Twitter’s New SEO Play: A Profile Directory Of All User Accounts

Twitter’s New SEO Play: A Profile Directory Of All User Accounts
http://bit.ly/VRm7Xd

twitter-new-logo-2012Twitter has quietly launched a user profile directory that it hopes will bring it more search engine traffic.

It’s Twitter’s second SEO play in recent weeks, coming on the heels of a change in its robots.txt file. With that change, Twitter made its content-based search results — i.e., tweets and hashtags, but not user searches — crawlable.

With the new directory, Twitter is finishing that process by making its user profiles more discoverable by Google, Bing and other search engines. When asked why Twitter launched the user directory, a company spokesperson said it’s “to help people find the accounts they’re looking for with various search engines.”

Is The Directory Helping Twitter’s Search Visibility?

Twitter’s user directory has been online for a couple weeks. It’s essentially a master site map of Twitter accounts listed alphabetically and, from an SEO perspective, follows best practices by showing no more than 100 profile links per page.

As I write this, a Google search for site:twitter.com/i/directory/profiles gives a superficial display of 718,000 matching results. If I click through to reach the end of the 1,000 results that Google will show, I can reach page 47 before getting the “we have omitted some entries very similar to the 469 already displayed” message. And if I click to include the omitted results, I hit the end at page 57.

twitter-google-directory

The 718,000 results isn’t right because Twitter’s directory doesn’t have that many pages. If you estimate that Twitter has about five million total accounts, the directory — with 100 accounts per page — would be about 50,000 pages, far less than 718,000.

But even if Google has only indexed about 57 pages (and those numbers aren’t perfectly reliable since I could be hitting a certain datacenter that has fewer results), it’s still a lot more than Bing. My searches show that Bing has so far only indexed the Twitter directory home page.

bing-twitter-directory

I have to assume that Bing will eventually crawl much deeper into the directory; Bing has gone on record admitting that its bot is slow, and that’s certainly the case here.

Of course, many Twitter profile pages have been crawled and indexed by Google and Bing for a long time now, so it’s difficult to say if the new directory is helping (or will help) the search engines find new, unindexed profiles.

The Checkered Twitter/Google Search History

What’s interesting is how Twitter’s recent search- and SEO-friendly moves fit into its checkered relationship with Google.

Google and Twitter used to be on good terms. Google had access to the full “firehose” of tweets and was primarily using that to power its Google Realtime Search product. But that ended in July 2011, forcing Realtime Search offline. Google promised that it would resurrect Realtime Search, but that never happened.

The end of that agreement meant Google no longer had access to the firehose — a special API feed of tweets — but Google was still able to do its regular crawl of Twitter profiles and content.

Except there was one temporary problem: Around the same time, in the summer of 2011, Twitter wasn’t very SEO-friendly. As we reported, Twitter was having technical infrastructure problems that hindered Google’s ability to crawl and index its site. Whoops.

Twitter eventually fixed those issues, but its relationship with Google has been strained ever since the end of the companies’ agreement. In January, Twitter came out firing when Google launched its Search Plus Your World product, accusing Google of favoring its own social content ahead of Twitter (and other social content).

Google’s response then — and many times since — has been to mention how Twitter turned off the firehose and isn’t giving Google direct access to its content anymore. But Twitter engineers joined with peers at Facebook and MySpace to create a “Don’t Be Evil” tool that showed how easily Google could surface Twitter (and other social) content without firehose access. For more on that, see this recap of Danny Sullivan’s conversation with Google’s Eric Schmidt from January.

So today, while the war of words between Google and Twitter has died down, we now see Twitter taking a much more proactive approach to search engines — first with the robots.txt change and now with the SEO-friendly user directory.

For more on the directory itself and how it works, see my companion article on Marketing Land, Twitter Quietly Launches A User Directory.

Related Topics: Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Search



SMX - Search Marketing Expo Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Study: 43 Percent Of Total Google Search Queries Are Local

Study: 43 Percent Of Total Google Search Queries Are Local
http://bit.ly/UN895n

Ad network Chitika has just released some new data — you’re seeing it here first — that compares local search volumes on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The study examined both PC and mobile traffic to determine an overall number.

Chitika looked at “millions of online ad impressions seen between September 21st and 27th, 2012.” To ensure it was measuring “local search,” Chitika compared the queries it was seeing from the engines “against its extensive database of local keywords and phrases (e.g. “near me,” “in Boston,” “around St. Louis,” etc.).”

What Chitika found was that 43 percent of the overall query volume coming from Google (mobile and PC) carried a local intent. That compared with 25 percent on Yahoo and Bing.

