Last point of positive consideration is dilution of marketing and branding efforts.


Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Website? - Whiteboard Friday

Remember that you're going to be working on marketing, you're going to be working on branding,


you're going to be working on growing traffic to these.


When you split your efforts, unless you have two relatively large separate teams, this


is very, very hard to do at the same rate that it could be done if you combine those


efforts.


Another big point of consideration, that compound growth rate that we talked about, that's another


big consideration of this.


What I don't recommend you consider and what has been unfortunately considered by a lot


of folks in the SEO-centric world in the past is topical focus of the content.


I'm crossing this out.


Not a big consideration.


You might say to yourself, but Rand, we talked about previously on Whiteboard Friday how


I can have topical authority around toys and games that are related to science fiction


stuff and I can have topical authority related to mobile apps.


My answer is if the content overlap is strong and the audience overlap is strong, you can


do both on one domain.


You can see many, many examples of this across the web, Moz being a great example where we


talk about startups and technology and sometimes venture capital and team building and broad


marketing and paid search marketing and organic search marketing and just a ton of topics,


but all serving the same audience and content.


Because that overlap is strong, we can be an authority in all of these realms.


Same goes for any time you're considering these things.


All right, everyone.


Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I look forward to some great comments and we'll see you again next week.


Content Marketing Tips for B2B Organizations - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans.


Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


This week we're going to chat about B2B marketing, specifically B2B content marketing, and some


tips that I've got for you that are a little bit different from how we would do B2C or


other kinds of content marketing.


But I get it, like a lot of the examples that you see in the content marketing world are


B2C or they're at B2B companies that are more like Moz where we have a B2C-like community


and a B2C-like audience.


So I think that when it comes to B2B, because there's some tricky elements, I wanted to


try and walk you through a few of those.


Let's start with the funnel.


So the B2B funnel is very similar to a B2C funnel.


In fact, marketing funnels in general work like this.


People become aware of a product.


They have some consideration for whether it's something they might actually want to buy.


They do some form of comparison against other solutions.


They decide to convert or not.


And then there's a retention element.


Retention element is less true in a lot of B2C fields, especially e-commerce, one-time


purchases.


It's generally more true in the B2B world.


I think one problem that we have in B2B marketing is a lot of times we target the wrong part


of the funnel.


This is actually really common because in B2C, usually things that hit on one of these


hit on a lot of them.


The same things that create awareness about a product or a brand also help with conversion,


also might help with comparison because of brand affinity, also might help with consideration


and retention.


It's less true in B2B.


Not to say not true at all, but less true.


And so I think one of the jobs that we have is to look inside our funnel and then identify


which part needs help versus which part works fine.


Another thing that is very important here, don't try to target, for the majority of your


content, don't try to target it at more than, let's say, two of these stages.


So I might say, hey, I've got a piece of content that I think can work really well for awareness


and consideration.


Or it's much further down the funnel, it's for people who already know us and are already


considering us, it's really about comparison and conversion or about conversion and retention.


That's fine.


I think when you get into trouble is when you say, hey, you know what, this is going


to help throughout the funnel, awareness, consideration and conversion.


Well, that tends not to be the case.


That's not to say it can never happen, but try to choose when you're creating your content,


when you're designing the strategy for why you're going to produce a particular piece,


decide what it's going to help with, point it at the content that's in the area of the


funnel that is in most need of assistance.


So let me give you a quick example here.


There's a company called PivotDesk, they're a fellow foundry company.


PivotDesk does something really cool.


They help small businesses in particular, a lot of startups and early stage companies,


but plenty of regular small businesses too, find office space.


So they're very business to business, right?


They're talking to landlords and they're talking to small businesses.


They have a great funnel, but they decide that they need more awareness, which is good.


Good job, PivotDesk, identifying which part of the funnel is the problem.


If you've seen that lots of people who are already aware of you and visiting you are


converting and getting through this part of the funnel, then you don't need to focus your


content efforts there, or maybe less of them.


We could think about potentially saying, hey, let's say that awareness is our problem.


Awareness to whom?


Is it awareness to small businesses or is it awareness to the landlords?


Again, two different audiences.


In this case, awareness to the landlords perhaps is the problem, and I'm making these up.


I don't actually know if PivotDesk has these problems.


But if that's the case, maybe what we want is an interactive tool that's essentially


part survey and part comparison, benchmarking metrics, so that a landlord can go in and


say, oh, MySpace is in Seattle, I have this much square footage of AAA space and the current


price is $31 per square foot, triple net.


And there's the average me versus what the rest of the Seattle market looks like.


Oh, fascinating.


I am undercharging or I'm overcharging or I have less square footage than most folks


have, or I'm missing these amenities or whatever it is.


That could work potentially very well for this stage of the funnel.


This is the process that I'd urge you to use when you're doing that B2B content strategy.


Target the right section of the funnel, make sure it's targeted to the right audience,


and then come up with a piece of content that's going to move the needle in the right place.


When you're measuring success in B2B, it is pretty different than B2C.


A lot of the time, unfortunately, the metric by which you will be judged upon is number


of leads created.


B2B tends to be very leads driven.


There's a few folks who are in B2B who are also self-service, like Moz is, but for the


vast majority, it's leads for the sales folks to follow up on.


Because of that, the classic metrics like how many social shares you've got across different


networks and how much visibility and raw traffic and engagement and those kinds of things tends


to be less important than quantity of leads generated.


This is really tough when you get into these areas of the funnel that are not the conversion


point.


If I'm trying to create raw awareness among my audience, I can really get misjudged if


my boss, my team, my client is only looking at the leads.


What I urge you again to do is to take note of what you're trying to improve and apply


the right metrics to it.


Don't just take the same metrics that are used for, well, obviously B2C, but don't take


the same metrics that are judged on conversion for retention or awareness for conversion.


This is critically important or you're going to focus on the wrong parts of the solution


you're trying to create.


Next up, many, many B2B transactions, in fact the overwhelming majority, don't just have


a single buyer.


In B2C, it's really simple.


I'm selling blue jeans, I'm selling them to a consumer, that consumer tends to be the


only person who's in on the consideration.


Maybe their partner is also thinking about it.


But for the vast majority, it's just that one person I'm selling to.


Not the case in B2B, not at all.


Oftentimes the person who ends up buying, who you interact with, who your salesperson


reaches out to as the conversation, that person is just one link in the chain of individuals


involved from a corporate ecosystem in who makes the buying decision.


And for that reason, a lot of times, again, content marketing that reaches this person


does a great job of reaching that buyer, but does a terrible job of reaching their manager,


the CFO, and the HR person who are all involved in these decisions as well.


Might be less successful.


This is why we need an overlapping persona analysis when we do our content.


It's also why when we're thinking about the funnel, we can't think about it without regard


for which target is in which stage of the buying purchase.


It could be that your buyer is all the way down here, but you have no resources, no content


that's going to help convince a CFO and an HR person up here that they should even put


you in the consideration set because you have no comparison against what are their other


options and why do you help save the money and those kinds of things.


Be careful with this.


Target your content to not only your buyer, but other folks as well, especially if your


sales folks are giving you feedback that that's where they're getting stymied.


With B2B, it tends to be the case that you can be much more aggressive with forms of


remarketing and retargeting.


That means paid content.


That means amplification.


It means spending dollars to promote the content that you've created.


The reason that you can do this as opposed to a lot of B2C is because it tends to be


the case that your customer lifetime value is way higher.


B2B transactions, we're talking about usually many hundreds if not many thousands or tens


of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per converted customer.


What you want to be looking at is not just the lifetime value, but also the current cost


of customer acquisition or CAC as it's called.


There's a ratio that a lot of folks look at in B2B, which is the CAC to CLTV ratio.


Essentially how much does it cost us to get a new customer versus how much value does


that customer provide.


B2C folks look at this too, but B2B folks tend to be obsessed with it.


When you see that this is low, when I see the ratio is high or the CAC itself is low


in comparison, this is $450 to acquire a customer versus $3780 CLTV, that's like a 9 to 1 ratio,


something like that, I have a ton of room to boost that.


I could probably boost that.


I could more than double it and I'd still be fine with a 4 to 1 ratio or even a 3 to


1 ratio.


I might consider spending a tremendous amount more money to get a customer.


If I can see through my funnel that I'm measuring to see how content performs as it pushes people


down this funnel and gets them to conversion, if I can see that for every 1,000 views or


10,000 views I'm getting a customer converting, well then I can go and I can amplify through


paid channels, through retargeting and remarketing, I can pay a lot of money to go push that content


to more places and to more people.


I can probably do things that I would almost never ordinarily do, like even buy search


ads, paid search ads against a keyword that is very content focused, not very conversion


focused that lives up here in the funnel and I can still have success.


This is something that very few B2B marketers are doing but some very successful ones are.


Last thing that I'll cover here, most B2B content does this, I don't know, it's like


every B2B marketer reads from the same playbook and look, I go through this process a lot


because I'm interested in a lot of B2B content since Moz is a business that I'm trying to


grow and what happens is that the content exposes very little for free.


So I might hear about something and go, oh yeah, I am interested in the average lifetime


value of self-service software as a service companies, sounds super corporate and boring


but I'm deeply interested in it, it really affects Moz's metrics.


