Posted by randfish

Today, Yahoo! formally announced that it’s fully transitioning its search engine backend to Microsoft’s Bing. While this is good news on many fronts for marketers (simplification of advertising platforms, a bigger competitor for Google, etc), it’s a big loss to webmasters who relied on some advanced link data available from Yahoo! Search that’s now unavailable.

While Yahoo! is maintaining their Site Explorer service, the use of advanced query parameters on searches using the link: and linkdomain: operators will no longer return results.

For the query above, Yahoo! previously showed pages that pointed to any page on SEOmoz.org from sites with the .edu TLD extension (these now return no results)
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Webmasters and marketers will no longer be able to use advanced parameters on link: and linkdomain: searches such as inurl, intitle, site, etc. breaking many data sources for software tools and limiting link research abilities. However, there are several worthwhile solutions/replacements, including tools from SEOmoz (though I’ll also cover a few others).

#1 – Linkscape Advanced Reports

SEOmoz PRO members now have unlimited access to Linkscape advanced reports, which can apply filters through the UI in much the same way one could with Yahoo! link searches.

Using the filters and search capabilities, I can add nearly all of the filters previously possible through Yahoo!, and many others unique to Linkscape.
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This tool is available at www.seomoz.org/linkscape

#2 – OpenSiteExplorer CSV Exports

Another methodology without quite as many bells and whistles, is to use Open Site Explorer. While Linkscape offers filtering right inside the interface, Open Site Explorer is built for speed, meaning you can see lots of links, but only in the views directly ported from our API. To get into the deep filtering, you’ll need to use the CSV export + Excel (or your favorite spreadsheet program).

The filters in OSE are more limited than Linkscape, but most reports take <10 seconds to generate
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When I export the results to CSV and open in Microsoft Excel, I can easily filter for the .edu links (or any other modifier I’m interested in). OSE also shows up to 10,000 links per report vs. Linkscape’s 3,000.

Using the "find" command in Excel is the simplest methodology, but you can do all sorts of awesome filtering using more advanced techniques
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This tool is available at www.opensiteexplorer.org

#3 – Majestic SEO

A UK-based search engine built using distributed crawlers, MJ-12, offers an SEO tool for backlink research. The index varies slightly to how major search engines and Linkscape build – instead of new indices built from regular crawls, MJ-12 adds new links and pages as they’re discovered to an ongoing index. This means a much larger dataset, but not always the same level of freshness and limited de-duplication/canonicalization. However, many SEOs like this project a lot, and MJ-12 enables the same filtering available in Linkscape:

Many cool filters and ordering are available via MJ’s tool and reports typically return fairly quickly
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This tool is available at www.majesticseo.com

#4 – Yahoo! Site Explorer CSV Exports

Just as CSV exports from Open Site Explorer can enable link searching, so too can exports from Yahoo! ‘s Site Explorer. The big limitation is the 1,000 link limit (1/3rd that of Linkscape and 1/10th that of Open Site Explorer). Previously, SEOs would use modified queries to make requests and get more link data from Yahoo!, but with this switch, the only remaining option is to request links for many pages on a single domain to help get a better sense of sites with greater than 1,000 external links.

The "Export first 1000 results to TSV" button + Excel filtering option enables marketers to do research, but is limited in quantity
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This tool is available at search.siteexplorer.yahoo.com

#5 – The SEOmoz API

For those with some programming skills, SEOmoz offers a free API for link data with up to 1 million calls per month, as well as a larger, full featured link data API starting at $500/month. This is the same API that powers both the Linkscape tool and Open Site Explorer, as well as integrations with Conductor, Hubspot, Flippa, Brightedge and many others.

The APIWiki offers lots of information and examples on how to make calls to the service and integrate with your own softare or practices.
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This API is available at www.seomoz.org/api

#6 – Use Yahoo! in Other Regions (Temporarily)

It appears that while Yahoo! Search in the US has been replaced by Bing, these commands can still work in other regions, such as Yahoo! India and Yahoo! Italy. However, this is likely a short term solution, as Bing will be rolling out to power Yahoo! serach in these countries over the next 1-2 years.

Hat tip to Himanshu in the comments!

#7 – Other possibilities

In addition to these sources, there are a few other options, albeit with less fully functional or open systems. These include:

• Google’s Webmaster Tools (which enables you to export links, but only for sites you own/control)
• Bing’s Webmaster Tools (with similar limitations, and fewer link options)
• Exalead (a European search engine with limited link command functionality)
• Blekko (a new search engine with a comparatively small index, but interesting link functions – though it’s still in private beta)
• Alexa (which contains a limited set of link data for some sites)

Other sources may yet emerge, and certainly players like Majestic and SEOmoz are working hard to improve their coverage, quality and functionality. It will be interesting to see how this change affects the link research landscape – hopefully Bing is working on something valuable to help replace this functionality and to serve up data when Yahoo! Site Explorer is also retired (currently scheduled for 2012).

p.s. If you’re hankering for more information on link research and training on SEO tools, we’ve got just a few tickets left for next week’s PRO Training in Seattle.

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Posted by randfish

If you’ve been using SEOmoz’s tools for a while, you’ve likely run across the same challenge we have — the data rocks, but you have to run a separate tool and report for each aspect of your SEO. That’s why, for the past year, we’ve been building a new platform to house all of the features and functionality of the SEOmoz toolset, and includes the ability to track metrics over time. We call it the SEOmoz "Web App."

