If you haven't seen her presentation, like run and see it at the end of the day today.


MozCon 2015 - 14 - How to Better Sell SEO to the C-Suite with Purna Virji

But now while the marketing team will have larger goals, it's important for you as SEOs


to have a time specific and clear revenue based goal. So for example, I'm giving you


an example of a fake widget company. The goal is by December of this year, which is my step


goal to reach 165,000 in revenue per month. And then by July 2016, we want to reach 320,000


in revenue per month. To set benchmarking, we'll say the baseline for June was 96,000.


Now since revenue is the metric that's dearest to the C-suite's heart, we want to try to


speak in terms of revenue and show them dollar signs. But if you can't get that information,


if you face hiccups, I found you can do a very rough and tumble estimate by taking orders


multiplied by average order value to give you a roundabout estimate. It'll still allow


you to show the dollar signs. So with this way, it's clear, easy to understand, and the


C-suite is very happy. Now, here's our chance to share the strategies


that we'll be using and explain the value behind each one. So we're going to be answering


the what we'll do and why we'll do it questions. Now if you're anything like me, you get super


excited about your strategies and what we're going to do and nerdy about SEO, but it's


important not to go into too much detail. Otherwise, we'll just lose their attention.


Like they're busy, guys. Just keep it short and sweet. And I've also found by taking a


page from the conversion rate optimization team, we'll lead out with the benefits first.


So I'm going to share a few examples, and don't worry about reading them in detail.


You'll have the slides later. They're just random examples that I pulled together. So


we'll start off with strategy example one. We're going to focus on high demand products


to maximize sales. So there's your why. There's your benefit. And so we're going to tell them,


okay, this means we're going to target our higher demand products like green widgets


and red widgets and maybe blue. We want to increase qualified leads and earn links. Right?


Simple. And we're going to do this through content and PR. We're going to hone in on


high converting markets. So this will allow us to make our case for local SEO, for our


stores in the states that convert really well. We want to improve conversions by improving


our onsite user experience. So this is very important. It helps us set our, make our case


for restructuring the navigation or improving page speed or refreshing content, because


it ties it back in a way to revenue as well as SEO growth. And finally, we just want to


reduce barriers to ranking improvements. So we're going to fix current technical issues


on the side. Like if you notice it's short and sweet, we're not going in like, oh, we


have these 505s, we have these 404s, we have 302s. It goes above their head. They don't


care. We're just going to say to rank better, we want to just fix these. So in this way,


it's really effective to sell to your audience. Firstly, the benefits are crystal clear. Secondly,


we've answered the why behind the what. And with this better understanding, they feel


more involved and they're more likely to have confidence in what you're going to do. So


really, everyone's a winner. Now we get to what is potential monthly growth. Okay, slight


slap on the wrist, but very gentle guys, I love you. Us SEOs are very reluctant to forecast


any kind of revenue growth when it comes to our clients. And I can understand that. But


if we're not ready to commit to any kind of growth projections, how can we expect the


C suite to commit all these resources to us? Showing them some numbers of what we expect


SEO to generate in revenue is a very, very important step in your document. This is what's


going to get their interest and show the value that SEO could have. Now, forecasting is an


art and a science. We don't want to do a swag. So no swags, but you want to just try to think


through each strategy and see what could it generate? What could it yield? Like how can


I expect revenue to grow? So it's quite, it's not that easy when you first start out, but


with a little practice, it's good. And here's the tip that's going to make it even better.


You want to speak in terms of probability. Now, part of why we're reluctant to forecast


any type of growth is we don't want to set ourselves up for disappointment. We'll never


nail the numbers 100% correctly. If any of you have, please can you buy my lottery ticket?


But if not, then I found that you can say that, okay, I'm 80% confident that we can


real this much growth, which is like a realistic option. It still gives you a 20% buffer so


you can show possibility without backing yourself in the corner. And then I also encourage you


to do a 60% probability level, which is an optimistic option. So you can be like, all


right, you know, this could be even more growth, but there's still a 40% chance it won't happen.


So as examples for my widget company, at the realistic option at the 80%, we're going to


assume a month to month growth of between five and 15% after a slower start. For my


more optimistic option, I'm going to expect maybe a month to month growth of 10 to 30%.


Remember, I have 40% chance of being wrong. It's okay. Again, after a slower June or July.


So we'll put out the numbers. Don't worry about reading them all, too, but give you


a second to look at them. If you notice, the 60% numbers are much higher than the 80%.


Again, it's more optimistic. And when you're coming up with your numbers, try to think


what could make me more confident in my 60% numbers? Because you know, once you show it


to the C suite, they're like, yeah, we want that. That will help you better prioritize


your strategies and tactics to work on what's going to be most effective. It's such a good


like disciplining step in a way I found. And again, it will help sharing these numbers


will show possibility without backing yourself into a corner. And long term, it will help


the C suite trust you more. All right, now we're going to say where's this growth going


to come from? I found that a lot of the C suite or people unfamiliar with SEO will only


equate SEO success with an improvement in the rankings and then okay, only if I'm number


one, will I really do well. But that's not the case, right? We know that we can generate


revenue even without a dramatic movement in the rankings. So this step will allow us to


share a solid thought process and explain the value behind our strategies, especially


the content and PR ones, because they tend to be more nebulous. So for example, Widgets


Are Us is expecting maybe 60% of organic search, the growth to come from there, maybe another


25% as a result of referral traffic and content outreach, and maybe another 15% as a result


of any PR and the direct traffic it sends. Again, it's a small but really mighty step


that shows the value behind our different strategies and shows that SEO has more value


outside of the SERPs as well. Potential Risks. This is where we can go in and explain our


probability levels a little bit more. So we can say that okay, if the risks that we've


outlined here were to manifest, then we'd be closer to our 80% numbers or maybe have


even worse performance than 80%. But if we could overcome these risks, then we could


be at our 60% probability levels. And the C-suite will want that. They're like, we'd


like these larger numbers, of course, more revenue. So just some examples of risks for


Widgets Are Us is delays in execution of content. Maybe the PR team can't help pitch this or


the IT team is not able to fix the issues in time. Or any sort of Google updates that


may hinder us. Or any sort of technical issues with site updates. So if you notice in this


list, we subtly made our case for the PR team to pitch our content, for the IT team to fix


our issues, for the writers and the designers to put up the content. So C-suite's now all


involved. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't want there to be any delays. We can


control this. We can do that. So now they're on your side and they want to help you to


make sure. And then if anything happens later, like you don't look defensive because you're


spelling it out in advance. So you'll be like ninja prepared to handle anything that could


happen. All right. Think back to your last attempt at getting resources, pulling teeth,


right? Well, with the strategy plan, we've now gotten to the point where the C-suite


is saying, okay, great, what do you need to make this happen? Like here, take, take, take.


So that's where we pull out our resource plan. That's where we can spell out if we need to


sort of hire any new people, maybe staff or agency or freelancers. Or also if we need


time from other departments. So for example, we could say, I have an SEO manager and I


have an SEO coordinator, but I'm going to need a community manager dedicated to me.


And I'm going to need 10 hours a week at least of PR time. And I'm going to need 15 hours


a week of web dev team's time. This way, the powers that be will sort of understand the


level of investment upfront. And they'll be able to align their teams to make sure that


they can give you this. Now, if you wanted to make a case for hiring a new resource,


there are a few more steps you can take to improve the odds. I found that making a sort


of business case or a cost benefit analysis, which essentially just shows that the value


that this new resource will bring is going to far exceed their cost to us. So try to


just have a few questions ready. You'll want to answer like, why do we need this person?


And if you can, tie it back to your strategies. Explain who will manage them internally, right?


Whoever you get will need to be managed. Explain in dollar amounts the value that we expect


their presence to bring. Also outline what happens if we don't have them. Will it affect


maybe we can't do a certain strategy or maybe it will have less chance of success? And then,


of course, dollar amounts, what's the estimated cost? This way, we can look like we're really


asking for more help for a valid reason, not just so we can put our feet up and go home


at 3 o'clock. It's simple. It's clear. And you can't really argue with numbers. Lucky


number seven, profit and loss graphs. So, okay, in the old days, we shied away from


profit and loss. I mean, we're SEOs, not accountants. They're boring folk. We're cool. But this


is a really, really important step. This is what's going to get their attention and really


hold it. And this one, as you can see, goes a little bit deeper than the six month projections


because we can show how order volume will be impacted. We can show how spend will be


impacted. We can show the additional expenses that we'll have and how that impacts revenue.


Again, you could go into more detail. You could add your cost requisitions in there


or any further metric you like. But it packs a powerful punch at the end to show them that,


even with all of this, we can still grow revenue this much. And plus, for the CEOs, it shows


them that you can think like them because now they're thinking, gosh, if order volume


is going to go up so much, I'm going to have to hire more customer support or it may impact


other departments. So this is why we want to do the step at the end. It's the extra


whammy. So we'll just sum up the plan quickly. We've outlined our goal, which is with a step


goal and then a longer term goal. We shared the key strategies, keeping the benefits top


of mind. We shared monthly growth projections at two probability levels to grab their attention.


We showed where the growth would come from to show the value even outside of the SERPs.


