How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And it's with this combination of theoretical information with educational videos, being


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

able to confirm it with the quizzes and task lessons, and you'll be able to flex your recently


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

acquired knowledge.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Now obviously, the pro tip here that I don't want to skip over is that no matter which


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

pathway you take, you're really looking to apply this to your real life projects.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Whether it's your own website that you have set up on WordPress or you're working with


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

a client, applying this knowledge is key to better understanding how it works, the time


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

it takes to implement, and also better understand the potential outcomes for your site.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Of course, if you are new to Moz, I would also recommend starting the Moz Pro free trial


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

so that you can get stuck into building keyword lists, track your site's performance or your


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

client's site's performance, better understand your site's authority as well as your competitors,


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

and much, much more.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The other thing that's interesting to understand is that you may be involved in learning something


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

intensely as part of a certification or engaging in free content.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And as you go, you'll find that you'll just be topping up on that information.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

You may not be as focused on a learning pathway.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

You'll just be topping up.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And even this is something that people will be doing long term, even if you are working


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

professionally in SEO.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

You may find that there are changes in the industry or there's a gap in your knowledge


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that you want to fill.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And this is a different experience for everyone.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So there's nothing new here that I can't offer you that hasn't been said before, but spending


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

a little bit of time engaging with blogs, the latest news, following folks on Twitter


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

and so on is a great way to help you top up on your knowledge and keep on top of any changes


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

going on in the industry.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

The next level to that is turning that connection, that social connection, and finding a way


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to engage.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So whether that's virtually or in real life.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So following industry folks and influencers on Twitter is a really great starting place.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

But if like me, you're finding it can become a little bit unruly and you're easily distracted,


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

then it can help to use those social media connections to identify events, whether they're


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

virtual or real life meetups or conferences, so that you can find a way to turn that connection


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

into an opportunity to network and gather more information.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Some of the biggest advances in my knowledge has come from engaging in events.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And I've been fortunate enough to go to a few of those in my time.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And I always come away feeling very inspired, have a renewed drive to try new things.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And don't forget that we do have MozCon coming up this year in Seattle.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And we have some incredible speakers joining us, which I know are going to be very inspirational.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then the other thing to consider is topic immersion.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And of course, learning does not happen in isolation.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So you may find that you spend a dedicated amount of time actually learning, understanding


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the fundamentals, ramping up on the lingo.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And then that is a great way for you to immerse yourself and then ongoing find a strategy


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

or a way that you can continue to be engaged in that topic.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So whether you are following a more free flow approach by digesting content that's available


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

online, or you want to follow a structured learning track with the Moz Academy, I would


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

advise finding a way that works for you to immerse yourself in the topic regularly.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And for you, it may look like a couple of minutes a week reading the Moz blog, what


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

we've published lately.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

You could visit the Learn Center and dive into a particular topic.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Or you can jump on Twitter and catch up with the latest from Dr. Pete on his featured snippets


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

research.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Whatever that looks like, look back at your goals and what you're hoping to achieve, and


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

then identify a way that you can continually immerse yourself in this topic and familiarize


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

yourself with it in a long-term way that is sustainable for you.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And remember to check back in and see how you're performing and keep yourself on track.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Best of luck with your learning journey.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Whether you are topping up knowledge or learning something new, I hope this has been helpful.


How to Learn SEO — Whiteboard Friday


Content Chaos: Building Your Brand through Constant Experiments Presented by Ross Simmonds

Cool is cool. Tip to anybody still in university, do not make your Twitter handle when you are still in school.


You will have it for the rest of your life.


Excited to be here.


Experiments have offered us some of the greatest inventions of our time.


Experiments have helped us create, experiments have helped us cure diseases,


experiments have helped us find things like velcro, pumpkin spice lattes and pop-ups that show up just when you are about to go and find that X.


They have helped us understand our world better.


And in marketing, experiments have given us the ability to test tactics, strategies and assumptions that we believe may be true.


Earlier today, if you were here for Kara's talk, she spoke heavily about A-B testing and the value of experiments.


And I enjoyed her presentation a lot because she talked about the importance of challenging your hypothesis and challenging your assumptions to really find out what will work for your business.


For me, I've always used experimentation in my business and through a variety of different startups and clients that I've worked with.


But my process is a little bit different from most.


It's not very scientific, some would say. I like to keep it simple. Build, ship, learn, decide.


And yes, I know what some of you science people might be thinking. You might be thinking, bro, do you even science?


And I understand that. I hear you. I understand what you're saying. This is very rudimentary. This sounds very basic. But I do that intentionally.


I do that because by keeping the process simple, it allows you to quickly ship ideas.


It allows you to quickly kill ideas. But most importantly, it allows you to quickly understand what experiments lead you to those insights and to those approaches that can truly drive traffic and drive results for your business.


When I came up with this philosophy, it was after doing years of experimentation with channels like Reddit, channels like SlideShare, channels like Instagram marketing, channels that include blogging and a variety of other different platforms that you've talked about and that you've heard of before.


But the fundamentals of this is something that I've been using before I even knew I was actually using them.


See, let me take you back in the time to the year 1994. When I was this cute little kid, I had a little mini MC Hammer haircut and I had a dinosaur T-shirt that my parents got me.


So back then, I loved experiments and I still love them today.


I grew up in Canada, this small little place called Preston, very much in the deep neck of the woods, and I became obsessed with nature so much that I went out and I found a bunch of worms.


And I always ask myself, OK, how can it snow so much here in Canada and the worms still show up in the spring?


So I dug up a bunch of worms and I had this idea. I had to figure out how do these worms live? How can they actually survive? How do they make it through the cold?


So build, ship, learn, decide. I decided to build an experiment.


I decided to take a bunch of worms, put them in an ice tray, add a little bit of water, and then I was going to ship it.


How? I shipped it by placing it in the freezer. So I placed these worms in the water in an ice tray in my parents' freezer.


I have a bad memory. My wife will tell you that. My parents will tell you that. A lot of my friends will tell you that.


So I forgot all about these worms in the freezer. You fast forward about three weeks.


I'm downstairs watching Power Rangers. All I hear is, Roster-Ralph Simmons, get up here!


And at that moment, I learned two things. One, I learned that they died. Two, I learned that Mama Simmons wasn't too pleased.


And I decided that I would never do that again. That's not my mom, just in case you don't know.


So even as a kid, you can experiment. But for some reason, as we get older in our careers, as we start to get job descriptions thrown at us,


as we start to build ourselves up and become leaders in a certain area, a certain niche, we stop experimenting.


We stop trying different things. We stop trying different approaches for our content marketing, for our SEO, for all of these different tactics,


when in reality, we should continue with that. And there's this huge myth that I come across often.


It's the idea that experiments don't work if you're small or if you're a medium-sized business, when in reality, they do.


You see, it's through experimentation that you're able to understand what tactics and what channels, what distribution channels,


what types of content will actually work well for your business. Sure, you can do the status quo, but you will be doing exactly what your competition is doing as well.


Instead, I encourage you to try experiments because they do work. Experiments can help you unlock opportunities that you didn't think were actually feasible or wasn't actually possible.


By doing experiments, you can get a better understanding of where you're going to get the best bang for your buck.


And sure, you have to do some analysis at the front end. You have to combine qualitative and quantitative insights to really say,


okay, this is something that we should try. And then once you've done that, once you've identified, okay, this is something that we're going to do, you dive in with it.


Because experiments can work regardless of your business size. You just have to do them right.


Now, don't get me wrong. I've done a lot of experimentation and I'm a big advocate of doing experimentation when it comes to your marketing efforts.


I'm a huge fan. But I will tell you firsthand that, yes, some of this is risky. There will be an opportunity where sometime you might fail.


If you look at this example here, do you guys remember when they came up with the purple and blue and green different catch ups and they were buying it and everybody thought, okay, this is disgusting.


I don't want ketchup that looks green. That's gross. They spent millions of dollars with this experiment and it failed.


One day I decided that I was going to try to start republishing my posts on Medium. Got two likes. One of them was probably my mom. It failed.


That's a part of the mix. That's what happens when you embrace experimentation. That's why I embrace that concept. Build, ship, learn, decide.


Because by embracing that approach, by embracing that process, it allows you to quickly see, okay, if I'm not driving results from this, I have to learn how I can do this better.


I have to learn what I can do to really start driving traffic and do something better.


Because at the end of the day, while some experiments might fail, some of them will soar.


McDonald's Canada, they ran this campaign a while back and it was kind of like a remix of Ask Me Anything's on Reddit where they said this is our food, your questions.


Ask us anything you want. And people did. People asked them why they were squeezing out all this pink stuff and putting it in Chicken McNuggets.


They were asking why their pictures of the Big Mac looked so good but the actual reality, the Big Mac was all mushy and disgusting looking.


And they had to answer those questions transparently. Right? That was an experiment. And it blew up. It went extremely well.


The perception of McDonald's in Canada changed. The press mentions changed.


A lot of people were starting to see, okay, this company does care about us. Whether or not they do or not, that's a whole different story.