It’s hard for me to resist making this post nothing but a huge collection of screenshots…

Starting TODAY (right now, in fact!), every PRO member has BETA access to the new web app.

We encourage you to create your first campaign(s), start tracking some rankings, crawling some pages and getting those optimization recommendations. The web app is our first application to automatically track data for any site(s) you care about on an ongoing, consistent basis, and make recommendations based on what we find. Thus, the real value comes after a week or two of tracking, and it gets more valuable, useful and reference worthy over time. One of our big goals was to make this app give back some beautiful screenshots and reports showing your progress in reducing the crawl problems, improving optimization and gaining in the rankings over time.

How it Works

The challenge with doing SEO on sites bigger than a few dozen pages is that no human has time to visit every page on a regular basis and check to make sure nothing is wrong, no opportunities are missed, no errors are present, and no search rankings are being unintentionally forfeited through poor optimization. The web app is designed to solve this by:

#1 – Crawling all the pages on your site every week and identifying potential issues in three categories:

• Errors – like 404s, 500s, missing titles, duplicate content, etc.
• Warnings – such as 302s, overly dynamic URL strings, long title elements, meta refreshes, etc.
• Notices – not problems, per se, but issues you might want to be aware of like 301s, rel=canonical tags, meta robots blocking, etc.

While we love what Google’s Webmaster Tools does on this front, we felt there were a lot more issues we wanted to see.

#2 – Tracking Rankings on the keywords you choose and automatically grading the pages that rank in the top 50 for their on-page optimization. It’s a simple concept, but a powerful one. Why? Because, we often found that:

• URLs ranking on page 2, 3 or 4 for a keyword phrase could move up dramatically in rankings and traffic with just a bit of keyword tweaking
• Sometimes, SEOs & marketers might not even realize they had a page that was competitive for a keyword, and showing off that potential automatically could make a huge difference
• Tracking rankings can help identify potential causes of rising/falling traffic and give a key baseline for performance, particularly as we add in data like traffic via web analytics, keyword difficulty scores and estimated search volume.

Basic rank tracking is great, but we think there’s a lot more you can do with the data when it’s integrated with other KPIs and metrics

Tracking competitors simultaneously is helpful for those SEOs who want to keep special tabs on select sites

#3 – On-Page Grading & Recommendations serve as a great companion to rank tracking, enabling easy identification of low hanging fruit (poorly optimized pages that still rank in the top 50 results are often huge opportunities for improved rankings and traffic). We built this feature because:

• It’s frustrating to figure out the best practices for on-page optimziation, but our correlation and ranking models work have made some valuable strides that deserve to be shared.
• No one can visit hundreds or thousands of pages and find all the keywords that are suboptimally targeted. The web app (particularly in concert with tip #1 below) can and it will message these with easy-to-parse grades and simple recommendations.
• You can feel confident that the on-page recommendations are consitently updating with best practices. As we learn more through testing/research or as algorithms change (we re-do our ranking models every few months), that information will quickly make its way into the on-page report cards.

An "A"! That’s good news. Still missing a few recommendations that might be worth checking out, though.

 

Aha! Using the keyword in the alt attribute might be a good addition (both for normal web rankings and for image SEO)

 

#4 – Link Analysis for your site and those of key competitors. This tab is still in progress, but in the future, we plan to integrate all of the link analysis abilities of Open Site Explorer and add historical tracking, competitive SERPs analysis and more.

Much more functionality coming soon

#5 – One Comprehensive System to Rule It All. More so than any single feature, we wanted to begin the process of replicating all the functionality of SEOmoz’s PRO tools into a single, integrated platform. You should be able to do all your SEO from one place – the web app. The functionality released today is just a tiny part of what’s to come.

Now I can see and access all the sites I care about from one place in my PRO account.

Here’s a video of me whiteboarding a bit more about the new web app:

How Does this Affect My PRO Account?

If you’re already PRO, think of this as a big, new feature that’s ready to start tracking data for you today. None of the old tools, functionality, guides,  Q+A, tips, webinars, etc. are going away. We’re just adding the web app as a key part of the SEOmoz PRO package.

We are, however, making a few shifts that I think you’ll really like.

Previously, PRO membership tiers had limits for how many Linkscape reports they could run. We’ve scaled up our servers to the point where we can handle pretty hefty quantities of requests, so as of today, we’re removing your Linkscape advanced report limits – all PRO members can now run unlimited numbers of Linkscape reports. Q+A remains the same, as does access to all the other tools + content.

Here’s the new PRO membership plans:

You may notice we’ve changed our pricing; however, these prices are for new members only.  Existing PRO members will continue to pay what they have in the past, but receive the expanded benefits and privileges we’re launching today. It’s our way of saying thanks for joining us in the early days.  PRO members – you’ll get an email soon detailing the improvements/upgrades to your membership.

If you’re not yet PRO, we’re keeping the PRO price of $79/month available until August 25th (14 days from now). After that, the price will go up to $99/month. If you sign up now (at $79/month), you’ll be grandfathered in and won’t be subject to future price increases.

And, as always, as PRO membership gets better, you’ll get immediate access to new features & upgrades and we’ll never raise your price.

5 Quick Tips to Get Started

The web app is certainly designed to be largely self-explanatory and I’m sure many of you have already jumped in and given it a spin. But, for those seeking a few tricks, here’s some that we’ve found in the last few weeks of using it for projects (some in concert with our consulting friends at Distilled).

