Posted by iseff
The app ecosystem is growing quicker than almost any other ecosystem has before, and the shift from desktop web to mobile app is happening faster than even the most optimistic predictions thought. Traditionally, the Moz… Continue reading →
Posted by Elizabeth_Crouch
The benefits of attending MozCon 2013 are invaluable: You’ll go home with insightful tips from top marketers, actionable advice from data experts, connections to awesome people in your industry, new friends from the Moz Community, freshly honed inbound marketing skills—and your very own Roger toy. One of the biggest bonuses? It’s a fantastic excuse to visit Seattle during the most beautiful time of year.
I polled the whole MozPlex to curate a list of our favorite places to dine, swill coffee, imbibe boozy beverages, play games, bust a move, hit the water, and take in the view. There are over 130 Mozzers now, so the list is long. From locally grown, organic eats and family fun on Lake Union to bocce ball and craft beer, Seattle’s got a little something for everyone.
The Hipster • The Sophisticated Palate • The Sandwich Lover • The Coffee Fiend
The Beer Snob • The Cocktail Connoisseur • The Adventurer
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The HipsterCommunity Coordinator Megan drinks out of an ironic cup. |
Recognizable by their tight jeans and plaid coloring, these gentle creatures can generally be found grazing the hill east of downtown. They might be slow to accept you into the herd, but once you’re in, they’ll share their abundant resources with you.
People’s Choice: The Mozzers’ top spot (and terminus to many a Wednesday beer night) is the Unicorn and its basement bar, the Narwhal (1118 East Pike Street). A kaleidoscope of circus décor, deep fried eats, and loud music, these bars are where Capitol Hill layabouts and techies alike unite in pursuit of good times and reasonably priced beverages.
The Seattle Institution: Grab a cold beer, tuck into a plate of nachos, and soak up some sun on the back patio at Linda’s Tavern (707 East Pine Street). The original Seattle hipster bar, this place is best approached with a pack of pals to keep you company and help you drink beer or mimosas by the pitcher.
Break out the Chopsticks: Sleek, modern, and serene, Momiji (1522 12th Avenue) is where most Mozzers prefer to sup on sushi. You can’t beat happy hour in the front bar—cheap Sapporo, sake, and decadently crunchy deep-fried Seattle rolls—but the back dining room is truly beautiful. If fish doesn’t strike your fancy, roll down the hill a little bit to In The Bowl (1554 East Olive Way) for the tastiest vegetarian Thai on the Hill. The dining room: small. The menu: epic. The bathroom: magical (just trust me here). Their four-star spiciness level will scald even the most fireproof of tongues, and their noodles will transport you to a different plane of happiness.
Al Fresco: With hipster cred and a patio to rival Linda’s, Captain Black’s (129 Belmont Avenue East) is another crowd favorite here at Moz. After you’re done stuffing yourself with fried Beecher’s cheese curds, hush puppies, and tater tots, you can drink a little whiskey, then roll back down Capitol Hill to your hotel.
Sate the Sweet Tooth: While die-hard Seattle hipsters may head to a lesser-known creamery on Capitol Hill (that also happens to be the best dessert spot for beer lovers, so read on), Moz recommends you join the line at Molly Moon’s (917 East Pine Street) for scoops of Fair Trade chocolate, salted caramel, or balsamic strawberry ice cream. Snag a waffle cone and chill on the astroturf at Volunteer Park (1247 15th Avenue East), the coolest place to be on a hot, sunny day.
Take in the View: Sure, you could wait in line at the Space Needle or climb to the top of Mount Rainier. But the Smith Tower (506 2nd Avenue) in Pioneer Square has been providing Seattleites with breathtaking views since before skyscrapers were even cool.
Fun and Games: Roll a few blocks north of Moz on Second Avenue to hit three of our favorite post-work stops: Rabbit Hole (2222 2nd Avenue) for skee-ball, highbrow cocktails, and outrageously good pub grub; Shorty’s (2222 2nd Avenue) for cheap PBR, video games, and pinball; and Lava Lounge (2226 2nd Avenue) for whiskey, booths big enough for a whole crew, and many rounds of shuffleboard.
Bust a Move: If you’re heading in on Sunday, hit up the Re-Bar (1114 Howell Street) for their FLAMMABLE! dance night. “A gay bar, only for everybody,” the Re-Bar mixes the hippest of the hip and the funnest of the fun in a LGBTQ-friendly atmosphere with stiff drinks and a packed dance floor. Heads up: cash only!
Weekend Adventure: If you’re staying the prior weekend and have a car handy, hit up Georgetown, a South Seattle neighborhood with plenty of art galleries, dive bars, tasty restaurants, and a cool trailer park flea market (5805 Airport Way) on the weekends.
