here to take away is that it absolutely isn't impossible to be able to do this. We know


Debunking Link Building Myths in 2021 — Whiteboard Friday

the value that building follow links directly into these category and product pages can


have, you just need to be inventive. You need to work with webmasters and writers to be


able to provide them with something that they want to share with their audience and readership.


And in them wanting to do that, it makes it more important for them to give you that link


back and to direct traffic to that page because the offer, the insight, the product could


be there. So number two, then a big myth that we're seeing a lot on Twitter in particular


is that top tier news sites only give you no follow. Now I was on a call just a couple


of weeks ago as part of a pitch and the sales process and was again, literally told this


by the contact that I was speaking to and that they had been historically advised that


if you wanted to get onto a top tier site, such as tech radar, USA today, or in the UK,


the likes of the sun and the Telegraph and stuff like that, you should expect a no follow


as a link as a blanket rule. Well, let me tell you, this is completely false. We have


had numerous links from top tier sites, from a variety of different writers, different


journalists for a number of different reasons for a number of different campaigns. The way


that you need to be switched onto this and the way that you can kind of overcome this


hurdle is by being prepared before you pitch your campaign in. So yes, there are desks


within tip top tier sites that have editorial policies. It may be that you work with key


contacts, webmasters and writers to try and uncover what those editorial policies are


so that you can manage your internal stakeholders expectations and clients alike. A big, big


publication in the UK, for example, that we know don't give any links at all. And if they


do, they are no follow is the daily express. So that's the kind of thing and the insights


that you should be kind of working towards a kind of knowing and understanding. But that


is just one publication out of thousands. So start to get your head around editorial


policies and how they change. They adapt, you know, the travel desk at one publication


will be completely different to the motoring cars or business desk at another or even within


their own publishing house. You need to do your research. And when you start to go after,


you know, specific journalists and writers, see if they do link nine times out of 10,


just by reading three or four articles that they've historically written, you'll be able


to understand if there is a chance of getting a link that starts to give you that insight


on what their editorial policies could look and feel like. And then of course, you need


to be prepared to give them a reason to link. And this is the most important point with


this second one here, you have to give them a reason through a really strong data, this


campaign through an offer through some insights that may be on your clients or your own branded


website, you must, must, must give them something that entices them to add that link into their


article. And of course, if you believe that you've done that, it's completely okay to


ask a lot of what we do at the moment as well could be that, you know, top tier sites, it's


not in their nature, it's not a journalist nature to think or look at things from an


perspective. So they may not put that follow link in straight away. So asking is completely


fair and dropping them a really nice kind polite note and then asking if they could


insert the link is okay. You may get a no, you may get an insight into the editorial


policies and the why that that link can't be added. But you know, for every one of three,


you might just get that cut through that you're you're looking for and you're after. So myth


number three, then is that you should only pitch your campaigns or your link building


content into journalists and writers in the morning. And this again is something that


is completely false. Some of our most successful campaigns, to name a couple have been pitched


in the afternoon after the editorial after lunchtime, sorry, and before the editorial


afternoon meeting. And we've had some huge, huge successes pitching in our campaigns on


a Friday afternoon if they're a little bit fun and light hearted. So I want you to throw


that alarm clock out the window. There is no pressure from you know, journalists themselves


to make sure that you get that email into their inbox before 9am. Actually, what I would


do at that point is take a step back, do some research and experiment, do some a B test,


you know, build a contact list of 10 to 15 people that you want to be building those


relationships with, see when they publish their articles, see when they're most active


on Twitter and stuff like that, and start to work out when actually might be a good


be might be a good time to pitch for them. The key thing if you're pitching in the afternoon,


for example, one thing to know is that you're going to be up against less competition, not


as many people because they believe this myth are going to be pitching in at the same time.


piece of advice here as well is that I wouldn't be pitching in your link building or digital


PR campaign completely culled from the get go. So if I was a writer, and that you know,


potentially you wanted to be building a relationship with I would give them the heads up two to


three weeks in advance, drop them an email, drop them a Twitter DM, say, Hey, I'm working


on this campaign. It's got data on x, y, z, looking to launch by the end of the month.


What is this something you're interested in? Would it be something that you would like


to cover? Let me know and I'll work alongside you to be able to get you everything that


you need for a potential article to go live. Again, that kind of stuff doesn't need to


be done at 9am in the morning, you can do that throughout the day, it can be done at


any time. We're currently in a completely different environment to what we were this


time last year, you know, COVID has definitely changed, working from home and stuff like


that people are far more flexible, people are trying to achieve a work life balance.


And again, that ties into the fact that not everybody is online at nine or 10 o'clock


in the morning, they may start later. So really, really do that research, start to understand


when your key contacts are publishing their articles, work with them well in advance so


that they know your campaign is coming up and you do not have to pitch at breakfast


time in the morning to get those links. Number four, then, is the relevancy isn't king. So


there is a huge debate at the moment. And again, you see a lot of it on Twitter and


social media, but for traditional SEO and link building tactics, that, you know, the


links that you build have to be really, really, really relevant and that they have to be completely


on brand from target sites and publications that you would expect that brand to be covered


in. Now, in the digital PR world, we have a slightly contrasting view to that in that


actually a link is a good link and relevancy isn't quite as important. But I want to debunk


the myth today that actually relevancy isn't king. John Mueller just last month back in


February released a short snippet that stressed the importance of having one highly quality


relevant link is the equivalent of having hundreds at a lower DA and of less relevancy.


This gives you a bit more insight into the way that Google is heading. And whilst historically


over the last 12 to 18 months, relevancy might not have been such a key thing for us digital


PRs and would have been more important to the more traditional SEO link builders, times


are definitely changing. That is a very, very surefire signal from John himself and from


Google that we should be considering relevancy. And the phrase content is king now needs to


transform into relevancy is king because, you know, brands will be rewarded and as such


visibility is likely to increase as a positive result of having highly relevant and highly


quality follow links pointing back to the domain. So final one, then number five is


that actually the one that probably stands the test of time, it's the one that's been


around the longest and the understanding that actually you can't ask for a link. It's a


huge, huge prominent myth within our industry and what we do. And actually you can, you


can 100% ask a webmaster, a writer, a journalist, a top tier publication, whoever they are,


you can definitely ask them for a link if they have covered your content, your campaign,


your insights, whatever it has been. Now, as I touched on earlier, not every desk, every


writer, every journalist is going to give you that link once you ask for it. But if


you don't ask, you don't get. So it may be that you get a no follow link. It may be that,


um, you know, in a couple of weeks time, I think it could be added. For example, it's


really, really important to do this in a polite and friendly way. Do not be demanding, but


I should, a simple, a short note. If a piece of coverage goes live or an article goes live,


going back to that writer, thanking them for their time and saying it's been great to work


alongside them. If you then at that point say it will be great if you could credit the


brand fully by adding in a link to XYZ or whatever your campaign or homepage may be,


the chances are they're going to do one of two things. Tell you no, it's not what they


do or add it in. There is a 50 50 chance of success here. So it's worth the risk and it's


worth you giving it a go. Now these are the top five myths that of course are highly relevant


today than the ones that gets spoken about on social media quite a lot. And it's as the


debate and the, I guess the synergy between digital PR and SEO is fusing together a little


bit more. Um, we've kind of gone through everything today in terms of, um, the myths themselves.


