me out a little because, well, I'll show you why. I think Google getting into the content


Welcome to MozCon 2017! [MozCon 2017] — Rand Fishkin

game is dangerous for all of us and something that we have to pay real attention to.


They've also been doing some I don't know, I really find this kind of sketchy. So this


list of the best accounting software, which I'm sure you've seen many card style formats


like this, this comes from the top ranking organic URL. If you go to that page, you'll


find an actual list. It will include all of these. It will have details about them. But


Google is sort of saying, oh, no, I think I'll just take your content and I'll publish


it in a format that gives you no clicks and no credit. Right? You don't even see a URL


there. There's nothing that you can click on. These will just bring you to searches


for these other products. I don't like it. I think that is breaking the fundamental contract


between web content producers and website owners and Google. Right? And that contract


has always been we produce stuff, you show it, but you give credit. You give credit,


you give some path. They're taking that away. And very frankly, it's troubling.


You might have also read AJ Kohn's amazing blog post recently on the challenges Google


is facing, the challenges all of us are facing, with Google deciding not to penalize link


spam but instead to mostly, mostly ignore it. And you might say, well, Rand, why is


that a problem? Well, here's the problem. If you are a spammer, you had to pay close


attention to the work that you were doing because you could get sites penalized or banned


and removed from Google. But now, now that it's being potentially ignored, you can kind


of spam and jam all you want and just see what works and what doesn't. And so I think


there's, like, this reemerging ecosystem of link spam out there, and that's a little troubling


as well. Google is also facing what I think is their


first real threat in years with Amazon's Alexa. I think Google knows that voice search is


a huge future, not the only future, but a huge future for search, and Alexa is a real


challenge. Google lost their first big case to the EU.


I mean, I mean big. $2.7 billion that they lost for promoting their own results ahead


of other folks' results. And I think this is actually a very good thing. I hope Google


does not win this case on appeal because I'd like to see Google get a little more careful


about how they display results and a little more fair about that.


Of course, that happened in the EU because in the U.S. this is nearly impossible. In


Canada, Google is facing some potential regulation of their results. You can check that out.


In the U.S., you know, in the U.S., Google is just a very smart, savvy political player.


So they were, I think, the second largest lobbyist, you know, donor to both Republican


and Democratic lawmakers over the last few years. They are also, this article, great


article from the Wall Street Journal, revealing that Google has been paying a lot of professors


and academic institutes to produce research saying that everything they're doing is good


and fine and no one should pay any attention to them from a regulatory standpoint.


Which, I don't know, I know it's legal, but sketchy, man. Is that not doing evil? It's


like doing, that's kind of evil. But they are still the unquestionable behemoth. I have


some great data to show thanks to, we've formed a partnership with Jumpshot and I want to


say a big thank you to Sean and Randy from Jumpshot. I think, Sean, you are actually


here. I don't know if you're in the room. If you are, raise your hand. You super rocked.


Oh my God, look at him back there. You rock. All right, I know I only have a few minutes,


but yesterday, yesterday, Sunday morning, I emailed Sean. I'm like, hey, I need this


other data for the presentation tomorrow. He's like, sure, I got nothing going on. It's


Sunday. Let me just do that for you. Sends it over. Phenomenal, phenomenal. So let's


ask ourselves, where do people search on the internet? Where do they search? Turns out


this is a breakdown from the click stream level, right? Jumpshot monitors millions of


U.S. Web users through their browsers, both mobile and desktop. And you can see that core


Google search, all right, I don't think anything on here is hugely surprising except images.


I almost could not believe images, and in fact, I'm going to do a whole blog post with


the data that Jumpshot has about Google images. Basically, most of that Google image search


is coming from Google core search. But once someone does a Google image search, they do


like hundreds of Google image searches, right? I think this is mostly people in bars who


are like, no, I think he kind of looks like Bradley Cooper. Look at, see, Bradley Cooper,


no, man, he doesn't look like him. He looks like this other guy. I think that's what it


is. That's my suspicion. This is May 2017. So that was October. This is May. You can


see it's changed a little bit. I actually have a delta here.


We think this is because of Halloween. October has an unusual spike in image search. We believe


that's a Halloween-related thing. And then this one over here, so Google Maps


going down is actually compensated by Google's local packs getting more of those clicks.


So map search is not getting the referrals. And then Amazon and Facebook, I'm getting


the, I'm interested to see that both of those are growing their share of searches. I think


that's fascinating. So far, 2017 is trending about 10 to 15% higher


in search volume, total search volume, than 2016 was. There's some seasonality, of course,


that you can see in there. And I think that's a good thing for us, right? That suggests


search is still growing, even in a very mature market like the United States. That is a very


good sign for search marketers, very good sign for Google, certainly.


We also had a breakdown, U.S., U.K., Canada. So you can see in there, right, how many searches


people are performing on average per month and, you know, the percent of searchers with


10-plus sessions. So there are a surprising number, I think, a surprising number of people


who perform fewer than 10 searches per month. That really, really kind of shocked me.


I just, I guess it's because of the world that we live in. I can't imagine only doing


nine searches in a month. Someone told me, you only have nine Google searches to do this


month. I would be panicking. That would freak me the F out.


All right. Click-through rate breakdown. So many folks, myself included, have been worried


that a lot of what Google is doing is cannibalizing the clicks that organic listings like the


ones we all try and optimize for are getting. And I think this data is suggesting that is


not the case. This lid is suggesting I need to work out more.


Geez. SEO, I think, is not actually being cannibalized.


You can see, so paid search up there, right, getting about, you know, 2.5, 3 percent, and


then no-click searches getting around 40-ish percent, 45 percent sometimes, and the rest


going to organic. And that's been fairly flat over the last year and a half or so.


So I wanted to ask, I asked the Jumpshot guys, like, hey, Sean, can you tell me what are


the web's top traffic refers? Great. Now I'm getting myself all wet because I can't. All


right. And Sean sent them to me. So this is basically a breakdown of the share of referral


traffic sent by all of these websites. These are the top eight, I think.


I don't know. I guess it doesn't surprise me, but Google being ten times bigger than


anyone else freaks me out. This is just Google's world and we are living in it. And that is,


that is frustrating. That's hard, right? So here, over here you can see when Reddit stopped


using Imgur for their image hosting and that meant Imgur dropped dramatically in terms


of their traffic. I mean, Reddit is a behemoth too. That is somewhat surprising to me that


Reddit is so big, right? They're bigger than Bing in terms of the referral traffic that


they send. But a lot of that was to Imgur. And in seven months, right, from October to


May, Google actually gained more share than anyone but the top five had. Insane. Insane.


That's, that's frustrating. Not all traffic refers are equal though. So if you're rooting


for Facebook here, be warned. Take a look there. Facebook sends most of its traffic


to the top ten. Google is, Google is really evenly distributed. Right? I mean, this is,


look at that. The ten thousands or the lower ten thousand sites that, beyond the first


ten thousand sites that Google refers traffic to actually get more share than the top ten


or the top hundred. That's good news, right? Google is sending traffic everywhere. Facebook


really buys us to the top. Reddit and YouTube even more so. Right? They basically send traffic


to a few websites but not the rest of us. So we, we live in a Google world here. I mean,


when it comes to web traffic, Google is just so unbelievably dominant. I don't think most


marketers even recognize how dominant Google really is in this space. I think we think


of Facebook and Amazon and other players as being potential. But stay tuned on Wednesday.


I'm going to talk a lot more about how we can fight back against this rather than just


scaring you. I will have a presentation on that.


So we've had ten years of MozCon. It's been an extraordinary journey. And this is the


first one. This is the only photo I can find of it. 2007. You can see donuts, the only


snack we could afford at the time. We had one presenter, a slightly chubbier version


of me. And I gave the presentation, I think it was, was it like seven hours of presentations,


and I was the only presenter. So I did like here's my keyword research presentation and


now here's my link building presentation. I don't know. I was young and dumb. Was anyone


there for that? Does anyone remember that? A couple of folks? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.


So MozCon 2017, what do we have in store for you? Well, we do have an exceptional lineup


of speakers and then they invited this guy. I don't know who he is. Looks like he has


a ridiculous mustache. We've got we've really worked with our speakers on making sure that


the tactics and the takeaways are very actionable. We have lots of snacks, lots of great snacks.


I'm looking forward to that. A giant friendly robot who you can hug and take photos with.


And I'm very pleased to say that Charlene Ditch is back running MozCon and she's done


an amazing job for years and now she's working as a contractor and runs her own events business


and it has been wonderful working with her. We have one hashtag for you, hashtag MozCon.


Don't need to use the year or anything like that. There's two parties. Those are on the


ones tonight, the crawl and then on Wednesday, the garage party. We have three days of flawless


weather. Like Seattle is basically like, oh, the rest of the country is really hot or humid


or whatever. Let's just keep it a nice 75 degrees and sunny. We can do that for you.


On Tuesday night, MozCon Ignite will be hosted by my wife Geraldine. I hope you will all


join us. That's an extraordinary event. One of the most special things that we do every


year and really a powerful experience to see your fellow marketers outside of a marketing


context, giving some really interesting talks. As always, I recommend in order to keep hygienic,


in order to prevent the spread of germs from many countries and many states, let's all


fist bump instead of handshake. I think that will really, really help science. Marketers


love science and science says the fist bump is the way to go. So let's do that.


