Better Understanding Link-based Spam Analysis Techniques

One frustrating aspect of link building is not knowing the value of a link. Although experience, and some data, can make you better at link valuation, it is impossible to know to what degree a link may be helping you. It’s hard to know if a link is even helping at all. Search engines do not count all links, they reduce the value of many that they do count, and use factors related to your links to further suppress the value that’s left over. This is all done to improve relevancy and spam detection. Understanding the basics of link-based...

5 Tips for Meeting Online Friends IRL

Social media is a bit of a paradox – we have more “friends” than ever, but our relationships feel more and more superficial. When we retreat to the comfort of the internet, we introverts have even less incentive to get to know people IRL (In Real Life, for those who don't spend all day on the internet). If you know me online, it may surprise you to hear that I consider myself a recovering introvert. I’m also a work-at-home father of a 1-year-old, so I’m lucky to hit one SEO conference a year. In honor of being in Seattle...

Replicate Google's Panda Questionnaire - Whiteboard Friday

Want to avoid the next Panda Update and improve your websites quality? This week Will Critchlow from Distilled joins Rand to discuss an amazing idea of Will's to help those who are having problem with Panda and others who want to avoid future updates. Feel free to leave your thoughts on his idea and anything you might do to avoid Panda. Video Transcription Rand: Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to a very special edition of Whiteboard Friday. I am joined today by Will Critchlow, founder and Director of Distilled, now in three cities - New York,...

Brand New Open Site Explorer is Here (and Linkscape's Updated, too)

This morning at Mozcon, I announced the launch of Open Site Explorer v3, a long-awaited upgrade to one of the most popular marketing tools on the web. I'm more than a little excited about all the progress, hard work and remarkable features that are included in this upgrade, so let's get right to them.The first thing you'll notice is the new design (of which I'm a huge fan): This continues into the top view of link data and now, social metrics. I've always wanted these to be side-by-side, and it's great to finally be able to see both...

Leveraging your SEO for Search Retargeting

Here at Moz we work hard to break down those silly silo things (frankly they scare us). We believe that the different pieces of marketing should constantly be communicating with each other. Cyrus (our SEO lead) and I try to communicate on what we are seeing, where we might be overlapping, dropping the proverbial ball and so on and so forth. We know that leveraging each person's daily activities for maximum impact is the key to any company's success. In the past, on the blog, we've talked about ways to leverage one of your tasks for related...

Getting Stuff Done by Video

Hi SEOmozzers! I’m Phil Nottingham and I've recently joined Distilled as an in-house pirate. This is my first SEOmoz post and I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments! The Conundrum Creating detailed and actionable client reports has become a vitally important skill for any agency SEO to hone. Often we’ll spend 20-30 hours composing a veritable treat of a read for our clients, a hand crafted sluice for a torrent of brilliant ideas, delegations, and requests that will certainly lead to a better performance in the SERPs...

Our Latest Chrome Toolbar Update is Live! (and one more cool thing)

Hi, I'm Karen, a new product manager at SEOmoz. On the heels of our Firefox toolbar launch in May, I’m happy to announce that we’ve launched our MozBar for Chrome. With this update, you’ll be able to research sites in your favorite browser--Chrome or Firefox--using a powerful toolbar that gets you quickly to the data you need most. We’ve made a number of useful improvements, most suggested by you! Let’s take a look at what you can do with the new MozBar. 1. Redesign for better integration with the Chrome user interface You can...

Mission ImposSERPble: Establishing Click-through Rates

Google and its user experience is ever changing. For a company that has more than 60% of the search market, it's common to hear the question, “How many visitors can we expect, if we rank [x]?” It’s a fair question. It's just impossible to predict. Which is a fair answer. But, as my father says, “If you want fair, go to the Puyallup.” So we inevitably hear, “Well, can you take a guess? Or give us an estimate? Anything?” To answer that question, we turned to major studies about click-through rates, incuding Optify, Enquiro, and the studies...

How to Research Local Citations After Google Removed them from Places

Late last week, in a move that was apparently spurred by threats of an FTC investigation, Google removed third-party reviews and listings from their Places pages in the Local/Maps results. This change was intended to help thwart complaints by sources like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Citysearch who claimed that Google unfairly used their content to make the Places pages results useful without compensation or traffic. Below is a visual of the change via the WSJ: Impact on Local/Maps/Places SEO Unfortunately, this move has a strong negative consequence...

Google's Negative Ranking Factors - Whiteboard Friday

By now you've heard about SEOmoz's study of Google ranking factors, but what about negative ranking factors? Sure, positive factors such as the correlations between social media shares and higher rankings earn a lot of attention - and they should. Smart SEOs look at all the factors, including those at the bottom of the list! Today we look at negative ranking factors - those SEO characteristics correlated with lower rankings - and how to avoid them. Video Transcription Howdy, SEOmoz! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today...