You should certainly already have those relationships.


How to choose an SEO company - Whiteboard Friday

And talking to those folks about who they use and whether they were successful, great


way to find some good people.


And then industry insiders.


So if you're watching Whiteboard Friday here on Moz, chances are good that you follow some


great SEO people on Twitter, which is a very popular network for SEOs, or that you read


SEO blogs, you can reach out to some of those influential insiders with whom you have a


relationship or whose opinion you really like and care about and ask them who they would


recommend.


Good questions to ask in the process, by the way.


I like asking SEO companies, what process are you going to use to accomplish our goals


and why do you use those particular processes?


That's a really smart one to start with.


Ask them about their communication and reporting process.


What's their cadence like?


What metrics do they report on?


What do they need you to collect?


Why do they collect those metrics?


How do those match up to your goals and how do they align?


What work and resources will you have to commit internally?


You should know that before you go into any arrangement because it could get very complex


if your SEO company says, great, here's a list of recommendations and you say, fine,


we don't have the development bandwidth or we don't have the content creation bandwidth


or we don't have the visual or UI or UX change bandwidth to make any of those.


What do we do?


Well, now you're road blocked.


You should have had that conversation much earlier in time.


By the way, SEO usually requires some intensive resource allotment and so you should plan


for that ahead of time.


What do you do when things aren't working?


I love asking that question.


I like asking for specific examples of when things haven't gone right and what they've


done to fix that in the past and work around it.


Finally, I like asking broadly, especially when you open a conversation, especially if


you're feeling like, hey, I want to get to know this company's approach to SEO and their


understanding of Google, you can ask them something like, hey, tell me, how does Google


rank results and how do you as a company influence them?


You should hear good answers about, yes, this is how Google does things and here's how we


know that and here's how we do our process of influencing those results.


That's great.


I like to recommend that folks choose on these four things.


Basically, the trust that you've established with the company, that's through references,


through the conversation, through people that you've talked to in your network, through


referrals.


If you hear great referrals and you trust those referral sources, that's a wonderful


signal.


Through communication style match, if your communication style, even if everything else


is good but when you have conversations, you walk away from them feeling a little frustrated.


Maybe you got the things you needed but it didn't flow smoothly.


I would suggest that maybe that's a cultural mismatch and you should look for another provider.


Then finally, price and contract structure.


Many SEO firms have contract structure that's month to month and that has a certain length


of time.


You should expect to pay some upfront payment and then some ongoing monthly fee.


There's usually a time at which the payment will recur and the contract will renew.


It's pretty similar to a lot of other services consulting types of agreements so you should


expect that.


If you're seeing very non-standard stuff, that can be a bad thing sometimes but not


always.


A lot of times SEOs have more creative pricing and that's all right.


Three pro tips.


If SEO needs to be a core company competency at your company, bring it in house.


An agency or consultant can never do as much with as much resources, with as much communication


as someone in house can do.


Starting with a consultant externally and then bringing someone in house is a fine way


to go.


Pro tip number two.


If the quality SEO folks that you're considering are too pricey, my suggestion might be to


say okay, how about you just advise us on the work and we'll hire an in house person


maybe who's more beginner level and you coach that person.


That can work well, again, especially if you have that budget to bring that person in house.


Pro tip number three.


Remember that SEO is not for everyone.


SEO is extremely competitive.


Page one gets 95% plus of the clicks.


The top three or four results are getting more than 70% of those clicks, 65, 70%.


A lot of the time if you can't afford yet to do SEO or to engage in it seriously, it


may not be all that valuable to go from ranking on page five for a lot of your key terms to


page two or the bottom of page one.


Unless you have the budget and the energy to really commit yourself to SEO, it might


be a channel you consider later down the road.


All right, everyone.


Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


We'd love to hear your thoughts on how you've picked good SEO companies in the past and


the experiences you've had there.


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


How to Maximize Your Content — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz friends. It's Ross Simmons from Foundation Marketing and in this video I'm


going to be talking to you about something that I care deeply about, how to maximize


your content. We've all produced content. You've probably just produced a piece of content


within the last few days, the last few weeks, maybe last few months. You've prepared and


developed pieces of content that you believe will serve your audience. And congratulations,


you've taken a big step. This is a big step for you because you've created something.


It's an amazing situation to be in. Not a lot of brands do it. So if you've done it,


congratulations. But what I want to talk about in this video is how you can ensure that the


content that you're creating, the content that you're producing, the content that your


team is developing quarter after quarter, month after month, year after year is actually


maximized for ROI, maximized for result and impact. So let's talk through the life cycle


of content, how you can ensure that the content that you're producing is actually going to


drive results and how you can set your team up for success to leverage that content consistently


so you are impacting your audience in a meaningful way.


So how do you start all of this? You start pre-launch before you press publish on a piece


of content, before you launch that landing page, before you roll out a series of new


landing pages, before you roll out a handful of comparison pages between your product and


the next landing pages that are going to educate people on keywords related to your industry,


before you do any of that, you have to do research. You have to research your audience.


You have to understand the intent behind the things that they're typing into Google. You


need to understand the problems and the pains that they're trying to solve. You need to


invest time in researching the channels that your audience are spending the most time on.


Why? Because what you're going to do is not take the typical approach of pressing publish


on pieces of content, giving yourselves pats on the back and calling it a day. No, you're


going to embrace this model, a model where you are actually going to distribute your


content in channels where your audience is spending time and you're going to maximize


the ROI out of your content because of that. But first, you have to create content with


intent. You have to understand the intent of the assets that you're creating. You don't


write blog posts for the sake of writing blog posts. Somewhere along the lines, we've gotten


into this trap where marketers have kind of thought, oh, all content just needs to be


published. If you press publish on content, the world will be yours. That's not enough.


You need to have with your content clear intent. You have to know exactly why you're creating


these assets. And when you do that and you root it in research, then you're ready to


launch. You're ready to launch a piece of content that you believe is going to resonate


with your audience. You're going to launch that piece and you're going to be excited


about it and you should be. This is an amazing moment. But the next thing you do after you


press publish on that piece of content is typically what's going to make or break that


content. It's what's going to determine if your content soars or if your content flops.


And typically what people do is they just share them on channels that they own. And


then, yes, it tends to flop. What is this? What does this mean? Money channels. Money


channels are one of the four different types of channels that you can distribute your content


on. There are four different channels that every brand should be able to understand and


map out as it relates to the places in which they distribute their stories, their content,


and the way in which that they distribute that content after it goes live. We have money


channels, we have rocket channels, we have ghost channels, and we have questionable channels.


What are each of these channels? So when you look at this entire grid, you see audience


fit and competition. In channels where you have high audience fit, high competition,


we consider those money channels. What does that mean? It means your competition is already


there. Your competition has identified that this is a channel where they too can generate


revenue. They too can generate ROI. It's also high audience fit. If your audience is there,


your audience is spending a lot of time on this channel, this is a money channel. It's


a channel that you probably already own. Maybe you're on LinkedIn because you're in B2B.


Maybe you're on Instagram because you're in B2C. You know with confidence on these money


channels that every single time you distribute your stories, every single time you distribute


your content, you're going to see an impact. You're going to see ROI and you want to leverage


these as much as possible. Then we have our rocket channels. Rocket channels also have


high audience fit. These are channels where your audience is spending a ton of time. These


are channels where you want to be because you know that your audience is there, but


it has low competition. Shh, don't tell anyone. These are the channels that you don't want


your competitors to know about because your competitors don't realize your audience is


spending a lot of time on these channels. To the rest of the world, they might seem


very risky. Oh, you're using Reddit. Oh, you're leveraging Facebook groups. This is a very


risky channel. What they don't know is that all of your audience is there. It's a money


channel. I mean, it's a rocket channel. A money channel would be if your competitors


are there. If your competitors aren't there, then it's a rocket channel. These are my favorite.


I love rocket channels because it means that there's not a lot of competition, which means


that your content and the stories that you produce might be, for a short period of time,


the only stories and assets on this topic and in your niche that your audience is getting


exposure to. If they're doing that and they're getting exposed to your brand consistently,


you're building a true brand connection with an audience that really wants your content.


That's what you want in a rocket channel. Then you have low competition and low audience


fit channels. What are those? Those are essentially ghost channels. Nobody's there. Your competition


isn't there. Your audience isn't there. It makes absolutely no sense for you to leverage


these channels. And it's okay for these channels to exist. They're going to happen in every


single niche. Some people just aren't going to be leveraging a certain channel and that's


okay. You can ignore them. Don't go on them. It's all right. Avoid them at all costs. But


then there's going to be some questionable channels that are actually going to just completely


make you scratch your head. These are channels where your competition levels are very high.


Tons of people are using this channel in terms of your competition, but no one is there as


it relates to your audience. So it makes you scratch your head. Why are they there? Why


is my competitor spending time on this channel? And that provides you with two insights. One,


maybe you need to research and understand whether or not there's some real opportunity


there that you're overlooking. Or two, maybe you need to ask yourself, is this just some


legacy efforts that are happening where your competitors are using this because it used


to work in the past and they haven't caught on to the fact that it's no longer working?


