The Moz Blog

SEO 101 for Travel Bloggers

Several weekends ago, for the first time, I accompanied my wife, Geraldine (aka Everywhereist, whose blog was just placed on Time.com's Top 25 Blogs of 2011 and then on Forbes' Top 10 Lifestyle Sites; woo hoo!), to Vancouver, BC for a professional conference focused on her career rather than mine (TBEX - the Travel Bloggers Exchange). Given that she's attended countless sessions on SEO, analytics, tech startups and scalable SaaS models, I figured it was the least I could do.

SEO Interview Questions

We've all been in difficult interview situations - you get a hard question and go on and on and on without giving a solid answer. In our realm, though, there are some SEO best practices that are so well established that everyone should know and be able to describe them to other people. If you're a business looking to hire an SEO...

How Much Does Google Make?

Google made $58.8 Billion in revenues in 2013. This post is based on Google's 2010 revenues of $29.3 Billion, and it attempts to illustrate just how much money that is.

Why Freebies are Link Building Gold

I'm a little bit obsessed with freebies. OK make that a lot. The psychology of giving someone a freebie and then seeing what you can get in return is fascinating to watch. People will fall at your feet for a free gift, and sometimes the results are better than any traditional marketing tactic could ever be. In this article I look at why freebies are so powerful, and how they can be turned in to...

The Ethical Issues of Personalisation Online

It feels kind of negative to start a post with a warning, but you’re all busy people and I’d hate for you to waste your time – so here goes: Today I’ll be talking about the ethics of personalisation online, and the potential issues which might arise as a result. As such I won’t be offended if you decide this isn’t quite your cup of tea and decide not t...

Increasing Your Local Search Presence Through Regionalization

As you venture through Natural Search Optimization, your primary goal is to expand the reach of your website to a global level. What happens when you have a client with specific geographic limitations though? If you or your client has a limited service area, then you should place a particular focus on localizing ...

How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever

It's here! Google has released Panda update 2.2, just as Matt Cutts said they would at SMX Advanced here in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. This time around, Google has - among other things - improved their ability to detect scraper sites and banish them from the SERPs. Of course, the Panda updates are...

The Wikipedia Model

As an SEO agency, Virante has always prided itself in having research-based answers to the questions presented by our clients. A year or so ago, I caught myself referring to the a site as having "a great looking natural link profile" without really having an numbers or analysis to describe exactly what that profile should look like. Sure, I could point out a spam link or two, or wha...

Agency vs In-House vs Freelance SEO: The Endless Debate (starring Mr. Men)

So you want a career in SEO? Or maybe you already have an SEO role and it's time for a change. Well, I've been doing SEO for five years now and I can safely say that I've endured the pros and cons of almost every type of SEO career situation. So let me give you some insight on the good, bad, and ugly for all of them. ...

6 Essential PPC Landing Page Optimizations

Your landing pages aren’t converting. Sadly, this is not your customer’s fault. It’s your job to tell your customers why your product is awesome and you have fewer than 5 seconds to tell that story. Regardless of whether you’re a rookie or veteran marketer, we’ve assembled the following checklist to help you avoid some of the common pitfal...

Google's Un-Personalized Search. Tools to Hack the Code.

Google’s personalized search means nearly every result returned within a browser is altered one way or another. It’s rare that two different people on Earth ever see the exact same set of search results. And Google made sure it’s darned hard to turn off. The rise of personalizat...

Building Faceted Navigation That Doesn't Suck

Developers and technical SEOs have heard the search engine mouthpieces say it over and over: "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines". If you ask me, there's one big reason why "primarily" sneaks itself into that statement: Faceted Navigation. Let's discuss how to provide a great user experience AND a search engine friendly faceted navigation.