Posted by randfish

This post is short and easy to follow, just like the tactic it recommends. Most everyone who optimizes for Google Local (aka Google Maps) is familar with David Mihm’s excellent and oft-referenced Local Search Ranking Factors. In that document, and in many places where local results are analyzed, it’s clear that getting your business/website into more listings, in a consistent fashion is a very good thing.

Yet, somehow, this obvious tactic has gone missing from many GG Local optimization recommendations. Either that or it’s so obvious that no one feels the need to mention it. Whatever the case, it’s available now

Step 1: Do Lots of Searches Related to Your Business & Region

Let’s say you’re working on local SEO for a Thai restaurant in Seattle, WA. Searches you might perform include:

• Thai Seattle, WA
• Thai Restaurants Seattle, WA
• Seattle Thai Restaurants
• Thai Food Seattle

You’re seeking results that show competing or closely related businesses, so get creative.

Step 2: Identify a Handful (or a Few Dozen) Businesses that Consistently Get Top Rankings

You could build a formal spreadsheet and perform tracking to identify these or start with gut feel and expand later on in the process. For less competitive listings, an informal approach may work just fine.

Step 3: Go to the Local Business Profile for Each of These

Don’t click the name of the listing itself. Instead, follow the links to the "reviews" about each of your competitors’ businesses. You’ll get a page with information about the business, reviews and lists of data that Google has found about them.

Step 4: Click on the Links to "More About this Place"

The "more about this place" section of the business listing shows brief snippets, titles and URLs where Google has found relevant information pertaining to the business. This is your potential goldmine for discovering listing sources.

Step 5: Go to those Sites & Get Your Business Added/Updated

 The domains that are listed are places where Google is pulling information about your business. This is where the Maps algorithm comes into play – it relies on not only the number of listings, but the quality of the sources and the consistency between them. You want every listing to perfectly match one another, right down the the suffix on the reservations phone number and the formatting of your suite number (e.g. 1221 E Pike Street vs. 1221 East Pike Street vs. 1221 E Pike Street Suite 200 vs. 1221 East Pike Street #200 are all DIFFERENT – don’t make that mistake).

As an example, I visited a link from Thaiku’s listing in the example above to Intuit’s Local Business Directory (I didn’t even know they had one until now) and could then add/edit SEOmoz’s listing:

In addition to the potential local ranking boost, a majority of these sources offer the potential to earn links! Even if you don’t care much about the local results themselves, this is a pretty terrific way to get some good quality, trusted sites linking to you.

Step 6: Repeat Step 4 & 5 for the "Reviews" and "User Content" Sections

If you’re hungry for even more sources, you can look at where listings come from on other competitors and/or go back to the business listing’s page in Google Maps/Local and choose from the "reviews" and "user content" sections for even more potential spots. Much like manual link building back in the late ’90’s, perseverance and careful attention to detail will take you far.

There are automated services out there to help with this process, but I haven’t yet seen one I feel completely comfortable about. The biggest issue is the dramatic value of and need for consistency in the listings. When automated systems submit, they can mix in a suite number in the wrong place, cut off a phone number because the form doesn’t accept hyphens or confirm a URL that doesn’t match what you’ve submitted elsewhere. For now, I recommend playing it safe and spending the hours (even if that’s a dozen or two) to get those 50-250 listings correct. Google will reward you with local rankings and high quality traffic.

p.s. Next week I’m down in Portland for SEMpdx’s Searchfest and hope to spend time with some true local search experts and perhaps share some more cutting edge tactics

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Posted by randfish

We’ve been getting a lot of questions in Q+A and on the road at events like last week’s Miva Merchant conference, Online Marketing Summit and the YCombinator conference about how to properly paginate results for search engines. In this post, we’ll cover the dangers, opportunities and optimization tactics that can best ensure success. The best part? These practices aren’t just good for SEO, they’re great for usability and user experience too!

Why is Pagination an SEO Issue?

Pagination, the practice of segmenting links to content on multiple pages, affects two critical elements of search engine accessibility.

• Crawl Depth: Best practices demand that the search engine spiders reach content-rich pages in as few "clicks" as possible (turns out, users like this, too). This also impacts calculations like Google’s PageRank (or Bing’s StaticRank), which determine the raw popularity of a URL and are an element of the overall algorithmic ranking system.
• Duplicate Content: Search engines take duplication very seriously and attempt to show only a single URL that contains any given piece of content. When pagination is implemented improperly, it can cause duplicate content problems, both for individual articles and the landing pages that allow browsing access to them.

When is Pagination Necessary?

When a site grows beyond a few dozen pages of content in a specific category or subcategory, listing all of the links on a single page of results can make for unwieldly, hard-to-use pages that seem to scroll indefinitely (and can cause long load times as well).

Clearly, I need to log into Facebook more often…

But, usability isn’t the only reason pagination exists. For many years, Google’s recommended that pages contain no more than 100 links (internal or external) in order to make it easy for spiders to reach down deep into a site’s architecture. Many SEOs have found that this "limit" isn’t hard and fast, but staying within that general range remains a best practice. Hence, pages that contain many hundreds or thousands of links may inadvertently be hurting the access of search engines to the content-rich pages in the list making pagination essential.

Numbers of Links & Pages

We know that sometimes pagination is essential – one page of results just doesn’t cut it in every situation. But just how many links to content should the average category/results page show? And how many pages of results should display in the pagination?

There are a lot of options here, but there’s serious danger in using the wrong structures. Let’s take a look at the right (and wrong) ways to determine link numbers.

In some cases, there’s simply too many pages of results to list them all. When this happens, the very best thing you can do is to work around the problem by… creating more subcategories! It may seem challenging or even counter-intuitive, but adding either an extra layer of classification or a greater number of subcategories can have a dramatically positive impact on both SEO and usability.

There are times, however, when even the creation of many deep subcategories isn’t enough. If your site is big enough, you may need to have extensive pagination such that not every page of results can be reached in once click. In these cases, there are a few clear dos and don’ts.

