The Content Distribution Playbook - Whiteboard Friday

What's going on Whiteboard Friday fans?


My name is Ross Simmons from Foundation Marketing and today we're going to be talking about


how to develop a content distribution playbook that will drive meaningful and measurable


results for your business.


What is content distribution and why does it matter?


First and foremost, content distribution is the thing that you need to be thinking about


if you want to combat the fact that it is becoming harder and harder than ever before


to stand out as a content marketer, as a storyteller, and as a content creator in today's landscape.


It's getting more and more difficult to rank for content.


It's getting more and more difficult to get organic reach through our social media channels


and that is why content distribution is so important.


You are facing a time when organic reach on social continues to drop more and more, where


the ability to rank is becoming even more difficult because you're competing against


more ad space, you're competing against more featured snippets, you're competing against


more companies and because content marketers have screamed at the top of their lungs that


content is king and the world has listened, it is becoming more and more difficult to


stand out amongst the noise.


Most marketers have embraced this idea because for years we've screamed, content is king,


create more content and that is what the world has done.


Most marketers start by just creating content hoping that traffic will come, hoping that


reach will come and hoping that as a result of them creating content that profits will


follow.


In reality, the profits never come because they miss a significant piece of the puzzle,


which is content distribution.


In today's video, we're going to be talking about how you can distribute your content


more effectively across a few different channels, a few different strategies and how you can


take your content to the next level.


There's two things that you can spend when it comes to content distribution.


You can spend time or you can spend money and in today's video, we're going to talk


about exactly how you can distribute your content so when you write that blog post,


you write that landing page, when you create that ebook, you create that infographic, whatever


resource you've developed, you can ensure that that content is reaching the right people


on the right channel at the right time.


So how can you do it?


We all have heard of own channels.


Own channels are things that you own as a business, as a brand, as an organization.


These are things that you can do without question probably today.


For example, email marketing.


It's very likely that you have an email list of some sort.


You can distribute your content to those people.


Let's say you have a website that offers people a solution or a service directly inside of


the site.


Say it's a software as a service or something of that nature.


If people are logging in on a regular basis to access your product, you can use in-app


notifications to let those people know that you've launched a blog post or better yet,


if you have a mobile app of any sort, you can do the same thing.


You can use your app to let people know that you just launched a new piece of content.


You have social media channels.


Let's say you have Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.


Share that content to your heart's desire on those channels as well.


If you have a website, you can update an onsite banner at the top or in the bottom right that


is letting people know who visit your site that you have a new piece of content.


Let them know.


They want to know that you're creating new content, so why not advise them that you have


done such?


If you have a sales team of any sort, let's say you're in B2B and you have a sales team,


one of the most effective ways is to empower your sales team to communicate to your sales


team that you have developed a new piece of content so they can follow up with leads,


they can nurture those existing relationships, and even existing customers to let them know


that a new piece of content has gone live.


That one-to-one connection can be huge.


So when you've done all that, what else can you do?


You can go into social media.


You can go into other channels.


And again, you can spend time distributing your content into these places where your


audience is spending time as well.


So if you have a Twitter account, you can send out tweets.


If you have a Facebook page, of course, you can put up status updates.


If you have a LinkedIn page, you can put up a status update as well.


These three things are typically what most organizations do in that phase two.


But that's not where it ends.


You can go deeper.


You can do more.


You can go into Facebook groups, whether as a page or as a human, and share your content


into these communities as well.


You can let them know that you've published a new piece of research and you would love


for them to check it out.


Or you're in these groups and you're looking and waiting and looking for somebody to ask


a question that your blog post, your research has answered, and then when you respond to


that article or to that question with the content that you've developed.


Or you do the same exact thing in a LinkedIn group.


LinkedIn groups are an awesome opportunity for you to go in and start seeding your content


as well.


Or you go to mediums.com.


You repurpose the content that you've developed.


You launch it on medium.com as well.


There's an import function on medium where you can import your content, get a canonical


link directly to your site, and you can share that on medium as well.


Medium.com is a great distribution channel because you can see that content to publications


And when your content is going to these publications, they already have existing subscribers and


those subscribers get notified that there is a new piece being submitted by you.


And when they see it, that's a new audience that you wouldn't have reached before using


any of those own channels because these are people who you wouldn't have had access to


before.


So you want to take advantage of that as well.


Keep in mind, you don't always have to upload even the full article.


You can upload a snippet and then have a CTA at the bottom, a call to action, driving people


to the article on your website.


You can use LinkedIn video to do the same thing.


Very similar concept.


Imagine you have a LinkedIn video.


You look into the camera and you say to your connections, hey, everyone, we just launched


a new research piece that is breaking down X, Y, and Z, A, B, C. I would love for you


to check it out.


I'll link below.


If you created that video and you shared it on your LinkedIn, your connections are going


to see this video and it's going to break their pattern of what they typically see on


LinkedIn.


So when they see it, they're going to engage, they're going to watch that video, they're


going to click the link and you're going to get more reach for the content that you developed


in the past.


Slack community is another great place to distribute your content.


Slack isn't just a great channel to build internal culture and communicate as an internal


team.


There's actual communities, people who are passionate about photography, people who are


passionate about e-commerce, people who are passionate about SEO.


There are Slack communities today where these people are gathering to talk about their passions


and their interests and you can do the same thing that you would do in Facebook groups


or LinkedIn groups in these various Slack communities.


Instagram stories and Facebook stories.


Awesome, great channel for you to also distribute your content.


You can add a link to these stories that you're uploading and you can simply say, swipe up


if you want to get access to our latest research or you can design a graphic that will say,


swipe up to get our latest post and people who are following you on these channels will


swipe up, they'll land on your article, they'll land on your research and they'll consume


that content as well.


LinkedIn Pulse.


You have the opportunity now to upload an article directly to LinkedIn, press publish


and again, let it soar.


You can use the same strategies that I talked about around medium.com on LinkedIn and you


can drive results.


Quora, it's like a question and answer site like Yahoo Answers back in the day except


with a way better design.


You can go into Quora and you can share just a native link and tag it with relevant content,


relevant topics and things of that nature or you can find a few questions that are related


to the topic that you've covered in your post, in your research, whatever asset you've developed


and you can add value to that person who asked that question and within that value, you make


a reference to the link in the article that you've developed in the past as well.


SlideShare, one of the OGs of B2B marketing.


You can go to SlideShare, upload a presentation version of the content that you've already


developed.


Let's say you've written a long blog post.


Why not take the assets within that blog post, turn them into a PDF, a SlideShare presentation,


upload them there and then distribute it through that network as well.


Once you have those SlideShare presentation put together, what's great about it is you


can take those graphics and you can share them on Twitter, you can share them on Facebook,


LinkedIn, you can put them into medium.com and distribute them further there as well.


You can go into forums, right?


Let's think about it.


If your audience is spending time in a forum communicating about something, why not go


into these communities and into these forums and connect with them on a one-to-one basis


as well.


There's a huge opportunity in forums and communities that exist online where you can build trust


and you can seed your content into these communities where your audience is spending time.


A lot of people think forums are dead.


They could never be more alive.


If you type in your audience, your industry forums, I promise you, you'll probably come


across something that will surprise you as an opportunity to seed your content.


Reddit communities, a lot of marketers get the heebie-jeebies when I talk about Reddit.


They're all like, oh, marketers on Reddit, that doesn't work.


Reddit hates marketing.


I get it.


I understand what you're thinking.


What they actually hate is the fact that marketers don't get Reddit.


Marketers don't get the fact that Redditors just want value.


If you can deliver value to people using Reddit, whether it's through a post or in the comments,


they will meet you with happiness and joy.


They will be grateful of the fact that you've added value to their communities, to their


subreddits, and they will reward you with upvotes, with traffic and clicks, and maybe


even a few leads or a customer or two in the process.


Do not ignore Reddit as being the site that you can embrace.


Whether you're B2B or B2C, Redditors can like your content.


Redditors will like your content if you go in with value first.


Sites like Imgur, another great distribution channel, take some of those slides that you


developed in the past, upload them to Imgur, and let them sing there as well.


There are way more distribution channels and distribution techniques that you can use that


go beyond even what I've described here, but this is just a few examples that show you


that the power of distribution doesn't exist just in a couple of posts.


It exists in actually spending the time, taking the time to distribute your stories and distribute


your content across a wide variety of different channels.


Without spending time, you can also spend money through paid marketing.


Paid marketing is also an opportunity for any brand to distribute their stories.


First and foremost, you can use remarketing.


Let's talk about that email list that you've already developed.


If you take that email list and you run remarketing ads to those people on Facebook, on Twitter,


on LinkedIn, you can reach those people and get them engaged with new content that you've


developed.


Let's say somebody's already visiting your page.


People are visiting your website.


They're visiting your content.


Why not run remarketing ads to those people who already demonstrate some type of interest


to get them back on your site, back engaged with your content, and tell your story to


them as well?


