December 20, 2006
Regifting SEO tools, calculators and images for the holidays
Are you searching for some cheap Christmas gift ideas or last-minute Hanukkah gifts for search engine marketers, great bloggers, or conference speakers? I am. Here are some free SEO tools, a free online calculator, and royalty-free images that someone gave me during the past year that I'm now regifting to friends and colleagues just in time for the holidays.
First, for all the search engine marketers on my holiday gift shopping list, I plan to regift the free SEO tools created by SEOmoz. This includes the Keyword Difficulty tool and Page Strength tool that were both reviewed by Barry Schwartz back in July. It also includes an IP Location Lookup, which isn't an SEO tool, but is still very useful.
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool issues a percentage score and provides a detailed analysis of the top ranking sites at Google and Yahoo. It can be used to analyze the competitive landscape of a particular search term or phrase. The SEOmoz Page Strength tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of search engine marketers seeking a better metric to quickly assess a site/page's value. And the SEOmoz IP Location Lookup determines the geographic location of an IP address using a bit of AJAX and Google Maps.
Next, for all the great bloggers who deserve to get corporate holiday gifts this year, I'm regifting the Blog Juice Calculator created by Text Link Ads. Barry Schwartz reviewed this fun little tool back in October.
The Blog Juice Calculator allows you to compare your blog with others based on Bloglines RSS subscriber data, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, and Technorati inlinks. It was the first “link bait” project by R. Marie Cox for Text Link Ads.
Finally, for the many, many conference speakers who I hang out with at Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld, and AdTech, I plan to regift iStockphoto. Guy Kawasaki, a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, touted this collection of royalty-free images during his keynote presentation back in November at WebmasterWorld's PubCon in Las Vegas.
iStockphoto features photographs, vector illustrations, Flash files, and video clips. To search for images, just enter the keyword in the search box at the top. Web-ready images only cost $1 and video clips are available for as little as $5.
Okay, so maybe it's a little cheesy of me to be regifting free SEO tools, a free online calculator, and royalty-free images to friends and colleagues. But, try searching for something more creative than free holiday screensavers at this time of year. It ain't easy.
Next year, I plan to celebrate Festivus. It's got to be less hectic to participate in the “airing of grievances” and the “feats of strength” than it is to find cheap Christmas gift ideas or last-minute Hanukkah gifts for dozens of search engine marketers, great bloggers, and conference speakers.
Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 20, 2006, 2:54 PM | Permalink
MySpace creates "friends" for newspaper
Roy Greenslade of the Guardian Unlimited in the UK reports that a small newspaper in Scotland, the Fife Herald, set up its own MySpace page and recruited some 400 new "friends" within weeks. Adam Morris, one of the newspaper's staffers, notes: "It's a totally untapped market for local papers, and it opens up new lines of communication," especially among younger readers.
Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 20, 2006, 10:40 AM | Permalink
The Link Building Conundrum - Eric Ward's View
Over the past year, there has been much talk about link building, in most cases specifically related to buying links. As Barry discussed and I commented on last week, the most recent hotly discussed topic has been around the subject of reciprocal linking. According to some interpretations of the Google Blog post from last week, reciprocal linking is now an "official no-no" when it comes to Google's ranking algorithm.
Last night, Webmasterrardio.fm's show "The Pulse" included a guest speaker who is very well acquainted with linking: Eric Ward. Eric gave some great insight into his opinions on the subject of reciprocal linking and link building best practices.
Eric was welcomed to the show by Co-Hosts Barry Schwartz, Ben Pfeiffer, and me. He introduced himself and his history (find out more about his link building history), and discussed his approach to building links which he feels is a bit different from the “norm” these days. He understands the fear of reciprocal linking that is being raised by some of Google's recent statements. Yet he feels that is there is concern, then maybe the worried party should question why they built the reciprocal links to begin with.
The trouble, Eric feels, is when people enter into a reciprocal link engagement with the initial intent to fool or game the Google algorithm in order to improve the rank of the site. He feels that this was never the original intent of reciprocal linking, when the practice started before Google even existed. The key point, however, is that it is difficult for the search engines to determine intent in a reciprocal relationship without looking further.
Eric surmises that the algorithms need more than just the presence of a few reciprocal (A>B>A) links in order to determine intent. He gave some examples of ways that search engines may be able to look for what he calls “signals of intent,” such as looking for further links and finding the presence of link farms or other sites that have been flagged in the past. If they do, then they should possibly return to look more closely at other relationships.
