But if your site just isn't ranking the way it should be, that is, for search terms that you know are right in your wheelhouse, without too much major competition, and that have significant search volume, there are a couple of quick and easy ways to begin diagnosing potential technical issues.


Technical Tips: Getting Started with Technical SEO

The first is with a simple site search. Try typing site colon your domain dot com with no spaces into Google.


At the top of the search results, you'll see the total number of pages the search engine currently has in its index for your site.


But if you see a result that looks like this, you have a problem. Your site isn't ranking because it hasn't been indexed.


Google recommends you investigate this issue in your Search Console account, which is where we'll go next.


When your site is set up and verified in Google Search Console, you can use the coverage report to see which pages on your site Google has successfully crawled and indexed, and which ones it's having problems with.


You can also find the reasons certain pages haven't been indexed and some information on how to fix them.


Your Moz Pro campaign can help you dig into crawling and indexation errors as well.


From within your campaign dashboard, visit the site crawl section to see the total number of pages the Moz spiders have been able to crawl on your site and the issues that were found.


From the site crawl dashboard or the left hand menu, you can investigate several types of issue, including response code errors, problems with robots dot txt, and redirects.


Thanks for joining me for our very first episode of Technical Tips from Moz. I hope you're excited to dive further into these strategies with advice from our experts.


If you're ready to take your journey to the next level right away, you can visit Moz Academy to learn more about our new Technical SEO Certification series.


MozCon 2015 - 05 - Delightful Remarketing: How You Can Do It with Duane Brown

So I'm going to talk today about delightful remarketing.


Now remarketing is about convincing past customers to come to your website, make a purchase who


may not have made a purchase in the past.


And you usually do this by serving them an ad when there's browsing the web or they're


on Facebook.


And the challenge is when I talk to people about remarketing, I usually get this reaction.


A lot of people find it weird and creepy and annoying and they don't know why they're seeing


that ad.


They don't know how to make that ad stop.


And that shouldn't be the case because delightful remarketing can help grow the revenue and


profit at your company and not annoy your customers at the same time.


And that's the point of delightful remarketing.


It's about making more money and not annoying your customers.


There are three key reasons I want to talk about why delightful remarketing is really


important.


And it really changed how I do what I do at Unbounce and anywhere I've worked about convincing


more people to come back to my website and buy.


First of all, over 60% of people abandon a shopping cart every year.


Think about that for a second.


That's a lot of people abandoning your website and not coming back and buying.


And that shouldn't be the case.


You want people to buy on your website.


And you want them to come back.


And next to email, I feel delightful remarketing is the only other warm lead gen channel that


can convince people to come back and buy from you.


Now, of this 40% of people who do buy from a website, ironically, only 6% of that is


actually representative of e-commerce revenue versus just retail revenue.


So that means when a Barnes & Noble or a big business sells a lot of stuff online, it's


probably only 6% of their business, which is kind of interesting because over the last


15 years, we went from 40 million people online to 3 billion people online.


And that's a lot of people.


Now let's look at the next seven years because we're going to have another billion people


and then this billion with a B come online.


And most of those people are going to be on a mobile device, period.


And that's because a lot of people in the brick countries can't afford a desktop computer.


They can't afford an Android or an iPhone that is a lot cheaper.


So now the question becomes, what is Delight for Marketing?


So I have three pillars I look at.


The first is message match.


And that's the idea that your advertising is going to match your audience.


And so instead of having a generic ad that has your brand name, you want an ad that really


speaks to these people, to have these people say, hey, I know why I'm seeing that ad because


I went to this website.


But more importantly, the ad's going to cut through all the noise, the BS, all the other


ads I see all day and want them to come back to your website and buy.


The other pillar is contacts.


And I think this is where a lot of people make a mistake online is they think, well,


I've got a great ad.


I've got a great audience.


I don't need to think about contacts.


But you want to think about when you're going to see the ad, how you're going to see the


ad, what devices the ads are going to be on.


And you want to make sure that it's going to be a great experience for people overall.


And the last point, and this is more of a gut check, is a delightful experience.


And you're not going to ask yourself this.


You're going to ask the rest of your team.


Because you can't convince somebody in CS or someone in engineering that this is going


to be a great ad for your customers.


Maybe you should go back to the drawing board and rethink what you're going to do for your


campaign.


So how do we create delightful marketing?


I want to talk about three things today.


I want to talk about a B2C commerce company.


I want to talk about a B2B business, especially if we're working in SaaS.


And I also want to talk about AdWords Customizer.


So I want to talk about why commerce and a burn pixel equals the A team.


Now a burn pixel is simply a pixel that fires on your confirmation page that tells a piece


of software, add this person to a remarketing list because they bought something.


And what I find a lot online is that when I'm traveling or I'm searching to go travel


somewhere or I'm going to go buy a piece of clothes, I get re-marketed to a lot.


But even though I may click on that ad and make a purchase, I find that days later I'm


still seeing that same ad.


And that's pretty annoying.


And the reason I'm seeing that ad is because the marketing team somewhere didn't have a


burn pixel file.


They didn't say when this person makes a purchase, put them on a remarketing list and don't show


them this ad again.


And you don't want to create that.


You don't want to annoy your users whatsoever.


So when you all go back to your offices later this week or next week and want you to talk


to the person who runs paid searches, that's not you, and say, does a burn pixel fire when


someone converts?


Always stop showing them ads when you're marketing them.


And if they say no, find out why and stop that because you don't want to annoy your


customers at the end of the day.


The other thing I want to talk about is sort of a SaaS business and Intercom.


Now for those who don't know what Intercom is, it's a great piece of software that hooks


into either your mobile app or a website and tells you what your customers are doing in


your app and your website.


So it shows what features they're going to use, what features they're not using.


It tells you the adoption rate of a feature.


Like in Unbounce, we launched a feature a couple weeks ago that was really cool.


And we're able to go on the app and see, oh, lots of people like this feature.


Oh, lots of people don't like this feature.


But the other cool part of Intercom is you can message people on the app and find out


why they don't like that feature.


And that's really important.


So today I want to talk about why that's really important.


Because when you go into Intercom, you can go and say, OK, I want to look at people who


didn't use a certain feature.


And you want to download that list and you want to upload it to, let's say, Facebook


or Twitter.


And you want to remark to people and say, hey, you don't use this feature.


You want to tell them why that feature is important.


You want to either send them to a blog post or send them to a landing page that has a


case study or white paper and really hit home that this feature is going to make their lives


easier.


It's going to make them more money.


It's going to make them feel like a rock star in front of all the people they work with,


which is important to like for a marketing.


You want to make people feel better versions of themselves at the end of the day.


After you've done that, of course, you want to make sure you stop remarketing them and


stop showing the ad after they converted because we don't want to have a bad experience.


So I want to talk a little bit about AdWords Customizer.


And this is kind of a cool feature that Google has.


And they don't really, and I don't get why, they don't really promote it all that often.


But basically, as you see the red arrow there, it has a little countdown clock to your ad.


So let's say you were going to have a sale next weekend and you were going to sell 50%


off shoes or 20% off shoes.


You can go into AdWords, create an ad, say the sale is going to start on a Friday, end


on a Sunday, and it will add a little countdown clock to your ad, which is really great.


It helps your ad stand out.


And the reason I like AdWords Customizer is because it makes your ad stand out and makes


it different.


But here's the challenge.


What if you don't have a sales?


What if you're in B2B or you're in high-end luxury goods?


What do you do?


And I thought, you know, this would actually be a great feature if I was going to launch


a new product or launch a new service, because I could create a remarketing list based on


people who hit that page.


So let's say I was going to launch something related to SSL next week.


I could create a campaign in AdWords Customizer.


I could buy keywords related to SSL, create ads related to SSL.


Anyone who clicks on an ad and goes to my landing page or goes to my blog post, I can


build a remarketing list off that.


And so when the feature actually launches in a week or two, I can remarket these people


and say, hey, you were interested in SSL.


Why don't you come back and actually either A, upgrade the product if they're a current


customer or B, why don't you sign up and actually use the feature since you thought it was so


great?


Now, setting up AdWords Customizer isn't the most complicated as it used to be years ago,


because if you see the ad here, if you make a face bracket with an equal sign in one of


your ads on description line two, it brings up this handy little tutorial that Google


asks, when does your campaign start?


When does your campaign end?


It also asks, what time zone do you want to use?


Do you want to use the time zone of the user?


So if you're doing a campaign that's only on the East Coast, maybe you only want to


show the ad between 8 AM and 8 PM for when people are at work.


Or conversely, you can use the time zone that is in your account.


You click Save, your campaign launches, and ideally, people click on your ad and come


back and want to shop with you.


So these are what I call the do's of Delightful Remarketing.


These are things I think about irregardless of what campaign I'm working on, what clients


I have, what I'm launching, where I am in the world.


None of this matters.


These are things that really take your campaign from just an OK campaign to an amazingly great


campaign.


So frequency.


Frequency is basically how often do you want to show someone an ad.


Now I've seen a lot of brands where I'll see an ad 8 or 10 times in a day, and that's


not the most delightful experience, because that's just annoying.