Do:

• Try to link to as many pages of the pagination structure as possible without breaking the 100(ish) links per page limit
• Show newer content at the top of the results list when possible, as this means the most link juice will flow to newer articles that need it (and are temporally relevant)
• Use and link to relevant/related categories & subcategories to help keep link juice flowing throughout the site
• Link back to the top results from each of the paginated URLs

Don’t:

• Show only a few surrounding paginated links from paginated URLs – you want the engines to be able to crawl deeper from inside the structure
• Link to only the pages at the front and end of the paginated listings; this will flow all the juice to the start and end of results, ingoring the middle
• Try to randomize the paginated results shown in an effort to distribute link juice; you want a static site architecture the engines can crawl
• Try to use AJAX to get deeper in the results sets – engines follow small snippets of Javascript (sometimes), but they’re not at a point where this is an SEO best practice
• Go over the top trying to get every paginated result linked-to, as this can appear both spammy and unusably ugly

When in doubt, consider the directives you’re optimizing toward – the need for fewer extra pages of pagination, the desire to make the browsing experience usable (many webmasters mistakenly think users will simply give up and search, forgetting that some of us can’t recall the name of the piece we’re looking for!) and the importance of maintaining a reasonable count of links per page. Also note that although I’ve illustrated using 5-10 listings (for graphical space requirements), a normal listings set could be 30-90 links per page, depending on the situation.

Titles & Meta Descriptions for Paginated Results

In most cases, the title and meta description of paginated results are copied from the top page. This isn’t ideal, as it can potentially cause duplicate content issues. Instead, you can employ a number of tactics to help solve the problem.

Example of results page titles & descriptions:

Top Page Title: Theatres & Playhouses in Princeton, New Jersey
Top Page Meta Description: Listings of 368 theatres, playhouses and performance venues in the Princeton, NJ region (including surrounding cities).

Page 4 Title: Page 4 of 7 for Princeton, New Jersey Theatres & Playhouses
Page 4 Meta Description: Listings 201-250 (out of 368) theatres, playhouses and performance venues in the Princeton, NJ region (inclusing surrounding cities).

Alternate Page 4 Title: Results Page 4/7 for Princeton, New Jersey Theatres & Playhouses
Alternate Page 4: Description: -

Yes, you can use no meta description at all, and in fact, if I were setting up a CMS today, this is how I’d do it. A missing meta description reduces complexity and potential mis-casting of URLs as duplicates. Also notce that I’ve made the titles on results pages sub-optimal to help dissuade the engines from sending traffic to these URLs, rather than the top page (which is made to be the better "landing" experience for users).

Nofollows. Rel=Canonicals and Conditional Redirects

Some SEOs and website owners have, unfortunately, received or interpreted advice incorrectly about employing directives like the nofollow tag, canonical URL tag or even conditional redirects to help control bot activity in relation to pagination. These are almost always a bad idea.

Whatever you do, DO NOT:

• Put a rel=canonical directive on paginated results pointing back to the top page in an attempt to flow link juice to that URL. You’ll either misdirect the engines into thinking you have only a single page of results or convince them that your directives aren’t worth following (as they find clearly unique content on those pages).
• Add nofollow to the paginated links on the results pages. This tells the engines not to flow link juice/votes/authority down into the results pages that desperately need those votes to help them get indexed and pass value to the deeper pages.
• Create a conditional redirect so that when search engines request paginated results, they 301 redirect or meta refresh back to the top page of results.

The only time I recommend using any of these is when pagination exists in multiple formats. For example, if you let users re-sort by a number of different metrics (in a restaurant list, for example, it might be by star rating, distance, name, price, etc.), you may want to either perform this re-sort using javascript (and employ the hash tag in the URL) or make those separately segmented paginated results rel=canonical back to a single sorting format.

Letting Users Display More/Less Results

From a usability perspective, this can make good sense, allowing users with faster connections or a greater desire to browse large numbers of results at once to achieve these goals. However, it can cause big duplicate problems for search engines, and add complexity and useless pages to the engines’ indices. If/when you create these systems, employ javascript/AJAX (either with or without the hash tag) to make the pages reload without creating a separate URL.

(the Google Analytics interface allows users to choose the number of rows shown, though they don’t have to worry much about crawlability or search-friendliness)

Also remember that the "default" number of results shown is what the search engines will see; so make that count match your goals for usability and SEO.

Additional Resources

• A Gallery of Pagination Examples and Recommendations from Smashing Magazine
• A Farewell to Pagination from SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday series
• The SEO Pager Plugin for Wordpress is a highly customizable set of options that allows you to create search-engine friendly pagination in Wordpress’s CMS from SEO Egghead

If you have any thoughts or recommendations to share in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!

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Posted by jennita

Over the past few months, we’ve announced a number of exciting changes here at the mozPlex. Some of those include becoming focused on our software, new SEO tools and a cultural change with our TAGFEE Tenets. With that, we’re committed to being transparent and authentic and feel we’ve done a great job keeping the SEOmoz community up to date on many of these changes.

However, one area we’ve been slacking is in ensuring that our community knows who we are, as a team. There are many mozzers who mainly work behind the scenes building tools, or providing excellent customer service to our members. Along with our shift from consulting, we’ve had a few organizational changes and people’s roles have changed. Additionally we have a number of moz Associates that help contribute to the blog and provide expertise in Q & A.

We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our team, and ask you to get to know us a little better. There are a few new mozzers that may even surprise you! This is an exciting time for us and the community and we’re excited to introduce ourselves. Each mozzer was asked to provide their title, social media accounts, top moz moment (tools created, blog posts written, etc.), then I asked them to answer a few fun questions. So without further ado, I’d like you to meet the mozzers.

Development Team

Every team plays an important role to the success of SEOmoz and our tools, but the development team is key. Without this group we wouldn’t have the suite of amazing tools that we have to offer our members today. Browse through the developers and see who has worked on your favorite tool, and learn more about the people behind the scenes.

