Posted by randfishWARNING: Get ready to read with this one. There aren't a ton of fun graphics or quick bullet points, but I do promise that if you read through, you'll feel much more knowledgeable about the topic, and likely get more value from organizing, speaking or attending an event. Over the past 6 years, I've attended nearly 100 conferences on search, online marketing, startups and technology. I've given presentations or sat on panels at nearly all of them. I've organized our own SEOmoz seminars here in Seattle and in London, built panels for a variety of other conference series and sat in the audience for many hundreds of sessions. Oddly, in the past 3 months, I've had more discussions about the conference format and the optimization of the experience than I can ever recall in previous years. I don't know whether it's me thinking about the problem more or just stumbling into conversations that center around conference strategy and business models, but like Twitter and conversion rate optimization, it's been finding its way into the nooks and crannies of every lunch, dinner, casual coffee or post-session beer. Wow... Even Google Trends says this is a hot topic. I consider the organizers of conferences like SMX, SES, Pubcon & many overseas events (RIMC, SMX Sydney, the SMX/SES shows in the UK & Europe, etc.) to be both good friends and good people. This blog post is in no way meant to denigrate or cast aspersions at their intents or achievements (which have been remarkable - SEO itself has gained tremendous legitimacy because of their efforts). Quite the opposite - it's meant to highlight some of the reasons why things we, as conference goers and speakers, complain about continue and why it's hard to change the status quo. I'm also going to try putting forward some ideas at the end of the post that I have seen work well and would love to see more of (or more experimentation with) in the future. (Added late) It's important to note while reading this post that I'm sharing my perspective, opinions and experiences, so please read with SEOmoz's usual "this is an opinion piece" lens. Competing Incentives On one side, we have conference & event organizers. They have businesses to maintain, revenue and profits to grow and pressures from owners/investors/boards to meet certain goals. They have to please advertisers, sponsors & exhibitors, but can't do any of that without first delighting customers (those who buy tickets to the events). On the other, we have attendees (and, to a lesser extent, speakers) who want to learn, have an enjoyable experience and get personal and professional value from the event(s). Most attendees are not paying themselves - this is a business expense they need to justify and hence, managers and C-level types hold the pursestrings. In the subsections below, I'll try to walk through the competing incentives and goals of these two parties and why they make the conference experience so tough to perfect. Venues, Locations & Timing This is one of the easiest dichotomies to describe. In one corner, we have the organizers, who are optimizing on cost. In the other, we've got attendees, who want the best experience (particularly if they're traveling). Not surprisingly, every organizer wants to hold their event at the best possible time in the most optimal location. That means, at least here in the US, winter events in warm weather climates like southern California, Las Vegas, Florida and Hawaii, summer events in mild climates like the Pacific Northwest or the Bay Area and events in extreme climates like the Northeast and Midwest in Fall/Spring. Economics dictates that supply for these optimal locations at optimal times will be low because demand is high. This also means that prices will rise accordingly. Organizers know it's hard to pass those costs on to attendees. Once a conference's price has been set for a few years, fluctuating dramatically is challenging. What many may not realize is some of the additional, behind-the-scenes inputs. For example, conference venues like to book 12-18 months in advance (sometimes more for very large/expensive/high demand events/locations). They require down payments and guarantees, since re-booking a space if an event cancels 3 or even 6 months ahead often proves impossible. In addition, advertisers, speakers, exhibitors and conference goers themselves get accustomed to certain events at certain times in specific places. Changing an established event always carries risk. Next time you wonder why SES has a show in Chicago in December and New York in March or why RIMC hits Reykjavik in winter, remember that costs, momentum and contracts make those very hard things to change. If we were all willing to fly to Anchorage in January, you can bet the costs would be rock bottom. Attendance Level This one isn't quite as clear cut. For some attendees, an intimate, small show experience is ideal. You get one-on-one time with the speakers, more opportunity for Q+A, a less stressful environment and, typically, easier times with everything from getting good food to booking hotels to scheduling meetings with other conference-goers/speakers. However... The incentives are frequently the reverse for both speakers (who want large crowds so they can justify the travel expense and preparation time) and for organizers (who have a tough time charging enough to a small group to make up for what a larger base could bring). Organizers also want to signal that their event is "a big deal" and high attendance numbers is one of the best ways to do this. So why not go for huge venues and trim the costs down to minimal levels I hear you ask? Good question. The obvious answer is profit margins (and sometimes, just covering costs), but it's not the whole reason. Advertisers, sponsors, exhibitors and even speakers want to be in front of "qualified" audiences. An audience of web marketers paying $100 to go to a show is hard to pitch as a compelling and potentially lucrative base to these groups. However, if tickets are $1,800 and 5,000 people show up, every speaker and sponsor in the world wants to make their voice heard and presence known to that group. Even the big industry players like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. will be willing to lose their top notch talent for a week to get in front of the audience, mingle with the crowd and network with the best and brightest. Some attendees are also more excited by large events. They provide greater opportunities to meet a high quantity of peers and help lend credibility to the value and importance of the event. They also tend to draw big name speakers and presenters, which means a perception of greater value from the learning aspects of the conference. Of course, this is all balanced by the availability and affordability of venues. SMX Advanced happens in Seattle and for each of the past 2 years, it's been completely sold out. The organizers could go to a larger facility, but Seattle doesn't have many that support in excess of 2,000 people without dramatically raising the costs (and likely lowering quality) and the SMX organizers may like the feel/vibe of the current audience size. It can also be a positive signal to consistently sell out a show - every SEOmoz seminar we've thrown has sold out weeks before the event and this means more early bookings, greater consistency in attendance and revenue and an easier time planning (to be fair, SEOmoz's seminars are a small fraction of the size - 150-250 attendees - of true, large conferences like Pubcon, SES, SMX or even OMS - and hence aren't particularly comparable). Speakers Things get more contentious and thorny around the issue of speakers. Attendees and organizers alike can agree that in a perfect world, only speakers who consistently earn top ratings and attract large followings would present. Sadly, in virtually every industry, these individuals comprise only a handful of players. Google's Matt Cutts and Avinash Kaushik are likely among them as is Danny Sullivan of Third Door and Seth Godin. However, I'm hard pressed to name many more that would attract paying audiences simply with their presence. There's also a large group of phenomenal speakers like Greg Boser, Dave Naylor, Vanessa Fox, Jessica Bowman, Marshall Simmonds and the like who are excellent presenters, incredibly valuable to the audience, and, together with other positive signals, are likely to draw in paying attendees. This is where the trouble starts, though. These individuals didn't necessarily start out as remarkable presenters. In fact, I've personally seen speakers I'd consider "rock stars" today many years back and the same couldn't always be said of them. It takes a trial-and-error, weeding-out process to determine who's going to be great, and that means you need to try out new names and faces as an organizer. Finally, you've got groups of new or nearly-new speakers, some of whom may be diamonds in the rough and others who may be complete duds. Organizers have little information to base this on other than their CV, a pitch form and possibly recommendations from previous events. Tragically, even great online writers/bloggers/personalities sometimes turn out to be less-than-amazing when placed in front of hot lights, a restless audience and 15 minutes of Powerpoint. Organizers & panel leaders (those who organize individual sessions or tracks) complain to me all the time about the necessity of finding the new stars, getting those diamonds-in-the-rough enough experience to shine and providing a diversity of speakers. Many technology conferences face the constant problem of gender imbalance and I'm certainly not immune to it. Last year, between Seattle and London events SEOmoz & Distilled had less than 15% women give talks - a shameful number. Everyone can agree that we need more truly great speakers and fewer mediocre/poor ones. But when you're trying to discover new talent, mature up-and-coming stars AND bring as many speakers into the event as possible (see the next section), it clashes with the goals of consistently excellent quality speakers and presentations. Session Formats This might be the toughest problem of all. More speakers = more attendees. And yes, that often holds true for even new speakers and those of low-middling quality. The reason is that speakers frequently invite clients, partners and colleagues as well as promote the event on their sites, blogs and social media accounts. If you want your event to have thousands of attendees, get 100+ speakers and they'll (hopefully) help spread the word for you. The problem is the session formats this creates. In order to maximize numbers of speakers while fixing the event length, you move from solo presentations to panels with increasingly larger number of participants. Some organizers argue that panels are a good thing and I'd agree in moderation. For something like an "Ask the Search Engines" panel, having a representative from both Bing & Google makes sense. For Q+A sessions in general, 3-4 panelists can help to spark discussion and even get into vigorous and valuable debates (at SMX West last week, my friend Roger Monti and I got into a nice tiff that I think helped keep the audience on its toes - and yes, it was all in good fun and good humor). However, when it comes to learning about an individual topic in a robust, in-depth fashion, I think it's very tough to argue that having a highly talented panel of 4 or 5 speakers give 10-14 minute slide decks can compare to a single 45-50 minute session with a single great speaker who can go both broad and deep (and then take questions). The highest rated panels (from my understanding and from direct experience with the ones I've seen) are always those where a remarkable presenter has the full time to dig into their subject matter. Three weeks ago I was at OMS San Diego where Dharmesh Shah spoke on Twitter and Tim Ash presented on Conversion Rate Optimization. The difference between that and a panel approach is night and day - there's just no comparison. But, as an organizer, if you optimize towards these highly rated sessions and kill the panels, you lose speakers which costs you reach and buzz and, likely, attendees. Happy attendees might rave about the value of the session in their reviews, but no one has the incentive to fill the seats like a speaker (even a bad one). Solving this issue might be a pipe dream. Session Topics What about the topic choices themselves? I hear attendees constantly complain about certain topics going missing while others get too much coverage. Organizers, meanwhile, struggle with how to fit in esoteric, but likely fascinating topics against tried-and-true (and in-demand) popular sessions. The best thing an organizer can do is to survey their audience ahead of time and plan/prepare from that feedback. But, this is much easier said than done. Organizers don't necessarily know who's going to be at a show with enough lead time to arrange speaker schedules and build a topic plan. It's also very hard to get commitments from a large number of speakers with a shorter deadline and nearly impossible to nail down keynotes and big names without months of advance notice. When Will Critchlow and I do the planning for the SEOmoz/Distilled seminars, we get to cheat in a lot of ways. First off, we have the email addresses of all the PRO and registered (free) members on SEOmoz, so we can survey to our heart's content ahead of time (and do). Second, we actually optimize to speakers - since we largely don't use the panel approach, we pool together a list of the speakers we've seen in the last 12 months that have wowed us and then ask them to give performances that speak to their strengths and experiences. Since we only need 10-15 speakers per event, we can personally invite a handful of top-notch folks each time. We know we're only covering a fractional amount of material (more cheating), but can get away with it since this is a niche event that doesn't need to appeal to a broad audience. Can a larger conference use these tactics? Almost certainly not. Their audiences aren't nearly as nicely packaged ahead of time, and panels are critical to growing the number of speakers, providing the diversity, giving experience to the "diamonds-in-the-rough," addressing all the important topics of the day, etc. Conferences like Pubcon, SMX, SES and OMS would also almost certainly take a huge amount of heat if they stopped accepting pitches and simply relied on a smaller contingent of consistently excellent speakers. Advertisers, exhibitors and sponsorships would likely drop too (even though they're technically not at all tied to the editorial programming side of the equation), and these are a massive source of revenue. Amenities As an attendee, we probably think that things like reliable wifi, better food and comfortable seating with tables and power outlets in session rooms makes a big difference. The problem is, these don't tend to correlate with how we actually choose conferences to attend and/or return to.  I know organizers who've invested hugely in the attendee experience, only to see retention rates drop (despite the fewer numbers of tweeted/blogged complaints). When those dollars are re-invested in marketing the conference, drawing in bigger keynotes, or optimizing other aspects, the numbers get better (even when cardboard sandwiches and grade-school chairs are employed). We, as conference goers, vote with our wallets, and we apparently don't care as much about the amenities as we make out to (personal note - please, conference organizers, don't use this knowledge against us too much; I love comfy chairs, good food and great wifi). Press Passes & Guest Passes Speaking of thorny issues - little in the conference world raises as much public ire as this one. For nearly every event it makes good sense to give bloggers and journalists press passes. However, when a big, expensive, popular event is thrown, these can quickly gobble into profit margins with questionable returns. The problems are myriad - bloggers don't often deliver the extent or quality of coverage they promise and traditional journalists frequently make no promise of coverage at all (and then write nothing). Feeding and seating them alone can run into the hundreds of dollars per day (trust me, you don't want to know what a trade venue will charge for a cup of coffee or a bag of Cheetos). And, as savvy organizers know, some (possibly even many or most) bloggers would pay to attend the event if their press pass request was rejected. You don't want to anger this vocal minority, but you also can't afford to be taken advantage of. For sold out events, it gets even harder. Longtime "friends" and traditional receivers of press passes may need to be sacrificed to make room for paying attendees, especially if the event relies on those last 1-200 seats for the majority of the profit margin. Organizers know they need to be careful to be generous, but discerning, or risk becoming known for "giving free access to anyone who can set up Wordpress." They also want to try to give newcomers to the blogging/coverage scene a chance to make an impact, while being mindful of abuse and sensitive to the dangers of angering influencers. It's a tough tightrope to walk and one that press pass requesters should be more sensitive to (I'm speaking from personal experience on this one, and know that we certainly owe some apologies for past requests and perceived slights). Optimizing the Conference Experience Now that we're through some of the reasons events are so hard to get right, I'll try to provide some recommendations for every participant in the process. This is personal opinion, and unlike SEO, it's not based on thousands of hours of experience, but probably just a few hundred and my own observations. Still, I hope it's valuable, or, at the least, worth considering. Advice & Experiments for Organizers

