9/5/2024
Are Google’s Helpful Content Updates affecting your rankings in unexpected ways? It might not be just about your content. As the August update rollout wraps, we can expect some winners and some losers, but why? Tom Capper digs into the data and reveals the surprising reality of what sites impacted by the Helpful Content Update have in common.
8/9/2024
In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom connects search intent to the organic funnel and how this can help guide our keyword research.
7/31/2024
Are you considering blocking AI bots? Perhaps you think it's crazy but want to see who it is. Tom Capper digs into the robots.txt of major sites to reveal who is blocking AI bots.
6/25/2024
Are you still sleeping on brand as a ranking factor? Explore Tom’s detailed takeaways from the Google leak, with an emphasis on understanding Navboost queries, a click-based ranking system, and branded search.
5/31/2024
In this Whiteboard Friday, Tom touches on four particular insights gleaned from the recent Google documentation leak.
5/24/2024
In this Whiteboard Friday, Tom takes us through the top SERP features of 2024 by both presence and Share of Voice.
5/3/2024
Learn about Google updates from this Spring in this Whiteboard Friday with Tom Capper.
4/17/2024
In this blog post, Tom discusses the reasons why you might block AI bots. In many cases, this will come down not only to your beliefs about how this technology will evolve but also to the specifics of the business involved.
4/12/2024
Unlock the secrets of SERP dominance in 2024 with Tom Capper. Discover the evolving landscape of position one rankings and seize the opportunities amidst shifting trends in SEO.
2/16/2024
How volatile are organic search rankings day to day? Tom dives into data he captured using STAT to answer this question.
12/19/2023
Explore the debate of whether or not user signals are a ranking factor in this article with Tom Capper.
9/22/2023
Discover key statistics on Google's Search Generative Experience and their impact on SEO, ads, and user experience. Dive into the latest trends shaping the search landscape in this insightful Whiteboard Friday with Tom Capper.
9/1/2023
In this Whiteboard Friday, Tom discusses why SEOs should measure their brand, with specific reference to Moz’s new metric, Brand Authority.
4/21/2023
In today’s episode, Tom goes over some of the new threats to Google from recent advances in machine learning models like ChatGPT, and how Google might react to those threats.
3/29/2023
Tom compares Google Bard and the New Bing, and shares his first impressions of both AI integrations.
2/1/2023
We’re back with another SEO recap with Tom Capper! As you’ve probably noticed, ChatGPT has taken the search world by storm. But does GPT-3 mean the end of SEO as we know it, or are there ways to incorporate the AI model into our daily work?
1/20/2023
Recorded at SearchLove London in October — in the wake of three Google updates — Tom presents a different take on core updates in this Whiteboard Friday.
1/17/2023
This post is not about the health of Google search as a product, or about the implications of improving AI products for your SEO strategy right now. (Although, I know of at least one post for this blog being written on that topic!) Instead, this post is about which of these threats, if any, actually stand a chance of unseating Google’s dominance.
12/20/2022
Have you ever wondered how Moz employees learn internally? Well, here’s your chance to get a sneak peek into never seen before, internal webinar footage with Tom Capper! Today’s topic: PageRank.
11/21/2022
Google algorithm updates seem to come in two main flavors. There are very specific updates, like the Page Experience Update, which tend to be announced well in advance, provide detailed information on how the ranking factor will work, and eventually arrive as a slight anti-climax. This post is about the other flavor: the updates announced when they're happening or have already happened with vague guidance. The kind that can have cataclysmic results for affected sites.
10/28/2022
In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Tom explains some of the common mistakes SEOs make when doing keyword research that are easy to fix, many of which come from metrics like search volume, click-through rate, and difficulty.
9/5/2022
In this post, Tom expands on one of the points from his recent MozCon talk: that a lot of time spent on keyword research is wasted. He’ll go over the three main ways SEOs turn what should be an involved piece of strategic thinking into an overly time-consuming routine, along with what to focus on instead.
6/7/2022
Google has suggested for a while now that bad links won’t have a negative impact on your site. Instead, the algorithm will supposedly be smart enough to withhold any positive benefit from such a link. Tom responds by discussing the benefits of tracking a metric like Spam Score.
5/13/2022
SEOs have powerful metrics at their disposal to measure the success of their strategies, such as Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA). But how best to use them? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Tom shows you how to think about these metrics as part of a holistic approach to your link building analysis.
2/18/2022
The promised page experience updates from Google that caused such a stir last year are far from being done, so Tom takes a look at where we are now and what happens next for the algorithm’s infamous Core Web Vitals.
