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Posted by randfish

It’s that wonderful time of the month again! Linkscape, SEOmoz’s web index powering our mozbar, API, Open Site Explorer, the classic Linkscape tool and many features in Labs and elsewhere pushed out new data (over the weekend) from a web crawl that ended earlier this month. There’s lots of fresh info to explore on your sites, including new links and metrics, but I wanted to show off some spiffy new features, too.

First up, by popular request, we’ve got a calendar of Linkscape updates available on the API Wiki:

This should be updated regularly with ETAs for new Linkscape updates and as promised, we’re sticking to our schedule of new data every 4 weeks.

Next is a picture of how the web looked in our latest crawl. For those of you who, like me, geek out on data about the web, this stuff is pretty cool:

I also grabbed some information about the use of internal vs. external links and usage of nofollows & rel=canonical tags:

• Percent of Pages with Rel=Canonical: 4.63%
• Percent of Links that are External vs. Internal: 15.2% External vs. 84.8% Internal
• Percent of Links that use Rel=Nofollow: 2.08%
• Percent of Internal Links w/ Rel=Nofollow: 1.44%
• Percent of External Links w/ Rel=Nofollow: 5.67%

Last, but certainly not least, we’ve got some great new calls in the API to request data. You can see a visualization of just a few of these below:

In speaking to lots of users of our Linkscape data, I hear the following requests, all of which are on our roadmap:

• Historical data – show the links I’ve gained/lost since the last index
• Historical data – show my link counts and metrics from the last 6-12 months of index updates (this is challenging, as what we crawl changes month to month, but we believe we’ve got a workable solution coming by Q4)
• IP Address / Origin Country – show the country and IP address of the link source
• Fresher & Faster Updates – this should be arriving by Q3 of this year, as we move to a more recursive model with fresh data updating possibly as quickly as every 1-2 weeks, while the larger, less-change prone portion of the index updates only 1X per month or two
• Deeper Crawls on Large Domains – also on its way for Q3
• Text Surrounding the Anchor – another project in the works; we’re first testing to see if it has correlation/impact on rankings (this should be exciting research)

If you have a feature or request that’s not listed, please let us know! We want to make sure you’re getting all the link information you need with the highest possible freshness and quality.

A big thanks to Kate, Chas & Phil from SEOmoz’s engineering team, who put effort into this month’s update.

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Posted by rolfbroer

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.

Google has found an intelligent way to arrange the results for a search query. But an interesting question is – where we can find that intelligence? A lot of people have conducted research into the indexing process and even more have tested ranking factors on their weight, but we wondered how smart Googlebot itself is. To make a start, we took some statements and commonly used principles and tested how Googlebot handled them. Some results are questionable and should be tested on a few hundred domains to be sure, but it can give you some ideas.

Speed of The Crawler

The first one we tested was Matt Cutts on his following statement: “… the number of pages that we crawl is roughly proportional to your PageRank".

This brings us to one of the challenges large content sites are facing – the problem of getting all pages indexed. You can imagine if Amazon.com was a new website, it would take a while for Google to crawl all 48 million pages and if Matt Cutts’s statement is true, it would be impossible without any incoming links.

To test it, we took a domain with no history (never registered, no backlinks) and made a page with 250 links on it. Those links refer to pages that also have 250 links (and so on…). The links and URLs were numbered from 1 to 250, in the same order as they appeared in the source code. We submitted the URL via “addurl” and waited. Due to the fact that the domain has no incoming links, it has no or at least a negligible PageRank. If Matt Cutts’s statement is correct Googlebot would soon stop crawling.

As you can see in the graph, Googlebot started crawling the site with a crawl rate of approximately 2500 nodes per hour. After three hours, it slowed down to a crawl rate of approximately 25 pages per hour and maintained that rate for months. To verify this result we did the same test with two other domains. Both tests came up with nearly the same results. The only difference is the lower peak at the beginning of Googlebot’s visit.

Impact of Sitemaps

During the tests, the sitemap manifested itself as a very useful tool to influence the crawl rate. We added a sitemap with 50,000 uncrawled pages in it (indexation level 0). Googlebot placed the pages which were added to Google by sitemap on top of the crawl queue. This means that those pages got crawled before the F-levelled pages. But what’s really remarkable is the extreme increase in crawl rate. At first, the number of visits was stabilized at a rate of 20-30 pages per hour. As soon as the sitemap was uploaded through Webmaster Central,  the crawler accelerated to approximately 500 pages per hour. In just a few days it reached a peak of 2224 pages per hour. Where at first the crawler visited 26.59 pages per hour on average, it grew to an average of 1257.78 pages per hour which is an increase of no less then 4630.27%. The increase of crawl rate doesn’t  stop by the pages included in the sitemap. Also the other F- and 0-levelled pages take advantage of the increase in crawl rate.

It’s quite remarkable that Google suddenly uses more of it’s crawl capacity to crawl the website. At the point where we submitted the sitemap the crawl queue was filled with F-pages. Google probably attaches a lot of value to the submitted sitemap.

This brings us to Matt Cutts’s statement. After only 31 days Googlebot crawled about 375,000 pages of the website. If this is proportional to it’s PageRank (which is 0) this would mean that it will crawl 140,625,000,000 pages of a PageRank 1 website in just 31 days. Remember that PageRank is exponential. In other words, this would mean you never have to worry about your PageRank even if you own the largest website on the web. In other words don’t simply accept everything Matt says.

Amount of Links

Rand Fishkin says: “…you really can go above Google’s recommended of 100 links per page, with a PageRank 7.5 you can think about 250-300 links” ( http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-flat-site-architecture )

The 100 links per page advice has always been a hot topic especially for websites with a lot of pages. The reason the advice originally was given is the fact that Google used to index only 100 kilobytes per page. On a 100 kb page the amount of 100 links seemed reasonable. If a page was any longer, there was a chance that the page would be so long that Google would truncate the page and wouldn’t index the entire page. These days, Google will index more than 1.5MB and user experience is the main reason for Google to keep the  “100 links” recommendation in their guidelines.

As was described in the previous paragraph, Google does crawl 250 links, even on sites with no incoming links. But is there a limit? We tried the same set-up as the websites described with 250 links on it but instead we used 5,000 links per page. When Googlebot visited that website something  remarkable happened. Googlebot requested the following pages:

• http://example.com/1/
• http://example.com/10/
• http://example.com/100/
• http://example.com/1000/

On every level Google visits, we see the same page requests. It seems like Googlebot doesn’t know how to handle such a large amount of links and tries to solve it as a computer.

Semantic Intelligence

One of the SEO myths used on almost every optimised website are the links placed in heading tags. Recently it was mentioned again as one of the factors of the “Reasonable Surfer patent”. If Google respects semantics, it definitely attaches more value to those “heading” links. We had our doubts and put it to the test. We took a page with 250 links on it and marked some with heading tags. This was done a few levels deep. After a few weeks of waiting nothing pointed in the direction that Googlebot preferred the “heading” links. This doesn’t mean Googlebot doesn’t use semantics in it’s algorithm, it just doesn’t use headings to give links more weight than others.

Crawling JavaScript

Google says it keeps getting better in recognizing and executing JavaScript. Although JavaScript is not a good technique to use if you want to be sure that Google does follow your links, it’s used quite a lot to reach the opposite goal. When used for PageRank sculpting the purpose of using JavaScript links is to make those links only visible for users. If you use this technique for this purpose it’s good to keep yourself updated on what Google can and can’t recognize and execute. To test Googlebot on it’s JavaScript capabilities we took the JavaScript codes as described in “The professional’s guide to PageRank optimization” and put them to the test.  