And we covered the potential risks and subtly made our case to get the C-suite on our side


to make this happen. And we shared our resource plan so we can have it all in advance. And


we hit it out of the park with the profit and loss graphs. So what do you think, guys?


Do you have a better understanding of the next few months will look like? It's so powerful.


Okay, you're just like, this is so much work. Ain't nobody got time for this. But a few


hours to put this together will yield you like months and months of peace, happiness,


bliss and success. Like I promise you, it is super worth it. Another thing I found is


how it's affected our day to day execution. We all have those days, right? You go into


work, there's like, oh my God, 25 things to do, 10 fires to put out. And you're just like,


oh, I don't know what to do. I'm going to sit there and waste time deciding what to


do. But this strategy plan will help counteract all of that. Okay. Near the end, guys, you've


been great. So now you have your doc and you're like, okay, now what? Now I have my doc. So


you want to schedule a meeting with the C-suite and then I'll give you a few extra tips to


help you win them over completely. They'll be madly in love with you. So we're going


to prepare the answers for the tough questions. So you know your C-suite well. You know the


common questions that come up with clients. You want to try to really think through and


have proper answers ready. Because if you're at that meeting and they come up with a question


like, why are we focusing on X first? Or how do you know Y will work? Or why are we doing


this what the competitor says? And then can't we do Z in half the time? Those are my favorite


questions. It's like, sure. You pay me double the money, I do it half the time. So, but


anyway, just having these answers at the ready at your fingertips will really help you earn


their trust and they'll feel more secure with you and trust you and your plans more.


Secondly, bring relevant examples to the meeting. This will help you sort of substantiate your


plans and your forecasts and just show that it's not like rabbits pulled out of a hat.


It's based on solid data. So you could put together case studies, research, examples.


So you could say, all right, we know X will work because, show your reason. Go to Mars.


Mars recently shared a study on Y. I mean, you find a million things on Mars. I would


go there. Or then in the past when we did Z, this is how it performed. So again, it's


just solid data that's actionable and authoritative and shows that you have a good solid plan.


And three, you want to create a tactical execution plan. So because this strategy document is


meant to be a conversation starter, it breaks the ice, they'll want to learn more. That's


when you need to be more prepared than a boy scout. So you're going to pull out a little


three month mini tactical execution plan, what you do anyway, and say that, okay, this


is what I'm going to do in month one, month two, month three. These are the mini milestones


and goals for each month. So again, you just look so organized and they'll have to have


faith in you and you can do what you want at that point then once you have their buy-in.


Then we want to set reporting and communication cadence. So my designer totally stole that


from Dilbert or something like that, but it's still funny. Now that you have their buy-in


or while in the meeting, you want to say that, okay, this is how often I'm going to report


and this is what I'm going to show you. So this will help counteract the whole SEO as


flavor of the month and then 60 days later, SEO is looking at, oh, something else, maybe


email marketing or something else is fun for them and you're going to miss out on their


support and buy-in. So we want to keep showing them regular reports at the frequency they


like to help keep showing them that you have value. So because they're busy, I like doing


sort of a weekly graph that just shows sort of this is the effort and this is the impact


on revenue and maybe a monthly one just showing progress against revenue. But you see what


will work for your team. Like you know your C-suite well, right? So you'll find the right


cadence and really remember and remind them that this is not set in stone. It's as flexible


as you need it to be. Think of it like a map, like you're driving somewhere. If you find


a better detour, you're going to want to take it. So these are not by any means whatsoever


restrictive. They're just there to guide you and help you. Moving forward, I think I strongly


believe that the companies that will win at SEO will be the ones that have full company


support. In this competitive space, having the backing of every department from customer


service to biz dev to traditional marketing and PR to the C-suite and finance can make


us SEOs practically invincible. Okay. It's not so as awesome as working on a tropical


island on a beach with your umbrella cocktails, but it's still pretty freaking awesome. And


we can carve out this future for ourselves. We can make the C-suite fall as madly in love


with SEO as we are and they'll as a result understand SEO. They'll want to hear more


of it. So then we can be focused fully on execution with the budget and resources we


need. We'll love what we do so much more and we'll have the media guys drooling over our


budgets. Remember, we as SEO CEOs are powerful enough to make this happen. Thank you.


Thank you. Though hugely relevant, I think people don't even realize this happens absolutely


everywhere. Even at Moz, we go through this exact same process and things need to be justified.


There's a lot of expenses. Rand, can I have more SEO budget?


He's lost his voice, but he's saying yes. So one thing that comes up when claiming this


is a lot of questions, claiming credit for trying to forecast revenue. The issue often


comes up in a multi-channel world that different people want to take credit for revenue and


revenue goes up, the product team wants to say, hey, it's because we did. How do you


deal with those kind of situations? So that's when we really need to work with


this. Say if I'm working with a PR team to do an outreach effort, that's where I get


them excited. I'll say, hey, what we'll do together will hit your goals and my goals


so we can show that, hey, PR did this, but this was an SEO tactic that we came up for


SEO. And you want to give everybody credit. I mean, we're not the only ones that will


win, but we'll say that through PR we got this additional exposure that we wouldn't


have gotten otherwise. But it was still an SEO tactic that we created that resulted in


PR wins. Or we shared the results.


Exactly. We share the results. Everybody wins. Okay. Brian Bozarth asked, what steps do you


take for really forecasting ranking CTR on ROI? What's the process you do for forecasting


those? So I'll try to look at first, I'll start with


the ones that are clearer. So if I'm doing this, here's what I'm expecting, maybe PR


pickup. Here's how much referral traffic I could expect based on how successful I think


the campaign is going to be. And then I'll know that look in the short term, it's not


going to move up the rankings immediately. But once it does, there are different studies


that have clicked through at a different level, but I don't know if that really applies so


much because the results are so personalized. So it's really more of a result of, okay,


if we do solid work and keep showing progress to Google, getting good engagement, getting


like authoritative links, then we should move up. And as we do, I'll try to look at some


click through rate studies. And yeah.


Common situation, you're working with an executive or a new client and they want to see immediate


results. When a lot of SEO activities take months, we're working on six months, 12 months,


18 month timeframes before we really see a long term investment. How do you set expectations


properly in those situations?


That's when you just got to go in and be really honest and we can set up cells for failure


if we're going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Within three months we're going to do this brilliant


job, but it doesn't really happen like that. Right. So I'd be brutally honest. I'm like,


you will probably not see good results there, but we have what I call our sort of in leading


indicator metrics that we use. So you can look at, okay, Hey, our sort of domain authority


is going up or we're getting certain authoritative links or a traffic is going up and that will


sort of be an indicator that eventually SEO is going to yield results.


Perna, thank you so much for stopping by. Perna Burja everybody.


More Than SEO: 3 Ways to Prove UX Matters Too [MozCon 2017] — Matthew Edgar

Good morning.


Thank you.


So I think most of us in this room, maybe all of us in this


room, hopefully after Will's talk this morning, all of us


in this room, would agree that user experience matters a


great deal for SEO.


Certainly in recent years, we've seen Google give a lot


of priority to user experience as they've started to focus on


things like page speed and mobile friendliness and the


quality of the content on our site.


Even the use of SSL certificates can be seen in a


user experience light.


And when you think about it, user experience and SEO have


always gone together.


Good user experience is all about discoverability, making


sure that the people who need to find your site can.


That's SEO.


Good user experience is about speaking your visitors'


language and making sure that you're really speaking to them


the way they talk.


That's keyword research and also has a lot to do with


really how you write good quality content on your site.


And we can probably come up with lots of other examples


here of how user experience and SEO really


relate and go together.


But the point is that it's always been important to


deliver a good experience to the people both when they find


your site on a search result and after they click on that


search result.


There are people who object to this.


And one of the most common objections that I hear is


none of that's true.


I don't need user experience.


I need rankings, and I need traffic.


Other people tell me, yeah, somebody else already is


taking care of that user experience thing.


Some other designer, developer, agency, whoever it


is, they've got it.


So really, you can just keep your hands off.


Because SEO, it just stops at the SERP.


We need to think about those objections.


But the other objection that comes up is a big one.


And it's one that comes up even for those of us who know


that user experience does matter and who know that user


experience and SEO go together.


And that's the question of, well, how do you measure it?


What the heck is good user experience?


And I think this comes up because user experience can


seem like a very nebulous topic.


It's kind of hard to pin down and really figure out what do


we mean when we say user experience?


It's very relative, and it's very subjective.


In contrast with SEO, at least classic SEO, we have clear,


objective, quantifiable metrics we can point to.


We did some work, and we got more organic traffic.


We have more backlinks.


We have higher rankings, higher domain authority,


whatever it might be.


But what are those clear, objective, quantifiable


metrics that can help us understand our user


experience?


I took that question on as a challenge because I wanted to


be able to show my clients first that user experience


does, in fact, matter, but second, that user experience


matters alongside and as part of your SEO work.


There are ways to measure user experience with things like


usability tests or surveys.


And while these are really great ways to understand who


your visitors are or understand what your visitors


might be thinking, how do they connect, really directly


connect, to your SEO?


The other issue with usability tests or surveys is that


they're typically only invested in during large-scale


redesign or redevelopment projects.


