The Super Bowl Ad That Almost Was...

Posted by great scott!

With the Super Bowl fast approaching, Rand looks back on his legendary proposal shenanigans of last year. Finally, all the details of the saga are revealed. Watch, comment and enjoy.  If you'd like to see the original proposal reaction video, go check it out.

UPDATE: I thought I'd add in a few more details about this post, since it's a bit personal. You can obviously see in the video that I'm a bit uncomfortable and nervous talking about it, even to this day, and I think a lot of that has to do with those old feelings from last year popping up. Hiding something from a spouse or partner, especially something this big, is hard, and it made for one of the most stressful times in my life. I honestly think it was worth it, though - just watching Mystery Guest putting the ring on her finger again makes it all worthwhile, and having a great story to tell about our engagement is a lot of fun (although, admittedly, I don't talk about it very much).

As far as the sponsor goes, I really don't harbor any bad feelings. I think Joe Morin from Storybids did an amazing job putting all of this together. In the video, I don't give him nearly the credit he deserves. Very frankly - there never would have been any media, any sponsor or any chance of succeeding without Joe's brilliant work. I'm eternally grateful and he knows it. I'm not upset with the sponsor, either, although I hope one day they can find the courage to let me show the video we made to my fiancée - I think they're very paranoid about it getting leaked onto the web, but it would be great fun to let her see it.

As for the aftermath - we had raised about $10,000 through MySuperProposal.com in donations, and that money was given away to the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. The very kind folks from the Veronica Mars show not only called us on the night of the proposal (as they had heard about it), they sent flowers and a signed copy of the script. An article ran the next morning in the local paper, but despite a short media blitz, there was no big circus, and I think that's just how we both preferred it. For those cynics who worried that we'd never set a date, we have - the wedding will be in the middle of September of this year, so expect my blogging to be non-existent at the end of the summer :)

A few relevant links:

• Tonight I Proposed to Mystery Guest - my original post on SEOmoz just after she accepted
• Her Reaction to the Proposal - I guess iFilm was purchased by Spike.com :)
• MySuperProposal - the website that started it all
• His TV Ad Works: Yes, She'll Marry Him - the article from the Seattle PI

Enjoy the SuperBowl, everyone - maybe there will even be some great commercials on this year. I'll let you know if we end up on the Oprah show for Valentine's Day...

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Yahoo Board, Sans Semel, to Consider Microsoft Bid

Yahoo's board of directors has issued a statement saying it will evaluate Microsoft's unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Not surprisingly, the board will be doing so without the input of former CEO and chairman Terry Semel, who stepped down as chairman last night. He was replaced as CEO by founder Jerry Yang back in June, and has been busy staffing up his old Windsor Media venture, though it remains to be seen what form that former investment firm will take. Roy Bostock, who has sat on Yahoo's board since May 2003, was elected to serve as non-executive chairman.

Semel's departure may bode well for a potential Microsoft deal, since he's been vocal in his disdain for such a merger. It also won't hurt that Yahoo's been shedding executives for the past year, so at least some of the potential redundancies are already dealt with.

On a conference call this morning to discuss the acquisition, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, suggested that Microsoft's offer would be the only one Yahoo could get, given anti-trust concerns that would prevent Google from making an offer. he played on the underdog theme, saying, "The fact is the industry will be better served by having a more credible alternative" in search and advertising.

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Vote for the SMX West Search Bowl Competitors

Posted by randfish

First off, a quick apology. I had posted this on Monday night without first checking with our nominees to ensure they could attend. I've now done so and thus, have a list of potential competitors who will be present if called upon! Sadly, favorites like Dave Naylor, Aaron Wall and a few others will not be in attendance, but the vast majority of nominees are attending!

For those who may be confused,  next month at the inaugural SMX West search marketing conference, two intrepid search marketers will take on teams from Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live & Ask.com in the first ever Search Bowl! Search Bowl is a trivia game, wherein the teams of two will be asked questions related to search and search marketing and those with the greatest knowledge of all things "search" will take home eternal glory! Or, at least, a 1994 Chrysler LeBaron (that's the prize, right Danny?).

For this voting, I've asked each of our nominees to prepare a short statement indicating why they would be best qualified to represent search marketers on the trivia field of battle. Here are their responses:

Heather Lloyd Martin (of SuccessWorks):

Sure, Why Not. Sounds like fun! :)

Michael Gray (of Wolf-Howl):

The man who bought a text link from Matt Cutts.

