We want to help you start/manage and grow your business using innovative strategies and implementation. We have a passion for helping businesses and companies of various sizes see the same success that we have achieved.
Our skillsets are wide and varied, from business strategy, marketing, to online strategy. An increasing number of companies are turning to the internet and online media as a means to maximising their marketing reach and exposure. This is special area of focus for us and we do more than simple SEO strategies.
This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building.
All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.
My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.
Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.
I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.
Journal Entry Day One
Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results.
Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:
However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.
It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do.
Alright, so, Day One prep.
Project description
For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:
Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).
Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).
Requires Prospecting.
Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.
In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.
So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?
I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.
Preparation
There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.
1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.
2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.
3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.
4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.
5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.
Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.
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Here we are again — that time of year filled with wrap-ups and lookbacks and “best of” compilations. 2020 was a year like no other, and that’s certainly reflected in the topics covered by the blogs in the list below.
We published 170 blog posts this year (including Whiteboard Friday episodes) — not too shabby for a year rife with personal and professional challenges! We’re looking forward to what 2021 has in store, but in case you missed anything, we’ve compiled the top 25 most-read pieces from the last 12 months*. You’ll find several Whiteboard Friday episodes (past and present), local SEO tips, and advice for empathetic marketing, along with the optimistic SEO predictions for 2020 and beyond — made in pre-COVID times.
So without further ado, here are the best Moz Blog posts of 2020. Enjoy!
*The top 25 Moz Blog posts listed below were published between January 1 - December 22, 2020, and are in order by unique pageviews generated during that timeframe.
Amanda tested a variety of keywords to see which ones exhibited a trend during the initial COVID-19 outbreak, and might warrant some attention from content marketers. Here's what she found.
In the past several years, we've already seen a sea of change in how we think and execute on SEO, but the future holds even more change — and more opportunity. Explore a rundown of key SEO topics to keep an eye on in the future.
Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: February 25, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 35,414
In earlier days of search marketing, SEOs often heard the same two best practices repeated so many times it became implanted in our brains: Wrap the title of your page in H1 tags and use only one H1 tag per page. Despite assertions from one of Google's most trusted authorities that sites "can do perfectly fine with no H1 tags or with five H1 tags", many SEOs didn't believe it. So of course, we decided to test it scientifically.
How should I get listed in Google My Business if I’ve got multiple businesses at the same address? How many listings am I eligible for if I’m running more than one business at my location? Get answers to your top questions in this comprehensive FAQ.
Author: Dr. Peter J. Meyers | Published: May 14, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 24,159
The May 2020 Core Update was the second-hottest update since the August 2018 "Medic" Update. Dr. Pete takes a hard look at the numbers, including why measuring winners and losers has turned out to be a tricky business.
Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: July 17, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 21,281
There's a new ranking factor in town: Core Web Vitals. Expected in 2021, this Google-announced algorithm change has a few details you should be aware of.
SEO Scientist Britney Muller offers a seventeen-point checklist of things you ought to keep in mind for executing on modern, effective SEO. You'll encounter both old favorites (optimizing title tags, anyone?) and cutting-edge ideas to power your search strategy into the future.
Author: Joy Hawkins | Published: October 23, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 20,330
Joy and her team at Sterling Sky have come to the conclusion that there are only four things inside the Google My Business dashboard that a business owner or a marketing agency can edit that will have a direct influence on where they rank in the local results on Google.
Author: Christopher Long | Published: March 9, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 18,354
Within Google's Index Coverage report, there are many different statuses that provide webmasters with information about how Google is handling their site content. While many of the statuses provide some context around Google’s crawling and indexation decisions, one remains unclear: “Crawled — currently not indexed”. This post will help you identify some of the most common reasons this mysterious status might be affecting your website, and how to address them.
A little creativity and smart tactics can uncover high-quality link building opportunities. This week, Britney Muller kicks off a new Whiteboard Friday series on modern link building.
Author: Dr. Peter J. Meyers | Published: February 5, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 14,825
On January 22, 2020, Google started removing Featured Snippet URLs from organic listings. We take a deep dive into the before and after of this change, including its implications for rank-tracking.
Which of your competitor's keywords are worth targeting, and which can be ignored? Learn how to tell the difference in this fan favorite Whiteboard Friday.
Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: October 16, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 13,381
When you publish new content, you want users to find it ranking in search results as fast as possible. Fortunately, there are a number of tips and tricks in the SEO toolbox to help you accomplish this goal.
Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: February 7, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 12,883
What factors are affected as you improve PageRank or Domain Authority, and how? Cyrus details seven SEO processes that are made easier by a strong investment in link building and growing your authority.
Our work as marketers has transformed drastically in 2020. Our good friend Rand talks about a topic that's been on the forefront of our minds lately: how to do our jobs empathetically and effectively through one of the most difficult trials in modern memory.
Author: Alex Ratynski | Published: March 16, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 12,836
The majority of your potential customers still use Google to find local businesses near them. In fact, 80% of searches with “local intent” result in a conversion. This begs the question: “What’s the best way to catch the attention of local searchers on Google?” The answer: through Google Maps marketing.
Are you building links the right way? Or are you still subscribing to outdated practices? Britney Muller clarifies which link building tactics still matter and which are a waste of time (or downright harmful) in one of our very favorite classic episodes of Whiteboard Friday.
In rare cases, SEOs create content that generates results so far beyond what was anticipated that a single project can greatly move the needle. Kristin walks through one such instance for her team's client, ADT.
Understanding what your target audience is searching and why is more important than ever. Britney Muller shares everything you need to begin understanding and fulfilling search intent, plus a free Google Sheets checklist download to help you analyze the SERPs you care about most.
Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: August 31, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 11,850
If your websites are like most, they include a fair amount of extra "stuff" in the title tags: things like your brand name or repeating boilerplate text that appears across multiple pages. But should you include these elements in your titles automatically?
