Why Do Visits to a Page that Jump After a Tweet Show Much Higher Visits than Twitter’s “link clicks”?

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I am a bit confused by trying to understand the traffic to one of my blogs after a tweet. I tweeted about an old blog post (How to Build a System to Reduce Interruptions for Software Developers). It had received 2 page views in the previous month. The day I tweeted it, 81 visitors clicked through to the post.

The blog I tweeted about is a very old blog (I started it 15 years ago). I use it now just to post comments that I make on other blogs which I want to be able to reference later. It is hosted on blogger (which is not something I would normally do, but I just had this blog sitting around not doing anything so I decided to use it this way) and I don’t have access to server logs or such things. The Blogger statistics shows you the page views and some limited data (which is where I got the 81 visitors from).

But blogger shows only 32 coming from Twitter and no other referrer above 5. Twitter only shows 23 link clicks. Where are all the other visits coming from? And why does Blogger show more visits from Twitter than Twitter does (I guess people could have tweeted the same info as I did – but without using the retweet function)? I figure Twitter’s figure should be more accurate, but it could also just be inaccurate? I have always been disappointed by how low Twitter link clicks are (but I figured that is just the way it is). I often get more likes than “link clicks” and sometimes more retweets than “link clicks (which doesn’t make that much sense to me).

Anyway if you have thoughts on what is going on with this data, please let me know.

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High Domain Authority Blogs That Use DoFollow Commenter Links

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Due to spam comments many sites add the nofollow tag to comments. For many years the nofollow tag has been the default in WordPress (you have to use a plugin to revert back to the original style where comment author links were not flagged as untrusted). With the nofollow tag Google (and Moz) do not give the link value.

Here is a list of blogs that moderate their comments and provide dofollow links giving those that contribute worthwhile comments the benefit of being considered real links by Google (and others). I will remove blogs that switch to being nofollow.

This list is up to date – unlike nearly every other source I find online (those lists I find online have very few blogs that are actually dofollow hidden in a huge list of nofollow blogs). I also don’t list blogs that are no longer actively updated. In case you wonder why this list is so short, those are the reasons why.

View the 2015 version of this list (that was last updated in early 2017)

6.0 Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog (Moz Page Authority (MPA) 55, Moz Spam Score (MSS) 5, Alexa 525,000)
5.6 (MozRank) Kikolani (MPA 63, MSS 3, CommentLuvDF*, Alexa 298,000)
5.3 Improving Your Search Engine Ranking (MPA 33, MSS 3, Alexa 721,000)
5.2 Grow Map (MPA 58, MSS 0, CommentLuvDF, Alexa 308,000)
4.7 Freelance Lifestyle, Finance and Entrepreneurship Blog (MPA 31, MSS 0, Alexa 1,210,000)
4.6 Successful Blogging (MPA 44, MSS 0, CommentLuvDF, Alexa 205,000)
4.4 Elise Cohen Ho (MPA 43, MSS 1, CommentLuvDF, Alexa 1,247,000)
5.7 Wassup blog (MPA 51, MSS 2, CommentLuvDF, Alexa 999,000)
5.5 Power Affiliate Club (MPA 40, MSS 2, CommentLuvDF, Alexa 302,000)
5.3 Mandy Allen (MPA 42, MSS 0, Alexa 787,000)
4.6 Sherman Smith’s Blog (MPA 47, MSS 3, CommentLuvDF, Alexa 985,000)

Order of the list is based on MozRank but sites moved down for using popups to interfere with visitors using the site and other usability problems.

Many of the best blogs that provide dofollow links require the use of your real name, a link to your home page or a blog that you obviously write, and comments that are valuable (not just meaningless drivel “great post” etc., which are often just deleted). They may also require numerous (normally between 3 to 10) approved comments before links become dofollow.

Unfortunately many people spam these blogs in an attempt to get dofollow links. That results in many of the blogs turning off dofollow links. Those that stay dollow are usually impatient with spamming low quality comments and remove poor quality links that are not personal blogs. If you comment, post valuable comments if you expect to get a dollow link, otherwise you are just contributing to the decline of blogs that provide dofollow links.

I also have dofollow links to the blogs I list here (unless they have failed to post my comments without explanation – likely do to poorly performing spam filters, if they chose to delete the comments for not being the quality they expect and say that, it is fine). If you see a list without links (just listing text urls) you can be confident that it was not created with much care and skip it: just go find more reliable lists, which will have real links to the blogs.

