Friday Favorites - 08/10/07

by Scott Allen

Here’s my favorite picks for Friday August 10, 2007…

I’ve missed a few weeks of blogging due to an extremely busy schedule this summer, so I’m just now getting caught up on my Friday Favorites. This week’s edition will be a little bigger than usual to make up for it. There’s a lot of great links today, so be sure to check them all out.

SEO Related:

Recent happenings in the Google-sphere include discussions on removing the PageRank metric, the long-hated “Supplemental Result” label gets dropped, and Google finally accepting underscores as word separators. (UPDATE 08/14/07: Matt Cutts informs everyone that this is not in effect yet, and to stick with dashes for now.)
Matt Cutts lists some updates to Google Webmaster Tools.
MSN/Live Search has finally gotten on board with Sitemaps autodiscovery through robots.txt.
If you want your site to rank in Search Engines, don’t host with GoDaddy because they block Googlebot. Yes, that is an obnoxious thing for a web host to do.
SEOmoz has release two great new tools. The Juicy Link Finder is a link builder’s dream tool, and the Popular Searches tool lets you see what are the currently hot searches from key sources across the web.
Aaron Wall shows us why screwing up your robots.txt file can be a costly mistake.
Some essential SEO tips from Search Engine Land.
SEOmoz poses a basic test of SEO knowledge that SEO consultants should be able to nail before charging clients for services, along with the answers, and some more questions from Danny Sullivan.
Interesting thoughts on how looking at SEO through PPC eyes can give you a new perspective.
One of the newest contenders in the Social Media arena is Sphinn, which launched about a month ago, and is targeted for the Search Engine Marketing niche. Rand has some thoughts on why search marketers should be using it.

Link Building and Linkbait Related:

V7N Forums discussion on link buying.
Want a million backlinks? Here’s how SEOmoz did it in less than three years.
What inspires someone to link to your site?

PPC Tips, Issues, Resources:

For improved tracking and integration with Google Analytics, tag your PPC campaigns easily with Google’s URL Builder tool.

Blogging / Blog Security Issues:

Graywolf’s thoughts on why you should publish a full feed on your blog.
Does your WordPress blog contain hidden security vulnerabilities?
Also, you may want to read about WordPress and Joomla exploits that are being included in Themes offered on certain third-party sites.
Test the security of your WordPress blog with the WP Scanner.
Top 10 Least Secure WordPress Themes.