So I might go look and then I see, well I can't really tell what's in here, what's


behind the wall, that you're not showing me very much, there's supposedly this amazing


content but I don't see anything there.


And then it asks me for too much in order to get access so if you fill out all these


ten different form fields about your position at the company and how much revenue you have


and how many employees you had and what was your growth rate last year and which other


products in this field have you considered and da da da da da da da.


Man, geez, I feel like I just had to sign a lease agreement in order to get a piece


of content and then that content is not web accessible, I have to download it which is


insanely frustrating if I'm on one of these.


It sucks, right?


I mean it just is a terrible experience on mobile, it's even a bad experience on desktop,


I don't want to have to download something and open it back up, that makes it less shareable,


it's very hard for me to amplify that content if I'm interested in it.


Then when I want to share with other people I have to tell them, hey you've got to go


to this download link and what happens?


Well I'll tell you what happens, every single time I download it and then I attach it in


an email and I send it to every relevant person at Moz and that B2B company that made it only


gets one email address and I unsubscribe from their list.


Insanity, insanity.


So if you can fix this process by making your content web accessible, making it so that


you're providing more of a teaser right on the page here so that more people are likely


to go through here, ask for as little information as you possibly can, you can get more later.


You can learn a ton about someone once you have just one piece of information, their


correct email address.


If you have that you can learn a tremendous amount about them, you don't need this, right?


You've got tools like full contact where you can use the API, plug in an email address


and they'll give you all sorts of persona type data about that person.


You can go then research the company and get all the facts from them, tons of stuff to


do.


And then the last thing that I find that's oddly frustrating, I don't know why I'm frustrated


about it but you should be, if you're a B2B marketer should be frustrated about it is


you don't reuse the audience for future content amplification.


So if you know that I downloaded this piece of content I think it is perfectly okay to


follow up with a personal message the next time you produce a piece of content like this


and say, hey, we redid it and here it is again.


That's not that hard, right?


If I haven't, well hopefully you haven't auto subscribed me to an email newsletter and I'm


getting tons of pieces of content that I care nothing about, what's far better is if you


tell me, hey, we redid this piece or since you like this piece you'll probably be very


interested in this other piece.


That's going to work really well.


You can also do RLSA with this for more paid amplification.


So I can take a list of emails of all the people who've downloaded this, upload it to


Google, upload it to Facebook and then have this content accessible via these paid formats


so that I'm bidding in Google and I'm showing the ads to people on Facebook or Twitter or


LinkedIn and all that kind of stuff.


All right everyone, hope you B2B marketers out there are doing some awesome stuff with


your content in the near future and we'll see you again next week for another edition


of Whiteboard Friday.


SEO and Accessibility: Content [Series Part 2] — Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans, welcome to the latest edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I'm Cooper Holmayer.


I started doing SEO in 2016 and today I work at a large outdoor specialty retailer helping


make our strategies for technical SEO come alive.


Thank you for attending this session 2 of 3 of our SEO and Accessibility series.


If you've taken the Intro to SEO course here at Moz, you're probably familiar with a concept


called Mozlo's Hierarchy of SEO Needs.


If you're not, the basic idea is that we have to have some foundational elements that are


needed to make us rank in search engine results.


And then we can layer some things on top to make us more competitive in those results.


It all starts with crawl accessibility and in the same way it starts with basic human


accessibility as well.


Our goal when we're creating content is to provide equitable access.


And so this means my content is not only available to search engines, but people of all abilities


as well.


Let's look at an example.


Let's say I'm a restaurant and commonly you'll see restaurants post their menu in the windows


of their stores or shops.


The problem with this idea, well it seems easy because anyone can walk by, they don't


have to look at my Facebook or my website, and they can look at the menu, see what they


like or don't like, and then choose to engage with my business and enjoy my food.


What's bad about this is that we've made some assumptions about our ideal audience.


We've assumed that they're the average height, that they're tall enough to be able to see


the menu that I've posted in my window.


We've assumed that they have great vision, that they on a rainy day can see the menu


items and still make the decision to come inside.


We've also assumed that by not including any pictures on our menu, people know what we're


talking about.


They're familiar with the cuisine that I'm making or the flowery, culinary, eloquent


culinary language that I'm using to describe my dishes.


But I think what you'll find is that these assumptions are exclusive versus inclusive


and we want to be inclusive of all of our audience members.


So for example, assume maybe my person is not an average height.


How do I account for that?


If they're not the average height, seeing the menu might be impossible.


Assume that maybe they have low vision or blindness and ask yourself, is this available


digitally or in a braille-compatible format that they can access too?


Or maybe add some pictures, add some different language to your menu to help people understand


the culinary language that you're using.


Because without that, they might not understand and they might choose to avoid your restaurant


versus come in and see it.


So these are things you can do to assume the best and provide a diverse group of people


a better experience.


Let's do some napkin math.


If you have a thousand people in your restaurant every month, we know from last time that one


in five people on average have a disability in the United States.


That means 200 of those thousand people have a disability and you're excluding them by


not including some information or other mediums to consume your menu.


That compounded is 200 people times, let's say an average of $15 a meal, that's $3,000


a month you're leaving on the table, quite literally.


So think about that.


It's not just about providing equitable access, but it will cost your business money too.


And $3,000 a month is very expensive, especially for a small business.


And I'm sure you're saying, Cooper, what if I'm not a small business?


What if I want people to buy my product or give me a lead or come sign up for my service?


That's okay.


These rules apply to you too.


It's the mindset.


If you have a podcast, an email newsletter, a blog, a website, I would implore you to


ask the question, as a person with blank, can I blank?


And fill in that first blank with things like, as a person with color blindness, ADHD, dyslexia,


hard of hearing, down syndrome, can I, and fill in that second blank with whatever you


want people to do with your business.


Can I buy a product?


Can I read this newsletter?


Can I enjoy this podcast?


And if the answer to that question, that string of questioning is no, you have a little bit


of a problem.


You have some work to do, right?


What I'm talking about is following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.


And these are commonly called WCAG or WCAG.


These guidelines are set up to make sure that our content on the web is accessible.


And I think you'll find that as you make your content accessible for people of diverse abilities,


you're going to have your content accessible for search engines of diverse abilities too.


So following the four principles of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, they are POUR or


POUR, perceivable, operable, understandable, or robust, I think you'll find that your content


resonates better with your audience, you exclude less audience members, and your search engine


optimization will ultimately only be that much better.


So what I want you to do by perceivable.


What I mean by perceivable is we all don't want to look at a brick of text.


I think that's pretty clear.


We tend to include things like images, video, audio on our pages.


And what I want you to do is consider any time you're using those rich media elements


to include a text alternative.


So this means images include alt text, videos include captions and transcripts, audio, same


thing, include the transcripts.


If I can't hear that audio with my speakers, I'm able to either convert it into something


I can use or I'm able to enjoy it in some other way.


And then when we're talking about video, including an ASL interpreter or converting your presentation


into American Sign Language can also be a little bit more inclusive for the audience


you're trying to reach and save you a little bit of that money we talked about earlier.


Operable.


What I mean by this is are your links saying click here or learn more or are they really


telling me where I'm going as a user?


Think about your users here.


We know we love anchor text.


We know that search engines love to see where we're going too.


So click here and learn more aren't as descriptive as they could be.


They're not as operable.


It's hard for me as a user to operate your website or your email newsletter or your podcast.


Is my content understandable?


So this is something I have a hard time doing too sometimes but considering is the content


that I'm writing at a reading level that my audience is going to enjoy that?


Have I described it in a language that my customers understand?


Often times I think we get stuck in SEO and we start to use a lot of SEO language especially


if you're working at an agency with clients.


Taking the time to break it down into language that's more understandable will allow you


to resume with a larger set of audience members but also it will allow you generally to capture


those search terms too right?


People aren't looking up PhD level things in Google search.


They're looking up language that we can all understand so consider that.


And then robust, this kind of touches things like is my website mobile friendly?


Is it responsive?


Are the things that I'm producing compatible with a lot of technologies?


And these technologies include assistive technologies.


So P-O-U-R.


Remember those things when producing web content.


You shouldn't need a monocle to read what you're producing.


You shouldn't need a PhD to read what you're producing and it should be really really easy


for a diverse group of people to access the stuff that you produce.


If you want some more information about WCAG there's a link right here and it will be linked


in the bottom of this post as well.


So what can you do as a content SEO?


You can write formative and unique page titles.


Those page titles matter for not just search engines but people as well and assistive technologies.


You can use headings correctly.


Normally I'll see people use those H tags.


We're probably familiar with the H1 but H2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 matter too.


To style the page in a certain way and make the text bolder or brighter or larger and


that will be great but as someone who's using assistive technology or someone who's trying


to understand the parent-child relationships between things on the page it's going to be


a lot harder for me to do that if I'm not using those headings correctly.


Links are for users.


One thing I always ask myself is, is this link on the page for SEO or is it for my customer?


And if the answer is it's just on the page for SEO come back to the table, figure out


a way to make an SEO friendly approach to a customer problem and put a link on the page


that's going to resonate with customers and also help your SEO, not just one or the other.


Plan for a text alternative.


