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Posted by Mel Gray

Working as a tech at a SEO company isn't always about SEO. Behind the scenes, there are servers to support, tools to debug and interoffice technical problems that arise all the time. The developers at SEOmoz have picked up a few tricks & tools along the way that have helped us solve all sorts of problems.  We're going to start making it a weekly habit of posting interesting tools that could help developers and administrators at other small / medium businesses.

This week's tool is "Baobab". It is a Linux based tool that helps analyze disk usage. If any sys admins out there have any experience with Ubuntu Linux they may already be familiar with Baobab (it's listed as "Disk Usage Analyzer" in your 'Accessories' toolbar).

Below is a sample image of the output you get after you first start Baobab:

The above output is very pretty and makes identifying what's taking up the most disk resources a snap. 

However, the above snapshot is a view of local disk usage.  The killer feature of this tool is that it allows you to view disk usage on remote servers using protocols like ssh, ftp, webdav, etc.

If you're at risk of running out of disk space on you're web server, you can plug in your log in information and get a visual representation of whats eating up all them gigabytes.

I'll illustrate the usefulness of this with a real scenario we faced at the Mozplex a while back. We have an Intranet file server that we use to store the valuable information that is used to power SEOmoz (like articles, legal documents, and the entire Wu-tang Clan discography).

One day I came into work and was greeted with an urgent email saying that nobody could save any new documents on the Intranet.  I quickly logged in and discovered that the disks were completely full.  I calmly thought to myself, "OMG WTF?".  I began solving the problem by plugging in my ssh credentials and grabbing a cup of coffee while Baobab worked its magic.  After a short while, the entire scan was complete and I was able to pin point the problem:

Thats a whole lot of rock! Come with me as I journey further into the ROCK! that powers SEOmoz.

Well well well, what do we have here......

DREAM THEATER?!?
3.4 GB OF DREAM THEATER?!

Only 2.7 GB of The Cure

In just a few minutes I was able to determine that Dream Theatre and Robert Smith were partly at fault for our Intranet file sharing problems. After a few more minutes, I was able to really dig into the Baobab report and trim down disk usage significantly.

As you can see, Baobab allows you to view your disk usage in a very convenient way. Other visualization formats are available, so if you get a chance play around with it; it's very cool.

Baobab is currently Linux only (although there have been reports of it working with Mac OS X). If you don't have access to a Linux machine, VMware is a nice compromise. I recently made the switch to OS X and am running Gutsy on my Macbook using VMware fusion.

If anybody out there has any other recommendations for tools that can analyze disk usage on remote machines, please say so!

That's it for this week! Next week we'll be back with another tool that can help make the tech in your company less technical.

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Deciding on the right search engine optimization services provider is of a fundamental importance. Therefore, before signing up the right search engine optimization services provider, make sure that you screen the person carefully. This can be done by doing inane queries and popping-up a bundle of questions from the companies where they were working previously. Going through the website of search engine optimization services provider for determining the services they are putting forward is t more...

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Posted by Eric Enge

Outbound links play a critical role in your overall linking strategy. This runs counter to the philosophy that used be popular in the industry, that of hoarding PageRank. You do read less about the notion of hoarding PageRank these days than you used to, but I still think that many publishers do not fully understand why outbound links are important.

Understand Your Target

It all comes down to what you need to do to receive authoritative links. You have to get inside the head of the person who is going to make the decision about linking to you or not. If you don't understand their mindset, your chances of success go down dramatically. Remember that these people are going to the sole judge and jury in terms of deciding whether or not to give you a link.

For example, someone that works at MIT lives and breathes an academic environment. Here are three quick facts about that environment:

1. There is a lot of cutting edge research taking place there.
2. People are voraciously reading the latest research papers published by others.
3. They aggressively credit the sources they use (citation is required).

Imagine when that person comes to your site and sees nothing new under the sun in terms of content and no outbound links. It just does not feel or look right to them.

