SEOmoz

SEOmoz, a Seattle-based search engine optimization company, serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services.

Posted by Eric Enge

Intro from Rebecca: Eric Enge is a guest blogger for SEOmoz. His posts primarily focus on link building, but he has tackled other topics as well. He has previously written about the role of outbound links, various ways to pursue links, the role of directories in link building, Google's Ajax APIs, and how he doesn't buy links. Today he'll be shifting gears a bit and will be talking about duplicate content. Enjoy!


Conventional wisdom among experienced SEOs is that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. In general principle, this notion is true, but there are exceptions to this rule. In other words, duplicate content penalties do exist for certain scenarios, and that is what we are going to discuss in this post.


The Conventional Wisdom

Once again, the conventional wisdom is almost always right. Here it is:

  1. Duplicate content can occur within a site, or across different sites.
  2. A page can be considered duplicate without being identical.
  3. The search engine wants to publish one version of a particular piece of content in their index. This is fundamentally because if a user gets a set of search results, goes to an article, and decides that is not what they want and returns to the search engine to check out other results, giving them another copy of the same article does not help them.

So fundamentally, what search engines implement is a filter. So far so good. Now let's talk about the consequences:

  1. Search engine bots come to a site with a crawl budget, which is counted in the number of pages they plan to crawl in each particular session. Each time it crawls a page that is a dupe (which is simply going to be filtered out of search results), you have let the bot waste some of its crawl budget. That means fewer of your "good" pages will get crawled.
  2. Links to duplicate content pages represent a waste of link juice. Duplicated pages can gain PageRank, or link juice, and since it does not help them rank, that link juice is misspent.
  3. Lastly, no search engine has offered a clear algorithm for how a search engine picks which version of a page is does show. In other words, if it discovers 3 copies of the same content, which 2 does it filter out? Which one does it still show? Does it vary based on the search query? The bottom line is that the search engine might not do what you want it to do.

While some SEOs may debate some of the specifics above, I think that the general structure will meet with agreement across most SEOs. So, now let's talk about a couple of problems around the edge of this model.


Problem Numero Uno

It's that last bullet in the list of consequences. For example, on your site you may have a bunch of product pages, and also offer print versions of those pages. The search engine might just pick the print page as the one to show in its results. This does happen at times, and it can happen even if the print page has lower link juice and will rank less well then the main product page.

I saw this with a recent client. The fix was to nofollow links to the print pages and no noindex those pages as well. Once this was implemented, everything improved significantly for them.

Strictly speaking, no penalty was in fact assessed. However, picking a lower ranking version of the page to show sure felt like a penalty.

A second version of this can occur when you syndicate content to 3rd parties. The problem is that the search engine may boot your copy of the article out of the results in favor of the version in use by the person re-publishing your article. This also does happen. The best fix I know for this, other than noindexing the copy of the article that your partner is using, is to have them implement a link back to the original source page on your site. Search engines nearly always interpret this correctly, and emphasize your version of the content when you do that.

Once again, perhaps no penalty was assessed, but it still sure feels like one.


An Actual Penalty Situation

The above examples are not actual penalties, but for all practical purposes have the same impact as a penalty - lower rankings for your pages. But there are scenarios where an actual penalty can occur.

I worked on one site that was aggregating content from many sources (from thousands of sites). More than 60% of the pages on the site contained content that could be found on those other sites. The value add of the site was in the unique categorization and organization of the content, and in the value-added information about each of the sources.

The site did very, very well for many years. But then the bottom fell out of the whole thing. Traffic dove to less than 20% of its highest levels. The great majority of pages were in the supplementals (back when these were still visible) and even ranked below pages on sites that had duplicated the content from them. The business was fundamentally in ruins.

We were able to rehabilitate the site and get it to about half its original traffic levels. The only thing we did was significantly reduce the amount of duplicate content. By getting it to these lower levels, we apparently got it below a threshold that made Google like the site again.


Summary

We do have scenarios where the way that the search engines select which version of a particular article to show is, for all intents and purposes, a penalty. While the search engine people I have spoken to would not call that a penalty, to a publisher it is. Regardless of what you call it, these are scenarios you need to avoid because they hurt your site.

In addition, real duplicate content penalties do exist. The scenario may need to be extreme, but it can, and does, happen.


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Posted by Danny Dover

About two weeks ago Rand and Scott posted a Whiteboard Friday explaining how to get an SEO job. I think it is a great resource for SEOs who already have a lot of experience, but what about those who don’t? How are the inexperienced supposed to get their first job at an internet technology company? The following is how I did it.

