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.

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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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Posted by Sam Niccolls

The SEOmoz Social Media Marketing Guide has been re-released and is now available. There is both an online version, as well as an expanded CSV version for those with a free SEOmoz account. The guide, which combines the Social Directory with the Social Media Marketing Tactics article, is an updated resource for marketers looking to expand their social media reach or obtain followed links.

Previously, the Social Directory was only available to PRO members, but with the re-release of the guide we have included many of the followed link sources that Jane compiled in the original PRO-only document and we’ve made the resource available to everyone, with an expanded downloadable version for PRO members.

   
5 Tips for Using the Social Media Marketing Guide

• Identify Greatest Link Juice Opportunities: Sorting the direct link source sites based on mozRank is a great way to help identify the sites that will pass the most link juice.

• Place Primary Focus on the Top 10: There are dozens of social media sites worth targeting, but you likely don’t have the time to target each effectively. So try to focus your initial efforts on the most popular sites before investing time on sites with more niche communities. 

• Filter Based on Category: Sorting by category and deleting the sites that are least relevant for your website content is an important way to whittle down your hit list and prioritize your efforts.

• Target Social News Sites with Largest Community: Prioritizing social news sites based on community size is a great way to identify the news sites that could lead to the greatest number of visitors to your site.   

• Download Expanded Guide: An expanded CSV version of the guide, which has an additional 25 sites that are not available in the online version, can be downloaded from the "List of 101 Social Media Sites" tab.

And for social media lovers, experts, and fanatics with sites to pimp, you can now add bling to your blog and hydraulics to your hypertext with one of Timmy’s snazzy social media badges.

If you have questions, feedback or want to share additional resources, feel free to do so in the comments on this post.

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Posted by great scott!

It’s that time again: Time to build some links and get those rankings up.

So you put on your link-building hat, link-building gloves, and link-building boots, go out, build a few hundred manual links from directories, content sites, blogs, etc., but you still can’t manage to beat that page with a tenth of your links…what gives?

Lately the engines seem to be giving much more authority to sites with strong, high-quality links, so it could be that you’re looking for link-love in all the wrong places. Watch the video to learn how to get the quality you need.

As Rand mentions in the post, PRO Members can make use of the Top Pages and Link Intersect tools to help them discover sources for high-quality links that will seriously help with rankings.

Oh, and while I’m mentioning PRO, there’s still time to get your FREE PubCon Pass by purchasing a year of PRO! We’ve only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. PubCon just raised their prices to $899 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO and a full-access PubCon Pass is an awesome deal.

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Posted by Sam Niccolls

 

 

 

This week’s roll up mixes a little bit of awesome with a little bit of awesomely bad. But regardless of whether or not you threw a Windows 7 launch party at your house, from Talk Like a Pirate Day to actionable SEO tips, the search industry had no shortage of entertaining headlines over the last couple weeks of September.

• 69 Free Tools to Improve Your Website:
  The Grok, Brian Eisenberg, who rolled out a self branded site, shares a great list of usability and marketing tools.

• Google Launches DoubleClick Ad Exchange:
  95% of Google’s revenue still come from search ads, but with the new DoubeClick Ad Exchange Google is poised to increase their display ad business.

• Matt Cutts – Meta Keywords Not a Google Ranking Factor:
  Matt Cutts or Jay-Z? (If I had a nickel for every time I asked that.) In the video on the Google Webmaster Blog, Matt Cutt’s breaks it down like Beyonce’s beau: Google’s got 99 ranking factors, but a meta keyword ain’t one.

• Maintaining Visual Consistency During A/B Tests:
  Testing competing features can move the conversion needle, but at what detriment to user experience? In a post about maximizing the effectiveness of split tests Andrew Chen talks about the importance of having a central visual design.

• SEOmoz Linkbuilding Guide Updated:
  Thanks to Eric Enge’s hard work, an updated version of the Professional’s Guide to Linkbuilding (free for paying PRO members) is now live on the site. Notable updates include adaptations for the inception of Bing, changes in nofollow, and more detailed explanations in select areas.

• Seth Godin’s Brands in Public:
  Though Godin’s Squidoo powered tool was beaten up for how it was rolled out, he promptly did some damage control and changed the tool from being opt-out to opt-in.

• Delving into the Long Tail:
  Rand talked about long tail searches the other week, but Seer Interactive’s blog post on the long tail serves as a great visual guide to conducting keyword research to identifying your greatest long tail opportunities.

• Top Web Analytics Pain Points:
  Integrating web analytics with other marketing solutions and verifying data accuracy topped the list in Unica’s survey of most common analytics headaches.

