It will take you to the subscribe page,


MozCon 2014 - 20 - Phil Nottingham - YouTube Optimization

to an external site as well.


But if you're going to consider using these,


think about it in pre-production.


Think about it as part of that creative mix.


So remember I said the MVC for YouTube


is usually watch another video?


There was a really, really great example


of doing this effectively from British Airways, who


did a series called Choose Your Own Adventure.


And what happened is you would watch this initial video, which


is basically somebody arriving at an airport.


And then what happens is you're sent to this box here,


and you can click on any one of those four cities.


And it will take you there and take you to the next video.


So what they've done from this is basically


used the Choose Your Own Adventure book model


that you may have seen in the 90s and 80s.


And they've basically replicated this on YouTube


to try and exacerbate the amount of content


that people are watching and therefore optimize


visibility across the platform.


Very, very smart.


But they thought about it creatively at the beginning


rather than considering annotations and afterthought.


Similarly, Juicy Couture did similar.


Obviously, this is a very desirable product.


So this wouldn't work if you were just


trying to sell Phil's Blue Widgets or whatever.


But what they've done here is basically


linked out to their different product ranges


and done a launch video to show this new range as well.


So you can actually drive a bit of traffic


and get people interested.


I'd recommend adding a call to action for subscription


on all your content.


You can actually set this up in the settings


so that it's automated.


Because again, as I mentioned, subscriptions


are the real currency of engagement on YouTube.


And the main thing that's going to help you rank better


and have increased visibility.


So try and get as many subscriptions as you can


and use the framework to improve this.


OK, promotions.


This doesn't happen.


Videos do not magically go viral on YouTube.


It's a complete myth.


I would recommend having a viral video chart from Unruly.


And what this is is basically a large catalog


over many, many years now of all the different videos that


have gone viral.


And you can segment them and you can see stats on it.


So it's a great way for you to actually observe


how and why different things have previously gone viral.


What they've recently noticed, and they just released this data


not so long ago, is actually because of the dirge of content


that we now have, increasingly you


need to get as many shares as you can


in the first couple of days.


And ideally in the first couple of hours of launching something


and pushing it.


And the more you can exacerbate those initial shares,


the more likely something is to continue and have


this long tail of shareability afterwards.


You need to optimize for that initial launch.


I recommend using pay promotions actually


for all pieces on YouTube.


It doesn't matter whether you're doing just the big hero pieces.


The home pieces can be useful as well.


And we've had some real success at Distilled using StumbleUpon,


Outbrain Video, and Reddit Advertising as well


to drive some really nice traffic to videos


for some of our smaller clients.


So one of them might be Digital Science,


who are a client that I work with.


And we only spent about $1,000 and we got 16,000 views


and some really, really nice engagement on this video


that we launched earlier last year.


Google Plus post ads are going to become incredibly


important for YouTube.


The old school pre-roll advertising model


that we currently have is a bit crap.


Nobody likes pre-roll ads.


Everybody hates them, which is a massive issue.


And I think this is one great way where Google have actually


thought to overcome this, by having these post ads that you


need to actively engage with to actually set up


the advertising framework.


So I think everybody should keep an eye on this


and start to play with it.


Unruly have actually been slightly ahead of the game


here, and they've had a product for a while called Unruly


Activate.


And what Unruly Activate does is it's basically


this network of bloggers that they have across the web


with embedded video players.


And what they'll do is serve different videos


to across these video players.


And it's only activated when you actually click Play.


So it's a great way to basically seed this content out there.


And it can be a lovely way to promote video


without forcing that pre-roll model, which may not work.


For pre-roll advertising itself, I


would actually recommend specifically targeting


channels and videos.


There's a bunch of ways in which you can slice and dice


and segment in YouTube TrueView and in-stream.


But I would recommend targeting specific channels and videos,


because you can really refine exactly what you're


going to offer somebody when you know the kind of content


they're going to watch.


And I'll show you an example actually from Burger King, who


did a wonderful job of this.


Damn bitches be on my nerves right now.


I cannot even watch a simple YouTube


video without these advertisements popping up.


YouTube Ed."


I hate these things.


This guy's just trying to watch a graphic animal attack video.


But no.


An ad.


Stupid, incredible deal.


This guy's just trying to watch a screaming goat video.


All black highlights.


Watching music video.


Jimmy Fallon clip.


An Anchorman 2 trailer.


North Korean babies play the guitar.


They have to sit through an ad.


Smart.


Gets the engagement in the first five seconds,


does something creative.


Specific targeting rather than just generic push


of a single piece of content.


So I am a self-confessed little bit of a troll, to be honest.


Little bit.


Paddy Moogan, who's speaking tomorrow, is my boss.


And I've done a lot of these memes,


basically happy Paddy, sad Paddy.


And this is essentially currency for communicating motion


distilled.


While he was away for a few months,


I decided to get this stenciled on our wall in the office.


And I recommend actually trolling


as a strategy for YouTube advertising.


So find out which of your competitors


have partner status enabled.


YouTube partner status means that you


allow advertising on the video.


Then go and create an ad specifically targeted


towards their customers.


And choose to serve that advertising only


via TrueView on their channel.


It may take a while to notice.


Great way to try and piggyback on somebody else's mistakes.


Similarly, for goodness sake, don't


allow ads on your own channel.


If you're doing marketing, if you


are trying to use YouTube to do marketing with videos,


as most of us in this room will be,


you don't want to be serving ads on them.


The only reason you want partner status


is if you're trying to monetize the content itself, which


most of us won't be.


So just turn it off.


YouTube have made it sound exciting.


Hey, I'm a YouTube partner, because then they


make money off you.


You can also find outreach prospects


by doing some smart competitor analysis.


So I'm really about to launch this product called


I'm Really Analytics.


It's in beta at the moment.


I've had a play with it.


It is fantastic.


It's basically search metrics for YouTube.


That's the best way I'd describe it.


And it allows you to type in different brands.


It allows you to look at different videos


and find all this information about who's


shared it, where it's gone.


It's going to be great.


As soon as this comes out, I'd recommend signing up.


Unfortunately, I don't know how much it's going to cost yet.


They're still working that one out.


But what you can do in the meantime


is use the Unruly Viral Video Chart.


Search for specific brands, maybe your competitors,


et cetera.


Go and find those videos.


Plug those videos into Open Site Explorer.


See who's previously embedded the content,


linked to the content.


And then you've got a whole list of potential outreach prospects


and people who might embed your YouTube videos.


People are normally quite good about embedding YouTube videos


because it doesn't feel particularly commercial.


You're just recommending content that you like.


So it can be a great way to do outreach.


I want to finish up in the last few minutes I've got just


answering this question.


Because obviously, as quote unquote SEOs,


we have a lot on our plate.


We've got PPC, SEO.


We're now doing content marketing.


We're doing outreach.


We're doing all this stuff.


Why should we care about adding something else to our plate


and really focusing on YouTube as a channel?


Well, I think you should care because of TV.


We are TV.


TV advertising spend is about to drop off.


I believe there's going to be a big drop of this kind of money,


and it's going to flood to the channels


that we typically work in.


Because the time spent watching video


compared to traditional TV, online video,


is now increasing massively.


And this is going to continue.


Many of us watch TV content on iPads, on laptops.


We don't often sit in front of the TV in our living room


and just watch all this stuff.


There's a change in user behavior.


And this is leading to a change in advertising spend,


although it's taking a while.


And YouTube is the number one online entertainment


destination by miles.


It's where people go for entertainment online.


And so I believe that we're about to see


the next great flood of money into digital.


We've written a report about this at Distilled.


It's called The Future of TV.


I'd recommend you go and check it out.


And YouTube is highly likely to be one of those places


where a lot of that money gets spent.


And we think that about $15 to $25 billion


could be up for grabs in this industry that's just burgeoning.


For reference, the PPC industry in the US alone, I think,


is about $18 billion.


So this is not trivial sums of money.


So tomorrow's biggest brands are going to be built online,


in a world that we're calling online first.


And I believe that actually, us in this room,


we are the people who can do this the best.


Because we understand outreach.


We understand technical SEO, which you need for YouTube.


We understand promotions.


We understand content creation.


We do real company inbound growth hacking marketing shit.


And I would advise you to please spend some time working out


how to optimize this platform.


Go, make great things.


Optimize for YouTube properly.


And go make yourself some money.


Thank you very much.


Thank you.


Woo!


So I put a tweet out saying the first person


to give me a drink after I finish speaking


will get a free link.


So Greg, where do you want me to link?


Honorego.com.


All right, done.


All right.


We're going to take one, we have one time for one question


from the audience.


Hey, so my question here is all about,


you know, the company that you're in,


you know, the people that you love,


and that you really don't care about.


all about your thought process of not using YouTube


as a dumping ground for all these TV ads and things


you may have.


How do you convince clients of that, in short?


So there's a bunch of directions.


It depends what excites the client.


So some people think very rationally.


And to do that, I'll just show them the data.


I'll show them, actually, most of the traffic


is coming from Google.


And actually, if they then decide to self-host the video,


it's going to be more effective for them


in terms of traffic acquisition.


If they're more emotional, then I can just talk big picture


about the focus of the audience and whether or not


people are actually excited about their content.


It is a tough challenge.


But ultimately, people are starting


to understand this slightly more strategic perspective a bit


better.


