harder to get.


Content Gating: Puting Your Content Behind an Email/Form Capture - Whiteboard Friday

It's also true that sales outreach to the folks who did access it may be much easier


and much more effective because you obviously have a lot of information about those people


versus if you collected only an email or no information at all, in which case it would


be close to impossible.


There's some benefits to – sorry.


There's some drawbacks first – let's walk through the drawbacks of gating, some things


that you can't do.


You have really a much smaller audience potential.


It is much harder to get this in front of tons of people, maybe not this page specifically,


but certainly it's hard to get amplification of this and it's very hard to get an audience


– get many, many people to fill out all those form fields.


It's certainly harder to earn links and amplification.


People generally do not link to content like this.


By the way, the people who do link to and socially amplify stuff like this usually do


it with the actual file.


What they'll do is they'll look for State of AI 2016 file type colon PDF site colon


your domain dot com and then they'll find the file behind whatever you've got.


I know there are some ways to gate that even such that no one can access it, but it's


a real pain.


It also is true that some folks – this leaves a very bad taste in their mouth.


They have a negative perception, brand perception around it.


That negative brand perception could be around having to fill this out.


It could be around whether the content was worth it after they filled this out.


It could be about the outreach that happens to them after they've filled this out and


their interest in getting this data was not to start a sales conversation.


You also lose a bunch of your SEO benefits because you don't get the links, you don't


get the engagement.


If you do rank for this, it tends to be the case that your bounce rate is very high, much


higher than other people who might rank for things like the State of AI 2016.


You just struggle.


All right.


What are the benefits and drawbacks of open access?


Well, benefit is pretty obvious.


Greater ability to drive traffic from all channels, of course.


Social, search, word of mouth, email, whatever it is.


You can drive a lot more people here.


There's a larger future audience for retargeting and remarketing.


The people who do reach the report itself in here, you certainly have an opportunity.


You could retarget and remarket to them.


You could also reach out to them directly.


Maybe you could retarget and remarket to people who've reached this page but didn't fill in


any information.


These folks here have much greater audience potential for those retargeting and remarketing


efforts.


Larry Kim from WordStream has shown some awesome examples.


Marty Weintraub from Aimclear also has shown some awesome examples of how you can do that,


certainly remarketing folks who've reached content.


Tons, of course, of SEO benefits via links that point to these pages, via engagement


metrics, via their ranking ability, et cetera, et cetera.


You're going to do much better with this.


We do much better with the beginner's guide to SEO on Moz than we would if it were gated


and you had to give us your information first.


Of course, right?


Overall, if what you are trying to achieve is rather than leads simply to get your message


to the greatest number of people, this is a far, far better effort.


This is likely to reach a much bigger audience and that message will therefore reach that


much larger audience.


There are some drawbacks to this open access model.


It's not without them.


It might be hard or even totally impossible to convert many or most of the visits that


come to open access content into leads or potential leads.


That's the case, right, that those people are going to consume that content but they


may never give you information that will allow you to follow up or reach out to them.


Information about the most valuable and important visitors, the ones who would have filled this


thing out and would have been great leads is lost forever when you open up the content,


right?


You just can't capture those folks.


You're not going to get their information.


These two are what drive many folks up to this model and certainly the benefits of the


gated content model as well.


My recommendations, it's a fairly simple equation, right?


I urge you to think about this equation from as broad a strategic perspective and then


a tactical accomplishment perspective as you possibly can and that is if audience size,


reach and future marketing benefits are greater than detailed leads as a metric or as a value,


then you should go open access.


If the reverse is true, right, if detailed leads are more valuable to you than the audience


size, the reach, potential reach, the amplification and link benefits and all the future marketing


benefits that come from those things, the ranking benefits and SEO benefits, if that's


the case then you should go with a gated model.


You get lots of people at an open access model.


You get one person but you know all their information in a gated content model.


Number two, it is not the case that this has to be completely either or.


There are modified ways to do both of these tactics in combination and concert and in


fact that can be potentially quite advantageous.


So a semi-gated model is something we've seen a few content marketers and companies start


to do where they have a part of the report or some of the most interesting aspects of


the report or several of the graphics or an embedded slide share or whatever it is and


then you can get more of the report by filling in more items.


So they're sharing some stuff which can potentially attract engagement and links and more amplification


and use in all sorts of places and press and blog posts and all that kind of stuff but


then they also get the benefit of some people filling out whatever form information is critical


in order to get more of that data if they're very interested.


I like this tease model a lot.


I think that can work really, really well especially if you are giving enough to prove


your value and worth and to earn those engagement and links before you ask for a lot more.


You can go the other way and go a completely open model but with add-ons.


So for example in this I've got, you know, here's the full report on AI.


If you would like more information, right, we conducted a survey with AI practitioners


or companies utilizing AI.


If you'd like the results of that survey, you can get that and that's like in the sidebar


or as a little notification in the report, right, a call to action.


So that's full report but if you want this other thing that maybe is useful to some of


the folks who best fit the interested in this data and also potentially interested in our


product or service or whatever we're trying to get leads for, then you can optionally


put your information in.


I like both of these, right?


They sort of straddle that line.


Number three, no matter which one or which modified version you do, you should try and


optimize the outcomes.


That means in an open content model, don't ignore the fact that you can still do retargeting


to all the people who visited this open content and get them back to your website onto potentially


a very relevant offer that has a high conversion rate and where you can do CRO testing and


those kinds of things.


That is completely reasonable and something that many, many folks do, Moz included, right?


We do a lot of remarketing around the web.


Second, you can drive low cost paid traffic to the content that gets the most shares in


order to bump it up and earn more amplification, earn more traffic to it, which then gives


you a broader audience to retarget to or a broader audience to put your CTA in front


of.


If you are going to go completely gated, a lot of these form fields, you can infer or


use software to get and therefore get a higher conversion rate.


For example, I'm asking for name, email, role, company, website, Twitter, LinkedIn.


In fact, I could ask exclusively for LinkedIn and email and get every single one of those


from just those two fields.


I could even kill email and ask them to sign in with LinkedIn and then request the email


permission after or as part of that request.


There's options here.


You can also ask for name and email and then use a software service like Full Contact's


API and get all of the data around the company and website and role and title and LinkedIn


and Twitter and Facebook, et cetera, et cetera, that are associated with that name and that


email address.


Then you don't have to ask for so much information.


Also, you can try putting your teaser content in multiple channels and platforms to maximize


its exposure so that you drive more people to this get more.


If you're worried that, hey, this teaser won't reach enough people to be able to get more


of those folks here, you can amplify that through putting it on SlideShare or republishing


on places like Medium or submitting the content in guest contributions to other websites in


legit ways that have overlapped audiences and share your information that you know is


going to resonate and will make them want more.


Now you get more traffic back to these pages and now I can convert more of those folks


to the get more system.


Content gating, not the end of the world, not the worst thing in the world.


I personally dislike a lot of things about it, but it does have its uses.


I think if you're smart, if you play around with some of these tactical tips, you can


get some great value from it.


I look forward to your ideas, suggestions, and experiences with content gating.


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


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

Hey Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Do you have a Google


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

My Business listing or do you work with clients that have Google My Business listings and


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

do you want to know more about the value of the traffic that Google My Business drives


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

to your website? Well if you do this is the Whiteboard Friday for you. So I'm Claire Carlisle


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

and I am a local search expert at Bright Local and today I'm going to speak about UTM tagging


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

for Google My Business. So you might be asking what is a UTM tag and if you are you wouldn't


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

be the first person to ask that question. So UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module but


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

if you just think of UTM tags as tracking codes that we add to the end of our external


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

links that tell us more about where that traffic came from and how it got to our websites.


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

So when someone clicks on a UTM tagged URL details of the source, the medium and the


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

campaign that that website visit comes from get transferred over into Google Analytics.


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

So why would we want to add UTM tags to our GMB URLs? Well without tagging all of the


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

traffic will end up in the organic bucket. So that's fine but what it won't tell us is


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

whether that organic traffic came from the regular organic results or whether it came


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

from Google My Business URLs in the business profile or in Google Maps. Another reason


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

is that many mobile apps and browsers don't give their referral traffic into Google Analytics


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

and that traffic is just going to end up in the direct bucket. And we're marketers we're


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

very used to having to demonstrate our value and the value of our services. So this is


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

a great way for you to illustrate the value that you're adding to your client or to your


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

organisation. We also often need to secure budget so whether that budget is for you know


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

more of our time or it's for photos or videos for Google My Business. It also lets us understand


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

the value of various Google My Business features so we can say Google posts is more valuable


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

to this client than Google products or Google products refers less traffic but at a rate


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

that converts higher. Also we'll get the Google search console data for those UTM tagged URLs


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

so we'll see the query data we'll see what queries actually driving impressions and clicks


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

on these UTM tagged URLs. So let's think about what we can tag. We hear a lot about zero


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

click search but that really isn't a new concept if you've been working in local search for


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

a while because from the business profile a potential customer can click to call a business


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

they can download driving directions they can look at photos they can read reviews they


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

can look at services all without clicking through to the business website. But that


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

said we do actually have a lot of opportunities in GMB to link back to our website and to


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

drive traffic to the website. So what you have in GMB will be dependent upon your primary


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

category but most businesses will have a website link they might have an appointment or a menu


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

URL they might have Google products they might have Google posts you might be using the new


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

follower offer which not a lot of people know about and even less people are using and it


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

might actually die and end up in the Google graveyard but it only takes 10 minutes to


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

set up so if you have the type of business that could attract a local following then


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

it's worth adding because you can see does it actually drive value for the business.