Ben Hendrickson Sr Software Engineer @bhendrickson  moz Moment "From the day I started building the Linkscape prototype to the day we launched the first version was about 10 months. I think that project went well."  I am proud to answer questions like this in a confusing and self-referential way.	Chas Williams Software Developer  moz Moment "I work mostly on Linkscape these days. I wrote the code for anchor text distributions and the new views for OSE, so the OSE launch was a proud moment for me " My favorite Youtube video.	David Joslin Systems Engineer David on LinkedIn  moz Moment "Since starting in August I have worked to improve our uptime significantly through monitoring, tuning, and application fixes. " On Saturday morning I hang out with my kids until my wife gets her beauty sleep and then I try to get a mountain bike ride in before working in the yard and other chores.
Jeff Pollard Lead Web Developer @nFluxx Jeff on LinkedIn moz Moment "I make sure your website experience is a wonderful one! " On Saturday morning I like to catch up on sleep.	Kate Matsudaira VP Engineering @katemats  moz Moment "Helping bring SEO tools and technology to the next level" Why is the sky blue? Because of Avogadro’s number – the number of molecules in a mole determine the wavelength of light reflected (I learned this in my physical chemistry class when we had to derive Avogadro’s number if the sky was yellow — as a result I will never forget this bit of trivia).	Ken Woodruff Senior Architect Ken will have to remain a mystery for another day because he did not get me his bio information in time. To be continued…
Nick Gerner Senior Engineer @gerner Nick on LinkedIn   Nick on Facebook  NickGerner.com  moz Moment Nick Leads SEOmoz API development and is currently working on solutions for historical Linkscape data tracking. On Saturday morning I go for a run, then chase my cats Garrison and Ira until my wife Susan wakes up.	Phil Smith Developer @philhsmith  moz Moment "Working on sooper-top secret project" The funniest job I ever had was… In high-school during the summer I would be the guy-in-a-foam-costume mascot for the local mall I worked at. Think giant purple dinosaur (but not barney.)	Roger Mozbot Needs No Title @roger_mozbot  moz Moment Standing on a crate in order to be as tall as Googlebot. Raised by a protein-rich, startup-obsessed race of robot aliens. Can’t stand paying per click.

Marketing Team

Now that we are focused on our SEO tools, the consulting and marketing teams have been combined. There have been a number of changes in roles and we’re now more focused than ever on getting our products launched, participating and leading our amazing community, and creating excellent content for our readers. Take a peak at our new Marketing team!

Danny Dover SEO Specialist @DannyDover Danny on LinkedIn  moz Moment Danny is at least half full of SEO know-how Rock, Paper or Scissors? Paper. On Saturday morning I…Kick ass and take names. Want to be on the list?	Jen Sable Lopez Community Director @jennita Jen on LinkedIn  moz Moment Having worked remotely for 9 months, I LOVE being in the office. The funniest job I ever had was… in college one summer I tasted beef. It paid well, but was really disgusting!
Joanna Lord Director of Customer Acquisition & Engagement @joannalord Joanna on LinkedIn  moz Moment "My focus is on introducing new audiences to our awesome resources and SEO tools. " My favorite Youtube video is… The Sunscreen Song On Saturday morning I… wake up, make coffee, check analytics, and then go explore my new home–Seattle.	Scott Willoughby Director-Conversion & Retention Marketing @great_scott Scott on LinkedIn  moz Moment Whiteboard Fridays Rock, Paper or Scissors? Rock! \m/ On Saturday morning I… wish cartoons were still as cool as they used to be.

Product Team

The product team leads the path to ensuring that the products being built meet the needs of our customers and they manage the projects from inception through deployment. Essentially they make sure we’re all doing our jobs.

Adam Feldstein Director of Product Management  moz Moment Current Focus: 1) Ship a new version of the mozBar. 2) Something much bigger (that I can’t talk about yet) Funniest jobs: I once played a rock/punk gig at a high school party. Ended up being extra fun when the lead guitarist locked his keys in the van with the engine running (fortunately I think we had already gotten the gear out).

Ben Huff Product Manager Ben on LinkedIn  moz Moment "I focus on herding cats. Recently that included getting Open Site Explorer out the door, safe and sound. I’m currently working on doing the same for the new Keyword Difficulty tool." The sky is blue because blue light waves are the shortest visible waves coming from the sun, and scatter off of molecules in the air the easiest.

Matt Heilman Art Director  moz Moment "I make SEOmoz look good"

Operations Team

Who keeps the company working like a well oiled machine? That’s the Operations team of course! They jump in and help with any aspect of the company as needed and are often our customers first point of contact. Without their magic touch the office would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Thanks for keeping us from running into each other!

Arden Turnbull Customer Service Manager / Office Coordinator  moz Moment Arden keeps our customers happy!

Christine V. Director of Operations  moz Moment I do my best to increase the staff’s level of happiness and productiveness, much like Tattoo on Fantasy Island. If SEOmoz was a Lifetime movie, I would be played by William Hung.

Sarah Bird Chief Operations Officer @SarahBird  Sarah on LinkedIn   moz Moment I own legal, financial, HR, and generally help make everything run smoothly. I also champion the Marketing Department and the SEOmoz API. I love my job. On Saturday morning I… Sleep in and then go for a long run around Lake Union.

moz Associates

This is an amazing group of experts from across the search marketing industry. We’re priveledged to have this group contributing to the blog, helping with Q & A and providing insight for new products. It sorta feels like we’re showing off… because we totally are! 