We have a code of conduct here at MozCon. It is very important to us. I'm going to tell


you a brief story about a project that I'm working on. So last year, sorry, this is hard.


Last year I got an email from a woman who said, Rand, I'm sorry that I need to share


this with you, but I don't know where else to go. She had attended an event that I had


spoken at and she was assaulted at that event by a speaker, by a speaker in our field. And


we told the organizers about this event. She told the event organizers and they said, we'll


take care of it. And then a few months later she saw on their website that they had reinvited


that speaker to keynote the event. And I was heartbroken. Like I did not think


that kind of thing happened to us. I didn't think that's who we were.


And so I'm not just going to tell you about this event. I did talk to the organizers.


They uninvited this guy. I've tried to make sure that he doesn't speak at other events


as well. But he is not alone. This happens in our field to people that we care about.


And we can put a stop to it. And that's why I'm starting a project called


Project Events Safe. The website is not yet live, but it will be soon. And I've been working


with some lawyers here in Seattle who have donated some time to help make this happen,


as well as many organizers, dozens of organizers around the world who I've emailed and they've


said they'd be excited to participate, hundreds of speakers who said they'd do the same. And


within this launch, I hope you'll all help me. But this is a real issue, and we want


to solve it. Thank you.


MozCon 2014 - 26 - Dana DiTomaso - Prove Your Value

Hello.


Sorry to hit my part about asking who is from Canada, so sorry.


But hi.


I think I'm the solitary Canadian speaking this year.


So about out A. There we go.


All right.


So where this came from is actually Annie's presentation is a great companion to mine


because Annie talks about all these great ways to pull out your data and make it look


fantastic.


I'm going to talk about how do you figure out what data you're supposed to be giving


to the clients in the first place.


So last year they did this Moz blog survey to ask what they should be talking about on


the Moz blog, and I outlined a bunch of the things that I saw that indicated that this


was obviously a topic that we needed to discuss in the community.


Number three, clients, customers misunderstand my work.


That's a big one.


Clients don't get it.


I'll talk about that in a second.


Politics and buy-in.


I got fired.


Measurement analysis.


How am I supposed to report?


And clients' customers are difficult.


Why can't they just agree to what I want them to do?


Why do they have to ask me so many questions?


And of course Annie being awesome, she tweeted this.


I think it was earlier this year.


Reporting on last click attribution in 2014 is like buying a football team and only paying


the players who score.


And I think that's a really important thing to remember is that there's so many different


pieces that go into the total marketing mix for a client.


And if you only report on the players who score, you're doing yourself and the client


a disservice.


Maybe it makes you look good, but it makes the social team look bad, for example, and


that's not fair to anybody.


And then Ian Lurie posted this, a post about the one trick ponies get shot.


Who read that post?


Okay.


After MozCon, go to the URL, read Ian's post.


It is an excellent companion to what I'm talking about today because it's talking about the


evolution of digital marketing with strategy, with reporting, and what that means when we


talk to our clients.


So now I have a couple stories to tell you.


First one, last year I showed some ads for a tattoo removal service and they were really


funny and people laughed and I got a few comments about it.


That client totally fired us two months later.


And it wasn't because the ads weren't funny.


They had a fantastic click through rate.


They got lots of leads.


But we weren't able to prove our value to that client.


They didn't see the value in what we did because our report wasn't making it clear to them.


So they fired us.


And at the time we were like, oh, screw them.


But now it makes sense, now that we've gone back and thought about it.


Story number two is another client of ours, a very large home builder all over North America,


we deal with home sales for two cities in Alberta, Edmonton and Calgary, and their VP


of marketing who is not our client, we deal with the marketing manager for the small division


of this much larger company, decided they should have one agency of record for all of


Alberta and it's a $5 million engagement.


They put it out to RFP.


We're five people.


There's no way we could have been on this business.


Plus we don't do any offline.


They needed TV, radio, print, digital, everything.


So a big agency got the contract and our client said, I love you guys, but I have to go with


this.


She said, but I saved a little bit of money.


So can I pay you to report on what this other company is doing?


And that's all I want.


And maybe a little bit of SEO advice.


But mostly just tell us what's going on.


What's important to them is making sure that everybody is rowing in the same direction.


So that's what we report on.


And so it's been going on for six months and because of these reports, we now have an opportunity


because the agency is actually really doing a terrible job with digital, we now have an


opportunity to bid on the digital pieces again to get them back in our agency.


And it's strictly through the strength of our reporting, which is really exciting.


And so those sorts of things came together and said, you know, this is a topic that I


should be talking about at MozCon to tell all of you how to report so well that you'll


never get fired.


In theory, not guaranteed.


So how many people here have said the client doesn't get it?


Come on.


I know more of you have.


You're lying.


I see some hands at the back.


Okay.


The client doesn't get it is never an excuse.


I mean, okay, sometimes clients are kind of dumb, shall we say?


Maybe?


Just a little bit.


But the client doesn't get it means that we're doing a crappy job of explaining what it is


that we do to the client.


The client doesn't get it a shorthand for I cannot be bothered to explain, why can't


they just agree?


This is too much work.


I'm really frustrated the client doesn't get it.


Part of that, too, also comes from ego.


We're doing the work.


We think we're doing an amazing job.


Why doesn't the client recognize that?


The client doesn't get it.


We have to put our egos aside and think about it from the client's perspective because the


clients don't always care about what you care about.


The clients care about their business.


They care about selling houses.


That's great that you got all those Facebook shares, that piece of viral content that you


made, but it didn't actually sell more houses.


I didn't get more test drives because you optimized the landing page.


That's the kind of stuff the client's going to care about.


So that client doesn't get it is really a fundamental disconnect between the things


that you care about and what the client cares about.


And then there's also the discussion about how do you define great work?


Is it awards?


Is it industry accolades?


Is it speaking at conferences?


What to you says this is amazing work?


Or is it hitting the client's goals?


And there's been a lot of talk here about traditional advertising agencies and how they're


coming to get us and I'm actually on the board of the advertising club of Edmonton, so I


do deal a fair amount with advertising agencies, and one of the things that's interesting is


that they hire creative directors based on how many awards they've won.


Not good work for the client.


They don't measure success in the same way that we can.


This is our competitive advantage.


And one of the things that separates a great client from an evil client, the light in the


black hat, is goals.


That's the number one thing that differentiates those types of clients.


Being able to say to a client and say what do you care about?


What is your primary unit of value?


And of course clients always have multiple things that they want to put out.


They say, oh, well, you know, I want to sell a bunch of cars, but I also really want to


make sure that people are feeling good about me in the community and all these other primary


metrics.


And the point is if you can define that one primary metric value and report everything


based on that, it can really help you look good to the client and also it can help you


do great work for the client, work that matters.


And setting real goals is totally scary, and I get that, because once you set the goal,


then oh, God, you have to meet it.


And there's nothing worse than not meeting goals.


You know, we've heard a lot about failure, right, and not the Olympics, for example.


And so failure is the worst.


Like I've had spectacular failures, as I'm sure many of you have, and it feels like crap,


and then you get up and after a while it gets better and you feel like maybe you can leave


the house again.


But when you're setting goals at work, sometimes this is people's jobs on the line, right?


So if your client is the marketing manager and they say, well, here's our goal, but I


really don't want to commit to something specific because I'm terrified that if I don't hit


it I'm going to lose my job, there's a lot of pressure on you, a lot of pressure on the


client, but setting those goals is the only thing that's actually going to mean that your


work has value.


I also want to talk about the idea of goals versus aspirations.


So goals we're pretty familiar with, right, smart goals, talk about that in a second.


Aspirations are those kind of fuzzy things, like make people feel better about us, brand


awareness, right?


It's not measurable, but it's important, but it's not a goal.


And often sometimes you have to go back to the smart goals, right, specific, measurable.


Oh, I always forget the A. What's the A, guys?


Actionable, thank you.


Realistic time based, right?


Every goal should be a smart goal, and if it isn't, then it's an aspiration.


So next I have some real goals from real clients with their permission.


It was funny writing those emails.


They're like, hey, I'm doing a talk on goals and I want to show yours because they're not


very good.


Is that okay?


And I'm like, yeah, do you mind not showing our brand name?


I'm like, yeah, no problem, that's cool.


These are real actual goals from our clients that we've received in the past, I think,


three months.


So first one, increased total sales of 17.5 million.


This is actually by the end of 2014.


Great.


Smart goal.


We can do this.


No problem.


And it breaks down further, like, what industry specifically they want to attract.


It's a B2B business.


Increased customer satisfaction rating.


Hmm, feels a little fuzzy, right?


Like this is not necessarily the best goal in the world.


It doesn't say by how much, doesn't say how they measure their customer satisfaction rating


now.


It doesn't say what's going to happen when we get there.


Are we going to keep going?


How are we going to make this happen?


It's okay.


So here's an even worse one.


Brand organization.


And you can insert any organization in this.


This is so generic as the brand statement and communicate the economic and social value


of organization to stakeholders.


Okay.


All right.


So you're just going to, like, slap that tag line under the logo.


So it was actually like the brand statement was quite lengthy.


