From: google.com

A few deadlines are coming up, and alas, we can’t do extensions, so I thought I’d remind the last-minute hold-everything types:

More than 4,000 people in 700 cities have signed up for the June 14 Linchpin meetup. Maybe you’ll meet someone who’s shipping. It’s free and it’s semi-unofficial.

Deadline for submitting a picture for the Linchpin cover is June 1 at midnight EST.

Also on June 2, the price for the full day ticket for the Boston road trip event goes up.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/-9TAaLAUS84/reminders.html

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From: google.com

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/xZcU4a836uM/is-this-noise-inside-my-head-bothering-you.html

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From: sitepronews.com

The iconic arcade game Pac-Man celebrated it’s 30th anniversary this month. That’s right, 30 years ago, Pac-Man was launched in Japan and it’s been a firm favorite ever since, with young and old.
To commemorate Pac-Man’s 30th birthday, Google created an interactive Home Page Doodle: a Flash-based mini game of Pac-Man incorporating the Google logo. The [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Google Doodle Celebrates 30 Years of Pac-Man

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/05/31/google-doodle-celebrates-30-years-of-pac-man/

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From: google.com

Posted by randfish

Sometimes, the page you’re trying to rank - the one that visitors will find relevant and useful to their query - isn’t the page the engines have chosen to place first. When this happens, it can be a frustrating experience trying to determine what course of action to take. In this blog post, I’ll walk through some of the root causes of this problem, as well as five potential solutions.

When the wrong page from your site appears prominently in the search results, it can spark a maddening conflict of emotion - yes, it’s great to be ranking well and capturing that traffic, but it sucks to be delivering a sub-optimal experience to searchers who visit, then leave unfulfilled. The first step should be identifying what’s causing this issue and to do that, you’ll need a process.

Below, I’ve listed some of the most common reasons we’ve seen for search engines to rank a less relevant page above a more relevant one.

1. Internal Anchor Text
   The most common issue we see when digging into these problems is the case of internal anchor text optimization gone awry. Many sites will have the keyword they’re targeting on the intended page linking to another URL (or several) on the site in a way that can mislead search engines. If you want to be sure that the URL yoursite.com/frogs ranks for the keyword “frogs,” make sure that anchor text that says “frogs” points to that page. See this post on keyword cannibalization for more on this specific problem.
   _
2. External Link Bias
   The next most common issue we observe is the case of external links preferring a different page than you, the site owner or marketer, might. This often happens when an older page on your site has discussed a topic, but you’ve more recently produced an updated, more useful version. Unfortunately, links on the web tend to still reference the old URL. The anchor text of these links, the context they’re in and the reference to the old page may make it tough for a new page to overcome the prior’s rankings.
   _
3. Link Authority & Importance Metrics
   There are times when a page’s raw link metrics - high PageRank, large numbers of links and linking root domains - will simply overpower other relevance signals and cause it to rank well despite barely targeting (and sometimes barely mentioning) a keyword phrase. In these situations, it’s less about the sources of links, the anchor text or the relevance and more a case of powerful pages winning out through brute force. On Google, this happens less than it once did (at least in our experience), but can still occur in odd cases.
   _
4. On-Page Optimization
   In some cases, a webmaster/marketer may not realize that the on-page optimization of a URL for a particular keyword term/phrase is extremely similar to another. To differentiate and help ensure the right page ranks, it’s often wise to de-emphasize the target keyword on the undesirable page and target it more effectively (without venturing into keyword stuffing or spam) on the desired page. This post on keyword targeting can likely be of assistance.
   _
5. Improper Redirects
   We’ve seen the odd case where an old redirect has pointed a page that heavily targeted a keyword term/phrase (or had earned powerful links around that target) to the wrong URL. These can be very difficult to identify because the content of the 301’ing page no longer exists and it’s hard to know (unless you have the history) why the current page might be ranking despite no effort. If you’ve been through the other scenarios, it’s worth looking to see if 301 redirects from other URLs point to the page in question and running a re-pointing test to see if they could be causing the issue.
   _
6. Topic Modeling / Content Relevance Issues
   This is the toughest to identify and to explain, but that won’t stop us from trying Essentially, you can think of the search engines doing a number of things to determine the degree of relevancy of a page to a keyword. Determining topic areas and identifying related terms/phrases and concepts is almost certainly among these (we actually hope to have some proof of Google’s use of LDA, in particular, in the next few months to share on the blog). Seeing as this is likely the case, the engine may perceive that the page you’re trying to rank isn’t particularly “on-topic" for the target keyword while another page that appears less “targeted" from a purely SEO/keyphrase usage standpoint is more relevant.

