going to get one row of data.


MozCon 2014 - 25 - Annie Cushing - Demystifying Data Visualization for Marketers

Going back to the Legos example, it's kind of like saying, all right, put all of the


plastic Lego bricks in this bucket.


Well, you're only going to have one bucket, because most of us aren't playing with crystal


Legos.


And that's kind of what we're trying to do here.


For most of us, this user-defined dimension is so archaic, they're going to be shown they're


going to show up as not set.


And you don't even care what that not set value is.


You can just completely ignore that and scoop up these metrics.


In fact, you can create a custom report, which I linked to a blog post in a video that will


teach you how to create custom reports in Google Analytics.


If that scares you, you can cherry pick the exact metrics that you want and pull them


in this way.


If for some reason when you apply the user-defined dimension, you have multiple rows, it's time


to update your dimension.


You really shouldn't be using the user-defined dimension.


So if you're using classic Google Analytics, you should really be using custom variables.


And if you're using universal, you should be using custom dimensions.


So if that happens to you and you don't have one row of data, there is another option,


and that is to use the year dimension.


So you have to create a custom report for this.


You're not going to find this in a standard report.


But custom reports, all marketers should be working with custom reports.


They're awesome.


And I really in my video I take you by the hand.


I'm like, oh, it's not scary.


You can do this.


I'm like a third base coach.


So this works as long as your date range doesn't straddle two years.


So if you're just doing like a monthly report and you want these overview numbers, this


is a good dimension to use.


Okay.


So now remember I said earlier that in charts, categories and data series are always used


together.


In this case, we don't have any categories because we only have one bucket.


We only have data series because we only have metrics.


So you can't chart this table.


I mean, chart this data, but you can put it in a table and you can trick it out like I


did here last month.


Those are just numbers that I brought in.


But I tricked it out with some spark lines and some other visualizations that you can


do very, very easily.


I have tons of blog posts on how to do that.


All right.


Moving on.


Let's say you have one dimension and one metric.


Let's say you just want to break down total revenue by medium or by country.


Just a really simple visualization.


You have several options for charts.


First is the pie chart.


I give you some tips and tricks with the pie chart.


It's personally not my favorite option.


But if you have a small number of categories, it's better than a poke in the eye with a


sharp stick.


Next we have the radar chart.


I linked to a really cool blog post where you can use this to create like a speedometer


chart, also called a gauge chart.


Pretty cool.


And then we have the column chart.


This is like the workhorse chart of Excel.


This is what I gravitate to the most.


And you have the horizontal bar chart, which is just the column chart flipped on its side.


This chart is really good if you have long axis labels.


Like let's say you're charting landing pages or campaigns with longer names.


This is a really good option.


But if you only have one data series like this, I highly recommend that you go with


a Spartan chart style.


There's no reason to keep all that junk that shows up in Excel, all of your custom I mean


all the default options, get rid of those.


The grid lines, all of that.


I linked to a video that I did to the exact minute mark in the video where I show you


how to create Spartan charts.


And you can just like bring the values right into the bars, fatten them up a little bit.


It looks really clean.


Another option that I very barely see with marketing data, but is great used as small


multiples and I include an example in the blog post.


This is called the radar chart.


It's actually a really cool option if used correctly.


But I will warn you, the default formatting is horrific.


And it's probably the reason more marketers don't use it, because it looks ugly as hell.


But I give you tips on how to clean it up and sexy them up.


Next up, this isn't a chart.


But you can use a heat map.


Last year at MozCon, Avinash, he had a heat map in his slide deck somewhere.


It was super sexy.


And so I did a blog post, a video tutorial on how to use a heat map.


So that's another option that you have.


So let's kind of look at let's take a deeper dive in here.


So if you have one dimension, one metric, this is what it's going to look like in a


table.


We just have medium and sessions.


Let's say we create a basic column chart.


This is what it's going to look like with a modicum of cleanup.


And if I right click and choose select data, here's what the select data source dialogue


is going to look like.


And here's how everything maps out.


You'll notice that medium is going to map out to your category access labels.


Excesses are going to populate to the data series, which is then going to populate to


your legend.


If you only have one data series, please, for the love of all things data, delete it.


You don't need a legend with only one data series.


Instead, just take that metric, whatever it is, sessions, and put it in your chart title


somewhere.


You don't need it in the legend.


And then your access labels are going to populate to the access, as you might imagine.


Okay.


Next up, let's say we have one dimension, multiple metrics that aren't time based.


So in this case, the first option you have here is the clustered column chart.


I use this a lot.


This is really good to show comparisons.


So let's say you want to show sessions versus revenue vis a vis.


This is a really good option.


Next up, we have the stacked column chart.


This is a better option if you want to see how each individual data series contributes


to the whole.


And I give a lot more detail on that in the blog post.


I use these a lot.


And then these are just their kissing cousins.


Same principles, longer labels go with these.


And then next up we have the 100% stacked column chart.


These are good if you want to convert your data into percentages and show how everything


adds up to 100%.


This would be good if you said, all right, I want to see what percentage of each of our


social sources are coming from desktop versus tablet versus mobile, something like that.


This is called segmentation in analytics geek speak.


And next up, same thing.


Just flipped on its axis.


And then we have the radar chart again with just two data series.


And this is one of my favorite charts.


I use them a lot.


I link to a blog post.


It's a combination chart.


This is a really good option if you're charting two things that are inherently very different.


So sessions versus bounce rate, revenue versus conversion rate, something like that.


I really only use it if the second data series is a percentage.


I have seen people use two whole values.


I personally don't recommend it because it gets really dicey to try to interpret.


And now let's look under the hood with these.


It's going to be just as you just as we saw before.


You have the table here.


Now we have a clustered column chart.


And here's the select data source dialogue.


And these populate exactly as we saw before.


The only difference is that now we have two metrics which become two data series which


become two items in your legend.


The one thing I will say about the legend is don't be afraid to move that around.


That's not sacrosanct.


In fact, the positioning that Excel uses for the legend is really subpar.


But if you click on the legend and just choose control one or command one if you're on a


Mac, you have the option to pop it to the top, bring it down low, whatever you want.


But even then, you can just click it, drag it exactly where you want it.


You can bring it inside the chart as long as it doesn't cover up any of your columns


or bars.


And also if you click on it, you have a bounding box.


If it's horizontal and you drag that bounding box in, it's going to stack your legend.


And if it's stacked and you drag it out, it's going to make it horizontal.


So you actually have quite a few options with that.


And I also recommend bumping up the text size.


And then just as we saw before.


Okay.


Next up, let's say you have one dimension, multiple metrics except the dimensions now


are time based.


So they might be day, month, year, something like that.


First up we have the line chart.


Now, notice I did not include the line chart in the non-time based dimensions.


The reason for that is that a line chart communicates continuity.


So it makes sense to use it for any dimension that's time based.


But it doesn't make sense if your dimensions aren't time based.


There can be exceptions, but they're very, very rare.


So for the most part, just think, you know, do I really want these things to connect?


There is you can hack it.


Like I have used the line chart with markers, deleted the line and used that for ranking


charts.


I believe Richard Baxter, I'm going back a few years, but I believe he has a blog post


on how to do that with a pivot chart.


Next up we have the stacked area chart.


Now, this is really good if you want a stacked option.


One thing I will say here is I don't recommend using the stacked line chart ever.


The reason is that they're not intuitive to interpret.


Just because the lines don't intersect like my lines do in this line chart does not mean


that people are going to think that these are contributions to a whole.


So I just don't recommend using them.


Conversely, I don't recommend using the regular standard area chart.


The reason for that is the individual data series end up covering each other, obfuscating


your data.


I have seen people kind of get around that by dialing up the transparency, but when you


dial up the transparency, let's say you have a red data series and a blue data series,


you dial up the transparency, when they overlap, now you have a purple data series.


Who wants purple data?


I don't know.


If it's your branding, yeah, that's fine.


That's totally cool.


It's not cool.


No, I'm just kidding.


But you don't want to make people stop and think, wait, what is this purple data series?


And I saw an example once where the client had a blue data series, a yellow data series,


and a green data series.


Guess what happened when they dialed up the transparency?


We had different versions of green because when the blue and yellow mixed, that made


green, which was a different green from the other.


So just don't try this at home, kids.


Next up, we have just as we saw before, the clustered column chart.


One little difference with this is this is really, really good for showing like year


over year percent delta.


So one way that I use this quite a bit with a time dimension is I'll have months across


the horizontal category access labels, so January, February, March, and then one column


will signify, let's say, 2014, and the other data series will signify 2013, and it's a


really good way to visually see year over year percent delta.


You can even add in another column that calculates your percent delta, turn that into a line


chart, pop that on a secondary dimension, and then people can easily see, oh, wow, we


had a 58 percent increase year over year for whatever this traffic or revenue is.


So you can experiment with that.


I've even on occasion put an area chart behind those, and that looks pretty sexy.


And then just as we saw before, you have the stacked column and the 100 percent stacked


column.


Now, notice I don't have any bar charts.


The reason for that is I personally don't and I do have other analysts who have also


said the same thing.


I don't recommend using horizontal bar charts when working with any kind of dimension that's


time based because people aren't used to looking up to down when they're progressing through


time.


We're really used to looking left to right.


So I don't recommend using bar charts.


Next up, let's say you have two dimensions and one metric.