No matter what you're building I'm sure it's going to involve some rich media.


Plan to include captions, transcripts, ASL interpretation in your presentation from day


one.


Over describe what's happening.


We know that descriptions are going to help pick up additional synonyms, additional talking


points for search engines as well.


We know that being more comprehensive and honest and ethical will ultimately lead to


a better SEO outcome.


It also helps people, normal people with diverse abilities get that same outcome as well.


Let them enjoy it.


This is about customers and not just search engines and I think you'll find that both


parties win.


Provide clear instructions to what you want people to do.


Don't make it hard to convert.


And number seven is write content that you want to read.


I would ask you to close your eyes and listen to the content that you've written on the


page and ask yourself is this SEO optimized or is this built in a way that a customer


would want to engage with it?


And what I want you to try to do is try to figure out how can I write this piece of content


in a way that is just seamless.


It's invisible that I've even optimized this for SEO.


It just feels like it's a normal piece of content that resonates with me.


That's what you're looking for.


The best SEO is invisible.


Help people and bots, not just bots or not just people.


So focus on the web accessibility guidelines and if you want some more information about


WCAG it's right there.


Next time we're going to talk about technical SEO and some behind the scenes code that will


make your website more accessible for all.


The Perfect Blog Post Length and Publishing Frequency is B?!!$#÷x - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going


to chat about blog posts and more broadly content length and publishing frequency. So


these are things where a lot of the posts that you might read, for example if you were


to Google ideal blog post length or ideal publishing frequency, will give you data and


information that come from these sources of here's the average length of content of the


top 10 results in Google across a 5,000 keyword set and you can see that somewhere between


2350 and 2425 words is the ideal length so that's what you should aim for. And I am going


to call a big fat helping of baloney on that. Like that is just, it's not only dead wrong,


it's really misleading. In fact, I get frustrated when I see these types of charts used to justify


this information because that's not right at all. Anytime you see this, if you see a


chart or data like this to suggest, hey, this is how long you should make a post because


here's the length of the average thing in the top 10, you should ask very careful questions


like what set of keywords does this apply to? Is this a big broad set of 5,000 keywords


and some of them are navigational and some of them are informational and some of them


are transactional and maybe a few of them are e-commerce keywords and a few of them


are travel related and a few of them are in some other sector because honestly, what does


that mean? That's sort of meaningless, right? Especially if the standard deviation is quite


high, right? If we're talking about like, oh, well, many things that actually did rank


number one were somewhere between 500 words and 15,000 words. Well, so what does the average


tell me? How is that helpful? That's not actually useful or prescriptive information. In fact,


it's almost misleading to make that prescriptive. You should secondarily ask, do the keywords


that I care about, the ones that I'm targeting, do they have similar results? Does the chart


look the same, right? If you were to take a sample of let's say 50 keywords that you


cared about and you were to get the average content length of the top 10 results, would


it resemble that? Would it not? Does it have a high standard deviation? Is there a big


delta because some keywords require a lot of content to answer them fully and some keywords


require very, very small amounts of content and Google has prioritized accordingly? Is


it wise then to aim for the average when a much larger article would be much more appreciated


and be much more likely to succeed or a much shorter one would do far better? Why are you


aiming for this average if that's the case? And third, you might ask the question, is


correlation the same as causation? And the answer is, hell no, never has been, big fat


no. Correlation doesn't even necessarily imply causation. And in fact, I would say that anytime


you're looking at an average, especially on this type of stuff, correlation and causation


are totally separate. It is not because the number one result is 2450 words that it happens


to rank number one. That Google does not work that way. Never has, never will. Instead of


trusting these big unknown keyword set averages, you should A, look at your keywords and your


search results and what's working versus not in those specific ones. B, be willing to innovate.


Be willing to say, hey, you know what? I see that this content today, the number one, number


two, number three rankings are in these sorts of averages, but I actually think you could


answer this with much shorter content and many searchers would appreciate it. I think


these folks who are currently ranking are over content creating and they don't need


to be. And C, you should match your goals and your content goals with searcher goals.


And that's how you should determine the length that you should put in there. If you are trying


to help someone solve a very specific problem and it is an easily answerable question and


you're trying to get the featured snippet, you probably don't need thousands of words


of content. Likewise, if you're trying to solve a very complex query and you have a


ton of resources and information that no one else has access to, you've done some really


unique work, this may be way too short for what you're aiming for. All right. Let's switch


over to publishing frequency where you can probably guess. I'm going to give you similar


information. So a lot of times you'll see, how often should I publish? Oh, look, people


who publish more 11 times or more per month, they get way more traffic than people who


publish only once a month. Therefore, clearly I should publish 11 or more times per month.


Why is the cutoff at 11? Does that make any sense to you? Is this visit all valuable to


all the companies that were part of whatever survey was in here? Did one blog post account


for most of the traffic in the 11 plus and it's just that the other 10 happened to be


posts where they were practicing or trying to get good and it was just one that kind


of shot out of the park there? I would ask questions like, who's in the set of sites


analyzed? Are they similar to me? Do they target a similar audience? Are they in my


actual sector? What's the relative quality of the content? How savvy and targeted are


the efforts at earning traffic? Is this guy over here, are we sure that all 11 posts were


just as good as the one post this person created? Because if not, I'm comparing apples and oranges.


What's the quality of the traffic? What's the value of the traffic? Maybe this person


is getting a ton of really valuable traffic and this person over here is getting very


little. You can't tell from a chart like this, especially when it's averaged in this way.


What things might matter more than raw frequency? Well, matching your goals to your content


schedule. If one of your goals is to build up subscribers like Whiteboard Friday where


people know it and they've heard of it, they have a brand association with it, it's called


Whiteboard Friday. It should probably come out once a week on Friday. There's a frequency


implied in the content and that makes sense. You might have goals that only demand publishing


once a quarter or once a month or once a week or once every day. That's okay, but you should


tie those together. Consistency, we have found, is almost always more important than raw frequency,


especially if you're trying to build up that consistent audience and a subscriber base.


I would focus on that, not how I should publish more often, but I should publish more consistently


so that people will get used to my publishing schedule and will look forward to what I have


to say, and also so that you can build up a cadence for yourself and your organization.


Third, crafting posts that actually earn attention and amplification and help your conversion


funnel goals, whatever those might be, over raw traffic. It's far better if this person


got 50 new visits who turned into five new paying customers than this person who published


11 posts and got one new paying customer out of all 11. That's a lot more work and expense


for a lot less ROI. I'd be careful about that. One aside I would say about publishing frequency.


If you're early stage or if you're trying to build a career in blogging or in publishing,


it's great to publish a lot of content. Great writers become great because they write a


lot of terrible crap and then they improve. The same is true with web publishers. If you


look at Whiteboard Friday number one or blog post number one for me, you're going to see


pretty miserable stuff. But over time, by publishing quite a bit, I got better at it.


If that is your goal, yes, publishing a lot of content, more than you probably need, more


than your customers or audience probably needs, is good practice for you and it will help


you get better. All right everyone, hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Should My Landing Page Be SEO-Focused, Conversion-Focused, or Both? - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


This week we're going to chat about landing pages and conversion-focused landing pages


versus SEO-focused landing pages.


So a few weeks back, I was at Unbounce's CTA conference up in Vancouver, Canada, which


was an amazing event, one of the best conferences that's put on in our industry, in my opinion.


I got a question from a few folks there about how to decide whether to target a landing


page toward SEO, toward conversion rate optimization and conversion focus, or whether we could


combine those.


So I thought we'd chat a little bit about that today.


It is quite doable.


An SEO-focused landing page has a few features that are unique from a conversion-focused


landing page.


In fact, both of them are unique.


What I'm going to do is use the example of Little Hotelier.


Little Hotelier offers reservation software, front desk software for small hotels, B2B's


guest houses.


I thought we could imagine basically a resource page on their website that was really a landing


page that's focused on SEO around a hotel booking site database.


So of course one of the things you have to do if you're a small hotel or a B2B or a guest


house is you've got to get listed on hundreds, if not thousands, of different listing sites.


Listing.com, Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, etc., etc., all the way down the list down


to the very local-focused ones or regional-focused ones.


Managing all those listings is a real pain.


So is managing the front desk and the bookings and making sure that everything is convenient.


So Little Hotelier manages all this for us and has a resource page.


It's not quite as good as the one I'm going to describe here, but let's just imagine for


a sec that they have this list of all the hotel booking sites, a database of it with


all the information you might want, and then of course they have their conversion-focused


page, littlehotelier.com, their homepage which is really all-in-one business software for


B&B's and guest houses and small hotels.


This is very conversion-focused.


They're trying directly to get people to buy the product.


This page is much more resource-focused.


They're trying to get people to see, hey, here are all of those sites that, well, of


course Little Hotelier can help list you on and manage for you, but also here's just generic


and general information about them.


I think it would be awesome if they listed all of these sites and included things like


traffic and the number of bookings that they saw from those sites in 2015 and the requirements


to get listed and the submission page, and then they could have a CTA, a call to action


like, let Little Hotelier manage hotel bookings for your property.


This would work really as an SEO-focused landing page.


