Weekly Search Recap 4/8/11

Hi Everyone,

This week we are going to highlight some of the articles we found the most interesting in the past week.

The Top 10

A great article by Adam Audette where he breaks down high level technical SEO factors including URL structure, Crawl efficiency & accessibility, and speed. He also provides a list of tools for the technical analysis.

2. Early Ranking Factors Data + an April Linkscape Update

This is a really insightful post by Rand Fishkin where he shares some very early results from SEOmoz’s 2011 Search Ranking Factors. One Highlight: Facebook + Twitter are Big! Facebook Shares is the single highest correlated metric. Social is more important to SEO than ever before.

3. What if my competitor is cheating at SEO?

The burning question everyone asks is: “What do I do if my competitors are conducting Black Hat link building schemes?” We have partnered with blekko, the up and coming hot new search engine. blekko will be able to surface real time link data so you can keep tabs of competitor analysis .

4. +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

Google’s latest attempt to tap into the Facebook like’s market.

5. LinkedIn’s Answer to Facebook’s Open Graph

Facebook & Twitter are big, and Google is now pushing further into social with the addition of +1. But how about the other big social network, LinkedIn? This week LinkedIn launches it’s answer: LinkedIn’s share buttons and plugins to bring member and company profiles to your webpage.

6. Exact Match Domains: This is Why They Can Still Rank

An argument for why exact match domains still matter; having the keywords in the domain gives a significant boost in rankings. Google’s Matt Cutts has talked about how this is an issue and how Google is reevaluating how it factors into rankings. But the issue is: how do you determine when a query is linked to brand or not?

7. 4 Reasons Your Boss Should Care About Social Media for SEO

I really cannot stress enough the importance of Social Media for SEO. Four solid reasons why social media is important for your company: personal communication, rankings, reputation management, and the fact that social media sells/converts.

8. 3 White Hat Ideas To Optimize Google Suggest Results

Great ideas for keeping your brand integrity intact in search results, such as Google instant and autocomplete: Use offline ads- especially radio, use news, and lastly, use partnerships. All of which are really great tactics.

9. Google On Outranking Stolen Content

Matt Cutts answers the question about how to do justice when sites that copy other sites are crawled more frequently. Google takes into consideration factors such as PageRank and Social Media amongst other things you can do. Worst case scenario, submit a DMCA request or spam report.

10. The SEO Industry Needs Some Reputation Management

A drastic and cynical article on the horrible name SEO has made for itself. While taking it a bit too far, this is a necessary wake up call to reform questionable tactics and clearing any ill will generated from Black hat SEOs.