New Illustrated Guide to Search Friendliness and - Shock, Shock! Ads on SEOmoz
Posted by randfish
Today I'm very proud to announce that the Illustrated Guide to Building a Search Friendly Website is finally complete. I've personally been working on it for over a month - completely writing it from scratch and doing all the designs and illustrations. I'm incredibly happy with the results, and I think you will be, too. This guide is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable documents SEOmoz has ever produced. It includes almost everything a web developer or publisher would need to know to build a site that follows the best practices of optimizing for search engines. Plus, it includes tons of clever illustrations:
As I noted in the past, we only release premium articles when we've provided something free first. In this case, that was our search engine ranking factors V2, which is on par quality-wise. However, we are going down a bit of the corporate road and also launching ads on SEOmoz. Don't worry, they're our ads, not anyone else's, and they only show for certain folks. For example, our "overlay" ad, the most intrusive (but also cool looking), only displays on your first visit to the site every two weeks (and only if you're not logged in as a member). Here's what you'll see:
See an example of this (even if you are logged in) here
We also have inline ads, ala Aaron Wall's suggestion (so blame him if you're angry 
), for the premium content, which displays to non-premium members and the general public.
We are seeking to ramp up premium membership and offer as much fantastic content as possible to you, both for free and in paid format. We love working on this kind of material and we think that it offers far greater access to the information we've collected (in a more egalatarian fashion) than our consulting services.
Speaking of consulting services, Gillian and I have recently made the decision to move to $1,000 an hour consulting prices. Yes, it's prohibitive, but we also think it accurately portrays the cost of time for our organization at this point. It also makes many of our recommended providers an even better choice. :)
p.s. Yes! I do plan to report back about the performance of these ads, and we certainly will be sharing lots of statistics from SEOmoz that you can use as a case study for your own projects/clients.
Find out why WWE Champion John Cena made a special trip home, and who else made a surprise appearanc
BYFIELD, Mass. ? WWE Champion John Cena was a special guest at Homecoming, presented by Chaotic Wrestling and Fabulous Productions, last night. The charity wrestling show, put on by The Champ?s father, John Cena Sr., aka Johnny Fabulous, benefited MADD Massachusetts, the Newbury Police Department and the Trista Zinck Scholarship Fund. (Read on Source)
“Open Access” - Elsevier, Wiley, RSC
Xx My survey of “open access” in chemistry publishers is part of a larger project which will be revealed shortly. I had not planned to look at closed access publishers but thought it was worth checking what they offered and the last few days of this blog records much of that. I shall summarise shortly. Peter Suber [...] (Read on Source)
Season Dreams Unveils A Fresh New Line-Up Of Artificial Christmas Trees In A Daring Array Of Styles
Season Dreams, one of the nation's leading online Christmas tree retailers, is unveiling a fresh new crop of non-traditional and highly unique trees as part of its 2007 artificial Christmas tree collection. (PRWeb Sep 25, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/U3F1YS1QaWdnLVN1bW0tTWFnbi1UaGlyLVplcm8=
Linky Goodness, October 15
I know, the Ides of October isn’t the most widely-celebrated ancient Roman holiday, but I thought you’d appreciate some Linky Goodness anyway! Finally building a true rival for for the iTunes/iPod: Universal In Talks With SonyBMG and WMG on Free Music Service On Certain Devices; Possibly Zune A sigh of relief: although we know they’re not always [...]
Plaintiff Expert Excluded From Testifying On Causation
NEW YORK - The ephedra multidistrict litigation judge on July 13 ruled that a case-specific neurology expert for a plaintiff is excluded from testifying at trial regarding ephedra causation and effects because he relied on incorrect data and his conclusions were unfounded (Harbir Singh v. Herbalife International of America, Inc., No. 06 CV 00014; In Re: Ephedra Products Liability Litigation, 04 MD 1598, S.D. N.Y.). Full story on lexis.com
Sean Penn, wife Robin end divorce proceeding (Reuters)
Reuters - Oscar winning actor Sean Penn and his wife actress Robin Wright Penn have withdrawn their divorce petition filed in December, a court document posted on celebrity Web site TMZ.com showed on Wednesday.
