MOZ team says, “If you’ve ever been the victim of a Google penalty, you know how painful it can be to identify the problem and recover from the hit. Even if you’ve been penalty-free thus far, the threat of getting penalized is a source of worry. But how can you avoid it, when it seems like unnatural links lurk around every corner? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, we’re overjoyed to have Google penalty and unnatural link expert Marie Haynes share how to earn links that do comply with Google’s guidelines, that will keep your site out of trouble, and that can make... [...]

Ben Davis says, “What is marketing ops? In Ashley Friedlein’s recent 2017 digital trends essay, he identifies marketing transformation as a hot topic. Ashley says that this could include the (re)integration of digital marketing, the introduction of a CCO (chief customer officer), bringing teams back in house, assessing supplier relationships, zero-based budgeting and marketing ops. Here’s what he has to say about the latter: The area that I find most interesting is the idea of ‘marketing ops’: the operating system for marketing. This is one effective way of keeping focus but... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Gary Illyes from Google has written a blog post named What Crawl Budget Means for Googlebot. In it, he explains what crawl budget is, how crawl rate limits work, what is crawl demand and what factors impact a site’s crawl budget. First, Gary explained that for most sites, crawl budget is something they do not need to worry about. For really large sites, it becomes something that you may want to consider looking at. “Prioritizing what to crawl, when, and how much resource the server hosting the site can allocate to crawling is more important for bigger sites, or those... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “A Google spokesperson has confirmed with Search Engine Land that the company’s link command is no longer functioning. Google told us the feature is no longer around, and using a link:www.domain.com will likely return irrelevant results. We saw signs of this going away a year ago, but then Google told us the link operator “is not dead.” Now, Google is telling us the link operator is essentially dead. Yesterday, Google’s John Mueller told webmasters not to use it. Of course, most webmasters already have known not to use it for years and years now. But as long as... [...]

Bryson Meunier says, “Hopefully, all of you learned from “Mobilegeddon” in 2015 and “Mobilegeddon 2” in 2016 that the updates Google makes to improve the smartphone user experience for the majority of Google searchers are not the end of the world. Not even close, in fact. Still, I have seen a lot of articles focused on this topic in relation to Google’s new mobile-first index, which will be launching finally this year — almost two years after Google’s Gary Illyes referenced it at SMX West. Here’s what you need to remember in order to fully take advantage of the opportunity... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google has officially confirmed they have begun rolling out the intrusive mobile interstitial penalty yesterday. Google warned us that this was coming almost a six months ago, and it did start rolling out on January 10, 2017, as Google promised. Google’s John Mueller and Gary Illyes confirmed the penalty began rolling out yesterday. This penalty only impacts intrusive interstitials that happen directly after going from a Google mobile search result to a specific page. It does not impact or penalize pages after that, so if you have a intrusive interstitial that comes... [...]

David Zimmerman says, “Did you sigh when you heard Google is revoking free full access to its Keyword Planner? Your first reaction was probably like mine: Google is sticking it to SEOs, once again. What are we going to do? Of course, we could invest in a third-party tool. Some of those tools might help fill the gap, but they are expensive and only as good as their sample size. And that got me thinking: If I would have to pay for a keyword research tool anyway, why not use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for my keyword research? If I create a small PPC campaign, I can get keyword data and... [...]

John Lincoln says, “Google just started rolling out the so-called “mobile-first” index. It’s going to change the way that your site gets ranked in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Here are a things you need to know about the mobile-first index so that you can optimize your website accordingly. What is the mobile-first index? By now, you probably know that Google crawls your site to add pages to its index. That is, it uses a bot to surf around your site like a real visitor and follows links on your pages. In the past, Google crawled your site as a desktop user. Now, however,... [...]

Jeffrey Vocell says, “So, you’ve developed an amazing site. You’ve put together some seriously valuable content, iterated on the design, and gathered a ton of feedback. Now, you’re finally feeling ready to share it with the world. And as soon as you publish your new site for the world to see, all of your content will immediately start showing up in Google, right? Well, maybe. Although, it takes a little more than just hitting the publish button. To get your site listed, you’ll need to check a few boxes first. Let’s walk through it … How Google Finds Your... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “Last year, Google announced that it was using a system called RankBrain to help guide the development of its search algorithm.  Essentially, the aim was to provide better and more relevant search results to users. According to a new study by Searchmetrics, the move has paid off. Here’s a bit more info on RankBrain and what’s happened since it was introduced. What is RankBrain? RankBrain is an artificial intelligence system that uses machine learning to better understand exactly what people are looking for when they type a search query into Google. If RankBrain... [...]