Barry Schwartz says, “A Google spokesperson has confirmed with Search Engine Land that the company’s link command is no longer functioning. Google told us the feature is no longer around, and using a link:www.domain.com will likely return irrelevant results. We saw signs of this going away a year ago, but then Google told us the link operator “is not dead.” Now, Google is telling us the link operator is essentially dead. Yesterday, Google’s John Mueller told webmasters not to use it. Of course, most webmasters already have known not to use it for years and years now. But as long as... [...]

George Freitag says, “This is it. The full agenda for MozCon Local 2017 and LocalU Advanced Workshop on February 27-28. If you’re a brand with a ton of locations or an agency with local clients, you’re going to want to come to MozCon Local 2017. We’ve got an amazing line-up of speakers from some of the top brains in Local Search to help you put together the perfect local marketing strategy and get the most out of local search. Come visit us in Seattle and learn about local search, SEO, citations, reviews, enterprise-level strategy, and so much more. Interact directly with... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google has officially confirmed they have begun rolling out the intrusive mobile interstitial penalty yesterday. Google warned us that this was coming almost a six months ago, and it did start rolling out on January 10, 2017, as Google promised. Google’s John Mueller and Gary Illyes confirmed the penalty began rolling out yesterday. This penalty only impacts intrusive interstitials that happen directly after going from a Google mobile search result to a specific page. It does not impact or penalize pages after that, so if you have a intrusive interstitial that comes... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “It’s that time again, friends… That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I’ve got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let’s see where we end up, and what I’ve got to say for the next 12 months. s always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale: Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area,... [...]

Jason Puckett says, “The testing and implementation of ad copy in AdWords has become increasingly important — and increasingly difficult. This is a result of the paradigm shifts in AdWords account structures. The ad copy advice that follows can help improve ad copy relevance easily, at scale. Shift in AdWords account structures Throughout 2016, we have seen a major debate regarding the concept of AdWords account structures. Regardless of your stance, one major shift that we’ve seen over the past two years is search engine marketers reducing the number of keywords per ad group within... [...]

Andrew Medal says, “Is your SEO provider about to get you penalized? Hopefully not, but there is a chance it might. It is too easy to put up a website and advertise SEO services without actually knowing what they are doing. There are also marketers out there who don’t keep up with Google best practices and still use old methods that are ineffective. If you have never been hit with a Google penalty, let me just tell you it is an experience like no other. Your heart falls into your stomach, you become short on breath and your eyes start to hurt from staring at your computer screen wondering... [...]

Joe Robison says, “Who doesn’t love working on low-hanging fruit SEO problems that can dramatically improve your site? Across all businesses and industries, the low-effort, high-reward projects should jump to the top of the list of things to implement. And it’s nowhere more relevant than tackling technical SEO issues on your site. Let’s focus on easy-to-identify, straightforward-to-fix problems. Most of these issues can be uncovered in an afternoon, and it’s possible they can solve months’ worth of traffic problems. While there may not be groundbreaking, complex issues that... [...]

Ryan Shelley says, “We’ve all heard the saying, “Content is king.” While in some respects this saying is true, in my opinion, this one phrase has done more damage to our industry than anything else. According to WordPress, “Users produce about 73.9 million new posts and 49.0 million new comments each month.” That’s roughly 2.4 million posts a day, and that’s just on WordPress alone. I would love to believe that all of that content has value, but in my experience over the years, I could make a very strong argument that most of it is junk. Google’s end goal is to deliver the... [...]

Jason Parks says, “One of the most common mistakes I see amongst companies investing in SEO is that they’ll write 4-5 internal blogs per month. When it comes to external blogs and distribution, there is no defined strategy. Zilch. Nada. Why External Content is Crucial Backlinks are the foundation of Google’s algorithm. If you want a complex explanation of the original PageRank algorithm, click here. I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version. Google views your site as authoritative when other sites link back to it. They don’t want to see a site that is spammy linking back... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Ranking among the top Google search results is increasingly driven by dynamic factors, such as content relevance and user intent, rather than static factors, such as the number of keywords and links on a webpage, according to recent research from Searchmetrics. The annual Searchmetrics ranking factors report was based on an analysis conducted in 2016 of Google search results for 10,000 keywords. The researchers examined which webpages were presented in the top 10 mobile and desktop results for each keyword and then determined which factors correlated to high rankings. The... [...]