If you have any questions for me, you want me to help you debunk myths or anything like


that, please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. Um, my handle is Shanna McGack


underscore. My DMs are open, more than happy to help. Really, really hope you guys enjoy


the newly reformed and refined link building guide on behalf of Moz. It's been great to


Optimizing the Journey to Deliver Radically Relevant Experiences Presented by Rebekah Cancino

Yeah, but having fun?


This is one of the coolest conferences I've ever been to.


Yeah.


Well, you know, like any good journey, right, good experiences tend to be a series of engaging


events that are strung together in a meaningful way.


Right?


And a lot of times it's less about the destination than it is about the experience getting there.


And so in light of that, I'm super excited to be here today to talk to you about how


we can understand our customers' journey and use that insight, right, and knowledge around


their defining moments to create and deliver experiences that give them what they want


and need when and where it matters most.


But before I go into that, I want to tell you a little story about a couple years ago


when I was working for a full-service agency.


We had just won a huge new client.


Really excited.


This client, they were an adhesive company, and they had a B2B plus B2C side of their


brand.


And you know, needless to say, we were a little jazzed because it wasn't that often that we


were working with a client who had the budget to do some of the really cool things that


we had been wanting to do for a long time and some of the things we wanted to try out.


And so as we dove into this project and found out the challenge at hand, it was more on


the B2B side of their brand.


And what we had to do was we had to convince design engineers to make the switch from using


traditional fasteners like nuts and bolts to using these high-tech, really rad adhesives


that they had.


They were lighter.


They were cooler.


They gave the design engineers more creative freedom.


It was one of those really great positions to be in as a marketer when what you're marketing


is actually way cooler than what everyone else has to offer.


And so we thought, man, we're set.


We got this on lock.


And so as we started to get to know our audience, remember I said the primary audience were


those design engineers, maybe some plant managers were involved in that as well, we realized


we're really short on time.


And so we don't have a ton of time to figure out exactly, you know, one-on-one interviews


or any sort of field observation.


So we had to rely on some of the marketing intelligence, maybe from like Mentel that


we had on hand and do a survey.


And then we used that information to put together some lightweight personas that had some psychographic


and demographic information as well as some information around, you know, just their challenges


and goals in their day-to-day job.


And from there, we went ahead and started building out key messages to relate back to


those target audiences and use those key messages to build out a really cool microsite, some


rad infographics and interactive content experiences.


We even went so far as to go out to some manufacturers who are doing some really cool stuff with


these adhesives like this company who makes 3D printed cars.


And we went and talked to them and interviewed their design engineers to kind of put together


case studies around what was possible with these adhesives.


Seemed like we had everything all buttoned up, but we missed a really important step


in this whole process.


So later, right, after we had already spent all of our content and digital budget, we


were doing some customer journey mapping.


Now you think, Becca, why weren't you doing the customer journey mapping before the launch?


Well, you know how things go, all right, timelines.


So we're doing this at this time, no more budget, and we actually have real design engineers


in this workshop helping us to understand their journey.


And we find out that way in the beginning, much, much before they would even be willing


to look at a microsite or watch a case study or even be looking for that, they needed access


to these really boring, dry technical data sheets.


Very important very early on in the journey.


Guess what?


These technical data sheets buried away in hard to use PDFs, no way to search through


the information, in a dusty corner of the website, not very accessible through mobile


phones, which, oh, turns out during this journey mapping workshop, it was much more of a use


case than we had anticipated, and that just kind of sucked.


And we were left thinking, man, I guess we'll have to wait until the next iteration, until


we get more budget to make those changes.


And I think this happens to us a lot sometimes as marketers.


I don't know, show of hands, how many of you have ever been in a similar situation?


Two of you, all right, fine.


Well, we find ourselves in these situations where we're faced with data that's so great,


but data doesn't tell us the whole story.


It doesn't tell us the nuance of the customer experience or the why behind the what.


And we end up with really helpful survey information, but survey information can also be this binary


one-way conversation.


And so what we end up doing is instead of understanding the customer journey, we put


together our marketing funnel from our point of view, and then we start to attach different


media and content, right, along each point in that funnel at each of those touch points.


But the thing about your marketing funnel is it's not your customer journey.


They're not the same at all.


Your customer journey has really nothing to do with us.


It's just their experience, and we have to find where it's most relevant and helpful


for us to fit in that experience.


This makes me think of an example that I saw of a landing page for ladies' swimsuits between


Target and Macy's, all right?


So Target, if you were looking at what normally makes a site pool rank and have really high


visibility, should be crushing it when it comes to Macy's ladies' swimwear kind of hub


page.


They have way more backlinks.


They have a much higher domain authority and page level authority.


But when you go to search ladies' swimwear, Macy's gets the top spot, and Target is like,


nah, nah, get going, all the way down there.


That blows.


And you're like, what's happening?


How is this working?


And when you start to look at the different landing pages, it begins to make a little


more sense.


So here are some screenshots of these landing pages taken just before Labor Day.


So, you know, big sale, last hurrah, get your swimsuit.


And Target has this huge ad.


I actually had to zoom out to even see the first product offerings.


It was taking up the entire portion of my screen, and there wasn't really any way to


dive in and look through those products in a way that was meaningful to me until much


further down the page.


When you look at Macy's, really big difference.


Macy's, right, they still have an ad.


I get it.


It's Labor Day.


They want to tell you what's on sale, but they immediately make it easy for you to see


what products are available.


And then there's lots of different ways that you can search through those products, whether


that's by size or maybe I need a swimsuit this weekend, so I need to see what's at a


Macy's near me.


And it's much more conducive to allowing the customer to follow their journey.


And it's interesting to me that this has actually impacted their search rankings because that


must mean that the behavior metrics around this page are somehow having even more effects


than things like backlinks and domains, which you normally wouldn't think is the case.


And so things have really changed.


And it's not just about optimizing and thinking about how can we get someone to this one point,


but we have to think about the long-term journey and what do they need after we get them to


come to us and how can we meet those needs.


And understanding their journey is what helps us deliver the content, features, functionality


that they need at the right time in that journey.


In fact, 53% of people, and I've heard from a few talks earlier today, someone throwing


around I think it was like 86% of customers say that they would literally give us more


money if we give them the experience aspects that they're looking for.