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

What does that traffic do when they get to your website what content are they looking


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

at where are they moving and how are they moving around is the traffic from GMB actually


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

driving revenue are they buying things when they get to your website and then we've got


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

all of our conversions and micro conversions that hopefully we have set up so we can measure


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

in Google analytics so do we get click to call do we get click to email do they download


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

a resource do they click through to our social media profiles do they fill in a form do they


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

sign up for our newsletter we can find out all of these things when we add UTM tagging.


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

So I'm going to give you some UTM tagging tips because I think the most important thing


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

is to be very very consistent from the outset because it's quite easy to get this wrong.


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

So consistency being key think about how you're going to separate out your words I like to


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

use a dash some people like to use an underscore whatever you use just make it very consistent


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

and then we have uppercase and lowercase letters so I always stick with lowercase letters the


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

reason being that Google analytics is case sensitive in all of its reports so if you're


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

using a mix of upper case and lowercase and Google is going to report on upon that separately


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

if you don't get this right you're going to be dealing with a lot of messy and bork data


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

that you're going to have to sort out outside of Google analytics and you really don't want


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

that. So another thing is if you get your source and your medium in a muddle then that


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

traffic is just going to end up in the other bucket which is pretty much totally sad times


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

so a way to avoid that is by thinking of the source as where the journey started or where


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

that traffic came from and the medium as the method of transport it's how that traffic


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

got from A to B. So before we think about which URLs on our website we're going to tag


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

up we need to think about who is managing the data and reporting in our organisation


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

or in our client's organisation because the UTM tags and the framework that you set up


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

needs to play nicely and sit within their framework you don't want to be robbing clicks


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

from them if they're going to try to demonstrate the value of something. Now you might find


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

that when you work with small and medium sized businesses no one is managing the data and


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

reporting in which case happy days this will work absolutely fine. So which URL will you


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

tag? Well there's some questions here do you have one location or do you have many locations?


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

So if it's just one location you probably tag up your home page. If it's many locations


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

you're going to be linking to your location landing pages. If you're using Google products


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

then you'll be wanting to link to your products or your services pages. If you have an appointment


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

URL then you'll be linking through to maybe the contact us page. If you have booking or


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

appointment functionality on your website you'll link to that page. Now unsurprisingly


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

the menu URL will link to your menu page and if you're using Google posts have a think


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

about where will you link to if it's a special offer post is there a special offer page that


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

it will link to? When that special offer expires what will you do with that page? Will it continue


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

to resolve or are you going to 301 it somewhere else? Plan all that out beforehand. Actually


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

you need to make sure that you check the URL that you're wanting to link to. Are you linking


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

to the correct version? If you're on HTTPS which I hope you are you won't want to be


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

linking to the HTTP. You need to look does that page resolve? Can you see everything


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

on that page? Does that page give a 404 in which case obviously we're not going to want


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

to link to it? Does that page go through a series of redirects? Now a series of redirects


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

is going to strip the UTM tagging off of that URL and we really don't want that. So once


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

you've checked which URLs you need to link to you're actually going to tag those up.


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

So for the source I'm using Google some people like to use GMB but whatever you choose again


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

make sure it fits within this framework and be consistent from the outset. For medium


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

I'm using organic and then for campaign I'm using that field to describe the location


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

of that link within Google My Business. So it might be the primary website link, menu


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

products, the appointment if you're using the new follower offer you have this and then


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

with Google posts I like to be a little bit more granular so I can see what type of posts


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

might be working the best and I can also track any changes when Google starts moving posts


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

up and around inside the business profile. So we've got the what's new post, the offer


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

post and the event post. And finally for Google posts using the campaign content field to


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

describe the actual content of that post. So if you work with a business which has lots


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

of unique and interesting content you might just need to describe that content. So summer


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

21 sale, free giraffe rides, curry night May 21 or you might just like to use the date


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

there in the campaign content field. So a top tip is if you're using posts you have


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

access to posts I hope you're using them then using a Google Sheets add-on called Post-O-Matic


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

which is brilliant it allows you to schedule your posts and it also automatically adds


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

UTM tagging within this format so it's very much recommended. So you're going to tag up


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

your GMB, URLs and those links with UTM code so you might use something like Google's campaign


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

URL builder which is something that I used to use when I first started tagging up business


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

profiles but since then I've been working on my UTM tagging guide with the Google Sheet


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

which is basically my gift to you with love. So you can use that to keep everything nice


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

and tidy and everything in one place. It auto generates the tag so all you have to do is


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

just drop your URL into the sheet and then it will give you the UTM codes for those URLs


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

and it's a good way to keep a record of what you're adding and that might be Google posts


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

if you're not using Post-O-Matic it might be your Google products and you have a record


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

then and you can understand what type of content resonates what doesn't and what does it you


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

know what you could do better with your content. So you will find that guide and sheet here


UTM Tagging for Google My Business

on this URL. So that's it for today I hope you found that useful and hopefully see you


UTM Tagging for Google My Business


Which Page Markup + Tags Still Matter for SEO? - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we are going to chat about page markup and tags and which ones still matter


for us.


Now, weirdly enough, you would think that over the last, say, seven or eight years,


we would have had an enormous growth in the number of tags and the optimization options


and what you have to do on a page, but that's not actually the case.


Google kind of gave us a few that were important, you know, things like rel author, and then


took some away.


And so it's changed a little bit, but it is not as overhauled massively as you might think.


And that's a good thing.


So old school SEO best practices, right, were sort of like, okay, I had to worry about my


title, my meta description and keywords tag, keywords a little less, so keywords hasn't


been worried about for maybe 15 years now.


But my robots tag, certainly, especially if I was controlling bot behavior, rel canonical


and the rel alternate tag for things like hreflang, which came about six or seven years


ago.


My headline tags, some potential basically markup that or text tags that could change


the format of text like strong and bold and em.


These have gotten less important, I'll talk about that in a sec.


Obviously with URLs worrying about rel nofollow and other forms of the rel tag and then image


source having the alt attribute.


This was kind of the basic bare bones fundamental minimums.


There were other tags that some people employed and obviously other tags that Google added


and took away over time or that they paid attention to a little bit and then didn't.


But generally speaking, this was the case.


Nowadays there are a few more, but they're really centered around just a few small items.


So we do have metadata now and I'm going to call this SEO even though technically it is


not just for the search engines and those are Open Graph, Twitter cards and the favicon.


I'll talk about that in a sec, why that actually changed even though favicon has been around


for a long time.


And then things like the markup for Google itself, the structured data markup that's


part of schema.org that Google is employing.


I want to be clear, Google is not using every form of schema.


If you go to schema.org you can find schema markup for virtually anything.


Google only uses a small portion of that and while certain websites have seen an uptick


in traffic or in prominence or in their visibility and display in the search engine results,


it is not a guaranteed rank booster.


Google says they don't typically use it to boost rankings, but they can use it to better


understand content, which in my opinion, better understanding content is something that often


leads to better rankings and visibility.


So you should be doing it.


And as a result, many of these old school tags still apply of course, right?


Adult attributes and in the header tag write the title and the meta description, meta robots,


canonical.


But really what's changed, the big things that have changed, added to the header of


pages I would tell you generally speaking that you should think and worry about Twitter


cards, Open Graph markup and the favicon.


Now Twitter cards pretty obvious.


Basically because Twitter is such a big distribution network for content and can be, it pays to


have your cards optimized rather than to just have the URL exist on its own.


You can stand out better in Twitter that way.


Open Graph markup, this is basically used by Facebook and Facebook an even bigger distribution


platform than Twitter.


And so of course you want to be able to optimize how you appear in those.


And because social media in general is so well correlated with all sorts of positive


SEO things, you want to put your best foot forward there.


And therefore I'm making this, I'm going to say this is an SEO best practice as well as


a social media marketing one.


Favicon is a little weirder.


So favicon has been around for forever.


It's the little graphic that appears in your browser window or at the top of the browser


tab.


But the reason that it matters is because so many sites, social media platforms and


many distribution sites, places like Pocket, places that scrape, places that will show


your stuff including sometimes at least in the past Google's knowledge cards will sometimes


use that favicon in their display of your site.