And how are you going to communicate the economic and social value?


What is exactly the economic and social value of your organization?


Who are the stakeholders?


How are we going to communicate to this?


A million questions.


This is a real goal for a real company that does a lot of business.


And then my favorite and probably the worst one, evaluate the effectiveness of current


communication tools in order to ensure profitability and growth.


Oh, you guys.


That goal is really crappy.


And we actually went to the client after they sent us this and we said this goal is not


good and they said, yeah, we know, we're sorry.


And I said to them, why?


And they said, well, we had to write something and we were in this thing all day and they


hired a consultant and we were doing goals and we wrote down this goal and the consultant


was like, that's great.


I'm like, hire that guy.


What are you doing?


And so that was really interesting to kind of walk the client through that process.


And they totally knew that goal was bad.


They were aware of its badness.


And we're working with them to make it better.


But a lot of times, because, again, setting goals is scary, they set goals that are kind


of crappy.


Keep that in mind, give the client some slack.


Sometimes there's outside forces at work when you're talking about goal setting.


And so once you finally get that goal set, like selling slices of cake, then you can


start to build your strategy and you can think about your report as well.


And when you start to build the strategy, I'm going to show an example later on, you


can think about how everything is going to relate to that goal.


All of your social, your email leads, your email marketing campaigns, your blog posts,


any other messaging that you have, your offline messaging, everything has to relate back to


that goal.


And if it doesn't, you can toss it.


You can say this is not important right now.


Maybe we'll write it down for later if that ever becomes a goal.


But it also means that you get really laser focused on that goal.


And you're not letting extraneous things like all the cool stuff you learned at MozCon distract


you from hitting your client's goals.


So here's another example.


We have a client who is an adult toy store, shall we say.


And I kind of want to show the PPC ads for that one maybe later.


They're really fun.


So she's probably our most fun client and the most surreal meetings because we meet


at her store.


So yeah.


My account manager texts her mom, she's like guess who our clients are?


Her mom thinks that we don't actually have real jobs.


So anyway, this client, one of her goals is she wants to improve in-store traffic.


Her e-commerce traffic is doing great, but she wants more people to come into the store


and buy stuff because otherwise why is she spending all this money on rent?


So one of the things that we talked about was, well, we should do a technical audit


for mobile and then to sell it to the client so that to get her on board doing this to


say, well, the reason why we need to do a technical audit for mobile is that if people


are searching at work for adult toys, they're probably not searching on their work computers


which are totally monitored by the IT department.


They're going to search on their phones or they're going to be out and about and say


what's the address of that place and they're going to search on their phones.


So the technical audit is really important because it's going to help us create a better


mobile experience.


It's going to help us figure out what we need to do to make mobile better for the customers


that you do have and also to make it better for mobile SEO.


You tell that to the client, they're like, oh, great, yeah, let's do it.


But if you say, oh, we have to do a technical audit because it's important, the client's


like, I don't know why.


But if you relate to that goal, they're much more likely to approve the kinds of things


you want to get done to get them to that point.


The other important thing to consider is the realisticness of goals.


This is where keyword research comes in really handy.


If the client says I'm going to sell a billion slices of cake and in your keyword research


you find out that only two people Googled cake in the past year, you're going to have


to have a really difficult conversation with a client.


And we have had these conversations before where we say, look, I know that you think


that this is the number of leads you're going to get by showing up well for this particular


set of phrases, but there's just not enough people in the city that you serve Googling


this.


We're going to have to branch out or you have to revise your expectations.


And you have the data, so this is how you have the conversation, so that you don't later


on have a really disappointing report and the client says, well, you suck, you're fired,


even though it's not really your fault.


It's just that's the number of people searching for the thing.


And then you can consider things like can we increase the demand for this particular


product and more advertising stuff.


But in the meantime, this is the data you have and this is what you're going to do with


it.


One of our superpowers as digital marketers is that we can measure almost everything.


I was talking about a lot of measurable stuff, especially the stuff that Annie talked about,


how to get all those measurements out of it.


We can show everything in our reports.


We can so, for example, TV or radio.


The people who report on TV or radio give reports that say, yes, we spent all your money.


Yay, please keep paying us.


Like they don't maybe they'll say how many people were probably watching the TV show


or listening to the radio at the particular time the ad was shown, but they have no sense


necessarily of how many people were engaged with it, how many people actually listened


to it.


You know, one thing that I say a lot is just because the ad was shown doesn't mean anybody


looked at it.


And that's a really important thing to be able to report on.


So as marketers, we can take this and say, well, we know that the radio ad played ten


times between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on this particular channel in this market.


Was there an increase in, say, direct traffic?


Did we set up a tracking URL?


Were there visits to it?


Did we set up a tracking number?


Were there phone calls to that phone number?


And I actually have a whiteboard Friday that talks about this as well.


I recommend looking that up.


I'll tweet out the link to it later.


But those are things that you can report on, which also makes you valuable because it's


bringing it back to those goals.


And then if the client is spending thousands and thousands of dollars on radio and TV and


it isn't working, it's not you saying the traditional advertisers are bad.


It's just the data.


And that's you're just showing them what's going on.


And then, you know, if they cut the TV budget, then maybe that's more money for you, which


is nice for everybody.


The other thing to remember is don't say the word conversions to clients.


Just banish that from our outside the office lexicon.


Conversions is a really nice thing to say internally, but when you say it to a client,


they immediately think sales.


And sometimes a conversion is not a sale.


Sometimes a conversion is a simple act of a client going on a website and educating


themselves about something.


So this is really nice if you work with government clients, for example, or if you're in a house


in government and you're running, say, an anti-smoking campaign and you want to reach


out to 10% of the people in Washington state.


Load up a geography report, take a look at where the visits come from, you know, and


if they download a free, you know, anti-smoking kit or something, that's a conversion.


But you don't want to say the word conversions.


You want to say something else like engagement or aware citizen or, you know, and find out


what kind of language that client uses to make this happen.


What kind of language they circulate in their reports and then that's what you need to use


in your report, but don't use the word conversions.


And the other thing to think about is that in our industry, we have it's been so much


data, right?


Like over the past three days we've been looking at all these different ways to get new kinds


of data and cool data and interesting data and I'm really excited about all the new data


I'm going to have to look at when I get back to the office, but we don't have a data problem.


We have a filter problem.


We are the fire hose that takes in all this data and our job is to still it down to this


little tiny drinkable coffee cup for the client and we don't necessarily do a really good


job of that.


Like, look at all these cool things and client's like, I just want more people in my store.


I don't care about bounce rate, right?


So you have to dial that down as much as you possibly can and boil it down to that essence


and again relate that to the goals and have that two-way conversation with your client


as well.


So I have more people walking into your store.


Are you selling more things?


So this in-store client is just one location.


She's never counted the number of people who walked in her door before and related that


to the number of times that she sold something.


So just doing something simple like installing a people counter can give you the kind of


data where you can talk about things like your in-store sales rate and that can also


make it valuable.


So you can find out from the client, hey, how was your month?


Did you have the best June ever?


Which you did.


But did you, you know, what are the people who were walking in the store?


Did you find that more of them were buying something, were less than buying something?


What was your average sales size?


How was that going up?


Have that conversation back and forth with your client.


Again related to goals.


And if you're working with really, really, really big companies like we were with the


example that I talked about in the beginning, the home builder client, every contractor


at that company, and you know there's a ton of them, there's probably some you don't even


know about, are all cogs in the big company machine.


And your job is to be the most important cog.


Be the barbecue at the barbecue.


Become indispensable through really goal-focused reporting.


And that means that when the budget cuts come in or the marketing manager, new marketing


manager gets hired, because you're so valuable, they're going to keep you and fire everybody


else.


Again, not guaranteed.


Really likely, though.


But you don't become that valuable by hoarding the data.


Saying no, no one else can look at these reports, they're special.


I love fighting with the web designers to get Google Analytics access.


That's the best part of my job.


And they say things like, oh, sorry, we can't give you access.


I'm like, you know what, you can.


I know you can.


And here's where you go.


I made a screen shot.


And then they argue with me.


Like, oh, I don't know.


I don't know if I can do it.


Like, I know you use MailChimp for your e-mail program.


Like, I know this is the log in.


Can I have it, please?


So don't hoard that data.


Be open and free with your data.


You know, again, like the TV people are never going to report on what you do.


But you can report on what the TV people do and you can give it to them and they will


find it valuable.


It will make their jobs better.


It will make their lives easier.


They will thank you for it.


They are less likely to crap all over you when they're asking for more budget.


And the other thing is be honest.


Even if things are going really bad, especially if things are going really, really bad.


Nothing is more awkward than having that conversation with a client saying so your organic traffic


went down 80% last month and your leads went down, like, 200%.


And you get to tell the client that and they're like, wow, that's really fantastically terrible.


But because you've built up this trust over time, because you've built up these results,


because they trust you, because you're reporting on results, they won't fire you right away.


Maybe if that kept going over several months, they might fire you.


But for this home builder client, we had this succession.


Their old website was terrible.


And so we had this succession of reports where organic was just dropping every single month


and every month we were like waiting for the new website.


Let's just hang on.


And literally for a year every report said that.


