Pre-Weekend Roundup for the Week of 10/12/08

SEO digest

Since I've caught the awesome cold that's been running rampant through our office, I was unable to publish the roundup yesterday. As such, I'm publishing it today as a temporary "Pre-Weekend Roundup." Now you'll have something fun to read on your lazy Saturday morning! Aren't I thoughtful...

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

• TechRadar has a list of 20 websites that changed the world and revolutionized the way we lead our lives. The first ever website went online August 6, 1991, which was my 8th birthday. That's one hell of a birthday gift!
• The SEO Review identify 5 spheres of social media. I'm surprised he left off the sixth sphere, which one could argue is the most important one of all...
• MakeUseOf.com brings us the best 3 tools to search for images by color. Fun fact: if you search for red, gold and green you'll pull up images of a karma chameleon...unfortunately, the search results come and go. They come and go-o-o-oooooo...
• JustDisplays.co.uk wonders how well sex sells in the SEO and technology industry and examines the efficacy of booth babes at industry conferences and tradeshows. Jane and I, along with several other SEOs, contribute our opinions to the article.
• Here's a little nerd humor for all of you geeks out there: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol.
• SEOmoz members Arena Flowers gave a presentation on SEO at the Small Business 2.0 Conference over the weekend. We thought we'd give them a little roundup love and link to their presentation (which included a shout out to SEOmoz!). Great job, guys!
• Vanessa Fox wrote a post about how to increase search indexing coverage with an XML sitemap. Her post was inspired by Jeff Atwood's article about his experience with sitemaps at Stack Overflow.
• Richard Baxter wrote a nice "SEO career kickstart guide" on how to get a job in SEO. It's good information for beginners who are looking to break into the SEO industry.
• Siegfried Jongsma has uploaded some videos from SMX East to his Vimeo account. He interviewed Rand about social media and Linkscape, so if you want to stare at my boss's bearded mug for a few minutes, then check them out.
• Greg Linden discusses some large scale computing challenges at Google.
• Bill Slawski has reported that Microsoft is exploring an algorithm that will increase PageRank for pages linked to by blogs, thus ensuring that LOLCats will be the highest ranked site on the Internet.
• Matt McGee shares five burning questions he has. If you can answer them, he'll introduce you to Bono (well, a cardboard cutout of him, anyway).
• Well, this is kind of creepy: Spokeo searches through 40 major social networks to find information about any person you specify. Maybe the site should have been called TheUltimateStalkersResource.com instead.
• Paul Graham argues why you should start a new company in a bad economy. I guess when you start at the bottom you can only go up, right?
• Apparently diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of "high-ability" problem solvers. This sounds like the premise to the nerdiest version of "You've Got Served" ever.
• The New Yorker wonders why we equate genius to creativity. Because boring geniuses are wedgie magnets, that's why.
• Trackur, an online media monitoring service, has announced that they've added influence measurement tools. Check out the new additions for all your tracking needs.

• So this is how Google builds such an effective team...
• Our friends at Distilled have blogged about how Google has relaxed their ban on gambling advertising in the UK. This is huge news for gambling websites. Let the competition begin!
• Distilled (and SEOmoz) also received mentions in the Telegraph's "top 10 tips for encouraging more website traffic." #11: Don't misspell your title tags (cough Telegraph cough).
• Google's Webmaster Central Tools now show which of your URLs are causing crawl errors so you can effectively manhandle them into submission. They've also announced the rollout of "First Click Free," which protects your content while still allowing it to be included in their index.
• Matt Cutts shows us how to convert existing links to your site into high-quality links for the low-low cost of FREE. Hey, that's a pretty cool tip! Sorry for calling you a turd last week, Matt.
• Aaron Wall asks how much is that linky in the window, (aka how much is a link worth to your business). He goes over the risks of renting links and also highlights affiliate sites and link marketing strategies. It's a good article that's well worth the read.

• Six Revisions put together a list of 15 tools for monitoring a website's popularity. It's a great accumulation of resources, and the comments offer up even more tools (including Linkscape!).

YOUmoz entries:

• Just 'Cause I'm Nofollow Don't Mean I Ain't Got No Link Love to Give. Carfeu talks about how nofollowed links are still beneficial because they bring traffic to your site.
• Implications on Mozilla Geode on SEO/M and Privacy. Marty Martin talks about the Mozilla Geode project and how it affects SEOs and marketers alike.
• Search Engine Optimization is All About the Way a Naive Visitor Thinks... Dharmayu says to forget about keyword density and instead focus on strategic keyword placement in order to attract your users based on how they read and view content on a screen.
• Why Do Good SEO Services Cost So Much? Kenneth Dreyer discusses why nobody can guarantee top results in Google and provides tips on how to justify your prices to a concerned customer.
• In Response to 'Google's Advice: Godsend or Gimmick?' Amoore shares with us some difficulties he had with advertising on Google's Content Network.
• No Qualifications? Then Love It and Live It! Paz shares the story of how he got into SEO.

Best of YOUmoz:

• Content, Design, and Engagement: Three Examples from the New Media. Buybigtires examines three New Media sites and identifies how each of them successfully engage their users. It's a well-thought post that provides good examples of how to provide compelling content to draw in readers.

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

• SEO executive for Latitude in Warrington, Cheshire, UK
• SEO apprentice for our partners in crime, Distilled, in London, UK. Our friends at Distilled are looking for a "creative genius" to join their team. In my extremely biased opinion, working with Distilled has been great and they have a wonderful team, so I highly recommend applying for this position.
• Internet marketing specialist for Powder Blue Productions in Irvine, CA
• Contracted PPC expert for Vortx in Ashland, OR. Vortx is one of Distilled's clients, and since they took our British friends whitewater rafting and made sure they didn't drown, I felt obligated to highlight Vortx's job opening and urge you apply if you're looking for some PPC work. :)
• Contracted SEO who can help an online training portal improve its rankings in Google.
• Search marketing specialist for Sesame Communications in Renton, WA
• SEO specialist, web programmer, and web designer for TopSpot Internet Marketing Solutions in Houston, TX
• SEO specialist for SEOmoz in Seattle, WA. For more information about this position, see our job posting.

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

• Travel Strategy Business in New York, NY
• HiRank in San Francisco, CA
• TopSpot Internet Marketing Solutions in Houston, TX
• IdeaOverTen in Pennsylvania
• Koves Technologies in Virginia
• Mountain View SEO in the US
• HFB Advertising in the US
• Newpath WEB in the US as well as the UK and Australia
• Interweb Marketing Group in Toronto, ON, Canada

UK / Europe:

• SEOgadget.co.uk in London, UK
• The On Connection in Faringdon, UK
• Iconvert AB in Stockholm, Sweden
• Access Point in Iasi, Romania

Featured resumes:

Currently looking:

• Andrea Moro has over 9 years of experience in the IT field. She operates a small web agency and offers website design and Internet marketing services.
• Gunjan Pandya has almost 3 years of experience in the SEO/SEM field. He served as an SEO executive and possesses a variety of SEO and technical skills.
• Son Wanari in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, has experience with web marketing, search engine optimization, internet marketing strategies and information architecture with a focus on increasing targeted web site traffic, enhancing and simplifying the user experience, and increasing online sales and web traffic.
• Miles Price in Buffalo, NY, has built his own ad agency and has implemented over 40 partner relationships. He's currently working with partners in establishing sales and doing SEO and SEM.

Happily Employed:

• Mariusz Szatkowski is a web designer and SEO specialist located in Gdynia and Gdask, Poland.

www.seomoz.org

published @ October 18, 2008