I don't want you to jot all these down.


How to Do Reputation Marketing Presented by Rhea Drysdale

I want you to think.


I want you to think about your organization and what's available to you and what you have.


That might be the net promoter score.


If you don't have it, you might want to start collecting it.


You might be looking at the number of closed tickets.


You might be looking at the amount of customer reviews.


You can look at your CEO approval rating, which is really important, because the CEO's


reputation accounts for 50% of the 60% of that intangible asset that makes up the value


of your company.


That's important.


You can look at cost per acquisition, retention rate, and you pull all this together, and


then you can give yourself maybe a grade.


67% here in the United States, that would give us a D. This is our client.


They have a D. Their shareholders are really happy.


Their employees are a little bit more happy.


Their customers and community kind of hate them.


We already mentioned that they're in a regulated industry.


It's not that exciting.


But then you can start tracking everything by sentiment and type.


You might be using some tools that allow you to track sentiment that are enterprise-wide,


but I don't want you to stop there.


It's really important to look at sentiment, because you can see when your efforts are


working.


So this is one of our clients that came on, and you can see that they had a lot of negative


comments.


We started hitting them with content and content marketing and SEO and all this stuff that


was really, really for a certain purpose, but when we tracked sentiment, we saw that


even though we were measuring these metrics over here, it actually improved over here


because the content was engaging and fun, and so it was increasing the amount of positive


comments that were being left.


You know what mattered more to the leadership team?


Not the number of impressions.


This.


They want to know what people think and feel about them, especially if you're publicly


traded.


We also looked at it by type, so you can track the amount of happy, unhappy trolls' needs.


When you have that, don't just stop there.


Create a system for feedback.


So here's an example.


In Q2, we had 28% of our comments that came from this.


A whole lot of people that were very confused, because we just released a blog post and an


email to the entire community, hundreds of thousands of people, I think millions, that


said, hey, we have this really cool, exciting thing.


Please go sign up.


And all the comments said, I'd love to sign up.


Where do I sign up?


Because the application button is buried, and you don't see it.


And we thought, well, what do we do?


Okay, we can make the button more prominent, but we actually missed the window on that


because nobody organizationally on their side was even tracking comments.


So what we said is, well, I know that you want to get into more content marketing and


exciting things like video content, so let's make a video.


Let's walk them through the entire process, and we're not going to stop there.


We're going to surprise them by reaching out to every single person individually and saying,


hi, I am so sorry.


I know it was hard for you to apply last time, but we love that you want to apply.


We created this video.


Here's where it's at.


And it took a little bit of effort, but not that much.


And we posted that, and people are stoked.


Here's another example of Geico.


How much would the dev team love to know that their app is so cool and so helpful that someone


stopped in the middle of buying a car to leave a review?


She thought that the app was so helpful that she literally is in the middle of it.


She got everything she needed in two minutes of just sitting there waiting for a loan officer


or someone to come over and left this huge gushing review.


All states does not look that good, I can tell you that.


Sorry if you're here.


It's a four-star rating.


It's not bad.


But they said it looks too much like their website.


It's not a unique personalized experience.


Oh, the other thing, my husband needed insurance recently, called Geico, they answered the


phone and said, hi, Brad.


What?


How did you know who I was?


Surprise.


You can improve employee happiness and retention when you share good feedback, and then that


gets them excited, and then they do something incredible, which is the secret to growing


your business.


They get excited and want to do more and they want to innovate, and the only way to drive


exponential growth is through innovation and the introduction of new subgroups.


Getting back to what else you can do, audit your About page and content for your mission


and values.


We had one client who came to us and said, oh, I want some content and I want SEO.


Cool.


Okay.


We looked at their mission.


I always start with mission.


Simple exercise takes about 30 minutes.


Their tagline said that they want to create content written by people, their demographic,


or other people in that demographic.


They wanted to be an online magazine for that demographic, and they wanted content about


healthy living, not just living longer.


They were totally an online magazine.


They were not writing content to the second point, and they definitely weren't writing


content that was written by their demographic for the other demographic, and they had so


many editors and so many writers, dozens, and they're trying to manage this whole thing,


but they'd forgotten their mission.


We showed up with them in the first month, did the audit, delivered it, focused on the


mission, immediately killed it with content that reduced their spend on paid social, went


through the roof, achieved their goal, gained their trust.


Then they said, okay, great.


Do I need to lay off half my editorial team?


Yep.


They didn't actually lay them off.


They were like contract writers.


They actually weren't getting paid anything.


Sad.


Pay your people.


They care more.


So they restructured, and now at this point they've actually hired an entire team.


They know what they're doing.


They're excited, and they came to us because they said we don't even know if we have a


real business model.


Can you help us?


We will totally close this down.


It's a hobby site, but let us know, and they do have a business model.


So chart your reputation, because what you think might be growth that's stagnant might


actually just be the fact that you are not living according to your mission and values.


You are not exceeding stakeholder expectations, and you may not be failing, but you're probably


just somewhere in that middle, like the vast majority of the world.


We show up.


We do our jobs.


We slog through it.


But are we making a difference?


When you fail, everything is harder.


Everything is more expensive.


It takes more time.


You have more legislative review.


So many horrible things happen, and it feels like crap.


And when you exceed, this is the fun part.


This is reputation marketing.


When you exceed expectations or just meet them even, some industries, that's all you


have to do.


When I call Time Warner Cable, please answer the phone, but you're never going to answer


the phone because you're Time Warner Cable.


So when you exceed someone's expectation, you suddenly find that people want to pay


more money.


They want to be around longer.


They want to be a loyal customer, and then they start talking about you.


So here's a very quick example.


Envision app is wonderful.


They're awesome.


They're so cool.


You should sign up for them.


So Leo, our creative specialist, got on there and talked to someone and said, I'm not sure


about this.


I think it's what we need.


And after that call, they said, what's your address?


And he thought he was going to get maybe a postcard or something.


So they sent him this whole care package filled with awesome things.


And if you're a designer and someone sends you this, you're going to be stoked because


it's beautiful.


You might actually want to tattoo it on your body.


He was so happy.


He was running around the office.


Like, look what they sent me.


And it didn't take much.


And then he tweeted about it and he took pictures on our, like, professional whiteboard.


And now I'm here on stage talking to you about it because they sent it in something surprising,


something beautiful, something that took a little bit of money but made the difference


and it allowed them to market their brand simply by having a great reputation.


All of that came in it.


So you should be optimizing for reputation because when you optimize for reputation,


you get more links because people give them out freely.


You get more mentions because people spread it around.


So how do you actually start?


You can start with the data that you have access to.


Now I'm going to pick on someone.


But be kind.


I'm going to pick on myself, outspoken media.


And I'm also going to pick on distilled and they can handle it, right, Rob?


Yes.


And I'm going to pick on SEER.


Also Razorfish if you're in the room.


Three great agencies, if I say so myself.


We're small.


We're not like them.


And they're not like Razorfish.


But those guys are my aspirational competitors and I want to know how we were doing.


I found out that we were doing pretty awesome on certain things.


So I looked at SpyFu data, pulled it, looked at our homepage and all of our transactional


pages and said how are we performing for those keywords?


The keywords that I think matter most because they're our homepage, ripped out all the branded


stuff.


We're doing pretty well.


So then I decided to look at over time.


We revised one of our service pages.


They're not even good service pages.


They don't even speak very well to what we do.


But we revised one and in two months that happened.


We're awesome.


Except we're not on the same level so there's like something missing here, right?


Like if I just look at that data in just that role and that context of SEO, totally not


the right story to tell.


So I went higher and I looked at it in context and when I looked at the full site, not just


the transactional pages, distilled, killing us and suddenly SEER jumps up.


It's because we haven't invested anything into our informational content.


We haven't invested in our events or resources.


And what does that mean?


It means we haven't invested in our community.


And that's important because that's our reputation and you guys are our stakeholders, one of


them.


So I went even higher and at this point I said what does it look like when we bring


in the branded keywords?


It looks like that.


We look like crap now.


Nobody knows us.


Our numbers didn't change at all.


SEER just doubled.


Razorfish showed up out of nowhere and distilled is killing all of us again.


Again, you're doing a good job.


I didn't really pick on you.


We don't have a visible brand and you know what?


Razorfish doesn't care because they're up here at the second most leading innovative


digital agency in the world.


So we said we've got a lot of work to do.


We're seven people in Troy, New York.


How do we make this better?


We're pretty good at this SEO thing.


That's cool.


But what do we have to do?


We have to get our mission out there.


More importantly, we have to invest in our team.


We have to train our team.


We have to improve our culture.


We have to be happier.


That little bell, Leo, anytime something happens, happy happens, hits the bell.


And we did that and guess what happened?


Our clients wanted to pay us more money.


All of our accounts got bigger.


We got more excited about the work.


We got ahead of cash flow.


We started holding events.


Everyone on the team was fired up and ready.


We finished the office.


And that didn't just have to happen because we saw that data, but the data kind of kicked


it into gear.


