#004: The Secret, Hidden World of Book Publishing Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed Subscribe on iTunes In this episode of the UnPodcast, we talked about the pressures of the book publishing industry, standard advances, and why publishers no longer hold the keys. We also discussed both ethical and unethical ways to hit the bestsellers lists, and why because of them the term, “bestseller” has lost much of its meaning. Other topics include: Why I was sent to the special ed office when I was in high school How Alison makes my rants and rambles into something cohesive How books on Kindle and Audible sync How to turn 6 printed pages into 2 The average number of business books published each year How payola is alive and well in the book industry Why authors need a team Why I do book talks instead of book signings And so much more. . . Items mentioned in this episode QR Codes Kill Kittens Kindle Matchbook Audible Clean Print Wiley Publishing ResultsSource Amazon affili
http://ravensiege.com/seo/004-the-secret-hidden-world-of-book-publishing/Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Growing Sales Without a Sales Team: The Power of Distribution
Early on, we made the decision not to grow a sales team at Moz. We re not anti-sales, per se, it s just that it does t fit our culture. We believe in practicing what we preach—inbound marketing—not interruption selling. Consequently, that provides a bit of a problem for a B2B SaaS business like Moz. Growing through traditional inbound channels is immensely powerful, but at a certain scale, maintaining linearity in growth through content, social media, and search becomes difficult. Working with the role of Business Development at Moz, it s my job to find those channels that will introduce growth at scale in a predictive way. Which brings me to distribution. Just over two years ago when I started at Moz, we began to ponder a simple question: If we offered an extended free trial on Moz (45, 60, 90, or 120 days) to select partners, could it move the needle on growth? Before we d be able to answer that question, however, we needed a few assets. The first was what we call a partner page
http://ravensiege.com/seo/growing-sales-without-a-sales-team-the-power-of-distribution/3 SEO Nuggets Under Your Nose
Tweet Tweet I was rummaging around in Google webmaster tools yesterday scratching up the surface of search queries like a chicken looking for a tasty grub. I found one, a 4500 searches a month keyword that we are not ranking for. The search queries tool in WMT provides you with the last 90 days of search data related to your site. Unlike Google Analytics it will not only clicks to your site but also how many times you actually appeared in search. The last couple of weeks I have been watching a ridiculous phrase rise in our data; Video Marketing SEO. Read yesterday’s post to see why I think it is ridiculous. It occurred to me though most people won’t go through these steps to find those tasty keyword morsels adrift in the search soup. Here’s what I do under Search Queries in Webmaster tools. 1. Initial Selection Google gives us an impressions column. It is notoriously unreliable though. Look at the numbers below, Today s SEO Keywords yesterday SEO Melbourne was 4,500 and today
http://ravensiege.com/seo/3-seo-nuggets-under-your-nose/Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Google’s Hummingbird Algorithm Ten Years Ago
Back in September, Google announced that they had started using an algorithm that rewrites queries submitted by searchers which they had given the code name “Hummingbird.” At the time, I was writing a blog post about a patent from Google that seemed like it might be very related to the update because the focus was upon re-writing long and complex queries, while paying more attention to all the words within those queries. I called the post, The Google Hummingbird Patent because the patent seemed to be such a good match. Image from Dr. Bill May from the US Forest Service on a page about wildflowers Google has been granted a number of patents about query re-writing, sometimes also referred to as query expansion or query broadening, which try to make it more likely that the search engines will return results closer to what a searcher is looking for, even if they might not necessarily use the best choice of keywords to find the information that will fill their needs. I had also recentl
http://ravensiege.com/seo/googles-hummingbird-algorithm-ten-years-ago/Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal
Introduction A few months back, I wrote an article on Moz all about a penalty our web agency received for unnatural links pointing to our website. At first, this was a bit of a shock to the system, but since then, we ve learned so much about Google s webmaster guidelines and we ve helped lots of companies get their businesses back on track and remove manual penalties associated with their websites. What did we get hit for? Cutting a long story short, the main reason we were hit with a manual penalty was for adding followed anchor text into the bottom of clients websites that said Web Design Yorkshire by Pinpoint Designs (both web design yorkshire and Pinpoint Designs linked to our website). At the time, we were just doing this out of habit, but we never varied anchor text, always had followed links and we were basically violating Google s quality guidelines. After a lot of work and research, we managed to remove the penalty from our website and since then have worked on lots of other