And I get brand fatigue, and I'm just going to ignore that ad and ignore that brand when


I see it.


So my general rule is I will get two to three ads a day for any one brand, because at that


point, you've got to remember that remarketing very much is a marathon and not a sprint.


You don't want your customers to get brand fatigue.


You don't want your customers to think, oh, this ad again?


Why am I seeing this ad again?


It's not a great ad.


Age.


If you're on AdWords or you're running Programmatic, you're on any advertising platform in the


what-to segment by age, you should totally do it.


And my last couple startups, generally between 25-year-olds and 44-year-olds were my core


demographic for the product I sell.


But if you sell it to, let's say, babies or parents who have babies or you sell it to


senior citizens, obviously your demographics will be a little bit older.


But what's great about segment by age is you're not going to show your ad to people who potentially


won't convert.


I know at Unbounce, the general demographic is 25 to 45, and I generally don't show ads


anyone beyond that, because those people just don't convert, and they don't generally spend


money with us.


Similar to age is location.


Now location is really interesting, because a lot of times with the market, people say,


let's just still target the whole country.


Let's go all out.


And that's great in theory, but if your business does really well in, let's say, New York or


California, why not just target New York and California?


Why target the whole country?


It makes no sense whatsoever.


Conversely, you can also just look at targeting the top cities where you get most of your


business, because I'd rather spend 80% of my time going after 80% of my business, which


are in the major markets, than trying to target everywhere in the world.


And at the end of the day, risk and game and marketing is like a game of risk, and you


want to make sure that you defend your territories, fend off your competition, and use locations


to your advantage.


So look back window.


Look back window is basically how long someone's going to be in a remarketing list.


Now generally a lot of platforms default to 30 days.


Twitter does 14, though you can change it to 30 days.


And unless you're in a business like insurance, or you're going to sell a car, or you're industrial


equipment, there's no reason you should have a look back window that's more than 30 days,


because after 30 days, if someone's seen your ads, odds are they're not going to convert


if they haven't converted already.


Creative.


We have a creative team on a bounce, and we don't always agree on what the creative should


be at times.


We all agree that we want to make sure we have a delightful experience for the clients.


And if you're like me, some days you just bang your head against the wall, because you


don't know what your creative should be.


And much like these brands you see on here, they all have great creative.


What I found works really well is I'll go talk to my CS team.


I'll look into Intercom and see why customers are buying our product, why they're using


our product.


If we don't find those reasons on our homepage and the things we talk about, then maybe that's


something I want to put in my remarketing.


Because if I come to a website and I think you can do X, Y, and Z, but you don't explicitly


say that, I'm probably going to go with the competition, because they tell me what I want


to hear at the end of the day.


So I've got basically a bonus tip I want to give.


About a month ago, Google launched remarketing lists for search ads in Google Analytics.


Now for those of you who don't run paid media, remarketing lists for search ads basically


takes a search campaign in AdWords, you layer on top of it an audience that has your remarketing


list.


So maybe you want to look at people who were first time visitors to your website versus


return visitors.


And what's cool about this is instead of, let's say, spending money on bid on your competitors'


terms, which can be really expensive, you took that same campaign for competitive terms


and you layer on top of your remarketing list of people who have come to your website for


the first time.


You'll find that, A, you're not going to compete with everyone who's going to want to bid on


those terms at Google.com.


More importantly, you'll find your CPC is a little bit cheaper, and though you won't


have tons and tons of click-through rates and impressions, you'll get enough that people


will click on your ad and convert at a lower cost, and at the end of the day, I think that's


pretty delightful.


So there are five things I kind of want you to take away from today's talk.


One, make your customers better versions of themselves.


Make sure you understand what they want and why they want it, and make sure you explain


to them why this feature is really great.


One, make sure you use your creative to your advantage and tell the things that they want


to hear and they're creative and they understand what your product or service can really do.


You also want to obviously make sure that Burnpixels fires so that when they convert,


you don't remarket them over and over again.


You also want to make sure that you check your campaign settings, so whether it's age,


location, look back window frequency, and make sure that you're not spending money on


areas that don't make sense for your business, and above all, have fun.


It may not be the sexiest part of advertising, but you can make a lot of money from it, and


that's pretty delightful.


Thank you.


I'm sort of hoping that somebody from Amazon is here right now so that they'd hear this


and be like, please stop.


Stop following me.


Every single thing that I look at.


So don't forget if you have questions to ask it on the MozCon QA.


We do have one question that I love that I just lost, of course.


So the question was, do you ever have a chance as a user to be like, OK, can we stop this?


Can I stop seeing this?


Is there something from a user side that allows you to make the remarketing stop happening


other than clearing your cookies or?


Yeah, so I mean, depending on sort of what platform you're on, a lot of ads will have


like a little triangle on the upper left or right hand corner.


If you hover over that little triangle, it's usually blue.


It says ad choice, and you can say whether you like the ad or don't like the ad or if


the ad is relevant.


So that can help stop the ad.


But there isn't a lot you can necessarily do.


Do you take that into account from the remarketing side?


Do you look at how many people are like, oh, I'm sick of seeing this thing.


You know, Jennifer, it's all about the money.


If I don't see people converting, it's just not working.


It could be the greatest ad in the world.


You could think you're a genius.


But if nobody's buying, how great can it really be?


It doesn't matter.


It's all about the bottom line.


And what about testing?


Do you have certain things that you look at for testing?


Like in social, we test a certain way.


In SEO, you test a certain way.


In CRO, you have different testing methodologies.


What are some things with remarketing that you do to sort of test what works better?


Sorry.


Frequencies.


I'm just going to interrupt you as much as I can.


I test ad copy a lot.


I've only been in bounds for four months.


So I'm still learning the customer and who they are and what they are and the different


segments.


And so sometimes I think I'll have an idea for a piece of copy and I think it's really


great.


But at the end of the day, after a week, if nobody's converted, I'll just rip it apart


and start from scratch.


I'm on a campaign right now where I'm on my fourth revision for ad copy and my fourth


landing page.


And even though my boss thinks I should give up on it a little bit, I'm like, just give


me to the end of July.


If I can't convince enough people to convert, then this was just a bad idea and I'll walk


away from it.


So I generally test ad copy first because you want to be able to get people to click.


And then from there, I'll get my landing page and what the offer I have and then just kind


of go from there.


And then obviously, I'll get age, location, frequency to sort of make sure I'm not spending


money in areas I don't want to spend money in.


So did I hear that correctly that you're sort of like after testing it and trying it out


and you have to be willing to just give it up and start over, try something totally different?


Yeah.


I mean, there's only excellent of hours in the week and sometimes an idea is just not


going to work and that's okay.


I mean, if this campaign I have right now doesn't work, I'll try something else.


I'll try something new.


But you have to be willing to take the risk and put yourself out there because you've


always done what you've always done.


You're always going to get what you've always gotten.


That's probably not the greatest experience in the world.


I like that.


Okay.


Rich has a good question.


What if a high percentage of your audience buy over the phone and you can't use the burn


pixel?


So what's the best thing that you can do?


I'm kind of curious what business he's in that they all want to call in.


If you can't do remarketing, you can't do remarketing.


Rich.


Obviously, let's say 90% of his business was on the phone.


That's still 10% of the people you're convinced to buy, right?


So remarketing isn't about quantity.


It's about quality at the end of the day.


I want to go after the people that make the most sense and get them to convert versus


trying to go after everyone on the internet because you could have a piss in cot just


with a bigger company and spend lots of money, but it doesn't mean you're going to as well


make more money than them.


Makes sense.


We have one more here.


Do you look at remarketing performance through an attribution model?


We are struggling slightly with that at Unbounce in the sense that we look at everything just


from a last click perspective because I know if I look at my ad words and my GA that 30%


of my first click conversions won't convert on a last click in GA, but they'll come through


referrals or direct and stuff like that.


So beyond the last touch, we definitely want to work at Unbounce and become better at,


but I don't think anyone's cracked that nut because every business is so unique and every


situation is so unique that there's not like a magic wand.


You can just wave and be like, this is what you do beyond last touch.


You've got it all solved now.


I still really want to send you out.


There are like five different companies that everywhere I go, I see their stuff over and


over again, and I'd like to, maybe we can talk after and be like, so for Unbounce, you


should go after these people and tell them to stop.


Talk to me.


I do it all the time.


I'm like, this is a bad experience.


I tweeted them.


They never got back to me and I didn't think they would, but I'm just going to tell them


anyways, because you will be out of business in seven years potentially if you keep this


up.


People used to tell us when we first started with SEOmoz remarketing, they would tell us


all the time how sick and tired they were of seeing Rand's face everywhere.


Which is funny.


It's Randy, so adorable, right?


I almost said that.


Sorry, Erica.


He's fun now.


Okay.


Thank you.


That's all of our questions.


For now, Duane, thank you so much for walking us through this.


Everybody, let's give Duane a big round of applause.


Eric Enge - UX, Content Quality and SEO - Whiteboard Friday

Hi, Mazers.


