According to Lawrence Coburn, the President of RateItAll, this is an exciting time for search marketers due to new opportunities in search queries. Historically, people would go to a search engine and enter a query. Now however, with a mere tap of a button on a phone, people can send out their location and it acts as a query.

Coburn comes from a user-generated content background and knows that it is not easy to get people to post content. But with check-in applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla, a single tap on a phone creates the content.

These applications tell your friends where you are while also letting Foursquare and Gowalla what places are popular. In addition, this data provides valuable opportunities for advertisers to get involved with location.

What does all this mean for search marketers? Location is important to them because they can build upon the APIs that Foursquare, Gowalla, and other similar applications have. Coburn’s company is even developing a product called DoubleDutch that will allow users to build their own Foursquare and Gowalla if they have a community tied to a specific location.

Because this idea of location as a query is relatively new, there are and will be challenges for search marketers. To help avoid them, Coburn advises marketers to create content around latitude and longitude. If they do this, then when people reveal their location, the marketers will know what to deliver.

How do you feel about using location as a query?

Posted by willcritchlow

It’s time for a quick mid-week geek-out – I wanted to collect together a bunch of resources I have written on first touch tracking in Google Analytics including (for the first time that I’m aware of), the technical implementation details:

• Following a Whiteboard Friday recorded when I was in Seattle a month ago or so
• I hurriedly wrote a post explaining general principles of how to get past last touch attribution in Google Analytics
• which it turned out was (quite reasonably) not enough for some of our readers (and I really wasn’t happy with the level of detail)
• so I have done my best to go above and beyond with detailed instructions on How to do First Touch Tracking in Google Analytics
• while digging around in GA and JavaScript to put this all together (a combination I probably shouldn’t have been doing) I discovered an interesting difficulty if you are going to migrate from the now-deprecated _setVar to _setCustomVar and wrote a post about it over on Search Engine Land.

If you’re the kind of person that unwraps your birthday presents early, you can skip to the punchline, grab the code you need to get first touch tracking working from Google code (don’t forget to read the instructions!). Here’s the meat from my detailed post:

Include following code anywhere above the Google Analytics code script in your page code:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://attributiontrackingga.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/distilled.FirstTouch.js">
</script>

Move your GA code above any Website Optimizer code or anything from Google that might write a visitor (__utma) cookie and look for:

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");

pageTracker._trackPageview();

In between those two lines, you want to put the following line:

distilledFirstTouch(pageTracker);

Oh, and don’t forget all of this is provided as is, with no warranty. I hope it will help you out, but only you are responsible for changes you make to your website and tracking code. Be extremely careful with live profiles and remember that you will need to do something different if you already use custom variables.

That’s all for now folks. Enjoy your analytics, don’t forget to drop comments with improvements, tips, tricks, abuse for writing such a short post etc. and if you need a primer on Excel to make the most of your new-found data, you can check out the recording of my conference call on how to be an Excel ninja (sign up for future calls here).

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To distract you from this spectacularly short post, here are some really big things found on the internet this week:

Check out the depth of the ocean:

As well as the size of the earth:

I also recommend watching this one.

Technorati Tags

analytics, ga, firsttouch, google, javascript, code

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Posted by Nick Gerner

Since the launch of Open Site Explorer and our API update, Chas, Ben and I have invested a lot of time and energy into improving the freshness and completeness of Linkscape’s data.  I’m pleased to announce that we’ve updated the Linkcape index with crawl data that’s between two and five weeks old—the freshest it’s ever been.  We’ve also changed how we select pages, in order to get deeper coverage on important domains and waste less time on prolific but unimportant domains. 

You may recall Rand’s recent post about prioritizing the best pages to crawl, and mine about churn in the web. We’ve applied some of the principles from these posts to our own crawling and indexing. Rand discussed how crawlers might discover good content on a domain by selecting well-linked-to entry points:

In the past, we’ve selected pages to crawl based purely on mozRank.  That turned out to favor some unsavory elements (you know who you are ).  Now, we look at each domain and determine how authoritative it is.  From there we select pages using the principle illustrated above:  Highly linked-to pages—the homepage, category pages, important pieces of deep content—link to other important pages we should crawl.  From intuition and experience we believe this gives the right behavior to crawl like a search engine would.

In a past post, I discussed the importance of fresh data.  After all, if 25% of pages on the web disappear after one month, data collected two or more months ago just isn’t actionable.

