And a young writer wrote to him looking for advice.


MozCon 2014 - 10 - Pete Meyers - How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas

And he wrote back something that was difficult but I think kind in a lot of ways.


This will be the only slide I read to you, I promise.


He said I'm afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you're prepared


to pay.


And I would say that kindly to all of you.


You've got to sell your heart your strongest reactions, not the little experiences you


might tell at dinner.


This is especially true when you begin to write, and I love this, when you have not


yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper.


When in short you have only your emotions to sell.


What does this have to do with content?


In the beginning we suck.


We don't have the skills.


And if you suck and are boring, you're done.


So you have to get your best idea up front.


You have to get the thing you care about out there first because you don't have the skill


yet.


And I'll tell you something, if all you do is spin out article marketing crap and bad


press releases and bad guest posts, you'll never develop the skill.


So you have to get out there and lead with your best stuff.


You have to do what you care about and maybe people won't notice that you suck.


And we all suck at one time or another.


So you want to see some data?


Well, here's why I believe this.


Back in the fall of 2011, I researched and helped launch the algo history on Moz, currently


well over a million visits since it launched.


Easily my most successful piece of content.


I was not ready to write this.


I had no business writing this.


I wanted to research it to learn for myself.


There were so many people who knew more about the algo history than I did out there.


And I really had no business pursuing this project.


But I put in the work.


And it went out and like all our posts, you know, Moz does well.


We had a good spike at the beginning and then it fell off.


We had a little follow-up.


And through the end of 2011, we had this nice steady 200 or so a day.


It was healthy for one of our posts.


Going into 2012, it started to pick up.


That's the second line.


Sorry, it's hard to see.


Round about that spike in the middle was the Penguin update, the first Penguin update.


And a renewed interest in the algorithm.


And the amazing thing is that traffic never went back down.


It just kept growing and growing and growing.


And we expect I expect to see 600,000 visits to the algo history this year.


And I'll tell you a secret.


I spend about two hours a month on it.


50,000 visits a month for two hours.


It's not bad.


There's two lessons I want you to have from this.


One is that because I invested in that when I wasn't writing in 2011, it's paying dividends


now three years later.


And it would probably be harder to do and someone else might have done it.


But the other thing is because it was in place at the right time when Penguin hit, we were


able to take advantage of something we didn't expect.


And I think that's the essence of evergreen content.


The other reason not to put off these big ideas is that too often a big idea is an illusion.


It's a fantasy.


Until you dig into that idea, I've written down so many ideas in WordPress and I've gone


to write it and ten minutes later I went, what?


What was this?


There's nothing behind this.


And we all do it at conferences.


Conferences are exciting.


And you're going to sit there and you go, MacCutt said something.


Inspiring tidbit.


I wrote this down.


I tweeted it.


It was great.


You go home and you go, what the hell was I going to do with that?


So I'm going to tell you a personal story.


I don't know if you've ever had what I call the idea.


And I don't mean an idea.


I don't mean like let's go out for ice cream.


That's an idea.


That's a good idea.


I mean the idea.


The world changing piece in the Middle East, rid the world of the boy bands, make cake


calorie free.


The idea.


And I get the idea, maybe you're like me, I hope so, otherwise it's going to be a really


weird story.


I get the idea at about 3 in the morning.


Have you ever had that you wake up at about 3 in the morning and the idea is in your head?


This is it.


This is the one.


And you think the worst thought you can have, there is no way I will forget the idea.


Don't need to write it down.


Don't have a pen.


You wake up the next morning and it's gone.


Back in I think it was the summer of 91, between my junior and senior year of college, I was


very interested in lucid dreaming.


You can talk to me about that later if you want.


Basically the idea is becoming conscious of the fact that you're dreaming and be able


to manipulate and work with the dream.


And I was so interested that I started talking to a professor, Steven at Stanford and I worked


up an independent study and somehow miraculously got it funded and got to spend a month in


California with him.


And I had all this cool equipment.


I got to sleep about 12 hours a night, which is awesome.


I have two toddlers now, so that seems like I feel like I'm making that up even as I say


it.


But I had all this equipment.


I had this cool REM light that flashed when I started dreaming and would wake me up so


I could write things down.


I had these pens with spotlights built into them and special note pads.


And one night that summer, 3 o'clock in the morning, I have no idea when it really was,


it was 3 o'clock in the morning, I had the idea.


And I could write it down.


And I had the pen and I did it.


And I don't know how I slept that night, but I woke up and it was like a thousand Christmas


mornings.


Everything would change after I picked up that pad and read that idea.


And the idea I had written down was number five, cheese log castles.


This is a true story, I swear to you.


Not love cheese as much as the next guy.


But this idea did not change the world.


And I think what I want to tell you is that fantasy, it's crushing.


And it's crushing when you have an idea that sounds great and it falls apart.


But it's better than the fantasy.


It's better to get that great idea out there and have it fail because there will be another


idea behind it.


And if you don't do that, you know, I have a lot of friends who are writers, so I'm going


to talk about that in a little bit.


If you live your whole life with the idea of the great American novel in your head,


with the idea of that great piece of viral content in your head, and you never try, what's


the point?


So get it out there.


Fail.


It's okay.


And I think this is what we fear.


So I have a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology.


Technically I have a Ph.D. in human experimental psychology with a cognitive focus, but that's


very wordy.


And there's a related school of thought that comes from the post-war era called information


processing.


And information processing theory tried to take all these ideas about the brain and use


analogies from technology.


And some of these are very pervasive, even though you might not realize it.


So a big idea in that is comparing our brain to a hard drive.


So oftentimes we think of memory like a hard drive.


You store an idea, you retrieve it, and eventually you run out of space.


This is completely untrue.


Our memory is holographic.


It's fascinating.


It layers on top of itself.


It creates new and interesting things.


But we carry this idea, this analogy, which is useful to a point way too far, and it's


become embedded in our society.


And so I think this is how we think big ideas work.


We have a storage of so many of them.


And when we use them up, they'll be gone.


There is no evidence for this.


There's plenty of evidence against it in any creative field.


When I started writing more for Moz, it was intimidating.


It's a big blog and it's a scary thing to do.


And I went from once every couple months to once every month to once every couple weeks.


And my fear was, I'm going to run out of things to say.


I'm just not interesting enough to keep you all entertained every two weeks for however


long I work here.


And the interesting thing was it made me create more often.


It made me generate more ideas.


And I think ideas work like that.


So don't be afraid that you're going to run out.


They'll be there.


So how do we do this?


I don't want this just to be theoretical.


I'm going to take you on a reverse auction of sorts.


I know it's going to be hard to get you to buy into the first thing I'm going to say.


It may be too hard.


And I've tried this before.


And I'll talk about that in a minute.


But I'm going to keep lowering the bid until I can get you to buy in, because this is important


to me.


And I think there's a process by which we can do this.


So the first thing I want you to know is some of you are thinking, why aren't you talking


about Google?


That's what you do.


You're a data scientist.


I'm not.


I'm a content marketer.


This to me is content marketing.


This is 300,000 visits this year.


This is a thing to build brand that I believe in to help other people believe in what we


do.


And what you may not understand is that all the data behind this also drives content.


This is just a sampling of what's come out of Moscast for me.


Blog posts, 65,000 visits, 46,000, 47,000.


My talk for Moscon last year, 88,000 views.


You may think, oh, well, you guys are Moz.


But I've written plenty of posts on Moz that got 3,000 or 4,000 people to see it.


We don't get five.


But this has driven hundreds of thousands of visits to blog posts, presentations, visual


assets, you name it.


That data to me is an engine for generating content.


I believe that's out there for you.


I know this is a hard thing to grasp.


I want to give a couple quick examples.


I'm not going to dwell on it.


There really is data everywhere.


This is Pornhub insights.


Please do not Google Pornhub blog.


If you don't know, Pornhub is a hub for porn.


I just want to put that out there.


I hope you can piece that together yourself.


We're all grownups.


If you Google Pornhub blog, you will get a blog that's full of actual porn.


But this is Pornhub insights.


And what Pornhub did that is amazing is they said, you know, porn actually has a big problem.


Matt Cutts has joked about this many times.


Nobody links to porn.


Porn is one of the most popular things on the Web.


Nobody links to it.


Nobody shares it.


I have been on sites for research purposes that actually had social buttons.


Like you're going to watch porn and think, I bet grandma would like this.


I'm going to like that.


That will be great.


No one has ever done that.


Or grandma is awesome.


Maybe.


But what they did is said, you know what, we have all this data about people that can


be anonymized and made interesting and we can build a blog that has no porn that would


appeal to marketers and drive links to our site.


So they built this blog, Pornhub insights.


That's completely based on data science.


Who would connect porn and data science?


But it's been successful.


This is a U.S. versus Russia.


They're trying to make it timely.


This was during some of the Olympics and some of the tension.


Short news is USA, we win.


I don't know if we want to win at this.


So here's an industry you wouldn't think of.


This is the Marvel Comics API.


Marvel Comics has an API to all their characters, all their comics, all their events in the


Marvel world.


Nobody that I know has built anything in marketing based on this.


How cool would that be?


It's out there everywhere.


It doesn't matter what your niche is.


You don't have to be an SEO.


