Domain Authority - Does it Really Exist as a Ranking Factor?
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Posted by BenRush

Rand recently published a post discussing 17 ways a search engine values a link. His number 5 reason referred to “domain authority” and caused a little stir within the comments trail as to what “domain authority” actually meant and where the proof of its existence has been seen.

The aim of my first YOUmoz post is to provide an example of where I believe domain authority is highly evident as search engine ranking factor. Apologies but I can’t really include any analytics data due to data protection.

Setting the scene

So it’s October 2008 and progress is slow on making technical and content changes to our transactional sites to improve organic referrals. I have just come up with an idea that I believe will provide some quick wins both on the organic referrals and on our PPC conversion rates on broad commodity type keywords. When I say commodity I refer to keywords that describe a product category, such as capacitors or connectors.

The Tactic

Utilise our root domain to create high level product category landing pages such as:

www.farnell.com/uk/connectors

www.farnell.com/uk/capacitors

These are located within folders on our root domain, rather than in sub domains like our transactional websites. The idea is that they are closer to the root, better optimised and easier to get live quickly. Even back then I believed domain authority was a strong ranking factor for Google.

Here is an example of it for our German business unit. The first shot shows our initial link from our root domain farnell.com to a sub folder /de/

 

The Result

The results were pretty impressive almost immediately. Within about 30 minutes of promoting a page to production we would be ranking in Google, usually on pages 1-2. After around a day we would usually be on the first page on broad, competitive search terms.

Now consider that these commodity pages were brand new, reasonably well optimised on-page, but contained only 1 single back link from an internal source and we were capable of ranking on just about any search term within the space of 30 minutes. Yes we followed some on-site “best practices” but to my mind the single reason why these pages ranked so well, so quickly was domain authority.

Even now, after being live for a considerable period of time, again without any real SEO work, you will see we proudly sit in top spot for connectors.

 

Try some other terms across other global search engines as examples:

Kondensatoren – Google Germany

Kondenzatory – Google Czech

Diodi – Google Italy

Kondensatorer – Google Denmark

Interested to hear more thoughts on domain authority from others. Do you feel this proves its importance or do you think other factors played into these



An Intelligent Way to Plan Your Internal Linking Structure
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Posted by zoicaremus

1) What is the internal linking structure?

- The way the pages of a website link to each other.

2) Why is the internal linking structure important?

• To make Google understand what are the most important pages from your website. You know which the most important pages are, but does Google know? If the internal linking structure is good, after the first crawling, at a command like site:mysyte.com, you will obtain a list of pages sorted out by importance. If the list corresponds with the order chosen by you, then you’ve made a good linking structure.
• To highlight the important pages, but also to decrease the power transferred to less important pages or to pages that will rank first from the start.
• To cut short the link-juice route to the important pages. Every time you will receive a link to a less important page, the juice has to get to the important pages fast.
• Because it’s difficult to manipulate. If you place links to the less important pages of your website anywhere, then the quality of your website will decrease.

3) What are the characteristics of a good internal linking structure?

• The most important pages have the largest number of links pointing to them (and the most powerful ones).
• In a good linking structure, the internal links point to the same page with different anchor texts. By linking with different anchor texts you tell Google more about that page.
• Linking through text in the body of the content, not only from menu items.

4) What does a good internal linking structure look like? Example of a website that has 7 pages:

 

List of all the pages by order of importance:

1. Personal injury
2. Accident Claim
3. Medical Negligence
4. Car Accident
5. Accident at work
6. Injury Solicitors
7. No win no fee

Number of outgoing links – 2 on the homepage and 3 on every other page (in body links, excluding menu links and other standard links), a total of 20 outgoing links.Number of incoming links (the blue page has blue incoming links):

• Personal injury – 6 links
• Accident Claim – 4 links
• Medical Negligence – 3 links
• Car Accident – 2 links
• Accident at work – 2 links
• Injury Solicitors – 2 links
• No win no fee – 1 link

This is just an example; the most important pages have powerful internal links pointing to them and they also have the biggest number of links. You can empower any page you want by placing more links to it. Also use different anchor texts for internal links (secondary keywords, other keywords for which you intend to rank).

