Content and SEO go hand-in-hand. Without one, your efforts on the other are seriously diminished. For example, your keyword research won't do much good unless you then use those keywords in your content. And, creating content without knowing what your audience is looking for will leave you without any significant traffic. Beyond that, high quality content is what earns you backlinks, and it's also what search engines crawl when they arrive at your site.
Ready to get strategic? Read the SEO's Guide to Content Strategy.
This page is your home base for learning about content and its role in SEO. The resources here are useful for learners of all skill levels.
Beginner's Guide to Content Marketing
We created this guide to be an easy-to-digest and reliable reference for all aspects of content marketing, whether you're just getting started or are part of an expert team that's simply looking to review its fundamentals. Check it out!
On-Page Ranking Factors
Learn what on-page ranking factors are and how they impact search engine ranking.
Content Strategy Template
A brief guide to building your content strategy
This template has all the elements you'll need to start researching and writing a content strategy. Take what you need and leave the rest — a content strategy should be tailor-made!
Featured Snippets: Essentials to Know & How to Target
Presented by Britney Muller at Mozcon 2019
By now, most SEOs are comfortable with the idea of featured snippets, but actually understanding and capturing them in the changing search landscape remains elusive. Britney will share some eye-opening data about the SERPs you know and love while equipping you with a bevy of new tricks for winning featured snippets into your toolbox.
How Many Words Is a Question Worth?
Presented by Dr. Pete Meyers at Mozcon 2019
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
Presented by Casie Gillette at Mozcon 2019
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Building a Discoverability Powerhouse: Lessons From Merging an Organic, Paid, & Content Practice
Presented by Heather Physioc at Mozcon 2019
Search is a channel that can’t live in a silo. In order to be its most effective, search teams have to collaborate successfully across paid, organic, content and more. Get tips for integrating and collaborating from the hard knocks and learnings of merging an organic, paid and performance content team into one Discoverability group. Find out how we went from three teams of individual experts to one integrated Discoverability powerhouse, and learn from our mistakes and wins as you apply the principles in your own company.
Why "Blog" is a Misnomer for Our 2018 Content Strategy
Presented by Taylor Coil at MozCon 2018
At the end of 2017, we totally redesigned our company's blog. Why? Because it's not really a blog anymore - it's an evergreen collection of traffic and revenue-generating resources. The former design catered to a time-oriented strategy surfacing consistently new posts with short half-lives. That made sense when we started our blog in 2014. Today? Not so much.
Content Marketing Is Broken and Only Your M.O.M. Can Save You
Presented by Oli Gardner at MozCon 2018
Traditional content marketing focuses on educational value at the expense of product value, which is a broken and outdated way of thinking. We all need to sell a product, and our visitors all need a product to improve their lives, but we're so afraid of being seen as salesy that somehow we got lost, and we forgot why our content even exists. We need our M.O.M.s! No, not your actual mother. Your Marketing Optimization Map — your guide to exploring the nuances of optimized content marketing through a product-focused lens. In this session you'll learn data and lessons from Oli's biggest ever content marketing experiment, and how those lessons have changed his approach to content; a context-to-content-to-conversion strategy for big content that converts; advanced methods for creating "choose your own adventure" navigational experiences to build event-based behavioral profiles of your visitors (using GTM and GA); and innovative ways to productize and market the technology you already have, with use cases your customers had never considered.
The Problem with Content and How We Fix It
Presented by Casie Gillette at MozCon 2018
Everyone thinks they need content but they don't think about why they need it or what they actually need to create. As a result, we are overwhelmed with poor quality content and marketers are struggling to prove the value. In this session, we'll look at some of the key challenges facing marketers and how a data-driven strategy can help us make better decisions.
Search-Driven Content Strategy
Presented by Stephanie Briggs at MozCon 2018
Google's improvements in understanding language and search intent have changed how and why content ranks. As a result, many SEOs are chasing rankings that Google has already decided are hopeless. Stephanie will cover how this should impact the way you write and optimize content for search, and will help you identify the right content opportunities. She'll teach you how to persuade organizations to invest in content, and will share examples of strategies and tactics she has used to grow content programs by millions of visits.
Feeding the Beast: Local Content for RankBrain
Presented by Mary Bowling at MozCon Local 2016
We now know searcher behavior and continual testing via machine learning indeed affects Google rankings and algorithm refinements. Learn how to create local content to satisfy both Google and our human visitors.