The only code Googlebot executed and followed during our test was the link in a simple “document.write” line. This doesn’t exclude the possibility that Googlebot is capable of recognizing and executing the more advanced script. It is possible that Google needs an extra trigger (like incoming links) to put more effort into the JavaScript crawling.

Crawling Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are a typical element on a webpage specially created for users. Sometimes they are used to support the site structure as well. Last month we encountered some problems where the Googlebot was not able to crawl it’s way up, so we did some tests.

We made a page a few levels deep with some content and links to higher levels on it ( http://example.com/lvl1/lvl2/lvl3/ ). We gave the page some incoming links and waited for Googlebot. Although the deep page itself was visited 3 times by the crawler, the higher pages didn’t get a visit.

To verify this result, we did the same test on an other domain. This time the test page was a few levels deeper in the site structure (http://example.com/lvl1/lvl2/lvl3/lvl4/lvl5/). This time Googlebot did follow some links which referred to pages higher on the site structure. Despite the fact that Googlebot does follow the links, it doesn’t seem to be a good method to support a site structure. After a few weeks Google still didn’t crawl all the higher pages. It looks like Googlebot rather crawls deeper into the site structure then higher pages.

Takeaways

In short, the lesson learned is that one can influence the crawl rate with a sitemap. This doesn’t mean that you should always upload a sitemap for your websites. You only want to increase the crawl rate if the bulk of your crawled pages get indexed. It takes longer for a crawler to return to an “F”-levelled page than to return to an indexed page. So if most of your pages get crawled, but dropped from the index you might want to consider getting more incoming links before using a sitemap. Best thing to do is to monitor for every page when Googlebot last visited it. With this method you can always identify problems in your site structure.

The amount of links isn’t limited to 250 links (even if you have no incoming links) although 5000 seems too much. We haven’t found the exact limit yet, but if we do, we will give you an update.

Links in heading tags for crawl purpose seems to be a waste of time. Though you can use them for usability purposes, because you’re used to it or because WordPress does it anyway and maybe if you’re lucky it’s still a ranking factor.

Another conclusion we can make is that the Googlebot isn’t very good in crawling breadcrumbs. So don’t use them for site structure purposes. Google just doesn’t crawl up as good as it crawls down. In contrast to breadcrumbs, you can use JavaScript for site sculpting purposes. Googlebot isn’t top of the bill if we’re talking about recognizing and executing JavaScript links. Remember to keep yourself updated on this subject, but for now you definitely can use some “advanced” JavaScript to do sculpting.

A last result that came up while performing research on the crawl process was the influence of the URL length. A short URL gets crawled earlier than long URL’s, therefore always consider the need for indexation and the need to be crawled if you choose your URL.

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Posted by Tom_C

Paywalls are a hot topic online at the moment. In the UK The Times has recently put their whole site behind a pay wall and in early 2011 the New York Times is set to also go behind a pay wall. Both of these sites will join sites such as the Wall Street Journal which has been behind a paywall for some time already. For those who aren’t familiar with how paywalls work this image might clear things up:

(Image credit)

There has been an awful lot written online about paywalls so I’m going to try and cover new ground in this post and focus exclusively on the conversion rate issues which are unique to paywalls and how news sites might seek to overcome them. Although that’s a pretty niche focus for this post hopefully the lessons and techniques can be applied to many different websites. Firstly, I’m going to look at the difficulties:

Objections To Overcome

In my eyes newspapers struggle with 3 unique problems which sets them slightly apart from other conversion funnels:

1. Micropayments – People are unfamiliar with making small payments online. Much as you and I (being internet savvy hopefully!) are comfortable shelling out small payments and going through the hassle of remembering our verified by visa password, the average joe still isn’t familiar with this.
2. Subscriptions - Again, this is related to the above point but there’s an objection which needs to be overcome which is paying for something regularly. We’re all a lot more comfortable paying once for a single product, paying regularly for access to something is a concept we’re a lot less familiar with.
3. News is free right? – The last, but perhaps most obvious of the objections and the one people vocalise a lot is "surely I can just get my news from a free source?". We’ve been living in a news-free world now for about as long as the internet has been around and certainly the younger generations simply assume news should be free.

So if you’re going to launch a paywall I think you have to consider these 3 factors very carefully. How are you going to overcome them?

Countering These Objections

Since there are 3 objections, I’m going to present 3 solutions!

1. Smooth The Funnel – As one client mentioned to me recently, "we try to smooth the sides of our funnel as much as possible". This approach to conversion rate optimisation I think overcomes the first objection. The idea being that if you’re going to make a micropayment (and certainly if you’re going to make more than one micropayment) then the process should be very quick and very painless.
2. Educate Your Users – Whenever you try and sell something it’s important to answer the question "Why do I get if I buy this?". For ecommerce websites this often results in making sure delivery options are very clear, or ensuring it’s clear which version of a product you’re selling. For paywalls I think it’s crucial to educate very strongly about what exactly the product is that you’re offering. Which sections of the site do you get access to, how long for, what’s in those sections etc. Even though it’s a micropayment, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need long sales pages and a lot of persuasion to get people to buy. Long sales copy is useful not only to persuade people to purchase but also to educate people on what exactly it is they’re buying.
3. Sell The Benefits – To overcome the "news is free" objection it’s crucial to sell the benefits of the content you have. Likely this needs to be something above and beyond "just" news. Consider what else you get, opinion, rich media etc.

Pay Walls In Action

Now, let’s look at some real life examples of paywalls in action and see what we can pick out from them considering the above objections and counter objections:

The New Scientist

One thing I hate about paywalls, is the idea that they are in fact a wall. I think there should be a psychological shift to think of them not as walls but instead as desirable products. I feel the New Scientist does this really well – take a look at the below call to action which appears at the top of an article which you can’t read in full online:

This isn’t saying "you can’t read this article unless you pay", this is saying "look how great it would be if you subscribed to New Scientist!". There are really nice visual calls to action and there’s even a 20% discount in there! Sweet.

Looking further at the actual conversion funnel we see they’ve greased the sides of the funnel nicely since it only takes a matter of seconds to whiz through the clear and simple checkout process.

The Times

The Times is a fascinating case study for conversion – they’ve been doing some things well, some things not so well but it’s a really interesting case study. Firstly, as above the thing I hate most of all about the times website is that you run into the paywall. It’s a wall. A barrier. There’s no way (no easy way) of signing up to The Times unless you try and click on one of the headlines on the homepage. This doesn’t make any sense to me – the only way into the funnel for a user is to click on a headline that interests them, only to be denied access to that article. I think it would be immensely valuable to have a call to action on the homepage to actually subscribe – this means that people looking to subscribe can do so easily and by clicking on something which has the desired outcome.

Once you’ve clicked a news story you’re presented with a pop-up overlay like this:

Now, what I can’t show you with this screenshot is the painstakingly long time it takes for this pop-up to load. This will likely be their biggest source of lost conversions – the popup is so slow that often the page will re-load and nothing will happen for a few seconds before the popup starts to render and even when it does render it takes at least 7-8 seconds for the "already registered?" box to even appear. For a website trying to persuade me to buy a subscription to an online product slow loading technology like this really matters and will put many people off.

Ok, I don’t mean to be too negative about The Times but there’s another very weird conversion killer. When you actually click to subscribe to the site the first page you’re presented with is this single function page:

I find this page very odd. Talking about greasing the sides of the funnel, this is like sandpaper on the walls coated with glue. Why should I enter my email address? What purpose does it serve? There’s not even any security or trust given that my email address won’t be sold to 3rd parties. There’s a reason that websites give those assurances, it’s because users are worried about it! Once you’ve entered your email address the next step of the funnel prompts you to re-enter your email address anyway so this page is more or less totally redundant for me.