Hamlet Batista (of HamletBatista.com)

Kowing and doing what everybody else does is not a competitive advantage.

Andy Beal (of Marketing Pilgrim):

I've probably read 100,000+ search industry news items over the past five years, if I don't release the pressure by regurgitating them, my head will explode.

Ian Lurie (of Portent Interactive):

Er, what is a Search Bowl? Should I wear protective clothing?

Todd Friesen (Oilman and now part of Visible Technologies - congrats, Todd, and welcome to Seattle):

I'll bring my cup....

Greg Boser (of WebGuerrilla):

I am coming, but I'm really hoping I don't win.

Matt McGee (of SmallBusinessSEM):

Every vote for me is an entry in next year's SEMMY Awards! (Not really, sorry.)

Loren Baker (of SearchEngineJournal):

I (nominate) Bill (Slawski) just as long as we can limit his answers to under 60 seconds and insist that he wear an eye patch :)

Andrew Goodman (of Traffick):

I feel that I'll fare better if we add an egg race, real Super Bowl trivia, or "best impression of Bugs Bunny" to the mix, but anyway, count me as "game" to be humiliated in some shape or form.

Jill Whalen (of HighRankings):

 I'm the one who made Altavista rank first for "search engine" at Google. Why? Because I can.

Congrats to all our nominees. Now please help your industry select its finest for the battle ahead:

 

 

Thanks for voting - we'll announce a winner next week (along with some other very cool stuff about SEOmoz's participation in SMX West).

p.s. That's not actually Jill's quote. I just made it up because she didn't get back to me with the requested one-liner. I'm sure if she had, it would be something far more clever and vote inducing.

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Rewriting the Beginner's Guide to SEO: Rewriting, Server & Hosting Issues

Posted by randfish

I'm currently in the process of re-authoring and re-building the Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, section by section. You can read more about this project here.

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Redirecting Pages for Users & Search Engines

On the web, as in life, the only constant rule is that nothing is constant and all things must change. However, on the web, when things need to change, or, in our case, move, specifically from one URL to another, there are critical best practices to observe.

Let's first assume that you have a simple scenario - a URL that needs to re-point to another address permanently.

There are multiple options for accomplishing this feat, but in general, a single one, the 301-redirect, is preferrable for both users and search engines. Serving a 301 indicates to both browsers and bots that the page has moved permanently. Search engines interpret this to mean that not only has the page changed location, but that the content, or an updated version of it, can be found at the new URL. The engines will carry any link weighting from the original page to the new URL, as below:

Be aware that when moving a page from one URL to another, the search engines will take some time to discover the 301, recognize it and credit the new page with the rankings and weight of its predecessor. This process can be lengthier if your page hasn't changed in a long time and the spiders rarely visit it, or if the new URL doesn't properly resolve.

Other options for redirection, like 302s (temporary redirects), meta refreshes, or Javascript are poor substitues, as they generally will not pass the rankings and search engine value like the 301.

Transferring content becomes more complex when an entire site changes its domain or when content moves from one domain to another. Due to abuse by spammers and suspicion by the search engines, 301s between domains sometimes require more time to be properly spidered and counted. For more on moving sites, see Expectations and Best Practices for Moving to or Launching a New Domain.

Server & Hosting Issues

There are thankfully few server or web hosting dilemmas that affect the practice of search engine optimization. However, when overlooked, they can spiral into massive problems, and so are worthy of our review. The following are server and hosting issues that can negatively impact search engine rankings:

• Server Timeouts - If a search engine makes a page request that isn't served within the bot's time limit (or that produces a server timeout response), your pages may not make it into the index at all, and will almost certainly rank very poorly (as no indexable text content has been found).
• Slow Response Times - Although this is not as damaging as server timeouts, above, it still presents a potential issue. Not only will crawlers be less likely to wait for your pages to load, but surfers and potential linkers may choose to visit and link-to other resources because accessing your site becomes a problem.
• Shared IP Addresses - Lisa Barone wrote an excellent post on the topic of shared IP Adresses back in March of 2007. Basic concerns include speed, the potential for having spammy or untrusted neighbors sharing your IP address and potential concerns about receiving the full benefit of links to your IP address (discussed in more detail here).
• Blocked IP Addresses - As search engines crawl the web, they frequently find entire blocks of IP addresses filled with nothing but egregious web spam. Rather than blocking each individual site, engines do occassionally take the added measure of blocking an IP address or even an IP range. If you're concerned, search for your IP address at MSN/Live using the IP:address query (or SEOmoz's Who Else is Hosted on My IP Tool).
• Bot Detection and Handling - Some SysAdmins will go a bit overboard with protection and restrict access to files to any single visitor making over a certain number of requests in a given timeframe. This can be disastrous for search engine traffic, as it will constantly limit the crawling ability of the spiders.
• Bandwidth & Transfer Limitations - Many servers have set limitations on the amount of traffic that can run through to the site. This can be potentially disastrous when content on your site becomes very popular and your host shuts off access. Not only are potential linkers prevented from seeing (and thus, linking to) your work, but search engines are also cut off from spidering.
• Server Geography - This isn't necessarily a problem, but it is good to be aware that search engines do use the location of the web server when determining where a site's content is relevant to from a local search perspective. Since local search is a major part of many sites' campaigns and it is estimated that close to 40% of all queries have some local search intent, it's very wise to host in the country (it's not neccessary to get more granular) where your content is most relevant.

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I'm actually really excited to have this section finished, as it means I can start diving into some less dry, more fun material with the next few chapters :)

BTW - If you haven't yet taken our survey, please do! And yes, expect to see me post this at the bottom of every blog post for the next few days to help encourage participation. We're hoping to get 3,000 or more responses, which would dwarf the sample size of something like the SEMPO report (which garnered 587 responses for 2006).

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CrazyEgg: New Free SEM/SEO Analytics Tool Blows My Mind

I'm constantly on the lookout for software tools and services that help us serve our clients better. Since I've been a closet geek and software junkie my entire life, I get a mild kick when I come across software that's well-designed and provides value and features that really stand out. Yesterday I was tipped off to one that almost literally knocked me out of my chair.

Click to read the rest of this post...

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Vote for the SMX West Search Bowl Contestants

Posted by randfish

Last week, we asked for your help in nominating candidates for SMX West's inaugural Search Bowl - a game of trivia that pits two intrepid search marketers against teams of two from each of the four major engines. Due to the writer's strike, there won't be a televised black tie, red carpet event. Instead, without further ado, here are the nominees:

 

 

Voting will run through to next Tuesday, when we'll announce the two winners. If any winners cannot make it, the selection will pass to the person with the next most votes.

BTW - Scott will be officially announcing it soon, but it's looking like SEOmoz will have a sponsored session on using premium membership at SMX West, open to all attendees (full conference and networking pass attendees). More to come!

p.s. Anyone notice that PollDaddy has gone to a freemium business model? Can I just say again how much I like that model :)

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Microsoft adCenter Partnering With WSJDN

Microsoft has announced it will provide the advertising for the Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN), which includes Barrons and marketWatch as well as WSJ.com.

Microsoft signed a deal to be the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search advertising on their sites. WSJDN is a leading provider of business and financial information news and analysis on sites such as WSJ.com, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, allthingsD.com and more. WSJDN reaches a savvy worldwide audience of over 20 million unique users and serves over 330 million page views per month on its sites specific to the highly sought-after financial services audience for advertisers. In addition to being a traffic leader in the Business & Finance verticals, the WSJDN reaches a highly qualified audience:

• A larger concentration of C-level Executives than any other original financial news sites
• A higher concentration of affluent males than any online network
• More Business Decision Makers and Technology Decision Makers than any other online publisher of original financial news
• A high number of active investors, both institutional/professional and self-directed
• 983,000 WSJ.com subscribers
• 723,000 C-levels
• Average age: 48 years
• 67% male

The Microsoft press release noted:

“Relevant and targeted digital advertising is important to our business and to the quality of the experience that we deliver to our users,� said Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “Microsoft’s state-of-the-art advertising platform will enable us to dramatically improve our revenues from this key sector, and we look forward to working together.�

“This deal is a significant win for Microsoft for two key reasons. First, it makes the extended Microsoft advertising network the premier destination for advertisers interested in reaching financially minded users, as it complements our offering in this vertical through MSN Money and other syndication partners,� said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft. “Second, this deal is a strong indicator that we’re gaining significant traction with our advertising platform. The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is one of the largest financial services publishers in a very dynamic vertical segment, and we’re delighted to add it to our portfolio.�

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Search Marketers' Wish Lists

We've collected the "wish lists" of several search engine marketers, sharing what they want most from search engines in the coming year.

