That's almost 3 million profiles who say they have it in their job description or title.


Web Search 2019: The Essential Data Marketers Need- Presented by Rand Fishkin

There's more competition and sophistication in SEO than ever before.


There's a shift in searches.


Search continues to grow, but organic clicks are probably becoming a smaller share of that.


There's a shift in ranking signals.


This is just my personal take on things, which I know looks madness.


There's ever-changing tactical effectiveness.


Thank you for demonstrating, Charlie.


A lot of people think I look like this guy.


Maybe if I just do my hair right.


And MozCon is here to help make you ready.


What Your Google Tag Manager Container Should Contain - Whiteboard Friday

I'm Oz Fans. My name is Dana DiTommaso. I'm president and partner at Kickpoint, which


is a digital marketing agency based in Edmonton, Alberta. Today I'm going to be talking to


you about Google Tag Manager and what your default container in Google Tag Manager should


contain. And I think if you're in SEO, there's certainly a lot of things Google Tag Manager


can do for you, but if you've kind of said to yourself, you know, Google Tag Manager


is not the easiest thing to work with, which is fair. It is not. It used to be a lot worse,


but the newer versions are pretty good. You might have been a little intimidated by going


in there and doing stuff. But I really recommend that you include these things by default because


later you was going to be really happy that you, that current you put this stuff in. So


I'm going to go through what's in Kickpoint's default Google Tag Manager container. And


then hopefully you can take some of this and apply it to your own stuff. And agencies,


if you are watching, you are going to want to create a default container and use it again


and again, trust me. So we're going to start with how this stuff is laid out. So what we


have are tags and then triggers. And the way that this works, the tag is sort of the thing


that's going to happen when a trigger occurs. So tags that we have in our default container


are the conversion linker, which is used to help conversions with Safari. And if you don't


know a lot about this, I recommend looking up some of the restrictions with Safari tracking


and ITP. I think they're at 2.2 at the time of recording this. So I recommend checking


that out. But this conversion linker will help you get around that. And it's a default


tag in Tag Manager. So you just add the conversion linker. There's a nice article on Google about


what it does and how it all works. And then we track a number of events. And you can certainly


track these things as custom dimensions or custom metrics if that floats your boat. I


mean, that's up to you. If you are familiar with using custom dimensions and custom metrics,


and I assume you probably know how to do this, but if you're just getting started with Tag


Manager, just start with events. And then you can roll your way up to being an expert


after a while. So under events, we always track external links. So anything that points


out to a domain that isn't yours. And the way that we track this is we're looking at


every single link that's clicked. And if it does not contain our client's domain name,


then we record it as an external link. And that's an event that we record. Now remember,


and I've seen accidents with this, where someone doesn't put in your client's domain and then


it tracks every single click to a different page in your client's website as an external


link. That's bad. When you transfer from HTTP to HTTPS, if you don't update Google Tag Manager,


it will start recording links incorrectly. Also bad. But what this is really useful for


are things like when you link out to other websites, as you should when you're writing


articles to help people find out more information. Or you can track clicks out to your different


social properties and see if people are actually clicking on that Facebook icon that you stuck


in the header of your website. The next thing to track are PDF downloads. Now there's a


limitation to this, of course, in that if people Google something and your PDF comes


out and they click at it directly from Google, of course, that's not going to show up in


your analytics. That can show up in Search Console, but you're not going to get it in


analytics. So just keep that in mind. This is if someone clicks to a PDF from a specific


page in your website. Again, you're decorating the link to say, if this link contains a PDF,


then I want to have this. And then we also track scroll tracking. Now scroll tracking


is when people scroll down the site. You can track and fire an event at, say, 25%, 50%,


75%, 100% of the way down the page. Now the thing is with this is that your mileage is


going to vary. You will probably pick different percentages. By default, in all of our containers,


we put 25, 50, 75, 100. Based on the client, we might change this. An advanced sort of


level up tactic would be to pick specific elements, and then when they enter the view


port, then you can fire an event. So let's say, for example, you have a really important


call to action, and because different devices are different sizes, it's going to be a different


percentage of the way down the page when it shows up. But you want to see if people got


to that main CTA. Then you would want to add an event that would show whether or not that


CTA was shown in the view port. And if you Google Google Tag Manager tracking things


in the view port, there's some great articles out there on how to do it. It's not that difficult


to set up. And then also form submits. Of course, you're going to want to customize


this, but by default, put form submits in your container because I guarantee that when


someone is making your container, let's say for a brand new website, they will forget


about tracking form submits unless you put it in your default container and they look


at it and say, oh, right, I have to edit that. So always put form submits in there.


And of course, you want to track telephone links and mail to links. Telephone links should


always, always be tappable, and that's something that I see a lot of mistakes, particularly


in local SEO when we're dealing with really small business websites. They don't make the


telephone links tappable. It's probably because people don't know how. In case you don't know


how, you just telephone and then a colon and then the telephone number. That's it. That's


all you need to do, just like a link, except I'm going out to a HTTPS colon slash slash.


You're going out to a telephone number. And that is going to make your visitor's lives


so much easier, particularly on mobile devices. You always want to have those to be tappable.


So then you can track the number of people who tap on telephone links and people who


tap on mail to links exactly the same way. Now, something that I do have to say, though,


is that if you are using a call tracking provider like CallRail, for example, which is one that


we use, then you're going to want to shut this off because then you could end up in


double counting, particularly if you're tracking every call made out from your website. Then


CallRail would have an analytics integration, and then you would be tracking taps, and you


might also be tracking telephone clicks. So you can track it if you want to see how many


people tap versus picking up the phone and calling, the old-fashioned way with landlines.


You could also do that, but that's entirely up to you. But just keep that in mind if you


are going to track telephone links. And then, of course, all pages tracking. Make sure you're


tracking all the pages on your website through Google Analytics. So those are the tags.


Next up are the triggers. So I have a tag of external links. Then I need a trigger for


external links. The trigger says, you know, when somebody clicks an external link, then


I want this event to happen. And so the event is where you structure the category and then


the action and the label. And the way that we would structure external links, for example,


we would say that the category for it is an external link. The action is click, and then


the label is the actual link that was clicked, for example. And you can see you can go through


each of these and see where this is happening. And then on things like form submit, for example,


or label could be the specific form. On telephone and mail, too, we might track the phone number.


On other things like PDFs, we might track like the page that this happened on for scroll


tracking, for example. We want to track the page that someone scrolled down on. And what


I recommend when you're setting up the event tracking for page scroll, the category should


be page scroll. The action should be the percentage of which people scrolled down. And then the


label should be the URL. And really think of it in terms of events where you've got


the category, which is what happened, the action, which is what did the person do, and


the label is tell me more information about this. So actions are typically things like


scroll, click, tap, if you're going to be fancy, and track mobile versus desktop. It


can be things like form submit, for example, or just submit. Just really basic stuff. So


really what it is, the two things that are going to tell you the difference are things


like categories and labels. And the action is just the action that happened. And I'm


really pedantic when it comes to setting up events, but I think in the long term, again,


future you is going to thank you if you set this stuff up properly from the beginning.


So you can really see tag goes to this trigger, tag to trigger, tag to trigger, et cetera.


So really think about making sure that every one of your tags has a corresponding trigger


if it makes sense. All right. So now we're going to leave you with some tips on how to


set up your Tag Manager account. So first tip is use a Google Analytics ID variable.


It's one of the built-in variables. And when you go into Tag Manager and you click on variables,


one of the built-in variables in there, I really recommend using that because if you


hard code in the GA ID and something happens, you have to change it in the future or you


copy that for someone else or whatever it might be you're going to forget, I guarantee


you, you will forget. So you're going to want to put that variable in there so you change


it once and it's everywhere. You're saving yourself so much time and suffering. Just


use a Google Analytics variable. And if you have a really old container, maybe the variable


wasn't a thing when you first set it up. So one of the things I would recommend is go


check and make sure you're using a variable. And if you're not, then make it to do for


yourself to rip out all the hard coded instances of your GA ID and instead replace it with


the variable. It will save you so much headaches. All right. So next thing, agencies, this is


for you. Create a default container to import. Obviously, if you're working in-house, you're


probably not making Google Tag Manager containers all that often unless you work at, say, a


home builder and you're making microsites for every new home development, then you might


want to create a default container for yourself. But agency side, for sure, you want to have


a default container that you make. So every cool idea that you think of, you think, oh,


we need to track this, just put it all in your default container. And then when you're


grabbing it to make one for a client, you can decide, oh, we don't need this or yes,


we need this. And it's going to save you a ton of time when you're setting up containers


because I find that that's the most labor intensive part of working with a new Tag Manager


container is thinking about what are all the stuff I want to include. So you want to make


sure your default container has all your little tips and tricks that you've accumulated over


the years in there and document it, of course, and then decide on a client by client basis


what you're going to leave and what you're going to keep.


