Doing Right By Customers

Social networking site has actually altered our lives, no doubt. As a consumer, today you have even more energy compared to ever before. The Internet brought a huge development in option of where we go shopping, and boosted accessibility to lesser costs by means of that competitors.

Social network, nonetheless, is an equalizer. It’& rsquo; s a talk tool like none that’& rsquo; s alreadied existing previously. Allowing a consumer in Florida to talk straight to a supplier in Oregon in actual time (timing allowing, naturally) to get direct responses form the source.

Electrical outlets like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and much more allow individuals to speak straight to stores, discussing the great, the bad and the unsightly. Those exact same outlets have actually become havens for businesses seeking to involve consumers, be they fanboys and girls or haters.

And while it’& rsquo; s delightfully to communicate with those which enjoy you, it’& rsquo; s probably a lot more vital to communicate with those which are dissatisfied with you. It’& rsquo; s from them that you will learn how finest to improve products, services and processes.

Amazon.com attacked a wall surface once after a time. They’& rsquo; d broke the nut on ranking, began to control ecommerce and took hold of a huge part of online sales for many individuals. However then individuals began to complain. And they complained sufficient regarding one point that it recorded Amazon.com’& rsquo; s interest: the product packaging of shipped products required renovation.

Today, Amazon.com continually finds feedback on things you are delivered. Did it arrive in one piece? Was the packaging well done? Was the box in one piece or crushed? They like to know regarding the problem of your thing from when you viewed it on your front action to when you took it out of the manufacturing facility packaging. And they’& rsquo; re less concerned concerning THEIR product packaging, but a lot more worried regarding exactly what occurs when a third party ships something to you. Amazon could control its very own activities, yet not essentially that of those 3rd party merchants.

While not every business has the size, form or darkness of Amazon.com, every business could find out to care like they do. And let’& rsquo; s be clear below. We & rsquo; re not speaking best-friend-consoling you caring. We & rsquo; re taking about looking through specifics to find exactly what works for a customer AND enhances success. This is business nevertheless. Continuous usability testing can go a lengthy way to heal just what ails your customers, as well. Ever before had the unsatisfactory encounter of utilizing a mobile gadget, visiting a site and discovering their navigation doesn & rsquo; t accommodate a touch setting? Without a pointer, you can & rsquo; t trigger the navigational elements to obtain where you wish. Now, if you & rsquo; re business, sort that stuff ASAP. Just what are you standing by for ?! Individuals are on mobile & hellip; NOW. The excellent news is that an increasing number of companies are acquiring wise concerning social media sites class. No more merely utilizing them to press sales messages out, they & rsquo; re increasingly being used to engage consumers, talk’concerning troubles and are seen by even more businesses as an early-alert tool for brewing problems. Yes, your grimy washing could get aired in public, however that & rsquo; s going to happen whether you join the chat or not. Much better to be included compared to disregard things and create a bad reputation. Which & rsquo; s the factor right here. Being receptive to consumers.

Believing’of them initially, while not disregarding your company needs, and discovering a means to supply an impressive encounter. When you impress a client, they share that experience. When you dissatisfy a customer, they share that experience. However turning dissatisfaction into a favorable, that & rsquo; s a proven way to convert complainers into proponents. Accomplish this a few times, the word begins to disperse, your track record looks much better and the long-term results are strong and proven. Duane Forrester Sr. Item Manager Bing

Are Links Losing Value in Google’s Algorithm? – Whiteboard Friday

There are some great arguments to be made on both sides of the question of whether links are losing value in Google’s algorithm. In some ways, it seems that they are — and in some, they’re more valuable than ever. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores both sides of the argument, offering some concrete advice to SEOs on how they can navigate today’s waters.

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.

3 Steps to Identify Blog Topics that are Relevant to Your Audience

The writer’s blog posts are entirely his or her own (leaving out the unlikely occasion of hypnotherapy) and might not constantly mirror the views of Moz.

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:

blog-idea-process.png

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.

social-crawlytics-most-shared-pages.png

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.

New Study Shows Original Content Reaches More People on Facebook

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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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(Provided): 10 Ways to Prove SEO Value in Google Analytics

Over the past two years I have flipped and flopped on my stance on (not provided) keywords in Google Analytics. For a long time I took a stance against complaining about missing keyword data in GA by asking the question “Why Do You Care So Much About (not provided)?

Then at some point last fall while I was hanging out with some of my fellow GACPs, their complaints about the data we were missing behind the fog of https: search results influenced me enough to join the ranks of (not provided) complainers.

Not Provided Trends

Not Provided Trends from Not Provided Count

Fortunately, that was only short-lived. Knowing that (not provided) will eventually be 100% of our search keywords, I’m back to my old stance of saying “deal with it” when it comes to complaints about missing keywords in Google Analytics.

But how do we deal with it?

Let’s start with defining the problem. Keywords have long fueled everything in SEO. From research through ranking through reporting, our lives as search analysts have been about granular keyword data. While in recent years the most effective SEO strategies have grown to center around creating great content, much of the industry is still conditioned around keywords being at the center of the universe. For many, keywords are the universe.

While most practitioners are gradually coming around to the changes in Google’s preferences for ranking sites with high-quality content, we are also tasked with re-training all of those who have grown accustomed to receiving keyword data over the years.

Missing keyword data in Google Analytics is causing trouble for Internet marketers because our peers, bosses and clients are used to seeing this data in their reports. It’s almost as if we are Pavlov, our report recipients are Pavlov’s dog, and keywords are conditioned response.

Pavlovs Dog

Image found on The Thinking Blog

With a conditioned response to keyword data, it becomes tragic when it is taken away. When something is taken away, our instincts illicit a negative reaction. We are conditioned to behave this way.

