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12/4/2013 600,000 unique visitors flooded in to read the post and half of them were not happy with me. This post outlines the 11 most important marketing lessons I learned from accidentally enraging a good portion of the island of Singapore.
3/17/2011 Prepare to stay out late, polish your dancing shoes and crank up the music. Today, I am very excited to announce that after almost two years, my book explaining everything I know about SEO is finally publicly available! And the crowd goes wild! ...
1/3/2011 Today is my last day at SEOmoz. I have been here for about three and half years and it really has been one the most important experiences of my life. I met fascinating people, traveled the world, ...
12/9/2010 Last week Rand Fishkin covered the new ways social media is impacting traditional SEO. While many SEOs had assumed this was happening already, this announcement marked the first time this new type of content endorsement (links within Facebook and Twitter) was actually confirmed as a ranking factor ...
11/4/2010 As people in relationships spend time with each other they start to leverage each others natural strengths to efficiently store information about the world around them. "Honey, what is the name of my Aunt's employer?" "Babe, what do you call that thing that heats bread?" They rely on each other to store information that is mutually beneficial. Some believe this p...
9/10/2010 In this week's Whiteboard Friday Rand Fishkin and Ben Hendrickson discuss LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There has been a lot of discussion about the relationship between these two topics lately and this video answers many of the questions people in the community have been asking. It is comprehensive (25 minutes) and uses many easy to understand di...
8/27/2010 In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin explains how to turn boring product pages into conversion-worthy product selling machines. These tips are topical (with the holiday season coming up), useful and in most cases, reletively easy to implement. ...
8/20/2010 In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Danny Dover tries to answer some of the hard questions in SEO. "If you are such a good SEO, why don't you rank number one for the keyword, SEO?" "How can you provide advice on SEO if you don't work for a search engine?" The answers to these two and some more doozies are below. ...
8/13/2010 In this week's Whiteboard Friday I talk about pitching SEO to potential clients and employers. This post describes the common elements that unite the successful pitches I have witnessed and describes how you can use them to your advantage. Also, I shaved my beard and now look like a 12-year-old boy. (I don't recommend that as a pitch tactic.) ...
8/6/2010 This week on Whiteboard Friday we pull a secret out of the SEO secrets vault. This handy strategy helps you take advantage of the specific types of results that Google chooses for people and company based searches and helps you dominate your brand search engine result page. ...
7/30/2010 This week on Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin describes the methods he recommends for outsourcing content creation. Content is extremely important for SEO and users alike so these best practices are important for those of us without the luxury of an in-house staff of copywriters. VIDEO ...
7/27/2010 Use Google Chrome? Download the SEO Toolbar Extension from SEOmoz for Chrome! Get quick access to a SERP overlay, many On-Page SEO factors, plus Domain & Page Authority.
7/16/2010 This week's Whiteboard Friday features the return of Rand (woo hoo!) and his self declared biggest SEO mistakes. We screw up a lot here at SEOmoz (hell, they hired me), so we feel it is only appropriate to take this opportunity to share what we have learned in an effort to prevent you from making our mistakes. SEO is complicated, the best we can do is practice, work hard and compare notes.
7/9/2010 Want happier website visitors and higher rankings? This week's Whiteboard Friday is about how and why to speed up your website. It is more technical than previous videos so I tried to spice it up with an ode to one of my favorite canceled TV Shows, Pop-up Video. Can't stand the content? At least the added comment...
7/2/2010 This weeks Whiteboard Friday is a little bit different than normal but a lot more awesome. I took the lead this week and am sharing 5 tips that beginners can use to get links from bloggers. This educational video is full to the brim with helpful tips, odd tangents and one very poor impression of a news anchor. ...
6/22/2010 Today, I am proud to announce the new and improved Beginner's Guide to SEO. This free tutorial covers everything you need to know to get started improving your search engine rankings in the major search engines. Put simply, this is the resource I would have kicked a fool in order to get my hands on when I was f...
