So now all of those links that we fought really hard to keep in the header, all those links


Boost SEO Rankings by Removing Internal Links Presented by Alex Stein

that we kept in the footer, now they had to share instead of having to share with the


usual 500 links that appear on these pages, they had to share with like 3,000.


So we were flowing significantly less authority to a lot of our pages on our site, which was


affecting their ability to rank and affecting the traffic that they could generate.


And from an engineering and UX perspective, they were like, what's the problem?


Why is SEO coming over here and telling us that we did something wrong?


Basically if you click on any of these areas, you should be taken to the product.


But we were like, you guys have effectively Octovision-toupled the number of links on


these pages.


Hashtag Octovision-toupled.


Hashtag Moscon.


Hashtag word of the day.


You're welcome.


Okay.


So we went in there, we wrapped it all up, reduced it back to one link, still worked


fine, everybody was happy, and sure enough, traffic came back.


So this is the real traffic trend that we saw.


And so it's important to think about what you're linking to, not only how you're


linking to it, but also how you're linking to it.


And if there are areas where you can reduce duplication, you should really try to do that.


Because I'd much rather this had been a story about how I figured out that we could


reduce the number of links and get a traffic gain.


But such is life.


So those are my examples.


Hopefully you found some of them relevant.


I wanted to talk about a couple exceptions to this tactic.


Because while this is a smart strategy for a lot of sites, it doesn't necessarily work


for everyone.


So if you have a low authority site.


So maybe you have a site that is brand new or you have a site that just has very few


external links, this is probably not going to work for you.


You need to have kind of a baseline of domain authority in order for this tactic to be available.


You're better off just building domain authority and getting external links.


Small sites.


So maybe you have a site with 30 pages, it's customer service oriented.


Again, I don't want you to reduce your header navigation from linking to 30 pages to linking


to two in order to rank better for pet sitting in San Francisco.


Just tell your pages it's fine.


Do something else.


There's a lot of other stuff to do.


But if you have a site that can benefit from this, I want to talk a little bit about how


to build a business case to get this done.


Because if I've sold you on the idea, I also want to tell you how to sell it to whoever


you need to sell it to.


So in order to get this done, you really need to be able to go to your stakeholders and


say, hey, I think that by removing these hundred links, we're going to make X number of additional


dollars.


In order to do that, you need to have some kind of average value per global link.


The way that we get at that is this equation.


You're going to take half of your nonbranded SEO revenue and divide it by the average number


of links that appear on every single page.


The idea here is that about half the money that a page is making, it's making because


you freaking link to it.


You're communicating to search engines, hey, this page exists, it's here, it exists at


this point within my overall site hierarchy, please rank it, search engines.


The other half, the other 50% is coming from external links pointing at the site.


So this will give you a rough number to work with.


But if you think back to the SEO bug story that I just told, the amount of money that


we lost compared to the number of links that we added to every single page, that value


per link was very, very, very close to this number that we were already using.


So it kind of helped to validate the formula and it helps, you know, you can take that


learning, so if you have a medium to large site with a reasonable amount of authority,


this calculation will put you in the right ballpark and you can run with that number.


So that you don't need to go through and count every single link that appears on every single


page, we created a link value calculator for you.


You can find it over here at dr.McAwesome.com.


You go in here, you drop a URL in, it will tell you the number of links that appear on


the page, it will tell you the, it will list out the URL of every single link which can


often be a surprising exercise because you're like, oh, my God, I didn't realize we were


linking to that.


Additionally, it will tell you the kind of a theoretical value per link that you're currently


getting and how much you could be getting if you only had around 200 links on the page.


But make sure to account for lost revenue.


So the 100 pages that you removed from your navigation, they're not going to rank as well


in search anymore and they're not going to make as much money.


So don't make this mistake.


Make sure that you account for that lost revenue in your final business case or else you're


just going to end up, you know, it might not be the right business decision for your site.


So in closing, remain vigilant.


The hammers are in your hands, as they say.


All these wonderful moral drawings were done by my good friend, Joe Brotman over at Joe


Brotmanart.com.


And thank you so much to the audience for listening and to MozCon for letting a guy


like me up on a stage like this.


That was awesome, man.


Thank you.


First of all, let me, let me, thank you for reminding me.


You just, for anybody who doesn't know, his shirt has lemurs on it.


It's true.


It's like lemurs.


That's like the whole talk was mole oriented.


I was like, just go all the way.


You know, why stop?


Why stop there?


So the, the first thing that a lot of people were asking about, like why you wouldn't just


no follow those links instead, instead of like the, yeah.


Yeah.


I'd rather, you know, I'd, I'd much rather be, you know, completely white hat and just


have the links that are in, in our, in our navigation, be real links to the pages that,


that are up there.


You know, a lot of times there's a user experience benefit.


Like I said, you know, it, it improved conversion rate, it decreased internal searches and made


things just a little, a little bit less, it reduced friction in the customer experience.


So I would say, you know, if they don't need to be there, don't have them there.


You're, you're just better off that way.


Well, and it kind of like, it ties in with what Joanna's saying, right?


Like if you look at like that footer and it's got like, you know, 45, like whoa.


So let's see, doesn't this inadvertently make the site deeper rather than wider?


Is that a principle that you would recommend?


Deeper rather than wider.


So like it's harder to get where you're, like it takes longer to get to specific pages?


I think, I mean, in this situation we're generally removing things that, that customers don't


care about or don't want.


So I'm fine with it being a little bit deeper if we're, you know, getting rid of the cruft.


I don't know if everybody read that article, but that was really cool.


But you know, just getting rid of things that don't need to be there.


So yeah, I'm fine with it being a little bit deeper.


And so, and the last one, I think, what is the baseline, like maybe from a domain authority


perspective, if you think for like a small being too small for a black.


So I would say in the 30s or 40s, if your domain authority is in 30s or 40s, that, you


know, you can, you can do this tactic and expect to get some results out of it.


You know, I've done this with smaller sites and while it's a, you know, it's a smart strategy


because it lets you grow faster once you gain external authority.


There wasn't a huge benefit to, to the, to making these changes.


That was really great.


Thank you so much.


Thank you very much.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Hi Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Kavi Cardos, I'm the


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

SEO manager here at Moz, which means I'm responsible for Moz.com's own SEO strategy and implementation,


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

along with the other SEO subject matter experts who you've seen many times before here on


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Whiteboard Friday. I'm going to talk to you today about the ROI of SEO, which is an important


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

topic for website and business owners themselves to understand, but maybe even more important


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

for the in-house and agency marketers who work on those websites to understand. The


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

reason for that, as you probably are already well familiar with if you are one of those


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

in-house or agency marketers with managers or clients to answer to, is that we as search


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

marketers can't get our important and lucrative work implemented if we can't prove that it


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

is lucrative. People in positions like CMO or head of the marketing department or small


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

business owner have a lot to worry about all the time, and they often have to make really


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

tough decisions about how to allocate really limited budget or other resources. So if I'm


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

talking to you as the person who's responsible for making those tough decisions yourself,


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I'm going to help you understand why SEO is worth that resource expenditure. And if you're


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the person who has to do the convincing, I'm going to give you the numbers and the talking


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

points you need to justify that return on investment. So I mentioned numbers, and you


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

can see that there is some math going on on this whiteboard behind me, but don't freak


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

out. I am not a math person myself, but I do understand that a head of marketing or


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

a small business owner who has a really tight budget to deal with needs to understand the


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

actual potential profit if they're going to go all in on an SEO strategy. Even here, working


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

at an organization whose entire jam is SEO, I still have to justify the SEO projects I


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

want to work on, the experiments I want to run, and the tools I want to use in terms


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

of their potential to actually generate revenue, either directly or indirectly. And you can


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

do the same thing if you can identify a fairly solid key performance indicator for whatever


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

it is you're proposing, with some math that's actually pretty simple. So let's look at our


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

example website, widgets.com, which is currently ranking number three in this SERP for one


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

of their most relevant and lucrative search terms, extra fine blue widgets. So we know


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that on average, the organic click-through rate for a webpage that's sitting in the third


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

position on a SERP for a transactional search query like this is about 7%. And in this example,


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

our KPIs are organic SERP ranking and also click-through rate. Yours might be slightly


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

different, but those are pretty average concerns for SEOs. So right now, with that 7% click-through


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

rate, this page is generating 500 monthly organic click-throughs on average. And once


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

a customer actually arrives on that product page, they have about a 3% tendency to convert


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

or actually purchase that widget. That's on the high end of average for e-commerce. And


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

with that widget costing $50, we are looking at an average monthly revenue from organic


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

search of $750 a month currently for that page. So this is the beginning of our math.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

I hope you're still with me. Chelsea, the SEO manager for widgets.com, wants to convince


