These are all the questions that you should consider if you've been affected by core updates.


3 Important Google Updates to Understand — Whiteboard Friday

Even if you haven't been affected, you should read them because it positions you well to


do well when the next core update is rolled out.


Another concept that a lot of people don't understand about core updates is that they


often operate on a site-wide level, similar to the helpful content update, which means


if Google has determined a large-scale pattern of either great quality content or not good


quality content, or perhaps a lack of EAT, Expertise, Authority, and Trust, in certain


areas, a core update can impact the rankings of almost all your content at scale.


That's not necessarily to say that there's one individual article that dropped in rankings


because that article is bad.


You could actually just be impacted by the core update as a whole because Google decided


that your site, in general, shouldn't be ranking as well as it is.


So people don't always understand that core updates operate in a site-wide fashion.


Content quality is extremely important during core updates.


So if you read Google's questions about the core update, almost all of them tie back to


how much is this website meeting the expectations of users?


How much does the content offer something unique that I couldn't get from other people's


websites?


Is the spelling good?


Is the grammar good?


Is the usability good?


All of this points back to quality.


Technical SEO is also part of content quality.


If your website is easy for users and search engines to crawl through and to navigate without


terrible page speeds or a bad user interface or things like that, this all factors into


their quality evaluations.


So it's not just content.


It's also technical SEO.


It's also performance, usability, website navigation.


All these things factor into content quality.


And then intent is the last point I want to make because one thing that I've noticed with


my core update analyses is that Google tends to be getting better at understanding user


intent.


And that's not always to say, you know, somebody typed, I want to go to this store.


Like that's a pretty clear intent.


When you type a keyword like dogs, there's a lot of different intents that the user might


be looking for.


They might be looking to adopt a dog.


They might be looking to feed a dog.


They might be looking to take a dog on a walk.


There's so many different things.


Google has so much data that they understand the intent better behind every keyword.


When they launch a core update, you often see that the types of results that are ranking


will change.


So you might see a dictionary website start to rank during a core update.


So let's say the example is dogs.


After a core update happens, perhaps a dictionary takes the number one position.


That's because Google determined most users want to define what the word dog means.


If that happens, it's very hard to say that your site did something right or wrong.


It's just that Google got better at understanding intent.


So that's very important to understand with core updates.


It doesn't always mean your site did anything wrong.


It could just be that Google's getting smarter.


So with all of that, these updates will probably continue to happen going forward.


So you should get a good understanding of how they work and best of luck to you and


What Do Google's New, Longer Snippets Mean for SEO? - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about Google's big change to the snippet length.


This is the display length of the snippet for any given result in the search results


that Google provides.


This is on both mobile and desktop, and it sort of impacts the meta description, which


is how many snippets are written.


They're taken from the meta description tag of the web page.


Google essentially said just last week, hey, we have officially increased the length, the


recommended length and the display length of what we will show in the text snippet of


standard organic results.


I'm illustrating that for you here.


I did a search for net neutrality bill, something that's on the minds of a lot of Americans


right now.


You can see here that this article from The Hill, which is a recent article, it was two


days ago, has a much longer text snippet than what we would normally expect to find.


In fact, I went ahead and counted this one and then showed it here.


So basically, at the old 165 character limit, which is what you would have seen prior to


the middle of December on most every search result, occasionally Google would have a longer


one for very specific kinds of search results, but more than 90%, according to data from


Systrix, which put out a great report, and I'll link to it here, more than 90% of search


snippets were 165 characters or less prior to the middle of November.


And then Google added basically a few more lines.


So now on mobile and desktop, instead of an average of two or three lines, we're talking


three, four, five, sometimes even six lines of text.


And so this snippet here is 266 characters that Google's displaying.


The next result from Save the Internet is 273 characters.


And again, this might be because Google sort of realized, hey, we almost got all of this


in here, let's just carry it through to the end rather than showing the ellipsis.


But you can see that 165 characters would cut off right here.


This one actually does a good job of displaying things.


So imagine a searcher is querying for something in your field, and they're just looking for


a basic understanding of what it is, right?


So they've never heard of net neutrality, they're not sure what it is.


And so they can read here, net neutrality is the basic principle that prohibits internet


service providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon from speeding up, slowing down, or


blocking any, and that's where it would cut off, or that's where it would have cut off


in November.


Now, if I got a snippet like that, I need to visit the site, right?


I've got to click through in order to learn more.


I can't just, that doesn't tell me enough to give me the data to go through.


Now Google has tackled this before with things like a featured snippet, right, that sit at


the top of the search results that are more expansive, you know, short answer.


But in this case, I can get the rest of it because now, as of mid-November, right, Google


has lengthened this.


So now I can get any content applications or websites you want to use.


Net neutrality is the way that the internet has always worked.


Now you might quibble and say, this is not a full, thorough understanding of what net


neutrality is.


You may not agree, but for a lot of searchers, this is good enough.


They don't need to click anymore, right?


This extension around 165 to 275, or 273 in this case, has really done the trick, right?


And so this can have a bunch of changes to SEO too.


So the change that happened here is that Google updated basically two things.


One, they updated the snippet length, and two, they updated their guidelines around


it.


So Google's had historic guidelines that said, well, you want to keep your meta description


tag between about 160 and 180 characters.


I think that was the number.


And they've updated that.


They've updated it to where they say there's no official, I think there's no official meta


description recommended length, but on Twitter, Danny Sullivan said that he would probably


not make that greater than 320 characters.


And in fact, we and other data providers that collect a lot of search results didn't find


many that extended beyond 300.


So I think that's a reasonable thing.


When did this happen?


It was starting in about mid-November.


November 22nd is when Systrix's data set starts to notice the increase, and it was over 50


percent.


Now it's sitting at about 51 percent of search results that have these longer snippets in


at least one of the top 10 as of December 2nd.


Here's the amazing thing though.


51 percent of search results have at least one.


Many of those, because they're still pulling old meta descriptions or meta descriptions


that SEO has optimized for the 165 character limit, are still very short.


So if you're the person in your search results, especially it's holiday times right now, right?


Lots of e-commerce action.


If you're the person to go update your important pages right now, you might be able to get


more real estate in the search results than anyone else, any of your competitors in the


SERPs, because they are not updating theirs.


So how's this going to really change SEO?


Well, two things, three.


It sort of changes how marketers should write and optimize the meta description, right?


We're going to be writing a little bit differently because we have more space.


We are going to be trying to entice people to click, but we're going to be very conscientious


that we want to try and answer a lot of this in the search result itself, because if we


can, there's a good chance that Google will rank us higher, even if we're actually sort


of sacrificing clicks by helping the searcher get the answer they need in the search result.


Second, this may impact click-through rate.


We'll be looking at jump shot data over the next few months and year ahead.


We think that there's two likely ways it could do it.


Probably negatively, meaning fewer clicks on less complex queries, right?


But conversely, possible it will get more clicks on some more complex queries because


people are more enticed by the longer description.


And fingers crossed, that's kind of what you want to do as a marketer.


Third, and last, it may lead to lower click-through rate further down in the search results, right?


So if you think about the fact that this is taking up the real estate that was taken up


by three results with two as of a month ago, well, maybe people won't scroll as far down,


right?


And maybe the ones that are higher up will, in fact, draw more of the clicks, and thus


being further down on page one will have less value than it used to.


What are things that you should do right now?


Number one, make a priority list of your – you should probably already have this – but


of your most important landing pages by search traffic, the ones that receive the most search


traffic on your website, organic search, and then I would go and re-optimize those meta


descriptions for the longer limits.


Now you can judge as you will, my advice would be go to the SERPs that are sending you the


most traffic, that you're ranking for the most, go check out the limits.


They're probably between about 250 and 300, and you can optimize somewhere in there.


The second thing I would do is if you have internal processes or your CMS has rules around


how long you can make a meta description tag, you're going to have to update those probably


from the old limit of somewhere in the 160, 180 range to the new 230 to 320 range.


It doesn't look like many are smaller than 230 now, at least limit wise, and it doesn't


look like anything is particularly longer than 320.


So somewhere in there is where you're going to want to stay.


Good luck with your new meta descriptions, with your new snippet optimization.


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


The #1 Reason Paid Ads on Search, Social, and Display Fail - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about the number one reason so many paid ad campaigns, especially


from new companies and companies with new products or new ventures that they're going


into, new markets and audience they're addressing, fail.


They just fall apart.


I see this scenario play out so many times, especially in the startup and entrepreneurial


world, but to be honest, across the marketing landscape.


Here's how it usually goes.


You got your CEO or your CMO, your business owner, and they're like, hey, we have this


great new product.


Let's spread the word.


So they talk to a marketer, could be a contractor, could be an agency, could be someone in house.


The marketer's like, okay, yeah, I'll buy some ads online, help us get the word out


there and get us some traffic and conversions.


And then a few months later, you basically get this.


How's that paid ad campaign going?


Well, not so good.


I have bad news.


And almost always, this is the result of a cycle that looks like this.


You have a new company's campaign, and the campaign is to sell something or get exposure


for something to try and drive visits back to a web page or a website, several pages


on the site, and then get conversions out of it.


And so you buy Facebook ads, Instagram ads, maybe LinkedIn and Twitter.


You probably use the Google Display Network.


Maybe you're probably using AdWords.