Author: Brian Gorman | Published: March 18, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 11,095
If you’ve been an SEO for even a short time, you’re likely familiar with Google Search Console (GSC). It’s a valuable tool for getting information about your website and its performance in organic search. That said, it does have its limitations. In this post, you’ll learn how to get better-connected data out of Google Search Console and increase the size of your exports by 400%.
Your choice of your primary and secondary categories contributes a lot to Google’s understanding and handling of your business. With so much riding on proper categorization, let’s empower you to research your options like a pro today!
Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: May 8, 2020 | Unique Pageviews: 10,745
Smart keyword research forms the basis of all successful SEO. Cyrus Shepard shares the basics of a winning keyword research process that you can learn and master in a short amount of time.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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The first half of this post is a quick rundown of some of the standard ways in which your conversions could be going awry.
The second half of this post — everything after “How to filter conversions with Tag Manager” is an advanced way of intelligently filtering conversions using Tag Manager and cookies.
If you’re confident you’ve already covered your bases, feel free just to skip to the advanced section, I just feel it’s important to go through some of the basic stuff before diving into more complex solutions.
Avoiding false conversions
Aside from failing to record important data, one of the best ways to screw up your analytics is to record the wrong thing and lump it in with all the times you’ve recorded the right thing.
For example: if you’re counting conversions when you shouldn’t be, that can screw up automated ad bidding, how much you value individual channels, or even how well you think your business is doing. For this post, we’ll be referring to this issue as “false conversions”.
There are a huge number of ways you can track conversions in Google Analytics, and a huge number of ways to screw it up. This post is going to focus on some of the main ways you can mess up conversions when you’re basing them on users completing a form and then landing on a thank-you page.
We’ll cover:
Some useful tools
Things to check — how might users be accidentally converting?
How to protect destination-based goals from false conversions
An ideal event-based goal approach
How to protect event-based goals from false conversions
Useful tools
The tools below will help you with some of the checks in this post.
Chrome DevTools
F12 will open Chrome DevTools (you may need to press the “function” key depending on your keyboard). You can test JavaScript in “Console”, and view active cookies in “Application”.
Google Tag Manager preview
Google Tag Manager has a new preview which will show you what happens on a series of pages over time.
Adswerve dataLayer Inspector
This plugin summarizes dataLayer information in Chrome Console.
Analytics Tracking Monitor plugin
I’ve found this plugin really useful for checking what information is being sent to GA. One nice feature is being able to block hits from actually being sent to GA while recording what would be sent.
Tag Assistant
The Chrome Tag Assistant plugin will show you what Tag Manager tags are present on the page. If you click to record the session, it’ll also give you a breakdown of everything that’s happened on each page. That said — I don’t tend to rely on the recordings as much if I have Tag Manager access, because a lot of the useful information is covered between the new GTM preview and the tracking monitor plugin.
Tag Mapper
I created a free Tag Mapper tool to make it easier to see what impact Tag Manager changes might have. If you’re planning on changing something in your GTM account, you can see what else might be impacted. Likewise, if you’ve noticed that something is broken, it can help you find the root cause.
Things to check
It can be tempting to leap straight to a catch-all solution, but if you’re recording conversions when you shouldn’t be, that could be because your website visitors are doing things they shouldn’t be.
Let’s start with a quick rundown of checks you should do to make sure you’re not making the numbers look right by just ignoring problems on your site.
1. Are you only recording conversions on thank-you pages?
To check if you’re recording conversions on pages you shouldn’t be (like, every page on your site or something) have a quick look at the Reverse Goal Path report in Google Analytics:
Conversions > Goals > Reverse Goal Path.
The first column on the left should show you where your goal conversions are taking place, unless you’re doing something unusual. If you’re seeing a bunch of pages in that column which you don’t expect, that’s a sign you need to change your criteria for conversions.
One thing to bear in mind here: if you’re recording conversions based on events rather than pageviews, and you’re seeing the wrong page appearing in that left-hand column, make sure your conversion event only ever fires after your pageview.
2. Are you linking to conversion pages in other ways besides form completions?
If you’re using any goals based on a user loading a specific page (like a thank-you page), and you know you’re only recording conversions on thank-you pages, another way you could be screwing things up is accidentally linking to those thank-you pages. If a user can click on the wrong link and end up on a conversion page, you need to fix that.
One way to check for this is using a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl the site and just see if your conversion pages appear. If they appear at all, you know that’s probably a problem. To find out how to fix the problem, you can select the offending pages and check the “Inlinks” panel, which will give you a list of where you’re linking to them.
3. Are users landing directly on thank-you pages?
A quick way to check if users are landing on your thank-you pages is to use segments. If you create a segment where the landing page is your thank-you page, you can get an idea of how often Google Analytics thinks users are landing on your conversion page.
Below, you can see a screenshot of the segment interface. I’ve set it to include any session where the first interaction was a user landing on a thank-you landing page. As you can see, that was the case for 339 sessions on this site:
Once you see how often users are landing on your thank-you pages, you can pinpoint the sources which are bringing those users to the site.
Below, I’ve applied a “lands on thank-you page” segment to the Source/Medium report, and it looks like we’re getting a bunch of direct sessions, but also some CPC sessions, and organic sessions elsewhere, too:
An important thing to bear in mind here is that this is based on what Google Analytics thinks is happening. It doesn’t necessarily mean users are landing on these pages directly from adverts. In fact, in this example, we know this isn’t always the case, and sometimes it’s a symptom of our tracking code being broken or confused in another way. Even so, it gives us some things to investigate.
For example:
Do we have adverts or other activity pointing straight to conversion pages?
Are our conversion pages indexed in Google?
Do we have a page in the middle of our conversion flow that isn’t being tracked?
Is our tracking code broken, or are users doing things on-site which would confuse GA?
3.1 Do you have adverts or other activity pointing straight to conversion pages?
I won’t be able to walk you through all of this, but all advertising platforms should allow you to check active landing pages. It’s also important to make sure that you don’t have any affiliates linking directly to conversion pages — either accidentally or maliciously — as you could be paying them a lot more than they deserve.
