Posted by randfishWhat motivates a link? Sometimes it's referencing data/research/news or given because you've produced something interesting and valuable. Sometimes it's because another site has licensed or adopted content/widgets/badges from you. But, in most cases where an editorial link is given, I find that the underlying motivation is because that link provides some benefit to the linking site. This brings us to the fourteenth tip in our headsmacking series and possibly the tactic that will provide you with the lowest hanging link building fruit yet.Let's start with a look at the sidebar of MindValleyLabs' Blog:Not too shabby, right? The link comes from their homepage and every blog post they publish and points back to our homepage, sending over plenty of nice link juice as well as some decent traffic (from those interested in learning who SEOmoz is and why we like MindValley so much).Now let's look at Matt McGee's Speaking Presentations Testimonialspage:Again, this link is great for search engines (there's only a handful of other external links on the page), it's relevant and it provides traffic as well as search engine benefit.The next step isn't too hard to figure out: Go give testimonials!I'd wager that most of you have between 2-5 dozen contacts who would love to get something positive written from you about them that they can publish on their site. It'snot hard to get started; simply make a list and start sending emails. I've provided a brief template you can use below:Hey Thomas,Long time no see! I hope all is well with TomsBlog.com and wanted to reach out to offer my help. I've been really impressed with the work you do - your posts are inspiring and educational time after time. I'd be more than happy to provide a testimonial you could publish on the site if you'd like - just let me know and I'll send something over. It would be my pleasure to share the benefits I've received with the rest of your visitors :-)Best wishes,Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmozTestimonial links have a number of qualities that make them absolute gems in the link acquisition world:You can often customize the link location and anchor text (so long as it's relevant and sensible) - just ask when you send over the testimonial (or, better yet, send over the exact HTML code that will embed the right link so all the receiver has to do is copy + paste) Testimonials are frequently sitewide, but even when they're not, they tend to reside on popular, important pages (even homepages sometimes - an otherwise impossible place to get a link) They're 100% editorially given and meant as a true reflection of the relationship you've built - that's precisely the kind of link the search engines want to count They provide strong benefits to both parties in the deal; everyone's a winner They're not nearly as awkward or bizarre as a standard link request and the probability for acceptance is very high Start a list and get cracking - you have nothing to lose but your link poverty :-)p.s. As with all link building tactics, if you go overboard (abusing this tactic to excess on in a manipulative fashion), the search engines may not take it well. This is a great way to leverage existing relationships and contacts to help bring in links, but if you're plotting how to use this to earn hundreds or thousands of links, you're likely treading on dangerous ground (unless you're a reporter for a major publication, in which case every business you mention is likely to be linking back to your articles about them).Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by RobOusbeyHi there - I'm a blogger. Could help me? I read that massive post about 'lessons learned from three years of blogging' and I've been brimming with ideas ever since. However, I'd like to attract more views to each of my posts.OK, I can help you with that, by using one equation and five quick techniques to get you thinking. Here's the equation:Number of Posts Read = Number of Visits * Number of Posts Read on Each VisitRather than just trying to get more people to your site, we should spend some time talking about the final part of that equation - the number of posts read by each visitor.So you're going to help me increase page views?Not quite. There's a whole bunch of techniques to increase page views without increasing the number of your posts which are read. As an example: you can publish each articles over a number of pages, and make people click 'next' buttons - each single read of a post now generates three page views. Great for a spike in CPM advertising revenue, bad for a long-term play of not irritating you visitors.OK, I get it. So where do I start?One technique to consider is that of linking to related posts or content.Ah! But I already do that - there's a Wordpress plugin I have ...The links in the sidebar or at the end of the article appeal to users who have finished reading and ask 'what do I do next?' These might encourage some people to read another post, but users might just wander off through any other link. Whilst they are reading, you have the visitor's undivided attention - so offer them a few 'next step' sign-posts during the article. For example: You could open the post with a reference to another post, and