• If possible, try to shave panels down to more reasonable sizes. Both speakers and attendees will appreciate it, and those nasty timing issues that can wreck schedules and hurt moderators will get better, too.
• Great networking events should be built into more conferences. Many attendees say that the most value they get is from the networking outside the sessions (which, to my mind means the sessions need help, but that's another matter).
• This also speaks to the value of providing great areas to network during the event. Quiet areas with couches, tables, drinks and wifi can make for very happy conference goers (note: for some reason, putting these in/around the trade booths never seems to work very while, though perhaps I just haven't seen an optimal configuration).
• Select speakers more carefully. Yes, it's hard work, but it's worthwhile. And consider optimizing topics to speakers rather than the other way around - if you know that a particular individual can give an amazing experience to attendees, block off 45 minutes, email and offer to pick up a flight and/or hotel. I've been consistently shocked by who will say yes (and then feel so guilty/thankful about having their expenses covered that they'll put in twice the effort preparing and promoting) .
• Be harsh on returning speakers if their last presentation wasn't up to standards. I understand having some new blood every time, but if someone under-delivered, you need to axe them, or make it clear that the next one needs to make the audience stand up and cheer.
• Likewise, bring back great speakers more often, but make them craft new content. In my experience, great speakers seem to do well no matter the topic (so long as they have some experience/relevance to it) far more so than experienced/talented professionals correlate with great presentations on those topic.
• Try playing with venues. OMS this year moved to a new location that was 10X better than their previous spot, and my understanding is that the cost was lower, too (SEMpdx's Searchfest also had a new location in downtown Portland this year that was fantastic, though I don't know the cost differential). When you find venues that will be accommodating, magic happens because your cost structure suddenly becomes less of a burden and more of an opportunity to do creative, interesting things attendees will remember.
• Big one - don't let the room sizes dwarf the audience sizes. I was just at an event where the room could hold 1,500 people but only 200 were in the session. It feels to everyone - speakers, organizers, attendees -  like there's no energy or excitement. In comparison, I was at an event a few weeks back where the room could only hold 150 and 170 squeezed in. The air felt electric and every presentation, question and tip felt alive. Optimize this one carefully because it makes a huge difference.
• Make new speakers jump through a few hoops to sell you on being installed on a panel. An impressive CV, a good blog and a high ranking title do not correlate with great presentations, but the ability to make a compelling web video (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) on the topic does.