Cindy Krum CEO & founder of Rank-Mobile – Denver, CO @Suzzicks Cindy on LinkedIn   Cindy on Facebook  moz Moment Cindy is a mobile marketing evangelist. She’ll be providing help in Q & A on mobile topics. Why is the sky blue? Because that is the way Google wants it? (We’re not sure if it will stay blue though – its still in beta and hasn’t officially launched.)	Duncan Morris Founder and CEO, Distilled – London, UK @duncanmorris  moz Moment Given that I always drone on about information architecture I guess I should really point to this post though at the time it came out this was my most interesting post. On a Saturday morning I travel around the south of England to the coldest and wettest playing fields in existence to play field hockey for Wimbledon Hockey Club. Of course in the UK we just call this hockey, but that would give you all the false impression that I’m rock hard and can ice skate.	Jane Copland SEO Consultant, Ayima Search Marketing – London, England Jane on LinkedIn Jane’s Personal Social Media Profile  moz Moment "I’ve written a couple of successful blog posts for SEOmoz (I worked as a full-time employee at SEOmoz from 2006 until 2009). My favourites are: Don’t End URLs in .0, What Rand and Jane Write When They’re Drunk, the follow-up and  A True Story. It’s about hookers." The funniest job I ever had was… I used to work for Rand
Kate Morris Kate Morris, Search Engine Marketing Consultant – Austin, TX @katemorris Kate on LinkedIn  moz Moment "My favorite blog post on YouMoz was Paid Search: Detaching From an Agency, which is what got me speaking on my first panel at SMX East 2008." I’m proud to be an … Army Brat. My favorite Youtube video is … Louis CK – Everything is Amazing, and Nobody’s Happy	Lindsay Wassell Q & A – Tampa Bay, FL @lindzie  moz Moment This post: Rethinking Duplicate Content On Saturday morning I… am awake before dawn caring for my newborn twins! I’m proud to be a… SEO	Michael Cottam Principal, Michael Cottam SEO Consulting – Portland, OR, Canada @Michael512 Michael on LinkedIn  Michael on Facebook   moz Moment I like this one, and it seemed to generate a pile o’ comments: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/its-a-feeding-frenzy-for-keywordrich-domains I’m proud to be a member of the downtown Portland Rotary Club and on the Ambassador Board of the Children’s Cancer Association.
Peter Meyers President, User Effect – Chicago, IL @dr_pete  moz Moment The post: SEO Cheat Sheet: Anatomy of a URL My most popular post on my own blog (by a longshot) is 25 Point Website Usability Checklist.  The funniest job I ever had was… Stuffing photo envelopes with a pot dealer and Christian survivalist. Why is the sky blue? … because The Flying Spaghetti Monster made it that way.	Richard Baxter Director / Founder SEOgadget.co.uk - London, UK @richardbaxter  moz Moment Hmm. I like writing about tools you guys do – Like this and this and pretty charts on ranking factors using Linkscape data like this.  And I really like talking about Microformats. My favorite Youtube video is… Eric Clapton Shreds – is pure awesome and always puts a smile on my face. One day match this level of guitar genius…	Rob Ousbey Search Marketing Consultant, Distilled – Seattle, WA (soon to be) @RobOusbey  moz Moment People seem to like my how-to and link building posts.  On Saturday morning I: often wake up to the smell of bacon The funniest job I ever had was: watching petrol drip down an inclined hot plate to measure the amount of residue. I won an award for it. Hotplate Rob they called me. Ahh, good times, good times.
Sam Crocker SEO Consultant, Distilled – London, for now! @crockstarltd Personal Fashions & Trends Blog  moz Moment I’m pretty new to the moz crew but I was pretty pleased with manning up to take on a "doozy" for my first Q & A and think I found a good solution to the problem I’m proud to be a… n Uh-merican, where at least I know I’m free! The funniest job I ever had was… working at McDonalds when I was 14 years old. My mom said "you can work for me for free 6 hours a day or you can get a job" we all know that Macky D’s is one of the few places that will hire 14 year olds and the rest is history.	Tom Critchlow Head of Search Marketing, Distilled – London Baby. @tomcritchlow  moz Moment My most loved SEOmoz post was this one, mainly because of it’s sensationalist headline… Headlines ftw. My proudest SEOmoz contribution was speaking at both the Seattle and London pro seminars in 2009 and getting some really positive feedback and comments. Rock, paper scissors? After years of playing poker I can now comfortably crush Will at rock paper scissors despite him claiming it’s a game of chance. I will gladly play any game of any sort for money.	Will Critchlow Co-Founder of Distilled, UK & US – London, UK. Though anywhere rainy appears to do. @willcritchlow Will on LinkedIn  moz Moment Taking credit for lots of things done by our team, I’m probably most proud of the London PRO seminar in October last year. My personal favourite post, mainly for the title (just google "space monstering") is this one. Rock, Paper or Scissors? I always lose this to Tom. Rock.

Boss Team

Last, but definitely not least we have our co-founders Rand and Gillian. They may very well be the most well known of the bunch, but I bet you didn’t know Rand used to be a black market Pokemon dealer! Without these two, we wouldn’t be the team we are today.

Gillian Muessig President/Co-Founder @seomom Gillian on LinkedIn  moz Moment "I’m the corporate evangelist and international voice for SEOmoz. My role is to connect the the SEOmoz community with the SEOmoz team and to spread the SEOmoz brand to new audiences and markets." I’m proud to be a… Mozzer. Nothing feels quite so good as seeing the fruition of a life’s work. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Rand Fishkin CEO @randfish Rand on LinkedIn  moz Moment The Beginner’s Guide On Saturday morning I … am hopefully sleeping in (though perhaps a more accurate answer would be that I’m at an airport). I am proud to be a … husband. (Geraldine: Awwww!)

Thanks for taking the time to get to know us!

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Posted by Dr. Pete

This post started as a reaction to accusations in the SEO industry that Top X lists, awards, etc. are only going to people’s friends. As I was writing it over what ended up being 2 weeks, I realized just how broad this issue really is, from personal to professional to political. I hope you’ll indulge me as I try to do justice to a topic that goes well beyond SEO.

We all know how it feels to be on the outside looking in. You start out feeling awkward and a little envious, but slowly it turns into something worse – depression, resentment, even rage. Eventually, we find a group to belong to, and the tables turn. No matter how often we were excluded (and maybe because of it), we eventually start to exclude others. It’s a vicious, if all too human, cycle, and it extends to every corner of our social interactions.

My Friends Are The Best

Just ask them; I’m sure they’ll agree. Do we prefer our friends? Do we give them the best opportunities and accolades? Absolutely. This is more than bias, though; it’s the simple reality of relevance. If you ask me who the "best" expert is in some niche of my own field or what the best article is on Topic X, I’m going to immediately draw from what I already know. Stating the obvious, I can’t recommend someone or something that I don’t even know exists.

Of course, there are times when we have a responsibility to dig deeper and look for the best candidates outside of our own limited realm of experience. When I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa, I had the opportunity to be the first student in my department to serve on a faculty search committee. One aspect of that experience that stuck with me was Iowa’s affirmative action policy. It wasn’t about numbers and quotas so much as a core philosophy that we had a professional obligation to search far and wide for the best candidate. We had the duty to leave our comfortable world of people just like us and venture into the world of "them".

