this one, index this one.


SEO Best Practices for Canonical URLS + the Rel=Canonical Tag - Whiteboard Friday

Don't index this one, index this one.


Don't index this one, index this one.


And I can do that using this, the link rel equals canonical, the href telling Google,


this is the page.


You put this in the header tag of any document and Google will know, aha, this is a copy


or a clone or a duplicate of this other one.


I should canonicalize all of my ranking signals and I should make sure that this other version


ranks.


By the way, you can be self-referential, so it is perfectly fine for abc.com slash a to


go ahead and use this as well, pointing to itself.


That way, in the event that someone you've never even met decides to plug in, you know,


question mark some weird parameter and point that to you, you're still telling Google,


hey, guess what, this is the original version.


Great.


But since I don't want Google to be confused, I can use this canonicalization process to


do it.


The rel equals canonical tag is a great way to go.


By the way, FYI, it can be used cross-domain.


So for example, if I republish the content on a at something like a, you know, medium.com


slash you know, at Rand Fish, which is I think my medium account, slash a, guess what, I


can put any cross-domain rel canonical telling them, oh, this one over here.


And now even if Google crawls this other website, they are going to know that this is the original


version.


Pretty darn cool.


Okay.


There's different ways to canonicalize multiple URLs.


I mentioned that rel canonical isn't the only one.


It's one of the most strongly recommended, and that's why I'm putting it at number one.


But there are other ways to do it, and sometimes you want to apply some of these other ones.


There are also not recommended ways to do it, and I'm going to discuss those as well.


So the second one is a 301 redirect.


301 redirect, this is basically a status code telling Google, hey, you know what, I'm going


to take slash b, I'm going to point it to slash a.


It was a mistake to ever have slash b.


I don't want anyone visiting it.


I don't want it clogging up my web analytics with visit data.


You know what, let's just 301 redirect that old URL over to this new one, over to the


right one.


Number three, passive parameters in Google Search Console.


Some parts of me like this, some parts of me don't.


I think for very complex websites with tons of URL parameters and a ton of URLs, it can


be just an incredible pain sometimes to go to your web dev team and say, hey, we've got


to clean up all these URL parameters.


I need you to add the rel canonical tag to all these different kinds of pages, and here's


what they should point to, and here's the logic to do it.


And they're like, yeah, guess what, SEO is not a priority for us for the next six months,


so you're going to have to deal with it.


And probably lots of SEOs out there have heard that from their web dev teams.


Well, guess what?


You can end around it, and this is a fine way to do that in the short term, log into


your Google Search Console account that's connected to your website, make sure you're


verified, and then you can basically tell Google through the search parameters section


to make certain kinds of parameters passive.


So for example, you have session ID equals blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.


You can set that to be passive.


You can set it to be passive on certain kinds of URLs.


You can set it to be passive on all types of URLs.


That helps tell Google, hey, guess what, whenever you see this URL parameter, just treat it


like it doesn't exist at all.


And that can be a helpful way to canonicalize.


Number four, you can use location hashes.


So let's say that my goal with slash b was basically to have exactly the same content


as slash a, but with one slight difference, which was I was going to take a block of content


about a subsection of the topic and place that at the top.


So a has the section about whiteboard pens up at the top, but b puts the section about


whiteboard pens toward the bottom, and they put the section about whiteboards themselves


up at the top.


Well, it's the same content, same search intent behind it.


I'm doing the same thing.


Well, guess what?


You can use the hash in the URL.


So it's a hash b, and that will jump someone.


It's also called a fragment URL, jumps someone to that specific section on the page.


You can see this, for example, moz.com slash about slash jobs.


I think if you plug in hash listings, it will take you right to the job listings.


Instead of reading about what it's like to work here, you can just get directly to the


list of jobs themselves.


Now, Google considers that all one URL.


So they're not going to rank them differently.


They don't get indexed differently.


They're essentially canonicalized to the same URL.


Okay, not recommended.


I do not recommend blocking Google from crawling one URL, but not the other version.


Because guess what?


Even if you use robots.txt, and you block google.spider, right, and you send them away,


and they can't reach it because you said robots.txt disallow slash b, Google will not know that


slash b and slash a have the same content on them.


How could they?


They can't crawl it.


So they can't see anything that's here.


It's invisible to them.


Therefore, they'll have no idea that any ranking signals, any links that happen to point there,


any engagement signals, any content signals, whatever ranking signals that might have helped


a rank better, they can't see them.


If you canonicalize in one of these ways, now you're telling Google, yes, b is the same


as a, combine their forces, give me all the rankings ability.


Number six, I would not recommend, also not recommend blocking indexation.


So you might say, oh, well, Rand, I'll use the meta robots, no index tag.


So that way Google can crawl it.


They can see that the content is the same, but I won't allow them to index it.


Guess what?


Same problem.


They can see that the content is the same, but unless Google's smart enough to automatically


canonicalize, which I would not trust them on, I would always trust yourself first, you


are essentially, again, preventing them from combining the ranking signals of b into a,


and that's something you really want.


Seven, I would not recommend using the 302, the 307, or any other 30x other than the 301.


This is the guy that you want.


It is a permanent redirect.


It is the most likely to be most successful in canonicalization.


Even though Google has said, we often treat 301s and 302s similarly, the exception to


that rule is, but a 301 is probably better for canonicalization.


Guess what we're trying to do?


Canonicalize.


Number eight, don't 40x the canonical version, or the non-canonical version.


So don't take slash b and be like, oh, okay, that's not the version we want anymore.


We'll 404 it.


Don't 404 it when you could 301.


If you send it over here with a 301, or you use the rel canonical in your header, you


take all the signals and you point them to a.


You lose them if you 404 that in b.


Right now, all the signals from b are gone.


That's a sad and terrible thing.


You don't want to do that either.


The only time I might do this is if the page is very new, or it's just an error and you


don't think it has any ranking signals.


You got a bunch of other problems you don't want to deal with, having to maintain the


URL and the redirect long-term.


Fine.


But if this was a real URL and real people visited it and real people linked to it, guess


what?


You need to redirect it because you want to save those signals.


Last but not least, when should we canonicalize URLs versus not?


Well, if it is the case that the content is either extremely similar or exactly duplicate


on two different URLs, two or more URLs, you should always collapse and canonicalize those


to a single one.


Also, if the content is not duplicate, maybe you have two pages that are completely unique


about whiteboard pens and whiteboards, but even though the content is unique, meaning


the phrasing and the sentence structures are the same, that does not mean that you shouldn't


canonicalize.


For example, this Whiteboard Friday about using the rel canonical, about canonicalization,


is going to replace an old version from 2009.


We are going to take that old version and we are going to use the rel canonical.


Why are we going to use the rel canonical?


So that you can still access the old one if for some reason you want to see the version


that we originally came out with in 2009.


But we definitely don't want people visiting that one, and we want to tell Google, hey,


the most up-to-date one, the new one, the best one, is this new version that you're


watching right now.


I know this is slightly meta, but that is a perfectly reasonable use.


What I'm trying to aim at is searcher intent.


So if the content is serving the same or nearly the same searcher intent, even if the keyword


targeting is slightly different, you want to canonicalize those multiple versions.


Google is going to do a much better job of ranking a single piece of content that has


lots of good ranking signals for many, many keywords that are related to it, rather than


splitting up your link equity and your other ranking signal equity across many, many pages


that all get slightly different variations.


Plus, it's a pain in the butt to come up with all that different content.


You would be best served by the very best content in one place.


Third, if you're republishing or refreshing or updating old content, like the Whiteboard


Friday example I just used, you should use the rel canonical in most cases.


There are some exceptions.


