So maybe you recorded the interviews, which is always a really good idea,


How To Support Data with Real-Life Interviews - Whiteboard Friday

and you can go back and pull out little sound bites or clips of the people saying these really impactful things


and use that when you're presenting the data.


So going back to that berry example, if you recall, we had that data around,


hey, we're seeing a lot of drop-offs on the product description page.


We're seeing a higher cart abandonment rate.


But maybe during the user interviews, we noticed the theme of people talking about how they obsessively click


the tracking link on the packages, or they wait for those gift recipients to send them a text message to say,


hey, I got this present.


And as you kind of unraveled why, you noticed that it had to do with the fact that these berries might melt


and they're worried about that.


Well, now you can elevate the content that you have around how those berries are protected in the little cooler-like box


on the pages and the places it matters most.


So maybe there's a video or an animated GIF that shows people how the berries are protected


right there in the checkout flow.


I hope that this encourages you to get out there and talk to real users,


find out about their context, and use that information to really elevate your search data.


It's not about having a big sample size or a huge survey.


It's much more about getting to real-life experiences around your product or service


that adds depth to the data that you have.


And in doing that, hopefully you'll be able to increase some conversions


and maybe even improve behavioral metrics, so those UX metrics that, I don't know,


theoretically could lead to higher organic visibility anyway.


Should SEOs Only Care About DIRECT Ranking Signals in Google? - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about direct ranking signals versus indirect ranking signals.


I see people ask questions like this all the time, like, should I only care about the direct


ranking signals?


Do I even really care as an SEO if something indirectly impacts my rankings in Google?


Because I can't really influence that, can I?


Or I can't be confident that Google is going to make those changes.


The answer from my perspective is, well, hang on a second.


Let's walk through this together.


Direct ranking signals are pretty obvious, right?


These are things like links.


So you earn a bunch of new links, they point to your page, your rankings go up.


Now my page for bookcases rank a little higher because all these people just linked over


to me.


Great, that's very nice.


Direct ranking signal.


My page takes eight seconds to load.


Now I improve a bunch of things about it and it only takes three seconds to load.


And so maybe I move up a lot less.


I put this from three to two and this one from 32 to 31.


So page load speed, a very small ranking factor, but as Google says, a direct one.


So all right, great.


Page load speed, that's improved.


Keyword and language usage.


I go from having my page about media storage furniture and then I realize no one looks


for media storage furniture.


They look for bookcases because in fact the thing that I'm storing here is the media is


books.


All right, boom, I'm moving up for bookcases again.


These are direct ranking signals.


They're very obvious.


We know that they are in Google's ranking algorithm.


Google is public about a lot of them.


They talk about them.


We can test them and observe them.


They are consistent.


They move the needle.


Great.


What about stuff like this?


I go to a conference.


I meet people, this friendly person with a hat.


Friendly person with a hat goes home and they write an article.


Friendly person with a hat's article contains a link to my bookcase website.


Well, Google would never say that going to conferences gives you higher rankings.


That's not a ranking signal.


Even building relationships with friendly people who have hats on, also not a ranking


signal.


But did it move the needle?


Yeah, it probably did because it ended up indirectly influencing a direct ranking signal.


Maybe Gillian Anderson, she probably has better things to do with the X-Files being back on


the air.


Very exciting.


Gillian Anderson, Rand's bookcases are my favorite thing in the apartment.


Wow, look, she sent thousands of people searching for Rand's bookcases.


What happens then?


Well, people pick it up and write about it.


Lots of people searching for it.


Maybe Google's entity associations and topic modeling algorithm starts to associate Rand's


bookcases as being an entity and associates the words Rand's with the words bookcases.


And so maybe now I rank higher.


Is it suddenly the case then that tweets equal higher rankings?


I mean, Google would certainly tell you tweets don't impact rankings.


Tweets are not a ranking factor.


What's going on?


It's indirect.


What about I go to my page and I decide, hey, you know what I think would be really cool


is if I had a feature where you take a photo of your bookshelf and I will tell you all


the books that you've got on it and then I'll even show them on my bookshelf on the website


so that you can see how your books look on Rand's bookcases.


So you upload a photo, bam, you can see all your books on there.


Super sweet feature.


Gets me some news.


Gets me a bunch of shares.


Adds time to my time on site.


Improves my conversion rate.


And also, weirdly, influences maybe a bunch of direct ranking factors that lead to higher


rankings.


So is it the case that photo upload features mean higher rankings?


Again, Google would never tell you that.


And it's not consistent.


It's not like every time I add a photo upload feature to a website it's suddenly going to


rank higher.


So what's going on here?


Well, indirect ranking features, indirect ranking influencers are powerful.


It doesn't matter that they're indirect.


They can have powerful impacts on your rankings.


And I think for SEOs this is really hard because Google's representatives will often say things


like we don't use that in the rankings.


That signal, that is not a ranking signal for us.


Which shouldn't shut down the conversation, but it really does in our industry.


A lot of times we hear that, well, hey, Google says social signals are not a ranking signal,


or tweets are not a ranking signal, or time on site is not a ranking signal.


So why should SEOs try and influence that?


That brings us to the second problem.


Clients, teams, managers, what do they say?


They say that's not SEO.


That's not your job, SEO person, right?


And they'll go back and they'll cite Google saying, hey, this doesn't influence rankings.


Well, guess what?


Both of these are really problematic because they may be technically accurate, but they


don't capture the big picture.


And because of that you miss out.


The other one I hear is indirect influences take time.


This is absolutely the case, right?


You get a bunch of links.


They're probably going to be counted ASAP, right, as soon as Google finds them.


You add this new feature here, it's going to take a while for all of these other things


to propagate over to the ranking signals that are actually going to impact your position.


That's tough, right?


They only have the desired impact when A, they get counted by the direct signals, and


B, when they actually work to influence the direct signals.


And so indirect signals are tough in all these ways.


My advice is to take a broader perspective, right?


Stop focusing exclusively on this directly impacts SEO and therefore is my job, and this


doesn't directly influence SEO and therefore is not my job, and say, holistically, I know


that lots of things that impact searcher satisfaction, user experience, amplification and amplification


likelihood, engagement, branding through memory and association, relationships with people,


brand coverage and saturation.


All of these things will indirectly positively impact your rankings, but not just your rankings.


They'll impact positively your conversion rate.


They'll impact positively your user experience.


They'll impact positively your bottom line.


That's the one that you really care about.


SEO is just a path to the bottom line to sales and brand building and amplification and the


things that you are actually trying to grow.


If you focus on these and you're aware of what is direct versus indirect and how the


indirect things impact the direct things, I think you can craft a very smart, holistic


SEO strategy.


If you throw out all the indirect stuff because it's not direct, you are killing yourself.


You're shooting yourself in the foot.


Your competitors, frankly, the smart ones, are the ones who are going to concentrate


on both of these.


Sometimes indirect stuff can be more powerful in the short term and the long term than direct


stuff.


That's just how it goes.


I'd urge you to fight.


Fight for the ability to have influence on these indirect signals, especially when they


also have positive impacts on other channels.


Don't let rank influence be a short term measurement only.


I think one of the big problems is that folks look at their rankings and they say, oh, okay,


we did this.


It moved up the next week.


That clearly had an impact.


No, look, a lot of the work that we do in SEO has rank impact for months and years to


come and we can't just measure things right away.


If it has a positive impact on other signals you care about on the bottom line, on all


of these types of factors, then it's going to influence rankings positively as well.


All right, everyone.


Look forward to your comments and we'll see you again next week for another edition of


Whiteboard Friday.


#WhiteboardFriday: Impactful B2B SEO Audits

Hello and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Carly Schoenhoven and I'm


a senior SEO manager at Obility. We're a B2B digital marketing agency here in Portland,


Oregon. Now, if you work for an agency, you know that sometimes a really valuable SEO


audit can be the difference between winning over a client and losing out to someone else.