So I just hammer home.


But I feel the pain.


It's really tough.


All right.


Thank you, Phil Nottingham.


Cheers.


Awesome.


Thank you.


How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom - Presented by Shannon McGuirk

So, it's the 14th of November 1948 and a news story had broken that would change the world


forever as we know it. The Daily Express, the most regal publication in the UK, reports


that Princess Elizabeth has given birth to a baby boy and that baby boy is of course


Prince Charles. But the reality is this story was written six months before this page even


went to print. And the reason that it was written six months previously is because the


editors at this publication knew exactly what to cover but there were four remaining facts


that they needed to slot in. The baby's sex, the baby's weight, how well mother and baby


were doing and of course where the baby was born. Let's fast forward 67 years and we can


see the same publication talking about the same thing but this time it's for Meghan Markle.


Meghan Markle has of course given birth to Prince Archie and we can see the same four


components of the story shining through. We know the sex, we know the weight, we know


how well mother and baby are doing and of course where the prince was born. Both of


those features were written six months in advance to when the newspaper published the


front page because this ties into a type of journalist writing called planned editorial


and that is exactly when journalists, editors all around the world know exactly what they're


going to be talking about tied into a specific day or time frame. But things are a bit different


for Meghan Markle and they're different because we live in a digital first world. In this


feature here from the Daily Express again you can see that Meghan Markle and Prince


Harry are supposedly considering the Obamas as Prince Archie's godparents. The Sun reveals


that Meghan Markle is taking a relaxed approach to motherhood simply because she was pictured


with a yoga mat. A third feature here then, the USA Today reports and thanks Meghan Markle


not for not hiding her postpartum baby bump. Now this is a type of journalist writing called


planned reactive editorial and it's where journalists know that they need to be talking


about Meghan. She is the woman of the moment. She has brought a new heir to the throne into


the world. However, they don't know what they're writing about until that morning because a


picture may break or another fact may come through that they need to cover. In a third


feature then, again sticking with the Daily Express, we can see that fans are convinced


Meghan is going to have another baby in early 2020 after a massive clue drops. Now if you


read this feature you'll understand that that massive clue is in fact a leading gambling


company revealing, giving out a press release, emailing journalists to say that the chances


of Meghan having another baby are 8 to 1. Now journalists reported that this story is


happening in the here and now. If you're a journalist or an editor you wouldn't have


known that that press release was coming into your inbox. So after receiving the information


you go into your editorial meetings and you pitch for that story to be covered that day


so that you can write about it. This is called reactive editorial because it's live. It's


on the pulse of the media. The problem that we have then as link builders is that we are


all link building in 1948. That's because most of our campaigns are tied around planned


editorial. So who here is doing content driven link building? A few hands. Good. Good. You're


actually missing out on 66 percent of the link building opportunities that you could


be going after because we're tying too much in this into this planned editorial type of


journalist writing. Instead we need to be going after planned reactive editorial and


reactive editorial to get that full breadth of what we could be securing as digital PRs


and link builders. Now this is a process and it's our approach to link building one as


content driven marketers and digital PRs. You guys should be really really familiar


with. Stage one we have ideation. Stage two we have production. We go through into outreach


and then finally reporting. So this process you may do two three four times throughout


a year for your content driven link building campaigns. And there's nothing wrong with


it. We do content driven link building campaigns around planned editorial because the most


successful planned editorial campaigns are based on insight. Insight is defined as to


gain a deep and accurate understanding of someone or something. So as marketers we are


trying to gain an understanding of the brand's audiences that we work with and the journalist


audiences that we are pitching these content driven campaigns into. Starting with insight


then we found this research. 37 percent of millennials have had their holiday destination


influenced by social media. And I'm definitely guilty of this as well. Just take a look at


Instagram. You can see these golden sands and rolling beaches crystal clear blue waters.


And I don't know about you guys but of course I want to go and book a holiday. So this put


the wheels in motion back at Aerodigital and we created this campaign as a result. We've


combined that insight with those images to come up with the most popular beaches according


to Instagram. It's a relatively simplistic campaign in the sense that we just took a


list of beaches off TripAdvisor that were coming out as five star rated plug them into


Instagram got our data set that gave us a ranking created an interactive map. But the


most important thing came down to the launch because we really wanted to tie it into planned


editorial journalists writing. And that's exactly what we did. We launched this in the


run up to National Beach Day because we knew journalists were going to be talking about


it. And it worked. Within two weeks we built 60 syncs followed links from top tier news


sites not just in the UK but all around the world. A second planned editorial campaign


then. And I have to be really honest with you this isn't a campaign that I particularly


liked. So every single year or every single quarter sorry car manufacturers reveal their


sales figures and through doing this you can see who's coming out on top as the top selling


car manufacturers in the world. This map though is pretty confusing right. It's not the easiest


to read and if I was a journalist I might be put off by it. So it was no surprise to


say it was a slow start to say the least. But my team back at the UK was saying there's


something in this. We know there is. We'll keep going and we'll keep pushing. And it


was through that effort and constant pitching that when we first started to land the top


tier links only a handful to begin with nothing that was really going to move the boat. We


noticed this headline from car scoops. Toyota is the best selling car manufacturer in forty


nine countries around the world. Now that on its own is pretty powerful. But let's go


back to our really really confusing map. You can't really see it right. Take all of the


other brands away and you can see how strong the story really is. So that was that insight


and that angle that we pushed and we pushed it as hard as we possibly could. And four


weeks after launching the campaign and stumbling across that insights would build ninety two


followed links. So a third campaign then. Let's start with


insight again because we're now onto a theme. We can see that planned editorial needs insight


to be a success. This is a Google trends graph that shows the Oscars Golden Globes and Academy


Awards spikes and when people are interested in them it's always towards the end of the


year and in the first quarter of the following year. So there's our insight. Combine this


with some favorite movie quotes in a brainstorm that we were having back in the UK. And this


is my favorite movie quote. So life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're


going to get. And of course Tom Hanks said that in Forrest Gump. But you combine that


insight with our team's favorite movie quotes and you get a campaign like this. The most


lucrative movie quotes of all time. Not the easiest campaign to digest. We were being


quite daring with our creative in this sense but it shows very quickly just how much Tom


Hanks was paid to say each word. And I think it roughly equated to around twelve thousand


dollars. But link building is also like a box of chocolates.


And we got zero links. Because you never know what you're going to get when you launch that


campaign. So link building then those case studies have just proven that actually it


can be really really unpredictable. The first campaign tying into planned editorial worked


really well. Client was happy. Things couldn't have gone any better. Campaign two was a slow


start but it took off and became a success. But campaign three we probably shouldn't talk


about that one anymore. And that's because this is the reality of link building right.


You can see the sharp peaks and troughs just here. January was a great month for this client.


We built more than sixty followed links. But let's look forward into August. Pretty embarrassing


month if you don't say so. The problem then inconsistent results will


get you fired. Because guess what can give more consistent results when it comes to link


building. Google ads. You can take an investment a chunk of money you have your input you put


it into the program and you get your output that has an impact on the bottom line that


decision makers can see. CMOs, heads of SEO, digital marketers can very very quickly see


the positive impact that Google ads is having with their marketing strategies. And unfortunately


we were in the position where Google ads took our link building budget. And this is the


line that was delivered from our point of contact for an e-commerce site. Unfortunately


the business is short sighted and we launched three campaigns with these guys that had performed


really well. But the decision maker at the top of the tree needed to see results in the


here and the now. Link building because of its unpredictability couldn't do that.


So as I said Google ads took our link building budget even though we were getting results.


And you can see the year on year traffic increases here from 2017 to 2018. We were doing a good


job. We got them coverage and links on sites like this all around the world. And actually


as a team we have built more than 7,000 pieces of coverage including followed links in three


years. So it's pretty frustrating that Google ads took my link building budget. And although


we built 7,000 pieces of coverage including links, I would argue and call my own team


out that actually that's only 33% of what we could have done. Because we were tying


too much into planned editorial. We were forgetting the other two types of journalists writing.


Our planned reactive editorial and our reactive editorial.


Now this is a challenge back in 2016 when I joined Aera. We, Laura and I just here,


faced the unpredictability of link building. With our clients we reported on the successes,


we reported on the failures and we have had to learn the hard way. Fast forward 12 months,


we were a team of five and at this point I had it up. And yet there was still pressure


around the unpredictability that ties into link building. It wasn't really until the


last kind of 12, 18 months that as a team of 15 we have started to find a way of building


and delivering consistent link building results for our clients. It ultimately comes down


to this. We have to stop link building like it's 1948, back when the daily express was


reporting that Prince Charles was born. Because it ties into planned editorial and planned


editorial alone. Instead, we need to be more like Meghan Markle.