From now on, we’re focusing on that first bar in the graph above. By the time our data approaches that second bar (meaning most of it is out of date), we should have an index update for you.  If and when we show you historical data, we’ll mark it as such.

What this means for you is that all our tools powered by Linkscape will provide fresher, more relevant data, and we’ll have better coverage than ever.  This includes things like:

• Open Site Explorer
• Competitive Link Finder
• Linkscape Visualization

As well as products and tools developed outside SEOmoz using either the free or paid API:

• Buzzstream
• Quirk’s Search Status Toolbar
• Carter Cole’s Toolbar for Chrome

There are plenty more.  In fact, you could build one too!

Because I know how much everyone likes numbers, here are some stats from our latest index:

• URLs: 43,813,674,337
• Subdomains: 251,428,688
• Root Domains: 69,881,887
• Links: 9,204,328,536,611

Our last index update was on January 17th.  You might recall some bigger numbers in the last update.  Because of the changes to our crawl selection, our latest index should exclude a lot of duplicate content, spam pages, link farms, and spider traps while keeping high quality content.

Our next update is scheduled for March 11. But we’ll update the index before then if the data is ready early

As always, keep the feedback coming.  With our own toolset relying on this data, and dozens of partners using our API to develop their own applications, it’s critical that we hear what you guys think.

NOTE: we’re still updating the top 500 list at the moment.  We’ll tweet when that’s ready.

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Posted by great scott!

This week Rand discusses recent changes that seem to signal the coming of another big shift in how the engines determine results. With the incorporation of social networks into results, increased personalized search, and even Google Buzz, the social graph is clearly becoming a more and more important factor for the engines. What will these changes mean for online marketers and how can you take advantage of them? Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday and find out…

And here, for your browsing pleasure, are some of the resources Rand mentioned in the video…

• Video intro to Google Buzz:

• Royal Pingdom says Twitter now processing more than one billion tweets per month.

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Posted by Danny Dover

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Chapter 4: Finding SEO Problems

Sections:

• 15 Minute SEO Audit
• 10 Minute Brand Reputation Audit (Not included in this blog post)
• Identifying Search Engine Penalties (Not included in this blog post)

15 Minute SEO Audit

The basics of SEO problem identification can be done in about 15 minutes. When completing this audit I recommend you take notes based on the action items listed in each section. This will help you later when you do a deeper dive of the website. This audit is not comprehensive (See Chapter 9 for a full annotated site audit), but it will help you quickly identify major problems so you can convince your clients that your services are worthwhile and that you should be given a chance to dig deeper. The smart ones reading this section may notice that it builds upon the ideas expressed in Chapter 2. The dumb ones reading this, will think it is Harry Potter. The latter might enjoy it more but the former will end up with better SEO skills.

Prepare Your Browser

Before you start your audit you need to set your browser to act more like the search engine crawlers. This will help you to identify simple crawling errors. In order to do this, you will need to do the following:

Disable cookies in your browser

Switch your user-agent to Googlebot

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

When the search engines crawl the Internet they generally do so with a user-agent string that identifies them (Google is googlebot and Bing is msnbot) and in a way where they don’t accept cookies.

To see how to change your user-agent go to Chapter 3 (Picking the Right SEO Tools) and see user-agent switcher. Setting your user-agent to Googlebot increases your chance of seeing exactly what Google is seeing. It also helps with identifying cloaking issues (Cloaking is the practice of showing one thing to search engines and a different thing to users. This is what sarcastic Googlers call penaltybait. ) In order to do this well, a second pass of the site with your normal user-agent is required to identify difference. That said, this is not the primary goal for this quick run through of the given website.

In addition to doing this you should also disable cookies within your browser. By disabling them, you will be able to uncover crawling issues that relate to preferences you make on the page. One primary example of this is intro pages. Many websites will have you choose your primary language before you can enter their main site. (This is known as an intro page.) If you have cookies enabled and you have previously chosen your preference, the website will not show you this page again. Unfortunately, this will not happen for search engines.

This language tactic is extremely detrimental from a SEO perspective because it means that every link to the primary URL of the website will be diluted because it will need to pass through the intro page. (Remember, the search engines always see that page as they can’t select a language) This is a big problem, because as we noted in Chapter 1, the primary URL (i.e. www.example.com/) is usually the most linked to page on a site.