And then finally a new website launched and the organic went up something like 173% in


the first month.


And the officers were like, oh, thank goodness that paid off.


But it was just getting the client to trust us and just hang in there.


We'll get there.


I promise.


And another thing with being honest is especially if you're working with large companies or


government organizations, people are really afraid to tell these people the truth.


So we were working with an advertising agency and a project and we delivered the final report


for this project.


It was a PPC campaign and we couldn't get Google Analytics access at all for the entire


campaign.


So we couldn't report on whether or not people were actually doing the thing that we want


them to do.


People clicked on the ads.


It just dropped off.


All we had was AdWords access, no analytics access.


And so in the report we wrote we don't recommend that you do this sort of campaign again until


you can give us analytics access.


And the advertising agency wrote us and said, oh, this is a bad idea.


You shouldn't criticize in the final report.


You know, I want to piss them off.


They're a big company.


And we kept it in and we sent it to them anyway.


And I was talking to someone from this company just casually a couple months later and she


said, you know, I really hate it when these agencies are so afraid we're going to fire


them so they blow smoke up our ass.


And I thought, well, good.


We remind ourselves it's not our job to make a client feel good about their bad decisions.


You have to be honest.


Because if you're like, oh, yeah, that sounds great and then it ends up being terrible,


now it's your fault, even though it was the client's stupid idea in the first place.


So remember that.


Always be honest with your clients.


Now that we've talked about all that stuff, reporting again, how can you easily show progress?


What we found really helpful is by repeating the goals every single month.


Hammer away at those goals.


Always be showing it.


And it can seem really repetitive to you, but to the client it's really clear to show


that progress over the next, you know, six months, year, two years, ten years.


The example I have later, the client's been with me for 13 years.


And so showing progress over that length of time is really interesting to show how their


business has changed and how our business has changed and how we did SEO 13 years ago


is certainly a lot different than how we do it now, but the goals are still there.


The other important thing is can anyone read and understand your report?


So another client story had a client who our contact got fired quite unexpectedly, and


we thought, well, that's it.


You know, the client contact got fired.


We hadn't actually built up any other contacts at this company yet because we've only been


working with them for a couple of months, and they hired someone new who came in and


I thought, well, you know, every marketing manager has their, like, pet digital agency


that they bring along with them to new companies, and we thought, well, that's it, we're done.


And we did our first meeting with this new client contact, and she said, I went over


the reports for the last six months, everything looked great, totally happy with how things


are going, let's get started on continuing on.


Like, oh, what a pleasant and wonderful surprise.


Totally didn't get fired.


And I think that that's also important to take yourself out of the picture.


Could you hand that report to anyone and they would be able to read it and understand what's


going on?


And do those metrics refer back to your goals?


Don't just have metrics for the sake of having shiny metrics.


Don't just have metrics that make you look good.


Have real metrics that report back to the goals.


So this is a chart that we do for every single one of our clients.


It's cobbled together from, like, some blog post Avinash did a couple years ago, but also


a whole bunch of other things we realize work really well for clients.


Talk about a goal.


So this is one of the goals from the beginning, the increased growth sales to 17.5 million.


KPIs, things that we need to make sure that we get to report on, things we need from the


client, growth sales, average sale size, average time to close the sale.


Tactics, and this continues on, this is not just all the chart, but, you know, use lead


tracking to determine a percentage of lead sources per industry and their source.


Use lead scoring to identify high close rate, high fast closing deals in their source.


This is all stuff we want to be able to report on.


Metrics, this is where Annie comes in.


We need to find out the lead form fields using the multi attribution model.


Where are those leads coming from?


What are the different touch points they make before they convert on the website?


And in the report, the things that we need to report on that we have access to, leads,


leads to channels, high value leads to channels.


We give this to the client at the very beginning of the engagement.


And we go over this.


So we're actually starting with the report.


Make sure that you go to the client very early on and identify this is the stuff we're going


to need so the clients are working on getting you access if it's complicated.


Big companies, this always takes forever to get access to anything.


And then in the report, make sure that the client knows this is what you're going to


get from us.


So there's that opportunity to adjust and reflect and make changes if they feel like


maybe it's not going to be easy or actually now that I've thought about it, maybe I want


to report on this instead or that goal is crazy, let's change that.


All that kind of stuff can go into at this point.


So there's no surprises later.


The goal here is you never want to report on a vacuum.


You never want to report on data in isolation.


You're always relating it back to that goal.


And you're also removing, again, that ego, that look at this awesome crap I did.


You're removing that from the equation entirely.


You're just saying this is the metric.


It relates back to the goal.


It removes a lot of the, you know, trying to make yourself the puffery, making yourself


look good from the reports.


And it also shows that every client is a special snowflake and every report is custom for them.


Another thing to think about when you're writing out these reports is you try really hard to


stay away from jargon.


So instead of saying we would like to implement maybe testing use and optimizely to ensure


that we're increasing our form leads, you can say we're going to try a couple different


landing pages and see what converts better.


Really avoid the jargon.


The clients don't care.


You can just see them glaze over.


Sometimes I'll be in a meeting and I get really excited about something and I start getting


technical and Michaela, our account manager, kicks me under the table.


Shut up, Dana.


Stop talking about that.


You're losing them.


And so it's important to cut down on the jargon as much as you possibly can.


And again, when you're having these conversations, you're relating everything back to that main


goal at all times.


Something else that's really valuable in a report is to include one page that has everything


on it that you can rip out of the report and hand it to the CEO.


For example, because usually you're not necessarily reporting directly to the CEO.


Let's say you're reporting to VP marketing, marketing manager.


This can also go to a board of directors, for example, which is valuable not for profits


because they often will look at the stuff and decide how they're going to take the budget.


Having that one page that explains everything can be enormously valuable to help save your


client's butt when budget time comes around and they say is there any value from hiring


this company?


I think we should fire them.


And they can say, well, look at this one page.


And because, you know, CEOs are busy people, sometimes they just want to look at one page.


They don't actually care about your 20 page report.


They just want to know right now how are things performing.


And every report must be custom.


I understand the lure of having a standard template that you set up and then you just


do an export every month and it automatically goes to the client, for example.


Every report must be custom.


Yes, it's more time consuming.


Yes, it takes more time.


But raise your rates.


It's always good to raise your rates now and again.


And make sure that the client is seeing the value in the report.


And if they see the value, they're going to be okay with the extra time and the extra


effort it takes to make these custom reports.


And stop reporting when you're done.


I understand the temptation when the client is paying you, say, like $50,000 a month and


you think, oh, I can't give them five pages if they're giving us that much money.


They're going to fire us.


They're not going to think I'm doing anything.


But the report should speak for itself.


Stop reporting when you're done.


Do not bulk up a report just to make yourself look awesome.


And reporting also shouldn't be a chore.


I have another story to tell about this.


So Chris, my coworker.


Where are you, Chris?


Please wave.


There he is.


So Chris started with us six months ago.


And I up until that point I really hated reporting.


It was pretty much the worst part of my job.


And I'm a serial procrastinator.


Like expert level.


I'm a level 90 procrastinator.


I have honed it over many years.


And I would put it off and put it off and put it off until like a killer account manager


would be like, Dana, you're going to sit down right now and do that report and I'm going


to sit here until it's done.


And I hated doing it because it was boring.


And then Chris started and we thought, oh, new person.


You get to do reports.


And Chris got really excited about doing reporting.


Like he's engaged by it, he's excited about it, the changes that he's made to make them


look better has been really fantastic.


Just having someone else be fired up about reporting has really made it better for us


as a company and also for myself.


I don't dread report week now anymore.


It's like, okay, this week is report week and we're going to blow through it and it's


going to be awesome.


And if you are like me, a procrastinator, be bored with reporting, get someone else


to help you who is fired up about it.


Because you have to treat reporting like it's the most awesome part of your job.


Being bored with reports is going to show in the report.


The client is going to think that you are a chore to them and they will be less excited


about continuing to pay your bills.


You have to show that enthusiasm.


In fact, reporting should probably be the most exciting part of your job because this


is the part where you get to shine and say, look, look at this awesome stuff we did.


Remember that post that we made because Richard Baxter showed us how to make it awesome?


That resulted in all these sales or whatever the client's metric happens to be.


So next slide is an old report.


This is a six� okay.


So this is� I'm going to feel the shame.


This is a real report I made almost six years ago.


It's so bad.


It doesn't even say the word leads on it.


And that's the client's primary metric value.


Right?


Google local business center had just come out.


This is like a trip down memory lane.


Upgrade the CMS and provide a site map listing to Google webmaster central.


I did that.


That's great.


Client doesn't actually care about any of this.


Thank goodness they're actually still with us.


This is the client who has been around for 13 years.


I'm so glad they were so patient with me while I struggled through crappy, crappy reporting.


This is the report that we do now.


This is the main page of the report.


This is the one page rip it out and actually she does actually rip it out and give it to


the CEO.


Every month our client contact here is the marketing manager.


So we show visitors by channel because it's something that they think about.


And some of the channels they manage and some of the channels we manage.


So it's important for them to see the total picture.


So for example, internally they handle social and email and red is bad and green is good,


for example.


So, you know, email, you did really great in May with email.


That was super impressive.


Thank goodness you're starting a new email campaign.


