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	<title>Peer Marketing Group</title>
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	<description>Social Media Solutions, Search Engine Optimization Solutions</description>
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		<title>Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors July 2010</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/thanks-to-this-month%e2%80%99s-sponsors-july-2010/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/thanks-to-this-month%e2%80%99s-sponsors-july-2010/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:17:39 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2010]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[July]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Month’s]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sponsors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thanks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[This]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/july-2010/"class="post_image_link"  title="Permanent link to Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors July 2010"><img class="post_image alignnone remove_bottom_margin frame" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/july-2010.jpg" width="600" height="300" alt="Post image for Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors July 2010" /></a>
</p>
<p>I&#8217;d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn&#8217;t be regular posts here.<br />
<span id="more-5757"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/starter_kit.php?src=wolf_howl"rel="nofollow" >Text Link Ads</a> &#8211; New customers can get 0 in free&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/july-2010/"class="post_image_link"  title="Permanent link to Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors July 2010"><img class="post_image alignnone remove_bottom_margin frame" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/july-2010.jpg" width="600" height="300" alt="Post image for Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors July 2010" /></a>
</p>
<p>I&#8217;d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn&#8217;t be regular posts here.<br />
<span id="more-5757"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/starter_kit.php?src=wolf_howl"rel="nofollow" >Text Link Ads</a> &#8211; New customers can get 0 in free text links.</p>
<p><a href="http://crazyegg.com/"rel="nofollow" >CrazyEgg.com</a> &#8211; Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.</p>
<p><a href="http://botw.org/"rel="nofollow" >BOTW.org</a> &#8211; Get a premier listing in the internet&#8217;s oldest directory.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ezilon.com"rel="nofollow" >Ezilon.com Regional Directory</a> &#8211; Check to see if your website is listed!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.contentcustoms.com/go/wolf-howl" rel="nefollow">Content Customs</a> &#8211; Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week</p>
<p>Interested in seeing your message here? There are banner and RSS advertising options available <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/advertising/"rel="nofollow" >find out more information</a>. Be sure to check out our new <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/22/sponsored-posts-experiment/">Sponsored post option</a>.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a list of some other programs and products I reccomend</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/thesis"rel="nofollow" >Thesis Theme for WordPress</a> &#8211; Hands down the best theme on the market right now, read my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/thesis-wordpress-theme-review/">Thesis Theme for WordPress Review</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/scribeseo/"rel="nofollow" >Scribe SEO</a> &#8211; Improve your blog posts with this easy to use built in tool, read my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO Review</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/knowem/"rel="nofollow" >KnowEm</a> &#8211; Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites, read an <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/socialmedia/michael-streko-knowem/">Interview with Michael Streko</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tigertech.net/referral/wolf-howl.com"rel="nofollow" >TigerTech</a> &#8211; Great Web Hosting service at a great price, read my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/tools/upgrade-your-hosting-and-save-some-cash-with-tigertech/">Tiger Tech Review</a>.<br />
<small><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/"title="Attribution-ShareAlike License" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" ><img style="border: 0;" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/plugins/photo-dropper/images/cc.png" alt="Creative Commons License" width="16" height="16" /></a> <a href="http://www.photodropper.com/photos/"onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" >photo</a> credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/26720971@N02/3970279665/"title="Seattle Miles (offline until Tuesday)" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" >Seattle Miles (offline until Tuesday)</a></small></p>
<p>This post originally came from <a href="http://michaelgray.name">Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/">SEO Consultant</a>. Be sure not to miss the <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/thesis-wordpress-theme-review/">Thesis WordPress Theme review</a>. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/july-2010/">Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors July 2010</a> <br/></p>
<p><a href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=290987"><img src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/banners/text_link_ads_F_468x60.gif"  alt="tla starter kit" style="margin:5px;border:0px;width:468px;height:60px;" /></a><br />
<h4>Related posts:</h4>
<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/thank-you-march-2010/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors &#8211; March 2010'>Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors &#8211; March 2010</a> <small>I&#8217;d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/thanks-april-2010/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors April 2010'>Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors April 2010</a> <small>I&#8217;d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/sponsors-feb-201/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors &#8211; February 2010'>Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors &#8211; February 2010</a> <small>I&#8217;d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/sponsors-may-2010/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors May 2010'>Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors May 2010</a> <small>I&#8217;d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/sponsors/sponsors-june-2010/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors June 2010'>Thanks to This Month&#8217;s Sponsors June 2010</a> <small>I&#8217;d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored&#8230;</small></li>
</ol>
<h4>Advertisers:</h4>
<ol>
<li><a  href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/starter_kit.php?src=wolf_howl">Text Link Ads</a> &#8211; New customers can get 0 in free text links.</li>
<li><a  href="http://crazyegg.com/">CrazyEgg.com</a> &#8211; Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.</li>
<li><a  href="http://botw.org/">BOTW.org</a> &#8211; Get a premier listing in the internet&#8217;s oldest directory.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/plugins/adrotate/adrotate-out.php?trackerid=31' >Ezilon.com Regional Directory</a> &#8211; Check to see if your website is listed!</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.page1hosting.com/">Page1Hosting</a> &#8211; Class C IP Hosting starting at .99.</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.dirjournal.com/">Directory Journal</a> &#8211; List your website in our growing web directory today.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.contentcustoms.com/go/wolf-howl" rel="nefollow">Content Customs</a> &#8211; Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week</li>
<li><a href="http://www.clarusglassboards.com/glass-boards.php" >Glass Whiteboards</a> &#8211; For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/reviews/clarus-glass-whiteboard-review/">Glass Whiteboard Review</a></li>
<li>Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consulting Services</a></li>
<li><a  href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/knowem/">KnowEm</a> &#8211; Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO Review</a> find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.tigertech.net/referral/wolf-howl.com">TigerTech</a> &#8211; Great Web Hosting service at a great price.</li>
</ol>
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		<title>Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your WordPress Posts</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/use-scribe-seo-to-optimize-your-wordpress-posts/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/use-scribe-seo-to-optimize-your-wordpress-posts/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:50:39 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/" title="Permanent link to Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your WordPress Posts"><img class="post_image alignnone remove_bottom_margin frame" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe-seo.jpg" width="600" height="300" alt="Post image for Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your WordPress Posts" /></a>