So something I sometimes struggle with is how to level up your basic SEO audit into


something that's really impactful for a B2B company that is in need of a long-term strategic


plan. Now, when I'm talking about an SEO audit, I'm not just talking about a technical audit,


something you can just pull from Screaming Frog. It's really about getting a clear picture


of a site's current SEO compliance, and most importantly, showing the ways both in the


short and long term that you can work with them to help them achieve their goals. So


today, I'm going to walk you through my approach to SEO audits and walk you through step-by-step.


Now before we get started pulling data, there's a couple of things I like to figure out. First,


number one is competitors. So SEO, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. If we want to improve our


rankings, a competitor is likely going to have to lose rankings. So it's really important


to get an idea of what competitors you're going to be looking at so you can see how


you stack up in relation to them. Now, again, it's really important to make sure that your


competitors are realistic. I can't tell you how many times I've been given Google as a


competitor. Now, maybe they're a competitor for you, but it's really important to make


sure that you're being realistic and finding competitors that are of a similar size so


that the insights you're providing are actually going to be valuable and actionable. So if


someone gives you Google as a competitor, think about it, maybe provide some alternatives.


Another thing I like to take a look at is goals. So if you're evaluating a company,


ask them what their goals are. Maybe they just launched a new product and they really


would like some specific insights as to how they can improve that content. Or maybe they're


going through a site migration in a few months and they really want some insights related


to that. So good audits are not one size fits all. So you can really level up your audit


by making sure that it's tailored to the site and the company you're looking at specifically.


So now that we've got our competitors, we've got our goals, let's get started by taking


a look at keywords. Obviously, keywords are so important. It's where you need to start


because keywords are the backbone of SEO. Now this is an audit. We're not doing a full


keyword research strategy here. This shouldn't take you all day, but there's a couple of


tools that you can use so that you can get some really interesting and helpful information


about keywords without having to put in a whole bunch of time. So Moz's Keyword Explorer


is a really great place to start. I love to use the compare link profiles tool, and this


is a really good way to take a look at one site versus its competitors and see how it's


doing from a really high level. It'll help you identify if there's someone who's really


elite, who's ranking for 20 times more keywords than you. That's maybe not the most realistic


competitor to monitor yourself against. You can see if maybe there's a site that's really


comparable, or if there's a site that's not ranking for hardly any keywords, that's not


going to be one you have to worry about. So it's a really good place to start just to


get sort of an idea of the competitive landscape. Another really helpful thing to look at is


the keyword overlap. So you've seen total keywords, but what are those keywords specifically


that are performing well? So my lovely drawing here of a keyword overlap chart gives you


an idea. So let's say the blue is your top competitor, green is competitor two, and then


the red is you. So you really want to take a look at that area where your competitors


overlap, but you don't have any keywords that are ranking. This is so important because


maybe you'll identify a topic area where all of your competitors have content for, but


the site you're looking at doesn't. This is a really good place to start and can help


you provide some initial content suggestions and get sort of a window into your competitors'


content strategies. So speaking of content, let's talk about looking at content for an


SEO audit. So this is probably where I spend the most time personally when I do audits


because it's really valuable and there's also so many different things to look at and you


can find something new pretty much every time. When you're looking at a B2B site in particular,


however, one thing you want to make sure you're taking a look at is the funnel. Do they have


content for all of the funnel stages and are they funneling people from one stage to the


next? So take a look at their site like you're someone visiting it for the first time. Take


a look at their awareness content and see are there mid-funnel CTAs? Are they making


the next step they want me to take clear? Or what is that ultimate conversion that they


want people to take in the purchase stage? Do they have a really clear contact form?


Is it easy to navigate to the demo if that's a really important conversion to them? Take


a look at their content and what they're doing, specifically making sure that they have content


for the full funnel. This is another good opportunity to evaluate your competitors.


So do the same thing on your competitor site. See if there's something they're doing really,


really well that the site you're looking at is not. Take some screenshots, share some


specific things that competitors doing that maybe you can learn from and find a way to


do your own version of on your site. All right, another area to always make sure you include


is technical because we all know that even if you have the best amazing content on your


site, if your technical SEO is a mess, it's not really going to matter if you're not able


to get that content indexed. So a good place to start is to do Moz's on-demand crawl. So


you can take a look at things like 404 errors, duplicate content, maybe they have missing


metadata on all of their really valuable top pages. That's good information to have and


to share. And then you also want to expand that to look at things like site speed. Maybe


they have really poor site speed and it's nothing that they've ever prioritized. Use


Google's page speed insight, see if there's some specific recommendations that you can


give them and that you can help them fix because ultimately it's about trying to get them to


want to work with you and showing how you could help them fix those issues. And you


can also take a look at things that might be impacting indexation. Take a look at their


robots.txt, take a look at their site map, just check all the boxes and make sure that


there's nothing that might be impacting their search appearance. And finally, I always like


to take a look at off-site. This is another great use of Moz. I love to use Moz's compare


link profiles option to get an idea of how you stack up with your competitors when it


comes to off-site. Now I know that off-site is really difficult. Link building is hard


and it takes a long time to really show results, but knowing how you stack up against your


competitors when it comes to domain authority and it comes to total links really helps you


get an idea of how hard it's going to be and how long it's going to take to catch up with


your competitors in the search engine results page. So I always like to take a look at domain


authority, external links, linking domains, and really just finding insights as far as


who's going to be the most difficult, who is the most authoritative, and where do we


stand today. You can also take a look at specific backlink profiles and link overlap, very similar


to the competitor overlap. See if there's a site where all of your competitors have


backlinks from and you don't. Maybe it's really relevant in industry publication and you can


provide them that and you can help them eventually, hopefully, get a link from there too. All


right, so we've taken a look at keywords, content, technical, and off-site. If you've


followed all the steps, you should have a really great audit with some super actionable


short-term and long-term action items to provide. So I hope this was really helpful and thank


Everyday Automation for Marketers

All right, we're going to keep things moving along.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm excited by our next speaker.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I've been looking forward to this for a while because I know something you don't know about


Everyday Automation for Marketers

what he's presenting.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Satomano lives in Columbia, presenting to us from Columbia today.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

How cool is that?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

One of the nicest people in SEO.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

He's a stand-up guy.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

15 years experience in SEO and he's creating quite a name for himself right now in the


Everyday Automation for Marketers

technical world of automation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

He's got some really cool things to reveal in this next talk.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We're going to be talking about them on Twitter and some other places.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Please welcome David Satomano.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

There was this Russian engineer that apparently automated everything that he did.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

He lived in a terminal and when he left the company, his colleagues had a look at his


Everyday Automation for Marketers

repository.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

They actually didn't know this, but the local network was connected to the coffee machine.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It was awesome.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

He could actually brew his coffee directly from his terminal.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That's the kind of automation I aspire to.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We're not talking about that today.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We're talking about marketing automation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Here's an example workflow for, say, an average tech SEO workflow.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We go ahead and we fire up Screaming Frog.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We check the crawl config.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We probably have to adjust things.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We let the crawl run through.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We analyze the site and we write it up.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Pretty simple, standard stuff, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

What would it take to automate just even a part of this, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Just to get the crawl config right.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So you understand how the server will respond.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Well, you could do something like change your IP, crawl with different user agents, crawl


Everyday Automation for Marketers

all the different variations.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This is really time consuming and on top of that, it's boring.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This is something that a senior technical SEO will take at least a couple of hours to


Everyday Automation for Marketers

do and they may not actually get it right.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So why are we doing this, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Why are we doing something that a computer can actually do better?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We should be working on the processes and the models at a higher level.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We should be able to abstract this work and this is why no code and low code automation


Everyday Automation for Marketers

workflow tools are so promising and exciting.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let me show you Electro-Neek, which is pretty cool because it can actually watch your behavior