It may be harder to check non-paid links, like social media activity. That said, it’s worth spending the time checking. If you find you’re linking to these conversion pages by accident, you can work with relevant teams to put policies in place for that in future.
3.2 Are your conversion pages indexed in Google?
Google can be a frequent cause of conversion page issues. It’s a ravenous crawler. It’ll follow links inside and outside of your site, and if there’s a machine-crawlable link to your thank-you page, it’ll probably find it.
A quick way to check if Google has saved your thank-you pages (and might be sending users straight to them) is to search for the pages in Google.
Using “site:” filters Google results to just pages on your site. Using “inurl:” filters results to just pages that contain a specific string.
Below is an example of a check we did for one of our clients. We found that they had a lot of “thank-you” pages in the index (over 600). Some of those pages were fine, but it highlighted a number of conversion pages for us to deal with:
3.3 Is your tracking code broken, or are users doing things on-site which would confuse GA?
We don’t have time to go through all the things that could go wrong here. Some things to check are:
Are you missing tracking code on some pages? Perhaps you’re failing to record the user before they land on the thank-you page.
Do you have different versions of Google Analytics on different pages? This can, again, cause confused or split sessions.
Are you including UTM parameters on any internal links? Any website crawler should help you find this.
Do you have the wrong timezone set in GA? Sessions can’t cross “midnight” — if they do, GA will split them into two separate sessions.
Are you including important information on the thank-you page that could cause users to bookmark the page, or try to come back to it later? One solution here is to include pretty much nothing visitor-specific on the thank-you page, and assure them that you’ll email them details. It’s worth testing this to make sure it doesn’t hurt visitor confidence.
Do you have any forms, that take more than half an hour to fill out, and don’t record interactions in the meantime? You can avoid this by splitting the form into different pages and tracking when visitors fill out a form field or when they hit errors. Entirely aside from what we’re looking at in this post, but all of these things should help you make your forms more user-friendly.
Once you have all of those checked off, you can start to look at ways to improve the way you filter your conversion data.
How to protect destination-based goals from false conversions
If you have your goal type set to “Destination” in Google Analytics, that means that any time GA records a pageview for a specific page, it’ll count as a conversion.
You can make your destination goals require users to have visited other pages first by using a funnel. If you edit the goal and switch “Funnel” on, you can specify the steps leading up to the goal. This means you can make sure that you don’t record goal conversions when users land directly on your thank-you pages.
You can also use it to separate out different kinds of goal conversions. For example, if you use the same thank-you page for multiple forms, you could have one goal where the funnel involves traveling through one form page, and another goal which involves traveling through another.
This will work if you:
Have a smaller (and fairly static) number of different goals.
There is a small (and fairly static) number of ways users can legitimately complete each goal.
However, funnel steps don’t allow things like regex, so they aren’t very flexible. Also, you can only use funnels with destination-type goals. So, funnels won’t help if:
Your goals are event-based.
You have lots of ways users could reach a goal.
You have multiple teams managing the site, and it doesn’t make sense to keep track of all the ways users could reach a goal.
You should be aware that if you have a problem like internal UTMs or sessions timing out, these form funnels can mean you stop recording some conversions you should be. Seriously, make sure those problems are fixed.
The ideal approach: event-based goals
The ideal approach involves using event-based conversions rather than destination-based ones. You work with your developers so that as the users complete the form you tell GA that an event has occurred, rather than GA having to wait for a thank-you page pageview. GA then records each instance of that event as a Goal conversion.
Below is the criteria for one event-based goal conversion, if you haven’t seen them before and are struggling to picture how they’re set up. It records a conversion for this goal any time GA receives an event of the category “thank_you_page”:
The reason this is ideal is, you’ll only record a conversion when the user actually does what you want them to do. Most conversion goals based on pageviews are just us trying to guess what the user has done. That’s why you run into problems with destination-based goals, like users landing directly on your thank-you page without completing the form you wanted them to complete.
You might think it’s a bit strange to leave this “ideal” solution until so late in the post, but I’m doing so because this is often not the simplest solution. It can require the most work on the developer side, and you could be using something built into your CMS that your dev team has to edit, or even worse, you could be working with an external form solution that they have to hack their way into.
I’m bringing this solution up at this point because if you don’t already have this in place, you’ll need to convince someone to do it. Their first question may be “have you considered other options?” When you have that conversation, you can say:
We’ve made sure we’re only recording conversions on the right pages.
We’ve made sure users aren’t getting to those pages in ways we can prevent.
We’ve made sure there aren’t other issues with how we’re tracking the site.
Our conversion data is being polluted in a way we can’t prevent because we have to rely on thank-you pageviews.
We can’t filter out those conversions using Google Analytics.
The best way to make sure our data is accurate is to use events, and the most accurate events to use are ones that only occur when the user does exactly what we want them to.
If you can help me I’ll be your best friend.
An alternative to Google Analytics funnels
It could turn out that the events-based solution above is impossible. Life has its frustrations, we soldier on.
An alternative is to switch to event-based conversions anyway and use Tag Manager to handle it all yourself. Using Tag Manager and cookies, you can create a more flexible version of GA’s funnel to only send conversion events when users land on a thank-you page having visited a qualifying page. How does that work? In short:
When a user visits one of your qualifying pages, you put a cookie in their browser.
When the user loads a thank-you page, you check for the cookie, and, if it exists, you send a conversion event to Google Analytics. If it doesn’t, you don’t.
Then you clear the cookie.
That means you won’t record the following false conversions:
Users landing direct on thank-you pages.
Users accidentally clicking to thank-you pages when they haven’t visited the relevant form.
Users leaving the thank-you tab open, or bookmarking it, and clicking back to it later after their GA session expires.