If you know of a dofollow blog with at least a 1 year track record and that has compelling posts (if it isn’t of high quality it will likely die so it isn’t worth adding just to have to remove it later) add a comment with the information on the blog.

* CommentLuvDF – they dofollow blog-post-title-link (usually only after between 3 to 10 approved comments) but not author link

Google Check of Whether a Website is Mobile Friendly

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Google provides a tool to show what if they think a web site is “mobile friendly.” Google states that they will penalize sites in their search rankings if Google doesn’t believe they are mobile friendly. So obviously this matters if you care about your ranking in Google.

If the site passes Google’s test you will get a response similar to ours:

Now Google’s automated tool isn’t so great at providing good usability advice (such as if it really is a good design for mobile users) but it does tell you if Google is going to punish the site or not. If Google thinks the site fails they will provide some feedback, such as:

Text too small to read
Links too close together
Mobile viewport not set

Then you can decide if those really are issues and if you want to fix them. Due to Google’s dominate market position it may be you feel forced to adjust a site (even if it means degrading real usability) in order to make Google happy so your site isn’t punished by Google in search rankings. Or you can decide that you are going to do what is right for users regardless of what Google will do to the site.

Note if you don’t have javascript enabled Google’s tool just fails. I can’t imagine why this tool should require javascript but certainly it is pitifully lame to not provide a clear indication that they created a site that doesn’t work unless javascript is enabled instead of just giving a completely useless message “There was a problem with the request. Please try again later.” as they do now. Google should punish sites that due such lame things in my opinion. I also get that useless message about 20% of the time when I have tried validating a site (but if javascript is enable just reloading makes it work).

The tool is useful in pointing out potential issues to improve for mobile users. I do wish however, Google wasn’t so autocratic about its opinions acting as though failing their tests is equal to failure mobile users. It isn’t, it is a decent indication there may be a problem but it is not proof there is a problem.

Customized Search Results by Only Searching Specific Web Site

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1 of the more interesting search features that most people know nothing about are customized search engines. I first experienced these with Rollyo in 2005.

I use a similar feature available via Google now to provide customized search results for topics such as investing, engineering and my Curious Cat web sites.

Setting up a Google Custom Search Engine is very easy. Essentially you just setup an account and then add the sites you want included in the search engine. Then you can get a search box to add to your site that will return results based on the web sites you selected.

The Importance of the User in SEO

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Optimize for how users are actually using the page — as opposed to how you optimized the page ahead of time — and you’ll see significantly better traffic.

Cyrus Shepard in an good blog post: My Single Best SEO Tip for Improved Web Traffic.

I have always seen the first focus on creating content that users want (both in content and usability of the medium of delivery). Some techniques related to SEO can be useful in tweaking how you go about managing your online presence but it is secondary to creating great content focused on users.

His article is really focused on putting a large amount of effort into tweaking the content. I think this makes sense for some important pages (and some important flows within a web site or web application). I think it is way too much effort to expend on most pages (the payback won’t be worth the effort).

SEO Techniques for 2016

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Your brand’s most valuable tool is its website. Your website is what people will read when they are researching your company and what you do. It is what they will turn to when they want to get in touch with you. It’s what will entice new traffic to buy and existing customers and clients to stick around. And, because of the way the Web works in the second decade of the new millennium, all of that is dependent upon Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is key to how people find your website now. Many new website developers and builders believe that SEO is just about keywords. The truth is that there is a lot more to SEO than simply using a few choice words or phrases a few times in your content and tags. Here are some of the best things you can do to ensure your website’s SEO is on the right track for your audience in 2016.

Security

More and more companies are finding themselves the victims of hackers and data thieves. It is vitally important that you make sure you protect the people who visit your site and submit information through your site, etc. While your Web hosting provider will likely offer some security on their end, it is also vitally important that you protect your work with your own servers.

According to Firewall Technical, a company that provides IT support in Ottawa, “A server acts not only as a space for business documents, but it can also control how documents are retrieved. In addition, servers protect the entire network. For this reason, it is critical that your server is operating smoothly.” Make sure that your local and cloud servers are as secure as possible. The last thing you want is someone stealing customer information from your own databases!

Search engines will even put up scary messages warning users that if they follow a link to a web site that has been hacked (and the search engine catches the hack). That will drop your search visitors to almost zero and they will be scared to come back even if you fix your server. No amount of SEO mastery will help you rebuild after a data breach that endangers your customers’ private information!