Roughly two years ago Google reported that 20 percent of PC queries “were related to location.” Since that time Google has put considerable effort into its local and map results, both online and in mobile.

In 2011 Google said that 40 percent of mobile search traffic is local. And last week a Google representative at an event informally said that now 50 percent of mobile search carries a local intent.

Obviously mobile search has raised the overall local percentage reported by Chitika (see postscript below). But these figures argue that local search volumes across engines are now quite massive. Indeed, they represent billions of queries monthly on the PC and mobile web. In addition they’re very high-value queries because local searchers are more likely to covert than others, especially mobile users.

Postscript: I asked Chitika to provide a breakdown of PC vs. mobile search in these findings. Chitika said that nearly three-quarters of Google’s local queries are in fact coming from mobile. It’s the opposite for Bing and Yahoo. However this is logical given that their mobile query volumes are so small compared to their PC volumes and to Google’s mobile search volume.

Related Topics: Featured | Features: Analysis | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Web Search | Top News



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The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs

The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs
http://bit.ly/UlUpE0

Posted by stuntdubl

This 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.

Exact match domains have always been the source of a lot of contention among SEOs. For quite some time, EMD’s have offered a competitive advantage for SEO’s who understood how to use them. In the early days of search when relevance algorithms were rather weak, many folks used “double dashed” domains because they were cheap to buy, and easy to rank. $ 6 to rank for a 3 word phrase. Sold. However, when you see best-online-seo-company.biz in your search result, you start to question the weighting of relevance factors. This is, in large part, how EMD’s got a bad rep to start with.

Despite the debate and obvious abuse, EMD’s represent what SEO’s do best – Seize Every Opportunity!

seize every opportunity - sincerely stuntdubl

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of EMD’s, and I agree with Elliot Silver that  EMD domains can be brands. High value keyword domains have been a commodity since the internet became a commercial marketplace. 

Matt Cutts (esteemed Google engineer) has made this comment in the past (about 2 years ago):

"We have looked at the rankings and weights that we give to keyword domains and some people have complained that we’re giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains. And so we have been thinking about adjusting that mix a little bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm so that given two different domains, it wouldn’t necessarily help you as much to have a domain with a bunch of keywords in it."

 

 

Types of EMD’s

Exact match domain best practices

I think it’s important firstly to qualify the different types of EMD. The major factors in identifying quality domains, to me, includes:

  • TLD extension (.com/.net/.org/.other)
  • Number of keywords
  • Dashed or non-dashed
  • Domains with “stop words” only qualify as “partial match domains”

Let’s start with dashed domains. It has been proven statistically that domains with more than a single dash are very likely to be spam. Multiple dashes in a domain was an early spammer trick because of the low barrier to entry with cost. This rules these out.  Don’t bother with a double dash domain. 

It is very common to see domain names that include a single hyphen, but when two, three, or more hyphens are present, this is often an indication that these domain names are associated with companies that are attempting to trick search engines into ranking their web pages more highly.

From this amazing patent post by Bill Slawski regarding EMD's and detecting commercial queries.

Even though there is plenty of evidence that a single dash domain can rank just fine, I would avoid this technique as well. Many of the single dash EMD’s that rank are old existing domains. It is my opinion that a single dash EMD still really provides very little advantage over a non-keyword domain with all things considered. Skip the dashed domains as well.

The next question is how many keywords in a URL is too many. I would answer 2-3 for a .net/.org and 3-4 for a .com. BestBusinessCreditCards.com may be long, but I think it is still effective and too the point. Four words is pushing it, but I think you can still make a valid argument for a 4 word .com domain in certain spaces where most all the domains are taken, and there are some very niche commercial products worth targeting specifically. While .net/.org domains are still very credible, there are more of them available, so I think you have to reduce by a word. 4 words max for .com, 3 words max for .net/.org.  3 word .com or 2 word .net/.org is the best idea.

.net/.org keyword domains have proven to be very effective as a tool for bootstrapping a website. I think this is valid strategy. Instead of flickr.com, start with onlinephotos.net or even onlinephotogallery.org. I understand the value of a brand, but I think there’s also value in embracing “bootstrapper traffic.” There's definitely a lot of value to a startup in some highly relevant long tail traffic from your targeted keyword phrase set.  .net/.org domains are generally priced at about 10% of the value of a .com domain. This can be of great value in competitive verticals where most of the domains have been registered for many years. 