If you want to maintain that old version, but you'd like the old version's ranking signals


to come to the new version, you can take the content from the old version, republish that


at slash a hyphen old, then take slash a and redirect that or publish the new version on


there and have that version be the one that is canonical and the old version exists at


some URL you've just created that's slash old.


Republishing, refreshing, updating old content, generally, canonicalization is the way to


go and you can preserve the old version if you want.


If you have content that is expiring, a piece of content, a product, an event, something


like that that's going away, it's no longer available, and there's a next best version,


the version that you think is most likely to solve the searcher's problems and that


they're probably looking for anyway, you can canonicalize in that case, usually with a


301 rather than with a rel canonical because you don't want someone visiting the old page


where nothing's available.


You want both searchers and engines to get redirected to the new version, so good idea


to essentially 301 at that point.


Okay, folks, look forward to your questions about rel canonicals, canonical URLs, and


generalization in general in SEO, and we'll see you again next week for another edition


of Whiteboard Friday.


How to Think About Technical SEO - Whiteboard Friday

Hi, welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Ben and I'm a principal consultant


at a company called Distilled. Today I'd like to talk to you about how we think about technical


SEO at Distilled. Now technical SEO is something that a lot of people know a lot of stuff about.


You accumulate knowledge over time from a lot of different sources and that's where


a lot of the value that we deliver comes from. But not everyone can think about technical


SEO from a strategic perspective and that's the skill that I think we should talk more


about. Let's start by framing the problem. So look at these charts. Now I would argue


that most people's mental model of technical SEO matches this first chart. So in this chart


the solid black line is the actual traffic that you're getting. Whereas the dotted line


is the hypothetical traffic you could be getting if all the technical problems on your site


were resolved. And so some people see this and say well if I can just keep fixing technical


things I can keep getting more traffic to my site. And that's one way of looking at


it but I would argue that it's not the best way of looking at it because really there


are only so many technical things that can go wrong with your site. There's a finite


number of problems. It's not an opportunity so much as an issue that needs to be resolved.


So what I try and encourage my clients and colleagues to do is think about it this way.


So it's the same chart, the same situation. Here's the actual traffic that you're getting


and the hypothetical traffic you could be getting but really what's happening is your


technical problems are keeping you from realizing the most potential traffic that you could


be capturing. In other words there are technical issues preventing us from capturing all the


traffic that we could. Now once you frame the problem in this way how do you solve it?


So some people just say well I got this big problem I need to understand how all the things


that could be wrong with this site I'm just going to dive in, I'm going to go through


page by page and I'll finish when either I run out of pages or more realistically I run


out of time or I run out of the client's budget. So what if there's a better way to actually


solve that problem and know that it's been solved? Well that's what this framework that


I'm going to present to you is about. The way that we would recommend doing that is


by taking the big problem, the overall problem of technical SEO and breaking it down into


sub-problems and breaking those down again until you have problems that are so small


that they are trivially solvable. Now I'm going to explain to you exactly how we accomplish


that. It's going to be a little bit abstract so if you want something concrete to follow


along with I'd recommend checking out the blog post at this URL. That's dis.tl slash


tech dash audit. Okay so when you have a big problem that you're trying to break down many


people's first attempt winds up looking something like this Venn diagram. So we take one problem


break it down into three sub-problems but there's some sort of overlap between those


problems. And once there's overlap you lose a lot of confidence. You know there is, are


you duplicating effort across these different areas? Or did you miss something because these


two things are kind of the same? Everything just gets a little hazy very quickly. So to


get past that what I've used at Distilled is this consulting concept called MECE. MECE


stands for Mutually Exclusive and Comprehensively Exhaustive. That's a lot of fancy words so


I'll show you pictorially what I mean. So instead of having a Venn diagram like this


what if each of the problems was completely independent? Now they still cover the same


area, there's just no overlap between them. And that's what MECE means right? Because


there is no overlap between them they are mutually exclusive. Because they cover all


of the original problem they are comprehensively exhaustive. So what does this mean in technical


SEO specifically? Remember the problem that we're dealing with is that there are technical


issues preventing us from capturing traffic that we would otherwise be able to. So what


are the three ways that that could happen? Well first maybe our content isn't being indexed.


There's a technical reason our content isn't being indexed. Second our content doesn't


rank as well as it could and therefore we're losing this traffic. Or three there is a technical


reason our content isn't being presented as well as it could be in the SERP. So this is


things like having rich snippets, stars, things like that that could increase click through


rate. And these things seem kind of trivial but actually all of the technical problems


that you can find on your site contribute to one or more of these three categories.


So again that was pretty abstract so let's talk about an example of how that actually


plays out. And this is actually the first technical check in this audit at that blog


post. So for instance we're starting by considering there is a technical reason our content isn't


being indexed. What are all the ways that that could happen? One of the ways is that


URLs are not discoverable by crawlers. And again that is a whole thing in itself that


can be broken down further. So maybe it's that our XML sitemaps aren't uploaded to Google


Search Console. Of course this isn't a guarantee right that we have a problem but if there's


a problem down here there's a pretty good chance that that trickles back up to a problem


up here that we're really concerned about. And the beauty of this isn't just that it


winds up helping us create a checklist so that we know all the technical issues we ought


to be looking at but it also helps us convey exactly what the meaning is of our findings


and why people should care about them. So this is the template that I encourage my colleagues


to use at Distilled. We are seeing blank. This is a problem because something. And you


should care about that because something else. And the way this works is like Madlib style


except we work like inside out. So we start with this point here. We are seeing that our


XML sitemaps aren't uploaded to Google Search Console. This is a problem because maybe URLs


are not discoverable by crawlers. And we should care about that because there's a technical


reason our content isn't being indexed. And that right there is exactly the message that


you deliver to your client. So again this is exactly the framework that we use for our


technical audits at Distilled. It's given us a lot more confidence. It's given us a


lot more insight into how long this process should take for our analysts and consultants.


And it's also got us better outcomes particularly because it's helped us communicate better


about what we found. Thank you very much. I would love if more people use this and feel


MozCon 2014 - 13 - Stephanie Beadell - Bad Data, Bad Decisions

All right, so surveys.


They're one of those things that seem really easy in theory,


right?


We all know how to do surveys.


You ask a lot of questions.


You get as many people as you can to answer those questions.


And then you make a bunch of pie charts and bar graphs,


and you try to find insight and meaning.


But the thing about surveys is why they are really easy


in theory, in practice.


They're really easy to screw up.


You could ask questions in the wrong order.


You could use the wrong words.


And you can end up with data that's


either completely misleading or completely useless.


And if you're lucky, you recognize the data as such,


and you just throw it away.


Or maybe your survey is not that important.


But if you're using that data to make real business decisions,


bad data could mean you spend a year's worth of dev resources


on a product that nobody wants.


Or you spend all your marketing budget on something


that doesn't impact revenue.


So what I'm going to do today is talk


about some of the common mistakes


that I see people make when they're doing surveys


and how to solve for them.


And I have two goals.


One is that you'll be able to write better survey questions


so you can get better data and drive your business forward.


Or two, that you'll maybe be a little bit more


critical of some of the studies and surveys you


see published online.


So let's get into it.


The first thing you can do, by default,


ask questions on a five or a seven point scale.


Now this is what you see when you see people say,


I'm happy to be at MozCon.


Strongly disagree to strongly agree.


Or how important are conferences to you?


Not at all important to very important with five or seven


points in between.


And the reason that scales are good


is that they give us a really good picture


of what the situation is.


The problem is that a lot of us default to yes, no questions.


Are you happy with your job?


Yes or no.


But that sort of question gives us really simple data


to work with.


