Studies on search engine ranking factors have always aroused heightened interest among digital marketers and website owners. The last correlation research held by moz and searchmetrics are by far the best examples of such studies.

What makes them outstanding is the fact that these effortful studies were performed by true professionals over impressively big amounts of data. Still, they managed to present the results in a simple and easy-to-interpret way.

Perhaps the only obvious defect is the title, which in both cases includes the phrase ranking factors. It confuses many marketers and drives them to the wrong conclusions.

Sure enough, the inclusion of ranking factors 2013 into a title instead of a less attractive and a bit boring "correlation study" forces many readers open the article. There are big chances that you are reading my post thanks to this little trick.

Anyway, these studies are great. What makes MOZ' research even better is that they thoroughly explained the methodology and published a link to the full data archive (420 mb table zipped into 160 mb archive), which allowed some crazy digital marketers including me to do their own research. So let's play with data and see what hidden gems we can find there.
Read more »

There are a sheer number of backlink opportunities available on the Web. And this may bring up a challenge both for professional SEOs and individual webmasters.

To surface the best link targets, one needs to assess SEO value of each potential linking source, check lots of different SEO metrics, and carry out their comparative analysis.

This article will tell you how to streamline the process and evaluate backlink prospects in 3 easy steps.

In the post you will find professional, yet easy-to-implement tips on how to:

• collect important SEO metrics for potential linking sites;
• roughly estimate SEO value of link targets;
• eliminate irrelevant backlink prospects;
• run comprehensive analysis of most SEO-valuable sources;
• target the best sites to get links from.

Read more »

Have you noticed how much Google's search results page changed this year?

I bet even the average user has noticed, while SEOs who habitually keep their fingers on Google's pulse are nearly feeling dizzy by now. I mean, holy carousel!

Needless to say, the way Google organizes and presents search results affects how much exposure a publisher gets from the search engine. So, we decided to do the ultimate recap of the major changes introduced to Google SERP layout in 2013.

Let's start with the changes that occurred in organic search. Read more »

Whether we like it or not, we SEOs depend on Google. Sometimes it feels like living in a tornado-plagued region: one needs to constantly watch their back, since you never know what to expect from the skies.

And, oh boy, did Google keep us on our toes this year! Heralded by the first release of the Penguin update in 2012, Google's all-out war on web spam only gained force in 2013. Several big algorithm updates have been rolled out, creating new winners and losers in the SEO camp.

So, what exactly has changed, and what impact did it have on the effectiveness of the SEO tactics we use today? Let's go over the most important milestones.

[Jan 22] Panda refresh rolled out

At the turn of the year, many SEOs observed palpable search results fluctuations. Google had kept silence for a while, but eventually announced a Panda refresh that affected 1.2% of English queries on January, 22. Read more »

After a number of Google Updates, it looks pretty challenging to focus on certain SEO factors – meta tags have become less important and backlink anchor texts must be treated with utmost care, but fortunately there’s one huge and critically important factor you can start working on today – TRUST!

Let’s review the ways of making your ecommerce site more trustworthy for search engines and users. Read more »

So you've just started your career in internet marketing and you are overwhelmed by the avalanche of blogs out there on the web.

Even if you have a desire to read them all, you might be afraid of falling into the abyss of irrelevant information, getting frustrated and wasting your precious time.

Cheer up! We've compiled a breakdown of 17 internet marketing blogs that are worth keeping an eye on!

Read more »