As recently as a month ago I was a victim of a state of mind I call Analytics Dismissal Disorder. This mindset is common after hearing about the importance of analytics, installing the tracking code and then getting overwhelmed by all of the graphs and scary numbers. When I suffered from analytics dismissal disorder (which my doctors called A.D.D. for short), I knew Google Analytics was important but avoided the extra effort necessary to learn how to get the most out of the software. This post explains what I needed to learn to get over this.

After learning the basics of Google Analytics, you can learn interesting facts like what search terms people use to find your website. In this case, web searchers are more interested in fat people falling than they are in me.

Here is the problem with Google Analytics:

It is obviously potentially useful but who has the time to study how to use a product. I don’t even read the text-less IKEA manuals so why would I read documentation for software. Sounds boring.

This all changed when SEOmoz offered to pay for me to go to WebShare’s Google Analytics Seminar (Wait, you are paying me to leave the office? Mission Accomplished). This 16 hour class walked me through Google Analytics and pushed me through the massive learning curve.

This post distills what I learned in those 16 hours of employer-paid-learning into something you can understand and act on in 20 minutes. Nerd High Five! (*Pushes up glasses*)

Overcome the Google Analytics Learning Curve in 20 Minutes:

An actionable guide to learning what you need to know about Google Analytics.

First Things First:

What are Accounts and Profiles and how are they different?

When you first log in to Google Analytics you need to navigate to your desired data set. This is much more confusing than it ought to be.

Accounts are like folders on a computer. They can contain a lot of different files (profiles) and serve mostly just for organization. An example of an account might be Work Websites or Personal Websites. (Be forewarned, this is not intuitive on setup. Don’t make the mistake I did and name an account after a website. That naming convention is more appropriate for a profile).

Profiles, on the other hand, are like files on a computer. They can’t contain additional profiles or accounts. They represent one view of a website (although not necessarily the only view). An example of a profile might be api.seomoz.org or SEOmoz minus Office IP addresses. You can limit a profile to whatever view of a website you want by using filters.

What are Filters and Segments and how are they different?

This is also more complicated than it ought to be. (grrr)

Filters are attached to website profiles (i.e. "SEOmoz minus office IP addresses") and are permanent. If a profile includes traffic data from all IP addresses except SEOmoz’s office computers, there is absolutely no way to reinclude this excluded data in the given profile at a later time. Filters are irreversible and kinda mean (thus the anal in Google Analytics). You can set them up on the profiles page. (See Below)

Segments are similar to filters except they are profile agnostic and their effects are temporary. In addition, they can be compared against each other. The example segments below shows all visitors (blue line), new visitors (orange line), and returning visitors (green line) and their distribution on the top content of the given website.

What are "raw" profiles and why use them? (Ctrl+Z won’t save you here) 

Google Analytics is different from other Google products in that it doesn’t provide a way to undo certain types of data processing (i.e. filters). In order to give you freedom to explore (and potentially ruin) your profiles, it is important that you create an unfiltered (raw) profile of your website that you can use in case something goes wrong with one of your other profiles. In SEOmoz’s case, this profile is literally called "Do Not Touch! Backup Profile". This is the backup profile we will use to get historical data when Joanna Lord screws up our other profiles. (Danny!)

What if I don’t trust a specific metric?

Tough beans! The key to getting the most out of Google Analytics is to trust it. This is very similar to how we measure time. We all know that our bedroom clock is probably not exactly synced with our office clock but we trust each time-peice as close enough. You need to make the same leap of faith for Google Analytics. The metrics might not be 100% accurate all of the time, but like a clock, at least they are consistent. This makes Google Analytics metrics good enough. (And quite frankly it is as accurate as all of its competitors)

Navigating Google Analytics:

Google Analytics Navigation

Dashboard (Mostly Useless High-level Metrics)

As you would expect, the dashboard shows you the high-level status of your website. The problem is that these metrics tend not to drastically change very often so if you keep looking at your dashboard, you won’t like see any big changes. ZzzzzzzzZZZzzzzz.

Real analytics pros don’t let friends rely on the default dashboard stats.

Intelligence (Automated e-mail alerts) – Check Monthly

Intelligence is Google’s confusing name for automatic alerts. Did traffic to your homepage jump 1000% over last week? Are visits from New Zealand down 80% from yesterday? Intelligence alerts will, with your permission, e-mail you if anything unexpected happens on your website.

Visitors (The type of people that come to your site) – Check Monthly

As the name implies, this section reveals information about your visitors. Want to know what percentage of your users have Flash enabled or how many people viewed your website on an iPad? This section will tell you. (Long live Steve Jobs!)

Traffic Sources (Where people are coming from to reach your site) – Check Weekly

This section shows you different reports on the sources that drove you traffic.

Content (Metrics on your pages) – Check Weekly

Whereas, Traffic Sources shows you information about other people’s pages as they relate to yours, the Content section only shows you information about what happens on your pages.