So the solution then, well, actually this whole thing came about by accident and I'm


more than happy to admit that. It started with this campaign here for a leading voucher


code company that we work with. We use World Health Organization to create this interactive


map that essentially plotted the top ten busiest countries around the world according to the


alcohol consumption per capita consumed. Now we launched this in January. Because it's


dry January, right? But I don't know about you guys, January is the time where I'm most


likely to go for a glass of wine after work. I am tired after long days, the commute is


long and actually trying to be fit and healthy after Christmas is probably something that's


not that appealing. So this launch here then, it tied into planned editorial types of journalist


writing because we knew journalists were going to be covering alcohol as a topic. We knew


they were going to be writing about feeling fit after a heavy festive season. And again,


it worked. It was a campaign that was built around insight and we built 35 followed links


of our first launch. Now most of us in this room and in the industry


might have stopped there because the campaign was a success. It had got it's it had hit


its KPIs. However, I'm a traditional PR and I have an always on mentality. Many people


in my team also have a traditional PR background and again, our brains are ticking constantly


trying to find the next media or link building opportunity. And the next one then was around


St. Patrick's Day. Again, every single year we know journalists are writing about it,


but we never really know what they're going to be talking about until that kind of two,


three weeks before. So you guys have probably guessed by my name.


I have an Irish background and as someone who has lots of family in Ireland, I was pretty


disappointed to know that Ireland didn't even make the top 20 booziest countries in the


whole world. Now their reputation, you'd probably think they're in the top 10. We took this


angle out to the press and specifically the Irish press saying, you know what guys, you


haven't made the top 20 and took it to the likes of Belfast Live, the Irish Independent,


the Irish News. It was a hit. We relaunched the campaign in March around this new hook


and secured 16 brand new features as a result of that extra push. Because that ties into


planned reactive editorial. Again, as a reminder, we knew journalists were talking about it.


We just had to give them the right content at the right time so they would cover our


feature. Then in June, the World Health Organization


released new data. This whole campaign was built around this data set from the World


Health Organization. This was unknown to us. We didn't know it was coming. Journalists


didn't know it was coming. So when we found out that it was there, the new data was on


the World Health Organization site, we jumped on it as quickly as we could to update that


campaign. We had our designers refresh things, our developers recode and a new campaign within


36 hours or so was up and live on the client site with that new data. We tied our new launch


into reactive editorial because no one knew it was coming. And after doing a third launch


for the same campaign with the updated data, we managed to secure 14 brand new links. That's


three outreach opportunities in six months when most of us as link builders might have


stopped after the first one. But we didn't really know what we were doing or what the


process was while we were doing it. We only really understood the success of things when


we looked back over that six month period. And we noticed. We tied into planned editorial,


planned reactive editorial and reactive editorial. And in doing that, tying our campaign launches


and relaunches into each section of journalists' writing, we managed to secure 35 links from


planned editorial, 16 links from planned reactive and 14 from reactive alone. That's 68 pieces


of coverage including followed links for a client when we might have stopped at just


35. So, this was a process that worked well. It worked really well. And we knew we were


onto something good. Because it was starting to give way for consistent link building results.


We're not seeing the peaks and the troughs here in the grass anymore. But the good thing


that we could say whilst we were doing this reactive outreach is that we were actually


working on creating larger campaigns for the client at the same time. And we partnered


with this chap here, Dr. Stuart Faramond. He's a leading food scientist. And again,


here you can see him testing beers. We stumbled on a bit of a theme with this client. The


press and they were more than happy to talk about alcohol and alcohol consumption. So,


with this experiment, we revealed the world's gaseous beers. And Budweiser came out on top


as the world's gaseous beers. This is what we call a planned editorial hero campaign


then. It's the big shiny showstopper that we're working on as an agency. But sitting


underneath that, we're doing our reactive outreach to tie into that steady drumbeat


of the media. And we're not forgetting that we have campaigns that we can keep pushing


harder and harder to deliver consistent link building results. So, finally, we've come


up with a solution to this problem that we're facing. And I'm going to coin the term the


digital PR newsroom. So, implementing the newsroom then. How do we go about this? How


do we do it? Because after all, it all happened by accident, right? Well, actually, the industry


has been talking about bridging the gap between PR and SEO for years. This article here isn't


necessarily new. Search engine watch reports that actually the collision between PR, content


and SEO and how they can make it work for their business. I've been on both sides of


that fence. I started my career in a traditional PR background. I learned the hard way how


to secure coverage. I did the fancy stuff like taking journalists out for Prosecco lunches


which wasn't really that fancy when they didn't give you coverage. And my most proud moment,


I managed to secure a front page nib on the daily mirror. Fast forward to 2019, though,


and instead I'm creating online assets with the team to benefit clients SEO instead. We're


taking an online digital approach. So, I'm going to show you exactly how we can combine


these two disciplines from everything that I've learned in my career so far in order


to set up this newsroom and pave the way for consistent link building results. Now, it


broadly spans across these three sections here. So, we've got planning, resources and


people. Let's kick start things with planning. Now, there are four main planning sessions


for this newsroom. The first one, my favorite, it's our 8.30 scrum meetings. So, every morning


at 8.30 a.m., the team and I, we huddle in our brainstorming room, we establish what's


trending because we know on Twitter journalists are taking this and their trending topics


as a guide and a representation of what they can write on that day. We'll look at what's


in the news as well and start to understand has another brand gone out there with a campaign


that we can piggyback off and news jack. Have we got any spokespeople, data, anything that


can add to this campaign that's already snowballing in the media? Also, Reddit's come up in a


couple of presentations today. We also use it in the newsroom and we try to understand


what people are talking about, what resonates with them in terms of the topics of conversation


that they're either up voting or they're casting to one side and pulling apart. And we've also


got awareness days then. So, today is gummy awareness day. Probably not that relevant


for many people in the room. But if you're working with a health brand and you've got


stats around sugar, potentially you could have jumped on the back of that this morning


and taken it out to press with sugar consumption or something similar like that. So, the goal


here with this 8.30 scrum meeting is to find your reactive editorial opportunities, the


ones that are happening in the here and now, the ones that are happening in realtime that


you have to jump on as quickly as you possibly can. So, what does this look like in action?


This is a survey and a piece of content then that we released in the summer of last year


for an ecommerce site. And it's very simplistic. We revealed the ultimate book bucket list.


So, it was revealing the authors and the books that you should read, watched it on holiday,


that kind of thing. We launched it on the 1st of July. Roald Dahl, a national treasure,


absolutely one of my favorite childhood authors. It's his birthday later in the year. And we


kind of knew that something may come up with this. He also came up as one of the top ten


authors in the world. Take to Twitter before our 8.30 scrum meeting and we saw Roald Dahl


trending. We thought this might be an opportunity for us to do something around this campaign.


And we were right. It turns out that the press were talking and they were going to talk about


his birthday. So, we took our stats out to the metro and other top tier sites in order


to kind of, you know, push that angle as hard as we could and deliver in terms of link building.


And this ties into reactive editorial because it happens in the here and now. A second meeting


then are 345 review meetings. Now, I completely understand that this is an incredibly difficult


slide to digest. But I wanted to give you real insight into what this newsroom is and


how we go about implementing it. This slide here reveals the actions that we have on a


week by week basis and also the people in the office, in my team that are going to be


jumping on things and doing it. The purpose of this meeting then is to review that document


and understand who in the team is going to be doing what and making sure that looking


into the week ahead, we've got everything lined up to jump on these planned reactive


campaigns. Now, remember, planned reactive are ones that we can predict are coming up.


So, what does this look like in action? Here's a campaign that we originally launched in


September 2017 for an engineering client that we work with. And it's a really simplistic


gift that reveals where the women in engineering are based around the world and which countries


have the most female engineers. When we first took it out in September 2017, it was a surefire


hit with the trade press. But every single year on the 23rd of June, it's Women in Engineering


Day. So, that creates an opportunity for us to update the data, update the design and


go back out again to those trade publications that we knew were going to talk about that


day. And in order to that we knew were going to talk about that day. And again, it worked.


You can see three weeks here before Women in Engineering Day, we started our outreach


into warm up the press and we ended up getting a ton of links through once again by planning,


researching and making sure we had everything possibly lined up to make the most of those


link building and planned reactive editorial opportunities. So, our monthly editorial meetings


then. So, what's coming up for the month ahead? This is our master content calendar and again,


not the easiest slide to read, but I really want to give you guys insight into how things


work. It shows week by week, month by month, the planned editorial campaigns we've got


coming out. But if you combine this with our outreach schedule to see when those launches


are going to take place, you can see gaps on this slide where there's wiggle room and


there's room that we could be ploughing into doing more kind of reactive outreach for.


So, the goal with this session then is plan your planned editorial launches alongside


your reactive outreach. So, you end up with those big spikes and those big campaigns launching,


those showstoppers, but you also have that steady drum beat underneath where you're trying


to maximize those link building opportunities. And finally, our quarterly reviews. Now, it


all started with this guy here and some of you may recognize his face. Mark Johnson.


So, he was the head of creative at Distilled and is now a freelance marketing consultant


and you can see his scribbles up here on the side. What those scribbles look like in reality


is this success matrix here and every quarter we sit down as a team and we plan our successful


versus not successful campaigns in terms of links against our complex and our not complex


campaigns. Now, the sweet spot then is when your campaigns sit in that successful and


not complex matrix. Because they're easy to come up with, create, design and also they're


delivering well. When you start to plot your campaigns onto this metric, then, you start


to see trends emerging. And one of the trends that we came across is that maps are great


for link building. Combine that with some insight that my boss and the author of the


link building book, Paddy Moogan, went out with around this time last year for Learn


Inbound. He analyzed every single link and every single campaign that we had ever built


or launched as an agency. And it gave ways to insights like this. So, this here reveals


the content formats in which deliver the highest amount of links on average. So, you can see


interactive campaigns there come out on top followed by statics and GIFs. So, we combined


our insight from that success matrix with the insight that Paddy had given us and shared


with the world at Learn Inbound and stumbled across a real formula here and trend that


worked. And these are three interactive maps. All of which these three campaigns have secured


more than 250 links between them from top tier national news sites all around the world.


