SEOmoz is now Moz

Today, May 29, 2013, SEOmoz retired its brand name to MOZ. Users can now access the site through MOZ.com. Rand Fishkin, CEO and Founder announced today that the re-branding is for a number of reasons, quoting.

• "Calling ourselves "SEO"moz is no longer transparent and authentic. With products like Fresh Web Explorer, FollowerWonk, GetListed, and the beta of Moz Analytics (alongside the vast array of non-SEO content we publish), we're no longer purely an SEO software company. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous, and that violates our core values.
• SEO is bigger than just SEO - as hard as I've fought personally and we've fought as an organization over the last decade to make marketers and organizations think more holistically about organic search, the branding of the past remains. SEO is seen as a narrow set of activities that move rankings up and bring search visitors in. To truly help with SEO, we have to do more than just place keywords, make sites accessible, and build links, but first we need the influence to make these changes. A broader marketer is often granted that influence, while pure SEOs still, unfairly, must strive for it.
• For many folks outside of our community, the acronym SEO has (unfair) associations with spam or manipulation. To quote an all-to-frequent comment we see when our site is mentioned around the web, "Don't trust any domain with SEO in the name." That feedback is hard to hear, and it's wrong, but that doesn't change the impact. We know that the "SEO" in SEOmoz has, in the past, hurt our ability to persuade people about the incredible value of organic search marketing. Moz gives us a chance to do something all marketers love - test something new and observe the results :-) 
• It's surpisingly hard for folks who don't know to say the acronym "SEO" as letters to pronounce the brand name. I've heard everything from see-oh-moez to say-ow-mahz to sh-ow-moss. For years, I didn't think it was a big deal, but fluency bias suggests this probably has a substantive negative impact on the brand's perception.
• The SEOmoz name retains a strong branding connection and expectation to our historical consulting business (just last week, I received 4 consulting inquiries!). We haven't offered consulting in many years, and this move can help distance our 2004-2009 incarnation from the software focus we have today.
• For the sake of transparency, I need to be honest that this is also marketing move - a rebrand is a chance to earn a second look from people who've long known us and had associations with the company. We hope that second look is going to lead those who haven't yet seen what we've become over the last few years to check out our content, Moz Analytics, and the many functions our research tools provide."

Highlights of the new features mentioned:

• FollowerWonk – Twitter Analytics (Who are your followers? Where are they located? When do they tweet?)
• Fresh Web Explorer – Mentions Tool (search for keyword and will return sites mentioning that keyword)
• GetListed – Listing Crawler Tool (searches for known sites a company is listed to, recommends listing sites to submit)
• Moz Analytics (beta) – Analytics Tool (comprehensive collection of a company’s web marketing data)

Rand Fishkin added that they are no longer purely an SEO software company, as they now look into Inbound Marketing and more comprehensive Analytics.

I believe they are kicking up a notch on the competition with the rival: HubSpot. As a Moz user, I am really glad about this major update. I'm really interested in Big and Qualitative Data and new Inbound Marketing Techniques. Hope this works for you as well.

Here's the full Moz announcement.

Google Buzz Re-announced Shutdown

In October 2011, Google Buzz announced that they will be shutting down the service. Just last weekend, Google sent a notification to Buzz users that the shutdown will take place on or after July 17th, 2013. This is the microblogging feature of Google that is closely like the service of Twitter and Facebook.

Wiki: Google Buzz was a social networking, microblogging and messaging tool that was developed by Google and integrated into their web-based email program, Gmail.

Google also announced in their blog that there are 3 ways to access your Google Buzz posts.

1. You can view it on your Google Profile
2. You can download it using Google Takeout
3. You can access it using Google Dashboard

I read their announcement 2 years ago and now I'm really surprised that Google Buzz is still around. =)) Kudos to Google for knowing when to stop though. :)

Excel: Moving Alternate Rows or Copying Text from Alternate Cells

Quick tip: This has helped me a lot! I was extracting hyperlinks and I needed to get texts associated in a separate column. This was the data I had:

Column A, cell 1: (Website name1)

Column A, cell 2: (This is the website's link) - note that the word link was a hypertext that's why I needed to use the macros mentioned above.

Column A, cell 3: (Website name2)

Column A, cell 4: (This is the website's link) - note that the word link was a hypertext that's why I needed to use the macros mentioned above.

What I want:

Column A: Website Name

Column B. extracted 'Link' or URL so to speak

What I did:

On a new column (C), I keyed in 

=INDEX(A:A,ROW()*2)

and double click / drag down;

Result:

Column C, cell 1: Website1

Column C, cell 2: Website2

Column C, cell 2: Website3

Column C, cell 2: Website4

I just did some "copy as text pasting" and remove blanks and viola!