• Google Analytics API – Event Tracking:
  You may use the the Google Analytics API to push data to your CRM system. Now, for those with video content, the analytics API can also be used for event tracking.

• Bing Continues to Increase Market Share:
  Google may still be the 800 lb gorilla, but Bing has definitely gained some traction over the last couple of months.

• Introduction to AdWords Bidding Tutorial Video:
  Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, lays out some great tips for beginner’s on how to get started with bid price management.

• Most People Don’t Like Being Ad Targeted:
  The study cited by the NY Times stating that two thirds of people don’t like being ad targeted sparked several follow up posts from both Greg Sterling and Matt Cutts. Regardless of your take on how the study was conducted, the article is worth a read.

• Go For it on 4th Down:
  The statistics support always going for it on 4th down, yet football coaches rarely do. The fascinating New York Times article begs the question of how similar thinking can be applied to your business.     

• Great Linkbait From The Guardian:
  The Guardian released several map infographics that give insight into the global recession.

• Pirate SEO Advice:
  Reading the SEO Skeptic post by Cap’n Long John Keyword is a humorous way to enjoy a belated celebration of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

• New Google Keyword Research Tool in Beta:
  Google rolls out a new and improved keyword tool that has advanced filtering and also pulls in data from Google Insights.

• Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment:
  The Marketing Experiments Blog shares a list of seven things you can test on your site to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

• Yahoo’s New Search User Experiece:
  Yahoo search rolls out a revamped look and feel with increased performance and more personalization.

• Searches for Linkbait Ideas:
  Anne Smarty’s list of ways to uncover linkbait offers several useful queries you can use to identify possible linkbait opportunities.

Top YOUmoz entries:

1. * Examining the Top 150 In-Linked Posts at SEOmoz by MikeTek (Promoted to the main blog)

2. The Zeroth Law of Writing for SEO by  Gil Reich

3. Startup or Corporation? The Life Changing Decision by Mgete

4. Parable of the Lost Link by interactivevoices

• Windows 7 Launch Commercial:
  Just when you thought it didn’t get any better than Songsmith the Windows 7 marketing team reminds us that Microsoft research is not the only Redmond team with an ad campaign that belongs on a VH1 awesomely bad list. And for those who have seen the original, the parody is fantastic, too. 

• Bank Emails Sensitve Information to Wrong Emails:
  All PR is good PR… unless of course you are the Rocky Mountain Bank and you emailed social security, password, and other info to over 1,300 of the wrong Gmail users. Oops!

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Posted by willcritchlow

The time has come to register for the London PRO Training Series 2009: Tips, Tricks and Tactics. Building on the success of the recent Seattle event, we have gathered in London some of the best SEOs around and given them strict instructions to make their presentations as actionable and tips-focussed as possible. It’s time to get your ticket for 19th-20th October. Unlike larger conferences, there is no expo hall, no choosing between different tracks and everything is designed to be useful for expert practitioners.

Read on to get a sneak preview of what to expect.

How to book

The essential details you need to know in order to book are:

• When: 19th and 20th October 2009
• Where: The Imagination Gallery (although you have to download some PDFs, it’s worth checking out the great location), Store Street, WC1E 7BL – just off Tottenham Court Road in London’s West End.
• How much: just $599 for PRO members, and only $899 for non-PRO (which currently works out at about £370 or EUR 420 for PRO)

^{The spectacular venue for the London seminar}

Why it’s going to rock

I promised a sneak preview of what you’re going to get at the London event. We are just finalising the exact timings and details, but you should expect to see a schedule something like this:

• "Advanced analytics"
  • Tips for actionable metrics
  • Tips for advanced measurement
  • Tips for dashboards for SEOs, marketing managers and executives
  • Speakers: Will Critchlow
    

• "Getting SEO done against the organisational odds"
  • Tips for SEO in an organisation
  • Team recruitment, management and structure
  • "Managing up" – essential tips for dealing with management
  • Metrics and reporting that work
  • How to write a technical specification
  • Speakers: Richard Baxter from SEOgadget
    

• "ROI from social media"
  • Tips for planning linkbait – idea generation, refinement and execution
  • Tips for how to launch linkbait content
  • How to make the most of linkbait after the spike
  • Using non-linking platforms to leverage linkbait – the Twitter & Facebook effect
  • Speakers: Lucy Langdon from Distilled
    

• "Diagnosing and fixing penalties, understanding guidelines"
  • Website pathology – understanding when you’re penalised and when you’re just not ranking
  • Macro and micro penalties – sitewide and keyword-specific penalties
  • Tips for diagnosing and fixing issues
  • Tips for reinclusion
  • The boundaries of the guidelines – understanding risk
  • Speakers: Jane Copland from Ayima
    

