Now why is that easier in this context, in the context of, uh, someone else helping someone


#WhiteboardFriday: A (Re)Intro to Guest Posting (on Sales-Supported Publishers)

else sell?


Well, let's dig in and talk through the how and you'll see also what makes that possible.


So primarily we're talking about finding publishers with whom you have top of funnel overlap where


some of your top of funnel topics, the pains that your prospective clients have and the


pains their prospective clients have are similar, interrelated.


Perhaps we're talking about audience overlap.


Perhaps we're talking about industry overlap, even location overlap.


There's some kind of overlap here and you're speaking into that place.


Uh, when you're, when you're thinking of topics for a given publisher.


Okay.


Another way to think about it is your, the members of that markets, uh, what we think


of as a solution stack, right?


So in the SEO space, we all have our favorite tool stack, right?


Uh, the tools everybody uses, um, Moz for example.


Well, um, you would be, you know, if you're selling into that, if you're an agency like


citation labs, it might make sense to work and try to get some visibility on a SaaS tool,


uh, in the SEO space.


Um, there's a lot, let's, let's work here a little bit longer though.


Stick on this one a little bit longer and think about unbundling the stack in different


verticals because this is really at the heart of the, the, the process and the approach.


Let's think about your realtor.


Uh, so you're in within your stack or your industry and certainly within your location,


there's going to be some roofers to a handful of these folks are going to have a blocks,


not all of them, but a handful will.


So you're going to approach a roofer with a topic such as 10 reasons to fix your roof


before you put your home up for sale.


Now this solves a roofer problem.


It's reasons to purchase roofing services also gives you an opportunity to talk about


your expertise as a realtor and what impact a roof condition may have on the sale of the


home.


Let's uh, go into this one here.


Uh, commercial ovens, let's say those, you know, uh, brick ovens for pizza.


And we're, we're, we're, we're looking at somebody in the flower space, right?


Maybe a, they've got some organic flower.


Well you've got a guide.


You go write them a guide on why you need to use organic pizza in your, in your pizza


dough for your pizza restaurant.


Okay.


The difference that organic flour can make on the outcome of the quality of the, of the


dough of the crust.


You're going to speak to temperature impact on organic versus not organic.


If there is, there might not be, but let's, let's just for the sake of this, assume there


is.


Um, and then you're also going to have a great chance to link to your, uh, your commercial


pizza ovens.


And if you're on a site that sells flour into the restaurant space, well, it really makes


sense for you to have some visibility there.


Um, let's say you sell cell phones and you're thinking about the fitness or, you know, uh,


health space.


So you can pitch something.


You find, find a physical therapist, you got 10 apps that augment your physical therapy.


This can work just as well for let's say a yoga studio or, um, uh, the CrossFit gym apps


that augment your exercise, your physical fitness regimen.


Um, again, you're putting them first because you're talking about augmenting services or


work that's already going on, right?


This, which is kind of assuming that someone would be their customer would choose to, you


know, go to this physical therapist or would choose to, um, uh, attend yoga classes at


this particular studio.


So this is what we're talking about when we think about or talk about unbundling this


stack.


You see, as we come up with topics that we would pitch, we're putting the publisher first.


Okay.


Always putting the publisher first and recognizing the reason that they publish.


This is the biggest piece guys.


Why do they publish?


They publish because they want to sell services and products.


So you're thinking about topics and formats that are going to support that and that overlap


with what you're selling and how you're functioning.


Um, let's see, here's another good tip.


Try and get calls to action for your publisher into the title.


So you know, we can revise this one.


10 reasons to fix roof before sale of home.


No, 10 reasons to call a roofer before you put your home up for sale or 10 reasons to


call a roofer now if you're going to put your home up for sale in April.


All right.


Um, so there's, there's, again, you're really looking at honing your pitch for the intended


purpose of this publisher group.


You thinking beyond the article, we talked about a little bit, mentioned this earlier.


You're thinking about FAQs, you're thinking about glossaries.


What other types of, what are the formats are, could be strong potential formats and


infographic, a small little infographic.


Um, any of these could be explained or, um, uh, supported through the use of, of graphics.


And again, this is the type of a document or pitch that could be really effective because


the publisher is going to see how it immediately, immediately is going to see how it's, how


it could benefit their sales, the reason why they publish.


You are going to lean into, you're an SEO, right?


You're going to lean into keyword research on your pitch.


Hey, it looked like you're not ranking for some of these terms in your area.


Um, and again, it has to be a, there needs to be overlap for these terms and uh, with


what you're trying to sell or with what your topic needs to be.


But if you've got some basis behind your pitch, some keyword, uh, keyword research to support


your topic and why it's going to benefit the publisher, you're miles ahead of anybody else


who's pitching them.


Um, and then you can even offer some promotion.


You're going to link to it from another placement.


If you get another one, you're going to put it up on Twitter to your following.


Uh, you're going to mention it on Facebook, et cetera.


Maybe even buy some ads for it.


Uh, now one of the key pieces here, it's kind of hidden down here at the bottom.


You're going to make sure that when you're linking to your pages on your site, you're


doing it in the context of a fact based citation.


Ideally, you've got something on your sales page.


We call it a citable element that's fact based.


Ideally your own data that supports a purchase decision.


Ultimately, for example, if you know that your ovens do best with organic flour at 412


degrees instead of 418, you've got the data to support that.


Well, that's a great place and reason to link back to your oven page that would have that


data point mentioned on it.


You are, you're best served by linking in a justifiable manner when, and that's specifically


when we're talking about data.


We're talking about, um, some kind of citation that's, that's is, it needs to be, uh, linked


where the link is, is absolutely, um, mandatory.


A quote for example.


Um, so again, this model or this approach has to be supported by citable elements living


on your sales pages or whatever page you're linking to.


Uh, if you choose to go this route and not necessarily do sales pages.


Whew.


I think that's about it folks.


Probably lots of questions, but that's our approach to guest posting on sales supported


publishers.


Um, give it a shot.


Let me know how it goes.


Love to hear from you.


Garrett at citation labs.com.


I'm happy to answer any questions.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Hey there Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

I'm Austin Peachey, SEO manager at Obility, a Portland-based B2B marketing agency.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Working for a B2B-focused agency, I know it can be hard to navigate the B2B marketing


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

landscape.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

If you want to succeed in B2B SEO, you need to make sure you follow the proper steps.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Today, I'm going to walk you through our roadmap for SEO success.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

The first step on this roadmap is data collection.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

It's so important to have all the data you collect be clean and precise because it's


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

going to help you make crucial decisions down the road.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Three key pieces to that are tracking, filters, and goals.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

For tracking, you need to ensure that your scripts are properly set up so they're collecting


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

data every day.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And to minimize scripts on your website, try to implement as many as you can through Google


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Tag Manager.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Filters are the next step that are really important for clean data.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

These will help you to remove website sessions that have no purpose in your analysis.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

The three key filters to include would be IP filters to remove traffic from your client,


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

your office, or remote workers.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Domain filters to remove traffic from commonly known spam websites.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And hostname filters to ensure that the sessions are actually hitting your website.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Lastly, it's very important to have your goals properly set up.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And you're not tracking things like bounce rate or time on site as a recorded goal.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

These are good metrics to check in on the health of your site, but they're not going


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

to be meaningful enough to make strategic changes on down the road.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

When it comes to B2B SEO, we focus on two different types of goals, micro and macro


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

conversions.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Macro conversions may be things like downloading a white paper or signing up for a newsletter.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Macro conversions focus on bigger lead-based goals like form fills or demo requests.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

The buyer's journey is so much longer when it comes to B2B versus B2C.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And you need to make sure that you are there with conversion points no matter where in


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

the cycle they are.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Once you get your data collection properly working, the next step is to look at the technical


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

health of your website and anything that might impact your indexation or traffic coming into


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

the site.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Focus first on critical crawler issues that may be bogging down your site.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

These could be 404 errors, duplicate content, and website speed performance.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

404 errors affect the crawlability of your site as well as the user experience as they're


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

actually going through your content.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Duplicate content errors can be as major as having two full instances of your website


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

available to crawl as well as something as small as just having a blog post posted twice


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

on your website.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Big or small, though, it's really important to have unique content throughout your entire


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

site.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Site speed and core web vitals are important to both SEO and the user experience.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Work with your web developer to minimize the scripts used on the site, optimize your images,


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

and really just clean up the code.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Once your main crawler issues have been addressed, you can start looking at creating well optimized


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

title tags and meta descriptions.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Make sure these are in for the user and not the search engines.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

A title tag isn't going to make the difference in your position on Google, but it could make


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

a difference in somebody clicking on your posting versus a competitor.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

The Moz Crawler is a great tool to help you improve the health of your site.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

It provides an organized breakdown of all the issues your site might be having as well


