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Tag: Moz

  • Moz Founder Says Google Knows Everything and is Now Relying on Behavioral Data for Search Rankings

    Moz Founder Says Google Knows Everything and is Now Relying on Behavioral Data for Search Rankings

    Google is now relying on behavioral data that it gets from searchers, Chrome users, Android, etc. as the primary way that it ranks pages, according to Moz founder Rand Fishkin, who spoke at the recent MozCon event.

    Google used to have to predict what searchers are going to do and used a reasonable surfer model as the premise for its search algorithm. No more says Rand Fishkin. Google knows everything so it doesn’t have to predict because it already knows. Interesting but very scary stuff.

    Rand Fishkin, founder and former CEO of Moz and current founder of Sparktoro, discussed Google’s current approach to ranking websites at MozCon:

    What is Google Going To Do About Judging Links?

    I want to from my mind of all the things that I knew about link building up until this point and instead, take a look at companies and brands and websites and just ask what did they do right and what did we do wrong in the past and what is Google going to do about judging links?

    You might remember that last year when Google announced RankBrain they said it is the third most important ranking factor. You might also recall Danny Sullivan asking them what are the first two? A few of us were on a phone call with one of Google’s engineers and brought this up and he was like, what are you talking about, everyone knows the first two are content and links. Still true.

    In the past, link evaluation algorithms have been in these places we’re all familiar with such as PageRank, source diversity, anchor text, trust distance, domain authority,  location on the page, spam out link analysis, yadda yadda yadda. All these little individual factors around how Google judges a particular link and all the links that point to a website.

    Google is Going Away From the Reasonable Surfer Model

    But this is not where they’re going. Google’s is going away from the reasonable surfer model. Remember what PageRank was supposed to do, even in 1998, it was supposed to predict which links on a page were important and then it was supposed to assign values to them and it was supposed to assign those based on the probability, the chance of someone clicking on those links.

    Of course, Google was very naive in 1998 and so all they could do was assign the same weight to all the links on a page and they assigned the weight of a page based on all the links that pointed to it.

    Google Search Relying on Behavioral Data Because Google Knows Everything

    But that is not today. Today, thanks to Chrome and Android and Google WiFi and Google Fiber, Google knows everything. Google’s sample of everything that happens on the web is probably in the 80 or 90 percentile range. It’s insane and it’s crazy. Because of that, they can see. Google knows where people were, where they go and where they go next. You don’t need a reasonable surfer model anymore. You don’t need to predict because you know.

    Google’s goal is pretty clear, it’s searcher satisfaction. Google knows that if they satisfy searchers well, those searchers will return again and again. The number of searches will go up and the number of searches per searcher will keep going up and that’s what we’ve been seeing. Even as desktop has leveled off in its growth, mobile keeps growing and searches and searches per searcher keep growing.

    Google’s core search team asks the same question every time, are searchers satisfied with the results? The way they know that is finding out if searchers are getting the answers that they’re seeking. Google asks how do we get to that? It’s behavioral data.

  • What is the Most Effective SEO Tactic?

    What is the Most Effective SEO Tactic?

    What is the Most Effective SEO Tactic? If you’re trying to gain visibility for your website, you’ve no doubt wondered about the answer to that question at some point. Well, it just happens to be the very thing that Google keeps telling you. It’s about the content.

    What has been your most effective SEO-related tactic? Discuss in the comments.

    Google has long been pushing webmasters to shoot for high quality content, especially since launching the Panda update several years ago. According to a recent survey by Ascend2 (via Marketing Charts), relevant content creation is by far the most effective tactic. That’s what 72% of SEO marketers say. This is followed by keyword/phrase research, frequent website updating, relevant link building, social media integration, frequent blogging, mobile search optimization, and website URL restructuring.

    seo-tactics

    The bad news is that relevant content creation is also one of the most difficult tactics, according to those polled, second only to relevant link building (which has become much more challenging in recent years due to developments at Google). A fair amount of those surveyed also find frequent blogging and website updating to be difficult tasks. Keyword/phrase research is the easiest thing to do.

    difficult-tactics

    The good news is that for 71% of those polled, the effectiveness of search engine optimization tactics is improving. It’s mostly modest improvement, but that’s compared to no change for 18%, modest worsening for 9% and significant worsening for just 2%.

    This is somewhat surprising given Google’s changes that put less emphasis on traditional, organic results.

