And so I give some examples of that, like a location-specific page or location service-specific


Local Projects to Boost Your Company and Career Presented by Mike Ramsey

pages because it's representing that.


There's some language in the Google guidelines around this that basically say we don't want


to have overall reviews.


We're looking for individual product reviews.


Well, in local and for local service businesses, what might their individual product be?


Well, maybe personal injury or bicycle accident or if you're a dentist, it's like implants,


et cetera.


So different reviews on those different pages would show up but not on the home page for


the overall company.


We found that the average ranking position for those across them all was 4.5.


We found that surprisingly it didn't take too much domain authority.


29, relatively low.


And I was expecting this to be a lot higher in order to achieve that.


It was basically like, hey, if you go through the work of marking up the review testimonial,


then it will show up.


But now for another story.


Like to introduce you to Dick Fosbury.


Some of you might know who he is, especially since we just had the Olympics recently.


Now Mr. Fosbury, good friend of mine, like to call him Fosby.


Not really.


He's not a good friend.


I just like calling him Fosby.


But anyhow, he was the first one to develop what is called the Fosbury flop on a high


jump.


And that is where they would run up to the bar and jump backwards over.


And before that, they would just go and jump and it was like they gyrated over the bar.


I don't even know what it looked like.


It was just awkward.


Like when you watch the old videos of him doing it, they would like jump up and be like,


and then they got over the bar somehow and I didn't understand it, you know.


But they couldn't get as high.


And so he comes along and in the Olympics, he just dominates the floor.


I mean, he just dominates everybody.


And he raised the bar.


Okay.


Well, Google just pulled the Fosbury flop.


Because just recently, like right as this deck was getting turned in, they updated their


guidelines around local and reviews and schema.


And so I've put together a link that takes you directly to those guidelines.


But the basic idea is this, they're saying that now instead of just being able to mark


up anything you want with a schema testimonial or something, you have to have a way for people


to leave those reviews on your website and you cannot curate them.


So it has to be a true representation, meaning that there needs to be both positive and negative


if you're going to mark those up.


You know, you couldn't just block out the negative reviews before you're posting them.


So there's some interesting things there.


The other one was that you can't mark up third-party reviews.


So you couldn't take a review from Yelp and put it on your website and then mark it up


and hope that you would achieve the rich schema star showing up.


Next.


Jamie's review data.


Now Jamie, true, true, true country woman in our office.


She was just in our rodeo that took place here in August doing a four-wheeler barrel


racing event and absolutely destroyed everybody.


So she's also a very, very good SEO.


And so anyhow, she did a study around reviews and found this.


She interviewed our clients and then she looked across some other data and then put together


some tests.


So I'll talk through that.


83% of our clients felt like they were too busy to effectively gather reviews and they


wanted help from us.


And we offered that, but some of them, you know, we've been offering it for a while,


but it's still an ongoing thing.


So part of this was just getting to our clients and asking the questions.


We asked where they wanted reviews from, these clients, and they said first Google.


This is a client's mindset.


Google.


Then industry-specific sites.


So for instance, in legal, it's Avvo, could be, you know, a TripAdvisor, could be something


else outside of that and other industries.


Then Yelp.


And the surprising one that's moving up very, very quickly in local is Facebook.


They're starting to really gain reviews very, very, very quickly.


And I could potentially see that third and fourth place switching before too long.


But another interesting thing was that 78% of our clients only wanted reviews if they


were five stars.


Okay?


Makes sense, right?


They're just like, I don't want reviews if they're not going to be five stars.


But here's the problem.


That's not always the case.


And according to a study by Bright Local, 92% of people want to read reviews or they


will read reviews before choosing a company.


And here's what they say about the average customer and what they're willing to purchase


or do or use the service of based on their star rating.


So as you can see here, four star and five star, about above 94%.


But as you get down to that three star, all of a sudden you're pushing 57%.


That's really low, you know, as an average.


And so I can understand a client saying, hey, we only want reviews at five star.


Our message to them was, well, you know, 94% of people will still use you if you can average


around four stars.


But pretty much outside of some of the big awful companies that are just really bad at


customer service and some of the things that Rhea talked about yesterday, it's pretty easy


for a company maybe outside of restaurants to average above four stars, you know, if


they're actively managing their online review process.


And so there's a few really great tools.


And we wanted to include this as part of our test.


So Jamie worked with Get Five Stars, which I think is a fantastic tool in the local search


review space.


And here's what we did.


And this was interesting.


We took one of our clients, we sent out 169 requests, we got 11 testimonials out of it,


14 star ratings from it, but zero transition to actually go and leave online reviews.


These were just a blind group going out and sending the emails to just a client base.


And that's not, you know, an abnormality.


This is fairly normal to not get reviews online if you're just blindly going out and sending


an email asking a big customer base.


But we have a bunch of clients that have done very well with reviews.


You can see here 100 reviews for a lawyer on Google, you know, 23, somewhere close to


50, another one around 25.


And so it's like, OK, we want to know from these clients, what are you doing?


What is getting people to leave these Google reviews for you?


This is what it was.


They personally reached out to everyone to ask them, either themselves or one of the


members in their office before they would send that feedback request using a tool like


Get Five Stars.


They would just ask, you know.


And so that's why at MozCon, what do they do?


You have people stand up that say, please go and review the speakers because it's important


for them to get feedback.


It means a lot to the event.


It helps them push it.


It helps them move it forward.


It helps them bring better quality.


It helps speakers progress and grow.


You know, so it's the same process.


And you have to work it into your business process to just ask every single person.


OK.


So that was a great study.


We found out some great things through that.


Then we have Roman.


Roman moved back.


I hired him.


And he does a lot of link building.


That's been his focus.


And Roman moved back because his mom was about to have a baby and he wanted to help.


And he's just about getting ready to go into college to finish his degree.


But he was, you know, to get a job at NFTY because he was actually just out of high school,


didn't have too much education beyond that.


But he was super into the space.


He loved the idea of programming.


He loved these things.


So we just basically said, hey, if you want to get a job here, you have a weekend.


You have to build a website.


And you have to optimize it and then show us what you did.


And so he comes back.


He's built two websites, you know.


And he took all these things into consideration.


So it was really fun.


So anyhow, his study was blogger outreach data.


And he wanted to know, hey, what about a spray and pray approach about reaching out to companies?


Or do we not spray and pray, but do we go and basically do really targeted blogger outreach


and test that?


So we took, you know, 230 outreach attempts across six different clients on average.


And here's what we are.


This is showing that data here.


You know, outreach to 230 websites across these six clients.


With spray and pray, just the response rate from spray and pray, we got 1.5 companies


responding to the request with outreach.


But only 5% of that 1.5% linked.


It's like just awful.


I mean, really, that's what that felt like, taking that approach.


But it was good to see and actually see data around, because I haven't seen too much data


around that.


But what about when we took a targeted approach?


So all of a sudden we went up from 1.5% to 42% response rate.


And of that 42 response rate of everybody that responded, an 18% link rate.


All right.


That was big.


You know, and this has been the approach we've taken, but we were wondering, was selective


truly the way to go?


Or do we need to go back to a little more spray and pray?


Well, this clearly showed us what we needed to do.


I mean, clearly.


So the last study I want to talk about is kind of bringing it back to NFTY itself.


And that was a study across our reporting that we send out to clients.


I've always prided our company on this subject.


It's always been a strong point for us.


We always do custom, really detailed reports that we spend a lot of time on, trying to


provide analysis and different things with.


And so we asked, first off, you know, this.


Well, we used a tracking tool to see how many of our clients were opening our reports.


It was 90%.


But then we went and we asked them, and we found out exactly the same thing.


We asked them, were you reading our reports?


And it was 90% as well.


So they weren't lying to us, which is good for clients to not lie to you.


So anyhow, it showed that our data in asking was correct.


How much of the report did the client read?


All of it, only 69%.


And it starts going down from there.


How often do you have a phone call with one of the managers from the company?


Now, in small business, dealing, you know, we have some bigger enterprise clients.


A lot of our clients are small business law firms.


And so how often did they have a phone call with a NIFTI project manager?


This is something we track every month that we're trying to improve to 100%.


But it was interesting to see that and to see some of the reasons why, which was basically


small business people don't have time.


We would try to make the phone calls.


They wouldn't return.


They would want to communicate through email, et cetera.


But this was the kicker.


This one was really hard for us.


What was the most useful information in our report?


I definitely thought it would be leads.


And that was last.


And I've been racking my brain.


And we've been talking to people about this.


And you know, keyword rankings, we've been trying to downplay that.


But that's what they wanted.


So it just left me confused.


And so we've been trying to figure this out.


And we've came to a few interesting things.


For instance, with leads.


Just something simple that we hadn't thought about was filtering out certain bad phone


calls or filtering out form fills that weren't really that qualified in some cases.


We had some people that were in our organization and some people that weren't.


And we were able to uncover that by looking at that.


Because they were like, yeah, you're giving us leads.


But I'm not sure we're totally trusting this data.


Or going into Google My Business, the dashboard, and pulling the reports out of there and having


the clients feel like they're not trusting that data.