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

as tips on how to remedy those issues.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Now that your site is in tip top shape, the next step is to move and do keyword research.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

When doing SEO for B2B companies, it's important to remember that the customer's journey is


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

so much longer than in B2C.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

These purchases are larger and there's more stakeholders that are part of the buying process.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Because of this, when you're doing your keyword research, you need to think about keywords


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

throughout the entire consumer's journey, targeting keywords at the top of the funnel


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

all the way to the bottom of the funnel.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Think of it in this way.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

If your product is a software that does task management, you can't just focus on optimizing


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

for the bottom of the funnel keywords, such as task management software or business organization


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

tool.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Instead, think about the keywords that your user might be searching for just because they


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

have a problem.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

What best way to keep my team organized or tips on how to meet deadlines on time.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Start your keyword research by reaching out to your client and see what keywords are important


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

rather than what they want to focus on.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And then once you have that seed list, expand that by exploring their site, competitor websites,


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Google search console, and keyword tools like the Moz Keyword Explorer.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Once you have this list, it's time to actually prioritize those keywords.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And by prioritize, we don't just mean whatever has the highest volume on a monthly basis.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

It's much more about what is relevant to your product and your consumers and what will eventually


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

drive conversions down the road.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And then now that we know these keywords, our next stop is to actually focus on the


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

content development that goes with these keywords.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Evaluate the existing content on your website and determine whether you need to build something


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

brand new, expand on what you already have, or more likely a combination of both of those


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

things.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

As you develop this content, you have to remember the golden rule, write for users, don't write


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

for search engines.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

The best content is the content people actually find useful and answer their questions.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Make sure your content is easy to read, links to other relevant topics within the content,


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

and cover the keywords you're focusing on as effectively as possible.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

That doesn't always mean writing the longest piece or the piece that really delivers the


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

content most effectively to the user.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

If you aren't sure what to write about, a good place to start is the search engine results


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

for the keyword currently.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

What currently ranks well?


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

What questions are they answering?


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And what was the intent of the user when they made that search?


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Answering these questions will really lead you to develop better content down the road.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

And as mentioned before, with your content, like your keywords, you do need to follow


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

the user through the funnel.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Make sure you're providing content through every stage of where they might be in the


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

buying cycle.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

So having top of funnel contents like strategies on how to meet deadlines will be just as important


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

as detailed content on the software you provide and the benefits it provides to the users.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

By doing this, your company will be seen and be a part of their decision making process,


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

whether they are just beginning to solve their problem or they're ready to go out and make


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

a final purchase.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

The last step on our journey is conversion rate optimization.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

You figured out your keywords, you have great content, but that really doesn't mean much


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

if they're not coming in and actually purchasing your product.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

There are multiple points of conversion rate optimization that you need to pay attention


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

to.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Search engine page conversion optimization, information seeker optimization, and lead


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

optimization.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

As mentioned in our technical health assessment, search engine conversion rate optimization


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

comes from your title tags and your meta descriptions.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

These are the first things your users see as they kind of start on their journey, searching


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

and finding answers.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

You need to make sure they're well written and entice the user to actually click and


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

learn more about you.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Test out different wordings and see what really drives the most clicks.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Information seeker conversion rate optimization is for those users that are really at the


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

beginning of their journey and they just need information.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

They're probably gathering from many different points.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

So you just need to provide them with more information about you, whether it's a case


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

study, a white paper, a video, or it's signing up for your newsletter program.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Lead focus conversion rate optimization is really getting the user to perform the action


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

such as filling out a form, taking a product demo, anything that's kind of that final step


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

before actually making a purchase.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Maximizing these conversions is really what's going to help generate the most revenue for


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

your business.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

The important thing to remember when doing conversion rate optimization is that you aren't


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

just making guesses.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Use heat mapping tools or A-B tests to determine what is actually working the best and then


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

make strategic changes to your site based on those results.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Well there you have it folks.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

That is our roadmap to B2B SEO success.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

Thank you very much for listening.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success

I hope you all have a great day.


The Roadmap to B2B SEO Success


SEO Strategy - The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 1

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to a special edition of Whiteboard Friday series.


I'm Rand Fishkin, the founder and former CEO of Moz, and I'm here with you today because


I'm going to deliver a one-hour guide to SEO front and back so that you can learn in just


an hour the fundamentals of the practice and be smarter at choosing a great SEO firm to


work with, hiring SEO people.


If you are already in SEO, you might pick up some tips and tactics that you didn't otherwise


know or hadn't previously considered.


And I want to ask those of you who are sort of intermediate-level and advanced-level SEOs


– and I know there are many of you who have historically watched me on Whiteboard Friday


and I really appreciate that – to give this video a chance even though it is at the beginner


level, because my hope is that it will be valuable to you to send to your clients, your


potential customers, people who join your team and work with you, developers or software


engineers or web devs who you are working with and whose help you need, but you want


them to understand the fundamentals of SEO.


If those are the people that you're talking to, excellent, this series is for you.


We're going to begin with SEO strategy.


That is our first part.


And then we'll get into things like keyword research and technical SEO and link building


and all that good stuff as well.


So first off, SEO is search engine optimization.


It is essentially the practice of influencing or being able to control some of the results


that Google shows when someone types in or speaks a query to their system.


I say Google, you can influence other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo and Yahoo


and Sejnam if you're in the Czech Republic or Baidu, but we are primarily focused on


Google because Google has more than a 90 percent market share in the United States and in fact


in North America and South America, in most of Europe, Asia and the Middle East with a


few exceptions.


So SEO is a tactic, right?


It's a way to control things.


It is not a business goal.


No one gets into – no one forms a new company or sits down with their division and says,


okay, we need to rank for all of these keywords.


Instead, what you should be saying, what hopefully is happening in your teams is we have these


business goals.


Let's say we're an online e-commerce shop and we sell customized soccer jerseys – football


for those of you outside of the United States.


So we want to grow our online soccer jersey sales.


Great.


That is a true business goal, right?


We're trying to build a bigger audience.


We want to sell more of these jerseys.


In order to do that, we have marketing goals that we want to achieve, things like, well,


we want to build brand awareness, right?


We want more people to know who we are to have heard of our particular brand because


people who have heard of us are going to be more likely to buy from us.


The first time you hear about someone, very unlikely to buy.


The seventh time you've heard about someone, much more likely to buy from them.


So that is a good marketing goal.


And SEO can help with that – we'll talk about that in a sec.


You might want to grow top of funnel traffic.


We want more people coming to the site overall so that we can do a better job of figuring


out who's the right audience for us and converting some of those people, retargeting some of


those people, capturing emails from some of those people, all those good things.


We want to attract ready-to-buy fans, people who are chomping at the bit to buy our soccer


jerseys, customize them, and get them shipped.


SEO, as a strategy, is essentially a set of tactics, things that you will do in the SEO


world to rank for different keywords in the search engines or control and influence what


already ranks in there so that you can achieve your marketing goals, so that you can achieve


your business goals.


Don't get this backwards.


Don't start from a place of SEO, especially if you are an SEO specialist or practitioner


or you're joining a consulting firm.


You should always have an excellent idea of what these are and why the SEO tactics that


you are undertaking fit into them.


If you don't, you should be asking those questions before you begin any SEO work.


Otherwise, you're going to accomplish things and do things that don't have the impact or


don't tie directly to the impact that the business owners care about.


That's going to mean probably you won't get picked up for another contract or you won't


accomplish the goals that mean you're valuable to the team or you do things that people don't


necessarily need and want in the business, and therefore you are seen as a less valuable


part of it.


But if you're accomplishing things that can clearly tie to these, the opposite.


People will really value what you do.


So SEO can do things like rank for low demand, things that don't have a lot of searches per


month but they are high conversion likely keywords.


Like, I'm looking for a customized Seattle Sounders soccer jersey that's in the away colors.


There's not a lot of demand, search demand for that exact phrase, but if you're searching


for it, you're very likely to convert.


You could try and earn traffic from high demand, low competition keywords that are less focused


directly on e-commerce.


So it could be things like Seattle Sounders news or Seattle Sounders stats or comparison


of Portland Timbers versus Seattle Sounders.


These are two soccer football clubs in the Pacific Northwest.


Or you might be trying to do things like building content that attracts links and influencer


engagement so that in the future you can rank for more competitive keywords.


We'll talk about that in a sec.


SEO can do some amazing things, but there are also things that it cannot do.


If you put things in here, if you as an SEO pitch to your marketing team or your business


owners that SEO can do things that it can't, you're going to be in trouble.


So when we compose an SEO strategy, a set of tactics that tries to accomplish marketing


goals that tie to business goals, SEO can do things like attract searchers that are


seeking your content.


It can control how your brand is seen in search results when someone searches for your particular


name.


