SEO has many nuances that have some effect on your results, but one of the primary factors in a high rating is backlinks. And the most useful backinks are “do follow” links from influential sites. Finding authoritative sites that will give you backlinks is no small task, particularly “do follow” links. For example, IM NewsWatch marks its links to products for sale “no follow”. David Henry‘s software, Comment Commander Pro Plus 1, finds influential websites in your niche that allow “do follow” backlinks and helps you place backlinks on them. Finding... [...]

Peterd says, “For those new to optimizing clients sites, or those seeking a refresher, we thought we’d put together a guide to step you through it, along with some selected deeper reading on each topic area. Every SEO has different ways of doing things, but we’ll cover the aspects that you’ll find common to most client projects. Few Rules The best rule I know about SEO is there are few absolutes in SEO. Google is a black box, so complete data sets will never be available to you. Therefore, it can be difficult to pin down cause and effect, so there will always be a lot of experimentation... [...]

Bill Faeth says, “Over the weekend Google released another search algorithm update, this time to their Local Search Algorithm.  An article by Search Engine Land, the updated has appropriately dubbed this the “Pigeon” update, which will most likely stick, as this appears to be a significant update. The algorithm update will provide more accurate and relevant local search results that are linked to organic search results within the Google Maps feature, also know as Google Places.  This is critical for local businesses and SEOs as it appears that the two sets of search queries will... [...]

Jason Acidre says, “It’s obvious that the technology behind search engines’ ability to determine and understand web entities is gradually leaning towards how real people will normally perceive things from a traditional marketing perspective. The emphasis on E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) from Google’s recently updated Quality Rating Guide shows that search engines are shifting towards brand-related metrics to identify sites/pages that deserve to be more visible in search results”. Using Modern SEO to Build Brand Authority MOZ Blog  [...]

This is a reminder for the Website Magazine webinar scheduled on July 31. Website Magazine is hosting a webinar on Thursday, July 31 at 2.00 pm EDT. The topic of the webinar is “Did Google just penalize me?”. The WM team says, “That’s the first question everyone asks when their traffic drops. The mystique of search engines, and how they do what they do, lends itself to sensationalism. Mainstream media fans the flames with reporting about websites violating terms of service, with results ranging from penalties to page rank downgrades. The truth is, today few businesses... [...]

Barney Garcia say, “Having a well-designed landing page will go a long way when it comes to bringing in conversions. You could have the best product or service in the world, but if you don’t communicate that effectively, you could be missing out on new business. Follow these tips and best practices the create the ideal landing page for your business. When creating a landing page, one of the first things you need to take into account is your purpose. According to Wordstream, some of the questions you should ask yourself include, “What is my end goal? Who is my audience? Where are... [...]

Bill Slawski says, “I’m going to be asking you to take over as Panda for a little while to see if you can identify the kinds of things that Google’s Navneet Panda addressed when faced with what looked like an incomplete patent created to identify sites as parked domain pages, content farm pages, and link farm pages. You’re probably better at this now then he was then“. Unraveling Panda Patterns MOZ Blog  [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Data are wonderful things. Properly applied, data can provide insights into where to trim budget and where to increase it. Data will indicate what’s working versus what’s not, what’s a signal versus what’s an outlier. And, data help to determine the proper media mix for the overall campaign strategy. Data-driven, performance-based advertisers reviewing their online display metrics often find it easy to justify spend on retargeting. After all, it’s very simple to see that retargeting is a big winner when it comes to display. But beware! There’s a trap in... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Last night, Google pushed out a major local search algorithm update. The update has been pushed out to U.S. English based search results and seems to have had enough of a significant update that many SEOs, webmasters and local business owners have taken noticed. The update impacts both the organic local listings within Google Map Search and Google Web Search. We are naming this algorithm update the Pigeon update, for more on that, see our post over here. The algorithm is more tied into the traditional web search ranking signals, including search features from the knowledge... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “By now, most of us have gotten around to doing testing of some sort on our websites, but testing specifically for SEO can be extremely difficult and requires extra vigilance. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains three major things we need to think about when performing these tests, and offers up several ideas for experiments we all can run!“. How Do I Successfully Run SEO Tests On My Website? – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]