And so we're trying to figure out different ways in small business and in local and in


service to improve on that and to make those things better.


But overall, it comes back to this.


All of these projects were just hustle projects.


They were using grit.


You know, it took extra work that we asked people to do.


But they went and they did it.


And they really got passionate about it.


And they really tried to figure some things out that would help them grow like the bristlecone


pine.


So I have a challenge.


What I challenge you to do is to go out and do your own bristlecone project.


You know?


You might not be in local.


Some of these studies might not be very relevant to you as far as the field that you're in.


But one thing that is extremely relevant is that you can continually grow over the course


of your life.


And the best way to do that is to just tackle something hard.


Tackle something that nobody else in your organization wants to.


Tackle something that's been perplexing you, that just makes it difficult to do what you


do.


And figure out how you can do it better.


And I want to hear about it.


So share it online and tag it with the bristlecone hashtag.


And I look forward to seeing what you come up with.


Thank you.


Mike, that was fantastic.


Thank you so much.


Seriously.


So, obvious question someone said.


Have you heard anything about Google rolling out a penalty for outdated review schema?


Asking for a friend.


So, you know, we've talked a lot about this internally.


So if somebody has that review schema markup, is Google going to penalize them for not following


these new guidelines when they basically raise the bar?


My thoughts on that is that most likely they're just not going to show the review snippet


stars on your listing.


That's most likely.


Now, could they move that to a penalty?


Yes.


I'm not speaking from too much experience.


Schema penalties are really easy to get out of.


I want you to remove that.


I cannot confirm nor deny that.


But I've heard from somebody.


So for the projects themselves, did you decide the topics or did they pick them personally?


They picked them personally.


We just went.


So we basically gave people a week to come up with their project.


They came back.


We gave feedback.


So one of the big parts of this was everybody pitched their project in a team of about three


or four people.


And then they just tried to refine that and come up with some of the interesting angles


that would just push those projects to go beyond.


And even Amador, when he first brought back his research and showed me, I talked him through


some ways that that could potentially get better as well.


And I just think that that feedback is super important.


The same way as like, you know, get five stars asking for feedback that improves the business


or MozCon asking for feedback.


And how did you protect their time?


Like making sure they didn't spend too much or...


It was a lot.


We didn't.


It was up to everybody to spend time.


It definitely, in nifty project time, it cost us a lot of internal money to do that, which


to me was really great for the experience that it was.


But a lot of people put in it after hours.


They just did it because they were passionate, especially Amador starting initially.


It was just extra time.


That's awesome.


Thank you so much.


How To Measure Content Engagement — Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans, my name is Dana DiTommaso, I'm president at Kickpoint, we're a digital marketing


agency up in Canada, and today I'm going to be talking to you about how to measure content


engagement, which is a topic very near and dear to my heart, and it's actually what I


talked about at MozCon this year, I'm even wearing the thematic t-shirt.


So if you weren't at MozCon or not going to buy the videos, which you showed they're good,


I'm going to give you a quick summary of what I talked about in that talk.


So there's four different things that I think you should be looking at when you're trying


to better understand your content engagement.


The first thing is that people keep tabs open, and right now you might be looking at your


400 tabs you have open and thinking, okay, yeah, I keep tabs open, what's the problem?


The problem is that every time you wake up your laptop from when it's sleeping, or you


open up that list of tabs in your mobile browser, often an empty page view, what I call an empty


page view, is sent off to analytics.


It's a zero second page view, because you didn't actually look at the page, it just


was checking to make sure the page was still live.


But because it activates analytics, what you end up with is a situation where you have


a lot of what I call tab hoarders.


So there is a way to measure how to fix this, there's going to be a link in the transcript


to get the actual recipe through Google Tag Manager to measure this, but the idea is that


when a tab is activated, there's two different things you can measure.


You can measure the action that was used to generate that tab, and you can look at the


tab type.


So the actions possible are navigating, or reloading, or the back and forward button,


and the tab type could be new or existing.


So if it's a reloaded tab in an existing tab type, then that means that person hoarded


the tab.


Essentially they've just had it open.


And this is just detecting from the browser, you don't need any fancy cookies or anything


like this, this is built in stuff for measuring.


So by looking at the percentage of which your tabs are run by tab hoarders, essentially,


you can see what percentage of your page views are actually fresh page views, like new people.


And also consider that if you have a lot of tab hoarders, it might be making your conversion


rate look like crap, because conversion rate in Universal Analytics is session-based.


So if every time they open a new tab...


Sorry, come back to that existing tab every single day, like once a day, that's one session


every day, and they never convert, that is a 0% conversion rate for this person, they


could look at this page like 30 times before they actually end up converting.


In GA4, you have the option of session conversions or user conversions, so it'll be a little


bit better, but you also have to assume that the cookies have remained to identify this


person's user, which is not always the case.


So definitely keep in mind that you might wanna discount hoarders when you're thinking


about your conversion rate for your site.


Second thing, I also want you to look at the page views per day.


So consider that when you have a report, and you probably have in that report top pages,


for example, like, look at this page, you published this blog post, it's got 80,000


views, we would like arrays, right?


We report on this stuff all the time, everybody does.


But what you don't do is you probably don't report on how many page views this page has


had since it was originally published.


So I want you to think about that.


So you can always capture the publish date of the page, and then try having a report


where you have the page, how many views that page has had since it was published, and then


take the page views, divide it by the number of days that page has been around for, and


then look at the page views per day.


And I've just sketched out an example here.


You can see page A, 1,100 views, 18 views per day.


Page B, 9,000 views, 14 views per day.


Page C, 18,000 views, but only 12 views per day, because this is an older post.


And so this one might look really great if you just looked at views, but if you look


at views per day, actually, this one's pretty great.


And then that helps you prioritize, well, this page is this quiet performer over the


long haul.


Maybe we should be looking at it and making sure that conversion rate is better.


And you can also establish a benchmark of how many views per day you would expect for


a new post over time.


And then when you publish something new, you can go back and say, is this actually...


Are we happy with the amount of page views per day that this new page or new post that


we've published is actually getting?


So a couple different options there.


All right.


Third thing.


Was the content consumed?


So this is a recipe that is available on our website.


Also the link, again, will be in the transcript to download it.


Consuming is the idea that when you go to a site, you're watching a video, we know you


watched the video.


We know you clicked on it.


We know how long you watched it.


If you're reading a piece of content, we don't actually know if you read the whole thing,


because content is different lengths, which means that there's different times it would


take to read that post.


Some posts might be 15 minutes, some posts might be five minutes.


So you can't use a standard timer for all of it.


Plus you need to know if they actually saw the entire post.


So the idea of content consumption is that it is depth and time.


If they reached the depth, the bottom of the post, then they saw the whole thing.


If the time was the amount that was actually took to read the post, then if both these


things are true, the content was consumed.


And if they only got to depth but not time, then it would be that they skimmed.


So they just roared on down to the bottom and they didn't actually read the whole thing.


If they got no depth but they got time, they're a tab hoarder, which we've already looked


at here, but this is another way to tell.


And if none of those things happened, then they just abandoned ship and they didn't care


about your post.


So by evaluating your page views with a percentage of what percentage were skimmers or hoarders


or abandoners or actual consumers, that can also tell you how compelling that content


is.


And then a bonus metric would be, well, what's the average scroll depth of this page?


So at what point are people bailing if they're not consuming with this post?


And you can see, oh, we've got this really weird call to action.


People think the post is done.


So if we move things around, maybe people will realize there's more to read.


That's a good way to measure content consumption and how it can improve content in your site.


All right, fourth, last thing.


Was a conversion possible?


I'm sure everyone reports on conversion rates.


What they don't report on is if the person could actually convert, which frankly doesn't


seem fair.


You're expecting someone to convert, and it's like, well, why didn't you do the thing?


They're like, I didn't even know I could do the thing.


I didn't see the button.


And I know marketers, we all have these beautiful computers that we use.


I'm a Windows person.


I have this big desktop at home that I was used for video gaming, and it's got two giant


monitors.


And of course, when I look at a page, I see a big section of a page.


But on a mobile device, the same page, you probably aren't necessarily seeing the buttons.


And so you really need to think about, could the person actually convert?


And I really encourage everyone, look at your website on a mobile device now and again.


I know we all think desktop first, even though we're supposed to think mobile first, because


we use desktops.


But many of our website visitors may only visit your site on a mobile device.


So really think about, based on that device, are people even seeing your call to action?


So to measure this, it's what's called an element visibility trigger in Google Tag Manager.


Again, in the link I have in the transcript, I will show you how to set this up.


It's a very simple trigger.


You just need to know a tiny little bit of CSS.


You just have to say, what's the class or the ID of the thing that I want to measure?


So for example, for some clients, I might say, show me every time an H1 enters the view,


or an H2, or something like that, a heading one or a heading two.


And then I know exactly how many headings this person has seen as they went down the


page.


And you could do the same thing with buttons.


So if you know you have a button and it always has a class of CTA, for example, you would


just say, record an event every time a button with a class of CTA shows up in this visitor's


screen.


