MOZ team says, “hen it comes to certain kinds of backlinks, avoiding penalties can be a real gray area. How can you earn the benefits without gaining the scrutiny of Google? In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand will teach you which rules to follow to keep you safe and on the up-and-up, all while improving your link profile”.Backlinks from Client Sites, Sites You Own, Widgets, & Embedded Content: How to Maximize Benefits & Avoid Problems – Whiteboard FridayMOZ [...]

Ronell Smith says, “At MozCon 2015, Dr. Pete delivered a gem that perked up my ears when he discussed Google’s featured snippets during his talk, “Surviving Google: SEO in 2020“:“Let’s say you’re No. 5 in a competitive query, and you’re trying to get from No. 5 to No.1. That is incredibly difficult; that takes a lot of money, a lot of links, a lot of authority. You might be able to jump past No. 1 to No. 0 with this just by matching the question better. So it may actually be easier to get from No. 5 to No. 0 than it is to get from No. 5 to No. 1... [...]

Aaron Wall says, “Remember the whole shtick about good, legitimate, high-quality content being created for readers without concern for search engines – even as though search engines do not exist?Whatever happened to that?We quickly shifted from the above “ideology” to this:The red triangle/exclamation point icon was arrived at after the Chrome team commissioned research around the world to figure out which symbols alarmed users the most.Search Engine Engineering FearGoogle is explicitly spreading the message that they are doing testing on how to create maximum fear to... [...]

Diana Huff says, “For many people outside of marketing, Google Analytics can quickly become overwhelming. This is particularly true for the owners of small manufacturing firms. Without the time and resources to properly understand and use the vast amount of data in Analytics, many small manufacturers simply look at top-line traffic as evidence their website is “working.”The reality, however, is more nuanced. It’s not so much that small manufacturers don’t understand how to analyze the data available, but that they often don’t know what to measure — especially if they’re not... [...]

Pete Wailes says, “As the web gets more complex, with JavaScript framework and library front ends on websites, progressive web apps, single-page apps, JSON-LD, and so on, we’re increasingly seeing an ever-greater surface area for things to go wrong. When all you’ve got is HTML and CSS and links, there’s only so much you can mess up. However, in today’s world of dynamically generated websites with universal JS interfaces, there’s a lot of room for errors to creep in.The second problem we face with much of this is that it’s hard to know when something’s... [...]

Tom Capperႊႊ says, “When we think of local SEO, we think of local packs, Google My Business listings, and local citations. While these things certainly are local SEO, they aren’t the whole picture. Local SEO can be split into three categories:Local pack results for organizations with local premisesOrganic results for organizations with local premisesOrganic results for organizations without local premisesIt’s the third category that I want to cover here today. This often-neglected and little-discussed area plays host to some of the biggest and most lucrative spaces in organic... [...]

George Freitag says, “Now that location-based searches are growing about 50% faster than any other type of search on mobile, what are you going to do to make sure you’re working on the front lines of this new, local-focused world? Well, you can start by joining us in Seattle for MozCon Local 2017 on February 27–28 for a day full of in-depth workshops from LocalU followed by an all-day conference from the top local speakers and brands.You’ll come away with another level of understanding related to local strategy, citations, reviews, SEO local link building, content creation, and more,... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “A new Google AdWords ad extension has been spotted in the wild. Moz’s Dr. Pete notice a new promotion extension being tested in a text ad.First are Consumer Ratings Annotations, next up is the new Promo Extension that’s being tested, followed by Sitelink Extensions, and finally, a Location Extension.The promotion extension (official name TBA) features an offer followed by some descriptive copy (Here Williams-Sonoma is using a promo code, but I’m guessing a code does not always have to be included).Merchant Promotions that feature the same tag icon shown in... [...]

MOZ team says, “If you’re not using your paid media in more creative ways than simply targeting customers at the buying stage, you’ve got a world of opportunity awaiting you. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, we’re delighted to have guest presenter Samantha Noble divulge 10 strategies for using your paid media to get your customers talking about you more and recommending you often”.Using Paid Media to Drive Loyalty & Advocacy – Whiteboard FridayMOZ [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google has added the ability to filter between AMP pages that show up in the rich cards section, i.e., the top news carousel, versus AMP pages that show up in the core mobile search results. You can access this report filter within the Google Search Console, under the Search Analytics report section where it shows the search appearance filter.Google wrote on Google+, “to make it easier to differentiate between how your AMPs are being shown, you can now filter between AMP article rich results & normal search results shown as AMP”.Google AMP reporting in... [...]