Another great opportunity is if you leverage video in any way, you can do remarketing ads


on Facebook to people who have watched 10, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, whatever it may be,


to your content as well.


Then one of the opportunities that is definitely underrated is the fact that Quora now offers


advertising as well.


You can run ads on Quora to people who are asking or looking at questions related to


your industry, related to the content that you've developed, and get your content in


front of them as well.


Then influencers.


You can do sponsored content.


You can reach out to these influencers and have them talk about your stories, talk about


your content, and have them share it as well on behalf of the fact that you've developed


something new and something that is interesting.


When I talk about influencer marketing, I talk about Reddit, I talk about SlideShare,


I talk about LinkedIn Video, I talk about Slack communities.


A lot of marketers will quickly say, I don't think this is for me.


I think this is too much.


I think that this is too much manual work.


I think this is too much niche communities.


I think this is a little bit too much for my brand.


I get that.


I understand your mindset, but this is what you need to recognize.


Most marketers are going through this process.


If you think that by distributing your content into the communities that your audience is


spending time is just a little bit off brand or doesn't really suit you, that's what most


marketers already think.


Most marketers already think that Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is all they need to


do to share their stories, get their content out there, and call it a day.


If you want to be like most marketers, you're going to get what most marketers receive as


a result, which is mediocre results.


I push you to think differently.


I push you to push yourself to not be like most marketers, not to go down the path of


mediocrity, and instead start looking for ways that you can either invest time or money


into channels, into opportunities, and into communities where you can spread your content


with value first and ultimately generate results for your business at the end of all of it.


I hope that you can use this to uncover for yourself a content distribution playbook that


works for your brand, whether you're in B2C or in B2B.


It doesn't matter.


You have to understand where your audience is spending time, understand how you can seed


your content into these different spaces, and unlock the power of content distribution.


My name's Ross Simmons.


I really hope you enjoyed this video.


If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out on Twitter, at the coolest school,


or hit me up any other way.


I'm on every other channel.


Of course I am.


I love social.


I love digital.


I'm everywhere that you could find me, so feel free to reach out.


I hope you enjoyed this video, and you can use it to give your content more reach and


ultimately drive meaningful and measurable results for your business.


Why Google Rewards Re-Publishing - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting


about republishing and why Google rewards republishing so much. I think this is actually


an underutilized tactic in SEO and in content creation. We have this idea like we make our


content checklist and we say, alright, these are the topics I need to cover, these are


the keywords I'm targeting, these are the audience I'm trying to reach. And then once


you create that piece of content you kind of go, alright, let's see how it does. And


then however it does you kind of go, okay, let's try and make the next piece better,


you know, we already took our shot at that piece of content, but that does not have to


be how it is. Google actually rewards republishing. So do, by the way, audiences. If a piece of


content is a hit or if you're sure that a piece of content could be a hit or that an


audience would appreciate it and enjoy it, I guarantee they're going to appreciate and


enjoy it if you update that piece of content or produce something better on that topic.


Same thing is true of social media. You can see a lot of the big content sites particularly


that are very, very successful these days, your buzz feeds and that kind of thing, doing


pieces of content over and over and over again, basically finding a formula, hitting it and


updating that content once they do it. So let me talk about why this happens. So I'm


using the example of Guinea pig food as opposed to Guinea pigs for food, which you could do


either way. Here I've registered the domain name, I haven't actually, but randsfurryfriends.com,


right, and I've got my Guinea pig food content that I put in my Guinea pig section on their


diet and that was produced in 2010. But five years later I'm going, man, that's content


is getting old, it's not performing the way I want to, I'm going to publish a new piece


of content targeting those same keywords on the blog this time of randsfurryfriends.com


and that's going to get October 15th or whenever that's coming out. This works really well


because Google does a few things here. First off, they're often testing, right, they're


kind of verifying like, hmm, all right, when a piece of content comes out, did it do well?


We, Google, might place that piece of content on the first page of the results and then


see how it performs with a small subset of searchers and that could be personalized or


that subset could be determined in a bunch of different ways. But if it performs well,


right, if it's the case that, yeah, you know, we really liked how engagement looked on this


SERP, a lot of people were clicking on that link, they weren't clicking the back button,


they seemed to be happy with the results, then Google's going to say, hey, maybe that


page deserves to stay here long term. If you never republish, you don't know whether the


problem was that you didn't earn the engagement and user happiness and searcher happiness


that Google needed in order to keep you on that front page. Maybe you had all the other


ranking signals you would have needed but you just didn't get there with searcher engagement.


Second, fresh publishing often provides its own rankings boost. You can see this generally


speaking. Russ Jones from Moz has done an analysis of SERPscape and seen that in queries


where Google is showing dates on multiple results in the SERPs, there tends to be a


high correlation with positive rankings performance and showing a recent date. So we know that


Google really likes fresh content for certain kinds of search queries and it's almost certainly


the case that even for those where it's not providing a massive boost, it's providing


some value. Being the most recent on a topic is probably going to give you some value and


benefit. So that's another one that helps us here. Third, when you publish multiple


times, you're building up that topical authority, that topical association that Google has with


your site, right? So they might say, huh, Rans Furry Friends offers a lot of content


but he publishes quite often and quite in depth about guinea pigs in particular and


so maybe we should start associating Rans Furry Friends with guinea pigs and show him


for more and more guinea pig types of search queries and that can broaden the reach of


any given particular piece of content to the keyword universe that you can potentially


rank for, which again, awesome, really nice to have that. Multiple pieces of content tend


to yield multiple opportunities to earn links, earn amplification, earn those social shares,


earn engagement, earn ranking signals of all kinds. So when I produce this, I've got


another shot at reaching my audience and getting all the signals, all the links, all the stuff


that I need to rank well if I didn't do it the first time or I can do it additionally.


And over time, you or your content team, you're going to get better at this. Five years ago,


I guarantee the content that I created for Whiteboard Friday, which you're watching


right now for our blog, it was not nearly as polished, as high quality, as what you're


getting to experience today on the Moz blog. We've gotten better at this stuff. Even our


hits from 2010 are not as good as some of our good content in 2015 or 2014 because we're


improving and this is going to be true for you as well. There's three different ways,


potential processes that you can go about when you're doing the republishing thing.


These should be applied, shouldn't all be done together. You should choose the one that


makes the most sense for you and your situation. So first off, A, multiple pieces that are


published one after another, and that time frame could be anything between them, targeting


slight keyword variations and slight content variations. So right here, I've got the 10


Foods Your Guinea Pig Will Love and Guinea Pig Food, just the broad article. I might


actually link to each of these between the two of them. This one would be a little more,


it's a little more listicle kind of format. This one's a little more informational, knowledge-based.


And the idea, hopefully, what I really want to do is get one of these ranking in the top


two or three results, and then once I produce the other one, if it ranks on page one, we


know how Google treats that. They'll put it directly below. So they won't have, you know,


you rank number two and you rank number eight. No, you'll rank number two, and if you rank


number eight, boom, they'll bump you up to rank number three. So now I dominate two and


three in the top three results. That's going to boost my click-through rate. That's going


to give me a ton of opportunity to earn those searchers. Just awesome, right? That's the


dominate search results approach. B is replacing old content with new. So essentially, you


know, I've produced XA and I'm going to replace it with XB, right? So I might say, like, this


page, I'm putting this content on there. The URL is going to stay the same. The idea being


I'm updating and improving that content. I have a second chance at earning links, earning


amplification signals, hopefully getting better engagement. Maybe if I'm already ranking well,


I can improve that. I do this a lot with Moz blog posts. If I get an email from someone


and I'm referencing an old post and I notice that old post is just a little messy or not


exactly what I'd offer today, I'll go in, update it. Sometimes that only takes me 10


or 15 minutes. Sometimes it takes me an hour or two, but then I can broadcast it again,


right? I can tweet it. I can put it on LinkedIn. I put it on Google+. I put it on Facebook.


I share it around, and that broadcast activity often earns lots of new links pointing to


it, and I see that pretty consistently, at least with my audience. C, I can redirect


old content to new. So potentially I can say, hey, you know what? I'm producing this new


piece on 10 foods your guinea pig will love. This old article I just don't love anymore,


but I want to get the rankings benefit and all the signals to this new page that this


old one has. So all these links and wonderful things that were coming in here, I want to


redirect them, and so I'm going to use a 301 to point A over to B. This has worked for


us many, many times with big content pieces that we've produced here at Moz, everything


from the ranking factors to our survey, industry survey, to lots and lots of other things.


We'll even do this when we produce a new blog post that is really replacing an old one.


We'll go ahead and 301 redirect or potentially rel canonical that old one, so make sure that


old one is still accessible for someone if they want to see the historical version, but


send all the ranking signals, all the links, all the traffic to the new one. Like I said,


these three, you should choose which goal you're trying to solve and then pick the republishing


process that works best for you. All right, everyone. Look forward to seeing you in the


comments and to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Discovering Which Sites Your Target Audience Visits - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about finding sites that your audience visits so that you can


better market to them.