Ok, enough negativity – time for some positives! The first thing I really like about The Times is the development of Times+. This website is an entire micro-site dedicated to educating users about the benefits of signing up, along with example pieces of content including videos and articles. This really plays well into point 2 above.

Another aspect I find really intriguing about The Times is that they have the opportunity here to create a worthwhile online community with intelligent comments on their articles. This would genuinely set them apart from other newspaper sites where the comments quickly descend into madness or idiocy or both! The very fact that you’re within a walled garden and the fact that The Times prides itself on intelligent debate should offer them an opportunity set themselves apart. I can see the beginnings of this as a marketing tactic and I can only assume this will grow as the website matures but this is a perfect example of point 3 – overcoming the "news is free" concept.

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal gets quite a nice thumbs up for one specific page they have which is this one:

There are two things I love about this page. Firstly, this type of feature comparison table works very well at driving conversions. It’s clear for users and has nice strong calls to action throughout. The second reason I love this is because of the more subtle perceived value proposition that’s included alongside the Print + Online + Mobile option where there is included a free £20 Amazon voucher. This instantly makes your perceived value of the item shoot up which I think is really clever!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I don’t mind the idea of charging for content online. This has to happen I think as the web evolves. But I really hope we can stop thinking of them as paywalls. I dislike the idea of running into a wall or barrier which prevents a user from getting what they want. Instead I hope that we can start treating this more as a membership service with benefits, bonuses and bells and whistles. Also, I couldn’t write this article without linking to this very ironic page on The Economist…

Note: CRO, is not an exact science. That’s why you run testing. Almost certainly some of the advice I’ve given here will NOT convert better than the current sites. That’s the reality of CRO and it’s why testing is key. Testing testing testing. However, the analysis of the conversion path I think throws up interesting debate so hopefully I’ve at the very least given some of these sites some ideas of what they might be able to test.

Also – final note, thanks to Ed Fry who has been in the Distilled offices the past two weeks on work experience and helped me gather some data and put this post together!

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Posted by Danny Dover

 This week’s Whiteboard Friday features the return of Rand (woo hoo!) and his self declared biggest SEO mistakes. We screw up a lot here at SEOmoz (hell, they hired me), so we feel it is only appropriate to take this opportunity to share what we have learned in an effort to prevent you from making similar mistakes. SEO is complicated. The best we can do is practice, work hard and compare notes.

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1. Reciprocal Links + Robots.txt NoFollow

Back before the formal SEOmoz days, Rand used to dabble a bit is some grayer areas of SEO. The first mistake he mentions is a tactic involving offering reciprocal links but blocking the outbound links via robots.txt/meta robots so that he could get all of the link value. This tactic didn’t really work and he ended up having to do a lot more work to get in the good graces of the webmasters he had fooled. Head smack!

2. Buying Links for Clients

This tactic also took place before formal SEOmoz days. At the time, Rand spent client budgets on paid links. This is a bad idea because the value of the links can’t be determined (was Google even counting them?). He later found out through Google employees that the links were not being counted and that they may actually be hurting the client’s site ability to rank. Oops!

3. Recommending People Use H1 Tags with Keywords

This mistake is a little bit more subtle. For years, SEOmoz recommended including keywords in the H1 of pages. After we started doing formal machine learning correlation tests we found out that this tactic didn’t actually help very much at all (including the keywords in normal text in bigger fonts worked essentially the same). This was a shame because it meant we wasted time and energy convincing our clients to update their H1s.

4. Recommending People Not To Use XML Sitemaps

When XML Sitemaps first debuted, Rand and SEOmoz recommended not using this. While the idea was sound in theory (having a XML Sitemap can make it difficult to spot information architecture problems) the observation ended up being outweighed by the impact we saw with the increased indexation rates of sites that employed this tool.

5. Incorrectly Redirecting Linkscape to Open Site Explorer

Recently we decided to 301 redirect all of the old Linkscape reports to our newer, better converting, Open Site Explorer reports in a 1-1 relationship. This was in theory a good idea but unfortunately including various tracking components on the redirect URLs resulted in us losing a significant amount of traffic. We later fixed this with rel=canonical but a lot of the damage was already done. Ouch!

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Do you have any lessons you have learned after making some noteworthy mistakes? If so, we would love to hear what you learned in the comments below.

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Posted by timsoulo

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.

Howdy SEOmoz fans! It is an overused practice to start from some "shocking" stats and dissertate on how Facebook is powerful and important for business. So, I will just consider you all know what is Facebook and how cool it is.

What you’re about to read is a step-by-step SMM strategy for promoting your business on Facebook. I’ve gathered all the best practices and tips that I have used myself, together with some advice that I haven’t tried but am confident will work well. Ok. That’s enough for the intro, let’s go!

Where To Start?

1. Brand Ambassador.

First of all, don’t use your personal account to promote your business, unless you want your customers to see your childhood pictures and lulz from the recent party. You can create another (purely business oriented) instance of yourself or hire someone to become your brand ambassador. This will be the person who represents your business online and handles all communications, so the info on the profile should be brief and clear and all the pictures neat and professional. Remember that users will associate your business with this guy.

Power Tip: Create a separate e-mail account in Gmail and import all the e-mail addresses of your clients there. Now when you use this account to create a new Facebook profile – the system will automatically find all of your clients in your address book and suggest to add them as your friends on Facebook! What a great start!

2. Creating a Facebook page.

Promotion on Facebook is all about having a page for your business. To create one, go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/ and click the "+ Create a Page" button.

Power Tip: "Page Name" is one of the the strongest ranking factors on Facebook search. Don’t miss the opportunity to add some keywords you wish to rank for as you are not allowed to change your page name later.

Configuring Your Facebook Page

1. Profile picture & avatar.

Profile picture is one of the few things in the design of your page that you can actually customize, so be sure to make the most of it. Here are two great articles that will help you: "5 Creative Ways to Hack Your Profile Photo"; "Making the Most of Your Facebook Profile Picture". 

2. Page info.

The next important thing to do is fill your Facebook page with information about your business. Most of it is stored under the "Info" tab, which you cannot remove or hide. Lots of people visit it, so work hard to make your info as brief and engaging as you can. "Think SEO" and use your keywords, as each of the tabs is indexable by the search engines.

Power Tip: if you type a URL starting from http:// in the info box under your profile picture, Facebook will turn it into a clickable link. So you can easily refer your visitors to your website, blog or twitter account.

3. Applications.

• Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) – allows you to create 10 additional tabs, which can contain HTML/CSS, Flash, FBML, iframes and FBJS; 
• NetworkedBlogs – allows you to post your RSS and Atom feeds directly to your wall; 
• Twitter Tab – posts your twitter updates to a separate tab; 
• Extended Info – adds an additional box which supports html/fbml, images, video and music to the left sidebar of your page; 
• Fan Appz & Promotions – helps you handle all kinds of contests, sweepstakes & give aways.

Tip: you’ll probably end up with lots of tabs by adding various applications. However you can easily drag them around if you think that some of them are more important.

4. Vanity URL.

To be able to convert your ugly "326727833086?ref=sgm&ajaxpipe=1&__a=7" URL into something fancy-looking, like "http://facebook.com/mybusinesspage" you need to have at least 25 fans. Once you do – go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ and click the "Set a username for your Pages" link at the bottom.