    It’s unfortunate that relevant link building is the most difficult tactic because another new study suggests that links are as important as ever to ranking in Google.

    Moz is sharing some data based on the top 50 Google search results for about 15,000 keywords. Cyrus Shepard reports:

    The correlation between higher rankings and the number of linking websites (root domains) sits at .30. This number seems small, but it’s actually one of the highest correlations the study found. (Smaller correlations are also not surprising—with over 200 ranking signals, Google specifically designed their algorithm so that one factor doesn’t dominate the others.)

    Even more telling is the number of websites we found in the top results that had external backlinks, or rather, the lack thereof.

    Out of the top results, a full 99.2% of all websites had at least one external link. (The remaining .8% is well within the margin of error expected between Mozscape and Google’s own link index.) The study found almost no websites ranking for competitive search phrases that didn’t have at least a single external link pointing at them, and most had significantly more links.

    google-links

    Check out the full report for additional insights.

    Earlier this year, Google said that you should avoid link building.

    Google webmaster trends analyst John Mueller was asked in a hangout if link building is, in any way, good for webmasters (start at about 55:40):

    He said, “That is a good question. In general, I’d try to avoid that. So that you are really sure that your content kind of stands on its own and make it possible for other people of course to link to your content. Make it easy, maybe, put a little widget on your page, if you like this, this is how you can link to it. Make sure that the URLs on your web site are easy to copy and paste. All of those things make it a little bit easier. We do use links as part of our algorithms but we use lots and lots of other factors as well. So only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your web site that actually helps.”

    After that, we spoke with prominent link building specialist Ken McGaffin about his thoughts on Google saying to avoid link building. He said:

    That all depends on the type of link building you’re doing. Let’s say I’ve just conducted a great piece of research for a client and my prime objective is to get them media coverage. The research and the accompanying press release was so good that it got coverage in the NYTimes, BBC and many others – good job done!

    But my secondary objective is to get links – so AS WELL as conducting the research, and writing the press release, I make sure that the journalist has something to link to, something that his readers will appreciate. That could be:

    – an in-depth blog post giving much more detail than the Journalist could give space to

    – a presentation or infographic of the results

    – a copy of the original research so that readers can check it out.

    In this case, I’m doing my client a service in getting PR coverage. But I’m also doing my best to ensure that editorial links and others links will follow. I can only see Google looking positively on my efforts – because of the value it offers. But if all I did was the ‘link building’ part then I’d be doing my client a disservice – and missing some major opportunities. This means that any online marketing/PR initiative is multi-layered – and one of those layers must be link building.

    Google has made it clear that it will not tolerate any link building that violates its guidelines, and it’s become as aggressive at going after sites that do as ever.

    It’s good to know that creating relevant content is still leading to significant effectiveness. Luckily, if you’re producing the right content, the links should come too. Look for ways to put out content that others aren’t creating. If others are creating similar things, look for ways to make your version better and more helpful.

    Do you have trouble creating relevant content? Building links? What’s the most difficult tactic for you? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Ascend2

  • Did Google Penalize A Site For A Natural Link From Moz?

    Update: We’ve updated the post with some additional comments from Fishkin he gave us via email. See end of article.

    Google has been on a warpath against what it thinks are unnatural links, but many think it’s off the mark with some of them. Meanwhile, the search giant scares people away from using even natural links in some cases, whether it intends to or not.

    Have Google’s warnings to webmasters had an impact on your linking practices? Let us know in the comments.

    When one thinks about reputable companies and websites in the SEO industry, Moz (formerly SEOmoz) is likely to be somewhere near the top of the list. YouMoz is a section of the site that gives voices to other people in the industry who don’t work for the company. It’s essentially a place for guest blog posts.

    YouMoz, while described as a “user generated search industry blog” isn’t exactly user-generated content the same way something like Google’s YouTube is. YouMoz content must be accepted by the Moz staff, which aims only to post the highest quality submissions it receives. This is the way a site is supposed to publish guest blog posts. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts seems to agree.

    If you’ll recall, Google started cracking down on guest blogging earlier this year. Google made big waves in the SEO industry when it penalized network MyBlogGuest.

    A lot of people thought Google went too far with that one, and many, who either hosted guest blog posts or contributed them to other sites were put on edge. Reputable sites became afraid to link naturally, when the whole point is for links to be natural (isn’t it?).

