SEO Scientist – Applying the scientific method to SEO

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-analytics-and-segmentation-for-better-conversion-optimization

I like articles that explain different tools and techniques through concrete examples. This one explains 4 different metrics that can be analyzed through creating segments in Google Analytics

http://www.seo.com/blog/the-value-of-fresh-content/

A little bit of circumstantial evidence supporting the claim that Google will boost your rankings if you feed it with fresh content. Which is probably true under very specific conditions, so I wouldn’t treat this as an article outlining a controlled experiment, rather as an interesting direction to check things.

http://www.johnon.com/716/google-breadcrumbs-seo.html

A commentary on Google’s move of replacing the URLs in SERPs with breadcrumbs. Interesting insights.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021217.html

Post on Bing link building guidelines, with links to the original Bing post and WMW discussion thread on the topic.

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/discover-what-google-really-thinks-of-your-pages.html

A great post describing how to measure and analyze data describing the frequency of Google visiting your site. With the visible PR being either outdated or unimportant parameter, frequency of spidering seems to be a likely contestant for the title of the parameter that defines the importance of your site. This article describes a way to measure and compare this frequency between different pages of your site.

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/5-seo-focussed-web-analytics-tools/

List of 5 not-so known analytics tools that (seem to) have been created with SEO on mind

http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/your-seo-kungfu-is-strong.php

Outline of a site-wide Title tag tweeking process for achieving maximal rankings and increasing overall CTR for those rankings. I don’t get the kung-fu metaphors, for some reason SEOs seem to be infatuated with them.

http://www.jonathanstewart.co.uk/a-comprehensive-guide-to-the-vince-update/

OK, this is probably going to be my last mentioning of the Vince (or the Brand) update on these lists. Here is a comprehensive guide on everything meaningful that was published on this subject

http://esseoo.com/forum/on-page/why-404-pages-should-return-404-codes-for-successful-on-page-seo/#p11

A nice case study explaining why you shouldn’t automatically 301 all your 404 pages back to your homepage. I do not necessarily agree with the way they have solved the problem – they could have done it without losing links to the non-existing pages, but that is another issue

http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/

Nice comparison of the old and the new beta Google Adwords keyword tool and the differences in the numbers they output for keywords with different search volumes

http://searchengineland.com/6-ways-local-domains-crush-dot-coms-in-international-seo-29898

A piece describing some reasons why country code TLDs have advantage over .com, .net, .org, etc. in local results

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/breadcrumb-navigation-examined-best-practices-examples/

Examination of breadcrumbs from the designer and user experience point of view

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/breadcrumbs/15022/

Examination of breadcrumbs from the SEO point of view. A very nice overview of all the pros and cons of different ways to utilize breadcrumbs on your site. One point that the article does not mention is duplicating links back home or to inner pages by using breadcrumbs. Remember those “second link doesn’t count” issues? Make sure that the link you want to be counted comes before breadcrumbs in the code.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/30-seo-problems-the-tools-to-solve-them-part-1-of-2

Good overview of all the SEOMoz tools. I like the way that the tools are presented – through a specific SEO problem that each of them solves. Still waiting for part 2 of the post.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/xenu-link-sleuth-more-than-just-a-broken-links-finder

Awesome review of one of my favorite SEO Tools – Xenu. Combined with Excel (who else?) this little FREE tool can do anything. Do. Read. This.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115210&lfe=1

A very interesting comScore research showing that 4% of internet users account for 85% of the clicks. That means you don’t have to target everyone. Some demographic research should be able to profile the heavy clickers for you and help you target those audiences that are most likely to click on your ads.

http://searchengineland.com/make-google-analytics-your-seo-watchdog-26475

A few tips on how to use Analytics to monitor for canonicalization issues on your site. Nothing Earth-shattering here but it is always good to have a variety of tools in your belt for doing the same task.

http://www.stonetemple.com/blog/?p=491

Interesting analysis by Eric Enge (haven’t heard from him in a while) on why deep links to your site’s inner pages increases the amount of juice that your homepage passes around.

http://www.ariozick.com/how-you-can-spam-google-local-for-fun-and-profit-in-10-easy-steps

Ari explains how to “influence” Google Local results. Not sure about the lifetime of this one but I trust Ari that it worked at the time of the writing 🙂

http://www.iamsearch.co.uk/seo/spark-something-like-cohesive-marketing-strategies/

A very interesting study case of one failed and two successful offline campaigns that are supposed to support online marketing efforts. Includes a what-to-do-to-get-it-right list.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/11/1-seo-tools-for-tracking-inbound-links

A list of link-tracking tools. Besides the obvious, popular ones (Majestic, Linkscape, Raven and Yahoo backlinks), includes some less known tools that are worth a try.

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/11/29/how-to-exploit-personalized-search-for-seo/

A novel look on how to harness Google’s Personalized SERPs to your benefit using some social engineering, bordering on psychology

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-indexation-cap

Interesting discussion on Google’s practice to limit the number of pages it indexes on large sites. Something tells me that this is a very old phenomenon that was always known as “Supplemental Index”. Anyways, there are some tips in here on how to deal with this situation.