It can nudge searchers toward queries by influencing what gets suggested in the auto-suggest or


by suggesting related searches or people also ask boxes.


Anything that shows up in the search results, nearly anything, can be influenced by what


we as SEOs can do.


But SEO cannot grow or create search demand by itself.


So if someone says, hey, I want us to get more traffic for this specific keyword, if


you're already ranking number one and you have some videos showing in the results and


you also have, you know, you're in the image results and you've got maybe a secondary page


that links off to you from the results, you might say, hey, there's just not more demand


and SEO by itself can't create that additional demand.


SEO also can't build brand, at least not by itself.


It can certainly be a helpful part of that structure, but if someone says, hey, I want


us to be better known among this audience, you can say, well, SEO can help a little,


but it can't build a brand on its own and it certainly can't build brand perception


on its own.


People are going to go and visit your website.


They're going to go and experience, right, have an interaction with what you've created


on the web.


That is going to be far more of a brand builder, a brand indicator than just what appears in


the search results.


And so SEO can't do that alone.


It also can't directly convert customers.


A lot of the time what we find is that someone will do a great job of ranking, but when you


actually reach the website, right, when visitors reach the website, they are unsatisfied by


the search, which, by the way, is one of the reasons why this one-hour guide is going to


include a section on searcher satisfaction.


When Google sees over time that searchers are unsatisfied by a result, they will push


that result down in the rankings and find someone who does a great job of satisfying


searchers, and they will rank them instead.


So the website has to do this.


It is part of SEO, certainly part of the equation, but SEO can't influence it or control it on


its own.


And finally, last but not least, SEO cannot work overnight.


It just won't happen.


SEO is a long-term investment.


It is very different from paid search ads, right, PPC, also called SEM sometimes, right,


buying from Google ads or from Bing ads and appearing in the sponsored results.


That is a tactic where you can pour money in and optimize and get results out in 24


hours.


SEO is more like a 24-month-long process, and I've tried to show that here.


The fundamental concept is when you have a new website, you need to earn these things,


links and engagement and historical performance in the rankings.


And as you earn those things, right, other people are linking to you from around the


web, people are talking about you, people are engaging with your pages and your brand,


people start searching for your brand specifically, people are clicking you more in the search


results and then having good experiences on your website.


As all those great things happen, you will grow sort of your historical engagement and


links and ranking factors, all these things that we sort of put into the bucket of the


authority of a website, the authority and influence of a website.


And as that grows, you will be able to first, over time, this might be three to six months


down here, you might be able to rank for a few keywords in the long tail of search demand.


And after six to nine months, if you're very good at this, you may be able to rank for


more and more competitive keywords.


And as you truly grow a brand that is well-known and well-thought-of on the internet and buy


search engines, yeah, 12 to 18 months in, maybe longer, you may be able to compete for


tougher and tougher keywords.


When I started the Moz website back in the early days of Google, it took me years, literally


two or three years before I was ranking for anything in Google, anything in the search


engines.


And that is because I had to first earn that brand equity, that trust, that relationship


with the search engines, those links and that engagement.


And today this is more true than ever because Google is so good at estimating these things.


All right.


I look forward to hearing all about the amazing strategies and structures that you've got


probably in the comments down below.


I'm sure it'll be a great thread.


And we'll move on to the second part of our one-hour guide, Cured Research.


8 Rules for Choosing a Domain Name - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we are going to chat about choosing domain names.


And in fact, I've got eight rules for you that will help guide your domain name choices.


Now it could be you're starting a new brand, it could be that you have an existing brand


and you're trying to take it online, it might be that you're working with clients who are


taking their brand online, it could be that you're starting a new company entirely.


I love entrepreneurship, congratulations.


Any of these ways you're going to need a website.


And before you do that, you should really think long and hard about the domain name


that you choose.


And in fact, the brand name that you choose and how that's represented through your domain


name online.


Domain names have a massive impact all over the web in terms of click-through rate from


search to social media results to referring links to type in traffic, brandability, offline


advertising.


There's a huge wealth of places that your domain name impacts your brand and your online


marketing and we can't ignore this.


So first rule that brand has for how to choose a domain name, make it brandable.


Brandable meaning, when you hear the domain name, when you hear yourself or someone else


say it, does it sound like a brand or does it sound like a generic?


So that means that hyphens and numbers are a real problem because they don't make something


sound like a brand.


They make it sound generic or they make it sound strange.


For example, if I try and say to you, let's imagine that our new company that we're starting


together, you and I, is a website that has pasta recipes and potentially sells some pasta-related


e-commerce products on it.


If I tell you that I have pasta-shop.com, well, that's hard to brand.


It's hard to say.


It's hard to remember.


Speaking of, is this brand memorable, right?


So generic keyword strings are a big no-no.


Generic keyword strings, really tough to remember, really tough to stand out in the brain.


You want something unique, which means try and avoid those exact and partial keyword


match domain names.


They tend not to do so well, in fact.


If you look at the numbers that we see in MozCast, for example, or in correlation studies,


you can see that over the past 10 years, they have done nothing but trend down over time


in terms of their correlation with rankings and their ability to show in the search results.


Dangerous there.


I would probably stay away from something like a PastaRecipesOnline.com.


I think BestPasta.com, maybe that's getting a little bit better.


PastaFicionado, well, it sounds brandable, for sure.


It's a little bit challenging to say, but it's definitely unique.


And I really like PastaLabs.com.


Very brandable, unique, memorable, stands out.


I'm gonna remember it.


It has kind of a scientific connotation to it.


Fascinating, right?


So I might think about the domain namespace that way.


Number two, make it pronounceable.


You might say to yourself, Fran, why is it so important that it's pronounceable?


Most people are gonna be typing this in or they're gonna be clicking on a link.


So why does it matter?


And in fact, it matters because of a concept called processing fluency.


It's a cognitive bias that human beings have where essentially we remember and have more


positive associations with things that we can easily say and easily think about.


And that includes pronounceability in our own minds.


This is gonna be different depending on the language that you're targeting and which countries


you're targeting.


But certainly, if you can't easily say the name and others are not easily able to guess


how to say that name, you're gonna lose that processing fluency.


You're gonna lose that memorability and all the benefits of the brandability that you've


created.


And so I might stay away from things like FlowerEggsH2Zero.com.


It's clever.


Don't get me wrong.


It's unique.


It might even be brandable, but it's very difficult to pronounce and to recall.


And when you see it, you don't know if that zero is an O. There's questions about like


what does it necessarily mean or not.


Raviolibertine.com.


Even I'm having trouble saying it.


Raviolibertine.


Right?


I would stay away from a little bit of the getting too clever for yourself.


And many, many domain names do try to do that.


And I might say, you know what?


Something like LandOfNoodles.com, while it doesn't fulfill every requirement that we've


got here, it is eminently pronounceable.


Easy to remember.


These are easy words that many people are very familiar with, at least in English.


Land of Noodles.


Whoops.


I like Land of Noodles.


I'm giving it a check mark.


Well, now I've messed up the whiteboard.


Hopefully Elijah took a picture before I did that.


Oh, he's giving me the thumbs up.


Good.


Number three, make it as short as you possibly can, but no shorter.


Meaning obey these other rules before you just go for raw length.


But length matters.


And length matters because of the processing fluency stuff we talked about before.


But the fewer characters a domain name has, the easier it is to type, the easier it is


to say, to share, the less it gets shortened on social media sharing platforms and in search


results.


Right?


So when you've seen those long domain names, they get compressed or they might not show


fully or the URL might get cut off or you might see just the t.co, all those kinds of


things.


So therefore, short is possible.


Shorter is definitely better.


I might go for something short like mypasta.com, but I'd be careful about going too short.


For example, pastascience.com is a pretty good domain name.


PastaSci, S-C-I.


I've lost that pronounceability and a little bit of that memorability.


It's a little bit tougher.


It's clearly a brand, but it's a little awkward.


I would probably stay away from that one and I'd stick with Pasta Science.


All right.


Number four, bias to dot com.


I know, it's 2016.


Why are we still talking about dot com?


The internet's been around 20 plus years and why does dot com matter so much when there's


so many TLD extension options?


And the answer is, again, this is the most recognized, most easily accessible brand outside


of the tech world.


If you're talking about, look, all I'm doing is addressing developers and my pasta website


only wants to talk to very, very tech savvy individuals, people who already work in the


web world, well, okay, maybe it's all right to go with a dot pasta domain name, right?


Perhaps you can actually buy that TLD extension now that I can as approved all these new domain


names.


But cognitive fluency, processing fluency says, dictates that we should go with something


that's easy, that people have an association with already and dot com is still the primary


thing that non tech savvy folks have an association with.


If you want to build up a very brandable domain that can do well, you want that dot com.


And probably, eventually, if you're very successful, you're going to have to try and go capture


it anyway.


And so I would bias you to get it if you can.