It doesn't tell us how strongly people feel,


and it doesn't give us a good picture of what to do next.


So we could ask that same question


in a slightly different way.


I'm happy with my job.


Strongly disagree to strongly agree.


And now we get data that looks like this.


We get an average score.


We get a distribution.


We can see, do people just sort of like their jobs,


or do people really like their jobs?


It gives us a good picture.


And the cool thing is that now that we've asked this on a scale,


we can use this data and compare it to other questions


and do correlation analysis or regression analysis later on.


So the reason we like five or seven point scales


is that researchers tell us that five or seven points do


a really good job of capturing variation


without overwhelming the respondent with choice.


They're also good because they're odd numbers, which


means they have a midpoint.


So you can have like a neutral or neither agree or disagree.


So you don't have to force people to lean


in one direction or another.


The next thing you can do are break down big concepts


into tangible pieces.


And customer satisfaction is a really good example of this.


A lot of times we just ask, are you satisfied?


But satisfaction is actually this really fuzzy topic.


It means different things to different people.


And usually it's not just something


that exists on its own, but it's the sum


of a lot of different factors.


So instead of just asking one question, are you satisfied?


You could break it down into three questions.


You could ask, are you happy with your purchase?


Would you purchase from us again?


And does our product meet our needs?


And you can take the scores to those three questions


and sum them up and have one overall score for satisfaction.


And now you not only know if people are satisfied,


you know how satisfied they are, you know why they're satisfied,


and you know where you need to improve.


And so you've taken this vague concept of satisfaction


and you've turned it into an action plan.


Now another way to do this is by product feature.


You can get a five point scale and ask people


how satisfied they are with each feature.


And again, you're going to get an overall score


for satisfaction and you're going


to get a breakdown by feature so you know where you


need to invest your content or your resources to improve.


Now the next thing is probably the biggest opportunity


that I see people miss all the time,


and that's comparing answers across questions.


Basically, it's segmentation.


And the reason we all miss this is


that when we get our survey data,


we treat each question as a separate entity.


We make a graph for each one and we never look and see,


hey, if people answered one question this way,


how'd they answer the rest of the questions?


And I'm going to show you why that matters.


So this is an example of a satisfaction question


that maybe an agency or a SaaS company might ask.


They want to know, how's our product quality?


How's our price?


How's our account management?


And just like before, you get data


that looks like this, an average score


for each piece of the business.


Now in this case, things look pretty good.


I'd be happy if this were my business.


But the problem is that this is hiding very important data.


This is misleading data.


If we were to break this down by client type,


we'd see a very different story.


Here we can see that our small businesses are very


dissatisfied about price, while our enterprise clients


are very dissatisfied with their account managers.


Now if our enterprise clients are where we're getting all


of our revenue, this has huge implications


for training and staffing.


And we would have completely missed this


if we'd only looked at satisfaction


as a question by itself.


So to get at this sort of data, what you can do


is, if you're familiar with Excel, use pivot tables.


Otherwise, tools like Survey Monkey


have a compare tab or a cross tabs feature


that'll let you get at this data and compare segments.


Something to keep in mind, though, is that surveys


are anonymous.


So you're not necessarily going to know


if your client is a small business or an enterprise.


So it's something that you're going


to have to remember to ask.


So it's good to plan some time upfront strategizing


about the types of segments you're going to want to use


so you can remember to ask those questions as you go.


All right.


Now I'm going to talk about how much power you as a survey


writer have and how much power you


have to actually screw things up.


The first one is with priming.


Now in 1996, a group of researchers got together,


and they had some students fill out some sentence scramble


worksheets, right?


A bunch of words, have to organize them into sentences.


And the student was supposed to walk down the hall


and turn it into a researcher.


Now, unbeknownst to the student, the researcher


was actually deep in conversation,


and the researcher was waiting to see whether or not


the student would interrupt them.


Now, not all these sentence scramble worksheets


were the same.


Some had words like rude, obnoxious, interrupt,


and others had much nicer words like polite, and calm,


and patient.


And as you might guess, the students


who had the rude worksheets were way more likely to interrupt


the researcher, while the students who


had the nice words waited patiently for their turn.


And so we call that priming.


And you might be thinking, what does this


have to do with surveys?


And what I want you to do is think about your introduction


and your description of your survey as its prime.


So last week on Twitter, I saw, this


is a good example and a bad example,


I saw a community manager survey.


And the tweet was, please take our community manager survey


so we can show people how valuable community managers


are.


Now, I agree that community managers are valuable,


but by setting that mood and that tone


that the purpose of the survey is


to prove that community managers are valuable,


that could influence the way that people


answer the questions.


Maybe a better way would have been to say,


please take this survey so we can help people understand


what community management is.


So your instructions set the tone for your survey.


Order bias is pretty straightforward,


pretty easy to understand.


Using the example of an industry survey again,


if I were to ask somebody, how important is link building?


And they told me, link building is very, very important.


If I followed up with, well, how much link building


do you plan to do this year?


They're going to exaggerate.


They're going to tell me that they're


going to do a lot of link building


because they just got done telling me it was very important.


So the way to get around this is by randomizing your question


order.


And pretty much every survey tool in the world, again,


allows you to do this.


You just have to look for the feature.


So by randomizing your order questions,


you can get around survey bias.


Now this next one is where we get a little bit uncomfortable.


And I apologize in advance.


I thought about not including it,


but I decided it was important.


In 1999, a group of researchers got together


and they had students play golf.


Now one group of students, they told,


this is a measure of sports intelligence.


The other group of students, they told,


this is a measure of natural athletic ability.


The students that they told was about sports intelligence,


the white students performed significantly better.


The students that they told that it


was a measure of natural athletic ability,


the black students performed better.


Now they never explicitly mentioned race.


They just sort of implied something


that could hint at a stereotype.


And as a result, behavior changed.


And it wasn't just this study that shows it.


A lot of studies have shown it.


And it's true of gender as well.


In another study, women were asked to take a math test.


And there were either two women present in the room


or two men present.


And when the women were present, the females


performed significantly better on the math test.


When the men were present, they performed significantly worse.


Now I'm sure none of us want racially charged surveys


and none of us want to include gender bias,


but I think it's something that's


important to keep in mind, that even just the implication


of something that could possibly hint at a stereotype


can affect people's answers.


But even stepping away from some of those emotionally charged


topics, let's go back to an industry survey.


Think about asking for someone's job title up front


or asking them how much they make


and getting them to think about their place in the company.


How might that affect their answers for your industry


survey?


So again, something that just even begins


to hint at a stereotype or people's place in the world,


it can influence behavior.


And that's actually usually why you


see demographic information go at the end,


because it's still important information to ask.


It's just not something we want to influence


the rest of people's answers.


So double-barreled questions, much easier to get,


much less controversial.


Basically, you don't want to ask and or questions


as yes-no questions.


Do you play games in your smartphone or tablet?


Well, what if I play both?


What if I play just one?


It's unclear.


Each question should ask one thing and one thing only.


Leading questions are also very straightforward,


but they're important to be aware of.


The classic example that scholars and researchers use


is this.


If you ask people, do you support helping the poor,


they're very likely to say, yes, of course I do.


If you ask them a somewhat related, though not exactly


the same question, do you support welfare,


Americans tend to say, eh, not so much.


And the thing is, these questions


get at a similar idea, but they're not exactly the same.


But the simple choice of wording elicits very different results.


And so some of the ways that you can account for this


are by pre-testing your surveys, by A-B testing your questions,


or at the very least by being cognizant of how the words you


use might impact people's answers.


So those are all the ways that you as a survey writer


can screw up your data.


Now I want to talk about how all of your surveys respondents


can screw up your data, whether they mean to or not.