But then for them their primary metric of value is leads.


So if we can show growth in leads month after month compared to last year, it's also a seasonal


business.


So comparing to the same time last year is very important for them.


It's actually an accounting firm.


So they typically from April is the big month and then after that visits typically go down.


But they want to make sure that they're seeing increases compared to last month and last


year.


That's also an important metric.


For them this report makes sense.


And for them this report means that they know that we've got their best interests at mind


and that we're focused on making sure that their goals happen.


So from shame to something better for sure.


And now for my last thing, I have something everybody, you have your Roger plushies, right?


Can you all take them out for me?


Okay.


I have mine over here.


So repeat after me.


I solemnly swear that I will never report on crappy metrics just to make myself feel


good.


Do you all mean it?


All right.


Thank you very much.


So I think we actually have time for a couple of questions.


If anybody wants to go to a microphone we'll probably be able to get to you.


I love what you said about raising your rates because if you prove your value, that's when


you can raise your rates and charge more, which is kind of the name of the game.


You should raise your rates every year.


So you deliver reports once a month.


Is that your standard?


Usually, yeah.


Sometimes there's different time periods.


Is there ever a time when it's appropriate to go outside that framework, weekly updates,


things like that?


Yeah.


Can you talk about what?


If there's a really high volume campaign that you're doing, so for example when we're doing


large volume campaigns or thinking about, for example, campaigns that we've done for


government agencies when it's a fixed length, so maybe it's just six weeks and it's PPC


and here's a very specific goal, then we would definitely look at things weekly.


But the reports we deliver on a weekly basis are extremely tactically focused, like here's


the adjustments that we need to make, but we need feedback from you.


So it just has to be very specific.


We find that working with car dealerships is actually a good example.


I know there's some people here who work with car dealerships.


They're extremely sales promotion focused.


So often there's a special report that will go out dealing with that specific weekend.


Or if there's a new show home opening for our home builder client, like a report about


that part on its own.


Mackenzie.


Dana, you are my favorite person in the whole world right now.


I just wanted to jump out of my seat and hug you during your whole presentation.


That would have been okay.


This is what we have been painfully struggling through for the last year really.


We've been making some progress, but the one thing I wanted to ask you about was on the


SMART goals stuff.


So as you know a little bit about what we do, it's the long game.


We're talking two to three years sometimes in terms of ramp up.


So we're very goal centric in our reporting and it will be things like affecting leads


like lead form submissions and something about thought leadership moving forward, building


the brand.


Essentially those are the general two goals that I can give you an example of.


I hesitate to put a time frame or some kind of a tangible guideline around, like for example


those lead submission goals because it's so misleading that if we say oh, it will be six


months and we're going to raise it this much because if we get to the six months and we


haven't done that, then they're upset and we're doing tremendous great work, but they're


not going to wait two to three years for something to come to fruition.


So how do we report on those small victories given those parameters but without misleading


them and without selling ourselves short?


I think you need to make sure that the goal starts with the client.


So instead of you setting the goal, the client has to set the goal.


So if they don't care about leads for the time being or if they say we're happy with


the status quo with leads while we're building this other part of our business or while we're


working on becoming experts in the media, in which case we want to measure like number


of media requests or number of mentions or whatever it might be, then that's okay.


But definitely talk to the client about what they consider to be.


I don't think we should ever be setting goals for our clients.


I think they're going to have to come to us.


And if the client is hesitant at all to set things like lead goals, at the very least


say, you know what, let's just report on what you're doing now.


So for example, for the adult toy store that I mentioned, she didn't have Google Analytics


on her website before she worked with us.


So there's no actual traffic goals that we can set because we have no idea.


So instead we're just looking at gross sales for right now.


And we don't have necessarily a percentage increase in gross sales that we want to achieve.


We just want to see how things are going and how is the work that we're doing affecting


that.


So it isn't necessarily a goal.


It's sort of a wait and see, but because we're still, it's still laser focused on that particular


target.


That's what makes the difference in the report because we know we're all pushing in the same


direction.


Well, yeah, I hear, I hear you a hundred percent on that.


I think it's more the client comes to us and says, within six months we want to see, you


know, 10% jump in this or whatever.


And so it's that conversation about, well, is that realistic?


And I know if you don't have your over your data for your work with them, you may have


the year over year data in GA, but you don't have actual, we've worked with this client


for one whole year and we know last year at this time it did this this year, you know,


you're, you're making inferences, which I get, but I don't know.


They're impatient.


I understand they're spending a lot of money, so it might be a conversation we continue


later, but it's, it's tough.


I think, I think with impatient clients too, it's, um, that's actually part of our selection


process for clients.


Sure.


And I mean, that's one of the joys of being a small agency is that we can afford to be


picky in ways that much larger agencies cannot.


And when we do choose clients, like if people come to us and say, well, my goal is to rank


number one for this, we're like, that's not actually a business goal.


Like what's your business goal?


Is it to increase number of people signing up for your product?


So like, yeah, like it's, it's walking.


So often you become a, we're joking that it's like where it's, it's, it's digital marketing


and business consultancy, right?


Sometimes you're like a therapist or client walking them through and, and I'm startled,


but also not sometimes that the number of clients who are really bad at setting goals,


like fantastically bad.


Like, how do you still have a business?


You don't set any goals.


How, how does that happen?


I think we've all had clients like that.


Right.


And it, it always startles me, but I shouldn't be that surprised.


But, but that's part of it too is our job is almost like a therapist to be like, it's


okay to set goals.


Don't be scared.


You can do it.


And I think that absolutely it can take a little while to get there.


Some clients are great right out of the gate and other clients need a little kick to get


going.


Um, and I think that that's part of our job as good marketers to ensure that we're helping


our clients set these kinds of goals that are achievable.


Thank you, Mackenzie.


We're going to take it over here.


Hi.


Um, that was fantastic and it was kind of exactly what I needed to hear today.


I'm wondering if you have any advice for clients that have decided to measure their own crappy


metrics.


Um, we actually have a client that had a horrible website and a semi black hat SEO campaign.


Um, they came to us at that point when their, when their rankings tanked and they were doing


horrible.


They rebuilt everything.


We're kind of starting over from scratch and they've decided that on top of our reporting,


they also, um, forced their customer service team to Google different keywords and report


and Excel every three hours where, what page they come up.


Um, so I'm wondering if you have any advice on how to kind of explain to them how bad


that is and if there's anything we can do.


First off, I'm so sorry.


Yeah.


Um, why?


Wow.


I mean, does not have enough phone calls.


Like do you need to keep him busier or something like that?


The call center people must have a job that is not checking rankings on Google.


Um, I think what I would do instead of like trying to talk him out of it, I would try


to, this is where, uh, you know, hire a psychologist.


There's one coming up, um, to find out like what is going on in the client's mind that


they are so mistrustful.


Obviously they've been burned before.


They made silly mistakes.


Did they know the company was black hat when they hired them?


No.


Okay.


So, um, sorry, yeah, you kind of got screwed over there, client.


Um, I think honestly you have to think past that and think why is the client doing this


instead of just attacking it head on and saying we're going to, you know, this is stupid,


don't do this.


Like that can make the client seem that you're really threatened by this, but instead, um,


you can talk about the variability of the keyword data and by searching this, you know,


but at the same time, like if it's not necessarily hurting you, does it matter?


And then if you do continue to prove these results over time, the client may actually


come to trust you and therefore they will stop doing this ridiculous stuff.


I mean, I'd be happy to talk to you more about this later, but I often find that when clients


react strangely or in a bad way to stuff, like you sometimes have to take a step back


and think like what can I do psychology wise?


Like what is going on in this client's head right now that I can, again, you're a client


therapist, like what is going on that's leading to this decision, that's leading to this reaction


and how can I step it back to, to, uh, try to convince them that maybe what they're doing


is kind of ridiculous.


Okay.


I really want to hear this one last question from Rand right here.


Oh, question from Rand.


I'm not terrified.


Bring it on.


Can we get Rand's mic on?


Y'all really loud Rand.


Yeah.


So let's say that you talked a little bit about raising your rates, but I think instead


of creating, would you be kind enough and fair enough to tell us either numbers or percentage


wise how that's growing?


How our rates have grown?


Oh, well, every once in a while we have a conversation, we're like, we should charge


more and then we charge more.


It's usually my business partner, Jen, because I am really bad at, uh, I have suffered the


disease of I can't believe people pay me for this, so I am really crappy at making people


pay money for stuff, so Jen does all that now, because she's more than happy to bill


clients for things.


I find that actually how we bill, and this is a completely separate conversation and


actually a whole webinar on its own, we don't actually do hourly billings, we do value-based


billing.


So value-based billing, and please Google this, because it's, I was going to include


it and then the presentation got too long and Erica would have shot me so I cut it out,


although I am over time now, but value-based billing is the idea that what you charge is


due to the amount of value that you provide for your client.


So if you are doing something and it takes an hour but you know the client's going to


make $50,000 off of what you do, you should charge more than something that's going to


take, you know, ten hours but it only provides $5,000 of value.


And a lot of that is asking clients, like, what's your margin on this?


And sometimes clients don't even know their margins on things.


