This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

In the past, I have tried several different ways to skip the first link that Google takes into account for a given URL (nofollowed links, links with 301 redirections, etc). However, all these attempts had little success (301 works but it's very suspect). Recently, I ran a test to see how Google handled the anchor links (links to different sections within the same page, eg: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://example.com/index.php#anything)">example.com/index</a> and was surprised by the results I found. In the setup I tested, Google completely ignored the first standard link and instead credited the second anchor link.

The Test

For my test, I included several links on a page (Page A),

• the first link is a simple link. (<a href="http://example.com/category/product.php">text</a>)
• the second and third link are anchor links. (<a href="http://example.com/category/product.php#anchor-example">other text</a>)

Or in graphic form: 

Results for Test 1

If you search for the first linked text we can see that we don't get the results of the destination page (Page B) . This link is not an 'anchor link', this link is a link to a 'simple URL' (that´s how I named it) but it is ignored.

SERP for first link: simple link (no # mark)

Instead, Google takes the next two anchor links (this and this) and shows the page they point to in the results. Although the apparent ignoring of the first link is odd, the way the link is displayed is even weirder. As you can see the URL that shows in the SERPs (See red box in image above) does not take to the anchor link, but to the simple link.

SERP for second link: anchor link (#)

SERP for third link: anchor link (#) 

Results for Test 2

SERP for first link: simple link

SERP for second link: anchor link (#)

I ran two more tests to see if the test could be reproduced. Both of the other tests had the same results!

Conclusion

It is interesting to see the impact that link order has on rankings. Keep this in mind going forward and I hope you find this as interesting as I did.

Note from Jen: Errioxa had an updated version in the queue that I missed that explains this all a bit better. I have updated this post with the new version. 3/16/10

Do you like this post? Yes No

Related posts:

1. Xenu’s Link Sleuth - More Than Just A Broken Links Finder Posted by Tom_CThere are literally a bazillion SEO tools on...
2. Does Digg links pass link juice ? May be not. Digg,in its efforts to curb spam and increase quality in...
3. Strategies to Spend Money & Earn ROI from Link Campaigns (without "buying links") Posted by randfishLast week at Pubcon Las Vegas, I presented...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

With the new developments that happened on Dailybloggr recently, there’s one question that lingers – what would happen to the Google PageRank ? The old domain name dailyseoblog.com had a PageRank of 4 (was once 5) with around 200 mapped backlinks.

Now that the design changes are in place and the site structure has changed, would it affect the Google pagerank ? Technically, since we have a 301 redirect in place, the PageRank is supposed to be preserved, but there are no guarantees, there could be losses, if not gains. I’m hoping that the PageRank sill remains the same, and hopefully with more links coming in this time around, might even get a boost. But we got to wait and see.

In your assumption, what do you think will be the Google Page Rank for Dailybloggr.com this update ? Lets make this fun.

Related posts:

1. SEO Tips Day 8 – Will linking to other sites, reduce your Page Rank ? Google PageRank is calculated by the number of internal links...
2. Change is good – And DSB has evolved to DailyBloggr First off, happy Valentine’s day to all. If you’re reading...
3. Top 50 high Page Rank Backlink packet PAGE RANK: 8 www.webmd.com PAGE RANK: 7 http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/ http://www.evernote.com/ http://blip.tv/...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

May It Please the Mozzers,

I haven't written on the blog in months, but I simply couldn't let today pass by without acknowledging the courage and perserverance shown by Rhea Drysdale in her pursuit of justice. She's my hero and I want to be just like her--A woman of action and humble fortitude.

Rhea announced victory against Jason Gambert in a trademark dispute lasting more than two years. She fought to prevent "SEO" from becoming trademarked for one mysterious man's private use. She fought on behalf of all of us who work in the SEO industry. Like many of you, I feel sad and ashamed I couldn't do more to support Rhea--but we've had other legal trouble to sort out at SEOmoz that consumes our limited legal resources. :( 

Lawsuits are expensive, stressful, and very time consuming. There is nothing glamorous or certain about them. Even when you're in the right, you have to keep worrying about whether justice will prevail, and whether you'll be broke or demoralized before it finally does.