5) Use MindMaps to plan your internal linking structure. For the drawing above I used MindManager. I can’t even think about starting a new website without a good plan. The process is this:

1. Do research and identify the keywords for your new website
2. Group them by order of importance and divide them on separate pages
3. Sort the pages by order of importance and decide on the number of links on each of them.
4. Set up the way in which the pages link to each other, draw the map (use whatever suits your needs)
5. Choose different anchor texts
6. Create the content, the links and place them online

Don't neglect the internal linking structure, it's like the blood vessels of your website.



Yahoo to Spend Over $100m on Ad Campaign
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In an effort to help promote it's Brand (and drive more users and longer time on site), Yahoo is launching a new campaign to begin "realigning all aspects of it's business around simplifying and enhancing the Web experience," according to their official Press Release



True or False: Organic Traffic Converts Better than PPC
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Posted by drummerboy9000

As a webmaster of a small business website, I get a lot of SEO's calling me, touting their services.

One of the claims many make is that the traffic from organic searches converts better than that from PPC searches. I currently handle all of our search engine optimization as well as PPC management. Having never tested the theory, I cranked up Google Analytics and started rummaging through data.

 The following test is the result. It is using only results from Google.

I first found three metal roofing related keywords on our website that had fairly high traffic from both organic and PPC campaigns. Next I broke down the data, comparing the conversion rates separately for organic and PPC. The following is the data, using data from the last 12 months.

 

Based on this data, at least for our website, PPC converts better. That's not to say that organic traffic doesn't convert well, it's just that PPC converts better.

Below is the data in Google Analytics (I cut it all up in order to make it fit in a reasonable amount of space)

 

I only used the data for the "Completed Form" conversion measurement in the graphs, but I left the data for "Contact Page Clicks" for you to see as well. By both measurements PPC traffic converts approximately 50% better than organic data.

I entered this data into an Excel Spreadsheet, which you can download here.

Answers to a few of the questions you might want to ask:

1. Question: Are the PPC landing pages the same as the organic landing pages?
   • Answer: All of the organic landing pages are the home page.
   • On keywords #1 and #3, which has the most data, about half of the PPC goes to the home page, while the other half goes to a second level page. The conversion levels remain about the same on either page.
   • On keyword #2, all of the PPC goes to a second level page.
2. Question: So why are you releasing this data? Do you hate SEO?
   1. Answer: First of all, I believe the benefits of SEO are massive. 45% of our traffic is organic. I released this data to shed some light on possible misinformation that has been spread around. I love SEO : )
3. Question: Does this apply to all websites and keywords?
   • Answer: I have no clue, not having access to multiple website data. I'm sure it varies from industry to industry. If anyone else has information on this please share it in the comments.

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome and encouraged.

"Keeping Up With the Joneses" Is 90% of SEO
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Posted by byrneseyeview

I've seen a few articles recently, on YOUmoz and elsewhere, extolling the benefits of originality in SEO. And I think it's time to set the record straight: in the vast majority of cases, if you are doing something none of your competitors are doing, you are wasting your time and your client's money.

The Case Against Originality

SEO is going corporate. Big companies are doing it in-house instead of hiring a consultant; consultants are scaling up, hiring people, and growing into companies in their own right. Meanwhile, the search engines have more or less made their peace with SEOs: there's a lot that's prohibited, and everything else might as well be mandatory.

Don't buy links.

Do use descriptive title tags.

Don't hide links.

Do structure your site so good content is always a few clicks away.

Etc.

If you come up with a novel strategy, it's probably going to find its way into the dos. Or the don'ts. And using a new strategy means betting your results and your reputation on the outcome. There's no particularly easy way to predict what they will decide—there's no reason ten consecutive "Please link to my site" emails should be morally superior to "link to my site and disclose it to your visitors, and I'll give you a dollar." And yet if you do the latter, and get caught, you're in trouble.

Your strategy might not end up in the dos or the don'ts. It might end up in the "what?!"s, instead. Search engines may not care to endorse or ban your strategy because it doesn't have any visible effect.

It's tempting to point to other technology innovator as proof that innovation can be rewarding. But bast amounts of wealth in technology are made with technology products, not services (Ross Perot, one of the few technology service providers to get really rich, also happened to treat employees like gears in a factory—basically a roundabout way of turning a service into a mass-produced product.)

The Case for Unoriginality

Want to know what works in SEO? Just look at the people who outrank you! You'll mimic many of their results if you can build a structure similar to theirs and get the same bloggers and directories to link to you ("I saw your link to Smith's Guide to Skinning a cat. Surely your readers know there's more than one way to skin a cat. You should have them check out Jones's Guide, too!").