The Beginner’s Guide to Getting Your Foot in the Door

Please Note: I use my job hunting materials as an example throughout this post. I do this merely as a example for people to work with. I do not have any need to distribute my resume, cover letter or applicable e-mails for the traditional reasons, as I am currently employed at a company I love. Please don't take this as an attempt to unfairly sell myself. I am honestly just doing this for educational purposes.


Research Yourself


The first step to getting your foot in the door at an exciting tech company is to take control of your online identity. It should come as no surprise that potential employers are going to Google, Myspace, Facebook, and Linkedin you. (Holy misuse of the English language, Batman!) Make sure you control what they are going to see.

Put yourself in their shoes
- Pretend you have an ultra conservative grandmother. If you would feel embarrassed if she saw a specific image or read a specific fact about you online, politely ask the poster to remove it. Keep this mindset while checking the following websites:
  • Facebook - Do NOT just untag photos. I did this a year ago while job hunting and now I don’t know where all the worst images of me are posted. Furthermore, do not assume that your friends' privacy setting will protect you. They won't.
  • Linkedin - If you don't have one, get one. If you do have one, update it.
  • Myspace - ummm delete it? Kidding, but try to clean it up as much as possible.
  • Flickr - It's going to be rough, but you need to look pessimistically at each photo and each comment and decide how they reflect on you.
  • All other websites you participate in - Are you applying to IBM but have dugg a bunch of anti-Microsoft posts?  Remember, companies have many loyalties. (I have a friend who was applying for an internship at IBM and the interviewer jokingly mentioned how much Microsoft sucks. It was a trick to see my friend's reaction because many IBM departments currently work closely with Microsoft.) Don't be so easily fooled.
Own your Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
  • Create a personal website with your name as the domain - When someone searches for you, the search engines will give a matching domain name more weight than an average page that simply mentions you.

Danny Dover Google SERP
My Google SERP includes DannyDover.com (#3) and the social profiles I listed on its contact page (#4 & #6)

  • Include links to all of your online profiles with your name as the anchor text - Include your typical usage of the site so the page has original content and is not just a list of links. This shows people you are plugged in and pushes your social profiles up on your SERP.
  • Highlight your best work - Create a collection of your work, with the best ones highlighted (block via robots.txt to avoid duplicate content if the work was originally posted elsewhere).
Find Your Dream Company
  • Contact companies that you know and respect - I recommend sending a short and/or really convincing e-mail to the appropriate people with a noteworthy and short subject line. Remember, these people receive hundreds of e-mails a day. Make your e-mail stand out without asking for a ransom.

    Below is the e-mail that got me this job. Feel free to personalize it for your own use. Looking back on this, I recommend you make it shorter. I got lucky.
Subject: Quick Inquiry

Dear Ms. Muessig,

Thank you for taking the time to read this. My name is Danny Dover and I have done a lot of research on your company and I am very interested in getting involved.

I see you and your company as the leading resource for SEO and Internet education. I am writing you this letter because I want to know how I can help change the face of the Internet with you and your colleagues. How can I become involved with SEOmoz? Any opportunity you could grant me including an internship, mentorship or even a discussion over coffee would be intensely appreciated and beneficial to my continued education.

Similar to your co-founder Mr. Fishkin once was, I am a student at the University of Washington and I am an avid web developer and entrepreneur.

Although I am very happy to be at the UW, I have reached an academic wall. I have taken all of the university's Internet related and web development classes. Unfortunately, the UW has chosen to dedicate most of its resources to computer science and has failed to grasp the increasing importance of the Internet.

I have met with advisers, professors and department heads and they all agree that the UW is dangerously lacking focus on the Internet but say that the knowledge required to teach classes is not available.

I believe you and your company have the required knowledge. I would love the opportunity to try to benefit your company and add to my education. I appreciate you taking the time to read and consider this.

