Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Hi SimplyNutrients! A subdomain will still beat an entirely separate domain. Sometimes it can even be treated the same as a subfolder on the main domain. For the best shot at that, do what you can to make the navigation, the footer, the design, the UX, etc. match the main site -- some combination of those seem to be what matter to Google on this front.
Best of luck!
A) Generally yes, but hard to say for certain. There are correlations suggesting that maybe some of them do pass influence in some way.
B) Probably, but again, likely based on engagement, i.e. if a social link gets very little engagement, it probably won't do much to influence search rankings, but if it gets a lot, it often seems to have at least some positive impact.
I don't think there's much value there. We haven't seen the c-block metrics correlate any better than linking domains of late (not surprising given that c-blocks aren't as popular a way to hide link networks anymore), so removed them from the new product.
Thanks Jack! I've been pushing the team to get a pie chart of anchor text (there's a lot of folks at Moz who think pie charts are evil and bad UI, but I like them), so I appreciate the +1 for that feature 
Thanks Clive! Thrilled to hear it's been helpful for you. I'm excited to see it get even better
Thanks Andrew! We're very glad to have that in the product, too. Been far too long
Funny you should ask Russ Jones from the Moz team has been working on testing a mobile-first type of index for link data to see what that does to the link graph. He should have a post out before not too long on that topic.
As for what mobile en-GB means as a setting in Moz Analytics, it's basically where/how we rank track - the geography and language that's used to check rankings (in your case "En - English" and "GB - Great Britain").
Thanks Ajaz - outside of this beta product, all the other spots in Moz Pro will still use the DA scores (and link counts) from OSE (including Mozbar). Once we launch publicly, that'll change to the new one though.
Thanks Adam!
Re: 1) There is a toggle in the panel above the link lists to filter out common syndication and shortening URLs. Maybe try checking that? If it's not catching everything, let us know what (here or via a ticket to [email protected]) and we can try adding those to the filtration.
Re: 2) Yeah - we have the "linking domains" view in the tool but adding a "one link per domain" or "up to X link per domain" in the links view is certainly something we can consider, too.
Thanks Ed! Britney (Muller), Russ (Jones), and I have been pushing the team really hard to get keyword rankings data alongside link data so you can see how the two correlate and connect up. I totally agree that's where the magic comes from in SEO -- accurate rankings + comprehensive link graph = SEO heaven. Hopefully Moz will get there soon!
Rick - I love what you're doing. Quick question - would you be OK with me writing a blog post for the main blog about your site and the SEO recommendations I'd have? Think it would make for a great case study style post.
UPDATE: I filmed a Whiteboard Friday video specifically on this topic, with a few examples, that's likely worth checking out.
Hi James - I would still strongly urge folks to keep all content on a single subdomain. We recently were able to test this using a subdomain on Moz itself (when moving our beginner's guide to SEO from guides.moz.com to the current URL http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo). The results were astounding - rankings rose dramatically across the board for every keyword we tracked to the pages.
I've had the opportunity to see many dozens of other sites do the same, almost always with similarly positive results (assuming they're moving from a subdomain without much other content/link signals to the subdomain that has those signals).
I think the important word you used in describing Matt's video is "implied." He's very careful not to speak in specifics, and often, I think the truth is buried in that non-specific language, rather than in the broader implied phrasing. That said, I do agree with you that after all these years, it seems odd that Google is still behaving in this fashion and that moving from one subdomain to another can have such a dramaticly positive impact on rankings.
p.s. Yes, for devblog, we put it there due to technical limitations. We plan to eventually get it moved to the main site.
Wow - surprisingly good topic for such a relatively basic part of SEO!
So... I think Todd Malicoat and I still disagree. He likes to have a different title + H1 and claims they're good for rankings and keyword diversity. I largely disagree based on user experience and the relative unimportance of H1s (you can see from our correlation analyses and our ranking models work that H1s appear to have virtually no advantage over just having keywords at the top of a page in large text).
My view is that when someone clicks on a search result listing, they expect to find the thing they've just clicked on. The title is what shows in the SERPs, but if the H1 is substantively different, they're getting what feels like a somewhat different page. That dis-congruous experience can result in high bounce rates and in searcher dis-satisfaction.
