slide, you'll see that I've proven that authority is raised on Google Plus by extension into


MozCon 2014 - 12 - Mark Traphagen - Google+ Game of Thrones: Claiming Your Brand Kingdom

Google personalized search by engagement.


The more people that are actively engaging with you, the more authority that you have.


That's the goal here.


And that's why we bring these people into a Google Plus community because that's the


goal here is to raise our overall search visibility by influencing their networks.


And so when we do this all, we're ready to rule the kingdom on Google Plus.


First of all, this is a great strategy.


Every time I hear somebody say Google Plus is a ghost town or my customers aren't there


or nobody in my business is doing anything on Google Plus, I think this is what I want


to say to these people is, like, are you marketers?


I mean, come on.


This is like that should be the one thing, like, nobody in my vertical has conquered


this yet.


I'm going to be the one.


I'm going to be ahead of everybody else.


We're three years into Google Plus and in most verticals it's still early adoption time.


You can get in, do something like this, and take over and get that kind of influence into


Google that your competitors aren't even thinking about now because they don't have time for


Google Plus, right?


So putting it all together here, what we're looking to do, if you forget nothing, if you


remember nothing else, you know, even if you don't do it with hangouts like I did it or


however you do it, the strategy here is to find a way to incentivize an audience to come


into Google Plus and get associated with your brand and then build, you know, use the things


that Richard taught you yesterday about building a vibrant community and fanning the flames


there.


And all those things apply here, that you get those communities associated with your


brand, you keep them active, you keep people engaged on them, and they are working for


you to build up your authority further and to make you rule.


So thank you very much.


Thank you.


Excellent.


Thank you, Mark.


I have a quick question for you.


Is there a time when it doesn't make sense to be on Google Plus for a company, for a


person, for a whatever?


Can you think of a good reason not to be there?


Well, I think the number one reason would be like you just don't have the time.


I understand that there are other networks right now which will get you, you know, everybody


talks about Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest might be in some cases, where that's going to get


you more of a quick, fast game on this.


I see Google Plus as however necessary to be thinking about at some point as a long-term


strategy.


This is building, it's just increasing your visibility on Google.


And if that's important to you at all, then I think it's something that you want to invest


time in.


That's a good one.


Do we have any questions?


Okay.


We have a good question out here.


Hi, Mark.


I really enjoyed that presentation.


I actually really love Google Plus.


What do you think is the most engaging type of post that you can put in your community?


Oh, that's great.


You know, well, really, I would defer again to some of the things that our other presenters


have said here.


They work there.


One of the great things, one of the reasons I bet you love Google Plus, one of the reasons


because of this is because you can create pretty rich content there.


You can create almost blog post level content.


You know, obviously the things that you've heard is, you know, have a great image associated


with the post is very, very good.


But the kinds of content that you heard Dr. Pete talk about, that you heard people talk


about yesterday, work there where you're putting out interesting things, you're getting questions.


One of the things for this particular strategy and particularly that thing that I showed


you earlier where they're showing the brand photo is that seems to work best for not link


shares, where you're sharing a link from somebody else's or even from one of your site posts,


but with a content that is originally on Google Plus.


And people love that.


People also love longer form content on Google Plus than on a lot of other social networks.


So those are some things that work.


I also have one more question.


So what do you think about those content aggregators that actually scrape Google Plus and then


point links back to Google Plus communities and profiles?


What are your thoughts on that?


Well, it looks like anything else in link building.


By the way, external links do build authorities of Google Plus profiles and also brand pages.


I have an article that I did last year for Search Engine Land that proves that.


So internal authority within Google Plus, external links.


So I would say just the other things, be cautious.


You want to do good link, but you can link build to your Google Plus profile and pages,


but you'd want to be smart about that.


You want to make sure you're getting good quality links coming into that.


Excellent.


Thanks, Mark.


We have one more question over here.


Just a quick question.


I work for a company that has eight local pages as well as our brand page.


And so I was wondering what type of content do you recommend to have on those local pages?


That's a fantastic question.


We're actually starting work with a company that has a thousand local pages, and they


eventually want a localized Google Plus strategy for those.


So I feel that pain and that strategy.


That's a great question.


I think if you can find a way to repurpose the content that you're creating for the main


brand page in ways that's very specific.


By that repurposing, I don't mean just changing a few words, but get the local owner, the


local franchisee, whatever it is involved in, okay, here's this great piece of content


we have.


Now, how can we work with you to make that specific to your audience, your locale, and


then repurpose that content in some way?


That's one thing that I would do in that regard.


Great.


Thank you.


That's a good one.


Looks like we have one more over here.


G'day.


Thanks for that talk.


It was really good.


So my question is about brand pages versus kind of interest slash community pages.


And one of the things that I've noticed is when we've got a page like, you know, I love


being your ideal customer or that kind of thing, they get a lot of traction.


People just go around clicking them, liking them, following them, just because they like


the idea versus a brand page.


But then as you build that community, it seems to be too far detached from a brand.


And I'm wondering, even though it's effective, like are you building a community, are you


getting your customers on, potential customers, is it actually worth it from an SEO perspective


or is it, you know, faking it?


Yeah, my, you know, this is the strategy.


It's like people just go out and get like Facebook likes, right?


You know, like we want likes.


Any like is good.


Well, Facebook, if you know, has gotten more smart about that.


It's just not running up a bunch of likes from irrelevant people and maybe even people


that are fake accounts or whatever doesn't get you what it used to get you.


So similar again, I think on Google+, I think, you know, I don't know this for sure, but


I would imagine that more and more they're going to be tracking.


I think it does matter, for example, and will matter more and more in the future, what the


subject of a community is that's associated with your brand page.


So that it's relevant engagement, that it's about what your brand is about, what it talks


about.


I think that's a good long-term strategy for where we see Google going with entity search


and all of those related things.


Great one.


Do we have time?


I'm so fast.


Rand has a quick question, right?


I just want to know, you said several things about increasing the authority of your Google+,


profile.


Can you tell me what does authority on Google+, mean?


How do you measure that and quantify it?


And what benefit does it provide?


Okay.


Well, first of all, how we measure that when we did the testing, and this is back when


PageRank was more active.


We used PageRank only because that's the only measure that we really had, because Google+,


pages and profiles do have PageRank.


And so we could use that as a relative measure.


And we looked at hundreds and hundreds of pages and profiles to see, like, why is this


profile, you know, PR7 and this one's a PR3?


And what we found was, you know, high correlation between who's engaging, how much engagement


and who's engaging within Google+, and then, as I said earlier, the external link profile


also had a high correlation to that authority.


Do you see any correlation between the PageRank of those Google+, pages and how the content


shared performed in rankings?


In personalized search, yes.


It's more likely to show up for the people in the extended network of the people that


circle your brand if you have that higher authority.


Yes.


Excellent.


It sounds like we have, Mark may have a bunch of questions after this.


So after the community speaker is, like, tracking down.


I'll be around.


Apparently you can find him on Google+.


Yeah.


Thanks, Mark.


It's great having you, like, Mark Trappig, and it's very SEO friendly.


Thank you, Dave.


Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about writing titles and headlines both for SEO and in this


new clickbait Facebook social world.


And this is kind of a challenge, right, because I think many folks are seeing and observing


that a lot of the ranking signals that can help a page perform well are often preceded


or well correlated with social activity, which would kind of bias us towards saying, hey,


how can I do these clickbaity, linkbaity sorts of social viral pieces versus we're also seeing


a challenge with, gosh, those things aren't as traditionally well performing in search


results from a perhaps click through rate and certainly from a conversion, search conversion


perspective.


And so how do we balance out these two and make them work together for us based on our


marketing goals?


So I want to try and help with that.


Let's look at a search query for Viking battles, right, in Google.


And these are the top two results.


One is from Wikipedia.


It's a category page, battles involving the Vikings.


That's pretty darn straightforward.


But then our second result, actually this might be the third result, I think there's


an indented second Wikipedia result, is the seven most badass last stands in the history


of battles.


And it turns out that there happened to be a number of Viking related battles in there


and you can see that in the meta description that Google pulls.


But and this one's from crack.com.


So these are pretty representative of the two different kinds of results or of content


pieces that I'm talking about, right?


One is very, very viral, very social focused, clearly designed to sort of do well in the


Facebook world.


And one is much more search, classic search focused, clearly designed to help answer the


user query.


Here's a list of Viking battles and their prominence and importance in history and structure


and all those kinds of things.


Okay, here's another query.


Viking jewelry.


I'm going to stick with my Viking theme because why not?


And we can see a website from Viking jewelry.


This one's on geldragon.com.


It's an e-commerce site.


They're selling sterling silver and bronze Viking jewelry.


They've actually done very classic kind of SEO focus, right?


Not only they have Viking jewelry mentioned twice, in the second instance of Viking jewelry,


I think they've intentionally, I hope it was intentionally, misspelled the word jewelry


to hopefully catch misspellings.


This is some old school SEO.


I would actually not recommend this for any purpose, but I thought it was interesting


to highlight.


Because in this search result, it takes until page three until I could really find a viral,


social targeted, more linkbaity, clickbaity type of article.


This one from io9, a thousand year old Viking jewelry found on Danish Farm.


