On the Ecommerce Outtakes blog, we talk a lot about what not to do online. In fact, our main focus is to point out where websites go wrong—with the intent, of course, to help improve the e-commerce experience across the web. One trend we’ve been noticing a lot lately is a lack of good filtering and sorting options. It’s a widespread e-commerce epidemic, and it’s high time we cured it. Filtering and sorting are huge components to making browsing for products easier, but it seems like many sites—and we’re even talking about some big, well-known brands here—are letting these features slip...

Posted by David Mihm It’s obviously not uncommon for small businesses to move -- fluctuating rents, growth, lifestyle concerns for the business owner or employees, and any number of factors make good reasons to move. However, few business owners understand the Local Search headaches they may be creating for themselves or their customers as a result of a move. Celia Bell, Assistant Director of SCORE’s Austin chapter, is currently experiencing some of those headaches and sent me an email last week to ask for my advice on how to alleviate them. Given her essential help with Local University Austin next week, it...

Today, I'd like to take a few moments to focus on something that affects us all, but isn't specifically code related. What I'm referring to is the people who commission the traditional books and magazine articles that you read and learn from every day.What you might not realize is that publishers have a tendency to enforce surprisingly strict guidelines upon writers.For those of you who haven't yet contributed to a technical book or magazine – or even some commercial blogs – what you might not realize is that publishers have a tendency to enforce surprisingly strict guidelines upon writers.Your article...

Posted by danaditomasoThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. First off, thank you to everyone who attended my Mozinar last week! I always find the Q&A portion of my talks to be the best part, and this blog post is going to answer all those questions that I either wasn't able to address or where I wanted to provide more information. If your question still isn't answered, please...

Posted by Dr. Pete Every few months, some mainstream news outlet runs a piece on how SEOs are just a bunch of “snake oil” salesmen. The implication is clear – we’re the carnival barkers of marketing, promising you #1 on Google and bottling moonshine as magic potions. Cue outraged SEO industry posts until we’re out of breath, wait 6 months, then repeat. Here’s the simple truth the angry back-and-forth arguments ignore – there would be no snake-oil salesmen if people weren’t lining up to buy it. I’m not here to excuse thieves and liars – they exist, and they should be called...