know, in that phase where I'm doubting whether your email will be interesting this time,


MozCon 2015 - 15 - Drive More Conversions with Lifecycle Email Campaigns with Tamara Gielen

yes or no.


Otherwise, people won't even look at it anymore.


So you don't have a lot of time to convince people.


Their attention is really, really scarce, right?


And that's why with email marketing, we need to think beyond ad hoc campaigns, beyond newsletters


that we send to everybody.


We try to think about email marketing in a life cycle kind of way because we want to


try and send relevant emails, very timely, very personalized.


The right message, the right person, right time.


Think we've heard that before.


Now to be able to do that, we are going to need data.


And Adam has talked about data quite a bit already, so I'm not gonna go into a lot of


details there, but we are going to have to know who our customers are.


We have to analyze whatever data we have on these people, right?


And from those analysis that we make, we need to try and get some insights.


We need to try and get to a stage where we can actually start predicting what people


are gonna buy from us.


I think I'm a big fan of Amazon.


I buy a lot of stuff there.


And when I was looking for these brick and clutch levers, they were also predicting,


or not predicting, they were suggesting other things I might be interested in.


And yeah, I was actually.


I hadn't thought about it yet, but you know, I am going to get new handlebars.


I am going to get new bar ends, you know, stuff like that.


So try to provide that service to the customer because that's the stage where we want to


get to.


Try to think, and this is a horrible picture, it could have been much nicer, but try to


just think about the whole life cycle, you know?


They're coming in, in that stage where they're still exploring you, they're exploring whatever


product you have to offer, maybe they subscribe to your newsletter.


They go through that journey, maybe you have sent them some offers they've clicked on some


stuff, maybe at some point you can start sending them stuff based on what they've clicked on


in the past.


Think about that life cycle, I'll get to that in a minute.


Like this picture here, and I've been to this place, it's amazing, isn't it?


Who has been there?


No one?


Antelope Canyon?


You should go there.


So like this picture, you need to send the right message at the right time.


You need to try to think of what people will want to buy from you before they can think


about it, or think about what message they will need from you first before they've even


thought about it.


Another example from Amazon, this is an email that I received from them a while back.


I'm a big fantasy fan, I read every book that has elves and trolls and magicians and whatever


in it.


I've read all of Brandon Sanderson's books, and I've bought them all on Amazon, so they


know my history.


Now what happens, and I don't know this for a fact, but I can totally imagine that this


is how it happens, this is most likely an automated email.


New book comes into the inventory, and an email goes out to everyone that has, in the


past, bought books from this author, or maybe books from similar authors or something like


that, and they send out this email.


This for me is not a sales message, it's not a marketing message, this for me is a service.


Because Amazon at this point is reminding me of the fact that one of my favorite authors


has written a new book and it's going to come out soon.


This is not marketing anymore.


Well, it is marketing, obviously, but this is a service to me as a consumer.


This is clever marketing.


The good thing about these things is that you can definitely automate these things.


You can have a look at what I'm doing on your website, you can follow me throughout that


experience, you know what I'm clicking on in your emails, you know when I've bought


something, what I've bought, and how often I've bought, so you know a lot of things about


me.


And when you pick up these signals that I'm kind of ready to buy again, that's when you


may want to shoot me an email, and I'll give you a bunch of examples of that later on.


Now, triggered emails, automated triggered emails are very, very powerful.


I saw this case at an email marketing conference a while back.


It was a company in the travel sector, and they sent out, the volume of the triggered


emails that they send out is about 5% of the overall email marketing volume.


But it generates, as you can see, 45% of the revenue of that email channel.


45% to 5% of emails.


So think about that, because email marketing today is still really, really strong.


It always has been.


We in the email marketing industry, we've always known that this is a really powerful


channel.


And everybody's been trying to say, like email marketing said, first it was RSS that was


going to kill email, I think at some point even Second Life was going to be killing email.


Every channel, every new channel that came along was going to kill email.


But we're still here, and email today, as someone said to me during lunch, or during


breakfast yesterday, email for us is the number one channel, the number one revenue generating


channel for us.


It is huge, but you have to do it well, because otherwise it can turn against you as well.


Now, if we're thinking about lifecycle marketing and how to get started with that, there's


like three important questions.


The first one, and you've heard about all of this before, you need to develop some sort


of an image of your customer, a persona.


You need to know who that person is.


And if you haven't done that yet, this is an exercise you cannot, you need to do this.


You cannot live without, you cannot get started without it.


You need to know who these people are for the different target audiences that you have.


Who are these people?


What are their name and a face to them?


What are their typical objectives?


What are their typical challenges?


But also, a very, very important thing, what are typical objections that they may have


towards a certain product or service that you're trying to sell them?


Because if you know what kind of objections they have in your salespeople, they'll probably


be able to tell you that because they should know.


If you know what are the typical objections, then you can already write in your copy something


that counters those objections, even before they say, no, I won't or no, I can't because.


So that persona is a really important one.


And the second thing, the second exercise that you have to make if you haven't done


it yet, is map out that entire customer journey.


You need to know from start to finish what are the steps that people are going through


when they are buying one of your products.


And that goes from, they find us on Google, they come to our website, they, I don't know,


they fill in a form, then they get this email, then they get this interaction, then all those


little steps, all those little steps, you need to map them out.


Create a whole customer journey.


See where people are going, see where they might be making objections, see where they


might maybe drop off, all those things.


And then have a look at all those different touchpoints and see how you can assist them.


And I'm not using the word marketing here on purpose.


See how you can assist them, see where you can give them that little push to move them


forward through that buying journey, through that customer journey.


A company called Gamers First, is a little case, they sell, well they make money by selling


virtual hand grenades.


They sell video games, as you probably would have guessed.


And the issue that they had is people cannot buy something from them unless they've registered,


logged in, and actually played the game.


They can only purchase when they're playing the game.


So what they did is they did that whole exercise that I talked about before, and they figured


out that there were like three major drop off points.


There was a point, people would register on their website, they would get an email where


they'd have to click a link to say that yes, I want to be registered on your website, the


famous double opt in thing.


So people would drop off there.


Then the second drop off point was at the point where they had verified their account,


but they hadn't logged in yet.


And then the third point was of course after logging in, they wouldn't have purchased.


So they were looking at all those different stages, and basically what they did is at


those three drop off points, they created a triggered email that would be sent to people


to get them to come back, to get them to go to the next step.


The first thing, for example, in the beginning they had like a really beautiful HTML email


that was sent out when people registered.


It had like great branding, a bunch of text, and then a button that people needed to click


on to verify their account.


They just got rid of that and they, well they tested it of course first, but they got rid


of that and now they only have a simple text email because that performed way, way better.


And then each of these different drop off points, they created an email, they tested


the hell out of it, and as an end result, 44% increase in revenue.


Three stupid emails, triggered emails.


And it's not easy to set those things up sometimes.


Sometimes you need to involve what we also lovingly call the business prevention unit,


IT.


We need to involve those people because they need to link databases, they need to, I don't


know, do all kinds of technical stuff that I don't know about to get all those things


set up.


Sometimes it takes months and months before you can actually get things going, but you


need to build your business case, and I'll talk about that in a second, to get there.


It's really important.


A couple of examples, how do you help or how do you assist people to go through that journey?


So what are typical triggered emails that you could send out?


And these are just examples for inspiration, and I'll talk a little bit about each and


every one and give you some tips and tricks there.


The first one, welcome messages, activation messages, onboarding programs, different kinds


of emails there.


This is the first one.


People sign up to your newsletter.


When they are on your website and they're signing up to your newsletter, they want to


hear from you.


They're in that mindset of, I want to get in touch with this company, I want this company


to send me emails.


Do that.


Send that very first email within the first five minutes after they have subscribed, and


welcome them.


Tell them what you're going to be sending them, and most importantly, try to get them


to come back to your website.


They're ready.


They're waiting for it.


They want to do something.


Try to get them to come back.


Try to get them to do the next step.


I like this email as well from Goodreads.


Here I have created an account, and they're sending me an email and trying to get me to


activate.


Now, what I like about this email is the famous rule of three.


There's three things that you can do.


They've really nicely put it in three categories.


First step is follow your favorite author.


Second step is join a group, and the third one, win a free book.


They've given me three easy things to do.


Remember that rule of three.


People like things in threes.


There's someone from Buffer here, and she's going to be talking.


I think it's tomorrow.


I like Buffer a lot.


It's one of my favorite social media tools.


I like it because they're keeping it human.


This is an email that doesn't even try to sell me anything.


They're just saying, like, hey, it's so great that you've purchased our awesome plan.


I don't even like the name of the plan.


They're trying to, like, you know, they're signing it with Joel and the Buffer team.


It's a personal email.


It's a simple email.


It even looks as if it was, like, sent personally to me, and some people actually will believe


that Joel sent this email personally.


They do.


But this is a really nice way to thank customers for becoming a customer.


It's a simple thing to set up.


Think about those things.


Join up me.


I signed up for a trial of their software, and what they did was in the first, the trial


was 15 days.


During those 15 days, I received six emails, right?