Hope this helps. Well if you want to be a macro superstar you can always use:

Sub Test()

Dim iLastRow As Long

Dim i As Long

iLastRow = Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row

If (iLastRow \ 2) * 2 <> iLastRow Then

iLastRow = iLastRow - 1

End If

For i = cLastRow To 2 Step -2

Cells(i - 1, "B").Value = Cells(i, "A").Value

Rows(i).Delete

Next i

End Sub

Enjoy! =)

Gmail and Google Wallet Integration: Send Money To Friends Easily

    

Travis Green, Google Wallet's Product Manager announced today that they now integrate Google Wallet with Gmail. Google is always improving its services and this is indeed one that will be very convenient for users. We all know that online and mobile shoppers continue to increase over the years so this will be beneficial for businesses as well.

What is Google Wallet anyway?

According to Wiki, Google Wallet is a mobile payment system developed by Google that allows its users to store debit cards, credit cards, loyalty cards, and gift cards among other things, as well as redeeming sales promotions on their mobile phone.

Pretty much clear. Or in other words - a competitor to Paypal.

The Integration:

So if you want to send money using Gmail, just hover on the attachment paperclip and click the "$" icon to attach money to you email. Just enter the amount you want to send and click "send". That easy!

This feature (sending money through Gmail) is currently available only in desktop version (so I may blog once the App comes out). However, you can still send money from Google Wallet and access from wallet.google.com on your laptop or mobile phone.

Of course Google Wallet promises that it will also cover users with the Purchase Protection Policy.

Additional notes: This is not a fully rolled-out feature and is coming to U.S. Gmail users over the coming months. Applicable only to users over 18 years old.

LinkedIn: New Privacy Policy and User Agreement

Today,May 13, 2013, is the day that LinkedIn rolled out their new Privacy Policy and User Agreement update. This is a follow up in my previous blog: LinkedIn: New Privacy Policy Made Easy. As we all know, yellow banners will always catch attention and that is where they put it. This is the actual banner that is linking to their revised page:

As promised LinkedIn has made a nice Privacy Policy page. They used images and grouped the policies into 11 parts namely:


1. Introduction
2. Your Obligations
3. Your Rights
4. Our Rights & Obligations
5. Disclaimer
6. Limitation of Liability
7. Termination
8. Dispute Resolution
9. General Terms
10. LinkedIn “DOs” and “DON’Ts.”
11. Complaints Regarding Content Posted on the LinkedIn Website

In case you you missed it up there, here is LinkedIn's updated User Agreement.

As mentioned before, the most notable thing about this update is that LinkedIn will now be allowing ads to show up on your accounts. Be smart, read.

Google: Penguin 2.0 to Roll Out Soon

Matt Cutts, Google's software engineer and Head of the Webspam Team has recently announced what to expect for SEO in the coming months. In a video released today he is proud to announce that Google will be rolling out Penguin 2.0 soon. It is very important to follow these SEO updates to help you in your digital marketing and online brand presence. Here is the summary of what he mentioned in this video:

• Google still aims to make all the changes that make a site compelling - it is of course through high quality content.
  
  
• Penguin 2.0 will target the black hat web span. This is more comprehensive than penguin.
  
  
• They will look up more on Advertorials that violate Google's quality guidelines. Advertorials should not float page ranks and should be clear in conspicuous disclosures.
  
  
• Upstream to deny the value to link spammers. They are looking to roll out a new system with a more sophisticated analysis.
  
  
• New comprehensive system to detect hack sites better. 
  
  
• Aims to help regular webmasters - algorithms to give more authority. E.g medical or travel. 
  
  
• Updating sites affected by Panda - find additional signals for sites that in the grey area that has quality.
  
  
• Refine host clustering - once you see a cluster of results from one domain in the first page you should see less in the succeeding pages.
  
  
• More for Webmasters - more concrete details and reports.

Coming in the summer of 2013.

Google is getting smarter and smarter so....

Black Hats Beware!

LinkedIn: New Privacy Policy Made Easy

Today, May 10th, LinkedIn has announced that they will be updating their privacy policy in the next week. LinkedIn said that they are committed to putting their members first that is why they made the announcement. 

These are the highlights for the Privacy Policy change are:

• They will be clarifying and simplifying language in these documents (use of legal words) to make it easier for members to read and understand.

• The updated Policy will be presented in a page that will eventually become a Privacy Portal.

• Sponsored content will be introduced in the LinkedIn feed. This feature will give LinkedIn's advertising partners the chance to serve designated content that members can like, comment and share.

Here's a short, very informative and straightforward video posted regarding this update.