Find the BEST two-word .net/.org within your category, and buy it in the aftermarket if it is available. For buying your EMD - see the advice below. This can be great for your mainsite, microsite, or just to keep your competitor from getting it. At worst, think of it as a defensive strategy for your most important phrases. Just don’t think you’re going to dominate the SERPS spending less than three or four times what you paid for the domain in the first place. A crappy microsite  that costs half of what you paid for the domain will get you a one way ticket to Nowhereville these days.

Search engine filters - SERP Nowheresville

Stop words in keyword domains

Domains that include stopwords don’t truly qualify as an EMD, but can be mildly effective. It probably wouldn’t be my first choice, but if you can get theDetroitRoofer.com for $ 6, it will probably be a decent bet you’ll have some decent signals at your advantage in ranking for your targeted term for the relatively reasonable future. There is the potential for some brand confusion here though if someone owns detroitroofer.com

The most significant benefit of an exact match domain is that it makes it much more easy to develop targeted keyword anchor text from authority sites. Anchor text as an SEO tool is in decline, but it has always been a very significant factor, and will likely remain this way to some extent. It’s much easier to get someone to link to your site with the domain name, than it is to tell them “link to me with these keywords." This is probably the major competitive advantage over non-EMD domains. 

Offsite optimization is more than just links these days with the increasing importance of social mentions. Smart money speculation says it will be easier to get keyword rich social mentions for an EMD than for other types of domains as well.

So with all the talk of EMD’s, what the people really want to know is: what should we do? For those of you in this camp, let me offer you my best practices with keyword domain names. Unfortunately, I can make no guarantees to the amount of time these will hold true in the ever shifting tides of SEO change, but this is where I think we're at as of the time of posting:

EMD and domain best practices

  1. Always be willing to spend 10-15% of your overall budget on the BEST domain name you can get. It will make a big difference in both the short and long run. Dive into the aftermarket, and send some emails.
  2. Skip the second level TLD’s - .mobi / .travel / .info isn’t worth it.
  3. No more than one dash in your domain (better to just skip dash domains altogether)
  4. 3-4 words max for .com EMD’s
  5. 2-3 words max for .net/.org EMD’s
  6. Best to build a Brand site on a keyword domain so you get both brand mentions and generic intent keywords (see Toys.com owned by ToysRus.com and associates)
  7. Geo-local EMD’s are great to own, and offer lower barriers to entry
  8. You're going to have to focus some efforts on "de

Why Big Content Is Worth the Risk

Why Big Content Is Worth the Risk
http://bit.ly/VzInVp

Posted by Dr. Pete

We all want the low-hanging fruit, but let’s be honest – the low-hanging fruit is rotten, bruised, and covered with the grubby fingerprints of all the other spoiled brats pawing at it. There’s a time for easy wins, but easy only gets you so far. Sadly, I see too many SEOs putting days or weeks of effort into crafting the perfect low-value scheme, when that same time could’ve easily gone into content that has real staying power and drives sales.

I’m obsessed with “Big Content” lately – resources that go beyond our narrow bins of blog posts, videos, and infographics. I’m going to show you how that obsession is paying off, and why building real content is easier than you think.

I. What Is Big Content?

First, let me apologize for introducing another important-sounding but vague and probably useless term. I’m only calling it “Big Content” because the examples I’m thinking of defy any single definition. I want this to be actionable, so let me try to pin down what I’m taking about…

1. Big Content Takes Effort

If you want easy, then stop reading (this article is pretty long, and that sandwich won’t eat itself). The #1 attribute of big content is that it takes time and effort – it doesn’t have to be expensive, but you have to invest something into it (and, as they say, time is money). The problem with easy is that what’s easy for you is easy for everyone else, too. If anyone can do it, a tactic quickly loses impact. You can’t build a lasting competitive advantage with easy.

Here’s what most people don’t get, though – once you get good at big, big gets easier. You learn how to be efficient, tap outside resources, and manage risks. The more you create big content, the more you see opportunities that weren’t there before. You have to put in the effort and make the mistakes – if you’re stuck on easy, big will always be out of your reach.

2. Big Content Breaks Molds

I don’t think “big” content fits any particular format, but what I have noticed is that the examples that fit my idea of big all seem to break the format mold – they’re either hybrids or somehow more than just the sum of their parts. I think examples speak louder than explanations here, so let’s look at a couple.

