Sphinn had a super busy week last week with discussion happening on more than a third of the published stories.
None of those stories saw more comment activity than the “Discussion of the Week,” which asked Would you want a link from a site that was hit hard by Panda? After a majority of “Yes” replies, the discussion expanded into whether links from Panda-hit sites are now less valuable and if Panda had an impact on PageRank. Our favorite comment in the whole discussion came from Sphinn member Michael Martinez of SEO Theory, who said this about the value of Panda links and so-called low quality links in general:
Even low PageRank pages can help with rankings if they are allowed to pass anchor text. You don’t need MAXIMUM POWER PAGERANK links in order to boost rankings through anchor text. Link spam would never have worked in the first place if that were the case.
Check out the excellent discussion for more about Panda and inbound links.
Meanwhile, an article about social media and the older generation was the most popular story of the week among Twitter users. Read on for the full roundup of last week’s Sphinn activity.
Most Comments
- Discussion: Would you want a link from a site that was hit hard by Panda? – Google's Panda update hit a lot of websites of all sizes — large, well-known sites and smaller, niche sites, too. Some sites reportedly saw search visibility decline by 80-90%. For our new "Discussion of the Week," we want to know: Would you want an inbound link to your site from a site that was hit hard by the Panda update? The floor is open!
- The Myth of ‘Professional’ Twitter Accounts – Great advice on "keepin' it real" when leveraging social network profiles for a business (large or small).
- Bing Rankings Cheat Sheet – Google is important but they aren’t the only player out there. According to recent numbers, Microsoft’s Bing now generates 30% of all U.S.A. searches (half Yahoo – which is Bing-powered and half from the Bing.com web site.) It’s becoming more important that you be sure your site is optimized for Bing. So what does Bing look for? Here’s a cheat sheet you can use to optimize your site for Bing.
- Harvard.edu: An Ivy League pornographic playground – Stephen Chapman looks at the underbelly of some Ivy League College websites and how it's not what one would expect of them.
- Google Introduces Official Search Blog – Inside Search – Google launches a new blog specifically for search including "regular updates on our algorithms and features."
Most Tweeted (not already listed above)
- You’re Not Too Old For Social Media, You’re Just Lazy – You're not too old for social media. Now shut up and learn :)
- Expert SEO Interview with Matt McGee – Terrific SEO Insights from Matt.
- Bing Ups Ante In Social Search, Re-Ranking SERPs With “Likes” – Bing is taking the next step in its self-conscious evolution from “search engine” to “decision engine.” Perhaps we could equally use the term “conversation engine,” as Bing begins to emphasize social content and even tries to enable connections between people through the deeper integration of Facebook and “Likes” data.
- How to improve the usability (and conversion rate) of your forms – "Nobody enjoys filling out forms…but at least you can minimise the pain for your users by ensuring that your forms are as easy to use and as well designed as possible."
- Look Out Blogs: Google News Gains Options To Drop Blogs & Press Releases – Tired of seeing blogs or press releases in your Google News homepage? Google’s got a cure for that, new settings that allow you to see fewer results from these sources, or none at all. That may cause some “blogs” to consider asking Google to reclassify them as news sources.
Hot On Sphinn: May 16 to May 22, 2011
- PPC Management For Large Accounts – Managing large pay per click campaigns can be tricky. This post, video and transcription provide some good info for these enterprise level accounts.
- Comcast Threatened To Pull Nonprofit Funding Over Tweet – Social media is great isn’t it? Never before have more people had more chances to voice opinions and share ideas. While that’s the rose-colored glasses description of the space let’s not forget what might be crawling underneath when you flip the rock over.
- AdWords Showing Display URL Domain in Headlines for Select Ads – Another move to help searchers identify authoritative sites and to help deilver a searcher performing a navigational query to the domain they’re looking for.
- 10 Terrible Tweet Types Killing Your Twitter Strategy – Through handpicked tweets, the impetus had now fallen on companies to teach prospective clients and customers how to regard them. For those companies (be they SMBs or big Bs) not too well-versed with social media awareness, or who simply don’t have the manpower to oversee it, such ambition can lead to bad habits that, over time, can grow into brand-killers.
- Google Instant Preview: A Game-Changer For Landing Pages – Very smart post about the importance of landing page design in the age of AdWords Instant Preview.
- Drip, Drip, Drip – Building Prospect Trust One Drop at a Time – This piece is mainly focuses on B2B, but I think that it also applies to a variety of consumer-centric online marketing segments.
- 21 vertical funnels where you can inject your content into a Google search index – Besides the tricky or even sneaky loopholes used by professional SEOs, like linking to a page so that Ms. Googlebot can discover it, there are at least 21 official ways to request indexation by Google.
- Link Building For Life: Determining Lifetime Link Value – The ideal goal for some SEOs is to minimize maintenance and effort for a given website. Get to number one for all desirable keywords, sit back, and then move on to the next website while the previous domain rakes in the cash. This dream scenario is unfortunately rarely the case, because there are other competitors that make number one an increasing difficult mark to hit – and, also, most notably – the link graph has a rapid rate of attrition.
- Robots.txt – blocking the right things – I just had a bit of a conundrum with the robots.txt file on a website, and have managed to find a solution which I thought would be interesting and useful for anyone wanting to make sure that they are blocking the right things in their robots.txt file. The problem….
- Unique Selling Proposition: How To Approach SEO In Crowded Markets – How a USP can differentiate your site in the crowded SERPS.
- Does Link Prominence On A Page Impact SEO? – Is link order on a web page an SEO factor? Link order may appear to impact the authority a link passes because it is closely related to two factors that most likely do have an impact on the weight the search engine algorithms give to a link: 1) click rates; and 2) page segmentation. Thus, while link order by itself is not an SEO factor, link prominence may have an impact on the link authority of a hyper link through its impact upon click rates Read more: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog#ixzz1MXQcSECF
- Why and how to use Facebook Comments on your blog – Jon Henshaw makes a great argument for switching to Facebook comments (and also provides a tutorial on how to do so). He's even got me thinking about making the switch…
- What Makes an Effective Link Builder? – Good link builders are a special breed of SEOs. There are a lot of solid SEOs in the industry, but effectively building links is much different from keyword research, copywriting, and technical analysis. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what makes an effective link builder.
- Keep Existing Buyers from Seeing Adwords Remarketing Ads – A very smart post about AdWords Remarketing Segmentation.
- Advanced Google Analytics w/ Distilled’s Mike Pantoliano – Where Mike discusses some Advanced Google Analytics tactics in advance of his SEMpdx speaking engagement.
- A kick ass guide to growing your website traffic online – Growing website traffic is hard. This guide takes you through the complete ins and outs of how to do it, from seo, to content strategy to marketing and promotion.
- Who Is Running Your Social Media Campaign? 5 Top Qualities Your Social Media Manager Should Have! – Your business deserves the right person to effectively manage your online presence. Here are 5 qualities your social media community manager should have.
- Link Building in a Panda’s World – Today, people are quickly becoming aware that older SEO tactics for link building are not only less effective but many are actually harmful. Link building is always going to be an evolving, shifting and developing art form. It is important to grow & adapt with the most recent patterns and that is what BlueGlass aims to do everyday.
- 5 successful Twitter marketing campaigns you should know about – Five awesome examples of how brands use Twitter in order to engage with their followers in new and unique ways.
This is the latest in a weekly look at the stories that were “hot” on Sphinn in the past week. We’ll post these recaps every week.
Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General | Sphinn
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