Once you’ve gone through this list and determined which issues might be affecting your results, you’ll need to take action to address the problem. If it’s an on-page or content issue, it’s typically pretty easy to fix. However, if you run into external linking imbalances, you may need more dramatic action to solve the mistmatch and get the right page ranking.

Next, we’ll tackle some specific, somewhat advanced, tactics to help get the right page on top:

1. The 301 Redirect (or Rel Canonical) & Rebuild
   In stubborn cases or those where a newer page is replacing an old page, it may be wise to simply 301 redirect the new page to the old page (or the other way around) and choose the best-converting/performing content for the page that stays. I generally like the strategy of maintaining the older, ranking URL and redirecting the newer one simply because the metrics for that old page may be very powerful and a 301 does cause some loss of link juice (according to the folks at Google). However, if the URL string itself isn’t appropriate, it can make sense to instead 301 to the new page instead.
   
   Be aware that if you’re planning to use rel=canonical rather than a 301 (which is perfectly acceptable), you should first ensure that the content is exactly the same on both pages. Trying to maintain two different version of a page with one canonicalizing to another isn’t specifically against the engines’ guidelines, but it’s also not entirely white hat (and it may not work, since the engines do some checking to determine content matches before counting rel=canonical sometimes).
   _
2. The Content Rewrite
   If you need to maintain the old page and have a suspicion that content focus, topic modeling or on-page optimization may be to blame, a strategy of re-authoring the page from scratch and focusing on both relevance and user experience may be a wise path. It’s relatively easy to test and while it will suck away time from other projects, it may be helpful to give the page more focused, relevant, useful and conversion-inducing material.
   _
3. The Link Juice Funnel
   If you’re fairly certain that raw link metrics like PageRank or link quantities are to blame for the issue, you might want to try funnelling some additional internal links to the target page (and possibly away from the currently ranking page). You can use a tool like Open Site Explorer to identify the most important/well-linked-to pages on your site and modify/add links to them to help channel juice into the target page and boost its rankings/prominence.
   _
4. The Content Swap
   If you strongly suspect that the content of the pages rather than the link profiles may be responsible and want to test, this is the strategy to use. Just swap the on-page and meta data (titles, meta description, etc) between the two pages and see how/if it impacts rankings for the keyword. Just be prepared to potentially lose traffic during the test period (this nearly always happens, but sometimes is worth it to confirm your hypothesis). If the less-well-ranked page rises with the new content while the better-ranked page falls, you’re likely onto something.
   _
5. The Kill ‘Em with External Links
   If you can muster a brute force, external link growth strategy, either through widgets/badges, content licensing, a viral campaign to get attention to your page or just a group of friends with websites who want to help you out, go for it. We’ve often seen this precise strategy lift one page over another and while it can be a lot of work, it’s also pretty effective.

While this set of recommendations may not always fix the issue, it can almost always help identify the root cause(s) and give you a framework in which to proceed. If you’ve got other suggestions, I look forward to hearing about them in the comments!

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Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/IZpMci6SpJg/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions

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From: sitepronews.com

When a website is finally getting respectable traffic, enjoying a decent page rank (PR), and already at the first pages of search engine results, is it time to break out the champagne in celebration?
The shrewd website owner knows this is just halfway through the journey to a successful income-generating website. The end-goal is still [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

De-mystifying Landing Page Optimization

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/05/31/de-mystifying-landing-page-optimization/

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From: sitepronews.com

Andy Warhol got it wrong, he meant to say 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes! That lower number seems much more appropriate in the fast moving world of Twitter, the souped up mass online messaging tool that never quits or takes a breather. But how effective is Twitter as a list building tool?
Recently, one well-known [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

List Building In The Age Of Twitter

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/05/31/list-building-in-the-age-of-twitter/

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From: google.com

Google, Facebook and Apple are no longer the underdogs. The online literati are now turning their critical eyes towards the new symbols of big capital.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/CdP7wOUXmMg/2916-google-is-not-cute-anymore.html

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From: google.com

Every 18 months for the last decade, the world has doubled the data it pushes to you.

Twice as much email, twice as many friend requests, twice as many sites to check, twice as many devices.

When does your mind lose the ability to keep up? Then what happens? Is it already happening?