Everyday Automation for Marketers

for repetitive tasks.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But take a look at the left hand side here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You see do while loop, if then.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

These are programming concepts.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So you can't really just jump into low code, no code automation without understanding what


Everyday Automation for Marketers

you're doing.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now this kind of industry, from what I gather, is really going towards robotic process automation


Everyday Automation for Marketers

and that's the hot term.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So this is the place to be, place to watch.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But still, you still have to understand the fundamentals to be able to do all this really


Everyday Automation for Marketers

cool stuff.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So that's what we're going to walk through today and I'm going to show you some really


Everyday Automation for Marketers

cool automations as well.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now, a few notes on this presentation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Everything that I'm going to be doing is simple.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's going to be free because I don't think you should be paying while you're learning.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I'm not going to automate for you, but I'm going to show you some of the possibilities,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then hopefully you can either tell somebody to do this for you or you can have a go and


Everyday Automation for Marketers

start using this no code, low code automation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Do not take any notes.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This deck will be online.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Just sit back, relax, and enjoy.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's talk about automation lingo.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And one of the very first building blocks is HTTP requests.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You all know what they do, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So there's two that I want to show you and that are important.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You're going to see quite often in automation workflows.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we're going to do something a little fun here and we're going to build an app so I


Everyday Automation for Marketers

can show you what this looks like.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Here I've got a new WIC.AI application and what we're going to be using this for is for


Everyday Automation for Marketers

classifying keywords.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And this is based on Brittany Mueller's Web Word Friday.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So if I go into the utterance and the understanding, if I type in Moz Pro, you'll see it because


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I've already classified this, it correctly identifies as navigational.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm going to go ahead and train and validate just to make sure that confidence level goes


Everyday Automation for Marketers

up.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But what if I had something a little bit different?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And here I've got two different things.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So informational is is and navigational is Moz Pro expensive.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

In my opinion, this would probably be a better classification for commercial investigation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

If you didn't have this entity, you could easily add it in here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm going to go ahead and do that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to train and validate.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

How cool is that?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we're talking about HTTP requests and the first one you need to know is the GET request.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And this is exactly what your browser does every time you punch in a URL, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we're just literally getting something.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's go ahead and explore that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now that we have our WIC.AI application, I kind of want to do something a little bit


Everyday Automation for Marketers

smarter.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I want to be able to return the meaning of a sentence without logging into the app.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Without logging into the interface.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So here we are at the API documentation and we can see that this is the right call.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So return the meaning of a sentence.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And here we've got certain arguments or parameters.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You can call them.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And Q1 is really important here because it's required.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so what do we want to classify?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

What word do we want to send?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so if you look on the right hand side here, we've got our endpoint, which is right


Everyday Automation for Marketers

here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then the full endpoint looks a little bit different because we've got essentially


Everyday Automation for Marketers

this Q, which is our query.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And here we're asking how many people between Tuesday and Friday.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then we have this header, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we need to send this authorization header with bare token.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now token refers to in this API documentation, the API key.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So this is actually pretty easy.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

If you go into your app, into wit.ai, you actually have on the settings page, your access


Everyday Automation for Marketers

token, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then you can actually just do this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so what I want to do is classify 301 redirect.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so now it's giving me a nice cruel command.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm just going to copy that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And without me having to set up any kind of environment, I'm going to go ahead and paste


Everyday Automation for Marketers

that in.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And let's just go ahead and run that and see if that works.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Hey, look at that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So it worked.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now let's make this a little bit better and include this thing called JSON PP.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And what that's going to do is just pretty print the actual result.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so you can see here is that the word that we wanted to classify was 301 redirect.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And it came back as informational, which is pretty good and at a really high confidence.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So the second HTTP request we need to know is the post.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This is when you're sending information back through a website like a contact form.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that information gets stored in a database somewhere.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That's it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Just means putting information somewhere.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's explore that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We're going to explore post requests together.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

What we want to do here is add more keywords to our commercial intent in this application.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So the way to do this is that in the MozCon deck, you'll see a link to the replit for


Everyday Automation for Marketers

a MozCon post example.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so what we're doing here is we're posting to this endpoint.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And again, this weird thing here that you see is essentially a placeholder for the entity


Everyday Automation for Marketers

that we want to post to.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

In my case, we're going to go with commercial.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And the next two lines here basically say we're sending across headers.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so this API requires an authorization header.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And of course, here's my API key.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Content type is application JSON.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then after we have the data, which is our JSON object.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And what we're doing is we're adding the by keyword and a few synonyms.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So just go ahead and click on run here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that came back with a response.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's go back to AI.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And we should be able to refresh the page here and see that our new by keyword has been


Everyday Automation for Marketers

added to the commercial intent along with its synonyms.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So the most common data format you'll see with APIs is going to be JSON.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And it's definitely worth learning.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Not only that, because you're already familiar with it through the use of schema and JSON-LD,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So once you do learn JSON, it's actually going to open up a world of opportunity and automation


Everyday Automation for Marketers

for you.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So if you're going to use things like scale.com, which is doing things like API for driverless


Everyday Automation for Marketers

cars and they have text classification, that's going to be an API.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You're going to be using get and post requests.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And you're going to be using JSON, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So this automatically opens you up to this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

On top of that, there are other really cool things like the OpenAI beta, which is text


Everyday Automation for Marketers

generation that may or may not put a lot of jobs, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And again, API, JSON, get, post requests.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So it's pretty cool.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now, this is a placeholder slide.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And you can look at this offline.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

There's not a lot to learn about JSON, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But there are a few concepts that you need to understand.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's go to the next building block of automation workflows.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Whenever we want to do something on a schedule or a timer, the word you want to use here


Everyday Automation for Marketers

is cron.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's go ahead and learn and take a look, actually, explore all the current building


Everyday Automation for Marketers

blocks we've gone over and build something cool.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Here we are at the search engine line homepage.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And what I want to do here is make an API out of this homepage that essentially pulls


Everyday Automation for Marketers

things into a Google Sheet.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now, this is another no-code solution.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We're going to use something called Simple Scraper.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I've got this installed.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to go ahead and scrape this website.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So it's going to ask me for a property up here in the top left.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm going to go ahead and add a property.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to call it the headline.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then I'm just going to visually select it, which is fantastic.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then I'm going to go ahead and add another property called the description for short.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then I'm going to highlight this part.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Great.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So now we can view our results.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

As you can see here, it's extracted everything properly, which is great.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Which is fantastic.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now I want to save this recipe.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to call it SEL and URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

All that kind of stuff is fine.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I can create the recipe.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So what we've done now, in fact, is created an API that we can run whenever we want.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And the other good thing about Simple Scraper is that it actually integrates with Google


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Sheets pretty easily.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So once you've authenticated, I can append results, any existing data, or I can replace


Everyday Automation for Marketers

the previous results.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm going to open the spreadsheet.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I can see here that there's nothing in here at the moment.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we're going to go to the API, and this is actually your API.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's really, really cool because it just works.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And of course, right here, I am submitting a GET request.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And as you can see here, it's formatted in a JSON object.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This is good, but it's not really running right now.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So the next thing we have to do is use this parameter, which is runNowEqualTrue.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm just going to paste it in here for a second.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And what I'm going to do is here, I'm going to run it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But on top of that, while that's running, I'm going to go to cronjob.org.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And here I'm going to create a cron job.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to call it SEL Scrape.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And our URL is a GET request with our API key.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I'm going to say every day at 1 o'clock in the morning.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm not sure why.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

They would update their home page at 1 o'clock in the morning,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

but let's just go with it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so I've created a cron job.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So it's going to run the API call at 1 o'clock every morning.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You can see here, this has been returned.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And let's go back to our integration.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's just open up our Google Sheet again.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And hey, look at that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That's pretty cool.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Webbooks.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