Thank You,
Danny Dover

Resume and referrals available upon request.
Note: Rand said contact him later. It was Gillian who said yes and eventually gave me this job ;-p

  • Talk to people you know - Most people get their first jobs by utilizing their connections. Track down and talk to your friends about possible job openings. They are your greatest resource.
  • Search Craigslist - Many companies (especially startups) ignore the traditional recruitment websites and post job openings online for free on Craigslist.
  • Search Monster and Jobster - Other more traditional companies use these standard professional websites. Don't ignore them.
  • Search the SEO marketplace - There are currently over 500 companies offering more than 200 jobs looking for people like you. It should come as no surprise that many people have already gotten jobs from using this marketplace.
Research the Company
  • First and foremost, figure out the culture of the company - Is this a company that you will really want to work at? Does it sound to good to be true? Is your potential boss an idiot? Try to figure these things out before you apply.
  • Read and comment on the company's blog - This helps to understand the culture of the company. Don't comment if you don't have anything valuable to say (advertisements for yourself are not valuable in blog comments).
  • Search their site for anything related to hiring - If you are lucky, you might find a gold mine of information
  • Stalk important employees online - I am only half kidding here because it is likely potential employers will do this (at least to a small extent) to you. If the company is small, you should know at least the basic facts about the key employees (titles, roles, and big achievements). This will further help you understand the culture and operations of the company. All of this will be very useful at the interview. (Truth be told, I actually recognized everyone at SEOmoz before I actually shook their hands for the first time. I also think that knowing Rand attended the University of Washington without graduating helped me write an e-mail that was able to get his and Gillian's attention.)
Resume

Many people put a huge emphasis on the intricacies of creating a resume. I have heard of people who obsess over things like paperweight, finding the correct shade of white and whether or not to add perfume to the paper (The answer is no). In my experience, it is always the words on the resume that have gotten me a job, not fancy tricks or paper.

The important resume factors are:
  • Write a specialized resume - I always write a resume tailored specifically for the job in which I am applying. Of course, I do have a general resume. I use it as a template and rearrange it based on my research into a particular company.
  • Write a creative cover letter - Make something that stands out without confusing people. For example, see the cover letter that got me this job and Rand's favorite applicant of all time. Note: both of these worked because the creators researched the company culture before making them.
  • Use a legitimate resume layout - Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). List your most important traits first and keep everything organized. Never, I repeat NEVER, use the default Microsoft Word resume template. On the same note, never make your resume two pages (see below to download the template I use).
  • Content - This is paramount. Choose your words carefully and always present yourself in the best light. Don’t lie, but do feel free to show off your skills.
  • Spelling and Grammar - Have as many people as you can read over your resume. If you are a student, show it to appropriate teachers/professors. If you are not, show it to your smart friends. Failure to have perfect spelling and excellent grammar on a resume is a great way to get eliminated.


Feel free to use my resume as an example


Feel free to use my resume as a example on how to sell yourself and as an aid for good word choice. Here is the PDF with my example information.

This template was exclusive (until now) to my family and was originally given to my brother, Josh, when he went to graduate school. Feel free to download the template file below:

DOC   ODT   PAGES

Portfolio

For any job in the SEO industry, a resume is not enough.
  • Do a case study - This should be specific to your skills and demonstrate quantitative results. Include the status of the case before, what you did to improve it, and what the results were afterwards. Although the case study write up that I did is in a different format, it is still a good example.
  • Help people - Not sure what to do for your case study? Contact a local charity and ask if you can help them in someway. If you want to be a web developer, offer to work on their website. If you want to be a SEO, see if you can make them rank for some tough keywords. Be sure to bring up this experience at interviews. (Thanks TigerAdvertising)
  • Always speak their language - Nobody likes talking to someone they can’t understand. However, people do like to be impressed by people who are more knowledgeable. Use the knowledge you gained from researching the company to determine how to express yourself.
  • Numbers - Make a one page summary of your results of your case study. Include graphs and tables where necessary.   
Interview

This is your big chance. Act like a Boy Scout and be prepared.
  • Bring your resume - Bring several hard copies and keep them in a manila envelope to keep them safe. Additionally, bring your resume in PDF format on a thumb drive in case someone wants more copies. Lastly, keep a copy of your updated resume on your website. You never know what the interviewer might expect.
  • Dress up - I am an adamant believer that it always helps to dress up at a professional interview. Men, wear khakis, a dress shirt, a tie, dress shoes, and black socks. Women, your clothing is beyond my expertise. However, as a rule of thumb, always dress conservatively and avoid looking fake. If you dress seriously, people will take you seriously.
  • Believe in yourself - You should know as much as you can by this point. Don’t stress, and if you don’t know the answer to an interviewer's question, be honest. Interviewers spend all day listening to BS. It is refreshing to talk to an actual human being.
  • Follow Up - Send a short and simple thank you after your interview. It is easy to do and makes a great impression.
Convince Them That They Need You