But the thing about that is you don't get that from looking at best practices.


That's only part of the picture.


You get that by studying someone's user experience and studying their journey.


And so what I would like to talk about today, and oh, by the way, when I say user experience,


I'm not just talking about interface design.


I'm talking about the entire interconnected experience.


So content, design, SEO that helps them find this in the first place.


And so what I would like to go through is some simple techniques, practical techniques


that you can use to get three kinds of insight around customer journeys.


One is strategic direction.


This is when we're getting that kind of bird's eye view of the whole story and saying, all


right, what problem are we even solving for them?


The second kind is around user experience.


And remember, it's everything.


What content, features, and functionality do users need at which critical moments in


the journey?


And the third kind is design decisions.


So as you've heard, designing for emotion and being able to invoke the right emotion


really pays off.


So what sort of emotion should we be designing for at critical points within that journey?


So let's get started.


We'll start with strategic direction.


This is getting that whole bird's eye view and understanding what problem are we solving.


Well, love them or hate them.


Google says focus on the user and everything else will follow.


And I love this, but focusing on the user, really what that means is understanding someone's


context.


And so take a look at these two guys, right?


The guy on the left, if you were standing next to him, you probably wish that he had


a little more clothes on.


And you might wonder, what in the hell he did to that poor animal.


Guy on the other side looks like a pretty cool dude.


I would have beers with him and maybe compliment him on his nice Ikea rug.


And the difference between those two pictures is that one fits my context.


Everything feels right.


That's what context does when things are contextually appropriate.


Everything just works, just fits.


And as marketers, we often think that context is tied to devices, channels, touch points.


Those can give us clues, but that's not what context is tied to.


Context is tied to people.


So when we're wondering where to start when it comes to the ingredients that make up a


great experience, we have to start by unpacking context.


One of my favorite tools to do this is called an empathy map.


It's where we look at what is someone thinking, feeling, and doing at this moment in the user


experience.


Now, clearly, you want this to be informed by real user research or maybe even talking


to users and having them unpack this picture for you.


When I talk about thinking, I'm saying, what do they want?


What are their expectations?


What are their active needs?


Active needs means it's explicit, it's obvious.


Feeling – what is their emotional context?


What are their stress levels?


What are their passive needs?


Passive needs are I won't exactly tell you that I need it, but because of my emotional


or stress state, these are things that would be really helpful.


And then finally, the last part of that is doing.


What is their physical environment like?


What devices are they using?


For what?


When?


What are their behaviors and actions?


And from that map, we can start to unpack and keep going.


We can say, well, who else might be involved in those key decision moments and start to


visualize every single step in that journey.


So, one way to do this, and it's totally scalable, is an old-fashioned journey mapping


working session.


So, this is where you get post-its, markers, and different color stickies.


I'll tell you how that works in a little bit.


And like all good things, these are scalable.


So, remember when I was talking about the journey mapping session for the large adhesive


company?


That was a really cool opportunity where we got to have real customers involved in that


workshop, but that's a luxury, and that's not always something that's possible, right?


A step down from that would be maybe we do it just with our internal team, but we make


sure that we have people from different disciplines and different departments, so we're building


empathy and buy-in across all of those departments.


That's also a luxury.


Something that is worthy of our time and something we should strive for, but maybe sometimes


it's just us, or maybe us and a colleague, and some data that we have, or maybe we've


talked to some customer service representatives or talked to some customers on the fly, and


we're building the journey based on that knowledge.


That's okay.


All good things are scalable.


But however you're approaching it, we want to make sure that the customer journey is


considering the broader context beyond just our marketing funnel, right?


And that it's something we're looking at from the user's point of view, because really,


a customer journey map, it's not about having this beautiful, highly designed map that just


kind of hangs up on the hallway next to the bathroom that people kind of glance at.


It's much more an exercise in empathy.


It's what we learn in that process.


So we can start out by just thinking through what are the high levels of a journey?


Normally, it starts with some sort of trigger moment, which is I have a problem, I have


a question, I have a need, and then it begins with research.


How am I going to go about solving that problem?


And then I come up with some options, right?


I start considering them all the way through purchase, and even the post-purchase is really


important.


And then once we're able to capture all the steps within those phases, we can move on


to having really smart discussions at each one of those steps in the journey.


What is someone thinking, feeling, and doing at that point in time?


Who else might be involved in that decision-making process?


Back to the design engineers, we found out they weren't the only ones making decisions.


Turns out that the technicians who actually assembled products, they have a really big


say because if they don't like the way something smells or if it's too hard to use, they complain


and then design engineers have to go back and do everything all over again.


So they really want to consider them.


We miss that.


This is where we can consider that in our customer journey.


And then finally, once we have an understanding of what steps they're taking across that journey,


what their emotional context is, who else is involved, we can start to make really smart


decisions around, all right, well, what features, content, and functionality make the most sense


at this point in the journey?


What do they need to make it to the next spot?


My favorite part is now we get to start voting on what's working, what's not, right, and


what's really, really terrible.


So remember those color sticky dots I mentioned?


It's really easy.


We just either ask the customers if they're participating with us or again, we make decisions


based on research, real research we have, and we start to know, well, what are some


areas that are going wrong?


What's going right?


Where are maybe some points of friction?


Key point here is that it's not just to do with our brand.


These are just things that are inherent in the journey.


And the journey starts to take shape of highs and low points, and we can start to see opportunities


of where we can come in maybe and mitigate some of that friction, make something that


sucks a little bit better.


And we can start to see gaps within our backstage, like what's happening in our business and


what's happening in the user journey.


Maybe there's a whole section of the journey that we've defined as a defining moment, meaning


this is a really important step in this journey.


If they can't get this right, if we don't get this right, they're going to abandon the


process altogether.


We can take a look at our process and say, are we even involved in this, or is this something


that we need to reprioritize what we're focused on creating and shipping?


So once you have that high-level picture of the journey, you can then start to dive deep


and get really clear around if we're solving the right problem or not.


I call this mapping the moment.


So an example of this is I was working for a company called Sherry's Berries.


They make chocolate-dipped berry gifts.


You can order them online.


They had already done the work to understand their customer journey, and they had gotten


to one point that they knew was a defining moment.


And it wasn't going very well, and it was directly impacting customer loyalty.


And that was the moment right when someone clicks send on a gift.


And they realized, based on some survey data, people at that point really need to feel good


about their purchase if they're going to come back and be a repeat customer.


And so they thought, if we could solicit an over-the-top thank you from the gift recipient,


maybe by creating a customized greeting card kind of app and directing them to it, I bet


that would make the gift giver feel really good, come back, buy more berries.


Well, they'd already acquired the technology to do it and started developing it out, so


they'd already invested some money in that.


But they decided to take a step back, make sure they were solving the right problem.


So we had a small working session.