Content Planning for Local SEO
What types of content should local businesses create? Learn in this article.
MozCon Video Bundle
Did you miss this year's MozCon? Now is your chance to experience what everyone has been talking about! We have over 19 hours of actionable inbound marketing knowledge.
From Anchor to Asset: How Agencies Can Wisely Create Data-Driven Content
Presented by Heather Physioc at MozCon 2017
Creative agencies are complicated and messy, often embracing chaos instead of process, and focusing exclusively on one-time campaign creative instead of continuous web content creation. Campaign creative can be costly, and not sustainable for most large brands. How can creative shops produce data-driven streams of high-quality content for the web that stays true to its creative roots, but faster, cheaper and continuously? I'll show you how.
Powerful Brands Have Communities
Presented by Tara Reed at MozCon 2017
You are laser focused on user growth. Meanwhile, you're neglecting a gold mine of existing customers who desperately want to be part of your brand's community. Tara Reed shares how to use communities, gamification, and membership content to grow your revenue.
Up and to the Right: Growing Traffic, Conversions & Revenue
Presented by Matthew Barby at MozCon 2017
So many of the case studies that document how a company has grown from 0 to X forget to mention that solutions that they found are applicable to their specific scenario and won't work for everyone. Instead of building up a list of other companies' tactics, marketers need to understand how to diagnose and solve problems across their entire funnel. Illustrated with real-world examples, I'll be talking you through the process that I take to come up with ideas that none of my competitors are thinking of.
How to Be a Happy Marketer: Survive the Content Crisis and Drive Results by Mastering Your Customer’s Transformational Journey
Presented by Tara-Nicholle Nelson at MozCon 2017
Branded content is way up, but customer engagement with that content is plummeting. This whole scene makes it hard to get up in the morning, as a marketer. But there's a new path beyond the epidemic of disengagement and, at the end of it, your brand and your content become regular stops along your customer's everyday journey.
Marketing in a Conversational World: How to Get Discovered, Delight Your Customers, and Earn the Conversion
Presented by Purna Virji at MozCon 2017
Capturing and keeping attention is one of the hardest parts of our job today. Fact: It's just going to get harder with the advent of new technology and conversational interfaces. In the brave new world we're stepping into, the key questions are: How do we get discovered? How can we delight our audiences? And how can we grow revenue for our clients? Watch this session to learn how to make your marketing and advertising efforts something people are going to want to consume.
Size Doesn't Matter: Great Content by Teams of One
Presented by Ian Lurie at MozCon 2017
Feel the energy surge through your veins as you gain content creation powers THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED... Or, just learn a process for creating great content when it's just you and your little teeny team. Because when it comes to teams, size doesn't matter.
What We Learned From Reddit & How It Can Help Your Brand Take Content Marketing to the Next Level
Presented by Daniel Russell at MozCon 2017
It almost seems too good to be true — online forums where people automatically segment themselves into different markets and demographics and then vote on what content they like best. These forums, including Reddit, are treasure troves of content ideas. This MozCon video has actionable insights from three case studies that demonstrate how your marketing can benefit from content on Reddit.
How to Write Customer-Driven Copy That Converts
Presented by Joel Klettke at MozCon 2017
If you want to write copy that converts, you need to get into your customers' heads. But how do you do that? How do you know which pain points you need to address, features customers care about, or benefits your audience need to hear? This MozCon video will give you a practical framework for writing customer-driven copy that any business can apply.
Data-Driven Design
Presented by Oli Gardner at MozCon 2017
Data-Driven Design (3D) is an actionable, evidence-based framework for creating websites and landing pages that will increase your leads, sales, and customers. In this session you’ll learn how to use the latest industry conversion data to inform copywriting and design decisions that impact conversions.
Google Penguin
Learn about Google's Penguin algorithm update and it's impact on search visibility.
Google Panda
What is Google's Panda algorithm update, and what did it do to affect ranking and search visibility? How can you avoid "Panda penalties?" Learn in this article.
On-Site SEO
Learn what "on-site SEO" is all about – and how it contributes to the search visibility of a webpage or website as a whole.
Totally Excellent Tips for Righteous Local SEO
Presented by Greg Gifford at MozCon Local 2017
Learn about the latest updates to Local SEO, including the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factor study results. Learn how to be more successful at selling your services and setting client expectations for Local SEO. Then, based off the hot-off-the-presses LSRF 2017 data, learn exactly which signals matter the most for local visibility and how to optimize them.