Those are the questions you need to ask. Now, once you have an understanding of that, once


you have an understanding of money channels, rocket channels, ghost channels, and questionable


channels, the next step is to ask yourself how you can leverage this information to create


and optimize your distribution engine so you can really maximize that content. So you start


to go to those money channels. You send that content out on the money channels that you


own. This is typically where the life cycle of content distribution within most brands


end. We press publish on a piece of content. We share it on Twitter. We share it on LinkedIn.


We might even share it on Facebook. And we'll send it out to our newsletter and the people


who have subscribed to our list. And that's it. We call it a day and it's over. That all


happens typically within one week. And then we start the process all over again with new


content and we continue back and forth, back and forth, doing this cycle just like it's


Groundhog Day instead of recognizing that there are plenty of other opportunities that


you should be leveraging to maximize your content. Most brands just embrace this. Money


channels and that's it. What you're going to do is different. You're going to start


to embrace rocket channels. You're going to start to think about how you can distribute


your content in channels and in areas where your audience is spending time that your competition


has overlooked. You want to ensure that you're spreading your content in sites and communities


and forums and newsletters and sponsoring newsletters and leveraging newsletters, leveraging


in-product opportunities. You want to be thinking strategically around how you can distribute


your content in ways that your competitors are overlooking. And then you want to maintain


that momentum. We no longer are thinking about this in a short period of time. You're trying


to maintain momentum and you're launching this content over and over and over again.


You're keeping the hype going as it relates to your content. And then you're going to


start to experiment. You're going to experiment and try things that other people would say


is too risky. You're going to try things that might not even take a lot of energy and a


lot of time but could ultimately unlock for you a new opportunity. Maybe you're going


to experiment by taking a blog post and turning it into something new. Maybe you're going


to connect with an influencer and see if they'll talk about your content. Maybe you're going


to send a DM to someone. Maybe you're going to experiment where you're going to run an


internal campaign where your entire team is going to amplify a piece of content for 24


hours on social. Everyone's going to be encouraged and trained and taught how to leverage social


to distribute that content. You're going to make a splash. You're going to experiment.


There's no such thing as an idea that is too wild when you are embracing the experimentation


status point in this engine and in this timeframe. You want to experiment with your content.


Once you've done that, you want to start repurposing it. That blog post, that article, that essay


that you created shouldn't live and die in just one format. It should be repurposed.


Can you turn that blog post into a YouTube video? Can you turn that YouTube video into


a podcast? Can you take clips of that YouTube video and then share 30-second clips on social,


on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Twitter, on TikTok, on all of these different channels? How can


you repurpose your content? Can you take that content and potentially turn it into a new


content? An infographic, a carousel, a story that is interactive. What can you do to repurpose


your content so it doesn't solely exist in one format? And once you start to do that,


you might even turn it into something like a Twitter thread. You might find that one


of those pieces of content that you repurposed takes a whole new life where it's generating


more engagement, more dialogue, more stories, more narratives that ultimately give you the


opportunity to connect with more people. You're also going to share that content. A lot of


people, again, make that mistake. They share it once and then they call it a day. You're


not going to do that. You have to recognize that the people who happen to be online on


Monday at 3 p.m. aren't the same people who are online on Thursday at 6 a.m. in the morning.


That is why resharing your content is important. Even that same newsletter that you sent out


two months ago, two weeks ago, and you plugged an article that you were so excited went live.


Guess what? Some people were on vacation. Some people didn't open it. Some people happened


to be caught up in watching Paw Patrol at the time and they didn't get a chance to see


your content. That's an okay situation. You want to leverage that. Leverage that as an


insight to understand why you should reshare your content because people are busy. Not


everyone saw your piece of content as much as you would like to think on the day in which


it went live. So reshare your content, repost it, and reshare it frequently. Then you're


going to think about syndication opportunities. This is how you can scale your content consistently


across a handful of different publications, handful of different URLs that you know your


audience is already subscribed to, that you know your audience is following and reading


and consuming, and you want to syndicate your content through these channels. Now it can


get very meta because if you repurpose your content into a YouTube video, you can take


that YouTube video and embed it directly into the blog post that is ultimately now being


syndicated into one of these communities and then you can reshare that piece. It all starts


to work together. That is how you maximize your content. Now at this point you might


be thinking, whoa, this is too much. I'm done. I can't continue. But I beg you to please


continue because there's one more major step, optimizing that content. You want to optimize


and update that content for two key reasons. One, SEO. Two, CRO. You want to optimize this


content so it is more likely to show up in search. If you created that content with intent


and you had the intent of ranking for some keywords that are informational or you had


the intent of ranking for keywords that are going to be educational to your audience,


you want to optimize it. You want to optimize that content based off of new trends and behaviors


that you're seeing in the market. You're going to check out the SERP and see what new questions


people also ask and update that content to reflect new insights and new information.


You want to make sure that you're optimizing and updating this content with new data, with


new graphics, with the new assets that you might have already developed and you start


to embed them in there. You might start to take graphics that you leveraged in a piece


of content that you repurposed and start to update it with that as well so you can leverage


Google Images. You're going to put the YouTube video in there. Google and YouTube are in


cahoots. Of course, they're all one entity. You want to leverage that to optimize and


update your content on a regular basis. This is maintenance mode. This is when every six


to 12 months you are doing a refresh of your content. Why? Because you recognize the importance


of maximizing your content. You recognize the idea that a piece of content shouldn't


just live and die within the first week of being published. It's something that should


be maximized. It's something that should be optimized, repurposed, syndicated, distributed,


and leveraged so you can unlock rocket channels that will ultimately give your content the


opportunity to go to the moon. Thank you so much for checking out this Whiteboard Friday.


I hope you enjoyed it. I'm Ross Simmons and I would be happy to connect with you on social.


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

Hi, my name is Megan and I'm an Onboarding Specialist here at Moz.


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

Today we are going to be looking at how we can research keywords based on the


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

content suggestions that we provide for you in our page optimization tool within


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

Moz Pro. Let's get started. Here within Moz Pro, scroll down the left-hand side


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

navigation menu until you hit page optimization. Our page optimization tool


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

is where you can assess those basic on-page elements, for example


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

descriptions and page titles, using a keyword and URL pairing from your website.


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

Today we are going to be focusing on Discover. Within our Discover tab you can


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

see here that we've populated for you some keywords based on the


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

keywords that you are tracking. To our left here you have some pages. These are


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

pages that are ranking for those keywords that we've put here. To kick off


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

that page optimization report, click on your score. Scroll down until you hit


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

content suggestions. Content suggestions are here to help you build better


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

content in relation to your topic. On the left we can see that we have a list of


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

keywords for you here. These keywords are based on those keywords that are


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

commonly found on pages that are ranking highly for the keyword that you've


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

entered here. Relevance is determined by how often these keywords show up in


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

those highly ranked search results. If you click the drop-down under top


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

ranking URLs you can see those URLs that are ranking highly for the keyword that


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

we've suggested here. Next to that you can see their ranking position. This is a


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

great way to start that content and competitor analysis. If you would like to


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

continue with this process use these seed terms and enter them into a keyword


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

research tool to kick off that cycle again. I hope this was helpful for you in


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions

determining how you can research keywords based on the content suggestions we


Daily SEO Fix - Content Suggestions


29 Advanced Google Tag Manager Tips Every Marketer Should Know Presented by Mike Arnesen

Thanks, Ron-El.


So we're gonna go from storytelling to deep, deep geek.


This is gonna be super tactical.


There's not gonna be any story here, so apologies in advance.


Well, we can start with a little bit of a story.


I first came to MozCon in 2012 as an attendee, and honestly, I didn't tell anybody this,


but it was my dream that I never thought would happen that I'd actually be a featured speaker


on the MozCon stage.


Yeah, the community speaking thing was awesome.


I never thought I'd come back.


So I'm here to tell you today that Google Tag Manager will literally make your dreams


come true.


We're gonna be covering a lot in a really short amount of time.


I did the math on it, and I have about 68 seconds to cover each tip, and you could easily


spend an hour talking about any given tip here.


So you're gonna want to access this full write-up that we put together with tools and resources


at upbuild.io slash GTM.


You can reference that, and each slide is gonna have a link to the specific tip on it.


I want to get on the same page before we get started with what exactly I'm gonna cover


in this talk.


It probably goes without saying that I'm gonna cover 29 ways for you to level up your Google


Tag Manager usage.


I'm gonna show you advanced analytics applications.


We're gonna talk about conversion rate optimization, website personalization, and even good old


fashion SEO.


I'm really excited about that stuff.


I'm also going to prove that Google Tag Manager is the best tool for your money.


I mean, it's hard to beat free, right?


So unless you have, like, $100,000 laying around and you could purchase an enterprise-level


tag management tool, Google Tag Manager is gonna be the way to go.


And I think it's a great strong point for the tool, because there's no barrier to entry.


If you want to mess around for a month just getting your feet wet and seeing if it's something


that's gonna work for you, you're not burning money the whole time.


But if you do have one of those enterprise-level tag management tools, the good thing is these


concepts can apply to any tag management platform.


I'm also gonna give you resources to deepen your expertise.


Unless you have a strong background in front-end web development, you're just not gonna be


able to become a fully-fledged expert in GTM in a day, let alone a month.