I'm Eric Enga, CEO of Stone Temple Consulting.


And today I want to talk to you about one of the most underappreciated aspects of SEO,


and that is the interaction between user experience, content quality, and your SEO rankings and


traffic.


I'm going to take you through a little history first.


We all know about the Panda algorithm update that came out on February 23rd of 2011.


And of course, more recently we have the search quality update that came out on May 19th,


And our Panda friend had 27 different updates that we know of along the way.


So a lot of stuff has gone on, but we need to realize that that is not where it all started.


The link algorithm from the very beginning was about search quality.


Links allowed Google to have an algorithm that gave better results than the other search


engines of their day, which were dependent on keywords.


And so these things, however, that I've just talked about are still just a tip of the iceberg.


Google goes a lot deeper than that, and I want to walk you through the different things


that it does.


So consider for a moment you have someone search on the phrase men's shoes, and they


come to your website.


What is it that they want when they come to your website?


They want sneakers, sandals, dress shoes.


Well, those are sort of the obvious things that they might want.


But you need to think a little bit more about what the user really wants to be able to know


before they buy from you.


First of all, there has to be a way to buy.


By the way, affiliate sites don't have ways to buy, so the line of thinking I'm talking


about might not work out so well for affiliate sites and works better for people who can


actually sell the product directly.


But in addition to a way to buy, they might want a privacy policy.


They might want to see an About Us page.


They might want to be able to see your phone number.


These are all different kinds of things that users look for when they arrive on the pages


of your site.


So as we think about this, what is it that we can do to do a better job with our websites?


Well, first of all, lose the focus on keywords.


Don't get me wrong.


Keywords haven't gone entirely away, but the pages where we overemphasize one particular


keyword over another or related phrases are long gone, and you need to have a broader


focus on how you approach things.


User experience is now a big deal.


You really need to think about how users are interacting with your page and how that shows


your overall page quality.


Think about the percent satisfaction.


If I send 100 users to your page from my search engine, how many of those users are going


to be happy with the content or the products or everything that they see on your page?


You need to think through the big picture.


So at the end of the day, this impacts the content on your page to be sure, but a lot


more than that.


It impacts the design, related items that you have on the page.


So just let me give you an example of that.


I looked at one page recently that was for a flower site.


It was a page about annuals on that site, and that page had no link to their perennials


page.


Well, okay, a fairly good percentage of people who arrive on a page about annuals are also


going to want to have perennials as something they might consider buying.


So that page was probably coming across as a poor user experience.


So these related items concepts are incredibly important.


And then the links to your page is actually a way to get to some of those related items.


And so those are really important as well.


What are the related products that you link to?


And finally, really it impacts everything you do with your page design.


You need to move past the old-fashioned way of thinking about SEO and into the era of


how am I doing with satisfying all the people who come to the pages of your site?


Thank you, Mathers.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

Hi there, this is Alicia from the MozPro Customer Onboarding team and I'm here today to show


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

you a quick way how you can use Link Explorer in order to compare link profiles with your


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

competitors.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

Let's jump in.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

From MozPro, we're going to go into the link research tool and then select compare link


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

profiles.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

We'll start off by entering in our URL and then we'll enter in our SERP competitors URLs


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

by adding another URL.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

The tool will allow you to compare your site with up to five additional sites.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

From here, we're going to see a quick snapshot of our link profile side by side with that


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

of our competitors.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

We're going to see linking metrics such as domain authority, spam score, total links,


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

and external followed links.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

And the site that's leading for a particular metric, we're going to see highlighted in


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

green here.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

Now, I've analyzed an exact page, but we can also switch over to the root domains view


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

if we want to see the link profile of the overarching domain.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

Make sure you also scroll down to see various graphs, especially the metrics over time.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

I suggest switching over into the linking domains view in order to get an idea as far


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

as how your competitors are growing their linking domains over time.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

Thanks so much for taking the time to watch today's daily fix video.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles

I hope it was helpful and look forward to seeing you next time.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Link Profiles


Digital Marketing Skill Pivot: Recruiting New Talent Presented by Emma Still

All right.


Good morning, MozCon.


I'm super, super excited to be here.


Like Zeph said, this is such an awesome opportunity.


In fact, I wrote the pitch for this talk on day two last year, but I'll get to the story


of that in a second.


First, I want to cover what the goal of this talk is.


Like Zeph said, it's about recruiting.


Really all I want is for you guys to walk away with a shift in your mindset, to understand


the skills that you have in a new, practically applicable way.


Let's also start with the reason that we're all sitting in this room today.


We're here for the actionable tactics.


This comes from a breakdown of post-MozCon survey data that Erica, who organizes this


lovely conference, had put together.


It's probably no surprise that it's for the actionable tactics.


So this is what caused me to write the pitch for this.


Last year, I was sitting in the audience talking to someone, and they were so excited because


of these actionable tactics they were getting.


But they were frustrated because they didn't have the people on their team in order to


be able to execute on it.


They had come off a series of really crappy interviews, reviewing irrelevant resumes,


and I felt for them because this struggle is real.


It's something that a lot of us deal with.


The good news is we're in high demand.


There's over 45,000 open jobs with SEO in the title on LinkedIn today.


These positions are really tough to fill, though.


According to SHRM, which is the Society of Human Resource Management, a marketing manager


is in the top 10 toughest jobs to fill in the U.S. today, along with things like a data


scientist or security analyst.


So they're in high demand, it's tough to fill, and it also takes a while.


And on average in the U.S., it takes 43 days to fill a marketing position.


You can start to think about a lot of the opportunity costs that pile up as a result


of this problem.


You might be paying for things like recruiter fees.


Your employees might be starting to get frustrated because they're picking up extra slack by


people left not on the team.


That can lead to frustration, turnover.


If you work agency side, turnover means risk on the client side relationship.


If you work in-house or anywhere else for that matter, it impacts your ability to get


shit done.


And that's what we're here for.


The good news is there's a way forward.


We're all sitting here with the skills we need in order to be able to do something about


this.


So speaking of the skills we have, I want to take a poll of the room and raise your


hand if you've participated in a link building or outreach campaign in the last couple of


years.


And I'll raise my hand.


This is not a trick question to get you to raise your hand and then tell you link building


is dead.


All right.


So the people with their hands raised, you might not be able to think of them as recruiters,


but they actually are.


And here's why.


Link building and recruiting are not that different.


If we look at it like a classic analogy, link building is to recruiting as prospecting is


to sourcing, a prospect is to a candidate, outreach is to outreach, and getting a link


is like hiring a candidate.


So you might be thinking about all the ways that you've used link prospecting techniques


in a way to apply it for recruiting, which is great because that's the point of the presentation.


But we all need a little bit of incentive.


What's in this for me?


There's three big reasons.


The first is that you can earn money.


So many companies nowadays offer things like referral bonuses.


Of those companies, 69% of them pay out between $1,000 and $3,000 per hire.


It's something that will probably pay off for you too because referral candidates are


three to four times more likely to be hired than non-referral candidates.


The second reason is that you get to cherry pick your coworkers.


Let that sink in for a second.


I'm pretty sure a lot of us in the room can relate to wishing we could pick the person


that we're working most closely with rather than leaving it up to chance.


And the last is that you get time back, time spent picking up the slack for vacancies left


on your team.


So if you're sick of working 50, 60 plus hour weeks picking up that slack, now's our opportunity


to do something about it.


And if you didn't raise your hand for that link building question, this all still applies


to you because we're all marketers in the room.


We take a step back for a second and look at this a little bit more broadly.


Marketing and HR aren't all that different either.


If we look at it again like a classic analogy, marketing is to HR as customer experience


is to employee experience.


Customer retention is to employee retention.


Customer acquisition is really just the same as recruiting and maybe even something like


upsells in sales and marketing is similar to something like professional development


for your employees.


So if you start to bridge these gaps and see these parallel worlds coming together, we


might be able to avoid stuff like this happening.


Hi, this message is for Lenny Levine.


This is Shucks from Shucks.


Just trying to touch base with you.


It looks like you do recruiting and we actually work with software IT-based type companies


to develop B2B sales development programs.


I was hoping to grab a couple minutes of someone's day and see if you do any kind of third-party


augmenting for your recruiting services.


My phone number is 511.


All right.


So thanks to Phil Nottingham from Wistia for sharing that.


And we're all laughing, but it's not meant to be a knock on recruiters at all.


If anything we've seen what a tough job they have.


Studies have shown that recruiters and HR professionals, 73% of them, have been investing


in different means for their social recruiting.


So just like we're here trying to learn new skills, HR and recruiting professionals are


no different.


The unfortunate part is that only 18% of this group consider themselves experts when it


comes to things like social recruiting.


So let's get into all the ways that we can help.


For me, this all started to come together when we got a prompt from our HR team.


And this is Lauren from our HR team.


Lauren sent us an advanced query that was designed to pull in all of our first connections


and a certain set of search criteria.


And I thought to myself, damn, that's pretty smart.


Our HR team is sending us advanced queries?


