SEO Werkt!

When you begin to get into multilingual and multiregional SEO, you know that you have taken a step forward as an SEO expert. Why? Well, because you are probably dealing with a large, complex site that demands the expertise of someone who knows what they are talking about. If you are dealing in…



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The stories of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg have become modern-day parables of living the American dream. The story of a visionary who made, lost, and re-won a fortune; the geek with self-belief; and the shrewd wheeler-dealers are familiar rags-to-riches tales but with a modern twist — their medium was digital. They were undoubtedly the first icons of the internet age, but their stories do not explain why the web looks and works like it does.

The real lessons to be learned from the internet’s 16-year history are in a number of untold stories: those whose key decisions led to Google becoming the most successful search engine; those who applied virtual reality to pioneer digital gaming; those who mastered the art of placing ads online; those who made TED reach millions online; those who made iTunes the top music retailer and decided on 99 cent tracks. The people behind these groundbreaking innovations introduced new practices that caught on and reset horizons for the way digital works as a communications and marketing tool. In the West, the people behind these breakthroughs remain the unsung pioneers of digital. In the East, the world’s largest search and social platform, Sohu in China, remains hardly known outside the Chinese speaking world. With more than 505 million internet users in China — larger than the population of U.S. — the Sohu network contains many of the world’s most populated sites.

Who are the unsung pioneers of digital, what lead them to achieve what they did, and what key lessons would they share from their endeavors?

Some of the greatest digital successes were achieved through sheer force of personality.

Embrace your opposition

The story behind the success of Google had much to do with understanding different user perspectives and engaging webmaster communities, as it was the creation of a new set of Google Webmaster Tools. Vanessa Fox, who’s credited with leading the Google Webmaster Center development, worked tirelessly to discover how colleagues from different departments did their jobs and what their pain points were. Those gaps informed the exchange of valuable information between webmaster and Google and helped her develop a range of perspectives to test the robustness of other new tools. However, it was how Fox shifted the outlook at Google, to open dialogue and engagement with the search engine optimization community that often outsmarted Google’s previous engines, that paved the way for the greater relevancy of Google’s organic search results. It was a personable approach that made the difference.

Turn knock-backs to your advantage

The story behind TED’s success as the best digital collection of keynote talks is a tale of persistence in adversity and belief in the potential of digital channels. The talks were originally only open to industry insiders, and June Cohen of TED had proposed TED talks to the BBC, which rejected the idea as “too highbrow” for broadcast. Instead, she turned to shaping video content for online viewing, as an online format video was agile enough to be compatible with new and emerging opportunities: “Different people watch video in different ways and at different times [so] we released TED Talks on multiple platforms. As a podcast on iTunes, streaming video on TED.com, embeddable player for blogs, and on YouTube. We’ve now extended to mobile apps…[and] even airplane in-flight video systems.”

Previous experiences help

iTunes Store had to overcome the problem of youngsters expecting music for free online. It took a music industry insider like Denzyl Fiegelson, who had previously organized tours for musician Paul Simon and managed numerous artists, to work with the Apple team in negotiating record labels, royalty, and distribution systems. Having a breadth of experience to draw on enabled Feigelson to capture the moment at a crucial time for the music industry’s migration to becoming online business.

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Have you seen a recent drop in your website’s traffic levels? Perhaps you’ve received a notification of unnatural SEO practices in your Google Webmaster Tools account? Unfortunately, SEO penalties can happen to any website, at any time. While it is possible to repair the damage incurred by these negative effects, it’s ultimately much more effective [...]

I’ve broken this out into lots of steps. You could do it all in one or two steps with a shell script or other geekery. I wrote this to keep each step simple, and get you into Excel as quickly as possible, instead.

I’ve railed about fixing broken links for years now. I’ve presented webinars about it, talked about all manner of fancy tools and generally made myself a pest.

What I’ve never done, though, is shown folks how they can quickly find those busted external links using basic tools. So, here goes:

Why bother?

With a log file, you can find broken external links that Google hasn’t. Google Webmaster Tools only shows you broken links found by Google. GWT ignores:

1. Old broken links that Google assumes are no longer relevant;
2. New incoming links that are broken, from sites like bit.ly;
3. Broken social media links, if they’re not driving many clicks.

Don’t you want all those links from Twitter? How about all the old .edu links you used to have, but lost when you took down the target pages?