But user experience is a long-term and ongoing process,


so we need metrics that work for us on a long-term and


ongoing basis.


You could use things like heat maps or recordings to get at


this information.


And while these are great tools, just because somebody


clicked here or scrolled there, what does that really


tell me about how my user experience works


alongside my SEO work?


So as an alternative, I turned to event tracking and Google


Analytics.


And there's a lot that we can measure with event tracking,


but I want to cover three examples of ways we can use


event tracking to really understand something


meaningful and interesting about our user


experience on our site.


I'm going to cover a fair amount of code as I go


through everything.


So if you want to download any of this code or use any of


it, there will be links to all of it on these slides if you


want to download those.


So let's begin by talking about how we measure how


people browse through or navigate our site.


Certainly a key part to creating a great experience is


making sure that the people who visit our site can find


whatever it is they came to our site to find.


And that means we need to track all the different ways


people navigate through our site, starting with tracking


all the things that people are clicking on.


There's a good script that can give us a way


to start doing this.


And what this script does, by default, is it tracks all the


clicks on outgoing links, downloads, jump links, a


couple other types of links.


The one type of link that's not tracked by default are


internal links, all the links that keep people on your site.


Those are the ones we really want to know about when we're


thinking about how people navigate our site.


So with a quick modification to this code, we can start to


track internal links as well.


And then in Google Analytics, we can see all the different


types of links people click on as an event category.


And if you click on that event category, you can see each


individual link as the action.


And you can figure out how many times people are


clicking on those links.


Now, that's a good starting point to understand how people


really navigate and use our site.


But it's not the full story.


Just because people click on a link doesn't really tell us a


whole lot of information.


We need to know more.


And one piece of information that we can add in is how long


does it take people to click on a particular link.


So we can modify this script just a little bit more to


include a timer.


And if the timer actually starts to track the time


people are actively on the page using visibility change,


then we can really see something more interesting than


just a timer that tracks the entire time people are on the


page and possibly have it open in a background tab.


And now with that information passed along as part of the


event label, we know something way more interesting than did


people click on a particular link.


We know how long it took people to decide that they


should click on a particular link on our site.


And we can add up all that information and come up with


an average minutes or average seconds that it takes people


to click on any given link on our site.


And from here, we can start to figure out, well, is it too


much time before people click on a link or too little time


before people click on a link?


Either way could suggest a lot of confusion or a lot of


frustration with how people are navigating our site.


But along with that, we also want to know the activity that


happens after people click on a given link on our site.


So for this, we could use something like sequences or


navigation paths or behavior flow to get at that


information.


But a more effective way I found to really start to


understand this is to set a cookie when people click on an


internal link.


And what you can do is you can let that cookie collect


information about the page that people clicked to and


then send that back as an event.


And what you can do with this is you can start to figure out,


well, did people stay on the page that they clicked to or


not?


If they clicked and then they clicked away really fast from


your website or they didn't spend a lot of time over


there, that suggests that there's some problems with


the experience people are having on that page they


clicked to.


And where this is really helpful is on landing pages.


Too often on landing pages, I think we get hung up on, well,


what's the bounce rate and what are people doing there?


But we also want to know something about the


experience people have after they're on that landing page.


So you can see in this example that people who were on my


site's home page, who landed on my site's home page from a


search result and then continued on to another page,


spent about a minute on that other page.


So taken together, that landing page and these other


pages makes it seem like there's a good experience.


But if we drill in on this a little bit more, we can see


that people who landed on my site's home page and then


continued on to my site's about page ended up spending


way less time on that page.


And all of a sudden, that starts to tell me, well, maybe


there's a problem there.


The landing page looks OK.


The bounce rate, everything is fine on that landing page.


But it's this other page people clicked to that's


potentially a problem.


That page is the one that's driving


people away from my site.


That's costing me converters.


That's also a page that's potentially sending people


back to a search result where they're going to click on


somebody else's website.


And that's potentially going to affect my search rankings


and performance.


Let's move on and talk about another example of how we can


really start to understand something about the content on


our site.


Yes, we want to know how people are clicking and


navigating through our site.


But there's more to the experience than that.


And we want to make sure that people are reading all the


content that we've written, that they're scrolling through


our design, that they're seeing everything we want them


to see.


And as a way to start doing that, we can use a scroll


tracking script.


And there's a lot of ones out there.


One I particularly like is this one from Parsnip.


Some of you might be using it.


And what these scripts do is they let you know how far down


the page people have scrolled.


And you can modify these just a little bit to make it a


little more interesting to know not just how far they


scroll down the page, but if people scroll to a particular


part of the page.


So you can say, well, did people scroll to the 27th


paragraph in a really long blog post?


Did they scroll to a feature at the end of my page?


Or in this example, did they scroll to a call to action?


Now, that's helpful.


But beyond just knowing how far people scroll down the


page or if they scroll down the page, we want to know


something more about the experience people have.


So we can add in some timing information.


And one piece of timing information we want to factor


in is the time it takes people to scroll through my page.


So I can say, well, people took 39 seconds to scroll to


that lower call to action.


And then once they got there, we can start timing it there.


And we can say, well, people spent 36 seconds looking at


that lower call to action box that we're


tracking in this example.


And for a call to action, 36 seconds is probably plenty of


time, maybe even a little too much time.


But if this was a really long paragraph of text or if that


was a five minute video that people scrolled to, 36 seconds


definitely is not enough time.


But beyond knowing the time that people spent to it, this


is where we can add click information in alongside the


scroll information.


And so in this example, we can say, well, look, 23 people


scrolled to this part of the page, and 11 of


those people clicked.


Not a bad click through rate.


If only we got more people scrolling to it, maybe we


could get more people clicking.


That's helpful.


But we want to know the bigger picture around scrolling


activity and the experience people have.


Because so far, all the things we've talked about have missed


out on a really big piece of scrolling through our site.


And that's that people don't just scroll down the page.


Sure, they scroll down, but they scroll back up as well.


And we want to make sure that we're tracking all the


scrolling activity that's happening in both directions.


And one really helpful thing we want to track is the way in


which people scroll back up the page right before they


leave our site, the exit scroll point.


And so with that exit scroll point, what we can do is say,


well, look, we know that people scrolled 70% of the


way down the page.


That's the maximum scroll point that they reached.


But when they left our site, they had scrolled back up to


the 40% mark of our page.


And if we add in the secondary dimension of browser size, we


can start to see, well, what's there?


What's at that part of the page?


And that tells me two interesting things about my


site's experience.


First, it tells me which part of the page people are


leaving from, not just looking at the exit page, but the


specific part of the exit page I need to improve to keep


people around.


But the second thing that this tells me is something about


what these people are interested in


who are on my site.


They scrolled back up to see something at


that part of the page.


They were curious about that.


They had a question about that part of my page.


And I can use that information to figure out, well, how


should I rewrite the content on this page?


Or how should I promote this page?


Or how should I build links to this page?


Or is there something about that part of the page that I


can learn what people are interested in, which can


influence how I want to adjust my product, or my services, or


my sales, or some other part of my business?


Finally, let's talk about an example of when things break


in our site's experience.


Yes, we want to know when people are successfully able


to navigate our site, and when they're able to read through


all the content that we've created.


But ultimately, some things are going to go wrong.


And when things go wrong, we want to know two pieces of


information.


First, we want to know, well, what did go wrong?


And how often did that error occur?


But second, we want to know, well, what kind of problems


were there, and how did those affect our site's experience?


And when we're talking about errors, we want to look not


just at the technical errors that occur, but we want to


look at the user errors, the times our users slipped up or


made a mistake.


And one place where we see a lot of errors, a lot of


slips, a lot of mistakes occur is on forms.


And no matter what type of form we're talking about,


there's lots of different ways things can go wrong.


And whenever an error is returned to a visitor on our


form, we want to send back an event.


And this event can just tell us which


specific errors occurred.


And the easiest way to do this is to give each error a


unique ID number.


And so we can say, well, people forgot a digit on


their phone number.


They made a mistake.


That gets one ID number.


People maybe got an error with an international phone number


failing to verify.


That would be a different ID number.


And then in Google Analytics, we can see all the different


combinations of errors that people got.


We can tally these up to figure out, well, how


frequently did each error occur?


But this is where we want to know more information about,


well, how did that really affect the experience people


had filling out that form?


So we can segment that event tracking report to see how


many of those people who got those errors ended up


completing the form.


And then we can compare those two numbers.


So we can see in this example that people who got error ID


number five, well, that occurred pretty frequently


with 22 occurrences.


But 20 of those people were able to move beyond the error


and complete the form.


So yes, the error is occurring.


But no, it's not really affecting our site's


experience all that much.


In contrast, error ID number four occurred a lot too.


But only seven of the 29 people who got this error


were able to move beyond the error and actually


complete the form.


So all of a sudden, that error looks like a much bigger


priority to fix to really improve our site's experience.


Now, this tells us something about user experience.


But it also helps us understand something about our


SEO as well.


Because with this, we can say, look, we got good quality


traffic to our site from search.


And we know that because we got them to our site.


We got them to this form.


We even got them filling out this form.