Homepage

Next, go to the primary URL of the site and pay particular attention to your first impression of the page. Try to be as true to your opinion as possible and don’t over think it. You should be coming from the perspective of the casual browser (This will be made easier because at this point you probably haven’t been paid any money and its a lot easier to be casual when are not locked down with the client) Follow this by doing a quick check of the very basic SEO metrics. In order to complete this step, you will need to do the following:

Notice your first impression and the resulting feeling and trustworthiness you feel about the page

Read the title tag and figure out how it could be improved

See if the URL changed (As in you were redirected from www.example.com/ to www.example.com/lame-keyword-in-URL-trick.html)

Check to see if the URL is canonical

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item on this list helps you align yourself with potential website users. It is the basis for your entire audit and serves as a foundation for you to build on. You can look at numbers all day, but if you fail to see the website like the user, you will fail as an SEO.

The next step is to read the title tag and identify how it can be improved. This is helpful because changing title tags is both easy (A big exception to this is if your client uses a difficult Content Management System.) and has a relatively large direct impact on rankings.

Next you need to direct your attention to the URL. First of all, make sure there were not redirects that happened. This is important because adding redirects dilutes the amount of link juice that actually makes it to the links on the page.

The last action item is to run a quick check on canonical URLs. The complete list of URL formats to check for is in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web). Like checking the title tag, this is easy to check and provides a high work/benefit ratio.

Global Navigation

After checking the basics on the homepage, you should direct your attention to the global navigation. This acts as the main canal system for link juice. Specifically, you are going to want to do the following:

Temporarily disable Javascript and reload the page

Make sure the navigation system works and that all links are HTML links

Take note of all of the sections that are linked to

Re-enable Javascript

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As we discussed in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web), site architecture is critical for search friendly websites. The global navigation is fundamental to this. Imagine that the website you are viewing is ancient Rome right after the legendary viaduct and canal systems were built. These waterways are exactly like the global navigation that flows link juice around a website. Imagine the impact that a major clog can have on both systems. This is your time to find these clogs.

Your first action item in the section is to disable Javascript. This is helpful because it forces you to see your website from the perspective of a very basic user. It is also a similar perspective to the search engines.

After disabling Javascript, reload the page and see if the global navigation still works. Many times it won’t and it will uncover one of the major reasons the given client is having indexing issues.

Next view source and see if all of the navigational links are true HTML links. Ideally, they should be because they are the only kind that can pass their full link value.

Your next step is to take note of which sections are linked to. Ideally, all of the major sections will be linked in the global navigation. The problem is, you won’t know what all of the major sections are until you are further along in the audit. For now just take note and keep a mental checklist as you browse the website.

Lastly, re-enable Javascript. While this will not be accurate with the search engine perspective, it will make sure that AJAX and Javascript based navigation works for you. Remember, on this quick audit, you are not trying to identify every single issue with the site, instead you are just trying to find the big issues.

Category Pages/Subcategory Pages (If applicable)

After finishing with the homepage and the global navigation, you need to start diving deeper into the website. In the waterway analogy, category and subcategory pages are the forks in the canals. You can make sure they are optimized by doing the following:

Make sure there is enough content on these pages to be useful as a search result alone.

Find and note extraneous links on the page (there shouldn’t be more than 150 links)

Take notes on how to improve the anchor text used for the subcategories/content pages

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As I mentioned, these pages are the main pathways for the link juice of a website. They help make it so if one page (most often the homepage) gets a lot of links, that the rest of the pages on the website can also get some of the benefit. The first action point requires you to make a judgment call on whether or not the page would be useful as a search result. This goes with my philosophy that every page on a website should be a least a little bit link worthy. (It should pay its own rent, so to speak) Since each page has the inherent ability to collect links, webmasters should put at least a minimal amount of effort into making every page link worthy. There is no problem with someone entering a site (from a search engine result or other third party site) on a category or subcategory page. In fact, it may save them a click. In order to complete this step, identify if this page alone would be useful for someone with a relevant query. Think to yourself:

1. Is there helpful content on the page to provide context?
2. Is there a design element breaking up the monotony of a large list of links?

Take notes on the answers to both of these questions.

The next action item is to identify extraneous links on the page. Remember, from Chapter 2 we discussed that the amount of link value a given link can pass is dependent on the amount of links on the page. To maximize the benefit of these pages, it is important to remove any extraneous links. Going back to our waterway analogy, this type of links are the equivalent “canals to nowhere”. (Built by the Roman ancestors of former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens)

To complete the last action item of this section, you will need to take notes on how to better optimize the anchor text of the links on this page. Ideally, they should be as specific as possible. This helps the search engines and users identify what the target pages are about.

