The weekend has landed!  So let’s not waste any time, here are my picks of the best/most interesting/funniest posts from the world of SEO, Internet Marketing and beyond.

Happy Birthday Sphinn!

It’s been a year since Danny Sullivan launched Sphinn and to celebrate Matt McGee posted this look back at Sphinn’s early days, highlighting some of the first posts to go hot and talking about the boost that comes from getting onto the frontpage.  This week also saw the launch of the new Sphinn Blog.  Of course, it’s not always sweetness and light over there…

The Great Second Link Anchor Text Debate ‘08

Last month David Eaves from SEOco.co.uk debunked the idea that if you have two links to the same place on a single page, only the first one will pass its anchor text to provide and relevance and ranking benefit in Google.  Or at least it appeared that way from anecdotal evidence of pages ranked in Google.co.uk
Then, last week Neyne, the SEO-Scientist, re-bunked the idea, by conducting a series of alternating tests on a pair of undisclosed, test-bed sites and observing the ranking effects in Google.com
This inspired Michael Martinez to carry out his own short term test, in the open, on his own public sites (although now that his test is over he has removed the links).  MM stated that his intention wasn’t really to prove the second link anchor text thing one way or the other, as much as he wanted to make his point that almost any SEO Test is inherently flawed.
Of course, all this back and forth bunking lead to some very lively and heated discussions in the Sphinn threads for some of the posts on the subject.  All this bickering prompted Debra Mastaler to light up the Matt-Signal in the hope of getting a straight answer out of him and settling this once and for all.  Well, at least he turned up and gave her an answer (of sorts - I guess he’s too busy with his viagra business these days).

Guest Blogging with Guess Who

James had a great write-up on his digital marketing blog this week where he quantified some of the benefits that his guest blogging world tour has brought him.  And now Michael Gray has announced that he’s looking for guest posters to appear on the Wolf-Howl, so I’m sure James’ll be popping up there soon enough.

It’s like Toast with a Y

Everybody’s favourite WordPress tweaking Dutchman, Joost DeValk released a load of updates for his WordPress plugins, along with a new plugin that makes it easier to send emails to your blog’s commenters.  Definitely need to check that out this weekend.

Jason Gambert - What a Douchebag

You know how Wikipedia has all those rules and moderators to try to maintain impartiality and make sure that entries aren’t edited for the sake of worthless self promotion?  Well, apparently Jason Gamert doesn’t.  Or at least, he didn’t until he got banned from Wikipedia this week.  Yet more proof of Jason’s well deserved victory in Chris Hooley’s SEO Superlatives contest.

The Funny Pages

As a tribute to the recently departed George Carlin (RIP) Cracked.com published its list of The 7 Words You Can’t Say On The Internet (without starting a flamewar).  I wonder if there’s a way we could make it look like Jason Gambert added them all to Wikipedia and then let him get flamed for it.

The Kensington Victoria blog shared this example of what the Twitter timeline would look like during a Zombie Outbreak.  I’m not sure how accurate their representation is though, because there’s no sign of the Fail Whale.

That’s it for another week.  I’ve got some changes for SEOpsCentre that I’ll be implementing over the next few weeks and one change will be that the Link-Fests will be moving from their current Friday slot to a regular place on Mondays from now on.  I’ll also be bringing in a few other (semi-)regular posts as well, more news on them soon.