It's important to note that reputation management, we usually think about it as a singular event.


It's not a singular event.


It's something that happens over time because we forgot to pay attention.


He lost $6.2 million in one stupid night.


That's reputation management.


I don't know how you quite manage that.


It's going to be expensive.


It's going to take time.


It's going to take years to recover.


But I want to talk about the exciting part, which is when you have reputational loss because


you forget to do basic things.


Like here's Pecks Arcade.


It's a local restaurant.


I love them.


They're the most expensive restaurant in town.


I don't care.


I will give them my money all day long because the experience is worth it.


Why?


They understand what they do.


They create great food and great experiences.


And they document that.


They don't just document that.


They coach their entire team.


I know they coach their team because they take pictures of them coaching their team


and put them on Instagram.


They let them know what to do and how to do it.


And that looks like living according to their mission and values.


So when I call to make a reservation, the first thing they say is are you celebrating


something tonight?


No, I'm not celebrating.


Okay.


But then I actually showed up for my reservation and they immediately said, well, what brings


you out tonight?


You don't have to be celebrating.


Just why are you here?


I just had a baby.


I was happy to just get out of the house.


I think I'd showered.


Bonus.


And 45 minutes into dinner, I get a call.


Baby's crying, screaming, you've got to come home right now.


No.


But the exciting part was they made everything special for us.


They gave us champagne two minutes once we were in the door because she knew that we


were there for the baby because we're trying to escape the baby.


And when we tried to run out, we scarfed our food down and they showed up with this little


care package filled with cookies because we didn't have time for dessert.


There were a lot more cookies, but I ate them.


And the thing that's important here is that they're not special.


I'm not special.


Like they do this for everybody.


And then what ends up happening is that people tweet about it and then they get free content


marketing because their community is doing it for them by posting gorgeous pictures of


their establishment.


And it shows in all of their reviews.


And they're able to charge a premium.


You can do it, too.


How do you do it?


By being reputation marketers.


And every single one of you is a reputation marketer.


You work on behalf of your clients.


You work on behalf of your business.


You work on behalf of everyone in the company every single day to establish a great reputation


and enhance that brand.


Corporate reputation, I already said, accounts for 60% of the company's value.


So this is why we need this.


We need to have reputation strategy and reputation marketers just like we now have content marketing


and content strategy.


That is what we need as an industry to be successful because I'm tired of building links


that go absolutely nowhere and do nothing for you.


I want to introduce surprise.


You have to be careful.


Just introduce surprise to everybody because then you set the bar way high and you're never


going to achieve that.


You have to do it in a consistent, good way.


So I want to know if I have any friends in this room.


I want to know if any of you care enough about this subject that you want to keep it going,


that you want to be involved, that you want to help us create fun deliverables and expectations


and define what this discipline looks like.


I also want to start speaking locally, like in your neighborhood.


So in 2017, we're going to be going all around the country talking to companies, organizations,


agencies.


So if you'd like to host us and be a part of this, I want to know who you are.


Please reach out to me.


If you're just someone that's really excited because you need this in your company, reach


out to me.


I'm not going to sell you on something.


I just want to say hello because I'm so excited about it.


And if you're ready, we published this guide an hour ago and I think it's working.


So go to outspokenmedia.com slash reputation marketing.


We're going to release a chapter.


I'm not going to hold ourselves to like a time frame, but we've got five chapters and


they're all going to come out in a phased approach.


Let's say like one a week, but maybe one a month.


Don't hold me to it.


There's a quiz on there that you can take to identify where you stand on that reputation


chart.


And again, we're going to have a lot of fun events and things happening.


So that's everything from me.


And thank you so much.


Thank you so much.


We don't have time.


We don't have time for Q and A, but you're going to be around for the next few days,


right?


I hope so.


Excellent.


Well, we know where to mob you and ask you all the questions you want to.


So read dry still.


Diagnosing Why a Site's Set of Pages May Be Ranking Poorly - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to talk about diagnosing a site and specifically a section of a site's


pages and why they might be performing poorly, why their traffic may have dropped, why rankings


may have dropped, why both of them might have dropped.


So we've got a fairly extensive process here, so let's get started.


First off, our first step is uncovering the problem or finding whether there is actually


a problem.


A good way to think about this is, especially if you have a larger website, if we're talking


about a site that's 20 or 30 or even a couple hundred pages, this is not a big issue.


But many websites that SEOs are working on these days are thousands, tens of thousands,


hundreds of thousands of pages.


And so what I like to urge folks to do is to treat different site sections as unique


segments for investigation.


And you should look at them individually.


A lot of times subfolders or URL structures are really helpful here, right?


So I might say, okay, mysite.com, I'm going to look exclusively at the slash news section.


Did that fall in rankings?


Did it fall in traffic?


Or was it slash posts, where my blog posts and my content is?


Or was it slash cities, right?


Let's say I have a website that's dealing with data about the population of cities.


And so I rank for lots of those types of queries, and it seems like I'm ranking for fewer of


them, and it's my cities pages that are poorly performing in comparison to where they were


a few months ago or last year at this time.


B, next thing I would do, check traffic from search over time.


So I'd go to my Google Analytics or whatever analytics you're using, and you might see


something like, okay, I'm going to look exclusively at the slash cities section.


If you can structure your URLs in this fashion, use subfolders is a great way to do it.


And then take a look and see, oh, hang on, that's a big traffic drop.


We fell off a cliff there for these particular pages.


And this data can be hiding inside your analytics, because it could be that the rest of your


site is performing well.


It's going sort of up and to the right.


And so you see this sort of slow plateauing or a little bit of a decline, but it's not


nearly as sharp as it is if you look at the traffic specifically for a single subsection


that might be performing poorly, like this slash cities section.


From there, I'm going to next urge you to use Google Trends.


Why?


Why would I go to Google Trends?


Because what I want you to do is I want you to look at some of your big keywords and topics


in Google Trends to see if there has been a serious decline in search volume at the


same time.


If search demand is rising or staying stable over the course of time where you have lost


traffic, it's almost certainly something you've done, not something searchers are doing.


But if you see that traffic has declined, for example, maybe you were ranking really


well for population data from 2015, turns out people are now looking for population


data in 2016 or 2017 or 2018, maybe that is part of the problem, right?


That search demand has fallen and your curve matches that.


Next up, perform some diagnostic queries or use your rank tracking data if you have it


on these types of things.


This is one of the reasons I like to rank track for even these types of queries that


don't get a lot of traffic.


First off, your target keywords.


In this case, it might be Denver population growth, right?


Maybe that's one of your keywords.


Next and you would see do I still rank for this?


How well do I rank for this?


Am I ranking more poorly than I used to?


Then you would check brand name plus target keywords.


So in this case, it would be my site plus the above here plus Denver population growth.


So my site or mysite.com Denver population growth.


If you're not ranking for that, that's usually an indication of a more serious problem, potentially


a penalty or some type of dampening that's happening around your brand name or around


your website.


Then I would look for a 10 to 20-word text string.


It could be shorter.


It could be only six or seven words or it could be longer, 25 words if you really need


it.


But essentially I want to take a string of text that exists on the page and put it in


order in Google search engine, not in quotes.


I do not want to use quotes here and I want to see how it performs, right?


So this might be several lines of text here.


Next, I want to do that same thing but with quotes, right?


So those lines of text but in quotes searched in Google.


If I'm not ranking for this but I am for this one – sorry.


If I'm not ranking for the one not in quotes but I am in quotes, I might surmise this is


probably not duplicate content.


It's probably something to do with my content quality or maybe my link profile or Google


has penalized or dampened me in some way.


And finally, the last one you can check is site colon and then the URL string, right?


So I would search for site colon mysite.com slash cities slash Denver, right?


And I would see, wait, has Google actually indexed my page?


When did they index it?


Oh, it's been a month.


I wonder why they haven't come back.


Maybe there's some sort of crawl issue, robots.txt issue, meta robots issue, something.


I'm preventing Google from potentially getting there.


Or maybe they can't get there at all and this results in zero results.


That means Google hasn't even indexed the page.


Now we have another type of problem.


And finally on the diagnostic side, check your tools.


Google Search Console, I would start there, especially in the site issues section.


You could check your rank tracker, whatever tool you're using, whether that's Moz or something


else.


You are on page and crawl monitoring.


Hopefully you have something like that.


You know, it could be through Screaming Frog.


Maybe you've run some crawls over time.


Or maybe you have a tracking system in place.


Moz has a crawl system.


Onpage.org has a really good one.


And then site uptime.


So I might check Pingdom or other things that alert me to, oh, wait a minute, my site was


down for a few days last week.


That obviously is why traffic has fallen, those types of things.


Okay.


You've done your diagnostics.


Now it's time to offer some hypotheses.


So now that we understand which problem I might have, I want to understand what could


be resulting in that problem.


So there's basically two situations you can have.


Rankings have stayed stable or gone up, but traffic has fallen.


