The Moz Blog

Adding Link Bait to Services

SEOmoz has been very busy with requests for business lately, and I'm finding a lot of companies I'd actually love to work with. Thus, it's been neccessary to use both pricing and my own estimation of the achievability of projects and the good-naturedness of the client to help sort who to take on and who to refer. I've also started adding (as a component of the contracts) the development...

Sandbox vs. Poor SEO for Google

I figured it's time to clear the air about identifying the Google "sandbox" penalty and comparing/contrasting it to other effects that can "appear" sandboxy. Here are the steps to take to determine if you're in Google's sandbox: Do a site: command at Google (example)If all of yo...

Vanity Rankings

I spoke to a potential client today about some desired rankings. The client was interested in ranking well for some moderate and a few heavily competitive phrases in a generally tough industry. Their end goal, however, was not to rank in order to convert visitors into sales or even leads, but rather, simply to impress and show off. Their products and services (and website) were not such that th...

Good Points in Designers vs. SEOs Thread

Good thread today at SEW on the subject of the Flash-designer portfolio set of web developers and their feelings on SEO. Glengara starts things off: I started a thread on whether all-Flash sites should be used in the commercial web, (my premise being that using Fla...

Sandbox Dodging Recommendations at SERoundtable

Barry, Donna, PK, Ben & Myself (the moderators from the new SERoundtable forums) are covering sandbox escape strategies in our first ever "Ask the Moderators" series for the forum. Some good responses and good information in the thread. As Barry noted to me, with mod-only threads, the signal-to-noise ratio is much higher than...

Mike Grehan on Those in the Sandbox

NOTE: This post has been edited. It was originally written in haste and without foresight. My apologies to Mike, who has earned better than to be criticized publicly in such manner. Mike Grehan, who stands without doubt among the people I admire most in the industry, has a ...

Speculation on How Search Engines Apply Temporal Data

In my opinion, temporal based data is one of the most valuable kinds of information that feeds into a modern search engine's algorithm. With it, search engines know when terms are getting more popular, when new terms are being used by searchers a...

Google experiments mixing country specific and global results together

A recent topic in SC brought up an interesting update with Google: they are adding country specific results to global resul...

Ferry Halim's Orisinal

No relation to SEO whatsoever, but Ferry Halim, a graphic and Flash game designer whose work astounds me has put together what is, in my opinion, his most addictive game yet. If you've never been to Orisinal, get ready to spend the rest of the ...

Craigslist Blocks Search Engines

According to a thread at SERoundtable, a few million results in Google (and other search engines) from Craigslist have dropped out due to a change in the robots.txt. The change must be very recent, as I had used Google to search CL just a week before the holidays. It's an interesting strategy from the classifieds giant - If anyon...

Mick's Selling Syndik8

The infamous Black Hat SEO forums are for sale - Mick's done a good job building up the community there. Let's hope it stays in good hands. It sounds like offers should be $10K+, so make sure you're serious if you want to bid. The traffic and revenue details are also listed - I'd imagine it carries a valuable advertising spac...

Ordered My New Laptop Today

I ordered my brand new Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop today. I was swayed mostly by the widescreen SUXGA monitor, which allows for a resolution of 1920 x 1200, ...