Anyone who’s been in internet marketing long knows the feeling: you go to check your rankings one day and something’s different. Your pulse quickens, a cold sweat spreads across your brow, your eyes widen…they’re gone. Your precious rankings are gone! Where did they go? What happened?

Penalties. They can bring the strongest of us to tears. But sometimes we can be too quick to blame a penalty on sudden changes in our rankings…

You see an amazing story somewhere in the vastness of  the web and you think to yourself: "Man, that would be perfect for my readers! It’d get great traffic and my customers/advertisers would love it!"

Now, how do you syndicate that content on your site (fairly and legally) without running into the traditional problems of duplicate content, link-back requirements, etc…all things that can really hamper the likelihood of SEO traffic for the content?  Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday to learn some great strategies for getting maximum impact out of content you license (and watch this older one if you have content you want to license out)…

Is it better to practically force your users to make the desired conversion action, or is it better to give them a choice? How about a choice between two desired conversion actions?  How about giving them choice, but making the more preferred one easier as well as anchoring it in social proof that makes it still more compelling?  It’s a powerful way to increase conversion rates and funnel users on your sites, and it’s a concept covered in the book Nudge, by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein…

Rand’s in Jolly Ol’ England this week, so I decided to share a preview from our upcoming DVD Training Series, "Tips, Tricks & Tactics: Volume 1," coming out in November.

We filmed this series during our recent seminar in Seattle and the response was amazing. One of the most popular sessions was Conductor CEO, Seth Besmertnik’s, presentation on "How to Win SEO Budget and Influence Your CMO…

We don’t talk about email marketing on the blog much, but any of you working in the internet marketing space (and that’s likely all of you) probably know that it’s still one of the most effective marketing channels out there. 

We’ve been fortunate enough over the years to partner with ExactTarget for our email marketing services and as they’ve grown and improved their offerings they constantly make me feel terrible…

Wondering how to win rank and influence users? Well, if you have multiple pages from one domain ranking in the same SERP, a little bit of optimization may help you get a coveted indented listing.  You know, one of those cool situations where two or more of your pages show up right on top of each other in the engines. While this is a bit of an advanced tactic, it can be extremely powerful for driving traffic…

It’s a common dilemma: When the engines constantly cry ‘content! content! content!’ you can start to wonder, "just how am I supposed to keep generating all of this unique content?"  A daunting challenge to be sure, especially for large sites with high-volume pipelines to fill.

In this week’s Whiteboard Friday Rand takes a look at the three major content classifications - editorial, machine-built, and user-generated - to help you understand what exactly qualifies as "unique" content, why it’s important to your site, and strategies you can use to generate it…

Straight from the Seattle Lunch 2.0 meetup at SEOmoz on August 14th comes this light-hearted look at raising venture capital.  SEOmoz CEO, Rand Fishkin, shares his experiences with raising capital with an amusing (but strangely appropriate) comparison to the dating scene.

SEOmoz emerged from our first round of VC funding with a profitable and growing business. Now seeking a B round, we get to see how things change with company size, shifting market dynamics, and a different pool of interested investors…

This week, Rand is joined by one of our in-house data geniuses, Ben Hendrickson, to talk more about some of our recently released correlation data to support guidelines for SEO best practices.

While correlation doesn’t always equal causation, it’s still very interesting to look at the attributes and features high ranking sites tend to have in common.  Comparing this data to known and accepted SEO practices can help to reinforce widely held notions or give us some insight into how the algorithms are changing; both important areas of analysis for successful online marketers…

It’s that time again and we’re happy to announce the 2009 SEOmoz PRO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics seminar is now on sale. Last year, we sold out within hours. This year - with a line-up including Todd Malicoat, David Mihm and Vanessa Fox - tickets will go even quicker.

The PRO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics seminar isn’t a conference. There won’t be any sales pitches or waffle - just clear, actionable advice on the latest tips, tricks and tactics that advanced SEOs are using…

This week’s Whiteboard Friday addresses everybody’s new favorite topic: Google’s "new" treatment of nofollow and how it creates a massive reservoire of lost link juice.  Everybody under the sun has written about this (SEOmoz included) in the last couple of weeks, so we decided to do a little roundtable (squareboard?) pow-wow on how best to deal with the problem.

Rand is joined by Nick Gerner, Ben Hendrickson, and Lindsay Perkin-Wassell to discuss possible solutions for pluging this nofollow leak…

Local Search guru and author of the new Local Search Ranking Factors, David Mihm, stops by Whiteboard Studios to discuss how business owners can get listed in Google’s Local Search Results.

Despite how powerful local and geo-targeted search has become, only a tiny fraction of businesses actually claim and verify their listing with Google (via the Google Local Business Center). The vast majority of listings are cobbled together from crawl data and information from trusted sources like the Better Business Bureau and other business directories such as InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze…

Acquiring users and getting them to take an action on your site is the absolute core of web marketing. Whether that action is making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a demo…it doesn’t matter, if you’re doing business online, your job is to acquire users and get them to take an action.