And the first one is with sensitive information.


Nobody likes to talk about their age or their income.


It feels very personable and personal,


and people don't want to share it.


This is usually why in surveys you'll see ranges,


like do you make between $30,000 and $50,000 a year?


Are you 26 to 35?


It's a lot easier to commit to a range


than to tell somebody explicitly what you make.


It's also why you see demographic information go


at the end of surveys, because people


are a lot more likely to be honest after you've built


some trust throughout the survey.


Boredom is another one that I'm sure we've all run into.


It's also known as survey fatigue.


And basically what this is, is when


you get to that point in the survey where you're just


so freaking tired of taking it that you just


start filling out random bubbles without paying attention


to the questions.


So a couple ways around this one.


You can set expectations up front


about how long the survey is going to take,


and actually be honest about how long the survey is


going to take.


You can show a progress bar as people go through the survey,


so they feel like they're getting somewhere.


And most importantly, you can limit the number of questions


you ask, so you're only asking the most important questions


and keeping people engaged throughout the whole survey.


The last one is how people don't really mean to screw up,


but they screw up all the time.


And that's because guessing is hard.


I've seen questions like, how many minutes a day


do you spend on Facebook?


How many minutes a day do you spend on Facebook?


I don't think any of us have any idea how many minutes a day


we spend on Facebook.


A lot more reasonable question would be,


do you log into Facebook multiple times a day,


once a day, weekly, multiple times a week?


That's a lot more fair, and we're


going to get a lot more accurate information if we're


able about what people will be able to tell us.


And so once you start asking better questions,


you'll be able to do a lot more interesting things


with your data.


You'll be able to do a lot more than pie charts and bar graphs.


So I'm going to use the example of Moz and Open Site Explorer.


Let's say they want to measure how people use OSE.


Traditionally, they might have just asked,


how often do you use OSE?


But maybe now we can step it up.


We can use a five-point scale, and we can break it down


by feature.


Ask, how often do you use each of these features?


And then compare that to, how would you


rate each of these features?


And then compare that to, how important are


each of the features to you?


And now we end up with charts that


look like this, where we can use it for product prioritization.


We can see, what are the things that people use all the time


but don't actually like?


Or what are the things that they rarely use but are actually


hugely important to their subscription?


It gives us a much better idea of where


we need to spend our dev resources, where


we need to create content.


And overall, it's just a much better picture than a stupid pie


chart or bar graph.


So lastly, I just want to quickly run through a few types


of questions that you can ask and what kind of data


you'll get from them.


The first one is categorical questions,


either the ones I've been hating on the whole time.


These are the yes-no questions.


Are you male, female?


What's your favorite movie genre?


They're the kind of questions where you get words instead


of numbers as your answer.


And I hate them, because all you get


are these stupid bar charts and pie graphs.


You can't do a lot with them.


You can't find averages.


You can't do correlations.


You can use them for segmentation,


but that's about it.


Now, ordinal questions are a slight step up.


These are ones where you use ranges.


They're like categories, but there's a clear order to them,


thus the name ordinal.


But again, you're limited to things like bar graphs and pie


charts.


You can't take the averages of questions like these.


Let me reiterate that one.


You can't use them for correlation.


Interval and ratio questions are where


we can start to have fun.


And this is that five or seven point scale


I was talking about earlier.


Ratio questions are similar, but you just ask for a number,


and it's kind of fill in the blank,


and there's a true zero, which is why


they're called ratio questions.


And this is where you can do interesting things


like measure the mean, median, and mode.


You can look at distributions.


You can look at correlation analysis


and see how your data is related to each other.


You can do cluster analysis, which


is my favorite kind of data analysis


and allows you to do things like instead of sitting


in your marketing meeting and saying,


I think we have three personas, and let's try to figure them


out, you can use your interval and ratio data


and let the data tell you, you actually


have five types of customers, and these


are the demographics, and this is how they behave.


And now you have data-driven personas.


Regression analysis is another really cool thing you can do,


and that will show you how different variables can


predict things like purchase behavior.


So you can invest your marketing budget


in the things that are actually going to drive revenue.


Now, I just showed you a lot of cool data analysis.


Unfortunately, in 15 minutes, I can't


get into how to actually do all of that,


but I can point you to the Excel add-in called the Analysis Tool


Pack.


It'll let you do some of these things like regression,


and I can promise you that if you start


to ask better questions and you start


to use the right words and the right form,


you'll be able to get data that lets you start doing


cool things like this and making better


decisions for your business.


That's it.


Thank you so much.


And so I know that it, for us, is a very, very top


of mind topic.


I'm curious to know.


I'd like to hear, what is one thing that


seems to be the biggest gaffe that people constantly


make when doing surveys and things like that?


Yeah, so I think the biggest problem that people have


is we all try to get really good sample sizes,


but we make this mistake when we try to extrapolate that out


and generalize it to bigger populations.


Our data has limitations, and that's fine.


We're not market researchers with tens of thousands


of dollars, but we just have to be aware that the data we're


getting isn't from a perfectly random sampled population,


and so we have to be careful about how we generalize


that across everyone.


Just be aware of limitations.


Definitely, that makes sense.


It looks like we have time to take one question out here.


Awesome, Stephanie.


I just had a quick question.


As far as sample size to find statistical significance


within your surveys, what do you suggest


as far as we do a lot of surveys for creating content


around statistics?


And I'd be curious about your input


about sample sizes for surveying the amount of people.


Yeah, so if you have the money, 1,000 is the gold standard,


and that's great.


If you're on a budget, 300's a little better, and worst case,


try for 100.


I mean, it just depends on your budget,


but in general, more is better.


Excellent.


Then it looks like we have, do we have any more questions


out there?


No?


OK.


Again, Stephanie will be hanging out,


and we'll have lots of time after.


You have lunch after, and so we'll


be around for more questions.


And again, I'm pretty sure you're about to get bombarded


by folks in pink t-shirts who are going


to ask you lots of questions.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

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


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

This week we're going to chat about blog post ideas, how to have great ones, how to make


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

sure that the topics that you're covering on your blog actually accomplish the goals


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

that you want, and how to not run out of ideas as well.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

The goals of a blog, let's start with goals of a blog and then what an individual post


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

needs to do, and then I'll walk you through kind of six formats for coming up with great


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

ideas for what to blog about.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

But generally speaking, you have created a blog either on your company's website or your


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

personal website or for the project that you're working on because you want to attract a certain


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

audience, which is great.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You're trying to also capture the attention and amplification, the sharing of certain


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

types of influencers so that you can grow that audience.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You probably want to rank highly in search engines.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That's not just necessarily a goal for the blog's content itself, but one of the reasons


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

that you've started a blog is to grow the authority, the ranking signals, the ability


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

to rank for the website as a whole, and the blog hopefully is helping with that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You're hoping to inspire some trust, right, some likeability, loyalty, and maybe even


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

some evangelism from your readers.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And many times a lot of personal bloggers especially are trying to provide a reference


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

point for their opinion.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So if you are a writer, an author, a journalist, a contributor to all sorts of sources, a speaker,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

whatever it is, you're trying to provide a home for your ideas and your content, potentially


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

your opinions too.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And then finally, many times a blog is crafted with the idea that it is a first step in capturing


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

an audience that will then take an action, and that could be buy something from you,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

sign up for an email list, potentially take a free trial of something, maybe take some


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

action, right?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

A political blog might be about call your congressperson, but those types of actions.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

From there we get into an individual post.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

An individual post is supposed to help with these goals, right, but on its own doesn't


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

do all of them.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It certainly doesn't need to do more than one at a time.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It can hopefully do some.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

But one of those is, generally speaking, a great blog post will do one of these four