Hell yes. Here’s how you can find them using your log files:

Get your tools together

If you’re using OS X or Linux, you have everything you need except, possibly, a spreadsheet program. Google Docs will work, or OpenOffice for big files, or Excel for the coolest stuff (like pivot tables).

If you’re on Windows, you’ll want to install CYGWIN—that gives you all of the command-line tools I talk about in this post.

1: Get access to the log files

If you run your own site, you can download the log files yourself. Otherwise, though, you’re going to have to ask someone else to get ‘em for you, and that’s rarely popular. Here’s how you can make the process less painful:

1. Explain why you need them: To improve sales. Log files will give you the best potential linking ‘wins’, and reveal the biggest site indexation problems.
2. Explain the value: The log files will let you more accurately spot ‘big two’ issues (links and indexation) than any other method. Both have huge implications for site traffic. Which has huge implications for sales.
3. Explain exactly what you need: Don’t just ask for ‘the log files’. Let them know you just need a 5-10 day slice of the files or, if the site’s really busy, just a day or two.
4. Provide them an easy secure location to upload the zipped files. An FTP or Dropbox folder should work fine, and it saves them a step.
5. Assure them we’ll delete the logs the moment we’re done.

The key here: Make this an easy process. The first concern of whoever you ask for the files will be: “Is this a lot of work for me?” and “Is this a security issue?” Answer those concerns before they’re raised.

1b: If you can’t get the files

I’ve spent weeks, literally, trying to get log file access from a client. Usually, that’s because no one knows what I’m talking about. If you run into this, try these steps, in this order:

If the site’s located with a hosting company:

1. Read the company’s tech support docs. You may find the information you need there.
2. Check the site’s control panel. It probably has an area for log file management, or a file manager where you can click around and find the log file folder.
3. If all else fails, contact the hosting provider’s tech support team. Pick up the phone. Talk to a human being. You’d be amazed how well that works.

If the site’s self-hosted or managed by an internal team:

1. Get in touch with whoever manages the server day-to-day. Whether they know it or not, they’ll have the info you need to get the logs.
2. If they can’t find the files, but they’re willing to let you get access, get SSH or Remote Desktop permissions on the server. You can then click around and find the log files, or go directly into the IIS control panel/Apache configuration file and find the log file location there.
3. If they can’t find the files and they won’t give you access, find out their server platform. Then research possible log file locations on that platform, and ask them to look there.

Got the files? Great! Time to get to work.

2: Extract the log files

Now, you can go download the log files. You probably have a bunch of compressed files up on a server somewhere. They’ll look like the right-hand side of my FTP window:

Transferring files via FTP

Download them to your machine. Decompress them using whatever utility makes sense. If these are .gz files, you can extract them using the GUNZIP command:

gunzip *.gz

That will extract every file in this folder with a .gz on the end, and leave you with something like this:

Extracting files with GUNZIP

Log files may be compressed using ZIP, or something else. You can find the right extraction tool using, I dunno, Google?

3: Combine the log files

Ideally, you need a single log file. To combine the log files, use the CAT command:

cat access_log > biglog.txt

The above command will:

1. Read each file that has a name starting with ‘access_log’.
2. Write the contents of all of those files into a file named ‘biglog.txt’.
3. The single ‘>’ tells CAT to erase a pre-existing file named ‘biglog.txt’ and start over. If you use ‘>>’ then CAT will add to the existing file, instead.

If the files are really huge you may have to keep them separate. But that’ll only be an issue if, once combined, the final file is multiple gigabytes in size. GREP is really good at processing huge files.

Interlude: What you need from this file

You need to find all of the broken external links. So, you’ll need four pieces of data:

1. The response code. A web server responds to a request for a broken link with a 404 error code, which then gets stored in the log files you just combined. The response code will let us filter for broken links.
2. The referrer. It also stores the referrer—the URL of the linking page. We’ll use this to figure out the value of the broken link.
3. The request. It stores the request—the URL of the linked page. The request will tell us which pages we need to replace or redirect.
4. The user agent. Finally, it stores the user agent—the type of browser or bot that made the request. This will let us exclude Googlebot visits.

With those four items, you can find all of the external broken links visited by browsers other than Googlebot.

4: Use GREP to find the 404 errors

Now to the good stuff. You’ve got one gigantic log file. You can use the GREP command to search through that file at super speed.