Goals (Metrics on whether or not people are doing what you want them to do) – Check Daily

Goals are predefined actions on your website that you want others to perform. It is important to note that you must configure these manually. Google can’t auto detect these. This section shows metrics on how people completed these goals or where they dropped off if they didn’t complete them.

Report Interface:

The bread and butter of Google Analytics are the reports. These are the frameworks for learning about how people interact with your website.

Graph:

The graphs/reports in Google Analytics have 6 important options. The first three are detailed below:

• Export. This is pretty self explanatory. You can export to PDF, XML, CSV, CSV for Excel or if you are too good for commas you can export to TSV.
• E-mail. This is one of Google Analytics more useful features. This tab allows you to schedule reoccurring e-mails or one time reports for your co-workers. As an added bonus, if you set up these auto-reports, the recipeients don’t even need to log into Google Analytics to access this data.
• Units (in this case Pageviews). This is a report dependent unit that you can change based on the context.

• Advanced Segments. This is an extremely powerful feature that allows you to slice and dice your data to your likings.
• Date Range (in this case, Apr 24 2010 – May 24 2010).
• Graph By. This feature allows you to choose the scope of the graph in relation to time intervals. For some reports you can even break down data to the hour.

Data:

Data is your tool to see specifics and and make quantifiable decisions.

• Views. This feature actually affects the graphs and the data. It dictates the type of graph or the format or the data.
• ?. This is your source for help on any given metric.
• Secondary Dimension (in this case, None). This allows you to splice the data table by specific data dimensions (cities, sources, etc…)

Which Reports To Track and When:

I recommend using this as a starting point and tailoring it to your needs as you learn more about the unique needs for your website.

Daily

Goals -> Total Conversions

Content -> Top Content (at the page level)

Traffic Sources -> All Traffic Sources

Traffic Sources -> Campaigns – (Optional)

Weekly (or bi-weekly if you have a content intensive website)

Goals -> Funnel Visualization

Goals -> Goal Abandoned Funnels

Content -> Site Search

Traffic Sources -> Direct Traffic

Traffic Sources -> Referring Sites

Traffic Sources -> Keywords

Monthly

Visitors -> Overview

Intelligence -> Overview

Content -> Content Drilldown (at the folder level)

Content -> Top Landing Pages

Content -> Top Exit Pages

Traffic Sources -> Adwords – (Optional)

Which Reports to Ignore:

Visitors -> Benchmarking

From installation validation tools, it’s estimated that as many as 70% of Google Analytics installs are either incomplete or incorrect. This means that the data that these benchmarks rely on, is very likely inaccurate.

Visitors -> Map Overlay

While this feature is one of the most popular features of Google Analytics, it is also one of the least useful. The data these maps present is not normalized so areas with high populations tend to always dominate the screen. They are not completely useless as they show trends but they are not something that can be relied on heavily either. Use your best judgement when viewing this report.

Content -> Site Overlay

This feature seems like a good idea but is not able to be implemented in a way that makes it accurate. Put simply, in order for this tool to work, Google Analytics would need to have more information about the location of a link on a page and a mechanism for tracking which instance of a link gets clicked. Clicktale and Crazy Egg are nice alternatives.

Conclusion:

Tracking the metrics above is only the first step. Imagine Google Analytics as a magical yard stick (For you sissies on the metric system, a yard stick is like a meter stick but better). It is essential for measuring the success or failure of a given online strategy but it is not an online strategy alone. It is best used as a supplement to the your current activities and should be treated as such.

I am surely going to get some flak from some Analytics gurus who know more than me. (You want to go Kaushik?) Remember, this guide is intended to help people get over the GA learning curve, not to be a comprehensive guide. If you are looking for the latter, check out the hundreds of blog posts at the Google Analytics Blog.

One last thing, if you’re interested in taking the Seminars for Success classes, here’s the upcoming schedule.

If you have any other advice that you think is worth sharing, feel free to post it in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my profile: Danny Thanks!

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Update: Happy April Fools day everyone! Thanks to all of those who played along and everyone who participated (willingly or not ;-p). Hopefully this made you or a friend smile as much as everyone here at the office. Until next year, Cheers!

 At SEOmoz, we have always striven to be at the forefront of understanding digital search. As web search has become an increasingly solved problem, some of our researchers have begun to switch their focus from Google to Facebook. Facebook is unique in that it is able to data mine social patterns between real life friends. This is increasingly critical data because as our lives become more busy, automation of simple tasks like social networking become more necessary.

Based on these trends, I am proud to announce our brand new tool, Facebook Status Optimizer.

Facebook Status Optimizer (FSO) automatically posts status updates on your behalf that are algorithmically written to ensure your status updates beat the competition and appear at the top of your friend’s newsfeed. SEO was largely about making money, so we are happy that Facebook Status Optimizer’s focus is aligned with what really matters in life – being popular online.

Key Benefits:

Automate talking with your friends with data from your actual behavior!

