Dudley Carr says, “Today we’re excited to remove the Beta label on Moz Local Insights! This feature has been in beta since November when David first announced it. This release of Insights continues the push to provide our customers with a holistic understanding of local search presence. First, a tremendous thank you to all of our customers who gave us feedback about what works and what doesn’t work. In the two months that Insights has been active for all 60K+ listings in Moz Local, we’ve collected 2.5 billion individual metrics! Insights is tracking 220K search keywords, traffic for... [...]

Miriam Ellis says, “St. Valentine’s Day is on the way, and I’ve been thinking about love and loyalty as they apply in the local business world. It’s been estimated that it costs 7x more to acquire a customer than to retain one; in my city, most of the major chains offer some type of traditional customer loyalty program. Most rely on a points-based system or an initial sign-up investment to receive benefits, but I wondered about Main Street. I picked 15 locally owned businesses at random to see if they had created loyalty programs, and then I checked Google and Yelp to see if any of... [...]

Will Critchlow says, “The FTC recently published their updated rules (and more accessible “guidance”) on what constitutes a “misleading” native advert [PDF]. I’ve read them. I only fell asleep twice. Then, near the end, a couple of bombshells. But first, the background. Native ads and the FTC For those who haven’t been following the trends closely, native advertising is a form of digital advertising whereby adverts are included “in-stream,” interspersed with regular editorial content. On social platforms, this takes the form of “promoted” posts — including stories or... [...]

MOZ team says, “Should you ditch keyword targeting entirely? There’s been a lot of discussion around the idea of focusing on broad topics and concepts to satisfy searcher intent, but it’s a big step to take and could potentially hurt your rankings. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses old-school keyword targeting and new-school concept targeting, outlining a plan of action you can follow to get the best of both worlds”. Can SEOs Stop Worrying About Keywords and Just Focus on Topics? MOZ Blog  [...]

Eric Enge says, “Machine learning is already a very big deal. It’s here, and it’s in use in far more businesses than you might suspect. A few months back, I decided to take a deep dive into this topic to learn more about it. In today’s post, I’ll dive into a certain amount of technical detail about how it works, but I also plan to discuss its practical impact on SEO and digital marketing. For reference, check out Rand Fishkin’s presentation about how we’ve entered into a two-algorithm world. Rand addresses the impact of machine learning on search and SEO... [...]

Pratik Dholakiya says, “Doing a search engine optimization (SEO) audit is no joke. It used to take time, the patience of a saint and too many spreadsheets. You may grow a white hair or two in the process. But, thanks to technical SEO audit tools, we are no longer doing those insane manual checks that we did in the past. Most SEO experts arm themselves with these tools so they’re no longer rummaging through raw data but making strategic decisions instead. In this article I’ll share three of my go-to tools for performing a technical SEO audit: DeepCrawl (a cloud-based tool), Screaming... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Should SME owners employ an agency to carry out SEO? Of all the questions we get asked at Econsultancy, this is the one that always jumps out at me. We get asked by SMEs that are using an agency and not seeing great results, as well as those who haven’t yet attempted anything in earnest, either in-house or with a partner. I have had some experience (admittedly only a year) working with a search agency, as well as a dabbling in practical SEO triage myself. Here are some points to bear in mind. If you’re an agency or an SME, feel free to comment. Do you know your... [...]

Erik Devaney says, “SEO is an evolving science. While some of the core principles will presumably stick around forever, the nuanced aspects of it are subject to continuous change. And as a result, many of the “proven” tactics people have used in the past — keyword stuffing, link schemes, etc. — are now stuff of legend. Unless your organization benefits from having a dedicated SEO person who can work on this stuff day-in, day-out, keeping up with the latest changes in the world of SEO can be a struggle. But in the end, adjusting your strategy based on search ranking... [...]

Your site needs traffic, actually, it needs more traffic and better traffic (i.e., traffic likely to invest in your offers.) That traffic does exist; no doubt about it. You just need to find it. Abbas Ravji had the same problem, and he decided to do something about it. When he analyzed the situation, he realized that the sites on Google’s page 1 are getting the traffic he needs. If only he could find out how they get the traffic and steer some of that traffic to his site. The result of his investigation is his new plugin, Wp RankMe. This new WordPress plugin digs into the public information... [...]

Aaron Agius says, “Could social signals be one of the mysterious 200+ factors that Google considers in order to determine your website’s rank? SEOs and digital marketers have been debating the question for ages. But what does the data actually say? Here’s a new perspective that attempts to answer this constantly debated question. Google Says No Google is often cryptic about what factors it uses to determine rank, but in the case of social signals, they’ve actually been fairly straightforward. Many Google representatives have mentioned that social signals are not a rank factor. One... [...]