They look like regular URLs, but they have superpowers.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's kind of like, you know, when something is done, ping this URL and then have it email me.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's kind of hard to explain because there's different definitions and some people interpret it differently.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So why don't we go ahead and build our very own?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's have a look.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

OK, so we're going to have a little bit of fun and create our own webhook.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

What I need you to do is in the deck, you'll get a link to the Google spreadsheet.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And from here, just click on Make a Copy.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I've already got one up here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The next thing you do is go to the Tools Script Editor and you'll see this code here already ready for you.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The only thing we need to do to get this running is deploy it as a web app.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so what's happening here is that we are going to give it a public URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's going to go through and ask you for some authorization.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Permissions.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Don't worry about it because this is going to be your code.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

There's nothing unsafe about it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So just go through the process and allow that to happen.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So that's all done.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And before I show you what's going on, I want you to look at this function name.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And this should kind of give it away.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Do get.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we're making a get request and there's a parameter called URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

What's going to happen is that we're actually just going to append a value that we put into URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Into our spreadsheet.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's go ahead and do this really quickly.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So there is our URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then I'm going to add the parameter URL equals testing monthcon.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Perfect.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so I should get a JSON response back.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

There's my message.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And if we go back.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Hey, look at that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That's pretty cool.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's do one more thing.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's make this a little bit more useful.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so now that I have my project key, which is here, I still have it pasted, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I can take this and I can use this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I'm just going to change this URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That's fine.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And now what I can do is I can make a little bookmark out of this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's go here and edit a bookmark.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm just going to paste that in there.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that looks pretty good.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so let's see if that works.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's go to google.com.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to save that to sheet.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I'm going to go back to my sheet.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And hey, look, I've done it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's worth mentioning a popular no-code automation platform like Zapier because they do cron and


Everyday Automation for Marketers

web hooks really well.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But if you look at the screenshot here in the second input, you'll see picking off a


Everyday Automation for Marketers

child key.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That's JSON.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So you need to understand that kind of stuff.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And at this point, you might be thinking, why am I learning this?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm not going to be a programmer.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Well, even if you don't want to be a programmer, right, and you want to do this kind of automation,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

you're still going to have to talk to a developer.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And developers need specifics.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And the more specific you can be because you understand at least some of these parts, the


Everyday Automation for Marketers

easier it's going to be to explain.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Doom and gloom, okay, because I've been around and I've seen lots of different automations,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

and I'm a little bit worried here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But I can't see machine learning not taking over parts of our jobs in the near future.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

For example, Distilled's search pilot, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

They're constantly doing tests.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

They're understanding which tests work and why can't this not be automated, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then think about how that would potentially work.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I mean, most of our sites are heavily templated already.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So what's the best way to do that?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

They are heavily templated already.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So why wouldn't a machine be able to execute one of these tests, write some new meta descriptions,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

for example, run it, and see if it got a lift?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's very possible, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So the last part is just to be able to understand how to use these no-code, low-code automation


Everyday Automation for Marketers

tools.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This is why you need to learn the fundamentals and you don't need to be a programmer.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So the next building block, which is really popular, is ETL, Extract, Transform, and Load.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I fell in love with a company called Stitch Data, not just because they have a really


Everyday Automation for Marketers

generous free tier of 5 million rows, just because they have a great platform.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I mean, lots of good connectors like Google Analytics, that kind of thing.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But I also found one which is probably my favorite because I can pass it any JSON data


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I want.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's go ahead and explore Stitch.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So once you've logged in, one of the things you need to do is add a destination.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So mine is BigQuery and I'm all hooked up here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The next thing you need to do is add an integration.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we've got a few things running here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The GA test is essentially just taking from my personal website and it gets filled into


Everyday Automation for Marketers

my BigQuery.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so it keeps loading every night, which is great.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This is good and there's a lot of good integrations.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But what I really want to show you and the magic of Stitch, I think, is the ability to


Everyday Automation for Marketers

load things into BigQuery through webhooks, which is fantastic.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm just going to name one here called delete, if I can spell.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I'm going to go ahead and save that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I guess I already have one called delete me.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's call it delete me 111.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And this is all I need, this webhook, which is great.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so I'm going to continue and that's it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that's it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I did have one called MozCon and I've been loading things into it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I just want to show you how easy this is.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I've already got this already loaded.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And again, this link is in the deck.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And all we're doing here is we're posting to Stitch and it's going to automatically


Everyday Automation for Marketers

create the BigQuery schema and it's going to enter these things.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So this, we already have Cyrus in there and we're going to say Britney Muller.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And we're going to go ahead and run that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

If everything worked out, you're going to get a response from Stitch saying it's accepted.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now, going into my BigQuery table, I was fooling around earlier and the schema has already


Everyday Automation for Marketers

been set by Stitch, which is awesome.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then I have a few Fred Flintstone and I have Cyrus Shepard.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And in a moment or so, I will also have Britney Muller.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Everybody loves browser automation, but it's kind of out of reach for a lot of people because


Everyday Automation for Marketers

it's complicated.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Like, have you ever tried the right puppeteer scripts?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You need to know JavaScript and plus it's not that easy.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I did find a tool that I think is going to make everyone's life a lot easier and I'm


Everyday Automation for Marketers

excited to show you.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's have a look.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Here we're at testim.io, which I think is the easiest browser automation tool I've found,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

period.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to create a test.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And what I want to automate is essentially just storing Google link data into my Google


Everyday Automation for Marketers

drive.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So here I'm going to go into create a navigation action.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So this is already at my search console data for my personal blog.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to record.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so here I can literally just do this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so it is recording the test as we speak.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm going to click on links.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to go to export certain links and more sample links and literally just do that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that is it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so we can see now that this is automatically stored in my Google drive.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm just going to go back here and stop that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So this has already been set up and this is really quick automation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's see here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to click on this play button, but I'm going to run locally.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And the reason why I want to do this is because I'm already logged in on my machine.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I don't want to fumble around with search console authentication because I've got two


Everyday Automation for Marketers

factor on that kind of thing.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I can just go run locally and you can see here that test them is taken over the browser.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And there you go.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I've just repeated my entire process.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so I can go ahead and do this once a week or whenever I need to.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But this is really, really simple browser automation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

No talk in 2020 is complete without talking about machine learning, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And honestly, some of the setup with some of the libraries puts me off.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that's why I use bigml.com.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That way I can just kind of focus on the mathematics and the output rather than the entire setup


Everyday Automation for Marketers

and figuring out these different libraries.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm really excited to show you a feature that I didn't know existed before and actually


Everyday Automation for Marketers

had some one on one help from bigml to be able to showcase this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And again, they have a generous free plan, so none of this needs to be paid.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's go ahead and let's show you the association discovery.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Hopefully, this data that looks familiar to you, it's actually the screen frog internal


Everyday Automation for Marketers

all report, except we're missing the address because we don't really need it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So got a few extra metrics in here like Moz links, equity external links, page authority,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

sessions, that kind of thing.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

But the one I want you to focus on is crawled during period.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Every single one of these rows represents the URL and how many times it was crawled


Everyday Automation for Marketers

during period.


