One decision that you'll have to live with for quite a long time is the domain name you choose for your site. You may have a list of options that you know are available, but what should you keep in mind when you sit down to make the decision? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers eight criteria for picking a winner. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Welcome to Rand's rules (for choosing an effective domain name) Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome Continue Reading ...

Feel like you're already over the term "storytelling" without ever really having understood how you can successfully apply it to your writing? You aren't alone. Like so much jargon, this amazingly powerful and useful word is in serious danger of being consigned to LinkedIn profiles and marketing parody. Even storytelling guru Annette Simmons is over the way we're teaching storytelling as a content cure-all. "We need to stop 'telling stories' that oxytocin or the magic of a 'narrative arc' Continue Reading ...

The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Image courtesy of Mike Behnken on Flickr. The civics of local: Caring about your community From Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to Central Park in New York City, with all of the town greens, plazas, fountains, schools, and libraries in between, America’s lasting community resources stand as a testament to our civic-minded past. Town fathers, city boards, and citizens of former times dedicated themselves to enriching local life by creating public Continue Reading ...

Structured data has never been more important than it is today. We’ll talk about why briefly below, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about giving you a new tool to add to your semantic SEO tool belt. My goal is to empower you implement semantic markup and structured data with greater ease and enable you to architect a more robust and complete web of linked data on your website (and beyond). Structured data is more important than ever I don’t think that’s an Continue Reading ...

Working in SEO, I always find myself poring over data and looking for ways to expedite the analysis process. Analyzing data can often be tedious, mind-numbing, and boring work, so anything that can be done to speed up finding that needle in the haystack is almost always a good idea. A few months ago, I began using a formula in Excel to categorize data and I'm constantly finding new ways to use it. It took a little bit of time and practice to remember the formula, to understand how it works and Continue Reading ...

[Estimated read time: 6 minutes] It's been almost two years (August 2014) since Google announced that HTTPS was a ranking signal. Speculation ran rampant, as usual, with some suggesting there was little or no benefit to switching (and possibly significant risk) while others rushed to sell customers on making the HTTPS switch. Two years later, I believe the data speaks for itself — Google is fighting, and winning, a long war. What's happened since? If you only consider the impact of Google's Continue Reading ...

Darren Shaw of Whitespark speaking at Mozcon Local The gentleman sitting across the table from me at a crowded lunch spot has what he sees as a workable business idea for a local business, a sound plan to get it off the ground, enough funds to weather the ups and downs of the current business climate in his area, and the determination to stick around long enough to be successful. However, what he doesn't have are the answers to three questions pertaining to content marketing for his small Continue Reading ...

We don't live in a world where we have the luxury of thinking about just user experience or just SEO. The two share many of the same spaces online, working in tandem and sometimes even clashing. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details the considerations and compromises that must be made for UX & SEO to coexist in harmony. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Continue Reading ...

Last year, we hosted the first MozCon Ignite, and it was a blast. We had so much fun listening to 5-minute stories on everything, from how to cook a hot dog to running a coffee charity from your kitchen, that we're bringing the event back for a second year. We can't wait to hear your story. MozCon Ignite takes place Tuesday, September 13, during MozCon as one of our evening networking events. In order to attend, you gotta: Buy your MozCon 2016 ticket! Wait, what is an Ignite-style Continue Reading ...

It was my first day at my new gig as a federal government IT consultant in Washington, D.C. I was slogging through the typical onboarding paperwork when a senior partner dropped by, introduced himself, and handed me a paperback book. “Read and implement this,” he said. The cover read The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, a book with a sole focus on “the ability to earn the trust and confidence of clients.” “Client management must be important,” I thought. This encounter occurred Continue Reading ...