All of these sources are trying to drive traffic to your web page and then get a conversion


that turns into money.


Now, what happens is that these get a high cost per click.


They start out with a high cost per click because it's a new campaign.


So none of these platforms have experience with your campaign or your company, and so


you're naturally going to get a higher than normal cost per click until you prove to them


that you get high engagement, at which point they bring the cost per click down.


But instead of proving to them you get high engagement, you end up getting low engagement,


low click-through rate, low conversion rate.


People don't make it here.


They don't make it there.


Why is that?


Well, before we address that, let's talk about what happens here.


When these are low, when you have a low engagement rate on the platform itself, when no one engages


with your Facebook ads, no one engages with your Instagram ads, when no one clicks on


your AdWords ad, when no one clicks on your display ads, the cost to show to more people


goes up.


And as a result, these campaigns are much harder to make profitable, and they're shown


to far fewer people.


So your exposure to the audience you want to reach is smaller, and the cost to reach


each next person and to drive each next action goes up.


This fundamentally is because the audience that you're trying to reach hasn't heard of


you before.


They don't know who you are, since they don't know, trust, like you, or your company product,


they don't click.


They don't click, they don't buy, they don't share, they don't like.


They don't do all the engagement things that would drive this high cost per click down.


And because of that, your campaigns suffer and struggle.


And I see so many marketers who think like this, who say yes to new company campaigns


that start with an advertising first approach.


And I want to be clear, there are some exceptions to the rule.


I have seen some brand new companies that fit a certain mold do very well with Instagram


advertising for certain types of products that appeal to that audience and don't need


a brand association, previously existing brand association.


I've seen some players in the Google AdWords market do okay with this, some local businesses,


some folks in areas where people don't expect to have knowledge and awareness of a brand


already in the space where they're trying to discover them.


So it's not the case always that this fails, but very often, often enough that I'm calling


this the number one reason I see paid ads fail.


There's only one solution, and it's not pretty.


The solution is you have to either get known to your audience before you pour money into


advertising, meaning you need to invest in organic channels, content or SEO or press


and PR or sponsorships or events, what have you.


Anything that can get your brand name and the names of your product out there.


Brand advertising, in fact, can work for this, right?


So television brand advertising, folks have noticed that TV brand advertising often drives


the cost per click down and drives engagement and click through rates up because people


have heard of you and they know who you are.


Magazine and offline advertising works like this.


Sometimes even display advertising can work this way.


The second option is to advertise primarily or exclusively to an audience that already


has experience with you.


The way you can do this is through systems like Google's retargeting and remarketing


platforms.


You can do the same thing with Facebook through custom audiences of email addresses that you


upload.


Same thing with Instagram, same thing with Twitter.


You can target people who specifically only follow the accounts that you already own and


control.


Through these, you can get better engagement, better click through rate, better conversion


rate and drive down that cost per click and reach a broader audience.


But if you don't do these things first, a lot of times these types of investments fall


flat on their face and a lot of marketers, to be honest, and agencies, consultants lose


their jobs as a result.


I don't want that to happen to you.


So invest in these first or find the niches where advertising can work for a first time


product.


You're going to be a lot happier.


All right, everyone, look forward to your comments.


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


How to Appear in Google's Answer Boxes - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about answer boxes, those featured snippets that Google


puts in ranking position zero, oftentimes above the rest of the organic results, usually


below some of the top ads, and sometimes they can draw a ton of the clicks away from the


rest of the ten results that would normally appear in Google's organic ranking.


Now thanks to our friends up at Stat in Vancouver, Rob Bucci specifically who did a great presentation


at MozCon, he delivered some really interesting research.


So we know a little bit more about the world of featured snippets, specifically that there


are three kinds of featured snippets or answer boxes, if you prefer, that appear in Google's


results on both mobile and desktop.


Now Rob used desktop-based, but in my research I checked through all the examples that I


could find and the same featured snippets that we saw in desktop were replicated on


mobile.


So I think this is a pretty one-to-one ratio that's going on here.


The three were paragraphs, lists, and tables.


I'll show you examples of all of those, but globally we are talking about 15% of all queries


in Stat's database that came up with one of these answer boxes.


So I did a search here for Istanbul history, right?


And you can see that Wikipedia is not just ranking number one, they're also ranking number


zero.


So they have this nice featured snippet, it's got a photo or an image that will appear on


the right-hand side on desktop or on top of the text in mobile, and then this snippet


which essentially tries to give you a brief answer, a quick answer to the question.


Now of course this query is pretty broad.


I probably want to know a lot more about Istanbul's history than the fact that it was a human


settlement for 3,000 years, but if you want just that quick answer you can get those.


They're paragraph answers for all sorts of things.


These are about 63%, 63% of all the answer boxes are in paragraph format.


Next we have these lists.


Lists look like this.


So I searched for strengthen lower back.


I get again that image, and then I get, this is from WikiHow, so quality, questionable,


but back strengthening exercises and they say number one, do pelvic tilting, number


two, do hip bridges, number three, do floor swimming, number four, do the bird dog exercise.


That sounds exciting and painful.


And this is from an article called How to Strengthen Lower Back, and it's on WikiHow's


URL there.


These lists that are usually in numeric or they can be in bullet point format, so either


one can appear.


They're about 19% of answers.


And then finally we have ones like this.


I searched for WordPress hosting comparisons, and these tables show up in a lot of places


where you see a comparison or a chart type of view.


In this case there actually was a visual of an actual graph, and then performance of the


best WordPress hosting companies, the name, the account type, the cost per month, and


this is from wpsitecare.com.


Again, this was ranking I believe number two or number three and also ranking number zero.


This is sort of great, right?


Whoever was ranking, I can't remember who was ranking number one, but they are ranking


ahead of the number one spot as well by being in this position zero.


These are about 16% of answers, so real close on tables and lists.


And this is via stats featured snippet research, which I will link to.


It's a PDF, great PDF document that you can check out from Rob that I'll point to in the


Whiteboard Friday.


In addition to knowing this about featured snippets, that it's a fairly substantive quantity


of things, it can also jump you above the rest of the results, and there's these three


different formats.


We had a bunch of questions and we keep getting them on how do I get in there?


And I actually have some great answers for you.


So not only has Rob and his team been doing some research, but we've done some research


and some testing work here at Moz and Dr. Pete has done a bunch.


And so I do have some suggestions, some recommendations for you if you're going to try and get into


these featured snippets.


First one, you actually need to do your keyword research and identify those queries that implicitly


or explicitly are asking a question.


And the question needs to be slightly broader than what Google can deliver directly out


of Knowledge Graph.


So for example, if you were to ask, how old is Istanbul?


They might say 3,000 years old.


They might not even give any citation at all to Wikipedia or any other website.


If I were to ask, how old is Rand Fishkin?


They might put in 37 and they might give absolutely no citation, no link at all, no credit to


any page of mine on the web.


Again, very frustrating.


So these are essentially queries that we're looking for in our keyword research that are


slightly broader than a single line or single piece of knowledge, but they do demand a question


that it's being answered.


And you can find those in your keyword research pretty easily.


If you go into Keyword Explorer, for example, and you use the suggestions filter for our


questions, virtually all of those are.


But many things like Istanbul history, it's an implicit question, not an explicit one.


And so you can get featured snippets for those as well.


You want to seek out queries that already use the answer box.


So again, if you're using a tool like Keyword Explorer or something, I believe Stat does


this as well, where they will identify the types of results that are in the query.


You're looking for these answer box or featured snippets, types of results.


If they are in there and someone else already owns it, that means you can usually leapfrog


them by providing a better, better formatted, more accurate, more complete or higher ranking


answer.


So if you're ranking number three or number four and the number two or number one result


is producing that answer box and you reformat your content—I'll talk about how we can


do that in a sec—you reformat your content to meet one of these items, the correct one,


whichever one is being triggered, you can leapfrog them.


You can take that position zero away from your competition and earn it for yourself.


It's especially easy when they're doing a poor job.


If they've got a weak result in there, and there are a lot of these that are very weak


today, you can often take them away.


Ranging number one is helpful.


It is helpful, but it is not required.


Not required.


Google will pull from any first page result.


In fact, you can test this for yourself.


Very frequently, if you do a query that pulls up an answer box and then you take the query


string and you add ampersand num equals 100 or you change your settings in Google search


such that Google shows 50 or 100 results, they are often going to pull from a lower


down result.


Sometimes in the bottom 30 or 40 results rather than the top 10.


Google is essentially triggering this answer result from anything that appears on page


one of the query, which is awesome for all of us because it means that we could be ranking


number six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and still get the answer box if we do other things correctly


like format and language.


These are essential.


The language means the language use.


We need to use the terms and phrases a little more literally than we would with a lot of


other types of keyword targeting because Google really, really seems to like, if I search


for strengthen lower back, they are showing me an article called strengthen lower back,


not back strengthening for newbies or that kind of thing.


They are much more literal in most of these than we've seen them be thanks to technologies


like RankBrain and Hummingbird with other kinds of queries.


We also need to make sure that we're matching the paragraph, the list, or the table format


and that we're using a logical answer to those query terms.


You want that answer to be, it can be in the title of your web page, but it can also be


in the caption of an image, the label of a section or a section header.


In this case, for example, part three of this article was back strengthening exercises.