As a brief aside, earlier this week I reviewed a web site that had been heavily over-optimized. For example, it had links that had been crudely stuffed into the home page and pointed to lower level pages that added no real value. They were there purely for the purpose of linking to a page with anchor text that corresponded to a key search term.

When people go off the deep end with SEO, you end up with sites that don't even read correctly. An end user who did not know about SEO who read such a site would literally be scratching their head when they see the site. This certainly lowers the ability of the site to close business. In addition, such an over-optimized site has no chance of getting links from an authoritative site. None.

Your Targets

This phenomenon is not limited to the academic world. You will encounter the same conditions at government sites, or amongst people at major media sites, such as the NY times. The nature and depth of the types of research may be different, but the idea of citing sources and looking for high quality content to link to remains the same.

You can extend this notion further. Any time you look at a site and see that they have gone to the trouble of creating authoritative content (and cite other sources as well), you know you have someone that is going to expect similar behavior from any site they would consider linking to.

It's kind of a club, really. Once you become a recognized authority in a field, you are a part of the club. Along with other authoritative sources in the same and closely related fields, you will start to get links flowing without a tremendous amount of effort.

Publishers of authoritative sites almost always care about their users. They spend time thinking about increasing content quality and adding new content to their site. They are not afraid that when they link to someone else, they will lose traffic that will convert into business for them. They know that the links they send to others will mostly be used by people that are not finding on their site what they are looking for (so there really is very little to lose).

Picking Sites to Link To

The first thing that needs to happen is that you have to have the authoritative mindset. As outlined above, this means that you embark on a deliberate campaign to achieve a status of being an authority in your field, and demonstrating that authority in what you publish. This includes building relationships with other authorities in the field.

As you are researching on the web to learn the things you need to become an expert, make note of the sites that help you the most, in particular those that are not your most direct competition. Cite these sites as sources along the way. Your visitors will appreciate your site more, and you will make a much more attractive target for other authority sites to link to.

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Complete SEO process automation is impossible, that’s for sure. Some people also think that all SEO tools are evil too. We’ve recently had a heated discussion over here if SEOs need to use tools at all. The points are as follows (for the record: I disagree with the first one and let search engines take [...]

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This morning I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that several webmasters began noticing three values being displayed under some AdWords ads that might reveal some details on how Google may rank AdWords ads. The scores include the "Pscore," "mCPC," and "thresh."

Danny and I took guesses at what each might mean and the mCPC seems likely to be the minimum cost-per-click for the ad. Thresh might refer to a threshold score for if or where the ad displays, while the Pscore might be a Google quality score metric of some sort - we guess.

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported onSearch Engine Land and from other places across the web

From Search Engine Land:

• Microsoft Live Search Adds More Images, Multimap, Find My Location, & Celebrity Rank
  Live Search has informed us that they have made a few enhancements to the search engine. The enhancements include an expanded image search index, a new integrated mapping experience with Multimap, a location based mobile search feature to "find me," and more content for the celebrities and books sections. Here...
• Court Documents: Microsoft Allocates $1.5 Billion For Yahoo Employee Retention
  Court documents cited by the Wall Street Journal (also CNET) show that Microsoft has set aside $1.5 billion to retain Yahoo employees in the event of a successful takeover. This is apparently not tied to the generous "poison pill" severance packages that Yahoo put in place in the event of...
• Outsourcing To Increase SEO Throughput
  Even with budgets getting tightened, your SEO program may be kicking, but the head count you requested to keep the program moving upward may not get approved. When this happens, it's time to look at a Plan B for increasing throughput without adding staff. Many people I talk to...
• Will Yahoo Create An Open Ad Profile?
  Yahoo's mantra these days is openness. To that end, Yahoo may create the ability for users to view their ad profiles -- the data that's being used to target them with advertising on Yahoo and its extended network. Yahoo EVP Jeff Weiner, who spoke at the Economics of Social Media...
• Google Ocean To Complement Google Earth, Maps & Sky Soon
  Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans from News.com reports Google is working on a new mapping system to map the Earth's oceans. The tool might be named Google Ocean and will complement Google Earth and Google Sky. News.com says Google Ocean will contain 3D oceanographic maps with underwater topography,...
• Google Toolbar PageRank Update Creates Major Webmaster Buzz
  Over the past few days, many webmasters and SEOs have been noticing an update to the PageRank score found in the Google Toolbar. Usually PageRank updates aren't that noteworthy, but it seems something is different about this PageRank update...