And then you can look at it as more like a funnel, instead of just a straight, what's


the conversion rate for the session?


It could be, how many people looked at this page?


How many people actually saw the CTA?


What was that view to CTA rate?


And then out of those people, how many of them converted?


And you may find out that your pages actually convert a lot better than you thought, but


people aren't seeing your CTAs.


So maybe you should show it to them.


Or maybe things are fine, but you don't know until you measure it.


So there are four different ways here to measure content engagement.


Maybe all of them will apply to you.


Maybe only some of them do.


But either way, you can definitely go beyond page views when it comes to figuring out if


your content is any good or not.


Paid Social for Content Marketing Launches - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans, my name is Kane. I'm a founder of a content marketing agency here in Seattle called Content Harmony.


We do a lot of content marketing projects where we use paid social to launch them and get better traffic and results.


And so I spoke about this this past year at MozCon and what I want to do today is share some of those tactics with you


and help you get started with launching your content with some paid traction and not just relying on your email outreach


or maybe your own existing email newsletter and social followers.


Especially for a lot of companies that are just getting started with content marketing, that audience development component is really important.


A lot of people just don't have a significant market share of their industry subscribed to their newsletter.


So it's great to use paid social in order to reach new people, get them over to your most important content projects,


or even just get them over to your week-to-week blog content.


So the first thing I want to start with is expanding a little bit beyond just your average image ad.


A lot of social networks, especially Facebook, are promoting video heavily nowadays.


And you can use that to get a lot cheaper engagement than you can from a typical image ad.


If you've logged into your Facebook feed lately, you've probably noticed aside from birth announcements,


there's a lot of videos filling up the feed.


And so as an advertiser, if you want to blend in well with that,


using video as a teaser or a sampler for the content that you're producing is a great way to kind of look natural


and look like you belong in the user's feed.


And so different things you can do include short animated videos explaining what the project is and why you did it,


maybe doing talking head videos with some of your executives or staff or marketing team,


just talking on screen with whatever in the background about the project you created


and kind of drumming up interest to actually get people over to the site.


So that can be really great for team recognition if you're trying to build thought leadership in your space.


It's a great way to introduce the face of your team members that might be speaking at industry conferences and events.


It's a great way to just get people recognizing their name or maybe just help them feel closer to your company


because they recognize their voice and face.


And so everybody's instant reaction, of course, is I don't have the budget for video.


That's okay. You don't need to be a videography expert to create decent social ads.


There's a lot of great tools out there.


Soapbox by Wistia is a great one that's been released recently that allows you to do kind of a webcam combined with your browser type of video.


There's also tools like BigView, VU.TV, Shaker, SHAKR, and Promo, which is a tool by a company called Slidely, I think.


All of those tools are great ways to create short, 20-second, 60-second types of videos.


They let you create captions.


So if you're scrolling through a social feed and you see an autoplay video,


there's a good chance that the audio in that is turned off so you can create captions to help let people know what the video is about


if it's not instantly obvious from the video itself.


So that's a great way to get cheaper distribution than you might get from your typical image ad.


And it's really going to stick out to users because most other companies aren't spending the time to do that.


Another really valuable tactic is to create lookalike audiences from your best customers.


Now, you can track your best customers in a couple of ways.


You could have a pixel, a Facebook pixel or another network pixel on your website


that just tracks the people that have been to the site a number of times


or that have been through the shopping cart at a certain dollar value.


Or we can take our email list and use the emails of customers that have ordered from us


or just the emails of customers that are on our newsletter that seem like they open up every newsletter


and they really like our content.


We can upload those into a custom audience in the social network of our choice


and then create what's called a lookalike audience.


And in this case, I'd recommend what's called a 1% lookalike audience.


So if you're targeting people in the US, it means the 1% of people in the US that appear most like your audience.


So if your audience is men ages 35 to 45 typically that are interested in a specific topic,


the lookalike audience will probably be a lot of other men in a similar age group that like similar topics.


So Facebook's making that choice, which means you may or may not get the perfect audience right from the start.


So it's great to test additional filters on top of the default lookalike audience.


So for example, you could target people by household income.


You could target people by additional interests that may or may not be obvious from the custom audience


just to make sure you're only reaching the users that are interested in your topic.


Whatever it might be, if this is going to end up being 3 or 4 million people at 1% of the country,


it's probably good to go ahead and filter that down to a smaller audience


that's a little bit closer to your exact target that you want to reach.


So excellent way to create brand awareness with that target audience.


The next thing I'd like you to test is getting your ads and your content in front of influencers in your space,


and that could mean bloggers, journalists, or it could just mean people like page managers in Facebook,


people that have access to a Facebook page that can share updates.


Those could be social media managers, that could be bloggers,


that could even be somebody running the page for the local church or PTA group.


Regardless, those people are probably going to have a lot of contacts,


be likely to share things with friends and family or followers on social media.


When you start running ads to this type of group, you're going to find that it costs a little bit more per click.


If you're used to paying $0.50 to $1 per click, you might end up paying $1 or $2 per click to reach this audience.


That's okay. There's a lot more embedded value with this audience than the typical user


because they're likely on average to have more reach, more followers, more influence.


It's worth testing share focus call to actions.


What that means is encouraging people to share this with some people they know that might be interested,


post it to their page even if it's something worth testing.


It may or may not work every time, but certainly valuable to test.


The way we recommend reaching most of these users is through something like a job title filter.


Somebody says they're a blogger, says they're an editor-in-chief.


That's the clearest way to reach them.


They may not always have that as their job titles.


You could also do employers. That's another good example.


I recommend combining that with broad interests.


If I'm targeting journalists because I have a new research piece out,


it's great for us to attach interests that are relevant to our space.


If we're in healthcare, we might target people interested in healthcare, in the FDA,


and other big companies in the space that they're likely to be following for updates.


If we're in fashion, we might just be selecting people that are fans of big brands, Nordstroms and others like that.


Whatever it is, you can take this audience of a few hundred thousand or whatever it might be


down to just a few thousand and really focus on the people that are most likely to be writing about or influential in your space.


The fourth thing you can test is retargeting non-subscribers.


A big goal of content marketing is having those pop-ups or call to actions on the site


to get people to download a bigger piece of content,


download a checklist, whatever it might be, so that we can get them on our email newsletter.


There's a lot of people that are going to click out of that.


90 to 95 percent of the people that visit your site or more probably aren't going to take that call to action.


What we can do is convert this into more of a social ad unit


and just show the same messaging to the people that didn't sign up on the site.


Maybe they just hate pop-ups by default. They will never sign up for them. That's okay.


They might be more receptive to a lead ad in Facebook that says,


subscribe or download instead of something that pops up on their screen.


The other thing we can do is start testing new messages and new content.


Maybe this offer wasn't interesting to them because they don't need that guide,


but maybe they need your checklist instead,


or maybe they just like your email drip series that has an educational component to it.


So keep testing different types of messaging.


Just because this one wasn't valuable doesn't mean your other content isn't interesting to them,


and it doesn't mean they're not interested in your email list.


We can keep testing messaging.


So if we are testing messaging on our site, we might take the top two or three


and test that messaging on ads.


We might find that different messaging works better on social than it does on pop-ups or banners on the site,


so it's worth redoing split tests that seemed conclusive on your site


because things might be different on the social media network.


So that's it for today.


What I'd love for you guys to do is if you have some great examples of targeting that's worked for you,


messaging that's worked for you,


or just other paid social tactics that have worked really well for your content marketing campaigns,


I'd love to hear examples of that in the comments on the post,


and we'd be happy to answer questions you guys have on how to actually get some of this stuff done,


whether it's targeting questions, how to set up lookalike audiences, anything like that,


we'd be happy to answer questions there as well.


So that's it for me today.


Thanks, Moz fans.


Google Ads Mistakes to Avoid - Whiteboard Friday

Music


Hey Moz readers, my name is Dana DiTomasso and I'm president and partner at Kickpoint.


We're a digital marketing agency way up in the frozen wilds of Edmonton, Alberta.


Today I'm going to be talking to you about PPC and I know you're thinking this is an SEO blog.


What are you doing here talking about PPC?


But one of my resolutions for 2019 is to bring together SEO and PPC people


because SEO can learn a lot from PPC and yes, PPC you also can learn a lot from SEO.


I know PPC people are like, we just do paid, it's so great.


But trust me, both can work together.


In our agency we do both SEO and PPC and we work with a lot of companies who have one person,


sometimes two, and they're doing everything.


So one of the things we try to do is help them run better ads campaigns.


So here I have tips on things that we see all the time when we start working with a new ads account


that we end up fixing and hopefully I can pass this on to you so you can fix it


before you have to call an agency to come and fix it for you.


So one of the things is this is actually a much longer piece than what I can present on this whiteboard.


There's only so much room.


So there is actually a blog post on our website which you can find here,


kickpoint.ca slash google dash ads dash mistakes.


Please check that out and that will have the full nine tips.


But I'm just going to break it down to a few today.


All right, so first thing, too many keywords.


We see this a lot where people in Google says, you know,


make sure to put together keywords that have the same sort of theme.


But your theme could be really specific or it could be kind of vague.


