Glenn Gabe says, “There you are. A big redesign or CMS migration is looming, and you’re ready to unleash a crawl on the new site in a test environment. You fire up your favorite crawling tool and trigger the crawl… and it lasts all of three seconds. Yes, there’s an obvious problem. The staging server is protected and behind some type of security measure that inhibits you from freely crawling it. Sweat begins to form on your brow as you wonder how you will get the crawl completed. At this point, you could choose to manually check all the pages, but you might end up in a padded room whispering... [...]

Clay Cazier says, “No doubt you have run across articles detailing the SEO benefits of structured data and how algorithms focused on things not strings are turning search engines into answer engines. A quick example: search for “George Clooney’s wife,” and Google immediately tells you Amal Clooney is his current spouse (married in 2014) and Talia Balsam is his former wife, married and then divorced in 1989 and 1993 respectively. In 2005, it is likely the top result would have been an organic listing featuring a website optimized for that particular query. Today, Google’s ability... [...]

Clint Evans says, “There are three big lies in SEO right now. SEO remains and has been the buzzword in small-business circles for about 10 years now. But there’s a seedy underbelly. I’ve talked with many business owners misfortunate enough to have suffered and been suckered by members of this underbelly. SEO is a technical and ever-changing discipline. If you’re busy running a $2 million to $20 million per year small business, how can you ever hope to keep up? If you’ve been burned, how do you know when to dip your toe back into the water? Who’s got your back? Lie #1: SEO is right... [...]

Nick Chowdrey says, “Anyone who knows anything about content marketing understands that a successful blog post or other piece of content is not just a case of “build it and they will come.” You can spend hours writing the most interesting and engaging post, or spend thousands on creating interactive/video content or e-book, but if you don’t have a strategy from the start for getting it in front of eyeballs… nobody’s going to see it. All that time and money—wasted. Here are my surefire, tried-and-tested suggestions for getting high ranking on search engines... [...]

Damon Rutherford says, “Forward-thinking PR agencies are quickly learning that by adding comprehensive search engine optimisation (SEO) to their range of services they can differentiate themselves from their competition and deliver significant additional value to their clients. As an SEO, my work with these agencies has increased in line with this development. Why have PR agencies started to embrace advanced SEO? The Google algorithm development rewards websites securing high quality links and mentions from dominant websites, giving PR agencies a new advantage over traditional SEO agencies. PR... [...]

Dudley Carr says, “Today we’re excited to remove the Beta label on Moz Local Insights! This feature has been in beta since November when David first announced it. This release of Insights continues the push to provide our customers with a holistic understanding of local search presence. First, a tremendous thank you to all of our customers who gave us feedback about what works and what doesn’t work. In the two months that Insights has been active for all 60K+ listings in Moz Local, we’ve collected 2.5 billion individual metrics! Insights is tracking 220K search keywords, traffic for... [...]

Verónica Maria Jarski says, “To increase your ranking in search results, check out these five rank-boosting tips. “Navigate your way to the top with blogs,” suggests Spark Pay in the following infographic. “Blogging is a fantastic way to build up your power ranking.” Blogging also increases your SEO footprint, lets you optimize specific keywords, and attracts social shares and inbound links. Another tip is to “explore the social media landscape,” recommends Spark Pay. “Social shares are arguably more important than ‘follows.’ Be as visible... [...]

Miriam Ellis says, “St. Valentine’s Day is on the way, and I’ve been thinking about love and loyalty as they apply in the local business world. It’s been estimated that it costs 7x more to acquire a customer than to retain one; in my city, most of the major chains offer some type of traditional customer loyalty program. Most rely on a points-based system or an initial sign-up investment to receive benefits, but I wondered about Main Street. I picked 15 locally owned businesses at random to see if they had created loyalty programs, and then I checked Google and Yelp to see if any of... [...]

Will Critchlow says, “The FTC recently published their updated rules (and more accessible “guidance”) on what constitutes a “misleading” native advert [PDF]. I’ve read them. I only fell asleep twice. Then, near the end, a couple of bombshells. But first, the background. Native ads and the FTC For those who haven’t been following the trends closely, native advertising is a form of digital advertising whereby adverts are included “in-stream,” interspersed with regular editorial content. On social platforms, this takes the form of “promoted” posts — including stories or... [...]

MOZ team says, “Should you ditch keyword targeting entirely? There’s been a lot of discussion around the idea of focusing on broad topics and concepts to satisfy searcher intent, but it’s a big step to take and could potentially hurt your rankings. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses old-school keyword targeting and new-school concept targeting, outlining a plan of action you can follow to get the best of both worlds”. Can SEOs Stop Worrying About Keywords and Just Focus on Topics? MOZ Blog  [...]