Среди других высокотехнологичных компаний, включенных в список лучших работодателей по версии Fortune, оказались Qualcomm (32 место), Cisco (55 место), Autodesk (70 место), Adobe Systems (83 место), Intel (84 место), Microsoft (86 место) и Hitachi (98 место).

Стоит отметить, что в список Fortune не вошли популярные интернет-компании, такие как Twitter и Facebook. Кроме того, в топ-100 лучших работодателей не оказалось корпорации Apple.

Также не можем не рассказать о то, что Google построит свой собственный аэропорт. 

Три главных человека в Google — Ларри Пейдж, Сергей Брин и Эрик Шмидт — хотят построить частный терминал в международном аэропорте Mineta San Jose International Airport. Под строительство уже выделено 29 акров земли. Проект оценивается в $82 миллиона. Причем руководители интернет-гиганта будут тратить свои личные деньги, а не средства Google.

Источник 

2012 was a year of triumphs and setbacks for marketers seeking the data to best accomplish their goals. Big improvements and additions in products like Google Analytics, GWMT, Bing Webmaster Tools, Mixpanel, KISSMetrics, Raven, and yes, SEOmoz PRO, too (along with dozens of others), helped many of us improve our reporting, auditing, and optimization efforts. But with the good came the bad, and setbacks like Google's expansion of keyword (not provided), the loss of referral data from iOS6, and kerfuffles over AdWords data appearing alongside rankings reared their heads, too.

When it comes to marketing data, I really like the concept behind Google's own mission statement: organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Unfortunately, I think the search giant has been falling short on a lot of the aspects that relate to our world, and thus it's up to third parties to pick up the slack. Moz is obviously part of that group, and we have plenty of self-interest there, but many other companies (and often Google and Bing themselves) are stepping in to help.

To help better understand the information that matters most to professionals in our field, we want to run a short survey focused specifically on data sources:



TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

We hope that this takes less than two minutes to complete, and that by aggregating broad opinions on the importance of data sources, we can better illustrate what matters most to marketers. In the spirit of transparency, we plan to share the results here on the Moz blog (possibly in an update to this post) in the next week or two.

Please help us out by taking the survey and by sharing it with your fellow marketers (or any professional you know who relies on marketing data).

Thanks very much!

*For those who have asked about SEOmoz's own plans regarding rankings vs. AdWords API data - we have removed AdWords search volume from our keyword difficulty tool (it was never part of the formula), and will be working on alternatives, possibly with the folks over at Bing. Like others in the field - Hubspot, Ginza, Conductor, Brightedge, Authority Labs, etc. - we plan to maintain rankings data in our software.

Source:seomoz.org

Remember everything you've learned about the power of Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media sites to promote your business? It remains true, with one caveat: In 2013, expect to see a backlash to the sheer massiveness of these sites--as well as the emergence of smaller-scale, niche networks. "In 2013, we'll see more users start to expect, if not demand, some tangible benefits in exchange for all the time they spend online and the personal information they're sharing," says Trendwatching.com's David Mattin. Adds Howard Tullman, CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, partner at Chicago High Tech Investors, and columnist for Inc.com: "Consumers are starting to understand the value of their information and asking to be compensated, whether with badges, rewards, preferred pricing, or discounts and perks." Tullman's prediction for 2013: "We'll increasingly see new kinds of virtual currencies and services--like Ticketmaster's Facebook app that lets you see where your friends are sitting at an event."

At the same time, the sheer massiveness of Facebook is creating opportunities for smaller-scale, niche networks. People aren't likely to flee Facebook outright, Tullman says, but they will increasingly augment their online social experience by using other networks whose size, privacy, and more customized parameters are better suited to specific tasks and goals.

Some good examples are Path, a free personal-social-network service that limits users to a 150-person circle; App.net, a subscription service that lets users create their own social networks; and NextDoor, a private social network that helps users connect with others in the same geographic area. MindMixer is a sort of virtual town hall that enables communities to define and discuss ideas. Yammer, meanwhile, helps businesses create internal networks.

The emergence of more and varied social networks will present a challenge to businesses accustomed to Facebook and Twitter. For one thing, many people use such networks specifically to avoid the increasingly commercial aspects of Facebook; in that case, you would be smart to start by limiting your presence to participation and listening, rather than selling. Eventually, however, smaller networks could become effective ways to reach specific geographic areas or professional groups, or build communities around a brand. The goal here, says Tullman, is less to attract new customers than to build deeper, longer-lasting, and more lucrative relationships with the ones you have. When you have that, word of mouth will naturally bring in the new business.

