On-site SEO (also known as on-page SEO) is the practice of optimizing elements, like title tags, on a website (as opposed to links elsewhere on the Internet and other external signals collectively known as "off-site SEO") in order to improve search engine ranking and visibility. This can involve optimizing both the content and HTML source code of pages on a site.
This page is your home base for on-site SEO resources designed for learners of all skill levels. Discover our top SEO guides, blog posts, articles and more!
What Is the Role of SEO in Digital Marketing?
The role that SEO has in digital marketing involves optimizing a website to improve its ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), which can help increase your reach to potential customers, and support your wider digital marketing efforts.
What are Keywords?
What are keywords, and why do they matter for SEO? What are long-tail keywords? How should you use keywords in content, and how do they inform a content strategy? Learn in this article.
Internal Links
Internal Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) the same domain as the domain that the link exists on (source). Why do these links matter for SEO, and what are the best practices for internal link structure? Learn in this article.
Moneyball is the Future of SEO
Advanced statistical analysis has changed the face of professional sports, and similar insights are changing the way we do SEO. In this talk, Will is going to share the approaches he's seeing from the most forward-looking SEO teams, as well as the lessons learned from their analysis of what's working and what's not.
The Ultimate How-To for Faceted Navigation SEO in E-commerce
MozCon Virtual 2021: The Ultimate How-To for Faceted Navigation SEO in E-commerce presented by Luke Carthy.
One of the biggest FAQs in e-commerce: "How do you handle faceted navigation when it comes to SEO?" We’ll ask the tough questions and answer them head-on! Join Luke Carthy as he walks through case studies, real-world examples, and how to leverage faceted navigation to really capitalize on high-converting long-tail keywords. If you're in e-commerce, you won’t want to miss this!
The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet
Share with your dev team to make SEO changes easier to understand and implement.
With brand-new updates, the Web Dev's SEO Cheat Sheet is a core resource for SEOs, web devs, software engineers, and anyone else needing to understand technical SEO standards for a website. Download the free PDF and share with your team!
Featured Snippets: Essentials to Know & How to Target
By now, most SEOs are comfortable with the idea of featured snippets, but actually understanding and capturing them in the changing search landscape remains elusive. Britney Muller will share some eye-opening data about the SERPs you know and love while equipping you with a bevy of new tricks for winning featured snippets into your toolbox.
What All Marketers Can Do about Site Speed
At this point, we should all have some idea of how important site speed is to our performance in search. The recently announced "speed update" underscored that fact yet again. It isn't always easy for marketers to know where to start improving their site's speed, though, and a lot of folks mistakenly believe that site speed should only be a developer's problem. Emily Grossman will clear that up with an actionable tour of just how much impact our own work can have on getting our sites to load quickly enough for today's standards.
Search-Driven Content Strategy
Google's improvements in understanding language and search intent have changed how and why content ranks. As a result, many SEOs are chasing rankings that Google has already decided are hopeless. Stephanie Briggs will cover how this should impact the way you write and optimize content for search, and will help you identify the right content opportunities. She'll teach you how to persuade organizations to invest in content, and will share examples of strategies and tactics she has used to grow content programs by millions of visits.
MozCon Video Bundle
Did you miss this year's MozCon? Now is your chance to experience what everyone has been talking about! We have over 19 hours of actionable inbound marketing knowledge.
Winning Value Propositions for Crawlers and Consumers
In an evolving mobile-first web, we can utilize pre-empting solutions to create winning value propositions, which are designed to attract and satisfy search engine crawlers and keep consumers happy. I'll outline a strategy and share tactics that help ensure increased organic reach, in addition to highlighting smart ways to view data, intent, consumer choice theory and crawl optimization.
5 Secrets: How to Execute Lean SEO to Increase Qualified Leads
I invite you to steal some of the ideas I've gleaned from managing SEO for the behemoth bad-ass Moz.com. Learn what it takes to move the needle on qualified leads, execute quick wins, and keep your head above water. I will go over my biggest Moz.com successes, failures, tests, and lessons.
The Truth About Mobile-First Indexing
Mobile-first design has been a best practice for a while, and Google is finally about to support it with mobile-first indexing. Learn how mobile-first indexing will give digital marketers their first real swing at influencing Google’s new AI (Artificial Intelligence) landscape. Marketers who embrace an accurate understanding of mobile-first indexing could see a huge first-mover advantage, similar to the early days of the web, and we all need to be prepared.