So this is an example, real example that we got where the keyword examples were all lawyer themes.


So defense lawyer, criminal lawyer, DUI lawyer, assault lawyer, sexual assault lawyer.


And technically they all have the same theme of lawyer,


but that's way too vague for it to be all in one single ad group


because what kind of ad are you going to show?


What do our lawyers call us, right?


It's not specific enough.


So take for example DUI lawyer, which I know is a really very competitive niche,


and then you can do DUI lawyer, DUI lawyer Seattle,


and then DUI lawyer and DUI lawyer Seattle spelled out a little bit differently,


and I'll talk about that in a second.


So by taking this one thing and then breaking it down into a much more specific ad group,


you can really have much more control, and this is a consistent theme in all the tips I talk about,


is much more control over where you're spending your money,


what keywords you're spending it on, what your ads are,


having a much better landing page ad match, which is also really important,


just makes your ad life so much easier when you've got it in all those ad groups.


And I know it might seem intimidating.


It's like, well, I have three ad groups now, and if I follow your tips, I'm going to have 40,


but at the same time it's way easier to manage 40 well-organized groups,


and it's managed three really badly organized groups, so keep that in mind.


The next thing is picking the right match type.


And so you can see here I've got this bracket stuff and this phrase stuff,


and what are these plus signs, right?


And so the three, there's really four match types.


There's broad match, which is terrible, and don't ever use it,


and broad match is just you writing out the keyword,


and then Google just displays it for whatever it feels like is relevant to that particular search.


And so for example, we've seen examples where it's like a catering company,


and they'll have catering in as a keyword,


and they're showing up for all sorts of phrases where the catering,


where they can't provide catering because they're searching for a venue that only does in-house catering,


or they're spending money on a catering conference,


or just totally irrelevant stuff, do not use broad match.


The upgrade from that is what's called broad match modifier, or BMM,


and that's where these plus signs come in.


So this is really the words DUI, lawyer, and Seattle in any order,


but they all have to exist and that other things can exist around that.


So it could be I need a DUI lawyer in Seattle.


I live in Seattle. I need a DUI lawyer.


That would also work for that particular keyword.


The next type is phrase, and that's in the quotes,


and this is DUI lawyer is the example here,


and then you can have anything before it, you can have anything after it,


but you can't have something in between it.


So it couldn't be DUI who is really great at being a lawyer,


or for example, you know, a weak example, but you get the idea.


You can't just shove stuff in the middle of a phrase match.


And then exact match is what's in the brackets here,


and that is just those words and nothing else.


So if I have DUI lawyer, this keyword, if I didn't have DUI lawyer Seattle,


this keyword would not trigger if somebody searched a DUI lawyer Seattle.


So that's as specific as possible,


and you really want to try that for your most competitive keywords.


This is the really expensive stuff because you do not want to waste one single penny


on anything that is irrelevant to that particular search.


So this is your head-on. It's really expensive every click.


I've got to make sure I'm getting the most money possible for those clicks.


That's where you really want to use exact match.


So next tips.


The next thing is what we see is a lot of people


have only one ad per group.


This is not a tip. This is a criticism up here.


And the thing is that maybe, again, you think it's easy for management,


but it's really hard to see what's going to work


because if you're not always testing,


how are you going to know if you could do better?


So make sure to have at least three ads per group.


And then look at your ad copy.


We see a lot of just generic, like, we are the best lawyers, call us.


There's nothing there that says I need to call these people.


And so really think about how you can add those emotional triggers


into your copy.


Talk to your client or your team if you work in-house


and find out what are the things that people say when they call.


What are the things where they say, wow, you really helped me with this,


or I was feeling like this, and then you came in


and I just felt so much better.


And that can really help to spice up your ads.


And you don't want to make it too, you don't want to get too fancy with this,


but we certainly want to make something that's going to help you stand out.


So really add those emotional triggers into your ad copy.


And then the next thing is making sure to have a call to action,


which seems basic because I think it's an ad,


if you click it, that's the call to action.


But sometimes people on the Internet, they're not necessarily thinking.


You just want to say, you know what, just call me, or email me,


or we're open 24 hours, just be really specific


on what you want the person to do when they look at the ad.


Just spell it out for them.


I know it seems silly, just tell them.


Just tell them what you want them to do.


That's all you need to do.


And then make sure you add in all the extensions.


So in Google Ads, if you're not super familiar with the platform,


there's a section called Extensions.


And these are things like when the address shows up under an ad,


or you've got those little links that come up,


or you've got somebody saying we're open 24 hours, for example.


There's all sorts of different extensions that you can use.


Just put in all the extensions that you possibly can


for every single one of your groups,


and then they won't all trigger all at the same time,


but at least they're there, and it's possible that they could trigger.


And if they do, that gives your ad more real estate versus your competition,


which is really great on mobile because ads take up a lot of space


at the top of a mobile search, so you want to make sure


to shove your competition as far as you possibly can down that search


so you own as much of that property as you possibly can.


One thing that I do see people doing incorrectly with extensions, though,


is setting extensions at, say, the campaign level,


and then you have different ad groups that cover different themes.


So going back to this example over here with the different types of lawyers,


let's say you had an extension that talks specifically about DUI law,


and then it was triggering on, say, sexual assault law, right?


You don't want that to happen.


So make sure you have really fine-tuned control over your different extensions,


so you're showing the right extension with the right type of keyword


and the right type of ad.


The other thing that we see a lot is where people have location extensions,


and they're showing all the location extensions


where they should not be showing all the location extensions.


So you've got an ad group for, say, Seattle,


and it's talking about this new home development that you have,


and because you just loaded in all your location extensions,


suddenly you're showing extensions for something in, say, San Francisco, right?


And it's just because you haven't filtered properly,


really double-check to make sure that you've got your filter set up properly


for your location extensions.


You're showing the right location extension for the right ad.


And I know that Google says, we'll pick the locations closest to the client,


but you don't know where that person is searching right there.


They could be in San Francisco at that moment


and searching for new home builds in Seattle


because maybe they're thinking about moving from San Francisco to Seattle.


You don't want them to see the stuff that's there.


You want them to see the stuff that's at the place where they're intending to be.


So really make sure you control that.


All right, so last but not least, keep display and search separate.


By default, Google so helpfully says, we'll just show your ads everywhere.


It's totally cool. This is what we want everyone to do.


Don't do that. This is what makes Google money.


It does not make you money.


And the reason why is because display network,


which is where you're going through a website and then you see an ad,


and search network, when you type in the stuff and you see an ad,


are two totally different beasts.


It's really a different type of experience.


And to be honest, if you take your search campaigns, which are text-based ads,


and now you're showing them on websites,


you're showing a boring text ad on a website that already has, like,


50 blinky things and click here and right.


And, I mean, they're probably not seeing this, and maybe they have an ad blocker installed.


But if they are, certainly your text ad, which is kind of boring


and not intended for that medium, is not going to be the thing that stands out.


So really you're just wasting your money because you'll end up with lower relevancy,


less clicks, and then Google thinks that your group is bad,


and then you'll end up paying more because Google thinks your group is bad.


So it really gives you that extra control by saying,


this is a search campaign, it's only on search,


this is a display campaign, it's only on display.


Keep the two of them totally separate.


And then you have lots of control over the search ads being for search


and display ads being for display.


Don't mix those two up.


So make sure to uncheck that by default.


So definitely there's more tips on our blog here,


but I hope that this will help you get started.


And SEOs, if you've never done a PPC campaign in your life,


I recommend just setting one up.


Put 50 bucks behind that thing.


Just try it out because I think what will really help you


is understanding more of how people search


because as we get less and less keyword data


from the different tools that we use to figure out what the heck are people Googling


when they try to search for a business,


ads give you some of that data back.


And that's where ads can be a really great ally in trying to get better SEO results.


So I hope you found this enjoyable.


The Local Algorithm: Relevance, Proximity, and Prominence - Whiteboard Friday

Hi Moz fans, this is Mary Bowling from Igniter Digital and today I want to talk to you about


the local algorithm.


I'd like to make this as simple as possible for people to understand because I think it's


a very confusing thing for a lot of SEOs who don't do this every day.


The local algorithm has always been based on relevance, prominence, and proximity.


And for relevance, what the algorithm's asking is, does this business do or sell or have


the attributes that the searcher's looking for?


That's pretty simple.


So that gives us all these businesses over here that might be relevant.


For prominence, the algorithm's asking which businesses are the most popular and the most


well regarded in their local market area.


And for proximity, the question really is, how is the business close enough to the searcher


to be considered to be a good answer for this query?


And this is what trips people up.


This is what really defines the local algorithm is proximity.


So I'm going to try to explain that in very simple terms here today.


Let's say we have a searcher in a particular location, and she's really hungry today and


she wants some egg rolls.


So her query is egg rolls.


If she were to ask for egg rolls near me, these businesses are the ones that the algorithm


would favor.


They're the closest to her.


And Google would rank them most likely by their prominence.


If she were to ask for something in a particular place, let's say this is a downtown area and


she asks for egg rolls downtown because she didn't want to be away from work too long,


then the algorithm's actually going to favor the businesses that sell egg rolls in the


downtown area, even though that's further away from where the searcher is.


