Alexandra Tachalova says, “SEO and SMM are like pizza and cheese: you can get one without the other, but, believe me, it isn’t worth it. Nowadays SEO cannot be effective without well-executed content curation. And that’s where social media kicks in — it helps you unlock untapped potential. Compared to other marketing channels, social media benefits SEO in unexpected ways. It’s not surprising that SEO and SMM have slowly become closely intertwined activities that all businesses want to take advantage of. But how exactly can SEO and SMM work together? Do social media signals affect... [...]

Alexis Sanders says, “SEO specialists spend massive amounts of effort trying to get Google on our side — to see the brilliance of our content, the ingenuity of our meta elements, and the genius of our organic strategies. We spend so much time treating Google as a metaphorical friend that we sometimes we lose sight of the overarching picture: that Google’s (sometimes magical) results are built upon an algorithm seeking conversation. Algorithms can (and do) solve many problems, but having one match the conversational level of human beings presents an enormous challenge. Engineers at top... [...]

MOZ team says, “Longer, more thorough documents tend to do better in the search results. We know that’s true, but why? And is there a way we can use that knowledge to our advantage? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains how Google may be weighting content comprehensiveness and outlines his three-step methodology for gaining an edge over your competitors when it comes to meeting searchers’ needs”. How to Beat Your Competitor’s Rankings with More *Comprehensive* Content MOZ  [...]

Dr. Peter J. Meyers says, “Google Home, Google’s latest digital assistant, is part of a broader market experiment in voice-only search. While the hardware is new, Google has been building toward this future for a while, and one of the clearest examples is the introduction of featured snippets to answer questions in search. For example, if I ask Google: “What is a moonshot in business?” I get this answer… In desktop search, Google also returns a set of traditional organic results, and, in some cases, ads, news results, Knowledge Panels, and other features. Featured... [...]

Ronell Smith says, “The young man at the back of the ballroom in the Santa Monica, Calif., Loews hotel has a question he’s been burning to ask, having held it for more than an hour as I delivered a presentation on why content marketing is invaluable for search. When the time comes for Q&A, he nearly leaps out of his chair before announcing that he’s asking a question for pretty much the entire room. “How do I know what content I should create?” he asks. “I work at a small company. We have a team of content people, but we’re typically told what to write... [...]

Russ Jones says, “Existential threats to SEO Rand called “Not Provided” the First Existential Threat to SEO in 2013. While 100% Not Providedwas certainly one of the largest and most egregious data grabs by Google, it was part of a long and continued history of Google pulling data sources which benefit search engine optimizers. I don’t intend to say that Google made any of these decisions specifically to harm SEOs, but that the decisions did harm SEO is inarguable. In our industry, like many others, data is power. Without access to SERP, keyword, and analytics data, our... [...]

MOZ team says, “It may seem like an impossible uphill battle to compete with big sites in the SERPs, but there are benefits to running a smaller site that can make a tremendous difference to your SEO. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains how small businesses and websites can target opportunities the big sites can’t, in spite of their natural advantages”. How Can Small Businesses/Websites Compete with Big Players in SEO? MOZ  [...]

Jo Cameron says, “Welcome to the sixth installment of our educational Next Level series! In our last episode, Jo took you on an adventure diving for treasure in the long tail of search. This time around we’re answering the call for help when you feel like you’ve done all you can, but you’re still not ranking. Read on and level up! You’ve optimized your pages, written delightful title tags, concocted a gorgeous description to entice clicks, used your target keyword in your copy with similar words, and your content is good, like really good. As far as you’re concerned... [...]

Joy Hawikns says, “It seems very apparent that Google has a filter for local that weeds through all the listings that should appear in the 3-pack on Google and in the Local Finder (when you click “More Places”), then filters some based on their spam score. Bill Slawski wrote about this in July and referenced the patent that was granted June 21, 2016, about it. To quote the patent: A spam score is assigned to a business listing when the listing is received at a search entity. A noise function is added to the spam score such that the spam score is varied. In the event that the spam score... [...]

Larry Kim says, “Quality and relevance are different things, yet we often discuss them as if they were the same. SEOs have been optimizing for relevance all this time, but are now being asked to optimize for quality. This post will discuss what that means and how to do it, with a focus on what I believe to be the single most effective and scaleable tactic for improving your site’s overall level of quality in most situations. It doesn’t matter how relevant the page is. The only way to get that page to rank these days would be to buy a lot of links, but then you’re dealing with... [...]