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/OQNWXauxFZs/redoubling-to-system-failure.html

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From: sitepronews.com

I get many questions about my job as a copywriter and SEO practitioner, and for the most part they follow a similar theme- ‘what do you do?’ and ‘could I do it?’ In an attempt to address these questions once and for all and possibly also give an insight into the life of an internet [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

An Informal Look at Writing Online Content

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/05/30/an-informal-look-at-writing-online-content/

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From: google.com

Posted by Sam Crocker

Hi there Mozzers! My name is Sam Crocker and I work for Distilled. This is my first post here at SEOmoz and I am looking forward to your feedback!

Background

My mother used to scold me for misusing my toys, playing with my food and for having a bit too much energy. She was well within her rights, as I was a bit of a handful, but at the moment one particular phrase really sticks out in my mind

“Is that what that was made for Sam? Use it the right way, please.”

Whether I was riding down the stairs in a sleeping bag, having sword fights with paper towel tubes with my sister, or using my skateboard as a street luge- I’ve always been big on using things for purposes other than their intended design. It should be no surprise that I do the same with some of the fancy and powerful tools upon which we have become quite dependent in the SEO world. Much like when I was little, it seems like by using things the “wrong way” there’s scope to have a bit more fun and to discover some new and different ways of accomplishing the same goals.

Me As a Little Guy. Snow Scraper = Renegade Fighting Stick?

I spoke about my most recent adventures in using things the wrong way at SMX Advanced London. I don’t think too many people who came to the keyphrase research session expecting to hear about how a scraper like Mozenda could be used to save all sorts of time and effort and generate new keyphrase ideas. You may want to have a quick read through that before watching the screencast.*

It’s also important to point out that Mozenda is best used as a discover tool in the instance I provide here. If this method were a perfect solution to keyword research you could very easily build a tool that does it better. The beauty of Mozenda, however, is that it can be just about any tool you want. If you need to generate brand new content around a subject area you know nothing about, you can use it to explore tags on delicious or another social media platform.

Given a great deal of interest in this technique that I received from attendees at the presentation and in the twittersphere I decided it was worth providing a full walkthrough to cover some of the nuances I wasn’t able to cover in a 12 minute presentation and to share with the folks who weren’t able to attend the conference.






<iframe class="embeddedvideo" width="480" height="385" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8i92wdvwYjA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></iframe>  



 *It’s worth noting that for the sake of consistency I used the same Google Suggest tool in the video as I used for my initial research and discussed at SMX London. Since then Rob Milard built his own keyphrase expander tool based on this work and it is considerably more versatile than the original tool (you can search Google.com or Google.co.uk and export the file as a CSV). The output of this version isn’t in XML and provides the “search volume” data missing from the first tool. So congratulations and a BIG thank you to Rob from me and the search community in general!

Next Steps

The above screencast is an introduction of a technique we have been experimenting with to broaden the keyphrases targeted on a site (particularly, it can be used to increase the number of longtail keyphrases and provide insights into terminology you may not be targeting in your current list of keyphrases). This can be particularly useful if you work for an agency dealing with clients from a number of different sectors. For the sake of demonstration I have only input 7 terms into the Google Suggest tool in an effort to pull out a workable dataset for the screencast and for my presentation but Mozenda is a pretty powerful tool, so there’s really nothing stopping you from using more keyphrases. As a matter of courtesy, however, I would suggest setting up some delays when running any large scraping task to prevent overwhelming servers or hogging bandwidth. For more information on this, please have a read through Rich Baxter’s latest piece on indexation.



One of the questions I was asked (by a number of people) was “what next?” As in: “what on earth am I going to do with these extra 10,000 keyphrases?” And although this presentation was intended as a proof of concept, I don’t want anyone to think we are trying to keep anything secret here so here are a few ideas about what you might consider doing next.

Option 1: Ask For Help!

For the people who find themselves thinking “I’m not really sure what to do with this data” I would suggest enlisting the help of a numbers guy or gal (Excel Wizards or other nerdy warriors). Odds are if you find looking at this sort of data daunting, you’re going to need their help making sense of the numbers later anyways.

Option 2: Outsource

The second option, for those of who know exactly what you want to do with this data, but don’t have the time to go through it all, I strongly suggest enlisting the help of cheap labour. Either find yourself an intern or make use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turks to find someone who can accomplish just what you need. The nice thing about services like this is that it’s a 24/7 workforce and you can get a feel for how helpful someone will be fairly quickly and painlessly.