    Understandably concerned about Google’s view of guest blogging, Moz reached out to Cutts to get a feel of whether its own content was in any danger, despite its clear quality standards. In a nutshell, the verdict was no. It was not in danger. Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin shares what Cutts told them back then:

    Hey, the short answer is that if a site A links to spammy sites, that can affect site A’s reputation. That shouldn’t be a shock–I think we’ve talked about the hazards of linking to bad neighborhoods for a decade or so.

    That said, with the specific instance of Moz.com, for the most part it’s an example of a site that does good due diligence, so on average Moz.com is linking to non-problematic sites. If Moz were to lower its quality standards then that could eventually affect Moz’s reputation.

    The factors that make things safer are the commonsense things you’d expect, e.g. adding a nofollow will eliminate the linking issue completely. Short of that, keyword rich anchortext is higher risk than navigational anchortext like a person or site’s name, and so on.”

    It sounded like YouMoz was pretty safe. Until now. Contributor Scott Wyden got a warning from Google about links violating guideolines, which included his YouMoz article as well as a scraper post (that’s a whole other issue Google should work out).

    “Please correct or remove all inorganic links, not limited to the samples provided above,” Google’s message said. “This may involve contacting webmasters of the sites with the inorganic links on them. If there are links to your site that cannot be removed, you can use the disavow links tool…”

    The problem is that, at least according to Moz, the links were not inorganic.

    “As founder, board member, and majority shareholder of Moz, which owns Moz.com (of which YouMoz is a part), I’m here to tell Google that Scott’s link from the YouMoz post was absolutely editorial,” says Fishkin in a blog post. “Our content team reviews every YouMoz submission. We reject the vast majority of them. We publish only those that are of value and interest to our community. And we check every frickin’ link.”

    “Scott’s link, ironically, came from this post about Building Relationships, Not Links,” he continues. “It’s a good post with helpful information, good examples, and a message which I strongly support. I also, absolutely, support Scott’s earning of a link back to his Photography SEO community and to his page listing business books for photographers (this link was recently removed from the post at Scott’s request). Note that “Photography SEO community” isn’t just a descriptive name, it’s also the official brand name of the site Scott built. Scott linked the way I believe content creators should on the web: with descriptive anchor text that helps inform a reader what they’re going to find on that page. In this case, it may overlap with keywords Scott’s targeting for SEO, but I find it ridiculous to hurt usability in the name of tiptoeing around Google’s potential overenforcement. That’s a one-way ticket to a truly inorganic, Google-shaped web ”

    “If Google doesn’t want to count those links, that’s their business (though I’d argue they’re losing out on a helpful link that improves the link graph and the web overall). What’s not OK is Google’s misrepresentation of Moz’s link as ‘inorganic’ and ‘in violation of our quality guidelines’ in their Webmaster Tools. I really wish YouMoz was an outlier. Sadly, I’ve been seeing more and more of these frustratingly misleading warnings from Google Webmaster Tools.”

    Has Moz lowered its standards in the time that has passed since Cutts’ email? Fishkin certainly doesn’t think so.

    “I can promise that our quality standards are only going up,” he writes, also pointing to an article and a conference talk from the site’s director of community Jen Lopez on this very subject.

    “We’d love if Google’s webmaster review team used the same care when reviewing and calling out links in Webmaster Tools,” Fishkin writes.

    Burn.

    Cutts would most likely have something to say about all of this, but he happens to be on leave, and isn’t getting involved with work until he comes back. He has been on Twitter talking about other things though. It will be interesting to see if he gets sucked back in.

    The whole ordeal should only serve to scare more people away from natural linking as Google has already been doing. If Google is penalizing a site for links from a site like Moz, what’s safe?

    We’ve reached out to Fishkin for further comment, and will update accordingly.

    Update: Fishkin tells us via email that he doesn’t think Google’s targeting of guest blogging in general is off base, but that their reviewers “need to be more discerning in marking problematic links.”

    He goes on to say: “When they select editorial links to highlight as problematic ones, they’re creating a serious problem for site owners on both sides. Correctly identifying non-editorial links really does help site owners improve their behavior, and I know there’s plenty of folks still being manipulative out there.”

    “In terms of Google ruining natural linking, I suspect that’s an unintended side effect of their efforts here. They’re trying to do a good thing – to show which links are cuasing them not to trust websites. But when they mark editorial links as inorganic, they inadvertently scare site owners away from making positive contributions to the web with the accordingly correct citation of their work. That’s how you get a Google-shaped web, rather than a web-shaped Google.”

