Hey, everyone, welcome to Whiteboard Friday. No, I am not Rand. My name is Dan Shure, and I’m an SEOmoz associate. I’m here in the MozPlex for the MozCon Conference. I’m very excited. I just flew in a little bit earlier today, and I’m going to do the Whiteboard Friday this week.
Today, we’re going to talk about the Top Ten Twitter Tactics times three. So I’ve got three lists here of ten tactics for each category that we’re going to go through. Those categories first are attention, that is getting attention onto your profile or who you are, just getting noticed by people that don’t follow you. The second is audience, so that is getting people to follow you and then maintaining that audience, and the third is action. So that is getting people to take actions from your tweets, from the people that are following you.
So let’s get right into the first one. For attention, the first thing I would say is you want to set up a profile that looks professional, that has personality, and that stands out in a way that you will get noticed. That might be a nice looking photo. That might be a clear user name, not something with a lot of underscores or weird digits in it or things that aren’t spaces. You want to have it be something that people will instantly recognize as your name.
Second, you want a contrast what’s happening out in Twitter a little bit and kind of stand out. So I’ll give you a few examples. One might be, suppose . . . so I’m a tad nervous. I’m not going to stop though. We’re doing this in one take. So, to contrast and stand out a little bit. If a lot of people around you are tweeting
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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/pJwurMptpj0/ten-painless-tactics-to-earn-attention-on-twitter
Category Archives: Internet Marketing
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Article source: http://www.southfloridabusinessworld.com/2012/09/two-day-gourmet-steak-and-seafood-sale/
Watch Out for Long Title Tags
Here is the all-true story of some intriguing events that have transpired at the MozPlex in the last couple of weeks.
It all started when Jamie wanted to look up his fantastic post from last year, “Custom Reporting Using Google Analytics and Google Docs – The Ultimate Analytics Mashup.” Not having the URL committed to memory, he did what any of us might do: he Googled it.
Imagine his surprise (and my consternation) when instead of a useful, keyword-rich, call-to-actiony title, he saw this:
For some reason, Google was displaying the text from the unique part of the post URL, rather than the title. A quick survey of Mozzers found that several of us had seen similar results when Googling old blog posts:
But it definitely was NOT happening on all blog posts!
I’m gonna be honest with you guys: I could NOT figure this out. I checked various factors for correlation. Could rel=author be causing this? Was something happening with the way title tags were being generated on the back end of the blog? Nothing seemed to match up.
One factor that I considered, but almost dismissed, was a change in how titles are truncated. The Google Inside Search blog had just released their monthly list of algorithmic tweaks for May, including these 3 that specifically had to do with how titles display:
- “Trigger alt title when HTML title is truncated. [launch codename "tomwaits", project codename "Snippets"] We have algorithms designed to present the best possible result titles. This change will show a more succinct title for results where the current title is so long that it gets truncated. We’ll only do this when the new, shorter title is just as accurate as the old
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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/fbbTiKeNZDg/long-title-tags
Were You Hit by Negative SEO?
Since Google’s “Penguin” update, hysteria over negative SEO has exploded, with people blaming it for every problem from falling rankings to their hands turning orange (Pro Tip: Check to see if you just ate a bag of Cheetos). I feel roughly the same way about post-Penguin negative SEO as I do about aliens. I’ve created the following graphic to illustrate my beliefs:
Ok, maybe that sounded a little harsh, but here’s the point – while I believe negative SEO is possible – and I’ve seen a handful of cases where I’m pretty sure it was effective – it’s usually not the root cause of a ranking drop. In other words: most people who think they’ve been hit by negative SEO haven’t been. This post is an attempt to ease your fears and help you find out if you’re one of the 0.1% who really saw that UFO.
Broadly defined, “negative SEO” can mean anything malicious someone does to harm your site’s rankings. Rand’s recent video on negative SEO covers many examples and is a great recap. Within the context of the Penguin update, though, negative SEO really only means one thing – that someone has launched an organized effort to make your link profile look bad. This usually means that they’ve hit you with a ton of low-quality or clearly black-hat links across a large number of domains.