So this is where things start to get a little complicated.


And I just want to challenge you to kind of lean in because if you get this, you will


be able to overcome what I've found is the main source of intimidation for marketers.


So let's say we have two dimensions and one metric.


First off, if you're going to chart two dimensions, you only get one metric.


So choose wisely.


So if we have a dimension for a device category, that's what we're seeing with desktop, mobile


and tablet, which is, by the way, one of my absolute favorite dimensions.


I was so happy that Justin Cutroni pimped it yesterday.


And then let's say the user type dimension, which they still need to update to user and


not visitor.


And I just chose these because they both have such limited options, so it made kind of a


clean table.


And let's say these are sessions.


If we create a chart from this, there's no problem.


Here we have a clustered column chart.


And remember I said earlier that sometimes you will have a dimension show up in your


legend.


Here is that example.


You'll see user type, that's a dimension.


That's not a value.


That's not a typical data series where we have sessions versus revenue or whatever.


And then just as we saw before, we have the select data source dialogue with the data


series populating to the legend, which is ultimately a dimension from Google Analytics.


And then you have all the chart options we've seen before with, that we saw with one dimension


multiple metrics.


There's just one problem.


This data here that I showed you, this is total fantasy data.


No marketing tool spits out data exports that look like this.


There is actually one, it's my favorite API tool, Analytics Canvas, and you can tweak


it and make it spit out data in this format.


But this is called report format.


And it works beautifully for charting.


But this is how marketing data actually shows up in exports.


And this is called tabular format.


It's very similar to how databases are structured.


You'll see each row is called a record.


It contains everything that you need to know about that particular data point.


And then you have field and then you have a field name.


Very much like databases.


But if you try to choose two of those dimensions and one metric, let's just say you click and


drag over them and you try to create a chart, Excel is going to stroke out on you.


And I won't ask for a show of hands of how many of you have ever gone to produce a chart


that looks like this, because there is no data hall of shame here.


I have done it multiple times.


And the reason for that is that Excel can't chart out two dimensions and one metric if


they're in that tabular format.


And it's not just dimensions and metrics from Google Analytics.


It's if you have two columns or two rows.


I'm going to stick with columns, because that's how most marketing exports come out.


If you have two columns that have text and one column that has values and you try to


create a chart from it, this is what it's going to look like.


And the reason for that is, like I said, Excel requires your data to be in this format, this


report format where we have one dimension across the top, one dimension along the rows


and one metric with the data.


And there is only one way to get your data into this format.


I know, corny as hell.


But I know for some of you, you see pivot table and you're like, oh, man, we were having


such a good time.


Why did you bring those up?


I know that they're scary and intimidating if you haven't worked with them.


But not if you think about what pivot means.


So let's just explore that word.


So all pivot means is that you're facing one direction and then you just turn another direction.


You turn on an axis.


That's all that a pivot table is doing, is taking one of your columns of data that you


tell it and you say, okay, go ahead, dedupe this column of data of dimensions and put


it across the top.


And when you do that, your data is going to show up in this report format.


And then at this point, you can click any cell inside here and create any chart you


want.


If you're on a PC, you'll be able to create pivot charts.


If you're on a Mac, the redheaded stepchild, a Microsoft, you can't create a pivot chart


because they're not supported in Mac.


But you can create any static chart from a pivot table.


So there you go.


These are the techniques that you can take and apply as a framework so that when you


go into Google Analytics or any other marketing tool, instead of waiting until you bring the


data into Excel and tooling around with it, hopefully you can approach data visualization


a little more strategically and know what you're going to do to visualize that data


before you even crack open Excel.


If you want to check out the blog post, you can go to bit.ly.demistifydata.


It's a thick and chewy cookie, tons and tons of resources.


And I also break it down slide by slide a full narrative.


So thank you.


Thank you.


So this is definitely something where you want to download the deck.


You want to read the blog post and all the information is there, right?


Exactly.


You started this when you started learning this stuff, you knew nothing.


Tell us about that process.


Yeah, so I took Avinash Kaushik's web analytics certification course.


And in the end, and this was like maybe six years ago, and when you're doing your dissertation,


he and the other guy, John Marshall, they're like two velociraptors coming at you from


both sides with like asking you questions and challenging you and stuff.


And Avinash said three words.


I didn't hear anything else he said after that.


He just said, if you pass.


And the rest of it was like, wha wha wha wha wha wha wha wha.


Because I spent 3500 bucks.


I was tweeting about this.


I couldn't fail publicly just because I didn't know how to visualize data.


And so I spent about a week feeling sorry for myself, honest God to this day.


They sent us an email with a breakdown of like feedback and stuff.


I never I just looked at the email to look for a pass or fail.


I literally did a find.


And then I just hit archive.


I to this day have yet to open up that Word doc and read their feedback.


But in the process when I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I was like, okay, I'm going


to learn data visualization and I'm never going to let Excel embarrass me like this


again.


I bought Excel books, hand over fist.


My daughter Tori is in the audience.


She can tell you.


I stopped running and started going to a gym so that I could read Excel books while I was


working out.


People didn't know what to make of me.


Then I started watching videos and stuff.


And then I thought, okay, how can I translate this for marketers?


So it was definitely birthed out of failure.


Yeah.


Now the stuff you showed today, it's pretty basic stuff.


I've seen charts and visualization from you that are way far advanced.


Now, for people interested in like you go to companies or you do some training, right?


Tell us a little bit about what your job is.


What's your day job?


Okay.


Yeah, so I do onsite training for companies if they want to learn more about Google Analytics,


data visualization.


I was also doing a three-day dashboard seminar where I teach marketers how to bring data


in from Google Analytics, use the Google Analytics API and build out fully dynamic interactive


dashboards which I'm actually in the process of bringing online.


So I'm doing everything in my power to try to like get this information out to marketers


so that they won't be disappointed or so intimidated and stuff.


So that's the deep end of the pool.


Well, Annie, thank you for sharing it with us today.


We hope you come back.


Thank you.


Refurbishing Top Content - Whiteboard Friday

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


I'm Brittany Muller, Moz's SEO and content architect,


and I'm so excited to talk to you today about refurbishing your top content.


Any of you watching likely have top content either on your site or a client's site


that does really, really well, whether that's getting the most traffic


or converting the most users, it does really well.


The problem is that we let it just sit there,


and we're not getting the amplification that we could out of that content.


So I'm going to talk to you today about how to sort of funnel in more qualified leads.


So how do we do that?


Step one is to identify your site's top traffic pages.


Analytics is so great for this.


And to further evaluate which of those pages are converting at the highest,


have the most engagement, and are bringing in most of your traffic.


And it's super important to keep in mind that there's other forms of content.


It's not always necessarily just a page on your website.


It could be a video somewhere, it could be a really great podcast,


it could even be a printout, and I've run into this a few times


where the information isn't currently digital,


but they use it in a clinic or in an office setting


that could do really great things for the website.


So keep that in mind.


For the sake of our example, I'm going with a long-form content


of how to choose the right college.


Maybe this brings in lots of applicants for a particular school or university.


And so what could they better be doing with this piece of content?


So that brings us to step two, to simplify and repurpose.


We all want to consume information differently.


There's different use cases, you name it.


So to take a long-form piece of content and to put it together in a PowerPoint,


really simplify it and break it up into slides.


From there, you can use those slides or take new raw footage


to make a really, really powerful video on how to choose the right college.


If you have these two steps done, you're kind of set up for success for images.


You could either take images from your PowerPoint or your video


and have really great informational text below it.


Lastly, audio.


How easy would it be to take this long-form piece


and to make it into an audio option or a podcast even,


allowing your visitors maybe another option when they get to this page?


So it's fun to experiment with that as well.


You can interweave some of these other forms of content back into the original piece,


and now you're learning a lot more about your audience


and a lot more about how they want to consume your content.


Step three is to publish on popular platforms.


I can already feel people getting really squeamish about this,


but you shouldn't.


And let me say there's two big reasons why you should be taking advantage of this.


One, these are all really, really powerful sites, right?


They rank really well.


And two, they have a huge audience,


and their audiences are actively seeking information that you're providing on your site.


So if you're not going to be providing expertise and information on these sites,


someone will, right?


So you want to take advantage of that, and you want to take the opportunity.


So you could take your PowerPoint and upload it to SlideShare.


SlideShare ranks so, so well.


You could take your video and upload it to YouTube


with the caveat of putting it on Vimeo or Wistia first.


You want to make sure that you are self-hosting for up to three months,


and then you can transfer your video to YouTube.


That way you're getting the authority of that video,


and YouTube.com isn't ranking first for it.


Instagram is great for those images, but again, I would always put the text below it


and keep your images really clean and not have too much text on them,


and then obviously hashtag appropriately.


And then Pinterest, Quora, people are actively asking questions


that you have all the answers to.


So to be the expertise in the field and to take advantage of people asking,


how do I choose the right college?


Reddit and LinkedIn are other options to further amplify.


So step four is to measure the referral metrics.


Measure the impact of republishing on these sites.


And there's a couple ways to do this.


These are some of my favorite engagement metrics.


So you have number of viewed pages, you have time on site,


bounce rate is always good to look at, and obviously conversions.