So, interactive maps for the win when it comes to link building. So, the goal with this session


here then is take your successes and learnings into the new quarter and beyond. We wouldn't


have known or taken the time to go back and establish those insights had we not put any


of their time aside. So, resources then. You need a content bank in order to set up and


implement this digital PR newsroom. And here's what a large content bank looks like for one


of our clients. We have been working with them for two years and launched more than


88 link building campaigns for them. This is sitting live and called the Discovery Hub.


And it homes and it's home to all of our campaigns. I understand that not everyone is launching


88 link building campaigns. And this is probably a rarity when it comes to setting up a content


bank. So, how do you set up a content bank for yourselves? Ideally, you need five plus


campaigns. They need to be evergreen, newsworthy and attributable. Evergreen in terms of the


data not going out of date like this really quickly. Newsworthy in the sense that journalists


are talking about it. And attributable. Have you got a spokesperson that can give comment


here? Documents and frameworks then when it comes to setting up this newsroom. So, we


have our editorial content calendar and this is something that we live and die by at Era.


It has every single date in which you have the awareness days in there that we can jump


on for link building and also days like political voting days and stuff like that. Stuff that


you need to give the media room to breathe in and you shouldn't be launching your campaigns.


We also have our media list or our master media list. When we're going after these reactive


editorial opportunities, we haven't got two or three hours on the morning of kind of doing


that outreach to build these really in depth prospecting lists. So, instead, we set up


a master media list that has all of our key contacts for that brand and at those specific


publications that we can go to very quickly. Our evaluation template then as I went over


on the success matrix side of things, we also make sure that as a document, we have this


ready to go for every single quarterly review meeting. Again, we plot success versus not


successful and complex versus not complex. In terms of tools we use for this newsroom,


we have Boz Sumo, Moz, of course, and some more traditional PR tools as well like hashtag


journal requests where you will see on Twitter, journalists asking for data, content, spokespeople


in the here and now. Those opportunities give way for you to jump on very, very quickly


for brands. It's journalists telling you they need things. Go and give it to them.


Now you can find all of these resources. I have set up a ton of documents for you so


that you can go back at the end of this week into your offices and set this newsroom up


yourselves. If you go to era.net forward slash MozCon 19, you will find everything you possibly


need in there. So, finally, people then. You need to define clear roles and responsibilities


in this newsroom. So, back at era, we have storytellers and storymakers. This team here


is split into people that tell the stories. So, they're on the front line of the press,


going and speaking to those journalists, making sure that they're pitching the right content


at the right time in the right way. And we also have the story producers. So, they're


the guys that go out and make things. Our designers, our developers, our content strategists.


And this is what the team structure looks like then. You can see the team is clearly


split into two different functions to make sure that everyone is accountable and knows


exactly what they should be doing to make this newsroom a success. You're probably thinking,


I haven't got a team of 15. How do I do this and make it work? Well, actually, it worked


really well in 2017 when era's content team was just myself and one other. So, we have


Laura as our content specialist and myself as our digital PR specialist. And again, you


can see the roles defined as a storytellers and storymakers. You can even implement this


newsroom as one person. If you are a storytelling and a creative unicorn, please come and speak


to me. You are a rare breed. If you can make stories and tell them, I would love to meet


you and potentially we can talk about working together in the future.


So, in summary, then, link building is incredibly unpredictable. I don't have to tell you guys


that at all. But as a team and an agency, combining the disciplines of traditional PR


and SEO, we have worked out a way of delivering consistent link building results for our clients.


We can no longer rely on these hero planned editorial campaigns any longer. Instead, we


need to be tapping in and creating campaigns and doing outreach that ties into all three


sections of journalist writing. We need to be more Meghan Markle and less Prince Charles.


So, success is not going to happen overnight. But I can promise you that it will happen


over time. And you will be able to once established this newsroom and get it up on its feet, secure


top tier links from sites just like this. This, guys, is how we should be doing link


Optimizing for RankBrain... Should We Do It? (Is It Even Possible?) - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about RankBrain SEO and RankBrain in general.


So Google released this algorithm or component of their algorithm a while ago, but there


have been questions for a long time about can people actually do RankBrain SEO?


Is that even a thing?


Is it possible to optimize specifically for this RankBrain algorithm?


I'll talk today a little bit about how RankBrain works just so we have a broad overview and


we're all on the same page about it.


Google has continued to release more and more information through interviews and comments


about what the system does.


There are some things that potentially shift in our SEO strategies and tactics around it,


but I'll show why optimizing for RankBrain is probably the wrong way to frame it.


So what is it that RankBrain actually does?


A query comes into Google and historically, classically, Google would use an algorithm,


probably the same algorithm, at least they've said sort of the same algorithm across the


board historically, to figure out which pages and sites to show.


There are a bunch of different ranking inputs, which we've talked about many times here on


Whiteboard Friday, but if you search for this query today, what Google is saying is with


RankBrain, they're going to take any query that comes in and RankBrain is essentially


going to be a query interpretation model.


It's going to look at the words in that query.


It's potentially going to look at things possibly like location or personalization or other


things.


We're not entirely sure whether RankBrain uses those, but it certainly could.


It interprets these queries and then it's going to try and determine the intent behind


the query and make the ranking signals that are applied to the results appropriate to


that actual query.


So here's what that means.


If you search today, I did this search on my mobile device, I did it on my desktop device,


for best Netflix shows or best shows on Netflix or what are good Netflix shows, good Netflix


shows, what to watch on Netflix.


You notice a pattern here?


These are essentially, all five of these searches are essentially asking for the very same thing.


We might quibble and say what to watch on Netflix.


Could it be more movie-centric than shows, which could be more TV or episodic series


centric?


That's okay, but these five are essentially what should I watch on Netflix.


Now RankBrain is going to help Google understand that each of these queries, despite the fact


that they use slightly different words and phrasing or completely different words, with


the exception of Netflix, that they should all be answered by the same content or same


kinds of content.


That's the part where Google, where RankBrain is determining the searcher intent.


Then Google is going to use RankBrain to basically say, now what signals are right for me, Google,


to enhance or to push down for these particular queries?


So we're going to be super simplistic, hyper simplistic, and imagine that Google has this


realm of just a few signals.


For this particular query or set of queries, any of these, that keyword matching is not


that important, right?


So they're minus that, not super important here.


Link diversity, eh, neither here nor there.


Anchor text, doesn't matter too much, neither here nor there.


Freshness, very, very important.


Why is freshness so important?


Well, because Google has seen patterns before and if you show shows from Netflix that were


on the service a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, you are no longer relevant.


Doesn't matter if you have lots of good links, lots of diversity, lots of anchor text, lots


of great keyword matching.


If you are not fresh, you are not showing searchers what they want and therefore Google


doesn't want to display you.


In fact, the number one result for all of these was published I think six or seven days


ago as of the filming of this Whiteboard Friday.


Not particularly surprising, right?


But freshness is super important for this query.


Domain authority, that is somewhat important, right?


Google doesn't want to get too spammed by low quality domains even if they are publishing


fresh content.


Engagement, very, very important signal here that indicates to Google whether searchers


are being satisfied by these particular results.


Related topics, and this is a high engagement query too, sorry.


On low engagement queries where people are looking for a very simple, quick answer, you


expect engagement not to be that big.


But for something in depth like what should I watch on Netflix, you expect people are


going to go, they are going to engage with that content significantly, maybe they are


going to watch a trailer or some videos, maybe they are going to browse through a list of


50 things, high engagement hopefully.


Related topics, Google is definitely looking for the right words and phrases.


If you, for example, are talking about the best shows on Netflix and everyone is talking


about how hot, I haven't actually seen it, but Stranger Things is, which is a TV program


on Netflix that is very much in the public eye right now, well, if you don't have that


on your best show list, Google probably does not want to display you.


So that's an important related topic or concept or word vector, whatever it is.


Content depth, that's also important here.


Google expects a long list, a fairly substantive page of content, not just a short, here's


10 items and no details about them.


As a result of interpreting the query using these signals in these proportions, these


five were basically the top five or six for every single one of those queries.


So Google is essentially saying, hey, it doesn't matter if you have perfect keyword targeting


and tons of link diversity and anchor text, the signals that are more important here are


these ones and we can interpret that all of these queries essentially have the same intent


behind them, therefore this is who we're going to rank.


Okay, so in essence, RankBrain is helping Google determine what signals to use in the


algorithm or how to weight those signals, right, because there's a ton of signals that


they can choose from.


RankBrain is helping them weight them and they're helping them interpret the query and


the searcher intent.


Does that actually change how we do SEO?


A little bit, a little bit.


What it doesn't do, though, is it does not say there is a specific way to do SEO for


RankBrain itself, right?


Because RankBrain is, yes, helping Google select signals and prioritize them, you can't


actually optimize for RankBrain itself.


You can optimize for these signals and you might say, hey, I know that in my world these


signals are much more important than these signals or the reverse, right?


For a lot of commercial old school queries, keyword matching and link diversity and anchor


text are still very, very important.


I'm not discounting those.