So I'm gonna leave you with stuff where you can continue to learn a little bit more about


JavaScript, a little bit more about the platform, and of course give you full details about


all the tips.


And finally, I'm gonna open your mind to new possibilities.


And I know that sounds incredibly cheesy, so let me explain.


I loved watching the movie The Martian.


And I don't know if this was a common reaction, but when I was in the crowd, I kept thinking


the whole time, this is exactly the way I use Google Tag Manager.


It validated my entire process for approaching tag management and using it as a tool for


SEO, which is not what it's packaged for.


When Mark Watney is on the surface of Mars, GTM, or the Hab, was his GTM.


What he did was pulled apart the whole thing, took all those pieces, reconfigured them in


unexpected ways, and figured out how to solve his problems with the tools that are available


to him.


GTM allows you to do that.


Pull apart your whole website, pull apart JavaScript, and come up with cool, creative


ways based on the challenges that you're dealing with.


And come up with stuff that other people might not even be motivated to find, and you're


gonna be one step ahead of the game.


So let's also talk about what I'm not going to do in this talk really quickly.


I'm not gonna review any of the basic mechanics and installation process for Google Tag Manager.


There's just not enough time.


We could spend an entire day on that.


So I'm just gonna have to assume a basic level of familiarity.


I'm also not gonna be able to give you the click by click.


Again, 68 seconds per tip.


So go to upbuild.io.


I'm also not gonna teach you how to code.


So sorry, Will Reynolds.


But that's okay.


I know that Will and Rand are committing to learn how to code in 2017.


I read it on Twitter, that makes it a real thing.


So they're on the hook now.


And one last thing.


I'm not gonna drop a knowledge bomb today and then leave you hanging.


If you have any questions on GTM, you want to talk about any of the tips, or you just


want to chat me up, I'm gonna be around for the rest of the month.


Come find me.


I'll be happy to help as much as I can.


And it's important to note that these tips aren't just for analytics nerds.


They're for anyone who's up to the task of doing marketing better.


You could be the one person marketing army in your organization who's tasked with literally


everything.


You might be the savvy enterprise marketer who is leading the team and is intensely driven


to get amazing results.


You could be the efficient idealist who wants to collect the right data in the most efficient


way possible with minimal process overhead.


Or you could be the under the radar innovator who is going to ask for forgiveness later


rather than permission, is gonna hack their way to results if they need to.


Google tag manager is gonna be an incredibly powerful tool.


And the more time you spend in it, the more you start to see how you can bend and even


break the rules to serve your purposes and accomplish your goals.


So without further ado, let's get into some GTM tips.


I know I talked about not doing housekeeping.


This is a quick overview of what these slides are gonna look like.


But the first tip is going to talk about housekeeping.


Before you get into Google tag manager stuff, you want to make sure that you have it installed


properly.


There's nothing worse than rolling out really cool stuff with GTM to figure out months down


the line that you had an entire directory where Google tag manager wasn't installed


So you can set up custom filters to grab GTM IDs off the page.


You can also set up custom extractions so you can grab any unknown IDs and see if you're


coming in blind to a new account, for example, you're gonna know how many containers are


on the site if there's conflicting tags and stuff like that.


A lot of the stuff that we're going to do is going to involve using jQuery to simplify


what we're tagging in Google tag manager.


Now if jQuery is not a familiar term for you, that makes it even more important.


jQuery is a way of simplifying JavaScript.


It's a library you can load onto your site so you can access click handlers, things that


are going to track how people are interacting with your site.


It makes it much, much easier for you.


About 70% of sites on the web already use jQuery, so the chances of you needing this


on a regular basis aren't that great.


But in case you run into a site where you don't have it or you might not have it, you


can have a workflow, and this is admittedly a little hacky, to have a tag that's going


to fire in Google tag manager and it's going to check for jQuery on every page.


If jQuery has been loaded, it doesn't do anything.


If it hasn't been loaded, it will go and retroactively add jQuery to your code and make it so you


can use the shortcuts to do your tagging from that point forward.


We talked a lot about in the analytics space getting clickstream data and understanding


how people are navigating through your site.


Out of the box, of course, we can see page views, but we want to be able to see clicks


as well.


How are people using navigation on our site?


Are they clicking on our CTAs?


Are they filling out forms?


In Google tag manager, you can do this really efficiently and it's pretty awesome.


So at UpBuild, the way we do analytics is we have two tags that handle all of the clickstream


tagging for our entire operation.


One tag is actually we want to start by applying click handlers to anything we want to track.


So let's say we want to track every navigation element and see which links in the navigation


are getting more clicked so we can decide whether we want to reprioritize things, if


we want to make things, take things out because people aren't clicking on them to begin with,


we can track all that stuff by applying click handlers to those with jQuery and then we


have a second tag that actually just receives data.


So there's this giant tag that's going to track all the little elements on our site


that we want to pay attention to and then a second tag that actually receives that data


and pushes it into Google Analytics for us makes it much more efficient and this is what


the tag looks like.


It's pretty, it's going to make your eyes bleed to try to look at it right now, but


once you understand the basic template, it's very easy to go through your whole site and


set this up.


So here's the process.


There's a great Chrome extension called jQuery unique selector.


So even if you don't know jQuery, you can just click on an element and it's going to


give you this piece of code that you can use to attach click tracking to anything on your


site.


This is something that I think is awesome about GTM.


You can build out your entire Google Tag Manager container without having to have any code


on your website.


You can start experimenting, test something, totally fail, go back to the drawing board,


keep incrementally improving things and finally arrive at your perfected version without ever


having to put out something that you're not super confident about on a client site, for


example, or on your site.


The way this works is that you can enter preview mode in Google Tag Manager and it gives you


access to this awesome debugging panel where you can see all the tags that are firing,


all the data that's being collected and QA that stuff really thoroughly before you have


to have anything actually send into Google Analytics and the cool thing is you can use


another Chrome extension called GTM injector to spoof having the GTM base code on a site.


So if I wanted to get Moz as a client, for example, I could test and build out an entire


Google Tag Manager container without them having to do anything and then as soon as


they put that code on the site, they're good to go.


I just hit publish and we're done.


Google has been making a big push to get Google Tag Manager into the enterprise game lately


and environments are a big piece of that.


So if you have a multi-tiered development environment like you have a dev site, you


have a staging site, you have a production site, you can configure Google Tag Manager


so that it recognizes all of those and then you can selectively push your code out to


the different environments to have your whole team be able to QA things and test.


Now there's even an additional feature called workspaces that they rolled out just under


two weeks ago that makes it really easy to collaborate.


So if you hop into your Tag Manager account and you start making changes, it automatically


creates a new workspace for you to do all your work in.


Then if for some reason you're doing a three-day project in GTM, you're sick one of those days


and somebody has to jump into Tag Manager and make a change because it's a critical


tracking need.


When you get back, GTM is going to notify you and say, hey, changes have been made to


the container, how do you want to manage these conflicts and you can choose to merge, you


can choose to overwrite, keeps things a lot cleaner so you can have a whole team in GTM


now and work together with Perfect Harmony.


So we've been talking a lot about conversion rate optimization this MozCon.


So what happens when you run a great AAV test in something like Optimizely and you reach


statistical significance for one of your variations and you need to make that change to your site


because it's a 20% lift in conversions, why wouldn't you want all visitors to see that?


One option is of course to direct 100% of your traffic into that Optimizely variation,


for example, but unless you're on an enterprise plan with Optimizely, you're paying by monthly


unique visits.


So you're kind of burning money if you're sending 100% of your traffic to that just


because you can't get your development team to implement the change permanently.


What you can do, and again, this is kind of hacky, is copy your variation code from Optimizely,


just open that up in the Optimizely editor, copy paste that into Google Tag Manager and


that's going to do the exact same thing except it's going to be free and sustainable and


until you can actually get that physically implemented on your site the proper way, it's


going to get you by.


Now seasoned analytics specialists are going to realize, of course, that out of the box


Google Analytics only tracks page views.


If you go to something like a PDF file or an MP3 file, Google Analytics doesn't collect


any data, Google Tag Manager never loads because it's a file, it doesn't communicate with your


server.


It's actually a great reason why Sam mentioned the importance of server log files.


That's where you're going to get that data but you can customize Google Analytics to


grab some of that data and what you can do within Google Tag Manager is turn on this


built-in variable called click URL and then any time someone clicks a link on the site,


you're going to be able to access what that URL was.


So you can selectively start tracking any URL that's clicked that ends with the file


extension that you care about, so whether that's PDF, CSV, PPT, all that kind of stuff,


you can track that in Google Tag Manager using simple functionality that's already pretty


much built in.


Same thing with downloads that happen from offsite sources.


Say you have a sales team that's sending spec sheets or about PDFs, white papers to prospective


clients, you want to be able to see if people are actually downloading that information


and you're not going to be able to see that because it has no relation to your website


even if it's hosted on your server.


But what you can do with GTM is set up a kind of pseudo intermediary download page, just


a blank page that says, hey, please be patient while we're preparing your download.


