Posted by Danny Dover

 Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer. Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting, we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO software. We want to thank all of you who provided feedback on the first version of the tool for your guidance and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Now enough with the chit chat, on to the new features!

New Features:

• Top Pages on a Domain
• Target URL
• Comprehensive CSV Export
• Usability Enhancements (The end of page reloads when applying filters!)
• Improved Filtering

Top Pages on a Domain

With the new version of Open Site Explorer you can get a sorted listed of the top 10,000 pages on a domain. This is essential for viewing your own site and for doing competitive analysis.

With this new feature, we can see that Microsoft is unwisely 302 redirecting their homepage! Doh!

You can also see which content is drawing the most links on your competitors websites. In this example we see that that these are the most linked to comics on XKCD.

Target URL

The new version of Open Site Explorer shows you which URL a given link is targeting when you sort by sub or root domains so you can see exactly where the given link is helping you. (This is also available for all links when the data is exported as a CSV)

With this new feature you can see which link is most important to Harvard.edu’s domain and which page it is linking to.

Comprehensive CSV Export

After lots of input, we are now offering more robust CSV exports.

The new CSV exports offer:

• The Target URL of the given link
• Numbers of links to the given source page
• Indication of whether or not the linked is followed
• Indication of whether the link is internal or external

Usability Enhancements

Remember how you used to have to reload the page every time you applied a filter in Yahoo! Site Explorer?

With the addition of the Filter Results button, these needless page reloads are a thing of the past.

Common Tasks are Easier to Perform

New buttons make performing common tasks easier and faster to do.

The new Explore and Compare buttons make it easier to get more information about any links you find interesting.

Improved Filtering

With the new version of this tool you can do even more filtering to drill down into what you think is important.

In this example, we filtered the data to show only followed (dofollow) and 301 redirecting external links to the specific page.

Open Site Explorer vs. Linkscape vs. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Throughout this process, we also heard a lot of questions about the differences between Yahoo! Site Explorer, Open Site Explorer and Linkscape. The chart below lays out the similarities and differences.

Help us Improve!

Are there other features you want to see? Are we moving in the right direction? We want know! Please feel free to share your suggestions and opinions via SEOmoz on Twitter, SEOmoz on Facebook or in the comments below

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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 randfish

Warning: This post isn’t about SEO or online marketing. The focus is on our growth as a startup and our adoption of company values and how we represent those internally and externally. Since transparency remains one of our guiding principles, we felt it only appropriate to share our work in this area – hopefully you can take something away that will provide value in your startup, entrepreneurial endeavors or career path.

At SEOmoz, like many companies, we have a collection of internal documents related to our goals with the business and the ideals we strive towards. A couple years ago, I wrote a post about some of our efforts in that direction, but last year, we authored a document called "The TAGFEE Tenets" that represents more about what we want to be.

Today, I want to share that document with you.

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SEOmoz’s Guiding Principles

This document represents the rules we have created and ideals we strive towards for all the work we produce as a company. We embrace these as the embodiment of who we are, why we exist and what we endeavor to achieve in every arena – from software to website content to actions in the workplace and on the road as representatives of SEOmoz.

The TAGFEE Code

Despite the immense challenges that we have faced and continue to face, we refuse to indulge in negativity or pessimism. We are an organization that believes in empowering people to be their best." – Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

The TAGFEE code reflects the core values of SEOmoz. It defines not only SEOmoz’s strategic differentiation in the highly competitive field of SEO, but also helps to set the standard of quality for all work and content produced. We acknowledge that we are entirely responsible for SEOmoz’s reputation, and that the level of success we achieve, the reputation we cultivate, and the contributions we make to the SEO industry are a direct reflection not only of the company, but of ourselves. In short, we are SEOmoz, and by adhering to these standards, we guarantee both we and our work will be Transparent and Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, and Exceptional.

Transparent and Authentic

• We share the inner-workings of our company – both the good and bad – openly with our community.
• We take responsibility for our mistakes and will do what we can to rectify them.
• We will represent ourselves and our intentions honestly to our co-workers and our clients.
• We will be ourselves, even if that means being occasionally silly, a little less than perfect, and (at times) more than a little dorky.

Why we believe in it

We at SEOmoz have differentiated ourselves from others in our sphere through our transparency, and open, honest dialogue – sharing behind-the-scenes information about the company and our products (even when that information is not entirely positive), and providing our opinions on trends and happenings in the industry, even if they differ from everyone else’s views.