5. Custom landing page.

You need an attractive landing page, which will convert your visitors into fans. Here is when the FBML application comes into play. Using HTML, CSS, FBJS and even flash you can create awesome landing pages that people will not only "like", but link to, and suggest to friends.

Tip: If you’ve got no development skills you can find some nice facebook FBML page templates that have just started to appear around the template stores.

What To Expect?

Before we start reviewing various Facebook promotion techniques, I’d like to clear things up a little bit. Essentially when someone "Likes" your Facebook page, they will be notified every time you update its status, it’s almost the same as following someone on Twitter. To have your message spread on Twitter you need to have your followers retweet your post so that their followers could see it and retweet in turn. On Facebook, the principle is a bit more sophisticated: when someone likes or comments your status update, this fact is being reflected in his profile. And when your status update gets a decent amount of "likes" and comments it is promoted to the Top News section of a user’s News Feed, so that more people could see it.

 Now let’s refer to a famous "90:9:1 Social Behaviors Rule" to understand what it takes for your message to become visible.

Let’s consider that "Heavy Contributors" are those ready to comment on your update, "Intermittent" ones will probably "like" it, and "Lurkers" will read it or just scroll through. Say your page has 100 fans. Knowing the fact that only 12%-20% of all your "Fans" will see your status update in their Live Feed, we can see that:

I hope this delivers a clear understanding that Facebook promotion takes an enormous amount of effort to become successful.

Promoting Your Facebook Page Internally.

1. Using your Brand Ambassador.

• Add to friends any people that may be your potential customers or somehow relate to your business. Recently, Facebook has added Skype integration, which can suggest you some Facebook friends from the list of your Skype contacts. Once you have a decent amount of friends use the "Suggest to friends" and "Share" buttons to promote your Facebook page to them;
• Use Facebook Search to discover relevant pages, groups, events, people and even messages. With Search you can easily track any mentions of your brand and provide feedback – people really love that;
• Once you join pages, groups and events, you are able to participate in the conversation, which is a great way of direct promotion. Moreover you can see the list of the group members and easily add them to friends;
• Communicate. Once someone comments on your new status, a photo, or anything else – answer back. Moreover you need to make people love your brand and become active contributors and then brand ambassadors. 1/4 of search results on each big brand is UGC (User Generated Content).

Power Tip: When composing a message put the @ symbol and start typing the name of your business page to mention it, just like you mention someone on Twitter. This can be used as a signature to your updates.

2. Keep the page fresh and interesting.

People join your page hoping to receive some interesting stuff from you, so do not disappoint them. Facebookers usually prefer pictures, videos and links to plain text updates. Here is a comprehensive list of things that you should keep in mind to avoid losing your fans: don’t post too many updates; don’t automate your content; don’t be a duplicate of your website and don’t be boring. Your page wall is your social proof and a signal for people to get involved.

3. Cheat a bit.

Ask fellow staff & your team members to post "likes" and comments on each of your status updates to boost its rankings. Only status updates with 5 or more "likes" and comments show up in the Top News section. This will also make your wall look "alive", which will inspire your fans to be more active on your page and participate in the conversation.

4. Fill in your page with media content. 

• Upload pictures of your products/services, your office and your team at work to make your company easier to relate to;
• Encourage your fans to post  pictures of how they use your product;
• Upload pictures from each event you host and tag your fans there;
• Post videos of your team members talks;
• Show your products/services in action;
• Use video to respond to your fans (Bill Clinton frequently does video responses on his page).

5. Treat your fans.

You need to offer your fans something special and reward them. For instance 1-800-FLOWER Facebook page shows the discount code only when you click the "Like" button.

You can make some special offers, which are available to your Facebook fans only and are not announced outside of Facebook. It’s dead easy to reward your loyal fans by promoting them to the admins of your page, which will most likely turn them into enthusiastic brand ambassadors. Anyway, if there is some prominent fan – he should be publicly rewarded.

6. Send an update to Fans.

Direct messaging is a very powerful tool, but do not misuse it. Think twice before sending a message to all of your fans – it should be really valuable if you don’t want everyone to ignore it or get irritated.

Tip: Facebook allows you to send targeted updates. Think of a way you could use that feature for your business.

7. Ask your fans for help.

Now and then you can post a status update asking your fans to help build the community by suggesting your page to their friends. Just refer them to "Suggest to Friends" and "Share" links on your page and measure their response.

8. Build partnerships with other pages.

Notice that each page on Facebook has an "Add to my Page’s Favorites" button. When you do this, the logo of this page appears in a special "Favorite Pages" box on your own page. People see it and they might click the link to find out more about this page.

Your aim here is to build partnerships within your niche and be "favourited" as much as possible. Add to favorites pages that you like or that your business is related to and inform their owners about it with a wall post or a private message. Most likely you will be "favorited" back.

9. Use the applications.

There are a lot of crazy apps that you can use to promote yourself. You can even develop one of your own if your budget allows that. But how do the viral applications work in common?

You need something that people would willingly launch. This might be a game or a quiz or any other kind of dynamic content that most people love. Once a person has his score, bagde, vitual gift or any other result – the application publishes it to his wall so that all his friends could see it. The application should have a clear call to action, so that new people could easily get engaged. If the application has some kind of a High Score – people will play it again and again till they outrank their friends. You can (should) use the apps for sweepstakes and giveaways – people love them a lot.

10. Spy!

Yes! Always keep an eye on your competitors, especially on those outranking you. Check what they do and if you consider it to be a successful strategy – do the same. When they fail – try to avoid their mistakes. Anyway, you should always be informed on what others are doing to promote themselves.

11. Ads?

Indeed the most common way to promote your page. But before you use it, check out these stats:

 

Promoting Your Facebook Page Externally.

 1. Facebook for webites.

The Facebook team has come a long way toward making your website more personalized and social. There is a list of great social plugins that can be easily embedded into your website and drive lots of new visitors: "Like Button" plugin, which is almost everywhere now, "Like Box", which let’s you become a fan of the website without leaving the page, "Live Stream" which is often used while broadcasting some event. Try them on your website and see what happens next.

2. "Like" and "Share" buttons.

These two are so powerful that they require a separate paragraph. Once you own an online store – those buttons are of exceptional value. Whenever you find something that appeals to you in an online store – you no longer need to copy the URL and send it to your friends to ask for their opinion. Just press the "Like" button. They will see that and comment on it. This applies to photos, videos, games, blog posts, reviews – literally anything that can be found on the web.

3. Put a link everywhere.

Once you have a website, you put its address everywhere – e-mail signatures, forum signatures, twitter info, author bio section, LinkedIn profile, links section of your blog. Do exactly the same with your Facebook page. Highlight your Facebook presence at offline events, print it on your business card, use every opportunity you have.

Power Tip: Take some twitter auto follow script that follows a person whenever he has specific keywords in his tweet. Some percent of the people you’ve followed will follow you back. Write an engaging request to join your Facebook page and set it as an automatic direct message to people, who have just followed you. Being launched, this system will drive some new fans to your Facebook page on a regular basis.

4. Using video.

Almost every video sharing service allows you to annotate your videos with links. This is a great way to drive some new fans onto your Facebook page. You can make viral videos, funny videos, tutorials, explanations, presentations etc. and include a link to your Facebook page with a request to join. Works perfectly!

5. Other services.

There are a lot of websites where you can get some targeted audience. For instance, upon writing this guide I’ve gone though dozens of presentations at SlideShare and Scribd. There I’ve seen many referrals to join Facebook pages specialized on marketing, and I did join some of them truthfully as I enjoyed their presentations. Examine carefully all the websites where you post information or showcase your services and think of the way you could refer people to your Facebook page.