    Image via Moz

    Do you think Google is going overboard here? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  • Moz Partners With Bitly For Click Tracking And Link Data

    Bitly announced today that it will provide click tracking technology and inbound link data to Moz to help users better understand who is linking to websites and how relevant those links are.

    The data will use number and frequency of clicks to determine relevancy.

    Moz had been using Twitter link data to rank relevance, but Bitly’s will utilize Twitter as well as Facebook, Google+, blogs, and other sources.

    “The Bitly click dataset is hands down the broadest and most authoritative available to anyone looking for information on how their content and brand is performing across the web,’ said Moz co-founder and former CEO Rand Fishkin. “Marketers armed with these insights are able to build campaigns that are designed to optimize attention through content.”

    “Previously we were using just Twitter data to understand the relevance of shared content,” he added. “While that’s a great start, our clients are looking for a holistic view. Bitly’s click data gives us a much more comprehensive and accurate picture by looking at the entire web and drilling into actual clicks, which is more valuable than simply looking at how frequently content is shared.”

    Bitly CEO Mark Josephson said, “Bitly owns a unique view of how links are shared across the internet. Insights gleaned from our differentiated data set can help all marketers make better decisions. We’re excited to put this into action with Moz so their clients can better understand how content and links are shared across the Web.”

    According to the company, marketers can identify recently created URLs and links within seconds, and highlight the most clicked content for effective campaign management.

    Image via Moz

  • Sarah Bird Is Now Officially The CEO Of Moz

    A little over a month ago, Rand Fishkin announced that he would step down as CEO of Moz (formerly SEOmoz). He would remain with the company, and focus on product and marketing, while handing over the reins to President and COO Sarah Bird.

    Read our recent interview with Fishkin about the transition here.

    Fishkin told us the transition would come in mid-January, which has now arrived. Bird is now officially CEO.

    The linked post includes a half-hour video about Fishkin’s and Bird’s past work together and plans for the future.

    Image via Moz

  • Rand Fishkin On The Best And Worst Parts Of Being Moz CEO

    Last month, we learned that Moz (formerly SEOmoz) CEO Rand Fishkin is stepping down from the role. He revealed that he would be handing the reins over to President and COO Sarah Bird, while taking on less of a people management role, and instead focusing more on his product and marketing passions with the company.

    We reached out to Fishkin for some more about his decision and the pending transition. He told us about what he liked and disliked about being a CEO, as well as his regrets about holding the position.

    On what he enjoyed most, Fishkin told WebProNews, “The ability to create and influence the company culture, product, team, and mission have certainly been the best parts. I’m hopeful that the ‘influence’ parts will continue for a long time to come in this new role.”

    On what he enjoyed the least, he said, “Over time, it’s been a lot of the organizational development, conflict resolution, and people management issues. Those seem, to me, to be less about how to make a great product, market it, improve it, and deliver value to customer and more about politics, which I wish didn’t exist. The bigger a company gets, the harder all that stuff is, and the better you have to be at it in order to have success doing all the customer-value-add stuff.”

    “I also don’t really enjoy interacting with financial folks outside of Moz,” he added.

    Fishkin had plenty of nice things to say about Bird in his announcement and in an email he sent to Moz staff. He told WebProNews, “Sarah is far more capable of possessing and projecting optimism to the team, more emotionally and culturally well-suited to the people challenges at scale, and she’s not as easily overwhelmed by non-productive emotions as I am (which is something we definitely need).”

    When asked if he has any regrets about being CEO, Fishkin told us, “Absolutely. I think I’ve made numerous terrible decisions as CEO.”

    “That said,” he added. “It’s also been a remarkable run for the company – we’ve built something really amazing culturally, product-wise, and with the Moz brand, and I’m hopeful that long term, we’ll achieve the mission we’ve set for ourselves and help hundreds of thousands of SEO-focused marketers to do their job better.”

    After sharing his plans, Fishkin wrote a blog post titled, “Can’t Sleep; Caught in the Loop,” in which he talked about his worst weeks of 2013 in which he had what he described as a “weird mental cycle,” which has kept him awake. He calls it ‘the loop.”