Duplicate Content
When it comes to SEO, what actually counts as duplicate content? Why does duplicate content matter for SEO, and how can you avoid the ranking issues that may stem from it? Learn in this article.
How to Be Specific: From-The-Trenches Lessons in High-Converting Copy
Presented by Joanna Wiebe at MozCon 2016
Abstracted benefits, summarized value, and promise-free landing pages keep marketers safe—and conversion rates low. Joanna shares how and why your copy needs to get specific to move people to act.
Content Chaos: Building Your Brand through Constant Experiments
Presented by Ross Simmonds (he/him) at MozCon 2016
A look at how taking risks on content and making investments can work out in a big way for brands and marketers. Whether it’s Reddit, Slideshare, Quora or Instagram, Ross shares some of the lessons he's learned from a variety of different content experiments.
Rethinking Information Architecture for SEO and Content Marketing
Presented by Joe Hall (he/him) at MozCon 2016
Information Architecture (IA) shapes the way we organize data, think about complex ideas, and build web sites. Joe will provide a new approach to IA for SEO and Content Marketing, based on actionable insights, that SEOs can extract from their own data sets.
Republishing: How to Earn Greater Value from the Content You Create
With multiple platforms for publishing content, the changing landscape of guest contributions, and the concerns about duplicate content, republishing for SEO can be a quandary. In this webinar, we'll explore which channels and processes may be useful depending on the types of content you create and are re-purposing.
Tracking and Reporting Content Success
Tracking success in content marketing can be tough, and effectively reporting on it can be even harder. Learn about collecting necessary metrics from a variety of tools, then walk through a downloadable spreadsheet designed to help you in your reporting efforts.
Practical Content Skills to Improve Creativity and Idea Generation
In this webinar, you'll learn practical thinking skills and brainstorming techniques to drastically improve your idea generation for content and talks through examples of content projects from brands doing outstanding content marketing.
How to Build a Content Marketing Machine
Content marketing doesn't have to be time-consuming and confusing. The key is to create compelling and conversational content with the sales funnel in mind. In this webinar we'll show you how to build and operate a content marketing machine that pushes prospects to paying customers.
Content or backlinks: which to build first?
With limited resources, where should an SEO concentrate their time: on building backlinks or creating content? This post explores the options and opinions.
SEO Basics: The Fundamental Signals Used to Rank Our Content Higher
This webinar dives into the SEO ranking signals we pay attention to when optimizing a piece of content here at Moz. From the overlooked to the obvious, this webinar walks through how a few basic principals improve almost any piece of content and help boost SEO success.
The Storytelling of Content Strategy
Content strategy is storytelling, and in this Mozinar we'll show you techniques borrowed from creative writing to show you how to inhabit the unique story of a brand and create a document that reflects your brand’s personality from the very start.
Advanced Content Promotion
You've made your content, you've researched it, you've put it online and now it's time to start earning links and mentions and get that content in front of as many eyeballs as you possibly can. Learn how to get started with advanced content promotion in this Moz Academy video.
Social Content and Engagement
How can you identify what content is getting - or will get - the best engagement rates? This Moz Academy video explores how to answer this question.
Getting Started with Local Content
Want to get started with local content? Well you're in the right place! Learn how to make great local content for chains and individual businesses in this Moz Academy video.
On-Page Optimization for Content and UX
This video covers on-page optimization in the context of content and user experience - factors that are important both people visiting your site and how a search engines sees your pages.
The Authoritative Content Funnel — Whiteboard Friday
In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, digital marketing expert Amanda Milligan walks you through the three parts that make up a content funnel for building authority, as well as the types of content that fit into each one.
How to Maximize Your Content — Whiteboard Friday
In today’s episode, content marketing expert Ross Simmonds walks you through the content life cycle, and how you can use it to ensure that the content that you're developing quarter after quarter, month after month, year after year, is actually maximized for ROI, results, and impact.
Measuring E-A-T? — Whiteboard Friday
The level of trust users have in your brand’s expertise is an important component when vying for that #1 spot, but Google has been ambiguous about what E-A-T actually is, and how it plays into your SERP rankings. In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Lily Ray discusses the ways in which you can prove that all important “E” – expertise.
A Content Engine that Drives Revenue — Whiteboard Friday
In today’s Whiteboard Friday, MozCon speaker and content marketing expert Ross Simmonds walks you through his method for creating a content marketing engine that will ultimately make you money, rooted in four simple steps: research, create, distribute, and optimize.