Use this command, changing the htm and file names as relevant:

grep "\.htm*[[:space:]]404[[:space:]]" biglog.txt > errors.txt

This command will:

1. Find every line in the log that includes ‘.htm’ and ‘ 404 ’. It uses a regular expression, or regex. I kinda suck at regex, so go to this site if you want to learn more.
2. Write that to a file called errors.txt.

This can take a minute or two.

You may need to change the .htm. We’re using to exclude all of the requests for .gif, .png and other non-html files. We only care about pages this time around. If your site uses php, and all of the URIs end with .php, you’ll have to change .htm to .php.

5: Get rid of Googlebot

We need to remove all 404 errors generated by Googlebot. GREP can do the job, again. Use this command:

grep -v "Googlebot" errors.txt > errors-no-google.txt

This command will:

1. Search through the file you generated in step 4.
2. Find every line that does not include “Googlebot”. The -v inverts the search, so GREP finds all lines that don’t match the search criteria.
3. Output that line to a new file called errors-no-google.txt. If the file exists, it’ll wipe that file and create a new one. Use >> if you want to append to the existing file instead.

Notice how fast GREP ran that command? Pretty nifty, huh?

When I ran through this exercise on my laptop, I took a .5 gigabyte biglog.txt file and trimmed it down to a 904kb file that just contained the errors I needed. It took a total of 5 minutes, start to finish. Try this in Excel and you’ll see smoke rising from your computer. GREP is so cool that I’ve written about it before.

6: Prepare your spreadsheet

Using whatever spreadsheet software you prefer, import the errors-no-google file as a space-delimited text file:

A space-delimited import in Excel

You won’t need most of the columns. Only three columns really matter:

1. The column that includes GET or HEAD and a URL. That’s the request—the page on this site that someone tried to load.
2. The column that includes a three-digit number. It usually comes right after the request. That’s the response code—the server’s reply to the request. If GREP did its job, the response should be 404 for every line in the sheet. Sometimes it goes wrong, though, because of a ‘404’ somewhere else in the row. Poop happens.
3. The next column should be a URL, or a dash. That’s the referrer. If someone clicked a link on another page, that other page’s URL is the referring URL. It’s shown in this column. If they typed in the page address, or if their browser is set up to hide the referrer, the referrer is ‘-’.

You can delete the rest of the columns. Then insert a new row at the top of the page and label the columns:

That’ll let you indulge in some data processing niftiness later on.

Oh, and save the damned spreadsheet. Nothing sadder than losing all your data because your cat strolled across the keyboard.

7: Set up filtering.

Put your cursor in the heading row you created in step 6 and click the filter button:

The filter button in Excel

Now you can sort and/or filter our stuff you don’t need. For example, I may not want to see all of those ‘-’ referrers:

Filtering out ‘dash’ referrers in Excel

And I probably only want to see external broken links, so I can filter out all referrers that include this site’s domain name:

Filtering out a domain name in Excel

Note that I used ‘does not contain’ for the second filter. Read up on Excel’s filter tool. It’s your friend.

8: Find the broken external links

Phew. Finally. We can find some external links. Take a look at the result:

The final spreadsheet – a link goldmine!

It’s a link goldmine!!! Every row represents a broken link from another site.

Now you can use a pivot table or other spreadsheet awesomeness to find the biggest problems:

Pivot table report showing most-requested broken links.

Or, you can just browse through the raw data. Either way, you’ll find great, easy incoming links.

9: Prioritize the links

Prioritize broken links like this:

1. Broken links from high-authority sites get fixed first. These links could really give you a rankings boost.
2. Broken links with a high number of requests get fixed next. A lot of people are still clicking them.
3. Everything else.

10: How to fix the links

None of this work means a thing if no one fixes the links! Here are the ways to fix them, from best to worst:

1. Rebuild the missing page. If the broken link points at a deleted page, replace that page. If the site’s an online store and the link points at a product that’s out of stock or no longer available, put up a page, at that URL, that says ‘This product is out of stock’ or ‘This product is no longer available’. Then provide links to other relevant pages, or to customer support, or to the category page.
2. Build a new page. If the broken link points at a page that never existed or had to be deleted, create something new (but relevant) there.
3. Build a detour page. Create a page that summarizes what the old page said and then says ‘But this page is gone now. Sniff. Instead, go over here.’ Then link to an alternative.
4. Use a permanent redirect. Create a 301 redirect from the broken link URL to a relevant page. Do not simply redirect to your home page! That just confuses your visitors.