We don’t need to share this information – we do so because we want to, as we believe it improves our company in several ways:

• It strengthens our community, giving our readers and subscribers a voice and sense of ownership in the company (equating with brand loyalty).
• It holds us accountable to our customers, as they are able to weigh in on many of the company’s decisions.
• It keeps us honest and true to ourselves – you can’t hide when your company is an open book.
• It is consistent with our goal of sharing knowledge not only about the field of SEO, but about the experience of running and owning a start-up. To quote Rand, "We want our community to participate in the adventure that is SEOmoz."
• It keeps us honest and realistic about our limitations, our intentions, and our products. We openly recognize our strengths and areas that need improvement, and share this knowledge with our community. An overly-congratulatory, jargon-laden, car-salesman approach would neither be true to our brand or ourselves.

• Rand’s blog posts about the SEOmoz story. 
• Divulging the entirety of SEOmoz’s finances in 2006 (a proclamation that we have repeated yearly, despite some limitations after having taken VC).
• Maintaining an open dialogue on the SEOmoz blog, even when comments are negative or critical.
• Disclosing our opinions and directions around contentious subjects (e.g. paid links).

Exceptions

Our openness has earned us a loyal following. Withholding information sometimes creates negative backlash. Nevertheless, there are circumstances under which we will not reveal information:

• When it would be materially harmful to the company. Rand refrained from sharing specifics about which partners he met with at VC firms, and does not reveal certain aspects of financial metrics.
• When it would be damaging to our competitiveness. We withheld information about Linkscape until launch because we felt that revealing this might be detrimental to the project’s goals.
• When revealing such information would be irrelevant or would risk violating our value of Empathy. We refrain from revealing any private or potentially sensitive information about employees, investors, colleagues, or other members of the SEO community.
• When the board specifically requests that we not release any information about certain internal goings-on at the company.

Generous

Criteria

Am I being as helpful as I can? Am I giving back to the community?

Tenets

• We will over-deliver whenever we can, providing our clients and subscribers with more than their money’s worth.
• We will provide compliments, referrals, and testimonials (that we truly believe in), and will not take compensation for them.
• We believe that generosity is its own reward, but also helps to make us profitable, as we receive referrals, sign-ups, positive testimonials, and accolades from the community.

Why we believe in it.

SEOmoz was created as (and remains to this day) a .org domain. The initial goal was to create a blog in which Rand could share with others what he learned about SEO – with no intention of monetizing it. Interestingly enough, this proved surprisingly successful. By focusing on providing a great deal of content and tools to our readers at no cost, we create brand-loyalty and awareness, and trust in our products. This, in turn, leads to profitability, as more and more readers, drawn in by what we offer for free, are compelled to sign up for premium membership.

This model has also worked incredibly well for the SEOmoz PRO training seminars, which are priced lower than others of its kind. Though it provides the company with comparatively low profit margins, it opens attendees up to the SEOmoz brand and has repeatedly led to positive press and coverage.

Our commitment to being generous extends beyond simply sharing information. We also strive to be generous with our time and finances in order to build stronger relationships with colleagues and staff. We take visiting SEOs out to lunch or dinner, invite them to tour the office, provide referrals (for which we refuse compensation), and host meet-ups and tweet-ups. SEOmoz employees are offered competitive salaries, stock options, and substantial vacation time.

Examples

• Providing an SEOmoz member with accommodations to a conference, when he could not otherwise afford them.
• Giving away free consulting work to organizations like the UN & Seattle Children’s Hospital.
• Danny Sullivan offering Rand his first conference pass to SES New York for free.
• Helping other startups with SEO, introductions to VCs, positive press coverage on the blog and sharing our experiences & lessons.
• Providing free PRO memberships to SEOs doing charity work and for projects to raise money like IM Charity parties.

Fun

Criteria

Are we celebrating our strengths? Are we having fun yet?

Tenets

• We will pursue projects that we find exciting and interesting. When faced with a task that we don’t find particularly enjoyable, we will strive to make it a positive experience or steer clear.
• We are dedicated to creating and maintaining a relaxed and friendly work environment.
• We will celebrate one another and our achievements.
• We will bring fun to our clients and subscribers in unique ways.

Why we believe in it

Because work is only work if you make it so. We want to bring fun and enjoyment to the workplace. If we’re enjoying ourselves, we figure we’ll be more productive, more resistant to stress, and better all-around at doing our jobs. Consequently, we celebrate creative, independent thinking, and our own unique strengths. Some of our best products and our biggest successes arose from mozzers pursuing their own whims and doing what they do best:

• Linkscape Visualization and Comparison Tool, the Competitive Link Finder (Nick & Ben building cool tools on top of Linkscape data).
• Whiteboard Friday (Scott Willoughby’s impromptu idea).
• Danny Dover’s popular checklist blog posts.