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

her boss to subscribe to an all-in-one SEO tool that's going to help her do in-depth


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

keyword research, competitive analysis, identify potential link targets, and that's going to


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

help her write some really solid on-page content, run her technical audits, and maybe earn some


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

new high-quality links pointing to the entire website and this product page in particular.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So her boss, of course, wants to know how much this is going to cost the company. So


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Chelsea does her research and finds a tool that can do all of that for $179 per month.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So she gets to work after her boss signs off on that, and she is able to bump this page


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

in the SERPs from the third position for this query, extra fine blue widgets, up to position


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

number two. Now, we know that a transactional search query like this, the page that's in


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the second position in the SERP, earns about an 11% organic click-through. So now this


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

page is drawing in 785 organic click-throughs per month. We're going to keep this 3% conversion


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

rate once the customer is on the page constant, just for simplicity's sake. But of course,


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

we know that Chelsea's good work on that product description and user experience on the page


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

could very well bump up that conversion rate too, which is great. But just to keep it simple,


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

we'll leave that conversion rate constant. Still costs $50 to buy this widget, so now


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

this page is bringing in $1,200 from Organic Search every month. That is currently a $450


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

increase per month over when this page was ranking number three. If we take out the cost


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

of the tool that Chelsea is using, we end up with a profit per month of $270, and that


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

works out to about $3,000 in profits per year. We can run those numbers again and assume


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that Chelsea is able to get this page to rank number one for this particular SERP, thereby


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

earning it a 22% average click-through rate. If she can do that, then that much greater


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

increase in organic click-throughs with that constant conversion rate and the price of


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the widget is going to get us an extra $1,600 per month in profits. And again, if we take


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

out the cost of that tool, that is going to come out to $17,000 per year. So now, $179


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

a month for some tools sounds pretty good, right? I know that's a lot of math that I


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

just threw at you, but imagine if widgets.com sells hundreds of products and she's able


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to get even a small percentage of those to improve in search ranking. Even if you have


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

glazed over the specifics a little bit, you can sort of get the idea here. So in reality,


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the average return on investment in SEO for an e-commerce company is about $2.75 for every


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

dollar that you spend. Your mileage is obviously going to vary based on your industry and the


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

website metrics that you have to start out with in actuality in your competitive landscape.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And if you're working on a website that is not e-commerce, it's going to be a little


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

bit harder sometimes to work out the dollar value of the work that you're doing. If you're


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

working on a lead gen site, you'll need to figure out an approximate dollar value for


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

every lead that you generate. Or if it's a content publisher, maybe it's the ad space


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that you were able to sell or whatever your site's moneymaker is. But this basic model


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

will work regardless of industry or your competitive landscape. So moving over here, I want to


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

remind you that one of the most useful and effective tools that you have in your toolkit


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

for forecasting and proving return on investment is something that you're probably already


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

using for SEO, and that is Google Analytics. So if you don't have your analytics account


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

set up to track the goals and conversions that are important to your business, you're


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

missing out on a free and relatively simple way of showing exactly how much your SEO work


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

is affecting your bottom line. You can set up your goals in your view settings of your


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

Google Analytics account, and you can customize those so that every time a user completes


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

an action like scrolling down a page to a certain point, clicking on a button, or obviously


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

making a purchase, that gets recorded as a goal completion in analytics. You can see


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

all of your goal completions for whatever time period you want within the conversions


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

menu of your dashboard. And if you have a dollar value attached to some or all of those


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

goals, you can filter this down to just organic traffic so that you can see exactly how much


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

money each of those goal completions is bringing in per month. And this can still work if you're


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

able to attach some kind of dollar value to your completions, your goals, even if they're


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

not ecommerce related necessarily. If you do sell products though, the ecommerce menu


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

under conversions is going to have some other really great insights like how well each of


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

your products is performing each month, and which of your coupon or affiliate codes is


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

performing the best month over month. So sometimes the best way to convince yourself or your


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

managers that investing in something like SEO is a good idea is by talking about it


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

in terms of dollars and profits like we just did. But sometimes you want to recognize that


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

your competition is already doing this thing that you're considering and already seeing


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

success. And at this point, any organization with a website that's not investing in SEO


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

is far behind the curve. So 60% of marketers currently say that SEO is their number one


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

concern when it comes to inbound marketing. And Forbes tells us that over $80 billion


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

is being spent each year just in the US on SEO. And that number is going up all the time.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So obviously, if you want to contend with your competitors who are taking up space in


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

those SERPs, you need to be able and willing to play the same game as they are. But here's


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

something else that's interesting. We saw a recent study that said that only 49% of


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

small businesses say that they invest in SEO. So this is interesting because almost 100%


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

of purchases these days involve organic search in some way. And yet less than half of American


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

small businesses are doing the work that it takes to become part of that buyer journey.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So if you are a small business or if you're an agency that works with SMBs, then yes,


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

your biggest competitors are absolutely already investing in SEO. But if you join them, you


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

may be able to beat out some of those smaller guys who didn't make the smart choice to invest.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

There's a lot of opportunity in this statistic.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

So the opposite of return on investment is the cost of not investing or the cost of inaction.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And we just went over one of those costs, losing out in the SERPs to your competition.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

But another cost that you face if you choose not to invest in that tool suite, not to hire


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the SEO agency, or not to let your team focus on SEO work is letting your website stagnate


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

or at worst, letting your website deteriorate as a result of lack of attention being paid


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to routine SEO maintenance. Your internal links can quickly become outdated if products


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

get removed from your catalog. On-page content can also really easily become outdated. And


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

if you had some valuable traffic being sent to your website from other sites that were


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

linking to you externally, if your site changes, then those links could become outdated or


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

they might just choose to remove them and you wouldn't even notice. And if you have


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to go through something like an entire site migration or a restructuring of your internal


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

architecture, those results can be disastrous if you don't pay attention to the important


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

SEO concerns that are at play there. So if you were ever considering hiring an in-house


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

SEO or an agency, it's probably because you knew that you didn't have time to pay attention


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to that kind of routine maintenance on your own. So the odds are that if you don't make


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

the commitment to that investment and get someone in there to help you, your site is


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

going to suffer. So the most important caveat in all of this, to remind yourself or to convey


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

to your managers, is that SEO, of course, takes time. It can be really exciting when


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

you're thinking about dollars and projecting those profits to get excited about the potential


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

results. But remember that in our example earlier, it took time for Chelsea to do the


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

work that was necessary to improve those pages that she was working on. And then it took


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

even more time for Google to do its job and for that work to actually affect those SERP


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

rankings and the click-through rate as a result. So there's a gap between where we spent the


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

money on that tool suite and where we actually saw the return. And that can be really frustrating


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

for business owners and especially for the SEOs who are trying to justify their work.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

And that's why it's so important to manage expectations around timing and the plausibility


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

of your results during that sign-off process, before that check is signed, so that you can


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

minimize the frustration that can come from waiting. But if you can get your stakeholders


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

on the same page as you are about your SEO work and use all the really great tactics


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that you've learned to get the best and most effective results possible, you will earn


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

that buy-in, you will make your bosses happy, and it'll be that much easier for them to


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

sign off on the next project that you propose. So thank you so much again for watching this


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

edition of Whiteboard Friday. I hope this was useful to you. Again, I'm Kavi Cardos.


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday

You can find me on LinkedIn under my name or on Twitter at The Rare Boss and tell me


The ROI of SEO — Whiteboard Friday


Daily SEO Fix - Check For Technical Issues

Hi there, my name is Emily and I'm part of the onboarding team here at Moz. Today I'll


be showing you some tips and tricks within the SiteCrawl section of the Moz Pro tool.


First, let's click into all crawl pages. And here we can paste in the URL that we're wanting


to research. We can also filter by status code here if we like. This will bring up the


number of issues that we have identified with this page. One thing to note is the crawl


depth. This refers to how deep on your site we have to crawl in order to find this page.


Perhaps you may want to have a think about your internal linking structure in order to


bring closer to the surface those important revenue driving pages. We can click analyze


to read more on the issues we found with your page. Once you've corrected this issue on your


site, you can come back here and click mark it as fixed. We'll recall this page within


your next weekly campaign update to see if the issue still persists. Issues with pages


can affect the search engines ability to index your website, which can negatively impact


How to Make an Impact with Google My Business Q and A

Howdy Moz fans, I'm Zach. And I'm Serena. And we're from the Moz Customer Success


Team. Today we'll be talking about the Q&A section of your business listing. Consumers


like to know what to expect for your business and oftentimes questions about who you are


and what you can do to create barriers to entry for customers. What better place to


serve up those answers than in your Google My Business listings questions and answers


section. Like reviews, Q&A appears directly on your Google My Business listing and is


visible when people search for your business online. Unlike reviews, Google Q&A allows


businesses to publish their own content in this area as well as answering questions from


the public. By asking and answering frequently asked questions, you can make your listings


look more informative and interactive in comparison to less engaged competitors. And as with any


new strategy, there can be a learning curve. Let's dive into Moz Local and explore some


ways you can effectively set up and monitor your listings Q&A.


