John Doherty says, “As a startup founder myself, it feels weird to talk about startups through the lens of backlinks. After all, there are so many other things to worry about — how’s my cash flow? Are my employees getting paid? How does the deal flow look? Are we going to hit our targets for this month/quarter? Why is the website/app so slow? Did that vendor pay us that huge amount they owe? What if I told you that I’ve seen (and helped) companies land funding off the back of solid SEO practices, including link acquisition and content creation? By integrating SEO into PR, outreach,... [...]

John White says, “SEO is changing. We can no longer rely on keyword targeting alone to optimize our content. Whether we should focus on topics or keywords is a debate in progress. But figuring out which topics can influence the SERP is, at best, a manual process; at worst, it’s a timesuck that can take hours out of your day. TL;DR Today we’ve launched Related Topics, a new feature in Moz Pro that can help you make sense of how search engines understand topics and phrases”. How to Feed a Hummingbird: Improve Your On-Page SEO with Related Topics in Moz Pro MOZ Blog  [...]

Lyndi Catania says, “Search engine optimization, also referred to as SEO, is a living, breathing process that changes often. In order for your website to gain maximum visibility on the web, there are different elements you need to take into consideration. You may think your website is SEO friendly as-is and doesn’t need any alterations, but it’s likely the rules of the SEO game aren’t the same as when you first began. Don’t let your website fall behind your competitors’ websites. In this case, change leads to something better. Here are some of the changes you’ll... [...]

Samuel Scott says, “No one cares about your company or product. Unless your CEO is Steve Jobs or your product is Google Glass, very few journalists and bloggers are going to write about you directly, because they’re reluctant to give free press to for-profit businesses. Few people are going to share something on social media that will only help a corporation to make more money. To gain significant media coverage and launch creative campaigns that spread through the Internet, companies usually need to insert their brands into larger stories. In this post, I will help readers to do exactly... [...]

John Cosley says, “Each month, users conduct more than 100 billion searches on search engines globally. And every day, a portion of the searches they perform involve queries that have never been made before. Those facts are widely cited, but fewer marketers are aware that at least a third of all searches conducted are from query terms unique to each search engine, such as Bing or Google. (According to Microsoft’s, my employer’s, internal research.) Why all these unique queries? There are more than 7.3 billion people on this planet — each one of them unique. While those that are online... [...]

Miriam Ellis says, “Is your brand visible to potential customers? If you’re a local business and you haven’t nailed down your local SEO, you’re missing the opportunity to be seen when that customer searches on desktop or on mobile. But local SEO isn’t some mysterious entity. It’s a series of concerted steps. And we can help you tailor those local SEO efforts to your business model. Simply find your business type on the following illustration and follow the steps that are specific to your needs”. Match Your Local SEO to Your Business Type with the Local... [...]

John Cosley says, “In the world of SEO, 2015 was relatively quiet. Sure, search marketers had a plethora of algorithm updates, constantly evolving snippets, instant answers and ever-changing metrics to contend with, but SEO practitioners are used to that pace of change. However, with conversations in the first quarter of this year still swirling around ad blocking and earned versus owned media, I believe that going forward, 2016 will be a very exciting year for SEOs. Based on my own experience and client comments and feedback, I foresee a couple of major shifts occurring. 1. Diversification... [...]

MOZ team says, “Identifying your target market is only one-fifth of the battle. If you want to win the proverbial war, you have to know your audience inside and out. Discovering the sites they visit and using that knowledge to your advantage is key, but the best practices to do so can feel unclear. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand outlines a five-step process to more effectively reach and market to your target community”. Discovering Which Sites Your Target Audience Visits MOZ Blog  [...]

Rebecca Maynes says, “In 2014, Mediative released an eye-tracking study that looked at how Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) has changed over the last decade, and how searcher behavior has adapted as a result. We learned that: 1. Top organic results are no longer always in the top-left corner, so users look elsewhere to find them. 2. Mobile devices have habitually conditioned searchers to scan vertically more than horizontally. Searchers are looking for the fastest path to the desired content. 3. People are viewing more search results listings during a single session and spending... [...]

Tim Peterson says, “Facebook has taken its biggest swing yet at rivaling Twitter and Twitter-owned Periscope as the primary place to watch and stream live videos online. On Tuesday Facebook said that it will start ranking live videos higher in people’s news feeds while those videos are being streamed live using Facebook’s live-streaming feature. The move adds another way for people to find out if a friend, brand, publisher or celebrity is streaming live. Like Twitter and Periscope, Facebook already let people subscribe to notifications when pages they follow start a live stream. But more... [...]