Advice & Experiments for Attendees

• If you love an event, a speaker or a session, sing it from the rooftops. Tweet, blog, write reviews, tell friends and invite colleagues next time. So many of the incentive problems described above happen because as attendees, we don't do the marketing or give the feedback we could and should.
• Don't tolerate low quality speakers/presentations, but also don't make it public. Tweeting nasty remarks about a speaker while they're on a panel shouldn't be any more acceptable than booing or throwing fruit. Make your voice heard to the organizers afterward - it will have a real impact (and if it doesn't, don't come back).
• You get out what you put in. Come with an open mind, a stack of business cards, openness to new ideas and a slough of great questions. Introduce yourself, don't be shy and make the most of networking opportunities; they often end up producing the most memorable value.
• Be the change you want to see - make sure to let organizers and speakers know what you liked and didn't via email and feedback forms. This includes venue/amenities/location/timing. None of us are clairvoyant (though Google's working on something, I hear).

Advice & Experiments for Budget Authorizers

• Give your employees freedom to choose their own events. Great people will choose wisely, and that's who you want to keep anyway.
• Let them stretch their budgets and time - at SEOmoz, we fix number of dollars and let our people do the rest. If they want to spend it all on one big trip to a conference in Fiji, go for it. If they'd prefer to optimize for multiple events closer to home, that's great, too. You'll often find employees are much more accountable if they know their budget really belongs to them.
• Ask attendees to record and share their experiences. Internal docs or wikis or a 20 minute PPT during a brown bag lunch from employees who attend events goes a long way. It will force them to take some notes and provide some actionable value back to the rest of the company and it lets the employee be the star - the one who's been somewhere and learned something no one else knows.

Advice & Experiments for Speakers

• Be empathetic - imagine yourself in the audience or better yet, remember yourself in the audience in the last session or at the last conference. What impressed you? Do that. What sucked? Avoid that.
• Go advanced - I have almost never been asked to go more basic at a search marketing event, no matter how adavanced my presentation or content gets. My takeaway is either that everything I do is way too beginner level or that audiences just love more "down-the-rabbit-hole" material. If you're on the fence, lean advanced.
• Don't pitch or present if you can't kick butt. You owe it to the audience, to the organizers and, for goodness sake, to yourself, to do an amazing job every time you're up speaking. If you're not funny or charismatic, don't sweat it - let the material do the talking.
• Fewer bullet points, less text, less time talking about each slide and less.
• More images, more screenshots, more callouts (text boxes with arrows to important stuff on a slide/screenshot), more stories and more real life examples.
• Don't ask for a business card to send someone a copy of your slide deck. Make it available online at a URL everyone can access. If your material is good enough, you'll get plenty of warm leads.
• Prepare. I'm a busy guy - no, seriously, I mean really busy - and I still take hours putting together high quality decks for even small conferences and 12 minutes presentations in half-full rooms. If you don't have the time to set aside and do great work on a presentation, you better either be incredibly naturally gifted on stage or have a team that makes great decks for you. If you can't do any of these, don't present.
• Remember you are why the event happens, you're why everyone is there, and you have a massive responsibility to deliver something that will add value for the audience. Just one or two actionable tips can tilt the balance, but don't settle for that. Do better than anyone would think possible and I promise the rewards will be tremendous. This industry is still craving excellence from its presenters and you have that chance - don't waste it.
• Experiment with taking questions in the middle of your talk, particularly if you're going longer than 20 minutes (which, sadly, is quite rare). It brings a liveliness and level of engagement that's tough to match with a purely "I'm going to talk at you" presentation.

Your Thoughts I don't mean to be forward, but I suspect a lot of organizers, speakers and attendees in the search marketing conference space will check out this post. Please, please share your thoughts and feedback below, with one caveat - we like to keep this blog TAGFEE, so no harsh insults or personal attacks. That's what YouTube comments are for :-) p.s. I'm just back from Searchfest in Portland (which was a terrific event that continues to get better every year). I was originally asked to give a 20 minute presentation on SEOmoz's toolset, but decided I couldn't be quite that self promotional and created a deck that covers a wider range. I saw folks giving my co-presenter, Enquisite's Richard Zwicky, a hard time over Twitter for talking all about Enquisite's software, but in fact, that's what we were asked to do and I was the one who went off-focus (so if anything, you should blame me). You can check out my slide deck here -  SEO Problems and the Tool to Solve Them. Hope you enjoy and sorry about the weird formatting; Scribd didn't import PPTx very well this time. p.p.s. Please excuse my lack of links to appropriate sites/pages/people and probably spelling errors (drove back from Portland tonight and still not over my sinus infection). Jen, if you have time early tomorrow, maybe you can help add those in? :-)Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishDespite being a seemingly simple topic, this one seems to stymie even experienced SEOs. There's a natural conflict that creates the issue - the more keywords you target on a single page, the less you need to link build and optimize (for both search engines and user experience/conversion rate) on many pages. To answer this question in a logical and truly optimal fashion, you need to start with the answer to two other important questions:

How many of these keywords carry the same visitor intent?

How competitive are the targeted terms/phrases?

When you answer the first question, you'll be able to break up lists of keyword terms into buckets of "intent." Searches are almost always intended to discover information or take action. If there are too many pieces of information/actions you need to provide on a single page, your conversion will drop. Remember that a 10% conversion rate for position #10 is better than a 0.5% conversion rate for position #1 (assuming the avgs. from the leaked AOL data cited below). NOTE: This data is from averages via AOL's data release in 2007. New numbers have not been forthcoming from any of the engines or third-party studies. For the second question, you need to know something about the competition levels. In a scenario where every shred of keyword usage matters a great deal, from the anchor text focus to the keyword being employed at the very start of the title tag, breaking up keyword targeting to multiple pages can make a great deal of sense. If you're deep into research on this topic, you can do something like the image below, where I've taken stats and metrics for all of the top 25 ranking pages for the query "broadway tickets" on Google.com and run analysis: NOTE: data in this graph via Open Site Explorer's Backlink Analysis If a keyword is highly competitive, I suggest single page targeting. This is not only because you can maximize on-page optimization, but also because it means that internal and external links that point to the page can focus more directly on the target term/phrase. It's also likely that you'll be competing against pages that are more highly targeted on that keyword phrase and could lose out if you don't have that singular, pinpoint focus. I wrote another post on a similar topic highlighting how to format titles, meta descriptions and keyword usage on pages that aim for multi-keyword targeting that may also be of help. Look forward to your thoughts on the topic.Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishThis week, despite still being seriously under the weather (see this week's sad WB Friday), I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although I'd wanted to put more work in and deliver a better presentation, I received some very kind words afterward and requests from folks to share the deck via the blog. Before I embed the actual deck, though, I need to provide some context (as this isn't a wholly self-explanatory presentation). Link building has, classically, been a tactic slapped on to a marketing campaign or website post-launch. I believe that those companies/sites that treat link acquisition as an afterthought, rather than building it into the product, will always lose out to those who treat link building strategically. In the deck below, I walk through a number of examples of sites, primarily startups, that have done this. These include:

• Twitter - every user of Twitter has an incentive to link to their profile so more people will follow them. This is also true of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, DeviantArt, Etsy & others
• Vimeo - nearly everyone who uses Vimeo appreciates the beautiful aesthetic they've created. The embeddable versions of Vimeo videos look and feel more professional and high quality than nearly any other player, hence they get embedded (a lot). This embed action automatically drives links back to the video on Vimeo's site, Vimeo's homepage and the user's profile, all with targeted anchor text.
• Urbanspoon - not only do they give badges to restaurants like Yelp and have started an online reservations system like OpenTable, Urbanspoon also features reviews from bloggers and foodies, who are then incentivized to promote their inclusion on the site.
• Last.fm - the widgets users embed on their site to share their favorite music automatically creates links back to the service.
• SurveyMonkey - a truly viral product (anyone who's surveyed is automatically exposed to the site), SurveyMonkey is inherently link acquisitive through the product. In order to use the service, you need to link to SurveyMonkey's site, where your form is hosted.
• Scribd - just look at the embed and the link below; 'nuff said.
• Miibeian.gov.cn - possibly the greatest link building strategy ever devised. The Chinese government requires that all websites in the country link to this site in order to operate legally; not too shabby, eh?

