Thunder SEO

Hello Everyone! It’s that time of the week again… Thunder Booms!!!

Following is our short-list of highlights for this past week. From Matt Cutts’ recent video “answer” regarding the importance of links on a page to the growing importance of Conversion Optimization, it’s been a great week for SEO and SMO insights and information.

• Link Building Lessons from Edward Bernays, “Father of Public Relations”
  Article from Vedran Tomic of Search Engine Journal about applying the lessons of the “Father of Public Relations,” Edward Bernays, to link building. The article discusses “influencing the influencers” which DOES NOT involve buying links but DOES involve building relationships with people, staying on top of industry trends, and following social media “power users.” Additionally, Tomic talks about the importance of link worthy content, claiming “the best way to build links is to make your content a tool of self expression.” It’s a great read for anyone looking for link-building inspiration.

• NYTimes.com’s Simmonds Explains Benefit of Linking to Other Sites via Topic Pages
  Rand Fishkin’s White-Board-Friday interview with Marshall Simmonds, Chief Strategist for the New York Times (ever heard of that site!). Simmonds explains the “Bow Tie Theory” (starting with About.com) and how sites like About.com and NYTimes.com have successfully used the bow tie effect, “link journalism” and topic pages to drive rankings and traffic, including the controversial practice of linking out to “authority” sites (including competitors). Great presentation and reference for updating a site’s internal linking strategy and site structure.

• Conversion Optimization is the New SEO
  Great post by Scott Brinker of Ion Interactive highlighting the importance on on-page conversion factors, including a nice overview of how SEO and conversion optimization are similar and different. Coming mostly from paid lead generation, Brinker offers some compelling arguments for creating a balance between traffic-focused SEO strategies and user-focused conversion strategies.

• “Is the order of links on a page important for SEO?” Matt Cutts Answers Matt
  Matt Cutts responds to question if the first link on a page is “priority” to Google, with the response, “I really wouldn’t worry about it.” Cutts explains that Googlebot will crawl through an entire page and determine which link is the most significant. While this (potentially) clears up questions about whether Google does indeed follow only the top level links, it still highlights the importance of prioritizing content and links so Googlebot knows what the page is about.

A big THANKS to SandCamp San Diego, Drupal and everyone who attended our SEO presentation this past Sunday at SandCamp’s Drupal conference at Balboa Park! The presentation was originally set to cover SEO and Social Media, but we only got part way through the SEO. Next time we’ll see if we can schedule more time for deeper SEO analysis and Social Media too!

The presentation here includes all slides discussed during the session, along with additional slides covering topics such as internal linking, leveraging blogs for rankings (case study), inbound link building and some other related topics.

Thanks again to everyone for getting up bright and early – and for making it a great Sunday morning!!! I look forward to next year

Following is our short list of highlights for this past week. From some “clear” statements about links that count from Matt Cutts to the exiting announcement of SEOmoz’s new Open Site Explorer tool, it’s been a great week for SEO and SMO news and information.

• Site Conversion Lessons from SEOmoz
  Real time examples from 2009 from the www.SEOmoz.com website. Great information and well-organized analysis of conversion tests, what worked, and what didn’t. Great reference for site development and Conversion Rate Optimization.
  

• Yelp Comes of Age – Yelp Analysis by David Mihm (Local Search Legend)
  Very insightful review of Yelp and its transition toward “working with” businesses. Mihm states he has been working on this post for the past year; and it shows. The depth of analysis and tracking of changes to Yelp’s stance toward businesses are very insightful. Also touches on Yelp’s lower revenue in comparison to competitors like CitySearch. Raises question if being too focused on consumers might not be good for “business”. Also addresses false claims that Yelp removed reviews if businesses advertised.

• SEOmoz Announces Launch of OpenSiteExplorer
  Move over Yahoo SiteExplorer. Move over Linkscape. SEOmoz is changing the “SEO Tool” landscape with the launch of it’s powerful, expanded and impressive “Link Popularity Checker + Backlink Analysis Tool”. The “full access free trial” period lasted only 3 days; the Free version offers up to 1,000 links and Top 20 Link Metrics (not bad!); SEOmoz PRO members have full access. See it in action at www.opensiteexplorer.org.

• PageRank and “Page Sculpting” in the Age of NoFollow
  Scott Smigler (guest author on Search Engine Land) delves into PageRank and how to structure a site to maximize the flow of PageRank to important pages for SEO and for conversions. Smigler’s post is highly informative and lucid in its description of PageRank and how to prioritize which pages to rank.

• Do Facebook and Twitter Links Help a Site’s Google Rankings?
  Recap of Matt Cutts video on the Google Webmaster Central Channel in which he clarifies how Google treats links from Facebook and Twitter, as well as .Edu and.Gov links (OK – so this video is from last week, but it’s still very timely).
  

Last week Matt Cutts posted a video response on the Google Webmaster Central Channel to the question, “How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, FB to a website?”  Along with clearing up any mis-perceptions about for how long he’s staying “bald” (see why), Cutts gives the low-down on how Google treats links from Facebook and Twitter, as well as links from .Edu and .Gov sites.

As Cutts explains, “We [Google] use Pagerank so we know how ‘reputable’ the site and inbound links are.” This re-iterates the importance Google places on the quality of a link versus the sheer quantity of links, with the Pagerank (of the linking url) being the definitive indicator of a particular link’s quality.

As for Facebook and Twitter, Cutts further explains that Google can only fetch a link if the site is public where Google can crawl it. For Facebook, many profiles aren’t public; while for Twitter, most links are nofollow (which makes sense given the enormous potential for spam if Twitter offered dofollow links).

In addition, Cutts commented, “We treat links the same from Twitter or Facebook or platform or website…just like we treat links from wordpress or Edu…a link from an Edu won’t carry more weight.” So there you have it — previously coveted links from .Edu and .Gov sites are not more highly valued than links from other domains. Again, the important indicator is the url’s Pagerank (or “authority”).

For many, this is not news but it’s always helpful to hear clear statements such as these from Google.

Has your experience with links from Twitter and Facebook, as well as .Edu and .Gov sites, been consistent with what Cutts describes above? Do you agree with how Google handles these inbound links? Please share your thoughts…