Computer learning algorithms learn from your friends’ popular status updates

Your friend’s popular status update:

Your automatically generated message:

Your friend’s popular status update:

Your automatically generated message:

Your friend’s popular status update:

Your automatically generated message:

FSO posts statuses that are algorithmically determined to get you more attention!

Share helpful product reviews with those that you care about!

Start using Facebook Status Optimizer today!

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 Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer. Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting, we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO software. We want to thank all of you who provided feedback on the first version of the tool for your guidance and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Now enough with the chit chat, on to the new features!

New Features:

• Top Pages on a Domain
• Target URL
• Comprehensive CSV Export
• Usability Enhancements (The end of page reloads when applying filters!)
• Improved Filtering

Top Pages on a Domain

With the new version of Open Site Explorer you can get a sorted listed of the top 10,000 pages on a domain. This is essential for viewing your own site and for doing competitive analysis.

With this new feature, we can see that Microsoft is unwisely 302 redirecting their homepage! Doh!

You can also see which content is drawing the most links on your competitors websites. In this example we see that that these are the most linked to comics on XKCD.

Target URL

The new version of Open Site Explorer shows you which URL a given link is targeting when you sort by sub or root domains so you can see exactly where the given link is helping you. (This is also available for all links when the data is exported as a CSV)

With this new feature you can see which link is most important to Harvard.edu’s domain and which page it is linking to.

Comprehensive CSV Export

After lots of input, we are now offering more robust CSV exports.

The new CSV exports offer:

• The Target URL of the given link
• Numbers of links to the given source page
• Indication of whether or not the linked is followed
• Indication of whether the link is internal or external

Usability Enhancements

Remember how you used to have to reload the page every time you applied a filter in Yahoo! Site Explorer?

With the addition of the Filter Results button, these needless page reloads are a thing of the past.

Common Tasks are Easier to Perform

New buttons make performing common tasks easier and faster to do.

The new Explore and Compare buttons make it easier to get more information about any links you find interesting.

Improved Filtering

With the new version of this tool you can do even more filtering to drill down into what you think is important.

In this example, we filtered the data to show only followed (dofollow) and 301 redirecting external links to the specific page.

Open Site Explorer vs. Linkscape vs. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Throughout this process, we also heard a lot of questions about the differences between Yahoo! Site Explorer, Open Site Explorer and Linkscape. The chart below lays out the similarities and differences.

Help us Improve!

Are there other features you want to see? Are we moving in the right direction? We want know! Please feel free to share your suggestions and opinions via SEOmoz on Twitter, SEOmoz on Facebook or in the comments below

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The proposed SEO best practice for this week deals with explaining what HTTP Status Codes are and why certain ones are important to SEOs. These 3 digit numbers cause all kinds of problems for search engines and SEOs that are related to indexing and redirection. While the resource page linked to below is not as directly actionable as the soon to be released page on redirection, it still serves as a good broad overview of the topic. As SEOs, we would love to hear your feedback on the following areas:

• Are there any tools that you think are essential for beginner SEOs to know about for finding status code errors?
• Are there any important status codes this page leaves out?
• Is there anything specific you would like to see on the redirection page?

Please let us know if there is something we should add, remove or modify to make this page more helpful for beginners.

HTTP Status Codes

Remember, this page is just a work in progress. We would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve it. Please feel free to leave your comments below.

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Chapter 4: Finding SEO Problems

Sections:

• 15 Minute SEO Audit
• 10 Minute Brand Reputation Audit (Not included in this blog post)
• Identifying Search Engine Penalties (Not included in this blog post)

15 Minute SEO Audit

The basics of SEO problem identification can be done in about 15 minutes. When completing this audit I recommend you take notes based on the action items listed in each section. This will help you later when you do a deeper dive of the website. This audit is not comprehensive (See Chapter 9 for a full annotated site audit), but it will help you quickly identify major problems so you can convince your clients that your services are worthwhile and that you should be given a chance to dig deeper. The smart ones reading this section may notice that it builds upon the ideas expressed in Chapter 2. The dumb ones reading this, will think it is Harry Potter. The latter might enjoy it more but the former will end up with better SEO skills.

Prepare Your Browser

Before you start your audit you need to set your browser to act more like the search engine crawlers. This will help you to identify simple crawling errors. In order to do this, you will need to do the following:

Disable cookies in your browser

Switch your user-agent to Googlebot

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

When the search engines crawl the Internet they generally do so with a user-agent string that identifies them (Google is googlebot and Bing is msnbot) and in a way where they don’t accept cookies.

To see how to change your user-agent go to Chapter 3 (Picking the Right SEO Tools) and see user-agent switcher. Setting your user-agent to Googlebot increases your chance of seeing exactly what Google is seeing. It also helps with identifying cloaking issues (Cloaking is the practice of showing one thing to search engines and a different thing to users. This is what sarcastic Googlers call penaltybait. ) In order to do this well, a second pass of the site with your normal user-agent is required to identify difference. That said, this is not the primary goal for this quick run through of the given website.