Content Pages

Now that you have analyzed the homepage and the navigational pages, it is time to audit the meat of the website, the content pages. In order to do this, you will need to complete the following:

Check and note the format of the Title Tags

Check and note the format of the Meta Description

Check and note the format of the URL

Check to see if the content is indexable

Check and note the format of the alt text

Read the content as if you were the one searching for it

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item is to check the title tags of the given page. This is important because it is both helpful for rankings and it makes up the anchor text used in search engine result. You don’t get link value from these links but they do act as incentives for people to visit your site.

Similarly to the first action item, the second item has to do with a metric that is directly useful for search engines rather than people (they are only indirectly useful for people once they are displayed by search engines.) Check the meta description by viewing source or using the mozBar and make sure it is compelling and contains the relevant keywords at least twice. This inclusion of keywords is useful not for rankings but because matches get bolded in search results.

The next action item is to check the URL for best practice optimization. Just like Danny Devito, URLs should be short, relevant and easy to remember.

The next step is to make sure the content is indexable. To ensure that it, make sure the text is not contained in an image, flash or within a frame. To make sure it is indexed, copy an entire sentence from the content block and search for it within quotes in a search engine. If it shows up, it is indexable.

If there are any images on the page (as there probably should be for users sake) you should make sure that the images have relevant alt text. After running testing on this at SEOmoz, my co-workers and I found that relevant anchor text was highly correlated to high rankings.

Lastly and possibly most importantly, you should take the time to read the content on the page. Read it from the perspective of a user who just got to it from a search engine result. This is important because the content on the page is main purpose for the page existing. As an SEO, it can be easy to become content-blind when doing quick audits. Remember, the content is the primary reason this user came to the page. If it is not helpful, vistors will leave.

Links

Now that you have an idea of how the website is organized it is time to see what the rest of the world thinks about it. To do this, you will need to do the following:

View the amount of total links and the amount of root domains linking to the given domain

View the anchor text distribution of inbound links

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As you read in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization), links are incredibly important in the search engine algorithms. Thus, you cannot get a complete view of a website without analyzing its links.

This first action item requires you to get two different metrics about the inbound links to the given domain. Separately, these metrics can be very misleading due to internal links. Together, they provide a fuller picture that makes accounting for internal links possible and thus more accurate. At the time of writing, the best tool to get this data is through SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer.

The second action item requires you to analyze the relevancy side of links. This is important because it is a large part of search engine algorithms. This was discussed in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization) and proves as true now as it did when you read it earlier. To get this data, I recommend using Google’s Webmaster Central.

Search Engine Inclusion

Now that you have gathered all the data you can about how the given website exists on the internet, it is time to see what the search engines have done with this information. Choose your favorite search engine (you might need to Google it) and do the following:

Search for the given domain to make sure it isn’t penalized

See roughly how many pages are indexed of the given website

Search three of the most competitive keywords that relate to the given domain

Choose a random content page and search the engines for duplicate content

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As an SEO, all of your work is completely useless if the search engines don’t react to it. To a less degree this is true for webmasters as well. The above action items will help you identify how the given website is reacted to by the search engines.

The first action item is simple to do but can have dire affects. Simply go to a search engine and search for the exact URL of the homepage of your domain. Assuming it is not brand new, it should appear as the first result. If it doesn’t and it is an established site, it means it has major issues and was probably thrown out of the search engine indices. If this is the case, you need to identify this clearly and as early as possible.

The second action item is also very easy to do. Go to any of the major search engines and use the site command (as defined in Chapter 3) to find roughly all of the pages of a domain that are indexed in the engine. For example, this may look like site:www.example.com. This is important because the difference between the number that gets returned and the number of pages that actually exist on a site says a lot about how healthy a domain is in a search engine. If there are more pages in the index than exist on the page, there is a duplicate content problem. If there are more pages on the actual site than there are in the search engine index, then there is an indexation problem. Either are bad and should be added to your notes.

