Marcus Tober says, “Searchmetrics recently launched their yearly Ranking Factors Study that bases numbers on rank correlation and averages of top 10 SEO rankings. The 2014 analysis shows that content on top-performing sites is much more holistic and less keyword-focused. In this post, Marcus Tober, founder and CTO of Searchmetrics, explains why you should focus on more than just keywords when it comes to technical aspects of your site, and how you can create relevant, comprehensive content for users”. Searchmetrics Ranking Factors 2014: Why Quality Content Focuses on Topics, not Keywords MOZ... [...]

Inklyo says, “Once you’ve established your business online with a website, it’s time to start advertising to your audience. The Internet is a huge space with vast amounts of pages and information, so it is unlikely that customers will just happen to stumble upon your website and engage with your business. You have to be the one to put it out there and draw customers to your site. The best way to do this is by using a content marketing plan. Instead of traditional advertisements that tell audiences what to do, the new and better way to attract customers is to show your audiences what to do“. Local... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “Google is drawing connections between semantic concepts and brand names, and it’s affecting SERPs. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains that process, offering tips on how we can help make sure our own brands are included”. How Google is Connecting Keyword Relevance to Websites through More than Just Domain Names – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]

Kate Morris says, “It’s on the internet, so it’s true. The bane of the existence of all search marketers is old or incorrect information given to clients at any point in time that they still hang on to. This post was inspired by an interaction with a client’s co-workers, people that are not thinking about SEO on a regular basis. This is not to knock them, but to bring to the attention of everyone that there is a continual need for education. These concepts have a way of hanging around”. Outdated SEO Concepts People Still Think are Reality MOZ Blog  [...]

Erica McGillivray says, “A lot of my life’s work has been focused on increasing the visibility of women and other minorities in male-dominated professional fields. I’m not here to give you an intersectional Feminism 101 lesson or explain to you that institutional sexism is indeed alive and systemically present in online marketing. Instead, in the spirit of the Moz blog, I want to give you tips and tricks to make our corner of the world more welcoming to women. Several of these tips can also easily be adjusted and applied to other groups of marginalized people. Some can really just... [...]

Jom Seward says, “I love Screaming Frog. It is without doubt the best SEO tool I use on a daily basis (no offense, Moz). The sheer amount of data you can get about your website, or someone else’s website, is incredible. You can find broken links, you can check for your Google Analytics (or any other) code on all pages through the custom search, and you can even go so far as to follow all the redirects and find out the redirect paths in a website. In this quick guide, I’m going to show how Screaming Frog data can be used to help perform a content audit. The data in Screaming Frog... [...]

Paddy Morgan says, “In my last post on Moz a few weeks ago, I talked about the idea of paying to promote your content using social channels. Today I actually want to go a step backwards in the process and talk about content creation. 1. How to verify you have a good idea I could write a whole post on this one topic, but maybe that’s for another day! For now, I want to share a few ways you can make sure you’re on the right track and increasing the likelihood that you have a content idea that is going to be well received”. 5 Hacks for Creating and Promoting the Right Content MOZ... [...]

Simon Penson says, “I’m not so sure it’s correct to say—as is so common lately—that today’s SEO is a new one, especially with regard to on-site SEO. Many of the things that are necessary today were also necessary in the past: a well-designed information architecture, a great navigation structure, good internal linking, etc. We should talk instead of a new emphasis we must give to some factors as old as SEO itself”. Teach Google About Your Entities by Using Topical Hubs – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]

Ben Barrass says, “Benchmarking, for those that were in the know, was once a fantastic feature of Google Analytics. Discontinued in 2011, and then followed by the removal of Adplanner the following year, meant it became a lot harder to contextualise the great work marketers were doing and get valuable market information. Alternatives for benchmarking have always been available, based on toolbar tracking or proprietary stats vendors for example, but those that used Google Analytics benchmarking reports loved the feature for its simplicity, the fact that it was perceived to be well informed, and... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “Here’s an example which highlights the importance of internal linking and the creation of hub pages.  To demonstrate this, I’ll look at the Guardian and Mail Online’sSEO and internal linking strategy, and the marked contrast between the two. We’re looking at publishers here, but the principles apply equally to any website. In the run up to the tournament, most major news sites created World Cup hub pages for the term, which is likely to be the most popular of 2014”. Why internal links and hub pages are the key to SEO success ‘Econsultancy’... [...]