Ronell Smith says, “According to our calculations, MozCon 2017 is a mere 158,000 minutes away. (But who’s counting, right?) As you might have guessed, we’re quite excited about our latest event, in large part because we have some new tricks up our sleeves. (More on that at a later date. We promise.)Aside from a few tweaks here and there, though, the next MozCon won’t be much different from those in years past.That is, it’ll be unique and awesome in equal amounts.MozCon 2017: July 17–19 in SeattleYou can still expect world-class speakers sharing original information in a... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Sistrix, an SEO toolset data collection company, published their analysis of the Google Fred update after reviewing “nearly 300 domains.” Their analysis describes the sites and pages that were hit like this:“…advertisement, outdated, thin and scraped content, as well as incomprehensible articles made up of 300 word ‘SEO texts’ pumped to the brim with main keyword mentions and void of any useful information or a sense of readability.”They have confirmed our analysis of Fred, where we said low value content sites were hit by this update.Juan Gonzalez from... [...]

Brian Wood says, “Title tags are a meaningful on-page ranking factor and are among the most influential factors in determining click-through rate (CTR) from search engine results pages. Higher CTR not only drives more traffic immediately, it also improves organic rankings when combined with good on-site metrics.Title tag CTR is also difficult to test: it requires a large number of pages that drive a lot of organic visits, and a pretty big chunk of time — usually around two months to give Google time to index all the pages in the test and then collect enough data to have statistically... [...]

Megan Hannay says, “Just last October at the Street Fight Summit, many marketers ranked voice search as the most “over-hyped” marketing tactic of the year. I think this is because many of them aren’t seeing the full scope of the technology. We’re putting on our consumer brains and thinking about the current awkwardness of speaking to Siri in public, not of a future inside self-driving cars or those moments when we just don’t want to get up from the couch.Currently, most voice searches happen on mobile phones. But within the next few years, it seems likely that devices with... [...]

Julie Joyce says, “When it comes to being unlinkable, there’s a lot more to consider besides boring content, poor quality writing and low-end design. Of the many issues that could cause users not to want to link to your content, here are four major ones that I see all the time: intrusive intersitials, gated content, excessive pagination and avant-garde design.You can find someone to argue for and against all four of these barriers, and I’d probably see some of those points in the last three cases, but I’m not sure much can change my mind about interstitials.Intrusive interstitialsIt’s... [...]

Jon Nastor says, ““Three … two … one … Ready or not, here I come!”My daughter Sadie hides anxiously behind the living room couch, while her best friend is searching, calling out her name, and trying to find her.Hide-and-seek, a game played out millions of times.If you don’t know, hide-and-seek is a popular children’s game in which any number of players conceal themselves in the environment, to be found by one or more seekers.The hiding is not what makes it fun.Kids will play for hours and hours when they continually find each other. When one of the children stays hidden... [...]

Alexandra Tachalova says, “To measure, or not to measure?When it comes to outlining potential metrics in digital marketing, I always ask myself a question: “Can I measure this?”For the most crucial elements of your strategy, the answer will likely be yes. But digital marketing involves tons of metrics that we must track on a daily basis. The majority of the data we gather gives us a general understanding of what’s going on, yet keeps us too far away from reaching our business goals. For instance, Google Analytics alone has more than 75 standard reports and each of them can be modified,... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google announced updates to AdWords Dynamic Search Ads on Tuesday, including support for expanded text ads.Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) will transition to expanded text ads through April, bringing them in line with search and display campaigns.Google is introducing a new solution for DSAs called page feeds. Page feeds consist of two columns: Page URL and Custom Label. The feeds enable advertisers to designate exactly which landing pages to include in a DSA campaign. There are several benefits and use cases for page feeds, such as these:If advertisers only want DSAs... [...]

Brian Wood says, “Title tags are a meaningful on-page ranking factor and are among the most influential factors in determining click-through rate (CTR) from search engine results pages. Higher CTR not only drives more traffic immediately, it also improves organic rankings when combined with good on-site metrics.Title tag CTR is also difficult to test: it requires a large number of pages that drive a lot of organic visits, and a pretty big chunk of time — usually around two months to give Google time to index all the pages in the test and then collect enough data to have statistically... [...]

Andrew Goodman says, “PPC account managers are held to exacting performance standards. Their efforts are judged by KPIs like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).That sounds simple enough. But it’s a lot easier to set tough performance standards than to achieve them. As competition mounts, an account manager may decide to shorten their time horizon to four months instead of four years, figuring that keeping the gig is a lost cause. That leads to “Operation Obfuscate” — to fool the boss by the attributed conversion numbers, at least over the short term.This... [...]