That's where they're pulling from.


In this case, they have city of Istanbul and then they have history and that's the section.


In this case, it's the chart, the performance chart that's shown right at the top of the


web page, but they will pull from inside a document.


As long as you're structured in one section or in the document as a whole correctly, you


can get in there.


You want to be accurate.


Google actually does tend to favor more accurate results.


I know you might say, how do I know I'm being accurate?


Some of this information is very subjective.


It is true.


Google tends to look at sources that they trust to look for words and phrases and structured


information that matches up many, many times over across many trusted sites, and then they


will show results that match what are in those trusted sites more often.


For example, many folks point out, what about in political spheres where there might be


arguments about which one is correct?


Google will tend to prefer the more accurate one from a scientific consensus type of basis


or from trusted resources like an NPR or Wikipedia or a census.gov or those kinds of things.


Not necessarily from those domains, but information that matches what is on those domains.


If your census numbers don't match what's on the actual census.gov, Google might start


to trust you a little less.


Number six, this is less about how to rank there but more about how to earn traffic from


it.


If you rank position zero, you might be frustrated that Google is going to take those clicks


away from you because the searcher is going to get the answer before they ever need to


click on your site.


Thus, you don't earn the traffic.


We've seen this a little bit, but in fact, most of the time when we rank number zero,


we see that we get more traffic than just ranking number one by itself.


You're essentially getting two because you rank number zero plus whatever normal organic


position you're in.


You can entice that click by using Google's maximum snippet length to your advantage,


meaning they are not going to put all the different numbered answers in the list here


from WikiHow.


They're only going to put the first four or five.


Therefore, if you have a list that is six or seven or eight items long, someone has


to click to see them all.


Same thing with a paragraph.


They're only going to use a certain number of characters.


If you have a paragraph that leads into the next paragraph or that goes long with the


character count or the word count, you can again draw that click rather than having Google


take that traffic away.


With this information at your disposal, you should be armed and ready to take over some


of those result number zeros, get some answer boxes, some featured snippets on your side.


I look forward to hearing your questions.


I would love to hear if you've got some examples of featured snippets where you're ranking,


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


Improved Reporting & Analytics Within @Google Tools - Presented by Dana DiTomaso

So I hope you had a good break.


You're ready to learn about exciting reporting stuff?


Reporting is always thrilling, best part of anyone's job.


No, you're lying.


All right, cool.


Last year, who was here last year?


You can kind of see.


All right, so you remember I was up here,


I talked about goal charters.


I ended with this nice graphic,


how we should be rowing in the same direction


as opposed to these poor souls


who work at an agency probably.


And so last year I talked about goal charters


and how important it is to create a goal charter.


And this year is the second half of that talk


where I'm gonna talk about what you're gonna do


with those goal charters.


So if you weren't here last year


or didn't watch the video, which you should,


it was a good talk, you can read the blog post


that we've written about goal charters there.


I do recommend it as a nice refresher


to what I'm gonna talk about today.


So what comes after the goal charter?


And what that is, we call it the analytics plan,


the reporting plan, you can call it whatever you want


without something to walk you through today.


Because what I find happens now


is this is a nice visual representation


of most reports as they are delivered currently.


Right, you exported a bunch of spreadsheets,


it's 47 pages of sizzling commentary


that no one's ever gonna read.


I mean, who here has sat in a meeting


where you're going through a report


because you're supposed to go through the report


because that's how you get paid, right?


Or continue to have your job as you go through a report


and everyone is bored.


You're bored, they're bored.


Someone out in the lobby is bored,


like they don't know why but they're bored.


Who, come on, who has done, yeah.


Everyone has had this problem.


And I think that that is the most difficult thing


about reporting is that you really feel like


you have to have volume for money.


If they're paying us a lot of money,


we can't just deliver a single page, right?


We have to give them a lot.


Like this report should have heft.


We toss it on desk, makes a nice thump noise, right?


That's terrible, that's not a good experience, right?


You're not paying for volume, you're paying for quality.


And good reporting is hard work.


And I think this is the difficult thing


is you think, I need to automate this process.


I need to have one report, the one report to rule them all,


but that's not actually gonna work here


because you need to make something


that's gonna be unique for you,


your client, your organization,


something that is gonna work for you specifically.


And today I'm gonna talk about Google tools, obviously.


It is in the name of the talk.


It'd be bad if I changed it now.


And I want you to think about the three aspects


of the Google trifecta of reporting excellence.


So Google Tag Manager is the factory.


This is where the stuff is built.


Interesting things happen there,


things that you may not understand,


but you see what comes out the other side.


Google Analytics is the warehouse where the stuff is kept.


And then Google Data Studio is the showroom


where you take the car and you sell it and you think,


this baby's got so few miles on it, it's gonna be great.


This report's gonna be amazing.


And then they take it out of the showroom


and it stops working or whatever it might be.


But you can do better than this.


And so really having these three tools work together


is what will result in a report that people look at


and say, I get what's going on.


And a big part of this too is planning ahead


because everyone knows you start working with a new client


or you get a new job and you say, where's Google Analytics?


They're like, oh, I don't know.


Or you get it and it's the wrong property ID.


Like that is not the property ID that's on the website


or it has no visits in it, that's my favorite.


Or they say, oh, you know what, the developers,


they won't let you have access to Tag Manager.


Or they won't let you put Tag Manager on


because you could do things with it.


Yes, that is the point.


That is what I would like to do with Tag Manager.


I would like to do things with it.


This can take a while.


I find that the size of the company


is not necessarily proportional to how long


it is going to take to get stuff done.


I find that the tiny companies sometimes,


that's what takes the longest


because they don't know who set it up.


Somebody at some point signed up for Google something.


I don't know.


Do I don't have a Gmail?


You don't have to have a Gmail.


Oh, I didn't know that, right?


Like it's exciting.


So planning ahead is really crucial.


You wanna start this process like the second you think


you're gonna be working at the company,


start looking at this stuff or working at the agency


or whatever it is.


Like get in there really early.


And I also want you to create your analytics plan


before you build anything.


Build the campaign, build the website, anything.


Because by documenting this and by creating this plan,


you're gonna be writing out in advance


what you're gonna be doing


and then documenting it for the future.


For analytics, for tag manager, for data studio.


And that goal charter that I talked about


and you're gonna read the blog post if you weren't here


or you're gonna refresh yourself on the blog post.


And that really tells you what metrics you're going to need


and the analytics plan and reporting plan


will help you figure out what needs to be done


to make that happen.


So I think of the goal charter as like the,


we call this the hopes and dreams, right?


We tell clients don't think about what you can do.


Think about what you'd like to do.


Don't look at, you know, I can't get that now in analytics.


Like I don't care.


Tell me what in a perfect dreamlike world


you would want to get out of your reports.


What are those goals?


What do you want?


And then it's our job to make that magic happen


which is usually not like as hard as you think


a lot of the time.


They say things like, oh I just wanna know


if people actually read the content.


Yeah, you can do that.


It's called content consumption.


I recommend checking it out from last year's talk.


Again, there's lots of ways to do this stuff.


So really try to free people from the limitations


they've imposed on themselves


because they've been dealing with bad people in the past


who don't know how to do things right.


You are not those people.


You know how to do stuff.


Tell them to think about those hopes and dreams.


You're gonna turn it into reality for them.


So I'm gonna walk through what your analytics plan


should include.


And the first thing of course is analytics.


I mean it's in the name, right?


So I want you to go through this in the plan.


I want you to document every single setting of what's here.


And why.


Why have you said it like this?


Why did you add that custom channel?


What does this custom definition that's named one mean?


That's my favorite.


These mystery custom dimensions that make no sense


whatsoever.


You know, what did you do for your calculated metrics?


Why did you change your tracking info?


Why did you exclude this domain?


Why is the cross domain tracking set up


the way that it is, right?


Document these things.


And the reason why is because then you know


you can trust your data.


You're outlined what you're doing and why.


You know the risks and you know where the data


100% can't be trusted.


You can explain to the client, you know,


this exists blah blah blah blah blah,


intelligent tracking prevention, et cetera.


Safari sucks.


Apple's horrible.


You know, I like privacy but no one else should have it.


Document all that kind of stuff.


And by having that data documented,


you have control over it, right?


So if something goes wrong, you'll know


that it's not the way it's supposed to be.


And yeah, I'm talking about analytics here,


but do this for all the other tools


that you're using as well.


So if Facebook is an important thing for you,


which it probably is, you should probably document


how stuff's set up there too, right?


Like think about all the states that you want your data


to exist in and then document how that works


and document the flow between them.


That's the analytics side of the plan.


And the other part of this is you're explaining the why


behind the setup.


So this is a screenshot from one of our analytics plans.


And I talk about custom dimensions in here,


which is always a really thrilling topic.


Like I haven't made it exciting yet for people.


I don't know how other than like streamers


and maybe a clown, like I don't know.


People don't get excited about data as I do.


I'm just a big nerd.


Obviously I was making video games when I was eight.


Anyway, so I think when it comes to selling


custom dimensions, you're not just saying,


I'm going to have this custom dimension.


You're saying why as well.


So for example, full refers is hit scope variable


that captures the entire referral path


of the visitor got to the website.


This covers additional information about visits to site.


They're not via referral sources or social media.


Why are we saving the GTM container ID?