If it's unavailable, my suggestion would be to go with the dotnet.co.co or a known ccTLD.


Those are your best bets.


Known ccTLD might be something like dot ca in Canada or dot it in Italy, those kinds


of things.


That's your next best bet.


I'd still bias you to dot com.


But the penneismightier.com, I'm particularly proud of this one.


I think it's a terrible pun, but you know, man's got to do.


MacaroniMan.net, would I potentially think about that if I couldn't get the dot com?


Yeah, possibly.


If I thought I was targeting a little bit more of a savvy audience and if I was pretty


sure that MacaroniMan.com was owned by a squatter who just wouldn't give it up or it was owned


by a small restaurant somewhere that I never had to really worry about competition with


and they wouldn't sell to me, yeah, okay, I might do it.


What about Impostable.co?


Avoiding the fact that this is another terrible pun of mine.


I might consider that if I absolutely couldn't get Impostable.com and that was already my


domain name and I felt like I had the branding ability to make the dot co something people


would associate with.


I could consider that too.


Number five, super obvious one, but please avoid names that infringe on another company


or another organization's existing trademark or could be confused with that trademark.


You have to be very careful here because it's not whether you think it could be confused,


it's whether you think any judge in the jurisdiction in which they might take legal action against


you would consider those two things to be potentially misrepresented or potentially


confusable.


It's not your judgment, it's not even your audience's judgment, it's what you think a


judge in the jurisdiction might have the judgment about.


This is dangerous waters.


I would urge you to talk to your attorney or legal professional about this if you have


real concerns, but there is the danger and this does happen regularly throughout the


web's history where a trademark owner will come and sue a domain owner, someone who's


owning the domain legitimately and using it for business purposes or just someone who's


purchased it and is sitting on it and that sucks.


This can also create brand confusion which is hard for your brand ability.


You might be familiar with some pasta brands that have done particularly well here in the


US like Barilla and Ronzoni and Rusticchella di Abruzzo.


Well, I probably would not go get Barzilla.com even if you have a hilarious Godzilla themed


pun that you want to make about the pasta.


Just because your name might be Ron and you are covering pasta, I still would not go with


Ronzoni.


I'm going to X those both out.


Likewise Rusticchella owns, apologies for my poor Italian pronunciation, but Rusticchella


owns Rusticchella.it.


They don't seem to own Rusticchella.com.


I think that's owned by a domain name owner, but I would not go start up a website there.


Barilla certainly could with their US presence go and claim trademark ownership of that domain


and potentially get it from you.


I would think that was risky.


Number six, make the domain name instantly intuitive.


If you believe that a member of your target audience, the audience that you're trying


to reach now and in the future, could immediately associate the domain name with a good guess


of what they think you do, that is a big positive.


Being able to look at that domain name and say, oh, I'm guessing they probably do this.


This is probably what that company is up to.


Something clever and subtle like savorythreads.com, okay, yeah, once I get to your site, I might


realize, oh, I see, it's sort of a playful word game there and savory, I get that it's


about food, but it's too clever in my opinion, right?


And it doesn't instantly suggest to a majority of your audience what it is that you do.


Likewise, analonitaizidi.com, well, yeah, maybe I could guess that these are probably


pasta names and it probably means that the website has something to do with that, but


they're not traditionally very well known pastas, at least here in the United States.


Those shapes are not particularly well known.


And so I might cross that one out too, versus something where it is clearly, clearly about


recipes for and potentially sales of goods, pastaprofected.com, right?


That's obviously intuitively about what it is going to be and anyone from your audience


could figure that out.


Number seven, keyword use in domain names you might think is an important thing and


that would be something that I would mention here from an SEO perspective.


It can help.


I'm going to be wrong.


It can help mostly for this instant intuition portion and the cognitive fluency and processing


fluency biases that we've talked about, but also a little bit from an SEO perspective


because of the anchor text that you generally will accrue when people link over to your


domain.


But what we've been seeing, as I mentioned earlier, is that Google's been biasing away


from these exact match and partial match keywords.


I would say that if you can get a keyword mention in your domain name that helps make


it obvious what you're about, go for it.


But if you're trying to target what would be called keyword rich or keyword targeted


domains, I would generally stay away from those actually in 2016.


They just don't carry the weight that they used to and there's a lot of associations,


negative associations that users and search engines have about them that would make me


stay away.


So I would not do something like a recipesforpasta.com.


I wouldn't do something like bipastaonline.com.


I would be tempted to in fact go for something very, very broad like gusto.com.


Think about a brand like an amazon.com, which clearly has no association with what it is,


or Google itself, right?


Google.com or a domain here in the Seattle area that serves lawyers that's called avo.com.


These are very, very well branded and associated with their niches, but they don't necessarily


need to have a keyword richness to them.


Another great example, the find a dog sitter, right?


Or find pet care website rover.com.


Well, rover has an association with dogs, but it's not really keyword rich.


It's more of a creative association, just like gusto means taste in Italian.


So I might be tempted to go in that direction instead, same thing with something like handcut.com,


right?


People have that.


Especially foodies are going to have that association between handcut and pasta.


Number eight, if your domain name is not available, last one, it is okay to go out there and add


a suffix or a prefix.


It is okay to use an alternate TLD extension like we talked about previously.


And it's okay to be a little bit creative with your online brand.


For example, let's say my brand name is pasta Terra.


Maybe I've already got a shop somewhere maybe in the Seattle area and I have been selling


pasta at my shop and now I'm going online with it.


Well, it is okay for me to do something like the pasta Terra.com or pasta Terra shop.com


or even pasta Terra.net.


I could, if I wanted to be very targeting a much more tech savvy set and was aware of


the branding difficulties, I could conceivably go with something like Terra.pasta, right?


Because that pasta TLD extension is now available.


But I could get a little bit broader.


In fact, I might prefer this and go with something like Rand of the Terra or Randstara.com or


eat at Terra.


If I were a restaurant, I might do something like eatatterra.com.


So with these rules in mind, I would love to hear from all of you about your domain


choices and your domain name biases and what you think is working in 2016 and potentially


not working.


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


Extract SEO Value from SERPs with Knowledge Graph and Answer Boxes - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're talking about the rich answers, instant answers, direct answers, whatever


you want to call them that Google and Bing are providing in search results that are taking


away a lot of clicks from those search results that people look for.


And I think the big four that SEOs are concerned about are what I'm going to walk through first


and then we'll talk about some tactical ways that marketers can actually work around them


or even take advantage of them.


So the first one here is what I'm calling the customized instant answer.


This is where Google has essentially said, hey, we're going to custom build something


for this type of a query that shows this kind of an answer box.


And you can see these for math equations, for weather kinds of searches.


The one I'm showing here is specifically around sports and schedules.


So I searched for Seattle Mariners, the local baseball team here in Seattle, who today as


of filming it is their opening day, April 7th.


So Seattle Mariners schedule is actually showing, right, well, it's actually showing the score


in real time since the game's going on as I'm filming.


But below that it shows scores and schedules and it says, you know, four six versus the


Angels live at the bottom of the sixth, four seven versus Angels seven ten p.m., et cetera,


et cetera.


So it actually goes all the way down here.


And if you click on any of these, you'll get more detail about where the game's being hosted


and where you can watch it on television.


Google's essentially said, hey, you know what?


No one should ever have to click on any results to get all of the key information about the


schedule.


If you're looking for far out scheduler stuff or very specific kinds of things, maybe you


might go to there.


But they even have links in here directly to buy tickets online.


So really they're taking away a lot of the clicks here.


Second, the Knowledge Graph answer.


This is where Google essentially is using their Knowledge Graph to provide a specific


answer.


You can think of this as connecting up with entities or concepts, brands, right?


Those kinds of things.


And I search for Mariners mascot.


Google will give me this little box from their Knowledge Graph that says Mariner Moose, the


Seattle Mariners, comma, mascot.


And they have a little logo there.


They don't actually show a picture.


I have to scroll down if I want to get images.


But the next link there, of course, is the Mariner Moose web page on seattle.mariners.mlb.com.


It's a lot of subdomains, Major League Baseball, but we'll deal with that later.


And then the third one, Knowledge Graph sidebar.


This is probably what we're most accustomed to when it comes to the Knowledge Graph where


I search, I get a list of results, but then there's also a Knowledge Graph piece on the


right hand side.


This one's showing Seattle Mariners baseball team.


There's the logo, arena, location, our manager, some details about the team, where some of


this data is extracted from, et cetera.


Typical Knowledge Graph kind of result off to the side.


And then fourth, and potentially most perturbing, I think, for many SEOs, many marketers, is


the extracted instant answer.


This is an answer that Google has pulled from a website, potentially your website, and they're


showing right in the results that full answer without a searcher needing to visit the page.


Most of the time they will cite the page.


