Win a Ticket + Lodging to MozCon 2018!

Posted by ErinMcCaul

Have you been wanting to come to MozCon but just can’t swing the budget? Want to take a selfie with Roger, meet like-minded friends at our afterparties, and learn from leading industry experts? I’m thrilled to announce that you can do it all by winning a free ticket to join us at MozCon this July!

I’m one of the behind-the-scenes house elves who helps make MozCon happen, and I’m here to tell you everything you need to know about entering to win!

To enter, just submit a unique piece of content telling us why we should send you to MozCon by Sunday May 6th at 5pm PDT. Make sure your entry is both original and creative — the Moz staff will review all submissions and vote on the winner! If you’re chosen, we’ll pick up the tab for your registration and accommodations at the Grand Hyatt. You’ll also have a reserved VIP seat in our front-row, and an invite to mix and mingle at our pre-event MozCon speakers’ dinner!

Without further ado, here’s the scoop:

Step 1: Create!

Create a unique, compelling piece of content telling us why you want to come to MozCon. Past ideas have included:

• Drawings
• Videos (must be one minute or less)
• Blog posts
• Original songs
• Books
• Slide decks
• Anything else you can cook up!

Don’t feel limited by these examples. Is this the year we’ll see a Lego Roger stop-motion film, a MozCon-inspired show tune, or Roger-themed sugar cookies? The sky's the limit, my friends! (But think hard about trying your hand at those cookies.)

Step 2: Submit!

Once you’re ready to throw your hat in the game, tweet us a link @Moz and use the hashtag #MozConVIP by Sunday May 6th at 5pm PDT. Make sure to follow the instructions, and include your name and email address somewhere easily visible within your content. To keep things fair, there will be no exceptions to the rules. We need to be able to contact you if you’re our lucky winner!

Let’s recap:

• The submission deadline is Sunday May 6th at 5pm PDT.
• Mozzers will vote on all the entries based on the creativity and uniqueness of the content
• We’ll announce the winning entry from @Moz via Twitter on Friday, May 11. You must be able to attend MozCon, July 9–11 2018, in Seattle. Prizes are non-transferable.
• All submissions must adhere to the MozCon Code of Conduct
• Content is void where prohibited by law.
• The value of the prize will be reported for tax purposes as required by law; the winner will receive an IRS form 1099 at the end of the calendar year and a copy of such form will be filed with the IRS. The winner is solely responsible for reporting and paying any and all applicable taxes related to the prizes and paying any expenses associated with any prize which are not specifically provided for in the official rules.

Our lucky winner will receive:

• A free ticket to MozCon 2018, including optional VIP front-row seating and an invitation to our speakers’ dinner (valued at $1,500+)
• Accommodations with a suite upgrade at the Grand Hyatt from July 8–12, 2018 (valued at $1,300+)

Alright, that’s wrap. I can’t wait to see what you folks come up with! Happy creating!

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Is There An SEO Benefit Of Using The Parent Page Feature In WordPress For Subcategories?

In episode 179 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked if there’s an SEO benefit of using the parent page feature in WordPress for subcategories.

The exact question was:

Question about site structure: I’m using virtual silo structure. If I have a page that links to one or more subcategory pages, is there SEO benefit to using the parent page feature in WordPress for this?

Is There An SEO Benefit Of Using The Parent Page Feature In WordPress For Subcategories? posted first on your-t1-blog-url

Does The Number Of Reviews Matter When You Want To Rank A Difficult Key Phrase In Local Search?

In episode 178 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked whether the number of reviews matters when trying to rank a difficult key phrase to page one in local search.

The exact question was:

Hey guys, I have a client with a seemingly difficult key phrase to get to page one.
It is (I replaced the two keywords with “”Keyword””) Keyword Keyword Minneapolis MN when I search for this using a Private Window we end up as #10 of page TWO. However if I put quotes around it, “”Keyword Keyword Minneapolis MN”” we are on page one plus it’s in the Maps Pak. We rank #3, #4, and a YouTube video ranks #9.