Always use options 1-3 before 4. A permanent redirect is a very imperfect solution, and best applied when you have no other options. 301 redirects will reroute authority for a while, but eventually the authority ‘decays’. Plus, a high number of 301 redirects on a site can wreak havoc with Google and Bing. Both search engines’ crawlers will give up if they see too many redirect ‘hops’.

Put away that letter opener…

This post has over 1800 words. At this point you’re probably ready to stab me. Please don’t. I like my insides in.

And, this isn’t nearly as hard as it seems. With practice, you’ll be zipping through all these steps in under an hour. It’s by far the quickest, easiest way to improve site authority.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Reporting Delay At Google Webmaster Tools
  Typically, Google updates the reports within Google Webmaster Tools daily but it typically is two days behind.

  Right now, the reports have not been updated since August 2nd, which puts us currently six days behind schedule…

• Here Is Why You Need To Manage Your Canonicals Right
  A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who is upset that Google lists the site under one domain and has the cache listed under a different domain…
• 130+ Cities Get Google Maps Traffic Data
  Google announced they’ve expanded their traffic data to over 130 smaller cities across the world.

  The expansion is not just in the US, but also in places like Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama…

• Google NYC Spider Lounge
  Avinash Kaushik posted a picture of a lounge at Google’s New York City office with a crazy looking lighting arrangement. He called it the “Spider Lamp,” but it makes the whole lounge take on a Spider

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

• Affiliate links vs Adsense, WebmasterWorld
• Apologize to Google Adsense Team, WebmasterWorld
• How much is luck a factor when it comes to Google rankings?, Google Webmaster Help
• What to look for in a BL campaign?, WebmasterWorld

Typically, Google updates the reports within Google Webmaster Tools daily but it typically is two days behind.

Right now, the reports have not been updated since August 2nd, which puts us currently six days behind schedule…

Typically, Google updates the reports within Google Webmaster Tools daily but it typically is two days behind.

Right now, the reports have not been updated since August 2nd, which puts us currently six days behind schedule.

Google has had delays before with Google Webmaster Tools, so this is not new.

Google’s Gary Illyes from the Zurich, Switzerland office responded that Google will be looking into it.

He wrote in two Google Webmaster Help threads:

Thanks for posting! I let the engineers know and they’re going to take a look.

So if your reporting is delayed, do not panic, it is everyone.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Yesterday, Bryson Meunier spotted a new test in Google’s mobile search results where they label smartphone-optimized pages with a little smartphone icon in the search results. Here posted some low quality images but Yoshihiko Yoshida has some better quality images which I am sharing here:

Google confirmed this test telling me:

Weâre experimenting with ways to optimize the mobile search experience, including helping users identify smartphone-optimized sites. We donât have any more details to share at the moment, but thank you for checking in.

Since Google offered up their official recommendation on mobile SEO, this is a good indicator (if you see the test) to see if your site is indeed implemented properly for Google to recognize that your site is smartphone optimized or not. There is no such feature in Google Webmaster Tools as far as I know. There are mobile sitemaps, but that is used for feature phones.

I am also pretty sure Google had a similar implementation, of labeling phone friendly pages in the search results, specifically for feature phones. Moving it to smartphones is neat, although I am not sure if Google will add this clutter to the page or not in the future?

Forum discussion on Google+.

Posted by mybinding1

Have you noticed that more and more video results are showing up in Google search results? Everywhere I turn, it seems that Google is providing me with options of videos to watch on the first page of their search results. As a user, I appreciate the video content and will often click on the video results. As a marketer, I am incredibly jealous of those placements and am constantly searching for ways to capture that traffic for my site. This post highlights the five most important factors I've found that play the largest role in when and where a thumbnail is awarded.

1. Index Status

This may seem like a no-brainer, but if your videos are not included in the video index, then you will not be eligible for the video thumbnail. That makes getting the video content on your site indexed your first priority.

If you want to check to see if your videos are included in the index, simply do a site search for your domain and click the Videos tab in Google. Below is an example of the list of videos included in the index for SEOmoz. As you know, the site feature of Google is not entirely reliable (not everything will show). However, it does give you an idea of the videos that Google includes in the index along with their thumbnails, titles, and descriptions, which can be incredibly helpful.