It's going to flash for a quick second but what you can do in that quick half second


is tag that information, send it to Google Analytics and actually implement a redirect


in Google Tag Manager to carry them forward to the asset that they requested.


So you just have the asset specified in your query string, have your sales team use that


rather than just the raw link to like a PDF, for example.


GTM is going to recognize which asset they want, log that data in GA and then redirect


them to their final destination.


Outbound clicks on your site.


Very similarly, you want to be able to see not only when people are coming into your


site but when people are going out.


Now I've seen people track this kind of going a little overboard in Google Analytics where


you get the full URL for every single outbound link tracked within your reports and you have


this massive report of like 20,000 links and it's not really that actionable to tell you


a lot about user behavior.


But what you would love to be able to see is like what sites in general are people most


attracted to?


So you want to see how many people left our site to go to Moz, how many people left our


site to go to Wikipedia, how many people went to a page on Google's help center.


So what you can do is configure another auto event variable to grab the host name whenever


somebody clicks a link.


And if that host name, basically the domain name, if it doesn't match the site they're


currently on, meaning it's not your site, you send that to Google Analytics classified


as an external click.


Now this is something that can get a little confusing.


And we see the terms cross domain tracking confused with sub domain tracking pretty frequently.


They're very different and there's different applications for both.


Sub domain tracking, it should probably go without saying, is when you have different


sub domains, that you have users navigating back and forth between.


Dev.moz.com doesn't actually exist just for purposes of illustration so don't try to go


there, there's nothing there.


So if they have the dev site and the Moz site, you want to be able to track people going


back and forth.


The way that cookies are set with GTM is a little problematic because it starts from


the left hand side and things don't really match up.


So you can actually do a quick setting change within Google Tag Manager and set what's called


cookie domain to auto, not the most intuitive thing, but what it does essentially is just


flips the order and starts applying the cookie from the right hand side and it sets it in


the same place so everything communicates properly and everything is sunshine and rainbows.


Cross domain tracking is something that you want to choose carefully.


The only reason you'll really want to do this is if you have multiple domain names that


are all part of the same user journey.


So the most common application is if somebody has to go to a third party site to check out


on your ecommerce site, like Shopify is a common one, you'll want to set up cross domain


tracking.


You can do that by setting allow linker to true in your Google Tag Manager settings,


put in the domains that you want to link in these cross domain settings, so a comma separated


list of all the domains that you want to appear as one unified user experience and then you


have to hop into Google Analytics and set up that referral exclusion list.


You need to do all three steps or it won't work.


It's very common to leave one of those out.


So we talked about subdomains.


So if you have subdomains, you want to be able to see the full host name printed in


your GA reports.


You don't want to have, you know, moz.com slash about and then let's say there's an


about page on the dev site, dev.moz.com slash about.


By default you're going to see a big lump of traffic under slash about when you look


at your Google Analytics reports.


So what you can do is print the full host name.


So you'll see www.moz.com slash about and dev.moz.com slash about.


See that unique traffic broken out properly.


Basically all you have to do is overwrite the page path when you're sending data into


Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager.


Stripping out personally identifiable information is pretty important and not something that


you necessarily think of.


So personally identifiable information is something that you are forbidden according


to Google's terms of service from sending to their servers for any reason.


So this is a legally sensitive topic so it's important to remember, not a lawyer, but there


is a big risk.


If you're caught for any reason by Google sending things like email addresses, credit


card numbers into your Google Analytics account, they are going to potentially, if they catch


that, wipe out your entire GA profile, not just the specific kind of view that is contained


within the profile.


They're going to take out the whole thing.


Even if you have unrelated sites in there, they're going to wipe it all out because it's


a violation of their TOS.


So really, really be careful.


And it's not enough to apply Google Analytics filters because that happens after the fact.


The data's already been sent to Google.


So Google Tag Manager, everything that it does happens before any data is sent out for


processing.


So you can use GTM to intercept that.


Not getting into this, it's pretty complicated code, you'll be able to access what the script


looks like, is creating a JavaScript variable that's going to receive any query string parameters,


it's going to check for sensitive information like emails or credit card numbers, it's going


to leave any non-PII information intact and replace that personally identifiable information


with a warning message.


This is a little bit what it looks like.


It's actually based on a post by a guy named Simo Ahava, he's kind of like the godfather


of Google Tag Manager, he's awesome, so I've kind of modified his script, which originally


only looked for email addresses, to also look for credit card numbers.


So you set this up, you're always protected because it's always going to recognize that


if it's being passed in, and it's going to give you a message if it ever is found, and


then at that point it's up to you to pull out your detective magnifying glass and figure


out why you're getting PII in the first place.


So yo, dog, we heard you like variables, so put variables in your variables.


We've seen this in a couple of examples whether or not you realized it, but Google Tag Manager


has this awesome ability to be able to combine variables to form other variables or to form


different tags based on other variables that you set up.


Sounds pretty complicated.


I had a good example here which I actually don't like anymore because there was a better


example published on Umoz, it was actually a post about setting your canonical tags using


Google Tag Manager and grabbing the HTTP protocol as a variable, grabbing the host name as a


variable and grabbing the page extension as a variable and using that to form one mega


variable that's composed of three for the canonical tag and using GTM to output that


onto your site.


That was pretty cool.


There's a link to that in the notes, by the way.


If you work in B2B marketing or any kind of lead gen, you know the importance of paying


attention to both Google Analytics data and CRM data.


It's actually pretty easy to join these two data sets using Google Tag Manager.


What it really relies on is finding a unique key that both data sets share so that you


can merge them together.


Every CRM system is going to have a unique ID for any recognized user.


Somebody fills out a form or they register for a webinar, Pardot, Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot,


they're all going to set a unique ID for that user in the user's browser.


GTM has built-in variables that can grab any cookie for you really easily so you just find


out what the name of that cookie is, then you pass it into Google Analytics with all


the rest of your data every time that cookie is picked up and then at regular intervals


export your data from the CRM along with that unique ID and then have their lead status


next to that, have their lead value next to that and then you can upload that using the


universal analytics import functionality and see that data within your Google Analytics


reports.


It's really cool.


You can even get more complicated and try to automate the whole thing.


Really cool possibilities there.


Mike over at Portant wrote a great post on that so definitely check that out.


That's in the notes as well.


So this is something I kind of like recreationally enjoy watching debates about.


People love to argue about what a data layer is, how it fits into web technology at all.


So I'll kind of just talk about it in the context of Google Tag Manager.


So anything that we interact with, that our users interact with on our site is what's


known as the experience layer.


It's all the front-end code.


It's what people click on.


It's what people convert on.


The application layer is what powers that.


It's the database, it's the server, and that's what makes the experience layer possible.


But what if there's information that you want to track in Google Analytics because that


top layer is where 99% of the stuff within GA happens.


That's actually why Samuel, the community speaker, was talking about server logs are


the only true accurate source of getting your 100% accurate traffic because if something


goes wrong in the experience layer, if somebody's not using JavaScript, if information isn't


printed correctly, that visitor's not going to get picked up, but the server layer is


accessing that from the application layer.


So what if there's something like the logged in state of a user?


You want to know how many people on your site are visiting who are actually people who are


logging in.


You can print that information to the data layer, which is an intermediary kind of layer


in between, and Google Tag Manager has functionality to be able to grab that in or grab that variable


out of the data layer without having it, without necessitating that it goes to the experience


layer and then you can put that into Google Analytics as well.


So we talk a lot about content at MozCon, and I think we know by now that creating content


for the sake of content is completely worthless.


You need to create content that helps people.


You need to create content that tells a story.


You need to create content that engages, that isn't going to get people to go right back


to the search results.


It's not going to help your perceived quality for your site.


So let's talk about ways to measure that.


Tips 16, 17, and 18 are going to give you different ways to measure engagement on your


content.


So measuring scroll depth is one that we can start with.


So we want to see how far people scroll down our long landing pages.


If you have a 16,000-word blog post, you want to see if people are actually spending time


on that and getting all the way to the bottom.


There's a great plug-in at parsnip that you can use, free to use and easy, easy, easy


to put into your site via Google Tag Manager.


Now 17 gets a little more advanced, and I think it provides more meaningful data.


You can observe dwell time, meaning how long are people spending on a page, and then fire


off an event after a user has been there a specified amount of time.


The issue with Google Analytics, for better or worse, is that these metrics like bounce


rate and time on site are calculated between successive hits.


So a page view is a hit, and the second page view in a user's journey is also a hit.


What happens if someone only looks at one page and they're there for 20 minutes and


they love the blog post, they buffer it, and then they leave the site?


Google Analytics is going to say, hey, that's 100% bounce rate, that's zero seconds time


on site, because they have no frame of reference to say, okay, where was the second point that


we can calculate this math from?


So with measuring dwell time, what you can do is fire an event after a specific amount


of time to negate the bounce rate, show that was actually a sticky visit, and actually


get an accurate time on site.


So you can do something like, say, a flat 20 seconds and say any page all over the site,


if somebody stays on 20 seconds, we're going to say that's good.


Or you can get more complicated and use JavaScript to count the number of words on the page,


divide that by some number you're comfortable with, find what feels like a good range, divide


it by 10, divide it by 15, divide it by 20, and then convert that to milliseconds and


then use JavaScript's set time out method to fire off an event to GA once they're on


a page for the specified amount of time.


