You're doing all sorts of sophisticated things, and it becomes very, very powerful building


Programming for SEOs - Whiteboard Friday

blocks to do much greater things.


Okay, so now that you understand programming and why you should do it, I want to leave


you with some resources to actually learn.


So the first resource I recommend is Lynda.


Grab rebranded LinkedIn Learning.


The reason why I recommend Lynda is because many, many public libraries offer you a subscription


for free.


And there's a ton of different programming classes in there.


You can get a Python class, many levels of advanced Python and JavaScript.


You can also learn other things, which I think is pretty cool.


So definitely recommend Lynda slash LinkedIn Learning.


When I was learning the program originally, I actually went to the library and had to


take out books and try to do it myself.


Nowadays there's tons of other resources like Code Academy.


Code Academy is fantastic.


It's completely interactive, so it will go through all the various concepts, and one


by one it will ask you to sort of perform them in a very logical manner so you learn


it in an optimal way.


Definitely recommend Code Academy.


They have both the JavaScript and a Python module.


The MOOCs online.


If you are the person that needs a more traditional classroom environment, you can learn for free


replicating that classroom environment at home.


These are websites like Coursera.


A lot of the major universities offer them.


Other courses there.


W3 Schools, which is very valuable for any sort of web development.


They have very good, very basic tutorials on JavaScript and CSS and HTML and anything


you might need to learn web development.


Also acts as an invaluable reference guide.


If you're interested in learning Python for data analysis, there's one book that I highly


recommend.


It is Python for Data Analysis by McKinney.


It's an O'Reilly book.


McKinney was the creator of Pandas, which is a very well used Python library for data


analysis.


So hopefully you've walked away a little less scared of programming and are excited to learn.


Leave your comments in the section below.


Thanks for watching.


Prioritize your link building efforts - Whiteboard Friday

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


As you can see, I'm missing my mustache, but never mind.


We've got tons of important things to get through and so we'll leave the facial hair


to the inevitable comments.


I want to talk today about how to prioritize your link building efforts and opportunities.


I think this comes as a big challenge for many marketers and SEOs because link building


can just seem so daunting.


It's tough to know how to get started and then it's tough to know once you've gotten


into the practice of link building, how do you build up a consistent, useful system to


do it.


That's what I want to walk you through today.


First off, step one, what I'm going to ask you to do is tie your SEO goals to the reasons


that you're building links.


You have some reason that you want links.


It is almost certainly to accomplish one of these five things.


There might be other things on the list too, but it's almost always one of these areas.


Rank higher for keyword X. You're trying to get links that point to a particular page


on your site that contain a particular anchor text so that you can rank better for that.


Makes total sense.


You want to grow the ranking authority of a particular domain, your website, or maybe


a subdomain on your website or a subfolder of that website.


Google does sort of have some separate considerations for different folders and subdomains.


You might be trying to earn links to those different sections to help grow those.


Pretty similar to A, but not necessarily as much of a need to get the direct link to the


exact URL.


C, sending real high value traffic from the ranking page.


Maybe it's the case that this link you're going after is nofollowed or it doesn't pass


ranking influence.


For some reason it's JavaScript or it's an advertising link or whatever it is, but it


does pass real visitors who may buy from you or amplify you or be helpful to achieving


your other business goals.


D, growing topical authority.


This is essentially saying, hey, around this subject area or keyword area, I know that


my website needs some more authority.


I'm not very influential in this space yet, at least not from Google's perspective.


If I can get some of these links, I can help to prove to Google and potentially to some


of these visitors as well that I have some subject matter authority in this space.


And then E, I want to get some visibility, visibility only to an amplification likely


or a high value audience.


So this would be things like a lot of social media sites, a lot of submission type sites,


places like a product hunt or a Reddit where you're trying to get in front of an audience


that then might come to your site and be likely to amplify it if they love what they see.


Okay, so these are our goals.


Second, I'm going to ask you to estimate the likelihood that the link target will pass


value to the page or to the section of your site.


This relies on a bunch of different judgments.


You can choose whether you want to wrap these all up in sort of a single number that you


estimate, maybe like a zero to ten where zero is not at all valuable and ten is super, super


valuable or you could even take a bunch of these metrics and actually use them directly.


So things like domain authority or linking root domains to the URL or page authority,


the content relevance, you could be asking is this a no-followed or a followed link,


is it passing the anchor text that I'm looking for or anchor text that I control or influence


at all, is it going to send me direct traffic.


And if the answers to these are all positive, that's going to bump that up.


And you might say, wow, this is high authority, it's passing great anchor text, it's sending


me good traffic, it's a followed link, the relevance is high, I'm going to give this


a ten.


Or that might not be the case, right?


This might be a low authority, maybe it is followed but the relevance is not quite there,


you don't control the anchor text and so anchor text is just the name of your brand or it


just says site or something like that, it's not going to send much traffic, maybe that's


more like a three.


And then you're going to ask a couple of questions about the page that they're linking


to or your website, right?


Is that the right page on your site?


If so, that's going to bump up this number.


If it's not, it might bring it down a little bit.


Does it have high relevance?


If not, you may need to make some modifications or change the link path.


And is there any link risk around this?


So if this is a, let's put it delicately, a potentially valuable but also potentially


risky page, you might want to reduce the value in there and I'll leave it up to you to determine


how much link risk you're willing to take in your link building profile.


Personally, I'm willing to accept none at all.


And then step three, you build a prioritization spreadsheet that looks something like this,


right?


So you have which goal or goals are being accomplished by acquiring this link.


You have the target and the page on your site.


You've got your chance of earning that link and that's going to be something you estimate


and over time you'll get better and better at this estimation.


Same with the value, right?


We talked about using a number out of 10 over here.


You can do that in this column or you could just take a bunch of these metrics and shove


them all into this spreadsheet if you prefer.


And then you have the tactic you're going to pursue, right?


So this is direct outreach.


This one's submit and hope that it does well and who it's assigned to.


Maybe it's only you because you're the only link builder or maybe you have a number of


people in your organization or PR people who are going to do outreach or someone, a founder


or an executive who has a connection to some of these folks and they're going to do the


outreach, whatever the case.


Then you can start to prioritize.


You can build that prioritization by doing one of a couple things.


You could take some amalgamation of these numbers.


So like a high chance of earning and a high estimated value will do some simple multiplication


and will make that our prioritization.


Or you might give different goals like you might say, hey, you know what?


A is worth a lot more to me right now than C and so therefore I'm going to rank the ones


that are the A goal much higher up.


That is a fine way to go about this as well.


And then you can sort your spreadsheet in this fashion and go down the list, right?


Go start at the top, work your way down and start checking off links as you get them or


don't get them.


Hopefully, that's a pretty high percentage, I'm doing real well here.


But you get the idea, right?


This turns link building from this sort of questionable, frustrating, what should I do


next?


Am I following the right path?


Into a simple process that not only can you follow but you can train other people to follow.


And this is really important because link building is an essential part of SEO still,


a very valuable part of SEO, but it's also a slog.


And so to the degree that you can leverage other help in your organization, hire an intern


and help train them up, work with your PR teams and have them understand it, have multiple


people in the organization all sharing this spreadsheet, all understanding what needs


to be done next, that is a huge help.


I look forward to hearing about your link building prioritization goals, what you've


seen work well, what metrics you've used, and we will see you again next week for another


edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Using STAT for Content Strategy - Whiteboard Friday

Hi everyone, welcome to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Dana Deitmasso. I'm president partner


of Kickpoint, which is a digital marketing agency based way up in Edmonton, Alberta.


Come visit sometime. So what I'm going to be talking about today is using STAT for content


strategy. And STAT, if you're not familiar, is STAT Search Analytics, which is, in my


opinion, the best ranking tool on the market, and Moz is not paying me to say that, although


they did pay for STAT, so now STAT is part of the Moz family of products. And I really


like STAT. I've been using it for quite some time. They are also Canadian. That may or


may not influence my decision. But one of the things that STAT does really well is it


doesn't just show you where you're ranking, but it breaks down what type of rankings and


where you should be thinking about rankings. And so typically I find, especially if you've


been working in this field for a long time, you might think about rankings and you still


have in your mind the 10 blue links that we used to have forever ago. And that's so long


gone. And one of the things that's useful about using STAT rankings is you can figure


out stuff that you should be pursuing other than, say, the written word. And I think that


that's something really important, again, for marketers because a lot of us really enjoy


reading stuff. Maybe you're watching this video. Maybe you're reading the transcript.


