Posts

Showing posts from March, 2023

Identifying and Filling Your SEO Skill Gaps — Whiteboard Friday

Image
In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Helen shows you how to find and address gaps in your SEO skills so you can continue evolving and developing your best SEO self. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hi, I'm Helen, Head of SEO at Car & Classic, and I am here today to share some top tips on how to identify your SEO skills gaps and how to fill them.  Now that sounds a bit rude, doesn't it, suggesting you have skills gaps? I don't know you. You might be an excellent SEO, and we're sure you are. But you know that thing that we tell our clients and our bosses that SEO is really difficult and it's always changing, and the algorithms, oh, no, they've developed again. Turns out that stuff that we tell our bosses and our clients to keep our jobs, it's actually true, and because of that, we have to keep our skill set evolving and developing to keep up with all the stuff that's changing in

Google Bard vs. the New Bing

Image
This week I’ve been fortunate enough to get access to both Google Bard and the New Bing, so a day later, I’m here to share my first impressions. What is the new Bing? “The new Bing” is the product of Microsoft’s unholy alliance with OpenAI, makers of the now infamous ChatGPT. This development promises to have seismic effects on the search ecosystem, with Microsoft’s CEO saying they’re happy to accept “demonetization” of search in their pursuit of market share, and Google extremely concerned about the threat ChatGPT technology poses as an alternative to their core search business. Of course, by now we’ve all also seen various viral posts and tweets showing just how dangerous it can be to use chat AI as a search engine , but that’s a topic for another day. For now, the point is that Bing is making moves. When I perform a search on “old bing” now, I can see this box inviting me to try the new one. You’ll notice a key detail here: it’s only available in Microsoft Edge . Yikes. Big

13 Local Search Developments You Need to Know About from Q1 2023

Image
Can you believe we’ve already sped through the first quarter of the new year? So much has happened, and on the strength of the warm reception this nascent local search quarterly review received in 2022, I’m going to continue the series this year. Thank you for being a reader. Let’s dive right into the most interesting new things we’ve seen in the first three months of 2023! A new local search ranking factor! Joy Hawkins and her Sterling Sky squad discovered something truly new this February: selecting pre-defined Google Business Profiles services from the list that Google offers some categories of business can have a tremendous positive impact on local pack rankings . Joy’s dream team is working to see whether custom-written services have a similar effect. For now, if Google shows you a choice of ready-made services (not to be confused with service areas) in your NMX interface and they relate to your business, definitely add them! By my count this brings us up to 5 GBP factors we

Identify Featured Snippet Opportunities – Next Level

Image
Featured snippets offer a fantastic opportunity for increased traffic and visibility for your site. There is a lot to say about this SERP feature and a lot that has already been said: Crystal Carter covered how to optimize existing content for featured snippets in an episode of Whiteboard Friday (complete with a handy dandy flow chart!) which is incredibly informative. Seriously, check it out. Additionally, Britney Muller has done multiple episodes on what featured snippets are, how to target them , and more . So what can I possibly add to the conversation? Well, let’s take a look at how Moz Pro can help with identifying opportunities to gain (or steal) featured snippets within your existing toolkit. Then you can take the infinite wisdom of folks like Crystal and Britney to elevate your content to new heights (and SERP features). A Refresher on Featured Snippets Before we dig in, let’s take a brief moment to talk about what featured snippets are, just to refresh our memor