This wasn't a big, huge enterprise thing, but we did have some real customers involved


in this working session.


And we started to map out their emotional context within this moment after someone clicks


send.


And we started to realize that they were feeling pretty anxious, pretty nervous, impatient.


And it's because they were thinking, oh, I just bought these berries.


Is so-and-so actually going to be home when they arrive?


Are they going to melt on the doorstep?


How are they being kept fresh in the first place?


These are all the things they were thinking of after they had purchased.


And because of that, what they were doing is they were obsessively checking their emails,


clicking tracking links, stalking Facebook, trying to see where people were.


And we were like, oh, OK, this is now getting a lot clearer, right?


The situation isn't just when they're sending a gift.


It's tied to this being a perishable food item.


And yes, they do need to feel good about their food choice, but it has nothing to do with


getting an over-the-top thing, because it has everything to do with being certain that


that gift is going to arrive intact.


And once we clarified what that problem was and got that insight, we were able to work


with them to formulate a problem statement in real time together.


How many of you used to read highlights as a kid?


Yeah.


My fav.


Well, Mad Libs, right?


We're familiar.


Mad Libs are a really great way to take some of that complex information about what we've


learned from talking to customers and what the real problem is and boil it down into


something actionable that we can give our whole team to make sure we're all working


in the same direction.


So for Sherry's berries, it might look something like the user has a problem.


The problem is that they don't have enough insight into how berries are being kept fresh.


They're worried about if it's going to arrive intact.


And maybe we can solve that by giving them a little more insight into how the berries


are being protected and then maybe giving the gift recipient a little more control about


rescheduling a gift if the time isn't going to work for them.


That allowed them to pursue solutions like for the future, working with their supplier


to see if that technology would be available.


Like, hey, a sweet surprise is on your way.


It's going to be delivered at this time.


Do you need to reschedule?


And then we found out that they already had really great content around how they were


keeping these berries fresh in these big cooler boxes.


It was just buried in the FAQ so we could elevate that content when and where it mattered


most in the user journey.


So a confirmation email on the checkout page.


And this did a lot to help that moment feel a lot better.


So beyond getting that strategic insight and knowing that we're solving the right problem,


we can use analyzing customer journeys to make sure that we're making the right decisions


around what content features and functionality we're delivering at different points in the


journey.


So one way to understand someone's journey is to analyze the way they search.


And when we're looking at the way people search, we're really looking at, well, what is their


intent?


And I'm sure you guys know, in order to understand intent, that takes looking at a lot of long-tail


searches to see what kind of words are they using to modify things, what questions do


they have, and how can we address those needs in our digital experiences.


Two kinds of intent to think about.


One is active intent.


This is the part that it's not explicit, I'm sorry, it is explicitly said.


So like with the chocolate dipped berries, active intent would be something like chocolate


dipped berries delivered or chocolate dipped berries gift, right?


They're these root keywords that are really obvious.


But a passive intent is something that isn't explicitly said.


It's just kind of implied.


So with the chocolate dipped berries, it's like, well, it might not be exactly what I'm


saying I need, but I want to know how are they being kept fresh?


Are there reviews on other people's experience?


Are there any food allergies that I should be aware of when I'm ordering these?


So in order to really meet our users and make sure that we have the right experience at


that point in the journey, we have to address both.


And how we uncover intent is probably really closely tied to a process a lot of you are


using already.


We look at what is.


What is is what can we find about how people are searching for things in our website with


our brand?


So insight search logs, we can see are people, what kind of words are they using?


What kind of things are they looking for?


Are they represented in our navigation or not?


We can talk to customer service representatives, see what kind of questions they get over and


over again.


And then we look at what's possible.


This is where we're looking at the entire industry, right, and we're trying to see,


okay, what are the trends in terms of how people are searching and what categories and


topics can I see that relate to us?


So again, once you have that information, you can start to categorize it and see where


there's an opportunity to meet those needs.


So let's say that you're looking into some long tail keyword research.


You know the long tail data that you get is only going to be as good as the root keywords


that you start with.


So it helps to kind of take a broad perspective and make sure you're considering every angle


of how people might be searching.


And then you can use a tool like Ubersuggest or Moz's Keyword Explorer or keyword.io and


use that to get lots of rich, really useful long tail keyword data around those root keywords.


And then if you're using Keyword Explorer, you can use something like a grouping tool


or maybe you can use a natural processing tool to start to see what categories are emerging


at a high level, but there's really no substitute, right, for doing this like down and dirty


work in Excel of actually looking at this data until your eyes want to fall out of your


head to see what categories and what themes are emerging.


And this is how we can begin to solve and satisfy passive intent.


So an example is a project we were working on for Sharp Healthcare System.


They're one of the largest healthcare systems in Southern California.


They also happen to sell health insurance.


And like someone said yesterday, health insurance isn't really about insurance.


It's about peace of mind.


Turns out peace of mind is very personal.


Peace of mind is tied to is this the right coverage for my unique situation?


And as we started to look through the long tail keyword data, we started to see some


categories appear.


categories like, okay, people are looking to see what's covered under their plan, no


brainer.


But then we started to see, no, there's actually some definite trends around people looking


for what's covered in relation to their special circumstance.


And then we started to see distinct topics.


So my special circumstance could be something like I'm a teacher, I'm a veteran, or I'm


an expecting mother.


We were able to then start looking in those, grouping them, and starting to see what types


of questions they were asking, what types of questions we could answer in these long


tail searches.


And we started to see things like, okay, sometimes these searches are related to newborns, or


they're related to things that are seemingly much earlier or unrelated to actual health


insurance, but broader and beginning in the beginning phase of the journey when I'm considering,


well, what do I need to do in order to make sure I have appropriate health coverage, not


even tied directly to health insurance.


And the real magic comes when we can analyze that search intent in those categories, not


just on their own, not just against our marketing funnel, but against the natural phases in


a user's journey.


And so we actually had to work really hard to get buy-in for this.


This wasn't something that people thought we should do.


We wanted to create content that answered those questions, and we had to get budget


to do that.


And we did that by showing, all right, there's actually quite a bit of people who are searching


and they need questions answered much earlier in the journey, in the research phase.


We have no content to address those needs.


Plus why duke it out with everyone else at the I need an insurance quote level when you


can insert yourself and be helpful much earlier in the journey, right?


It's a lot more strategic.


And so from doing that and analyzing and understanding those different topics, we were able to make


some really important design decisions like we changed the navigation to make sure that


the coverage by type or by special circumstance was much higher in the navigation and more


prominent way to browse through the website.


Then we went ahead and built specific pages, right?


So remember the maternity coverage?


We wanted to make sure that we were addressing things like is prenatal yoga covered?


What about alternative birthing methods?


Maybe even including videos of a woman's birthing story and just general helpful content to


help people prepare for that experience.