In addition to bringing fun to the workplace, we also are dedicated to bringing it to our subscribers and clients. Our blog posts, tools, and seminars are not only useful, but enjoyable. We hope our incorporation of whimsical graphics, fun anecdotes, t-shirts, stickers, and Roger mozbot will bring smiles and a bit of levity to the average work day.

Examples

• SEOmoz’s casual dress code, flexible hours, and open office layout.
• Company events and celebrations such as the 2,000 subscribers party and Danny’s Champagne Wednesdays.
• Team lunches, birthdays, and snacks (thanks, Christine and Arden).
• Conference comics, Werewolf Card decks, ridiculous Rand-as-Santa videos, our Facebook photos & videos, etc.

Empathetic

Criteria

Am I being respectful of the thoughts and feelings of others? Can I proudly stand behind my work and my statements?

Tenets

• We treat others the way we wish to be treated – with respect for their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
• We will strive to maintain the highest level of professionalism, never resorting to personal attacks or name-calling.
• We will not participate in or be distracted by gossip, negativity or insults.

Why we believe in it

We respect the desires and feelings of everyone with whom we work. This includes not only employees, but colleagues, community members, clients, investors, and even direct competitors and detractors. We respect their personal lives and consider them separate from their professional lives (and therefore not a topic of discussion). Before producing any product, blog post, or even an email, we must ask ourselves if it is as considerate of the feelings of others as we personally hope to be.

By doing so, we feel we will help bring an air of professionalism and focus to our industry, and not be distracted by petty conflicts, disagreements, or gossip. While many sites in our industry fall into that trap, we hope to establish SEOmoz as a drama-free oasis. While we personally like reading "snarky’ writing, we reject it as a voice or tone for our professional environment. We want to be humorous and fun, but always in a positive, uplifting way. We believe that this approach to community is one we can all feel good about contributing to every day.

Issues of Contention

Even during disputes or disagreements, we will strive to make our point without dismissing or debasing anyone else’s ideas. We will give and accept constructive criticism with the understanding that it will help make us, and our company, even better.

In the case of a disagreement or debate regarding an SEO issue, we will focus on using "I" statements to make our claims: "I believe x." "I think the best approach is y."

We will not address personal attacks made against the character of SEOmoz employees or members on other sites (and will remove them from our site if/when they appear), as we feel this is the strongest and best way to stifle such discourse. Obviously, we will refrain from making personal attacks, direct or implied, against anyone, be they critic or competitor.

Topics

Acceptable topics: In addition to anything directly related to the search and advertising industry, we can comment on positive changes in the personal lives of SEOs (congratulating SEOs on wedding days, engagements, births, etc.), new hirings at major companies, tips and tricks for improving rankings, white-hat tactics. We will report on unsubstantiated or rumored news or reports relevant to the industry, but we will be sure to frame them appropriately ("We heard that Yahoo might be considering x.")

Off-limit topics: divorce, firings, affairs, sexual relations, accusations, slander, insults (even if it pertains to a job or project that was poorly executed, it can be expressed in a better way), personal attacks, gossip, outing spam, critiques of general social groups or demographics, unethical or illegal SEO tactics.

Note: SEOmoz has created a more in-depth, often updated document for internal reference. It includes a list of topics that should either not be mentioned on the blog at all, or mentioned with high-sensitivity (that is, pending review from Sarah/Rand). Examples include the deal terms of our venture financing, members & topics from the search marketing community that have a high proclivity for negative content, patent pending technology related to our products, legal issues, etc.

Examples

Behavior that meets the Empathetic criterion:

• Supporting others in their time of need. Remembering that we are all people first, and professionals second.
• Refraining from posting about firings of specific individuals, even when they pertain to the industry. Layoffs could be mentioned, as long as it is relevant to the industry, newsworthy, and done with empathy and tact (though specific individuals should not be targeted or pointed out).
• Offering refunds when a customer is dissatisfied.
• Responding to all customer services inquiries and tweets in a timely manner, with courtesy and competency.

• During a panel on link-bait, an SEO mentioned (in jest) that writing about the personal sex life of a woman in the industry would gain a you a lot of traffic. While the individuals in question were friends and it was done in an attempt at humor, we would consider this off-limits.  
• Using any sort of shock-tactics or inflammatory language (including misleading content), to gain more traffic or links.
• Using insulting or degrading language (either towards readers or fellow SEOs) under the guise of being instructive.
• Writing a "snarky" blog post that degrades, humiliates, insults or demeans others in any way.
• We should no longer write blog posts like this attack on Robert Scoble (we might critique his content, but would not do it in such a personal way). We should also try to re-cast future posts like this rant against startup marketing advice to be more focused on the positive and less harshly critical.

Exceptional

Criteria

Is it the best it can be? Is it uniquely better than anything else out there?