And if she were to ask for egg rolls open now, there might be a business here and a


business here and a business here that are open now.


And they would be the ones that the algorithm would consider.


So relevance is kicking in on the query.


If she were to ask for the cheapest egg rolls, that might be here and here.


And if she were to ask for the best egg rolls, that might be very, very far away.


Or it could be a combination of all kinds of locations.


So you really need to think of proximity as a fluid thing.


It's like a rubber band.


And depending on the query, the searcher's location, the relevance to the query, and


the prominence of the business is what Google is going to show in that local pack.


And I hope that makes it much clearer to those of you who haven't understood the local algorithm.


If you have some comments or suggestions, please make them below.


How to Make Newsworthy Content — Whiteboard Friday

Hi everyone, I am Amanda Milligan, the Growth Director at Fractal. And today I'm going to


talk to you about how to make newsworthy content. My career has been in marketing and communications,


but my degree was in journalism. So this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.


So my MozCon presentation is actually on how to perform a link gap analysis, which basically


means how to find out who your competitors are getting links from, and then how to brainstorm


how you can get similar links. Well when it comes to actually building those links, newsworthy


content is the best way to do that. And I'm going to talk to you about some of the elements


that are really important in creating that type of content. So first, data. Data is really


crucial to this process because most of us do not have breaking news operations or full


newsrooms for our brand, right? We are not actual reporters, this is not a full-time


job. So we can't be just reporting on the newest thing that's happening, we almost have


to create our own news by digging in and investigating topics that are interesting to us. So original


data is a great way to do that. You can start with seeing if you actually have any internal


data at your company that would be of interest to relevant publications. A lot of companies


overlook this aspect, obviously you have to have permission to do so, but you might have


information that would be really interesting, or maybe you have an email list or an audience


that's pretty active that you can survey or poll and find out some information that would


be appealing to people. So that's a good place to start. Otherwise, there's public data available.


The government alone has tons and tons of publicly available data sets that you can


use and even combine different data sets to see some really interesting things. An example


of a combination of that is for our client Porch.com, we looked at information about


how much different household home improvement projects cost, and then we surveyed people


to ask how often they did those home improvement projects, and we were able to see the cost


of home improvement over many years of time. So that's an example of using two different


data sets combining for new insights. Thirdly, surveys and other types of data collection


are great if you don't have the answer in data yet. Maybe you can run a survey, maybe


you can scrape social media, maybe there is another way we've done germ swabbing, anything


you can do to collect data. Basically, a good way to think about it is ask yourself a question


that's interesting to you and would be interesting to your audience or think about what's interesting


to your audience, and if there is no answer, ask yourself how you can find it. And then


this piece will make the rest of the process exponentially easier because when you go to


pitch a reporter, you're going to say, I have exclusive research, new data that no one else


has really talked about before, and that is hugely appealing to the media. The second


component here is emotion, is what you're working on going to make somebody feel something.


Now I actually have a sample headline down here from Tech Republic, this is actual coverage


from a piece that we pitched, and it says, your Zoom background may not make you look


as professional as you think. Now you read that and you're like, wait, what? We're all


on Zoom, that's not good. So that has an element of surprise to it, right? The reason why I


say to think about this, it comes sometimes inherently when you're coming up with ideas,


we all tend to think of things that are going to have some kind of an emotional resonance,


but if you think about this stuff from the beginning and you imagine maybe what a headline


might look like or what's going to be the interesting takeaway from something, you can


really focus in on the interesting parts of a project. You can also see here, so this


headline is from a survey that we did, I believe, more original data, so they're able to say


some new claim that they weren't able to say before, right? So emotion, if you are not


really sure which direction to go in, try surprise, focus on surprise, because a lot


of journalists like to focus on things that are new and unexpected, right? Also, we did


a study many years ago, I think 2013, where we looked at all the viral images of that


year and we polled people on what emotions were most present and surprise was the most


present one. So it's actually very prevalent in viral content, but we're not even talking


about viral content, we're talking about anything that does well in digital PR, surprise is


a really great way to do that. So as you're creating a piece of content or a project,


ask yourself as you're doing it, like, you know, what do you expect? And if the results


come back that way, obviously you have to work with what the data gives you, but if


you found it surprising, odds are someone else is going to find it surprising and make


sure that's highlighted in the results and when you pitch it, make sure it's highlighted


in the body of your pitch. Thirdly, impact. Impact is actually, it has some other names


sometimes when you talk about newsworthiness, prominence is one of them, basically, is it


actually affecting the audience? When a journalist decides what to write, they want to know,


does this impact my readers? How does this affect their daily lives? Right? So if you


look back at this headline example, TechCrunch or Tech Republic, excuse me, their audience


most likely has been on a lot of zoom calls in the last year or so, right? So they know


when they saw this pitch, this is going to be interesting to a lot of people. This is


more in the general audience bucket. You can do projects and I have another video about


tangential content, which you can check out that's along these lines, but you can think


what impacts a wide audience. If you're trying to get national news coverage or appeal to


a pretty general audience, you have to think about what's going to impact a lot of folks.


What do we have in common? You know, what is something that we're going to be able to


all relate to? Or you can still apply this in a niche perspective. You don't always have


to appeal to everybody, but if you're going to do that, then you need to focus in and


think, how is this going to impact that specific person that I have in mind, right? That set


of people. And if you're able to do that and explain in your pitch to the journalists,


I think this insight is interesting because XYZ and they see that it has an impact for


their audience, they're going to be more likely to cover it, right? Because it's in their


interest not only to get their audience to click on these stories, but to inform them


about things that they might be interested about. In this case, it's that they might


not look as professional as they thought, right? So this, I put this headline here because


it's an example of all three of these things. And we often like to think we have our digital


PR perspective involved from the very beginning of creating content. You don't want to have


them separate. You don't want to create something and then have somebody pitch it later and


have no idea kind of where it came from or why you went in that direction. Think about


what is it that we're trying to get out of this? What's the question we're trying to


answer? If you have a thesis, is it correct? Are you proving it wrong? Those are going


to be the interesting bits that are going to lead you to getting the coverage like this.


So I went through a lot very quickly. The whole point of this is if you come up with


something newsworthy, if it's appealing to a certain group of people, if it's original


information and it has a lot of emotional resonance, you're going to be able to pitch


that to the media and hopefully get media coverage for your brand, which not only gets


you brand awareness and a very authoritative positioning because your brand is being mentioned


alongside original research that your brand did, but also incredible backlinks, which


again ties into the whole backlink analysis side of things. SEOs are really always looking


for ways to get excellent links, but you have to earn those links and you have to earn it


through creating newsworthy content. So thank you so much for joining me today. I really


How to Make a Technical SEO Recommendation - Whiteboard Friday

Hi, my name is Ben. I'm a principal consultant at a company called Distilled. Welcome to


Whiteboard Friday. Today I'd like to talk to you about something a bit different than


most Whiteboard Fridays. I'd like to talk about how to work with clients or bosses in


a different way. So instead of thinking about technical SEO and how to make technical discoveries


or see what problems are, I want to talk about how to present your findings to your client


after you've done that discovery. So what's the problem that we're dealing with here?


Well the scenario is that we've got a recommendation and we're presenting it to a client or a boss.


Easy enough. But what's the goal of that situation? I would argue that there's a very specific


goal and the best way to look at it is the goal is to change the action of the individual


or the organization. Now what if that wasn't the case? What if you worked with a client


and none of their actions changed as a result of that engagement? Well what was the point?


Why should they have even trusted you in the first place to come in and help them? So if


this is the specific goal that we're trying to accomplish, what's the best way to do that?


Most people jump right to persuasion. They say if only I could something, the client


would listen to me. If only I could present the forecast. If only I could justify the


ROI. Something, right? Some mysterious research that probably hasn't been done yet and maybe


can't even be done at all. And my argument here is that the idea of persuasion is toxic.


And when you say if only I could this, really what you mean is if only I had the evidence,


the client would have to do as I say. You're trying to get control over the client when


you say these things. And it turns out that human beings basically do whatever they want


to do and no matter how well you make your case, if it's made for your reasons and not


the client's, they're still not going to want to do the thing that you recommend. So I've


introduced a framework at Distilled that helps us get past this and that's what I'd like


to share with you right now. So the key to this method is that at each step of the process


you allow the client to solve the problem for themselves. You give them the opportunity


to see the problem from their own perspective and maybe even come up with their own solution.


So there are three steps to this. First, you suggest the problem. And when I say suggest,


I don't mean suggest a solution. I mean you plant the idea in their mind that this is


a problem that needs solving. It's almost like Inception, right? So you first say, here


is what I see. Hold up the mirror to them. Make the observations that they haven't yet


made themselves. Step two, demonstrate. And what demonstrate means is you're allowing


them to emulate your behavior. You're demonstrating what you would do in that situation if you


had to deal with the same problem. So you say, here's what I would do if I were in your


shoes. And finally, you elaborate. Say, here's why I think this is a reasonable activity.


