Posted by Cyrus Shepard This week we noticed a new feature in our Google Analytics account a set of reports called Search Engine Optimization. Google announced these reports are out of beta and now available to all users. Is Google really going to help us with our SEO? The reports are found in the new interface, under the Traffic Sources section. Setup requires a Google Webmaster account . After you connect your accounts, the data sharing is almost instant,

Posted by randfish I'm constantly recommending thought leadership as a marketing strategy and, frequently, getting a lot of pushback. It started when I was a consultant, but continues to this day. It usually goes something along the lines of: Other Person: It's easy to be a thought leader in the fields you just showed, but what are the rest of us ordinary businesses supposed to do? Me: Actually,

Posted by PhilNottingham When the iPad first came out, like many people, I didn't really get it. My initial thoughts were something along the lines of "Steve... what the hell?! You've produced a giant iPod and are somehow trying to claim its some sort of brilliant new product." I resolved never to buy one, considering it simply a folly for overly wealthy businessmen or an iPod designed for the visually impaired. 18 months later,

Posted by Aaron Wheeler It's often pretty difficult to make a short title for a webpage that offers a lot of varied or super-specific information. At SEOmoz, we say that the best practice for title tag length is to keep titles under 70 characters. That's pretty pithy considering that the title also includes your site or brand name, spaces, and other nondescript characters. So, does it matter if you go over 70 characters?

Posted by iPullRank Before I even start saying anything about keyword research I want to take my hat off to Richard Baxter because the tools and methodologies he shared at MozCon make me feel silly about even thinking about bringing something to the Keyword Research table. Now with that said, I have a few ideas about using data sources outside of those that the Search Engines provide to get a sense of what needs people are looking to fulfill right now.

Posted by chadburgess This post was originally in YOUmoz , and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. "I know before the cards are even turned over..." - Mike McDermott, Rounders When Mike McD was called by Teddy KGB in a huge No-Limit Hold'em poker pot, he didn't have to see his opponents hand to know that KGB had two aces,

Posted by Cyrus Shepard Good news to all you link builders out there. SEOmoz just updated the PRO SEO Web Directory List . The long overdue update includes over 400 directories )up from 180( separated into three categories Web, Local and Social. Wait, arent link directories dead? The practice of obtaining links from online directories has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. The stereotypes of the past are both true and dangerous. Spammy,

Posted by dohertyjf I love using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics. Sure, you can export a big chunk of data to Excel and then use some Excel wizardry to clean up the data and display it in different ways, but what if you just need to get a quick snapshot of certain traffic or trends, but the default segments don't go far enough? I've put together a few of my favorite Google Analytics Advanced Segments for you,

Posted by Benjamin Estes Recently I had a client who )generally for the enlightenment of their executive branch( wanted traffic information reported in an easy-to-digest format. The idea was that while they had consistently used Google Analytics for some time, there were people in the company who had an interest in knowing certain traffic data, but were too far from the day-to-day running of the website to be spending a lot of time sifting through Analytics reports.

Posted by Bryce Howard Howdy folks! I wish I was writing you with better news, but in the spirit of TAGFEE , we want you to be as informed as possible about your PRO membership: Due to a major PRO web crawler service outage that occurred on Friday evening, crawler-related PRO features )link analysis and crawl diagnostics( are currently disabled. However, rankings, on-page optimization, and all tools except Crawl Test are functional. So what the *bleep* happened!?

Posted by Aaron Wheeler Over 160,000 new top-level domains were registered yesterday. 160,000! This huge volume of new sites being birthed wasn't unique to yesterday; this happens every day )you can check out today's progress at DailyChanges.com (. The sites that start out pre-optimized and that continue optimizing immediately after publishing will be at an incredible advantage over those that were made without SEO in place from the get-go. Of course,

Posted by Dr. Pete As part of our quest to understand the Algorithm, we do a lot of correlation analysis here at SEOmoz. We tend to dive right into the deep end, so I thought it might be a good time to take a step back and talk about the absolute basics of correlation, including some warnings about causation. Well often say )and hear( the fallback phrase correlation does not imply causation, but people rarely dig into what that means.

Posted by randfish In two weeks, we'll be making the first spots available for the beta of a highly anticipated )and heavily requested( feature: social media analytics inside the PRO web app . The beta will launch with Facebook and Twitter, and in months to come we may add LinkedIn and Google+. For now, though, we'd love to get up to 1,

Posted by LCT There are a number of ways managers can ensure they are doing everything they can to keep their employees happy and therefore productive. Sometimes this requires the moon, and sometimes this requires a new chair. But sometimes, it only requires a good discussion and reassessment of goals - or, an hour of your time. Whats important is that you know what it takes, and how you can reach them, and that you take action.

Posted by randfish In late August, I gave a free webinar called Link Building with Open Site Explorer . As is usual, I couldn't limit myself to just a bunch of Moz tools )always feel a bit too self-promotional when I do that(, so I ended up covering more than a few others as well. I also ran through a link building methodology and process that I've seen a lot of professional firms adopting lately,

Posted by koozai_mike This post was originally in YOUmoz , and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. In my last post I explained why free stuff is link building gold , and in this update I'm giving you 99 actionable ways to gain links by giving stuff away. By the end you'll have a ton of link building ideas,

Posted by Tom Anthony A couple of months ago I got pulled in on a project for a new client, who admitted that their previous 'SEO guy' had bought them some links. Not a lot of links )they didn't have a lot!(, but it seemed that had been the extent of their SEO efforts. One of the things we needed to do was evaluate what amount of damage might have been done.

Posted by randfish Last week, we launched a new Linkscape update with data crawled and indexed in August. Several folks noticed some significant changes in this index, particularly in link counts and some PA/DA metrics. I wanted to take some time in this post to talk about Linkscape's data, our process, some of the challenges we're facing and what you can expect to see with the index over the next several months. Before we do that, here's the stats on the latest update: 45,

Posted by dohertyjf On Wednesday I presented at SMX on the panel called "Facebook, Twitter, and SEO". I was excited to speak alongside Horst Joepen )SearchMetrics(, Jim Yu )BrightEdge(, and Michael Gray )Atlas Web Services(. In my talk, I showed some information from patents that talked about how a search engine might detect a person's topical relevance and authority and use a scale on which to pass link juice from their social shares or not.

Posted by Aaron Wheeler We all have access to a lot of great metrics surrounding keywords we research and target, including data from search engines themselves, analytics suites, and other third-party companies )ourselves included(. It's one thing to gather and parse this data, but it's a whole 'nother thing to actually act on that data to drive traffic. On this week's Whiteboard Friday,