It's designed to draw traffic in to drive keywords like list of hotel booking sites,


where to submit my small hotel, most visited hotel booking sites.


You could even make regional-focused ones of this like hotel listing sites New Zealand


if they wanted to have a New Zealand-focused set of sites where you could submit or manage


yourself in the booking world.


This one is really much more targeted, hyper-targeted, only focused on the keywords that are going


to convert people directly like small hotel software or B&B hotel reservation software,


that kind of stuff.


The differences between these two and the way to identify whether you need one or the


other or need a mix of them is to ask a few questions.


First off, are you trying to both rank for generic keywords and conversion-focused keywords,


or are you trying to rank for both, or are you not worried about keyword rankings at


all and you're only concerned with conversion?


If you're only concerned with conversion, then you want this one, right?


But if you are worried about both ranking for keywords and trying to convert some visitors,


you probably want a more content-focused page like this one, a more SEO-focused landing


page.


One of the needs that you have with SEO is that you need low bounce rate and high engagement


rate.


But the reverse is true here.


You don't necessarily need to worry about bounce rate and engagement rate.


You only need to worry about conversion rate.


So this needs a low bounce rate and a high click-through rate.


You want people staying on this page.


You want them to click the call to action.


You want them to investigate more.


But on this page, actually, a high bounce rate is okay if the conversion rate is high.


So if people are converting from this page, it doesn't matter too much if a lot of people


visit and many of them go away from here.


That's not too important to you.


You're just worried about conversion rate and optimizing for that conversion rate.


If you can bring that up a percent, you don't mind if bounce rate also goes up 5% or 6%


or 7% because you're turning people off who are the wrong customers.


Here you've got to have keyword-targeted content.


That means the content itself needs to fulfill all the requirements that Google has and that


visitors have around what they're looking for.


This keyword targeting is secondary or might even be unnecessary entirely.


This needs to be able to earn editorial links or it can't rank.


If it can't earn editorial links, it's going to have a very, very difficult time with manual


link building to a conversion-focused page.


Commercially-focused pages are much tougher.


But this one doesn't even need to worry about links at all.


This one has to serve many audiences.


It's treated really like a piece of content that helps anyone who's looking for this information


and then has a CTA, a call to action, on the page.


But this one needs to be heavily focused on one particular audience.


The particular audience Little Hotelier is trying to convert who's the right customer


for them for their software.


And hopefully those folks are already qualified.


These folks over here are not necessarily qualified.


This might be part of the qualification process.


If you visit this page and you then say, huh, I'm kind of interested in letting them manage


my bookings, maybe you should end up here, right, on this landing page that is conversion-focused.


This page should be driving traffic to those more conversion-rate-focused pages.


This page, yes, it might rank for some keywords, but it's primarily concerned with direct conversions


and hopefully it's receiving traffic from other on-site channels like this one or off-site


page channels that are driving very targeted visitors.


What I'd urge you to do is ask yourself these questions when you're considering a landing


page.


Am I trying to earn traffic that might be interested in my content?


If so, you're building one of these.


If you're trying to target an audience that is already qualified, that's already familiar


with you or that you're trying to get familiar with your product, then you're really trying


to convert them, in which case you want one of these.


These pages are great for doing tons of landing page testing and optimization.


They're great for videos.


They're great for testimonials.


These types of pages are great for content.


They're great for serving all sorts of visitor intents.


They're great for targeting a large set of keywords that all have the same searcher intent.


When you try and mix these, things get a little challenging.


That's where you really need to balance out and decide, hey, what is my primary goal here?


Serve the searcher audience, which may not be conversion-focused, or convert people and


not worry so much about the searcher audience, maybe try to capture them on other pages before


they get here.


All right, everyone.


Look forward to your comments, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of


Whiteboard Friday.


Discover Featured Snippet Opportunities - Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Today we're going over all things discovering featured snippet opportunities.


This is the first part to three videos.


This will be the discover, but we're also going to have a target and a measure video as well.


So really, really excited. It's going to be a ton of fun.


I'm doing it with you, so you're not going to be alone.


It's going to be this cool thing we all do together.


Okay, so for those of you that don't know what a featured snippet is,


it is one of those answer boxes at the top of search results.


So let's say you do a search like, oh, I don't know, are teacup pigs healthy?


Which they're not, it's super sad.


I love pigs.


But you'll get a featured snippet box like this that tells you, like, no, they're actually starved,


and it gives you all this information, right?


So it's different than something like people also ask boxes or your typical search results.


And they're particularly appealing because of the voice search component.


So most voice searches come from those featured snippet boxes,


as well as it just being really appealing in general to have that top spot.


So this process is pretty straightforward.


You're going to start with just your basic keyword research.


So you're also going to focus on questions.


AJ Gergich did this incredible study write-up on SEMrush about featured snippets


where he discovered that around 41% of all featured snippets come from questions,


which makes sense, right?


The how questions are really interesting because those results are most likely to result in lists.


And now lists take both the form of numerical as well as bullets.


So something to kind of keep in mind there.


But what's interesting about these lists is that they tend to be a little bit easier to truncate.


So if you know that Google is showing eight results,


maybe you go back to your page and you make sure that you have 10.


That way it lures people in to click to see the full list, right?


Really interesting there.


You also want to evaluate your current ranking for these particular keywords.


And you want to prioritize keywords based on ones that you rank on page one for.


It tends to be much easier to grab a featured snippet or to steal one if you're also on page one.


From there, we're going to put all of this data and more data into a big spreadsheet


so that we can really analyze and prioritize some of these opportunities.


So some of the metrics I came up with, feel free to share some ideas below,


are your keyword, average monthly search volume, current featured snippet URL.


It's this guy over here, right?


What is that domain authority and page authority?


You want to make note of those.


Is it a featured snippet hub?


This is such a cool term that AJ came up with in his article


that essentially coins a featured snippet URL that ranks for 10 or more featured snippet boxes.


So, and you probably won't know this right away, so this might stay blank,


but once you start seeing more and more of those same URLs,


you might think it's one of those hubs, right?


Kind of cool.


Featured snippet type, right?


Is it a paragraph, a list, or a table?


Is there any markup? Is there schema markup?


What's going on on the page in general?


Just sort of scope all that out.


What's your rank?


And this is actually supposed to be over here.


So again, you want to see if you're, you know, ranking 10 or under on a particular page,


hopefully on page one.


And then is there an image?


So the featured snippet images are really interesting because Google likes to swap them out


and remove them and test them and do all this crazy stuff.


I got to talk about these images and the tests that I've been doing on them


on the Two Peas podcast with Brian Childs, part of his Moz's podcast series,


and it was super fun and I share some secrets in there, so go check it out.


And then what's the type of image?


So typically you can start to see a theme of a particular niche or industry


in their featured snippet images.


Maybe they're all stock photos or maybe they're all informational type photos.


Maybe they all have the same color.


Really interesting to sort of keep an eye on those.


What's your desired featured snippet URL?


This will typically be whatever URL is ranking, right?


But maybe not. But make note of that.


Other notes, you can mention where Google's pulling the featured snippet from that page.


I think that stuff's super interesting.


You can do all sorts of fun stuff.


So two primary tools to do all of this research within are Moz Keyword Explorer and SEMrush.


So both have some caveats, right?


Moz Keyword Explorer is great because you can do a bunch of keyword research


and save them into lists.


However, you can't do keyword research only viewing the keywords that have featured snippets.


You can't do that. You have to do all the keyword research, put it into a list,


and then we give you that data.


With SEMrush, it's pretty cool.


You get to filter only by featured snippet keywords.


So that off the bat is awesome.


However, once you get a keyword list put together in Keyword Explorer,


not only do you get that information of whether or not there's a featured snippet,


but right within your list of keywords, you have the ability to add your website


and immediately see your rank for all of those particular keywords in your list,


making this super, super easy.


I tried to do this with SEMrush.


I know they have all of the features necessary to do so.


However, it's just not as easy.


You have to use a combination of their different tools within their tool.


I hit a couple different limits within Keyword Analyzer,


and then by the time I got to position tracking,


I lost my search volume from Keyword Magic Tool, which is super frustrating.


There might be a better, easier way to do that.


Maybe their API or pulling some stuff a little bit differently.


Feel free to comment down below.


Maybe there's a better way than either of these. I don't know.


But you could also do it pretty manually too.


You could use Google Keyword Planner and look some of this stuff up yourself.


But I hope you enjoyed this.


Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


How to Make Money with SEO in 2019 - Whiteboard Friday

Hi, DeMoss fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


This week we are talking about how to make money with SEO.


Now, for many of you who might be watching this video because perhaps you have Googled


or searched on YouTube about how to make money with SEO, what I want to do is talk about


how that practice has changed dramatically in the last 10 years.


In 2009, if you were searching for how to make money with SEO, there were a lot of sketchy


and manipulative and actually relatively simplistic, straightforward things that you could do to


make money online with SEO, and that has changed.


That is not the case anymore, and I think this is why you see so many people who are


in worlds like affiliate marketing and the worlds of creating small websites and many


networks of small websites and trying to sell relatively simplistic, unbranded products


or services or advertising revenue, that a lot of those sites have disappeared.


And certainly part of that is because the margins on many of those products has gone


way down.


