Pete Prestipino says, “Branded keywords are the terms (and phrases) that are directly related to a company/enterprise or its services/products. Most enterprises rank quite well for these terms and phrases but not everyone. Let’s take a closer look at SEO for branded keywords. It’s actually quite common for brands to monitor social media and organic searches for references to their specific brand name but they should also be researching the other terms consumers use in association with their brand name (as well as that of their competitors). Doing so can help brands understand... [...]

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... [...]

Jesse Boskoff says, “When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), staying on top of trends is about more than sounding savvy when you talk tech with your colleagues. It’s also essential to the strength of your enterprise’s online marketing efforts. Here are six must-know SEO trends poised to make a big impact in 2017. 1. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Google’s new AMP Project promises to deliver optimized content to mobile users at lightning speeds. An open-source project, AMP relies upon specialized HTML files that are designed to load at least four... [...]

A.J. Ghergich says, “What you should know about featured snippets Recently my agency Ghergich & Co. teamed up with SEMrush to conduct an in-depth study on featured snippets. SEMrush generously compiled and shared 1,400,000 featured snippets from their database for us to analyze. What makes this study different? Our study focused on 30 questions, prepositions, and comparison search phrases instead of a random set of keywords. Anecdotally, many other SEOs and I saw that pages that answer questions — such as who, what, when, where, and how — tend to be great at earning featured snippets. Our... [...]

Pete Peranzo says, “Engagement. It’s what gets people to connect with your company through your website. Getting engagement from your audience is the biggest challenge we face online. How do you hook someone in so that they stick around when you get the on your site? One effective answer is to start with explainer videos. WHAT ARE EXPLAINER VIDEOS? An explainer video is a short and simple video that presents the basics of your business to visitors. They’re almost always animated and their sole purpose is to give the people watch a clear understanding of a product or service. The visuals... [...]

Dave Davies says, “Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a big fan of reading Google patents — or, when I’m feeling lazy, reading Bill Slawski’s analysis of them over on his blog, SEO By The Sea. I also have a particular interest in those involving entities, as they are (to me at least) the ones that are defining the problems Google is trying to solve. As machine learning evolves, entities represent how search engines increasingly are viewing the world. Before we dig into this latest Google patent, which was granted on December 22, 2016, let’s first define an entity to make sure we’re... [...]

Simon Penson says, “Content promotion is hard. Disparate audiences and an ever-growing proliferation of channels to reach them through has made the life of a content marketer incredibly tough. What would you say, however, if there was a single solution to reaching EXACTLY the right people at exactly the right time, across any and every channel in real time? It may sound like a pie-in-the-sky opportunity but the reality is such an option is actually very, very close. In fact, for some it already exists. That option is ‘programmatic.’ Although still in its infancy from a content perspective,... [...]

MOZ team says, “It’s been a few years since we’ve covered the topic of comment marketing, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of date. There are clever, intentional ways to market yourself and your brand in the comments sections of sites, and there’s less competition now than ever before. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand details what you can do to get noticed in the comments and the benefits you’ll reap from high-quality contributions”. Comment Marketing: How to Earn Benefits from Community Participation MOZ  [...]

Felicia Crawford says, “Now that we’ve comfortably settled into the first two weeks of 2017, it’s time to revive an annual Moz Blog tradition: the Best of 2016 is here! I’ve carefully collected data on all the posts, comments, and commenters you remarkable readers liked the most this past year, compiling it all into one big, beautiful blog post. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll rue the day you ever downloaded Pocket. But as we commence our journey into the insights and revelations of yesteryear, my sincere hope is that you’ll feel inspired. That you’ll... [...]

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... [...]