</p>
<p>As you know I&#8217;m a big fan of the WordPress platform. Although it&#8217;s <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/wordpress-for-seo/">not the most optimal platform</a>, there&#8217;s no question that <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/tools/how-i-create-and-manage-a-wordpress-website/">it makes it easier to run a website</a>. I was recently asked by <a&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/" title="Permanent link to Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your WordPress Posts"><img class="post_image alignnone remove_bottom_margin frame" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe-seo.jpg" width="600" height="300" alt="Post image for Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your WordPress Posts" /></a>
</p>
<p>As you know I&#8217;m a big fan of the WordPress platform. Although it&#8217;s <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/wordpress-for-seo/">not the most optimal platform</a>, there&#8217;s no question that <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/tools/how-i-create-and-manage-a-wordpress-website/">it makes it easier to run a website</a>. I was recently asked by <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/"title="Brian Clark of CopyBlogger" >Brian Clark of CopyBlogger</a> to test a new service/plugin for WordPress, one that was designed to help you do a better job of optimizing your posts.<span></span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO</a> is plugin that works with WordPress to analyze your posts, give you information about them, and make suggestions about improving your post from an SEO Perspective. If you&#8217;re using <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/thesis">Thesis</a>, the plugin interfaces without a hitch. While I haven&#8217;t tried it, I understand it also works with the Hybrid and Headway themes as well. If you aren&#8217;t using either of those themes, that&#8217;s fine. You&#8217;ll just need the<a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/"title=" All in One SEO plugin" > All in One SEO plugin</a>. So here&#8217;s what Scribe SEO does &#8230;</p>
<div>
	<a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe1.jpg" rel="lightbox[1702]"><img class="size-full wp-image-5110" title="scribe1" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe1.jpg" alt="" width="347" height="233" /></a></p>
<p>Your post is ready to be analyzed by ScribeSEO</p>
</div>
<p>Once you&#8217;ve finished writing your post, the plugin checks to make sure you&#8217;ve written an optimized version of your title in the custom title field. Want the title to be the same? That&#8217;s OK, but you&#8217;ll have to copy/paste it down below. It then checks to see if you&#8217;ve written a meta description. Yes, I know <a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/">the meta description is not a part of the ranking algo</a>, but your meta description is what appears under your page title in the SERP&#8217;s and writing a click-enticing meta description is good thing. If you don&#8217;t think Google is using click tracking data, you might want to reconsider. Last, it checks to see if you&#8217;ve got content for the post. Once everything is set you&#8217;ll see three green arrows like in the screen shot to the right and the analyze button will &#8220;turn on.&#8221; Hit the button and the process will start. For this write-up, I&#8217;ll show data from an old post.</p>
<p>Before we dive in, let&#8217;s do a common sense review. Just because a computer program tells you to do something doesn&#8217;t mean you should turn off your brain and blindly do it; use some common sense. Sometimes you&#8217;ll do something &#8220;wrong&#8221; on purpose. If you are breaking the rules intentionally and are fully aware of what you are doing and why, feel free to ignore the suggestions. Remember that just because Google and <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-maps-lost-iphone/">your GPS tell you to go a certain way doesn&#8217;t always mean it&#8217;s the right way to go</a>. Always use your noodle.</p>
<p>Ok, so here&#8217;s a sample of the information you&#8217;ll get back from Scribe SEO:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe2.jpg" rel="lightbox[1702]"><img class="size-full wp-image-5116" title="scribe2" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe2.jpg" alt="" width="539" height="335" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe3.jpg" rel="lightbox[1702]"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5115" title="scribe3" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe3.jpg" alt="" width="528" height="328" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe4.jpg" rel="lightbox[1702]"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5114" title="scribe4" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe4.jpg" alt="" width="536" height="329" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe6.jpg" rel="lightbox[1702]"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5112" title="scribe6" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/scribe6.jpg" alt="" width="535" height="320" /></a></p>
<p>The tool gives you an overall score, a breakdown on keywords, suggestions for tuning your focus into/out of keywords, and a SERP preview. The last tab gives you some general overall SEO guidelines to keep in mind. Are there other tools out there that can give you this information? Absolutely. But can they give it to you right in your dashboard, before you publish, and  without a lot of copying and pasting? Nope.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s where you need to use your brain a little. You don&#8217;t need to strive to get a 100% on every post. Technically your posts might be better but honestly I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;d be as valuable or have as much personality. Having an article that is 100% optimized but is boring is never as good as a slightly less optimized article that&#8217;s interesting to read. However <em>(he says, looking squarely in the direction of you bloggers out there)</em> ignoring keyword focus in favor lyrical prose isn&#8217;t the answer either. What you need to do is strike a balance, and that&#8217;s where <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO</a> comes in. Write an interesting post/article <em><strong>THEN</strong></em><strong> use Scribe SEO to make sure your article is targeting the right words and sending the right signals to the search engines</strong>. This is especially helpful if you are <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/reviews/textbroker-com-review/">outsourcing your content creation</a> to someone who isn&#8217;t an SEO.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO</a> is a paid service. You&#8217;re allowed to set it up on as many websites you want. Then, depending on the level you choose, you get a certain number of evaluation runs. For $27 a month you&#8217;ll get 30 evaluations, for $47 a month you&#8217;ll get 120 evaluations, and for $97 you&#8217;ll get 300 evaluations.<strong> However as part of the introductory offer you can get the full 300 evaluations for only $27 a month (but the offer ends Feb 19th so you better hurry)</strong>.</p>
<p>Is it worth the price? If you&#8217;re using CPM based advertising and you can generate higher rankings and more traffic then the answer is yes. Running Adsense or an affiliate website/blog? Again if this tool can help you write posts that rank better, drive more traffic, and get you more clicks or conversions, then the answer is again yes it&#8217;s absolutely worth it.</p>
<p><strong>Bonus Tip:</strong> Do you have old posts that you expected a little more out of? Use this tool to go back, re-evaluate, and tweak things a bit to improve them.</p>
<p>Is this tool for everyone? No. However, if you are looking for a native tool to help finely tune your posts, then yes, this tool can help you. If you feel that your writing is stronger then your SEO knowledge, then yes, this tool will definitely help you. If you use writers with varying degrees of SEO expertise, this tool will absolutely help you bring everything up to par.</p>
<p>If you fit into any of the above scenarios, <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/scribeseo/">give Scribe SEO a try</a> and publish posts that are better optimized. Don&#8217;t forget: it&#8217;s only $27 for the highest level until February 19th.</p>
<p>UPDATE: to answer the question, if you join at the $27 price now you&#8217;re locked in, and it won&#8217;t go up as long as you stay subscribed.</p>
<p><small>Disclosure: I was given beta access to this tool and the above post does contain affiliate links. However I&#8217;m comfortable recommending this tool since I have tested it on several commercial websites I run and have been satisfied with the results. </small></p>
<p><strong>Advertisement</strong>: Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/">SEO Consulting Services</a> #5</p>
<p>This post originally came from <a href="http://michaelgray.name">Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/">SEO Consultant</a>. Be sure not to miss the <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/thesis-wordpress-theme-review/">Thesis WordPress Theme review</a>. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/">Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your WordPress Posts</a> <br/></p>
<p><img src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/?ak_action=api_record_view&amp;id=5100&amp;type=feed" alt="" /></p>
<p>Related posts:
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<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/tools/technorati-wordpress-and-related-posts/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Technorati, WordPress and Related Posts">Technorati, WordPress and Related Posts</a> <small>If you&#8217;re a wordpress user you probably know the incoming&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/wordpress-seo-security/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress SEO: WordPress Security Why it Matters to SEO">WordPress SEO: WordPress Security Why it Matters to SEO</a> <small>In recent weeks wordpress security, or more correctly the lack&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/use-scrapers-to-build-links/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress SEO: How to Use RSS and Scrapers to Build Links">WordPress SEO: How to Use RSS and Scrapers to Build Links</a> <small>When you run wordpress or any other blog for that&#8230;</small></li>
</ol>
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		<title>Tattooed Energy Boosters &#8211; Wicked Energy Drink Gets a Facelift From a Tattoo Artist</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/fun/tattooed-energy-boosters-wicked-energy-drink-gets-a-facelift-from-a-tattoo-artist/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/fun/tattooed-energy-boosters-wicked-energy-drink-gets-a-facelift-from-a-tattoo-artist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:50:38 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Fun]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/wicked-energy-drink"><img src="http://images.trendhunter.com/phpthumbnails/69960_1_120.jpeg" hspace="10" width="120" height="120" align="left" border="0" /></a>  (TrendHunter.com) The tattoo craze keeps on inking everything in sight. As if having one on your body wasn&#8217;t enough, you can now get t-shirts, hats, and even cologne that boasts a tattoo-styled exterior. Add Wicked Energy…</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/wicked-energy-drink"><img src="http://images.trendhunter.com/phpthumbnails/69960_1_120.jpeg" hspace="10" width="120" height="120" align="left" border="0" /></a>  (TrendHunter.com) The tattoo craze keeps on inking everything in sight. As if having one on your body wasn&#8217;t enough, you can now get t-shirts, hats, and even cologne that boasts a tattoo-styled exterior. Add Wicked Energy…</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Whiteboard Friday &#8211; Outsourcing Content Creation</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/whiteboard-friday-outsourcing-content-creation/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/whiteboard-friday-outsourcing-content-creation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:50:37 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/49007">Danny Dover</a></p>
<p>&#160;This week on Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin describes the methods he recommends for outsourcing content creation. Content is extremely important for SEO and users alike so these best practices are important for those of us&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/49007">Danny Dover</a></p>
<p>&nbsp;This week on Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin describes the methods he recommends for outsourcing content creation. Content is extremely important for SEO and users alike so these best practices are important for those of us without the luxury of an in-house staff of copywriters.</p>
<p> <center><object width="640" height="360" id="wistia_159073" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"><param name="movie" value="http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/flash/embed_player_v1.1.swf" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="wmode" value="opaque" /><param name="flashvars" value="videoUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/a9fd1b32bbcda0c3aaff590d921c8e8cdff6f013.bin&amp;stillUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/5537aad6d6930339388f78067739192be9c79ea7.bin&amp;unbufferedSeek=true&amp;controlsVisibleOnLoad=false&amp;autoPlay=false&amp;playButtonVisible=true&amp;embedServiceURL=http://distillery.wistia.com/x&amp;accountKey=wistia-production_3161&amp;mediaID=wistia-production_159073&amp;mediaDuration=587.8" /><embed width="640" height="360" src="http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/flash/embed_player_v1.1.swf" name="wistia_159073" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="opaque" flashvars="videoUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/a9fd1b32bbcda0c3aaff590d921c8e8cdff6f013.bin&amp;stillUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/5537aad6d6930339388f78067739192be9c79ea7.bin&amp;unbufferedSeek=true&amp;controlsVisibleOnLoad=false&amp;autoPlay=false&amp;playButtonVisible=true&amp;embedServiceURL=http://distillery.wistia.com/x&amp;accountKey=wistia-production_3161&amp;mediaID=wistia-production_159073&amp;mediaDuration=587.8"></embed></object></center>
<div style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248); padding: 5px; width: 250px;"><img width="42" height="18" alt="" style="padding: 0pt; margin: 0pt 10px 0pt 0pt;" src="http://static.wistia.com/images/marketing/wistia_video_heatmap_icon.gif" />    <a target="_blank" href="http://app.wistia.com/seomoz/159073">See my stats for this video</a></div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><u>Embed Video:</u></p>
<div style="width: 600px; height: 25px; overflow-y: scroll; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 5px;">&lt;object width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; id=&quot;wistia_159073&quot; classid=&quot;clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/flash/embed_player_v1.1.swf&quot;/&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowfullscreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;/&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowscriptaccess&quot; value=&quot;always&quot;/&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;wmode&quot; value=&quot;opaque&quot;/&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;flashvars&quot; value=&quot;videoUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/a9fd1b32bbcda0c3aaff590d921c8e8cdff6f013.bin&amp;stillUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/5537aad6d6930339388f78067739192be9c79ea7.bin&amp;unbufferedSeek=true&amp;controlsVisibleOnLoad=false&amp;autoPlay=false&amp;playButtonVisible=true&amp;embedServiceURL=http://distillery.wistia.com/x&amp;accountKey=wistia-production_3161&amp;mediaID=wistia-production_159073&amp;mediaDuration=587.8&quot;/&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/flash/embed_player_v1.1.swf&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; name=&quot;wistia_159073&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; allowscriptaccess=&quot;always&quot; wmode=&quot;opaque&quot; flashvars=&quot;videoUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/a9fd1b32bbcda0c3aaff590d921c8e8cdff6f013.bin&amp;stillUrl=http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/5537aad6d6930339388f78067739192be9c79ea7.bin&amp;unbufferedSeek=true&amp;controlsVisibleOnLoad=false&amp;autoPlay=false&amp;playButtonVisible=true&amp;embedServiceURL=http://distillery.wistia.com/x&amp;accountKey=wistia-production_3161&amp;mediaID=wistia-production_159073&amp;mediaDuration=587.8&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-outsourcing-content-creation/&quot;&gt;Whiteboard Friday &#8211; Outsourcing Content Creation&lt;/a&gt;</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>Rand starts this presentation by setting context with his favorite SEO diagram. You can read more about the <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-seo-fundamentals-pyramid">SEO Pyramid here</a>.</p>
<h2>Step 1: Requirements Gathering</h2>
<p>Decide what you are trying to accomplish. Are you doing this for sales? SEO? Engagement? Traffic? Brand awareness? Be clear and write down what you want to accomplish along with the metrics you will use to measure them.</p>
<h2>Step 2: Locating Potential Resources</h2>
<p>You have plenty of options for finding potential resources. You can go offshore, in-house or hire web contractors. For web contractors, you can use the traditional services like <a href="http://www.craigslist.org/">Craigslist</a>, <a href="http://www.odesk.com/">oDesk</a>, <a href="http://www.elance.com/">Elance</a>, <a href="http://www.guru.com/">Guru</a> or tap into the world of writing communities and long tail bloggers. These last two recommendations while not as established can many times provide superior quality writing with lower budgets.</p>
<h2>Step 3: Research Writing Quality &amp; Voice Match</h2>
<p>In order to do this, we highly recommend you set up a voice document (a written record of how you would like to sound in your company&#8217;s written communications and promotions). Give this to the writer before getting a sample and use this as the yardstick after they submit their first sample. This will help you gauge if this person is a good fit for your organization.</p>
<h2>Step 4: Scale, Evaluate, Track</h2>
<p>Now that you have established a process, you need to put checks into place to make sure the writer is hitting their targets. Look back at the goals you created in the first step and use them to track and improve upon the related metrics.</p>
<p>Remember, from both an SEO and from a human perspective, writing is about quality over quantity. Having one great article that engages readers and earns links far outweighs 100 poorly written articles.</p>
<p>
<p>Do you like this post? <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/10589/1/0">Yes</a> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/10589/0/0">No</a> </p>