I don’t want to downplay attacks on your site. If you’ve had a security breach, such as a DDoS that is taking down your site or an SQL-injection attack that has modified your content or added outbound links, take it seriously and handle it quickly. With link-based “attacks,” though, the situation can get a lot trickier, and the cures can sometimes be worse than the disease. If
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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/80RLSDFg5hY/were-you-hit-by-negative-seo
5 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
With the number of updates Google and the other search engines make to their algorithms, it can be daunting to stay current with best practices for search engine optimization (SEO). Should backlinks still be a priority? What is Google’s Penguin update and how can I stop losing traffic because of it?
But no matter how much search engines change their ranking equations, there are a number of basic SEO mistakes you’ll want to avoid. Here’s a look at the five most common errors and some advice for how you can avoid making them:
Mistake No. 1: Failing to conduct proper keyword research.
The Internet runs on keywords. Websites show up in search engine results only when they’re relevant to keyword queries.
If you’re posting web content based on whatever you feel like writing rather than based on proper keyword research, you might be limiting your opportunities to generate search results traffic. A keyword is a word or series of words that a user enters into a search engine. To research keywords for your industry, use tools such as Google’s free Adwords Keyword Research service to look for search queries that generate an adequate volume of website results without being so competitive that your site won’t rank high in the search results.
Related: How Keyword Research Can Improve Your SEO
Mistake No. 2: Building low-value backlinks.
Although link building can be an important part of online marketing, you won’t want to put quantity ahead of quality. Low-value backlinks — including those from spam websites, irrelevant sites or sites built solely for the purpose of disseminating links — could do damage to your site’s SEO, especially in the wake of the recent Google Penguin update.
Google Penguin is an algorithmic change designed to weed spam sites out of search results.
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Article source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223882?cm_mmc=Carousel-_-223882-_-13-_-fpf
17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid
by SEOMoz
If the last few months of ranking changes have shown me anything, it’s that poorly executed link building strategy that many of us call white hat can be more dangerous than black-hat strategies like buying links. As a result of well intentioned but short-sighted link building, many sites have seen significant drops in rankings and traffic. Whether you employ link building tactics that are black, white, or any shade of grey, you can do yourself a favor by avoiding the appearance of link spam.
It’s become very obvious that recent updates hit sites that had overly aggressive link profiles. The types of sites that were almost exclusively within what I called the “danger zone” in a post about one month before Penguin hit. Highly unnatural anchor text and low-quality links are highly correlated, but anchor text appears to have been the focus.
I was only partially correct, as the majority of cases appear to be devalued links rather than penalties. Going forward, the wise SEO would want to take note of the types of link spam to make sure that what they’re doing doesn’t look like a type of link spam. Google’s response to and attitude towards each type of link spam varies, but every link building method becomes more and more risky as you begin moving towards the danger zone.
1. Cleansing Domains
While not technically a form of link building, 301 “cleansing” domains are a dynamic of link manipulation that every SEO should understand. When you play the black hat game, you know the chance of getting burned is very real. Building links to a domain that redirects to a main domain is one traditionally safe way to quickly recover from Google actions like Penguin. While everyone else toils away attempting to remove scores of exact-match anchor text, the spammers
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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/Tv6PixteaqQ/17-types-of-link-spam-to-avoid
Link Building A-Z Guide – Definitions & Terms
When those of us in search marketing talk and write about link building, we tend to use terms that we think are very commonly understood. We bandy around phrases like “CTR on page 1 of the SERPs is better than on page 2″ and “god help me if my content gets deindexed.”
However, for the new guys and gals out there (and that includes people who are both learning about building links and clients who seek link services) this link building guide will help define and explain some of the more common link building terms, from A to Z.
A – Anchor Text, AC Rank, Actual PageRank
Anchor text
The content inside of the anchor element ( aanchor text /a) and is designed to give you an idea of what the content you are pointing to is about. The anchor element contains an href attribute where the target of the link is designated. The anchor element is, many times, called an anchor tag.
AC Rank
Majestic SEO’s measure of a page’s importance, on a scale of 0 to 10. It can be considered an alternative to Google’s PageRank and is used in various link tool programs. The AC Rank stands for A Citation Rank.
The Actual PageRank
Google’s value for your page, and it’s not what you see on a tool or your toolbar, as that isn’t updated frequently enough to reflect the true value.
B – Backlink Profile, Blog Network, Bing, Blekko, Bait
Backlink profile
A term used to describe the links coming into a site from sources other than the site itself.