You don't have to be in our industry.


There's data everywhere.


Even if you don't have an original data source, you can take a new perspective.


This is Nate Silver's blog.


All of us know about this, FiveThirtyEight, during the election.


It's changed a bit now.


Reading Nate's book now.


I don't want to minimize what Nate did because he's an extremely interesting, intelligent


person.


But when Nate launched FiveThirtyEight, what he essentially did was he didn't invent a


new poll.


He didn't start a polling company, which would have cost millions of dollars.


He didn't find a new data source.


He took the polls that were out there and he weighted them by their historical accuracy.


He just made a weighted average of polls.


And two things happened.


One, he got new data that was more accurate than what other people had because everybody's


polls had error.


And two, he got data more often because every time there was a new poll, he could publish


something new.


And so as technical and statistical as what Nate did seems, the reality is he just took


a new perspective.


And I think that's out there.


I don't want you to wait for inspiration to come to you.


That's the lesson.


This is the most interesting screen I'll look at all day.


It is the worst UI I've ever built.


And what this is, I'm not going to dive into details, is an alert of all the things Google


changed the previous night.


All the things they added and an interface for me to look at them and they have little


red squares around them.


So every morning I get up and say I found something new on Google.


This machine handed it to me.


I can't ‑‑ this is ‑‑ I practiced this slide and this is very frustrating for


me.


I don't know how to express what this is.


Because this is a machine that generates content.


This is a kind of magic for me.


This is content handed to me on a silver platter and I forged the platter and that is an amazing


feeling and I wish I could share it.


And I've tried to ‑‑ I gave a talk at SearchLove about data‑driven content and


it went fine.


It was okay.


And a few people afterwards said, wow, that was really interesting and they went and did


something with it and that was cool.


And the rest of the audience just kind of ‑‑ they didn't know what to do.


It was too much.


You know, and I think Mike's talk ‑‑ I was enthralled through Mike's talk yesterday


and I fear that some people are going to look at it and go, wow, that's cool and then go


home and think, I can't do that.


And I hope you don't.


I believe in this.


But I don't think I can convince you.


And so I'm not going to stand up here an hour and try to do that.


I'm going to try to give you ways to emulate this without the data, without maybe being


technical that maybe you can wrap your head around.


So this is the first one and this is ‑‑ it sounds easy.


Just be an expert.


Come on.


Do it.


This is Search Engine Roundtable.


Barry Schwartz.


I have a lot of respect for Barry.


He helped me a lot when we were building MozCast.


Before MozCast and still long after MozCast was Barry.


And when we launched, Barry wrote a nice post and he said in this, I always took a human


approach to watching the forums, seeing the complaints and then using my own judgment


to determine if it was a large change.


How did Barry track the algo?


He doesn't have a Ph.D. in computer science.


He's, you know ‑‑ he doesn't work for Google.


He went out every morning and he read the forums.


He read Webmaster World.


He read Google Support Forums.


He read what people were saying and he developed the intuition to tell if something had happened.


And he's good at it.


And I don't minimize that at all.


What he does is very complementary to what we do.


But he put in the time.


And so if you don't have the system, you can still become an expert.


I'm going to give you a few quick examples.


This is Bill Slosky.


Again, Bill is not a patent lawyer.


But what does Bill do?


He reads the patents.


And Bill, if you can sit with him for an hour, is a fascinating person.


And he has developed this intuition for these patents by just taking the time.


Annie who is here somewhere ‑‑ I can't see anybody if they rose their hands.


But Annie picked a niche.


And I think why I single out Annie is that if you said become an Excel expert and you


go on Google, there are hundreds of people talking about Excel.


How are you going to stand out?


Well, Annie picked this niche of looking at Excel within our industry, within marketing,


and also this idea, this cool idea of making data sexy.


And because she picked this niche and was able to focus on that, she became a subject


matter expert.


I think the fear is, well, if I become an expert and I'm giving all this data away,


what's left for me?


It's hard to convince you, but I will tell you that now I could shut off every system


I have and because I'm seen as a subject matter expert for Google, data comes to me.


People tweet me and say, have you seen this?


And I go, oh, no, I don't.


And I write that down.


And then I blog about it a week later.


Data comes in so much faster than it goes out.


And if people start to see you and give you that reputation, you will get more out of


it than you give away.


I know that many of you are agency, many of you are consultants, and you're probably sitting


there thinking, look, I have three, four, half a dozen clients at a time.


I cannot become an expert at all these things.


You're in‑house.


You have that advantage.


And you're right.


But I was a small company for eight years.


I was VP at the end, but I always talked to clients every day.


I was a private consultant for six or seven years.


And I'm going to tell you a story, because I think this is the secret to being a SME,


to being a subject matter expert.


I used to work for what was originally an ISP, ASP, in 97, 98, when we didn't even really


know what that meant ourselves.


We were building websites for whoever would let us.


My boss, the owner, I was the only employee, actually traveled three to four days a week


to consult to pay our bills, because we didn't make any money.


So I was just me.


I'm there with the servers, I'm there writing code, I'm there fixing it, I'm there and people


are calling me.


And I did a lot of tech support back then.


If you've ever done tech support, you know it's a hard job, but you have those days where


you are the miracle worker.


And I had that day, and I solved somebody's problem, and they said, you know, you really


know everything about this subject.


I said, yes, I do.


No, I didn't say that.


I had a moment of honesty, and it was one of the most important moments of honesty I've


had in my life.


I said, you know what, I don't.


I know 20% more than you do.


But the secret is, I know which 20% it is.


I know what I know that you don't.


That's the key to being a subject matter expert.


Do you think I know more about Google than Barry Schwartz or Danny Sullivan or anybody


at Webmaster World or 100 engineers at Google?


I don't.


But I have this data source that's original.


I have this piece of knowledge that's original.


And I know that they don't, and I can send that to them.


And the good thing for me is those 100 engineers at Google, the hundreds, the dozens, however


many really work on the algo, they can't talk about it.


So they're not my competition.


And all these other guys, all I have to know is, and gals, pardon me, is what part do I


know that they don't know.


And that gives me ammunition to send things.


I e-mail Barry and Danny and say, hey, check this out.


And sometimes they publish it.


That's been great.


Real quick story.


I got to speed this up.


I Googled redacted letter and I got this and I love it.


Dear citizen, everything is fine.


Relax.


From your government.


Very comforting.


The day after Panda 4, the day of Panda 4, I got three e-mails that said don't tell anybody,


but, and told me exactly what they knew about Panda 4 and in one case about eBay.


Being a Smee, people come to me and say you can't tell anyone this, but, and give me this


knowledge that you don't even get at conferences.


So that's a powerful thing.


You're missing out.


Let me tell you.


So what if that's too much?


What if you're just saying that sounds hard.


It's early and that's hard.


I don't want to do it.


Is there a way to systematize this process?


And I thought hard about this and I think there is.


Is there a way we can make a process that helps generate content?


So I'm going to do something weird.


I'm going to give you a bunch of examples that you've already heard as marketers.


Some of these that honestly we've kind of beaten to death.


But I'm going to give them what I hope is a new perspective and show you something maybe


you haven't seen in these examples before.


So this is Blendtec.


Will it blend?


We've all seen this.


They put stuff in the blender and they blend it.


It's kind of cool.


And I've seen them talk about this.


This is a fascinating story.


What you might not know, thank you to Rick Glahn, who is their SEO now.


He might be out there, too.


I can't.


It's like a come to Jesus with all the lights.


The archangel Gabriel is going to come down any time and tell me something cool.


I'm a preacher's kid so I can make that show.


But what you might not know is that there are somewhere in the realm of 130 of these


videos now.


They found a process that they could repeat.


And by repeating it, they got better at it.


And no one would look at most of these videos and think that they're unoriginal or that


they had just copied themselves or that they had just kept spinning out crap.


And yet they were able to create 130 pieces of content.


And they are unique and they are creative.


This is my favorite.


This is the Chuck Norris one.


I don't know if you've seen it.


They put Chuck Norris and all the bad guy action figures in there and they blend them


all up.


And then there's this pile.


And then Chuck Norris comes out of the pile.


And then he flies away, which makes no sense, but it's awesome.


So you should watch that.


Will it blend Chuck Norris?


I don't remember what I googled.


And so I don't want to pretend like this is easier, that they're not creative, but there's


a process.


Well, someone else has a process like this.


I asked our team when I wrote this.


It's been a couple months.


And best we could guess, we had produced 379 whiteboard drives.


And now you saw some of the early ones the other day.


They're bad.


But they were fun.


You know, it didn't matter.


And now look, when you look at video, and I think John will talk about this and don't


miss John talking about video because John's great.


And Wysia has been here and they've had some great stuff.


When you think about video, you think, well, this is such an investment.


How am I going to be able to sell this?


What if you didn't sell it to Let's Make a Video and that's going to cost 5 to 10 grand?


What if you said we could make 200 videos, we could make 400 videos?


This has become a content process for us.


And we're able to spread the cost and the risk out over hundreds of pieces of content.


We have a process now.


It's a professional process.


And you know what's more, for our content strategy team, come Friday, we know what we're


going to do.


We're going to work Friday, every week.


It's already planned.


That's the easiest day of the week for us to plan.