In addition, I'm not convinced there's a measurable benefit from differentiated titles vs. H1s. No search engine rep has given guidance on this (in fact, they've stayed conspicuously quiet over the years about whether the H1 does anything at all).
So - there you have it - a small controversy on a small point of on-page optimization. I think the best practice is to do what feels right (neither Todd nor I think the other's opinion will have a negative impact) and, if you're uncertain, test it out on different sets of pages.
My general view though is that there's far better uses of most SEOs time than worrying about H1s
Howdy Moz friends,
Today, the Moz team is making a new tool -- Link Explorer -- available in private beta for Moz Pro subscribers (including those taking a free trial). The tool is still a little ways out from public launch, but we wanted to get your feedback to help make it the best product it can be.
What's Link Explorer?
In essence, it's a replacement for Open Site Explorer (Moz's tool for link discovery, competitive analysis, and link building) that addresses many of its most pernicious challenges, such as:
Daily updates - no longer will you need to wait a month or two to see a new DA score or the links you built last week. Link Explorer updates every 24 hours with all the new links we've discovered that day, and gives a new DA score each night.
A MUCH bigger index - OSE has always been known for having quality links, but quantity has been an issue. No longer. The new tool's link index is more than 20 times larger than Open Site Explorer's, covering trillions of links across hundreds of billions of pages, while maintaining a focus on high quality domains and pages.
Additional functionality - new graphs (like link growth over time), new charts (like gained+lost links), new filters and sorts, and some new kinds of data coming soon.
Improved metrics - Domain Authority and Page Authority have both been upgraded to have better correlations with Google's rankings (and they now update every 24 hours)
Insanely fast - page load times on the new tool are almost as fast as Google's results Less time waiting means more time to dig into results
Link Tracking Lists - check a box next to any links of interest and you can build lists in the tool to track them over time, see whether/when they link, prioritize your outreach efforts, and (in the future) get aggregated data and alerts about those links
There's much more to come, but we'd love for you to check out Link Explorer, find bugs, report things you love (and don't), and help us make it the best possible product for you and your teams.
You can leave feedback here in this Q+A thread, email [email protected], or send feedback through the feedback form in Link Explorer.
I wanted to start a thread to share some of the really cool marketing tactics I've seen on the web that I think few folks are using, AND ask the community here what you've seen, too!
Some of my favorite undiscovered or less-used tactics include:
Making smart use of bios for conferences, events, interviews, etc. where folks ask you or your team members for a "bio" and you get to control the links, link targets, and anchor text. This is super powerful in my experience, so long as you have a moderately strong profile or regular participation in this type of stuff.
Price anchoring on conversion pages, e.g. http://www.trackur.com/options - note how they start with the highest price to help "anchor" the audience to bigger numbers. A great principle of psychology in action.
Using re-marketing to draw people to content rather than just purchase/conversion pages. The effectiveness of these is, I've heard, dramatically higher than the usual re-marketing campaigns that take you to a squeeze or purchase page. I can't share the example I'm thinking of, unfortunately, but I'd urge you to try it!
Get more social shares and clicks by SHARING MORE THAN ONCE! A lot of folks feel like they are burdening their audience on Twitter/Facebook/G+ or frustrating them if they post multiple times, when in fact, very, very few of your followers are online at any given time. I've tested this myself and I get almost no negative feedback but can triple or more the number of shares/+1s/likes/visits/etc I get just by sharing 2-3X! The key is not to be too repetitive or annoying, and to acknowledge past shares (at least for me). e.g. I'll say "my blog post from last night on XYZ" and get a ton more clicks.
What are your favorites? Please share!
To be honest, it's more than a year out of date, and not the best resource. We've talked internally about a replacement, but need to spec it out and find a contractor (and we have so many other improvements/upgrades/features to PRO we're in the process of making).