The key to surviving is to give them more meat. Better meat!

We can do better than keyword reporting

While keywords have always been at the center of the SEO universe, reporting too heavily keyword data has long been a crutch for propping up weak and unoriginal marketing efforts. There are better ways to measure your organic search marketing performance, and many of them are already available for you within Google Analytics.

Instead of fixating on a handful of fat head keywords, it’s time to train executives to focus on what really matters to your business: how organic search brings revenue (and ultimately profit) into your organization.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to measuring search performance purely based on keyword data. What follows are 10 ways that you can prove the value of your SEO efforts in a (not provided) world.

I first gave this presentation in January, 2014 at Superweek in Hungary. For those of you who learn best by going through slides, you can view all of the slides here:

For those of you who would benefit from an explanation of what these slides mean, the rest of this post is for you.

What follows are 10 ways that you can use Google tools to prove the value of your SEO efforts, even after (not provided) reaches 100%. Some of these may seem obvious, while I’m hopeful that others will give you an “aha” moment.

1) Measure overall organic traffic over time

Organic Traffic over Time

While search marketers may judge themselves by their abilities to rank for certain keywords, your organization will likely be judging you on two things: overall traffic and conversions. The good news is that if your site has been in existence for at least 13 months and you have goals configured in GA, you can work to prove your value by showing the recent growth that you have brought to the organization.

This can easily be done using the date comparison tool within Google Analytics. An executive in your organization may be used to seeing reports featuring information about individual keywords, but they will quickly forget about keywords if you can show them that you have grown organic search traffic by 200% year over year. The memory of keywords will be completely erased from their mind when they see the revenue growth of 150% year over year!

The Mind Eraser for Executives: Revenue and Profit

Revenue growth and profit erase the memories of keywords. Mind Eraser image from Wikipedia.

Executives are often compensated based on that same growth and profit. Showing them that you are a source of growth or profit for your organization is a key to obtaining more resources for your team, rising through the ranks of the organization and increasing your overall compensation.

Wouldn’t it be great if the loss of granular keyword data were the key to your personal financial gain?

2) Segment organic search traffic by landing page

Now that we understand how focusing on the end result is the best area to focus with our bosses and our bosses bosses, we have to deal with the reality that it’s very hard to optimize the ocean.

Knowing that you have tens of thousands of search visits to your site without any indicator of what drove them there is an ocean of useless data. That’s what we are dealing with when staring at a screen with (not provided) keywords.

Not exactly useful

Not exactly useful

Good news: there are multiple alternatives to looking at the view above. In fact, if you can probably skip this report entirely. The quickest and easiest solution to find some level of granularity in Google Analytics is to look at the Landing Page primary dimension while in the organic keywords report. This will give you a view of the pages on your site that are driving the most organic traffic.

Organic Landing Pages

In my case, I can see that there are several pages on my site that are drawing organic search traffic. Since I wrote these posts, I can tell exactly what each page is about based solely on the article URL. For example, the #1 traffic driver for me is a post I wrote about auto posting your content to social media. I wrote this post after growing super frustrated about a lack of information on the topic during my previous Google searches.

As is often the case with my blog, I tend to write lengthy posts on a topic after growing frustrated on the information that is currently showing up in online searches. If I have to view 10 search results pages to piece together the answer to my question, then there is a tremendous opportunity to outrank the existing articles by writing something more comprehensive.

My SEO strategy for Jeffalytics is to provide the best answer to a question that I recently struggled with myself. I rarely worry about keywords, because I am concentrating on providing the answer and not fixated on keywords. I also understand that much of the traffic coming to the site will be from the long tail.

Reporting on the success of your pages vs. individual keywords gives you a much quicker indication of what content is working. Amplifying what is working is a key impactor of future success.

In your case, you may find that the #1 landing page for your site is your home page by a large margin. This is common for established brands and the home page often represents a branded query. If you want to get advanced with your reporting, try inferring brand/non-brand to your landing pages based on the URL and reporting on each separately.

Note: I am sure that my blog would benefit from a stronger keyword focus, but I can only do so much as a single author hobby blogger.

3) Use landing pages as a secondary dimension

If you are accustomed to looking at the organic keywords report in GA, or if your (not provided) count is still providing valuable data, then you may want to view the landing page as a secondary dimension within this report. This can be easily done by choosing landing page as a secondary dimension within the keyword report.

Secondary Dimensions for Organic Search

4) Use filters to make (not provided) more meaningful

The first three suggestions we give for dealing with (not provided) work out of the box with your Google Analytics account. For those of you who are bold enough to experiment with filtering the data coming in through your website, you can combine the organic keywords and landing pages into a single field by creating filters for your views in Google Analytics. The good folks at Econsultancy provided an awesome guide on how you can steal some of your keyword data back using advanced filters in GA.

*Please note that when applying filters to your data it is highly recommended to only do this with a NEW VIEW. Do not apply to existing views to your site for two reasons: 1) You might screw up the filter, which could prevent your site from collecting data and 2) The filter is not retroactively applied, so there’s little advantage to applying to your main reporting profile anyway since you can’t do an apples to apples comparison.

By applying the following filter to a new view, your (not provided) keywords become more meaningful.

Not Provided Filter

As you can see, the keyword not only becomes more meaningful, but it also frees up a secondary dimension for further analysis that would not be available to you otherwise. Think about all of the awesome analysis you can do now!

More Relevant Not Provided Reports

5) Use multi-channel funnels to prove value

Two areas that always suffer with last click attribution are organic search and social. This is because the visitors we receive from these sources are often at the top of the marketing funnel and don’t often purchase on the first site visit. While we may influence their future purchase with our company, it doesn’t always happen on the first date. It often takes a paid search ad, remarketing, email marketing or a direct visit to complete the buying process for these visitors.

