The Moz Blog

Removing ?PHPSESSID from a URL

You’ve worked hard to prevent any duplicate content on your website. No copy-paste on your copy, no two url’s returning the exact same webpage due to incorrect usage of mod_rewrite and so on. But then, a couple days after the big launch, Google starts getting cluttered with dozens of references to your website, which harms your rankings. All due to an incorrect and insecure alternat...

Managing Risk: Legal Issues for Merchants and Affiliate Marketers

My goal is to present a checklist of legal issues and trends surrounding affiliate marketing. I hope this will be interesting to both merchants and marketers. Affiliate marketing has unfortunately gained a bad reputation for being particularly high risk. While the industry is unlikely to ever be risk-free, it is possible to manage your risk by (1) investigating your prospective marketing partner; (2) using and maintaining a tight legal contract that allocates the risk and provides for the appropriate indemnifications, and (3) keeping informed about the current technology, marketing strategies, and regulatory climate. Without further ado, let's take a look at risk identification and management for merchants and affiliate marketers.

Ask Yourself... Do You Feel Lucky (about getting those links)? Well Do You?

High quality directory link building may seem dreary and time-consuming, but it's still one of the best methods to build credibility with the search engines (remember the importance of trust distance?). Today, while adding resources to our list of valuable directories, I stumbled across two webpages with valuable insight into the process of link building. Both are from universities, providing ...

Enterprise SEO: 5 Ways To Stay Sane

"We just can't make the changes you're recommending, so it doesn't pay to keep working with you."After hearing this from a client while I was at SMX West a few weeks ago, I walked over to a bench and punched it so hard that my knuckles started bleeding. The next day, as I went through security in Santa Clara, the TSA folks eyed me suspiciously. They likely thought I...

Roundup Thursday for the Week of 3/23/08

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: Three star links: Four star links: Five star links: ...

Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons

We're just not getting any visitors from the search engines... I probably hear that line 30X or more each week - over email, in phone calls, in conversation, on forums, etc. and to tell the truth, it would be really handy to have a resource I could point folks for some self-diagnosis. If only there were some type of medium that I could publish on... one that would be accessible on ...

Latest Firefox Update Causes Problems With SEOmoz

Starting last night in to this morning, we've been getting reports of people who have recently updated their version of Firefox to the new 2.0.0.1.2 release and now get a blank screen when they come to SEOmoz. We're still working on what the exact issue is with our site and why upgrading Firefox breaks it, ...

The Power Of Online Campaigns, And The Sad Downfall of Jericho

I don't watch much television. It's silly really. I bought a big flat screen HDTV DVR OMG WTF television before I could really afford such things and I only regularly watch two shows. Tonight, one of my two shows will go off air for the last time, leaving me with only American Idol, which I encourage you all to link to from now on as American Idle (and al...

The Boston Consulting Group Matrix -- Revisiting Marketing Models

I like looking at marketing models – after all – we are SE Marketers. In addition, I find applying traditional marketing models to online marketing isn’t all that hard, and makes for better by management who know nothing about search marketing. Simultaneously, the process inspires a unique insight into ones strategies. This time round, I d...

Paid Search Lessons from David Szetela

Today I sat in on a webinar taught by David Szetela, the founder of Clix Marketing. He gave some great tips about common PPC and paid search mistakes, and I thought I'd share them below. Don't mix search and content campaigns. David recommends turning off the content network and not mixing search and content...

SEO Industry Survey Results Released

We've been working pretty hard on pulling together the numbers from the roughly 2700 responses to the SEO Industry Survey, graphing the results, and writing up some thoughts in an article on the SEO Industry Survey. Being the new guy at SEOmoz, the gang thought it would be a good idea for me to pull myself out ...

Copyright: Sample Forms and Strategies for Registering your Online Content

I'm going to divide up the registration process into three parts because each application should include three things: (1) The Completed Application; (2) A Sample or Copy of the Work; and (3) the fee. Part One: The Completed Application Applications to register copyright are actually very short and pretty intuitive. Regardless, many people break out into a cold sweat at the thought of completing a copyright application. I have a feeling the paper part is what holds most people back. Because "seeing is believing," I am sharing with you the copyright applications I have created to get SEOmoz up to date on its copyright registration.