Now, this is an awesome tactic to use for link building.


It's great for advertising.


It's great for reaching your community wherever they may go on the web.


But it's not always obvious how to go about this, and that's exactly what I want to talk


you through.


So first step here is we want to actually identify people who are part of our target


audience.


So whoever it is that we are trying to reach, that we're trying to sell to, that we're trying


to market to, these are people that we know perform certain kinds of searches.


They visit places on the web.


They download and install apps.


Whatever it is that they're doing in the digital world, we want to uncover those things.


And to do so, we need to start with a sample set, a small but substantive sample set of


say five to ten people who really match our audience's attributes.


And then essentially we're just going to clone them.


We're going to replicate those folks.


So assuming we start here with a little group of, I've got my six fellows over here, I'm


going to take out one of them and I'm going to essentially look at the attributes and


characteristics of this person who's in my audience.


This is Mortimer.


He's a freelance writer for the example that we'll be using this Whiteboard Friday.


I'm going to assume that I'm creating a product for writers specifically.


And so I know that Mortimer is a contributor to several different publications.


Now that I know his name and a little bit about him and what he does, title, maybe company


where he works, etc., I can look at what are the social networks that Mortimer uses.


I'm going to do a search essentially just in Google and I'm going to look for where


all the places that Mortimer has profiles on the web.


From where does he share content?


If he's using Twitter, by the way, this is super easy with follower wonk because I can


go to the follower wonk analyze page and I can actually tap right in to see all of the


content, well, the list of domains that Morty shares from most often.


That's pretty cool.


If he's not using Twitter, it's fine.


We can do this manually and we can just start to look at, all right, where is he sharing


content from?


What's he talking about, etc.


Where does he already have a profile?


What networks is he using?


Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to use data that I already know about keyword


research.


So I take my keyword research, which I've already performed, that I know this group


of people is searching for in general.


I can be a little bit broader than I normally would be around very sales or conversion focused


types of keyword research.


I can essentially say, what do I know these people look for when they're looking to further


their careers or their writing or their work in my area?


It doesn't have to be conversion focused.


It can be very broad.


So I can essentially collect those search results and then I want to find the domains


that are ranking well consistently numerous times for numerous different keywords.


So I might use words like podcasts for writers and then, yeah, I'm also going to grab the


related searches like best literary podcasts, good podcasts for writers.


Maybe I should be writing podcasts is actually a related search here or podcast books.


And then I'm going to take those searches, find, you know, line them up.


Here's my keywords right here in the columns.


And then for my rows, I'm going to have the, well, these are the domains that I found ranking


consistently for these.


I was makeuseof.com, the right life, the right W-R-I-T-E, life, and writingexcuses.com.


These all ranked somewhere for some of these queries.


So I'm going to make a list like that.


This can actually be done pretty easily with tools.


You could use your Moz exports.


If you're using Moz's ranking tools, you could use the same thing.


Just export all your ranking URLs from search metrics or from get stat if you're using stat,


or you could use SEMrush, whatever ranking software you're using, you can get an export.


But you can even do this manually.


It just takes a little more time.


Next up, I'm going to use some tools and some search queries to broaden these lists.


So, you know, if I find that a lot of people and a lot of writers do visit goodreads.com


for obvious reasons, I can then plug that into SEMrush.


From SEMrush, I can see all of the keywords that they rank for and the domains that most


often also rank for those keywords.


I can use SimilarWeb to essentially see similar websites.


People also visit these sites, right?


That's inside SimilarWeb Pro.


And I can use Google.


What I want to do is add queries like verse versus alternatives, sites like similar sites


onto the end of Goodreads or whatever the domains are that come from my list over here.


And then I will get a bunch more domains that I can plug in.


The last thing I want to do to broaden this list just one more time and to validate and


verify that I've captured all the right stuff is I might try and send out a survey to my


target audience.


So if I'm connected to these six people and hopefully 10 to 20 more at least like them


and I'm actually going to survey them and say, I really like using Typeform.


I've used it a few times.


If you follow me on Twitter, I've been sending some Typeform surveys lately.


It looks great on mobile.


I get high completion rates.


So I love that software.


I might ask them, what are your three favorite websites for freelance writing resources?


And then boom, one, two, three, submit.


Sweet.


Now, it would be even greater here is if I captured an email address because then I can


reach out to those folks and say, hey, here are the most popular websites or I put up


a blog post that shows what they are.


Now I can go and reach out to the websites that most frequently appeared here and say,


hey, guess what?


You showed up most often in my survey and I wrote about it.


Great for networking and building relationship and furthering a relationship.


The last step is actually the work that goes into identifying the marketing opportunities.


So I know all these sites.


I've got a huge list that I've now expanded and expanded again.


And now I can go and look for things like an ad opportunity.


So on Goodreads, they have an advertising platform that I can specifically use.


I can look for community discussion or commenting features.


Booklikes has a system where I can set up a profile and then start commenting and contributing


to their forum and their Q&A. Bookish has a cast of characters.


So I can find that this is on their about page.


I can find the people behind the site and then I can connect with them.


They all have Twitter accounts.


I can follow them on Twitter.


I can connect with them via LinkedIn.


I could pitch them on email if I have something specific that I'd like to contribute to the


site or if I'm not seeing an advertising opportunity or something else.


Lit Reactor had a great place where I could actually create an account and then start


submitting my content just like Youmoz does for moz.com.


So those guest submission opportunities.


Basically I'm looking for anything like this.


Types of opportunities where I can get involved in these sites and be visible to their audiences


so that I can start creating a relationship with those audiences and then hopefully earn


their interest, earn their attention, earn their trust, and have them go check out whatever


it is that I'm doing on my own website.


All right everyone, look forward to your suggestions and ideas as well as any cool tools or processes


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


#WhiteboardFriday: Is Google E-A-T Actually a Ranking Factor?

Howdy Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday, coming to you from my home where I am wearing a tuxedo.


Wearing a tuxedo in hope that it exudes a little bit of expertise, perhaps authority, maybe even trust.


Yes, today we are talking about Google EAT, Expertise Authority Trust.


Specifically asking the question, is Google EAT actually a ranking factor?


Now surprisingly, this is a controversial subject in the world of SEO.


Very smart SEOs on both sides of the debate.


Some SEOs dismiss EAT, others embrace it fully.


Even Googlers have different opinions about how it should be communicated.


And I want to talk about this today, not because it's a debate that only SEOs care about,


but because it's important how we talk to stakeholders about EAT and SEO recommendations.


Stakeholders being clients, website owners, webmasters, anybody that we give an SEO recommendation to.


How we talk about these things are important.


So I don't want to judge, I don't want to be the final say in, that's not what I'm attempting about these various,


is Google EAT an actual ranking factor?


But I do want to explore the different viewpoints.


I talked to dozens of SEOs, listened to Googlers, read Google patents,


and I found that a lot of the disagreement comes not from what Google EAT is,


we have a pretty good understanding what Google EAT actually does, but how we define ranking factors.


And I found that how we define ranking factors fall into roughly three different schools of thought.


Now the first school of thought, this is the traditional view of ranking factors.


People in this camp say that ranking factors are things that are directly measurable,


and they directly impact rankings, or they can directly impact rankings.


And these are signals that we're very familiar with, such as page rank, URLs, canonicalization,


things that we can see and measure and influence and directly impact Google's algorithm.


Now in this case, we can say Google EAT probably isn't a ranking factor under this definition.


There is no EAT score, there's no single EAT algorithm, as Gary Ilyas of Google says,


it's millions of little algorithms.


So in this school of camp, where things are directly measurable and impactful,


Google EAT is not a ranking factor.


And then there's a second school of thought, almost equal to the first school of thought,


that says Google's algorithm is sufficiently complex that we don't really know all the direct measurements


and in these days, it's a little more useful to think of ranking factors in terms of what is modeled or rewarded,


things that have effects that are possibly indirect.


Now this really came about during the days of the Panda algorithm in 2012,


when Google started using much more machine learning and eventual neural networks in its algorithm.


And to give you a brief overview and to grossly oversimplify, Panda was an algorithm designed to reduce


low quality and spammy results in Google search results.


And to do this, instead of using directly measurable signals, instead they used machine learning.


And again, to grossly oversimplify, Brittany Muller has a great post on machine learning,


I'm going to link to it if you're interested.


But what they did is they took sites that they wanted to see more of in Google search results,


sites like New York Times, things like that, that based on certain qualifications,


like did they think the site was well designed?


Would you trust it with your credit card?


Does it seem like it's updated regularly and written by authors?


And they put these in a bucket and instead of giving their algorithm direct signals,


they told the machine learning program, find us more sites like this.


We want to reward these sites.


And so in this bucket, ranking factors are things that are modeled or rewarded.


And people in this school of thought say, let's just go after the same thing Googlers are going after,


because we know those things tend to work.


And algorithms that fall in this bucket are like Panda, Site Quality, and EAT.


