Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today, I want to talk a little bit about links losing their value in Google’s ranking algorithm.

So Google recently came out and talked about how they had tested a version of their search engine, of search quality algorithms, ranking algorithms, that did not include links as a ranking signal. Of course, a lot of SEOs went “Wait, they did what?”

But it turns out Google actually said they really did not like the results. They didn’t like what they saw when they removed links from the ranking elements. So maybe SEOs are going, “Okay, can I breathe easy, or are they going to keep trying to find ways to take links out of the ranking equation?” Certainly, links for a long time have been an extremely powerful way for SEOs and folks to move the needle on indexation, on rankings, on getting traffic from search engines.

I’m going to personally come out and say that, in my opinion, we will continue to see links in Google’s rankings systems for at least the next five and probably the next ten years. Whether they continue to be as important and as powerful as they’ve been, I think is worthy of a discussion, and I do want to bring up some points that some very intelligent marketers and SEOs have made on both sides of the issue.

So, first off, there are some folks who are saying, “No, this is crazy. Links are actually growing in value.” I thought Russ Jones from Virante made some excellent comments on a recent blog post where some experts had been asked to do a thought experiment around what Google might do if links were to lose signals.

He made some good points, one of which was as Google filters out . . . so let’s say I’ve got this webpage on Google, and as I filter out the value that are passed from some links through algorithms like Penguin or through filtration systems that remove either Web spam or low-quality links or links that we don’t find valuable in our relevancy algorithms, it actually is the case that these other links grow in importance. In fact, as Russ wisely pointed out, many of the other kinds of signals that Google might potentially replace links with, things around user and usage data, things around social signals, all of those things actually can be validated through the link graph, and you can use the link graph to add additional context and information about those other signals. So I think there’s a point to be made.

People have also pointed out that as we get into this world where no-follow is very, very common, a lot of websites putting no-follow on there, social sharing is oftentimes a much more common form of evangelizing or sharing information than linking is. Before we had the popularity of Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+ and all these networks, that social sharing would have been bloggers and people in forums linking out to these resources.

There’s also, unfortunately, created a lot by Google themselves, and Bing to a certain extent, too, there are many, many webmasters and site owners and editorial specialists on the Web who have a fear of linking out. They worry that by linking to something bad or if they link out and then something happens to that website they link out to, that maybe something will happen to their site.

As a result, it’s actually become a greater and greater challenge over time to earn editorial links for everyone. This is interesting because it actually suggests that there is more value when you do earn those editorial links. So I think there’s a very credible case to be made.

On the flip side, there are SEOs who are pointing out, hey, look links are definitely a diminishing signal because there are elements in a ranking system, and anytime you have elements in a ranking system and you add new signals of relevancy, new signals of usefulness, of importance, of popularity, whatever those are, the pie chart has to squish those in. Then, the portion that used to be links, all of this stuff here, just this portion is still link-
based. So links become a smaller piece of the pie chart.

One good way of explaining this is think of, for example, Olympic ice skating, where you have judges who give rankings. Those judges, they’ll give a score — a 7.5 and an 8.5. They have criteria that they look at. As new criteria get added, the criteria for other pieces necessarily becomes a little bit less important.

Now, in Google’s ranking system, it’s not quite the same logic. We don’t have a pie chart that can add signals and remove signals. It’s not like everybody has a score out of just 10. But the ability of pages and sites to move up in the rankings is influenced by the elements that are in here in a similar fashion.

So what really should SEOs do? What should we take away from this sort of debate and discussion and this testing of Google by removing links from their algorithmic signals and not liking those results? Well, in an ideal world, in a best-case scenario, as a marketer, the way that I believe we should be thinking about this is to invest in the marketing, in the tactics and channels that provide value in multiple ways.

By “multiple ways,” I mean provide value in terms of branding; provide value in terms of direct traffic; provide value in terms of growing my social network; provide value in terms of growing my e-mail network, in terms of growing my influence and thought leadership in this sphere; all those kinds of things.

If I can get those multiple ways and still earn links? So content marketing is one that a lot of SEOs and marketers have been investing in because it does these things. Content marketing means that I get social shares. It means that I get more social followers. It means that I grow the people who pay attention to my brand and are aware of my brand. That content can also earn links, which helps me in the search engine rankings. That’s the ideal world. There are many forms of this. Content marketing isn’t the only one.

It can also be good, not quite as good, to refocus the energy that you might currently be expending on building all kinds of links and instead concentrate very carefully on the few links that really matter. As we’ve seen here, even for those who are arguing, “No, it’s becoming less important,” it’s not becoming less important. Those folks are saying, “Hey, there are a lot of things getting filtered out, and it’s harder and harder to earn the good editorial links.” Focusing on getting those is still very valuable.

Do not do these things — keep getting any and every link. We’ve talked about this many times on Whiteboard Friday. You guys are all familiar. Especially the non-editorial kind. It’s too dangerous a world. If you’re building a site that you want to last in the search engines for a long period of time, many months and years in the future, you can’t afford to be actively, proactively going and getting non-editorial links.

Please, don’t ignore the value that you get from activities that might not directly earn you a link — things that could get you brand mentions and grow your brand, things that could build up your resource of content, things that could build up your social channels — just because those things don’t earn you a link.