Finding Your Way To SEO & Content Success: A Framework
Presented by Ross Simmonds (he/him) at MozCon 2022
Let’s cut to the chase: there are a million ways to win online today. You can create amazing scalable landing pages. You can create a backlink empire. You can create a bunch of pillar assets and clusters. The options are endless. But how do you determine what’s the best investment for your brand to make to generate organic traffic? Ross will share a framework that will help guide your thinking along with some tactical techniques and case studies you can steal.
Link Relevance vs. Content Relevance in Link Building
Relevance is talked about a lot in the context of link building, yet none of us know exactly how Google measures it. When it comes to link building, and specifically the part that relevance plays, the potential answers are a lot more complex than we think. Let’s start by splitting out link relevance and content relevance.
The Professional's Guide to Keywords & Content
Professional keyword research is more than just finding a list of likely words to build your site content around. Learn more in the Professional's Guide to SEO.
Humans vs. Robots: Picking the Best Audience for Your SEO Content
When writing for search engines, should you create content for the algorithm or for your human readers? The answer is both. Here’s how you can do it.
How to Know When You Need a Dedicated Paid Landing Page
Creating custom, campaign-specific landing pages is resource-intensive, and not every team has the necessary tools, expertise, or personnel to build the content. So, how do you know if you need a custom page, or if you can safely send paid traffic to an organic page and still achieve your KPIs? This three-step, data-driven evaluation helps answer this question.
9 Ways to Design Inclusive Content
Inclusivity is about understanding diversity and ensuring everyone can be involved to the greatest extent possible. It's an important consideration for every business owner and content creator, and should be at the heart of your ongoing design efforts — not something you look at after a website or content goes live.
How to Capitalize on the Link Potential of a Research Report
Presented by Debbie Chew (she/her) at MozCon 2022
There are many types of link magnets, but there's one that'll never go out of style: data-backed research reports. When done well, you're creating a piece of content that helps your E-A-T, drives backlinks, and is genuinely interesting content for your target audience. This talk will cover the different steps needed not just to create a research report, but to create one that can get links
Case Study: The ROI of Re-optimizing Content (Plus Bonus How-To)
You know it’s important to keep your content up to date, but exactly how much does it matter? Lauren shows you the actual ROI she and her team at Brafton have seen from regularly re-optimizing blog posts over the last several years.
Commercial vs. Functional vs. Emotional: A Case Study on Page Title SEO Testing
In our fast-paced day-to-day lives, we can often underestimate the power of copy, even though it’s the only thing between our business and our customers. To that end, Marty used SEO Testing to trial different copy types in product page titles, and want shares the results of that test in this blog.
More Than Pageviews: Evaluating Content Success & Correcting Content Failure
Presented by Dana DiTomaso (she/her) at MozCon 2022
Throw that tired pageview-and-bounce-rate-heavy report right out the (virtual) window — we can do better than that! Dana will peel back the layers on measuring content success. You'll learn which metrics will actually tell you if your content is doing what it's supposed to be doing, and how to link these metrics to your SEO strategies and tactics.
How to Measure the Impact of Content Based on Intent
When it comes to measuring the impact of content, you might think of KPIs like “sitewide conversion rate”, or picture an upward graph that shows an increase in traffic. But are those metrics really meaningful? In this piece, Kelly argues that, no, they’re not. Instead, focus on getting actionable insights that can help your content flourish, by measuring its impact in a meaningful way.
The Four Pillars of Relevancy: How Digital PR Campaigns Can Lead to Gains in Every Sector
Rebecca explains how a relevant digital PR campaign can lead to commercial gain, and takes you through the steps to get there.
How Contextualizing Topics can Lead to Press-worthy Content for Your Brand
The team at Stacker has mastered how to create newsworthy, data-driven stories for their newswire. Contextualizing topics, statistics, and events serves as a core part of their content ideation process. Today, Amanda shares their winning strategy so you can create content that has real news value.
How to Improve Organic Clickthrough for Your Content
SERPs are becoming more diverse and interactive, making any CTR study out there much less reliable, because no two sets of search results are ever the same. So, how much control do content creators have over how their work is represented in search? As it turns out, quite a bit!
The Core Elements of Storytelling that B2B Can Learn from B2C
For those in the B2B world, you’ve probably heard B2B referred to as “Boring 2 Boring.” It’s time to end that perception and spice things up a bit by exploring marketing storytelling techniques that can take your B2B marketing strategy to the next level.