Everyday Automation for Marketers


Everyday Automation for Marketers

during this log reporting period.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So this would be URL A and it was crawled five times.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And what I want to do is try to figure out if I've missed anything.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Are there any reasons why this was crawled more often or not at all?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

In comes big ml to the rescue.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we're going to be using something called association discovery,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

which as I say, discovers relations between variables and high dimensional data sets.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

For me, this is a bit more important.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So associations go beyond simple variable correlations, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And they also reveal a complex set of rules.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This will make sense in a second.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Once you've logged into your big ml free account, what you need to do here is click


Everyday Automation for Marketers

on the upload data source and go ahead and upload your CSV.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I've already done this here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so once it's been uploaded, all you need to do is click on the down arrow and one click


Everyday Automation for Marketers

data set.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The one click data set looks like this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You have a histogram of all the different values.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So from here, what we want to do is we want to configure an association.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

These are the amount of rules or the number of fields that will contribute to the rules.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm going to lower this down to two to make this a little bit faster.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

On top of that, what I want to do is really focus on the fact of the crawl during period.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I want the rules to describe what's happening with this specific field.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You don't really have to do too much.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You can study a lot more on big ml, but from here you can just create an association.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That'll take a few minutes, but here's the output.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This will make a lot of sense already to most people working in SEO.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So if we're looking at something like the consequent where crawled during period is


Everyday Automation for Marketers

less than or equal to 0.36, a rule that describes that is indexability non indexable.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That makes a lot of sense.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And if something is indexable, generally gets crawled more than 1.82 times.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

You can look at all these different metrics and you can see that big ml will actually


Everyday Automation for Marketers

give you a full description as to what they mean.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The other way to do this is by visualizing it through a graph.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now this is a little bit messy, so we're going to add some labels.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Then we're going to increase the leverage and we're going to increase it all the way


Everyday Automation for Marketers

to the top.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So we have a really good idea of what we're looking at.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And of course this makes sense.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

If it was crawled less than 0.36 times is probably because it's not indexable.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now this is a data set that you know, but this is really, really useful to be able to


Everyday Automation for Marketers

get to grips with a data set that you don't know.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful use cases for machine learning.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

On top of that, big ml makes this so incredibly easy with no code solutions.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I encourage you to try this out with any data set that you have to be able to sense check


Everyday Automation for Marketers

what you're looking at.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

All right, you made it through your vegetables.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now it's time for cake.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm excited about this because you're going to be able to deploy your own version


Everyday Automation for Marketers

of like IFTTT in the cloud within a couple of minutes.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And we're going to be using something called n8n.io and Heroku, which is awesome.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So let's go ahead and let me show you probably the coolest thing in this presentation.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

During the course of the research for this presentation, I trialed every automation tool


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I could in the end, I settled with n8n.io, which is pronounced node nation because it's


Everyday Automation for Marketers

free.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And I see a lot of problems with this tool.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So what we're going to be building is essentially this, you enter in URLs, we are going to loop,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

we are going to go to the page speed API, grab lighthouse metrics, send them to stitch,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

which is the same as the page speed API.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And then we're going to go to the page speed API, grab lighthouse metrics, send them to


Everyday Automation for Marketers

stitch, which is then going to store them in our BigQuery database.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

To get this working, you're going to need the link in the deck to my GitHub repository.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And from here, you're going to need a free account with Heroku, the page speed insights


Everyday Automation for Marketers

API key, and of course, your stitch data account hooked up to BigQuery.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And you're going to need your webhook URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's go ahead and deploy this to Heroku and just see just how easy it is.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Down at the bottom, you'll need to change your app name three times.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that's it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

We're going to go ahead and deploy that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Okay, so our app is deployed.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The default credentials are user and pass, which you should probably change if you're


Everyday Automation for Marketers

going to do this.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And that's it, we're logged in.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

The next part is going back to the repository and I've got some code already ready for you.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And you can just open up a new window, copy everything and watch this magic.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Bang.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I can just paste that in.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now there's going to be a few things you're going to need to change.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Obviously, we don't have your API key.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So within the page speed module here down at the bottom, I can click on this and I would


Everyday Automation for Marketers

replace my page speed API key.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Additionally, you'd have to do the same thing with your stitch module.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Here's my working version of this workflow.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now to start it, all I need to do is make sure the start button is connected and I can


Everyday Automation for Marketers

execute the workflow.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So what is happening here?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I've got my URLs.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's going to structure the data in a way so that I can split it and loop it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to go through the page speed API.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to set the lighthouse metrics and then everything is going to get pinned to


Everyday Automation for Marketers

the webhook for stitch and placed in my BigQuery instance.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's say I wanted to add in an extra URL.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I would go into this module and let's ping google.com as well.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I can click on this X and that's already saved for us.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So that's great.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now one of the things is I don't really want this start button here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

It's not really useful.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I'm going to go ahead and add a cron trigger and that'll put this directly in and I can


Everyday Automation for Marketers

add a cron time.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Let's just say every day at two o'clock and that's it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And so from here I'm going to go ahead.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to connect that.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I'm going to go and activate it and that's it.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now this workflow will complete every single day at two o'clock without me looking, which


Everyday Automation for Marketers

is incredible.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

A few closing thoughts.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Computers can't automate this fully yet, but don't get comfortable.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Automation workflows need to have good checks and balances and error reporting because sometimes


Everyday Automation for Marketers

you think something executed, but actually you can get what you thought you were getting.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

In terms of programming, I'm not saying you have to learn the program, but if you did


Everyday Automation for Marketers

enjoy some of the things I showed you here today, you want access to this kind of automation,


Everyday Automation for Marketers

you don't have to go very far.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Whatever language you choose, learn to parse JSON, learn how to make HTTP requests, and


Everyday Automation for Marketers

that will get you in a really good spot.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

A bit of a bonus here.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I got asked by Cyrus and Brittany to build the Moz API for Sheets.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And this is a way to easily get LinkScape data into Sheets without any code.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

There's also a few helpful functions in there as well.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So you can download it today for free through this link, and you can also check out the


Everyday Automation for Marketers

posts on the Moz blog.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Now, one other thing.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

This wouldn't be a presentation on automation if I didn't automate something, right?


Everyday Automation for Marketers

So I talked about a lot of things here, and the deck might be hard to follow, but I can


Everyday Automation for Marketers

email you a full list of instructions.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Stick your email in this URL as the GET parameter, click on send.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I promise not to spam you.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

I will just send you the tutorial.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

A big thank you to every single company that I've mentioned here today.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Without them, I would never be able to do this stuff, so thank you very much.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

In terms of your journey of automation, you should start by doing little projects.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

And here's a few ideas for you to get started.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Don't worry about automating pretty much everything that you do.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Just take little bits and small bits at a time as you're learning.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

That's it from me.


Everyday Automation for Marketers

Hopefully you enjoy the rest of MozCon.


Everyday Automation for Marketers


Top 4 Things to Know About GA4 — Whiteboard Friday

Hi, my name is Dana DiTommaso, I'm president at Kickpoint, and I am here today at MozCon


2022 to bring you some details on the exciting world of Google Analytics 4, which I know


all of you are like, ugh, I don't want to learn about analytics, which is totally fair.


I also did not want to learn about analytics and then I kind of learned about it whether


I liked it or not, and you should too, unfortunately.


I think the biggest thing about the move from Universal Analytics to GA4 is that people


are like, they log in, everything looks different, I don't like it, and then they leave.


And I agree, the user interface in GA4 leaves a lot to be desired.


I don't think there's necessarily been a lot of good education, especially for those of


us who aren't analysts on a day-to-day basis.


We're not all data scientists, I'm not a data scientist, I do marketing.


So what I'm hoping is I can tell you the things you should know about GA4 and just a basic


sort of level so that you have a better vocabulary to talk about it when people are horrified


by the move to GA4, which is inevitable, it's going to happen, you've got to get it on your


site, starting basically immediately if you don't already have it.


So here's the, I started out with three things and then I realized there's a fourth thing,


so you get a bonus, exciting bonus, but we'll start with the first three things.


So the first thing, it's different, which I know is obvious, yes, of course, Dana, it's


different, but it's different.


Okay, so in Universal Analytics, there were different types of hits that could go into


Analytics, which is where hits came from originally as a metric that people talked about.


So for example, in Universal Analytics, you could have a page view, or you could have


a transaction, or you could have an event, and those were all different types of hits.


In GA4, everything is an event.


There's a page view event, there's a transaction event, there's, well, an event event, I mean,


you name the events whatever you want.