You might refer to the transcript later. A lot of us are readers. Not a lot of us are


necessarily visual people. So sometimes we can forget stuff like video is really popular


or people really do prefer those places, packs, or whatever it might be. So thinking outside


of yourself and thinking about how Google has decided to set up the search results can


help you drive better content to your clients and your own websites. And the biggest thing


that I find that comes of this is you're really thinking about your audience a lot more because


you do have to trust that Google maybe knows what it's doing when it presents certain types


of results to people. It knows the intent of the keyword, and therefore it's presenting


results that make sense for that intent. And we can argue all day about whether or not


answer boxes are awesome or terrible, but from a visitor's perspective and a searcher's


perspective, they like them. And so I think we need to just make sure that we're understanding


where they might be showing up and if we're playing by Google's rules. People also ask


is not necessarily going anywhere. So all that being said, how can we use ranking results


to figure out our content strategy? So first thing about stat. If you haven't used stat


before, again, check it out. It's awesome. But one of the things that's really nice is


you can do this thing called data views. And in data views, you can group together parts


of keywords. And so you can do something called smart tags and say, I want to tag everything


that has a specific location name together. So let's say, for example, that you're working


with a moving company and they are across Canada. And so what I want to see here for


opportunities are things like where I'm not ranking, where are there places box showing


up that I am not in, or where are there people also ask showing up that I am not involved


in. This is a nice way to keep an eye on your competitors. Then we'll also do locations.


So we'll say everything in Vancouver, group this together. Everything in Winnipeg, group


this together. Everything in Edmonton, in Calgary, in Toronto, group all that stuff


together. And then the third thing can be attributes. And this is stuff like best, good,


top, free, cheap, all those different things that people use to describe your product because


those are definitely intent keywords. And often they will drive very different types


of results than things you might consider as your head phrases. So for example, looking


at movers in Calgary will drive a very different result than top movers in Calgary. In that


case, you might get, say, a Yelp top 10 list. Or if you're looking for cheapest mover in


Calgary, again, a different type of search result. So by grouping your keywords together


by attributes, that can really help you as well determine how those types of keywords


can be influenced by the type of search results that Google's putting out there. And then


the last thing is product services. So we'll take each product and service and group it


together. And one of the nice things about stat is you can do something called smart


tag. So we can say, figure out every keyword that has the word best in it and put it together.


And then if we ever add more keywords later that also have the word best, they automatically


go into that keyword group. It's really useful, especially if you are adding lots of keywords


over time. So I recommend starting by setting up some views that make sense. So you can


just import everything your client's ranking for. And you can just take a look at the view


of all these different keywords. But the problem is that there's so much data when you're looking


at that big set of keywords that a lot of the useful stuff can really get lost in the


noise. So by segmenting it down to a really small level, you can start to understand that


search for that specific type of term and how you fit in versus your competition. And


so put that stuff in the stat, give it a little while, let it collect some data, and then


you get into the good stuff, which is the SERP features. And I'm covering just a tiny


little bit of what stat does. Again, they didn't pay me for this, but there's lots of


other stuff that goes on in here. My personal favorite part is the SERP features. And so


what I like here is that in SERP features, it will tell you which features are increasing


and decreasing overall, and then what features are increasing and decreasing for you. And


so this is actually from a real set for one of our clients. And for them, what they're


seeing are big increases in places, version 3, which is the three-pack of places. Twitter


box is increasing. Did not see that coming. And then AMP is increasing. So that says to


me, okay, so I need to make sure that I'm thinking about places. And maybe this is a


client who doesn't necessarily have a lot of local offices. Maybe it's not someone you


would think of as a local client. So why are there a lot more local properties popping


up? And then you can dive in and say, okay, only show me the keywords that have places


boxes, and you can look at that and decide, is it something where we haven't thought about


local SEO before, but it's something where searchers are thinking about local SEO. So


Google is giving them three-pack local boxes, and maybe we should start thinking about,


can we rank in that box, or is that something we care about? Again, not necessarily content


strategy, but certainly your SEO strategy. Next thing is Twitter box. And this is something


where you think, Twitter's dead. No one's using Twitter. It's full of terrible people,


and they tweet about politics all day, and I never want to use it again. Except maybe


Google really wants to show more Twitter boxes. So again, looking at it and saying, is Twitter


something where we need to start thinking about it from a content perspective? Do we


need to start focusing our energies on Twitter? Maybe you abandoned it and now it's back,


and you have to start thinking, does this matter for the keywords? And then AMP. So


this is something where AMP is really tricky, obviously. There's been studies where it says,


I implemented AMP and I lost 70% of my traffic and everything was terrible. But if that's


the case, why would we necessarily be seeing more AMP show up in search results if it isn't


actually something that people find useful, particularly on mobile search? And one of


the things actually that I didn't mention in the tagging is definitely look at desktop


versus mobile, because you are going to see really different feature sets between desktop


and mobile for these different types of keywords. Mobile may have a completely different intent


for a type of search. If you're a restaurant, for example, people looking for reservations


on a desktop might have different from, you know, I want a restaurant right now on mobile,


for example, and you're standing next to it and maybe you're lost. So you really have


to think about what that intent means for the type of search results that Google's going


to present. So for AMP, then you have to look at it and say, well, is this newsworthy? Why


is more AMP being shown? Should we consider moving our news or blog or whatever you happen


to call it into AMP so that we can start to show up for the search results in mobile?


Is that a thing that Google's presenting now and we can get mad about AMP all day, but


how about instead we actually be there? You know, and I know I don't want the comment


section to turn into a whole AMP discussion, but I know there's obviously problems with


AMP. But if it's being shown in the search results that searchers who should be finding


you are seeing and you're not there, that's definitely something you need to think about


for your content strategy and thinking, is AMP something that we need to pursue? Do we


have to have more newsy content versus evergreen content? Maybe your content strategy is really


focused on posts that could be relevant for years when in reality your searchers are looking


for stuff that's relevant for them right now. So for example, things with movers, you know,


there's some sort of mover scandal. There's always a mover who ended up taking someone's


stuff and locking it up forever and they never gave it back to them, right? There's always


a story like that in the news. So maybe that's why it's AMP. So definitely investigate before


you start to say, AMP everything, maybe it was just like a really bad day for movers,


for example. And then you can see the decreases. So the decrease here is organic, which is


that traditional ten blue links. So obviously this new stuff that's coming in, like AMP,


like Twitter, like Places, is displacing a lot of the organic results that used to be


there before. So instead you think, well, I can do organic all day, but if the results


just aren't there, then I could be limiting the amount of traffic I could be getting to


my website. Videos, for example. Now it was really interesting for this particular client


that videos is a decreasing SERP for them because videos is actually a big part of their


content strategy. So if we see the videos are decreasing, then we can take a step back


and say, is it decreasing in the keywords that we care about? Why is it decreasing?


Do we think this is a test or a longer term trend? And this is what's nice about stat


is you can say, I want to see results for the last seven days, 30 days, 60 days. You


know, once you get a year of data in there, you can look at the whole year and look at


that trend and see, is it something where we have to maybe rethink our video strategy?


Maybe people don't like video for these phrases. And again, you could say, but I had people


do like video for these phrases, but Google, again, has access to more data than you do.


And if Google has decided that for these search phrases, video is not a thing they want to


show anymore, then maybe people don't care about video the way that you thought they


did. Sorry. So that could be something where you're thinking, well, maybe we need to change


the type of content we create. And then the last one is carousel that showed up for this


particular client. And carousel are just ones where they show lots of different results.


I'm glad that's dropping, because it actually kind of sucks. It's really hard to show up


well there. So I think that's something to think about in the carousel as well. You know,


maybe we're pleased that's going away, and then we don't have to fight it as much anymore.


So then what you can see in the bottom half are what we call share of voice. And so share


of voice is calculated based on your ranking and all of your competitors' ranking and the


number of clicks that you're expected to get based on your ranking position. So the number


one position obviously gets more ranks than the number 100 position. And so the share


of voice is a percentage calculated based on how many of these types of items, types


of SERP features that you own versus your competitors, as well as your position in these


SERP features. And so what I'm looking at here is share of voice and looking at organic,


places, answers, and people also ask, for example. And so what STAT will show you is


the percentage of organic. And it's still, for this client, you know, and obviously this


is not an accurate chart, but this is vaguely accurate to what I saw in STAT. Organic is


still a big beefy part of this client search result. So let's not panic that it's decreasing.