Day one, day three, day five, day eight, day 12, and day 15.


And in each of those emails, they talked about functionality of the tool, or they talked


about this one little piece of, this one little thing that I could do with the tool, trying


to get me to activate.


In those 15 days, that's their only chance to get me to activate.


And they know if I start using the tool, it's going to be much, much easier to sell it to


me, to sell a paid subscription afterwards.


So once those 15 days were over, I received, I think, two more emails from them trying


to get me to buy a subscription.


Again, everything is automated.


Everything is just sent out without you having to lift a finger.


That's why I love triggered emails.


That's why I love lifecycle emails so much.


You only set it up once.


You test the hell out of it, and then it just sits there and it generates revenue and business.


Recovery programs.


Things, emails like this, they look so simple, and yet it can sometimes take up to 12 months


to get it installed, because again, all those systems need to talk to each other, and data


needs to be integrated, and all those things.


But imagine all those people that are coming to your shop, that are putting stuff in your


shopping cart and going away without paying.


If you can get only a portion of them back through sending them one, two, maybe three


emails, three follow-up emails, that generates an awful lot of money.


Even if this takes you 12 months to get up and running, it's going to pay for itself


within a very short amount of time.


If anything, think about this if you're doing e-commerce.


It's one of the most important emails.


Now, here you see an example where they're showing you what was in the shopping cart.


Here's an example of another abandoned shopping cart email that doesn't show you what was


in the shopping cart, but they just have a link for you to go back.


Test different options.


That's basically what I'm trying to say.


Test with, probably in the very first instance, when you're rolling this out, you won't be


able to show the product.


Probably because there's no connection with your email database, I don't know, many reasons.


The first phase of your rollout will probably be an email like this.


Simple and easy, just a link back to the shopping cart.


Then the second phase, maybe you start adding products.


Maybe you want to start testing, as you can see over there, how do you say, the percentage


off, giving people a discount to come back.


Now, funny story there is in Belgium there's an e-commerce store that I buy from quite


often.


They have trained me to put stuff in my shopping cart and then wait one day because then I'll


get an email that says you don't have to pay shipping costs.


That's kind of stupid.


If you can easily train people to wait for those promotions.


In this case, I'm hoping that the company here is not doing this in each and every abandoned


shopping cart email.


But maybe only when it's a very important client, for example.


Think about those things.


Think these things through.


Another version of that, and I'm showing maybe a lot of B2C examples, but think about a B2B


context.


Somebody has been to your website and they started filling out a form to download, I


don't know, a white paper.


But they didn't complete filling that form out.


You could send them an email that reminds them again about that white paper.


Just don't say, hey, I noticed that yesterday at 2.42 you were on the website and you spent


two minutes or 20 seconds on this page and we noticed that you were interested in the


... I mean, don't play big brother too much.


People don't like that.


That becomes really creepy.


But something like this here, they're just reminding me of the fact that I've been looking


for a place to stay in San Francisco.


If anybody has any suggestions of where I can stay in San Francisco on Thursday and


Friday, let me know.


So abandoned search is definitely something that you can also look into.


Another example of abandoned search is, again, my favorite e-commerce store, Amazon, who


sends me emails like this when I've been on their website.


You may have seen those emails as well.


So think about that.


Think how you can, first of all, figure out who was on your website and when it is a good


idea to trigger an email like that.


Maybe they visited a certain product page.


Maybe they've downloaded something.


Maybe they've attempted to do something.


They clicked through on an email but they didn't take the action.


Then maybe you can follow that up with something else.


Another type of lifecycle marketing emails are the upsell and the cross-sell programs.


An example here from, I don't know how to pronounce this in English, DeWalt, whatever.


I'm not technical.


I have what you call two left hands.


But I'm told that when you buy a battery, like you buy one of their appliances, that


battery can also be used in all the other appliances.


So you're actually saving money by buying more.


That makes sense?


At least that's what they're trying to make you believe here.


But again, they're trying to upsell you something.


Same with EasyJet, who if you've purchased, I mean, travel companies do this all the time,


right?


You've purchased airline tickets.


Maybe you're going to need a hotel room.


Maybe you need to rent a car.


Maybe you want to book some excursions.


Maybe you need, I don't know, a taxi to drive you to the airport.


Typical upsell and cross-sell programs.


Same here with Amazon again.


But also when somebody has, you know, needs to renew a subscription to a service, why


not send them an email a bit more in advance asking them, you know, to come back, maybe


give them a special discount.


All those things can be automated.


I like this example as well.


This is actually a transactional email and we call emails like this is like something,


confirmation of an order.


That's what we call transactional emails.


Here again, perfect opportunity to try and upsell me something, right?


A lot of companies just send out boring text emails, you know, to confirm a purchase.


Why not try to get me to buy some more?


People follow up programs, take a survey after you purchase something.


I like this one, Booking.com.


They actually send me an email to, you know, prepare me for a trip that I was going to


take.


I was going to stay at a hotel.


Afterwards they ask me to review.


What I like about this email is they're using, I've done a project at Booking.com years ago


and I know that the developers there, they won't change a letter on the website without


actually testing the hell out of it first.


If they change a word on the website and it stays, it means that it's making them more


money, right?


And they're also very big fans of a guy called Robert Cialdini.


I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's written a book called, I think it's The Science


of Persuasion or The Principles of Persuasion.


Read that book.


One of the principles of persuasion that they're using in here is they're saying like, hey,


7.6, so the review score is 7.6 based on 778 guests.


That number sounds like it's, you know, believable.


It is not a round number.


If they would say here based on 500 plus guests, it wouldn't be as believable as that number,


Anyway, 76.


CoolBlue.


I think there's someone in the audience here from CoolBlue.


They're an e-commerce company.


They sell, I think, mainly electronic appliances, if I can buy it on CoolBlue, I will buy it


on CoolBlue because they're not the cheapest, but their customer service is really awesome.


Now, in the context of this email, they just basically ask me to review one of my purchases


and they're giving me the chance to win something if I write a review that is really, really


good.


Now, one of the things that I would have changed in this email, it's just little tips and tricks,


if you make the guy look at the text, if you make him look at the blue button, my eyes


will look at the blue button as well.


Now my eyes will go to his face and my eyes are drawn, the attention is drawn to that


face.


Make that face look towards, or make him point towards the button and I will look towards


the button.


Just something to keep in mind.


What I wanted to point out with this example here, you see on the top, those little images,


the speech bubble and the little round thing with a number in it, those symbols have been


known to stand out in the inbox.


Of course, if everybody's going to start using them, they won't work as well as they do now,


but something you can try out, send people reminders.


CoolBlue again, I bought some in cartridges.


Now they're following up with an email, like a couple of months after I bought those cartridges,


they followed up with an email saying like, hey, maybe you need some more.


And that is a very clever thing to do because what happens when I run out of ink and I need,


I usually find out that I've run out of ink when I want to print something.


And what I'm going to do when I'm running out of ink is probably I'm going to go to


a shop and buy new ink cartridges.


Now if they can get me to purchase some so that I have some spares lying around, then


that's a clever thing to do.


So an easy email to be automated again.


MotoGP is trying to get me to renew my subscription.


Just different examples that you can use for inspiration.


GoDaddy speaks Dutch these days.


It's really horrible.


I want them to speak English to me.


They're warning me that one of my products is up for renewal.


One keeper trying to get me to come back, trying to remind me that I used to be an elite


user and I'm not anymore so they're giving me the chance to come back.


All of those emails easily, I'm not going to use the word easy.


They can be automated and they should be automated.


I love the happy birthday emails.


I love them.


But I love them even more if they give me something in return, if they give me like


a little present.


Who doesn't, right?


I receive a lot of emails around the week of my birthday.


Now there's a restaurant in my neighborhood and they send me an email to congratulate


me on my birthday like a week before my birthday and they say like, hey, if you come in the


week of your birthday, if you come on a Monday, a Tuesday, I think a Wednesday and a Thursday,


if you come on any of those days, you get a free meal if you bring a second person with


you.


So they're doing two things here.


They're making me feel good because I'm getting something for free but also they're filling


up their restaurant on days where they don't have a lot of traffic usually, right?


So that's very clever to do.


Give me something.


I like getting things.


I like this email again, an example from Buffer because, you know, we're in the category surprise


and delight.


This is just an email that says like, hey, you've just paid your invoice but they're


doing it in such a nice way, I want to continue to do business with them.


You know, use some personality if you can.


Mindkeeper, I don't know if you guys use it here but they're really great at inventing


new records.


No?


The next email actually says like, hey, you've run like 100 times.


It's really great.


So again, surprise and delight.


Send people something.


When I was working at eBay back in 2005, we used to send our members a certificate.


When they reached like their feedback score of X, you know, when they got their first


feedback score, for example, we would send them an email that had like a link to a PDF


that they could print out with a certificate like, hey, you've, you know, you reached your


first start.


People would actually print that out, hang it up against their walls and then send us


pictures of that.


Simple things.


Makes them, you know, love you.


LinkedIn trying to get me to come back and I am, this is curiosity.