So this really starts to paint a picture of where are you seeing the qualified leads,


where is your qualified traffic coming from,


and then the next time you go to a new content strategy,


maybe you leave out these three because you didn't get much traffic from them,


but maybe you saw a bunch of qualified leads from SlideShare.


So that brings you to pivot, like the Friends episode.


It is really stupid.


But it allows you to pivot, right?


So now we have a strategy moving forward.


We know what platforms work best for your website or your business,


and you're kind of setting yourself up for success down the road.


I would love, love, love to hear if you have experimented with these strategies,


what has worked for you, what hasn't.


Also feel free to ask me any questions down below.


Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Whiteboard Friday,


and I will see you all again soon.


#WhiteboardFriday: 7 SEO Processes That Get Easier With Page Rank Domain Authority

Howdy, mods fans.


Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I'm Cyrus Shepard.


Quick whiteboard this week.


I want to talk about links.


We know in SEO we love links.


Everybody wants links, but why?


What do links do for you?


And they do a surprising amount for you that we sometimes don't realize.


So the title of today's whiteboard, seven SEO processes that get easier with increased


page rank and domain authority.


So why do we choose page rank and domain authority?


Well, these are both algorithms that measure link power, both the number of links and the


quantity of links.


Page rank being Google's algorithm to rank web pages based on popularity and importance.


Domain authority, which Google doesn't use, just to be clear.


Domain authority being a Moz algorithm that measures both link quantity and quality.


And for our purposes, we can basically use them in the same conversation.


We're talking about the power of your links.


So the first thing that everybody knows about, links help you rank.


They help you rank in many, many ways.


You can get higher rankings.


You can attack more keywords.


But most importantly, you can attack more competitive keywords.


A good thing I like to do is when I'm trying to see if I can rank for a keyword, simply


Google it, check the page authority, which is a very similar metric of all the top ranking


pages.


See what your page authority is for your top ranking keywords.


And you can kind of have a pretty good idea if you have an ability to rank for that keyword.


But then we get into the nitty gritty, the other benefits of having that link equity.


One of the most important being crawl budget.


When you have more link equity, Google will crawl more of your pages.


If you only have a handful of links and a million pages on your website, it's going


to be very difficult to get Google to crawl and index all those million pages.


If you're eBay or Amazon or Google or a site with like 100 domain authority, yes, you might


be able to attract Google to crawl those million pages.


And Google will also crawl them faster.


You may get Google to crawl your pages with low domain authority, but it's going to take


a while for Google to visit those again.


So then we get into the idea of indexation speed.


With a higher domain authority, Google is going to crawl and index your content typically


much faster than they would without.


So if you have a page that you've updated recently, you're going to see Google update


it quicker the more authority that page has.


And this also, you're going to see this in the SERPs if you have outdated title tags


or meta descriptions.


You can ask Google to crawl it via the submit URL tool.


But generally, the more authority a page has, the more incoming link power, you're going


to see those things updated so much quicker than you would with low link equity.


This is my favorite one.


With increased link equity, your own links become more powerful.


And this gives you incredible ranking power because your internal links that you're linking


to yourself become more powerful with that link equity.


So it makes everything easier to rank.


The best link building you can do when you have high authority is linking to yourself


and it's so easy.


But also the links that you link out to other people also become more valuable, which makes


you a more attractive target.


Insulation from bad links.


My friend Everett Sizemore came up with that word, insulation.


With better link equity, you're somewhat protected from a handful of bad links.


Now if you have low link equity and you get a bunch of spam links to your site, your risk


of penalization or being impacted by negative SEO increases pretty high.


But if you have a million links, a handful of bad links just aren't going to hurt you.


And a good way to think about this is ratios.


Because of course, anybody can get penalized.


Anybody can suffer the consequences of bad links.


But if those bad links only make up a tiny portion, meaning a small ratio, then you're


somewhat insulated by the impact of those bad links.


Over optimization.


Now, Google says they don't have an over optimization penalty, but anecdotally many


SEOs understand that if you're a small site, you're just starting out, it's very easy to


over optimize for keywords with exact back anchor text and not rank.


The key usually in SEO is you want a lot of variety.


With a lot of links, that variety is much easier to get and you have much less risk


of over optimization.


Linking internally with exact match anchor text, you can get away with a lot more with


higher domain authority than you can with less domain authority.


And that's kind of the key to this whole thing.


With higher domain authority, you just get away with a lot more.


It's the idea of the rich getting richer.


Fran Fishkin, our friend, likes to talk about the flywheel effect.


When you have more links, everything gets easier.


Because when you start ranking and people start seeing you in the SERPs, you're going


to get more links from that content and more links are going to equal more ranking and


the wheel is just going to keep turning and turning.


More people want to link to you and amplify you and work with you.


You're also going to get a lot more spam requests and link requests and things like that, so


it isn't fun.


But generally, the more domain authority you have, the more page rank you have, the easier


life is going to get.


And you just want to start building it up day after day after day.


So like I said, quick and easy Whiteboard Friday this week.


Hope you enjoyed it.


We'll talk to you next time.


The Big One: Relaunching Your Website Presented by Lauren Vaccarello

Hi, everybody.


Thank you for having me here.


As Rob said, my name is Lauren Bacarello.


I'm the VP of marketing at Box.


This should be a really fun topic to talk about.


It's what we're calling the big one.


We're launching your website.


So to give you a little bit of background, let you know what we're going to talk about


for the next 25, 30 minutes.


I'm going to run through some background information, give you some history on what the Box.com


website was.


We're going to go through 11 tips for launching or relaunching your global website.


I'm going to talk a little bit about how it all worked out, and I'm going to try to leave


about five minutes so everyone here can really ask me anything.


The things I really want everyone in this room to take away from this session are nobody's


perfect.


And one of the things that you'll always look at, and as a marketer, we tend to look around


and say, this company does such amazing marketing.


This company's website is perfect.


And we tend to hold people and companies on pedestals.


And what I really want everyone to take away is none of us are perfect.


You never have enough resources.


No website launch or marketing program are ever as flawless or impeccable as people think.


So I really want this to be the time to sort of share our highlights and share what went


really well and also give you some insights into what didn't go quite so well even on


a website launch to the scale of a multibillion dollar company.


So some background information.


So consider this part of the presentation story time.


So this really is the dirty laundry that we walked into that you probably won't have a


lot of people share.


So I've been at Box for about a year.


And I get into the company.


And you see a website that looks pretty much like this.


It's not the prettiest website.


The design's a little old.


The copy isn't great.


Box is a multi-product company.


You really can't tell.


So this is what I thought I walked into.


And then a few months into being at the company, getting up and running, they say, hey, we


think we want to relaunch the website.


I take on the website as part of my job.


And then I start to dig a little bit deeper.


And what I find out is the website not actually just some superficial changes.


It turns out that when we had the website, we had no people with web experience in the


marketing team.


We had no one on SEO.


We had no one doing web strategy.


We had no web producers.


We had no web designers.


We had two designers on the product org that we could borrow that would actually help design


the website.


We also had the website was built on Drupal 7.


The engineers working on the website did not know how to use Drupal 7 and were new to the


platform.


In addition to all of that, turns out the website was built on Drupal 7.


The entire website was hard coded into blank text box by an agency that outsourced to another


agency.


So even though this is what my website looks like, it's basically 1999 and it would have


been better if it was built in Dreamweaver.


So we said, all right, we've got to relaunch the website, so what do we do?


So what did we actually tackle when we relaunched the website?


Completely new site architecture.


We ripped apart the entire information architecture and built the whole thing from the ground


up.


We're a multi-product company.


We are an enterprise company.


You couldn't tell that from our website, so we had to tackle that.


We also know the rev cycle of Drupal, they're going to reiterate and release a new version


every 12 to 24 months.


We don't have that much more time left on Drupal 7, so let's migrate to Drupal 8.


The copy on the website, not super good.


Let's rewrite all of the copy on 120 page website.


The design, not super hot either.


Let's redo all of the design for the website.


The messaging, doesn't quite make sense anymore.


Let's redo the messaging for the website.


Also when I say the box.com website, there's actually seven existing foreign language sites


that all need to be included because you don't want a Frankenstein website with old site


and new site.


And then while we're at it, we also want to test going into three new markets.


So let's throw on three new additional foreign language sites.


So when I say we relaunched a corporate website, this is actually what we did.


Super fun, right?


This is absolutely the way you should launch a website.


I loved it.


So what I'm going to do now, now that you have a little bit of background, we're all


on the same page of what I'm talking about when I'm saying we relaunched the website.


Let's talk about the 11 things that you actually need to know.


Whether you're doing a simple website relaunch or you're taking on a big hairy challenge,


you're relaunching an e-commerce website, here's some basics that we learned along the


way and what will make your life a lot easier.


The first thing you need to know when relaunching a website of any scale is know why you're


doing this.


If you were doing this because of vanity, because you don't think the site's good enough,


totally fine.


Just know that's the reason up front.


For us, why we relaunched the website had a few key reasons.


First, if we wanted to update a logo on the website, Box has 66,000 customers.


We want to put new logos.


We want to tell people who our customers are.


To update a logo on the website took two weeks.


You'd have to file a JIRA ticket, have to get someone in engineering to stop working


on product to jump in and update the logo on the website.


If you want to scale a business, this is not possible.


The website is the face of the company.


It also is responsible for millions of dollars of revenue for the business.


We need this to be better.


We need this to be a bigger revenue contribution.


