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In his (intentionally very short) post on Tuesday, Rand makes the case that long-form content isn't necessarily great content:

"Rather than applying a tactic like long-form content universally or setting length as the bar (or even a metric) for greatness, we instead match our content to our audience's needs and our business/personal goals. 700 more words will not help you reach your goals any more than 7 more words. Create content that helps people. Do it efficiently. Never write an ultimate guide where a single image could more powerfully convey the same value. Trust me; your audience and your bottom line will thank you."

I think this is something we all struggle with as online marketers, in one way or another.  As someone who casually consumes online content on a regular basis, this also resonates with me on a personal level.

I'm curious, what are your hesitations with focusing on shorter-form content that packs a wallop, and what excites you about it? Can you think of any examples of content you've come across that you consider 10x short-form content?

And could hard metrics — such as search queries, citations, traffic, and click-through rates — influence organic search rankings? Tom Coad “StickyEyes” tackles both these questions in this post for YouMoz. Take a peek at his research, and let us know how it compares to your own findings.

If you haven't done any research yourself along these lines, I'd love to hear your answers to these same questions based on your more casual observations and analysis of the brands you monitor in the SERPs.

Hi Romeo,

Crawl Test's currently being updated, but you can still use it at http://mz.cm/16nn81v.

Cheers,
Christy

In the online marketing community, there is a widespread belief that long-form content ranks better.

In today's YouMoz post, Ryan Purthill shares how his research indicated 1,125 to be a magic number of sorts: The closer a post got to this word count, the better it ranked. Diminishing returns, however, were seen once a post exceeded 1,125 words.

• Does this jibe with your own data and experiences?
• Do you think increasing word count helps content rank better in general?
• What about for specific industries and types of content?

Let's discuss!

This week on The Moz Blog, Eric Enge wrote about Why You Must Become a 10x Brand. In the post, he said:

"You need to be in-demand. If some channel does not make it easy to find you, you need people to miss you. That's why you must behave like an authentic, engaged member of the overall community. Having a great product or service will be a requirement, but that's just table stakes—you need to be a 10x brand."

I'd love to know what you think about this statement. In particular, I would love to hear your answers to the following questions:

• What does becoming a 10x brand mean for you, your business, or your clients?
• What does this look like in small business, medium business, large/huge businesses?
• Is it an easier process for any one of these categories, and how would you go about it?

I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this topic, folks. Don't be shy, let's discuss.

Hi Eric_S, this is a great question!

Have you looked into installing Google Tag Manager on your site?

Depending on how your website is managed, installing GTM on your site may or may not require minimal development resources. Once it's up and running, though, you can use GTM to implement all sorts of SEO changes. On your site. Yourself.

Unlike the title tag, including keywords in your H1 will not improve your rankings in the SERPs any more than placing keyword anywhere high up in the code will. That said, including a keyword in your H1 is great for usability, which can increase conversions. When a user clicks on a search result (which includes keywords in the title tag), it is reassuring to click-through to a page with the same keywords prominently displayed.

Marking up your HTML with header tags is also very important for communicating the organization of your page to screen readers, which are used by the vision-impaired to browse the web.

Hi there, thanks for your question. Yes, this would be a very bad idea. Duplicate content issues aside, copying content and passing it off as your own is plagiarism. This is unethical and violates copyright law. If you are interested in publishing someone else's work on your site, you are both legally and ethically obligated to obtain their permission to do so, and then properly attribute to work to the original creator if granted permission to republish it. Rather than going this route, however, your time would be better spent implementing Hutch42's advice. (That is, create your own authoritative content that will naturally earn links, show off your content creation skills, and rank in organic search engine results.) Best of luck!

Christy

Note: GWT search query data is useful for sure, but isn't a keyword ranking tracker in the sense that tools by Moz, Majestic SEO, SEMRush, etc. are. For example, as compared to showing you how you are theoretically ranking (or not ranking) for the keywords you specify, it only shows you data for actual search queries that returned URLs in the SERPs.

Hi Tanveer,

Thanks for reaching out to the community with your question! You've already been asked some important questions, and I have one of my own: What is the purpose of each site? That is, what kinds of products/services are these eCommerce sites selling?