And for that reason it certainly can pay to have a good favicon that stands out, that's


obvious and clear much more so than it was say a decade ago.


Now not as important anymore are things like the H1, 2 and 3.


And I know what you're going to say, you're looking around like wait a minute, I see,


I still see a lot of recommendations from tools even like Moz Pro that say I should


use H1, H2, H3.


It is a best practice.


I mean I'd say H1 and H2 are best practices but they are not going to transform or massively


help your rankings.


They're not very well correlated with better rankings.


In lots of testing folks could barely ever observe a true reconcilable difference between


using the headline tag and just having those be big and bold at the top of the page, those


headlines be big and bold at the top of the page.


However, I'm saying this alone, if you are using item prop to describe a headline, an


alternate headline in your schema.org markup that actually can be more useful and we do


think that Google is at least using that as they say to better understand your content.


I think that's a positive thing.


And then there's lots of other sites that can use schema as well.


Google is not the only place and that can certainly help your visibility too.


Not as important, strong, bold, EM, just kind of doesn't matter as much.


With CSS taking things over you don't need to worry about visual display of text in your


HTML code nearly as much and certainly not from the search engine perspective.


I'm adding to the body tag of course all of the schema.org options.


I'm just showing the article ones here but you should consider any of the ones you've


got, recipes or news or videos or all sorts of stuff.


Questions that folks might have around page markup.


What about other metadata?


There's like the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and other forms of open metadata and other


forms of markup that you could put in there.


I'm going to say no, don't bother.


Until and unless something gets truly popular and used by a lot of these different services,


Google included, it just doesn't pay in my opinion and it adds a little bit of extra


weight to a page that just doesn't matter.


W3C validation, does it matter if I have valid HTML code that's sort of very, very perfect?


Nope, it doesn't seem to matter much at all, didn't matter back in the day, doesn't matter


now, I would not worry about it.


Most of the most popular and most visible sites in Google do not actually validate at


all.


What about schema that Google hasn't adopted yet?


I'm going to be a little controversial and say it's probably worthwhile.


If schema has already stated this is how this format works but you don't yet see Google


using it, it could still pay to be an early adopter because if and when Google does do


that it could bring benefit.


Now if you're worried about heavy page load or if this is very time consuming for you


or your dev team, don't worry about it too much.


You can certainly wait until Google actually implements something before you go and add


that relevant schema to your site.


Other forms of semantic markup?


I know there's lots of people who believe semantic markup is the future and those kinds


of things but I don't.


I don't think that until and unless the engines adopt it, it probably does not pay.


Certainly we have not seen browsers, we have not seen search engines, we have not seen


big organizations that in the social media world start to adopt this semantic markup


stuff.


I would worry less about that.


To be honest, the engines of the future are worried about parsing the content themselves,


not about how you mark it up on your pages.


Header footer sidebar labels in CSS.


This was like a spam or manipulation or link counting thing for a long time where SEO is


worried that page markup that called out this is in the header, this is in the footer, this


is the sidebar of the visual of the page.


I'm saying these links are in here or these links are over here or these links are down


here.


If this was a concern, I am less worried about it nowadays but if you are very paranoid or


concerned, you certainly could use alternate things.


I just wouldn't worry about it very much.


If you want to check these pages, you want to go through a process of actually reviewing


all this stuff, there are a few tools that will do all of this stuff for you.


They'll look at all of these different tags and markup options.


The free one I love the most, it happens to be a Moz tool but I just really like it.


It's the Moz bar, you can download it for free.


There's almost 400,000 people who use it regularly for free and that's awesome.


It does have a little on-page checking option.


It will run through all this different stuff for you.


You could of course view source and do it manually in your browser.


You can use Google's structured data checker tool which is linked to from the Moz bar's


on-page checker but also you can Google it yourself and then plug stuff into it.


You don't need to be logged into your webmaster tools or search console account and it will


validate at least the schema.org options that Google considers which is great and some ones


that they don't use but that's cool too.


Facebook has the same thing with open graph checking and so does Twitter with their card


validator.


If you want to use a paid service to go like crawl your site automatically and it surface


all these issues for you, Moz Pro campaigns does that.


So does on-page.org, great company out of Germany and Screaming Frog, great company


out of the UK.


With these options, I would love to actually hear from you in the comments.


If you have seen markup or tag options that are not covered here that you think are influencing


SEO for a wide range of folks, please bring them up.


Let's talk about them.


Let's talk about any of these you disagree with and we'll see you again next week for


another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


How to Get Discovered, Delight Your Customers, and Earn the Conversion [MozCon 2017] — Purna Virji

Hello, guys. Good afternoon. Hello. Let's get started by taking a little walk down memory


lane. The technology edition. Let's go back 10 years ago. The year 2007, what came out,


the iPhone. The iPhone first launched. All the things and apps we take for granted today,


like Uber or Instagram or Seamless, didn't exist. The craziest stat to me, though, from


10 years ago is that one out of four Americans was still using dial up internet. Dial up.


Remember the sound? Does that not feel like a lifetime ago? And yet, despite all of these


great advances in technology that we're making, we're still doing things like this. Pushing.


Interrupting. And I get it, right? Attention is so difficult to get and to hold on to that


we feel compelled as marketers to do the things that we don't like as consumers. And then


what happens? The consumers strike back. We install ad blockers. We happily pay more money


for services like Hulu or Spotify that are ad free versions. Right? We all do this. What


we need to be doing is saying goodbye to interruptions and hello to conversations. Advances in AI


and technology have made it incredibly easy to more effectively engage with our audiences.


So we need to make the switch and I'm going to show you how today to make the switch from


interruption based marketing to intelligent conversational relationships using chat bots.


So let's get started by covering our evolving technology. We'll look at how we need to be


evolving engagement and how we need to evolve our strategy. So let's get started by looking


at technology. Before we look at what's coming or what's already sort of here, let's take


a look at what changes are happening to existing technology. A lot of the things that we have


taken for granted as being absolutely 100% necessary are becoming less and less necessary.


Let's talk about screens, for example. Did you ever imagine we'd have marketing without


screens? Yet with voice controlled marketing, we can interact with technology without the


need for a screen. I could order pizza from Amazon Alexa, for example, without needing


a screen. Or if we think about apps, Gartner did this research that in the next two years,


by 2019, 20% of brands are going to abandon their mobile apps. And if you think about


why, the siloed apps that we have on our phone are the interruptions. You have to start what


you're doing in one app to go into this other app and figure out how to use this new app


and all the different systems. It's not cohesive. And websites as well are increasingly being


bypassed. Look, they're not dying. They're just being bypassed in several cases. So I


could go to the sky scanner chat bot to book my next trip, and I don't need to go to the


website at all. So there are new players in this game that are coming in to change things


for us. And this is what we need to be paying attention to so we can stay relevant in the


years to come. The new players are digital personal assistants, chat bots, and skills.


Let's level set about each of them. Your personal assistant is something like a Cortana or a


Google assistant. Her job is to get to know you better and be a part of your entire digital


life through different touch points with your permission, of course, and get to know your


preferences, your likes, your dislikes so she can serve you and make your life easier.


On the other hand, we've got bots and skills. These are the agents on behalf of the company.


So their job is to know the company really well, and you can interact with bots or skills


either directly via a platform like Facebook messenger or Skype messaging or via your digital


personal assistant. Their job, again, is to help you and work with your personal assistant


to make your life easier. Let me give you an example. Let's say I have a trip to Boston


coming up next week. And Cortana is tracking it for me because she saw the email from my


travel company, let's say Expedia. So Cortana knows because of Expedia's email to me that


I'm going to Boston next week. Like a lot of people, I booked my flight really early,


but I always forget to book a hotel until the very last minute. So now I'm in need of


my hotel room. So I can go to Cortana and be like, hey, Cortana, ask Expedia to book


me a hotel in Boston. So Cortana has the information so she can say that, oh, your trip to Boston


for July 23rd, okay, last time you stayed at the Contoso hotel, do you want me to book


you the same one? See, because she knows what I've done before. I'm like, yeah, that's great.


Contoso is fine. Let's book that. Great choice. Do you want me to use your credit card ending


in one, two, three, four? Yeah, that's perfect. That's exactly the one I want you to use.


Okay. You're all set. I've emailed you the confirmation. How easy was that? This took


less than 60 seconds to do something that would have taken me at least ten times longer


than that if I did it the traditional way. So it's no surprising at all that Business


Insider predicts that by 2020, 80% of businesses want to have chatbots. So the natural question


to ask at this point is, hey, what will this do for SEO? Is it going to destroy it? Because


that's the trend, right? Everything is going to kill SEO. And no. It's not going to kill


it at all or destroy it at all. There's just a shift coming. And I don't think any other


industry outside of us is so used to handling and dealing with big shifts. So in this time,


we can even see it coming. So our jobs are going to expand. They're going to go beyond


the website. They're going to be including the bots and the skills and the personal assistants


in our quest to engage with our audiences. So let's look at how engagement is going to


be evolving. One of the reasons that I really, really like


conversational marketing is that it changes our conversation with the audience from a


one to many to a one to one. And it also allows the audience to determine the cadence of the


conversation in your marketing efforts. You can also get super personalized and learn


from the interactions with your audiences. So let's see how we can use it.