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google.co.uk push igoogle with artist Jeff Koons theme, SEO Home
• Google Apps Hacks Is Out, Google Blogoscoped
• Where art thou?, Official Google Blog

Business Issues

• Ex-Yahoo CEO Semel exercised $37.8 mln in options, Reuters
• Google announces plans to open office in downtown Madison, CNN Money
• Yang takes $1 salary in 2007; Former Yahoo execs made the most, ZDNet
• How Google Fuels Its Idea Factory, BusinessWeek
• RIAA Sues Music Search Engine, MediaPost
• Google CEO Predicts Marketing To Become More Analytical, MediaPost
• Eric Schmidt: Google Has Secret Plan To Mint Money With YouTube, Silicon Alley Insider
• IAC Net Falls As Diller Plans Split, Wall Street Journal
• Wikimedia Foundation restructures its board, News.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Gettin' down (under) with a new Mapplet, Google LatLong
• Google Maps Fixes missing record bug, Mike Blumenthal
• Static Maps Have Never Looked This Good!, Google Maps API Blog
• AdSense for mobile content now integrated with DoubleClick Mobile, Official Google Mobile Blog
• DOUBLECLICK MOBILE INTEGRATES WITH MOBILE AD NETWORKS, Google

Link Building

• Comment Link Building for SEO: The Search for the Golden Egg or Goose Chase?, Search Marketing Sage
• Dude, Your Site Is Boring No Links For You, The Link Spiel

Microhoo

• Yahoo is betting it can win proxy battle with Microsoft, MarketWatch

Paid Search & Contextual

• adCenter spring upgrade: reporting updates, adCenter Advertiser
• Meet The Team: US Ad Services, adCenter Advertiser
• Kenshoo Launches Kenshoo UK To Provide Technology Solutions For The European Paid Search Industry, webitpr
• Rumor: Google to Offer "Recommended" Sponsored Links, Marketing Pilgrim
• Tesco vows not to place Google keyword bids on rivals' trademarks, Brand Republic
• Which Advertiser Types Do You Put in Your Google AdSense Filter?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Better Bookmarks for Firefox 3, Yahoo Search Blog

SEM Industry

• Search Conference Controversy Sparks Up Again, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEORipOff.com : Stain of the Search Marketing Industry, Search Engine Journal

SEO & SEM

• How To Optimize for Google: Q & A, Stepforth
• Blackhat Techniques Which Shouldn't Work in Google But Still Do, SEOptimise
• Reputation Management Campaign Strategy , Shimon Sandler
• The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet, SEOmoz
• What Are You Converting?, Search Engine Watch
• Facebook Does Keyword Research, SEOmoz
• Looking for 'Bad Guys' - Discovering Networks of Sites, Search Engine Journal
• Managing Duplicate Content In a World Where Google Can Crawl JavaScript, Search Engine Roundtable
• Real and Imagined Errors in Google Sitemap Feeds, SEO Speedwagon
• What are Some Questions to Ask an SEO Firm to Check their Legitimacy?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Which button would you click? A lesson on website optimization, Google Analytics Blog

Social Media

• Is Social Media Marketing Right For You?, SEOmoz
• Matt McGee: Twittering for Charity, Small Business SEM

Web Analytics

• Google Relaunching Measure Map, TechCrunch
• Google Analytics for Blogger now in private beta, Google Analytics Blog