Another big reason, also the whole marketing department learned how to do marketing away


from the website and around the website versus using the website.


We said we need to make it easy for our marketing department to update content.


We need to have a bigger revenue contribution and a better experience for visitors to the


website.


So great.


We know why we're going to launch the website.


Next thing, super simple, you really need to have clear goals, metrics and timing when


you're taking on a big project.


Why are you doing this?


How are you going to know if this is successful?


So for us, we thought about timing.


We're going to kick off this project in January, and we want new front end, new back end, new


design, new messaging.


We don't really have a team.


We don't have a copywriter.


By the way, we want this done in three months.


I was able to negotiate us a five month window, and we took on this task that was this impossible


task.


How are you really going to rebuild basically 11 sites, front end, back end, design content


in five months and increase results for the website?


So got everyone together and really approached this as this is an impossible task, but we


are going to make this work.


And one of the things we're going to do, really clearly defined and shared goals.


The purpose of relaunching a website is not to relaunch a website.


The purpose of relaunching a website is really about what are the end results, what are the


contributions.


For us, we thought about defined goals as increasing pipeline and revenue contribution


by 30% within six months.


Not only did we have to improve initial performance as defined by pipeline and revenue, but make


sure we're set up for long-term improvements of the site.


We also wanted a 10 percentage point reduction in bounce rate.


Our bounce rate was too high.


So what are we going to do to get people on the site more engaged?


And finally, this idea of increasing user engagement.


The reason there's not a hard metric on this one, we're actually looking at several different


things.


We're looking at time on site pages viewed.


Also key pages viewed on the website.


Prior to launch, we didn't have a single piece of video content on the website.


The old site architecture wouldn't let you embed video.


We actually wanted to put video, get people to watch.


We've got these incredible customer stories and customer usage.


How do I make sure people are using this?


Because we also have a big sales team.


So how do we make sure the website becomes something that the sales organization can


use?


To actually do this, this takes a ton of work and a pretty big team.


So we ended up putting a group of people together to work on this.


We had engineering.


We got a couple of designers from the product team.


We finally hired a copywriter.


The project kicked off on January 1st.


Our copywriter who wrote every single piece of copy on the page started on January 3rd.


She had seven days to learn about our product, our benefits, our features to be able to articulate


this to the entire world.


We also knew we didn't have the right engineering resources and enough engineering resources.


So we found an outsourced Drupal development firm who put three web developers, had them


sit in our office and work to build with us.


Because if you're going to move fast, you need to make sure you're resourced properly.


We didn't have a project manager, so we borrowed one from the sales organization.


Great project manager on the sales team jumped over into marketing and said, how can we help


do this?


How can we have a big impact on the business?


So we got this really disparate group of people together who frankly never worked together


before.


But how are we going to do this in a way that makes it work?


You have to make sure everyone in the team is emotionally bought in.


All of these people were told you have to work on relaunching a website.


They're doing this because their manager told them to do this, which would be fine if we


were on any sort of reasonable timing.


If you want people to move faster than they thought possible, to really move mountains,


they have to be emotionally bought in.


And that's why I like to call this the power of why.


What they were doing was relaunching the website.


Why they were doing this is because the website is the face of any business.


The most important thing every company has is going to be their website.


Why they are doing this is this is going to be growth for the business.


This is how we accelerate growth rate.


This is how share price goes up.


This is the most meaningful thing that they can do.


So we explain to everybody not only why are we doing this, what are the goals, what are


the revenue contributions, and how does everyone's work do that?


If we have somebody working on a design for the website, we wanted to make sure he didn't


see this as I'm just making designs, I'm just trying to make a pretty web page.


The reason he is doing this, the reason he was working on designs, was to get more people


engaged with the content, to get more people interested, to better explain our products


and services so more people will come back, more people will buy, and ultimately what


we are enabling our customers to do is to truly change their business, their industry,


and in some ways some of our customers are actually changing the world because of their


usage of our product.


And we wanted to make sure every single person working on the website knew this is why we


are doing this.


But it's not just about the people working on your team, it's really about the entire


company.


So we got the entire company behind the project.


Every single person in the company knew what we were doing, why we were doing it.


From our DevOps team to our product team, the rest of engineering, our HR and recruiting


teams knew what we were doing, why we were launching the website, and the impact that


this would have on them and the rest of the business.


Every single week we would send out an update to the leadership team of the company as well


as key stakeholders to say this is what's going on, are we on track, how are we doing,


and if we need help because every single website relaunch, every single project is going to


hit a roadblock that your team may not be able to solve on their own.


And by getting the whole company involved, any time we hit a problem, someone in a different


department was able to step up and remove a roadblock for us extremely quickly.


And what's important to realize is almost all of these things happened before the relaunch


even started.


Getting people on board, setting goals, setting metrics, knowing why you're doing this happens


before you even start designing, before you start writing code, before you start writing


copy.


And other things that have to happen before you even get started is this idea of prework.


If you want to move quickly, it's all that up-front work that's going to be the most


important, most impactful things you can do.


For us, it was how do we define the information architecture of the website?


We are ripping and replacing everything.


We can't do this on the fly.


What's the information architecture?


What does the sitemap really look like?


What are our wireframes?


How are we looking to build?


Who is supposed to come to the website?


Who are our buyer personas?


What's our overall content strategy?


What are the technical decisions we need to make?


What's our hosting platform?


Are we going to host internally or externally?


Are we going to use Drupal 7 or Drupal 8?


Figure out all of these decisions before you even start working, because I can tell you


right now there's nothing worse than working on content and building it out and then finding


out you're writing for the wrong buyer or you're killing half of the pages you thought


you were building.


So this up-front work is going to save you a ton of time in the long term.


The most important thing that I can tell everybody, if you only remember one thing about what


you're going to do when you're doing a mass site relaunch, is to decouple frontend changes


from backend changes.


Let me tell you what I mean.


So your frontend, super easy.


If any of your stakeholders and executives, someone who doesn't work in marketing, thinks


about website changes, they think about what they can see.


They think about the words on the page, they think about the design.


And those are going to be all of your frontend changes.


But on the backend, you have hosting platforms and CMS systems for us because our product,


you log into our product through the website, there's the relationship between the product


and then also the website.


There's all of these things on the backend, all of these infrastructure decisions, load


balancing that have to get made.


Your CEO is never going to ask you about load balancing, they're going to ask you about


design.


So when you're working on a website relaunch, rip apart frontend changes from backend changes.


If you do frontend and backend at the same time, it will be the most painful experience


you're ever going to have.


The reason I say that is because we did it all at once.


And I wouldn't ever recommend doing frontend and backend at the same time.


The things that you'll start to see is once you redo all of your backend, the reason you


want to break it apart, so you can update design, you can update content management,


and you can do all this with the same look and feel, the same words, and you can start


to figure out the things you don't know.


When you do it at the same time, you're going to be doing a lot of work in parallel and


it may end up causing a lot of duplicate work.


One of the biggest lessons learned that we had was how do you co-locate different teams?


It will be rare that every single person working on a website will actually work on the exact


same team.


For us to give you an example, our engineers sat on the third floor.


Our designers sat on the other side of the third floor.


Our copywriters sat on the sixth floor.


Our product marketers sat on another corner of the sixth floor.


Our project manager for the website sat in sales on the fifth floor.


So we are literally as far apart as a global web team as we can be and still be in the


same office.


Some of the issues with that is we're meeting once a week to check in.


So everything moves in this very, very waterfall process.


By putting people in the same room with shared goals, they're going to start to be able to


move a lot faster and get a lot more done.


And there's a ton of focus right now on what people can do to having a disparate workforce


or having people and remote workers and people working all over the world.


If you have a really complicated project with a lot of different people, a lot of different


teams, a lot of different stakeholders, it is 99% of the time going to be easier if you


can physically put people together so when they have a question, they can just lean over


and ask somebody.


Slack helps a lot, but there's a lot to be said for colocation.


Start thinking about what you're doing when you're rolling out pages and how you can test


a few pages and iterate.


It's going to be extremely tempting to say we're going to roll out everything really,


really quickly.


We know copy, we know design, we know everything that we're going to do, and we are going to


mass produce pages.


Think about what you can do to actually build a couple of pages, test out the build process,


test out what copy and design and build looks like together and start to iterate.


What you shouldn't do is a mass page build before you work through any bugs.


So let me tell you a little bit about obviously what we did and a lot of these lessons learned


are through doing it the way you shouldn't.


As we started to build the website, because we were building everything in parallel, we


had engineering working on replatforming and rearchitecting and everything in the background.


Then we also had to hit this incredibly aggressive deadline and 120 pages of content that is


going to have to get rolled out across 11 sites and only nine languages across the 11


sites, including some languages that we've never used before.


We had to do a lot in parallel.


So we had the engineers sitting over here working on infrastructure, working on replatforming,


working on building templates and modules.


We had the design team sitting over here saying, how do I build a really, really fast modular


system?


How do I build design principles?


What are all the modules that I need to build?


And then we had the copywriter sitting over here saying, I'm going to use module 7, 5,


and 12 on this page.


I can fit this much copy.


I'm going to start writing out all of the copy.


And here's an outline and here's the messaging that I need that's in an Excel sheet.


And I'm going to take that and translate it to a box note and start writing through all


of these different pieces of content.