I’ve done the first column of a silo on the website, Siloed the videos together, even have 3 levels of IFTTT put together, but still cannot seem to move the website up to page one for this key phrase. And another detail, the client has 7, 5 star reviews compared to his competition’s 87, 5 star reviews. (Would that make a difference?)

What the heck? Please help me I cannot afford to lose more hair! (BTW I am a Syndication 2.0 member)

Okay I’ll stop and take a deep breath now.
Edit Addition: I have noticed that one of our main competitors is EVERYWHERE on every type of keyword search I try. Always on page one. (The company with 87, 5 star reviews, they also have pages on their site for almost every suburb, “”Keyword Keyword suburbcity MN””

Does The Number Of Reviews Matter When You Want To Rank A Difficult Key Phrase In Local Search? posted first on your-t1-blog-url

How We Got a 32% Organic Traffic Boost from 4 On-Page SEO Changes [Case Study]

Posted by WallStreetOasis.com

My name is Patrick Curtis, and I'm the founder and CEO of Wall Street Oasis, an online community focused on careers in finance founded in 2006 with over 2 million visits per month.

User-generated content and long-tail organic traffic is what has built our business and community over the last 12+ years. But what happens if you wake up one day and realize that your growth has suddenly stopped? This is what happened to us back in November 2012.

In this case study, I’ll highlight two of our main SEO problems as a large forum with over 200,000 URLs, then describe two solutions that finally helped us regain our growth trajectory — almost five years later.

Two main problems

1. Algorithm change impacts

Ever since November 2012, Google’s algo changes have seemed to hurt many online forums like ours. Even though our traffic didn’t decline, our growth dropped to the single-digit percentages. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t break through our “plateau of pain” (I call it that because it was a painful ~5 years trying).

2. Quality of user-generated content

Related to the first problem, 99% of our content is user-generated (UGC) which means the quality is mixed (to put it kindly). Like most forum-based sites, some of our members create incredible pieces of content, but a meaningful percentage of our content is also admittedly thin and/or low-quality.

How could we deal with over 200,000 pieces of content efficiently and try to optimize them without going bankrupt? How could we “clean the cruft” when there was just so much of it?

Fighting back: Two solutions (and one statistical analysis to show how it worked)

1. "Merge and Purge" project

Our goal was to consolidate weaker “children” URLs into stronger “master” URLs to utilize some of the valuable content Google was ignoring and to make the user experience better.

For example, instead of having ~20 discussions on a specific topic (each with an average of around two to three comments) across twelve years, we would consolidate many of those discussions into the strongest two or three URLs (each with around 20–30 comments), leading to a much better user experience with less need to search and jump around the site.

Changes included taking the original post and comments from a “child” URL and merging them into the “master” URL, unpublishing the child URL, removing the child from sitemap, and adding a 301 redirect to the master.

Below is an example of how it looked when we merged a child into our popular Why Investment Banking discussion. We highlighted the original child post as a Related Topic with a blue border and included the original post date to help avoid confusion:

This was a massive project that involved some complex Excel sorting, but after 18 months and about $50,000 invested (27,418 children merged into 8,515 masters to date), the user experience, site architecture, and organization is much better.

Initial analysis suggests that the percentage gain from merging weak children URLs into stronger masters has given us a boost of ~10–15% in organic search traffic.

2. The Content Optimization Team

The goal of this initiative was to take the top landing pages that already existed on Wall Street Oasis and make sure that they were both higher quality and optimized for SEO. What does that mean, exactly, and how did we execute it?

We needed a dedicated team that had some baseline industry knowledge. To that end, we formed a team of five interns from the community, due to the fact that they were familiar with the common topics.

We looked at the top ~200 URLs over the previous 90 days (by organic landing page traffic) and listed them out in a spreadsheet:

We held five main hypotheses of what we believed would boost organic traffic before we started this project:

1. Longer content with subtitles: Increasing the length of the content and adding relevant H2 and H3 subtitles to give the reader more detailed and useful information in an organized fashion.
2. Changing the H1 so that it matched more high-volume keywords using Moz’s Keyword Explorer.
3. Changing the URL so that it also was a better match to high-volume and relevant keywords.
4. Adding a relevant image or graphic to help break up large “walls of text” and enrich the content.
5. Adding a relevant video similar to the graphic, but also to help increase time on page and enrich the content around the topic.