If you do this by rote, you'll be #2 at best. So don't. Find the niches they don't target, and get the same links they do get. Your site will outrank them for the terms they don't quite target, which can often convert at a higher rate than broad terms. If one company sells "shirts" and you sell "souvenier t-shirts," you can mimic their success—for a term that leads far more searchers to make a purchase.

Go ahead. A well-blazes trail is an easy one to follow.

And once you've saved yourself the trouble of chasing wild geese and dead ends, you'll have plenty of time to so the other 10% of SEO: coming up with the unique content and unmatchable links that will put you over the top.

The Exceptions

If you're going after a competitive term, you can't afford to do what everyone else is doing. But targeting a hyper-competitive term isn't just business: it's PR, bragging rights, and general obstinance. The competition to own the term [car insurance quotes] must be brutal. It's easier to get a dozen iterations on, say, [car insurance price honor student discount].

If you really, really have to get a tough term, you can experiment. In fact, you have to. You have to get the links your competitors can't get—and you have to keep doing it, because they're doing the same thing to you.

The SEO market is not saturated. Many SEO professionals know the industry's standards and best practices. While most of us would love to come up with the next big linkbaiting technique or gray-hat trick, the fact remains: most of the time, when you're doing SEO, pioneering doesn't pay.



Blogging for the Long Tail
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Posted by matt lambert

This is a very straightforward and quick article in support of the recent Whiteboard Friday, which said very clearly that the long tail of search has greater volume, and is less competitive.

Well, of course for the stats mad amongst us, that's just like an open invitation to go and delve into their analytics. This is what I came up with:

Compare the number of people landing on static 'company and product' type pages with the number landing on blog pages, which are targetted at more specific subjects. I did this (with permission) for a small business (not my own) that had been blogging for about a year or more.

Ok, so whilst not conforming to levels of scientific rigor, it shows the potential. I was quite suprised to find that the conversion rate of traffic was almost exactly the same for both sets of traffic. Excluding paid and brand searches.

This diagram of an actual small business has proved most useful in encouraging people to start a blog! Feel free to use.

 

 

The impressive thing is that the profile matches the approximate 75% of searches that in the whiteboard video Rand mentioned that happen in the tail - but surely that's just a co-incidence.

 

Improve the Long Tail - Wordpress Automated Query Insertion!
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Posted by MOGmartin

This is my first stab at a YOUmoz entry, I would welcome your questions or comments either publicly in the comments section or by PM.

A few months back I was reading through my daily dose of SEO blogs, and happened across this post over at BlogStorm by Patrick Altoft concerning the drop in traffic that sribd had suffered from recently.

He handily posted the below graph from Quantcast to quantify their actual loss, and went on to explain that they had been employing a nice tactic to increase search visibility for long tail queries:

"The site used to have a clever internal system which monitored the keywords sending natural search traffic and then added them to the page automatically to make the page seem more relevant than before and therefore get higher rankings."

 

The concept of taking actual search queries that have triggered clicks to your site I found very interesting, its kind of like UGC but without requiring the surfer to actually do anything, and for most websites building up a decent position on the potentially hundreds of terms per page that 'might' drive traffic is phenomenally difficult unless you have some serious domain authority in your chosen subject, and lets face it, most of us don't!

I tend to use WordPress for most of my smaller sites that I launch around keyword rich domain names, as its a simple and easy way to build out half decent sites in minutes as opposed to days, so I set about writing a plugin that would replicate exactly what scribd had turned off to monitor the results.

In a nutshell, the plugin strips the search term from the referring URL if its come from a search engine (pretty much every major SE as well) and saves it in a table,  and displays the queries on the post pages of the wordpress site that a user has used to find that specific page.

The results so far have been pretty good, increasing the total number of clicks that I have received from specific long tail queries, and increasing the unique queries that have passed through hits. 

Some example stats taken from one of my sites:

Before the plugin (well, mainly before the plugin, I installed it on this site on August 25th)

 

 

After the Plugin (and a week or so)

 

 

Further Stats from those time periods: (BP= Before Plugin / AP = After Plugin)

Total Visits from Organic Search: 1,382 BP / 2,627 AP

Total Unique Search Terms (organic): 176 BP / 347 AP

Increase in Organic Traffic =  90.08%

Increase in Unique Search Terms = 97.15%

I have the plugin installed on about 25 different websites at the moment, and I have seen a varying uplift in traffic to old posts on every wordpress site I have installed it on, the stats above are from a site I chose because it has had no new content added or changed and zero linkbuilding done during the period of the test (or immediately before either).