http://ravensiege.com/seo/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal/Monday, October 14, 2013
5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-12/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-11/Sunday, October 13, 2013
5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-9/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-10/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-7/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-8/Saturday, October 12, 2013
5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-4/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-5/Friday, October 11, 2013
5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-2/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-whiteboard-friday-3/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo/5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO
Hello Moz fans. It s a pleasure to be here today. I am here to talk a little about international SEO, five dos and don ts that I see happening all the time. I would like to share them with you as an extension of my MozCon presentation about this topic. The first one is to identify all the resources for your international SEO process from the beginning. This is very, very important that you advise your client, even if it s not a pure SEO type of thing to do, or maybe some of the aspects that they need to take into consideration, not necessarily from an SEO perspective, it is important that you are a consultant for him. You say, Hey, please be aware that in order to go international, at some point you will need native support. You will need to reply to your clients in the appropriate language. You will also need to be mindful about international deliveries if these are tangible products to be sent; the pricing, the currency, language, cultural factors, regionality factors. If it is lang
http://ravensiege.com/seo/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo-2/Friday, October 4, 2013
Operation Clean Air: Clearing Up Misconceptions of Yelp’s Review Filter
Last week, the New York Attorney General s Operation Clean Turf fined 19 companies a total of $350,000 for writing fake reviews on behalf of their clients. The case sets a laudable precedent not only for the future of local search, but for digital marketing more broadly. While the amount of the fines is hardly Earth-shattering, the outcome of this operation should give pause to any SEO or reputation-management company considering quick-and-dirty, underhanded tactics to boost their clients rankings, improve their clients reputations, or launch negative attacks on competitors. In the wake of this settlement, however, a wave of media coverage and a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School have clouded the reality of Yelp s review filter—already poorly understood by typical business owners—even further. In this piece I hope to dispel four misconceptions that it would be easy to conclude from these recent publications. 1. Most aggressive review filter ≠ most successful rev
http://ravensiege.com/seo/operation-clean-air-clearing-up-misconceptions-of-yelps-review-filter-6/Taking Advantage of Google’s Bias Toward Hyper-Fresh Content – Whiteboard Friday
Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit about Google s strange and overwhelming in some cases bias to fresh content. I want to give a shout out to Glen Allsopp who had talked about this a little bit and written some blog posts exposing some of Google s priorities around freshness or what feel like priorities for them around freshness. Google s been biasing to fresh content, trying to show more and more fresh results, recently published results in their SERPs for several years now, but it s gotten particularly strong in the last 12 months in certain sectors. I think Glen had noticed it very strongly in some of the sectors that he was watching for some of his clients. We have seen it in some places very heavily, in other places not as much. But you can definitely feel it. There are places like Shakespeare plays. This is a search result that a few years ago, even 6 to 12 months ago probably you would not have seen much fr
http://ravensiege.com/seo/taking-advantage-of-googles-bias-toward-hyper-fresh-content-whiteboard-friday-4/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-9/Taking Advantage of Google’s Bias Toward Hyper-Fresh Content – Whiteboard Friday
Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit about Google s strange and overwhelming in some cases bias to fresh content. I want to give a shout out to Glen Allsopp who had talked about this a little bit and written some blog posts exposing some of Google s priorities around freshness or what feel like priorities for them around freshness. Google s been biasing to fresh content, trying to show more and more fresh results, recently published results in their SERPs for several years now, but it s gotten particularly strong in the last 12 months in certain sectors. I think Glen had noticed it very strongly in some of the sectors that he was watching for some of his clients. We have seen it in some places very heavily, in other places not as much. But you can definitely feel it. There are places like Shakespeare plays. This is a search result that a few years ago, even 6 to 12 months ago probably you would not have seen much fr
http://ravensiege.com/seo/taking-advantage-of-googles-bias-toward-hyper-fresh-content-whiteboard-friday-3/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-8/Operation Clean Air: Clearing Up Misconceptions of Yelp’s Review Filter