A big misconception is that, okay, great, chatbots, they're only something like a large


company or large brands can afford to do. And that's not true at all. Bots work for


every brand, big or small. In fact, smaller companies can benefit even more from chatbots


because they can help bring about efficiencies so you may not need to hire another person


that you may have struggling to afford to do. And they also work for every single stage


of the funnel. Let's have a look. Bots are great for broadcast


and awareness. They're great for engagement as well as conversions, remarketing and retention


and of course customer service that we're used to. Let's look at an example. Let's say


I shop frequently at ABC bookstore. ABC bookstore knows that I'm a big fan of Rand Fishkin and


I have bought his books before. So if Rand has a new book coming out, ABC bookstores


bot will send me a message saying, hey, Purna, Rand's new book is releasing soon. Do you


want me to send you a sneak peek of the first chapter? Of course. It knows me well. It knows


I love Rand. My response is going to be, yes, please, oh, my God, oh, my God. What this


bot also knows about me based on my purchase interactions with them before is that I'm


a sucker for a sale and I suffer from retail formal. If you tell me things are on sale


now or things are running out quickly, I'll buy it.


So what it will do next is be like, okay, great, I'm emailing this to you now. But you


can also save 15% of a preorder of his book if you use the code I love Geraldine. Just


hurry up, though, because the code expires in 24 hours. Of course, my response is going


to be thank you and you can probably bet that I went and bought the book now. The reason


that it works is because it upped the level of relevancy. It was all about me and my likes


and dislikes. It changed the conversation from a buy now to a what do you need right


now and that's what's going to make marketing something people are going to want to consume


when it comes across as really helpful. And this applies to all the different channels.


So let's take a look now at how we can use chat bots across your different channels to


help them and how we can use your different channels to build up your bot channel. We'll


start by search, of course, because that's near and dear to all of our hearts here. Traditionally,


if you look at your search result, I mean, yes, you put in a query and a lot of back


end and advanced engineering goes into it to give you the right results. But there's


no real further interaction that happens with the SERPs. It's time to shake things up a


bit. It's time to make the SERPs conversational and I don't mean voice search for once. I'm


going to ask you guys to do something since I know most of you have your computers. If


you don't have a computer, would you mind just sharing with the person next to you?


This doesn't work on the phone. It has to work only on the desktop for now because it's


something brand new. And it has to be Bing because no one else is doing this. It's exclusive


to us. So if you go to bing.com, do a search for monsoon Seattle. I'll give you a second.


If you have got your results so far, do you notice this one line under the main listing?


Questions? Ask monsoon restaurant bot for help. Now while engaging and having conversations


with your search engine is a little bit in the future, you can interact with businesses


in the SERPs through the business bot that Bing has. So now and you can try, you can


ask it questions. You can ask it things like, hey, what payment information do you accept?


Do you have vegetarian options? Or even natural language like can I bring my dog? It's smart


enough to understand that can I bring my dog means is it pet friendly and are pets allowed?


Sadly, pets are not allowed at monsoon Seattle. So if you're going to go there, please don't


take your dog. How cool is that? Local SEOs, I'm sure this is very exciting to you because


now you can engage with the brand. This saves me as a consumer time from going to the website


and scrolling around to find the answers to these questions, which may not even exist


on the website. And from a business standpoint, I don't keep getting the same repetitive calls


that waste the time of my human staff to answer the same questions again and again that can


be easily answered by a bot. So this is so new that it only exists for restaurants in


Seattle at the moment. Our goal is to expand this beyond Seattle in the coming months.


So stay tuned. You can either just follow me on Twitter or check the Bing blog for this.


But that's fascinating. Okay. Those were chatty business listings. How about making the entire


Sorp conversational? Well, here's a real cool sneak peek of something that's still in really


early stages of development. Advances in artificial intelligence, in particular, something called


machine reading comprehension, which is pretty much what it says on the box, which is the


machine reads something and understands it, can help to botify the entire web.


So let's say, for example, I was looking for something on Wikipedia. So the history of


Singapore, for example. Bing's info bot can be like, hey, do you want to ask questions


about this page, this information on Wikipedia? Again, this is not Wikipedia's chat bot. This


is Bing's info bot that's creating a chat bot on the fly from websites that show up


in the Serps. That's going to change SEO a fair amount, right? I would imagine.


Now this is still really early stage. We're still piloting this with companies like Wikipedia,


WebMD, or recipes, for example. But stay tuned. I want to give you guys a glimpse into the


future so you can be prepared. Let's go to the next step, which is you want


to be right there when people are looking for you. That's what all of us want to do,


right? And I'm going to give you some tips, but the most important thing in our future


conversational world is brand awareness. And I'll show you exactly why.


Say I was talking to the personal assistant of my choice. Again, this works on Google,


this works on Cortana, this works on any of them. So let's say if I was asking Cortana


that hey, Cortana, how much are flights to Paris this weekend? Cortana will give me a


list of results in the Serp, pretty much like we're used to getting, right? Here are some


different companies, here are some different price options. Not surprising. But what if


I was already very familiar with the Skyscanner bot and I knew that by interacting with it


before it was very easy to use, what I could do then would be like hey, Cortana, ask Skyscanner


how much are flights to Paris this weekend? Do you want to see the difference in interaction?


So connect me directly to Skyscanner. That means all my interactions are going to be


with Skyscanner. Where's the competition? Not visible at all. There's no chance of me


being distracted now because I know about Skyscanner, I knew about their chat bot, I'm


going to just use it and book my trip. Bye bye, competition.


So brand awareness is going to be super incredibly important for us to be working on with all


of our clients. You want people to discover that A, you've got a really good bot and that


it works really well and it makes life easier. So how are some ways that you can do that?


Let's turn to search, of course. Now, bots have the same problem right now that apps


had, which is discoverability, right? There's tons of different apps. It's hard to find


out or know that they exist. And this is something that we see happening with bots as well, but


because we see what happened with apps, all the different platforms, whether it's Facebook


or Microsoft or Google, are taking steps to build discoverability tools.


But for now, some of the ways that we can get discovered is via search. I can go to


Google.com and I can do a search for bots. I can also go to Bing.com and Bing does something


slightly different with the bot experience. We bring up different boxes right up top.


So it's like a little answer box up top that lists the different bots. They're also sorted


by the type of platform. So if you notice next to finance bots, it says telegram or


Slack. So I can just filter based on the platform that I prefer to use. And if you notice the


blue link under the name of the bot, it's already enabled. So if I click on that, I


can just quickly set up that bot in the platform of my choice. It's awesome. Sorry. It's going


to make your discoverability really easy. The next one is with email. Can you guys guess


what the average email open rate is? Just shout it out. What's that? 18%? 80%. 80. It's


a bit lower than 80. Anyone else? Yeah, 18 is a bit closer. According to MailChimp's


research, it's 15 to 25% open rates. Can you guys guess what the click through rate within


the email is? I heard it there. About 2.7% ish on average. Again, according to MailChimp.


You guys, those are pretty low numbers. Let me ask you this question now. Hands up if


when you get a text message, you usually look at it, you check it within ten minutes. Yeah,


a lot of us. Keep your hands up for a second. If you respond within ten minutes. Yeah. So


many of us do. It's a really fast medium. Far more than, say, ads or emails, which can


get lost because we're inundated with messaging. So let's think about ways that we can try


to use our emails to build awareness for our bots so that we can try to build that platform


up more and get that engagement. So I could just within a call to action in my email be


like, hey, message us for 20% off. So this is a good way to, again, incentivize people


to go ahead and interact with your bot. Once you help build up the bot channel, it's also


a good way to even personalize more and then you don't have to be as reliant on email,


though as Justine was saying, it's still pretty valuable. What you can also do is with your


social media. Now, we're also used to going to social media to go ahead and share updates


about our brands or ourselves or, of course, run ads. What if we instead of running ads


or messaging that went back to our landing page, what if we sent it back to our chat


bot instead? It is a native platform. If you're on Facebook, you're pretty much used to dealing


with Facebook Messenger, for example, so you're not really going to a completely different


website. You're still staying within the realm of Facebook. Also, the ads can feel more helpful


than salesy. So if it says, like, hey, we're having a special sale, 10% off, your normal


call to action would have been like shop now or buy now. Whereas here we can say things


like why don't you chat with the stylist? Let us help you. Again, we're going from the


buy now to how can I help you now. So think about doing those ads, not just your social


media ads, your regular display ads, your text ads, any of them can be really greatly


enhanced by trying to drive some traffic to build up your bot channel and you can see


it thrive and prosper. Now, hopefully at this point you're like, okay, this is super exciting.