That said, I'll ask the team to look into it further. I do think a great directory list would be a valuable part of PRO content.
postscript update: We have a project in process to replace this with something very cool, updatable and more scalable, too. I believe launch ETA is Q3 of 2011. Justin Briggs from Distilled and Cyrus Shepard from Moz are working on this together.
Hey gang,
Russ Jones from Moz has been doing a ton of heavy lifting work to try to get around the new problem posed by Google AdWords recent change to merged-keyword volume data. But, we're fighting back against this obfuscation in Keyword Explorer. I'm sharing two emails (slightly edited) from Russ about what we're doing here:
Introduction to the Problem:
Google Adwords Keyword Planner is the primary source for keyword search volume (how often a keyword is searched monthly on Google) for much of the search marketing industry. While Google has grouped together highly-similar terms for a while (especially misspellings), in June of 2016 they dramatically increased this keyword-grouping. This means similar phrases like "keyword rank", "keyword ranking" and "keyword rankings" would all be reported as having the same, combined search volume, rather than their individual search volumes. If you were to take Google's numbers at face value, you might think there are 3,000 searches per month for these 3 terms, when in reality there is only 1,000, divided amongst the 3 terms.
How we are addressing it:
Moz's Keyword Explorer uses a blend of data sources, not just Keyword Planner, to build our volume metrics. This gives us a distinct advantage in that we can adjust the volume of words that deviate dramatically in one data set verses another. Take for example the phrases "keyword rank", "keyword ranking", and "keyword rankings". While Google Keyword Planner might report all of these as having 1,000 searches per month, Moz Keyword Explorer can detect that these numbers are significantly higher than what our models would predict given our other data sets. We can then adjust the volume accordingly. Moreover, given our huge keyword data set, we can also identify grouped phrases (like these 3) and divide the volume proportionally to what we see in our other data sets. Thus, we address the grouping problem from multiple directions.
Here's email #2 from Russ, detailing more of how we're attacking this:
I have been working pretty much non-stop on this keyword volume disambiguation problem (finding the real search volume of individual keywords when Google clumps several together). I think I have settled on a pretty good solution and am working on getting it all in. For example...
Google Keyword Volume for the phrases "briefcase for women" and "briefcases for women" are both at 3600 because they have been lumped together. My disambiguation script says the singular (briefcase for women) should be 2731 and the plural should be 869. Google Trends roughly agrees with this, showing that the singular is searched more than 2x the plural: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=briefcase%20for%20women%2C%20briefcases%20for%20women&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4
Basically, Keyword Explorer should already be providing some more accurate/segmented numbers than AdWords, and in the future, we'll get even better thanks to our clickstream data and our evolving models.
Any questions, let us know!
He's evil and bad! Don't try to contact him or you'll be turned to the dark side, too!
Oh no wait... I'm thinking of a different guy.
Just email me! My email's all over the web and I respond to 99% of real emails I get - [email protected]
Have you had success with any particular methodologies that you'd recommend?
Hey gang - thought I'd jump in with some official word from the Mozscape/Big Data team:
This latest index is smaller than prior ones, meaning we indexed fewer webpages total. However, the quality and importance of those pages in general is higher. In particular we've cut out a exceedingly large number of pages and subdomains on many Chinese sites that appeared to be biasing our crawl priorities and giving us some serious processing trouble.
DA, PA, and link metrics have maintained very similar correlations with Google rankings in this index, so if you've seen a large drop in either, it may be related to the removal of links that Google may not have been counting very highly. However, it's also possible that you've lost DA/PA from links that Google did count and Moz should be, too. As we regrow our index size in the next 2-3 updates, you may see a return of those scores. We do expect the next few indices to process much more quickly than the lag we experienced in the last few, and are watching indices very closely to make sure we're on the right track.
Also, with DA/PA drops, note that every index these occur, primarily because the sites and pages at the very top of the metrics scale (with PA/DA scores in the 99-100 range) are growing their link profiles massively, thus stretching what it means to have those incredibly high scores. If you had a DA of 90, and gained great links at the same rate you did last year, but many other DA 90+ sites were growing their link profiles even more rapidly (which tends to be how the web goes - the rich get richer, faster, every month), your DA would likely fall a few points even though you technically are still growing your link profile. DA/PA of 100 gets harder and harder to achieve every index because of the rate of growth of pages like Twitter.com, Google.com, and Facebook.com.