And I'm not saying that we half-ass it.


You know, I know Rand is my friend and every day, every time, he cares what goes up there


and that it's good.


And we try and put the creativity into it.


But the process is there.


It gets easier every time to some degree and we get better at it.


And you know, it's funny, if we don't do it, people notice.


People expect it.


We set an expectation that make people come back.


They don't even care what the topic is.


If whiteboard Friday doesn't go up on time, they're like, where's whiteboard Friday?


They don't even know if they're interested in what we're going to say that week.


This is a process that's repeatable.


So I'm going to give you some examples outside of video.


You may not know this blog, but you know the story.


This is the Julie Julia project.


Julie Powell back in 2002, I think, which is amazing in and of itself, decided to read


Julie Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking and cook all the recipes in a year.


And when you think about what she did, which is, again, amazing for 2002, she built her


blog calendar for the entire year in one idea.


Now it was hard.


You keep making that whole book in a year.


I'm an amateur cook at best.


This is hard.


Julia was no ‑‑ Julia Childs was no amateur.


But the process was there.


For that year, she knew what was going to happen.


She had built this process that would roll out.


She eventually ‑‑ she had basically set this up.


And eventually she got a movie deal out of it.


So as marketers go, that's pretty good.


This is dinosaur comics.


I don't know if you ever read this.


This one about Twitter.


I don't think if I read it from here.


It's funny.


He's talking about the different social metrics.


Twitter is a cool social network because complete strangers can message you anytime and there's


no way to turn it off.


If I counted right and understood his URL structure ‑‑ he's been doing this for


a while ‑‑ there are over 2,600 of these dinosaur comics.


And why am I telling you this?


Because every single one of them uses the same template.


And it's not a secret.


I'm not ruining it for him.


Everybody knows it.


If you read the comic, you know it.


And it's funny.


It's actually funnier because every day it's the same.


And I think ‑‑ I don't know the author.


I think this is somebody who said, you know, look, I'm not an artist.


I'm a writer.


I'm a humorist.


I want to put that best part of what I do out there.


But he doesn't have to worry about that now.


And he's gotten away with this 2,600 times.


And it's an open secret.


And that's kind of amazing.


Nela Ray does these 124 visual workouts.


She has currently 124.


And all they are is recombinations.


I'm kind of into body weight fitness.


So there's recombinations of these body weight exercises.


And there's probably only 20 or 30, I don't know, couple dozen exercises that she recombines.


But she gives them a name and then she makes these kind of like infographic-y posters.


And so you do these and you go, you know, who wants to say, yeah, I just did a bunch


of pushups.


When you can go out and say, I just did the Thor strength of Asgard workout.


Go swing some jolnir.


However you say that, jolnir, I'm not Icelandic.


I'm going to do the Wolverine workout.


This is cool.


And she does it well.


And it's well designed.


And she brings something.


But there's a pattern here.


You know, she has all the pieces to do this again.


I tried to replicate this when I launch.


I'm doing this content experiment, if you haven't seen it, minimal talent.


And the idea that I tried to replicate was this.


If you haven't, I've done five logos.


So I realize five is not a real impressive number.


But I want you to understand the pattern.


The pattern is I take a brand, I kind of dissect it until it's ridiculous.


I build a minimalist logo based on that.


And then I carry the joke too far.


And if you read the post with the logos, that's what happens every single time.


There's this pattern.


And I could keep writing this blog until I run out of brands to make fun of.


And that, you know, that would take the rest of my life.


So what's the secret?


This.


Find something that's repeatable but not repetitive.


Don't do the same shit over and over to where it's obvious, to where you're just spinning


out things, where you're just changing some words, you're just filling in keywords.


Find a process that's repeatable, which means that the core is the same.


The core idea is the same.


But every time you do it, it has a different unique flavor.


Because if you can find that, then you've essentially captured what I'm trying to do


with data.


You find a way to build a process that generates new content much more easily where you don't


have to worry about running out of ideas.


There's always something there.


So finally, I'm going to speed through this because I know this is a little out there


for some of us.


I know some writers.


I've been spending more time with them.


And it's a really they're kind of amazing people.


And what I like about hanging out with writers is that they love to write.


It just sounds stupid.


But we're kind of whiny about content.


You know, we sit around going, my clients are boring.


Content is hard.


Why do I have to write another blog post?


Why do I have to make another video?


There are people out there who would kill to get paid to create.


And when I see that in them, when I see that passion, I'm a little embarrassed.


Because I make a lot of money and sometimes I sit there and I complain about I've got


to do this again.


And to be creators and to be paid to be creators is an amazing thing.


And so I want to there's some tricks they've taught me.


And these are tools, but these are tools you've probably never seen in an SEO conference before.


This is a fun one.


My friend runs a Google Plus group called Captioneers.


And he puts up cartoons, pictures and pulp fiction and we try to make captions.


So this is from Flash Gordon.


I don't know what's going on.


They're all staring at something and there's smoke rising out of the air.


I wrote the caption, even for Ming, that's a lot of weed.


I hope I can make pot jokes in Seattle now.


That's legal.


And it sounds stupid, but it doesn't take long.


It's fun.


And what it's taught me is a lot about writing titles, which I'm not very good at.


This is an actual game called Rory's Story Cubes.


What you do is you pick however many you want, three, five, six, and you roll them and you


tell a story out of whatever you rolled.


And it's fun and it's an easy way to kind of get your brain going.


And that's what I'm trying I want you to exercise your craft.


Because whether we see it or not, we are creators.


And this is about craft.


And you need to exercise that.


You know, that creativity is a muscle.


I'm going to steal a page from the Will Reynolds Handbook.


I have six sets of Rory's Story Cubes with me.


The first six people who come up to me any time in the conference, I will be here all


week and tell me a story.


Anything.


Personal, professional.


I'm a psychologist, so I've heard some weird shit from people.


I used to do dream research so people would come up to me, I had this dream, and it's


like, I murdered my husband and bathed in the blood.


And I'm like, oh, that's nice.


I'm sure there's nothing wrong with you.


So come at me.


I can handle it.


I've got six of those.


They're fun.


If you have kids, they're really fun.


This is a Kickstarter I got into a little too much for a week or two called Storium


that's in beta.


It's a really great beta.


They did a good job.


And it's a game for writers.


And there's some role-playing games like this that you may never have heard of, so I'm not


going to mention them.


But it's basically a game where the narrator sets up a situation.


Here's the situation your character is in.


And you have cards and you have to play the cards against whatever happened.


But when you play the card, you have to write it out.


You have to write it out like a story.


And so you're sort of collectively writing the story.


This is one I narrate.


It's called the League of Amateur Time Travels.


It's a dystopian time travel comedy.


This is fun.


And it doesn't take a lot of work.


And it helps me think in terms of craft.


And I know some people think this has nothing to do with content.


But the aspects of storytelling, setting up the world, you know, a lot of these things


are very relevant to what we do.


Some of it's just the creative side, just the practice of writing, of putting the words


on paper and learning how to turn a phrase.


But there's always a world behind what we talk about.


There are always characters, even if it's just us and the audience and our competitors.


And so we can learn a lot from this.


And you don't have to invest a lot of time.


My friend, my best friend is a chair of the physics department at Milliken, southern Illinois,


has three boys, including two twins.


He has no time in the day.


And he got into flash fiction.


And what flash fiction is, it's just you get a prompt every week.


This one was, there's a lot of these sites.


This is little green men.


And you write X hundred words, there's a limit.


And he got into it so much that even being a full-time professor and speaking and having


three sons, he ended up writing a novel because he just loved it.


But it's a really easy way to just once a week go in and play around.


And if along the way you decide, you know what, maybe I'll just write a book.


This is National Novel Writing Month, the Anno Remo in November.


The goal is just to write 50,000 words in a month and not worry about if they're any


good.


They have one in June.


I haven't done it yet.


But I have friends who have had a lot of fun.


The thing writers have taught me, if you have to distill it to one thing, is writers write.


You have to practice your craft, whatever it is.


If it's video, if it's blogging, I don't care what your industry is, what your topic, you


may not think of yourself as a writer, but you have to get better.


And you will not get better by spitting out the same crap over and over and over.


You have to stretch your ability.


So if you can't accept this phrase, I'm okay with that, then please try to accept this


phrase, creators create.


And we are creative professionals.


And if you think, why should I do this?


And why should I care?


I'm going to try and give you a few things.


This is a cute kitty, but it's not a cute slide.


They're coming for us.


Content marketing has become big business.


It's getting big brands' attention.


It's getting big money behind it.


And I think we look at that and go, yay, there's going to be more money for us.


But it's getting the attention of the people who are our predators.


It's getting the attention of the big PR agencies.


It's getting the attention of the big media companies.


It's getting the attention of Madison Avenue.


And they're smelling the money and they're coming for us.


And we are going to have to compete with them in the next few years, more and more.


We're going to be up against them with content marketing because they don't see it as just


these SEO guys optimizing some blogs.


They see this as real money.


If you don't believe me, that's a blog post that Neil Patel wrote on Quick Spread, I think.


And down in the comments, somebody said the nice thing, oh, these posts are so great.


What's coming in the future?


Neil says, just wait 60 days.


I'm working on this thing.


