The Moz Blog

Flash and SEO - Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines & Flash Still Don't Mix

I know, I know. Google's indexing Flash and Flash developers can rejoice now that their content is SEO-friendly. Sorry - I don't buy it for a second. Flash content is fundamentally different from HTML on webpage URLs and being able to parse links in the Flash code and text snippets does not make F...

Adwords - Monitoring Your Impression Share

Having been inspired by the fantastic paid search posts which I’ve been seeing on here recently, I decided to chime in with one of my own – hopefully you’ll find this useful :)What is impression share?You can calculate your impression share by dividing the total number of search queries relevant to your campaign by the total number of times your ...

What To Do When Google Bans Your Site Because Of A Bogus DMCA Take-Down Notice

I've had a few different people approach me because their sites have been banned by Google based on the filing of a DMCA Take-Down Notice. Their sites are gone from the SERPS and people want to know SEO and legal strategies for getting around this problem. Today I'm going to share the best legal response to this problem. Your best bet for getting content restored is to file a counter-notification in accordance with the DMCA. I'll give you some background information and then some sites with more detailed information and examples below.

Whiteboard Friday - SEO Site Reviews Step-by-Step

This week our good buddy and SEOmoz Global Associate, Tom Critchlow, is back in the hizzy for an awesome installment of WBF. In this video, Tom will walk you through all of the important components to look at when conducting a basic SEO Site Review. This is the bread and butter of most SEO consulting so for those of you new to the game, it's a great primer; and for those of you witha few mil...

Roundup Thursday for the Week of 7/6/08

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: Three star links: * The best SEO training money can buy (hey, we do have to wade through a lot of shit in order to achieve top rankings...). * Apparently Yelp is shutting down accounts it thinks are "trading glowing reviews with other business owners." It's a tricky situation for Yelp since they obviously want to keep the quality and sincerity of reviews up, but they don't want to mistakenly witch hunt innocent people. * Finally, a video of search engine spiders crawling the web.

Taking Note Of Competitors' Mistakes & Successes

Quite often, people ask me this, either to my face, via Q&A or in emails: how do I come up with truly unique, never-before-seen, shiny new ideas? What a question. It's a rare thing to come up with something that's really never been done before. Many of the novels on a bookstore's shelves contain stories that have been told before in one form or another. Real originality is fantastic, but there is plenty to be made from taking a good idea and putting a new spin on it and making it better.

Treat Me Mean, I Need The Reputation

There's been a fair amount of buzz recently about online reputation management and how to do it. One thing which I think has been missing from the discussion however is looking at the different ways a negative reputation can manifest itself online. After all, not all negative reputations are created equal. Sometimes it's a page that looks innocuous but contains mildly negative negative things once...

3 Search Marketing Tools Worth a Look - Refined Ads, WordButler & Advanced Web Ranking

Over the last couple weeks, I've seen some very cool new (and older, but "new to me") tools in the search marketing field that I think are worthy of testing to see if they make a good fit for your organization. I know I don't cover 3rd party tools as much as I should, so to make up, I've got 3 in a row. The first, ...

Headsmacking Tip #2: Top Level Navigation Naming Conventions

Tonight I'm continuing with our headsmacking tips theme (see #1 from June) with a piece of SEO advice that's been around the industry for longer than Google but still doesn't get the traction it deserves. When it comes to top-level menu navigation, most of us are thinking about which b...

The PageRank Hierarchy, As Defined By Celebrities

A PageRank layman recently asked me how Google decides what site gets what ranking. Rather than bore him with technical tidbits from last decade's abstract, I thought I could better express the concept through a medium we can all appreciate: celebrities.The metaphor is a simple one: PageRank is all about the quantity and quality of inbound links, right? Well, the value of a celebrity...

Rewriting the Beginner's Guide Part VII: Growing Popularity & Links

I'm currently working on re-authoring and re-building the Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, section by section. You can read more about this project here. Links - a Proxy for Popularity and Importance ...

SEO Myths That Persist: Keyword Density

It amazes me that Keyword density is still touted as an important on page metric, the argument in its favor goes something like this: "The more times a term appears in a document the higher the keyword density for that term. The higher the keyword density the more relevant a document becomes for that term." The calculation used to back up this claimThe k...