Here's the deck: Strategic Link Building As you can see, I've put in a shameless plug for Open Site Explorer at the end. If you haven't seen the new features launched yesterday, you're missing out. Tons of the data is completely free, and top pages is just about the easiest way to find traffic and link opportunities ever built (not that I'm biased or anything). :-) Look forward to your comments about the presentation and the concept of productizing link acquisition into a site.Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishThis post is short and easy to follow, just like the tactic it recommends. Most everyone who optimizes for Google Local (aka Google Maps) is familar with David Mihm's excellent and oft-referenced Local Search Ranking Factors. In that document, and in many places where local results are analyzed, it's clear that getting your business/website into more listings, in a consistent fashion is a very good thing. Yet, somehow, this obvious tactic has gone missing from many GG Local optimization recommendations. Either that or it's so obvious that no one feels the need to mention it. Whatever the case, it's available now :-) Step 1: Do Lots of Searches Related to Your Business & Region Let's say you're working on local SEO for a Thai restaurant in Seattle, WA. Searches you might perform include:

• Thai Seattle, WA
• Thai Restaurants Seattle, WA
• Seattle Thai Restaurants
• Thai Food Seattle

You're seeking results that show competing or closely related businesses, so get creative. Step 2: Identify a Handful (or a Few Dozen) Businesses that Consistently Get Top Rankings You could build a formal spreadsheet and perform tracking to identify these or start with gut feel and expand later on in the process. For less competitive listings, an informal approach may work just fine. Step 3: Go to the Local Business Profile for Each of These Don't click the name of the listing itself. Instead, follow the links to the "reviews" about each of your competitors' businesses. You'll get a page with information about the business, reviews and lists of data that Google has found about them. Step 4: Click on the Links to "More About this Place" The "more about this place" section of the business listing shows brief snippets, titles and URLs where Google has found relevant information pertaining to the business. This is your potential goldmine for discovering listing sources. Step 5: Go to those Sites & Get Your Business Added/Updated  The domains that are listed are places where Google is pulling information about your business. This is where the Maps algorithm comes into play - it relies on not only the number of listings, but the quality of the sources and the consistency between them. You want every listing to perfectly match one another, right down the the suffix on the reservations phone number and the formatting of your suite number (e.g. 1221 E Pike Street vs. 1221 East Pike Street vs. 1221 E Pike Street Suite 200 vs. 1221 East Pike Street #200 are all DIFFERENT - don't make that mistake). As an example, I visited a link from Thaiku's listing in the example above to Intuit's Local Business Directory (I didn't even know they had one until now) and could then add/edit SEOmoz's listing: In addition to the potential local ranking boost, a majority of these sources offer the potential to earn links! Even if you don't care much about the local results themselves, this is a pretty terrific way to get some good quality, trusted sites linking to you. Step 6: Repeat Step 4 & 5 for the "Reviews" and "User Content" Sections If you're hungry for even more sources, you can look at where listings come from on other competitors and/or go back to the business listing's page in Google Maps/Local and choose from the "reviews" and "user content" sections for even more potential spots. Much like manual link building back in the late '90's, perseverance and careful attention to detail will take you far. There are automated services out there to help with this process, but I haven't yet seen one I feel completely comfortable about. The biggest issue is the dramatic value of and need for consistency in the listings. When automated systems submit, they can mix in a suite number in the wrong place, cut off a phone number because the form doesn't accept hyphens or confirm a URL that doesn't match what you've submitted elsewhere. For now, I recommend playing it safe and spending the hours (even if that's a dozen or two) to get those 50-250 listings correct. Google will reward you with local rankings and high quality traffic. p.s. Next week I'm down in Portland for SEMpdx's Searchfest and hope to spend time with some true local search experts and perhaps share some more cutting edge tactics :-)Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishWe've been getting a lot of questions in Q+A and on the road at events like last week's Miva Merchant conference, Online Marketing Summit and the YCombinator conference about how to properly paginate results for search engines. In this post, we'll cover the dangers, opportunities and optimization tactics that can best ensure success. The best part? These practices aren't just good for SEO, they're great for usability and user experience too! Why is Pagination an SEO Issue? Pagination, the practice of segmenting links to content on multiple pages, affects two critical elements of search engine accessibility.

• Crawl Depth: Best practices demand that the search engine spiders reach content-rich pages in as few "clicks" as possible (turns out, users like this, too). This also impacts calculations like Google's PageRank (or Bing's StaticRank), which determine the raw popularity of a URL and are an element of the overall algorithmic ranking system.
• Duplicate Content: Search engines take duplication very seriously and attempt to show only a single URL that contains any given piece of content. When pagination is implemented improperly, it can cause duplicate content problems, both for individual articles and the landing pages that allow browsing access to them.

When is Pagination Necessary? When a site grows beyond a few dozen pages of content in a specific category or subcategory, listing all of the links on a single page of results can make for unwieldly, hard-to-use pages that seem to scroll indefinitely (and can cause long load times as well). Clearly, I need to log into Facebook more often... But, usability isn't the only reason pagination exists. For many years, Google's recommended that pages contain no more than 100 links (internal or external) in order to make it easy for spiders to reach down deep into a site's architecture. Many SEOs have found that this "limit" isn't hard and fast, but staying within that general range remains a best practice. Hence, pages that contain many hundreds or thousands of links may inadvertently be hurting the access of search engines to the content-rich pages in the list making pagination essential. Numbers of Links & Pages We know that sometimes pagination is essential - one page of results just doesn't cut it in every situation. But just how many links to content should the average category/results page show? And how many pages of results should display in the pagination? There are a lot of options here, but there's serious danger in using the wrong structures. Let's take a look at the right (and wrong) ways to determine link numbers. In some cases, there's simply too many pages of results to list them all. When this happens, the very best thing you can do is to work around the problem by... creating more subcategories! It may seem challenging or even counter-intuitive, but adding either an extra layer of classification or a greater number of subcategories can have a dramatically positive impact on both SEO and usability. There are times, however, when even the creation of many deep subcategories isn't enough. If your site is big enough, you may need to have extensive pagination such that not every page of results can be reached in once click. In these cases, there are a few clear dos and don'ts. Do:

• Try to link to as many pages of the pagination structure as possible without breaking the 100(ish) links per page limit
• Show newer content at the top of the results list when possible, as this means the most link juice will flow to newer articles that need it (and are temporally relevant)
• Use and link to relevant/related categories & subcategories to help keep link juice flowing throughout the site
• Link back to the top results from each of the paginated URLs

Don't:

• Show only a few surrounding paginated links from paginated URLs - you want the engines to be able to crawl deeper from inside the structure
• Link to only the pages at the front and end of the paginated listings; this will flow all the juice to the start and end of results, ingoring the middle
• Try to randomize the paginated results shown in an effort to distribute link juice; you want a static site architecture the engines can crawl
• Try to use AJAX to get deeper in the results sets - engines follow small snippets of Javascript (sometimes), but they're not at a point where this is an SEO best practice
• Go over the top trying to get every paginated result linked-to, as this can appear both spammy and unusably ugly