5/26/2010 As recently as a month ago I was a victim of a state of mind I call Analytics Dismissal Disorder. This mindset is common after hearing about the importance of analytics, installing the tracking code and then getting overwhelmed by all of the graphs and scary numbers. When I suffered from analytics dismissal disorder (which my doctors called A.D.D. for short), I knew Google Analytics wa...
4/1/2010 At SEOmoz, we have always striven to be at the forefront of understanding digital search. As web search has become an increasingly solved problem, some of our researchers have begun to switch their focus from Google to Facebook. Facebook is unique in that it is able to data mine social patterns between real life friends. This is increasingly critical data because as our lives become more busy, ...
3/4/2010 Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer. Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting, we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO so...
2/18/2010 This post is part of an ongoing series where my co-workers and I are working to build a freely available resource center of up-to-date SEO best practices. As we write this content, we are submitting them for peer review so that everyone on the Internet can benefit from collective intelligence. You can read more about the ...
2/11/2010 The basics of SEO problem identification can be done in about 15 minutes. When completing this audit I recommend you take notes based on the action items listed in each section. This will help you later when you do a deeper dive of the website.
1/12/2010 A couple of weeks ago I published a post titled "Tests Show PageRank Sculpting with Nofollow Still Works" where I argued that a test that I had run showed that nofollow was a legitimate means for sculpting PageRank. When I originally wrote and posted the blog entry, I full-heart...
12/28/2009 As SEOmoz has matured as a company, our SEO team has shifted away from treating SEO purely as an art and more toward treating it as a science. There is certainly the necessity for both perspectives but I beleive we are now much more centered. As a result of this shift, we have been running more tests and analyzing more data. Before I get into the topic of our latest test resul...
11/4/2009 He wakes up at 7:31 AM just like the day before. With ignorance as his shield, he ventures out into a world without privacy. The young man (a title given to him by his mother) sits submissively in his bed and idly scans e-mail on his phone. Another notice from his bank, a forwarded e-mail from his friend, 5 new e-mails from his co-workers, and an intimate message from a girl he met ...
9/15/2009 This is the second post in a series of SEO Guides aimed at answering frequently asked SEO questions. (The first one was Properly move domains ) If you have an idea for another guide, please let me know if the comments below. Background: This is one element of a problem called internationalization. The internet evolved (or was intelligently designed for those no...
8/19/2009 It is a typical Tuesday afternoon in suburbia California. Jenny, a sixteen year old girl is taking a sick day from school. With a runny nose, she sits idly on her bed surfing Facebook. At the same time, 2,000 miles away in Seattle, a twenty-two year old ambitious college drop-out named Kevin is on Twitter complaining about his sore throat. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a 40 year...
8/7/2009 Moving domains makes a tremendous impact on search engine rankings and usually leads to a temporary loss in traffic. But Why? This is because the major search engines use metrics on both the domain level and the page level to determine rankings. When a webmaster decides to switch to a brand new domain, they are resetting their domain metrics to zero whether they know it or not. Luckily, there are steps one can take to minimize the affects of this.
8/4/2009 Disclaimer: This post doesn’t include SEO advice or tactics. Instead it is a request for input on a book I am writing. If you are looking for actionable SEO content, please skip this post and read the other search related posts on our blog. About three months ago, I was fortunate enough to be contacted by Wiley Publishing and asked to write a book a...
7/13/2009 Personal branding is the art of showcasing your experiences, accomplishments and perspectives. Like many of you, I knew the importance of this but had always put building a personal branding website on the back burner because I didn't think it was very important and because I felt uncomfortable talking about my accomplishments in such an obvious and self-serving fashion. Recently, my view co...
6/26/2009 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 ...
6/10/2009 Learning SEO can be a daunting experience. To make this process a little easier, I have broken down my method for learning SEO into bite-sized chunks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less. I have also tried to create a mechanism to make it easier to get help and expand personal networks.