Source:inc.com

With the recent Google Webmaster Tools security bug, I thought a deep dive into what GWT has to offer SEOs might be prudent since many SEOs may have logged in recently.

Google Webmaster Tools was once Google Webmaster Wasteland. But the past year has been a fruitful one as Webmaster Tools has rolled out improvements faster than Facebook does new privacy statements. Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) is now full of insightful data and metrics that you cannot get anywhere else. Some GWT data is useful, some is not. Let's dive in and take a look at each tool in GWT.
Guide to Google Webmaster Tools Index Webmaster Tools Sections My Favorite Tools
Configuration #1. Download Your Latest Links
Health #2. View Your Website Crawl Stats
Traffic #3. Submit To Index
Optimization #4. Webmaster Tools Data in Google Analytics
Labs #5. Rich Snippets/Structured Data Test Tool

Webmaster Tools Home

When you first login, you'll see a list of all websites in your Google Webmaster tools account as well as few links to view all messages from Google, 'Preferences', 'Author Stats' (Labs), and a few miscellaneous links under 'Other Resources'.


All Messages

Google used to rarely communicate with Webmasters through messages. This year some probably wish they communicated a little less with the amount of "love notes" many SEOs have received. You might see a message here if:
Google thinks your site may have been hacked
Google detected unnatural links pointing to your site
Google thinks links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

You can set the messages email threshold to: 'only important' or 'all messages' under the "Preferences" tab

See it: View All Your Messages
Labs - Author Stats



Since authorship isn't tied to a single domain, Google shows authorship stats for all sites you write for as well as individual stats. You'll need a valid author profile (go Google+!) to see stats here. The stats are interesting, and good for verifying which URLs are showing your ugly mug in the SERPs.

See it: View your Author Stats

Other Resources - Rich Snippets/Structured Data

If you've never used the rich snippets testing tool, now known as "structured data", bookmark it now. It's a one stop shop to test URLs to see if your author profile is linked correctly.

You can also use the tool to check if you've setup or verified your:
Author Page
Name
Google+ Page as a Publisher
Any structured data detected (reviews, products, song titles, etc) in the form of microdata, microformats, or RDFa

See it: Test Your URLs for Structured Data
Specific Site Dashboard in Google Webmaster Tools

Once you select a site after logging in, you see the real meat of the tool. The site specific dashboard has a nice overview showing:
Crawl Errors
URL Errors
Site Errors
Health status of DNS, Server Connectivity & Robots.txt
Overview of # of Queries (plus clicks and impressions)
Sitemaps (including submitted URLs and indexed URLs)



There are five major sections once you've selected a site: 'Configuration', 'Health', 'Traffic', 'Optimization', and 'Labs'. I find that the most insightful data is in the 'Heath' and 'Traffic' sections, and what you can get inside Google Analytics.

The 'Configuration' Section
Settings



Here you can target a specific country for your website, choose a preferred domain (www or non-www), and limit the crawl rate of Googlebot if you so choose.
Sitelinks



Google automatically choosing Sitelinks to display below your main URL on certain queries, usually brand related. If you have certain URLs you wouldn't want showing as Sitelinks you can "demote" them and Google won't show those demoted URLs.
URL Parameters

If you're having problems with duplicate content on your site because of variables/parameters in your URLs you can restrict Google from crawling them with this tool. Unless you're sure about what you're restricting, don't play with the settings here!
Change of Address

If you are switching your site to a whole new domain, do a 301 redirect, then make sure Google knows about it here.
Users

Ever taken like 20 minutes to add a new user to your Google Analytics account? No? OK, maybe that was just me. Luckily adding a user to GWT is much easier. There are two main user types: 'Full user' and 'Restricted User'. Restricted users are good for clients if you want to give them most view-only access, but little ability to change settings or submit things (you probably don't clients filing random reconsideration requests!).


Associates

This setting is a way for members of YouTube's Partner Program (probably not you) to link their YouTube Channel with Webmaster Tools. My guess is this section will get more settings in the future, but for now, it's very confusing. More details on the Google Webmaster Central blog here.