This is really where this context can come in. But then you can think, all right, so


we know that we are doing, eh, on organic. So is it something where we think that we


can gain more? And so the green shows you your percentage that you own of this, and


then the black is everyone else. So thinking realistically, you obviously cannot own 100


percent of all the search results all the time because Google wouldn't allow that. So


instead thinking, you know, what's a realistic thing? Are we topping out at the point now


where we're going to have diminishing returns if we keep pushing on this? You know, are


we happy with how we're doing here? Maybe we need to turn our attention to something


else like answers, for example. You know, this particular client does really well on


places. They own a lot of it. So for places, it's maintain, watch, don't worry about it


that much anymore. Then that can drop off when we're thinking about content. We don't


necessarily need to keep writing blog posts for things that are going to help us to rank


in the places pack because it's not something that's going to influence that ranking any


further. We're already doing really well. But instead, we can look at answers and people


also ask, which for this particular client, they're not doing that well. It is something


that's there, and it is something that it may not be one of the top increases, but it's


certainly an increase for this particular client. So what we're looking at is saying,


well, you have all these great blog posts, but they're not really written with people


also ask or answers in mind. So how about we go back and rewrite the stuff so that we


can get more of these answer boxes? And so that can be the foundation of that content


strategy. So when you put your keywords into stat and look at your specific keyword set,


really look at the SERP features and determine what does this mean for me and the type of


content I need to create, whether it's more images, for example. Some clients, when you're


looking at e-commerce sites, some of the results are really image heavy or they can be product


shopping or whatever it might be. There's really specific different features, and I've


only shown a tiny subset. Stat captures all the different types of SERP features. You


can definitely look at anything if it's specific to your industry. If it's a feature, they've


got it in here. So definitely take a look and see where are these opportunities. And


remember, you can't have 100% share of voice because other people just got to show up there.


Ed Reese - My Favorite 5 Analytics Dashboards - Whiteboard Friday

Hi, I'm Ed Rees with Six Band Marketing and Local You.


Welcome to this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite things in terms of Google Analytics,


the dashboard.


So think of your dashboard like a dashboard on your car.


What's important to you and what's important to your client.


I have the new Tesla dashboard, you might recognize it.


So for my Tesla dashboard I want navigation, tunes, calendar, everything in a bag of chips.


You notice my hands are not on the wheel because it drives itself now.


Awesome.


So what's important?


So I have the top five dashboards that I like to share with my clients and create for them.


So these are the executive dashboards, ones for the CMO on the marketing side, new markets,


content and a tech check.


You can actually create dashboards and make sure that everything is working.


And these on the side are some of the few that I think people don't take a look at as


often.


It's my opinion that we have a lot of very generic dashboards, so I like to really dive


in and see what we can learn so that your client can really start using them for their


advantage.


Let's start with the executive dashboard.


There is a lot of debate on whether or not to go from left to right or right to left.


So in terms of outcome, behavior and acquisition, Google Analytics gives you those areas.


They don't mark them as these three categories, but I follow Avinash's language and the language


that GA uses.


So when you're talking to executives or CFOs, it's my personal opinion that executives always


want to see the money first.


So focus on financials, conversion rates, number of sales, number of leads.


They don't want to skip through all the, they don't want to go through the marketing first


and then get to the numbers.


Just give them what they want.


And in a dashboard, they're seeing that first.


So let's start with the result and then go back to behavior.


Now this is where a lot of people have very generic metrics, pages viewed, generic bounce


rate, very broad metrics.


To really dive in, I like focusing and using the filters to go to specific areas on the


site.


So if it's a destination like a hotel, oh, are they viewing the pages that help them


get there?


Are they looking at the directional information?


Are they viewing discounts and sorts of packages?


Think of the behavior on those types of pages that you want to measure.


And then reverse engineer and that way you can tell the executive, hey, this hotel reservation


viewed these packages, which came from these sources, campaigns, search and social.


And remember you're building it so that they can view it for themselves and really take


advantage and see, oh, that's working and this campaign from this source had these behaviors


that generated a reservation in that example.


Now let's take a look at it from a marketing perspective.


You want to help make them look awesome.


So I like to reverse it and start with the marketing side in terms of acquisition, then


go to behavior on the website and then end up with the same financials, money, conversion


rate percentages, number of leads, number of hotels, hotel rooms booked, et cetera.


Like to get really, really focused.


So when you're building a dashboard for a CMO or anyone on the marketing side, talk


to them about what metrics matter.


What do they really want to learn?


And a lot of times you need to know their exact territory and really fine tune it in


to figure out exactly what they want to find out.


So again, I'm a huge fan of filters.


What behavior matters?


So for example, one of our clients is Beardbrand.


They sort of build beard oil and they support the Urban Beardsman.


We know that their main markets are New York, Texas, California, and the Pacific Northwest.


So we could have a very broad regional focus for acquisition, but we don't.


We know where their audience lives.


We know what type of behavior they like.


And ultimately what type of behavior on the website influences purchases.


So really think from a marketing perspective, how do we want to measure the acquisition


to the behavior on the website?


And ultimately, what does that create?


So these are pretty common.


So I think most people are using a marketing and executive dashboard.


Here's some that have really made a huge difference for clients of ours.


New markets.


Love new market dashboards.


Let's say for example you're a hotel chain and you normally have people visiting your


site from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana.


Well what happened in our case, we had that excluded and we were looking at states broader.


Hawaii, Alaska, Colorado, Texas.


Not normally people would come to this particular hotel.


Well we discovered in the dashboard, and it was actually the client that discovered it,


that we suddenly had a 6,000% increase in Hawaii.


They called me, said are we marketing to Hawaii?


I said no.


And they said well according to the dashboard, we've had 193 room nights in the past two


months.


Like wow, 193 room nights from Hawaii?


What happened?


So we started reverse engineering that and we found out that Allegiant Airlines suddenly


had a direct flight from Honolulu to Spokane and the hotel in this case was two miles from


the hotel.


They could then do paid search campaigns in Hawaii.


They could try to connect with Allegiant to co-op some advertising and some messaging.


Boom.


Would never have been discovered without that dashboard.


Another example, top content.


Again going back to Beardbrand, they have a site called the Urban Beardsman and they


publish a lot of content for help and videos and tutorials.


To measure that content, it's really important because they're putting a lot of work into


educating their market and new people that are growing beards and using their product.


They want to know is it worth it?


They're hiring photographers, they're hiring writers, and we're able to see if people are


reading the content they're providing and then ultimately we're focusing much more on


their content on the behavior side and then figuring out what that outcome is.


And a lot of people have content or viewing of the blog as part of an overall dashboard,


let's say for your CMO.


I'm a big fan of in addition to having that, also having a very specific content dashboard.


So you can see your top blogs, your top, whatever content you provide, I want you to always


know what that's driving on your website.


And one thing that I've never heard anyone talk about before, we use all the time, is


a tech check.


So we want to see, you know, set up so we can view mobile, tablet, desktop, browsers.


What are your gaps?


Where is your site possibly not being used to its fullest potential?


Are there any issues with shopping carts?


Where do they fall off on your website?


Set up any possible, you know, tech that you can track.


I'm a big fan of looking both on the mobile tablet, any type of desktop, browsers especially,


to see where they're falling off.


So having, you know, for a lot of our clients we'll have two, three, four different tech


dashboards.


Get them to the technical person on the client side so they can immediately see if there's


an issue.


If they've updated the website but maybe they forgot to update a certain portion of it,


they've got a technical issue and the dashboard can help detect that.


So these are just a few.


I'm a huge fan of dashboards.


They're very powerful, but the big key is to make sure that not only you but your client


understands how to use them and they use them on a regular basis.


I hope that's been very helpful.


Again, I'm Ed Rees and these are my top five dashboards.


Why Effective, Modern SEO Requires Technical, Creative, and Strategic Skills - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week I'm going to do something unusual.


I don't usually point out these inconsistencies or sort of take issue with other folks' content


on the web, because I generally find that that's not all that valuable and useful.


But I'm going to make an exception here.


There is an article by Jason DeMers, who I think might actually be here in Seattle, maybe


he and I can hang out at some point, called Why Modern SEO Requires Almost No Technical


Expertise.


It was an article that got a shocking amount of traction and attention on Facebook.


It has thousands of shares, on LinkedIn it did really well, on Twitter it got a bunch


of attention.


Some folks in the SEO world have already pointed out some issues around this, but because of


the increasing popularity of this article, and because I think there's this hopefulness


from worlds outside of the hardcore SEO world that are looking to this piece and going,


look, this is great, we don't have to be technical, we don't have to worry about technical things


in order to do SEO, and I completely get the appeal of that.


I did want to point out some of the reasons why this is not so accurate.


At the same time, I don't want to rain on Jason because I think that it's very possible,


right?


He's writing an article for Entrepreneur, maybe he has a sort of a commitment to them,


maybe he had no idea that this article was going to spark so much attention and investment,


and he does make some good points.


I think it's just really the title and then some of the messages inside there that I take


strong issue with, and so I wanted to bring those up.


First off, some of the good points he did bring up.


He wisely says, you don't need to know how to code or to write and read algorithms in


order to do SEO, and I totally agree with that.


If today you're looking at SEO and you're thinking, well, am I going to get more into


this subject, am I going to try investing in SEO, but I don't even know HTML and CSS


yet, those are good skills to have and they will help you in SEO, but you don't need them.


