Here’s a look at the most read columns from our SEO experts that stood above the rest this year.

Significant shifts toward more automation affected nearly every aspect of the paid search landscape in 2018, and there were other important developments that will have a lasting impact in the new year. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Content-led link building expert Paddy Moogan offers some practical tips on driving inbound links and collaboration tools to manage outreach campaigns. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

John Mueller to me seems like a real genuine person and someone who is in a tough position every day trying to balance the line of defending the Google search results while helping some people who try to manipulate those same results. Each Christmas eve for over 12 years, John Mueller has been helping webmasters with their problems.

The search engine industry is all decked out to celebrate the holidays and Christmas with their happy holiday and Christmas logo and themes. This year we have special logos and designs from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Sogou and our own site.

The post From Our Marketing Family to Yours, Happy Holidays, Marketers! appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® .

Someone asked John Mueller of Google if it is true that a statement off an SEO company’s web site was legit. The statement basically said that links are critical with ranking in Google and you should only hire “Google-partner SEO agencies” to create such links. John Mueller said the statement “it’s completely wrong.”

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google’s John Mueller said in a Reddit thread that Google will typically use the most restrictive crawling command or signals they find on the page. “Google will use the most restrictive setting you have on the page,” John Mueller said