Kurt Heinemann says, “When is the last time you thought about your e-commerce site’s search solution? If you’re like most digital retailers, you probably haven’t given it much thought in years. Site search is the workhorse of online shopping, yet it is rarely considered a critical part of an e-commerce strategy. That’s a huge mistake. Site search is the single strongest indicator of online buying intent. When customers use site search, they’re likely looking to buy. If your site search isn’t running optimally, you’re missing sales opportunities“. Five... [...]

MOZ team says, “When should you disallow search engines in your robots.txt file, and when should you use meta robots tags in a page header? What about nofollowing links? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers these tools and their appropriate use in four situations that SEOs commonly find themselves facing“. Controlling Search Engine Crawlers for Better Indexation and Rankings MOZ Blog  [...]

Jamie Press says, “Many of us have known for a while that Google Autocomplete can be a useful tool for identifying keyword opportunities. But did you know it is also an extremely powerful tool for content ideation? And by pushing the envelope a little further, you can turn an Autocomplete topic from a good content idea into a link-building, traffic-generating powerhouse for your website. Here’s how I did it for one of my clients. They are in the diesel power generator industry in the Australian market, but you can use this same process for businesses in literally any industry and market... [...]

Barry Feldman says, “You never know for sure which social media tactics are going to deliver for you. Even the task of defining “effective” is a challenge. Your definition of success may differ from, well, anyone’s. Social media evolves at the speed of screen flicker. There simply are no steadfast rules. If you love social media the way I do, you try to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s working in a variety of ways. You dig into the research. You experiment. And you gather the advice of the experts who call this stuff their profession. A combination of all of the above will... [...]

Eric Enge says,Today’s post focuses on a vision for your online presence. This vision outlines what it takes to be the best, both from an overall reputation and visibility standpoint, as well as an SEO point of view. The reason these are tied together is simple: Your overall online reputation and visibility is a huge factor in your SEO. Period. Let’s start by talking about why. Core ranking signals For purposes of this post, let’s define three cornerstone ranking signals that most everyone agrees on: Links Links remain a huge factor in overall ranking. Both Cyrus Shepard and Marcus... [...]

Brad Shorr says, “If SEO had existed in Shakespeare’s day, the playwright might have written, “The fault, dear colleague, is not in our stars, but in our website’s poor optimization.” A poorly optimized website cannot serve its purpose. Many factors go into on-site optimization, but three items stand out as being not only crucial but also frequently shortchanged or completely overlooked. Let’s examine each and discuss how you can give them their due and dramatically boost your SEO performance. 1. Keyword Pitfalls Keywords should be made of sterner stuff. Keyword... [...]

Erik Devaney says, “So, you’ve read dozens — if not hundreds — of SEO articles on the web. You’ve digested countless tips and tricks for improving your website’s SEO. You’ve even (over)paid that self-proclaimed “expert” to help you develop an SEO strategy that aligns with your business’ goals. But after all of the reading and learning and strategizing, it dawns on you: You haven’t actuallydone anything yet. Especially when it comes to on-page SEO, there’s no excuse for dragging your feet. After all,you get to establish what... [...]

Tom Anthony says, “In the Distilled R&D department we have been ramping up the amount of automated monitoring and analysis we do, with an internal system monitoring our client’s sites both directly and via various data sources to ensure they remain healthy and we are alerted to any problems that may arise. Recently we started work to add in functionality for including the rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in this system. In this blog post I’m going to share an open-source Python library we’ve just started work on for the purpose, which makes it easy to read the hreflang... [...]

MOZ team says, “User experience and the quality of your content have an incredibly broad impact on your SEO efforts. In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Stone Temple’s Eric Enge shows you how paying attention to your users can benefit your position in the SERPs“. UX, Content Quality, and SEO MOZ Blog  [...]

MOZ team says, “Like many other areas of marketing, SEO incorporates elements of science. It becomes problematic for everyone, though, when theories that haven’t been the subject of real scientific rigor are passed off as proven facts. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Stone Temple Consulting’s Mark Traphagen is here to teach us a thing or two about the scientific method and how it can be applied to our day-to-day work“. Becoming Better SEO Scientists MOZ Blog  [...]