Jason's totally right, you don't have to have them and you can learn and pick up some of


these things and do searches, watch some Whiteboard Fridays, check out some guides, and pick up


a lot of that stuff later on as you need it in your career.


SEO doesn't have that hard requirement.


And secondly, he makes an intelligent point that we've made many times here at Moz, which


is that, broadly speaking, a better user experience is well correlated with better rankings.


You make a great website that delivers great user experience, that provides the answers


to searchers' questions, and gives them extraordinarily good content, way better than what's out there


already in the search results.


Generally speaking, you're going to see happy searchers and that's going to lead to higher


rankings.


But not entirely, right?


There's a lot of other elements that go in here.


So I'll bring up some frustrating points around the piece as well.


First off, there's no acknowledgement, and I find this a little disturbing, that the


ability to read and write code, or even HTML and CSS, which I think are the basic place


to start, is helpful or can take your SEO efforts to the next level.


And I think both of those things are true, right?


So being able to look at a webpage, view source on it, or pull up Firebug in Firefox or something,


diagnose what's going on, and then go, oh, that's why Google is not able to see this


content.


That's why we're not ranking for this keyword or term, or why even when I enter this exact


sentence in quotes into Google, which is on our page, this is why it's not bringing it


up.


It's because it's loading it after the page from a remote file that Google can't access.


These are technical things, and being able to see how that code is built, how it's structured,


what's going on there, very, very helpful.


Some coding knowledge also can take your SEO efforts even further.


So many times, SEOs are stymied by the conversations that we have with our programmers and our


developers and the technical staff on our teams when we can have those conversations


intelligently, because at least we understand the principles of how an if-then statement


works, or what software engineering best practices are being used, or they can upload something


into a GitHub repository and we can take a look at it there.


That kind of stuff is really helpful.


Secondly, I don't like that the article overly reduces all of this information that we have


about what we've learned about Google.


So he mentions two sources.


One is things that Google tells us, and others are SEO experiments.


I think both of those are true, although I'd add that there's sort of a sixth sense of


knowledge that we gain over time from looking at many, many search results and kind of having


this feel for why things rank and what might be wrong with a site and getting really good


at that using tools and data as well.


There's people who can look at Open Site Explorer and then go, aha, I bet this is going to happen.


They can look, and 90% of the time they're right.


He boils this down to, one, write quality content, and two, reduce your bounce rate.


Neither of those things are wrong.


You should write quality content, although I'd argue there are lots of other forms of


quality content that aren't necessarily written video, images and graphics, podcasts, lots


of other stuff.


Secondly, just doing those two things is not always enough.


So you can see, right, like many, many folks look and go, I have quality content.


It has a low bounce rate.


How come I don't rank better?


Well, you know, your competitors, they're also going to have quality content with a


low bounce rate.


That's not a very high bar.


Also, frustratingly, I get this really gets in my craw.


I don't think write quality content means anything.


You tell me, right, when you hear that, to me that is a totally non-actionable, non-useful


phrase, that's a piece of advice that is so generic as to be discardable.


So I really wish that there was more substance behind that.


The article also makes that, in my opinion, totally inaccurate claim that modern SEO really


is reduced to the happier your users are when they visit your site, the higher you're going


to rank.


Wow.


Okay, again, I think broadly these things are correlated, right?


User happiness and rank is broadly correlated, but it's not a one-to-one.


This is not like a, oh, well, that's a 1.0 correlation.


I would guess that the correlation is probably closer to like the page authority range.


I'd bet it's like 0.35 or something correlation.


If you were to actually measure this broadly across the web and say like, hey, were you


happier with result one, two, three, four, five, the ordering would not be perfect at


all.


It probably wouldn't even be close.


And there's a ton of reasons why sometimes someone who ranks on page two or page three


or doesn't rank at all for a query is doing a better piece of content than the person


who does rank well or ranks on page one, position one.


And then the article suggests five, five and sort of a half steps to successful modern


SEO, which I think is a really incomplete list.


So Jason gives offering a good onsite experience, writing good content, getting others to acknowledge


you as an authority, rising in social popularity, earning local relevance, problematic, and


then dealing with modern CMS systems, which he notes most modern CMS systems are more


SEO friendly.


The thing is there's nothing actually wrong with any of these.


They're all generally speaking correct, either directly or indirectly related to SEO.


The one about local relevance I have some issue with because he doesn't note that there's


a separate algorithm for sort of how local SEO is done and how Google ranks local sites


in maps and in their local search results.


And also not noted is that rising in social popularity won't necessarily directly help


your SEO, although it can have indirect and positive benefits.


But I feel like this list is super incomplete.


And I, okay, I brainstormed just off the top of my head in the 10 minutes before we filmed


this video a list.


The list was so long that as you can see, I filled up the whole whiteboard and then


didn't have any more room and I'm not going to bother to erase and go try and be absolutely


complete but there's a huge, huge number of things that are important, critically important


for technical SEO.


If you don't know how to do these things, you are sunk in many cases.


You can't be an effective SEO analyst or consultant or in-house team member because you simply


can't diagnose the potential problems, rectify those potential problems, identify strategies


that your competitors are using, be able to diagnose a traffic gain or loss.


You have to have these skills in order to do that.


I'll run through these quickly but really the idea is just that this list is so huge


and so long that I think it's very, very, very wrong to say technical SEO is behind


us.


I almost feel like the opposite is true.


We have to be able to understand things like content rendering and indexability.


We need to know crawl structure, internal links, JavaScript, Ajax, right?


If something's post-loading after the page and Google's not able to index it or there's


links that are accessible via JavaScript or Ajax, maybe Google can't necessarily see those


or isn't crawling them as effectively or is crawling them but isn't assigning them as


much link weight as they might be assigning other stuff and you've made it tough to link


to them externally and so they can't crawl it.


Disabling crawling and or indexing of thin or incomplete or non-search targeted content,


right?


We have a bunch of search results pages.


Should we use rel="preve next"?


Should we robotset text those out?


Should we disallow from crawling with meta robots?


Should we rel="canonical them to other pages"?


Should we exclude them via the protocols inside Google Webmaster Tools, which is now Google


Search Console?


Whoa!


You have to know that!


Managing redirects, domain migrations, content updates.


A new piece of content comes out replacing an old piece of content.


What do we do with that old piece of content?


What's the best practice?


And it varies by different things.


We have a whole whiteboard Friday about the different things that you could do with that.


What about a big redirect or a domain migration, right?


You buy another company and you're redirecting their site to your site.


You have to understand things about subdomain structures versus subfolders, which again,


we've done another whiteboard Friday about that.


Proper error codes, right?


Downtime procedures and not found pages.


So if you're 404 pages, turn out to all be 200 pages and they go, well, now you've made


a big error there, right?


And Google could be crawling tons of 404 pages that they think are real pages because you


made it a status code 200 or you used a 404 code when you should have used a 410, which


is permanently removed, to be able to get it completely out of the index as opposed


to having Google revisit it and keep it in the index.


Downtime procedures, right?


So there's specifically a, I can't even remember, it's a 5xx code that you can use, maybe it's


a 503 or something that you can use that's like revisit later, we're having some downtime


right now.


And Google urges you to use that specific code rather than using a 404, which tells


them this page is now in error and Disney had that problem a while ago, if you guys


remember where they 404'd all their pages during like an hour of downtime and then their


homepage, when you search for Disney World, was like not found.


Oh, geez, Disney World, not so good.


International and multi-language targeting issues.


I won't go into that but you have to know the protocols there, right?


Duplicate content, syndication, scrapers, how do we handle all that?


Somebody else wants to take our content, put it on their site, what should we do?


Everyone's scraping our content, what can we do?


We have duplicate content on our own site, what should we do?


Diagnosing traffic drops via analytics and metrics, right?


Being able to look at a rankings report, being able to look at analytics, connecting those


up and trying to see like why did we go up or down?


Did we have less pages being indexed, more pages being indexed, more pages getting traffic


less, more keywords less?


Understanding advanced search parameters.


Today, just today, I was checking out the related parameter in Google which is fascinating


for most sites.


Well, for Moz, weirdly, related colon our site dot com shows nothing but for virtually


every other site, well, most other sites on the web, it does show some really interesting


data and you can see how Google is connecting up essentially intentions and topics from


different sites and pages which can be fascinating, could expose opportunities for links, could


expose understanding of how they view your site versus your competition or who they think


your competition is and then there's tons of parameters like in URL and in anchor and


dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.


In anchor doesn't work anymore, never mind.


Okay, I have to go faster because we're just going to run out of these like come on, interpreting


and leveraging data in Google Search Console.


If you don't know how to use that, Google could be telling you of all sorts of errors


and you don't know what they are.


Identifying topic modeling and extraction, right, using all these cool tools that are


coming out for better keyword research and better on page targeting.