Blog networks
Exactly what they sound like: networked blogs. Their importance in link building has recently been compromised as several high-profile and large networks (e.g., BuildMyRank) have been devalued.
Bing
The most popular alternative to Google’s search engine at
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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172916/Link-Building-A-Z-Guide-Definitions-Terms
Coding guidelines for HTML and CSS
Wednesday, May 02, 2012 at 8:46 AM
Webmaster level: All
Great code has many attributes. It’s effective, efficient, maintainable, elegant. When working on code with many developers and teams and maybe even companies, great code needs to also be consistent and easy to understand. For that purpose there are style guides. We use style guides for a lot of languages, and our newest public style guide is the Google HTML and CSS Style Guide.
Our HTML and CSS Style Guide, just like other Google style guides, deals with a lot of formatting-related matters. It also hints at best practices so to encourage developers to go beyond indentation. Many style guide authors know the underlying motivation from the question whether to describe the code they write—or to prescribe what code they want to write. Not surprisingly then, in our HTML and CSS style guide you’ll find both (as much as you’ll still find a lot of different development styles in our not entirely small code base).
At this time we only want to introduce you to this new style guide. We hope to share more about its design decisions and future updates with you. In the meantime please share your thoughts and experiences, and as with the other style guides, feel free to use our style guide for your own projects, as you see fit.
Written by Jens O. Meiert, Senior Web Architect, Google Webmaster Team
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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/amDG/~3/9R05sp7fkRs/coding-guidelines-for-html-and-css.html
How To Use HTML Meta Tags
Want top search engine rankings? Just add meta tags and your website will magically rise to the top, right? Wrong. Meta tags are one piece in a large algorithmic puzzle that major search engines look at when deciding which results are relevant to show users who have typed in a search query.
While there is still some debate about which meta tags remain useful and important to search engines, meta tags definitely aren’t a magic solution to gaining rankings in Google, Bing, Yahoo, or elsewhere – so let’s kill that myth right at the outset. However, meta tags help tell search engines and users what your site is about, and when meta tags are implemented incorrectly, the negative impact can be substantial and heartbreaking.
Let’s look at what meta tags are, what meta tags matter, and how to avoid mistakes when implementing meta tags on your website.
What Are Meta Tags?
HTML meta tags are officially page data tags that lie between the open and closing head tags in the HTML code of a document.
The text in these tags is not displayed, but parsable and tells the browsers (or other web services) specific information about the page. Simply, it “explains” the page so a browser can understand it.
Here’s a code example of meta tags:
head
title Not a Meta Tag, but required anyway/title
meta name=”description” content=”Awesome Description Here” /
meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html;charset=UTF-8″ /
/head
For more on the history of meta tags, see our post “Death of a Meta Tag”.
The Title Tag
Although the title tag appears in the head block of the page, it isn’t actually a meta tag. What’s the difference? The title tag is a required page “element” according to the W3C. Meta tags are optional page
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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067564/How-To-Use-HTML-Meta-Tags
7 Ways Links Cause Search Rank Changes
Based on the happenings over the past few weeks, and especially given that Google is sending warning messages about unnatural links to webmasters, it seems almost inevitable that the next great link building business scam will be promising to clean up linking messes for websites, so those sites will have a chance to get back in Google’s good graces.
Not all such businesses will be scams. It is possible to go through a process to “cleanse” a site of enough of the spammy links that the site can return to Google. Whether or not that site’s ranking returns is a whole different question.
My Site’s Ranking Tanked. What Happened?
Before making the decision to pursue the time consuming process of cleaning up “bad” links, it pays to understand the variety of potential reasons your site might have dropped in the rankings in the first place. Not all rankings drops have to do with your site’s links, and not all Google warning messages result in a ranking penalty or removal.
Google’s known about these unnatural links for years. All that’s new here is Google has decided to tell you about them, and good for them.
Google won’t tell you the exact URLs they think are unnatural, for reasons that you can kind of understand. They don’t want the link networks to know they’ve been caught until they have found as many different pages in the network as possible.
Here’s a summary of seven different occurrences that could explain a drop in your site’s rank.
1. Other Sites Gained Additional Legitimate High Trust Links to Help Their Content Outrank Yours
This is the most painful explanation to accept. Nobody cheated. You just don’t have the content quality that a competitor (or some other site) does.
To get
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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2170399/7-Ways-Links-Cause-Search-Rank-Changes