The section below gets into some specific Tag Manager terminology (the most confusing being that a “Custom Event” and a “Google Analytics Event” are two different things entirely).
Some terminology to know
I’ve color coded Tag Manager terminology in blue and all Google Analytics terminology in orange, but if you find yourself getting lost, you might want to read around a bit or talk to a knowledgeable colleague or consultant.
Event: Something we send to Google Analytics to record a specific action.
Custom event: Something that happens on the web page, which we can use as part of the criteria for a Tag Manager trigger.
Trigger: A set of conditions we lay out in Tag Manager. When these conditions are all fulfilled at the same time, the trigger fires and usually activates a tag.
Tag: Something in Tag Manager that does something. This sounds vague because it could be almost anything from sending an event to Google Analytics to completely rewriting the page.
Variable: A piece of information in Tag Manager that we can easily reference in triggers, tags, or other variables.
Data layer: Structured information on the page which makes it easier to pass information to Tag manager.
How to filter conversions with Tag Manager
1. Make sure Google Tag Manager is installed on your site
If you’re switching from standard GA code to Tag Manager, make sure you don’t include both GA and Tag Manager, or you’ll double-count.
2. Tell Tag Manager every time a thank-you page is loaded
We’ll assume your thank-you pages are all the same type of page, so you can reasonably say to your dev team, “please make this change to all of our thank you pages”. Ask them to add something like the script below.
Example script <script>
window.dataLayer.push({
"event": "conversion"
});
</script>
If you need to test this process before getting the devs involved, you can try adding the code yourself by pasting it into the console using Chrome DevTools.
When the page loads, that script will add information to the data layer. Tag Manager will detect the change, and you can use it as one of the conditions for a trigger. In this case, Tag Manager would detect a Custom Event called conversion as this data is added. We’ll come back to that.
3. Tell Tag Manager every time a qualifying page is loaded
We’ll also assume there are some similarities between your qualifying pages. For one thing, they’ll probably all have a form on them. You can coordinate with your dev team to automatically add/activate a script any time one of those forms is added.
Example script <script>
window.dataLayer.push({
"event": "qualifying"
});
</script>
In this case, you’d see a Custom Event called qualifying. Again, you can test this by pasting directly into Console.
4. Whenever a user lands on a qualifying page, set a cookie
You’ll use your “qualifying” Custom Event as the criteria for a trigger. Below is a screenshot of the trigger setup:
Then you’ll create a tag which will be activated by that trigger. The tag will add some content to the page, in this case adding JavaScript (even though the tag type specifies HTML). The JavaScript will run as soon as it’s added and set a cookie for the user, that way you can pass information from one page to another.
Example script <script>
// Get time 30 minutes from now (this is because the default GA session timeout
// is half an hour and we want our cookie timeout to match)
var dt = new Date();
dt.setHours( dt.getHours() + 0.5 );
// Set a cookie called ‘qualified’ with the value being ‘true’ which expires in 30 minutes document.cookie = "qualified=true; path=/; expires="+dt; </script>
5. Get the cookie value
Use a Tag Manager variable to make sure you’re detecting the value of the cookie, which will give you the current value of your “qualified” cookie each time you check.
6. Determine whether you should filter the conversion
In step two, you created a dataLayer event that will occur on all of your final conversion pages.
Now you create a trigger which fires on your “conversion” event.
Then create a tag which is activated by that trigger, and creates another Custom Event.
Below is the custom HTML to add. It checks if your qualifying cookie is set to “true”, which shows the user has already visited a qualifying page this session. If it is true, you create another Custom Event called “create_filtered_conversion”. If it’s false, you don’t. Either way, delete the cookie by setting its expiry time to be far in the past.
Example script <script>
// When we are about to fire a conversion - check if we should.
// If we should - create an event that will trigger the conversion
// otherwise, don’t. Either way - clear the cookie
// Get variables
var isQualified =
// Check if the conversion is qualified
if (isQualified === "true"){
// If the user has a qualifying cookie
window.dataLayer.push({
"event": "conversion_confirmed",
});
} else {
// Do nothing if we have determined the conversion shouldn't fire
""
}
// Set cookie expiry in the past to clear it
document.cookie = "qualified=false; path=/; expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00";
</script>
7. Send event to GA
First you create a trigger which is waiting for that “conversion_confirmed” event.
Then you create a tag, activated by the trigger above, which sends the relevant event to GA. The specifics of the event sent to GA can be whatever you want, you just need to make sure they match the criteria of your goal in GA.
8. Don’t switch off your old conversions straight away
One nice thing about this is you can run it alongside your existing conversion tracking to see how often conversions are being filtered out. Keep your old conversion setup running for a while (how long depends on how often you get conversions).
Watch the two numbers and check if you’re filtering out loads of conversions. This check will help you spot mistakes in either the old setup or the new one.
Let me know what you think
Google Analytics will never be a perfect record of everything on your website, but these checks and processes should help you weed out some of the ways it can mislead you.
What do you think? What GA improvements do you think people have been missing? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @robinlord8. <="" strong="">
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So I wanted to talk about SEO competitive analysis because it is a really crucial part of your SEO strategy and of your SEO success. As you know, SEO doesn't work in a vacuum. So if you want to be able to improve your SEO traffic, your click-through rate, your keyword position, and eventually your conversions, you have to be able to take the space of some existing competitors.
Today I'm going to walk you through the five phases of the competitive analysis. We'll start with how to select your competitors. Then we'll discuss the keyword distribution and what is important to understand the keyword distribution. Then we'll discuss keywords and content gaps and opportunities. Then we'll move on to technical health of your website and your competitors' websites. And we'll finish with backlink analysis.
Selecting competitors
So selecting competitors is the step that is really important, especially in the B2B space, because the B2B space is very competitive, and in this space we have a few marketing giants like Oracle, AWS, Marketo, Google, that can be considered the de facto competitors for everyone.