You know what the interesting part is?


In this case, both of these are on powerful domains.


They both have quite a few links to them, right, from many external sources.


They're pretty well SEO'd pages.


In this case, the first two pages of results are all kind of small jewelry website stores


and a few results from like Etsy and Amazon, more powerful authoritative domains.


But it really takes a long time before you get these, what I'd consider, very powerful,


very strong attempts at ranking, right, for Viking jewelry from more of your clickbait,


social headline viral sites.


And io9 certainly, I would kind of expect them to perform higher, except that this doesn't


serve the searcher intent.


I think Google knows that when people look for Viking jewelry, they're not looking for


the history of Viking jewelry or where recent archeological finds of Viking jewelry happened.


They're looking specifically for e-commerce sites, right.


They're trying to transact and buy or at least view and see what Viking jewelry looks like.


And so they're looking for photo heavy, visual heavy, potentially places where they might


buy stuff.


Maybe some people looking for artifacts as well to view the images of those.


But less of the clickbait focus kind of stuff.


This one, I think it's very likely that this does indeed perform well for the search query


and lots of people do click on that as a positive result for what they're looking for from Viking


battles because they'd like to see, okay, what were the coolest, most amazing Viking


battles that happened in history.


You can kind of see what's happened here with two things, right.


One is with Hummingbird and Google's focus on topic modeling and the other with searcher


intent and how Google has gotten so incredibly good at pattern matching to serve user intent.


And this is really important from an SEO perspective to understand as well.


And I like how these two examples highlight it.


One is saying, hey, just because you have the most links, the strongest domain, the


best keyword targeting doesn't necessarily mean you'll rank if you're not serving searcher


intent.


Now when we think about doing this for ourselves, right, that clickbait versus search optimized


experience for our content, what is it about?


It's really about choosing.


It's about choosing searcher intent, our website and marketing goals or clickbait types of


goals.


And I visualize the intersection here with a Venn diagram.


So these in pink here, the clickbait pieces that are going to resonate in social media,


Facebook, Twitter, et cetera.


Blue is the intent of searchers and purple is your marketing goals, what you want to


achieve when visitors get to your site, the reason you're trying to attract this traffic


in the first place.


This intersection, as you will notice, is super uber tiny.


It is minuscule.


It is molecule sized.


And it's a very, very hard intersection to hit.


In fact, for the vast majority of content pieces, I'm going to say that it's going to


be close to, not always, but close to impossible to get that perfect mix of clickbait, intent


of searchers and your marketing goals.


The times when it works best is really when you're trying to educate your audience or


provide them with informational value and that's also something that's going to resonate


in the social web and something searchers are going to be looking for.


It works pretty well in B2B types of things, particularly in spaces where there's lots


of influencers and amplifiers who also care about educating their followers.


Doesn't work so well when you're trying to target Viking battles or Viking jewelry.


What can I say?


The historians of the Viking world simply aren't that huge on Twitter yet.


I hope they will be one day.


This is kind of the process that I would use to think about the structure of these and


how to choose between them.


First off, I think you need to ask, should I create a single piece of content to target


all of these or should I instead be thinking about individual pieces that hit one or two


at a time?


So it could be the case that maybe you've got an intersection of intent for searchers


and your marketing goals.


This happens quite a bit and oftentimes for these folks, for the gel dragon Viking jewelry,


the intent of searchers and what they're trying to accomplish on their site, perfectly in


harmony but definitely not with clickbait pieces that are going to resonate on the web.


More challenging for io9 with this kind of a thing because searchers just aren't looking


for that around Viking jewelry.


They might instead be thinking about, hey, we're trying to target this specific news


item.


We're trying to find someone who looks for Viking jewelry in Danish Farm or Viking jewelry


found or those kinds of things to be finding our site.


Then I would ask, how can I best serve your own, my marketing goals, the marketing goals


of your website through the pages that are targeted at search or social?


Sometimes that's going to be very direct, like it is over here with geldragon.com trying


to convert folks and folks looking for Viking jewelry to buy.


Sometimes it's going to be indirect.


A Moz Whiteboard Friday, for example, is a very indirect example.


We're trying to serve the intent of searchers and in the long term, eventually, maybe sometime


in the future, some folks who watch this video might be interested in Moz's tools or going


to MozCon or signing up for an email list or whatever it is.


Our marketing goals are secondary and they're further in the future.


You could also think about that happening at the very end of a funnel coming in if someone


searches for say, Moz versus search metrics and maybe search metrics has a great page


comparing what's better about their service versus Moz's service and those types of things


and getting right in at the end of the funnel.


That should be a consideration as well.


Same thing with social.


Then lastly, where are you going to focus that keyword targeting and the content foci


efforts?


What kind of content are you going to build?


How are you going to keyword target them best to achieve this?


How might you interlink between those pages?


I'll give you a quick example over here, but this can be expanded upon.


For my conversion page, I may try and target the same keywords or a slightly more commercial


variation on the search terms I'm targeting with my more informational style content,


informational style content versus entertainment social style content.


Then conversion page might be separate depending on how I'm structuring things and what the


intent of searchers is.


My clickbait piece may be not very keyword focused at all.


I might write that headline and say, I don't care about the keywords at all.


I don't need to rank here.


I'm trying to go viral on social media.


I'm trying to achieve my clickbait goals.


My goal is to drive traffic, get some links, get some topical authority around this subject


matter and later, hopefully rank with this page or maybe even this page in search engines.


That's a viable goal as well.


When you do that, what you want to do then is have a link structure that optimizes around


this.


Your clickbait piece, a lot of times with clickbait pieces, they're going to perform


worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page because it looks like


you're trying to sell people something.


That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general.


What plays is, hey, this is just entertaining and I can just visit this piece and it's fun


and funny and interesting.


What plays well in search, however, is something that lets someone accomplish their task.


It's fine to have information and then a call to action and that call to action can point


to the conversion page.


The clickbait piece's content can do a great job of helping to send link equity, link


equity, ranking signals and maybe some visitor traffic who's interested in truly learning


more over the informational page that you want ranking for search.


This is kind of a beautiful way to think about the interaction between the three of these


when you have these different levels of foci, when you have these different searcher versus


clickbait intents and how to bring them all together.


All right, everyone.


Hope to see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


MozCon 2014 - 02 - Kerry Bodine - Broken Brand Promises

Happy Bastille Day for anyone who is celebrating.


Oh yeah, there we go.


I'm really thrilled to be here and talking with all of you


about customer experience.


It really is my passion.


I eat and breathe and sleep customer experience.


I love it.


And I think it's just so important to the work


that we're all doing.


So one of the things that I track as a customer experience


fanatic is the American Customer Satisfaction Index.


There's actually one of these over in the UK as well.


So for those of you who aren't familiar,


the American Customer Satisfaction Index folks,


they go out and they survey about 80,000 consumers


every year.


And they ask them about the products and the services


that they've purchased.


And not surprisingly, what their level of satisfaction


is with those things.


So this past year, Bloomberg Businessweek


did some analysis.


And they actually looked at the companies


that were listed on there, the publicly traded companies,


and compared their ranking to their stock performance.


And unfortunately, the way it shook out in 2013


was that the companies that were on the bottom of the Satisfaction


Index actually performed better on the stock market


than the companies on the top.


And this was true no matter how you sliced that index.


So whether you took the top 50% and the bottom 50%


or the top 10 and the bottom 10, any way you sliced it,


these were the results.


And so they published an article called


Proof That It Pays to be America's Most Hated Companies.


And this got a lot of media attention.


It was on Colbert.


And this was really just like a dagger into my heart.


This goes against everything that I believe and know


to be true.


Just a couple of the words from this article


that Colbert pulled out.


Customer service scores have no relevance


to stock market returns.


The most hated companies perform better.


Your contempt really, truly doesn't matter.


If anything, it might hurt company profits


to spend money making customers happy.


Ouch.


This is so brutal.


Unfortunately, as I said, it is true


if you're looking at just the 2013 numbers.


So as you can see on the slides here, what we've got in orange


is the S&P 500.


And in yellow, we've got the American Customer Satisfaction


Index portfolio.


And so what that is is made of companies


that either have a high score on that index


or they have a score that's been increasing


over the last several years.


So yes, the ACSI index did perform worse in 2013.


But if you look across all the other years,


that trend is flipped.


And the ACSI folks try to explain it


by talking about just some of the anomalies that happened


in stock trading in 2013.


I'm not a financial analyst, so I'm not


going to speak about those things.


But yes, clearly something happened


in 2013 that was different.


But the big picture here is the rest of those years.


And in fact, if you had invested $100 back in 2000,


it would be worth nearly $600 based


on investing in that American Customer Satisfaction Index


portfolio.


And only $120 if you had invested it in the S&P 500.


So I think this is really compelling evidence


that it pays to focus on customer experience.


This is something that all of our companies


need to be investing in.


So one of the things that drives this, drives these results,


is, of course, customer loyalty.


And a lot of companies have actually


focused on trying to understand what the connection is


between customer experience and customer loyalty.


So just a few data points.


These come from Oracle.


81% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer


experience.


And in fact, that's about a 5% margin


they've found that they're willing to pay.


70% of consumers have stopped buying goods or services


from a company based on poor customer service.