Now we can say, look, the reason they're not completing


this form isn't because we did our SEO work wrong, or we


targeted the wrong terms, or we targeted the wrong people


in the search result.


No, it's because of this specific error on this


specific field of this specific form.


All of a sudden, we have a much better way to really


diagnose and understand problems.


But this also tells us something about how user


experience affects our bottom line.


In the case of this form, I can say, look, the reason


people aren't completing it is because of this error.


It's because of this bad experience that's happening.


And with that, user experience is no longer a nebulous


concept that's tough to pin down.


It's something where you can really demonstrate how it


affects your bottom line, how it affects your marketing, and


how it affects your SEO.


7 Red Flags to Watch Out For When Auditing Your Link Profile - Whiteboard Friday

Hey guys, welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Cameron Jenkins


and I work here at Moz. Today we're going to be talking about auditing your backlink


profile, why you might want to do it, when you should do it, and then how to do it. So


let's just dive right in. So it might be kind of confusing to be talking about auditing


your backlink profile. When I say auditing your backlink profile, I'm specifically talking


about trying to diagnose if there's anything funky or manipulative going on. So there's


been quite a bit of debate among SEOs, so in a post-penguin 4.0 world, we all wonder


if Google can ignore spammy backlinks and low-quality backlinks, why would we also need


to disavow, which essentially tells Google the same thing, just ignore these links. So


it kind of poses three reasons why we might still want to consider this in some situations.


So why? Number one, the disavow is still offered. Disavow is still an option you can go to and


submit a disavow file right now if you wanted to. Number two, you can still get manual penalties.


So Google still has guidelines against the outline of the link schemes and types of link


manipulation and if you violate those, you could get a manual penalty in your Google


search console, it'll say something like unnatural links to your site detected, total or partial,


you can still get those. So that's another reason I would say that the disavow is still


something you could consider doing. And then three, Google says their stance hasn't changed.


So I know there's like a little bit of back and forth about this, but technically, I mean,


Google has said our stance hasn't changed, still use the disavow file carefully and when


it's appropriate. So we'll talk about when it might be appropriate, but that's kind of


why I would consider that this is still a legitimate activity that you could do. So


when? I would say that in today's climate, it's probably best just to do this when you


see overt signs of a link scheme or link manipulation, something that looks very wrong or very concerning


because Google is so much better or better at uncovering when there are manipulative


links and just ignoring them and not penalizing a whole site for them. It's not as important,


I think, to be as aggressive as we maybe used to be previously. But if you do, maybe you


inherit a client and you just look at their link profile for the first time and you notice


that there's something sketchy in there, I might want to consider doing it. If there


are signs, you're an SEO, you can kind of detect the signs of maybe there's a link scheme


going on. But if you're not quite sure how to diagnose that, check for red flags in Moz


link explorer and that's the second part of this. We're kind of going to go through some


red flags that I have noticed, but huge disclaimer, seven possible red flags. Please don't just


take one of these and say, oh, I found this, like immediately disavow. These are just things


that I have noticed over time. I started an SEO in 2012 and right around the time of Penguin


and so I did a lot of cleanup, so many spammy links. So I kind of just saw patterns and


this is the result of that. I think that's kind of stayed true over the last couple of


years, links that haven't been cleaned up. Some people are still doing these kind of


low quality link building techniques that actually could get you penalized. So these


are some things that I have noticed. They should just pique your interest. So if you


see something like this, if you detect one of these red flags, it should prompt you to


look into it further, not immediately write off those links. Those are bad immediately.


They're just things to maybe spark your interest so that you can explore further on your own.


So with that big disclaimer, let's dive into the red flags. First red flag, irrelevance.


So a couple examples of this, maybe you are working on a client, they are US based and


all of their locations are US, all of their entire audience is US based, but you get a


quick glimpse of the inbound links, maybe you are in Link Explorer, you go to the inbound


links report and you see a bunch of domains linking to you that are.ru and.pl and that's


kind of confusing, right? Like why is my site getting a huge volume of links from other


countries that we don't serve and we don't have any content in Russian or Polish or anything


like that? So that might spark my interest to look into it further, could be a sign of


that. Another thing off topic, so my favorite example just because it was so ridiculous


was I was working with an Atlanta DUI attorney and he had a huge chunk of backlinks that


were from party planning, like low quality party planning directories and they didn't


make any sense. So I mean I clicked on them just to see what it was and you can kind of


go to it and see, okay, yeah, there really is no reason they should be linking to each


other. It was clear he just went to Fiverr and was like $5 here, build me links and he


didn't care where they came from. So you might notice a lot of totally off topic irrelevant


stuff but just obviously disclaimer, it might look irrelevant but then when you dive in


further it's really they are in the same market and they kind of have a co-marketing relationship


going on. So just be careful with that but it could be a sign that there is some link


manipulation going on if you have totally off topic links in there. Second red flag,


anchor text. So again this is another cool report in Mozlink Explorer. You can go in


there and see the anchor text report. I would look for, when I notice that there is link


manipulation going on usually what I see is that there is a huge majority of their backlinks


coming with the same exact anchor text and usually it is the exact match keyword that


they want to rank for. That's usually a huge earmark of hey they have been doing some shady


linking. So the example I like to use for this and why that is concerning and there


is no percentage that is like whoa that's manipulative but if you see a really disproportionate


percentage of links coming with the same exact anchor text it might prompt you to look into


it further. But the example I like to use is say you meet with five different friends


throughout the course of your day. Different occasions you know they are not all in the


same room with you. You talk to each of them and they all say hey yeah my weekend was great


but like I broke my foot. You might be, you would be suspicious like what they all broke


their foot this is weird what's going on. Same thing with anchor text. If you are earning


links naturally they are not all going to look the same and mechanical. Something suspicious


is probably going on if they are all linking with the exact same anchor text. So that's


that. No follow to follow. This is another one that please don't use this as a sweeping


role because I think even Russ Jones has come out and said at a mass scale that's not a


good predictor of spamminess. But what I have tended to see usually if they also have spammy


anchor text and they are irrelevant usually I also see that there is a really really disproportionate


ratio of no follow to follow. So use these kind of red flags in conjunction with each


other when they start to pile on it's even more of a sign to me that there is something


fishy going on. So no follow to follow. You might see something ridiculous again something


you can see in link explorer maybe like 99% of all of their backlinks are follow which


are the ones that pass page rank so that's if you are going to do a link scheme you are


going to go out and get the ones that you think are going to pass page rank to your


site and then 1% just like or no percent is no follow. So maybe something to look into.


Same thing with links to domains again not an overt sign of spamminess there is no magic


ratio here but sometimes when I notice all of these other things I will also notice that


there is a really disproportionate ratio of say they have 10,000 inbound links but they


are coming from only 5 domains. Sometimes this happens an example of this I was auditing


a client's backlink profile and they had set up 5 different websites and on those websites


they had put site wide links to all of their other websites so they had created their own


little network they were trying to by linking to each other they were hoping to bolster


all of their sites authority. Obviously be careful with something like that it could


indicate that you are self creating follow links which is a no no. Domain naming so this


one is just kind of like the eyeball test which I will get to later but you can just


if you go to your inbound links you can just kind of start to notice domain names that


just look weird and they will start to look off the more you look into stuff like this.


So when I was doing a lot of backlink auditing what I noticed was that a lot of these spammer


links came from low quality directory submission sites so a lot of those tend to have the name


they would say directory in it or dir so like best link dir dot co dot whatever and a lot


of times when they have naming conventions like that I have noticed that those tend to


be low quality directory submission sites so you can even eyeball scan and see if there


is any dir directory type of links. Same thing with articles like back in the day when people


used to just submit like easy articles or article base or something like that if they


have the if it has the word article in the domain name might be something to look into


maybe they were doing some low quality like article submission with backlinks to their


site kind of good deal and then if you tend to see a lot of links in their backlink profile


that have like SEO link type naming conventions unless you are working on a site that is in


the SEO space they shouldn't have a bunch of links that say like you know best SEO site


dot com or best links for you doc I've seen a lot of that so just something that I have


noticed something to maybe watch out for. Tool metrics so these can be super helpful


if you see tool metrics that maybe there is a really high spam score something to look


into. If you actually it might be helpful Moz on their help hub has a list of all 27


criteria that they look at when evaluating a site's spaminess so that might be something


helpful to look into how Moz's spam score calculates spaminess so maybe look into that.


DA and PA just a note on this domain authority and page authority if you see links coming


from low DA or low PA URLs just make sure you don't write those off right off the bat


it could just be that those domains are very new maybe they haven't engaged in a lot of


marketing yet it doesn't necessarily mean they're spammy it just means they haven't


done much to earn any authority so just watch out for kind of writing off links and thinking


they're spammy just because they have a low DA or PA so just something to consider. And


then finally we have the eyeball test so like I said the more you do this and it's not something


that you should be engaging in constantly all the time nowadays but you'll start to


notice patterns if you are working on clients with spammy or link profiles these kind of


sites low quality sites tend to have like the same template you'll have a hundred sites


that are all you know blue they have the exact same navigation exact same logo they're all


in the same network you'll start to notice themes like that a lot of times they don't


have any contact information because no one maintains these things they're just up for


the purpose of links they don't care about them so no phone number no contact information


no email address nothing. And also like a telltale sign which I tend to notice on these


like self submission type of link sites is we'll have a big PayPal button on the top


and it'll say pay to submit links or even worse it'll be like use this PayPal to get


your links removed from the site because they know that it's low quality and people ask


them all the time so just something to consider on the eyeball test front so I hope this was


helpful hopefully it helps you kind of understand you know when you might want to do this when


you might not want to do this and then if you do try to you know engage in some kind


of link audit some things to watch out for so I hope that was helpful if you have any


tips for this if you've noticed anything else that you think would be helpful for other


SEOs to know drop it in the comments. That's it for this week's Whiteboard Friday come


From Zero to Local Ranking Hero - Presented by Darren Shaw

So I wanted to present a case study that I did,


looking at a local business that had no presence.