And the results were pretty sweet, right?


We decreased bounce rates by 28% and increased in people asking for a quote by 156%, which


was really rad.


So pays to do this kind of work.


Last kind of insight, design decisions.


This is one we're getting to.


How can we design for our emotion and how does something look, sound and feel at different


points within the journey?


One of my favorite examples of this is Headspace meditation app.


Now if you think about someone who might be considering a meditation app, they're probably


what feeling, stressed, scattered, needing a way to focus, maybe even overwhelmed.


Perhaps they're skeptical.


They might be thinking is meditation right for me?


Does this really work?


Right?


And what might they be doing?


Maybe a friend is telling them about this app.


Maybe they're searching it because someone told them about it and they're trying to see


what's it all about.


And they're definitely on their phone, which we know is like definitely a hard place to


focus.


It's a world of distractions.


And so we can start to say all right, well, what's the current state of emotion?


Stressed, overwhelmed, scattered, intimidated, and by intimidated I really mean skeptical.


And then we can see, well, what's the desired state?


What is our goal?


We want them to feel calm and confident, open to meditation being an actual solution for


them.


And we can use this exercise with our copywriters, designers, our marketing team, even sometimes


our developers when it comes to how interactions feel and get everyone on the same page and


working towards the same design goals.


And it's really cool when you start to overlay this on the user journey.


I love this example by Effective UI where they take those different emotional contexts


and they tie them to all of the defining moments within the journey and they start to measure,


well, what is the emotional experience both that's just the user, so unrelated to our


product or service, and then what is the emotional experience in relation to our product and


service and analyze those gaps.


And you can start to apply decisions that come from those kind of goals to all sorts


of things.


Like just take a look at this meta description.


It says Headspace is a gym membership for the mind, a course in guided meditation, delivered


via app or online, try a starter course, take 10 for free.


Now this might seem really simple, but notice there's no truncation.


Notice that they're using something really accessible that we can all relate to, a common


frame of reference.


It's like a gym for your mind.


So that sets a lot of expectations and says a lot in a small amount of words.


And then if you're worried about trying it, hey, no sweat, it's free.


And that friendly relatable approach is carried in through every aspect, right?


The characters that they use and their branding feel relatable and fun.


They're these cartoons that make things not so intimidating.


And you'll start to see those designs, I'm sorry, the design goals play out not just


in the branding and in how their search results are written, but actually in the app itself.


So there's a really great friendly video that tells the story of what a gym for the mind


is like.


It makes it social so you can play along with your friends and see how they're doing if


you'd like to.


And then notice the last screen, the one that's yellow, it has the pause button in the middle.


That's an active meditation mode.


And what's happening there, do you see the bars, the notification bars at the top and


bottom, how they've shifted to become yellow as well?


This is because they're trying to take the focus off of what's happening on your phone


and get you centered on the activity at hand, which is meditation.


There's even an option to turn off notifications during that meditation session.


And because all these things are interrelated across search and content and design, right,


everything feels really authentic and helpful and human.


One thing to keep in mind, though, and I'll use Facebook as an example for this, is I'm


sure you guys have seen the nostalgic moments, right, where there's like, there's a picture


from last year, and it seems like such a great idea, and they're trying to give you this


emotional delightful moment of giving you some good happy memories.


But what if you got divorced last year?


What if you broke up with your partner?


Or worse, what if someone that you really love passed away?


And do you remember the feature on Facebook where they had, hey, here's your year in review,


and there was like festoons and confetti and like picture, picture, picture, picture.


Well, that happened to Eric Meyer, and it happened to be a picture of his daughter who


had just died from cancer.


He called this an inadvertent algorithmic cruelty, and he said, I didn't go looking


for grief this afternoon, but it found me anyway, and I have the programmers and designers


at Facebook to thank for it.


And so Facebook tried to fix this by giving us some features to kind of filter that out,


but I would suggest that if you've lost someone you love or you're having just a general bad


time in life, adjusting your Facebook settings is probably the last thing on your mind.


So my main takeaway here is that, yes, we can design for emotion, and we should consider


someone's emotional context, but we have to be careful when it comes to trying to evoke


certain emotions.


We have to regularly test our assumptions, ask for user feedback, right, and stress test


those design decisions to see where an experience might break down, because while we want something


to feel emotionally appropriate, we also don't want it to be harmful or hurtful.


So I hope that these examples have convinced you to start mapping out your customer's journey


and using different techniques to understand how you can give them the experiences they


want and need.


There's three different kinds of tools, if you remember.


There's the journey mapping, where you're getting a view of the whole picture, right?


There's moment mapping, where you're diving into a single defining moment and answering


the questions of what problem are we solving, what's the emotional context here?


Then there's meta mapping, which is where we're looking at that keyword data, analyzing


the long tail, coming up with categories, but not stopping there, overlaying that information


across the customer journey to see where gaps might lie.


It gives us three kinds of insight, strategic direction, what content features and functionality


do we need, and how should things look, sound, and feel at the right moment at the right


time within that user journey.


This is going to help us save time and money by getting to better solutions faster with


less rework, and it's going to help us gain and retain customers by giving them things


they want and need.


This is going to be hard work.


It's not easy to collaborate across disciplines.


I've suggested things like working with your actual customers or involving people from


different departments.


Do that when you can.


It's really hard work.


I swear it's going to be worth it.


Get out there and make stuff that matters.


Thank you.


Link Strategies that Stand the Test of Time: A Tribute to Eric Ward (Link Moses) - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we are paying an honorary tribute to our friend, lost but not forgotten, Eric


Ward.


Eric was one of the pioneers of the SEO industry.


In fact, he was a link strategist and a creator of links for websites before search engines


even valued links on the Internet.


He was the very first link marketer that Amazon.com hired.


He had a testimonial from Jeff Bezos on his website, from Google's Matt Cutts from many


years ago, and worked with hundreds if not thousands of organizations to improve their


link strategies.


Beyond that, Eric was a remarkable contributor to the field of SEO through conferences and


events, through webinars, through his blog and his Twitter account, and through countless


conversations with SEOs like me.


In fact, Eric was one of the first people who helped me to understand how link strategy


worked.


I have many, many fond memories of him.


I'd also like to say that Eric and I had a number of phone calls and emails over the


years about mental and emotional health.


I know that's something that both of us have struggled with.


I know that it's something that many of us in the entrepreneurial and technology worlds


struggle with.


It's an issue that deserves more openness and more attention.


I hope that we can do that, that I can do that here at Moz.


But of course, this is Whiteboard Friday.


Since we're honoring Eric, what I want to help today with is talking about some of his


link strategies that stand the test of time.


These are high-level concepts, which we often dig into the weeds and the details here on


Whiteboard Friday, but I think it pays to pull back a little and think about links from


a big-picture perspective.