Here’s a great concept put together by SimplyBusiness  - a WordPress Guide for Small Business. At first glance, you might think it’s “just” a flowchart:

Big Content Sample - Flowchart

Click on “NO” under any section, though, and you get a custom resource to answer the question. Some of these are links out, but others are videos created specifically for this project:

Big Content Sample - Flowchart + Video

Flowchart + links + video = something bigger. Here’s another recent example by the folks at Seer Interactive, an interactive content piece called “How Do They Make Money”:

Big Content Example - Infographic

At first glance, it looks like an infographic, but click on any company logo and you’ll see the real content in action:

Big Content Example - Infographic + Data

Again, if you want to over-simplify, it’s just icons + pop-ups, but the whole effect is a useful and professional piece that really engages people. Both of these examples also clearly have a lot of research and effort behind them.

3. Big Content Can Be Small

Big content needs big concepts, but it doesn’t have to be lengthy. One of my first introductions to big content was a 1-page PDF I created back in February of 2009, a 25-point usability checklist.  What was big about it? Well, even though it was only a single page, it represented not only years of client experience, but 30-40 hours of work just to create the list itself. I distilled a ton of usability texts and much longer checklists and combined that with my own experiences to create something that I really felt represented a lot of knowledge in a small space.

This was also my introduction to just how successful big content can be. The piece not only attracted traffic and links, but it ended up in books and classes and introduced me to dozens of respected members of my industry. What’s more, this content had real staying power – even though I wrote it over 3-1/2 years ago and have barely touched my consultancy blog this year, here are the 2012 traffic stats for just that one piece:

Checklist Stats - 56.898 pageviews

While this content took a lot of up-front effort, I’ve spent almost no time on it in 2012, and yet it drove almost 50K unique pageviews and over half the entrances to my site. It’s an investment that’s paid itself off a hundred times over.

II. Benefits of Big Content

Now that you have some idea of what I mean by “big content”, let’s dive right into the tangible benefits. Sure, big content drives traffic and links, but so does any successful content. I want you to understand what sets big apart, and why it’s more than just quantity…

1. Big Content Has Longevity

People come back to big content, as my experience with the usability checklist illustrates. If you put enough effort and research into a piece and make it truly unique, it’s almost naturally “evergreen”, even long after publication. There’s a step even beyond evergreen, though – big content has a way of creating audience or at least being in the right place at the right time when that audience is ready for it.

Let me give you an example. Another big content piece I’ve been deeply involved in is the Google Algorithm History here on SEOmoz – not only is it a big piece in scope, but we’ve actively updated it since launch, making it somewhat unique in the realm of historical posts. I intended it to be a “living” document.

While the Algo History has been popular, it started out a lot like any other piece of content – it had an initial spike that then settled into a steady hum. This is the first two months:

Algo History traffic - first two months

While the initial spike was respectable (just over 9K pageviews), this is a pretty typical pattern for our blog posts – a big opening day that levels off in a few days. Admittedly, the Algo History did keep on producing traffic, but the rest of 2011 was a steady trickle (in the realm of 200-400 pageviews/day). Overall 2011 traffic to the page was about 63K unique pageviews.

This pattern continued for the first couple of months of 2012 – there was some slow build-up, but nothing earth-shaking. Then, along came April:

Algo History - Penguin spike and 2012

On April 25th, traffic to the page spiked. Recognize that date? It’s the day after Penguin, and the start of a newfound interest in the algorithm. Remarkably, that interest has stayed steady, even months after the

Facebook's New Custom Audiences: What They Are and How You Can Use Them - Part 1

Facebook's New Custom Audiences: What They Are and How You Can Use Them - Part 1
http://bit.ly/Woj748

Posted by Justin_Vanning

If you're currently advertising on Facebook, you've probably heard the announcement about their new Custom Audience feature. The announcement was a pretty big deal and had most marketers salivating over the new targeting possibilities. 

In case you missed it, here's a brief overview of the Custom Audiences feature and tips on how you can use it to your advantage.  

What Are Facebook Custom Audiences?

Let's say you have a current email list of all of your existing customers. You've introduced a new product that you think would be valuable to those customers, and you'd love to be able to run Facebook ads that show only to those customers. Up to this point, you didn't have a way to do this.

Now, with Facebook Custom Audiences, you now can upload your customer email list (or a list of phone numbers or Facebook User ID's) for Facebook to hash the data against its users to find matches. Pretty cool, eh?

Odds are that if you have 1,000 customer emails, they won't all be currently on Facebook. However, many of your customers might have used the same email when they bought from you as they did when (if) they signed up for Facebook. You'll probably be surprised at how many people from your customer list have the same email that match back to their Facebook account. To test this new feature out, we uploaded some of our customer lists and were seeing anywhere from 50-70% match rates. Not too shabby.