If you're just starting out, you'll first want to publish some common FAQs about your


business. You can do this by heading into the publish tab of Moz Local and creating


a Q&A post. FAQs will vary based on your industry, but some possible questions to consider would


be things like vegetarian or vegan offerings, parking availability, accessibility, and store


hours. When a customer asks a question, they're likely considering your business, so we recommend


responding as quickly as possible so you don't miss out on a potential lead. Moz Local can


also alert you whenever a new question is asked, helping you capture leads with fast


responses via the customer feedback tab of the dashboard. When answering questions, keep


things brief but complete. Avoid responding with just a yes or no or directing customers


to your website. Instead, bring valuable information directly into your response so customers don't


need to go searching for additional information. And once you hit publish, your response will


be viewable to all potential customers. Q&A is a great way to stay on top of questions


and uncertainties prospective customers may have, and addressing incoming questions right


away can show customers that you are responsive and care about their inquiry. If you're looking


for an effective way to monitor incoming questions, Moz Local can help you scale your Q&A strategy


Local Market Analytics: The Challenges and Opportunities - Presented by Rob Bucci

As I said, my name is Rob Bucci.


I am the VP of R&D here at Moz.


In that role, I get to work with some very smart, very passionate, and very talented


people.


I get to work with Brittany Muller, who just introduced me.


I get to work with Dr. Pete, and I get to work with Russ Jones.


Together, we get to spend our time talking about big ideas, and talking about the future


of search and what we think about it.


I'm here today to talk to you about some of the things that we've been thinking about,


about the future of search and what we're going to do about it.


Before I do that, I need to take a moment and slow down for a little bit.


I want to address some concerns that those of you in the audience may have, something


important.


If any of you were at my talk in 2017, you probably left with the same concern that everyone


left with.


Over the past few years, people have approached me and asked me about that concern.


I've been guilty of being a little bit cagey in my response.


I wanted to take this moment in front of all of you to finally address the concern that


came out of my 2017 MozCon talk, which was, when will Rob's mean husband finally let him


get a kitty?


If any of you were at the talk, you may remember me mentioning that my husband wouldn't let


me have a kitty, but if I did have a kitty, I would love him forever.


I would hug him, and I would call him sandwiches.


Well, I got good news.


I'd like to introduce you to my tiny fur baby.


He is three pounds.


He's about five months old.


He'll be like five pounds fully grown, which is hilarious because me and my husband together


are like 500 pounds, and we're in love with this tiny three-pound psychotic ball of fluff.


He's amazing.


You may want to know, did you call him sandwiches like you said you would?


No, I'm sorry I didn't call him sandwiches.


I was tempted, but based on his giant stature, we decided to call him Hercules.


You're probably wondering, Rob, is he perfect in every way?


The answer is yes, he is perfect in every way.


This cat is like a denial of service attack on my brain.


Every time I see him, I just want to smush his little face.


He's so cute.


It's troubling because I forget what I'm saying every time I look at him.


What were we talking about again?


Search.


I'm here to talk about search, not kittens.


When we think about the future of search, we think about what we at Moz have to do in


order to evolve ourselves and our products to be prepared for that future.


In 2019, when we've been thinking about the future of search, one of the things we've


been talking about a lot is local.


Here I am today to talk to you about what we're thinking about in regards to local search.


We're going to start with the basics.


What exactly is local SEO?


Local SEO is the discipline of optimizing your business to be visible for a local audience.


That includes things like optimizing your business's website, sure, absolutely, but


it also includes managing your local listings.


The headache in managing local listings is addressed by Moz Local, which effectively


solves that problem for the majority of local SEOs.


But there's a whole other side to the problem that local SEOs face, and that is how do you


measure the performance of your website in hyper local organic search?


This is an area where traditionally, I believe that SEOs and marketers have been underserved


in terms of the quality of the data they have and the tooling that they have available to


them.


Today, my goal is to talk to you about that side of the problem.


We're going to push aside the whole local listings thing, and we're going to talk about


the performance of your websites in organic search results.


I'm just going to quickly open a bottle of water here as I dry up on stage.


Pardon me.


If you've ever heard me talk before, you've definitely heard me talk about SERP analytics.


SERP analytics is the discipline of mining the SERP for things other than just the ranking


of your website.


It's about looking for all sorts of other opportunities on the SERP.


It includes things like looking at share of voice charts.


It includes aggregating queries together based on SERP intent.


It includes looking for different featured snippet opportunities.


All of these are elements of the SERP analytics practice.


Now, local market analytics, I like to call it, is the discipline deployed at a hyperlocal


level.


Local market analytics is all about mining SERPs in specific markets, looking for performance


opportunities that are by nature hyperlocal.


That's the lay of the land for what we're going to talk about today, and you're probably


wondering what you're going to learn.


My number one goal is to convince you that the future of SERP analytics is all about


local SERPs for the vast majority of queries that you care about.


When I say a local SERP, I mean a SERP that is seen by a searcher who is standing in a


specific city or a specific zip code.


I'm going to talk about that data.


I'm going to talk about how it's hard to get.


I'm going to talk about how it's hard to process and mine.


I'm also going to talk to you about some of the killer insights that you can drive if


you were to have access to that data.


Like any proud parent, I'm also going to talk about what we're doing at Moz in order to


help solve those problems for people.


Along the way, there will be kitten photos.


He's very cute.


Just get into it.


Why is local market analytics important?


Well, if we all agree that people turn to Google throughout their day to solve their


problems, that's obvious, right?


We can all agree that's how people use Google.


We can also agree that Google, in turn, in order to solve people's problems, pays attention


to a lot of metadata about the search.


They pay attention, obviously, to what you search for, but also the data around the search.


For example, the location of the searcher.


One thing we know is that Google will change the SERP based on a variety of different variables


that they see.


One of those variables is the location of the searcher.


I'm about to spend the next 10 slides convincing you of this, so just take it for a fact.


We know Google changes the SERP based on the location of the searcher.


If all that is true, then we know that in order for a business to thrive and grow, it


needs to be visible in the areas where its customers are searching for it.


That's why local market analytics is important.


It connects us as marketers, as local SEOs, to the data that represents the on-the-ground


reality of where our searchers are searching from.


Another thing we need to agree on, another fact, is that everyone is using their mobile


phone to Google all day long, right?


We can all agree on that.


That's a fact.


Everyone's on their mobile phones and going to Google.


The next fact that we have to agree on is that national SERPs don't actually exist.


I want to explain what I mean by national SERP.


National SERP is, if you go to your rank tracking, your SERP analytics tool, they allow you to


track a query in a specific country.


For example, you can track a query like Adidas shoes in the United States.


In order to do that, what they do is when they go to Google to perform that search for


you to retrieve that SERP, they pass some data to Google.


They'll maybe pass the latitude longitude that's somewhere randomly in the center of


the United States, or instead of passing a latitude longitude, they'll pass the phrase


United States.


This will locate the search to United States.


The problem with this is that when we go to search Google, we're not saying to Google,


hey, we're in the United States.


Our phone is saying to Google, we're at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Tupper Street.


It's very, very specific as to where the search is coming from.


Google in turn is taking this signal and is building a SERP that is full of all sorts


of content that is relevant to the specific location of the searcher.


It's in this way that looking at a national SERP is simply not as nuanced or precise an


example of a SERP that your average searcher would see depending on where they're standing.


We have folks like Danny Sullivan who are acknowledging that the influence of location


is far greater than the influence of personalization when it comes to explaining why the SERPs


for a single query might be different between two different searchers.


Across one data set of ours, 1.2 million SERPs, we found that 73% of them contain some kind


of localized feature like local packs or other types of results.


We know that SERPs vary.


Oh my God, I can't even look at them.


We have to get through this.


Okay, just going to look out of the one eye.


Maybe I'll miss them.


Anyway, so we know that SERPs vary for the same query in different markets.


In another data set, we saw that almost 25% of the sites we were tracking had some degree


of variability between those markets.


What I mean by markets is like Seattle versus New York, Toronto versus Vancouver.


We know that within a market, SERPs can vary wildly.


Our data shows that a site's rankings could vary across individual zip codes within a


single market anywhere from 15 to 85%.


So I'll headline that for you.


That's like, what I'm saying is rankings can vary across markets like Seattle versus New


York and they can also vary across individual zip codes within those markets up to 85%.


So you can be searching the same query as your friend who's on the other side of town


and he might see an 85% different SERP than you based on the data that we did in one study.