I talked about a couple of those at MozCon like Monkey Learn, there's the new MozContext


API which will be coming out soon around that.


There's the Alchemy API which a lot of folks really like and use.


Identifying and extracting opportunities based on site crawls.


So you know, you run a screaming frog crawl on your site and you're going, oh, here's


all these problems and issues.


If you don't have these technical skills, you can't diagnose that, you can't figure


out what's wrong, can't figure out what needs fixing, what needs addressing.


Using rich snippet format to stand out in the SERPs.


This is just getting a better click-through rate which can seriously help your site and


obviously your traffic.


Applying Google-supported protocols like, I don't know, rel canonical, meta description,


rel prev next, hreflang, robots text, meta robots, x-robots, no ODP, XML site maps, rel


nofollow, the list goes on and on and on.


If you're not technical, you don't know what those are, you think you just need to write


good content and lower your bounce rate.


It's not going to work.


Using APIs from services like AdWords or Mozscape or Ahrefs or Majestic or SEMrush or SerpScape


or Alchemy API, those APIs can have powerful things that they can do for your site and


powerful problems they could help you solve if you knew how to use them.


It's actually not that hard to write something even inside a Google Doc or Excel to pull


from an API and get some data in there.


There's a bunch of good tutorials out there.


Richard Baxter has one, Annie Cushing has one, I think Distilled has some.


Really cool stuff there.


Diagnosing page load speed issues, which goes right to what Jason was talking about, right?


You need that fast loading page.


Well, if you don't have any technical skills, you can't figure out why your page might not


be loading quickly.


Diagnosing mobile friendliness issues, same thing.


Advising app developers on the new protocols around app deep linking so that you can get


the content from your mobile apps into the web search results on mobile devices.


Awesome, super powerful, potentially crazy powerful as mobile search is becoming bigger


than desktop.


Okay, I'm going to take a deep breath and relax.


I don't know Jason's intention.


In fact, if he were in this room, he'd be like, no, I totally agree with all those things.


I wrote the article in a rush.


I had no idea it was going to be big, and I was just trying to make the broader points


around like you don't have to be a coder in order to do SEO.


That's completely fine.


I'm not going to try and rain criticism down on him, but I think if you're reading that


article or you're seeing it in your feed or your clients are or your boss is or other


folks are in your world, maybe you can point them to this whiteboard Friday and let them


know, nope, that's not quite right.


There's a ton of technical SEO that is required in 2015 and will be for years to come, I think,


that SEOs have to have in order to be effective at their jobs.


All right, everyone, look forward to some great comments, and we'll see you again next


time for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


MozCon 2015 - 08 - Too Busy to Do Good Work with Marta Turek

Okay, so you go to work every day, you put in your 8 to 12 hours, you're working hard,


but are you doing really meaningful work?


As knowledge workers, we should be creating, innovating, challenging best practices, challenging


the status quo, defining new best practices, but are we really doing that, or has the knowledge


worker today become the modern line worker?


Have you asked yourself that question?


Here's why you should.


The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a study this year in which they surveyed 478


high level marketing executives from around the world.


They also conducted interviews with high level CMOs.


And the consensus was clear.


80% of CMOs say that they need to restructure the marketing function to better support their


business.


So as marketers, what that means is that you can either ride the wave or be crushed by


the wave.


So what's changed?


Well, in short, everything.


The first element is actually a really positive one, in that for the first time, marketing


is being seen as a revenue driver on the P&L statement versus a cost.


What that means is that marketers increasingly have a lot more responsibility.


We're responsible for the entire customer experience, right from initial awareness through


to loyalty, through to advocacy.


We're responsible for customer engagement.


What does customer engagement mean?


It means that customers are repeat purchasing our product, they are involved with the product,


and they're loyal to what we're offering them.


And increasingly, we need to be offering our marketing message via multiple channels.


In the past, the buzzword was multichannel.


Now that buzzword is omnichannel.


And all of that means that as marketers, we need to grasp new technologies, we need to


understand data, we need to understand marketing operations, and we need to, within all of


those tactics, be able to understand and grasp the bigger picture.


But we're overwhelmed.


In our day to day, we're really running that hamster race, and we don't have time to develop


these new skills, especially when every single day looks like this.


On average, we experience one interruption every eight minutes, which equates to seven


interruptions an hour.


If you do the math, that takes you to 50 to 60 interruptions every day.


Assume that the average interruption takes five minutes, and then you're looking at wasting


roughly 50% of your average workday.


Furthermore, assume that 80% of those interruptions offer little or no value.


You're looking at three hours of wasted time in a day.


So we know that the expectations of us as marketers are growing.


We know that there is a widening skills gap.


So what are we going to do about that?


Well, we need a formula for success.


So that's what I'm going to be speaking to you about today.


We're going to dissect our workday, and we're going to focus on the tactics that can make


us more effective in the granular day to day grind of what we do.


So this is where we're going to start.


We're going to start with habits.


So conventional wisdom has it that it takes 21 days to develop a new habit.


Now what is a habit?


The definition really of a habit is that it is a decision that was once conscious that


has now become unconscious.


And that is our goal, is that we want to be making tiny, specific changes in our daily


work habits so that we can become more effective, so that we can have more time to think and


to create and to innovate.


And by applying these tiny, specific habits every day and staying committed to that process,


that is where you're going to develop your individual competitive advantage, competitive


advantage for your business.


So let's talk about how we're going to do that.


We're going to define a process for these steps that we're going to take to become more


effective.


And this is what it looks like.


So over 21 days, we are going to integrate 21 new tactics that we want to develop into


habits.


Now, I come from agency, I work in the PPC environment, so you'll see that many of the


examples I talk about are going to be related to PPC, but you're going to be able to apply


them to your marketing function.


So on day one, we're going to introduce tactic number one that we want to become habit number


one.


On day two, we're going to integrate a second tactic.


And then on day two, we're going to be focusing on implementing both tactic number one and


tactic number two.


On day three, we're going to introduce the third tactic and so forth.


So by 21 days, you will have introduced 21 new tactics that are going to make you more


effective in your day to day.


And the goal is that by day 21, the first tactic will then become habit number one.


By day 22, the second tactic will become habit number two.


Our goal here is that we're trying to make these effectiveness measures, we're trying


to make them unconscious.


So in the same way that you wake up in the morning and you brush your teeth and you get


ready for work and you don't think about that, that's what we want to do with these effectiveness


tactics so that you are naturally integrating better practices into your day.


So we've talked about how we're going to do it.


Now let's focus on what we're going to be focusing on.


So our goal is to try to create flow in the different components that make up work.


So what do you need to do work?


First you need time.


You need the capacity to be able to do work.


Then you need context.


You need to know what to work on in order to start to work.


Once you know what to work on and you actually sit down to start working, you need focus


and you need clear mindset in order to achieve that work.


And finally, most of us here don't work, well, I say we don't work in silos, most of us probably


do work in silos, but most of us work in teams and so we need to communicate.


And so that's that final loop, that communication loop in work.


So then once the communication in work happens, then you move back to time.


So these are the specific elements that we're going to be focusing on in terms of what tactics


to apply to make us more effective in our day.


Okay, so what is the biggest time waster in our work days?


Well, 49% of people agree, meetings.


I think for me this doodle is more valuable than what I get out of most meetings I attend.


So the first thing that we're going to do is that we're going to focus on taking back


control of your work day.


And the way that we're going to do that is that you're going to review your calendar


and you're going to ask yourself, how much time do I have to do real work?


And when I say real work, I'm talking about meaningful work.


I'm not talking about going to meetings and I'm not talking about answering emails.


Most of us, we're not hired to do that.


That is a secondary element of what we do.


I'm talking about your unique skill set.


I'm talking about that work that you should be doing because you are best suited to do


it because you can offer the most value to your organization or your team by focusing


on that work.


So your first tactic that you're going to implement is you're going to stop mindlessly


accepting meetings.


So what does that mean?


It means that if you receive a meeting invite where there's no clear agenda, where you don't


know what the expectations are of you in that meeting, where you don't know why that meeting


even exists, you're going to decline that meeting.


If you have a meeting suddenly pop up in your calendar, same day invite, it's Thursday morning,


you're working, meeting pops up for 2 o'clock in the afternoon, you're going to reschedule


because sometimes I find that people seem to think that we're sitting at our computers


waiting for a meeting to pop up in our calendars and we have nothing better to do in the day.


That's not the case.


Meetings can be rescheduled.


And the third thing that you're going to do is that when you find meetings that might


be stacked in such a way where you have 30-minute gaps or 15-minute gaps between those meetings,


you're going to try to reschedule them.


It's not always going to be possible, but those 30 minutes are lost time.


That time is gone.


There is no way you're going to be productive in 30 minutes between one meeting and the


next.