(The extent of this will differ depending on how much the job is needed and whether or not it is an internship, apprenticeship, part time, or full time job. My situation was extreme because my formal education was not getting me where I wanted to go.)
  • Make them an offer they can’t refuse - When I applied here, I offered my (limited) services at no charge and promised to provide all of my own resources (computer, software, etc). As an intern I realized that money was not the immediate goal. I had found a company that promised to provide me with valuable experience and I was ready to take a short term loss (in money and energy) in return for big rewards later. Employers will generally keep an intern as long as the intern is bringing more value to the company than they are taking away from it. As an intern, expect to take on a lot of tedious tasks (I read and categorized every blog post ever written on this website), but be sure you are at a place you love.
A Little Bit of Something Else
  • Be yourself! - They will either like you or not, and there is nothing permanently you can do to change that.
  • Luck - Sometimes there is nothing you can do. At some point while job hunting you will fail. I have failed several times and I fully expect to fail many more times in the future. I have been able to learn from my mistakes and have constantly improved myself. Through this constant process of improvement I have guaranteed that I will be successful at something. The catch is it most likely won’t be what I expect.
Stop Reading and Start Doing!
  • Start Now - I have read a million blog posts containing excellent advice. The reality is these didn't help me at all until I started putting what I had learned into practice. Right now, you should print this out and start doing everything on it. Go get yourself a job!


I look forward to hearing from the more experienced SEOs in the comments. Please let me know how I can improve this guide. If any of you (experienced or inexperienced) decide it would be preferable to contact me privately, please feel free to e-mail or private message me using the information available in my profile. Thanks!

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Posted by randfish

Yes, whiny title writer, you most certainly do. Check out this piece from the AP on PapaJohns.com:
The nation's third-largest pizza delivery chain trumpeted the $1 billion milestone Wednesday, noting that its U.S. online sales have been growing at an average clip of more than 50 percent per year. In 2001, the chain's online sales totaled $20.4 million. Last year, its online sales approached $400 million.

Papa John's said more than 20 percent of its sales come from online or through text messaging, an option it introduced last year. The company said text sales are meeting expectations, but it didn't provide specifics.

Freitas said online business is driving higher overall sales at his more than 50 Washington-area stores. Online orders account for about half of overall sales at a couple of his restaurants, he said.

"I knew it would be a big part of our business, but this has blown my expectations away, and I think it's even going to go higher," Freitas said.

While the demographics of pizza-delivery-addicts may skew slightly to the younger, online-obsessed population, this is a fairly good signal that even the most mainstream parts of the American consumer market are finding value in using the web. Why? In this particular instance, my answer would be "usability."

Let's walk through the standard, offline, phone-based process of ordering pizza:

  1. Make decisions about:
    • Which restaurants can deliver to your location
    • Pricing
    • Quality
    • Reliability and Timing
  2. Find a menu for the pizza place you want to order from OR call the pizza place and ask for a list of menu options and prices
  3. Put pizza restaurant on hold while you evaluate the choices and confer with the group placing the order
  4. Place the pizza order
  5. Provide credit card information for payment or choose cash at the door
  6. Hang up and wait for pizza

We've all done this for years, and to be honest, it's not a hard process. In fact, it's actually possible that the expression "as easy as ordering pizza" could exist.

But, just to be fair, let's take a tour of that same process on the web (using visual examples from Papa John's site):

Papa Johns Homepage

The homepage is there to sell me on stuff, but it's nice that they have a link to a whole page with all their specials - that's always a struggle to understand properly over the phone and you sometimes wonder if you're getting the best deal available.

Papa Johns Menu 1

Admittedly, it's a nuisance to put in your address before you see the menu, but on the plus side, you can find out what menu is available (and whether delivery is available) in your area. I'm guessing they change the pricing a bit depending on region, but you're not really losing anything over the old pick-up-the-phone method, so it's forgivable.

Papa Johns Menu

Having the menu online is actually remarkably more convenient. Not only can Papa John's upsell you on some of their specialty pizzas, you can actually peruse the entire menu at your leisure, along with prices and descriptions (and even photos) - something that would be nearly impossible offline.

Papa Johns Create Your Own Pizza

This is where the online system really shines - the create-your-own-pizza form. This is the part that never gets done right over the phone, but with the web system, you can craft it exactly right and be sure that the pizza maker is seeing the order the way you want it. There's still the possibility for human error, but it's gone way, way down. Plus, it's great to have your web order available so if you do get the wrong pizza, you can reject it, pay less, or get it for free.

Papa John's Checkout

Confirmation and checkout are pretty much exactly what you'd expect - the nice part is that you can review your choices, make changes, and get things right where you want them before sending in the order. This part of the phone conversation happens fast in the normal ordering process, and crafting selection to your exact budget and party size can be challenging.