And also use a naming scheme and folders. Again, because you may not be working there


forever and somebody in the future is going to want to look at this and think, why did


they set it up like this? What does this word mean? Why is this variable called foo? Things


that have annoyed me about developers for years and years and years. Developers, I love


you, but please stop naming things foo. It makes no sense to anyone other than you.


All right, so our naming scheme, and you can totally steal this if you want, is we go product,


result, and then what. So for example, we would have our tag for Google Analytics page


downloads. So we would see Google Analytics, this is the product that the thing is going


to go to. Event is what is the result of this thing existing. And then what is the PDF download.


And then it's really clear, okay, I need to fix this thing with PDF downloads. Something's


wrong, it's kind of weird, and now I know exactly where to go. And again, with folders


as well. So let's say you've implemented something such as content consumption, which is a Google


tag manager recipe that you can grab on our website at kickpoint.ca, and I'll make sure


to link to it in the transcript. And let's say you grab that, then you're going to want


to take all the different tags and triggers that come along with content consumption and


toss that in its own folder, and then separate it out from all your basic stuff. And even


if you have everything to start in a folder called basics, or events, or analytics versus


call tracking, versus any of the other billion different tracking pixels that you have on


your website, it's a good idea to just keep it all organized. I know it's two minutes


from now, it is saving you a lifetime of suffering in the future. And future you, whether it's


you working there, or somebody who ends up taking your job five years from now, just


make it easier on them. Especially too, when you think back to say, Google Analytics has


been around for a long time now. When I go back and look at some of my very, very first


analytics that I set up, I might look at it and think, why was I doing that? But if you


have documentation, at least you're going to know why you did that really weird thing


back in 2008. Or, you know, when you're looking at this in 2029, and you're thinking, why


did I do this thing in 2019? You're going to have documentation for it. So just really


keep that in mind. And then the last thing is auditing regularly. And that means once


every three, six, 12 months, pick a time period that makes sense for how often you're going


into the container, you go in, you take a look at every single tag, every single trigger,


every single variable. Simo, Hava has a really nice Google Tag Manager, sort of auditing


tool, I'll make sure to link to that in the transcript as well. And you can use that to


just go through your container and see what's up. Because let's say you tested out some


sort of screen recording, like you installed Hotjar six months ago, and you ended up deciding


on say, another product instead, like Full Story. So then you want to make sure you remove


the Hotjar. And how many times have you found that you look at a new website, you're like,


why is this on here? And no one of the client can tell you, they're like, I don't know where


that code came from. So this is where auditing can be really handy. Because remember, over


time, each one of those funny little pixels that you tested out some product, and then


you ended up not going with it is weighing down your page. And maybe it's just a couple


of microseconds, but that stuff adds up. So you really do want to go in and audit regularly


and remove anything you're not using anymore. Keep your Google Tag Manager container clean.


A lot of this is focused on obviously making yourself, future you, very happy. Auditing


will also make future you very happy. So hopefully out of this, you can create a Google Tag Manager


default container that's going to work for you. And I'm going to make sure as well when


the transcript is out for this, that I'm going to include some of the links that I talked


about as well as a link to some more tips on how to add in things like Conversion Linker


Boost Your SEO Using Dynamic Tags in STAT Analytics

Hi, everybody. I'm Cyrus Shepard. Today I want to quickly show you the power of tags


and smart tags in Stat Analytics to help boost your SEO.


You may know Stat as an enterprise rank tracker, but it can do so much more than that. A lot


of the secret sauce comes from data views, which allow you to slice and dice your data


in literally thousands of different ways. Let me show you what I mean. Stat allows you


to add a huge amount of keywords, which you can assign different attributes to. For example,


you can define the search market, add a specific location or zip code, even choose the device


type. Most importantly, you can add tags, which allow you to get granular insights to


all your keyword groups. Okay, tagging is great, but let's say you


have thousands of keywords and you only want to find the keywords where you rank in the


top three, or you want to find keywords where you don't rank at all. Well, that data changes


every day. That's where smart tags come in. Smart tags allow you to create dynamic tags


based on any filtered view. For example, let's say you want to look at keywords where you


rank in the top 10 and there's a featured snippet that you don't own. Now, simply create


a smart tag off this feature, and this will show you new featured snippet opportunities


that you could be winning. And that's our introduction to tagging in Stat Analytics.


Why It Can Pay to Get Links from Domains that Don't Always Rank Highly - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about why it may not actually pay to get links expressly or


exclusively from the websites and pages that are ranking highly for your keywords.


And there's a bunch of reasons why behind this, and there's a corollary to it, which


is high ranking websites may not always be best link targets, right?


So okay, let's start with this question of when you're trying to rank for a target keyword.


Let's say you're trying to rank for stylish sofas.


Stylish sofas.


You decided you want to replace your couch, you want something stylish.


So you search for stylish sofas.


And the results that come up, I'm not talking about the paid results, that would be a mistake


to try and get links from those.


They're pretty commercially focused.


They probably don't want to link to you.


And I'm not sure it's all that valuable necessarily, at least from an SEO perspective.


But are these links, the ones that rank in the organic results, top five, are they necessarily


the best links you could possibly get?


And there's some reasons for and some reasons against.


Let's talk about in favor of why these are good link targets.


First one is pretty simple and pretty obvious, right, that these pages get a lot of search


visits from this query.


And if you can be, you know, if you're somewhere in this page, right, if my website's linked


to here, that's actually a really nice thing.


Maybe someone will click on the top result and then they'll find me and they'll click


on it and they'll go to my page instead.


That would be great, right?


So if it's linked to there, you could get direct traffic from those pages.


So nice link to have.


And second, Google's put some sort of trust and a signal of authority for this keyword


by ranking it here, right?


It's saying, hey, you know what, this top result and these top results are all highly


relevant and authoritative for this particular query.


So those are absolutely true things.


But I think they bias SEOs and link builders to think in terms of, oh, if I want to rank


well for this, these are the only things I should be looking at or the first things I


should be looking at or the best places to get links from.


Here's why that's not necessarily the case.


So some points against.


First off, ranking is not actually an explicit signal from Google that these are the best


quality links.


By putting a page here, right, in the top of the results, Google is saying, we, Google,


believe that this page will do a great job of solving the searcher's query.


If it's not, we, Google, know that if you get a link from here, you have a very good


chance to rank for this keyword.


That's not explicitly or implicitly said.


It's not an implication.


Google's never stated that publicly.


And I don't think it's necessarily the smartest thing to do in their ranking algorithm, right,


to have this recursive system that looks at who that already ranks is linking to someone


else and replace them.


That would be poor for Google's own user experience for a bunch of reasons.


Second, Google and searchers expect that these pages that rank here are going to solve the


searcher's query themselves.


Not they're going to link to something that's going to solve the searcher's query, at least


certainly not necessarily, and definitely that they're not going to force you to make


another click.


Google wants to rank pages here that solve the searcher's problem directly.


And so saying, oh, well, I don't think they do that and maybe they should link to me to


solve this aspect of the problem is a spurious connection.


And third, of course, earning links from these pages, incredibly difficult.


These people, especially if they're ranking for a commercial non-branded query like stylish


sofas, they really, really don't want to link to one of their competitors, right, to someone


who's trying to actively outrank them.


That would be pretty challenging.


And I recognize that many times when link builders go about this, they look at, okay,


this page is ranking, let me see if I can find another page from this domain from which


I can get a link.


That's not terrible logic.


That's a totally reasonable way to go about link building.


But whether it's the best or the only one is what I'm going to challenge here.


I don't think it is necessarily best or only way that you should go about doing your link


building for all these reasons we've just talked about.


Okay, now, what are the alternatives?


You might be asking yourself, well, Rand, so show me where should I be doing this if


not from here?


And I'm going to present a few alternatives.


There's obviously an infinite number of link building tactics you could pursue, but I think


some of the smarter ones would be to think about some alternatives like sites and pages


that link to multiple high-ranking targets.


For example, if one and three and four are all linked to by site A.com, site A.com seems


to clearly carry some – or seems to carry, not necessarily for sure, right, it could


be correlation and not causation, but it's certainly worth looking at as to whether site


A is relevant and provides high-quality links and could conceptually link to you and whether


that's a good resource.


But I think that link intersect concept is a really good one to start with.


And in fact, I think from a logic perspective, it makes more sense that sites and pages that


tend to link to these top results are probably more – provide more potential power to your


ranking authority than just the pages that are already ranking.


Second, sites and pages that rank well for what I'd call like broader keywords in the


space, right, broader topics that are related to the space you're in.


So if it's stylish sofas, you might look at keywords like, well, who's ranking for interior


design or interior design magazines or interior design events or perhaps it's decoration ideas.


If I can find the people who are ranking for those sorts of things, that probably is going


to say those are the types of places that will link out to other resources that have


more specific targeting, like targeting stylish sofas, and probably provide a lot of value


there.


Third, I like going and trying to find influential publications and resources that are in the


topic space that might not actually be doing good keyword targeting or get a good SEO,


which means it's hard to use Google to find them.


You may find them ranking on page two, on page three, page four.


You may need to do some other types of research like look on Instagram and see what companies


or what publications are using these hashtags and have lots of followers in this interior


design or decoration or furniture space.