Unfortunately, with that line of thinking, you are really missing out on a lot of interesting insights because those websites are so huge that they might rank for hundreds of thousands of keywords. Sometimes we see millions of links and have a Domain Authority of 98. So when you compare yourself to them, then it will be really difficult to actually find good nuggets of information about your website. You will always be at the bottom, and it's also really discouraging.
So I really would recommend that you are realistic about who your real competitors are. And nothing prevents you from refreshing your competitors in six months or a year from now if you feel like you've outgrown the competitors you selected in the first place.
One thing I want to highlight as well is that you should have different sets of competitors for each funnel stage. For example, let's say your target keyword list includes definitional keywords like "what is cloud computing." So your competitors for "what is cloud computing" might be ZDNet or TechTarget, for example. But let's say you want to target "cloud computing solution," then your competitors could be IBM. But the intent of the user who is looking for "what is cloud computing" versus "cloud computing solution" or "cloud computing software" is very different, so you cannot target the same competitors for each level of the stage funnel. You will miss out on a lot of good insights, too.
I also do want to point out that your competitors will be very different in different areas of digital marketing or even offline marketing. Your PPC, your paid search keywords, or your paid social keywords will not be the same as your SEO keywords. Really the best way for you to identify good competitors is just to Google your target keywords. It's really as simple as that. And then see who comes up and see what their strategies are.
Keyword distribution
So let's take a look now at keyword distribution. One thing that I want to point out is that sometimes we audit competitors that seem like they're ranking for thousands of keywords, and it's a little intimidating. But really ranking for thousands of keywords isn't the end-all be-all. You should really pay attention to their keyword distribution. Out of those thousands of keywords, how many are branded, how many are not branded?
Of course, you won't be able to rank for your competitors' branded name. So you really have to focus on the non-branded keywords. Also, those keywords, do they have a lot of volume? Are they really difficult to rank for? Are they ranking for hundreds of keywords with zero searches or 10 searches per month, for example? Are those the keywords that you really want to target? And if you do manage to take their place on the first page, is it really going to help your overall SEO strategy?
Another good thing to look at is diversification. Are your competitors only ranking for one keyword category, or are they targeting different categories? A competitor that, let's say, ranks for only branded keywords or keywords that have very little search volume or that is targeting only one specific category wouldn't be very dangerous keywords. And as we talked about earlier, you should not have the same competitors for every set of target keywords that you are working with. So make sure that you repeat this step for each set of competitors.
Keyword gaps and opportunities
Next comes the content and keyword gaps and opportunities. So in this stage, you should really think about the keyword gaps — the content gaps between you and your competitors. It's not just how often do they post or what do they target. It's also which topics do they publish on the most, or which topics do they focus on the most on their product or their solution pages. What kind of content type do they prefer? Are they publishing only blog posts? Are they publishing mostly videos, glossary pages, e-books, white papers, webinars? You really have to pay attention to that, because if all of your competitors are using blog posts and then you come in with your webinar that people need to sign up for and give you their information, then you are not going to be able to beat them at their own game. You have to kind of align to what is available in the competitive space.
Frequency is important, too. If your competitors publish twice a week on their blog or have a live demo every week, or release a new e-book every month that they will email to their customer base, you also have to align on that frequency. I would say out of the competitive analysis, this is one of the most important stages because you really have to be aware of the type of opportunities that you are going for.
And it really comes back to what we were talking about earlier with the competitor selection. You have to be realistic. It is very important to know what you're going against. Otherwise, you can keep publishing blog post after blog post after blog post, but if you have not identified the proper competitors or have not identified the proper type of content that you need to create, all of those blog posts will not amount to improved performance on your site.
Technical health
The fourth stage of the competitive analysis is technical health. So I think we can all relate to how annoying it is when you get to a website and it's full of 404 errors and the links are broken and it's too slow. It's just a really bad user experience. And Google is very smart, and they know that we don't like a bad user experience, and that if the user experience is bad, then they are going to put other websites above you.
So I did mention page speed, so don't be scared. I know it's always a huge ask to fix your page speed. But I would recommend that you use the Google PageSpeed Insights and take a look at those easier things to fix. One thing that comes up all the time is images being too big or too heavy, taking too long to load. So if that's the case, take a look at your main images and see if you can reduce the size of them. Usually, the images that are the heaviest are the ones that will be on your homepage slider or in the background on your product or solution pages. So just by fixing a few pages on your website, you could improve your page speed by several seconds, and we know it means a lot when you're a user. Definitely do those two steps with your competitors, too.
For example (you can do it with Moz or you can do an on-site crawl for any website), let's say that all your competitors are missing H1s or are missing meta descriptions or have a lot of 404 errors, then you know those are the top priorities that you need to fix. Again, think about your competitive advantage. If all your competitors' websites are really slow, then fix your page speed first. If it's a horrible user experience because you keep hitting 404 errors, fix your 404 errors first.
Backlink opportunities
The last part of the competitive audit should be the backlinks opportunities. So you can use the Moz link discovery tool to find out about everyone's lost and discovered new links. This makes link building a little more approachable than just saying, "Oh, I will target The New York Times," because by looking at people's competitors and lost and discovered websites, you can identify websites that probably know you, or know your competitor, or at least know your industry, and so may be more willing to link to you. Especially if they used to link to your competitor or are currently linking to your competitors.
Definitely do this for your own website as well, to identify the links that you have recently lost and that you can try to reacquire. I would recommend that you repeat this step on a monthly basis because you have better chances of reacquiring links that you recently lost rather than if you contact someone saying, "Oh, two years ago you used to link to me. Can you please link to me again?" You're out of that person's thoughts. So try to stay on top of it. And you might have a lot of links at the beginning, but if you do it regularly, then it's much more manageable.
Also, when we're talking about backlinks, I would advise you to look at your competitors' Spam Score and link diversity. For example, I did a competitive analysis recently and I saw that one of the competitor's Spam Score was 23%, which I had never seen before. It was so high. It was ridiculously high. So it made me happy in a way, because it seemed unachievable at first to get to the number of external links that they had, but then it turns out that the majority of their links were spammy. And with a Spam Score of 23%, I don't think they'll be able to carry on much longer.
