MOZ team says, “hen it comes to certain kinds of backlinks, avoiding penalties can be a real gray area. How can you earn the benefits without gaining the scrutiny of Google? In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand will teach you which rules to follow to keep you safe and on the up-and-up, all while improving your link profile”. Backlinks from Client Sites, Sites You Own, Widgets, & Embedded Content: How to Maximize Benefits & Avoid Problems – Whiteboard Friday MOZ  [...]

Ronell Smith says, “At MozCon 2015, Dr. Pete delivered a gem that perked up my ears when he discussed Google’s featured snippets during his talk, “Surviving Google: SEO in 2020“: “Let’s say you’re No. 5 in a competitive query, and you’re trying to get from No. 5 to No.1. That is incredibly difficult; that takes a lot of money, a lot of links, a lot of authority. You might be able to jump past No. 1 to No. 0 with this just by matching the question better. So it may actually be easier to get from No. 5 to No. 0 than it is to get from No. 5 to No. 1... [...]

Aaron Wall says, “Remember the whole shtick about good, legitimate, high-quality content being created for readers without concern for search engines – even as though search engines do not exist? Whatever happened to that? We quickly shifted from the above “ideology” to this: The red triangle/exclamation point icon was arrived at after the Chrome team commissioned research around the world to figure out which symbols alarmed users the most. Search Engine Engineering Fear Google is explicitly spreading the message that they are doing testing on how to create maximum fear to... [...]

Andrew Ruegger says, “What is the future of paid search buying? Will the search engines or bid management platforms release an innovation that transforms how we buy? Will a new player emerge and totally revolutionize the search industry? When we look at the most sophisticated ways to buy, we’ll find some clues about what the future holds. Technically savvy search marketers can be innovative with campaigns above and beyond what bid management platforms (BMPs) provide. They can expertly work in between the BMPs and UIs, using advanced practices such as AdWords scripting. This is great, and... [...]

Diana Huff says, “For many people outside of marketing, Google Analytics can quickly become overwhelming. This is particularly true for the owners of small manufacturing firms. Without the time and resources to properly understand and use the vast amount of data in Analytics, many small manufacturers simply look at top-line traffic as evidence their website is “working.” The reality, however, is more nuanced. It’s not so much that small manufacturers don’t understand how to analyze the data available, but that they often don’t know what to measure — especially if they’re not... [...]

Pete Wailes says, “As the web gets more complex, with JavaScript framework and library front ends on websites, progressive web apps, single-page apps, JSON-LD, and so on, we’re increasingly seeing an ever-greater surface area for things to go wrong. When all you’ve got is HTML and CSS and links, there’s only so much you can mess up. However, in today’s world of dynamically generated websites with universal JS interfaces, there’s a lot of room for errors to creep in. The second problem we face with much of this is that it’s hard to know when something’s... [...]

Tom Capperႊႊ says, “When we think of local SEO, we think of local packs, Google My Business listings, and local citations. While these things certainly are local SEO, they aren’t the whole picture. Local SEO can be split into three categories: Local pack results for organizations with local premises Organic results for organizations with local premises Organic results for organizations without local premises It’s the third category that I want to cover here today. This often-neglected and little-discussed area plays host to some of the biggest and most lucrative spaces in organic... [...]

Danny Sullivan says, “Last week, Google pledged to fight “fake news” in its search results yet offered up no solutions to the problem. That’s likely because Google has no easy fix. True, it’s not the first thing on the page, as was the case last week. It’s also moved to the second page of results for searches on “final vote” or “final election count.” But there’s little to prevent it or similar mistaken stories from repeating what caused all the criticism in the first place. How the ‘In the news’ section changed to include fake news The first problem is that just... [...]

George Freitag says, “Now that location-based searches are growing about 50% faster than any other type of search on mobile, what are you going to do to make sure you’re working on the front lines of this new, local-focused world? Well, you can start by joining us in Seattle for MozCon Local 2017 on February 27–28 for a day full of in-depth workshops from LocalU followed by an all-day conference from the top local speakers and brands. You’ll come away with another level of understanding related to local strategy, citations, reviews, SEO local link building, content creation, and more,... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “A new Google AdWords ad extension has been spotted in the wild. Moz’s Dr. Pete notice a new promotion extension being tested in a text ad. First are Consumer Ratings Annotations, next up is the new Promo Extension that’s being tested, followed by Sitelink Extensions, and finally, a Location Extension. The promotion extension (official name TBA) features an offer followed by some descriptive copy (Here Williams-Sonoma is using a promo code, but I’m guessing a code does not always have to be included). Merchant Promotions that feature the same tag icon shown in... [...]