From there, that will lead you to influential publications in the space that maybe have


lots of readership, lots of engagement on social channels or on their website, but haven't


done a particularly great job in Google.


Those influential publications, I think Google is doing a very good job of identifying, hey,


wait a minute, here's a bunch of publications that are important in SpaceX, and they are


all linking to this website, which is doing a good job of targeting these keywords, so


therefore, that's who we should potentially rank.


So hopefully this Whiteboard Friday will help you to expand your link building opportunities


and also to recognize why the top ranking pages might not always be and certainly aren't


necessarily the best link targets.


Thanks, everyone.


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


10 Things that DO NOT (Directly) Affect Your Google Rankings - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about things that do not affect your Google rankings.


So it turns out lots of people have this idea that anything and everything that you do with


your website or on the web could have an impact.


Well, some things have an indirect impact, and maybe even a few of these do.


I'll talk through those, but tons and tons of things that you do don't directly affect


your Google rankings.


And so I'll try and walk through some of these that I've heard or seen questions about, especially


in the recent past.


First one, long-standing debate.


The age of your website.


Does Google care if you registered your site in 1998 or 2008 or 2016?


No, they don't care at all.


They only care the degree to which your content actually helps people and that you have links


and authority signals and those kinds of things.


Granted, it is true.


There's correlation going in this direction.


If you started a site in 1998 and it's still going strong today, chances are good that


you've built up lots of links and authority and equity and all these kinds of signals


that Google does care about.


But maybe you've just had a very successful first two years and you only registered your


site in 2015 and you built up all those same signals.


Google's actually probably going to reward that site even more because it's built up


the same authority and influence in a very small period of time versus a much longer


one.


All right.


Whether you do or don't use Google apps and services, so people worry that, oh, wait a


minute.


Can't Google sort of monitor what's going on with my Google Analytics account and see


all my data there and AdSense?


What if they can look inside Gmail or Google Docs?


Google, first off, the engineers who work on these products and the engineers who work


on search, most of them would quit right that day if they discovered that Google was peering


into your Gmail account to discover that you had been buying shady links or that you didn't


look as authoritative as you really were on the web or these kinds of things.


So don't fear that use of these or the decision not to use them will hurt or harm your rankings


in Google web search in any way it won't.


Number three, likes, shares, plus ones, tweet counts of your web pages.


So you have a Facebook counter on there and it shows that you have 17,000 shares on that


page.


Wow, that's a lot of shares.


Does Google care?


No.


They don't care at all.


In fact, they're not even looking at that or using it.


But what if it turns out that many of those people who shared on Facebook also did other


activities?


They resulted in lots of browser activity and search activity, click-through activity,


increased branding and lower pogo sticking rates and brand preference for you in the


search results and links.


Well, Google does care about a lot of those things.


So indirectly, this can have an impact.


Directly, no.


Should you buy 10,000 Facebook shares?


No, you should not.


What about raw bounce rate or time on site?


Well, this is sort of an interesting one.


So let's say you have a time on site of two minutes and you look at your industry averages,


your benchmarks, maybe via Google Analytics if you've opted into sharing there, and you


see that your industry benchmarks are actually lower than average.


Is that going to hurt you in Google web search?


Not necessarily.


It could be the case that those visitors are coming from elsewhere.


It could be the case that you are actually serving up a faster loading site and you're


getting people to the information that they need more quickly, and so their time on site


is slightly lower.


Maybe even their bounce rate is higher.


But so long as pogo sticking type of activity, people bouncing back to the search results


and choosing a different result because you didn't actually answer their query, so long


as that remains fine, you're not in trouble here.


So raw bounce rate, raw time on site, I wouldn't worry too much about that.


The tech under your site's hood.


So are you using certain JavaScript libraries like Node or React?


Sometimes Facebook, once Google.


If you use Facebook, does Google give you a hard time about it?


No.


Facebook might due to patent issues.


But anyway, we won't worry about that.


Dot net or what if you're coding up things in raw HTML still?


Just fine.


Doesn't matter.


If Google can crawl each of these URLs and see the unique content on there and the content


that Google sees and the content visitors see is the same, they don't care what's being


used under the hood to deliver that to the browser.


Number six, having or not having a knowledge panel.


On the right-hand side of the search results, sometimes you get that knowledge panel that


shows around the web and some information sometimes from Wikipedia.


What about site links where you search for your brand name and you get branded site links?


The first few sets of results are all from your own website and they're sort of indented.


Does that impact your rankings?


No it does not.


It doesn't impact your rankings for any other search query anyway.


It could be that showing up here, it probably is that showing up here means you're going


to get a lot more of these clicks, a higher share of those clicks and that's a good thing.


But does this impact your rankings for some other totally unbranded query to your site?


Nope.


It doesn't at all.


I wouldn't stress too much.


Over time, sites tend to build up site links and knowledge panels as their brands become


bigger and as they become better known and as they get more coverage around the web and


online and offline.


So this is not something to stress about.


Number seven, what about using shared hosting or some of the inexpensive hosting options


out there?


Well, directly, this is not going to affect you unless it hurts load speed or uptime.


If it doesn't hurt either of those things and they're just as good as they were before


or as they would be if you were paying more or using solo hosting, you're just fine.


Don't worry about it.


Number eight, use of defaults that Google already assumes.


So when Google crawls a site, when they come to a site, if you don't have a robot.txt file


or you have a robot.txt file but it doesn't include any exclusions, any disallows, or


they reach a page and it has no meta robots tag, they're just going to assume that they


get to crawl everything and that they should follow all the links.


Using things like the meta robots index, follow or using on an individual link a rel equals


follow inside the href tag or in your robots.txt file specifying that Google can crawl everything


doesn't boost anything.


They just assume all those things by default, using them in these places, saying, yes, you


can do the default thing doesn't give you any special benefit.


It doesn't hurt you but it gives you no benefit.


Google just doesn't care.


Nine, characteristics or sorry, characters that you use as separators in your title element.


So the page title elements, it's in the header of a document and it could be something like


your brand name and then a separator and some words and phrases after it or the other way


around, words and phrases, separator, the brand name.


Does it matter if that separator is the pipe bar or a hyphen or a colon or any other special


character that you would like to use?


No, Google does not care.


You don't need to worry about it.


This is a personal preference issue.


Now maybe you found that one of these characters has a slightly better click through rate and


preference than another one.


If you found that, great.


We have not seen one broadly on the web.


Some people will say they particularly like the pipe over the hyphen.


I don't think it matters too much.


I think it's up to you.


Number 10, what about using headlines and the H1, H2, H3 tags?


Well, I've heard this said, if you put your headline inside an H2 rather than an H1, Google


will consider it a little less important.


No, no, that is definitely not true.


In fact, I'm not even sure the degree to which Google cares at all whether you use H1s or


H2s or H3s or whether they just look at the content and they say, well, this one's big


and at the top and bold.


That must be the headline, right?


That's how we're going to treat it.


This one is lower down and smaller.


We're going to say that's probably a subheader.


Whether you use an H5 or an H2 or an H3, that is your CSS on your site and up to you and


your designers.


It is still best practices in HTML to make sure that the headline, the biggest one is


the H1, and I would do that for design purposes and for having nice clean HTML and CSS, but


I wouldn't stress about it from Google's perspective.


If your designers tell you, hey, we can't get that headline in H1, we've got to use


the H2 because of how our style sheets are formatted, fine, no big deal, don't stress.


Normally, on Whiteboard Friday we would end right here, but today I'd like to ask, these


ten are only the tip of the iceberg.


So if you have others that you've seen people say, oh, wait a minute, is this a Google ranking


factor?


And you think to yourself, ah, geez, no, that's not a ranking factor.


Go ahead and leave them in the comments.


We'd love to see them there and chat through and list all the different non-Google ranking


factors.


Thanks, everyone.


See you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Goodbye, Generic SEO Audit – Say Hello to Customization & Prioritization - Whiteboard Friday

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday.


My name is Cameron Jenkins and today we're going to be talking about the SEO audit.


We're going to be talking about how to take it from its current generic state to something


that's a little bit more customized and has prioritization baked in.


So hopefully we're going to be doing these SEO audits for higher impact than we're currently


doing them.


So I think it's safe to start with a definition of what an SEO audit is.


Now depending on who you ask, an SEO audit can mean a lot of different things.


So if you were to boil it down to just barest of bones, here's what I would say an SEO audit


usually is.


This is what someone means when they say SEO audit.


So it's a list of checks basically.


You have all of these things that are SEO best practices and you run your site through


this sieve and you try to see is my site compliant or not compliant essentially.


So you have things like missing H1s, yes or no, broken links, yes or no, duplicate title


tags, yes or no.


So you end up with this whole big long list of things that are wrong and not according


to SEO best practices on your site.


The whole purpose of this is usually to improve some kind of SEO metrics.


Maybe you're trying to correct a traffic drop or something like that.


So you have this whole laundry list of things now that you need to fix as a result of this


SEO audit.