So the best thing to do in that situation is to try to reschedule them so they can be


back to back.


So now you've cleared up your calendar, and this is this tactic you're going to implement


every week.


Once you've done that, what you're going to do with that time that you've now restructured


is you're going to create two to four-hour blocks of uninterrupted work time in your


day.


And you're going to schedule that in and create a meeting invite for yourself so that your


team can also see that you're busy in that time.


So effectively what we've done now with these first two tactics is that we have created


the time to work.


Now the next element is to know what to work on.


In order to know what to work on, we need to plan.


So our third element is to practice systematic time planning by using lists.


And we're going to create different lists for different purposes.


So first you're going to create your master list.


Your master list is a brain dump of everything that you could potentially be working on.


Every ad hoc request, every report that you need to build, every campaign, every project.


It's a master task list.


Then at the end of every month, you're going to create a monthly list.


This monthly list comes from your master task list which drives everything, but the monthly


list is a little bit more strategic.


You're thinking about what are the high-level elements that I want to be focusing on this


month.


Then either at the end of the week on a Friday or at the start of the week on a Sunday night,


you're going to create your weekly list.


Now your weekly list is going to be a lot more tactical.


This is what is going to define your priorities for the next week.


And the goal here is that you are proactively planning your work rather than reactively


reacting to work in your day-to-day environment and waiting for emails to come into your inbox


to tell you what to work on.


And then you're going to create a daily list at the end of every day.


And this is really important.


It's really important that you do this at the end of the day rather than at the start


of the new day because what you're actually doing is that you're allowing your subconscious


to think about those tasks while you're sleeping.


And then the next day when you wake up and you go into the office and you start to work,


you already know what your priorities are.


You're not reacting to the environment around you to tell you what to work on.


You know what you should be working on.


So now that you know what to work on, we need to figure out how to make you effective when


you're actually working on that stuff.


So first thing we're going to do, we're going to switch off all the distractions.


Now I know this is going to be hard and it's going to...


You will mess up.


You will mess up and that's okay.


Just keep trying.


You're trying to develop a new habit.


So the goal is just to persevere with every one of these tactics.


Start for two hours.


Just switch off all the pings and pop-ups and notifications that you get and start with


two hours.


Now I know this one's going to be a challenge for many of you, but just don't do it.


Don't check email.


Try it.


For two hours, don't check email and you'll be surprised at how much you can achieve when


you're focusing on a single task.


I don't know, I'm sure many of you have read about this, but they say it takes 20 minutes


to get back to the level of focus that you had after a distraction.


So if you allow yourself to check email in your uninterrupted work time, you're effectively


losing 20 minutes of productivity.


Next time yourself.


There's a lot of tools out there that allow you to time how long the work takes.


This will help you to understand how long things actually take and it will help you


to more effectively plan your work, more effectively forecast tasks for the future, and it will


also give you a good idea of how you're spending your days.


So now this next element focuses on organizing your information.


As knowledge workers, that is really one of our key competitive advantages, personally


or within our organizations, is the information that we carry.


The average executive loses approximately six weeks, they say, searching for missing


information.


So what you want to be doing is you want to be integrating specific tactics that help


you to organize all of the information that you have around you, starting with clear naming


conventions.


Now, I'm using a PPC example here, but this is relevant to every random tools that you're


using, whether it's Salesforce, whether it's PPC, whether it's Google Analytics.


There's places within those tools where you need to be creating some type of campaign


or some type of structure and you want to have a linear naming convention that everyone


else is aware of as well and everybody else in the team is using so that it's easier to


navigate that tool.


The next thing that you want to do is wherever possible, you want to indicate actions and


labels and naming schemes within the actual user interface.


And here again is a PPC example to show you what I mean by that.


This is an example of a negative keyword list within the UI.


And what you'll see is that within the label for each of the lists, there are instructions


for which campaigns to apply this list to.


So when you're giving somebody a task and you're saying, hey, can you update the negative


keyword lists, then whoever is working on that, they may have never worked on it before.


If they see these types of instructions built into the UI, suddenly you can delegate a task


rather than holding someone's hand through it because they don't know which lists are


applicable to which campaigns.


So now when it comes to organizing your information, email I think is one of the most overlooked


information repositories that we work with every day.


And it's actually becoming one of my pet peeves in terms of how much information stays in


email.


I actually, I've started to say recently information goes to die in inbox because we don't action


that information.


So that's what I mean by emails not a storage container, it's a shipping container.


What you want to be doing is you want to be extracting critical information from your


inbox.


And there's different types of information that you receive in your inbox.


So if you receive a file from a client that needs to be saved, you make sure that that


is saved in your document management platform.


If you receive a request for a task, you put that into your master task list.


And then if you receive important information about a campaign or a project or a specific


client, you put that into your master knowledge base.


And so this way, I mean, we get hundreds of emails a day, and this way if you're the only


person on the team receiving the specific email and there's really important information


in there, you can make sure that the entire team has access to that information.


And that makes it possible to delegate and to share information more quickly, and you


waste less of your time having to repeat yourself or to verbally share information because not


everybody has that context.


Next element in terms of organizing information is to label file names clearly.


And I mean within your document management platform, you want to have a hierarchy, and


you want to make sure that everybody on the team can navigate the folder structure that


has been created without having, you know, without being told how to do it.


They should be able to see it intuitively.


There should be context in terms of how your files are named.


One of my favorite examples of how a Word document was once named, it was filed as document.


Now, that's not useful to anybody.


So you want to make sure that the context is there, that it's dated, there's a clear


purpose, and the purpose is stated in the file name.


So this one is a little, I know I'm asking a lot of you with this one, but, and I'm using


a PPC example here.


It's I say master client knowledge base, it can be a knowledge base for anything.


But what you want to be doing is something like this where, so we work with many clients,


we work with clients that are with us on average for a 12-month contract and can be with us


for five years.


So we have different team members working on these projects as well.


And what we develop, and you can use any structure that works for you, Excel works really well


for this, where, you know, imagine this is an AdWords, this is a knowledge base for an


AdWords client, and every single tab serves a specific purpose.


So in one tab, we'll have a visual representation of an account structure so that we can explain


to someone within 30 seconds how the account is structured rather than someone having to


navigate into the UI and try to figure it out themselves.


We have the different geographic markets that we're targeting in there.


You might have a budget tab in there.


You will have campaign settings in there.


What are the standard best practice campaign settings that you're implementing for this


client?


And so forth.


And so the idea here is that when you do have new team members coming on board, that they


are able to access this information and very quickly ramp up on the project.


So again, we work in teams, and we need to understand contextually what everybody is


working on.


So one of the things that we do there in terms of knowing, for example, in a paid search


campaign, if there are three people working on that project, you want to make sure that


everybody understands what everybody else is doing within the UI.


And we do that by setting up a change sheet in Google Docs.


Now for those of you familiar with paid search, this is not a replica of your change history.


These are high-level points that you're putting into the document in terms of the actions


that you've taken.


And what's really great about this is that when you're doing monthly or quarterly reporting,


and you see a dip or rise in your trend, in your data, it's so quick to reference this


type of document and to see how an action might be tied to a change in the data.


And then that helps you to tell the story behind the data.


So now we're going to talk about communication.


So it's that final element of work.


There's that feedback loop.


And it's about communicating about the right things in the right places.


We tend to use email for everything.


And then we tend to check email all the time in a day as well.


So if you are going to write an email, try to write a subject line that helps the receiver


understand the priority of the email.


So here is an example.


When you're writing emails, put in the client name at the start or the project name.


Give some context about what this is about.


And then put in the purpose of the email.


Trust me, when you write subject lines like that, you will get faster responses, especially


for those types of people who are receiving hundreds of emails in a day.


You're helping them prioritize.


And I know from experience this works.


If you start doing this, there are people out there who will like this, and they'll


start returning the favor.


And you'll start to receive emails with awesome subject lines.


So the next element is to compartmentalize your communication.


So what I mean by that is that you want to you don't always need to send an email.


How often do you get emails with three words in it or one word in it?


What you want to do is that you want to move your communication to the relevant platform.


So if you're using project management tool and you've allocated a task to someone and


you want to add some context or additional subtasks to that task, don't send an email.


Put all task-related information into the project management tool.


If you're working on a task and you need some context or some information or you want a


status update on the task, use a group chat tool.


Hip chat is great for that, where you've got specific rooms allocated to specific projects


and you can have a conversation in that room about a specific project.


And then finally, ask yourself, do I really need to send that email?


Is it really necessary?


Sometimes it's not.


Sometimes you can pick up the phone.


Sometimes you can just Skype someone.


So try to A, reduce the number of emails that you send and B, communicate about the right


things in the right places.


A third thing in terms of becoming more effective with communication, this ties to agendas.