Last week, the New York Attorney General s Operation Clean Turf fined 19 companies a total of $350,000 for writing fake reviews on behalf of their clients. The case sets a laudable precedent not only for the future of local search, but for digital marketing more broadly. While the amount of the fines is hardly Earth-shattering, the outcome of this operation should give pause to any SEO or reputation-management company considering quick-and-dirty, underhanded tactics to boost their clients rankings, improve their clients reputations, or launch negative attacks on competitors. In the wake of this settlement, however, a wave of media coverage and a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School have clouded the reality of Yelp s review filter—already poorly understood by typical business owners—even further. In this piece I hope to dispel four misconceptions that it would be easy to conclude from these recent publications. 1. Most aggressive review filter ≠ most successful rev
http://ravensiege.com/seo/operation-clean-air-clearing-up-misconceptions-of-yelps-review-filter-5/Taking Advantage of Google’s Bias Toward Hyper-Fresh Content – Whiteboard Friday
Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit about Google s strange and overwhelming in some cases bias to fresh content. I want to give a shout out to Glen Allsopp who had talked about this a little bit and written some blog posts exposing some of Google s priorities around freshness or what feel like priorities for them around freshness. Google s been biasing to fresh content, trying to show more and more fresh results, recently published results in their SERPs for several years now, but it s gotten particularly strong in the last 12 months in certain sectors. I think Glen had noticed it very strongly in some of the sectors that he was watching for some of his clients. We have seen it in some places very heavily, in other places not as much. But you can definitely feel it. There are places like Shakespeare plays. This is a search result that a few years ago, even 6 to 12 months ago probably you would not have seen much fr
http://ravensiege.com/seo/taking-advantage-of-googles-bias-toward-hyper-fresh-content-whiteboard-friday-2/Operation Clean Air: Clearing Up Misconceptions of Yelp’s Review Filter
Last week, the New York Attorney General s Operation Clean Turf fined 19 companies a total of $350,000 for writing fake reviews on behalf of their clients. The case sets a laudable precedent not only for the future of local search, but for digital marketing more broadly. While the amount of the fines is hardly Earth-shattering, the outcome of this operation should give pause to any SEO or reputation-management company considering quick-and-dirty, underhanded tactics to boost their clients rankings, improve their clients reputations, or launch negative attacks on competitors. In the wake of this settlement, however, a wave of media coverage and a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School have clouded the reality of Yelp s review filter—already poorly understood by typical business owners—even further. In this piece I hope to dispel four misconceptions that it would be easy to conclude from these recent publications. 1. Most aggressive review filter ≠ most successful rev
http://ravensiege.com/seo/operation-clean-air-clearing-up-misconceptions-of-yelps-review-filter-4/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-7/Taking Advantage of Google’s Bias Toward Hyper-Fresh Content – Whiteboard Friday
Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit about Google s strange and overwhelming in some cases bias to fresh content. I want to give a shout out to Glen Allsopp who had talked about this a little bit and written some blog posts exposing some of Google s priorities around freshness or what feel like priorities for them around freshness. Google s been biasing to fresh content, trying to show more and more fresh results, recently published results in their SERPs for several years now, but it s gotten particularly strong in the last 12 months in certain sectors. I think Glen had noticed it very strongly in some of the sectors that he was watching for some of his clients. We have seen it in some places very heavily, in other places not as much. But you can definitely feel it. There are places like Shakespeare plays. This is a search result that a few years ago, even 6 to 12 months ago probably you would not have seen much fr
http://ravensiege.com/seo/taking-advantage-of-googles-bias-toward-hyper-fresh-content-whiteboard-friday/Operation Clean Air: Clearing Up Misconceptions of Yelp’s Review Filter
Last week, the New York Attorney General s Operation Clean Turf fined 19 companies a total of $350,000 for writing fake reviews on behalf of their clients. The case sets a laudable precedent not only for the future of local search, but for digital marketing more broadly. While the amount of the fines is hardly Earth-shattering, the outcome of this operation should give pause to any SEO or reputation-management company considering quick-and-dirty, underhanded tactics to boost their clients rankings, improve their clients reputations, or launch negative attacks on competitors. In the wake of this settlement, however, a wave of media coverage and a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School have clouded the reality of Yelp s review filter—already poorly understood by typical business owners—even further. In this piece I hope to dispel four misconceptions that it would be easy to conclude from these recent publications. 1. Most aggressive review filter ≠ most successful rev