The 'Health' Section
Crawl Errors

Crawl errors shows you issues Googlebot had in crawling your site. This includes response codes (404s, 301s) as well as a graph of the errors over time. This is a fantastic resource for spotting broken links, as the URL shows up as a 404 error. You can see when Google first detected the error codes and download the table of errors into a spreadsheet.



Crawl Stats

Pages crawled per day is a good SEO metric to track over time. You can get some insight from the chart, but this is a metric to check in on and record every week. Ideally you want that number continuing to climb, especially if you are adding new content.



Blocked URLs Fetch as Googlebot & Submit To Index

Fetch as Googlebot will return exactly what Google's spider "sees" on the URL you submit. This is handy for spotting hacked sites as well as seeing your site the way Google does. It's a good place to start an SEO audit.

The really neat feature that's new this year is "Submit to Index". Ever made a title tag change and wished Google would update its index faster to get those changes live? 'Submit to Index' does just that. 50 times a month you can submit a page to update in near real-time in Google's index. Very handy for testing on-page changes.

Here's Matt Cutts on how to use the 'Submit to Index' tool:


Index Status

Make sure and hit the 'Advanced' button here so you can see all the interesting index stats Google shows about your site. Keep an eye on the 'Not Selected' number as that could indicate that Google is not viewing your content favorably or you have a duplicate content issue if that number is rising.


Malware

If Google has detected any malware on your site you will see more information here. Google often sends messages now if Malware is detected as well.

The 'Traffic' Section
Search Queries

These queries are when your site shows up in a search result, not just when someone clicks your site. So you may find some keyword opportunities where you are showing up but not getting clicks. I much prefer the interface in Google Analytics for this query data, and you may find a lot more queries showing up there then here.

Keep an eye on the CTR % for queries. If you have a known #1 ranking (your brand terms for example) for but an abnormally low position 1 CTR that's a sign that someone might be bidding on your brand terms (which may or may not be good). If you have a high position but low CTR it usually indicates that your meta descriptions and title tags may not be enticing enough. Can you add a verified author to the page? Or other structured data? That could help CTR rates.



Links To Your Site

This is my favorite addition to GWT this year. The link data here keeps getting updated faster and faster. When this was first launched earlier this year the delay on finding links was around three weeks. I've seen the delay down to as little as one week now.

There are two ways to download lists of links, but the "Download Latest Links" is the more useful of the two.

"Download More Sample Links" just gives a list of the same links as the latest links but in alphabetical order instead of most recent. The main report lists the domains linking to your site sorted by the number of links. Unfortunately drilling down into the domain level doesn't give really any useful insights other than the pages that are linked too (but you can't see where they are linked from on the domain). You'll find domains listed here but not in the "Latest Links" report. Bummer.


Internal Links

Pretty good report for diagnosing internal link issues. This tool is nothing fancy but URLs are sorted by most internal links. Use this to diagnose pages on your site that should be getting more internal link juice.

The 'Optimization' Section
Sitemaps

See a list of all the different types of sitemaps Google has found or that you have added and some stats about each one. You can also test a sitemap as well before submitting it and Google will scan to find any errors. Webmaster Tools shows stats here on Web sitemaps, as well as Video, News, and Image sitemaps as well
Remove URLs

You can submit URLs (only for sites you control of course) that you wish removed from Google. Make sure and follow the removal requirements process.
HTML Improvement

Think of this as a basic On-Page SEO audit tool. Google will show you lists of URLs on your site that don't have unique Title Tags, or are missing Meta Descriptions. This is a handy tool for quick On-Page SEO issues when you first take over a new website. Click on any of the issues found to return a list of the URLs that need improvement.


Content Keywords

See a list of single keywords, not key phrases, which Google thinks your site is about. As long as you don't see spam stuff here, you're good.
Structured Data

If you have some structured data on your site, such as a linked Google+ author or product review data, you can see stats about that data including the type of data found and the schema. This is useful to mass verify that all the pages you think are marked up correctly actually are.



The 'Labs' Section
Custom Search

Ever wanted to build your own search engine? You can with Google Custom Search. If you have a collection of sites that you're always searching through using Google, you might consider using Google Custom search to build your own Google that just returns results from those sites. You can see how the custom search engine would work on just your own site using the preview tool here in Webmaster Tools.
Instant Previews

Input any URL on your site (or just leave blank and click 'Compare' to see the homepage) to see what the preview of the site might look like in a Google desktop search results set, or on a mobile SERP.