Eric also briefly introduced what he calls the “Matt Cutts rule,” asking webmasters to consider if they would try to get a particular link with Matt Cutts sitting on their shoulder. When asked if there is a difference between penalization and devaluation (remembered that word today), Eric felt that it would be “foolish and reckless” of Google to penalize a site without some “pretty heavy analysis.” He notes that he has seen sites drop in rankings due to what he believes is a temporary devaluation of some links that had helped the site in the past, while Google investigates those sites further.
The last question asked was how he would pick a high quality link. He brought up an example of getting links from .edu top level domains. He suggested putting oneself in the search engine's position: can they trust the link even if from an .edu site? If the page has links to YouTube, MySpace, and Napster, for example, it is pretty likely that it is a student page, which may be cause for concern if a commercial link appears along side. However, if the page is obviously a part of a Veterinarian School, for example, the “algorithmic footprint” left by the page's other outbound links may indicate that it is more trustworthy. Great stuff.
Eric summarized by saying that people should understand that any tactic used for link building could lead to potential repercussions. There are places that sites should have links anyway, he recommends, regardless if the engine will give credit for them or not.
Added: I just noticed Rand's excellent post on this subject, which also led to Danny's equally detailed opinion.
Posted by Chris Boggs on December 20, 2006, 10:26 AM | Permalink
Visits by college students to MySpace power its lead in page views
comScore Networks has released a study that analyzes the impact of visits from university locations to the top two Web properties, Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace) and Yahoo!
College students account for 8% of all Web content consumed by U.S. Internet users, as measured in page views. At MySpace, the top Internet property in November on the basis of page views, 12% of content is viewed at university locations, while only 6% of page views at Yahoo! occurs at university locations.
If college student usage is omitted, the data tells a very different story: Yahoo!, with 35.6 billion page views for November, would rank higher than MySpace with 34.9 billion.
Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 20, 2006, 10:20 AM | Permalink
Podzinger Powers Search Capabilities for Thames Valley
Yesterday, Podzinger announced that it is powering the search for Thames Valley pod.tv This is Podzinger's first venture outside the United States. Podzinger expects to continue expanding its reach through similar partnerships.
Thames Valley pod.tv is the UK's fastest growing video podcast webTV site and provides commercially sponsored content in a variety of areas including art, music, cooking, gardening, and business.
Podzinger uses speech-to-text technology that creates a text index of the video sound track. With Podzinger, users through keyword searches can find keyword-specific content anywhere in either audios or videos. The searcher can jump directly to the point where their keyword is spoken without having to listen or view and entire audio or video clip. Instead of relying on a paragraph of text or a series of tags to describe the show, Podzinger directly searches the content.
Posted by Amanda Watlington on December 20, 2006, 8:44 AM | Permalink
YouTube and Google Video Subscriptions in Outlook Email
In October 2006 comScore Media Metrix ) reported that more than 63 million people worldwide, age 15 and over, visited YouTube.com. Fueling this growth are the 65,000 new videos being uploaded daily just to YouTube. Among the tools available for users looking for ways to manage the increasing flood of video content is the new inclue! Media Inbox, version 1.2 that integrates with the Outlook email program.
The inclue! Media Inbox is one of a few RSS (real simple syndication) readers that can be used with Outlook and Outlook Express. It includes features whereby users can enter a keyword search and get video updates delivered from Google Video and YouTube. Inclue! also supports audio. Viewers can create their own channels and view the videos or listen to the audio directly in Outlook.
You Tube and Google Video are all about sharing video experiences. The phenomenal growth of video-sharing sites and the number of videos being added to these sites daily has created a need for tools like inclue! that will enable users to better manage video content. Today, video content can be shared through email, embedded in blogs or posted to a site either as individual videos or as part of playlists. Viewers can subscribe to RSS feeds of their favorite video channels. They can even create their own playlists and receive alerts with tools like inclue!. when new video is posted.
Effective distribution and optimization of video content today relies heavily on the tagging that users add when posting a new video. The more accurate the tags are on each video, the easier the video is to find. With the growth of tools like inclue! it is incumbent on search marketers to develop a rich understanding of emerging tactics for video search optimization.
Posted by Amanda Watlington on December 20, 2006, 8:33 AM | Permalink
Wanted: Passionate Users. Pay: Much Less than Founder Money!
Danny Sullivan's approach to his "keynote conversations" with top executives at Search Engine Strategies conferences draws from Lord Nelson's favored strategy: "Never mind maneuvers, go straight at them!" His conversation with industry gadfly Jason Calacanis was true to form, both informing and entertaining the audience. Andrew Goodman attended the keynote and offers his always acerbic observations on the conversation in today's SearchDay article, A Keynote Conversation with Danny Sullivan and Jason Calacanis.
Posted by Chris Sherman on December 20, 2006, 2:26 AM | Permalink