So on a home page, maybe you want them there for 20 seconds before you're considering them


a sticky visitor.


On a blog post, that's going to be more like two minutes, because it's much, much longer


based on word count.


Now monitoring pogo sticking is a really cool idea.


It's probably the most experimental thing in here.


So take this recommendation with a grain of salt and just as a note, this is 100% not


my idea.


This guy that I mentioned previously, Simo, he came up with this idea to, OK, let's figure


out how we can monitor how many people are coming from Google search results to our site,


then calculate how long it takes for them to bounce back to organic search results so


we can monitor that and make sure that's not going to impact our rankings in a negative


way.


So when somebody comes in from Google, you can actually use Google tag manager to log


a new browser history entry.


You're kind of faking a new browser history state with GTM.


Then if somebody clicks on the back button, it's going to try to convert that browser


history event to a blank string.


Google tag manager out of the box can pick up on that and you can say, OK, now let's


actually fire a tag into GA with how many seconds they spent on the site, say they were


someone who bounced back to the search results, and then manually invoke the previous browser


state to send them back.


So there's a lot that can go wrong here.


You're creating fake browser history entries, you're intercepting a user's request before


you actually send them on their way.


So again, take this with a grain of salt and if you're going to do it, experiment and test


and then experiment and test again, make sure it's going to work on your site configuration.


But pretty cool opportunity nonetheless.


Of course, if you're working in GA and you're paying attention to that and that's how you're


calculating your success, you want to make sure the data is not getting muddied by your


own team's traffic.


So the traditional way to do this is filtering out IPs within Google Analytics.


That however does not take into account people who maybe are working from home, if your entire


team is distributed, if you have people traveling, and if your office doesn't have static IP


addresses, it's nearly impossible to maintain this with any sense of reliability.


So what you can do on top of IP filtering is define a parameter that's going to indicate


someone's on our team and we don't want them in our Google Analytics account.


You always want to have an unfiltered profile to always collect any data regardless of where


it comes from, but you can set up a filter view that's going to say this is not including


people from our internal team and you can set that up with GTM so it's listening for


that parameter and you send this link to everyone in your organization.


So say you send an email and you instruct folks to open this on every browser they do


work from on every device and then those are all going to be tagged to be excluded from


your Google Analytics.


Now this is some really cool stuff.


Absolutely metadata.


You can update the metadata and other content assets on your site for SEO purposes using


Google Tag Manager.


This is crazy that this kind of happens a lot, but I've seen it so many times throughout


my career is you write some really cool metadata for the site, you're like okay, we've tested


this in PPC, we know it's going to lead to an increased click through rate and then the


client's like okay, we can't get that implemented until next month or we have a home grown site


that doesn't have a CMS and we need to hire a developer to be able to make that change.


Really?


So what you can do is hack it together and get by with Google Tag Manager.


You can inject a tag into the site that's going to identify what element you want to


change and then overwrite it.


This page on UpBuild, the page title is just analytics.


Using Google Tag Manager we've actually injected a script onto the page, overwritten the page


title and Google within two weeks actually crawled it, executed the code and is returning


that in their search results.


I've seen people do this on larger scales as well, but it's worth noting that if your


site has a lot of JavaScript complexity like it's a node JS app or an Angular app, Google's


probably going to give up executing JavaScript after a while, so if you have a lot of stuff


going on, your mileage may vary, but if your site is relatively simple, like 99% of WordPress


sites, you're probably going to be able to do this.


So cool thing to start pushing the limit on and see how far you can get with it.


Another cool one, everyone who knows me knows I'm a geek about structured data.


So back at Search Fest earlier this year I spoke about this idea of using Google Tag


Manager to dynamically push out JSON-LD markup so we can be eligible for things like blog


post markup, recipe rich cards, all kinds of cool stuff along the lines of products,


but when I spoke about it originally, it was kind of theoretical and I didn't really have


the JavaScript know how to figure it out, but luckily this guy Chris Goddard who works


at SERPs.com, he's a much better coder than me and he figured it out and he posted on


the Moz blog a couple months ago, so a link to that in the notes.


And so a client came to us and said, hey, we have a recipe site, we have thousands of


recipes, we add new recipes every day and we want to be eligible for Google's new recipe


rich cards on mobile.


You guys have heard about that, it's really cool, it's designed to make the mobile experience


easier but it relies on structured data in JSON-LD.


So how could we scale this out without having to require that client to loop in a bunch


of additional dev resources to change their content management system, we could use GTM


to do it.


The process involved taking that template, stripping it down to its bare skeleton, so


it's this rough container and within Google tag manager you create a new variable to pull


in each relevant data point and use that to populate that shell.


So we pushed that out with Google tag manager across 1500 pages and awesomely enough, that


validated in the structured data testing tool.


It showed up in the search console reports and most importantly, it actually led to generating


recipe rich cards in the mobile search results.


So a quick one, if you don't have the standard version of internal site search tracking,


you want to be able to see what people are searching for in your internal search results,


so you can actually hack this together and say, you know, if you don't have question


mark search term equals XYZ, but you have some different format, you can actually reconfigure


your query strings or your URLs for that matter within Google tag manager and put them into


the expected format.


The really cool thing, there's a blog post on it that gets more into detail.


I don't want to spend a ton of time on it right now, but check that out.


Now I wish there was a one size fits all solution for this.


So it's becoming more and more common that we have these dynamic web apps that don't


really behave in the expected way that Google tag manager out of the box is going to be


able to track.


So if you have an Angular app that users can navigate through and the URLs don't necessarily


change, like Will Reynolds yesterday showed that example from Callaway golf where there's


this golf club finder and you want to know how far people are getting into that, but


URLs don't change, events aren't firing off in the expected way, you can't actually use


your traditional methods there, so you have to figure out whether you're going to use


advanced listening, whether you want to ask your developers very nicely to include a data


layer in there so you can get that information, but really you just have to experiment and


get more and more familiar with Google tag manager so you can take those things as they


come.


Now fortunately if you are on Angular, there's a great new project in GitHub that will allow


you to seamlessly integrate Google tag manager functionality into your Angular app.


I personally haven't used this yet, but the people behind it are wicked smart, so check


it out.


Now measuring video engagement, of course, like if we're going to create video content,


we don't want to just put it on site and be like okay, we created video, good, we're awesome.


We need to see how many people are watching it, when people watch the video, are they


more inclined to actually convert for us?


We want to know if that video is paying off.


If you're using embedded YouTube videos on your site, you can actually use a plug-in


that was created by cardinal path that leverages the YouTube API to track video progress at


predefined points, 25% increments.


Pretty cool stuff.


Or if you don't want to hack it together, just use Wistia like an adult.


I'm not being paid to say that, but I love Wistia and their analytics integration is


off the hook.


You don't have to do anything and you can have data start coming into your analytics


immediately without having to set any settings.


So it makes your job a whole lot easier.


Now Cara on day one mentioned looking in Google Analytics to see where people were abandoning


forms to ID hate hypotheses for your CRO testing.


The complication is that's not a default thing that you have in your Google Analytics account.


You need to set that up.


So using Google Tag Manager, what you can do is as people start editing progressively


more and more form fields, say this is like six form fields long, we're going to progressively


add information into a JavaScript array and say, okay, when they added the first field,


they got to name.


By the time they get to the third field, they've got to name, they've got to email, they've


got to organization.


If they abandon the form, we have a rule that says, okay, then send that data into GA so


we can see a full report of where people are abandoning forms and where we need to possibly


improve with CRO testing.


If your site is ad supported, you're relying on that revenue, you really want to understand


how many people are blocking ads on your site.


So this is another thing you can kind of hack together.


There's no really good way to do it.


And especially if an ad blocker is blanket blocking any request to Google.com because


they're serving so many ads, it's not going to load GA.


It's not going to load GTM either.


So there's a certain percentage you're never going to be able to track unless you're using


your server log files.


But you can get an approximation of how many people are visiting your site with ad blockers


by actually using GTM to load up basically bait for these ad blockers.


So you create a script that's something super obvious, ads.js or advertisement.js.


And that does one simple thing, it sets a global variable on your site.


So using GTM, you can see if that has been set.


If it has been set successfully, you know that there was no ad blocker there.


If it wasn't, you actually return true and send that information into Google Analytics.


So after that, you'll be able to start seeing reports and say what percentage of our users


are using ad blockers.


That's going to be very important if that's something you rely on.


So there are great personalization tools out there that you can pay for that are going


to do this kind of the proper way.


But if you need a proof of concept or you just are really limited on budget, you can


hack together personalization using Google Tag Manager.


So all of us likely have some kind of funnel on our site.


For example, one of the clients UpBuild works with gets donations to fund research they're


doing in the medical space.


So we want to see how many people we can get to actually make a donation.


So using GTM, we can set a cookie whenever somebody enters the funnel.


We know they have intent.


They're considering making a donation.


So we set a cookie that says entered funnel.


We let them progress through and on the final page, on that donation successful page, we


actually remove the cookie.


So who has that cookie still at the end of the day?


It's the people who entered the funnel but didn't yet convert.