The plugin also gives you a handy control panel where you can see how what queries have triggered clicks for what pages (live stats) and you can also configure a few other parameters, such as how many queries are displayed and the format they are displayed in.

This is my first stab at an SEO plugin (or any plugin in fact) for WordPress, and if any other webmasters here that use WordPress would be interested in giving it a shot, I would love to hear your feedback!

Disclosure: within the plugin list of keywords I have an embedded link back to my new site, if you don't want it to appear on your site then you can remove it from the source, but as noted in the documentation of the plugin, I would really appreciate it if you did link to my site if you find the plugin useful! 

If you want to play about with the plugin you can download my Wordpress SEO Plugin Here (download from wordpress.org).

 

Microsoft Yahoo Partnership Part 3 of 3
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In the third, and most exciting (and actionable) blog post about the Microsoft-Yahoo Deal, I will cover the 5 ppc management


Yahoo! Editorial Update
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Understanding online consumers - new whitepaper details survey results...
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Based on feedback we received at ourCatalyst


Retail search marketers - be prepared for a flood of eBay traffic.
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Over on sister-blog, eBay strategies, we have details


Bing cashback webinar tomorrow - ChannelAdvisor Bing / Microsoft
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Tomorrow, September 15 @ 2pm ET, ChannelAdvisor is excited to co-present a webinar featuring Bing's cashback program. I'll be the MC and we'll have Bruce Curling who runs BD for Bing's cashback program.


Googles Trademark Policy
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Ive noticed a lot of confusion over Googles new trademarkpolicy.


Come see us at shop.org
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Searchmarketing readers - ChannelAdvisor will be out at shop.org with a full team of experts ready to show you any aspects of our ChannelAdvisor Complete system (Search, CSE, Marketplaces, Rich Media, etc.) that you are interested in. In addition to our booth (#401), we'll have a dedicated demo room where you can have a drink snack and see a longer demo if interested. Stop by the booth and say you read about it on searchmarketing.com for a little gift.


Paid Ads Shifting to the Left on the SERPs
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When i got in this morning and ran a few queries on Google, I noticed that the ads on the right side (we'll call them RSA) appear to be shifted to the left. I confirmed that this was the case with a few other members of the Search Services


Building a Better Brand Campaign
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Brand campaigns are easy, right? Just throw some variations on your business name and url into an ad group, set some ads, and let the engines take care of the rest. But then again, youve spent a lot of time building your brand; why not spend a little more time on how you advertise it? Ive seen a number of brand campaigns benefit greatly from some simple reorganization, and with a little work, you too can make sure you are maximizing your brands exposure. To start, I would recommend that every brand campaign has, at a minimum, three ad groups:


Where to Begin a White-Hat Link Building Campaign
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Posted by Deckers

In reading Rand’s post on the paid links debate and the related comments that followed, as well as the discussion about link brokers on another site, I wanted to take some time to figure out how to actually go about white-hat link building. The definition of paid links for the purposes of this article is paid links = $/mo. If the money stops the link disappears.

This is coming from someone fairly new to the SEO industry, and my aim in writing this is not only to help solidify my thoughts, but to also get your feedback for what has worked in the past (creative ideas that haven’t made it out of the testing phase are welcome). From reading several posts on the topic of link-building here at SEOmoz, and through other resources on the web, link-building (on large scale, using white-hat methods) still has a sort of secretive, mysterious force field surrounding it.

If I said to myself, “Links seem to be a pretty important factor in ranking well; what can I do to grow in that area?” – Aside from “Buy some links” I don’t know that anything I’ve read could sum it up in 6 words or less. So another goal by the end of this will be to sum up how to naturally build links, using only white-hat techniques, in 6 words or less. [Enter epic theme music]

1.)    Good Content – Make That Viral Content

What makes something viral? Michael Jackson is dead! Immediately thoughts start to race through the mind: That’s crazy! What happened? How’d he die? Can I get a refund on my tickets?

How do you create something viral like that? Aside from making up an outrageous lie or hoping to stumble across some important piece of information that no one’s found yet that just happens to be exactly what you need for you business, there has to be some reproducible aspect of creating viral content that can be harnessed.