The other beautiful thing about Custom Audiences is that not only do you have a new, custom audience that you've created from your own customer data, but you can layer on any of the other Facebook Advertising targeting options on top of it. For instance, let's say you upload the emails of your current customers and found 70% of them on Facebook. Now you have a Custom Audience of these folks. You can now say that you only want to run a Facebook ad to the people in this list who include the filters of living in Seattle and not liking your fan page yet. The options for targeted marketing are pretty limitless.

Some of you might have concerns about privacy. It's important to note that Facebook will hash (or encrypt) all of the email addresses, phone numbers, or Facebook user ID's that you upload before matching it to Facebook profiles. Here's Facebook's own explanation of this:

"Facebook calculates the hash of the email addresses and phone numbers that people have given us and stores these hashes with the corresponding person. When an advertiser imports their hashed audience list into power editor, we compare it with our hashes to find all the matching user IDs. If an advertiser imports a hashed email address that we don't have, it won't match anything. Facebook won't know the original email address or phone number because it was hashed before it was uploaded."

How Can I Use Custom Audiences?

I was pretty excited after reading the Custom Audiences announcement, and I started brainstorming the countless ways to use them. Here's what I've come up with so far:

  • Drive Facebook Likes: This one is pretty obvious. Now that you can mash your offline lists to Facebook profiles, you can easily set up a Custom Audience of your current customers or people who've signed up for one of your email lists (basically anyone who's had a brand impression with your company) and start serving them ads to try and get them to like your FB brand page. You'll want to make sure you select the option to only show ads to the people in this Custom Audience who don't already like your page. 
  • Drive Sales/Conversions: If you're a business that collects email addresses for lead gen purposes, why not upload those as a Custom Audience and then serve Facebook ads to that group? For example: if you sell products and know that your customers tend to buy product A before buying product B, upload the list of emails of all customers who've bought product A and then serve them ads promoting product B. Maybe you're a B2B business and 20% of your customers are in your mid-tier product plan. You can serve those customers ads trying to get them to upgrade to the next product tier. Maybe you're an online florist and Valentine's Day is approaching. Why not upload an email list of all your customers and then use Facebook targeting to focus on only the customers who are in relationships or married, and serve that group a Valentine's Day promotion? The possibilities are endless.
  • Drive Newsletter Signups: If your company has a newsletter that you send out on a regular basis and you can pull an email list of all customers who haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, upload that group as your Custom Audience. You can then serve ads promoting your newsletter to those customers. 

The potential targeting options with Custom Audiences is pretty vast, so I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities I missed. Now that we've discussed what the Custom Audiences are and some ways to use them, let's quickly talk about how to set them up.

How Do I Set Up Custom Audiences?

In order to use Facebook's Custom Audience feature, you'll have to use a 3rd party vendor  (SalesForce, AdParlor, Alchemy Social, GraphEffect, Kenshoo, Nanigans, Social Moov, and Optimal) or the Facebook Power Editor. Check out the link to learn about what the Power Editor is and how to download and start using it.

Once you have it downloaded, you'll want to click on the Custom Audiences tab on the top nav and then click "create audience".

A pop-up will load asking for you to upload your Custom Audience file. Make sure your file is in CSV or TXT format, name it, and then upload it to Facebook. 

 

Facebook will now mash your audience list with their user profiles to see how many match. Remember, the number of people in your original list will not match the number that Facebook returns for the Custom Audience size for two main reasons: some people will not be active users of Facebook, and some will not use the same email address or phone number that they gave your company as they do on their Facebook profile. 

Once the audience has finished uploading in Facebook, you can click it and then click "create ad using audience" to set up an ad or you can click the Custom Audience tab from the ad editor. 

What's Next?

The new Custom Audience feature is pretty exciting, and I'm launching some tests here at SEOmoz to see how it performs for us. We'll be testing 3 things to start:

  • Driving Facebook likes
  • Driving conversions (free trial signups)
  • Driving newsletter signups 

I'll collect data over the next couple of weeks and write a follow-up post to show how they performed for us. 

I'd also love to hear from you all to see what you think about this new Custom Audience feature. Are you currently using it, or do you plan on using it in the future? If so, how will you plan on using it? Add your thoughts in the comments section below and we'll continue the discussion. 

 


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What Kind of Content Gets Links in 2012?

What Kind of Content Gets Links in 2012?
http://bit.ly/SCxDAk

Posted by dohertyjf

Back in 2009, Casey Henry wrote two of the greatest posts ever on SEOmoz -What Makes A Link Worthy Post - Part 1 and What Makes A Link Worthy Post - Part 2. Since we're getting close to three years since those posts went live and the SEO world has changed considerably, some of us thought that it was about time to pull some new numbers and see how the community has changed in regards to what people link to.