I don't know how these businesses stay in business, it's amazing, but clients have told


me, like, no one has ever asked for our margins before, no one has ever asked for our business


goals before, so clearly not a lot of people are doing this, you can really make you stand


out, but ask for their margins and then the amount you bill should be relative to the


amount of value you're going to provide to the client, and so it completely removes that


idea of things like hourly rates, of raising your rates, because if you're providing that


kind of value, you're not really thinking about it on terms of a one hour, this kind


of thing.


Track your hours and keep track of the amount of time that you spend, but at the same time,


you're not necessarily focused on we need to make sure that everybody is 80% billable,


and it also frees you up from a larger company perspective to do things like paid paid vacation


or giving extra vacation or not having people work, you know, 60 hour work weeks, which


I don't do anymore and it's been amazing because of the way in which we bill clients.


The clients make sure they're seeing value, they're happy to pay us because they are making


money off of what we do, but we're not necessarily equating that to this is the amount per hour.


Does that kind of explain your?


Yes, thank you.


Okay.


Thank you Dana DiTomasso.


How and Whether to Invest In And Structure Online Communities - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about how and whether to invest in and structure online communities.


I want to say a thank you to at Dave Craig on Craig, probably Craig, on Twitter.


Dave, thank you very much for the question, an excellent one.


I think this is something that a lot of content marketers, web marketers, community builders


think about is, should I be making an investment in building my own community?


Should I leverage someone else's existing community?


How can I do that and benefit from an SEO perspective and a content marketing and a


brand awareness perspective?


So we'll try and tackle some of those questions today on Whiteboard Friday.


First off, before you go and invest anywhere or build anything, I urge you to think strategy


first, meaning your business has goals.


You have things that you want to accomplish.


Maybe those are revenue growth or conversions.


Maybe they have to do with entering a new sphere of influence or pursuing a new topic.


Maybe you're trying to launch a new product.


Maybe you're trying to pivot the business or disrupt yourself, change with technology,


whatever those business goals are.


They should lead you to marketing goals, the things that marketing can help to accomplish


in those business goals.


And from that should fall out a bunch of tactics and initiatives.


It's only down here in your marketing goals and tactical initiatives that if online communities


match up with those and serve your broader business goals, that you should actually make


the investment.


Or if they fall below the line of, well, we can do three things that we think this year


and do them well, and this is thing number four or number five or number ten, it doesn't


make the cut.


So online communities fit in here if they, one, match up as you found a passionate group


of investment-worthy size that exists in your topic.


So if, for example, you are targeting a new niche, let's say – I think Dave himself


is in cryptocurrency, right?


So there's definitely a passionate group of people in that sphere, and it is probably


of investment-worthy size.


More recently that investment has been a little rocky, but certainly a large-sized group,


and if you are targeting that group, a community could be worthwhile.


So we have passion, we have a group, they are of sizable investment.


Second, you or your brand or your platform can provide not just value but unique value,


unique value different from what other people are offering via community superior to what's


available elsewhere.


And Dave might himself say, well, there's a bunch of communities around crypto, but


I believe that I can create X, which will be unique in ways, Y and Z, and will be preferable


for these types of participants in this way, right?


Maybe that's because it enables sharing in certain ways.


Maybe it enables transparency of certain kinds.


Maybe it's because it has no vested interests or ties to particular currencies or particular


companies, whatever the case may be.


And last but not least, you're willing to invest potentially for years, literal years,


without return or with very little return to build something of great long-term value.


I think this is the toughest one, but communities are most similar in attribute to content marketing,


where you're going to put in a ton of upfront effort and a lot of ongoing effort before


you're going to see that return.


Most of the time, most communities fail because the people behind them were not willing to


make the investments to build them up, or they made other types of mistakes.


We'll talk about that in a sec.


You have two options here.


First, you can build your own platform, and second, you can participate in an existing


community.


My advice on this is never do number one without first spending a bunch of time in number two.


So if you are unfamiliar with the community platforms that already exist in interior decorating


or in furniture design or in cryptocurrency or in machining tools or in men's fashion,


first participate in the communities that already exist in the space you're targeting


so that you are very familiar with the players, the platforms, the options and opportunities.


Otherwise, you will never know whether it's an investment-worthy size, a passionate group.


You'll never know how or whether you can provide unique value.


It's just going to be too tough to get those things down, and so always invest in the existing


communities before you do the other ones.


Let's talk quickly about building your own platform, and then we'll talk about investing


in others.


If you're deciding that what matches your goals best and your strategy best is to build


your own platform, there are numerous opportunities.


You can do it sort of halfway where you build on someone else's existing platform, for example,


creating your own subreddit or your own Facebook or LinkedIn group, which essentially uses


another community's platform but you're the owner and administrator of that community,


or you can actually build your own forum or discussion board, your own blog and comments


section, your own Q&A board, your own content leader board like Hacker News or like Dharmesh


and I did initially with inbound.org where we essentially built a Reddit or Hacker News-like


clone for marketers.


Those investments are going to be much more severe than a Facebook group or a Twitter


hashtag, a Twitter chat or a LinkedIn group or those kinds of things, but you want to


compare the benefits and drawbacks, and in each there are some of each.


Sources and discussions, those are going to have user-generated content, which is a beautiful


thing because it scales non-linearly with your investment.


If you build up a community of people who are on an ongoing basis creating topics and


answering those topics and talking about those things in either a Q&A board or a forum discussion


or a content leader board, what's great is you get that benefit, that SEO benefit of


having a bunch of long tail, hopefully high-quality content and discussion you're going to need


to do.


Mostly what you're going to worry about is drawbacks like the graveyard effect where


the community appears empty and so no one participates and maybe it drags down Google's


perception of your site because you have a bunch of low-quality or thin pages or people


leave a bunch of spam in there or they become communities filled with hate groups and the


Internet can devolve very quickly, as you can see from a lot of online communities.


Whatever you're doing, so blog and comments, you get SEO benefits, you get thought leadership


benefits but it requires regular content investments.


You don't get the UGC benefit quite like you would with a forum or discussion.


With Facebook groups or LinkedIn groups, Twitter hashtags, it's easy to build but there's no


SEO benefit, usually very little to none.


With a Q&A board, you do get UGC and SEO.


You still have those same moderation and graveyard risks.


With content leader boards, they're very difficult to maintain, inbound.org being a good example


where Dharmesh and I figured, hey, we can get this thing up and rolling and then it


turns out no, we need to hire people and maintain it and put in a bunch of effort and energy.


But it can become a bookmarkable destination, which means you get repeat traffic over and


over.


Whatever you're choosing, make sure you list out these benefits and then align these with


the strategy, the marketing goal, the tactics and initiatives that flow from those.


That's going to help determine how you should structure, whether you should structure your


own community.


The other option is participating in existing ones, places like Quora, subreddits, Twitter,


LinkedIn groups, existing forums.


Same thing.


You're going to take these, right?


Well, we could participate on an existing forum and we can see that the size and reach


is on average about nine responses per thread, about three threads per day, three new threads


per day.


The benefits is that it can build up our thought leadership and our recognition among this


group of influential people in our field.


The drawback is it builds our competitors' content, right, because this forum is going


to be ranking for all those things.


They own the platform.


It's not our owned platform, right, and then we align that with our goals and initiatives.


I'm not going to dive through all of these, but I do want to end on some bits of advice.


I mentioned already make sure you invest in other people's communities before you build


your own.


I can also add to that if you're going to build something, if you're going to build


your own, I would generally rule these things out, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Twitter


hashtag groups.


Why?


Because those other platforms control them and then they can change them at any time


and your reach can change on those platforms.


I would urge you to build for SEO and for an owned media channel.


Second, I'd start with a platform that doesn't lose credibility when it's empty.


That is to say, if you know you want to build a forum or a content leader board or a Q&A


board, make it something where you know that you and your existing team can do all the


work to create a non-graveyard-like environment initially.


That could mean limiting it to only a few sections in a forum, or all the Q&A goes in


one place as opposed to there's many sub-forum that have zero threads and zero comments and


zero replies.


Therefore, every single thing that's posted, we know that at least two of us internally


will respond to them.


That type of stuff.


Third, if you can, avoid using a subdomain and definitely don't use a separate domain.


Subdomains inherit some of the ranking ability and benefits of the primary domain they're


on.


Separate domains tend to inherit almost none.


Last, but not least, before you build, gather a willing, excited group of people, your crew,


hopefully via an email group.


This has served me extremely well, who will be those first active members.


If you're building something in the crypto space, as maybe Dave is considering, I might


say to him, hey, find those 10 or 15 or 20 people who are in your world, who you talked


to online already, create an email group, all be chatting with each other and contributing,


then start your Q&A board, or then start your blog in your comment section, or then start


your forum, what have you.


If you can seed it with that initial passionate group, you will get over a lot of the big


hurdles around building or rolling your own community system.


All right, everyone.


I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we'll see you again next week.


Machine Learning 101 - Whiteboard Friday

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


Today I'm talking about all things machine learning, something as many of you know I'm


super passionate about and love to talk about.


Basically this sparks a seed in some of you to explore it a bit further because it is


the most powerful thing to happen in our space in a very long time.


Brief overview, in a nutshell, machine learning is actually a subset of AI.