Please fill us in with some details on these sites so we can help. Thanks!

Christy

Hi there, we are so happy you love the new Moz! Crawl test will eventually be integrated into Moz Analytics. In the meantime, you can use it at http://pro.moz.com/tools/crawl-test.

Yes, and I think the way that Web 2.0 sites (as defined by the way you are using the term, Jubaer), including those hosted on Wordpress.com and Tumblr, is a great example of why search engines treat subdomains as distinct domains.

Practically anyone can set up a site on Wordpress.com like abc.wordpress.com with minimal effort. That is, after all, the primary service Wordpress.com offers, after all. The sites that exist as subdomains of Wordpress.com have very little in common with each other, other than being hosted on Wordpress.com.

Wordpress.com has a DA of 96. There are some truly fantastic sites hosted as subdomains of Wordpress.com, and there are also a lot of really crappy ones, too. If search engines treated the value of a link from crappysite.wordpress.com as authoritatively as the value of a link from fantasticsite.wordpress.com simply because both are hosted on wordpress.com (which does, as you say, have a DA of 96), would that be best for users? Nope, it would not. Someone could have made crappysite.wordpress.com for the sole purpose of "earning" a link to their own (self-hosted) site, or created it with good intentions, but never put in the work needed to become a valuable site for its intended audience like fantasticsite.wordpress.com did.

And, let's not forget about the importance of relevance. The topics of sites on Wordpress.com  are all over the place. Therefore, it makes sense to treat each one separately, right?

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your question! Do the videos absolutely have to be on YouTube? If not, we have TONS of free educational resources in our SEO Learning Center. You can sort content by category, skill level, and delivery format (including Whiteboard Fridays, webinars, and MozCon videos). Hope that helps!

Christy

Hi Andy, you may want to watch the recording of Greg Gifford's recent Mozinar How to be a Local Search Superhero. It packs a ton of up-to-date information on Local Search into less than 90 minutes. I'd also keep an eye out for his followup post

Hi there, thanks for your question! Here's how to update your competitors in Moz Pro:

• 1. Login to Moz Pro, then navigate to your Campaign Settings. Or, just go to http://analytics.moz.com/manage-campaigns.
• 2. Select the Campaign you want to update competitors for.
• 3. You will then be taken to a page that says Campaign Settings for [Your Selected Campaign Name]. Go to the Competitor Sites section of this page (located between the sections for Traffic Settings and Search Settings).
• 4. To add or edit a competitor, click on the pencil icon.

I also recommend visiting the Moz Help Hub at http://moz.com/help/guides/getting-started/campaign-settings to view screenshots of this process, and learn more about the Campaign Settings in Moz Pro. Let me know if that works for you, thanks!

Christy

Hi Matt Williamson  - Thanks so much for letting us know about this issue! We know it is very frustrating, and our engineers are taking a look at it now. We'll post any updates we have in this thread.

Thanks so much for your patience. We appreciate you!

Christy

Don and Peter, I love this so much! Great job, ya'll!

Okay, to view questions answered by a person, you'll need to grab their user ID from the URL for their community profile. (For example, your user ID is 446.) Next, swap it out for the user ID in this URL: https://moz.com/community/q/users/446/answers.

To view questions posted by a person, do the same thing with this URL: https://moz.com/community/q/users/446/questions.

Voia! Does that make sense, EGOL? It's not the most elegant solution, but it's what we have (for now).

Christy

Hi there. In addition to answering David's thoughtful questions, are you able to share the relevant links and/or screenshots with us? Let us know so we can help, thanks!

Christy

Hi there. While you can add redirects by directly modifying the .htaccess file, there are a number of Wordpress plugins that can do this for you (and minimize the chance of breaking your site). You can also configure many of these plugins to automatically set up redirects for you, monitor 404s, etc. I recommend checking out the plugin Redirection (and testing it on a staged copy of your site first if at all possible.)

Hi Robert, this is a fantastic question! I have a hunch that if you post it on a weekday with a more specific title, it will get more Mozzy love.