In this school of thought, yes, EAT can be considered a ranking factor.


Then there's even a third school of thought that goes further than these two.


And this school of thought says inequality or action that could increase rankings should be considered a ranking factor,


even if Google doesn't use it in its algorithm, direct or indirect.


An example of this might be social media shares.


We know that Google does not use social media shares directly in its algorithm,


but getting your content out in front of a large number of people can lead to links and shares.


And eventually, more traffic and rankings as those signals roll downhill.


Now, it may seem kind of crazy to think that anyone would consider something a ranking factor


if Google actually didn't consider it a ranking factor directly in its algorithms.


But if you think about it, this is often the way real world business scenarios work.


If you're the executive of a company, you don't necessarily care if Google uses it directly or not.


You just like seeing the end result.


An example might be, aside from social media, bounce rate, long clicks, TV commercials.


Excellent example.


If you run a Super Bowl commercial and you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company


and you know that that's going to lead to increased rankings and traffic,


you don't necessarily care if it's a direct impact or an indirect impact.


So those are the school of thoughts, and I'm not here to judge any of them.


But what I think is important is how we communicate recommendations to stakeholders.


When we give SEO recommendations in our audits or whatnot, the standard I like to use,


I like to think of it in terms of goals,


and a framework for goals that I like to use is the SMART system of goal making.


Meaning goals should be specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-based.


Now in the traditional view of ranking signals, yes, specific and measurable are great


because we're using direct impacts, but with EAT, the signals get a little squishier


and it's hard to translate those into specific, measurable signals.


And I think that's why people in this camp don't like considering EAT a ranking factor.


To illustrate this, Bill Slowski, the Google patent expert,


recently shared a patent that he thought might be related to EAT or it's possibly.


We don't know if Google uses it or not.


But the patent, it took website representation vectors to classify sites.


Now that's a mouthful, but basically what that means is the patent's goal


was to determine actual expertise of websites based on vectors.


So for example, it could determine through machine learning and neural networks


if a website is written by actual experts, say medical doctors,


or if it was written by medical students, or lay people, or somebody else.


And it can do that for any type of site, whether it's medical, law, finance, and classify its expertise.


In this sense, what Google is saying, if Google wants sites within the medical sphere


to be like the Mayo Clinic, and there are rewarding sites that are like the Mayo Clinic,


that is really hard to fix.


And it's almost impossible to fake with these kind of sophisticated algorithms.


So it's very hard to give SEO recommendations based on something like this.


So what you really have to do if you want to dive in is start finding where the differences are


between your site and those sites that are actually ranking.


Marie Haynes, another SEO who thinks a lot about EAT,


she says in an interview with Aleta Solis that I'm also going to link to, it's an excellent video.


Thank you, Aleta, for doing that.


She says it's about finding the gaps.


But back to Lily Rae, I'm getting sidetracked here.


Lily Rae is one of the few SEOs who have actually done real good research into some of the EATs


by comparing sites and seeing what some of the differences are of sites that have been rewarded


and sites that have fallen in rankings.


Some of her research has found some really interesting things.


For example, for medical queries, sites that lost had 433% more CTAs, calls to action,


typically because they're selling something, they're trying to sign you up.


A little bit of mixed intent, where the expert sites had fewer CTAs.


The winning sites were written 258% more by real experts as opposed to laypeople


or people without advanced degrees.


And the losing sites had 117 fewer affiliate links.


And that could be something like this algorithm at work or something like that.


But we start to identify what's actually being rewarded.


And again, this is hard to fix or fake, but we can start to fill in the gaps.


So the question is, though, how do we make these specific, measurable, and actionable?


Measurable is especially hard when we're talking about things like expertise and authority.


Fortunately, a lot of these problems have already been solved back when Panda was released back in 2012.


If you want to make these more nebulous, squishy things measurable and actionable,


you have to start to measure them the same way Google does.


And that's using panels of people like the quality raters that Google employs.


Thousands of quality raters across the globe to look at sites and rate them.


Those ratings aren't used directly in Google's algorithm.


They're used to sort of test the algorithm.


But you can start to score sites on a certain deliberate scale.


So you can use things like the quality rater guidelines or the eat questions that Google has released.


Questions that, it's a list of questions that say things like, is this site written by an expert?


Would you cite this site if you're writing an academic paper about it?


Questions like that.


And you get a group of people, maybe it's five people, ten people or more,


and you ask those questions about your client site and compare it to the expert sites that's winning,


and you can start to see where the gaps are.


Maybe this site only scored a five on a scale of ten that appeared to be written by experts.


And by assigning values to it and using panels of questions and scoring,


you can make it specific and measurable and actionable.


And that's how you do it.


It doesn't pay to give nebulous recommendations such as improve your eat.


I know of one SEO consultant who says,


eat is meaningless, and he is definitely in this camp here that the signal should be measurable.


Eat is meaningless because it could mean anything you want.


If you tell your clients to improve eat, you could be meaning anything.


Improve your links, write better content, hire some experts.


Instead, you've got to make it measurable, you've got to make it actionable.


And I think no matter what camp you're in, that's the way you want to go.


All right, I hope you enjoyed this Whiteboard Friday.


Hopefully it sparked some conversation.


If you enjoyed it, please share.


How Create an SEO strategy 2017 - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to this special New Year's edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I hope you have all had a wonderful holiday season and are about to have a wonderful New


Year's.


This week we're going to chat about how you can have a remarkable, amazing SEO strategy


in 2017.


And the first thing I'm actually going to start with is not the broad spectrum strategic


picture, which we've talked a little bit here on Whiteboard Friday about and I'll reference


some of those, but is actually understanding some of those big picture search trends.


What are the search engines doing?


How is that affecting my strategy?


How does that mean I should influence and affect my specific tactics for 2017?


And so I'll walk through a few of these big ones.


There are others, but I think these encapsulate many of the big things we've been seeing.


First off, a huge rise in SERP features, meaning that Google is showing many more types of


data and types of markup in the search results.


We have, I believe, 17 that we record for keyword explorer, but there's another seven


or eight that we do not record, but that we see in between one and two percent of queries.


So there's just a ton of different features that are going in there.


As part of that, we're also seeing a rise in instant answers.


This is especially true on mobile, but it's true on desktop as well.


Google is trying to answer a lot of the queries themselves, and that can mean they're taking


away traffic from you, or it can mean there's opportunity to get into those features or


those answers.


We're also seeing this trend that started with Hummingbird and now obviously continued


with RankBrain around intent, searcher intent, being more important than keywords in how


we target our content.


This does not mean you can remove keywords from the equation.


You have to understand what the searcher has typed into the engine before you conserve


their intent.


And very small variations in keyword structure can mean real changes in searcher intent.


That's a critical part of how we craft content for people.


The value of comprehensiveness has clearly been on the rise.


That's been true for a couple of years, but it definitely is a trend that continued in


2016, and we expect to continue into 2017.


You can see a bunch of examples of research in that area, including some from Whiteboard


Friday itself.


Multi-device speed and user experience.


Google's been harping on this for several years now, and I think what we are observing


is that speed is not the only user experience element.


Google has taken action against overlays and pop-ups.


They've taken action clearly that suggests that there's some engagement metrics that


are going on there and that sites that have better user experience and that garner better


engagement are doing better in the search results.


We've seen a bunch of trends around unreliability of Google data.


That includes search volume data.


It includes data in AdWords around Google showing you which keywords are in there.


It includes inaccuracies in Google Search Console, formerly Webmaster Tools, around


rankings.


My colleague Russ Jones has just put out a big piece on that showing essentially that


if Google says you've got this many impressions and this many clicks, that may be totally


wrong and false.


So be cautious around that.


Voice search clearly on the rise, not yet a huge trend in terms of an addressable market


that search marketers can go after, but we've talked a few ways here on Whiteboard Friday


and at Moz about how you can think about voice search impacting your results in the future


and what types of content you might want to produce to be in front of voice searchers.


Machine learning and deep learning, Google has clearly made a shift to that in the last


18 months, and we're seeing it affect the search results in terms of how they're considering


links, how they're looking at keyword searches, how they're looking at content.


Multivisit buyer journeys have always been important, but I think we are now seeing the


trend to where not just search marketers but marketers of all stripes recognize this, and


a lot of us are optimizing for it, which means that the competitive landscape now demands


that you optimize for a multivisit buyer journey that you don't just consider a single visit


in your conversion path or in your optimization path.


And that means for SEOs, considering what are all the queries someone might perform


as they come to and come back to my site.


Bias to brands, that is a continuing trend over the last few years.


We're still seeing it, and we're seeing it even more so, I would say we're seeing it


even when those brands have not necessarily earned tons of links, which used to be the


big dominating factor in the world of, you know, is a brand stronger than a non-brand?


A lot of times that was about links.


Now it seems that those are decoupled.


But that being said, we're kind of feeling an undiminished value of links.


If you've built a brand, if you've done a lot of these things successfully, links are


certainly how you can stand out in the search results.