When in doubt, consider the directives you're optimizing toward - the need for fewer extra pages of pagination, the desire to make the browsing experience usable (many webmasters mistakenly think users will simply give up and search, forgetting that some of us can't recall the name of the piece we're looking for!) and the importance of maintaining a reasonable count of links per page. Also note that although I've illustrated using 5-10 listings (for graphical space requirements), a normal listings set could be 30-90 links per page, depending on the situation. Titles & Meta Descriptions for Paginated Results In most cases, the title and meta description of paginated results are copied from the top page. This isn't ideal, as it can potentially cause duplicate content issues. Instead, you can employ a number of tactics to help solve the problem. Example of results page titles & descriptions: Top Page Title: Theatres & Playhouses in Princeton, New Jersey Top Page Meta Description: Listings of 368 theatres, playhouses and performance venues in the Princeton, NJ region (including surrounding cities). Page 4 Title: Page 4 of 7 for Princeton, New Jersey Theatres & Playhouses Page 4 Meta Description: Listings 201-250 (out of 368) theatres, playhouses and performance venues in the Princeton, NJ region (inclusing surrounding cities). Alternate Page 4 Title: Results Page 4/7 for Princeton, New Jersey Theatres & Playhouses Alternate Page 4: Description: - Yes, you can use no meta description at all, and in fact, if I were setting up a CMS today, this is how I'd do it. A missing meta description reduces complexity and potential mis-casting of URLs as duplicates. Also notce that I've made the titles on results pages sub-optimal to help dissuade the engines from sending traffic to these URLs, rather than the top page (which is made to be the better "landing" experience for users). Nofollows. Rel=Canonicals and Conditional Redirects Some SEOs and website owners have, unfortunately, received or interpreted advice incorrectly about employing directives like the nofollow tag, canonical URL tag or even conditional redirects to help control bot activity in relation to pagination. These are almost always a bad idea. Whatever you do, DO NOT:

• Put a rel=canonical directive on paginated results pointing back to the top page in an attempt to flow link juice to that URL. You'll either misdirect the engines into thinking you have only a single page of results or convince them that your directives aren't worth following (as they find clearly unique content on those pages).
• Add nofollow to the paginated links on the results pages. This tells the engines not to flow link juice/votes/authority down into the results pages that desperately need those votes to help them get indexed and pass value to the deeper pages.
• Create a conditional redirect so that when search engines request paginated results, they 301 redirect or meta refresh back to the top page of results.

The only time I recommend using any of these is when pagination exists in multiple formats. For example, if you let users re-sort by a number of different metrics (in a restaurant list, for example, it might be by star rating, distance, name, price, etc.), you may want to either perform this re-sort using javascript (and employ the hash tag in the URL) or make those separately segmented paginated results rel=canonical back to a single sorting format. Letting Users Display More/Less Results From a usability perspective, this can make good sense, allowing users with faster connections or a greater desire to browse large numbers of results at once to achieve these goals. However, it can cause big duplicate problems for search engines, and add complexity and useless pages to the engines' indices. If/when you create these systems, employ javascript/AJAX (either with or without the hash tag) to make the pages reload without creating a separate URL. (the Google Analytics interface allows users to choose the number of rows shown, though they don't have to worry much about crawlability or search-friendliness) Also remember that the "default" number of results shown is what the search engines will see; so make that count match your goals for usability and SEO. Additional Resources

• A Gallery of Pagination Examples and Recommendations from Smashing Magazine
• A Farewell to Pagination from SEOmoz's Whiteboard Friday series
• The SEO Pager Plugin for Wordpress is a highly customizable set of options that allows you to create search-engine friendly pagination in Wordpress's CMS from SEO Egghead

If you have any thoughts or recommendations to share in the comments, we'd love to hear from you!Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishLast week, while in London, I received an email from Paul Graham, whom I've long admired, possibly even idolized a bit. He asked if I was available to come speak at a YCombinator SEO event in Mountain View. Tonight, I presented at that evented and thought I'd share my experiences, recommendations and yes, my presentation. Not everything that was discussed is public, in fact, much of it is "classified" at YC's request. However, there's so much good material that it would be criminal not to share. First up, my presentation from the YCombinator SEO for Startups event (naturally, hosted on YC company and prior SEOmoz consulting client, Scribd): SEO for Startups: YCombinator February 2010 Next, since it's hard to do any slide deck justice with just the slides, a list of top advice and recommendations, not just from the slide deck, but from many years of interactions, consulting and Q+A help for startups:

SEO as a Strategy, not a Tactic Yelp uses SEO as a strategy. When their community finds something new in the neighborhood, content is created. They are limited in scale only by the physical world's local businesses. Plus, it's only natural that local businesses with good rankings will want to share those via a badge and a link; it's only natural that their top contributors will want to share the reviews they've given. SEO is a strategy - it's part of what makes them the business they are. If you're just thinking in terms of keywords in the title and submitting to some directories, you're going to get lapped by someone who understands how to make content, links, sharing & search demand an integral part of how users interact with their website.

Start SEO in the Concept Phase, Not After the Site is Built It's hard to do, particularly when you spend your first two years as a founder thinking SEO is a cross between black magic and BS, but SEO works best when it's architected alongside a businesses marketing plan. I've mentioned in the past that I think VCs and angel investors should be asking about SEO in the first meeting - startups should be three steps ahead of that.

Build Accessibility First & Foremost I come back time and time again to the SEO Pyramid. It all starts with unique content that engines can find and users find valuable. I'm now the proud owner of a Y Combinator t-shirt bearing the tagline "Make Something People Want." All I'm asking is that you also make something Google (and Bing) can find, too. And, in concert with this advice, check out Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization to help solve that puzzle.

SEO is NOT a One Time Event Fire and forget works with smartbombs (or maybe not - scroll to section 5), but it doesn't work with SEO. This is a constantly evolving field, and not so much because Google's algorithm is changing all the time, but more so because 300 (or 30,000) competitors are constantly trying to produce better content and market it more effectively while the engines are constantly experimenting with new kinds of results and information. No product is good enough to survive without marketing - even Google itself just ran a Super Bowl ad. SEO is marketing, and as such demands the same attention. Ignore it, and you will fall by the wayside.

Analytics are a Religion An ad salesman comes to you and tells you that 20% of your exact target market is reading a particular magazine. By putting in a full-page ad every month for the next year, you can ensure that they'll all know your name and many will buy from you. But wait... How many saw it? How many took the desired action? How many heard about it from a friend or read a loaner copy on a flight? You'll never know. With SEO, it's the complete opposite - every action has a trackable reaction. If you ignore the data, use last-touch attribution or neglect to build serious models that track the value of your campaigns, you may as well blow the money on a giant billboard on the 101. Who knows? Maybe the right investor will drive by and decide to invest... Just don't count on it.

Clever Tricks Aren't that Clever (or New) I promise that no hairbrained scheme to manipulate the search rankings by registering thousands of sites or scraping the web for open places to link or contacting 6,000 "friends" for a link exchange are either A) new or B) going to work. Apply your creativity in white hat ways and make sure it passes the Google web spam litmus test. And no, that doesn't just mean it passes Google's Quality Guidelines, it means you would happily show it to any engineer on the webspam team content in the knowledge that they'd actually WANT it to help your site rank better.

Don't Let Search Dominate Your Traffic Sources If Google sends 90% of your traffic, your business has real danger associated with it. Why aren't people coming directly to your site, being passed links in email, getting Tweets and Facebook mentions that send traffic? Why is no one blogging about you, writing about you in the press, commenting in forums with links to your content? These "natural" signs tell a story of a real business providing real value. The 90-95% Google trafficked site says something strange is going on, and Google themselves are likely to figure that out sooner or later.

And last, but not least, I'd like to recognize some of the brilliant people and companies represented. It was humbling to receive such kind praise and attentitive ears from companies like:

• Apartment Rentals Site - AirBnB (whose founders were kind enough to give me a ride back to my hotel at SFO!)
• Dead Simple Publishing Site - Posterous (I learned the official way to pronounce it - "pastarus")
• Concerts & Tour Dates Startup - Songkick
• Time Management Software Provider - RescueTime ( a local Seattle startup, and host of the Feb. 25 event)
• Gift Card Exchange Marketplace - Cardpool
• Real Time Search Startup - Scoopler
• Live Video & Chat Hub - Justin.tv