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		<title>Bit.ly Launches Tool That Tells You Which Videos Are Going Viral</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/social-media/bit-ly-launches-tool-that-tells-you-which-videos-are-going-viral/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/social-media/bit-ly-launches-tool-that-tells-you-which-videos-are-going-viral/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:25:54 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2009/12/17/bitly-tv/&#38;service=bit.ly"><img width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2009/12/17/bitly-tv/" align="right" /></a>
</p><p><img src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/bitlytv-260.jpg"/><a href="http://mashable.com/tag/bitly">Bit.ly</a>, as the world&#8217;s <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/10/12/bitly-domination/">largest URL shortener</a> and default for Twitter messages, has thousands of links passing through its doors every day.  Because of that, it has a great deal of data on what&#8217;s hot and what&#8217;s popular&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2009/12/17/bitly-tv/&amp;service=bit.ly"><img width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2009/12/17/bitly-tv/" align="right" /></a>
<p><img src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/bitlytv-260.jpg"><a href="http://mashable.com/tag/bitly">Bit.ly</a>, as the world&#8217;s <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/10/12/bitly-domination/">largest URL shortener</a> and default for Twitter messages, has thousands of links passing through its doors every day.  Because of that, it has a great deal of data on what&#8217;s hot and what&#8217;s popular on the web.</p>
<p>Now the company is finally beginning to harness that knowledge in meaningful and useful ways.  The company has launched <a href="http://bitly.tv/" target="_blanK">Bitly.tv</a> today, a new experimental website that utilizes Bit.ly data to find what videos are going viral on the web.<br />
<span></span><br />
When you load the Bitly.tv interface, it presents you with screens of what videos it has determined are hot <em>right now</em>.  There are also options currently for figuring out what is hot for today and for the last two days (we&#8217;d like to see bitly.tv go farther into time, though).  It gets even more interesting when you click on a video.  Not only will a description and an embed of the video appear, but it also displays recent tweets sharing the video with Bit.ly and buttons so that you can tweet and share the video on Facebook.</p>
<p><center><br />
<img src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/bitly.jpg"></p>
<p></center></p>
<p>Bitly.tv makes sense, but we think this is only the first step.  If Bit.ly can perfect the algorithms for videos, it certainly can do it for blogs and news articles.  And because it utilizes link sharing over Diggs or upvotes, it may in fact be a more accurate tool for figuring out what&#8217;s hot on the web.  We think this is just the beginning.</p>
<hr />Reviews: <a href="http://api.blippr.com/apps/336650-Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook</a></p>
<p>Tags: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/bitly/">bit.ly</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/bitly-tv/">Bitly.tv</a></p>
<p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gtDdMVgBkkN3dABiZWKMgTDQMMs/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gtDdMVgBkkN3dABiZWKMgTDQMMs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/><br />
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		<title>Badges &amp; Widgets Can Take Your Rankings to the Top!</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/badges-widgets-can-take-your-rankings-to-the-top/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/badges-widgets-can-take-your-rankings-to-the-top/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:25:53 +0000</pubDate>
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<p>SEOmoz has mentioned it before in their link building videos that  badges and widgets are a great way to get links, but can they really  help you get to the top for very competitive terms?  I believe so&#8230;</p>]]></description>
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<p>SEOmoz has mentioned it before in their link building videos that  badges and widgets are a great way to get links, but can they really  help you get to the top for very competitive terms?  I believe so and  have some proof to demonstrate it.  Most badges I have seen are some  type of image that is hyperlinked to the owner&#8217;s web site.  I&#8217;m sure  everyone would agree that there is <em>some </em>value in image links,  but probably not a whole lot.  The big question is how can you turn this  into a phenomenal ranking boosting tool?  It&#8217;s easy and I will show you  how one company has been successful at it for a couple of years now.   This article may create a lot of discussion, but the numbers speak for  themselves.<span id="more-8711"></span></p>
<p>A normal badge would look something like this:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8717" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/iheartseomoz1.png" alt="" width="96" height="14" /></p>
<p>The company I am using in my example is called Authorize.net.  They  are an Internet gateway service used by online stores for credit card  processing.  What they have done is created a badge merchants can place  on their web site showing their customers that they are a valid  merchant.  The badge is called a verification seal.  The difference in  what they have done is they added a text link below their badge.  I&#8217;m  sure a lot of merchants are smart enough to remove this promotional code  when they download it, but many do not.  According to Open Site  Explorer, over 10,000 root domain names have not done so.</p>
<p>Their badge looks like this, which &#8220;online payments&#8221; is a hyperlink  pointing to their home page and the badge itself is pointing to a page  that verifies the merchant:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8718" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/authnet.gif" alt="" width="100" height="92" /></p>
<p>They say the best kind of links are in the content and Google is  great at determining this while giving very little value to links of  this nature.  This may be very true, but it is definitely working for  this group.  If anything, you should consider implementing it if you can  make it work for you.  If you are thinking this may only work  temporarily, let me say this.   Authorize.net did not have great  rankings 3 or 4 yrs ago.  I started  watching them implement this and  over time their rankings started to  climb.  A year or two ago they  moved to the top on a few very competitive keywords and haven&#8217;t dropped  since.</p>
<p>Lets look at the numbers shall we?</p>
<div id="attachment_8714" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 540px">
	<a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/seomoz.gif" target="_blank" rel="lightbox[3004]"><img class="size-full wp-image-8714 " src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/seomoz.gif" alt="" width="540" height="113" /></a></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Click to Enlarge</p>
</div>
<p>Obviously this doesn&#8217;t work for every web site due to the inherited requirements, such as having a badge people want to link to.  However, the ones that can take  advantage of this could really exploit it.  Even SEOmoz could do  something like this as well with their badges.  There may be a question  of professionalism for some, but definitely a nice topic to debate on.   Please share your thoughts.<a title="Attribution License" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"><br />
</a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/9297688@N02/1504597368/"title="Foto Blog SMR" ></a></p>
<p><em>Curtis Stevens is the founder of Gotmerchant.com, a <a href="http://www.gotmerchant.com/">credit card processing</a> service  provider.  They help merchants accept credit cards or switch processors  if they&#8217;re not happy with their current provider.  They also specialize  in a few unique products such as the <a href="http://www.gotmerchant.com/casio-electronic-cash-register.php">Casio cash register</a> or a <a href="http://www.gotmerchant.com/wireless_credit_card_processing.php">wireless  credit card machine</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"title="Attribution License" ><img src="../wp-content/plugins/photo-dropper/images/cc.png" alt="Creative Commons License" width="16" height="16" /></a> <a href="http://www.photodropper.com/photos/">photo</a> credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/9297688@N02/1504597368/"title="Foto Blog SMR" >Foto  Blog SMR</a></p>
<p>This post originally came from <a href="http://michaelgray.name">Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/">SEO Consultant</a>. Be sure not to miss the <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/thesis-wordpress-theme-review/">Thesis WordPress Theme review</a>. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/link-development/badges-widgets-can-take-your-rankings-to-the-top/">Badges &amp; Widgets Can Take Your Rankings to the Top!</a> <br/></p>
<p><a href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=290987"><img src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/banners/text_link_ads_F_468x60.gif"  alt="tla starter kit" style="margin:5px;border:0px;width:468px;height:60px;" /></a><br />