• "Scalable site architecture"
  • Tips for planning large sites
  • Tips for diagnosing site architecture issues
  • How to fix broken site architectures
  • Changing tactics as your site passes size milestones
  • Speakers: Duncan Morris from Distilled
    

• "Expert keyword research"
  • Tips for understanding keyword structures – keyword usage patterns for large sites
  • Trade-offs between accuracy and usability
  • Tips for researching head and tail keywords (and what to do with the knowledge)
  • Tips for evaluating competitiveness
  • International keyword tips – how to research non-English languages
  • Tips for applying keyword research learnings to UGC
  • Speakers: Will Critchlow & Rand Fishkin

• "Live linkbuilding"
  • Two expert SEOs showing details from a real life linkbuilding campaign
    • Strategy
    • Research
    • Execution
  • Speakers: Rand Fishkin and Tom Critchlow from Distilled

• "Conversion rate optimisation"
  • Tips for Designing Landing Pages that Sell
  • Tips for Designing & Pricing Promotions
  • Tips for Building Email-Signup Funnels
  • Tips for Email Marketing
  • Speakers: Ben Jesson from Conversion Rate Experts

• "Head to head presentation-off – the re-match"
  • Speakers: Will Critchlow & Rand Fishkin

• "News site SEO"
  • Tips for dealing with rapidly-published and expiring content
  • Tips for exploiting breaking news
  • How to encourage social engagement with news sites
  • How to target high-value "head" keywords by leveraging unique advantages of news sites
  • Metrics and measurement for news sites
    • Engaging your journalists in the process
  • Speakers: Rob Ousbey from Distilled

• "Reverse Engineering the Competition"
  • Tips for Competitive On-Site/Page Analysis
  • Tips for Competitive Link Analysis
  • Tips for Competitive Strategic Analysis
  • Speakers: Tom Critchlow

• "SEO is Nothing Without Content"
  • Tips for Scaling SEO into Editorial Content Creation
    • How to fit SEO into content brainstorming
    • How to make content that’s produced more likely to earn search traffic
    • How to make SEO part of the content creation tasks
  • Tips for Baking a UGC & SEO Souffle
    • How to get users to do your SEO for you
    • How to maximize/incentivize UGC contributions
    • How to get users to link to UGC
  • Speakers: Rand Fishkin

• "Vertical and universal search"
  • Tips for local search
  • Tips for image and video search
  • Tips for blog search
  • Tips for universal
  • Speakers: Tom Critchlow and Patrick Altoft from Branded3

• "The limits of automation"
  • The hottest tools and how to use them
  • Tools of the future: what no-one’s built yet
  • The limits: tips for when you have to use computers to make humans smarter
  • Speakers: Dave Naylor from Bronco

• "The right strategy for your organisation"
  • SEO tips for startups
  • Tips for competing when you are established but not a household name
  • Tips for dominant / large site improvements
  • Speakers: Will Critchlow and Duncan Morris

The breaking news is that we are hoping to be joined by Ben Hendrickson from SEOmoz revealing the results of the in-depth research he has been doing recently into ranking models – a technical-sounding way of saying that, with access to the vast amounts of data gathered by Linkscape, Ben (one of the smartest people I’ve ever met) has has been mathematically quantifying the value of SEO techniques in the rankings equation.

^{The seminar rooms at the Imagination Gallery}

And once the hard work is out of the way, your ticket gets you access to the exclusive event on the Monday night at the Charlotte Street Blues Bar. I can personally vouch for their cocktails, food and spectacular range of bourbons (what? Someone had to try it out). There will be at least three of the following:

1. Cocktails / finger food
2. Live music
3. A chance to chat informally with the fantastic speakers and other attendees
4. Copies of Google’s algorithm lying around

^{The bourbon bar at Charlotte Street Blues}

Don’t take my word for it

In a survey of attendees of the recent Seattle conference, 90% said they were "extremely" or "very" satisfied with the seminar. They loved Ben Jesson’s and Tom’s presentations (both of whom are presenting in London) and previous attendees have had these things to say:

An excellent high level seminar with substantial advanced tactics. Having attended numerous SEO conferences, this had a much greater ROI.
-Greg Patterson, President, Mojo Juice Inc.

Chock full of detailed strategies, theories and practical explanations of very advanced search optimization methodologies. It was worth every penny (and more, but don’t tell Rand I said so!).
-Marty Martin, Director of Web Strategies, Leisure Publishing Co.

Better than any other SEO conference I’ve attended and the price was less.
-Mike Perez, President, High Ranking Websites, Inc.