Tenets

• We will utilize all of our skills to create high-quality, well-designed software, code, tools, and products. We will consistently strive to do so on-time and on-budget.
• We will endeavor to be leaders in our industry, providing unique, unparalleled information, products, and customer service to our clients and customers.
• We will never sacrifice quality for profitability.
• We will make SEOmoz synonymous with SEO.
• We will make ourselves known through speaking engagements, webinars, videos, and interviews, all the while delivering the same level of quality and excellence we strive towards.

Why We Believe It

SEO is a new and growing industry – an excellent platform on which we can prove ourselves to be best in the field. Apple made MP3 players accessible and usable for everyone – not just geeks and gadget-lovers. Julia Child translated French cooking for the average home cook. We believe we can do the same for SEO. Through high-quality, unique content, tools, and products, we can make SEO tangible, understandable, and accessible to all.

We won’t provide our subscribers and readers with tools or information that is inaccurate or "needs work." Nor will we create sub-par products simply for the sake of doing so, or for making a profit. Whatever we create, we aim for it to be better than any other resource or tool of its kind. Our work will be worthy of us.

Examples

• Linkscape & Open Site Explorer 
• Whiteboard Fridays
• PRO Training Seminars
• The SEOmoz blog
• Our Amazing Staff!

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How Do We Use this Document?

• It’s one of the first items we send to potential employees we’re considering hiring, to help them get a feel for who we are and what we want to be.
• We give it to everyone who blogs or answers Q+A as an associate for SEOmoz (e.g. Dr. Pete, Michael Cottam, the Distilled crew, etc.) to help guide them in comment moderation and provide best practices for the content we produce (both publicly on the blog or privately in answer to Q+A).
• We shared it with potential investors after initial meetings turned into interest to help provide a sense of the character SEOmoz strives towards.
• We use it every day in meetings and decisions about product, content, strategy, hiring and more.
• We apply it to every new hire, asking ourselves whether they can be stalwart supporters of these tenets.

If you’ve ever met with me to talk about startups and entrepreneurship, you’ve doubtlessly heard me ramble on about the importance of "culture." SEOmoz has had a lot of success in the past 3 years, and it’s my belief that our biggest risk isn’t competition or macro-economic factors or even technological challenges (though all of these certainly require effort). I worry about most culture going "sideways." If  our best and brightest start leaving SEOmoz because they no longer believe we stand behind our principles or if the executive team, and most importantly, I, don’t embody TAGFEE, we have risk. Conversely, if we can summon the will and the drive to work hard, both at execution of our tasks and adherence to these criteria, we have a great shot at building something amazing.

As always, we warmly welcome your thoughts and contributions on both TAGFEE and the concept of startups embracing values overall.

p.s. We also invite everyone in the SEOmoz community to judge us against the TAGFEE tenets and let us know if you see us stray or feel that some action we take isn’t "TAGFEE" (it’s an adjective we use a lot internally). You’ve helped so much to make us who we are today, and we are humbled and honored by the contributions everyone in the SEO field has made to helping us build the culture and community here. We hope you’ll continue to help, both in cheering us on and in steering us back to the right path when we stray.

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Posted by RobOusbey

Links. We often talk about why we want them and how to get them, but today I’d like to go back to basics and look at the constituent parts of the HTML code behind them. This is definitely a post for the new SEO, or web-developer looking to expand their experience, but even experienced search marketers may want to comment the nuances of some parts of the humble anchor tag’s attributes.

Here’s a couple of example links; the first is a link to the White House’s website, the other is to Distilled’s new US website.

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Posted by mgalecki

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

A SHORT INTRODUCTION…

We all know that the search engine robots more frequently visit popular pages, i.e. those that have the largest number of incoming links, both internal and external ones. The architecture of a website is usually correlated with the popularity of these pages expressed by number of backlinks:

• Home page has the most backlinks,
• 1st (e.g. product categories), 2nd & 3rd level pages obtain less links,
• finally the least important are deep pages (with articles, classified ads, product pages, etc).

The above mentioned “importance” of web pages versus the web site architecture has been illustrated in one of the Rand’s posts titled "Diagrams for Solving Crawl Priority & Indexation Issues":

Important pages tend to have a different priority of indexation, and this was also presented very nicely by Rand:

Purple spots are those with the highest number of external links. As it can be seen, the pages which are close, take some of the popularity and they pass part of it further (pink spots). All the other spots stand for pages that are too far from the entrance points of search engine robots, which means that the chance of their indexation is much smaller.

In case of classified websites, which contain a lot of content, the above diagram should include subsequent category listing or search results pages. They are obviously less important than the main category pages, but their indexing additionally influences the indexation of their components – ad details pages. This is particularly important when the listing starts with so called premium ads, which change less often than standard classifieds.