The Sophisticated PalateEngineers Martin and Doug give a toast to good taste. |
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People’s Choice: Restaurant Zoe (1318 East Union) is part of the bustling restaurant scene around 12th and Union. Staffed by a kitchen full of vets from Canlis, Crush, and other Seattle standards, Zoe boasts an effortlessly cool atmosphere, and an approachable menu of artistic Pacific Northwest fare. Two blocks away, Cascina Spinasse (1535 14th Avenue) dishes up the most decadently delicious Northern Italian eats you can find outside of Piemonte—leg of rabbit, tajarin pasta glued together with butter and sage, precious lettuces dressed with Barolo vinegar and Ligurian olive oil. If you’re in the mood for slightly lighter fare, hit their side bar, Artusi (1531 14th Avenue), for ingenius cocktails (including a slushy machine full of rotating frozen craft cocktails that will most certainly change your life) and a compact menu of mind-blowingly good food.
The Seattle Institution: An overwhelming number of Mozzers cited one of prolific restaurateur Ethan Stowell’s restaurants as their personal favorites, so I’m going to just lump them all together. If you’re sticking downtown, go for vino, fluffy gnocchi alla romagna, and perfectly al dente pasta at Tavolata (2323 2nd Avenue). If we’ve already convinced you that Capitol Hill is the place to be, head to Rione XIII (401 15th Avenue East) for Roman-style pizza and pasta, Anchovies & Olives (1550 15th Avenue) for ice-cold oysters and beautifully prepared seafood, or Bar Cotto (1546 15th Avenue) for mouth-watering charcuterie, veggies, and thin, crispy pizzas. Feeling adventurous? The tasting menu at Staple & Fancy (4739 Ballard Avenue Northwest) in Ballard is also worth the extra trip.
Pro tip: Arrive in luxurious style with our friends from Uber—it’s either less expensive than or about the same price as taking a cab, depending on what kind of ride you fancy. MozCon attendees will also get hooked up with a little friends-of-friends discount!
Break out the Chopsticks: Round up at least two or three people to hit Monsoon (615 19th Avenue East) with you, because you will probably want to order every single thing on this exquisite Vietnamese-influenced menu. Especially the drunken chicken.
Al Fresco: What happens when two classically trained chefs fall in love, get married, and wed Korean cuisine with French technique and Northwest ingredients? Pure magic. One of the best meals of your life. Dumplings that will restore your faith in humanity. Hitch a ride to Fremont and try to snag a seat on the back deck at Revel (403 N 36th Street).
Sate the Sweet Tooth: What’s that overpowering cocoa-brownie smell wafting toward you on the deck at Revel? It’s Seattle’s premier chocolate factory, organic and Fair Trade Theo (3400 Phinney Avenue North). Take a tour, and bring home chocolatey souvenirs for your loved ones—or yourself. We won’t tell. If you take our other recommendations and end up on Capitol Hill for dinner, head to D’Ambrosio Gelato (1544 12th Avenue) for creamy, authentic Italian goodness from a certified Master Gelatiere.
Worth the Trip: Another Ballard stand-out, The Walrus and the Carpenter (4743 Ballard Avenue Northwest) shares a dining room window with the aforementioned Staple & Fancy. Go here for the freshest oysters, the most delectable menu, the most gorgeous kitchen, and the mustache-iest waitstaff north of the Shipping Canal.
Weekend Adventure: We highly recommend that you pay a visit to Woodinville for wine tasting. Much closer than the sun-drenched growing regions in Central Washington, Woodinville’s tasting rooms bring some of the best wines within quick driving distance of the big city. A few of Moz’s favorites: Mark Ryan (14475 Woodinville-Redmond Road, Woodinville, WA 98072), DeLille (14421 Woodinville-Redmond Road Northeast, Woodinville, WA 98072), Obelisco (19495 144th Avenue Northeast Woodinville, WA 98072), and Long Shadows (14450 Woodinville-Redmond Road, #105, Woodinville, WA 98072).
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The Sandwich LoverCustomer Acquisition Manager Justin enjoys a Paseo sandwich and the gorgeous view from Gasworks Park. |
People’s Choice: The people have spoken, and they have chosen Paseo (4225 Fremont Avenue North and 6226 Seaview Avenue Northwest). These are, empirically, the best sandwiches in Seattle. They might be the best sandwiches anywhere, ever. Crispy baguette. Savory aioli. Tangy jalapeños. Grilled onions simmered in the same addictive sauce they use to marinate their meats. Crisp romaine lettuce. Cuban-style pork, chicken, tofu, or seafood. You might just decide to dump out your suitcase and refill it with Paseo sandwiches to take home. That might be a bad decision. Might.
Nice Buns: Lil Woody’s (1211 Pine Street) is just a few blocks up the hill from the Convention Center. Their burgers come piled with exotic ingredients and paired with hand-cut fries and milkshakes made from Molly Moon’s ice cream.
The Seattle Institution: Don’t let the divey décor and weird name fool you—The Honey Hole (703 East Pike Street) on Capitol Hill makes some seriously delicious sandwiches, served up with zero pretention and a side of the crispiest fries you will ever eat.
Sate the Sweet Tooth: In addition to their eponymous treats and sweet scoops, Cupcake Royale also boasts a freezer full of ice cream sammies in flavors like red velvet cake and burnt caramel with sea salt. There are a few locations, but we’re partial to the one across the street from Moz (108 Pine Street). You can admire our Post-it window murals from street level or pop in to say hi!