Facing the Future: 5 Simple Tactics for 5 Scary Changes
We've seen big changes to SEO recently, from an explosion in SERP features to RankBrain to voice search. These fundamental changes to organic search marketing can be daunting, and it's hard to know where to get started. Dr. Pete will walk you through five big changes and five tactics for coping with those changes today.
Up and to the Right: Growing Traffic, Conversions & Revenue
So many of the case studies that document how a company has grown from 0 to X forget to mention that solutions that they found are applicable to their specific scenario and won't work for everyone. Instead of building up a list of other companies' tactics, marketers need to understand how to diagnose and solve problems across their entire funnel. Illustrated with real-world examples, I'll be talking you through the process that I take to come up with ideas that none of my competitors are thinking of.
A Site Migration: Redirects, Resources & Reflection
Site. Migration. No two words elicit more fear, joy, or excitement to a digital marketer. When the idea was shared three years ago, the company was excited. They dreamed of new features and efficiency. But as SEOs we knew better. We knew there would be midnight strategy sessions with IT. More UAT environments than we could track. Deadlines, requirements, and compromises forged through hallway chats. ... The result was a stable transition with minimal dips in traffic. What we didn't know, however, was the amount of cross-functional coordination that was required to pull it off. Learn more in this video!
Reverse-Engineer Google's Research to Serve Up the Best, Most Relevant Content for Your Audience
The SERP is the front-end to Google's multi-billion dollar consumer research machine. They know what searchers want. In this data-heavy talk, Rob will teach you how to uncover what Google already knows about what web searchers are looking for. Using this knowledge, you can deliver the right content to the right searchers at the right time, every time.
Data-Driven Design
Data-Driven Design (3D) is an actionable, evidence-based framework for creating websites and landing pages that will increase your leads, sales, and customers. In this session you’ll learn how to use the latest industry conversion data to inform copywriting and design decisions that impact conversions. Additionally, Oli Gardner will share a new methodology for prioritizing your marketing optimization that will show you which pages are awesome (leave them alone), which pages aren’t (massive ROI potential here), and help you develop a common language that your teams of marketers, designers, and copywriters can use to work better together to collectively increase your conversion rates.
How to Target Multiple Keywords with One Page - Next Level
In this edition of our educational Next Level series, you'll learn an easy workflow for researching and targeting multiple keywords on one page. Read on and level up!
XML Sitemaps: The Most Misunderstood Tool in the SEO's Toolbox
XML sitemaps are a powerful tool for SEOs, but are often misunderstood and misused. Michael Cottam explains how to leverage XML sitemaps to identify and resolve indexation problems.
A Guide to JSON-LD for Beginners
Structured data is a must-have for many sites, but it can be hard to get a handle on the technical considerations. Learn the important basics of JSON-LD and how to ramp up your education as you apply it.
What Is SEO?
What is SEO all about, and why do things like keywords, on-site optimization, and links matter when it comes to improving a site's search engine visibility and ranking? Learn the basics in this article.
Anchor Text
What is anchor text, how is it used, and how can it be optimized for SEO efforts? Learn more here.
Rethinking Information Architecture for SEO and Content Marketing
Information Architecture (IA) shapes the way we organize data, think about complex ideas, and build web sites. Joe will provide a new approach to IA for SEO and Content Marketing, based on actionable insights, that SEOs can extract from their own data sets.
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The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly email newsletter sharing the 10 most valuable articles about SEO and online marketing that we could find.
Practical A/B Test Statistics: How to Run Better Tests and Get Cleaner Data
"Everyone should A/B test." Sounds like great advice, but if you're not careful, A/B testing can do your online business more harm than good! In this webinar, we break down the myths and misunderstandings surrounding A/B testing, focusing on 5 specific things you need to do to prepare for any split test.
How many keywords per web page?
Can you optimize a web page for more than one keyword? If so, how? This Q&A post dives into recommendations from the SEO community.
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Get certified with SEO Essentials.
Whether you're building a robust SEO team or leveling up your own marketing skills, this Moz Academy SEO Essentials Certification covers everything you need to quickly ramp up on fundamental SEO topics and develop a competitive SEO strategy.
Should I Use Relative or Absolute URLs?
Should we use relative or absolute URLs on our sites? It's a simple question with a nuanced answer, and in today's Whiteboard Friday, Ruth Burr Reedy guides us through.