A great example of this one is a lot of folks have been talking about guest posting. Of course, I did a Whiteboard Friday right before Google made their announcement about guest posting. Guest blogging, guest posting, in that classic SEO for a link fashion, is not a great idea. But it can still be a great channel to earn brand awareness and attention, to earn direct traffic. I mean, a lot of folks can post on forums, on sites that earn them an additional audience, and that additional audience in the future might turn into people who share and link and become customers. So that’s a beautiful world. Don’t ignore the value of that.

I’m sure there’s going to be some great debate and discussion in the comments, and I really look forward to hearing from all of you. Take care. We’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

If you’re reviewing this post now, chances are that you have actually experienced this (or understand a person who has): You have the deadline of a post coming, however you still have no idea what to cover.

Often you acquire away by covering breaking news or a trend in your area, by doing a testimonial of a new item or service, or by covering a current conference or meetup that you have actually gone to, however you can’t do this constantly. You likewise intend to cover something that is not only useful yet additionally attractive, something that permits you to link with your audience.

And you may be a seasoned blog writer, copywriter, or marketer. You might likewise know your audience very well; you have actually constructed your personas, completed and developed key phrase research, and have actually already tried some methods to obtain through the “author’s block.” You have actually gone to the material of prolific developers to obtain influenced and even attempted Portent’s content idea generator, however you still have a tough time discovering a relevant and stimulating article idea each time that your target date strategies.

This most likely occurs because although you know where to locate the data—– and might also have it currently—– to obtain you motivated and identify ideas, the hardest component is to make it actionable, given that it’s so easy to obtain lost in such a vast quantity of information.

What you require in order to recognize article suggestions that will certainly allow you to associate with your audience is a workable and easy procedure that is easily repeatable, applicable to any kind of market, and scalable:

Action 1: Gather the pertinent information

Just how can we avoid obtaining shed when there’s a lot information readily available with so numerous sources? By concentrating only on gathering the most crucial information that’s pertinent to your target: Identifying a relevant and eye-catching post concept for your internet audience.

Here’s the data that you will require:

1. Your very own most well-liked articles

You do not have to go via every one of your previous blog posts, merely pick the most well-liked ones:

• Many went to blog posts on your blog site: Use Google Analytics to identify those posts that have actually had the highest quantity of visits, the most valuable sees (those that generated the highest quantity of conversions) and the most engaged check outs (those that had the greatest period and created more pageviews on the blog site). Remain simply the leading 20 % of them.

• A lot of discussed articles on social networks: Use SocialCrawlytics to creep your blog and view which are the posts that have been discussed the most by your visitors in their favorite social networks. Once more, simply keep the leading 20 % of them.

After collecting the data, consolidate these two “Top 20 %” selections, get rid of the duplicates, and create a spreadsheet with the following information for each post:

• Title
• LINK
• Check outs
• Sales
• Check out period
• Shares in each social network (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and so on)

Now you know which of the posts has been, previously, your very own most preferred material. You know just what has actually enticed better traffic and presence in social networks, and the social networks that your audience likes.

2. Your competitors’ most prominent blog posts

It’s time to accumulate the most preferred blog posts from your rivals, and although you do not most likely have access to their complete analytics, you can still identify some important data:

• A lot of discussed posts on social networks: Crawl their blog sites with SocialCrawlytics as you did before.
• The majority of on the surface linked articles: With Open Website Explorer, examine to view which articles have earned the greatest amount of hyperlinks from other websites.

With this details you can combine these two listings into one and create a spreadsheet for the leading 20 % of blog posts by your rivals that consists of the following information:

• Title
• ADDRESS
• Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
• External hyperlinks
• Linking domain names

Here you have one more very useful and very targeted source of info:
The most prominent blog site posts of your rivals!

3. Your area’s and influencers’ most shared content

Besides your very own top material and that of your rivals, you could additionally determine which content is most liked in your very own social communities—– the different teams that are hooked up to each various other and develop your audience.

For Twitter, you can obtain your communities and the influencers, subjects, and locations each areas by utilizing Tribalytics, just by adding your Twitter deal with:

Once you recognize your different communities, their most prominent topics, and influencers, you can acquire even more specific by utilizing Twtrland to acquire the most popular tweets for your influencers:

Create a listing with the top material shared in your influencers’ leading tweets and segment it using the various subject locations recognized for your communities. Complete it with social and search popularity-related data apiece of them:

• Title
• URL
• Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and so on)
• External links
• Connecting domains

Here’s one more very appropriate input for your article ideas: The material that your influencers like to discuss and that has actually been well-liked in your own Twitter communities.

4. The most popular relevant content in social networks

After having identified the blog posts subjects and pieces that have actually carried out much better for you, your rivals, and in your social communities in the past, you can recognize which have been the total most well-liked items of material in social networks about those exact same subjects in the most recent times.

Organize the best-performing material that you have now into different topics groups or areas and usage Buzzsumo to look for them.

Download the most communal material in social networks for each classification. You will have a listing with the complying with info:

• Title
• ADDRESS
• Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and so on)
• Material type

Settle the selections, segmenting again per group and organize it by focusing on the total best doing material for your subjects in social networks.