How We Increased a Law Firm’s Leads by 174% With Content Optimization [Case Study]
In this case study, walk through the steps the Tao Digital team took to achieve increased leads, impressions, and clicks for their client. By making strategic content optimizations at the right time, you can do the same.
How to Use Keyword Clustering to Seamlessly Optimize Your SEO Content
Keyword clustering is the SEO tactic to use if you want to seamlessly optimize your SEO content and streamline your workflow at the same time. The best part? It’s fairly simple, and SERPs give you all the information you need to make an informed decision on exactly how to do it.
Why SEOs Need to Invest More in Long-Form Content (and How to Do It)
Long-form content can often be overshadowed by other forms of execution that may be considered more visually engaging. The truth is that the value of long-form content shouldn’t be overlooked because it can do so many things for a brand, including driving traffic, building authority, and building links.
Magento SEO: The Guide to Optimizing Magento Websites
If you’re an SEO in the e-commerce space, it’s important to learn how to work with Magento. Today, Chris walks you through seven areas for SEO adjustments that are unique to the Magento platform.
How to Choose Pillar Page Topics
With the growth of conversational search intent, pillar page strategies have entered the scene to fulfill those queries. Like anything in the SEO space, pillar page strategies take time and a great deal of planning to do correctly. Let’s break down this process.
How to Carry Out Content Audits — Yes, Plural
A content audit done once to highlight current website issues will have a short shelf-life of usefulness. However, a content audit that is continuously updated offers multiple uses for analyzing and reporting on strategies. Here’s how to conduct that ongoing audit.
3 Powerful On-Page Optimizations to Power Up Your Content
It’s not easy to write content that ranks in Google and drives conversions, but if you follow a few simple steps, you’ll be well on your way to ranking, and to engaging customers on all types of devices.
A Step-by-Step Strategy for B2B Pillar Pages
A great way for B2B companies to fill a top-of-funnel content gap is by creating pillar pages. To help get you started, guest host Carly Schoonhoven of Obility walks you through a simple strategy for implementing pillar pages on your website.
SEO and Accessibility: Content [Series Part 2]
As SEOs, our goal when we're creating content is to provide equitable access, which means that content isn’t just available to search engines, but also to people of all abilities. In the second installment of his three-part accessibility series, Cooper shows you how to ensure that your amazing content is accessible by bots AND people.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: What They Are and Why SEOs Should Care
In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and outline the steps you can take to meet its standards. We’ll also touch on the reasons why accessible websites typically rank higher in search engines — making accessibility the right choice all around!
How to Calibrate Your Brand Voice to Your SEO Advantage
One of the best ways to stand out from the herd of businesses in your niche is to develop a unique brand voice for your company – one that will appeal to customers and get noticed via SEO. This article will show you a few tricks to help develop a unique voice, structure your content, and turn Google’s algorithms to your advantage at the same time.
How to Use Surveys to Tap into Trending Conversations (and Build Links)
Most brands aren’t operating full newsrooms and don’t have the capacity to cover breaking news, but there are still ways to participate in relevant, newsworthy conversations — and surveys are a great option. See how you can utilize surveys to add value to conversations, and earn the interest of writers at top publications.
How to Turn One Piece of Content into Multiple for SEO
As people consume more and more content each day, they become less receptive to basic content that doesn't provide a new perspective. To counter this issue, you must make sure that your content is native to each platform you publish on. However, that doesn’t mean that you need to start from scratch. There's a way to take one content idea and turn it into multiple, which can scale across multiple platforms and improve your brand awareness.
Generating Local Content at Scale
Building local pages at scale can be a painful task. It's hard to strike the right mix of on-topic content, expertise, and location. Russ Jones shares his favorite white-hat technique using natural language generation to create local pages to your heart's content.
How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
Presented by Brian Dean at MozCon Virtual
Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.
Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution
Presented by Ross Simmonds at MozCon Virtual
What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.
Google E-A-T SEO: How to Create Content Google Wants
Over the past few months, you’ve probably seen the buzzword (or acronym, rather) “E-A-T” floating around. While this term has been in the lexicon of many SEOs for quite a while now, since the major Google algorithm update in August 2018 (AKA “the medic update”), a big bright spotlight has been shone on Google’s “E-A-T”.
