Posted by great scott! Test, test, test! That's the mantra these days. Conversion Rate Optimization is the buzzword on everybody's lips )and tweets(. So why are we telling you NOT to test? Well, we're not, we're just saying to be smart about it. People often get a testing platform ready to roll and then start obsessing over just how intricate they can get with multi-variate tests...it's a walk before you crawl scenario.

Posted by Glen Allsopp 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. Despite my love for SEO and my presence in the industry for almost 5 years, I have to admit that I barely followed the latest trends over the last 12 months.

Posted by richardbaxterseo Technical problems, errors and surprise releases are all regular features in the day to day management of a website when youre an SEO. Theres no doubt that maintaining a quick, error free and well optimised site can lead to long term traffic success. Here are some of my tips for regular checks you should be doing to stay on top of your website to maximise your search engine performance.

Posted by jennita Note: This post will make you smile, possibly even laugh. It won't however teach you much about SEO. You've been warned. Last week I attended SMX West in Santa Clara, California and took a couple flip video cameras along. I thought it would be fun to do "man on the street" interviews, somewhat along the lines of Jay Leno's " Jaywalking " episodes on The Tonight Show. Another great idea I had was to employ the help of Dana Lookadoo from Yo! Yo!

Posted by randfish WARNING: Get ready to read with this one. There aren't a ton of fun graphics or quick bullet points, but I do promise that if you read through, you'll feel much more knowledgable about the topic, and likely get more value from organizing, speaking or attending an event. Over the past 6 years, I've attended nearly 100 conferences on search, online marketing, startups and technology. I've given presentations or sat on panels at nearly all of them.

Posted by randfish Despite being a seemingly simple topic, this one seems to stymie even experienced SEOs. There's a natural conflict that creates the issue - the more keywords you target on a single page, the less you need to link build and optimize )for both search engines and user experience/conversion rate( on many pages. To answer this question in a logical and truly optimal fashion,

Posted by RobOusbey Search Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics - all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, I've shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have been seen. If you're considering an SEO campaign for your site, or are trying to persuade someone else to invest in internet marketing, I hope this post will help demonstrate the potential of internet marketing.

Posted by randfish This week, despite still being seriously under the weather )see this week's sad WB Friday (, I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although I'd wanted to put more work in and deliver a better presentation, I received some very kind words afterward and requests from folks to share the deck via the blog. Before I embed the actual deck, though,

Posted by great scott! Sure, you use Twitter as a social media tool, but have you ever considered it as an SEO research tool? No? Well watch and learn this week to find out how you can harness it in a whole new way. Now that social signals )particularly Twitter( are becoming more important in the engines, they can help you pinpoint when a keyword is going to trip the 'Query Deserves Freshness' switch. If you can figure that out,

Posted by Danny Dover Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer . Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting , we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO software. We want to thank all of you who provided feedback on the first version of the tool for your guidance and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future. Now enough with the chit chat, on to the new features!

Posted by jennita SMX West 2010 kicked off with quite a bang )or was that a yell?(. Since Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer was the keynote, people arrived early to ensure good seats. The music playing before it started was amazing, it helped to create an excitement in the room that I really had never felt before a keynote before. I had attempted to save a seat for someone up front, but there was just too much demand and had to give it up.

Posted by randfish This post is short and easy to follow, just like the tactic it recommends. Most everyone who optimizes for Google Local )aka Google Maps( is familar with David Mihm's excellent and oft-referenced Local Search Ranking Factors . In that document, and in many places where local results are analyzed, it's clear that getting your business/website into more listings, in a consistent fashion is a very good thing . Yet, somehow,

Posted by randfish We've been getting a lot of questions in Q+A and on the road at events like last week's Miva Merchant conference , Online Marketing Summit and the YCombinator conference about how to properly paginate results for search engines. In this post, we'll cover the dangers, opportunities and optimization tactics that can best ensure success. The best part? These practices aren't just good for SEO, they're great for usability and user experience too!

Posted by RobOusbey This is a graph of organic traffic for a theoretical site - they might be in an industry such as print advertising, construction equipment or VHS rental. The decline in traffic is pronounced and serious. A critical distinction when looking at a graph like this is whether the site's performance is increasingly worse than the competitors, or whether the whole industry is in decline.

Posted by great scott! This week, we've got a couple of newcomers to Whiteboard Studios! Our very own Jen Lopez and Danny Dover )whom you should know well thanks to Jen's Meet the Mozzers post( are pinch-hitting for our globe-trotting CEO. Let's all give them a big welcome. We did a PRO Site Review Webinar last week and noticed a few SEO issues that are all-too-common. So, in this week's Whiteboard Friday,

Posted by jennita Over the past few months, we've announced a number of exciting changes here at the mozPlex. Some of those include becoming focused on our software , new SEO tools and a cultural change with our TAGFEE Tenets . With that, we're committed to being transparent and authentic and feel we've done a great job keeping the SEOmoz community up to date on many of these changes. However, one area we've been slacking is in ensuring that our community knows who we are,

Posted by neopunisher 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. After Nick announced the free Linkscape API , I decided to write a SEO extension for chrome. I wanted to focus on all aspects of SEO and not just linking )like some other extensions( as well as a fast clean UI.

Posted by willcritchlow The good news is that tomorrow )Wednesday 24th Feb(, at 8.30am PST )11.30am EST / 4.30pm GMT(, I am going to be joined on the next Distilled conference call by Richard Baxter as we discuss "how to get the most from your SEO". The even better news is that it is totally free )as long as you register in time(. If you would like to join us on the call,

Posted by randfish Last week, while in London, I received an email from Paul Graham , whom I've long admired, possibly even idolized a bit. He asked if I was available to come speak at a YCombinator SEO event in Mountain View. Tonight, I presented at that evented and thought I'd share my experiences, recommendations and yes, my presentation. Not everything that was discussed is public, in fact, much of it is "classified" at YC's request. However,

Posted by Tom_C This post was inspired by Rand. If I'm honest, I'm not sure how many of my posts aren't inspired by Rand... Specifically however it was this tweet which set the wheels in motion )if ever so slowly(: The link that Rand twittered was this one to the Financial Times . It's a story about checklists. Yeah, *yawn* right? Well not quite - you see these checklists, used by all kinds of people from pilots to doctors,