Posted by Cyrus Shepard Compare the two posts below, both written by the exact same SEO expert and each containing around the same number of words. Without knowing the subject, can you guess which post earned more links? Try 378 to 6. In addition to its visual appeal, the left post was more timely, useful and informative - all hallmarks of copywriting grace. The secrets of copywriting have existed since before the ancient Greeks.

Posted by randfish Since 2006, SEOmoz has offered a summer training event in Seattle, WA. This year, our 6th, that event is becoming something truly unique - the search marketing industry's first customer conference. Mozcon tickets are now on sale )though quite a few have already sold to those on the waiting list( for July 27-29 - if you're in the organic web marketing field, you should pull every string possible to attend.

Posted by Geoff Kenyon As increasing number of searches have local intent behind them, Google is showing Places listings in many more SERPs. This presents an opportunity to either gain a spot on the first page for many businesses or to gain more space on the first page for companies already ranking on the first page. Here are five things that Ive seen impact rankings in Google Places.

Posted by randfish Out of the many recent accomplishments that we've had, perhaps none is more exciting than the recent publicity we received from being named in Seattle's Top 10 Places to Work by Seattle Met Magazine: What do rubber band balls, coffee, cupcakes & a workspace w/ no computer have in common? The cover of this month's Seattle Met magazine! But, magazine articles aren't the only thing that should entice you to join our ragtag bunch.

Posted by Aaron Wheeler Last week, Rand discussed the importance of correlation data in general and how you can use it for SEO research. It's a lot easier to get things done if you know which tasks are high priority and which are low, and correlation data can help. This week, Rand finishes off this two-part series on correlation data by discussing some specific observations we've made about correlations between SEO tactics and their effects on rankings.

Posted by Sam Crocker 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. Hey Mozzers! A quick introduction for those of you who don't know me: my name is Sam Crocker . I work for a global media agency called OMD and am based in London.

Posted by JoannaLord Disclaimer: This post doesn't contain any awesome SEO tips, tactics, search engine revelations, or anything of that nature. Instead this post contains information on how to make some quick cash...don't hate me, k?! Can you believe it's been almost 5 months since we launched the affiliate program here at SEOmoz?! Crazy I know. I guess time flies not just when you are having fun, but also when you are making money! We now have just around 1,

Posted by randfish The local listings in Google + Bing are becoming more competitive sector by sector and for some local businesses on the web, even tactics like competitive citation analysis and tools like Whitespark's awesome local citation finder aren't enough. Here, then, are five more unique and useful ways to boost the visibility of your local site on the web, earn more Places citations + reviews and potentially appear in even the most competitive local SERPs.

Posted by randfish Today I want to share an incredibly simple yet massively powerful process for building search-optimized, "great content." There's no fancy tricks and nothing propetiary about the approach, but it is rare indeed to find an organization that follows these steps and hence, it's a way to potentially differentiate and build a competitive advantage. Step 1: Build a Survey No one knows what searchers want better than the searchers themselves,

Posted by jennita Well hello there friends, it's been a few weeks since we've chatted about our new PRO Q&A forum. To be honest, over here at the MozPlex we've been pretty blown away by the volume and amazingness of both the questions and answers going on in there. Every one of you who has jumped in deserves a huge round of applause! We've been getting great feedback and have heard from a number of people that they're now addicted to Q&A.

Posted by RobOusbey I've written before about running competitions for link building , but given the increasingly important role of Twitter in online marketing and SEO, it's time to address a popular mechanic: Twitter competitions. Historically, there were two particular reasons to run competitions through Twitter: firstly to increase the number of followers )and hence, the influence( of a Twitter account.

Posted by Aaron Wheeler One of the most helpful aids in doing SEO is knowing what factors actually affect your rankings. It seems obvious on its face, but not everyone prioritizes their SEO work with the knowledge of how changes to a site and link profile actually affect the SERPs. It's important to at least have some heuristics to use in pursuit of higher rankings, and while it's not always easy,

Posted by BryanCrow 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. A weird thing has happened as a result of panda. Something you might have expected Google's Search Quality testers to catch before rolling the update out. Due to the domain-wide nature of the signal, high-quality,

Posted by Dr. Pete Even the best advice is useless if you cant put it into play. As a consultant who started his professional life as a coder, I always try to consider the effort and cost of implementing any changes I advise. Dont get me wrong some difficult changes have to be made, despite the pain. Usually, though, there are a few easy wins that wont take days of development or thousands of dollars to put into play.

Posted by randfish Since last December's admission from Google + Bing's search teams regarding the direct impact of Twitter + Facebook on search rankings, marketers have been asking two questions: What signals are Google + Bing counting? How much influence do these social signals have on the results? Over the last few weeks, we've been collecting data and running calculations in an attempt to provide more insight into these answers. Today,

Posted by willcritchlow You might have seen some of the buzz about the recent #linklove events we ran with SEOmoz in London and New Orleans. These were single-day events focused purely on link building. In a little over a month's time, we are running our first 2-day deep-dive expert conference stateside. I've spoken at a bunch of the mozcon events in Seattle, and we thought it was about time we brought the show to the east coast . Without further ado,

Posted by Aaron Wheeler Sure, you know SEO like you know the back of your hand. You know how to linkbuild, and you know how to do keyword research. Of course you've got a lot of SEO knowledge - you've been watching these Whiteboard Fridays every week, right? =P Well, now it's time to get crackin'! Unfortunately, it feels like you never have enough time to get done all the things you know you should do.

Posted by randfish Several weeks back, I gave a very unique talk at LUISS University in Rome, Italy at the bequest of the US State Department and the Business Association Italy America )BAIA(. The audience was small, but the energy was fantastic. Italy has traditionally been a challenging place to do a tech startup, but a consortium of folks are aiming to change that. My talk was an early part of that effort, and I'm really proud to be involved. Luckily,

Posted by Paddy_Moogan A question that I get asked quite a bit is something along the lines of "what link building tools do you use?". The honest truth is that I don't use that many on client sites every day. I've certainly paid for and used quite a few over the last few years, but when I first started in SEO, I didn't have the cash to buy tools or subscribe to them. This forced me to do things manually for quite a long time,

Posted by Laura Lippay Music selection to enjoy with this post: The Unforgiven )Metallica( In October of 2007 I was standing in front of a full house at the Yahoo Sunnyvale headquarters. I was on a mission to try to explain, with very little actual evidence, that SEO is more than just site optimization. I could see what was coming down the pipeline loud and clear. SEO isnt SEO anymore, its different. SEO )especially for enterprise-level sites( equals a damn good product.