And 64% have taken their business somewhere else,


moved to a competitor based on having bad customer


experiences.


So loyalty, this is really important, right?


And I'm sure something that all of you in this room


are thinking about.


And of course, big brands, they create campaigns


that try to engender loyalty, right?


So you probably have seen United's campaigns around.


They're trying to revive their Fly the Friendly Skies brand


campaign from many years ago.


So I took this picture over in the BART station


in San Francisco.


Nonstop friendly, right?


That definitely embodies United Airlines, right?


Well, they make some very explicit promises


about what this means.


And in fact, they sent out an email


to all of their most loyal customers late last year


when they launched this campaign.


So I fly a ton for work.


And so I'm one of their 1K members,


which means I fly more than 100,000 miles a year.


And so I got this email.


And I'll pull out just some of the words


so you can read what they were promising to me.


So friendly now means more than it ever did.


It means being user friendly.


In other words, flyer friendly, even got a little service


mark for that.


We're giving you an unmatched global network


with more onboard product features, better technology,


and of course, great customer service.


It's a pretty big promise to live up to, right?


Well, a friend of mine is also a 1K flyer on United.


And she got this email back last September.


And that very afternoon, she boarded a plane


bound for a place on the other side of the country.


So it's going to be a long flight for her.


And she's kind of a chilly person, not personality wise,


but she gets cold on the airplane pretty easily.


And so when she got onto the plane, as she's walking on,


she asked one of the flight attendants for a blanket.


And the flight attendant said, well, where are you sitting?


And she said, oh, I'm back in 11A.


And the flight attendant said, I'm sorry.


We only have blankets for people in first class.


So she said, are you sure?


You know, I really get cold on planes.


And the woman said, I'm sorry.


If we give you a blanket, we're going


to have to give everyone a blanket,


and we just don't have enough.


So better onboard product features, right?


Not happening for my friend.


So she walks back to her seat, and she sits down.


And then she remembers this email, and she gets mad.


And so she calls the 1K hotline, and she


explains what's happening to the person on the phone there.


And a very well-meaning client services representative


who she talks to says, OK, what I want you to do


is take your phone and walk up to the front of the plane


and hand it over to the flight attendant who you're talking


with.


Yeah, you can imagine how this plays out, right?


OK, so she hands the phone to the flight attendant.


The flight attendant's demeanor changes immediately.


And my friend gets her blanket, right?


So she's sitting there then on the plane,


and they come through for the beverage service.


And the flight attendants completely overlook her


on purpose, right?


They completely deny her any kind of drink,


which I actually think probably is illegal on a long flight.


But yeah, great customer service?


No, she did not get that at all.


So United made some very explicit promises


to their most loyal, their most profitable customers.


They were not able to keep those promises.


Companies also make implicit promises.


So my husband, another airline story here,


he was trying to get home from Los Angeles.


So Los Angeles to San Francisco, a very short flight.


And flying Delta, so this is all he was trying to do.


Now, it was a really bad day for flying into San Francisco.


There was bad weather, as there is occasionally there.


And so a lot of flights were canceled during the day.


He had the very last flight out of LA.


Now, his flight was not canceled due to weather, however.


It was canceled due to mechanical problems


with the plane.


But instead of putting him directly back,


a direct flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco,


back home the next day, they were


going to route him through Sacramento,


but not Sacramento to San Francisco.


Sacramento to Salt Lake City, back to San Francisco, right?


So they're also telling him in the airport


that they're not going to give him any kind of food


or beverage or any kind of a hotel


accommodation for the evening.


So he's trying to work things out there.


He calls me.


I'm at home.


It's late at night.


So I think, well, what can I do?


I'm going to go on Twitter and see


if I can get some help there.


So I find Delta Assist on Twitter.


Now, I don't know about you, but when I see Delta Assist


on Twitter, I think, oh, this is a great place to get help,


right?


They haven't really promised me anything.


Well, maybe they have a little bit.


It says we're listening around the clock, seven days a week.


So I'm thinking, I just read that really quick,


and I'm thinking, OK, great.


I'm going to get help.


So here's what I tweet to them.


At Delta Assist, 2 AM, husbands LAX to SFO canceled


because of broken plane.


No hotel, and rather than put him on Southwest United Direct,


three connections tomorrow.


So this is about all that I felt that I


could do to help my husband while he was stranded in LAX.


I'm expecting to get a reply back, right?


They said that they're listening around the clock seven days


a week.


I didn't read the part of their Twitter description


that told me that they were potentially not going to be


able to get back to me right away.


And then if I wanted immediate help,


I should call or email them.


So I'm thinking, yeah, this is great.


I'm going to get some help for my husband.


Well, nine hours later, I still hadn't heard from them,


and so I tweeted again.


Dear at Delta Assist, your Twitter handle


suggests that you actually assist people on Twitter.


And then I added some hashtags that I hoped would


help them pay attention to me.


Another three hours later, I finally hear from them.


Thank you for your patience.


We've had extremely high call in Twitter traffic


due to the weather conditions across the US.


How may I assist?


Well, my husband was on a business trip.


He just bought another ticket direct home the next day,


got a hotel room.


Everything was fine.


He was long home before this happened.


But through this interaction, just


by actually being on Twitter with a Twitter handle called


Delta Assist, they had made an implicit promise to me


about what the experience was going to be


like of dealing with them.


So why are these explicit and implicit promises so important?


Well, I want everyone in the room


to close your eyes for just a minute.


Really close your eyes, nothing bad is going to happen.


And I want you to imagine that you're seven years old.


This is a long time ago.


Your parents have promised you that they're


going to get you a kitty cat for your birthday.


I want you to imagine what that kitty cat looks like.


OK, you can open your eyes.


I want to see with a show of hands


who imagined something that looked something like this.


Real live animal?


OK, it looks like the majority in the room.


Who imagined something that looked like this?


OK, we have a few people who actually


did imagine the stuffed animal instead


of the real live adorable kitty.


OK, so I hope this illustrates a point to you


about the importance of expectations.


But just to hammer this point home,


I want to do some kitty cat math.


So if what you're expecting is the live kitty


and what you get is the stuffed animal kitty cat,


you are going to be one very sad seven-year-old or eight-year-old,


right?


Or maybe you're even going to be angry.


But if what you're expecting is, in fact, the stuffed animal,


the few of you in the room that actually did


envision the stuffed animal, and what


you get as a stuffed animal, you are


going to be very happy, right, with your birthday gift.


The important thing to keep in mind


here is that the birthday gift is exactly the same in both


instances.


But how you feel about that experience,


about that gift differs based on what your expectations are.


But this is what marketers are doing all of the time.


They are setting these impossible expectations


through the explicit and implicit promises


that they make.


So to understand how we need to realign


those promises with the actual experience,


we need to understand what the customer experience is.


We need to understand what the customers are going through.


We need to understand the customer journey.


And when I talk with marketers about the customer journey,


I often get this.


Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know about the customer journey.


It's the typical funnel, right?


Awareness, consideration, conversion.


Loyalty magically happens right after that, and then advocacy.


Well, I say, no, this really isn't what I'm talking about.


You have to think about this as kind of a horizontal timeline


and from the customer's perspective.


And they're like, oh, yeah, OK, we can just flip this


and then put it onto a timeline looking thing.


Well, sorry, it's not going to cut it.


I want to show you a journey map, a couple of journey maps,


actually, from my world that I consider to be pretty good.


And I want you to, I hope that you'll understand, really,


why these are so much more meaningful and more impactful


than the simple marketing funnel and thinking about customers


as really just eyeballs that we're trying to convert.


So the first journey map that I want to share with you


is from Intuit.


So of course, they make tax software,


but they also have a service called Personal Pro.


It's house calls on demand.


So they'll meet with you over the phone or at your home


to help you with your taxes.


And a few years ago, they did some journey mapping


to understand, really, what this experience is going to be like.


And this is what the journey map looked like.


Now, I doubt that even the people in the front of the room


can read a lot of the text on here.


Certainly those of you in the back can't at all.


But I hope that everyone, no matter where you're sitting,


can look at this diagram and grok in an instant


which parts of that experience are going well


and which parts are not.


So we've got our horizontal timeline.


It's basically from the time that the customer starts


to learn about the service and then actually books the service,


has the phone call with the tax professional,


and then gets her taxes filed.


And you can see with this line that goes up and down where


it's working and where it's not.


And you can see those emoticons expressing emotion


about how this person's feeling.


I'll pull up just a little bit of the text for you.


There's a stage here that's actually called Wait and Wonder.


She doesn't know, really, what's going on.


And it says here, she's worried.


I wonder if they got my fax.


Do I need to be near my phone?


Or sorry, near my computer.


I'm not sure what to expect.


Do I have everything that I need?


So it's all the questions, all of the concerns


that this person has, a typical customer


has while they are going through this experience.


And these journey maps, through this type of illustration


and content, can really help teams to develop empathy


for their customers.


Now, one other type of journey map that I want to show you,


because every journey map is different,


is for the Exploratorium.


The Exploratorium, for those of you who don't know,


is a great science museum in San Francisco,


primarily geared for kids, but great for adults, too,


and a place where they host parties and things like that.


So here's a journey map for the Exploratorium.