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

things and hopefully two or even three.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

One of those might be help readers to accomplish a goal that they have.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So if I'm trying to figure out which hybrid electric vehicle should I buy and I read a


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

great blog post from someone who's very, very knowledgeable in the field and they have two


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or three recommendations to help me narrow down my search, that is wonderful and it helps


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

me accomplish my goal of figuring out which hybrid car to buy.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And that accomplishment of goal, that helping of people hits a bunch of these very, very


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

nicely.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Next, you could have a post that is designed to inform people and or entertain them.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So it doesn't have to be purely informational.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It doesn't have to be purely entertainment, but some combination of those or one of the


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

two about a particular topic.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So you might be trying to make someone excited about something or give them knowledge around


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

it.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It may be knowledge that they didn't previously know that they wanted and they may not actually


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

be trying to accomplish a goal, but they are interested in the information or interested


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

in finding the humor.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Third, it could be around inspiring some amplification and linking.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So you're trying to earn signals to your site that will help you rank in search engines,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

that will help you grow your audience, that will help you reach more influencers, and


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

thus inspiring that amplification behavior by creating content that is designed to be


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

shared, designed to be referenced and linked to is another big goal.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And finally, creating a more positive association with the brand.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So you might have a post that doesn't really do any of these things.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Maybe it touches a little on informational or entertaining, but it is really about crafting


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

a personal story or sharing an experience that then draws the reader closer to you and


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

creates that association of what we talked about up here, loyalty, trust, evangelism,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

likability.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So knowing what our blog needs to do and what our individual posts are trying to do, what


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

are some great ways that we can come up with the ideas, the actual topics that we should


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

be covering?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I have kind of six paths.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

These six paths actually cover almost everything you will read in every other article about


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

how to come up with blog post ideas, but I think that's what's great.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

These frameworks will get you into the mindset that will lead you to the path that can give


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

you an infinite number of blog post ideas.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So the first one, I like to ask the question of are there any unanswered or poorly answered,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

right?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It could be something that people have covered before.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Unanswered or poorly answered questions that are in your field that your audience already


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

has and is asking, and do you have a way to provide great answers to those?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So that's basically this process of I'm going to research my audience through a bunch of


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

methodologies, going to come up with topics that I know I could cover, I could deliver


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

something that would answer their preexisting questions, and I could come up with those


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

through surveys of my readers.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I could have in-person meetings or emails or interviews.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I could have informal conversations, right, just in passing around events or if I'm interacting


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

with members of my audience in any way, social settings, and I can certainly do keyword research,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

especially questions.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So if you're using a tool like Moz's keyword explorer or I think some of the other ones


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

out there, Ahrefs might have this as well, where you can filter by only questions.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

There's also free tools like Answer the Public, which many folks like, that show you what


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

people are typing into Google specifically in the form of questions, who, what, when,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

where, why, how, do, et cetera.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So I'm not just going to walk you through the ideas.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I'm also going to challenge myself to give you some examples.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So I've got two, one less challenging, one much more challenging.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Two websites, both have blogs, and coming up with topic ideas based on this.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So one is called Remotors.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It's remotors.net.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It's run by Aleta Solis, who many of you in the SEO world might know, and they talk about


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

remote work, right, so people who are working remotely.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It's a content platform for them and a service for them.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And then the second one is a company I think called Schweiss or Schweiss Doors.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

They run hydraulicdoors.com, very B2B, very, very niche.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Pretty challenging to come up with good blog topics, but I think we've got some.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So if I'm working in remote work, I might say here, you know what?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

One of the questions that's asked very often by remote workers but is not well answered


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

on the internet yet is how do I conduct myself in a remote interview and present myself as


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

a remote worker in a way that I can be competitive with people who are actually physically on


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

premises and in the room?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That is a big challenge.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I feel like I'm always losing out to them.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Remote workers, it seems, don't get the benefits of being there in person.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And so a piece of content on how to sell yourself on a remote interview or as a remote worker


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

could work great here.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Second, hydraulic doors, one of the big things that I see many people asking about online,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

both in forums, which actually rank well for it, the questions that are asked in forums


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

around this do rank around costs and prices for hydraulic doors.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And therefore, I think this is something that many companies are uncomfortable answering


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

right online.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

But if you can be transparent where no one else can, I think these Schweist doors guys


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

have a shot at doing really well with that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And so how much do hydraulic doors cost versus alternatives?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Here you go.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Second, all right, number two here, do you have access to, I'm going to say unique types


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

of assets that other people don't?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That could be research, could be data, could be insights.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It might be stories, right, or narratives, experiences that can help you stand out in


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

a topic area.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And this is a great way to come up with blog post content.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So basically the idea is you could say, gosh, for our quarterly internal report, we had


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

to prepare some data on the state of the market.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And actually some of that data, if we got permission to share it, would be fascinating.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And we can see through keyword research that people are talking about this or querying


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Google for it already.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So we're going to transform it into a piece of blog content and we're going to delight


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

many, many people, except for maybe this guy.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

He seems unhappy about it.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I don't know what his problem is.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

We won't worry about him.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Wait, I can fix it.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Look at that, so happy.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I ignore that he kind of looks like the Joker now.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

We can get these through a bunch of methodologies, right?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You can do research, right, so statistical research, quantitative research.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You could do some crowdsourcing.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That could be through audiences that you've already got through email or Facebook or Twitter


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or LinkedIn.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That could be through insider interviews, interviews with people on your sales team


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or your product team or your marketing team, people in your industry, buyers of yours.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It could be proprietary data, right, like what you've collected for your internal annual


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

reports.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It could be curation of public data.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So if there's stuff out there on the web and it just needs to be publicly curated, you


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

can figure out what that is.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You can visit all those websites.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You could use an extraction tool or you could manually extract that data or you could pay


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

an intern to go extract that data for you and then synthesize that in a useful way.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It could be multimedia talent.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Maybe you have someone like we happen to here at Moz who has great talent with video production


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or with audio production or with design of visuals or photography or whatever that might


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

be in the multimedia realm that you could do.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Or maybe you have special access to people or information or experiences that no one


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

else does and you can present that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Those assets can become the topic of great content that can turn into really great blog


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

posts and great post ideas.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So for remote workers, they might say, well, gosh, we have access to data on the destinations


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

people go and the budgets that they have around those destinations when they're staying and


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

working remotely because of how our service interacts with them.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Therefore, we can craft things like the most and least expensive places to work remotely


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

on the planet, which is very cool, right?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

And that's content that a lot of people are very interested in.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

For twice doors, hydraulic doors, we can look at, hey, you know what?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

We actually have a visual overlay tool that helps an architect or a building owner visualize


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

what it will look like if a hydraulic door were put into place.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

We can go use that in our downtime to come up with, we can see how notable locations


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

in the city might look with hydraulic doors or notable locations around the world.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

We could potentially even create a tool where you could upload your own visual photograph


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

and then see how the hydraulic door looked on there.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So now we can create images that will help be shared.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Three, I like this and I think that many personal bloggers use it well.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I think far too few business bloggers do, but it can be quite powerful, and we've used


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

it here at Moz, which is relating a personal experience you have or a passion to your topic


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

in some way that resonates.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

For example, you have an interaction that is very complex, very nuanced, very passionate,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

perhaps even very angry.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

From that experience, you can craft a compelling story and a headline that draws people in,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

that creates intrigue, and that describes something with an amount of emotion that is


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

resonant, that makes them want to connect with it.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Because of that, you can inspire people to further connect with the brand and potentially


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

to inform and entertain.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

There's a lot of value from that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

This can come from, usually it comes from your own personal creativity around experiences