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Fake It Til You Make It
• PPC Position: Crappy Spellers Wanted
• Dude, Your Site Is Boring No Links For You
• Matt McGee: Twittering for Charity
• Google 'VisualRank' - A Prototype for Precision Image Search
• Optimizing for Product Colors: Duplicate Content or Long Tail Gold?
• 100-Plus Tips and Resources to Protect Your Site Network from Google
• SEORipOff.com : Stain of the Search Marketing Industry
• How I Use Twitter for Headline Examples
• Creating a Natural Link Profile for Your Site
• Small Business Marketing Unleashed, We Miss You
• 20 SEO Copywriting hints
• An Understanding of SEO Keyword Research
• Court Orders Negative Keywords Used To Block Trademark Terms
• Semantic SEO Can Increase the Number of Page Views by 500%
• Twitter Secrets Revealed

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported onSearch Engine Land and from other places across the web

From Search Engine Land:

• Google Adds Street Views To Step-By-Step Driving Directions
  The Google LatLong Blog announced that you can now see street views turn-by-turn (when available) when you are seeking out driving directions via Google Maps. For example, when driving from the Empire State Building to Times Square, you can see that Google has street views available for every turn. A...
• Twitter Wrote This Column For Me
  By now you have probably seen a bunch of talk about Twitter. And after all of this talk you might be still thinking: OK, so what the heck is Twitter really and why should I care? How is it going to help my business at the end of the...
• Yelp For Business: New Tools Allowing Local Businesses To Speak For Themselves & More
  As the phenomenon of local business ratings and reviews becomes more "institutionalized" and important, efforts are popping up to help businesses cope and/or take advantage of the trend. Merchant Circle is one business in the local space that has positioned itself as a platform for SMB "reputation management" as well...
• The Art of Opportunistic Linking
  A couple weeks back I wrote a LinkWeek column here titled "Your Site's Manifest Linking Destiny". At the end of that column I closed with the following thoughts......
• Google Showing Ranking Scores On AdWords?
  This morning I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that several webmasters began noticing three values being displayed under some AdWords ads that might reveal some details on how Google may rank AdWords ads. The scores include the "Pscore," "mCPC," and "thresh." Danny and I took guesses at what...
• Microsoft Live Mobile Adds Product Search, "Find My Location"
  Microsoft has introduced enhanced mobile product search, at m.live.com. It shrinks down the content from the desktop product search into a bite-sized mobile presentation. You get images, reviews, product specifications and features. These things don't come up for every category; however it's a very nice presentation of information, and the...
• Search Illustrated: Inside The Search Algorithm
  The Algorithm. If an SEO had a nickel for every time that phrase was mentioned in a day... Over time we've become more comfortable with the main triggers that affect search rankings. But, it's leveraging the sum of all factors that can really give you an advantage over the...

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Promote your feeds and gadgets with iGoogle, Inside AdSense
• Yahoo to outsource Messenger phone calls to Jajah, Yahoo! News

Business Issues

• Google: SEC recommending action against director, Reuters
• GOOGLE ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF ADDITIONAL PROXY MATERIALS, Google
• Interview With Citi Analyst Mark Mahaney On Yahoo/Microsoft/Google, TechCrunch
• Lawsuits: Google discloses ex-Pixar CFO's legal trouble -- but Disney doesn't, Valleywag
• Yahoo! pimping malware from banner ads, The Register
• Fast Search Acquisition Completed by Microsoft, Search Engine Watch Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Shaking things up, Google LatLong
• Yelp Lets Businesses Fight Back, TechCrunch

Link Building

• Auto Dealer Links - "Do Follow" Tuesday, Link Building Best Practices
• Buying 70,000 Links From Same Site Equated to "SEOicide", Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Whois Domaintools Paid Links Passing PageRank, beu blog
• The Google paid link dilemma, E-Consultancy