Content, Rankings, and Lead Generation: A Breakdown of the 1% Content Strategy
Presented by Andy Crestodina (he/him) at Mozcon 2019
How can you use data to find and update content for higher rankings and more traffic? Andy will take us through a four-point presentation that pulls together the most effective tactics around content into a single high-powered content strategy with even better results.
Super-Practical Tips for Improving Your Site's E-A-T
Presented by Dr. Marie Haynes at Mozcon 2019
Google has admitted that they measure the concept of "Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness" in their algorithms. If your site is categorized under YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), you absolutely must have good E-A-T in order to rank well. In this talk, you'll learn how Google measures E-A-T and what changes you can make both on site and off in order to outrank your competitors. Using real-life examples, Marie will answer what E-A-T is and how Google measures it, what changes you can make on your site to improve how E-A-T is displayed, and what you can do off-site to improve E-A-T.
How to Audit for Inclusive Content
Presented by Emily Triplett Lentz at Mozcon 2019
Digital marketers have a responsibility to learn to spot the biases that frequently find their way into online copy, replacing them with alternatives that lead to stronger, clearer messaging and that cultivate wider, more loyal and enthusiastic audiences. Last year, Help Scout audited several years of content for unintentionally exclusionary language that associated physical disabilities or mental illness with negative-sounding terms, resulting in improved writing clarity and a stronger brand. You'll learn what inclusive content is, how it helps to engage a larger and more loyal audience, how to conduct an audit of potentially problematic language on a site, and how to optimize for inclusive, welcoming language.
Keywords Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Presented by Ross Simmonds (he/him) at Mozcon 2019
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies
If you're looking to grow, your content promotion needs to move beyond mere social promotion. See how advanced content promotion strategies are working for successful companies and take away solid strategies you can emulate for improved growth.
Should SEOs & Content Marketers Play to the Social Networks' "Stay-On-Our-Site" Algorithms?
Increasingly, social networks are tweaking their algorithms to favor content that remains on their site, rather than send users to an outside source. This spells trouble for those trying to drive traffic and visitors to external pages, but what's an SEO or content marketer to do? This edition of Whiteboard Friday goes into detail on the pros and cons of each approach, then gives Rand's recommendations on how to balance your efforts going forward.
How to Rank in Google Image Search
Optimizing your images for ranking in Google Image Search and the Image Pack is not a side of SEO to be ignored. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains just about everything you'd want to ask about image search SEO, from foundations to best practices.
Google Hummingbird
What is Google's "Hummingbird" algorithm update? What influence did this update have on how search results are built? Learn in this article.
How to Build a Killer Content → Keyword Map for SEO
You've got content on your site that doesn't intentionally target any keyword. But how do you identify those opportunities and, most importantly, capitalize on them? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand illustrates the process of creating your own content-to-keyword map to discover where to optimize, what content to build, and how to intelligently target keywords when you're auditing a site.
Can SEOs Stop Worrying About Keywords and Just Focus on Topics?
Should you ditch keyword targeting entirely? There's been a lot of discussion around the idea of focusing on broad topics and concepts to satisfy searcher intent, but it's a big step to take and could potentially hurt your rankings. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses old-school keyword targeting and new-school concept targeting, outlining a plan of action you can follow to get the best of both worlds.
Creating Influencer-Targeted Content to Earn Links + Coverage
Most SEO campaigns need three kinds of links to be successful; targeting your content to influencers can get you 2/3 of the way there. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers the tactics that will help your content get seen and shared by those with a wide and relevant audience.
Blog Post Ideas: Maximize Your Reach with the Right Topics
A blog is only as effective as its posts. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand offers six paths you can take to make sure your posts resonate with your audiences.
The Keyword + Year Content/Rankings Hack
Earning site traffic from competitive keywords with decent search volume doesn't always have to be a struggle. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares how to make ranking for competitive keywords easier on yourself using very fresh content.
Backlinks from Client Sites, Sites You Own, Widgets, & Embedded Content: How to Maximize Benefits & Avoid Problems
When it comes to certain kinds of backlinks, avoiding penalties can be a gray area. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand will teach you which rules to follow to keep you safe and help you benefit.
How Visual Communication Can Make or Break Your Content Marketing Strategy
For all but the fewest of brand's, content strategy comes down to creating content—blogs, ebooks, infographics, etc. That's a losing game. This webinar walks through placing strategy at the forefront, allowing it to guide the discovery, design, and creation process.
