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How Do Sessions Work in Google Analytics? — Best of Whiteboard Friday

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Posted by Tom.Capper Google Analytics data is used to support tons of important work, ranging from our everyday marketing reporting, all the way to investment decisions. To that end, it's integral that we're aware of just how that data works. In this Best of Whiteboard Friday edition, Tom Capper explains how the sessions metric in Google Analytics works, several ways that it can have unexpected results, and as a bonus, how sessions affect the time on page metric (and why you should rethink using time on page for reporting). Editor’s note: Tom Capper is now an independent SEO consultant. This video is from 2018, but the same principles hold up today. There is only one minor caveat: the words "user" and "browser" are used interchangeably early in the video, which still hold mostly true. Google is trying to further push multi-device users as a concept with Google Analytics 4, but still relies on users being logged in, as well as extra tracking setup. For most...

Location Data + Reviews: The 1–2 Punch of Local SEO (Updated for 2020)

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Posted by MiriamEllis Get found. Get chosen. It’s the local SEO two-step at the heart of every campaign. It’s the 1-2 punch combo that hinges on a balance of visible, accurate contact data, and a volunteer salesforce of consumer reviewers who are supporting your rise to local prominence. But here’s the thing: while managed location data and reviews may be of equal and complementary power, they shouldn’t require an equal share of your time. Automation of basic business data distribution is the key to freeing you up to focus on the elements of listings that require human ingenuity — namely, reviews and other listings-based content like posts and Q&A. It’s my hope that sharing this article with your team or your boss will help you get the financial allocations you need for automated listings management, plus generous resources for creative reputation management. Location data + reviews = the big picture When Google lists a business, it gives good space to the business name, an...

Location Data + Reviews: The 1–2 Punch of Local SEO (Updated for 2020)

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Posted by MiriamEllis Get found. Get chosen. It’s the local SEO two-step at the heart of every campaign. It’s the 1-2 punch combo that hinges on a balance of visible, accurate contact data, and a volunteer salesforce of consumer reviewers who are supporting your rise to local prominence. But here’s the thing: while managed location data and reviews may be of equal and complementary power, they shouldn’t require an equal share of your time. Automation of basic business data distribution is the key to freeing you up to focus on the elements of listings that require human ingenuity — namely, reviews and other listings-based content like posts and Q&A. It’s my hope that sharing this article with your team or your boss will help you get the financial allocations you need for automated listings management, plus generous resources for creative reputation management. Location data + reviews = the big picture When Google lists a business, it gives good space to the business name, an...

Behind the SEO: Launching Our New Guide — How to Rank

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Posted by Cyrus-Shepard Seven years ago, we published a post on the Moz Blog titled "How to Rank: 25 Step Master SEO Blueprint." From an SEO perspective, the post did extremely well. Over time, the "How to Rank" post accumulated: 400k pageviews 200k organic visits 100s of linking root domains Despite its success, seven years is a long time in SEO. The chart below shows what often happens when you don't update your content. Predictably, both rankings and traffic declined significantly. By the summer of 2020, the post was only seeing a few hundred visits per month. Time to update We decided to update the content. We did this not only for a ranking/traffic boost, but also because SEO has changed a lot since 2013. The old post simply didn't cut it anymore. To regain our lost traffic, we also wanted to leverage Google's freshness signals for ranking content. Many SEOs mistakenly believe that freshness signals are simply about updating the con...

How We Became Digital Marketers in Just One Summer

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Posted by rootandbranch Editor’s note: This blog is from the perspective of five University of Pittsburgh students — Kirsten , Steve , Darcie , Erin , and Sara — who completed a class this summer called "Digital Marketing Search Fundamentals", taught by Zack Duncan of Root and Branch. Introduction Our digital marketing class this summer did not give us credits that count towards graduation (in fact, some of us graduated in Spring 2020), nor did it give us a grade. Instead, we learned about paid search and organic search along with some of the key concepts central to digital marketing. We also became certified in Google Ads Search along the way.  We each had different reasons for taking the course, but we all believe that digital marketing will have value for us in our lives. At the beginning of the term, in June 2020, we were asked, “What is one thing you’re hoping to get out of this class?” Here are some of our responses to that question: I hope to gain a strong unde...

5 SEO Tactics to Maximize Internal Links — Whiteboard Friday

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Posted by Cyrus-Shepard Are you using internal links to their full potential? Probably not. Luckily, Cyrus is here with five tips to help you boost your internal linking strategy — and your site performance — in this brand new Whiteboard Friday. Resources for further reading: •  Should SEOs Care About Internal Links? •  Internal Linking Best Practices Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cyrus Shepard, and today we are talking about internal links. Specifically, five SEO tactics to maximize your internal links. I love internal links. There are a lot of guides out there, internal link best practices — they explain everything. This is not that video. This is not that guide. Instead, I want to show you ways to maximize your internal links for maximum SEO gain, because I see a lot of people who don't leverage their f...