use a compelling title which encourages them to open it in another tab, and 'save for later'.Wait - is that what you did at the top of this post?Indeedy. I'd also suggest doing something similar near the end of the post, so that you can suggest to the reader a 'next step' before they finish reading. Don't let their attention wander - if they've read to the end then they are likely to be happy to read other pages that you recommend. And don't scroll down to the bottom just to check if I've done it here - the answer is yes.Right, I'll intelligently include a few 'related posts' in the text. What's next?A basic idea that is often overlooked is variety. Shake up your style of posting and try some different formats that aren't just text. SEOMoz has done this quite well recently, with regular videos, downloadable PDF resources, list posts, slide shows, etc. This allows visitors to read more of your posts without succumbing to the strain / snow-blindness of page after page of similarly formatted posts.Is that why you published this post in a Q&A format?It wasn't intentional - I actually pinched the idea from a mathematics post about the P versus NP problem.Right. Keep my blog varied to keep visitors interested. Do you have any recommendations about style?Yes, two actually, and I hope you won't feel like you are 'selling out' to follow them. The first is to stay upbeat - reading a blog with posts that are consistently negative or miserable is tiring. It's like talking to that guy who always sees the worst and moans about everything - you can't wait to get away. If your posts make the reader smile a little, then they'll be more likely to linger in the 'happy place' you have created for them.The other style point?I believe that visitors will spend longer on a site if their intelligence is taken for granted, and they are made to feel clever. Avoid long explanations of basic concepts and let your visitors do their own research on any topics you mention which they aren't familiar with. Similarly, there's no need to oversimplify the reading level of your text. Fortunately, we're lucky that the SEOMoz blog is read by knowledgeable, professional types who are more than capable of reading about advanced concepts and know how to do their own independent research if necessary.Aw shucks, thanks!OK, one final idea about structuring your blog: remember that the snippets you display on category pages etc will influence people's decision on whether to visit a page. However, as these snippets target current users, they may have a different focus to a snippet you would use offsite - say in an RSS feed, on a social book marking site, etc. For example, you may choose to use this text when persuading people to visit the site: "A popular piece of traditional SEO advice is ripped apart by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz. Of course we should just focus on the user - right? Find out why that might be wrong, and then join the debate!" but on the site we should use: "You've undoubtedly heard the old industry adage: 'Do what's right for users and engines will reward you with higher rankings.' This is tragically misleading, and this post covers specific tactics you must consider, beyond the purely user-focused aspects." (By the way: if you've not yet had the opportunity, I do recommend reading Rand's post about this topicand checking out the healthy debate it generated.)Is this the bit where you hand over to the readers and ask for their suggestions in the comments?Absolutely. Every post I've written for SEOMoz has been followed by some great additions, I'm keen to see what you come up with today.Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by randfishI'm in the middle of a wild 6-week stint. First Oslo for a week, then home for 4 days, then SMX Eastand a week in New York City. Tonight, I'm back in Seattle, but only for a few days - our SEOmoz/Distilled London seminaris just a scant 168 hours away. And, of course, on my return, I couldn't help but be compelled to do another set of SEO graphics (first series here) after seeing this great collection of Infographics & Data Visualization Blogs.These are somewhat disparate, but hopefully valuable. I've provided some descriptions and explanations below each:This first graph is fairly basic. In low-level competition results - long tail or relatively unpopular queries and sectors - the relative value of basic on-page optimization is very high. That drops down as competition increases because many, many pages and sites will have proper keyword usage and targeting. The engines will instead choose rankings based on popularity and authority metrics, where links play a much larger role. This isn't to say that it isn't still important to get the on-page stuff right; it's just unlikely to give you the boost you'll need to rank well in more competitive arenas.I've obviously chosen only a few link building tactics to highlight here, but when constructing this graph, I found these to be particularly interesting.Manual link building tactics tend to trail off in value (in my experience) as a site becomes better known, more popular and earns a collection of thousands-millions of high quality links. The incremental value added by another tiny directory