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<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/data-gather-from-blog-widgets/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Data Gathering from Blog Widgets'>Data Gathering from Blog Widgets</a> <small>When Yahoo purchased MyBlogLog many wondered, was it a good&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/tips-for-controlling-the-top-10/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Tips for Controlling the Top 10'>Tips for Controlling the Top 10</a> <small>While this strategy is never going to work for anything&#8230;</small></li>
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<h4>Advertisers:</h4>
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<li><a  href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/starter_kit.php?src=wolf_howl">Text Link Ads</a> &#8211; New customers can get 0 in free text links.</li>
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<li><a  href="http://botw.org/">BOTW.org</a> &#8211; Get a premier listing in the internet&#8217;s oldest directory.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/plugins/adrotate/adrotate-out.php?trackerid=31' >Ezilon.com Regional Directory</a> &#8211; Check to see if your website is listed!</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.page1hosting.com/">Page1Hosting</a> &#8211; Class C IP Hosting starting at .99.</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.dirjournal.com/">Directory Journal</a> &#8211; List your website in our growing web directory today.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.contentcustoms.com/go/wolf-howl" rel="nefollow">Content Customs</a> &#8211; Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week</li>
<li><a href="http://www.clarusglassboards.com/glass-boards.php" >Glass Whiteboards</a> &#8211; For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/reviews/clarus-glass-whiteboard-review/">Glass Whiteboard Review</a></li>
<li>Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consulting Services</a></li>
<li><a  href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/knowem/">KnowEm</a> &#8211; Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO Review</a> find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.tigertech.net/referral/wolf-howl.com">TigerTech</a> &#8211; Great Web Hosting service at a great price.</li>
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		<title>No Time Like the Present to Choose Strong Passwords [Passwords]</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/fun/no-time-like-the-present-to-choose-strong-passwords-passwords/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/fun/no-time-like-the-present-to-choose-strong-passwords-passwords/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:57:42 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2010/01/500x_2010-01-21_110342.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" />We harp on the importance of strong passwords a lot here at Lifehacker and for good reason, it&#8217;s important and most people consistently use terrible passwords. The analysis of the 32 million user password breach at RockYou certainly highlights that.&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2010/01/500x_2010-01-21_110342.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" />We harp on the importance of strong passwords a lot here at Lifehacker and for good reason, it&#8217;s important and most people consistently use terrible passwords. The analysis of the 32 million user password breach at RockYou certainly highlights that.</p>
<p>Last December the password database of RockYou&mdash;a service that lets people create multimedia slideshows and other media creations for social networks like Facebook&mdash;was <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rockyou_hacker_30_of_sites_store_plain_text_passwords.php">completely compromised</a>. The login and password information of 32 million users was captured by a single hacker who released the passwords&mdash;sans matching logins&mdash;to the public.</p>
<p>Security firm Imperva went through the entire 32 million entries and analyzed the passwords. They published their finding in a small paper &#8220;<a href="http://www.imperva.com/docs/WP_Consumer_Password_Worst_Practices.pdf">Consumer Password Worst Practices</a>&#8221; that highlights the shortcomings of the RockYou user&#8217;s password selections and laments how little times have changed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In 1990, a study of Unix password security revealed that password selection is strikingly similar to the 32 million breached passwords. Just ten years ago, hacked Hotmail passwords showed little change. That means that users, if allowed to, will choose very weak passwords even for sites that hold their most private data.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How weak were the RockYou passwords? Almost 300,000 users had the password &#8220;123456&#8243; and if you count the number of users from the Top 10 section of the password analysis that used variations of numbers like &#8220;12345&#8243; and &#8220;1234567&#8243;, the number creeps towards nearly half a million. Astoundingly 61,958 users had the password &#8220;Password&#8221; and 22,588 used the name of the service &#8220;rockyou&#8221; as their password. Just in case you thought we were overlooking other shockingly bad passwords &#8220;Qwerty&#8221; was used by nearly 14,000 users.</p>
<p>So what can you do? Imperva highlights some things you can do to create more secure passwords but none of what they&#8217;re saying is reinventing the wheel. It&#8217;s the same advice that security experts have been giving for decades and users have been ignoring. Nonetheless, it bears repeating and if you&#8217;re not doing it right now you need to start:</p>
<ul>
<li>Passwords should be longer than six characters and include a mix of uppercase, lowercase, and special characters.</li>
<li>Your password should never be a name, a slang word, or any word in the dictionary. It should never include part of your name or your email address.</li>
<li>Use passphrases instead of passwords. Even if you&#8217;re limited on the number of characters you can use, turn a long phrase into a jumbled short one. &#8220;I like bread and butter, especially at breakfast time.&#8221; can become &#8220;Ilbab$eabt!&#8221;.</li>
<li><strong>Use a different password for every single site you access</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>.</p>
<p>The last one is extremely important. RockYou stored all their passwords in plaintext which isn&#8217;t&mdash;shockingly!&mdash;as uncommon as you would think. If your password is compromised because of the stupidity of the people running the service you use, it doesn&#8217;t matter if you had an awesome password of enormous length and variety. If you use that awesome password on other services those services have now been compromised.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re freaked out about your crappy passwords&mdash;and you should be!&mdash;now would be a great time to review some of the numerous guides and resources we&#8217;ve shared over the years on the topic like <a href="http://lifehacker.com/184773/geek-to-live--choose-and-remember-great-passwords">how to choose and remember great passwords</a>, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/229197/how-to-create-the-perfect-password">how to create a perfect password</a>, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5046988/eight-best-keepass-plug+ins-to-master-your-passwords">eight great KeePass plug-ins to master your passwords</a>, and <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5445101/your-passwords-arent-as-secure-as-you-think-heres-how-to-fix-that">how your passwords aren&#8217;t as secure as you think</a>.</p>
<p>You can read more about the RockYou password and get more security tips at the link below. Have your own tip or trick for crafting great passwords? Let&#8217;s hear about it in the comments.</p>
<div><a href="http://www.imperva.com/docs/WP_Consumer_Password_Worst_Practices.pdf">Consumer Password Worst Practices (PDF!)</a> [via <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/14/rockyou-hacked/">Tech Crunch</a>]</div>
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		<title>7 Cutting Edge Web Design Trends (that Can Actually Improve SEO)</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/7-cutting-edge-web-design-trends-that-can-actually-improve-seo/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/7-cutting-edge-web-design-trends-that-can-actually-improve-seo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:57:41 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/63">randfish</a></p>
<p>As the worlds of web design and SEO merge ever closer, we&#8217;ve been seeing design-specific elements produce a positive impact on SEO for the sites that employ them. It&#8217;s terrific news for SEOs who love design&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/63">randfish</a></p>
<p>As the worlds of web design and SEO merge ever closer, we&#8217;ve been seeing design-specific elements produce a positive impact on SEO for the sites that employ them. It&#8217;s terrific news for SEOs who love design and are capable of and passionate about making it part of their repertoire. It&#8217;s also great for designers who find that as they evolved from Flash designs to machine-readable CSS and separated markup from content, they&#8217;ve earned more links and more organic search love.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img height="531" width="350" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/design-seo-synergy-venn.gif" alt="Synergy between Design &amp; SEO 1997-2010" /></p>