Some of it is big competition from many new entrants, including big companies like Amazon,


but many others as well.


And a big part of this is the way that you think about making money online and how you


might be able to use SEO to do that.


Now, if you are not one of those folks who is trying to do that and you are instead a


professional marketer, I still think this video is going to be very valuable for you


because there are a few key sources of change that have been brought to our industry by


what Google has done and what websites have done and how users behave that shifts a lot


of this thinking, so stick with me.


If you want to make money online in the SEO world in 2019, your general step one is to


either find and buy or create a new business or a website that fits some important criteria


or to modify a website you've already got to fit these important criteria.


The first one is you want a relatively high amount of gross margin per search visit.


This is fundamentally different from the past.


In the past, I knew plenty of people who built their living in the SEO world with a visitor


is worth a penny to me, a visitor is worth a hundredth of a penny to me, but it doesn't


matter because I can make up for it in volume.


But today, earning search visitors is so much more challenging in the past, especially for


a new website or an emerging one or a startup, that I believe you need this high gross margin


to be able to do that.


So you want to find people who are searching for a variety of things.


I want this thing, do a search, come to your site, take an action of some kind.


That could be sign up for an email list, it could be view some advertising, it could be


actually buy a physical product or buy a software product, whatever it is.


And you make revenue that is significantly more than the cost of serving that customer,


the cost to you of maintaining the website and doing the marketing and your time and


hours and whoever else you employ and keeping the lights on and paying the bills and the


taxes and the product itself, right, whatever you're shipping or whatever you're creating


and serving, software, advertising, et cetera.


And then B, it inspires and incentivizes users to amplify their experience and, as a result,


your brand.


You might say, like, why do I need that?


Why do I need someone who's going to go and share?


Not every visitor, but you need a certain percent of people to go and say, gosh, their


site is great.


I am going to post about it on my social media.


I'm going to link to it.


I'm going to talk to my friends about it.


When people see this thing that I've made, I'm going to say, oh, it came from such and


such place.


You need that because these types of online and offline word of mouth and amplification


is core to a business's survival on the web, and that is fundamentally different than 10


years ago.


10 years ago, you could do a lot of sketchy, spammy, manipulative stuff to earn links and


to earn rankings, and Google has removed almost all of that ability.


99 percent of websites, especially in the English language world, if you are operating


in other languages, especially where Google's web spam team has not done as well, there's


still some more of those opportunities.


But generally speaking, this is crucial.


You need people who are going to link to you and amplify you.


And C, you need a business that fits the criteria of over time it creates branded demand rather


than generic search behavior.


Why?


Because otherwise you do not create a competitive advantage that is sustainable with time, and


other people who do will certainly recognize that and enter your field and compete with


you and put you out of business.


I want this thing is a fine search phrase to target for your SEO.


But you know what's way easier?


I want YourSite.com.


When you have people searching for your brand and your branded products or the keywords


that they were searching for generically plus your brand is a word in there, what they're


saying is, Google, don't serve me up just any result.


Take me to that website.


That is a competitive advantage, a barrier to entry that has huge amounts of protection


for you as a business owner.


All right.


Step two, you've found a business that fits these criteria or you've created one or you've


modified your business such that it does this, great.


Now you need to design a unique value prop and a strategy that does a couple of things.


It's got to resonate with searcher intent, meaning you are serving what searchers actually


want rather than just serving searchers with what you want them to do but that does not


actually serve them.


This is because Google has gotten too sophisticated about being able to match searcher intent


with the keyword phrases and rank the sites that solve the searcher's problem.


Ten years ago that was not the case.


Ten years ago in 2009 someone could search for best pasta and you could serve them up


a site that tried to sell them a certain kind of pasta as opposed to comparing a bunch of


different brands and varieties and trying to truly serve the searcher's intent.


That's almost impossible today.


There are a few exceptions but those gaps are closing rapidly.


It also needs to produce search optimized content that people in publications want to


link to, want to link to.


Totally different from 2009 when you could manipulate the link graph, acquire links in


ways that searchers didn't necessarily love but Google would put you on top anyway and


you could sort of take advantage of that for a while.


Not the case.


Now you need people to want to link to, to have a reason to link to you.


Otherwise you will not be able to get those top ranking positions.


So, first build a keyword research list.


You're going to go into, you could use Moz's Keyword Explorer which is what I personally


use but there are many keyword research tools out there on the web.


You could type in phrases because I love Italian food so I'm using examples like that.


So best pancetta, three year aged parmigiano, rusticchella d'abruzzo which is like this


pasta variety that I personally think is the best one out there.


And there's search volume, there's difficulty, there's click through rate percentages.


So I'm building this list.


You can go check out the videos on keyword research if you want to dive deeper on this.


But essentially I want this list because I want to be able to answer some questions about


the search phrases and terms that I'm targeting with my business.


First, what will I create to be ten times better than what's already ranking on page


one for these terms?


If I search for best pancetta and I cannot come up with a way that I think I could outperform,


have a better web page than what everyone else has got there, what's my competitive


advantage?


How am I going to take that over?


You better come up with those things, right?


I need those answers for the crucial terms and phrases that I'm going after that are


going to bring me the gross margin dollars that I need for my products, my services,


my advertising, what have you.


Second, when I produce that content, who will help amplify or link to this and why?


Who will help amplify this and why?


You don't have a great answer to that question?


Don't publish the piece.


Wait until you do.


Find that great answer because you need that amplification in order to perform, especially


in the early stages.


Once you have lots of links, high domain authority, lots of visibility in Google, you can put


a lot of things out there on the web and basically coast on your brand strength and the fact


that Google already likes your domain and is going to bias toward you.


But in the early stages, when you have a new business, not the case.


And third, how will I build a moat around this business that can protect from potential


incursions by Google themselves?


If you look at the search results today versus 2009, you will see a dramatic difference,


which is that Google's results from Google Maps to Google's own instant answers to their


feature snippets to their tabs and systems where they try and answer a query fully with


their own stuff, Google travel, Google flights, Google hotels, the list goes on and on and


on and on.


They are taking away a lot of that opportunity and you need to have a way to protect yourself


from that.


One of those ways is certainly branded search.


Another way is to make sure that the words and phrases that you're going after, especially


early on, are not ones where you have to compete with Google themselves.


And step three, finally, find what customers do before they search for these high value


keywords to you, right?


High competition keywords around your topics.


What do they search for before they get to that?


What do they search for around that stuff?


How can I capture this customer prior to that money search and then I can create a new keyword


research list and a new set of content that I'm going to create to target those people,


which will be vastly easier to capture them earlier in their buying cycle, earlier in


their potential funnel.


So exposure keywords would be things like carbonara recipe, right?


Someone's going to search for carbonara, how to make it before they ever look up, now where


do I get pancetta, right?


And this one potentially is easier to rank for than this one.


This may be not an imperfect example, but types of Parmesan, first off, the English


American spelling versus three-year Parmigiano.


This is a transactional keyword.


I know what I want.


This is a I'm still learning about this thing.


You're going to need content in both of those worlds.


Pasta brands, I'm learning.


Rusticchella d'Abruzzo, I know what I want.


Got to serve both.


And finally, as part of step three, you want to find what link likely sources are willing


to cover.


What is going to be the thing that gets you the amplification?


Sometimes it's not the same thing as the exposure keywords or the money keywords, so you need


content that is going to affect influential publications and people.


Things like, okay, we're going to produce a piece.


It doesn't necessarily serve a lot of searchers, but we know we can get links to it.


We know people tweet about it.


We know they'll post their Facebook page.


We know they might talk about it on Instagram.


The best American cities for Italian food.


Competition between American cities, you know whoever it is, whatever.


Philadelphia, we put them low in the rankings.


New York, we put them high in the rankings.


They're going to fight about it relentlessly, right?


Tons of people are going to talk about it.


The New York Post is going to write about it.


Philadelphia Inquirer is going to be all pissed about it.


Great.


You can get it in Italy if you're really just there for the meals.


Right?


That's the kind of thing someone would cover.


Cooking pasta in cold water isn't madness.


It's better.


What?


I actually do this, by the way.


I do recommend starting pasta in cold water.


We'll talk about it in another episode when I have my cooking set up here.


But regardless, the idea behind this is that I have influencer and publication targeted


content in addition to exposure keywords and money keywords.


And this, this sort of strategic thinking is how you can make money with a new business,


a new website in 2019.


It is vastly different from what you saw 10 years ago.


All right, everyone.


I hope you've enjoyed this.


I look forward to your comments.


We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


MozCon 2014 - 27 - Nathalie Nahai - The Psychology of Persuasive Content for "Boring" Industries

Hello, everyone. How are you doing? Silent. Don't leave me hanging. Oh, my God.


My name is Natanhai and I'm a web psychologist. Sounds like the beginning of some kind of


AA meeting. Anyway, today I'm going to be talking about persuasive, well, psychology


of persuasive content for boring industries. I kind of thought, well, as any good psychologist


should, one should define the term before launching in. So I thought, well, what are


boring industries? So I kind of thought, well, banking. Anyone here in banking? I'm sorry.


I'm really sorry. You guys do great work. Or at least you will after this talk. You


can thank me later. Insurance is really boring. And I just figured


plumbing. No one likes shit. So I thought I would start with these three.