#1 – Import some of your top referring keywords from your analytics

When I started the SEOmoz campaign, I grabbed our top few hundred keywords that referred traffic and imported them through the manage keywords input box (which kindly accepts CSV, TSV and carriage-return separated inputs).

By exporting my list of top keywords from Google Analytics and pasting them into the web app, I’ve got easy tracking on tons of keywords I care about, and a chance to find some missed opportunities.

 

#2 – Find pages that rank in the top 10-30 with low grades (Cs, Ds and Fs)

When my rankings and on-page reports came back, I found tons of pages that got Cs or Ds ranking in position 5-50, ripe for improvement.

Those Cs, Ds and Fs are gonna turn into As and send us a lot more traffic!

The best part is the automation – it’s a simple process, but an incredibly tedious one if performed manually. The web app’s a lifesaver on that front. Those Cs, Ds and Fs, if improved to As and Bs, will likely bring up rankings, particularly on the less competitive terms and phrases and those where I may have the links I need to rank, but never took the time to do on-page optimization. Editing a few page titles and adding some keywords to content never felt so rewarding.

#3 – Use the "grade any page" easter egg feature

The web app’s on-page optimization system will soon be replacing our tired and somewhat rickety term target tool. In the meantime, you can run "one-off" reports through an easter egg feature. Just create the keyword you care about and you can edit the URL field manually to grade any page for any term/phrase:

Notice the highlighted portion in blue in the screenshot – easter egg FTW!

#4 – Apply labels to your keyword groups to separately track relevant data/metrics

Nearly every section of the app allows for filtering based on keyword group, error type, etc. By building smart keyword groups (via the "manage keywords" page) to align with the types of terms/phrases I care about, I can separately build reports showing performance in rankings and on-page optimization for those labels.

#5 – Point out crawl diagnostic issues to a friend or potential client

If your friend has a website with some crawl issues, I’m sure they’d appreciate having that pointed out – you can even export the crawl results to CSV and email it over. Likewise, if you’ve got clients or managers you’re trying to convince to do some SEO fixes, the diagnostic visualization can be very handy to show off the problem.

Sending over this report might just bring your buddy a bit more search traffic (or help you win a new client)!

What’s Next?

Oh, believe me – we’re just getting warmed up.

Our engineering team is committed to regular updates every few weeks, starting with something big a couple weeks from today. Those updates will add features, fix bugs and help grow this web app into the platform professional SEOs deserve – a system that lets you perform all of the essential tasks of SEO from one place – from building, submitting and managing XML Sitemaps to tracking your ROI from organic keywords through integration with your analytics package to tracking search results in verticals like video, maps/local, news, images, et al. to mapping your crawl data from Webmaster Tools against your indexation of pages receiving search traffic (we’ve had some good chats with the WM Tools team about integrating their API in cool ways) and much, much more.

We’ll be publishing a post this weekend inviting you to vote for features you’d most like to see. That feedback will be used to help prioritize our work, so suggest now, vote on the weekend and you’ll see what you want in the app even sooner!

We Need Your Feedback

The web app is the basis for our future plans around providing great SEO software, and we need your help to make it amazing. On every page of the web app, you’ll find a feedback tab on the left-hand side of the page. Please click it often and tell us what you found frustrating, what more you want to see, and even what you liked and want more of. Our team reads every one and build priorities based on the most-requested features.

We also know there’s going to be bugs at launch. Some early ones we’re aware of include:

• Slowness – many of the web app pages take 10-15 seconds or more to load depending on the quantity of keywords, issues or other data involved. We’re working to cache much of this in databases for much faster retrieval in the next few weeks.
• Crawl & Rankings Retrieval – your first data will take 5-20 minutes to populate. We do an initial "speed crawl" of 250 pages, but to be respectful of server load issues, we’re pretty cautious with our requests. That first hour inside the app after creation may feel a bit empty, but just wait, it gets much better
• On-Page Grades – edge cases, including keywords that are out of order or have odd broad matching aren’t perfect yet. We’ll be working to fix this and make this experience as seemless as possible.
• Root Domains – currently, campaigns can only be created with single subdomains (e.g. www.seomoz.org, not *.seomoz.org). We’re working to make root domains an option as well, so you can track all the pages at mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com, blog.mydomain.com, etc. in one campaign.
• Adding more than 10 Keywords Simultaneously – to help with load as we begin public testing, we’ll only collect rankings for the first 10-20 keywords entered immediately (within 10-15 minutes). If you add 50 or 500 keywords at once, we’re limiting rankings and on-page checks until your next update date for now.

This isn’t just another tool – it’s a new approach for SEOmoz – creating an application that uses crawl data, APIs and integrated research to improve your productivity and simplify SEO.

But, we need to be realistic – in this first iteration, we’re not just in beta, we’re at the nascent stages of the app’s potential. What we’re launching today is pretty remarkable, and I feel confident that for nearly everyone reading this post, it can help you earn a considerable amount more traffic from the search engines. That said, the future is what we feel best about, particularly since we hope to have your help in the improvement process.

This is very much a BETA launch, but we think you’ll enjoy playing around with the app and get a lot of value in return. So, what are you waiting for? Go build a campaign!

p.s. If you’d like to learn more, check out our FREE WEBINAR on the Web App coming up this Friday, August 13th at 10am Pacific – Register here. And you can still sign up for the SEOmoz Tools Training at our Seattle Seminar later this month (we’ve just added more seats).