5. Your pertinent internet market questions

An additional very appropriate source of post suggestions is the questions asked by your on the internet neighborhood in social networks, such as Twitter, and on websites like Quora.

Go to your appropriate topic’s concerns, and develop a selection with the highest-voted concerns. Automate this procedure by developing an IFTTT dish for their RSS feeds, by adding them straight into a Google Docs Spreadsheet.

You can complete the previous listing of questions with the ones that customers make straight in Google by utilizing the SEOchat associated keyword phrases tool, a multi-level suggestion key phrase finder that will offer you

By doing this, you will find out which are the largest concerns that folks ask on the web regarding your pertinent subjects. A direct source of ideas to create posts that answer them.

6. Your sector web content requests

Subscribe to HARO or ProfNet and obtain daily email signals each time a media outlet requests the input of a professional about your picked classifications of content. Produce filters to use a label to those emails that especially feature among your pertinent content topics:

By doing this you will certainly discover just how journalists are aiming to cover these subjects and the type of material they’re composing regarding them currently. This could serve as a continuous referral for material suggestions: View exactly what essential sites are covering your appropriate topics at the moment.

Step 2: Ask the pertinent inquiries

Once you have collected all the previous data you will have an extremely full, but still convenient, prioritized and categorized source of potential article suggestions from different sort of sources:

Analyze and make this data actionable with the following steps:

1. Ask on your own which are the features that differentiate this leading content and concerns? Exactly what do they all have in common? From the areas where they are focused to the design or style, recognize the patterns that they adhere to and make a listing of requirements with them.
2. Make a list of potentially eye-catching posts concepts by taking as an input the currently existing well-liked material, inquiries and demands that you have identified in the past, applying the requirements that you have determined that they all share.
   • Especially ask the 5 Ws (which, what, when, where, why) and “how” for the potential subjects, believing on just how these will target your audience requirements and feelings.
   • Categorize each idea with a degree of “passion” based upon how appropriate is for your audience and the quantity of search quantity that exists around each topic (you could verify the key phrase organizer details with those of SearchMetrics and SEMRush).
3. Search and recognize which of these blog post concepts have actually been currently covered, whether by you, your competitors, or other website in the past. View which sites have actually posted the posts and the degree of success they had with them. It’s also important that you specify where content layout (text, infographic, video clip, to-do list, slides, and so on) and kind (overview, news, review, webinar, report, competition, etc.) they have actually been published, and also when they were published (since it’s not the very same to have actually been covered 5 years ago than simply a couple of months before).

By following these steps you will have a listing of article ideas with this information:.

• The article suggestion
• Passion.
  • Search quantity
  • Relevance level
• Insurance coverage condition.
  • Magazine LINK
  • Material layout
  • Material kind
  • Magazine day
  • Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
  • External links
  • Linking domains

Prioritize those ideas that have the highest degree of passion which have not been posted yet.

Action 3: Recognize your article possibilities

For each of the very focused on possible ideas for articles, ask the adhering to inquiries to filter them further and validate your opportunities:

• Is this topic associated with your business’s vision and goal?
• Is this the kind of article content that is actually interesting and useful for your audience?
• Is it clear exactly how the post will help your audience solve a concern or enhance exactly what they have?
• Will you have the ability to compose the post to be easily eaten and understood by them?
• Are the sources should create the article feasible for you?
• Will it pay for you to place with this blog post?

The winning suggestion will be those for which you address yes to the inquiries.

If you have identified a subject that has been currently covered in the past with an article, yet it follows the remainder of the previous criteria so is still attractive to seek, then consider how you can create an one-of-a-kind marketing suggestion that differentiates yours from exactly what came in the past. 2 common options are:

• Do a follow-up blog post, completing or expanding the preliminary info.
• Reformat the post to create a tool, develop a to-do list, a guide, a list or compilation of resources, an infographic, a presentation or a video that makes it simpler and much more desirable to eat, and afterwards create an article to announce it.

Some instances; rinse and repeat.

I add my writing to Moz, State of Digital, and at WooRank and it´& severe; s essential for me to have a process to comply with to be able to come up each month with brand-new blog site articles ideas, so I have actually followed this process in the past to create these articles:

It has actually worked pretty well for me in the past and with any luck it carries out you as well!

Do you use a procedure to identify your blog site articles concepts? I would adore to become aware of it.

Posted by Chad_Wittman

This 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 Moz, Inc.

Facebook continues to make significant changes in the news feed. This time Facebook has decreased the importance (technically the “weight”) of status updates. With these changes occurring so rapidly in the news feed, many brand managers want to know how to stay on top of it all.

We dug deep into the data to see what the latest change was and wanted to introduce a philosophy to stay ahead of the constant changes. We analyze and monitor this type of data for thousands of Facebook pages with a tool called EdgeRank Checker.

On Jan. 21, Facebook released a blog post explaining that status updates from pages are less engaging than status updates from friends. In other words, status updates were going to lose exposure in the news feed.