Link diversity is also really important because you don't want all links coming from blog posts or all links coming from one type of publication. So when you think about new links that you can acquire, definitely make sure that you have different types of websites linking back to you, that they're using varied anchor text, that sort of thing, so that you don't look spammy and you don't end up with a Spam Score of 23%.
Time management
So I wanted to also talk a little bit about this pie chart over there. It was how much time you're supposed to spend on each of these steps. So the biggest one, as I mentioned earlier, was the gaps and opportunities audit. That is really where you should spend the majority of your time.
Something that is also really important is the competitor selection as I talked about earlier. If you don't have the proper competitors to audit, then you won't get the helpful type of insight that you are looking for. Technical health would be the third most time-consuming, important step of this competitive analysis.
As we talked about, good user experience is very important. And the last two that should take you a little less time are keyword distribution and backlinks. So if you're really, really pressed for time, you can forgo the backlinks for now and do it later and focus on that part of the on-site SEO.
Conclusion
So to recap, the five stages of the competitive analysis that you should include in your own competitive analysis are selecting the right competitors, auditing the keyword distribution, looking for content and keyword gaps and analysis, performing a technical check on your website and your competitors' websites, and auditing your backlinks and the competitors' backlinks.
If I can leave you with one more thing is really to be realistic. That goes back to the competitor selection and even when we're talking about distribution. Be realistic in your target keywords. Don't go for keywords that are extremely difficult if you are a website with a lower Domain Authority or you're just starting with SEO.
And don't go after those B2B giants if you're a mid-market B2B company. Know that you can refresh this at any time if you feel like you've outgrown your competitors. So thank you again for spending time to talk about competitive analysis with me. Now go and audit those competitors.
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You're tired of hearing it and I'm tired of saying it, but 2020 really has been a year like no other. SEOs and marketers around the world had to deal with their day-to-day work moving home, alongside a host of natural disasters, civil rights issues, and a pandemic that will alter our industry and global economy for years to come.
We could have held off on launching this year's reader survey, but we decided to move forward anyway because we know your work and your interests have been impacted, and we wanted to know how much.
I'm excited to share with you the results from that survey in this post. We'll go through what's changed — and what hasn't — for our readership since our last survey in 2017, and detail what those insights mean for the Moz Blog in 2021.
Methodology
We published this survey in July 2020, with questions asking for details on the professional occupations of our readers, how those readers interact with the blog, and what those readers like to see from the blog. We also included COVID-19-specific questions to gauge the pandemic's impact on our readers. The survey was shared on the blog, through email blasts, and on our social media accounts.
The percentages shared in the sections below are part of a total of 388 responses we received over four months. This is actually our first data point, showing that engagement with surveys has shifted drastically since our 2017 survey, which got nearly 600 responses in just one month. Given the interruptive nature of 2020's events, we won't let that difference discourage us from utilizing surveys in the future. Where able, I've compared 2020's results to those of the 2017 survey, to better visualize the differences.
Answers were not required for all questions, so if something did not apply to a respondent, they could leave the answer blank or choose a variety of "no opinion" or "N/A" options.
We don't typically include demographic or geographic questions in our reader surveys, but given the overwhelmingly positive response to the Gender Gap in SEO and Diversity and Inclusion in SEO surveys published this year, we will do so moving forward. Understanding the struggles SEOs and marketers face in the industry due to race, gender, and sexual orientation is imperative to understanding how to best work with and for everyone, and we acknowledge that shortcoming in this year's survey.
Who our readers are
Let's dive in. First up: the questions asking readers to tell us more about themselves.
What is your job title?
The word cloud below is an amalgamation of the top-used words in response to this question, and the size of the word correlates to the number of mentions that word received.
No surprises here: number one (by far) was "SEO". Our readership remains heavily SEO-focused in their occupations, with content marketers coming in close second.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
That said, 2020 saw an increase in respondents in the lower percentage brackets of readers who use SEO strategies in their daily work, specifically the 1-10% and 41-50% ranges. This could be due, in part, to the broadening of tasks assigned to SEOs in the marketing industry, as several respondents also mentioned a need to wear multiple hats in their organization.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The majority of our readers remain intermediately knowledgeable about SEO concepts, leaving plenty of room for new learnings across skill levels.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
While the majority of Moz Blog readers are still in-house SEOs and marketers, an interesting takeaway for us in 2020 is the increase of those who are independent consultants or freelancers from 11% in 2017 to just under 17% in 2020. We'll make sure to take that into account for our content strategy moving forward.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
Far and away, the challenge most often mentioned in response to this question was the high volume and rapid cadence of new SEO information, new tools, and algorithm updates. Readers are struggling to determine what to focus on and when, what to prioritize, and what even applies to their work. We can certainly help you with that in 2021.
Other frequently-mentioned struggles were familiar to us from previous surveys, showing us that the SEO industry still needs to address these issues, and that the Moz Blog can continue offering up content in response. These issues included:
Lack of resources and cross-functional collaboration at work.
SEO prioritization at work.
Lack of consolidation in analytics and reporting tools.
Difficulty explaining the value of SEO to bosses/clients/non-SEOs.
Difficulty explaining what SEO CAN'T do to bosses/clients/non-SEOs.
Attracting new clients and customers.
Having to wear multiple hats.
How our readers read
Keeping in mind all that context of who our readers are, we dug into preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
As an increasing number of readers rely on social media channels for their news and content consumption, the shift from frequent readers to "every once in a while" readers is not a surprise, but it is a concern. It also necessitates our incorporation of social media engagement as a top KPI for blog performance.