So far I've spent around $50,000.


By the time I'm done, I expect 75 to 100.


And I heard Neil speak later.


I don't know if it was about the same piece of content, but he had spent over $100,000


on one piece of content.


This isn't Madison Avenue.


Neil is our people.


Neil is a medium-sized agency.


And he believes in this enough to spend $100,000 on one piece of content.


How are you going to compete with that if you don't have something?


And so here's the point, I hope, of everything I'm saying.


I hope I can at least convince you a little bit.


This is us.


This is totally made-up data.


This is what I believe.


So I'm going to come right out and say it.


This is us, the I won't say small agencies, but small and medium-sized companies, small


departments within big brands, even if you're a national brand, and we certainly have national


brands here at the show, maybe you don't have a big department, maybe you don't have a big


budget, maybe you only have a few people doing content and SEO.


And this is the big creative agencies, the PR firms, the ad agencies, the people who


can spend millions on a campaign.


So what do we have and what do they have?


I'm going to walk you through what I think.


We have a little bit of creative talent.


I think they have a little more.


They hire for that.


We have a lot of technical skill.


And I don't discount that.


I'm a technical SEO.


My undergrad is in computer science.


I believe in that.


But I'm going to tell you a secret about technical SEO.


Unless you're a really big brand, it has diminishing returns.


There are things you need to fix on sites.


There are things you need to do.


But if you optimize a site without the content and without the market and without the promotion,


you're only going to get so far.


And even on a big site, those efforts are going to start to return less and less.


So I think we've kind of hit a point where, yeah, we have a lot of that.


And they have less.


You know, big agencies do not do that well for the most part.


But they're learning they need to.


And we're only going to be able to squeeze so much more out of that.


We have little offline networks.


They have massive offline networks.


They have the connections.


The Google rounds was talking about this.


You know, we are still at the kids' table in a lot of ways with our connections.


And that's something we need to know.


We have big online networks.


And we tend to think we're great because of that.


You know, oh, I have all these Twitter followers and blah, blah, blah.


But what happens when you have a huge offline network?


You have a pretty good online network.


If you know thousands of people, those people are on Twitter.


Those people are on Facebook.


And they have the cash.


And we don't.


And we're not going to get the cash until we're where they are, until we're competitive


with them.


So how do we compete?


I don't think we're going to get the cash easily.


We can build our offline network, but that takes a lot of effort and skill too.


Our technical skills, we can only grow so much.


So I think the key for us, if we're not going to spend the money, is in that bottom piece.


I think the key is in the creative for us.


I think the key is in the ideas, finding sustainable ideas that we can produce inexpensively without


them being junk.


Knowing that until the ideas are out there, until we've succeeded, we're not going to


get the cash.


So I hope you'll take at least some piece of all of this.


I know you might not go out there and build a data-driven system that hands you content.


I hope you will.


I hope to God, if you don't listen to me, I hope you'll listen to Mike.


I hope you will go home sincerely and try one thing he said and learn that it's maybe


not quite as hard as you think, that you can do this, that you don't have to be a statistician.


You can do this and build something amazing.


But if you don't, then try to become a subject matter expert to a small piece.


Try to get that 20% that people in your industry don't have.


I'm going to tell you something.


We look at our industry and you go, well, yeah, we have all this data.


We're a very data-rich industry.


My clients are boring.


Boring clients are easy to find data that nobody's tapped because everybody else in


the industry thinks their industry is boring too.


So it's out there.


It's untapped.


You can get that.


And if you can't do that, then find a system.


Find something you believe in enough to repeat that you can do creatively so that next Friday


you know what you're going to write about and the Friday after that, because that's


a powerful system that many people have replicated many times.


That's it.


Thank you.


That was all I work with you, am I inspired to do better?


Cyrus is actually my boss.


So if you don't, he's one of my two bosses.


Cyrus is one of them.


So I just want to say I'm a horrible person to manage.


I'm completely unmanageable.


So please let's thank Cyrus.


He has a hard job.


One thing, yeah, we won't get into that.


One thing that I know about you because I work with you is you start things all the


time that you have no idea what you're doing, whether it's learning JavaScript or doing


100 pushups or something like that.


How important is it to make it part of your job to take time to learn new things or if


you're manage people, how important is it to reserve time for them to learn new things?


I think it's incredibly important.


I think Will actually has talked about that, that they sort of push that with their people.


I set aside, I try to set aside about a half an hour a day to read and about a half an


hour to write about things not necessarily that I'm writing about right now.


I think the big thing to me is, so Cyrus was talking about, I did this really stupid thing,


this was 2012 maybe.


The end of 2011, I was on this fitness board with a bunch of people.


I was just getting back into some things and I was really getting into pushups.


Some guy's like, you know what, we should do 100 pushups a day next year.


I'm like, no, no, let's do 50,000 next year.


And then I committed to this and I thought, well, that was pretty fucking stupid.


I don't know what I was thinking there.


But I really like this idea of this year-long goal.


And so I did it.


I was the only person left.


I did like 51,000 that year.


And what was funny about it, it was a terrible workout.


Don't do it.


It's a horrible workout.


I almost injured my shoulder many times.


But when I was done, I knew I did it.


And that's the thing for the creative process for me.


To do these big projects, there's a confidence that comes with it and you kind of need that


to go after the next crazy thing that you're going to do.


Because some of them aren't going to work and you're going to have to be able to weather


that.


And that takes a certain confidence, too.


So that's been the big thing for me.


You have to see you can do it.


You won't see that until you do it.


And that's why it's hard to talk about.


I can't convince you with words.


Try it.


That's what's important.


I get a lot of emails from you trying just one simple thing.


Like I wrote this one little thing.


What's it look like?


And six months later it turns into what we see today.


But it always starts as that one little thing.


I hate to send those out.


But I did this weird JavaScript.


Let's take a question.


Yes.


Hi.


Good morning.


I noticed you had your logo parody post.


And we've had some writers do something similar.


Companies and brands are an easy target to make fun of.


And our attorneys throw a fit because we're using the copyright or violating the trademark.


So I'm wondering how do you navigate that fine line of


Yeah.


I have to admit that project I've been lucky because it's a little below the radar so I


can get away with things that a big brand couldn't.


I've tried to make that project just absurd enough that nobody's going to get too upset.


I think that's a lot harder when you're a big brand.


Because if you're a big brand making fun of another big brand, that gets a little nasty.


And in that case, I think you have to make fun of yourself.


I'm a big fan of that.


Because I think that actually and that's hard to sell within your organization.


But that can really help build community.


But I think you can take it, you know, really in a way it's a I'm poking fun at branding.


My wife is a management consultant.


She's a physicist by training.


That's a different story.


But she works in these processes every day where it just gets more and more patently


ridiculous.


More money is spent.


More people are involved until at the end of the day you're going they just they spent


$2 million on what?


And so I think, you know, if I had to do that again but I was afraid I might get in trouble


by putting the brands out there, I could still make fun of that process and maybe they'd


all just be fictitious logos.


Maybe I'd make them up completely, make up a brand.


So I think try to maybe just try and abstract it.


You know, whatever there's something you're making fun of.


But it's a concept.


I'm not really poking fun at these companies.


It's the process.


Thank you.


Thanks, and just remind everybody if anybody does have a question, feel free to go to the


microphones.


I am going to put you on the spot here for a second, Dr. P, because we didn't talk about


Google today.


You sort of your job is finding changes in Google and sort of you've kind of a window


into predicting where Google is going.


If you were just to give the audience a little hint today where you think Google is going


and what the most important thing is, what would you say that is?


I loved Cindy's talk the other day because I think we have to watch what's happening


with Google Now.


I think we're going to get new platforms that only use Google Now.


And I think the thing about it is whether or not we can argue about mobile all day,


Ran.


But in a way it doesn't even matter.


It's that our displays are changing, our formats are changing, and so Google is going to have


to build a mix and match.


And we're seeing it already.


They're not just putting ten links in the same format in the same columns every time.


That surf is changing depending on what device you're on.


So I think you really have to have an awareness of what's going on, especially with your money


terms.


You have to go out there and see that.


I think we have to be very wary of these new scraped answer boxes because Google is going


to expand that.


And when the answer is up at the top, even if you have attribution, what's that doing


to CTR?


We have no idea.


I don't think it's good for the most part.


So we're just starting to collect some data on a we get some weird ones from Oz where


they put the answer box up based on a blog post and some of my posts.


So we're trying to change that and see what happens.


And we'll write about that probably in the next few months, some experiments.


But I would watch that closely.


So I'm very interested.


I actually got into the feature graph because flux, algo flux is so complicated.


You know, the signal to noise, rankings change every day.


And especially if you're in a very newsy kind of QDF situation, rankings change every hour


sometimes.


We don't realize how dynamic they are.


But that feature graph and those things that Google are adding, we miss that.


So I think we have to watch that carefully.


Dr. Pete, it's been an honor.


Thank you for coming today.


That's awesome.


Overcoming Objections on Your Landing Pages - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about overcoming objections on your landing pages in order


to improve conversion rates.


So this is a process that I have stolen part and parcel from conversion rate experts, a


British consulting company that Moz has used a couple of times to help with our campaigns.