The next action item is a quick exercise to see how well the given website is optimized. To get an idea of this, simply search for 3 of the most competitive terms that you think the given website would reasonably rank for. You can speed this process up by using one of the third party rank trackers that are available. (Refer back to Chapter 3)

The final action item is to do a quick search for duplicate content. This can be accomplished by going to a random indexed content page on the given website and search for either the title tag (in quotes) or the first sentence of the content page (also in quotes). If there is more than one result from the given domain, then it has duplicate content problems. This is bad because it is forcing the website to compete against itself for rankings. In doing so, it forces the search engine to decide which page is more valuable. This decision making process is something that is best avoided because it is difficult to predict the outcome.

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Posted by Danny Dover

 A couple of weeks ago I published a post titled "Tests Show PageRank Sculpting with Nofollow Still Works". In it, I argued that a test I had run showed that nofollow was a legitimate means for sculpting PageRank. When I originally posted the blog entry, I full-heartedly believed that my analysis of the test results was accurate. As it turned out, I made a mistake.

The actual results of the test were inconclusive. Plain and simple, my test did not include enough samples to be statistically significant.

In doing so, I unintentionally misinformed all of you. For that, I am extremely sorry.

It is now my goal to make this up to all of you. Below is more information on this and my plan for running a new test.

In the meantime, what should I do about PageRank sculpting?

The first test results should be disregarded. This means that I, along with my co-workers at SEOmoz, recommend neither removing nofollow if it is installed (as we have seen detrimental effects for websites) nor adding it if you don’t have it. Quite simply, we don’t have enough information. (Which is why I ran the original test in the first place… damn)

Your time is best spent on link building and creating quality content. Tricks and tactics like PageRank sculpting are interesting short term tactics but fail in comparison to long term ROI on building a page that should be found. Remember, the most valuable information that Google ever gave SEOs is in the second sentence on this page. Providing the information that Google wants to make universally accessible in a search engine friendly way is the best long term strategy an SEO can have.

What was the old test?

We built 40 websites that looked similar to the following screen shot:

Each website in the experiment used the same template. Each keyword phrase was targeted in the same place on each page and each page had the same amount of images, text and links.

Each domain was unique and used a different IP address. Each testing group had different information in the WHOIS records, different hosting providers and different payment methods.

The standardized website layout contained:

1. Three pages per domain (the homepage and the keyword specific content pages)
2. One internal in-link per page (Links in content)
   1. One in-link to homepage from third party site
3. Six total outbound links.
   1. Two "junk" links to popular website articles to mimic natural linking profile (old Digg articles)
   2. One normal link to keyword test page
   3. Three modified links (according to given test) to three separate pages optimized for given keyword
4. Links to internal pages only came from internal links
5. The internal links used the anchor text (random English phrase) that was optimized for the given internal page
6. Outbound links (aka "junk" links) used anchor text that was the same as the title tag of the external page being linked to (Old social media articles)

This graphic represents an ultra simplified version of five test sites.

In the old experiment each of these different "variable links" would have attempted to sculpt PageRank in a different way. (Variable link ‘a’ might use nofollow, variable link ‘b’ might use javascript, etc..) Each of the "normal links" would then point to one of five different pages trying to rank for the same term.

For testing purposes, I choose phrases that were completely unique to the Internet. These were phrases that had never been written online before. (For example, "I enjoy spending time with Sam Niccolls". Just kidding Sam… don’t hurt me) In theory, the page that corresponded to the most effective PageRank sculpting method would outrank its competition for these isolated phrases.

To make us confident in our results we had to compensate for the inherent noisiness of the Internet. To do this, we ran the experiment in parallel eight times.

This shows the full scale of the experiment. Each color (labeled with the numbers 1 – 5) refers to a different PageRank sculpting method. The 8 groups horizontally represent the isolated tests.

What went wrong?

As far as I can tell, the experiment was executed without a problem. As it turned out, the problem wasn’t necessarily with the experiment itself but rather with interpreting the results. I used the wrong metric to evaluate the results (average rank of each testing group) and relied on too few samples.

What is the new test?

Rather than testing which PageRank sculpting method works the best, I am now going to test if the nofollow method works at all.

We ran the numbers (see math below) and found our we could run this test in either of two ways. The first way would only require 40 samples but would require a very high rate of success (nofollow beating control) to prove valid. The second test emphasizes precision and requires a much lower success rate but a much larger sample.

I have both tests planned and would love to hear your feedback of the tests prior to running them. Below is a diagram of the plan to test the nofollow method against a control (null) case.

This diagram shows an ultra simplified version of two test pages to be used in the new nofollow test. The real versions of the pages are more like the "Horsey Cow Tipper" example at the beginning of the post.

