Questions created by donford
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Does Google's Information Box Seem Shady to you?
So I just had this thought, Google returns information boxes for certain search terms. Recently I noticed one word searches usually return a definition. For example if you type in the word "occur" or "happenstance" or "frustration" you get a definition information box. But what I didn't see is a reference to where they are getting or have gotten this information. Now it could very well be they built their own database of definitions, and if they did great, but here is where it seems a bit grey to me... Did Google hire a team of people to populate the database, or did they just write an algorithm to comb a dictionary website and stick the information in their database. The latter seems more likely. If that is what happened then Google basically stole the information from somebody to claim it as their own, which makes me worry, if you coin a term, lets say "lumpy stumpy" and it goes mainstream which would entail a lot of marketing, and luck. Would Google just add it to its database and forgo giving you credit for its creation? From a user perspective I love these information boxes, but just like Google expects us webmasters to do, they should be giving credit where credit is due... don't you think? I'm not plugged in to the happenings of Google so maybe they bought the rights, or maybe they bought or hold a majority of shares in some definition type company (they have the cash) but it just struck me as odd not seeing a reference to a site. What are your thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | donford1 -
Moz Thumbs not working? @MozHelp
Hi all, I'm noticing an issue with Moz thumbs. Last night before bed, I am pretty positive I gave EGOL and Laura a thumbs up for their answers to this question. This morning I noticed there were no thumbs up for their responses. At first I thought maybe I didn't give them a thumbs up, and proceeded to thumb them again. Everything appeared to work, however after returning to the post I noticed my thumbs didn't appear to be recorded. Has anybody noticed this issue?
API | | donford0 -
MozPoints end of year 2015, top 50 aggregated
On December 30th, 2015 I decided to look at the Moz Community Rankings, I find it fun to do for time to time, and I always like to see how close I am to getting that special dinner with Rand I have heard so much about in the past. One thing I noticed right away is that Moz ranks members just on MozPoints, and not on other factors like, how helpful they tend to be. This means had I joined in a few years earlier, I could be at the top.. or could I be??? Again, it is just something I did for fun, but I decided to look at a few additional factors to get my True MozRank 🙂 By examining just the top 50 active members I added some additional ranking factors and aggregated them to find a true Rank. The ranking factors are.. Moz Points Per Month (Using the users points divided by months they have been a member) Thumbs Up percentage (Using the percentage of Thumbs Up they receive per point) Good Answer percentage (Using the percentage of Good Answers they receive per point) Endorsed Answer percentage (Using the percentage of Endorsed Answers they receive per point) After that I gave each of the top 50 a rank in each category based on their respective scores. I then totaled the ranks, and assigned a new final rank based on the lowest totals (which means they ranked the best).
Search Behavior | | donford
Edit (01/18/2016): With the help of Peter Nikolow I aggregated all active users as per this post.
Link to all 4291 active users ranks For example EGOL category ranks: MozPoint Rank (1) Points Per Month Rank (2) Percent of Thumbs Up Rank (27) Percent of Good Answers Rank (29) Percent of Endorsed Answers Rank (23) Total = 82
Final Rank = 5 His closest competitor RyanKent MozPoint Points rank 2 MozPoint Rank (2) Points Per Month Rank (3) Percent of Thumbs Up Rank (39) Percent of Good Answers Rank (9) Percent of Endorsed Answers Rank (20) Total = 73
Final Rank = 2 Well it was a fun experiment for me, a couple people are out of place in the rankings based on other factors but for the most part MozPoints are pretty accurate. You can view the spread sheet on Google Docs and play around with the data as you wish. Don EDIT: After looking at the document again I noticed an error with rank assignments I have since fixed it. Edit (01/18/2016): With the help of Peter Nikolow I aggregated all active users as per this post. Link to all 4291 active users ranks13 -
Looking for a Proof Reader for a Moz Blog Post..
