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Showing posts from December, 2017

How to Rank in 2018: The SEO Checklist - Whiteboard Friday

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Posted by randfish It's hard enough as it is to explain to non-SEOs how to rank a webpage. In an increasingly complicated field, to do well you've got to have a good handle on a wide variety of detailed subjects. This edition of Whiteboard Friday covers a nine-point checklist of the major items you've got to cross off to rank in the new year — and maybe get some hints on how to explain it to others, too. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to a special New Year's edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to run through how to rank in 2018 in a brief checklist format. So I know that many of you sometimes wonder, "Gosh, it feels overwhelming to try and explain to someone outside the SEO profession how to get a web page ranked." Well, you know what? Let's explore that a little bit this week on Whiteboard Friday. I sent out a tweet asking folk...

The Very Best of the Moz Blog 2017: Our Top 50 Posts

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Posted by FeliciaCrawford Now, I know we technically have a few days left in 2017, but I'm ready to dive head-first into a fond, full-blown retrospective. Each year we look back on what we've published, compiling and sharing the pieces you liked best. Normally we divvy it up via various metrics: traffic, 1Metric score , total thumbs up, total comments, the best of YouMoz, and so on and so forth. This year, however, we're doing things just a little differently. A lot has changed in the past year... The way we run the blog has changed in a few significant ways from the days of yesteryear. YouMoz, our user-generated content blog, was retired in the autumn of 2016 (though we hope to resurrect it in another form someday). We reduced our publishing frequency a bit, and refocused our content on core SEO topics after spending 2015 and 2016 branching out into other marketing subjects (like social media and content marketing). We also made some big changes with regards to commenti...

Mozzy Good Wishes to You & Yours!

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Posted by FeliciaCrawford As the long holiday weekend draws to a close and we prepare to welcome a brand-new year, we at Moz just want to thank you all for a wonderful, fulfilling year on the blog. Your colorful commentary, delightful debates, thrilling thumbs-up, and vivacious visits have made the past twelve months sparkle and shine (and with that, I'll bid the alliteration adieu). Our "card" features a cameo from a little Moz Dog you may recognize: the inimitable Lettie Pickles ! At the Moz HQ, we practice a multitude of holiday traditions. Whether it's Mozzers gathering in the common room (affectionately named "Roger") to light candles on the menorah during Hanukkah, trading and stealing gifts for the company-wide White Elephant exchange (someone won a bonafide Commodore 64 this year!), or getting our boogie and our board gaming on at the Moz holiday party, we try to honor this special season with a healthy mix of reverence and good old-fashioned fu...

3 Creative Ways to Give Your Content Efforts a Boost - Whiteboard Friday

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Posted by randfish We know that content is our doorway to earning countless SEO benefits for our sites. Admittedly, though, it’s too easy to get stuck in a rut after one too many content marketing campaigns. In this extra-special holiday edition of Whitebeard Friday (see what we did there?), Rand offers three novel ways to add sparkle to your content creation efforts Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to a special Christmas edition of Whitebeard Friday. This week, I wanted to try and help with just a few tactical suggestions on some creative ways to pump up those content marketing campaigns. I've seen that many, many folks in the SEO world, of course, naturally, are investing in content marketing because content is the path to links and amplification and search traffic. Sometimes those content campaigns can feel a little stale or repetitive. So I have some creative ideas, thi...

Followerwonk Is Moving On to a New, Loving Home

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Posted by adamf We have exciting news to share with you about our Twitter analytics tool, Followerwonk ! For a while now we’ve been looking for a new home for the tool. We’re very pleased to announce that Marc Mims, one of the tool's original developers, formed a company to acquire it and will continue to operate the popular service under the Followerwonk brand. A little history In August 2016, we announced our intention to sell Followerwonk. It’s a useful and powerful application, but since acquiring it in 2012, we discovered that the overlap between users of Followerwonk and users of our core SEO products was smaller than we anticipated. To address that problem, in 2015 we offered it as a separate subscription — part of a larger strategy to extend our services beyond SEO. Last year we made some hard choices , ultimately deciding to refocus our efforts on our SEO core. It was then that we decided to seek a better home for our Twitter analytics tool. Marc and Followerwonk go wa...

Use as Directed: A Content Marketing Plan for Robust Business Performance

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Posted by Alex-T The chances that your company invests in a content marketing strategy are very high. Content Marketing Institute revealed that 89% of B2B and 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing, while the money spent on this activity ranges between 26% to 30% of an entire marketing budget. I believe that spending up to 50% of your overall budget on content marketing needs isn’t too much, if you know how to take advantage of it. Not only will it benefit your brand’s awareness, but it will also help you generate traffic, leads, and sales. My personal experience working with digital businesses has shown that only a few are successful in finding a strategic approach to their content plan. Sadly, most companies practice throwing spaghetti on the wall to see if a piece of content gets any readers. In this post, you'll learn how to ensure that every piece of content you create drives traffic, attracts leads, and generates sales. I’ll give you ready-to-use solutions on how you...

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

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Posted by Dr-Pete Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters. Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit , but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement": Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit o...