How do I get started? The first thing you need to do is think of this quote by Bernie


Brown. Perfectionism is the thing that's really preventing us from taking flights. A lot of


people are scared or afraid to go and test out this channel because they're like, oh,


my gosh, my bot has to be as advanced and chatty and interactive like in the movie Her.


But that's not the case. Take the pressure off. It does not need to be perfect. And certainly


it does not need to be anything like the movie Her at all. Which, again, is still science


fiction. That technology doesn't really quite exist to that level right now. What you can


even think about is what Facebook's research showed, that sounding robotic can actually


increase your efficiency because people have lower expectations for what a robot can engage


with you in terms of conversation. So take the pressure off, get started, it doesn't


need to be perfect. The thing is, even though chat bots are still quite a brand newer and


more nascent channel, the fact that even today's basic conversations work is proof that as


this gets more and more advanced, marketers will adopt this technology in increasing numbers.


A big proof of that, I was chatting with some of our banking clients and they are very excited


in creating chat bots. And as you know, banking as an industry has so many regulations that


they tend to be slower to adopt new things. But they've seen the value in saving themselves


time from like repeated questions such as hey, how much balance is in my bank today


or things that are easy but take three or four minutes of their customer services time


because of security questions that need to be asked. So they've seen the value in saving


their customers time and also saving their money in terms of call center reps. So I'm


going to share with you a bot design plan that you can use no matter what platform you


go with to create your bot. It's a simple four step plan. Step one is you need to identify


the goal. Why does my chat bot need to exist? To do this, you want to start by talking to


customer service. That hey, what are questions that our customers are asking us very often?


What are things that they want to be able to do more quickly, more efficiently? Try


to get to the root of that so you can find the one singular problem that you want to


solve. Now, sadly, shockingly, I guess chat bots can't solve world peace, but they can


still solve smaller problems and that's what we need to get them to do. Then you need to


identify the problem, I mean, the platform that your audience is on. For some people


that may be Slack. For some people it may be Skype. So you want to discover where your


client's audience is you spending most of their time. The next slide is my favorite


step which is where you brainstorm without any limits. Ask yourself this question. If


anything was possible, what would I do? And if the answer is I would bring in Brad Pitt


to sit next to me in the office while I created my chat bot, put it down on the list, it's


a good idea. Don't disqualify any ideas. Once you have this list down, you can then go and


think about what would our customers love? So that will shorten the list a little bit.


Then we go to the step where we bring it back down to reality and we're going to say that,


okay, what's the simplest way to start? Maybe I have this big grand idea, but what's the


first step that I can take towards it that I can start testing out today? Then you want


to think about making it either a bot or a skill. So, for example, how important is the


vocal aspect which would make it a skill? Or does it need to be both? And what should


my KPIs be? So that would all be determined by the goal of your bots and how you set it


up. Step four is when you spark it into life. So you're going to want to think about the


platform. You're going to want to think about the structure as well as the conversation,


the tone and the voice that you're going to use within your chat bot. And then you're


going to launch it and monitor it. Now, bringing something like this to life


can take anything anywhere from ten minutes to several months. It's one of those it depends


on how complex you want it to be. Tools, there are several. Facebook has their


Facebook messenger for devs. Google has API.AI. And if you want to find some of the different


tools and resources along with some code samples that you can use, you can go to this website,


aka.ms. I promise you it is a treasure trove of everything that you're looking for to guide


you to getting set up. I also created one more thing for you. It


is your design worksheet. And I'm sorry, as you can see, I'm a terrible designer, so it's


not pretty. But I promise you it's really functional. This is a one sheet project management


guide that will allow you to go through and think about what am I trying to achieve? What


are the questions people ask? So you can keep everything in one place and then create the


actual powerful hypothesis for your chat bot. So you can easily download it at that URL


up there. And I promise you, no matter what you choose, it is easier than most people


think. So if I had to recap, you want to try to build


an AI powered bot or skill. You want to promote it across different platforms. And you want


to engage and measure across multiple touch points. And like any tech that is brand new,


problems are going to exist. For example, on a very large one off aberration scale,


you all read the news about Microsoft's Tay chat bot that went actually quite horrible.


But we learned from it. We learned that you need to put up those guardrails around the


conversations that you have. So other people are already learning things the hard way for


you to make it easier. So come back in and learn.


Remember, caution is necessary. Avoidance is not. One day in the very near future, your


chat bot can be your best performing employee, your best sales guy, your best customer service


app, your best marketer. The proof is in the pudding. If you last year I was reading this


interview with the 1‑800‑Flowers CEO just two months after they launched their chat


bot. He said that 70% of their orders from their new Facebook bot were from brand new


customers and tended to go towards a younger demographic. 70%. That's a brand new audience


that they're able to reach. Last year as well, Sephora shared that once a user engaged with


their kick Sephora bot, they then went on to average ten messages per day. That's an


incredible interaction. But my favorite example of all is Taco Bot from Taco Bell. That bot


which takes orders for food on Slack has taken in over $10 million worth of food orders just


via the Slack bot. That's a lot of tacos. $10 million. So my question to you guys is,


How Agencies Can Wisely Create Data-driven Content [MozCon 2017] — Heather Physioc

So, who's seen Wonder Woman?


Yeah.


Seeing this many badass women on a marketing conference stage in one day, I feel the same


way I did when they were doing all those flips and fight scenes on Wonder Woman.


This is the coolest.


Girl boss for the win.


So, I am Heather Physiok.


I'm director of organic search at VML.


It's a big global digital ad agency headquartered in Kansas City.


And today we're going to talk about how agencies, especially the big giant creative beast agencies,


can build data driven content systems.


And although the research that went into this is centered around the big agency environment,


I believe that these learnings can apply no matter what size agency you work at.


So, from anchor to asset, let's rock and roll.


So, a little bit of a back story.


I started at VML in mid 2014.


And I mostly worked at small, medium sized agencies.


I did a very brief stint at a big agency.


And they were the largest agency in Kansas City by a margin.


But they had 2600 employees in 29 offices around the world.


So, this was like the big leagues for me.


And I remember the first day I walked into VML, the walls were literally lined with hundreds


and hundreds of creative awards.


We're talking canned gold, lions, and adees and other awards I can't pronounce.


And they were on the ad agency A list, top ten, two years running.


They were on the forester leaders list.


I mean, they've got creative achievement written all over them.


It was completely intimidating.


And they were working on these giant brands.


These are amazing brands to work on.


We had Bridgestone, we had Wendy's, we had Electrolux, we had Express.


And not only did these brands have big budgets, they had big complexity and big visibility


into every marketing and budget decision they made.


It was fast paced.


It was a lot of moving pieces.


It was like I was chugging from this fire hose of creativity.


And I was completely out of my element.


I do not have a creative bone in my body.


My job is a technical field.


I still explain to people that what I do is get stuff found on the Internet.


I feel like they made some kind of clerical error when they hired me.


But they did.


They hired me to take over this one person SEO practice that got brought in after the


fact to do some retroactive technical cleanup if they got brought in at all.


So I had my work cut out for me to make a name for search in a creative agency.


So I already quit my other job.


So I figured I should buckle down and do the one thing I knew how to do.


I started optimizing.


And you guys, it kind of worked.


So the first two years we got 80% revenue growth both years in a row.


This year we're pacing for another 40, 50%.


And we did a great job of becoming a part of VML's DNA.


And we did it by becoming easy to understand, seamless to integrate, and most importantly


impossible to ignore.


We built this dream team.


I call this my dream team slide.


Piece by piece.


We were scrappy and lean like a startup.


We did this PR road show inside and outside the agency to educate people on what it is


that we do.


We inserted ourselves into conversations where we were not asked to be, but we knew we could


help.


We started putting out points of view, thought leadership pieces.


We started selling projects or partnerships instead of projects.


It was a complete mentality shift at this agency.


We even won a little award for our global search work on Hills Pet Nutrition.


That little award was a big deal to us.


It was almost like this meteoric growth was too good to be true.


And that's because it was.


We hit the ceiling.


We made these massive promises to these amazing clients that search was a good investment


for them to ship their dollars to.


That we could help their customers through search.


That we could get them real, measurable, tangible results.


Our word is everything.


So we were getting some small wins.


You know, the technical, the SEO 101 basics.


But we know that this only takes clients so far.


We knew we had gone about as far as we could go with that.


But we were facing some tough questions.


Are the partnerships we sold to these clients worth it?


Technical SEO, easy.


Check it off a list.


We started building great relationships with developers.


Nailed it.


On page SEO, you got it.


I will optimize your title tags and descriptions all day.