5/21/2009 I can always pick out a fool when I hear someone claim they fully get the internet, whether it be a social media snake-oil salesman or a Twitter user with too many followers. The fact of the matter is that while it’s possible (and exciting) to understand one sub-sphere of the internet, there are simply too many spheres for one person to really understand all of them. I simply don’t think it is possible.
4/1/2009 Once every 100 years, a technology is developed that changes the way that people view their world. Today, I am fortunate enough to be able to introduce one such technology. Internet, please make way for Webfluence, the world's first and only search engine by SEOs for SEOs. ...
3/3/2009 Starting a company is a lot like streaking. Coming up with the idea and brainstorming the execution is exciting but performing the action is difficult and rarely done well. I, like a lot of people, have had my mind hijacked by a new business idea that fools me into believing I came up with the next big thing. Unfortunately, most of these plans ended in complete failure. As soon as I started to make progress I would inevitably run into an unforeseen problem that would, like a bad streaking plan, leave me embarrassed and out of breath.
2/19/2009 This post is a little different than what you might be used to. Instead of talking at you, I would like to talk with you. I would like to propose a blogging outline, not actually blog on the given subject (yet!). First, allow me to explain myself. I have been under-utilizing my blogging privileges the last three months and I would like to try to make this up to you. I have made the ...
1/13/2009 To encourage webmasters to create sites and content in accessible ways, each of the major search engines have built support and guidance-focused services. Each provides varying levels of value to search marketers, but all of them are worthy of understanding. These tools provide data points and opportunities for exchanging information with the engines that are not provided anywhere else.
12/10/2008 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. ...
12/8/2008 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.
10/16/2008 This month marks the end of my first year at SEOmoz. I have spent literally hundreds of hours learning and trying to perfect my SEO and marketing skills. Although, I still have a ways to go to catch up with my expert co-workers, I have made a lot of progress. I credit this to the people I have relied on and the many tools that have helped me along the way. The following is a c...
9/24/2008 Disclaimer: This post doesn’t include any information about SEO. If you are looking for SEO related content, please read the normal search related posts on this blog. UPDATE: I clarified below that it is the winners of the 4 rounds that won, not just people who chose the winning weapon.
8/19/2008 Everyday a fiercely competitive battle takes place online over capturing the attention of millions of readers. As a result the blogosphere constantly changes shape and different players thrust forward as content kings for the day. Lately I have been trying to find out what forces control this volatile scene. I have been looking for recurring themes and hoping to find useful correlations. ...
8/15/2008 Disclaimer: This post doesn’t include any information about SEO. If you are looking for SEO related content, please read the normal search related posts on this blog. The SEOmoz community has always been a fundamental driving force behind this company. All of you provide the motivation to keep us working and the guidance to keep us on the right track. When asked why I like my ...
8/1/2008 The Foolproof Method for Great Blogging Don’t become an expert by acting like one - This might sound counter-intuitive, but it really does make sense. Many inexperienced bloggers try to make their work sound important and reputable even when it is not. This is an easy mistake to make because emulating the industry leaders is a logical path to success. Don’t be fooled. Real success comes from distinguishing oneself in a useful way, not by pretending to be something one is not.
7/3/2008 It is greatly ironic that algorithms, the quintessential example of all that is not human, would be so fundamental to social media. Last week I wrote a post about how Google gathers user data. This week I continue by exposing how popular social media websites use algorithms to ut...
6/25/2008 Google Inc. is first and foremost a data company. In the past, it competed on a level playing field by manipulating publicly available data better than its competition. By doing this, it had unprecedented success. Enter Web 2.0. Hard drives, processors, bandwidth and even workers are now all relatively inexpensive. This has caused the barriers to entry in the search field to drastic...