Fun and Games: Like a little nosh with your board or card games? Cafe Mox (5105 Leary Avenue Northwest) in Ballard is a sweet spot to grab a beer, eat a sandwich, and play some Settlers of Catan. Bonus: family-friendly!
The Coffee FiendDirector of Community Jen savors a steamy latte. |
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Downtown: Home to many a Moz 1:1 meeting, Fonté Café and Wine Bar (1321 1st Avenue) is a lovely place to grab perfectly brewed coffee and tame your inbox first thing in the morning. Is WFCS a thing where you live? We hope that it is.
Capitol Hill: Espresso Vivace is arguably the best coffee in Seattle. But we don’t like arguments, so you should probably roll up the hill to Vivace’s open-air sidewalk bar (321 Broadway Avenue East) or brick-and-mortar café (532 Broadway Avenue East) to find out for yourself.
Pioneer Square: If you find yourself in Seattle’s oldest neighborhood, head to art-filled Zeitgeist Coffee (171 South Jackson Street) before you embark on the Seattle Underground Tour (608 1st Avenue). Not your typical tour, this fun crawl through the buried former ground-level of Old Seattle is a Moz favorite. You’ll learn all about lusty prospectors and the women that fleeced them, Seattle’s original wooden plumbing pipes, and how old-timey architects beat the mud by building streets ten feet in the air.
Beyond: Lighthouse Roasters (400 North 43rd Street) in Fremont is off the beaten path, but roasts such perfect coffee, you won’t mind the hike through this residential neighborhood—a great stop on your way to Woodland Park Zoo (601 North 59th Street).
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The Beer SnobRuby Programmer Ben appreciates the subtle hoppy notes of an IPA. |
Gotta Taste Them All: If you only make one dedicated beer stop, let it be at Brouwer’s Cafe (400 North 35th Street) in Fremont. With 64 beers on tap, over 300 bottles, and 60 scotches, even the most jaded, world-weary connoisseur will find something new to sip on.
Fun for the Whole Family: Think beer and babies don’t mix? Kid-friendly Fremont Brewing Company (3409 Woodland Park Ave North) will prove you wrong. Parents can kick back and have adult conversations while the little ones dig into never-ending bowls of pretzels and play with their contemporaries.
Sate the Sweet Tooth: The truly indie creamery on Capitol Hill, Bluebird (1205 East Pike Street) also brews some mighty fine beer. Home to the best vegan “ice cream” ever—a deceptively creamy horchata flavor—they also make beer floats with their stout. Frosty stout plus peanut butter ice cream equals mind, blown.
Fun and Games: Von Trapp’s (912 12th Avenue) cavernous biergarten on Capitol Hill is basically a playground for grown-ups. Go for the epic German and Belgian beer list, indulge in some tasty pretzels and brats, and stay for many rounds of bocce ball.
The Tastiest Kind of Tourism: Ballard is home to some of our favorite breweries, all located within walking distance of the neighborhood’s lively shopping and dining corridor. We recommend checking out Hilliard’s Beer (1550 Northwest 49th Street) and Peddler Brewing Company (1514 Northwest Leary Way). If you don’t mind mixing drinks with actual peddling, you can also hop aboard the Cycle Saloon (206-678-7211), a people-powered tour of Ballard’s breweries.
The Cocktail ConnoisseurHelp Desk Administrator Dave and Customer Success Strategist Renea sip martinis at The Zig Zag. |
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The Seattle Institution: The Zig Zag Café (1501 Western Avenue #202) was one of the pioneering bars in the American craft cocktail movement. Nestled alongside the Pike Street Hill Climb between Pike Place Market and the waterfront, this dimly lit cocktail joint is the go-to spot for booze aficionados in Seattle. Their house cocktail list is inventive and extensive, their selection is carefully curated, and the ‘tenders are some of the best in the biz.
The New Darling: Looking to try something rare and extraordinary? The Captain’s List of spirits at Canon (928 12th Avenue) is so extensive that you need to scan a QR code to download it to your phone (which makes our nerd-hearts fill with glee). Beyond the floor-to-ceiling walls of precious booze, Canon wins us over with the little touches: stainless steel straws, slate coasters, cucumber-infused water, and copper mint julep cups.
The Hidden Gem: Tucked away in an alley between First and Second Avenues, Bathtub Gin & Co. (between Bell & Blanchard in “Gin Alley”) staffs bartenders who are gifted with a sixth sense: Tell them what kind of spirit you like and what kind of mood you’re in, and they’ll make you something mind-blowing. If you can snag a seat at the upstairs bar, do it. If not, settle in on a leather couch in the library room downstairs.
The Grand Tour: Touring the city’s distilleries is a fun way to sip local spirits and see Seattle while you’re at it. If you don’t have time for a full tour, head up to Sun Liquor Distillery (514 East Pike Street) and Oola Distillery (1314 East Union Street) on Capitol Hill. If you’ve got a bit more time, we recommend taking Local Craft Tours’ (206-455-3740) chauffeured trip around town. You’ll leave from downtown, then hit three or four distilleries (including some of our very favorites, Sound Spirits and Letterpress Distilling) to sample the wares.