Karl Blanks and Ben Jessen have just been phenomenal for this stuff.


And look, they're not the only ones who do it.


A lot of people in conversion rate optimization use a process similar to this, but it's something


I talk about and share so often that I thought, hey, let's bring it to Whiteboard Friday.


So a lot of the time marketers have this problem where a lot of people are visiting a page,


a landing page where you're trying to sell someone or get someone to take a conversion


action, maybe sign up for an email list or join a community or download an app, take


a free trial of something, test out a free tool or buy an actual product.


Like in this case, my minimalist noise canceling headphones.


They are very minimalist indeed, thanks to my subpar drawing skills.


But when lots of people are visiting this page and very few are converting, you've got


a conversion rate optimization problem and challenge.


And this process can really help you through it.


So first off, let's start with a question around what's a low conversion rate?


And the answer to that is it really depends.


It depends on who you are and what you're trying to accomplish.


If you're in business to consumer e-commerce, like selling headphones, and you're getting


what I'd say is relatively qualified traffic, you're not just blasting traffic to this page


that's coming from sources that maybe don't even know what they're getting, but in fact,


people who clicked here knew that they were looking for headphones.


1.5 to 2%, that's reasonably solid.


Below that, you probably have an issue.


It's likely that you can improve it.


With email signups, if you're trying to get people to convert to an email list, 3 to 5%.


With B2B software as a service, it's a little bit lower, 0.5 to 1%.


Those tend to be tougher to get people through.


This number might be higher if the B2B product that you're serving and the SaaS product is


a free trial or something like that.


In fact, a software free trial usually is in the 1.5 to 2% range.


A free app install, like if people are getting to an app download page or to an app's home


page or download page and you're seeing below 4 or 5%, that's probably a problem.


Free account signup, if you're talking about people joining a community or maybe connecting


a Facebook or a Google account to start a free account on a website, that's maybe in


the 2 to 3% range.


But these are variable.


Your mileage may vary.


But I want to say that if you start from these assumptions and you're looking and you're


going, wow, we're way under these for our target, yeah, let's try this process.


So what we do to start and what conversion rate experts did to start is they collect


contact information for three different groups of people.


First group are people who've heard of your product, your service, your company, but they've


never actually tried it.


Maybe they haven't even made their way to a landing page to convert yet, but they're


in your target demographic.


They're the audience you're trying to reach.


Second group is people who have tried out your product or service but decided against


it.


That could be people who went through the shopping cart but abandoned it and so you


have their email address.


It could be people who've signed up for an email newsletter but cancelled it or signed


up for an account but never kept using it or signed up for a free trial but cancelled


before the period was over.


It could be people who have signed up for a mailing list to get a product but then never


actually converted.


And then the third one is people who have converted, people who actually use your stuff


like it, have tried it, bought it, etc.


You want to interview them.


You can use three methods and I recommend some combination of all of these.


You can do it over email, over the phone, or in person.


And when we've done this specifically in house for Moz or when conversionary experts did


it for Moz, they did all three.


They interviewed some folks over email, some folks they talked to over the phone, some


folks they went to literally conferences and events and met with them in person and had


those interviews, those sit down interviews.


And then they sort of said they grouped them into these three groups and then they asked


slightly different questions, variations of questions to each group.


So for people who had heard of the product but never actually tried it, they asked questions


like what have you heard about us or about this product?


What would make you want to try it?


And what objections do you currently have that's stopping you from doing that?


For people who sort of walked away, they maybe tried or they didn't get all the way through


trying, but they walked away, they didn't end up converting or they didn't stick with


it, we could say what made you initially interested?


What objections did you have and how did you overcome those?


And what made you change your mind or decide against this product?


Oftentimes that's a mismatch of expectations versus what was delivered.


And then for the people who loved it, who are loyal customers, who are big fans, you


can say well what got you interested?


What objections did you have and how did you overcome them?


What has made you stick with us?


What makes you love us or this product or this service, this newsletter, this account,


this community?


And if you did love it, can we share your story?


This is powerful because we can use these later on for testimonials.


And then see in this process, we're going to actually create a landing page that takes


the answers to these questions, which are essentially objections, reasons people didn't


buy, didn't convert or weren't happy when they did, and we're going to turn them into


a landing page that offers compelling explanations, compelling reasons, examples, data and testimonials


to get people through that process.


So if you hear for example, hey I didn't buy this because I wasn't sure if the right adapters


would be included for my devices or I travel on planes a lot and I didn't know whether


the headphones would support the plane use that I want to have.


Great!


Terrific!


So if you include what the adapters are right on there, which airlines they're compatible


with, all that kind of information that's going on the page.


If they say hey I actually couldn't tell how big the headphones were, I know you have dimensions


on there but I couldn't tell how big they were from the photos.


Okay let's add some photos of representative sample sizes of things that people are very


familiar with.


Maybe a CD, maybe an iPhone, right?


That people are like oh yeah I know the size of a CD, I know the size of an iPhone, I can


compare that against the headphones and now that's one of the images in there.


We've answered the objection.


I wasn't sure if they had volume control.


Let's put that in a photo.


Is tax and shipping included in the cost?


I didn't want to get into a shopping cart situation where I wasn't sure.


Perfect!


We're going to put in there tax included, free shipping.


Is the audio quality good enough for audio files and pros because I'm really well terrific.


Let's find a known audio file, let's add their testimonial to the page.


We're essentially going one by one through the objections that we hear most frequently


here and then we're turning those into content on the page.


That content can be data, it can be reasons, it can be examples, it can be testimonials.


It's whatever we need it to be to help get people through that purchase process.


And then of course with every type of conversion rate optimization test and landing page optimization


we want to actually try some variations and so we're going to do a split test of the new


page against the old one and if we see this stronger conversion rate we know we've had


success and if we don't we can go back to the drawing board and potentially broaden


our audience here, try and understand how have we not overcome these objections, maybe


show this new page to some of these people and see what additional objections they've


got, all that kind of stuff.


This process is really powerful.


It helps you uncover the problems and issues that you may not even know exist and in my


experience it's the case that when companies try this whether it's for products or for


services for landing pages for new accounts for apps whatever it is they tend to uncover


the same small set of answers from these groups over and over again and it's just a matter


of getting those four or five questions right and answering them on the landing page in


order to significantly improve conversion rate.


All right everyone look forward to your suggestions, your ideas, your feedback and we'll see you


again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


MozCon 2015 - 18 - Back to the Future with Local Search with Mary Bowling

Hi everyone, thanks for coming today.


Google has always tried to model local search by looking at the real world and then applying


what it sees there to its online products and platforms.


There we go.


And for a long time the algorithm was really a lot of smoke and mirrors.


And it was very rudimentary when Google first started displaying Google local results back


in 2004.


And as local marketers, we ended up doing a lot of really artificial things that had


no place in the real world of marketing businesses to the people around them that could actually


become their customers.


And what a long, strange trip it's been.


These were the original local search results back in 2004.


And then in 2007 we got gold stars in the results.


In 2008 we got a 10 pack.


And then that shrunk to a 7 pack in 2009 when Google started designating local search results


with a map pen.


In 2010 we got some of the richest local search results we've ever seen.


It took information from the website, showed images, we thought we were really cooking


with local search.


But by 2012 Google had shrunk those back down to just the basics again.


In 2013 we were amazed and pretty much baffled by these local carousels.


And now in 2015 we have local packs that fly out into business listings that we're referring


to as local knowledge panels.


And we also have snack packs.


And there's a chance that at least for the immediate future these might become the local


search results that we're seeing across all devices.


But Google's really learned a lot since 2004.


And it's really improved its algorithm.


A lot of that smoke has cleared.


Its technology has also improved.


And we as local marketers have to adapt to this.


There's a lot of things that we've been doing for years and years that were aimed at satisfying


these flawed algorithms.


So now that the algorithm has actually improved and is using a lot more and more realistic


signals, we have to do things that are more like traditional offline marketing so that


we can be part of this real world.


We've got to get rid of the smoke and mirrors on our side of things as well.


That's what I mean when I'm talking about going back to the future with local search.


Through all of this the local algorithm has pretty much stood with proximity, relevance,


and prominence.


And with proximity what Google's asking is this business close enough to the area of


search for it to be considered.


And this has changed over time.


And Google has really learned a lot from searcher behavior.


It has a really good idea how far searchers are willing to travel to patronize certain


types of businesses.


It's also considers the inventory that it has to choose from when it's showing local


results.


And that affects proximity as well.


For relevance, Google is asking the question does this business do or sell what the searcher's


looking for.


And for prominence it's saying what businesses of this type stand out in this location.


So those are the three things that the local algorithm has always been based on and probably


always will continue to be based on.


This is a chart I've made of the different components that go into local search success


in 2015.


I'm not going to go into all of it, but if you follow this you'll build a really solid


foundation for local search success.


And I'm going to try to highlight some of the things that have changed recently that


are going to spur us more towards doing these traditional offline marketing tactics than


the artificial things that we've been doing trying to satisfy flawed algorithms.


In 2004 when the search results first came out, the centroid from which Google determined


proximity was pretty much the center of town.


And the local post office served as the proxy for the center of town.


Then Google got a little more sophisticated and started realizing that different types


of businesses tended to cluster in different areas.


