The Moz Blog

How to Troubleshoot Local Ranking Failures [Updated for 2018]

Your site's local rankings are dropping fast — is it because of Possum? Local Service Ads? Lack of organic authority? Or something else entirely? Miriam Ellis uncovers the most common causes of lost or low local rankings in the Google SERPs and helps you diagnose just what went wrong with her actionable 10-point checklist.

Selling SEO to the C-Suite: How to Convince Company Executives to Support SEO

If you've ever had trouble getting buy-in or budget approval for SEO, you know how hard it can be to convince stakeholders of the value of your work. Rebecca Maynes offers up advice on how to present your case to execs, educate them on the points they care about, and win respect (and budget) for your SEO efforts.

SEO Ranking Factors & Correlation: What Does It Mean When a Metric Is Correlated with Google Rankings?

Correlations data isn't always as clear as it seems. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares the myths and realities of correlations in SEO ranking factor studies, then offers five smart ways to glean more trustworthy, useful information from the data.

How Does Mobile-First Indexing Work, and How Does It Impact SEO?

Slowly but surely, mobile-first indexing is coming. In this post, Bridget Randolph explains what’s changing and answers commonly asked questions about how this change will affect SEO. If you've got one we haven't covered, leave it in the comments!

How to Rank: The SEO Checklist

This edition of Whiteboard Friday covers a nine-point SEO checklist of the major items you need to cross off to rank in 2018 — and maybe get some hints on how to explain it to others, too.

The Very Best of the Moz Blog 2017: Our Top 50 Posts

We've curated a hefty list of the Moz Blog's top posts throughout the year, covering all of our most popular categories. Come check out what you may have missed, see which community members made the Top 10 Comments, and help us ring in 2018 right!

Followerwonk Is Moving On to a New, Loving Home

We've been searching for the perfect home for our Twitter analytics tool, and it finally found us. Please join us in congratulating the new owner of Followerwonk!

Use as Directed: A Content Marketing Plan for Robust Business Performance

Most marketers utilize content marketing, but it's not always clear how to use it effectively, measure your results, or see actual business value from the effort. Alexandra Tachalova shares tactical advice for preparing a content marketing plan that will prove valuable for your bottom line.

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be?

The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 90K results, we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Moz the Monster: Anatomy of an (Averted) Brand Crisis

On November 10, John Lewis' "Moz the Monster" campaign launched, rewriting SERPs and presenting a potential threat to our brand. Here's how we handled the crisis.

Keyword Research Beats Nate Silver's 2016 Presidential Election Prediction

Can keyword research be a more powerful indicator of people's behavior than traditional methods of prediction, such as exit polling? Inspired by the controversy and confusion around US elections, we decided to test the theory.

Not-Actually-the-Best Local SEO Practices

Not all common practices in local SEO are the *best* practices. In fact, some of them can be pretty darn harmful. Check out Miriam's list of what-not-to-dos in today's blog post.