But that's what happened because they embraced the idea of an experiment.


With SlideShare, I've been investing heavily into this channel to kind of understand it better.


And throughout this talk, I'm going to talk about my SlideShare presentations and experimentation a lot more.


But this is one of those channels that I am saying right here in front of all of you is one of the most underrated yet powerful B2B channels available.


If you can capitalize on SlideShare, if your audience is in the professional market, in the B2B space and you're sleeping on this channel, you're missing out on a huge opportunity.


The SEO through this channel is mind blowing. The amount of leads that you can generate, mind blowing.


And I'm going to share with you some experimentation tips that you can use to really drive results from that.


There's also this myth that experimentation is just for color palettes, for buttons, for subject lines, landing pages, call to actions.


When in reality, content marketing experiments can work extremely well as well.


Things like content upsells, your new networks, the types of content, the approach that you take, the tone that you use for the different types of content that you're creating.


All of this can help you in driving real results for your business if you're willing to embrace a little bit of chaos.


Now, I blame this man for the reason why I put those worms in the freezer in the first place, Bill Nye.


But he always constantly encouraged us to embrace a little bit of chaos.


And I know when you're talking to executives, a lot of people like to say, no, we can't have chaos.


We don't we can't embrace that. We need to keep things linear. We need to keep things straight line.


You have to embrace the chaos. And when I say chaos, I don't mean everybody's running around like crazy, like they just saw a rare Pikachu or something.


No, what I'm saying is that you have to embrace chaos with a little bit of structure.


So establish some processes around how you can run experiments, how you can learn from those,


and then how you can decide what your next steps are going to be after you run that experimentation.


Because when you start doing content experiments, there is a reality and a very likelihood that you are going to face a roadblock, that you're going to face failure.


And that's OK. Let me give you an example of one of my first failures. And it was significant. It blew my mind.


So a few, I'd say a year ago, I decided that I was going to dive into this channel called Reddit.


A lot of you are probably familiar with it. And I was like, OK, I can be the coolest cool by showing people that you can market on Reddit as a B2B brand, as a marketer, and you can kill it.


I was going to figure out a way that you could do it. I wanted to crack the Reddit code.


So I build, ship, learn, decide. I had already built a bunch of blog posts. I had already built a bunch of slide shares.


My ship was simple. I had to take all of this content and then just upload it to Reddit.


If I submitted all these links, people would go crazy. So I thought, next thing you know, Ross, you're banned.


You're blocked. Bye, Felicia. You're done. I was kicked off of Reddit. I was like, this sucks. Right? Like, what am I going to do?


Now, I could have quit. I could have said, all right, I'm done. This isn't for me. It's not going to work.


But instead, I went back to that process. Build, ship, learn, decide. And I had to learn why I failed.


And I quickly realized that there was a huge disconnect. There was a disconnect between marketers and what we actually wanted from Reddit and what the users of Reddit actually wanted back.


So I dove in and I started to study the game. I started to study how people were actually consuming content on Reddit and how marketers were using it.


And I realized that all marketers were taking a very similar approach.


We assume that if you put up a meme on Reddit, you upload a link on Reddit, you'll drive success.


When in reality, that's not how it works. You can take a look at this post. A company actually put this up on Reddit thinking that it would work.


It just says the only pen that matters. How does Reddit respond? This sucks. Your post sucks. Everything about this sucks.


Look, Reddit will tell you where to go and how to get there. Let me tell you.


So when you see that, you can clearly see that there's a huge disconnect between what marketers were doing and what Reddit actually wants.


So I had to dive in and say, OK, if people are commenting like this, I've got to figure out what's going on here.


So the approach? Simple. You go to Reddit, you find a subreddit, a community where people are engaging, where they're active, and then you sort that content by the top posts.


And then by reading what the users have actually stated, this is the best content. This is the stuff that we want.


This is the stuff that we're commenting on.


You can quickly learn the insights around the topics, the types of content, the tone, the style, and the resources that they want.


One of the key insights that I learned by embracing this process of build, ship, learn, decide is a lesson that in Reddit, every single community is a little bit different.


So if you go to our entrepreneur, a subreddit of entrepreneurs, wantrepreneurs, freelancers, they're talking about and they're sharing and embracing content that is long form.


Content that you would sort of find on like the Buffer blog, the Moz blog, content like that. That's the type of stuff they want.


Content that provides them with transparent insights into case studies, into resources, valuable content that they can use to improve their business.


That makes sense. But then if you go to a subreddit like r.vegan, what they're looking for is they're looking for content that shows trends of the different places that are moving more and more towards plant-based diets.


They're looking for content that provides them with insights around, oh, Guinness just became vegan. I don't even know why they had meat in Guinness beer in the first place, but they just became vegan.


Right? Or you go to r.canada and we're trying to figure out how we're going to feed all the Americans when you guys move up after this election.


Kidding, kind of.


When you look at it, when you start to dive into these different subreddits, you start to realize that it's really just one content platform and all of these different subreddits just want different content.


Sort of like real life. Like different people want different content. Different people want to consume content in a way that matters to them.


So as marketers, as content creators, as people who are trying to develop value for these people, we have to have empathy and understand their actual needs.


And then from there, recognize that Reddit, as scary as it sounds and as much as people are saying, oh, you can't use Reddit, they'll come get you, it's just a platform like Medium, LinkedIn, Tumblr, you name it.


It's just another content platform.


So I decided that I was going to run an experiment after gaining all these insights and lessons and say, how can I embrace this? How can I take this to the next level?


So I decided I was going to do a case study on how we were able to grow our Instagram following from zero to 50,000 real quick, real freaking quick, Drake reference.


And I put up this post, Reddit stop. So this post was already republished on inbound.org, generated a bunch of traffic, a lot of marketers loved it.


So I repurposed it in a way that Reddit would enjoy. I said, hey, community, check out this post. I've learned so much for you. What do you think of this?


Because I did that, I've been able to generate clients directly from this post. I've been able to get signups for my mailing list and I've been able to generate significant amount of comments.


And my inbox on Reddit is continuously dead from people asking me questions about Instagram marketing.


Eventually, by embracing that process of build, ship, learn, decide, I was able to crack the Reddit code.


I've been on the front page multiple times. Just last week, I was on there twice. I've closed multiple clients on there.


I've helped my clients generate thousands of visits, ensure I see that it spikes and then it's down.


But at the end of the day, it's an experimentation that allows you to drive results from Reddit. Right?


Everybody would say, don't use Reddit as a content marketing strategy. Don't embrace this channel because it's scary.


Because they'll tell you where to go and how to get there. But if you experiment, you can actually find that there's gold in these places where everybody else is telling you to ignore.


Now, earlier today, Ram put up a slide that kind of blew my mind because it reminded me of this network that I used to use called Quora.


And Quora was my first love. It was one of the first experimentations that I was doing.


I found Quora right out of university. I was like, this is a great site. I'm going to be the best marketer on Quora ever.


Now, as I said earlier, with success comes failure as well. Build, ship, learn, decide.


My build when it came to Quora, it's a simple question and answer site, was that I needed to answer every single marketing question I could find.


So every time I saw a question about marketing, I was there answering it. I was responding. I was writing an in-depth response to try to help drive referral traffic back to my site.


I wanted to drive traffic back to my books. I wanted to drive people back to my site so I could get them in my funnel and drive results.


What happened? Huh? Traffic? You want to talk traffic? I didn't get any traffic.


The highest spike is like 20 visits. This is so embarrassing to show this on a big stage. But that's my referral traffic. It was sucky, right? Like it was brutal.


Build, ship, learn, decide. At this moment, I learned that Quora wasn't driving that much referral traffic to my site.


And that was my goal. That's what I wanted to do. So I kept going and I kept doing it. And as you can see, nothing really was happening.


But what I did notice was that I learned that Quora had this interesting relationship with some top tier websites.


They have relationships with Forbes. They have relationships with Huffington Post, with MSM Business, some big names.


And I was like, OK, what does what do these relationships actually mean? Build, ship, learn, decide.


I decided that I was going to build content that was topical. And when I did that, I started to find that every time I did, Forbes would start republishing it on their site.


So I kept doing it. I wrote a post about why the rock star, the guys rock star behind Grand Theft Auto were able to kind of build their business and business lessons that you could take from them.


When Jay-Z released his album, I wrote a post on Quora about business lessons that you could learn from Jay-Z.


And by doing this, I was taking advantage of the fact that I learned through experimentation that Quora had that relationship.


So I doubled down on it. Now, I had to realize something. It goes back to that process. Build, ship, learn, decide.


I learned that when it came to driving referral traffic, Quora wasn't the site for me.


But when it came to generating backlinks from these major media companies, when it came to getting the credibility of being able to say you're in Forbes, Quora made sense.


But when it came to referral traffic, I had to tell Quora, just like Justin Timberlake, baby, bye, bye, bye.


A recent channel that I've been using is Instagram. And Instagram is another content platform that a lot of people consider really a social network.