BEFORE THE TEST…

Having this theoretical information, we have decided to see how it is like in practice. We have analyzed a website of http://www.morusek.pl (with animals and pets related classifieds from Poland) which has a total number of indexed pages exceeding 100,000. Using the combination of "site" and "inurl" queries we checked what is the number of indexed pages with a list of classifieds (in Polish “ogloszenia”): http://www.google.pl/search?q=site%3Awww.morusek.pl+inurl%3A%22%2F0%2F%22+inurl%3Aogloszenia

The initial results were the following:

To continue the analysis, we excluded the first pages, as the numbers here are influenced by existence of some category pages with no classifieds at the moment, but which are indexable (there are crawlable links in the menu). In addition, to verify the effectiveness of the "site" query, we took into account a number of pages reported by Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) under "Internal Links". The results were as follows:

WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW?

The first conclusion is obviously that the higher the page number is, the less probability that the page will be indexed. Secondly, while the actual numbers of GWT and “site” queries vary a lot, the trends (slopes) are almost the same. On average, the chance that the robot will crawl to the next page of search results decreases by 1,2-1,3% per page.

It is also interesting that, according to Google Webmaster Tools, pages from 2 to 4 have a good indexation ratio which later decreases dramatically at the fifth position. For example, for sites with number 4 the level of indexation is 60%, while for pages number 15 it falls below 30% (according to Google Webmaster Tools), or 40% (for the command “site” in Google). This is due to the fact that Googlebots have a much longer way to reach the appropriate link in case of the latter (a link to page 15 first appears on page 12), while there are direct links to pages 2, 3 and 4 on the first pages of search listings (see below):

THE SUBJECT OF THE TEST: INTRODUCING MORE LINKS

We decided to test what would be the changes in indexation ratios if we introduced more links to subsequent ad listings pages. On the first page of each category we added links to the 5th, 10th and 15th pages as show on the picture below:

After a month we tested the changes. Due to inaccurate results returned by the command “site” in Google (number of indexed pages seemed to be greater than the actual number of them) we present data from Google Webmaster Tools (internal links) only:

THE RESULTS

The graph clearly shows us that indexation of pages that were added to the listing on the first page is much higher after the change (pages: 5th, 10th and 15th), and actually equals the indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4.

However, the increase in indexation of pages directly linked from the home page did not affect the indexation of the neighbouring pages. For example, we can see a huge increase for page 10, but there is no change for pages 9 and 11. The conclusion is that for Googlebots these pages are too far from the points of entry. Only category pages for main region have incoming links. To index page 9 of the intersection of categories and regions, the robots would have to go the following path:

1. main category page (entry point),
2. category page + region (first page of results),
3. category page + region (tenth page of results),
4. category page + region (page 9  of the results).

What makes it even worse, not all the category pages have incoming links.

THE CONCLUSIONS

For classifieds or e-commerce websites, the conclusion is that the more pages linked in the listing, the greater the chance that they will be indexed. In general, it is clear that the farther from the point of entry (external link), the less chance that the page will be indexed. Therefore, it is advisable not to create sites with a very deep structure and to remember that the pages far from the points of entry should be additionally linked to (for example as "similar products", "see also", "related categories", etc.).

Looking at the chart we can see yet another change – a slight decrease in indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4. This can be either because there are new pages added recently and they have not been indexed yet (when the number of ads in a certain category has started to exceed the space on the first page), or due to increase in the number of outcoming links on the first page. I would rather bet the first explanation, because in fact the new links were added to a small percentage of pages. There are only 400 fifth pages (so the links to fifth pages were placed on 0,5% of all the first pages). Pages 10 and 15 are even less numerous.

Introduction of additional links has not increased the level of indexation of classifieds, however I suppose that the rate of change was simply too small to affect their indexation. Moreover, the indexation of ads of Morusek.pl exceeded already 80% when the experiment started. Such changes can produce a visible increase in the number of indexed pages in case of sites where the rate of change is much higher and the level of indexation of classifieds or products – lower.

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Posted by randfish

Today I have two very big announcements. First, SEOmoz is exiting the consulting business to focus exclusively on our software model. And, second, we have an expanded partnership with Distilled (new US site: Distilled LLC), who’ll be taking over many of our consulting clients and opening offices here in Seattle. I’m going to talk briefly about both of these below, then add detail on why we’re so bullish about the SEO software market.

SEOmoz started in 2004 as a blog where I could post my struggles and learnings about search engine optimization. By 2005, the business was taking real consulting clients under the SEOmoz name. In 2007, we launched PRO membership, our self-service SaaS product and by the end of the year, PRO was 50% of our revenue. As I noted in the post on our venture capital process, that number has grown dramatically (to 85% of revenue) and in 2010, our goal is to make it the sole focus of the company.