That's pretty much as true in 2016 and 17 as it was in 2011 and 2012.


Only caveat there is that the quality of links matters a lot more.


So knowing all those things, I think we can now craft some very smart SEO tactics.


We can apply those to the SEO problems we face.


Step two is to map your organization's top level goals to your SEO tactics.


And that can look something like this.


Here's Zao Corporate, the opposite of Moz, which is hopefully not very corporate.


Zao Corporate's big three for 2017, right?


They want to grow revenue with new enterprise customers.


They want to lower their costs to get more profitable.


And they want to improve their upsell to existing customers.


So SEO can help with these things by, and this is a really smart framework, right?


You want to take the things that your organization wants to accomplish at its executive or board


level and you want to show that SEO is actually doing those things.


Not just that you're trying to rank for keywords or bring more traffic, but that you've mapped


your priorities in this way.


So I could say SEO can help by identifying searchers that enterprise targets and influencers


perform and then ranking for those.


We can lower our costs to get more profitable by reducing the cost per acquisition.


We'll drive more traffic with organic search, thus reducing our dependency on advertising


and other forms of marketing that costs a lot more, right?


Those types of things.


Step three is to build a keyword to content map.


We talked about this here on Whiteboard Friday.


I'd urge you to check that out if you haven't already.


But the basic concept is to have a list of terms and phrases that come out of your tactics


and your goals that you build a map for and then show like, all right, here's how we're


ranking today, here's the URL which we're ranking with, or we don't yet have a URL that's


targeting this keyword phrase and thus we need to build it.


And then the action required there and what the priority is.


You can also think about adding some additional things to your content and keyword map or


to your project list by breaking down all the SEO efforts that you're going to do to


hit all these goals into discrete projects with a few things.


An estimated time of delivery, the people who are assigned to it, and an ordering based


on the expected return on investment.


You can be wrong about this.


It's okay to be, you know, hey, we're taking our best guess, you know, thumb in the air,


we don't really know for sure, but we're going to try, here's the project, it's link building


for the homepage, it's our number one priority, the value estimate is high because we currently


rank number two or three for our own brand name, it's assigned to this person to Rand,


and the ETA is March 30th, great, terrific.


And now I know, right, I've taken this from here and from my projects list, it's part


of my goals, it's where I think I can have a big impact, terrific.


And then step five, the last one here, is to build a reporting and measurement system


that's going to show progress, not just to you internally but to your entire team or


to your client if you're a consultant or an agency, and that anyone can look at and say,


aha, this is where they're going with this, this is how they've done so far.


So you want to take any tactic or any project and add the metrics by which you will measure


yourself, right?


So if it's, we're trying to rank in the top three for our competitor comparison searches,


right, Zao versus whatever company Zao's competing with, and the metrics there are ranking first,


then search volume, the traffic we get from it, the conversions, and the retention of


those customers who've come through.


Now you've got a real picture of how your SEO efforts map up to these big picture goals.


It's a great way to frame your SEO.


So with that being said, I am looking very much forward to hearing how you're planning


your 2017 SEO strategy.


If you have recommendations and tips that you'd like to see here or questions, feel


free to leave them in there.


And despite the holiday break, I will be in there to answer your questions as best I can.


Look forward to joining you again next week and next year for a wonderful year of SEO


and Whiteboard Fridays.


The Linkbait Bump: How Viral Content Creates Long-Term Lift in Organic Traffic - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about the link bait bump, classic phrase in the SEO world, and


almost a little dated.


I think today we're talking a little bit more about viral content and how high quality content,


that really is the cornerstone of a brand or a website's content, can be an incredible


and powerful driver of traffic, not just when it initially launches, but over time.


And so let's take a look.


This is a classic sort of link bait bump, viral content bump analytics chart.


So I'm seeing over here my traffic and over here the different months of the year.


And you know, January, February, March, like I'm under a thousand.


Maybe I'm at, you know, 500 visits or something.


And then I have this big piece of viral content.


It performs outstandingly well from a relative standpoint for my site, gets, you know, 10,000


or more visits, drives a ton more people to my site.


And then what happens is that that traffic falls back down, but the new normal down here,


new normal is higher than the old normal was, right?


So the new normal might be at a thousand, 1,500, 2,000 visits, whereas before I was


at 500.


So a lot of folks see an analytics chart like this, see examples of content that's done


this for websites, and they want to know why does this happen and how can I replicate that


effect?


The reasons why are it sort of feeds back into that viral loop or the flywheel.


Thanks, Elijah.


The flywheel, right, which we've talked about in previous Whiteboard Fridays, where essentially


you start with a piece of content, that content does well, and then you have things like more


social followers on your brand's accounts.


So now next time you go to amplify content or share content socially, you're reaching


more potential people.


You have a bigger audience.


You have more people who share your content because they've seen that that content performs


well for them in social, and so they want to find other content from you that might


help their social accounts perform well.


You see more RSS and email subscribers because people see your interesting content and go,


hey, I want to see when these guys produce something else.


You see more branded search traffic because people are looking specifically for content


from you, not necessarily just around this viral piece, although that's often a big part


of it, but around other pieces as well, especially if you do a good job of exposing them to that


additional content.


You get more bookmark and type in traffic, more searchers biased by personalization because


they've already visited your site, so now when they search and they're logged into their


accounts, they're going to see your site ranking higher than they normally would otherwise,


and you get an organic SEO lift right from all the links and shares and engagement.


So there's a ton of different factors that feed into this, and you kind of want to hit


all of these things.


If you have a piece of content that gets a lot of shares, a lot of links, but then doesn't


promote engagement, doesn't get more people signing up, doesn't get more people searching


for your brand or searching for that content specifically, then it's not going to have


the same impact.


Your traffic might fall further and more quickly.


How do you achieve this?


How do we get content that's going to do this?


Well, one of the big ways that—we're going to talk through a number of things that we've


talked about previously on Whiteboard Friday, but there's some additional ones as well.


This isn't just creating good content or creating high-quality content.


It's creating a particular kind of content.


And so for this, what you want is a deep understanding, not necessarily of what your standard users


or standard customers are interested in, but a deep understanding of what influencers,


influencers in your field, in your niche, will share and promote and why they do that.


And this often means that you follow a lot of sharers and influencers in your field and


you understand, hey, they're all sharing X piece of content.


Why?


Oh, because it does this, right?


Because it makes them look good, because it helps their authority in the field, because


it provides a lot of value to their followers, because they know it's going to get a lot


of retweets and shares and traffic, because whatever that because is, you have to have


a deep understanding of it in order to have success with viral kinds of content.


Next, you want to have empathy for users and what will give them the best possible experience.


So if you know, for example, that a lot of people are coming on mobile and are going


to be sharing on mobile, which is true of almost all viral content today, FYI, you need


to be providing a great mobile and desktop experience.


Oftentimes that mobile experience has to be different, not just responsive design, but


actually a different format, a different way of being able to scroll through or watch or


see or experience that content.


And there's some good examples out there of content that does that, makes a very different


user experience based on the browser or the device you're using.


You also need to be aware of what will turn them off.


So promotional messages, pop-ups, trying to sell to them, oftentimes that diminishes user


experience and means that content that could have been more viral, that could have gotten


more shares, won't.


Unique value and attributes that separate your content from everything else in the field.


So if there's like A, B, C, D and whoa, what's that?


That's very unique.


That stands out from the crowd.


That provides a different form of value in a different way than what everyone else is


doing.


That uniqueness is often a big reason why content spreads virally, why it gets more


shared than just the normal stuff.


I've talked about this a number of times, but content that's 10x better than what the


competition provides.


So unique value from the competition, but also quality that is not just a step up, but


10x better, right?


Massively, massively better than what else you can get out there.


That makes it unique enough.


That makes it stand out from the crowd.


And that's a very hard thing to do, but that's why this is so rare and so valuable.


This is a critical one and I think one that I'll just say many organizations fail at.


And that is the freedom and support to fail many times to try to create these types of


effects, to have this impact many times before you hit on a success.


And a lot of managers and clients and teams and execs just don't give marketing teams


and content teams the freedom to say, yeah, you know what?


You spent a month and developer resources and designer resources and spent some money


to go do some research and contracted with this third party and it wasn't a hit.


It didn't work.


We didn't get the viral content bump.


It just kind of did okay.


You know what?


We believe in you.


You've got a lot of chances.


You should try this another nine, ten times before we throw it out.


We really want to have a success here.


That is something that very few teams invest in.


The powerful thing is because so few people are willing to invest that way, the ones that


do, the ones that believe in this, the ones that invest long term, the ones that are willing


to take those failures are going to have a much better shot at success and they can stand


out from the crowd.


They can get these bumps.


It's powerful.


It really, really helps, not a requirement, but it really helps to have a strong, engaged


community either on your site and around your brand or at least in your niche and your topic


area that will help, that wants to see you, your brand, your content succeed.


If you're in a space that has no community, I would work on building one, even if it's


very small.