So usually what you end up saying is, hey, dev team or client or whoever you're giving


this to, you need to fix these things because they're SEO best practice.


What's wrong with this though?


I think there's a couple things wrong with this.


Number one, it means that we're addressing things that may or may not actually be the


culprit of whatever issue we're facing.


It's just a list of things that didn't meet a best practices list but we don't really


know and we're not really sure if these things are actually causing the issues that we're


seeing on our site.


So because we don't know if these are the culprit and the things that are hurting us,


they may or may not have an impact when we actually spend our time on them.


And number three, that leads to a lot of potential wasted time.


This is especially true for everyone.


Everyone's very busy.


But this is especially true for people who work at enterprises and they have a very large


website and maybe are really strapped for time and resources development team.


If you give them a list of fixes and you say, hey, fix these things because it's SEO best


practice, they're just going to say, yes, sorry, no, I don't have time for that and


I don't see the value in it.


I don't really know why I'm doing this.


So I think there's a better way.


Move over to this side.


Customization and prioritization I think are a lot better alternatives to doing our SEO


audits.


So there are three kind of main ways that I like to customize my SEO audits.


Number one, it may sound a little bit counterintuitive, but don't look at everything.


There are plenty of times when you do an SEO audit and it makes sense to do a kind of comprehensive


audit, look through all kinds of things.


You're doing links, you're doing content, you're doing the site architecture, you're


doing all kinds of things.


Usually I do this when I'm taking over a new client and I want to get to know it and I


want to get to know the website and its issues a little bit better.


I think that's a totally valid time to do that.


But a lot of times we're doing more work than we actually have to be doing when we look


at the entire website in every single scenario on the website.


So maybe don't look at everything.


Instead, I think it could be a good idea to start with a goal or a problem statement.


So a lot of times SEO audits kind of come in response to something.


Maybe your client is saying, hey, our competitor keeps beating us for this, why are they beating


us, or hey, we've had year over year decline in traffic, what's going on, can you do an


SEO audit?


So I think it's a good idea to start with that as kind of a goal or a problem statement


so that you can narrow and target your SEO audit to focus on the things that are actually


the issue and why you're performing the audit.


And number three, I think it's a really good idea to segment your site in order to isolate


the actual source of the problem.


So by segment, I mean dividing your site into logical chunks based on their different purposes.


So for example, maybe you have product pages, maybe you have category pages, you have a


blog section, user generated content, there's all these different sections of your website.


Segment those, isolate them, and look at them in isolation to see if maybe one of the sections


is the culprit and actually experiencing issues.


Because a lot of times you find that, oh, maybe it's the product pages that are actually


causing my issues and it's not the blog posts or anything else at all.


So that way you're able to really waste less time and focus, take a more targeted focus


look at what's actually going on with your website.


So once you've kind of audited your site through that lens, through a more customized lens,


it's time to prioritize.


Because you still have a list of things that you need to fix.


You can't just heap them all on to your whatever team you're passing this on to and say, here,


fix these all.


It's a lot better to prioritize and tell them what's more important and why.


So here's how I like to do that.


I would plot this out on a matrix.


So pretty simple matrix at the top, your goal goes there, keeps you really focused.


And all of these little things say, pretend these are just the findings from our SEO audit.


On the y-axis, we have impact.


And on the x-axis, we have time.


So essentially we're ordering every single finding by what kind of impact it's going


to have and how much time it's going to take to complete.


So you're going to end up with these four quadrants of tasks.


So in this green quadrant here, you have your quick wins.


These are the things that you should do right now because they're going to have a really


high impact and they're not going to take a lot of time to do.


So definitely prioritize those things.


And this blue quadrant here, you have things that are going to make a really high impact,


but they also take a lot of time.


So schedule those after the green quadrant if you can.


And I would also suggest breaking those larger time-intensive tasks into smaller bite-sized


chunks.


This is a good idea no matter what you're doing, but this is especially helpful if you're


working with a development team who probably runs in two-week sprints anyway.


It's a really good idea to segment and tackle those little bits at a time.


Just get it on the schedule.


In this orange zone here, we have things to maybe deprioritize.


Also put them on the schedule, but they're not as important as the rest of the tasks.


So these are things that aren't going to make that high of an impact, some impact, but not


that high, and they're not going to take that much time to do.


Put them on the schedule, but they're not as important.


And then in this last quadrant here, we have the just don't do it quadrant.


Hopefully if you're taking this really nice targeted look at your site and your audit


through this lens, you won't have too many of these if any, but if something's going


to take you a lot of time and it's not going to make that big of an impact, no one really


has time for that.


We want to try to avoid those types of tasks if at all possible.


Now I will say there's a caveat here for urgency.


Sometimes we have to work on things regardless of what kind of impact they're going to make


on our site.


Maybe it's because a client has a deadline or it's something in their contract and we


just have to get something done because it's a fire.


We all love hate relationship with those fires.


We don't want to be handling them all of the time if at all possible.


Let's make sure to make those the exception and not the rule so that we actually get these


priority tasks, these important things that are going to move the needle done and we're


not constantly pushing those down for fires.


One last thing, I will say impact is something that trips up a lot of people, myself included.


How do you actually determine how much of an impact something is going to have before


you do it?


That can be kind of tricky and it's not an exact science but there are two main ways


that I kind of like to do that.


Number one, look for correlations on your website.


If you're looking at your website through the lens of these pages are performing really


well and they have these things true about them and they're on your list of things to


fix on these other pages, you can go into that with a certain degree of certainty knowing


that hey, if it works for these pages, there's a chance that this will make a high impact


on these other pages as well.


So look at the data on your own website and see what's already performing and what qualities


are true about those pages.


Number two, I would say one of the biggest things you can do is just to start small and


test.


Sometimes you really don't know what kind of an impact something is going to make until


you test on a small section and then if it does have a high impact, great.


Put it here and then roll it out to the rest of your site but if it doesn't have a good


impact or it has minimal impact, you learn something from that but at least now you know


not to prioritize it, not to spend all of your time on it and roll it out to your entire


website because that could be potentially a waste of time.


So that's how I prioritize and I customize my SEO audits.


I think a lot of us struggle with what even is an SEO audit, how do I do it, where do


I even look, is this even going to make a difference?


So that's how I try to make a higher impact with my SEO audits by taking a more targeted


approach.


If you have a way that you do SEO audits that you think is super helpful, pop it in the


comments, share with all of us.


I think it's really good to share and get on the same page about the different ways


we could perform SEO audits for higher impact.


So hopefully that was helpful for you.


That's it for this week's Wiper Friday.


How Google Gives Us Insight into Searcher Intent Through the Results - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about how Google is giving us insight through their search


results, their suggested searches, and their related searches into the intent that searchers


have when they perform their query, and how, if we're smart enough and we look closely


and study well, we can actually get SEO and content opportunities out of this analysis.


So the way I thought I'd run this Whiteboard Friday is a little bit different than usual.


Rather than being purely prescriptive, I thought I'd try and illustrate some actual results.


I've pared them down a bit and removed the descriptions and taken some out, but to try


and show the process of that.


So here's a query for damaged furniture.


And if I am trying to reach searchers for this query, let's assume that I'm in the furniture


business, I might see here that there's some ads up at the top, like this one from Wayfair,


inexpensive furniture up to 70% off.


I scroll through the organic results.


Everyday clearance furniture outlet, mybobs.com, okay, that's a local place here in Seattle.


Seattle furniture repairs and touch-ups.


Okay, this is interesting.


This is a different type of result, or it's serving a different searcher intent, right?


This is we will repair your furniture, not we will sell you cheap, damaged furniture,


which these two are.


And then how stuff works, which is saying we will show you how to repair wooden furniture.


Now I scroll down even further, I get to the related searches.


Scratch and dent furniture near me, which suggests one of the intents absolutely behind


this query is what Wayfair and mybobs are serving, which is cheap furniture, inexpensive


furniture that's been previously damaged in some way.


Tents furniture outlet, similar intent.


Bob's discount furniture pit, I'm not totally sure about the pit naming convention.


And then there's some queries that are similar to these other ones.


So here's what's happening.


When you see search results like this, what you should pay close attention to is the intent


to position ratio.


So if you see lots of certain types of intents, right, let's say intent A is I want to buy


furniture, intent B is I am looking to touch up or repair my furniture, and intent C is


show me how to do it myself.


If you see more A's ranking near the top, not in the advertising results, because those


don't need a very high click-through rate in order to exist.


They can be at 1%, 2%, and still do fine here.


But if you see these higher up here, that is an indication that a higher percent of


Google's searchers are preferring or looking for this A intent stuff.


And you can apply this to any search that you look at.


Thus, if you are doing SEO or creating content to try and target a query, but the content


you're creating or the purpose you're trying to serve is in the lower ranked stuff, you


might be trapped in a world where you can't rise any higher.


Position four, maybe position three is the best you're going to do because Google's always


going to be serving the different intent, the intent that more of the searchers for


this query are seeking out.