In the box that you see towards the right-hand side of this


is really the experience of being at the Exploratorium.


So think about this as kind of the core of your company's


product or service.


There's that time period where they are physically


interacting with the core thing that your company provides.


And then there's all these steps that lead up


to getting to the Exploratorium.


And there's also some steps, things that happen


after the visit as well.


So this is one of the things that's really impactful


about journey maps, is that it's really looking


at that holistic experience.


Everything that happens throughout the funnel,


but all through the use of the service, getting support,


and really leaving, potentially.


So we've got the part of the journey map


that shows us where the promises are being made.


And then we've got the part of the journey map


that shows us where those promises are


trying to be kept.


So the big question is, who's responsible for all of this?


Who's responsible for brand?


Who's responsible for marketing?


And who's responsible for customer experience?


Well, the short answer is that it's everyone.


Every single person in your organization


and in your partner organizations


is responsible for the customer experience.


Every single person in this room is responsible.


This is why this is something that you all need to care about.


We care about deeply.


So it's not just the people on the front line.


It's not just customer service reps.


It's not just people who are working in retail stores.


It's not just account managers who are going out


and talking to customers.


No, it is every single person, even if you never, ever


talk face to face with customers.


Throughout the entire length of your job or even your career.


So the question is, if it's really everyone


in the organization, how do we start to figure out


exactly what our role is, either in making promises


or in keeping promises?


Well, there's a version of the journey map


that can actually help with this.


And it's actually called a service blueprint.


So if you want to find a service blueprint,


so if you want to find more diagrams like this,


you can Google service blueprints.


And you'll find all kinds of them online.


The one I want to share with you comes from a farm to table


catering company that's based in Toronto.


Excuse me.


So here's our journey map.


Again, not something that you can read


from the back of the room.


But again, I hope that you can look at those lines


and understand where the journey is going well


and where it's not.


Just like the other journey maps that we looked at,


they've got a horizontal timeline


that shows what the customer is going through.


The big steps up at the top talk about the customer


finding the catering, finding the catering company,


finding that it exists, deciding which caterer they're


going to use, ordering, actually receiving the food,


eating the food, and then paying and wrapping up.


And they've called out three different lines here.


So the purple line is the communications.


The blue is customer service.


And the orange is the food.


So this is showing how the customer feels about it


positively and negatively.


And then they've got kind of this overall emotion line


to show what the customer is feeling


throughout the entire journey.


And down at the bottom, they've called out


a couple of quotes, similar to what we


saw on the Intuit journey map.


So currently, the staff do not make recommendations


about whether I've ordered the right amount of food.


And I love this one.


I feel bad.


Their heart and soul is in it, but the driver wrecks it.


OK, so this is your pretty standard journey map.


They have a companion document to this,


which is the service blueprint.


And again, we've got the six steps in their customer


journey up at the top.


What we've got on the bottom here


is really everything, all the different touches


points that the customer interacts with.


So you might see on the left-hand side here,


it says front of house.


So they're using kind of a restaurant metaphor here.


What's front of house?


Everything that the customer can see and touch


and interact with.


Everything that the customer knows exists.


And just like I pointed out on the journey


map for the Exploratorium, we've got


touch points and interactions that are involved


with making promises, right?


So we've got a website, and we've got marketing materials.


OK, then we've got the part of the journey


where the promises actually need to be kept.


So we've got a delivery truck, uniforms, and a delivery setup


sheet.


Now, here's where things get really interesting


and where this really diverges from being just


kind of your standard journey map


to truly being a service blueprint.


And it's all the stuff that happens


on the bottom of the slide here.


And just as we had the front of house,


now we've got the back of the house.


And what you probably can't see very well


is there's a dotted line that goes


across the entire width of this document.


And it says line of visibility.


So essentially calling out that these


are the things that are not visible now to the customers.


Maybe your customer imagines, if they really


thought about it hard, that these things exist.


But the customer has no contact with any of these people


or touch points that happen below this line.


OK, so what have we got here?


Again, we've got people behind the scenes


who are responsible for making the promises.


In this case, we've got people who


manage the online presence.


We've got people that are creating the brand guidelines


and marketing templates.


And then we've got people behind the scenes


who are responsible for keeping the promises.


So we've got someone who is actually responsible


for preparing that delivery setup sheet for the driver.


And all together, this is a really great view


of that entire ecosystem that I talked about.


And it shows every single person in this organization


who's responsible for keeping the promises


and making the promises.


OK, so what I'm hoping all of you are now asking


is, how can I do this?


So how can you help your company keep its promises?


I've got four pieces of advice for you.


The first is that you need to come


to terms with what your brand really stands for, really,


really, right?


Because often, what we want our brands to stand for


is not, in fact, what they really


do stand for with consumers, right?


So here's a few brands that I know most of you


are going to be familiar with in the room.


And these are going to be brand slogans that


come from a website called Honest Slogans, really


great website.


Highly recommend that you go there and check it out.


But for now, Apple, $2,000 Facebook machines.


You're laughing because it's true, right?


Best Buy, try it out before buying it on Amazon.


Waffle House, it's 2 AM and you're drunk.


If you laughed, I can guess at what part of the country


you live in.


All right, Nike will slip into a nice coma for a few hours.


And my personal favorite, WebMD, convince yourself


that you have a terminal illness.


Again, you're laughing because it's true, right?


We've all been there.


OK, so how can you do this?


How can you really get to the bottom of what


your brand stands for?


OK, you might laugh when I tell you what the answer is.


But I'm serious about this.


It's collage.


It's a great tool.


It's not the only tool, but it's a tool that I really love.


These are actually, this is a real collage


that was created by a bunch of factory workers.


I like to imagine them being big, burly factory workers


doing collage, but I don't know what they really looked like.


But what these collages represent


are those factory workers' impressions, really


what they're thinking about in terms of the brand


meaning for a tool manufacturer.


Not a set of tools that you and I would go pick up


at Home Depot, but really tools that


are made for industrial use.


And you can see here that this type of collage


was very effective at unearthing really


what these folks felt about the tools that they were using.


OK, so once you've come to grips with the reality of your brand,


what it really stands for, you then


need to determine how your brand is, or often not,


reflected in your customer experience.


OK, so this is where journey mapping comes back in.


Now, I showed you a bunch of journey maps that were pretty,


and they were done in Photoshop or Illustrator, InDesign.


But the reality is this is something


that you can do with just a bunch of Sharpie markers


and Post-it notes in either a whiteboard or a big piece


of butcher paper.


It's also something that I would encourage you to do with many,


many people from your organization


and with your customers or your clients as well.


And the point is that you're trying


to create a journey map that will vividly depict


what's going right and what's going wrong in the customer


experience.


Now, even if you're in the front,


unless you're a Swedish speaker, you probably can't read this.


But there are little hearts, and there's a little frowny face


over on the left indicating what's going right


and what's going wrong.


So you can translate this then into a tool


that I've developed called the CX brand map.


Now, you don't have to scribble all of this down.


I've actually I'm going to provide you


with a link at the end of the presentation


to a very ugly web page where you can go and download this.


You won't have to sign up or anything like that.


But the point of this little template


is to help you translate information from that journey


map into really that hard look at what's


going on with your brand.


So the first row is where you're going


to fill in all the brand promises that you're making.


So all those implicit promises and all


the explicit promises that you're making.


Or maybe it's just your brand values.


The next line, the next row, is where


you're going to put in all the evidence


that you found for your journey mapping exercise.


But it's evidence in the customer experience, again,


that either supports your brand promises


or contradicts it in some way.


And then the third row is your brand reality.


What is the promise that you're actually keeping?


So let's say that your brand promise is all


about transparency.


But through the journey mapping process,


you realize that you're actually being quite opaque.


So you put transparency there.


You put the evidence in the next row.


And then the bottom line there would


be the reality, the opaqueness.


The third recommendation that I have for you


is to help employees discover the role that they play.


And that discover word is really important here.


Because unlike planning for a website or a brochure,


we can't just give someone a stack of brand standards


and say, here, this is how you need


to act every single day as you interact with customers.


First of all, no one's going to read that.


And second of all, they're probably


going to hate it, right?


I mean, you wouldn't want that in your job.


So we need to empower people to make their own connections


to the brand.


So I've got another little tool for you


for this, another template.


So it's very similar to the first one that I showed.


We've got our brand promises on the first row there.


The second row, though, is a place for the employee


to write down in their own words what


they think that brand should feel like to customers.


And then the third row is where they're


going to put in their own answer to what can I


do to deliver this promise.


OK, so let me show you how this would work,


because I know this is a little more complicated


than the first template.


So let's assume that all of us in the room,


we work for an insurance company, a health insurance


company.


So we've got Susan, who works in marketing.


We've got this brand promise of transparency.


Susan says, in the customer's words,


I think they would say, I understand all the ins


and outs of my insurance.


And Susan says, OK, what can I do


to help deliver on that promise?


Well, I can test all of the plan information


on our website with members to see if they actually


understand it, right?


So that's one thing, at least, that Susan can personally


do to make sure that this health insurance company is delivering


on their promises.


OK, we've got a frontline person, John,


who's a customer service rep, same brand promise.


He's going to describe it a little bit differently.


