Rand Fishkin says, “Today, it’s my pleasure to announce some exciting news. First, if you haven’t already seen it via his blog post, I’m thrilled to welcome Russ Jones, a longtime community member and great contributor to the SEO world, to Moz. He’ll be joining our team as a Principal Search Scientist, joining the likes of Dr. Pete, Jay Leary, and myself as a high-level individual contributor on research and development projects. If you’re not familiar with Mr. Jones’ work, let me embarrass my new coworker for a minute. Russ: Was Angular’s CTO after... [...]

Billy Hoffman says, “As we know well by now, the speed of a web page is very important from an SEO and user experience perspective. Faster pages have higher search engine ranks, and users will visit more pages and convert higher on a fast performing website. In short, the smart SEO professional needs to also think about optimizing for performance as well as content. As we discussed in our last article, WebPageTest is a great free tool you can use to optimize your website performance. One of the most useful outputs of the WebPageTest tool is a graphic known as the waterfall diagram. A waterfall... [...]

Kristi Hines says, “If you’re a local business owner, you’ve likely heard that you should submit your business to local business directories like Yelp, Merchant Circle, Yellow Pages, and similar networks in order to help boost your local search visibility on Google. It sounds easy at first: you think you’ll just go to a few websites, enter your contact information, and you’ll be set. Because all you really want to do is get some links to your website from these profiles. But the truth is, there are a lot of local business listings to obtain if you go the DIY route. There are... [...]

Brian Sutter says, “Small businesses have always lived and died by word of mouth. Even before the Internet, a business was in trouble if too many people said bad things about it. Fast-forward to today, when any customer can say almost anything about your business, and all the world can read it. One negative review can cripple a new business. Even an established company has to be careful not to rack up too much negative feedback. Turns out that online reviews are important. However, maybe you’re skeptical: Exactly how influential are customer reviews in the first place? you ask. Is anyone... [...]

Dan-Petrovic says, “Question: How does a search engine interpret user experience? Answer: They collect and process user behaviour data. Types of user behaviour data used by search engines include click-through rate (CTR), navigational paths, time, duration, frequency, and type of access. Click-through rate Click-through rate analysis is one of the most prominent search quality feedback signals in both commercial and academic information retrieval papers. Both Google and Microsoft have made considerable efforts towards development of mechanisms which help them understand when a page receives... [...]

Sam Edwards says, “As you’ve probably heard before, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the entire world. That means  aside from Google (which owns YouTube) no website is used more frequently each month than YouTube. In fact, the most recent statistics suggest Google attracts an estimated 1.1 billion unique monthly visitors. YouTube brings in approximately 1 billion. That’s more than Facebook, Yahoo!, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bing, and other popular sites. And this equates to big bucks. According to data curated and published by ExpandedRamblings.com, YouTube produced... [...]

Farooq Bhatti says, “In the local search sphere, one of the most important aspects of an establishment is its unique identifier, commonly known as NAP, which stands for Name, Address and Phone.   A citation is simply an online mention of your business NAP. When search engines see consistent NAP citations across your website, review sites, social media profiles, and directory listings, then this acts as a positive ranking factor. However, if search engines find inconsistencies in the citations, in the interest of caution and their own reputation, they promote businesses with accurate and... [...]

Paul Shapiro says, “I recently asked a room of experienced marketers how they thought social media marketing could assist their SEO efforts. The answers were more or less what I had expected to hear: Social media helps foster relationships, which in turn helps build links and improves rankings. Social media aids in public relations, as a distribution channel and a means of generating easy online buzz. Social sharing provides a form of social proof, giving greater credibility and trustworthiness to your content. Brands can rank for their social networking profiles and receive greater visibility... [...]

MOZ team says, “With all the advancements search engines have made, a lot of folks in the SEO world are circling back to a fundamental question: If I’m targeting a particular keyword, where and how often should I use that in the front and back ends of my page? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand puts his recommendations into the context of today’s SERPs“. How Much Keyword Repetition is Optimal MOZ Blog  [...]

Farooq Bhatti says, “Big changes have been introduced in the way local businesses are presented on Google search results.  Since early August 2015, Google altered the usual seven pack local listing to a smaller three pack (aka snack pack) listing across all its sites worldwide. How businesses react to these changes will define how easily consumers can find them. Let’s take a look at what the new search results look like and what insights we can gain from them“. How the Google Snack Pack update impacts local search ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]