What's also nice about this is if you perform this and you see a single intent being served


throughout and a single intent in the related searches, you can guess that it's probably


going to be very difficult to change the searcher intent or to serve an entirely different searcher


intent with that same query, and you might need to look at different ones.


All right, next up, e-commerce site design.


So an ad up here, again from Shopify, this one's our e-commerce solution just works.


Then, so they're trying to sell something.


This is, I'm going to go with they're trying to sell you e-commerce site design.


So that's intent A. 30 beautiful and creative e-commerce website designs.


This is also from Shopify because they just took my advice, well, okay, obviously they


took my advice long before this whiteboard Friday, but they're ranking with exactly what


we talked about in intent B, right?


Intent B, which was essentially, hey, I am looking for inspiration.


I'm looking for ideas.


I'm trying to figure out what my e-commerce website should look like or what designs are


successful.


You can see that again.


Intent B, right?


So what's ranking higher here?


It's not the serve the purchase intent, it's serve the examples intent.


And when we get to related searches, you see that again, e-commerce website examples, top


e-commerce websites, best e-commerce sites 2016, these are all intent B. If you're trying


to serve intent A, you better advertise because ranking in the top results here is just not


going to happen.


That's not what searchers are seeking.


It's going to be very, very tough.


By the way, slight side note, whenever you see this, this late in the year, right, we're


in October right now as we're filming this Whiteboard Friday, I did this search today


and I saw best e-commerce sites 2016 still in here.


That suggests to me that there were a lot more people searching for it last year than


there are this year.


Essentially, and you will see there's like the same thing for 2017 down below, but it's


lower in the related searches.


It doesn't have as much volume.


Again, that suggests to me it's on a downward trend.


You can double check that in Google Trends, but good to pay attention to.


Okay, side note over.


Let's move on to our last example here, Halloween laboratory props.


So Halloween's coming up.


Lots and lots of people looking for laboratory props and props and costumes and decorations


of all kinds.


There's a huge business around this, especially in the United States and emerging in the United


Kingdom and Australia and other places.


So up at the top, Google is showing us ads.


They're showing us the shopping ads, shop for Halloween laboratory props, and they've


got some chemistry sets and a Frankenstein-style light switch that you can buy and some radioactive


props and that kind of thing from Target, Etsy, and Oriental Trading Company.


And then they show images, which is not surprising, but hot tip.


If you see images ranking in the top of the organic results, you should absolutely be


doing image SEO.


This is a clear indication that a lot of the searchers want images, and that means Google


Images is probably getting a significant portion of the search volume.


When I see this up here, my guess is always it's going to be 20% plus of searchers are


going to the image results rather than the organic search results, and ranking here is


often way easier than ranking here.


Okay, more interesting things happening next.


This result is from Pinterest.


Best 25 mad scientist lab ideas on Pinterest.


913 best laboratory Frankenstein haunt ideas images on Pinterest.


DIY mad scientist lab prop on Pinterest.


And by the way, there's a video segment in here, which is all YouTube.


This happens quite a bit when there is heavy, heavy visual content.


You essentially see the domain crowding, single domain domination of search results.


And what does that mean?


Don't do SEO on your site or fine, do it on your site, but also do it on Pinterest.


Also do it on YouTube.


If you're creating content like these guys are over here, right?


BigCommerce and Shopify created these great pieces for beautiful e-commerce designs.


They put together a ton of images.


Wonderful.


You can apply that same strategy for this, but then what should you do?


Go to Pinterest, upload all those images, create a board, right?


Try and get your images shared.


Do some Pinterest SEO, essentially, and do the same thing on YouTube.


Have a bunch of examples in a short video that shows all the stuff that you're creating,


and then upload that to YouTube.


Preferably have a channel, preferably have a few videos so that you can potentially rank


multiple times in here because you know that many people are going here.


This is pretty far down, so this is probably, let's say, it's probably less than 10% of


searchers make it here, but still a ton of opportunity.


Very different type of search intent than what we saw in these previous two.


And look at the related searches.


Homemade mad scientist lab props, mad scientist props DIY, do it yourself, how to make mad


scientist props.


These intents are, generally speaking, not being served by any of these results yet.


If you scroll far enough in the YouTube videos here, there's actually one video that is a


how-to, but most of these are just showing stuff off.


That to me is a content opportunity.


You could make your Pinterest board potentially using some of these, right?


DIY homemade how to make, make that your Pinterest board, and probably, I'm going to guess that


you will have a very good chance of pushing these other Pinterest results out of here


and dominating those.


So a few takeaways, just some short ones before we end here.


Don't target content.


In the SEO world, don't target content without first understanding the searcher.


We can be very misled by just looking at keywords.


If we look at the search results first, we can get inside the searcher's head a little


bit.


Hopefully, we can have some real conversations with those folks too.


Second, Google search, search suggest, related searches, they can all help with problem number


one.


Thirdly, gaps in serving intent can yield ranking opportunity, like we showed in a few


of these examples.


Finally, don't be afraid to disrupt your own business or your own content or your own selfish


interest in order to serve searchers.


In the long term, it will be better for you.


You can see that exemplified here by Shopify saying, we're going to show off a bunch of


beautiful e-commerce designs, even though some of them are not from Shopify, and big


commerce did the same thing.


Even though some of them are not using big commerce's platform, they basically are willing


to sacrifice some of that in order to serve searchers and build their brand, because if


they know if they don't, somebody else clearly will.


All right, everyone.


I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I would love to hear your examples in the comments about how you've done search intent


interpretation through looking at search results.


We'll see you again next week.


Backlinks from Client Sites, Sites You Own, Widgets, & Embedded Content - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about a question we see a lot here at Moz around what you should


do with websites that you maybe design or build or do work for, your clients' websites


if you're an agency or consultant or a web designer or builder, sites that you own but


are not your primary website, and widgets and embeds, blog roles, all these kinds of


things where you control the link infrastructure or could control it, and should you?


I think one of the challenges here is to understand that many folks have recognized that over


the years widgets, embeds, links from client websites have gotten other sites penalized,


potentially even your sites penalized over the years because you had all these links


that you control pointing back to places and to Google that can look really sketchy.


I want to talk through some best practices about how you can get link benefit and value


from these places without getting yourself into trouble.


The challenge here is let's say that I own sneakerobsessed.com, but it is not my primary


website or maybe it's a client's website, but I do own sneakysneakers.com.


I'm thinking to myself, gosh, the fact that I control, I have the login for the admin


here, the site owner or me would be fine with linking from these pages to these pages.


What should I do there?


I don't want to get into trouble, but I would love to get some benefit, and I think that


these links could help me.


Should I add a link from every page here to a bunch of pages here or to my homepage?


Should I link to a variety of my pages, like take a few of these and link them to my homepage,


take a few others and link to some internal pages?


Should I use a single page on this website to link back to maybe my homepage?


And the answer is kind of it depends.


It depends.


My recommendations are if this is a client website or a site you've done work for, a


site you designed or built or your agency did, if you have clientdomain.com, what I'm


going to suggest is that you take a page, the about page, or a page you specifically


built like about this site, and you link to that page from the footer or the sidebar or


the header.


It's kind of one of those things that gets us linked to from a lot of pages, like the


about page or the contact page would get or the privacy policy, those kinds of things,


would get on clientdomain.com.


And you make that the only page where you intentionally, specifically link back to your


domain.


And you essentially have some blurb about here are the details about the designer or


developer, the technologies used on this website, those kinds of things.


And if you would like to get in touch with the creator of this website, it is these folks


over here.


And that points over to you.


That means you essentially have a site-wide link to one page, which is flowing a lot of


link equity to that single page on your client's website, and that link is pointing over to


you.


This is very unlikely to be penalized.


It's very likely to draw in clicks.


It has all these beneficial properties.


For sites that you own, so myothersite.com and mymainsite.com, right, what I'm going


to suggest here is that you don't have an intentional specific link strategy, like,


okay, one out of three pages I'm going to have linked.


I'm going to have them link to these pages in particular.


I'm going to have the anchor text always be this.


Don't set up that kind of policy or process.


Instead, I want you to focus on providing visitor value.


Reference things on your main site when they are relevant to content on your other site.


And this should happen naturally and organically.


Any time you're referencing other content you've created or things that you've done


or recognition that you have or someone else from your organization, you would naturally


link over here.


That's the way you should play it, not with some specific process and checklist.


Anything that matches a very standard pattern is going to be easily recognized by Google,


and that can get you into trouble.


With blog roles and syndicators and those type of sites, it's a little less stringent


because blog roles have this unique – and so do syndicators – have these unique attributes


of basically saying it is the right thing to do for a blog role when it exists on, you


know, it's usually on one of the sidebars of a blog, sometimes a blog's homepage,


sometimes every page of a blog.


It's usual for those to be kind of site-wide style links that always point back to the


other blogs' websites' homepage or blog pages.


And that's okay here too.


That is not a big problem.


The only time you get into real trouble is if that blog role is essentially just a paid


manipulation.


It's technically a blog network.


It's not that you're being editorially endorsed by someone else.