I know how my insurance works.


And John says, first of all, I'm going


to avoid jargon when I'm talking to the customer on the phone.


And I'm also going to ask callers if they have any questions


about how their insurance works or how their plan operates.


And then just to show someone who's really behind the scenes,


we've got Brian, who's legal, same brand promise.


He translates it a little differently.


My insurance company isn't trying to hide anything.


And he says, OK, what I'm going to do


is I'm going to create new standards for the legal text


on all of our member correspondence.


So this tool is just a very simple way


for people to create their own personal connection


to the brand promises that are being made.


The fourth thing that I would encourage you to do then,


and this is fourth for a reason, is


to align your marketing with your actual customer


experience.


This is the thing you're going to do last.


So when we were talking about journey maps earlier,


you might have noticed that this one for the Exploratorium,


it has all these big red dots on it.


So these dots are meant to help us zoom in very quickly


on the problematic areas in that customer journey.


Because usually what we're using these journey maps for


is to identify what's broken in the customer experience


and then fix it.


That's the main purpose that most companies


have in mind when they're going through the journey mapping


process.


But here's how you can use a journey map in another way.


Rather than paying attention to these big red dots,


pay attention instead to the green dots.


Green dots are the bright spots in the customer experience,


the places where your company is really doing well, really


delivering on its promises.


And those are the aspects of the customer experience


that you should focus on when you're thinking


about marketing endeavors.


So Apple was one of the first companies


to do this in recent years.


When the iPhone came out, they focused


all of their advertising on the great experiences


that we were all going to have by using this smartphone.


They didn't say, hey, guess what, you can't copy and paste.


They just focused on what was awesome about this product.


And the same thing with the iPad when it came out.


So I showed this Delta slide earlier.


Flying is more than just a flight.


Delta continues to elevate the flying experience.


And yes, they elevated again and again and again


in the case of my husband's experience.


Well, I knew that something like this


had to exist on Delta's website.


They're talking about how great their customer experience is.


They're talking about their brand.


So you might think, OK, yeah, they're doing what


I'm talking about.


But they buried this four levels deep in their site


architecture.


So I had to Google it.


There was no way I was ever going


to find this on their website.


Emirates Airlines does something very different.


So they've actually got their very first navigation item


talking about the Emirates experience.


And when you click on it, you get to a section of the site


that shows you how amazing the flight experience is going to be.


This is their first class cabin.


Amazing.


My jaw hit the ground.


I didn't know that this existed on the planet.


So yeah, but they're showing you, yeah, I really


want to fly Emirates now.


But they're also talking about how


they're airline of the year.


So they're out there telling everyone


how great their experience is.


Are they perfect?


No, absolutely not.


But they are good.


And they're highlighting the parts of the experience


that they're the best at.


So we often talk about this interplay between making


promises and keeping promises, whether you're


talking about this context or any context in your lives.


You make the promise, and then you keep the promise.


My closing advice for you is to actually flip those two things.


You need to first keep your promises and then make them.


Thank you very much.


OK, we're going to do some Q&A. If you have a question,


we have three microphones set up throughout the room.


One over there, one in the middle, one over there.


We'll do this for every session.


You shared a link in your deck to some of those assets


that people can download.


Yes, it's caribooty.com slash CX brand.


So if anybody is wondering throughout any presentation


today, tomorrow, the next day, the speaker decks


will be available for download at moz.com slash mozcon.


You can go there today as soon as the speaker is done


or any time after they speak, and those will be available.


So I'm really interested.


I'm really interested.


You consult with a lot of companies.


Do you ever consult with a company


and you're doing this journey mapping,


and they just don't know what their customer journey is?


Oh, totally.


Yeah.


There are so many assumptions that companies


make about what their customers go through,


but oftentimes those assumptions are wrong,


and they often have big gaping holes in them.


So I was working with a large bank,


and they were mapping out the onboarding journey for CFOs


for a B2B product that they offer.


And they thought that the big problem in the journey


was this one point where they send them a ton of paperwork.


So it's just they're inundating them


with so much physical paperwork.


And so they were about to invest several hundred thousand


dollars in a technology solution to that.


But when they brought their customers


in to validate this journey map that they put together,


the customers were like, these were CFOs.


They were like, oh, no, that's not a problem.


We've got staff and processes to deal with that.


The big problem is actually upfront


with some of your marketing materials and information


that we need to gather.


And so they were able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars


by just validating what this customer journey is


with their customers.


So yeah, it's very common.


I would say probably no company has


a complete and accurate view of their journey map


or of the customer journey until they


go through this journey mapping process


and actually validate it with real customers.


Are some people in denial?


Oh, yeah.


Yeah, absolutely.


I really like the example you used of Apple on the screen,


focusing on not over-delivering, but almost under-promising,


focusing on one thing.


And I was reminded of Frontier Airlines back in the Midwest.


They used to fly.


And their advertising was all about the chocolate chip


cookie, which is the exact opposite.


Do you ever advise people just to find that one thing


and focus on that instead of this over-promising journey?


Well, certainly I don't think you should be over-promising,


right?


But I think that's actually one of the big problems


that we have in organizations today


is that we think there's just one thing that we


need to focus on.


And it's probably the thing that a particular department


or a particular executive finds to be most important


or thinks is just really cool or whatever it is.


And so this chocolate chip cookie thing,


and there's other companies that do similar things like that.


They're trying to create just this little moment of delight.


But the question is, does that actually cause delight?


Does that actually increase loyalty in any way?


And so the trick is actually understanding and measuring


what the customer perceptions are


of some of those touch points and then doing


the financial analysis to understand whether or not


that is an appropriate use of funds.


And here's the thing.


I am a customer experience zealot.


I love it, as I've already told you.


But when I'm talking with organizations


about customer experience, this is not just


about delighting the customer endlessly, right?


This is about making our companies more profitable.


And so if that cookie is doing it, that's great.


And if it's not, cut it out and find something else


to focus on.


OK, let's take a question here.


I'm very happy.


The first question is from community member Shaw


Manns, who traveled all the way from Kangaroo Island,


Australia.


It was like a 30-hour flight.


Shaw, go ahead.


OK, thanks, Cyrus, and the perfect MC as always.


Kerry, I'm really interested in the second part


of the problem, which is I think from my own point of view,


when I deal with companies, I'm never


surprised that things go wrong.


But it's always whether they're actually fixed.


And like the United example you gave,


if that stewardess had actually just come up with a blanket,


it probably would have all been awesome.


And it wouldn't have been something


that would have gone further than that.


So I guess my question is about how much effort people need


to put into that second part.


I recently saw something about a hotel chain that actually gives


their employees a budget per day to make things right for people.


So how important is that in the whole mix?


So the question is about how important is the employee


piece, or what are you referring to as the second part?


Well, I guess how important it is for the company


to recognize that they can't just


fix everything at the beginning before they make the promise,


but they need to put some effort into actually catching it


when it does go wrong.


Yeah, I mean, customer experience management


is a very complex field.


And there is a lot of work, and I


would say the bulk of the work in the customer experience


field does happen around the delivering of the promises.


I think too much work is really reactive.


Yeah, just fixing things.


Like, OK, something's broken, we're going to fix it.


And the whole ecosystem idea is a framework


that I developed to help companies understand


that you can't just put Band-Aids on the things that


are broken, because then they're going to continue to be broken


again and again and again for the next customer.


In the case of United, as you mentioned,


that's going to happen again, right?


Unless they do something in order


to make that employee change her behavior in the future.


And so, OK, the question is, well, what do we do then?


Again, part of it is helping the employee understand


what's being promised.


But a lot of it is around building


a customer-centric culture, helping


with employee engagement.


There's a lot of turmoil at United,


and a lot of employees don't feel engaged, right?


They're not happy about the employer that they work for.


I'm guessing she's probably one of them.


I've also run across amazing flight attendants at United


as well.


But yeah, building that customer-centric culture,


building employee engagement, these


are critical pieces to really help


fix the systemic problems, at least with personnel.


And then, of course, there are policies and processes


and technology systems and all kinds


of things that need to be put into place to fix other types


of problems as well.


And by the way, I studied at the University of Adelaide,


for a year, very close to you.


But I didn't make it to Kangaroo Island.


I will always regret that.


I need to get back there someday.


All right, we're going to do one or two more.


Go ahead.


Yeah, thanks for your presentation.


It was great.


Just could you talk for a minute about the process


of getting customer feedback in order to fill in the journey


map?


Yeah, absolutely.


So how do you get customer feedback


in order to do the journey maps?


So here's what I suggest.


You get a big sheet of butcher paper and sticky notes,


Sharpie markers.


And you just put one step of the journey on each sticky note.


And you just lay it out in a series of sticky notes


on this big sheet of butcher paper.


I'm talking like 10 feet long, something like that.


You need a big wall for this.


And then, so you do this before you talk to the customers.


And then you bring the customers into a workshop type setting.


And you have them go through the journey map.


And you just talk with them, and you get them to tell stories


about their real life interactions.


You do this in groups of like three or four customers


with a couple of employees from your company.


And so you've got multiple of these little groups


going on in the same room.


And yeah, you just get them to tell their stories


and start moving around the sticky notes.