1/18/2022
Today, we’re announcing the full launch of Performance Metrics, including a host of new features and improvements based on the feedback we’ve received from early adopters, as well as our own experts and data.
11/8/2021
Do links or brand authority truly correlate with ranking on the SERPs? This study of the first 20 organic results for every MozCast keyword suggests that yes, they do, but with some important considerations.
10/19/2021
Are Core Web Vitals correlated with rankings? If so, is that any more true than it was before the Page Experience Update? In the third and final post of this series, we’ll see what the data tells us about the relationship between CWV metrics and organic ranking performance.
10/12/2021
In the second post of his CWV series, Tom discusses a critical issue he believes may have undermined Google’s ability to introduce Page Experience as a major ranking factor: flimsy metrics.
10/7/2021
Tom shares some surprising data we’ve surfaced at Moz suggesting that, contrary to popular SEO belief, right now is the best time in years to be an outsider in SEO.
10/5/2021
In part one of a new series on Core Web Vitals, Tom explores what has gone wrong with Google's new metrics, where we stand now, and why you still need to care.
9/24/2021
Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, you might want to look into your crawl budget.
9/17/2021
In today's episode of Whiteboard Friday, Moz SEO expert Tom Capper walks you through cannibalization: what it is, how to identify it, and how to fix it.
8/25/2021
Internal linking is a vital SEO tactic, and usually the easiest way to build a page’s authority. But is Google still valuing your links in its mobile-first index?
8/20/2021
In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Moz’s own SEO expert, Tom Capper, talks about the untapped organic traffic opportunity that is Google Discover.
4/28/2021
It’s been nearly nine years since Google rolled out its Disavow Tool. This guide covers how and when to use it, and the potential risks and benefits.
4/20/2021
Moz’s new Performance Metrics features allow you to check Core Web Vitals and other page performance metrics for any page, thousands of URLs at a time.
2/1/2021
After the success of a 2015 article in which he shared a free forecasting tool, Tom has created a new, free spreadsheet template to forecast how your SEO efforts will affect your site traffic. In this post, he shows you how it works and how to use it, and then how to build your own (better?) version.
11/13/2020
Google Analytics data is used to support tons of important work, ranging from our everyday marketing reporting all the way to investment decisions. To that end, it's integral that we're aware of just how that data works.
3/13/2019
Why well-known brands run into SEO difficulties and 5 recommended tactics to help remedy them.
8/17/2018
Whether or not you own or market a local business, it may make sense to compete for space in the organic SERPs using local pages. Tom Capper shares a 4-point process for determining whether local pages are right for you in this week's Whiteboard Friday.
5/28/2018
Ad blockers, filters, and misplaced code can make for botched data in your analytics setup. How can you identify what's missing and estimate the impact on your traffic?
12/7/2017
Misinterpreted data can mislead even the best of us. Check out these four data analysis pitfalls common to digital marketing and some keen tips on how to think critically and avoid them.
8/14/2017
What do you do when you've hit the ranking ceiling? It's important to continue to grow your site traffic, but it can feel like a dead end once you're already at #1. Tom Capper shares some tactics for growing your audience beyond those awesome rankings.
4/25/2017
Back in Google’s early days, people navigated the web using links, and this made PageRank an excellent proxy for popularity and authority. The web is moving away from primarily link-based surfing, and Google no longer needs a proxy — so what, in 2017, is the point in links?
3/13/2017
Is branded search volume as important as link metrics when it comes to ranking? Check out the results of this correlations study and explore how these factors might influence the SERPs.
11/21/2016
If you don't have a physical presence, there are some situations where you can still rank for local queries. Learn whether you should, how to identify queries to compete for, and recommendations on how to optimize for them.
7/18/2016
Don't let data sampling lead you astray. Learn when sampling happens in GA, how accurate it is, and what you can do about it.
6/1/2015
In this post I'll pull apart four of the most commonly used metrics in Google Analytics, how they are collected, and why they are so easily misinterpreted.
11/10/2014
Out of the box, Google Analytics handles being deployed across multiple domains or subdomains extremely poorly. This is easily the most common critical problem in Google Analytics, despite its being easy to fix.
6/30/2014
Learn how to track four of the most valuable customer loyalty metrics using nothing but your wits and Google Analytics.
3/10/2014
Attribution modeling in Google Analytics is potentially very powerful in the results it can give us, yet few people use it well. This post shows you how to get started with the data you already have.