In addition to doing this you should also disable cookies within your browser. By disabling them, you will be able to uncover crawling issues that relate to preferences you make on the page. One primary example of this is intro pages. Many websites will have you choose your primary language before you can enter their main site. (This is known as an intro page.) If you have cookies enabled and you have previously chosen your preference, the website will not show you this page again. Unfortunately, this will not happen for search engines.

This language tactic is extremely detrimental from a SEO perspective because it means that every link to the primary URL of the website will be diluted because it will need to pass through the intro page. (Remember, the search engines always see that page as they can’t select a language) This is a big problem, because as we noted in Chapter 1, the primary URL (i.e. www.example.com/) is usually the most linked to page on a site.

Homepage

Next, go to the primary URL of the site and pay particular attention to your first impression of the page. Try to be as true to your opinion as possible and don’t over think it. You should be coming from the perspective of the casual browser (This will be made easier because at this point you probably haven’t been paid any money and its a lot easier to be casual when are not locked down with the client) Follow this by doing a quick check of the very basic SEO metrics. In order to complete this step, you will need to do the following:

Notice your first impression and the resulting feeling and trustworthiness you feel about the page

Read the title tag and figure out how it could be improved

See if the URL changed (As in you were redirected from www.example.com/ to www.example.com/lame-keyword-in-URL-trick.html)

Check to see if the URL is canonical

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item on this list helps you align yourself with potential website users. It is the basis for your entire audit and serves as a foundation for you to build on. You can look at numbers all day, but if you fail to see the website like the user, you will fail as an SEO.

The next step is to read the title tag and identify how it can be improved. This is helpful because changing title tags is both easy (A big exception to this is if your client uses a difficult Content Management System.) and has a relatively large direct impact on rankings.

Next you need to direct your attention to the URL. First of all, make sure there were not redirects that happened. This is important because adding redirects dilutes the amount of link juice that actually makes it to the links on the page.

The last action item is to run a quick check on canonical URLs. The complete list of URL formats to check for is in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web). Like checking the title tag, this is easy to check and provides a high work/benefit ratio.

Global Navigation

After checking the basics on the homepage, you should direct your attention to the global navigation. This acts as the main canal system for link juice. Specifically, you are going to want to do the following:

Temporarily disable Javascript and reload the page

Make sure the navigation system works and that all links are HTML links

Take note of all of the sections that are linked to

Re-enable Javascript

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As we discussed in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web), site architecture is critical for search friendly websites. The global navigation is fundamental to this. Imagine that the website you are viewing is ancient Rome right after the legendary viaduct and canal systems were built. These waterways are exactly like the global navigation that flows link juice around a website. Imagine the impact that a major clog can have on both systems. This is your time to find these clogs.

Your first action item in the section is to disable Javascript. This is helpful because it forces you to see your website from the perspective of a very basic user. It is also a similar perspective to the search engines.

After disabling Javascript, reload the page and see if the global navigation still works. Many times it won’t and it will uncover one of the major reasons the given client is having indexing issues.

Next view source and see if all of the navigational links are true HTML links. Ideally, they should be because they are the only kind that can pass their full link value.

Your next step is to take note of which sections are linked to. Ideally, all of the major sections will be linked in the global navigation. The problem is, you won’t know what all of the major sections are until you are further along in the audit. For now just take note and keep a mental checklist as you browse the website.

Lastly, re-enable Javascript. While this will not be accurate with the search engine perspective, it will make sure that AJAX and Javascript based navigation works for you. Remember, on this quick audit, you are not trying to identify every single issue with the site, instead you are just trying to find the big issues.

Category Pages/Subcategory Pages (If applicable)

After finishing with the homepage and the global navigation, you need to start diving deeper into the website. In the waterway analogy, category and subcategory pages are the forks in the canals. You can make sure they are optimized by doing the following:

Make sure there is enough content on these pages to be useful as a search result alone.

Find and note extraneous links on the page (there shouldn’t be more than 150 links)

Take notes on how to improve the anchor text used for the subcategories/content pages

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As I mentioned, these pages are the main pathways for the link juice of a website. They help make it so if one page (most often the homepage) gets a lot of links, that the rest of the pages on the website can also get some of the benefit. The first action point requires you to make a judgment call on whether or not the page would be useful as a search result. This goes with my philosophy that every page on a website should be a least a little bit link worthy. (It should pay its own rent, so to speak) Since each page has the inherent ability to collect links, webmasters should put at least a minimal amount of effort into making every page link worthy. There is no problem with someone entering a site (from a search engine result or other third party site) on a category or subcategory page. In fact, it may save them a click. In order to complete this step, identify if this page alone would be useful for someone with a relevant query. Think to yourself:

1. Is there helpful content on the page to provide context?
2. Is there a design element breaking up the monotony of a large list of links?