12/11/2020 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 2017 holiday edition of Whitebeard Friday (see what we did there?), Rand offers three novel ways to add sparkle to your content creation efforts.
9/11/2020 Link building is incredibly effective, but it can be intimidating and frustrating, too. In this popular Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin builds out a framework you can start using today to simplify the link building process for everyone involved.
9/4/2020 Have you ever tried to create 10x content? It's not easy, is it? Knowing how and where to start can often be the biggest obstacle you'll face. In this oldie-but-goodie episode of Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin talks about how you can develop your own 10x content to help your brand stand out.
4/3/2020 Our work as marketers has transformed drastically in the space of a month. Today, we're grateful to welcome our good friend Rand to talk about a topic that's been on the forefront of our minds lately: how to do our jobs empathetically and effectively through one of the most difficult trials in modern memory.
2/21/2020 Which of your competitor's keywords are worth targeting, and which can be ignored? Learn how to tell the difference in this fan favorite Whiteboard Friday. Plus, save a seat our upcoming webinar, Competitive Analysis for SEO: Size Up & Surpass Your Search Rivals!
6/21/2019 Focused on new link acquisition for your clients or company? Link building is always a slog, but Rand has a PR-focused tip that makes it much easier to find people and publications that'll cover and amplify you. Check it out in this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday!
5/31/2019 Sketchy, manipulative practices and simple, straightforward tweaks no longer do the job — to be successful in 2019, you need to be smart, strategic, and in tune with what searchers want. Rand Fishkin outlines three steps you need to have down if your goal is to improve your bottom line with the help of SEO.
11/16/2018 If you have an audience on YouTube, are you doing everything you can to reach them? Inspired by a large-scale study from Justin Briggs, Rand covers the top factors to invest in when it comes to YouTube SEO in this week's episode of Whiteboard Friday.
9/7/2018 Let's admit it — many of us still practice outdated SEO tactics in the belief that they still work. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand sets us straight and offers up a series of replacement activities that will go much farther toward moving the needle.
7/20/2018 A searcher's first impression happens on Google's SERPs, not your website. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand takes us through the inherent challenges of reputation management SEO and tactics for doing it effectively.
6/29/2018 We rely pretty heavily on Google, but some of their moves lately have made doing SEO a lot harder. What organic opportunities have been taken away, and what are some potential solutions? Rand covers a rather unnerving trend in this week's Whiteboard Friday.
6/15/2018 When is it right to use metrics like bounce rate, pages per visit, and time on site, and when should they be ignored? Rand adds his two cents to the conversation around whether these metrics are worth considering in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
5/25/2018 Are your SEO goals right for your organization? They must tie into your company goals, your marketing goals, & provide specific, measurable metrics. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand outlines how to set smart SEO goals for your team & shares examples of how different businesses can do just that.
5/4/2018 Link Explorer may be in beta, but when it comes to your links, it's still a big deal. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand transparently addresses many of the biggest complaints about OSE over the years and explains the vast improvements Link Explorer provides, from DA scores updated daily to historic link data to a huge index of almost 5 trillion URLs.
4/20/2018 Rand's got 16 years of hands-on marketing experience under his belt, and in this Whiteboard Friday, he shares his best advice—from flywheels to product launches to knowing your audience—to help all of us learn from his own trial and error.
4/6/2018 What goes into a truly great product launch? Rand reveals his best advice in the form of an actionable checklist in this Whiteboard Friday. Make sure to check out the last item—it may be the most important one to start with!
3/16/2018 For your clickbait and viral content efforts to bear fruit, they need to be done the right way and used in the right places. Rand discusses what kind of content investments make sense for this type of strategy and explains why it works in this week's Whiteboard Friday.
3/2/2018 The number-one reason most paid ad campaigns fail: you're a stranger to your audience. In this Whiteboard Friday, learn exactly what signals the death knell of a PPC campaign, and solutions to ensure your ads are worth the money you pour into them.