We have a great practice where we will write our client agendas within a Google Doc and


the client has access to that Google Doc and the whole team can collaborate on the agenda


and then the meeting notes are also written in that same Google Doc.


So eventually, over time, you have this awesome repository of agendas in the right place with


their accompanying meeting notes and it really helps to, again, tell the story about the


client progression or the history.


When I joined ROI, the first thing I did is, one of the first things I did was to read


through the Google Docs of agendas for the clients that I was working on to better understand


the history and the context and where we're at with those clients.


So now I'm just going to give you a few more quick tips, actionable tips in terms of things


that you can be doing.


So your next tactic, if you don't already do this, bookmark.


Bookmark all your frequently used programs in Chrome, in Firefox.


A quick tip that I learned and it's really cool, just small things that you can do to


make yourself more effective is that if there are specific programs that you use and that


have typical branding so that you can see what that program is just with a little image,


you can get rid of the text and you can just bookmark those little images so then you have


more space within your toolbar to bookmark more things.


Use Pocket.


I recently discovered Pocket.


If you are like me and you're a culprit of having 25, 30 tabs open in multiple windows


because you want to get back to all of those things that you need to read and then your


computer crashes and then you lose it all, Pocket is a great solution for you.


It's a fantastic tool.


You can very quickly, within the click of a button, bookmark, I say bookmark, but you're


pocketing, so you can put into Pocket all of the things that you want to read later.


And it integrates really well between devices as well.


Use a password management tool.


If you don't already, there are a ton of options out there on the market.


Most of them, you know, add a certain level of free and then you can always upgrade to


the premium version.


But we use so many different tools and platforms today and we've got so many passwords to keep


track of.


If you want to save five minutes a day, if not more, use a password management tool.


Standardize.


So again, this goes back to that element of we're knowledge workers.


We should be creating.


We should be thinking of new things.


We shouldn't be stuck in repeatable tasks.


So if you are working on a repeatable task, every time you work on it, add an instruction


to it.


You don't need to write the full instructions the next time that you do it, but if you diligently


add new instructions every time you're doing that repeatable task, eventually you can delegate


that and give it to somebody else so that you can focus on the work that you should


be working on.


Use a project brief.


Again, so, you know, these things that I'm asking of you, I'm not really asking you to


do anything more.


I'm just asking you things to do a little bit differently.


So think about the last time that you were starting to work with a new vendor or exploring


that relationship or launching a new campaign.


Say for example you're launching a rocket fuel campaign.


So you as the key stakeholder at your company are interfacing with the key stakeholder at


rocket fuel.


And you're going back and forth and you're exchanging information and then your email


stream becomes 20 emails and then you decide, okay, cool, we're ready for launch, we have


all of the details.


Only you two have all of that information.


And it's in your email.


So what do you do?


You forward that email string to the other relevant people that need to know about it


and they need to go through those 20 emails to get that relevant information where all


you really needed to do was to put it into a simple document.


It does not have to be complex.


Just put key pieces of information that you extract from the emails into that document.


And if you want to be really smart about it, you should be doing that while with the first


email that starts rather than the 20th so that you don't have to read all 20 emails


again in order to summarize that information.


So now we've talked about, these are 20 actionable tips.


And remember, we're integrating a new one every single day.


We're not necessarily actioning them every single day, but we're bringing them into our


consciousness.


So the final tip.


So once you've been doing this for almost three weeks, set aside 30 minutes in your


day to update your skills.


What we're focusing on here is one, to be more effective in how we work, and two, to


increase our skillset.


Because we need to do that.


If we don't do that, we're going to fall behind.


Why are we going to fall behind?


Because to work, we don't just need time.


Before you need time to work, you need the knowledge to work.


You can have all the time in the world, but if you don't have the knowledge, you become


redundant.


And that is our goal.


And for marketers, given the way this is so big and always following us, we need to be


updating our skills.


So today is day zero.


Tomorrow is day one.


What tiny specific habits are you going to integrate into your day?


Thank you.


Awesome tips, where I was sitting over there, there was a lot of heads nodding, no meetings.


So a couple of questions we got on Twitter.


One was how do I encourage my team to do this with the no meetings?


That seems to be a sticking point.


The other was how do I sell the C-level on no meetings?


How do I convince my manager, my supervisor, everybody else, how do I spread this throughout


my company?


So when it comes to meetings, I think the way to do that is to start asking, ask your


C-suite those difficult questions.


When there's, whether your colleague is sending you a meeting invite or whether it's the CMO,


ask them, you don't have to be aggressive about it in any way.


All you say is what is the agenda for this meeting?


What is the purpose of this meeting?


What role would you like me to play in this meeting?


How do I prepare for this meeting?


If they can't, then you're helping them to think about it and they might come to the


conclusion themselves that this meeting isn't necessary.


And then, but really it starts with you.


Before you can teach anyone else to do any of these things, you need to lead by example


and you'll see that some people will organically start to respond to you and start to implement


the same things and others you're going to have to convince a little bit more.


I think that's awesome.


We have a rule at Moz that you're supposed to have an agenda for every meeting and if


you don't, the meeting doesn't take place.


Yep, I agree with that completely.


Okay, we got a Rand Fishkin asking, I like to use my email as my task list.


I email myself task and at inbox zero, I have no work left.


Is this a good idea?


Rand, I don't know how you have no work left.


I think you're fooling yourself.


I mean, in terms of where you keep track of your tasks, what tools you use, that is going


to be a personal decision.


Having said that, I believe in having a master task list in a place where you can clearly


see all of the tasks because then that helps you to better prioritize.


If you're emailing yourself tasks in individual emails, you might very quickly lose track


of the big picture.


Okay, last question.


This is the rapid fire round because a lot of people are asking about your favorite platforms


and tools for each task.


So I'll say a problem and you say what your favorite platform is.


Knowledge base.


Excel.


Communication.


Hip chat.


Project management.


Asana and monkey works.


All right.


Marta Turek, thank you very much for these tips.


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SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Hello, I'm Tom Capper from Moz and today I want to talk about how I'm going to use chat


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

GPT and NLP, natural language processing apps in general in my day to day SEO tasks.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

This has been a big topic recently, I've seen a lot of people tweeting about this, some


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

people are saying SEO is dead, this is the beginning of the end as always.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I think that's maybe a bit too dramatic but there are some big ways that this can be useful


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

and that this will affect SEOs in their industry I think.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

The first question I want to ask is can we use this instead of Google?


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Are people going to start using NLP powered assistance instead of search engines in a


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

big way?


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So I asked, just being meta here, I asked chat GPT to ask a song about Google search


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

results being ruined by an influx of AI content.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

This is obviously something that Google themselves is really concerned about right?


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

They talked about it with the helpful content update.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Now I think this is, the fact that we can be concerned about AI content ruining search


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

results suggests there might be some problem with an AI powered search engine.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Now AI powered is maybe the wrong term because obviously Google themselves are to some degree


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

AI powered but I mean pure AI written results.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So for example I stole this from a tweet and I've credited the account below but if you


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

ask it what is the fastest marine mammal?


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

The fastest marine mammal is the peregrine falcon.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

That is not a mammal.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

And then it mentions the sailfish which is not a mammal and marlin which is not a mammal.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

This is a particularly bad result whereas if I Google this, great, that is an example


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

of a fast mammal.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

We're at least on the right track.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Similarly if I'm looking for a specific web page, I've searched Atlantic article about


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

the declining quality of search results and even though clearly if you look at the other


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

information that it services, clearly this has consumed some kind of selection of web


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

pages.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It's refusing to acknowledge that here whereas obviously if I Google that, very easy, I can


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

find what I'm looking for straight away.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So yeah maybe I'm not going to just replace Google with chatgpt just yet.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

What about writing copy though?


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

What about, you know, I'm fed up of having to manually write blog posts about content


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

that I want to rank for or that I think my audience want to hear about so I'm just going


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

to outsource it to a robot.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Well here's an example.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Write a blog post about the future of NLP in SEO.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Now at first glance this looks okay but actually when you look a little bit closer it's a bluff.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It's vapid.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It doesn't really use any concrete examples.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It doesn't really read the room.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It doesn't talk about sort of how our industry might be affected more broadly.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It just uses some quick tactical examples.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It's not the worst article you could find.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I'm sure if you asked, you know, you pulled a teenager off the street who knew nothing


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

about this and asked them to write about it they'd probably produce something worse than


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

this but on the other hand if you saw an article on the Moz blog or another industry credible


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

source you'd expect something better than this.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So yeah I don't I don't think that we're going to be using chat GPT as a as our copywriter


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

right away but there may be some nuance which I'll get to in just a bit.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

What about writing descriptions though?