In those cases, these are the five things that are most typically to blame.


One, there's new SERP features, right?


There's a bunch of featured snippets that have entered the population growth for cities


search results.


Now number one is not what number one used to be.


And if you don't get that featured snippet, you're losing out to one of your competitors.


Second, lower search demand, like we talked about in Google Trends.


I'm looking at search demand and there's just not as many people searching as there used


to be.


Three, there's brand or reputation issues, meaning I'm ranking just fine, but people


now for some reason hate me.


People who are searching this sector think my brand is evil or bad or just not as helpful


as it used to be.


So I have issues and people are not clicking on my results.


They're choosing someone else actively because of reputation issues.


Snippet problems, meaning I'm ranking in the same place I used to be, but I'm no longer


the sexiest, most click-drawing snippet in the search results and other people are earning


those clicks instead.


Or number five, and this is a little hard to see, but there's been a shift in personalization


or location biasing by Google, meaning that it used to be the case that everyone who searched


for city name plus population growth got the same results, but now suddenly people are


seeing different results based on maybe their device or things they've clicked in the past


or where they're located.


Location is often a big cause for this.


For many SEOs for many years, SEO consultant resulted in the same search results and then


Google introduced the Maps results and pushed down a lot of those folks and now SEO consultant


results in different ranked results in each city and each geography that you search in.


So that can often be a cause for falling traffic even though rankings remain high.


B, if you're seeing that rankings have fallen and traffic has fallen in conjunction, there's


a bunch of other things that are probably going on that are not necessarily these things.


A few of these could be responsible still, like snippet problems could cause your rankings


and your traffic to fall or brand and reputation issues could cause your click-through rate


to fall, which would cause you to get dampened.


But oftentimes it's things like this.


Duplicate content, low quality or thin content, right?


Google thinks that what you're providing just isn't good enough.


A change in searcher intent, meaning that people who were searching for population growth


used to want what you had to offer, but now they want something different and other people


in the SERP are providing that, but you're not, so Google's ranking you lower.


Even though your content is still good, it's just not serving the new searcher intent.


Loss to competitors, right?


So maybe you have worse links than they do now or less relevance or you're not solving


the searcher's query as well.


Your user interface, your UX is not as good.


Your keyword targeting isn't as good as theirs.


Your content quality and the unique value you provide isn't as good as theirs.


If you see that one or two competitors are consistently outranking you, you might diagnose


that this is the problem.


Then technical issues, right?


If I saw from over here that the crawl was the problem, I wasn't getting indexed or Google


hasn't updated my pages in a long time, I might look into accessibility things, maybe


speed, maybe I'm having problems like letting Google bot in, HTTPS problems or indexable


content.


Maybe Google can't see the content on my page anymore because I made some change in the


technology of how it's displayed.


Or crawlability, internal link structure problems, robots.text problems, meta-robots tag issues,


that kind of stuff.


Maybe at the server level, someone on the tech ops team at my website decided, oh, there's


this bot, really problematic bot coming from Mountain View that's costing us a bunch of


bandwidth.


Let's block bots from Mountain View.


No, don't do that.


Bad.


Those kinds of technical issues can happen.


Six, spam and penalties.


We'll talk a little bit more about how to diagnose those in a sec.


And seven, there could be click-through rate issues or engagement issues, meaning pogo


sticking like people are coming to your site but they're clicking back because they weren't


satisfied by your results, maybe because their expectations have changed or market issues


have changed.


Next, and last in this process, what we're going to do is make some fixes and observe


the results.


Hopefully we've been able to correctly diagnose and form some wise hypotheses about what's


going wrong, and now we're going to try and resolve them.


On-page and technical issues, if we're fixing those, they should usually resolve, especially


on small sections of sites, pretty fast.


As soon as Google has crawled and indexed the page, you should generally see performance


improve.


But this can take a few weeks if we're talking about a large section on a site, many thousands


of pages, because Google has to crawl and index all of them to get the new sense that


things are fixed, and traffic is coming in, since it's long-tailed to many different pages,


you're not going to see that instant traffic gain and rise as fast.


B, link issues and spam penalty problems.


Look, if you have crappier links or not a good enough link profile as your competitors,


growing that can take months to, or years even, to fix.


Penalty problems, spam problems, same thing.


Google can take sometimes a long time.


You've seen a lot of spam experts on Twitter saying, oh, well, all my clients who had issues


over the last nine months suddenly are ranking better today, because Google made some fix


in their latest index rollout or their algorithm change that's sort of, okay, we'll reward


the people for all the fixes that they've made.


Sometimes that's in batches that take months.


C, fixing a small number of pages in a section that's performing poorly might not show results


very quickly.


For example, let's say you go and you fix slash cities slash Milwaukee.


You determine from your diagnostics that the problem is a content quality issue.


So you go and you update these pages.


They have new content, serves the searchers much better, doing a much better job.


You've tested it.


People really love it.


And you fix two cities, Milwaukee and Denver, to test it out.


But you've left 5,000 other cities' pages untouched.


Sometimes Google will sort of be like, no, you know what?


We still think your cities' pages as a whole don't do a good job solving this query.


And so even though these two that you've updated do a better job, we're not necessarily going


to rank them because we sort of think of your site as this whole section and we grade it


as a section or apply some grades as a section.


And that is a real thing that we've observed happening in Google's results.


Because of this, one of the things that I would urge you to do is if you're seeing good


results from the people you're testing it with and you're pretty confident, I would


roll out the changes to a significant subset, 30%, 50%, 70% of the pages, rather than, you


know, doing only a tiny, tiny sample.


And D, sometimes when you encounter these issues, a remove and replace strategy works


better than simply upgrading old URLs.


So if Google has decided slash cities, your slash cities section, is just awful, right,


has all sorts of problems and not performing well on a bunch of different vectors, you


might take your slash cities section and actually 301 redirect them to a new URL slash location


and put the new UI and the new content that better serves the searcher and fixes a lot


of these issues into that location section such that Google now goes, ah, we have something


new to judge.


Let's see how these location pages on mysite.com perform versus the old cities pages.


So I know we've covered a ton today and there's a lot of diagnostic issues that we haven't


necessarily dug deep into, but I hope this can help you if you're encountering rankings


challenges with sections of your site or with your site as a whole.


And certainly, I look forward to your comments, your feedback.


If you have other tips for folks facing this, that would be great.


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


Spot Check URLs with On-Demand Analyses in Performance Metrics

Hi, guys.


My name is Michael, and I'm on the onboarding team here at Moz.


And in this video, I'm going to show you how to quickly analyze your URLs on demand with


performance metrics.


Performance metrics looks at how well set up your page is for Google's page experience


algorithm update.


And making sure your site is well optimized for this update gives you a much better chance


of maintaining your hard-earned rankings and growing your site traffic.


Get started by heading to the performance metrics section of your Moz Pro campaign on


the left navigation menu.


You can use the dropdown menu to sort URLs by page authority, site traffic, crawl issues,


and ranking position.


To start analyzing URLs on demand, head down to the list of URLs and select the ones that


you wish to analyze.


You can click on analyze to analyze a single page.


Or if you want to analyze multiple pages at once, you can check the box beside each URL


and then select analyze selected URLs.


Once a URL has been analyzed, you can see its overall mobile and desktop performance,


and you'll get a breakdown that shows how you're doing for each core web vehicle, which


play a key role in Google's page experience algorithm update.


Each metric will be critical, needing improvement, or looking good.


To get a detailed report on each URL, head to view report.


Again, you'll see its mobile and desktop performance scores and its historical performance.


This gives you the ability to easily see the impact of any changes you've made to those


pages over time.


What's great about on demand analysis is that you can analyze the URL, make some changes,


and then come back and reanalyze it the same day to see if your scores have improved.


To see exactly what changes you need to make, go to opportunities and diagnostics.


You'll get suggestions for both mobile and desktop that you can fix to help improve your


page performance.


If you click on the drop down menu, you'll be provided with tips written by the Moz team


on what the issue is, why it's an issue, and how you can go about fixing it.


These opportunities can be extremely useful if you want to spot check a prospective client's


URLs for a pitch.


To export the report, just scroll up and click on export PDF, and you'll have a PDF report


that you can easily share with a client.


For more info on our new performance metrics features, just click on help when you're using


Welcome to MozCon 2019: Golden Age of Search - Presented by Sarah Bird

This is my 11th MozCon.


Holy crap, that's a lot of MozCons.


Who is it?


Raise your hand if it's a first MozCon.


Yes, I'm loving that.


Okay, great.


Raise your hand if it's your second MozCon.


Woo, loving it.


Third, third MozCon, fourth?


Yes, fifth?


Yes, fifth.


Okay, you guys should just be up here giving the opening then by now, right?


You've heard it before.


Sixth, seventh, eighth?


Yes, yes, yes, ninth?


MozCon local, we're going to count it.


We're going to count it.


Yep, add it all up.


That's right.


Okay, well I think I'm like close to the top in here.


Wow.


No, you got me.