Site Performance

This tool got dropped by Google's spring cleaning in April 2012. I like using webpagetest.org for testing site performance.

Webmaster Tools Data In Google Analytics

Connecting your Google Analytics account with your verified site profile in Google Webmaster tools brings some GWT data directly into your Google Analytics account. No need to login to two places.

To connect a verified GWT site to the correct analytics site, click the "manage site" dropdown:



Once connected, GWT data shows up in the Standard Reporting section of Google Analytics under "Traffic Sources" -> "Search Engine Optimization".

Not all GWT data is available in GA. You'll only get three data sets in Google Analytics:
Queries
Landing Pages
Geographical Summary

Let's look at each of these and see what's worth looking at.
Queries

Queries are interesting because you can see some of the keywords that might be hidden under (not provided). This doesn't help with attribution of course, but at least we can still use that data for keyword research. Darn you (not provided).

What's really interesting is how many more queries show up in the query report in Google Analytics (that is supposed to be GWT data) than do when you directly get the query data in Google Webmaster Tools. For example, for the timeframe: Oct 28th-Nov 27th we had 317 queries report in Google Analytics:



but only 93 in the Google Webmaster Tools 'Top queries' report:



I'm not sure why such a big discrepancy between GWT queries and queries in Analytics from GWT. I definitely see more Google Images type queries in the GA report and less in the 'Top Queries' in GWT. Interesting discrepancy. Anyone else notice a big difference in query data?

Nonetheless the Query data can be interesting and it's nice to have right in GA. I hope that Google continues to provide more GWT data directly into Google Analytics like this.
Landing Pages

You're better off getting your actual top landing pages list from Analytics, but you can see what GWT sees as your tops pages sorted by Impressions. The interesting nugget of info here is the CTR. That's not data you see in analytics and could be insightful. I like comparing the CTR to the site average:


Geographical Summary

This section is again useful really for the CTR rate data. Looking at specific countries you can see where it might be worth running more Facebook ads or doing some international SEO work in.

Source:seomoz.org

Apollo fell in love with a priestess, and offered her the terrible gift of prophecy. She agreed to the gift, but when Apollo asked her to lie with him, the daughter of Priam refused. The God, angry, cursed her: the young priestess would have been a prophetess, but no one would believe her.

Her name was Cassandra.



Every day this month, I've seen Twitter posts with every kind of predictions about how web marketing disciplines will look in 2013.

I am not exempt from the desire to predict the future. The urge is something deeply human and, in an industry as uncertain as ours, sometimes it is a psychological necessity. However, some of those predictions are so improbable that this obscure prediction (written to be blatantly false by one of my Spanish friends) seems more plausible:

"Google launches Google Balrog. The name of this new Google algorithm is inspired by the name of the mythical creature imagined by Tolkien, because it will operate the same way.

It will be an algorithm that, wrapped in fire, will crawl the Web, penalizing and incinerating sites which do not include the anchor text "click here" at least seven times and not include a picture of a kitten asleep in a basket.

If your site will not meet these minimums, the Balrog will go after you." (The translation is mine from Ricardo`s original post in Spanish.)



Every speculation about how something may evolve in the future should be based on the knowledge of the past, and, in the case of Google, we should not make the mistake of excluding elements like its acquisitions and technological evolution when predicting its future.

For example, Panda should be seen as a needed action that Google took in order to solve a problem caused by the technological advancement of Caffeine. In fact, with Caffeine (June 2010), Google was able to find new pages (or new information about existing pages) and could add them straight to the index.

As a negative side effect, gazillions of poor-quality pages flooded the SERPs, objectively deteriorating them. I'm sure the Search Quality team was already working on finding a solution to the poor results in the SERPs, but this particular Caffeine side effect accelerated the creation of the Panda algorithm.


Opening the prophecies book of Cassandra

If you visit the About Us page of Google, you will read this: Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

That is the why of Google, and three words matter the most:
Organize
Accessible
Useful

The how is represented by its algorithms; the what is composed by all the products Google has developed along the years (Search, Local, Mobile, Video, Voice, etc.).




Organized

For many years, I've considered Google as a cataloguer of objects, which offers information on a variety of topics:
Written content
"Generic" content
Blog posts
News
Questions/Answers
Books
Patents
Academic articles
Photos and images
Videos
Apps

You've probably noticed that these are the vertical searches Google offers and that compose the Universal Search right now (I excluded Products because they are a paid option, and I consider Google+ status as “posts”).

