phoenix search engine marketing news

Glen Allsop (aka ViperChill) asked me if I wanted to take a look at his new ebook that he has just published, All You’ll Ever Need to Monitor and Manage Your Reputation Online, and of course, I said yes. I’ve watched Glen rise up to be a very knowledgeable young man, and I was anxious to see what he has to say about online reputation management. I know that he has decided to steer his company in that direction (moving slightly away from SEO), so I was definitely curious.

He is selling the ebook for $19, and I think it’s definitely…

More SEO Tips….
Tags: free hosting digg seomoz rand fishkin

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

In case you were concerned with your blog, like I was, with a mass exodus of Feedburner subscribers, @AndyBeal helped me figure it out this morning through Twitter (you can follow me if you want @mdjensen), which I am coming to see its importance more and more.
It looks like Netvibes was undergoing some maintenance and so […]
More SEO Tips….
Tags: blogging myspace web 2.0 free hosting digg

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

Posted by Darren Slatten

Hello, YOUmozzers! This is my first ever YOUmoz blog post and possibly my last, depending on how well SEOmoz can handle a little bit of constructive criticism.

Up until about 3 weeks ago, I was working at a fairly well-known SEO firm, but unfortunately, my valid SEO theories and genius-grade ideas weren’t welcome there, so I decided to strike out on my own! SEOs are a dime a dozen these days, so I have been looking for ways to differentiate myself and establish some sort of credibility… without having to namedrop my previous employer. The SEOmoz SEO Expert Quiz immediately grabbed my attention, and I vowed to unleash a fury of SEO information, the likes of which the world has never seen!

Well… that didn’t exactly happen. On the contrary, my dream of SEO world-domination was sucker-punched by an offensively-low test score that was obviously doped up on programmatic errors and arguable responses to ambiguous questions. So traumatic was this result that I immediately lost my will to live, and without thinking I leapt through my office window like some kind of suicidal Hollywood stuntman! As the shattering glass cut into my non-SEO-expert flesh, I spread out into a perfect swan dive and prepared for the 30-story drop that would end my miserable existence. Unfortunately, I work out of my one-story house, so the drop was only 3 feet… and it ended with me landing in a generic pine-scented hedge. So I’m moving forward with plan B… which is to whine, complain, and argue about what I think the SEO Expert Quiz’s answers SHOULD have been… and then possibly manipulate my SEO Quiz logo to make myself feel better. So here we go…

RESULTS:  You scored 184/255 points (73%)

The first thing I noticed was that several of my correct responses didn’t "get counted" for some reason. They just showed up as blanks and were therefore marked wrong. I don’t know what I did to create this error, but it gypped me out of 12 correct answers! The odd part is… the "Level" bar (the graph that fills up as you submit correct answers) acknowledged my answers. So when it gave the results, it looked like this:

Notice how full the bar is? That’s certainly not a 27% gap at the top!

Here you can see that "Your Answer:" is blank… but leaving a question blank isn’t an actual option when you’re taking the test. You have to choose an answer in order to see the next question!

I can pretty easily justify adding those points to my "real" score, but these next ones are a bit trickier. I’ll display the questions as screenshots, as not to make the test questions/answers any more "Googleable" than they have to be. I will also refer to the possible choices by A, B, C, etc., even though letters aren’t actually displayed next to the answers.

QUESTION 8:

My Answer:  A

Right Answer:  B

First of all… I don’t stand behind any of these choices 100%, but I think that choice A is the "least wrong" answer. The best argument against choice A (that I can see) is that keywords found in Meta Description tags aren’t heavily weighted, compared to the Title tag. The fact is, however, that no one truly knows how search engine algorithms work… and therefore, the definition of "important" in choice A is purely subjective speculation.

However, I feel that choice B has two arguments against it. The first is that Google builds its SERP snippets from any page content that contains the query–not just from the Meta Description tag. In fact, I would estimate that the vast majority of search results do NOT contain Meta Descriptions in the snippet… simply because the average webpage’s body section offers so many more chances to provide the most-relevant content for any given query.