http://ravensiege.com/seo/operation-clean-air-clearing-up-misconceptions-of-yelps-review-filter-3/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-6/Thursday, October 3, 2013
What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-5/Operation Clean Air: Clearing Up Misconceptions of Yelp’s Review Filter
Last week, the New York Attorney General s Operation Clean Turf fined 19 companies a total of $350,000 for writing fake reviews on behalf of their clients. The case sets a laudable precedent not only for the future of local search, but for digital marketing more broadly. While the amount of the fines is hardly Earth-shattering, the outcome of this operation should give pause to any SEO or reputation-management company considering quick-and-dirty, underhanded tactics to boost their clients rankings, improve their clients reputations, or launch negative attacks on competitors. In the wake of this settlement, however, a wave of media coverage and a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School have clouded the reality of Yelp s review filter—already poorly understood by typical business owners—even further. In this piece I hope to dispel four misconceptions that it would be easy to conclude from these recent publications. 1. Most aggressive review filter ≠ most successful rev
http://ravensiege.com/seo/operation-clean-air-clearing-up-misconceptions-of-yelps-review-filter-2/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-4/Operation Clean Air: Clearing Up Misconceptions of Yelp’s Review Filter
Last week, the New York Attorney General s Operation Clean Turf fined 19 companies a total of $350,000 for writing fake reviews on behalf of their clients. The case sets a laudable precedent not only for the future of local search, but for digital marketing more broadly. While the amount of the fines is hardly Earth-shattering, the outcome of this operation should give pause to any SEO or reputation-management company considering quick-and-dirty, underhanded tactics to boost their clients rankings, improve their clients reputations, or launch negative attacks on competitors. In the wake of this settlement, however, a wave of media coverage and a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School have clouded the reality of Yelp s review filter—already poorly understood by typical business owners—even further. In this piece I hope to dispel four misconceptions that it would be easy to conclude from these recent publications. 1. Most aggressive review filter ≠ most successful rev
http://ravensiege.com/seo/operation-clean-air-clearing-up-misconceptions-of-yelps-review-filter/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-3/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base-2/What I Learned from Scraping SEOmoz’s Active User Base
Many moons ago, when Moz was SEOmoz, I had the idea to scrape all its publicly available profile data on active users just to see what I could learn about the community. Quantitative market research is an incredibly powerful method to quickly grab insights on a brand s users. Using those insights, we can develop strong content strategies and link-building campaigns, as well as develop competitive insights. What easier way than scraping the data from a brand s user profiles? In Soviet iAcquire, the web crawl you. Oh, you may have heard of Gary and Cogswell, the Russian-coded robots that escaped the Ministry of Education and Science and sought asylum in iRank (our homegrown targeting and reporting technology for scaled content marketing). They were originally assigned some very menial tasks, but I ve since reprogrammed them to aid us in better marketing. They are here to lend a hand to their idol, Roger Mozbot, in the hunt for Red October. As the Russian saying goes, Many hands make lig
http://ravensiege.com/seo/what-i-learned-from-scraping-seomozs-active-user-base/Wednesday, October 2, 2013
#002: Why You Shouldn’t Leverage Disasters on Social Media
#002: Why You Shouldn’t Leverage Disasters on Social Media Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed Subscribe on iTunes In this episode of the UnPodcast, we talked about double standards, guilt, and shaming in social media, and the right way for charities to use social media to support their cause. Other topics include: The brouhaha over Lean In’s posting for a highly skilled intern, for no compensation The ins and outs of voluntary slave labor Why our message has to be consistent, especially on the Internet Why trying to be cool in marketing is almost as bad as trying to be funny Leveraging likes the wrong way on Facebook Why data is dangerous A huge tipping point for Twitter when it comes to social injustice Why insurance gets a bad name Why you should shut up or help The benefits of hashtags without brand names on Twitter Shaming and Tweetathons How Scott has become what he hates on Twitter And so much more. . . Items mentioned in this episode Lean In Video provided
http://ravensiege.com/seo/002-why-you-shouldnt-leverage-disasters-on-social-media/The Future of Search: 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Released
