The Eight Types of Relationships Every Entrepreneur Should Have
In 1974, Robin Dunbar earned his stripes as an anthropologist and evolutionary pscyhologist by completing work on his PhD from the University of Bristol, which was summarized in a paper entitled, Social Dynamics of Gelada Baboons. (Look those suckers up, they’re scary.) Dunbar’s research would go on to cover the evolution of communication and culture, social networks, and the social evolution of the human mind. But it was while studying the grooming habits of apes that he stumbled upon the single finding that would go on to fuel much of his career. There’s a fun little scientific concept called the Social Brain Hypothesis, which tells us…
Small Business Roadmap Revisited — 4 Updates Based on Your Feedback (FS106)
In the last 6 episodes we revealed the 6 stage small business roadmap. A stage by stage, step by step, 10,000 foot view of building a business. They weren’t the 6 stages your business will go through automatically. They were the 6 stages you want to go through so that you and your idea are best setup for success as you define it. The roadmap was immensely well received (you’ll find links to each episode below) and in this episode we cover two things: We answer the 4 common questions we heard from your comments. We reveal 4 updates we made to the roadmap based on your feedback. Take a listen to the episode, subscribe in itunes if you haven’t and…
Five Ways to Stand Out in a Sea of Noise
The odds are stacked against you. It’s true. I’m often amazed at how many people decide to try to build small businesses online, despite the odds. Maybe it’s naivete. Maybe it’s egotism. Maybe it’s bravery. Probably it’s a combination of all three. I think you need all three to succeed as an entrepreneur. Here’s how the odds are stacked against you: whatever space or niche or idea you decide to build your thing around, chances are there are hundreds or thousands of (or more) competitors out there already. All these other players create a sea of noise that means your voice simply won’t be heard, even if you have something decent to say. To…
The Nifty Guide to Local Content Strategy and Marketing
Posted by NiftyMarketing This is my Grandma. She helped raised me and I love her dearly. That chunky baby with the Gerber cheeks is me. The scarlet letter “A” means nothing… I hope. This is a rolled up newspaper. When I was growing up, I was the king of mischief and had a hard time following parental guidelines. To ensure the lessons she wanted me to learn “sunk in” my grandma would give me a soft whack…
Moz’s 2014 Annual Report
Posted by SarahBirdMoz has a tradition of sharing its financials (check out 2012 and 2013 for funzies). It’s an important part of TAGFEE.Why do we do it? Moz gets its strength from the community of marketers and entrepreneurs that support it. We celebrated 10 years of our community last October. In some ways, the purpose of this report is to give you an inside look into our company. It’s one of many lenses that tell the story of Moz.Yep. I know. It’s April. I’m not proud. Better late than never, right?I had a very long and extensive version of this post planned, something closer to last year’s extravaganza. I finally had to admit to myself that I was letting the perfect become the enemy of the good…
7 Days After Mobilegeddon: How Far Did the Sky Fall?
Posted by Dr-PeteEven clinging to the once towering bridge, the only thing Kayce could see was desert. Yesterday, San Francisco hummed with life, but now there was nothing but the hot hiss of the wind. Google’s Mobilegeddon blew out from Mountain View like Death’s last exhale, and for the first time since she regained consciousness, Kayce wondered if she was the last SEO left alive. We have a penchant for melodrama, and the blogosphere loves a conspiracy, but after weeks of speculation bordering on hysteria, it’s time to see…
Extract SEO Value from SERPs with Knowledge Graph and Answer Boxes – Whiteboard Friday
Posted by randfishMany SEOs are frustrated by the ever-expanding repertoire of answer boxes and results from the Knowledge Graph on Google’s SERPs. One thing we can be sure of is that they’re not going away anytime soon, so in today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand offers some strategic advice (as well as several tactics) for getting SEO value from those SERPs, and even from those boxes. For reference, here’s a still of this week’s whiteboard. Click on it to open a high-resolution image in a new tab! Howdy, Moz Fans!…and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re talking about the rich answers, instant answers, direct answers, whatever you want to call them, that Google and Bing are providing in…
The 3 Most Common SEO Problems on Listings Sites
Posted by Dom-WoodmanListings sites have a very specific set of search problems that you don’t run into everywhere else. In the day I’m one of Distilled’s analysts, but by night I run a job listings site, teflSearch. So, for my first Moz Blog post I thought I’d cover the three search problems with listings sites that I spent far too long agonising about. Quick clarification time: What is a listings site (i.e. will this post be useful for…
Search Trends: Are Compound Queries the Start of the Shift to Data-Driven Search?