Hello everybody, After being here for 4 years I decided to write a post for YouMoz. That was about 3 months ago, and while I have read, re-read and proofed this thing a dozen times since, I know my own limits. I honestly want the post to be the best it can be, and while I stand by my article, I know my forte is not with writing. My article is about Beginning SEO and Where to Start, yes it maybe cliche but I find myself answering many of the questions on these QA boards that I address in this article. It would be nice to have a post I could point to when such situations arise. What I'm looking for is one or two persons with a strong knowledge of basic SEO, the ability to understand me (a cluttered mind), and strong grammar skills. Credit will be given to those who want it. The article is basically in what I consider a finished state, I just need to add a compendium video for one of the sections. I have done my own artwork, research, and document design. I just need a keen eye to snuff out those grammar errors I always miss and somebody to tell me if a section doesn't make sense. If you are interested please let me know here, or send me a PM. I would like to have something to review to make my selection so if you're not active here, a link to where you are would be beneficial. I know that might be asking a lot; help and you also get vetted, but the idea is I don't want to send out what I think is a very good article only to see it appear on another site. Thank you, Don P.S. To the Moz staff. Once I make my selection I will mark at least one response as Good so it don't keep annoying you as an un-answered question.
Content Development | | donford1 -
Do You Work At Home As An SEO Or Have An Office?
I'm curious how many of you all work at home or mostly at home either through an company or freelance. Or are most of you employed at a corporation? My company was recently bought by a very large global company. Recently I found out that all the SEO and web design is contracted through outside sources. With the headquarters in Europe, this being my primary job function I kinda feel well you know.... down.. Websites I put my life into for the last 7 years are going to be handed over to a corporation to do with whatever they feel they should. I know they were never really mine, but when you spend so much of your life to making them the best you can, so much so to attract the attention of a global billion dollar company, you should feel great right? But I feel like my dog just died. I don't have a bad impression of the company but the shift of moving me to the IT guy has begun. Normal web updates I would have done, are now being pushed aside. I don't hate IT I like helping others, but I really loved being able to make a difference through the web. Now I'm left contemplating my future, big corporations have so much bs, I just don't feel comfortable. I would really appreciate you all giving me your thoughts and tell me about any similar experiences you have had in your life. Cheers, Don
Industry News | | donford0 -
Google+ What is up with results?
If anybody has followed me, they know I am not a big advocate of Social Media, but I understand when you must adapt. So we broke down and made our Google+ Page https://plus.google.com/113910385846996409142 The problem is, when you go to Google and search "Google+ Columbia Engineered Rubber" You get what appears to be 2 place pages (our company is in 2 locations) and one page that looks like something somebody tried to make, could have somebody here, or some auto generating thing..don't know. But our real page that we made (linked above) doesn't appear at all. Does anybody know how to go about consolidating these pages to the one I made, its quite confusing for one company to have 3 pages showing in results none of which are correct. Thank you for you time, Don
Social Media | | donford0 -
What is SEO to you
We define SEO, as search engine optimization. Though it is more of an art. A web developer is not necessarily a SEO and vice versa. In my job as a web developer I wear many hats, and often asked what exactly SEO is. Before panda the seo industry seemed to follow "tricks" to get sites ranked. This practice lead to many seo company's thinking that spamming links, using link exchanges, link rings etc.. was actually the way to "SEO". So now it seams SEO is simply a short word as to how to get your site in top results, thusly ignoring the actual definition. As a web developer I always viewed SEO as a way to help the search engines understand what my web page is about. What do you think SEO means to you and your company?
Search Behavior | | donford0 -
Social Media Gurus... What would you do, your industry has no presence?