    “Moz’s performance this year (which wasn’t great, but was still fairly good, ~25% growth) isn’t directly connected to Sarah taking the leadership role, but it does have an indirect impact,” Fishkin told us. “I think the people challenges at our scale, combined with some of the tough decisions that didn’t pan out created a lot of cycling negativity in my head that I’ve referred to as ‘The Loop.’ That negativity and the emotional impact it’s had on me, and by extension, Moz, are certainly part of the reason I wanted to make this move.”

    “That said, there are others, too,” he added. “I think Sarah will make an excellent CEO long term, and I want to focus more on individual contributor types of work. I also want to put my energy into things I love (like product & marketing) rather than those I don’t, but felt obligated to do (like people issues).”

    Fishkin and Bird recently spoke with the Moz board, and determined that the move will be made in mid-January, when they’ll be moving to a new office.

    Image: Rand Fishkin

  • Rand Fishkin Is Stepping Down As CEO Of Moz

    Moz CEO Rand Fishkin announced in a blog post that he is stepping down as the CEO of Moz (formerly SEOmoz). But don’t worry, you won’t be seeing less of him. In fact, from the sound of it, you’ll be seeing more.

    Fishkin is not leaving his company or anything like that. He’s just decided that he’d like to focus less on things like people managing and more on product and marketing – the areas where he is more comfortable. He’s handing the reins over to President and COO Sarah Bird.

    Fishkin shared an email sent to staff, in which he says:

    My role will actually be very similar. I’ll likely be spending more time in the weeds with product design, marketing initiatives, and evangelism (blogging/speaking). I’ll continue to represent Moz externally quite a bit. But I won’t be doing much people managing (only Nicci will continue to report to me), work on our finances, organizational development stuff, or recruiting/hiring of senior staff. I’ve also promised to write a book next year on startup marketing!

    I want to change my title to “individual contributor.” Mostly because it reflects my belief that you don’t need to manage people in order to have influence, I love and want to promote the IC track/concept, and that titles are kinda BS 🙂

    I will continue to be on the eteam and on the board of directors, representing internal shareholders (like y’all).

    Later in the email, addressing the question of if this means he will leave in the near future, Fishkin says, “Hell no…You’d have to push me kicking and screaming. I plan to be here for a long time to come.”

    The timeframe for the transition isn’t clear yet, but Fishkin says it will be more so after a board meeting next week.

    Image: Rand Fishkin

  • SEOmoz Will Now Be Known As ‘Moz’

    SEOmoz has changed its name to simply, ‘Moz,’ to better reflect the growing industry of which it is a part. The company, however, isn’t only rebranding itself. It’s also launching a completely new product.

    SEOmoz now redirects to Moz.com.

    “The Problem: There isn’t a product that measures the effectiveness and impact of inbound marketing efforts,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “Sure, Google Analytics can give you traffic data—but it doesn’t give you data for all your efforts across other channels. Moz Analytics is built to expose that data and give marketers insight into how to improve their efforts. It helps users answer a difficult question: What is the ROI of inbound marketing?”

    “The Pitch: Moz is the result of two years of product development, based on a trend that was clear to our Founder and CEO, Rand Fishkin,” the spokesperson adds. “The world of search marketing has evolved. Social media marketing matters, content matters, and SEO matters—they all contribute to the greater picture of inbound marketing, or earned marketing, as we like to call it. Moz manages and analyzes those marketing efforts on a single subscription platform.”

    “For the past decade, we’ve fought to make SEO a legitimate, respected part of a web marketer’s arsenal,” says Fishkin. “Today that battle is expanding to include content marketing, social media, community building, brand tracking, and other inbound channels. While SEO remains a key part of our product, it’s no longer transparent or authentic to say we’re purely an SEO software company.”

    The Moz Analytics platform includes SEO and link analysis features, social analytics and brand/web mention data. It will show where a brand, competitor, or industry topic is being talked about on the web, and companies can see where they’re being mentioned, but not linked to.

    “The transformation of Moz over the past year is a direct result of the feedback we’ve received from our customers and community,” says Fishkin. “We’ve taken input from thousands of marketers, and built the tools they need to understand the impact of their efforts.”

    Moz has over 25,000 customers, and boasts a community of over 300,000 online marketers. Moz Analytics is in private invite-only beta mode for the time being. They will start transitioning customers to the new software over the coming weeks.

    Fishkin discusses the change more over on the Moz Blog.