Here is an example of how the content marketing funnel looks for a startup I am working with.

Content Marketing Funnel

Notice how prominent organic search and content marketing are at the top of the decision process and how they tail off as people begin to make purchases. This is the type of behavior that many companies experience when trying to draw in new customers (note that this is a simplified picture and YMMV). The above funnel is based loosely on industry specific research provided by Think Insights.

The easiest way to understand whether your business is impacted by a similar decision making funnel is to look at the multi channel funnels functionality within Google Analytics. My favorite is the assisted conversions report, because it allows us to see very clearly whether any of our traffic driving channels are understated with last click attribution.

Multi Channel Funnels

Understanding our last click + assisted revenue numbers can double the measurable impact of our organic search efforts.

6) Hook up with Google Webmaster Tools

I got the Hook Up

The closest direct replacement to (not provided) keyword data is the integration between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. By hooking up the two tools with each other, we unlock a wealth of keyword data that is slowly becoming more accurate.

While these reports are not available in Google Analytics out of the box, if you utilize the asynchronous version of the GA tracking code or Google Tag Manager, you can use these tools to verify ownership of your website through Google Webmaster tools. Once verified, you can connect the two products and have keyword data start rolling in to the Search Engine Optimization reports in Google Analytics.

Google Webmaster Tools Data

From here you can begin to see impressions for individual keywords, clicks and click through rates for Google search. While I don’t find the information to be extremely reliable, the data is improving.

The key I have found once again to ensure accuracy is to once again look at the landing pages report as opposed to the “queries’ section. In my case, the queries section only shows 6,720 clicks from Google off 161,182 impressions while the Landing Pages report shows 28,139 clicks for the same 90 day time period.

Landing Page Clicks

This is actually very accurate when compared to my organic landing pages for the same time period:

Organic Landing Pages

The difference in my case is that they only show the top 1,000 queries, which does not represent all of the long tail keywords that drive traffic. On the other hand, since I don’t have close to 1,000 pages on this site, the top 1,000 landing pages do not get cut off by this limitation.

Top 1,000 Queries

Some of this may be attributed to the changes Google made on December 31, 2013 to have more detailed search queries in Webmaster Tools.

Google Webmaster Tools data may not be perfect, but in many cases it is all we have.

7) Segment organic search traffic by demographics

If you are not using the new Demographics reports in Google Analytics, you are seriously missing out on some amazing data. You’re also not alone, because these reports are so new that very few people are using them to their fullest.

Why aren’t people using them? Because first of all it may require a change to your base Google Analytics code to get them enabled. It also may require an update to your privacy policy.

The demographic report data is provided by Doubleclick and requires you to utilize the dc.js version of Google Analytics in order to access the data. This may require changing the code on your site if you are not already using the dc.js version of GA to enable remarketing. It is also not compatible with Universal Analytics at the moment. For Google Tag Manager users it’s as simple as checking a box in your tag settings for GA.

For those of you who can navigate the above process and enable the reports, you can see some very cool data about who is interacting with your site. You can segment by the age range and gender of your visitors to understand who fits into your target market.

Organic Search Demographics

Better yet, you can create a secondary dimension that allows you to understand how an age range or gender performs by traffic source. Ever wonder whether males or females are better searchers? Do younger visitors convert better than older ones? You can answer these questions and adjust your search strategy based on the key demographics for your site.

Organic Search by Age

8) Use dashboards to surface the most important metrics

I love that we can share dashboards, segments and reports between accounts in Google Analytics. This makes it easier to consistently work across accounts and also allows users to have access to the works of analytics professionals in the click of a button. One of these professionals is Dan Barker, who grew so tired of having keywords (not provided) in Google Analytics that he created a website with resources dedicated to dealing with the problem. His site, Not Provided Kit, provides 6 different add-ons that you can install into your Google Analytics account.

Not Provided Kit

I especially like the custom dashboard that helps you understand some of the key information behind not provided keywords for your website. Brilliant!

Custom Dashboard

For a wealth of custom dashboards and reports, I highly recommend that you check out the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.

Google Analytics Gallery

9) Paid and organic search reports in AdWords

Stepping outside of Google Analytics, these last two ways of dealing with (not provided) also come from Google. The first is utilizing the relatively new Paid & Organic keyword report in Google AdWords. This report marries data from your AdWords account and Google Webmaster Tools to help you understand where you have the best keyword coverage. This report helps you understand how often your site appears in paid and organic search for a given keyword that you are targeting.

Paid and Organic Search Reports AdWords

If your company is heavily involved in both paid search and organic, you can get started by linking AdWords and Webmaster Tools. From there, I recommend reading How to Use Google AdWords Paid & Organic Report by Lunametrics.

10) Use Google Trends

If you are still interested in understanding the interest and performance of individual keywords over time, you can always utilize Google Trends to gain insights into the popularity of a keyword over time or compare the relative search volume for two similar terms. This data can help you understand if interest is growing or shrinking in recent times, as well as aid you in targeting one keyword over another in your content marketing efforts.

Now if only Google used their own tools to see how interest in not provided has grown 500% since it was introduced into our lexicon in 2011.

Google Trends Gauge Interest

It’s time to come clean

When something is taken away from us, it’s hard not to react negatively to the change. As Avinash put it in his article about this very topic, you need to go through the five stages of grief to come out clean on the other side. It almost reminds me of Andrew Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption.

Stop Worrying about Not Provided Shawshank

Andy Dufresne crawled through a river of (not provided) keywords and came out clean on the other side.

