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In my experience that means that the report is still computing and should be ready on the day posted.

Daniel,

I second John's suggestion with FB ads. You can target by interest. Because you have a natural/organic product I'll bet you can reach a nicely targeted audience. Within your ad give them a reason to like you: a discount, giveaway, promises of useful updates...sometimes even just a pretty picture will draw people in.

I've had a lot of success with FB ads (18,600 fans and counting) and I think with proper targeting you can too.

I have a feeling you would do well with Mommy bloggers. Offer a giveaway to their readers or send them product for review. It's an excellent way to get exposure and links back.

Not sure where to start? I suggest finding those sites that rank well for the keywords you want and see who links to them. You may find a lot of great opportunities there.

Usually about 6 weeks. The last update was at the beginning of June and the next one is scheduled for next Monday.

Not an unintellegent question at all. You are right that you can't message a fan page (as far as I know!) and that someone must follow you in order to DM on Twitter. However, don't be shy about reaching out. Post on the fan wall or @username message the site owner on Twitter. You don't have to spell out that you are looking for a link, just say something like "@username Hey, Have a question about your site - can you DM me?"

I'd think most webmasters wouldn't mind this sort of communication. Social media is all about communication, afterall.

Hope that helps and good luck with the link.

Thanks for everyone's responses! I believe I have solved the mystery.

I went into my analytics and found that traffic had been sent from cnn.com, edition.cnn.com and weather.cnn.com. EGOL had mentioned the widgets that news sites will often use to link to relevant stories. Turns out I found a widget on the weather page that is administered by outside.in - a service that localizes content. I added our blog's feed to outside.in months ago and completely forgot about it. So, I'm assuming, someone who was searching weather or news in the Portland area perhaps would see our most recent post on Portland food carts.

I'm assuming these widgets don't pass any link juice, but I'm so glad to have the traffic and exposure. I suggest anyone who ever writes localized content should sign up for outside.in - your post might just show up on cnn.com.  

I'm stumped and I'm hoping some mozzers will be able to help.

I run our company blog (http://scottymacblog.com/). The last couple of days I have noticed that the blog is receiving some traffic from cnn.com. I looked, but cannot find any mention of the blog on cnn. Adding to my frustration is that the content on cnn is constantly changing. Our blog doesn't do any sort of advertising and no one affiliated with the blog posts on cnn. As great as it is to be getting traffic from such a valued source, I have no idea why.

Has something like this happened to (for?) anyone else?  Any ideas on how I can research the source of the link?

Thanks in advance!

Wes,

I had a similar problem with getting a fresh ranking report and was told there was a server crash. Some data was lost. I suspect you fell victim as well. I just received an updated report so I'm assuming you will too. HTH.

Exactly what EGOL said.

Sometimes the hardest work is the most rewarding.

Exactly as EGOL said it's all about what makes someone click. It helps to put yourself in the position of the searcher. If I'm looking specifically for Jimmy Choo glasses, I would want to see that in the first part of the meta description to ensure me that your page is one that has what I'm looking for.

It's a large task, but there really is no way of short cutting it.

I did notice that your product pages don't have much in the way of descriptive copy. Once you have your descriptions written out you can use some of that language for descriptions on the site (or vice versa). With product pages can help to have descriptive text to help you rank.

Hope that helps and best of luck!

Unfortunately, I can't speak for the plug in part of your question. However, I can offer up from a user experience perspective that this is a good case for testing out your site. You can test different messages, different abilities, different pricing and see what the consumer response is. Google Website Optimizer can help you set up an A B test so you can see what your costumers respond more favorably to.

I suppose your ability to do that depends on your flexibility with the shopping cart and, unfortunately, I am no expert on that. I would only suggest that you ask these questions when you are talking to your developer.

I hope that helps!  Best of luck.

Agree with Aaron. Don't create multiple social media accounts just to have them. Make sure you have the manpower to keep each one updated. From experience I can tell you it's a lot of work keeping up with the influencers of many different topics.

Awesome. I will keep an eye out for it.

I've noticed a lot of questions in Q&A regarding directories. It's sort of an outdated subject, but there is an opportunity there to outline possible values (or not).  I did a quick search and couldn't find any recent articles regarding directories on SEOMoz.

Not as cool or sexy as some of the other topics suggested, but a definite opportunity.

Mine still says Last Linkscape index update: 05/06/2011

It's possible more updates are to come**.** I would check back again tomorrow**.**

It looks like the next OSE update is on June 6th so hang in there! Sometimes it takes 30-60 days. I'm patiently waiting for links to my brand new site to show as well.

Good luck and I'd love to hear how it turns out for you!

I think "success" in social media is determined by different variables for different companies. I work for a food manufacturing company and for us the most important variable is credibility. We implemented FB last July and now have over 18000 fans. Have our consumer sales gone up tremendously? No, but now we can show big stores that we pitch to that our product is so popular we have over 18000 fans. It's all about perception. It even got us on Groupon's radar, who had intitially turned us down for a national campaign because we were "too small". Our company is the same size now, we just have the ability to show off our 18000 fans.

Point is, you may want to step back and consider variables other than sales. Some would argue that using social media to leverage brand awareness and credibility may pay off more in the long run than an X% sales increase.

Thanks everyone. It seems the consensus is to rename the files (assuming they aren't already ranking high with their current file name), ensure each one has proper alt text and submit an image site map to google.

I've got a busy Friday ahead of me!

Also, Mike - thanks for the tip on the caption tag. I hadn't thought of that. Every little bit of "google juice" helps. I'm going to give it a try!

Thanks, Benjamin. That's a great way of looking at it. All of the images I looked at did have "golden retriever" in the beginning of the file name.

Plus bonus points because I got to look at puppies.