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Posted by jennita

Yabba Dabba Doooo! Ok, I have no idea what the Flintstones has to do with SEO training, but the point is… I’m excited. It’s that time of year again when we open up registration for the PRO Training Series: Tips, Tricks and Tactics. See! Now do you get why I’m so giddy? As with every year, we have a killer lineup of speakers including Tim Ash, Dan Zarella, Laura Lippay, Wil Reynolds, Marshall Simmonds, Will Critchlow. Plus we’ve brought back the highly acclaimed "Ice Cream Break" – you wouldn’t want to miss that.

Rand and Dharmesh Shah having an ice cream treat.

Here’s the deal, last year we sold out quickly and, sadly, had to actually turn away a lot of requests. With a limit of only 310 attendees, the networking alone is going to be amazing. But that also means tickets will go quickly. The sooner you register, the better your chances of learning from top-notch speakers and networking with a unique group of advanced SEOs (Oh… and you get to hang out with JLo. heh.)

So, let’s just jump right into the details… or you can just go register.

Details!

Where: Westin Hotel, Seattle (This is where we had it last year as well, and it rocked!)

When: August 30 – 31, Plus an optional &frac12; day tools training on September 1 (65 person limit)

Price: $1149 for general attendees
           $649 for PRO Members (that’s $500 off the regular price!)
           Plus $125 for the optional tools training

Speakers!

Remember that killer lineup I mentioned above, well here’s the full list. As you can see the speakers cover a huge spectrum of knowledge an expertise. Plus don’t forget, the tickets are limited, so it’s a lot easier to get one-on-one time with them in this setting.

• Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
• David Mihm, GetListed.org
• Dan Zarrella, Hubspot
  
• Will Critchlow, Distilled
• Jen Sable Lopez, SEOmoz
• Laura Lippay, NinebyBlue
  
• Ben Hendrickson, SEOmoz
• Lindsay Wassell, Keyphraseology and SEOmoz
• Ian Lurie, Portent Interactive
  
• Wil Reynolds, SEER Interactive
  
• Rob Ousbey, Distilled
• Joanna Lord, SEOmoz
• Marshall Simmonds, Define Search Strategies
  
• Tom Critchlow, Distilled
• Tim Ash, Sitetuners

The Goods!

Check out the agenda for the full two days. We’re covering topics ranging from the Science of Twitter & Google’s Algorithm to Conversion Rate Optimization and Reverse Engineering your Competitors’ Rankings. 

 

Networking!

If you don’t believe me about the amazing networking that happens at the seminar, read How to Network at an SEOmoz Seminar After-Party from audiore. She wrote this after the seminar last year, and it’s a great guide to networking. Plus, where else can you geek out at the computer at a party? (see below)

A group geeking out at the after party

DVDs

If you can’t attend the seminar, or even if you do and just want to relive it forever, you’ll be able to purchase the training on DVD. We’ll have more information about that coming soon.

London Seminar – October 25-26

Don’t worry! If you’re wondering about the London Seminar, sign up below to get on the email list to learn more as soon as details are announced.

Email Address *
First Name
Last Name

What Past Attendees Have Said

Here are a couple great posts from attendees last year, which were submitted to YOUmoz. Go Community!

10 Valuable, Actionable, Take-Aways From the SEOmoz Pro … from Whitespark

YOUmoz Immersion at the SEOmoz Day Spa from erikellsworth

 

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Posted by great scott!

The SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series is back with our latest installment, Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2!  Picking up where Volume 1 (now in it’s second printing) left off, Volume 2 is bigger, badder and loaded with 8 discs worth of training material to advance your SEO skills.

Intended for those seeking to learn high-level, scalable, enterprise SEO tactics and strategies to push their knowledge to the next level, this brand new series offers 14 all-new advanced presentations plus updated editions of two of the most popular modules from Volume 1.  Filmed live in London, UK before an international audience representing over a dozen countries, this series will teach you priceless SEO strategies that you can apply whether your audience is hyper-local or spans the globe.

 

 

Until Saturday, April 3rd, you can get Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2 for just $449 (that’s $150 off the regular price of $599) and we’ll include FREE Worldwide Shipping.  That’s less than 1/3 of what most industry conferences cost, and you can share this among your entire team (no travel expenses either).

Want to save even more?  SEOmoz PRO Members only pay $299 ($449 regularly). Do the math and you’ll see that this is a great opportunity to get the brand new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tact, try SEOmoz PRO and save a ton of money at the same time.  Still want more? Keep reading to the bottom of the post for an extremely limited offer that’ll save you over $400…

If you’re ready to learn a ton of immediately actionable, advanced strategies you can start using right away, then Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2 is one of the best training investments you can make this year.

 

Video quality not representative of actual DVD content

Special Bonus Offer (while supplies last)…

Ultimate Advanced SEO Bundle: Tips, Tricks & Tactics Volumes 1+2 – Only $549 ($399 PRO)

For an extremely limited time, if you order Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2, you can get Volume 1 for only $100 more (regularly $499)!  We’ve only printed a couple hundred DVD copies of of this six-disc, 17 module series (the original printing sold out within weeks) specifically for this bundle.

Together, Tips, Tricks & Tactics Volumes 1+2 provide over 20 hours of top-notch, advanced strategies. This unrivaled education in SEO is an absolute must have for organizations, agencies, or individuals anxious to rapidly advance their search marketing know-how.