2/23/2018 Should you put time and effort into building a vibrant online community? What are the benefits from a brand, SEO, and content marketing perspective? In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand answers all your questions about investing in and structuring an online community, including whether it's worth your time.
2/16/2018 Same content, different domains? There's a tag for that. Rel=canonical can inform Google that the same content exists on multiple sites. Rand covers how to use it properly and what to keep in mind in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
2/9/2018 Your rankings have dropped and you don't know why. Maybe your traffic dropped as well, or maybe just a section of your site has lost rankings. It's an important mystery to solve, and in this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares a detailed process to follow to diagnose what went wrong, why it happened, and how to recover.
2/2/2018 Writers regularly receive dangerously incorrect advice on how to write for SEO. To protect your site from Google penalties and ensure your writing is appropriate for modern SEO standards, Rand outlines outdated practices and a brief 5-step writing process for 2018.
1/26/2018 Contrary to popular opinion, high ranking pages aren't always the best targets for link building. This Whiteboard Friday delves into the pros and cons of targeting top ranking sites for links, and why you should consider a link intersect strategy, targeting sites that rank for broader topics, and earning links from publications ranking beyond page 1 of the SERPs.
1/19/2018 Increasingly, social networks are tweaking their algorithms to favor content that remains on their site, rather than send users to an outside source. This spells trouble for those trying to drive traffic and visitors to external pages, but what's an SEO or content marketer to do? This edition of Whiteboard Friday goes into detail on the pros and cons of each approach, then gives Rand's recommendations on how to balance your efforts going forward.
1/12/2018 Broad and unusable volume ranges, misalignment with other Google tools, and conflating similar yet distinct keywords — these are just a few of the serious issues that make relying on AdWords search volume data alone so dangerous. In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, we discuss those issues and offer a few alternatives for more accurate volume data.
1/11/2018 For the past ten years, Rand has made a set of predictions for SEO in the year ahead, and for all ten years he's been largely correct. Check out what he got right in 2017, and pay close attention to his predictions for 2018 — they're doozies!
1/5/2018 Correlations data isn't always as clear as it seems. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares the myths and realities of correlations in SEO ranking factor studies, then offers five smart ways to glean more trustworthy, useful information from the data.
12/29/2017 This edition of Whiteboard Friday covers a nine-point SEO checklist of the major items you need to cross off to rank in 2018 — and maybe get some hints on how to explain it to others, too.
12/8/2017 Snippets and meta descriptions have new character limits, and it's a big change for Google (and us SEOs). Learn about what's new and what it means for SEO in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
12/1/2017 Controlling and improving the flow of your page content can actually help your SEO. In today's Whiteboard Friday, we cover the questions and goals you need to hit the bullseye on this process.
11/17/2017 We're well aware that PPC can have an effect on our organic results. But what effect is that, exactly, and how does it work? This week's Whiteboard Friday covers the ways paid influences organic — and one very important way it doesn't.
11/10/2017 Buried inside most SERPs (especially those with more general queries) is a host of insight into Google's assumptions about searcher intent. Rand explains how you can find it.
11/3/2017 In honor of the late SEO pioneer and our friend, Eric Ward, this episode of Whiteboard Friday covers the kinds of link strategies he worked so hard to teach.
10/27/2017 There's a powerful concept in the world of SEO software: the "keyword universe." Learn how to harness the potential of tens of millions of keywords and their rankings data in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
10/23/2017 Keyword Explorer can show you which keywords you and your competitors already rank for. Get the freshest, most accurate keyword rankings data here.
10/20/2017 This week's Whiteboard Friday covers links in headers and footers, in navigation versus content, and how that can affect internal and external links, link equity, and link value between your site and others.
10/13/2017 A single headline can't do it all. You need to develop something a little different for your goals tied to SEO, social media, and site visitors. This Whiteboard Friday covers a process to help optimize your titles across multiple platforms.
10/6/2017 Plenty of websites that make it easy for you to contribute don't make it easy to earn a followed link from those contributions. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares five tactics to help you earn equity-passing followed links using traditionally nofollow-only platforms.