Power Tip: In case you have some kind of a digital product – create a torrent with some demos, name it with trending keywords and upload to all torrent trackers you can find. In the info or in the comments section add a link to your Facebook page. Then go to your analytics and watch your numbers grow.

Wheew… That’s the end of my guide. Sure there’s a lot more to add, but I tried to keep my tactics brief, to leave some space for your imagination. I’m sure each of you can invent lots of fantastic ways to use Facebook for SMM. I am open for any questions, shoot!

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Posted by fabioricotta

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.

Hi SEOmoz folks,

Sometimes we begin a new SEO consulting job and do not to know where to start our Link Building. We have a lot of options but the first thing I really like to do is to analyze what my competitors are doing. As we know, one of the best ways to analyze backlinks is by using Open Site Explorer (OSE). With this tool we can submit a domain and see which pages on the web are linking to it and some awesome metrics. We can use it to begin our analysis.

The first thing you need to do is to create a competitor list. Then you need to go to OSE and insert your competitor(s) domain(s). Then you will filter by links from "External Pages Only" and "All Pages in the Root Domain", as you can see below. With these filters, we guarantee that we will have an overall look at your competitors’ website backlinks.

After the above steps, we need to export all this data by clicking on "Export to CSV". After that, you will import this data to Excel:

Next, you will remove the 6 first lines, as they are only comments. Then you need to select the first line, click on the Data Tab and select "Filter". This will give you the ability to sort every column by some filters.

Now we can begin our competitor analysis. For this part, I have chosen 9 commonly used link building strategies that you can use OSE and find what your competitors are doing. So, let’s take a look:

Finding Directories

As some SEOs know, using Directories as part of your link building strategy can provide a good value to your backlink profile. If your competitor is using any directory strategy, we can find it using OSE data, filtering the Title column by the text filter "directory" or you can filter the URL column with text "directory". The good part of that is that you can see the Page Authority and Domain Authority of each directory page that your competitor is listed in and figure out to which one you should submit your website. A "bonus" filter you can use is filter by PA above 5 and DA above 20, so you will remove all the bad directories from your list.

Niche Forums

One thing that I really like are forums, maybe it’s because most of my knowledge came from there. Well, thinking about link building and SEO, when you find a niche directory, you find a community that talks about the same thing (or related) as you. If those members recommend your services you can get really good leads. So, one thing you can do is to investigate which forums your competitors were recommended in, so you can interact with those people. The idea here is to filter the Title column by the text filter "forum" or you can filter the URL column with text "forum". Using it will retrieve all the forums that provide at least 1 link to your competitor. You can use the same tip here that I gave in the last topic.

Powerful Profile Pages

Sometimes when we do a link building strategy we use some profiles to post and interact with customers and people about our website. And sometimes, those platforms that we use for it provide ways to drop a link (eg. user website). Based on this idea, one cool idea is to check which social networks your competitor is working. You can do it easily by filtering the URL column or Title column by text filters "user" or "profile". After identifying those profiles check how you competitor is working with it, like how is he interacting with the community, check if he is creating new content, check which keywords he is using on that new content.

A good tip here is to check the backlinks to that profile page. We noticed that some competitors are buying links for that profile page, so they can get more juice and spread it to their content. I am not telling you to do the same, but maybe you can file a spam report.

Tag Pages

A common and cheap link building tactic is to submit your website to social bookmarking websites. Sometimes, social bookmarking does not provide a strong enough value, but many SEOs use it as a base for their link building strategy. So, you can find which social bookmarking websites your competitors are using. The good thing (tip) here is to find a niche social bookmarking website. Those kind of websites can provide you some good leads as they are related to your niche. So, be careful when checking this.

To find the tag pages and then the social bookmarking websites, you can filter the Title column by text filters "tag" or "tagged". Another filter you can use is "tag" in the URL column.

Where They are Submitting Articles

As Rand pointed in a previous Whiteboard Friday, if you create a good Article Submission strategy you can get some good links and traffic. For example, you can filter the URL column with some already known article directories ("ezinearticles.com", "amazines.com", "articlealley.com", "articleindex.net", "goarticles.com", "articlesltd.net", "365articles.com", "articletrader.com", "articlesbase.com", "thebestarticles.com", "mycontentbuilder.com", "thinkarticle.com", "articlerumble.com", "gsarticles.com", etc…).

The idea here is to find where your competitors are gaining links and then find their profiles. After that, grab a list of all articles that they posted and run a OSE report for each link (you can do it using the SEOmoz API). Check which ones have a large number of backlinks. Then you need to check why they attracted so many links and just use that idea to create some new content.

A bonus tip here is that some article directories enable comments with link… so, try to comment in your competitors’ best articles.

Resource Pages as Good Backlink Sources

Some years ago, one of the common things that webmasters did was to create pages listing some useful links as resources. Nowadays it’s not common but the point is that there are a lot of resource pages out there. So you can check if your competitor is listed in any resource page and then ask the webmaster to include your valuable website. It’s really easy, but don’t forget to be generous and really show that your website can help their visitors.

To find the resources page, you can filter the URL column using the text filter "resources". I’ve tried to filter the Title column but I didn’t like the results I found.

Competitors Press Releases

When we talk about press releases we need to be careful about our objectives. The first thing here is to identify which company your competitor is using to distribute their press releases. So you can filter the URL column by the common PR Distribution companies ("prweb", "send2press", "prnewswire", etc…) and since those companies sometimes publish the press release inside their domain, you can find your competitor’s press releases. The second step is to grab a list of all press releases they published and do the same thing I told you about article directories’ profiles. Find which are the most linked press releases and why. This will give you some advantage in your next press release.

Linkbait with InfoGraphics

One of the latest link building tactics is to create amazing InfoGraphics. The cool thing for link building is that if you create a good infographic it can go viral and provide a lot of backlinks. So the point here is to see if your competitors are using infographics to get links. To check it, just filter the Title column by text filter "infographic" and you will find the list of infographics that give links to your competitors.

The point here is that you can tell me "Hey, when I create an InfoGraphic I post it at my site, not in someone’s else blog". You are right, but the point here is that some websites can’t use / post those kind of images inside their structure, so they need to publish it as guest post.

A tip here is: if you find an infographic inside a blog, don’t forget to comment in the comments area. You can get some value there.

Trusted links: Any .EDU or .GOV links?

Most of the linkbuilders love .edu and .gov links. They are strong, they are trusted and they really rock. Based on that, you can check if your competitors have any link coming from any of those TLDs. You can find it filtering the URL column by text filter ".edu" or ".gov".

You need to check why your competitors have those links and then try to find a way to get them. Don’t forget to avoid those .edu crap networks.

Wikipedia Links

Worldwide known, Wikipedia is a great source of visitors and leads. We can’t count their backlinks because of nofollow, but they still provide value by sending you traffic. We made some Wikipedia strategies for some clients and those links are just growing our referral visitors. You can find the Wikipedia pages that link to your competitors by just filtering the URL column by text filter "wikipedia.org".

One thing to remember is that Wikipedia (moderators) does not like spam or commercial stuff. So the easy way we find to get a link from them is by adding some valuable content, specially when you adds notes about statistics that you published in your press release. This really rocks and in most cases they allow you to reference your data source (you).

Conclusions

We saw in this article that using a SEO tool such as Open Site Explorer could help you to find what our competitors are doing, providing us some insights on how to create our SEO strategy. It is important to highlight that I am not telling you to get the same backlinks that your competitors had, but I am trying to show you is that you can begin your strategy by getting the best of what your competitors did, and then, improve with your own ideas.

