Purna Virji says, “My neighbor has the most beautiful garden ever. Season after season, she grows the most exotic, gorgeous plants that I could never find in any local nursery. Slightly green with envy over her green thumb, I discovered a glimmer of hope. There are apps that will identify any plant you take a photo of. Problem solved. Now the rest of the neighborhood is getting prettied up as several houses, including mine, have sprouted exotic new blooms easily ordered online. Take a photo, get an answer. The most basic form of visual search. Visual search addresses both convenience and... [...]

Mihai Aperghis says, “As an SEO, whether you’re working in-house or handling many clients in an agency, you’ve likely been using this tool for a bunch of reasons. Whether it’s diagnosing traffic and position changes or finding opportunities for optimizations and content ideas, Google Search Console’s Search Search Analytics has been at the core of most SEOs’ toolset. The scope of this small guide is to give you a few ideas on how to use Search Analytics together with Google Sheets to help you in your SEO work. As with the guide on how to do competitive analysis in Excel,... [...]

Tony Edward says, “Google has been testing a new content platform called “Posts with Google,” and it could have a huge impact on brand searches, for both paid and organic. We all know that Google has had its struggles with trying to develop its own social network; Google Buzz is dead, and Google Plus seems to be on its way out. This new platform seems to have some social elements to it, though it is very different from a social network. On the official site for this platform, Google states the following: Every day millions of people search on Google, many of whom are looking for information... [...]

MOZ team says, “We’re excited to announce that the MozCon 2016 Video Bundle is ready! That means no more #FOMO — you can catch up on all 27 sessions and over 15 hours of online marketing goodness from some of the brightest minds in the industry. Want to earn more featured snippets? Yup, we cover that. Looking for new tools and tactics for link acquisition? You’ll learn that, too!”. The 2016 #MozCon Video Bundle Has Arrived! MOZ  [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Every year we like to get a Googler who is close with the ranking and search quality team to give us future thinking points to relay to the search marketing community. In part two of our interview with Gary Illyes of Google, we asked him that question. After a little bit of coercion, Illyes told us three things: (1) Machine learning (2) AMP (3) Structured data He said: Well I guess you can guess that we are going to focus more and more on machine learning. Pretty much everywhere in search. But it will not take over the core algorithm. So that’s one thing. The other... [...]

MOZ team says, “How are you using remarketing on Facebook? If you’ve ever felt frustrated about the ROI on FB ads, it just may be time to give them another chance. In today’s guest-hosted Whiteboard Friday, Ryan Stewart outlines his process for using remarketing and targeted content creation to get more conversions out of your Facebook ad spend”. How to Build a Facebook Funnel That Converts MOZ  [...]

Dr. Peter J. Meyers says, “After almost a two-year wait, the latest Penguin update rolled out in late September and into early October. This roll-out is unusual in many ways, and it only now seems to be settling down. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen many reports of recoveries from previous Penguin demotions, but this post is about those who were left behind. What if you didn’t recover from Penguin? I’m going to work my way from unlikely, borderline conspiracy theories to difficult truths. Theories #1 and #2 might make you feel better, but, unfortunately, the truth... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “For years, many companies have invested heavily in SEO. But when it really comes down to it, is SEO just a crapshoot? That’s a question worth asking following a survey that asked hundreds of respondents to predict which page would rank higher than the other for a variety of keywords. The result: “most SEOs are no better than a coin-flip at predicting which page will rank better.” In the UK SERPs, respondents’ accuracy in selecting the higher-ranked page was just 46%. It was higher in the US by about 10%, but for many search terms, accuracy... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “If you know me, you know I’m hyper-critical of the software, data, and products Moz releases. My usual response to someone asking about our tools vs. others used to be to give a rundown of the things I like about the competition and why they’re great, then look down at ground, shuffle my feet in embarrassment, and say “and Moz also has a good tool for that.” But Keyword Explorer (and the progress Moz Pro & Local have made this year) brings out a different behavior in me. I’m still a little embarrassed to admit it, but admit it I must.... [...]

Amanda Zantal-Wiener says, “These days, it seems like most marketing jobs require at least a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. Even writers need to know about it — gone are the days, it seems, of simply composing with words. We have to know how to rank, build links, and yield traffic. But many of us aren’t sure where to begin. And that, says HubSpot Senior Acquisition Manager Matt Barby, is due to the deluge of information available on SEO. “The problem is that most of it is either ill-informed or just factually incorrect,” he explains. Luckily, because... [...]