or article submission site (or other small-site focused tactics like link exchanges or requests) becomes miniscule. Linkbait and Viral content is almost always highin value, particularly when you can craft content that helps to bring in links with the right anchor text pointing to the right kinds of places (like badges, widgets and embedded content). However, relatively speaking, the value is highest when the site is brand new and drops gradually with popularity. Media + Press links, like Linkbait, are consistently valuable, but the same principles tend to apply. Once you're a behemoth in your field, another link from the Wall Street Journal or the Chicago Tribune won't provide a substantial boost. Content licensing (or technology licensing) and partnership-style links are particularly interesting. For new sites, the value tends to be low, simply because you have very little content to license and few big brands are willing to make arrangements with you. As you gain traction, though, this technique climbs in value and, in my experience, provides some of the best ROI for large, dominant sites that can leverage their content warehouses to earn dozens or even hundreds of individual external links to every piece of content they produce through licensing agreements that require a link back to the original. The panel I spoke on at SMX East about PR Sculpting featured six speakers with six unique perspectives on the topic. While it was tough to find consensus around the minute details of PR Sculpting, the panel mostly agreed that the tactic is primarily valuable for helping sites that have additional pages they want in the main index that simply don't make the cut get in. This handy chart illustrates that principle, showing that, relatively speaking, you're only really getting value out of the practice of PR sculpting (whether you do it with nofollow, careful link selection, link consolidationor something else) when you have pages that languishing in search engine index obscurity (see this recent post for more).The reason I've made the value low when you have 0-20% of your pages indexed is that this generally corresponds with an overall lack of the required link juice to spread around. You need to get over that barrier before you can start to tackle where to flow it internally to get pages indexed.Similar to PR sculpting, XML Sitemapstend to carry more value in certain scenarios (and, interestingly, with certain engines). It's been my experience that Microsoft's Bing engine gives slightly more preferential treatment to pages in XML sitemap files than Google, but at high numbers of URLs, the value is high for both engines (I've not included Yahoo! because I haven't seen consistent results with their treatment of Sitemaps - and because I strongly suspect that 8-10 months from now, we'll be SEO'ing in a two engine world).p.s. As always, these graphs are based on my personal opinions & experience; please feel free to share your opinions and critiques.Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by great scott!This week our very own Jen Lopezis at SMX Eastin New York. She took a few minutes to sit down with Googler, Maile Ohye(first name pronounced like the Disney teen pop-star, last name rhymes with "Oy vey!"), to get the answers to some of webmasters' most frequent questions. Watch the video to get Maile's take on how to best approach such issues as:Getting deep sites indexedHandling multiple sitemapsHow to influence crawl frequency and scheduleWhether or not to worry about spammy inlinksDuplicate content from scraper sitesAnd much more!SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Interview with Google's Maile Ohyefrom Scott Willoughbyon Vimeo.Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by chenryThis post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.I’m sure many of you are like me and one of the first things you do in the morning is head to SEOmoz and check out the blogs. Along with seeing the new posts, I'm also always checking out my MozPoints and watching them grow, or shrink sometimes. In one of my past posts I did a case study of MozPointsand a few members discussed how they would like to see real-time related graphsof their MozPoints over time. That time is now, I would like to introduce a new little side project I’ve been working on, Mozpoints.com. Mozpoints.com started out as a way for me to see who is moving and shaking things at SEOmoz without having to read everything and try to remember who said what. On the main page of the site you will see it shows the “movers and shakers” for three different time periods, daily, weekly, and monthly. It also shows some thumbing and comment stats for the time period also.Entering your SEOmoz username or click on someone’s name will display a graph of their MozPoints. Currently the graph only displays the lasts 30 days worth of information, but once more data is collected and stored, a new feature will become available to change the time period. When hovering over a data point it will display a few important pieces of information, number of points, rank, number of comments, and number of posts. MozPoint data is updated every night so this data in not exactly real-time, but close enough.Another great little feature is the dynamic badge for your website. This badge is much like the original that SEOmoz offers but with a new feature that self-updates your rank at SEOmoz. I hope that this is something that the SEOmoz community will enjoy and use. I’m hoping to hear suggestions from all of you and make this community grow and connect. If you have any suggestions or ideas for MozPoints.com please feel free to contact me via SEOmoz or leave them in the comments.Special thanks to Danny for giving me the idea via his commenton my previous post. Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by Dr. PeteMany SEO topics are like good games - you can learn the basics in a few hours, but really mastering them can take years. One topic that seems simple but that generates a ton of questions here on SEOmoz is URLs: How to construct them, how to optimize them, what the pieces are, etc. In the spirit of great SEOmoz cheat sheets like Danny's web developer cheat sheet, I've decided to put together a 1-page guide to all things URL. You can click on the image below for a larger image or download the PDF(105KB).Download as a PDF (105KB)The guide is broken up into two sections: (1) "SEO-friendly URL", showing a modern URL and it's parts, and (2) "Old Dynamic URL", showing a classic, dynamic URL with CGI parameters. Both sections contain useful tips and stats about URLs and their optimization (based on SEOmoz research).(1) SEO-Friendly URL(2) Old Dynamic URLI hope you find it useful and welcome any comments and criticisms.Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by Sam NiccollsThe SEOmoz Social Media Marketing Guidehas been re-released and is now available. There is both an online version, as well as an expanded CSV version for those with a free SEOmoz account. The guide, which combines the Social Directory with the Social Media Marketing Tactics article, is an updated resource for marketers looking to expand their social media reach or obtain followed links.Previously, the Social Directory was only available to PRO members, but with the re-release of the guide we have included many of the followed link sources that Jane compiled in the original PRO-only document and we've made the resource available to everyone, with an expanded downloadable version for PRO members. 5 Tips for Using the Social Media Marketing GuideIdentify Greatest Link Juice Opportunities: Sorting the direct link source sites based on mozRank is a great way to help identify the sites that will pass the most link juice.Place Primary Focus on the Top 10: There are dozens of social media sites worth targeting, but you likely don't have the time to target each effectively. So try to focus your initial efforts on the most popular sites before investing time on sites with more niche communities. Filter Based on Category: Sorting by category and deleting the sites that are least relevant for your website content is an important way to whittle down your hit list and prioritize your efforts.Target Social News Sites with Largest Community: Prioritizing social news sites based on community size is a great way to identify the news sites that could lead to the greatest number of visitors to your site. Download Expanded Guide: An expanded CSV version of the guide, which has an additional 25 sites that are not available in the online version, can be downloaded from the "List of 101 Social Media Sites" tab. And for social media lovers, experts, and fanatics with sites to pimp, you can now add bling to your blog and hydraulics to your hypertext with one of Timmy's snazzy social media badges.If you have questions, feedback or want to share additional resources, feel free to do so in the comments on this post.Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by Lucy LangdonThe word 'incentive' is defined as a ‘positive motivational influence’. The purpose of this post is to explore the different kinds ofuser behaviourthat can be encouraged with incentives. Although this will hopefully include links as a helpful byproduct, the advice focuses more on increasing user interaction and engagement.(This post isn't about creating great content as an incentive for links- other ‘moz posts have talkedcomprehensivelyaboutthat.)1. Let's Get CompetitiveIf you run a site that thrives on user generated content (or you're thinking of adding this feature to your site but aren't sure where to start), then this is one technique to increase interaction from users. In forums, competitive behavior occurs naturally as users try to achieve various levels of status within the community. Other sites can mimic this behavior (and the consequential engagement it brings) but they may need a structure to help it along. Here are a few ideas:- if you have a product or place that you want reviews for, feature a 'Review of the week' (don't forget to email them to let them know they're featured!). It's up to you how far you want to take this- why not take your top 5 reviewers out for dinner once a month?