Now I've got to be honest, most of the time in my experience if you use this framework,


you never even make it to elaboration, right? Because the client solves the problem somewhere


back here and you can just end the meeting. The key again is to let the client solve the


problem for themselves for their own reason in the way that they feel most comfortable.


Let's look at an example because that is again kind of abstract. So let's say that you've


made an observation in Google Search Console, right? They have, the client I mean, has all


these pages that Google has discovered but shouldn't really be in the index or indexable


or discoverable at all. So you start by suggesting. I see in Search Console that Google has discovered


18 million pages when it should be let's say 10,000. This is from your faceted navigation.


Now notice there's no judgment, there's no hint at what should be done about this or


even the severity of the problem. You're just presenting the numbers. And now we're already


sort of at a turning point. Maybe the client hears this and they do a sort of a head slap


and they say, of course, you know, I hadn't seen that problem before but here's what I


think we should do about it. And you reach some sort of agreement and the problem is


solved and the meeting is over and you get that hour back in your day. Maybe they sort


of have some sort of questions about what this means, what this implies and they want


to hear your solution. Well now it's time to demonstrate what you would do when presented


with that fact. Say, this would be fixed by adding nofollow to links to that faceted content.


And maybe they see how this is an obvious solution to the problem that's completely


compatible with their tech stack and again you get 50 minutes back in your day because


the meeting's done, you've done your job. Or maybe they don't, maybe they don't understand


why that would be a good solution. So finally you get to this stage which is elaboration.


Here's why I think this is a good idea. These pages are important for user experience, right,


you don't want to get rid of the faceted navigation in your ecommerce store but you do want to


not link to those pages for SEO reasons because maybe there's no search volume for related


terms. So for a particular cost range for an item or something like that there's just


no associated search activity. You need the pages still. So you say these pages are important


for user experience but they don't satisfy any search intent. And at that point the client


says of course you've come up with the ideal solution and I'm going to implement your recommendation


exactly as you've given it to me. Or they don't, right. And if they don't, you know,


you're no worse off. You can basically walk out of that meeting saying I've done everything


possible to get the client on board with my recommendation but it just didn't work out.


And that feeling of being able to know that you did the right thing has been a very powerful


one, at least in my experience. I've been consulting for about eight years and just


going through this process helps me sleep better at night knowing that I really did


my job. And we've also found that this has a really high success rate with clients too.


Basically you'll discover that it's much, much easier to put together presentations


if you know that this is the format that you're going to be presenting in. So if you think


that your job is to give the evidence to the client to convince them of something, there's


really no end to the evidence that you could gather. You could always gather more evidence


and when you get to that final meeting you can say, ah, you know, it's not because I


saw the problem in the wrong way or I communicated in the wrong way, it's that I didn't justify


the ROI enough. And there's no leave, that rabbit hole just keeps going, just keeps going.


So again this method has been extremely successful for Distilled. If you're interested in engaging


with this more you can read at this URL dis.tl.present where I give a more thorough write up on this


and of course I'd love to hear any thoughts or experiences that you have with this method.


7 Title Tag Hack for Increased Rankings + Traffic Whiteboard Friday

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


Very excited to be here today, my name is Cyrus, I'm a Moz associate.


Today I want to talk to you about title tags.


Specifically, title tag hacks to increase your traffic and rankings.


Now you may be asking yourself, are title tags even still important today in SEO?


You bet they are.


We've done a lot of correlation studies in the past, those correlation studies have shown


different things sort of decreasing in the past years.


But we've also seen a lot of experiments recently where people have changed their title tag


and seen a significant measurable increase in their rankings.


Now the other aspect of title tags that people sometimes forget about is the click-through


rate that you get, which can measurably increase your traffic if you get the title tag right.


Now what's neat about increasing your traffic through click-through rate is we've seen a


lot of experiments, Rand has experimented a lot, that if you can increase this, you


can measurably increase this.


Traffic through increased clicks can seem to increase your rankings under certain circumstances.


So you get the dual benefit.


So that's what I want to talk to you about today, increasing those rankings, increasing


that traffic by changing the first thing that your visitor is going to see in the SERPs.


So the important thing to remember is that these are things to experiment with.


Not all of these hacks are going to work for you.


SEO is founded in best practices, but TrueSuccess is founded when you experiment and try different


things.


So try some of these out and these will give you an idea of where to get started in some


of your title tag experiments.


The first one is numbers.


Numbers kind of pop out at you.


These are examples like five signs of a zombie apocalypse or how mutants can save 22% on


car insurance.


When you see these in SERPs, they tend to get slightly higher click-through rate sometimes


because this works because of a cognitive bias.


Our brains are trained to find things that stand out and are specific.


And when you're scanning search results, that's a lot of information.


So your brain is going to try to find some things that it can grasp onto.


And numbers are the ultimate things that are both specific and they stand out.


And so sometimes in certain circumstances, you can get a higher click-through rate by


using numbers in your title tags.


Now a very specific type of number are dates.


Rand did an excellent whiteboard Friday a few weeks ago.


We'll link to it below.


And these are things like best actress Oscar nominee 2017.


Or even more specific, you can get the month in there, top NFL fantasy draft picks September


Now Rand talks about this a lot.


He talks about ways of finding dates in your keyword research.


The key in that research is when you're using tools like Keyword Explorer or Google AdWords


or SEMrush, you have to look for previous years.


So if I was searching for this year's, we don't have enough data yet for 2017.


So I would look for best actress Oscar nominee 2016.


The other cool thing about this is you can leverage your CMS.


If you use WordPress, if you use Yoast plugin, you can actually have your title tags update


automatically year to year or even month to month leveraging that.


It's not right for all circumstances, but for certain keyword queries, it works pretty


well.


Third is length.


This is one of the most controversial, something that causes the most angst in SEO is when


we're doing audits or looking at title tags.


Because inevitably when you're doing an SEO audit, you find two things.


You find title tags that are way too short like pantsuit or title tags that are way,


way, way too long because they just want to stuff every keyword in there.


80 ASL red pantsuit with line collar, mid-rise belt, hook-eye zipper, herringbone knit at


Macy's.


Now these two, they're great title tags, but there's two problems with this.


This is way too broad, pantsuit could be anything, and this title tag is way too diluted.


It's hard to really know what that is about.


You're trying to scan it, you're trying to read it, and search engines are going to look


at it the same way.


Is this about a pantsuit?


Is it about herringbone knit?


It's kind of hard.


So Etsy recently did a study where they, and Etsy measured hundreds of thousands of URLs,


and they shortened their title tags.


Because more often than not, the longer title tag is a problem.


Shorter title tags, not so much.


You see longer title tags in the wild more often.


And when they shortened the title tags, they saw a measurable increase in rankings.


This is one of those things where best practices usually is the best way to go because the


optimal length is usually 50 to 60 characters.


And when you're deciding what keywords to put in when you're shorting this, that's where


you want to use your keyword research and find the keywords that your visitors are actually


using.


So if I go into my analytics or Google search console, I can see that people are actually


searching for pantsuit, Macy's, and maybe something like that.


I can come up with a title tag that fits within those parameters, Tahiti ASL red pantsuit.


Pansuit's the category, Macy's, and that's going to be your winning title tag.


And you'll probably see an increase in rankings.


Synonyms and variants.


Now you notice in this last title tag, the category was a plural of pantsuit.


That can actually help in some circumstances.


But it's important to realize that how you think your searchers are searching may not


be how they're actually searching.


Let's say you do your keyword research and your top keywords are cheap taxis, and you


want to optimize for cheap taxis.


Well people may be looking for that in different ways.


They may be looking for affordable cabs, or low cost, or cheap Ubers, things like that.


So you want to use those variants, find out what the synonyms and variants are, and incorporate


those into your title tag.


So my title tag might be fast affordable cabs, quick taxi, your cheap ride.


That's going to contain, that's optimized for like three different things within that


50 to 60 word limit, and it's going to hit all those variants, and you can actually rank


a little higher for using that.


The way you find these synonyms and variants, you can certainly use, look in the SERPs,


type your keyword into the SERPs, into Google, and see what they highlight bold in the search


results.


That will often give you the variants that people are looking for, that people also ask


at the bottom of the page.


Your favorite keyword tool, such as Keyword Explorer, or SEMrush, or whatever you choose,


and also your analytics, Google Search Console is a great source of information for these


synonyms and variants.


One of my favorites in titles is Call to Action.


Now you won't often find the call to action words in your keyword research, but they really


help people click.


These are action verbs.


These are words like buy, find, download, search, listen, watch, learn, and access.


When you use these, they give a little bit more excitement because they indicate that


the user will be able to do something beyond the keyword.


And so they're not necessarily typing in the search box.


When they see it in results, it can create, oh wow, I get to download something.


It provides a little something else there, and you can increase your click-through rates


that way.


Top referring keywords.


This is a little overlooked, and it's sort of an advanced concept.


Oftentimes we optimize our page for one set of keywords, but the traffic that comes to


it is another set of keywords.


But what's very powerful is when people type their words into the search box and they see


those exact same words in the title tags, that's going to increase your click-through


rate.