Some of the time they don't even cite where the page, where the answer came from, which


means you don't even have an opportunity to earn that click.


Even more insanely frustrating.


But in this case, I've searched for baseball, how many players, right, how many players


on a baseball team.


You can phrase this query in a bunch of different ways and you will get a Major League Baseball


roster is a roster of players able to play, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.


The 25-man roster and the 40-man roster.


Okay, so there's two different kinds of rosters in baseball and Google is building a big answer,


big long answer to try and explain this and then sending you to the Wikipedia page if


you need more detail.


So these four kinds of things are causing a ton of consternation in our field.


There was a study from Stone Temple Consulting out in Boston that Eric Engi and Mark Trapp-Hagan


put together where they looked and saw that over a large quantity of search results, I


believe it was 800,000 search results set, almost 20%, 19% of those had rich answers


in some format, direct answers in the SERPs like one of these.


And I think that even excluded number three here, the knowledge graph.


So that's a lot of queries where Google is taking away potentially a ton of traffic.


You might say, hey, well, in the long tail and in the chunky middle, it's probably not


as bad as it is in the fat head of query demand, but this is still very significant for a lot


of folks.


And so there's two ways to think about this.


One is strategically and one is tactically.


And so my first advice is on the strategy side of SEO.


So when you're thinking about knowledge graph and instant answers and these kinds of things,


how they affect your results, the first thing I'd ask is, is the branding of extracted answers


a worthwhile SEO investment?


If you get this, like Wikipedia has here, is that actually worthwhile for you?


Or is that something where you say, you know what, we're not going to concentrate on it.


And therefore, from saying, hey, that's not an investment for us, anytime we start to


see these types of results, we're no longer going to make a considerable SEO investment


there.


We don't really care if our competition gets it.


We'd rather focus our energy, attention, dollars, people, time on the organic results where


we think we can earn a higher click through rate and actual traffic rather than just the


brand association.


Or you might say, brand association matters hugely.


We want very much to be associated with baseball.


We're trying to build this up.


It would be great if we could replace Wikipedia here.


We'd be thrilled even if we didn't get the traffic.


And then you need to go through the step of actually building some analytics.


We need to say, hey, how are we going to measure when we get these kinds of results the potential


volume that's going on there?


And then how are we going to record that as a success?


Because you won't be able to see it in your visitor analytics or in any metric that is


directly associated with your website.


Second strategic one, what kinds of content investments could Google replace with instant


answers?


Content investments that we are making or that we are planning to make.


And if they could replace them, how likely do we think that is?


And does that change our strategy around what we want to invest in from a content perspective,


from an SEO perspective for the future?


If we say, hey, you know what?


We are in the online printing business.


And we think that Google will soon have a price comparison in search, direct answer


kind of thing, like they have for flight search in our field.


You know what?


Maybe we want to shy away from that.


And we want to go down a different avenue for the content that we're going to create.


That could be something that goes into your calculus around decision making.


I would urge you to at least consider the possibility and know where your threat vectors


are from a Google taking us over in the SERPs perspective.


And then three, do we want more customized answers?


If you're Major League Baseball or the Seattle Mariners, this is actually probably a godsend.


This is a wonderful thing.


Reason being, it helps folks directly find so fast where they can watch it on television,


where to buy tickets online.


This is actually probably wonderful for the Seattle Mariners.


And they don't actually care that much, at least from a strategic perspective, an overall


perspective.


They don't care that much whether this is costing them a lot of traffic to their website


because it's bringing great value to the brand.


And Google is sending folks directly to the authoritative site.


So this means from an SEO perspective, you don't get spammers or manipulators or ticket


resellers who are taking over this search space for them.


So depending on the kind of brand you are, the kind of organization you are, instant


answers might be a great thing.


In which case, you might want to think about how can we partner more deeply with Google?


What can we provide in a structured format?


How do we get that information to them in that kind of way where they will hopefully


replace a lot of these fathead queries with exactly what we're hoping they do in a fast,


efficient manner for searchers?


Next up is tactical plans to consider.


I think the first one is most important here.


When you are doing your keyword research and your keyword evaluation, I think one of the


things that many, many folks are still missing from this is a column that looks at keyword


opportunity.


Historically, we've had a bunch of things when we do keyword research.


We look at here's our keyword column.


We look at difficulty.


We might look at volume.


We might look at potential value to the business.


We were looking at how successful it was when we purchased that keyword and what the conversion


rates were like.


All those kinds of things, right?


Path to conversion, et cetera, et cetera.


One of the things we have not historically focused on is keyword opportunity, meaning


the click-through rate opportunity.


You could do something like a bucket, high, medium, and low.


I put HML here.


You could say something like, hey, we think that this alters the click-through rate curve,


random guess, 30%, 40%, whatever it is, and use some numbers to classify those so that


when you're actually doing keyword research and choosing which keywords to consider, you


make the right kinds of decisions.


A lot of the time you might see, hey, this has high volume.


The difficulty is not that bad.


Oh, shoot.


But Google has an instant extracted answer that is taking up 30% of the above the fold


space, 40% of the above the fold space.


SERP number one is probably getting 20% of the click-through rate that it would ordinarily


get if that instant answer weren't there.


That needs to be a part of our calculations going forward.


Second, what kinds of content and kinds of invent are searchers who are not satisfied


by the knowledge graph or instant answer listing?


What are they searching for and how?


Because that is an opportunity for us to get around this problem.


If I search for Seattle Mariners schedule, but what I'm actually looking for is I only


want to see away games that are in three states that I'm going to be visiting.


Well, you know what?


Actually, this isn't enough.


I need to go directly to the page.


That might be an intent that I'm going to try and serve very easily from a user experience


perspective on the page that ranks first, that's on, what is it, seattle.mariners.mlb.com.


That question, if you can answer that effectively and find a bunch of those, you may in fact


over time be able to get rid of those instant answers.


You've probably seen there have been examples where Google had an instant answer, had a


knowledge graph, got rid of it.


My perception is that a big reason for that is that searchers weren't clicking those,


they weren't taking advantage of them, and instead they were choosing results below the


instant answer and so Google got rid of it.


Nice thing there.


Should we be creating or avoiding structured data for Google to use and will our competition


do that?


You need to make a decision.


Hey, should we create structured data that Google can easily pull into knowledge graph,


easily pull into instant answers?


If we don't do it, will our competition do it?


Do we care if they do it, if we don't do it?


It's a little bit of prisoner's dilemma sometimes, but you've got to make the call there and


I think that's something SEOs should do in their tactical plan around keywords.


Next, do we need to control for search traffic changes with knowledge graph and instant answers


in our analytics or our forward-looking estimates?


If you say to yourself, hey, it's only a matter of time before we started seeing some tests


here, we expect Google's going to roll this out in our space around our site, how is that


going to impact us and what does that mean for our year-over-year search estimates for


SEO, traffic estimates for SEO, or what does it mean for how much we think we can grow


this year in the future, that kind of thing.


Looking backwards, if this has been introduced, how much did that change our results sets


and our traffic and do we think that could happen more or less and have we put that into


our analytics so that we recognize, hey, our SEOs did great work, Google just took a lot


of the traffic away from us from an opportunity perspective.


And then the last one I think we need to think about is very deep in the tactical trenches


but that is did the titles, descriptions, and even the keyword targets that we're focused


on, those need to focus on longer tail or more specific types of questions and searcher


intent.


So we might say, hey, you know what, I'm willing to sacrifice ranking for Mariner's mascot


but I really want to rank for Mariner Moose videos.


I really want to rank for Mariner Moose costumes.


I really want to rank for whatever those extra intents, those things deeper down the funnel


and those long tail parts of the query might be and that could change the types of content


and keywords that you invest in.


All right, everyone, I know Knowledge Graph and instant answers can sometimes be very


frustrating for us but I hope you'll apply these tactics and recommend some more in the


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


Take care.


Goal Driven Content and Community Efforts - Whiteboard Friday

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


This is a special White Beard Friday edition of our show.


We of course have the annual tradition where I wear the beard but you know the beard gets


in the way of a lot of me talking to you so I'm just going to wear the hat for today.


I hope that's alright and I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season.


Christmas and Hanukkah start the same day this year.


New Year's of course, Kwanzaa, whatever you're celebrating a very happy holiday to you.


So let's chat about exchanging more value with the contributors to your content and


community efforts.


So basically I think in the holiday season we talk a lot about exchange of value and


exchange of gifts and of giving and that's wonderful.


We do this on our websites as well.


So you're watching Whiteboard Friday.


You might leave a comment in our comment section.


You might tweet about this.


You might put it on Facebook.


You might share it on LinkedIn.


There's sort of a community of things going on here, right?


Most of the ideas that I have for Whiteboard Friday come from people like yourself in the


community who have ideas and questions, concerns and issues and that's a wonderful thing.