But then I also started to think about all of the spammy recruiter LinkedIn messages


that were sitting in my inbox, which I'm sure a lot of you can relate to.


So I started thinking about ways that we could look on a not saturated platform, like LinkedIn,


which is where all recruiters are looking, and find candidates that are engaging passively


on different websites.


So that's what I'm going to show you now, the how.


So this is going to be broken down by four common search criteria that we tend to look


for when we're recruiting candidates.


First and foremost are those hard skills, the non-negotiables, the things you need to


do in order to be able to do your job well.


So we'll stick with this theme of advanced queries.


It's something a lot of us in the room are probably familiar with.


And if you think about a site search, you query a certain domain and add a series of


qualifiers based on what you're trying to find.


So if I were to do a site search to find a candidate, the first thing that comes to mind


is Moz.


So we can use a site search advanced query to look at Moz's community base.


And so say, for example, I'm searching in the Moz community base, and I'm looking for


people who are in the United States, maybe someone who has local search experience, or


maybe someone who's worked at an agency in the past.


You can continue to refine your query based on what you're looking for.


And Moz isn't the only website you can look at.


You could look at something like an industry publication, a forum, or a niche website.


And this also isn't just for SEO professionals.


Say for example I was looking to hire a coder or a developer.


I could query a website like Stack Overflow or GitHub to find the candidates I need based


on certain criteria.


Another common thing we tend to look for when we're sourcing talent is trustworthiness,


those warm connections, those referrals.


So what skills do we have in order to be able to find for those?


We can do something like a social analysis.


And the tools I'm going to share with you, you don't necessarily have to use these ones.


There's a lot that will give you similar results.


But this example is from Clear, and you can use the Talk With report.


The Talk With report is very simple.


All it does is give you a list of the people that you've talked with most frequently.


So this is my Talk With report.


And on first thought, when I'm engaging with these people on a day-to-day basis, may not


be can I hire them?


But after reviewing the report, I may be able to look at someone like Ryan as a potential


candidate.


Or maybe Mike could refer me to someone that he knows.


Keep following down that path based on the people that you interact with frequently.


You may be asking yourself, well, what if I'm not active?


I don't talk with a lot of people on Twitter very often.


And that's okay.


This is still applicable.


You could simply just use a different profile.


You could use someone like a former colleague.


You could use your company's profile.


If your company is new or not active, you could use a competitor's profile.


Maybe someone who's too qualified for the position.


Or someone who's just not interested at this time.


So here's an example of a way that I've used this for a former colleague.


And Rachel used to work on our analytics team.


And so she's pretty active on social media.


So I enter her profile into Clear, and I can see the people that she's interacted with


frequently.


So now I can look at someone like Michelle as a potential candidate.


Adrian down there in the corner, maybe he can refer us to someone he knows.


Or take it a step further and look at someone like Elizabeth and check out her Talk With


report.


So keep following down that path to find a list of candidates to vet through.


Another way that you can use Clear is the Top Content report.


Again, very simple.


All it does is give you a list of the posts that has been engaged with most frequently.


And chances are, these people who are engaging with your stuff, know who you are, probably


agree with you, and might want to work for your company.


So advanced queries will give us a list of people with those hard skills.


We can use social analysis to find those warm, trustworthy referral connections.


But what about the thing that a lot of people say is almost more important than those?


The soft skills.


A culture fit.


What do we have in our toolkit in order to be able to find someone who could be a culture


fit?


I'll tell you how.


But first, I'd encourage you to think about what's important to your company.


What are you built on?


What's your mission?


What do you stand for?


I've heard it a million times.


We don't hire jerks.


Okay?


So maybe you're also looking for someone with a team mentality.


Someone who's empathetic.


Someone who is audience-centric in the way that they approach their marketing.


So simply find a piece of content that kind of aligns with those values.


And then we can do a content analysis.


Using a tool that probably a lot of us are familiar with, like BuzzSumo.


So this is an example, shameless plug from the CIR blog that one of my colleagues wrote


about the selfless approach to SEO.


And this is very audience-centric and empathetic, which happens to align with the way that we


approach things, too.


So all I do is enter this into BuzzSumo, click on view sharers, and it spits out a list of


all the people who have shared this content in the past.


Then I can toggle on the left-hand side based on the type of user I might be looking for


and even filter down to location.


So that's the last one here.


Location.


It's a very common thing we tend to look for when we're hiring.


So we can do something like geographic analysis with a tool that a lot of us are probably


familiar with, like Followerwonk.


And if you're looking for an alternative to Followerwonk, Twitonomy is another similar


one.


The last one you're looking for is a list of users mapped to a certain location based


on who they follow.


So I'm going to share an example of a way that I've used this for a client in the past.


And this client is based in Toronto.


This is not Seattle.


And my point of contact, his manager had moved on from the company.


We were working on a lot of really important stuff and knew that if they were a man down,


it was going to be a lot more difficult for us to get things pushed through and see success


for the client.


If you work agency side, you probably also know that turnover on the client side could


be pretty risky for the relationship.


So we decided to help.


We can use Followerwonk and enter in.


This is an example of my profile.


Enter in my profile and look at the people who follow me in a certain location.


And there I have seven people who follow me in Toronto that I can probably reach out to,


see if they're interested, or see if they can refer us to someone who is.


If you're not active, that's okay.


You can simply just use another profile.


So those are those four common search criteria that we tend to look for when we're finding


talent.


But we have time for a quick bonus round.


And this is too simple not to share it with you.


This is not rocket science.


If you follow someone that represents an ideal candidate on Twitter, Twitter, based on the


way that you have your emails configured, will send you a list of similar users.


And they even do it for you in the interface.


So if I'm following someone who I think might represent an ideal candidate, why not just


check out the people that Twitter suggests as similar users?


So to wrap this all up, again, the goal was simply just to get you thinking about the


skills you have in a different way.


I'm not going to be able to tell you how to revamp your interview process or create a


company culture that will attract candidates once you can find them, but simply to get


you thinking about the ways that marketing and HR are so similar that you might be able


to make your next grade higher.


Metrics for Better Keyword Research — Whiteboard Friday

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today I'm going to be talking to you about metrics, but specifically


metrics for keyword research. Now, I think this is a very fundamental part of SEO. A


lot of people think of it as a very basic part of SEO, which can be a problem sometimes.


I think often this might be the very first task you're asked to do in your SEO career,


but I think there's some common sort of mistakes or misunderstandings within keyword research


that are quite easy to fix, and a lot of it comes from metrics. So these are the three


metrics I want to talk about today. So there's search volume, click-through rate, and difficulty.


I want to talk to you about how you can sort of use these together and where you need to


be careful. So search volume, I think obviously you're not going to get away from this as


a metric. I'm not asking you to get away from this as a metric, don't worry, but it does


have some well-known problems and some lesser-known problems. So one of the better-known ones


is, I think probably about seven years ago now, I can remember the late great Russ Jones


talking about some of the problems with Google Keyword Planner data, which is really a ubiquitous


data source and a lot of tools. And I understand why, in a lot of cases, it's the only practical


data source to use, but Google Keyword Planner data has some issues. I'm not going to go


into those now because like I say, it's been talked about a lot in the industry. Hopefully


some of those older resources will be linked to below, but I just want to talk about how


impactful it can be in your research and in what you're trying to do for your business.


So I did a test recently where I gathered a bunch of sample keywords and I benchmarked


them in various metrics and various tools to see what volumes I got. Now the source


of truth I'm using here is Google Search Console. So you can be reasonably confident that if


you rank first for something, then in Google Search Console, the number of impressions


you have will be equivalent to the true volume. Now there are some caveats there. Maybe you


only rank first on certain days or in certain locales, certain devices. There's a bunch


of data cleaning and work that we have to do to clean that out. But once that's done,


we can say, okay, in this particular sample of keywords, the average search volume was


about 97 searches a month. Now it could have been anything, just in this particular sample,


it happened to be 97 searches a month. Now in Moz's tools, I put in the same set of keywords


and we got an average of 101, which I'm pretty pleased with. That's quite close. And then


in a couple of competing tools that also don't use Google Keyword Planner data, they got


150 and 190. So same sort of order of magnitude. But then the Google Keyword Planner data on


average was 1,803. So that doesn't even fit on the whiteboard, by the way, to get that


chart into scale. And obviously that's quite a big problem. If you were using this in anything


sort of business critical and your boss is saying, oh, can you estimate how much traffic


this new site section might get or how much revenue we might make? And your estimate is


out by a factor of 18, that is going to be a problem, right? So this is a big danger,


even though this is an old problem. I was actually surprised by how impactful this could


be in the real world. The other problem with keyword volume is a bit of a subtler one and


it has to do with how much SERPs are changing over time now. And the issue here is that


just knowing, we're only interested in search volume, right? Because we're interested in


clicks. We want people to search a keyword and we want to know how many people are searching


a keyword because we think we might win their click by ranking. But the trouble is these


days search volume doesn't actually give you that much of an idea about how many people


might click or could click. So you might have keywords with very similar volume that actually


have very different numbers of clicks available. This is a random sample of keywords from 750


keywords from Mozcast. And I put these into Mozpro to get an idea of the different click-through


rates. And this is the total click-through rate of the queries. So this is the percentage


of people that clicked on anything, not just one specific result. And 85 of these keywords,


so over 10% of these keywords, they had a total click-through rate for all results of


under 20%, meaning the vast majority of people clicked on nothing. And only about a third


of these keywords had, slightly over a third of these keywords, had a total number of clicks


that were similar to the search volume, right? 81 to 100% of the search volume. So this is


really interesting because there's a wild spread here and this varies a lot from one


keyword sample to the next. And basically what this means is that just knowing about


volume doesn't mean you actually know about clicks anymore, at least. So this is a bit


of a problem, right, when we're using search volume as metric. We kind of have to use,


but there's maybe some issues. So how can we get around that? So one, as I've just talked


about, one thing we can look at is click-through rate in combination with search volume. So


I just said in Moz, you can look at the total click-through rate of a query, but you can


also look in Search Console at the click-through rate just for your specific result, where


you've ranked now. And so that can help you to have a better idea for the sort of actual


opportunity that comes with a keyword rather than just search volume, which basically doesn't


give you much of a clue about that on its own. So you can use these together to get


a better idea. The last metric I want to talk about that you can use with these is difficulty.