They're trying to trigger my curiosity.


I always want to know who are those people that have been looking at my profile.


Again, automated emails, triggered lifecycle messages.


Runkeeper trying to get me to come back.


You know, you haven't been using the tool.


Why not?


Maybe it was something we said.


Please come back.


I don't, I like this email in a sense that it tries to trigger an emotion, at least the


first part.


The second part of it just has too much text.


If they would have taken a clue from that Goodreads email that like the rule of three,


these are three things that you can do, this would have been way better even.


Just little things and tips and tricks.


So a couple of keys to success.


First of all, if you want to set up these automated messages, you're going to have to


get management buy-in.


Why?


Because data is involved and a lot of integration will probably be involved and they may not


understand why you want to spend time and effort on that.


So try to maybe even first set up a campaign that is not automated just to figure out,


you know, how much more revenue or leads it's going to bring in, right?


Get them to buy into that.


That way, then think about which data you need.


Think about where that data sits and think about how you can bring that data all together.


And maybe you don't have certain data.


Maybe you need to collect that.


How are you going to do that?


Think about those things.


A very important thing, and I was on a panel, I was moderating a panel, actually, at another


conference, and I had someone from Arsenal, the soccer club in the UK, and they had set


up a really nice automated program to tell people about if their subscription was up


for renewal, to send them an email, you know, to remind them of that.


But it also got sent out when they just purchased or when they just renewed.


That's horrible.


That's a horrible experience.


So make sure that you set up those rules and triggers and test them extensively.


And optimize those emails for conversion.


Don't just let them sit there and move on to the next thing.


Try to optimize them as much as you can.


And start small.


Start small.


Think about if, you know, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you


there.


So think really good about what it is that you're trying to achieve.


Are you trying to prevent churn?


Are you trying to think of get people to buy another product, get people to buy the second


purchase, I don't know, get people to buy a first thing from you?


Think about what it is that you want to achieve.


And then once you know what business problem you're trying to solve, ask a bunch of questions.


And prioritize those questions that you want to ask based on the business opportunity that


they offer, and then take or ask those questions and think about the actions that you want


those answers to trigger.


Does that make sense?


So really ask yourself a lot of questions.


And really think very hard about, okay, with the answer of that question, what is it that


I'm going to be able to do?


And don't think of it as one big project.


A client of mine worked three years to really get from no automation at all to having an


abandoned shopping cart, email, having some upsell emails and all those things.


They started by just getting data from a third party data provider.


And they started small, they started sending out campaigns based on that data.


And then they aggregated some more data from social media over time.


And then they linked up their CRM system to their email platform and their transaction


system to their email platform and all those things.


So start small.


Don't try to make this into one big project.


Make sure that you have small things that you can already start to do.


I think this is what I want to leave you guys with.


When you're doing automated email marketing, when you're doing lifecycle email marketing,


aim for progress.


Don't aim for perfection.


That was it.


So fascinating numbers about triggered emails versus standard blast emails.


Because I think we all put 90% of our effort into the blast emails.


Absolutely.


And so the takeaway, at least for me, is find more opportunities where we can get those


triggered emails.


So we're almost out of time.


I do want to ask one question because it came up several times.


Kate Sand, I think, said it best here.


What is the tipping point on email quantity and frequency?


When do you become an inbox stalker?


How many triggered emails are too many?


If the content of those emails is valuable to me, then you're not stalking me.


If you're providing a service to me, then you're not stalking me.


Is there a tipping point?


Look at your numbers.


Your stats will tell you when people are starting to get annoyed by unsubscribing, by not opening,


by not clicking anymore.


So your numbers will tell you.


So here in the States, we always get questions about can spam.


Do we have to worry about that at all with triggered emails?


I mean, can we become spam if we do it too much?


Well, I love your legislation here in the US because you can basically do anything.


In Europe, we need to have like an actual opt in.


People need to say, yes, I want to receive your emails before you can actually send those


emails.


So you have a lot of freedom to do what you want unless, I mean, there is this thing about


transactional emails and I think it's more of a best practice rather than legislation,


but I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a US citizen, so I could be wrong there.


Try to keep the promotional portion to like 20% and 80% of the message should be the transaction.


I think that's a good rule of thumb.


Cool.


Thoughts to take away.


Tamara, thank you so much.


Thank you.


Tamara Gillan, everybody.


Using Related Topics and Semantically Connected Keywords in Your SEO - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about using related topics and semantically connected keywords,


not just for keyword research, although that is a potential use in application, but also


for some of the on-page SEO processes that we run.


Now, when I say related topics and semantically connected keywords, I'm not actually talking


about the things that you would find through a traditional keyword research process.


So the idea here is not to say, what other things are people searching for that I could


target?


This is really trying to define two different unique kinds of use cases or extractions for


keywords.


And those are, what are keywords, well, words and phrases overall, unique words and phrases


that are used on more pages and paragraphs and phrases that contain the query you're


going after across the web, and what are terms and phrases that are used by more pages that


rank for that particular query.


This may sound a little technical, but it's not too hard.


Once I show you these examples, I think you'll grasp it real quick.


So let's say, for example, that I'm trying to target the word food processor.


I've chosen that as a good keyword for me.


It's something that I want to rank for.


I know that if I can rank for it, I'm going to do well.


My keyword research is done.


At this point, I'm doing on-page SEO.


I'm trying to make my page more relevant and my site more relevant.


I'm trying to rank better for this.


And it could be the case that using certain words and phrases on the page where I'm targeting


food processor is very important.


Google might look at a page that's ranking for food processor and say, gosh, it's weird


that this page doesn't have this keyword, this keyword, this keyword on it.


We would expect that a page that's targeting food processor should have these things.


And so I want to find two things.


I want to find in the top 10 or top 20 results that Google already has for food processor,


what are words and phrases that are on those pages more frequently?


And across the entire web, the corpus of the whole internet that Google crawls, or at least


the important parts of the internet that Google crawls and indexes, what are words and phrases


that are used more on those pages when the phrase food processor is present?


And that's what this chart is showing me.


Essentially, these are things that are used more across the whole web.


These are things that are used more on pages that already rank for this term.


And I've done this with two examples, so food processor and rainforest.


Rainforest keywords in orange, food processor keywords in purple.


So for example, you might see that the word recipe is used across the web on lots of pages


that contain food processor, which makes sense, right?


Lots of recipes that call for a food processor have the word recipe on the page, but those


aren't necessarily the ones that rank very well.


And so it's over here.


It's high up on the yes used across the web, but low down on used by pages that rank well.


So is it important to use it on the page that I'm trying to target?


Well, maybe.


It depends on how comprehensive I'm trying to be.


Maybe I should think about Tari being met on a different page.


These kinds of things.


Something like, let's go over to our example for rainforest.


A word like temperate rainforest, which are less popular and commonly used both on the


web and in the results that rank, then the more commonly thought of tropical rainforest.


So Washington State, for example, near Seattle has some temperate rainforest where you get


lots of rain, but you don't think of them as traditional rainforest.


They don't have thousands of creatures in them.


They're all hot and wet like they are in Brazil or Costa Rica or those kinds of places.


So temperate, less common we used across the web and less common in the ones that rank


well.


But something like Amazon, very common in things that rank well and in the middle of


pages that use it and don't.


Many pages that use rainforest don't describe specifically the Amazon rainforest, but many


do.


Okay.


So now you've got this concept.


What do I do with these?


Well, there's really two big things that you can do that are pretty awesome.


One is using them to boost your ranking potential.


So if I have a page that's targeting rainforest, I want to think about what are the topics


and concepts, words and phrases that Google probably wants me to cover that users and


searchers probably also want me to cover.


And those are things like, they could be things like rainfall and ecosystem and biome, tropical,


Amazon like we talked about, maybe even a competing brand like National Geographic,


which is on here.


It's used on a lot of pages that rank well.


Maybe Google has an association between rainforest and Nat Geo and I should potentially reference


them or link to them or talk about them, pull a photo from them, that kind of thing.


Brazil, right?


These words, using them on the page can help me to be more relevant, more comprehensive,


potentially more useful and more high quality.


This is especially true for informational style searches, but potentially true for commercial


searches too.


The second thing is I can use this to expand my keyword research.


So instead of just saying like, hey, I'm going to look for things that people also searched


for, I'm going to use Google suggest and related searches, I'm going to use keywordtool.io,


or I'm going to go to Google AdWords and see what are the other high volume searches, I


might broaden my thinking to, huh, I wonder if things like food processor recipes or very


specific things like pesto made with food processor are interesting things for me to


target additionally deeper in my site so I can build authority around all the topics


and concepts that are related to the word food processor.


Not every one of these semantic and related topics is going to be a good choice for you.


That's definitely the case.


You have to use good judgment and the traditional metrics that you would use for keyword research,


right?


Volume, difficulty, opportunity to discover the right ones.


What's kind of cool and one of the reasons I'm covering this this week is that some tools


have come out.


In the recent past, a bunch of NLP, natural language processing tools, and APIs that let


you do some cool stuff around this.