There are a million ways to go about this process, but it’s crucial for yourself and your clients to understand the funnel (particularly in terms of search patterns) that takes a potential customer from a vague notion of a want/need to converting on your site…

We here at SEOmoz have been fortunate enough to work with some incredible consulting clients over the years. We’ve achieved some amazing results and built some wonderful relationships with many of them. We’re often asked about what it takes to really develop a standout SEO consulting brand and, since it’s an oft overlooked topic, that’s exactly what we’ll cover in this week’s Whiteboard Friday…

How deep or flat your site is can have a lot to do with how thoroughly indexed it is. Minimize the number of "clicks" it takes the bots to get to your content, and the more likely it is to get indexed.

In this video we’ll look at some simple strategies to help flatten out even the most labyrinthine sites. 

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Flat Site Architecture from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo…

Ever wonder why it seems like certain SERPs are constantly up to date, when other take eons to get any movement?  It often has to do with QDF, or Query Deserves Freshness; a component of the Google algorithm that pays special attention to queries that may need frequent updating, such as breaking news stories.

When the engines recognize that the "best" results for a certain search may change drastically from day-to-day, or moment-to-moment, they may mark the search QDF, which will help promote new, related content from trusted sources to the top of the SERP, even if that content doesn’t yet have any links…

A couple of weeks ago, Rand mentioned "awesome links" in the Buckets & Buckets of Keywords Whiteboard Friday.  Since then we’ve had several people ask us exactly what makes a link awesome?  Well, never fear, that’s what we’ll discuss today: what makes a link particularly high-quality and powerful, and how one can go about getting these radical links.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - How to Get Awesome Links from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo…

Once again, Business Dog is on top of things: He told me to post a quick reminder that the special, deeply discounted Pre-Sale Introductory Offer (with FREE Shipping) on the new Advanced SEO Training Series DVD Set and the super-limited Ultimate SEO Training Bundle expires tonight at midnight.  This is likely the best price we’ll ever offer on this series, so don’t wait, get it while it’s still available…

We get tons of questions–from folks on both sides of the equation–about ways to structure SEO contracts, what to include, how to know when a company is ready for consulting, what the costs should be, how to measure success, and tons of other factors. In this week’s Whiteboard Friday we’ll look at several of these factors to help take some of the uncertainty out of the black art that is SEO Consulting…

This week on Whiteboard Friday we’ll look at link quality.  The strength of your link profile isn’t all about volume anymore. You need to know where and how to attract strong links that will actually communicate a powerful message about your site to the engines.

Watch the video for a nice breakdown of how to judge what makes a quality link.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Dude, Your Links Kinda Suck from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo…

Following on the tremendous success of our SEO Basics Video Training Series, we’re proud to introduce the all new SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series, now available for pre-order at a special discounted price.

Intended for those seeking to learn high-level, scalable, enterprise SEO tactics and strategies to push their knowledge to the next level, this four-disc, 12-hour series covers all aspects critical to advanced search marketers…

This week Rand’s invented a new word: "bucketizing".  What the heck does this mean, yous ask?  It’s the process of putting keyword groups into different buckets–segmenting them, if you will–by different factors such as traffic volume, intent, conversion rate, etc.  Ran describes the process in more detail in the video, but this is a valuable way to organize your gigantic keyword lists into manageable groups to help you prioritize and manage your efforts…

Corned beef hash, hash browns, there are many great types of hash out there (don’t start, I get it).  All too often overlooked by online marketers and webmasters, however, is the old school hash symbol (#), also known as the pound symbol.  This little beauty can do some pretty cool things for you.  It can control duplicate content problems, martial affiliate links, and even help you control the content shown to different visitors…

This week Rand discusses how to position your blog within your niche.  Blogging is obviously an incredibly powerful tool for building a brand and can be effective in almost any industry. However, there are important considerations to take into account when you’re setting up a blog, and that’s what this installment of Whiteboard Friday is all about.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Positioning Your Blog from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo…

Okay, so any of us in the online marketing world have been guilty of obsessing over rankings at one time or another. Well, in this week’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand makes the case that Rank Tracking may not be the end all be all of SEO metrics, at least not by itself.

Take a look and see what else you need to be monitoring in order to make rank tracking truly worthwhile to your sites and those of your clients…

This week we’ll look at an all too common misconception: the idea that building out a microsite to target a particular keyword, and then using that site’s strength to link to your primary site is a worthwhile strategy.

In the video Rand discusses issues such as link pop, domain diversity, and strategy while looking at how and why microsites are frequently used ineffectively.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - The Microsite Mistake from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo…

This week we’re talking about video optimization. Video has become one of the most powerful content formats in recent years–whether as a regular part of a blog (like good ol’ Whiteboard Friday) or as a viral content strategy–but when you’re using video as a strategy it pays to consider your goals. Are you looking for link generation? Keyword targeted content? Branding and recognition? All of the above?

Depending on your primary objective, you may need to consider different publishing strategies, and that’s exactly what we’ll cover in this episode…

Back in the studios fresh for 2009, we’re discussing ways to deal with complex content situations.

How do you deal with a very popular piece of content that must be available in several versions for your users (single-page, multi-page, downloadable, etc)? While not exactly a duplicate content or canonicalization problem, you could still suffer in the SERPs due to the division of links between the different versions…