Image credit: Yoshihide Nomura If you’ve ever had the privilege of being present for a baby’s first joyful encounter with a household pet, you’ll have noticed the profound wonder and excitement of the little one’s reaction. Once upon a time, that was each of us beaming and bouncing up and down with the thrill of meeting our first dog or cat. Don’t lose that joy — be like these Canadian women watching whales from their garden: From our earliest days, most of us have simply loved animals. We fill children’s books with tales of them and choose them as life companions. In many cultures, animals are sources of sacred power, and in all parts of the world, wildlife is absolutely essential to balanced ecosystems. 67% of American households now include pets — that’s the majority of your consumer base signalling just how much animals matter to them. When local business owners and marketers communicate with most customers about animals, shared affinity is ready-built into the exchange, d...

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series on SEO and accessibility. In the final installment, Cooper shows you how the technical SEO strategies you implement across your site can help make it more perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to the latest edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cooper Hollmaier. I've been doing SEO since 2016, and today I work for a large outdoor retailer helping our technical SEO strategy come to life. Thank you so much for attending this series on SEO and accessibility. I hope that you've gained a broad perspective and new tips and tricks for creating content that not only is resonating with your audience, performs well in search, but is also accessible to more people. Today we're going to talk about technical SEO and accessibility.  Technical SEO and accessibility Let's dive in. Last time we talked about Web ...

This year's MozCon Virtual is right around the corner, and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space, or even your sofa. On July 12th, 13th, and 14th, join Ringmaster Roger under the MozCon big top for insights and tactical presentations from industry leaders, plus the opportunity to connect and network with fellow attendees! Tickets are just $129 for Moz subscribers until May 31, including access to the professionally produced video bundle (a $350 value!), providing incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price: Save my spot at MozCon Virtual! And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to...

It doesn’t take a pro to do SEO. But hiring one can certainly help. For business owners who are ready to take their SEO efforts up a notch, it may be time to move beyond the DIY approach and onboard an SEO provider that can get the job done. But the question is: How do you find and hire the right SEO company that can generate real, tangible results for your business? Here are our top tips for smart SEO hiring — from weighing the pros and cons of outsourcing to knowing what questions to ask during the hiring process. Benefits of hiring an SEO company While there are countless resources online to help you implement SEO on your own, there are also many perks to either outsourcing your SEO marketing or hiring an SEO professional in-house. SEO isn’t always the easiest to figure out, so working with a professional may be the solution to avoiding headaches, wasted time, and marketing dollars down the drain. If you’re asking yourself if it’s worth hiring an SEO company, it’s time to co...

There's plenty of room for paid tools in the SEO space — Moz is a prime example — but if you’re just getting started or lack the budget necessary for fancy tools, there are still many resources available. In this piece, we’re going to cover five of our favorite FREE Google tools, and how they can help you step up your SEO game. 1. Google Trends Google Trends is used to track the “trends” around search queries. This makes it a great tool for keyword research . Finding new keywords When you go to Google Trends, you’ll see a search bar where you can input a broad topic or specific search query. Upon entering your query, you’ll be presented with a trend chart of interest in the query over time. While this may be useful, the real gems are at the bottom of the page: Related Topics and Related Queries. By default, these boxes will both be set to “rising.” This means that these topics and queries are currently gaining traction. These are the keywords that you may want to capitaliz...

As SEOs, our goal when we're creating content is to provide equitable access, which means that content isn’t just available to search engines, but also to people of all abilities. In the second installment of his three-part accessibility series, Cooper shows you how to ensure that your amazing content is accessible by bots AND people. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to the latest edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cooper Hollmaier. I started doing SEO in 2016, and today I worked at a large outdoor specialty retailer helping make our strategies for technical SEO come alive. Thank you for attending this Session 2 of 3 of our SEO and accessibility series.  It all starts with accessibility If you've taken the intro to SEO course here at Moz, you're probably familiar with the concept called Mozlow's hierarchy of SEO needs. If you're not, the basic idea is that we ...

If you’re currently working to make your website accessible to all users, you’ve probably already heard about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) . This piece of US federal legislation was passed to prevent discrimination against disabled individuals, either by government agencies or private companies. Even though the ADA was created before most organizations had an online presence, recent legal precedent shows that the act applies to the accessibility of websites and mobile apps just as much as it does to physical locations, such as stores, restaurants, and movie theaters. The ADA itself doesn’t set out any specific criteria for web and mobile accessibility. Instead, many web developers and legal professionals turn to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) , widely accepted as the benchmark for digital accessibility today. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at WCAG, and outline the steps you can take to meet its standards. We’ll also briefly explain why accessib...