The change was implemented nearly immediately, as we saw organic reach begin to dip rapidly. In the graph below, you’ll see a ~40% decrease from the two weeks after Jan. 21, as compared to the two weeks before:

While frustrating for many brands, status updates aren’t displayed nearly as often as links and photos, as they typically don’t provide as much value to the business. Status updates are typically used for gathering general opinions or quick message updates, whereas links can drive actual traffic.

During this change, the other content types were not significantly impacted. Most experienced a very moderate decrease, which is most likely due to normal fluctuations. Interestingly, videos have now become the strongest performer in the news feed. Our sample size for posts with videos is less than optimal, but our historical data shows a similar pattern. For brands that have the capability to deliver engaging videos, it should be considered as an interesting content outlet in the future.

How does a brand stay ahead?

As we study each change in the news feed, a common theme begins to appear. Content that creates value tends to bubble to the top. Google has a similar approach with search results. We see Facebook slowly becoming similar to Google in that capacity. When we examine the brands that are less impacted by negative changes, they tend to have strong engagement—specifically shares. Why is this? We think we can explain this phenomenon with a concept called Content Originator.

Content Originator

Brands that actually create the content (thus, Content Originators) are the ones that experience the most value in the news feed. We’ve seen Google take a similar approach with examining inbound links. Content Originators actually have less to do with Facebook specifically, as compared to the maturation of any social network. Twitter most likely experiences similar results, which you can see as a Tweet propagates across the world—the Content Originator gets more exposure.

The reason that Content Originators are able to succeed with an onslaught of changes is that they are able to utilize natural distribution networks such as shares. While Facebook’s algorithms may not weigh their initial post as heavily as before, strong engagement and shares are strong signals to distribute the content further.

The news feed is filled with increasing competition that boasts larger and larger budgets to gain exposure within the feed. Being a Content Originator helps slice through the noise created by so many pages re-reporting news. The re-reporting of news is something that Facebook is attempting to decrease through these changes. It is also possible that brands will begin to gain additional exposure through the “Trending” section if they’re the Content Originator of a new and trending topic.

In an example below, you can see the local value that Facebook provides in the trending result. A story that was shared on Facebook 2,000+ times from CarolinaLive (not quite a Content Originator, but as close as you can get in a situation like this, as compared to a CNN-type news source) is given the extra exposure. The next object listed is from Fox Carolina News, again more of a Content Originator than the national brand of Fox News.

The example above is meant to illustrate how Facebook perceives Content Originators elsewhere in their platform. We use things like this as clues to better understand how the news feed works.

Conclusion

Facebook decreased organic reach of status updates by ~40% on Jan. 21. For most brands, this doesn’t have a large impact on their strategy, as they are mostly using links and photos to further increase their brand. Using a concept called Content Originator might help craft a content strategy that stays ahead of news feed changes. Facebook may be placing additional value on content originators in the news feed, and is surely valuing brands with strong engagement—especially ones with high share levels.

Methodology

We studied roughly 50,000 posts from 800 different pages for the two weeks before and after Jan. 21. For most metrics, we examined the median of each page’s average performance over the time period analyzed. Engagement is defined as likes + comments + shares for this study.

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The online marketing community is often abuzz with excitement whenever we discuss the latest trends within our industry, such as omni-channel marketing, new and clever ways to leverage mobile, or the advent of changes in user behavior such as multi-touch/multi-devices. We all want to be on the cutting edge of technology/innovation and no one wants to feel as if they’re lagging behind. Unfortunately the reality is there are hard resource constraints we all face, whether it be time or money. Simply put, no one has time to do it all. The real obstacle we all face is how do we prioritize any online marketing activity in a world that constantly demands more? How do we develop a consistent and integrated framework/workflow process in an increasingly complex ecosystem?

These are the challenges that, as marketers, we are all facing. Coming from an agency background, I can completely relate to the feeling that the right approach is to do more (offer more marketing channels/provide more specializations). Having worked on a variety of clients stemming from diverse backgrounds, whether it be huge enterprises, VC-backed start-ups that have to provide monthly reports to their board, or working within a heavily regulated industry, it doesn’t seem like anyone is looking for more options. Too often this results in scope creep, extended timelines, and going massively over-budget. In actuality, most of us are looking for a simplified approach and a means of appropriately prioritizing the right activities in an industry that wants to pull everyone in too many directions.

Some of the biggest wins I’ve gotten for my clients was when I took a step back and focused on the fundamentals, like what goals should be targeting and how can we develop proper reporting to gain attribution for our work, where are we being inefficient with our existing resources and how can we streamline the existing workflow process, and how can we do more of what we’re doing right? In order to be successful, it’s not about doing more work, it’s about doing more of the right type of work. The purpose of this post is to help marketers determine how to start and execute an integrated online marketing strategy – how to simplify the process and make sure you’re prioritizing the right type of activities to help you meet your overarching marketing objectives.

Step 1: Ask the right questions

(Gain an in-depth understanding of how marketing fits within the organization)

This is the most important step when developing an integrated online marketing strategy and plan. Without a clear and in-depth understanding of why marketing is important for the business, it’s nearly impossible to prioritize the different marketing activities and determine whether or not you’ve hit and/or exceeded meaningful goals for the organization. Depending on the type of business and where the business is at, there are different functions for marketing. Is the goal building brand awareness, developing product awareness, creating product market fit, increase in visibility, or is it another means of lead generation/revenue generation?