For an example, I went into the analytics here at mods and I looked at follower wonk,


and I found the top referring keywords in Google Search Console are Twitter search,


search Twitter bios, and Twitter analytics.


Those are what people are looking for right before they click on the follower wonk listing


in Google.


So using that information, I might write a title tag like search Twitter bios with follower


wonk, the Twitter analytics tool.


That's a pretty good title tag.


I'm kind of proud of that.


But you can see it hits all my major keywords that people are using.


And so when I type in Twitter analytics into the search box and I see the Twitter analytics


tool, I'm more likely to click on that.


So I've written about this before, but it's very important to optimize your page, not


only for the traffic you're trying to get, but the traffic you're actually receiving.


And when you can marry those two, you can be stronger in all aspects.


And finally, I want to leave you with a question.


Questions are great tools to use in your title tags.


And these are things like where do butterflies migrate?


Maybe your keyword is just butterflies migrate, but by asking a question, you create a curiosity


gap and you give people an incentive to click.


Or what is page rank?


That's something we do here at Moz.


So you get the curiosity gap, but oftentimes by asking a question, you get the bonus of


winning a featured snippet.


Brittany Mueller wrote an awesome, awesome post about this a while back about questions


people also ask, how to find those in your keyword research and claim those featured


snippets and claim people also ask boxes.


And it's a great, great way to increase your traffic.


So these are seven tips.


Let us know your tips for title tags in the comments below.


And if you liked this video, I'd appreciate a thumbs up.


Share it with your friends on social media.


I'll see you next time.


MozCon 2015 - 13 - Digital Analytics: People, Process, Platform with Adam Singer

Howdy, Moz fans.


I know some of you guys are a little hungover,


but let's just get through this.


You're going to make it to lunch.


You're going to get something greasy,


and I promise you'll feel better.


I'm not hungover at all.


I actually don't drink the night before I speak,


so it gets better.


Don't worry.


So thank you so much for the intro.


In addition to being a Googler, I also sat in your shoes


as an SEO, as an analyst, as an email marketer,


as a paid search consultant, all that jazz,


working with several consultancies.


And so hopefully I can provide some context to you guys,


not just about Google Analytics, but how


to improve your measurement practice overall.


So I know that some of you guys may think


that measurement is boring.


And actually, I think measurement is the most


interesting part of digital marketing, in addition


to being the most fundamental.


So you shouldn't stress about measurement, and here's why.


First of all, measurement is really the key


to improving what we do.


So if you want to do better at your job,


you're going to need to measure it.


And the other part, and this is why you should be excited,


even if you don't think analytics is awesome,


is the fact that you're going to get more money if you're


able to show that your results are awesome.


So hopefully we can get you today


to move from being first-world problems,


or making us measure our results, to a success kid.


And if you are stressed, or if you are hungover,


I know some of you guys are hungover, don't worry.


You're going to make it through it.


So today I'm going to talk about three things


that, if you guys can nail down, measurement


is going to get a whole lot easier for you.


The first one is people.


You need the right analysts.


You need the right digital marketing team.


You need the right data scientists.


Process.


So not just having the right people,


but making sure you're actually using data in the right way,


to make sure you're actually sharing data


throughout the organization, to make sure you're actually


using that data as part of your decision


process for different marketing tactics, for different UX


tactics, for all of the things that you do.


And then platform.


I'm just going to talk a little bit today


about Google Analytics.


I'm actually, all of the other speakers


have done such a great job talking about Google products


that actually I think you guys are kind of tired about hearing


about our products.


So hopefully I can just give you guys some perspective.


And if you do want to dive deeply into our products,


especially analytics, we now have


a MOOC that's a Massive Open Online Course, where we


do deep dive into the product.


I can't make anyone a product expert in 30 minutes.


I really wish that I could.


But our online courses are really a great way


to help accelerate your knowledge and your team's


knowledge.


So that's how we try to scale education.


Great, so people, that's all of us.


There's really a 90-10 rule with your digital marketing


spend on analytic software.


So you should be spending 90% of your budget on your team


members, and about 10% on software.


And the reason that is is that software is not


at the point where it can do your data analysis for you.


Maybe one day we can get there.


I'd argue we're never going to get there fully, just


because what an analyst does is really connects


all of those dots, is thinks about questions to ask,


is does a lot more than just spitting out reports.


They actually help turn that data


into actionable information.


My colleague Avinash likes to talk about this.


Our goal is the highest value from web analytics


implementation.


And so it's about the people.


Our cost for every $10 we spend on tools


and vendor professional services, we should be spending


$90 on analysts.


So that's good news for us, because we all obviously


want to be paid more.


We all obviously want to be highly valued.


But let's talk a little bit more about this.


Fancy software isn't going to solve all of your problems.


If you think that way, still re-evaluate,


because we have such great software.


We have Moz.


We have Google Analytics.


We have all these awesome tools.


But we need people to run them.


So you have to have business acumen.


So your analysts need to understand


how to control for variables in a test.


They need to understand what is statistically significant.


They need to understand what are the objectives, what


are the goals that you're actually


trying to achieve online.


And that's really important.


The other thing to look for in quality analysts


are nerd skills, so not just understanding the business


side, but really understanding the geek side,


understanding what an API is, understanding


how to set up an analytics implementation,


understanding all of this great stuff to be able to use data.


And an analyst doesn't have to be a programmer.


They just have to know enough to be dangerous


and work with developers and work with programmers.


They need to have the vision for this stuff.


They need to be the ones that are telling the programmers


what to do.


I also want to touch on that a PhD is not required.


And actually, some of the best analysts that I've worked with


were not statisticians.


They weren't data scientists.


They were just people who had built a really successful app,


a really successful blog, a really successful product


or e-commerce experience.


And they had just looked at everything that went into that.


They were using data along the way.


They were seeing what sources were sending them


high-quality traffic.


They were understanding what marketing tactics were


converting.


They were understanding what platforms their users were


participating in.


And the other key part about that


is the best analysts are comfortable working


with imperfect data, whereas the best statisticians


and if you're going to be a PhD working at a biotech company


looking at cohort data of people in a clinical trial,


that data has to be perfect.


And so in many ways, having that stats background


actually leaves you at a handicap where


the internet is imperfect data.


So get really used to working with imperfect data


if you have a stats background.


Of course, you want to lean on that.


You want to make sure tests are statistically significant.


But you don't need to be a scientist


to be a really good analyst.


So let's talk about some just three really simple sample


questions.


This is really basic.


But if you've never hired a good analyst before,


three just simple questions to get started.


You obviously want to ask them a lot more than that.


Ask a team member how they would plan


to get data and insights on two different groups,


from PR and marketing to customer service and UX.


How would that be efficient?


Ask some things like, how do you see a breakdown in data capture


reporting and analysis?


Obviously, most of the time should be spent on analysis.


And we want data capture and reporting


to be as simple and automated as possible,


because we can get a robot to do that.


That's not where we should be spending our time.


And then how to do things like use data


to improve your digital marketing, those questions.


And I've written a few blog posts on questions


to ask an analyst when you're hiring them.


I can tweet those out after.


So getting external help while building a team,


I think that this is OK for companies that are just


building out their data-driven marketing practice


or their data science practice or what have you.


I think that this is a good thing.


There's a lot of really qualified agencies.


We have something called a Google Analytics Certified


Partner, where you can find a partner on the site


that we vetted.


We've looked at their case studies.


We've looked at their practices.


But getting help is a good thing.


And I think that analytics savvy is something


we all need to be good at.


But get help until you're really there


and you're really executing.


And I find that once companies do get external help,


over time, they'll bring those skills internal.


And they'll just rely on external partners


for doing bigger, meatier projects


and to do the parts of analysis that your savvy internal team


doesn't want to do.


So that's OK.


Great.


So we've talked about people a little bit.


Let's talk about process, because I


think everyone in this room actually already knows


how to find good analysts.


A winning process versus not.


So actually, in my free time, I keep several websites


and blogs that generate money for fun and profit.


And by the way, as a side note, I


think everyone in this room should have side projects,


sandbox projects, as I call them,


because they're places for you to iterate.


They're places for you to test things with freedom, right?


Where you're in an environment where there's no restriction


and you can just execute.


So one of my sites I don't really care too much for.


It's kind of old.


And I looked at the organic non-paid traffic to it.


And it's like, WTF, this sucks.


But for another site that I really care about,


I've really focused on building awesome content,


on building the social profiles of it, on building great lists


and building engaged visitors.


And it's like, oh my god, we need to duplicate this.


So look at the processes that are working for you


so you can achieve these types of results.


If you're like our friend from Office Space


or you have people like this on your team, that is not good.


You never want to be manually doing things


like bringing data from one spreadsheet


into another spreadsheet.


If I can create a script that makes your job irrelevant,


that's really dangerous.


So hopefully none of you guys are doing that.


You guys are all awesome marketers.


And if you are, I've got some tools in a little bit


that I will try to help out.


But what you want to be doing is not


moving data from spreadsheet to spreadsheet.


You want to collect what matters.


That's the first thing that you need


to think about with your analytics process.


And so these are events, transactions,


and custom dimensions that I might


collect for a mobile app, right?