Free yourself of the burden of how things used to be. Keywords as you knew them are probably never coming back, so use this as an opportunity to advance your career, get paid more and make your company lots of money.

Hopefully these 10 tips will help you better understand where you can look to get at the data you need. Happy Analysis!

6 Steps to Compiling an Integrated Online Marketing Strategy

The author’s posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

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.

About StephanieChang — Senior Consultant and Head of Distilled NYC with experience working with clients ranging from VC-backed start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Passionate about teaching & learning. Contact me on Twitter at @stephpchang

#MozCon 2014: Everything You Want to Know (Including the Kitchen Sink)

MozCon is five months away! What?! And besides my daily countdown to MozCon, provided by the lovely Sha Menz, many of you out there have asked for the juicy details of what we’re planning this year. This year, MozCon is July 14-16 at the Washington State Convention Center.

But before I dive further down: If you’re already planning on coming to MozCon, but haven’t bought your ticket (or your team’s tickets), do it now! Seriously, we’re already almost sold out of early bird MozCon tickets [~60 tickets left], and I know you want to have a happy wallet with a savings of $200.

For the best deal on MozCon tickets, make sure you’re a Moz Pro Subscriber. If you’re not, you can take a 30-day free trial with us and get the Subscriber rate for you and your team—even on trial day number one! Cancel your trial at any time if it’s not for you, and we’ll see you at MozCon.

Sign up for MozCon today

We say MozCon is “not your typical marketing conference,” but what does that truly mean? Many of you are probably familiar with TAGFEE, our company code, which is woven tightly into MozCon. But what we really aim for is that second E, which stands for Exceptional. Not exceptional in the “really awesome” way, but exceptional as in the exception to the rule (which is in itself really awesome). We want MozCon to be the place where marketers feel the love of being part of this extraordinary community, and where you can spend three days enveloped in new knowledge and actionable information from our forward-thinking speakers to take home with you .

If that’s too mushy for you, just watch the video of what happened last year. :)

MozCon 2014 Ticket Sales Promo

It’s all about meeting you!

Before I start talking about the amazing speakers or the bacon, our community—that’s YOU!—drives the force behind MozCon. MozCon humbly started out as the SEOmoz: PRO Training Series because we wanted to meet our community and share face-to-face what we were learning about SEO. As we grew, MozCon became the place for our community to hang out with each other and the industry experts we bring in.

One of our exceptional goals has been to maintain that community camaraderie that much smaller conferences embody. I’m pleased to say that we’ve all leveled up to the challenge.

Roger Hugs Montage

Roger has lots of friends!

Our beloved mascot Roger joins us for every MozCon. He loves giving hugs. Sometimes he even dances around. One time, we hooked up a Kinect with a dance simulator to the main stage, and late into the lunch break, people could come on stage and dance as Roger! And then Roger danced as Roger. Seriously, you have to see it to believe it.

[embedded content]

I’m joined by Roger, Roger, and Rand on the stage.

One of the most magical moments from MozCon 2013 was from Wil Reynolds. After giving his hour-long presentation, Wil gave away a bunch of books, aimed to help people with their careers, and doled out advice to conference goers. He sat on stage talking with and listening to person after person during the lunch break. (Well, until I had to play traffic cop and let our a/v crew set up for the next speaker.) It probably could’ve gone on for hours longer.

Wil gives out books and advice

Wil signs books and talks with attendees at MozCon 2013.

We also give you the chance to be on stage and share your insights! At MozCon 2012, we launched our community speaker program where we opened up four shorter speaking slots for everyone in our community (YOU) to pitch for.

Every year, we get a ton of emails pitching to speak at MozCon. And for all those emails, I’ve sadly had to reply that we don’t accept pitches because we have a selection committee. But now that we have community speakers, we have a place for everyone to toss their hat in the ring.

The competition is fierce for these spots. Last year, I kept them open for a week and a half and saw 130 responses! Crazy.

Our past speakers are really successful and amazing people, including A. Litsa, Dana Lookadoo, Darren Shaw, Fabio Ricotta, Jeff McRitchie, Mike Arnesen, and Sha Menz. All community speakers get to attend our speaker’s dinner, get a free ticket to MozCon, and of course, get to speak on the MozCon stage.

Every year, our post-MozCon polling says that you love our community speakers, and many of their talks rank highly. We’ll be opening community speaker solicitations no later than the first week of April. Stay tuned!

Mike on the MozCon 2013 stage as a community speaker

Mike Arneson owns that MozCon stage!

All throughout MozCon, you’ll have the chance to interact with Mozzers. From marketing and help, to engineering and operations, Mozzers of all stripes use MozCon as a chance to learn who you are. Some are looking for direct feedback about products. MozCon 2013 goers got access to the Moz Analytics beta. And some just want to hear about you: the people who use the products we make, read the blog we’ve fostered, attend the Mozinars we host, and come for MozCon. We’re always elated that people truly join us from around the globe.

Group photo of Mozzers

Group photo time! All the Mozzers.

Anyone else ever have problems at concerts where you can’t see that stage? At MozCon, our set-up not only ensures there’s not a bad seat in the house, but also that you have plenty of room. You know for your laptop, your tablet, your work phone, your personal phone, your MozCon swag bag, your moleskine, your coffee, your soda, your water, and your issue of Thor #337, which introduces Beta Ray Bill, that you never leave home without.

Attendees sit at tables with power cords and plenty of leg room. MozCon is a fully accessible conference for all attendees. And before you go asking about internet—we know the wifi never works at any conference ever—we’re coming up with some creative solutions. Just stay tuned.