But it's actually a channel that you can use for much more than that.


Instagram is a channel where you have the ability to connect with people by creating content that is compelling and unique.


Now, typically everyone would say, OK, if you're putting up content on Instagram, it needs to be pretty visuals.


It's not a place where you can really connect with a business audience.


I wanted to challenge that. Build, ship, test, build, ship, learn, decide.


So what was my build? Simple. I found out that there was a lot of people building these accounts on Instagram, generating thousands, if not millions of followers by simply taking a stock photo and adding some text over top.


I was like, OK, this is easy. And I know it ain't easy being cheesy, but I need to switch it up a little bit.


I want to try something different. So how can I enhance this?


How can I create a content on Instagram that will really resonate with entrepreneurs, with freelancers, for this company in a way that's not the typical stock photo with text over top?


We doubled down on design. We decided that we were going to create custom illustrations that would connect with people.


We were going to create infographics. We were going to create long form written text in an image.


And we were going to share that on Instagram. Build, ship, learn, decide.


Throughout this process, something crazy happened. We were able to grow our account from zero to 50,000 people within just six months.


Then something crazier happened. The company Reddit, somebody was browsing through and they decided that they were going to repost one of the illustrations on their platform.


Once on Reddit, somebody was browsing. They decided they were going to republish it on 9Gag.


Once it got on 9Gag, the community manager for that site said, huh, I'm going to put this on our Instagram account and tag the company who shared it.


Hustle and grind. When they did that, we saw a huge spike in the amount of followers.


The number of followers on Hustle and grind's account was growing by thousands every 10 minutes.


Something started to click. Build, ship, learn, decide. We learned in that moment that if a big account talks about a little account, something special can happen.


So what did we do? We doubled down on that opportunity. We decided that we were going to double down on the world of influencer marketing.


So we started to go back to that process. Build, ship, learn, decide. We built a list of a bunch of accounts that had a similar audience.


They were targeting a group of people that we wanted to connect with. Then we added them all to a WhatsApp group.


And we said every day, Monday through Friday, you're going to shout out another member of this group.


So on Monday, everybody's going to give a shout out to Hustle and grind. On Tuesday, everybody's going to give a shout out to this account, this account, this account, this account.


And by doing so, without spending a cent, you see, this was before Instagram rolled out their ads.


We were all able to grow our accounts by the thousands without spending a single cent. Build, ship, learn, decide.


As we embrace this, though, some crazier things started to happen on Instagram. They rolled out the algorithm and then conversion rates started to drop.


Our traffic from Instagram started to drop. Our email subscribers from Instagram started to drop.


So while experimentation can offer you breakthroughs and insights, there is the risk that Google could throw something astray,


Facebook could throw something astray, but you have to continue to embrace that model of build, ship, learn, decide. It's just like Reddit, right?


I could have backed away when I failed on Reddit and said, this is it, I'm done. And I could do the same with Instagram, but I'm not.


Instead, I'm going to go back to that model, build, ship, learn, decide, and try out this Instagram story thing, something that looks a little interesting.


Right now we're getting about 5,000 views per post. Let's see where it goes.


Now, let me take you back to SlideShare. SlideShare was the first experiment that I did where I had to actually invest a lot of time and money.


Over the course of the last few years, I probably spent more than $20,000 on SlideShare presentations.


When I did this, it was based off of the reality of the success of this one small campaign.


Now, it's not that many views, 7,000, not bad, but this was the campaign and the initiative that really kick-started SlideShare as a content marketing opportunity for me.


I looked at the channel. In 2012, SlideShare was not being used as a place to tell a story.


It was being used as a place where you would upload your deck after you gave a presentation, and that was it.


It was a graveyard for decks. You would upload your deck, call it a day.


For me, I said, okay, that's interesting. Maybe I can create a deck that's sort of like a blog post, talk about something topical.


That's my approach. It was going to be a topical piece of content, talking about Obama.


And then content marketing, that was the topic, already validated.


So I had validated the topic. The approach was somewhat validated, but the channel was very new.


And I said, okay, what if I doubled down on the design? What if I doubled down on the idea of telling a story?


Can I increase the amount of views? Can I increase the amount of leads that I'm generating from this platform?


So I doubled down on that. Over time, we were able to generate millions of views on SlideShare.


And I've been able to replicate this over and over again for clients and for myself.


How? Simple. Build, ship, learn, decide. Through that process, I've learned so much about this platform.


I've learned that in the first five slides, it is major key to ensure that you hook somebody with like a lead.


That's a copywriting term. It's around the idea of hooking someone so they want to keep clicking to ensure that they're going on to the next slide.


Otherwise, you risk the opportunity of losing them. You want to also ensure that at the end of those slides,


if you want to drive results, because I know a million views, that's kind of cool.


But what's really cool is actually driving ROI, driving some money. Like Wu Tang says, cash rules everything around me.


So at the end, you have to ensure that you have a call to action that makes sense.


You can't pay the bills with likes. You can't pay the bills with views.


So what I've learned, build, ship, learn, decide, is that if you ship a handful of different call to actions that are various,


that are various, that vary between all of the different slide decks, you have a better likelihood of actually generating great leads.


If you are creating one SlideShare deck and it's all about Snapchat,


the call to action at the end of that deck is not going to be the same as the one where you're talking about the future of B2B marketing.


They're different audiences. The people reading one are not the same as the other.


So test your CTAs, test the different variations that you're going to have at the end of your decks with content upsells,


telling people to download a resource, telling people to check out a webinar that is already automated and set up,


to subscribe for a newsletter, download your book, whatever that may be.


And by embracing that experience, build, ship, learn, decide, you will be able to do that.


Now, it's all fun and games to get into experimentation and sure, it is chaotic and there's a lot of different things that you can do.


But before you do all of this, before you start to jump into, I'm on SlideShare, I'm on Instagram, I'm going to do all these different things,


you have to ask yourself about two things.


One, you have to ask yourself about the actual energy and the cost that it takes to actually do these experiments.


Gauge the cost from both a financial and a time perspective.


Once you've done that, it's time to start validating the experiment itself.


Ask yourself, how risky is this channel? How risky is this approach? How risky is this topic?


Are people in my industry doing this already? Are people using this channel?


And if they're not, then OK, maybe it's a little risky.


If you get check marks all across the board here, then that's a low risk experiment.


If you have one or two check marks, then it's kind of innovative, it's sort of like a lot of the stuff we've been talking about.


But if you have no check marks, that's where you have an opportunity to find a breakthrough, sort of like the Reddit opportunity.


Experiments give you the opportunity to drive real results.


A lot of people resist experimentation because it is and can be scary.


But if I can throw one model at you guys before I get off stage, it would be to embrace this approach from Coca-Cola called the 70-2010 model.


What they do is simple. Every year they invest 70% into low risk content, content that they know is likely to work.


They invest 20% into innovative content and 10% into high risk.


So when you look at this, it's like, OK, 30% somewhat risky content, you can deal with that, you can run with that.


But what happens through experimentation when you embrace that model, build, ship, learn, decide,


that high risk content becomes innovative because you start to learn things.


And then that innovative content becomes low risk eventually.


And when you get there, when you get to a point where you have low risk content and your competitors are still afraid,


you're able to drive leads, you're able to drive traffic, you're able to generate results that your competition isn't.


Embrace the chaos. Embrace experimentation because that's where breakthroughs happen.


And at the end of the day, that's what this is all about.


That's what moving our industry forward is all about.


And if we can do that, if we can ensure that we're doing experimentation, we can move our brands forward,


we can move our clients forward, we can move ourselves professionally forward.


And sure, don't get me wrong, at the end of the day, if you don't want to embrace experimentation with your content marketing efforts,


you can sit on the sidelines, you can sit back, you can embrace the status quo.


But by doing that, by accepting it as it is, you may as well be as dead as those worms in my mom's freezer.


Thank you guys for listening.


Don't leave. Don't go anywhere. Still here.


I'll take that. We have a couple of minutes.


We have a few questions about SlideShare in particular.


Any particular industries or types of business that you find it works particularly well for?


Any communities that it speaks very well to?


Yeah, so I think that if you are in the B2B software space, it definitely works extremely well in there.


One thing that a lot of people forget is that LinkedIn bought SlideShare.


When that acquisition took place, they became completely in cahoots.


So LinkedIn, I don't have the data on this, but from my qualitative research,


I've noticed that LinkedIn gives SlideShare presentations a lot more love in terms of distribution on LinkedIn than on your other channels.


So if you write a blog post and you embed a SlideShare presentation, you have a greater chance of getting reached.


So when you look at industries that operate with any other professional,


I think that you can drive significant results through SlideShare.


It's definitely a huge opportunity that I think everybody should consider.


So for folks who want to take advantage of that, it can look pretty daunting and scary to get started with.


How would you dip your toe into that SlideShare, would it?


So the easiest thing that I would recommend, and it's a quick win for people,


is to look at some of the best content that you've developed over the years and then repurpose that as a SlideShare presentation.