SEO Basics: The Fundamental Signals Used to Rank Our Content Higher
This webinar dives into the SEO ranking signals we pay attention to when optimizing a piece of content here at Moz. From the overlooked to the obvious, this webinar walks through how a few basic principals improve almost any piece of content and help boost SEO success.
8 Simple Steps Towards a Super Fast Website
In this webinar, we'll show you eight simple tricks to use to make a major speed difference for your page load times. The basics and tricks covered here require little or no coding experience.
Internal Linking: A Scientific, Scalable Approach
Everybody recommends internal linking, but there's been little proof of actual effects on rankings, traffic, and conversions. In this webinar, you'll learn how to identify large-scale internal linking opportunities, point more authoritative links to target pages, and identify top keywords.
Best Practices for Error Pages
Learn about the best practices for handling HTTP status code errors and error pages on websites in this Moz Academy video.
Website Architecture and Internal Links
In this Moz Academy video you'll learn about the role website architecture and internal links play in SEO.
On-Page Optimization for Content and UX
This video covers on-page optimization in the context of content and user experience - factors that are important both people visiting your site and how a search engines sees your pages.
How to Create 8 Million SEO Test Ideas Using ChatGPT — Whiteboard Friday
As SEOs, we tend to come from an audit mindset, to look for things that are wrong and to try and decide what is the best way of doing things. In today’s episode, Will tries to get you into a testing mindset, and helps you do so by generating test ideas through ChatGPT.
Helping Google Navigate Your Site More Efficiently — Whiteboard Friday
This week, Shawn talks you through the ways your site structure, your sitemaps, and Google Search Console work together to help Google crawl your site, and what you can do to approve Googlebot’s efficiency.
Daily SEO Fix: Investigating Keyword Cannibalization
In this Daily SEO Fix edition, we take you through what keyword cannibalization is, how to investigate it on your own website, and how to solve any potential issues your site may have.
Visual Search Optimization — Whiteboard Friday
In this week’s episode, MozCon 2022 speaker Crystal Carter talks you through the different optimizations that you can make for visual search, and the kinds of results that you might see for visual search content.
Page Optimization with Moz Pro
Take the guesswork out of your on-page content strategy with Moz Pro.
How We Increased Revenue with Speed Optimization [Local SEO Case Study]
There are some key scenarios when local SEOs should seriously consider speed optimization, even for a small local client. Small local clients are still impacted by the issues that come along with having a slower website such as higher bounce rates, lower conversions, and worst of all, a poor user experience. Amanda shares her experience with speed optimization, and the positive results for her client.
Humans vs. Robots: Picking the Best Audience for Your SEO Content
When writing for search engines, should you create content for the algorithm or for your human readers? The answer is both. Here’s how you can do it.
How to Know When You Need a Dedicated Paid Landing Page
Creating custom, campaign-specific landing pages is resource-intensive, and not every team has the necessary tools, expertise, or personnel to build the content. So, how do you know if you need a custom page, or if you can safely send paid traffic to an organic page and still achieve your KPIs? This three-step, data-driven evaluation helps answer this question.
Next Search Intent
Satisfying search intent is a critical component of our daily SEO work. But if you're not thinking ahead to what a searcher might look for after that initial query is answered, you could be missing out. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Ola tells you what "next search intent" is, why it's important, and how to optimize for it.
9 Ways to Design Inclusive Content
Inclusivity is about understanding diversity and ensuring everyone can be involved to the greatest extent possible. It's an important consideration for every business owner and content creator, and should be at the heart of your ongoing design efforts — not something you look at after a website or content goes live.
Advanced On-Page Optimization
Take your on-page optimizations to the next-level using advanced tactics for one of the most common SEO tasks. This presentation goes beyond simply adding keywords. Chris will show you how to utilize tools such as IBM's Natural Language Understanding to find semantic entities of competitor pages, how Google's EAT guidelines apply to content, and what actionable steps you can take to improve content, perform on-page content experiments, and measure the impact of those tests.
Case Study: The ROI of Re-optimizing Content (Plus Bonus How-To)
You know it’s important to keep your content up to date, but exactly how much does it matter? Lauren shows you the actual ROI she and her team at Brafton have seen from regularly re-optimizing blog posts over the last several years.
How to Prep Your SEO Strategy for a New Website
Your SEO strategy should be one of the primary considerations before you even start your website. Instead of fighting to make your website SEO-ready later on, start with this holistic SEO checklist for new websites and save yourself valuable time and resources
Commercial vs. Functional vs. Emotional: A Case Study on Page Title SEO Testing
In our fast-paced day-to-day lives, we can often underestimate the power of copy, even though it’s the only thing between our business and our customers. To that end, Marty used SEO Testing to trial different copy types in product page titles, and want shares the results of that test in this blog.