I'm feeling really jazzed and happy today because Rhea has bolstered my belief in people, the SEO industry, and the justice system. As Joanna Lord said earlier, "Its a good industry-day folks, good industry day :)"  It just feels warm-and-fuzzy to work in a community of people like Rhea who sacrifice a lot without hope of any financial gain. And of people like Aaron Wall, Michael VanDeMar, Barry Schwartz and many others who've publically supported and recognized Rhea for her efforts both today and in the past.

I just wanted everyone out there in blogland to know that we have a big crush on Rhea and a big crush on the SEO industry. It's so great to see everyone coming together to support Rhea and recognize what she's done for all of us.

You can show your support by helping Rhea recoup some of her legal fees. She's updating her blog with the best way to donate to her (without inadvertently giving her some tax grief!) on the OutSpokenMedia blog.

Group Hug!

Sarah Bird

Chief Operations officer and Erstwhile Legal Blogger

SEOmoz, Inc.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Related posts:

1. Rethinking Duplicate Content Posted by LindsayThis post is about three pretty interesting things...
2. It’s Only A Clique If You’re Not In It Posted by Dr. PeteThis post started as a reaction to...
3. 2009 in Pictures & SEOmoz’s Seattle Meetup on Wednesday 1/6 Posted by randfishWhat a year! From traveling to software development,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I know, I promised a Linkscape update by last week.  And I missed it.  But there's an update today!  Do you forgive me?  No?  Not enough?  Well how about doubling the volume of data available in our free API?  You might have gotten a totally awesome email last week announcing that the free SEOmoz API is now serving up to 1,000 links.  This email was so awesome I just had to share it (nice work Scott!)

• Up to 1,000 links to a page, subdomain or root domain (sorted by Page Authority of the linking page)
• Anchor text for those 1,000
• Aggregate anchor text counts across all links in our index
• HTTP status code
• nofollow indicators
• Plenty of metrics for data junkies

We've got a community submissions page on our wiki, and we love to share neat apps.  So if you build something on our API, send it our way and we'll make sure the community hears about it.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Related posts:

1. Launching the SEOmoz Free API and Enough Power to Build Open Site Explorer Posted by Nick GernerThe launch of Open Site Explorer last...
2. 10 Chrome Extensions to double your productivity If you’re a webmaster / blogger, its very likely that...
3. 10 Valuable, Actionable, Take-Aways From the SEOmoz Pro Training Seminar Posted by WhitesparkThis post was originally in YOUmoz, and was...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Looks like Digg is up for a major overhaul, one that will completely translate its image and reputation, hopefully to better heights. From what I’ve heard and seen, Digg is taking some real bold steps. Completely changing the game they played, reversing the table.

Image courtesy – RWW

As we all know, Digg was both famous and notorious. Famous for its “Digg Effect” and notorious for its “Non-democratic” ways of giving all the powers to top-diggers, who are long time (some not so long time) diggers who has the power to make or break a story. They are influential, and has mostly an army of fellow diggers who vote for their stories, making them to the front page. Now we all know that this isn’t easy as it sounds. There are games being played, hate groups, blind fans, a bit of racism, and all that stuff. Now, you can disagree with me in vain but we all know that if a normal guy (lets say inactive guy or fairly active guy) submits a story, its no way making it to the front page. You need to be an “insider”.

You have to have an army of diggers whom you should suck up to requesting for diggs.

You should monitor the story every hour and see how the diggs come “naturally”.

You can’t just pass the story link via email, but share the upcoming page link, and ask them to find your story from the page.

Trade diggs, reddits, stumbleupons etc.

Stay up late night if you’re on the “other side” of the world to get maximum exposure for your story.

And all that s**t.

So digg is democratic yeah, but all these games are played under the hood. I’m not saying that Digg allows all these on their own, they probably aren’t aware of it and as and when they come across a website/digger that tries to game the system, they ban it as well. But that wasn’t enough.