Tragically, the following brief set of photos from the event were taken on my new Android camera phone (yes, I'm such a Hacker News/Paul Graham geek that I had to pull it out): YCombinator Founders Eating Dinner (noticeably absent in the photo was the single female founder - but they do have one!) Luckily, there was plenty of Coke to help keep me hydrated (and caffeinated) during the event The rush for pizza (apparently, The Flash is one of the founders they funded!) Paul and Rand in the Anybots lab - thanks again, Paul; it was a fantastic experience There were more than 40 companies in attendance, so there's no way to name them all here, but the above represent some of the most active on the SEO panel and during the lengthy, but phenomenal Q+A. Later this week, SEOmoz's own Danny Dover will be attending the Y Combinator meetup in Seattle, and he'd love to say hi and chat with folks there, and hopefully help to bring a good name to SEO. p.s. At the end of the presentation, Paul noted that the startups owed me a debt for sharing information about SEO. I disagree, but who am I to pass up such a wonderful opportunity. My only request to the attendees was that, if they should see SEO being badmouthed on Hacker News to kindly step in and help others realize the power and legitimacy of this marketing channel.Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishLast week I spent a day with small business owners in Glasgow (pronounced glaz-go), Scotland teaching the basics of online marketing and SEO. It was a remarkable experience to be faced with such a different crowd than what I'm used to. As a comparison, the week prior, I'd been in Mountain View presenting to the Silicon Valley Search Engine Roundtable, comprised of heads of SEO and marketing directors from Fortune 500 companies - all very savvy operators. The program, Online Xcellence, was sponsored by the Scottish government and organized by Brian Mathers, one of the most extraordinarily passionate people I've met in the search marketing world. Rand, Brian Mathers & Mystery Guest (err... Everywhereist these days) Brian's inspired determination has brought online marketing to hundreds of businesses in Scotland. It was, in fact, wholly remarkable to witness the friendships and camaraderie he'd built by showing off the power of usable websites, analytics and search marketing. Even more impressive was the financial and business success he'd brought to the companies he helped, many of whom were in attendance for the Online Xcellence event. Brian wasn't the only wonderful host we met in Glasgow. His colleagues, Adrian Bereziuk and Yusuf Chauhdry helped to make us feel at home. In fact, one of SEOmoz's contributors, Mintyman (aka Darren Savery, who runs the Semiconductor Directory and authored this excellent post last year) not only attended the event, but picked us up from the airport and took us out to dinner! Scotland's legendary hospitality & outgoing friendliness were easy to find wherever we went - from shopkeepers to train passengers to taxi drivers and hotel staff. Since the audience reading this blog likely doesn't need a refresher course in the basics of online marketing and SEO, I though that instead, I'd share some of the biggest takeaways from my experience in talking to Scottish businesses on SEO & marketing topics. #1 - Prioritization of Marketing Tactics Drives Small Businesses Crazy Small business owners know that there massive opportunities from web marketing, but the options and recommendations are overwhelming. PPC, SEO, social media, analytics, design, usability, email marketing - the list goes on and around every corner there's a case study of a business that's done remarkable things with each of these.  Sometimes it's hard to just get past the basics of "what should my website look like?" and "what information should I put on the site?" I'd written a more advanced post on the topic of choosing the right Internet marketing channel, but this is a true struggle and one I don't have an answer for. Maybe someone will come out with a remarkable resource that can help on this topic - it's certainly needed. #2 - The Myth of Great Content Pervades For those practicing SEO, the flawed concept that "great content" will naturally attract links and rankings is a big problem. "Make great content" isn't bad advice, it's just not the whole picture. The site that does a great job converting visitors and providing solid information about their product will, most likely, lose out to a site with subpar material for customers that does a great job building material that appeals to the linkers of the web and marketing directly to them. Just like everything else in life, search engine rankings aren't fair and sites don't get what they deserve. The web rewards savvy operators who understand the psychology that drives attention, interest and links. I wrote about this just last December - Great Content Equals Great Rankings, Right? Wrong. #3 - Local Listings are Still a Mystery (and sometimes a thorn in a small business' side) I consistently point folks to David Mihm's excellent resource on the local search ranking factors when faced with these questions, but sometimes the problems go deeper than just listings and ranking. Many business owners have third-parties that set up their local listings on Google (website developers, SEOs, etc). When it comes time to update the listings, reclaiming ownership of those accounts or correcting errors can be a nightmare, and in some cases, Google has no system to handle the situation. The one piece of advice I can give that's straightforward and consistently effective is to research the sources Google pulls from in the local listings (usually by examining competitors' sources) and get listed in these. The name, address, phone number and website address (along with other details) of the business need to match exactly every time - contintuity among the listings seems to be a big ranking factor. #4 - Multiple Sites are a Weak Link Building Strategy I think it's only natural that when many of us first get into SEO and find out about PageRank and the power of links, we instantly generate the brilliant idea to build dozens or hundreds of sites that all link to our main site in an attempt to bolster these metrics. It's probably for the best that these tactics are largely useless. An island that wants to get foot traffic from the mainland can't just build a few dozen islands around it and put bridges up between them all. A useful resource on this topic is the post Root Domains, Subdomains vs. Subfolders and the Microsite Debate, which covers not only the weakness of the microsites as link popularity enhancers but also when microsites can be valuable. After all, we just launched one of our own with Open Site Explorer. #5 - Last Click Attribution is Killing Analytics None of the businesses I spoke to employed anything but last click analytics, which can tragically mask the value of all sorts of marketing channels and investments. Yes, Twitter and Facebook traffic don't tend to convert well, but who knows if those channels are filling your conversion funnel at the top and resulting in sales 3-5 visits later (when the customer searches for your brand name in Google, thus obscuring the true path of discovery). With cookies and lifecycle attribution, you can properly distribute your success to the right channels. Even just enabling first touch tracking in Google Analytics will make you much more sophisticated and accurate. Personally, though, I think this is something Google (and the other analytics vendors) need to build into their products by default. We shouldn't be hacking up code and customizing to get this data. It should be right there in a tab called "conversion attribution" where you can see the channels that originally sent visitors who converted and get 2nd, 3rd, 4th visit sources prior to conversion, too.   I also couldn't pass up the opportunity to share the wonderful experience I had traveling in Glasgow, and to Stirling by train on the weekend.   The Kelvingrove Art Gallery on an impossibly sunny, early February afternoon   Stirling Castle, site of dozens of historical battles between the English & Scots   Our tourguide in Stirling castle, featuring matching Tartan pants and tie, along with a phenomenal Scottish brogue The view from Stirling castle South to the Wallace Monument The William Wallace monument in Stirling (built in the 1800s to commemorate Wallace's patriotism) FYI - Hollywood's take on Wallace was not entirely accurate (surprise, surprise) That's right, we climbed all 300 narrow, windy stairs to reach the top Possibly Scotland's most magical treat - whisky in porridge for breakfast; a tradition I'm taking with me wherever I go. We had a fantastic time in Scotland, and I was honored to participate in the Online Xcellence program. I hope Brian has continued success recruiting online marketing experts for the program; it's a truly worthwhile and enlightening experience. p.s. I'm heading to Edinburgh this summer to catch part of the Fringe Festival and possibly catch up with my new Scottish friends again. Tomorrow, though, I'm off to California for OMS, Miva Merchant, a Y Combinator SEO Summit and then SMX West. Hopefully I can get over my cold before we depart.Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishWarning: This post isn't about SEO or online marketing. The focus is on our growth as a startup and our adoption of company values and how we represent those internally and externally. Since transparency remains one of our guiding principles, we felt it only appropriate to share our work in this area - hopefully you can take something away that will provide value in your startup, entrepreneurial endeavors or career path. At SEOmoz, like many companies, we have a collection of internal documents related to our goals with the business and the ideals we strive towards. A couple years ago, I wrote a post about some of our efforts in that direction, but last year, we authored a document called "The TAGFEE Tenets" that represents more about what we want to be. Today, I want to share that document with you. SEOmoz's Guiding Principles This document represents the rules we have created and ideals we strive towards for all the work we produce as a company. We embrace these as the embodiment of who we are, why we exist and what we endeavor to achieve in every arena - from software to website content to actions in the workplace and on the road as representatives of SEOmoz. The TAGFEE Code Despite the immense challenges that we have faced and continue to face, we refuse to indulge in negativity or pessimism. We are an organization that believes in empowering people to be their best." - Talal Abu-Ghazaleh The TAGFEE code reflects the core values of SEOmoz. It defines not only SEOmoz's strategic differentiation in the highly competitive field of SEO, but also helps to set the standard of quality for all work and content produced. We acknowledge that we are entirely responsible for SEOmoz's reputation, and that the level of success we achieve, the reputation we cultivate, and the contributions we make to the SEO industry are a direct reflection not only of the company, but of ourselves. In short, we are SEOmoz, and by adhering to these standards, we guarantee both we and our work will be Transparent and Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, and Exceptional. Transparent and Authentic Criteria Am I being as open and honest as possible (without causing any harm)? Am I accurately representing my opinions and my values? Tenets

• We share the inner-workings of our company - both the good and bad - openly with our community.
• We take responsibility for our mistakes and will do what we can to rectify them.
• We will represent ourselves and our intentions honestly to our co-workers and our clients.
• We will be ourselves, even if that means being occasionally silly, a little less than perfect, and (at times) more than a little dorky.