Links

According to a Moz report done last year, domain level linking is the most important component of SEO success. Domain level linking is a link that points to the whole site instead of a specific page or piece of content within that site.

A few years ago, this was easy enough to achieve. Businesses would hire content writers to churn out dozens of pieces of slap-dashed content and wallpaper the Internet with them (you remember E-zines, right?) to build up their inbound link percentage. Starting around 2013, however, Google and the other search engines got hip to this gaming of their system and started reworking their algorithms. It was a move similar to what they did when keyword stuffing started to dilute their search results.

Today the links that point to your site need to be relevant and from quality sites. Setting up link wheels is a punishable offense and publishing the same piece of content in multiple places is no longer allowed (in fact, it can get your site delisted entirely). This means that you need to be proactive about giving interviews and guest posting on relevant and high-ranking sites both within and outside of your niche.

A great way to help this along is to sign up for services such as Help a Reporter Out. You can sign up as a “source” and then respond to the queries that fall within your expertise. If the reporter asking for help/information chooses your response, you might score an interview or a quote–both of which come with links back to your site. You can also sign up for contributor accounts on sites like The Huffington Post.

Keywords

We’ve talked a lot about how keywords aren’t as important as links and security. This doesn’t mean, however, that your keywords are irrelevant in the 2016 SEO game. Keywords and phrases are still important. They are still often the deciding factor in how your site is listed within a searcher’s results. The difference is that now the keywords you choose matter more than ever.

The keywords you choose must flow naturally within your content. This means that when doing your research, you want to focus on keywords that flow naturally instead of just words strung together haphazardly. You also need to be aware of how often you use them. While there is no definitive ideal percentage, you typically want to limit your keywords to one to two percent of the content.

Security, links and keywords are the most important parts of your SEO campaign. Make sure you get these right and the rest should fall into place!

Related: Keeping Up with SEO Changes

Moz Essentially Stops Sharing MozRank etc. via API

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Moz had been allowing up to 1,000,000 rows of data to be retrieved via their API for free each month. We used that service when we updated our MultipageRank site to show Moz scores. We made this update because Google stopped updating their publicly shared pagerank values and were happen to support Moz’s commitment to providing data similar to what Google stopped sharing.

Moz updated their site (with no notice) to stop providing results after 25,000 rows a month (so 97.5% less than they used to – essentially none). To retrieve more you must pay $500+ every month. We don’t even get that much in revenue each year so that isn’t an option for us.

We will have to look for options about what to do, possibly finding an alternative to MozRank. At this point MozRank is still shared publicly via the toolbar so still is potentially a decent public metric. But just like Google removed the measure from the public once it had served to provide them marketing value maybe Moz will do the same thing and only provide the data for those paying for it. Obviously it is perfectly in their right (both Google and Moz) to restrict access to their data.

It sure would be nice if companies provided a few months notice before they stop the data from being provided. It will take us some time to update our site, since it is just a simple project we do to try and help people.

Don’t Hide Important Content Using Coding Gimmicks

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My comment on: Does Hidden/Tabbed Content Still Get Picked Up By Google?

I would say that hidden tab stuff is bad Ux (most of the time). I could figure out what the heck was going on when I read this post and it seems to end without having addressed the issue sensibly. Oh, the content is hidden up above I finally figured out. I think Google does exactly the right thing, in making the hidden content a very low ranking factor for the page because as a user it is hidden and not the focus of the page.

The conclusion of the original post is hidden text is given very low weight by Google in search results. If you go to that page, note that you can’t see most of the content for that “page” you have to find the links to unhide the content.

The hidden text being discussed here is when you hide content that only becomes visible once the user clicks something (and instead of going to a page that highlights that content, some content is unhidden and other content is added to the hidden content on the page). It is just a bad Ux practice in general (as with many Ux issues there are odd cases where it can make sense).

Good Blogging Practices

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One of the things I have always done is to read and comment on blogs I find worthwhile. The main reason I do this is to learn. Another advantages include growing a network of like minded people (that grow from recognizing you commenting on their blog or blogs they read and then some start to read your blog…). And that growing your following can result in more links to your site and better search rankings.

These are my comments sparked by an post with some good ideas on some good blogging practices. They are edited and extended from the comment left on the blog.

Great thoughts.

Give your readers what they want: so important and yes to some extent people think of this, but that idea should get more attention from most bloggers.

Length of posts; as you say make them appropriate. Sometimes what you have to share is best captured in a long post. Sometimes a short post is best. Trying to jam a post into a specific format/length is a recipe for failure.