Almost all these “objects” have their own algorithms which are frequently updated, similar to the YouTube, Google News, and Google Images algorithm updates. And all them have their flaws (for instance, the real value to be assigned to a link).

Until recent years, Universal Search seemed to be similar to a building constructed with Legos, but there were three important changes in 2011 that changed the landscape. These changed began developing in 2012 and – possibly – will be consolidated in 2013, which could really unify all the vertical searches. These three changes are:
Schema.org
Authorship
Google+

Schema.org

We know that Google is using semantic closeness in its categorization of crawled information, as we know how the concept of Entity is strongly related to semantic.

However, this aspect of the crawling function has assumed a larger relevance after the implementation of Schema.org. The general acceptance of HTML5 as the new standard (pushed by Google since its beginning) and tools like Open Graph has helped boost relevance, as well.

The fact that Google offers the opportunity to verify accuracy of rich snippets implementation (and is continuously updating the tool), changed its name to the Structured Data testing tool, and recently offered the opportunity to highlight events structured data directly from Webmaster Tools makes me suspect that semantic is going to have even greater weight in how Google will organize the information it crawls.



The Knowledge Graph (and open data such as Freebase since Google's acquisition of Metaweb in 2010), which recently rolled out in many regional Googles, is based on the semantic web and is improving very quickly. My advice is to start thinking seriously about semantic as a channel for possible web marketing and SEO actions.

Authorship

AuthorRank has been one of the hot topics of 2012. People smarter than me wrote about it, and even created a tool around it.

In my 2011 “Wake up SEOs, the New Google is here” post, I presented my hypothesis that AuthorRank would have become a part of a more complex set of graphs, whose purpose was to organize and present for real the best content in the SERPs. We have not yet seen that “prophecy” become fact, but I am stubbornly convinced that this is the direction Google has taken. If not, why can we already use the relation ”author”/Google profile in posts, articles, videos, and books? In the future, I see AuthorRank becoming useful in other objects as well, such as photos, images, and audio.

Today, I want to focus on an aspect of AuthorRank which (incomprehensibly) does not receive much attention: the rel=”publisher” mark up. It is rel=”publisher” that connects a site (the publisher) with the authors. Even when those same authors abandon the publisher to start working with another site, their AuthorRank will continue to influence the “PublisherRank,” which makes it even stronger.



Google+

During the last SMX Social Media Marketing Expo, Vic Gundotra told Danny Sullivan:

"I think people are just now starting to understand that Google+ is Google. At some point, we’re gonna have a billion users. And eventually, you’ll just say: 'Google has a billion users.'”

I am not going to discuss the value of Google+ as a social media channel, but we must admit that it is the irresistible evolution of Google for a number of reasons:
Social is the nature of a profiler tool.
The fact that rel=”author” and rel=”publisher” are strictly related to Google profiles makes them part of the future of Google Search (and also Paid Search).
It is the easiest way for Google to obtain real social signals, not just through how users act on Google+, but also through users connecting many other social accounts to the their G+ profile.


Accessible

"You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer."

You can find that phrase in the Ten Things We Know to Be True page of Google.com.

Google bought Android Inc. in 2005 and entered in the mobile phone industry in 2008. Why the sudden surge into mobile? Aside from Android being a gold mine, Google's goal is making information universally accessible. Because more and more people are using mobile for search (especially for local), it was imperative for Google to be a player in the space:



Search on mobile is almost synonymous with Local Search, which can also (partly) explain why Google Now has been developed, along with the peculiar design of the mobile version of Google Search.

Therefore, it's time to stop thinking of mobile as an option and realize it's a priority.

For that same reason (strongly connected to the concept of accessibility), Google started giving instructions and suggestions about how to build mobile-optimized sites, with special predilection for the responsive design technology.

Mobile accessibility means also Google Voice Search, and what a surprise , from Knowledge Graph, Schema, and Local Search.

In addition, we can't forget Project Glass. It is still a Google X project, but has been given to developers to start designing software/apps in preparation for its commercial release predicted for 2014.

Accessibility gives information to users quickly, which explains why site speed is so important to Google - so much that it released mod page speed this last October and updated it just few days ago.