Why are we looking at the navigation type?


Because, and this is on page two.


I did not include this in the screenshot.


But we want to capture navigation type


because this tells us a little bit more about the path.


On page two as well, we want to capture,


for example, like tabs.


How many tabs does the user have open?


What tab ID is the session in?


Because maybe someone has like a thousand tabs open,


which half of you do.


I know we talked about this last year.


Who here has a thousand tabs open at this very moment?


Like, you guys are screwing up the internet still.


You know this, right?


You know that if you leave tabs open all the time,


it sends a zero second session off to analytics


every time you reactivate your browser, right?


You're, no?


Let it go.


Marie Kondo that tab.


Like, so I'm just going to talk about tabs for a second.


This is my pet peeve.


This is screwing up analytics because if you


leave lots of tabs open, you're making


it look like this site has been open forever,


but as a reality, it's a zero second session.


And so we've had someone sitting, I think,


on our main blog page for eight months now.


I just want to call them and say close it.


Because it's not a real session.


They would be so freaked out if I called them.


Can you imagine?


In the future, we'll be able to do that, I'm sure of it.


Facebook's just the, they're almost there.


So you really explain the why behind the setup.


Because you don't want to wonder why


past you decided to do something eight years ago, right?


You really want to think of this


as analytics succession planning.


Because you may not be at this job


or working with this client forever.


It's really a nice gift for whoever's


going to work on it after you.


You probably wish that the person who set it up


did this in the first place, so you're not


looking at it going, why are you doing the thing?


Especially with stuff like custom dimensions and metrics.


Those are always, someone did something weird, right?


And really think about it too.


Analytics has been out now for 14 years.


Do you remember what you did 14 years ago?


I definitely do not remember what I did 14 years ago.


I mean, I'm sure I was excited


about Google Analytics coming out.


I'm sure I read about it on a forum


on Webmaster World or something back then.


But it's not something where I remember.


And so 14 years ago, when you set up analytics


and you didn't document it,


you created this problem for yourself.


So document this stuff.


And in the guide, make sure to cover


both analytics and tag manager.


Because you're going to be using tag manager, right?


Everybody uses tag manager, it's the best.


Anyone not use tag manager?


Okay.


Oh wow, this is awesome.


Okay, I did have hands last year, so good job everybody.


Congratulations.


Okay, so in the guide as well,


you should be talking about tags, triggers, and variables.


What have you set up?


Why have you set up?


It is boring to document this.


It is not the most threatened part of your job, right?


But you have to do it because if something changes,


you want to know why it changed and how.


Because sometimes that change history


is not necessarily giving you everything


that you need to know,


especially if you have a shared account


where everybody uses the account


and is just going to say like your shared account


went and deleted a bunch of stuff.


Not really helpful to find out that like


Bob decided to go on a delete-a-thon


and didn't tell anybody, right?


And because of this,


you're showing how the tools tie together.


So this is the start of Google tag manager section


in the sample analytics plan.


And usually I'll just say like


it's going to contain these following pixels.


Because the other thing too is that if you're not us,


people don't understand how Google tag manager


and Google analytics work together.


I cannot even tell you the number of times


I had conversations with clients that go like this.


Hi, we like to put Google tag manager on the site.


And then when you do that,


you need to remove Google analytics from the site.


And you're like, oh,


but we aren't using Google analytics anymore?


No, no, no, you are.


It's just in Google tag manager.


But why isn't Google analytics on the site anymore?


It's in Google tag manager.


But I still want analytics, yes.


You're still going to have analytics.


I tell them, think of Google tag manager


like a shopping cart and you're pushing around,


you know, your analytics tags in the cart.


And that analogy hasn't worked yet.


So if you have a great one, please share it with me.


Because if I had a dollar for every time


I have that conversation, I'd have like 20 American dollars,


which is like a million Canadian dollars.


I'd be rich.


But yeah, I think that that's a hard thing


for people to understand is that


how these tools work together.


So by documenting this in theory


and walking people through it,


they should understand, I hope, maybe not.


So maybe this is a pipe dream.


But I hope that we all do this.


Maybe it'll get better.


Anyway, so the other part of it too


is talking about the basic stuff


you're going to be setting up.


So this is talking about what we deliver


via custom task in Google tag manager.


If you're not familiar with custom task,


it is very nerdy and delightful.


Simo Ahava, who's basically the grand wizard


of Google tag manager,


he has a great section on custom task.


So for example, you can double check


if a transaction ID is already in GA.


And if it is, then you won't record the transaction ID again


because remember back when I got mad at you


about leaving tabs open?


You know what else people do?


They leave receipt pages open.


And then every time that receipt page is triggered,


it sends a transaction back into Google Analytics again,


and then you're over counting your e-commerce transactions.


For example, you know who really loves to do this?


They're old people.


So we were working with the symphony in Edmonton,


and it turns out that they had thousands


of extra transactions counted


because they were leaving their ticketing pages open


for months, months,


because you buy your tickets to symphony


super far in advance, right?


Anyway, don't do that.


Use custom task.


Different talk, but please go investigate that further.


All right, so.


And then the other thing too is you need to address


what you're gonna do with that data, right?


Because you're never gonna have this situation


where you say, we're gonna collect this


because maybe we're gonna need it later.


I hate that.


That's how you end up with Google Analytics profiles


that have like 50 events that fire every time the page loads


because maybe we're gonna need this.


Like that stuff slows things down over time.


It's not like a free for all when it comes to events.


You can just fire off as many as you want.


Like don't do that, right?


Everything should have a reason why it exists


and why you're doing that thing.


And then at the end of this analytics plan


and Google Tag Manager plan,


you're gonna have a little note about Google Data Studio


because you're all gonna be using Google Data Studio


and love it after this talk if you don't already love it.


So when we talk about Google Data Studio,


we talk about the things that are gonna go into the report.


I'm gonna come back to this in a little bit.


So what you're gonna have at the end of this plan


when you're all done this


is you're gonna know what different tools


need to talk to each other.


Website, phone, reviews, social media,


all this different stuff


because remember your client gave you those pipe dream goals


and one of them was I wanna know if people


who buy this product instead of this product


are more likely to leave positive reviews for me on Google.


Like I don't know how to do that but you will


because our problem is that you're missing


a shared language right now between these different tools.


This talks this way and that talks this way


and we can't get these two to talk to each other.


But what can be a common language


between the two is Google Analytics client ID.


And if you don't know what the client ID is,


that is a unique identifier given to you


when you go to a website.


And if you would like to be a big nerd like me,


there's a great extension for Google Chrome


called Data Layer, I think it's Data Layer Pros extension.


It's great because then you can look


what other people are doing in their Google Tag Manager


and then steal their ideas.


A really good site to visit with this is the Next Web.


They have an excellent Google Tag Manager setup.


Anyway, so you can see the CID here.


It's just a random string of variables.


And then what you do is you save the CID


as a session scoped custom dimension in Google Analytics.


And so you might be doing this,


if you're like, I was not told there would be coding,


this is an SEO conference, not a code conference.


It's super easy, I promise.


So if you're not super familiar with analytics,


dimensions and metrics might be tough.


And that's okay because it honestly,


for me it took me a while to get dimensions


and metrics clear in my head.


Dimensions are the stuff like channel, city, browser,


the things that the metrics get tossed into.


And the metrics are the actual numbers, what happens.


So something like a CID would be a dimension


because it is to that specific session,


whereas a page views for example would be the metrics.


And really I like to think of dimensions as a descriptor


and the metric as the number of times


that that descriptor happened,


if that helps you keep it clear in your head.


So now we have to take that CID


and then we have to move it back,


move it into other applications


because this is the real trick, right?


You can get the CID, but if you don't get it elsewhere,


you have no way of tying this data together.


So, but then the other half is,


well how do I get this data back in analytics again?


Right, I've got the CID in analytics,


but then where do I go from there?


Did you know you can make your own Google Analytics hits?


I mean this is how spammers do it, right?


You've gone into referral traffic


and you see like freeseoadvice.com,


you're like how did that guy do that?


I'm gonna show you.


Do not use this to spam your competitors.


I mean you could, I don't advise doing it.


It is funny if you do, but don't do it.


Especially not on April Fools, anyway.


So, let's walk through an example of how to do this.


So, we're gonna save the Google Analytics CID


in a hidden field in your form.


And then that hidden, that would go into,


oops, and then that would go into, there we go,


a field for example in Salesforce.


So, we have a client who's a pest control company


in Australia, boy they have a lot of pests in Australia,


he's very busy, and on his form,


and this site is Squarespace, like it's not set


in the web development world on fire,


but we can put a hidden field in there,


which will capture the CID, because the very fine people


at UpBuild, thanks UpBuild, I think you're out there,


ah yeah, there you guys are, they're great,


you should talk to them, they're cool.


They created this nice JavaScript function that you can run


which will grab the CID and toss it into that hidden field


in the form for you.


And then, when the opportunity is closed in Salesforce,


then you can push that back over into Google Analytics.


But how, you may ask.


Well, Google has a hit builder.


It shows you how to do this stuff.


You put the things in the fields,


and then the hit is built for you.


And this is a basic page view hit, so,


and you can mouse over all the little eyes


and it'll tell you what it is, but essentially this is,


you would change the CID to be the actual


Google Analytics ID, and the CID would be that long,


variable that we talked about, and then you have the host,


which is mydemo.com, you have the page, which is home,


and then you have the tile tag, which is homepage.