Hi Fergus, thanks for your question! Yes, you can do this. It's fairly straightforward if you know what to look for -- no hacks needed. :). Here's how:

1. In MA, select the profile you want to create a custom report for.

2. Click on Custom Reports, and then Create a Custom Report.

3. Name your report and add a description, then click on Add Modules.

4. In the LH nav, select Keyword Rankings, then scroll down the page and select the Performance tab.

5. Filter your data by Keyword Label. You should now see keyword performance data for the keywords attached to the label you selected. All good? Great, now click on the blue plus sign in the view for this module to add it to your custom report (with the filtered view). The blue plus sign will turn green to confirm the module has been added.

6. If you would like to add another view for this module, you can do so before leaving the same screen. Just select the view you want (and filter if desired), then press the (now) green button again. Repeat as desired.

7. Continue configuring your report as directed by MA. (Move on from Add Modules to Design Report, then Preview and Download, and, finally, Schedule Report.

Hope that helps! Please let me know when you are able to set the report up, or if you need any clarification. Cheers!

Christy

Yes, page load time is a ranking factor. Optimizing pages so they load quickly is listed as a best practice in Google's Webmaster Guidelines. So yes, increased page load load time may decrease rankings. It should definitely decrease traffic. Eight seconds is a looong time these days to wait for a page to load! Have you seen any changes in the SERPs since making these changes?

On the positive side, you must have some fantastic content if users are willing to wait that long for a page to load -- and stay on it for over half an hour I am curious, are you having a lot of repeat traffic?

No, bounce rates do not affect rankings. Matt Cutts has said that if a user visits only one page on a site and finds the information they need, this is a positive user experience. High bounce rates aren't positive for every site, don't get me wrong. If you have an ecommerce site for shoes and you have a very high bounce rate, meaning customers aren't browsing your offerings, writing reviews, and going through checkout, you aren't likely selling very many shoes on the site. The bounce rate is measured in GA to give you the information you need to analyze your site performance in this regard, not for the purpose of ranking your site.

Increased time on page correlates with increased user engagement. Users engage with, and engage longer, with quality content. Or at least highly entertaining content While it is not as clear-cut as to weather this is a ranking factor as is the case for page load time, Google is measuring it and they are all about rewarding websites that provide a great user experience, right?

+1 for Hemingway App! I also like Scribe for similar reasons, but Scribe isn't free (or nearly free).

I didn't know about the desktop version, EGOL, and will definitely check that out. Thanks for sharing!

Christy

Robert,

I totally did not pick up on your movie reference, doh! Good one. Nevertheless, I stand by my recommendation.

I am sorry you get yelled at for visiting Moz when you're on the clock. Boo! Wait... what? The President/Founder of drumBeat gets yelled at for visiting Moz??

Hi DJ123,

Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, we are experiencing intermittent issues with our tools as a result of ongoing DDoS attacks. I am so, so sorry for the frustration and inconvenience this is causing you.

Rest assured, our engineers are working as hard as possible to resolve the attacks and resulting instability of our tools. For ongoing status updates on the situation, please visit Moz Health. For details on the DDoS attacks on Moz, please check out this article from the NYTimes: Tally of Cyber Extortion on Tech Companies Grows.

We are grateful for your patience, DJ123.

Kind Wishes,
Christy

Hi David,

Great question! Peter and Mat both make good points. A few more things:

1. You can also tell that the Natureflex is a business page, vs personal timeline, as it has a like button, does not have a birth date (nor other personal information), has an option to share the page with your friends, has a link to suggest an edit to the page "about" information, and shows the number of likes.

2. It is against Facebook's TOS to create two personal Facebook Timelines. I know several people who have done this (one for business contacts, and the other for personal friends only.) Their accounts could be shut down at any time. The thing is, what they could easily do that is within Facebook's TOS is convert one of those Timelines to a Page with their personal name on it. If you create a new Facebook Page to represent one of your clients as an individual person (vs. brand/product, etc.), choose "Artist, Band, or Public Figure." When you go to create a new Page, you have a variety of options to choose from. This is the one to choose if you are creating a Page for any individual person (even if they are not technically an artist, band, or public figure.) When you select this option, you'll have a long list of categories to choose from, including "Business Person."  See Rand Fishkin's page as an example.