Just like Casey's posts, I have pulled the individual linking root domains (LRDs) instead of the total link counts, which gives us a better picture of how wide content spreads since we are eliminating the fact that one site could have the link on 1,000 pages.

I have done this for just the posts since Casey's Part 2 went live on November 4th, 2009. I also took a random sample of 500 posts since then and pulled the link metrics for them.

For the purposes of this post, I pulled:

  • Number of LRDs
  • Number of thumbs up
  • Number of comments
  • Types of media in the post (videos, images, lists, presentations)
  • Category
  • Word count
  • Author

I decided not to pull social data because I did that back in July 2011 and people hated on it. I decided to keep it to links and the other numbers, and not try to imply correlation or causation.

What I am not doing here

To be clear, I am not talking about whether or not these posts rank well, or whether or not they were "good" posts. Rather, I am presenting you the data/numbers and letting you decide what to do with them.

I should also state that since some categories had more posts in them than others, I normalized the data by dividing the number of posts against the sum of the metric, to get an average. This took away any skewing based on popularity of the category. Here is an example of non-normalized linking root domains to a category:

And this is what it looks like normalized:


It's not a HUGE difference, but for the integrity of our data, we want to do this to give a true picture.

Let's go!

Posts with images

First, it has long been postulated that posts with images receive more links than posts without images, but is that true? Does the data tell us this?

Yep, it sure does.

Comments by category

I also wondered if the number of comments on a post correlated to links. Does getting more comments on a post mean that there will probably be more links to it, thus we should encourage more comments so that we have a better chance of getting links?

First, here are the categories that get the most comments (aka generate the most discussion):

We see that the whitehat/blackhat posts tend to generate the most discussion, followed by conversation rate optimization, consulting tips and tricks, and search engine trends. Surprisingly (to me), linkbuilding comes in at #10.

But do comments correlate to links?

There seems to be a bit of a correlation, but I don't think it is large enough to necessarily justify generating comments and community just for the links. There are other reasons to do it that are stronger than linkbuilding.

Amount of content

Our dear Dr Pete wrote a post back at the end of 2011 about Moz’s most popular content, in which he saw that there was possibly a correlation between longer content and the number of links a post gained. I’ve always loved the longreads websites and longer pieces of writing and journalism, but is it true that longer pieces may attract more links than shorter pieces? Let’s let the data speak again.

If we visualize the 500 posts based on word count, we get this graph from largest to smallest:

Without changing the order of the data, if we visualize the links that these posts have gained, there seems to be a correlation between longer content and links:

Interesting! #longreads has long been one of my favorite hashtags to check out on Twitter and this validates another reason for writing longer content.

Does linking out increase links?

I tire of all the posts that I see written talking about “building links by linking out.” These posts confuse correlation with causation. However, I decided to use the data provided by the ScreamingFrog export and see if linking out really did correlate to linking root domains in. Here’s what I found:

There does seem to be a slight correlation between the number of links going externally and the number of linking root domains coming in. Once again, remember that correlation does not equal causation and you cannot say that since you link out, you’ll get more links.

What kind of content do we like to talk about?

Even though tag clouds don’t help your SEO onsite, and in my opinion look dumb and even could get you gobsmacked by a Penguin, they can be useful for finding common themes. So, here are the themes often used in SEOmoz blog headlines:

Average LRDs by type of media

Here’s the one you’ve all been waiting for. In Casey’s post, he showed the following graph, which showed that content with all three media types he pulled was most likely to have the most links:

Since this is an updated post, I wanted to run the data again. This was the most surprising graph I found, because it seems that on SEOmoz, posts with just images tend to get more links than posts with all three media types I pulled (lists, images, and video)! Check it out:

I really do not know how to explain this, other than maybe these are the posts that are most often scraped?

In regards to video, notice that most of the posts on the SEOmoz blog that just have video are Whiteboard Fridays. Therefore, I must say that your mileage may vary when it comes to posts with just videos, as this data shows that the links are probably influenced by the fact that Whiteboard Friday has been branded and is always high quality and educational. You can’t just put videos into a post and expect it to attract more links simply because of video.

Just for fun

LinkedIn Now Lets You Follow Top “Influencers”

LinkedIn Now Lets You Follow Top “Influencers”
http://bit.ly/SAaz67

LinkedIn has allowed users to follow companies and groups for some time, making it easier to access the top news of the day.  In an effort to expand the type of updates users receive and to provide them more interesting content, the company is now allowing them to follow a small set of “influencers.”