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I thought this was pretty good.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Write a meta description for my Moz blog post about SEO predictions in 2023.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Now I could do a lot better with the query here.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I could talk I could tell it what my post is going to be about for starters so that


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

it can write a more specific description.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

This is already quite good.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It's the right length for a meta description.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It covers the bases.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It's inviting people to click.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It makes the post sound exciting.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

This is this pretty good.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

You'd obviously want a human to review these for the factual issues we talked about before


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

but I think a human plus the AI is going to be more effective here than just the human


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

or at least more efficient time efficient.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So that's a potential use case.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

What about ideating copies?


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So I said that the pure chat GPT written blog post wasn't great.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

But one thing I could do is get it to give me a list of subtopics or subheadings that


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I might want to include in my own post.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So here although it is not the best blog post in the world it has covered some topics that


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I might not have thought about.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So I might want to include those in my own post.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So instead of asking it write a blog post about the future of NLP and SEO I could say


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

write a bullet point list of ways NLP might affect SEO and then I could steal some of


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

those if I hadn't thought of them myself as potential topics that my own ideation had


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

missed.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Similarly you could use that as a copywriter's brief or something like that again in addition


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

to human participation.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

My favorite use case so far though is coding.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So personally I'm not a developer by trade but I do often like many SEOs I have to interact


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

with SQL with JavaScript with Excel these kinds of thing and that often results in a


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

lot of googling from first principles for someone less experienced in those areas and


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

even experienced coders often find themselves falling back to Stack Overflow and this kind


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

of thing.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So here's an example write an SQL query that extracts all the rows from table 2 where column


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

A also exists as a row in table 1.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So that's quite a complex you know I've not I've not really made an effort to make that


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

query very easy to understand but the result is actually pretty good.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

It's a it's a working piece of SQL with an explanation below.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

This is much quicker than me figuring this out from first principles and I can take that


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

myself and work it into something good.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So again this is AI plus human rather than just AI or just human being the most effective.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I could get a lot of value out of this and I definitely will.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I think in future rather than starting by going to Stack Overflow or googling something


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

that where I hope to see a Stack Overflow result I think I would start just by asking


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

here and then work from that.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

That's all.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

So that's how I think I'm going to be using ChatGBT in my day to day SEO tasks.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

I'd love to hear what you've got planned.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT

Let me know.


SEO Recap with Tom Capper — ChatGPT


#WhiteboardFriday: 21 Smart SEO Tips for 2021

Howdy Moz fans!


Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I'm Cyrus Shepard.


Today, so glad that you can join us.


We are talking about 21 Smart Google SEO Tips for 2021.


We're getting ready for a new year, a new year of SEO strategies.


These are 21 practical tips that you can implement that should hopefully move the needle on your


organic traffic.


These are some of the best tips that I've collected over the past year, many of them


that I'm going to use myself in my own SEO strategies.


Now we have four categories, increasing clicks, content on page SEO tips, technical SEO, and


a little bit of link building.


There's 21 of these.


These are going to go fast.


We're trying to do 10 to 12 minutes so we don't get to spend a lot of time on each one,


but don't fret.


We're going to link to appropriate resources in the transcript below so that we can keep


along and explore a little bit more.


All right, ready to dive in?


Let's start with clicks, specifically earning more clicks from Google without actually ranking


higher, because that's one of the great things about SEO.


You don't actually have to rank higher to get more traffic if you can get more clicks


from the rankings that you already have.


So let's talk about some specific strategies for getting more clicks without increasing


rankings.


First, favicon optimization.


Now I'm surprised more people haven't talked about this in 2020.


Google displays favicons in mobile search results and they can influence your click-through


rate if they're high contrast, if they're visible or not visible.


Having a good favicon can make a few percentage points difference, very minor, but it does


make a difference if you can get it right.


Aaron Wall, SEO book, wrote one of the very few posts about that.


We'll link to that below.


While we're optimizing our favicons, let's take a look at breadcrumb optimization.


Google displays breadcrumbs in both desktop and mobile search results.


They can be keyword-rich breadcrumbs, which can influence your click-through rate.


Now Google gets their breadcrumbs from a lot of places.


That can be your URL, your schema markup, your actual breadcrumbs on the page.


What you want to do is make sure Google is displaying the breadcrumbs that you want them


to display using those keywords that you choose.


The best way to do that, make sure that you have breadcrumbs actually on your page with


links that you're using schema markup.


Ideally, it would match your URL structure, but that isn't always necessary.


So a great breadcrumb optimization audit.


Let's optimize those meta descriptions.


This is so old-school SEO, but recent study shows that 30% of websites don't even use


meta descriptions.


Now, that's understandable because another study shows that 70% of the time, Google will


rewrite the meta description, usually because it's not using the keywords that the user


is searching for.


But if we write a well-crafted meta description, it can compel users to click.


And that means using keyword-rich descriptions that people are actually searching for.


So when Google does use your meta description, it's encouraging those clicks and acting as


marketing copy for your website.


Along with meta descriptions, titles.


Just shared a study recently showing that dates added to titles increased rankings for


a particular brand.


Numbers are generally one thing that I always test in title tags that usually produce pretty


consistent results.


Specifically, dates in title tags are often a winner.


January 2021.


Don't be spammy about it.


Don't include it if it doesn't make sense.


And don't fake it.


But if you can include a number, it will often increase your click-through rate for any given


query.


How about doing a boilerplate audit for your title tag?


Tip number five.


What's boilerplate?


Boilerplate are the parts of your title tag that repeat every single time.


For example, here at Moz, we put Moz, our brand name, at the end of every title tag.


We used to put Whiteboard Friday at the end of every Whiteboard Friday until we tested


it and found out that we actually got more clicks and higher rankings when we removed


it.


So boilerplate, you want your titles to be unique, provide unique value.


So I would encourage you to experiment with your boilerplate and see if removing it actually


increases your rankings.


Sometimes it's not going to.


Sometimes you need that boilerplate.


But do the test to find out.


Tip number six.


Schema.


Specifically, FAQ and how-to schema.


Google gave us a huge gift when they introduced these in search results.


Fact schema gives you a lot of search real estate.


You can't always win it, and you can't always win the how-to schema.


But when you do, that can definitely increase or influence people to click on your results,


expand those fact schemas out.


It's not appropriate for every page.


You want to make sure that you actually have those facts on your pages.


But it is one way, in appropriate situations, that you can increase clicks without increasing


your actual Google ranking.


All right.


So let's move on to some content and on-page tips.


Number seven.


This is the year I want you to look into relaunching your top content.


Content can go stale after a few years.


So we launch content.


You have a blog.


You launch it.


You share it on social media.


Most people forget about it after that.


So go back, look at your top content over the last two to five years or even 10 years,


if you want to go back that far, and see what you can relaunch by updating it, keeping it


on the same URL.


In some cases, you can see gains of 500 to 1,000% just by relaunching some of your old


content with some updates.


So do a relaunch audit in 2021.


Number eight.


Increasing internal linking.


Now, a lot of top SEO agencies, when they need to quickly increase rankings for clients,


there are generally two things that they know are the easiest levers to pull.


First, title tags and meta descriptions, what's getting more clicks.


But second is increasing the internal linking.


You know that you can increase internal links on your site, and there's probably some opportunities


there that you just haven't explored.


So let's talk about a couple easy ways to do that without having too much work.


Number nine is updating your old content with new links.


This is a step that we see people skip time and time again.


When you publish a new blog post, publish a new piece of content, make sure you're going


back and updating your old content with those new links.


So you're looking at the top keyword that you want to rank for and going in Google Search


Console or checking tools like Keyword Explorer to see what other pages on your site rank


for that keyword, and then adding links to the new content to those pages.


I find when I do this, time and time again, it lowers the bounce rate.


So you're not only updating your old page with fresh content and fresh links and adding


relevance, you're adding links to your new content.


So make sure when you publish new content, you're updating your old content with those


new links.


Number 10, remove unnecessary links from your content.


Now, this is a form of page rank sculpting.


Page rank sculpting is a dirty word in SEO, but actually it works to a certain extent.


It's not no-follow link page sculpting.


It is removing unnecessary links.


Do you really need a link to your team page on every page of your website?


Do you need a link to your contact form on every page of your website?


In many cases, you don't.


Sometimes you do.


But if you remove the unnecessary links, you can pass more link equity through the links


that actually count.


And those links are a major Google ranking signal.


Number 11, need you to do a mobile link parity audit.


What is that?


What is a mobile link parity audit?


That is ensuring that the links on your mobile site are the same as the links on your desktop


site.


Why is that important?


Well, the last couple of years, Google has moved to a mobile-first index, meaning what


they see on your mobile site, that's your website.


That's what counts.


So a lot of sites, they have a desktop site, and then they reduce it to their mobile site


and they're missing links.


They get rid of header navigation, footer links, things like that.


Recent studies show that the average desktop page has 61 links.


Average mobile page has 54 links.