Get the
Ultimate Advanced SEO Bundle
, an $1,095 value, for only $549 (or $399 for PRO Members)!  Remember, this offer is limited to quantities on-hand and will go quickly…also, this special pricing and free shipping is only available until Saturday, April 3rd, so order fast.

 

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Posted by adamf

First, let me make a quick introduction. Normally, I spend my time focused on new products at SEOmoz, working with a great team of people that design and build our new tools and features. Today I am excited to use my first blog post to announce our new SEO toolbar for Firefox, and tell you about some of the powerful features we have added.

As a quick reminder, all of these new features are free, and will be available to anyone who downloads the Firefox SEO Toolbar!  However, we still reserve advanced link data for PRO members.

So, on to the features. To add a little color to my descriptions, I’ve also asked some SEO experts you may recognize to preview the toolbar and talk about how they use the new features.

1. New SERP Overlay

This new Search Engine Results Page overlay was designed to offer the most relevant link data without getting in the way. You can now use our toolbar to see which search results are getting the most links, and click Explore to run a full analysis in Open Site Explorer. To turn on this overlay, click the settings button on the toolbar, and select SERP Overlay.

 
 

"I get the best ‘feel’ for abstract metrics by seeing them in familiar places. I find it easiest to understand the new metrics by seeing them on search results I’m familiar with; as an added bonus, this is one of the most helpful analyses you can do when looking at a new SERP for the first time." –Will Critchlow

2. Page Authority and Domain Authority

Page Authority and Domain Authority have taken their place as the primary metrics in the toolbar. These two predictive metrics will give you the best indication of how authoritative pages and domains are. If you miss having mozRank and mozTrust available at a glance, don’t despair!  You can add these back into the toolbar by selecting them from the settings menu.

3. Surf Like a Search Engine

We have added new settings that allow you to hide images, turn off JavaScript, and even set your user agent. This will help you see pages like the search engines do, and identify potential bad page behaviors. And just to help out, we’ve added a handy little overlay to keep you aware of when any of these features are set. Just click the link in the overlay and all of your settings will return to normal.

"The new user agent switching means I’ve removed another plug-in from Firefox. I love my SEO plugins but I also think there’s such a thing as having too many. Go for simplicity is what I always say. Special love goes out to disable JavaScript, too – I actually caught a nice bit of hidden link spam with this last week! Disable images is a sure fire way to check out the image alt attributes on a web page too. Nice." –Richard Baxter

"I don’t want to take credit for an awesome feature. OK. I want to take credit for an awesome feature. After constantly forgetting I was surfing as googlebot and getting chucked out of Google calendar etc I asked for this feature and it’s just as awesome as I hoped it would be. " 

4. New Data in the Analyze Page Overlay

Our analyze page overlay has also been enhanced with a number of new, useful data points, including

• Page Download Time – this becomes more important with Google’s announcement that speed matters.
• Text to Code Ratio – Is there more code on your page than content? Don’t make the search engines sift through too much code to find the relevant content.
• HTTP status codes – Find out the status code of the current page, and learn which redirects were involved in getting you there.

 

"The overlay is still the most valuable thing for me. I must use it 5+ times every day to get quick info about how many links are on a page, whether it’s using rel="canonical" or whether the keywords are properly included in the right page elements. I hate using ‘view source’ and searching through code; overlay FTW!" –Rand Fishkin

"The http status codes feature is my favourite new addition to the tool. There’s not more reloading and hunting through LiveHTTPHeaders reports – this lets me very easily see the redirect route taken in getting to the current page." –Rob Ousbey

5. Quick Access to Tools from SEOmoz and Third Parties

The tools dropdown has been expanded to include fast access to the latest SEOmoz tools as well as a wealth of other helpful resources, including traffic data, Twitter tools, and domain info.
 

I hope you enjoy the new toolbar. Please give it a try, and be sure to send feedback so we can keep making it better. You can easily send feedback by clicking on the light bulb icon on the toolbar.

 

 

 

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Posted by great scott!

Last week we unveiled our newest toy, Open Site Explorer, to the world and the response was phenomenal. Now we want to take some time and really show everyone just what this powerful link analysis tool is capable of and answer your questions, so we’re hosting not one, but two FREE Webinars this week (it’s the same content, run twice to help accomodate schedules and time zones).

The presentations will be 60 minutes each, 25 minutes of slides, followed by 35 minutes of Q+A on Wednesday, January 27th at 2:00PM (PST), and Thursday, January 28th at 10:00AM (PST)  In each live webinar, Rand will show you around Open Site Explorer, offer tips and strategies for getting the most out of it, explain our new Domain Authority & Page Authority metrics, and answer your questions.

Here’s the catch: each webinar is limited to 1,000 attendees. The last time we announced a webinar on the blog, we had over 3,000 people try to register in the first hour, so if you want to attend one of the live sessions, register quickly. If you can’t make it, we’ll have a recording of the presentation available in a couple of days on our webinars page.

---

Looooove Webinars and can’t get enough of ‘em? Then you should totally become a PRO Member! In the last couple of months we’ve started running regular webinars just for PRO Members and they’ve been really popular.

In February we’re stepping it up even more. In addition to our monthly educational webinar (February 4th on Analytics), we’re adding a second monthly webinar where we’ll be performing live site reviews of sites submitted by our PRO Members!

PRO Members can head over to the PRO Webinars page for more info on February’s webinars, as well as recordings and slide decks from past webinars. If you’d like to join us for the next PRO Webinar–and possibly even get a live site review–sign up for PRO to access the PRO Webinar page for registration details or just watch your inbox for an invite.