For this new test, both "normal links" will point to two separate pages trying to rank for the same unique phrase. "variable link ‘x’ will then link to a different page. "variable link ‘y’ " will be nofollowed and also link to a completely separate page. For each test group, we will see which of the two competing pages ranks higher. Our hypothesis is that the page that that is linked to from the page that has the nofollowed link (variable link ‘y’) will ranker higher. We beleive this because we think the control case will split the link value semi-equally between the two links on the page and thus not send its full worth to the page trying to rank for the unique term.

This test will then be duplicated 20 times as seen in the diagram below.

Are 20 tests (40 domains) really enough? We think yes but only for one very specific outcome. In order for this second test to be valid at 95% confidence, 15 out of the 20 tests will need to show that nofollow was an effective PageRank sculpting method.

If this doesn’t happen, we will need to run a third test with a much bigger sample size.  If we want to be 95% sure we will detect nofollow being better with 95% significance even if the odds nofollow wins a given trial is only 5 out of 8, we will need 168 test pairs.  (See math below)

What keeps you from making the same mistake?

While reworking the old test, I got the help of Ben Hendrickson who sits a few desks away.  Please feel free to check our math before we run the test.

The Math Behind the 168 Pairs Nofollow Test

This test consists of a number of independent trials. In each trial, either nofollow or the control will rank higher. Thus the number of wins will be distributed according to a binomial distribution.  Where n is the number of trials, and p is the probability that nofollow wins a trial, the normal approximation to the binomial distribution is:

Where W is the number of wins, and z is the number of standard deviations above the mean, the formula for the number of wins is thus:

The null hypothesis is that nofollow wins at p = 0.5 (even odds). To reject the null hypothesis in favor of the hypothesis that nofollow is an effective PageRank sculpting method with 95% confidence, we would need to see a minimum of W(n,0.5, 1.645) wins. How many wins will we see? We are 95% sure to see at least W(n, p, -1.645), where p of the actual chance that nofollow win a given trial. If we are setting a lower bound of p = 5/8 = 0.625 for what we are trying to detect, then we have a lower bound of seeing W(n, 0.625, -1.645) wins (with 95% likelihood) if in fact nofollow is at least that much better. We can set this lower bound on the number of wins we expect equal to the number of wins we need to see to have 95% confidence nofollow is better. After that we can then solve for the number of trials.

So we conclude we need 168 trials.  If this test fails to show nofollow is better, then we are 95% sure that nofollow wins trials less than 62.5% of the time.  We wouldn’t be able to say nofollow sculpting doesn’t matter, but this does say it doesn’t seem large in comparison to the other factors we were unable to control for in our experiment.

The Math Behind the 20 Pairs Nofollow Test

So then why don’t we run this as our next test? The answer is simple.  A 168 trials is a lot of domains to setup.  So maybe we will get lucky.  If we do a good job of controlling for other factors, and the nofollow sculpting has a modest effect, perhaps the nofollow will win much more frequently than 62.5% of the time on average.

To see a 95% significance of nofollow doing better than the control, we will need to see 15 wins for nofollow out of the 20 trials.  One could do more math for this, but how we actually got this number was an online binomial distribution probability calculator.  Plug in p=0.5 (as this is the null hypothesis), n=20, and many various values for the numbers of wins until you find the lowest number whose chance of getting greater to or equal to it is less than 5%.  That number should be should get 15.

Is there any takeaway from the original test?

Thousands of people read the post about the first PageRank sculpting methods and based on my assessment took it as truth. It wasn’t until two days after posting the original entry that Darren Slatten pointed out my mistake. That means that the damage had already been done and it would be practically impossible to contact all of the people who had read the post.

The small amount of people who did notice were (rightfully) upset with me. Their frustration with me and SEOmoz was vented on their personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, e-mails and in the comments on the original post. This was a great (although unintentional) case study on how the Internet affects the distribution of information.

(mis)information on the Internet does not die.

We saw the very real effects of this on a large scale after the Iran election was covered by normal Iranian individuals on Twitter and on a very small scale with the test results of my first experiment. Once the information reached the Internet, it was out of the control of both its creator and those trying to silence it. For me, this was a much needed reminder of how much the Internet empowers its users. Together, all of you are a force to be reckoned with

One more thing… Why don’t you post the actual URLs so we can investigate them ourselves?