And so I'm gonna talk to you about that today.


To start, you can download slides at that URL.


So if you wanna just take a moment.


So when we do SEO, we typically take a client that already has some


kind of online presence and we try to make it better.


And then we do a whole bunch of things for that business.


And we typically see rankings go up.


But it's hard to keep things in a silo.


It's hard to know, well, was it the links that we built?


Was it the content we added?


Was it local search?


Was it the reviews?


Was it the citations?


What are the things that really had the impact to get me ranking?


And so in this case study,


I really wanted to step through all of these things one by one.


So I was looking for a business that had absolutely zero presence.


So I went to Twitter and I asked.


And so I asked a bunch of people to fill out this form.


We got about 113 people had submitted the form.


And every one of them already had a Google listing or


they had a Facebook page or they had a website.


So none of them were a clean slate.


I was really looking for this absolutely no online presence whatsoever.


So fortunately I remembered that we have some friends.


They have this custom home building company called FC Development.


And so I decided I'll work with them,


because we've always talked about helping them with this.


So I gave them a call.


I gathered all the information I needed to collect content and


information I needed for their citation building.


I did some keyword research in local.


Typically I would say you can't get search volume, but


that has changed as of today.


So typically I just like to gather the main head terms,


what are the obvious terms that you can think of.


And then I combine them with things like modifiers.


So modifier would be like the city, custom home builders, that kind of


stuff, and then I'll use this little tool to combine them.


So I did this basic keyword research.


Next thing was to set up a Google listing for them.


So we created the Google listing.


So you'll notice the name there, FC Development's Custom Home Builder.


So a keyword in the business name is one of the primary ranking factors


in local search.


It's been proven time and time again.


Get a keyword in there.


It really helps.


It can also get your listing suspended.


So in this case, I had this great opportunity to actually get them to


change their business name.


So I wanted that keyword in there,


cuz I knew it would help with the ranking.


So we got their business name properly changed, that's who they are now.


FC Development's Custom Home Builder.


So then we optimized the Google listing.


And that's mostly just categories.


In GMB, there's a whole bunch of stuff you can do in there.


But the only thing that really impacts rankings beyond


the business title is the category.


So the primary category is super key.


So I chose the obvious one, Custom Home Builder.


And then I added additional categories.


Home Builder was the only one that was relevant.


All the other stuff, like you can have a description, you can have services.


None of that really contributes to rankings.


But it really does contribute to conversions.


So you want people engaged with your listing,


you want your listing to look great.


And so you still wanna do all that stuff, but


no one's really shown ranking boosts from all those other fields.


So in terms of actual optimization, it's mostly just the category field.


So I wanted to give them a website.


So I went with the most basic version.


In Google My Business, you can actually add a website.


So they have this little website builder.


And it's pretty decent, actually.


So I went in there, I made a website.


It looks fine, so it's not bad for any small business.


It's simple and easy to use.


So any business owner can get in there and make a website pretty easy.


It also can feed content directly into the Knowledge Graph.


I'll put a question mark there because it's just all theory, I don't know.


But when you think about it,


you're saving your website directly into Google's database.


So I don't know, maybe.


Have no idea if that actually is a thing.


But another thing I really like about it is that every time you post


a new Google post to GMB or you get a review,


it automatically shows up on your GMB page.


And so it makes me wonder, even if you do have a website,


maybe it's a good idea to build out your GMB page,


even if you don't even turn it on.


You just still put your content there.


So fill out that content and


maybe it'll help contribute to relevancy signals.


So before I started building citations, I thought, I can't use that URL.


So Google gives you this really terrible URL.


I didn't want to spread that all over the Internet.


So right within GMB, you can buy domain.


So I bought them in domain and they're fcdevelopments.ca and


then that just instantly connected with the GMB listing.


So that was nice.


Next thing I did is I set up rank tracking.


So I wanted to check their rankings and look at that,


I created their listing and they're ranking number one.


It was that easy.


So now just some caveats.


That's the, it's a really long tail keyword.


It was home builders in Glenora, Edmonton, which is pretty obscure.


And then I also just live a couple blocks away from them.


And so proximity in local search is a huge factor.


And so since I was close to them, it was long tail, Google was like,


here's a relevant business that's close to you.


To get a better sense of rankings,


you really wanna see how do you rank around the whole city.


And so it's really important when you're tracking local ranking


campaigns that you check from a number of different spots.


And so what I did is I just kind of mapped out these different areas.


I got the zip codes for all those different spots around the city.


And then I set them up in our White Spark local rank tracking software.


So each location there, and you can actually see that's all the same


keyword, but they're all ranking at different locations


around the different areas that I'm tracking.


All right, so the next thing to do is citation building.


Let's have a look at citation building.


I had our citation building team build out 100 citations.


And here's an interesting tip for you.


Use a different phone number for citations than you use for your GMB


and your website.


And so I know a lot of you are thinking, well,


what about nap consistency, isn't that a thing?


So you can get around that by adding it as an additional number


in Google My Business.


So the primary number on the listing is the actual number for


the business.


But then there's those two additional fields in GMB, so


you can add it as a secondary number.


And then all of your mentions around the web,


all your citations will still be connected to your Google listing.


And so this was beneficial because their primary number was Owen's cell


phone, and I didn't want his cell phone ringing off the hook with all


the sales calls from all the directory sites.


So I checked this cuz I used CallRail to get that second number.


And out of 18 calls, they were all sales people.


So no harm done.


No one actually is going to myhuckleberry.com and


calling this business.


So it's not a problem.


Okay, so one month later, did the citations have any impact on rankings?


I sort of let that run for a bit.


Tiny little uptick at the end.


Citations are more of a foundational ranking factor.


So it's the kind of thing that I don't expect to see huge rankings


from citations alone.


But if you don't have them,


then you don't really have that foundation you need to be able to rank.


So it's kind of the thing you gotta do anyways.


All right, more content.


We just had a small paragraph on their GMB webpage, so


I added a little bit more content.


I wanted to see what impact that would have.


So I just added this little thing about the process, how they build homes.


Pretty small, a little bit of content.


But after adding that, the next day, rankings in organic started showing up.


They did have some local finder and local pack rankings already, but


we started to see our first organic ranking show up with a little bit more content.


I wanted to see the impact of getting more citations in front of Google.


So basically, you gotta wonder, are the citations providing any value


if Google doesn't know about them, if they're not indexed in Google?


And so what you wanna do is you want to


make sure that Google has all of these listings in the index.


So I went to the site, the GMB webpage, and


I added a whole list of all of the citation sites with links.


So I made all these links to the citation site.


This is typically the way that you get more citations indexed.


So I did that, and then I used this Green Lane SEO Google Indexation Tester.


So Bill Seabold and his team built this thing.


It's really awesome, but apparently, I looked at it today,


it doesn't work anymore.


Google changed something, so this was cool for checking indexation.


But you can't use it anymore.


But it worked while I was doing the study.


So I did this study, and this is a little much to read, but


every day I would check the citation indexation.


You'll see that it basically hovers around 14 to 20 every day.


It changes a little bit each day.


And so there was no real change with the citation indexation after


creating that GMB page.


And the results were always a little bit different, so


I didn't know what was going on with the indexation testing.


And then I thought, well, of course this page on GMB is not helping with


citation indexation because the page has no authority to pass to those citations.


So I went looking around, I was like, okay, well,


what are some other ways to index citations?


And I found this post by Matthew Woodward about


indexing backlinks with a backlink indexer.


So in this post, he recommends this service, which is the one hour index,


the only guaranteed indexing service.


I was like, great, I'm gonna try this.


So try it out.


That also did nothing, but Matthew Woodward got some sweet affiliate bucks.


So that was good.


Okay, so let's, I had this idea.


I was like, I know what the problem is.


I just need a higher authority domain to link to.


So I put all of the domains or all of the citations on a page on white-spark.ca.


That's my website.


It has more authority.


So I started with that.


And then the next, then I submitted it to search console.


So I want this page to actually get Google's attention.


And the next day, boom, double the indexation rate.


So it works.


That actually is a way to get more citations indexed out of the 70


something, 72, only 15 were not indexed.


So they were just on really lower quality sites that Google


still would not index.


And it seemed to help too.


Rankings actually went up the next day.


So we had a little spike.


We started to see rankings increase.


And they continued to increase.


But sort of at the end of March, early April,


we started getting other signals coming into play as well.


All right.