We tracked all five of these changes across all 200 URLs (see image above). After a statistical analysis, we learned that four of them helped our organic search traffic and one actually hurt.

Summary of results from our statistical analysis

• Increasing the length of the articles and adding relevant subtitles (H2s, H3s, and H4s) to help organize the content gives an average boost to organic traffic of 14%
• Improving the title or H1 of the URLs yields a 9% increase on average
• Changing the URL decreased traffic on average by 38% (this was a smaller sample size — we stopped doing this early on for obvious reasons)
• Including a relevant video increases the organic traffic by 4% on average, while putting an image up increases it by 5% on average.

Overall, the boost to organic traffic — should we continue to make these four changes (and avoid changing the URL) — is 32% on average.

Key takeaway:

Over half of that gain (~18%) comes from changes that require a minimal investment of time. For teams trying to optimize on-page SEO across a large number of pages, we recommend focusing on the top landing pages first and easy wins before deciding if further investment is warranted.

We hope this case study of our on-page SEO efforts was interesting, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have in the comments!

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!

Should Marketers Use Bitly Or Ow.ly Now That Google Will Be Transitioning Its URL Shortener?

In episode 178 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked if a Firebase Dynamic Link would be okay for marketers or whether they should use Bit.ly or Ow.ly now that Google will be transitioning its URL shortener.

The exact question was:

Thank you guys for all the help you give us here. Now that google will be transitioning the google URL shortener what the heck is a Firebase Dynamic Link and will it be good for us marketers or should we use Bitly or Ow.ly and call it a day.

Should Marketers Use Bitly Or Ow.ly Now That Google Will Be Transitioning Its URL Shortener? posted first on your-t1-blog-url

The SEO Quick Fix: Competitor Keywords, Redirect Chains, and Duplicate Content, Oh My!

Posted by ErinMcCaul

I have a eight-month-old baby. As a mom my time is at a premium, and I’ve come to appreciate functionalities I didn’t know existed in things I already pay for. My HBONow subscription has Game of Thrones AND Sesame Street? Fantastic! Overnight diapers can save me a trip to the tiny airplane bathroom on a quick flight? Sweet! Oxiclean keeps my towels fluffy and vanquishes baby poop stains? Flip my pancakes!

Moz Pro isn’t just a tool for link building, or keyword research, or on-page SEO, or crawling your site. It does all those things and a little bit more, simplifying your SEO work and saving time. And if you’ve run into an SEO task you’re not sure how to tackle, it’s possible that a tool you need is right here just waiting to be found! It’s in this spirit that we’ve revived our SEO Quick Fix videos. These 2–3 minute Mozzer-led tutorials are meant to help you get the most out of our tools, and offer simple solutions to common SEO problems.

Take Moz Pro for a spin!

Today we’ll focus on a few Keyword Explorer and Site Crawl tips. I hope these knowledge nuggets bring you the joy I experienced the moment I realized my son doesn’t care whether I read him The Name of the Wind or Goodnight Moon.

Let’s dive in!

Fix #1 - Keyword Explorer: Finding keyword suggestions that are questions

Search queries all have intent (“when to give my baby water” was a hot Google search at my house recently). Here’s the good news: Research shows that if you’re already ranking in the top ten positions, providing the best answers to specific questions can earn you a coveted Featured Snippet!

In this video, April from our Customer Success Team will show you how to pull a list of keyword phrases that cover the who, what, where, when, why, and how of all the related topics for keywords you’re already ranking for. Here’s the rub. Different questions call for different Featured Snippet formats. For example, “how” and “have” questions tend to result in list-based snippets, while “which” questions often result in tables. When you’re crafting your content, be mindful of the type of question you’re targeting and format accordingly.

Looking for more resources? Once you’ve got your list, check out AJ Ghergich’s article on the Moz Blog for some in-depth insight on formatting and optimizing your snippets. High five!

