The Moz Blog

You Don't Own Your Brand Online...But You Can Own the Search Results

There are over 200 million blogs online, thousands of review sites, sites specific to leaving feedback about companies and thousands of forums on any topic imaginable.People can talk about whatever they want, pretty much wherever they want, and with so many people "conversing online" a lot of that conversation is involving brands - their products, their services and their busin...

Whiteboard Friday - Blogging for Higher Rankings

This week, Rand discusses a few essential strategies to consider when adding a blog to your site. If you want your blog to be readable, enjoyable, and able to generate links and traffic, give this installment of Whiteboard Friday a look. ...

Thursday Roundup for the Week of 5/11/08

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: Two star links: * The Industry Standard provides us with the 25 top B to Z-list blogs. Why am I giving the link 2-star status? Because the stupid site spaces the list out over multiple pages. ARGHHHHH. Take your page views and ad impressions and shove 'em up your arse.

How Newsworthy Are Your Newsletters?

talk about good and bad newsletters...

What Is Acceptable For "People Search Engines?"

I don't often get indignant about websites. Even bad ones. Sometimes I complain about what passes for Web 2.0 genius, but never before have I been really horrified by an online service. Spock.com horrifies me. I have never before felt like a website should cease to exist, but I am appalled at my experience with Spock. I'm in the process of having my personal information removed from the site at th...

The Beginner's Guide to Becoming an SEO

About two weeks ago Rand and Scott posted a Whiteboard Friday explaining how to get a SEO job. I think it is a great resource for SEO’s who already have a lot of experience, but what about those who don’t? How are the inexperienced supposed to get their first job at an internet technology company? The foll...

Do I Really Need to Build Web Access to My Service?

Yes, whiny title writer, you most certainly do. Check out this piece from the AP on PapaJohns.com: The nation's third-largest pizza delivery chain trumpeted the $1 billion milestone Wednesday, noting that its U.S. online sales have been growing at an average clip of more than 50 percent per year. In 2001, the chain's online sales totaled $20.4 million. Last year, its online sale...

Does "Query Deserves Diversity" Algorithm Exist at Google?

Most of us in the search space are familiar with the principles of the "query deserves diversity" (QDF) algorithm at Google, but this is almost certainly not the only intent detection process and algo-tweaking area the engine applies. One popular theory that gets inspires a good bit of discussion around the SEO water cooler is that Google may recognize queries with the potential for mult...

Digg Has Shout-Blocked Me

I've been shout-neutered, folks, and it ain't cool. Let me explain. Yesterday I submitted a story to Digg. I didn't expect it to get on the home page, but I had an "Oh well, what the hell" mentality about it. My plan was to do the usual--shout it once and call it a day. After I submit a link to Digg, I typically shout the story to my friends in about three waves. You can o...

Barbara Ling: Secrets of a Veteran Webmaster

Barbara Ling of Ask Owlbert is a veteran webmaster. She recently commented at my site and as we were trading followup emails, I realized that she was someone with a lot of experience and great advice to share. Thus, this interview. Enjoy! 1) Tell readers how you got started as a webmaster. What was your first project? How did you build it...

Whiteboard Friday - Sharing Content for Fun & Profit

This week Rand fields another reader inspired topic: Why share content that could possibly be used by your competitors? There are several reasons including Attention, Authority, Credibility, Scalability and Marketing. Watch the video to learn the thought behind how sharing your ideas and content can help you out in all of these areas. ...

Tool of the Week: Keeping Visitors With Lijit

At their purest for, search engines hope to use the wisdom of crowds to accurately sort pages across the internet. They pay attention to the words a page uses to talk about another page and adds up some numbers. This is obviously a wonderful idea for a system until people figure it out and begin to manipulate it. At this point algorithms become involved to try and detect spam and malicious code an...