So we can actually use that to fire additional HTML tags on our home page to say if someone


has that entered funnel cookie, it means they didn't convert but they're probably going


to be more predisposed to actually finishing what they started.


So we can show different content to them using Google tag manager based on that cookie.


Now this is not something that I came up with at all.


It's just a post that I saw a couple weeks ago and I was like this is so cool, I need


to include it in my deck 100%.


It's a guy named Steven Harris over at Seer.


If you don't know what a lookup table is, it's just a fancy JavaScript variable in Google


tag manager that passes in one variable and then outputs something else based on what


that is.


So for example, if you have a bunch of domains that you want to track in Google analytics


and you have site one and site two are supposed to send their information to one Google analytics


property, the dev site has their own depending on whether they're on domain two, domain three


or domain five, they send you a specific one.


So you have all this complication and those can be really hard to maintain, they can be


very time consuming to build out if you have hundreds of rows there.


So Steven's solution allows you to not only scale that very efficiently but actually use


regular expression matching in there as well which is really, really cool.


So you can take something like this and condense it down to this using his method.


So check that out, it's worth reading for sure.


And the way that that one works is it actually uses Google sheets to help you generate that


lookup table and then creates an exported Google tag manager container that you can


import into your account and get all those variables pre-setup for you.


So what I want to talk about here for tip 29 is actually further leveraging that import


functionality.


So to get to the heart of it, really what this boils down to is when you have a whole


Google tag manager account and you have all of your tags set up, all of your variables


set up, all your triggers set up, you can recycle that work and get yourself a huge


head start on a subsequent project by exporting that full container and importing it into


a new account.


You can get yourself weeks ahead of the curve if you need to.


So what I want to do for MozCon is make upbuild standard Google tag manager base container


available to everyone here.


So this contains all of the tags that we just talked about right now plus some other stuff


that we use on a daily basis.


We use this to pre-populate all of the client work that we do.


So I'm making it available to everyone.


It's a new version that actually people on my team haven't even had a chance to play


with yet.


It's called Eru 2.


So check it out, go to that link and you can get your copy and for the next 30 days I only


want it to be available to MozCon attendees.


Don't share out the password unless you want.


I'm not the boss of you, but the password is Roger.


So let me take a break.


Hacking way too much time.


I really like this movie Kung Fury if you guys have seen it.


It's awesome.


But at the end of the day, you know, in the face of these overwhelming challenges in marketing,


we just have to GTM the shit out of this.


Be Mark Watney.


Become a student of the Watney School of Marketing.


Let the obstacles and challenges that you face shape the way you do things.


Let it motivate you to figure out creative ways to accomplish your marketing goals that


your competitors might not be motivated to find.


And one thing I want to leave you with is that the most helpful thing you can know about


Google Tag Manager is what it really is.


What is Google Tag Manager?


It's nothing more than a glorified JavaScript injector.


So you don't have to be a coder to get the most out of Google Tag Manager, but anything


you can learn a little bit more about JavaScript, whether that's five minutes a week that you're


just learning one specific additional function about JavaScript, it's going to be very helpful.


So I want to leave you with some resources here.


You can download all these, of course.


Some tools that you can get, some blog posts that you can read that are highly recommended.


Old-fashioned books, you guys remember those?


And courses online to teach you JavaScript.


Most of these are free or freemium.


And that's it.


Happy optimizing.


5 Secrets: How to Execute Lean SEO to Increase Qualified Leads [MozCon 2017] — Britney Muller

You have a secret.


It might be embarrassing, it could be funny, it could be completely harmless.


But each and every person in this room carries around secrets.


I actually still remember creating one of my very first secrets around the age of five


when I told my younger brother Alex that our parents found him in a dumpster when he was


a baby.


We were a little bit older than this, but I still remember that cute little face looking


at me and going, I don't believe you.


To which I had to sadly inform, no, it's true.


They found you in this dumpster and they had to sign a contract stating that they could


never tell you how you were found.


But I was just a baby so I couldn't sign it, which is why I'm telling you now.


I go, but Alex, you have to keep this a secret because if you go to mom and dad and you ask


them, they're just going to say it's not true because they signed that contract.


You can imagine this horrible little secret didn't last very long.


Tears ensued, I got in huge trouble, I'm actually still apologizing to this day about it.


My brother and mom are actually here today, so if you see my poor dumpster brother who's


staying right over here, feel free to just give him a hug.


Like poor kid.


Poor kid.


Oh my goodness.


One definition of a secret is that it's something that's not properly understood, it's a mystery.


And working at Moz has allowed me to test and see things on a domain 90 something website


that I never thought possible.


But keeping those secrets to myself isn't going to do anyone any good, right?


So that's why I'm so excited to share some of this stuff with you all today.


And these are also just kind of the things that I would in all honesty tell industry


friends of mine after a conference or over beers.


This is kind of the fun stuff that moved the needle that you might not expect.


So I want you to ask yourself, what secrets is your website hiding?


Because if you're able to uncover some of these secrets, you can start to really move


the needle like we were able to this year at Moz.


Curiosity is the one essential element that you're going to need to uncover some of these


secrets.


You have to be asking the right questions, you have to be looking in the right corners


and uncovering some of this stuff.


So some of you are probably wondering, okay, how the heck did she get to Moz?


Rand kind of alluded to this, but it's been a very interesting journey.


So essentially I started a digital marketing agency in 2012.


We were a team of seven at our peak and did very well.


But after a couple years working in the private medical space, we stopped feeling so good


about marketing some of the procedures and medical practices that we were marketing.


And so we collectively decided to let most of our highest paying clients go.


It's a really tough decision.


And while we could have continued on and kind of changed course, I was so burnt out.


And having met Rand a couple times at different conferences we were speaking at, he just magically


picked up on this exhausted founder vibe of mine.


And so he did reach out on Twitter and was just like, hey, we're hiring for an SEO.


If you're at all in a position, please feel free to apply.


And it took me all of, I don't know, like a couple of minutes to be like, okay, yep,


I would love to see where that goes too.


So about a dozen interviews later and a couple of months I was at Moz.


So I do not take being the SEO at Moz very lightly.


I think it's a very huge honor.


And I also realize that I get the privilege of working with some of the greatest people


in the entire world.


Our staff is out of this world, brilliant and so amazing.


So it's just been a true honor.


But like Rand kind of alluded to, it's a little bit like being the internal tax accountant


at H&R Block, right?


It's high expectations, high pressure with that extra layer of public scrutiny.


But I love to think that that just kind of makes me better at my job.


And I love what I do.


So without further ado, let's take a look at where Moz.com was when I started on July


11, 2016.


So the first thing I needed to figure out was just what's true north for Moz.


And immediately it was pretty obvious that it was Moz Pro and Moz Local signups.


At a micro level, that's the free trials and the Czech local listings.


So everything I did was trying to increase the qualified organic traffic to these two


funnels.


And like many of you, I did what any SEO or any strategist would do upon a new client


or a new job.


You do a very in-depth site audit.


And what was unique about this site audit is I decided to put it in Google Slides, which


blew me away because immediately everyone at Moz started jumping in to help fix all


of this low hanging fruit that we had discovered.


So that was a really, really cool thing to see.


We had 175,000 indexed pages.


And we had around 800,000 organic users a month.


That is enough to fill 12 century link fields.


It's insane, a month.


We also had a home page, domain authority and page authority of 89.


And my job was to bring all of this up significantly.


Oh, God.


I was definitely sweating.


That was terrifying.


So we're going to go through the five secrets.


And it's kind of going to be this fun journey that I'm going to take you on.


Here's a really cheesy picture of Roger.


I tried to get where he's reaching out his hand to take you guys on one of those journeys.


So stupid.


And then after we go through the five, we're going to take a look at the results one year


later, the full website results.


So the first secret.


Who's ready?


All right.


First secret is that our website had 70,000 pages of crap.


And not just crap.


Indexed crap.


This is a big problem for SEOs, right?


It was something that caught me off guard right away.


And I thought, oh, we've got to address this first and foremost.


So like I said, we had 175,000 indexed pages.


Forty one percent of those are community profile pages.


And they're not the community profile pages like you wonderful people here or Chris, who's


been a legend, right, in the field.


Not you guys.


These are people like Barack Obama, who leaves ridiculous comments just to increase his Moz


points and makes me crazy.


Oh, my gosh, Brock, rude.


Or it's people like this, a New Delhi modeling agency, a cover as an escort service that


Moz wants nothing to do with.


Right?


And a lot of you technical SEOs can probably see where this is going.


People like this are either bot created or they're spammy and they actually send tens


of thousands of links to their profile pages in hopes of what?


Passing page rank to the link to their website.


It's ridiculous.


So I knew we had to do something about it.


I wasn't really sure how we were going to do it.


But we had decided that a good quality metric might be those Moz points.


So we could evaluate people based off that, based off the low Moz points that weren't


really contributing much at all to the website.


So the hypothesis here was just that metanote indexing profiles under 200 Moz points would


eliminate many thin spammy pages and add value to the primary pages that deserved it.


So we went from over 71,000 index profile pages down to 1,490.


Crazy.


Big jump.


And we immediately saw improvement.