What I'm saying is you can't do SEO for RankBrain specifically or not in the classic way that


we've been trained to do SEO for a particular algorithm.


This is kind of different.


That said, there are some ways SEOs should respond.


If you have not already killed the concept, the idea of one keyword, one page, you should


kill it now.


In fact, you should kill it a long time ago because Hummingbird really put this to bed


way back in the day.


But if you're still doing that, RankBrain does that even more, right?


It's even more saying, hey, you know what?


Condense all of these.


For all of these queries, you should not have one URL and another URL and another URL and


another URL.


You should have one page targeting all of them, targeting all the intents that are like


this.


When you do your keyword research and your big matrix of keyword to content mapping,


that's how you should be optimizing there.


Second, it's no longer the case, as it was probably five, six years ago, that one set


of fixed inputs no longer governs every single query.


Because of this waiting system, some queries are going to demand signals in different proportion


to other ones.


Sometimes you're going to need fresh content.


Sometimes you need very in-depth content.


Sometimes you need high engagement.


Sometimes you don't.


Sometimes you will need tons of links with anchor text.


Sometimes you will not.


Sometimes you need high authority to rank for something.


That's a different model.


As a result, the reputation that you get as a website, a domain earns a reputation around


particular types of signals.


That could be because you're publishing lots of fresh content or because you get lots of


diverse links or because you have very high engagement or you have very low engagement


in terms of you answer things very quickly but you have a lot of diverse information


and topics on that, like a dictionary.com or answers.com, somebody like that, where


it's quick drive-by visits.


You answer the searcher's query and then they're gone.


That's a fine model, but you need to match your SEO focus, your brand of the type of


SEO and the type of signals that you hit to the queries that you care about most.


You should be establishing that over time and building that up.


RankBrain, yes, it might shift a little bit of our strategic focus, but no, it's not a


classic algorithm that we do SEO against like a panda or a penguin.


How do I optimize to avoid panda hitting me?


How do I optimize to avoid penguin hitting me?


How do I optimize for hummingbirds so that my keywords match the query intent?


Those are very different from RankBrain, which has this interpretation model.


With that, I look forward to hearing about your experiences with RankBrain.


I look forward to hearing about what you might be changing since RankBrain came out a couple


years ago.


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


Facing the Future: 5 Simple Tactics for 5 Scary Changes [MozCon 2017] — Dr. Pete Meyers

Thank you for everything.


Being part of our community, being part of our event, being here with us through some


tough times in the last year or two and through the good times too.


Thank you for coming out Sunday if you were here for the workshop.


You might not know that a few months back we had this bright idea.


I think it was Russ Jones.


I'm going to blame Russ for it.


Whether he did it or not, I can't remember.


He said, you know, why don't we take the longest week of our year, the most stressful week,


and let's add a date at the beginning and talk for four hours.


And I guess we were all high.


I don't know.


Like there was a gas leak or something.


And we all thought this was a great idea until like a week ago.


And then the fans kicked in.


I don't know what happened.


And we all said, what the hell did we decide to do?


And you know what, though?


It was good.


It went really well.


I hope you had a good experience there.


It's amazing to be up here in front of a thousand, 1200, 1400 people.


But to be in those rooms with you with 20 and 40 people and hear the problems you're


going through was a great experience.


So thank you for that.


We hope some of you will join us next year.


I also want to thank Chris Smith.


I'm not going to call you out.


But Chris sent me a tweet the other day that encapsulated the problem I'm having with this


deck and I had in creating it.


And he said, I'm going to paraphrase.


He said, you know, Dr. Pete, I really look forward to your talk.


But dude, why is it always scary with you?


And if you've seen me speak, you know, I apologize.


And it's kind of my job.


My job is to look ahead at where Google is coming from and what they're trying to do


and what's going to hit us next.


And both from a marketing and a product standpoint, we have to know this.


And I feel it's important to know this and to inform you.


But it is scary sometimes.


And you know, you know the kind of thing I do.


I get up here and I show you screens like this.


I say, you know, type in Dr. Salarian.


Actually, I sat with someone at lunch yesterday whose lunch was eaten, so to speak, by this


kind of change.


You know, because Google is just saying, here's the median doctor salary and here's some other


professions and here's a knowledge panel on the right and here's people also ask related


questions.


And if you click on one of these questions, and organic is completely below the fold.


If you've read any of Brittany's work on the infinite PAAs, you know, you see that if you


click on these, it actually generates new questions.


And the box keeps refreshing and keeps changing.


You can have this entire pseudo-organic journey in this box and never see an organic result.


And that's scary to us as organic search marketers.


I understand that.


And you can see new things like this, the job listings.


If you're in this business and you woke up the morning this lunch, that was a very bad


morning for you.


And this is scary, I think, because it's so specialized.


And this doesn't affect most of you.


But when you see this in the back of your mind, you're saying, when am I next?


When is the other shoe going to drop and what do I do about this?


And I think that can be frightening for us.


And sometimes on stage, I even scare myself.


And this was 2015 with, for some reason, I became very frightened of my own finger.


And now it seems fine.


I don't know why.


I don't know what happened.


So here's what I want to do today.


I want to take five topics.


And I guess we have a five theme, Krista and I, this afternoon.


That's a good number.


And I want to talk about five things that I think you're aware of right now but might


be afraid of.


Things you're not sure what to do about, things that are on your mind, things that maybe your


boss or your client are saying, what are we going to do about this?


How do we handle this?


And maybe you don't know.


And I'm going to try to give you five takeaways, one thing you can do for each of these things.


One of them you're not going to like.


But I hope these are actionable things where you can go home and instead of sitting in


the corner sobbing and drinking as you're reading the notes, you can say, you know what,


today I'm going to do one of these things.


So the first one is the one you're not going to like.


HTTPS.


This is the MozCast dataset, 10,000 keywords that we track.


As of June 30th, 55% of the results on page one of those 10,000 queries were secure.


As of about a year ago, it was only 30%.


It was funny when I published the 30%, I got a bunch of people who said, well, look, what


you're not telling us, if 30% are HTTPS and 70% aren't.


And I said, true, good point.


And then when I published it, it was 50%.


Some people said, well, what you're not telling us that there's 50% are, then 50% aren't.


I'm like, well, your math is still correct.


I'm not sure how comforting that is.


And I have a feeling in about a year, somebody is going to say, when I say it's 95%, they're


going to say, well, 5% still aren't.


I'm on the boat and the water is only up to here, but this part of my head isn't drowning


yet.


That's going to become less compelling.


And I want to look, if we track the trend ahead, I think we're going to be at around


two-thirds by the end of the year.


So this is advancing.


This is an 18-month timeline where we've gone from around a third to where we'll probably


end up around two-thirds.


This is happening.


We know Google is serious about this.


Of the top five sites in the data set we track, Wikipedia, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Yelp,


you've heard of all of these, all of them are secure now.


Of the top ten sites that we track, eight are secure.


Of the top 20, I believe it's about 16.


The big players are taking notice, they're switching to HTTPS.


That will drive Google's ability to push this message.


And we know they've pushed the message hard.


We've had an update.


This is not without its perils.


The folks at Conde Nast who run Wired put out a very transparent article.


This was last year, I think, about how the switch didn't go very well and they had some


trouble.


And so I understand this is scary.


I understand this is difficult.


I'm going to be totally transparent even as I encourage you to do this.


I asked Gary, as the numbers are rising, do you see another big HTTPS algo update coming?


I know that you can be skeptical of what Google has to say, but Gary has been very close to


this HTTPS project from the beginning.


He said, no, we aren't planning on that yet, but, and this is the important but, the Chrome


team is very serious about implementing warnings and implementing changes around HTTPS.


So what you're going to see in the next few months most likely is that Chrome is going


to start warning not just about e-commerce sites, but things like lead gen forms.


Maybe you don't sell anything and you think I don't have to worry about this, but you're


a doctor or a lawyer or you're a plumber and you have a lead gen form and all of a sudden


Chrome pops up a warning that says this isn't secure and you start to lose conversion.


That's going to happen in the next year.


They're going to become more aggressive about that.


They're going to push this harder and you don't want to wake up and just find that's


changed.


So what do you do?


This slide takes a little explaining.


A couple years back I read a story about a Penn and Teller trick and they were kind of


making fun of Siegfried and Roy and they were saying, you know, they conjure up these tigers


and they've got like six tigers.


We're going to do one better.


We're going to get seven things.


And so they do this trick and they produce seven bees just to beat six and they're making


a big deal out of it and they're talking smack about them.


But then they keep going until there's just dozens and then hundreds of bees and they're


pouring bees on each other and there's bees everywhere and the room is filling up with


bees and you can watch the video on YouTube and you're thinking this seems a little dangerous


and then you look at the camera guy and the camera guy is just decked in the full bee


suit like bee armor and Penn and Teller are just sitting there with these bees and somebody


asked them later, they said, how did you do this trick?


They said there was no trick.


We just did it.


We got stung.


This was a stupid thing to do but we had to do it.


We had to do the hard thing and this is the first thing I want to tell you.


Sometimes we have to just do it and I know it's tough.


I know HTTPS is not, it's going to be risky.


I know it's going to take time but you need to look now, what's it going to take?


How long is it going to take?


What are the engineering resources going to look like?


What are the risks?


What's it going to cost?


