Jim Yu says, “By 2019, it is predicted that content marketing will become a $300 billion industry. However, this content will have limited value unless it is actually found by the right audience, optimized to achieve maximum impact and measured in relation to business results. Ensuring your content is search-engine-friendly and optimized across the buyer’s journey is critical to the success of both content and SEO teams. Major search algorithm updates, such as Google’s Panda and Penguin, are focused on delivering users the highest-quality results and the most relevant content. Brands... [...]

Dan Shure says, “Marketers: Add podcast promotion to your skill set Sure. This post is for podcasters. Hi Podcasters. You may find the below interesting, perhaps educational — and I hope you leave your insights for the Moz Community in the comments below (I’ll be reading and replying to all of them). But even if you never plan on having your own podcast, this post is for you, too! I see the marketing of podcasts will being an important addition to any marketer’s skill set in 2016 and beyond. So below, we’ll examine iTunes ranking factors, lay out promotional strategies... [...]

Eric Siu says, “Increasing your marketing return on investment (ROI) happens when you increase your returns, decrease your costs or both. Both, of course, is what most marketers aspire to, but it’s admittedly difficult to achieve. One of the easiest leverage points in the equation is to reduce costs, and that’s where free content comes in. No, I’m not talking about the older content models, where writers distributed content in exchange for backlinks. Those sites served a useful purpose at the time, but are no longer as appealing to marketers, thanks to changes in Google’s algorithm.... [...]

Josh Earl says, “When I was a teenager, a late-summer lightning strike splintered the telephone pole that served our rural Ohio farmhouse. The power was out for three days in the sweltering August heat, and pretty quickly we ran out of water. The problem wasn’t our water supply — the well under our house was deep and swollen thanks to the thunderstorm that knocked out our electricity. But our plumbing system relied on an electric pump to pressurize the water and that pump needed electricity to run. The water was just feet from our pipes, but that well might as well have been bone... [...]

Jayson Demers says, “SEO is a popular online marketing strategy, and therefore, competitive, but I’m consistently amazed at how many business owners and marketers opt not to engage in an SEO strategy because of its perceived limitations or drawbacks. One of the biggest misperceptions is that SEO is expensive, and it’s driven by the fact that some agencies have higher-level packages that cost tens of thousands of dollars per month. Yes, SEO can be expensive for hyper-competitive, national-scale businesses, but that doesn’t mean it’s unaffordable for the average business owner. In... [...]

Sergey Stefoglo says, “WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. There’s a good chance you’ll need to optimize or work on a website that uses WordPress, if you haven’t already! Whether you’re a business owner, designer, developer, PPC expert, SEO consultant, or writer — getting familiar with WordPress is a smart move. When I started out in SEO, I worked with local businesses that hired smaller firms to design or develop their sites. Naturally, most people gravitated towards WordPress as their CMS of choice: it was easy to customize, even... [...]

Jacob Baadsgaard says, “For many companies, the goal of their paid search campaigns is to generate leads. As marketers, we work hard to get qualified leads to our sales team for the lowest cost possible. But the problem is, a successful paid search campaign doesn’t just produce cheap leads — it produces economical sales. The trouble with sales Recently, I was approached by a client who had decided that paid search simply didn’t work for their business. They had made enough money off of their paid search leads to cover their ad spend, but they weren’t really making any profit. To be... [...]

MOZ team says, “Are you guilty of living in the past? Using methods that were once tried-and-true can be alluring, but it can also prove dangerous to your search strategy. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand spells out eight old school SEO practices that you should ditch in favor of more effective and modern alternatives”. 8 Old School SEO Practices That Are No Longer Effective MOZ  [...]

Purna Virji says, “Whether you work in SEO or PPC, you’ve likely noticed a new trend emerging in your search reports: a rise in longer-tail searches and question-based search phrases. The likely culprit? Voice input. Voice search is easier than text input; we all know this. We can speak something much more naturally than we can type it. Most of us are looking for a fast fix or a way to make multi-tasking more efficient, and conversational user interfaces fit that bill perfectly. Whether we want to ask Alexa to clarify a recipe while cooking, ask Siri for directions while driving or run... [...]

Sarika Pariwal says, “Long-tail keywords can help even smaller and newer websites to “steal” traffic away from the big and established players. All it takes is some intelligent keyword research and content creation. So here’s a lowdown on the what, why, and how of long-tail keywords. What Keyword phrases that typically contain 3-4 or more words are known as long-tail keywords. They tend to show a more specific search intent on the part of the searcher, narrowing down the results to only the most appropriate. These keywords are less general than 1-2-word keywords (AKA “seed”... [...]