Take notes on the answers to both of these questions.

The next action item is to identify extraneous links on the page. Remember, from Chapter 2 we discussed that the amount of link value a given link can pass is dependent on the amount of links on the page. To maximize the benefit of these pages, it is important to remove any extraneous links. Going back to our waterway analogy, this type of links are the equivalent “canals to nowhere”. (Built by the Roman ancestors of former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens)

To complete the last action item of this section, you will need to take notes on how to better optimize the anchor text of the links on this page. Ideally, they should be as specific as possible. This helps the search engines and users identify what the target pages are about.

Content Pages

Now that you have analyzed the homepage and the navigational pages, it is time to audit the meat of the website, the content pages. In order to do this, you will need to complete the following:

Check and note the format of the Title Tags

Check and note the format of the Meta Description

Check and note the format of the URL

Check to see if the content is indexable

Check and note the format of the alt text

Read the content as if you were the one searching for it

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item is to check the title tags of the given page. This is important because it is both helpful for rankings and it makes up the anchor text used in search engine result. You don’t get link value from these links but they do act as incentives for people to visit your site.

Similarly to the first action item, the second item has to do with a metric that is directly useful for search engines rather than people (they are only indirectly useful for people once they are displayed by search engines.) Check the meta description by viewing source or using the mozBar and make sure it is compelling and contains the relevant keywords at least twice. This inclusion of keywords is useful not for rankings but because matches get bolded in search results.

The next action item is to check the URL for best practice optimization. Just like Danny Devito, URLs should be short, relevant and easy to remember.

The next step is to make sure the content is indexable. To ensure that it, make sure the text is not contained in an image, flash or within a frame. To make sure it is indexed, copy an entire sentence from the content block and search for it within quotes in a search engine. If it shows up, it is indexable.

If there are any images on the page (as there probably should be for users sake) you should make sure that the images have relevant alt text. After running testing on this at SEOmoz, my co-workers and I found that relevant anchor text was highly correlated to high rankings.

Lastly and possibly most importantly, you should take the time to read the content on the page. Read it from the perspective of a user who just got to it from a search engine result. This is important because the content on the page is main purpose for the page existing. As an SEO, it can be easy to become content-blind when doing quick audits. Remember, the content is the primary reason this user came to the page. If it is not helpful, vistors will leave.

Links

Now that you have an idea of how the website is organized it is time to see what the rest of the world thinks about it. To do this, you will need to do the following:

View the amount of total links and the amount of root domains linking to the given domain

View the anchor text distribution of inbound links

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As you read in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization), links are incredibly important in the search engine algorithms. Thus, you cannot get a complete view of a website without analyzing its links.

This first action item requires you to get two different metrics about the inbound links to the given domain. Separately, these metrics can be very misleading due to internal links. Together, they provide a fuller picture that makes accounting for internal links possible and thus more accurate. At the time of writing, the best tool to get this data is through SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer.

The second action item requires you to analyze the relevancy side of links. This is important because it is a large part of search engine algorithms. This was discussed in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization) and proves as true now as it did when you read it earlier. To get this data, I recommend using Google’s Webmaster Central.

Search Engine Inclusion

Now that you have gathered all the data you can about how the given website exists on the internet, it is time to see what the search engines have done with this information. Choose your favorite search engine (you might need to Google it) and do the following:

Search for the given domain to make sure it isn’t penalized

See roughly how many pages are indexed of the given website

Search three of the most competitive keywords that relate to the given domain

Choose a random content page and search the engines for duplicate content

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As an SEO, all of your work is completely useless if the search engines don’t react to it. To a less degree this is true for webmasters as well. The above action items will help you identify how the given website is reacted to by the search engines.

The first action item is simple to do but can have dire affects. Simply go to a search engine and search for the exact URL of the homepage of your domain. Assuming it is not brand new, it should appear as the first result. If it doesn’t and it is an established site, it means it has major issues and was probably thrown out of the search engine indices. If this is the case, you need to identify this clearly and as early as possible.

The second action item is also very easy to do. Go to any of the major search engines and use the site command (as defined in Chapter 3) to find roughly all of the pages of a domain that are indexed in the engine. For example, this may look like site:www.example.com. This is important because the difference between the number that gets returned and the number of pages that actually exist on a site says a lot about how healthy a domain is in a search engine. If there are more pages in the index than exist on the page, there is a duplicate content problem. If there are more pages on the actual site than there are in the search engine index, then there is an indexation problem. Either are bad and should be added to your notes.

The next action item is a quick exercise to see how well the given website is optimized. To get an idea of this, simply search for 3 of the most competitive terms that you think the given website would reasonably rank for. You can speed this process up by using one of the third party rank trackers that are available. (Refer back to Chapter 3)

The final action item is to do a quick search for duplicate content. This can be accomplished by going to a random indexed content page on the given website and search for either the title tag (in quotes) or the first sentence of the content page (also in quotes). If there is more than one result from the given domain, then it has duplicate content problems. This is bad because it is forcing the website to compete against itself for rankings. In doing so, it forces the search engine to decide which page is more valuable. This decision making process is something that is best avoided because it is difficult to predict the outcome.