Those include people like Alchemy, Sysmos, Openkele, and a number of others.


And then it's also the case, and this is slightly self promotional, but Moz Analytics recently


released their related topics feature so you can now go to the on page section of Moz Analytics


and see a list of things.


The Moz Analytics one is going to be more like the stuff here, right?


Think words and phrases that are used by pages that also already rank for the query you're


targeting.


And then in about a month, Keyword Explorer will be launching, which I've talked about


a number of times, and that will have more of these things.


It's used on pages across the web that also feature this.


But you can get this stuff currently through some of these tools.


You can do your own analyses.


There's lots of code out there in code repositories that you can pull from the web.


So I encourage you to give this a try.


We've seen some good results from people who are trying this stuff out, who are including


these terms and phrases, and who are broadening their keyword research with it.


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


Whiteboard Friday.


Automatically Analyze Tracked URLs with Performance Metrics

Hi there, my name is Michael and I'm an onboarding specialist here at Moz.


I'm going to show you our brand new tracked URLs feature in the performance metrics section


of Moz Pro.


Performance metrics is designed to make sure that your site is well optimized for Google's


page experience algorithm update.


More than ever before, it's important to make sure that your site delivers a high quality


user experience.


So you can meet Google's expectations, continue ranking and grow your site traffic to achieve


your goals.


With our new tracked URLs feature, you can track the performance of your URLs on an ongoing


weekly basis and automatically analyze the impact of any changes you've made to those


pages over time.


To get started, go to your Moz Pro campaign and click on the performance metrics tab under


site crawl.


To track a URL, simply scroll down to the list of URLs, check the box beside the one


that you wish to select and then click on add to tracked.


You can go directly to your track list or if you want, you can just click on the tracked


URLs tab.


Once there, you can look at mobile scores and desktop scores for all of your URLs and


you can see at a quick glance which platform needs more work based on the breakdown of


URLs in the critical, needs improvement and looking good categories.


You'll also be able to view the historical performance scores for these tracked URLs.


So say you make changes to your page using your Moz suggested improvements and want to


see the impact of those efforts, you can automatically check your updated scores at the next analysis


date.


You can also filter the tracked URLs by text, by performance scores, analysis status and


Core Web Vitals scores which are a key component of the Page Experience algorithm update.


To view a detailed report on each URL, head over to view report.


Again you'll see your mobile and desktop score and you'll also see whether there's been any


changes in your performance metrics which are again rated as critical, needing improvement


or looking good.


This is really useful to see if there's been any improvement on the performance of your


tracked URLs over time.


If we go down a bit further, we'll be able to see opportunities and diagnostics for both


mobile and desktop.


If you click into any of them you'll be able to see some tips on what the issue is, why


it's an issue and how you can fix it.


What's really useful is you already know exactly what page is causing that issue.


If you want to export the report, just click on export PDF.


For more info on our new performance metrics features, just click on help when using performance


Wait, Paid Media Investments Can Yield SEO Value?! - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about advertising investments and how paying for advertising


can actually yield positive results for SEO, for links, for social shares, for content


investments, for email marketing, for all of these organic channels.


I know this seems weird, but it actually can work.


So Google has some guidelines around this, right?


They say, look, if you're over here and you're saying like, hey man, I'll give you 500 bucks


for a link on your site, a live, followed, back link directly, that is not okay, right?


Even if the person on the other side says, sure, I'll take your 500 bucks and add that


link, Google doesn't want to count those links.


They treat those as web spam.


They're going to find ways to avoid that type of manipulation and they can, in fact, penalize


you for it.


And lots of times they do.


However, Google is totally fine with it.


They even support and endorse and run systems, a whole advertising network around this, to


say, hey, I'd love to buy some ad spots from this website.


Sure, my sidebar ads are no followed and they cost $150 a month and this is totally 100%


okay by Google.


And in fact, this is okay by any form of things, right?


So social networks are fine with this.


Email things are fine with this.


The FCC, the federal communications folks here in the US are totally fine with this.


The EU is fine with this.


Totally okay.


As long as it's disclosed that this is an advertising relationship on the website, you're


in the clear.


And in fact, very often it's the case that there's a correlation, a strong correlation


between advertising and organic types of relationships and returns.


So a lot of times you'll see an ad buy is the first step to a deeper relationship between


a website or a blogger or a media source and an advertiser, right?


And that'll lead to some forms of content sharing.


Maybe some of the content will be promoted on the advertiser's site or the other way


around.


That might lead to some business development of some kind.


That could lead to guest contributions of content or guest posting of some kind.


It can lead to social sharing where the advertiser shares something that they've sponsored on


the media sites and or the other way around.


It can lead to email inclusions and email sponsorships.


It can even lead directly to links and brand mentions, right?


People will say, hey, I want to thank my advertiser or hey, one of my advertisers came out with


this cool product that in fact they didn't pay me to endorse, but I am organically endorsing


it because I really like it.


By the way, they happen to be top of mind for me because they're an advertiser.


Sometimes you don't even realize those relationships are happening, but they do.


This is why there's often a very strong connection between advertising dollars and those kinds


of more organic forms of relationships.


While Google certainly is smart enough to realize that those relationships exist, they


don't say, no, it's not okay that you bought a link and that eventually led to or you bought


an advertising format from this person and that eventually led to a more organic kind


of relationship and now they're endorsing you without a followed link, without payment


in an editorial kind of way.


That's actually totally fine.


This is why advertising can be so powerful, not just for search and for links, although


that's certainly a big one.


I've actually got a few suggestions, some places where we've seen over the course of


time and I've seen certainly in some of the companies that I occasionally help out informally


where they've benefited from these types of things.


On the other side, seen from bloggers and journalists and media sites and niche websites


and forums, how they have also benefited from these forms of advertising.


Some of these tactics may be worth trying.


It's really going to depend on your business goals and who your audience is.


The first and most obvious one is really what's reflected over here and that is reaching out


to these bloggers, forums, niche websites, news and media sites.


They often offer direct forms of sponsorship or display or text ads on their site.


They're going to be nofollowed or they're going to use some sort of JavaScript redirect.


What you want to do though is you want to go direct.


I want to buy from nichebloggerabc.com, not from Google Ads or Federated Media, which


happens to power advertising on their site.


You want those direct advertising inquiries where you have the relationship personally


and that's what you're building.


Don't use that generic ad provider.


Do make sure, by the way, if you're going direct, make sure those links are nofollowed.


You don't want to buy followed links or you'll get into the problem that we had over here.


You're trying to build a relationship, not a followed link.


Hopefully all those other positive organic things, those will come later.


Those will come later if you buy these nonfollowed links, if you start that relationship with


advertising.


Next one, conference and event sponsorships.


Especially in particular, more creative and more audience relevant forms of advertising


can create much greater engagement.


If you buy a booth at a conference, that can help.


Maybe you've got a trade show booth and people come by and that kind of thing.


That does work for some folks, especially if they're looking for leads.


However, if you do something very creative, we've done a few things with conferences and


events even here at Moz where we've done forms of sponsorship that are more creative.


We give out swag.


We share some content.


We do something that's very special for the audience that happens to be relevant to their


interests usually along the lines of SEO stuff.


That works much better.


That often will get pickup and coverage by press and media, by bloggers who attend events,


by people on social media who go to these events.


Weirdly, almost ironically, the less promotional you are in your advertising, which seems counter


intuitive, but the less promotional you are, the better this works.


The better this works for all of the organic kinds of things you're seeking.


It might not work quite as well for that direct lead capture or sales capture, but by saying,


hey, we're going to provide free Wi-Fi to the entire conference and all you have to


do is enter a repetition of our brand name three times as the password.


Well, guess what?


That builds a lot of brand equity and it is much more appreciated than, hey, we're going


to need you to take this free demo or you need to give us your email address and be


promoted to and these kinds of things.


That less promotional can often have greater returns.


And then the last one I'll mention here, even though this list could go on and on and you


can use your imagination, is outdoor TV radio print, those old school forms of advertising.


I think one of the most interesting studies I saw was a couple of years ago from Google


showing the correlation between these forms of advertising and search volume.


And I think it was the team from Sierra Interactive who put up a case study about some outdoor


advertising.


Now it could have been Sierra, it might have been distilled.


I'm going to make sure and I'm going to put it in the blog post itself.


I'll link over to that study for you guys.


Showing that when one of their clients had invested in these forms of advertising, they


saw a direct bump in search traffic.


Essentially more people were searching for their brand name, for their products, and


those people went to their website.


And now, I mean, that's a beautiful thing, especially if you are trying to increase search


demand and search click through rate.


So if you perceive that you have a weakness in terms of like, hey, we're just not getting


as much branded search, we're not getting as high a click through rate, our brand recognition


is low, that's hurting us in search results, people are getting better engagement than


us and as a result they are getting more, you know, higher rankings and better links


and all this other kind of stuff.


This is a great way to potentially combat this.


With any form of tactic that you're trying like this, you're going to want to think really


careful about audience makeup.


So many of the times when you're doing traditional, more traditional kinds of advertising, what


you're seeking is an audience that's made up of people who are going to buy your product,


people who have a high potential to be a customer.