So what can go wrong?


We have design sitting over here building out designs.


We have copywriters, copywriter, writing 120 pages of copy with vague character requirements


that are going to sit in the designs that are over here.


And then we have our engineering team building everything based on some basic principles.


We got copy approved.


We got design approved.


We got engineering approved.


But what we ended up getting on the initial build, when we go to sit down and we had five


of us sitting together, and we're going to create 120 web pages in an eight-hour marketing


hackathon and we are going to sit and build everything out in mass.


It's going to be easy.


We've got the team.


We had a bunch of bourbon.


It'll be fantastic.


I had a lot of bourbon.


It was a really fun night.


So this is what we ended up getting.


Has anyone here ever been on a safari?


This is my random safari story for anyone here.


You guys will understand what this means.


So when you go on safari, a lot of it's like driving around looking for animals, and the


drivers are very, very funny.


And the running joke when you're on a safari is every time you see this animal, which is


a wildebeest, they say, hey, guys, it's a wildebeest.


This is what design by committee looks like.


And then everyone laughs.


And we're like, well, what do you mean?


It's like, well, think about it.


A bunch of people got together and they said, I want this animal that's really fast, so


I'm going to give it legs like a horse.


And I want it to be able to avoid predators who would need some sort of camouflage.


Zebras have that, so we're going to give it stripes like a zebra.


And it needs to be mean and angry, and it's going to have to have big horns.


So we're going to give it horns, and we're going to make it look like a ram.


And then you put it all together, and you get the ugliest animal in the safari or in


the bush, which was the wildebeest.


Every single piece in isolation makes perfect sense.


You put it together, and you get the ugliest animal in Africa that becomes the running


joke on every trip.


So this is what we ended up getting with our first launch.


And we had five of us sit and build 120 web pages in this eight-hour hackathon.


We were so proud of ourselves.


We put it all together and went, shit.


This looks terrible.


And we talked to – actually, hopefully she'll never see this.


The product marketer who spent so much time on this came back and said, but how are we


going to get copy reapproved?


All of this got approved.


This is what we have to do.


We're like, I'm never going to let this website see the light of day.


This is the worst-looking thing I've ever seen.


So what did we do?


This is actually when we took the different team and said there is no more silo.


We are locking everyone in a room for the next 30 days, and we are turning this whole


website around.


So we ended up rebuilding the same pages all over and went through piece by piece and said,


what matters?


How are we going to do this?


And there is no more design does this and copy does this.


You're going to sit next to each other and rebuild and update every single page on this


website until it's something we are happy with.


And after a lot of bourbon and me making a lot of people very unhappy by doing that,


we finally got a website we were happy with.


So great, we have this website we're happy with.


Let's go do this.


Let's just flip this on.


Awesome, we're done.


We're not going to do this because we have to go back to the original goals of the website.


What are we going to do to increase revenue from this website?


The success metric is not done and will never be done.


So we're going to torture the dozen people and not let them out of the room until we're


done.


So we have a very slow methodical rollout.


For the most part when you roll out websites, it's always been let's do a 50-50 split test.


I don't think that's enough anymore.


And honestly, the stakes are way too high.


This is a massive corporate website.


If I mess this up, this is a material revenue impact on the business and I like my job.


So we did a one 10-25-50.


The first three days we rolled everything out at 1%.


Whole purpose is can we check for bugs?


Did we mess up a lead issue?


Is a page not working?


Are we throwing up a 404?


We QA'd everything but you don't know what you don't know.


So for the first three days we just bug checked and the best way to bug check is with real


traffic.


Things looked good.


We made a couple of changes.


Then we rolled it out to 10%.


The reason we did 10% was to look for directional information.


Does anything start to look weird?


It's not going to be statistically significant but it's going to let you see hot spots.


And for us, it let us see a couple of hot spots of our pricing page doesn't look right


directionally.


Let's pull up the old page and the new page.


Pull out the data and start to do more qualitative comparison.


Let's get this in front of a few customers and figure out why we think the performance


is starting to look directionally off and let's course correct really quickly.


Then we rolled it out to 25% of our traffic.


This is really for how do we get more data, how do I identify more hot spots and how do


I adapt quickly, make any changes before I do a real split test at 50%.


And what was super weird at 25% is all of a sudden our bounce rate was like 80% and


the entire team was crushed because we spent four months killing ourselves to build the


worst website in the world.


We have an 80% bounce rate.


What the hell is wrong with us?


And I have to be the bearer of bad news and tell everyone that, you know, what did we


do?


And they're sitting there going, this doesn't make any sense.


We shouldn't be at an 80% bounce rate.


This doesn't make any sense.


Make sure you're looking at the right data set.


That's super helpful because when things logically don't make any sense, it probably is because


it doesn't make any sense.


If you're working for a SaaS company, you log into your product from your website, at


least we log into our product from our website.


So when we pull data, we have to pull out any product logins because that's not really


a bounce that someone using our product.


And our analytics team is phenomenal.


And for our core data, we did that and we forgot to pull out customer logins.


So turns out we didn't build the worst website in the world.


Turns out performance was actually better.


The positive of looking at the wrong data set was a couple of things that would have


taken a little longer to fix, the sense of urgency to fix the home page and get a home


page that was tighter, got amplified about 10X, so that got changed really well.


So after three days of everyone feeling miserable about themselves, we realized we were actually


good at our jobs, rolled it out to 50%, performance improved, initial signs for leads and pipeline


and revenue started to go up.


So that was awesome.


And then we said, okay, now we have to flip on international.


We tested the U.S. first.


Now we have to roll out international.


Don't underestimate the workload behind an international rollout.


We had a tool called Lingotek, which helps you automate a lot of it.


The QA process across nine foreign languages and the actual physical rollout of nine foreign


languages is going to be ten times as much work than you could possibly imagine.


Don't forget that piece.


We did to a degree.


We also thought we could gradually roll out international.


Even if your external hosting company tells you you can have part of the site on Drupal


7 and part of the site on Drupal 8, when it comes to actually rolling it out, not true.


Everything has to be on the same version.


So we sped up international rollout and got that done in a week instead of six weeks,


which was super fun for everybody.


My team works a lot.


They took vacation after.


Really the last thing I could tell everybody is the launch of a new website.


Once your website's live, think of it as day one.


Having a new website is amazing.


You've got good performance.


We had a bunch of we actually drank a bunch of bourbon.


We were very excited to launch the new website.


You can tell what I do with my time at work a lot.


This is the first day.


The launch of the website was literally the first day of having a website.


Now it is what is our constant plan to test to improve to make this better every single


day?


And there's going to be great content coming up in the next two days about ways to continuously


improve the website.


But this is probably my biggest takeaway.


So super, super quick run-throughs of everything.


Just know why you're relaunching a website.


Make sure you get buy-in from the team, from the company.


It will make getting through hurdles and asking people to do more than they ever thought they


could a hell of a lot easier.


Decouple your front end from your back end.


Really, I know everyone's going to force you to do it all at once.


It will be the worst experience you can possibly have.


Just split it apart and say no.


Methodically roll out your website.


You don't know what you don't know until you roll it out in small batches.


And just keep making it better.


We have like 90 seconds for questions.


I'm going to stop talking.


Hopefully this was helpful for everybody.


And thank you.


My name is Lauren.


Literally 90 seconds.


That's great.


Okay.


One thing we had a few questions about was the decoupling the front end and the back


end.


How do you decide which of those to tackle first?


What's the plan for that?


Oh, great question.


So front end, back end.


Back end first.


The even if you know you're not going to keep your copy, you know you're not going to keep


your design, it is a lot easier to fix all of the back end with the same design, the


same copy.


People will say, but you're going to do throwaway work.


You have to build modules for things you're not going to use.


It will end up saving you a lot of time.


Because for us, we found things like padding and spacing issues that don't seem like that


big of a deal.


Across 120 pages, padding and spacing issues are going to be the biggest pain you could


possibly have to deal with, especially if you have people that you work for that care


a lot about Pixel Perfect.


So pull your back end first, clean up all of your back end.


It is not throwaway work.


And then build the front end on top of your back end will be a lot stronger.


When you talk about the testing and some of the page identification beforehand, tell me


about some of the process of user testing or the processes and the tools you ran through


to do that.


So we actually did a fair amount of user testing as well, especially when we initially launched


the will to be used on a website.


We looked at usertesting.com to do things at scale, to figure out what are the things


that looked a little off.


We also had an external user experience consultant come in and help us look at everything.


Even if you were great at user experience and this is what you do for a living, if you


were looking at the website nonstop for four months, you lose perspective.


So we brought in, so we used usertesting.com, we brought in an external consultant and we


also have a customer advisory board or a few different customer advisory boards.


So we called up some friendly customers, put the new website in front of them and then


asked for very, very honest feedback.


In terms of testing tools, fun story, over one weekend one of our engineers built an


A-B testing tool.


It was great.


So they wanted us to use that for the initial launch.


Could not do anything complicated.


We're on Optimizely now and absolutely love it.


You can do a lot more.


And coincidentally, a company who specializes in testing can build a tool a lot better than


an internal engineer in a weekend.


Someone asked a question about the timeline on those 1%, 5%, 10% tests.


So the 1% test ran for three days?


1% was three days.


10% was actually about three days for the initial direction.


It took us another two days to make some changes.