<p>In this post, I&#8217;ll walk through examples of those design practices in use and describe how they can help improve your opportunity for organic search rankings and traffic.</p>
<h2><strong>#1 &#8211; Designing that Elicits &amp; Conveys Emotion</strong></h2>
<p style="text-align: left;">A phenomenal article from Aarron Walter of Mailchimp on ThinkVitamin &#8211; <a href="http://thinkvitamin.com/design/emotional-interface-design-the-gateway-to-passionate-users/">Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users</a> &#8211; deeply explores the trend of designers using their talents to imprint emotion on users. Personally, I love this practice, and professionally, I see it as incredibly valuable for SEO, too.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Rather than simply providing a user with information, these sites attempt to convey a sense of the companies, products and services they represent in a tangible way. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">For McMiller&#8217;s Sweets, below, the website expresses the brand&#8217;s humor, whimsy and obsession with their product. I only wish I could buy online &#8211; there&#8217;d be a few boxes headed for the SEOmoz offices right now.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mcmillerssweetsemporium.co.uk/" target="_blank"><img height="500" width="620" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/mcmillers-sweets.gif" alt="McMillers Sweets Emporium" /></a></p>
<p>Box.net, an enterprise-focused software company, aims to achieve an air of simplicity and a feeling of the ease that comes from using a basic, consumer application but targeted at a business audience. Their redesign has me convinced &#8211; it&#8217;s light and airy, it&#8217;s up in the clouds (perhaps a double-meaning since they host in &quot;the cloud&quot;) and it even calls out the &quot;sexiness&quot;&nbsp;of the application.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://box.net/" target="_blank"><img height="448" width="620" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/box-dot-net-homepage.gif" alt="Box.net Homepage" /></a></p>
<p>When users are emotionally invested in the websites they visit, they&#8217;re more likely to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Link</li>
<li>Share</li>
<li>Contribute Content</li>
<li>Participate</li>
<li>Remain Loyal</li>
<li>Invest in the Experience</li>
<li>Browse more Pages</li>
</ul>
<p>All of these have either first or second-order impacts on SEO in a positive way.</p>
<h2><strong>#2 &#8211; The Scroll-Triggered Call-to-Action</strong></h2>
<p>Sometimes, you don&#8217;t want to overwhelm content with calls-to-action&#8230; At least, not until you&#8217;re fairly certain your visitor has finished reading. That&#8217;s where the brilliance of the scroll-triggered call-to-action comes in.</p>
<p>Browse any article on the New York Times website and you&#8217;ll see this behavior in action, driving you to read the next article in the series only after you&#8217;ve reached the bottom of the current piece:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img height="261" width="620" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/nytimes-scroll-callout.gif" alt="Scroll-Triggered Call to Action on NYTimes" /></p>
<p>It&#8217;s great for boosting page views, but also drives more awareness of those pieces, improving links and driving up visibility for previously less-well-publicized works. My guess is that clicks are quite high.</p>
<p>In the next example, the OKCupid Blog leverages precisely the same tactic:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online-dating/" target="_blank"><img height="295" width="620" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/okcupid-blog-scroll-trigger.gif" alt="OKCupid Blog's Scroll-Triggered Sharing" /></a></p>
<p>This use case might be even more brilliant. After wrapping up a remarkable article about what statistics tell us not to do in online dating, my first instinct is to share the piece with some single friends. OKCupid&#8217;s flawlessly timed, dropdown overlay synchs with this internal compulsion and makes it easy to tweet, like, stumble or buzz away.</p>
<p>Scrolling +&nbsp;triggers = more browsing, more awareness and more sharing (and I think the potential applications for SEO&nbsp;are far greater in quantity than just what&#8217;s been shared above).</p>
<h2><strong>#3 &#8211; User Badges</strong></h2>
<p>If your users are passionate about your site and their experience or participation, why not make it easy to share?</p>
<p>For years, sites have been offering users the virtual incentives of points, badges and status to encourage greater participation. Andrew Follet from <a href="http://www.conceptfeedback.com/">Concept Feedback</a> authored <a href="http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/increase-your-user-activity-with-points-badges-and-status/">a brilliant piece analyzing this precise behavior</a> and exposing some terrific examples.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve noticed an interesting behavior as it relates to user badges as well, and it&#8217;s spurred me to whiteboard the following chart numerous times for those who have online communities considering SEO: </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img height="451" width="500" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/badge-adoption-graph.gif" alt="Badge Adoption Graph" /></p>
<p>The lesson?&nbsp;Make great communities, encourage participation and reward your users with badges that will make their sites look good. It&#8217;s the online equivalent of giving out high quality, well designed t-shirts &#8211; fans won&#8217;t just wear them to bed; they&#8217;ll actually show off your brand.</p>
<h2><strong>#4 &#8211; The Animated HTML Multiheader</strong></h2>
<p>I <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-multiheader-a-huge-trend-in-homepage-design">wrote about the multiheader</a> a long time ago, and the evolution of design has made them tremendously more compelling and useful since then. Case-in-point, <a href="http://www.unbounce.com">Unbounce</a>, who has 5 different messages/features on their homepage all accessible to engines and all part of a single multiheader. I&#8217;ve screencaptured them elegantly &quot;swooshing&quot; in and out of the headline position:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://unbounce.com" target="_blank"><img height="354" width="620" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/unbounce-multiheader-1.gif" alt="Unbounce Homepage" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://unbounce.com" target="_blank"><img height="356" width="620" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/unbounce-multiheader-2.gif" alt="Unbounce Homepage 2" /></a></p>
<p>The advantage is two-fold &#8211; more content on the homepage that&#8217;s accessible to search engines (thanks to clever CSS/HTML usage) and everyone who links to any one version is concentrating the link juice singularly on the home page. In some cases, that could cause problems, but in others, it&#8217;s a great opportunity to leverage design to focus the links you acquire where you need them most.</p>
<p>BTW &#8211; Speaking of Unbounce, If you have yet to read Oli Gardner&#8217;s <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-12step-landing-page-rehab-program-infographic-10488">12-Step Landing Page Rehab Program</a>, you&#8217;re seriously missing out.</p>
<h2><strong>#5 &#8211; Sexy, Embeddable Infographics</strong></h2>
<p>Infographic linkbait is certainly all the rage these days, and I think it&#8217;s a well-justified trend. The brilliant part is that you benefit by producing the infographic and other bloggers benefit by sharing it and attracting views, attention and links of their own. So long as the embed works seemlessly and the infographic is compelling, you&#8217;re off to the link acquisition races.</p>
<p>Some examples I&nbsp;enjoyed came from Smashing Magazine, who put together this piece on programming (and the how-to behind it&#8217;s creation):</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/06/designing-the-world-of-programming-infographic/" target="_blank"><img src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/aboutprogramming.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>And this smart contribution from Visual Economics:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.visualeconomics.com/food-consumption-in-america_2010-07-12/" target="_blank"><img height="825" width="450" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/what-are-we-eating-visual-e.gif" alt="What are We Eating Infographic" /></a></p>
<p>As with badges, the &quot;beauty rule&quot;&nbsp;applies &#8211; the sexier your infographic (and the most interesting/useful/compelling the content), the higher adoption will be.</p>
<h2><strong>#6 &#8211; Designing Around Illustration (with CSS)</strong></h2>
<p>It used to be that I&#8217;d see a website built around illustrations and artistry and shake my head in sadness, knowing that the beauty of the UI was unlikely to be experienced by anyone except those coming via type-in. Today, with the amazing progress of CSS, sites like Carbon Made can have their design cake and eat their SEO, too.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://carbonmade.com/" target="_blank"><img height="667" width="550" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/carbonmade-homepage.gif" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>Google&#8217;s &quot;text only&quot;&nbsp;cache shows every word you can see in the screenshot &#8211; we&#8217;ve come a long way indeed. And, darn it if that design doesn&#8217;t make me want to just climb a mountain and jump off a cliff into an octopus-filled lake below&#8230; errr.. make an online portfolio (yeah, that&#8217;s the one!)</p>