A lot of people ask the question, because Google has this thing where


you can add service areas in Google My Business where you say,


OK, my business actually services this zip code and this one and this one


and this one.


And they're like, OK, well, if I can specify that in Google,


does it help me rank?


So I wanted to take this opportunity to test it.


So every postal code that I was tracking in Google My Business,


I also set that up in everything I was tracking in my rank tracker.


I set it up in Google My Business.


And I wanted to see what kind of impact it had.


So maybe a little impact, but there were so many other things happening


that I wasn't sure if maybe that was it.


So I thought, well, to be sure, if I take them out and then rankings drop,


then I'll know, OK, service areas do impact ranking.


So I took them all out.


I brought it back down to just Edmonton.


And rankings were not impacted by removal.


This kind of confirms the general consensus in the local search


community that the service areas do not impact rankings.


So if you're wondering that question, there's some answer there.


So Google Posts, I wanted to see if I could see anything


from Google Posts.


We started pumping them out daily, adding fresh posts to the listing.


Rankings maybe responded a bit.


It was hard to say.


If they did, I really think that it's more about engagement signals.


And it's also about that content from the post getting put on the web page.


I don't think that the posts themselves are driving rankings.


And if they were, it was so minor.


It was really little.


How about reviews?


Reviews are really well known to impact rankings in local search.


Everyone pretty much agrees about that, that you get more reviews.


You rank a little bit better.


So I sent an email out to the business owners.


And I said, okay, here's a nice template you can use.


Email all your past customers and get them to leave your review.


So we started getting reviews.


We got our first one, like next day.


We got a couple more.


It was great.


We got these reviews.


Any impact on ranking?


Yes.


So it actually, we did see ranking start to increase


after those reviews came in.


So that was great.


Confirmed expectations there.


How about links?


Links are always good.


We think that links have a pretty significant impact on local search


rankings.


I don't know if you've ever seen this sort of tweet thread that this


guy did, his grindstone SEO.


But basically he did a case study.


He looked at a bunch of sites that were ranking in like casino,


payday loans, etc.


And he really did a deep dive on their links.


He wanted to see what were the elements of those links that were


really helping them rank.


And so it came down to this concept of high authority domain


relevant links.


So you would get these links from sites that are high authority and


relevant to your domain.


So if you're a lawyer,


you would get a site from the best legal blog in the industry, right?


So that's a big deal, getting those links.


And then he also found that they never messed around with keyword anchors.


So the sites that were really killing it had no keyword anchor text.


They were all branded anchors.


So that's what he sort of discovered.


So I took this as my link building philosophy for this case study.


And I contacted this company, Outreach Pete.


They basically just email bloggers and say, hey,


we got a cool resource or a cool site, we can link to it.


And so they do that.


And they managed to get us some links on pretty good sites.


So this one was like a environmental home building site.


We got a branded link there.


We got one from this, another home related site,


architecture site, another architecture site.


So we got these pretty solid links that were pretty good.


And then I also was able to give them a link.


I sort of, I gave them a sneaky link.


I said that they gave me a testimonial on our White Spark


local citation finder page.


That page has pretty good authority.


So I got them a link there too.


So I got these four links.


And this is pretty exciting.


Look what happened to their rankings.


Wow.


Just like totally doubled all their rankings.


We saw it lift amazingly overnight.


So of course, like any SEO, my instinct is, let's get more links.


I want as many links as possible.


I'm gonna go crazy.


And so I started, I reached out to Pete again and I was like, hey Pete,


this is awesome, let's get some more links.


So he got me 12 new links, six from industry specific sites and


six from city specific sites.


So they're actually like Edmonton blogs and that kind of stuff.


So they're great links.


No impact.


These are all the links that I got day by day and


we're not seeing that same kind of impact on rankings.


So this slide ended on June 21st.


Even up until July 5th, still nothing.


The links did not have an impact.


So what the heck?


Why were those first four so exciting?


My theory here is the law of diminishing returns.


And so you get those first few links because you had nothing before.


So this brand had zero links before.


And then once I get to four or five links,


I've kind of reached parity with the rest of my competition on this.


This is a small industry, it's custom home builders in Edmonton,


which is a city of about a million people.


And so I've reached this parity level and so


getting more links isn't going to help push me into the stratosphere of rankings.


I'm already on par with them.


So this is my theory about what happened there.


And so I just think we didn't need more links.


We needed to diversify and improve in some other areas of the business.


And so the big one that was a gap, of course,


was we had this pretty lame one page GMB website.


So we're going to build them a brand new website.


So we did this, looked pretty good.


We built a nice spanky website.


And this is a good website.


It's got everything you need on a website.


Lots of content, lots of internal linking.


I was able to optimize the title tag.


You can't really do that with the GMB website.


We have pages for every specific neighborhood that they build in.


We have home profiles for all the houses.


So this is a solid website that's pretty well optimized for local search.


So I went to Google and Google Search Console.


I re-indexed it via Search Console.


So I did the re-indexing.


And then look at that.


Had a little bit of an impact.


Google was pretty happy with our new site.


And so we saw some rankings go up.


So this was July 11th when I took this last screenshot for my slides.


And yeah, we're seeing some positive improvements.


All right, so let's look at some of the things that you can learn from this,


things that I learned along the way.


First is that local rank tracking thing.


If you're just tracking from the city center, you really gotta fix that.


You've gotta be tracking from multiple places if you're tracking locally and


get a sense of where you rank around the whole city.


To get the full value from your citations, take the time and


effort to try and get them indexed.


You can use the technique I showed in the slides here.


That will really have a better impact than a whole bunch of


mentions out there that Google doesn't know about.


The service area section in G&B will not help you rank in the area.


The only thing that thing does is when you do a branded search,


it shows a little map of your business and it outlines the area.


It's for display purposes only.


So that's not gonna help you rank.


You should invest in a Google review strategy.


They definitely have an impact.


If you're not focused on reviews, you really should be.


Whoa, those first few links really had an impact.


It's important, I think, to sort of understand your competition.


Figure out what the baseline is and make sure you have met that.


That'll sort of break you into ranking alongside them.


Any individual strategy will probably hit a point of diminishing returns.


We certainly see this with citations.


So you've got the core 60 citations.


Building 100 more is probably not gonna move the needle.


I witnessed it with links in this specific case study.


We see it with reviews.


Let's say you look at the results and most of the reviews,


most of the competition has maybe 30, 40 reviews.


And you have 60 reviews.


Great, you're already winning at reviews.


You get 100 more reviews.


They're probably not gonna push your rankings beyond.


A full website, of course, is better than a single page G&B website.


It's obvious.


And overall, it's not one specific activity.


It's the aggregate of all of these activities that will move the needle.


So that's sort of the results of my case study.


I learned a little bit on this and I hope it was helpful for you too.


That's it.


Thank you.


Finding Ideas for a Video Series or Podcast - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans, my name is Phil Nottingham and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard


Friday. Today we're going to talk about how to come up with a great idea for your video


series or podcast. I think a lot of businesses out there understand that there's just this


great opportunity now to do a longer form series, show in podcast or video form, but


really struggle with that moment of finding what kind of idea could take them to the next


level and help them stand out. I think the most common error that businesses make is


to start with the worst idea in the world, which is interviewing our customers about


how they use our product. I'm sure many of you have accidentally fallen down this trap


where you've thought, ah, maybe that will be a good idea. But the thing is, even if


you're Ferrari or Christian LeBoutin or the most desirable product in the world, it's


never going to be interesting for someone to sit there and just listen to your customers


talking about your product. And the problem is that your customers are not a unique group


of people aside from the fact that they use your product. Usually there isn't anything


else that brings them together. And for this kind of content, for video series and podcasts


to really stand out and to grow in terms of their audience, we need to harness word of


mouth. And word of mouth doesn't grow through the way we often think about audience growth


in marketing. Many of us, particularly in the performance marketing space, used to think


about funnels, right? So we get more and more traffic into the funnel, get more people in


there, and ultimately some of them convert. But the way word of mouth works is that a


small group of people start communicating to another group of people who start communicating


to another group of people. And you have these ever-expanding circles of communication that


ultimately allow you to grow your audience. But that means you need to start with a group


of people who are talking to one another. And invariably, your customers are not talking


to each other as a kind of rule of thumb. So what you need to do is find a group of


people and audience who are talking to each other. And that really means a subculture,


a community, or maybe an interest group. So find your group of customers and work out


what is a subset of customers, what kind of community, what culture are they part of,


a group of people who you could actually speak to. And the way you might find this is using


things like Reddit. If there's a subculture, there's going to be a subreddit. A tool like


SparkToro will allow you to discover other topics that your customer base might be interested


in. Slack communities can be a great source of this. Blogs, there's often any sort of


topic or niche audience have a blog. Hashtags as well on social media and perhaps meetup


groups as well. So spend some time finding who this audience is for your show, a real


group of people who are communicating with one another and who ultimately are someone


who you could speak to in a meaningful way. Once you've got your audience, you then need


to think about the insight. And what the insight is is this gap between desire and outcome.


So what you normally find is that when you're speaking to groups of people, they will have


something they want to achieve, but there is a barrier in the way of them doing it.