Microhoo

• No Break in the Standoff of Microsoft and Yahoo, New York Times
• Could Microhoo Merger Create a Search Duopoly?, Ad Age
• Why Steve Ballmer Will Keep Chasing Yahoo, New York Times

Paid Search & Contextual

• adCenter spring upgrade: campaign management updates - adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com
• API Upgrade for Editorial Validation Errors - adCenter API, adcentercommunity.com
• Is Google Putting A Hurting On Your Expectation Management With Clients?, SEM Geek
• Online Ad Network Adify Sold To Cox For $300 Million Plus Earnout, paidContent.org
• Killer Site Targeting: PPC Content Scrape , Search Engine Watch
• Google, Mobile Marketing Association Pursue Differing Ad Standards, ClickZ

Searching

• Travelgrove launches Hotel Search Engine, altsearchengines.com
• Searching for Creative Commons licensed content, Google Custom Search
• Wine search engine Snooth goes global!, altsearchengines.com

SEM Industry

• An Interview with Exalead's Franois Bourdoncle, altsearchengines.com
• Top Search Marketing Blogs by RSS Subscribers, Online Marketing Blog

SEO & SEM

• Google Follows Nofollowed Links in SEOmoz Comments?, SEOmoz
• The Role of Outbound Links, SEOmoz
• Conducting a Redirect Audit on Your Web Site, Search Engine Watch
• Serious SQL Injection Vulnerability, Red Cardinal
• Google Updates Toolbar PageRank: April 2008, Search Engine Roundtable
• How 3 Lines of Code Can Improve Your Rankings, Search Engine Guide
• How to Analyze Page Keyword Prominence, Search Engine Journal
• Let's Talk Landing Pages, SEOmoz
• Protecting Your Personal Brand: 4 Simple Steps, ViperChill
• Will Your Website Pass a Google Review?, SEO Book

Social Media

• OpenSocial Developer Interview: Charles Ying from Pixverse, OpenSocial API Blog
• Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Twitter Gaining Momentum But Still Niche, Hitwise Intelligence

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Video Categories, Google Operating System

Web Analytics

• Movin' on up, Burning Questions
• Taking the Fear Out of Web Analytics for Your Small Business, Search Engine Watch

Other Items

• Google Lego Monster, Googlified
• Google Maps Stickers Gone Missing, Search Engine Roundtable
• Daily SearchCast, April 28, 2008: Catching Up! SMX Social Through Microhoo!, Daily SearchCast
• Daily SearchCast, April 29, 2008: Yelp Enables Business Talk Back; Mystery AdWords Scores, Daily SearchCast
• Finally, Some Good News: A New Baby for Jerry Yang!, AllThingsD

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Its Spring, How Clean Is Your Blog?
• Twitter: I Twink I Twove You
• SMX Social Media 2008 Recap by Michael Gray
• Adopting a Local Search Strategy for Multi National Clients
• Google Leaks Max CPC and Quality Score Variables (Pscore, mCPC and thresh)
• How to Analyze your Site with Del.icio.us
• How Keyword matching is just a little like online dating ?‚?» SEO Chicks
• Twitter Wrote This Column For Me
• The Art of the "Thank You" Page
• PuzzCAPTCHA: Proving You Are Human, The Fun Way.
• Get Your Search Marketing Resume Indexed By A Recruiter
• The Role of Outbound Links
• Yahoo Answers: 11 Million Answers per Month
• 22 Essential Habits Towards Blogging Success
• Social Media Being Taught at School
• Working on Content Sharing Survey Results
• How To Make A Small Fortune With Twitter
• Guest Post by Social Media Dad, Matt McGee
• 10 reasons why Yahoo search sucks
• Muhammad Saleem on the Importance of Community
• 16 Great Ways To Approach Social Media Marketing - A Beginner's Guide
• SMX Social: Just What Did Calacanis Say About SEO & More Recaps
• Kevin Ryan of Search Engine Strategies addresses rumors and bannings

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