All of my SlideShare decks started off as blog posts, and then once I see that a post is starting to take off,


I'll repurpose that as a SlideShare deck.


And a lot of people get weirded out thinking, oh, I have to do SlideShare presentations, I have to write blogs, I have to create infographics,


when in reality, you have all of this content, just repurpose it.


Repurpose it for your tweets, repurpose it for SlideShare.


That's the great thing about content, right?


And then turn it into a SlideShare, you have an opportunity to then redistribute that SlideShare presentation in blog posts, in guest posts,


and give webinars with it. The opportunities are endless.


So look at it as a bigger launching pad than it actually is.


#WhiteboardFriday: The Anatomy of the Perfect Pitch Email

Hi everyone, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Amanda Milligan,


I'm the Marketing Director at Fractal, and today I'm going to talk to you about the anatomy


of the perfect pitch email. This has to do with the digital PR space. The way that we


get backlinks and brand awareness for our clients is by creating original research,


new studies and surveys, and then pitching those things to writers. Now, the pitching


and the promotion is some of the trickiest part, and a lot of it comes down to this,


the email you send to a writer. So what I've done here is literally write out a real pitch


email that was sent to a writer that resulted in a publication and coverage of the story.


Shout out to Skylar who wrote this one. And what I'm going to do is walk through each


piece of it, each element that we think is extremely important and that we include in


all of our emails. So, to start, I actually used this email because it didn't delve too


much into the personalization. I wanted to show an example of what happens if you can't


personalize as well, but personalization or any kind of human connection is extremely


important and it should be the lead into the body of your email. So, in this case, it's


a little more general. And it says, we all remember the horror flicks that left us sleeping


with the lights on. So that's a more general human experience, right? I know I slept with


the lights on when I saw the ring for the first time. And that's just some way to connect


with the person who's reading it to have them think of a memory. However, if you actually


have a chance to personalize an email, for example, if the writer has written something


that resonates with you recently, or you follow them on Twitter or LinkedIn, and you like


something that they shared, you can connect with them, you went to the same school, you


have the same love of animals. We actually have a lot of people who pitched this year


like pitching pictures of their animals and talking about how much they love dogs or cats.


Anything that is genuine can do really well. But remember that there's a human being on


the other side of the email that you're sending, and just humanize this a little bit. So that


should be about a sentence or two. As you can see here, it ends about here, right? So


you don't want to go into a whole life story, but touch on that a little bit. The next segment


is a top level project description. So the next sentence here says, actually, it says,


could you imagine if one of those characters occupy the room next to yours? So now we're


bridging the kind of anecdote to the actual project. To explore this further, my team


asked over 100, I keep saying 100,000 TV and movie fans about their most and least desirable


fictional roommates. So right there, you know exactly what the project is about. It's about


a survey we did asking people which fictional characters and all kinds of media they would


like to live with. So it's very fun. It's a light piece, it's a fun piece. However,


the structure is still the same when creating these pitch emails, no matter if it's hard


news or something a little more lighthearted, this is a really effective way to go. Okay,


so that covers seeming connection and top level project description. This next piece


is arguably the most important. This, as you can see over here, are the main takeaways,


the biggest, most interesting new insights from the study that you did. You don't want


the writer to be sifting through your content trying to figure out why they care or why


any of their readers are going to care. It's your job to pull the two or three most interesting


takeaways, literally create a bulleted list for them so that they can see it very quickly.


So in this case, we literally said, or Skylar literally said, here's what we found. The


Beetlejuice home ranks as one of the most identifiable movie houses. However, Beetlejuice


was the least desirable fictional roommate, understandably. The reason why I can assume


she called this out is because in this particular pitch, she was pitching a home publication.


So she's talking about houses. And the reason I highlight that is you shouldn't have even


the same body of a pitch that you send to everyone. It depends on who their readers


are and the topics that they cover, the subtopics they cover. Even if they're, you know, the


relevant you're pitching in the first place, make sure to tailor every aspect of the email


to them specifically. You might have a list of 10 to 15 interesting takeaways and you


piece together which ones make the most sense per writer. Okay. So then some other facts,


movie fans agree Norman Bates would have been equally under undesirable as the whole could


be as a roommate, which is just funny. Despite appearing in your dreams while you're fast


asleep, Freddy Krueger ranks as the least as least less desirable than Hannibal Lecter.


So the fun thing about this project and something I didn't mention at the top is that we were


pitching it around Halloween. So it makes a little more sense, right? So you have that


timeliness factor also. And this is fun, but they're basically writing these bullet points


thinking like, what could the writer's headline be? What are they going to say is the most


interesting part of this project and why do they think it's going to be fun or funny or


entertaining or useful or informative? So that covers this section. It's extremely important.


And honestly, as you're creating content, you should be thinking of these things, hypothesizing


what these could look like. If you can't even imagine what little bullet points you're gonna


be able to create after you do something, it might not be interesting enough or you


might not be on the right track. So then this is important. It's small, but it's important.


Here's a link to the full study linked. Some people do the tactic of kind of asking, Oh,


do you want to see the rest? Like we can send it to you. We don't recommend doing that because


you don't want to add an extra step. You don't want writers to have to work for anything.


You want to give them everything they need to make a decision. So you're making it easy


for them by calling out the bullet points that are the most relevant. And then you're


saying, but listen, look at the whole study. If you want, if this is intriguing to you,


here it is. You can view the whole thing and make a decision as to whether it's a good


fit for your audience. So be sure to do that. And then, uh, it's got to do a good job by


saying it's the very first day of October, which it was at the time and your readers


are gearing up for Halloween. So she's tying back the relevancy of the project to their


readers, which is what you always have to think about. The writer only cares about whether


something's going to resonate with their readership. That means that they're doing a good job.


So she kind of ties that up. Any interest in sharing this exclusive study with the publication?


So I highlighted here a direct ask. So come out and say like, so do you want to cover


this? In this case, we were pitching it as an exclusive meeting. Nobody else had covered


it yet, which makes it a little more appealing. You're saying you're going to be the first


ones to talk about this study. You can say it's exclusive and you can highlight that


in the email as well. But even if you're not doing that, if you're pitching it to a bunch


of people or somebody's already covered it and you're still pitching it, just make sure


you directly ask, are you interested in covering this? You know, don't, don't kind of assume


they even know how to respond. Okay. So those are the four main components of a pitch email.


Now there's a lot that goes into making this work. This is just one piece of a greater


puzzle. Your content has to be fantastic because as I say, no fantastic pitch can salvage a


terrible project. You just can't pitch your way out of it. But also you need to be targeting


the right people. So sometimes we have fantastic pitch emails go out or anybody has fantastic


pitch emails go out, but the person for whatever reason, can't cover the content. And that


happens. It certainly happens. Sometimes people have full editorial calendars or they just


wrote about something recently similar. But you want to avoid the situation where they


say cool pitch, but this isn't my niche. And this happens all the time in the industry


because we surveyed 500 publishers last year, 2019, depending on when you're listening to


this. And they said that their number one pet peeve is being pitched content that does


not match their niche. So there are being pitched things that they don't typically write


about. So this is a fantastic way to get your pitches, increase the chances of successful


pitches. But that doesn't mean that it's foolproof if you haven't done all these other steps.


And if you're interested in learning about those things, check out my other content on


Moz. I've talked about what makes great content. I've talked about some things to look at when


it comes to who to pitch. All these things fit together. But I did want to break down


for you exactly what that pitch can look like. So best of luck out there. I know it's tough


Server Log Files & Technical SEO Audits: What You Need to Know Presented by Samuel Scott

AND PR flawed


In preparation for this talk, I did some research on my own company's website.


I looked in Google Search Console to find out how many times Google crawled our site


on a particular day.


You'll see the number there.


I wanted to compare that to what actually happened in our server logs.


As you can see, the number in our server logs is different.


Now, you might ask yourself, what's the big deal?


It's not that big of a difference in the number, and it's only one day.


But think about the implications of this statement.


Take this difference in crawls over one day, and think about what it means in terms of


the differences that you will see in Google Analytics versus your server logs in terms


of visits, conversions, leads, transactions, and everything else.


The data that you see in Google Analytics is wrong.


It's not accurate.


So before I go further, first, I must clarify, why is there a difference between what you


see in your server logs and what you see in Google Analytics?


The reason is that Google Analytics is client-side code that appears on that is placed on the


front end of your site.


Server data, obviously, is direct server-side information.


If the Google Analytics code is blocked or otherwise does not execute, then we have no


information on what is occurring.


All that information is in your server logs.


So before I go any further into what you need to check in your server logs in an SEO context,


the important thing to keep in mind is that we as marketers have two sets of data.


We have the blue pill fantasy of Google Analytics data, but we have the red pill reality of


server log data.


And if you want to know what is actually occurring on your website and in your servers, you need


to look at your server logs.


But don't take my word for it.


You can do your own research.


This is my first MozCon, both as an attendee and as a speaker.


So I don't know if Moz ever assigns homework, but I'll give all of you a task.


