Posts

The Link-Earning Stack Every SEO Should Strive For

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Being an SEO, you can’t go a day without hearing about links: “Links are crucial!” or “Prioritize links!” or “Links are the nourishing lifeblood of the almighty algorithm!” But for those of us who’ve taken the next step to actually figure out how to earn said links, we realize it’s not that straightforward. It’s hard to sum up all of that in the tweets and LinkedIn posts that get shared about link earning, because the truth is, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all link earning approach or vendor. You need a link earning “stack” that appropriately reflects the complexity of your marketing and content goals. In an ideal world, here’s what that stack would look like. (Hat tip to Paul Zalewski, SVP of Marketing at Verblio , who gave me the idea for this breakdown!) Passive link earning Objective: Set up a foundation for link earning with lower effort over time Content needed: A “linkable content” asset (this is key) Promotion needed: Manual outreach and promotion to acq...

Protect the Hours of Operation on Your GBP from Unwanted Google Edits

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Image credit: Bart Maguire Over the next six months, Google is going to employ machine learning and AI to alter the hours of operation on twenty million Google Business Profiles as part of their project of creating a “self-updating map”. Some experts estimate that this is roughly one-fifth to one-sixth of all GBP listings, meaning the chances are strong that you or one or more of your clients could experience these edits. Google has good reason for pursuing accuracy in their local index, but local business owners have even better reason to be on top of this announcement and proactively safeguard the validity of their own data. Today, we’ll show you what to do to take charge on these vital listings which, while they belong to Google, represent your business. Why is this happening and is this new? Google is right in observing that the chaos of COVID-19 has affected the accuracy of their local business index. Updating GBP hours to reflect changes may not be at the top of the to-do...

Blue Ocean SEO Strategy

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If you're familiar with the blue ocean marketing strategy , you know that SEO is inherently a "red ocean" industry. With fierce competition to attain rankings, links, and authority, SEOs are constantly trying to one-up their competitors. In this environment, is there any hope for creating a "blue ocean" — innovating to avoid the choppy waters of the current market?  In today's Whiteboard Friday, PJ Howland of Leaders.com suggests that a blue ocean SEO strategy is achievable through creating realistic content for your customers. Watch to learn more!  Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hey, Moz fans. Welcome back to another Whiteboard Friday. I am PJ Howland. I am the Head of SEO and Evergreen Content at leaders.com . So my background is kind of that sweet spot right in between if you've got SEO over here and content and editorial over here, that middle ground where SEO and ed...

12 Actionable Steps to Drive Newsletter Growth with SEO Content

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At Brafton, we’ve found our newsletter subscribers to be our best, most engaged audience. These are our people. They live and breathe content marketing, just as we do. Some even partner with us to create and execute awesome content marketing campaigns for their brands. Over the last two and a half years, we’ve placed a significant emphasis on growing this subscriber base, and we’ve achieved a 170% increase (and counting!) across 84 countries. Newsletter subscriptions coming from organic search traffic. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably looking for ways to grow your newsletter list, too. SEO blog content has been the foundation for our growth. How does it work? Simple: We create blog content that ranks highly in search, and we make it super easy (and tempting) for readers to subscribe to our newsletter once they visit our blog. While the concept seems straightforward, the effort is anything but. Read on to learn how to get users from your website onto your newslett...

Daily SEO Fix: Competitive Keyword Research

Competitive keyword research is a crucial part of any SEO strategy. It’s vitally important to understand what your competitors are ranking for, so that you can identify the most relevant keywords in your niche or industry. But before you begin your quest to find new keywords, you need to know exactly who your competitors really are. You might have some idea of who your closest competitors are, but on closer inspection, they may be different. Finding out which sites appear most often alongside your own can give you a fantastic insight into who you're competing against for valuable keywords. Moz Pro’s competitive research tools allow you to find out exactly who your competitors are, what keywords they rank for and what their top performing content is. You can then use this information to create high-quality content that can compete against what your competitors have published, and get you more traffic to your site. In the following videos, some of our best and brightest Mozzers w...

How to Learn SEO

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Whether you're just getting started, figuring out how to fill in knowledge gaps, training your team on SEO fundamentals, this is the Whiteboard Friday episode for you! With over a decade of experience in the SEO space, Moz’s head of content, Jo Cameron, dives into her own learning journey and talks through everything from understanding your resources and your budget to strategies to keep you on track in real-world projects. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I wanted to talk you through a topic that is close to my heart, which is how to learn SEO. I'm Jo. I'm the head of content here at Moz, and I feel like I've been learning SEO for the better part of a decade. So I feel like I can speak from experience, although I do know that everyone's methods for learning new information, whatever it is, is different. To get started,...

MozCon 2022: The Initial Agenda

We’re just about three months out from the big event (can you believe it?)! Today, we’re excited to give you a preview of everything our speakers have in store when they take to the stage this year. With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too). And in case you hadn’t heard, you’ve got two incredible ways to join us this year, a fully immersive in-person experience in Seattle, or through our livestream only pass which will be broadcast live from the Seattle stage. Can’t join us in person or for the livestream? We’ve got you covered with an option to pre-purchase...