We're not talking about building a community of thousands or tens of thousands.


A community of a hundred people, a community of fifty people even can be powerful enough


to help content get that catalyst, that first bump that will boost it into viral potential.


And then finally, for this type of content, you need to have a logical and not overly


promotional match between your brand and the content itself.


You can see many sites in what I call sketchy niches, right?


So like a criminal law site or a casino site or a pharmaceutical site that's offering like


a interactive musical experience widget.


And you're like, why in the world is this brand promoting this content?


Why did they even make it?


How does that match up with what they do?


Oh, it's clearly just intentionally promotional.


And look, many of these brands go out there and they say, hey, the average web user doesn't


know and doesn't care.


I agree that the average web user is not an influencer.


Influencers know, they are very, very susceptible, well, they're very, very suspicious of why


content is being produced and promoted and they're very skeptical of promoting content


that they don't think is altruistic.


This kills a lot of content for brands that try and invest in it when there's no match.


And so I think you really need that.


Now, when you do these link bait bump kinds of things, I would strongly recommend that


you follow up, that you consider the quality of the content that you're producing thereafter


that you invest in reproducing these resources, keeping those resources updated, and that


you don't simply give up on content production after this.


However, if you're a small business site, small, medium business, you might think about


only doing one or two of these a year.


If you are a heavy content play, you're doing a lot of content marketing, content marketing


is how you're investing in web traffic, I'd probably be considering these weekly, monthly,


at the least.


All right, everyone, look forward to your experiences with the link bait bump, and we'll


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


MozCon 2015 - 03 - How To Do Content Strategy (Probably) with Kristina Halvorson

Hi. I asked if I could dress like a fairy sprite so I could just be like coming out


of the woods. But they said no. Also just want to clarify brain traffic is a content


strategy consultancy and I'll explain a little bit more why that is in just a minute. So


I'm actually going to get us back on track for time. I have cut slides but I'm going


to give you a secret URL where not only can you see those secret slides but you can download


the whole PDF. Right? You guys were a whole lot less excited about that than I thought


you were going to be. Okay, so just to provide a little bit of context for my journey with


content strategy, in 2009 I wrote a book called Content Strategy for the Web. And at the time


there were maybe one or two other books about content strategy but they were really scary


to me. They used a lot of big words and talked about things like XML and taxonomies and at


the time I was a web copywriter and I was just like those are those scare me. So what


I wanted to do was I wanted to provide a really easy elevator pitch for what I thought was


a really important topic that nobody was really talking about. So this is what I came up with.


Content strategy is the practice for planning for the creative, creation, delivery and governance


of useful usable content. This people seem to like this. It was non-scary. It was simple.


It was to the point to help people understand that oh yeah, content. It's people aren't


coming to our websites for the design or the flash or the interactive company history timeline.


So the other thing that content strategy did that I thought was important was that it stepped


us away from the what. Right? The what are we going to do is a relatively simple straightforward


conversation. What are we going to talk about? What are we going to build? Is it going to


be social media posts? Is it going to be a video? Is it going to be a podcast? Because


in fact there are a whole host of other questions that we need to be considering when we talk


about our content. Why are we doing this in the first place? Is it for visibility on search


engines? Is it for links? Is it because our customers have asked for it because they need


it? Is it to promote our products and services? Is it to build trust? So understanding specifically


why and how that's related to our business goals and our user needs is so critical and


so key. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. How are we going to do this? No,


really. How's it going to get done? Are we paying somebody to do it? Do we have the right


skill sets in place? Do we have the time? Do we have the appropriate source content?


How is this going to get done? When is it going to get done? Now I know that we're all,


you know, the answer that we always get at BrainTific is when do you have a timeline?


And they're like, yes, yesterday. Well, that doesn't work. So are we appropriately estimating


the amount of time that the content that we believe will be required to fulfill whatever


objectives we have will need to be done and delivered? Who is the content for? I often


say that if your content is for everybody, then your content really is for nobody. Do


we have our appropriate audience segments in mind? Do we have user personas in place?


Have we done a good job of mapping content requirements to the user or to the customer


journey? How is this for? Who is going to create it? This is also a big question, especially


with the content heavy marketing plans that most of us have today. A big thing I hear


from clients is we're just not sure that we have the appropriate skill sets in place to


create content for the digital environment. Or we're not sure which agency to go with


or whether or not we can find the right kind of freelance writers to do this kind of content.


That information has to feed into your content strategy and your content plans. What is it


that we currently have to work with? Another huge thing we get called in for are content


audits where people are telling us, we know we have so much fantastic content, but it


isn't stored in one place. Or people within our organization can't find it or don't know


that it exists. Or when we take a step back and look, we find that editorial plans that


we have in place for the next two months are the same things we had in place four years


ago. Where is that content? Is it any good? Is it still relevant? Is it accurate? Is it


timely? Is it up to date? Where is this content going to go? This can be, we see this oftentimes


as marketers as an opportunity where we want to focus on content distribution and content


amplification and promoting that content. This comes back around to that why. Why are


we doing this in the first place? So that when we are considering the where as part


of our content strategy, we're ensuring that the answer to that question is informed by


strategy and not simply by because we should. How often are we going to create this content?


When we first started recommending blogs, for example, everybody needed to have a blog.


Put that blog on your homepage. Get the CEO blogging. One of the things that we didn't


consider was what we were committing to when we launched a blog. How often were we going


to be posting? Did that person actually have the time and resources to do that? So if we


commit to any kind of a content property, how often are we going to need to take care


of it? And then this was the big question that always cropped up for me when I was doing


web copywriting projects. It was what next? What's going to happen once that content is


out there? Because a lot of times what I found is that content was something that just got


added to the content landfill, which is already what we have for so many of our social media


properties or our websites or our multiple websites. Content that just piles on top of


more content. So without any kind of a strategic plan for what's next, we're just ending up


with content that dies on the vine. So that's where we started six years ago. In 2012, I


authored a second edition, co-authored a second edition with my VP of content strategy at


the time, Melissa Rock. And suddenly, three years later, our definition of content strategy


had gotten a whole lot longer and a whole lot more complicated. You might say there


were a bunch of caveats. But ultimately, what we found was that the conversation had not


necessarily splintered, but had taken so many different, so many awesome focuses depending


on whether you were working within a content management system, whether you were an information


architect, depending on your role in marketing. Were you social? Were you SEO? Were you lead


gen? Depending on your role within user experience design. So content strategy suddenly seemed


to apply to everyone. And it was for that reason that we were trying to get our arms


around exactly, well, when we talked about content strategy, what exactly did we mean?


Now, right about this time, another trend was on the rise. That's right, content marketing.


I tried to figure out how to do an animation where this would go with the Star Wars theme.


Do you know what I mean? That's not the Star Wars theme, but you know what I mean. So what


was crazy about this to me is that I had already been coping with and sort of coaching clients


back from the edge of, we need more content on our websites. We have to make sure that


content is sticky and that it gives people a reason to engage and to come back. And I


was saying, what I think we really need to focus on is user experience and content purpose


and making sure that when our customers come to us or our potential customers come to us,


we're getting the content in front of them that they need in order to make a decision


or get a problem solved. Content marketing and demand gen kind of rose up at the same


time, which was the only kind of marketing that's left is content that builds trust,


that doesn't talk about our products and services, content that creates goodwill towards our


brand and affinity with our brand. Now, I agree with all that. I think that content


marketing or custom publishing is important and that for some organizations it can be


a really good idea. However, the way that that was translated and continues to be translated


within our industry is this. This is a thing that exists on the internet, by the way. I


did not create this. Where more content equals good content. Over and over I go into organizations


to consult or to vet their marketing plans. And over and over what I hear is we're not


sure why, but we need more content because that's what leadership is telling us. And


you guys, we couldn't deal with the content that we already had in the first place. And


now we're being tasked with creating more. And not only that, you guys are being tasked


with optimizing it and making sure that it appears in the right time and the right place


for the right people. Right? So more than ever, it's my opinion that the conversation


about content strategy and ensuring that we are considering our content from a strategic


standpoint is more and more critical. So the good news is that now, six years after I first


published Content Strategy for the Web, there's a whole host of amazing resources, not just


books but also blogs and podcasts. And you hear about content strategy at just about


every single conference you go to. And this is a huge shift. Rand showed in his intro,


this kind of state of the state talk, that content marketing and content strategy are


the two fastest growing positions within the industry. And there's a reason for that.


So I want to take a step back then. There are a lot of different ways, as I mentioned,


to sort of address and talk about and consider content strategy. But this is how I talk about


content strategy. So when you consider content strategy, Melissa and I introduced this, and


it's the quad. It's something we developed at BrainTraffic a couple of years ago. And


essentially what I think is powerful about this framework for discussing content strategy


is that for the first time, it really tied together not just what we were going to create,


but also how we were going to structure that. And then who the people were and what their


processes were for getting at that content and creating it and taking care of it. And


then the governance component, which is how we're going to care for this over time and


make decisions. So at the center of this is the strategy.


