Posted by Danny Dover Everyday a fiercely competitive battle takes place online over capturing the attention of millions of readers. As a result the blogosphere constantly changes shape and different players thrust forward as content kings for the day. Lately, I have been trying to find out what forces control this volatile scene. I have been looking for recurring themes and hoping to find useful correlations. Last Friday, )August 15th,

Posted by Danny Dover Disclaimer: This post doesnt include any information about SEO. If you are looking for SEO related content, please read the normal search related posts on this blog. The SEOmoz community has always been a fundamental driving force behind this company. All of you )Moz Community( provide the motivation to keep us )SEOmoz employees( working and you issue the guidance to keep us on the right track. When asked why I like my job so much,

Posted by Danny Dover I dont pretend to be nearly as prolific as people like Robert Scoble or Mike Arrington but I have had some notable success with blogging. In addition to the traditional blogging triumphs )links, notable mentions, social media(, I have been able to help a lot of people and learn a lot. The following is my way of giving back to a community that has already given me so much.

Posted by Danny Dover It is greatly ironic that algorithms, the quintessential example of all that is not human, would be so fundamental to social media. Last week I wrote a post about how Google gathers user data . This week I continue by exposing how popular social media websites use algorithms to utilize user data. Although humans power social media, it is algorithms that provide the frameworks that make user input useful. As proven by the countless social sites online,

Posted by Danny Dover Google Inc. is first and foremost a data company. In the past, it competed on a level playing field by manipulating publicly available data better than its competition. By doing this, it had unprecedented success. Enter Web 2.0. Hard drives, processors, bandwidth and even workers are now all relatively inexpensive. This has caused the barriers to entry in the search field to drastically lower.

Posted by Danny Dover J. K. Rowlings )She wrote a little book called Harry Potter( recently gave the commencement speech at Harvard University. She spoke about the power of failure and the incredible potential of imagination. It was a great speech that left me with one powerful lasting gem. She pointed out that humans are unique in their ability to learn from others experiences. Last week I attended my first search conference.

Posted by Danny Dover )WARNING: This post doesnt offer any SEO advice. If you are looking to learn something, feel free to skip this. Thanks!( Update: I changed the name of this post from "The SMX Advanced Music Video" to the current title to clear up any confusion. After every search conference it has become a tradition for a mozzer to write up some kind of creative recap. In the past, these have included Comics , Overheard at... and Personal Responses .

Posted by Danny Dover Creating viral content for social media is always a gamble. Seemingly great pieces can unexpectedly flop while poorly written blog posts and strange images can go viral without any effort from the creator. In most ways, the success of viral marketing is out of the hands of the marketers. Yet, smart marketers, just like smart gamblers, know there are certain things they can do to help their chances.

Posted by Danny Dover You would think that if someone didnt know what they were searching for, they would stop looking. Yet everyday, I talk to people who aimlessly spend their time and energy looking for some far away holy grail. As a SEO my quest for success is a little better defined. I want to work on websites that drive immense traffic, be at the top of competitive SERPs and most of all, I want to help people. I think many SEOs feel the same way.

Posted by Danny Dover About two weeks ago Rand and Scott posted a Whiteboard Friday explaining how to get a SEO job . I think it is a great resource for SEOs who already have a lot of experience, but what about those who dont? How are the inexperienced supposed to get their first job at an internet technology company? The following is how I did it.

Posted by Danny Dover When I first started at SEOmoz about 9 months ago, I was the web development intern. My experience prior to the internship was limited entirely to writing code. Since then, I have spent literally hundreds of hours expanding my knowledge into different areas. Specifically I have focused on accepted SEO techniques and small business practices. My beginner SEO checklists of the last few weeks have been the tangible result of my newly acquired knowledge.

Posted by Danny Dover For the last three months I have been hard at work learning SEO by optimizing a local small business website. The business is called Giggly Wiggly Preschool and is located in the Seattle suburb Issaquah, Washington. This Issaquah Preschool was the preschool I attended many years ago so I am happy I was given the chance to give back to it.

Posted by Danny Dover Lately I have been reading about online behavioral analysis and have started to realize its potential for advertising. To better understand its power try this simple exercise. Open a new window, go to Google and search malpractice . Then right away search lawyer. Look at the ads on the right. You likely will see ads for malpractice lawyers located in your area * . What Google has done here is actually very sophisticated.

Posted by Danny Dover If you are involved with internet marketing for more than five minutes you will inevitably hear someone preach about the power of Digg. It is funny how hard people work for their 15 minutes of fame. Yes, if you make it on the homepage your website will receive hundreds of thousands of views in a single day. Yes the links it provides will help your search rankings. And yes the Digg girl will magically show up at your house and play twister with you.

Posted by Danny Dover I really like YouTube. It is brilliantly easy to use, almost universally accessible and unparalleled in its ability to popularize creative and funny people. YouTube is single handedly responsible for causing an irreversible drop in world productivity while simultaneously bringing countless amounts of joy to average people. It does this without charging users and while staying mostly advertising free.

Posted by Danny Dover For as long as I can remember, the best way for me to learn has been to do. I have gone through countless checklists while trying to understand search engine optimization. The following is a compilation of the most useful checklists I have completed in order to learn SEO. My intent is that this list can be used by people who are inexperienced in SEO but want to learn more. )As a bonus I included handy dandy check boxes.

Posted by Danny Dover Yesterday, I was arguing with my friend about the existence of one sight or sound that is universally funny. He argued that since different cultures find humor in different things, there couldn't possibly be one example of something that is funny to everyone. Unconvinced, I started searching for the holy grail of funny. Immediately, I went on YouTube and starting browsing my favorite videos. Eventually, I came to the monkey video below.

Posted by Danny Dover On March 04, 2008, the internet community saw the culmination of the world's most successful video marketing campaign. With 80 million views in 2 months, Clarus Bartel's homemade music video dethroned the Evolution of Dance as the most viewed video of all time on YouTube. This simplistic video shook the YouTube community and unveiled the fundamental flaws in the worlds biggest video platform. The video, titled CANSEI DE SER SEXY Music is My Hot Hot Sex,

Posted by Danny Dover Two weeks ago our office updated our phone system to a more professional business setup. The new system brought additional phone extensions and 23 new phone numbers. While it was a bit of a headache having our phones and internet down while the phone company upgraded our account, it was nothing compared to our new problem. When our awesome office manager, Christine , got into the office the morning after the update, she got an odd phone call.

Posted by Danny Dover I like to think that I was born just in time to live through the first truly global revolution. I am a 20 year old student who has watched computers and the internet transform the world. Unlike my predecessors, I rarely watch live TV, never listen to the radio and haven't bought a CD in nearly a decade )last one was Offspring's Americana (. Between my fraternity, my campus,