Nathan Gotch says, “Technical SEO mistakes are the silent killer of campaigns. They not only disrupt user experience but also make Google hate your website. Keep the following fact in your mind as you read this article: When users don’t like your website, Google doesn’t like your website. So, the goal of technical SEO is make the user experience flawless on your website. Fixing the following mistakes will help you achieve that goal: 1. Your website is painfully slow. A slow site is a bad site. Half of all Web users expect a site to load in two seconds or less. Most abandon sites... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “There’s no question that building great inbound links to your site is hard work. While many site owners resort to spamming blog comment sections to get their backlinks, that’s neither necessary, nor effective for your SEO efforts. But it’s probably just a last ditch effort since, although there’s much talk about generating inbound links, the nitty-gritty ways to actually do that are rarely discussed. New Call-to-action But link building doesn’t need to be as tough as most people make it. Think of it like social media — if you’re a source... [...]

Charlene Ditch says, “Ever dreamed of going to MozCon and imagined yourself watching Dr. Pete’s talk, taking photos with Roger, and giving Rand a fist bump? Or maybe you’ve always gone to MozCon and just can’t budget it this year? Well, we have the opportunity of a lifetime for you! This year, we’re thrilled to try something new and give our community members a chance to win an exclusive VIP MozCon experience! A free ticket to MozCon 2016 including optional VIP front row seating, accommodations (with suite upgrade) for the entire conference, airfare/transportation to Seattle,... [...]

Dmitry Dragilev says, “It’s no secret that SEO is changing fast. So fast, in fact, that many small business owners have trouble keeping tabs on what is (and isn’t) important in the world of SEO. Back in the early days, things were simpler. SEO was all about title tags, keywords, and backlinks. Today, a successful SEO campaign needs to take into consideration branding, user experience, semantic search, and much more. Not to mention that Google continues to move the goalposts on a daily basis. In fact, Google has confirmed that on average it makes two change to the algorithm every... [...]

Barry Levine says, “A few months ago, the Content Marketing Manager at a client’s organization reached out to me, asking if we could provide his copywriting team with an SEO training session. I was floored! We had been optimizing the majority of their content for years, but they had never shown any interest in doing it on their own. Why the sudden change? A new VP of marketing had come on board with search experience and wanted to make SEO a priority across the entire marketing department. After years of trying to get them engaged, all it took was a new person to come in and make it happen.... [...]

Angela Petteys says, “Setting up and using Yoast SEO When you’re working with a self-hosted WordPress site, the Yoast SEO plugin is one of the most valuable tools you can have. Yoast SEO is one of the most widely popular WordPress plugins around and it’s easy to understand why. Whether you’re running a personal blog or you’re a SEO professional managing a website for a client, Yoast is a powerful tool that can help you make your site as search engine-friendly as possible. Yoast SEO can be installed on any self-hosted WordPress site. (Sorry, free WordPress.com bloggers.) It’s easily... [...]

Winston Burton says, “I recently attended a search conference and had the opportunity to converse with attendees from a wide range of fields, with varying SEO backgrounds and experiences. After many interesting and engaging conversations, a common takeaway stood out to me: People are hung up on technical SEO metrics. I remember multiple questions like, “What’s your minimum threshold for Trust Flow?” or, “Okay, you get relevant links, but what is the average Domain Authority?” I shared my observation with our sales team when I returned, and they confirmed this was a common theme... [...]

Winston Burton says, “Many SEOs these days are focused on content marketing. This involves building out high-quality content optimized for searcher intent, then amplifying that content through social to capture end users in their moment of need. But what are the right steps to prioritize and amplify content? Read on. SEO content prioritization & creation At one point in SEO, all we talked about was being “relevant” in order to rank. However, modern SEO is about being both relevant and useful; content that achieves this is exactly what Google is looking for. You can prioritize based... [...]

Christian Sculthorp says, “Did you know that only one-seventh of the world’s population speaks English? And only about 340 million speak it as their first language (source: Ethnologue). That leaves more than six billion people who won’t get the message if you have the English-only mindset. If you sell a product or service that’s available worldwide, localizing your content online can be a massive opportunity, especially if your website is close to maxing out its current SEO potential. SaaS is a good example of an industry that can benefit from this; they can serve customers around the... [...]

Neil Patel says, “The exact details of Google’s search algorithms aren’t public knowledge, making it somewhat difficult to know exactly what it is the search giant is looking for in quality websites. One of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of these quality rankings is the importance of “white-hat” link-building as part of a solid SEO strategy. The term refers to the desire to create a good product or a service that people will want to link to (the “white-hat” reference) and that over time may increase your search ranking. The confusion over white hat was... [...]