As part of our exit from consulting, we’ve worked hard over the past 6 months with Distilled (note how Will Critchlow has been in a lot of Whiteboard Fridays of late) to help take over our existing clients and transition the handling of consulting leads. As part of this, we determined that Distilled could do the most good by opening an office in Seattle, WA. Duncan Morris is out in Seattle this week (and yes, we’re making him watch the Superbowl next Sunday) to help scout locations and begin hiring. If you’ve got SEO experience and are in the Seattle area, please drop them a line!

What Does this Partnership Mean?

• Distilled will continue to contribute regularly to the blog, Q+A and WB Fridays on SEOmoz (we’ve dealt with the fact that their accents make every piece of advice sound more credible)
• We’ll continue to work jointly in organizing the London and Seattle PRO Training Seminars each year
• Distilled will be helping the SEOmoz product & engineering teams to design, build and test great tools and software (thanks for the help on OSE!)
• Our internal SEO team will be transitioning to focus on product & content development as well as marketing for the SEOmoz site (we’re like the cobbler’s children over here and that needs to change)
• SEOmoz’s active consulting contracts will be 100% complete by June of 2010; however, we’ll continue to provide informal service to non-profits like the United Nations & Seattle Children’s Hospital.
• We’ll be recommending Distilled to many of the folks who ask us for consulting (when there’s a good fit), but will NOT be changing our protocol of continuing to suggest companies on our Recommended List

Why Software?

In the late 1990’s, companies who wanted detailed reporting on their visitor analytics turned to consultants for sophisticated log file analysis or individual installations of code to track data. At the same time, the field of email marketing was dotted by thousands of individual, hard-to-scale, non-standard solutions. Today, SEO is the same way. Whether you’re an external consultant or a in-house operator, you’re almost certainly mashing up dozens of web-based tools, possibly with home-grown software and self-built spreadsheets to produce an SEO process that works. While many of us have found ways to do this effectively, there have been no platforms of SEO software to set the standards. That’s what we’re trying to change.

At SEOmoz, we believe that the promotion of ideas on the web needs to be simplified and that it starts with SEO. Small and medium businesses, web-based startups and consultants of all sizes need tools to help make their lives easier and processes that track important data for them, identify actionable metrics and report externally the missed opportunities and competitive landscape we all face. Just look how dollars are spent in the search marketing sphere:

(sadly, no 2009 numbers yet, but the distribution is likely very similar, though spending now exceeds $14B)

Now compare that to where growth is expected in online marketing over the next few years:

This summer, SEOmoz will be releasing our new software platform (and in the meantime, there will be plenty of other releases including an update to Open Site Explorer, a new Keyword Difficulty tool, a dramatically upgraded mozbar and more). We hope you’ll join us for this exciting journey.

p.s. I also wanted to call out Jon Henshaw’s terrific post on software vs. services. After working hard to develop this partnership over the last few months and transition out of consulting, we couldn’t help but ponder the old adage of great minds thinking alike.

---

Update from Will: My post on the deal is now live as well over on the Distilled blog.

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Posted by Nick Gerner

The launch of Open Site Explorer last week opens up a lot of link data, filters, and anchor text to a much wider audience than we’ve ever had before.  In that same vein, today we’re announcing our new and improved SEOmoz Free API.

Any registered (it’s free) SEOmoz member can visit our API Portal and get an API key that gives you access to:

• Data for any URL in our index including
  • Domain and Page Authority
  • mozRank
  • total link count
  • external, followed link count
• The first 500 links to any page, sub domain or domain
• Filtering on those links: 301s, Follows, External, etc.
• The first 3 domains linking to any page, sub domain or domain
• The first 3 anchor text terms or phrases in links to any page, sub domain or domain

You’re welcome to use this data for private or publicly-facing purposes. We already have a variety of partners integrating this data including:

• Buzzstream
• Brandwatch
• HubSpot’s Grader Suite
• Quirk’s Search Status toolbar

Check out some sample code and applications on the wiki.

Our idea is that getting this data into the hands of webmasters makes everyone better off: we’re excited about our new authority scores, marketers are thirsty for metrics, and users of all kinds of tools are better off with a deeper look at real data.  The free package will keep you covered up to a million links per month that you’re free to use for any purpose from consulting to building an SEO campaign management suite.