Our speakers are also comfortable with an extra long stage and three huge, stage-to-ceiling (seriously, maybe a three inch gap up there) screens. The middle screen projects their live image and the other two show their presentations. We do our best to ensure that you—yes, you way in the back—can see every bit of the action.

Attendees listening to the speakers

Attendees listen to speakers, but also have room to move around.

We’re happy to say that people come back to MozCon year-after-year, not to just learn, but to hang out with the industry friends that they’ve made. It’s kind of like a big ‘ole family reunion—at least with the family you enjoy.

Friends hanging out at MozCon

Friends are just the best thing ever.

Learn all the things!

One of my absolute pleasures in life is working with MozCon’s exceptional speakers. Industry leaders from about every niche in online marketing have graced the MozCon stage, sharing their knowledge, tips, and inspiring you. And me too!

Dana DiTomaso rocks the MozCon 2013 stage!

Our MozCon selection committee works extraordinarily hard to vet and handpick the best speakers. And we continually expect more and more from those who we invite back or invite for the first time when the next year’s conversations start about who should speak. The MozCon stage is large; its audience very enthusiastic and particular; and because of that, I’ve seen seasoned speakers—the people I know you’d love to have at a dinner party to pick their brains—send emails panicked that their presentations won’t be enough. Don’t worry, they always deliver.

Get a taste of MozCon sessions and speaker quality with these two free sessions. One from Kyle Rush from MozCon 2013 on conversion rate optimization and Wil Reynolds from MozCon 2012 on Real Company Shit:

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

While we’re still working to confirm and select ~11 more speakers for MozCon 2014, here’s who is already signed up: Annie Cushing, Dana DiTomaso, Jeremy Bloom, Justin Cutroni, Kyle Rush, Marshall Simmonds, Nathalie Nahai, Paddy Moogan, Pete Meyers, Phil Nottingham, Rand Fishkin, Richard Millington, Sarah Bird, and Wil Reynolds.

And don’t worry, since MozCon is a single-session conference and we’re all in one big room together, you won’t miss a single presenter!

Let me give you a brief preview of who these amazing people are:

Annie Cushing

Annie Cushing is an analytics genius and consultant. No, seriously, if there’s something that needs to be reformulated in a spreadsheet and made into a beautifully digestible report for your client, boss, or CEO, she’s your go-to person. Annie’s blog, Annielytics, is full of video tutorials to walk you through the jungles of Excel. This will be Annie’s third MozCon, and in her very popular 2013 session, she spoke about “not provided” and going beyond keywords in your analytics.

Dana DiTomaso

Dana DiTomaso has her finger on the pulse of small business and local marketing. She leads as a Partner at Kick Point Inc, a small agency. There, Dana regularly plays out David and Goliath type stories with the small businesses she represents. At MozCon 2013, she absolutely wowed our community with her talk about taking SMBs to the next level of marketing. Dana also may have moonlighted as Roger one time.

Jeremy Bloom

Jeremy Bloom from Integrate.com, a marketing software company, is new to MozCon, but you might’ve heard of him before. He’s hit the entrepreneur world by storm, raising lots of venture capital and earning kudos and awards from Forbes, American Business Awards, and more. Jeremy is also a three-time World Champion, two-time Olympian, and eleven-time World Cup gold medalist in men’s freestyle skiing. He also had an NFL career with the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers. I think he’ll be the first Olympian and NFL star on the MozCon stage.

Justin Cutroni

Need another heavy hitter? Google Analytics Evangelist Justin Cutroni will be joining us this year. If you need to learn anything about Google Analytics—the more advanced the better!—he probably has the answer. Justin is the author of two books, both on Google Analytics. He’s also a father, skier, and cook.

Kyle Rush

You know that moment when you find out that quiet person sitting next to you secretly runs the world? That’s Kyle Rush, head of optimization at Optimizely and formerly at The New Yorker and Obama for America. At the latter, he helped the team that transformed how we think about digital campaigns. (Seriously, go watch him talk about this.) Now that’s some serious conversion rate optimization! Kyle also has some adorable dogs.

Marshall Simmonds

Are there ever enterprise-level sites that make your jaw drop at how much freaking amazing work went into them? Marshall Simmonds might’ve been the SEO behind them, sites like all the New York Times properties, USA Today, CBS, Toys-R-Us, Gawker Media, and many more. Today, he serves as the founder and CEO of Define Media Group, Inc., an enterprise-level SEO and consulting group. Marshall likes to remind us that he’s “internet old,” meaning that he gave a talk at the SEOmoz: PRO Training Series in 2010.

Nathalie Nahai

Leading the field of web psychology, Nathalie Nahai, the web psychologist, will be back on the MozCon stage. Her work delves into how to make your site(s) resonate with your audience based on their culture, gender, or other psychological need. Do you need an image of happy people or authority figures? Nathalie’s got the answer. She’s also an accomplished author and musician and is doing an upcoming free Mozinar with us.

Paddy Moogan

Besides having a name that’s just fun to say, Paddy Moogan‘s an accomplished SEO with a knack for link building, and is head of growth markets at Distilled. He took the stage by storm in 2012, skipped 2013 to hang out with Hobbits in New Zealand, and now’s back for 2014. And we’re ready for Paddy and his love of comic books and Aston Martins (James Bond’s car).