United States

United Kingdom

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This post is part of an ongoing series where my co-workers and I are working to build a freely available resource center of up-to-date SEO best practices. As we write this content, we are submitting them for peer review so that everyone on the Internet can benefit from collective intelligence. You can read more about the SEO Knowledge Center here.

This weeks proposed SEO best practice deals with duplicate content. It is my belief that duplicate content is the single biggest SEO problem on the Internet. (Well that and Myspace layouts.) On the page linked below, Jen Lopez discusses what duplicate content is, how it gets created and how to get rid of it. Hopefully, this page will help all of you combat this problem.

Please let us know if there is something we should add, remove or modify. We are also open to suggestions on how to design better robots. As you will see on the duplicate content page below, Rand’s robot mock-up skills are like a mixture of Avatar CGI and Shakespearean writing but without any of the talent or impressiveness (or iambic pentameter for that matter).

Duplicate Content

Remember, this page is just a work in progress. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve it. Please feel free to leave your comments below.

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I believe that the hardest part of SEO is simply keeping up with the trends. Our industry moves extremely fast and as a result, my co-workers and I have spent countless hours searching through old blog posts, articles and e-mail threads while trying to find small tidbits of information. Each of us have separate lists of our favorite resources and up until now, we haven’t had a convenient way to aggregate these.

Luckily, we are finally fed up enough to try to do something about this problem.

Together, we are going to spend the next month putting together an SEO Knowledge Center that will contain information on the best practices and important information for various SEO elements. After they are done, I am making it my responsibility to keep these pages up to date for the duration of my employment at SEOmoz. (Read: Job Security ;-p)

While my co-workers and I write these, we would like to offer up all of our drafts for peer review. Below you will find the first three SEO elements that we are tackling. We are big fans of the wisdom of the crowds and would love to hear all of your feedback.

Title Tag

URL

External Link

Please note: These pages are not yet finalized! That is why we are submitting them for review

Mini Update: Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions so far I just wanted to clarify the editing process for these pages. The first version of the SEO Knowledge Center will only be updatable by people who work at SEOmoz. I don’t think that is sufficient long term, so I would love to hear ideas on how to add a better feedback system. My first thought was wiki style, but given the nature of these pages, I don’t think this is the best solution. What do all of you think?

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A couple of weeks ago I published a post titled "Tests Show PageRank Sculpting with Nofollow Still Works". In it, I argued that a test I had run showed that nofollow was a legitimate means for sculpting PageRank. When I originally posted the blog entry, I full-heartedly believed that my analysis of the test results was accurate. As it turned out, I made a mistake.

The actual results of the test were inconclusive. Plain and simple, my test did not include enough samples to be statistically significant.

In doing so, I unintentionally misinformed all of you. For that, I am extremely sorry.

It is now my goal to make this up to all of you. Below is more information on this and my plan for running a new test.

In the meantime, what should I do about PageRank sculpting?

The first test results should be disregarded. This means that I, along with my co-workers at SEOmoz, recommend neither removing nofollow if it is installed (as we have seen detrimental effects for websites) nor adding it if you don’t have it. Quite simply, we don’t have enough information. (Which is why I ran the original test in the first place… damn)

Your time is best spent on link building and creating quality content. Tricks and tactics like PageRank sculpting are interesting short term tactics but fail in comparison to long term ROI on building a page that should be found. Remember, the most valuable information that Google ever gave SEOs is in the second sentence on this page. Providing the information that Google wants to make universally accessible in a search engine friendly way is the best long term strategy an SEO can have.

What was the old test?

We built 40 websites that looked similar to the following screen shot:

Each website in the experiment used the same template. Each keyword phrase was targeted in the same place on each page and each page had the same amount of images, text and links.

Each domain was unique and used a different IP address. Each testing group had different information in the WHOIS records, different hosting providers and different payment methods.

The standardized website layout contained:

1. Three pages per domain (the homepage and the keyword specific content pages)
2. One internal in-link per page (Links in content)
   1. One in-link to homepage from third party site
3. Six total outbound links.
   1. Two "junk" links to popular website articles to mimic natural linking profile (old Digg articles)
   2. One normal link to keyword test page
   3. Three modified links (according to given test) to three separate pages optimized for given keyword
4. Links to internal pages only came from internal links
5. The internal links used the anchor text (random English phrase) that was optimized for the given internal page
6. Outbound links (aka "junk" links) used anchor text that was the same as the title tag of the external page being linked to (Old social media articles)

This graphic represents an ultra simplified version of five test sites.

In the old experiment each of these different "variable links" would have attempted to sculpt PageRank in a different way. (Variable link ‘a’ might use nofollow, variable link ‘b’ might use JavaScript, etc..) Each of the "normal links" would then point to one of five different pages trying to rank for the same term.