In addition to the free API (which I think is quite powerful already), we’re expanding our paid API offering. The paid API includes everything above, but also includes:

• Additional metrics:
  • number of domains that link to you
  • mozTrust
  • number of links to all pages on your domain
  • and more
• A deeper look at links, way beyond the first 500 (first 100k for each sort per page, domain or sub domain)
• Plenty of sorts on links:
  • domain authority
  • page authority
  • linking root domains
• Way more anchor text terms and phrases (up to 100k per page, domain or sub domain if you’ve got that many)

This is exactly the same API powering Open Site Explorer.  So if you think OSE missed a feature, or should include other data sources, you can build it over again and do an even better job   If you do, drop me a line and I’ll take a look. We’d love to share partner apps on our wiki, Twitter, the blog, and elsewhere.

We don’t even have an attribution requirement. Although, we have a tasty 15% discount if you do cite us as a source

To sign up, just contact us, and we’ll start the process.

EDIT: The paid API is available outside of a PRO membership.  A PRO membership buys the tools, and content, and sweet sweet badge.  The paid API is extra.  Of course, the free API is both free and full of awesome.

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Posted by randfish

How many pages has Google indexed?

This question and the problems surrounding it run rampant through the SEO world. It usually arises when someone starts doing searches like this:

Google claims to have 93,800 pages indexed on the root domain, seomoz.org. That sounds pretty good, but when I ran that search query last week, the number was closer to 75,000 and when I run it again from Google.co.uk 60 seconds later, the number changes even more dramatically:

How about if I hit refresh on my Google.com results again:

Doh! Google just dropped 8,500 of my pages out of their index. That sucks – but not nearly as much as managers, marketing directors and CEOs who use these numbers as actual KPIs! Can you imagine? A number that means nothing, fluctuates 300% between data centers, can change at a moment’s notice and provides no actionable insight being used as a business metric?

And yet… It happens.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to get much, much better data than what the search engines provide through "site:" queries and this post is here to walk you through that process step-by-step.

Step 1: Go to Traffic Sources in Your Analytics

Click the "traffic sources" link in Google analytics or Omniture (it can also be called "referring sources" in other analytics packages).

Step 2: Head to the Search Engines Section

We want to find out how many pages the search engines have indexed, so the obvious next step is to go to the "search engines" sub-section.

Step 3: Choose an Engine

 

Choose the engine you want indexation data on and click. If you have both paid and organic traffic from this engine, you’ll want to display organic only at this step, too.

Step 4: Filter by Landing Pages

The "Landing Page" filter in the dropdown will show you the traffic each individual page on your site received from the engine you’ve selected. This also produces the magical "total" number of pages that have received traffic, described in the last step.

Step 5: Record the Number at the Bottom

That count tells you the unique number of pages that received at least one visit from searches performed on Google. It’s the Holy Grail of indexation – a number you can accurately track over time to see how the search engine is indexing your site. On its own, it isn’t particularly useful, but over time (I usually recommend recording monthly, but for some sites, every 2-3 months can make more sense), it gives you insight into whether your pages are doing better or worse at drawing in traffic from the engine.

Now, technically I’m being a bit cheeky here. This number doesn’t tell you the full story – it’s not showing the actual number of pages a search engine has crawled or indexed on your site, but it does tell you the unique number of URLs that received at least 1 visit from the engine. In my opinion this data is far more accurate and more actionable. The first adjective – accurate – is hard to argue (particularly given the visual evidence atop this post), but the second requires a bit of an explanation.

Why is Number of Pages Receiving ≥1 Visit Actionable?

Indexation numbers alone are useless. Businesses and websites use them as KPIs because they want to know if, over time, more of their pages are making their way into the engines’ indices. I’d argue that actually, you don’t care if your pages are in the indices – you care if your pages have the opportunity to EARN TRAFFIC!

Being a row in a search index means nothing if your page is:

• too low in PageRank/link juice to appear in any results
• displaying content the engines can’t properly parse
• devoid of keywords or content that could send traffic
• broken, misdirected or unavailable
• a duplicate of other pages that the engine will rank instead

Thus, the metric you want to count over time isn’t (in most cases) number of pages indexed, it’s number of pages that earned traffic. Over time, that’s the number you want to rise, the number you want marketers to concentrate on and the KPI that’s meaningful. It tells you whether the engine is crawling, indexing AND listing your pages in the results where someone might (has) actually click(ed) them.

If the number drops, you can investigate the actual pages that are no longer receiving traffic by exporting the data to Excel and doing a side-by-side with the previous month. If the number rises, you can see the new pages getting traffic. Those individual URLs will tell a story – of pages that broke, that stopped being linked-to, that fell too far down in paginated results or lost their unique content. It’s so much better than playing the mystery game that SEOs so often confront in the face of "lower indexation numbers" from the site: command.