Basic page hit, super easy to build, anyone can do this.


And you don't need to be a developer to make this happen.


I mean, there's JavaScript, but it was super minor,


and also, everyone should learn a little bit of JavaScript,


it'll make your day better, and super fun at parties.


Guaranteed.


But what you do need is Zapier,


or is Zapier a tool of your choice?


I don't really care which one you use, I like Zapier,


so I'm gonna show you Zapier.


And this is the actual process for this client.


So when he closes an opportunity in Salesforce,


then Zapier runs, I think, every 15 minutes.


I mean, this is low volume, right?


So if you're running super high volume,


you probably have the cash for a developer


to do this instead.


If you aren't closing opportunities every 18 seconds,


Zapier is probably just fine for you.


But you can see, in the URL, we've got the Google Analytics,


blah, blah, blah, blah, and then we have transaction,


because I'm pushing it back in Analytics


as an actual transaction, like he's an e-commerce site.


He's not, it's also sold offline.


But now we have this e-commerce data into Google Analytics,


and then we can see the actual cash we made


off of someone coming to the site and filling out the form.


So you can see step one is that advertising reference string


that's the CID, that's what he decided to call it.


Got the amount.


You have the opportunity ID, which is transaction ID.


Ta-da!


The first time I did this, I really felt like a wizard.


Honestly, like I yelled at my computer, I was so excited.


My coworkers are used to this by now,


but it was really cool.


So make a test Google Analytics property just for yourself.


Because really, what's stopping you from trying this out?


Just test it out until you're happy with what you're seeing.


Send hits away.


Don't do it to your competitors, but you could.


And what you can do with this is you can do things


like tie survey responses to purchases, right?


So are people who buy this particular ant removal service


happier than people who buy the cockroach service?


Are they more likely to leave reviews for you?


So for example, like when you buy a specific product


or you could use things like Gather Up, for example,


who are downstairs, you talk to them, they're great.


They also have a Zapier recipe.


You could tie that in and actually tie their CID


to the review, they leave you and Gather Up.


You can combine reviews with in-store visits, for example.


So you know that the person walked into the store


and you could see that they left you a review as well.


And you can bring offline and online purchases together


because what's stopping you from associating that CID


with a loyalty card that you give to your customers, right?


And you can see if they go to the website


and if they come in, the possibilities are endless


once you have this because now your systems


are talking to each other.


The second half of this is let's make


your reporting process suck less because it does.


How about you never have to export a spreadsheet ever again?


Huh, that'd be fun.


That'd be a nice improvement I imagine in your life.


And that brings us to my fave, Google Data Studio.


I love Google Data Studio because it has math,


there's calculated fields.


I did a Whiteboard Friday on this.


It's a really bad Photoshop job.


Whoever put that helmet on my head, I am very upset at you.


It's not good.


Anyway, second pro tip, if you ever do a Whiteboard Friday,


don't wear a white shirt.


Okay, all right.


But yeah, watch this Whiteboard Friday.


I talk about calculated fields.


I do not wear a hard hat, it's great.


You can do some basic quality of life stuff reports.


So this is an example of,


and these slides will be available, don't worry.


You can do some basic quality of life stuff.


So for example, make the pages clickable


so the client can go and see what the page was.


Really easy way to do that.


Maybe you have a UTM tagging problem.


You know, you go into analytics


and you look at traffic by channel,


because that's what everyone does,


and then you see this other channel


that suddenly is taking up 20% of your traffic


and you go in there and you realize


that the Facebook advertising people have gone insane


and are running Facebook boosted,


Facebook non-retargeting ads.


Like that's not a thing that Google knows what to do with.


So just sitting there and other


doing literally nothing useful.


Well, you can write a thing that will


re-categorize this traffic and process it in,


and yes, this is called fixed nightmare UTM.


This is what I called it.


I changed it for the client, but for the screenshot,


this is what I called it.


And it re-categorizes this traffic


and puts it in the right channel for you.


So if somebody's screwed up in the past,


you can fix it in the future.


Wizard, promise.


The other thing we can do with it


is you can blend data in Google Data Studio.


Maybe you can't get everything to push back to GA.


Maybe your tool of choice doesn't integrate with Zapier.


That's okay.


You can blend it together afterwards.


It's like will it blend but for data?


And the answer is yes, it will always blend.


So thinking back to the analytics plan,


what do you have to include in the report?


And remember I showed the screenshot before


of all the different stuff you're gonna talk about


because your client's gonna be so happy with you


and boss, you're gonna get a raise.


It'll be great, parade.


The thing that I usually do is I usually start by sketching


and you can see my really fantastic handwriting.


I'm left-handed.


This is what happens.


And I usually sketch out in cue cards in advance.


So this is actually the real live cue cards


that I used when I was putting together


this real live report and thinking about


how all these different pages are gonna work together.


And make sure to choose the right elements


when you're sketching.


It's way easier to fix it now than it is in Data Studio


where you'll just be finicking with pixels all day.


You just wanna get it out of the way now.


And you'll know you'll have the right graph element


when you can tell at a glance you're on the right path.


It's not some sort of weird thing you have to unravel.


You just look at it and you know.


And you don't have to be there to explain the report.


And I think this is one of the most valuable things


about good reports is that they explain themselves.


Wouldn't that be nice?


No more sitting there going through a report.


Nobody wants to do this.


They'd rather be outside.


It is raining right now, I think.


But sometimes it's nice.


You wanna go outside.


You don't wanna sit there and look at a report.


It's boring.


And the report can be used for years to come


because again, you look at a report that's eight years old.


Is it actually gonna make sense to you?


Are you gonna know where you were at that point in time?


Probably not.


But with these kind of reports you would.


And good reports also answer a question.


So when we're thinking about answering questions,


this is the questions that the charts are answering.


So if you're comparing values, right?


You're gonna use a bar chart.


You're gonna use a combo chart, a line chart, or a table.


Not a huge fan of tables.


I feel like we over rely on tables a lot


and people who aren't nerds don't super like tables.


But I mean, we have them.


I guess you could use them if you must.


What's the distribution of your data?


Are there outliers?


This is where you use a histogram


or scatter chart, for example.


Do you need to show how different parts come together


to show a whole?


And this is where you use stacked bar, stacked area charts.


My personal favorite are stacked areas.


I have a favorite chart.


It means I'm a big nerd.


And what's the relationship between different influences?


So scatter or bubble charts work really well for this.


And then another favorite of mine


is the are we there yet chart,


which is the bullet chart,


which is a recent addition to Google Data Studio.


So keep these design guidelines in mind.


And I wanna make sure you remember this stuff too.


So only answer one or a few questions per page.


Don't cram it all in, right?


Just go slow.


Choose a report color orientation based on user needs.


I'm gonna show you an example and it's the client's colors.


It's not necessarily your colors.


I'm gonna customize it for them.


And if you know they're gonna be printing it,


don't put a black background on that.


That's mean, make it white.


Give the data room to breathe as well.


Don't cram lots of stuff in there because you can.


Like leave space, you know?


Let the eyes relax in between looking


at the different data elements.


And explain everything.


Add notes, because remember you're not gonna be there, right?


Because your report's gonna stand on their own.


It doesn't matter if you get hit by a bus,


which will be tragic,


but also your reports will still be great, right?


Which is really what we're worried about in life.


Assume you're not gonna be there.


And use the user's own words.


What do they call things?


So nobody calls it, you know,


phone call goal four conversions.


Right, that's not a word human beings use.


They call it how many phone calls did I get?


If the goal is member signups,


don't call it new member conversions.


Say this is how many members signed up.


So here's an example of a real live report


from one of our real live clients.


And they actually need to worry about member signups.


And this is the first page of the report.


I think this report is four pages in total.


This is that, this is the final report


that came from those cue cards I showed you earlier.


The word conversions is not on here


because that client doesn't use the word conversions.


It's not a word that means anything to them.


Don't use it on here.


And you can see, you know,


it's are people getting in touch?


There's a number of people who contacted you.


Here's the ways in which they contacted you.


Are you engaging members and prospective members?


How many people signed in?


These are things that matter to this particular client.


You may be looking at this and thinking,


but Dana, where are sessions by channel?


That's my first report always.


I bet you if you took any market


or you sat them down and said make a report,


the first report, the first chart


they would put would be sessions by channel, right?


It's our default chart forever.


It doesn't necessarily mean anything,


especially not to this client.


So this is on page, I think, three or four.


And it's just a stacked area.


And it's just like, here you go.


And it's by week, so they do have a drop


at the end of the week.


They shouldn't panic about that.


I did explain that.


There's explanatory text under this.


And then if they really wanna know the numbers,


well, they can just mouse over it and see.


But they don't need a table of sessions by channel.


They just need to look at the pretty colors


and say yes, okay, things are going great, awesome.


And for them, growth is not necessarily


something they're worried about at this time


in terms of the traffic.


They're reshaping their traffic


to get better results for their members


and have more members sign up.


They're coming to the site, they're just not signing up.


So this is really, traffic by channel


isn't necessarily something


that they're super worried about.


So why start off by showing them that, right?


Show it at the end.


Really important thing I want you to take away


is ignoring what doesn't help you.