Confirmation Bias

Beyond simple relevance is something more powerful, and sometimes more insidious. We all have a natural tendency to take sides, and, once we do, to find reasons why our side is right and the other side is wrong. Psychologists call this "confirmation bias," the often unconscious need to find data that confirms what we already believe. If we like someone, we’ll find reasons to support them and give them the benefit of the doubt. If we dislike someone, we’ll find reasons to be suspicious of everything they say and do. If you think confirmation bias is something only other people have, you’re fooling yourself.

Choosing Sides

Beyond our friends, confirmation bias quickly begins to apply to all of our cliques and teams. If you’re a sports fan, then that team mentality is usually just harmless fun – associating with your team provides a shared emotional experience. I’m a Cubs fan – believe me when I say that I understand the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, although not in quite the ratio I’d like. What happens, though, when that team mentality starts to apply to things like politics, as we’ve seen far too often over the past couple of decades (on both sides of the fence)? Suddenly, our clique is 50% of the population, and our enemies are the other 50%. At best, it’s divisive. At worst, it breeds hate, violence, and bigotry.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Of course, we all like to think that we’re free from bias, but the power of bias is that the flaws that are obvious in others are often hidden and unconscious in ourselves. If I mention that I do SEO, do you picture a savvy internet guru or spam-spewing snake-oil salesman? If you’re an SEO, and you hear that I work with SEOmoz, do you think I’m a paragon of white-hat virtue or part of Rand’s evil conspiracy to take over the industry? Reality is probably somewhere in between. If I tell you that I voted for Obama, do you see a beacon of liberal hope or a Communist bent on destroying our nation? I can assure you that I am neither. So, how do we get past these labels and start to understand people, whether personally or professionally?

Get to Know People

Social media has given us a difficult dichotomy. On the one hand, it’s never been easier to "friend" people in shallow and meaningless ways. On the other hand, we have the tools to get to know our peers and friends of friends in ways that were never before possible. The next time you friend someone, take a moment and find out something about them. Where are they from? What do they do? What kind of music do they like? Do they blog? If they do, read a post. If you see a label ("liberal", "conservative", "Twilight fan"), don’t jump to conclusions. Give that person a chance to speak for themselves.

Play In a Different Park

It’s easy to be self-righteous when you’re surrounded by your fan-boys and girls. It’s easy to get a standing ovation at your campaign rally when you only invite the people who gave you the most money. If you want perspective, you have to give up the home-field advantage. If you disagree with someone, comment on their post instead of running back home to write a rant. Try guest-blogging – even better, guest-blog in a different industry. Try to explain why SEO is worthwhile to an audience of small business owners, designers or UX professionals. It’ll be a tough sell, but you’ll learn a lot in the process.

When In Doubt, Ask

Social media is a mine field of misunderstanding – if you’re not sure what someone means in that 140-character Tweet, ask them. If they write a blog post that seems like a personal attack, call them. It’s not just about being nice – bad blood runs deep, and today’s simple misunderstanding could destroy relationships and opportunities tomorrow.

Open Your Circle

We all remember the people who excluded us, and we too often hold that fact against the universe. Let it go. When you finally get into that circle, especially your professional circle, try to remember that someone else is still outside looking in. Here are a few ways to give someone else a chance, because we can all use a little good karma:

• Promote other people’s links and awards, even the competition.
• If you’re at a conference talking to a group and you see someone standing outside the circle with that awkward look of faux participation, invite them in.
• Make an introduction to help someone’s career along.
• If someone is new to blogging, comment, subscribe, or even link to them.
• When someone challenges you publicly, listen and think before you counterattack.
• Don’t envy other people’s success – learn from it and improve.
• Every once in a while, shut up and listen.

At the end of the day, those of us who have attained some measure of success need to remember that we all had a little help along the way. Try to return the favor once in a while.

Photo licensed from iStockPhoto.com (Photographer: Hélène Vallée)

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Posted by Sam Niccolls

"Don’t do viral marketing until your product doesn’t suck. If you do, more people will find out your product sucks." This pearl of wisdom from serial entrepreneur Dave McClure applies well not only to product development, but also to conversion rate optimization. The extension would be "don’t focus on getting more visitors until your site converts the visitors it already gets."

This is a sentiment we’ve taken to heart here at SEOmoz. So in this post we will share how we grew traffic and conversions in 2009, as well as some of the valuable lessons we’ve learned in the process, which we’re excited to execute on in 2010.

Traffic Statistics from 2009

In the past, SEOmoz has shared data about the traffic we receive (see past years – 2006, 2007). In 2008, we somehow skipped out, but this year, we’re bringing sexy back. Yes, it’s probably helpful to our competitors, but it’s also hugely valuable to our members (we hope) and part of our core value of transparency. So in the same vein of Rand’s blog posts about the venture funding process, we’re opening the kimono and sharing some analysis in hopes that others can benefit from our traffic and conversion rate learnings. 

We’ll start with an overview of visitor and broad traffic data: 

The early part of the year featured a big growth, as the overall popularity of the site spiked, new traffic sources (like Twitter) started bringing in visitors and we finally experimented with email marketing for the first time. The latter part of the year saw relatively steady numbers, with a small, predictable fall in December for the holidays.

Return visits show a fairly similar trend, with a slight drop in Q4 (though, as you’ll see below, it was a massive growth from 2008).

We’ve come a long way in 2009 – growing traffic to the site as a whole and to the blog. Revenue was also up over 250%, so it’s not just additional visits or visitors – conversions have also been improving.

All this raw data is interesting, but it’s even more valuable to dig in deep and identify the opportunities for improvement.

11 Conversion Rate Optimization Lessons We Learned in 2009

If marketers are captains of leaking ships, finding ways to remove more water faster might work, but plugging the holes and improving conversion rates is much more efficient. At SEOmoz we’re proud of the ship we’re sailing, but there’s also a laundry list of ways we can improve. So based on some of the things we learned in 2009, here are some of the holes we will look to plug to keep the Moz ship rising in 2010.

 

The takeaways from these slides shouldn’t be – do exactly what we’re doing on your pages – but rather, find a process at your company to identify where your traffic is going, where you are losing customers, and make small conversion rate improvements because, depending on how you monetize your site, making incremental conversion rate improvements could be the most efficient way to hit your revenue goals this year.