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Search Marketers' Wish Lists, Part 2

We've collected more "wish lists" of several search engine marketers, sharing what they want most from search engines in the coming year.

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Measuring PR in cold, hard cash

If you haven't read Mike Grehan's ClickZ article, "Search and the changing face of public relations," read it now. Among the many pithy and insightful comments within his article is this one: "I think traditional PR firms may be on their way out." Go, read it now. This will be on the mid-term exam.

When you're done reading that, read Sally Falkow's post in the Search Engine Watch Blog, entitled, "Search not understood and used in PR campaigns." Do we begin to see a trend yet?

Now, go back and read my article in Search Engine Watch, entitled, "Blogs Are the New Trade Press." Yep, the experts agree. "The world of public relations has changed dramatically over the past five to 10 years â€" or, at least it should have."

But it often seems like the folks over in PR didn't get the memo.

Well, they're not the only ones who didn't notice that the world was changing. On March 27, 2007, The Project for Excellence in Journalism noted in The State of the News Media 2007, "The press is no longer gatekeeper over what the public knows. Journalists have reacted relatively slowly. They are only now beginning to re-imagine their role. Their companies failed to see 'search' as a kind of journalism."

And many (but not all) people failed to see "blogging" as a kind of journalism. Or, at least some percentage of blogging. As the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported on July 19, 2006, in a report entitled, "Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers, "34% of bloggers consider their blog a form of journalism" and "56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post."

Now, that's a couple of paradigm shifts at the same time. So, don't blame your public relations people if they didn't connect the dots.

Who do I blame? Well, it's the Chief Marketing Officer in some companies or the Vice President of Marketing in others who is responsible for measuring the results of various elements of the marketing mix. And if the CMO or VP of Marketing is still content with a getting a stack of press clippings at the end of each month, can you blame his or her PR people from thinking that they've done their job?

Okay, so counting press clips has been a bogus PR metric for more than 20 years. I've told the story in "Measuring PR in Cold, Hard Cash" of my first month as Director of Corporate Communications at Lotus Development Corp. -- way, way back in 1986.

After my first month on the job, I took a very thick book of about 700 magazine and newspaper clippings that we’d received, walked down the hall to CEO Jim Manzi’s office, and casually dropped it on his desk. Manzi took a quick look and said, "Jarboe, if I could deposit these in a bank, I’d know what they were worth. But, until you can measure the impact of PR in cold, hard cash, don’t waste my time with these so-called reports."

And, I have to admit, Manzi was right.

So, what are the right PR metrics?

In MarketingSherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008, you'll find more than half a dozen, including:
-- Press mentions,
-- Blog mentions,
-- Ranking of a press release in news search engines,
-- Click through rate (CTR) from links in a press release,
-- Rise in site traffic around launch, and
-- Track leads from click through conversion.

That's the memo that most CMOs and Marketing VPs haven't received. They can measure public relations in both PR outputs and business outcomes. And they had better get the memo before the CEO does.

And, trust me on this: When the big boss starts asking for "real" measures of success, then the traditional PR people will start learning about SEO, blogs and web analytics.

One last note: There are other PR people of who this. Sally Falkow is one. Lee Odden, the founder of TopRankResults.com, is another. And Katie Paine, my predecessor at Lotus, is a third. She writes The Measurement Standard Blog.

She and I both started looking for ways to measure PR in cold, hard cash -- before search, blogs, and web analytics -- but after the big boss started asking for "real" measures of success.

See the trend?

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RipOff Report Responds: You Be the Judge

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

May It please the Mozzers,

Welcome to another edition of Legal Monday! Some of you may recall my post from last week, The Anatomy of A RipOff Report Lawsuit, in which I attempted to illuminate the legal issues surrounding the controversial site RipOffReport.com.