Search What You See: Visual Search Tactics, Tools, and Optimizations
Visual search has been at the forefront of Google’s search and product innovations in the last year. Join this talk for “search what you see” optimizations via Google Lens and more.
Shopify SEO: The Guide to Optimizing Shopify [Updated for 2023]
Shopify is an increasingly popular platform for e-commerce sites, but it's not fully SEO-friendly out of the box. What's the best way to optimize your Shopify experience for SEO?
Page Experience is Here to Stay: Moz Launches Performance Metrics Suite
Today, we’re announcing the full launch of Performance Metrics, including a host of new features and improvements based on the feedback we’ve received from early adopters, as well as our own experts and data.
How to Improve Organic Clickthrough for Your Content
SERPs are becoming more diverse and interactive, making any CTR study out there much less reliable, because no two sets of search results are ever the same. So, how much control do content creators have over how their work is represented in search? As it turns out, quite a bit!
22 Smart Google SEO Tips for 2022
We're back with a brand new season of Whiteboard Friday episodes for your viewing pleasure. First up: SEO expert Cyrus Shepard shares his top 22 tips for successful Google SEO in 2022. Watch to find out what to prioritize and what to look out for in the year ahead!
Best of Whiteboard Friday 2021: 21 Smart Google SEO Tips
Our top Whiteboard Friday episode of the year was originally published all the way back at the beginning of January! So much has happened in the marketing industry since then, but Cyrus’s 21 SEO tips for the year are still definitely smart.
How We Increased a Law Firm’s Leads by 174% With Content Optimization [Case Study]
In this case study, walk through the steps the Tao Digital team took to achieve increased leads, impressions, and clicks for their client. By making strategic content optimizations at the right time, you can do the same.
How to Use Keyword Clustering to Seamlessly Optimize Your SEO Content
Keyword clustering is the SEO tactic to use if you want to seamlessly optimize your SEO content and streamline your workflow at the same time. The best part? It’s fairly simple, and SERPs give you all the information you need to make an informed decision on exactly how to do it.
Performance as a Ranking Factor: The State of the Web and Core Web Vitals [Part 3]
Are Core Web Vitals correlated with rankings? If so, is that any more true than it was before the Page Experience Update? In the third and final post of this series, we’ll see what the data tells us about the relationship between CWV metrics and organic ranking performance.
The ROI of SEO
Search marketers can't get our important work implemented if we can't prove that it's worth the investment to our higher-ups. With that in mind, Moz’s own SEO Manager, Kavi Kardos, is going to give you the numbers and the talking points you need to justify the return on investment of your SEO work.
Tackling 8,000 Title Tag Rewrites: A Case Study
Let's take an in-depth look at Moz.com title tags that were re-written by Google, including three case studies where we managed to fix bad rewrites.
Magento SEO: The Guide to Optimizing Magento Websites
If you’re an SEO in the e-commerce space, it’s important to learn how to work with Magento. Today, Chris walks you through seven areas for SEO adjustments that are unique to the Magento platform.
How to Choose Pillar Page Topics
With the growth of conversational search intent, pillar page strategies have entered the scene to fulfill those queries. Like anything in the SEO space, pillar page strategies take time and a great deal of planning to do correctly. Let’s break down this process.
How to Carry Out Content Audits — Yes, Plural
A content audit done once to highlight current website issues will have a short shelf-life of usefulness. However, a content audit that is continuously updated offers multiple uses for analyzing and reporting on strategies. Here’s how to conduct that ongoing audit.
3 Powerful On-Page Optimizations to Power Up Your Content
It’s not easy to write content that ranks in Google and drives conversions, but if you follow a few simple steps, you’ll be well on your way to ranking, and to engaging customers on all types of devices.
Fulfill Untapped Customer Demands Through Your Faceted Navigation
By centering your secondary navigation on long-tail keyword opportunities, you’ll be able to strategically utilize consumer intent, secure additional web conversions, and boost revenue levels.
A Step-by-Step Strategy for B2B Pillar Pages
A great way for B2B companies to fill a top-of-funnel content gap is by creating pillar pages. To help get you started, guest host Carly Schoonhoven of Obility walks you through a simple strategy for implementing pillar pages on your website.