If you have a video sitemap submitted inside of your Google webmaster tools account, you will be able to see the number of videos that you submitted along with the number of videos that have been indexed. Again, I have found the numbers to be less than comprehensive, but it is another tool to use in checking whether your videos have been indexed.

Getting your videos indexed by the search engines doesn’t have to be difficult. There have been some awesome blog posts here on SEOmoz about that, including this one titled An SEO's Guide to Video Hosting and Embedding and this one called Video Sitemap Guide for Vimeo and YouTube. There are also some excellent resources directly from Google, such as this section of their Webmaster help on Video Best Practices. Here is a screenshot of that page from their site:

Check these resources out when you have time, they are definitely worth the read. If you are struggling with getting your videos indexed, you might want to consider using a hosting provider with built in SEO features such as Wistia (they will take care of most of the heavy lifting for you). In the meantime, here is a quick overview of what you need to do in order to get videos in the index.

1. Create and submit a video sitemap: Make sure that your sitemap includes a unique title, description, embed location, thumbnail, and content location for each video on your site. The keyword phrase and description should match with the content on the page where you have embedded your video.
2. Embed your videos using a simple SEO friendly embed code: The embed code that you use on your page needs to be SEO friendly. Google needs to be able to verify the information from your sitemap entries to ensure that the video is actually embedded on the page and that the information is accurate. Most SEO friendly embed codes will include all or most of the information from the sitemap. However, several hosting providers are also starting to integrate schema.org info into embeds to make information even more visible to the search engines.
3. Get your page found: Standard SEO principles also apply in video SEO. Googlebot needs to be able to find the page where you have embedded the video and in order to get that page to rank, you are going to need to make sure that it has pagerank passed to it through internal linking, external linking, or both.

If you are embedding your videos on pages that are already indexed or on a domain that is regularly crawled by googlebot, it shouldn’t take long for you to see new videos show up in the index (1-3 days for our site).

2. Competition

Once your videos are included in the index and eligible for video thumbnails, the next major factor to consider is competition. Winning the video thumbnail result is highly dependent on how competitive the search term is for which you are trying to rank. If you want to beat out the competition, here are a few things to consider:

Are you competing with your Video Hosting Provider for the thumbnail result? If you are embedding videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, or other public video sharing sites onto your site, you are fighting an uphill battle to win the video thumbnail. Until about a year ago, it was difficult to get Google to index these videos on your site. Now they will index them (in the case of YouTube you don’t really even need to submit a video sitemap). However, given the choice between your site and YouTube, Google seems to choose YouTube 9 times out of 10. The same is true to a lesser degree from sites such as Vimeo or Metacafe. For this reason, you are really better off hosting your videos with a hosting solution such as Wistia, Vzaar, Brightcove, Limelight, or using a custom player such as JW Player. Phil Nottingham provided a great overview of the features of these different options in the blog post I linked to above. Here is a screenshot:

If you have your video hosting situation figured out, the next thing you need to figure out is what type of competition do you have on YouTube? Currently, the vast majority of video thumbnail results that are awarded seem to be given to YouTube videos. It probably has something to do with the fact that they are the largest repository of video content on the web. However, it doesn’t hurt that they are owned by Google. Topics that have large amounts of high quality video content on YouTube will be very difficult to crack using your own website. Keep this in mind when choosing key phrases and creating content.

Are you competing with yourself? If you create a lot of video, the temptation is very strong to distribute it everywhere (YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, etc.). This is a valid strategy for some companies. However, it is important to note that you will most likely be competing with your own content on these platforms for the video thumbnails. At MyBinding we have a huge YouTube channel, and we run into this problem all the time. Our YouTube videos outrank the videos on our own site. Ultimately you need to decide whether that is worthwhile for you or if you want to try and attempt to rank on different platforms for different keywords. This decision is going to be based on your business case and is going to vary from company to company.

Finally, remember that you are competing for a space on the first page of the Google search rankings. If the page where you embed your video doesn’t deserve to rank on the first page of Google for your chosen keyword, then winning the thumbnail will be difficult. That isn’t to say that video results don’t jump up the rankings occasionally. However, it is far easier to try and get a thumbnail added to an awesome page that is already ranking than it is to get a weaker page to skyrocket in the rankings.