Power to the People: Human-Centric Local Search Marketing
No matter how the search landscape shifts, your local strategy will always be future-proof if you focus on one thing: your customer experience. In this webinar, we'll cover how pleasing real-world people over online algorithms translates to success in local search.
Content Creation for the Real World
It's easy to talk about creating great content, but as anyone who's tried knows, it's not so easy in the real world. In this webinar we'll walk through a highly-actionable process for creating consistently engaging content across a variety of formats, with takeaways that any business can start using immediately to make their content marketing more effective.
Making Great Marketing Videos with a Team of One
Video content can have a huge ROI, but how do you make a pro-quality video by yourself? In this webinar you'll learn about interviewing a subject; how to capture b-roll; editing; why you don't want to host on YouTube if you want SEO authority; and how to make your video crawlable by Google.
How to Craft an Advanced Social Content Strategy
Struggling to stay organized on social media? Sick of constantly trying to balance out an overwhelming amount of content? In this webinar we'll cover how to streamline your social media marketing by building a clear, actionable content strategy that will simplify your routine and save hours a week.
How Content Strategy Can Influence the Bottom Line for Any Business
For all but the fewest of brands, content strategy comes down to creating content—blogs, ebooks, infographics, etc. That's a losing game, however. Content Strategist Ronell Smith walks through placing strategy at the forefront, allowing it to guide the discovery, design, and creation process.
Advanced Content Analysis in Google Analytics
With the right setup, Google Analytics offers far more than the standard built-in metrics for your content. This post shows how to use content groupings and custom dimensions to maximize your insights.
Content Marketing China-Side
China has the world's biggest internet population, yet is a place where all the familiar social platforms and established content mantras simply don't apply. This webinar runs through a breakdown of China's key social media platforms and types of content that work.
Earning Links Through Audience Segmentation
This webinar discusses earning links through audience segmentation, enabling you to create the right content for your users.
Making 'Big' Content Work: Planning, Production, and Promotion
In this webinar, we'll show you how to make content that's bigger, better, louder and stand out in today's competitive content marketing landscape. We'll cover how to plan big content creation, manage its production, and promote it in all the right places.
How to Build Links to Your Blog - A Case Study
After a month or so of development, my site was finally ready and I wanted to start thinking about how to get some traffic going on the website. Whilst paid advertising and social media were a huge part of the strategy, I knew that appearing in the search engines for a wide selection of long-tail phrases was going to be instrumental to the blog's success. This is when I began developing my link building strategy and, after trialing out some very successful approaches, I've decided to now share my link building tactics with you all.
12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time
When you look around at successful blogs -- whatever industry or topic -- there are several undeniable basics to success. And it starts with blog posts that kill it…rather than get killed. But what kills a blog post? Here’s a list of 12 things. Ignore them and you will have a tough time being successful.
Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World
In a land ravaged by pandas, one man will teach you everything you need to know about duplicate content. Learn how to spot duplicates in the wild and stop them in their tracks.
How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas
Presented by Dr. Pete Meyers at MozCon 2014
Learn how to stay afloat in the coming flood of content, as Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for sustainably creating high-value content.
Scaling Creativity: Making Content Marketing More Efficient
Presented by Stacey (Cavanagh) MacNaught at MozCon 2014
Stacey will talk you through tactics and tricks to help you scale your content marketing efforts without cutting corners on quality.
More than Words: Localizing Your International Content
Presented by Zeph Snapp at MozCon 2014
Zeph takes you beyond the technical implications of international SEO, showing you real life examples of how to leverage your existing content in other languages.
Top 10 PR Tactics and Strategies of Successful Content and Link Building
Presented by Lexi Mills at MozCon 2014
Everyone's had an outreach pitch rejected, but Lexi will show you that by slicing and dicing your content, you can turn those no’s into yes’s.
Building a Winning Video Marketing Strategy
Presented by Phil Nottingham at MozCon 2013
Phil's going to guide to you through the process of building a video content strategy from inception to launch. He'll explain the creative and technical tactics required to win the internet with video. By the end of this session, you'll know where to host your video, how to optimize it, what kind of content you should be creating, and how to get professional quality returns without spending a fortune.
The Mobile Content Mandate
Presented by Karen McGrane at MozCon 2013
Do you think "no one will ever want to do that on mobile"? Chances are, someone already wants to. Karen will discuss why you need to deliver content wherever your customer wants to consume it - and the risks of ignoring mobile users. She'll also explain how to start your mobile content strategy, define what you want to publish, construct the relationship between your mobile and desktop site, and evolve your editorial workflow and content management tools.