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Posted by randfish

For the past 15 months, we’ve been working hard to improve Linkscape, our index of the WWW. Today, we’re releasing an entirely new platform for Linkscape’s index with more accessible data than ever before. And, for the next 48 hours, full functionality is available entirely for free:

The new tool, Open Site Explorer, makes gathering, sorting and exporting link data easier than ever. It’s built with speed and accessibilty at the forefront and provides a tremendous amount of information about the links to any page or site. Since there’s a lot to cover, let’s dive right into some of the features and functionality.

#1 – Fast Access to Top Level Metrics

At the top of every results page, you’ll find the key metrics we have on your page – the importance/ranking ability of that URL (Page Authority) and root domain (Domain Authority), the number of linking root domains and the total number of links.

#2 – See Up to 10,000 Links Alongside Anchor Text & Key Metrics

You can browse through up to 10,000 links (this is restricted to 1,000 for non-PRO members normally, but will be completely free to everyone for the first 48 hours). We also offer CSV export functionality, but it won’t be available until the weekend (and then, only to PRO members – CSV takes up a LOT of bandwidth for 10K rows ).

#3 – Filtering for the Links You Want to See

As you drill down in the list of links, you can exclude nofollowed links or see only the 301s that point to a page. You also have the ability to sort by the location from which you want to see links – internal vs. external – and links that point to a given page, all pages on a subdomain or an entire root domain.

#4 – Display Root Domains that Contain Links

The second tab in Open Site Explorer (OSE for short) is the linking root domains. We realized that a lot of people want to get a quick glance of the types of sites that are sending links to a given page or domain, and thus created this unique view. In the future (probably a couple months away), you’ll also be able to click an individual domain and see a list of pages from that site that link to the target of your choice.

#5 – Review Anchor Text Term & Phrase Distribution

Anchor text is often the missing link in a "why does that guy rank there?" puzzle. We’re opening up the anchor text distribution so you can learn more about your own sites and pages and those of the competition. You can also sort by both the number of root domains that contain a link with a particular anchor text term (single word) or phrase and the raw number of links containing that anchor text.

#6 – Pie Chart Displays of Link Data 

Many SEOs worry that, particularly on small sites, they may seeing lots of numbers of links, but the sources aren’t ideal. In this view, we try to illustrate through pie charts the percentage of links that come from internal vs. external pages and are followed vs. nofollowed. This view is at the top of the "full metrics" tab.

#7 - Rejoice in Data Junkie Heaven 

Additionally in the "full metrics" tab, you’ll find a list of all the Linkscape data we’ve got including mozRank (an algorithm similar to Google’s PageRank), mozTrust (akin to TrustRank) and many more. You can also see the more refined link counts and data for an individual URL, the subdomain it’s on and the hosting root domain.

#8 – Compare Pages/Sites Link Metrics to One Another

A frequently requested feature is the ability to compare one site/page against another. OSE makes this quick and easy with a comparison view drop-down. If you click the "-" symbol again, you can return to the individual report view.

#9 – Graphical Views of Metric Comparisons

In the comparison view, we show nice visual charts that you can embed in a client report or send to your boss to help illustrate just how challenging it might be to take on a particular competitor. For example, you can see above that Fred Wilson has a long way to go to reach Guy Kawasaki‘s stats on his blog (granted, Guy’s posts are designed for a much broader audience and he’s been blogging for longer).

#10 – Compare Links Side by Side

At the bottom of this comparative view you’ll see links side-by-side. We noticed a lot of SEOs open two browser windows with lists of links to compare them against one another and thought "why not make that easier?!" With this feature, you can scroll through the links for two pages to get a fast sense for the quality and variety of sources that point to each.

New Metrics – Domain Authority & Page Authority

We’ve got much more information coming soon about these two metrics, but basically, we’re using our ranking models to build predictions about how well an individual page might perform in the search engines (Page Authority) or how well content on a root domain would do (Domain Authority). These aren’t like PageRank or mozRank at all – they’re much broader.

Authority scores take into account all the metrics we have about a page and hundreds of derivatives of those metrics. We’ve put the scores on a classic 0-100 scale that’s logarithmic (so moving from a 50 to a 60 is much harder than moving from a 10 to a 20). Over time, these metrics will change and evolve as we get better and better with our machine learning systems (and as the engines and the web itself changes). Watch for this week’s whiteboard friday with much more detail on this subject. For now Open Site Explorer is the only place to get Domain/Page Authority data, but we’ll be rolling it into the SEOmoz toolbar and other tools over the next few months.

Linkscape’s Index Update

Linkscape itself has also updated – growing to a whopping 65 billion URLs with 45 day minimum freshness. As Nick’s previous post on the Trillion+ URLs Linkscape has seen shows, freshness is one of the most critical metrics for those who care about accurate link data, and we’re working hard to keep our index as up-to-date as possible. Linkscape recrawls every page in the index each month, so no "old data" is stored or served. Our current metrics for this index are:

• Pages: 64,180,990,434 (65 billion)
  • 301s: 293 million
  • 302s: 672 million (Marshall Simmonds calls this "job security")
  • 404s: 360 million (but we do try to exclude known 404s in crawls, so this may be low percentage wise)
• Subdomains: 259,977,972 (260 million)
• Root Domains: 63,264,651 (63 million)
  • .com – 49.4%
  • .net – 6.4%
  • .de – 5.8%
  • .org – 5.2%
  • .ru – 2.5%
  • .cn – 2.5%
• Links: 701,881,850,733 (701 billion)
  • Nofollows: 13 billion (1.85%)
  • Internal Nofollows: 9.06 billion vs. External Nofollows: 4.11 billion
  • Meta Refreshes: 40.9 million
  • Internal Links: 638 billion vs. External Links: 63 billion (people link to their own stuff a lot more than they do to others)
  • Feed Autodiscovery (i.e. RSS/Atom feeds): 2.261 billion
  • Rel=canonical: 100 million
  • Links passed through 301s: 8.61 billion (just over 1% of all links go through a 301)
• mozRank Correlations to Google Toolbar PageRank
  • Individual page mR: 0.42 (avg. error +/- 0.56 from PR)
  • Subdomain mR: 0.45 (avg. error +/- 0.35 from PR)
  • Root domain mR: 0.45 (avg error +/- 0.37 from PR
• File Extensions
  • html: 26.5%
  • php: 21.7%
  • htm: 10.6%
  • asp: 5.7%
  • aspx: 2.9%
  • cgi: 0.89%

API Update

Finally, we’ve also updated the SEOmoz API – you can now get lists of links for any URL for FREE along with tons of other link data and metrics. Sarah & Nick have a blog post coming soon with more, but for now, check out the API page to get a developer key and the API Wiki for more details.

Answers to Common Questions About OSE

What’s the difference between OSE and Linkscape?

Open Site Explorer provides a fast, free, more basic view of link data while Linkscape provides power users the ability to refine by dozens of filters, search within link anchor text, URLs and domains. Linkscape will let you dig into significantly more metrics and details on a per link basis on things like mozRank passed, Domain mozTrust, juice per anchor text, links from particular TLDs, etc.

OSE is substantively faster than Linkscape, and not as metrics heavy. It’s designed to give the "500 foot view" vs. the deep, in-the-weeds look you can get in Linkscape. Certainly feel free to try both and use the one that suits you best.

Why is OSE on a separate domain?

Three big reasons, actually:

1. We’ve haven’t tried the microsite strategy in a long time (since the first launch of the Web 2.0 Awards), and want to test and see lots of SEO and strategic/branding (we’ll have some cool data to report in the next few weeks/months)
2. OSE is built entirely on the SEOmoz API platform – we wanted to show off just how much you can build using that service
3. SEOmoz engineers are very busy working on another exciting launch (scheduled for June) so we wanted to split resources without putting a load on folks focused on our site (PRO members may see some previews of that even earlier)

What will OSE continue to offer for free?

For the first 48 hours, registered members (anyone with a free SEOmoz account) will get the full PRO features (unlimited metrics, up to 10K links per report, full anchor text data, etc). After that, anyone can still get up to 1,000 links per search and a sampling of metrics. You can see a full breakdown in the bottom right-hand corner of the homepage.

Why Call it "Open" Site Explorer?

We’re aiming to give out more link data than anyone else on the web for free. Open Site Explorer not only gives out lots and lots of links (up to 1,000), but also metrics and link numbers for free (permanently). We also provide a free API that lets you use any of the data (including lists of links) in your applications, public or private. Our goal is to be transparent with this data – to show exactly how many pages/domains are in our index, show accuracy with freshness and canonicalize and re-crawl like a search engine. We’re trying to take the web’s link graph and make it as available as possible and use the revenue component of PRO membership to accelerate growth on index freshness, quality and size.

Please Give Us Feedback!

We’d love to hear from you. If you have suggestions, bug reports (this is a first launch, after all) or ideas for future iterations, please leave them in the comments or send them via the Open Site Explorer feedback form. We’re of course very excited for the launch of OSE and would certainly appreciate you sharing and helping us spread it around. The free period ends at 8am Pacific on Friday, January 22nd, but PRO members will continue to be able to access all the features and unlimited reports (and free reports will still provide up to 1,000 links).

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Posted by randfish

First off, I hope everyone among our US (and expat) readers had a great holiday weekend, filled with tryptophan and football (I know mine was). Second, I’m very excited to announce that SEOmoz PRO is launching our first ever webinar on Thursday Dec. 10th at 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern, 7pm London/UK). We’ve heard from a number of our members that they’d like to do some live reviewing of strategies and recommendations and get questions tackled in this format. I’ll be running the webinar personally, but I haven’t quite decided on a topic, and that’s one thing I need your help with.

Below is an embedded Google form (they’re pretty spiffy) with three short questions. We’ll use your feedback to help determine the content and format for the webinar, as well as gauge interest level.

 

 

We’ll have another blog post in the next few days announcing details (based on your requests + votes), as well as an email to all PRO members with a registration link.

Of course, if you have anything to add in the comments or any recommendations, we’d love to hear from you there, too. If this webinar goes well, we’re certainly planning to make it a monthly event for PRO members, and possibly offer some free webinars to the entire community. A future subject that folks have been asking about is training on the SEOmoz toolset – that’s something we want to do, but we have some changes + additions coming in January, so we’ll get those released first, then follow up.

Thanks for your feedback and happy holiday season! 

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Posted by great scott!

Ready to upgrade your SEO skills, learn actionable new strategies, and get ready to make 2010 the year you totally rock online? Well, we’ve got just the thing to help you finish out the year with the latest tactics to take your SEO to the next level.