So keyword difficulty is a metric we have in Moz. Some other tools have similar things.


And what we do is we take the page authority and domain authority of the other results


that are ranking for that keyword to get an idea of sort of how tough the table stakes


are for this competition. And then we also look at the click-through rate, the total


click-through rate of that query, like I was just talking about. So this gives you an idea


of how dominated this SERP is going to be perhaps by Google features or something like


that. And then together, this forms our difficulty score. So this gives you an idea of the level


of opportunity here, right? So when you use all three of these together, you can say,


okay, I've got this many searches and this click-through rate. So I know how many clicks


available. And then with the difficulty, I know how many of these clicks I might actually


be able to win. So that's all relatively quick and simple one. Hope you found that useful.


Let us know on social, and I'm sure we'll have more of these coming right up. Thank


#WhiteboardFriday: How to Select Meaningful B2B SEO Keywords

Hi and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Cody McDaniel and I am an SEO Manager


at Obility. We are a B2B digital marketing agency and today I want to talk about selecting


meaningful B2B SEO keyword targets and the process and steps you can take in your own


keyword research. So B2B is a little bit different than you would see in your normal B2C types


of marketing. The sales cycle or the length of time it takes to actually make a purchasing


decision is usually a lot longer than you would see just buying something off Amazon.


It's going to take multiple stakeholders, individuals are going to be involved in that


process, it's going to be usually a lot more expensive. So in order to do that they're


going to want to be informed about their decision. They're going to have to look up content and


information across the web to help inform that decision and make sure that they're doing


the right thing for their own business. So in order to do that we have to create content


that helps educate and informs these users and the way to do that is finding keywords


that matter and building content around them. So when we're developing keyword research


for our own clientele the first thing that we do is gather a seed list. So usually we'll


talk with our client contact and speak to them about what they care about but it also


helps to get a few other stakeholders involved. So the product marketing team or the sales


team, individuals that will eventually want to use that information for their clients


and talk to them about what they care about, what do they want to show up for, what's important


to them and that will sort of help frame the conversation you want to be having and give


you an understanding or an idea of where eventually you want to take this keyword research. And


it shouldn't be very long, it's a seed list, it should eventually grow. So once you've


done that and have a baseline understanding of where you want to go, the next thing you


can do is review the content that you have on your own website and that can start at


your homepage. What's the way that you describe yourselves to the greater masses? What's the


flagship page have to say about what you offer? You can go a little bit deeper into some of


your top level pages in About Us but try to generate an understanding of how you speak


to your product, especially in relation to your clients and the industry that you're


in. You can use that and from there you can go a little bit further, go through your blog


posts to see how you speak to the industry and educate and inform individuals, go to


newsletters. Just try to get an understanding of what exists currently on the website, where


your efficiencies may be and of course where your deficiencies are, your lack of content


that will help you generate ideas on where you need to look for more keywords or modifications


in the keywords you have. Speaking of which, with the keywords that you currently have,


it's important to know how you stand. At this point, I try to look to see how we're ranking


the greatest scheme of things and there's a lot of different tools that you can use


for that. Search Console is a great way to see how potential users across the web are


going to your website currently that can help you filter by page or by query. You can get


an understanding of what's getting clicks and generating interest but you can also use


other tools, SEMrush, SpyFu, Ahrefs, Moz of course. They'll all give you a keyword list


that can help you determine what users are searching for in order to find your website


and where they currently rank in the search engine results page. Usually these lists are


pretty extensive. They can be anything from a few hundred to a few thousand terms. It


helps to parse it down a little bit. I like to filter it by things like if it has no search


volume, mix it. If it's a branded term, I don't like to include it because you should


be showing up for your branded terms already. Maybe if it's outside the top 50 in rankings,


things like that. I don't want that information here right now. I want to understand how we're


showing up, where our competencies are and how we can leverage that in our keyword research.


That should help the list be a little bit more condensed. One of the things you can


also look at is not just internal, but external. You can look at your competition and see how


we're ranking or comparing at least on the web. What do they use? What sort of content


do they have on their website? What are they promoting? How are they framing that conversation?


Are they using blog posts? All that information is going to be useful for maybe developing


your own strategies or maybe finding a niche where if you have a particularly stiff competition,


you can find areas of not discussing. Use that competition as a framework for identifying


areas of potential opportunities and how the general public or industry speaks to some


of the content you're interested in writing about. Once you have that list, it should


be pretty big. The idea of the ecosystem you're working with is important to gather metrics.


This is going to contextualize the information that you have. You want to make informed decisions


on the keywords that you have, so this metric gathering will be important. There's a lot


of different ways you can do it. Here at Ability, we might categorize them by different content


types so we can make sure that we're touching on all the different levels of keyword usage


for the different topics that we discuss in our content. You can look at things like search


volume. There's a lot of different tools that do that. The same ones I mentioned earlier


in the Moz, through SEMrush. There's a great tool we use called Keyword Keg that aggregates


all of them without giving you an idea of search volume on a monthly basis. You can


also use other metrics, things like difficulty, like how hard it is to rank compared to some


of the other people on the web, or organic click-through rate, like what's the level


of competition you're going to be going up against in terms of ads or videos or carousels


or other sort of Google snippets. Moz does a great job of that. Use these metrics and


what they should help you do is contextualize the information so that maybe if you're pretty


close on two or three keywords, that metric gathering should help you identify which one


is maybe the easiest, has the most potential, so on and so forth. Once you have that, you


should be getting a good understanding of where those keywords live and you should be


selecting your targets. Now I've run through a ton of clients who, former agencies have


sent them a list of three to four hundred keywords that they're trying to rank for.


I cannot stand it. There's no value to be had there because how can you possibly try


and optimize and rank for hundreds and hundreds of different variations of keywords? It would


take too long, right? You could spend years in that rabbit hole. What we try to do is


focus on maybe thirty or forty keywords and really narrow down what sort of content is


going to be created for it. What you need to optimize. Does it exist on your website?


If not, what do we need to make? Having that list makes a much more compartmentalized marketing


strategy and you can actually look at that and weigh it against how you're currently


deploying content internally. You can look at success metrics and KPIs. It just helps


to have something a little bit more tangible to bite down on. And of course, you can grow


from there, right? You start ranking well for those twenty or thirty terms and you can


add a few more on at the end of it. But again, I think it's really important to focus on


a very select number, categorizing them by the importance of which ones you want to go


first and start there because this process and content creation takes a long time. But


once you've selected those, it's also important to consider intent. And you can see I've outlined


intent here a little bit more in depth. And what do I mean by that? Well, the best way


that I've seen intent described online is as an equation. So every query is committed


to two parts, right? The implicit and the explicit. What are you saying and what do


you mean when you're saying it? And so when I think of that and try to relate it to keywords,


it's really important to use that framework to develop the strategy that you have. An


example I have here is email marketing, right? So what's the implicit and explicit nature


of that? Well, email marketing is a pretty broad term. So implicitly, they're probably


looking to educate themselves on the topic, learn a little bit more about what it's about.


And you'll see when you search for that, it's usually a lot more educational related content


that helps the user understand it better. They're not ready to buy yet. They just want


to know a little bit more. But what happens when I add a modifier on it, right? What if


I add software? Well, now the keyword has intent. It may mean the same thing as email


marketing in some context, but software implies that they're looking for a solution. We've


now gone down the funnel and are starting to identify terms in which a user is more


interested in purchasing. And so that type of content is going to be significantly different


and it's going to be more heavily implied on features and benefits than just the email


marketing. So that intent is important to frame your keywords and it's important to


make sure that you have them in every step of your purchasing funnel. And the way that


I like to usually look at that, you see it everywhere. There's an upside down triangle.


You have your top, middle, and bottom level pieces of content. And usually at the top


it's going to be things like blogs and other sorts of informational content that you're


going to be having to use to inform users of the types of topics and things in the industry


you care about. And that's probably where something like email marketing would exist.