At Distilled, we’ve determined that the best way to gain clarity on the goals of an organization is to undergo a discovery phase. We’ve established this discovery phase based on our previous experience working with clients where we executed marketing strategies and reported on KPIs that we later discovered were not as meaningful to key stakeholders as we had anticipated.

Depending on the client, I have sat down with the VP of sales, head of product, head of events, the CTO, the CFO, head of marketing, and account managers to gain an in-depth understanding of their priorities and their pain points. Ultimately, in order to focus on the right type of marketing activities, we need a 360-degree view of what would have the most impact to the business from different perspectives.

Sample questions:

High-level financial perspective (for CEOs/CFO/high-level directors)

High-level business perspective (for CEOs/CFO/high-level directors)

• What is the business’s unique value proposition?
• What are the overall business goals and objectives that we want to hit over the next 12-24 months?
• What are the overall infrastructure and resources that would be required to hit these goals?

High-level growth perspective (for CEOs/CFO/high-level directors)

• How does your company set goals and strategy around growth, expansion, and optimization of your business? Who dos this and how often do you revisit it? Who sits in on this conversations from the marketing department?
• How does your business determine how much money each year is invested into the growth/expansion of the business?
• Has the amount you’ve invested into growth fluctuated over the years or has it stayed consistent? Why?
• How much of your marketing budget do you invest into offline vs online per year? Why? Has the amount fluctuated much year to year and if so, what do you attribute the fluctuation to be due to?

VP of sales

• Discuss what the normal sales cycle looks like
• Discuss who on the sales team has the deepest understanding of the product and customer needs
• Discuss main objectives the sales team has when making a sale and how they qualify a lead
• Discuss trends and demands of products/services
• Discuss strategic partnerships the company has and creative ways to leverage them

Head of marketing

• Review marketing team roles, KPIs, and get a better understanding of the roles the team is currently hiring for
• Overview of different digital marketing channels, activity performed over time across these channels, and overall market performance
• Discussion of overarching marketing objectives/goals and the opportunities for growth
• Are there marketing channels you are currently not investing into that you want to be investing into? What’s kept you from investing in those channels to date?
• What are your highest margin products/services? What are the lowest?
• What are the products/services that attribute to the largest revenue drivers for the business?
• Do you have any new products/services that you are trying to bring to market? Why?
• What are the challenges/opportunities you see in bringing this new product/service to market?

Step 2: Identify the problem statement and the meaningful goal(s) the marketing team can/wants to impact

Once we have an in-depth understanding of the client’s, department’s or businesses’s overarching goals and objectives, we should then be able to explicitly identify the problem the organization is facing, as well as the meaningful goals we can and want to impact. It’s important to make sure that we aren’t spreading ourselves too thin by trying to accomplish/impact too many goals/objectives, but sticking to the ones that would be most meaningful to the overall business based on the information we received from step 1.

For this specific post, I’m going to provide a sample scenario to make this entire process a little more concrete. Let’s say, hypothetically, I have identified that the problem is a successful organization wants to enter into the online marketing realm, but doesn’t know where to begin. However, we do know that the immediate and most meaningful goal for the client’s overall business would be to increase the number of leads the company receives. This specific objective is one I’ve commonly come across with either B2B companies or any service-oriented organizations (like agencies or firms).

To put it succinctly, the problem statement for the organization would look something like this:

Problem statement:

“In order to continue the company’s current 5-year trajectory, the organization needs to discover other methods of garnering leads to support the company’s growing market share. These channels need to (1) be effective in targeting the company’s core audience of small and medium sized businesses (generally less than 200 employees) (2) become an effective framework for ensuring that these channels have the potential to generate good leads for the company’s sales force and (3) that we are consistently aware of the need to develop mechanisms for reporting, so that the organization as a whole has a deeper understanding of how much budget they should be allocating to which departments in the future.”

The sample goals for such an organization that would help support the problem statement could be:

• Specify the appropriate marketing channels/platforms that will help the company increase the number of leads generated.
• Once we have identified these channels and launched campaigns on these platforms, we will need a process to put together stretch growth projections.
• Once we have met these stretch growth projections, we need to establish a very clear framework of what resources it would take to continue investing in these channels.

Most of the organizations you’re currently working with have previously invested into different online marketing channels. As a result, the goals for your organization may distinctly differ from the ones listed above. In situations where a company has previously invested into online marketing, before you establish concrete goals for the organization, you should first analyze the performance of these channels and identify areas that can be used to improve its performance , such as improving the integration between different marketing channels, identifying methodologies to improve the conversion rates of those channels, or having stretch goals we want these channels to meet.

Step 3: Develop a methodology for identifying the appropriate marketing channels/activities to invest in

The next step to develop an integrated online marketing strategy/plan to determine the appropriate channels to invest in based on the overall problem statement and the already established goals/objectives. For instance, in the example scenario established above, we’ve already deemed that our primary goal would be to increase the number of leads generated. Based on the fact that our sample has no clear foundation in online marketing, it would seem unwise to invest too heavily at the beginning on online marketing activities that don’t establish a clear feedback loop. In addition, because of the company doesn’t have an understanding of what are the key metrics they need to hit, we need marketing activities that help us establish a strong foundation for reporting.