But what I've found is that 99 percent of the time we all follow exactly the same patterns


in our content and our community efforts with how we basically use each other's value and


exchange value with each other.


So here's the challenge.


The hat's just swinging around and hitting me.


It's great.


So you have kind of three groups, three major groups that I would consider community exchangers


of value.


Those are people like commenters and onsite contributors, your social media followers


and fans and people who engage with you through social and then influencers and experts and


sort of broadly speaking amplifiers, right, people who do this.


And there's definitely – look, lots of the people who might be commenters are also influencers.


Lots of the people who are social media followers may also be onsite commenters.


That's definitely the case.


But traditionally the contributions look like this.


For these folks when they leave comments they are seeking answers and visibility, right?


So they want to show maybe something that they've done and they also want an answer


or reply from you or from someone in the community.


They have questions about it.


And for you, you know, they're creating – oh, I promised myself I was going to do red and


green because I'm a very Christmassy Jew this year – more content and SEO for you, which


is great, right?


And that's one of the big values of comments absolutely speaking.


This is one of the reasons we try and render comments on the page so that the engines can


crawl them.


It can help you rank for more long tail stuff.


It can certainly help you with engagement metrics and all those kinds of things.


Now for guest content, which a lot of folks do create and allow – Moz certainly has


through – historically through YouMoz and soon we're going to be allowing that through


the main blog so you might be seeing more guest contributions there, right?


Visibility for them and content and SEO for you.


Same story there.


Okay, now shares and replies, right?


On social it's essentially you are helping to – when you create content and when you


– whether that's content on the social media platform or on your own website that


you're amplifying, when other people share that content or they like it, they reply to


it, they amplify it, that's new fans and followers and content for them hopefully,


right?


And it's more reach and visibility for you.


With influencers, experts, and amplifiers, pretty much the story is like more influence


for them, right, through contributing to your content or promoting your content and more


reach for you through those influencers and experts audiences.


And this is certainly powerful and useful too.


With roundups, which I think unfortunately have become the default style in which people


use influencers and experts in many, many fields, right, it's more visibility for


them hopefully because they appear in that roundup, they have their name cited, all that


kind of thing, and you're hoping that they're going to share it and amplify that content


so that you get more reach to their audience.


Maybe they'll even link to it which will get you links.


Okay.


I want us to think broader.


So what I believe is that being the exception to this rule can be hugely helpful.


Essentially if everyone else is doing something in one way, doing it another way, doing it


a different way will fundamentally add more value to your content and SEO efforts.


So if we're talking about these commenters and onsite contributors, I want you to think


about profiles.


This is something that most comment plug-ins don't allow by default, right?


Just creates a profile, but that profile lives on discuss as a site, not on your site.


Think about your Moz profile, right?


Think about your LinkedIn profile.


Think about the profile that you create on lots of community-focused websites like in


inbound.org or Hacker News or something, right?


There's fundamental value to having that.


You can own that content.


You can now promote that page.


You can rank in search engines with it, all those kinds of things.


Written citation suggestions like places like Wikipedia have, others have notable ones.


Medium obviously has the highlighted section, right?


It's a little more creative.


And featured comments, which places like the New York Times do.


I think if you are an editorial content creator and you want to amplify the visibility of


comments and encourage people to share great comments, a featured comment system is a valuable


one.


Here on Moz we used to show comments ordered by the date in which they were left, right,


or the timestamp of when they were left.


And now we order them based on thumbs, which encourages people to have a great comment


because it will have the most visibility because it got the most thumbs up.


With social media folks, I would think about some of the content.


You can create content that features social contributions, thus encouraging people to


follow you and contribute and reply to and amplify your tweets or Facebook shares or


LinkedIn because they will get additional visibility from that.


You can think about collection and amplification of data that you collect through polls and


short surveys.


Facebook and Twitter are great about allowing those.


Promotion of other people's social accounts.


One of the things that I think far too few social accounts do is actually call someone


out by name and say, hey, this is another really valuable page on Facebook that you


should check out or this person did this wonderful thing.


I see too few Twitter accounts, including the Moz Twitter account, doesn't call out


as many people in non-reply tweets as we probably should or could.


I think that's another wonderful thing that we can do.


And use of social, of course, in testimonial and promotional content.


We started doing that where we essentially said, hey, someone said something really nice


about us on Twitter or on Facebook or on LinkedIn.


Let's reach out to them and say, hey, could we use that on our website, on our product


page to help get you visibility and show that you're an expert in this field, but also to


help us sell this product that you apparently love.


Win-win there.


Again, wonderful way to creatively use that same type of content.


And last, with influencers, with experts, with amplifiers, I think there's vastly more


ways to do this than roundups.


First off, I've seen some folks create some great email discussion, help each other type


of lists.


I'm part of a few of those.


I love them.


There's great content on there.


I think this is a wonderful way to get influencers and experts on your side in the long term


and to help them help each other as well as you.


I've also just recently become part of a few BCC email lists where a couple of content


creators in the technology and entrepreneurship space, when they have new content to share,


they share it first with this BCC email list before they even promote it to their regular


audiences.


That's awesome.


That gives me a chance to be one of the first people to show it to everyone.


I of course benefit from that through sharing with my audiences, and they benefit through


the additional visibility that I give them.


Surveys and data gathering, I'm a much bigger Beliezer in surveys and in showing data than


in roundups.


I think roundups that just are text only and have a bunch of text, rather than show data


from a lot of influencers and saying, hey, we interviewed 100 startup CEOs, and we got


these five data points from each of them, and here's the distributions.


Vastly more interesting than here's the two sentences of advice that every startup CEO


gave about how to hire your first engineer, right?


That kind of thing.


Featured commentary and input on content is another way to do this.


Essentially, you share content with influencers.


You say, hey, if you have some featured comments or some ideas around that, send that back,


and we will include it in the launch of that content.


Lovely stuff there.


I've been part of a few of those, and I love those.


Discussion or debate as actual content.


The FiveThirtyEight folks have been brilliant about this, where they invite on guest contributors


and experts, and then they feature that discussion.


Some other political sites and places like The Stranger have done that.


Wonderful stuff.


Getting creative with how you exchange value with your content and community contributors


is an awesome way to go.


I hope in 2017, I see a lot more of this stuff, maybe even a little less of this stuff.


All right, everyone.


Hope you have a great holiday season and a great year.


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


I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Okay, you don't want to miss this next session.


We're going to get started in just a second here.


You know those SEOs that you kind of sense that they know things that you don't know


and they have skills that you don't have and you kind of want to know what their secrets


are?


Russ Jones is exactly one of those people.


So one of the things he knows about is making money.


And that's the title of his talk, You Want to be Rich?


How to Make Your Consultancy Profitable, something he knows a lot about.


He used to work with a successful consultancy.


Then he became a researcher.


He's built tools.


He's bought and sold businesses.


He knows every aspect of the business.


This is going to be an informative session.


I'm sure we're going to enjoy it.


I'm going to kick it over to our friend Russ Jones.


Take it away, Russ.


You are not going to make it.


The truth is, if you think your talent and effort will make your business succeed, you


won't make it.


In fact, 25% of all new businesses will fail in the first two years.


Made it past the first two year mark.


Great.


Good for you.


45% will fail within the first five years.


Made it past five, even better.


But 65%, almost two thirds will fail within the first 10.


Why is this?


What is the reason for businesses failing left and right?


Are people just terrible at their jobs?


Well, the truth is, is that we believe in an entrepreneurial economy where we take people


who are excellent at doing one thing and then ask them to run a business that does that


thing.


So today, I'm going to talk about something that I hate.


I just truly hate it.


It's hard to describe, but the reality is that business decisions matter so much about


how effective your agency or consultancy will be.


So today, I'm going to use the wisdom of the masses, the information I've been able to


get from others across the web, people I've known for years running agencies and consultancies.


And hopefully, we'll be able to get through some of this hard stuff about business and


be able to help you build the kind of agency and consultancy that you want to have.


But as I've said, I hate this stuff.


I hate it.


I've always hated it.


I've always liked SEO.


In fact, the last two jobs I have taken, I've made it clear on the negotiation table that


I want absolutely nothing to do with making business decisions.


But this graph right here shows exactly how I feel about it.


You know, there are things that I consider important, arguing on the internet and other


things that I hate.


But the reality is that business decisions have got to be the thing that I think is most


important and I dislike.


So we're going to start with costs and then deal with earnings and then get through the


business stuff.


And then we'll be able to talk about SEO.


But we've got to cover the hard stuff first.


And the hardest part by far is people.


People are expensive.


In fact, 74% of individuals on a survey I provided reported that staffing is the majority


of expenses.


And that's not unique to our industry.