For testing purposes, I chose phrases that were completely unique to the Internet. These were phrases that had never been written online before. (For example, "I enjoy spending time with Sam Niccolls". Just kidding Sam… don’t hurt me) In theory, the page that corresponded to the most effective PageRank sculpting method would outrank its competition for these isolated phrases.

To make us confident in our results we had to compensate for the inherent noisiness of the Internet. To do this, we ran the experiment in parallel eight times.

This shows the full scale of the experiment. Each color (labeled with the numbers 1 – 5) refers to a different PageRank sculpting method. The 8 groups horizontally represent the isolated tests.

What went wrong?

As far as I can tell, the experiment was executed without a problem. As it turned out, the problem wasn’t necessarily with the experiment itself but rather with interpreting the results. I used the wrong metric to evaluate the results (average rank of each testing group) and relied on too few samples.

What is the new test?

Rather than testing which PageRank sculpting method works the best, I am now going to test if the nofollow method works at all.

We ran the numbers (see math below) and found out we could run this test in either of two ways. The first way would only require 40 samples but would require a very high rate of success (nofollow beating control) to prove valid. The second test emphasizes precision and requires a much lower success rate but a much larger sample.

I have both tests planned and would love to hear your feedback of the tests prior to running them. Below is a diagram of the plan to test the nofollow method against a control (null) case.

This diagram shows an ultra simplified version of two test pages to be used in the new nofollow test. The real versions of the pages are more like the "Horsey Cow Tipper" example at the beginning of the post.

For this new test, both "normal links" will point to two separate pages trying to rank for the same unique phrase. "variable link ‘x’ will then link to a different page. "variable link ‘y’ " will be nofollowed and also link to a completely separate page. For each test group, we will see which of the two competing pages ranks higher. Our hypothesis is that the page that that is linked to from the page that has the nofollowed link (variable link ‘y’) will ranker higher. We believe this because we think the control case will split the link value semi-equally between the two links on the page and thus not send its full worth to the page trying to rank for the unique term.

This test will then be duplicated 20 times as seen in the diagram below.

Diagram showing simplified test pages from the new nofollow test

Are 20 tests (40 domains) really enough? We think yes but only for one very specific outcome. In order for this second test to be valid at 95% confidence, 15 out of the 20 tests will need to show that nofollow was an effective PageRank sculpting method.

If this doesn’t happen, we will need to run a third test with a much bigger sample size.  If we want to be 95% sure we will detect nofollow being better with 95% significance even if the odds nofollow wins a given trial is only 5 out of 8, we will need 168 test pairs.  (See math below)

What keeps you from making the same mistake?

While reworking the old test, I got the help of Ben Hendrickson who sits a few desks away.  Please feel free to check our math before we run the test.

The Math Behind the 168 Pairs Nofollow Test

This test consists of a number of independent trials. In each trial, either nofollow or the control will rank higher. Thus the number of wins will be distributed according to a binomial distribution.  Where n is the number of trials, and p is the probability that nofollow wins a trial, the normal approximation to the binomial distribution is:

Where W is the number of wins, and z is the number of standard deviations above the mean, the formula for the number of wins is thus:

The null hypothesis is that nofollow wins at p = 0.5 (even odds). To reject the null hypothesis in favor of the hypothesis that nofollow is an effective PageRank sculpting method with 95% confidence, we would need to see a minimum of W(n,0.5, 1.645) wins. How many wins will we see? We are 95% sure to see at least W(n, p, -1.645), where p of the actual chance that nofollow win a given trial. If we are setting a lower bound of p = 5/8 = 0.625 for what we are trying to detect, then we have a lower bound of seeing W(n, 0.625, -1.645) wins (with 95% likelihood) if in fact nofollow is at least that much better. We can set this lower bound on the number of wins we expect equal to the number of wins we need to see to have 95% confidence nofollow is better. After that we can then solve for the number of trials.

So we conclude we need 168 trials.  If this test fails to show nofollow is better, then we are 95% sure that nofollow wins trials less than 62.5% of the time.  We wouldn’t be able to say nofollow sculpting doesn’t matter, but this does say it doesn’t seem large in comparison to the other factors we were unable to control for in our experiment.

The Math Behind the 20 Pairs Nofollow Test

So then why don’t we run this as our next test? The answer is simple.  A 168 trials is a lot of domains to setup.  So maybe we will get lucky.  If we do a good job of controlling for other factors, and the nofollow sculpting has a modest effect, perhaps the nofollow will win much more frequently than 62.5% of the time on average.

To see a 95% significance of nofollow doing better than the control, we will need to see 15 wins for nofollow out of the 20 trials.  One could do more math for this, but how we actually got this number was an online binomial distribution probability calculator.  Plug in p=0.5 (as this is the null hypothesis), n=20, and many various values for the numbers of wins until you find the lowest number whose chance of getting greater to or equal to it is less than 5%.  That number should be should get 15.

