The Moz Blog

YOUmoz Newb Pwns SEO Expert Quiz!

Hello YOUmozzers! This is my first ever YOUmoz blog post and possibly my last, depending on how well SEOmoz can handle a little bit of constructive criticism. ;) Up until about 3 weeks ago, I was working at a fairly well-known SEO firm, but unfortunately, my valid SEO theories and genius-grade ideas weren't welcome there, so I decided to strike out on my own! SEOs are...

Customer Service Protocol 101: The Revised Edition

I apologise for another Facebook-centred post, but something interesting happened to me this week. I also realise that it is a bit strange to title an original post, "The Revised Edition," but this is indeed a complete re-write of my first draft. My initial post was titled, "Cusomter Service Protocol 101: Threaten To Ban Your Most Loyal Users" and it was quite the diatribe. You see, on Monday Facebook threatened to ban me. They said I had been caught spamming. I became very angry, as I hadn't spammed anyone. I'm also one of Facebook's biggest fans in an environment where everyone has something bad to say about the company.

Have Online Press Releases Gone the Way of the Dodo?

Recently I attended the eCommerce Summit, and while I was there I attended the "Using Press Releases to Drive Sales" session. The sole speaker was Joe Beaulaurier, marketing manager of PRWeb. Sure, his session was a bit salesy (then again, so were a lot of the session at the eCommerce Summit, but it is ecommerce, after all), but he did make so...

Google Spam Illuminates the Algo's Reliance on Domain Authority

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Rewriting the Beginner's Guide Part VI: How Usability, User Experience, and Content Affect Search Engine Rankings

I'm currently working on re-authoring and re-building the Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, section by section. You can read more about this project here. How & Why "Great" Sites Rise t...

Building a Better Spam Detector

A couple of weeks ago the AIRWeb held it's 2008 conference. I've taken a stab at my own adversarial information retrieval tool...

Whiteboard Friday - Building a Personal Brand

This week Rand discusses the topic of Personal Branding. What are the pros and cons of having a personal brand for yourself or within your company? How can you build a personal brand, and what benefits personal branding can have above and beyond corporate branding. Enjoy! ...

Thursday Roundup for the Week of 4/27/08

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: Two star links: * Regarding TechCrunch's "Is Keyword Search About to Hit its Breaking Point?" article, well, I'll quote what Rand said: "[S]uch a load of crap. Users have to change, not engines."

Facebook Does Keyword Research

If I had been paying attention on April 15th, instead of swanning around New Zealand, I would have noticed that Facebook had launched what amounts to an elementary keyword research tool... and as I write that, I realise that Facebook Lexicon is perhaps less elementary than some of the tools that we already pay for. An anonymous aggregation of "public and semi-public" keywords from across...

Is Social Media Marketing Right For You?

Last week on The Office, corporate weenie Ryan visited the Scranton branch and told them that they needed to make up extra sales that their website should have brought in. He had been fervently pushing the website onto the staff, telling them that version 2.0 of the site will be even bigger and better, and that embracing new technology like online sales will skyrocket paper purchases and make thei...

Let's Talk Landing Pages

Chapter 4 of Web Design for ROI is all about landing pages, and it's the best and most valuable chapter thus far. The chapter starts off with this little gem of a quote: Enter the custom landing page. It's a web site's stand-in for ambassador, concierge, and superstar salesperson rolled into one. It's been carefully crafted to meet, ...

The Role of Outbound Links

<p>Outbound links play a critical role in your overall linking strategy. This runs counter to the philosophy that used be popular in the industry, that of hoarding PageRank. You do read less about the notion of hoarding PageRank these days than you used to, but I still think that many publishers do not fully understand why outbound links are important.</p><h3>Understa...