For those of you who are active link builders and link strategists, much of this might be


familiar, but I bet for your clients, for your teams, for your bosses, for the people


that you work with, this sort of strategic-level thinking sometimes goes ignored, and it means


that you don't always get the credit that you should.


Let's take some of the lessons.


These are just a tiny handful of the plethora of value that Eric has provided over the decades


that he'd been in our field.


First off, Eric liked to talk about why people and organizations link.


I think there's actually some excellent tactical and strategic thinking in here.


First off, he talked about how the content that they would link to is actually deserving


of their recognition, which I think makes intuitive sense, but is something that is


often not considered in a link-building list.


When we create our list, we sometimes ignore that.


That they have a non-financial incentive to link, which makes sense.


If you're trying to get someone to link, they need to have a reason, an emotional reason,


a business-driven reason, a partnership-driven reason.


If it's financial, of course the search engines will penalize it or eventually penalize it.


The right person made them aware that the citation should exist.


This was the form of work that Eric concentrated on, particularly early in his career when


he was a very tactical link strategist.


I think it makes great sense, but is so often ignored, that we don't find the right people


in our organizations to make that connection, that we don't actually make the organizations


that should link to us aware of why a link should happen and where it should exist, and


that this work, while very manual, is also very powerful.


It can drive direct traffic, and of course, it drives rankings and search engines.


D, that the content actually matters to their audience.


Whoever you're reaching out to, this reason, this incentive, needs to connect with their


audience.


Otherwise, Google is unlikely to count that link, and visitors are unlikely to click on


that link.


I actually think personally that the two might be related, that there's some form of browser-level


data, user- and usage-level data that Google's using here.


I found this fascinating.


Eric pointed out that it is vastly easier, vastly easier to get content to earn links


from its audience, from a target, if it is new or recently updated.


It's much more challenging to do that with older content, which is one of the reasons


why a lot of the strategies, or a lot of the tactical elements that he proposed when working


with his clients centered around, how are we going to update, redo, or make something


new that is going to cause all of these things to be true?


I think if you can check off these five, you have got a great set to be able to go out


and pitch people on why those links should exist.


A quote from Eric, identifying contact venues that would be inclined to care about the new


content enough to write about it and or to link to it.


I think that really is PR, right?


That's public relations just in a digital marketing capacity, and really a huge part


of what successful outreach looks like.


Next up, great execution is a result of strategy and planning.


I know, who knew what's true in every other part of the business world and every other


part of the world of things that get accomplished is also true in link building?


Yes, it is.


Eric liked to say that strategy flows from a deep understanding of the topic and the


space, which is why a lot of these services that you might find online that are very inexpensive


or very scalable don't work very well in links, because they don't have that deep topic and


deep space understanding.


When you have a deep understanding of the topic and the space, you can better target


your link earning abilities.


Next, a blueprint of how to earn links from various types of targets dramatically increases


the odds of success.


Two interesting things in here.


If you have a blueprint, that means you have a structure for how you're going to target


and how you're going to outreach.


If you consider various types of targets, and Eric mentions a number of these on his


website.


Eric is planning to link to a bunch of resources in this Whiteboard Friday from Eric around


this.


If you choose those various types of targets, you will over time discover which ones are


consistently high performing for you and have the best opportunity to earn you the links


that will make a difference in your campaigns.


Eric would say, what we do, and he's using we here to refer to link strategists rather


than just link builders.


What we do is to help content find the audience it was intended for and the audience find


the content.


I love that.


It has a beautiful simplicity to it, but also a deep strategy that unfortunately a lot of


link building campaigns don't pay attention to.


Third, short term thinking leads to devaluation penalties and poor results.


Eric was extremely passionate.


If you ever spent time with him or listened to one of his webinars or interviews, he was


very passionate about this idea that links that would exist, even if Google and Bing


did not, are almost always the ones that provide the most value.


But that's both in traffic and in rankings.


He would say, so Eric had this wonderful nomenclature.


He was known as Link Moses, and Link Moses had these commandments about link building.


He said, the link schemer may eat today, but the link earner eateth from a bountiful table


for a lifetime.


I think that's a beautiful sentiment.


Folks, if Eric has provided you with value, and I can assure you that if you were in the


link world, almost all of us who have anything worthwhile to share have earned our ideas


from people who have learned from Eric or from Eric himself.


His family is grieving, and it would be wonderful if we could help show them support.


Geraldine and I, my wife and I, have done so, and I'd encourage you to do so as well.


Danny Sullivan, who's now with Google, but of course who's behind Search Engine Watch


and Search Engine Strategies and then Third Door Media, has set up a donation page that


will go directly to his family at bit.ly slash ericward2017.


I think it would be wonderful if the Moz community and all of us who've benefited so much from


Eric's help over the years paid him that respect.


Thanks very much.


Preparing Your Data Consumers for GA4 — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans. I'm Ruth Berridi. I am the CEO of UpBuild. We are a boutique digital


marketing agency specializing in technical SEO, advanced web analytics, and whole funnel


digital marketing strategy. And today, I want to talk a little bit about Google Analytics


4. So, as hopefully all of you by now know, Google Analytics 4 is here. It is the next


generation of Google's analytics tracking software. And what I think at this point,


hopefully, most marketers at least know that it's coming. The most important thing to know


is that on July 1st, 2023, which is less than a year from now, Google Analytics 4 will be


the only Google Analytics product that will be continuing to collect data. Universal Analytics,


which has been the analytics standard for several years now, will be completely sunset in less than


a year. A lot of people are talking about this. A lot of people are talking about Google Analytics


4, what it is, how to use it. I'm hopeful that the Whiteboard Friday audience already knows a lot of


these things. But one thing I think a lot of us marketers are not thinking enough about are the


people besides us who use analytics data and what they need to know about Google Analytics 4 in


order to continue using analytics data for the things that they use it for. So, before we get


into that, let's just stop. Let's just stop for a minute. Do you have GA4 collecting data on your


web properties, on all of them? Do you? Are you sure? If you don't, if there's a website that you


own or are involved with in any way, just not have GA4 collecting data, just pause this video.


Just pause it real quick and just get GA4 running on that site. It only takes a second. It's actually


very, very easy to implement. And all you need to do at this point, you don't need to configure it,


you don't need to do anything else, just get it collecting data. I'll wait. Okay, ready? All right,


great. Here we go. So, one thing that we need to think about as people who use marketing analytics


data is that there are other people besides us who need that data and see that data and use that data


to understand what's happening and make decisions accordingly. So, who are these people? It might be


team leadership, it might be your CEO. CEO is the worst, I know. It might be your boss. It might be


your boss's boss. Your board of directors, if you're a publicly traded or venture capital funded


company or any other kind of company that has a board, chances are you are compiling at least a


quarterly report for your board on how the website is doing using analytics data. You might also,


if you are like me, an agency marketer, you have clients, you have client points of contact.