I do think the long, detailed posts are valuable and if you are never doing that there is likely some value in seeing if some of what you have to say can be expressed well in a long post.

I do have comments I leave spark me to write longer posts on my own blogs. I also started a management blog on blogspot (over 10 years ago) and when I created my own domain (also over 10 years ago) I left it there (urls should live forever).

A few years later I started to use that blog to republish comments I thought were worth keeping (one of the things I do is link to my previous content and trying to find some comment I want to reference is really hard, by collecting comments I think I might want to reference on that blog I can actually find them again). I often edit these a bit and add some links (which I often am prevented from including even when they would be really useful).

I was adding this to the related links that follow – Build Your Online Presence (another post that started as a comment). And this shows another reason to republish your comments that are worth keeping. The original article link is gone. I always include a link to the post I commented on; it is amazing how many are broken a few years later (lots of people break a basic web usability and wise SEO practice and break their urls).

An illustration of why it is in your interests to have urls live forever. Last year I did posts on my most popular posts on many of my blogs (based on views in 2014). A fairly typical example is from my Curious Cat Comments blog. The most popular posts by year 2014-6 (the most recent year does have an advantage as lots of regular readers read each new post); 2013-1; 2010-1; 2009-1; 2008-1; 2007-1; 2006-2. This one actually was more heavily weighted to recent post than most of my blogs. I just checked it for this year and 2 posts from 2007 and 1 post from 2008 that were not in the top last year are all in the top 6 this year (and the one from 2008 last year is also repeated again).

Big Updates to Moz Index Results in Big Moves in Domain Authority and Page Authority Results

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Moz posted a big update to their index this week that had a big impact on Moz Page Authority and Domain Authority. Why does it matter?

Really it doesn’t matter, but since Google is so secretive the Moz data gives us some insight into what Google (and other search engines are likely seeing). The changes to Moz have no direct effect on search results or traffic. What Moz believes (and it makes sense they are right) is that the updates better match what Google (and the others) see.

Basically Moz found some weaknesses in their prior data and methods and have tried to improve them, as they explained here. Many sites are noticing lowing Page Authority and Domain Authority numbers for their site (as I am on mine). I am not clear yet, but it seems possible, their was a general inflation in the numbers and so say the average number might have declined by 20% (this is just a made up number for illustration purposes). If that were true what really matters is if you declined less (that would be good) or more (that would be bad) than 20%.

And of course, there will be lots of variation in the changes in scores. These scores move around a fair amount (though Domain Authority scores do seem fairly stable over time) even when no big changes are happening at Moz.

Comments on the fluctuations of DA and PA scores from Rand Fisken- DA/PA Fluctuations: How to Interpret, Apply, & Understand These ML-Based Scores

because Mozscape indices take 3-4 weeks to process, the data collected in an index is between ~21-90 days old.
…
Since Domain and Page Authority are on a 100-page scale, the very top of that represents the most link-rich sites and pages, and nearly every index, it’s harder and harder to get these high scores and sites, on average, that aren’t growing their link profiles substantively will see PA/DA drops.
…
PA/DA are created using a machine-learning algorithm whose training set is search results in Google. Over time, as Google gets pickier about which types of links it counts, and as Mozscape picks up on those changes, PA/DA scores will change to reflect it.
…
My strongest suggestion if you ever have the concern/question “Why did my PA/DA drop?!” is to always compare against a set of competing sites/pages. If most of your competitors fell as well, it’s more likely related to relative scaling or crawl biasing issues, not to anything you’ve done

Rand provides lots of good insight here. Moz is generally followed closely by people that pay a great deal of attention to SEO. I am not really in that camp, I pay some attention just because I find it interesting. I don’t spend time trying to figure out how to increase SEO through various gimmicks.

I don’t pay much attention to ratings for other sites, based on his suggestion I might start tracking a few similar sites to see how their scores vary over time as a way of understanding my scores better. All I really did before was look at other sites authority scores and comparing when I was bored (maybe 2 or 3 times a year) but didn’t keep track of any of them.

I find Moz interesting because it gives us open access to interesting data. There are many other things that impact search results but the authority pages and sites have is an interesting thing to watch (and does have a real impact on search results – even if it is much less than people might suspect).

Earlier this year I wrote about Decreases in MozRank and Page Authority for some of my sites and I posted an update where most of the decreases had disappeared (the authority numbers had returned to the same or close to what they were before the decline). Hopefully that will happen for my sites this time too, but we will have to wait and see.