Some would argue we still haven't really reached artificial intelligence, but it's just one


facet of the overall AI.


The best way to think about it is in comparison to traditional programming.


Traditional programming, you input data and a program into a computer and out comes the


output, whether that be a web page or a calculator you built online, whatever that might be.


With machine learning, you put in the data and the desired output and put this into a


computer and you get a program, otherwise known as a machine learning model.


So it's a bit flipped, right?


And it works extremely well.


There's two primary types of machine learning.


You have supervised, which is where you're basically feeding a model labeled training


data and then unsupervised, which is where you're feeding a program data and letting


it create clusters or associations between data points.


The supervised is a bit more common and you'll see things like classification, linear regression,


image recognition, things like that are all very common.


And if you think about machine learning in terms of, okay, there's all of this data that


you're putting into the model, data is the biggest part of machine learning.


And a lot of people would argue that if machine learning was a vehicle, data would be the


fuel.


And it's a really important part to understand because unless you have the right types of


data to feed a model, you're not going to get the desired outcome that you would like.


So let's look at an example.


If you wanted to build a machine learning model that predicts housing prices, you might


have all of this information.


You might have the current price, square foot of these homes, land, the number of bathrooms,


the number of bedrooms, you name it, it goes on and on.


These are also known as features.


And so what a model is going to try to do when you put in all of this data, it's going


to try to understand associations between this information and come up with a model


that best predicts home prices in the future.


And the most basic of these machine learning models is linear regression.


So if you think about inputting the data where maybe you just put in the price and the square


foot, and you can kind of see the data like this, right?


You see that as the square foot goes up, so does the price, and a model over time in looking


at this data is going to start to find the smoothest line through the data to have most


accurate predictions in the future.


What you don't want it to do is to fit every single data point and have a line that looks


like that.


That's also known as overfitting because it doesn't play nice for new data points.


You don't want a model to get so calculated to your data set that it doesn't predict accurately


in the future.


And a way to look at that is by the loss function.


And that's maybe getting a bit deeper in this, but that's how you would measure how the line


is being fit.


Let's see.


So what are some of the possibilities in SEO?


How can we leverage machine learning in the SEO space?


So there's a couple of ways that people are already doing this.


You can automate meta descriptions by looking at the page content and using a machine model


to summarize the text.


So this literally summarizes the content for you and pairs it down to a meta description


length.


Pretty incredible.


You could similarly do this for titles, although I don't suggest you do this for primary pages.


This isn't going to be perfect.


But if you have a huge, huge website with hundreds of thousands of pages, it gets you


halfway there.


And it's really interesting to start playing around in that space with these large websites.


You can also automate alt text for images.


We see these models getting really good at understanding what's in an image.


301 redirects.


Paul Shapiro has an incredible write-up and basically processed for that already.


Content creation.


And if that scares some of you or if you doubt that these models can currently create content


that is decent, I challenge you to go check out Talk to Transformer.


It is a paired back version of OpenAI, which was founded by Elon Musk.


And it's pretty incredible and a little scary as to how good the content is just from that


paired back model.


So that is for sure possible in the future and even today.


In addition to product and page suggestions.


So this is just going to get better.


And imagine us providing content and UX specifically for the unique users that come to our site.


Highly personalized content.


Highly personalized experiences.


Really exciting stuff moving forward.


I've got some resources I highly suggest you check out.


Google Code Labs is one of my favorite just because it walks you through the steps.


So if you go to Google Code Labs filter by TensorFlow or machine learning and you can


see the possible examples there.


Colab notebooks or Jupyter notebooks are where you'll likely be doing any of the machine


learning that you want to do on your own.


Kaggle.com is the number one resource for data science competitions.


And so you get to really see, you know, what are the examples?


How are people using machine learning today?


You'll see things like TSA has put up over a million dollars for a data science team


to come up with a model that predicts potential threats from security footage.


Right?


This stuff gets really interesting really fast.


And it's also so important to have diversity and inclusion in this space to avoid, you


know, really dangerous models in the future.


So something to definitely think about.


TensorFlow is a great resource.


It's what Google put out and it's what a lot of their machine learning models is built


off of.


And they've got a really great JavaScript platform that you can play around with.


Andrew Ning has an incredible machine learning course.


I highly suggest you check that out.


And then Algorithmia is sort of a one-stop shop for models.


So if you don't care to dip your toes into machine learning and you just want, say, a


summarizer model or, you know, a particular type of model, you could potentially find


one there and do a plug-and-play of sorts.


So that's pretty interesting and fun to explore.


The last thing is a machine learning model is only as good as the data.


I can't express that enough.


So a lot of machine learning and data scientists, it's all data cleaning and parsing and that's


the bulk of the work in this field.


And it's important to be aware of that.


So that's it for Machine Learning 101.


Thank you so much for joining me and I hope to see you all again soon.


5 Common Objections to SEO (& How to Respond) - Whiteboard Friday

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday.


My name is Cameron Jenkins and today we're going to be going through five common objections


to SEO and how to respond.


I know if you're watching this and you're an SEO, you have faced some of these very


objections before and probably a lot others.


This is not an exhaustive list, I'm sure you've faced a ton of other objections, whether you're


talking to a potential client, maybe you're talking to your friend or your family member.


A lot of people have misunderstandings about SEO and that causes them to object to wanting


to invest in it.


So I thought I'd go through some of the ones that I hear the most and how I tend to respond


in those situations.


Hopefully you find that helpful.


Let's dive in.


Okay, the number one objection I hear a lot of the time is this other channel, whether


that be PPC, social, whatever, drives more traffic or conversions, therefore it's better


than SEO.


And I would respond a few different ways depending.


So the number one thing I would usually say is that don't forget that success follows


investment.


So if you are investing a lot of time and money and talent into your PPC or social and


you're not really doing much with organic, you're kind of just letting it go, usually


that means, yeah, the other channel is going to be a lot more successful.


So just keep that in mind.


It's not inherently successful or not.


It kind of reflects the effort you're putting into it.


Number two, I would say that every channel serves a different purpose.


You know, you're not going to expect social media to drive conversions a lot of the time


because a lot of the time social is for engagement.


It's for more top of the funnel.


It's for more audience development.


SEO, a lot of the times that lives at your top and mid funnel efforts.


It can convert, but not always.


Every channel serves a different purpose.


And the last thing I would say, kind of dovetailing off of that, is that assists versus last click


only, I know is a debate when it comes to attribution, but just keep in mind that when


SEO and organic search doesn't convert as the last click before conversion, it still


usually assists in the process.


So look at your assisted conversions and see how SEO is contributing.


Number two objection I usually hear is SEO is dead because the SERPs are full of ads.


And to that I would respond with a question.


What SERPs are you looking at?


Because it really depends on what you're querying.


You know, if you're only looking at those bottom funnel, high cost per click, your money


keywords, absolutely those are monetized.


Those are going to be heavily monetized because those are the bottom of the funnel.


So if you're only ever looking at that, you might be pessimistic when it comes to your


SEO.


You might not be thinking that SEO has any kind of value because organic search tends


to, those organic results are pushed down really low when you're looking at those bottom


funnel terms.


So I think these two pieces of research are really interesting to look at in tandem when


it comes to a response to this question.


I think this was put out sometime last year by Varn Research and it said that 60% of people


when they see ads on the search results, they don't even recognize that they're ads.


And that's actually probably higher now that Google changed it from green to black and


kind of blends in a little bit better with the rest of it.


But then this data from JumpShot says that only about 2 to 3% of all search clicks go


to PPC.


So how can these things coexist?


Well, they can coexist because the vast majority of searches don't trigger ads.


A lot more searches are informational and navigational and they're more so than commercial.


So just keep in mind that people are doing a lot of research before buying.


A lot of times they're looking to learn more information, they're looking to compare.


Keep in mind your buyer's entire journey, their entire funnel and focus on that.


Don't just focus on the bottom of funnel because you will get discouraged when it comes to


SEO if you're only looking there.


And also they're just better together.


I mean there are a lot of studies that show that PPC and SEO are more effective when they're


both shown on the search result together for a single company.


I'm thinking of one by Seer they did right now that showed the CTR is higher for both


when they're on the page together.


So just keep that in mind.


Number three objection I hear a lot is that organic drives traffic does not the right


kind of traffic.


And people usually mean a few different things when they say that.


Number one, they could mean that organic drives traffic but it's usually just branded traffic


anyway.


So people who know about us already and they're searching our business name and they're finding


us.


That could be true but again that's probably because you're not investing in SEO, not because


SEO is not valuable.


And I would also say that a lot of times this is pretty easily debunked.


A lot of times inadvertently people are ranking for non-branded terms that they didn't even


know they were ranking for.


So go into Google Search Console, look at their non-branded queries and see what's driving


impressions and clicks to the website.


Number two, again just to say this one more time, assists are important too.


They play a part in the eventual conversion or purchase.


So even if organic drives traffic that doesn't convert as the last click before conversion,


it still usually plays a role.


Number three, it can be highly qualified.


Again this is that following the investment thing.


If you were actually paying attention to your audience, you know the ways they search, how


they search, what terms they search for, what's important to your brand, then you can bring


in really highly qualified traffic that's more inclined to convert if you're paying


attention and being strategic with your SEO.


