In 2011 I wrote a post here on Moz. The title was "Wake Up SEOs, the New Google is Here." In that post I presented some concepts that, in my personal opinion, we SEOs needed to pay attention to in order to follow the evolution of Google. Sure, I also presented a theory which ultimately proved incorr...

Topic Trends, the latest feature added to Moz Content, allows marketers to quickly access a snapshot of the most popular and the most relevant content in any vertical. By accessing the content in the Content Search index, Topic Trends highlights the topics that were written about most frequently in ...

Is it time to rewrite the SEO playbooks? For what seems like forever, SEOs have operated by a set of best practices that dictate how to best handle redirection of URLs. (This is the practice of pointing one URL to another. If you need a quick refresher, here’s a handy guide on HTTP status codes.) Th...

Is the practice of tracking keywords truly dying? There's been a great deal of industry discussion around the topic of late, and some key points have been made. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand speaks to the biggest challenges keyword rank tracking faces today and how to solve for them. Click on t...

Have you taken a look at Google Shopping recently? Okay, so it isn’t quite the ecommerce monster that Amazon or eBay are, and yes, it’s only filled with sponsored posts. Playing around with it, however, proves that it provides a decent experience. And that experience got me thinking. What if, instea...

It's been over two years since Google launched Featured Snippets, and yet many search marketers still see them as little more than a novelty. If you're not convinced by now that Featured Snippets offer a significant organic opportunity, then today is my attempt to change your mind. If you somehow ha...

Content marketers, does the following scenario sound familiar? You’re tasked with creating content that attracts publicity, links, and social shares. You come up with great ideas for content that you’re confident could accomplish these goals. However, any ideas that push the envelope or might offend...

Rapid growth. In the business world, it's generally thought of as a good thing — scratch that, a great thing. But when you're an ecommerce site, that rapid growth can also mean more hurdles to jump, especially when it comes to your SEO and information architecture. In this episode of True North, you...

We're hearing a lot about voice search lately, and that trend doesn't seem likely to disappear. But does it have a direct impact on how you should be thinking about your SEO strategy? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses what to expect when it comes to the future of search and what you can d...

Sampling is a process used in statistics when it's unfeasible or impractical to analyse all the data that exists. Instead, a small, randomly selected subset is used to keep things manageable. Many analytics platforms use some sort of sampling to keep report loading times in check, and there seem to ...

There are lots of myths and misconceptions surrounding the subject of inte ational SEO. I recently gave a Mozinar on this; I'd like to share the basis of that talk in written form here. Let’s first explore why inte ational SEO is so confusing, then dive into some of the most common myths. By the end...

Any old picture might be worth a thousand words. But your target niche doesn’t need or want a thousand words. Your ideal audience needs the right words, paired with the right images, to tell a story that uniquely appeals to their deepest desires. Studies show that people understand images faster tha...

One decision that you'll have to live with for quite a long time is the domain name you choose for your site. You may have a list of options that you know are available, but what should you keep in mind when you sit down to make the decision? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers eight criteria ...

Structured data has never been more important than it is today. We’ll talk about why briefly below, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about giving you a new tool to add to your semantic SEO tool belt. My goal is to empower you implement semantic markup and structured data with gre...

The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Image courtesy of Mike Behnken on Flickr. The civics of local: Caring about your community From Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to Central Park in New York City, with all of the town greens, plazas, fountains, schools, and libraries in between, America’s l...

Feel like you're already over the term "storytelling" without ever really having understood how you can successfully apply it to your writing? You aren't alone. Like so much jargon, this amazingly powerful and useful word is in serious danger of being consigned to LinkedIn profiles and marketing par...

Last year, we hosted the first MozCon Ignite, and it was a blast. We had so much fun listening to 5-minute stories on everything, from how to cook a hot dog to ru ing a coffee charity from your kitchen, that we're bringing the event back for a second year. We can't wait to hear your story. MozCon Ig...

We don't live in a world where we have the luxury of thinking about just user experience or just SEO. The two share many of the same spaces online, working in tandem and sometimes even clashing. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details the considerations and compromises that must be made for UX & ...

Darren Shaw of Whitespark speaking at Mozcon Local The gentleman sitting across the table from me at a crowded lunch spot has what he sees as a workable business idea for a local business, a sound plan to get it off the ground, enough funds to weather the ups and downs of the current business climat...

It was my first day at my new gig as a federal gove ment IT consultant in Washington, D.C. I was slogging through the typical onboarding paperwork when a senior partner dropped by, introduced himself, and handed me a paperback book. “Read and implement this,” he said. The cover read The Trusted Advi...