I invited Mr. Thomas B. Duffy, one of RipOff Report's attorneys, to contact me regarding last week's post with any corrections, feedback, documents, or missed cases that he thought might be helpful. I am very grateful to him for taking me up on my offer and contacting me last week. The phone call lasted for more than an hour. For today's Legal Monday, I want to summarize five of Mr. Duffy's responses:

1. The Post Contained A Factual Error.
2. The Titles Appear to Be Keyword Stuffed Because Many People Who Write RipOff Reports Understand SEO.
3. The Titles Appear to Be Keyword Stuffed Because That Is How Uneducated People Write When They Are Really Upset.
4. RipOff Report's Technical People Indicate That The Site Is Not Violating Google's Guidelines.
5. Ed Magedson Proved His Innocence When He Stated He Could Not Have Authored The RipOff Reports Because He Lives In Arizona And the Alleged Defamatory Reports Have IP Addresses From All Over the Country.

RipOff Report has been much discussed lately and some may feel that the topic is tired. Regardless, I felt I would be remiss if I did not share some of RipOff Report's counter-arguments and comments. For those of you who are utterly bored of RipOff Report, I promise to move on next week.

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1. The Post Contained A Factual Error.

First things first. I want to thank Mr. Duffy for informing me of a factual error in my post. I had inadvertently referred someone as a former RipOff Report employee. In fact, the person was a former employee of the plaintiff in one of the cases. Immediately after our conversation, I corrected this inaccuracy.

While I strive for complete accuracy, I do make mistakes. I appreciate being corrected and I apologize for facilitating misapprehension.

2. The Titles Appear to Be Keyword Stuffed Because Many People Who Write RipOff Reports Understand SEO.

During our conversation, Mr. Duffy spontaneously brought up the issue of keyword-stuffed titles. (For examples of seemingly keyword stuffed title tags, look here and here.) He explained that the reason it appears that the titles have been optimized is because they are, but not by RipOff Report. Instead, Duffy claimed that many people understand SEO and purposefully used SEO techniques in their titles to improve rankings.

I'm not sure what to say about this. Really? Are there hundreds of SEOs completing RipOff Reports? Do we buy this as a community?

3. The Titles Appear to Be Keyword Stuffed Because That Is How Uneducated People Write When They Are Really Upset.

At other points in the conversation and without prompting, Mr. Duffy suggested an alternate explanation for the seemingly keyword stuffed title tags: That is just how uneducated people write when they are very upset. According to Duffy, these "poorly educated" people get so upset that they "can't put a sentence together."

While I agree that the U.S. education system has its faults, I can't bring myself to agree with Mr. Duffy here. "Russ Whitey [sic] Education Group Scam Rip Off Fraud Misrepresentation Deceptive trade practices Securities and Exchange Russ Whitney Foreclosure Wealth Intelligence Academy Law Suit/ Focus On Foreclosure Cape Coral Florida" doesn't look to me like a poorly educated person who is so upset they can't form a sentence. "Misrepresentation" is a rather large word for the uneducated masses. Also, I find the different spellings of "Whitney" to be highly suspect.

Before this goes any further, I also want to be clear that none of the Complaints I have seen suggest that RipOff Report employees generate all the reports. In fact, I think it is safe to assume even those who are suing RipOff Reort agree that most reports are written by the masses. Thus, there are certainly many, many counter-examples of perfectly reasonable, albeit inarticulately phrased title tags.

And then there are those that repeat the company name and the word "internet." Is this what they're teaching in our public schools? To repeat words for emphasis when angry? To repeat words for emphasis when angry?

(Okay. That was a wee little joke. Couldn't resist.)

4. RipOff Report's Technical People Indicate That The Site Is Not Violating Google's Guidelines.

Again spontaneously, Mr. Duffy volunteered the fact that RipOff Report's "technical people" had determined that the site was not violating Google's webmaster guidelines. As proof of RipOff Report's compliance, he offers the fact that "We're [RipOff Report] still on top."

I am a not an expert in technology. I just work in a community with more than its fair share of technology experts. Is RipOff Report violating Google's Webmaster Guidelines? According to people that I trust about this kind of thing, the answer is "yes."

I linked to his post last week because Chris Bennett did an excellent job of demonstrating the ways RipOff Report fails to comply with Google's guidelines. In summary, Mr. Bennett points directly to:

• the aforementioned use of keyword stuffing
• the site's failure to use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines;
• the multiple domains and subdomains (w3.ripoffreport.com and badbusinessbureau.com) with substantially duplicate content;
• the pages loaded with irrelevant keywords.