Lastly, WPO (Web Performance Optimization) is not exactly an SEO activity, but it affects SEOs, so it must be considered one of the priority for 2013. The frequently troubled relation between SEOs and developers/web designers will forcedly find a solution in 2013. We will need to start being better communicators and reach them where they are.
Useful

At the end of November, Matt Cutts gave a definition of SEO as Search Experience Optimization in his Google Webmaster Help video series:



Nothing really new, but yet another confirmation that SEO should focus on providing users with useful information.

Panda, Penguin, EMD, Layout Update... all of these updates were aimed at prioritizing the most useful sites available, and punishing those that Google considered useless.

Content marketing (the discipline that helps create useful information) has become a big priority for SEOs. However, there are still so many in our industry who don't really understand what content marketing really means and how SEO can be implemented into a content strategy. This is not the best place to discuss this topic, but check out the deck below for further explanation.



How to Build SEO into Content Strategy by Jonathon Colman

2013 will see definitive adoption of content marketing into SEO, and those sites that do not integrage marketable content into their strategies will see themselves overtaken in the SERPs.

At the same time, we will also see an increase of content marketing spamming: guest posts as article marketing, infograph-spam, or simply not consistent content actions. Sadly, SEOs tend to screw up a lot of at-first-good-tactics just because of a short-sighted tactical vision we may have. It's possible that some of the Search Quality Team actions will be focused on those facets of spam, because they already have the tools for doing it.

Usefulness to Google does not just mean "content," hence filling every kind of site with zombie infographics just because "they are cool" is not the way to go. Usefulness is paired with personalization, as if Google was saying, "We will offer you the opportunity to find the information that is interesting to you based on your previous searches, your interests, the authority of the sources, and where you are."

For that reason, I consider the Venice update the most underestimated update of 2012. It completely changed the SERPs for almost every kind of query.

Moving forward, I recommend paying close attention to the Gmail Search Field experiment, or why Google is putting effort towards making International and Multilingual SEO easier.
Cassandra's appendices: what updates might we see in 2013?

Between 2011 and 2012, we experienced three major updates: Panda, Penguin, and EMD.

The first update's goal was to clean the SERPs of useless content, defined as content that doesn't provide any real value to the users. The second aimed to clean the SERPs of content that ranked thanks to a "false popularity" obtained through low-quality link building actions, rather than ranking by value according to users. The third update's goal was to clean the SERPs of content that ranked solely because of an exaggerated boost obtained from its exact match domain.

The Penguin and EMD updates were even more necessary after Panda as a logical consequence, if you really think about it. Panda resulted in a large amount of sites disappearing from the SERPs. Other sidtes that survived Panda's ranking factors still won in the SERPs, mostly due to an over-SEO'd link building strategy. After Penguin, we saw those sites replaced by the sites relying only on the strength of their domain names, leading to the EMD update roll out.

Are the SERPs perfect now? Not quite. Domain crowding (and its counter part, domain shrinking), which was minor issue since 2007 was somehow justified by the Brand Update, is becoming a problem, especially in countries where the EMD update is not yet rolled out.


Conclusion

We know how much can still be done through Rich Snippets spam, the gaming of Local Search, and guest posting and infographic directories spam. In 2013, we may see the effects of a massive collection of spam sites (although Google is working on it, thanks to the disavow tool); could this be the "linkapocalypse," or maybe even the real "Balrog" update? These are simply my assumptions, as every year when it comes to possible updates. What is sure is that we will see new releases of Panda and Penguin, and the extension of the EMD update in all regional Googles.

This is Google in 2013 for me and I am not a prophet, just someone who likes to look at the past while trying to interpret the future. I am right? Probably not.

Source:seomoz.org

Top secret: editing your own writing is the worst part of writing. We all hate it, whether we label ourselves writers, SEOs, Doctor Who fans, and/or magical princesses. Stepping back from your own writing to give it polish is hard. Typos, badly constructed paragraphs, awkward phrases, or just general poor writing jump out when someone else writes it. But moi? I would never do that. And neither would you.

However, reality is that today no matter our titles, most of us are required to write, and we need editing help. I hope you'll be able to find some tips to help you in what can sometimes be an arduous process. But maybe you'll find a little love, a little magic, and transform your writing into something beautiful.





P.S. Advanced grammar students: go forth with the diagramming of sentences.

"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." -- Gertrude Stein

Video Transcription

"Howdy SEOmoz fans. It's Whiteboard Friday. I'm Erica, and I'm the Community Attachè here at SEOmoz. Today we're going to talk about copy editing and things you can do to make yourself look more professional.