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

that you've had.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It could be you, you the writer or the author, but it could be anyone in your organization


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

too.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Some resources I really like for that are photos, especially if you are someone who


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

photographs a reasonable portion of your life on your mobile device.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That can help inspire you to remember things.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

A journal can also do the same thing.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Conversations that you have can do that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Conversations in person, over email, on social media, and travel itself.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I think any time you are outside your comfort zone, that tends to be those unique things.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

For example, remote workers.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I visited an artist collective in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I realized that, my gosh,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

one of the most frustrating parts of remote work is that if you're not just about remote


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

working with a laptop in your brain, you're almost removed from the experience.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

How can you do remote work if you require specialized equipment?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

In fact, there are ways.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

There's maker labs and artist labs in cities all over the planet at this point.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I think this is a topic that potentially hasn't been well covered, has a lot of interest,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

and that personal experience that I, the writer, had could dig into that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Hydraulic doors.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I've had some conversations with do-it-yourselfers, people who are very, very passionate about


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

DIY stuff.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

It turns out hydraulic doors, this is not a thing that most DIYers can do.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

In fact, this is a very, very dramatic investment.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That is an intense type of project.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

99% of DIYers will not do it, but it turns out there's actually search volume for this.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

People do want to, or at least want to learn how to, DIY their own hydraulic doors.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

In one of my favorite things, after realizing this, I searched and then I found that Schweistors


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

actually created a product where they will ship you a DIY kit to build your own hydraulic


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

doors.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I didn't even recognize this need.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I thought that was very, very impressive.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

They didn't just create a blog post for it.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

They even served it with a product.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Super impressive.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

All right, number four.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Covering a topic that is, I'm going to call it hot in your field or trending in your field,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or in the news or on other blogs, the great part about this is it builds in the amplification


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

piece.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Because you're talking about something that other people are already talking about and


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

potentially you're writing about what they've written about, you are including an element


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

of pre-built-in amplification.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Because if I write about what Darren Rouse at Problogger has written about last week


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or what Danny Sullivan wrote about on Search Engine Land two weeks ago, right now it's


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

not just my audience that I can reach, but it's theirs as well.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Potentially, they have some incentive to check out what I've written about them and share


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I could see that someone potentially maybe posted something very interesting or inflammatory


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or wrong or really right on Twitter.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Then I could say, oh, I agree with that or disagree or I have nuance or I have some exceptions


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

to that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Actually, I think that's an interesting conversation to which I can add even more value.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Then I create content from that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Certainly social networks like Twitter and Instagram are good places to do that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So too are forums, subreddits.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I really like Pocket for this where I'll save a bunch of articles and then I'll see


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

which one might be very interesting to cover or write about in the future.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

News aggregators are great for this too.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That could be a tech meme in the technology space or a meme-a-random in the political


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

space or many others.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

For remote workers, you might note, well, healthcare last week in the United States


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

and for many months now has been very hot in the political arena.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

For remoters, that is a big problem and a big question because if your health insurance


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

is tied to your employer again as it was before the American Care Act, then you could be in


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

real trouble and you might have a lot of problems and challenges.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So what does the politics of healthcare mean for remote workers?


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Great.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Now you've created a real connection and that could be something that other outlets


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

would cover and that people who've written about healthcare might be willing to link


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

to your piece.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Then for hydraulic doors, one of the things that you might note is that Eater has recently


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

written about, which is a big blog in the restaurant space, has written about indoor


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

and outdoor space trends in the restaurant industry.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

You could, with the data that you've got and the hydraulic doors that you provide,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

which are very, very common, well, moderately common at least in the restaurant, indoor,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

outdoor seating space, potentially cover that.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

That's a great way to tie in your audience and Eater's audience into something that's


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

interesting and Eater might be willing to cover that and link to you and talk about


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

it, et cetera.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

The last two, I'm not going to go too into depth because they're a little more basic,


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

but number five is pure keyword research driven.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So this is using Google AdWords or keywordtool.io or Moz's Keyword Explorer or any of the other


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

keyword research tools that you like to figure out what are people searching for around my


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

topic, can I cover it, can I make great content there.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Then number six is essentially taking any of these topics but applying one level of


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

abstraction.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

What I mean by that is there are people who care about your topic, but there's an overlap


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

of people who care about this other topic and who also care about yours.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

For example, in the hydraulic doors space, people who care about restaurant building


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

trends and hydraulic doors has a considerable overlap, and that is quite interesting.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

For remoters, it could be something like, I care about remote work.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

I also care about the gear that I use.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

My laptop and my bag and those kinds of things.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

So gear trends could be a very interesting intersect.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

Then you can apply any of these other four processes, five processes onto that intersection


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

or one level of abstraction.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

All right, everyone.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

We have done a tremendous amount here to cover a lot about blog topics, but I think you will


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

have some great ideas from this, and I look forward to hearing about other processes that


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

you've got in the comments.


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday

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


Blog post ideas - Whiteboard Friday


Image & Visual Search Optimization Opportunities- Presented by Joelle Irvine

Hi everyone. I'm here to talk about visual search. I'm going to start with a story. So


I saw these shoes and I had to have them. My first instinct was to Google it. And what


I realized was I didn't, I couldn't remember what those decorative perforations were called.


So my initial search was men's dress shoe pattern. And then I realized it's called brogue.


So I go back to Google and I search women's black patent leather brogue shoes with black


and white platform sole. Google returned this. And of course I've confused Google because


there's too many options and too many unknowns. I click on images, not so much. Then Google


shopping, slightly better but not quite. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. So


what about visual search? Well, that's more like it. Not only do I get search results,


but I also get options to refine my search by category and price. Visual search makes


it easier when you don't know what you're looking for, when you're looking to match


a particular style and when your search query is way too long and complicated. Over the


last few years, many of us have been spending our time optimizing for local search, for


rich results, for voice search and of course staying up to date with all the wonderful


algorithm updates. And what I've realized is that visual search is now being used by


many big brands. It's way more sophisticated. It's way more user friendly and has more practical


applications and we should all be spending more time focusing on this. So I will also


share some opportunities and tactics so you too can benefit from visual search. So just


to be clear, I'm not talking about image search. I'm talking about visual search. In an image


search you would type in a query and the search engine would return image results. In this


case, you would enter an image and the search engine would provide similar image results


to give you more options. It's like Shazam for images. And just to be clear also, if


you haven't done this before, you can check out Google Photos or the Pinterest app and


in Google Photos you can use an existing image to do the visual search. You would click on


the visual search icon and it would perform the search for you and in Pinterest you can


take a new photo or an existing photo and complete the search. Did you know that 85%


of consumers place more importance on visuals than on text when searching online for clothing


or furniture? And although it's not widely used at the moment, visual search is now being


is now there's more user sorry excuse me there's more user expectations. According to Vessence,


62% of the young people would like to be able to search by image and 58% of them would like


to be able to click directly to make a purchase. Things are moving really, really fast. So


we're going to dig into what's new. I'm going to tell you another story. This story is about


a chair. It's about this chair. I realize that it may not be to everyone's taste. However,


imagine it's your new chair and you love it and you want to decorate your living room


based on the look of this chair. Where do you start? How do you find items to match


this particular style? Do you go to Houzz? Do you go to Google? Do you go to Amazon or


Pinterest due to a search for blue, red, white and yellow accessories? Well, Pinterest has


added a way of including intent into their discovery experience. Normally a visual search


result would return similar items, in this case chairs. Pinterest released a new feature


in May called Hybrid Search. This allows you to search by combining the aesthetic of an


existing pin with text provided by the platform. These are some image results based on the


look and feel of the chair and text queries such as bookshelves, walls and clocks. If


you think that's cool, it gets better. Last month Pinterest announced that they're working


on a new feature called Complete the Look. It leverages context like an outfit, body


type, season to generate taste based recommendations. You'll be able to find shoes or a bag to match


an outfit or curtains to fit in your living room. And if you're geeky like me, I would


highly recommend checking out the Pinterest engineering blog. They share everything that


they're working on and all the mechanics of everything. I'm going to switch over to Google


now. Google Lens can now identify over 1 billion items. That's four times as many as when they


launched in 2017. And at the recent Google I O conference, they announced several new


features for Google Lens. Some of those are new filters. You can now scan your environment


and search for items that exist in reality. And it can also identify and recommend items


on a menu when you go to a restaurant. It can translate text from print directly onto


your phone and go from text to speech. They also added augmented reality to Google search.