SEO and Accessibility: Content [Series Part 2]
As SEOs, our goal when we're creating content is to provide equitable access, which means that content isn’t just available to search engines, but also to people of all abilities. In the second installment of his three-part accessibility series, Cooper shows you how to ensure that your amazing content is accessible by bots AND people.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: What They Are and Why SEOs Should Care
In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and outline the steps you can take to meet its standards. We’ll also touch on the reasons why accessible websites typically rank higher in search engines — making accessibility the right choice all around!
How to Calibrate Your Brand Voice to Your SEO Advantage
One of the best ways to stand out from the herd of businesses in your niche is to develop a unique brand voice for your company – one that will appeal to customers and get noticed via SEO. This article will show you a few tricks to help develop a unique voice, structure your content, and turn Google’s algorithms to your advantage at the same time.
6 Steps to Executing an Efficient SEO Clean-Up Strategy
In this article, learn how to successfully execute an SEO clean-up strategy to ensure your site aligns with your business goals, keeps you in Google’s good books, and yields an excellent user experience for visitors and customers.
Announcing the New Technical SEO Certification Series: What It Is & How to Get Certified
The Moz Learning Team has put in many, many hours of work to develop a technically focused, in-depth training series that hones in on the nuts and bolts of technical SEO. We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the Technical SEO Certification Series through Moz Academy.
Local SEO for Nonprofit Organizations: 5 Tactics to Try Today
Through the “search and deliver” dynamic of SEO, nonprofit marketers have the opportunity to reach local audiences that indicate their interest and engagement through their search behaviors. Nonprofit marketers can leverage this to engage supporters, drive donations, and share their nonprofit’s mission with the world. Read on for local SEO tactics you can try today.
Page Optimization with Moz Academy
Learn how to identify what actions should be taken on your site to improve content performance and maximize your site's reach.
Core Web Vitals: The Next Official Google Ranking Factor - Whiteboard Friday
There's a new ranking factor in town: Core Web Vitals. Expected in 2021, this Google-announced algorithm change has a few details you should be aware of. Cyrus Shepard dives in this week on Whiteboard Friday.
New SEO Experiments: A/B Split Testing Google's UGC Attribute
We A/B tested adding rel="ugc" to our Moz Blog comment links using Distilled's optimization delivery network (ODN). Here's what we found — and what we're thinking about testing next.
The One-Hour Guide to SEO
Can you learn SEO in an hour? Surprisingly, the answer is yes, at least when it comes to the fundamentals! From SEO expert Rand Fishkin, we present you a six-part series of roughly ten-minute-long videos designed to deliver core SEO concepts.
Running Your Own SEO Tests: Why It Matters & How to Do It Right
Google's algorithms have undergone significant changes in recent years. Traditional ranking signals don't hold the same sway they used to, and they're being usurped by factors like UX and brand that are becoming more important than ever before. What's an SEO to do? The answer lies in testing. Sharing original data and results from clients, Rob Ousbey will highlight the necessity of testing, learning, and iterating your work, from traditional UX testing to weighing the impact of technical SEO changes, tweaking on-page elements, and changing up content on key pages. Actionable processes and real-world results abound in this thoughtful presentation on why you should be testing SEO changes, how and where to run them, and what kinds of tests you ought to consider for your circumstances.
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy Krum will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Image & Visual Search Optimization Opportunities
With voice, local, and rich results only rising in importance, how do image and visual search fit into the online shopping ecosystem? Using examples from Google Images, Google Lens, and Pinterest Lens, Joelle Irvine will show how image optimization can improve the overall customer experience and play a key role in discoverability, product evaluation, and purchase decisions for online shoppers. At the same time, accepting that image recognition technology is not yet perfect, she will also share actionable tactics to better optimize for visual search to help those shoppers find that perfect style they just can’t put into words.
Super-Practical Tips for Improving Your Site's E-A-T
Google has admitted that they measure the concept of "Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness" in their algorithms. If your site is categorized under YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), you absolutely must have good E-A-T in order to rank well. In this talk, you'll learn how Google measures E-A-T and what changes you can make both on site and off in order to outrank your competitors. Using real-life examples, Dr. Marie Haynes will answer what E-A-T is and how Google measures it, what changes you can make on your site to improve how E-A-T is displayed, and what you can do off-site to improve E-A-T.