Find out who in your company has access to your server logs.


It might be you.


It might be your IT manager.


It might be your DevOps engineer or your sysadmin.


Send him an email asking for a week's worth of server log data.


Ask him to bucket it by day.


Now compare that, compare what you see to what you see in Google Analytics, and I think


you'll be shocked.


And what I would like to see is that if you can send, if you do this research, tweet it


to me and logs.io on Twitter, because we're going to compile this data, and if we get


enough responses, we'll create a white paper on this topic and we'll release it for all


of your reference.


Okay.


So now before I go into server log analysis for STO, first I want to go give you a little


background on what exactly are logs.


In an IT environment, you have different types of machines, and you'll see a list at the


top of the slide.


Servers, networks, you know, everything you can think of.


All of these machines continuously output data based on their performance.


Whenever these machines do something, it is logged and recorded in those machines.


24 hours a day, seven days a week, 364 days a year.


So what people can do is to go into these machines and look at log data to find out


problems, to find out what's happening in their servers, for example, and many other


purposes I'll go into in a bit.


There we go.


So essentially, you need to do server log analysis if you want to know what is happening


in your servers on your website.


And I'm not the only one who has noticed.


So how can you solve this problem easily?


I'll tell you what we do in our own company.


We use an open source stack of software called the ELK stack, and it consists of Elasticsearch,


Logstash and Kibana.


Logstash collects all of your logs and ships them into Elasticsearch, which is a searchable


database.


And then Kibana takes that data in Elasticsearch and visualizes it for you like this.


This is a dashboard that we created for our own use to analyze our server logs.


So this is a realtime monitoring dashboard using this open source software that I use


to see what's happening on our website and on our servers in realtime.


And all of you can do the exact same thing with this open source software, and at the


end I have a list of informational resources that you or your DevOps engineers or your


sysadmins can use to build your own dashboard if you want.


Now again, why exactly do you want to do log analysis?


There are three main use cases.


The first one is IT operations.


I'll give you an example.


Say you're a marketing SaaS company like Moz or Buffer or anyone else who's here.


Your product depends on it working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.


It can't fail because if it fails, you lose your customers.


So what you can do is look for these failures and find them in the log data.


Whenever there's a failure, the first place that it will be recorded is in your log data.


The other second use case is security and compliance.


It's related.


Whenever there's a hack, an intrusion or unauthorized access into your systems, you'll see it first


in your log data.


But the third reason is why we're all here.


You can use your log data, obviously, for business intelligence and marketing and specifically


technical SEO.


That's my personal favorite.


So here I'll show an example of what's called a server log entry.


Every single time that anything is requested from a server, a file, a picture, a URL, one


log entry like this is outputted in the log files.


So now, for example, I'll walk you through the elements of this one by one very quickly.


What you see in white is the IP address in question.


What you see in blue is the timestamp of the request.


What's in green is called the method.


The two main methods are get and post.


Get is when somebody is requesting something from a server like a web page.


Post is when something is submitted when someone submits something to a server.


Like if you submit a blog post comment to a website like Moz.


The red part is the URI, which is the specific item that is being requested.


Most often it's a URL.


The item in blue, I'm sorry, orange is the response code.


I'm sure we all know what those are.


This is a 200 OK response code.


And the item in purple is the browser that's being used at this time and the user that


is making the request.


In this case, it's Googlebot.


Wrong way.


There we go.


So, again, every single time something is requested from a server log file, a single


server log entry is recorded and stored.


A batch of server log entries is called a server log file.


And all of your servers almost always create a single server log file every single day.


What that means is if you want to find out what happened on your server two days ago,


that there is a log file in your server that most likely has a name of that date.


Now, here's the fun stuff.


You want to analyze your server logs to see what's going on.


What specifically do you need to look for?


What problems can arise?


And how can you fix them?


These six things are the six major things to check in your server logs when you do technical


SEO in that specific context.


We'll take these one by one.


Bot crawl volume.


Okay.


In the past when technical SEOs would do log analysis, most of the time they would request


a batch of log files from their DevOps engineer or their sys admin and then they would look


at the data, see what problems there are and fix them.


But there's a problem.


When you export a batch of log data in that way, you're only looking at a moment in time.


You cannot see overall historical trends, which is where the story really lies.


For example, when you look at bot crawl volume, you can see the number of requests made by


Google bot, Yandex, Yahoo, that's probably pretty low by now, the number of requests


made by Yahoo.


And you can see if there's a big dip that indicates a problem that you need to fix.


So if there's a big dip in number of requests that, say, Google bot is making of your website,


you want to check your robots.txt file, your robots meta tags and also look for errors


in Google search console.


Response code errors.


One thing you can do when you do server log analysis is batch URLs and overall directories


by response code.


You can collect all your 404s together, all of your 302s together, so you know exactly


where the problems are occurring and what needs to be done to fix them.


A common example, obviously, is 302 redirects.


In case someone here doesn't know what a 302 redirect is, it's a temporary redirect.


It's a redirect that tells Google, I mean, end users, that I'm going to redirect you


from this URL to this URL but only for a temporary timeframe.


The problem is that temporary redirects don't pass link juice.


So most 99% of the time you want to change temporary redirects 302 to a 301, which is


a permanent redirect.


And those do pass link juice.


Crawl priorities.


Okay.


If you also group your URLs and directories together, you can see what parts of your website


are getting crawled the most and the least by search engines.


And the question to ask yourself is does that match your business priorities?


Say you're an e-commerce website.


Say you update the shoes section of your site every single day.


But you update the furniture section of your website once a month.


Do you want Google to crawl the directory with shoes a lot more often than you want


Google to crawl the directory with furniture?


So what you can do is set the priorities in your XML sitemaps to reflect those business


priorities.


Last crawl date.


Did you make a change to a page and you want Google to crawl and index that straightaway?


You can look in your log files to see the last time that Googlebot crawled any URL,


image, file, page, whatever.


And if you've updated a page or created a new page and Google hasn't found it yet and


it's critically important, then you can submit that URL directly in Google Search Console.


Crawl waste.


Okay.


This is the most complicated one.


Google sets a crawl budget for every single website.


The problem is that if Google is crawling your website and Googlebot hits that limit


before finding new content or updated content, Googlebot will leave your site before it crawls


that information and therefore those changes or those new pages will not be reflected in


the SERPs.


The most common reason for crawl budget waste is the use of URL parameters.


Now we love URL parameters, right?


We've already talked about them.


The problem is that if you have ten different links going to the same page because of parameters,


then Google and other search engines will find that page through ten different methods.


What that means is that Google is crawling the same page ten times and that doesn't need


to happen.


It's a waste.


So what you can do is you can tell Google you can block Google from accessing URLs with


parameters that you define.


So in your robots.txt file, there's also URL parameters section in Google Search Console.


You can tell Google do not crawl URLs with these parameters that you define.


So Google will be blocked from accessing and crawling those URLs and Googlebot will only


crawl the direct URLs on your site.


So there is no more waste.


Okay, great.


So this is the list of resources I've mentioned, by the way.


Again, if anyone here wants to create your own dashboard to monitor your server logs


in realtime, this is a bunch of informational material on the ELK stack.


Again it's open source.


You can go to the source web pages.


You can go to GitHub, lots of places to get this information, to get even other information.


It's on the deck, which I'll tweet out in a few minutes so you can see.


So basically, the nutshell is that as we all know, technical SEO is an important part of


SEO.


If Google cannot access, crawl, and parse your website, nothing else you do will matter.


Technical SEO is critical.


And server log analysis is a crucial part of technical SEO.


And if you can become an expert on server log analysis, then like Neo, you'll be the


one.


Hi, Samuel, that was really great.


Thank you.


So okay.


When analyzing logs, what's your perspective on a URL that returns inconsistent response


codes?


Is that anomaly or an issue?


A URL that returns different response codes like rapidly?


I'm not sure what.


It doesn't say rapidly.


It just says codes.


So answer it rapidly.


Okay.


Well, that's actually very interesting.


I presume the person is asking, say you see that a URL is going from a 202 to a 404 to


a 302 to who knows what over time.


I've actually never encountered that myself.


That's a very interesting question.


To be honest, I don't have an answer because I've never encountered that before.


So I don't have an answer.


I'm sorry.


Is the server logs for things like response code errors more accurate than using crawl


software like Screaming Frog?


I don't want to come up as endorsing or criticizing any other log analysis software.


That's not my point.


My point is to just show you what you need to find using whatever tools you might want


to use.


So a lot of tools out there will access your server logs and then show you the information


directly.


But beyond that, I really don't want to endorse any of them.


AdWords bots crawl websites for quality score metrics.


Have you been able to track how often which pages AdWords bots is crawling?


Have you gone on experiments to see how you can get it to crawl paid landing pages more


often?


Oh, that's very interesting.


Okay.


Also to that, I don't have an answer because my team focuses more on the organic side.


So we haven't really looked into the paid side of things.


