MOZ team says, “It’s the season of giving, and that notion extends to search! Brand preferences have an almost tangible impact on several levels, from consumer affinity to a rankings boost on Google. In this holiday edition of our now-traditional Whitebeard Friday, Rand explains why it’s important to keep brand recognition at the forefront of your strategy, and offers up a framework on how to get started on giving searchers a reason to prefer your brand“. Giving Searchers a Reason to Prefer Your Brand MOZ Blog  [...]

Trond Lyngbø says, “Going into the FIFA World Cup 2014, Argentina’s prolific scorer, Lionel Messi, widely considered the world’s best attacker, was expected to steer his team to victory. But he didn’t score a field goal in four games at the knockout stage — and his team lost in the finals! Just like soccer, digital marketing is also a team effort. To win in the long run, each element of your omni-channel marketing plan, including SEO, should work in concert with and build upon the others  to power your business to massive success. Do you work in a large organization, selling... [...]

Roy Hinkis says, “Last month Google made a big announcement, potentially signaling a game changer for search. Google is quietly rolling out app-only content indexing, even if that content isn’t actually hosted on the indexed app. So, what does that actually mean? The game-changing implication is that when you search Google from your phone or tablet, app-only content will “stream” directly to your mobile device — even if you don’t have the app installed. Thus, if I search for the key phrase “hotel tonight in Chicago,” I’ll see results from mobile apps that aren’t installed... [...]

Berry Levine says, “With software robots (bots) settling into what seems to be a permanent and major part of website traffic, a Detroit-based company is out with a report that takes a different angle. Instead of focusing on identifying and warding off bots, says “State of the Human Internet Report, 2015,” why not focus on verifying which visitors are human? That’s the mission of Are You A Human (AYAH), Inc., a company that tracks visitors on over three million websites in nearly 200 countries and determines which ones are clearly exhibiting human behavior. Its new report quantifies... [...]

Aaron Agius says, “Could social signals be one of the mysterious 200+ factors that Google considers in order to determine your website’s rank? SEOs and digital marketers have been debating the question for ages. But what does the data actually say? Here’s a new perspective that attempts to answer this constantly debated question. Google Says No Google is often cryptic about what factors it uses to determine rank, but in the case of social signals, they’ve actually been fairly straightforward. Many Google representatives have mentioned that social signals are not a rank factor. One... [...]

MOZ team says, “You may have heard the term “AMPs” thrown around lately. What exactly are Accelerated Mobile Pages, what do they mean for search, and how can you prepare for it all? In this week’s BritishWhiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow and Tom Anthony of Distilled lay out all the important details“. What You Need to Know About Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]

Taylor Tomita says, “Search engine optimization (SEO) has always been apparent within the internet world, but as Google’s ranking factors have been streamlined with their frequent search algorithm updates, implementing SEO into a website is becoming increasingly necessary in today’s digitalized world. SEO is the process of setting up a website in a way that allows it be visible within a search engine’s results page, based on the standard practices that all search engines use to organize the internet world. This can be boiled down to a number of strategies, but overall, SEO is impressing... [...]

Dr. Peter J. Meyers says, “It’s been 3 1/2 years since we launched the MozCast project, and one request I hear a lot is if we can make more than 30 days worth of data available. So, working with Dave Snyder and the team atCopyPress, we’ve put together the highlights of 2014 and 2015 — the confirmed algorithm updates you already know, and the ones you might have missed. The data is mine, but credit for everything else goes to CopyPress (Thanks, Dave!). If you have any questions about specific events or dates, feel free to comment, and I’ll do my best to follow up with any... [...]

Ciaran Murphy says, “Today, we’re talking about June 25th, 2015: the day Google AdWords changed forever to allow Analytics remarketing audiences to be available for advertisers on search. In our video blog, we’ll begin by telling you why this is important and explain some problems it solves. We’ll give you some examples of how you can use RLSAs, along with four benefits of using them. We’ve also included a simple example of how you can create one audience. And we’ll conclude with the sequel to The Day Google AdWords Changed Forever. This video is about 25 minutes... [...]

Quinn Whissen says, “Link building has had a rough year. Thanks in part to Google’s John Mueller’s comments that link building, in general, is a strategy to avoid, a number of SEO practitioners have moved away from the practice. More specifically, they’ve flocked to a more natural form of link building involving the creation, syndication and promotion of thoroughly researched original content; the idea here is to attract orearn links naturally without ever manually building a link on an outside source. I’m a big fan of this approach. It’s safe, natural and can earn you a ton of... [...]