For us at SEOmoz, 2009 was an outstanding traffic year. We’re certainly proud of the fact that over 100,000 more visitors will visit the site this January than last January, but we are also well aware of the fact that more traffic does not equate to more revenue. So for this reason, we will continue to place our efforts on better converting the visitors we already have and better retaining our existing PRO members.

In closing, please note that this post is not meant to bash SEO, PPC, social media marketing, or any other traffic building tactics. Getting traffic to websites is what we do. It’s at the core of what we do at SEOmoz! Our goal is simply to be transparent about how we’re working to improve our business. Admittedly, however, when Rand says conversion rate optimization will be a major trend in 2010, it’s possible he’s projecting just a little.

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Posted by great scott!

Welcome, dear readers, to the first Whiteboard Friday of 2010!! As you may notice, there’s a bit of a new look. This comes in large part from our move to a different video hosting solution. We hope these changes will provide a higher-quality WBF experience, and better accessibility for our viewers around the world. On with the show…

There’s always debate: should you focus on your big head terms, or those wide-ranging tail terms? We’ve invited one of our best mozMates, Will Critchlow of Distilled, to join us for a look at how to balance your keyword strategy.

A major factor in designing your strategy needs to be analytics data. As Will discusses, many people find that analytics show most of their conversions coming from branded keyphrases, but this doesn’t adequately reflect the search path people are following before they make a latent conversion.  In the video Rand and Will discuss how to take this into account and make sure you’re targeting the best phrases for your business and your audience.

Will is currently stuck at the airport trying to get home to the snowed-in United Kingdom, so the post he references in the video isn’t available yet. In the mean time, you can view his slide deck from the "Analytics Every SEO Should Know" presentation he gave at the SEOmoz London Seminar this winter. Slides 23 and 24 show a little bit about first-touch and multi-touch search analytics. Keep an eye here, or on the Distilled blog for his post about doing first-touch analysis in Google Analytics.

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Posted by randfish

Historically, I’ve been fairly narrow in what I read in the blogosphere and tech arena (almost all SEO-centric stuff). You can see my Firefox sidebar list here, which  hasn’t changed much since 2008 with the exception of the blogs and news sections. But, over the past 6 months, I’ve been broadening out considerably and found that it adds a great deal to the conversations I’m able to participate in and contribute to, especially as SEOmoz itself has expanded from the SEO world to the larger technology and startup world. For the New Year, I thought I’d share some of the sources that have contributed most on this front and some of my favorite posts/contributions from those sources.

#1 – Hacker News

(http://news.ycombinator.com)

I find more good stuff here than anywhere else, and the diversity is impressive, too. Tragically, Hacker News is also a place for lots of misinformation, fear, and loathing around SEO, but it’s good to get a sense for how the rest of the technology world still views our niche. The signal to noise ratio is higher than on places like delicious/popular, the tech subreddit or Digg (which has become largely useless to tech professionals as its moved away from its roots).

A few items I’ve found via Hacker News include:

• Why everything you think about User Centered Design in Wrong
• On Self Promotion
• The death of the boring blog post

#2 – A VC

(http://www.avc.com)

Fred writes compelling pieces consistently, almost never gets preachy, is self-promotional in a highly credible and useful way and brings up topics I wouldn’t have thought about without him. Most of us can’t have Fred on our boards or as an investor, but we can get into his head via his blog and participating more in the comments there has been a priority of mine for a while (he’s built a remarkable community in the comments).

Some favorite posts:

• Tenacity
• The "We Need to Own" Baloney
• Ten Characteristics of Great Companies

#3 – Chris Dixon

(http://cdixon.org)

Chris, like Fred, delivers crystal clear value propostions with his posts. And IMO, he’s even higher signal to noise than Fred. I don’t always agree with him on everything, but I like the way he thinks about problems, I like the ones he brings up and I think he has his finger intensely on the pulse of what startups and technologists (and technical marketers like SEOs) are thinking about and dealing with. It’s a pleasure to see a new post from Chris – here’s to hoping he makes many more in 2010.

Some favorites include:

• Why the web will continue to grow rapidly
• Man and superman
• Software patents should be abolished

#4 – Techmeme

(http://techmeme.com)

Techmeme is an obvious choice, but it’s also critical to the list. If it weren’t for Techmeme, I’d have to wade through ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and Techcrunch post-by-post, every day. Don’t ever leave us, Gabe.

No specific posts here – there’s far too many to name, and the site updates much too quickly for me to even recall all the great stuff I’ve found here. However, I will say that I highly recommend m.techmeme.com for mobile browsing. It’s been a joy to scroll through every time my wife takes extra-long in the dressing room at Anthropologie.

#5 – Answers On Startups

(http://answers.onstartups.com)

Launched just this past October, Answers On Startups has become a haven for learning more about the challenges, issues and questions entrepreneurs face in the technology world. I’ve recommended it before, and early on participated heavily (and I’d like to do more of that in the future), but if you’re seeking answers from highly authoritative folks in a scalable fashion, this is the spot. I’m really impressed by the quality of many contributions there - the signal to noise is pretty exceptional.

Some of the best include:

• What’s more important: release fast or getting it right?
• Free Trial vs. Freemium
• Qualities/skills of a CEO

#6 – Daring Fireball

(http://daringfireball.net)

In my ideal world, 5 years from now, when I’ve been put out to pasture by someone smarter and more capable, or bought out I’d have a blog like this. Some entries are just links, some are lengthy and thoughtful and all are interesting and worth reading. Author John Gruber also brings a remarkably diverse range of topics to the site and yet somehow, signal to noise remains high.

A few recent picks:

• Google’s Meaning of Open (a short, but flawless skewering)
• The Next iPhone
• A Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs

#7 – Steve Blank

(http://steveblank.com)

A few of Steve’s posts are not only relevant, but serve to actually change direction in the executive ranks here at SEOmoz. That’s high praise, but if you read the blog, you’ll see what I mean. Steve’s been there, and his experiences run in shocking parallel to the issues we face or worry about on a regular basis. Even when I disagree with points, the logic and thought he puts into the post makes for a great read and a hard think.