Greg Gifford has me beat.


Not too surprising.


Twelve.


Alright.


You're uninvited for next year.


Just like that.


No, I'm kidding.


Totally kidding.


Alright, let's see.


Who else do we have in the room here?


Who here is from out of the United States?


Do we have the international visitors?


Yes, very good.


Okay, Europe.


Is Europe in the house?


Yes, okay, a little bit.


We've got some Africa.


Anyone come all the way from Africa?


Yes, anyone?


Anyone in the corner?


Asia?


Yes, we've got some friends from Asia.


Australia?


Yes, we've got some friends from the United States.


From Asia.


Yes.


I like the Australians are like bringing the party already.


We count on you.


We count on you for that.


South America?


Okay, a little shy.


Okay, good, good, good, guys.


And then what about right here, a great state of Washington?


Make a little noise.


That's right.


Seattleites?


Okay, good.


Seattleites, my request.


Please help me be a great host to all these wonderful humans who've come to spend three


days in our city and just be like the best, warmest Seattleites you can possibly be and


give them all the great tips on where to go.


Okay, who here is solo?


Who here came independently from their team?


Yes.


Brave souls.


I'm loving this.


Who here is with a team of people and this is kind of team bonding-ish.


Make some noise, teams.


Okay, very good.


Do we have people in agency?


Who works at an agency?


Yeah, make some noise.


Make some noise.


Good, good, good.


Okay, and then the rest of you, I suppose that means you're in-house brands or consultants,


solo consultants maybe.


Very good, very good.


Several of you are like, is she going to talk about this?


Am I right?


Several of you are like, is she going to address what is going on down there with her?


Are we going to...


Okay, let's have a family meeting.


Yes.


I am wearing a peg leg.


And I will tell you what happened just so that you can let go of it and then we can


focus on the rest of the conference.


This is the only time I want to talk about me this whole time.


This is what happened, guys.


Well, first of all, who's broken a bone?


Make some noise if you've broken a bone.


Okay.


Who's got pins?


I've got nine pins in here and a plate.


Some pins?


Teach me how to go through TSA because I don't know yet.


So, what happened is it's a short story.


I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.


I was having an amazing time.


It was a beautiful day.


It was sunny.


It was a great jump.


I was having so much fun with my parachute.


Everything was going really, really well until the very last moment.


And then I came in a little hot.


Landed wrong, guys.


I can give you my three things I would do differently in a separate TED Talk that I


will not do today.


And the result is two broken bones and my ankle.


And my journey, yes, I've been wearing a peg leg.


You will also see me on electric scooter and I am trying to put weight on it.


But now we all know.


Now we all know.


And we don't have to talk about it a lot for the next three days.


Whew.


Okay.


Good.


I'm here.


All right.


So, enough.


One thing, actually.


One thing.


I think the best part about MozCon is meeting the people.


Right?


It is the networking.


And for those of you who are introverts, it's also the scariest part of MozCon.


But it's so good.


So, just to warm us up, because I really want I want MozCon to be the friendliest conference


of all of the SEO search conferences.


I want to be the friendliest.


Will you find someone you don't know and just turn to them and say I am so glad you're at


MozCon.


My name is Thessen Sech.


And I look forward to seeing you around.


Just turn to someone you don't know.


I will take a minute and then I'll call your attention back.


Someone you don't know, I'm so glad to see you here.


Say it.


Thank you.


Yep.


Good.


Good!


It's happening!


Okay.


Wind it down.


Come back into the room.


Yes.


Oh, what a lift.


Bring it back to me now.


Bring it back to me.


Bring it back.


You guys, you did it!


You did it!


Now you all know somebody at MozCon.


You all have a friend.


When you walk into the lunchroom today and you're feeling anxious, no big deal.


You've got a friend at MozCon now.


All right?


And let's practice those muscles throughout this whole week.


All right.


I want to shift gears now.


I want to start by saying I'm really proud of all of us for being here.


The whole team at Moz has been working for months to make this event really, really special


to live up to the reputation that MozCon has.


The speakers have been slaving away.


Their loved ones are like, will we ever see you again?


They've been wasting their summers hiding away, building PowerPoint decks for you and


for me, right?


To share their knowledge.


And everyone in this room has something really amazing in common.


You are all here to stretch, to grow.


You are curious.


You are engaged.


And that is an amazing, amazing mindset to be in.


So I just wanted to sit with that and call it forth from you and help you recognize that


you are surrounded by a community of learners.


So that's the first thing.


Which is good.


Because we are in what I think of as a golden age of search.


A golden age of search.


Why do I feel that way?


Because we are searching more than ever before as searchers.


We search so much we don't even know we're doing it.


It's subconscious.


It just happens.


You ask someone, when's the last time you did a search?


They might be like last week.


No, they did like five already today.


It's that automatic.


Not only are we searching more than ever before, we are searching in more places.


We have Google, yes, of course, on our desktop and our mobile phone.


But it's now embedded into our devices.


It's in our wrists.


It's in our car.


It's in our home assistant.


It's all over it.


It's ambient.


Search is omnipresent.


What that means, this multi-interface world and this dynamic world where search looks


and feels different than it ever has before means that the complexity has just dramatically


increased and I think it's going to continue to.


I think it's going to continue to.


So, one of the changes that we have seen and that we're experiencing, Google is no longer


just a gateway.


You guys remember the good old days when it was like you could count rankings, when the


word ranking still made sense and it wasn't sort of a leftover artifact?


I'm number one, two, three.


I'm number three, right?


And Google's whole job was to get you to somewhere else on the web.


Google was like, I got you.


I'm going to send you here.


I'm going to put you on this other website.


And so we as marketers, all we had to really worry about was like, okay, what's the sort


of meta description?


What keywords am I showing up for?


And is my website going to convert?


Right?


We'd talk about traffic and rankings.


So simple.


Today, Google is the destination.


Google wants to keep you there.


Google doesn't want to lose you to someone else.


They want to answer your question for you.


They say, I got you, searcher.


I'm going to do my best right here.


And what that means when you combine that with the multi-device world, different interfaces,


all coming at you is what I like to think of as 31 flavors of SERP results, right?


31 flavors of ice cream, anyone?


Yes?


Okay, good, good, good.


Those of you who know know.


So I think about search that way, right?


It's no, it could be anything.


It could be video.


It could be a video result, like right fast forward to the exact pinpoint moment you want.


It could be a table.


It could be an interactive table.


It could be a list.


It could be a carousel.


It could be an answer box.


It could be the search experience.


You don't really know what you're going to get in their 31 flavors, right?


It's a lot.


It's a lot for us to deal with.


And it's in response to Google understands users, searchers, more than ever before.


And I think that's just increasing.


Google understands searcher intent.


I know we're going to hear a lot about that because as marketers, we have to think like


Google thinking like a searcher so that we know what ingredients to put into that flavor


of ice cream that's going to come out the other side.


And we have to guess which flavor it's going to be.


I just really want some ice cream right now.


So that's always the case.


So the job is harder than ever before.


But we are in a golden age of search.


I want to recognize the positives in that, right?


That there is more to do, that there is more opportunity, and that your role is more important


than ever before.


Not all search is created equal in this golden age, right?


I don't want to leave out the hard stuff.


In this golden age of search, whole categories of organic search have been lost, right?


Whole categories.


And also there's more opportunities.


Local SEO, we are big investors in at Mize.


We have seen this trend on localization being more influential than even personalization


when we all thought personalization was going to be the big thing.


So within localization and users seeing different search results in the same region, we know


that that means there's actually lots of opportunity, right?


And our jobs now are not simply to show up in a search result, but to make the most compelling


experience in the search result possible.


We used to talk about conversion rate optimization on your website.


Now we're talking about it right there on the SERP, on the result itself, right?


What are your reviews saying about you?


What are your images saying about you?


Do you have that meta description dialed in?


Should I be creating a whole different kind of content for this kind of search experience


that Google is going to serve up?


Product search, I mean, yes, there are definitely parts of the search pie that are not commercializable


and then there's this whole other area.


I mean, product search, Amazon, right here in Seattle.


Is anyone from Amazon here?


Amazon, it's okay.


I'm not going to say anything nasty.


It's wonderful.


Amazon providing good competition.


Good competition.


We need competition, right, for product search.


This is great.


It means we have to level up.


It means we have to invest the time to be here.


So in this golden age of search, we are going to have to have this new mindset, right?


We have to let go of old ideas, old language.


We have to think about what does it mean to show the value of what I do in a world where


there's so much no-click search?


Does it mean something I'm doing is not valuable?


No, it doesn't, right?


What does it mean to talk about your search visibility in a world that's so interactive


on the SERP result itself?


What does it mean?


And that is what we're here to discover, right?


We've got three days of content.


We have got 27 speakers.


Each of them are going to be doing keynote-style talks of 30 to 40 minutes apiece.


So we can get both really strategic for you, but also really tactical, really good nuggets,


right?


We've also got community speakers.


We've got birds of a feather table.