Why we believe in it We at SEOmoz have differentiated ourselves from others in our sphere through our transparency, and open, honest dialogue - sharing behind-the-scenes information about the company and our products (even when that information is not entirely positive), and providing our opinions on trends and happenings in the industry, even if they differ from everyone else's views. We don't need to share this information - we do so because we want to, as we believe it improves our company in several ways:

• It strengthens our community, giving our readers and subscribers a voice and sense of ownership in the company (equating with brand loyalty).
• It holds us accountable to our customers, as they are able to weigh in on many of the company's decisions.
• It keeps us honest and true to ourselves - you can't hide when your company is an open book.
• It is consistent with our goal of sharing knowledge not only about the field of SEO, but about the experience of running and owning a start-up. To quote Rand, "We want our community to participate in the adventure that is SEOmoz."
• It keeps us honest and realistic about our limitations, our intentions, and our products. We openly recognize our strengths and areas that need improvement, and share this knowledge with our community. An overly-congratulatory, jargon-laden, car-salesman approach would neither be true to our brand or ourselves.

Examples

• Rand's blog posts about the SEOmoz story. 
• Divulging the entirety of SEOmoz's finances in 2006 (a proclamation that we have repeated yearly, despite some limitations after having taken VC).
• Maintaining an open dialogue on the SEOmoz blog, even when comments are negative or critical.
• Disclosing our opinions and directions around contentious subjects (e.g. paid links).

Exceptions Our openness has earned us a loyal following. Withholding information sometimes creates negative backlash. Nevertheless, there are circumstances under which we will not reveal information:

• When it would be materially harmful to the company. Rand refrained from sharing specifics about which partners he met with at VC firms, and does not reveal certain aspects of financial metrics.
• When it would be damaging to our competitiveness. We withheld information about Linkscape until launch because we felt that revealing this might be detrimental to the project's goals.
• When revealing such information would be irrelevant or would risk violating our value of Empathy. We refrain from revealing any private or potentially sensitive information about employees, investors, colleagues, or other members of the SEO community.
• When the board specifically requests that we not release any information about certain internal goings-on at the company.

Generous Criteria Am I being as helpful as I can? Am I giving back to the community? Tenets

• We will over-deliver whenever we can, providing our clients and subscribers with more than their money's worth.
• We will provide compliments, referrals, and testimonials (that we truly believe in), and will not take compensation for them.
• We believe that generosity is its own reward, but also helps to make us profitable, as we receive referrals, sign-ups, positive testimonials, and accolades from the community.

Why we believe in it. SEOmoz was created as (and remains to this day) a .org domain. The initial goal was to create a blog in which Rand could share with others what he learned about SEO - with no intention of monetizing it. Interestingly enough, this proved surprisingly successful. By focusing on providing a great deal of content and tools to our readers at no cost, we create brand-loyalty and awareness, and trust in our products. This, in turn, leads to profitability, as more and more readers, drawn in by what we offer for free, are compelled to sign up for premium membership. This model has also worked incredibly well for the SEOmoz PRO training seminars, which are priced lower than others of its kind. Though it provides the company with comparatively low profit margins, it opens attendees up to the SEOmoz brand and has repeatedly led to positive press and coverage. Our commitment to being generous extends beyond simply sharing information. We also strive to be generous with our time and finances in order to build stronger relationships with colleagues and staff. We take visiting SEOs out to lunch or dinner, invite them to tour the office, provide referrals (for which we refuse compensation), and host meet-ups and tweet-ups. SEOmoz employees are offered competitive salaries, stock options, and substantial vacation time. Examples

• Providing an SEOmoz member with accommodations to a conference, when he could not otherwise afford them.
• Giving away free consulting work to organizations like the UN & Seattle Children's Hospital.
• Danny Sullivan offering Rand his first conference pass to SES New York for free.
• Helping other startups with SEO, introductions to VCs, positive press coverage on the blog and sharing our experiences & lessons.
• Providing free PRO memberships to SEOs doing charity work and for projects to raise money like IM Charity parties.

Fun Criteria Are we celebrating our strengths? Are we having fun yet? Tenets

• We will pursue projects that we find exciting and interesting. When faced with a task that we don't find particularly enjoyable, we will strive to make it a positive experience or steer clear.
• We are dedicated to creating and maintaining a relaxed and friendly work environment.
• We will celebrate one another and our achievements.
• We will bring fun to our clients and subscribers in unique ways.

Why we believe in it Because work is only work if you make it so. We want to bring fun and enjoyment to the workplace. If we're enjoying ourselves, we figure we'll be more productive, more resistant to stress, and better all-around at doing our jobs. Consequently, we celebrate creative, independent thinking, and our own unique strengths. Some of our best products and our biggest successes arose from mozzers pursuing their own whims and doing what they do best:

• Linkscape Visualization and Comparison Tool, the Competitive Link Finder (Nick & Ben building cool tools on top of Linkscape data).
• Whiteboard Friday (Scott Willoughby's impromptu idea).
• Danny Dover's popular checklist blog posts.

In addition to bringing fun to the workplace, we also are dedicated to bringing it to our subscribers and clients. Our blog posts, tools, and seminars are not only useful, but enjoyable. We hope our incorporation of whimsical graphics, fun anecdotes, t-shirts, stickers, and Roger mozbot will bring smiles and a bit of levity to the average work day. Examples

• SEOmoz's casual dress code, flexible hours, and open office layout.
• Company events and celebrations such as the 2,000 subscribers party and Danny's Champagne Wednesdays.
• Team lunches, birthdays, and snacks (thanks, Christine and Arden).
• Conference comics, Werewolf Card decks, ridiculous Rand-as-Santa videos, our Facebook photos & videos, etc.

Empathetic Criteria Am I being respectful of the thoughts and feelings of others? Can I proudly stand behind my work and my statements? Tenets

• We treat others the way we wish to be treated - with respect for their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
• We will strive to maintain the highest level of professionalism, never resorting to personal attacks or name-calling.
• We will not participate in or be distracted by gossip, negativity or insults.

Why we believe in it We respect the desires and feelings of everyone with whom we work. This includes not only employees, but colleagues, community members, clients, investors, and even direct competitors and detractors. We respect their personal lives and consider them separate from their professional lives (and therefore not a topic of discussion). Before producing any product, blog post, or even an email, we must ask ourselves if it is as considerate of the feelings of others as we personally hope to be. By doing so, we feel we will help bring an air of professionalism and focus to our industry, and not be distracted by petty conflicts, disagreements, or gossip. While many sites in our industry fall into that trap, we hope to establish SEOmoz as a drama-free oasis. While we personally like reading "snarky' writing, we reject it as a voice or tone for our professional environment. We want to be humorous and fun, but always in a positive, uplifting way. We believe that this approach to community is one we can all feel good about contributing to every day. Issues of Contention Even during disputes or disagreements, we will strive to make our point without dismissing or debasing anyone else's ideas. We will give and accept constructive criticism with the understanding that it will help make us, and our company, even better. In the case of a disagreement or debate regarding an SEO issue, we will focus on using "I" statements to make our claims: "I believe x." "I think the best approach is y." We will not address personal attacks made against the character of SEOmoz employees or members on other sites (and will remove them from our site if/when they appear), as we feel this is the strongest and best way to stifle such discourse. Obviously, we will refrain from making personal attacks, direct or implied, against anyone, be they critic or competitor. Topics Acceptable topics: In addition to anything directly related to the search and advertising industry, we can comment on positive changes in the personal lives of SEOs (congratulating SEOs on wedding days, engagements, births, etc.), new hirings at major companies, tips and tricks for improving rankings, white-hat tactics. We will report on unsubstantiated or rumored news or reports relevant to the industry, but we will be sure to frame them appropriately ("We heard that Yahoo might be considering x.") Off-limit topics: divorce, firings, affairs, sexual relations, accusations, slander, insults (even if it pertains to a job or project that was poorly executed, it can be expressed in a better way), personal attacks, gossip, outing spam, critiques of general social groups or demographics, unethical or illegal SEO tactics. Note: SEOmoz has created a more in-depth, often updated document for internal reference. It includes a list of topics that should either not be mentioned on the blog at all, or mentioned with high-sensitivity (that is, pending review from Sarah/Rand). Examples include the deal terms of our venture financing, members & topics from the search marketing community that have a high proclivity for negative content, patent pending technology related to our products, legal issues, etc. Examples Behavior that meets the Empathetic criterion:

• Supporting others in their time of need. Remembering that we are all people first, and professionals second.
• Refraining from posting about firings of specific individuals, even when they pertain to the industry. Layoffs could be mentioned, as long as it is relevant to the industry, newsworthy, and done with empathy and tact (though specific individuals should not be targeted or pointed out).
• Offering refunds when a customer is dissatisfied.
• Responding to all customer services inquiries and tweets in a timely manner, with courtesy and competency.

Behavior that would not meet the Empathetic criterion:

• During a panel on link-bait, an SEO mentioned (in jest) that writing about the personal sex life of a woman in the industry would gain a you a lot of traffic. While the individuals in question were friends and it was done in an attempt at humor, we would consider this off-limits.  
• Using any sort of shock-tactics or inflammatory language (including misleading content), to gain more traffic or links.
• Using insulting or degrading language (either towards readers or fellow SEOs) under the guise of being instructive.
• Writing a "snarky" blog post that degrades, humiliates, insults or demeans others in any way.
• We should no longer write blog posts like this attack on Robert Scoble (we might critique his content, but would not do it in such a personal way). We should also try to re-cast future posts like this rant against startup marketing advice to be more focused on the positive and less harshly critical.

Exceptional Criteria Is it the best it can be? Is it uniquely better than anything else out there? Tenets

• We will utilize all of our skills to create high-quality, well-designed software, code, tools, and products. We will consistently strive to do so on-time and on-budget.
• We will endeavor to be leaders in our industry, providing unique, unparalleled information, products, and customer service to our clients and customers.
• We will never sacrifice quality for profitability.
• We will make SEOmoz synonymous with SEO.
• We will make ourselves known through speaking engagements, webinars, videos, and interviews, all the while delivering the same level of quality and excellence we strive towards.

Why We Believe It SEO is a new and growing industry - an excellent platform on which we can prove ourselves to be best in the field. Apple made MP3 players accessible and usable for everyone - not just geeks and gadget-lovers. Julia Child translated French cooking for the average home cook. We believe we can do the same for SEO. Through high-quality, unique content, tools, and products, we can make SEO tangible, understandable, and accessible to all. We won't provide our subscribers and readers with tools or information that is inaccurate or "needs work." Nor will we create sub-par products simply for the sake of doing so, or for making a profit. Whatever we create, we aim for it to be better than any other resource or tool of its kind. Our work will be worthy of us. Examples

• Linkscape & Open Site Explorer 
• Whiteboard Fridays
• PRO Training Seminars
• The SEOmoz blog
• Our Amazing Staff!

How Do We Use this Document?

• It's one of the first items we send to potential employees we're considering hiring, to help them get a feel for who we are and what we want to be.
• We give it to everyone who blogs or answers Q+A as an associate for SEOmoz (e.g. Dr. Pete, Michael Cottam, the Distilled crew, etc.) to help guide them in comment moderation and provide best practices for the content we produce (both publicly on the blog or privately in answer to Q+A).
• We shared it with potential investors after initial meetings turned into interest to help provide a sense of the character SEOmoz strives towards.
• We use it every day in meetings and decisions about product, content, strategy, hiring and more.
• We apply it to every new hire, asking ourselves whether they can be stalwart supporters of these tenets.

If you've ever met with me to talk about startups and entrepreneurship, you've doubtlessly heard me ramble on about the importance of "culture." SEOmoz has had a lot of success in the past 3 years, and it's my belief that our biggest risk isn't competition or macro-economic factors or even technological challenges (though all of these certainly require effort). I worry about most culture going "sideways." If  our best and brightest start leaving SEOmoz because they no longer believe we stand behind our principles or if the executive team, and most importantly, I, don't embody TAGFEE, we have risk. Conversely, if we can summon the will and the drive to work hard, both at execution of our tasks and adherence to these criteria, we have a great shot at building something amazing. As always, we warmly welcome your thoughts and contributions on both TAGFEE and the concept of startups embracing values overall. p.s. We also invite everyone in the SEOmoz community to judge us against the TAGFEE tenets and let us know if you see us stray or feel that some action we take isn't "TAGFEE" (it's an adjective we use a lot internally). You've helped so much to make us who we are today, and we are humbled and honored by the contributions everyone in the SEO field has made to helping us build the culture and community here. We hope you'll continue to help, both in cheering us on and in steering us back to the right path when we stray.Do you like this post? Yes No Continue Reading »

Posted by randfishWe all work hard at the SEO process - analyzing sites, gathering data, researching potential problems and identifying the solutions. Today's post is on how to work smarter and faster using bookmarklets for SEO. No matter your browser, these plug-and-play links will let you get your job done faster and easier, and look like a pro in front of bosses and clients. The list isn't completely comprehensive, but it covers 95%+ of the SEO data points I retrieve on a monthly basis and a few extras I don't personally use that may be valuable to others. It also has a section at the end on how to make your own bookmarklets for any site, tool or service you use. To employ, just click and drag the bookmarklet links from this blog post into your sidebar or bookmarks folder and rename to whatever you'd like. I've divided the post up into sections so you can quickly grab the items you care about. SEO Bookmarklets Sections:

• Site Indexation Queries
• Backlink Data Queries
• Specialized Search Queries
• Domain & Traffic Data Queries
• Social Media Data Queries
• How to Construct Your Own Bookmarklets

  Just follow the instructions from this highly "meta" image :-) Site Indexation Queries

• #1 - Google site:rootdomain.com
  • Bookmarklet - GG Indexed Pages
• #2 - Yahoo! Site Explorer listing of pages on the root domain 
  • Bookmarklet - Y!SE Indexed Pages
• #3 - Bing site:rootdomain.com
  • Bookmarklet - Bing Indexed Pages

Backlink Data Queries

• #4 - Open Site Explorer (OSE) list of links to current URL
  • Bookmarklet - OSE Links to URL
• #5 - OSE list of links to entire domain
  • Bookmarklet - OSE Links to Domain
• #6 - OSE list of linking domains to current URL
  • Bookmarklet - OSE Linking Domains to URL
• #7 - OSE linking domains to entire domain
  • Bookmarklet - OSE Linking Domains to Root
• #8 - OSE anchor text distribution for current URL
  • Bookmarklet - OSE URL Anchor Text
• #9 - OSE anchor text distribution for entire domain
  • Bookmarklet - OSE Domain Anchor Text
• #10 - Yahoo! Site Explorer (Y!SE) links to current URL
  • Bookmarklet - Y!SE Links to URL
• #11 - Y!SE links to entire domain
  • Bookmarklet - Y!SE Links to Domain
• #12 - Google Blogsearch links to current URL
  • Bookmarklet - GG Bloglinks to URL
• #13 - Bing linkfromdomain for entire domain
  • Bookmarklet - Bing LinkfromDomain
• #14 - Historical PageRank for current URL
  • Bookmarklet - PR History

 Specialized Search Queries

• #15 - Google: Remove personalization
  • Bookmarklet - GG +Dups
• #17 - Google: Show results from last 24 hours only
  • Bookmarklet - GG 7 Days
• #19 - Google: Show US results (useful when performing queries from overseas)
  • Bookmarklet - Continue Reading »