For example, there were a lot of law offices around the courthouse.


So Google started adjusting its centroid for proximity from that.


But in 2014, just about a year ago with the pigeon update, there's been a major shift.


And as David Mims said in the latest local search ranking factor survey, the searcher


became the centroid.


That's absolutely huge.


Google is now determining proximity from the searcher's location.


And of course, this is made possible by its vast improvements in its technology.


A lot of marketers don't know how to react to this.


We're used to being able to make a business rank in a location just by using the right


tactics.


But now Google's really changed the game on us.


So I suggest that you start by trying to absolutely dominate the area around the business.


If you cannot show up in the search results for the people that are closest to the business,


you really don't have very much chance of showing up for people further away.


So this is what you've got to get right first.


Then think about expanding realistically from that business location.


It makes a lot more sense for this business, for example, to expand its marketing footprint


out into places like La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe than it does to try to rank for people


that are way down south in Chula Vista.


Because post offices were considered the centroid at one time, a lot of people used PO boxes.


Google made that impossible by making it impossible to verify locations that were using a post


office box.


But when that happened, a lot of businesses, especially service area businesses, started


using UPS store type or mailboxes, et cetera, type addresses.


And we refer to those as virtual offices, but they're really fake offices.


They're fake locations.


And Google has now changed the algorithms to make these fake locations as far as UPS


store type addresses.


It's changed the guidelines and says they are not acceptable anymore.


Now when we look at the search results, we still see a lot of these types of addresses


the business is ranking in the local search packs.


But anybody that's using those needs to be aware that Google is continually re-verifying


and going through all of the businesses and flagging some of them with particular traits.


And these UPS store type addresses are among the targets that they're going after.


So if you're using a UPS store as your virtual or fake office, you better start thinking


about coming up with a plan B.


Google's changed its algorithm a little bit with the Regis type offices and DaVinci suites


in order to reflect reality a little bit better.


So if you are using one of these as a dedicated office, this is a place where you report to


work every day and conduct your business, you really don't have anything to worry about.


But there are also a lot of businesses that just use these every once in a while to meet


with clients or pretend to use them every once in a while to meet with clients.


And if you are doing this, you should be putting in what Google really wants to see is the


hours and the days that you are there at that location.


So think about that.


If you are only there one day a week, and let's say you're legitimately there, this


isn't even a fake location, you're legitimately there one day a week.


But if you have your hours set correctly, searchers are only going to see your business


as open that one day a week.


So that might not be a really good investment of your resources.


And so think about what Google is showing in the search results and the fact that if


you rank, it still might not bring you very many new customers.


And if you're only using this type of location to try to rank for places where you don't


have an office or a shop or a store, Google really is watching you.


And I think it's only a matter of time before they find a way to shut down most of these


types of businesses.


One thing that Google hasn't considered are coworking offices or shared office spaces.


It kind of has this idea that a business is not legitimate unless it has a permanent physical


location.


And that's really not reality in 2015.


There are plenty of us that walk around with our businesses in our pockets or our purses


or our backpacks, and we can essentially do business no matter where we are.


But the fact is it's so easy for spammers to use these types of locations that they're


probably never going to be a good choice for a local business that wants to rank in the


local search results.


As far as proximity, Google needs to know exactly where you are, and it needs to trust


the information that it has about you.


And the best way to establish this trusted location information is through what we call


citations.


And this is Moz's glossary definition of citations, a mention of a business name in close proximity


to its address, phone number, or both, used by the search engines to weigh both the accuracy


and popularity of businesses and their indexes.


For a long time, we were all creating as many citations as we could in just about any place


that we could do it, just the way we were doing with links.


Now you really only need about 25 to 50 good citations at trusted sources for ranking purposes


from Google.


We really want to emphasize quality of citations over quantity.


Again, this theme is pretty much the same as we went through with links.


First it was quantity, but now it's quality.


So let's shift our thinking on citations and really think about first getting into the


data providers, and then looking at places that actually have the potential to send customers


to local businesses.


You also need to have the same information in your Google listing.


And Google has really made some major changes in the guidelines recently.


Just at the beginning of this year, it made some changes where it said, do not use descriptors


in your business name anymore.


And descriptors were essentially keywords.


And by using them, we were stuffing keywords into our business name.


So make sure you're using your real world business name in your Google listing.


And if you haven't checked out these guidelines lately, there really have been some helpful


and specific changes where Google's telling us what to do with big brand multi-location


businesses.


Those are very messy places to be, and now Google is giving us very clear direction about


how it wants us to treat those.


And just last week, Google also added a bunch, this is just a snippet of it, a bunch of new


guidelines for what it's calling authorized representatives.


And that pretty much describes almost all of us in this room, anybody who's representing


a business with a Google business listing.


And if you read these, they're really interesting.


Things like never make false, misleading, or unrealistic claims.


Never use harassing, abusive, or untrustworthy tactics.


I mean, this is really a big change for Google.


And in local search, we have had a really big problem with sleazy marketers robo-calling


small businesses and trying to scare them into things that involve their Google business


listing.


So we don't know how Google plans to enforce this, and we don't have any way yet to report


the offenders, but at least Google is now laying down the groundwork.


They're setting the rules out there so that they can start hopefully doing something about


some of these, what I call, sleazy marketers.


As far as relevance, categories are going to reinforce your relevance, the categories


that you choose in your Google local business listing.


And we used to have a bunch of categories.


We could go in and we could create our own custom categories if we wanted to, but now


Google has a much smaller set of categories for us to choose from.


And it's telling us to be very specific with our categories.


If you are a computer consultant, for example, you want to make sure that you're choosing


that as your primary category rather than the more general category of consultant.


And you really want to use the data providers to reinforce these categories at Google.


If you have to put yourself in some marginal category that you don't think really describes


your business very well, you have an opportunity to use these data providers to give Google


more and better clues about what you do.


And luckily for us, Moz created a category tool.


So this makes it really easy to go in and identify which categories are available at


which data providers.


If you're, I went a little too fast there, if you're outside the US, you might find Mike


Blumenthal's category tool a little more useful.


We also want to use our websites to reinforce categories.


And I like to structure a website around categories and subcategories.


A lot of local businesses that have older websites, they have very flat architecture


on their websites and most of them are optimized for exact match terms.


But now we want to theme our sites around these categories and subcategories instead.


And I found that one of the best ways to do this is to build sections of the site with


pages talking about your services, your projects, your people, and your products.


And I really like using project or case study pages.


These give you an ongoing opportunity every time that you do your work to write it up


on your website and put it up there for people to see.


The Urban Land Institute here in Seattle does a good job of putting up case studies about


its projects.


It allows it to rank for a lot of long tail terms.


This one is a little garage builder in Minneapolis.


He writes his own project pages.


He even does a little bit of keyword stuffing.


But he ranks for a ton of terms that are related to building garages in the whole Minneapolis


and St. Paul area.


And he puts pictures up on here.


And not only does he rank for things, people click through to these pages and when they


get to these pages, they spend a lot of time reading them and looking around on this section


of the site.


This is exactly the kind of information that you'd want to see if you were thinking about


building a garage.


So use projects and case studies on your website and you'll never run out of things to write


about.


As far as reviews, they used to be a really significant ranking factor.


Google wanted a bunch of reviews so that they could compete with other review sites.


So they made them count a lot in the algorithm.


But that's not true anymore.


In the latest local search ranking factor survey, we think that they account for about


10% of the algorithm.


So stop talking to your boss or your clients about let's get more reviews so we can rank


better.


That's not why we want more reviews anymore.


We want more reviews because they help to attract more new customers to the business.


So what you should be talking to your clients and bosses about is finding a way to elicit


feedback from your customers in an intelligent way and then listening to what they have to


say about you.


And you really want to talk to them about fixing business problems that people tend


to complain about.


This is the process that we want to use.


And what's going to happen is when you're listening to your customers, when you're fixing


the things that they tend to complain about, you will get a larger and larger body of good


reviews over time.


And that's going to help you attract more new customers to the business and help the


business grow.


Lastly, I want to talk about having a good link profile.


And this is kind of ironic because with the Pigeon update, getting good links became much


more important for ranking well in local search.


And at the same time, a lot of people are being scared away from doing anything that


even remotely looks like link building because of all the penalties.


So in local search, this is very ironic and we want to talk about getting real with links.


And by a real link, I mean a link that's going to take somebody from looking at a screen


on an electronic device to picking up a phone or coming into the business and hopefully


becoming a customer.


The stay at this hotel, for example, started with an online search and then links were


followed until the room at the hotel was booked.


These are the kind of real links that we all want to be concerned about getting.


And when you think about it, local links can be a lot easier to get than links for a national


or global business.


Local businesses, they already have relationships with businesses and people in their town.


They're already active in their communities.


They're real people in real places.


Our role in this is to help them understand why they want links, which is to help them


attract more new customers.


And our role is also to help facilitate this process, to guide them through it, to find


opportunities for them to get good links and then to coach them on how to ask for these


types of links.


We want to grow local barnacles.


And by a barnacle, I mean attaching your business information to a website that either ranks


for something you want to rank for or is used by a lot of people to look for the type of


business like yours.


