The Moz Blog

One-Time or Ongoing SEO - Is it a Yes or No Question?

Being that I am mostly on the business development/sales side of things, I hear a lot of the concerns, questions, thoughts, etc from our clients. One of the things that has come up more and more is, "Do we really need to have ongoing SEO maintenance?", or "Can we wait on doing the ongoing SEO?" It sounds like it should be an automatic "You need it" (being that this is the business I'm in and my business partner and I would love the work), but is it always been that easy?

Customer Service and Reputation Management the Twitter Way: A Case Study

Last year I bought Comcast's NBA League Pass, which gave me access to the entire season of NBA basketball games. My brother egged me on to order it so he could use my online login and watch streaming games at home in Michigan (his cable provider didn't offer League Pass). A couple weeks ago I received a letter from Comcast informing me that they've auto-renewed me for NBA League Pass this year and that if I don't want to renew I'd have to cancel. I asked my brother if he wanted it again this year and he said that he didn't really want to shell out the money for it, so I could go ahead and cancel it if I wasn't going to use it. ...

Microsoft Forces Me to Hate Internet Explorer

I found a quote recently that really embodies my sentiments about Microsoft's Internet Explorer: "If IE6 were a person, I'd punch that person in the face." Whose famous words are these? Mine. That's right, this is something that I--the World's Best SEO--actually said to a client last week, in response to an email he sent me. Here's the backstory...

How to Generate Backlinks from Search Traffic from Brand Keywords

Recently a site I was working on experienced a huge spike in search traffic from branded keywords. The site was fairly new and no major link building had taken place, and we hadn't worked on approaching any bloggers or media outlets for editorial links. Yet when reviewing our web analytics, we noticed that the spike in traffic were from keywords related to our company name.

Pubcon Next Week: Sessions, Parties, Werewolf Games and More

Next Tuesday, Pubcon Las Vegas 2008 kicks off, and we're sending a big cadre of mozzers to the show. For the first time ever, SEOmoz will have a booth at Pubcon, so please stop by, check out Linkscape, Trifecta and our other PRO tools and get a special Pubcon show discount on SEOmoz PRO membership. Mozzers in attendance will include:

The Filing Cabinet Theory of Site Architecture

Last weekend at Scary SEO, Dave Snyder gave a very solid presentation on Information Environment Design…what the rest of us would call Information Architecture. Duncan Morris also wrote about information/site architecture on SEOmoz very recently. While absorbing both of these presentations, I couldn’t help but think once again of the analogy I repeatedly come back to when trying to explain Info/Site Architecture to people: the filing cabinet.

Which Presidential Candidate Do SEOs Prefer?

Today is Election Day in the United States, and, by most accounts, is an exceptionally important and historic one. I thought it would be valuable to get a look at the world of SEOs and how we're generally choosing to cast our ballots. There have been a few endorsements around the tech world:

How to Respond to a Subpoena for User Information

If you have a site that includes user-generated content, you may one day receive a subpoena asking you for personally identifying information about your users. Receiving a subpoena can be intimidating and you often don't have a lot of time to respond. This post is designed to give you some high-level steps to follow.

Roundup Thursday for the Week of 10/26/08

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: On Thursday, November 6th, Exact Target and Marketing Sherpa are launching a free, 8-part webinar series. They'll be extracting actionable intelligence from Marketing Sherpa's new 2009 Email Benchmark Guide. If you attend any of the sessions you'll receive $100 off the guide and $400 off Marketing Sherpa's Email Summit being held in March.

What Quantum of Solace Can Tell Us About Information Architecture

I've said it before, and no doubt I'll say it again: in my opinion, the number one reason for websites failing online is because they have a poor information architecture. Don't worry, I'm not going to compare myself to Bond. Instead, I'm going to use Quantum of Solace to demonstrate how something as simple as categorizing a new action movie can lead to some serious problems in your site architecture. (Just for the record, I tend to use the phrases 'site' or 'information architecture' interchangeably to cover a multitude of sins.)

Headsmacking Tip #9 - Vertical Content Can Earn You Links

For the next in my headsmacking series, I thought we'd look at the ever-challenging task of earning links to your site. Though it may seem daunting, sprinkling some creativity on the link acquisition puzzle can definitely make the process easier (and sometimes, more fun, too). One of the strategies that seems to elude many site owners and marketers is that of leveraging their vertical content t...

Are You Forcing Your Users to Superfluously Click?

Unnecessary clicks really put the "super" in "superfluous," yet we run into them all the time. Whether they're the fancy yet impractical creation by a site designer, a lazy workaround courtesy of an apathetic developer, or a misguided "I've been trying to architect this site for two months now and I can no longer see straight" decision by an SEO, these seemingly innocent clicks can have a negative impact on conversion rates or, simply put, they can irritate users. Below are a few examples of some clicks that cause me to grit my teeth and shake my fist.