And today's talk I'm going to look at persuasive copy. We're then going to dive into engaging


images and then viral videos. Does that sound all right to you?


Yeah. All right. Okay. So we're ending with the videos because you've had a really long


three days and if you had the kind of night I had last night you're probably really hung


over. So the whiskey was really quite nice. So let's start with persuasive copy.


So in the U.K., I do a lot of work with marketers and I write for marketing week and you often


hear this term bandied around, the golden ratio, 80 20 where people say, okay, if you're


going to get people to read what you're writing, you have to make sure that the headline is


hooky enough. So we're going to spend 80% of our time on the headline and then 20% on


the rest. Doesn't sound like a great idea to me, but this is received wisdom. We're


going to come back to this. Ultimately, if you want people to read your copy, you want


to make sure that you have something that makes you want to read on. So whatever industry


you're in, whether it's boring or not, to get people to read, you need a hook. So I


thought I would create nine steps that I actually take for the kind of copy that I write to


creating persuasive headlines and the copy that supports them. Although it should be


the other way around. So we'll start with number one, understand


your target audience. Now, if you're a psychologist and even if you're not, if you're trying to


relate with people, you have to understand their psychological context. And in terms


of understanding these layers, I like to think of it in terms of three main key spheres,


if you like. You have the universal psychological context, and that is things like social validation.


So we're all here. We all want to feel admired and liked by our peers and our families. It's


why the like button is so persuasive. We feel validated and liked. Or the retweet button.


So social validation is one key universal principle. Another would be the need to feel


like we belong, which is why communities like this are so amazing. So those are universal


psychological contexts. The second layer is cultural. And this can


be anything from looking at the U.S., which is vast, and then bringing it down a little


bit and going, okay, what's the cultural typography, if you like, of a city versus another, like


Seattle. And then you go in further and you say what about an organization, what about


a team. And you start to get a sense of what motivates people to do what they do.


The third and final layer, which I found particularly exciting, is around individual differences.


And this is things like personality. Neurochemical differences between one person and the next.


Personality matters when you're creating persuasive content. Why? Because research has shown that


adding persuasive messages to personality traits to those of your audience can be an


effective way of increasing that message's impact.


So I have created, curated, really, a list of three of the big five traits and the different


words that we use if we score highly in these traits. So extroverts, those of you who are


sitting towards the front of the stage, will tend to score more highly for extroversion.


You are more likely, when you're speaking about yourself, to say things like feeling


strong, I'm outgoing, I like to be active, I like excitement and attention, thrill-seeking,


novelty, all of these different components, you'll find are the hallmarks of people who


score highly in extroversion. So if your audience is fairly extroverted,


I'm going to give you some tools that you can use to find out if they are or not, if


your audience is extroverted, you may find that this is a really quick route to engaging


with them at a very deep level. Another trait, openness, your openness to experience.


Apparently, I read about this last year, I had a really interesting conversation about


it last night, mushrooms, magic mushrooms, I don't know if they're legal, they're not


here yet, but okay, we're working on it, you've got the weed thing down, it's only a matter


of time, people. So psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, if you take some,


and I'm not advocating that you do, although I hear it can be quite fun, if you take some,


it can increase your openness levels for up to about a year. Also, interestingly, totally


different thing, the French eat a lot of raw meat, and there's this little parasite called


taxoplasma gondii that will increase your extroversion levels over the course of your


lifetime. So anyway, these things can change. If you are open or doing lots of mushrooms,


you are likely to use these words to describe yourself. So things like innovation, intelligence,


sophistication, imagination, creative, and creativity, all of these sorts of words. If


you are emotionally a bit more vulnerable and you score higher for neuroticism, and


we all score everywhere on some of the spectrum of these particular traits, then you're more


likely to respond to these sorts of words. So things like uncertainty, security, protection,


safe. If you're trying to sell someone something and they're in the neurotic camp, then saying


that you can reduce the anxiety or reduce their fear is a really persuasive technique


to use. And there's some research that's come out from Cambridge that's not yet been published


that did this for retargeting ads with Google, and they found it to be a very effective way


to segment and engage specific audiences. So these are some tools. If you're interested


in actually applying some of this stuff, the big five is the academic version that will


enable you to have a look at and assess your audiences. This is the small version which


you can get online, the IPIP Neo. If you're interested in doing something a little bit


less academically off-putting, you can try out VisualDNA. They have some amazing tools.


They're a company based in the UK who are redefining data sharing and psychographic


stuff. They have the biggest psychographic database in the whole world, so it's worth


checking out. And finally, MyPersonality.org. They're based out of Cambridge University,


and they do some really interesting consensual psychographic profiling of Facebook users,


but it's all with informed consent, because you all know what happened recently when they


didn't do that. Okay, second step. Write to one person. You


should give each segment, especially when you're looking at personas, a psychologically


representative persona, so building on the previous point. This means looking at their


age and their gender, of course, but also their personality traits and their culture,


which can be their country, their peer group, and also motivation. So whether they're getting


motivated to engage with you intrinsically, so is this going to help me become a better


person, to grow, to develop, or extrinsically, am I going to get a fast car or a better job


or be other people to the promotion? Third one. Always start with your copy. Always


start with it. Write the outline of your copy first and then the headline. Otherwise, it


won't work. And the reason for this is you have to have mental consistency between the


headline that you've written and the body of the work, and it will ensure that you distill


your content into a headline that can deliver. Psychological trigger words. This is my favorite.


All of these words that you see up here, you will notice in news articles and headlines


throughout the ages throughout the world. So things like weird, bizarre, strange, mystery,


effortless, painstaking, all of them, my favorite being the brackets, it's not what you think.


So if I said to you three amazing ways to increase your fertility at MozCon, brackets,


it's not what you think, yeah, okay, I don't even know what you thought. It kind of just


takes you down a journey where you start to want to fill in the blanks and so you want


to know what's going to happen next, so you're going to click.


Okay. You should always test several different headlines, but the interesting thing is that


you should read them aloud. Why? Because when we read, we process our thinking differently


than when we speak. And actually research found that if you're writing your thoughts,


you'll think and express yourself in a different way than if you're typing. So there's all


sorts of different ways. So it will give you a new perspective.


Pick the number one benefit. You have to make it really tangible and include it in the headlines.


This is a great example. Harvard Business Review's proven ways to earn your employees'


trust. It's proven, scientific, we will love a bit of this, and it tells you what it's


going to give you. Of course, you should always include the product


and problem in the headlines. This should be really basic. However, what you often don't


find is that people have a really keen understanding of what that problem is. And we saw this yesterday


and I was utterly delighted. I actually use Optimizely. They're amazing. And what they've


shown with this is a really extraordinary insight into the problem that people find


with platforms. They're not saying they're the best platform. They're not saying they're


the cheapest platform. They're saying that you'll actually use their platform. I've used


a lot of platforms and then just not used them. So when I read this, I was like, yes,


I shall use it. And actually I do. Oh, other thing also, just if you're in Web


Design, permissive language to get people to convert in a call to action to sign up


to trials, use language like test or try. It's much more persuasive than sign up or


subscribe. Okay. Totally left field headline. I go to


a lot of conferences and I don't really check my LinkedIn that much. And I recently got


this email from this guy. It says I'm going to hunt you until you accept our LinkedIn


connection. I was like, great, I'm going to call the police. And then smiley face, sounds


scary, doesn't it? Well, yes, it bloody well does. You shouldn't have sent me that message.


So he sent me this thing. It stayed in my inbox for about five days, mainly because


A, I was really quite impressed that he bothered to do something like this. And B, it was just


that that's where he decided to go with it. Not like, you know, bizarre ways. It was just


I'm going to hunt you. So anyway. But the point was that it got my attention and that


you can do things like that that are a little bit left field that will get people's attention.


Okay. Always split test your headlines. It doesn't matter how small your readership is,


you've got to be able to test what people respond to, whether it's emails and articles


or Web pages. And there's obviously various ways you can do this.


Right. Now the juicy bit. Before I jump in with this formula, I'm going to preface this


by saying that headlines and headline structures are always subject to trends. So we saw recently


a few years ago when BuzzFeed came on the scene and suddenly we had these epicly long


headlines that people would read. Before that it was a question of how do we write a small


headline that's going to be persuasive that people will want and next will probably be


something different. However, I found that if you use this formula, even elements of


it, and you have the content to back it up and that bit's crucial, then it has a very


high success rate. So you want a number or a trigger word, an


adjective, a keyword, and a promise. Sounds like countdown. Adjective, please. And then


sorry, a British joke. A killer headline will ensue. So what does this actually look like?


How does this work? So, for instance, if I said, okay, I want to have a subject around


frying eggs. Does anyone like eggs? I like eggs, I guess. Eggs Florentine. But no one's


really excited about eggs. You could write an article that says how to fry an egg or


why I love frying eggs or you could apply the formula.


13 unbelievable ways you can fry a small egg with a sock. And suddenly you start getting


these weird mental images. You might hate eggs, but you're like, that sounds a bit odd.