Your very own Mr. Rand Fishkin also identified a few doozies:

• It appears that the URL - www.ripoffreport.com/lists/ - is being cloaked (though it doesn't seem to necessarily be malicious cloaking). Try searching for Rip Off Report at Google and that's the second result, but unless you change your user agent to Googlebot, it forwards you to http://www.ripoffreport.com/lists/1/default1442.htm (or something similar).
• The site also sells paid link advertising and fails to nofollow the links.
• MSN/Live has clearly banned the site and will no longer index it, while Yahoo! has simply severely limited its ranking ability (when 2/3 engines think a site's spamming, that's a pretty good signal something's wrong).

5. Ed Magedson Proved His Innocence When He Stated He Could Not Have Authored The RipOff Reports Because He Lives In Arizona And the Alleged Defamatory Reports Have IP Addresses From All Over the Country.

Mr. Duffy stated repeatedly that Mr. Magedson had 'proven' he was not the author of any RipOff Reports, Titles or Rebuttals. There is a sworn statement, according to Mr. Duffy, in which Mr. Magedson proves he couldn't have authored certain RipOff Reports because the author's IP address was in Texas and Ed lives in Arizona.

I did not find a statement by Ed Magedson that said this exactly. I did, however, find a couple statements in which RipOff Report attempts to prove its innocence by revealing the author's IP address and then swearing that it doesn't match the IP addresses belong to the company or to Mr. Magedson. Ergo, RipOff Report did not author or change the Reports. One is a sworn statement by Ed Magedson. The other is a sworn statement by a long-time technology consultant for RipOff Report, Ben Smith.

There is nothing inviolate about an IP address. I am concerned that Judges and perhaps most attorneys, might give this evidence more than its proper weight. Thus, for any non-techies who may be reading, I asked our CTO, Jeff Pollard, to explain to me how IP Addresses work and how easy it would be to get an alternate IP address for your home or business computer. Here is Jeff's response:

An IP address identifies a network connection to the internet - but it does not identify a specific computer.  For instance, as far as the internet is concerned all actions taken from our office internet connection - no matter which individual computer did it - are from the same IP address.  So even though Jane's computer could be commenting on SEOmoz and my laptop is browsing cnn.com, both are making requests under the same IP address.

And that isn't to say that IPs can't be changed or spoofed.  You can use a proxy or VPN to mask your IP address and make it look like it's coming from somewhere else, or if your ISP assigns you a dynamic IP (like our office currently has), vs a static IP, your IP address changes as often as you restart your router (or you ISP feels like it).

So in general, for the casual internet browser, their IP address does an OK job identifying them.  But if you want to spoof your IP or just use one not associated with your home or office, it's not that hard at all.  It can be as simple as restarting your router, using any number of proxy services or even just go down to your nearest Tully's and use the free WiFi.

I am an attorney and not a technologist. That's why I rely on geniuses like Mr. Pollard. You, my readers, are much more tech savvy than I am. Thus, you are more than capable of exercising your independent judgment regarding how effectively the "Not-Our-IP-Address Defense" exonerates RipOff Report.

Conclusion

I don't know if Mr. Duffy was representing his own views or RipOff Report's views when he told me these things on the phone. I make no assumptions.

I do know that on several occasions during the course of the phone call, Duffy informed me that Magedson was upset, talking to his "litigators," and thinking about suing the SEO community for "ganging up" on him. While he did not go into detail, Duffy hinted that Magedson may try and bring some kind of antitrust lawsuit against everyone who has participated in the recent online discussions about RipOff Report.

I sincerely hope that this was just bluster. An antitrust suit would be ill conceived and frivolous. The SEO community has not called for a boycott, shared confidential information, refused to deal or engaged in monopolizing behavior. Most importantly, because SEOs do not compete with RipOff Report, antitrust laws are inapplicable. To the contrary, I suspect that RipOff Report generates a great deal of business for SEOs by creating negative rankings that require reputation management services. Thus, the collective outcry of the community could be viewed as altruism at its finest.

As always, I thank you for your readership. I hope that the threat of a lawsuit will not have a chilling effect on comments.