Because you don't want to wake up tomorrow and find that one of these warnings is launched,


something major has happened and now you have to do it overnight.


So I want you to start thinking about what that's going to take.


SERP features also can be scary to us.


You know, here again, another example, veterans benefits.


We got a featured snippet, takes up most of above the fold.


We got tweets, we got a knowledge graph, we got one organic result and it's the VA themselves.


You're not going to compete with that.


That can be intimidating.


Here's a news, a very news specific kind of query.


We got top stories and we got tweets and current tweets, current news information is dominating


the first page.


You want to get a California king bed?


They don't know if you want to buy one or watch the Rihanna video.


This is a very weird SERP to try to compete on.


Even Google doesn't know what you're looking for.


87% of the SERPs in our MOSCAS data set right now have some kind of rich feature.


I've told you this 100 times, this is not the anomaly, it's not the exception, this


is the rule.


This doesn't even include PLAs, ads, shopping results.


It's well over 90%.


So we know we have to face this.


But we don't know what to do because there's so many of these features and they're launching


all the time and they're changing all the time.


So here's the message I want to get across today.


Here's an example.


You're trying to rank for Beyblade battles.


You know what?


You go and you look at the first page and you realize the first five are all videos.


If you're trying to rank for this and you're not producing a video, and I know these are


YouTube and I know that's a dicey topic, but just in general, if everyone on that page


has a video except you, you're missing something.


This is what you need to focus on.


So how do we do that at scale?


Rob showed you earlier.


Thanks, Rob.


And Stat has tools for this too.


In Moz Pro we have certain feature tracking.


You can go into your campaign and you can just look.


And this is for Moz itself.


This is a Moz campaign.


The legend is a little hard to understand.


I apologize for that.


But that scissor on the left, for example, is featured snippets.


And the gray tells us that there's a lot of them in the keywords I track and the blue


tells us what we're in.


So we can see that there's videos in our SERPs, there's review stars, there's featured snippets,


there's related questions.


But there aren't local packs in the things Moz tries to compete for.


There aren't news results.


There aren't a ton of tweets.


And so you need to go in and look at your own data and say, you know what, I don't have


to compete on all these things.


I need to find out what's going on in my space.


Is my space a news heavy space?


Is it a local heavy space?


Is it a tweet heavy space?


Are there a lot of videos?


Are there a lot of questions that are being answered with featured snippets?


And I want you to pick something and focus on it.


I also want you to know where not to spend your time.


This is the medical knowledge panel.


I've talked to people in this space.


Unless you're one of the big players, unless you're WebMD mail clinic, this is content


Google has created themselves with partners, with knowledge.


They put these graphics out.


This isn't a great SERP to be on.


Type 2 diabetes, that's a very, very difficult expensive SERP.


Unless you're one of these top players, don't bother.


Mortgage calculator.


Let's say you built a mortgage calculator.


Congratulations, so did Google.


And theirs is going to win.


And it's good.


And it's fine.


You know what?


I think this makes us angry, but you know what?


From a consumer standpoint, there are a lot of bad tools out there.


Google standardized it.


They realized this was useful.


They did what people wanted.


But this is not something you want to rank on right now.


This is a featured snippet for when is squirrel appreciation day.


It's January 21st for your favorite squirrel if you want to think ahead.


But what else do you need to know?


And the featured snippet even has the three years ahead.


If you want to know squirrel appreciation day in 2019, you're done.


And I'm going to say if you kick forward to 2030 looking at this data, that it's probably


January 21st.


So why would I ever click on timeanddate.com even though there's a featured snippet?


Great, I got an organic result, but I'm done.


It's January 21st.


Stay away from this.


Somebody said this before.


I think it was Will Reynolds, and he's absolutely right.


Samsung TV.


If you're not Samsung, you're going to pay for this SERP.


That first set with all the extended, that's all an ad.


Those first five links are all ads.


There's nine shopping results on the right.


Don't be an organic agency that says to your client or says to your boss, because you only


do organic, that they don't need to worry about PPC because you're lying.


This is a paid search.


And if you want to rank for that, you better accept that reality and find out what it's


going to cost, or you're going to need to get in the long tail and you need to strategize


differently.


So be aware of that.


Don't deny it, because some SERPs are paid.


So if you don't know where to start, you don't have the data, you can't pick, I'm going to


give you something to pick, and we're going to talk about this a little more in a minute.


I think you should pick featured snippets and related questions, and here's why.


Because featured snippets are an extension of organic.


You already know a lot of what needs to be done to rank for them.


I think this is a healthy thing to go after.


In our dataset, there are about 15% of queries have it.


Ours is a very head-oring in the dataset.


It's commercial terms, it's single word terms that are not great featured snippet terms.


So we think that number is really much higher.


So we're seeing a lot of them, we're seeing a lot of growth.


I think this is a good thing to focus on, because you already have the skills for this.


So I'm going to talk about that in a minute.


Rank brain, the scary one.


And I talked about this last year.


I know a lot of you are worried.


I want you to worry a little less.


I think this is part of our problem.


This thing that they said.


Rank brain is one of the hundreds of signals that go into the algorithm.


In the few months it's been deployed, rank brain has become the third most important


signal.


And we went holy shit, out of hundreds, it's number three.


And then they asked Paul Harr, I can't remember who it was, I think it was Paul, what are


the first two?


And he said content and links.


Content and links is like 700 signals.


Maybe exaggerating.


I don't know.


But anyway.


So third most was kind of a conceptual idea.


The other thing we know about rank brain is that rank brain is a layer that is operating


on all searches, but that doesn't mean that it's affecting everything.


It's happening, it's having more impact in the longer tail, it's having more impact with


natural language.


So I think we've over worried a little bit.


What is it?


I was just like scouring the web for anything I could find the other day that Google hadn't


published out loud and I found a video of Jeff Dean from the research team presenting


in South Korea.


I'm like great, I'm sure nobody's watched this video of Jeff Dean in South Korea.


And there's a slide that's really great and I kind of stole it and refurbished it but


it's a real slide.


Krista is like taking notes down here and I hope not reporting me for anything.


But this isn't a secret, it's on the web.


And it's very useful and it's a common problem.


It's a problem that Google is trying to solve.


Here's what I'm going to say about rank brain.


Don't worry about exactly what rank brain is.


Don't go out and take seven deep learning classes.


Don't be like me and take the first three days of 100 deep learning classes and think


quick because you realize you actually have a job to do and you can't spend your entire


life taking deep learning classes.


Understand what the intent is.


And this is the simplest explanation I can give of the intent and this is a great slide


by Jeff Dean.


If you type in car parts for sale in Google, this is a classic search problem.


When you look at document one, and document one has the phrases car parking available


for a small fee and parts of our floor model inventory for sale.


That matches all the keywords.


And then you look at document two, selling all kinds of automobile and pickup truck parts,


engines and transmissions.


It only matches one keyword.


But document two is a much, much better match any human can recognize.


This is the problem Google has been trying to solve for years.


This is part of what they're trying to solve with RankBaring, we strongly believe.


So just understand that intent.


This is a Udacity course that Google does.


They had a quiz.


I talked about this last year.


I'm not going to go into depth.


But they asked the question, if you were using deep learning for search, how might you use


it?


And I thought that's a very interesting question for Google to ask me and they gave me the


answer.


But look at what they're saying.


They're saying that deep learning was a good match for machine learning and supervised


learning.


And I'll show you something else hidden in this slide, which is that they're feeding


the machine the input and the relevant outputs that's coming from humans.


Google is looking what we think is relevant and teaching the algorithm based on that.


That doesn't mean a whole new set of ranking signals.


It means that we're starting to look at what people think is relevant.


And that's a good thing.


That's a good thing because it gives us the freedom to think more like people.


This is Word2Vec from Google's own site, TensorFlow.


I'm not going to go into great depth on this.


They were able to teach the machine just by feeding it.


It's called unsupervised learning.


By feeding it a massive amount of words and context.


And it was able to learn things like the relationship between king and queen is the same as the


relationship between man and woman.


The relationship between walking and walk is the same as the relationship between swimming


and swam.


So we know that Google is able to do this.


We don't know if this exactly is ranked brain, but we know this is happening.


We know they can do it.


And we see it in play.


We see this advanced synonym of understanding.


It used to be that if you typed in discount airfare, you had to find that text on the


page.


But now if you look at what they highlight, if you look at what they bold, you see that


they're ranking on discount and cheap and cheapest and deals and airfare and flights


and tickets.


And any of those things are being deemed relevant.


I did a post that's still up there called tactical keyword research in a ranked brain


world.


And I did a weird thing.


I went to Google and I said, tell me what about this post is wrong.


And they did.


And I can't tell you all of that, which is extremely frustrating, but I'm going to give


you the core message of what I'm allowed to tell you, which is this.


Google said we support.


Well, it was Gary and John, basically.


Gary and John said we support the message of this post.


These are good things to do.


But the truth is we were able to do a lot of this before ranked brain.


And there's actually a page on how search works that essentially says Google has been


developing a synonym understanding system for more than five years.


This is something that's been going on before ranked brain.


We think ranked brain is part of this and an extension of this.


But this is the reality we live in, whatever we call it.


So how do we try and cope with this?


You can go to the post.


I talked about this a bit last year.


I'm going to rush through it.


I'm going to pitch keyword explorer just for a second.


I know I don't usually push product.