Fixing the Indexability Challenge: A Data-Based Framework
How do you turn an unwieldy 2.5 million-URL website into a manageable and indexable site of just 20,000 pages? Areej AbuAli will share the methodology and takeaways used to restructure a job aggregator site which, like many large websites, had huge problems with indexability and the rules used to direct robot crawl. This talk will tackle tough crawling and indexing issues, diving into the case study with flow charts to explain the full approach and how to implement it.
Killer E-commerce CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
Flex those note-taking muscles, because you'll need them for this high-powered talk! Luke Carthy will share solid, profitable, and actionable tips on just how to identify juicy e-commerce revenue wins using the unlikely duo of an SEO crawler and custom extraction. You'll learn how to uncover impactful low-hanging fruit to both increase your conversions and improve your UX using the tool that's already in every SEO's arsenal. You'll also glean in-depth insight into some of the world's biggest names in e-commerce, sharing major missed CRO opportunities, costly oversights, and rookie mistakes hidden in plain sight.
Should SEOs Care About Internal Links?
Learn how to analyze, optimize, and structure your internal links (and put the kibosh on out-of-date tactics) in this Whiteboard Friday.
How to Rank in Google Image Search
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.
Pop-Ups, Overlays, Modals, Interstitials, and How They Interact with SEO
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.
Launching a New Website: Your SEO Checklist
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.
I've Optimized My Site, But I'm Still Not Ranking—Help!
When all your hard work seems to be going nowhere, there might be a reason. Jo Cameron walks you through a list of things to check and accomplish to make sure your site can start ranking ASAP.
How to Build a Killer Content → Keyword Map for SEO
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.
How to Choose a Domain Name
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.
How to Optimize for Competitors' Branded Keywords
It's probably crossed your mind before. Should you optimize for your competitors' branded keywords? How would you even go about it effectively? Well, in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains some carefully strategic and smart ways to optimize for the keywords of a competitor, from determining their worthiness to properly targeting your funnel to using third-party hosted content for maximum amplification.
Can SEOs Stop Worrying About Keywords and Just Focus on Topics?
Should you ditch keyword targeting entirely? There's been a lot of discussion around the idea of focusing on broad topics and concepts to satisfy searcher intent, but it's a big step to take and could potentially hurt your rankings. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses old-school keyword targeting and new-school concept targeting, outlining a plan of action you can follow to get the best of both worlds.
Controlling Search Engine Crawlers for Better Indexation and Rankings
Robots.txt, meta robots, and the nofollow tag are all ways to tell search engines how to crawl and index your site. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers four common use cases of these tools, offering guidance on when you should use one over another.
15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs
URL BEST PRACTICES - It's been a long time since we covered one of the most fundamental building blocks of SEO--the structure of domain names and URLs--and I think it's high time to revisit.
Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO
Subfolders or subdomains? 301 redirect or rel canonical? What about optimal link structures for SEO? Some of the basic questions are the ones that crop up the most frequently, and in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand tackles those three.
Targeting Multiple Keywords on a Single Page
Learn the in's and out's of using one webpage to simultaneously target multiple keywords.
A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO
As the "O" in SEO has broadened in scope, the most effective elements of on-page optimization have changed. While there is arguably no "perfectly optimized page," this update to a 2009 post provides a comprehensive guide to steer you in the right direction.
Here’s How to Generate and Insert Rel Canonical with Google Tag Manager
In this article, we’re going to learn how to create the rel canonical URL tag using Google Tag Manager, and how to insert it in every page of our website so that the correct canonical is automatically generated in each URL.
Optimizing for Accessibility: Alt Text, Videos, Images & More
Alt Text For Video Accessibility: Have you been following along as we explore SEO + Accessibility? In this post, we shares resources and advice on SEO and Accessibility overlaps when optimizing alt text for images, video, and non-text elements.
Optimizing for Accessibility + SEO: Formatting & Link Overlaps
Do you know the overlaps between SEO and accessibility? If you’re optimizing for search engines, you’re also affecting how people using assistive technologies experience your site. Let's examine the effects and best practices for keyword usage, text formatting, and links.
Optimizing for Accessibility + SEO: Site & Page Structure Overlaps
How well can ALL visitors navigate your site? In this first post of three, we'll try out simple screen readers & look at structural overlaps in SEO + accessibility like titles, headings, semantic markup, page structure & sitemaps.
What You Should Know About Accessibility + SEO, Part I: An Intro
If you optimize for SEO, does that mean you have accessibility covered? What about the other way around? This Part 1 of 2 post looks at high-level overlaps & recommends a11y blogs, resources, & fun tools to start you thinking about accessibility and SEO optimization.