That's actually not necessarily what you're seeking when you do these forms of advertising.


You are really seeking, yes, people who might become customers, but also people who might


influence customers.


And customer influencers is often a very different group than direct customers themselves.


It might be that you're reaching a much smaller audience, but it is more targeted to that


flow, right?


For conferences and events, you really want those press and media types of people.


For these blogs, forums, and niche websites, you might be targeting influencers and journalists


and other bloggers and social media mavens and that kind of stuff who consume this type


of content online far more than your regular customers do.


And so you want to be careful about that when you're choosing advertising that is supposed


to be helping you with organic channels.


This is a really interesting topic.


It's one of the newer kind of forms and ways that people are leveraging paid advertising.


It does, you know, it can run the risk if you get too aggressive with it that you actually


step on some of these FCC guidelines or Google's guidelines.


So you've got to be very careful.


But if you walk this line well, you can experience great benefit to your SEO, your social, your


content, your email, your brand by paying for it and getting those indirect benefits


as a second order effect.


All right, everyone.


I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Look forward to some great comments.


Hopefully you all have some stories to share about this.


And we'll see you again next week.


Daily SEO Fix: Report Links Adding Colleague as a User

When you're analyzing your FCA performance in MozPro, you may want to share regular updates


on a weekly or monthly basis with a colleague.


You can give them access to your campaigns and custom reports by adding them as an additional


user in your account.


Let's hop in and have a look.


Click on the drop-down menu on the top right and select Manage Users.


From this page, you'll see all the folks you're currently giving access to, your available


allowance and a link to purchase more seats should you need them.


Only the owner of the account will be able to assign access, edit billing information


and adjust your subscription settings.


However, it is worth noting that anybody that you give access to will be able to see all


of your campaigns across your account.


If you would prefer not to give access to all of your campaigns, there is another option


which I'll cover at the end of this video.


If you're happy to give access to a colleague, they'll be able to see all your campaigns,


click Assign Seat, enter their email address and click Send.


That will shoot them off an email that they can accept to gain access to your account.


From your end, you can hop over to your campaign, select Custom Reports from the left navigation


and from the Actions menu, click Edit, Schedule and Email.


You'll be able to see how frequently your custom report is set up to generate and send


and make sure you have this option checked.


This will send your report when it's ready to run to everyone within this subscription.


If you would prefer not to give user access to the person you wanted to share this report


with, you can do that by clicking Share Outside this subscription.


Enter their email address here, click Add and then don't forget to click Finish and


you're good to go.


How to Get Big Links [MozCon 2017] — Lisa Myers

Good morning! Are you okay? Let's have a cheer! Yeah, I know it's early. I've actually been


up since 4 o'clock, so I'm kind of halfway through the day already. So I'm so excited


to be here. I've been wanting to speak at this event for quite a few years. This is


actually my first speaking gig in the US as well. I've been speaking a lot in Europe and


other places, but this is my first US slot, so hopefully you can understand my accent


okay. I'm actually Norwegian, but I've lived in the UK for nearly 18 years, which make


my accent sound like a drunk Irish person. So I'm going to be talking about how to get


big links. But first I need to just tell you a story. In January 2015, my agency wasn't


doing too well. So I run an SEO agency, SEO only, and the results that we were managing


to receive, especially in terms of link building, were rapidly decreasing. In fact, we were


kind of staring down the barrel. The amount of time that it took to get one piece of coverage


and the quality of that coverage was reducing. So I had a choice to make. I could continue


along the same way and hope for the best, or I could take a risk and restructure. I


think one of the big problems was that by then there had been so many algorithm changes,


particularly to do with link quality, and the type of content that was coming out, because


by this time everyone was trying to do content marketing, which I think 80% of the time meant


writing articles or very static infographics and such. It was so much of that content out


there that standing out became really quite difficult. So I realised that if I continued


creating one piece of content in the hope of getting one link, that link would have


to be really, really good. So I restructured the agency. And the way


the agency now looks is more like a creative agency. So we have designers, developers,


researchers, copywriters, creatives, and tech SEO. But the biggest part is the outreach


team. So basically what I did was restructure in this way because I really believed that


to survive we had to start thinking like 50s ad execs and executing like geeks.


We have launched 66 campaigns in the last 12 months. That's a lot of campaigns over


several markets. But of those 66 campaigns, we came up with 350 ideas. In fact, way over


that. What does that say about us? We're really good at coming up with sweet ideas.


Let me give you some examples. So have you ever thought it would be really cool if you


could print your tweet on a toast? A twister? Yeah, that's not really great. Or it gets


worse. Have you ever thought how cool would it be or handy would it be if you could order


a condom with your pizza? I really fear that this was one of my ideas as well. The point


is, you have to come up with a lot of shit ideas in order to come up with great ideas.


And it's pretty much about not being afraid to fail. I know it's a lot of pressure of


being original, coming up with content. And when we think about creatives, we think about


people like Picasso or Edison or Steve Jobs, maybe. And we don't really see ourselves like


that. And then we panic and it kind of becomes a 404 of creativity not found. The problem


is that we don't really need to be thinking we need to be creative or a creative. I think


it's about being innovative. And to me, being innovative is simply to take something and


make it better. So when Aliens was pitched into the Hollywood


studios, it was actually pitched in as Jaws in space. And if you think about it, GrubHub


is kind of like Uber for food. Find something that nearly worked and make it better. So


in 1982, an Austrian named, mind this name, Dieter Masterschitz, that is definitely not


how you pronounce it, he visited Thailand and came across an energy drink that was marketed


to truckers, really low cost energy drink. And as you can see, he didn't really even


bother changing the logo, this is now Red Bull, one of the most successful drink stories


I think of the time. So in 2013, Business Insider did this piece


about 100 deadliest films by on screen deaths. This was definitely a data geek geeking out.


And it was an interesting piece, but it looked pretty terrible, right? And it shows you basically


the 100 top movies with and then according to how many on screen deaths there was.


So we took this piece and realized we could make it better visually, but also from the


data point of view. So we created what became Director's Cut, which is basically an updated


version of this campaign, which you know, you'd be amazed at how much data you can find


accessible. There was an entire forum dedicated to counting on screen deaths. Amazing. So


this is what it looked like. Very importantly, the top movie was quite a big surprise. Guardian


of the Galaxy at PG 13 was the deadliest movie of all time.


So I must admit that this campaign surprised me how well it did. The first paper to pick


it up was the Guardian. So the Guardian in the UK is one of the most respected newspapers.


And as soon as the Guardian covered it, we had a tweet from James Gunn, which is the


director of Guardians of the Galaxy, going, yay, deadliest movie. Not only did he tweet


it, he spent two hours replying to tweet saying, no, I think you will find this is correct


data. Because I bet you a few of you are now thinking, surely Star Wars blowing up planets


for more deaths. This is the point of it. If the result is surprising, it creates discussion.


And creating discussion is a surefire thing of managing to get the coverage. This got


over 700 links. And of the biggest majority of these links are seriously high authority.


Yahoo, the Guardian, enemy, CBS, it just got loads and loads. And that's not the only thing


you got. I think it's important to try to concentrate on getting coverage that also


deserves more than just the link. This became a Twitter moment, shared over 48,000 times


in 48 hours. Social might not be an impact on rankings, but it sure as hell helps you


get links. Another campaign we did, which was based on


something that already exists, is the Forbes billionaires list, which I'm sure you all


would have seen at some point. This is a list that's released every year by Forbes and has


had several decades of data. The interesting thing is that they have this list and they


have like you can go back to the older versions, but there's no way of seeing all of this data


in one. So we created the billionaires league where we got all the data from Forbes, but


also added other additional research pieces, more lighthearted angles. And this basically


allows you to go out and do outreach for loads of different angles, like has the average


age of billionaires gone up or down. They also had several sorry, also had female billionaires


included in it. And this got 97 links and over 850,000 views.


If your coverage can get that amount of views, it is very unlikely that it's going to be


deemed as dodgy in any way from Google's point of view. I had a bit of an order issue with


the slide, sorry. I also would really recommend that you over invest in building formats that


can be used again. And again, going back to movies for inspiration here, Finding Nemo,


when they created that, they had to create a new ray tracing technology to model the


light dappling through the water. That took an extortionate amount of time for Pixar.


But this is something that Pixar is known for doing. They've got something called the


Pixar Render Man, which is basically a library of technology that once they've created this


technology, they can use it for the next movie and the next movie. Obviously, our head of


production is not too pleased about this, because sometimes it takes an awful lot of


time to add a piece of new technology or spend extra time on a campaign.


But this year, we launched this campaign, which is the eSports champions, looking at


all different data points about the eSports industry. And as you can see, it's pretty


much Billionaires League for eSports. So putting in that extra time on Billionaires League


helped us create another campaign quite quickly. This looks at things like top earning women


in the industry, how much prize money. It literally had at least 40 different entry


points of data that you can look into in the eSports. And I think this is just a super


interesting kind of industry to look into. And it's so hot. And it's already had 198


links. And that is a quite recent campaign as well. And 190,000 views picked up by MSN


because it's inside a mashable. This campaign was done pan Nordic, so all the Nordic countries,


Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland. And it got a lot of coverage also in those countries,


which is very, very challenging, because there are a lot of laws around gambling sites and


stuff. And this was for a gambling client. Another idea that's worked really well for


us is we quite like collaborating. And again, this takes a lot of time the first time around.