Now I can hear you say - yeah, Rand, we get it. Ordering pizza online has a lot of benefits over calling up and ordering over the phone. And yes, lots of people are using this service. But what the heck does it have to do with SEO?

The short answer is that this is one of the clearest illustrations I've seen of a completely normal, easy offline process becoming even easier and better with help from the web. It's also a phenomenal success story for the company that pioneered it. The big takeaway here is that no matter the offline process - from restaurant menus to contract approvals to renting office space or hiring a plumber - the web's ability to create better usability makes for opportunity for businesses.

So, do you really need to build web access to your business processes? No. Only if you want to get more customers and make your existing ones happier. And hey, if pizza delivery chains can do it, you can too.

p.s. An adroit reader asked me, anonymously, last week for some ammunition in helping convince the brass that using the web for typically offline processes could have ROI - happy to oblige!


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Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

May It Please the Mozzers,

Today we're going to contrast two recent judicial opinions on the use of a competitor's trademark in meta-tags. Same issues, different outcomes. Let's take a very brief look at each case.

North American Medical Corp. v Axiom
2008 WL 918411 (11th Cir. April 7, 2008)

The two companies involved in this suit make spinal decompression devices. Allegedly, Axiom used North American Medical's trademark in its metatags and not in the body of the site. We don't know what kind of metatags (title? keyword? description?) were used. The Court found that Axiom used the trademark in metatags to "influence Internet search engines." "For instance," the Court states,
evidence in this case indicated that, before Axiom removed these metatags from its website, if a computer user entered the trademarked terms into Google's Internet search engine, Google listed Axiom's website as the second most relevant search result. In addition Google provided the searcher with a brief description of Axiom's website, and the description included these terms and highlighted them.
Accordingly, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this was trademark infringement because using a trademark in metatags to influence engines was a "use in commerce" and likely to cause consumer confusion.

Standard Process, Inc. v. Banks
2008 WL 1805374 (E.D. Wis. April 18, 2008)


Standard Process creates dietary supplements. They are suing a doctor for including Standard Process trademarks in metatags. We don't know what kind of metatags are involved in this case either. However, unlike the appeals court ruling in Axiom, this Judge found that
"today 'modern search engines make little if any use of metatags.....' As more and more webmasters 'manipulated their keyword metatags to provide suboptimal keyword associations, search engines progressively realized that keyword metatags were a poor indicator of relevancy.' Accordingly, search engines today primarily use algorithms that rank a website by the number of other sites that link or point to it."
Since search engines don't use metatags, the 7th Circuit District Court ruled that the use of a competitor's trademark in a metatag is not "a use in commerce."



Both cases involve using a competitor's trademark for advertising purposes. However, they represent fundamentally different understandings about how metatags work and the effect, if any, they have on the consumer.

Because the value of using keywords in metatags for ranking purposes is minimal at best, you could respond to both of these cases with a resounding, "So what?"  Why do we care if you can or can't use a competitor's mark in keyword metatags since that is not a viable SEO strategy?

There are three reasons we care about these cases:


(1) While not valuable for rankings, metatags (at least title and descriptive tags) are important for SEM. The engines may ignore them, but consumers do not. SEO/Ms need to be cautious when using competitor's trademarks to lure clicks. Given the conflicting state of the law, there is risk involved in doing so.

(2) The cases also demonstrate the varying levels of technological sophistication within the legal field. The Axiom judge was working off an understanding of metatags from the early nineties. Further, lawyers and judges are not differentiating between the kinds of metatags, even though this impacts the visibility of the mark and therefore the likelihood of consumer confusion.

(2) These cases may provide insight into how the courts will approach other keyword-triggered advertising issues, such as search engine liability for Adwords, Adsense, and aggressive/abusive SEM (such as trademarked-stuffed "review sites"). In short, we can look forward to many conflicting, poorly conceived rulings with the occasional beacon of clarity.

Attorneys will make out very well. I'm not sure I can say the same for the engines and internet marketers.

Good luck guys!

Best Regards,
Sarah

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Posted by randfish

Most of us in the search space are familiar with the principles of the "query deserves freshness" (QDF) algorithm at Google, but this is almost certainly not the only intent detection process and algo-tweaking area the engine applies. One popular theory that gets inspires a good bit of discussion around the SEO water cooler is that Google may recognize queries with the potential for multiple intents and attempt to modify the search results to include more than just those pages that would normally rank (based on their standard algorithm).