That’s right, the SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series is back with an all new DVD Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics!  Whether you’re a fan of the series, or this is your first time experiencing SEOmoz Training DVDs, this new six DVD set is one you won’t want to miss. Filmed before a live audience in Seattle, Tips, Trick & Tactics features over a dozen world-class instructors teaching high-level, actionable strategies on 17 advanced topics.

This brand new edition of the Advanced SEO Training Series includes over 10 hours of immediately actionable material designed to really push your SEO skills to the next level. These advanced strategies will help you launch your SEO plan or reinvigorate your existing efforts with fresh tactics that will change the way you think about online marketing.

Don’t miss out on your opportunity to get the latest and greatest SEO strategies from the world’s top experts. The information you get in Tips, Tricks & Tactics is the sort of in-depth, high-level stuff these pros don’t normally share at conferences, or even online. We actively encourage them to share their best advice, and most effective strategies that they use to be at the top of the SEO game…and they really deliver!

Until Sunday, December 6th you can get the Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics 6 DVD Set for just $399 (that’s $100 off the regular price of $499) and we’ll include FREE Shipping.  That’s less than 1/3 of what most industry conferences cost, and you can share this among your entire team (no travel expenses either).

Want to save even more?  SEOmoz PRO Members only pay $199 during pre-sale ($249 regularly). Do the math and you’ll see that this is a great opportunity to get the brand new Advanced SEO Training Series, try SEOmoz PRO and save a ton of money at the same time.  Order soon, because the special release pricing will only last until December 6th and these DVD Series’ sell out every year (we only do a limited run of each DVD series). Get Tips, Tricks & Tactics now, and rev up your SEO in the new year!

What’s covered on Tips, Tricks & Tactics?  Tons!  This series features 15 Instructors (including Rand Fishkin, Todd Malicoat, Vanessa Fox, Ben Jesson, David Mihm, and more) speaking on almost every topic important to the advanced search marketer…

Disk One

• SEO for Content
• Advanced Site Architecture
• Advanced Keyword Research

Disk Two

• Local Search Strategies
• Alternative SEO Tools
• News & Image Search Strategies
• Advanced Linkscape Tactics

Disk Three

• How to Design a Link Building Campaign
• How to Launch a Startup

Disk Four

• History of SEO
• Future of SEO
• High ROI Social Media

Disk Five

• Researching the Algorithms
• How to Win SEO Budget
• Conversion Rate Optimization

Disk Six

• SEO Business Strategies
• Avoiding Search Engine Penalties

Still want more? We have a limited quantity of free passes to SES Chicago ($1,995 value) if you purchase a new 1-year PRO Membership! That means you can get the Tips, Tricks & Tactics DVD Training Series, a full year of SEOmoz PRO, and an all-access pass to SES Chicago for almost $1,000 less than just the conference pass alone! Not going to Chicago? SES will let you exchange your free Chicago pass for any of their other conferences in 2010, including London, West, New York, or any other!

What Did Live Attendees have to Say About Tips, Tricks & Tactics?

"If last year was ‘tech school’ this year is ‘Grad School’! Really powerful presentations."

"I’m the SEO for a $200 million company and I plan to use the knowledge I gained from this Training to radically change the foundations of my company."

"I’ve seen the future…This is absolutely essential to businesses and did nothing short of blowing me away."

"I’d recommend it to anyone but my competitors."

"I felt like I had a serious wake-up call to remember why I’m optimizing websites in the first place."

"It’s nice to hear about theories and logic, but these presentations with examples definitely make the ‘putting it into practice’ part much easier."

"I’ve been doing SEO for four years now, and I found a lot of things in here that you just can’t find online."

"This is very high-level, actionable stuff!"

"There’s a lot of information! It really gives you the edge."

Get Tips, Tricks & Tactics now and get the edge for the new year!

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Posted by jennita

This post really doesn’t need much of an introduction, so I’ll get right down to it. Pubcon is coming! Pubcon is cooommiiinnnnggggg! It seems like the whole industry might just shut down for a week while we take over Las Vegas (I hope they’re ready for us). This would probably be a great time for spammers to come in and take over our SERPs since we’ll be busy in sessions, going to parties, meeting new people… and gambling (DUDE! It’s Vegas).

SEOmoz will be representing in full force this year. Although we don’t have a booth, you’ll find us lurking in all corners of the event. Here’s a quick lowdown on who will be attending from the moz crew:

• Danny – Say "Danny Dover" ten times fast. What?! It’s funny. Really. (ok I’m tired)
• Scott – He’s coming out from behind the camera!
• Adam – Ping him if you’re interested in user testing some of our new products!
• Jen – Holla!
• Arden – You’ll recognize him by being the friendly one (unlike the rest of us meanies)
• Rand – You know, that guy who always wears those funny yellow shoes
• Gillian – She arrives just in time from her worldwide SEO tour
• Pete – As in Dr. Pete, apparently people only know him by that name.

Speaking of Dr. Pete, don’t forget to check out his post 7 Tips for Surviving PubCon to help you make it through the week.

Party Party Party!

I know I know, quit blabbing and get to the good stuff. SEOmoz will be hosting the 3rd Annual Search Spam / Werewolf party on Tuesday night. Tickets are unfortunately limited to 200 people and are for SEOmoz Pro members plus guests, so be sure to RSVP right away before they’re gone!

Here are the details:

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Time: 7-9pm
Location: Wynn Hotel – Chambertin Room
Drinks: 1 free drink ticket per person, cash bar after that

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