9/22/2017 Not everything you do on your website affects your Google rankings. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand goes through ten things commonly believed to influence rankings that Google actually doesn't care about.
9/15/2017 In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand reminds us of link equity's basic principles, covers the 3 most common issues websites face with equity flow, and offers advice on how to actually control and optimize that flow in a way that works.
9/8/2017 Without a solid base of links, your site's SEO won't be competitive. This Whiteboard Friday shows you three relatively quick, easy, and tool-free ways to (link) build a sturdy foundation for your site.
9/1/2017 It's not uncommon to rank well in one locale and tank in another, even for sites without an intent to capture local queries. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows you how to diagnose the issue with a few clever SEO tricks, then identify the right strategy to get back on top.
8/25/2017 What makes a page high or low quality? How can you easily filter pages on your site to determine which pages are of high importance, which need work, and which are just plain bad? Check out the answers in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
8/18/2017 The perfect blog post length or publishing frequency doesn't actually exist. "Perfect" isn't universal — your content's success depends on tons of personalized factors. It's all explained in this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday.
8/11/2017 Imagine Google assigned a quality score to organic search results based off of click data and engagement metrics, and that it would function similarly to the Google AdWords quality score. How might such a score work and how could you optimize for it?
7/28/2017 Stop bumming out journalists, bloggers, and content creators by begging for links. Try out some of Rand's tactics in this Whiteboard Friday to earn those links without the painful ask (and low success rate).
7/21/2017 There's a new ranking factor in town, and it's one that will affect almost every aspect of your site optimization. Check out why searcher task accomplishment is such a big deal in today's Whiteboard Friday.
7/14/2017
[Canonical SEO] Learn Google SEO best practices by how to properly implement the CANONICAL URL TAG. Learn about rel=canonical, where it's necessary and appropriate, and the pitfalls you should avoid at all costs.
7/7/2017 It's not impossible to compete with comparison sites in the SERPs. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand tackles one of the toughest ranking issues in SEO: capturing those broad plural search queries with comparative intent.
6/30/2017 Making enemies with your content can actually have a lot of benefits, not the least of which are new allies gained and the links and shares that follow. Rand shares what to do (and what not to do) when it comes to chasing success with controversial content.
6/23/2017 Most SEO campaigns need three kinds of links to be successful; targeting your content to influencers can get you 2/3 of the way there. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers the tactics that will help your content get seen and shared by those with a wide and relevant audience.
6/22/2017 How do you measure the ROI of attending a marketing conference? It's less about the numbers and more about the results. Rand explains the rationale behind why he believes conferences are worth the investment and shares his own personal list of favorites.
6/16/2017 Unclear on how to apply link metrics like linking root domains, Domain Authority, and Page Authority? Rand defines these terms and how to use them alongside your other SEO metrics in this Whiteboard Friday.
6/9/2017 Does Google treat text kept behind "read more" links with the same importance as non-hidden text? The short answer is "no," but there's more nuance to it than that. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains just how the search engine giant weighs text hidden from view using CSS and JavaScript.
6/2/2017 Rankings fluctuations can be panic-inducing, but they happen to everyone. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses why ranking fluctuations occur, the importance of keeping your cool during those darker moments, and how to identify when you should actually be concerned.
5/26/2017 Learn how to analyze, optimize, and structure your internal links (and put the kibosh on out-of-date tactics) in this Whiteboard Friday.
5/19/2017 A blog is only as effective as its posts. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand offers six paths you can take to make sure your posts resonate with your audiences.
5/12/2017 Optimizing your images for ranking in Google Image Search and the Image Pack is not a side of SEO to be ignored. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains just about everything you'd want to ask about image search SEO, from foundations to best practices.
4/28/2017 This week we're chatting about pop-ups, overlays, modals, interstitials, etc. They have specific kinds of interactions with SEO. In addition to Google's guidelines around them, they also change how people interact with your site, which can adversely or positively affect you accomplishing your goals, SEO and otherwise.
4/21/2017 Net neutrality is a hot-button issue lately, and whether it's upheld or not could have real ramifications for the online marketing industry. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers the potential consequences and fallout of losing net neutrality. Be sure to join the ensuing discussion in the comments!