Not sure if you're aware, but last April there were a lot of comments on Twitter about snakes


having legs. Well, I think that they added AR to search so we could all see for ourselves


how many legs they actually have or don't have. So in all seriousness, AR could have


many amazing possibilities for online shopping. You can imagine the possibilities. Here are


some things that you can do to integrate a visual search into your strategy. It can be


hard for people to discover new products. With the majority of Pinterest searches being


unbranded, it's a great way for people to find out about unknown brands and products.


They're way more open to it. It's good news for smaller or less known brands to get discovered.


Why Pinterest? Why now? Well, oh sorry, I'm going to go back. You want to try and leverage


existing platforms and partnerships. If the technology exists, why not use it? Either


optimize content for where your audience already hangs out, like on Instagram or Pinterest.


And if you want to integrate visual search into your platform, partner with a company


that already does this. There are several leaders in the industry. Some of them include


Visens, Slice or Cortexco. Here are two examples. Levi's partnered with Pinterest to create


Find Your Levi's style. There people can go online, fill out a quiz and they'll recommend


Visens style options for you. And ASOS, which you heard about earlier, collaborated with


Visens to integrate visual search into their own platform. I tried it out. It's very cool.


So why Pinterest? If your content is not on Pinterest, I highly suggest you check it out.


I realize their audience isn't as large as Google or Facebook or Amazon. However, Pinterest


Lens has over 600 million visual searches per month. 250 million people use it from


around the world. And those people are looking to buy. Proportionately, Pinterest generates


the most traffic out of all the other social media networks. It's very important to think


about it. Capitalize on impulse buying. Please don't judge me for saying that. But a recent


study found that 72% say that the platform inspires them to shop and they're not actually


looking to buy. So take advantage. Create compelling in store experiences. So we all


know that physical spaces have been having problems for the past few years. The ones


that have proven successful are the ones that have done things in the store to make the


experiences better for their customers. Whether it be with tech or activations. Alibaba brought


fashion and mirrors to the guest change rooms so that when you try on an outfit, you can


actually select other colors or accessories to go with your outfit. Amazon created a high


tech mirror so that you can project an outfit onto so you don't even have to try it on.


Pin codes can be displayed in store for customers to look up a product and also be taken to


a curated board. Right now, Home Depot and Nordstrom use those pin codes. And increase


revenue. Gartner predicts that by 2021, e-commerce brands who optimize for voice and search have


potential to increase profits by 30%. That's pretty cool, but it is a prediction. Let's


take a moment to address the elephant in the room. Lenses tend to auto select the wrong


focal point. They also tend to categorize a person instead of a product on occasion.


They display items that are currently out of stock, leaving customers and users frustrated.


So how do we optimize for images to address these pitfalls? Everything that you do and


can do to optimize your images will also help visual search. Make sure that your images


are indexed by submitting image site maps. Basic product data from the shopping feed


helps visual search technology understand your content. If you have ad accounts, you


can sync product data from your site directly to Google merchant center and to Pinterest


catalogs. Pinterest catalogs are relatively new and allow visitors to search by brand.


You should definitely check this out. This helps automatically keep product info up to


date in search results and avoid penalties from Google. Structured data. Unlike many


rich results, product images have potential for generating traffic and potentially quick


sales. In the product description, I highly recommend including your USPs. So, for example,


if you have free shipping, include it there. It could be the deciding factor in a click.


Use the most relevant schema for your images. Add rich pins to your site. This can reduce


friction by improving the pin to purchase process. And it will reduce the potential


frustration by eliminating any items that are out of stock from the user's feed. To


be honest, I wish more platforms would do this. Now let's look beyond the technical.


Your images should be on brand and be consistent. They should be clutter free. Product images


should have a clear focal point and be in the foreground. You should provide context


for images. And I'm talking about within the image itself and the text surrounding the


images. So, for example, your text should be relevant and engaging for your audience


and the images themselves. You can use lifestyle images when it makes sense. If you use stock


photography, like I did in this blog post, make sure it's not an overused image. Also,


customize it to your look and feel so people know that it's your brand. Include multiple


angles of each product so your customer can properly evaluate your product. And any image


that does not add value, remove it. Stay on top of what's happening. Make sure that your


content and your images are topical and on trend, relevant to your audience. And think


beyond keywords. Pinterest releases a monthly trend report that I find very helpful. There's


also Google trends. There's answer the public. There's Google My Business Q&As. And customer


feedback reports. And think ahead. There's also things becoming like visual sentiment


analysis. Think about how you could understand the emotions of your audience on social media.


Adapt your content and images so they're timely and relevant to your audience to improve discovery


and engagement. So I have to tell you a secret. I'm terrible with parting thoughts. I always


have too much to say and I can't put it into words. So here's a pic of me getting ready


to shop for an outfit to match my new shoes. And I do have to wait for Pinterest complete


to look to come out. So I'll be waiting for that. And I also want to say that I covered


a lot of visual search for online shopping for fashion and home decor. However, I know


that most of you or many of you don't work in those fields. So think about how this can


apply to your industry and to what you do. Whether it be travel or real estate or automotive


or food and beverage. The possibilities are endless and technology is improving every


day so things will improve and there will be more things to do. So hopefully I've inspired


Daily SEO Fix - Review Rankings and Segment Keywords

Hey there, this is Maddie and I'm on the onboarding team here at Moz.


Today we're going to take a look at how we can sort our keywords by ranking gains and


losses.


First off, we want to start by jumping into the ranking section of the campaign and then


scrolling down until we hit our tracked keywords overview.


From here, we select the keywords we wanted to look at just on the left hand side and


then as we press the add label from here we can choose whichever we want to call it.


So for example, I'm going to go today as the drop July 2020.


As we confirm, you'll actually see these grey boxes appearing underneath these specific


keywords.


From here, what we can do is pop up into the label box, click on the drop down and then


actually select the group that we're wanting to focus on.


From here, we can then use these filters across the top to dig in and have a look at this


info a little bit further.


Hopefully this is helpful in order for you to keep track on what's going on with the


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I wanted to talk you through a topic that is close to my heart, which is how to learn


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

SEO.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I'm Jo.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I'm the head of content here at Moz, and I feel like I've been learning SEO for the better


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

part of a decade.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So I feel like I can speak from experience, although I do know that everyone's methods


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

for learning new information, whatever it is, is different.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

To get started, I'll take you through how you might want to begin to learn SEO, whether


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

you're getting started from scratch or you're already working in SEO and you're figuring


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

out how to fill in knowledge gaps.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Or maybe you have a team and you would like to train them up and get them ramped up on


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

some fundamental SEO topics.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So I'll dive into my own learning journey when I was learning SEO and the fundamentals


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

of SEO.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I'll also talk through understanding your resources, your budget, so that you can achieve


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

your goals in the time and budget available to you.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I'll also talk about a few additional strategies to keep you on track, including topic immersion


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

and applying your learning knowledge to real-world projects.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

But first of all, I'll start with why.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Why would you want to learn SEO and start to fill in the knowledge gaps of core fundamental


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

SEO topics?