You're trying to rank for wedding rings.


You type it into keyword explorer and you get back a thousand keywords.


And it's all these little variations.


Wedding rings and wedding rings for men and wedding rings for women and wedding rings


cheap and wedding ring sets.


And already you're thinking how am I going to create this content for these thousand


keywords and if I'm doing my job it's going to be hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands.


What do I do?


And the one thing I think you can do that's important is start to think of these as conceptual


groups.


So we have a tool, group keywords.


I apologize for the cryptic yes with little lexical similarity messaging that was built


by our data science team.


But essentially that just means you know what, group these pretty liberally.


They can be pretty similar but don't worry about it.


And so we start to see that it puts these keywords together and we get things like wedding


bands, wedding rings, Walmart.


All right, interesting.


Wedding sets for women, unique.


And if you look at some of these, these are representing dozens, over a hundred keywords


in some cases.


And I think the flexibility of where Google has headed and the flexibility of RankBrain,


the good thing about it, is that we don't have to micromanage every little variation


of the keyword.


Every S and ED and ING, we can get away from that and especially in the long tail.


When you get into question research, you can have tens of thousands of variations.


You can't target all of those.


You shouldn't try.


So I want you to pick and think about these concepts.


So I just picked three.


Wedding rings, Walmart, wedding bands, women, white gold, wedding sets for women, unique.


And then start to write naturally and think like a marketer.


And that's okay.


Think like a human.


So wedding bands, women, white gold, I'm going to go obvious.


White gold wedding bands for women.


Wedding rings, Walmart.


Well, I'm not Walmart but what about great wedding rings at Walmart prices?


That's what people are really looking for, right?


They don't have a lot of money to spend.


Wedding sets for women, unique.


Well, what if I turned to a phrase like unique wedding sets for unique women?


Well, I want to be unique, right?


That's a good thing for a marketer.


And this gives you the freedom to think about dozens and hundreds of keywords conceptually.


But I think the important thing is it gives you the freedom to write for people.


And I believe that's what Ringbrain has done.


And so it's still tricky and it's still a machine and it's still learning and evolving


and that's going to keep happening whether we like it or not.


But as the machine is thinking a little bit more like us, we get to be more like people


and we don't have to laser focus on keyword stuffing and all these outdated tactics.


So I want you to play around with that.


There's also a tool, keyword explorer if you want to play.


There's one called exclude your query terms that basically says give me everything that's


relevant to wedding rings but doesn't have wedding rings in it.


And I think that's a good exercise.


Just get that out of my head.


Get those words out of my head.


I want to rank for this human concept that people understand.


All right.


We talked a lot about featured snippets.


I'm going to try and give you one way to target them.


You've seen these.


They're in competitive commercial verticals.


Here's one for credit score.


My wife used to work for one of the big three.


You have very expensive ads at the top and then before they're any organic, you've got


a featured snippet.


You've got that number zero position we call it.


You're really trying to this can be really competitive real estate.


And even if you go to a full res high screen, you've got related questions below that and


credit karma number one is way down there.


These take up a ton of real estate.


This is what burst down is July and not only do you have the answer and an image but the


text you're taking up a huge amount of the screen.


On mobile this is my pixel phone.


You know, this is a new phone, high resolution.


It's the entire first page.


A little more even.


Featured snippets have tripled in the last two years in our datasets.


They rolled out at about 2% so we think they've increased by 6, 700% since they launched.


You'll also see that it's kind of a plateau.


So every once in a while Google is going, you know what, we're going to turn up the


volume on featured snippets.


It's going to probably be low quality for a little bit and we're going to tweak it and


once we get it right we're going to turn it up again.


I think you're going to see this continue.


They're trying to answer people's questions.


Couple of things to do.


First of all, be aware that you do have to rank on page one currently to be in a featured


snippet.


So you have to do that organic work.


It can be anywhere on page one but the relationship kind of dives.


So we see about a third of the featured snippets are the person ranking in the first position.


Another third in about two, three and then it starts to fall off.


So we think that in that top five, that top four, five, that's a good opportunity.


If you're ranking in the first four or five and actually in the first three to five I


think there's a special opportunity which is that let's say you're number three, I think


it's going to be easier to potentially get that snippet and write better content than


to get to organic number one.


So this can be a good investment if you're in that kind of first half of the page.


Rob showed some similar data earlier.


We pulled a big list and about two-thirds in our list were text snippets, were paragraphs


essentially and then a little less than half of that were lists and tables and videos.


Videos are kind of a special format.


We're much smaller.


I think they did an update to this.


We got announced today.


Stat has a good white paper.


I'll tell you the takeaway for me is that if you see Google is doing say a list snippet


or a table snippet and it's a competitor and you want to compete, consider that they think


that format is important.


So we'll see it a lot with how-tos.


We'll see step-by-step instructions.


You might want to format your content more around that.


Doesn't mean it has to be a UL ordered list.


It just means you need a step-by-step kind of content.


The one thing I want you to try, experiment with something called inverted pyramids.


Inverted pyramids is a writing style and the idea is that we're going to give away the


answer first and then expand.


So here's our page for what is the title tag.


We put it right out there.


Title tag is an HTML element, et cetera, et cetera.


And then we expand into more and more details.


We expand into things like what's your optimal format?


What's your title like?


Why are they important?


How do you write one?


I know this can be a little scary because you can feel like you're giving things away.


But it gives Google a good thing to target for the snippet and it also naturally causes


you to write in a way that's good for Web users.


These are people with a short attention span.


They need to see they're on the right path.


So they see that snippet, they go to your page, it says the same thing and if they're


interested, if they're qualified visitors, they can drill down, see the details and continue


to read and get more information.


If they're not, if they're not interested enough to keep going, they weren't good prospects


for you anyway.


So I'd encourage you to play around with this.


Think in terms of summarizing first.


Put the answer at the top and then expand into more detail.


This is a journalistic style.


Here's a page on Northwestern's journalism site.


This is not some kind of SEO trick.


So I think this is something that can be good for search, good for users, good for Google,


good for us, hopefully.


And finally, voice can be a little intimidating.


I go to OK Google and I say, how much blood do I have because my seven-year-old asked


me on the way to school, which is a little bit of a creepy question, daddy, how much


blood do you have?


Do you need some of it or what are we doing here?


According to Camp Wonderopolis, and there could not be a greater site to answer a creepy


question than Camp Wonderopolis.


That sounds like a great place to go.


I'm going to send my kid there so she stops asking me about how much blood I have.


Scientists estimate the volume of blood in the human body, you don't worry about that.


You can learn that later.


Learn that on your own time.


So if we go to the SERP and we ask the question, how much blood do I have, well, scientists


estimate the volume.


That looks very familiar.


That featured snippet is driving that voice search.


We know that.


We did a big study this year.


Highly, highly correlated.


This is the same engine.


That's good news for us.


That means that the actions we take for featured snippets to answer questions, they're impacting


voice.


We don't have to learn something entirely new.


I'm going to give you a small warning.


Just be careful.


Voice is getting into some new capabilities.


So if I ask a question like, how do I make tacos on desktop search, I get a step-by-step


guide.


If I ask Google Home how to make tacos, it says, I can help you make that.


Would you like me to find you a recipe?


And if you don't answer, it actually keeps badgering you.


I made the mistake of putting home in my office and sometimes I forget to answer it and it's


like, yes or no.


Did I ask you?


I went to the bathroom and I had a sandwich.


I'm like, what's going on?


Why are you yelling at me?


But Google Home will actually go find you a recipe.


So Google has started to create some targeted content.


We're just seeing the beginning.


So you do need to go try it out.


You can go to your Android.


If you have Google Assistant, it's the same engine.


But if you have to have one thing that you're going to do about this, here it is.


We looked at a ton of featured snippets.


I think we pulled 10,000 questions and a thousand of them had featured snippets.


And we I manually had the brilliant idea that I was going to do a featured snippets study


where I just sat there and asked Google Home a thousand questions.


And yeah, this took about two weeks and was a little bit of a dumb thing to do.


But one of the things we learned was that by type, almost 90% of paragraph featured


snippets generated voice results.


Around about half of the list snippets and maybe a third of the table snippets generated


voice results.


Because it's pretty hard to translate a list in some cases and especially a table into


a voice answer.


So if you're going to do something, target those text featured snippets.


If you see that there's a paragraph snippet, the odds that that's going to generate a voice


result are very high.


And this is kill three birds in one stone.


You're doing well in organic, you're getting that snippet, you're getting voice.


You don't have to have a voice expert.


You don't have to freak out about voice.


This is part of your organic journey that you're already on.


It's part of creating better content.


It's a win-win kind of thing.


All right.


Let's summarize.


HTTPS is coming.


Just eat the bees.


So I have a confession to make.


I misremembered this Penn & Teller story.


I read it years ago and in my mind at some point during the trick they started eating


the bees.


Then I found the video and I found out that that never happened and I am crazy.


But I'd already made the slide and I really liked it.


So I just left it up there.


Because look, sometimes things are hard.


We are such a low hanging fruit industry.


Everyone's still on it.


And I know many of you work hard and do the right thing.


But I hate the low hanging fruit questions.


We're not willing to do the work sometimes.


This kind of thing is tough and it takes work and it takes risk and we need to do it.


And sometimes as professionals we need to do the hard thing.


