Roundup Thursday for the Week of 9/7/08
Three star links:
- Apparently only 35% of Fortune 500 companies own [their company name] sucks.com. You know what that means, spammers--opportunity comes a knockin'!
- CNET talks about the gray area of SEO and interviews former SEOmoz CTO Matt Inman about his widget bait strategy that ended up getting his free online dating site in hot water.
- Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Wikipedia entry was curiously "scrubbed clean" hours before John McCain announced her as his running mate. Politics aside, this is yet another example of the biggest problem with Wikipedia. Pro: Anyone can add, edit, and remove content on any given subject. Con: Anyone can add, edit, and remove content on any given subject...
- MapQuest can has local content? Mapping website MapQuest recently launched MapQuest Local, which is a customizable local start page that contains news, events, gas prices, business listings, weather updates, and other nifty features.
- Michael Gray provides a concise yet compelling argument as to why social media and blended search ain't going anywhere any time soon.
- The long-awaited Spore game has finally been released. It's a "game about evolution, but evolution that's intelligently designed by the choices you make." Meh, the only upcoming release that I'm remotely excited about is Rock Band 2. Holy crap, I'm so excited.
- Truer words have never been spoken: "If your marketing strategy relies on being at TechCrunch 50 or Demo, you've already failed."
- A VC blogs about the feedization of the web, saying that more and more web UIs remind him of news feeds common to financial markets.
- Hey baby, why don't you lean in nice and close...I'm going to talk to you about digital intimacy. Uh, via instant messaging, that is. Anyway, we'll light some candles, turn the lights down low, pop open a bottle of wine, crank up the Barry White...and then I'll super poke ya. (Unfortunately, that is not a euphemism--more like nerd foreplay.)
- You lose, terrorists! The world is becoming a happier place! Ranked "saddest place" is Pluto. They've been pretty bummed about losing planet status...
- Stephan Spencer teaches us how to leverage our affiliates for PageRank. Usually I just leverage them for donuts. Thanks, Pepperjam!
- Speaking of affiliate marketing, Rae Hoffman guest blogs on Copyblogger and gives us a good rundown of how affiliate marketing works. Sometimes the process involves donuts.
- What's the next big thing after Google? I hope it's Altavista--then we'll have gone full circle, like a snake eating its own tail.
Four star links:
- Here's an interesting article about using pricing as an indicator of quality. I'd see way crappier movies in the theater if they were only a couple of bucks. (Okay, I'm lying. I already see crappy movies in the theater. Disposable income FTW!)
- Willy Franzen conducted a job search experiment on Facebook, where he used advertising to help college students look for jobs. It's an interesting article and provides a lot of unexpected takeaways.
Five star links:
- Rob Dubbin from the Washington Post abstains from using Google for an entire weekend. His experience is amusing and pretty eye opening to how easily we can depend on the search giant, not just to look stuff up, but for email, mapping, videos...yikes.
- Adding Value to Website Content. Webwordslinger provides some suggestions to web copywriters on how they can add value to their product.
- Why is Google Suggest Acting Very Oddly? Toast the most analyzes Google Suggest and brings up some oddities he's noticed.
- The Use of Queries for Ranking Purposes. GregH shares a sneaky ranking strategy with us. It's not exactly white hat, but it's an interesting tactic nonetheless.
- Share Your Microsoft Stack Pains. Jeremiah Andrick from Live Search reaches out to the SEOmoz community and asks us to share some feedback on the Microsoft stack. If you have any suggestions for him, provide them in his post's comments.
- Getting Attention as a Blogger Through Blogger Interviews. Gnet talks about how interviewing people for your blog is a great way to provide interesting content and attract links.
- SEO for Websites with Recently Purchased Domains. Ryder Sugden shares his frustrations about doing SEO for two differently aged domains and asks if there is a specific time frame for a website to age and start being able to rank in the search engines.
- Facebook Viral Videos: TapeWorms, Trojans and Obfuscation. Bookworm SEO laments about hacked accounts and spammers on Facebook.
Best of YOUmoz:
- Uh Oh, Made Google Drop an 'O'. Oh noes, Identity broke the Google!
- Link Building Notes of an SEO Kindergartner. Pritham Barhate knocks it out of the park with his first YOUmoz entry. He went through every blog post on SEOmoz that was categorized under "link building" and created a document of link building tactics pulled from the posts. It's a great resource--thanks, Pritam!
New events added to the Events Calendar:
- UK SEO Seminar/Workshop October 3 at the Clarendon Centre in Brighton, East Sussex, UK. The workshop is being hosted by Fresh Egg, the SEO company I interned for about two years ago. Ammon Johns and Lee Colbran are both great guys and knowledgeable SEOs, so if you can attend their seminar I highly recommend it. :)
Upcoming events:
- Internet Marketing Conference September 11-12 at the Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites in Vancouver, BC, Canada
- Melbourne SEO Meetup September 13 at The Palms Food Court in Mt. Waverley/Syndal, Australia
- Webdagene September 18-19 in Norway
- Social Networking Conference at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel Kensington and Conference Center September 22-23 in London, UK
- PPC Summit September 25-26 in Los Angeles, CA
- UK SEO Seminar/Workshop October 3 at the Clarendon Centre in Brighton, East Sussex, UK
- SMX East October 6-8 in New York, NY. SEOmoz members get a 20% discount if they use discount code SEOmoz@SMX while registering. This discount can be applied to all access passes (full and one day) only. Early bird registration expires Monday, September 8, so if you're thinking of attending then you should sign up soon!
New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:
Featured job postings:
- Online marketing manager for Hayes Martin in Newport Beach, CA
- Senior SEM strategist for the Chad Management Group in Toronto, ON, Canada
- SEM specialist for Scripps in Knoxville, TN
- Internet marketing specialist for Vat19.com in St. Louis, MO
- SEO analyst for Roundarch in New York, NY
Featured companies:
United States/North America:
- Root Search Marketing in Indianapolis, IN
- New York Web Design in, uh, California. Interesting...
- Roundarch in Chicago, IL
- ThoughtLab in Salt Lake City, UT
- SEOHaus in San Diego, CA
- Swan Business Solutions in Toronto, ON, Canada
UK/Europe:
Asia:
- Solution Point in New Delhi, India
Australia:
- Generator Web Design in Perth, Australia
Featured resumes:
Currently looking:
- Emma Brooks is a dedicated and passionate digital marketing professional who is seeking full-time or contract employment in Australia for October 2008. She has experience with SMM, SEO, PPC, keyword research, PR management, link building, and more.
- Vickey Parchani in India is an SEO with over two years of experience. He is proficient in onsite optimization, site analysis, keyword research, writing content, link building, and PPC.
- Anita MacKenzie from BC, Canada, has over 4 years of SEO web copywriting experience. She has "a passion for writing compelling product copy."
Happily employed:
- Nathan Cavicchi is an SEO/SEM with over two years of experience. He currently works at JBA Network as their SEO manager.
www.seomoz.org
published @ September 12, 2008