So what we know is that the SERP that your searcher or your customer in Vancouver sees


is not the same as the SERP your customer in Toronto sees.


We know that SERPs change depending on where the search is coming from, even for queries


without high local intent.


Because when it comes to local intent, we expect the SERPs to change.


They're sending a strong local signal.


Obviously, the SERPs are gonna be different from two different locations because it's


based on location.


Like their need is bound by the location that they're in.


But we're seeing this happen on SERPs without high local intent as well.


He's sleeping on my husband's head.


That's the tiny little face.


Anyway, okay, so just to make things even more crazy, speaking of local intent, SERPs


change for different kinds of local intent.


So like for example, searching in Seattle for sushi in Seattle versus sushi near me


results in SERPs that have 68% different results on them.


So that's kind of nuts, right?


Like you're actually searching for the same thing.


You're just phrasing it differently.


You're even standing in the same location as your peer, but you're seeing different


SERPs.


So we're seeing a lot of change there.


And this is a really big complexifier because now you have to be intentional about which


specific combinations of query and location you want to optimize for.


Were you to tweak the variables on either side of that equation, it will result in a


different SERP.


And the more queries and locations you care about, the more that challenge scales.


So here's a SERP for the term furniture store in Seattle and New York.


First thing that's really obvious is there are local packs.


They're different.


One is Seattle, one is New York, kind of rooted in Manhattan.


But I want to point out that the organic results are different.


The second place organic result in Seattle is Macy's.


On New York, it's Yelp.


In fact, they're both Yelp.


So different local packs, different organic results.


And here's sushi near me in Seattle and New York.


Again, yeah, local packs, whatever, but also the organic results are different.


I believe it's like eater.com in Seattle and TripAdvisor in New York.


And here's a SERP for the query how to file small claims.


First thing we know, no local packs.


There are no local businesses that exist to service the specific need in these areas.


But this is a very high local intent query because depending on where you live, the approach


for filing a small claim against somebody is different.


So it's bound by your location in that way.


I love this example because it also shows how featured snippets can change for the same


query between two markets.


So in Seattle, we have one featured snippet.


In New York, we have another.


These are informational queries that are locally bound and that you can see those featured


snippets change.


So if you're in the featured snippet game and you're chasing those opportunities, but


you're only tracking them nationally, depending on your query space, it's possible that you're


missing opportunities.


And worse, it's possible that you're misreporting your performance.


I also want to point out, people also ask blocks.


It's the same between the two queries because it doesn't care about location.


It only cares about the query itself.


And then again, the organic results are different.


Different organic results for Seattle versus New York.


Now, if you came today already being the kind of SEO who cares about how your local pack


results appear to the searchers that you care about, you already knew to expect that in


the screenshots I just showed you, the local packs would vary between two locations.


It's like the basic truth of local SEO.


It's like table stakes.


The local packs change depending on where the searcher is searching from.


That's how they work.


That's why they exist.


But what I hope to convey for you in the past three screenshots is that a lot more changes


than just the local listings.


So if we accept that your local listings will change, your organic results will change,


and even your featured snippets will change based on the searcher's location, it follows


that in order to do a proper local market analytics practice, we need to be tracking


in multiple zip codes for every market we care about because we have proven that SERPs


can vary across zip codes.


In other words, if I'm in the greater Memphis area and I have three hardware stores and


I'm only tracking the term hardware store in one Memphis zip code, I'm missing what


my searcher or my customer on the other side of town is seeing when he's looking for something


that my business might solve for him.


I don't have all the data because the SERP that he's seeing over there is different than


what I'm seeing where I'm tracking.


This gets really, really hard really, really quickly.


You see, the number of markets that you care about and the number of queries that you care


about scales up this challenge exponentially.


We call this multi-sampling where you're looking at the same query in different zip codes and


then you're averaging together all that data and from that you're actually driving your


analysis and that's a very challenging thing to do.


It's super powerful because with that you can provide all sorts of incredible insight.


I've talked a little bit about why this data is important.


I've talked about how it's hard to get.


It's a ton of data.


It's hard to get.


It's hard to store.


It's hard to process.


If you can figure all that out, you can drive some really killer analysis.


I want to spend some time showing you some examples of that.


For this talk, I put together a little data set.


This data set is on petfinder.com and this data visit you're seeing here shows you the


nationwide performance for petfinder.com for a tight set of 10 queries.


These queries are things like adopt a cat, adopt a dog.


There are no branded terms in this query set.


What I love about this is petfinder.com is not a local store.


They have no brick and mortar locations.


They're pure online only play, yet clearly if you look at the map, their performance


is influenced by the location of the search.


What we did here in order to get this map is that we tracked those 10 queries in the


top 50 cities in the United States.


Within those cities, we multi-sampled from up to five different zip codes.


We averaged that data together and then we used that to derive the average performance.


You can instantly see that varying point performance in different areas across the United States.


Look at Seattle.


They're doing pretty good.


Right a little bit more south in Portland, they're doing worse.


That variance between Portland and Seattle is interesting and I wanted to dig into that.


The next thing I did was I segmented out all the data that had to do with just one query,


adopt a cat.


What we're seeing here is that nationwide performance just for adopt a cat.


On doing a little more investigation, what I discovered was that it's actually the dog


related content that's driving down PetFinder's performance in Portland.


It's for the proof of that adage that cats rule and dogs drool because they're doing


worse in Portland just in the dog queries whenever something dog related was used.


If they were my client, really quickly I've gotten to a pretty good nugget of advice to


give them.


Hey, if you care about Portland, you should probably optimize your dog related content


because it's dragging down your average performance there based on the other queries that we're


tracking for you.


Let's say for a second that we can know with certainty that PetFinder really cares about


Portland.


Because we're multi-sampling from five zip codes there, we have the data to go even deeper.


Here I'm showing you the five zip codes in Portland that we sampled the rankings from.


Look at the variance.


When I saw the data come in for this talk, I was blown away by the amount of variance


I saw in the rankings from different zip codes because PetFinder is not like a local kind


of business at all.


Yet there's this incredible variance we're seeing, a range from three to seven, which


is significant.


I wanted to show you how if you were so inclined, you could look at this data geospatially.


You could look at it on a map.


You could pinpoint the areas that you're sourcing your multi-sampling from.


We're PetFinder to be the kind of business that had local stores.


We could overlay this information.


We could look at demographic data and so on.


You can be very precise with how you're sampling this information.


It's just a matter of how complex you're willing to let it get for you.


That's a lot about PetFinder and how we're performing.


I also want to talk about everything else that's on the SERP because there's a lot more


information on the SERP than just PetFinder's rankings.


One of the things that we can do is we can derive a national competitive profile for


PetFinder.com.


This is just a sample of that.


It's not obviously the whole thing.


It's just a couple of sites I pulled out.


Finally based on all that multi-sample data, PetFinder.com is doing pretty good.


We have OrphanDog.


We have AdoptAPet.


We have PetOrphans.


We have KittenLady.org, which is a domain that I'm really starting to relate to.


I come home from work and I pick a herk up and I coo at him like a tiny baby and I rock


him back and forth.


I'm fully on track to become a kitten lady, but I digress.


That was a national snapshot.


This is the snapshot for North Carolina.


This is an interesting abstraction of our data because in North Carolina we're actually


tracking two markets.


We're tracking Charlotte and Raleigh.


I think I pronounced that right.


Raleigh.


Woo, yeah.


Okay, so we're tracking these two markets.


What I've done here is I've combined them together as an abstraction and I've pulled


them out.


I'm able to traverse through the data from really high level all the way down to individual


markets and within those market zip codes.


This is somewhere in between that.


This is the statewide view.


North Carolina competitive profile, completely different lay of the land.


CharlotteSPCA.com, number one.


CharlotteNC.gov, number two.


They're beating Petfinder.


This is proof that for sites like Petfinder and all sites, they need to be specific about


the markets they care about in order to truly understand who they're competing with because


these two are nowhere on the map when it comes to national profiles.


You only discover those competitors once you get that granular.


That really is just the tip of the iceberg because at this point, we know our performance.


We know our competitive landscape.


The natural progression is for us to try to find ways to beat those competitors.


Instantly we start thinking about ways that we can find feature snippets that they don't


have or find markets to move to that they're not in.


All that is very valid and I would love to spend time talking about that with you.


We don't have time today.


I do because I can't resist want to talk about one thing, which is imagine what you could


do if we had local search volume data.


This is something that I always wanted to bring to Stat.


Never managed to do it because local search volume data at scale is very hard to get,


but if you had it, you could do incredible share of voice reporting that was super granular


and nuanced.


You could start building a model that would prove the ROI of your SEO efforts in a market


before you moved into that market so you could use it to prioritize markets.