As a result, for a company such as the one mentioned above, I would start off investing more heavily in paid channels, such as paid search, display advertising/retargeting, and possibly the development of affiliate advertising. Based on the successful launch of these channels, the goal is that overtime, we would develop an understanding of the core audience we want to target, the type of copy that would resonate with this audience, as well as which type of keywords that would convert best. This is not to undermine the long-term benefits of more inbound channels, like content strategy and SEO, but at this point in the company’s online marketing strategy/plan, we simply don’t have the immediate resources to invest and prioritize heavily in these channels.

Image Credits: Google: Think Insights

That being said, understanding the type of ad copy and keywords that perform well in paid channels is a really important finding for the company’s potential future work in other marketing activities, such as SEO and content strategy without needing these type of channels to complete redundant work. Understanding the type of marketing findings from a particular marketing activity that are fundamentally important to other marketing channels is the beginning stages of developing a cohesive integrated marketing campaign.

Step 4: Develop core objectives for the specific channels we would invest in

Once we’ve identified the specific marketing channels we want to be investing in and our goals, we want to outline some very core objectives that we want to achieve for each of these channels. This will be instrumental in helping the individuals who are responsible for execution to develop a strategy that will help support the overarching objectives.

Example goal: Launch the company’s paid search account

For Q1, our objectives for the account might be to:

Objective 1: Gain an understanding of the type of ad copy, keywords, and landing pages that have successfully worked for your competitors

Objective 2: Put together a clear keyword hierarchy, ad copy tests, landing page tests, and overall bidding strategy for the paid search account

For Q2, our objectives for the account might be to:

Objective 1: Based on the re-launch of the paid search account, set and meet specific targets for budget and CTR/CPA goals in Q2. Since we’re just starting the account and don’t have a clear understanding of an ideal CPA or even the lifetime value of a customer, we are going to use generic targets for our initial foundation.

These would include:

• Meet the industry standard of achieving a 1% CTR
• In terms of cost per acquisition, given the simplified formula that CPA = total cost/number of conversions, we’ll put together the initial goals as:
  • First goal is to hit breakeven point
  • After achieving this first goal, the second might be to increase the profitability of conversions
  • If we achieve the second goal, our third goal is to determine how to increase the amount of budget going to these channels without affecting overall profitability.

For Q3, our objectives for the paid search account might be to:

Objective 1: Review initial targets and determine:

• If we met these targets, the creation of new stretch targets.
• If we didn’t meet these initial targets, develop a clear understanding of what it would take to meet these stretch targets and execute upon the strategy.

Step 5: Put together a brief and an efficient/integrated workflow process for marketing activities

One of the most important takeaways I’ve learned when developing and executing an integrated marketing campaign is the value of putting together an extremely clear brief. Writing a concise, well-thought out, and clear brief is challenging, but proactively putting one together will ultimately save everyone money and time. A clear brief makes it explicitly clear whether or not the outcome met the overall objective and if an activity/channel was successful or not. This is especially important when a marketing manager/director is juggling multiple balls in the air and can’t manage the day-to-day execution of these activities.

Below is a fantastic video from The Skool Rocks that describes in-depth what makes a great brief, how to use it, and how to develop a brief for different audiences, such as internal teams and designers vs. developers. The audience for The Skool is targeted towards creatives and web designers, but this video has tons of key takeaways that are also directly applicable for online marketers.

Once the brief has been put together, it’s important to work with the team to develop a very efficient/integrated workflow process to execute upon these marketing activities. Having a clear understanding of the specific activities and in what order they will be executed upon to meet clearly defined goals gets everyone on the same page. A carefully thought out workflow will eliminate any confusion, will take into account the different dependencies and when certain individuals should be checking in/having meetings with different departments, and have carefully set expectations for communication and meeting deadlines.

For instance, if the site needs to create new landing pages, the ideal scenario would be for the paid search/SEO/content/brand teams to work together to prioritize the overall layout and copy of the page. Otherwise, having the paid search team create PPC landing pages, then the SEO team create another set of landing pages, while the content team creates a third set of landing pages can be deemed overly redundant, which can lead to massive inconsistencies and scalability issues that may pop up on the site. That being said, there are clearly scenarios of which it is necessary for different sets of landing pages to be generated. The overall goal is of course, to reduce redundancy whenever possible.

Step 6: Report and reassess results and then expand or reallocate resources as needed

Once different marketing channels/platforms have been launched and there is ample data to be analyzed and reported on, it’s important to reassess this information and determine whether the channel/activity has adequately performed and more importantly, if the channel has potential to grow given its existing performance. It’s also important to consistently and strategically evaluate whether given the overarching business goals/objectives for the organization if budget and resources have been adequately allocated. If not, we need to determine whether any of it needs to be reallocated or further developed (example: making hiring decisions).