And sometimes as grownups we need to do the hard thing.


So my advice to you about HTTPS is eat the damn bees.


Sometimes it's just got to be done.


And I warned Stacey our captioner that I was going to say that just in case it sounded


weird.


Thank you Stacey.


Well it began for Stacey who is amazing by the way doing all our captioning.


Because we talk fast and we say weird things.


So eat the bees.


Don't actually, a beekeeper actually responded to me and tweeted, please don't eat the bees


that's very dangerous and bad for these.


I'm like I love the bees I'm sorry.


Please no that's metaphorical.


Don't eat any bees.


SERP features is going to continue to evolve.


I know this is scary.


I cannot tell you what's coming.


I cannot tell you what thing like jobs is going to launch tomorrow.


I don't think Google even knows what's going to happen a year from now.


This is an ongoing experiment.


Don't worry about all the things that could happen.


Pick one or two and get moving.


And I think feature snippets are a great start.


But if you have the data, if you see that you're in a news heavy industry, you're in


a video heavy industry, you're seeing a ton of related questions, pick something, learn


about it, try that.


Don't try to do everything.


Don't fixate on RankBrain.


Write for people.


If you had to do one thing, write for people again.


Stop keyword stuffing.


Stop messing around with this.


You still want to do great keyword research.


You still want to know what you're ranking for.


But don't feel like every single variation has to get into that content.


Still write the content for people.


We know user signals are becoming more important.


We know Google is looking at what we interact with.


We want good content that's good for people.


As the machine learns more, that's what the machine is looking for.


And the machine is going to recreate the ranking factors over time based on that.


And that's a good thing.


People ask questions.


Google understands this.


They have to answer them with limited screen real estate.


They have to answer them on mobile phones.


They have to answer them on voice.


So answer those questions.


Don't be afraid to do that.


I think we're afraid to give things away.


And yes, maybe you want to stay away from what day is squirrel appreciation day because


the answer is so simple.


But a lot of answers.


We saw a ton of how questions, a ton of how to questions in our dataset.


These are questions that take time to answer.


And if you see three bullet points, you're still going to click.


Because I can't tell you how to build a deck in three bullet points.


I can't tell you how to make paella in three bullet points.


People are going to click through.


They're going to be interested.


They're going to see a sent trail.


They're going to try and understand more.


And those are going to be qualified good visitors.


Don't be afraid to answer questions.


Finally voice search is here.


It's not incredibly prevalent.


It's still new.


It's still evolving.


But the good news is you already know this.


You know how to rank in organic.


And if you can rank in organic, you can rank in a featured snippet.


If you can rank in a featured snippet, you can appear in Google voice search.


So you already know how to do this.


Don't be afraid of it.


Play around with it.


Have fun with it.


Imagine the first one you can get if you already have it and you show your boss on Google Home,


look, we rank for this.


I'm a voice expert.


Go do that.


It's true.


You know, so try it out.


It's fun.


How to choose an SEO company - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about how to choose a good SEO company, a consultant or


an agency, could be an independent person.


But what I want to do as we get into this is help you to understand some of the mechanics


behind SEO consulting work.


This is a critical hire because if SEO is important to your business, then the choice


of which company or person to use is going to have a huge impact, probably one of the


biggest impacts on whether you get great results.


And there's a bunch of mistakes that people make when they go down this selecting an SEO


company path.


First one is a lot of people use Google as their filter, and the logic makes a lot of


sense here if you think about it simplistically.


So simplistic thinking is a good SEO company will do a great job ranking for SEO company


or SEO consultant or SEO consultant plus my city name, right?


So if I'm looking for the best SEO in Seattle, I have only to Google best SEO Seattle, and


surely the number one company will show up at the top.


But unfortunately what happens is most of the very good companies, the ones that are


in high demand, the ones that do consistently great work and get great referrals, they don't


actually need to rank here.


They're overwhelmed with clients all the time because their clients refer them to people


and lots of people in their network refer folks to them.


They have a high retention of clients.


Lots of people are very satisfied.


They're making plenty of money and they're incredibly busy.


So they don't spend any work optimizing their own website to get new clients.


As a result, you are often left with some of the dregs here.


Many of the companies that rank well for best SEO plus city name or best SEO plus a region


or plus a particular specialty like best e-commerce SEO are not the best.


They are in fact the folks who are simply without any client work and so they're concentrating


all their energy on trying to get new clients.


Sometimes maybe you can find some good folks in there.


It's just not a great filter.


Okay, second, trusting the top SEOs list.


So many people will search for best SEOs or best SEO consultants or best SEO companies,


best SEO companies United States and they'll get to a website like, I don't know, bestseos.com


or topseos.com.


There are a number of these types of websites that are essentially just aggregators and


their business model is they try and rank for terms like this and then they sell those


listings, right, the listings on their page to SEO firms and companies.


So they might call up, you know, back when Moz was a consulting company many, many years


ago, they'd call us up and they'd say, hey, do you want to be number three?


We can make you number three on the best SEO companies list for $20,000 a year.


Or we can make you number one but you're going to have to pay $75,000 a year.


That is not a great – I mean it's a great model for them, don't get me wrong, but that


pay to play scheme is not trustworthy for you as a consumer of SEO companies, right.


You would never trust someone that said, oh, well, what's the best restaurant in this particular


region?


You'd never go to a list where the restaurant's just paid.


That would give you the conglomerates and the people who can afford to spend the most


and the worst, right.


So don't trust those types of lists.


There are a few lists, there are a few websites, places like credo.com run by John Doherty.


There's obviously Moz's recommended SEO list which is just my personal recommendations


and the recommendations of my network.


You can't pay to be on there, you can't pay to be listed.


Some of those are more trustworthy and we'll try and link to a few of those good ones at


the end of this whiteboard.


Mistake number three is believing the sales pitch that unfortunately many, I'm going to


say low quality SEO consultants use which is there's a secret sauce.


There are no secret sauces in SEO, right.


If you hear the like this is how Google works, blah, blah, blah, blah and then here's how


we do our secret optimization techniques.


I can't tell you what those are.


It's a proprietary methodology but it works really well.


That's baloney.


You should reject that.


If you ask how do you do it and they say I'm sorry I can't tell you it's a secret or it's


proprietary that is a very, very bad sign.


No one has a secret proprietary process.


SEO is a very, very open field.


It's well understood.


It has origins and a lot of secrecy but that is not the way it is today and you should


never accept that as an answer.


That is a red flag.


The process that I do recommend for choosing a great SEO company, first off I want you


to establish, sit down with your team, with your CEO, with your executive team, your board,


whoever you've got and figure out the goals you're trying to achieve with SEO.


Why do you want to do SEO?


Why do you want to rank organically for keywords and then figure out how you're going to judge


success versus failure?


In this process there are good goals and bad goals.


Good goals are things like I want to get in front of a lot of people who are researching


this and so we need traffic from these specific groups.


I know that they perform searches for this.


Great.


We're trying to boost revenue and we're trying to boost it through new sales and SEO is a


sales driving channel.


Fine.


We're trying to boost downloads or free signups or free trials.


Also a fine goal.


We're trying to boost sentiment for our brand.


Maybe if you Googled some of our branded terms today there are some poor reviews, there's


lots of good reviews that rank below them.


We want to push the good reviews up and the bad reviews down.


Sentiment.


That could be something you're driving as well.


You know a lot of people are researching your brand or branded terms.


Those are all good goals.


Bad goals are things like we just want traffic, more traffic.


Why?


Well, because we want it.


Terrible.


Terrible goal.


Traffic is not a goal in and of itself.


If you say, well, we want more traffic because we know search traffic converts well for us


and here's the statistics on it, fine.


Terrific.


Now it's a revenue driving thing.


Rankings alone.


Unfortunately, this is a vanity thing that many people have where they want to rank for


something simply because they want to rank for it.


Usually a bad sign for SEO companies considering clients, you shouldn't have that on your goals


list.


That's not a positive goal.


Beating a particular competitor out.


Again, four specific keywords or phrases.


Again, not a great goal.


Doesn't drive directly to revenue.


Doesn't drive directly to organizational goals.


And then vanity metrics.


I still see people who are saying, hey, does anyone know a great SEO company that can help


bring our domain authority up or our majestic trust flow up or worst of all, our Google


PageRank up.


Google dropped PageRank years ago.


That's terrible.


All right.


So vanity metrics, bad ideas too.


Step two.


If you have a list of these good goals that you're trying to optimize toward, my suggestion


is that you should assemble a list of usually three to five is I think sort of the right


comfort zone.


You can do more if you have the bandwidth to evaluate more, but three to five at least


consultants or agencies.


And those could be by a bunch of criteria.


So you might say, hey, look, we really need someone in our region so that we can meet


with them in person or at least someone who can fly to us on a regular basis.


So maybe that's a requirement for you.


Or you might say that's not important.


Remote is great.


Fine.


Wonderful.


You might say something like our price range or our budget is this particular thing.


You want to find whatever those criteria are and make sure you've got a list of three to


five folks that you can consider against one another.


Have some conversations with them and dig into references.


Good sources to find those folks that I really like.


Your friends and personal networks, especially and professional networks as well.


Similar non-competitive companies.


You will find that if you're, for example, in a B2B space or an e-commerce space and


there's a non-competitive e-commerce company whom you're friendly with, you can build those


relationships.