6/10/2008 J. K. Rowling (She wrote a little book called Harry Potter) recently gave the commencement speech at Harvard University. She spoke about the power of failure and the incredible potential of imagination. It was a great speech that left me with one powerful lasting gem. She pointed out that humans are unique in their ability t...
6/3/2008 Creating viral content for social media is always a gamble. Seemingly great pieces can unexpectedly flop while poorly written blog posts and strange images can go viral without any effort from the creator. In most ways, the success of viral marketing is out of the hands of the marketers. Yet, smart marketers, just like smart gamblers, know there are certain things they can do to help their chances...
5/22/2008 You would think that if someone didn’t know what they were searching for, they would stop looking. Yet everyday, I talk to people who aimlessly spend their time and energy looking for some far away holy grail. As a SEO my quest for success is a little better defined. I want to work on websites that drive immense traffic, be at the top of competitive SERPs and most of all, I wa...
5/13/2008 About two weeks ago Rand and Scott posted a Whiteboard Friday explaining how to get a SEO job. I think it is a great resource for SEO’s who already have a lot of experience, but what about those who don’t? How are the inexperienced supposed to get their first job at an internet technology company? The foll...
4/23/2008 For the last three months I have been hard at work learning SEO by optimizing a local small business website. The business is called Giggly Wiggly Preschool and is located in the Seattle suburb Issaquah, Washington. This Issaquah Preschool was the preschool I attended many years ago so I am happy I was given the chance to give bac...
4/21/2008 Lately I have been reading about online behavioral analysis and have started to realize its potential for advertising. To better understand its power try this simple exercise. Open a new window, go to Google and search “malpractice”. Then right away search “lawyer”. Look at the ads on the right. You li...
4/16/2008 If you are involved with internet marketing for more than five minutes you will inevitably hear someone preach about the power of Digg. It is funny how hard people work for their 15 minutes of fame. Yes, if you make it on the homepage your website will receive hundreds of thousands of views in a single day. Yes the links it provides will help your search rankings. And yes the ...
4/14/2008 I really like YouTube. It is brilliantly easy to use, almost universally accessible and unparalleled in its ability to popularize creative and funny people. YouTube is single handedly responsible for causing an irreversible drop in world productivity while simultaneously bringing countless amounts of joy to average people. It...
3/29/2008 Yesterday, I was arguing with my friend about the existence of one sight or sound that is universally funny. He argued that since different cultures find humor in different things, there couldn't possibly be one example of something that is funny to everyone. Unconvinced, I started searching for the holy grail of funny. Immediately, I went on YouTube and starting browsing my favorite videos. Event...
3/9/2008 On March 04, 2008, the internet community saw the culmination of the world's most successful video marketing campaign. With 80 million views in 2 months, Clarus Bartel's homemade music video dethroned the Evolution of Dance as the most viewed video of al...
2/29/2008 Two days ago our office updated our phone system to a more professional business setup. The new system brought additional phone extensions and 23 new phone numbers. While it was a bit of a headache having our phones and internet down while the phone company upgraded our account, it was nothing compared to our new problem. When our awesome receptionist ...
2/27/2008 I like to think that I was born just in time to live through the first truly global revolution. I am a 20 year old student who has watched computers and the internet transform the world. Unlike my predecessors, I rarely watch live TV, never listen to the radio and haven't bought a CD in nearly a decade (last one was Offspring's ...
1/31/2008 Note: The following post is based on conversations I have had with top Microsoft employees and college graduates being recruited by Facebook. The conclusions I have come up with are based on the information they gave me along with many hours of independent research. Although the following is speculative in nature, it is based on fact. ...
1/7/2008 For those of you who don't know me yet, my name is Danny and I am SEOmoz's intern. I have spent the last several weeks reading and categorizing all the blog posts written over the years on this site. It has been quite the project and has let me really experience how this company and the SEO industry as a whole have evolved. I, like the other mozzers, am a stat junkie and kept notes on notable tren...