“Influencers” basically means “important thought leaders,” and includes the likes of Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, President Obama, Mitt Romney, Reid Hoffman, T. Boone Pickens, Craig Newmark, and many more.  At the outset, LinkedIn will provide around 150 “thought leaders” for users to follow.  According to a blog post, LinkedIn says that they’ll continue to expand the list of influencers over the next few months.

When you follow one of these top professionals, you’ll be able to see their posts in your feed and like, comment, and share them at will.  You won’t only see posts from these top users, but also videos, photos, and slideshare presentations.

Some of these media updates will be “long-form,” including big presentations on topics like “Impact of poverty on nutrition” by celebrity chef and author Marcus Samuelsson” and “It’s not just who you know, it’s what they know” by LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.

“We know millions of conversations take place on LinkedIn everyday. Today, we’re providing another way for you to get even more value from LinkedIn by accessing the incredible insights and information directly from some of the most recognized and influential professionals on LinkedIn. We’ve also made it even easier for you to join or start a professional discussion,” says LinkedIn’s Ryan Roslansky.

You can check here for a big list of the “influencers” currently available to follow on the network.  LinkedIn will also be recommending people to follow to users in time.

WebProNews » Social Media

The Anatomy of a Link Building Hack Day

The Anatomy of a Link Building Hack Day
http://bit.ly/Sv96hg

Posted by Rob Toledo

The “hack day” is a popular and effective practice used by developers and designers alike to quickly ship new products with minimal administrative overhead. These events have consistently proven fruitful by the likes of Google, TechCrunch Disrupt, a variety of startups, and even the US Government in allowing creativity to turn ideas into reality much quicker than a traditional release cycle. Subscribing to the Facebook philosophy of “move fast and break things,” hack days are not about releasing a perfect product with signoff and approval from every boss in the building, but rather quickly developing and acting on great ideas.

In early 2012, Distilled held an internal hack day of our own. There were 40+ of us in the same room, and we were given the green light to run with any thoughts we had on how to make Distilled better. With little instruction, teams were formed, ideas were hashed out, a lot of coffee was consumed, and at the end of the day, we ended up with 70+ new ideas going live. Ranging from improving how we track data, fine-tuning a daily process, or somehow producing 57 SEO protip videos for our clients and blog readers, the main benefit from this day was how motivating it was to see the collective effort of a team creatively coming together to improve things for everyone.

Seeing the success of this effort, our Outreach team now applies this hack day concept once a month to a rotating list of projects. We typically pause other work and, as a team, pour all of our focus and resources into one client for eight hours straight. Thus far, this collective effort has quickly revealed itself as successful and most certainly worth the resources.

Below I will outline what a typical hack day looks like for our outreach team here at Distilled, which is to act as merely a skeleton of what could work for you. Things might be completely different for you and your team, and that is perfectly fine. There are very few rules as to what makes for a successful hack day, but we do recommend every team, whether you are in-house, agency, or even freelance, give it a try.

Under each section, you will find italicized text referencing the specifics of our most recent hack day for those hoping to briefly peek into daily operations here on the Distilled Outreach team.

But first, three key things to keep in mind:

  1. Get creative: No strategy should be off the table here as this is a great opportunity to try new tactics and see what sort of results they may yield. Nothing should be counted as a failure, even low success rates. Editing a Thomas Edison a bit here, "I have not failed a thousand times at building links. I have successfully discovered a thousand ways to NOT build a link!"
  2. Set lofty goals: This should be a great time to prove that your team working together is when it is at its strongest.
  3. Have FUN: This should be a break from daily routine, and is a great opportunity to enjoy some time with the team. Keep the fridge filled with snacks and soda, put on some music, and enjoy!

Second, a brief introduction to our main cast -- feel free to reach out to any of us and ask any questions you may have:

Adria “Jersey” Saracino (follow on Twitter): Head of outreach

James “Jamazing” Daughtery (follow on Twitter): Outreach coordinator

Alyssa “Unofficial Distilled Rapper” Ennis (follow on Twitter): Junior outreach coordinator

Kyra “Dirty Look” Kuik (follow on Twitter): Content writer, editor

Luke “Tuts” Clum (follow on Twitter): Creative designer, content creator

And myself, Rob Toledo (follow on Twitter): Outreach coordinator

___________________________________________

8:00 AM – Prepare a ton of coffee:

This goes without saying.

I like to show up early to settle in a bit. There is a growing internal competition between myself and several others to see who can be the one to arrive early enough to unlock the door and get first shot at the Aeropress (soon to be replaced by an espresso machine).

