موز-moz

‘Baacle SEO’ was a term first popularized by Will Scott in 2011 to describe the process of attaching your business to existing high-ranking entities (like major directories) and then promoting them as a means of dominating search engine results for desired terms. Today, we’re going to take that novel concept in a different direction, with the goal of increasing brand awareness for single, multi-location, and enterprise local businesses by latching onto existing influences in any given community. Up ahead: simple tips for interpreting your city, a downloadable community awareness spreadsheet, and real-world examples for your inspiration! Before we dive in, take a look at these two eye-opening...

There sure is a lot of interest in SEO ranking factors: There have been major studies done on this, notably by both Moz and Searchmetrics. These are groundbreaking pieces of research, and if you're serious about SEO, you need to understand what these studies say. That said, these are too complex for most organizations to deal with. They need a simpler way of looking at things. At Stone Temple Consulting (STC) we deal with many different types of organizations, including some of the world's largest companies, and some of the highest-traffic websites in the world. For most of these companies, understanding that there are 200+ ranking factors does more harm than good. Why, you ask? So many peop...

Google is constantly testing new design elements, but over the past few months they've been testing a change that, while it might seem small on the surface, represents a major philosophical shift. The screenshots in this post were all captured on live SERPs but appear to be tests and have not rolled out permanently. Here's an example of the basic change: Notice how each result (ads and organic) is wrapped in a container and visually separated on a gray background. These containers are called "cards" in Google's veacular, and they're important, but we'll get to that. Why should we care about a few borders and a background? Shift #1: Mobile-first design We've known for over two years that Goog...

Duplicate listings have been a plague to local search marketers since local search was a thing. When Moz Local first introduced duplicate closure in the fall of 2014, the goal was to address the horribly time-consuming task of finding and closing all those duplicate listings causing problems in Google, Bing, and various mapping platforms. Though we’ve consistently been making improvements to the tool’s performance (we’ll get into this later), the dashboard itself has remained largely unchanged. Not anymore. Today, we’re proud to aounce our brand new duplicate management dashboard for Moz Local: Here’s a rundown of the features you can look for in the Moz Local upgrade: New Duplicates Dashboa...

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) has been around since the begiing of the web. Historically, a lot of the time and attention has been spent on the on-page elements — headlines, copy, calls-to-action, forms, and design — to increase conversions. Although optimizing on-page elements to maximize conversions still can and does have tremendous value, isn't there a better way forward? Absolutely! There are several ways to increase your conversion rate by as much as 5x. But the smarter way to do it is by influencing the right people before they ever land on your site or persuading them to come back if they left your site before converting. Here are 10 mind-blowing CRO tru...

All the puzzle pieces have come together, and MozCon 2016 is ready to rock! Over the past week, I've had the pleasure of peeking at our speakers' outlines, and I caot wait. Whether you're looking to for the latest SEO information, ready to tackle mobile's biggest issues, wanting to push your content to 10x, or generally wanting to absorb everything online marketing, it's going to be so good. If you're reading this post and remembering you haven't bought your ticket yet, I'll pause: Buy your MozCon 2016 ticket! Now let's get to the good stuff: The MozCon 2016 Agenda Monday 08:00–09:00amBreakfast...

Are you ready for AMP? Ready or not, it's coming to Google search results, and it's arriving in a big way. Google has aounced that they'll be showing Accelerated Mobile Pages in their search results for the “ten blue links.” This means that sites that aren’t news-specific now have the opportunity to show AMP pages in Google’s search results. AMP is a very lightweight version of a webpage that has been stripped of the many elements that cause a regular webpage to display slowly, such as tons of cookies, third-party Javascript, and slow-loading ad networks. This results in a page that loads lightning-fast, which is great for those who are on slower coections or simply don't want to wait for a ...

Researchers estimate that it’s up to 25 times more expensive for a company to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, making ongoing investments in consumer satisfaction a priority. There's nothing more disheartening to a local business owner than receiving a very negative review — and given that as little as 13% of consumers will patronize a business with a 1- or 2-star rating, there may be nothing more important than the owner taking every possible step to resolve negative reviews with speed and skill. Negative reviews don’t write themselves. While looking at restaurant reviews recently, I came across an owner-consumer interaction that perfectly encapsulates the typical steps ...

There are lots of myths and misconceptions surrounding the subject of inteational 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 inteational SEO is so confusing, then dive into some of the most common myths. By the end of this article, you should have a much clearer understanding of how inteational SEO works and how to apply the proper strategies and tactics to your website. One common trend is the lack of clarity around the subject. Let's dig into that: Why is inteational SEO so confusing? There are several reasons: Not everyone reads Google Webmaster Guidelines and has a clear understanding of how they index an...

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 & SEO to coexist in harmony. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about managing tension between user experience and SEO. This is a topic we've touched on a little bit in the past, but we've seen it come up quite a bit as many more folks ar...

[Estimated read time: 6 minutes] It's been almost two years (August 2014) since Google aounced that HTTPS was a ranking signal. Speculation ran rampant, as usual, with some suggesting there was little or no benefit to switching (and possibly significant risk) while others rushed to sell customers on making the HTTPS switch. Two years later, I believe the data speaks for itself — Google is fighting, and wiing, a long war. What's happened since? If you only consider the impact of Google's original HTTPS update, I understand your skepticism. Prior to the update, our 10,000-keyword tracking system (think of it as a laboratory for studying Google searches) showed that roughly 7% of page-1 Google ...

[Estimated read time: 4 minutes] This is going to be an exciting year for MozBar. I’m happy to aounce that we’ve got something new that will help you save a ton of time tuning your on-page SEO. (New to MozBar? Lea more about our free SEO toolbar extension available in the Chrome store.) We've added Page Optimization to MozBar Premium! If you want to dive right in, download MozBar for Chrome. To access the Page Optimization feature, you'll need to be logged in to your Moz Pro account. If you don’t have a Moz Pro account, you can take a free 30-Day trial to check out all the new goodies. Currently in Moz Pro, you can run a Page Optimization report for any of your tracked keywords and campaigns...

SEOs and executives speak different languages. It's a simple fact, but it's one that often acts as a blocker for getting your ideas and investments approved. A simple change in how you communicate your marketing goals, triumphs, and challenges could be what's standing between you and getting the C-suite buy-in that's integral to your success. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand helps you translate your marketing jargon into financial metrics and data that the folks in charge will actually care about. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going...

Like the talking mice to Cinderella, we're already working hard on MozCon and crafting Roger one heck of a ball gown. (And letting our metaphors get out of control in the meantime.) Which means I'm here to share with all of you the current MozCon 2016 Agenda and a ton of other preview goodies. If you're suddenly like "Oh snap, I haven't bought my ticket(s)!", I'll pause while you: Buy your MozCon 2016 ticket! New emcees: we're mixing it up! As some of you know, Cyrus won't be emceeing MozCon this year. (We still adore him, and I'm sure his face will make it into a few slide decks.) So we decided to take this opportunity to shake it up. Emceeing MozCon is a hard job. We want each and every sp...

[Estimated read time: 9 minutes] Note: this post is based on a recent presentation I gave at LeaInbound Dublin. You can find the slides here. Mobile search as a topic has changed a lot over the past few years. When I first started looking at this, back in 2012, there was already a lot of discussion happening around the topic of mobile. And back then, the big question everyone was asking was, “what should my mobile strategy be?” Even then, things were shifting. At one of my early conference presentations on the topic, I made the point that we should stop thinking about a “mobile strategy” as different from our web strategy, because mobile technology was becoming simply another way to access t...