At the same time, it’s also important to reevaluate when it is appropriate to start initiating other marketing activities/platforms that have previously not been as big of a priority and how to properly integrate existing marketing activities with these new channels to ensure there is little to no redundancy taking place across platforms. One other aspect to consider is to determine whether the incorporation of other tools/resources will make the entire process more efficient.

Ultimately, compiling an integrated online marketing strategy/plan can definitely be overwhelming, especially given the wide-range of different platforms/channels that currently exist within our industry (not to mention the continuous technological advancements that increase the number of platforms/tools that are available). It’s important to develop a framework that ensures the resources (such as time, money, head space of individuals) is focused on the right set of activities that will help support the company’s overall business vision, goals, and objectives. This type of framework is initially time-consuming, but in the long run, can save a lot of confusion, when the complexities within an organization’s marketing team increase. Having very clear objectives of why you’re investing in a specific channel and for what specific purpose not only aids with reporting, but also ensures that everyone on the team (both internal and external resources) have a clear understanding of appropriate targets.

As the ecosystem of our industry becomes ever more complex, establishing a very clear framework for how to simplify the process and execute on the important marketing activities becomes increasingly more important. As marketers, let’s embrace these new challenges and begin the process together. There’s no better time than the present.

MozCon 2014 Ticket Sales Promo

MozCon 2013 free video – Kyle Rush – Win Through Optimization and Testing

Howdy, Moz followers, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today I assumed I would certainly attend to something that’s taking place in the wider Search Engine Optimization and inbound marketing neighborhoods, which is this suggestion that the only thing that Search engine optimisations do any longer is make content and do material advertising. So we build some material then we go market and we outreach and we attempt and acquire individuals to connected to it.

That is truly lessening the work requirements, which are huge, astonishingly vast and much larger compared to this concept. So I thought I ‘d take a little stab and drop a pebble in the ocean of points that SEOs are responsible for by tackling these 6 ways, six out of most likely 600 ways that you can earn greater ranks without investing in material creation or material advertising.

So, first off, primary, you can make your bits far better and your pages offer that intent. Permit me reveal you just what I’m discussing.

So basically, in the search outcomes page, this is a quite tiny mockup of that, but I might do a search and I’ll view a ton of titles and then the URL here it and the meta description listed below that. I might even view an author profile. I could see video clip bits. If you’ve obtained some abundant snippet mark-up, I’ll view those in right here, and this leads off to your web page. By enhancing both the bit below, to make sure that could possibly indicate including rel=”author”,
that could possibly imply adding a video clip, that can mean including some rich mark-up, that could mean changing the title, tweaking the title to be a little bit a lot more compelling to select, altering the description, also really, surprisingly, altering the URL. Some research studies have program just recently that Address as a matter of fact do contribute to whether folks prefer to click them.

After that it’s not pretty much making this compelling, but additionally making whatever is on that page, whatever is on that snippet match exactly what’s on the page that users reach, considering that as we know, pogo sticking, individuals embarking on of this page harms you in two huge means. One, it harms you due to the fact that the engines straight look at pogo sticking behavior and go, “Oh, people select this and then they return and they don’t like it. I’m out of right here. I do not would like to rank this web page.” 2, you don’t have a chance to transform those individuals into customers or into prospective sharers or linkers to your content.

All right, so number one, entirely outside of material production could seriously move your positions up.

Second, enhancing the crawl goodwill and the pages-of-value proportion on your internet site.

So I was speaking to a quite smart SEO over email the various other day, and he shared something that I adored. He shared, “I have never ever viewed and never worked with a large site where enhancing crawl data transfer really did not imply significant increases in natural search website traffic.” I assumed that was really smart and well stated. That’s certainly been the situation that I have viewed as well, but I liked his phrasing of it in certain. So this idea that, well fine, I’ve acquired a great page below, a great web page stood for by smiley face dude, and smiley face man is connecting bent on, well, 3 not so wonderful pages, pages that Google does not specifically wish to index. They do not offer a lot of value to them or their searchers or to customers in general. It’s usually the situation that websites simply have these.

Go and look at your website. I bet you’ll click about, and you’ll resemble, “Guy, why do we even have this web page any longer? This does not help anybody. It doesn’t help anybody.” Well, if you boost the proportion of those web pages, remove or discard or also simply remake a few of those pages, you could dramatically boost your crawl data transfer and the happiness that Google views with your site. I’m not just discussing sort of penalties, like Panda, that may impact individuals which have large amounts of poor quality stuff.

However, along with this, aside from the proportion, you could likewise check out your navigation. If you have actually got something similar to this, so this is a rather clean navigation device. This one web page is connecting out to 6 or 7 various other pages. That’s fine. Yet what regarding when I reach this page and he’s associateding with one other web page, who connecteds to another page, which connects to another page, that associateds with another web page, that links to one more web page that’s really a replicate of that initial web page I was discussing? Improving this sort of stuff, making these models of navigation tidy, making your website a lot more indexable, making your navigation get you into deep web pages in less clicks, and making all of the web pages accessible rather than needing to go down these wormholes could really enhance your site’s web traffic also.