Having local search volume just makes a lot of sense because if you're tracking a keyword


in Toronto, I want to know what the search volume is in Toronto.


I'd be even better knowing what the search volume is in individual zip codes in Toronto


if I could get it.


I would take it if I can get it, but it's very hard to get.


If we had all this data, we could finally show up with some answers to some really interesting


questions.


Do my national SEO strategies have the same impact across my entire audience?


Am I reaching some markets differently than others?


Which market should I prioritize for my SEO efforts?


Which queries should I optimize for in which markets?


How does my query focus change market by market?


Are there regional differences to consider?


Do different query variants have different competitors in different markets?


All of these are actually fairly difficult questions to answer that suddenly get easier


if we have the data available in a way that we can query against it.


Why don't more people do this?


Well, one, it requires an immense amount of data.


It really does.


Not only to just collect, which is hard enough, but to store, to process, to pipeline, to


parse.


All that framework for doing the analysis is very hard.


Once you have that framework, doing the actual analysis is hard because you're collecting


the same SERP from different zip codes over and over and over and keeping track of all


that complexity is very difficult.


It makes the analysis more challenging.


In many cases, the data just isn't available, i.e. local search volume.


It's just hard to get.


At the end of the day, what everyone comes back to when I talk to them about this is,


Robin, I'm an SEO.


I'm not a data scientist.


I don't have time to build the analytical engine for this.


I don't work for a company that has a huge budget and untapped development resources.


It doesn't exist and it's all fair.


You know that at Moz, our mission is to make SEO easier for everyone.


You're probably wondering, okay, Rob's talking about this, but what are they actually going


to do about it?


Well, I would love to explain that to you.


At Moz, we see really big opportunities in local search.


In the past year, we've doubled down on local search in a number of areas, some of which


you've probably already heard of.


For example, the Moz Local Update has new distribution partners, expanded features and


analytics.


It more fully allows marketers to own their online presence more than ever before.


Yet, it solves a portion of the local SEO problem.


What about all that major challenge with regards to collecting all that data and storing it


and pipelining it and parsing it and multi-sampling it and make sense of it?


Who's going to help me with that market level analysis that local market analytics would


provide?


What tooling exists to help me do this?


Well, I mean, to be honest, we just went ahead and built it for you.


I'm really happy to tell you all about local market analytics.


All the screenshots that I showed you in this presentation deck are actually product screenshots.


All that data viz lifted directly from the product.


It's launching as an add-on for Moz Pro and it allows you to capture that on-the-ground


reality of local search better than any product on the market.


All that complex multi-sampling, this does it for you.


So you pass in the keyword in the market, you get back hyper-local SERPs.


It then takes those hyper-local SERPs and it uses them to weave together very intricate


nuanced market level insights that you can traverse through from high level to super


granular just the way I showed you in this talk.


In fact, everything I've done in this talk is doable with this, all without wasting hundreds


of hours doing it manually.


The people who put this together are incredibly proud to share it with you today because it


represents some of the most local, sorry, some of the most accurate, precise and nuanced


local SEO and analytics data available on the market today.


I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time showing you screenshots because I want you


to come out at the Moz Hub and let us show it to you for yourselves, but I can't resist.


So here's a quick snapshot of a dashboard of the performance for a specific keyword.


This is cat adoption and we're looking at that nationwide performance and then a bar


chart showing the trend over time.


Here are the SERP competitors for a specific keyword.


This one is adopt a cat and this is for all markets in the United States, but you can


actually toggle into specific markets so you can instantly pull up your competitive profile


in varying markets.


If you're the kind of SEO who's looked at this data today and thought, man, how is local


search impacting me?


How is this searches location impacting the performance of my site?


This is the kind of tooling that's going to help you answer that question.


Here is the performance for a specific keyword.


You see in that table down below, you can see how it ranks in different markets and


there's one thing I wanted to point out there.


I don't know if anyone sees it, but it's local search volume.


Moz has local search volume, which I am unbelievably and irrationally excited about because it's


something I always try to get into stat, never managed to do it and now we have it here in


local market analytics as that add-on for Moz Pro.


And soon it'll be available in other Moz products.


You can expect to see it in stat.


I'm really excited about the opportunities that it makes for all these kind of new analysis


vectors.


So local market analytics, it's launching today.


It's an invitation only limited release.


We're continuing to develop the functionality based on user feedback, so I and the team


want you to use it, want you to tell us what you think about it, want you to give us that


feedback so we can make it better.


You can learn more and you can request an invite at mz.cm slash lma 2019.


I believe it's case sensitive, so just watch out for that.


And I want you to come visit us at the Moz Hub.


We're going to be there all through lunch, all through the rest of the show and I and


the people who worked on this functionality would love to show it to you.


And that's it.


Hercules hopes you enjoy MozCon.


Thank you very much for your time.


Have a great day.


Can SEOs Stop Worrying About Keywords and Just Focus on Topics? - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to talk about a topic that I've been seeing coming up in the SEO


world for probably a good six to twelve months now.


I think ever since Hummingbird came out there had been a little bit of discussion, and then


over the last year it's really picked up around this idea that, hey, maybe we shouldn't be


optimizing for, researching, and targeting keywords or keyword phrases anymore.


Maybe we should be going more towards topics and ideas and broad concepts.


And I think there's some merit to the idea, and then there are folks who are taking it


way too far, moving away from keywords, and actually losing and costing themselves so


much search opportunity and search engine traffic.


So I'm going to try and describe these two approaches today, kind of the old school world


and this very new school world of concept and topic-based targeting, and then describe


maybe a third way to combine them and improve on both models.


So in our classic keyword research on-page targeting model, we sort of have our SEO going,


yeah, which one of these should I target?


He's thinking about best times to fly.


He's running a travel website, best times to fly, and there's a bunch of keywords, and


he's checking the volume and maybe some other metrics around best flight times, best days


to fly, cheapest days to fly, least crowded flights, optimal flight dates, busiest days


to fly.


Okay, a bunch of different keywords.


And so maybe our SEO friend here is thinking, all right, she's going to maybe go make a


page for each of these keywords.


Maybe not all of them at first, but she's going to decide, hey, you know what?


I'm going after optimal flight dates, lowest airport traffic days, and cheapest days to


fly.


I'm going to make three different pages.


Yeah, the content is really similar.


It's serving a very similar purpose, but that doesn't matter.


I want to have the best possible keyword targeting that I can for each of these individual ones.


And so maybe I can't invest as much effort in the content and the research into it because


I have to make these three different pages.


But you know what?


I'll knock out these three, I'll do the rest of them, and then I'll iterate and add some


more keywords.


That's pretty old school SEO, right?


Very, very classic model.


Newer school, a little bit of this concept and topic targeting, we get into this world


where folks go, you know what?


I'm going to think bigger than keywords.


I'm going to kind of ignore keywords.


I don't need to worry about them.


I don't need to think about them.


Whatever the volumes are, they are.


If I do a good job of targeting searchers' intent and concepts, Google will do a good


job recognizing my content and figuring out the keywords that it maps to.


I don't have to stress about that.


And so instead, I'm going to think about, I want to help people who need to choose the


right days to buy flights.


And so I'm thinking about days of the week, and maybe I'll do some brainstorming and a


bunch of user research, and maybe I'll use some topic association tools to try and broaden


my perspective on what those intents could be.


So days of the week, the right months, the airline differences, maybe airport by airport


differences, best weeks.


Maybe I want to think about it by different country, price versus flexibility, when can


people use miles, you know, free miles to fly versus when can't they?


All right, and now I've come up with this, the ultimate guide to smart flight planning.


And I've got great content on there.


I have this, you know, graph that where you can actually select a different country or


different airline and see the dates or the weeks of the year or the days of the week


when you can get cheapest flights.


And this is just an awesome, awesome piece of content that serves a lot of these needs


really nicely.


And it's not going to rank for crap.


Like I don't mean to be rude.


It's not the case that Google can never map this to these types of keywords.


But if a lot of people are searching for best days of the week to fly and you have the ultimate


guide to smart flight planning, you might do a phenomenal job of helping people with


that search intent.


And Google is not going to do a great job of ranking you for that phrase.


And it's not Google's fault entirely.


A lot of this has to do with how the web talks about content.


A great piece of content like this comes out.


Maybe lots of blogs pick it up, news sites pick it up, you write about it, people are


linking to it.


And how are they describing it?


Well, they're describing it as a guide to smart flight planning.


And so those are the terms and phrases people associate with it, which are not the same


terms and phrases that someone would associate with an equally good guide that leveraged


the keywords intelligently.


So my recommendation is to combine these two things.


In a smart combination of these techniques, we can get great results on both sides of


the aisle.


Great concept and topic modeling that can serve a bunch of different searcher needs


and target many different keywords in a given searcher intent model.