Content, these big international enterprise brands have a shockingly low amount of content


on their sites.


So this is a huge opportunity, right?


Crap.


We consistently struggled to get content for our clients' websites and to convince people


that this was a priority.


The best we could hope for was some thin, weak blog content or some fluffy content from


a questionable influencer that we might get asked to optimize after the fact.


But what baffled me is that we knew content marketing budgets were growing.


According to this PQ Media study, content marketing is going to grow to $313 billion


with a B dollars by 2019.


Or this study from the Content Marketing Institute, I believe, shows that 39% of B2B marketers


believe their content budgets are going to increase next year.


Or I did my own research for an executive research project and 72% of respondents said


that they believed that their clients' budgets were going to increase for content at least


slightly if not dramatically.


So if the demand for content is there and the money exists, why can't my award-winning


creative shop create content for some of the best brands in the world?


We sucked at it.


And again, we would cross off these technical SEO items and we would hit a wall with getting


copy and our ability to get results stopped in its tracks.


It wasn't getting scoped in as a dependency.


We couldn't get the resources.


Whatever the case, there was always some obstacle between us and getting words on a client's


website.


But we had to figure this out.


If we don't figure this out, we can't get the results we promised our clients.


We lose our scopes and people could lose their jobs.


Content marketing seems so simple, especially the way we talk about it in this industry.


But in the agency world, it was the one thing that threatened to kill my team.


I cannot go back to my boss, to my clients, to my CEO, to the people I hired and tell


them, well, we can't figure out content.


I guess we should all pack it up and go home.


This is what keeps me up at night.


I have this world-class SEO team and we can't deliver results because we can't deliver content?


Give me a break.


Unacceptable.


So we started to research.


And one comforting and yet alarming fact is that we were not alone.


In fact, agencies everywhere reported having trouble with almost every part of the content


marketing workflow.


None of us had it figured out.


Here's a study from Adage.


Top problems, creating quality, engaging content, lack of budget, lack of time.


Content marketing institute, content creation again, strategy development, prioritization.


My own research, client maturity about content, selling the value, proving the ROI, working


in silos, bad scoping, and others.


More and more and more.


Different studies, different methodologies, different numbers, but the story remains the


same.


We have big content problems to solve for.


And if there is a problem, I am an engineer at heart, I'm going to solve it.


Thanks, Vanilla.


So we can't solve the world in a day.


Let's focus on a couple of items here.


First, proving the value of content so you can get the investment and the buy-in that


you need to move forward in the agency world.


Creating a process that is flexible and adaptable enough for the agency environment.


And sourcing that content so you can create it affordably well and at scale.


Couple assumptions about agencies.


We live for chaos.


We are fueled by creativity and chaos and process and rigid structure is often seen


as the tradeoff to that brilliant creativity.


There's never, ever, ever a one size fits all approach in the agency world for every


agency or every client.


There's just too much unpredictability.


There's always some exception to the rule.


And we know that content formats are going to continue to evolve and change.


Cindy just said that the URL may not even be necessary next year.


Who knows?


But we're seeing this just in the three years I've been at VML.


We're putting search technology in cars.


We're putting in wearable devices.


We need a system that's flexible enough to adapt to the new forms of technology.


And we found four main problems in the research.


And the first was territorialism.


So in the agency world where everybody's vying for a seat at the table and everybody wants


to get a bigger piece of the budget pretty much.


And so it creates territorialism which then begets winners and losers inside the agency.


But ultimately the biggest loser is the client.


So everyone thinks they own content, especially creative.


But our research shows that not all content belongs in the creative department.


So we'll talk about how to overcome that.


Next was ownership.


Everyone thinks they own content and has an opinion.


But truthfully, no one department owns content.


So what happens is everybody ends up going rogue and doing their content marketing in


silos.


So we need some sort of ownership to see this process through and connect the dots.


Speaking of process, the next problem is there is no process.


So I sat down with a dozen subject matter experts in different disciplines and I interviewed


them for 60 to 90 minutes each.


And I asked them, what is content to you?


What does it work like in your discipline?


How do you know if it's working?


Where do you come in?


What does the perfect system look like?


And I compared the data on the commonalities and the anomalies so we could develop a process


that works for agencies and not just for search.


Last sourcing, we need to be able to create high quality content affordably and at scale


but without sacrificing the creativity that an agency is known for.


So proving the value.


Let's dive in.


This was my eureka moment.


So not everyone actually agrees on what content means.


Looking back, this seems so simple and obvious.


But to me, this was mind blowing.


Creative thinks about content completely differently than digital does.


There is a fundamental misalignment in definition.


So if you ask 100 different marketers, which I did, to define content in their own words,


you will get 100 different definitions, which I did.


So this is the top 25 words that came up in the content marketer definitions.


And these are good, right?


These are pretty solid words.


They're not wrong.


They're pretty great.


But the problem is every definition from one to the next varied so widely that there was


no consistency in understanding of what it meant.


That's a big deal.


So as I dug down deeper, I found that the true dichotomy lies between campaign and continuous.


So creative thinks of these big burst campaigns.


It's a big effort crammed into one massive short-term campaign.


And digital thinks of continuous content for the consumptive audience.


And they think about it as new and improved copy and multimedia that's continually released


over time.


That is a huge difference in understanding.


No wonder we're having a hard time bringing content to life.


We're speaking different languages.


So we had to get serious about defining this inside and outside the agency.


Here's how it breaks down.


So campaign thinks about aspirational as this push marketing, inspiring people to action


with big short bursts, creative campaigns.


It's memorable.


They create a fabulous message.


They push it out to the world.


And they hope you like it.


We can't do that in the digital world.


We have to flip that thinking on its head and do the pull marketing style.


We need to actually do the effort to understand what it is the consumer needs or wants.


And we have to fulfill it.


It's not about what they want to do.


It's about what the consumers want to accomplish online.


We either fulfill it or we don't.


So creative, of course, has very high standards for creativity.


But for digital content, it can't just be creative for the sake of being creative.


It actually has to serve a purpose, and we need a balance of both for brands.


Creative tends to think of single stream.


They tend to design campaigns around one or just a select few channels.


Wherever the media dollars and platform partnerships take them.


But in digital, we think about how to adapt a story to live in many different channels.


And it will live on long after the media dollars stop.


And last, it can be very costly to develop a campaign in the creative world where it


launches and lasts for a very short piece of time for one piece of content.


But in continuous content, we need a lot more content.


So we need to be faster.


We need to be leaner, more agile, less expensive.


Very different skill sets.


So now that we've defined content clearly so we can use this inside the agency and with


our clients, how are we going to educate our clients so they know that this is the right


thing to do?


Pro tip, clicks don't mean shit.


Pardon my French.


And sorry to the French people that I just call that French.


Money talks.


The website traffic is not and has never been enough to convince enterprise brands that


they need to invest in continuous content.


They have way bigger fish to fry.


They're thinking about profit margin and shareholder value and market share.


And yet SEOs are so prone to promising rankings and traffic.


The website is the least of their concerns.


That was a really tough pill for me to swallow that search was not the center of the universe.


So, we created a few tools to help clients understand the value of what we do and how


we can bring content marketing to life for them.


Why it's so important.


So first tool.


This is a super rough content maturity model.


And so it ranges down to the bottom left from reactive, very ad hoc with little thought


to the management and consequences of the content that they're publishing, if they publish


any at all, all the way to completely strategic, fully integrated.


Information is a part of their DNA.


Thinking about how their efforts are going to come to life through content is their default


state.


I would say that most of our clients probably start in that tactical space.


They're creating some content.


They're doing a pretty good job.


But it's in silos and they're not connecting the dots.


So we use this as a tool to educate them on where they fall in the spectrum and what it's


going to take to get to the next iterative step in the process.


Here's another tool.


Growing base versus buying spikes.


This is obviously completely fake data.


But it does a really beautiful job of distilling down in a digestible way the difference between


the value that campaign and continuous brings to the table.


So smart campaigns, they get these huge spikes in visibility, right?


You get this big increase and then it drops to nothing.


Then you get this big increase and it drops to nothing when the media dollars stop.


And again and again.


You win some awards.


Now in the foreground you got the black part here.


I'm sorry, in the background the blue with campaign and continuous.


This shows how the continuous digital content creation can support those campaigns.


You get similar spikes when the campaigns launch.


And then afterward it dips down too because the media dollars have stopped and that has


an influence but it doesn't drop to zero.


And then the next campaign it spikes again and then it drops but it doesn't drop to zero.


It actually drops less than before.


And so on.


And so forth.


And what you end up with is this orange line for trajectory that shows how you're continually


evolving that brand over time and capturing more real estate and traffic than you ever


did before.


Basically it makes the spikes more spiky, the dips less dippy.


You get it.


And it keeps brands relevant even when the media dollars stop.


That's a good tool.


This is what I call atrophy versus growth.