And for local barnacles, most of us can start with local authority sites like a Chamber


of Commerce or a Better Business Bureau or a Convention and Visitors Bureau.


We want to look for these sites that rank well for what we want to rank for and get


listed there.


And go hyperlocal.


And what I mean by hyperlocal is at a community or neighborhood level.


And a lot of these hyperlocal websites, they don't get very much traffic.


They have low domain authority.


This one looks very nice, but some of them are very ugly and outdated and have dancing


gifts all over them.


Let the people in those communities use them.


And think about it.


If you were, if you had a website about the area around you, that is of a lot of interest


to you.


So you can get some traffic and some branding by being listed on hyperlocal websites.


You also want to build good local karma.


And this is a very old school offline marketing tactic to build good local karma.


You want to try to build your brand in your community.


And it's not that hard to do it.


You want to sponsor events.


You want to sponsor groups.


You want to donate to local charities and events.


You want to be active in the community.


You want to volunteer your services.


And you want to offer discounts to targeted groups.


Figure out who's your target market and where can I get a link by giving those folks a discount.


In this particular example, it's a college website in New Hampshire.


And you can see that Ben and Jerry's has got a link on there by giving a discount for college


students.


That's a match made in heaven.


So look for those types of opportunities.


And then you want to move referrals online.


Most of these businesses already have other businesses that are referring customers to


them.


So it's not that hard to ask them, hey, can you use your website to refer customers to


me too?


And when you're doing that, don't be afraid to link back to them if it makes sense for


the visitors to your website.


And also use local media.


Use local media.


Do not use PR Web for a small local business.


Local media actually cares about local news.


In fact, they're the only ones who probably care about a lot of the news that a small


local business has to share.


And when you're doing it, make sure that you include images so that your content is a little


more attractive for them to publish and a little more attractive for other people to


share.


This is an example of a website in rural Virginia where a hoarder is, a hoarder died and they're


having an estate sale.


Now this is not very big news in most places.


But in this particular location, it made it onto the website.


So keep in mind that news varies by location.


Something that would never get published in big city media might be just right for a little


hyper local website or a small town newspaper.


So when you're building your foundation for local search success, think about how Google's


algorithms have evolved.


Think about how Google is doing such a better job of modeling the real world than they ever


have in the past.


And then up your game, get real and start modeling what you do, excuse me, start modeling


with what you do to match the evolving algorithms for local.


Thank you.


Lots of good information.


The Twitter was kind of blowing up on that.


So thank you for that.


Some very specific questions.


Adam Koons, what about these local independent consultants?


We have a lot of consultants here, one man shows, one woman shows, and they don't want


to use their home address.


How can they rank locally in situations like that?


That's a real tough one.


What you're going to have to do is work more on the organic side of things.


And if you can get your organic rankings up high enough, make sure you have some good


links coming into your site that show that you are really a part of that community, then


that's your best chance because without showing your home address, it's very hard to build


that trusted location information.


You talked a little bit about reviews.


It's not as big a deal as some people think it is, like 10% of the algorithm, your best


guess.


What, if they aren't focusing on that, what are the two or three things that they should


be focusing on?


What are the big pieces of that pie?


The big pieces of that pie are your website optimization, your onsite website optimization,


and your incoming link profile.


So Rand had a question about that.


In regular desktop national search, we see a correlation between nofollowed links and


rankings.


We don't know that they're helping that much, but there seems to be a relationship.


Do you think nofollowed links help in local search?


Yes.


I think they most definitely help in local search.


You didn't even hesitate there.


No.


So nofollowed, that's awesome.


So Jared Carnes asked, you said quality citations over quantity.


What in your eyes qualifies as a quality citation and, for example, is Yext?


Would that be considered a good citation?


Yext is not really a citation.


Yext is a platform that's going to try to create citations for you.


So depending on the type of business you have, that may or may not be a good platform to


use.


But really trusted citations are going to come from the major data providers and from


the secondary data providers.


And you'll see those in the Moz local category tool if you'll go to it.


And then also the authority sites within your community and even hyperlocal sites, anything


that identifies you as being a part of a particular community.


There's a lot of apps right now that allow you check-ins, Facebook does check-ins, all


sorts of.


Do you see those being used as a kind of citation?


Do you think there's a correlation between that real world activity and rankings?


Yes, I do.


Because I mean, most of those platforms are set up that they know if you're there or not.


So you're checking in, that kind of gives Google a bit of trust that you really are


a real business and you have a real location.


So an actionable point maybe to encourage those sort of check-ins, put it in apps, things


like that.


Awesome.


Mary, before you go, we have a special gift for you.


This is our special Roger Bobblehead.


Can we get a close up on that?


Bobblehead.


Boom, boom, boom.


All right.


And we hope to see you back again, Mary.


Thank you so much.


How to Create 10x Content - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about how to create 10x content.


Now, for those of you who might need a refresher or who haven't seen previous Whiteboard Fridays


where we talked about 10x content, this is the idea that because of content saturation,


overload, the idea that there's just so much in our streams and standing out is so hard,


we can't just say, hey, I want to be as good as the top 10 people in the search results


for this particular keyword, term, or phrase.


We have to say, how can I create something 10 times better than what any of these folks


are currently doing?


That's how we stand out.


Look, there's some criteria for 10x content.


I actually have a page, a Google Doc that I keep adding to that has a list of 60 plus


different pieces of 10x content.


I'll link to that.


But basically the criteria for 10 times better than what anyone else is doing is it has to


have great UI and UX on any device.


That content is generally a combination of high quality, trustworthy, it's useful, interesting,


and remarkable.


It doesn't have to be all of those, but some combination of them.


It's got to be considerably different in scope and in detail from other works that are serving


the same visitor or user intent.


And it's got to create an emotional response.


I want to feel awe, I want to feel surprise, I want to feel joy, anticipation, or admiration


for that piece of content in order for it to be considered 10x.


It has to solve a problem or answer a question by providing that comprehensive, accurate,


exceptional information or resources.


And it's got to deliver content in a unique, remarkable, typically unexpectedly pleasurable


style or medium.


If you hit all of these things, you probably have yourself a piece of 10x content.


It's just very hard to do.


And that's what we're talking about today.


What's a process by which we can get to checking off all these boxes?


So let's start here.


First off, when you have an issue, let's say you've got a piece of content that you know


you want to create, a topic you're essentially, you know you're going to address that topic.


We can talk about how to get to that topic in a future Whiteboard Friday.


And we've had some in the past, certainly around keyword research and choosing topics


and that sort of thing.


But if I know the topic, I need to first gain a deep, deep insight into the core of why


people are interested in this subject.


So for example, let's do something simple, something we're all familiar with.


I wonder what the most highly rated new movies are out there.


And essentially this is, well, okay, how do we get into this person's brain and try and


answer the core of their question?


They're essentially asking like, okay, how do I figure out, help me decide what to watch?


And that could have a bunch of angles to it.


It could be about user ratings or it could be maybe about awards.


Maybe it's about popularity.


What are the most popular movies out there?


It could be meta ratings.


Maybe this person wants to see an aggregated list of all the data out there.


It could be editorial or critic ratings.


There's a bunch of angles there.


So let's go to step two where we have to get unique.


We know that uniqueness, being exceptional, not the same as everyone else, but different


from everyone else out there is really important.


And so as we brainstorm different ways that we might address the core of this user's problem,


we might say, all right, movie ratings, could we do a roundup?


Well, that already exists at places like Metacritic.


They sort of aggregate everything and then put it all together and tell us what critics


versus audiences think across many, many different websites.


So that's already been done.


Awards versus popularity.


Again, it's already been done in a number of places that do comparisons of here's the


ones that had the highest box office versus here's the ones that won certain types of


awards.


Well, okay, so that's not particularly unique.


What about critics versus audiences?


Again, this is done basically on every different website.


Everyone shows me user ratings versus critic ratings.


What about by availability?


Well, there's actually a bunch of sites that do this now where they show you this is on


Netflix.


This is on Hulu.


This is on Amazon.


This you can watch on Comcast or on demand.


This you can see on YouTube.


All right, so that's not unique either.


What about which ratings can I trust?


Hang on a tick?


That might not exist yet.


That's a great unique insight into this problem because one of the challenges that I have


when I want to say what should I decide to watch is who should I trust?


Who should I believe?


If I go to Fandango or Amazon or Metacritic or Netflix, whose ratings are actually trustworthy?


Well, now we've got something unique and now we've got that core insight, that unique angle


on it.


Now we want to uncover a powerful, hard to replicate, high quality method to provide


an answer to that question.


In this case, that could be, well, you know what?


We can do a statistical analysis.


We get a sample set big enough, enough films, maybe 150 movies or so from the last year,


and we take a look at the ratings that each service provides and we see if we can find


patterns, patterns like who's high and low?


Do some have different genre preferences?


Which one is trustworthy?


Does one correlate with awards and critics?


Which ones are outliers?


All of these are actually trying to get to the which one can I trust question.


I think we can answer that if we do this statistical analysis.


It's a pain in the butt.


We have to go to all these sites.


We have to collect all the data.


We have to put it into a statistical model.


We then have to run our model.


We have to make sure that we have a big enough sample set.


We've got to see what our correlations are.


We have to check for outliers and distributions and all this kind of stuff.