So organic users went up almost 9% the following month.


And then this sweet little voice came into my head, which is a coworker of mine, Trevor


Klein.


He's actually been behind the curtain this whole time being like the glue of the conference.


He's the best.


But he sends me stuff like this.


And he goes, yeah, but that previous period included December.


He'll always double check my stuff.


And I go, he's right.


If you're just comparing previous period, you're not accounting for those seasonal trends.


And granted, these results that I'm going to show throughout the deck, they're all sample


data.


We all know that.


They're Google Analytics.


And I'm not saying that these are exact causations.


Right?


But they're correlations.


And this is the data that we saw.


So if I compare this year over year, we saw over 13% increase in organic users the following


month.


Really, really crazy.


Big big takeaway here is that you have to find those low traffic, low converting web


pages on your site.


They are not doing anything for you.


And it's a lot like actually pruning a plant or a bush.


Not that I have a whole lot of experience with that.


But it sounds like if you prune it right, the other stuff grows and gets really healthy.


It's so similar for something like a website.


You want to push authority to those primary pages that deserve it.


I emailed Dawn about this, who's speaking later today.


And she told me, because I wasn't sure how to explain this.


And she goes, it's important optimization.


Right?


Which I thought was beautiful.


You can also evaluate this by doing the site colon search and seeing what thin pages are


showing up somewhat high on your site.


So this is not me picking apart profiles.


Like, I'm not just a profile hater.


But I looked at home talk.com.


Super interesting website.


They are a DIY site that does all these projects and really cool things.


But I thought, why would they not want their home decor and their cleaning and their lamp


recycling front and center on some of those pages instead of cute craftsy girl or whatever


we saw back there?


You know?


So definitely take a look at that.


So I do have one regret confession to make.


And I actually this comes from a good place.


I am very kind of driven to fix everything on Moz.com.


And I think especially when you start a new job, you aren't aware of the barriers or roadblocks


and so you just want to fix everything.


So the night after we implemented the robot note index for those profile pages, I was


on my computer.


It was super late.


And I opened up search console, which you know is just a bad idea.


And I looked at our URL parameters.


And saw that we had all sorts of URL parameters that were not configured.


And so I did what any of you would probably do.


I stayed up for a couple hours and I configured them all, which added up to over a million


unconfigured URL parameters that were then configured.


While I don't think it would have had as big of an impact as those meta note index profile


pages, it definitely could have helped, right?


To the extent I'm really not sure and it sucks that I would have spaced that out a little


bit more.


But I think the point here, especially those of you in e-commerce or with any sort of website


that is using lots of filters or sorting or ordering, you have to look at search console.


You have to configure those URL parameters.


Not only does it help your crawl budget, but it also helps solve for lots of duplicate


content issues and just makes your site a lot, lot stronger.


So if you go to search console, you look at URL parameters.


If you don't see anything here, you're good.


You're totally good.


But if you see some stuff, you want to make sure that it's configured properly.


And the first part is just making sure that you set it to whether or not the content is


changed, yes or no.


From there you can configure how it's crawled.


And to make sure that you're doing all this properly, this video is so easy to follow.


It just really walks you through the basics, which is really nice.


So definitely check that.


Our next secret, our CMS was very outdated.


Not just outdated.


It was a homegrown CMS.


That did, I mean, it did great things for us while we were using it.


But we definitely needed to update it.


And we were updating our Learn Center.


So we were doing all this reorganization, all these updates across Moz Learn Center,


and we knew we had to put it somewhere where it was accessible to us and a little bit easier


to use.


So Rachel Goodman Moore is an amazing, amazing architect of stuff like this.


And she just made it really, really strong and we knew we had to support her.


And we considered all sorts of CMSs.


And it really came down to Kraft.


And so after Kraft was chosen, I knew that I had to really dive into the SEO-matic plugin.


And so I knew the things that we needed to do as far as the SEO side to keep this strong


and stable and supportive.


But you really don't know what's going to happen on a migration, right?


It's not an exact science.


You kind of got to see where this stuff goes.


So our hypothesis was that updating the CMS will provide better accessibility and could


help SEO.


Right?


You just never know with stuff like this.


You can do all the evaluation in the world.


So we moved all the Learn Center pages over to Kraft.


And I immediately saw these three primary SEO benefits that kind of blew me away.


And I knew some of these were coming, but the self-referencing rel canonical tag was


there, which Google, I think just a week or two ago, said that they definitely prefer


that, right?


So that was a good first one.


JSON-LD schema was just baked into the CMS, which was great.


And it had much better crawlability.


So the result was that it was definitely more accessible to our staff.


It was a lot easier to use.


And it helped our SEO tremendously.


Like to a point where, to be totally honest, I'm still investigating this.


And if any of you can bring some clarity to me, please let me know, because this was shocking.


Learn Center pages went through the roof organically.


I mean, crazy and perfectly coinciding with that date that we launched it.


We saw a 203% increase in organic page views versus the previous period.


And just for Trevor, we're going to take a look at the 170% increase in organic page


views year over year, right?


That's huge.


Really, really impactful.


I think the huge takeaway here is that you have to evaluate your CMS.


You have to test this stuff.


And I really like how we did it at Moz, where we just took a folder, right?


You don't have to move the whole site if you have a huge site.


It's brilliant to test something like this on a folder path and just see what it does


and see what it provides you with.


Secret number four.


We were not nurturing our readers like we should have been.


This was a really interesting discovery and something, I think, that says a lot as far


as you're more than an SEO, you're more than a marketer, you're more than a copywriter.


We should all be evaluating these websites as the user and providing value in any way


that we can.


So I was doing some research for a keyword research article I was writing for the blog.


And I started reading Russ Jones' article here on keyword research.


And I thought, this is perfect.


It's going to be the gateway to all the other top keyword research articles for Moz.


This is great.


But I got to the bottom of the article and there was one out of four suggestions had


anything to do with keyword research, which was a little shocking.


So I immediately went to Felicia Crawford and Trevor Klein at our blog and our developer


Devin.


I go, how are we pulling this stuff?


What's going on?


And it was pulling from the three categories that we were setting within the article.


And that just kind of confused me because there's one clear primary category for that


article, right?


So the hypothesis here was by providing more relevant suggested articles, we're going to


increase pages per session.


So instead of those three, we narrowed it down to the one and immediately the suggestions


improved.


So this is that same post.


Now, three out of the four are talking about keyword research, which is pretty cool.


Pages per session went up almost 5% versus previous period and just a little bit over


11% year over year.


Really, really cool stuff.


But I think this says a lot as far as optimizing for your users' journey.


What do your users want after they consume a piece of your content or after they're on


a primary page of yours?


What would be those next steps?


I think no one does this better than Lifehacker.


So I recently put together a Raspberry Pi game console and it all started at this article.


And what was so cool is when I got to the bottom of the article, it had three subsequent


articles that helped me really complete this whole process.


I knew what game controllers I wanted.


I knew that I needed Raspbian to upload the different game image components.


I knew how to do all of it just from these four articles.


I think kind of optimizing for your users' journey and fulfilling that intent onto the


next steps is a huge untapped market for some websites.


Secret number five.


This is funny.


Okay.


Mazdas are not perfect SEOs, myself included.


I chose this picture because I think a lot of hands touch a lot of websites.


I bet a lot of you in here have a much larger staff that are constantly doing things on


your website, whether that's updating things, adding images, graphic design, you name it.


You have to optimize for your optimization.


And my whole theory behind this is teach a woman, a man, to fish, right?


So this is a picture of my dad.


And the secret behind this picture is that he did not catch that fish.


We were actually just canoeing and we found it struggling in these weeds and we were trying


to get it to deeper water.


And I told him, I'm like, this is amazing.


I have to take a picture.


And he was like, you're so stupid.


This is so embarrassing.


Did not catch that fish.


But it's a great picture.


And I think it's a funny one for this point.


So you're responsible for sparking that in-house SEO curiosity.


I truly believe that people understand SEO by doing it.


It's a lot like programming.


You can't read a book on Python and know how to program Python.


You have to do it, right?


You have to execute it.


So I did this really fun Moz SEO master class.


And a big part of it was getting the attendees to do this SEO thing where I wanted to do


them to make up a word or find a keyword or keyword phrase that had little to no search


volume.


And then I wanted them to create a page about it.


And my example was Devin made sweaters.


He's our main developer and he wears these really great old man sweaters.


And so I had to play off that.


That was the example.


Devin actually doesn't even know that, I don't think.


But gave them all full admin access because I wanted them to see everything that was available


to them.


I wanted them to break the site.


I wanted them to play around with it.


That's the point.


And the results were amazing.


These guys got some of the funniest things up in ranking.


And the thing that I saw that made me so happy was they started asking questions they would


never otherwise ask.


And I got to see them.


And they're talking about SEO every day.


I got to see these things click for them.


And it was wonderful.


And so much fun.


But I think there's a genuine understanding in doing.


And it was so cool to see everyone sort of latch onto that and get excited.


But the big takeaway here, I love this quote from Tony Hysh, learn by doing.


Theory is nice, right?


But nothing replaces the actual experience.


I think that's really, really powerful.