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Fix #2 - Site Crawl: Optimize the content on your site

Sometimes if I find a really good pair of pants, I buy two (I mean, it’s really hard to find good pants). In this case duplicates are good, but the rules of pants don’t always apply to content. Chiaryn is here to teach you how to use Site Crawl to identify duplicate content and titles, and uncover opportunities to help customers and bots find more relevant content on your site.

When reviewing your duplicate content, keep a few things in mind:

• Does this page provide value to visitors?
• Title tags are meant to give searchers a taste of what your content is about, and meant to help bots understand and categorize your content. You want your title tags to be relevant and unique to your content.
• If pages with different content have the same title tag, re-write your tags to make them more relevant to your page content. Use our Title Tag Preview tool to help out.
• Thin content isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s still a good opportunity to make sure your page is performing as expected — and update it as necessary with meaningful content.
• Check out Jo Cameron’s post about How to Turn Low-Value Content Into Neatly Organized Opportunities for more snazzy tips on duplicate content and Site Crawl!

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Fix #3 - Keyword Explorer: Identify your competitors’ top keywords

Cozily nestled under a few clicks, Keyword Explorer holds the keys to a competitive research sweet spot. By isolating the ranking keywords you have in common with your competitors, you can pinpoint their weak spots and discover keywords that are low-hanging fruit — phrases you have the content and authority to rank for that, with a little attention, could do even better. In this video, Janisha shows you how targeting a competitor’s low-ranking keywords can earn you a top spot in the SERPS.

Check out all that overlapped opportunity!

For a few more tips along this line, check out Hayley Sherman’s post, How to Use Keyword Explorer to Identify Competitive Keyword Opportunities.

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Fix #4 - Site Crawl: Identify and fix redirect chains

Redirects are a handy way to get a visitor from a page they try to land on, to the page you want them to land on. Redirect chains, however, are redirects gone wrong. They look something like this: URL A redirects to URL B, URL B redirects to URL C… and so on and so forth.

These redirect chains can negatively impact your rankings, slow your site load times, and make it hard for crawlers to properly index your site.

Meghan from our Help team is here to show you how to find redirect chains, understand where they currently exist, and help you cut a few of those pesky middle redirects.

Looking for a few other redirect resources? I’ve got you covered:

• Moz's Learning Center: Redirection
• 301 Redirects – How to Redirect Your Website
• Search Console Help: Change page URLs with 301 redirects

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Alright friends, that’s a wrap! Like the end of The Last Jedi, you might not be ready for this post to be over. Fear not! Our blog editor liked my jokes so much that she's promised to harp on me to write more blog posts. So, I need your help! Find yourself facing an SEO snafu that doesn’t seem to have a straightforward fix? Let me know in the comments. I might know a Moz tool that can help, and you might inspire another Quick Fix post!

Get a free month of Moz Pro

If you’re still interested in checking out more solutions, here’s a list of some of my favorite resources:

• The SEO Learning Center: If you need a refresher on SEO basics or need to do a gut-check, the Learning Center has your back.
• Moz SEO Training: Whether you need to master your next skill or get your team ramped up on the basics, live training courses can help.
• Our Next Level blog series, focused on helping you solve SEO problems with Moz Pro. We cover lots of topics:
  • How to Target Multiple Keywords with One Page
  • I've Optimized My Site, But I'm Still Not Ranking—Help!
  • Geomodified Searches, Localized Results, and How to Track the Right Keywords and Locations for Your Business
  • Diving for Pearls: A Guide to Long-Tail Keywords
  • Presenting Your Findings: How to Create Relevant and Engaging SEO Reports

Stay cool!

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!

Can We Effectively Use SerpSpace PBN Domain Package For Money Sites?

In episode 178 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked if it is possible to effectively use SerpSpace PBN domain packages for money sites.

The exact question was:

I noticed SERP space has a PBN domain package. Since those domains will be niche relevant and thoroughly vetted, could they also be used effectively as money sites (I’m thinking affiliate site)? Or is it better to stick with a new domain that’s never been used? Thank you!

Can We Effectively Use SerpSpace PBN Domain Package For Money Sites? posted first on your-t1-blog-url