25% was about five business days and then 50% ran until statistical significance, which


for us was another five business days.


With the international and the U.S., you did international rollout first?


We did U.S. first and then all of the international.


The thing to keep in mind with our international rollout was UK was a full site, France was


a full site.


The other nine sites were maybe 30-page mini sites.


There's just no way you can keep up that scale of content.


So we had a large site for our biggest markets and the easiest ones and then mini sites.


What things were you looking for when you did the U.S. rollout?


Was there anything you were like, okay, we're going to check to see if this happens and


then we'll know what to do next when we go international?


Yes.


So we identified key pages.


So figure out what your most important pages are on the website and spend extra time to


understand what's happening.


With the new site navigation, we wanted to see where people were going, how people were


navigating the website.


We also sanity checked that with more qualitative, more user experience and more actual people


telling us what they were doing.


We looked at not just site bounce rate but overall bounce rate and engagement on key


pages.


What they were doing, what hot spots there were.


It made the rollout for international a lot easier with the exception of Japan because


Japanese is different, I think, for every single company and it was a totally different


business model.


So that was literally doing this all over.


Awesome.


Well, congratulations with the launch.


Let's give a big Moscon thank you to Lauren Vee.


MozCon 2014 - 21 - Will Reynolds - You Are so Much More than an SEO

You know, RCS, as I mentioned before, is kind of like a journey. It's not a destination.


So, you know, this concept that we're trying to get better, we're just starting it. So,


today I'm just going to continue on parts of those themes with how do we just get better.


So, you obviously know you're more than an SEO, but sometimes you have a hard time or


I see we have a hard time. So, a lot of what I'm going to be presenting are things that


we're struggling with. So, I'm going to show you things that show where I want to take


SEO and where I want SEO to be, not necessarily that we're doing everything that I'm going


to show you, but it's my longer-term vision. So, let's rock because I've got a lot of slides.


So, SEO sucks. And it's funny, this like this analogy kind of came together, the words kind


of came together and I went, well, SEO should be about search user experience. Like, how


often do we talk about the experience of the person after they click on your top ranking?


Never. Fuck them, we got the ranking. Think about it. When's the last time you cared about


that one person that clicked on that page you built and to make sure that they had a


pleasurable experience throughout the whole process? Right. Someone on your site is disappointed


by your site today or yesterday. How many of you know that? How many of you spent some


time yesterday finding the one person that your company failed from search? No freaking


hands. How many of you know that Matt Cutts is on some kind of vacation? Yeah. And who


gives you checks? Does Matt Cutts write you checks? Who cares where Matt Cutts is right


now? Your customers are on your site and they're disappointed sometimes and nobody spends any


time looking at that or finding that out because you're too busy high fiving yourself because


you got a ranking. So today we're going to talk about search user experience. What's


the experience when somebody clicks on your ranking? Not how did you get the ranking?


So I'm going to talk a little bit about my lovely wife Nora. On our honeymoon we were


in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and we stayed at a place called Rim Ping Village. And we're


at the front desk and we say to the concierge up front, am I on? Yeah, I'm right. So we


say to the concierge up front, you know, we want to go to the night market in Chiang Mai.


We hear it's awesome. So she says, okay, you go out the front, you make a right, and then


when you're at the bridge you go over the water and you make a left and you're right


there at the night market, you'll see it. Great. So me being a guy and not being really


good at directions, I walked out the front of the I walked out the front of these doors


and made a left. Right? And then I started hearing behind me. When I hear somebody running


behind me, I'm from Philly, I clench my fists and get ready to be like boom, right? So I'm


like I'm in Thailand, I don't know where I am, you know, it's a little bit like okay,


what's going on? And I hear Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Reynolds. And Elaine says,


are you going to the night market still? Have you ever been to Thailand? They'll never tell


you you're wrong, right? Are you still going to the night market? I went yes. And she goes,


it's that way. That experience is all about what happened after I paid for my room. See,


a great concierge, if you think about it, if you travel, you're in a hotel, a great


concierge doesn't just say oh, make a right, and then they don't know whether you walked


left or right. How often are we driving people to things and we don't know if they actually


got there and we don't care because we got to go build 30 more links or two more links.


So from that experience, I've been thinking, wow, Elaine, I remember her name to this day


because of the experience she had stood out or the experience I had stood out so much


because she cared what happened after the conversion. Jesus, care about customers after


you get their money? It's a concept. So I think what we've kind of run into is we're


like shouting to the world about our title, right? I'm a content marketer now, I'm an


outreach specialist. And it's funny, what we're doing is like when a flower dies, do


you call it something other than a flower? A dead flower is still a flower, right? You


don't call it something completely different. A chrysanthemum is a chrysanthemum regardless


of yes, I know the word chrysanthemum, regardless of whether it's alive or dead. And I feel


like we should look more broader at what we do and not focus on the title because if you


actually care about your customer, what I believe will happen is nobody's going to care


about what your title is because you're going to care about the customer more than anyone


in your organizations. I had an advisor named John Mason and John said to me once, he said,


Will, someday you should kick me off of your advisory board. And this is when I only had


three people. And I said, John, I would never do that. I'm loyal to the death. And he goes,


no, there will come a time at which the team that takes you from A to B might not be the


team to take your company from B to C. And I said, no way, John. Well, John's no longer


on my advisory board because he was right. He said, don't waste my time keeping me around


out of loyalty if you don't see value in what I can continue to bring. The problems you


have today could be something different. And that's always stuck with me that sometimes


the team that gets you from A to B isn't the team that's going to get you from B to C and


C to D, et cetera. So when I saw this picture, it reminded me of a concept that we probably


hear a decent amount, which is what got you here won't get you there. So whatever got


you in this room, for a lot of us, for me, it was cloaking at one point, and then it


was directory links at one point, and then it was all kinds of crap, right? It got me


here. But what about what's going to get you there? Maybe the skills that got you from


A to B aren't the skills that's going to take you from B to C. Because for how many of us


I feel so bad for legitimate writers like Joel who writes great content or Matt Ninnman,


the oatmeal, is because now because we can all put our fingers on keyboards, we've all


become SEO copywriters. I can write. Well, why? Well, because I have these and a keyboard,


and it makes me a writer now because that's the new title, right? I'm a content marketer.


If you didn't care about content and customers before, just throwing that title in ain't


going to do shit. The real question is can you deliver a strategy? And can you deliver


a strategy that's holistic, end to end, and integrated? If you can focus on that, a lot


of the other things about what you call yourself ain't really going to matter. And all I want


to do today is show you that you guys are primed for this already. I'm going to try


to speed up the beginning so I don't have to speed up the end for once. So what do I


do? All this stuff matters. But so does the search user experience. So once you get the


link, once you get the ranking, how often do you then go to Google Analytics to see


how much traffic it drives but you don't look at the bounce rate? Because you don't


really care if that person is getting through it. You just got your rankings. Go get my


boss off my ass for a week. Got the ranking you wanted, got your 30 links. Here you go.


Can you leave me alone for a week? You know, what would happen if your client pulled you


aside or your boss pulled you aside and said I want conversions from links to be a secondary


or I want conversions from links, I want rankings to be a secondary metric? Ooh. Think about


that. What if somebody said I want rankings to be a secondary metric, not a primary. I'm


going to judge you based on your ability to drive business. How would that change your


strategy? Yeah, you wouldn't have to go around doing a lot of things that you might do to


just keep your boss happy. Trust me, we all know what that's like. Because you know, the


thing that matters more than links is freaking customers. When you're not selling belts,


it don't matter how many links you got, does it? You don't pay your rent in rankings. So


today we're going to talk a little bit about RCS, but really let's replace the company


with customer. Today I'm here to talk to you guys about real customership. There are people


that our websites disappoint because we know how to make the pull the levers to get it


to rank, but we actually aren't always giving a shit about is that experience good.


So, Cyr went through a branding exercise trying to figure this brand thing out. Got to learn


from somebody. So we hired a guy named Ed Tettamer, ran this humongous agency in Philly,


big advertising agency, the agency that partnered with them now, they do Super Bowl ads and


we brought him in. They just help us to think differently. And Ed said, when do you know


that your job is well done? And he's in the church, we work in a church, and we all are


raising our hands, you know. When our clients are happy, when our clients are happy, you


know, like when our clients are happy, that's when I've done a job well. This is what Ed


had to say to that. And I'm telling you, it has changed, it has fundamentally changed


the way I look at my job. And we're going to get into this.


It's funny, you know, I'm not a guy that likes to put Steve Jobs quotes in slides, but on


my drive from Philly to San Diego about ten weeks ago when I was going out to our office


in San Diego, I listened to this. Just for the record, you can get from Philly to about


Las Cruces, New Mexico before this thing is done on audio book. All right? So if you ever


have a long trip, listen to it. Because how many people took away from the book, oh, Steve


Jobs is a dick. Steve Jobs has found a way to get people to transcend what they thought


were their own limitations. That's the management lesson. Not that Steve Jobs is a dick. You


could have read the freakin' Cliff Notes for that.


And what this quote reminded me of is the fact that sometimes you have to give your


client the thing that they're not even asking for yet. Right? Because the stylus was awesome.