Now that the new digg algos and designs are coming up, I’m hoping there’ll be some fresh and new change coming in for the good. We’ve heard that it will take away the powers from top-diggers and give it to the people, but how effective its going to be ? I don’t know. Its very likely that the clever ones will figure a way out to manipulate it further, but hopefully, they won’t do it quick, and as they do it, digg gets clever as well.

Have you been using Digg ? How easy /hard was it for you ?

Related posts:

1. Social Media is about making money too ! The Digg Example The big question with social media networks always has been...
2. Does Digg links pass link juice ? May be not. Digg,in its efforts to curb spam and increase quality in...
3. Top 10 ways to get banned from Digg #1 – Use a script: Digg is a company that...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Rob and Duncan are currently in Seattle, with this week full of interviews of SEO consultants for our US office. Since the announcement in February, we have been working flat out with a bunch of new clients and dealing endlessly with the US immigration service. With people on the ground, I guess we're now officially participating in the American dream, so to celebrate I'm going to spell Visualization with a z throughout this post. I can't guarantee full American spelling for everything I'm afraid - muscle memory is a powerful thing.

Anyone who has heard me speak will know about my love of data. Heck, I've even given talks on Excel ninjas. However, this post isn't so much about the data (and that's the last mention of Excel, I promise). This post is about the visualization.

I expect that everyone in SEO has spent at least some time recently thinking about data visualization techniques. They are great ways for content and data sites to get links and branding benefit and are also loads of fun. Tom's resource for information visualization and infographics is a great place to start if you don't really know what I'm talking about.

Last week, I was approached by the FT to pull together some data for them about the use of the web (and social media in particular) across the UK's political parties as we approach the election. As I started thinking about how I wanted to shape this, I realised that I wanted to produce a visualization for the web as well and that the process I was using might be interesting to you guys. Hence, my top tips for data visualizations with bits and pieces of real world examples:

7 Data Visualization Secrets

1. Gather data (intelligently)

Over the weekend, I had a bit of a think about what kind of data I wanted to be able to visualize. Thinking about Twitter, for example, I wanted to know things like the most influential (and least influential) Twitterers in each party, who was doing things really well and who was making a pig's ear of it, who could I compare unfavourably to some comedy joke accounts and how did the best of them compare to the Prime Minister's wife's pretty impressive performance.

In order to answer any of these questions, I needed data, and lots of it. Obviously, had I been working on this on a weekday, I'd have looked around for the newest recruit in the Distilled office and asked for the data on my desk by the end of the day. Without that option at the weekend, I fired up Mozenda to grab Twittering MPS, their grader ranks, retweetranks, and tweetranks along with follower counts, number of tweets and profile information. It took me about half an hour to gather all this information!

Tip #1: use tools like Mozenda to mash up your own data with multiple sources of public data to get unique insights.

If you haven't played with Mozenda yet, I highly recommend it - with a simple user interface for creating robust crawlers, it's a superb tool for any SEO.

2. Delegate additional research

There are some things that even the best scraping engine in the world can't gather for you. For example, I wanted to cross-reference the data I'd gathered against the cabinet and shadow cabinet. Only a human can do this reliably. For this, I recommend using a virtual assistant service for cheap data gathering (I use timesvr - in the US, you could use mechanical turk for this kind of thing).

I discovered an awesome service the other day - Smartsheet integrates with Google Apps and has an integration with Mechanical Turk that enables you to easily populate tabular spreadsheet data using cheap human resource. Unbelievably useful and powerful.

3. Use great design

I'm not a designer. My design sense is about as well-tuned as my singing. I think this makes me appreciate the importance and value of design even more. Since I'm not the expert here, I'm just going to tell you what works for me when getting other people to make things look pretty:

• Wireframes are your friend: although I hate paper for almost everything, I used to always sketch ideas on paper. Recently I have been a late convert to the power of drawing wireframes on the computer. I am, however, definitely sold. Choose your weapon of choice - I'm currently liking MockingBird but have also seen cool stuff from (Balsamiq, gliffy, Pencil (a Firefox plugin - thanks Simon Lilly) and Mockflow)..
• Pay attention to the users of your data: carefully consider the width, colour scheme and any associated links in the embed code to make the most of embedding opportunities
• Get professionals involved early: don't lock your limited-design-skills-self in a darkened room only to emerge with something that even a pro couldn't make look pretty. When you're at the wireframe / outline stage, show what you have to a designer and get feedback before kicking off the final data collection and design phases
• Brief as well as possible:  provide a few examples of the style you are looking for and visual elements you particularly like. Include comments about anything you don't like in the examples you provide. Try not to be that guy who says I just don't like it - can't quite put my finger on why...