The Top Myths about International SEO
In this webinar we'll discuss some of the persistent myths surrounding international SEO and cover how best to build and execute a solid international SEO strategy, including the importance of choosing the right site structure for your business, localization as it relates to ranking, which language tags you need to use.
Through The Looking Glass: Overcoming Organizational Perspectives
Traditionally, UX has viewed SEO as being disruptive to design and communication, and SEO believe UX overlooks searchability. In this webinar, we'll walk through how designers think and what they value, understanding contrasting and differing language and tools in SEO and UX communities, and how to better integrate and add value to design workflows as an SEO.
9 Things You Need to Know About Google's Mobile-Friendly Update
My colleague Emily Grossman and I wanted to cut through the noise and bring online marketers a clearer picture of what's in store later this month. In this post, you'll find our answers to nine key questions about the update.
Responsive, Dynamic Serving, and Mobile – Which Site is Right for Me?
From responsive, dynamic serving and mobile, there are many different types of sites to choose from. In this webinar we'll walk you through what a responsive site is and explain the pros and cons of programming your responsive site.
Rel=Confused? Answers to Your Rel=Canonical Questions
In light of Google's recent post on common rel=canonical mistakes, I explore the most commonly asked questions we get in Q&A regarding canonicalization.
12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time
When you look around at successful blogs -- whatever industry or topic -- there are several undeniable basics to success. And it starts with blog posts that kill it…rather than get killed. But what kills a blog post? Here’s a list of 12 things. Ignore them and you will have a tough time being successful.
Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World
In a land ravaged by pandas, one man will teach you everything you need to know about duplicate content. Learn how to spot duplicates in the wild and stop them in their tracks.
Improve Your SEO by Mastering These Core Principles
Discover how SEO tactics that win in the long run complement web-friendly business practices and core principles, and how to incorporate this approach into optimization strategies for changes in search results.
Win Through Optimization and Testing
Kyle shares his knowledge from the frontlines of the most intense web campaign to date: the 2012 US presidential election. His team won big for Obama with a data-driven approach. Kyle will explore tactics like how they increased donations by 49% and help you implement these wins for your site.
The Mobile Content Mandate
Do you think "no one will ever want to do that on mobile"? Chances are, someone already wants to. Karen will discuss why you need to deliver content wherever your customer wants to consume it - and the risks of ignoring mobile users. She'll also explain how to start your mobile content strategy, define what you want to publish, construct the relationship between your mobile and desktop site, and evolve your editorial workflow and content management tools.
Web Spam Research: Good Robots vs Bad Robots
Matt goes on a wild ride to find the interesting features necessary to algorithmically classify a site as spam or non-spam. Will the good robots finally win?
Design that Drives Action
Bryan's experience with dozens of the world's most transformative startups has given him unique insight into how users behave on the web and what drives lifecycles of customer success. In this talk, he'll dive deep into the psychology of web users and show powerful examples to help illustrate how marketers can think beyond a single landing page and earn powerful bumps in sales through conversion actions.
The Mobile SEO Stack: Tools to Develop a Mobile-First SEO Process
With mobile usage on the rise, it's more important than ever to optimize for on-the-go users. But which tools support mobile SEO? Aleyda's compiled 28 tools that will help you answer all your mobile SEO questions, plus a handy graphic to download for at-a-glance reference.
Not Your Dad's Keyword Tool: Advanced Keyword Research Use Cases
This isn't your dad's keyword tool. Learn about novel ways to take advantage of powerful keyword tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to do far more than find related keywords.
Which Page Markup + Tags Still Matter for SEO?
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.
Linking Internally and Externally from Your Site - Dangers, Opportunities, Risk and Reward
Navigating linking practices can be a treacherous process. Sometimes it feels like a penalty is lurking around every corner. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about the ins and outs of linking internally and externally, identifying pitfalls and opportunities both.
SEO Split-Testing: How to A/B Test Changes for Google
Google is increasingly relying on machine learning and artificial intelligence, making ranking factors harder to understand, less predictable, and less uniform across keywords. It's becoming such a complex system, that we often can't really know how a change will affect our own site until we roll it out. In this environment, we'll need to use split-testing more and more.
How will changing my title, meta tags, and URL impact rankings?
Will changing page title tags and other metadata have a negative impact on search ranking and visibility? Learn more in this Q&A post.
How Much Keyword Repetition is Optimal
If you're targeting a certain keyword, knowing where and how often to use that keyword in the various elements of your page is essential. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand offers his recommendation.