And in Sweden, for Expedia, we worked with a castle called Malmöhuslött, where we created


a Google Street View tour of the castle with audio visual as well and information about


each area in the castle. Now, to be able to do this, we had to create a new software that


helped doing Street View over several floors. It took us a lot of time. But it then allowed


us to look at other venues that we could do similar things with. This had 86 links and


25,000 views. Obviously, this is in Sweden, so Swedish market is a lot smaller in terms


of the amount of sites and stuff. And for Expedia, being a travel company, getting to


visit Sweden and the very specific travel-related sites is very big. So, this year, we launched


the prison, which is basically a museum of a prison near Copenhagen in Denmark, where


we used the exact same technology again and were able to create Street View in this prison.


This is a very recent campaign. It's already got 83 links. And as you see again, there's


a lot of very travel-related sites there, like literally every tourist board local as


well as the Danish tourist board, the main one, covered this piece.


So I'm not saying that that means the developers can then just chill out. You have to continuously


work at this. But it's not always a data piece or programming where you need to invest in.


Sometimes it can be really plain and really simple. We launched this end of last year


for Expedia in the UK, and it's a very simple graphic campaign. It's a kind of travel posters


created in a vintage style, including extinct animals from around the world like they were


still alive. So, the dodo in Mauritius and the Moa in New Zealand and so on. These are


very, very pretty, but they're also for a very good cause, right? And this did amazingly


well. It got over 223 links, including again some of the biggest sites out there. This


got a lot of US coverage as well. This also picked up loads of social shares


from all of those sites that featured it. And it got covered in the Observer on Sunday.


Observer is the second biggest Sunday newspaper in the UK. So getting print coverage with


your SEO campaign I think isn't the standard, but if it's good enough to be in the paper,


again, it is going to reduce the risk going forward.


One of my favorite things about this campaign is that it was even made into a fan made mod


for the Sims game, so you can actually see the poster in the game. That's some serious


dedication. It must have really spoken to someone to take that time, and I love that.


People started calling our office wanting to buy the posters. And lastly, and most impressively


I think, is someone started a petition thanking the managing director of Expedia UK for commissioning


this work. When was the last time you saw a petition where someone was thanking someone?


It's crazy. The main thing with this, though, is that


doing creative campaigns for SEO to get links is not good enough that you get one campaign


and that does well. You have to consistently get the coverage. And when you get the consistent


coverage, that's when you get the results, because that is what you want to know, right?


You're like, yeah, this is cool, but does it actually work?


We worked with Expedia for four years. We only worked with Expedia in Europe. Just want


to make that clear. And in the last 12 months, we've had 46% increase in organic visibility


for the Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Expedia Sweden having


the smallest, that's 16% increase in organic visibility. To put into context, Expedia Sweden


has a higher visibility than IKEA in Sweden, so getting any increase is pretty awesome.


Another client that we just started working with, Lensstore, which is basically contact


lenses online, we've launched two campaigns and four months of outreach so far and the


main hero term of contact lenses have already gone from position 11 to position 3. So it


does definitely work. So being SEOs, we really want to know how


can we analyse this shit so that we can do exactly the same? I could tell you that we


have figured out a way of analysing what type of campaigns work best.


So we did that. This is the last six months' worth of campaigns divided into different


types like data, games with data capture, visual, street view, video and so on. But


before you go down thinking I'm going to take a photo of this and I'm just going to start


doing data campaigns because they work best, I would like to tell you a story about some


chickens. I thought that would get love. Chickens, that's weird. So there was a study made at


University of Texas at Austin, and it is quite a funny study because they had loads of participants


to look at these pictures of a plump attractive chicken, I've never said that, plump attractive


chicken, versus an unattractive chicken and skinny and then they told the participants


that the plump one was a natural chicken and the skinny one was an engineered chicken.


They then divided them in two groups and told group one that the natural chicken is healthy


but not that tasty and the engineered chicken is tasty but not that healthy. Guess what,


the other group they told the opposite to. What's interesting about the findings of this


study is that both groups preferred the natural chicken. But neither group justified their


choice based on how they felt. In fact, what they did is that they used the opposite reason


to justify the same decision. We don't actually make these decisions based on these details,


we make it how we feel. That is the point. This is called post hoc rationalization and


as marketers we do this all the time. And I can hear myself doing it and I'm like, oh,


man, I'm doing this again. The point is formats are just the vessel of the idea. The creative


is what connects with people. It's not whether it was a data piece. If we do this, if we


kind of do all this data, we could actually lose out on campaigns that do really well


just because we're trying to make something into a specific format. I'm just going to


get some water. Oh, my God, it's not just you around. I can't open it. Okay. Talk amongst


yourselves. But, you know, the creative doesn't have much place if you don't do the outreach.


Even the best campaign ever won't get any coverage if you don't tell people about it.


This is what I think we are the most well known for in the UK is doing the outreach.


In fact, in the Verve team, the outreach team is the biggest. We have two tech SEOs. We're


really good at tech SEO, but outreach is the really, really big team because this is where


most of the work is done. This is where you get the results. I'm going to tell you about


what outreach is not about before I tell you what it is about. So, I get asked this a lot.


This is the first question people ask me when they know that we are doing really well in


outreach. In fact, Rand insisted that I still need to include this slide. So, we use the


same tools that most people use. Gokarna and Meltwater are both tools that you can find


the contact for the journalist, and I think Gokarna is amazing, but in some of the more


obscure countries, Meltwater is a lot better. And we use Bustream because it's awesome and


he helps us make sure that we keep on track with everything. And we use Bosumo for finding


inspiration for campaigns or looking at content while it's already there. But these are just


tools. You can't build a house by just holding a hammer and building. These are just tools.


The second one I would like to say is that there is no optimum way of writing an outreach


email. I get this a lot as well. Surely it's just keep your outreach email short and snappy


with really terrible jokes. I'm going to show you an example. So, James, who I call JC because


I have a tendency to hire people called James, he's one of our most amazing outreach people.


His style is quite interesting. This is his outreach email to people for the billionaires


league. So, he starts off, obviously he's bolded a few things and stuff and you think,


ah, this looks quite long. This is the next bit. And the next bit. And the next bit. And


that's it. What the? That's like an essay, right? Surely this doesn't work. This is like


the look, when I saw this outreach email, I was like, there is no way anyone's going


to get back to you. It's going straight in the junk mail. This is the reply from a journalist


at the mirror. You got my attention with this brilliant release. Wish all PRs sent something


like this. I see the money team because I think there might be something in there for


them. This is the coverage. This is the mirror, one of the biggest papers in the UK. It's


not about how many emails that you send either. Unfortunately, there is no pattern in that.


JC, again, see now I'm not even calling him James. It's just JC. This is an example of


a month where JC sent over 1,000 emails and he got 20 pieces of coverage. Now, this is


Iris, who sent 267 emails and got 23 pieces of content. 23 links. Now, basically, they


have totally different strategies of getting the exact same result, which I think is super


interesting and I would like you to really think about that.


Going back to that year of January 2015, there was something very significant that also did


in that year and that was the realisation that outreach is about people. It's about


the mindset that these people have. I wholeheartedly believe that outreach is about grit. It's


about passion and perseverance. Especially perseverance. Because if you want to be in


outreach and if you want to get those links, you cannot give up.


In March last year, I interviewed this guy, Alex. Alex had a CV that read pretty much


like hundreds of other people wanting to get into this industry. He had been to university,


then done a year doing some writing, worked for a couple of newspapers and so on. But


as I was interviewing him, I realised that the thing that really lit him up was when


I talked about his interest. It turns out there was a story there that he didn't even


have on his CV. That was that Alex, being a very, very quite posh schoolboy, went to


this school which is quite a well-known school. It looks like Harry Potter school, surely.


He is extremely passionate about American football. Like super passionate about American


football. In fact, he was so frustrated that there were no literature about American football


in the UK. When he was in a university, he decided to write his own book about American


football. He did this while he was at university, set off time every day to write and at the


end he didn't just leave it. He went to a publisher and said, I want you to publish


this book. He even bypassed the agent, which is like for anyone that knows anyone that


tried to publish anything, that's completely unheard of. He was super crooked, just went


like, I'm just going to go straight to the publisher. And his book is sold at Amazon


and in bookstores in the UK. Now, that is grit. If I just looked at his CV and judged


him by his CV, I would have completely missed the talent. Because it's how they think that


really changes how well they do. So, what I then changed is the way that I


was asking questions to find these people. So, instead of asking the standard CV questions,


I started researching loads of different questions that would help me figure out how they are


thinking about things. Were they likely to give up? So, there's a few ones that I use


regularly and I'm going to share with you. One of them is actually I read originals by


Adam Grant, who I love. And in his book, there was mention of a study where they tried to


figure out what would make someone stay in a job and also perform in a job. So, they


asked them like loads and loads of questions. But very frustrating, although I had like


35,000 people that they asked, they couldn't find any correlation between like the obvious


things that you would think like education, job hopping or anything like that. The one


thing that showed correlation was a question that they just added at the end, which was


what browser do you use? And it turns out the people that used Firefox or Chrome were


like 17% more likely to stay in the job. And also perform better. The reason for that is


that if you use Chrome or Firefox, you have not accepted the default on your computer.