My second counterargument to choice B is that even when the Meta Description DOES show up in the SERPs, it doesn’t have nearly the amount of influence on click-through that the Title does. If your page has a user-friendly Title with relevant keywords, the Meta Description probably won’t even get noticed.

A third counterargument (that many of you might discount, since it is more opinion than fact) is that optimizing a page’s SERP snippet for higher click-through does not qualify as "search engine optimization," according to the most widely-accepted definition of that phrase. Choice B implies that "search engine optimization" includes any kind of content modification that results in more search engine traffic. Under that same liberal definition, I could argue that overbidding on PPC listings is considered SEO.

QUESTION 12:

My Answer:  D

Right Answer:  B

It can be argued that choice D is "more correct" because the phrase "while SEM covers PPC, or paid search" does not irrefutably mean that SEM covers PPC EXCLUSIVELY. In other words, the use of the word "while" does not explicitly imply that SEM cannot also refer to organic/natural listings.

Furthermore, this question is entirely subjective to begin with, and it asks about the majority opinion of a group that it never defines. If you ask the entire English-speaking population what the difference is, the answer is probably something like "one ends in ‘O’ and the other ends in ‘M’." 

QUESTION 36:

My Answer:  D

Right Answer:  C

Every one of these choices is completely wrong, except for D. Choice A is a disadvantage, B is simply false, C is false if we can find just one advantage, D is at least partially right, and E is simply false.

The article that is linked to in the explanation of choice C offers information on the outcome of an experiment that Danny Sullivan performed. He discovered that Yahoo and Ask DO in fact factor the Meta Keywords content into their search results. He also recommends placing keyword misspellings in the Meta Keywords tag. Since there exists a small chance of using the Meta Keywords tag to your advantage, choice C is false.

QUESTION 42:

My Answer:  D

Right Answer:  B

There are thousands of sites that are hosted on the same IP address, and statistically, this situation is way too common for Google to perform any kind of computational analysis on the IP address of every link it crawls. Therefore, choice D is least likely to decrease the value of a link.

Choice B is the only option that says the linked-to page is also linking out to an external page. Therefore, the value (defined by the resulting increase in a site’s search engine rankings) of the inbound link is offset by the PageRank that is "lost" through the outbound link.

QUESTION 64:

My Answer:  A

Right Answer:  B

Duplicate content occurs much more frequently within the pages of a single domain, but this question uses words like "issue" and "problem," which are measured by the negative consequences that result from duplicate content–not by frequency of occurrence. In other words, if two of your site’s pages are considered duplicate content, then Google will rank only one of them. The other will be filtered from SERPs or Google will combine the stats of both pages into one entry in their index. Neither of these consequences is too severe, since at least one of the pages is still ranking. However, if another domain is duplicating your content, there is a chance that your page will be filtered and the other domain’s page will rank. This is a much more serious problem, because now you don’t rank at all.

Not counting the wrong answers I’ve just argued, there were 2 questions that I got wrong "for reals." They were questions 35 and 59. The only way I can accurately modify my quiz score is if I know the specific point values of each of those questions, which I don’t. So I will try a couple of alternate methods…

Guess the Point Values:

The total points possible are 255 and there are 75 questions, so that puts the average point value at 3.4 points. Now if I were making a test with weighted point totals, I would weight them on a scale of 1-5 points, with 5 being the most difficult or most important questions. Based on that, I’d assign questions 35 and 59 the values 5 and 3, respectively, which puts my point loss total at 8. 255 minus 8 is 247, and 247 divided by 255 rounds to 97%! (This is assuming that I successfully argued my way out of the other 5 wrong answers.  )

Measure the Level Bar:

As you can see in the previous screenshot image, the Level bar kept track of my score, despite the buggy total percentage. If the programming logic of the Level bar is reasonable, then the percent of "filled" bar should be roughly equal to my test score percentage (before adding the argued points). Here is that analysis…

Original Level Bar (turned sideways):

Filled Portion of Level Bar: 396 pixels

Empty Portion of Level Bar (painted blue so you can see it): 4 pixels

396 divided by 400 is 99%! (And that’s without adding my argument points!)