This weighting system for more ambiguous or multi-intent queries can't be proven, but it doesn't seem unlikely to me. Let me walk through a quick example to help illustrate the concept. Let's say you're performing a search for "GDP."
Query Deserves Diversity


Why, Googlebot, what a fascinating idea. What kind of results might this produce?

Query Deserves Diversity

So - because a lot of searchers express a preference for more diverse results than just those pages that ordinarily would "make the cut," Google provides an extra helping hand to pages they feel help to satisfy those searchers. This data could be gleaned from lower CTRs in the SERPs, greater numbers of query refinements, and even a high percentage of related searches performed subsequently.

Of course, when Google wants to get really serious about disambiguation, they go a different route. Check out these SERPs for the term "application:"

Query Deserves Diversity

These "horizontal line," disambiguation style results appear on many searches where Google thinks that the searcher is probably seeking something that their query isn't producing. They're especially likely to appear for very general search phrases.

My personal experience has been that a more subtle, "Query Deserves Diversity" (QDD) algorithm does exist, at least to some degree. It makes a lot of logical and searcher satisfaction sense in results like:
  • Company names (where folks might want to get positive and negative press, as well as official company domains)
  • Product searches (where e-commerce style results might ordinarily fill up the SERPs, but Google tries to provide some reviews and non-commercial, relevant content)
  • News & political searches (where it might be prudent to display "all sides" of an issue, rather than just the left/right-wing blogs that did the best job baiting links)
I'd love to open up the question to more discussion. Do you think that QDD exists? Where do you think it might be used? And, of course, how might we, as SEOs, take advantage of this for our clients and our campaigns?

p.s. Just out of curioosity, does anyone know why, on that first search result I showed for "GDP," the second result from BEA.gov isn't indented?

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Posted by rebecca

I've been shout-neutered, folks, and it ain't cool.

Let me explain. Yesterday I submitted a story to Digg. I didn't expect it to get on the home page, but I had an "Oh well, what the hell" mentality about it. My plan was to do the usual--shout it once and call it a day. After I submit a link to Digg, I typically shout the story to my friends in about three waves. You can only send a shout to about 100 friends at a time, so if you have 300 friends, you have to break the list up into thirds and shout the story 3 separate times. Also, Digg prevents you from sending the shouts immediately back to back--you have to send a shout, wait a while, then send it again. This is to prevent spamming and abuse.

Anyway, back to my story. Continue to gather around as if I'm telling you the tale of how John Henry was a steel drivin' man. I submitted my story and hit the "Share" button. When you click on "Share," it typically pulls up your list of friends who are able to receive shouts, and you can click on whoever you want to send your story to.

This time, however, instead of pulling up my friends list, I saw this message:



What? "Crikey"? What the hell is this? The box never loaded my friends list--the circle just perpetually turned. I tried typing in some friends' names to filter the list down, but nothing happened. I was effectively shout-blocked.

I pinged some colleagues on IM and asked them if they've ever had this happen to them before. One of my friends said, "How many friends do you have on Digg?" I looked:


I was a bit surprised to see that I had racked up over 550 friends, but still, not a huge deal, right? My friend responded with, "I don't have nearly that many friends." I asked around. Sure enough, I have a ton of friends on Digg. Most of the folks I talked to have less than 200.

Okay, so I have a lot of friends on Digg. That's not so bad, right? I mean, all I do is befriend people who become fans of me. The whole point on having friends on Digg is so that you can share stories with each other, and the Shout feature allows you to share stories with a large number of friends vs. having to contact them all one-by-one. Why then would Digg penalize me for having too many friends? Did I hit some mysterious "max number," like once you get to 500, it's too many? If that's the case, why don't they make it clear that you can only have a certain number of friends?

I don't see how they could think I'm a spammer. Here are my stats:


I've averaged less than one submit a month since I've joined (March 28, 2006), and none have made it to the home page. Of those submits, I've shouted probably about 5 of them. When I do shout, I send my shouts out exactly once. None of my friends receives the same shout from me more than one time. So, what the hell is going on here?

I filled out a bug report and emailed feedback@digg.com with the subject "You guys shout-blocked me! I thought we were bros..." I haven't received a response from Digg yet save for a stupid automatic response regarding my bug report:
Hi -

Sorry for the inconvenience. Try clearing your cache/cookies and restart your browser. If you're still having problems, please email us back and we'll do our best to help you.

Thanks.