But actually, whoever asked that question, if you could send me a tweet with that, I


would love to actually do the research myself to find the answer to that.


And I'll get back to you in a couple of days maximum.


All right.


Well, thank you very much.


How to Estimate Total Volume and Value of Keywords in a Given Market or Niche - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week I want to chat about how you can estimate the total volume and value of a large


set of keywords in a market or niche.


And look, we're going to try and simplify this and reduce it to something that is actually


manageable, because you can go way, way deep down a well.


You could spend a year trying to figure out whether market A or market B is better to


enter or better to chase keywords in, better to create content in.


But I want to try and make it a little simple without reducing it to something that is of


no value whatsoever, which unfortunately can be how some marketers have looked at this


in the past.


So let's try this thought exercise.


Let's say I'm a recipe site or a food site, and I'm thinking, I wonder, you know, I want


to get into the Asian noodle scene.


There's a lot of awesome Asian noodles out there.


I, in fact, had chow fun for lunch from Trove on Capitol Hill.


When you come to MozCon, you have to try them.


It's awesome.


So maybe I'm looking at chow fun and sort of all the keyword sets around those, right,


that Chinese noodle world.


Maybe I'm looking at pad thai, which is a very popular Thai noodle, particularly in


the U.S., and maybe Vietnamese rice noodles or bun.


And so I'm trying to figure out which of these is the one that I should target.


Should I start creating a lot of pad thai recipes, a lot of chow fun recipes?


Should I go research one or the other of these?


Am I going to chase the mid and long tail keywords?


I'm about to invest a large amount of effort and really build up a brand around this.


Which one of these should I do?


And side note, this is getting more and more important as Google is moving to these topic


modeling and site-specific topic authority models, right?


So if Google starts to identify my site as being an authority on chow fun, I can expect


to rank for all sorts of awesome stuff around it versus if I just kind of dive in and out


and have one-offs of chow fun and 50 different other kinds of noodles.


So this gets really important.


A massively oversimplified version that a lot of people have done in the past is to


look broadly at kind of AdWords groups, the ones that AdWords selects for you, or individual


keywords and say, oh, okay, well, chow fun gets 22,000 searches a month, pad thai gets


165,000, and rice noodles, which is the most popular version of that query, it could also


be called Vietnamese noodles or bun noodles or something like that, but gets 27,000.


So well, there you go, one, two, three.


Dead wrong, right?


It's totally oversimplified.


It's not taking into account all the things we have to do to really understand the market,


right?


So first off, this isn't going to include all the variations, the mid and long tail


keywords.


So potentially, there might be a ton of variations of rice noodles that actually add up to as


much or more than pad thai.


Same thing with chow fun.


In fact, when I looked, it looked like there's a ton of chow fun modifications and different


kinds of things that go in there that could be, the pad thai list is a little short.


It's like chicken, vegetable, shrimp, beef, you know, like, okay, pretty simplistic.


There's also no analysis of the competition going on here.


So I don't know whether pad thai, yeah, it's popular, but it also has 50 recipe sites all


bidding for it, tons of online grocers bidding for it, tons of recipe books that are bidding


on that.


I don't know.


And then it could be that chow fun has almost no competition whatsoever.


So you're really not considering that when you look in here.


And finally, and this can be important too, these numbers can be off by up to 200% plus


or minus this number.


So if you were to actually bid on chow fun, you might see that you get somewhere in the


22,000 impressions per month, assuming your ad consistently shows up on page one.


But you could see as little as 11,000.


I've seen as much as 44,000.


Like huge variations and swings in either direction and not always totally consistent


between these.


You want them to be, but they're not always.


And so because of that, we have to go deeper.


These problems mean that we have to expend a little more energy.


Not a ton.


It doesn't have to be massive, but probably a week or two of work at least to try and


figure this out.


But it's so important, I think it's worth it every time.


All right.


So we're going to conduct a broad keyword research dive into each one of these.


Now not as much as we would do if we knew, hey, chow fun is the one we're going to target.


We're going to go deep.


We're going to find every possible keyword.


We're going to do kind of what I call a broad dive, not a deep dive into each market.


So I might want to go, hey, I'm going to look at the AdWords suggestions and tally those


up.


I'm going to look at search suggests and related searches for some of the queries that I get


from AdWords, some of the top ones anyway.


Then I'm going to do a brief competitive analysis.


Maybe I'll put the domains that I'm seeing most frequently around these specific topics


into AdWords – or sorry, into SEMrush or another tool like that, so SpyFu, KeyCompete,


whatever your preference might be, and see what other terms and phrases they might be


ranking on.


So now I've got a reasonable set.


Probably didn't take me more than a few hours to put that together if that.


If I've got an efficient process for this already, maybe even less.


Now comes the tricky part.


I want you to take a small sample set, and we've done this a few times.


Take a small kind of – I wouldn't say random might not be the right word, right?


It's a small considered set of keywords and bid on them through AdWords.


What I say considered, what I mean is a few from the long tail, a few from the chunky


middle, a few from the head of the demand curve that are getting lots and lots of searches.


Now I want to point each of those to some new high quality pages on your site as a test.


So I might make maybe one, two, three different landing pages for each of these different


sets.


One of them might be around noodles.


One might be around recipes.


One might be around history or uses in cuisine or whatever it is.


Then I am going to know from that exercise three critically important things.


I'm going to know accuracy of AdWords volume estimates, which is awesome.


Now I know whether these numbers mean anything or not, how far off they were or not.


I can run – I could probably run for between 10 and 15 days and get a really good sense


for the accuracy of AdWords.


If you're feeling like being very comprehensive, run for a full month, especially if you have


the budget because you can learn even more over time.


And you'll rule out any inconsistencies due to a particular spike, right?


Like maybe the New York Times recipe section features chow fun that week and suddenly there's


a huge spike, whatever it is.


Also learn relative price, competition and click-through rate.


This is awesome, right?


This means that I know, hey, it costs a lot more per visitor that I'm trying to get on


Podtie.


Now there's two really good things to know there.


When a click costs more money, that also usually means there's more advertisers willing to


pay for that traffic.


So if you're on the primarily organic side and you believe you can compete with the folks


in the organic ranking, a very high price, bid price and payment price that you have


to pay to AdWords is a good thing.


If you're on the other side of that where you think, hey, look, we're not going to compete


organically right now, we just don't have the domain authority to do it, it's going


to take us a while, then a high price is a bad thing.


You want that cheaper traffic so you can start to build up that brand through paid as you're


growing the organic side.


So it really depends on who you are and what situation you're in.


Then finally you can figure out some things around click-through rate as well, which is


great to know.


So you can build some true model estimates and then go into your board meeting or your


client pitch or whatever it is and say, hey, here's the numbers.


Lastly, you're going to learn the difficulty of content creation, like how hard was it


for you to create these kinds of things, like wow, when we write about Chow Fun it's just


easy, it just rolls off.


Podty, we have a really hard time creating unique value because everything's been done


in that world and we're just not as passionate about those noodles as we are about Chow Fun.


Cool, great, you know that.


Also you'll find out some, assuming your test includes this, which it doesn't always have


to, you can guess from sort of engagement rate, browse rate, time on site, all those


kinds of things, but you can look at search conversion as well.


So let's say you have some action to complete on the page, subscribe to our email newsletter,


sign up to get updates when we send them out about this recipe or create an account so


you can sign in and save this recipe, all that kind of stuff or a direct e-commerce


conversion, you can learn that through your bidding test.


Awesome, that's great.


Now we really, really know something and based on that we can do a true analysis, an accurate


analysis of the different groups based on those things, relative volume, difficulty,


opportunity, growth rate and ROI.


Growth rate might be an interpreted thing, but you can look at the Google trends to kind


of figure out over time whether a broad group of terms is getting more or less popular.


Could use something like mention.net or Fresh Web Explorer for Moz to look at mentions as


well.


And now you can be happy here, right?


So I might have chosen Chow Fun because I looked and I said, hey, you know what, it


did not have the most volume overall, but it did have the lightest competition, the


highest return on investment.


We were great at creating the content.


We were able to engage our visitors there, had lots of mid and long tail terms.


We think it's poised for big growth with the growth of Chinese noodles overall and the


fact that the American food scene hasn't really discovered Chow Fun the way they have Vietnamese


noodles and Pad Thai.


So that is where we're placing our bet.


Great.


Now you have a real analysis.


You have numbers behind it.


You have estimates you can make.


This process, although a little heavy, is going to get you so much further than this


kind of simplistic thinking.


All right, everyone.