They're only linking to you because you're linking to them, right?


You get into that reciprocity challenge.


That's not to say you should never link to anyone who has you in their blog role either.


It's just that this has to look natural and editorial to Google or you can get in trouble.


Syndicators, by the way, it's okay to link from every syndicated piece of content back


to the original piece of content.


In fact, that's the way it should be.


If you do your own syndication like I do sometimes on Medium where I put up my blog post that


I've already put on moz.com slash rand on medium.com slash, you know, Rand Fish, then


you should have each of those linked back to their original pieces and that's just fine.


For widgets and embeds, things get a little dicier and this is actually where we see a


ton of penalties.


Not to say that people don't have problems with their client sites too a lot of the time,


but widgets and embeds have been particularly taken to task by Google in the recent past.


So the idea here is that you have this piece of content here that's being embedded from


your site.


So, you know, sneaker obsessed, maybe the guys there went to Sneaky Sneakers.


They saw a data graph of Nike shoes versus Adidas shoe sales over the last 12 months


and they were like, oh, man, I really want to show that.


That's awesome.


And, in fact, there's a little embed this graph onto your own website and so they took


that, they put it on there.


You get into more dangerous territory with this type of thing when there is, in the link


between here, there's keyword matching anchor text, no opt out option, meaning there's no


way to say I don't want to include a link to the original.


When visitors are very unlikely to click that link, when there's no sort of, oh, why would


I ever click on the attributed link from the embed, when it's remotely controlled via JavaScript,


meaning you can remotely update this link in anchor text, that gets real sketchy.


When the widget's purpose feels like it exists only for links, like it's not particularly


useful, there's not a clear reason why this is a widget instead of just a graphic that


other people can use or content they can syndicate, why make it a widget, as opposed to something


like a graph whose data can change or an interactive content element or a video player or something


like that, right?


And then any sort of payment or discounts that you offer or coercion to get people to


embed it gets you into more dangerous territory.


You're much less likely to have problems if you keep that anchor text branded or omitted


entirely.


If it's non-branded anchor text, it's just your brand name, or it's very limited, it


just says, you know, data via, and via is the link itself.


Opt out of the link is available, meaning that someone could say, yeah, I want to embed


that.


Include a link back to sneakysneakers.com?


No, no thank you.


There should be a compelling reason to click.


You know, that embed is static, it's not controlled by JavaScript, the widget feels like it's


reference focused, so there's actually some value there.


And it's only embedded intentionally by those who are naturally and editorially choosing


to include it.


That will keep you safe.


Hopefully, you will not encounter these problems.


I think if you follow these rules, you'll be in a safe zone and you'll also be benefiting


from the link value that these can provide.


Look forward to your comments.


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


How to Get Links That Compy with Google's Guidlines - Whiteboard Friday

Hey everybody, my name is Marie Haynes and today we're going to talk all about links.


So if you know anything about me, you know that I've done a lot of work with unnatural


links.


I've done a lot of work helping people with penguin problems and unnatural links penalties.


But today we're going to talk about natural links.


I'm going to give you some tips about the types of links that you can get that comply


with Google's guidelines.


These links are sometimes much harder to get than unnatural links, but they're the type


of link that Google expects to see and they're the type of link that can really help improve


your rankings.


So number one is to ask people.


Now some people might say, wait, that's not a natural link because I actually had to ask


somebody to get it.


But if somebody is willing to vouch for your website, to link for your website, and you're


not giving them anything as an incentive in return, then that actually is a good link.


So you can ask family members and friends and even better is employees.


You can say, hey, if you have a blog, could you mention that you work for us and link


to us?


Now if they have to hide the link somewhere to make it actually happen, then that may


not be the best link.


But if they legitimately are happy to mention you and link to your company, then that's


a good natural link that Google will appreciate.


Number two is directories.


And again, people are probably freaking out saying, directories are not natural links.


They're self-made links.


I'm not talking about freelinkdirectory.com and other types of spammy directories where


anybody in the world could create a link.


I'm talking about directories that have a barrier to entry, a directory that you would


expect that your business would be listed there, and a directory perhaps that people


are actually using.


A good place to get listed in these directories where you expect to see businesses is Moz


Local.


Moz Local can really help with the types of directories that you would expect to see your


site listed in.


There are sometimes also, though, niche directories that perhaps you have to do a little bit of


searching for.


So for example, let's say that you're a wedding photographer.


You might want to be listed in a local city directory that tells people where to find


musicians for their wedding and venues for the wedding and also wedding photographers.


That can be a really good link, and it's the type of link that would bring you traffic


as well, which is another indicator of a good link.


A good way to find these opportunities is to search for your competitor's phone number.


So you can do a search for the phone number minus their site, and that should give you


a list of directories that Google actually thinks are good examples of links to your


site.


So you can approach those directories and see if you can get a link to your site.


Number three is industry connections.


Most businesses have connections with suppliers, with vendors, with clients, and with partners,


and these are places where you would expect to see that your business is listed.


So if you can get listed on these types of lists, then that's a good thing.


A good way to find these is to find out what lists are your competitors on, take a look


at their link profiles, and see if there's anything there where you should be listed


as well.


Next, we'll talk about unclaimed brand and name mentions.


So this is a place where somebody has mentioned your business, mentioned your website, perhaps


mentioned your name, but they haven't linked to you.


It's perfectly okay to reach out to those people and say, hey, thank you for mentioning


us.


Could you possibly link to us as well?


And a lot of the time, that can result in a link.


You can find these opportunities by using Moz Fresh Web Explorer, and also, I think


every business should have set up Google Alerts to tell you when somebody has mentioned your


business.


However, even with these setups, sometimes some things get missed, and so I recommend


every month that you go and you do a search for your brand name and subtract out your


website.


You might want to also subtract out sites like YouTube or Facebook if you have a lot


of those listings as well, and then set the date back for one month and see what new mentions


has happened in that last month, and you may be able to reach out to some of those businesses


to get links.


Number five is to reclaim broken links.


A way that you can find broken links to your website is to go to Google Search Console


and look at the crawl errors.


What I'm talking about here is a place where somebody has linked to your website, but perhaps


they've misspelled the URL.


And what you can do, there's two ways that you can reclaim these.


One is to reach out to the site and say, hey, thanks for linking to us.


Could you maybe fix the typo?


And number two is to create a redirect that goes from the misspelled URL to the properly


spelled URL.


When you do this, you lose a tiny little bit of link equity through the redirect, but still,


it's much better than having a link that goes to a broken page, because a link that goes


to a 404 page is one that doesn't count for page rank matters.


Next is just be awesome.


Journalists are always looking for stuff to write about, and if you can do something with


your business that is newsworthy, then that's fantastic.


Something you can do is create an event or perhaps do something for charity, and journalists


love to write about that kind of thing.


A good way to find opportunities to do things like this is to do a Google search for local


and your profession.


So let's say you were a hair salon.


You could do a Google search for local hair salon and then click on news, and you'll see


all sorts of news stories that journalists have written about, perhaps a local hair salon


has offered free haircuts for veterans.


That gives you an idea of something that you can do as well.


And that also gives you a list of the journalists that are writing these types of stories.


So you can reach out to those journalists and say, hey, our business is doing this awesome


thing.


Would you consider writing a story about us?


And generally, that would include a link back to your website.


Number seven, if you're getting press, do things to get more of that press.


I have a story about a client who had a product who went viral.


And what he ended up doing was contacting all of those people who had linked to him


and offering himself as a source for an interview.


We also contacted people who mentioned the product but didn't link to him and said, hey,


could you possibly link to us?


We'd be happy to do an interview.


We'd be happy to provide a new angle to the story.


So if you're doing something that is going viral, that is getting a lot of press, often


that means that people are super interested in this aspect of your business.


And you can usually, with a little bit of work, get more links out of that process.


Number eight is HARO, which stands for Help a Reporter Out.


HARO is an email list that connects journalists with businesses, with professionals as well.


So these journalists are looking for a source.


For example, if you're a dentist, there might be a journalist who's doing a story about


teeth whitening.


And that journalist might want to use you as a source and then link to you.


A tip that I can offer is, if you're using Gmail, is to set up filters in Gmail so that


you only see the HARO requests that contain your keyword or your business.


Otherwise, you can get up to three of these emails a day, and it can be a little bit overwhelming


and fill up your inbox.


Number nine is to look at what content you have that's already getting links.


A good way to do this is to go to Google Search Console, Links to Your Site, Most Linked Content,


and click on More.


This is going to give you a list of the URLs on your site and the number of domains that


are linking to those URLs.


If you download the list, you'll also be able to see the exact URLs where the links are


coming from.


If you have content on your site that actually is already attracting links, then this is


the type of content that you want to promote to other people to get more links.


You can also contact the people who did link to you and say, thank you so much for linking


to me.


Is there something else that we could produce that would be useful for your customers, for


your readers?


And often that can give you good ideas for creating new content, and the links are right


there if those people are willing to give you ideas to write about.


And number 10 is something that's been discussed on Whiteboard Fridays before is 10x content.