And because of that, it's actually a lot better way to report on your data.


So for example, one of the things that I know people always wanted to be able to report


on in Universal Analytics is what pages did people see and how did that relate to conversion


rate?


And that was really tricky because a page view was something that was at the hit scope


level, which means it was just like the individual thing that happened, whereas conversion rate


is a session scoped thing.


So you couldn't mash together a hit scope thing with page view as conversion rate, which


is session scope, they just didn't combine together unless you did some fancy blending


stuff in Data Studio, and who's got time for that?


So now in GA4, because everything's an event, you have a lot more freedom with how you can


slice and dice and interpret your data and figure out what pages do people engage with


before they actually convert it, or what was that path, not just the landing page, but


the entire user journey on their path to conversion.


So that part is really exciting.


Second thing, engagement rate is a new metric in GA4.


They do have bounce rate, they did recently announce it.


I'm annoyed at it, so we're gonna talk about this a little bit.


Engagement rate is not reverse bounce rate, but it is in GA4.


So in Universal Analytics, bounce rate was a metric that people reported on all the time,


even though they shouldn't have...


I hate bounce rates so much.


Just picture a dumpster fire GIF right now across your screen, like I just...


I hate bounce rate.


And why I hate bounce rate is it's so easily faked.


Let's say, for example, your boss says to you, hey, you know what, the bounce rate on


our site's too high, could you fix it?


You're like, oh yeah, boss, totally.


And then what you do is whenever somebody comes on your website, you send what's called


an interactive event off to Google Analytics at the same time, and now you have a 0% bounce


rate.


Congratulations, you got a raise, because you made it up.


Bounce rate could absolutely be faked, no question.


And so when we moved over to GA4, originally there was no bounce rate, there was engagement


Engagement rate has its own issues, but it's not measuring anything similar to what bounce


rate was.


Bounce rate in UA was an event didn't happen, it didn't matter if you spent an hour and


a half on the page reading it closely.


If you didn't engage an event that was an interactive event, that meant that you were


still counted as a bounce when you left that page.


Whereas in GA4, an engaged session is by default someone spending 10 seconds with that tab,


that website open, so active in their browser, or they visited two pages, or they had a conversion.


Now this 10 second rule, I think it's pretty short.


10 seconds is not necessarily a lot of time for someone to be engaged with the website,


so you might want to change that, it's under the tagging settings in your data stream.


So if you go to admin, and then you click on your data stream, and you go to more tagging


settings, and then you go to session timeouts, you can change it in there.


And I would recommend playing around with that and seeing what feels right to you.


Now GA4, literally just as I'm filming this, has announced bounce rate, which is actually


it is reverse engagement rate.


Please don't use it.


Instead, think about engagement rate, which I think is a much more usable metric than


bounce rate was in UA, and I'm kind of excited that bounce rate in UA is going away, because


it was...


All right, so next thing.


Your data is not going to match, and this is stressful because you've been reporting


on UA data for years, and now all of a sudden it's not going to match, and people would


be like, but you said there was 101 users, and today you're saying there was actually


102, what's the problem?


So I mean, if you have that kind of dialogue with your leadership, you really need to have


a conversation about the idea of accuracy in analytics, as in it isn't, and error and


everything else.


But I mean, really, the data is going to be different, and sometimes it's a lot different.


It's not just a little bit different, and it's because GA4 measures stuff differently


than UA did.


There is a page on Google Analytics Help which goes into it in depth, but here's some of


the highlights that I think you should really know sort of off the top of your head when


you're talking to people about this.


So first thing, a page view metric, which we're all familiar with, in Universal Analytics,


this was all page views, including repeats.


In GA4, same, page views, page view, great, so far so good.


Then we had unique page views in Universal Analytics, which was only single views per


session.


So if I looked at the home page, and then I went to a services page, and then I went


back to the home page, I would have two page views of the home page.


For page view, I would have one page view of the home page in unique page views.


That metric does not exist in GA4.


So that is something to really watch for, is that if you were used to reporting on unique


page views, that is gone.


So I recommend now changing your reports to sort of like walk people through this comfort


level of getting them used to the fact that they're not going to get unique page views


anymore.


Or you can implement something that I talk about in another one of my Whiteboard Fridays


about being able to measure the percentage of people who are reloading tabs and tab hoarders.


You could work that into this a little bit.


OK, next thing is users.


Users are really, I think, a difficult topic for a lot of people to get their heads around.


Because they think, oh, a user, that means that if I'm on my laptop, and then I go to


my mobile device, obviously, I am one user.


You're usually not, unfortunately.


You don't necessarily get associated across multiple devices.


Or if you're using, say, a privacy-focused browser like Safari, you may not even be associated


in the same device, which kind of sucks.


The real only way you can truly measure if someone is a user across multiple sessions


is if you have a login on your website, which not everybody does.


A lot of B2B sites don't have logins.


A lot of small business sites don't have logins.


So users is already kind of a sketchy metric.


And so it's unfortunately one that people used to report on a lot in Universal Analytics.


So in Universal Analytics, users was total users, new versus returning.


In GA4, it's now active users.


What is an active user?


The documentation is a little unclear on how Google considers an active user.


So I recommend reading that in depth.


Just know that this is going to be different.


You never should have been reporting on new versus returning users anyway unless you had


a login on your site because it was such a sketchy bad metric.


But I don't think a lot of people knew how bad it was.


It's OK.


You're just reading your reports now so that when you have to start using GA4 on July 1,


2023, for real, UA is done, then at least it's not so much of a shock when you do make


that transition.


One other thing to think about as well with the changes is sessions.


So in Universal Analytics, a session was the active use of a site.


So you're clicking on stuff.


It had a 30-minute timeout.


And you may have heard never to use UTM tags on internal links on your website.


And the reason why is because if someone clicked on an internal link on your website that had


UTMs on it, your session would reset.


And so you would have what's called session breaking, where all of a sudden you would


have a session that basically started in the middle of your website with a brand new campaign


and source and medium and completely detached from the session that they just had.


They would be a returning user, though.


That's great.


You should have been reporting on that anyway.


Whereas in GA4, instead, now there's an event.


Because remember, everything's an event now.


There was an event called Session Start.


And so that records when, well, the session starts.


And then there's also a 30-minute timeout.


But there is no UTM reset.


Now that doesn't mean that you should go out there and start using UTMs on internal links.


I still don't think it's a great idea.


But it's not necessarily going to break things the way that it used to.


So you can now see where did someone start on my site by looking at the Session Start


event.


I don't know if it's necessarily 100% reliable.


I've seen situations where if you're using consent management tools, for example, like


a cookie compliance tool, you can have issues with session starting and whatnot.


So just keep that in mind, is that it's not necessarily totally foolproof.


But it is a really interesting way to see where people started on the site in a way


that you could not do this before.


So bonus, bonus before we go.


All right, the fourth thing that I think you should know about GA4.


Use BigQuery.


There's a built-in BigQuery export under the settings for GA4.


Use it.


The reason why you should use it is A, the reports in GA4 are not great.


The default reports, they kind of suck.


B, even the explorations are a bit questionable.


Like you can't really format them to look nice at all.


So what I'm saying to people is don't really use the reports inside GA4 for any sort of


useful reporting purposes.


It's more like an ad hoc reporting.


But even then, I would still turn to BigQuery for most of my reporting needs.


And the reason why is because GA4 has some thresholding applied.


So you don't necessarily get all the data out of GA4 when you're actually looking at


reports.


And this happened to me actually just this morning before I recorded this Whiteboard


Friday.


I was looking to see how many people engaged with the form on our website.


And because it was a relatively low number, it said zero.


And then I looked at the data in BigQuery and it said 12.


That amount could be missing from the reports in GA4, but you can see it in BigQuery.


And that's because of the thresholding that's applied.