Left axis growth.


Bottom axis time.


So hopefully we have real data of the progress we've been able to make for a client so far


using that technical and on page SEO 101 basics.


Real data show a little bit of growth.


Maybe we see a little bit more coming from the efforts we've already done.


But we know we've reached that point where we have to start creating content to expand


their footprint online.


Well that's where that orange line could take you.


We try to put realistic projections together.


If you create the content we're recommending, we think we can get you here in year one,


year two, year three.


But the important part, I find sometimes that telling clients how content can benefit them


does not work as well as scaring them with if you don't do this, you're going to lose


or miss X.


So we juxtapose that with what happens if they don't create content or if they don't


invest in continual content creation and search optimization.


It could potentially stay flat or it could even atrophy at X rate per year.


That would scare me.


Okay, one more tool for you.


A channel ROI comparison.


So there was this really good Avinash post in the last couple of weeks.


I don't know if anybody follows him.


But he asked us to challenge ourselves with this very hard question.


Is the time and the money and the effort that we are putting into these channels proportionate


to the profit or the impact that it has on the other end?


It's a tough question to ask and it's a tough question to answer.


But this tool does that in a very basic way.


So you can choose whatever channels you like, whatever metrics you like that you can get


data for.


But for the sake of simplicity, I went with paid and organic search here.


The gray bars are the content budget that we recommend to the client in year one, year


two, year three.


And it's all inclusive.


Those are made up numbers.


Please don't freak out.


It's all inclusive, right?


It's the research, the writing, the editing, the publication, the optimization.


Everything is in there.


Maybe it stays the same.


Maybe it increases.


I don't know.


You do the math.


Year one, year two, year three.


So from that, the black line, we're going to estimate our potential traffic growth.


Yes, I know the search landscape is changing.


Yes, I know this is impossible to be perfect.


But we think about things like the volume of content we're planning to create.


We think about the search volume potential, the competition.


And we do our best to come up with realistic conservative traffic estimates.


From there, we calculate the estimated organic cost per click based on their investment from


the growth we're going to get them.


And here's the fun part.


We get the same cost per click data from our Google AdWords route.


We get historical data going back as far as we can for that specific client on how much


the cost per clicks have gone ‑‑ costs per click?


Does anybody know?


‑‑ have gone up year to year.


And then we use that to project how the paid search cost per click is going to increase


in the subsequent three years.


Well, right away before I've even started investing in content, I see the gap is huge.


These are also not real numbers.


Please do not tweet these out as if it's like perfect math.


The gap is huge.


But here's what's really interesting.


Paid search costs for the same result are going up, up, up, where organic search costs


are going down, down, down.


I'm a client.


You got my attention.


You're telling me I can get the same results or better with less money?


I'm listening.


Now, I do not mean to diss on my paid media friends because I think there's a place for


both.


I think they serve different purposes at different times.


But if I'm a client, I want to know how my money is working.


Now, again, clicks is not necessarily the best metric.


Think about goal conversions, ecommerce revenue, whatever.


You could run this for any channel, any metric, and SEO and content is not always going to


win.


All of these charts and graphs I will put in a link at the end so you have a base template


to work from.


Okay.


Cool.


So how are we going to build a system to actually bring that to life in that complicated agency


environment?


So I mentioned I interviewed all those subject matter experts in the different disciplines,


what they care about, pain points, perfect system.


And I did that to truly understand what they needed from content, not what I thought they


needed or I thought the agency needed.


And this stuff was so critical to get the buy-in from those people I interviewed in


their departments to facilitate the change management that it's going to take to put


this in play in a 3,000-person agency.


So in the agency world, it starts with a brief, figure out what we're even doing here, channel


inputs, keyword research, et cetera.


You build a content playbook to define the strategy that everybody is going to align


to.


You create a content calendar for the who, what, when, where of what content is going


to get created.


It goes to production and then it gets published, approved, amplified.


It seems so, so simple now that it's on paper.


And at the risk of ruining a perfectly simple flywheel, this is what it looks like when


you double click down into that in the agency world.


The agency brief step has audience personas, brand research, competitive analysis.


The channel input stage could have seven or more inputs by itself.


Keyword research, social listening data, PR threats and opportunities, user experience


data, web analytics, behavioral analysis, and so on and so forth and so on and so forth.


My point is not that this is the perfect agency flywheel for everyone.


My point is you need to go figure this out in your own agency.


Most people don't take the time to sit down with them and ask.


So in addition to this perfect flywheel, at the top you see that editor in chief role,


there's your ownership.


So this person may not be a practitioner of each of these individual disciplines, but


we learned that we may need to create a role like this to oversee the process, understand


and bring in the right stakeholders at the right time, and make sure we're connecting


the dots and delivering on what we promised for our clients.


So one size does not fit all, do the interviews in your own agency.


I will share the questions that I asked in my own.


Warning, there's like 40.


You might be surprised what you find.


Y'all are probably saying, yo, Heather, this shit looks hard.


Yeah, brah.


It's hard.


Yeah, is it actionable?


Totally.


And it's probably going to get smoother and easier as time goes on.


Is it easy?


Hell no.


If you went easy, you're in the wrong job.


But most of those things that you saw on that flywheel, they're happening right now in agencies


today in silos.


And it is wasting your clients' money.


And it is getting worse results.


And it is getting fewer results, because no one's taking the time to do this right.


Some stuff is just hard.


That seems to be the theme of Moscon so far.


Some shit is just hard.


You have a responsibility to put in the time, use your brain, and build something better


for your clients.


Real talk, not every agency is going to have these resources.


I get it.


And Ian had a great talk on Monday about small, scrappy agencies where people wear multiple


hats.


Go rewatch that.


And not every client is going to have these budgets to cover that many resources.


I get that, too.


But any pieces you can add into that flywheel make it a stronger content strategy.


And this is a good skeleton of a process that you can adapt for your agency's reality.


So make it yours.


All right.


It's a classic make versus buy decision.


Any MBAs?


Yeah.


Make versus buy decision.


Do we create it or outsource it?


First we're going to consider pros and cons of a couple different sources.


I'll give you a few quick examples.


This is from my perspective.


Once again, you're going to have to use the old noggin and figure it out for yourself


what you think about these sources.


First let's talk about in-house creative.


So in-house creative, really smart people who brainstorm in a room and make jokes until


something brilliant comes out.


You get really great message control.


Like it's going to be flawless.


Every detail top to bottom of that campaign is going to be beautiful.


And you're going to get more creativity than you could from any other source.


It's unparalleled out of a creative agency.


And then it's going to be completely custom.


Every client, every campaign, everything is going to be custom end to end.


Now the downsides are they tend to think in single campaigns.


And it can be really slow to execute because of how many resources and how much time goes


into creating the perfect campaign.


And it can be very costly to create that one piece of content.


Okay.


What about outsourcing to a third party content vendor?


I was super skeptical of this, especially with the high creativity standards of the


agency.


But I've kind of come around now that we've found one or two that are pretty good.


Content is their specialty.


They do this all day, every day and nothing else.


They probably know what they're doing.


They're really great at flexing to changes in demand.


When things get heavier, when they need to back off, people don't lose their jobs.


They have the resources to adapt to that, which is much harder to do in the agency.


And they often have end to end systems where you can put all your necessary inputs in,


keyword research, for example.


And they route it through the team for writing and then to optimization and to legal for


approvals and the client for approval all the way until it's ready to publish back at


the agency again.


That's useful.


And they can be really fast.


Speed to market, very high.


Now on the downside, it does create extra steps.


Sometimes that's outside the agency.


And so that does create some complexity.


I get it.


Profit margin might get squeezed, might even go down to zero if the client goes direct


to the outsource vendor.


Quality control can be a little tougher.


It may be a bit of a process to achieve the quality you want over time.


And I would say this is lowercase c, creativity.


They don't have the same institutional knowledge and understanding of the brand that you do.


All right.


Last one.


This one's kind of fun.


So we're seeing a lot more artificial intelligence vendors coming on the scene to machine generate


content.


And actually, Will Critchlow at SearchLove showed some examples of this in human writing


versus artificial intelligence generated writing.


And people couldn't tell it apart.


It is a scary place.


But perks.


It seems to be automated and relatively easy to use.


You put stuff in, it does its magic, and out comes some content.


It seems to be good at creating a campaign of multiple formats of content with the same


message or project for different platforms.


And it learns over time.


It's going to continually get better and better and better.


But it's still the early days of content via AI.


And so it's limited by the inputs.


It's a machine.


We're humans.


So if the things we put into the machine are not enough or not the right things, we may


be disappointed with what comes out the other end of that machine.


And it's a machine, so it lacks human judgment.


It doesn't know what's good or bad until we're giving it feedback in its feedback loop.


And quality control is probably most difficult in this particular content vendor channel.


So this is just a few sources.


Like I said, adapt for your own reality.