So that's what I would say for that one.


Moving on to number four, that objection I hear is SEO takes too long.


And that's honestly one of the most common objections you hear about SEO.


And in response to that I would say it's not a growth hack.


A lot of people who are really antsy about SEO and like why isn't it working right now


are really looking for those instant results.


They want a tactic, they can sprinkle on their website for instant whatever they want.


Usually it's conversions and revenue and growth.


I would say it's not a growth hack.


If you're looking at it that way, it's going to disappoint you.


But I will say that SEO is more methodology than tactic, right?


It's something that should be ingrained and embedded into everything you do so that over


time when that's baked into everything you're doing, you're going to achieve sustained growth.


So that's how I would respond to that one.


Number five, the last one and probably one of the most frustrating, I'm sure this is


not exclusive to SEO.


I know social hears it a lot.


You can't measure the ROI, therefore I don't want to invest in it because I don't have


proof that I'm getting a return on this investment.


So people kind of tend to mean, I think, two things when they say this.


Number one, they really want to be able to predict ROI before they even dive in.


They want assurances that if I invest in this, I'm going to get X in return, which is there


are a lot of, I think, problems with that inherently, but there are some ways you can


get close to gauging what you're going to get for your efforts.


So what I would do in this situation is use your own website's data to build yourself


a click-through rate curve so that you know the click-through rate at your various rank


positions.


By knowing that and combining that with the search volume of a keyword or phrase that


you want to go after, you can multiply the two and just say, hey, here's the expected


traffic we will get if you let me work on improving our rank position from 9 to 2 or


1 or whatever that is.


So there are ways to estimate and get close.


And a lot of times when you do improve, you're focusing on improving one term, you're likely


going to get a lot more traffic than what you're estimating because you tend to end


up ranking for so many more longer tail keywords that bring in a lot of additional search volume.


So you're probably going to even underestimate when you do this, but that's one way you can


predict ROI.


Number two here, measuring ROI is a lot of times what people want to be doing.


They want to be able to prove that what they're doing is beneficial in terms of revenue.


So one way to do this is to get the lifetime value of the customer, multiply that by the


close rate so that you can have a goal value.


Now if you turn on your conversions and set up your goals in Google Analytics, which you


I think should be doing, this assumes that you're not an e-commerce site.


There's different tracking for that, but similar type of methodology applies.


If you apply these things, you can have a goal value.


So that way when people convert on your site, you start to rack up the actual dollar value,


the estimated dollar value that whatever channel is producing.


So you can go to your source medium report, see Google Organics, see how many conversions


it's producing, and how much value.


And the same thing applies if you go to your assisted conversions report.


You can see how much value is in there as well.


And I think that's really beneficial just to be able to show people like, look, it is


generating revenue.


My SEO that's getting you organic search traffic is generating value in real dollars and cents


for you.


So those are some of the most common objections that I hear.


I want to know what are some of the ones that you hear too.


So pop those in the comments.


Let me know the objections you hear a lot of the time and include how you're either


struggling to respond or find the right response to people or something that you found works


as a response.


Share that with us.


We'd all love to know.


Let's make SEO better and something that people understand a lot better.


So that's it for this week's Wiper Friday.


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

So for all of you that were out late, I am going to talk fast and loud today, just like


you want.


Thank you, Cyrus.


I want to say thank you to you, not in the thanks for coming way, but obviously thanks


for coming.


We appreciate it.


But thank you for this.


This is my third time on the MozCon stage.


I've been with Moz full-time for a year and a half.


I think contracting for four.


But I've been part of the community for seven and a half years now.


I joined SEOmoz at the time in December of 2006 after I had seen a Mr. Anne Fishkin at


SES Chicago and heard about this community.


And it sincerely has changed my life.


You're an amazing group and thank you for that.


So if you know my work, you may be expecting me to talk about Google.


But I'm not going to.


And I'm sorry.


But I want to talk about us a little bit.


I want to talk about the method to my madness and why I do what I do.


And where we need to be, where we need to head, and maybe the paths that will get us


there as content marketers.


And not all of us will get there.


And I'm sorry to say that.


And I mean that as no insult.


But this is going to be a hard path.


When I started grad school, my advisor, a wonderful man, a really nice person, got up


in front of us and he said, all of you here can do this.


You'll have the capability.


You're all smart enough.


It's not about how smart you are.


But less than half of you will make it.


Because you're not going to be willing to do the work.


You're not going to be willing to put up with the bullshit that this takes.


And that's reality for us.


Our industry is changing.


And we're going to have to do the work.


And so I'm going to try and help us get there.


But it's not going to be easy.


So I want to talk about a disconnect that we have right now.


A couple quick shows of hands.


This will be easy, I promise.


How many of you are involved in any way in content creation?


Maybe you write.


Maybe you design.


Maybe you guide the process.


A lot.


Okay.


Well over two-thirds, I'd say.


How many of you have ever consumed content?


You've read a blog post.


You've watched a video.


In the last week, I don't think any hands are even going to go down.


Yes.


This is something that we all know as content consumers that we are afraid to admit to ourselves


as content creators.


And it goes something like this.


This is how we think of our content.


It is so damned refreshing that I won't even put the bottle to my mouth.


I'm just going to pour it all over my face.


That's how great it is.


I ran the Chicago Marathon last year for the first time.


Ran, I use loosely.


26.2 miles in October in Chicago and no one at the end of the race drank water like this.


I have never been more thirsty.


I still got the bottle to my mouth.


But I use this ridiculous stock photo because this is how we think.


This is how great we think what we do is.


But this is the truth.


And we know this as content consumers.


We all know this.


We are drowning in content.


We are saturated.


It's too much.


We are producing too much.


We are consuming too much.


We are afraid.


And we are not afraid that the umbrella might blow out of our hands and into the river.


I'm from Chicago.


So that's a very real fear.


That's actually our worst fear other than being shot.


So that's not really funny.


We're afraid of drowning.


The flood of content is coming and we're drowning.


And even when we go looking for content, you know, I do this myself and it's stupid, but


I go on social media to find content.


And then I find something I have to read.


I don't know if you've done this.


And I'm pissed I have to read it.


And this is why I went on social media.


I went out looking for a link and I find a link and I think, oh, there's five minutes.


Oh, why did I go?


Because there's just too much.


And it's not good.


And we have to face that.


Well, how bad is it?


There's a little back of the napkin math.


This is WordPress' stats, some interesting stuff.


WordPress alone says that they posted 41.6 million new blog posts per month.


And I found some stats to say that WordPress is about 19% of what blogs run on.


So by that math, there are 7.3 million new blog posts every single day.


Seven million.


Now, you might say, okay, some of that's probably scrape and some of that's low quality and


that's not what we would think of as a blog post.


But I want you to understand this is just blog posts.


This isn't YouTube videos.


This isn't Tumblr.


This isn't Medium.


You know, these aren't all the various formats of content we're putting out there.


So that 7 million may not actually be quite accurate, but it's not off by an order of


magnitude.


There are millions of pieces of content going up every single day.


So you are not one drop in the content bucket.


I did the math for you.


You are one drop in 237 buckets.


So I hope that's not depressing.


I actually found a guy who sat there and dripped the water into the bucket and measured it.


I thought that's science.


I like that guy.


But it's worse.


It's not just that we know.


Everybody knows.


This is the onions new site.


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


ClickHole.


ClickHole is a parody of BuzzFeed.


Our industry is so sad right now that you can make a living off of making fun of us.


This is a three-hour video.


Stick of butter left out at room temperature.


It is actually three hours long.


ClickHole is hilarious.


But for all of us in this room, it should be uncomfortably hilarious.


It is funny for about a minute and then I have to leave.


Because I realize that this is how bad it's gotten.


We are a parody of ourselves.


And that's not good.


So where do we go?


I want to talk about how to create sustainable ideas.


Big ideas.


How to do it in a scalable way.


Stacey actually after me is going to give a much more tactical talk and I hope it's


a great combination.


This is about the strategy.


This is about the thought process.


I want to start with an idea I believe in.


I believe we have a bad tendency to take our best ideas and save them.


And this is human nature for any creative, but we are bad about it in the content space


because many of us are small and medium companies.


Many of us even if we are at large companies, content still doesn't have a big budget.


It doesn't have strong commitment.


We pay lip service.


And so we say, you know, I've got this great idea.


But I'm not ready.


I don't have the skills.


I don't have the budget.


I don't have the team yet.


So I'm going to save it.


I believe strongly that this is a mistake and I'm going to try and convince you why.


If you believe an idea, you're passionate about it.


What happens if you wait?


Let's say I have this great idea and I think, you know, in November I'm going to be ready.


So in the next few months I start to make my list, you know, I plan out my post a little


bit and what do I have?


Oh, top ten ways, some stuff.


You won't believe this crap.


Much weird tricks for some BS.


This ultimate guide to please kill me.


Because you have to write all this stuff first.


And what happens when November comes, you hate what you do.


And the problem is that all the passion that went into that idea, it's not in the idea


itself.


That comes from you.


And if you've lost it, it's gone.


You can't put that in a WordPress document and go back later and get it back.


I've tried to do that.


And you lose it.


So I think you have to bring these things to the front.


This is a wonderful letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author.