The only common thread for all things viral that comes to mind is starting something buzz-worthy; something that makes the reader want more information. If somebody has a formula for this, please share! Having been assigned the task for developing an organic link-building campaign in the near future, this seems like a high ROI endeavor in terms of acquiring links if it works. My suspicion though is that there is a lot of trial and error involved, with the process resulting in a lot of campaigns that aren’t successful. Does anybody have any thoughts on other common threads that go into making a viral campaign successful? (Making something buzz-worthy has already been taken)

How does it work?

• People love your content and as a cause-effect type occurrence, they’re compelled to talk about it on blogs, forums, and websites e.g. Did you hear about Google’s crop circle thing…
• And in doing so, people link directly to the source as a reference for other people who want more info… Did you hear about Google’s crop circle thing…
• People in peripheral markets that you wouldn’t necessarily have access to, begin to follow the trail back to your site.
• Ensuing gossip, talk, excitement, and buzz continues for people new to the situation
• The process repeats itself until it dies out and eventually becomes old news, but hopefully at which point you have a whole bunch of link love coming your way

2.)    Ask for Links

There was a post done a while back on how to effectively use article marketing, and specifically, the section that mentions the author’s favorite method for getting links through articles touched on a more general concept for me,  which is just simply to ask.

Aside from some leg-work in compiling a list of relevant sites that you want linking back to you, after that, it’s simply a matter of making contact , telling them who you are, why you want to be associated, and asking if they’ll link. Again, operating on suspicions here and will gladly welcome corrections and feedback from people who have experience with this, it seems this method would yield far fewer links compared to a successful viral campaign, but in the grand scheme of link acquirement, I could see picking up some extremely valuable links this way.

Another variation on this as mentioned in a recap of great takeaways from the SEOmoz PRO Training Seminar  is the use of confirmation pages and/or confirmation emails as a platform to ask people to link back to you.

How does it work?

• You have not because you ask not…
• On the second variation, people who show interest in your site are likely to be more receptive in linking to you

From what I’ve been able to glean, these two pillars look to be what support a long term, white-hat link building program

From an 80/20 perspective on what’s going to be the best use of time, money, and resources for gaining the most links, viral content seems to be the better vehicle. I should mention, the definition of viral content I’m using is really a large umbrella that covers not only content generated through blog posts, forums, and news articles, but also through contests, quizzes, etc.; essentially anything that compels people to find out more, I consider to be viral.

I realize the two methods mentioned above are vague, and maybe even over-simplified, but if you have any additional thoughts, comments, ideas, or corrections on how best to begin a link building campaign from a 30,000 foot view, I’d love to hear about them.

My answer to the initial question of where to begin a white-hat link building campaign in 6 words or less (as promised): Viral Content and Asking for Links.

Your thoughts?

Learn Link Building From a Will Ferrell Movie
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Posted by Royur

Has anyone watched the movie called Semi-pro? Where a small basketball league called ABA is on the verge of collapse and has to be merged with the NBA to survive, but the NBA only accepts four team to be merged and thus the trouble begins. Flint Tropic (Will Ferrell Team) must make a great basketball play and also get two thousand fans so they could get merged.   

I'm not actually a fan of Will Ferrell movies, but there are a lot of things you can learn from this movie. Will Ferrell is the promoter of the team, and I have to admit that he is doing a great job doing it.  He realizes that his team is not good enough to have a lot of fans and so he uses other methods to get a lot of fans. He uses an amazing starting line up, eye liner, free corn dogs for the audience if the score reaches a certain point, dare devil by jumping many girls, half court shot for $10.000 and also wrestling with a bear. 

In the line of link building sometimes we have to build links but the site is not good enough to generate its own link and thus we have to do what Will Farrel do in the movie, we improvise!

Starting line up or should I say first impression

So if the website content is generally flat and not so interesting for common viewer but the first time you open the site you got an awesome welcoming sign that leaves the viewer remembering your site more than the other site that is competing and has the same boring content as you are. The next time people want to link about the not-so great content they would remember that your site has better impression than the others. 

Eye liner

Will Ferrel use eye liner in one of his match to increase his team look on national TV. Make your site different with the other site no matter how silly that would look. Remember that your site is not good enough to get its own link, then why don't you use other method to get link. 

