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Jan
15
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Another new year has come and many of us are still analyzing the balance of successes and failures of the previous one. It is definitely a useful chore. I am happy to count this blog as one of my successes. It was humbling to see it included in SearchEngineLand’s blogroll and nominated for Best SEO Research blog—I voted for Bill’s and I am glad he won the title :-)—among other accomplishments. Thanks to everyone for the recognition!
On the other hand, last year I had more goals that I didn’t quite reach than ones that I did, although I suppose that puts me in the big crowd. 
I like to start each year by revisiting the unachieved goals, the uncompleted projects, the planned-but-not-executed things I call my missed opportunities. One common one (and I am sure many of my peers experienced the same) is maximizing the number of clicks I get from organic listings. The problem, as many might be asking themselves, is how to measure the organic click-through rate in the first place! Read on to learn how….
Popularity: 93% [?]
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Jun
18
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You can spend a few hours researching, structuring, drafting and proofreading a great post, to completely miss it by choosing a really bad title. I recently submitted a carefully crafted rebuttal to the Seomoz article: Proof Google is Using Behavioral Data in Rankings. The post generated some controversy and some heated discussion as to the validity of the tests and results. I read everything. And, given my technical nature, I decided to dig deeper in myself. I ended up with slightly different conclusions about the experiments. If you want to find out please read the post at Youmoz.
Now, here's the bad news. As Kurt, wisely points out, I tragically missed the mark by poorly choosing an empty title: "Relevance feedback".
Sat (6/16/07) at 05:38 PM
Good post… well thought out and presented… gave it a thumbs up. Unfortunately, it will most likely get overlooked by most readers due to its title/headline. Look at the article you're a referencing, "Proof Google is Using Behavioral Data in Rankings". You know that headline will bring in some clicks. It was moved to the blog of SEOmoz from the Youmoz section (even with its flawed testing and logic). The mozzers aren't stupid… they know this type of headline and article will stir up some controversy and bring in some links. I'm no expert copywriter… far from it. I just hate to see a good post sit on the sidelines because of a bad headline.
The title I chose did not offer the reader any incentive to click or learn more. I guess that I operate in two modes: engineer and marketer and that I forgot to flip the switch while writing this post.
First, let me state that his remarks about the mozzers are valid for most journalists, trade publications, social media sites, etc. It is human nature to judge books by their cover. If the cover is crap, the content must be crap. That is how we normally think.
Popularity: 6% [?]