Very truly yours,
Sarah

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Duplicate content question

Someone recently asked me

I read this overview of what you said at an SES conference:

Matt Cutts â€" Google Not prepared, but informal remarks. High order nits: what do people worry about? He often finds that honest webmasters worry about dupe content when they don’t need to. G tries to always return the “bestâ€? version of a page. Some people are less conscious. The person claimed he was having problems with dupe content and not appearing in both G and Y. Turns out he had 2500 domains. A lot of people ask about articles split into parts and then printable versions. Do not worry about G penalizing for this. Different top level domains: if you own a .com and a.fr, for example, don’t worry about dupe content in this case. General rule of thumb: think of SE’s as a sort of a hyperactive 4 year old kid that is smart in some ways and not so in others: use KISS rule and keep it simple. Pick a preferred host and stick with it…such as domain.com or www.domain.com.

From http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html

If this is an accurate summary, and I’m reading what you’re saying, then there’s no need to worry about duplicate content issues when submitting articles. Is that correct?

My response:

What I was saying was: I often get questions from whitehat sites who are worried that they might receive duplicate content penalties because they have the same article in different formats ( e.g. a paginated version and a printer-ready version). While it’s helpful to try to pick one of those articles and exclude the other version from indexing, typically a whitehat site doesn’t neet to worry about 1-3 versions of an article on their own site. However, I would be mindful that taking all your articles and submitting them for syndication all over the place can make it more difficult to determine how much the site wrote its own content vs. just used syndicated content. My advice would be 1) to avoid over-syndicating the articles that you write, and 2) if you do syndicate content, make sure that you include a link to the original content. That will help ensure that the original content has more PageRank, which will aid in picking the best documents in our index.

We use additional heuristics of course, but I figured other people might want to hear that take.

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Using SEO for Reputation Management

SEO has a pivotal role in reputation management, as it can push down negative results and enhance positives in search results.

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Choosing the Right CMS Platform for Your Website (from an SEO perspective)

Posted by randfish

The Question:

I'm starting a new site and have no idea what I should do for software. Do I need to use a content management system, and if so, how do I make sure it's SEO-friendly?

The Answer: It depends...

I want to try taking a new tact with this blog post and give some direction about how to approach this issue. There's no way to tackle the question from every angle in every possible way (at least, not without 100 pages of content), but hopefully, when you refer your friend who's launching a website or your new startup's VP of Engineering to this page, they'll find some helpful starting points. NOTE - This post isn't going to cover specific CMS platforms. There's some great web resources already out there like www.opensourcecms.com and www.cmsmatrix.org to help manage this task. Instead, this blog post will help you determine the essential questions to ask of your stakeholders before embarking on a web development project.

The first part of the question determines your need for a Content Management System (CMS) and I've made a handy flowchart to guide you through the process:

Nowadays, it's exceptionally rare for a company or even a private site owner to select a static site, even when a content management system isn't required due to the inexpensiveness of customizing free platforms like Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress or Mambo.

On to the second portion of our query - how to ensure that a CMS will be search-engine friendly. Below are 12 basic SEO issues that frequently plague content management systems (both pre-built and custom-made). By dealing with these, you'll ensure a relatively smooth platform for content delivery:

1. Title Tag Customization & Rules
   A search-engine friendly CMS must allow for title tags to not only be customized on a page-specific level, but also enable rules for particular sections of a website. For example, if your site offered a blog, several static pages and a forum, you might want to create a rule that all blog pages would begin with "Yoursite Blog > " while forum pages used "title of post > Yoursite Forum."
2. Static, Keyword-Rich URLs
   URLs have historically been the most problematic SEO issue for CMS platforms. Nowadays, search-friendly content management systems should feature custom URL creation. Here's an example from SEOmoz's custom-built CMS:
   _
   