This is creating content that's 10 times better than anything that's out there on the web.


This doesn't have to be expensive.


It can just be a matter of answering the questions that people have about your product or your


business.


So, one thing that I like to do is go to Yahoo Answers and search for my product for my profession


and see what kind of questions people are asking about this profession or product.


Because if people are asking the question on Yahoo Answers, it often means that the


answer is not easily available on a Google search.


So you can create content that's the best of its kind that answers any questions that


people might have, and you can reach out and ask for links.


And if this is really, truly 10x content, it is the type of content that should attract


links naturally as well.


So these are 10 ways that you can get links that will comply with Google's guidelines


and really should make a difference in your rankings.


These are going to be harder than just going to a free link directory or using some spammy


techniques to make links.


But if you can do this type of thing, it's the type of thing that really moves the needle.


You don't need to be worried about the web spam team.


You can be proud of the types of links that you're getting.


So thanks for watching.


I'd be interested in seeing what types of links you have gotten by creating great things,


by doing things that Google would expect businesses to do.


So leave a comment below, and I'm sure we'll have a great discussion about how to get links


Measuring Link Building – Whiteboard Friday Brand: Moz

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's Whiteboard Friday is about measuring link building.


So obviously this is a very big and very old topic in the SEO space, and it's one that


Moz as a company is heavily invested in, right?


Like domain authority and page authority are two very popular products of ours which are


commonly used for this exact purpose.


Now this isn't going to be an abtorial though.


I could stand here and just say, you know, obviously these are the best metrics in the


world and that can think that's not what I'm here to do.


I'm here to tell you, give you a bit of nuance about how and when to use these metrics and


how to think about them and how to use them alongside other metrics as well, rather than


just having one tool and seeing it as a solution to all problems, which isn't necessarily fair.


So to do that I'm actually going to start by going right back to 1998 and Google's PageRank


model.


Now I know that a lot has changed since 1998, both with the world and with Google, but this


was Google's original way of thinking about links and in a lot of ways it's still the


best that we have to go on.


And a lot of current SEO best practices and dogma are still based on this original understanding,


except there are a few things we've sort of picked up along the way that don't really


have a basis in anything that Google has said or done, which is part of why I want to sort


of point them out.


So PageRank originally was a way of using links to estimate the probability that a user


is on a page.


And that's already quite interesting, right?


That's because that shows that this is a model that is about popularity.


So when we talk about this now, we often talk about things like, you know, trust and authority


and this kind of thing.


And I'm sure those are relevant, but it's worth remembering that originally this was


just a way of estimating effectively the popularity of a page.


I know that I said of a page as well, not even a domain.


So imagine a world where there's one page on the internet, which is page A that I've


labeled here.


Now if there's one page on the internet, it's not that hard to estimate the chance that


a random browser is on that page, right?


It's a certainty they're on that page.


If we introduce a second page, it's still not that hard.


And we just assume it's going to be a 50-50 and so on and so forth.


And that's sort of the baseline probability that we have to work with.


But then we can take a sort of a bit of a tangent or a bit of a bit of a spice added


to the situation when one page links to another.


And that's obviously what we're actually interested in.


So if A links to this second page, and at the moment there's still only two pages on


the internet, ignore these other boxes, they'll come in later.


There's only two pages on the internet and A links to the second page.


We say that 0.85 times this probability is passed on.


Now 0.85 is a fairly arbitrary sort of constant.


It's one that comes from an old Google document.


It probably isn't that exact value, but it's fine for literature purposes and it's the


best we've got to go on.


So in this case, why have we said 0.85 by the way?


Why haven't we said that all of the users on this page clicked through?


Well that's because we assume that some of them are going to go and do their own thing.


Stop browsing the internet, do something else.


And it turns out this dampening factor is quite important in a world where pages do


actually link to each other in a big web rather than just one link in one direction.


So that's all well and good right?


What if we had a second link and introduced a third page to the internet?


This is still a very simplistic model right?


We've got an internet with three pages and two links and the links only go in one direction.


This is very very simple.


But in this case we say we can't have both of these pages getting the full probability.


No, the users aren't going through to both, they're going through to one of them.


So that gets half of 0.85a.


But then this one does too.


So in this simple version, again in a more complex model we might say oh one of these


links is more likely to be clicked on so it gets more probability or something like that.


But in this simple version we're saying it's split two ways.


Now in this case we've already learned something interesting again because by adding another


link we've reduced the value of the existing links.


And that's something that we hardly ever think about in a link building context right?


But that is sort of what we're thinking about when in technical SEO conversations we talk


about not having too many links in the top nav and this kind of thing right?


We're trying to focus our strength where we most want it.


And then lastly, I promise the algebra will stop soon, lastly what if we had another jump


in this system?


Well in this case this 0.85, this dampening happens again.


So 0.85 times 0.85 is about 0.72 so it's less.


So basically it's 0.85 times this page above it and so it's gotten even lower.


And this is why as technical SEOs sometimes we get caught up with things like chain redirects


and this kind of thing.


Well I think that's important, that's where that sort of dogma comes from.


So I'm not going to go any further with this sort of simplified page rank explanation.


What I am trying to draw to your attention here is a few things.


One is that there's a lot about the specifics of a page here that affects the value of these


links.


Like the number of links that the page sent outwards.


And also things like what this page was, what linked to the specific page.


Note that I didn't say anything about domains here.


This could be on four different domains, it could be on one domain.


We only talked about page specifics here.


And Google has been a little bit ambiguous over time in terms of how they think about


pages versus domains.


But broadly speaking they say they care about pages not domains.


So that's interesting right?


Because we could have, these could all be on the same domain conceivably and yet this


page could potentially be a lot weaker and pass on a lot less strength than this one.


So that's interesting and that's something we don't normally think about with link building.


So if we bring this back on topic to what I said I was going to talk about, actual metrics


for link building, there are a few qualities that we're looking for right?


Now what I haven't just talked about is these first two.


We do want metrics that are fast.


We want it to be available as quickly as possible so we can report to our client or a boss or


that kind of thing.


And also just with busy people we don't want to waste our time.


We want metrics that are ubiquitous so when I do say to my boss, oh you know I got you


a link which had DA90, there's a good chance that he or she or they know what that means.


Whereas if I say it had a Tom Capper score of 38b they can say what are you talking about?


So I do need to use a metric that's reasonably well understood.


But then there's this page and link level specifics that I just talked about.


So if I think about a metric like domain authority it does very well on these first two and it


does okay on this third one because it is trained on rankings to some degree but it's


answering which is some of what this is determining right?


So there's some benefit there and it does take into account some of this stuff but ultimately


it's domain level metric so it has to treat all the pages on one domain equally by definition.


And that has its, that produces some pros and cons.


So what I want to do is I want to put some metrics on a chart like this and suggest how


you might use them alongside each other.


So I've got actual as the vertical axis here so the closer it is to what we're actually


trying to measure which is Google's view of the value of the link basically the further


up it's going to be.


But then I've also got this fast slow sort of convenience metric.


So a metric like domain authority is probably somewhere here right?


It's very fast, it's very ubiquitous but it's missing some of this nuance because it's a


domain level metric and it's answering a slightly different question.


It's answering the question that DA's designed to answer the question how likely is a page


on this domain, all things being equal, to rank well?


And that's a slightly different question to how valuable is that link.


But if I'm saying oh I won't DA but not necessarily domain level you might say oh well Moz has


a metric for that and you should know and it's called page authority.


Well yep that is a good candidate.


So like most page level metrics in the industry including Google's and including our own,


page authority is initially informed by some domain level factors as well as page level


factors.


But it is, we've done correlation studies and this kind of thing, it is a lot closer


to measuring the value and ranking potential of a specific page than the domain authority


is as you'd expect right?


Because it's a more precise metric and it is capturing some of this nuance.


But I actually think you can go a step further with this as well.


Now page authority is a bit slower than domain authority because you have to wait for Moz


to discover and call the page.


And we do our best but it's not instant.


However there are, if you're willing to wait even longer than that you could use a metric


like referral traffic.


Apologies for my absolutely awful writing there.


So with referral traffic what we're interested in is how many people actually click through


from the link that I've built to my site.


And that's interesting because that's what Google was actually trying to measure in the


first place right?


So if we can measure that then we're getting pretty close to whatever they were aiming


for.


So whatever sophistication they've built in we're sort of capturing that nuance.


Now that has some obvious drawbacks.


One is that a lot of link building campaigns don't do very well on this metric and you


can draw your own conclusions about that.


The other is that you're obviously going to have to wait quite some time for this data


to become available and even then there might be issues with the client's analytics or this


kind of thing.


Anyway that's what I wanted to share with you today and essentially what I would suggest


is that you use all of these metrics and some others that you could put yourself on this


chart.


So I'm interested to hear what metrics you would use and where you would draw them on


this kind of chart.


And I put these green lines in as sort of a guide because I think you could do sort


of prospecting in this first section like before you've even built the link and then


initial reporting to the client and then this section would more be after the campaign where


you want to learn from it and think about what kind of links you would build in the


future and whether you would do the same sort of thing again.