Hope you liked this post!

Fabio Ricotta is the Co-Founder of MestreSEO, a brazillian SEO company.

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Posted by randfish

One of the most common questions we receive here at SEOmoz is "What’s the best way to learn SEO?" There are many ways to answer, but in this post, I’m going to cover the responses I give most often and those I’ve seen have the most success. But, before I describe each of these, it pays to understand that not all learning methodologies are the same in style, substance or where they can take you. If you’re completely new to SEO, some of these won’t be appropriate and if you’re already a veteran, others won’t teach you much you don’t already know.

Thus, let’s start with a chart of relative knowledge/experience levels (similar to this old/outdated post on levels of knowledge):

Now that we have some context, let’s dive in to the ways I recommend learning SEO. For each, I’ve provided a description of the process, the ideal starting level(s) (and where you can expect to reach via that methodology) and a list of resources with my notes.

#1 – Free Online Guides

A number of free guides, eBooks and downloadable PDFs exist on the web to help provide insight into SEO. Some are highly comprehensive while others touch only lightly on the topic. The key to being successful with this process is to identify guides that are both up-to-date and accurate in their recommendations. No council exists to regulate the dispersal of SEO information and thus, a few proprietors of free guides can lead you down incomplete or even dead wrong paths.

Recommended for: New to SEO, Aspirant, Journeyman

List of Resources:

• SEOmoz’s Free Beginner’s Guide to SEO (just updated for 2010)
• Aaron Wall’s SEO Guide for Bloggers
• Google’s Starter Guide for Webmasters
• Danny’s Checklist for Learning SEO

Time Investment / Commitment Required: 1-3 hours should get you through any of the guides above

#2 – Published Literary Works

For those who like to curl up with a book, a number of authors/publishers have come out with solid resources in the past couple years. Books have a unique advantage over online guides in that they’re often better written, more carefully edited and can be more easily judged on the reputation of the authors/publishers. Conversely, they are hard to update (even in the book I wrote last year, a few links and references are already broken) and thus, don’t always contain the most up-to-date information.

Recommended for: New to SEO, Aspirant, Journeyman

List of Resources:

• Inbound Marketing by Dharmesh Shah & Brian Halligan
• Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing by Kris Jones
• Search Engine Optimization Secrets by Danny Dover
• Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox
• Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grapone & Gradiva Couzin
• The Art of SEO by Rand Fishkin, Jessie Stricchiola, Eric Enge & Stephan Spencer

Time Investment / Commitment Required: The largest of these is ~450 pages, which might take between 4-8 hours depending on how fast you read

#3 – Blogs, Forums & Search Communities

In my opinion, everyone learning SEO can garner value from discovering 3-5 favorite sources of information online and keeping up to date with each on a daily or weekly basis. Forums and blogs pump out a tremendous quantity of content, but just by browsing the headlines and reading teh stories that stand out, you can get exposure to strategies, techniques, news and trends that would otherwise be difficulty to stumble on by yourself.

Many SEOs (myself included) first learned the practice almost entirely through contributions, questions and threads on industry blogs & forums. Today, I’d suggest starting with a base from a free guide or book, then diving into the communities to stay sharp and get individual questions answered. I’ve provided a few of my personal favorite resources below, but will be working on a more comprehensive list in the near future.

Recommended for: All

List of Resources:

• Forums / Q+A
  • Cre8asite Forums
  • SearchEngineWatch Forums
  • Onstartups Answers (SEO)
  • Quora (SEO)
• Blogs
  • Search Engine Land
  • SEO Book
  • Search Engine Roundtable
  • Search Engine Journal
  • Performable Blog
  • Conversation Marketing
  • Distilled Blog
• Other
  • SEO Alltop
  • Delicious SEO Tags
  • Techmeme

Time Investment / Commitment Required: 30-45 minutes per day or 90 minutes per week (if you aggregate your time into a single slot)

#4 – Building Sites & Earning Rankings

Many in the SEO field will say that building your own sites and practicing SEO in the real world is the only way to learn. I disagree with that message, but I do concur that it’s possibly the most crucial step to advancing your career and abilities.

My view is that if, prior to building a site and attempting to earn some rankings, you have a great mental model of the field, you can build a truly defensible strategy for your site(s). If you simply register a domain that sounds nifty and start trying to rank for a keyword you think is popular, you can get a very warped sense for how to do SEO and what matters in the short, medium and long run. At the very least, read a free guide and engage a bit on some of the online communities.

Once you’ve got a base of knowledge, building a site is the next logical step. I strongly suggest starting small and preferrably with a topic that you’re personally passionate about rather than one that just has high AdSense payouts. I’ll recommend a number of options for building/hosting below, but if you have the technical know-how to configure your own server and write from scratch, that’s a perfectly reasonable alternative (just make sure it’s not too time consuming to leave room for some actual SEO).

Recommended for: Aspirant, Journeyman, Authority

List of Resources:

• Posterous
• Page.ly
• WordPress
• Tumblr
• SquareSpace

Time Investment / Commitment Required: A minimum of 4-5 hours for setup and creation of initial content, and more likely 40-50 hours to produce something high quality and robust and conduct initial off-site SEO/marketing efforts.

#5 – Conferences & Events

If you’re hungry to learn SEO in person, see real life examples and hear stories from the front lines (as well as meeting the practitioners and evangelists), getting out to events is an excellent next step. The last few years has seen an explosion in the quantity and variety of events in the field and many have different foci and target audiences, so be sure to choose the right one for accomplishing your goals. Many of the large conferences are focused on drawing out discussion around topics, advancing the discourse in the field and promoting networking while some smaller events are more specifically geared to pure education or intimate networking.

Recommended for: Journeyman and Above

List of Resources (in order of upcoming dates):

• Blueglass Los Angeles - July 19-20
• SES San Francisco - August 16-20
• SEOmoz PRO Seattle - August 30-31
• SMX East New York - October 4-6
• Inbound Marketing Summit Boston - October 6-7

Time Investment / Commitment Required: Typically 2-4 days plus travel time

#6 – Online Classes

The online online learning series I’m familiar with in this category is Market Motive, but they’re impressive enough to warrant both a category of their own and a recommendation. Founded by Michael Stebbins and John Marshall (who previously founded & sold ClickTracks) along with Avinash Kaushik, Todd Malicoat, Bryan Eisenberg and more, the staff is a who’s who of Internet marketing. When this many great brains get together, the results are smashing. Market Motive combines webinars, phone calls, coursework and more into a comprehensive curriculum. They end the series with a dissertation defense given over the phone and only passing candidates earn certification.

I’ve personally been on a few calls with early entrants and master certification candidates and been seriously impressed. Since I’m recommending them so highly, I connected with the folks at Market Motive, and they’ve put together a discount  for moz readers. You can sign up for MarketMotive using the code "SMZ6TOOLSMC" and get $600 off their master certification course + 3 months of SEOmoz PRO membership FREE. But, make sure to do it in the next 5 days as the upcoming master certication course starts on July 19th.

Recommended for: New to SEO, Aspirant, Journeyman and Authorities/Gurus seeking formal, recognized certification

List of Resources:

•  Market Motive

Time Investment / Commitment Required: Over the course of 90 days, this is a 10-20 hour per week commitment, possibly more when cramming for the dissertation.

---

The field is certainly much richer with options than when I began, but as we know from the science of conversion, more choices don’t always indicate more actions. Hopefully, the recommendations above have helped to give you a starting point. I’d love to hear from you in the comments about where and how you learned SEO and what you’d recommend to others.