But email marketing software is probably going to be sitting right here in the middle where


somebody is going to want to make an informed decision, you know, relate to other pieces


of content on competitor websites, check those features, and determine if it's a useful product


for them. And from there you can go a little bit further and move them into different types


of content, maybe email marketing software for small business, right? That's far more


nuanced and specific. And maybe you'll have a white paper demo that's specifically tailored


to businesses that are looking for email marketing in the small business space. And so having


content in three separate spaces and three different modifications will help you identify


where your content gaps are and make sure that users can move throughout your website


and throughout the funnel and inform themselves on the decision they're trying to make. So


with that, I should give you some idea of how we develop keyword research here at our


own agency. And I hope that you guys can utilize some of these strategies in your own keyword


research wherever you are out in the world. So thanks again for listening. Happy new year.


How To Use Hosted Blog Platforms for SEO & Content Distribution - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat a little bit about blog platforms, places like Medium,


Subtle, that's Subtle with a V instead of a U, Tumblr, LinkedIn, places where essentially


you've got a hosted blog platform, hosted content platform.


It's someone else's network, you don't have to set up your own website, but at the same


time you are contributing content to their site.


This has become really popular I think, look, Medium and LinkedIn are really the two big


ones where a lot of folks are contributing these days.


LinkedIn very B2B focused, Medium very startup and new media as well as new creative focused.


And so I think because of the rise of these things we're seeing a lot of people ask themselves,


should I create my own content platform?


Do I need to build a WordPress hosted subfolder on my website or can I just use Medium because


it has all these advantages, right?


Well, let me try and answer those questions for you today.


So what do hosted platforms enable?


It's really simple to sign up and start creating on them, right?


You plug in your name, email, a password, you don't have to set up DNS, you don't have


to set up hosting, you can start publishing right away.


That's really easy and convenient.


It also means that for a lot of marketers they don't have to involve their engineering


or their web development teams.


That's pretty awesome too.


There's also built-in networks on a lot of these places, Medium in particular but Subtle


as well, Tumblr quite obviously has a very, very big network.


And so as a result you've got this ability to gain followers or subscribers to your content,


right?


Someone can say like, ooh, I want to follow at Randfish on Medium.


I haven't published on Medium but for some reason I seem to have thousands of followers


there.


And so I think this creates this idea like, hey, I could reach a lot more people that


I wouldn't necessarily be able to reach on my own platform because it's not like these


people are all subscribed to my blog already but they are signed up for Medium or LinkedIn,


right, which has hundreds of millions of worldwide users.


There's also an SEO benefit here.


You inherit domain authority.


On Medium and on LinkedIn in particular these can be really powerful.


So Medium is a domain authority 80, LinkedIn a domain authority of 99, which is no surprise.


Pretty much every website on the planet links to their LinkedIn page.


And so you can imagine that these pages have the potential to do really well in Google's


rankings and you don't necessarily have to point a lot of links at them in order for


them to rank very well.


And we've seen this, Medium has been doing quite well in the rankings.


LinkedIn articles are doing quite well in their niches.


This is a little different, subtle but important difference for Subtle itself, for Tumblr,


for WordPress.


These are on subdomains, right?


So it would be, yes, there are lots of people who are using WordPress, although that's very


customizable but you could imagine that if I got rans-t-shirts.wordpress.com or rans-t-shirts.tumblr.com


or rans-t-shirts.subtle.com, that doesn't have the same ranking ability.


That subdomain means that Google considers it separately from the main domain.


So you're not going to inherit the ranking benefit on those.


It's really Medium and LinkedIn where that happens.


And to be honest, Google Plus as well, we see them ranking like a Medium or a LinkedIn


too.


You also have this benefit of email digests and subscriptions which can help grow your


content's reach.


For those of you who aren't subscribed to Medium, they send out a daily digest to all


of the folks who are signed up.


And so if you are someone who is contributing Medium content, you can often expect that


your subscribers through Medium may be getting your stuff through an email digest.


They may even get broadcast to a much broader group, to people who aren't following you


but are following them and if they've, you know, hearted your content on Medium, they'll


see it.


So you get all these network effects through email digests and email subscriptions too.


This is pretty awesome.


Like to me, these are compelling reasons to potentially consider using these.


But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's talk about the downside as well.


You know, to my mind, this prevents me, these downsides prevent me from wanting to say,


well, from wanting to encourage certain types of use.


I'll talk about my best advice and my tactical advice for using these in a sec.


So links, authority, and ranking signals that are accrued, right?


We recognize that you put a post on Medium.


A lot of times, posts there do very well.


They get a lot of traction, a lot of attention.


They make it into, you know, news feeds.


Other sites link to them, other pages around the web link to them.


It's great.


Lots of social shares, lots of engagement.


That is terrific.


Guess what?


Those benefits accrue only to Medium.com, right?


So every time you publish something there and it gets lots of links and ranking signals


and engagement and social and all these wonderful things, that helps Medium.com rank better


in the future.


It doesn't help your site.com rank better in the future.


You might say, but Rand, I've got a link here and that link points right back to my site.


Yes, wonderful.


You now have the equivalent of one link from Medium.


Good for you.


It's not a bad thing, but this is nowhere near the kind of help that you would get if


this piece of content had been hosted on your site to begin with.


If this is hosted over here, all these links point in there and all those ranking benefits


accrue to your site and page.


In some ways, from an SEO perspective, especially if you're trying to build up that SEO flywheel


of growing domain authority and growing links and being able to rank for more competitive


stuff, if you're trying to build that flywheel, you'd almost say, hey, you know what?


I'd take half the links and ranking signals if it were on my own site.


That would still be worth more to me than more on Medium.


Okay, but that being said, there's all the distribution advantages, so maybe we're still


at a wash here.


There's also, on these blogging platforms, these hosted platforms, there's no ownership


of or ability to influence the UI and UX.


That is a tough one, too.


One of the wonderful things about blogging is, and we've seen this over the years many


times at Moz, right?


People come to Moz to read the content, and they remember Moz, and they have a positive


association, and they say, yeah, Moz made me feel like they were authorities, like they


knew what they were talking about, and so now I want to go check out Moz Local, their


smaller product, or Moz Analytics, or Open Site Explorer, or whatever it is.


That's great, but if you are on Medium, or if you're on Subtle, or if you're on WordPress,


or if you're on, well, WordPress is more customizable, but if you're on Google+, right, the experience


is, oh, I had a really good experience with Medium.


That's very, very different, right?


They will not remember who you are and how you made them feel, at least certainly not


to the extent that they would if you owned and controlled that UI and UX.


So you're really reducing brand ability and any messaging opportunities that you might


have had there.


That's dramatically, dramatically reduced, and I think that's very, very tough for a


lot of folks.


Next up, and this speaks to the UI and UX elements, but it's impossible to add or to


customize calls to action, which really inhibits using your blog as part of your funnel, right?


Essentially, you know, I can't say, hey, you know what I'd like to do?


I'd like to add a button right below here that, below all my blog posts that says, hey,


sign up to try our product for free, or get on our new mailing list, or subscribe to this


particular piece of content, or I want to put something in the sidebar, or I'd like


to have it in the header, or I want to have it as a dropover when someone scrolls halfway


down the page.


You can't do any of those things, right?


That sort of messaging is controlled by the platform.


You're not allowed to add custom code here, and thus your ability to impact your funnel


with your blog or with your content platform on these sites is severely limited.


You can add a link, and yes, people can still follow you on these networks, but that is


definitely not the same.


There's also, frustratingly for a lot of paid marketers and a lot of marketers who know


that they can do this, you can't put a retargeting pixel on a subtle, on a medium, on a, actually


you may be able to on subtle now, I'm not sure if you can, but medium for sure, LinkedIn


for sure, Google Plus.


You can't say, hey, all the people who come to my posts on medium, I'd like to retarget


them and remarket to them as they go around the web later, and I'll follow them around


the internet like lost puppy dog.


Well, too bad.


Not possible.


Can't place that pixel, no custom code.


That's out.


The last thing, and I think one of the most salient points is there have been many, many


platforms like this over the years.


Many people use the example of GeoCities, where a lot of people hosted their content,


and it went away in the early days of the web.


It was very big, and a few years ago it fell apart.


It's not just that, though.


The uncertain future could mean that in some time frame, in the months or years to come,


medium or subtle or LinkedIn or Google Plus could become more like Facebook, where instead


of 100% of the people seeing the content that they've subscribed to, maybe they only see


10% or the Facebook averages today, which are under 1%.


This means that you don't really know what might happen to your content in the future


in terms of its potential visibility to the audience there.


If that's the sole place you're building up your audience, that is a high amount of risk


depending on what happens as the platform evolves.


This is true for all social platforms.


It's not just true for these hosted blog content platforms.


Many folks have talked about how Twitter in the future may not show 100% of the content


there.


I don't know how real that is or whether it's just a rumor, but it's one of those things


to consider and keep in mind.