That's why I pointed out that you do this with sticky notes.


Because if you show them a beautiful,


in-design version of a journey map,


they are not going to feel comfortable changing any of it.


You put so much time and effort into making


this big, beautiful document.


Yeah, OK, yeah, it looks good.


That's the type of feedback that you'll get.


But when it's sticky notes, they'll be like, oh, no,


move this over here.


This isn't the order that it happens in.


And then you give them sticky notes,


and they can add their own things.


I like using red and green dots that they


can add on to show what's working well and what's not.


And then I also, there's a place online


where you can get these emotion stickers.


And it's like 12 different emotions.


And they can put the stickers on to show how they're feeling.


So yeah, it's a very simple just kind of conversation


that you have in a workshop style setting.


Do you have any recommendations for companies


that are working with mainly online connections


with their customers?


If you're primarily working online, a great thing to do


is to actually make screenshots of some of your primary pages


that the customer would visit and have those on hand


so that they can mark them up as well.


And during this process, you recommend beer and donuts


for everybody working?


Food is a huge part of running these workshops.


But typically, I try to get them to stay away from the carbs


so that their energy level stays up.


Light beer.


Yes, exactly.


One last question.


Go ahead, Mackenzie.


Hey, Kerry, thanks for your presentation.


Really excited to take what you're showing up there


on the map and kind of molding that with the touch point stuff


that you can kind of figure out with your audience.


But my question comes from the metric side.


Can you share a little bit about how you measure this stuff


at what KPIs you're using?


Yeah, the question, how do you measure this process?


What are your KPIs?


OK, so there's a few things that I would recommend that you do,


specifically within the context of making promises and keeping


promises.


You can do surveys.


Surveys are typically one of the best ways


to get customer feedback.


I'm sure, raise your hand in the room if you've gotten


a survey from a company recently.


My dad actually told me the other day,


he said, I'm really annoyed by all your CX work,


because now every company that I work with


asks me to fill out a survey.


And I hate taking surveys.


So yes, surveys are one way of doing it.


So then the question is, well, what type of questions


do you ask in a survey?


So I would specifically ask, within this context,


about the promises that you're making.


Think about the types of explicit and implicit promises,


and then ask questions that get at whether or not


you are delivering on it.


So to what degree would you say that your recent interaction


was transparent, that type of thing.


And then there's lots of other questions that you can ask.


You can ask your customers if you're actually providing


the value that they want, how easy you are to do business


with, how enjoyable your company is to do business with.


Those are all kind of typical aspects of metrics


that companies typically ask.


And then there's the big one, which is Net Promoter Score,


which is where you ask, how likely are


you to recommend our company based on your interaction?


There's a lot of controversy about Net Promoter Score,


but it is kind of the gold standard


in terms of how a lot of companies


measure their customer experience.


Thank you.


Carrie, thank you so much for starting us off.


That was excellent.


Darren Shaw: Find All Your NAP Variations Before Building Local Citations - Whiteboard Friday

Hey there Moz fans, I'm Darren Shaw from Whitespark and I'm here today to talk to you about why


you need to find all of your nap variations before building local citations.


It's an important topic to cover because citation consistency is one of the most important local


search ranking factors.


Last year's local search ranking factor study, it was ranked the number two most important


factor second only to just actually having a business in the city you're trying to rank.


Before I get into it, I want to cover a couple definitions really quickly.


So NAP stands for name, address and phone number.


A citation is basically a mention of your name, address and phone number somewhere on


the web.


Typically you're going to see that on sites like yellowpages.com or yelp.com or supers pages


but you can find them on any kind of sites like blogs, newspaper, whatever.


Anywhere your name is mentioned, that's a citation.


So I want to illustrate a mistake we see happening all the time in citation building.


I'm going to show you an example here.


So Bob is a lawyer and he wants to figure out how he can rank in the local pack.


So he does a little research, he comes across an article on how to rank in local SEO, he


reads about citations and how that can help with his local rankings.


So the article suggests that he uses the local citation finder to research his competitors


and find citation opportunities.


So he's done that, he's got this list and he's off to submit his business to all these


various directories.


So he goes to yellowbusiness.com and he's thinking, well, maybe I already have a listing


there.


So he searches for his phone number, doesn't find anything, he thinks he's all in the clear


so he creates a listing.


This is the mistake he's made.


He didn't realize, he didn't think about the fact that he already had a citation because


he used to use his old cell number for his business.


If he had searched for his cell number, he would have found the old listing on the site.


So now he's created this problem where he's got an old incorrect listing on the site and


he's created a duplicate listing.


So he's created a citation consistency problem and it's not really helping him to rank well.


So we solved this problem in our White Spark Citation Services with this four-step process


to find all the different map variations.


So step one, we asked the business, you know, tell us about any previous business names


that you've had, so if you've changed your name in the past or if you have a corporate


account, how about any addresses?


Have you moved locations?


Do you have any secondary locations?


Do you have your business registered at a corporate address?


Phone numbers, any call tracking numbers, toll-free numbers, cell numbers, any past


numbers that you've used for the business.


So this is a great way to start.


We get a list of all that stuff.


Next we'll go to MozLocal and we run a search for the business name in zip and this, because


MozLocal queries all the primary data aggregators and a number of other important sites in the


local search ecosystem, it tends to surface a lot of map variations, so we use this to


add to our list.


Third, we'll go to Yellowbot and Merchant Circle.


So these two sites are interesting because they collect data from a number of different


sources but they don't do a very good job of merging listings as the data comes in,


so we end up with a lot of duplicates on the site.


So it's a lot of work to clean up that site but it's very helpful for this process.


So for this one you just put in a portion of the business name.


So Bob's Business is Bob Loblaw's law firm, so instead of just putting the whole thing


in, we'll just put in Loblaw to help surface variations.


So here's some variations that might come up.


We've got Loblaw & Sons LLC, Loblaw's Law, Bob Loblaw's Law Blog, and so after we get


that, we're going to go to Google, we're going to search Google, and now what we're doing


here is we're trying to find any variations that we didn't already discover.


So we already have a number of different names, we have a number of different phone numbers,


and so what we'll do is we're going to find more names.


So if you put in a phone number for the business and you exclude all the names, Google's going


to surface any sites or any pages that mention that phone number without any of these names.


That helps you to surface any variations that you weren't aware of.


So you do that for each phone number, and then on the phone number side, if we're trying


to find more phone numbers, we'll search for the business name and exclude the phone numbers


we already know of.


By excluding phone numbers we already know of, we might find new names.


One trouble with this one is it tends to surface a lot of pages where you just mention the


business without the phone number, and that's a common thing.


So what I do in this case is I scan the results looking for obvious business directories,


so if it's like a Yelp or a Foursquare or anything like that.


So I'm looking for business directories in these results.


Then we want to see if there's any other addresses we missed, so put in the phone number and


exclude the addresses that you're already aware of.


Do that for each phone number.


An important tip here with the addresses is that you don't want to use the full address.


So let's say, for example, your address is 5329 Saddleback Road, South, Suite 705.


Don't put in the whole thing.


You put that in quotes.


It's only going to match pages that are an exact match with that.


So just put in that portion that's going to be common to all the sites, like 5329 Saddleback.


At the end of this process, you should have a very nice, clean list of all of your various


names, addresses, and phone numbers for the business.


Now you're ready to build citations.


So all you have to do at this point is just make sure that you check all NAP variations


on the site before you submit a listing.


So there's two ways to do that.


One, you can use the site search feature to search by name and or phone number.


So you're going to run all those.


But you can't always rely on this.


Some of the sites have a really crummy search feature.


It doesn't work very well.


So we always double check by doing a number of Google searches as well.


So you'll use the site colon operator in Google.


You go site colon local dot com space, and then put it in quotes.


So phone one, phone two, name one, name two, address one.


You're going to go through all of the different variations that you're aware of.


At the end of that, if you found a listing, then you want to claim it and update it.


If you didn't find a listing, then you're clear to submit.


So this way, you'll be creating citations without worrying about creating duplicate


listings.


So that's everything.


I hope it's been helpful.


I want to say a big thanks to Nyanghislav Zhukov, who helped me organize all this information.


And a big thanks to Moz for having me.


So if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.


Accelerated Mobile Pages - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans and welcome to British Whiteboard Friday. We're filming this in the London HQ


of Distilled. This is the founder and CEO Will Critchlow. I'm Tom Anthony, head of the R&D


department. And today we're going to be talking about accelerated mobile pages. Will, what is an


accelerated mobile page? I'm glad you asked Tom. So an accelerated mobile page or AMP for short,


is a project from Google and Twitter designed to make really fast mobile pages. And its essence,


it's basically a stripped down form of HTML, a diet HTML, if you will. Tom will talk a little


bit more about the actual details of that. Fundamentally, it's an HTML page designed to


be super lightweight, and crucially designed really fast loading. So Google, Twitter, a bunch


of other companies have rolled this out, kind of in response to projects like the Facebook Instant


Articles project from Facebook and Apple News and so forth. This is designed to be the open


response. So it's open source, and there are all kinds of elements of openness to the project.


But Tom, do you want to tell us a little bit about how and why it's fast?