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Posted by richardbaxterseo

Today, we’re going to talk about Microformats, a simple set of extensions to HTML, allowing us to add meaning to certain types of data found in our web pages. As SEOs, Microformats provide us with a wonderful toolbox to enhance our Google search snippets, particularly if you own a site with reviews, recipes, contact details or location data.

In this post we’ll talk about Microformat standards available to webmasters that have events listings data on their websites. Think conferences, festivals, theatre, even opera – they’re all events that can be described with components of the hCalendar Microformat.

What does an Events Based Rich Snippet Look Like?

This result, for "photography exhibitions London" shows an enhanced, hCalendar based rich snippet:

The example ranking is taken from a site that lists things to do in London, and you can see that the events featured on the listings page have been pulled through into Google’s (UK) SERPS.

What is the hCalendar Microformat? [Definition]

Brace yourselves for a mildly techie, but perfectly worded definition, courtesy of Microformats.org:

hCalendar is a simple, open, distributed calendaring and events format, using a 1:1 representation of standard iCalendar (RFC2445) VEVENT properties and values in semantic HTML or XHTML. hCalendar is one of several open microformat standards suitable for embedding in HTML, XHTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar

What Properties Should I be Interested in?

Google looks out for the following elements of the hCalendar Microformat in your web page mark-up. Not all of the elements listed are actually required, but if you have the data it’s probably worth implementing as fully and correctly as you can. Here, Google break down exactly what they’re watching out for:

Property	Description
summary	Required. The name of the event.
url	Link to the event details page.
location	The location or venue of the event. Can optionally be represented by nested organisation data, or nested Address data. Recommended (unless the page containing the markup is a page about the venue, and the location is the same for every event.)
description	A description of the event.
startDate (dtstart)	Required. The starting date and time of the event in ISO date format.
endDate (dtend)	The ending date and time of the event in ISO date format.
duration	The duration of the event in ISO duration format.
eventType (category)	The category of the event, such as "Festival", "Concert", "Lecture".
geo	Specifies the geographical coordinates of the location. Includes two elements: latitude and longitude. Optional.
photo	A link to a photo or image related to the event.

A Before and After Example of an Event Implementation

On Saturday a few of us went to the Wireless festival to have a day in the sun with music and (of course) a few beers. Let’s say you’re describing that event listing on your website.

Your HTML might look a little like this:

<div> <a href="http://www.wirelessfestival.co.uk/lineup/">Wireless 2010</a> <img src="wireless.jpg" />World class acts playing across four stages -  but Wireless is about so much more than just amazing music... When: Saturday 3rd July, 12:00pm - 11:00pm Where: Hyde Park, London Category: Concert <div>

 

Now let’s take a look at that same event, marked-up with our hCalendar elements:

<div class=”vevent”> <a href=”http://www.wireless.co.uk/” class=”url summary”>Wireless 2010</a> <img src=”wireless.jpg” class=”photo” /> <span class=”description”>World class acts playing across four stages -  but Wireless is about so much more than just amazing music</span> When: <span class="dtstart"> July 3rd, 2:00PM<span class="value-title" title="2010-07-03T1200Z00"></span> </span>- <span class="dtend"> ~11:00PM<span class="value-title" title="2010-07-03T2300Z00"></span> </span> Where: <div class="location vcard"> <span class="fn org">Hyde Park</span>, <span class="adr"> <span class="street-address">Hyde Park</span>, <span class="locality">Paddington</span>, <span class="region">London</span> </span> <span class="geo"> <span class="latitude"> <span class="value-title" title="51.50716" ></span> </span> <span class="longitude"> <span class="value-title" title="-0.17066"></span> </span> </span> </div> Category: <span class="category">Concert</span> </div>

This is usually a simple implementation, with only a few changes to the CSS stylesheet required. Have a chat with your web developer to get an idea of how much work it is to implement.

Testing and Go Live

Implementing Microformats can be reasonably easy, provided you already have the event data available on your site. To make using Microformats just a little easier, Google has provided a rich snippets testing tool to help make sure your mark-up is correct.

To get your rich snippets working in Google’s results pages though, takes time and patience. Google are reviewing sites on a case by case basis, so the next step is to fill out this form and wait. Patience is a virtue though, and Google takes the semantic web and structured data very seriously. According to this write up of the Semantic Technology Conference in San Francisco, rich snippets are now available in 40 languages, and enhanced snippet impressions have grown four fold globally since October 2009. Google are planning more support for more formats, such as video, local businesses and shopping in the near future. How exciting!

If you’d like to learn more about Microformats, Joost De Valk has an excellent tutorial on implementing hReview in WordPress. If you’ve got a spare 45 minutes or so, Joost and I recently discussed Microformats and their impact on SEO with Bas van den Beld on the State of Search show on WebmasterRadio.fm. Enjoy, and thanks for listening!

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Posted by Sam Crocker

Good morning Mozzers!

Today we’re going to walk you through some rather basic but far-too-oft overlooked conversion factors specifically for international SEO. Anyone who has had the pleasure of using ecommerce sites in multiple countries may have noticed that as a general rule the sites look pretty similar if not identical. Today we are going to walk you through some of the pros and cons of this approach and how you might actually benefit from mixing things up for different audiences in different countries.

WARNINGS:

1. There is something to be said for having a similar site, brand, and feel that can be recognized all over the world.

2. Some CMS systems do not allow for easy changes to be made for different versions of the site.

3. With Google Translation, many folks are becoming less interested in having multiple sites anyhow.

4. More sites mean more potential problems and things to worry about.

Now, with these warnings out of the way let’s first jump into some of the potential benefits, and then look at some examples. 

Why Change a Good Thing?

Let’s consider an example company that has enjoyed a great deal of success in a country like the US and would like to become a major player in a country like Japan. Now, setting aside some of the logistical nightmares and translation issues we could stick with the templates and design from our original site in hopes of breaking into the Japanese market as a known quantity. After all, our model has worked wonders in the States and is likely to appeal to the Japanese market as well, right?

Well, maybe.

On the other hand, it’s probably worth considering a number of things about the site before we make a decision either way.

How Powerful is my Brand?

First, have we done our market research? It is all well and good if we have experienced success in one market, but it won’t necessarily mean that our brand name means anything to the new market. We don’t need to look too far outside of the field of SEO to realize that market shares and the "major players" can vary greatly from one country to another.

Now, we search marketers may tend to be biased towards Google in our SEO efforts, but we at least are all familiar with Bing and Yahoo! Meanwhile, some countries (China in the example) these "major brand names" may not mean anything. So banking on your "established brand" means very little when exploring a new market- be sure to do your research!

"I want a Pretty Site"

Secondly, what if up means down and down means up. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it’s not so far off. Colors can mean totally different things from one country to another. And I’m not talking about horoscopes here! This isn’t a simple question of blue means serenity and purple means power there are much more pressing conversion factors to talk about here.

Let’s look at the implications of red and green and up and down. This factor was brought to my attention in a recent blogpost by the folks on the Yahoo Developer Blog and it is a really crucial point to consider- especially for conversions. In the US and most English speaking countries we are accustomed to a simple logic: Green = Good, Red = Bad. This holds from everything to traffic lights, to stock markets. However, in China and Korea the opposite is true.

These two screenshots were taken at the same time. The one on the left was taken from Yahoo! Finance whilst the one on the right was taken from Yahoo! Korea. As you can see, both images are showing the same data, although one of them appears with red arrows for the upward movement of the stock markets and the other appears with green arrows. This may be a simple illustration but it is easy enough to understand how the massive red letters you use to draw attention for falling prices on your US site could cause a bit of confusion.