You are tasked with creating a Facebook page for an industry which has a distinct lack of social media presence. During your research for your industry or client you find none of their competitors are using social media to any large degree. Reviewing the whys, you find that the demographics of people using Social Media outlets like, Facebook, Twitter, Pin Interest, and LinkedIn do not really fit with the industry. Do you view this as a great opportunity for your company / client and push forward with creating a Social Media presence? Or, do you inform your company / client based on your research, social media isn't a viable use of time or money? Examples: Plastic Manufacturing
Social Media | | donford
Industrial Laundry
Tractor Trailer Wholesale
Copper Mining Equipment I am interested in how the guru's handle clients / companies that don't necessarily fit the mold of social media, but ask and are willing to pay you to make it happen for them. I am hoping this to be a good discussion as I don't see any right or wrongs in these situations. What would you do?0 -
You folks see the Google Analytics Real Time View (Beta)
I was pretty impressed by the amount of data they can present to you and how quickly the site gets it to you. Hit your GA account click the Home tab then click the Real Time (Beta) link in the navigation. It is pretty impressive. GoogleAnalytics.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | donford0 -
Helpful or Hurtfull / Distributor Links to Our site on every product page?
We have a distributor site with a page rank of 3 on its home page, and 0-1'ish on its product pages. While our manufacturing site is PR 4 getting close to 5... We are thinking about adding a link from our distributors product pages to our manufacturing appropriate material information page. This would be about 10k links spread out among 7 materials. We want to add these links to help our distributor sites customers, but we don't want to hurt our manufacturing site in the process. I personally don't know of any problem this would cause, but our manufacturing site is so important I need to verify adding this many links wouldn't hurt us. Your thoughts and knowledge is appreciated.
Link Building | | donford0 -
Internal Links & Title Tags, Which Page Benifits?
The best way I can explain why question is with an example. Lets say I have a parent parent page that is focusing on a broad keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | donford
I also have a sub-page which is focused more on long-tail keyword variations. When I make an internal link and give it a title tag, should I give it the long-tail keyword for the juice, or should I use the broad keyword for the parent page's relevancy? Thanks for any help, advise or pointers.0 -
Hyphenated Words as Keywords what is spam?
Do you know of any evidence that explains how Google or any SE would handle pages with words that are commonly hyphenate? Our site for example has a large O-ring section. A couple years ago when we did our SEO we used Google's keyword tool and found that these words all have different Cost Per Click, Global / Local searches. O-Rings
Algorithm Updates | | donford
O-Ring
oring
o-ring So we assumed they were each unique keywords and designed our pages to alternate usage of the terms as they are fairly interchangeable. However we have not achieved the position we would have expected from all that work, now while I'm doing another SEO pass with the tools here.. I want to make sure we don't spam them, but still cover all our bases. Thanks for any tips, advice or links.0 -
Title Tag, Are the Keywords Plucked out of it?
We are working on redoing our site and I read the article from rand about how to properly format title tags, here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tactical-seo-how-many-termsphrases-should-i-target-on-a-single-page He showed how he could take 6 keywords and use them all in the title tag: The title Tag:
On-Page Optimization | | donford
Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org The keywords:
Ted Baker
Ted Baker London
Ted Baker Clothing
Ted Baker Mens
Ted Baker Mens Clothing
Ted Baker Mens Collection So what I am wondering is the keyword Ted Baker Mens Collection actually getting found. In this case we are dealing with a contraction (men's) and a plural form of a keyword (collections). Is it plucked out from the title tag above?
Like this? Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org In his article he goes on to say the biggest mistake he sees is, unfortunately exactly the way our site was built 6 years ago. That is people doing this: Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men's Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com Our site does just that, while we are PR 4 and get decent traffic for the business we are in, we are doing a huge update with new pages, information, and most importantly trying to get all the SEO the best as possible. I want to make sure before we make these what could be huge impact changes that search engines do in fact Pluck the keywords from the title tag, and they are not required to be together. Thank you for any thoughts, answers and most importantly your time. Example following this formula: Our Top 3 Keywords:
Molded Rubber
Rubber Molding
Custom Molded Rubber Our Old way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber, Rubber Molding, Molded Rubber
The new way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber - Molding Services | OurSite.com0