But we've also heard from these same individuals that moving away from the kind of stereotypical


agency format of a bunch of full time employees to a contractor led type of company has been


more effective.


But how do we do that?


How do we do that safely?


And is it actually beneficial?


Well, there's a lot that we can learn.


So what do we do?


Do we just fire everybody and replace them with contractors?


Well, not exactly so fast.


It turns out that when we just look at businesses that have made the decision to significantly


decrease the number of employees, 83% of the time they found that that was significantly


financially valuable.


Now, bear in mind, the majority of businesses have not significantly cut their staff.


But those who have have found it valuable.


But the reverse is true as well.


We find that 69% of businesses that have made the same kind of decision except to increase


staffing have seen financial benefit from it.


But there is a big difference there, almost a 14 point difference.


That kind of feels bad because people are important.


We care about people.


People are the reason we have businesses.


I think instead what we need to start doing is thinking about a traditional model versus


a modern model.


The traditional model is full time with almost everybody showing up to the office and working


all day.


It requires lots of generalists.


It requires people dedicate a very large amount of time to learning how the business works


versus a modern model where we're kind of focusing more on contractors, more on project


managers.


This doesn't mean that we're employing fewer people.


It just means that we're using them in a different way.


Of course, you have to think about this from an ethical position as well.


Our goal here is not to replace people and put them into jobs that are not worth taking.


Instead we want to treat our contractors with the same degree of respect and dignity and


frankly pay them the difference now that they're specialists that we would have been paying


were they full time employees.


But of course, the only cost isn't just people.


It's rent.


Now, we've actually seen something really interesting over the last several months,


which is that most of us have been forced to go remote, if not all of us.


But several businesses have gone remote or at least partly remote well before COVID-19.


Now, a good percentage of companies report that rent is their second largest percentage


of expenses.


In fact, the company I worked at several years ago, it was rent that really dug our grave


on several occasions because we made plans based on the growth of our company.


And when we were shocked by certain changes, it meant that we were still stuck in the bad


rent contracts.


So how have businesses done that have moved to an all remote or mostly remote strategy?


Well, it turns out that most of the time companies have found this very beneficial.


In fact, of the companies that have chosen to go fully remote, 85% of them have said


it's been financially beneficial.


They've reported that it's allowed them to be a lot more profitable, and they've reported


that they've actually seen increases in employee productivity.


Now, I'm the first to say that going remote is not a panacea.


In fact, you need to be very careful about company culture, about the mental health of


your employees who are now working in an isolated environment, but it's certainly something


worth considering.


Now, here's the one that we almost never consider, mutiny.


Think about it.


When's the last time your company has ever even considered its leadership and whether


or not they should remain?


I think this is a legacy issue.


It's the fact that our companies have almost all been guru led for decades, where we start


with one person who knows SEO really well and might have some sort of really good personality,


so they speak on stages and they get business.


That doesn't make them good leaders or good business leaders in particular.


Now, this is a tough one because we're talking about people we care about and people who


are important to the business.


In fact, what we find is that companies that have taken the choice to get rid of some of


their leadership have only found by a small margin for that to be profitable.


Of course, we also see in these anecdotes that a lot of the time these decisions have


been made as a result of infighting or that the leadership changes weren't really about


profitability and instead were about some other behavior that resulted in the need for


a person to go.


But it is important to think about your employees in the same way that you think about your


leadership and that is that no one is above the company.


Everybody is in this together.


I know it's difficult to talk about all of those cost issues, but let's move on to the


stuff that we care about a little bit more, which is about making money.


How do we increase our earnings?


One of my favorites is what I call the paradox of cutting services to earn more money.


It seems kind of strange that you would get rid of business lines and then actually end


up making more.


But this is basic economics.


You see, what we're looking at instead is the opportunity to focus on the things that


we're really good at.


New businesses often are stuck in this kind of situation where we think that we have to


take on every type of job that's offered to us or we won't be able to keep our doors open.


But that is a fool's errand.


Ultimately, you'll be doing poor jobs on work that you're not good at and you'll build a


bad reputation that will make it harder in the future for your business to succeed.


So instead, what we want you to do is to focus on what you can master and then multiply the


services that are based on that, but get rid of the ones that ultimately you can't perform


on.


Now, this actually has led to one of my favorite sayings, which has helped me land so many


contracts, which is when a customer comes to me and has four or five things that they


want, but one or two are things you don't offer, it just feels really good to say to


them, you know what?


We just don't do so and so.


We only do the things we're really good at.


I'd be happy to share you with some specialists, individuals who are really good at this one


or two things, but as a business, I'm not going to sell you a product that we're not


proud of.


And what you'll find is that this will engender better loyalty and better relationship with


your customers and you'll be able to do a better job and then just pass the work on,


the specialty work to your contractors who are able to then do a better job than you.


So what we have found is actually 85% of businesses that have cut service lines have said that


it has been financially beneficial.


This is one of, if not the strongest and most profitable recommendations we found across


the board.


But of course, sometimes it makes sense to add service lines and 72% of businesses that


had added service lines reported that it was profitable.


So how do we do this in a way that is safe?


Well there are a couple of things that we can do.


The first thing we can do is ask existing clients whether or not this is something that


they're interested in.


And instead of diving in completely head first, we can look at white labeling or finding some


basic proofs of concept so that we're able to test out the waters, so to speak.


But an important thing to do is to make sure that you plant a certain number of these new


types of business lines rather than just one at a time.


It's almost like a competitive relationship where we're looking at a number of service


lines all at the same time to see which ones perform best.


Now hopefully what we'll be able to do is over time whittle down these new service lines


so that we can get rid of the ones that aren't working.


Don't be afraid to abandon ship quickly.


You see the earlier that you fail, the faster that you can try again with something else.


But hopefully one of those trees that you planted and nurtured will grow.


And eventually you'll find that service line that it's complementary and valuable and will


allow you to grow your business.


Often these are complementary in the sense that they rely on very similar skill sets


from what you've offered before.


It's an easy way to identify new potential business lines.


Look at what your staff is already capable of doing and then determine what you can use


those people to accomplish in the time that they might have available.


Now this is probably my personal favorite.


While cutting service lines has always been useful, this was the one that surprised me


the most every time when I worked for a consultancy, which was just raising prices.


It seems silly at first.


I remember the first and the second and the third and the fourth time always thinking


there's no way that we can raise prices.


People are going to say no.


People just aren't going to buy our products anymore.


But that's just not the case.


Now of course there is a right and a wrong way to do it.


Of businesses that have chosen to raise prices, 88% said that it helped them financially.


That means that roughly one in 10 ended up finding out that their customers by and large


weren't willing to follow suit.


But nearly 90% were.


So don't be afraid to raise prices.


But make sure you do it in a way that is polite and that is thoughtful of your customers.


I think there are maybe three or four steps that you should follow.


The first is you should announce this early.


Tell your customers, look, we're going to be raising prices in the future.


Cost of doing business has increased.


We want to invest in better products, et cetera.


Just let them know.


Second, if that customer seems to be tight on budget or hesitates, be willing to grandfather


them in for a while.


This will engender trust and loyalty with them.


They'll be happy about the fact that they get to get this better service but at their


existing price.


And you're nowhere soft than you were before.


Now the third thing is to be able to push this value proposition.


Now that you've got a higher priced product, you've also got the opportunity to show people


why that product is worth it, what value you can afford, what things you can do that you


couldn't before.


And then finally and most importantly, now that you've raised your prices, you're actually


able to just deliver better products and services.


It's that simple.


You can't build a reputation.


If you're working with resources that are insufficient to actually accomplish the work


that you promised.


So if we're talking about checking chicken and egg, we're talking about the siding between


raising prices and offering better services.


You've got to raise prices first and it's going to work.


In many cases, you'll be surprised to find that your customers are a lot happier with


a better quality product at a higher price.


So we've moved on from the costs and the earnings.


We're done with the business part.


Now for the fun part.


Now for SEO.


How do we do a better job as a consultancy or agency in making money that doesn't really


involve just business decisions?


Well, by far the first one has got to be automation.


In fact, 81% of businesses that have invested in automation have said that it was profitable.


It was worth it.


So what I think is that there are basically four different levels of automation.


The first level of automation is just to take advantage of the tools you already have.


So in this case, I'm assuming that a good number of you are Moz customers and you can


set up recurring or one-time PDF reports for automation within your campaigns.


In fact, if you haven't done this yet and you're a Moz customer, just stop the presentation


now, hop on a conference call with your other employees, ask forgiveness for the sins you've


committed against them for not automating, and then put some of this automation in place.


This presentation will be waiting for you later.


Just get this done.


It's so important and will make your business a lot more efficient.


So these are just some basic reports that are available from scratch.


Just inside of Moz's system, you simply select them.


The basic levels and the ones that I've highlighted here, like a competitive analysis, are the


types of things that you would expect out of seeing your family doctor for a checkup


every year.


