Webcology

Moz LayoffsThe search marketing world was stunned late yesterday with the announcement Moz is laying off 28% of its staff in a move to become profitable. Moz CEO Sarah Bird made an emotional blog post yesterday titled, “Moz is Doubling Down on Search” outlining a renewed focus on core SEO related products in the Moz Toolbox such as rank tracking, keyword research, local search listings, duplicate management, onpage items, web crawl, and links analysis. Left unmentioned in her post was the community Moz had created and sustained for several years. In fact, all layoffs happened in the community divisions of Moz, including the extraordinary Jennifer Sable Lopez. Rand Fishkin later tweeted this was about getting the company revenue-right. For Moz and the extremely tight internal community they’ve built, this must be an awful day; even more so for those let go, not because of their performance but because of a management decision to marshal their energies in a more focused direction. In the long run, if Moz can make itself profitable without outside funding, it may well turn out to be the wisest decision Moz has ever made. For the time being, it feels like there’s a hole in the entire SEO community this morning. Big love to Moz, the Mozzers, and the now expanded Moz Alumni. Thanks for all the contributions over the years and we all look forward to seeing what comes next. Gawker to cease publishing next week. The 14 year old online tabloid was targeted by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Theil in a massive series of direct and indirect legal actions. Gawker Media, the parent company that owned Gawker was sold last week to Univision for $135million. They publish six other online magazines; Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Jezebel. Details on what will happen to those properties or to Gawker’s archives have yet to be announced. The Univision purchase is pending a decision to allow the sale which is expected today from a Manhattan bankruptcy court.NSA Hacked! In an ironic and somewhat dangerous role reversal, the National Security Agency, otherwise known as America’s cyber-spooks were hacked, quite heavily. A group calling itself the Shadow Brokers are asking for 1million  Bitcoins, which is about $570million US in an auction to release the best cyberweapons and release a treasure-trove of secret files. The hack happened to a division of the NSA known as the Equation Group which, according to Kaspersky security, has been active for over 20 years. In a report published by Kaspersky in 2015, the Equation group was described as “a threat actor that surpasses anything known in terms of complexity and sophistication of techniques, and that has been active for almost two decades,”  The group is thought to be responsible for the infamous Stuxnet attack on Iran’s centrifuges in 2007.

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Marissa Mayer and her Future with Yahoo and how she Can Cash Out of Yahoo to the Tune of 123 Million; No loss of PageRank for 301 or 302 redirects; Use Excel Plug-In Analytics Edge to get ALL landing page data from Search Console.; Top 20 Weird Google Questions as Identified by UK Firm Digitaloft ; Reddit to allow marketers to sponsor user posts.

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4 daily habits of successful SEOs

1 – Read the News
2 -  Review all analytics tools to figure out what is and isn’t working 3 – Take hands-on action.
4 – Constant skills upgrading requires constant tinkering

Plus, Arianna Huffington stepping down from HuffPost. Huffington said the new health and wellness company she is launching, Thrive Global, demands her full-time attention. Thrive will start in November.

Links still Crucial, as explained by Jason deMers in Search Engine Land; Google Brain teamtaking questions in a massive AMA at Reddit right now! 


Also, Google Ranking Factors 2016, ###a>



- Content Links Are the Two Most Important Ranking Signals
- RankBrain - Third Most Important Factor
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) is Not a Ranking Factor
- Google Confirms 301, 302, 3xx redirects Do Not Lose PageRank Value
- Local Business Ranking Factors
- Mobile-Friendliness - a Ranking Signal on Mobile Searches
- Google Now Ranks Mobile Page Speed Separately
- Google Updates Search Quality Guidelines

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Google's possible reversal of last week's algorithm update; Instagram's new killer feature that copies Snapchat; Explaining impressions, position, and clicks; No loss of PageRank for any 3xx redirect; How Google Treats Subdomains vs. Subdirectories in 2016; Singular and plural words can be different in Google's eyes; Disavow file and manual action reinclusion requests have to be on canonical URL; AMP in general SEPS; AMP pages no longer need structured data to be valid in Google Search Console.

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Marissa Mayer and her Future with Yahoo and how she Can Cash Out of Yahoo to the Tune of 123 Million; No loss of PageRank for 301 or 302 redirects; Use Excel Plug-In Analytics Edge to get ALL landing page data from Search Console.; Top 20 Weird Google Questions as Identified by UK Firm Digitaloft ; Reddit to allow marketers to sponsor user posts.

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Marissa Mayer and her Future with Yahoo and how she Can Cash Out of Yahoo to the Tune of 123 Million; No loss of PageRank for 301 or 302 redirects; Use Excel Plug-In Analytics Edge to get ALL landing page data from Search Console.; Top 20 Weird Google Questions as Identified by UK Firm Digitaloft ; Reddit to allow marketers to sponsor user posts.

Machine Learning and Trying to Predict Google Rankings as Jim Hedger and Dave Davies speak with JR Oaks, Director of Strategy for Consultwebs, an agency that specializes in online marketing for law firms throughout the United States and internationally. JR wrote a piece in Search Engine Land on machine learning, "An experiment in trying to predict Google Rankings" 

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Air BnB taking housing stock out of communities; Pokemon Go – Pokemongo • WTF?   Marketing boom for small businesses with lures or gyms;  Amazing for augmented reality applications. Will Penguin Ever Launch? Poll being taken at SE RoundTable.. Pop-ups asPrimary Content? Meurlerbe (Maybe) Google’s new Showcase Shopping feature to display paid shopping ads in new and improved ways. Plus, Jim Hedger and Dave Davies speak with WME Training founder David Ogletree to talk about AdWords,PPC, SEO and his love of training.  

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Search engine optimization has built credibility over the years, but spammers and black-hat practitioners still give it a bad name. Jim Hedger and Dave Davies discuss a recentSearch Engine Land article that says, "As much as the SEO industry wants to grow up and shed the shady reputation it had in the past, it seems many don’t want to change and still cast a shadow over the industry. For every company doing things right, it seems there are many more who have not updated their practices or still want to take shortcuts."

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Big Change to Keyword Planner: Google Restricts Access to Those With AdWords Accounts as reports say  reports that Google has turned off access to those that use the tool without also being an active advertiser with a currently active campaign.  Plus,  Google Displays Lyrics in Search Results; Songwriters & Publishers Earn Revenue; Plus,  AMP is Not Currently a Ranking Factor as Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, opened up SEJ Summit Chicago with a twenty-minute presentation about what AMP is, why publishers should be using it, and what the future of AMP is.

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