Every two years, Moz surveys over 100 top industry professionals to compile our biennial Search Engine Ranking Factors. For 2013, we ve supplemented the survey with real-world correlation data from a scientific examination of over 17,000 keyword search results by Dr. Matt Peters and his data science team. We ve released some of the 2013 data previously, but not the full set until now. So with great pleasure, I present the complete results of this year s survey and correlation data: 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Why do we call it ranking factors? Google claims to use over 200 signals in its search algorithm. While we don t know what exactly these signals are, it s helpful to examine high-ranking pages so that we can begin to understand the characteristic of pages search engines like to reward. This can give us a hint as to the ranking factors the search engines actually use. Correlation is not causation but it sure is a hint. Edward Tufte For example, if the correlation data shows
http://ravensiege.com/seo/the-future-of-search-2013-search-engine-ranking-factors-released/The Future of Search: 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Now Live
Every two years, Moz surveys over 100 top industry professionals to compile our biennial Search Engine Ranking Factors. For 2013, we ve supplemented the survey with real-world correlation data from a scientific examination of over 17,000 keyword search results by Dr. Matt Peters and his data science team. We ve released some of the 2013 data previously, but not the full set until now. So with great pleasure, I present the complete results of this year s survey and correlation data: 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Why do we call it ranking factors? Google claims to use over 200 signals in its search algorithm. While we don t know what exactly these signals are, it s helpful to examine high-ranking pages so that we can begin to understand the characteristic of pages search engines like to reward. This can give us a hint as to the ranking factors the search engines actually use. Correlation is not causation but it sure is a hint. Edward Tufte For example, if the correlation data shows
http://ravensiege.com/seo/the-future-of-search-2013-search-engine-ranking-factors-now-live/Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Beers, Blokes & Business Launch
Tweet Tweet Yesterday I wrote a post about a new podcast I’m involved with called Beers, Blokes & Business. I used the post in today’s video as an example of how to simply setup Authorship and get a post ranked really quickly. Well it took over 7 minutes in this case, which I think is a little slow. The launch party for the podcast is next week with only a few tickets remaining. Rank Speed Is Proportional To Competition Usually when you publish something in WordPress, Google will crawl it almost immediately. If the title of the post, in yesterday’s case “Beers, Blokes & Business” is not highly competitive you can usually rank pretty fast for it. For instance my PBEVENT post ranked no.1 in seconds because it was not that competitive. As soon as you get a little competition though Google slows down ranking your page I have seen this time and time again. When I wrote my series of posts back in July on SEO Consultant Melbourne and even as recently as a couple of days ago on my
http://ravensiege.com/seo/beers-blokes-business-launch/Your New Sales Cycle: Optimizing for the Ultimate Moment of Truth
Search is a natural step in the discovery process. In a web-based world, search engines offer a lens into a qualified and structured view to help online consumers focus and make informed decisions. With Google dominating search, marketers concentrated on improving search ranking through tried and true techniques to ensure that what they were marketing earned a coveted position in the likely search results a customer might consider clicking. Search is only part of the story now. The experiences that people have, and in turn share, have created a powerful collective repository that is indexed and tapped every minute of every day—mostly outside of Google. The importance of search engine marketing is fundamental to the discovery process. And, this is a world that still thrives today even though popular conversations among businesses and marketers center on social and mobile media as the next big thing. There s notable truth in the hype surrounding social and mobile of course. With over
http://ravensiege.com/seo/your-new-sales-cycle-optimizing-for-the-ultimate-moment-of-truth/The Ultimate Moment of Truth: Moving Toward Shared Experiences
Search is a natural step in the discovery process. In a web-based world, search engines offer a lens into a qualified and structured view to help online consumers focus and make informed decisions. With Google dominating search, marketers concentrated on improving search ranking through tried and true techniques to ensure that what they were marketing earned a coveted position in the likely search results a customer might consider clicking. Search is only part of the story now. The experiences that people have, and in turn share, have created a powerful collective repository that is indexed and tapped every minute of every day—mostly outside of Google. The importance of search engine marketing is fundamental to the discovery process. And, this is a world that still thrives today even though popular conversations among businesses and marketers center on social and mobile media as the next big thing. There s notable truth in the hype surrounding social and mobile of course. With over
http://ravensiege.com/seo/the-ultimate-moment-of-truth-moving-toward-shared-experiences/