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The AdventurerSocial Community Manager Erica hits the high seas. |
Hit the Water: Looking for the best views of downtown? Get on a boat. Taking the West Seattle Water Taxi (Pier 50, 801 Alaskan Way) or the Bainbridge Island Ferry (Pier 52, 801 Alaskan Way) will give you glittering city views, and you can explore the walking paths, restaurants, and more on the opposite shores. If you’ve got a little more free time, Moz recommends renting kayaks from Moss Bay (1001 Fairview Avenue North, #1900) or canoes from the University of Washington Waterfront Activities Center (3701 Montlake Boulevard Northeast). Don’t forget to pack your flippy-floppies.
Drop the Mic: Seattle’s karaoke scene runs the gamut from modern and glitzy to gloriously divey. Our top picks are Rock Box (1603 Nagle Place) for their communal main room and swanky private rooms and Bush Garden (614 Maynard Avenue South) for their cheap drinks, campy backdrop videos, and awesome emcees.
Do the Tourist Thing: There’s nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail. The Seattle Monorail (in Westlake Center at 5th Avenue and Pine Street) is just a quick walk from the Convention Center. A relic of bygone times, this old beauty will deposit you directly at the Seattle Center (305 Harrison Street), where you can play around at the Pacific Science Center (200 2nd Avenue North) and check out some celebrated Northwest art glass at Chihuly Garden and Glass (305 Harrison Street). You can also go up in the Space Needle, if you reeeeeeally want to.
Get Your Culture Fix: Modern art and gorgeous views go hand in hand at the SAM Olympic Sculpture Park (2901 Western Avenue). Stroll the length of the waterfront to visit this picturesque outdoor museum, grab a bench, watch the sun sink behind the Olympic Mountains and the Puget Sound, and reflect upon what an awesome time you had at MozCon.
I hope this exhaustive list has gotten you pumped for MozCon! (With this many recommendations to try, you can even start planning your MozCon 2014 and 2015 agendas.) Haven’t secured your ticket yet? Get on it!
Hope to see you in Seattle in July. Feel free to reach out in the comments with any questions, or if you’d like any custom recommendations!
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Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Have you ever redirected a page hoping to see a boost in rankings, but nothing happened? Or worse, traffic actually went down?
When done right, 301 redirects have awesome power to clean up messy architecture, solve outdated content problems and improve user experience — all while preserving link equity and your ranking power.
When done wrong, the results can be disastrous.
In the past year, because Google cracked down hard on low quality links, the potential damage from 301 mistakes increased dramatically. There’s also evidence that Google has slightly changed how they handle non-relevant redirects, which makes proper implementation more important than ever.
From Dr. Pete’s post – An SEO’s Guide to HTTP Status Codes
A perfect 301 redirect works as a simple “change of address� for your content. Ideally, this means everything about the page except the URL stays the same including content, title tag, images, and layout.
When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity.
The new page doesn’t have to be a perfect match for the 301 to pass equity, but problems arise when webmasters use the 301 to redirect visitors to non-relevant pages. The further away you get from semantically relevant content, the less likely your redirect will pass maximum link equity.
For
example, if you have a page about “labrador,� then redirecting to a page
about “dogs� makes sense, but redirecting to a page about
“tacos� does not.
A clue to this devaluation comes from the manner in which search engines deal with content that changes significantly over a period of time.
The famous Google patent, Information retrieval based on historical data, explains how older links might be ignored if the text of a page changes significantly or the anchor text pointing to a URL changes in a big way (I added the bold):
…the domain may show up in search results for queries that are no longer on topic. This is an undesirable result. One way to address this problem is to estimate the date that a domain changed its focus. This may be done by determining a date when the text of a document changes significantly or when the text of the anchor text changes significantly. All links and/or anchor text prior to that date may then be ignored or discounted.
If these same properties apply to 301 redirects, it goes a long way in explaining why non-relevant pages don’t get a boost from redirecting off-topic pages.
Savvy SEOs have known for a long time that redirecting a huge number of pages to a home page isn’t the best policy, even when using a 301. Recent statements by Google representatives suggest that Google may go a step further and treat bulk redirects to the home page of a website as 404s, or soft 404s at best.
This means that instead of passing link equity through the 301, Google may simply drop the old URLs from its index without passing any link equity at all.
While it’s difficult to prove exactly how search engines handle mass home page redirects, it’s fair to say that any time you 301 a large number of pages to a single questionably relevant URL, you shouldn’t expect those redirects to significantly boost your SEO efforts.
Better alternative: When necessary, redirect relevant pages to closely related URLs. Category pages are better than a general homepage.
If the page is no longer relevant, receives little traffic, and a better page does not exist, it’s often perfectly okay to serve a 404 or 410 status code.
Before Penguin, SEOs widely believed that bad links couldn’t hurt you, and redirecting entire domains with bad links wasn’t likely to have much of an effect.