Absolutely. So as Will said, it's like a diet HTML. So certain tags of HTML, you just can't


use. Things like forms, that stuff are out. CSS, you need to use a streamlined version of it. You


can use most of CSS, but some parts are falling under best practice and they're just not allowed


to be used. And then JavaScript is basically not allowed at all. You have to use an off the shelf


JavaScript library that they provide you with. And that provides things like lazy loading. So the


idea is that the whole platform is designed just for pure readability, fewer speed, things such as


images don't load until they're stored into view. And the JavaScript does all that for you. We


anticipate that can be at the point where the JavaScript library is built into certain operating


systems. So you don't even need that either. And then all of this is designed to be really


heavily cached so that Google would host these pages, host your actual content right there. And


so they don't even need to fetch it from you anymore. Will you go and tell us how that works?


Yes, that's the diagram we have in middle here. So we're all used to this idea of a regular web


page. I've called this www in the diagram. And this is the regular desktop version of the page.


And in the source code, if you have an AMP version, you would designate that with the


rel amp HTML link, which points over to your what we call hosted AMP page. So this is a page on your


own domain constructed of this stripped down form of HTML. And so if you want to see this in action,


I've referenced the guard here, they were one of the first reference partners,


you can put slash AMP on the end of any news story on the Guardian website and see the AMP


HTML. It's linked in this way with the AMP HTML link in the source code. So that's the hosted AMP


that has nothing to do with Google, you can just do that. And it is designed to be faster. But


they've also rolled out this, this free hosted cached platform part of the deal as well,


which is labeled here with the G static. So if you when you actually see these things showing


up in Google search results, which we'll talk about in a moment, the version that shows up


there will typically be hosted on a G static.com. In other words, a Google hosted cached version.


And critically, both of these are both the one you host yourself and the version that is cached


around the internet, potentially even by other people as well. Both of those would contain the


rel canonical back to the original. So that this is really just it's similar like a rel alternative


in a mobile in a mobile world. So it's it's fast because the HTML is cut down. But it's also


potentially designed that these things are bits of content that can be cached potentially by anyone


with that rel canonical pointing back to you, I think it's worth saying that even on the cached


version of the pages, Google have said you're still going to be able to provide your own adverts.


And so they've basically built, we don't know the details of it yet, but they've built a platform


where you can serve adverts from AdSense, outbrain most of the major advertising platforms, and you'll


still accrue all the revenue, they don't take any of that stuff. And also with the cached versions,


you can use analytics. At the moment, the rollout version, you can just use a tracking pixel. But we


know they're working on a platform where it's a sort of vendor neutral platform for things like


Google Analytics, Omniture, and all of that stuff. So you can still get all of the analytics, you can


still provide ads to your pages and everything, even when you're served via the cached versions


of the pages. Yeah, that's very important. That's part of that JavaScript framework that we were


talking about where you get these, these limited containers, which are kind of very limited


JavaScript functionality that you can you can use up. So let's talk a little bit about how this


might actually show up in search results. So first of all, what we know at the moment is,


it's looking like it's mobile and it's right there in the name accelerated mobile pages,


which is why I brought along my mobile whiteboard to demonstrate this for you. This is the AMP


version showing up on a mobile device. Tablet, phablet, not quite sure what it's called. So right now,


it's mobile, it's talking about being mobile, it's not even rolled out just yet. But in the demo that


we've seen, it's showing up as a carousel above the regular blue links, typically for news related


terms, because most of this is focused on obviously reading content. So the people who rolled this out


first have been news publishers typically. So you search for a news related term, you see this


carousel of swipeable images above the blue links, click on one of those open super fast, that's the


whole point. And then you can swipe to another another AMP page across the way. It is actually


also displacing or appearing for some terms where you'd expect to see paid search ads. I wouldn't


read too much into that. This is just in the demo at this point. Yeah, in the long run, maybe there


are paid versions of this, who knows. We're expecting this to be rolling out soon. Google's


latest official line is maybe February in 2016. But one way or another, we expect to see this in


the wild, sometime pretty soon. So it's not there yet, but it will be soon. What can you be doing to


prepare? So two things. Firstly, you want to be able to start building AMP pages for your site,


and you want to make sure that those pages are valid. Because, as we said, it's like a diet


version of HTML. But it's very, very strict how you build the HTML tags have to be in certain


orders in certain places, you can't use certain things. And if you do any of that, your AMP page


is invalid, and they probably won't be using it. So to validate your AMP pages, you actually use a


tool that's built into Chrome. So if you open the developer tools in Chrome, there's a system there,


and you can look it up on the AMP project website, where you can actually go to a page and you can


ask it to validate, is this an AMP page, and it'll tell you any problems with that page. So one,


build AMP pages, make sure you're doing it well. And the second bit is working out how to streamline


building pages. If you want to sort of CMS or anything like that, then obviously, you want this


to be an integral part of your process moving forward, you want AMP pages to be something that


all pages or many pages possible have an AMP version of those pages. So there's already for


the most popular CMS is things like WordPress already have plugins available that you can go


away, download that plugin. And basically, for a lot of the pages, it'll do a lot of the work for


you in creating those AMP pages. So you definitely also, obviously, if you're building your own CMS,


then you should prioritize trying to get similar functionality into CMS. And now's the time to do


that. Because being there at the launch is the time to get the kind of kick the benefit from


when these things roll out. So that's kind of a lot of the background on it. For more detailed


reading, we've put a few resources here, you can go and check out the, this is an actual demo of


what it might look like in search results, you can do try out your own searches on that kind of


streamlined Google. At the moment, you'll only see the demo results at this page, obviously,


so you can on a mobile device, and on a mobile device. And then this is the original main project


web page where you can find the GitHub repository of code and all those kind of validators and so


forth. And we've written some more here. This is a link to our website. So yeah, we would recommend


you check it out if you're into publishing. This is an opportunity for publishers to get to get a


Does Voice Search and/or Conversational Search Change SEO Tactics or Strategy? - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about voice search, conversational search, Internet of


Things search, and how these attributes and the rise in these trends may or may not play


a big role in our SEO strategy and tactics for the future.


So all right, today we have a few sort of nascent beginnings of this, and I made a prediction


at the beginning of this year in my traditional predictions post that voice search, conversational


search, Internet of Things, that these wouldn't actually have a big impact or much of an impact


at all on the web marketing world.


What we are hearing is from the engine specifically, Google and Bing, talking about how a higher


and higher percent of their queries are coming through voice searches.


However, what we are not hearing is how this might be changing SEO or whether it's changing


SEO.


So today what we have going on is things like folks asking their device, their Android device,


okay, Google, what's the difference between libel and slander?


You might hear this, maybe you have a question, something you want answered, and Google will


respond verbally to you, or they might just show you the results on the screen and then


you can click through to there or some combination of the two.


You can ask your Alexa device, the Amazon Echo Alexa device, you can ask it, Alexa,


did Iceland beat England in the Euro soccer game?


Or football game as English and Icelandic people would call it.


In fact they did, really sorry about that, England.


But I kind of want to see the Icelandic commentator freak out again, so that seems exciting.


Hey Siri, right, for Apple products, hey Siri, where can I get Vietnamese rice noodles near


and Siri will look around you and then return some results, that sort of thing.


And of course there's also this idea that with more and more cars are becoming hotspots


for searches as drivers ask their cars things or ask their phones in their cars things like,


alright Tesla, this is not real, you can't actually say this to Tesla yet, but I'm sure


it's coming, when is my brother-in-law's birthday and does he drink whiskey?


And hopefully your Tesla will be smart enough through whatever partnerships it has with


these other technology companies to be able to answer that.


This is what's happening today, right, we're seeing the rise in conversational and voice


search.


And so there's a new and different kind of keyword demand and also a new and different


kind of result set that returns because of that.


Does it really make a huge difference from an SEO perspective?


Well, I'm going to argue that not yet, no it doesn't.


However, I think there are strategic and tactical things that we should be paying attention


to as this world progresses, this world of voice search, conversational search progresses.


First off, strategically speaking, we're going to see a continual rise in instant answers.


What is happening is that when a lot of these voice and conversational search queries are


coming through, they tend to be longer and they tend to be seeking out an answer that


a device can quickly give you a direct answer to.


Things like what I've placed here, right, and this requires some logic and some understanding


from the machines, some contextual understanding, but it's not that challenging and the machines


are doing a good job of this.


I suspect that what we'll continue to see is that the percent of queries with an instant


answer result keeps rising over time.


Because of that, now this is percent, percent, not absolute numbers, I mean obviously the


absolute numbers rising, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the traditional kinds


of queries that have been made to search engines are going to disappear.


In fact, one of the things that I would urge you and caution against is to say, oh, because


voice and conversational search are rising, we should stop paying attention to direct


traditional web search and web results.


It may in fact be the case that even with the rise of all these instant answers and


new SERP features and voice search that the raw number of clicks on search results in


your industry and your field for your keywords may actually have gone up despite all these


trends because these trends are additive.


They are not necessarily taking away from other forms of queries, at least not necessarily,


right?


Second, I think Google and Apple and Amazon and Alexa and all of these engines that participate


in this will be continuing to disintermediate simplistic data and answer publishers.


So I think it behooves you to question what types of information you're publishing.