Yeah I'd love to hear your ideas.


What a Two Tiered SERP Means for Content Strategy - Whiteboard Friday

Hi, Whiteboard Friday fans. I'm Will Critchlow, one of the founders at Distilled. And what


I want to talk about today is joining the dots between some theoretical work that some


of my colleagues have been doing and some of the client work that we've been doing recently


and the results we've been seeing from that in the wild and what I think it means for


strategies for different size sites going on from here.


So the beginning of this is a credit to one of my colleagues, Tom Capper, thcapper on


Twitter who presented at our Search Love London conference a presentation entitled The Two-Tiered


SERP. And I'm going to describe what that means in just a second. But what I'm going


to do today is talk about what I think that the two-tiered SERP means for content strategy


going forward and base that a little bit on some of what we're seeing in the wild with


some of our client projects.


So what Tom presented at Search Love London was he started by looking at the fact that


the correlation between domain authority and rankings has decreased over time. So he pulled


out some stats from February 2017 and looked at those same stats 18 months later and saw


a significant drop in the correlation between domain authority and rankings. This ties into


a bunch of work that he's done and presented elsewhere around potentially less reliance


on links going forward and some other data that Google might be using, some other metrics


and ranking factors that they might be using in their place, branded metrics and so forth.


But Tom saw this drop and had a hypothesis that it wasn't just an across the board drop.


This wasn't just Google not using links anymore or using links less. It was actually a more


granular effect than that.


This is the two-tiered SERP, what we mean by the two-tiered SERP. So a search engine


result page, a SERP, you've got some results at the top and some results further down the


page. And what Tom found, he had this hypothesis that was born out in the data, was that the


correlation between domain authority and rankings was much higher among the positions 6 through


10 than it was among the top half of the search results page.


And that this can be explained by essentially somewhat traditional ranking factors lower


down the page and in lower competition niches. And that at the top of the page where there's


more usage data, greater search volume and so forth in these top positions, that traditional


ranking factors played less of a part. They maybe get you into the consideration set,


right? There are no domains ranking up here that are very, very weak. But once you're


in the consideration set, there's much less of a correlation between these different positions.


So it's still true on average that these positions 1 through 5 are probably more authoritative


than the sites that are appearing in lower positions. But within this set, there's less


predictive value about the domain authority is less predictive of ranking within this


set than it is of ranking within this set.


This is the two-tiered SERP. And this is consistent with a bunch of data that we've seen across


the place and in particular with the outcomes that we're seeing among content campaigns


and content strategies for different kinds of sites. We are distilled. We get quite a


lot of clients coming to us wanting either a content strategy put together or in some


cases coming to us essentially with their content strategy saying, can you execute this?


Can you help us execute this plan? And very common for that plan to be, we want to create


a bunch of big pieces of content that get a ton of links. And we're going to use that


link authority to make our site more authoritative. And that is going to result in our whole site


doing better and ranking better.


And we've seen that that is performing differently in different cases, right? And in particular,


it's performing better on smaller sites than it is on big sites. So this is a little anonymized


case study. This is a real example of a story that happened with one of our consulting clients


where we put in place a content strategy for them that did include a plan to build the


domain authority because this was a site that came to us with a domain authority significantly


below that of their key competitors. Also with all of these sites not having a ton of


domain authorities. This was working in a B2B space, relatively small domains. They


came to us with that. And we figured that actually growing the authority was a key part


of this content strategy. And over the next 18 months, put out a bunch of pieces that


have done really well and generated a ton of press coverage and traction and things.


And over that time, they've actually outstripped their key competitors in the domain authority


metrics. And crucially, we saw that tied directly to increases in traffic that went hand in


hand with this increase in domain authority. But this contrasts to what we've seen with


some much larger sites in much more competitive verticals where they're already very, very


high domain authority. Maybe they're already stronger than some of their competitors. And


adding to that, so adding big content pieces that get even more big authoritative links,


has not moved the needle in the way that it might have done a few years ago. And that's


totally consistent with this kind of setup where if you are currently trying to edge


in the bottom or you're competing for less competitive search terms, then this kind of


approach might really work for you. And it might in fact be necessary to get into the


consideration set for the more competitive end.


But if you're operating on a much bigger site, you've already got competitive domain authority,


you and your competitors are all very powerful sites, then a kind of hypothesis is that you're


going to be needing to look more towards the user experience, the conversion rate, intent


research. So what is somebody who performs this search actually looking to do? Can you


satisfy that intent? Can you make sure that they don't bounce back to the search results


and click on a competitor? Can you make sure that in fact they stay on your site, they


get done the thing they want to get done, and it all works out for them? Because we


think that these kind of things are going to be much more powerful for moving up through


the very top end of the most competitive head terms.


And so when we're working on a content strategy or putting our creative team to work on these


kind of things on bigger sites, we're more likely to be creating content directly designed


to rank. We might be creating content based off a ton of this research, and we're going


to be incrementally improving those things to try and say, have we actually satisfied


the perfect intent for this super competitive head term? And what we're seeing is that's


more likely to move the needle up at this top end than growing the domain authority


on a big site.


So I hope you found that interesting. I'm looking forward to a vigorous discussion in


the comments on this one. But thank you for joining me for this week's Whiteboard Friday.


How to Write Customer-driven Copy That Converts [MozCon 2017] — Joel Klettke

Goodness gracious. Real quick, can I get a shy like, woo-hoo if this is your first time at MozCon?


Alright, see that's the last you guys have been all day, let's keep that going.


So in 2012 I was you, and the first MozCon I came to I decided that being right here, right now, was gonna be a goal for me.


So I pitched, and I failed, and I pitched, and I failed, and finally I pitched, and I get to be here, and I'm super, super excited about that fact.


And the moral of the story is, please, please, pitch community slots. Wow.


Alright, but I've got 15 minutes to blow your mind, to potentially change the way you think about not only how you write copy, but the words you put into it.


But if we're gonna go on that journey together, it's gonna start by us agreeing that maybe we've been thinking about copy the wrong way.


And here's what I mean by that. When you think about writing a landing page, you probably think about it something like this.


You need a headline, you need a strong sub-headline that adds to that headline, and then you need a hero image that brings context to all of that.


And then in your body copy, yeah, you wanna talk about the benefits of your product, and then you need to have a call to action to tell people what to do next.


And then you need to have some social proof to give credibility to everything that you just said.


And that's not necessarily wrong, but the problem is, you can have all of those components and build something totally useless.


Something that doesn't convert, doesn't have an impact, and doesn't do what you need it to do.


And so as a copywriter, I used to think about copy that way, and I started hunting for what I called the Holy Grail.


I wanted to have a framework that any business could use, anyone in any business could use, to go from that white little blinking cursor to writing a page that was intelligently organized and built to convert.


And I found it when I realized that every conversion is a conversation. Every conversion is a conversation between the questions in your lead's head that they brought with them, and the copy on your page and how well it answers those questions.


Answer those questions well, and you're on your way to a conversion. Do a bad job of answering those questions, and you potentially lost that conversion.


So I did a little bit of digging, and I narrowed it down to these six questions. These are the six things every lead comes into the page asking, depending on their level of awareness.


So what the heck is this? Who is it for? Or maybe better, is it for me? Why should I care? Or how will it make my life better? How does this work? What's the process? What's the catch?


And if I see how it works, why should I believe a single thing you've told me? And if I do believe a single thing you've told me, what do I need to do next?


So if we use this framework to evaluate a landing page, we can see that, hey, here Unbounce does pretty good. They've answered all of these questions on this landing page for an e-book.


We can see, all right, we know exactly what it is. It's an ultimate guide to conversion-centered design. And then we can see who it's for. We can see why we should care.


They've given us the takeaways and the different chapters. Then they've got a video that kind of breaks down how it works, what the takeaways will be, how the book's put together.


And finally, they've got a call to action that says what next. And then on the bottom there, we've got some social proof that tells us why they're credible to teach us this in the first place.


But I bet if most of us took this framework and looked at our own websites, it would look more like this. All of a sudden, we see some gigantic gaps in the information that we've put together.


For example, this page does a good job of saying, it's a new e-book. I give it a pass on that. It's good enough that it's an e-book.


They don't explain who this is for. I was really generous in giving them the question, why should I care, because they've got about ten words that say one thing you'll learn in this book.


Absolutely nothing that tells us why we should trust them. And then a big giant button where if we decide to trust them anyways, hey, we can download this. We can go for it.


But there was a problem with this framework. And that is if you think back to your last conversation, it probably had a logical flow.


So for example, if you came up to me and said, Joel, what do you do? And I said, I have ten thousand customers.


And then you said, yeah, okay, but how will that make my life better? And I said, sign up today.


The problem is I'm answering your questions but not in the order you're asking them. I'm not having a conversation with you. I'm forcing my facts on you.


I'm not making this a conversation. I'm monologuing at my own terms. So if you want to make this framework useful, you have to think about it logically.