Then Google dropped the hammer on low-quality links.
If the Penguin update and developments of the past year have taught us anything, it’s this:
When you redirect a domain, its bad backlinks go with it.
Webmasters often roll up several older domains into a single website, not realizing that bad backlinks may harbor poison that sickens the entire effort. If you’ve been penalized or suffered from low-quality backlinks, it’s often easier and more effective to simply stop the redirect than to try and clean up individual links.
The same concept works at the individual URL level. If you redirect a single URL with bad backlinks attached to it, those bad links will then point to your new URL.
In this case, it’s often better to simply drop the page with a 404 or 410, and let those links drop from the index.
If you perform an SEO audit on a site, you’ll hopefully discover any potentially harmful redirect loops or crawling errors caused by overly-complex redirect patterns.
While it’s generally believed that Google will follow many, many redirects, each step has the potential to diminish link equity, dilute anchor text relevance, and lead to crawling and indexing errors.
One or two steps is generally the most you want out of any redirect chain.
SEOs typically hate 302s, but recent evidence suggests search engines may now be changing how they handle them — at least a little.
Google knows that webmasters make mistakes, and recent tests by Geoff Kenyon showed that 302 redirects have potential to pass link equity. The theory is that 302s (meant to be temporary) are so often implemented incorrectly, that Google treats them as “soft� 301s.
Duane Forrester of Bing addressed this in a recent tweet.
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Posted by Lindsay
Today I’m pleased to bring you Aleyda Solis, Madrid-based International SEO at SEER Interactive, a Moz Associate, and State of Search blogger. We’re excited that she’s bringing her international perspective to MozCon, where she’ll lay out how to make the bold but lucrative move into the international market. You definitely don’t want to miss her talk, “International SEO and the Future of Your ROI,� if you’re interested in growing your online business.
Tell us about the presentation you have planned for MozCon.
It’s going to be an exciting adventure, guiding the audience to discover their international SEO potential and what could be the future of their ROI.
It will be beyond the “ccTLDs vs. subdirectories for country targeting” type of session (although best practices with examples and tactics will be also shared). It’s meant to answer frequent questions I get from strategic, operations, and business perspectives, like: “How do I connect with international audiences and develop an attractive offer and assets when I don’t even speak the language or know anything about the country?â€� Or, “How can I develop original, localized content for all of these non-English websites if I don’t have enough resources?â€�
If this is an issue for your business, then it’s highly likely that your international SEO strategy wasn’t planned and established well enough from the beginning, allowing your investment to become cost-effective and scalable in foreign organic search markets.
I started to cover international SEO from this perspective in a SEER post I wrote about establishing an international SEO strategy.
Why would it be unwise for someone to miss your presentation?
Because I will be giving away delicious Iberian ham that I will be bringing from Spain to selected audience members in my session! 😀 (I’m kidding!)
I really wish I could do that, but unfortunately it is forbidden by US Customs. (Nonetheless, you might want to ask for a change in customs law to make it friendlier to Spanish gastronomy so I can do that in the future.)
Seriously, though, it would be really unwise to skip my session because I will be sharing what could be the next step to grow your online business. You definitely don’t want to miss that.
What types of businesses should be thinking about international SEO, and why?
All businesses that might have an audience in other countries or that speaks other languages should be thinking about it.
Sometimes people think that only huge businesses that already have a multinational physical presence should be thinking about an international web presence and search marketing activity. But this is far from true and is just myopic. For more, take a look at this Moz post I wrote about discovering your international online potential.
Regarding international SEO, what is the most unexpected thing you’ve learned along the way?
Maybe not unexpected, but unfortunately usually overlooked: The characteristics of audience behavior in each country.
Beyond language differences, there are many cultural, economic and sociological factors that can affect the success of many aspects of your SEO process, like the level of response from a link-building campaign, for example. At the end, beyond search engines that serve as a bridge, SEO is about the people.
You can have a better understanding of what I’m talking about in this post I published at State of Search about different aspects that drive an international SEO industry and audience research.
What do you do at SEER Interactive?
My activities at SEER are quite diverse: On one hand, I’m helping to grow the international SEO business, giving SEER more visibility by speaking at diverse events in Europe, identifying and validating leads, giving pre-sales support, and establishing and coordinating the best organization and processes for international SEO. On the other, I’m also developing and helping to implement international SEO processes for current clients.
Tell us about the places you’ve lived.
I’m from Nicaragua, a small, tropical country with a lot of volcanoes, lakes, and beaches on both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts in Central America. Nicaragua’s natural landscape is breathtaking; here’s a photo of Momotombo Volcano (one of the 12 volcanoes on the Pacific coast of the country):
Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettziegler/7355295166/
I grew up, studied, and worked there until I left to study in Salamanca, Spain in 2006. It’s a beautiful student town full of history, with students from all over the world (a lot of people go there to learn Spanish). It’s also home to the University of Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain (where I went to study), which was founded in 1218. Its front building looks like this:
Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/3855579280/
I ended up staying in Salamanca after finishing my studies, and got my first SEO job at an online marketing company. I lived in Salamanca for a bit more than 4 years — until I came to Madrid, the city where I live now.