Hopefully, you've already been in close communication with your client point of contact


about Google Analytics 4. You've already got it set up for them. But chances are your client point


of contact has these same people in their work lives. So, if you are working with a director of


marketing, a marketing manager, a CMO, someone in the marketing seat, you need to make sure that


that person, your client point of contact, has the same information to message to the people above


them and the other consumers of analytics data within their organization who may not be as


familiar with how analytics data is collected but still know enough to be using it and at least know


enough to be receiving reports containing this data. All of these people need to understand what


is happening with Google Analytics 4. The time to do that is now. The time to do that is not July


2023. It's we need to start right now. We have less than a year to get everybody on board with


what GA4 is, how it's different, and what that means for the data that they consume and use to


make decisions because it is different. It's going to be different. I've talked to people who have


seen that little alert pop up in Universal Analytics that strikes a little fear into all of


our hearts. Universal Analytics is going away on July 1st, 2023. Some people seem to think of this


as when your phone says, I'm going to install an operating system update overnight. Like, cool,


great, phone, you do you, turn it on in the morning. It's not that different. It's fine. That is not


the case with Google Analytics 4 and we need to make sure that everyone who uses analytics data


with whom we interact understands that so that they are not taken aback when that change happens.


We can also start making that change now, gently, iteratively, over time while UA is still collecting


data in order to illustrate to our data consumers what the differences are. So, the first thing that


we need to do when it comes to GA4 and the upcoming transition is have a plan for historical


data. One of the big things about this transition is that historical data in Universal Analytics


will not be available via the GA interface after July 1st, 2023. So, how are you going to get that


data? Because chances are you're not going to be okay with just saying, all right, well, we installed


GA4 when it first came out in the fall of 2020. So, we've got a little more than a year or two of


data and that's our new data universe. There are companies who have just decided that that's what


they're going to do. That's their new normal, you know, KonMari or historical data, namaste, release


it into the world. Most people are not going to do that. Most people are going to want to see


historical data from farther back than fall 2020, which is the earliest that you could have been


collecting this data. So, what is your plan for historical data? Hopefully, you have one. There


are many blog posts and videos and articles out there on ways to preserve your historical data.


I'm not going to go too deep into that, but whether you're using BigQuery and you're going to port it


into some sort of database or data warehouse, maybe you have a small enough data set that you're just


going to export a bunch of spreadsheets and kind of store that. Maybe you're going to build some


kind of custom SQL database, whatever you're going to do with your historical data. It's none of my


business, but you should have a plan to store that data. Now, at this point, you may already have


spoken to these people about the fact that historical data is going away because that's


something that they are probably feeling pretty amped up about. I'm feeling amped up about it.


It's a lot and we need to have a plan, but that's okay. That's what we're doing today. The real thing


that we need to keep in mind as we're making a plan for historical data is that the data in


Google Analytics 4 and the data in Universal Analytics is collected differently. Even things


that have the same name are going to be slightly different metrics behind the scenes. We're going


to talk more about that in a minute. But it's important to know that comparing GA4 and Universal


Analytics data is always going to be apples to oranges. They're not the same. So even as you have


a plan to make and store and use this historical database, however you're going to do that, you


need to keep in mind that that data and the data you use going forward are not going to be one-to-one.


And that's okay. I mean, it is what it is. Some people keeping that in mind are changing what


they're doing. Is the expense and effort of data warehousing your historical UA data worth all of


the time and expense it's going to take considering that it's apples to oranges? I can't make that


decision for you, but it's something to consider. It's something to ask yourself and really think


about what you're going to do with historical data going forward and how you're going to use it.


Because what's changing with Google Analytics for? Everything. It's really different. And hopefully


by now you've gone in there, gotten under the hood, you've played with some of the reports,


you've looked at the UI. It's really different from Universal Analytics. I've been doing SEO


since 2006 and this is the biggest change in Google Analytics, especially the front end,


the UI that I've ever seen. And also the back end is different. The method of data collection


within GA4 is different because a big part of why Google is making this push for GA4 is in an effort


to be more in compliance with data privacy laws. So they're having to change some of the ways that


data is collected and reported. They're also looking at how to better do things like report


on cross-domain traffic, cross-device traffic, traffic between websites and apps when those are


the same thing. They're the same and they're different and now in GA4 you can look at that


data in a more holistic sense. There's a lot of exciting cool stuff happening in GA4. But the


important thing to know is that things that are called the same thing in GA4 are still fundamentally


different and collected at the very least slightly differently than they are in Universal Analytics.


This is going to be hugely important when we're looking at this historical data. A great example


is sessions. The session for many, many years has been the core unit of analytics data. GA4,


you can tell from their reporting, is really trying to shift everyone's reporting from sessions


to users. Both sessions and users are collected slightly differently. They are counted slightly


differently. So your session numbers in GA4 and Universal Analytics for the same time period are


going to be slightly different. Now the degree to which they are different is going to depend on a


lot of things. Filtering options in Universal Analytics are a lot more advanced than they are


right now in GA4. So if you have a lot of custom filters set up, if you're filtering out a giant


known bot network, if you are filtering out data from specific countries, if they, you know,


whatever you're filtering out, chances are you cannot implement that yet in GA4. That's going


to affect it. But the session itself, how it's counted, when a session resets. So for example,


sessions resetting at midnight, having your time zone configured, hugely important in UA,


less of a thing in GA4. So depending on the time period, depending on your filtering, depending on


how you're counting sessions now, your session's data may be a little different or a lot different.


All of this is also going to depend on the scope of your data. Tiny differences become big in bigger


data sets. So if you've got hundreds of thousands or millions of sessions in a given time period


that you're reporting on, the chances that those numbers are going to be different in GA4 to UA is


they're going, probably going to be different by a bigger percentage. And at the same time,


if you only have a very, very small number of users because that sample size is smaller,


you may also see bigger gaps. It really depends on your data. The important thing, and your data


consumers don't need to know the ways in which data collection is different. You can tell them


and they're not going to remember and that's okay. They're busy and they don't need to know. What


they do need to know is that it's different, it's not the same, and you have a year at this point to


show them the degree to which it is different so that they can start to understand what the


difference between the old data set and the new data set is while you still have those same time


periods of data collection to compare, just to give them an idea of what's different. So at this


point, you probably have some of these data consumers who are in love with our report.


They've got their one report and they look at it every day or they look at it every week or they


look at it every quarter and you have spent the last however long you've been reporting to them


refining that report. You show them the report and then they say, what about this date piece of data?


And you put it in there and then they never look at it again. You take it out and no one notices or


you put it in there and it becomes the new normal or maybe you have been trying for a long time to


get them to look at users instead of at sessions but they just love session so much as a metric.