I'm going to go on.


I'm going to do shifting modes now to cruise director, cruise director Sarah.


All right.


Okay, MozCon.


That's the hashtag.


So join the conversation, okay?


For those of you who don't know already, there's this thing called Twitter.


You should use it.


Lots of people are already talking there.


Okay, good.


MozCon is the hashtag.


This year's theme is deep sea exploration because we're going deep into the vastness


of this world of search.


And so we're all little Jacques Cousteau's bonus points for those of you who can use


sea puns and sea gifs on the hashtag.


That's a challenge.


Birds of a feather table.


I love this.


So many of our speakers have also volunteered to be hosts of a birds of a feather table.


At lunchtime, you'll see a table with a table topic.


That is your invitation to join.


And you already know what to say.


Come to learn.


Come to teach.


There's some great topics today.


I listed out some of them here for us so that we could do it.


The reviews and reputations, user experience, actual tactics for destination travel, strategies


for engagement, quality raters guidelines, EAT, reporting and analytics, local SEO, machine


learning, all really good stuff.


So please engage there.


This is also, again, great for those of us who are a little bit introverted and want


to know how to engage.


The partner hub.


We could not do this without our partners.


Please do visit our partners in the exhibit hall.


I'm going to read them real quick because they are providing they're helping us keep


the quality of the snacks really high, which for me is very important part of the MozCon


experience and also the parties.


Yeah, the snacks.


Am I right?


The snacks.


Okay.


Call rail, call tracking, recording and analytics.


NUDA build and sell high converting websites at scale.


Easy texting, reach thousands of contacts at once with max texting alerts and reminders.


Gather up.


Gather your customer feedback and reviews into one place.


Pages.


Free quarterly print magazine about SEO.


Pitch box, link building, influencer outreach, content promotion platform for agencies, publishers


and brands and word stream.


Online advertising made easy.


So can we get a little round of applause for our partners in snacks.


The parties.


Very good.


Also, actually, one quick thing.


Don't forget the MozCon app.


The MozCon app is downloadable.


You haven't got it.


It's got the agenda.


If you're looking for the words of a feather table topics, they are in the activities section.


Use that MozCon app.


Just search for MozCon 2019.


Quick reminder here.


MozCon is for everyone.


This is a special point of pride for me.


We are and are always working on improving this.


We want to be accessible for everyone this year.


That really came home to roost for yours truly.


So I'm glad we've been investing in this for some time.


We have a nursing mother's room.


Are there any parents of very small babies in here six months or less?


Give me a little clap.


Yeah, a little clap.


Make some noise.


Oh, my God.


Bless you.


Bless you for being here.


And if there are any moms in particular, bless you extra double triple.


We do have a room just for you.


So let us know.


We have gender neutral restrooms.


So if that's an option that you would enjoy, please know it's there.


If you have trouble locating any of these special facilities, just ask us at registration.


We want you to be really, really comfortable here.


Oh, and also the live transcription.


How great is that?


Stacey coming back as our transcriber here.


The legendary, legendary Stacey.


Fantastic.


We do have a code of conduct that it's kind of a downer topic in some ways to bring up,


but it's important to me that we do take a moment and say it explicitly because this


conference is really, really special.


Talking to the speakers last night, several of them began in the audience where you are,


and now they're up here on the stage.


Several people have gotten their jobs that they currently have from coming to MozCon.


Some people have left inspired for new careers in digital marketing from coming to MozCon.


I want to start with that because that's what I want for everyone.


I don't want anyone to ever come to a MozCon and feel harassed, uninvited, judged, made


to feel less than.


I want everyone here to be lifted up.


So my call on you, my request is let's lift each other up 100%.


Let's just treat each other with dignity.


That includes the social channels.


There is no place at MozCon for any inappropriate conduct, any inappropriate jokes.


Just make, you know, only make the kind of jokes you would make if you're like significant


mother, and your grandmother, and your favorite mentor, counselor, and boss were all standing


right next to you.


Like that's a good kind of guideline, right?


Okay, good.


Are we for that?


Are we for making this like the most friendly, respected, safe, outgoing?


Thank you.


Good.


Good, good, good.


Okay, that said, now that I've laid the like, remember, we use this professional fun.


This is office fun.


That's what we call that, right guys?


Let's do talk about the parties because the parties are amazing.


I do want us to have fun.


I want us to be silly.


I want you to be silly.


I want you to meet folks.


We've got some great parties lined up.


We have tonight, we have a block party.


It's at the 41, block 41 in Belltown.


That's right.


It's going to be kind of outdoors.


It's drinks.


It's music.


It's going to be great.


And it's an easy-ish walk from here.


Not for yours truly, but for those of you with two legs.


17 minutes flat.


Totally enjoy that.


Tuesday, we don't have an official event.


That is a good day for you to explore Seattle if you're an introvert to a little recovery


time, right?


Or make your own party.


Seattleites, I'm counting on you to invite our out of town guests to all the hippest spots,


all right?


I'm calling that forth in you.


And then Wednesday night.


Do not miss the garage party on Wednesday night.


It's a tradition.


There's bowling, which is hilarious.


And there's karaoke, which is where you will find me.


There's drinks.


There is pool.


It's a fantastic time.


That's uphill.


So, plan to get there.


Do take Lyft.


Take Uber.


Take our light rail.


Be very, very safe.


So, wow.


We have covered a lot.


We know who's in the room.


We got this whole situation out of the way.


We talked about the golden age of search and how we have all got to level up.


And that's why we are here.


We are here to level up and bring that back to our places of work.


We're going to leave here inspired so we can keep it going.


The Easiest PR Focused Link Building Tip in the Book - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we are talking about the easiest link building tip in the book.


It is PR-focused, meaning press and public relations-focused, and I'll dive right in.


If you are trying to get some new links for your new client, for your website, for your


company, start with this process.


Step one, identify some of your sites or your business's unique attributes.


The type of company that you are.


Are you a startup, a scale-up?


Are you mid-stage?


Are you a small business?


Are you family-owned business?


What's the background of your founders?


Do they come from a special place, something that is unique?


Almost certainly the answer is yes, but in what kinds of ways?


What type of financing do you have?


What is your customer focus, your customer target?


What is your purpose, values, culture, geography, sector or market, or other attributes like


accessibility?


Maybe you do a great job of serving differently-abled folks.


Maybe you are a very sustainable business, a super green business.


Maybe you have a very high bar of ethics, or your facilities are absolutely outstanding


and super Instagram-worthy.


Whatever it is, some combination of these you're going to take, and you're going to


find other people who share those attributes.


Other businesses, some other businesses that share some of those attributes or some combination


of them.


For example, I've taken a type of business, a startup, and a geography.


Startups in San Diego.


Or type of financing, angel-financed, but a type of business that is unusually angel-financed,


a physical retail location business.


That's fairly atypical.


B-corps, right, a benefit corp that is in the healthcare space.


Again, somewhat atypical, somewhat unique.


A black-owned business that's in tech, tragically also unusual.


Now, step three, I'm going to find publications in people that have covered or amplified other


people like you, some combination of other people like you.


So we'll start with my first example here.


If I am a startup in San Diego, I will plug in several other startups in San Diego.


So I did a search, startups in San Diego, on Google.


I found CloudBeds and Hire a Helper, two startups that are in San Diego.


And I find a bunch of coverage opportunities by searching for the combination of the two


CloudBeds and Hire a Helper leads me to Programmable Web, has a page that lists both of them because


they both have APIs.


San Diego Startup Week lists both of them because they were both panelists or speakers


there.


Snip2Code has a machine learning directory because they both had some interesting uses


for machine learning that they applied.


Tampa Bay Times covered both of them because of a data content piece.


These are your link opportunities, your press, PR, coverage opportunities.


And you can repeat this again and again with combinations like this.


And the best part is you are using just your brain and Google search.


Super, super simple.


Of course, you could take this and you could apply this, right?


You could plug in the websites for CloudBeds and Hire a Helper to Mazel's Link Explorer,


and you could get a bunch of other link opportunities, right?


You could plug those two in and you could plug in your own website, and then you could


say, show me sites that link to these two but not to me through the link intersect function.


So there's ways to advance this with tools, but this is some of the simplest, best ways


to launch, to get coverage, to get people to know you and like you and start to have


heard of your brand, and to get those links that Google's going to need to rank your website


higher.


All right, everyone.


Hope you've enjoyed this.


Look forward to some of your tips and advice around easy PR-focused link building tips.