Dr. Pete Meyers

Dr. Pete Meyers. Do I really need to intro this guy? Data scientist here at Moz, Pete’s done some killer projects about our collective obsession with changes in Google’s Algo, including MozCast and the Google Algo History. Recently, he did a Reddit AMA and picks Superman as the winner in a fight against Batman. (I may disagree with this.) We’re crossing our fingers that by July Chicago’s dug itself out of snow, and Pete will be able to make it. :)

Phil Nottingham

Sometimes a pirate, sometimes a video expert, Phil Nottingham is the video strategist at Distilled. He especially enjoys being able to purchase shiny, new video equipment. Last year, Phil tickled the audience pink with his video where he pretended to be Rand for a Whiteboard Friday. His New Year’s resolution is to drink better whiskey; I’m just putting that out there, MozCon goers…

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin, the guy known for his loud shirts and industry championship. Founder of Moz, former CEO, and now an individual e-team contributor, Rand will be speaking to the changes in our industry this year at MozCon. He’s spoken at every MozCon, delivering all those actionable tips and inspirational words. Despite all this, he still blushed as I made him write his own name on the whiteboard as the first chosen speaker for MozCon 2014.

Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee, Richard Millington has made community building into a science. Think community is fluffy? Richard will blow your mind. Make sure to check out his recent free Mozinar. Whether you’re wrangling mommy bloggers, gun enthusiasts, or the ever-popular plumbers, Richard will show you how to start, build, grow, and reach critical mass with your community.

Sarah Bird

Our brand-new CEO Sarah Bird will take the MozCon stage again. It’s probably one her new job duties she’s most nervous about. Trained as a lawyer, Sarah has a lifelong passion of learning new things and challenging herself. Good thing; we’ve kept her on her toes since 2007! For MozCon, we’re planning on introducing a new format, a fireside chat, with Sarah, so you’ll be able to hear all the good stuff about her and her new role.

Wil Reynolds

Always a crowd-pleaser, Wil Reynolds, founder of SEER Interactive, will be back to give out inspiration like candy in a suburb on Halloween. The first time I saw Wil speak (SearchFest 2012) his rousing speech somehow made me feel confident enough to drive through a snowstorm in a Prius. And minus the snowstorm, I challenge anyone not to feel transformed by a Wil speech. (Go watch his MozCon 2012 talk. MozCon talks age like fine wine.)

Cyrus Shepard

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Cyrus Shepard, our exceptional emcee. As the Senior Content Lead at Moz, he dreams up ways to drive traffic to our site and pokes people to level up our skills to help. Cyrus keeps speakers on track and facilitates q&a. If you’re worried about his emcee chops, he sent in an audition tape of that time he won a car on Hollywood Squares.

I hope you’re already taking notes of which speakers you can’t wait to see. In the coming months, speakers will be firming up their topics and starting to dive into exactly what they’ll be presenting on at MozCon 2014. They’ll also be joined by around 15 more people, including our four community speakers. While you’ll have to wait for the full agenda until then, you can get an idea of what kinds of talks happen at MozCon through last year’s agenda.

We love hosting you!

We’re excited to bring our community from all parts of the world to MozCon. Whether you live locally in Seattle or have to take two plus connecting flights from either Cape Town, South Africa or Tampa, Florida to reach us, we want to share something new with you.

For those of you boarding planes to MozCon, this year you (or your employer) can save some pennies by flying with either Delta or Alaska Airlines. If flying on Alaska, head to alaskaair.com and use the code ECMV042 for 5% off. If flying on Delta, go to delta.com and use the code NMH7W for 2-10% off, depending on where you depart from.

Once you hit Seattle, we’ve got some special deals with two great hotels, the Grand Hyatt and the Olive 8. Both are located in downtown Seattle, just two blocks away from MozCon, and both are fabulous places to lay your head down after a long day of learning. Not only is there a discount, but MozCon attendees also get complimentary wi-fi and $20 per night parking.

Book your hotel today!

MozCon map

MozCon is the far-right pin, and the two hotels are the other pins. So close!

So we got your shelter and your wifi, your next basic need of bacon is also covered. Did I write bacon? I meant food.

At Moz, we love our food, and since MozCon’s like that big reunion with the good side of the family, we’re going to feed you. Every day of MozCon, you’ll have breakfast, lunch, and two snacks with us. We spare no details. In the past, we’ve had treats like ice cream and crepes for breakfast. Ever dream of conference food? (Are you laughing?) Well, MozCon’s the exception to that.

Okay, what about the bacon? One of our most popular breakfast items is bacon. Last year, two mornings featured all the bacon you can eat. (As a long-time vegetarian, I donate my own bacon portions to one lucky MozCon goer every year.) And for those of us non-bacon eaters, don’t worry, we’ll have that covered too.

Enjoying the grub! Sorry, bacon fans, couldn’t find a bacon-specific photo.

After a day of learning, you’re going to need some downtime. Work hard, play hard, that’s the mantra, right? In years past MozCon’s parties have been hosted at such amazing venues at The Garage, which features a bowling alley, and the Experience Music Project (EMP), Seattle’s own music and sci-fi museum. We’re still nailing down the details, including location, for the Tuesday night bash, but rest assured, you’ll be having the time of your life—while making some great new friends.

Making friends at the MozCon Party!

Hanging out and having fun at the Tuesday party.

Okay, you’ve come all the way here, and you’ve seen photos of the new MozPlex… Yes, we give office tours!

We don’t do them during MozCon, since we all attend it. But in the days surrounding, we open up the office and share our story and our space with you. We’re super thrilled this year to be able to show off our new digs, which will fully be home sweet home by July. The MozPlex is about eight blocks away from MozCon, so just a short walk through downtown.

MozPlex tour sign-ups will most likely go up in June when we’re much closer to the event.

the mozplex

Joel and Abe in their natural environment at the MozPlex.

We’d be remiss to not give you a welcoming gift (or four) to MozCon. Don’t worry, we always try to fill our swag bags with useful, tasteful, and fun stuff. Last year, attendees were over the moon to get Roger figurines as part of their MozCon haul. While I’m under top-secret orders not to mention what we’re giving away this year, let’s just say I let out some squees.