I came to Madrid after accepting an SEO manager position at a company here at the end of 2010. Madrid is an amazing place, since it has the great alternatives that big cities offer, and at the same time allows you to have a good quality of life. Here’s a view of Gran Via, one of the main streets in Madrid:
Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/nico_/6887000482/
What is it about Madrid that keeps you there?
Madrid (followed by Barcelona) is where most of the bigger types of business activity happen in Spain, from trade shows and professional networking events to a wide range of cultural activities. There’s also good weather (there’s always sun, although it might be a bit cold during winter) and great culinary offerings (delicious tapas everywhere!), so I’m happy here at the moment. Although, of course, I’m quite open to experiencing new places to live in the future. I love to travel and experience new cultures.
Are you doing what you thought you’d be doing when you were growing up?
I had the somewhat common “dreamsâ€� among children of being an astronaut (I really just wanted to go to space, it wasn’t necessarily because I knew what an astronaut actually did). So that’s really a pending point in my life: going to space! I definitely need to start saving more for that.
What is the last thing that you have seen/heard/experienced that has inspired you?
I’ve recently had two experiences that have been inspiring in different ways.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to go to Israel to speak at KahenaCon and had the great opportunity to spend a Saturday walking around Jerusalem Old City. It was a truly inspiring experience, seeing places with such a rich historical and also religious background, like the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulchre and Dome of the Rock. Even if I’m not religious myself, it was a somewhat magical experience.
Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Zucpg1N8yT/
Another (and totally different) inspiring moment happened a week ago when I had the chance to try Google Glass. I felt like I was already living in the future, interacting with that small, translucent movie theater-like interface in my glasses with just my voice. Truly amazing.
Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Z8tuxJt8yd/
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
To ask myself “What’s the worst that could happen?� when I’m making an important or scary decision. This question allows me to get my risk-averse considerations under control, and gives me a great opportunity to start assessing a new situation with more balanced criteria. By asking this, I’ve been able to go out of my comfort zone more frequently and live new experiences.
Thank you, Aleyda! It was great to learn a bit about your background and how international SEO matters for all types of businesses, not just the big multinationals.
If, like us, you just can’t get enough of Alyeda, you can find her as @aleyda on Twitter (where she juggles Spanish and English).
Still don’t have your #MozCon ticket yet? Reserve your spot now!
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Posted by PhilNottingham
Video can be an expensive and time-consuming investment. For small businesses especially, the cost of producing video will always have to be weighed against other marketing investments, and the sad truth is that video can be a tough sell — especially when the ROI from its significant expense is hard to predict or quantify.
I think part of the problem is that most marketers (including SEOs) don’t have a very good understanding of the value that video can provide for them; they see virality, branding, and perhaps increasing conversion rates as the extent of it. Video as a media type, however, has potential on which few people capitalise: the ability to secure fantastic, high quality links back to your site.
In this post, I want to outline nine ways in which video can be used to augment and enhance link-building activity, with the goal of giving you more ammunition to secure an investment in video as part of a wider inbound marketing strategy.
Pages where video is part of the overall sum of a multimedia interactive can be extremely engaging, and as such generate a lot of links.
For example…
http://cloudsovercuba.com/ is a fantastic microsite that uses mixed media to tell the story of the Cuban Missle Crisis. While this was not likely created with links in mind, the page has managed to secure 1,920 links from 266 link root domains (according to OSE).
Two guides from Simply Business, The Small Business Guide to WordPress and the Small Business Guide to YouTube were created with link buidling in mind and include embedded videos within each interactive flow chart. These are currently at 179 and 22 linking root domains respectively
If you’re building a multimedia webpage that can’t realistically be viewed through an iframe on another site, where you choose to host your video ultimately doesn’t matter.
Your main focus should be making the content lightweight, quick to load, and mobile friendly. Therefore, either using the HTML5 <video> tag to display video or embedding all videos through iframes is normally the best way to go, though many other JavaScript-focused implementations are also fine.
JavaScript libraries such as popcorn.js can help you do some really cool things with embedded video, such as changing the way pages look based on playback time.
Things that go viral socially don’t actually correlate all that well with things that get lots of high quality, equity-passing links. This is because there is a subtle difference between the kind of things you’re happy to share socially and the kind of things you’re happy to include on your own site through embeds/referring links. If someone embeds your video on their site — it has to be because they want their readers to stop looking at their own content and spend time watching yours instead.
If your explicit goal is to get people to embed and link to your video content, Dollar Shave Club or Old Spice should not be the standards you aspire to. Instead, you should be looking to create something that provides value for a specific target demographic and the content must be informative, entertaining and succinct.
In many instances, this ends up looking something like a video infographic. A great example of this done successfully of late is from CCN, who created an excellent piece on relative salaries which has accrued 43 linking root domains.