That sounds quite intriguing. You've got the number, you've got your trigger word, you've


got the adjective, the keyword, and the promise. And there you have it. Something that is going


to be a lot more interesting to click on than the one previously.


So for boring industries, I've chosen home insurance because everyone finds it really


boring, myself included. You could write an article that says why you should insure your


home. This is very standard. There's a lot of adverts out there like this. Or home insurance


for the whole family. Yay. Or you could do this. Three bizarre ways our bespoke insurance


could save your life. Now, obviously, you want to make sure that your legal team have


made sure that it's kosher for you to write. But it does make it a little bit more compelling.


So you've got your number, your trigger, adjective, keyword, promise. So I hear you ask, isn't


this just click bait? I would argue that it's only click bait if you're not offering value.


If you're just driving traffic and then they land and there's nothing there. So you have


to be able to deliver what you've promised. This is one of my favorite examples of how


not to do it. So I really like Upworthy. And I get a few breaks in the day and I thought,


brilliant, I shall check this out. I quite like the Dalai Lama as well. He's kind of


quite cute. I'm in a sort of wise way. So the Dalai Lama has some very wise and uplifting


words about farting. So I was thinking, brilliant, this sounds utterly ridiculous. I'll read


that. So I go on to the thing. It's like 11 minutes long, which is an eternity when you're


trying to get a paper that you're writing out. So I sit and I watch it. And it's basically


10 minutes of just him talking about wisdom, which is fine ordinarily, but not when I just


want a bit of distraction and a dopamine hit. And at the end he just basically says, yeah,


I fart on planes like everyone else. That's not wise. That's not funny. It was just an


admission that all of us knew anyway. And the point I'm making here is that if you're


going to write something like that that is exciting and then you go through and you realize


that it's a bit shit, rubbish, then you're going to get to the point where you're getting


your trust in the quality of that content eroded. And if you have enough of these small


erosions, you just will stop going back. So you have to make sure that you can deliver.


And the reason that you would do this obviously speaks for itself, but you can do it by asking


yourself what the tangible benefits would be for your customers to get from this content,


which is why things like this work. Here that's not just the number. They've also created


an identity level trigger. So 10 things only exceptional bosses give employees. Obviously


we're not the target audience unless we run our own companies, but we all would like to


think of ourselves as exceptional. So you click through. You read down. Nice big barnum


catchall phrase. Good bosses make smart decisions and get important things done. Don't most


of us think that we make smart decisions and we get important things done? Yes. So you're


initiating a consistency principle yes set. So you go, yes, I do that. And then you read


the great ones do so much more. So you're thinking, oh, God, what's there more to do?


I want to be great, so I'd better do some more. So they're inviting you to click on.


And then you can see that actually it's quite efficient. Another 177,253 people have that


same impulse. Let's move on to images. So one of the issues


that we face with long form content and other such things is that we're very easily distracted


by images. Why? Because principally when we're growing up, that's the first thing that we


learn to understand our environment with. So they're instant. They're data rich. They're


visually compelling. And they take up most of our attention when we first land on a piece


of content. If you want your images to be more engaging,


you have to elicit emotion. These are your classic six. The one that doesn't get used


very much but is often the most powerful is disgust. The reason that you can do some interesting


stuff with this is because you often end up with memes pairing images with text that are


not necessarily congruent. So there's dissonance between the emotional content of the image


and the emotional content of the words such as this. Oh, no, wait, that's coming next.


I threw in an extra bit of info. So where thought conflicts with emotion, the latter,


emotion, is designed by the neural circuitry in the brain to win. So if you're reading


something and it's provocative and it's emotional, whatever other decision making process you


have that you believe to be rational will get superseded by the emotional content. So,


yeah, so things like this. This is First World Problems. Guy looking very depressed. Underneath


it says a swan just spat in our salsa. Obviously you wouldn't be that upset if a swan spat


in your salsa. What do you do eating salsa next to swans? I don't know where he lives.


Maybe Queens back garden or something. Okay, another one. So had to wake up for the ironing


lady to come and collect our clothes and she still isn't here. It's really not that big


of a deal but it's the dissonance that creates the tension. This one, Boromir, one does not


simply pull the flash at 4 a.m. and these other things. It's kind of sweet. But this


is why they work. The other thing you have to do is tell a story. Especially if you're


trying to sell something that people just don't identify with emotionally. And to do


this, you have to ditch all the abstract terms and make your story contrasting and concrete.


Great example, the Washington Post earlier this year created a new website called No


More and they decided with this website to go the visual route. So you can see with the


images, you've got six images of the Pope with a guy who's pretty badly disfigured.


Now if you look at each individual image on the page, you'll notice that they're really


not that different from one another. In fact, they're not even in what appears to be a chronological


order. But because it appears to tell a story and because we read from left to right, we're


trying to find meaning in this sequence. And because you're trying to find meaning in the


whole Gestalt principle of closed loops, you want to be able to understand the entirety


of what's happening, you will keep gazing at it until you've understood what the meaning


is or you'll click through. So it's actually quite an effective ploy.


This one's one of my favorites. So vacuum cleaners, does anyone like cleaning the houses?


No? A bit boring? Great example of how to take a boring item and make it fun. So on


the left we have cute wrinkly Sharpay puppy. On the right we have no more wrinkles. Wrinkles


gone. And so this is basically saying, look, our vacuum cleaner is so strong, it will suck


all the wrinkles off your puppy. Which actually sounds quite disgusting. But they executed


it pretty well without all the blood and gore that happened. They got rid of that bit. That


was the middle phase. They ditched the middle. But the point is you're getting a contrast


and concrete message before and after A to B, et cetera.


Bosh, job done. This is a very elegantly designed advert. So standard life investments. Anything


relating to numbers, banking, investments is pretty abstract, right? Unless you're going


to go out and buy that Maserati or whatever. What they've done is what their legal team


probably didn't allow them to do with their copy. They've created a message which is extraordinarily


tangible and compelling. So on the left you've got a chunk of coal and the word potential


plain white background. On the right, delivered. Opulent blue silk and then a diamond. It's


giving you that narrative without saying we're going to turn you from rags to riches. It's


giving you that, well, yeah, archetypal story. And I think it's quite a powerful way of doing


it. You also have to create a curiosity gap. And


I talked a little bit about the Gestalt thing. This is the desire to close the loop. So I


saw this recently. I was browsing BuzzFeed for the content of this video, of course,


for this talk. And I found this, 24 things that Londoners can't stop talking about. Obviously


I was in London. They tracked my IP. They know where I am. And because I have this desire


to see what's going on in London in my hometown, of course I'm going to click on it. Because


if I don't, I'll miss out. Also this. How many of you were kids at some


point? How many of you are adults now? Right. So things that kids do that would be creepy


if an adult did them. Who's that going to apply to? Everyone. Everyone. So you're going


to try and create a loop, a closed loop for that curiosity gap.


Really viral videos. So this is a fun bit. We heard earlier from Phil, actually, who


mentioned Unruly Media, who do some amazing stuff in the video space. Things on finding


out what psychological triggers will increase attention, engagement, memory, et cetera.


And one of the things that's really good at doing this is the use of nostalgia. So this


is the interactive bit. So I've got this video. I want you to tell me two things. Number one,


do you think it's effective at inducing a sense of nostalgia? This will be sample specific


because it will be for those of you who were born in the 80s. And number two, does it make


you want to buy their products? And then if so, why? And if not, why not? Take a look.


You might not remember us, but we met in the 90s. We are members of Generation Y as in


Yin Yang, Yo-Yo. Life moved a little slower. Discs were square. Desktop folders had personality.


Extra storage space was just a zipper away. There was only one social network, but most


of your friends died of dysentery. The only thing buzzing in your pocket was a pet. Until


that died too. But at least the troll was still a friend. Lunch was a puzzle, not a


picture. You were pumping jams, water, shoes. You didn't have to worry about a news feed


full of farm animals. You were busy feeding wild animals. A haircut didn't cost $60. It


cost four minutes. You really had nothing to lose. Unless, of course, you were playing


for keeps. The future was bright. You grew up. So did we.


Right. Hands up if you felt the sense of nostalgia to that. I always do when I watch that. I


think that's most of us. Hands up if you think that that was an effective way to make you


want to buy their product. Hands up if that was a yes. A few of us. Hands up if that was


a no. Why the no? Shout out to me, people. Oh, the wall of sound is amazing. I'm going


to crowd surf any second. I'm guessing that you probably sensed that there was a sense


of nostalgia, but they coupled it badly. So the point here is that they put you in this


beautiful scenario. You get this sense of nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia.


Yes, I empathize. I remember this. I had trolls at school. Blah, blah, blah. You get to the


end point, and you are so convincingly in that state of nostalgia. They then put up


the logo, and what do you think you associate with their brand? Nostalgia, which belongs


in the past, right? So the point with any of these psychological principles is that


you have to think about the end goal. So the end goal is meet the new interact explorer.


Nothing about what you just experienced was new. Nothing. It was all old. It was all nostalgic.


So what they should have done would have been to have nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia. This


is where we're at now, sexy wiggle. And then finally, anticipation about the future is


going to be amazing. Come join us. Go. But they didn't create that. They didn't use a


curiosity gap. They didn't create anticipation or excitement or surprise. And so you're left


in this nostalgia hump, which is why I would imagine it wouldn't have been that effective,


among other things, obviously, technical stuff aside.