3. Keyword Intent

It is difficult to define exactly which key phrases will qualify for video rich snippets in Google universal search results. It appears that virtually any key phrase could be awarded a video thumbnail. However, certain phrases are far more likely to have video results than others. The best way to think about this is to consider keyword intent. Search terms that include words such as demo, demonstration, review, tutorial, video, test, lesson, or how commonly return video search results. Google has determined that these words represent “intent” by the searcher that fits with video results. These type of search terms tend to be the easiest to dominate with video thumbnails.

Below is a search results page for the term “Wire Binding Machine Demo” (something from my industry and probably not exciting to most of you). However, you will notice that the first three results are all videos (one from Metacafe and two from YouTube). Of the other results on this page, four others are video related.

Recently, I have also noticed that more and more specific product names are also returning video results in universal search. I suspect that moving forward, Google will continue to expand the search results that receive weighting for video thumbnail results. That being said, it is always a good idea to stick with the terms that are more likely to produce video results.

4. Page Placement

According to Google’s best practices for video, they are looking for you to “Create a great user experience on your video pages.” Specifically, they state that they are looking for sites to create a standalone landing page for each video. With this in mind, the page where you embed your video should only have one video on it and that video should only be embedded on one page on your site (again don’t compete with yourself). The page should also include descriptive text, title, captions, and other information to help make your video stand out. Google can’t watch your video (yet), so they will often rank it based on the other information surrounding it on the page. Adding other media elements such as images along with text will not only provide a better user experience, but will also help you to rank your videos better.

Here is the exact wording from Google on this issue:

In addition to the content on the page along with your video, Google has also stated that they are looking for a “Prominently Placed” embedded video player on the page. As we know from the Page Layout algo update in January 2012, Google is able to understand the placement of various elements on the page and use that information as a ranking factor. If at all possible, look to place your videos towards the top of your blog posts or pages.

5. High Quality Relevant Thumbnails

The final element to consider when trying to win the video thumbnail in universal search is the thumbnail itself. You have the opportunity to define the thumbnail for your video in your video sitemap that you provide to Google. When it comes choosing a thumbnail, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. It should be high quality. Google’s guidelines says at least 160×90 and up to 1920×1080. I suggest going with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
2. It should be representative of your content. Google is looking for thumbnails that reflect the content of your video. If your thumbnail is generic or unrelated to your video, it is possible that you may have problems keeping your videos in the index.
3. It should be unique. Using the exact same image for multiple thumbnails is similar to trying to include the same video twice in the same video sitemap and can cause indexing problems. Make each thumbnail unique and save yourself the hassle.
4. Choose your thumbnail with CTR in mind. This is your best chance to help yourself and get users to click on your content. Make sure that your thumbnail is awesome and that users will want to click on.

These are five of the most important factors that I have noticed in attempting to win the video thumbnail in Google. Have you seen others? Are you having success in these areas? Leave a comment and let's help each other get better in the area of video SEO.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Honestly, a fairly slow week despite some significant SEO events. SEOmoz introduced MozCast, a weather report to track Google changes. There are some SEOs claiming Google pushed out a Penguin refresh but I think it is because SEOs are very eager for a new Penguin refresh. Google Webmaster Tools added a structured data dashboard and it is pretty cool. Matt Cutts of Google explained in more detail what those new link notifications are about – so you get it now? SEOmoz received one of those link notification after getting into a fight with negative SEOs. We get into the debate on exact match domains versus branded domain names. Bing now allows you to tag your Facebook friends in Bing. Majestic SEO launched a competitive keyword tool based on links. Google updated their toolbar PageRank values this week. Google loves their Olympics search results. I also published the monthly Google SEO webmaster report this morning. That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

• SEOmoz Tries To Automate Google Update Notifications With MozCast
• UK SEOs Say Possible Google Penguin Refresh
• SEOs Eagerly Waiting A Penguin Refresh
• Structured Data Dashboard On Google Webmaster Tools
• Google’s Cutts Explains Untrusted Link Notifications
• Did Negative SEO Beat SEOmoz?
• Google SEO: Exact Match Domain Or Not?
• Annoy Your Friends On Facebook With Bing Facebook Tagging
• A Keyword Competitive Tool Based On Links & Anchors
• Google PageRank Update: August 2012
• Google Touts Their Olympics Results
• August 2012 Google Webmaster Report

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!