I realize many of you, we started out as SEOs. A couple of years ago, in the industry, it was like keyword research. Where am I ranking? The most copy you ever wrote was like a meta description, maybe a product description.

But today, the world of SEO, as we know, is drastically changing. We're doing all sorts of copywriting these days. Content marketing is huge. You've got guest blogging. We're all over, and a lot of you are really frustrated because you're like, "Man, I wish my writing was better. I wish I had a writer on my staff to help me out." But sometimes you are that person who is doing a little bit of everything. I've totally been there.

So today we're just going to talk about how to make your copy editing magical and make you look a little more professional. People will be like, "Wow, I knew you were an amazing SEO. I didn't know what a great writer you were too."

So these are some little handy-dandy tricks I try to remember any time I am writing.

So the first thing you want to do is you want to identify your why. Why are you writing this piece? What are you trying to accomplish by going out there and talking about it? Like when I sat down to outline my Whiteboard Friday, I said, "I have this knowledge about copy editing. I want to share it with SEOmoz's audience because I know you'll find it valuable, especially if you're going to write a YouMoz or something.

So if you can focus really on your piece and figure out that why it is so important with you, that's really going to make sure that your piece, that your writing comes together. If you're writing about kittens or unicorns or if you're writing a serious piece about using Google Analytics, importing into Excel, and doing all the crazy, amazing SEO things I know all of you know how to do.

So the second thing that you want to focus on is finding your voice. Every writer writes a little bit differently, just as every person is a little different. As you continue to write and continue to practice, there will be certain words you use. There will be certain ways you phrase things that really identify who you are.

One of the funnest things I like to play with is using styles or voices from other people. So, for instance, I've totally written a blog post as Rand, and it was kind of funny. Can I sound like Rand? Where can I go? Or I used to - and now Ashley our content specialist has taken this over - write the SEOmoz newsletter. One time I wrote as Roger, but as Captain Kirk doing a little captain's log. So you can have a lot of fun with your voice and your style. Don't be afraid to be a little kooky. Give it a little personality. Show who you are. Show what you're interested in.

The third tip, which is going more, once you've written your piece, you're kind of pulling back into the finer editing stage. Read your work aloud. Just do it. Sit there and go slowly. If you have to print it out, do it old school, and just read every word you've written.

When I was a kid, I had this problem where I would always skip over the little words like the, a and. My teachers would just paper full of red. Like what happened? I finally broke that habit when I went to college, and I started printing out my essays and reading them slowly aloud. I'm sure my dorm mate was like super thrilled to hear my essays about ancient Celtic languages, for instance.

But it will so much improve your writing, because you'll notice things. You'll read it and you'll like, "Wow, this doesn't make any sense. What was I even thinking?"

It helps with some of those more embarrassing typos or confusion if your sentences are getting really long and complicated, especially as you're diving into more advanced topics.

So my fourth tip is put your writing aside. I'm sure many of you have suffered from writer's block or just frustrations when you get to the editing part. You just don't want to let it go. Writers often call this killing your babies, which is kind of vulgar maybe. But we get really attached to what we've written, and we can't always see how to edit it and how to bring it back in and really refine our piece.

Maybe you start a draft and you set it aside and maybe you come back to it tomorrow. Maybe you come back to it six months to a year from now. You never know when it's . . . if it's something you love and it's something you're passionate about, maybe you can't push it. But sometimes maybe it's just that 24 hours, because I realize a lot of you are also out there writing things that are super time sensitive that you have to get out right away, which brings me to the next point.

Ask a friend to edit. If you're doing something really time sensitive, this is extremely helpful. If your friend has any editing experience, it's even better. You never know what crazy typos you're going to send out into the world or what crazy communication flubs, or maybe your piece just needed like five paragraphs cut out of it. Having someone you trust and someone who you can respect their opinion goes even further.

You definitely don't want to do things like I've done where I was sending out an email about fly fishing clothing and in the subject line I put,
"Flying fishing clothing sale today" or something like that. It just really helps you from making that mistake and then going, "Oh, what did I do? Oh no."

