The Moz Blog

Hiding From Your Competitors

Recently SMX London 2009 happened. I was too busy feeling ill to attend but I did my best to follow what happened. One of the talks that sounded really good was by Mikkel deMib about hiding your site from competitors. He suggests emailing them, then using the email headers to get their IP address. I'm going to cover the code you can use to "deal with" such spies.

Getting Value from Search Conferences

I've just got back from SMX London (when I say "just" I'm obviously referring to the Hangover, as I've been back multiple days), and It's probably the best event I've been to for all around value and enjoyment. Having to been to several conferences (Including 3 SES events) over the years though, I've come to the conclusion that, unless you are networking for clients, these events are not easy to justify the expenditure they incur. The problem most people in the intermediate-advanced tier face is hearing only what we know already; I spend a lot of these sessions sucking eggs now.

An Unfortunate Series of Server Events

It's late night Sunday and rather than bringing you exciting news from the world of search and SEO, I've got some explaining to do. For those who hadn't noticed, SEOmoz has some serious downtime and errors this weekend. Starting early morning Saturday and running through to Sunday, many parts of the site were inaccessible due to either A) an exceptionally unlucky set of simultaneous h...

Whiteboard Friday - Path to Conversion

Acquiring users and getting them to take an action on your site is the absolute core of web marketing. Whether that action is making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a demo...it doesn't matter, if you're doing business online, your job is to acquire users and get them to take an action. There are a million ways to go about this process, but it's crucial for y...

Internet Marketing in the Movies: Are People Starting to "Get" It?

Since I'm a movie buff and an Internet marketing nerd, I often notice Internet marketing and search mentions in various movies, and I always pay attention to the movie URL shown in trailers (my two recent favorites: the URL for Sacha Baron Cohen's upcoming Bruno film was www.meinspace.com/bruno, but it looks like now it's redirecting to MySpace.com, and the URL for I Love You, Beth Cooper is www.iloveyoubethcoopermovie.com, making me wonder why they had to append "movie" to such a specific URL). Recently I came across two examples where the movie industry referenced or directly utilized Internet marketing/social media marketing, and it got me wondering if Internet marketing is finally starting to become more mainstream (meaning fewer people will look at you with blank faces as you try to describe what you do for a living).

If I Could Go Back In Time & Give Myself Some Advice, This Would Be It

Dear 2007 Rand Fishkin, Hi there - it's me - your 2009 self. I know it's highly unlikely you'll ever get this email, but who knows? The flow of time could chaotically spasm and somehow drop a printed copy of this on your lap - stranger things have happened. And, in that unlikely event, here's a few quick things you should know:...

Do Twitter Accounts Need Scale?

My Twitter account has close to 1000 followers, which is not an amazing number but still a decent enough to have an effect on referral traffic patterns (and it's a nice, even figure). So what benefit is 1000 followers to your site if you don't tweet or promote your site directly? I'm not a full-time Twitter guru, and have other accounts that I manage on behalf of clients that generate more interest, so my thought is with my own account how much traffic would I get out of people visiting my site via my profile link because they wanted to learn more about my agency? This is different to a number of Twitter accounts who actively tweet and encourage people to visit their website. I need to know the value of that profile URL for my agency.

Get More Visitors to Your Website Without Ranking Higher

At this week's SMX, Rand made a comment about two big brands that ranked at #2 and #3 for their industry's generic keyword behind an exact match domain. Referring to SERPs Click-Through-Rate data, he suggested that you could calculate how much more traffic the larger brand could receive from the keyword by moving from position 2 to position 1.

Whiteboard Friday - Embedded Content & Linking

This week's Whiteboard Friday comes to you courtesy of a few friends from the Twitterverse. We had Lindsay put out a call for WBF ideas and, among the suggestions, a few of our followers asked for tips on linking strategies and embedded content, so here we are, thanks to... @mattlambert @khu...

Lessons Learned from 3 Years of Blogging

The beginning of this month (May 2nd, to be exact) marked my 3 year anniversary as a blogger. My first post on SEOmoz was a paragraph long and consisted of asking our readers if they know of any Spanish-language SEO blogs. It attracted 18 comments. Huzzah! Since then, I've published 241 more posts, with this one being #243. I thought I'd reflect back on my three years of blogging and share the good, the bad, the downright ugly, and the lessons I've learned along the way.

URL Rewriting: Increase Organic Traffic By Using Dynamic URLs That Look Static

If you haven't noticed URL rewriting, you haven't been thinking like a search engine optimizer. More and more sites are using this technology to create human-readable (and SEO-friendly) URLs. If your site is one of them, good for you. Read on and you might find some reassuring data to back up your excellent decision. If you are not familiar with how URL rewriting will improve organic search ranking and traffic to your site, I don't blame you. It's not a hard concept to grasp, but it's rarely covered well in SEO publications. Few sites are using it, and this creates an opportunity for you to get ahead in ranking. If you have any search competition, you should already be thinking about how to improve the way you present data to engines.

GFGI

A note to all new and learning online marketers, I have been reading SEO & PPC resources, blogs and forums for much longer then I have been contributing to them. In fact, it is only in the last year, and more seriously in the last 6 months, that I have spent any real time in the online SEO communities. So I don't know how some who have been around for much longer have managed to stick around without killing someone. No wonder Darren sometimes comes across as cranky!