The Moz Blog

Whiteboard Friday - Building a Personal Brand

This week Rand discusses the topic of Personal Branding. What are the pros and cons of having a personal brand for yourself or within your company? How can you build a personal brand, and what benefits personal branding can have above and beyond corporate branding. Enjoy! ...

Thursday Roundup for the Week of 4/27/08

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: Two star links: * Regarding TechCrunch's "Is Keyword Search About to Hit its Breaking Point?" article, well, I'll quote what Rand said: "[S]uch a load of crap. Users have to change, not engines."

Facebook Does Keyword Research

If I had been paying attention on April 15th, instead of swanning around New Zealand, I would have noticed that Facebook had launched what amounts to an elementary keyword research tool... and as I write that, I realise that Facebook Lexicon is perhaps less elementary than some of the tools that we already pay for. An anonymous aggregation of "public and semi-public" keywords from across...

Is Social Media Marketing Right For You?

Last week on The Office, corporate weenie Ryan visited the Scranton branch and told them that they needed to make up extra sales that their website should have brought in. He had been fervently pushing the website onto the staff, telling them that version 2.0 of the site will be even bigger and better, and that embracing new technology like online sales will skyrocket paper purchases and make thei...

Let's Talk Landing Pages

Chapter 4 of Web Design for ROI is all about landing pages, and it's the best and most valuable chapter thus far. The chapter starts off with this little gem of a quote: Enter the custom landing page. It's a web site's stand-in for ambassador, concierge, and superstar salesperson rolled into one. It's been carefully crafted to meet, ...

The Role of Outbound Links

<p>Outbound links play a critical role in your overall linking strategy. This runs counter to the philosophy that used be popular in the industry, that of hoarding PageRank. You do read less about the notion of hoarding PageRank these days than you used to, but I still think that many publishers do not fully understand why outbound links are important.</p><h3>Understa...

Google Follows Nofollowed Links in SEOmoz Comments?

I may be totally wrong on this, or maybe I've overlooked some obvious explanation as to why the content on the end of nofollowed SEOmoz comment links has been indexed and ranked. Puzzling over this by myself and with friends hasn't produced any good conclusions, so I thought I'd throw this out there to the community. Nutshell: periodically, I'll search for my own name in search engi...

The Secret: SEM Sued for Trademark Violations and Breach of Fiduciary Duty

In fact, the whole nasty mess is public record because the owners of The Secret are suing their former internet marketer for trademark infringement and violating his duty of loyalty to them. The case, TS Merchandising v. Hollings, was filed November 2007 and includes allegations that Hollings infringed and exploited The Secret's trademarks by selling his own merchandise under the brand, cutting unauthorized side deals with vendors of authentic merchandise, and generally using his knowledge of SEO for evil by seeking personal gain. The whole story has the bizarre, made-for-Tv feel about it. Regardless, it's an interesting look at the kind of trouble that internet marketers can get themselves into.

Reminder: 40% Off Introductory Discount on The SEO Video Training Series Ends Monday!

Business Dog told me to post a quick reminder that the special, deeply discounted Introductory Offer on the new SEO Video Training Series expires Monday. This is likely the best price we'll ever offer on this series, so don't wait, get it before this offer over! Do you really want to ignore ...

Whiteboard Friday - How to Get an SEO Job

This week, Rand discusses a topic inspired by a reader's email: how to get a job in SEO. He discusses many of the prime things one needs to consider and be familiar with before going in to interview with an SEO company. If you've been considering getting into the industry, or you've got an interview coming up, this is definitely worth a watch. ...

Holy Mother of Linkbait

This past Tuesday night (and, eventually, Wednesday morning), Rand and I sat down and "wrote" a post that we were quite sure was rather amusing. Admittedly, posting to a widely read SEO blog after getting little sleep and consuming three beers and two cocktails isn't advisable. We were, however, relatively sure we were on to something good.

The Beginner's Checklist for Small Business SEO

For the last three months I have been hard at work learning SEO by optimizing a local small business website. The business is called Giggly Wiggly Preschool and is located in the Seattle suburb Issaquah, Washington. This Issaquah Preschool was the preschool I attended many years ago so I am happy I was given the chance to give bac...