When people embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or any other social video platforms, they don’t typically link to the domain of the creator in the process, but instead, the profile of the user on the YouTube/Vimeo domains. This is fantastic for the platforms themselves, but clearly sub-optimal for any business trying to do SEO and build links back to their site in order to improve rankings. While these social video platforms are a fantastic way to seed your content and get it in front of a wider audience, you don’t want the likes of YouTube taking your link equity.
Therefore, if you’re creating video link bait — you should (at least during your initial period of outreach) ensure the version of the video embedded on your site is seen as the de facto “canonical� by self-hosting or hosting with a paid third-party online video hosting provider.
I’ve been lucky enough to try out all of the providers below:
To save you the hassle of research, I’d estimate that in 90% of circumstances, Wistia is by far the best solution (unless you’re a large media house looking to serve advertising off your embedded videos, in which case you should look at Brightcove). Wistia has the best tool available for marketers and offers it at an extremely reasonable price. (Note: I’m not being paid or otherwise compensated by Wistia for saying that; I’m just saying it because right now it’s true. If any other online video platform starts outperforming Wistia in terms of their offering, I’ll be sure to let you know.)
After you’ve set up your hosting, you need to ensure that you embed your video in such a way that anyone who clicks an “embed this video� button is given an embed code which will feature a referring href attribution link to the appropriate page on your site where the video lives.
Unfortunately, no online video provider currently offers this as a standard feature (although I know this is in the pipeline for Wistia), so for now, this means you’ll need to manually customise the embed codes for videos you’re trying to use as link bait.
I have a built a tool which will automate this process for you. The “With textarea in textarea� option is what you should choose for the embed on your own site, while the “without double textarea� is the option you should choose when putting together an embed code to send to outreach prospects.
While marketers should think of YouTube primarily as a network for increasing brand awareness, if you have videos with a viral/social element that are also likely to generate a number of links, then YouTube can be a useful platform to generate leads for link building.
Anyone who embeds a YouTube video of yours should be seen as a really solid link prospect, as they’ve essentially already linked to your content.
Oftentimes, a gracious and thankful outreach email to anyone who does embed your YouTube videos can be a great way to both build relationships and convert those YouTube embeds into links back to your own site rather than to youtube.com. One angle I particularly like to use when reaching out is suggesting that sites “swap the YouTube video embed for a high quality HD embed that doesn’t include ads,� and then providing them with an alternative, securely hosted video iframe embed which includes a followed attribution link underneath the video.
To work out who has previously embedded or linked to your YouTube videos, you can use a combination of YouTube Analytics and Open Site Explorer.
The video below runs through the process of finding out where your videos have been embedded:
From here, you should also put the following URL variations through Open Site Explorer to find out where your video has been linked to but not embedded (replace the ID string with your own):
Note — if your “link bait� videos have a social/viral element to them, you can put them on YouTube and follow the process above after your period of outreach with a securely hosted video (as detailed in the “using video as link bait� section).
If you have access to a significant budget for promotion and outreach, paying for viral seeding can be a useful way to generate further link prospects from your YouTube videos. I recommend using Unruly Media for such a service.
Everyone hates YouTube ads. The meme above got 1597 upvotes on Reddit and hit the front page, which is more or less proof of objective fact in internet terms.
However, I think this opinion is so widely held not because YouTube ads necessarily suck, but because online video advertising is still a young industry that has yet to mature. The majority of larger companies place their TV adverts on YouTube and pay for seeding, rather than bothering to create content specifically for the platform and target a specific audience accordingly.
One way in which YouTube ads could be more effective is by advertising a free content library or permission asset — like an email list — rather than a specific product or service that costs money.
This way, you can improve visibility of the content in which you’ve already invested and hopefully build additional second-order links to it through this increased awareness.
Export your content with the appropriate settings and upload to YouTube. From there, you’ll need to tie your AdWords to your YouTube account and then begin defining the target audience to which you want to advertise.
There is some evidence to suggest that by simply using video to improve the quality of your commercially focused pages, you are likely to generate more natural links across the board.
Check out the screenshots from the Majestic Historic Index below for appliances online and Zappos — sites that have both invested heavily in product video to improve their page types:
To a greater or lesser extent, what we’re talking about here is product videos – i.e. videos created to provide information on a specific product or service.
Product videos are most effective when they take an audience member from a place of initial interest further down the path toward conversion by engaging on a personal level with the likely questions and concerns of the interested party. These videos should be mostly informational rather than promotional, more “shopping channel� than “TV ad.�
If you’re creating videos to improve and augment specific pages on your site — e.g. videos for specific products — then these videos should always be either self-hosted or securely hosted using a third-party provider (e.g. Wistia) as mentioned previously.
This is because these videos will likely only make sense within the context of the pages for which they’re created, and therefore won’t provide much value for an audience finding your content through YouTube search or recommendations. Additionally, by hosting such content on YouTube, you can risk your site being outranked by the instance of the video on youtube.com for branded queries relating to the specific product or service covered in the video. For more information on this problem, check out my post on building a video SEO strategy.