My best advice here is use platforms like these for reaching their audiences.


I think it can be great to say, hey, one out of every 10 or 20 posts I want to put something


up on Medium or I want to test it on Google Plus or I want to test it on LinkedIn because


I think that those audiences have a lot of affinity with what I'm doing, and I want to


be able to reach out to them.


I want to see how those perform.


Maybe I want to contribute there once a month or once a quarter.


Great.


Wonderful.


That can be a fine way to draw a distribution there.


I think it's great for building connections.


If you know that there are people on those networks who have big, powerful followings


and they're very engaged there, I think using those networks like you would use a Twitter


or a Facebook or like you already use LinkedIn to try and build up those connections makes


total sense.


Amplifying the reach of existing content or messages.


If you have a great piece of content or a really exciting message, something exciting


you want to share, and you've already put some content around that on your own site


and now you're trying to find other channels to amplify, well, you might want to think


about treating Medium just like you would treat a post on Twitter or a post on Facebook


or a post on LinkedIn.


You could instead create a whole piece of content around that sort of like you would


with a guest post and use it to amplify that reach.


I think guest post style contribution in general is a great way to think about these networks.


You might imagine saying, hey, I'd love to contribute to YouMoz, which is Moz's own guest


blogging platform, and that could be wonderful, but you would never make that your home.


You wouldn't host all your content there.


Likewise, you might contribute to Forbes or Business Insider or to the Next Web or any


of these sites, but you wouldn't say that's where all my content's going to be placed.


It's one chance to get in front of that audience.


Last one, I think it's great to try and use these for SERP domination.


So if you say, hey, I own one or two of the top listings of the first page of results


in Google for this particular keyword term or phrase, I want to use Medium and LinkedIn,


and I'm going to write two separate pieces targeting similar keywords or those same keywords


and see if I can't own four slots or five slots out of the top ten.


That's a great use of these types of platforms, just like it is with guest posting.


Don't try to use these as your content's primary or, God forbid, only home on the web.


Like I said, uncertain future, inability to target, inability to use in the funnel, just


too many limitations for what I think modern marketers need to do.


I don't think it is wise either to put content on there that's what I'd call your money keywords,


right, essentially stuff that is very close to the conversion funnel where you know people


are going to search for these things, then when they find this content they are very


likely to make their next step a sign-up, a conversion.


I would urge you to keep that on your site because you can't own the experience.


I think it's much wiser if you say, hey, let's look way up in the funnel when people are


just getting associated with us or when we're trying to bring in press and PR or we're trying


to bring in awareness, broad awareness.


I think those are better uses.


I think it's also very unwise to make these types of platforms the home of your big content


pieces, big content pieces meaning like unique research or giant visuals or interactive content.


You probably won't even be able to host interactive content at most of these.


If you have content that you know is very likely to drive known high quality links,


right, you've already got your outreach list, you're pretty sure that those people are going


to link to you, please put that content on your own site because you'll get the maximum


ranking benefits in that fashion.


Then you could potentially put another piece of content, repurpose a little bit of the


information or whatever it is that you've put together that's wonderful in terms of


big content as another piece that you separately broadcast and amplify to these audiences.


What I'm really saying is treat these guys, Medium, Subtle, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google


Plus, treat them like these guys, like you use Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and


YouTube and guest hosts in general.


It's a place to put a little bit of content to reach a new audience.


It's a way to amplify a message you already have.


It's not the home of content.


I think that's really what I urge for modern marketers today.


All right, everyone, look forward to the comments and we'll see you again next week for another


edition of Whiteboard Friday.


#WhiteboardFriday: How to Resolve Duplicate Content

Hey, Moz fans.


Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I'm Megan, and I'm part of the Learn team here at Moz.


And today, we're going to talk a bit about duplicate content.


So why are we talking about duplicate content?


Well this is a pretty common issue, and it can often be a bit confusing.


What is it?


How is it determined?


Why are certain pages on my site being flagged as duplicates of one another?


And most importantly, how do I resolve it if I find that this is something that I want


to tackle on my site?


So first off, what is duplicate content?


Essentially, duplicate content is content that appears in more than one place on the


internet.


But this may not be as cut and dry as it seems.


Content that is too similar, even if it isn't identical, may be considered duplicates of


one another.


When thinking about duplicate content, it's important to remember that it's not just about


what human visitors see when they go to your site and compare two pages.


It's also about what search engines and crawlers see when they access those pages.


Since they can't see the rendered page, they typically go off of the source code of the


page.


And if that code is too similar, the crawler may think that it's looking at two versions


of the same page.


Imagine that you go to a bakery and there are two cupcakes in front of you that look


almost identical.


They don't have any signs.


How do you know which one you want?


That's what happens when a search engine encounters two pages that are too similar.


This confusion between pieces of content can lead to things like ranking issues, because


search engines may not be able to figure out which page they should rank, or they may rank


the incorrect page.


Within the Moz tools, we have a 90% threshold for duplicate content, which means that any


pages with code that is at least 90% the same will be flagged as duplicates of one another.


So now that we've briefly covered what duplicate content is, what do we do about it?


There are a few different ways that you can resolve duplicate content.


First is the option to implement 301 redirects.


This option would be similar to having a VHS copy of a movie, which maybe isn't so relevant


anymore.


So you want to be sure to provide folks with the digital version that's streaming online.


On your site, you can redirect older versions of pages to new updated versions.


This is relevant for issues with subdomain or protocol changes, as well as content updates


where you no longer want people to be able to access that older content.


Next is the option to implement rel canonicals on your page.


Say you're at a bake sale and you have two types of cookies with you, sugar and chocolate


chip.


You consider your sugar cookies to be top notch.


So when folks ask you which one they should try, you point them to the sugar cookies,


even though they still have the option to try the chocolate chip.


On your site, this would be similar to having two items for sale that are different colors.


You want human visitors to be able to see and access both colors, but you would use


a canonical tag to tell crawlers which one is the more relevant page to rank.


You also have the option to mark pages as meta no index.


For example, you may have two editions of your favorite book.


You're going to read and reference that second edition because it's the newest and most relevant,


but you still want to be able to read and access edition one should you need to.


Meta no index tags tell the crawler that they can still crawl that duplicate page, but they


shouldn't include it in their index.


This can help with duplicate content issues due to things like pagination.


But what if you have two pages that really aren't duplicates of one another?


They are about different topics and they should be treated as separate pieces of content.


Well, in this case, you may opt to add more content to each of these pages, so it's less


confusing to the crawler.


This would allow them to stand out from one another, and it would be similar to say adding


sprinkles and a cherry to one cupcake and maybe a different color frosting to the other.


If you ever need help identifying which pages on your site may be considered duplicates


of one another, MozPro SiteCrawl and On Demand Crawl can help.


Within both of these tools will flag which pages are considered duplicates of one another,


and you can even export that data to CSV so you can analyze it outside of the tool.


Just a little pro tip here.


In the CSV export of that data, the duplicate content group will tell you which pages are


considered duplicates of one another.


Any pages with the same duplicate content group number are part of the same group of


duplicate pages.


This is by no means an exhaustive list of the ways you can resolve duplicate content,


but I do hope that it helps to point you in the right direction when it comes to tackling


this issue.


And if you're interested in learning more about SEO fundamentals and strategy, be sure


to check out the SEO Essentials certification that's offered through the Moz Academy.


Engineering-As-Marketing for Non-Engineers Presented by Tara Reed

Wow, it's so awesome to be here with you all today.


My name is Tara Reid, and I'm the CEO of a startup called Collecto.


I also run a project called Apps Without Code where I teach nontechnical entrepreneurs how


to build their own apps without writing any code.


What's interesting about the work I get to do every day is that I get to push people


outside of a box they've created for themselves based on what they think their skill sets


are and what they think their role is.


So what do I mean by that?


Well, a lot of us in this room, for example, are SEOs.


And so we've created a box containing all of the things that SEOs are supposed to do


professionally, all the things we have the skill set to do, and for the most part, we


stay roughly inside that box.


But not everyone in here is an SEO.


Some of us are content marketers or other types of marketers or project managers or


entrepreneurs.


And still, we create these boxes for ourselves around the types of things that are our job


to do professionally, the types of things we have the skill set to do, and for the most


part, we stay in that box.


So today what I want to do is I want to break down the walls of these boxes we've created


for ourselves about what our marketing skill sets are, and I want to really reimagine what


our role looks like as marketers.


And I want to do that by introducing you to a concept called engineering as marketing,


which probably does not fit inside of your box right now, at least not yet.


Engineering as marketing is when you build interactive tools to acquire, convert, or


engage your leads.


It's a relatively new concept, but most of us are not doing much engineering as marketing


on our teams at all.


We're building pretty static landing pages, pretty static blog posts, website pages that


don't allow our users to have much interactivity at all.


Because we've decided for the most part as marketers that this engineering as marketing


stuff doesn't fit inside of the skill set that we have as marketers, and so we just


don't explore it.


And so what happens on our teams and on our offices is that the marketers are over here


and the engineers are over here, and sometimes we work together when we need to, but for


the most part, we've decided as marketers that that engineering stuff, that's not the


stuff we do.