I will do this, but not right now. Posting them now would compromise the integrity of this and future tests. By linking to the test pages I change their link profile. I am happy to do this after the tests have been run and we no longer need the framework. I hope that makes sense

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I would love to hear your thoughts and constructive criticism on our new test. Please feel free to chat your brains out in the comments below

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Duplicate content issues are unfortunately, a continuing problem for webmasters. According to Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive, the search engines will likely pick the wrong pages if you let them determine which are the best pages on your site. To prevent this, she recommends that webmasters be proactive when it comes to duplicate content.

In order to be proactive, you need to be consistent. First of all, be consistent with your information architecture. Secondly, link consistently to the same URLs. Thirdly, send consistent messages to the search engines. By sending conflicting messages, you will be giving the search engines the opportunity to choose which page will show in the search results.

Thurow says that even though a page could have several differences such as color, order of words, etc., the search engines will not detect differences unless the content is dramatically different.

“Whenever you think of duplicate content, you can’t think of it only from a searcher perspective, you have to think how does a search engine see it and how can I make sure that the search engines and searchers get the best page on my website,” she pointed out.

In regards to the canonical tag, Thurow believes it is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it allows users to easily filter sites with content management systems. However, she believes it is a curse since it can be abused.

Whether or not you’re ready, next year is almost here, and this December-to-January transition point is always a convenient time to consider the direction things are taking. We won’t point you toward any feel-good movies or silly self-help books, though, as Amanda Watlington provided a more useful look at the SEO industry.

Watlington, the founder of Searching for Profit, has dealt in both SEO and marketing for a number of years, and observed that in 2009, “We have seen some of the choppiest economic waters . . . that any of us have endured.” Obviously, this caused a lot of negative effects.

2010’s not looking entirely rosy, either, and in an interview with Abby Johnson, Watlington talked about clients cutting back budgets while expecting better results. She stated that clients can get hung up on old SEO issues that may not matter anymore, too.

Another problem then relates to changes at the search engine level, with Google’s announcement about speed really standing out. Watlington argued that cutting sites’ load times is more of an engineering task, and one that can consume a goodly amount of money at that.

Still, the news isn’t all bad. As she works with retailers, Watlington said, “I’m seeing an actual uptick in purchases.” She also issued a piece of advice that can take companies pretty far: “love your customers.”

According to Bruce Clay, the current concept of search is that a user has to know what he is looking for in order to type it into a search engine. Although the user might not know the specifics of what he is looking for, he has already made the decision to go to a search engine and find information. Clay, however, believes search should be an extension of marketing since most searches are a direct result from other forms of media.

Mike McDonald of WebProNews pointed out that this new view of search could raise problems for businesses. He said if businesses pay money for ads that prompt searches, they could be driving traffic to their competitors if they are not number one in the search engines.

To do it the right way, Clay suggests planning a strategy. First of all, decide what you want to promote. Secondly, optimize your website so that you are number one, at least with PPC. Thirdly, decide to dominate and succeed. Lastly, get a billboard with a catch phrase or write an article with a catch phrase in it. These steps will prompt people to search based on the action phrase.

As you do this, make sure that you have fully optimized. The last thing you want to do is not be number one after you have taken the time to promote a product. Clay says the SEO needs to be ready to respond to the promotion. He also issues a warning in regards to the media promotions: “If you don’t do the offline right, nobody knows to go search for you.”

In summary, think about how the user would search and tie it into an action phrase to brand with your business.

What are your thoughts regarding search as an extension of marketing?

When WebProNews spoke with Nick Fox back in August, he indicated that the future of paid search could be without keywords. At the recent SES Chicago, WPN sat down with Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media who shared with us how this development would impact advertisers.

Up to this point, Google has used keywords as a proxy for relevance. In the future, however, the search engine hopes to allow advertisers to state their desired outcome and then, use its machine-based learning to produce that desired result. In other words, Google would essentially take the necessary information and put the ad in front of the most relevant audience.

Why is all this important? According to Elesseily, it’s important because query length is increasing, new and unique search terms are increasing, and searcher sophistication is increasing. All these elements make it hard for advertisers to keep their keyword lists fresh.

Incidentally, not all of the advertising community supports this new development. Elesseily said that some advertisers believe it’s too broad of an approach and don’t like the idea of putting that much trust in Google.

Although Elesseily doesn’t believe keywords will go away, she does believe the future of paid search is changing.

What are your thoughts regarding paid search without keywords?

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