Is there any takeaway from the original test?

Thousands of people read the post about the first PageRank sculpting methods and based on my assessment took it as truth. It wasn’t until two days after posting the original entry that Darren Slatten pointed out my mistake. That means that the damage had already been done and it would be practically impossible to contact all of the people who had read the post.

The small amount of people who did notice were (rightfully) upset with me. Their frustration with me and SEOmoz was vented on their personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, e-mails and in the comments on the original post. This was a great (although unintentional) case study on how the Internet affects the distribution of information.

(mis)information on the Internet does not die.

We saw the very real effects of this on a large scale after the Iran election was covered by normal Iranian individuals on Twitter and on a very small scale with the test results of my first experiment. Once the information reached the Internet, it was out of the control of both its creator and those trying to silence it. For me, this was a much needed reminder of how much the Internet empowers its users. Together, all of you are a force to be reckoned with

One more thing… Why don’t you post the actual URLs so we can investigate them ourselves?

I will do this, but not right now. Posting them now would compromise the integrity of this and future tests. By linking to the test pages I change their link profile. I am happy to do this after the tests have been run and we no longer need the framework. I hope that makes sense

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Update: Based on some excellent feedback in the comments (Seriously, thank you everyone!) I have updated the post with some clarifications and more added data. Specifically, I added a diagram of the page setup and removed a confusing comment I made about Javascript links.

As a result of this shift, we have been running more tests and analyzing more data. Before I get into the topic of our latest test results, let me provide some important points to establish context.

1. There is overwhelming evidence that from a "ROI on time spent working" perspective, there is much more value in link building and creating content that is link-worthy than obsessing over search engine algorithm fluctuations like PageRank sculpting. Link building is human oriented and thus more inline with the long term goals of the search engines. Links also have the added bonus of being easy to measure and thus easier to prioritize.
2. We can’t directly measure how PageRank flows so we can only infer results. This needs to be acknowledged when interpreting test results. That said, we also can’t directly measure objects outside our solar system and this solution of inference has become the basis for modern Astronomy. (If it is good enough for NASA, it is good enough for SEOmoz ;-p)

The Experiment

We chose the following five PageRank sculpting methods to test:

Rel=‘nofollow’ - The standard mechanism for nofollowing a link. <a href=’http://www.example.com’ rel=‘nofollow’>example</a>

Link Consolidation – Consolidating low priority pages. You can read more about link consolidation here.

Iframe – Include a standard link in an iframe that is blocked via robots.txt or meta robots so engines can’t follow it.

Javascript – An external Javascript file (blocked from robots) that inserts links into divs when the page renders.

Control Case – Null test with standard links.

Page Setup

We then built five standardized websites that used these different methods (one used iframes for its test links, another one used Javascript for its test links, etc..) and included one normal link with the anchor text of a phrase that was completely unique on the Internet.

Each website in the experiment used the same template. Each keyword phrase was targeted in the same place on each page and each page had the same amount of images, text and links.

The standardized website layout contained:

1. Four pages per domain (the homepage and the keyword specific content pages)
2. One internal inlink per page (Links in content)
   1. One inlink to homepage from third party site
3. Six total outbound links.
   1. Two "junk" links to popular website articles to mimic natural linking profile (old Digg articles)
   2. One normal link to keyword test page
   3. Three modified links (according to given test) to three separate pages optimized for given keyword
4. Links to internal pages only came from internal links
5. The internal links used the anchor text (random English phrase) that was optimized for the given internal page
6. Outbound links (aka "junk" links) used anchor text that was the same as the title tag of the external page being linked to (Old Digg articles)

Example Test Website

Please note that the above example was NOT actually used. I provided a fake example to maintain the integrity of the testing platform for future tests.

The experiment variables were:

• links (based on experiment type)
• colors
• photos (although alt text was standardized)
• text (randomized text based on proper English grammar using a standardized word-set)

We then did everything we could to make sure that all of these pages received the same amount of link juice from external sources.

The null result would be a random assortment of experiment types ranking in the SERPs.
The alt result would be one experiment type outranking all of the others.

Redundancy

We then duplicated this experiment eight times in parallel. This meant 40 different domains, 40 different IP addresses, 8 different WHOIS records, 8 different hosting providers and 8 different payment methods. (We then went outside and drank)

We ran this test for 2 months.

The Results

As you can see, the nofollow method ranked an average of 1 place higher (0.7) in the SERPs than the control result. This is significant when you realize the total is out of 5.

It appears that the iframe method and link consolidation were slightly effective but the margin was so small that they could be contributed to error.

The Javascript method did not work at all.

The Bottom Line

Despite what the search engine representatives say, nofollow is still an effective way for sculpting PageRank. If you have nofollow sculpting already installed, don’t remove it. If you don’t have it installed, implementing it probably won’t make a drastic change but we encourage you to test this when it is responsible to do so.

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