And that's what we have to get instilled in our staff and our coworkers so that we're


not putting out fires.


Right?


Let's optimize how we optimize.


So we've got time for these bonus secret slides where we aren't breaking and testing stuff.


And this might get into a little trouble, especially with Dr. P. Rand says I'm good.


All right.


So we have been playing around with this feature snippet, how to choose a domain name.


That GoDaddy and Amy Lynn Andrews, this really cute mommy blogger, have been ranking really


well for.


But Rand has a really good whiteboard Friday.


So we have been tweaking the page.


And I was able to get this, which is kind of cool.


So it's how to choose a domain name Moz.


But what's funny is I lost it.


And I remember not doing a whole lot to the page.


And I didn't know what was going on.


And I looked a little closer.


And there was a typo in the meta description.


The word choose.


I couldn't believe it.


I fixed it.


And it came back.


I added the typo and we lost it.


I did this over ten times over two days.


Tested it from a couple different VPNs, couple different browsers.


Really, really interesting.


And then I had this crazy epiphany, you guys.


It was like, oh, my God, you can uncover more featured snippet secrets by trying to lose


them.


It's genius, right?


Moz is like, oh, shit.


What is she doing?


Because then you get to see what tipped it to the point of losing it.


It's so hard to get some of these featured snippets because you're changing all sorts


of markup, you're making it into a table.


Fun secret about this.


This is John Doherty's dog Butterbean, who's adorable.


And I get to watch him sometimes.


So I tried it again on another page.


And this is where Dr. Pete, I am so sorry, because watching his talk yesterday, he was


so proud of that featured snippet title, the title tag featured snippet, which I actually


tried to lose at one point because I added this typo.


I felt so bad during his talk.


I was like, oh, God.


So I added that typo, which actually our incredible editors caught.


That was very impressive.


But no dice.


Didn't work.


And then I think I kind of woke up from my foggy SEO dream and was like, that's probably


not a good featured snippet for you to lose, Britt.


Go find something else.


So I left that alone, and I found this.


Buy Twitter followers, which another secret is that we have old content on our blog, and


we're well aware of it, and we're not telling anyone to buy Twitter followers.


But I thought this would be a good one to experiment with.


So I added the typos.


I added two typos here.


Nothing.


I changed the H2 to H3 for the heading that was kind of being pulled here.


Nope.


And then I removed to sum up, and it was gone.


And I thought that was super interesting.


And then I did it.


I just wanted to fix the typo in the meta description, because my whole thing is, you


know, we know as SEOs that meta description isn't supposed to have an impact on ranking,


right?


It has an impact on click-through rates that tangentially has an impact on ranking.


But it came back.


Yes.


So crazy.


And then I added the typo back.


Gone.


Fixed it.


It was back.


I got so excited.


I'm doing this multiple different times.


I had people all over Moz testing this for me.


Really, really interesting stuff.


But I think you have to always be testing.


You have to always be curious and kind of pushing the envelope and seeing what's working


and what's not.


So to recap here, those five Moz secrets that you can all kind of take away and apply to


your website or your clients is that we have a lot of crappy pages on our site, a lot of


dead weight that we were able to prune.


Number two, we had those unconfigured URL parameters, which is also just sort of dead


weight, dead crawl weight for your website.


Outdated CMS, not optimizing for that user journey.


And we're not perfect SEOs.


And then obviously go ahead and break stuff.


All right.


So what are the results a year later?


Like how did all of this do overall?


So we went from 175,000 to 84,700 index pages.


So we really tried to trim that down.


We increased organic users by over 100,000 a month.


That is adding on another 1.4 of those century-length fields to the first 12, right, which is pretty


cool.


We got domain authority from 89 to 92.


And home page page authority from 89 to 91, which is pretty exciting to see.


30% year-over-year organic page view gains, which is awesome.


And 12% year-over-year organic user gains.


SEMrush says that we increased keyword reach by 51%.


And to be totally honest, this is so clearly a reflection of the entire Moz staff.


I am honored just to be a catalyst for these cool case studies.


So it totally takes a village.


Each and every person at Moz helped get all of these results up and to the right for us.


And I could not have done it without any of them.


But my question to you is, what secrets will you uncover?


What questions will you go back to the office and ask?


What things can you be looking at or testing or experimenting?


Because I think it can uncover some really incredible insights for you.


Thank you guys so much.


How to Operationalize Growth for Maximum Revenue [MozCon 2017] — Joanna Lord

Very excited to be here. I do have to say there's like one rule I try to go with, which


is never follow a speaker with an accent. Because there's just like nothing I'm going


to say that's going to sound as good as someone with an accent. And then to follow someone


who's funny that also danced. Like I feel like I'm set up to fail. But we'll give this


a whirl. I'm very excited to be here. As Ran mentioned, long history with Moz. Big fan


of the community that Moz has built, all of you. And also this topic is something I am


particularly obsessed with. And if you ask me what do I spend my time thinking about,


it's this. It's how do you organize for growth? It's literally right here all the time. How


do you stand up the teams? How do you hire against them? How do you systematically approach


scaling channels? And so that's what we're going to talk about for the next kind of 30


minutes. I do talk fast. I use my hands a lot. I'm an east coaster. So try to let it


hit you, let it flow over you. And if you guys have questions after, we can always find


each other later and talk about it as it relates to your business or your channel or your team.


So kind of jumping in, as Miriam mentioned, we can talk about ClassPass another time.


But we are based out of New York. We're a very fast growing company. We're about four


years in, but we've grown to over 200,000 subscribers. We have a community of over a


million. We've been able to kind of launch different products, scale to 39 cities. There's


been a lot of growth. And a lot of hard challenges along the way that kind of contributed to


that growth. And you'll hear about some of that today. But out of that also comes a lot


of great assets that you can use for growth. And so we're going to talk about how you can


actually mobilize around specific assets you have at your company to get what I'm calling


inflection growth. And that's what we want to tether to. When we talk about what is growth


today, I'm not just talking about up and to the right. And it's not that I don't love


incremental growth. I think it's great. I think it's great that if, you know, today


you have a dollar, tomorrow you have two, that's valuable. Your businesses are growing


up and to the right, that's great. But what we're really after is inflection opportunity


for growth. It's shifting the momentum your company has so that you can build into those


margins. You can pull more money in and reallocate and distribute it in new and exciting ways


faster than your competitors so you can win the market. So that's the type of growth we're


talking about today. Redistributing the margins that you're building so that you can grow


faster than your competitors. And hopefully so that you have a transformational year.


Because that's what we're all after, right? We don't want to be second best in our arenas.


We want to win the market. And to do that, you have to be better, faster, and more resilient


than any of your competitors that you're fighting against. Whether that be channel, platform,


campaign, it doesn't even matter. There's only three ways to grow a company. We all


know them, right? You either acquire more people, everything to do with acquisitions,


leads, emails, eyes, traffic, interest, demand, or you retain them longer, right? We increase


their LTV, we keep them in the ecosystem, we redistribute their excitement into our


ecosystem, we get more activity, more engagement, or we monetize them differently. We increase


their ARPU, right? Their average revenue per user. That could be a cross-sell, a side-sell,


an up-sell, whatever it is. These are the only three ways to grow. And it feels so simple.


Everything we hear for all these days and everything we do in our rooms, all the brainstorms


we have, fundamentally the tactics come back to these three buckets. So why does it feel


so damn hard, right? No matter what happens, I'm just shocked. Like, we have a great quarter,


I get in the room with my CFO, we re-forecast, I see my next quarter's plan, I'm with my


team, right? So I'm like faking it. I'm like, we're going to crush it. This is going to


be great. Look at last quarter. We're going to do great. Then I go home, I like shut the


door, I sit on my couch, and I'm like, what's going on? How am I going to hit these goals?


What is going on? I don't know. I'm out of tricks. I've tried all the levers. I've done


all the tactics. I need something even bigger, even better. It's just always more and more.


It feels so hard. And there are reasons it feels hard. There are things that have fundamentally


changed and shifted under us that have made it harder for every marketing leader in the


world. Whether you're leading a team or a channel or a platform or you're just a high


performing IC that is responsible for a very important KPI, everything we know has really


changed. And these paradigms are actually staring us in the face as we think about how


we want to grow our companies. So I want to talk through just a couple of them before


we start to talk about ways that we can work around them and through them. So first and


foremost is ownership. Who owns growth at your company? My favorite question. I used


to ask this because I thought it was provocative to ask in a room. Don't do that. No one likes


that person. They're just like, ugh. And the reason is because we used to own it. 8 to


10 years ago it was very clear because we acquired new people. It was all about CPC,


CPA, CPL, CPEs. We brought them in. And my background is performance. That's where I


started 15 years ago. And I used to bring people in and throw them over the fence. I'd


be like, good luck, product. I hope you do well. And then I was like, whoa, we own it


together. Right? So all the platforms that came up, it was mainly because there's all


these different platforms we can acquire into and there were better analytics tools that


showed us we could actually come together with the product team in early life and activation,


increase our CVRs, whether that be trial, conversion, however, and we could also increase


the LTV mainly in that early life activation. And so we started to come together on our


roadmaps and we both owned growth. It was a shared goal. And then we realized to do