MOZ team says, “Is it better to rank higher in a single position frequently, or to own more of the SERP real estate consistently? The answer may vary. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand presents four questions you should ask to determine whether this strategy could work for you, shares some high-profile success cases, and explores the best ways to go about ranking more than one site at a time”. Ranking Multiple Domains to Own More SERP Real Estate MOZ  [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “One of the marketing world’s greatest frustrations has long been the lack of data from Google and other search engines about the behavior of users on their platforms. Occasionally, Google will divulge a nugget of bland, hard-to-interpret information about how they process more than X billion queries, or how many videos were uploaded to YouTube, or how many people have found travel information on Google in the last year. But these numbers aren’t specific enough, well-sourced enough, nor do they provide enough detail to be truly useful for all the applications... [...]

Tom Capper says, “A little over two weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at SearchLove San Diego. My presentation, Does Google Still Need Links, looked at the available evidence on how and to what extent Google is using links as a ranking factor in 2017, including the piece of research that I’m sharing here today. One of the main points of my presentation was to argue that while links still do represent a useful source of information for Google’s ranking algorithm, Google now has many other sources, most of which they would never have dreamed of back when PageRank was conceived as... [...]

Michael Cottam says, “When Penguin 4.0 launched in September 2016, the story from Gary Illyes of Google was that Penguin now just devalued spammy links, rather than penalizing a site by adjusting the site’s ranking downward, AKA a penalty. Apparently for Penguin there is now “less need” for a disavow, according to a Facebook discussion between Gary Illyes and Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land back in September. He suggested that webmasters can help Google find spammy sites by disavowing links they know are bad. He also mentioned that manual actions still happen — and... [...]

Felicia Crawford says, “Back in 2015, we had an epiphany. Every day, via every channel, you — our readers, subscribers, community members, and social followers — would ask us really good questions. (You’re an incredibly intelligent, friendly, inquisitive bunch, you know that? It’s humbling.) A lot of those questions were about how to accomplish your SEO goals, and it got us thinking. Moz is an educational resource, it’s true, but we also offer a suite of tools (both free and paid) that can help you achieve those goals. Why not provide a space for those two things to... [...]

MOZ team says, “You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you’ve gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there’s a better way. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren’t the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that’ll make the juice worth the squeeze”. Better Alternatives to “Expert Roundup”-Style Content – Whiteboard Friday MOZ  [...]

Kristina Kledzik says, “A few weeks ago, rankings for pages on a key section of my site dropped an average of a full position in one day. I’ve been an SEO for 7 years now, but I still ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, panicked that I wouldn’t be able to figure out my mistake. There are so many things that could’ve gone wrong: Did I or my team unintentionally mess with internal link equity? Did we lose links? Did one of Google’s now-constant algorithm updates screw me over? Since the drop happened to a group of pages, I made the assumption it had to do with our site or... [...]

Sarah Bird says, “I have a longstanding tradition of boring Moz readers with our exhaustive annual reports (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015). If you’re avoiding sorting the recycling, going to the gym, or cleaning out your closet, I have got a *really* interesting post that needs your attention *right now*. (Yeah. I know it’s March. But check this out, I had pneumonia in Jan/Feb so my life slid sideways for a while.) Skip to your favorite parts: Part 1: TL;DR Part 2: Achievements unlocked“. The Moz 2016 Annual Report MOZ  [...]