Friends can also be great at telling you what's good about your writing and encouraging, bringing those themes out. I just wrote an essay about Dr. Who. My editor came back to me, and she was like, "You know, you've been doing too much recapping. Cut this, cut this, cut this." I was kind of sitting there like, oh my gosh, wilting flower. I don't want to kill my babies. But what my editor was great about was she said, "You know, I really love what you're doing here and here and here. Let's bring that out." So at the end of the day, I had to do a super bunch of editing, but it helped me to know what the best things were out of that piece too. So criticism is both a negative and a positive.

Getting a little more into the technical, a lot of you out there are like, "How can I be better with my grammar?" I get a lot of questions from people at SEOmoz about grammar things, like, "Should I put a comma here? What the hay. Where do I go? How can I improve my grammar stuff?"

The first thing, which I suggest, is looking at what's called active versus passive voice. Active means exactly what you all know the word means. Active means that you're out and about. Your language is springy versus passive it's just kind of in the corner. It's like the wallflower at the party. You don't really care.

So, for instance, if you had the sentence, "The dog was jumping on the bed." You're dog is bad. Your dog is jumping on your bed. But it's just kind of boring. If you're like, "The dog jumps on the bed," it's much more active. It tells you what the dog is doing. It brings that sentence to life. Often it's just a simple switch of moving what you're talking about at the end to the beginning.

You can look up more about active versus passive voice online. It's known to be verbs are passive.

The next thing you want to do is look at your sentence lengths. You want to vary them. A lot of people get really long winded when they're writing because they're trying to cram everything in. You get these super long sentences that are all the way to the ground. If you just step back and look and be like, "Oh, I can put periods here. I can shorten it." You can have a short sentence and a long sentence. It's a littlie advanced, but it will make your writing much more snappy and sound like people actually converse.

For those of you who are really, really advanced in your grammar, here's my last tip. Learn to diagram sentences. I'm sure my 7th and 8th grade English teachers are very happy that I'm recommending this to you. But if you really want to know grammar and if you really struggle with it, learn how to diagram sentences so you can identify the subject of your sentence, the verb of your sentence the object, and any sort of clauses or anything. Then you can figure out, if people come to you and say like, "You always have run-on sentences, you always have incomplete sentences," these are the type of things that if you can identify the parts of the sentence, you can say,
"Oh, I know exactly why this sentence isn't working. Or I know why it's not communicating clearly to my audience." But that's just your advanced homework.

So I hope that all of you will learn these magical tips and transform your writing. You can now go from just an ordinary SEO to something more magical."

Source:seomoz.org

Happy Holidays!! The December Mozscape index is now live! The latest index has just been released and you will see fresh Mozscape data in Open Site Explorer, the Mozbar, PRO campaigns, and the Mozscape API.

The Big Data team was hoping to provide a special holiday treat launching two indices in one month again, but, unfortunately processing was bitten by a full machine failure. We've had really good luck running Mozscape processing on the larger, high compute AWS machines, but, sadly, just a few days before the index was complete, an entire computing machine failed which forced us to have to re-run a few steps. Even with the failure, the December index is a few days earlier than our scheduled release date on December 27th - a pre-holiday treat for everyone!

In even bigger Big Data news - our private cloud is fully up and running in Virginia and we are about 25% done with our first production ready index! If all goes well, we'll be releasing the first Mozscape index created in our own private cloud in mid-January. What a way to bring in the new year!

Here are the metrics for this latest index:
78,671,787,078 (78 billion) URLs
687,827,137 (687 million) Subdomains
136,539,340 (136 million) Root Domains
917,094,026,686 (917 billion) Links
Followed vs. Nofollowed
2.32% of all links found were nofollowed
56.69% of nofollowed links are internal
43.31% are external
Rel Canonical - 14.07% of all pages now employ a rel=canonical tag
The average page has 72 links on it
61.38 internal links on average
10.45 external links on average

And the following correlations with Google's US search results:
Page Authority - 0.36
Domain Authority - 0.19
MozRank - 0.24
Linking Root Domains - 0.30
Total Links - 0.25
External Links - 0.29



The histogram for the freshness of the index's crawl data shows a pretty high volume of fresh crawl data coming from middle of November. This index will have data ranging as old as the end of October, but a large volume of the data was crawled from the middle to end of November.

We'll be keeping an eye on things over the holiday, so send us your feedback - we always love to hear your thoughts! And remember, if you're ever curious about when Mozscape is updating, you can check the calendar here. We also maintain a list of previous index updates with metrics here.

Source:seomoz.org