So I always recommend using the BigQuery data instead of the GA4 data.


And in Google Data Studio, if that's what you use for your reporting tool, the same


issue applies when you use GA4 as a data source.


You have the same thresholding problems.


So really just use BigQuery.


And you don't need to know BigQuery.


All you need to do is get the data going into BigQuery and then open up Google Data Studio


and use that BigQuery table as your data source.


That's really all you need to know.


No SQL required.


If you want to learn it, that's neat.


I don't even know that well yet.


But it is not something you have to know in order to report well on GA4.


So I hope that you found this helpful and you can have a little bit more of a better


dialogue with your team and your leadership about GA4.


I know it seems rushed.


It's rushed.


Let's all admit it's rushed.


But I think it's going to be a really good move.


I'm really excited about the new kinds of data and the amounts of data that we can capture


now in GA4.


They really freeze us from the category action label stuff that we were super tied to in


Universal Analytics.


We can record so much more interesting data now in every event.


So I'm excited about that.


The actual transition itself might be kind of painful.


But then a year from now, we'll all look back and laugh, right?


#WhiteboardFriday: Investigating Traffic Upticks

Hi, welcome to Whiteboard Friday. I'm going to be talking through the journey that you


embark upon when you notice a sudden change in traffic to a particular page on your site.


In our case, this was a sudden and consistent increase, which may on the face of it look


great. You may perceive that this is exactly what you and your clients have been striving


for. But as we know, traffic funnelling into your site isn't the end of the story. You're


also going to want that traffic to convert. But also when something like this happens,


there can be other lessons that you can learn and potentially apply to other pages and areas


of your site. I'm Jo, I'm the learning team manager here at Moz. We create all the course


material that you'll see on the Moz Academy. This is where you can advance your SEO education


and earn your SEO essentials certification. We also write the documentation for how to


use the Moz tools. And this is where our story begins. Over the summer, we noticed a fairly


drastic increase in visitors to a particular Moz bar help page. We wanted to go beyond


trying to understand why we're getting that traffic and turn this into an opportunity


to support our company goals. So when you see something like this happen, your first


question might reasonably be, why? Why are we getting this traffic? What has changed?


What has caused this? And also what do we already know through the metrics we're collecting?


On the Moz learning team, we track top level metrics monthly, including unique visitors.


We also collect visitor sentiment through the feedback button on the page. And we also


collect reporting every month in our Moz Pro campaign using Keyword Explorer and Link Explorer


as handy research tools in our toolkit. So first of all, we had a dig into the monthly


metrics on a more granular level. We looked at the cadence of the traffic in Google Analytics


to see if there was a sudden, if this was a sudden spike or a consistent trend over


time. Now, before you can be totally confident in the quality of your Google Analytics data,


you may want to clear up and filter that data. You can learn all about this in the SEO Essentials


Certification. With this course, we take you through our SEO methodology, which helps you


to approach SEO strategically. This is made up of five sections, research, audit, optimize,


amplify, and iterate. Reporting sits in the fifth section of the methodology, which is


iterate. Within that, we break it down into awareness metrics, onsite activity, and the


all important conversions. The lessons in the SEO Essentials Certification take you


through this in much more detail. And you can download the SEO report card when you


purchase this course. So back to what we saw in Google Analytics, we noticed an upward


trend that also reflected the pattern followed by our previous traffic trends. We saw these


scallop shapes, which nicely line up with the weekdays and the weekends. And you may


be used to seeing a different shape depending on your industry. We also looked at referral


data in Google Analytics and compared this to what we saw before the spike. We also looked


at how traffic was entering and exiting that page through Google Analytics. And we had


a dig around in Google Trends to see if we could identify any related topics taking off.


I'm tracking the help section of the moz.com domain in my mozpro campaign. And I have this


connected to Google Analytics. And this pulls in the overall visits and landing pages. This


is the data that you'll see in the acquisition section of Google Analytics. So while my team


is focused primarily on one area of moz.com, this gives me an idea of where this page sits


as a percentage of search traffic in relation to other landing pages. Now this is where


it all starts to come together. Under the rankings tab in my mozpro campaign, I can


now see the landing page data cross referenced with my tracked keywords and their rankings.


So I can also see search volume and estimated visits for each tracked keyword. We also entered


the moz bar URL into Keyword Explorer to review the ranking keywords for that URL, and then


added these keywords to my existing campaign to track them over time. We know that SEO


and SEO reporting is iterative. So by building out your tracked keywords in this way, this


will help you to fill in the blanks as to which keywords are sending traffic to your


site. We also saw some interesting data from the visitor satisfaction button. This is the


thumbs up or thumbs down option that you can select on this page and generally indicates


if the content was helpful or not. And we saw that there were a lot more people responding


that this content was indeed helpful. So this is not only positive for my team and I, but


it's also informative. And it gave us a really good idea that the content on this page was


generally matching the intent of the visitors. So we looked at all of this together and we


drew some conclusions. It didn't seem like this visitor traffic was coming from one particular


source or campaign that we could reasonably attribute this to. It looked like it was reflecting


our previous traffic trends, just a lot more of it. And so it's probably quite important


now to explain a bit more about the page that we are investigating. The page is about Mozbar.


It's an overview of how to use our free Chrome extension. Now it would also be remiss of


me not to mention the fact that we have had a massive shift this year in terms of changes


to our lives and businesses due to COVID-19, which has had a massive impact on how people


spend their time, how businesses are run and many, many other areas of our lives. So after


we looked at data for that page, in addition to all the other reporting metrics, we took


a step back and we thought, well, what is this page about and how has this shift impacted


demand for these types of tools? Because of these two things, nothing else really standing


out as a flag to indicate a single event and this global change, we started to lean towards


this being part of an increase in demand for free tools. Mozbar is a free extension that


sits at the top of your Chrome browser and it displays link metrics for your pages that


you visit on the web. It's also got some other handy features like the ability to highlight


different types of links so it can show you internal or external links on a page and to


check your on page elements and so on. So with all of this information we collected,


we're now circling around understanding what caused this. And the trick for us wasn't just


to figure out why this was happening or why it happened, but to turn this into some kind


of positive action. So what we decided to do was to test driving traffic directly from


these pages or this particular page to our key Moz initiatives. So this would be our


personalized one-to-one walkthroughs of the Moz Pro tool and the Moz Pro free trial. This


was a quick edit for my team. We could add those in there fairly quickly to test this


out. We already know that this page is doing a stand-up job of helping people to understand


how to use Mozbar. So let's see if they are interested in our other SEO tools. We added


links to this page to help people identify what to do next once they've given Mozbar


a go. And what we found out was that we are indeed seeing people taking us up on this


offer and they are clicking through to have a chat with our excellent onboarding team


and also to check out the Moz Pro 30-day free trial. So with this relatively small amount


of effort from my team, we've now started to collect data on visitor behavior that can


better inform future decisions and future projects. Thank you so much for joining me


Esse Quam Videri: When Faking it is Harder than Making It- Presented by Russ Jones

I'm really glad to be here today.


This is my second year getting to do MozCon and it's just so exciting to be here and see


so many different people in the crowd with so many different areas of expertise, all


of whom are here specifically to see me.


Today I'm going to talk about probably the least data-driven topic I've ever discussed.


I've been mulling over this topic for at least four, maybe five years.


So we'll see how it goes, but I need you to bear with me.


I know we only got a little bit more time left, but we're going to be all over the place


with this one.


We're going to be going from really high-level theory stuff to some very specific tactics.


Just try and stick with me for just the next couple minutes.


The beer is coming, don't worry.


So the title of my talk is SE Quam Bois Dairy.


You see, there are three incontrovertible truths about the state of North Carolina,


which is where I'm from.


Number one is that UNC is the best university in the world.


Go Heels.


Number two, we have the best barbecue and if anybody disagrees, we can meet in the parking


lot in the back and handle that like men.