<p>For another look, check out Ruby on Rails developers, Pioneers:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pieoneers.com/" target="_blank"><img height="537" width="550" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/pioneers-homepage.gif" alt="Pioneers Homepage" /></a></p>
<p>Pretty, accessible and indexable, what more could an SEO&nbsp;ask?</p>
<h2><strong>#7 &#8211; Creative Content Formats Unleashed</strong></h2>
<p>Sometimes, you visit a site that stands out from everything else you&#8217;ve seen on the web in the past. Historically, many of those sites have also been tragically obscured from search engines. Nowadays, a new breed is emerging, showing off massive creativity, brilliance in design innovation and a compelling combination of link-worthiness and search-accessibility.</p>
<p>A few of my favorite recent stumbles into this realm include:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.grainandgram.com/nicksambrato/" target="_blank"><img height="402" width="550" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/grain-and-gram.gif" alt="Grain and Gram" /></a></p>
<p>Above: <a href="http://www.grainandgram.com">Grain and Gram Gentleman&#8217;s Journal</a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.shopsanctuaryt.com/leaf/geisha-beauty.html" target="_blank"><img height="381" width="600" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/sanctuary-t-shop.gif" alt="Sanctuary T Shop Homepage" /></a></p>
<p>Above:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.shopsanctuaryt.com">Sanctuary T Shop</a> (who knew a small e-commerce shop could be this pretty?)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://heartdirected.com" target="_blank"><img height="405" width="620" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/heart-directed-blos.gif" alt="Heart Directed Blogs Homepage" /></a></p>
<p>Above: <a href="http://heartdirected.com">Heart Directed</a> (a great place to find more remarkable creative formats, though lacking the machine readable content to be an SEO example itself)</p>
<hr />
<p>It&#8217;s a great time to be on the web, thinking about SEO, design and the brilliant things that can happen when they overlap strategically. Here&#8217;s to hoping that more of us who invest in organic search traffic will bolster that task with the power amazing design can bring. It&#8217;s not just more links &#8211; it&#8217;s greater engagement and a higher liklihood that sharing of all kinds will occur. However the search engines evolve, you can be sure this is the type of behavior they&#8217;ll seek to reward.</p>
<p>p.s. If design inspires you, I&#8217;d recommend checking out <a href="http://www.drawar.com">Drawar </a>and Six Revisions list of <a href="http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/10-fresh-galleries-for-web-design-inspiration/">10 Fresh Galleries for Inspiration </a></p>
<p>
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		<title>Opera Mini a Hit on the iPhone</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/social-media/opera-mini-a-hit-on-the-iphone/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/social-media/opera-mini-a-hit-on-the-iphone/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:42:56 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/05/28/opera-mini-iphone-stats/&#38;service=bit.ly"><img width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/05/28/opera-mini-iphone-stats/" align="right" /></a> <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/05/28/opera-mini-iphone-stats/&#38;title=Opera Mini a Hit on the iPhone&#38;srcTitle=Mashable&#38;srcUrl=http://mashable.com"><img src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" /></a>
</p><p><img src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/opera-mini-iphone-260.jpg" alt="" title="opera-mini-iphone-260" width="260" height="190" class="alignright size-full wp-image-288660" />Since its release last month, <a href="http://mashable.com/2010/04/12/opera-mini-iphone-approved/">Opera Mini for the iPhone</a> has been used by more than <a href="http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2010/05/28/" target="_blank">2.6 million users</a> and is now the third most popular Opera Mini&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/05/28/opera-mini-iphone-stats/&amp;service=bit.ly"><img width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/05/28/opera-mini-iphone-stats/" align="right" /></a> <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/05/28/opera-mini-iphone-stats/&amp;title=Opera Mini a Hit on the iPhone&amp;srcTitle=Mashable&amp;srcUrl=http://mashable.com"><img src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" /></a>
<p><img src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/opera-mini-iphone-260.jpg" alt="" title="opera-mini-iphone-260" width="260" height="190" class="alignright size-full wp-image-288660" />Since its release last month, <a href="http://mashable.com/2010/04/12/opera-mini-iphone-approved/">Opera Mini for the iPhone</a> has been used by more than <a href="http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2010/05/28/" target="_blank">2.6 million users</a> and is now the third most popular Opera Mini device worldwide.</p>
<p>This data was presented in Opera&#8217;s <a href="http://www.opera.com/smw/2010/04/" target="_blank">State of the Mobile Web</a> report for April 2010. Opera&#8217;s report focuses on the most popular websites, based on Opera Mini users, and also showcases the demonstrable international impact that the iPhone has had on its data.<br<br />
/> <span></span><br<br />
/> Opera Mini was released for the iPhone in the middle of April 2010, meaning that the impact demonstrated in the report took place in just two weeks. In that time, the iPhone became the most popular Opera Mini handset in the U.S., beating previous leader BlackBerry by a significant margin.</p>
<p>Many were surprised when Opera Mini was accepted into the App Store, in part because Apple has historically blocked apps that &#8220;duplicate [the] functionality&#8221; of its native apps; in this case, Opera Mini competed with the iPhone&#8217;s native Safari browser.</p>
<p>And while Opera Mini cannot be selected as the default web browser (meaning links opened in Mail or from other apps cannot open in Opera Mini) its success indicates that there is indeed a base of users who want an alternative web browser for the iPhone.</p>
<p>Have you used Opera Mini for the iPhone? What are your thoughts?</p>
<hr<br />
/><center><em><br<br />
/><br />
<h3>For more <a href="http://mashable.com/mobile/">mobile</a> coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on <a href="http://twitter.com/mashablemobile" target="_blank">Twitter</a> or become a fan on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mashable.mobile?ref=sgm" target="_blank">Facebook</a></h3>
<p></em></center><br<br />
/><br />
<hr<br />
/><br />
<hr<br />
/>Reviews: <a href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/602143-App-Store" target="_blank">App Store</a>, <a href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336650-Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/337084-Opera" target="_blank">Opera</a>, <a href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/599519-Opera-Mini" target="_blank">Opera Mini</a>, <a href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336952-Safari" target="_blank">Safari</a>, <a href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336651-Twitter" target="_blank">Twitter</a></p>
<p>Tags: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/browsers/">Browsers</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/iphone-apps/">iphone apps</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/opera/">opera</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/opera-mini/">opera mini</a></p>
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		<title>How to Benchmark in Analytics</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/how-to-benchmark-in-analytics/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/how-to-benchmark-in-analytics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:42:55 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/195184">JoannaLord</a></p>
<p>We have a lot of changes going on at SEOmoz (feel free to get excited, we sure are!) and with all of these changes to the site comes the need to focus on tracking. Internally we&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/195184">JoannaLord</a></p>
<p>We have a lot of changes going on at SEOmoz (feel free to get excited, we sure are!) and with all of these changes to the site comes the need to focus on tracking. Internally we have spent the last few months redirecting our attention to not only the best practices regarding analytics and data mining, but really pushing ourselves to revisit our analytical processes.</p>
<p>You know what we realized? <i>There sure is a lot of data.</i> While I have always appreciated the reporting features in GA, I find that too often people take the reports at face value and fail to go deeper. It&rsquo;s unfortunate since it is in those deep dives that you usually discover the data that can change your current course of action. So this post is going to tackle an approach to analytics that is often overlooked and (<i>thanks to Google and their silly naming convention decisions</i>) is rarely used to its fullest capacity. Get excited folks we are going to talk about <b>benchmarking </b>{Woohoo! Insert audience applause here}.</p>