8:15AM – Create a collective workspace:

Getting away from your desk can be one of the easiest ways to create almost instant productivity. Breaking daily routine will immediately foster outside the box thinking, which is exactly what leads to the most success during a hackathon.

It is also beneficial to have the team in the same room. If this is not possible with people working from various locations, consider setting up an all-day webcam for easy and quick communication. We also use a shared Google doc to track our progress throughout the day (feel free to copy our template here).

Consider offering your clients (or managers if you are working in-house) the opportunity to sit in for as long as they want. The enthusiasm that comes out during a hack day is very contagious.

We have a (relativey) cozy conference room here at Distilled Seattle, which makes for a great work environment for such collaboration. Adria will typically project the shared gdoc onto the wall so we can all watch in real-time as we make progress throughout the day.

8:30AM – Preliminary strategy and goal setting:

This will vary greatly depending on the project. When looking to promote existing content, we might discuss what types of sites would be interested in the piece, what previous contacts would want to help, what benefits the content provides to niche communities, etc.

If it is more of a freestyle project, the strategy extends well beyond that. What creative work can we throw together? What sort of design can we get done in a day? Do we have time to start at square one and put out feelers to see what kind of content bloggers are interested in hosting, and then immediately turn around and provide that content?

Nothing is off-limits here. This time should be used for hyper focus on one project, figuring out what expectations you can set, and making a plan to achieve your goals all within a limited one-day period.

Looking for a few ideas to get the ball rolling? The only one Paddy Moogan gave an epic presentation on 35 ways to get links at MozCon 2012 with plenty of great ideas.

Our most recent hack day featured the Small Business Guide to WordPress. We tend to focus these monthly efforts on clients who have taken a chapter out of Wil Reynolds #RCS Bible (did you see their RCS Money project?) in order to not only maximize success, but to encourage more of this type of behavior.

We broke down this specific project into several areas of potential interest: small business blogs, web designers, social media influencers, and tutorial sites. We discussed what our pitches would look like, how we would reach the most people, and in what ways we could quickly turn around and provide the content we were hoping to deliver.

We agreed that the time would be best spent for the first few hours with James and I  focusing on outreach to our previous contacts, Alyssa and Luke outreaching to new contacts, and Kyra prospecting at first then transitioning into writing once we started receiving positive responses.

Bing Invests In Klout, Adds It To Social Sidebar

Bing Invests In Klout, Adds It To Social Sidebar
http://bit.ly/V1UeNe

Bing announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Klout, including an strategic investment in the company. This, a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews, is aimed at “strengthening social influence data on both the Bing and Klout platforms.”

“There will be more to come down the road,” he says, but the first things users will notice about the partnership are Klout data surfacing on Bing’s sidebar and highlights from Bing surfacing in the “moments” section of some people’s Klout profiles.

On the Bing sidebar, you might see a persona’s Klout score and topics they’re influential about. “This will help people connect with the right experts on the things they’re searching for,” the Bing spokesperson says.

Bing and Klout

Regarding the Bing “highlights” on Klout, he adds, “These Bing ‘highlights’ may include the number of times a person shows up as an expert in the ‘People Who Know’ section of Bing’s sidebar or the volume/frequency of searches for that person, demonstrating how search can be a powerful new indicator of online influence.”

Bing and Klout

“This is just the beginning of a new partnership between the two companies, and another great example of Bing’s commitment to working with industry partners to not only expand its social experience and help people do more with search, but to bring search as a signal into other social experiences,” he says.

It’s unclear how much Microsoft has invested in Klout. Update: Microsoft gave us the following statement from Bing Corporate Vice President, Derrick Connell: “We aren’t disclosing specific terms of the investment.”

Michael Arrington of CrunchFund, an investor in Klout, says, “The reason Klout was able to get a deal like this done is because they have a lot (a whole lot) of data on people. This data, along with the fact that they remain a neutral party working with all the giants, allows them to create a sort of Page Rank that tells others how influental you are in given areas.”

According to Eric Eldon at TechCrunch, the deal is not exclusive, indicating that Klout could, theoretically, become a ranking factor in Google.

Since rolling out the social sidebar back in May, Bing has added several new features, including Quora and Foursquare data.

WebProNews » Social Media

Garmin Nuvi 2595LMT

Garmin Nuvi 2595LMT
http://bit.ly/NTTgjj
The Garmin Nuvi 2595LMT becomes your individual speaker phone, as an incentive your telephone directory is loaded from your phone to the 2595LMT whenever your cellphone and GPS links. No fumbling with your cell phone while driving, you will simply RESPOND TO on the display to get all of your calls hands complimentary while continuing to securely continue driving.