And this might be something to do with tools or hardware, software. It could be just to


do with professional experience. It could be to do with emotional problems. It could


be anything really. So you need to kind of discover what that might be. And the essential


way to do that is just through good old fashioned talking to people. Focus groups, surveys,


social media interactions, conversations, even data that you have from search, like


using Google Search Console, internal site search, search volume, that kind of thing,


might tell you exactly what sort of topics, what problems people are having that they


really try to solve in this interest group. So what we need to do is find this particular


little nugget of wisdom, this goal that's going to give us the insight that allows us


to come up with a really good idea to try and solve this barrier, whatever that might


be that makes a difference between desire and outcome for this audience. Once we've


got that, you might see a show idea starting to emerge. So let's take a couple of examples.


Let's assume that we are working for like a DIY supplies company. Maybe we're doing


you know, just sort of piping. We will discover that a subset of our customers are plumbers,


and there's a community there of plumbing professionals. Now what might we find about


plumbers? Well, maybe it's true that all plumbers are kind of really into cars, and one of the


challenges they have is making sure that their car is up to the job, or their van is up to


the job for their work. Okay, so we have an interesting insight there, that there's something


to do with improving cars that we could pick for plumbers. Or let's say we are doing a


furniture company, and we're creating furniture for people. We might discover that a subset


of our audience are actually amateur carpenters who really love wooden furniture, and their


desire is to become professional. But maybe they have, the barrier is they don't have


the skills or the experience or the belief that they could actually do that with their


lives and their career. So we see these sort of very personal problems that we can start


to emerge an idea for a show that we might have. So once we've got that, we can then


take inspiration from existing TV and media. I think the mistake that a lot of us make


is thinking about the format that we might be doing with a show in a very broad sense.


So like we're doing an interview show, we're doing a talk show, we're doing a documentary,


we're doing a talent show, whatever it might be. But actually, if we think about the great


history of TV and radio over the last hundred years or so, all these really smart formats


have emerged. So within talk show, there's Inside the Actors Studio, a very sort of serious,


long, in-depth interview with one person about their practice. There's the Tonight Show starring


Jimmy Fallon, which has got lots of kind of set pieces and sketches and things that intermingle


with the interview. Oh, there's Ellen, where multiple people are interviewed in one show.


If we think about documentaries, there's like fly on the wall stuff, just run and gun with


a camera like Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Carrying on the food theme, there's Chef's


Table, where it's very planned and meticulously shot and is an expose of one particular chef.


Or something like Ugly Delicious, which is a bit more like a kind of exploratory piece


of documentary where there's kind of one protagonist going around the world and they piece it together


at the end. So you can think about all these different formats and try to find an idea


that maybe has been done before in TV in some format and find your way through that. So


let's think about a plumber example. Plumbers who love cars, well, we could do Pimp My Ride


for Tradesmen. That's an interesting idea for a talk. Or we could, let's say we're going


after like amateur carpenters who would love to be professional. We could easily do American


Idol for lumberjacks or carpenters. So we can start to see this idea emerge. Or let's


take a kind of B2B example. Maybe we are a marketing agency, as I'm sure many of you


are. If you're a marketing agency, maybe you know that some of your customers are in startups


and there's this startup community. And one of the real problems that startups have is


getting their product ready for market. So you could kind of think, well, the barrier


is getting the product ready for market. We could then do Queer Eye for product teams


and startups. And we'll bring in five specialists in different areas to kind of get their product


ready and sort of iron out the details and make sure they're ready to go to market and


support marketing. So you can start to see by having a clear niche audience and an insight


into the problems that they're having, then pulling together a whole list of different


show ideas how you can bring together an idea for a potential interesting TV show, a video


series or podcast that could really make your business stand out. But remember that great


ideas are kind of 10 a penny. And the really hard thing is finding the right one and making


sure that it works for you. So spend a lot of time coming up with lots and lots of different


executions, trying them out, doing kind of little pilots before you work out and commit


to the idea that works for you. The most important thing is to keep going, keep trying and teasing


out those ideas rather than just settling on the first thing that comes to mind because


usually it's not going to be the right answer. So I hope that was very useful. And we will


How to Do Reputation Marketing Presented by Rhea Drysdale

Hi guys.


So that was a pretty big intro.


Thanks Rob.


I'm here today to talk to you about a really exciting concept.


Something that we've been working on for years at Outspoken Media.


Something that has kept me up as late as needing to battle people wrong on the internet and


fight trademarks.


And back in 2007, Steve Jobs released the iPhone.


It was one of the best presentations that we'd ever seen in the world.


He held everyone and he was so excited.


And he held them because he worked so hard on this amazing piece of technology that has


changed the world.


I don't have an iPhone and I wish I did.


I wish I had an iPhone with an ear jack to give you, but I don't.


But what I do have is an idea.


An idea that I think is going to change all of us for the better.


Because I've been struggling for a really long time.


I've been struggling as a business owner and as a marketer when I worked in-house and when


I worked with our clients.


We've worked with some amazing clients and we've done great things.


But it always felt like we were missing something because we'd only get the results to a certain


point.


We'd build X number of links, we'd get the rankings, we'd get the traffic.


But eventually we'd lose the client.


Why did we lose them?


Well, there are a number of factors, but a lot of them came down to something that was


a little beyond us.


Beyond our capabilities as an agency to even understand and be a part of.


Because we weren't in the leadership discussions and we fundamentally had a disconnect between


brand and what I eventually identified as reputation.


Reputation management for a long time has been considered a negative.


Something horrible happens, you need to go rush and fix it.


It feels a little scammy, like how do I displace my results?


I slept with the wrong person and I embezzled company funds, help me fix this.


That's not exciting.


I don't actually want to do that.


I don't want to work with you on that.


What I want to work on is how to make great brands with great reputations and people that


just rabidly love you.


And when you have that, everything gets easier.


Those links work.


The traffic that you're driving converts.


They don't just convert, they become loyal customers for a really long time.


And I'm here to talk to you about it because a lot of us suck right now.


I saw this study come out a week ago.


7% of employees said that they thought their agency was exceeding their client's expectations.


7% of us.


That's it.


I've certainly got some accounts where I think we're doing a good job.


I don't know if we're doing a great job.


But is it our fault?


We might be doing the work, but again, there's a disconnect.


Everything's not happening.


And that's why we have reputation marketing.


So you are here right now for the first time ever getting introduced to what I consider


to be a new discipline.


Because I don't want to talk about reputation management anymore.


I'm done and I'm tired.


I want to talk about reputation marketing.


I think it's exciting and fun.


And at the end of this, I hope that a certain number of you actually become reputation marketers.


Just like content strategists, we need someone that is internally within your organization


who holds on to the single most critical and tangible asset that drives everything for


your success.


Reputation marketing is not reviews management.


So if anyone has a Wikipedia account, please go on there and fix it.


It basically says it's managing your Yelp reviews.


It's a really, really trivial explanation.


What it is is what happens when you consistently exceed the expectations of your stakeholders.


There's kind of a big word.


Usually you think about publicly traded companies and shareholders.


If you're on the corporate communications team, you're talking to media, government.


We've got, of course, your employees, often the most forgotten and most important stakeholder


in your organization.


So the actual definition is the action or business of cultivating and promoting a positive


reputation.


Go edit Wikipedia, please.


How many of you are familiar with these brands?


Some will, some won't.


So who's on the right?


Wait.


Right.


That's an Ermase bag.


That's a Birkin bag, I believe.


On the left is Coach.


They're both luxury bags.


So we've got Coach and we've got Ermase.


They're very, very similar looking.


In fact, their logos look almost identical.


I'm pretty sure Coach stole Ermase.


Your Ermase or the Coach bag costs $300.


That's a lot of money for a bag.


I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, I don't spend $300 on hardly anything.


Maybe I'm cheap.


I'm probably a little cheap.


I think the shoes were expensive.


The other bag?


Yep.


It costs as much as your house.


I'm definitely too cheap for that.


It's not going to happen.


I can't sleep in it.


It's not going to feed me.


But why?


Who's going to spend $150,000 on a bag?


And why?


Is it a magical bag?


Is it going to last 50 to 300 times longer than the Coach bag?


Is it like in Harry Potter?


It contains lots of stuff and you can pull anything you want out of it?


It's not magical.


It's not made by leather that's going to last 50 to 300 times longer.


But they're able to charge that much because of exclusivity, because they control the market,


because it's in demand, they're super ultra.


But ultimately, it comes down to the brand, the brand equity, and the reputation that


they've actively built over time.


There's one study that came out.


It's a little bit biased.


It was created by baghunter.com.


But it actually showed that Hermes bags are possibly a better investment than stock market


or gold.


That means you can't actually use the bag, kind of like when you collect your little


figures or comic books.


I have an entire box of comic books.


My son is not allowed to touch them.


Decreases the value.


So you can't use your bag.


You just have to collect it, keep it, and hope that the market doesn't change, kind


of like the tulip bubble.


Let's hope that everybody keeps Birkenbags really expensive.


But why?


Because they're very, very reputable.


They often top some of the most reputable companies list.


They've been around for over 200 years.


They're pretty recession-proof.


That's what happens when you're an ultra-luxury brand.


And what I love is that what they started in is what they continue to produce.