And we can do it in a way that targets keywords intelligently in our titles and our headlines,


our sub-headlines, the content on the page, so that we can actually get the searcher volume


and rank for the keywords that send us traffic on an ongoing basis.


So I take my keyword research ideas and my tool results from all the exercises I did


over here.


I take my topic and concept brainstorm, so my topic tool results, my user research results,


and I take these and put them together in a list of concepts and needs that our content


is going to answer, grouped by combinable keyword targets.


I'll show you what I mean with the right metrics.


So I might say my keyword groups are, you know, there's one intent around best days


of the week, and then there's another intent around best times of the year.


And yes, there's overlap between them.


There might be people who are looking for kind of both at the same time, but they actually


are pretty separate in their intent.


Best days of the week, that's really someone who knows that they're going to fly at some


point and they want to know, should I be booking on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or a Monday


or a Sunday?


And then there's best times of the year, someone who's a little more flexible with their travel


planning and they're trying to think maybe a year ahead, should I buy in the spring,


the fall, the summer, what's the time to go here?


So you know what, we're going to take all the keyword phrases that we discovered over


here, we're going to group them by these concept intents, like best days of the week could


include the keywords best days of the week to fly, optimal day of week to fly, weekday


versus weekend best for flights, cheapest day of the week to fly, best times of the


year, that keyword group could include words and phrases like best weeks of the year to


fly, cheapest travel weeks, lowest cost months to fly, off-season flight dates, optimal dates


to book flights.


These aren't just keyword matches, they're concept and topic matches, but taken to the


keyword level so that we actually know things like the volume, the difficulty, the click-through


rate opportunity for these, the importance that they may have, or the conversion rate


that we think they're going to have.


And then we can group these together and decide, hey, you know what, the volume for all of


these is higher, but these ones are more important to us, they have lower difficulty, maybe they


have higher click-through rate opportunity, so we're going to target best times of the


year.


That's going to be the content we create.


Now I'm going to wrap my keywords together into the best weeks and months to book flights


in 2016.


That's just as compelling a title as the Ultimate Guide to Smart Flight Planning, maybe a tiny


bit less, you could quibble, but I'm sure you could come up with one.


And it uses our keywords intelligently, and now I've got subheadings that are sort by


the cheapest, the least crowded, the most flexible, by airline, by location.


Great, I've hit all my topic areas and all my keyword areas at the same time, all in


one piece of content.


This kind of model where we combine the best of these two worlds, I think is the way of


the future.


I don't think it pays to stick to your old school keyword targeting methodology, nor


do I think it pays to ignore keyword targeting and keyword research entirely.


We've got to merge these practices, come up with something smart.


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


for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

There is so much to love and admire about our next speaker. Some of my favorite things are just how


passionate she is about dogs, getting people registered to vote, just so so important, and


her love of the great outdoors. She's also an adjunct professor at the University of Kansas


and has some of the coolest tattoos I have ever seen. There's quite truly, there's no one better


to deliver the following session jam-packed with competitive advantage takeaways than our following


speaker. Please join me in welcoming group communications director discoverability at VMLYR


Heather Physiok. Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining us at MozCon virtual 2020,


especially despite the unusual circumstances. I know it's not the same as being in the big room


in person together, but I'm so grateful to every one of the MozCon organizers and all of you for


pivoting to this different format for everyone's safety. So hopefully we'll all be together again


soon. I'm Heather Physiok. I am group director of discoverability at VMLYR. I'm based in Kansas


City, but we have a global footprint with around 80 offices around the world. And today I'm going


to talk to you about competitive advantage, how you can find your unique value that you bring,


especially as industries like ours and probably our clients' industries as well are becoming


increasingly commoditized. So let's talk about the state of our industry. SEO is dead. My work


here is done. I'm just kidding. But if you've ever heard this eye roller before, this is a common


refrain in the search industry. And you'll often hear it when Google takes more precious real


estate into its clutches and away from website owners, or as we watch the internet become


inundated with content for SEO that's drowning out really great content, or maybe dime a dozen


SEO providers are popping up all over the web offering these lowest common denominator search


services. It's enough to make any search expert feel like it's impossible to win. I get it. But


I argue that search and content marketing aren't dead. Far from it, in fact. They're just


commoditized. Google is still the main place people turn for searching for information and


answers and action. And humans will continue to search. It's in our nature to search, even well


beyond Google. However, the industry is becoming increasingly commoditized, and that's something


we need to talk about. So I surveyed more than 100 digital marketers around the globe, and I asked


them whether they're observing their field becoming commoditized. Of those, more than two-thirds said


that content marketing is moderately or highly commoditized. Nearly 73% said the SEO industry is


commoditized. And almost a full three-quarters said the paid search space is becoming moderately


or highly commoditized. But you already knew this, right? You're working in this field. The trouble,


though, with commoditization of an industry is that it makes it difficult for a business to stand


out. It gets harder to stay competitive, which makes it harder for your business to grow.


And it's not terribly surprising because achieving real, sustainable, competitive advantage is not an


easy task. I mean, these are just a few of the many reasons people say that it's hard for them


to stay competitive in their industries. It ranges from knowing what opportunity is available to you


to own, to challenges being able to innovate rapidly enough, to internal barriers like buy-in


or fear of risk-taking. So with all that in mind, is our industry in trouble? I mean, are we in the


wrong business? Well, it's not just us digital marketers who are experiencing commoditization


and competition. Our client brands are fighting this too because it's a natural part of the life


cycle of business. So without understanding what competitive advantage really is, much less how to


find, improve, and defend it, we risk drowning in that sea of sameness. So we're going to use


digital marketing professions like search and content as a working example throughout this talk,


but know that these principles can benefit you, your clients, or any business regardless of


industry, but it could also even help you assess your individual competitive advantages, perhaps


when it comes to landing a new job or getting that big promotion. So what even is competitive


advantage? There are a few traits that most professionals agree on, but that open-ended survey


revealed a lot of disparity and confusion. So I'm here to clear that up. Now, most often when we talk


about a brand's competitive edge, the conversation winds up at mission and vision statements,


but the sad truth is that many, many businesses are claiming competitive advantages in these


meaningless mission statements that aren't really competitive advantages at all. So let's break down


one example, profitable growth through superior customer service, innovation, quality, and


commitment. This is a commonly used example of a bad mission statement, and that's for a few reasons.


One, it's vague. It has no specificity whatsoever. It's got this long list of things without any


focus or tangible way to actually implement and measure, and there are things that every business


should probably be doing. These are table stakes for even being in business. You could probably


copy and paste any brand name in front of this. In fact, I found a dozen companies that did


exactly that. This was in just the first two pages of search results where brands pasted their name


in, basically, even though this is heralded as a prime example of a bad mission statement. And if


the meaningless mission statement isn't enough, let's examine what many brands consider their


unique selling propositions. Brief digress here. I actually dislike the phrase unique selling


proposition or USP because it's all about the brand. I much prefer UCB or unique customer benefit,


which puts the customer at the center. This is what we should be doing as marketers, but let's move on.


So apologies in advance if you work for any of these invoice software companies. So Freshbook


says, invoice software that saves you time. Invoice2go offers time-saving features that


keep you in control, and Slick Tools says they can help you organize and speed up your invoicing.


So you're saying you'll save me time. Cool. Now, in fairness, these brands also usually list other


benefits as well elsewhere on their sites, and some are even okay, but this is what they're


leading with. The problem is that none of these are unique. Nearly every invoicing software that


I looked at highlighted some version of speed or saving time or getting paid faster.


That is certainly a valuable feature, but what's the benefit that's going to make the customer


choose you when everyone else offers the same thing? Now let's try these instead. These benefits


are a lot more clear. InvoiceSimple says you can invoice your customers in seconds. They're not


just saving you time, but you're getting invoices done in seconds. That specifically is what puts it


over the edge. Zero gives you a real-time view of your cash flow. Cash flow is incredibly important


to businesses, and that ability to see it immediately at any time is a great benefit.


And Scoro says stop using and paying for six plus different tools. It is very, very common for small


and medium-sized businesses to add one tool at a time over many years, and then one day they wake


up and they're drowning in accounting software, and maybe they're making more mistakes with the


higher margin for error. They're just losing time keeping it up with it all. So much, much, much


better. But this is only brands who are articulating what they think their competitive advantages.


How do you know whether your unique value is a competitive advantage at all?


So I sometimes say to start with your est. That's best, fastest, smartest, cheapest, most innovative,


most horizontally integrated. Whatever it is, go through this brainstorming exercise


and ask yourself what you are best at or what you want to be best at. Keep in mind, maybe it's not


the est overall. Maybe it's the est for a specific segment of your audience or a specific need state


of your customer or the est of a specific geographic region. Now, once you have a few of


these in mind, you have to check them against a few criteria to ensure that they really are


competitive advantage. First, is your advantage unique? If anyone can claim the same thing, it's


not unique. It should serve a unique need, a distinct audience, or deliver your product or


service in a unique way. So dig deep to find something that is specific and tangible that sets


you apart from your competition. Next, if you can copy and paste any brand name in place of yours,


it's probably not defensible. Make sure your unique benefit or advantage is clear and specific.