All the Rogers!

That’s a lot of Rogers who went out in the world with you.

While you’re in Seattle, don’t forget to visit Seattle! July is the best time to explore our city and the surrounding area. I know sometimes when we go to conferences that we only see beyond the conference and hotel on the to/from airport-hotel drive (I’m just as guilty!). Don’t deprive yourself of digging into the best of Seattle, whether you want to visit the famous gum wall, discover the troll under the bridge, or head out to hike Mount Si. Whet your appetite with Rand’s restaurant and bar guide, and discover amazing Seattle treasures as crowd-sourced by Mozzers.

The great thing about Seattle is that you can be whomever you want to. Whether you’re looking to attend a Sounders game, reenact Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” (I can tour-guide!), take a hot tub boat on Lake Union, or eat pie and see Snoqualmie Falls, Seattle has something for everyone.

We love Seattle!

Highlights from our party last year include karaoke with a live band.

Take me to MozCon!

For those of you still trying to convince your boss (even if that boss is you!) about the expense, make sure to read the ROI (value vs expense) MozCon post from last year. MozCon’s expenses and our program remains very similar value-wise. And don’t forget to take a 30-day free trial in order to get the Pro Subscriber rate (if you’re not already a Subscriber).

Don’t hesitate to ask me anything about MozCon in the comments; I’ll do my best to answer.

Sign up for MozCon today

How Your Salary Compares to Online Marketers Across the World

A short time ago, Moz released the 2014 Industry Survey results. We collected data from over 3,700 marketers spanning more than 80 countries around the globe.

Thanks to new analysis tools from Survey Monkey we are able to slice the data many different ways to gain insight into the demographics, tools, and tactics of online marketers living everywhere. One popular data set we wanted to examine in detail is the salaries of online marketers.

Transparency in salary data helps everyone make better decisions, and knowing the factors most associated with changes in salary can help you advance your career.

The average salary of online marketers

If you include all 3,700 respondents in our analysis, we arrive at a average salary calculated from the midpoint of the survey ranges:

Note that the almost half the respondents, or 49.1%, were from the United States, which greatly influences this number.

Things start to get interesting when we break down salaries by country. Here are the average salaries of the countries with the highest number of survey participants. All salaries are converted to US dollars.

Australia leads the pack in online marketing salaries, with the United States close behind. (For many countries, the number of responses were too few to draw a conclusion with any statistical confidence. For example, the data shows Japanese marketers are very well paid, but only three marketers from Japan responded to the survey.)


Update: In the comments below, marketers from India have indicated the figure of $26,724 seems way too high for that country. It’s certainly possible, as the the lowest option on the survey was $0-$30,000, and we used the midpoint of that range for calculation.

Apparently, the salary buckets we designed with our mostly Western audience are not one-size-fits-all.

Here is the raw data for India only, which might paint a more accurate picture.

Answer Options Response Percent Response Count
< $30000 63.2 134
$30,000-45,000 9.9 21
$45,000-60,000 3.8 8
$60,000-75,000 1.9 4
$75,000-100,000 1.4 3
$100,000-150,000 0.9 2
$150,000-250,000 0 0
> 250000 0.9 2
I’d rather not say 17.9 38

Salary by role / job title

We also broke down salary by the specific field and job title the marketer worked in. No surprise, engineers commanded the highest salary, closely followed by user experience professionals.

It’s unfortunate to see web designers and social media professionals make less than the average salaries. These are extremely valuable roles that often garner outsized returns in company investment. Hopefully the perception of the value of these jobs begins to change.

What is surprising is to see SEO and content professionals in the middle-lower portion of the pack.

It appears that the more skills you add to your toolkit, and the more you become a T-shaped marketer, the higher your long-term earning potential.

Salary by years of experience and age

If there is one factor that seems more closely tied to your earning level than any other, it’s the number of years of experience that you have.

Folks working over 10 years in the industry blew everyone else out of the water. This trend was consistent across all job types and all countries examined. The longer you have worked in the field, the more you make.

Another consistent earnings trend is age. Simply put, older online marketers tend to have higher salaries than younger folks, who presumably have less experience on average.

The survey did have a couple of respondents under the age of 18 who reported earning more than $100,000 per year. Although we have every reason to believe their claim, we lacked enough data points to make a confident conclusion.

The gap: salary by gender

Although women have made great progress in joining the ranks of online marketers, as an industry we still have a ways to go in terms of pay equality.

For reference, the number of female respondents in 2014 was 28%, up from 21% when we ran the survey in 2012.

On average, those same women earned more than $10,000 less in salary than their average counterparts.

When we compare men and women by how long they’ve worked in the industry, a pattern starts to emerge which might help explain the gap.

The chart below graphs percentage of all men and women against years of experience. While online marketing is still a male-dominated industry, in the past the imbalance was even worse. Hence, for today at least, more men have more years of experience behind them.

If this explained it, we would expect women and men to earn roughly equal salaries for equal years of experience. In reality, this isn’t true.

While women marketers with between 1-3 years of experience actually earn slightly more than their male counterparts, the salary gap increases dramatically as the years of experience rise.

As the chart below shows, a male marketer with between 5-10 years of experience earns an average of $15,000 more than a female with the same amount of experience. The gap grows even larger with 10 or more years experience to an amazing $30,000 difference between men and women.

Let’s hope these numbers start to shift, especially with the increasing number of women now entering the field. It’s hopeful to see the younger generation actually pull ahead of male salaries in many areas.

Salary by education

How much does formal education play a role in your salary?

Hopefully not much, when you consider that one of our founders dropped out of college just two classes before graduation.