The example wireframe that follows is for entertainment only. Any relationship to real infographics real or imagined is coincidental:

If you are including graph-based data, choose your charts carefully (tip: pie charts are often bad). I found this neat flow-chart for choosing what style of graph to use the other day - from Advanced Presentations by Design by Andrew Abela:

4. Consider interactivity for widgets

Any time you are working with data online, you have opportunities to provide your users with interactivity. Sometimes, static infographics are plenty enough to get links and sometimes you will get significantly more if you are providing a widget that allows people to offer their visitors interesting functionality.

You don't always have to build this yourself. We recently started working with Tableau Software whose business intelligence software has a kick-ass free, public version that is really cool for just dropping in data and creating widgets for embedding. Here's a subset of the UK politicians on Twitter data:

5. Quirky is at least as important as correct

You all read the internet. You know the power of random facts, cute animals, in-jokes and comedy references. It's generally not enough to present just the raw facts - interesting comparisons and strong imagery improve the shareability of any piece. We are all wired to remember (and therefore to repeat) comparisons better than plain numbers.

I'm still working on which elements of my infographic might make for quirky comparisons. For example, did you know that an Oscar is the same height as an adult pygmy marmoset monkey? From a client's recent Oscars infographic:

Source: LocateTV

6. Know who your targets are

Finishing on a couple of strong SEO points, if your goals are improved rankings, you are doing this primarily for links (and if you are doing it for branding purposes, the sharing is critical). So you need to know who your targets are and find a way to reach them. If your target market happens to overlap with Reddit, StumbleUpon etc. then they are obviously going to be great, but don't forget to drop people in your niche a line as well.

Bonus tip: don't forget the infographic fans.

7. Provide the embed code (with a link)

You want to provide the embed code for two reasons:

1. to make it easy for non-tech-savvy bloggers to share your content
2. to make sure (as far as possible) that you get a link out of it

If you can style and include the link in a relevant way (especially if it links to more data or more information) you increase the chance that the people embedding your content will embed the link along with it. If you want to go even further, you could provide your graphic under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Please keep the comments for discussions of techniques and ideas, not for politics. Any political comments included above are for amusement only and may or may not reflect the political views of the author, or anyone else.

Technorati Tags

Do you like this post? Yes No

Related posts:

1. Google Quietly Pushing More Links + Data in Snippets Posted by randfishThe last 3 months have heralded a bevy...
2. The Freshest Linkscape Data Ever Posted by Nick GernerSince the launch of Open Site Explorer...
3. One Giant Leap for Link Data: Announcing Open Site Explorer + Page/Domain Authority Metrics Posted by randfishFor the past 15 months, we've been working...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

You know the funny thing about jerks ? Its that, not a single guy you ask to will admit that he’s anything close to being a jerk, but he can show you ten guys around him, who’s one. I’m no different.

But the reality is that both you and me see a lot of them around, in real life mostly and on Twitter, even more frequently. The fact is that, while you and me agree that “that guy” is a jerk, he doesn’t understand. And this post might come to him as a surprise, if it does, I’m glad that it served the purpose.

So here are ten of the things (which are many) that will make you look like a jerk on Twitter. Obviously, stay away from them, or do anything similar.

1. Ask for ReTweets via DM to people whom you haven’t RTd at all.

Looks like people will do anything to get a ReTweet. After all, ReTweets are an over hyped thing on Twitter these days. Asking for ReTweets are fine, but some people ask for Re-Tweets via DM to people, while they themselves have not re-tweeted anything from the guy. While influential tweeters are the common prey for this, the “attacker” has anyone who follows him back as a potential target. In my opinion, this is completely lame. At least re-tweet the guy before asking him to re-tweet you.