And when I talk about content strategy, really what I encourage people to do is to make some


active decisions about where they are going to focus their time and energy and resources


to improve their content efforts, which have to exist necessarily within the larger content


ecosystem. So really what that comes down to is this.


Any good strategy forces you to make a choice. We are going to focus on this. We're not going


to do this. As marketers, we really hate doing that because we love opportunity. We love


cool new things. We love trials and testing and so on. And that's really obviously so


valuable. But ultimately, you can't do it all. And when we try to do it all, our efforts


become fragmented and metrics become shaky. So we'll talk a little bit more about how


to set that strategy. So again, content. When we talk about this


substance, really this is something that, again, I think tends to be a little bit of


an easier conversation for us. What's the story we want to tell? What's the topic that


we need to address? What are the brand elements? How can we ensure that the brand integrity


is intact? What's the voice and tone that we're going to use? And then the structure


is how are we going to organize that content? How are we going to categorize it? And then


what are the elements of the content structure that we need to consider to make it work with


our back end systems? And this then is what it comes down to.


When we select and make decisions about our content substance, we have to ensure that


it's fulfilling our business objectives by meeting our audience needs. And the structure,


when we consider that, is that it's got to make content findable and usable for our users


and manageable for technologies. Now, what's cool about search, I think, is


that your work really bridges those two things. That the work that search analysts and SEO


experts and practitioners do is something where you've got to understand how these two


things work together. It is a science and an art. And just for the record, I know just


enough about search to be dangerous. So let's quickly move on before I make a jerk out of


myself. So, man, you guys are a tough audience. You're thinking? You're overthinking it? Okay,


great. Let's move on. All right. So then we get into the roles, structure,


processes and tools, your workflow. This is always a little bit of a messy thing, especially


when it comes to ownership, content ownership, roles and responsibilities, where your starts


and stops and so on. And then governance, which is our policy standards and guidelines.


Governance is probably the number one thing that we get called for in brain traffic because


they're like, oh, my God, we have content marketing and we have SEO and we have social


and we have CMS and we have a million different silos working in all these different things


and there's no centralized platform, blah, blah, blah. We're pretty sure governance is


the silver bullet that's going to help us get there. What can you have to us by the


end of Q2? To which I always respond. So our workflow ultimately is what's going to put


some structure around our content lifecycle. Doesn't that sound dreamy? And then governance


is in fact what is going to help empower, facilitate and align content decisions across


all of the different teams, within marketing, within our SMEs, across our different silos.


So let me step back and provide a little bit of clarification. Remember I said that big


long definition that we decided we needed to introduce in 2012, which was really 14


definitions. I recently, this has really been kind of keeping me up at night. Some people


worry about like taxes or the government and I worry about content strategy. And I really


kind of was able to break it down into three different areas of content strategy. And so


this is sort of how I end up talking about it. We did call it content strategy for the


web because our publisher wouldn't let us change the second edition title. But really


when I think about it now, I talk about it in terms of content strategy for user experience.


This is where we're really talking about how content plays a role in what our customers


experience when they encounter us across any of our digital properties. So I really love


this graphic. This is something that was published by IBM like in the early 2000s. Forward thinkers.


And you can kind of see here's where content strategy plays a role. I love that they include


usability and accessibility, which is something that we kind of tend to run over in our rush


to get to the next great thing. UI, user interface, understanding and making smart decisions about


our platform selections, how things are going to function, and then that all important information


architecture. So that's the first piece. The second way that I talk about content strategy


is adaptive content strategy. And I saw this on Twitter recently. Ethan Marcotte is the


guy that invented responsive design. And he showed a clip of something he was IMing with


someone where he said, I'm really sorry. I know this is rough. Is there anything I can


do for you? And the response was, yes, you can roll back time and not invent responsive


design because that has completely messed with our jobs and our processes and everything


else. It's a great thing. But ultimately, we do need to be thinking about content components


and tagging and how those are going to be delivered and searched for and how they will


turn up across different platforms and devices. And then finally, this thing, enterprise content


strategy, which is really not necessarily an area that we all get to play in because


this is something that oftentimes has everything to do with organizational structure, change


management, leadership, and overall sort of operating principles. This is included in


the slide deck. You guys can, you know, go and enjoy it for a little bit of bedtime reading.


But it really does sort of cover all of the different parts of how content operations


and that substance and planning and editorial and so on all come together within that governance


piece. It's really a good, good, messy thing that I love to mess around with.


OK, so yeah. Let's get to this. So there are really four parts to getting content strategy


done that I work with and that I would encourage you guys to consider, too. The assessment


and analysis of the content and of the content ecosystem of your customers, your stakeholders,


the tools you have to work with, the content you already have, et cetera. Analysis, which


is getting back with your key findings and insights about what's working, what's not,


and where the opportunities are. And then strategy, which is we can do all of these


things, but we're going to focus on these things to have the most impact for our customers


and on our bottom line. Architecture and editorial, which really get at that substance and structure


piece. Implementation, which is how are we going to get this stuff done. And then maintenance,


which is the plan for what happens next. So we're going to tackle the first two parts


here, assessment analysis and strategy, and architectural and editorial. These are the


two things that we typically can play in. Again, oftentimes our roles or our jobs, we


sit in areas where we don't have control over all of this stuff, that we have focused control.


And so as I go through this, I want you guys to really be thinking, what can I bring to


the table here? What should I be bringing to the table? What meetings are happening


that I'm not being invited to that I need to gently introduce myself into so that I


can help the folks who are making decisions in these areas make good decisions, better


decisions, smarter decisions that will help make this content findable and more visible


across channels and properties. So when we get into any sort of a discovery checklist


when we're designing digital properties or undergoing digital planning, these are oftentimes


the discovery questions that get asked. These look familiar to you guys, business objectives,


project objectives, cross-platform initiatives, design research, all this good stuff.


For me, one of the most powerful things about a content strategy framework are the questions


that get asked in this phase. Because oftentimes what I find is that what causes 11th hour


meltdowns when we're building any kind of digital process is that smart questions weren't


asked up front. And so those are the things that come back to bite us in the end. So what


I recommend to people is that they come to the table not only with typical, what is your


role, what do you do, what's important to you, what's working, what's not, but questions


that are going to help us focus in on opportunities and challenges that exist with the content


itself, with content planning, and with the content processes. Content brought is something


that oftentimes will come at us when we do an early content inventory, and it's redundant


content, outdated content, and trivial content. I think that's so clever. I did not make that


up. I wish I did. Again, man, what is wrong with you guys? I mean, that was not hilarious,


but at least a courtesy laugh. Jeez.


Okay, so after we get to all of this, we write up our assessment and our analysis, and we


get to, dun, dun, dun, the strategy, the thing that everybody's super excited about, woo-hoo,


strategy. Okay, so here is a sample content strategy. We'll deliver the right content


to the right person in the right time in the right place. Do you guys recognize this strategy?


Is this your strategy? This is the strategy I get handed 90% of the time as I walk through


the door. And it's at this point that I think I got to talk to these people about strategy.


Strategy was another thing that kept me up at night for a really long time, because there


was a lot written about it. It's confusing. What's marketing strategy, business strategy,


and so on. And this was finally sort of what helped me boil it down.


So let's say that you're a bear, and as a bear, you have some fundamental goals in life,


the primary one is which, of course, to survive. But you've got to sleep, you've got to hibernate,


you've got to reproduce, and of course, you've got to eat. So in this instance, we're going


to focus on that primary goal, which is eating, to be sustained.


Now, to fulfill this goal, you have a couple of different options, right? You can go forage


for berries, you can go, or small animals or whatever bears eat. You can go look in


the campground to see if there's anything in there that you can rummage around and eat.


Or in this instance, you can go down to the river to get fish. So this bear, you guys


have chosen, your strategy is to go down to that river, to travel to the river, and to


find fish, to eat fish. Okay? So in this instance, specifically then, you also have a bunch of


different ways that you can go after that fish. You can go swim into the river and try


to catch it, right? You can go along the side of the river and see if there are fish close


to the shore that you can kind of get at. Or you can go and stand in the middle of the


river and open your mouth and wait for a fish to jump in, which is what the tactic is here.


So okay, so we've got our goal, which is to eat. We've got our strategy, which is to go


down to the river. And then we have our tactic, which is to stand in the middle of the river


with our mouth open, hoping that a fish will jump into it.


So in this scenario, if we take away the strategy, and we're left with our goal and our tactic,


then we might as well be sitting in a field with our mouth open, hoping that a fish will


fall from the sky. There you go. So how many, I mean, I feel like oftentimes we're operating


like this, right? Well, let's hope this works. We're going to sit over here and try it again


over here. What are our metrics? So these are a few actually effective content strategies.


And again, these things force us to say no. We're going to use our website as our primary


vehicle to gather and capture qualified leads. All right? So we're going to ensure that our


website is usable. We are going to point to our website from our social media properties.