Look forward to hearing from you about how you've done analyses like these in the past


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


Supercharge Your Link Building Outreach! 5 Tips for Success - Whiteboard Friday

Hi Moz fans, my name is Shanna McGurk, I'm the head of PR and content at a UK based digital


marketing agency called Aera. So at this year's Mozcom I spoke about how to supercharge your


link building with the digital PR newsroom and spoke about the three different types


of media and journalist writing that we should be tapping into. But I only had half an hour


to be able to share my insights and thoughts and as a next step from that presentation


I need to give you guys everything, I need to equip you guys with everything in order


to be able to go out and actually speak to these journalists. So for my Whiteboard Friday


today I'm going to be sharing my five tips for success for supercharging your outreach


specifically evolved around email outreach alone. In the UK and in the US as well we're


seeing as our industry grows and develops journalists don't want to be called anymore


and instead the best way to get in touch with them is via email or on social media. So let's


dive straight in. So tip one then, I want to share some insights with you that I did


for subject lines and specifically around some A-B testing. Back in the early part of


the summer around April time we started working on a tool called Buzzstream. Now that allowed


us to be able to send different kinds of tests and emails out with a variety of different


subject lines in order for us to understand how many open rates we were getting and to


try and encourage journalists through the use of our language and emojis to open up


those all important pitch emails so that we could follow up and make sure that we're bringing


those links home. So we ran two different types of A-B tests. The first one here you


can see was with the journalist name in the subject line and the journalist name without.


It turns out then that actually when we were running this data we were seeing far more


opens if we had the journalist name in the subject line. It was getting their attention,


it was getting that cut through that we needed when you know they're getting hundreds of


emails per day and to see their name in a little nib meant that we were increasing open


rates. So that was our first learning from test number one. Now test number two we had


a bit of a gut feel and a little bit of an instinctive feel that there were certain types


of words and language that we were using that were either getting us more open rates or


not and for this one specifically it was around the use of the word data. So we compared the


use of the word data with a story tip and again including the journalist name and not


to try and see how many journalists were opening up our emails. At Aera we have around a 33%


open rate with any campaigns that we launch and again this is tracked through Broadstream.


But when we started to do these A-B tests and combined story tip for name and then follow


with data we increased that to 52%. So that jump up okay it doesn't mean that you're going


to get 52% more links off the back of your outreach but it means that you are getting


more people opening up that email considering your data considering your campaigns which


is half of the problem right when we all know as outreaches, content marketers, digital


PRs how difficult it can be for someone to even just open that initial approach. So now


off the back of those A-B tests make sure that whenever you're writing those emails


out you have story tip for Tom and then followed by data and whatever research you've got in


that campaign. So tip two then keeping on the theme of language I did a piece of research


for another conference that I was speaking at earlier in the summer called Search Leads


and another one called Outreach and I analysed 35,000 articles across six different top tier


news sites in the UK. The language that came out of that was with around the headline specifically


was so interesting. So I split these 35,000 articles down into relevant sectors took the


likes of travel, automotive, business what have you and then I was able to create around


30 word clouds according to different articles that had been produced within these different


industries at different titles and I was able to start to see common words that were used


in headlines and that got my mind ticking a bit and I was starting to think well actually


as a team at Aera we should be starting to pitch and use language within our pitches


that journalists are already using because they straight away resonate with the story


that we've got. So here's a quick snapshot of the kind of word clouds that the analysis


revealed and you can kind of see some core words shining through. So we've got research,


best, stats, experts that kind of thing. Now the top five words that were most commonly


used across all sectors within the headlines were best, worst, data, new and revealed.


Now data is really interesting right because if we go back to our A B testing we know that


that's a strong word and that that will get you more opens with your subject lines but


it also reaffirms that that A B test is right and that we definitely should be using data.


So combined story tip for that journalist name Tom or what have you with data and then


start to use some of the language here out of these top five and again you're going to


increase your open rates which is half of the problem with what we're doing with outreach.


So tip three then. Now this was quite an experimental approach that we took and a huge recommendation


of mine when you're doing your email outreach is actually to start to use colour within


that all-important pitch email itself. So we've moved from subject lines into looking


at the body of the email and we use colour and bolding back at Aera. So we use colour


straight away when we're writing the email. So we'll start with something like, dear Tom


I have a story that you might be interested in and straight under that, so we're already


using again the language that they'll be using story going back to our A B test but then


straight under that we will bold, capitalise and put in a really bright colour reds, greens,


blues, nice strong primary colours there. The headline that we think Tom might write


off the back of our outreach. So here's an example. New data reveals that 21% of drivers


have driven with no insurance. Not the most exciting headline in the world but if Tom


here is an automotive editor or a digital online automotive writer straight away he


knows what I'm talking to him about and again he can start to see how this data can be used


to craft stories for his own audience. Again as I said this is quite experimental we're


in the early phases of it at Aera but we know it's working and it's something that I learnt


again at Outreach Conference too. Straight under this use of colour with headline you


should pull out your key stats. Now only keep those bullet points to three to five. Journalists


are busy, they're on deadlines. Don't be having huge bulk paragraphs or long winded sentences.


Tell them the headline, follow it up with the key stats, be clean, be punchy and get


to the point really quickly. Below this obviously sign off and include any press material, Google


Drive links, press packs that you've got under that. Again we're seeing this work really


really well. We're still in the early stages and hope to share some insights and kind of


data and metrics as to the success results of it but we've been able to secure links


from the likes of The Mail Online, The Telegraph back in the UK and also last week just Fox


Business using this exact approach. So tip four then and again this is a really playful


technique and something that we only learnt with experimentation. Start to use emojis


within your pitches as well. Now this can be used within the subject line. Again you're


looking to try and get the journalist to get that piece of attention straight away and


look at your headline or start to use them within the body of the email too because they


break up that text and it makes your emails stand out far more than if you have someone


that's pitching in a business piece of data and you've just got huge stats and research


pieces. Actually throw in some emojis that are relating to the business world, a laptop


or whatever it may be, something that proves your point around the campaign and again it's


more engaging for a journalist to read that. It means that they'll probably remember your


email over the other 200 that they're getting that day. So really nice simplistic tip then


from me if you're pitching something in the automotive world put a car or traffic lights


on the end. If you're doing something in the travel sphere, sun, beaches, something that


just gets that journalist's eye and means that your email is going to be opened above


anyone else's. And finally then, so I know I've kept this around email outreach for the


last couple of points but one thing that we're seeing work really well with the implementation


of this digital PR newsroom is starting to approach and speak to journalists on Twitter.


Twitter we know is a news source for journalists. Trending topics will obviously be picked up


in the press and covered on a daily if not hourly basis. As soon as something breaks


on Twitter we'll see journalists, writers, bloggers turn that trending feature into an


article that's really resonant and relevant for their audience. So in the run up to your


campaign way before the launch, we're talking like three or four weeks here, reach out to


Twitter, reach out to the journalist sorry on Twitter, start to engage with them, like


some articles you know, start to let them know, like let them be known that you're in


and engaging with them on their social media platform. Don't push it too hard, you don't


want to go overboard with this but a little bit of engagement here and there means that


when your email comes into their inbox it's not a new name and you're already starting


to build the foundations of that relationship. Secondary to this then, feel free and start


to experiment with DMing journalists as well. We know that they're getting two, three, 400


emails per day. If you take to Twitter and send them a quick overview of your up and


coming campaign via a Twitter DM, it's likely that they'll read that on the journey home


or potentially when they're walking from meeting to meeting and again it puts you one step


ahead of your competitors. Recently we've got some of our best pieces of coverage through


warming the press up and specific journalists through Twitter because when your campaign


launches you're not going out with it cold, instead a journalist knows that it's coming


in, they may even have that editorial space to cover that feature for you too. It's something


that we've seen really work and again I can't stress enough that you really have to find


that balance. You don't want to be plaguing journalists, you don't want it to be a pain


and starting to like every single tweet they do but if it is relevant and you find an opportunity


to engage and speak to them about your campaign in the weeks in advance, it opens up that


door again. You may be able to secure an exclusive out of it which means that you get that first


huge hit. So there are my five tips for link building in 2019 and we'll help you supercharge


things. Now if you have any comments for me, any questions please pop it on the thread


below or reach out to me on Twitter as I've just said, feel free to send me a DM. I'm


always around and would love to help you guys a little bit more if you do have any questions


#WhiteboardFriday: Matter. How SEOs Can Help... Now

Hey folks, this is Russ Jones here, adjunct search scientist at Moz, principal search


scientist at System One.


Today is my first day giving a whiteboard Friday from my home here in Cary, North Carolina.


And unfortunately, it's with a somber attitude as many of you are at home right now, realizing


what's going on in the world.


Normally at this time of night, I figured I'd be having a scotch, so maybe I'll start


with that.


You see, we all need to relax a bit because things are tough and difficult.


But at the same time, one of the things that's been troubling me a lot lately through this


whole crisis has been, how much do I matter?


How do I make myself matter?


Now, sure, I've got kids and a wife, so I work and I do things that help them to thrive.


But in my day to day job, most of what I do is work on search engine optimization, trying


to get sites to rank, which can sometimes be really good and sometimes be really bad.


And most of the time, it's just somewhere in the middle.


They're helping businesses do better.


But in a time like this, it almost feels like there's a calling for us to do something more.


And today I want to talk a little bit about some of the ideas I've had on how as search


engine optimizers and web professionals in general, we might be able to matter just a


little bit more and make just a little bit more of a difference during this pressing time.