Free Corn Dog for audience when the score reach certain point

Give a free gift to the audience of your website when your site reach 10.000 viewer a day for example. This would make the viewers help each other and tell other people to come to your site and probably by linking your link in it. Just remember to put the website stats up front so many people can watch it, but in the movie, Will Ferrel wants to cheat the number so the point would not reach that certain point. 

Dare Deviling with pretty girl in it

Never underestimate the power of pretty girl and incredible stunt, combine they would make incredible link building strategy. What do you sell in your website? A dull car? Use the car in a daredevil stunt video with hot chicks behind. What about dull non-flavored candy? No problem, use it as stunt properties with hot chicks as the background. 

Half court  shot for $10.000

Have you considered building a mini game in your site, where every 100 viewer gets the chance to play the mini game to win $10.000. I'm pretty sure that this would make a great link building strategy. But just make sure that viewer know that the game is beatable and you make it practically impossible to win, just like half court shot. 

Wrestling with the bear

In the final act to get 2000 supporters Will Ferrell announces for those who watch spam the news that he would wrestle with a bear in the next match. In link building term this mean sue big company that would make many people talking about it. Just make sure the big company is someone you are close with and know what you're doing and this is all one big drama to get links. The bear in the movie is a tamed bear, but those people in the movie think it is the real deal. 

Anyway, this is my first post in YOUmoz and hopefully this has been helpful. I would recommend you to watch the movie even though I think its not a great movie, but in the SEO line of work, I think you could learn a lot. This is only what I think of the movie, if you watch it then you might get another insight on it. Be a promoter just like Jackie Moon (Will Ferrel) in the movie... 

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Whiteboard Friday - Tips, Tricks & Tactics Preview: Seth Besmertnik on Winning SEO Budget
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Posted by great scott!

Rand's in Jolly Ol' England this week, so I decided to share a preview from our upcoming DVD Training Series, "Tips, Tricks & Tactics: Volume 1," coming out in November.

We filmed this series during our recent seminar in Seattle and the response was amazing. One of the most popular sessions was Conductor CEO, Seth Besmertnik's, presentation on "How to Win SEO Budget and Influence Your CMO." In this week's Whiteboard Friday you'll get a sneak peek at part of Seth's presentation (one of 17 presentations on the DVD series) where he'll show you how to quantify the actual business value of SEO in a way that will get serious attention from executives and clients alike. Watch as Seth explains his surefire way to strike fear in the hearts of your C-suite, maintain motivation in pursuing an SEO strategy, and generate reports like a mad-man.

Keep in mind, this is just seven minutes of his 30-minute session, so it's really just a small taste of what Seth has to teach.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Tips, Tricks & Tactics Preview: Seth Besmertnik on Winning SEO Budget

Quick Note: A couple of the slides shown in the presentation look a little washed-out. That's a result of the video compression for streaming; they're perfectly clear in the uncompressed DVD video.

This Week in Search: Triple Roundup for 10/1/09 to 10/21/09
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Posted by Sam Niccolls

 

 

 

 

• Bing's Twitter Search & Google's Defensive PR:
  On the heels of Bing's Twitter Search announcement, Google's PR team put their Annie Oakley shades on and announced some upcoming social media moves of their own.

• Google Analytics' New Features:
  There are some fantastic features in GA's latest release including customized alerts, threshold goals (i.e. for time on site and pages per visit), advanced table filtering, mobile traffic reporting, more robust user defined variables, and unique visitor segmentation, just to name a few.

• Why SEO Matters:
  Derek Powazek's blog posts aside, About Online Matters' thoughtful reflection provides some great reminders about the value and importance SEO.

• Business Week Best Under 25:
  If you're inspired when you see those 13 year old figure skaters win Olympic gold, Business Week's list of top 25 young entrepreneurs will have you looping and lutzing in no time.

• Please Remove Your Site From Google:
  This e-mail from a hopelessly confused webmaster to a competitor is worth its weight in gold.

 

• SEOmoz News - Lindsay Perkin Wassell Announces Departure:
  In her post last week, SEOmoz's consulting lead reminds us that not all duplicate content is bad. And though we feel bad for the non-canonical twin, we couldn't be happier for Lindsay and her husband. Many congrats, Lindsay!

• Wolfram Alpha Launches $50 iPhone App:
  In a month where a search engine launches a $50 iPhone app and Adobe rolls out a free Photoshop app, doubts could be raised. But to the best of our knowledge, the world is still round and pigs are still unable to fly.

