As a test I created the identical title for both the YouTube video as well as on Sphinn.

Matt Cutts liked my video but instead of linking to the original source (because I killed him off in my Electrocution Solar video) he linked to my YouTube video page.

I kinda knew this was going to happen:

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Google Favors Link Juice Verses Original Source

Andy provided me with a lot of good ideas which I am now starting to think about and I wanted to throw him a link to say thanks!

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Andy Jolls of Video Credit Score

It is happening slowly but perhaps people like me that are not early adopters but perhaps 2nd or 3rd tier adopters are considering leaving our M$ software that we have grown up with and are now looking at solutions like Google Docs.

Once people like me make the shift and can become productive after the change, we normally tell people like our parents that might consider changing if the benefits are large.

I think many of us think M$ as being like the devil because of their monopoly, however we could never leave because it worked so well and there was nothing else to really go to that would be worth the change. I think a lot of us would like the drop the chains that M$ has had on us for the past two decades, but it is not so easy even when the other solutions are free.

I think with services like Twitter.com we are all seeing a change where getting information out there as fast as you can is a good thing. Using cloud applications we can collaborate better and get things done faster.

To be honest I think I write in WordPress far more than Word right now. I also use WordPress more than I do Dreamweaver lately.

I am not saying anything new here, but what I am saying is the change is interesting to watch. For me it might be 6 months to a year before I make the switch.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Underlying Shift Away From MS Office Suite

Instead of doing a writeup like I did for last year’s SMX Advanced conference, I made a video so my friends at home could get an idea what the conference is like.

I can’t remember everyone’s name in the video (sessions I attended), but I think this list has it covered:

Roger Montti, Founder & Owner, MartiniBuster.com
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts (thanks for the mention of my spoof video!)
Jay Young, Owner, Link Fish Media, Inc.

Robert Bergquist, CEO, Widemile
Scott Brinker, President & CTO, ion interactive
Rob Crigler, Director of Interactive Marketing, Orkin, Inc.
Tom Leung, Business Product Manager, Google
Jonathan Mendez, Founder & CEO, RAMP Digital

Gab Goldenberg, Owner, SEO ROI
Todd Malicoat, Internet Marketing Consultant, Stuntdubl
Jeremy Wright, CEO, B5 Media

Akin Arikan, Senior Manager, Internet Marketing, Unica Corporation
Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance
Rich Devine, Director of Search, ZAAZ
Ryan Gibson, Director of Marketing, Rimm-Kaufman Group

Matt McGee, SEO Manager, Marchex
Brian Klais, Executive Vice President, Search, Netconcepts
Laura Lippay, Group Program Manager, Search Strategy, Yahoo
Jonah Stein, Founder, ItsTheROI
Richard Zwicky, President, Enquisite

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Todd Friesen, Vice President Search Strategies, Visible Technologies
Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service
Rob Kerry, Head of Search, Ayima Search Marketing
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
Alex Bennert, Director of Client Services, Beyond Ink

If you are interested, check out my video of Matt Cutts from the same conference.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

SMX Advanced 2008 Roundup [Video]

I have been interested off-topic link bait the past few weeks, which is somewhat related to fabricated link bait, so when Danny Sullivan asked Matt Cutts about the 13 year old/hooker fake news story during You&A With Matt Cutts a couple of days ago, I took out my camera and video taped Matt Cutts response on the issue.

After the session I asked Matt if it was OK to post the video, and he gave me permission. I also asked Chris Elwell the President of Third Door Media and he also gave permission.

Some editing was involved to stay within the one minute SMX video policy. I tried my best to represent Matt’s response accurately with the editing I had to do.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Matt Cutts Take On Fabricated Link Bait [Video]

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

I am Heading Off To SMX Advanced Conference

Let say you follow people that you want to learn from that are really big in the search industry like:

• Danny Sullivan
• Greg Boser
• Rand Fishkin
• Matt Cutts

Every time you log on to your Twitter account you see your smiling face next to all the people that are in the top of the industry. In a way it makes it feel like you are having a conversation with them when you are really not, since they are not follow you.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Warning: Twitter Can Give You Fake Ego Boost

I think the tipping point for me in the past few weeks as been all the people I enjoy following on the net are now talking on Twitter “what they are doing”.

These few people that I follow fascinate me, so it is kind of people magazine for me (my wife reads it, I don’t).

For instance you get more info than you really need such as Danny Sullivan telling us when he is waking up and when he is going to sleep. For some reason this still keeps my interest – odd.

I noticed the importance of the Bio in your profile (see right) and changed mine so people that don’t know me can get a good idea if they want to follow me or not. When I see someone new is following me and I can’t tell what they are about in a few seconds – I move on.

I am not sure why anyone would want to follow me since I am somewhat of an unknown in the SEO community. That is why I put in my bio, “I play an SEO on TV.” I don’t speak at SEO conferences but I have created some silly puppet movies that thousands of SEO’s have watched.

I noticed that the people I follow really let their hair down on Twitter and get cryptic at times because of the 140 character limit.

As long as the top SEO people in my niche keep talking I will keep using Twitter. As soon as they get bored, I will too.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Why Your Twitter Bio Is Important

However, I get several sites that like to “steal” my content and place it on their site and make AdSense $ of it.

It is hard to stop these people.

Yesterday I saw a post by Stephan Spencer of NetConcepts and it gave me an idea.

So I downloaded this RSS footer plugin and then add my photo to the RSS feed.

So now my feed carries more branding to those people that are placing my content on their site. Here is what my last post looks like in Google Reader:

Thanks Stephan for the great idea.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Add Your Photo And Links To Your RSS Feed

In fact if you look at the this Trulia page for Prescott you will notice the word rent is not even on the page, even though they rank #3 for the phrase “Prescott houses for rent” in Google.

If you look closely at their code you can see the word “rent” is actually being used on the page but it is hidden from view using a hidden <div> tag.

Are they doing this on purpose? No, I don’t think so, they are trying to give the user a nice experience by not messing up the page. Google looks at intent – and I don’t think they are intentionally doing this to get people looking for rentals on their site but I am sure they get a ton of traffic because of it.

Since Trulia has so much trust and pages linking to it, all they have to do is insert one hidden word on the page and it can out rank rental sites like mine. I am not being a cry baby here, since I know I can out rank them in Prescott if I wanted to, I am just trying to get the conversation going about hidden div’s.

I would love to use hidden div’s like this to improve my user’s experience but I am too scared I would get kicked out of the index, but Truila doesn’t need to worry since they are a large company and probably have a person at Google they can call if they get hurt in the rankings.

If someone at Google (Matt Cutts / Brian White) is reading this, I think you should create a tweak so this doesn’t happen. I think they would work on this anyway since a person looking for rentals and lands on Trulia’s site is not a good user experience.

I couldn’t help ask this question to Matt on the new Ask a Google Engineer:

Update 2/3/09: I just saw the Greg Boser mentioned that Trulia has been Google slapped and sure enough I now can’t find Trulia ranking for “Prescott Houses for Rent”.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Trulia.com Uses Hidden Text