So avoid superlatives and hyperbolic language that can't really be quantified in any way.


The typical mistake that I see is generic language that doesn't paint a picture for customers as to


what makes you special. It's too vague. And I frequently heard in the survey that people believe


that they have competitive advantage by being first to market with their type of service.


And being first does confer some benefits initially, but as soon as the market figures out


that there's money to be made and there's very little competition in this space, that's when they


swoop in to encroach. First mover advantage is competitive advantage for a little while,


but it's not sustainable competitive advantage. If you can't hold on to that competitive advantage


for a long while, it's too short term. And today we're focusing on sustainable CA.


Next, if your customer doesn't care about it, it's not valuable. And thus it is not a competitive


advantage. So what you're in business to do isn't defined by what you're selling. It's defined by


what your customer actually wants. And in the search business, this is especially true because


if people aren't searching for it, then it's not valuable to the business. Your customer has to


feel that what you offer is of greater value than what your competitors offer. And that typically


happens in two ways. You may have a comparable product, but at a better price, or you may have


a better product at a comparable price. So your relative value would be greater.


It's also not competitive advantage if you're not really living it. This is why typical CSR,


or corporate social responsibility, fails to be an adequate competitive advantage for many brands.


They make a few donations, they slap a logo on their website, but they're not really living that


purpose from top to bottom in their organization. And frankly, customers see right through it. It


cannot be a competitive advantage that is on your website, but that also isn't reflected at the C


level with your sales reps who are working with customers, in your factories, and so on. Now,


for all their flaws and all of my personal moral beefs with Jeff Bezos, Amazon was unwavering in


their commitment to fast and affordable shipping. And that's been a huge contributor to why they


are the behemoth they are today. And people know that Ben & Jerry's is this vocal and activist


brand in every aspect of what they do, and they live up to the promises that they make at every


interaction. Possibly most important of all, competitive advantage is temporary. It's a moving


target. Now, the objective should probably always be to have long-term sustainable competitive


advantage, but I don't want you to conflate long-term with permanent. Certainly, enjoy it


while it lasts, but you cannot get too comfortable. When you identify yours and you're enjoying these


nice profit margins or share a voice in a space, competitors are going to start racing to take


advantage of the new learnings themselves. And that's going to lead to eventual parity among


competitors, and the cycle starts again. So you need to figure out where to evolve or reinvent


to stay competitive. So this is a handy little framework I created for finding, establishing,


articulating, and maintaining your competitive advantage. Discover, differentiate, demonstrate,


defend. But note that this isn't purely linear one way. Once competitors encroach on your previous


advantage, you're at risk of losing it. So be sure you're always looking ahead to what your


next competitive advantage may be or how you can elevate and defend the one that you already have.


So let's dig into this framework a little further. First, discover the tools to find your


competitive advantage. Now, discovering what makes you different is half the battle, right?


In an increasingly crowded and competitive landscape, how do you figure out where you can win?


Now, the number one recommendation coming out of my survey is just to ask. This could be tools like


formal surveys and in-depth interviews, or it could be as simple as casual feedback or ad hoc


conversations with your customers. And that can reveal some sort of a little bit of a problem.


But it could reveal some seriously insightful advantages. The objective here is to figure out


why you over someone else. So a few things you might ask them. Why did you hire us over another


firm? Or why did you hire another firm over us? So we often, almost always, ask the brands that we


pitch to in the RFP process these questions. So we can better understand what's valuable to customers


and continue to modify our approach. You might also ask existing clients, why did you choose to


leave us and switch to another firm? Or why do you continue to work with us after all these years,


like exit interviews and stay interviews? Look for patterns and the reasons that you are gaining


and keeping and losing great clients. Your competitive advantage might be hiding in there,


but also insight into your competitors' advantages and any gaps that they aren't filling as well.


Beyond asking, try also listening quietly. So this could include social listening to be sure,


but also think of things like conversations on Reddit or Nextdoor or other relevant forums where


people are having a frank dialogue or they need solutions to their problems or people are making


recommendations for or against different brands because people are more likely to be honest in


this environment where they're helping their neighbors. You can certainly read ratings and


reviews on popular sites like Amazon or Yelp as well. Granted, it's easy to fake reviews in sites


like these, but look for patterns and what people are saying about your brand and your products and


services or your competitors' products and services. What are their common complaints? What


are their concerns? What are their questions? What are their concerns? What are their concerns?


How do other brands do poorly or not at all that create gaps that you can fill?


Next is to workshop it. You have to ask yourself hard questions about who you are,


what you can commit to, and how you can follow through with your customers on your competitive


product as well, not just your own. There are a million and one tools and formats you could use


to do this, but I'll just briefly cover two, the classic SWOT analysis and the Porter's Five Forces


model. SWOT analysis, for anybody who's not familiar, it's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,


and threats. You want to do this for your brand as well as your competitors. Now, strengths are


capabilities and value that you bring to the table. Weaknesses are the gaps in your resources


or capabilities or offerings that might hold you back from being best in class.


Opportunities are the untapped or unexplored areas of potential growth.


And threats are outside forces or external factors that put your business at risk, like economic


downturn or perhaps susceptibility to global pandemics or entry of a disruptive new competitor.


Now, the second tool I want to share with you, this is a little denser, so roll with me here,


but it's the Porter's Five Forces framework. Now, most folks who attend business school or get their


MBAs are going to learn about this, but you can also read about it in Michael Porter's book,


Competitive Advantage. This is a method to analyze the competitive pressures on your business.


At its most basic, you might ask yourself questions like the ones I'm about to share with you


and assign a high, medium, or low pressure value for each of the five forces. His model


basically asserts that these five forces determine how intense your competition is


and thus how attractive it is to enter an industry based on its potential for profitability.


So it's also a valuable critical thinking tool, even if you're already in an industry,


to figure out where you can compete and edge out that opposition.


Okay, so here we go. We're digging in. The first force is competitor rivalry. It's right in the


center in orange here. What is the quality, quantity, and diversity of your competitors in this


space? How fast or slow is the industry currently growing? What's the growth potential in the future?


Are customers typically loyal to a brand? Are they brand agnostic and switching around a lot? So this


is kind of like the macro view of your competitive space. Okay, so next we need to think about the


toggle between the threat of new entrants into your space and the threat of substitutes for your


space. So new entrants, let's focus there first on the left. Is it an easy or hard industry to enter?


Are the barriers for entry high or low? That's the core of this. So a brand with a high threat of new


entrants or low barriers to entry might be something like food trucks with some good recipes,


a little capital to invest in a truck, and some elbow grease. You could basically be in business


tomorrow. But industries that have a very low threat of new entrants or high barriers to entry


might be things like airlines. So it's very expensive to buy planes and find and hire qualified


pilots, and it's an industry that is loaded with governmental regulations. So now switching over to


substitutes. Are there many other products and services on the market for your customer to choose


from as a complete alternative to what you offer? And once again, what are the switching costs like?


Is it hard or easy to switch between these things? Could there be an entirely alternate solution to


what you offer or might they abstain entirely? So for example on that, an alternative to a highly


commoditized toilet paper product might be an entirely alternative solution like a bidet.


So what comes to mind is the brand TUSHY who basically took off when COVID-19 hit and


stockpilers made toilet paper scarce. Or perhaps a makeup brand like Sephora faces substitution


in the form of abstention. People who are choosing not to wear makeup at all, perhaps in the wake of


a global pandemic. Okay, so now the final two forces. We have to think about how well buyers and suppliers


can bargain with your company. I feel like I'm using air quotes a lot, but hang with me. So every company


has a supply chain, even service businesses like digital marketing. For traditional manufacturing


companies, suppliers might be the raw materials or transportation providers. For digital marketing


companies like ours, suppliers might be technology companies like Microsoft that provide software.


Or it could be the talent that we hire to do the work. And if demand for those supplies is greater


than the available supply, then the bargaining power of those suppliers creates high pressure.


And this can be due to the quantity of suppliers or the unique needs that you have for securing


those supplies. So for example, if you need GMO-free, organic, locally sourced ingredients from


companies that donate money to offset their carbon impact, those suppliers are probably harder to come


by than suppliers that don't meet those stringent criteria. But if the resources you need are a dime


a dozen, like chips and PC laptops for example, bargaining power of suppliers is lower. So now


switching to buyers, remember that end users and buyers are part of your supply chain too.