4/14/2017 Hovering your finger over the big red "launch" button for your new website? Hold off for just a second. From a keyword-to-URL content map to sweeping for crawl errors to setting up proper tracking, today's Whiteboard Friday covers 5 boxes you need to check off before finally setting your site live.
4/7/2017 By comparing top pages data from multiple sources against one another, you can get some really cool, powerful advanced SEO opportunities in your content and keyword targeting. Rand explains how in this Whiteboard Friday.
3/31/2017 You know SEO is important, but you barely have time for lunch, much less keyword research. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers a minimum viable SEO strategy to give those with limited time a plan forward.
3/17/2017 Should you rank one site higher in a single position frequently, or own more of the SERP real estate consistently with multiple domains? In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand presents 4 questions you should ask to determine whether this strategy could work for you.
3/14/2017 How many words are in the average query? What percent of queries are phrased as questions? Are people really starting more searches on YouTube than Bing? Rand uses clickstream data to answer all the questions about searcher behavior that Google doesn't provide.
3/10/2017 Thinking of publishing an expert roundup? Don't—there's a better way. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.
2/24/2017 Reaching the perfect audience is priceless, but hyperlocal keyword research is frustrating. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares how to find powerful, laser-focused keywords to bring you *exactly* the customers you're looking for.
2/10/2017 Earning site traffic from competitive keywords with decent search volume doesn't always have to be a struggle. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares how to make ranking for competitive keywords easier on yourself using very fresh content.
2/6/2017 What's new for on-page SEO in 2017? Rand outlines it in 5 succinct tactics: 1) Move beyond keyword repetition rules; 2) Searcher intent matters more than raw keywords; 3) Related topics are essential; 4) Links don't always beat on-page; and 5) Topical authority is more important than ever.
1/27/2017
There's both a right way and a wrong way to go about selecting an SEO company or consultant for your site. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares his best advice and mistakes to avoid when it comes to the hiring process.
1/13/2017 Comment marketing can be a strong yet largely undervalued strategy, with high potential and low competition. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand details what you can do to get noticed in the comments and the benefits you'll reap from high-quality contributions.
1/11/2017 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.
1/6/2017 It's incredibly important to consider SEO when launching a startup. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares how to kickstart a comprehensive SEO audit for your new business's site.
12/30/2016 From understanding the big-picture search trends to making sure your SEO goals jive with your CEO's goals, there's a lot to consider when planning for 2017. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand outlines how to craft a truly remarkable SEO strategy to help you sail through 2017.
12/23/2016 What value does your community provide and what value do you provide them? Rand explores 10 fresh, actionable strategies to encourage and promote an exchange of value that will feed your content and community efforts.
12/9/2016 After analyzing hundreds of SERPs, Rand has identified and classified the 10 distinct content types that work best for SEO. In this Whiteboard Friday, he explains those types and how to use them effectively in your content marketing strategy.
12/2/2016 Should you focus on H1s and H2s, or should schema.org demand all your on-page attention? In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand expounds upon what still works for on-page SEO and what's out of date.
11/25/2016 When it comes to certain kinds of backlinks, avoiding penalties can be a gray area. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand will teach you which rules to follow to keep you safe and help you benefit.
11/11/2016 Rand's three-step process for improving your "content comprehensiveness" will help you answer all of a searcher's questions and help you beat out competitors for those higher-ranking positions.
11/4/2016 It may seem like an uphill battle to compete with big sites in the SERPs, but there are tangible SEO benefits to running a smaller site. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains how small sites can target opportunities the big sites can't, despite their natural advantages.
10/28/2016 From your top-level nav to your seal-the-deal content, there are endless considerations when it comes to crafting your ecommerce page. Using one of his personal favorite examples, Rand takes you step by detailed step through the process of creating a truly superb ecommerce page in today's Whiteboard Friday.
10/21/2016 Have you ever considered gating your content to get leads? Whether you choose to have open-access content or gate it to gather information, there are benefits and drawbacks you should be aware of. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand weighs the pros and cons of each approach and shares some tips for improving your processes.