So let's start off.


How can SEOs help now?


Well, I think one of the first things that search engine optimizers have the ability


to do, obviously, is to influence the search results.


But we know right now that a serious problem that's plaguing social media and search engines,


and really just all information in general, is misinformation.


Information getting out there about what works and what doesn't to try and help stop the


coronavirus.


And whether this information is well intentioned or not is of no impact if it actually does


cause harm.


So as a search engine optimizer, one of the things that you have the ability to do is


actually try and help out the sites that deserve to rank.


The sites that are providing information.


You know, I noticed if you were to search into Google for alternate cures for COVID,


the first two things that would come up were colloidal silver and garlic.


It seems like for some reason, everything can be cured with the same stuff that kills


vampires and werewolves.


I'm not sure where this came from, but regardless, it's there.


It's in the SERPs.


In fact, you can search right now for how to cure COVID-19 with silver.


And you'll find sites that rank that try and tell you that this works.


And we know it doesn't.


So I'm not telling you that we should Google bomb everybody out there who has a good website


that's doing the right thing and providing good information.


But perhaps when you're writing your blog posts or presenting information online to


your customers about COVID-19, you should take the time to think about who can I link


to?


What sites can I link to that are going to give information that will help my customers


and not just think of them as customers, but help their families.


So when you write an article about the discount that your business is offering, perhaps you


might want to link to maybe the CDC's website, which will list off the different treatments


available.


Or if you run a local business, perhaps you can list off the various sites which are available


for COVID testing.


Now there are lots of different ways that we can go about this, and I'm not going to


give you a list of sites that you should link to.


But there are probably sites that you visit almost every day, checking on the stats, seeing


how things are going.


And perhaps you should share those with the world and share them in a way that can make


Google better.


Now the second thing that I want to bring up right now is actually an interesting opportunity.


You see right now a lot of professionals, a lot of experts are simply out of work.


You see as much as it's nice to be a search engine optimizer and work on a computer where


you could be on the beach or in the basement or in a cubicle if you have to, but where


you can work from anywhere.


That's just not the case for most people in America.


In fact, a recent study came out and said that only 40% of jobs could possibly be completed


remotely.


And that's possibly.


That's not meaning that they will be or that it's easy to or efficient to or effective


to, just possible.


That number is staggering.


But there is one thing that we can tap into in these times.


And that thing we can tap into is expertise.


You see, we always talk about producing evergreen content for our clients.


And I just gave a whiteboard Friday a couple days back about how it's difficult as an SEO


to write content about things you are not an expert in.


Well for once, it turns out that there are lots of experts who need work and who would


be, let's just say the best opportunity you will ever have to produce truly evergreen


content.


I mean, think about the various areas of experts that are available to you.


Hospitality.


I mean, think about calling your local hotel and asking whether or not they can put you


in touch with any concierge staff, even just by email.


They know more about your city and about what tourists or individuals want in that city


than perhaps anybody else.


Or you could talk about travel agents.


The same sort of information can be available to your website.


And you can understand how that if you're an SEO that works with a lot of local businesses,


works with a, say a couple of different restaurants.


Well then this concierge can then help provide you with third party unbiased information


about these types of restaurants.


And then you can assist in the process of helping these restaurants move to an online


and delivery service during their time of need.


The same thing is true with entertainment.


You know, recently an old employee of mine offered to fix the jingle to come up with


a new intro for some video production that Maz had made in the past.


And he's an incredibly talented individual.


Luckily he's also an SEO so he can work remotely.


But at the same time, you know, maybe there's an opportunity to work with a truly talented


artist or truly talented musician to make the kinds of changes to your brand that you've


always wanted to, but have never been able to get access to.


And maybe the same thing is true if you're an information website and you write about


sports, for example.


Just because games aren't going on doesn't mean that the history of the sport doesn't


need to be reported on.


Then there isn't an opportunity to produce some of the best content, the most reflective


content that's ever existed on the web.


And then third, I think we can tap into almost any kind of sales representative out there.


These people not only pride themselves on the knowledge, but the knowledge that they


have of the products that they sell is what makes them able to sell it.


And these types of sales reps, whether they're in technology, whether they're selling, who


knows, audio visual equipment, it doesn't really matter.


What matters is the fact that they are experts and they have the unique capability to write


about content better than anybody else.


And for once, for this short period of time, they're looking for that opportunity.


So that's one thing that I want you to really focus on is the opportunity here for you to


serve yourself and your customers and those in need all at the same time.


It's possible if you only look in all of the right places.


Now that's not all that we can do.


Now one of the things that has been really interesting has been the response of a handful


of the larger companies or organizations across the world.


One of them or two of them for that matter have been Google and Facebook.


Both of them have announced just enormous sums of money that they are going to pour


into free credits for small and medium businesses inside of their representative ad platforms.


But here's the thing, they can't really distinguish between the small businesses that are going


to suffer and the small businesses that are going to do well during these times.


They're not necessarily sure whether or not the local store that's advertising on their


website is already set up for e-commerce or whether or not they're just trying to bring


people to the front door.


Well here's a unique opportunity and I normally give a lot of grief to people in the paid


search space because I think search engine optimization is just so wonderful.


But this is really for you paid search folks out here.


What kind of opportunities are there amongst your clientele where you can co-market?


Where you can work with your customers who are healthy in this time of need to co-market


on behalf of the customers who are not?


You see, people are going to wake up with credits in their account.


Some of them are going to need it and some of them are not.


And you are in a unique position to put those people together.


Right now if you're thinking about how you can help, I bet most of your customers are


wondering how they might be able to as well.


And by simply putting them together maybe, just maybe, you'll have an opportunity to


do well by all of your customers and hopefully help some people out who really need it.


The fourth thing I want to bring up is something we've seen a lot, which is how healthy businesses


of all sizes are responding and a lot of them are providing some sort of discounts or offers.


I want to be really careful here because I don't want to say that providing discounts


and offers in these times is in any way, let's say, taking advantage or, I don't know, not


giving respect to what's going on.


It's actually really important that we seek out opportunities to help those in times of


need.


But I think that you really ought to be careful and be thoughtful and respectful of those


who you will be helping in this manner.


So one of the first things that I want to say is that if you are going to offer something,


do your best to make it free.


You see, there aren't lots of businesses right now who are going through just a little bit


of hurt.


And there aren't a lot of people out there who are just going through a little bit of


hurt.


We're talking about a lot of people going through really difficult times.


And the deeper you can dig, even if it's carved out specifically for the individuals or businesses


that are in the most desperate of times, the better it's going to be for them in the long


run.


Now one of the first tips I want to say is don't set time traps.


I don't know what the word is for this, but I call them time traps.


And they're popping up left and right, which is, hey, we're going to give you the first


X number of days free.


Put in your credit card.


And it's a subtle but pretty obvious attempt over time that these individuals will forget


about the credit card and hope that they end up just rolling into some payments that they


otherwise wouldn't make.


Don't do that.


If at all possible, inside of your payment system, make some free trials or some free


tools available to people that just don't require a credit card, that credit card right


now is often meaning food for some of these people.


So let's just be thoughtful.


Now what you can do is target those who are most affected.


For example, a lot of businesses are offering services and discounts specifically for the


families of first responders, doctors, and of any kind of individual who's been identified


as an employee or a place of business that must be open, like your pharmacy.


Now the reason why you want to target these people is they're having to put their lives


on the line literally every day, even though that's not something they really signed up


for when they got into the business.


And so the least we can do is offer them our biggest discounts.


And third, we've got to be able to target those who are most helpful as well.


You see, it's not just about the people who are in need.


It's about the people who are helping those in need.


And I'll give you an example.


Right now there's a serious crisis with domestic abuse in America.


You see, the quarantine has meant that people have had to stay home.


And it's in that time meant that the abused have had to spend more and more time with


their abusers.


Now there's probably a dozen domestic shelters within your area, or if you live in a larger


city, and certainly those across the state.


But how easy is it for those resources to be found?


How much can they actually handle at this point?


What do they need donations of?


Do they need money?


Do they need food?


These are things you can find out and take advantage of, but most importantly as an SEO,


you can help these organizations be easily discoverable, which is incredibly important


right now because people are in dire situations and need information fast.


So there are opportunities here for you to offer services yourself, for the businesses


that you support to offer services, and for you as an individual to simply contribute


to all sorts of different individuals who are doing their best to get us through this


crisis.


Now the fifth thing I'd like to think about is some sort of online transition army.


Now most of us here are some sort of web professional, or we own a business that has a website, but


in all that we've done, there is some degree of experience that involves putting a business


online or putting an organization online.


And whatever it is, whatever that skill is that you've developed, maybe it's e-commerce,


maybe it's shipping, maybe it's paid search, who knows what it is, it's time to pick up


the phone and start calling the organizations that don't have this kind of representation


and help them make the transition.


We know that there are tens of thousands of talented SEOs across the country, and even


more search marketers, and even more web designers and developers, and we know that they've got


free cycles.


I know I do.