If buyers can easily bargain by driving down costs through competition, you have high pressure here.


If you are truly the only player in the market or one of few who do what you do, then the bargaining


power of buyers would be lower. Okay, so let's move on to differentiate. Once you've found the


gap you want to fill, you need to choose your area of focus. Often we make the mistake of trying to be


all things to all people all the time. But brands and individual humans cannot pull this off in a


sustainable way forever. So if you're trying to be adequate at everything, it's difficult to be great


at anything. There's an opportunity cost to everything we spend our time, money, attention on.


So this is why you'll see a lot of companies actually diversify their offerings and spin up


separate business units or product teams. And when they are exploring these new avenues for


business, they don't typically try to make it work using only the resources and talent they have


dedicated to their original line of business. They want to separate off resources and dedication and


focus and budget to ensure that the cash cow piece of their business stays functional and driving


revenue. And this new area of exploration has the right resources to be done right. Now the silos


that occur because of this are a talk for another day. Every business decision has trade-offs, but


we'll talk about that another time. So while it's not impossible, it's very difficult to maintain a


deep focus when you are spread too thin. Now remember that smart strategy is not just choosing


the things you will do, it's choosing the things you won't do. We need to be willing and able to


make hard choices about where to spend our time, budget, energy, and attention. And to get truly


great at something and achieve competitive advantage, you really need to set your sights


on something specific. One problematic example I've heard from a big client is challenging our


paid and organic search team to win at both efficiency and return on ad spend and volume


and share voice at the same time. And the reason this is problematic for anybody who doesn't work


in paid search, efficiency and ROAS have a more selective approach to advertising on certain terms


or topics that ensure we're optimizing for an efficient cost per acquisition. So it results in


a narrower reach but very efficient use of ad dollars. On the flip side, focusing on volume or


achieving the largest share of voice in a space typically requires casting a wider net and traffic


may convert at a lower rate and profit margins and ROAS might be a little tighter. So they don't


really coexist well. Another common challenge is trying to be a company or a person who is both


broad and versatile while also being deeply specialized. And this isn't absolutely impossible,


but maintenance and upkeep becomes very challenging over time. So if your brand wants to be perceived


as the most versatile brand that can adapt to anything or meet everyone's needs, that's great.


It's just difficult to also be perceived as deeply specialized in a certain field. So let's use


groceries as a working example. Walmart may be the generalist for being able to get just about


anything you could possibly want in one place, but Nature's Own might be the deeply specialized whole


organic local food shop. Far less variety and versatility, but you can be assured that everything


they curate in their store hits certain quality and sourcing criteria. So consider what that means


for you as a business or as an individual professional. I have a quick exercise I want to do with you.


If you go to mozcon.vmlyrconnect.com, you can get a full stack of resources and tools to bring


your competitive advantage to life and it has every MozCon talk I've ever done. But let's walk


through a few of the questions real quick that you would ask yourself. Okay, so quick exercise to break


things up. What would you say you do here? What are the core activities that make up your business?


This could be core products or services, core audiences you serve, core problems you solve.


Consider the individuals, decision makers, customers, and firms that you serve.


Are they in certain industries or do they have certain job titles? Where do they get their


information and how can you best reach them where they are? What keeps them up at night? What


problems are they solving or decisions are they making that you could help with? What are points


of friction or frustration that you or your business are uniquely equipped to alleviate?


What do your customers value? According to yet another book, it's called The Purpose Advantage


by Jeff Fromm, the business you're in is defined by what your customer wants, not what you're


selling. So reflecting on this question can help you identify a higher purpose for the company


through the eyes of your customers. Next, you have to be able to answer the why you question


with a unique and persuasive reason. And I love getting to the why behind anything, but if this


doesn't jump out at you immediately, try the five whys exercise. It's an iterative technique that


helps you dig deeper into cause and relation, cause and effect relationships. So you work your way


backward asking why time and again until you get to the core. So let's try an example. So The


Ordinary, they're a makeup company. They sell affordable back to basic skincare products.


They're growing super fast. They just grew to $300 million in sales last year. And they only launched


like three years ago from parent company, Deciem. Brand name recognition and sales volume are off


the charts. Why? The brand is taking off with budget conscious millennials who are over 30 and


take an interest in skincare. Why? None of their products cost more than 15 bucks. Why? Their


products only have the most essential active ingredients and they're skipping unnecessary


stuff like parabens and sulfates and mineral oil and formaldehyde and mercury and a bunch of stuff


I can't pronounce. Why? This creates an affordable skincare regimen without scary unknown ingredients,


all without animal testing and without excess wasteful packaging. And final why, your fifth why,


this hits on morals and values of the millennial skincare audience who want to stay beautiful but


minimize their impact and their footprint in the world without having to pay a premium to do it.


And once you've done the due diligence of truly reflecting on these questions, examine your


answers. Look for clues and patterns that start to formulate a plan for the areas where you can


bring the most unique value to your customers. And competitive advantage can take many, many forms.


There are typically several avenues a brand can take to own a certain customer benefit or audience


segment or industry or price point. So here are a few clues to watch for in the patterns. I'll


only cover a few. Are you the most personalized brand in your space? The ordinary that I was just


talking about? They allow customers to fill out a short questionnaire and their skincare experts


will create a custom skincare regimen for you. Or do you have an incredible community with loyal


advocates and rich conversation that people want to be a part of? Brands like Moz and Tableau seem


to have this advantage in their spaces. Do you have a reputation for constant innovation,


rapid evolution, generally outsmarting the competition or disrupting an industry?


Tesla, for all of Elon Musk's flaws, is iconic for its innovation. They're almost synonymous.


Consider things like supply chain efficiencies, breadth or depth in certain markets, the ratio of


cost to value, ethics and commitment to certain causes. Find the pattern. And now it's time to


boil it down into a simple brand statement to make it crystal clear what your competitive advantage


is going to be. And this is going to help you focus your resources. Do note that this isn't a


simple exercise. It's deceptively simple on screen. If it's too easy, you should probably be skeptical


of whether you've really found your competitive advantage. So put in the work. Writing these


statements is hard and it takes time and you should expect to have to revisit this over time


as your competitive environment evolves or your customers preferences change. So I took the


liberty of writing one for The Ordinary. We, The Ordinary, create high-performing minimalist skincare


products so that cost and cause-conscious skincare enthusiasts can have an ethical, effective skincare


regimen without paying a premium price. And then check your work. Pressure test that brand statement.


Does it meet the five criteria we talked about for competitive advantage? If not, keep digging. And


once you have a clear competitive advantage statement, be sure to connect and reconnect with


that intention time and again. Now that you've discovered your potential competitive advantage


and chosen where to focus, it's time to bring it to life. It's one thing to find it to begin with.


It is entirely another to demonstrate that consistently to your customers. Now the difference


between the average brand that merely puts a mission statement on their website and a brand


with true sustainable competitive advantage is whether they walk the talk in every single thing


that they do. It has to be consistent with your products and services. It has to happen at all


levels of your company. It has to be true in every moment that you're communicating with customers.


And once again, we find ourselves pressure testing competitive advantage, but this time we're asking,


can we realistically live this across departments, offices, teams, roles, initiatives, processes,


marketing efforts, and everything in between? Let's talk about a couple quick questions you


might ask yourself in order to activate competitive advantage in every respect.


How does this affect your existing ways of working? What changes do you need to make in


order to be able to live this fully? If you're just now identifying your competitive advantage


and that's totally okay, you may have work to do in order to make sure that this is consistent


across your organization. What are some things you won't do in support of your purpose? I love


this question. This could either be things that you're choosing not to focus on, or it could be


things you're actively avoiding. What team members can you bring together from across functions and


activate this competitive advantage? Be sure you're providing common language and targets for the team


so you can all be united in action driving toward those competitive outcomes. How are you going to


prove your commitment outside of your organization to your customers? Your team from the top to the


bottom needs to fully believe and commit into this mission, but your customers also need to believe


you too. So ask yourself what proof looks like. How will everyone know if you are in fact achieving


the competitive advantage that you're claiming? And what indicators can measure how you're putting


your competitive advantage to work in action? Make sure to define what winning looks like


and establish a baseline for how you're doing and how the competition is doing. Create metrics that


support that new purpose. A couple of quick examples. Is it a high win to loss ratio when


you're pitching new business or a certain growth trajectory for company size or revenue?


Is it share voice in the industry or among a certain audience segment? Or maybe it is the


retention of your ideal type of client or high referral rates. Whatever it is, just know what you


want to achieve and how the competition currently measures up and then revisit those measurements


regularly. Now please, please know you cannot be casual about competitive advantage. This is not a


hobby. This could be life or death for your business. You have to be obsessed. All right,


last part of the framework is to defend that competitive advantage. Remember, competitive