It's just as important as watching what does help you.


So if I focus on sessions by channel,


that would become important to this client


when in reality, that isn't actually


what's important to them.


Their goal is new members sign up.


It's not getting more organic traffic.


So just demote that stuff.


It's not important.


And every website out there too has that page


that gets totally useless organic traffic


because it ranks really well for some rando thing


that you didn't think of when you made it


or you weren't expecting it to do so well.


I think we still have an answer box if you Google,


if you Google AdWords Express.


I think we are still the knowledge panel


for AdWords Express for our article


why you shouldn't use AdWords Express.


And this Google's fixed it recently.


Joy found that.


I don't know if it's still out there or not.


It's great.


We get lots of impressions.


Probably not what people were looking for, right?


That's a noisy page for us.


And part of it too is thinking about the personas


that are coming to the site.


Who are the people that I care about


and I don't care about?


So this is an example for a convention center.


A, B, and C are event planners.


These are people who book weddings, meetings, conferences,


people we want to talk to.


D are the people who come to events


and they just want to know the set time


for when, you know, I don't know, Backstreet Boys.


I think there was a 90s tour.


I think they were actually there quite recently


or coming to the site.


You can see that persona D is more than half of traffic


to the site.


If we average their conversions based on all the traffic,


their site would look kind of crappy.


But if we subtract persona D and we say,


all right, I only care about A, B, and C,


that conversion rate looks a lot better.


If persona D happens to convert, it's kind of an accident


or they were applying for a job.


It's not someone we care about in this way.


Their sales team doesn't actually care


how many people came to the site to look at set times.


So we remove it from the reports entirely.


And that way they don't have to pay attention


to something that doesn't matter to them.


All right, quick more examples.


So Google Analytics annotations suck, right?


No one looks at them.


They're short.


You can't write long things in them.


They're not exposable by the API.


You can't get them out of Google Analytics.


You probably have 14 years of annotations in there


and you can't do anything with them except take a screenshot.


So instead, how about having annotations in a Google Sheet


and then blending it in with your Google Analytics data,


for example?


And yes, I'm giving you these charts.


Oh, you're welcome.


I didn't think you'd get that excited.


Yeah, this was fun when it worked.


I know it says null up there.


I have a note in the thing about how to get rid of that.


But you can blend that with your,


you put the annotations in a sheet,


you blend it with your data.


Ta-da, it looks so much better.


And this is how to do that.


I don't want you to look at this.


This is just for your reference afterwards


because I uploaded the deck.


Another question, what is your true search visibility, right?


Rand talked a lot about how Google's stealing all


of our traffic from us, those jerks.


And when it comes to local search,


there's a lot of different things that come in,


a lot of different inputs.


So instead, we're pulling in in one chart,


Google Search Console impressions and clicks,


as well as sessions on the website,


as well as Google My Business views, Map views,


and Google My Business clicks.


And now that you have all this in a single chart,


you could run a math function by watching my very exciting


Whiteboard Friday where I don't wear a hard hat,


and add it all together and see what


your true number of clicks was and see how much Google Search


Console is lying to you.


It's a lot.


You could add in more stuff, too.


You could grab ranking data via stats API.


You could add PPC data to this.


There's tons of stuff you could do once you've


got it all in a single chart.


And this is the thrilling blend that I


used in Data Studio for this.


Again, you can make this yourself, probably this


afternoon, super easy.


Visual brand change tracking.


Nothing is more exciting than when people call us and say,


hello, we're going to rename ourselves.


We don't want to lose any search traffic.


Good luck, right?


But you want to be able to track this and give your client


an easy way to track this.


This one is really simple.


It's a blend of two Google Search Console properties


in the same chart.


You can see where they renamed.


You can see where their old brand got named.


And a news article, that big blue spike at the end,


that was annoying.


But you can see the red spike take off,


which we're slowly moving traffic over from one


to the other.


And you can just watch it go over time.


And again, this is the blend.


This is the easiest out of all these things.


Anyone can do this.


And it is going to make you look so good.


You'll probably get a raise when you go back


to this conference.


So grab all these charts.


We're going to that link there.


It takes you to a Data Studio dashboard


where I have all these charts.


And I've documented how to recreate them.


You can take a copy of it as well and knock yourself out.


Email me if you have questions.


One last Google Data Studio pro tip before I leave.


Did you know that in file report settings,


you can put in a Google Analytics tracking ID?


And then you can see when people open your report.


And then you could have it send alerts to Slack channel


when your client opens the report, for example.


Or you could make a report that would report on your reports.


I call that the yo-dog report.


Anyway, so you could do that too.


And then you can see if clients are actually


looking at your reports.


They're probably not.


But they should.


They're great.


And because you have these awesome reports


that are doing your job for you, you


can spend your time on what matters,


which is the actual marketing thing that people


are paying us to do.


Not so much with the exporting of spreadsheets.


I hope you enjoy your new life in Google Data Studio.


Thank you so much.


The Hidden Talents of Email: Creating Customer-Centric Messages Presented by Justine Jordan

Well, hello there, everyone, and thank you for the very warm introduction from Rob.


I think he made me sound a lot cooler than I really am.


But two really quick things before we get started.


First of all, a really silly picture of me, because who doesn't love a silly picture of


a dorky email marketer?


But also a URL that you should write down right away.


I think I even tweeted it a few minutes ago, because scheduling tweets is silly at conferences.


But the URL is litmus.com slash LP slash MozCon.


Everything I'm going to talk about today is already up there, along with a lot of links


to how-tos and resources, because as Rob said, we're going to get really jam-packed and move


quickly here.


So we all know that emails got talent, right?


As marketers and consumers along, we both know that emails got a lot of things going


for it, but not always for the right reasons.


One of my favorite emails that I get every year is this birth-a-versary email from my


husband's family.


If you've ever wondered what a birth-a-versary is, it's your birthday and your anniversary


combined.


Yes, I got married on my birthday, and if you're wondering, it's December 18th, in case


you want to send me something really awesome.


But I look forward to this email every year.


What happens is my husband's family takes all the things you've done that year, and


they write a poem for you about your previous year and how you're turning another year older.


So as you approach the above 30 bracket, it makes turning another year older a little


bit less painful.


But needless to say, I look forward to this email.


It's one of the very few I get in my inbox that I love every year.


But there's also a lot of emails that, frankly, make us grumpy, right?


It also has a talent for that.


Let's be honest.


The inbox full of deals and subject lines that you're just kind of sick of getting,


that makes me definitely grumpy.


Or like my friend Rachel pointed out, she said, J. Crew, if you're going to send me


an email with some puppies in the subject line, then you better deliver on some damn


puppies.


In case you haven't noticed, I like cats.


But this cat isn't cool with puppies either.


She's like, yeah, I don't want any puppies.


It also has a talent for being kind of confusing or maybe even misleading sometimes.


When you stay at a hotel and they send you an email and they say, hey, will you take


this survey?


But then it comes from do not reply.


It's kind of a mixed message there, right?


Like please take this survey, but thank God, do not reply.


So that's kind of just a jerk thing to do, right?


You're like, eh.


Don't do that.


It also has a talent for exposing both our technological and our human weaknesses.


I'm sure everyone in this room has had the great displeasure of sending an apology email


at least once in their career.


I know I have.


In this case, the email was apologizing for an email that went out earlier this same week,


but it came from Blaine, whose email was Trish.


And then when you actually looked in my inbox, I never got the email they were apologizing


for sending.


So in that case, email can just be downright embarrassing and you're just like, oh, I wish


no one had seen all that.


Gosh, guys, right?


Can I just go actually back in here?


No?


Okay.


So we're really just not feeling the love.


It can be a really tricky thing.


And for someone that really, really loves email, which you'll see here in the next 27


minutes, it just makes me, we can do a better job, guys.


We really, really can.


And every once in a while, there's an email that's really talented and it makes me surprised


and delighted and just so grateful that it came into my inbox.


Like when Songkick sends me an email that says, hey, one of your favorite bands is coming


to the House of Blues in Boston and I'm like, yeah, it's awesome, I love getting these kinds


of emails.


So as marketers and consumers, we know that email is awesome, but sometimes we forget.


It's preferred, it's measurable, it's direct, and it's personal.


60% of people said they would rather receive an email than interact with your brand on


your website or even over social media.


We can measure opens, clicks, conversions, we can all tie that back to our customers


and see what they're doing.


It's awesome.


It's direct.


It's an opportunity to get right in someone's inbox.


It's such a personal place, right?


But we also have mounds and mounds of data that we can use to make email really personalized.


But I think sometimes we forget that personal nature of email.


Every time we press send and our email goes to 10,000 or maybe even 10 million people,


sometimes we forget that emails go to real people with real lives, with real desires,


with real interests, that they're human beings and that real humans want to connect with


other real people.


And so those people, when they want to connect with you, your brand can be human too.


So you have to ask yourself, how can my brand take advantage of the human nature and create


customer centric campaigns that people actually want to receive and interact with?


The secret is in this little Venn diagram that we created.


It's when you magically unite the needs of your subscribers with the needs of your business.


That's when magic happens, right?


And it's a little bit harder than it looks.


Here's a couple of my favorite emails.


This one from Karma, does anyone have a Karma Wi-Fi hotspot?


They're like the coolest things ever.