10/12/2016 "I'm still a little embarrassed to admit it, but admit it I must. KW Explorer is the best keyword research tool in the market, period*." 3 brand-new upgrades to Keyword Explorer will make your research easier and more accurate than ever.
10/7/2016 Penguin 4.0 has finally rolled out as a core part of Google's algorithm. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains Penguin's past, present, and future, offers his analysis of the rollout so far, and gives advice for going forward (hint: never link spam).
9/30/2016 RankBrain is unlike any of the classic Google algorithms we've dealt with in the past. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand tackles the question of what RankBrain actually is and whether SEOs should (or even can) optimize for it.
9/23/2016 Featured snippets are here to stay, and they're proving to be an important goal in the never-ending quest for rankings. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains the 3 types of featured snippets and how you can best position yourself to grab those coveted spots in the SERPs.
9/9/2016 From where to how to when, there are a number of erroneous claims about link building floating around the SEO world. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand sets the record straight on 8 of the more common claims he's noticed lately.
9/2/2016 We need to think about a broader spectrum of content than "what our target audience wants." In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers the nuance we should all have in mind when figuring out what content to create next.
8/26/2016 Have you been ignoring local link and citation building because you're an online-only or non-local website? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why all sites should consider chasing local links and citations, suggesting a few different ways to discover opportunities in your areas of focus.
8/19/2016 When Google says jump, it's hard not to jump. We often take the words of Google representatives as law, but it's important to understand subtleties and to allow for clarification with time. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses some angles to consider that will help you stay grounded when the "Big G" makes a statement about SEO.
8/12/2016 You've got content on your site that doesn't intentionally target any keyword. But how do you identify those opportunities and, most importantly, capitalize on them? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand illustrates the process of creating your own content-to-keyword map to discover where to optimize, what content to build, and how to intelligently target keywords when you're auditing a site.
8/5/2016 What's more important: drawing in more traffic, or converting the traffic you have? When it comes to your landing pages, that may be a tough question to answer. After watching today's Whiteboard Friday, you'll be better equipped to decide whether you should opt for an SEO focus, a conversion focus, or a strategic balance of both.
7/29/2016 Is the practice of tracking keywords truly dying? There's been a great deal of industry discussion around the topic of late, and some key points have been made. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand speaks to the biggest challenges keyword rank tracking faces today and how to solve for them.
7/22/2016 We're hearing a lot about voice search lately, and that trend doesn't seem likely to disappear. But does it have a direct impact on how you should be thinking about your SEO strategy? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses what to expect when it comes to the future of search.
7/15/2016 How to choose a domain name: make it brandable, pronounceable, short, intuitive, bias to .com, avoid names that infringe on another company, use broad keywords, and if not available, modify.
7/8/2016 We don't live in a world where we have the luxury of thinking about just user experience or just SEO. The two share many of the same spaces online, working in tandem and sometimes clashing. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details the considerations and compromises that must be made for UX & SEO to coexist in harmony.
7/1/2016 A simple change in language and perspective could be what's standing between you and getting the C-suite buy-in that's integral to your success. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand helps you translate your marketing jargon into financial metrics and data that the folks in charge will actually care about.
6/24/2016 [Long Tail SEO] The keyword phrases you can uncover in the long tail of search are worth their weight in gold, often driving highly valuable SEO traffic to your site. Dive into core strategies to make long tail keywords work in your favor, from niche-specific SEO to a bigger content strategy.
6/14/2016 It's been 5 weeks since Keyword Explorer's launch and in that time, more than 75,000 folks have tried out what is, in my opinion, the best keyword research tool on the market. Today, we're upgrading it further with three of the most requested features since launch.
6/10/2016 Picture this: You discover that your site is ranking for a keyword you've been targeting. Cause for celebration, right? But what if that ranking page is irrelevant, wrong, or simply not the best choice? This frustrating situation is more common than you might think. Rand shows you how to cope when you find that your valuable queries are sending traffic to the wrong URLs in today's Whiteboard Friday.