Remember you got your handspring visor or your little palm three and the stylus was


cool and then you would lose them and you go on eBay. And what's interesting is that


if you ask focus groups, we all in this room would have figured out a way to build a better


stylus. Maybe it clips on or slides in. And Steve Jobs was like, you know, the finger's


not dead. You walk around with them every day. But I wouldn't have come up with that


in a focus group. So how often are your clients asking you for things that maybe you can be


a little bit ahead of them and say, hey, guys, you know, that's great, those links and all


that, those domain authority links, that got us here, but what's going to get us there?


They're not going to always bring that to you, your boss or your client. They're not


going to bring that to you. It is your job to fight for that. And the reason why it is


is because you have to I can't tell you guys, you know, I was talking to Stefan from conductor


today and he's like a lot of SEO is janitorial. I was like what do you mean by that? I've


never heard that phrase before. People do shit, spill shit, and we come in cleaning


it up. Like when you would dunk on an NBA one on one Larry and Bird and slam dunk and


the glass all shatters and the guy goes. You know? So that's for people who had Amigas


and shit before there was PCs. Thank you. So we have to fight being pigeon holed, guys.


You have to fight this every day because people are going to not even give you the opportunity


to open your mouth about anything other than links and traffic and rankings. And what you


all know is that, hey, that's a little bit more complex than it used to be. I can't just


pull these levers like I used to and cha-ching, out it comes, boss. Those days are dwindling


and we know it. I just want to empower you guys with some anecdotes that we use to help


our clients to also see us in a different light. So you've got to be like a five-year-old,


guys. You've got to ask why five times for everything your boss asks you to do. Ask why


five times every time your manager asks you to do anything, your client. Ask why five


times. Is Cyr good at this? No. Are we trying to get better at this? Yes. It's so funny


to watch people's clients say, hey, you know what I want? I want 20 links this week. And


then watch us be like, okay. I'm like, no, fuck that shit. We're not doing that anymore.


If I strategically realize that maybe getting you those 20 links this month is important


to your overall goal and objective, then yes. But let's stop blindly just being like it's


my job to make you happy. Ask why five times. This is the founder of Toyota. He's the guy


that kind of came up with this strategy, the theory of the five whys. When you ask why


five times, not only will you piss your boss off, you'll actually get to the root of the


problem, which maybe you might be able to solve without the way that they're thinking


about it in the same way they think they need a stylist. And you're going, you got a finger.


That never gets lost, right? So when somebody says to you, it broke my heart. One day a


client asked us to do 30 blog posts for them, and we said yes. And then by the time they


got on my radar, I went, why do we say yes to that? So when a client asks you or somebody


in your company says we need 10 blog posts a month, your job is to ask why, not say yes.


And then they're going to go, well, because they're going to say something stupid like


content is king or I went to Moz and I heard Will say that you should write a bunch of


content. And then why? Well, because Google rewards it. Why? Well, I need to give Google


what they want, right? Like why do you need to give Google what they want? Well, I got


to get customers. Like what are you asking all these questions for? Just go do the cleanup


janitorial shit I asked you to do. Well, before you leave, I got one more why for you. Why


do you want me to do that? And they're going to obviously tell you that they need to grow


their business. Hopefully, if they don't answer it in this format, get a new job, because


this is an argument that a chimpanzee should not say no to.


This is how you must respond every time you go through the five whys. What if I could


grow the last thing without doing all the bullshit you're asking me to do? And it's


not bullshit. It's just that people don't know. We've trained them to worry about links


and page rank. And then when they come to us and ask us about links and page rank, we


go don't they know searches change? No. It's our job to change the way they think. This


has to be your response to that, because that then opens up opportunity for you to do something


bigger than what they're asking you to do. If you don't ask those five whys, you're out


building 20 links without even knowing why you're doing it. And then when the company


doesn't grow and your company gets fired, you're like, but I did the 20 link thing.


Renew? Please? They're going, oh, you know, actually the business wasn't growing. You're


like, oh, maybe if I had to focus on that, I might have come up with a completely different


solution than 20 links. They're going to want to push you off the dock. Clients are going


to hate you for a little while until you actually grow the business.


But for the ones that believe this, it just feels like when you cuddle up with your dog


and it just feels good and right, which I do all the time. I miss the hell out of my


dog right now. So how often do we make this argument? I'm


going to build you content and then I'm going to promote it and then I'm going to get you


links and then those links are going to get you rankings and the rankings are going to


get you traffic and then you're going to get money. That is a hard trajectory for a lot


of people who don't do what we do to follow. And it leads to, well, where are my links


then? Because you told me that's part of the path to get money.


Whereas look at what Airbnb did. During Sochi, when all these journalists were complaining


about their rooms, they just hit them right up and then they showed a picture of it, super


smart. Hey, why don't you stay in this room? It's available in Sochi because your hot water


doesn't work or you're locked out of your room or the toilet fell through the floor,


whatever happened. And they did this over and over again.


What's really interesting about this, guys, is Airbnb was like, F links, why don't we


just tweet and get money? Think about it. It's not funny. Because we get asked to build


links and we run off and do it. Okay, you need links, okay. Hey, I got you 20 and here's


all the domain authorities and didn't I do a good job patting you on the head? They were


like, screw that, we're going to tweet and get money. I'm going to skip this slide because


I hated it but I was scared to edit it after I gave it to Eric already.


So only the speakers laugh about that one. You guys know what it's like. Fucking nervous.


So what's interesting is that Airbnb did get links from doing that. Wouldn't it be interesting


if you tweeted, got money and then got links from the things that you tweeted and got money


from? Think about how you would be viewed in your company. Yeah, I tweeted and got some


money. It's only 140 characters. How did you do it? I'm going to show you guys some


tactical stuff later that will show you how to watch these kind of things and I hope it


helps. So I wake up one morning, I wake up really


early and I wake up with shitloads of energy. My wife hates my fucking guts. And I wake


up and I'm in the shower and I'm talking to her and I'm like, okay, I got this thing from


mods con I want to talk to you about. Mind you, she is still asleep. My dog is like,


what the fuck is going on? And I say to my wife, I say, you know, I explain to her this


concept and she goes, what you're really talking about, Will, is a logic model. For those of


you who haven't had the fortune of meeting Nora, she's a Ph.D. She's studying her Ph.D.


so she's a brainiac. She has like five degrees and I have like 99% of one. So I haven't finished


that last class. So she says it's a logic model, Will. We do this all the time in the


nonprofit sector. What we look at is we look at outputs versus outcomes. I said, well,


Nora, what does that mean? Mind you, she's still like, what the fuck? Okay. So then her


mind starts clicking and she's like, Will, in Nicaragua, when we build a water system


with her nonprofit that she started called Water for Waslala, she said, you know, we


celebrate digging the trenches and they don't dig the trenches but we'll talk about that


now. We celebrate when the system gets built. Building the system to get those people clean


drinking water is an output. The outcome is that people are more healthy. The outcome


is supposed to be that women don't have to spend three hours a day getting water so they


can actually be in classrooms and become more educated and improve their quality of life


and give them more opportunity. But she said, what happens in the nonprofit world? We stand


up and we clap and cheer when the water tank first gets on and you turn on the spigot and


we don't show up ten years later to find out did we actually achieve the outcome. And I


said, I'm using that in my MozCon, girl. She said, go for it.


So getting 30 links or writing a couple of blog posts, it's an output, guys. That can't


be the outcome, right? Growing a business, engaging with more customers, building customer


sentiment, that's an outcome. How often are you working on outputs and being happy about


it? Making clients happy? Yep, you see where I'm starting to go with this. Excuse me. I


would rather make my clients' customers happy and believe that that's going to make them


happy. And sometimes people don't agree with us on that. And I'm starting to learn that


even on clients, you know, sometimes the clients take you from A to B, we might not be there


B to C, and that's okay. That's completely okay. So, you know, it's funny because as


my wife is talking to me about a logic model she's learning in a Ph.D. high level statistics


class, this applies to every freaking day. We've been celebrating the first step of SEO.


Got a click? Cool, let me go get some more clicks. What would happen if we changed our


job to celebrating the last step? Think about how you would think about your job. What would


you do differently if your whole goal was to celebrate the last step, not the link you


got, but how much traffic and conversions came from that link? Thanks, Brian. You know,


things like that might change, like I said earlier, the way you do strategy. So Lester


Freeman from The Wire. You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But when


you follow the money, you don't know where it's going to take you. And this is why we


don't know what to call ourselves. The more we start trying to follow the money, I'm like,


whoa, I'm in social now and I'm in this and I'm in that, and that's what we're going to


start to get into in a little bit. These guys don't send us checks. Couldn't edit it with


Matt Cutts because I was scared of Erica. These guys, because some of you guys, I know


somebody in the audience are going to be like, oh, I get AdSense checks for like 50 cents.


I'll be like, man, you know what I'm saying. These guys don't give us checks, but we spend


all day worried about what they fucking think. And we ignore our customers to learn something


about Panda. You're ignoring your customers. I'm telling you guys because I'm going to


show you examples. Maybe we could be the people that focus on the customer and the search


user experience, which then lets us start to get our hands in other areas that people


don't like us to get involved in. So the first thing is I believe search user experience


requires social. So I'm going to walk you guys through a little story. Car ID. Hit them


up on Twitter. Hey, I'm looking for something 18 inches. You know, I'm not like sitting


on 22s. Like I'm not that guy. I just wanted some nice 18-inch wheels for my car. And they


responded same day. Kudos. Their engagement rate went up, right? Yep. Hey, boss, my engagement


rate went up. I responded in less than 30 minutes. Okay. Great. So I wanted the wheels


in the lower right-hand corner. When they responded to me on Twitter, they sent me this.