- Digg Support Team
Yeah, of course, clearing my cookies will magically fix the ridiculous "Crikey!" message and let me send shouts again. (FYI, I humored them and tried it to no avail.) I currently still can't send shouts to people via the "Share" feature. Someone suggested that I start deleting friends because I look like a spammer with so many, but I really think that's unfair. If Digg wants you to have only a certain number of friends, they should put a cap on the number of friends you can have. Plus, as I said earlier, the whole frickin' point of befriending people on Digg is so you can check out stuff that they like, have dugg or commented on, and so you can send and receive stories. It's like the cable company turning off your cable access once you've bought HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax. That's one channel too many, so you can't see any of them now. Harumph.

So, there you have it. I can't send shouts to people because I happen to have a large number of friends. Even though my stats prove that I'm not a spammer, Digg seems content to penalize me, anyway. I'll let you know if I ever receive an actual useful response from anyone at Digg (though one of my friends online pinged some of his buddies who work at Digg about the issue, and their response was a "We'll look into it" in an eye-rolling, whatever tone). Until then, however, I'll be surfing Digg with a cone around my neck like a neutered dog:



Bastards.

Postscript: Thanks a bunch to Lorna (check out the comments below) for helping me figure out how to pull up my buddies list letter by letter (it's a bit tedious, but it works). Looks like I'm not quite shout-blocked, I'm just slowed down a bit, but for crying out loud, you'd think that Digg could, you know, explain how to pull up lists of friends once you hit a certain number and need to start filtering the list in order to have it displayed at all. Instead of "Start typing to filter your friends list," the message could say "Type a letter to pull up the appropriate friends," or something to that effect. Digg, you suck. Lorna, you rock.

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Posted by great scott!

This week Rand fields another reader inspired topic: Why share content that could possibly be used by your competitors?

There are several reasons, including Attention, Authority, Credibility, Scalability and Marketing. Watch the video to learn the thought behind how sharing your ideas and content can help you out in all of these areas.



SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Sharing Content for Fun & Profit from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by kung_fu_mike

5-8%. It doesn't sound like a huge amount of most things. What if I told you it was 5-8% of the visitors to your site? Would you be more interested then? What if I told you it was 5-8% of the visitors you coveted the most? The visitors you spent the most time worrying about? The most energy on? The visitors that don't stay. That's right. What if I told you there was a way to get 5-8% of the people who returned to the search engine results page to stay on your page? Keep reading.

Lijit is the brain child of Stan James, stemming from his master's thesis project Outfoxed. Outfoxed was social network combined with a browser plugin. It worked by appending markup to your search results pages telling you who might know whom, and how much they trusted an individual result. Obviously a social network that only works when there is a bunch of people on it combined with a browser plugin is a tough business model.

Lijit was born of one of the primary values of Outfoxed, trust-based searching. Lijit allows you to create your own network of pages including social network profiles, blog, delicious tags, and many other things all searchable from the Lijit widget placed on your page. The setup is easy, and it leads us to the 5-8%.

The 5-8% is the figure reported by Micah Baldwin of Lijit as the average percentage of visitors who click on one of Lijit's suggested links, which come from what I believe to be Lijit's finest feature. First we start with a Google search for "term sheets".

Down at the 10th link position you will see "Term Sheet Series Wrap Up" by Brad Feld. I am headed there 1) because he has the Lijit Widget installed, and 2) because he a friend and I like his page.

Fled Term Sheet Result

When you click on the link to his page, notice the lijit display at the top labeled "Looking for more about term sheets?" This is where Lijit has made its mark. It has given the visitor another place to go besides back.

Fled Lijit Result


Lijit is wonderful tool to keep more traffic not just in your site, but in your content. I highly recommend checking them out. If you have questions, feel free to post them below and maybe Micah will be paying attention.

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Posted by rebecca

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Sorry folks, no more link yahtzee since someone at WikiAnswers was smart enough to change the answer to the question I linked to in my zero star section. Hooray for progress!

One star link:

Two star links:

  • Shoemoney says that SEO has no future, which is a bit of a hater thing to say, but his exact words are "...in my opinion there just is no future in current SEO for Google..." I could agree with that claim (emphasis on current SEO) since SEO is constantly evolving, so SEO practices that work today may not be effective five years from now.
  • Prepare to be horrified: manbabies.com. WTF, WTF, W.T.F.

