Announcing warnJS – the internet emergency broadcast system
I don’t know if you have ever huddled in an internal room with your children during a tornado warning, but it is one of the most unsettling things I have experienced in my life. While unsettling, it is equally relieving to know that you are in the best place you can be before it hits. There are many ways we become aware of impending weather emergencies – the emergency broadcast system on TV and radio, weather apps or text message services on our phones – but one media provider seems left out altogether… the Internet. It seemed silly to me that the most versatile medium mankind has ever known wouldn’t have a solution that made the dissemination of this kind of information quick, easy, and unobtrusive. So I went to work. I used my 8...
Proposing a Debate Series
I recently responded to a request for pitches from SMX with the idea of doing formal debates on contentious topics in the search marketing industry. I thought it would be a good idea to open the topics up for recommendation. Even if SMX doesn’t do it, we could certainly do something on hangouts or at other conferences. So here are some of the debate topics I think would be worth considering… To Out or Not to Out Following Google’s Guidelines is the Best Course of Action Links are Losing Value Google is a Force for Good Online Paid Search vs. SEO Social Media is the Future of SEO Usage Metrics are the Future of Ranking Factors Alright, what debates would you like to see? What contentious issues would you like to hear from differing opinions...
An Open Letter to BrightEdge
Below is my correspondence with the BrightEdge representative who has been soliciting our business. I have removed names as the representative has been truly professional. Hi ###, First, I apologize that you are the recipient of this email. As my point of contact at BrightEdge, you have done an excellent job in selling what is no doubt an excellent product. I have used BrightEdge through clients in past and can say with certainty that it is a valuable platform and is likely worth its price. However, it has come to my attention today that BrightEdge has filed suit with SearchMetrics regarding a series of patents acquired in the last 2 years. While I find software patents in general to be concerning, or at least requiring of greater scrutiny, even a cursory glance...
Virante’s Software List Grows Again
I am proud to announce today the launch of AuthorRank Pro, the first and only tool that allows you to track your AuthorRank, AuthorTrust and other metrics over time. The tool also helps you find great authors for your own site and great opportunities for writing on other sites. But what I am most proud of is the growing corpus of great software owned and operated by Virante. Remove’em: We’ve removed over 1,000,000 bad backlinks from the web as the most comprehensive tool for penalty recovery online. nTopic: Statistically proven to increase organic traffic when recommended language is applied across your site. Penguin Analysis: The Machine Learned Penguin Risk Detector. Know just how vulnerable you are to the next Penguin update! AuthorRank Pro: The...
The Most Devious Link Campaign of SEO History
Disclaimer: This article represents my own opinion and not that of my employer, clients, or business partners. 1,792,729 I want you to try and remember that number. One million, seven hundred ninety two thousand, seven hundred and twenty nine. It is a big number, and it represents the most successful, devious link building campaign of all time. What makes it successful is quite clear. The number you are looking at right there is none other than the number of unique websites according to NerdyData that have attempted to install authorship markup with links to Google+. Now, I am careful to say attempted because many of them have installed it incorrectly, but the backlink still exists. No doubt the 4,587,474 historical root linking domains “earned” by...
Should we move to an all HTTPS web? No.
Joost de Valk has started a great discussion about https everywhere over at his blog and it is well worth the read, however I believe he has come to the wrong conclusions. The discussion was spurred on by Bing’s apparent move to HTTPS which would influence the passing of referrer and, subsequently, keyword data to webmasters from search queries. It is worth noting that as of the writing of this, Bing’s HTTPS version is not working and Bing has made no announcement of a move. Much of this discussion in the SEO community revolves around Section 15.1.3 of RFC2616 which indicates that… Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer header field in a (non-secure) HTTP request if the referring page was transferred with a secure protocol. Subsequently, as a user...
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