Is syndicated (duplicate) content considered fresh content?
Is syndicated duplicate content (i.e., identical content that's been published across multiple distinct domains) considered fresh content on an individual domain? This Q&A post explores hypotheses and SEO implications.
Onsite SEO in 2015: An Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Marketer
SEO has come full circle as on-page SEO has returned to the forefront. Rand will share how and why on-site SEO is so important and show off uncommon tactics with powerful potential.
Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?
Opting for a rebrand/redirect or consolidation is a difficult decision to make. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand offers some guidance for those marketers who are wondering if it's the right path.
How Google Pulls Structured Snippets from Websites' Tables
There are many pages on the Web that are filled with data in the form of tables, and Google is including some of that tablular data in search results in places that may surprise you. Here's how it works, and how you can take advantage.
Getting Local Keyword Research and On-page Optimization Right
Local keyword data is often difficult to find, analyze, and prioritize. Get tips, tools, and processes for zeroing in on the best terms to target when optimizing your website and directory listings, and learn how and why to structure your website around them.
Illustrated Guide to Advanced On-Page Topic Targeting for SEO
The concepts of advanced on-page SEO are dizzying: LDA, co-occurrence, and entity salience. The question is "How can I easily incorporate these techniques into my content for higher rankings?" The truth is, you can create optimized pages that rank well without understanding complex algorithms.
Why is my redirected page not appearing in Google?
Every time this website owner 301-redirects their site to a new location, traffic disappears almost completely. This Q&A post troubleshoots the cause of these traffic drops and looks at a few potential solutions.
More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
As marketers, helping search engines understand what our content means is one of our most important tasks. Search engines can’t read pages like humans can, so we incorporate structure and clues as to what our content means. This post explores a series of on-page techniques that not only build upon one another, but can be combined in sophisticated ways.
The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links
For those of us who are trying to earn links for our clients, receiving a nofollow link can feel like a slap in the face. But these links have hidden powers that make them just as important as followed ones. Here's why nofollow links are more powerful than you might think.
How do I noindex duplicate (non-unique) content?
How does "noindexing" a page impact how duplicate content is crawled? This Q&A post explores hypotheses and a few other solutions to preventing content from appearing in Google's search index.
The Most Entertaining Guide to Landing Page Optimization You'll Ever Read
If you've ever been bored while reading a blog post, your life just got better. If you've ever wanted to learn about conversion rate optimization, and how to design high-converting landing pages, without falling asleep, you're in the right place. Buckle up, and prepare to be entertained in your learning regions.
12 Ways to Increase Traffic From Google Without Building Links
The job of the Technical SEO becomes more complex each year, but we also have more opportunities now than ever. Here are 12 ways you can improve your rankings without relying on link building.
How to implement pagination and other search parameters
Using pagination in conjunction with other URL parameters can be confusing. Check out this Q&A post for a discussion of how to best implement both.
How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects
Have you ever redirected a page hoping to see a boost in rankings, but nothing happened? Or worse, traffic actually went down? When done right, 301 redirects have awesome power to clean up messy architecture, solve outdated content problems, and improve user experience — all while preserving link equity and your ranking power. When done wrong, the results are often disastrous.
Why are my pages cached but not indexed by Google?
Why might Google not be caching pages that they've previously indexed? Explore a few potential reasons in this post from the Moz Community Q&A.
DA/PA fluctuations: how to Interpret, apply, and understand these ML-based scores
Seeing fluctuations in Domain Authority (DA) or Page Authority (PA) scores? This Q&A post from Rand explores how and why these numbers change when a new index is released and what these fluctuations mean for your site.
Blocking blog links from being crawled
Should website owners block blog category and author links from being crawled? Why or why not? Learn more in this Q&A post.
How to block "print" pages from indexing
This Q&A post explores techniques for preventing "print" pages from being indexed by search engines.
Why did a redesign affect my site performance?
Seeing a stark decrease in rankings after a website redesign? This Q&A post explores a few potential reasons why.
Does increasing word count help content rank better?
Does increasing word count automatically help content rank better? Learn what the SEO community thinks in this Q&A post.
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
How does using the canonical tag impact indexation and search visibility? This Q&A post explores how search engines interpret the use of this tag on a webpage.
How does a search engine bot navigate past a .PDF link?
Can search engines crawl PDFs? How can website owners get the most SEO value out of linked-to .PDF files? This Q&A post looks at a few hypotheses and solutions.