2. Tweet the same thing to multiple users hoping for attention.

Things like “Hi, I am Mr.ABC trying to XYZ” to everyone you find interesting. If you check these people’s profile, you’ll see that the same message is tweeted as “mentions” to numerous people. Its all fine but the problem is, assuming that someone really got interested in your tweet and checked your profile, he’s consider himself lucky and back up asap. You end up being a spammer.

3. Sucking up to celebrities and influential guys.

The only reason why I’m not a big fan of celebrities on Twitter (except a few like @alyssa_milano) is for the fact that most of them are “preaching accounts”. I mean they’re here on Twitter as a part of the agenda, or because their PR agency insisted. They never reply, nor do they tweet anything meaningful other than their own “branding”. You may differ in opinion but I’m seriously not interested in that stuff on Twitter. And there are those guys who’ll do anything to grab their attention. You can se such guys whose profile will have nothing else than questions to Kim Kardashian and Ashton Kutcher. In fact, they’re here on Twitter for these celebrities, but I sincerely hope that they all succeed in their tries.

4. Placing TechCrunch and Mashable like sites on auto feeds.

Some guys out there are really smart, they automate stuff, so much that they’d tweet anything from a news website. We like breaking news but imagine, a bunch of guys tweeting the same tweet at one particular time (as soon as the story is published on a site). Worse, sometimes there would be a couple of stories, like a daily digest feed add some few text from the original story. Doesn’t make any sense, does it ? What I do is unfollow auto-tweeters and instead follow the website owner. He too would be tweeting breaking stories from his own website, but he does it selectively, and it makes sense.

5. Adding so many hashtags that its more than the original tweet.

I guess they do it to get more re-tweets. Like we know that there are bots and syndicators out there that picks up particular hashtags like #google, #wtf etc. And when you add these hashtags, they increase the possibility of getting re-tweeted. But come on, that doesn’t mean that you have to do anything like adding five hashtags to a tweet. #wtf #lol #rofl #lmao – that’s too much dude !
Summary
When I wrote this post, I did not have any particular person in mind but, honestly thought how one could screw up things on Twitter and luckily could find these examples popping up on my twitter stream. It was just easy job to pick them up. If any of them made sense, I’m just happy enough.

But what are your thoughts ?

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips to stop being a jerk on Twitter You know the funny thing about jerks ? Its that,...
2. New to Twitter ? 7 Tips to make Twittering a rewarding experience It doesn’t surprise me when someone complains about Twitter. Its...
3. 5 Tips to make Twittering more meaningful by increasing the signal to noise ratio You can only find two type of people on Twitter....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

You know the funny thing about jerks ? Its that, not a single guy you ask to will admit that he’s anything close to being a jerk, but he can show you ten guys around him, who’s one. I’m no different.

But the reality is that both you and me see a lot of them around, in real life mostly and on Twitter, even more frequently. The fact is that, while you and me agree that “that guy” is a jerk, he doesn’t understand. And this post might come to him as a surprise, if it does, I’m glad that it served the purpose.

So here are five of the things that will make you look like a jerk on Twitter. Obviously, stay away from them, or do anything similar.

1. Ask for ReTweets via DM to people whom you haven’t RTd at all.

Looks like people will do anything to get a ReTweet. After all, ReTweets are an over hyped thing on Twitter these days. Asking for ReTweets are fine, but some people ask for Re-Tweets via DM to people, while they themselves have not re-tweeted anything from the guy. While influential tweeters are the common prey for this, the “attacker” has anyone who follows him back as a potential target. In my opinion, this is completely lame. At least re-tweet the guy before asking him to re-tweet you.

2. Tweet the same thing to multiple users hoping for attention.

Things like “Hi, I am Mr.ABC trying to XYZ” to everyone you find interesting. If you check these people’s profile, you’ll see that the same message is tweeted as “mentions” to numerous people. Its all fine but the problem is, assuming that someone really got interested in your tweet and checked your profile, he’s consider himself lucky and back up asap. You end up being a spammer.