Number 3, probably the simplest one on the selection. You make your web pages a lot faster, the Internet will certainly award you. Some of this is direct. Some of this is Google basically sharing, “Yes, web page rate is a quite little part of our ranking formula. We do take it into consideration.” However a great deal of it is not Google straight. A lot of it is customers being too much happier and doing the exact same thing we chatted regarding up here, which is reducing your bounce rate, decreasing that pogo-sticking task, and significance that you have a chance to change a whole lot more of those folks into purchasers, sharers, appreciators of your brand name.

Number 4, I actually truly similar to this one. This is among my favorite ways to do link building in general, hyperlink earning as a whole, which is to leverage your network to help draw in those web links, shares, traffic, recommendations, and so on. I have actually viewed a couple people that I actually admire in the area which’ve essentially taken this strategy. They say, “Hey, whenever someone informs us we truly enjoy you, we assume your solution is impressive”, they say,
“Thank you a lot. That implies the globe to us, and it would certainly indicate even a lot more if you would mention to a person about it,” your good friends, your social network, indicate us on your site somewhere.

We uncommitted if it’s a followed link, a no followed link, we’re not requesting hyperlinks. Exactly what we’re requesting is if you believe you’ve obtained something excellent by functioning with us, by buying our item, by utilizing our solution, by communicating with us, we aided you in some means, kindly share it. That’s all I’m asking. I saw it in one female’s e-mail trademark. She just shared, “If I have actually ever been practical to you, it would be awesome if you could discuss our internet site.”

I do not know what the sale rate is like for her, yet it does not also matter if it’s 0.001 %. That is a lot much more hyperlinks and shares and assistance. What a wonderful means to make the sort of signals that will help you rate a lot better.

Incidentally, for a bit more on this topic and a certain method below, look at a post I created a little while back called “The Assist Me Help You Dinner.” It’s a little Jerry McGuire I understand, but sorry.

Number five, go try this process for me. Identify the pages on your website that make individuals delighted yet that aren’t making natural search website traffic. Below’s exactly what I indicate. They have actually obtained superior engagement, a low bounce rate, a great number of gos to, a higher browse fee, indicating folks are clicking and seeing various other web pages after them, but they do not acquire natural search web traffic.

This in fact happens very a little bit, that you see pages such as this. Oftentimes, not consistently, yet oftentimes the culprit here is that the keyword targeting and the keyword marketing simply isn’t really there. Basically, these are web pages that are developed not by SEO folks or by Search engine optimizations who just kind of failed to remember or were targeting keyword phrases that have long given that quit being sought. Go enhance those. Go discover the key words that those web pages need to be ranking for and then upgrade the page, the titles, the content a little bit. You often should not need to fine-tune much of the material at all on the web page in order to get the targeting right and dialed in simply a little bit. In some cases you may even alter the ADDRESS, and afterwards you can do an ADDRESS rewrite or a 301. That’s fine also.

If you’re doing a much more significant update process, go in advance and relaunch and reshare it as well, particularly if a bunch of folks have actually forgotten it or search engines have ignored it. Merely that upgrade, merely that quality signal could aid you acquire a little bit more in your ranks.

Last thing I’ll point out. I don’t understand where the concepts originate from that timeless hyperlink structure is completely lifeless. It’s not, and among things that is genuinely still active and still quite powerful is what I call classic competitive design link structure. I recognize that sort of low-quality visitor uploading and directory web link structure and a bunch of these other even more guide, scalable features have actually really vanished, however timeless competitive web link building is still just as useful as it ever has actually been and not simply for Search Engine Optimisation, yet for the traffic you could make from those areas as well.

So go and use your favorite link structure tool. We like Open Site Traveler or Fresh Internet Traveler if you’re looking at kind of points that have been simply recently published. We do have a device as well called Web link Intersect that assists you discover pages that two or additional of your competitors are connected to by but you have not been, those kinds of points. I think Majestic SEO likewise has a function like that, so you can check them out.

Then you make this form of prioritized selection for outreach and starting to try to speak to a few of these individuals. Just what I advise, given that a lot of people get discouraged if they visit the initial guy and there’s merely a ton of hoops that they need to hop through and it’s quite difficult to locate any get in touch with information and afterwards it’s very difficult to acquire a response and when you do obtain a feedback, it’s adverse, and you can simply get oppressed.

What I like to do, for that reason, especially due to the fact that getting links from a diverse group of places is usually better compared to just acquiring one or 2 here or there, is to go ahead and prioritize the list by just how simple you think it will be. If there’s a journalist which’s currently following you on Twitter and they’ve blogged about several of your rivals and you figure they’re going to keep blogging about this topic, why would not they discuss you?
Great! Do a bit of outreach. Ask them exactly what you can do to be a feature in the following tale. It’s most likely a relatively basic one. If there’s a web page that’s detailing sources of the kind that you currently have, great, go communicate to them. That’s possibly a really simple one.

This kind of things and hundreds even more like it are done in the arena of exactly what contemporary Search engine optimizations still need to be doing in addition to the newer responsibilities that we have around material creation and material marketing, all of this social networks job and those examples. So I try not to fail to remember any one of this, however I know that we have a great deal of various other responsibilities too.

I hope you’ve appreciated this edition of White boards Friday. We’ll see you once more following time. Make sure.