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Learning SEO can help you to build your business.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

It can help you get more traffic to your website, and it can also help you advance your career


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

. I began to learn SEO because I wanted to sell more jewelry that I was making on my


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

own website.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So my motivation was to get more traffic and my focus was on what I could do to my website


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

authority, understanding the fundamental knowledge of how search engines function so that I could


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

create content that was exciting to my audience and was digestible for search engine bots


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

at the same time.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So ultimately driving more traffic to increase my revenue is what started me on this journey.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

You may as well want to grow your knowledge in order to advance your career, or you may


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

already be working in SEO and want to fill in some of those gaps so that you can achieve


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

your professional business goals.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So whether you are currently running your own business, whether you're working in-house,


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

outside, or building up a strong SEO team, developing tangible fundamental core SEO knowledge


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

is a great way to help you achieve your goals.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The thing I would recommend starting out with, whether it's for you or your team, is to outline


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

your learning journey.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The first thing to understand is what exactly you want to learn and within what time frame.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So this can help you to set your own expectations and keep you on track.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

When I was discovering how to sell more jewelry, my learning pathway covered the following


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

fundamental topics.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I started out with the fundamental core SEO concept.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So as part of this experience, I was searching a lot.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I was reading a lot online and I was just trying to digest the lingo.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I wanted to understand how Google algorithms worked and what was changing with each update


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

so that I could get a better understanding of how search engines function, how their


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

bots function, and then building up that fundamental knowledge in that area.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

That then led me into keyword research, exploring what exactly it involves, and then trying


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to understand how I get in front of my audience, how I create content that they're searching


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

for and how do I meet that need.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I also wanted to do my keyword research in an organized way.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So understanding the strategy behind that, building out a comprehensive strategy that


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

made sense with the time that I had available.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Ultimately what I was trying to get here is to understand and get better insights into


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the different language that my audience was using.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So what people were searching for in my industry.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

This then led me into page optimization.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So this is all about the different page elements and I was trying to understand which of these


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

elements I could actually affect in the CMS that I was using at the time.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I was also trying to understand how to create structure in my content so that it was optimized


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

not just for the bots but also for my human visitors so I could get in that great experience


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

when they landed on the page.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then I also started to explore link building because of building my website authority was


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

really important to me and I didn't understand how to do that.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And this was quite a big learning curve.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I did end up getting a little bit confused around the concept of building and how that


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

worked, how you tread that line between creating content that people want to link to, creating


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

good quality content, 10x content that's impactful and interesting and then the difference between


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that and the different link building strategies.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And generally how do you build your website authority and how did I do that so that I


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

could achieve my goals and drive more traffic and generate more revenue.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then all tied in with that also is understanding that whole spectrum of PR and how it intersects


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

with link building.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Also more core technical link building strategies and outreach along with broken link building


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

and how you go about putting that into process in a way that makes sense with the time that


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I had available.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then I also wanted to explore how to show the impact of my results.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So understanding reporting, what to report on, how to track results.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And this is important whether it's for yourself or for your client and how do you know what


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

you have achieved and whether it has achieved the desired effect.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So undoubtedly there is a vast amount of information available online that covers these topics.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

But if you do find that overwhelming and you would like a more clearly defined learning


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

pathway outlined for you, there is the Moz Academy SEO Essentials Certification.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And we cover all of these fundamental topics and they're all neatly wrapped up in a six-hour


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

course.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So if you're wanting to display your knowledge, you can also link up your badge, your certification


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

badge with your LinkedIn profile to demonstrate your skills there.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The course covers all of those topics.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

It starts with understanding how search engines determine a site's value, how you identify


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

good keywords and map them to semantic topic groups along with how SEO fits in with the


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

sales funnel, how to prioritize SEO tasks which is really important when you're time-strapped,


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

how to determine your most valuable content which is great for your website or if you're


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

working with a client who currently already has a bit of content there, and then understanding


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

how to evaluate links and then of course that all-important reporting in order to measure


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the impact of SEO.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I would have been super excited to take this course when I was learning and I know it would


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

have saved me a ton of time so that I could have just ingested all of that fundamental


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

information, covered the essential topics when I was getting started.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So now that you have outlined the topics that you're wanting to cover, I would then recommend


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

getting started understanding your resources that you have available to you.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The first one is obviously time.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

How much time do you have in a day, in a week, and when do you want to get this learning


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

experience completed, whether it's a particular topic or more broadly speaking.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And the second one is of course budget.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So do you have any professional development budget available to you?


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Is this something that you can potentially build into your current role?


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Maybe there's a stretch assignment in there.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Are there people available to you in your current network that can potentially assist


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

you in understanding what you need to learn and then help you to figure out how you're


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

going to learn it.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Now that you have outlined the topics you want to cover, let's explore the resources


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

you have available to you.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The first big one is obviously time and the second one is your available budget.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So how much time do you have available in a day, in a week, and then also how long are


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

you hoping to get this, how long do you have available for you to get this learning experience


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

completed?


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then also can you build this into your current role, maybe as a stretch assignment,


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

and how do you have that conversation with your peers?


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then exploring whether you do have a professional development budget available to you.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Now the good news is that there is a learning pathway for everyone, whatever your budget.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

If you're still exploring what exactly it is that you want to learn, then the best place


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to get started is the Beginner's Guide to SEO, which is available on the Moz Learn Center.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

This is a fantastic piece of content that has helped people learn SEO for nearly a decade


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

now and it was refreshed quite recently by the wonderful Brittany Mueller.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

You can take yourself through and teach yourself the fundamentals at your own pace.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So any profession, and honestly so many professionals SEOs tell us that they learn SEO from Moz


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

and this is often the place they start out.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So you'll be treading a path many have walked before you.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

But of course, if you do have a bit of budget and your timeline is kind of tight and you


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

want to put some guard rails around it and you want to keep yourself on track or you


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

want to keep your team accountable, then you would want to look at the courses available


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

on the Moz Academy.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The SEO essential certification, which I have mentioned previously, is key for building


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

up fundamental knowledge.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

We do also have the technical SEO certification.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So if you want to just launch your knowledge into this next stratosphere, this is becoming


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

more critical as topics like core web vitals bring the worlds of SEOs and developers closer


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

together.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then of course, if you're wanting to better understand your industry's competitive landscape,


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

we also have the competitive analysis certification.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

With each of these certifications, we have gathered together all of the core fundamentals


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

of each of these topics and we've supercharged them with unique learning methodologies and


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

you'll be able to engage with on-demand educational videos, quizzes, and task lessons.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So you can also keep track of your progress as you learn.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So if you're finding a bit of a hard time keeping on track or if you want to speed up


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

your learning or the learning of your team that you're training, then this is a really


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

great place to start.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So once you've figured out what it is you want to learn, what resources you have available


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to you, your timeline, I think it's interesting to better understand and explore some long-term


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

learning strategies.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So something that we have found quite important when we build out the SEO certification is


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the concept of learning, digesting that theoretical information, confirming it with a quiz, and


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

then being able to apply it.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So whether that is within a tool set or in addition to with your own project, whether


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that's your own website or a client's website.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So when I was starting to learn SEO fundamentals, with each of those topics that I learned about


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

above, I explored how I could apply this to the work that I was doing.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And I wanted to keep on track with my primary goal, which was to drive more traffic and


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

generate more revenue.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

By doing this, it helped me understand how much effort it took and over time, I got a


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

better understanding of the impact and roughly how long it took to see results.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So this is the methodology that we apply as part of the Moz Academy certifications.