Look at those four. Do they look anything like the one that I just showed you that I


wanted? My engagement rate went up, son. 30 minutes. Got it. Check. Not what was wheel's


experience. It's click. And then the funny thing is they sent me to a page. They didn't


even check off so you can't see it because of the dropdown. There's not even an option


for an 18-inch wheel here. They didn't give a rat's ass about my experience. They just


wanted to make sure they responded in a certain amount of time. And they did. And they sent


me to a page that had 256 options, none of which could actually fit my car, which I told


them I needed an 18-inch. Hopefully you guys are in the wheels because I am. The next part


of this presentation is all about rims. So what's interesting is SEOs are like we won.


You know why SEOs thought they won? Because they got rich snippets. Woo-hoo! Got rich


snippets. Yo, got the video up. Yo, my UGC is bad A-S-S. Check it out. We got all these


votes and it's like the amount of duplicate content to unique content. And my content


writers wrote new content, so now it's not duplicate from the manufacturers, right? Woo-hoo!


We won and Will's clicking on all of our shit that we've spent tons of money on. And all


those numbers are going up. Will watched our video this long and all that shit, right?


PPC is going we won, too. You know, we got these great ads and we've got this new ad


extension and people really click on it more and increase our CTR. Social is saying we


won because Rival IQ is saying our engagement rate went up. Woo-hoo! Okay. They all failed.


Every one of them failed. How often are you getting a higher CTR because of authorship


and saying I won? You fail. Unless you're looking at what that actually does for your


organization. What does it do to drive your business? They're all losers. We all lost


in that scenario. I'm going to walk you through why.


Lauren Hill said it best. You might win some, but you really lost one. Right? I didn't


get a water bomb at the end. I was waiting for one of you guys. Damn, you all suck. You


might win some. How many sums are you winning right now because you got rich snippets and


you're ignoring me? I'm the one. I pay your checks, remember? I'm your customer. Why didn't


you help me out when I needed you after I clicked on all your ones? You won some. You


lost one. Where does that show up in your ranking report?


Guess what? It doesn't because their rankings are awesome. Click through rates, awesome.


It doesn't show up. And Omar is like, y'all are getting robbed. Why are you getting robbed?


Because actually I didn't buy from them. I hit up Tire Rack. Notice how the screen grab


doesn't have a response in the bottom? I am still waiting. If anybody here is in Tire


Rack, too late. Because your SEO is on point. That's how I found you guys because your stuff


is awesome. So you're probably here doing more awesome SEO. You didn't give a rat's


ass about me when I asked the same question I asked to car ID. A lot of opportunity if


we took over social. It takes over fucking social. You know, it's funny. I don't know


what's going on at Tire Rack, but I guess like Omar was walking through with a shotgun


and a bulletproof vest because there is not a soul that cares anything about me. They


must have not been there. Because Twitter works pretty well these days. When you put


an at symbol, it usually sends you a notification saying somebody would like to talk to you.


It's like when people say, oh, my cell phone wasn't working. You're like, no, your voicemail


worked. Those days are over when it was like, oh, my voicemail wasn't working. No, you got


my message. Same thing. And what was really frustrating is one day I'm sitting in our


apartment in San Diego and I'm like, I'm watching their commercial. And you know me, I'm just


like a fireball of just like love and anger, right? It's either love or anger. And I'm


like, fuck them. I'm like, I asked you for help and you're bombarding me with TV commercials.


Wait a second. Why should I like I can't click on the TV and buy rims. That is a very detailed


process for those of us who love rims. It takes a long time to figure out what you want,


right? And they build all the car configurators and all that. They are advertising to people


who just ask them for help. They did not respond to that does not show up in your ranking report.


And if you don't look for this, then all of a sudden your ROI on SEO sucks. And now your


boss is like, give me more links because the things are failing. Maybe things are failing


because somewhere in the search user experience, maybe somewhere in the experience of that


user, you have failed them. You can become the hero and pick all that back up. And then


nobody is going to give a rat's ass about what you call yourself. Trust me.


So I guess I didn't buy anything, right? Wrong. Ain't they pretty? I love those. I used all


of car IDs, all the tire racks configurators, all their awesome stuff they spent hundreds


of thousands of dollars on, loved their rich snippets, saw video, followed them on Instagram,


got all kinds of inspiration. And you know what? Omar is like, y'all got robbed because


you built all these assets and did all this awesome stuff, but I bought it from this company.


Do you see how freaking pixelated this image is? It's because it's the only one on Google


Images that you can find of their front of their store, and it is ghetto. It is up on


like, Mike King would know, it's way up on North Broad. Anybody from Philly? You go way


up on North Broad, it starts to get a little sketchy up there, right? I went there, got


my wheels from the wheel thing. Why? Because they gave a shit about me. And I used all


the assets that you guys get, like, oh, yeah, baby, rankings, got it. I'm like, thank you,


because I used all your stuff. And when I asked you for help at the very end of my journey,


well, that's the social department. Your CEO or CMO ain't going to give a shit about that.


You go tell them, we built all this stuff and we're getting less value for the assets


we're building because these guys aren't doing it. Can I start responding? It can happen.


There's a guy named Frank Eliasson, he did that at Comcast. And that's why, you know,


you go, oh, I hate Comcast. Yeah, you tweet them, they will get back to you. If he can


figure out a way to get Comcast to change it and you can't, that's not your boss. That's


you. Fix it. Caring about the customer will cause people to listen. CMOs don't always


care about links, but they care about the customer, they should care about the customer.


So this is how I felt. It's like, you lose. All of them, they lost. And I was just like,


good day, sir. You get nothing. I'm giving my money to the wheel thing. They robbed you.


You get nothing. And I love how it's like this in slow motion. You lose. Good day, sir.


That's how I felt. Because it's my money. And those rooms weren't cheap. It felt so


good to give my money to somebody who cared a damn about me. Reminder, guys, relationships


are fragile and they're multi-touch. Think about all those touch points and go into somebody's


office and say, I want to make sure that everybody that gets to our site gets that concierge


feeling experience. And I don't care if they bounce in the email, I don't care if they


end up over in social. Wherever our customers need help, when I'm driving them to the website,


I want to be the person to see them through. When they make a left out of the front of


the building, I want to be the person that goes up behind them and says, did you want


to make a right? And I don't mean a freaking pop-up chat window when the analytics tells


you that I'm close to a purchase. Because I had already bought, I had already paid money


to Rimping Village. They just cared so much about my experience that they took it to another


level. The question is, are you willing to fix that experience? I hope you are. Get you


a lot more visibility when you can do that. Not easy. We're trying to do this, too. Trust


me, clients want to keep just boxing you in. Hey, you guys get links, right? Yeah, but


what if those links we get don't drive you any outcomes? What if those links we get you


end up running into something where somebody on social is disappointed and you don't answer


them back? I can't convert somebody you don't care about. Because then what do they do?


They ask you for more traffic. Oh, well, you have to get me more. So they put more pressure


on you, all of you, right? When another channel fails, your boss puts more pressure on you


to add more people to the top of the funnel as if you can just make up search volume.


That's not fair. But we have to remind them that there's other opportunity there. So I


want you guys to change your focus. And this is really big for me because I'm preaching


it as hard as I can to get Sears boat to shift. Stop driving clicks. We are the click drivers.


What would happen if we were the click builders? What would happen if we built a click, not


drove a click? Building clicks is about community. And not like in the hey, you should build


a community phase. Every book that tells you you should build a community, how to do it


on the Web, never talks about this. You have to fundamentally care about helping that person


through. There's no software that's going to just make you go from being like I don't


care about them to like I care about them now. Build a click. Stop getting the click.


How much time are you investing in building clicks? I'm going to show you guys a half


a million dollar opportunity that if you don't try to build clicks, you're going to miss


out on with real data from one of our clients. You know, where does the fact that this boat


sank and Mickey Aronson, who was the CEO of the company, was high fiving LeBron on the


front row of the Miami Heat games while people's family members died, where's that going to


show up in your Omniture Report? You know what you're going to get asked to do? Get


me some more clicks. You're like, whoa, CEO doesn't give a shit about anybody. I can't


fix that for you. That's why they fired him and they got a new CEO. That doesn't show


up. And, guys, I've done this. You know, it's funny, as I was kind of reflecting as I was


putting together these slides, I realized something I had done, and I remember about


two years ago I caught this, and I wanted to write a wrong. We had a client in the oh,


so this is something that maybe my friends from Red Ventures, Eppie and Ian, they get


so much great stuff out. I'm going to give you guys something that may or may not work


for your business, but I can't use it because I don't have a client in the space anymore.


But we built we had a Dish Network style lead gen site, and we built a page that was all


about Dish Network for gamers. So a lot of gamers want to know about bandwidth issues,


right, to see if they can play their Xbox and their games. And you know what we did?


We sent it out and we wrote three paragraphs about that. And it ranked number one. And


it drove a ton of clicks. And we high fived because we got a ranking and some clicks.


We did not help one gamer really and honestly figure out if their Xbox 360 was going to


work well over Dish Network's Internet system or Comcast or any of the different things.