Sorry this roundup is delayed. I had the damn thing about 60% completed earlier today, but then Mel brought in a pig full of beer, which we proceeded to drink during lunch. A couple of glasses later, I returned to my desk and inadvertently hit whichever combination of keys on my keyboard is the equivalent to the “Back” button on my browser, thus losing my post. After work, I went to the liquor store (wow, all this talk of alcohol sure makes me look like quite the drunkard…) and, after making my purchases, was prevented from entering the store’s parking garage because two car thieves were getting busted by four squad cars’ worth of police officers. Then, once I finally started to hunker down and get some work done, Jane distracted me with something horrible. Thanks, Jane.
To summarize, beer pig + crime scene + Jane’s deviousness = delayed Roundup Thursday.
Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:
Three star links:
Four star links:
- The NY TImes highlights the “blissful ignorance effect,” where once you’ve committed to buying or consuming something, you want to like what you’ve bought so you end up doing a lot of self-convincing.
- Hey, Matt Cutts is doing link bait! And I just…linked…to it…ah, damnit, he got me.
- SEO ROI shows us how to hide a text link ad. Sneaky, though Rand points out that the link graph should still reveal the manipulation to Google’s classifiers.
Five star links:
YOUmoz entries:
- Why Am I Doing This? Goodroi points out that you should ask yourself that very simple question before taking on tasks like blogging, social media, video content, and making various business decisions.
- The Rise and Fall of PageRank: A Parable. David LaFerney talks about, well, the rise and fall of PageRank. And there’s a picture of a gorilla!
- Page Title Optimization and Google’s New Inline Search Box. Miketighe discusses organizing page titles with regards to readability and usability.
- What Comes First, the Meta Description or Content? Sarita asks us what we think of first and foremost when working on a website, the SEO or the content.
- Do Other Meta Tags Really Work? Petrosianii shares an interesting a post touting the various types of meta tags, and tried them out on his own website to see if they’d improve his rankings at all. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t.)
- Taking [true knowledge] Out for a Test Drive. Carfeu tests [true knowledge], a new question-answering search engine.
- Link Building Through Cloaking? Click Magnet talks about a shady link building scheme he came across.
- A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to the Store Blog. Linda Bustos shares a “searchonsearch” result with us. The site delivered content to her based on the referring keywords. Pretty clever!
- I’m Leaving and I’m Never Coming Back… OldSchoolSEO shares some reasons why visitors may be leaving your site.
- 8 SEO Facts You Should Know Before Taking Up an SEO Service. Mukesh Mani provides some great guidelines for clients who want to hire an SEO.
- Use ‘What Googlebot Sees’ to Find Scrapers. Brent D. Payne suggests sneaking a peek at the “What Google Sees” section in your Webmaster Central console. It highlights sections of your site that you may want to consider nofollowing.
- SES NY and SMX West, Compared. Wrttnwrd compares the two most recent SEO conferences.
- Bees Attract Bees – Social Networking Over the Net. Anna Eliot provides an overview of various social networking websites.
- Slow Web Server Response is Eating My Homework. Maruschka complains how her web host is messing up her chances to win an SEO contest at work.
- What’s Good for the WMC HTML Verification File Isn’t Good For You. Brent D. Payne isn’t happy about having to log into Google’s Webmaster Tools every time he needs to supply the correct meta tag for a specific domain.
- Introducing…The Funniest Moz Comments of All Time. Tom Critchlow scrounges up some funny comments that were posted on SEOmoz.
Best of YOUmoz:
- It’s My Mozday and I’ll Cry If I Want To. Vingold announces his one year anniversary on SEOmoz, shares his awesome cake decorating, and discusses some things he’s learned about our community in the past year. Happy anniversary, Vin!
- Don’t Be Too Clever When Marketing (especially in Miami International Airport). Hamlet Batista shares an amusing anecdote with us involving his SMX promotional t-shirts, a Googlebomb joke, and some very unamused airport security guards.
New events added to the Events Calendar:
- There was a new event added but the Events Calendar appears to be down right now, so I’ll update this post with the new event once Mel fixes it.
New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:Featured job postings:
Featured companies:
United States/North America:
Central America:
UK/Europe:
Asia:
Featured resumes:
- Navaneeth Kishor R is an experienced SEO/SEM with over four years of experience. He is currently looking for employment.