- take a leaf out of Trusted Places' book and create badges for Local Experts- follow SEOmoz's example and create a leader boardthat is powered off thumbsAny of these incentives could be turbo-charged by adding a followed link back to the user's site.2. Feature your usersAllowing guest posts, or even 'guest content', on your site is a great way to let your users know how much you value them. If a site I spent time on came to me and asked me to write a feature for them because they valued my input up to now, I'd be bowled over (yeah, I know, it doesn't take much).If you'd rather not put the time into contacting individual users, try just putting a button on your site that invites guest posts or pitches. Savvy bloggers will be in touch before too long and you'll give off great vibes implying how much you value your users.3. Donate to charityPromising you’ll donate to a charity if someone links to your site feels a bit mafia-esque to me. Seeing as donations are a slightly gray area anywhere, I’d advise going after other kinds of beneficial user behaviour. For example, a client of ours donates about $5 to charity every time someone reviews his product. You could also use this method to acquire usability feedback, UGC and email newsletter sign ups.How to do itHave a look at your site and decide where it is this tactic could be useful. Ideally, users will be very close to interacting in these ways already- the charity angle just serves to push them into action.Depending on what you're after, present the donation option when the user is in the right place to action it. For example, it would be much more effective to ask for a review of a product once someone has actually bought one! Similarly, why not ask for usability feedback when the user leaves the site, sweetening the deal with a promise to donate if they acquiesce.You should definitely have a dedicated page that describes what you're doing, why you're doing it and how much you've raised. Include a link to this in any relevant call-to-action.If possible, have a small list of charities that you donate to and let users choose which one they’d like the money to go to.Once you've had the donations up and running successfully for a few weeks, let the charity know what you’re doing and suggest they might like to link to you to verify the process for your users. Win win.Make the process as shareable as possible: ask if the user would like their friends to know about how they can make a free donation to charity.A word of warning: even though this isn't an opportunistic scam and allows everyone- you, the charity and your users- to benefit, some people will have a problem with it. Make sure to be careful and respectful at all times.4. Product GiveawayIf you have an ecommerce site, do you have any small, cheapish products that you could send to bloggers to get them to review? If you do, then this is a great way to build relationships with bloggers in your niche and encourage them to talk (hopefully positively) about your company. I wrote a whole thing on how to go about doing this, but then Rob pointed out he'd blogged about it a couple of weeks ago- so have a read of his post about Link Building for Small eCommerce Sites5. Competitions and Prize DrawsCompetitions are a really adaptable way of incentivizing certain types of user behavior. Here are just a few examples that we've seen recently:- To get email sign ups - Fat Face- Win A Camper Van(very viral- has a 'refer a friend' draw as well)- To sign up to a newsletter- Silksleep.com - win a silk blanket- To get reviews - Pitchup.com- review a campsiteand win a tent- To generate buzz- the Hoxton Hotel competition- first set-number of entries win a room for a £1 and, of course moonfruit- enter anyone that mentions you into a prize draw (This doesn't necessarily have to happen on Twitter, but the real-time nature of it really helps to add momentum)- To receive blog engagement- New Scientist - win a piece of moon rockIf you have any other examples of using 'positive motivational influences' to encourage certain kinds of user behavior, I'd love to hear about them in the comments. SEOmoz Pro Training Series: LondonWe have just a few tickets left to this event and it's about to sell out. If you're the type to wait around until the last minute, you better get on it before it's too late. This is a can't miss event, Sign up now.Do you like this post? YesNo
Posted by great scott!It's that time again: Time to build some links and get those rankings up. So you put on your link-building hat, link-building gloves, and link-building boots, go out, build a few hundred manual links from directories, content sites, blogs, etc., but you still can't manage to beat that page with a tenth of your links...what gives?Lately the engines seem to be giving much more authority to sites with strong, high-quality links, so it could be that you're looking for link-love in all the wrong places. Watch the video to learn how to get the quality you need.As Rand mentions in the post, PRO Memberscan make use of the Top Pagesand Link Intersecttools to help them discover sources for high-quality links that will seriously help with rankings.Oh, and while I'm mentioning PRO, there's still time to get your FREE PubCon Passby purchasing a year of PRO! We've only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. PubCon just raised their prices to $899 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO anda full-access PubCon Pass is an awesome deal.Do you like this post? YesNo