Conclusion:

I’m just going to go ahead and average the two scores and say I got a 98%. But that’s just a number… I still need a fancy SEOmoz logo to display it. For that, I resort to a little bit of reverse engineering. After a quick "optimization" of the HTML code I was given, I now proudly present my official SEOmoz SEO Expert Quiz score!

img246.imageshack.us/img246/1544/seoquizbadgebadassyz9.gif) repeat scroll 0% 50%; text-decoration: none; display: block; width: 241px; height: 108px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; position: relative;”>SEO Badass - 98%

Are you an SEO Expert?

Do you like this post? Yes No

More Search Optimization News….
Tags: wordpress seomoz google pagerank seo

Please be sure to visit our new Social Blog Network, as well as our Social Bookmark Site. Both offer services for free!
Get you latest SEO news fix at AutoPrimeMedia.com!

Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

An excellent post from Rand Fishkin today about the reliance on domain authority for spam in Google highlighted a great tip to find the most important domains within a TLD.
To find a list of what is possibly the top 100 authoritative .co.uk domains in Google just perform the following query:
www site:.co.uk

This obviously isn’t entirely accurate, […]

More Search Optimization News….
Tags: blogging blogger free blogs sem reddit

Please be sure to visit our new Social Blog Network, as well as our Social Bookmark Site. Both offer services for free!
Get you latest SEO news fix at AutoPrimeMedia.com!

Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

…are increasingly thinking about problems that are not Web-specific. This is one of the themes of this Fall’s Web 2, more to come on that in a moment. But here’s an example from Tim. I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that if we’re going to make our way…
More Search Optimization News….
Tags: web 2.0 free blogs

Please be sure to visit our new Social Blog Network, as well as our Social Bookmark Site. Both offer services for free!
Get you latest SEO news fix at AutoPrimeMedia.com!

Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

This is an interesting move: Google has lost another senior executive to Facebook with the departure of the search giant’s VP of global communications. Elliot Schrage, Google’s VP of global communications and public affairs is to take up the role of VP of communications and public affairs at Facebook…
More Search Optimization News….
Tags: blogging myspace web 2.0 free blogs wordpress themes

Please be sure to visit our new Social Blog Network, as well as our Social Bookmark Site. Both offer services for free!
Get you latest SEO news fix at AutoPrimeMedia.com!

Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

The following post is a guest post. SEO Scoop endeavors to showcase and highlight guest bloggers, in the hopes of giving up and coming bloggers and SEOs a chance to shine. Please take some time to appreciate their efforts by visiting their sites, or by networking with them.

SEO Scoop does not necessarily agree with or condone any tactics mentioned by guest posters.

By: Joshua Ardoin

Are you looking for some tips on how to use WordPress like a ninja? Well, you are in luck. I recently attended WordCamp Dallas and here are some video and audio nuggets from the two day WordPress conference.

• Matt Mullenweg…

More Search Optimization News….
Tags: blogs myspace free blogs wordpress themes seomoz

Please be sure to visit our new Social Blog Network, as well as our Social Bookmark Site. Both offer services for free!
Get you latest SEO news fix at AutoPrimeMedia.com!

Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Om has analysis of the Clearwire/Xohm deal. Perhaps we will….
More Search Optimization News….
Tags: web 2.0 free blogs cylon blogosphere reddit

Please be sure to visit our new Social Blog Network, as well as our Social Bookmark Site. Both offer services for free!
Get you latest SEO news fix at AutoPrimeMedia.com!

Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

November 6, 2007Stubhub announces a deal with ESPN and gets highly targeted links from team specific pages throughout the ESPN.com site.“The agreement integrates StubHub branding, links and promotions across ESPN.com, and creates a convenient destination for fans to search for tickets to sporting events nationwide. StubHub is now dynamically integrated into ESPN.com Team Pages, Scoreboards, […]
More SEO Tips….
Tags: blogs myspace free hosting cylon seo blogosphere del.isio.us

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

Dell ran a second Green contest with FM, and it’s amazing. Check out the top 150. And the text expressions here….
More SEO Tips….
Tags: digg seomoz rand fishkin page rank sem social media del.isio.us

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

Posted by jamersan

Today I was trying to pull up a website when my computer had one of those hiccups.  Somehow, I only managed to get .com in the address bar before I pressed enter.  As it typically does when it can’t find a site, my browser forwards me to Google’s results for the term ".com".

The results I received were a little surprising and I would like to know the SEOmoz community’s thoughts on it.  The strangeness of these results piqued my curiosity and I am excited to see what everyone’s theory on these results are. 

The top 30 results I received, in order, were:

1. Myspace.com
2. Yahoo.com
3. Amazon.com
4. Answers.com
5. MSN.com
6. Linux.com
7. CNN.com
8. Ask.com
9. Dictionary.reference.com
10. Weather.com
11. Weather.com (again!)
12. Go.com
13. Live.com
14. Whatis.techtarget.com
15. Lycos.com
16. Verisign.com
17. Bartleby.com
18. NationalGeographic.com
19. Download.com
20. About.com
21. Real.com
22. Spaceweather.com
23. Mozilla.com
24. Mail.yahoo.com
25. Google.com
26. Refdesk.com
27. Washingtonpost.com
28. Comcast.com
29. Usatoday.com
30. Wordpress.com 

Myspace had the nice big "more results" layout where it lists 8 links to different areas of the site.  In my experience, Google usually only displays this type of listings when a site pretty much owns a keyword search for an extended period of time.  

Also of interest were the "Searches related to: .com"

• unvision.com
• realtor.com
• target.com
• rotten.com
• lyrics.com
• break.com

I know many, if not all of you may get different results, but this is what was showing for me as of 4:30PM Central Time on Thursday. 

Why would Google rank 25th on its own search engine for a term that applies to any .com site out there when weather.com shows in both the 10th and 11th places?  

Why are the related searches not any of the sites in the top 30 results?  

Do you like this post? Yes No

More SEO Tips….
Tags: wordpress web 2.0 sphinn seomoz rand fishkin page rank

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

This is a great article about career moves and getting a solid start in the SEM arena. Anyone new to SEM or that has gone through/considered a career move should read this post in its entirety.

65 Vote(s)

More SEO Tips….
Tags: myspace rand fishkin page rank seo sem

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

I haven’t been blogging as often as usual lately and it’s about time I get back on track. I attended my first search marketing conference last week. I do not consider myself much of a conference-goer and I am not really much of an extrovert. Previously, I’d been to only two conferences—JavaOne in 2003, but […]
More SEO Tips….
Tags: blogger web 2.0 wordpress themes rand fishkin page rank seo reddit

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

In this post, I’ll be showing you how to install a FavIcon onto your WordPress blog using a cool new plugin. This is my first ever video post, be gentle What is a FavIcon?A FavIcon is the little graphic that is displayed to the left of a URL in the address bar of your browser […]
More SEO Tips….
Tags: free hosting seomoz google seo

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software

Lee Odden writes… It’s a near nightmare situation really. A client sends an email on Friday saying, "We’re launching a new web site on Monday, can you take a look at it to make sure our site optimization is ok?".

61 Vote(s)

More SEO Tips….
Tags: wordpress free hosting digg page rank sem

Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.

Please visit one of our great sponsors:
Daily Shopping Deals!
Rosetta Stone Lanuage Software