And number three is that I believe we have the best state motto.


Most state mottos are patriotic and they're nice and all, but we've got one that's just


really deep.


It's SE Quam Bois Dairy, which means to be rather than to seem.


And it occurred to me many, many, many years ago that this was a complete antithesis of


the person that I am.


You see, I'm a liar and I'm damn good at it.


Like I kind of wish I weren't in some ways, but I know that I am.


It's something that I've done my entire life and I turn to it really easily.


Most of the time it's fairly innocuous.


It's like telling your kid some sort of lie to make them stop asking you questions or


telling the hotel concierge that you lost your charger as opposed to forgot it so that


they'll give you a new one or fabricating sections of your resume to get a job at Moz.


Little things like that.


In all reality, about two years ago, I was here in Seattle.


I live in North Carolina, but I occasionally come up to the mother base and see how things


are going.


Try to put people in line, make sure they're not making shit, exactly as Brittany said.


I realized that I had forgotten to cancel a doctor's appointment.


In particular, this is a doctor that I've been seeing for 16 years every week.


I knew the policy by heart.


I was going to have to pay this guy $160 out of pocket because I forgot.


My stomach just sunk the way it does when you search for a keyword and your site's just


no longer there.


Then in the back of my head it just popped.


It was like, I could just lie.


I'll just call the guy and tell him I'm sick or one of my kids are sick and I had to stay


home.


At that moment, I don't know why it was different that time because I'm sure in the past I've


done this dozens if not hundreds of times.


Two epiphanies came to me.


The first was, how bizarre is it that my mind immediately went to a lie?


Why did my mind immediately go to deceiving this doctor who has done nothing but care


for me and in vain actually take $160 out of his pocket in order to avoid the uncomfortable


admission that I had forgotten?


The second was the epiphany that I'm making this story up just for this conference.


It didn't really happen.


I am a liar and I'm good at it.


What I've really learned is actually that there is this unique Gordian knot of sorts


that ties together a whole bunch of skills and aptitudes that are related to lying.


They are the same things that can make us deceitful but that can also make us persuasive.


They are things that make us clever.


They make us think around problems differently and sometimes think for shortcuts or identify


ways to solve problems differently than others.


It occurred to me that the entire narrative of the relationship between SEOs like me and


Google over the last 20 years has been to be rather than to seem.


It is that we hand Google daily and have for years, whether you're white hat or black


hat, a very different perception than the reality of what our sites actually present


to the users.


I wanted to make sure that this wasn't something that only I thought of.


This wasn't just me.


I sent out a quick poll on Twitter.


Got a bunch of folks retweeted to help me out.


The question was fairly simple.


Do you make sure that your content deserves to rank before you promote it?


Unsurprisingly, 64% of those who responded, SEOs or SEO agencies, said no.


Sometimes we do but not all the time.


It's really important here.


I don't want this to be some sort of finger-wagging, ethical, moralistic sermon, shame on you kind


of thing.


I want us to sit back a little bit and recognize where we are as an industry and just come


to grips with the reality that most of the time we are pretending.


In fact, it gets a little bit worse.


14% of the respondents said they don't even know.


Even check.


Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps you promoted content on a site that has actually


done damage to the users who have ended up finding it in Google?


This seemed a little bit scary to me.


I think we have this shared heritage of deception.


I don't once again mean for it to make you feel bad or to think that you've chosen the


wrong career path or anything.


My twin brother became an attorney and we constantly argue over who is more evil.


We can kind of break into pieces the varieties of tactics that we use.


It's really easy.


I bet most of you in this room have said, well, I'm not a black hat.


I don't auto-generate content.


Raise your hand here.


Who is sort of a traffic equalizer?


Who was a black hat ten years ago?


Or Xrumor, who here is familiar with this beast of link spam which kind of ruined the


internet for about six years.


Or Clickbots.


It's easy to say, we don't do that stuff.


We're not like that.


We're better than that.


But if you really take a microscope to the tactics that you use and question them for


whether or not they're actually improving the user's experience, I think you'll find


more often than not that your goal is to convince Google that your site is more relevant and


important rather than to actually make it relevant and important.


Think about it.


The most basic techniques, keywords and title, meta, alt tag, strong H1, H2, every place


you can shove a keyword.


Does any of that actually make the content significantly better for the user?


Or does it just make it obvious to Google what your content is about?


Guest post link building, it's at worst gray hat link building.


But every guest post link that you get does absolutely nothing to improve your own content.


If that guest post moves you to number one, your content is no better than it was when


it was at number two.


We do content length for content length sake.


Spin content if you're a black hat will hide content.


Do all sorts of different techniques.


But there are some that are user centric.


There are some techniques that tend to fall a little bit more on the side of helping out


users.


One that's become really forefront these days has been page speed.


We talk a lot now more about quality, about eat metrics.


We talk about contact formats.


For example, we want to have unique imagery or video, not just text.


We talk about validating our content with citations, actually linking out to the sources


from which we were able to get the statistics that we used to make that quality content.


We add features and tools like calculators.


We make our content accessible.


We improve usability.


And we do competitive content analysis.


So it's not all bad news.


We do both.


But I have a central thesis.


I think it's been a long time in the making.


It all really began when Will Reynolds famously quipped real company shit.


And it occurred to me that this was the future.


The difference being, though, that real company shit, or RCS, presupposed that you were not


a real company and that you need to pretend to be by doing real company shit.


And now I think that we're coming to a new age in which it's about being a real company.


And so the central thesis is this.


Within the discipline of search engine optimization, the return on investment of being the best


query response is approaching the return on investment of pretending to be the best response.


Now, I'm not going to run through all of these real quick.


But for this central thesis to be true, there are a couple things that have to happen in


the market.


For example, the cost of making quality content needs to come down.


The efficacy of certain types of tactics like link spam need to come down.


But it's not that all of these need to happen at the same time.


It's just that we are converging on a point at which at some moment in the future, it's


going to become cheaper and more efficient to actually produce really fantastic content


than to somehow slip one past Google and get bad content to rank.


Let me give some examples.


So creating exceptional content is starting to become substantially easier.


I remember five, six years ago before I joined Moz that the concept of creating a thorough


piece of content required a great deal of effort.


But now with Keyword Explorer, it's stupid simple.


You just choose our questions.


You can group them.


And now you've got this fantastic article.


I chose plagiosephaly.


It's a really common condition.


Babies with getting flat heads while their skulls are still forming.


So it's like an advanced and difficult topic related to health.


But standing right in front of you is the exact writing prompt you need to produce a


great article.


Article's plagiosephaly.


Section one, what is plagiosephaly?


Section two, how do we treat it?


Section three, what is the helmet?


Section four, what causes the syndrome?


So on and so forth.


It's really easy to create dense, thorough, and content that answers all the questions


of your competitors.


The cost of UI and UX is going down.


There are just dozens and dozens of tools out there that let you identify what types


of changes you've made to your site and improve the usability.


It's just stupid simple.


Speed, page speed?


Before I joined Moz, the only companies that had content delivery networks were the biggest


companies in the world.


They were using Akamai or Google's own content delivery network.


Now they're free.


It's literally free to distribute your content to data centers across the globe to automatically


speed it up.


And you can do it with a free plug-in for WordPress.


The price of actually doing things right is coming down.


The cost of accessibility is easier than ever.


On webaim.org, you can use their free wave tool.


You can use tenon.io, which I'll show you a little bit later.


But all of these techniques that in the past we might look at and say, that's just too


much to do.


We need to make money now.


Let's buy some more links.


That's starting to change.


In fact, on the issue of link building, I'll bring it up in a minute.


But what I want to show you is that once you actually deserve to rank, once you actually


are the best, rather than pretend to be the best, your link building is going to be far


more successful.


And, of course, the other half of the equation is what's happening to the efficacy of these