Option 3: Jump Right In

Finally, the third option for those of you with some Excel skillz and a bit of time. There will definitely still be some manual work to be done and some weeding through for terms that are not at all relevant, the suggestions where you usually say aloud “no, Google I did NOT mean...” will clearly need to go.

The best use of this data will be the general themes or “common words” that you can quite easily sort through or filter for using Excel and that you may have been to oblivious to prior to starting.

 Feel Free to Sing Along if You Know The Words! (image via: Kottke)

Step 1: Remove all duplicates. In this example there were no duplicates created though I can only assume that with 10,000 keyphrases run through the tool there will be some duplicate output.



Step 2: Remove URL suggestions. I know we like to think otherwise, but if the user was searching for “gleeepisodes.net” they probably aren’t interested in TV listings from your site. It would also be a fairly cheeky move to try to optimise a page about someone else’s website.



Step 3: Remember your target audience. If you only operate in the UK “Glee schedule Canada” and “Glee schedule Fox” can probably be eliminated as well. Now would be a good time to eliminate any truly irrelevant entries as well (e.g. “Gleevec” – although some of your viewers may have leukemia this probably is not what most visitors to your site are looking for).



Step 4: With the remaining terms and phrases run them through the usual sense checking routines. This is a good time to check global/local search volume for these terms and look at some of the competitiveness metrics as well. Search volume will probably be quite high for most of these terms (at least enough for Google to think someone might be looking for them regularly), though competitiveness probably will be too, so choose wisely.

Identifying the patterns at this stage will be essential to the value of the research you are conducting. You can try to filter for common phrases or suggestions at this stage and if, as in this example you realise “rumors” is a relevant term you’ve not targeted anywhere on the site, it is high time you consider adding content targeting this area for all of the television shows on the site.



Last Step: Come up with a sensible strategy to attack all this new content. Look at these terms as jumping off points for new content, new blog posts, and new ways of talking about this and other related products/services/subjects on the site.

Conclusions

A lot can be learned through this sort of exercise. In addition to finding some new high volume search terms, it may help you identify trends in search for which you have not been competing and have implications across the whole site rather than on one page. For example, maybe you didn’t think about “spoilers” or “rumors.” For a site dedicated to television programmes this sort of terminology will likely be valuable for a number of other shows as well!



The moral of the story? If you build it they will come.

Sometimes it is worth developing your own tool to make use of existing technology. Whilst I still feel Mozenda is the right tool for the job for handling larger datasets, the tool Rob built is a perfect example of both how a little creativity and building on other’s ideas can lead to benefit for everyone. Rob’s tool effectively rendered my Mozenda workaround unnecessary for most small to medium sites, and that’s awesome.

Image via: Motivated Photos

A final word of warning: I’m not suggesting that you replace all other keyphrase research with this idea. This technique is best utilised either during creation of a site about an area you know very little about (it’s rare, but it happens), or when you’ve run out of ideas and tried some of the more conventional approaches. It’s all about thinking outside of the box and trying new things to save you time. Onpage optimisation, linkbuilding and more traditional keyphrase research needs to be done but sometimes the best results come from trying something a bit experimental and using things for purposes other than that which they were designed.



If you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to shame me publicly either in the below section or on Twitter.

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Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/aStX8VrL0ps/keyword-research-tool

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From: searchenginewatch.com

What Google calls “the buzzing blogger community” has been blogging about SES Toronto 2010, which will be held June 9-11 at the Hyatt Regency Toronto. So, what’s the buzz?

Click to read the rest of this post...

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/3sm_YoHgLW8/100530-150031

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From: google.com

Here are some of the search engine news headlines that have attracted our interest lately!

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/ll5pg5RQv6U/2950-pandia-search-engine-news-wrap-up-may-30.html

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From: google.com

Yahoo! add popular trends to image and video search.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/B8yO4WmEWN0/2941-yahoo-adds-popular-trends-to-image-and-video-search.html

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From: google.com

Google adds SSL encrypted search option.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/Sts_RfMde10/2929-using-encrypted-google-search.html

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From: google.com

Yes, I know you’re a master of the web, that you’ve visited every website written in English, that you’ve been going to SXSW for ten years, that you were one of the first bloggers, you used Foursquare before it was cool and you can code in HTML in your sleep. Yes, I know that you sit in the back of the room tweeting clever ripostes when speakers are up front failing on a panel and that you had a LOLcat published before they stopped being funny.

But what have you shipped?

What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?

Go, do that.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/LACJ4Eal_ls/but-what-have-you-shipped.html

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