• Conde Nast to Close Gourmet Magazine:
  At the beginning of the month, Conde Nast made their not so savory announcement that they're closing Gourmet and two other magazines.

• New Q & A: Bing Continues to Improve for Webmasters:
  Bing made a solid addition to their webmaster suite with the addition of a new Q & A section.

• The Evolution of Zuckerberg & Facebook:
  VentureBeat's under the hood look at the evolution of Zuckerberg provides an interesting news feed on Facebook's company history and culture.

• Germany' Best SEO Resources 
  We love that Germans love SEO here at SEOmoz. If you're a German SEO, or you spreken a little Deutsch, you can cast your votes for Germany's best on SEO United's site. (Note: If you do not speak German, referring traffic source is a great way to pick your vote for "Best SEO Blog.")

 

• People Are Less Happy on Mondays:
  Facebook status updates confirm the brilliance of Bill Lumbergh; We're all prone to catching cases of the Monday's... mmm-kay, great.

• Google Patents Trust Rank:
  Bill Slawski talks about how the trust rank in Google's recent patent is different from the trust rank described in Yahoo's 2004 paper and he shares some possible reasons for the patent. In related news, the Google Webmaster Tools patent on crawl rate filed by Vanessa Fox and several others in 2006 was also accepted this month.

• Using Google Analytics  to Find Links to Your Non-www:
  Luna Metrics has a wealth of useful blog posts on web analytics. And though limited to link data on your own site, Jim Gianoglio's method for finding links to your non-www URLs is a creative, SEO-related use of Google Analytics.

• Video - Aaron Patzer Talks About Mint:
  The presentation given my Mint's CEO about the company's history is an entertaining watch for startup entrepreneurs and tech junkies alike.

• Back in the eCommerce Day:
  Get Elastic's Linda Bustos share's a wayback machine style look at 9 old school eCommerce website designs.

• Surprising Web Analytics Usage Data:
  The Google commissioned Forrester study uncovers some statistics you might not have guess about enterprise usage of free analytics tools, as well as how ineffectively most people use their web analytics tools.

 

• Video - Matt Cutts Gets His Herr Did:
  Members of Matt Cutts' team shave his head as the camera rolls.

• 20 Conversion Rate Optimization Resources:
  Wordstream's compilation of conversion rate optimization focused blogs, books, and podcasts is worth a look through. It has several resources you might be familiar with, as well as a handful that are probably new.

• First Link Checker Tool:
  Based on the idea that Google only considers anchor text for the first link on a page to be relevant, BusinessOnLine launched an early version of a tool that identifies multiple links on a page with the same destination.

• 10 Worst Money Making Business Ideas:
  Neil Patel's list of bad business ideas is both humorous and reprehensible. So yes, his Homer Simpson graphic is more than appropriate for the post.

• Using Google's Chart API for Map-based Linkbait:
  I'm a big fan of Epicurious' Seasonal Ingredient Map, as well as Travel Pod's Traveler IQ Challenge, but Google code offers some pretty slick ways to implement customized maps for linkbait on your site.

Highlighted by two great posts from Casey Henry, each of which were promoted to the SEOmoz Blog, there have been a bevy of bookmark-worthy reads this October on YOUmoz.

Top YOUmoz entries:

1. *What Makes a Linkworthy Blog Post by chenry 
   

2. *Track Your Mozpoints by chenry
   

3. Google Universal Results in Brazil by Fabio Ricotta

4. Using WordPress Automated Keyword Insertion for the Long Tail by MOGmartin

5. An Attempt to Understand Local Ranking Factors by riseandshineseo

6. White-Hat Linkbuilding by deckers

7. Planning Your Internal Linking Structure by zoicaremus

8. Domain Authority: Is it a ranking factor? by BenRush

9. True or False: Organic Traffic Converts Better than PPC Traffic? by drummerboy9000

10. Determining Keyword Value by eslobrown

* Indicates blog post was promoted to the SEOmoz Blog

 

• SEOs Are Spammers, Evil Doers and Opportunists:
  And yes, you should read the exchange between blogger Derek Powazek and Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan. If you missed it, the back-and-forth went a little something like this... Powazek made a post disparaging SEO, which sparked a reaction across the industry. Danny Sullivan responded to Powazek's post. Then, Powazek responded to Danny's response and Danny followed up again in response to Powazek's response. There were also a myriad of tweets and blog posts, but that's the basic gist of the blogger-mama-drama that was.