We are going to focus our search efforts on our website specifically. We are going to


ensure that our website is responsibly designed. Okay? So these are decisions that we make


as an organization, as a team, that force us to say no to other things. Or we'll evolve


our print production model to deliver single source omni-channel content. Well, now we're


looking at our technology platform. Now we're looking at content structure. Now we're looking


at a content audit to ensure that we have all our content types. These are specific


activities that we need to focus on. So when you go to document your content strategy,


these are the things you absolutely need to have in place. Anything that's missing, if


something is missing here, it's not a strategy. It's a good idea. Or it's a half-baked plan.


And when we make decisions within marketing, hopefully there is something like this that


is directing our efforts or that's providing guardrails for our efforts. I rarely see this


within organization, and it's a tough thing to get to because it requires a substantial


amount of alignment. But again, this is something that we can participate in simply by coming


to the table and asking good questions. So here's a really pretty framework that you


can use. And in the secret PDF, I also have a bunch of different examples of introductions


to the content strategy document, what your analysis structure can look like, and so on.


Okay? I have three minutes to catch up. That's not going to happen. All right. So then we


get into architecture and editorial. Now oftentimes this is what we see. When we are creating


anything, these are the different pieces that are going into our build process or into our


day-to-day activities. However, when we are talking about content strategy, these are


the pieces that are often overlooked or they're an afterthought or they're unclear or they're


fragmented. So within our content strategy toolkit or implementation plan, these are


things that need to be addressed. Now again, in the secret PDF, I have lots of different


examples of this, which frankly would be really boring to walk through up here because it's


kind of a small type, which Erica really gave me hell for appropriately. But if you want


a shortcut, there's this amazing new book called the Content Strategy Toolkit that has


collected and curated more examples than I've ever seen in one place. So you might want


to check it out. There are free chapters out there. So then we get into the implementation


and maintenance, or as I like to call it, the hard stuff. This is where politics come


into play. This is where resources come into play. This is where the difference between


demand gen and lead gen comes into play because this is where we need to make decisions about


what's working and what's not. And as Rhian was talking about, be brave and kill the stuff


that isn't. Kill it, admit defeat, whatever you need to do to innovate. And also in the


governance piece, who gets to say no? Moving forward, if we come to the table with ideas


or things that maybe are just alongside of the strategy or things that we think might


help us in other areas, right, who gets to rein us in? Who gets to say this is what we've


chosen to focus on now? Now, do I think that this framework completely eliminates the opportunity


for innovation or for creativity or for spotting new opportunities? Absolutely not. Those have


to be a part of our everyday work. However, what I think is important is that as marketers,


we tend to become subject to the bright shiny object syndrome, where instead of really seeing


through activities that we've been working towards and building on, we suddenly will


think, oh my God, there's a new platform over here and we absolutely have to be on it right


away. I spoke at a marketing conference several years ago where I asked people, how many of


you know what content you have within your organization and where it lives? And it was


an audience about this big and I had three people raise their hand. And then I said,


how many of you are on Pinterest? And I swear to God, every single hand in the place went


up. And I just wondered, how many of you should be on Pinterest? How many of you have brands


where that actually make sense? How many customers actually or potential customers actually care


to find you on Pinterest? Those are the kinds of things that a solid content strategy can


help you look at clearly and make brave decisions about what you are going to do and what you're


not going to do. So how do you make the case to go backwards with the clicker? Huh? God,


again. How do you make the case for content strategy? This is the number one question


I get asked at conferences because a lot of times people know that it's important, but


they can't get anybody to listen or they put together their deck or they've downloaded


one of my decks and they've done a roadshow of it within the organization and they're


just not getting the kind of buy-in that they're looking for. The number one way that you can


make the case or get buy-in for content strategy or for investing in content strategy, both


time and resources, is to talk about pain points. Figure out what your boss or your


boss's boss cares about and what's hurting them and what they are wishing they could


get fixed or where the process is breaking down or where things can seem to continue


to get messed up within the content process. Where is it that it hurts? And then step back


and figure out how one of the pieces of the content strategy process might be able to


deliver a smart solution and start there, start small. Same with unanswered questions.


The number of times I see us making decisions based on assumptions, like not just a few


decisions, but a whole lot of decisions, entire campaigns based on assumptions, makes me nuts.


So if we can get in there and identify what are those unanswered questions, where do we


have an opportunity to ask some of these smarter questions about content, oftentimes that will


buy us the time and the resources that we need to be able to go ask those questions.


And it doesn't need to be some huge well-funded research project. Sometimes it can just be


getting the right people around the table and asking questions that nobody else has


before. And then there are, of course, the opportunities. And I'm not talking about the


content marketing opportunity here. I'm talking about opportunities to improve the quality


of our content, not just in a way that we think is better, but in an industry-wide way.


How can we competitively differentiate with our content, really, truly differentiate?


You guys are always looking for ways to improve findability of your content, to improve visibility.


Where are those opportunities? And how can understanding more about our audiences or


our clear business objectives help you to prioritize and focus those opportunities?


And also, are there opportunities to cut costs, to create new efficiencies within our content


processes internally? Where are those opportunities? Can you spot them? Can you articulate them?


That's an easier thing to sell up.


So my final question to you is this. You guys sometimes do live in silos that are frustrating


because you see and you know and you understand from a best practices perspective, God, if


only everybody who's creating content and who's delivering content would check in with


me or let me participate in that conversation so that I can bring my clear expertise to


the table or bring the new insights that I've gathered from MozCon and help shape our content


creation and maintenance process.


Use this approach. Use this framework. Work hard to tie in from a holistic standpoint


all the different pieces that have an effect on our content products and processes that


exist within our companies and for our customers. It's up to you guys to shape this conversation,


to bring it to the table, and to advocate for your user needs, your customer needs,


for responsible metrics, for meaningful metrics, and ultimately for the entire thing that Content


Strategy comes back and focuses on, which is what are you going to do? What are you


not going to do? And the stuff that you are going to do, how are you going to kick ass


at it? Thanks.


That was awesome.


Thanks. Okay, this is a really important slide that we actually need to keep up.


Okay, let's leave that up. Let's leave that up. We're going to take a couple questions


here.


Good. You can take me right off that screen.


Yes.


Damn.


So this is the URL that people can go to and download the PDF.


Yep. And if you guys have Wi-Fi access and anybody wants to try to do that right now


and then let me know if it's working, that would be fantastic.


Okay, so I'm an old school SEO, right? And a lot of old school SEOs in this audience


were very slow to evolve sometimes. So I thought this was a really good question from Evan


Davis. My clients want calls and their customers don't read content. So we make content to


rank. I bet you hate that question. So how does Content Strategy apply?


When you're making content to rank? Well, I think that, you know, what I've always said


in the world of search is that oftentimes we're measured on page rank. And that's what


our clients are looking for and that's what our clients count as a success. But ultimately,


if people click on that and they don't find what they're looking for or the content sucks,


they're going to leave, right? Going back to search results is a click or it's a swipe.


So Content Strategy, I think, can help. Sorry, I'm talking to you. Content Strategy, I think,


can help by ensuring that that content is quality and that it is meaningful. And ultimately


that it does, I know that a big ton of content marketing is that don't use content to market


your products or services. Use it to build your authority as a trusted thought leader


in the space. But I think, again, ultimately, people want pretty specific things from you


as a brand. And if you're creating content just for the visibility, if they get to it


and it's not meeting those needs, then it was, you know, a nice idea.


I think a lot of us, even at Moz, we sometimes struggle to create content that is actually


valuable to people. I have a question here. When you say less content but engaging content,


do you have any good examples of that?


Now, I didn't say engaging. I think, or if I did say engaging, I take it back. Because


I think that engagement is a pretty lousy metric. And I think it is a metric that we've


leaned on because we're not sure what else to measure. So we measure shares, and we measure


clicks, and we measure likes. But ultimately, those are pretty cheap to come by, I think,


because it doesn't do anything to assess intent. Right? It's just kind of a wave, or it's kind


of a high five.


So I'm going to answer the question more, what do I think makes content quality content


or useful content or content that actually drives our customers through and drives them


deeper into the funnel. Again, I think it's content that addresses a specific need or


task, which is pretty unsexy. Right? I mean, the content that I'm looking for, nine times


out of ten, if I'm thinking about a product or a service or how to solve a problem, is


specifically how to solve a problem or how to make a decision. Yeah?


And so I think that when we create content about like, we sell, you know, I don't know,


paper products, so we're going to create a series of good ideas for a picnic. What? Right?


I want to know maybe where you're sourcing them or mine were moldy and who do I call?


I mean, I'm sorry, I've never had moldy paper products.


Okay. One thing, another question we had final question for you. A lot of people in this


room are very heavily involved in content promotion. We didn't get into it very much


in your presentation here. Is that, is that very much part of your process or is that


more outside the process?


You know, I've been thinking a lot about content promotion and I don't like, I'm really unclear


about why we would be promoting our content versus our products and services. Like I kind