Pratik Dholakiya says, “The landscape for search engine rankings is brutally competitive where geographically relevant searches are concerned. And, increasingly, the landscape is becoming pricier and less penetrable. As a result, local SEO has become much more important to businesses across the board. Around 80 percent of consumers look to search engines to find local information. By leveraging customer reviews and producing keyword-rich content pertaining to geographic location, relevance and the targeted audience, businesses can achieve more visibility without breaking the bank. Businesses... [...]

Gini Dietrich says, “If you haven’t been responsible for media relations, earned media may seem most scary or out of reach, but it really isn’t. Earned media is one of the most cost-effective ways to raise brand awareness and — if it’s done well — increase sales. Today, though, given that word of mouth is more effective than paid media, earned media is even more crucial to gaining authority for your content efforts and improving your SEO. Of course, this can’t be done overnight. A strategic earned media program requires consistent efforts to build awareness and relationships with... [...]

Janet Driscoll Miller says, “So you’re going to redesign and relaunch your website. Congratulations! That’s certainly a major undertaking. But before your relaunch is live, you may want to perform an SEO audit, just to be safe. A proper SEO audit identifies potential SEO pitfalls prior to launch, giving you time to get issues fixed before you replace your current website. Unlike a general SEO audit on your website, an audit for a relaunching site is a bit of a different animal because you’re looking at and comparing two different sites: the old site versus the newly designed site. Relaunch... [...]

ML team says, “2016 brought incredible developments in both SEO & SEM. From the emergence of AI, search engine algorithm changes, new formats like ETAs, call extensions and voice search the complexity of managing SEO and SEM has become more complex than ever. And the momentum won’t stop as 2017 brings forth a new wave of opportunities for SEOs and SEMs like you. Learning how to drive quality, targeted traffic from your efforts is the difference between success and failure and SMX West features 50+ sessions on SEO, SEM, Analytics, Content Marketing, Social Media and more. Join us at... [...]

Pete Prestipino says, “While the appeal of rich snippet markup is obvious, many Internet retailers have been slow to take advantage of the opportunity on their product pages. Whether the reason for this is the complexity of doing so, or because their e-commerce platform just doesn’t support such an initiative, those merchants that do deploy rich snippets stand to capture far more attention on the search results pages than their competition. The benefit of adding markup (Microdata, RDFa, or JSON-LD) to product pages specifically is that it provides search engines an opportunity to... [...]

Pete Prestipino says, “Branded keywords are the terms (and phrases) that are directly related to a company/enterprise or its services/products. Most enterprises rank quite well for these terms and phrases but not everyone. Let’s take a closer look at SEO for branded keywords. It’s actually quite common for brands to monitor social media and organic searches for references to their specific brand name but they should also be researching the other terms consumers use in association with their brand name (as well as that of their competitors). Doing so can help brands understand... [...]

Jesse Boskoff says, “When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), staying on top of trends is about more than sounding savvy when you talk tech with your colleagues. It’s also essential to the strength of your enterprise’s online marketing efforts. Here are six must-know SEO trends poised to make a big impact in 2017. 1. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Google’s new AMP Project promises to deliver optimized content to mobile users at lightning speeds. An open-source project, AMP relies upon specialized HTML files that are designed to load at least four... [...]

MOZ team says, “It’s been a few years since we’ve covered the topic of comment marketing, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of date. There are clever, intentional ways to market yourself and your brand in the comments sections of sites, and there’s less competition now than ever before. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand details what you can do to get noticed in the comments and the benefits you’ll reap from high-quality contributions”. Comment Marketing: How to Earn Benefits from Community Participation MOZ  [...]

Felicia Crawford says, “Now that we’ve comfortably settled into the first two weeks of 2017, it’s time to revive an annual Moz Blog tradition: the Best of 2016 is here! I’ve carefully collected data on all the posts, comments, and commenters you remarkable readers liked the most this past year, compiling it all into one big, beautiful blog post. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll rue the day you ever downloaded Pocket. But as we commence our journey into the insights and revelations of yesteryear, my sincere hope is that you’ll feel inspired. That you’ll... [...]

George Freitag says, “This is it. The full agenda for MozCon Local 2017 and LocalU Advanced Workshop on February 27-28. If you’re a brand with a ton of locations or an agency with local clients, you’re going to want to come to MozCon Local 2017. We’ve got an amazing line-up of speakers from some of the top brains in Local Search to help you put together the perfect local marketing strategy and get the most out of local search. Come visit us in Seattle and learn about local search, SEO, citations, reviews, enterprise-level strategy, and so much more. Interact directly with... [...]