But once we've done this exercise of sitting down and analyzing the pros and cons, we create


a make versus buy decision model.


So very simple.


On the left axis, we may list out all of our different potential content vendor sources.


And on the top, we list out different business criteria.


I used a few examples here.


Cost to create, control over the process, how fast it goes to market, how creative it


is, which really matters to our clients.


There's other possible criteria listed along the bottom, and I do include this in the link.


And then I kept mine super simple.


I went one for worst, ten for best.


Okay?


And then I had it spit out a score.


And that helped me to prioritize which sources or vendors would make the most sense to create


content for our clients.


Should we keep it in house or should we outsource it?


So you may use this to choose which tool your agency uses permanently, or you have it in


your toolkit so you can look real smart when you pull it out for different clients in different


projects.


So very powerful little tool there.


Big takeaways.


You cannot assume that everyone views content the same way.


Do the work to discover what your clients and your colleagues think content means and


take the time to clearly redefine what you need content to mean.


Stop winging it in silos.


Build a documented process or at least a skeleton of one based on interviews that you have done


around your agency.


Get that buy-in.


Understand what they need content to do and how they envision it working, and then you


automatically have their buy-in because you built this process on their input with their


interests in mind.


And last, examine all of your potential content production sources.


I think the most important point here is it may not be inside the agency sometimes.


I hope that most of the time it is, but it's not always.


And weight them from your perspective and determine which ones are the right sources


to use for which clients and which projects.


Help them make that smart make versus buy decision.


With that, special goodies.


That is MozCon.VMLConnect.com.


Your name is VML all caps.


Everything I talked about is in there.


Thank you very much.


MozCon 2014 - 14 - Zeph Snapp - More than Words: Localizing Your International Content

How are you guys doing? It's tough to follow stuff. That was pretty awesome. So, yeah,


pretty much people don't believe that I'm from Mexico. So I kind of have to start presentations


with a little bit of Spanish just so that you believe me. Internet penetration rates


in the U.S. and the U.K. are rapidly approaching 100 percent, right, which means that eventually


you and your company are going to have to go outside of your borders because the U.S.


and the U.K. it's over. The saturation rates, or penetration rates,


in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East are so much lower than they are in the U.S.


So you've got to start looking outside, right? I can guarantee that out of this room 80 percent


of you will end up working on an international project in your career. I just made that up.


What I'm not going to talk to you about is I'm not going to talk to you about reflang.


I'm not going to talk to you about ccTLDs because every single international presentation


that you will see will address those subjects. You can also check the blog post we wrote


about it, too. You guys don't need that stuff. We need to


go to the next level. We need to do something different. This is the Rock Band Extreme,


for those of you who are too young to know. They're the reason why I named this more than


words, so I had to put them in. So the first thing you want to think about


is planning, right? You want to think about what assets you have at your disposal when


you're going international. So the kind of stuff that you're going to be looking at is


do you have people on staff who speak the language? Do you have great social media channels?


Do you have a really good YouTube channel? You want to line those up so you can think


about localizing them first so that you can do what you're best at.


Now, when you are assigning staff to this, be very realistic about what they can actually


do, because in a lot of cases what ends up happening is the person on staff who took


high school Spanish gets assigned to translate the entire Web site, which is not a good thing.


And, you know, I took high school Russian. You do not want me translating your Web site


to Russian. You really, really don't. So the next thing you want to think about


is your budget. And it's going to be more expensive than you think it is. We have a


saying in Spanish, it's, lo barato te salecar. Basically what it means is going cheap can


be very expensive. And, yeah, if you're willing to spend the


resources on optimizing your Web site and taking care of users in the U.S., in the U.K.,


then you should be willing to spend the same type of budget when you're going to a new


market. Granted, the advantage is that the return on your investment is probably going


to be higher in other countries than it is in the U.S. because there's less competition


right now. Now, let's talk about documentation and how


you prepare for an actual translation project. Now, the first thing that ‑‑ oh, there


we go. We're always ‑‑ we work with international companies. We actually don't have any clients


that are from Mexico or Latin America. And so what we're always looking for is a way


to latch on to the strategy that people have for their Web site now and try and do something


similar. We want to maintain brand consistency. So we're always looking at who, how, and why.


So the example I have for this is we have a company in the finance sector who works


with us. And in the rest of the world, they had been building personas, and the personas


were young professionals and young couples and college students. They were looking for


high‑income people. And when they came to Latin America, we basically said, all right,


give us all your customer data, because they had already had a few customers. And we went


through and we analyzed all of it in a similar way to what Steph was talking about. And we


found that in Latin America, their core customers were actually the parents of these young professionals


and college students because they were the ones with the disposable income. And they


were also the ones who were ‑‑ you know, all the kids were living at home with their


parents into their late 20s. So you have to take into consideration that your personas


are going to change. You're going to need to think about your targeting and validate


that information. So I don't really have a lot of time to talk


about keyword research, but I want to at least touch on this. There's going to be queries


that are going to make sense in any language, right? Like how to tie your shoes or how to


bicycle kick. The language is going to change, the terminology is going to change, but the


query is going to be the same. So you can put those in one bucket. You can understand


those pretty easily. But then there are localized queries that are a little bit tougher. And


these are going to change depending on where you are. That's actually the champion of the


Conchacaf ‑‑ I don't know if you guys know this ‑‑ Mexican team. Yeah, nobody


even knows what that is, right? It's okay. Yeah. Anyhow, so these localized queries are


really important as well. And this is where you're going to have an advantage. If you're


actually using the localized queries correctly, you're going to own the long tail, and that's


where the bulk of the traffic is, actually. Now, I want to talk a little bit about how


we do keyword research for international companies, and we use this tool called the Alchemy API,


which is sick. There are other people doing things that are really revolutionary with


this. I'm not smart enough for that, but I'm going to show you how we use it. So basically


what you do is you drop a URL into the Alchemy API, and it extracts entities. This is actually


from a post that Rand did, the one about men's fashion, which I'm not paying attention to


at all. I couldn't do the cuffs. It was too hard. And what this does is it allows us to


see the entities that are in the content so that we know what we need to translate and


what needs to stay the same. And this is really, really important, because if you don't do


this, you could end up with your page having a phrase like Amazon Kindle Fire becoming


light a fire in the jungle. Nobody wants to see that. And that's actually a true story.


I've seen that in a while. Yeah. Bad, bad news.


Now, the other thing that we do is so you know that perfect client who when you're doing


a project, they bring you their entire Web site in an Excel spreadsheet with the keywords


mapped out to every page? Yeah, me neither. So what we do is we use the Alchemy API, we


drop the URLs in there, and it extracts all the keywords that they see. And it's a quick


and easy way for us to get started. So we can look at this and start localizing these


keywords. The other thing we can do is understand a little bit about the how they feel about


the sentiment, which is really, really neat. But it gives us a place to get started, which


is really important when you're thinking about keyword localization.


Eli Schwartz has also written extensively about this. I highly recommend you check out


his presentations. The other thing that we always do is we build style guides. And this


is really important for your content, because you're going to need to think about having


your branding be consistent across all your languages. And this is actually I mean, it


sounds hard. It's harder than it sounds. You need to think about the way that people are


being addressed. You need to think about your personal branding. And you need to actually


tell people what they're not allowed to talk about, because if you don't, someone will


write about that subject. And you won't know until it's already live on your blog and everyone's


pissed off at you. The other thing we do is we build translation


templates. This is just a simple one in Excel. We're actually we're giving this one away.


This is it's no big deal. It doesn't work for everybody. But we found that it's sometimes


harder to translate from English to developer than from English to Spanish. So this just


lays it out for them so that they know exactly where the sentence goes without actually knowing


the language, which is really, really important. So, okay, let's talk about actual translation


now. You have a few options. You can go with a machine translation, but don't. Don't do


that. You'll get deindexed. You can't use machine translation. So if you're going to


put up that Chrome extension of Google Translate, just know that that's going to get you in


trouble, even though Google built it. Another thing that we're seeing is that there


are companies that do, like, machine learning. So what they do is they take a machine translation.


They've got a big Web site, right? And what they do is they'll correct things on a sentence


level. And wherever that sentence exists somewhere else on the Web site, it gets corrected as


well. So it sort of tries to fool Google into thinking that it's original content without


it being original content. Don't do that either. Seriously, don't. It's really bad for your


users. You may fool Google, but your conversion rate is going to suck.


Human translation is a really good option. But if you're working with a translation agency,


make sure that they're being consistent about where the translators are from and that they


understand the entities and the personas that we were talking about earlier so that they


can actually translate with context. It's really, really important that the people


working on your project have context. So in a best-case scenario, a company is going


to do that. They're going to take the time to understand your product and understand


you and do things the right way. But in the worst-case scenario, they're just going to


have someone from Spain or an Italian living in Spain translating, and then they're also