Marrakesch, Morocco - Storks and ..... Penguins (Continued)
Whilst stood discussing our penguin find, Flinn spotted a prickly pear stand and of course the whinge began - god that child loves those prickly pears. We wandered on over and Flinn delved into the far reaches of his shorts pockets to locate some dirhams to pay him with. He was stuffing them in his mouth so fast that the prickly pear peeler couldn't keep up with Flinn. After his fourth the guy stopped peeling any more so Flinn was upset that he hadn't got as many as usual for his dirham. As Mam said - city prices, what do you expect - and it is a lot more expensive in Marrakesch compared to elsewhere in Morocco. Then of course Flinn was upset with Mam as she told him he'd had enough anyway. Tantrum time! We finally managed to drag him away from the prickly pears and carried on meandering towards the El Badi. Walking through the huge, studded wooden gates, I was a little concerned that I was about to be stork crapped on. It's bad enough when a seagull gets you, ...
FDA Committees Vote To Ban OTC Cold Remedies For Children Under 6
SILVER SPRING, Md. - Two U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committees voted Oct. 19 to ban over-the-counter (OTC) cold remedies for children under the age of 6. Full story on lexis.com
Service Channels (Web Host Directory)
The Planet, leading provider of dedicated web hosting, has announced that it has added the Xeon 3210-SAS, equipped with a 146GB hard drive and 2GB RAM.
Binnall Talks to Vallee
Last Thursday I posted a short interview with Jacques Vallee about his recently released book Messengers of Deception (Amazon US and UK ). In five days, the interview has already been read by 10,000 people, so it would seem plenty of readers still value Jacques' opinion on the UFO controversy. Well if you liked the taste of that short interview, ... (Read on Source)
Monkey Ball For iPhone Sells 300,000 Copies
The capabilities of multimedia phones such as the iPhone and the Instinct have elevated the possibilities of cellphone gaming beyond the simplistic gameplay and poor quality graphics they’ve been restricted to for some time. The question of course is will this catch on? Monkey Ball says yes, it certainly can. A port of an existing [...]
Too Bad About Fay
Maybe it's premature but Fay has been a disappointment to us here in north Georgia. Still, she's been a fascinating watch that could get more fascinating yet. Fay anomalously strengthened over land yesterday, and it's possible that she will gain hurricane status over the Atlantic coastline of Florida, before she reverses course and moves west. A ... (Read on Source)
Injured rare Sumatran rhino rescued in Sabah: wildlife official
A rare Sumatran rhinoceros, whose species is on the brink of extinction, has been rescued injured in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo island, a wildlife official said over the weekend. (Read on Source)
Citrix Revs Up Virtual App Software
Citrix has announced the upcoming availability of XenApp 5, the latest version of its application virtualization software. The new release, formerly dubbed "Presentation Server," is part of the software maker's effort to consolidate its product line around XenServer, which it acquired with the purchase of XenSource in 2007. The software boasts improved application start times, the company said.
Flexi 8 now available for Mac
SA International has released a Mac OS X port of Flexi 8, which features much of the same functionality of the Windows version. Flexi 8 is a sign designing software suite that lets users easily put together signs. The Mac version has received a slightly modified appearance to work in the Mac OS X environment. The application features customizable shortcut keys, direct PDF export for customer proof...
Akademy 2008 was Amazing
It has been a couple of weeks since Akademy 2008 finished. KDE's contributors are now back home, more enthusiastic than ever about our future. If you missed the talks videos are now online. This article covers what happened during the week and outlines some of the results. Read on for more.
This is where Akademy was held.
The Beginning
On Friday August 15th 2008, hundreds of KDE contributors came to the city of Mechelen to register for the event many had been looking forward to for almost a year: Akademy 2008. We played. We worked hard. We drank beer and we ate food. We even discussed eating food. We listened to talks. We brainstormed. We discussed. We designed. And we wrote code. But after a long and busy week, it was time to go home. Most of us have regained our strength after this exhausting, yet energising week, and we are looking back at one of the best meetings we ever had. Of course, one can never really capture all that happened. Despite the impact of the keynotes and BoF's, much happened in the corridors. Much has not been recorded anywhere but in the memories of those participating. The following report therefore focuses on the big events and the announcements.
Modelling the latest sleek design.
The first day of Akademy brought us two keynotes, 16 other presentations, and various lightning talks about Plasma, moderated by Aaron Seigo. The first keynote was given by Frank Karlitschek. He spoke about increasing community involvement by giving "power to the people", and the refreshing ideas in his talk represented Akademy 2008 in a nutshell: innovation and community. This topic was further explored in talks following the keynote. Some of these ideas are described in the article about integration at Akademy. Related was the talk about a future development model of KDE. This talk and the BoF session later on have resulted in many discussions within the community. Time will tell if the ideas discussed will really shape the future of KDE development and the Free Desktop at large. The second keynote was about Nokia, who discussed their involvement in Qt and KDE. On Tuesday, Nokia gave away over 100 N810 internet devices to KDE developers to prove their point, and we also reported their support for the Firefox port to Qt in cooperation with Mozilla. Suffice to say, the first day at Akademy was a great success.