We just got done hearing a great presentation


on mobile.


So to understand what's working on your mobile app,


you need to actually collect what matters


to be able to analyze that data.


So some things you might collect from mobile


are users logged in to access achievements for a game app,


users moving up from level one to two, transactions, users


buying a new skin or additional lives for their character.


Custom data could be things like achievements.


Mobile games, by the way, a friend of mine


runs a small mobile gaming company.


They only have a few games, and they generate so much revenue.


It's insane the amount of money people pay for things


like in-app purchases and games.


I'm always shocked when I see how


a lot of these mobile app companies do, especially


these small ones.


So it's a great opportunity.


Once you are collecting data, you


need to sketch out a plan of what you're going to measure.


And sorry, 16 by 9 kind of killed the slide.


Understand the buckets that matter for your users


and then measure them.


Things like for an app again would be acquisition metrics.


So app marketplace downloads, new and active users,


engagement, engagement flow, loyalty and retention.


App crashes is an important one, just like website crashes.


You want to make sure you're having a great experience.


And then outcome metrics, obviously, you guys


know what that is, things like sales or monetization.


But if you did nothing else, have macro conversions


and micro conversions.


And hopefully you guys know what this is.


If not, macro conversion is an end result


that we want from our website.


We want people to give us money.


We want people to sign up for an email newsletter


or something of that sort.


So you can think of a macro transaction like marriage.


Hopefully none of you guys would ask someone


to marry you on the first date.


Has anyone actually asked someone


to marry them on the first date?


Good.


No hands.


I actually spoke at an LA Publisher Association meeting


a few weeks ago, and I actually got a couple hands.


LA is really weird.


I guess people ask them to marry them on the first date.


But anyway, a lot of you guys do, unfortunately,


and I see this because I see your ads,


ask customers to buy from you on the first meeting.


And I think it's just as absurd in the world that we live in.


I don't know who you are.


I've never heard of your brand.


Why should I give you money?


But when you think about it, if you can romance your customers,


if you can take them on some dates first,


just like you'd hopefully take them to wine, dinner, a movie,


all that good stuff, then maybe later on that customer


will actually marry you.


And the great part about this is you can actually


measure all of those micro conversions on the way


to a macro conversion.


So if you did nothing else, please


leave the session with having some micro conversions


and macro conversions.


And a micro conversion would be something along the way.


That would be something like maybe viewed


a certain section of your website


or signed up for an email list if later on you were


going to purchase from them.


And yesterday, Kara shared some great examples of this


with her CB2 example.


So the reason they were able to do that, by the way,


and I'll get into this in just a minute a bit more,


is CB2 is not measuring the old session-based world.


They're measuring users.


They're measuring people across devices, across platforms.


Adrian talked about tags a little bit yesterday.


We've gone tag crazy.


63 is the number of average tags on a Fortune 500 company's


website, which is insane.


And so it's scary.


Tags, tags as far as the eye can see.


And it's not good to have all these tags on your site.


It's going to slow down your site.


It's going to provide a worse user experience.


And it's also going to make it really hard for you to change


anything on your website.


And so we launched a product called Google Tag Manager,


which is a free tag management solution to hopefully


make your life easier.


It's super awesome.


It's getting better by the day.


We now even have Tag Manager for mobile.


And that's super cool because you


can push updates to a mobile app without having


to have users download an entire new version of that app.


So it's a very powerful tool.


If you're not using our tag management tool,


just use a tag management tool, please.


It will make your life much easier.


I'm not going to touch on this too much,


and Adrian went about this.


Moving right along, in terms of process,


create a process for data requests.


This is really easy.


Just make a simple email address,


data-request.company.com, and have any requests


from that email address for data of any type,


whether that's website data, CRM data.


Hopefully, as an analyst, you're responsible


and have your hands in all the different data sources.


Have it be known that if you want data, email this address.


Don't email me.


Don't email our coordinator on our team


who you think you can boss around.


Have it as part of an email.


And that way, it can go to everyone.


Everyone can see it, and you can put it as part of a process.


So some essential information that I like to have in this,


I'm not leading marketing teams anymore.


I'm on the engineering side of the company working


on education and product stuff.


But when I was a consultant, some


of the things I would ask for is, what data do you need?


What format do you need it in?


And this is an important one.


Do you just want a pretty, do you


want a slide with just this one data point


or proving this one thing for a presentation?


Do you need a CSV doc?


Do you want it on carrier pigeon?


Let me know how you want it so we can give it


to you in that format.


And I'm not wasting everyone's time with back and forth.


When do you need it?


That's an important one.


Hopefully, you can train your team members


that you can't snap your fingers and have a complex analysis


and some awesome data visualizations just


dump on someone's desk.


That requires work.


Is this a one-time request or a recurring request?


So those are just some things to think about.


And another idea is, if you want to make it even easier,


just use a simple Google Doc and make a form.


And then you can have people fill out the form.


And you can make it so they have to fill out all the fields


or they can't skip something.


And that can make your lives a whole lot easier


with wrangling the data universe at your company


and getting different team members what they need.


So let's also talk about education.


This is my favorite subject from a process standpoint.


Teach everyone how to use data.


I think as you teach people how to be better


analysts in the different part of your marketing team,


it's going to elevate your value as the analytics lead,


whereas the person who's responsible for data.


And so not just your team, the entire organization,


the more you educate them on the value of data,


the more they'll value it.


So executives, educate them on how


your different digital tactics can improve the bottom line.


BI, you can get deeper customer insight


through behavioral trends.


Marketers, we all know.


Webmasters, we all know.


Product designers and devs, testing feature and benefit


messaging to see what customers want.


Customer service, I think, is a great one


that a lot of people here focus on social understand


but probably some SEOs don't think about.


You could reduce call center volume by identifying,


by analyzing CRM data and understanding what people


actually call about and making a static web page that answers


this one annoying question that all these people are calling


you about that they're probably also searching


for on your site.


Another great way to get at that data is site search.


So look at site search and see what people are actually


looking for.


And that's great data to use.


Create some best practices and training theory docs.


I know Moz is the best company at creating best practices


and all this stuff.


I bet they don't care if you copy paste some of that


and put it on an intranet.


They're probably all good with that.


So create all these docs and create all these processes


and organize it.


And that way, when someone has a question,


you can just link them to something and be like, hey,


here's the answer, but you should learn about this.


So I'm a big fan of this.


And maybe create one spreadsheet or one doc


that takes people through a journey of different just tools


and tactics they need to become familiar with


and then resources that tag to those.


So creating processes for your marketing,


for your tag management, for email, and for marketers


is all good.


Ask for input and evangelize the process.


So this is a sample roadmap, if you want to download it.


I know the slides are online so you


can get some links for a testing and optimization process


and all the steps you would want to go through.


Socialize that to your team.


Make it clear what that process is.


And that way, different team members can know the steps.


Culture shift is obviously an ongoing process.


But I think that the media has done a good job of elevating


the value of analytics.


And so I know that a lot of CXOs are hungry for more data-driven


insights.


I think that marketers already know


that CMOs are already on board.


So I think this is getting even easier.


But this still doesn't happen overnight.


You guys are going to have to evangelize.


You're going to have to be your internal avenach for getting


people excited about data and getting people


to value it as they should.


Share your results and teach others to do so.


So whenever you're sharing data, don't


share a spreadsheet with just a whole bunch of numbers


because no one's going to read it.


Turn it into a pretty deck.


Make it into a PDF.


Have an executive summary for the people who


don't want to pop through it.


The other thing is to give data to different groups that will


actually care about that data.


So your VP marketing probably wants


to see different metrics than, say,


someone on your customer success or on your support team.


So make sure that you actually give the right data


to the right group.


Let's talk about platform.


I've got about 10 minutes left.


So I think that's just enough to get through this.


And if I don't answer your questions,


I'm happy to talk to you after.


So collecting data from multiple data sources


is really important.


I know someone asked Kara a question about offline data.


That is absolutely something you need


to collect, whether that's we consider offline data even


something from a call center, something from in-store.


You need to bring all of that data


into whatever analytics platform you're using,


whether that's Google Analytics, whether that's


Omniture or Adobe's new marketing cloud.


Whatever you're using, you need to have your data together


so you have a complete view of your users.


We need to move away from putting things like page views


and pages per session on a pedestal


or bounce rate on a pedestal.


They're so tactical.


They're KPIs.


They're fine indicators of success.


But what we want to be able to do


is ultimately understand and measure our users.


And Kara's example yesterday with CB2 was so powerful.


That's how the best marketers are just crushing it.


They're getting their users to log in.


They're having their users have a logged in experience


on an app on their website.


They have the right carrots and sticks in place


to get people to log in.


By the way, don't ask someone to log in or become


a member on the first visit.


There's an annoying trend with these new fashion e-commerce


startups.


There's all these startups that want


to personalize what you wear.


And so you get to their site and they're like, well,


before you can see anything, log in with Facebook.


And I'm like, fuck you, I'm not going to log in with Facebook.


I don't know who you are.


It's terrible.


Their bounce rate must be crazy.


But do think about that.