Browser Usage

Finally, be mindful of the most common browsers in the country you are targeting. Compatibility across all browsers is always advisable but not always achievable. Although you may have built your site in the US with an understanding that most people would be using Chrome or Firefox the same may not be true everywhere else. In fact, as much as we bemoan Internet Explorer in the UK and the US it is still far and away the pre-eminent browser in Japan.

*REMEMBER THIS, because this bit of information may become even more relevant to you after a forthcoming casestudy by Tom which reveals some potentially massive Conversion losses from Internet Explorer users. I fear I may have said too much already, but be sure to watch this space for a link to the article.

 Speaking the Language

Image: Engrish.com

My final suggestion for creating a site outside of your country comes with a word of warning. If this image looks ridiculous to native English speakers, imagine how silly a site built by one of us looks to a native mandarin speaker. Invest the time and effort to find the right person to build the site. If you are looking to take your ecommerce site to a global audience make sure you’re doing it the right way!

Do What Makes Sense!

As you may have realized, some of these seem like common sense but are far too often overlooked. If your site/brand doesn’t have any recognition to speak of make sure you’ve done your market research. It makes perfect sense for a brand like Amazon (without too many "offensive" colors used on any of their sites) to capitalize on their brand recognition across the web. There is no reason for them to invest too heavily in a redesign and a new name- because they can afford to acquire existing brands and rebrand.

However, if you have just enjoyed some excess in your home market and are thinking about taking your ecommerce platform to new heights be sure to consider the impact on usability.

Image: Cartoon Depot

Have I got the colors right? Have I considered the language issues? Have I thought about conversions and browser issues? And perhaps most importantly- have I got the funds to do this the right way at the moment?

If you can’t afford to make the switch properly, perhaps it is better to consider a "friendlier" market that is more similar to your current market and save your global dominance for a later experiment.

*Browser and Search Statistics from StatCounter

 

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Posted by randfish

Last week, Mixergy’s Andrew Warner interviewed me about the founding of SEOmoz and our trajectory to date. It was a very personal interview about the background of the company, but turned out to be a great experience. I’ve posted it below for those who might want to watch over the weekend and if you prefer, there’s also a full text transcript on the Mixergy blog post.

After the interview, I noticed the Mixergy chatroom had dozens of questions I wasn’t able to answer and I’ve been receiving a fair number of emails and tweets about it as well. Thus, I figured it was time to put together a post on SEOmoz’s history and offer to formally answer questions in the comments of this post.

SEOmoz’s History (1981 – 2010)

1981: Gillian Founds the Company that will Become SEOmoz

When my parents moved from New York to Seattle (so my Dad could work for Boeing), my Mom opened up a small marketing/print design/consulting business. Over the next 20 years, she’d raise three kids (myself, my brother and sister) and maintain the solo operation.

1999: Rand Starts Working with Gillian

At the time, I built mostly static Flash + HTML websites for local small businesses around the Seattle area including small banks, dentists and even a retail clothing store. Knowing nothing of SEO or the power of search engines, most of the pages I build are completely inaccessible to the bots.

2001: Rand Drops out of School

I’d been pursuing a degree at the University of WA, but left two classes shy of graduating to devote 100% of my time to the company, which was struggling to make ends meet thanks to the dot-com bust and the dropoff in demand for website construction. Our company starts going into deep debt, which will continue until late 2005 / early 2006.

2004: SEOmoz is Founded

Although I started trying SEO in 2002, I’m still pretty awful at it. In an attempt to grow my skillset, I participate vigorously on half a dozen SEO forums and eventually build SEOmoz.org as a site to host my thoughts, struggles and discoveries. Google’s sandbox, in particular, had been vexing me and I kept hoping to stumble onto the secret of getting a site "released."

Feb. 2005: First SES Conference

Thanks to the generosity of Danny Sullivan, I attend SES New York (and take a ridiculous quantity of notes about every session I attend). I’d later pitch to speak at SES Toronto, scrape together the money to go and, following on that first experience, get invited to attend many other future shows.

Dec. 2005: Newsweek Covers SEOmoz

Newsweek magazine writes an article about "the shadowy world of SEO" using SEOmoz as the "white hat" example. I author the first version of the Beginner’s Guide to SEO as a resource for those seeking to learn more (figuring the Newsweek traffic will be curious – instead, it gets Slashdotted, which sends us tens of thousands of curious webmasters and developers).

2006: SEOmoz Turns Around Financially

Although 2005 had been a reasonably good year financially, my personal debt hovered close to $500,000. In 2006, Gillian works with debt collection agencies, banks and creditors to eliminate most of the debt and build repayment plans. By July of 2007, we’ll be completely debt free (though even in 2010 my credit history will still prevent me from renting an apartment or leasing a car). We post our financials at the end of the year and for the first time, I have a salary, and don’t need my girlfriend (now wife) to pay for everything

Feb. 2007: We Launch PRO Membership

Although consulting has been a growing source of revenue, we decide that it’s not as scalable or as far-reaching as a recurring revenue model. PRO membership is launched after 3-4 months of development on tools, resources and guides. The initial price is just $29/month (and we still have a solid handful of folks who are grandfathered in and continue to pay that rate!)

Oh, and I proposed to my girlfriend (and got a yes… after a few instances of "what?!") We married the following year and are still over-the-top stupid for each other.

Nov. 2007: Investment Capital Comes Our Way

Ignition Partners & Curious Office co-invest $1.1 million in SEOmoz to help us scale our software, build our web index and grow the team. Michelle Goldberg from Ignition and Kelly Smith from Curious Office join Gillian and I on the board of directors and things get a bit more serious and focused (in a very good way).

We posted financials for 2007 just after taking the investment.

Oct. 2008: We Launch Linkscape

After 10 intensive months of work, we build a scalable, sizable crawl of the web, conduct processing of metrics and launch our first tool to expose that data – Linkscape. Unfortunately, launch day coincides with the collapse of Bear Stearns and the beginning of a very rough period for the world’s economies (and somewhat dampens our press coverage).

Dec. 2008: We Return to Profitability

Despite a tough environment, SEOmoz returns to profitability in December of 2008 and has been profitable again ever since.

June 2009: A Second Attempt at Fundraising Fails

We decided in 2009, after exciting growth in Q1-Q2 to seek a second round of outside funding. But poor timing, unoptimized metrics and a subpar pitch eventually yield no results. Tragically, this costs the team many months of product progress. On the plus side, no dilution of shares.

January 2010: Open Site Explorer Launches

Our most exciting project to date, Open Site Explorer, a product to help SEOs and marketers better see into the web’s link graph, launches. We follow up with a new Keyword Difficulty tool, our SEOmoz toolbar (Chrome version is just a few weeks away, BTW) and improvements to the Linkscape index.

August 2010: The Next Big Thing

Since diagramming a new direction/product for SEOmoz in January 2009, we’ve been working to grow our engineering team, solidify our process and scale our backend to handle something new & exciting. I previously leaked a design mockup at the bottom of this post, but here’s another:

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Today we are:

• 24 people strong
• Growing at a steady pace
• Profitable
• Shaking with anticipation for our upcoming launch (and working furiously to make sure everything goes right)

I can say without hesistation that the most exciting times are definitely ahead of us.

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As I noted above, I’m happy to answer any questions I can about SEOmoz’s founding, past or growth. Feel free to leave them in the comments below (though I may be a bit slow to respond depending on the timing).

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