Three star links:

  • According to this blog post, "Google may be adding geographic information about brick and mortar stores and service companies to the algorithm along with reverse IP lookup to help boost site rank for regular results."
  • Need a gift for your son or daughter? How about road kill toys? They're adorably squishy!
  • Apparently Thursday at noon is the best time to post blog entries. Maybe I should have delayed publishing this by 3 minutes...damnit.
  • Search Engine Land reports Microsoft Live Search's new design going live. Ooh, how very minimalistic!
  • Joe Morin's new company, Storybids, now has a website that's live. According to the site, "Storybids is a simple yet extremely powerful website tool for media sellers and content buyers. We connect those with creative ideas for product placement with advertisers who want to place their products in user generated videos, mini-dramas and webisodes, music videos and online commercials."
  • Lee Odden shares 5 new Twitter tools with us. Rand gives Summize.com his bearded seal of approval.
  • My favorite SEO slash hardcore U2 fan, Matt McGee, is jobless. He provides some great tips on how to improve your SEO experience and knowledge and hopefully nail that SEO interview. Meanwhile, I'm starting a site called feedmcgee.com that will take donations (U2 schwag is acceptable) to ensure that our little small business SEM doesn't go hungry.
  • Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the yottabyte, which is 1,024 zettabytes, which is roughly a crapload of exabytes, a buttload of petabytes, an assload of terabytes, and a shitload of gigabytes...scientifically speaking, of course.
  • Although MySpace received 74% of U.S. social networking visits in April 2008, it's a -5% change compared to the same time last year. Facebook, meanwhile. experienced a 32% increase in market share from last year and had 14.8% of visits, and some site called myYearbook had a 475% year over year change from 2007, enjoying 1.33% of visits this year.
  • Brian Cuban (Mark Cuban's brother who I pretend I know well because we're friends on Digg) wrote a post asking whether a competitor is devaluing your keywords. He opines that keyword suits like the Orion Bankcorp v. Orion Residential Financial case in Florida will become much more common over the next decade. For more information about the court case, check out Sarah's great post about how the court order on negative keywords won't break the Internet.
  • Hey, check it out, the Google Analytics Blog defines search engine optimization. The eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Blog weighs in on their definition.
  • Galen Ward provides an interesting argument as to why you shouldn't link to your trusted partners. We generally advise against linking to your competitors or to those within your niche using the same anchor text/keywords you yourself are trying to rank well for.
  • I'm betting that most SEOs will love this t-shirt; Rand has probably ordered at least 50.
  • Stephen Colbert has been awarded the Webby Person of the Year. Mission accomplished, Google bombers!
  • This comic accurately portrays the evolution of virtually every college student's life ambition. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to resume fervently watching the clock until it's beer thirty pm.

Four star links:

  • Last week's In the Trenches post at Search Engine Land highlights the benefits of a Google Campaign Report, recommends Nielson's Blog Pulse Trend Search as a great free tool, and drills through the main engines' paid search news.
  • It's an oldie but a goodie: 12 Examples of Viral Content, and What We Can Learn From Them provides, well, 12 examples of viral content and highlights some takeaways and lessons learned.
  • Speaking of viral content, this post shares 6 strategies for building viral content. They're some pretty sound tips. I recommend studying both the examples and the strategies before you venture off to create viral content of your own.
  • Malcolm Gladwell (Mr. Tipping Point) writes an article for the New Yorker about the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery. Rand proclaims that the article is "so awesome, I think I just got pregnant." If you too would like to become pregnant, read the article so that you may also conceive a Gladwell baby.
  • Barry Schwartz believes in the Google -60 penalty, and he provides examples to support his claim.
  • Adam Audette has a great SEO guide to information architecture, and he also provides some nice advice on nofollow sculpting.
  • Slightly Shady SEO tells us why whitehats need to know blackhat SEO, and he provides some really solid, sound reasons as to why we shouldn't be turning our nose to blackhat SEO practices, but rather can actually learn from them.
  • The redesigned NES. Hell. Yes.
Five star links:

YOUmoz entries:

Best of YOUmoz:

  • Brent D. Payne gets all sappy and talks about his Five Favorite Things About Twitter. And, naturally, all of you Twits just ate it up. ;)
  • You Got Us Traffic, But Where Are the Sales? from Sakis highlights how it's easy to forget that a lot of conversions actually happen offline, though your website still probably drove a lot of those sales. Lots of people come to your site and then make their purchase decision later.

New events added to the Events Calendar:

Upcoming events:

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

Asia:

Featured resumes:

Happily employed:

  • Zafar Ahmed is an SEO evangelist who specializes in Internet marketing strategy reports.
Looking for employment:
  • Mike Young is an international link building and SEO specialist with proven leadership and interpersonal skills.

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