The way I'd phrase this is if a certain percent, X percent of queries that result in traffic


can be answered in fewer than Y words, right, or with a quick image or a quick graphic,


a quick number, then the engine is going to do it themselves.


They don't need you, and very frankly, they're faster than you are.


They can answer that more quickly, more directly than you can.


And so I think it pays to consider are you in the safe or dangerous portion of this strategic


framework with the current content that you publish and with the content plans that you


have out in the future.


So if you're in the world of food and cooking, recipes, probably very safe, right?


It's very, very difficult for an engine to say, okay, here, let me read you the ingredients,


let me show you the photos, let me give you the entire rundown, I'll give you the comments,


I'll give you the star rating.


It's just too complex.


What's very simple is cooking conversions.


Alexa, how many cups are in, or how many pounds of flour do I need to make up a cup?


Very simple cooking conversion, instant answer, very possible, pretty dangerous.


To be relying on a ton of your click-through traffic for that dangerous stuff.


Sports analysis, very, very difficult for any of these services to try and provide analysis


of a game.


Very easy for them to provide a score.


Very difficult for them to do an in-depth product comparison.


Very easy for them to do a specific, simplistic product price comparison.


What are the prices of X on these?


Learn to code tutorials, almost impossible to disintermediate, but a quick function lookup,


very easy to disintermediate.


So if it's hard to aggregate and present simply, you have a competitive advantage and you probably


will be able to keep that traffic.


If it is easy to aggregate and present simply, you're probably in dangerous territory long-term.


Tactically speaking, there's three things that we really think about as we move to the


conversational and voice search world.


Those are keyword research and targeting requires SERP analysis.


It requires SERP analysis of both desktop and mobile.


And preferably in the future, I think we're actually going to be looking for keyword research


tools that can perform a voice query and then can tell us what the results either look like


or sound like from the engine.


And we need to do our prioritization of keyword targeting, which keywords we actually want


to select and which keywords we want to create content for and try to rank for based on our


click-through opportunity and our value.


If we don't have that information and that data, then we're probably going to be choosing


some keywords unwisely compared to our competition who is thinking about this.


Second, content structures are going to need to optimize for instant answers.


If someone searches for libel versus slander, it is the case that if you rank on the first


page and you have the right content structure, Google may pull you into that instant answer


box.


What we've seen from our research is that being in that instant answer box is not a


bad thing.


In fact, it tends to increase click-through rate and overall traffic for many, many publishers.


Not true for everyone.


Some instant answers do really disintermediate queries, right?


The Iceland versus England, what was the score?


If Google just tells you, you don't need to click through.


But certainly on libel versus slander, you may see libel is written or published defamatory


statement while slander is spoken.


It's very likely that people will actually be clicking through to learn more about that


subject and then you have an opportunity to serve up ads or to serve up your services


or whatever product you're selling, those types of things.


Format things intelligently.


Dr. Pete did a great blog post on how to rank number zero, how to get into those instant


answer results.


He recently did a presentation at SMX Advance that he's published on SlideShare that you


can check out as well.


Both those resources are very handy.


Number three, like I mentioned earlier, you've got to keep an eye on absolute volume and


true search volume demand, not just percentages.


If keyword search volume for the terms and phrases that you care about, if the orange


is typed and the green here is voice search, you can see that it looks like over here,


right, this is 60% plus.


Voice search has overtaken typed search, but what's actually happened is that year to year,


typed search has gone up as well.


It didn't stop paying to try and rank for these keywords.


In fact, it paid more and more dividends.


It's just that voice search grew even faster.


So I think we have to be cautious if we think about voice as completely disintermediating


or taking over our industry or our content.


Rather we should think of this as additive, and we need to pay close attention to the


true overall volume demand, both typed and voice search, over time.


All right, gang, look forward to your tactics, your strategies for voice and conversational


search, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


MozCon 2015 - 14 - How to Better Sell SEO to the C-Suite with Purna Virji

Hello, hello. So I'm going to help you get over your hangover because this is really


awesome stuff. I'm excited to share with you. So I'm going to channel 1% of Marty's energy


and that will be good, right? All right. So let's take a second and all picture something


together, shall we? Calming, exercise. So it's the start of a new SEO project. Excitement


level is high. C-suite is super excited. SEO is the shiny new toy and everybody wants to


play with it. But cut to 60 days later or 75 days later and that same team is now firing


off complaints. Oh, this is too much work. We don't have time for this. There's no budget.


SEO is failing. Now, poor you. You are the defensive. You rush to explain. But the C-suite,


they're impatient. They're not ready to listen. They have their doubts and fears about SEO.


And as far as they're concerned, they've been proven right. You're frustrated. They're frustrated.


It's not exactly enough. It's Brady Bunch vibe. Now, they're not a bad person, right?


Their successful leaders focusing on growing their company, they don't have time for SEO.


They don't understand it. They don't have faith in it. It feels like an uphill battle


for you just to earn their trust. Sound familiar? Anybody? Yes? Now imagine if you could magically


win them over even before you got to this unpleasant situation. If they were there to


support you and ask you, hey, what resources do you need? Do you need more budget? Can


the other departments help you? If they rallied your call center, the customer support team,


IT, traditional marketing and PR behind you, what do you think we could achieve with that


support? Unstoppable, right? Now I know what you're thinking. You're saying,


it sounds so idyllic and blissful that it must exist somewhere over the rainbow where


troubles melt like lemon drops high above the chimney tops. But no, this is all possible.


I'm going to share a secret with you. You're not just SEOs. We are the CEO of SEO at our


companies. We're powerful folks, guys. We can impact PR and branding and social and


user experience and a hundred other things. Case in point, what Rand said, there are things


that SEOs can do that nobody else can do. So why should SEOs be put in the corner? No


longer do we have to be isolated in the marketing department, drawing over the media guy's budget


and singing Celine Dion to ourselves. No. We're the CEOs of SEO at our companies. And


what do we want? More budget, more resources, understanding and support. And we can get


it. There is a way to win the C-suite over. It's with clear strategy. It's with clear


direction. It's with showing the C-suite that we can speak their language and help them


expand their comfort zone to include SEO. Now, like you guys, I've had many, many frustrating


conversations with clients. But really, they're all learning opportunities, right? So let


me share one extreme example story with you. There was our SEO team with our wonderful


agency support. And we had done this brilliant campaign. We earned tons of high quality links.


We got national PR coverage several times over. We had a dramatic lift in social shares.


We had a huge lift in traffic. I mean, we were excited. We were patting ourselves on


the back. We were high-fiving each other. We thought we did really well. But to the


C-suite, they equated SEO success only with ranking improvements. And they thought the


entire campaign was a huge failure when we didn't move to number one in that 30-day period.


So they thought SEO is a waste of time. It's not working. I swear. I was so frustrated.


I had to run down the street screaming my head off. But then I put my tag-fee hat on,


right? It's always good to channel Moz when you can. And I said, OK, the onus is on me


and all of us SEOs to better set expectations and gain alignment on what we're trying to


achieve. So I found a way to think like a CEO and make this happen.


So I'm going to show you how you can channel your inner CEO today. Let's get in their heads.


What's the CEO's role? Pushing the company forward and propelling growth. They're not


often deep in the weeds of strategies and tactics like we need to be. So while we're


thinking like intimate strategies for the next weeks and months for one channel, they're


thinking how they're going to push their company forward over the next few years. You see the


disconnect? Their language is profit and loss. And to really win their support, we have to


show them that we can think like them and we can drive towards the same goal of company's


wide growth. It's time for us SEOs to sit at the C-suite table with the other cool kids.


SEO is your business within the organization and we need to approach it like a CEO would,


especially when it comes to strategy planning. Now, since the C-suite is familiar with business


plans, I found that taking aspects of a business plan and converting it into an SEO strategy


plan document is really, really helpful. This document will help you gain alignment on strategies.


It will help you make a case for the resources you need. It'll help you set expectations


for the C-suite. We don't want those are we there yet questions. So it'll help you set


make or break goals and it will help you earn trust and buy-in so you have their unwavering


support throughout. Sounds amazing, right? Well, I'll show you how we can make this happen.


The SEO strategic planning process is ideally done at the start of a new project or at the


start of a new planning cycle at your company. You'll need to outline a clear strategy that


shows what SEO can generate in revenue plus the risks and potential pitfall and what you


need in one simple short document. This will help show that you can tell the CEOs the direction


that you're going to be steering SEO in for the company and also it'll help you analyze


your own progress so we can course correct as needed.


Okay, let's get to the plan. The elements are, there's seven of them. There's goals,


your strategies, six month growth projections, growth attribution, potential risks, your


resource plan, and finally profit and loss. And I'll walk you through each of them, though


of course you will have some of this information already. This document will help with the


C-suite by answering the five key questions, the who, what, when, where, and how. And it


will serve as a conversation starter so they will be excited to want to learn more about


SEO. They'll want to know what you're doing. They'll understand it.


Now, have you ever seen a CEO getting excited about SEO? Not that often. So I promise you


with this document, you'll make them put down their iPhones and listen to you. So step one,


we want to outline what's the goal. Now as Dana DiTomasso had pointed out in her phenomenal


presentation at Moscon last year, setting really important specific smart goals is critical.