You have gone out of your way to find something better. And that is the measurement of grit


that you can use. Another question is pretty random, but trust me, this one is also very


useful. So, you look at this picture. It's a London


underground. On the platform, it's an elephant. What would you do if you saw this elephant?


So, the interesting thing about this question is that you will immediately have thoughts.


The kind of like thinking that you will have is interesting to me. So, basically, it's


kind of divides into two very specific forks. Like one big group and pretty much everyone


in the outreach and creative team has answered I would take a picture of it, sit on it, fly


it, because they think that's obviously true. And Instagram, Facebook, and all those kind


of things. While the other group and pretty much all the tech SEOs, developers, went straight


into risk assessment. And oh, hang on, how did it get there? What are we going to do


about it? Oh, I need to call the zoo. One guy went so far as saying, hang on, is it


true that elephants are scared of mice and there are loads of mice on the underground?


That's seriously kind of analytical. The point of these kind of questions is not that they


are right or wrong, but it's a way of figuring out how people think. And what I really want


is people that can stretch. People that have maybe already stretched themselves or have


been stretched. Sometimes you're stretched by experiences and, therefore, you are more


likely to be able to persevere because you have already been through stuff. Or like Alex,


you made yourself go through something because you really wanted it.


And then when you have these people, and I know loads of you already have this script,


the most important thing of getting successful outreach is to encourage people to be more


of who they are, not to be someone else. There's no one shape and no one way of doing things.


And we are really missing out on a lot of things when we are, I think the world is so


pro-extrovert. It's like whoever shouts the loudest get heard. But some of the best creative


that's been created at Verve has been by the quietest voice in the room. And as managers,


as leaders, as coworkers, we need to really open up to listen differently depending on


who we talk to. One of our most successful campaigns to date,


Idioms of the World and the campaign I shared with the vintage poster was created by a guy


at Verve called Matt who is really shy and really quiet. But when he comes to me and


says I really want to do this, it's like someone else shouting it. That's what I mean when


listening differently. And if you can encourage people to know that it's okay whoever they


are and that they can find their own way of doing it, that's when you really see results.


That is really just our secret. It is letting people find their own way of writing those


emails. We give them all the same tools, but everyone has their own way of doing it. Some


send loads of emails, some send very few emails and they research everything. They're just


very, very different. We basically just need to find our own way.


And I cannot stress just how much of an impact this will make. I'm just going to share one


more story. It's this paradox called the monkey ladder paradox, which had five monkeys in


a room and a ladder and some bananas on top of the ladder. Every time a monkey tried to


go and get the bananas, the scientists will spray them with water. And they would do this


repeatedly until they stopped going to the bananas. Then they would change one monkey


with a completely new monkey. And as that new monkey went straight for the bananas,


the other monkeys tore it down and started beating it up because they didn't want to


be sprayed with water. Then they changed another monkey. And now this is the interesting thing.


What happened was that the monkey that had just been replaced just before, who had never


been sprayed with water, then helped the others tear down the monkey and beat it up. Eventually


they had five new monkeys that had never been sprayed with water and they went nowhere near


the bananas. You are not a monkey. You do not need to take on any of these beliefs.


I think this is the biggest secret to most people's success is that it doesn't matter


if everyone in here say that I can't do this. If I think I can, I will. And if you can teach


people how to do that and how to believe in themselves, they will get the results.


The key to outreach is basically perseverance and being more of who you are. Whether you


are extrovert or introvert, whether you take a long time doing it or you are very quick.


Basically as SEOs and content marketers, we need to be professional labyrinth walkers


when we come to a dead end, we find another way. And that's how I managed to get from


Advanced On-Page SEO Optimizations — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans.


I'm Chris Long with Go Fish Digital, and today we're going to talk about advanced on-page


optimizations.


Commonly in SEO, when we think about on-page optimizations, we're typically thinking about


core places to include the keywords such as the title, the H1, the URL within the content.


But some people might be wondering, how can you take your on-page optimizations to the


next level and get beyond some of those basic tactics?


So that's what I want to cover today.


So one of the best ways I've found to shift away from the keyword mindset is actually


to shift to more of an entity mindset.


So for an example, if you were going to optimize a page for the term retire early, instead


of using the term retire early a bunch of times on the page, you could use tools like


IBM Watson or Google Natural Language.


Both of those have public-facing tools that you can run any text document you want through.


And if you ran it from a result like Investopedia, you might see that retire early comes up with


entities such as Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, two of the top authors about retire early.


As well, when you take a look at competitor pages and have more of an entity mindset in


mind, instead of just thinking about how many times they're using a keyword on the page,


or thinking more strategically about common topics and themes, you want to integrate within


your own website content.


Another great way to take your on-page optimizations to the next level is this concept of EAT,


Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.


One of the best ways to improve the expertise of your site content is just to simply look


at your author biographies.


A lot of sites still get this wrong.


And when you look at author biographies, you should always be thinking about, hey, where


can I highlight my years of experience, my education, my previous experience, my thought


leadership, directly within your author biographies to better highlight your expertise to both


Google and users.


As well, another thing I love to think about with on-page optimizations is this concept


of information gain scores.


It's one of my favorite patents analyzed by Bill Slosky, where he talks about the fact


that Google looks to reward content that adds to the search results and doesn't just repeat


what's already out there.


So think about where you can leverage your own unique expertise, data, and insights to


benefit from this concept of information gain scores.


Another great way to improve the EAT of your site's content is to actually cite sources.


The wire cutter is phenomenal at doing this.


Any time they cite an individual fact, they actually cite where they got that fact and


link to external, trusted, accredited sources to verify where they're finding that information


from.


Another great way to improve the trustworthiness of your content, take your on-page optimizations


to the next level.


Another strategy that I think is highly, highly underrated is this concept of freshness.


We've actually run tests on our own site, and we pretty consistently see that when we


do things like update timestamps or just refresh content, we see noticeable upticks in both


rankings and visibility and traffic.


And I think this makes sense from kind of multiple perspectives when you really start


to think about it.


From a trustworthiness standpoint, if Google thinks the content is outdated, well, it's


hard for it to trust that the information is actually accurate within the article.


As well, from a competitive standpoint, it's very hard for Google to compete in terms of


real-time results.


That's why users might go to platforms like Twitter instead of Google.


However, in recent years, Google is making a push toward include live blog posting type


URLs in top stories.


I think they're trying to incentivize publishers to update their content in real time to set


the expectation that users can get real-time information on Google instead of just Twitter.


Another great way of thinking about your on-page optimizations is this concept of historical


competitor changes.


Oftentimes when we think about our on-page optimizations, we're only thinking about what


competitors are doing in the given moment, but we're not telling the story of how they've


changed their on-page optimizations in order to get to that point.


So you can do this type of analysis for really competitive queries.


What I like to do is find a strong competitor that's actually improved in the rankings in


recent years, and then take that page and actually run it back through the wayback machine


and see which on-page changes have they made over time, what content they're adding, what


are they removing, and what are they keeping the same.


And that can help you better isolate what the most prominent on-page changes competitors


have made have been.


Another great strategy to use is the Text if Compare tool.


You can actually take an old version of text and then compare that against the current


version of text, run that through a tool, and the tool will actually highlight all of


the changes competitors are making.


That makes it very easy for you to find what on-page strategies your competitors are utilizing.


The final aspect of advanced on-page optimizations I want to talk about is this concept of keyword


segmentation.


We segment our traffic data in Google Analytics all the time, but we don't segment our keyword


data in the same way.


So using tools like Stat, we can actually create keyword segments anytime we do some


type of on-page optimization.


If we update entities, if we update freshness, if we update Eat, we can create keyword segments


in all of those different instances.


And then over time, we can compare the segments against each other and measure what the most


important ones have been.


That will actually give you better data about what type of on-page optimizations work best


for your specific sites.


So hopefully that's been helpful.


Hopefully you walk out of here with some more strategies and concrete takeaways on how you


can improve your on-page optimizations and take them to the next level.


When and How to Use Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Link Count Metrics - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about when and how to use domain authority and page authority


and link count metrics.


So many of you have written to us at Moz over the years, and certainly I go to lots of conferences


and events and speak to folks who are like, well, I've been measuring my link building


activity with DA or hey, I got a high DA link.


And I want to confirm when is it the right time to be using something like DA or PA or


a raw link count metric like number of linking root domains or something like spam score


or a traffic estimation, these types of metrics.


So I'm going to walk you through kind of these three, page authority, domain authority, and


linking root domains, just to get a refresher course on what they are.