For this kind of content, you should also be trying to get video rich snippets in order to drive more clicks from the search results pages. This can be achieved either through implementing schema.org mark-up, or by submitting a video XML sitemap. See here for more information on implementation.
Video for blogs should be primarily informational with reasonably soft branding. “Talking head� videos are perfect for this and if you have the resources, supplementing the footage with screencasts and/or animated graphics is often a nice way to break up the flow and provide interest.
In order to make it scalable and require minimal editing, I’d normally recommend trying to do these videos in one take with minimal scripting prior to recording the content. Watch the video from Wistia feat. MC Fishkin which explains exactly how Moz manages its creative process to scale the creation of Whiteboard Friday videos with minimal effort.
The hosting for your blogging videos should be determined by the answers to a couple of questions.
1. Which is more important to you – greatest possible exposure to your content or individuals only viewing the content in the context of your own site?
The two are fundamentally dichotomous. If you want maximum exposure, your content should be hosted on YouTube, where it will rank well in the search results (normally those for youtube.com, not for your site) and also be visible throughout the YouTube platform. If you want users to only add comments on your site, within your community framework as opposed to YouTube’s; or are keen to re-target visitors with PPC, then self hosting will be the more appropriate option for you.
2. Is there any search volume on YouTube for the topics you are covering?
This can be worked out using the YouTube Keyword Tool. Be advised that data from the YouTube keyword tool is fairly inaccurate, but the relative indicators of search volume should give you a pretty good feel for whether there is any demand for the content you will be creating.
If there is search volume, that’s fantastic and your videos will likely get some good traction on the YouTube platform should you wish to host there. If there’s no search volume, then having your videos on YouTube likely won’t provide much additional value for you. If the latter is true, you’ll always be better off self-hosting your videos (or using a secure third-party solution as explained previously), since this way you can drive all traffic to your own site rather than to youtube.com.
You generally shouldn’t think about doing both. If you decide to self-host your content and also put it on YouTube, this strategy just gives individuals the option of viewing and linking to content on YouTube rather than your own site, while failing to undertake the primary activity that will help boost your YouTube rankings — namely, embedding your YouTube videos and driving views through those embeds. Rather than giving you best of both worlds, it can actually give you the worst of both worlds.
Video content can get you top-tier guest posts and linking opportunities. If you’re able to show a proven history of creating valuable and interesting video content for your own site and others, pitching for guest-post opportunities on top sites becomes so much easier than the standard cold approach.
The kind of content you need:
In many ways, the kind of content you’d use to guest post will have a very similar form factor to the kind of video you’d normally include on your own blog — mostly “talking head” focused.
Interviews of your customers/authorities in your industry often work really well here, because the videos can also act as ego bait. If you can make an individual look really professional on camera in a way they would be unable to do themselves, it can be really easy to get some great links from them for doing so.
If you have the resources or skills, you can also create product videos for commercial partners or build ads for content created by others (someone did this for Distilled, for free, and you can bet I gave them a few links).
Ultimately, as long as you get a link, the way in which a video is embedded on someone else’s site shouldn’t matter to you.
However, if the target in question is not particularly amenable to linking out to you, one of the best ways to encourage them is to only provide the webmaster with an embed code for the content, rather than the raw video file. This means securely hosting the content with a platform like Wistia, enabling domain restrictions and then including a text link back to your site at the end of the embed code (as covered above in Idea 2, using video as link bait).
In the vast majority of instances, webmasters won’t bother to tweak the embed code and remove the link, whereas if they take the embed code themselves from the instance of the video on a social platform (YouTube/ Vimeo etc.), the embed code will not include an attribution link back to your site with it as standard.
For both of these sites, you will need regularly publish content covering a specific theme that is completely non-branded or commercial in nature. You’ll also need to create different videos for each platform. There is a stringent editorial process to get accepted to either site, and unless your content is relevant to their target audiences, you won’t be granted the Dailymotion motionmaker status (which includes a followed link) or a blip.tv channel profile.
Creating a content series specifically for a single link is obviously a huge investment in time and money, but remember that the benefit here will be brand awareness and hopefully referring traffic, too. If you’re in a particularly “trickyâ€� niche to which it’s difficult to build links, but you have a lot of expert knowledge within your company, this might be a useful technique for you to leverage.
The purpose of a video news release is to support a press release with ancillary information that gives further context around the story in question.
Video news releases are a particularly useful asset for any PR campaign, since they allow your story to make it to the top of a journalist’s pile. Reporters don’t always have the time to write up articles for every interesting pitch, but with a video release you’re essentially doing half the work for them. All editors need to do with a VNR is put together a supporting paragraph, embed the video and then click publish.
Video news releases should always be hosted on YouTube, since the majority of sites are comfortable with embedding YouTube videos on their site and know how to get an embed code from a video on youtube.com
The best practice is just to include a link to the YouTube instance of the video within your initial outreach email. If your contact gets back to you in a positive way regarding the story, you can ask for a “credit link� for the video pointing back to your site.
I hope you found this post useful! Do you have any other good ways to build links with video? If so, please do hit me up in the comments! I’d love to hear about any new ideas.
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