of link juice lost or passed. They're only meant to be representative of the basic link flow concepts.UPDATE FROM RAND:A bit of my logic in the images is in dispute in the comments, and we're asking Sito take a look at some math to help us figure it out. Basically, the strategy of sculpting link juice is still sound, but the idea of a "leak" of juice through adding additional links to a page may not be accurate (at least, according to the original Google PR formula). Many thanks to Hamlet Batistafor bringing this up :)Do you like this post? YesNo