I swear I don't work for Karma, I work for Litmus.


But I had just gotten my Karma and I had been using it for a few hours.


I was actually working at a park bench outside.


And they sent me this email that said, hey, your battery's dying.


You might want to charge it soon.


I was like, oh my gosh, that's genius.


I put my marketer hat on for a second and I thought, Karma wants me to charge a device


because the more I charge it, the more I use it.


The more I use it, the more data I need to buy from them, which benefits their business.


But also, I'm finding the thing really useful.


So my needs as a consumer, I don't want the dang thing to die.


And their needs of a business united in a really cool email with a nifty animated GIF.


That makes me happy.


This email, it sounds really simple enough.


It just looks at the weather every day and it says, here's what you should wear.


But the real brilliance is in that little red graph there on the right side.


When I signed up for the email, it asked me, well, when do you like to exercise outdoors?


I said that I like to exercise outdoors when it's probably more than 30 degrees, but really


no higher than 75.


I'm kind of a hot and sweaty person in general.


I don't want to be outside any longer than that.


So it told me, here's the times of the day when the weather is going to meet your temperature


thresholds and you should exercise outdoors.


If that's not personal and relevant and tailored just for me, I don't really know what is.


My colleague Chad creates a framework.


He calls this the hierarchy of subscriber needs.


And it goes from the foundational elements of what makes an email just functional all


the way up to what makes an email remarkable and everything in the middle.


So at the bottom you have a respectful email.


That's, do I even have permission to send it?


Am I meeting my subscribers' expectations?


Then the email has to be functional.


Do the links and the images work?


Or when I click a link, does it take me to a 404 page?


Then there's valuable.


Is this email personal?


Is it relevant?


Am I actually getting something out of it as a user and not just the company that's


sending it?


Am I just being treated like a cash machine?


No, thank you.


And then there's remarkable.


Am I surprised?


Am I delighted?


Am I willing to share this email with my friends and family?


Am I going to post it on Twitter?


Am I going to talk about it?


That's like the holy grail of email.


So first I want to talk about functional and respectful emails and how we get there first.


You've got to get out of the blast mentality.


If I hear people in this room, and there's a lot of you, use the word blast over the


next couple days, I will personally slap you on the wrist very kindly.


That's because email is not a blast.


A blast is a tank, right?


It's a weapon of mass destruction.


It's violent, right?


You don't say you're going to blast your friends when you send them an invitation to your open


house, right?


So start saying communication.


Start saying email.


Start saying message.


That's what an email really is.


It's definitely not a blast.


Let's take a walk in our user's inbox or a walk a mile in our user's shoes.


I know it sounds cliche, so bear with me for just a second.


Don't feel like I'm taking you on this, dragging you on this thing that you don't really want


to do.


Which, by the way, if you've ever tried to put your cat on a leash, that's exactly what


happens.


They either collapse or they're like, I can't do this.


So earlier Kara talked about opt-in, right?


She really reinforced the fact that you can't email people unless they've asked to hear


from you.


So that foundational element about just respecting your audience and having permission to send


is so, so critical.


I think we've all received an email that we don't really want in our inbox.


And so spam is defined first and foremost by the user.


Is this an email that they want to receive?


And if they don't, to them it's spam.


But you also have to realize that spam is different in different parts of the world.


And the US has some of the worst or the most lenient spam laws anywhere else that I've


ever seen.


If you're sending email from the US to people in other countries, you actually have to obey


the laws where you're sending the email to, not where you're sending it from.


So if you have customers based in, say, Germany that has some of the strictest spam laws,


you should be following the spam laws in Germany.


And the US is the only place in the world that doesn't require permission or consent


to email someone.


And everywhere else in the world does.


So just keep that in mind.


So you can't act like a spammer, right?


Permission is opted, it's not purchased, don't buy lists.


That's the absolute bare minimum of what you should be able to do to send email and meeting


that subscriber hierarchy of needs.


So after that, I want to talk about the inbox experience.


This is where we're really going to start walking that mile.


I break this up into two parts.


The first part is the inbox.


That's the from name, the subject line, and this thing called preview text.


The second part is the email body when people finally open and click.


But I want to spend a few minutes and really walk through the inbox in detail because I


think it's one of the most ignored and under-optimized parts of email.


If you think about it for a second, we spend so much time crafting the body of our email.


We write headlines, we create images, and then we check it in our little email tool


and we're like, hey, guys, what should the subject line be?


Have you ever done that?


I know I have.


And I'm up here giving the email talk.


So you want to reverse that, right?


If you think like if you have a really great open rate, say 30%, 40%, which is a pretty


good open rate, then 100% of people are seeing the inbox, but only 30% of people are seeing


the actual body of the email itself.


So take the time, go through this process, and really put some effort into the inbox


part, the from name, the subject line, and the preview text.


So let's break it down.


The from name.


That's what people see first.


Who's the email from?


Is it from your company?


Is it from a person at your company?


Is it from a combination of both?


You could put Justine Jordan at Litmus.


I really like how Quora does this.


They actually put a little bit of explainer information about what you can expect in the


email and they variate their from name so that it almost acts as a subject line in some


ways.


Really cool idea.


And behind every from name is what we call a from address.


So if a customer or subscriber replies to your email, where does it go?


You don't want to use no reply.


Because what happens then is if you send your customer an order receipt and they have questions


about their order and it goes to no reply, what does that say about how you care about


their order?


Not very good, right?


Or if I have a question about my new work life plan at work and again, it's going to


go nowhere.


I like how JetBlue does this.


They actually put reply in there.


And if I reply to that email, I can feel good that another human being is reading it and


might actually respond to my inquiry.


Make sure you're monitoring that inbox, you give people a place to send replies to and


you're not just saying this is going to go in a black hole and we don't care about you


or your email because that's kind of what that's saying.


So subject line optimization.


Everyone wants to know how do you send the perfect subject line.


And to be frank, there's no such thing.


Even though Litmus wrote a blog post about it, I think it's on the resource page, I'll


be the first to admit there's no such thing as a secret formula for a subject line.


And as marketers, we tend to be really, really focused on the open rate.


But frankly, we're kind of desperate, right?


We end up writing subject lines that say like don't delete, please open this email.


It's crazy.


Because opens are kind of a vanity metric.


They're flawed.


First of all, they require an image to be turned on in order to even rate an open at


all.


If you're B2B and you're sending a lot of plain text emails, you're not going to get


any sort of open rate at all because there's no images in that email.


Instead, you should be looking at what open rates actually result in clicks and conversions.


So follow the subject line further down the funnel and see what's happening after the


open.


Because that's really what's most important.


And when you ask people what they actually want out of subject lines, it's kind of interesting.


They say they don't want things that are overly promotional or salesy.


They also don't want spelling or grammar mistakes in their emails.


Surprise, surprise.


That's a low bar to clear.


But they want things that sound relevant and personal.


Of course.


They want to feel like the email is tailored for them because email is a personal medium.


We want every email to be like the birth of a rosary email with a personalized poem from


your family inside.


That's awesome.


So preview text optimization.


That's the next thing.


Are any of you familiar with this or using it?


I can just barely see you if you raise your hands.


All right.


Cool.


If you're not, this is, again, one of the most underutilized pieces of email optimization


that you can do.


Instead of putting view images, you should do something that's actionable or trackable.


And the preview text acts as a second subject line.


You get one chance in the subject line, but you get two whole lines in some instances


after the subject line to put some more text in there.


So some of my favorite bad and good examples.


Email not displaying correctly view online.


Let's get rid of that.


Or having trouble displaying this email.


I don't know about you, but as a marketer at my company, I don't want the word trouble


right next to my brand name in the inbox.


That's no good.


Instead, I like this one from Wistia that says scrappy beginnings.


We all started somewhere.


Videos and lessons learned.


That's awesome.


Or Sprout Social, they say webinar follow-up.


They say here's some next steps that you can get the most out of your webinar experience.


That's useful.


Valuable.


Or Meetup.


To meet up organizers all around the world, thanks for all you do to create community.


That kind of gets me right here in the field.


I like that, too.


So preview text can show up in the inbox, but not in the email itself.


There's some code that you can put in your message to make sure that it just shows up


in the inbox, but not in the email.


You should test this.


Use it and A-B test it.


One time I saw someone that ran a test, they teased the last article in their newsletter,


and it was a really long newsletter.


And guess which one got most clicks?


It was the preview text that teased that article in the bottom, and that article got a ton


of clicks.


So it works, guys.


You should try it.


So an optimized inbox in the end looks like this.


It's got your from name, it's got your subject line, and it's got preview text at the bottom.


And you're utilizing all three of those things, and you're making good of all of them.


And one final word, don't be these guys, right?


We live in a mobile world.


Lots of emails come from iPhones and iPads.


And to be clear, I didn't even get these emails.


I'm not going to read them, because they can be super offensive, but you can read them


and laugh, hopefully, or just cringe.


But people noticed this stuff.


They tweeted these.


I found these on Twitter, guys.


I searched for bad subject line or bad email fail or something, and these came up.


So people noticed this stuff and they tweeted about it.


These didn't come to my inbox.


So we covered the first part of the subscriber experience, which is the inbox.


Like I said, super important, gets totally ignored.


What happens when someone finally does open your email and then they actually look at


the body of it?