While having a doctoral degree pays off (hat tip to Dr. Pete), the benefit of having a master’s degree compared to a 4-year degree is almost nothing. This is an industry were the successful are largely self-taught, and most people continue to learn by experience, which is likely why experience seems to play such a heavy role in compensation levels.

In the future, as more colleges and learning institutions offer programs in online marketing, we may see a time when a person’s degree plays a more significant role in salary potential than it does today.

More data than you can poke a stick at

This is only a small sampling of the data we collected for the 2014 Industry Survey.

For anyone who wants to run their own analysis, Moz has made the complete data set available under a Creative Commons license. You are free to use it for research to slice and dice any way you choose.

Download Raw Data

You can see a great example of this from the folks at Digital 22, who put together this breakdown of online marketing salaries in the UK using the survey data.

Now, let’s go ask for a raise.


Note: An earlier version of the post referred to salary medians. In actuality, the calculations reported reflect weighted averages of the medians within each salary range. Hence, the term “average” more accurately reflects how we calculated salary figures.

6 Ways to Earn Higher Rankings Without Investing in Content Creation and Marketing – Whiteboard Friday

With all the buzz regarding content advertising and marketing and just how remarkable a method it is to gain greater rankings, it’s simple to ignore all the other tools that excellent Search engine optimizations and online marketers have at their disposal. In today’s White boards Friday, Rand covers 6 ways to boost your rankings without investing a penny on content production and advertising and marketing.

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.

Quality: Do You Have It, or Just Think You Have It?

Quality: Do You Have It, or Merely Think You Have It?

The majority of internet sites feel they produce high quality material. Some even have interior procedures in position to evaluate, fee, edit and change material prior to publication. This does, unquestionably, often take even more people, so it sets you back more therefore can be a bit daunting for numerous smaller businesses to enable. But what is clear, is that every person pursues high quality. Which wouldn’& rsquo; t? We all understand top quality is a found after quality. Be it in an auto, a hand bag, a set of hiking shoes, a donut and even in the material uploaded to your blog or website.

Even big authors with developed editorial procedures in position have instances when things happen that erode the top quality of material, nevertheless. Simple points, often, like grammatical errors, leading to mistakes, yet likewise in some cases bigger work like mistakes around truths, or the incorrect photo in an article. Mistakes occur and ultimately, it’& rsquo; s still humans modifying points, so it’& rsquo; s entirely probable that the strange typo survives.

So in the real globe of an author, such points could slide past all as well quickly –– despite having numerous eyes seeing. We’& rsquo; ve all experienced that minute where we view something go live and are stunned by the glaring typo in the center of the short article that 4 individuals unsuccessfuled to pick during modifying. It takes place.

If it begins to occur regularly, however, a design arises.

If you’& rsquo; re frequently on the fly and keying in the word & ldquo; from & rdquo; comes out as & ldquo; form & rdquo;(I often do this), envision how a reader sees this? It’& rsquo; s puzzling when reading, to say the least. At best they merely move past the typo and keep reading. At worst they merely concede at such repeated issues and look for a brand-new source for content to take in.

We’& rsquo; re discussing the essentials below. The “& ldquo; just how you compose & rdquo; issues as a lot as the & ldquo; exactly what you create &rdquo;. Usual Errors Lots of errors are typical

; like using the inaccurate word or phrase in a given situation. Below & rsquo; s a checklist of 20 typical mistakes writers frequently make. That selection is skewed towards literature authors, instead of technical writers, however you understand. Right here are 15 more & ldquo; grammar goofs & rdquo; from CopyBlogger “. Some mistakes come from misinterpreting

a subject, an absence of grammatical understanding, speed or a collection of other choices. Points like sentence structure(run-on sentences, absence of punctuation, over punctuation, etc. ). Points like switching off spell checkers. Hurrying or skipping your proofreading. All can and do occur. As all of us find out to read and create, over

time we start to view patterns. We intuitively start to recognize ways to build a sentence, which words to make use of where, and just how finest to convey our definition. This starts occurring when you & rsquo; re a kid. Cast your mind back to that time in your life and you & rsquo; ll most likely manage to unearth a memory of exactly how baffling it all was. Understanding to write, when your whole globe to that factor was publishing. Knowing the definition of brand-new words with vocabulary homework. New equations with new symbols to recognize; mathematics was/is a language of its own! But over just a few months, you discovered it. You discovered to build sentences, use descriptors appropriately and convey the desired definition. You found out those pictures and aced your tests. You created compositions and term papers continuously improving your very early knowledge to create better and much better outcomes. So today, as you scan the paper, or check out something online

, it & rsquo; s patently noticeable to you when you come across a typo, or a sentence merely doesn & rsquo; t review properly. Once again, most times we simple check past it and keep reading, yet sometimes, it & rsquo; s a show stopper. The point ends up being shed as your focus shifts to looking for mistakes. You could start to see all future work from this author in an unfavorable light, as typos end up being commonplace in their writing. Yes, there are a number of methods to write some words.

Similar words develop in different ways in various areas of the world, and even within different areas of one country. However those aren & rsquo; t errors. Those are merely distinctions. And’while an American visitor could acquire a wiff of Canadian, for instance, from an author utilizing a various version of a word occasionally, it & rsquo; s exactly how Canadians are educated to mean specific words. This might all appear a little bit & ldquo; down in the weeds & rdquo;, but equally you & rsquo; re judging others & rsquo; writing, so the engines court yours. If you have a hard time to get previous typos, why would an engine show a web page of material with mistakes greater in the positions when other pages of mistake free content already existing to serve the searcher? Like it or otherwise, we & rsquo; re judged by the high quality of the results we’show. So we are continuously seeing the high quality of the content we view. Duane Forrester Sr. Item Manager Bing