Given the multiple off-blog distribution methods and frequency of prompts to take this year's survey, we saw a sharp increase in "non-reader" responses from 1% in 2017 to 6% in 2020. That said, it's interesting that Moz email and social media subscribers who weren't Moz Blog readers felt motivated to take a survey entitled "Moz Blog Reader Survey". We've taken note of the topics requested from those respondents, in the hopes of encouraging more engagement with the blog.
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
While desktop and laptop computers remain the most common way to consume blog content, mobile phone use saw an increase of nearly 10 percentage points. Mobile phones have only improved in the last three years, and it's no secret that we're using them more often for actions we'd normally take on a computer. As we move toward blog CMS improvements in 2021, mobile-friendliness will be a priority.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
Across the board, we saw a decrease in the number of respondents listing other SEO news resources, as well as the first instance of a social media platform in the top 10 resources mentioned. This only serves as further evidence that social media is continuing its growth as a news and content medium.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for readers to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
While the trends regarding readers' opinions on relevancy remained similar between 2017 and 2020, we saw about a 6% dip in respondents who said 81-90% of posts are relevant to them, and increases in the bottom four percentage brackets. These results, paired with the topic requests we'll cover later, indicate a need to shift and slightly narrow our content strategy to include more posts specific to core SEO disciplines, like on-page SEO and analytics.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Given the breadth of topics on the blog and the wide range of reader skill levels, we're happy to see that, for the most part, readers find our posts just about right on a scale of too easy to too advanced.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
Similarly, it's great to see that readers continue to be satisfied with the amount of content served up in each post.
How often do you comment on blog posts?
RIP, comment section. A trend we've seen over the last several years continues its downward slope: 82% of readers who took part in the survey never comment on posts.
When asked for the reasons why they never comment, we saw some frequent responses:
"I have nothing to add."
"It wouldn't add value."
"I'm still learning."
"I never comment anywhere."
"I don't have enough time."
"Follow-up questions go unanswered."
"I read posts in the RSS feed."
"English isn't my first language."
"I'm not signed in."
Blog comment sections and forums used to be the place for online conversations, so this drop in engagement certainly signals the end of an era. However, these concerns also give us some areas of improvement, like working with our authors to be more responsive and improving comment accessibility. But sorry to those who prefer not to sign in — without that gate, we'd be inundated with spam.
In contrast, here were the reasons for commenting:
"I have a question."
"I have a strong emotional connection to the material."
"I strongly agree or disagree."
"I want to add my personal experience or advice."
We definitely encourage readers who do have questions or concerns to continue commenting!
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
Outside the responses along the lines of "No changes! Keep up the good work!" for which we thank you, these were the top asks from readers:
More thoughtful feedback from and interaction with authors.
More variety and diversity in our author pool.
More video content.
More specific case studies, tests, and experiments.
More step-by-step guides with actionable insights showing how to solve problems.
Ability to filter or categorize by skill level.
Diversity in location (outside the US).
These are great suggestions, some of which we've already begun to address!
We also received only a few responses along the lines of "keep your politics out of SEO", specifically referencing our Black Lives Matter support and our posts on diversity. To those concerned, I will reiterate: human rights exist beyond politics. Our understanding of the experiences our co-workers and clients have had is essential to doing good, empathetic work with and for them. The Moz Blog will continue our practice of the Moz TAGFEE code in response to these ongoing issues.
What our readers want to see
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
Survey respondents could choose multiple topics from the list below in their answers, and the most-requested topics look very similar to 2017. A noticeable shift is in the desire for mobile SEO content, which dropped from being requested in 33% of responses in 2017 to just under 20% in 2020.
In 2020, we certainly had more content addressing the broader marketing industry and local SEOs impacted by the pandemic. To better address the relevancy issue mentioned earlier, the top four core SEO subjects of on-page SEO, keyword research, link building, and analytics (all included in over 50% of responses) will become blog priorities in 2021.
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
The way readers want to consume those topics hasn't changed much at all in the last three years — the desire for actionable, tactical insights is as strong as ever, with the request for tools, tips, and techniques remaining at 80% of respondents. These types of posts have been and will remain our go-to moving forward.
COVID-19
Moving into our last and newest section for the survey, we asked readers questions regarding the way in which they consume SEO-related content during the COVID-19 era.
Has your consumption of SEO-related content changed due to COVID-19?
Only 34% of respondents said that their consumption of SEO-related content had changed as a result of the pandemic, a number we expected to be higher. It's encouraging to see that so many readers were able to maintain a sense of normalcy in this area.
Of those who did see a shift, these were the most common reasons why:
Job loss and job hunting
Shift to work from home and being online 24-7
E-Commerce industry shifts
Online engagement shifts and ranking and traffic drops
Loss of clients and constricting budgets
More time to read paired with less time or opportunity to implement learnings
Would any of the following topics be helpful for you as a result of COVID-19 impacts?
Along those same lines, the most popular topic requested as a result of COVID-19 impacts with 27% of responses was tracking/reporting on traffic and ranking drops. Content and marketing strategies during a crisis came in close second and third, with 24% and 21%, respectively.
The answers to these questions show us that pivoting our content strategy in spring 2020 to address areas of concern was helpful for about a third of our readers, and probably contributed to the relevancy issue for the other two-thirds. We'll continue to include these topics (on a smaller scale) until we see the other side of this crisis.
What happens next?
Primary takeaways
You asked, and we hear you. Moving into 2021, we'll be writing on more technical, core SEO topics along with issues on the business side of SEO. We'll also bebuilding out our Whiteboard Friday series to provide more fresh video content. And as always, we'll strive to provide you with actionable insights to apply to your daily work.
Given the steep decline in comment section engagement, we'll be encouraging our authors to be more responsive to questions, and to interact with you on social media. Make sure to follow Moz on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with the blog and our guest authors.
Finally, stay tuned, as next year we're planning UX improvements to our blog CMS to address usability and accessibility concerns.
My genuine thanks goes out to those readers who took the time to give us their feedback. It is immeasurably valuable to us, and we're looking forward to applying it to all the amazing content we have coming your way in 2021.