Some of his best:

• The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas are No Longer Free
• Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves
• Good Enough Decision Making

#8 – NYTimes Most Emailed

(http://www.nytimes.com/gst/mostemailed.html)

Despite the financial and institutional problems they face, the NYTimes still puts out absolutely phenomenal content on nearly every area of life. From cooking to politics, travel to health, there is amazing material to be found in the Grey Lady, and the Most Emailed list is the place to find the best of the best.

Some favorites:

• Twitter Chatter During the Superbowl (I love their interactive graphics)
• Using Menu Psychology to Entice Diners
• Google Keeps Tweaking its Search Engine
• 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)

#9 - Venture Hacks

(http://venturehacks.com)

 When I was out trying to raise a second round of VC this summer (big mistake – more on that in a future post), Venturehacks’ historic content was invaluable. However, visiting the site made me realize how much good stuff there is that doesn’t apply only to those currently raising money. They’ve got some seriously great writers/contributors, invaluable interviews and tackle tough subjects.

My personal favorites recently included:

• 10 Skills I look for before writing a check
• How to develop your customers like you develop your product
• The Arrogant VC: Why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs

#10 – Twittersphere

(http://twittersphere.com)

Since they don’t publish archives (the most frustrating feature), I’m unable to show off just how cool this site is and has been over the last few months, but just try visiting a couple times a day for the next few weeks and you’ll see. It’s remarkable how much good stuff gets re-tweeted (and how much junk – signal to noise is about 15%, which is still decent since it’s easy to skim and consume at will). You can also get a sense for how important Twitter’s link graph is to the engines through Twittersphere – a lot of pages that have 0 links will have thousands of tweets pretty fast.

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Your turn! I’d love to see the sites outside the SEO world that give you the most professional value (and I’m certain the rest of our readers would too). Feel free to link drop even to yourself, so long as it’s relevant

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Posted by randfish

First off, apologies for my absence from the blog these past few days. It’s been an incredibly busy time, trying to wrap things up before I leave for San Diego over the holidays. So much for a December lull… In this post, I’m going to try tackling a lot of the recent trends we’ve been observing from the engines and talk about my personal perception of what’s to come over the next 12 months. 

#1 – This Real-Time Search Thing is Outta Here

Microsoft initially beat Google to the punch in announcing their integration with Twitter data in their SERPs. And in response, last Monday, Google released what is, in my opinion, an early test version of Twitter integration that’s nowhere near ready for prime-time. Google has a history of jumping the gun to prevent other companies from stealing the press narrative, but in this case, I think it’s seriously damaging (and nearly everyone, consumer or search enthusiast, agrees) their usability and relevance.

As Danny Sullivan notes, it’s like we’re back to Infoseek in 1997. If you want to rank #1, don’t worry about quality content, relevance or popularity, just be the last person to Tweet about a topic and you’ll come out on top (at least, for a few seconds).

This is, in my estimation (and many others), the worst implementation of new results Google’s ever implemented. I imagine the clickthrough and abandonment stats have their usability folks up in arms already, and it’s only to preserve face from a PR perspective (as well as an increasingly prideful attitude of "Don’t like it? So what are you gonna do about it?" that Aaron Wall describes in a gutting fashion here) that this has stayed in place as long as it has (1.5 weeks).

In 2010, I think this fades away. Perhaps not entirely, but we won’t be seeing it for nearly as many queries with the prevalence we do today. Google may love real time, and it’s certainly gotten them a lot of press (though very little of it is entirely positive), but they can’t continue sacrificing quality for PR in this fashion. I think the engineers still run things over there, and the stats data is already making them balk. Although I don’t have numbers, my impression is that we’re already way down in the quantity of queries showing real time results compared to last week.

#2 – Twitter’s "Link Graph" is the Real Deal

All that real-time integration bashing aside, I’m a firm believer in my original hypothesis that Twitter is cannibalizing the web’s link graph. In fact, I think a rough history of "recommendation sources" looks something like:

Google has always strived to keep up with the latest ways that content is being recommended and suggested. It’s how they determined popularity and relevance with PageRank and I think Twitter’s data is merely the next evolution. Just yesterday, they launched their own URL shortening service (I think this was more to get data, but it’s also possible it was a pre-emptive PR strike against bit.ly, who launched their PRO service just a day later). 

Google’s not going to just take raw number of tweets or re-tweets. I think we’re already seeing the relevance and reputation calculations in their decisions of which tweets and sources to show in the real-time results, and I expect that algorithms/metrics like PageRank, TrustRank, etc. will find their way into how Google uses the real-time data. Today, SEOs want to turn tweets into links so they can get SEO benefit. My feeling is that tweets are going to carry their own weight in helping pages rank in the not-too-distant future.

#3 – Personalized Search is Here to Stay

Unlike real-time’s temporal nature in the results, I think personalized search is here for the long haul. Google released their "permanent" personalization of results last week, and Bing released their own just this week. As usual, SearchEngineLand’s coverage is impeccable, though one big question remains in my mind:

What metrics impact personalization?

Is it merely clickthroughs from the organic results? Does visit history play a role? Or clicks from other vertical search services Google offers? What about clicks from paid search ads – either in the SERPs or from AdSense/DoubleClick?

I’d love to see experimentation done on this front so marketers have a better idea what they’re dealing with. If it’s proven that you can get organic benefits by attracting PPC clickthrough, this may be the new "paid inclusion" for 2010, and could drive bid prices up massively as companies compete not only for paid listing clicks, but for the chance to earn "organic" positioning as well.

Personalization means a few things for SEOs, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the game, IMO:

• The Rich Get Richer – It’s now truer than ever. If you rank well, and earn solid traffic, you’re going to be even harder to unseat. Startups and upstarts are going to have an even greater uphill battle to climb than before.
• Branding is More Important – you want your loyal visitors and fans scouring the SERPs for your listings, and clicking them more so than anything else. I expect some clever spammers are going to be manipulating this with everything from Mechanical Turk to virus infections that make their browser search for their brand and click those results. We’ll see if Google has good protections in place to defend against this.
• There is No Normal Ranking – Or, at least, there’s no "normal" ranking that’s "average" in a personalized SERPs world. Rank tracking may still carry some value to understand how non-personalized searchers see your pages, but that data is going to be less useful in comparison to what your analytics report about search traffic and the trends. Win the "personalization" battle, and you may start to care less about the classic "rankings" battle.