More news came in during the second day, most notable the the many improvements in Qt 4.5, work by the KDE-PIM hackers and JOLIE bringing service-oriented computing to KDE. Later on, a casual meeting of Frank Karlitschek and Fabrizio resulted in plans for co-operation between the Open Collaboration project and JOLIE. A great and certainly not unique example of how Akademy brings people with brilliant ideas together!
We can always depend on Seb to find practical solutions to difficult problems (this cup was meant to hold the voting cards up...)
The day ended by handing out the Akademy Awards. Mark Kretschmann and the Amarok team, Nuno Pinheiro and the Oxygen team, and Aaron Seigo and the Plasma developers were awarded with the official metal gear and praise and recognition from the community. Of course, we gave a standing ovation to the organisers of this year's Akademy as well.
Moving on...
Monday was set aside for the famous KDE e.V. meeting. 7 hours of talking and (re)counting votes, who could say no to such an experience? Not many - we welcomed several new members to the e.V. and during the meeting, the previous quarterly report was released. Further, it was decided to endorse the new Community Working Group, and a Code of Conduct. We also voted on and accepted the Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA), which has been worked on for the last year in co-operation with the Free Software Foundation Europe.
Having food and a beer in Mechelen.
The exciting atmosphere and the Nokia N810 devices we received fuelled much of the discussion during the Emsys-sponsored Embedded and Mobile day. Nokia clearly played a vital role, demonstrating their long-term commitment to Qt and KDE. Soon blog posts about the Nokia N810 showed up with KDE developers talking about the potential of this device. KDE packages for the N810 are already available, and much work is going into porting several key KDE infrastructures like Plasma or Ruby bindings support to it. Expect more, especially since Nokia provided lots of free food and beer at the social event on Saturday night!
Careful, hot Plasma design going on!
Development and BOF Meetings
On Thuesday, the BoF sessions (done "unconference" style) started. The purpose of the BoF sessions is to bring developers interested in a certain subject together to talk about it informally. During the BoF sessions, several rooms centring around a certain sub-project were available: the Amarok Den, the Plasma Hackers Containment, and the Office and PIM productivity room. In each of these rooms you could find 20-odd developers working on their respective applications, using the whiteboards to develop new interface concepts or discussing the weather (bad). Furthermore, two days were reserved for a more in-depth exploration of important topics: the HCI usability day and the Sun tutorials day.
We can not detail everything that happened in these rooms, but here is a quick impression of some of the results.
Outside enjoying the weather.
One interesting discussion in the Plasma Containment room was about small form-factors. Aaron Seigo noted how they figured out how to solve the issue with the system tray taking up too much space - combining it with the notification widget. A big target for the Plasma developers is to ensure Plasma can just as easily be controlled with multiple fingers or thumbs as with the mouse. For this, work on a full-screen application launcher and better controls is being undertaken. Another interesting development is going on around a Qt port of Edje. Edje allows a separation between the application logic and the user interface, which is described in an easy-to-use language. Integrating this technology in Plasma seems a high priority, and the first experimental Plasmoids using QEdje have appeared already. It will make it easier to write Plasma interfaces, allowing people with UI design skills (but little programming knowledge) to contribute.
Usability team having a drink.
The BoF about Solaris had a demo of DTrace, which not only led the developers to a bug, but also prompted the Okteta developer to have a look at Okteta running on other platforms like Windows and Mac OS X.
The focus of the session was really more about the developer tools available on the Solaris platform (and also on other platforms, because DTrace can be used on FreeBSD and Mac OSX as well) than the platform itself; some words were said about KDE 4 on Solaris, "it'll be there soon" as well.
Seb Ruiz, one of the Amarokers wrote in his blog how the major work in the Amarok Den was critiquing and improving the major components in their GUI. Lydia Pintscher, the Amarok Community Manager, noted "The most important thing about Akademy in my opinion was meeting our Summer of Code students. It really helped to get to know them and make them feel they are part of the team. I hope it helped to convince them to stay with Amarok after SoC. Oh, and we really enjoyed the Akademy Awards Ceremony, obviously."
We enjoyed good beer at the social event.
The Human Computing Interface workshop by Ellen and Celeste focussed on giving developers the tools to make their applications easier to use. Ellen explained: During the Hacking Marathon, we organised a Human Computer Interaction day including various workshops to educate the KDE developers with regards to usability and design practices. This included an introduction to the KDE user research profiles that will help developers define their project goals and focus their work on the users' needs. In a second workshop, six usability and design methods were explained to developers which they can can apply to improve the usability of their software.