<p>All of you excel spreadsheet lovers out there know plenty of ways to extract data and pinpoint specific red flags or recent successes. In fact, most people use analytics to simply analyze the current state of their account. While this is certainly a priority, it really is one dimensional. Instead of stopping there, why not go further? Why not better understand where your data was, and how you are measuring up? In fact, why not use this data to help inform your internal decisions as a company? It&rsquo;s like an analytical epiphany&mdash;&ldquo;<i>using past and current data to help guide you moving forward</i>.&rdquo; Glorious.</p>
<p>While many of the analytics platforms out there have given us a number of ways to compare historical data to current data, we are still limited to two distinct time ranges (for the most part). It&rsquo;s great to see those two ranges stack up against each other, but that still leaves a lot to be desired. Without going further you miss the &quot;interaction&quot; between those two distinct time ranges.</p>
<p>Benchmarking your data is a great way to discover more about this, often overlooked, gray area. Benchmarking simply means you set a standard at which you compare something else to. When used for data mining, it means you plot two distinct variables (time ranges, metrics, dimensions, etc.) over a period of time and then use these &ldquo;benchmarks&rdquo; to infer conclusions when making decisions.</p>
<p>You can then see&nbsp; a more complete picture of your site&rsquo;s <em>momentum</em>. In my opinion, understanding your site&rsquo;s momentum is one of the most powerful metrics an analyst can calculate. If you can say with authority that you know how your site <em>is doing</em> and how it will <em>likely be doing</em> in the next week, month, few months, etc., you are in an ideal place. With data like that you can take more calculated risks.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;"><i>*First, I want to throw out a disclaimer&mdash;a little over a year ago Google decided to integrate <i>&ldquo;Benchmarking&rdquo; into their Visitors tab in GA. This just made things confusing in my </i>opinion. The GA feature actually shows your site in comparison to a {very very very limited} industry pool of similarly {not really} sized sites. There is a lot wrong with the assumptions of this feature, but for our purposes here, when I say &ldquo;benchmarking&rdquo; I mean the act of plotting two distinct variables over time to extract insight&hellip;not the {ridiculous-I-can&rsquo;t-believe-they-took-it-out-of-beta} GA feature.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img height="538" width="620" alt="Benchmarking on SEOmoz in GA" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/benchmarking-on-seomoz.gif" /><br />The &quot;benchmarking&quot;&nbsp;feature in GA on SEOmoz</p>
<p>Okay now that we got that out of the way, let&rsquo;s talk about how you can benchmark your data to hopefully gather some insight into your site&rsquo;s performance.</p>
<h2>Know your bottom-line (and your &quot;high-line&quot; &ndash;yes, I just made that word up)</h2>
<p>This is probably the most common approach to benchmarking. It&rsquo;s a pretty simple way to analyze the current state of your account. You should know your extremes for every metric. For example if you are a company that sells a seasonally successful product, you should know what your lowest conversion rate is for the year, as well as your peak conversion performance. In understanding the extremes you can make better assumptions on how your off season stats are trending. While not the most accurate approach to data mining, benchmarking the extremes of your account enables you to speak intelligently, at any given moment, on how your site is currently performing.</p>
<h2><b>Know your ratios &amp;&nbsp;relationships</b></h2>
<p>Am I the only one that always reads &ldquo;ratio&rdquo; as &ldquo;radio&rdquo;? I digress. Knowing your metric ratios and how they relate to each other, is a great way to quickly detect when things are headed south. Often, as analysts, we don&rsquo;t realize something has gone wrong until we see sales are down. While that is an effective method of pinpointing mistakes, it certainly isn&rsquo;t ideal. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be nice to quickly identify issues as they actually become issues? Crazy, I know. Well this is exactly what benchmarking the ratios of your site&rsquo;s metrics can do. At SEOmoz, we use ratio/relationship benchmarking to keep our traffic stats in check. We don&rsquo;t just plot out how many visitors each section of the site brings in out of the total visitors; we compare those percentages against each other. This gives us a ballpark value to guide us. An example; &ldquo;the X part of the site brings in roughly twice as much as Y, which brings in about 1/3 of the traffic as Z.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The great part about this method of benchmarking is you can easily turn it into a visual representation of the different pieces of the pie, and isolate out when things start to shift. Below is an actual example Rand pulled together earlier this week (yes he does that sort of thing for fun! A true data-head!). In this chart we have graphed out the top trafficked pages on our site, and then plotted them against each other to show how they are performing in relation to each other.<b><br /></b></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img height="376" width="620" alt="Traffic by Section on SEOmoz" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/traffic-by-section-seomoz1.gif" /></p>
<p>You can see the significant drop in the blue segment (our Tools page), which was due to a redirect mistake we made (oops&#8230;<a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-biggest-seo-mistakes-seomoz-has-ever-made">Rand talks more about that here</a>). By visually representing these sections, we can easily identify shifts in the relationships, which can guide us on where we should focus our attentions (aka fix our silly SEO mistake ASAP!).</p>
<h2>Know the norm</h2>
<p>Okay I know, I know&hellip;I talked a whole lot of trash above on the GA benchmarking feature, and here I am talking about &ldquo;knowing the norm,&rdquo; but approaching data analysis this way can be insightful. Knowing and using industry standards in benchmarking can efficiently identify low hanging fruit.</p>
<p>However, the actual GA benchmarking tab is a poor example of this. Keep in mind that sites have to opt into the benchmarking, so (a.) this feature might not even have your industry represented and (b.) you have no way of knowing how many sites these &ldquo;standards&rdquo; are calculated on. Also keep in mind there are only three buckets for website &ldquo;size&rdquo; in this feature&mdash;small, medium, and large. WTF right? Yeah, since when do all websites fit into those three sizes? What am I ordering a latte over here?</p>
<p>With that said, it&rsquo;s worth knowing the vital metric standards for your industry. If you see that similar sites to your own have a bounce rate of around 40% and you are chilling around 65%, while all the other metrics look closer in range, then you can assume this metric is where you should direct your optimization efforts. This approach isn&rsquo;t as scalable or as accurate as other benchmarking methods, but it&rsquo;s definitely worth a mention, if only for peace of mind.</p>
<h2>Know the limits</h2>
<p>While benchmarking is incredibly effective for things like trending, projecting, and exploring the data, it&rsquo;s important to know the limits of the process. It is meant to be a discovery process, not a scientific formula. Just like anything else you take away from the data, it is just an insight, not a guarantee. You are making assumptions based on past performances, and performances change. So one word of caution to all of you data-heads out there&mdash;benchmarking is a great tool to add to your bag of tricks, but it is only one of many you should be using. Don&rsquo;t get so caught up in forming relationships between the metrics and dimensions of your site that you lose perspective on the independent variables themselves.</p>
<h2>In conclusion</h2>
<p>Get in there. I mean it, seriously. I know we are all crazy busy, but that shouldn&rsquo;t translate into a two minute GA log-in, a quick glance at the vital metrics and a few automated reports. Our analytics are meant to be explored. Benchmarking is one of those processes that may take an extra hour or two, but discoveries made during those few hours can be instrumental in guiding your company&rsquo;s decisions.</p>
<p>Confession: At SEOmoz we haven&rsquo;t always been the best with analytics and tracking, but in the past half a year we have refocused our energies on truly knowing what our users are doing, how our site is performing, and finding opportunities within the data. It&rsquo;s time consuming, and tricky, and what you discover <em>is not always fun to find out</em>, but it has certainly helped us redirect resources where they are needed.</p>
<p>Over the next few months we are rolling out all sorts of good stuff, {the <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-chrome-toolbar-download-the-mozbar">Chrome toolbar launch </a>was just a teaser my friends <img src="http://www.seomoz.org/js/editor/images/smiley/msn/wink_smile.gif" alt="" /> }. We are using processes like benchmarking to better prepare us for these changes. Taking on new challenges as a company is an awesome thing, but doing it with a little data to steer you, makes the ride even more fun.</p>
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