04/11 – Panda 2.0                                 09/28 – Panda 2.5

05/09 – Panda 2.1                                 10/03 – Panda Flux

06/21 – Panda 2.2                                 10/13 – Panda Flux

07/23 – Panda 2.3                                 11/18 – Panda 3.1

Panda 1.0 impacted an estimated 12% of queries

Anyway, I think the quiz is still cool and up to date (most part), it kindda refreshes your memory on SEO fundamentals.

There’re are 75 questions which can take up to 30 mins to finish. You get an image stamp to put on your site. Like this one –>>

94% Take the quiz at SEO moz

Few questions I’ve missed:

• #35 Which of these is least likely to have difficulty ranking for its targeted terms/phrases in Google?

  Correct Answer: A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links

  This is a tough question, and the answer is even somewhat debatable. However, as phrased, the MOST correct answer is almost certainly – “A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links” – as each of the other situations have many examples of having very difficult times ranking well.

• #60 Where do search engines consider content inside an iFrame to be located?

  Correct Answer: On the source page the iFrame pulls from

  Engines judge iframe content the same way browsers do, and consider them to be part of the source page the iFrame pulls from (not the URL displaying the iFrame content).

• #68 Which Search Engines currently allow the ‘nocontent’ attribute?

  Correct Answer: Yahoo!

  To date, only Yahoo! has implemented the nocontent parameter.

If you’re interested, here’s the link to take the quiz: http://www.seomoz.org/seo-expert-quiz

Some companies are still not 100% sure if to have the SEO outsourced to the specialist SEO Company, or to hire SEO staff directly, and have them work onsite. The constant barrage from the SPAM email offers from mostly Far East SEO companies and their low pricing and the high contract rates of the local Chicago SEO companies and professionals mate things even worse! To outsource to an unknown company on the other side of the world, or to hire a local provider – who will in most cases charge you twice more?

The reason it is so hard to hire a SEO staff or engage a SEO company is that there is relatively little understanding on what SEO really is. It is not uncommon to hear the completely opposite opinions and definitions on what the SEO is. Some people bring in the pay per click (PPC) in it, some talk about on page and off page SEO, some talk about link building (now, how do you build a link?). The social media, made things even more complex lately.

So how do you hire someone not knowing nothing neither on what the task on hand is, nor the results that are to be achieved? You are quite likely to fail. If you stick to it, you are quite likely to fail a few times as well.

The same is true if you hire internally or a external SEO vendor.

Do it yourself SEO jobs are the natural result of this situation. You either try to do it yourself if you are a small company, or ask your existing staff to learn and do the SEO tasks for you. That is even more often a recipe for the disaster. You are asking of your staff to do a SEO job that they have not been trained for and have no experience in it. Jet somehow you expect them to succeed?

Hiring for SEO jobs is tough.

The best peace of the advice is to get the best SEO professional you can get – to help you and do the job interviews for you. Regardless if you are hiring an external SEO company, or an onsite SEO vendor, or the person to do SEO inhouse on your payroll. You are far likely to get the right one to do your SEO jobs than trying to asses the candidates yourself (presuming you are not a SEO specialist yourself!).

搜索引擎排名算法中主要考虑的是以下因素：URL、网站影响力、关键字匹配、网页更新时间、网页的相似度等因素。

百度将用户搜索的关键字是否与页面整体匹配，关键字是否与标题、meta、内容匹配、URL放在网站影响力的前面，百度这样做的意图是降低网站影响力的作用，更突出网页的质量、网页与用户期望结果的匹配度，符合用户的搜索体验。

而Google的以网站影响力优先的算法，是其搜索结果排除人工干预的必然选择，否则将会出现大量垃圾网站的结果出现在搜索结果首页。

由于百度存在人工干预机制，而Google则完全依赖机器出现搜索结果，因此百度对于非重要影响力的网站的结果具有一定的监控能力，一旦发现是垃圾网页出现在搜索结果前列，百度可以通过人工封杀网站的形式处理，因此百度可以适当降低网站影响力的权重。

网站影响力主要根据网站的外部链接的多少和质量根据一定的算法计算出来。不同的搜索引擎有不一样的算法，但大致而言相差不多。但不同搜索引擎的排名算法也在不断地调整，最近Google也因为博客的原因增加了网页更新时间的权重。

从总体而言，一个网站在Google的排名可能是缓慢提升的，随着时间的推移，网站外部链接的增加，网站PR值会越来越高，在Google的排名就增加了。而网站在百度的排名则与网站影响力关系有一定关系，但不是最大，一个新网站，如果在关键字处理得当，可以得到百度较高的排名。

新版SEO搜索引擎优化入门指南丰富了内容，有了更多的图文例子，对词汇定义也更加完善，而Google机器人也强势回归。Google SEO 入门教程涵盖 了网站站长需要考虑优化的诸多方面。这些方面（比如改善标题和描述元标签，URL结构，网站导航，网站内容的建设，锚文本……等等）适用于各种不同经验层 次的网站站长和不同规模和类型的网站。

您可以到 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=zh-Hans&answer=35291

下载完整 32 页的 PDF 文件（英文版、简体版、繁体版），打印下来作为有用的SEO入门参考资料。

Over 10,000 people from more than 90 countries have taken the survey earlier this year. Topics like job titles, responsibilities, in-house vs agency, earning difference across the board and seo tactics were conducted from this survey.

One interesting aspect from one of the survey questions is “What are the youngers up to these days?”

Results show the next generation under 22 are far more likely to have:

• Removed nofollow

• Used rel=”canonical”

• Bought links from other webmasters and websites

• Filed a reconsideration request to Google

• Filed a spam report

In my opinion, the survey offers one of the most comprehensive views yet of the current state and future prospects of SEO and search marketing. To see it yourself, check out the report here: Get The 2010 SEO Industry Survey Results.

In summary:

•April 28th – May 3rd is when it happened
•Algorithmic change
•Impacts long tail searches more than head searches
•It is “deliberate” and will be sticking around
•Quality change
•No relation to Caffeine but Caffeine is “proceeding to pace”
•No human manipulation
•This is not temporary
•If you are impacted, assess your site for quality
Here is the detailed video from Google’s Matt Cutts:

You can report paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers and etc from webmaster tool.

Here’s a shortcut link for it:

http://goo.gl/linkspam

Although Matt Cutts states Google works really hard from Competitor A hurting Competitor B from this “bad mouthing” action. It doesn’t guarantee Google won’t penalize a site because a bogus report from your competitor.

So be careful when you go out bad mouthing someone, because it might back fire you.

You can find Matt Cutts original post at: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/calling-for-link-spam-reports

“What should we do with Black Hats?”

50 SEOs, 50 different answers.

My favorite one is “Don’t blame the players, blame the game.”

Enjoy watching. It’s quite entertaining.