Posted by Tom-Anthony The Web is an ever-diminishing aspect of our online lives. We increasingly use apps, wearables, smart assistants (Google Now, Siri, Cortana), smart watches, and smart TVs for searches, and none of these are returning 10 blue links. In fact, we usually don’t end up on a website at all. Apps are the natural successor, and an increasing amount of time spent optimising search is going to be spent focusing on apps. However, whilst app search …
An Introduction to Schema.org Markup for Emails
Posted by kristihinesIf you are a Gmail user, you have likely received some emails that stand out from the rest with a call to action button within the subject line. If you’ve booked a flight recently, your airline may have sent you an email that includes an interactive way to view your travel plans. Similarly, Google Inbox app users might have seen emails that look like this. These calls to action are courtesy of Schema.org markup for email. Just like Schema.org markup for web pages helps web pages stand out in search results, Schema.org markup for emails helps certain emails stand out from the rest in your inbox. The goal of email markup is to allow people to take action on …
How to Create Boring-Industry Content that Gets Shared
Posted by ronell-smithIf you think creating content for boring industries is tough, try creating content for an expensive product that’ll be sold in a so-called boring industry. Such was the problem faced by Mike Jackson, head of sales for a large Denver-based company that was debuting a line of new high-end products for the fishing industry in 2009. After years of pestering the executives of his traditional, non-flashy company to create a line of products that could be sold to anglers looking to buy premium items, he finally had his wish: a product so expensive only a …
9 More Marketing Channels to Grow Your Small Business (108)
In the last episode we covered 10 growth channels to explore. In this episode we cover 9 more channels you can leverage to attract more people to your business. We’re adding our experience and advice to the list of 19 channels mentioned in the great book Traction. Enjoy! It’s better to listen on the go! Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe: (how to) iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, RSS, Download 9 More Marketing Channels to Grow Your Small BusinessTweet This SHow Notes Fizzle Show – 10 Marketing Channels to Grow Your Small Business (FS107) Book – Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers…
Why the Links You’ve Built Aren’t Helping Your Page Rank Higher – Whiteboard Friday
Posted by randfishLink building can be incredibly effective, but sometimes a lot of effort can go into earning links with absolutely no improvement in rankings. Why? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows us four things we should look at in these cases, help us hone our link building skills and make the process more effective. For reference, here’s a still of this week’s whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab! Video transcriptionHowdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re chatting about why link building sometimes fails. So I’ve got an example here. I’m going…
5 Lessons From a $213,000 Launch
Two weeks ago our little 3-person company launched a new video training platform and community for online business builders. The launch (which was actually iterated over 3.5 months) was a hit. We exceeded our expectations and brought in a nice chunk of revenue (which I’ll detail below). We also learned a lot, partly through experimentation, partly by talking with other entrepreneurs, and partly by reading everything we could about launching this kind of service online. I’ve been working online for a while now (Think Traffic will be three years old in March), but I still remember so clearly years ago wondering if I could really do it — if I could bootstrap a small business based around…
When Will Be Next Google Pagerank Update In 2013?
New Year is here; and all bloggers and webmasters are eagerly waiting for the next Google Page Rank update, which is expected anytime soon. Many forums are already buzzing the rumors of Google PageRank release, but the truth is Google hasn’t rolled out any PageRank update for 2013 yet. However, based on last updates one can predict when Google will roll out its next PageRank update. But before we go any further, let us get a quick review of WHAT GOOGLE PAGE RANK is all about… Google count link votes and determines most important pages based on them with the help of PageRank. This ranking algorithm assigns numeric weights to every single page crawled by Google, the total range of weight is divided into 11 parts…
Top Three Inbound Marketing Strategies for Mobile Apps
Posted by robigangulyThis 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. Disclaimer: This post is an extension of the recent Mozinar “Standing Out in the Sea Of Apps: Building an Audience of Fans for Your Mobile App’s Success” and covers questions from audience Q&A. You can watch the recorded Mozinar here! Mobile. The very word makes some of us cringe …