The Moz Blog

Offline Keyword Research for Local Languages

In mid-June 2008, I met my friend who has a canvas painted shoes boutique. She requested me to make a blog that promotes her painted shoes boutique. One of the challenges I came across when building the blog was the keyword research, as none of the online keyword research tools I used were able to return good results of searches for our local language (Indonesia). The tools always showed "0" or "not available." The experience made me doubt that there was a market share available for her product over the internet.

Social Media: The People's Choice Awards of the Internet

I've been hearing a lot of grumbling lately about the steady degradation of the quality of content online, especially as it relates to social media and social news sites. I don't necessarily agree with the gripes--was content that magical in 1999? As far as I can recall, there were hamster dances, dancing babies and Geocities pages long before LOLcats, Rickrolls and MySpace. Sure, there are millions and millions more people online now than there were 10 years ago and there are buttloads more pages of content, but to me, the type and quality of content hasn't changed all that much. You still have news articles and research papers and useful information in one corner, and porn, memes, photoshopped images, and general nonsense in another corner.

The Five Secret Ways Nintendo Rules The Internet

By keeping children and teenagers entertained back in the 1980s, Nintendo has claimed a spot in the heart of the present day internet generation. Nintendo's internet success is widely accepted yet largely undocumented. The tactics below reveal only the tip of the iceberg. ...

Belated Whiteboard Friday - Can Bad Links Hurt Me?

As some of you may have noticed, we've been a bit delinquent in our video posts. What with the Thanksgiving holiday, Rand's travel schedule, and my ill-fated (yet brief) bout with the plague, the production schedule in Whiteboard Studios fell a little off-track. The good news is we feel really bad about it, so here's an extra make-up dose of rock 'em, sock 'em Whiteboard Friday...

Search Is Changing Forever, Rand :).

With every tweak and change that Google brings to its search result pages, the "potential-ROI" balance on search tips ever more towards PPC and away from SEO. I realized this when I read Aaron Wall's Marketing Lessons from Google. Search marketing leaders demand results, so it's irrelevant that the means of practicing SEO remain the same. What is relevant is that Google is decreasing the ability of SEO to provide stable, measurable results. As Aaron points out in his post, Google seeks to undermine competing business models.

Why a Google Monopoly is Bad for Search Marketers

When search marketers get together at a pub and talk, the conversation inevitably turns to Google's near-monopolistic share of web search. For many of us that are new to the field, Google has always been the market leader and the focus of most of our efforts. But historically, this wasn't the case. Have a look from a historical perspective: ...

SEO Toolbar: Introducing the New SEOmoz PRO Toolbar (Now with Less Beta!)

All of us at SEOmoz are proud to announce that in addition to doubling the size of the Linkscape index today, we are releasing our own SEO toolbar! The developers and PRO member beta testers have been hard at work prodding, poking and tweaking the toolbar to make sure it is fine tuned and ready for today.

Linkscape Index Update Doubles Size!

Finally we've done it. The long awaited Linkscape index update is here. It's more than doubled the size of our index and with it you'll get 3000 links to any page. This brings us to about 38 billion URLs, with about 450 billion links...

Blabbing with Jessica Bowman: SES, In-House SEO, and Noob Advice

Before SES San Jose I interviewed Chris Winfield about the panel he was speaking on, social media, and other fun stuff. With SES Chicago just around the corner (December 8-12), I had the opportunity to interview another ...

Via Enquisite: PPC Agencies Make 45X What SEOs Do for the Same Value

Here at the Seach Insider Summit in Park City, UT, Richard Zwicky from Enquisite has just released some amazing data. As Jessica Bowman, Todd Friesen, John Marshall and I sat in the lunch room watching his slides, we alternately stared in shock, shook our fists in anger and raised eyebrows in disbelief. If you've ever felt, as an SEO, that you were un...

Mobile Search Ranking Factors (Clue - One Normal SEO Factor is Missing)

We have been doing some research into how to rank in Google mobile web search. Google is the dominant player in mobile search in the US (source: Nielsen Mobile) - our test site hasn't yet been indexed in the other search engines so I'll have to report back later on how it does there:

10 Different Types of Clients

TYPES OF CLIENTELE - After having worked with a number of clients as well as listened to my colleages talk about companies and folks they've worked with, I thought I'd draft up a handy list identifying the various types of clients you may run into. I've found that this list is extremely official and scientific, so you should be able to refer to it and instantly identify a potential client. ;) Enjoy! ...