But once we do that and once we show our methodology, now all we have to do is find a unique, powerful


and exceptional way to present this content.


In fact, FiveThirtyEight.com did exactly this.


They took this statistical analysis.


They looked at all of these different sites, Fandango and IMDb users versus critics versus


Metacritic versus Rotten Tomatoes and a number of other sites.


They had this one graph that shows essentially the star rating averages across 146 different


films, which was the sample set that they determined was accurate enough, and now they've


created this piece of 10x content.


They've answered this unique take on the question, which rating service can I trust?


The answer is don't trust Fandango, basically.


You can see more in there.


Metacritic is pretty good.


A couple of the other ones are decent.


The key here is step five.


Check that you're going to do this five to ten times before you have one hit.


The only way to get good at this, the only way to get good is experimentation and practice.


You do this over and over again and you start to develop a sixth sense for how you can uncover


that unique element, how you can present it in a unique fashion and how you can make it


sing on the web.


All right, everyone.


I look forward to hearing your thoughts on 10x content.


If you have any examples you'd like to share with us, please feel free to do so in the


comments.


No problem linking out.


That's just fine.


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


#WhiteboardFriday: Getting Smarter with SERPs

Hey folks, this is Russ Jones here again with another exciting edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Exciting might be an exaggeration, but it really is important to me because today we're


going to talk about data quality.


I know I harp on this a whole lot.


It's just, as a data scientist, quality is really important to me.


And here at Moz, we've made it a priority of the last several years from improving the


quality of our domain authority score, improving spam score, completely changing the way we


identify the search volume of particular keywords.


Quality is just, it's part of our culture here.


And today I want to talk about a quality issue and probably the most important metric in


search engine optimization, which are search rankings.


Now I know there's this contingent of SEOs who say you shouldn't look at your search


rankings, you should just focus on building better content and doing better outreach and


just let it happen.


But for the vast majority of us, we look at our rankings for the purposes of determining


how we're performing.


And we make decisions based on those rankings.


If a site stops performing as well for a very important keyword, well then we might spend


some money to improve the content on that page or to do more outreach for it.


We make important decisions, budgetary decisions, on what the SERPs say.


But we've known for a while that there's a pretty big problem with the SERPs.


And that's personalization.


There just is no national search anymore.


And there hasn't been for a long time.


And we've known this.


And we've tried different ways to fix it.


Today I want to talk about a way that Moz is going about this that I think is really


exceptional and is frankly going to revolutionize the way in which all SERPs are collected in


the future.


So let's just take a step back and talk a little bit about what's wrong with SERPs.


Several years back I was a consultant and I was helping out a nonprofit organization


who wanted to rank for the keyword entrepreneurship.


They offered grants and training and all sorts of stuff.


They really deserved to rank for the term.


And then one day I searched for the term as SEOs do even though they rank track and still


check it themselves.


I noticed that several local universities to where I live, University of North Carolina


Chapel Hill and Duke, had popped up into the search results because they were now offering


entrepreneurship programs and Google had geolocated me to the Durham area.


Well this wasn't represented at all in the rank tracking that we were doing.


See the nationalized search at that time was not picking up any kind of local signals because


there weren't any colleges or universities around the data center which we were using


to collect the search results.


That was a big problem because that one day Google rolled out some sort of update that


improved geolocation and ultimately ended up taking a lot of traffic away for that primary


keyword because local sites were starting to rank all across the country.


So as SEOs we decided to fight back.


And the strategy we used was what I call centroid search.


And centroid search sucks.


The idea is pretty simple.


You take a town, a city, a state, or even a country, you find the latitude and longitude


of the dead center of that location and then you feed that to Google in the U-U-L-E parameter


so that you get a search result from what would happen if you were standing right there


in that specific latitude and longitude and performed the search.


Well we know that that's not really a good idea.


And the reason is pretty clear.


Let me give an example.


This would be a local example for a business that's trying to perform well inside of a


small city, a medium town or so.


This is actually, despite the fact that it is drawn poorly, the locations of several


Italian restaurants in South Bend, Indiana.


So as you can see, each little red one identifies a different Italian restaurant and the centroid


of the city is right here, this little green star.


Well there's a problem.


If you were to collect a syrup this way, you would be influenced dramatically by these


handful of Italian restaurants right there in the center of the city.


But the problem with that is that these blue circles that I've drawn actually represent


areas of increased population density.


You see most cities, they have a populous downtown but they also have around the outside


suburban areas which are just as population or close to as population dense.


At the same time, they don't get represented because they're not in the middle of the city.


So what do we do?


How do we get a better representation of what the average person in that city would see?


Well the answer is what we call sample search.


There are lots of ways to get about it.


Right now the way we're doing it in particular is looking at the centroids of clusters of


zip codes that are overlapping inside a particular city.


So just as an example, although not exactly what would happen inside of local market analytics,


each one of these purple stars would represent different latitudes and longitudes that we


would select in order to grab a search engine result and then blend them together in a way


based on things like population density or proximity issues and give us back a result


that is much more like the average searcher would see than what the one person standing


in the center part of the city would see.


And we know that this works better because it correlates more with local search traffic


than does the centroid search.


Of course there are other ways we could go about this.


For example we could, instead of using geography, we could use population density specifically


and we can do a lot better job in identifying exactly what the average searcher would see.


But this just isn't a local problem.


It isn't just for companies that are in cities.


It's for any website that wants to rank anywhere in the United States, including those that


just want to rank generically across the entire country.


You see right now the way that national SERPs tend to be collected is by adding a UUL of


the dead center of the United States of America.


Now I think pretty much everybody here can understand why that's a very poor representation


of what the average person in the United States would see.


But if we must get into it, as you can imagine, the center part of the United States is not


population dense.


And we find population areas throughout the coastlines for the most part that have a lot


more people in them.


And it would make a lot better sense to sample search results from all sorts of different


locations both rural and urban in order to identify what the average person in the United


States would see.


Centroid search delivers you a myopic view of this very specific area, whereas sampled


search can give you this blended model that is much more like what the average American


or in any country or county or city, even neighborhood, would see.


So I actually think that this is the model that SERPs in general will be moving to in


the future, at least SERP collection.


If we continue to rely on this centroid method, we're going to continue to deliver results


to our customers that just aren't accurate and simply aren't valuable.


But by using the sampled model, we'll be able to deliver our customers a much more quality


experience, a SERP that is blended in a way that it represents the traffic that they're


actually going to get, and in doing so, will finally solve to at least a certain degree


this problem of personalization.


Now I look forward to MAHS implementing this across the board.


Right now you can get it in local market analytics, and I hope that other organizations follow


suit because this kind of quality improvement in SERP collection is the type of quality


that is demanded of an industry that is using technology to improve businesses' performance.


Without quality, we might as well not be doing it at all.


Thanks for hearing me out.


I'd like to hear what you have to say in the SERPs or in the comments in the SERPs as well,


and hopefully we'll be able to talk through some more ideas on quality.


Looking forward to it.


How Much Keyword Repetition is Optimal? - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about keyword use, keyword repetition, and overuse.


I know this might seem like a basic topic, but actually it's advanced a little bit in


the last few years, and I still get a surprising amount of email and see a surprising number


of questions around things like, how many times should I use my keyword that I'm targeting


to rank for in my URL string, or my H1 tag, or my title, or how many different pages should


I have that target this keyword?


So let's try and clear a little bit of this up.


Let's say I've done a search here, are skeleton keys real, and I see results ranking.


This is actually kind of a nice result, because what you see are not a lot of pages that say,


are skeleton keys real?


I just did this search, and the top 20 results, there's actually not even one where the title


of the piece or the headline of the document is, are skeleton keys real?


You see lots of documents ranking in Google that don't perfectly match this keyword set.


And I think that's a good example of how far Google has come in trying to understand the


intent behind queries, how far they've come in terms of connecting topics and keywords,


how far they've come on topic modeling algorithms.


So really there's three primary considerations that we do still need to worry about as SEOs.


The first one is the search results snippet itself.


I've taken Etsy's snippet here, which is not fantastic, and then when you get to the page,


that product is actually gone, and Etsy's suggesting some other ones which aren't skeleton


keys.


Kind of frustrating, because they do have skeleton keys if you search on the site.


But in any case, I'm sure Stephanie and the SEO team over at Etsy will take care of that.


ASAP.


The primary considerations in your search results snippets are, is the result informative


and useful?


I want to be able to look at this and think to myself, aha, that tells me something that


I didn't already know, or it starts to tell me something about whether or not skeleton


keys are real or not, and where they come from, and its history, and what they are.


And is it useful?


Can I apply that information?


Is that going to help me accomplish whatever I'm trying to accomplish?


In this case, a very information-based query, and so the only accomplishment is the knowledge


itself.


Is it going to draw the eye and the click?


This is a great reason why rich snippets are so valuable, and why anything you can do to


bulk up or add to your snippet, get more vertical space, make your listing stand out can be


helpful.


And then is it perceived as relevant and trustworthy by searchers, right?


So a lot of times that's going to be a brand consideration set.


They're going to be looking at the domain name.


They might be looking in the title for a brand there, if it is there, if it's not there,


those kinds of things.


Second, keyword analysis algorithms.