Furthermore, in the scope of the Season of Usability, we offered a student project to further develop the Human Interface Guidelines and identify common design patterns in KDE 4. Thomas Pfeiffer, one of our student interns, also attended Akademy and together, we documented several design patterns that will soon be available on techbase.
Finally, we had a discussion about dialogs. Dialog alignment has been an issue in KDE for about 2 years now. During this year's Akademy, we worked together with several developers to come up with some final guidelines for dialog alignment. They will soon be documented on techbase, including some Qt Designer tips and tricks.
Work and play have to go together. So we had a Nokia-sponsored social event, were we had good food and Belgian beer. And Thursday we went to Mechelen, and had a great tour over the river, paid for by our own KDE e.V. Many pictures were shot during Akademy, be sure to have a look at those made by Bart Coppens, Jonathan Riddell or in Sebas' gallery (who donated the pics in this article).
Wrapping up
That wraps up the overview of Akademy. On Friday most people left, though some stayed until Saturday, still working. It took everybody a while to get back home (not everybody having a good trip), and a while to adjust. Alexander Neundorf even speaks of a "Post Akademy blues". Once adjusted, normal life continues. Wade continues to be funny. And we are still writing code.
Some new members of the KDE e.V. joined at Akademy. So can you!
But, despite the importance of coding and design going on at Akademy, it is not all what our yearly KDE meeting is all about. Talking to enthusiastic fellow KDE developers is. The KDE community offers a diversity of bright, interesting and simply amazing people. Meeting those, talking, having dinner or a drink - it is what makes Akademy one of the best things the year brings. There is so much more fun to be had, things to be learnt and work to be done, from art to be drawn to code to be written, you know you want to join us!
Visa Plans To Let Phones Charge Your Purchases (NewsFactor)
NewsFactor - In the not-too-distant future, Visa credit cards may merge with cell phones. The card giant announced Friday that it is developing applications for Google's Android operating system and upcoming Nokia smartphones.
It May Not Be as Fast as a Tsunami, But It's Still Coming
To demonstrate how global warming will one day turn familiar surroundings into aquarium props, Offsetters suspended lifeboats off the side of buildings and lined Vancouver's streets with water safety gear: life vests under park benches, and a life guard, on duty, in the middle of a promenade. (Read on Source)
Post-Shuttle Job Loss Estimate Falls to 3,500
KSC could shed as many as 4,500 positions after the shuttles are retired. (Read on Source)
Start-up developing new Web interaction paradigm
The secretive start-up Siri plans to make the interface to the Internet more usable by mere mortals.
Guts and gory
Camouflaged even in death, this little mammal lay on the path while an army of weaver ants attended to its post-mortem rites with indefatigable haste. Uncautious strollers would have enjoyed a foot of flea-ridden fur and flabby parts plus a leg up in vigorous exercise thanks to the plunging of hundreds of mandibles and a dash of formic acid into ... (Read on Source)
The Trail
HENDERSON, Nev. -- Just hours before voters nationwide were to head to the polls, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin released a two-page summary of her medical history Monday night.
X-Ray Discovery Sparked 19th-Century DIY Craze
After the discovery of the X-ray in 1895, princes and paupers X-ray everything within reach "just to see what it looked like." The curator of a new exhibit on early scientific photography at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art explains in this multimedia slide show.
Using JavaScript onMouseOver
As part of the Internet's "point and click 'appeal, the event onMouseOver JavaScript interacts with a user based on the points where the mouse cursor. It is a great way to display messages, entert...
IDC: Half of UK firms have a green plan
But questions remain over short term cost savings
Nearly half of firms have a green IT strategy, and another quarter plan to devise such a plan in the next two years.
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Ten Tips to Keep Your Pet Birds Safe This Holiday Season
tags: safety tips , holidays , christmas , hanukkah , kwanzaa , new year's day , pets , birds , parrots Elektra. Female Solomon Islands Eclectus parrot, Eclectus roratus solomonensis , April 2008. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [ larger view ]. This message was emailed to me, and I am posting it here as a public service. With the Christmas, Kwanzaa, ... (Read on Source)
Time lists top 10 iPhone apps
Time has published a list of its ten favorite App Store downloads. Pandora Radio ranked highest and was considered "the all-time best free app for music lovers." The streaming music service also scored the top position in Apple's overall comparison of free apps. Users can enter an artist, song, album or genre, and Pandora then creates a station that provides similar music from a wide range of cont...
name: MAGPIE