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


Harnessing the Power of Feedback — Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans, welcome back to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is


Megan and I'm on the learning team here at Moz and today I'm going to talk to


you about harnessing the power of feedback when it comes to content


iteration. So one of the projects that I contribute to in my position here is


taking care of our customer help center which we call the Help Hub and if you're


not familiar with the Help Hub, this is where we house all of our how-to guides,


tips and tricks, workflows, and troubleshooting guides for the Moz


tools and I do encourage you to check it out if you have some time later or if


you have questions about the tools. A key part of maintaining the Help Hub


includes gathering, monitoring, and implementing customer feedback and this


is a crucial component for us. Why is that? Well because we want to be sure


that we're providing quality, helpful content to our customers. In addition,


this process allows our customers to find answers to their questions quickly


and easily at any time and it does take some of the lift off of our help team as


well by reducing the number of tickets that they receive asking these very


questions and so I'm going to go ahead and take you through the process that we


use to implement customer feedback in hopes that you can take it and apply it


to your own content creation and maintenance strategies. So what is the


first step? Well first we gather data because we don't know what feedback


people have if we don't ask for it right? So if you are familiar with the Moz


Help Hub you may have seen our surveys that are at the bottom of all of our


articles and here we ask if the article was helpful and we do this with a series


of emojis that indicate if it met their needs or not and if the customer


indicates that it did not they do have the option to enter a comment letting us


know why and when it comes to gathering data on your own content you may have to


add a survey like this or there are plenty of other ways that you can start


to gather data to work with. So if you have a social media presence you can


start keeping track of feedback there or ask your followers directly for insight


into what they find most helpful and least helpful about your content or you


can send a survey out via email ask your customer service team for feedback look


at customer emails and tickets to see what questions the customers may be


asking which you're not currently answering on your site and we do that as


well we work closely with our help team to ensure that everything that we can


answer is answered in the help home so once you have that data to work with


it's time to analyze it so we review both vote counts meaning helpful versus


not helpful as well as comments here at Moz and when comments are left we look


to see if there's an opportunity to implement a change in that guide based


on the feedback additionally if we're seeing a trend in votes for a particular


page or section we will take a look at how we can improve or reword update the


content to better serve the customer one thing to keep in mind during this step


however is that not all feedback you receive will be actionable and that's


okay a few questions that I like to ask myself when looking at feedback for an


article are was the customer on the right page to find their answer and if


not how did they get to this page and is there an opportunity to help them find


their way to the correct page whether that's through links or additional


resources etc is there and is there a question that I can answer on this page


or should this question have its own dedicated page sometimes we end up


writing whole new guides based on feedback that we get from customers and


what was the customer trying to achieve how did this guide fall short in helping


them achieve that goal so now that we've identified areas for improvement it's


time to implement changes to that content so this may be as simple as


adding an FAQ to answer a specific question or as involved as writing a


new work flight new workflow or troubleshooting guide as I mentioned


previously and just as an example some specific things some specific changes


that we implemented based on customer feedback include adding quick links to


all of our pages for easier navigation creating separate pages for each of our


keyword metrics and building out multiple workflows based on questions


that customers have asked this step in the process may look different depending


on the type of content that you create and the type of feedback that you


receive for example if you primarily work in creating video content and you


receive feedback that customers wish the videos had subtitles you may opt to


implement those on past videos as well as any that you release moving forward


however if you have a blog or a newsletter or some other type of


long-form content it may not make sense to use resources to update older pieces


of content instead you may opt to start implementing those changes in your


content moving forward and it may be a combination of those maybe you have some


really popular articles that can be updated from the past and start


implementing those changes in your content moving forward so after


implementing your changes you want to be sure to track your results we track our


votes and survey responses regularly to help monitor for update opportunities


and to see if the responses have changed for that particular piece of content and


finally we start the cycle all over again gathering more data analyzing it


implementing changes and then tracking the results implementing this process


here at Moz has allowed us to see a correlation between changes that we've


made to the help of content and the number of helpful votes that we receive


we treat this part of our content library as a living document that is


always evolving to not only account for tool changes but also to take into


account customer feedback gathering feedback on your content can help to


identify trends and what your customers are engaging with and how you can


further improve your offerings moving forward you know and that's key you want


to always be improving it can also help to identify resources that may need


updating or ideas for future content for example if you have a blog post about


how to bake a cake and your readers are commenting that they don't know how to


pick the right kind of pan for the recipe there may be an opportunity to


publish a new blog post about the best types of cake pans or if you publish


help guides like myself if a customer says they couldn't find the answer to


their question in that article there may be an opportunity to look into questions


like the ones that we outlined earlier in our analyze step you know what are


they trying to achieve what how do they end up on this page and how can I help


them to reach their goal I hope that you found this helpful and that you're ready


to get out there and start harnessing the power of feedback and thank you so


Why Google AdWords' Keyword Volume Numbers Are Wildly Unreliable - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans.


Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


This week we're going to chat about Google AdWords' keyword data and why it is absolutely


as insane as an SEO or as a content marketer or content creator to rely on this.


Look, as a paid search person, you don't have a whole lot of choice, right?


Google and Facebook combine to form the duopoly of advertising on the internet, but as an


organic marketer, as a content marketer or as someone doing SEO, you need to do something


fundamentally different than what paid search folks are doing.


Paid search folks are basically trying to figure out, when will Google show my ad for


a keyword that might create the right kind of demand that will drive visitors to my site


who will then convert?


But as an SEO, you're often driving traffic so that you can do all sorts of other things,


right?


As content marketers, you're driving traffic for multitudes of reasons that aren't directly


or necessarily directly connected to a conversion, at least certainly not right in that visit.


And so there's lots of reasons why you might want to target different types of keywords


and why AdWords data will steer you wrong.


First up, AdWords shows you this volume range and they show you this competition score.


And many SEOs I know, even really smart folks just haven't, I think haven't processed that


AdWords could be misleading them in this facet.


So let's talk about what happened here.


I searched for types of lighting and lighting design and Google AdWords came back with some


suggestions.


This is in the keyword planner section of the tool.


So types of light, lighting design, lighting consultant, we'll stick with those three keywords


for a little bit.


And I can see here that, all right, average monthly searches, well, these volume ranges


are really unhelpful, 10K to 100K, that's just way too giant, even 1K to 10K, way too


big of a range and competition low, low, low.


So this is just, this is only true for the quantity of advertisers.


That's really the only thing that you're seeing here.


If there are many, many people bidding on these keywords in AdWords, these will be high.


But as an example, for types of light, no one, there's virtually no one bidding, but


for lighting consultant, there's quite a few people bidding.


So I don't understand why these are both low competition.


There's not enough granularity here or Google's just not showing the accurate data.


It's very confusing.


And by the way, types of light, though it has no PPC ads right now in Google's results,


this is incredibly difficult to rank for in the SEO results.


I think I looked at the keyword score, it's in the 60s, the keyword difficulty score,


right?


The 70s, maybe even those 70s, because there's a bunch of powerful sites, there's a featured


snippet up top, the domains that are ranking are doing really well.


So it's going to be very hard to rank for this and yet competition low, it's just not


telling you the right thing.


That's not telling you the right story.


And so you're getting very misled on both competition and monthly searches.


Worse, number two, AdWords doesn't line up to reality with itself.


I'll show you what I mean.


So let's go over to Google Trends.


Great tool, by the way.


We'll talk about that in a sec, but I plugged in lighting design, lighting consultant, and


types of lighting.


You know, and I get the nice chart that shows me seasonality.


But over on the left, it also shows average keyword volume compared to each other.


86 for lighting design, 2 for lighting consultant, and 12 for types of lighting.


Now you tell me how it is that this can be 43 times as big as this one, and this can


be six times as big as that one, and yet these are all correct.


The math only works in some very, very tiny amounts of circumstances, right?


Like, okay, maybe if this is 1000, and this is 12,000, which technically puts it in the


10k, and this is 86,000.


Oh, no, wait, that doesn't quite work.


Okay, now we made it work.


But you change this to 2000 or 3000, the numbers don't add up.


Worse, it gets worse.


Of course it does.


When AdWords gets more specific with the performance data, things just get so crazy weird that


nothing lines up.


So I searched for, what I did is I created ad groups, because in AdWords, in order to


get more granular monthly search data, you have to actually create ad groups, and then


go review those.


So this is in the review section of my ad group creation.


I created ad groups with only a single keyword so that I could get, you know, the most accurate


volume data I could, and then I maximized out my bid until I wasn't getting any more


impressions by bidding any higher.


Whether that truly accounts for all searches or not, hard to say.


But here's the impression count.


2500 a day, 330 a day, 4 a day.


So 4 a day times 30.


Gosh, that sounds like 120 to me.


That doesn't sound like it's in the 1000 to 10,000 range.


I don't think this could possibly be right.


It just doesn't make any sense.


What's happening?


Oh, actually, this is types of lighting.


Google clearly knows that there's way more searches for this.


There's a ton more searches for this.


Why is the impression so low?


The impressions are so low because Google will rarely ever show an ad for that keyword,


which is why when we were talking above here about competition, I didn't see an ad for


that keyword.


So again, extremely misleading.


If you're taking data from AdWords and you're trying to apply it to your SEO campaigns,


your organic campaigns, your content marketing campaigns, you are being misled and led astray.


If you see numbers like this that are coming straight from AdWords, oh, we looked at the


AdWords impression, know that these can be dead effing wrong, totally misleading, and


throw your campaigns off.