3. Here is some more information about Facebook Pages that you may find useful.

Please let us know if we have answered your question, and how you get on.

Cheers,
Christy

I second Dirk's recommendation for Google Academy. I would definitely master the first two lessons in order, which will give you the skills you need to get started tracking the performance of your own website, and make use of the supplemental forums and videos for each course. Self-study is available year-round, and group study, facilitated by a Google staffer, is held a few times a year.

When I first started working with Google Analytics 7 or 8 years ago, I thought that Google Analytics was fairly intuitive, and most people could dive into it head-first (trial and error style.) However, I would not recommend anyone just getting started with GA today take that route.

Hi David,

Actually, this forum was built from scratch, in-house.

We are really glad you enjoy using it! I'd love to know what you features you must appreciate, which ones you could do without, and what you'd like to see added to make using the forum a much better experience for everyone.

Also, I am curious what forum platform solutions you've already looked into for your own forum, and how they compare. Would you mind sharing? (No pressure, of course.)

Great question, thanks!

Christy

Hi Joni,

Thanks for the update. It looks like you can do this. Unfortunately, the catch is that you have to take action within 14 days of linking your YouTube account to Google+ (see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3056283?hl=en&ref_topic=3097177). As you said, Google+ is constantly making changes, and you are certainly not the only person out there with this problem. In the meantime, I would contact Google about your situation via the form on this page - https://support.google.com/youtube/contact/ytgplus. Make sure to use the email address associated with your YouTube account, and please keep us posted. Best of luck!

If you didn't register for the webinar, you can find the recording here, along with all of our recent tool-specific webinars. I hope that helps!

Christy

Hi Danny, thanks for your question! Google pulls the author information you see in search results from individual Google+ profiles (not brand or local business pages). So yes, each one of your partners will need to establish Authorship by setting up and actively maintaining an individual Google+ profile. (See https://plus.google.com/authorship for details.) Does that answer your question?

I am also going to have a Local search specialist look at this question as well, and see if they can offer any tips for making it easier to manage the individual and Local pages in tandem. Best of luck!

Christy

Thanks for the additional feedback, Kevin Budzynski! Our engineers are looking into this issue and we'll update this thread with any updates we have. Thanks so much for your patience!

Kind wishes,

Christy

Hi there, are you asking why does this particular Yelp page shows rating review stars in the organic search results -- and how you can get your rating review stars to show for your Yelp page for these same queries, too -- or something else? In addition to clarifying your question, it would be great if you could share a few screenshots and/or URLs that show us how your Yelp page (and/or website) is performing for these same queries, compared with E Appliance Repair. Thanks!

Christy

Hi there, I'm sorry to hear that. Good news, though: your campaigns should have been archived when you had the issue with your credit card. If so, you can simply reactivate them. To do this, navigate to http://pro.moz.com/campaigns and click on "Archived Campaigns" in the sub-menu. Then click the button labeled "Activate" next to each campaign in the list. Did that work?

If not, please send an email to help@moz.com to open a new help request ticket. Best of luck! (Christy)

The title tags are actually at risk of being truncated (or, in some cases, replaced) when they are too wide now. So a title of around 100 character can in theory show up in the SERPs without being cut off if it uses primarily thin letters. The ideal pixel width, however, is still somewhat of a mystery -- somewhere around 500px.

The only thing they are good for is letting the competition know what keywords you are targeting on your pages. So, assuming you aren't using meta keyword tags yourself, you are doing the best thing for your site here, and now know where to look for a bit of competitive intelligence.

Christy

Rel=publisher is for brands, rel=author is for individuals. Google pulls author information from individual Google+ profiles. WMT content guidelines state that each profile should have a clear, recognizable headshot of the author. Hope that helps.

Hi Boodreaux,

Did you see Linda and Andrea's requests for clarification above? Please give us more details about this site (URL if possible) so we can help. Thanks!