And so we go into our marketing teams, we build marketing strategies that look like


this, centered around things that we're comfortable with and things that fit closely around our


skill set or our team skill set.


So we focus on SEO and content marketing and community building and email marketing and


PR and pay per click and social media marketing, but that other experimental engineering as


marketing stuff, that's over there.


We're not really doing that right now.


And so today I want to reimagine our role as marketers, take where we are and where


we've confined ourselves as marketers and just see what else is out there.


Specifically, I want to talk to you about your plan for engineering as marketing in


your own company, because there are really three ways you can go about tackling an engineering


as marketing strategy.


So number one is that you can use your engineering as marketing strategy for conversion, to have


awesome conversion rates on your sites, on your landing pages, on your blog posts, et


cetera.


Instead of having a static page, you build interactive experiences and I'll show you


some examples of what that looks like.


But engineering as marketing is not just about conversion and converting people who are already


on your site.


It's also about ways that you can get people to your site.


How can we build interactive experiences before people even get to our pages?


And number three, you can use engineering as marketing for an engagement strategy after


someone is already in your funnel, has given you an email address, has a warm lead, has


signed up for your product, has signed up for your service, whatever it might be, how


do you engage them and use engineering as marketing to do that?


So those are the three ways we're going to tackle and talk about today.


At the end of my conversation with you, I'm going to leave you with a toolkit that I've


built for you containing my 25 favorite pieces of software that you can use to build your


own engineering as marketing plan.


What you will find is that none of these tools in this toolkit I'll offer you require you


to know anything about writing code.


They are all built for marketers or people who don't write code to build awesome interactive


experiences and I'll share that toolkit with you today.


So before we jump into details, I just want to talk about why.


Why should you care about engineering as marketing?


Well, one of the fundamental premises of engineering as marketing is that it is the marketer's


responsibility to think about new and experimentative ways to acquire, convert and engage leads


on your site.


It's not just the engineer's job, it's our job too.


And today, since there are so many platforms out there emerging that you don't need to


know how to code to use, implementing an engineering as marketing strategy means that you get to


stop begging your engineering team to help with every single campaign.


It gives you a little bit of autonomy, a little bit of agency back into your hands as a marketer.


It also means you have an opportunity to double conversion rates and engagement.


I'll talk to you about some examples of engineering as marketing experiments that I have run.


I have myself where we've doubled our conversion rates by taking blog post content, static


content and just turning it into an interactive experience.


And also you get to differentiate from the same boring tactics all the rest of your competitors


are using when you implement a strategy like this.


So as I mentioned, one of the biggest ways to implement engineering as marketing is to


use it to convert people who come to your page.


Most marketers think about a very static page, a landing page, a blog post, a static piece


of content, but I want to show you some examples of people who really nail this engineering


as marketing thing.


They've got it down.


And the first example I want to show you is Moz, who we know and love.


So Moz has a separate page, an entire page, an entire tab on their website dedicated to


free tools for users and new leads to engage with.


Open site explorer is one of those examples.


You put in your URL and you get a really awesome analysis of your page and some action points


and recommendations for things to do to optimize.


And Moz is not dumb.


They know that this funnels people in and gives them a little sneak peek, a little bite


of what the experience will be like when they upgrade to a pro and become a paying user.


Another example, HubSpot has a how strong is your website calculator.


These two examples that I've just shown you are people building calculators and widgets


on their page to engage users in a new kind of way.


Crew.co has a really awesome quiz.


So that's why we've talked about calculators, but you can also use engineering as marketing


in other formats like quizzes, right?


We've all taken a quiz before.


This is not scary stuff.


Crew has realized that one of the biggest questions their customers have when they come


in and want to start building an app is should I build an app or a website?


And they were manually having to in their project management experience answer those


questions one by one for each of their users.


So they did something really smart.


They took a question that was a common frequently asked question in their onboarding experience


and they turned it into an interactive quiz for their users.


It creates something really engaging for the customer.


They feel like they're taking this fun thing that plops them into a declarative answer


about what they should do next.


And really all crew did was they took a blog post that they had about whether or not you


should build an app or a website and the different things you should consider and they made a


copy of that content and put it into a quiz.


IKEA does some really interesting things with engineering as marketing.


In fact, IKEA has built an augmented reality app where you can pull out your phone and


see in the comfort of your own home what your furniture will look like in your house before


you buy it.


And then they funnel you in to say, okay, now here's the button to purchase it.


And if you think that you need to know how to code in order to build augmented reality


experiences, you've got that wrong too.


And the toolkit that I will give you, I will show you some tools where you can even do


this stuff without writing any code.


I also want to show you a project that I've launched myself called art collecting school.


I mentioned that I run an online art startup and one of the biggest questions that people


have is, well, how does art even get priced?


I don't even understand anything about art.


And how do I even go about finding art in the first place?


And so what we did was we took a bunch of blog posts we had, a bunch of content that


was just on static pages on our website.


And we turned them into interactive experiences to onboard and to offer to our users to convert


them when they came to the page.


So art collecting school was a series of videos and interactive experiences.


You first landed in a video about how art gets priced.


That was a question that so many people had.


And then after you watch that short video, you enter into a game experience where you


get to guess the art price and there's a leader board where you can compete against other


people and it gives you real life experience to see if you actually understand this stuff


or not.


And then after you would experience that interactive experience in leader board, you would then


jump into another video on what your art buying personality was.


How to determine what your motivation is for buying art.


And after that, you would jump into a quiz that told you based on your answer system


questions what your art buying personality was.


All of this content originated as a static blog post.


What we did was we turned it into an interactive experience and saw 28% conversion rates on


this page.


Which was much better than we were doing just on our static blog posts.


So I want to talk to you about how you tactically build this stuff.


If you are a marketer, you're interested in having awesome conversions on your site, but


you don't write code, how do you build this stuff?


And I want to walk you through some examples of software tools that are going to allow


you to do this work.


So first example, lead quizzes.


We looked at a couple examples of engineering as marketing with quizzes.


Lead quizzes is a tool built specifically for marketers to allow you to do this.


Not only can you create a customized quiz for your users and for your visitors, but


also will funnel them through to the purchase of a product.


And walk them through the different steps.


Maybe you have multiple quizzes.


Maybe you have multiple interactive experiences and lead quizzes is a tool that you can use


to do that.


The interface is point, click, drag, drop.


Which we all can do.


Type form is another example of a quiz, but I want to talk to you about an unorthodox


way to use surveys as engineering as marketing.


One of the things that I love to do is use software tools in unintended ways.


Has anybody here ever read one of those books where it's like a choose your own adventure


book and you get to choose, answer a question and it takes you to a different chapter of


the book and then you answer a different question and it takes you somewhere else.


You get to choose the outcome of the story.


What would it look like if our content on our pages looked like that?


What would it look like if you read a piece of content, you engaged with it in some sort


of way and then went somewhere else and it was a customized experience for you based


on your answer and then you went somewhere else and each person could have their own


journey through our content?


How could you hack a quiz to do that?


Well quizzes have built in logic, right?


So when someone answers a question in a specific way, you can take them to a different question.


What if we weren't asking questions, we were showing content like a blog post?


Now let's look at some fancier stuff.


Motion AI is a tool that allows you to build artificial intelligence chat robots without


writing any code.


You just set a storyboard, point, click, drag, drop of the different outcomes and conversations


this chat bot can have with your users and you build your own artificial intelligence.


So if you want to walk someone through an onboarding experience, you want to welcome


someone to your site, allow them to ask some specific questions, you want to walk them


through blog post content, frequently asked questions, why can't we do it in this way?


Stencil is a tool that allows you to build your own video games for your users and gamified


experiences and bubble, which is my favorite platform of all these that I've shown you,


allows you without writing any code to build your own apps, mobile, web apps, yourself


with a point, click, drag, drop solution.


This tool bubble is really robust.


I actually want to show you a little bit more about all of the things that you can do in


these types of platforms and they're relatively new.


There's a new suite of tools coming out to us as marketers, us as nontechnical people


and it's our job to find them and use them.


So this platform bubble has three really important tabs inside of the software.


The first tab is the design tab, which you do not see up here.


The design tab is where you just design whatever you want the front end of the interface to


look like, whatever you want the site, the app to look like and you point, click, drag,


drop onto the page.


There's a database tab, too.


So you actually get to build your own fully functional database in this program as well.


The database runs on Amazon Web Services.


And so you get to define how you want to structure the database, think of it like a spreadsheet


where you get to decide what the headers and the columns are and you get to reference different


columns together.


Then there's a workflow tab and this is where the without code part comes in.


Because instead of your app, your mini app, your microsite being run on JavaScript or


any other coding language, it is in plain English.


And it literally says when the user clicks this button, then log them in.


And you can get really complex.


You can say when the user clicks this button and these three things are true but not this,


then log them in, then take them to this page, then save this piece of data.


I built algorithms on top of this platform.


So I want to show you an example of a project that was built on this platform bubble that


I'm mentioning.