Have a safe and healthy holiday season, Moz fans, and happy reading!
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On December 3rd, Google announced that they were rolling out the latest Core Update. Initially, the bulk of the impact seemed to arrive on that date, with MozCast spiking at 112.4°F:
We measured above-average ranking flux in the three days prior to the update announcement, and a few days after the announcement, but the bulk of the flux seemed to occur on the roll-out day. (The dotted line represents the 30-day average prior to December 3rd.)
How did December 2020 compare to other Core Updates?
While technically the third largest named core update, Google's December Core Update was very close in measured impact to the May 2020 Core Update and the August 2018 "Medic" Update.
Winners and more winners
Back in May, I came down pretty hard on winners and losers reports. I don't want to discourage all core update analyses, but our rush to publish can produce misleading results, especially with multi-day updates. In May, I settled on a 7-day update analysis, comparing the full week before the update to the full week after. This helps better reflect multi-day roll-outs and also cleans up the noise of sites with naturally high flux, such as news sites (which often wax and wane on a weekly cycle).
Below are the top 20 overall winners in our MozCast data set, by percentage gain:
Note the 1-day comparisons (December 4th vs. December 2nd) vs. 7-day and in particular the orange values — five of our top 20 picked up considerably more gains after the bulk of the update hit. We also saw some reversals, but the majority of sites recorded their wins and losses early in this update.
Another challenge with winners and losers analyses is that it's easy for large percentage gains and losses from small sites to overshadow larger sites that might see much larger traffic and revenue impact. Here are the top 20 winners across the 100 largest sites in our tracking set:
Note that New York Magazine picked up considerably more gains after December 4th. Of course, for any given site, we can't prove these gains were due to the core update. While Apple's App Store was the big winner here, a handful of big sites saw gains over +20%, and eBay fared particularly well.
Winningest content / pages
We tend to focus on domain-level winners and losers, simply because grouping by domains gives us more data to work with, but we also know that many of Google's changes work at the page level. So, I decided to try something new and explore the winners among individual pages in our data set.
I stuck to the top 100 most visible pages in our data set, removed home pages, and then looked only at the 7-day (before vs. after) change. Here are the top 10 winners, along with their 7-day gain (I've opted for a text list, so that you can click through to these pages, if you'd like to explore):
It's interesting to note a number of shifts in financial services and especially around mortgage rates and calculators. Of course, we can't speak to causality. It's entirely possible that some of these pages moved up because competitors lost ground. For example, https://www.mortgagecalculator.org lost 23% of their visibility in the 7-day over 7-day comparison.
While it's interesting to explore these pages to look for common themes, please note that a short-term ranking gain doesn't necessarily mean that any given page is doing something right or was rewarded by the core update.
What trends are you seeing?
Now that the dust has mostly settled, are you seeing any clear trends? Are any specific types of pages performing better or worse than before? As an industry, analyzing Core Updates has a long way to go (and, to be fair, it's an incredibly complex problem), but I think what's critical is that we try to push a little harder each time and learn a little bit more. If you have any ideas on how to expand on these analyses, especially at a page level, let us know in the comments.
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It goes without saying that 2020 has been a wild ride. If you're like me, you've missed some exciting news or even taken some time away from all things digital when it felt like the world was just too much. At Moz, we created a lot of helpful content in 2020, publishing community resources, reports, and guides across topics like local SEO analytics, competitor analysis, keyword research, campaign management, and more. With all that coming your way, there’s bound to be some oversight. Here's a recap of what you might have missed in the chaos that has been 2020.
The State of Local SEO Industry Report 2020
The State of Local SEO Industry Report 2020 provides a snapshot of local SEO — both before and during COVID-19 — helping you understand the trends, ideas, and biggest challenges shaping your work in the new decade.
We found that 43% of respondents thought there weren't enough quality resources to train teams and clients. That insight led to some of the resources we created this year, and those we’ll be launching in early 2021.
How to Rank on Google
The freshly updated How to Rank on Google 25-step master checklist walks you through how to rank a page, from page ideation all the way to traffic pouring into your Google Analytics account. This framework for beginner to intermediate SEOs provides everything you need to get started.
The Keyword Research Master Guide
The Keyword Research Master Guide helps you understand exactly what content to create to best help achieve business goals and target relevant traffic. This guide provides concrete keyword research workflows that act as a practical place to start, and introduces intermediate and advanced SEO techniques that will help you step up your keyword game.
The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet
An enhanced web dev cheat sheet, this updated resource has been downloaded tens of thousands of times by SEOs and developers alike, to better align on the goals between both types of practitioners. It’s the go-to tool to explain technical and on-page best practices, and is easy to digest by all.
Other content you may have missed
Our favorite Marketing Scientist, Dr. Pete, published deep, technical research on Youtube and Google to understand how video is served in the SERP (shocker — we learned that there’s little room for competition when it comes to video and Google), as well as Google Core Update analyses to understand the impact and implications of Google’s algorithm changes.
In addition, we transitioned MozCon to a virtual platform, doubling the number of attendees of previous years and providing the most cutting edge insights and strategies from leading marketers across the country.
Moz’s commitment to the digital marketing community has helped the company thrive in a challenging year, but community-building means more than just business success. Moz has taken stances on diversity, equity, and inclusion by making a statement and taking action to support the Black Lives Matter movement, publishing diversity and gender in SEO reports with Nicole DeLeon of North Star Inbound, and making historic changes to the board of directors with the addition of Asia Orangio and Tara Reed.
As we turn the corner into 2021, we expect the challenges to continue, but remain hopeful that things will improve. No matter what surprises the new year has in store, we’ll be here to support you with resources and tools to help you improve your SEO proficiency and reach your goals. You’ll see a new course from Moz Academy, a guide on local SEO, and much more. If you have any suggestions on what resources would be helpful to you, please let us know in the comments below.
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