Eric Enge says, “The recent SMX West conference had many awesome sessions, and today I’m going to provide some compelling insights from “SEO and Social: A Match Made in Marketing Heaven.” One of the great things about this session is that all four speakers took a step back and provided fresh ideas on how to think about the integration of these two disciplines. Let’s dig in! Flexibility and a willingness to fail Leading off the session we had Maggie Malek, head of PR and social at MMI agency out of Houston. She walked us through a process for getting search and social to work together. If... [...]

Ronald Dod says, “Search engines help you get new readers, viewers, and listeners for your content, but all too often you yourself are the reason search engines hold your content back from prominent positions in their search results pages. Search engines want to show the world your content, but not if you’ve made mistakes that undermine the user experience and search engines’ guidelines. So give the search engines what they want by avoiding the following common mistakes that content creators make. 1. Short Content Google likes long-form content because it gives searchers enough... [...]

Andy Crestodina says, “It’s as if they live in different countries: Searchlandia and Socialstan. Search optimizers and social media marketers don’t get together a whole lot, at least not in the same piece of content. But there’s no reason they can’t peacefully coexist in one article, in one URL. Imagine. One topic, one message, united in quality, but with two separate and equally powerful sources of traffic: search and social. Is it possible? Can one post be optimized for both? Yes. And when it happens, the traffic is greater than the sum of its channels. Um. Actually, the traffic... [...]

MOZ team says, “By now, most people who follow SEO are familiar with structured data, the Schema.org vocabulary, and rich snippets. Even those who know very little about SEO appreciate the benefits of adding structured data to their websites, namely that they might be able to get rich snippets in search results. Of course, the main benefit of structured data is that it helps search engines better understand your content, which in turn helps them rank it more appropriately in search results. But we’re not here to discuss the what and why about structured data; there are plenty of other... [...]

Sonia Simone says, “So today is April 1, which usually means we’ll try to feed you some stupid joke that will just make you roll your eyes when you realize the date. Not this time, internet. Brian kicked things off on Monday with three ways to get links that you haven’t heard 20 million times from people whose websites have no links. Plus he gets a little snarky, which you never want to miss. On Tuesday, our friend Jon Nastor showed us how we can actually get listeners for our podcasts. It’s a useful thing to know, since the #1 question on the minds of new podcasters is: “For the... [...]

MOZ team says, “Even if you know — deep down in your heart of hearts — how important SEO is, it’s hard to prioritize when you have less than 3 hours a month to devote to it. But there’s still a way to include the bare minimum, even if you run on a tight schedule. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers a minimum viable SEO strategy to give those with limited time a plan going forward”. Minimum Viable SEO: If You Only Have a Few Minutes Each Week… Do This MOZ  [...]

Loren Baker says, “In the world of SEO, user experience on websites has always been a factor, as has the time it takes for a site to load. However, with the use of mobile devices surpassing desktop use (in most consumer-facing industries) and the wide adoption of broadband, people expect sites to load instantly. Long gone are the days of waiting 10 seconds for a site to load. If a page takes more than a couple of seconds to load, users will instantly hit the back button and move on to the next result. Accordingly, Google officially started paying attention to site speed and declared its... [...]

Ronell Smith says, “According to our calculations, MozCon 2017 is a mere 158,000 minutes away. (But who’s counting, right?) As you might have guessed, we’re quite excited about our latest event, in large part because we have some new tricks up our sleeves. (More on that at a later date. We promise.) Aside from a few tweaks here and there, though, the next MozCon won’t be much different from those in years past. That is, it’ll be unique and awesome in equal amounts. MozCon 2017: July 17–19 in Seattle You can still expect world-class speakers sharing original information in a... [...]

Alexandra Tachalova says, “To measure, or not to measure? When it comes to outlining potential metrics in digital marketing, I always ask myself a question: “Can I measure this?” For the most crucial elements of your strategy, the answer will likely be yes. But digital marketing involves tons of metrics that we must track on a daily basis. The majority of the data we gather gives us a general understanding of what’s going on, yet keeps us too far away from reaching our business goals. For instance, Google Analytics alone has more than 75 standard reports and each of them can be modified,... [...]

Casey Meraz says, “For years, I’ve been saying that if you have a problem with spammers in local results, you can just wait it out. I mean, if Google cared about removing spam and punishing those who are regular spammers we’d see them removed fast and often, right? While there are instances where spam has been removed, it seems these are not fast fixes, permanent fixes, or even very common. In fact, they seem few and far between. So today I’m changing my tune a bit to call more attention to the spam issues people employ that violate Google My Business terms and yet continue... [...]