And page authority and domain authority are actually a little complicated, so I think


that's worthwhile.


And then we'll chat about when to use which metrics.


So I've got sort of the three primary things that people use link metrics for in the SEO


world and we'll walk through those.


So to start, page authority is basically, you can see I've written a ton of different


little metrics in here, right?


Linking URLs, linking root domains, MozRank, MozTrust, linking subdomains, anchor text,


linking pages, followed links, no followed links, 301s, 302s, new versus old links, TLD,


domain name, branded domain mentions, spam score, and many, many other metrics.


Basically, what PA is is it's every metric that we could possibly come up with from our


link index, all taken together and then thrown into a model with some training data.


So the training data, in this case quite obviously, is Google search results because what we want


the page authority score to ultimately be is a predictor of how well a given page is


going to rank in Google search results, assuming we know nothing else about it except link


data.


So this is using no on-page data, no content data, no engagement or visit data, none of


the patterns or branding or entity matches, just link data.


So this is everything we possibly know about a page from its link profile and the domain


that page is on, right?


And then we insert that in as the inputs alongside the training data.


We have a machine learning model that essentially learns against Google search results and builds


the best possible model it can.


That model, by the way, throws away some of this stuff because it's not useful and it


adds in a bunch of this stuff like vectors or various attributes of each one.


So it might say, oh, anchor text distribution, that's actually not useful, but domain authority


ordered by the root domains with more than 500 links to them.


I'm making stuff up, right?


But you could have those sorts of filters on this data and thus come up with very complex


models, which is what machine learning is designed to do.


All we have to worry about is that this is essentially the best predictive score we can


come up with based on the links.


So it's useful for a bunch of things, right?


If we're trying to say, how well do we think this page might rank independent of all non-link


factors, PA, great model.


Good data for that.


Domain authority is, once you have the PA model in your head and you're sort of like,


okay, got it, machine learn against Google's results to produce the best predictive score


for ranking in Google.


PA, DA is just the PA model at the root domain level.


So not subdomains, just root domains, which means it's got some weirdness.


It can't, for example, say that randfishkin.blogspot.com is different than www.blogspot.com.


But obviously a link from www.blogspot.com is way more valuable than from my personal


subdomain at Blogspot or Tumblr or WordPress or any of these hosted subdomains.


So that's kind of an edge case that unfortunately DA doesn't do a great job of supporting.


What it's good for is it's relatively well suited to be predictive of how a domain's


pages will rank in Google.


So it removes all the page level information but still operative at the domain level can


be very useful for that.


Then linking root domains is the simplest one, right?


This is basically a count of all the unique root domains with at least one link on them


that point to a given page or site.


So if I tell you that this URL A has 410 linking root domains, that basically means that there


are 410 domains with at least one link pointing to URL A. What I haven't told you is whether


they're followed or nofollowed.


Usually this is a combination of those two unless it's specified.


So even a nofollowed link could go into the linking root domains, which is why you should


always double check.


If you're using Ahrefs or Majestic or Moz and you hover on the whatever, the little


question mark icon next to any given metric, it'll tell you what it includes, what it doesn't


include.


All right.


So how do we use these?


Well, for month over month link building performance, which is something that a lot of folks track,


I would actually not suggest making DA your primary one.


This is for a few reasons.


So Moz's index, which is the only thing currently that calculates DA or a machine learning


like model out there among the major tool sets for linked data, only updates about once


every month.


So if you are doing your report before DA has updated from the last link index, that


can be quite frustrating.


Now I will say we are only a few months away from a new index that's going to replace Mozscape


that will calculate DA and PA and all these other things much, much more quickly.


I know that's been something many folks have been asking for, it is on its way.


But in the meantime, what I'd recommend using is linking root domains, the count of linking


root domains and how that's grown over time.


I would also recommend you use organic rankings for your targeted keywords.


I know this is not a direct link metric, but this really helps to tell you about the performance


of how those links have been effective.


So if you're measuring month to month, it should be the case that any months you got


in a 20, 30 day period, Google probably has counted and recognized within a few days of


finding them and Google is pretty good at crawling nearly the whole web within a week


or two weeks.


So this is going to be a reasonable proxy for how your link building campaign has helped


your organic search campaign.


Third is the distribution of domain authority.


So I think in this case domain authority can be useful, it wouldn't be my first or second


choice, but I think it certainly can belong in a link building performance report.


It's helpful to see the high DA links that you're getting, right?


It's a good sorting mechanism to sort of say these are generally speaking more important,


more authoritative sites.


And then spam score I like as well because if you've been doing a lot of link building,


it is the case that domain authority doesn't penalize or doesn't lower its score for a


high spam score.


It'll show you, hey, this is an authoritative site with a lot of DA and good looking links,


but it also looks quite spammy to us.


So for example, you might see that something has a DA of 60 but a spam score of 7 or 8,


which might be mildly concerning.


I start to really worry when you get to like 9, 10, 11.


Second question, how valuable is a link from a given domain?


I think this is something that folks ask.


So they look at their own links and they say, all right, we have these links or our competitor


has these links.


Which ones are providing the most value for me?


And in that case, if you can get it, for example, if it's a link pointing to you, the best one


is of course going to be real traffic sent.


If a site or a page, a link is sending traffic to you, that is clearly of value and that's


going to be likely interpreted positively by the search engines as well.


You can also use PA and DA.


I think it's pretty good.


These metrics are pretty good and pretty well correlated with relatively speaking value,


especially if you can't get at a metric like real traffic because it's coming from someone


else's site.


Then linking root domains, the count of those to a page or a domain, the rankings rise.


In the case where a page is ranking position four, a new link coming to it is the only


thing that's changed or the only thing you're aware of that's changed in the last few days,


few weeks, and you see a rankings rise, it moves up a few positions, that's a pretty


good proxy for, all right, that is a valuable link.


But this is a rare case where you really can control other variables to the extent that


you think you can believe in that.


I would also, I like spam score for this as well because then you can start to see, well,


are these sketchier links or are these links that I can likely trust more?


Last one, ordering link outreach targets.


I think this is one that many, many SEOs do, right?


We have a big list of links.


We've got 50 links that we were thinking about, should I get these or not, and which ones


should I go after first, and which ones should I not go after.


In this case, DA is really quite a good metric.


That is because it's relatively predictive of the domain's pages performance in Google,


which is a, it's a proxy, right, but a decent proxy for how it might help your site rank


better.


This is one of the things that folks will talk about, hey, it tends to be the case that


when I go out and I build lots of DA 70, DA 80, DA 90 plus links, I often get credit.


Why DA and not PA rant?


Well, in the case where you're getting links, it's very often from new pages on a website


which have not yet been assigned PA or may not have inherited all the link equity from


all the internal pages.


At the same time, as those pages themselves get more links, their PA will rise as well,


but the reason that I generally recommend a DA for link outreach is both because of


that PA, DA timing issue, and because oftentimes you don't know which page is going to give


you a link from a domain.


Could be a new page they haven't created yet.


Could be one that you never thought they would add you to.


Might be exactly the page that you were hoping for, but it's hard to say.


Second, I think linking root domains is a very reasonable one for this, and linking


root domains is certainly closely correlated, not quite as well correlated, but closely


correlated with DA and with rankings.


Third would be spam score like we've talked about.


Fourth, I might use something like SimilarWeb's traffic estimates, especially if real traffic


sent is something that I'm very interested in, right?


If I'm pursuing nofollow links or affiliate links, or I just care about traffic more than


I care about rank boosting ability, SimilarWeb has got what I think is the best traffic prediction


system, and so that would be the metric I'd look at.


So hopefully you now have a better understanding of DA and PA and link counts and when and


where to apply them alongside which other metrics.


I look forward to your questions.


I'll be happy to jump into the comments and answer, and we'll see you again next time


for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


An Apple Search Engine? — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans. We're here today to talk about an Apple search engine. There's been


rumors circulating for a couple of years now that Apple are building a search engine. I'm


here to convince you I think they are building a search engine and I think they already launched


it. But before we get into what does that look like, let's start off by talking about


the common reasons people say Apple won't be building a search engine. The first is


that we know that Google pay Apple something in the order of 18 to 20 billion dollars a


year to be the default search engine on Apple devices. That's a lot of cash but if you consider


Apple makes more than a billion dollars a day, probably not such a big idea as we think


it is. But more importantly in 2020 the Department of Justice in the US said that they were going


to be suing Google for monopoly practices. One of the four bullet points they listed


as their reasons was that they don't want Apple being paid by Google to be the default


search engine. They believe that's a monopoly practice. They want it to stop. So even if


Apple do care about the cash it might be going away anyway. So then it was not necessarily


a surprise in 2018 we saw the head of search at Google leave and go to Apple. Apple hired


the head of search. That's a very suspicious thing to do if you're not building a search


engine. We also saw at the same time they started listing job listings for hundreds


and hundreds of search engineers which all adds up to building something search related.


And so rumors circulating Apple are going to build a search engine. It flew under the


radar a little bit but Apple already launched a web search engine. In iOS 14 we're on iOS