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How to Grow Your SEO Firm
Will Critchlow

How to Grow Your SEO Firm

Marketing Industry

Another business-focussed post from me today (with a little SEO at the end). I was answering a Q&A the other day in a kind of tag-team formation with Rand when I realised that some of my thinking would make a good blog post. The question was about how to grow a new agency and asked whether we thought that contacting site owners and pointing out flaws / suggesting improvements was a good way to win new business. Rand and I sung with one voice to say (paraphrased) that we weren't big fans of the cold approach and that networking (both online and offline) was one of the keys to success. I wanted to elaborate on that a little bit.

Roundup Thursday for the Week of 8/3/08
Rebecca Kelley

Roundup Thursday for the Week of 8/3/08

SEO Events

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: Three star links: * Gmail got 302 hijacked. Oh, the humanity! * Lisa Ditlefsen nerds it up by introducing SEO Wars. Rand is "Rand Link Walker." Need I say more? * Live Search Webmaster Center has been updated to offer crawl issue reports, backlinks data, and download functionality. Hooray for new features! * Searchlight Digital disputes a recent YOUmoz entry that displayed SERP clickthrough rates (the post is linked to in the YOUmoz roundup below) and releases their own ultimate guide to SERP clickthrough rates. * Want to know how magicians can control your mind?

All That Is Wrong With SEO in the UK
M

All That Is Wrong With SEO in the UK

Blogging

Have you used a search engine recently and been disappointed with the results it returned? If so it is unlikely you are alone. Here’s why. In order to survive in the online world, websites need traffic. Visitors are an essential commodity. They generate the page impressions and revenues that any website needs to grow and thrive. Without a consta...

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The It Getters
Rand Fishkin

The It Getters

Moz News

Some people just "get" the web. I don't know how to explain this phenomenon effectively or convey a reasonable set of criteria upon which a person could be judged, but there's no doubt about it. I think back to the first time I heard Greg Boser or Jessie Stricchiola speak at a conference, the first few blog posts I read at MindValleyLabs, the first time I sat down with my friend ...

The Looming Battle for .search
S

The Looming Battle for .search

Technical SEO

After I wrote the first draft of this post I was reluctant to submit it. I was saying to myself "This is overstating the importance of domains. Google doesnt really care about this stuff."A day later in the news. "Google offers 6 figures for knol.com"Google cares about names. As does Apple. As does any company that knows the web. So let's talk about the looming battle fo...

The Most Valuable Lesson I Learned When Pursuing a Finance Major
Rand Fishkin

The Most Valuable Lesson I Learned When Pursuing a Finance Major

Marketing Industry

Not many people know that I actually attended the University of Washington in Seattle and worked, briefly, towards a degree in finance, thinking that I might join the ranks of Wall Street. It was a long time ago (in web years), and I dropped out of the program two classes away from graduation to pursue the company that would become SEOmoz full time (in 2001). Before I did, though, I met a ...

Hacked: How Safe Is Your Business?
Paul Lalley

Hacked: How Safe Is Your Business?

Moz News

I was hacked! I feel so…so violated. And stupid. All of my business contacts, work in progress and other critical information were in the hands of some hacker, cracker or script-kiddie. And how did I find out? My credit card company called to ask if I’d bought a bicycle in Taiwan. Or clothes in Paris. Not only was I hacked, the black hat got m...

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Nailing the Coffin Shut on the "Don't Link to External Sites" Philosophy
Rand Fishkin

Nailing the Coffin Shut on the "Don't Link to External Sites" Philosophy

Link Building

Rare is the month that goes by when the spectre of the none-too-solid argument for hoarding link PageRank and link juice doesn't rear its ugly head. And since I've just spent the last 5 hours on Q+A duty (as our beloved Q+A manager Jane is on vacation), and in need of a short punchy post, I'll make this brief. Arguments for never linking out to other sites: If th...

Manage Risk By Including an Indemnification Clause in Your SEO Consulting Contracts
Sarah Bird

Manage Risk By Including an Indemnification Clause in Your SEO Consulting Contracts

E-Commerce SEO

May It Please the Mozzers, Continuing my mini-series on SEO contract clauses, today's Legal Monday focuses on indemnification clauses. These kinds of provisions are standard in many consulting contracts. They can be extremely valuable or extremely dangerous in your contract. Therefore it is very important to understand and use them intelligently. Inde...

Headsmacking Tip #4: Use Keyword Variations with Matching Intent Together
Rand Fishkin

Headsmacking Tip #4: Use Keyword Variations with Matching Intent Together

On-page SEO

For this week's tip, I thought we'd quickly run through an issue that, early in my SEO career, frequently confused me (and seems to trip up lots of sites today, too). The concept is simple - given a page that's ranking well for Keyword "A" some folks make the mistake of targeting close variations of "A" on separate pages without good justification. Here's a quick exa...