The vast majority of websites benefit from just basic level of automated reporting because


there are certain things you just have to know in order to make sure that your website


is doing well.


But good automation begets better automation.


You see, once you find out from those regular reports, like a quick site audit, that there's


something missing, that there's something wrong, well, then you've got the opportunity


to use other forms of automation, like running a deeper full site audit report to identify


exactly what's going wrong.


Or for example, a deeper link audit because you've identified that there's a link problem.


So use the tools that you already have.


Chances are that there's built-in automation that is a point and click away.


Well, the second level is connecting the sources that you already own and use.


So in this case, instead of using pre-built connections, we're creating the connections.


Now the cool thing about this is that the community has just come alive in this area.


We are in a renaissance of connecting data sources.


They're just huge amounts of value to be derived from new and unique data mashups.


And people are posting them to the internet for free.


Sheetsformarketers.com is one of my favorite sites.


They've got tons of Google Data Studio and Google Sheets mashups of data that allows


you to produce and automate the process of just tons of different things that your consultancy


already does.


But don't just copy, contribute.


The more data sets that you can connect, the more valuable you can be to the community


as a whole.


It's going to help build your company's reputation.


Might help you build some links as well.


So don't be afraid to jump in.


Now you might be saying, look, I'm not a programmer.


I know the marketing side of SEO.


I know HTML and JavaScript, but I don't know anything about Python or server-side markup


languages.


I just don't know exactly what to do.


You don't have to be a pro to make this happen.


Just go search Upwork for Google Data Studio and you'll find tons of people who are experts


in this.


Now be careful.


I mean, if you look at the examples here that I've shown you from the screenshot, there


are a bunch of people who are offering like $3 an hour.


You probably don't want to work with them.


Or if you do, you want to offer them a fair wage.


But chances are you'll be able to find individuals who can help you make those connections and


make you automate things without actually having to be a programmer yourself.


There's no reason, no reason not to move from the step one of automation to step two, where


you're building your own connections.


Well, what's step three?


Step three is where we start getting a little bit more thoughtful.


This is where we move from originally built in connections and automation to connecting


sources that we already use to thinking about the steps, strategies, and techniques that


we currently employ and then applying some type of automation framework on top.


So I call this third level strategic smart and adaptive.


I'm going to give just a simple example here that takes advantage of if this, then that


which allows you to connect a lot of different services together.


So let's just walk through an example.


So a framework might look like this.


And first you just see a bunch of icons.


Doesn't make a lot of sense, but let's just go through it.


I call this if this, then that on steroids.


Imagine first if this, then that detects a drop in organic traffic because you connected


it to Google Analytics.


Well, then because of that, it checks a Google sheet, which tracks your rankings that you're


pulling from the stat API.


And if it finds out that both of those things are true, that traffic has dropped and rankings


have dropped, it checks linked data from MozLink Explorer's API, which perhaps you've put into


Google Sheets as well.


And then it determines if links are lost, then it cues up a link analysis message.


If not, then it cues up a page insight analysis message.


And this cue message goes to one of your employees.


You can send it via email, like Gmail, which connects directly with this, then that.


It can also then add that message to the analyst to-do list.


It can notify the analyst via Slack that this is something they need to do.


It can add a calendar entry automatically for the analysis and the customer rep to talk


about this problem, and then send an email to the customer letting them know that you've


already identified the problem and are working on it.


And once you've set this up the first time, it'll go every time.


Now what I like to do is to try and move to what I call the fourth level of automation.


And the fourth level of automation is where we move out of simply mimicking human tasks


to trying to do things that are better than what humans can already do.


Now this is where artificial intelligence starts to play.


And the truth is, is the vast majority of businesses don't have clients or customers


who could really benefit from this.


So I'm not going to spend too much time on this slide.


I just really want you to understand that this is coming, that there are businesses


that are already looking at using artificial intelligence to identify and improve solutions.


In fact, one of the ones that I've been working on for quite some time is using natural language


programming to identify exactly what type of content Google prefers.


Not based on human intuition, but literally looking at the content from the kinds of natural


language processing that Google is using in their current algorithms.


Pretty straightforward.


But this type of automation in the future will drive a lot of the innovation that's


required to succeed.


So if you're still on step one, you need to get started.


You need to get started now.


So these are the four levels of automation.


Here's one just general rule of thumb.


If you have to do it three times, automate it.


It's that simple.


All right.


So let's talk about acquiring new businesses.


Sometimes we just got to figure out how do we get new customers?


Well, this is pretty straightforward.


So I'm going to run through what I think to be are the easiest and most straightforward


ways of generating a natural feed of leads.


First is to participate.


Just get involved online using Quora, Reddit, Webmaster Community, Twitter to answer questions


and to provide information.


Also using your own blog is one of the best ways just to get information out there and


get your name out there.


Now here's a chance to steal a little tip from the local SEOs.


We know about the importance of having identical NAT information like phone numbers across


the web.


Well, do the same when you're talking on the web about your business.


Use the same username.


Use the same description.


Make sure you're always using the same website.


And that way, individuals who encounter you across the web will always know that it's


you and your business.


You know, a particular opportunity that I've found that's been very, very useful for small


consultancies that are starting is the use of Clarity FM.


Clarity is a basic tool where you sign up and you charge a certain amount of money per


minute.


And if you use your Clarity moniker in the post where you're answering questions, people


can then know to easily visit Clarity and then sign up for a brief consultation.


Now the second thing is to practice.


You need to get your name out there and you need to prove that you can do it.


And what I recommend is doing work for nonprofits.


Now how do you find a nonprofit that needs help?


Well, just look at job postings.


Chances are there's a nonprofit in your area right now who is looking for an SEO.


Contact them, say, look, we're not looking to take a job from anybody.


We're not looking to become your consultancy.


We just want to do some work for you on your behalf while you're trying to hire.


This is a great opportunity to build up case studies and to build up relationships with


businesses and organizations in the community.


Now the third thing that I like most is programming.


This is close to my heart.


This is how I used to get business for my old consultancy.


It was to create tools.


But what if you can't code?


Well, it's the same thing with automation.


Hire people who can.


Here's one thing, simple tip.


Go look at a story like this one by Cyrus Shepard, the 60 Best Free SEO Tools, and read


through them.


Find the ones that need slight improvements or that can be made better in some way, shape,


or form.


And then just go hire a contractor to build it.


Yes, it's going to cost some money.


But when you host it on your site and give it away for free, you're going to get publicity.


You're going to get links.


You're going to get traffic.


You're going to get a reputation for being the type of company that provides to the industry.


And that's one of the easiest ways to start getting leads from other SEOs.


Now the fourth thing you have to do is publish.


Because once you've actually created these tools, people have to learn about them.


So write content regularly.


Now I know this is hard to constantly come up with ideas.


So stop coming up with ideas.


Instead, look at what other people have written and write your own commentary on them.


This is a great opportunity to create conversations with leaders who are already writing innovative


content and then letting them come to you in order to respond to your thoughts, your


concerns, sometimes criticisms, and also the things that you've found interesting and valuable


about what they've written.


Most people don't know this, but the way I got onto Rand Fishkin's radar first many,


many years ago was in response to an article in which Rand wrote, 10 things I still don't


know about SEO.


And I responded with an article, 10 things I know that Rand doesn't.


Now when I wrote that article, when I started, I didn't know the answers.


So I went out and did research and did experimentation.


But by responding, I developed a relationship with Moz.


A decade later, I was working for Moz.


I mean, this is exactly the way you build relationships.


Now you've got to acquire the company, or at least the business, once they reach out.


So what's the hook?


How do you convince somebody to actually sign up with you?


Well there are a couple of things that I found are really helpful.


One, always know a complex problem about their site before you speak with them.


We have a quick site audit inside of Moz.


You just run it before you make a phone call.


And that way you're prepared to surprise the customer with something that you've already


done your homework on.


Second, you use that trick I mentioned earlier.


Build trust by explaining that you don't offer certain services because you only work on


the things that you specialize in.


Third, avoid pricing games and say that.


We don't do discounts.


We just charge a fair price.


That's how we've always worked.


And I promise you, it'll save so much negotiation time and it'll make them trust you a lot more.


And finally, be willing to walk away.


If the customer comes to you and says, look, I want a cheaper price than you're willing


to offer, just say no.


Say look, we can't do the job you want at that price.


And we are not going to take that work and mess up your site.


It's just not what we're willing to do.


You'll earn respect for it.


You might lose some business, but in the long run it'll pay off.


Now the last thing I want to talk about is autonomy.


Autonomy is a lie.


The number of consultancies that will produce a steady alternate income stream is practically


zero.


Build software, you got to compete.


Launch sites, you got to compete.


Each end, you got to compete in all of these situations.