They didn't stop and just innovate and leave what they were doing behind.


When they created Hermes, they started in harnesses.


And eventually, they expanded into saddlery and saddlery bags, and then eventually, women's


handbags.


And they didn't leave any of those, that you can still get your bridle in your saddle.


They're good at what they do, and they keep doing it.


I don't want to bash Coach.


Coach is a great company.


They've been around for a while, too.


They've been around for many, many years.


I'm bad at math.


Many.


So, again, I'm a little bit bad at math, but when I look at this math, there's a really


significant difference here.


And it's kind of interesting.


So the amount of sales for Hermes is only about a billion dollars more.


Their employees are a lot less.


Look at the market capitalization on that.


How do they get three times more in value with less employees and just a little bit


more in sales?


Again, that's reputation.


So what makes up a great reputation?


We have to go back and talk about what reputation is.


It's an expectation of future behavior based on past experience.


And there are a couple things that it's not.


It's not an impression.


And I think that's really important to understand because we confuse them.


And I hear everyone talk about brand and how you have to have a great brand and people


are going to love your brand and know they're going to love you and that reputation.


It's not that I love the logo or the image.


I love you and what you do.


We have to talk about expectations.


I think that net promoter score is a little bit flawed.


When we look at net promoter score, it's on a scale of one to ten.


And you ask how likely are you to recommend this to a friend?


Well I think that's kind of rooted in the fact of did we meet your expectations enough?


And if you say nine to ten, the expectation is that yes, the expectation I had, you met.


Nobody goes into an establishment expecting to not have their expectation met.


And so here's this great score that tells you whether or not you're really bad at what


you do.


But what it doesn't have is tells you when you're really, really amazing at what you


do because it's not just about recommending but being surprised.


Great reputations are going through consistency.


Now I'm talking about great reputations and we're going to talk about what that secret


ingredient is but it's important to emphasize consistency.


If you don't have consistency down, you have a lot of work to do.


We struggle with that at Outspoken Media often.


I'm not good at it.


I like to be strategic.


I like to hop in.


I like to work at late hours.


It doesn't really lend itself well to process and documentation and education.


So we're trying to improve.


But there's nothing more important than working on that, having a nice consistent product


or service, making sure that everyone in your organization is trained up.


Then after that, it's the dedication to your mission.


Do you actually know what you're doing and why you're doing it?


And does everybody else?


And if everybody can't communicate that, you've lost something.


And then once you've got those two things covered, the most important part is the element


of surprise.


It's that feeling of just unbridled excitement and joy that all of your stakeholders get


at certain parts of their experience with you.


There's an interesting statistic that says that surprised consumers by negative news


are twice as likely to stop buying the product as they are to continue buying it.


What happens if we're surprised in a positive way?


There's no statistic on that.


Let's try to track it.


So what happens if we actively cultivate and promote a positive reputation?


You can introduce it in many different areas of your organization.


Every area of your organization can have surprise and consistency and dedication and mission


and values.


Values, I'm going to throw this out there.


Not every organization has to live according to a set of values.


Some might disagree.


But there are a lot of organizations that really don't have great values and they're


still successful but they have a great mission.


So you need a mission.


And I think that in today's world, values are becoming more important.


Seven in ten consumers say that they frequently or regularly discuss how they feel about a


product they bought.


And I'm going to talk about a product that I bought recently.


It's not sexy.


It's cleaning products.


But I fell in love with it.


Because I have a three-year-old and I have a seventh month old and they absolutely run


around the floor, they lick things that they're not supposed to lick.


It's a little bit terrifying.


And we've got the little safety latch on the cupboard but it doesn't matter because my


son just walked over and went bloop.


I'm in the cleaning products.


So what Better Life did, some of you might have seen them on Shark Tank, is they didn't


just create a sustainable green cleaning product, they created something that was safe.


You can actually take the product, squirt it in your mouth and swallow it.


It's disgusting.


But it's safe and you can do that.


And it actually smells really good.


So I've never enjoyed mopping but I'm like sniffing the floor.


And what I loved about their bottles is when you're in the aisle and you look at the little


like recycle me, they didn't just put recycle me on their packaging.


They put something cool and exciting and different.


I want to come back as a surfboard.


Next bottle, I want to come back as a kaleidoscope.


Every single bottle has something different.


And I found myself in the Target aisle looking at every single bottle.


When did you do that?


Like last with cleaning products.


I actually hate the cleaning product aisle.


It's overwhelming with smells.


Just get me out of here as quickly as possible so I can go look at things I don't need.


But I loved it.


And I'm here talking to you about it because it was so surprising and awesome.


As a society, we care about reputation.


We care about the products and services that we purchase.


At least most of us.


Gen Z really cares about it.


Who's Gen Z?


That would be my sister, my brother.


That's kind of that range of like my son at three up to about 16.


Gen Z matters a lot.


They're the first generation that's literally come up in technology and internet.


They have no other experience but that.


They're so smart.


My son knew how to use an iPhone by the time he was four months old.


What matters to them is not just the brand experience, but they have to respect the brand.


And what does that get into?


That gets into reputation.


It's not just about the brand.


It's about your reputation.


So let's be really clear about what this means.


Brand versus reputation.


Brands create impressions that make you think or feel something.


But reputation is about experience.


What happened when you had that experience?


Positive or negative or everything in between.


And brand recognition does not mean engagement.


And I see so many dollars going into brand awareness and then nobody actually cares about


what happens after that point.


So when we map it on this nice little matrix, brand matters or brand doesn't matter.


Reputation matters less.


Reputation matters a lot.


What it ends up looking like is this.


Sometimes brand matters a lot.


Doesn't mean you're not successful.


I might have had one logo up there.


I realize that in today's political climate, I had to be fair.


So I put both up there.


I'm not going to tell you which one.


Okay.


Sometimes you have reputation that matters less and brand matters less.


What does this look like?


A lot of regulated type of industries.


We work with a really large energy provider.


When you are working with a certain utility in a regulated industry, you don't have any


other choice.


This tends to be the giant monopolies that we see and then we get really angry and every


single one of these logos is notorious for having just awful reputations.


But they're still massive and have tons of money.


Then there are those where brand matters less.


We might not actually see their brand.


There's not a lot of marketing that happens.


But we love them.


PBR famous for guerrilla marketing.


Amazing how they brought that brand into being cool.


Wegmans.


That's a grocery store.


Who likes Wegmans?


I don't know Wegmans.


I've never actually shopped at one.


But I hear about it all the time because people won't stop complaining about how we don't


have a Wegmans.


Trader Joe's I found out about $5 wine.


That's about apparently pretty good.


So when a Trader Joe's showed up, I was so excited except you can't buy wine in a Trader


Joe's in the state of New York, which is really sad.


Dr. Bronner's.


There's another cleaning product.


Then there are those that invest a lot in their branding and their marketing and they


also have great reputations.


Southwest.


One of our team members flew here and she was so excited.


She'd never flown Southwest before.


And yesterday she tweeted, so stoked, just had the best experience.


Love Southwest now.


Starbucks.


I realize we're in Seattle and so that doesn't play very well maybe.


But in New York, my options are Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks.


One feels like an exclusive luxury like experience.


The other consistently forgets what I ordered and gives me a try latte when I ordered iced


tea.


Disney and Amazon.


Amazon's an interesting one because they actually had a massive reputation hit, right?


Like we saw that news article go out about their employees.


And that has to hurt when it comes to trying to hire, acquire, retain great talent.


But it doesn't stop them from still topping some of the most reputable lists out there.


Consensiv, Reputation Institute, Forbes.


There's some great lists that you can see and Amazon is always at the top.


So here's a nice picture.


Everything mapped.


Where do you fall on this?


How do you actually measure it?


This is what I want you to leave with.


The financial perspective is important because reputation is not new.


Reputation has been around for decades and decades and decades and has had nothing to


do with anyone in this room because it's coming from the CFO.


It's coming from stock.


It's coming from shareholders.


When we look at those KPIs, they're tracking brand equity.


And that's really important to understand.


Price premiums, like Hermes.


Market capitalization, stock price, profit, and they are risk managers.


And one of the biggest impacts to risk is your reputation.


They get it.


And they want to know how to measure it, but it's really hard.


But they've kind of invented some formulas that help them.


When we look at marketing, we have brand voice, traffic, sales, revenue.


And these are great.


But they're not as important as the things on the left.


Yeah, left.


So here's one of the formulas that someone came up with.


You can look at your market value minus your tangible assets.


That becomes your reputation.


When I did the math on Apple, that meant that their reputation account was like $450 billion.


That seems a little high.


Another way to look at it is what happens when disaster strikes.


And I think it was Exxon.


And when that disaster occurred, they lost between 3.5 and 7%.


So you could basically kind of say maybe based on that, reputation is about 3.5 to 7%.


I think it depends entirely on the situation, how bad it was, and a bunch of other factors.


That's why it's intangible.


But there are three ways that you can get started.


You can create your own score.


This is really fun for all the data heads in the audience.


We are going back to reviews.


I said it's not reviews management, but you can use those review sites to help you.


You can go and start aggregating those data points.


If you're a small company, you might not have all of these.


But if you're larger, you do.