The Moz Blog

Use the Blank Sheet of Paper Test to Optimize for Natural Language Processing

The Blank Sheet of Paper Test determines if what you’ve written has meaning to someone who has never encountered your brand or content before. But what if we’re performing the BSoPT on a machine instead of a person? Does our thought experiment still apply?

How to Stay Creative With an SEO-Driven Content Strategy

There are ways to remain creative even within a grander, primarily SEO-driven strategy. Here, let's dive into six tips to ensure you don't have to sacrifice your own creative freedom for the sake of organic growth.

A Must-Have Keyword Research Process for Winning SEO

Smart keyword research forms the basis of all successful SEO. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus Shepard shares the basics of a winning keyword research process that you can learn and master in a short amount of time. Plus, sign up for his free webinar on May 21, 'Build a Winning Keyword Strategy: Start-to-Finish'!

Diagnosing Traffic Drops During a Crisis: Was It You, Google, or the Whole World?

Losing traffic is hard enough, but how do you know if it's just you, or if the whole world has gone wrong? Here's how to separate your site from broader changes in Google or the rest of the world.

How We Ranked a Single Page for 2.6K Keywords Driving 30K Monthly Searches [Case Study]

By leveraging data-centered campaigns, paired with personalized outreach to top publishers, we regularly garner earned media placements for our clients. In rare cases, we create content that generates results so far beyond what was anticipated that a single project can greatly move the needle. I’m going to walk through one such instance to reveal how it all works together, what can be learned from this experience, and the type of result it can achieve.

Building Better Customer Experiences - Best of Whiteboard Friday

Your customer's experience after becoming a lead is important for their loyalty and retention. In this classic Whiteboard Friday, Dana DiTomaso shares 3 big things you can start doing today that will immensely improve your customer experience.

Content Authority: Potential Measures of Authoritative Content

If Google were to use a measure of content authority, what might go into it? In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Russ Jones walks us through what exactly might constitute a "content authority" score and how SEOs can measure their efforts.

Announcing: The Keyword Research Master Guide

Why a new guide? Often in SEO, we get so preoccupied with technical SEO (pagination, site speed, the latest Python course, etc.) that we forget the basis of winning SEO begins and ends with keywords. Not choosing keywords before you start with SEO means shooting in the dark — a likely losing gamble if your content will succeed or not.Choosing the wrong keywor...

How Google SERP Layouts Affect Searching Behavior

There are several studies (and lots of data) out there about how people use Google SERPs, what they ignore, and what they focus on. Two things I have never seen tested are the actual user reactions to and behavior with SERPs. My team and I set out to test these ourselves, and this is where biometric technology comes into play.

Why Site Speed Still Matters (Revisited)

Portent's latest site speed study refresh looked at 10 websites spanning a number of industries and 26,000 different landing pages, ranging in performance from extremely slow pages to extremely fast. The results show that every second you can shave off your page load speed has intense conversion rate benefits that defy differences in verticals or selling approaches.

Matter. How SEOs Can Help... Now

As SEOs, we can influence over how the world gets its information. In times like these, when businesses of all stripes are facing uncertainty and we may be looking for ways to help, SEO can be your superpower. Russ Jones outlines five ways SEOs can make a difference amid the chaos of COVID-19 — simply by doing your job and doing it well.

Opting Out of Google Featured Snippets Led to 12% Traffic Loss [SEO Experiment]

Working with the team at SearchPilot, we devised an A/B split test experiment to remove Moz Blog posts from Google featured snippets, and measure the impact on traffic.