Whenever we encounter these "paradigm changing" events in the SEO world, I like to go back to my philosophy about SEO fundamentals. From what I can see, it looks like things haven’t changed enough yet to warrant panic. It’s been a massively dynamic 3 months, but we’re not on the precipice of anything that’s going to shift SEO in the ways some previous "game-changers" have.

#4 – It’s Going to Be a Two-Engine, 80/20 World

The latest figures suggest that Google continues to slowly gain market share in the US, while Bing & Yahoo! compete for share that will eventually belong to them both (once the regulatory hurdles clear, which I think they will). I believe that a year from now, most webmasters will be looking at a scenario where Comscore/Hitwise reports Binghoo! has ~25-28% market share, but those engines combine to send a little under 20% of all search traffic (remember that they count searches on all Microsoft and Yahoo! properties – even internal searches – while Google tends to send the vast majority of their search traffic externally to other sites).

#5 – Site Explorer & Linkdomain will Disappear

Tragically, everything I hear out of Yahoo! and Bing is that Site Explorer is off to the great beyond. The expense of maintaining a web index isn’t something Yahoo!’s willing to invest in once they don’t have to, and Bing’s given no indication that they’re going to re-open the portal to link information. The best we can hope for is an acceleration in the functionality offered by Bing Webmaster Tools, but even that’s unlikely to offer competitive link intelligence.

I’m guessing other services will rise up to try to take Site Explorer’s place, as the service had millions of monthly queries run against it.

#6 – SEO Spending Will Rise Dramatically

Forrester put out a great report on US Interactive Marketing Spend (a little pricey at $1749, but interesting). Two graphics struck me as particularly compelling:

SEO trails only social media and online video as places where marketers (not just search marketers, but ALL marketers) will be shifting dollars.

Meanwhile, SEO continues to outpace PPC in terms of CAGR. We’ve still got a long way to go before balance is established between the share of clicks SEO commands and the fraction of spend it receives, but the gap is slowly closing.

#7 – 2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization

If I were doing another startup today, it would focus on software for conversion rate optimization. I think this is still the most under-utilized and highest ROI activities in the marketing department, but more awareness is on its way. CRO isn’t just about testing; it’s about building a process for improving converion over time. Online businesses can generate so much revenue from this, yet few invest. I think 2010 is the year, simply because it’s an inflexion point for companies to assess their spend and where they derive value. These guys are likely in for a blockbuster year; I wish I could invest :-)

This graphic comes via my post on choosing which Internet Marketing Channel to Pursue.

#8 – More Queries will Send Less Traffic

Google & Bing are both doing more to make their visitors stickier and get their queries answered without ever having to leave the engine. This is a good product practice for both companies, and I’m surprised Google’s taken so long to move away from their "get people off Google" point-of-view, but it’s definitely happening. Check out some recent examples:

Everything I need to know is right there – the last game score, the record, the opponent, their next match day and time. The only thing missing? What channel it’s playing on in my area.

I don’t even have to complete my query! Google’s got that weather report sitting in the suggest box. They wrote about this feature here which launched last week. Google O/S had another good post on the topic.

Thankfully, I’m not actually headed to Kodiak, but those results are pretty spiffy, and are likely to prevent me from needing to visit Alaskaair.com and get that flight info.

The customer service number is something Bing’s started to provide more and more (though there’s one company even they don’t have that data on). With Fedex, you don’t even need to leave Bing to track a package (Google also offers similar functionality).

My perception is that the more the engines can apply "instant answers" to search queries, the more they will, and the less any other sites will see traffic from those queries. It’s a better user experience this way, and I’m certain it’s one of the biggest things that engenders loyalty and return queries – something both engines are desperately competing for.

 

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This post isn’t intended to be one-sided, and I’d love to hear from you – do you agree? Disagree? Think I’m out of my head? Let everyone know

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Posted by randfish

We all know about the Linkerati by now – how to identify them, how they’re segmented and why they’re the secret to SEO. Yet, time and again, I see link builders and companies pass up amazing opportunities to earn links and attention from those who have the best ability to help your content/brand spread virally.

I’ll lay out two scenarios below to help illustrate this point:

Scenario 1: Emailing a Prominent Blogger/Writer/Journalist/Site Owner/Social Media Personality/Etc. Hoping for a Link

You/your company:

• Identify a list of Linkerati that may be relevant/interested in your business/content
• Send a carefully crafted email to each individual, hoping to attract their attention and interest
• Follow up with those who reply (and maybe those who don’t) with emails or even a phone call
• Request a review of your product/tool/site/idea

Scenario 2: Meeting that Same Person First, then Following Up

You/your company:

• Identify prominent (or even relatively less known) Linkerati in your city or at an event you’re attending
• Schedule a meeting / invite them to coffee or to tour your offices (or even just go to an event you know they’ll be at)
• Introduce yourself politely and humbly and mention you’re a fan. Exchange business cards, have a chat and let them know what you do (also helps if you can find some non-work related topics to bond on as well)
• Follow up with an email thanking them for the meeting and asking if they’d take a look at your product/tool/site/idea

I’d argue that while Scenario 1 is more scalable, it’s also potentially damaging in the long run. When you first introduce your work to someone who can help it spread, you have that single chance to make a first impression. If the relationship matters and you’re seeking a high "conversion rate" for attracting attention from the Linkerati, use Scenario 2.

The beauty of these links is that they not only create value for SEO, but often attract second-order effects like increased brand awareness, links/tweets from the followers & fans of the Linkerati, and improved odds that you’ll be positively remembered and introduced when someone mentions they need "X" (whatever it is your product/tool/site/idea does).

In-person connections have always been powerful attractors of value for me in the SEO, social media and startup worlds and when I see early stage (and mature, later-stage companies) engage in this fashion, it’s almost always positive. Just make sure you’re professional, candid, friendly and never over-bearing in your interactions; chances are you’ll get much more than a link.

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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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