Let's talk about that for a few minutes.


We have to think about what makes an email contextually relevant when we get to this


part.


What is the key of creating a customer-centric campaign?


What do you know about your users so that you can create a better experience for them?


We can look at technology, we can look at environment, and we can look at task.


We look at technology that's simply what device are they using?


Am I on a giant 27-inch iMac or am I on a teeny tiny iPhone 4SE, because people still


use those, I think.


Environment.


Where and when am I?


What am I trying to do?


If I am at an ATM machine and I request an email receipt at that ATM machine, I am not


sitting at my desktop computer.


So if you send me an email when I am definitely not at my desktop, the email should look good


on that mobile device because I'm not at my desktop.


Or what am I trying to do?


So my local gym, I want to swim at the pool.


The pool is closed, but which pool?


It doesn't actually say in the email.


It just says the pool is closed.


And I'm like, well, there's three gyms that I go to that have pools.


Which one is closed?


I don't know.


Or I'd love to talk to any of you in the audience that have an Apple Watch about how you are


receiving emails on it and if that experience is a positive one for you.


Because as a marketer, if you're sending emails that don't have a plain text version, people


on an Apple Watch aren't getting your email.


There's no text version, there's no email on Apple Watch, which is kind of nuts.


So we all know that mobile is exploding, right?


It's grown 600% just in email alone in the last five or six years.


That's nuts.


It went from 8% to like 56%.


But just because I'm on stage telling you that 56% of email opens are happening on mobile,


you can't listen to me.


I don't always know you or your audience.


Litmus, my own company, B2B, a lot of people only open our emails while they're at work


during the day.


We have about 15% of our audience that opens on mobile.


But big B2C consumer app companies, they have like 70% of their emails that open on mobile.


So you have to pay attention and know what's good for your audience.


If you have a ton of people opening on mobile, look at responsive design.


A lot of cool things you can do.


You can cut down your navigation.


You can change emails from two column to one.


A lot of great things happening with responsive email.


Also technology, right?


If you have those people that are on a retina display, either on their phone or on a MacBook,


I see lots of Apple logos glowing silently at me from the stage, retina images are super


important and you can also put them in email.


The way it works is you save the image out as two times the size you want to display


it in your email and then you resize it in your code.


For simplicity sake, if I want to display the image at 100 pixels by 100 pixels in the


email, I save it out as 200 by 200 and then I readjust it in the code itself.


So it actually looks really nice and sharp and your logo isn't all pixelated on the retina


display.


Also speaking of images, a lot of email programs out there block them automatically.


Outlook is probably one of the biggest offenders of this.


If you're sending a lot of images in your email and your main message is captured in


the image, it's going to show up blank.


You can optimize that by using alt text, colored backgrounds.


You can also style your alt text so it shows up as a different font or color.


Alt text is a good accessibility practice in general.


So code snippet there.


I also learned this simple accessibility hack just a couple weeks ago at our conference


in London.


It's so, so, so easy.


If you have people reading your emails with a screen reader and because email has to be


table based, it has this really horrible experience where it reads it and it's like table one,


column one, cell one and it actually says what's in the column, which is really awful.


If you just add role presentation to all the tables in your email, it skips over all those


empty columns and kind of nonsense and just reads the text, which is such a better experience


for people using a screen reader.


Also images as buttons, just don't do it, guys.


Stop saving out your buttons as images because again if images are turned off in an email,


no one can see your call to action.


You want to use what's called a bulletproof button instead and again because email is


all table based, we're going to have a cell, the cell is going to have a background color,


the cell is going to have just a regular old text link inside of it so it kind of looks


like a button, quacks like a button, must be a button even though it's just a table


cell with color and a link inside.


We call those bulletproof buttons and weird nerdy email language.


Also channel your intermix a lot.


My rule of thumb for every button is to say I like big buttons and I cannot lie.


This is all channeled through the context of that mobile user because we want a better


experience for them.


I don't need to tell you guys that you need to A B test your CTAs.


You want to look at what creates a great CTA, right?


You want to A B test it, think about things like high commitment calls to action, friction,


all that kind of stuff.


I've seen tons and tons of tests where things like this happen.


You say free trial or see plans or pricing and you get a 200% increase in signups.


Again, it's not all just about the open rate.


You have to follow it all down through to the end of the funnel and see what parts of


your email are actually landing on that conversion.


And speaking of mobile and CTAs, for the love of everything, please stop saying click here.


If people are on a mobile device, they are not clicking unless they invented a new wireless


mouse that I can attach to my iPhone, I'd like someone to invent that, please.


But as far as I'm concerned, those don't really exist.


And don't say tap here either, right?


Use a more firm direct call to action, rather than a weak passive one.


And make everything bigger.


I say 16 pixels is a good baseline for body copy by 22 pixels for headlines.


And the rule of thumb, which by the way, you can use your thumb.


It's a great tool that we all have.


You can smash it up against your computer screen, you can smash it up against your phone.


You want all of your CTAs as well as the white space between them to have at least that much,


which is about 44 by 44 pixels, according to Apple anyway.


My thumb might be a little bit bigger.


Your mileage may vary.


But make sure you're using that rule of thumb, and that way you'll never forget it, because


it's always on you, to see if all your CTAs and you have enough white space in your email.


So basically enlarge all the things, right?


We like to talk about video in email, too.


And the tricky thing with video in email is that video inside of an email doesn't really


work.


But it rolls off the tongue so nicely to say video in email.


Really what you can do is video with email, but video in email doesn't really work.


What you want to do instead is you want to create a thumbnail of your video, put it in


your email, and then when people click the thumbnail, it takes you to a landing page


where then you view the video.


But it doesn't play right in your email.


It's not really well supported.


Speaking of being human, should A.B. test this, too, but typically it almost always


works out that the human wins.


We A.B. tested a photo of our thumbnail of our engineer Eddie versus a photo of our very


lovely product.


But Eddie won hands down.


People definitely prefer Eddie to our nice new shiny product.


It really reconfirms the fact that people want to connect with humans, especially at


your brand, rather than just your brand.


If video really isn't your thing, you can use animated GIFs.


These are some of my favorite examples.


You can entice, entertain, and educate with animated GIFs.


If you're B2B and you're thinking, I'm not cool enough, I can't use animated GIFs, some


of my favorite animated GIFs came from B2B companies that were using product demos as


an animated GIF.


You can actually put a product demo in your email just as a GIF.


It works.


That's super cool.


But if you're going to use GIFs, keep in mind that the first frame, especially if you have


a lot of Outlook users, should be the CTA.


Because Outlook only shows the first frame of your animation, if you don't put everything


in there, Outlook users are going to see this if there's nothing in that first frame, which


is just blank.


No good.


All right.


So we talked about the top part of the or the bottom part of the pyramid.


Let's talk about the top.


What else do we need to know and how it can benefit us and them?


So if you think about context, what else do we know about our users?


Do we have behaviors, life cycle factors, things that we know that we can help contextualize


their experience even more to move their emails into that remarkable and valuable area?


Welcome emails.


Great example.


If I signed up for Litmus as a service, I get an email about Litmus as a service.


If I signed up for a welcome email just to sign up for their newsletter, I get kind of


a best of.


So it's contextualized based upon where they entered my marketing funnel, as a member of


my service or as a reader of my blog.


And then if I do follow-up emails to customers, I don't want to send them a trial for a product


they're already paying for.


It's not very thoughtful of me.


So instead I'm going to send them just some additional value-add content, but all the


prospects are going to get the actual trial deal.


You can also take information about what you know about the golden path for your customers.


If you know that certain behaviors lead to better conversion metrics down the road, encourage


those with email.


Customer I.O. knew that people that authenticated the domain in their accounts actually had


higher LTV longer down the road in the relationship, and so they took advantage of that and sent


people a reminder email to authenticate their domain.


It let me know if people abandoned the sign-up process when signing up for software, we actually


sent them the B2B equivalent of a card abandonment email where we say, hey, looks like you were


signing up, did you have some troubles or anything we can help with?


You can also use geolocation, trigger emails based upon someone's city if you're doing


an event, send people an email related to where they live and what's going on around


them.


One of my favorite examples of this life cycle approach is actually from Airbnb.


I took a trip to Amsterdam with my husband recently, and the first room that we asked


for wasn't available.


So we got this email from Airbnb that said, hey, your first room wasn't available, but


here's some alternatives that look kind of similar that you might want to keep in mind.


Super awesome, really valuable, awesome.


Then I booked that, I got a nice receipt.


Then about a week before, they said, hey, it's time to pack your bags, here's some great


tips and tricks that you should know about your trip to Amsterdam, super helpful.


And then when I was done, they said, how did you feel about your experience?


Will you read it for us?


Even when I'm not traveling with Airbnb, they send me really relevant emails that are based


upon my past interactions with them to help me get reengaged.


So this one says, you booked a trip this time last year, do you want to explore some additional


trips?


Or they know I live in Boston, so they say, here's some places nearby that you can get


just on a weekend trip.


Really awesome.


Now, to get that very, very top level pyramid to go from just having a valuable email to


a truly remarkable email, we can start to implement some neat little technical tips


and tricks or strategies that go beyond just sending valuable, respectful, functional content.


CSS animation is one of my favorite little surprise and delight mechanisms.


You can put little clouds animating about the current weather.