Jennifer Slegg says, “For many SEOs, a glimpse at the Google’s Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines is akin to looking into Google’s ranking algorithm. While they don’t give the secret sauce to rank number one on Google, they do offer some incredible insight into what Google views as quality – and not-so-quality – and the types of pages they want to serve at the top of their search results. Last week, Google made the unprecedented move of releasing the entire Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines, following an analysis of a leaked copy obtained by The SEM Post. While Google released... [...]

Gianluca Fiorelli says, “Whenever Google announces something as important as a new algorithm, I always try to hold off on writing about it immediately, to let the dust settle, digest the news and the posts that talk about it, investigate, and then, finally, draw conclusions. I did so in the case of Hummingbird. I do it now for RankBrain. In the case of RankBrain, this is even more correct, because — let’s be honest — we know next to nothing about how RankBrain works. The only things that Google has said publicly are in the video Bloomberg published and the few things unnamed Googlers... [...]

Paddy Moogan says, “Content marketing is hard. The problem is that the process looks easy. You brainstorm some ideas, choose one that you like, design and build it, do some outreach and you get traffic, links and social shares. Job done. It’s a bit like link building, where someone may say, “Just build great content and the links will come.” Unfortunately, it’s very rarely that straightforward. Yes, sometimes you can get lucky and something will fly with little effort. But anyone that says that content marketing is easy has probably never done it over and over again.... [...]

Jay Leary says, “Stating the obvious here, but content is a massively important part of any inbound marketing campaign. The problem that most of us run into — and I know this well from years of SEO consulting with publishers — is that even “good” content can fade from view without a share, link, or conversion. Engaging an audience isn’t as simple as clicking “publish.” So, how do we avoid making phantom content a habit? For Moz, timely data has been a big part of the answer. Over the years, we’ve built internal tools like1Metric to guide our work.... [...]

Christopher Jan Benitez says, “In the world of post-Penguins and post-Pandas, the phrase “SEO automation” sounds taboo. It is easy to think of this term as “black hat” when tools like SeNukeXcr and XRumer help webmasters build hundreds of backlinks and attract thousands of visitors with a few clicks of a button. You do not have to do the legwork for building links and drive traffic because these tools will do the laborious work for you. In essence, this is the idea of what SEO automation does – taking away the guesswork from intricate SEO tactics to produce results. However,... [...]

MOZ team says, “When it comes to the link building process, there’s a lot to keep track of — and that process today is pretty different from what it was a few short years ago. In this week’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand scores 20 different attributes that can influence a link’s value based on whether or not they still matter in 2015/2016“. 20 Attributes that Influence a Link’s Value – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]

Jason Moore says, “There’s a lot to be said on the subject of landing pages. And if you were at this year’sASCEND Digital Marketing Summit, you heard Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner’s epic talk on landing page optimization. (Missed out? Order the video package.) Part of Oli’s talk focused on how to optimize your page to urge visitors to sign up for your email list – a crucial step towards email marketing success. Where Do I Start? One of the first things Oli recommended is to admit that you have a problem. Take a look at your landing page. Figure out what the point of that page... [...]

Ronell Smith says, “When the client asked to “go mute” during our monthly client call, there was no reason to sound the alarm. After all, being able to talk through what they’ve heard as a team, in private, was normal. But when the always-skeptical global marketing director said the COO (who has been in the room for the 10 minutes of analytics discussion) wants to take the discussion offline for a bit, but wants you to hold on, I knew things had likely gone off the rails. “Thanks for holding, you guys,” says the head of marketing upon taking the phone off mute... [...]

Stephan Spencer says, “You’ve done your basic keyword research and strategized a plan to tackle the keywords for which you want to rank. You are working that plan to increase your rankings, traffic, and of course, conversions. You’re good on your keyword plan, right? Not so fast! Are you sure there are no opportunities you are missing out on? What about keywords that aren’t in your plan yet? If you aren’t sure that you are squeezing all the juice out of your keywords, then I have a few tips and techniques to suggest. If you haven’t done your basic keyword research and strategy... [...]

Jayson Demers says, “Your company’s reputation plays a large role in local organic search rankings. For example, if your company is listed in every major local business directory and you’re mentioned on local news sources regularly, and if great user reviews of your business dot the web, you’ll likely rank higher than if just the reverse occurs: You’re rarely mentioned and your reviews are poor. Every business gets a bad review now and then, and some businesses naturally have trouble attracting reviews from their customers. But, with local SEO becoming more important and more influential,... [...]