The Moz Blog

Tips from a recovering journalist: How to write effective press releases that help SEO

It's been said here before: Press releases are much less powerful than they used to be for SEO purposes. While churning out news releases and submitting them to free sites may not do much, the medium can actually be more powerful than ever if used right. Convincing a single reporter or high-profile blogger to pick up your news is infinitely more beneficial...

My Startup Experience: VC, Entrepreneurship, Self-Analysis & The Road Ahead

(Intro: This post continues a series of personal growth focused entries. It doesn't have much direct, applicable SEO value, so feel free to skip if that's what you're seeking) I've learned more in the last 9 months than at any previous time in my life - about myself, about this company and about the worlds of venture capital, entrepreneurship and startups. And, in the spirit of transpar...

A Bad Day for Search Engines: How News of Michael Jackson's Death Traveled Across the Web

First and foremost, let me extend my best wishes to the family and friends of Michael Jackson. I can only imagine the pain of losing a close friend and then having to watch it play out on a global stage. He made an extraordinary impact on the world and although not perfect, he is a teacher even in death (as evidenced by this post). The following is a timeline of how the news of the ...

Whiteboard Friday - Correlation, Causation & SEO

This week, Rand is joined by one of our in-house data geniuses, Ben Hendrickson, to talk more about some of our recently released correlation data to support guidelines for SEO best practices. While correlation doesn't always...

Why you should consider breaking your subpages down to one page

This is my first YOUmoz post and I am no native speaker so please be lenient ;-)Many SEO consultants know that scenario: A client complains about being nowhere in the SERPs, even though they consider themself being one of the best results for a particular search query. The client mostly is a small local business and if you check out his site, you almost always see the same mistake: there...

Summer 2009 Online Marketing and Search Conferences

Is it just me, or is it getting on hot in here? Well it IS summer time again, and this year there are some interesting (both national and global) summer online marketing conferences happening. Some of the mozzers will be attending and/or speaking and I thought this was a great time to let everyone know where we'll be, and in some cases, where we'd like to be! Online Marketing Su...

The 12 Skills That Have Served Me Best in My SEO Career

I've gotten a lot of email recently from folks asking what they can do to get involved in the world of search marketing and SEO. Tonight, Mystery Guest and I attended the Seattle Job Social event and had a really interesting experience talking to people about SEOmoz, the positions we're hiring for (SysAdmins of the Northwest, please email us!) and ...

Case Study - How to Beat Google and Rank #2 for Viagra

I have been following the keyword "Viagra" lately and have noticed a website creep up the ranking ladder. Most of the sites do belong on the front page of Google, such as: Viagra.com, Wikipedia, howstuffworks, etc. So... I was wondering how did http:...

Whiteboard Friday - How Do We Plug the Nofollow Leak?

This week's Whiteboard Friday addresses everybody's new favorite topic: Google's "new" treatment of nofollow and how it creates a massive reservoire of lost link juice. Everybody under the sun has written about this (SEOmoz included) in the last couple of weeks, so...

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages--and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings." We can talk about the temperature of the sea and the possibility of winged pork some other time,...

Are 404 Pages Always Bad for SEO?

There are some very different schools of thought out there regarding 404 error code pages. Some SEOs recommend: Never allowing them - 301'ing every error page back to the home page or an internal category level page to preserve the maximum amount of link juice (in case someone links to a broken URL) Letting any erroneous/mistyped URL 404. Something...

Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit

Last Friday I attended and spoke at the Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit in San Francisco. The idea of the conference was to cover technical SEO topics and help train developers and others. The 100 attendees (or so) were a mixed bunch; developers, SEOs, managers and the like. The sessions covered site archit...