   _
   Notice how the first line allows me to create the title of the post, while the second enables manual sculpting of the URL structure (and an automatic "generate" button if I'd prefer to simply use the post title)
3. Meta Tag Customization
   The meta description and robots tags are the two critical ones (mentioned in detail here). Enabling editorial control is essential for a good CMS.
4. Enabling Custom HTML Tags
   A good CMS has to offer extra functionality on HTML tags for things like "nofollow" on links, or <hx> tags for headlines and subheadlines. These can be built-in features accessible through menu options or the CMS can simply allow a manual editing of HTML in the text editor window when required.
5. Internal Anchor Text Flexibility
   In order to be "optimized," rather than simply search-friendly, customizing the anchor text on internal links is critical. Rather than simply making all links in a site's architecture the page's title, a great CMS should be flexible enough to handle custom input from the admins as to the anchor text of category-level or global navigation links.
6. Intelligent Categorization Structure
   A close second to poor URLs is poor category structure. When designing an information architecture for a website, there should be no limits placed on how pages are accessible due to the CMS' inflexibility. CMS' that offer customizable navigation panels will be most successful in this respect.
7. Pagination Controls
   As pagination can be the bane of a website's search rankings (see here and here), controlling it through careful use of nofollows and meta noindex tags will make your important content get more link juice and crawl attention.
8. 301-Redirect Functionality
   Many CMS' sadly lack this critical feature, disallowing the proper re-direction of content when necessary. 301s are valuable for expired content, pages that have a newer version and dodging keyword cannibalization issues. 
9. XML/RSS Pinging
   Although it's primarily useful for blogs, any content, from articles to press releases can be issued in a feed, and by utilizing quick, accurate pinging of the major feed services, you limit some of your exposure to duplicate content spammers who pick up your feeds and ping the major services quickly in the hopes of beating you to the punch.
10. Image-Handling & Alt Tags
    Alt tags are a clear must-have from an SEO perspective, serving as the "anchor text" when an image links and providing relevant, indexable content for the search engines. Images in a CMS' navigational elements should, preferrably use CSS-Image Replacement, rather than mere alt tags, though the difference in our testing has been fairly small.
11. CSS Exceptions
    The application of CSS styles in a proper CMS should allow for manual exceptions so a user can modify how a strong, headline or list element appears visually. If they don't, writers may opt out of using proper semantic markup for presentation purposes.
12. Static Caching Options
    Many CMS' currently offer caching options, which are a particular boon if a page is receiving a high level of traffic from social media portals or news sites. Bulky CMS' often make dozens of extraneous database connections, which can overwhelm a server if caching is not in place, killing potential inlinks and media attention.

I'd love to hear more in the comments about particular struggles you've had with CMS from an SEO perspective and what other features you think are important for a good CMS to offer. I'd also be interested to know more about anyone's specific experience with the various CMS platforms available (free and paid) and if you've got a favorite.

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Facebook Ads & Applications: Critical SEM Learning Curve

The New York Facebook Social Advertising Event Nov. 6, 2007 introduction from boy-wonder Mark Zuckerberg was a millennial harbinger of marketing-things-to-come. If your business or agency’s search marketing department has dismissed Facebook applications & paid ads, as outside of your product’s demographic, think again. Though advertisers are making millions now on the Facebook platform, the revolution is far more important than Facebook.

Not Your Father’s PPC
The SEM concepts employed on Facebook’s fledgling paid ad platform embody a methodology which will be likely be embraced by mainstream search engines and communities. Keyword research has always been the staple of classic “pull� search marketing. When configuring Facebook paid campaigns, marketers research and target buzz pockets of user interests, as expressed by their dealings with friends. It’s called the “social graph.�

As an example, now it’s possible to target ads to “Woman between 24-29 years old, interested in gardening, organic food, wine, cooking, live in Minnesota or Wisconsin, and are in a relationship.�

Last week Google responded by (re)announcing beta-testing of an enhanced AdWords feature, called demographic bidding. Advertisers will target gender and age groups on some sites within the Google content network. The feature is being tested over the next few weeks with a select group of advertisers in the U.S. and the U.K.

There has been industry debate regarding the long-term value of demographic targeting. MSN has had similarly rudimentary demographic targeting features for quite some time.

Facebook Applications: Fad or Future?
INC Magazine recently published a celebrated case study about quick scores. Whether you believe in Facebook apps or not, Google has already responded with Open Social developers’ platform, "a set of common APIs for building social applications across many websites,� and inked deals with prominent social sites. These next-gen social apps and widgets are coming. Early adopters, who figure things out now, will clearly have the advantage.

“Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online,� Zuckerberg imparted to more than 250 advertising and marketing executives on that day in New York. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.�

Facebook ads and applications represent marketing early adopters’ first opportunity to dapple in, what will clearly be, a significant wave of future viral techniques and media buys. Study Facebook and practice marketing to points on the social graph in order to prepare for a future which is already here.

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