Another way to engage people through videos and create a scenario in which it's more likely


to go viral is to mirror your audience. So this is to do with things like lifestyle,


to do with personality, where they live, what kind of stuff they do. And I found this one,


which I really like, for jeans. Jeans are fairly boring. This advert is not quite as


boring.


It's like a little boddy romance.


Very cute indeed.


So that's an example of mirroring your audience around the streets of New York.


The other one, I'm not totally not sorry about this.


So you guys recently had Independence Day, which the Brits don't really care about at


all.


But you guys really do.


And I found this video that kind of bridges our cultures a little bit.


This is just to make you feel good on the last day because I think you deserve it.


Oh, happy Fourth of July, America.


Ready to fire up the grill and celebrate our victory over the Brits?


Well, I'm not because despite that incredibly convincing American accent, I'm one of those


Brits.


I've acted in film and TV for years, but my greatest performance is acting like I don't


care that every summer you gobbled down tube sausages and celebrate kicking our arses or


butts, as you say, incorrectly.


You really still have to celebrate your emancipation from us.


I mean, that's like your girlfriend breaking up with you and then celebrating with fireworks


every year for 300 years.


It gets my goat.


But what really gets my goat is imagining how great America would be if we were still


in charge.


Oh, America, if we'd won the war, you'd have better comedy, news, TV programs and way better


rude words.


Oh, I'm talking Fanny, Trollope, Mingertart, Mingebag, Bleeding, Sodding, Blooming, Cocked


Up, Get Stuffed and of course, Wanker.


Imagine how sophisticated you'd sound when you're insulting someone.


Oi, Brad, your wife's a slag.


Don't piss off your wanker.


See how classy that sounded?


With our accents and your American self-confidence, you'd be unstoppable.


Yeah, you'd have to pay a few more taxes, but you can't put a price on that.


Great Britain too would be the greatest country on earth.


Your lawyers would all wear powdered wigs so criminals really respect them and you'd


have all the mushy peas you can stuff down your bloody great gobs.


Oh, and if you get sick, you don't need to worry about medical insurance because with


a national health service, a doctor will see you for free in about two years.


Plus, your taxes will be spent on things you really need, like a royal family who do the


tough jobs no one else wants to do, like being driven around in a really nice car while waving.


You'll want to eat some apple pie, then shoot some hoops and have a hoe down?


F***ing bollocks.


This July 3rd, grab a Newcastle Brown Ale and toast to how great it could have been


if we won.


If we won.


Right, well there you go.


So making things funny.


You can also surprise people with something a little bit unexpected.


Chaps, I'm really sorry to put you through this, but this is an example of how plumbing


or plumbing related stuff can be surprising.


Oh, Gary, that's disgusting.


What?


Lock the door.


No, it's just a wee.


Why are you sitting down then?


I bet every single one of you chaps, whoever sits down to wee whilst drunk or hungover


will now get a soft closing loose seat off the back of the advert.


Right, so the final one that I want to share with you, this is one of my favourites, mostly


because it takes something really, really boring and it creates a narrative which is


universally applicable and it's a very, very moving advert for something which ordinarily


wouldn't relate to any kind of thing like life insurance.


So yeah, watch this.


But rather than trying to hinder people from taking their lives, we wanted to change their


minds about it.


A simple light is where our idea began.


We wanted to light up each step as people walked by, surprise them and bring them joy.


We went to the bridge and walked on it to see for ourselves.


We wanted to connect with people on eye level so we started to create sensors that reacted


to people as they walked by.


We wanted this bridge of life to start a conversation with people, sometimes with a simple greeting


or with words of wisdom or with a silly joke that would move their hearts.


And where the conversation ends, we set up bronze statues of two friends where one is


patting the other on his back and pinching his cheek.


A


small first step by Samsung life insurance to save lives, to give a new home, to share


a new dream, to encourage and inspire.


Even at this very moment, the bridge of life is speaking to someone.


Human love, Samsung life insurance.


So what did you think of that?


You felt pretty moved, right?


At least a bit?


Every time I've seen this video countless times and every time it says at the end, just


go and see the person you miss, my heart just makes me upset.


But it's a beautiful, beautiful way of creating wider meaning around their products for people


that probably might not even ever use their product by accessing those universal emotional


traits or feelings, really.


So key takeaways, because I want to make sure there's time for a little bit of questions.


If you want to create persuasive content, you have to make sure that you understand


your audiences, that you engage them emotionally in any number of those ways that we've just


seen or more, and that also you use psychological triggers.


If you want to find out more about the references, there's a full list that you can check out.


And I will now take your questions if you have them.


Thank you for your attention.


Thank you, Nada.


We are going to have time for a couple questions, so go to the microphones if you have one.


So talking about injecting emotion, using emotional engagement, so this sounds lighthearted,


but I don't mean it to be.


What if you work with a bunch of people, as many marketers do, who just are emotionally


sheltered, not in touch with their emotions?


How do we bring that out of each other?


You can get them to watch things that make them cry.


I think it depends on what the goals are.


So if you're working with people who are like my dad's a physicist and works with physicists,


and so does my brother, and you get people who are a bit more analytical who perhaps


have a different way of processing, and I think if that is your situation, then it's


worth relating whatever story you're trying to create to things that have impacted them


in their own personal lives.


We all have feelings.


Even psychopaths have feelings, even though they're not empathetic.


So if you can relate whatever the empathy or emotion is that you're trying to create


in your process to something that speaks to them personally about their own experience,


that tends to be quite an effective way.


Okay.


Cool.


Hey, thanks so much.


That was really interesting.


I've noticed, especially in headlines, that a lot of those words that you had on the slide


have been around for a long time.


They don't seem to change.


But I was wondering if you have any opinions about the you'll never guess what happened


next.


I see that and I just won't click anymore because it's so prolific, but I also know


that marketers aren't the general population, so I was wondering if you think that that's


going to stop working.


That's a good question.


So it depends on how you deploy that particular principle.


Essentially what you see with any kind of psychology is that if you have an understanding


of the person or the people you're trying to reach, that always will stay the same.


The underlying motivating factors don't change.


It's just the way in which you deploy them that do.


So for instance, to your point, yes, I often won't, because I know what's going on, but


there are other ways of doing it.


So for instance, VHX, a video platform over in New York, did this thing where they had


a YouTube channel, or there's a client of theirs that had this, and they wanted to create


a series.


So they gave seven episodes away for free, and then the last episode is, well, you're


going to have to pay $3 to see what happens.


Because they had such a big viewership, they used that principle in a way that was kind


of ethical because they had given so much value, they got that buy-in, and then people


did want to know what happened next.


So I think it's a question of always testing how you're going to deploy that technique.


So the mechanism will change, but the underlying motivation won't.


Does that make sense?


Yeah, it does.


Thank you.


These are conversations we have all the time.


We have them at Moz when we're testing headlines and implementing content.


Is this too click-baity?


Are we deceiving our audience?


And Rand always says, is it empathetic towards the audience?


That sort of helps us out.


Yes, go ahead.


What do you do if your industry is boring and your content is mostly behind a paywall


what people want to see?


So the goal there would be to get them to go behind a paywall.


Yes.


Well, if most of your content is behind a paywall, then they're not going to know what


content they're missing out on.


So one of the biggest ways in which to get people to connect with you is through reciprocity.


If you don't give them enough, and there will be a sweet point for each industry or for


each site.


So you have to find that sweet point.


And if you're not giving stuff away so they don't feel like they're building a relationship


with you and they don't know what to expect, then whatever links you use, it will be viewed


more click-baity, especially if it's an industry which doesn't usually do that kind of stuff.


So I'd give more content away, try some of these principles, and then also get feedback


about what people value or maybe even do a series of posts and then the final one, which


is the synopsis with all the references and the research, that one that's high value,


get people to get that from behind the paywall.


Thank you.


Thanks.


Fascinating stuff.


So if you want to learn more about website psychology, what is the best way to do that?


So I have created some goodies for you guys, which has all these slides and then a free


chapter for my book and some other things.


You can go to bit.ly forward slash moz goodies.


I've also tweeted about it.


And then Institute of Web Psychology, where I run courses on the subject.


And there's a free course on there at the moment if you fancy trying it out.


That's it.


Or tweet to me.


I think we're going to tweet that link out to those links.


Technical Tips: Measuring the Impact of Technical Strategies on Rankings

Welcome to today's episode of Technical Tips, where I'm going to show you how you can use


Moz Pro to create custom reports in order to monitor the success of your technical SEO


efforts.


Hi, my name is Alicia and I'm part of the Customer Onboarding team here at Moz.


Let's get started with today's episode.


First step in creating a report to monitor how your technical tasks are impacting your


rankings is to identify and prioritize the pages on your site that have issues that you


want to fix.


From your Moz Pro campaign, head to Site Crawl and All Crawl Pages.


You can filter this list to show only the pages that have issues on them and then reorder


them to prioritize, for example with Page Authority.


Click Analyze to see further page details and to review what issues have been detected.


You can also get more tips on prioritizing issues by checking out Dr. Pete's Technical