Book now

If you’re still not convinced, my top 5 reasons to book a place at the SEOmoz / Distilled London PRO training are:

1. Get unparalleled access to Rand Fishkin, the whole Distilled crew, Jane Copland (ex-SEOmoz – now at Ayima), Richard Baxter (in-house SEO supremo turned consultant), the ever-hilarious Dave Naylor, Ben Jesson (whose recent presentations have blown me away every time) and Patrick Altoft’s quietly spoken genius.
2. Hear the top two presentations from the Seattle seminar, a bunch of never-heard-before presentations and hopefully be among the first to hear the results of Ben Hendrickson’s in-depth ranking models work – the largest and most comprehensive quantitative study I know of into exactly how much each factor affects rankings.
3. Last time Rand challenged me to a presentation-off, I scraped in ahead. Chastened, bruised, he came back to win a similar event at the Seattle seminar the other week. I can’t believe he is going to come with anything less than his A-game this time around. If you want to see us going head to head, this is your chance.
4. It rains in Seattle all the time (Rand claims this isn’t true but it’s rained on me every time I’ve been there). In London, by contrast, it only rains some of the time. But in seriousness, London’s a great city. If you live here, you should come because the seminar’s local and easy. If you don’t live in London, come learn SEO in the greatest city in the world (TM).
5. It’s not all work and no play. We have organised a fantastic evening’s entertainment for the Monday night when you’ll be able to relax and chat with all the people you’ve met during the day. For the seriously hardcore, there are also rumours of a LondonSEO event on the Tuesday evening to talk even more SEO.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, otherwise book your ticket and we’ll see you there.

What would you like to see for the head to head?

Last time Rand and I had a presentation-off, it was on the relatively boring subject of analytics. We were chatting on the phone yesterday and haven’t yet decided what our big show-down should be about. We are considering keyword research, but are still open to other ideas. If you are coming (or are going to buy the DVD) then leave us a note in the comments about what you’d like to see for the big rematch.

Oh, and just in case I haven’t said it often enough yet, don’t forget to book your place. If you have any questions about it you can drop me an email.

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Posted by Nick Gerner

Just before the SEOmoz PRO Seminar, over the weekend, we updated the Linkscape index.  This is great timing because we’re also unveiling (to PRO members only, sorry free members) the prototype for a new tool!  We’re calling it our competitive link finder, powered by Linkscape.  But Tom Schmitz was good enough to explain things in a blog post some weeks back.

But before I dive into the new tool, as is traditional, some numbers:

• URLs: 39 billion
• Root Domains: 55 million
• Subdomains: 208 million
• Links: 443 billion

The sharp members of our audience will recognize that this index is, in fact, smaller than our last.  Our index size is varying from update to update as we tune quality vs coverage.  And this creates some issues around historical tracking.  Believe me, we are working on the issue, stay tuned for more information around this scenario.

More interesting is an Index Quality Study we finished just before this update.  From that study two things are immediately interesting to me. 

First, we estimate that between 60 and 70% of what Y!SE might give you (including no follows, duplicate links) are in our index today (the small one, remember?).  Moreover, we estimate that nearly 50% of what Y!SE will give you, we could too, but we filter out as duplicates, nofollows, or otherwise less important than other data we’ve got in our top 3000 links.

Next we’ve gotten a lot of feedback about how mozRank matches intuitive understanding.  Sure it’s a 10 point scale, similar to Google Toolbar PageRank, but often people are finding it’s off from what they’re expecting.  This is because of the data we’ve been optimizing our index for:

In the past we’ve been concentrating on a more or less random sample of pages users might care about (the red bars).  As it turns out, you guys care a lot more about important pages and want mozRank to be focused at describing the authority of these pages (the blue bars).  So we’ve dramatically shifted the focus of mozRank toward these pages.  Hopefully you should get a better experience out of mozRank and mozTrust for these high authority pages and sites.

We have more data for partners and power users.  PM me if you’re interested.

Finally, here’s the new competitive link tool. (I know you guys already took a peek at it!)  The idea is to identify authoritative sites and communities you could get links from, but don’t already. 

What we do is take your site, and up to five related sites (maybe competitors).  From those we find all the links the related sites have, and find the common ones.  From that we create a check-list.  These are the big important sites your industry is engaging with, but you aren’t. 

Of course, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to get some of these endorsements too.  I mean, you’ve got great content, products, tools, and services.  Users want that stuff.  Google, et al. want to deliver those search results.

So go check out your latest updated data, our new tool, and stay tuned for a Linkscape FAQ adapted from my PRO training slides.  That’s a little something for those of you who couldn’t make it to the seminar

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