You might choose not to invest in content around types of lighting when in fact that


could be an incredibly wonderful lead source, could be the exact right keyword for you,


is getting way more search volume.


We can see it right here.


We can see it in Google Trends, which is showing us some real data, and we can back that up


with our own clickstream data that we get here at Moz.


Number three, another problem, Google conflates keywords.


So when I do searches and I start adding keywords to a list, unless I'm very careful and I type


them in manually and I'm only using the exact ones, Google will take all three of these,


types of lights, types of light, singular light, and types of lighting, and conflate


them all, which is insane.


It is maddening.


Why is it maddening?


Because types of light, in my opinion, is a physics-related search.


You can see that many of the results talk about, you know, they'll be like from energy.gov


or whatever, right, and they'll show you the different types of wavelengths and light ranges


on the visible spectrum.


Types of lights will show you what?


It will show you types of lights that you could put in your home or office.


Types of lighting will show you lighting design stuff, right, the things that a lighting consultant


might be interested in.


So three very different types of results with three different search intents all conflated


in AdWords.


Killing me.


Number four, not only this, a lot of times when you do searches inside AdWords, they


will hide the suggestions that you want the most.


So when I perform my searches for lighting design, Google never showed me, I couldn't


find it anywhere in the search results, even with the export of a thousand keywords, types


of lights or types of lighting.


Why?


I think it's the same reason down here, because Google doesn't believe that those are commercial


intent search queries, well, AdWords doesn't believe they're commercial intent search queries,


and so they don't want to show them to AdWords customers because then they might bid on them


and Google will A, rarely show those and B, they'll get a poor return on that spend.


And what happens to advertisers?


They don't blame themselves for choosing faulty keywords, they blame Google for giving them


bad traffic and so Google knocks these out.


So if you are doing SEO or you're doing content marketing and you're trying to find these


targets, AdWords is a terrible suggestion engine as well.


As a result, my advice is going to be rely on different tools.


There's a few that I've got here, I'm obviously a big fan of Moz's Keyword Explorer, having


been one of the designers of that product.


Ahrefs came out with a Near Clone product that's actually very, very good.


SEMrush is also a quality product.


I like their suggestions a little bit more, although they do use AdWords keyword data,


so the volume data might be misleading again there, I'd be cautious about using that.


Google Trends, I actually really like Google Trends, I'm not sure why Google is choosing


to give out such accurate data here, but from what we've seen, it looks really comparatively


good.


Challenge being, if you do these searches in Google Trends, make sure you select the


right type, right, the search term or not the list or the topic.


Topics and lists inside Google Trends will aggregate, just like this will, a bunch of


different keywords into one thing.


And then, if you want to get truly, truly accurate, you can go ahead and run a sample


AdWords campaign.


The challenge with that being, if Google chooses not to show your ad, you won't know how many


impressions you potentially missed out on, and that can be frustrating too.


So AdWords today, using PPC as an SEO tool, a content marketing tool, a little bit of


a black box, I would really recommend against it.


As long as you know what you're doing and you want to find some inspiration, they're


fine.


But I'd rely on some of these other tools.


Some of them are free, some of them are paid, all of them are better than AdWords.


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


for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy MOSFANS and welcome to a new edition of Whiteboard Fridays.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

My name is Lydia Infante and I'm the Senior SEO Manager at Sanity.io.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Today I'm going to be talking to you about SEO gap analysis.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

And yes, I know it's a very unsexy topic, but bear with me because it's worth it.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

SEO gap analysis takes us to the first principles of what we do in SEO.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Because ranking on Google is not ranking in a vacuum.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Ranking is outranking your competitors.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

You've got a very limited space on the first page of the SERPs


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and you need to be doing better than your competitors to be able to rank there.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

That means that you need to know what your competitors are doing


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and how you're going to do it better.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

But first of all, you need to know who your competitors are, who they are really.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're going to be speaking about competitor identification


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

in a different Whiteboard Friday in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Once you have your set of competitors ready,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

you're going to proceed to benchmark yourself against them.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

And we're going to be doing this across the three pillars of SEO.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

So we're going to be looking at content, we're going to be looking at links,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and we're going to be looking at tech SEO.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're going to look at how our competitors perform for each of those


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and how we compare.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

So when it comes to content, the very first thing that we want to look at


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

is the estimated traffic by type that our competitors and we have.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

So when I'm talking about traffic by type, what I mean is like,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

are they getting branded traffic versus unbranded traffic?


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Product traffic, editorial traffic, it's going to be very different


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

depending on the vertical that you're in, so adapt it to make it yours.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're also going to be looking at the number of editorial URLs that they have


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and how much traffic these editorial URLs are getting each on average.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

And lastly, we're going to be looking at the number of keywords


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

that they're ranking for.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're not going to be looking at all of the keywords,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

we're going to be aiming for the range of 1 to 30.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Again, you can make this yours, you know your market better,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and you know what's relevant, but that should narrow the entire pool


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

to stuff that's a little more relevant to your competitors.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Then we're going to be looking at links.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're going to begin with the link app analysis.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

That is, we're going to look at how many links your competitors have


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and how many referring domains are pointing to your competitors.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Then we're going to use this to measure link growth.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're going to look at how many links your competitors had


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

six months ago or 12 months ago if your market is a little slower,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and we're going to get a percentage of growth out of that.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

That's going to indicate to you whether your search market


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

is very aggressive with link building and you need to make an effort to keep up


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

or it's a little bit more relaxed.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Then we're going to be looking at branded search.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

So how many people are looking for your competitors' brands


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

versus how many people are looking for your brand?


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

That's going to indicate the level of brand awareness


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

that you have within your target audience in comparison to your competitors.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're going to take it one step further


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and we're going to be looking again at branded traffic.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

There should be a very correlated relation


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

between branded search and branded traffic.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

If you're first for branded search, you should be first for branded traffic


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and so on, but if there isn't, it might be an indicator


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

that you don't have content within your site


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

that's responding to the user's queries about your brand.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

So that's definitely a very quick win that you could action right now.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Lastly, we're going to be looking at Tech SEO.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

And this is incredibly difficult to measure


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

because the requirements in Tech SEO vary from website to website,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

from vertical to vertical.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

I am personally in the SaaS market,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

so my requirements for Tech SEO is essentially make it readable


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and make sure that JavaScript is not blocking anything,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

plastic crawling and rendering issues, and that's about it.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

But if you're in e-commerce, you're likely dealing with faceted navigation,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

you're dealing with filter management, and it's a little bit more demanding.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

So the best way that I have found to measure Tech SEO changes


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and performance is web vital scores.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

We're going to go on the Chrome UX report on Data Studio


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and we're going to look at the main three core web vitals,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

grab the number, the percentage of good URLs according to Google,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and then we're going to average them out into one score.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Then we're going to be looking at page speed.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

You can do this with page speed insights,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and we're going to be looking at the scores for mobile versus desktop.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

I don't average these out


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

because I think they provide really useful information


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

of what issues your industry is running into


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

when it comes to mobile usability.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

And then lastly, we're going to do some manual checks.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Take a look at the robots.txt, take a look at the sitemap,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

how they manage canonicalization,


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

and that's going to inform you better


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

on how you could outperform your competitors.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

And if this seems very complicated, don't worry.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

I have provided a free template for you so that you can make it yours.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

Thank you so much for watching my Whiteboard Friday.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

My name is Lydia Infante, and you can find me on Twitter


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

at lydiainfanteM.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday

You can find me on my website at lydiainfante.com.


SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday


New Daily SEO Fix Video: Using Custom Reports for Ranking Opportunities

Hello, I'm Varad from the onboarding team here at Malls.


Today, I'm going to show you how we can create a custom report to stay on top of the ranking


opportunities for our website.


It's good to have a ranking opportunities report delivered to you on a regular basis


and that can help you to stay up to date about the content ideas, the page optimization opportunities


and even a few quick ranking wins.


In order to create a custom report, I'm just going to head to the setup wizard on mods


pro and there it is.


As you can see here, there are already a few pre-made templates that are already available


here.


Now remember, these templates will only be available to you if you are on a medium or


a higher plan and in case if you want to, you can still choose to start from scratch


as well.


Now in the list of templates, I'm going to find the ranking opportunities report.


There it is.


Once we have this template selected on the right hand side, we'll be able to see what


all things will be included in this report.


You can choose to preview the report before we create this and once we are done here,


then we are going to click on create report.


Now I want this report to be delivered weekly, so I'm going to select weekly in here and


then click on select template.


One great feature about these custom reports is that even if you select like a specific


pre-made template, still you will be able to customize the report according to your


needs.


You can name this report, you can add description according to what you want and then I'm going


to click on next.


That's when in this section we'll be able to see which modules will be added in this


report.


If I scroll down below, this first module of the keyword opportunities, so basically


in here what we will be able to see is the keywords that are already sending some traffic


to our website and the keywords that we are already ranking for, but we are not tracking


them in the campaign.