Christy

Hi Chad,

Here's a great thread from Q&A that offers a few different options for addressing your Hatom feed errors: Wordpress Hatom Problem. To be honest, though, I currently need to address the same issue on one of my own sites, and Authorship rich snippets are showing for all of this site's blog posts in the SERPs.

While I wouldn't ignore the Hatom feed errors altogether, I would change your Google+ profile image to a likeness of yourself right off the bat. Authorship is meant for people, and is why it requires reciprocal linking between an author's article/post and their personal Google+ profile. The Google+ profile you are currently linking to is showing a branded image (vs. your smiling face). I've seen Authorship suddenly start showing for people who updated their avatars from a side profile shot to a full-facing one, from an image with dark glasses to a one without, from one with a busy background to one with a background that makes their portrait pop, from a group shot to individual portrait, etc. And while I have occasionally seen logos show as Authorship snippets, this is the rule, not the exception.

The next thing I would do is enable bylines on your blog posts and articles where this makes sense. Then I'd work on regularly publishing useful, high-quality content for your audience on your website/blog -- and build up your personal Google+ profile. Those are good starting points!

Finally, you should also know that Google has never guaranteed showing rich snippets for Authorship in the SERPs, and recently reduced their presence in the SERPs by 15% about a week ago. You can read more about this in this blog post for Virante by Google Authorship expert Mark Traphagen. Work on becoming known as a quality author who posts on quality websites, though, and this shouldn't be a problem. (Easier said than done, I know. But you can do it!)

I hope this helps. Please let me know how things go, and if you need clarification. Cheers!

Christy

Good question, Dave! Crawl Test will eventually be integrated into Moz Analytics. In the meantime, you can use Crawl test here: http://mz.cm/16nn81v.

Hi Chad,

I'm glad your question was answered! Would you kindly mark the most helpful responses you received in this thread as "good answers"?

To answer your last question, bylines contain the name of the author of a story, and sometimes the date published and category. For example, in this post on The Moz Blog, Are You Setting up Wordpress for SEO Success, the byline is "May 7th, 2012 - Posted by Dan Shure to On-Page / Site Optimization".

Bylines are most appropriate for blog posts, news article, editorials, and feature stories. Bylines should not go on press releases, product/service pages, nor sales pages. I peeked at your site, and didn't see any content piece that looked like it should have a byline. If you add a blog to your site with Wordpress, bylines will be enabled by default. Hope this helps, and best of luck!

Christy

Hi there, the rel="author" tag does not show up anywhere in the HTML for this page. There is good news, though. If you go back to the GWT rich snippets testing tool and input your author's Google ID, you will see that Authorship has been established for this page using the verified email method.

Just is correct that the primary purpose of alt text  to assist the visually impaired. Therefore, you should provide descriptive, concise alt text for every relevant image. So no, do not place hyphen between every word. You can (and should) use hyphens, accent marks, etc. for words that need them in alt text.

For non relevant, redundant images such as bullets and purely decorate images, you should use null alt text (alt=""). This will signal the screen reader to skip over the image.

Hope that helps! (Christy)

Hi there! In addition to the responses above, I'd also recommend checking out the Yoast plugin. On a brand new blog, I recommend noindexing the category pages until a good amount of content is built up in each category, including unique content on each category landing page. You may find this post by Dan Shure helpful: http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success. Best of luck!

Christy

I second what EGOL said, Ed! high-fives

Hi Eric,

You've received some great responses here! All are spot-on (as far as one can be answering this question at this time, that is.) You may also be interested to know that Dr. Pete has answered this question here in the forum at http://moz.com/community/q/google-s-mobile-update-what-we-know-so-far-updated-3-25. He actually posted a Q&A of common questions about the mobile update, taking new questions in the discussion thread, and updating the original Q&A post as new information becomes available.

Christy

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your suggestion! Would you mind submitting a new feature request at https://seomoz.zendesk.com/forums/293194-Moz-Feature-Requests? You can also vote on other feature requests, track their status, and review feedback from the Product Team at that URL.

Thanks,
Christy

Hi there, thanks for your question! As the companies otherwise operate independently and it doesn't make sense to to cross-market the products under an umbrella brand, I would build out each company's website on its own domain.