3. Sucking up to celebrities and influential guys.

The only reason why I’m not a big fan of celebrities on Twitter (except a few like @alyssa_milano) is for the fact that most of them are “preaching accounts”. I mean they’re here on Twitter as a part of the agenda, or because their PR agency insisted. They never reply, nor do they tweet anything meaningful other than their own “branding”. You may differ in opinion but I’m seriously not interested in that stuff on Twitter. And there are those guys who’ll do anything to grab their attention. You can se such guys whose profile will have nothing else than questions to Kim Kardashian and Ashton Kutcher. In fact, they’re here on Twitter for these celebrities, but I sincerely hope that they all succeed in their tries.

4. Placing TechCrunch and Mashable like sites on auto feeds.

Some guys out there are really smart, they automate stuff, so much that they’d tweet anything from a news website. We like breaking news but imagine, a bunch of guys tweeting the same tweet at one particular time (as soon as the story is published on a site). Worse, sometimes there would be a couple of stories, like a daily digest feed add some few text from the original story. Doesn’t make any sense, does it ? What I do is unfollow auto-tweeters and instead follow the website owner. He too would be tweeting breaking stories from his own website, but he does it selectively, and it makes sense.

5. Adding so many hashtags that its more than the original tweet.

I guess they do it to get more re-tweets. Like we know that there are bots and syndicators out there that picks up particular hashtags like #google, #wtf etc. And when you add these hashtags, they increase the possibility of getting re-tweeted. But come on, that doesn’t mean that you have to do anything like adding five hashtags to a tweet. #wtf #lol #rofl #lmao – that’s too much dude !
Summary
When I wrote this post, I did not have any particular person in mind but, honestly thought how one could screw up things on Twitter and luckily could find these examples popping up on my twitter stream. It was just easy job to pick them up. If any of them made sense, I’m just happy enough.

But what are your thoughts ?

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips to stop being a jerk on Twitter You know the funny thing about jerks ? Its that,...
2. New to Twitter ? 7 Tips to make Twittering a rewarding experience It doesn’t surprise me when someone complains about Twitter. Its...
3. 5 Tips to make Twittering more meaningful by increasing the signal to noise ratio You can only find two type of people on Twitter....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Lately, there have been an increased number of usage of hashtags on Tweets. I do not have any number/statistics to support this, but we’ve all seen it, haven’t we ? Tweets with lot of hashtags, sometimes even inappropriate and irrelevant placed just to add more re-tweet value by bots. As more and more bots/apps use content syndication from hashtags, the more hashtags you use, the more the probablity for your tweet to get retweeted/syndicated.

But does this reduce the overall quality of the tweet ? Does it look messy ?

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips to stop being a jerk on Twitter You know the funny thing about jerks ? Its that,...
2. 5 Tips to stop being a jerk on Twitter You know the funny thing about jerks ? Its that,...
3. Can you predict DailyBloggr’s Google Page Rank this time ? With the new developments that happened on Dailybloggr recently, there’s...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Social Media and sports is a great combo, or so have history proven. The latest sensation in Indian sports – IPL is embracing social media this time and “it is big”.

Watch IPL matches on YouTube live as it happens !

If you’re one of those who bought tickets to an IPL match then you might want to regret on it, because the entire IPL matches, highlights and live streaming is coming to your bedroom through YouTube this time. How cool is that ?

YouTube has opened a dedicated channel for IPL and will stream live cricket as it happens. There will be a delay of some minutes but that’s okay for fans worldwide. Not only YouTube but even Twitter and Orkut is pulled in this time and they’re gonna make sure you miss nothing this time.

This is a nice example of how a sporting event can make the best use of social media, and leverage on billions of dollars worth publicity, at 1/100 of traditional media coverage costs.

Well, we’re watching.

Related posts:

1. The Social Media Cheatsheet (Infographic) Found this nice piece of infographic that explains almost in...
2. The LG Liveborderless Social Media Campaign How about someone give you $100,000 to travel around the...
3. Is Social Media ROI Unmeasurable? Posted by Dr. PeteI'm reporting live from Pubcon Las Vegas...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.