Some Necessary Caveats

This methodology certainly isn’t perfect, and there are some important points to be aware of (thanks especially to some folks in the comments who brought these up):

• Google Analytics (and many other analytics packages) use sampled data at times to make guesstimates. If you want to be sure you’re getting the absolute best number, export to CSV and do the side-by-side in Excel. You can even expunge similar results from two time period to see only those pages that uniquely did/didn’t receive traffic. In many of these cases, you might also only care about pages that gained/lost 5/10/20+ visits.
• Greater accuracy can be found from shrinking the time period in the analytics, but it also reduces the liklihood that a page receiving very long tail query traffic once in a blue moon will be properly listed, so adjust accordingly, and plan for imperfect data. This method isn’t foolproof, but it is (in my opinion), better than the random roulette wheel of site: queries.
• This technique isn’t going to help you catch other kinds of SEO issues like duplicate content (it can in some cases, but it’s not as good as something like GG WM Tools reporting) or 301s, 302s, etc. which can require a crawling solution.

I’d, of course, love your feedback. I know many SEOs are addicted to and supportive of the site: command numbers as a way to measure progress, so maybe there’s things I’m not considering or situations where it makes sense. I also know that many of you like the number reported in Google Webmaster tools under the Sitemaps crawl data (I’m skeptical of this too, for the record) and I’d like to hear how you find value with that data as well.

p.s. Tomorrow we’ll be announcing two webinars (open to all) about using Open Site Explorer to get ACTIONABLE data. Be sure to leave either Wednesday the 27th at 2pm Pacific or Thursday the 28th at 10am Pacific free

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Posted by great scott!

This week we’ve got a special Whiteboard Friday double feature! As you’ve probably heard, we launched our new link checker and backlink analysis tool, Open Site Explorer, this week and it makes use of some exciting new metrics: Domain Authority and Page Authority. We asked our old chum, Will Critchlow, to talk to Rand about these metrics to help everyone understand what they are, what goes into them, how to use them, and why we created them.

In Part One, Will and Rand discuss how to use these metrics to gain insight and intelligence on your (and your competitors’) pages, domains, and link profiles, as well as why these metrics can be a better predictor of ranking success than others that you may have used in the past.

In Part Two, the guys dive into detail about what exactly goes into Domain Authority & Page Authority: how they were modeled, how they compare to actual search results, why your DA & PA scores may change over time, and lots of other details to help you better understand how these metrics work.

Both videos are viewable below, simply select the one you’d like to watch from the playlist on the right of the player. I’d recommend watching them in order, but it’s not necessary.

These new metrics have already been quite popular among users of Open Site Explorer, and one of the big questions is, "When can I get them in the SEOmoz Firefox Toolbar?!"  Well, surprise, surprise, we’re on top of it! They’ll be available in the new toolbar update coming out next month…here’s a sneak peek

 

New scores, new features and much more are on their way in the February version of the mozbar

If you’ve got questions about Domain or Page Authority, please leave us feedback below. We’re trying to make these metrics as useful and valuable as possible and would love your suggestions.

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Posted by wrttnwrd

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

One often-ignored part of SEO is making invisible pages visible. When I say ‘invisible’, I mean pages that have received zero clicks from organic search results.

If you can find those pages, you can decide:

• To keep them, but work to raise their organic search profile;
• To keep them, but use more of their link juice to help other, higher-profile pages on your site; 
• Get rid of them, and 301 redirect them to higher-profile, higher-value pages on your site.

Soooooo, how do you find ‘em?

Turns out, a new Google Analytics feature can make it happen: Pivot table reports

Here’s how you do it:

1. In Google Analytics, click ‘Content’.
2. Click the ‘Top Content’ report:You’ll see a list of the most-viewed pages on your site. Not much help just yet.
3. Now for the good stuff. At the top-right corner of the ‘Content Performance’ tab, click the ‘Pivot’ button:
   

4. Change ‘Pivot by’ to medium. Leave ‘Showing’ set as ‘Pageviews’. You’ll get a new table showing pages as the rows, and the mediums (media? mediumses?) as the columns, like this:
   

5. Now, sort the ‘organic’ column ascending (lowest values first). You’ll see a nice, clear list of pages that haven’t received any clicks from organic search:
   

That’s it! You can take a look and find the pages getting zero organic clicks.

A few cautions:

1. This report will not show pages with zero pageviews overall. If a page never received any pageviews, then the Google Analytics tracking bug never fired, and the page isn’t in Google’s reports.
2. This data is a lot more helpful for pages that otherwise get lots of traffic. If a page gets 1 view overall and zero organic views, that may mean it’s got SEO issues. Or, it may mean that the page just sucks overall. Use your judgment.
3. This is only 1/2 the battle. Don’t assume the invisible pages need optimization, and that all will be well. It’s possible that these pages simply shouldn’t be there, or that there’s a problem with how you’re linking to them, or something else. Use this report as a starting point. Not an end point.

Happy Analyzing!

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