And then the second module when I scroll down below, this module will tell you the potential


page optimization pairings.


You can fully customize, you can move the modules by clicking on this icon here, or


you can delete any module as well by clicking on the cross icon here.


In here, I also want one more module, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on add


modules on the left navigation bar.


Then once we click on add modules, I'm going to click on rankings.


Then once I click on rankings, I'm going to scroll down a bit here, click on competition


and then scroll down a bit again.


Once we scroll down here, what I'm going to do is I'm going to sort this data out to see


what are the keywords that my competitors are ranking for in the highest positions.


So once we have this, I can click on this plus icon here.


And once I click on this, then it'll ask me how many rows would I like to be included


in this report.


I'm going to select 10 in this case and click on add module.


And that will tell you that module added successfully.


And I'm going to scroll up again and then I'm going to click on next here.


Once I click on next, then you can see the first are the keyword opportunities, the keywords


that are already sending some traffic to our website and the keywords that are already


ranking our website in some positions.


Then we have the potential page optimization pairings in here.


And below that is the module that we have added that will tell us what are the keywords


that our competitors are ranking for in the highest position.


Once we have all of these things here, we can choose to move these modules by clicking


on these icons here.


As I told you, the custom reports are fully customizable, even if you select a specific


template.


Now, once we are sure that yes, that's the report I want, then I'm going to scroll up


again and then I'm going to click on next to continue finishing the report.


And once I do that, here will be a preview of the report.


You can click on the generate PDF report that will help you in generating a PDF report to


see before you finish creating this report.


I'm going to click on next and then this way we will be able to share this report with


anyone outside the subscription if we have, we just need to click here, insert the email


address and then when I click on finish, that's our custom report created that will keep us


updated that will keep us stay on top of the ranking opportunities for our website as well


as the content ideas and the page optimization opportunities.


Boost SEO Rankings by Removing Internal Links Presented by Alex Stein

Hi, thank you so much for that introduction, Zeph.


My name is Alex Stein.


I'm going to be talking today about how to reduce the number of links in your internal


navigation to help the pages you really care about rank even better.


So over at Wayfair we call this project whack-a-mole.


Why you might ask?


Because having project names is cool.


But also because links are always popping up everywhere.


There are so many different things happening on websites from product releases to feature


releases to site makeovers and a lot of times these have the unintended consequence of adding


a lot of links to every single page, adding a lot of links to your navigation.


So we call it project whack-a-mole because links are always popping up and it's our job


as SEO optimizers to optimize the flow of authority through a site.


So I wanted to start off with a quick 10,000-foot view of how site authority works.


You get authority from external links and then that authority passes through to your


other pages through your internal links.


For any given page, its authority is divided amongst all of the links on that page.


15% of it just disappears.


So one of the core ideas of this talk is that if you have your links, you double your authority.


If you remove half the links from any given page, the remaining links that you left there


will get twice as much authority from that page.


Have your links, double your authority, it's a surefire way to success.


Thank you so much.


My name is Alex Stein.


It's been a pleasure speaking with you.


Just kidding.


Obviously I want to talk a little bit about what we've done and how we've done it so that


you can do it too.


So all of my examples are going to cover the different forms of global navigation which


are navigation that appear on every page.


Like the header.


So we did project whack-a-mole on our header and saw some great results so I'm going to


share a little bit about the process around it.


So if you're going to be removing links from your header, I recommend you use at least


three main data points.


You want to be using search volume, header click data, and page level revenue.


So these three things can act as a system of checks and balances against each other


so you're making better data-driven decisions.


So because there can be situations where a term in the header has very low search volume


but might have a very high click count.


And what's happening there is that people are hitting your site and they're saying,


oh, that's what I want.


I couldn't remember what it was called but I know that's what I want.


Alternatively, you can have situations where you have very low click count but very high


page level revenue.


So maybe it's a high converting page or just a high ticket item.


But the benefit that you get from removing that link isn't going to outweigh the revenue


that you lose.


So in both these situations, we're leaving the links in the header where if we were just


using one individual data point, we might be inclined to remove them.


So we did this on our header.


We looked critically at what really needed to be there and we were able to remove around


150 links.


So we actually A.B. tested this in order to be extra careful and the variant with fewer


links saw a decrease in internal searches as well as an increase in overall conversion


rate.


So what was happening was that since we were removing options that people didn't care about


from the header, they were able to find the pages that they wanted faster so they didn't


need to search for them.


Additionally, they got put in front of product faster which improved our funnel metrics overall.


So that's just the cherry on top because when we pushed this out to the live site for the


SEO benefit, we saw increased rankings in particular to the pages that we left in the


header as well as around a 5 to 10% increase in site traffic as a whole which is a huge


benefit for such a simple change.


So now all those links that we left in the header, they didn't need to share the authority


that they were getting from every single page on the site with an additional 150 links.


And similarly, all of the products and article pages that we have, they didn't need to share


the authority that they were getting from their parent pages with those 150 links that


are usually in the header.


So we're just making the site leaner and meaner and giving our most important pages every


single possible advantage that we can.


My second example covers the footer navigation.


So the footer is often a good place to start project whack-a-mole because a lot of times


people put links in the footer because they don't know where else to put them.


So because of that, there's a lot of unqualified links in the footer and by unqualified, I


mean links that don't need to be accessible from every single page of your site.


So I'm going to take a quick minute here, give a shout out to some of our sponsors.


Thank you so much for sponsoring the event.


You know, Moscon is awesome, but you should know that if you're sponsoring an SEO conference,


your site might come under a little bit of SEO scrutiny.


So I'm going to poke a little fun at these guys.


They're not doing anything wrong.


There just might be room for improvement.


So similar web, right?


We have awesome competitive intelligence company, really cool data, 37 links in the footer.


And I actually think between the time I made this deck and now, they have 47 links.


So it's called project whack-a-mole for a reason.


These things kind of just accumulate without you really paying attention.


But do we really need individual links for our data and about us and our team or can


we just have one link that leads to one page called our company?


WordStream, another awesome PPC company based out in Boston with Wayfair, 48 links in the


footer.


So do people really need to be able to get to the shopping cart abandonment article from


every single page of the site?


I don't know.


And obviously, I'm giving these guys a hard time.


You know, there's a lot of good SEO reasons that you might put links in your footer.


And we too were once like them.


You know, before we did project whack-a-mole, we had around 51 links in our footer.


You know, we had links to our general policies and our shipping policies and our 30-day policies


and our policies about our policies.


And it was a lot of useful information, but just information that didn't necessarily need


to be on every single page of the site.


So we went in there, looked critically at what needed to be there.


We looked at how people were getting to different pages and we were able to reduce this number


down to 20.


And a big way that we did that was we found places where we could take many links and


turn them into fewer links.


So with all of our policy links and the kind of customer service oriented pages, we created


one awesome page with tabbed content and contact forms and HTML jumps and quick links and we


just called it help.


We probably made it easier for customers to find the information that they needed by reducing


the number of options that they had and all the while helping our SEO.


My third example is sidebar navigation.


This is the left or right-hand menu, the global menu.


Not all sites have this, but some of them do.


This is a problem that I see come up a lot more on smaller sites that are on CMSs like


WordPress.


So a lot of the themes and designs that you can download for WordPress, they often have


the they often use UX elements that can add a lot of links to every single page.


So things like tag clouds or recent post widgets or duplicate navigation or my favorite, archive


links.


So a lot of times these all appear in combination on a site and they can easily add over 100


links to every single page.


So my advice is always when I'm working with these sites is to whack a mole, cut it out.


Unless you have business data that's showing that people are engaging with these features


and they're driving signups or conversions, cut it out.


Give your primary taxonomy, give the pages that are core to your site and what your site


really is as much of an advantage as you can and don't let these additional links detract


from the authority that you can send them.


So those are the three main forms of global navigation, but I also wanted to talk quickly


about page templates or page types because it's also very important to try to reduce


the number of links that appear on pages that make up a large percentage of your site as


a whole.


So for us in e-commerce that's generally product grid pages.


So we have many, many of these pages.


In general, there are a lot of opportunities on these page types to do project whack a


mole to find areas for link reduction, but I wanted to tell a little story, a little


anecdote about how the number of internal links on these pages can really affect how


authority flows through your site and can affect SEO traffic.


So we had a code release that went out that was updating how these pages worked.


So a couple weeks later we noticed that SEO traffic had started to trend downwards.


Since the downward trend kind of correlated with the code release date, we were pretty


sure they were related, so we started looking into SEO elements, et cetera, about all of


our titles, our canonicals, our robots, everything was fine, nothing weird was going on.


From a user experience standpoint, the pages were working better than ever, so it took


us a minute to figure out what had happened.


And it was only after looking at the page source code side by side from the kind of


before code and after that we realized that we had turned every single product listing


from one link into like 28 links.


Holy molefield, Batman.


The image had become a link, the name of the product had become a link, the price had become


a link, even the white space next to the price had become its own individual link to the


product URL.