Rapid Fire Link Building Tips for Your Content
Presented by Ross Hudgens at MozCon 2013
You've built your content and made it King. Now what? Ross teaches you how to take your content and turn it into links for your site. Whether you're just hunting for backlinks or building up social shares, you'll find all the tips to get your community engaged and building those links for you.
How to Earn Links without Doing Anything
Presented by Ian Lurie at MozCon 2012
Embrace your own awesome while kicking back and relaxing. Ian takes you through how to be so brilliant online that you'll be swimming in links.
High ROI Content Strategies for SEO
Presented by Ruth Burr Reedy (she/her) at MozCon 2012
Need to get a bang for your buck? Cyrus focuses in on how to boost your SEO ROI with targeted and precise content.
8 Can't-Miss Off-Page SEO Strategies to Build Your Online Reputation
Earn brand mentions, rankings, traffic to your site, and conversions using these off-page SEO strategies: building your brand, leveraging social media, playing around with content types, and more.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing focuses on delivering your brand message to a targeted set of industry influencers rather than to the market at large, relying on those influencers to amplify your voice to a relevant and pre-qualified audience. Learn more about it in this article.
The Best Types of Content for Local Businesses: Building Geo-Topical Authority
What's the best way to show local searchers that you're an authority in your niche? You guessed it — through your content. But that can be a pretty vague and overwhelming term; what are some actual ways to make a difference, conversions-wise? Miriam Ellis explains.
Constant Content: The Silver Bullet for Failing Content Marketing Strategy
The State of Content Marketing Survey told us that 92% of marketers don't have a clear plan for content marketing. The only answer: the constant content approach.
The 10 Types of Content That Work Best for SEO
After analyzing hundreds of SERPs, Rand has identified and classified the 10 distinct content types that work best for SEO. In this Whiteboard Friday, he explains those types and how to use them effectively in your content marketing strategy.
5 Steps to Content Marketing Success
Content marketing isn't easy when it's done right, but when you have a solid process in place, you've got a much better chance of hitting a home run. Paddy Moogan takes us through his own 5-step process for making sure your content marketing campaign starts off right.
Is syndicated (duplicate) content considered fresh content?
Is syndicated duplicate content (i.e., identical content that's been published across multiple distinct domains) considered fresh content on an individual domain? This Q&A post explores hypotheses and SEO implications.
Marketing Innovations: Creative PR, Content, and SEO Strategies'
Presented by Lexi Mills at Mozcon 2015
Lexi shows you how to apply strategies used in emerging markets to grow the success of your PR, SEO, and content work from bathrooms to rock bands.
An SEO's Guide to the Insane World of Content
Presented by Matthew Brown at Mozcon 2015
Find yourself arguing whether or not SEO is just great content? Matthew will talk through a strategic and tactical journey of content strategy from an SEO's viewpoint and leave you with new tools and tactics.
How To Do Content Strategy (Probably)
Presented by Kristina Halvorson at Mozcon 2015
Put 10 people in a room and ask them to define 'content strategy,' and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. Kristina will share her own tried-and-true approach!
Content, Conversations, and Conversions
Presented by Will Scott at LocalUp 2015
How local businesses, and the marketers who love them, can use social media to bring home the bacon.
Illustrated Guide to Advanced On-Page Topic Targeting for SEO
The concepts of advanced on-page SEO are dizzying: LDA, co-occurrence, and entity salience. The question is "How can I easily incorporate these techniques into my content for higher rankings?" The truth is, you can create optimized pages that rank well without understanding complex algorithms.
12 Ways to Increase Traffic From Google Without Building Links
The job of the Technical SEO becomes more complex each year, but we also have more opportunities now than ever. Here are 12 ways you can improve your rankings without relying on link building.
Personas: The Art and Science of Understanding the Person Behind the Visit
With the erosion of keyword intelligence and the move to strings-not-things for the user, Google is pushing all marketers to focus more on their target audience. This post will teach you how to understand that audience, the future of Google, and how to build data-driven personas step by step.
How do you create and distribute content?
How much effort do you put into getting your content distributed? Do you have particular strategies for creating your content? What are they? This Community Q&A post explores this ideas and possibilities.
Does increasing word count help content rank better?
Does increasing word count automatically help content rank better? Learn what the SEO community thinks in this Q&A post.