Whatever it is that your data consumers love about Universal Analytics, chances are it's going to be


at least a little bit different in GA4 and it's highly likely, and I would go so far as to say


advisable, that that report is going to have to change. So the time to show them that it's


different and ease them into that change like dipping a toe into the jacuzzi is now. Not July 2023, now.


Users are another really great example of what is different between Universal and GA4. So in


Universal Analytics, we're all used to total users and new users. Those are the two breakdowns of


active users. In GA4, you have a metric called active users which is the users that have been


active on your site in the last 28 days. That is the default users metric that you're going to see


in GA4 and in the reporting. Now you may decide because you've already been reporting on total


users that you want to report on total users in the future. You can do that but I would encourage


you to look at the ways in which GA4 is presenting and encouraging you to use the data. It's very


interesting to me, this is a little bit of a sidebar, the ways in which Google Analytics over


the years has taught us what is important to measure based on what they surface up most


prominently in reports. And for my career, that has chiefly been the session. Now increasingly


we're looking at the user which is great in a world in which most people's purchase journey


involves more than one device and certainly more than one session but it does change the way we


fundamentally look at and think about data. And I would encourage you rather than trying to swim


upstream on that to think about how you are going to change your data reporting in order to mesh up


well with the reporting that GA4 is going to roll out because they're still rolling out new features


all the time. You can take a look at what they are surfacing up prominently now to get an idea of


where those new features are most likely going to be rolling out in the next, especially in the next


year but even beyond that so that you are reporting in ways that are going to get you the most new


cool data soonest. But I digress. Another thing I want to make really sure that everybody, especially


these people, understand is that events means something completely different in GA4 than it


does in Universal Analytics. In Universal Analytics, events are very specific thing. You collect a piece


of data, you have four parameters that you can assign category, action, label, value. We've all at


this point used UTM parameters. We know what those are. We're familiar with it. It's comfortable. In GA4,


everything is an event. It's almost going back to like super, super old-school internet days and


thinking about hits on your website. At this point, everything in GA4, if you boil it down to a


fundamental piece of data collection, is called an event. Could they have called it something


different and made this less confusing? Yes, but they didn't and here we are. So this is really


important to make sure that your data consumers understand that event collection is going to be


different and that's important because of this apples to oranges comparison. As you're collecting


events data in GA4, it's going to be really, really tempting to try to recreate as much as you can


your Universal Analytics instance. How you're collecting data, how you're reporting on it.


Resist the urge to do that. When you are configuring custom events in GA4, resist the urge and maybe


even the pressure from these people to replicate that category, action, label, value naming


convention just because that's what you're used to. Instead, this is a fabulous time to really be


rethinking your data collection and your reporting and we as marketers have a huge opportunity here


that I want to make sure we don't miss. Many of us have come into whatever role we're in now and


come into an existing Google Analytics instance. Filters have already been set up, goals have


already been configured, events have already been set up and have been tracking data for however


long before we got there. What this usually means is that things are not set up entirely to our


liking. Many marketers, myself included, have come into an analytics situation and found that the


data is incorrect, inaccurately reported, it's double counting things, it's not counting things.


We have an opportunity now with GA4 to make sure that our data collection is complete, accurate,


precise and robust and we need to seize that opportunity. And the same thing goes with event


collection. Now is the time for everyone watching this video to start thinking about data governance.


Now is the time for us to seize control of the data and do what we can to not only make it


complete, accurate, precise, robust but also future-proof that data collection for ourselves,


for the organizations that we work for, for our clients and for our data consumers. Because we


may not be the only people using that data. There are often other teams going into analytics. If you


work with a paid search team or a display team or you work with just a general marketing agency who


maybe doesn't do anything with analytics but they look at the data, maybe they don't do anything to


the website but they need data about the website because it informs their campaigns, they probably


have dashboards configured, they probably have events set up, they may have set up those events


in ways that you don't like. Things like, oh here the label is capitalized, there the label isn't


capitalized. Guess what, those are two different events. That's still going to be true in GA4. As


of right now at least capitalization is still going to make two different parameters. So we


have an opportunity right now to enact some data governance, make some rules and take control. So


when we think about events in GA4, yes everything is an event. There are many things that are going


to be collected automatically. You do not have to configure GA4 to collect things like page views.


They're just going to do that. I don't think you can get them to not do that because it would break


the tool. You could but why would you? In addition to that there are enhanced measurement events that


Google has available for you to configure. Almost all of those they're very easy to set up and


they're standardized. The same is true for recommended events. So within GA4 the next level


of complexity from automatic and enhanced measurement events are recommended events. And in


the GA4 support documentation there is a large and increasing list of different recommended events


and the parameters that they collect that you can look at. I would say at this point any recommended


event that applies to your site you might as well configure because you could use that data. With


both enhanced measurement and recommended events because they have built in parameters Google is


going to be using those more to drive some of the I know they're wanting to do a lot more with


automated analysis and machine learning on data sets. All of that's going to start from the data


that is consistent across Google Analytics is broader data set which is these enhanced


measurement and recommended events. All of the parameters will be named to the same thing so


it's very easy for them to collect them and then apply machine learning to them. You still as you


are setting these up need to make sure that you are enacting some data governance need to make


sure the parameters are named the same way that the same parameter is collected in the same way


across recommended events so that you are going forward no longer having apples to oranges that's


GA4 to UA. Everything in GA4 should be oranges. I'm gonna get that on a t-shirt no one will know


what it means. And then the next level up is custom events. Custom events in GA4 are really cool.


You can collect data on just about anything. You can pass just about any piece of data that Google


Analytics 4 can collect. You can collect as a parameter. You've got there's a ton of functionality


especially if you are pushing things into the data later to collect that as event parameters. We're


no longer limited to category, action, label, value. We are limited by the total number of


parameters that we can collect per property which makes sense because data storage is expensive and


it's expensive for Google. But we have a lot more customizability when it comes to custom events.


This is very cool and we really need to apply the Spider-Man principle here. With great power comes


great responsibility. Resist the urge to get in there and start tracking everything you know


partying like it's I guess 2099 at this point. Resist that urge. Make a plan. Now is the time


for data governance. As you are thinking about the custom events that you are going to track and the


parameters you are going to collect, you might start by just outlining what you know you want


to track and how you want to collect those parameters. But then it's time to make some


rules. Some rules for what you're gonna track, how you're gonna track it, what parameters you're


gonna collect, and how those parameters are labeled. You shouldn't just do this for whatever


you're gonna configure as you're setting up GA4 now. Think about how you can create and future


proof rules for data collection going forward so that over time you know you get promoted,


somebody else is doing your job, you win the lottery and go off to an island and are having


a beautiful time. Whoever has your job after you should still have rules so that when they are


setting this stuff up it is still oranges to oranges and you are creating a data set that is


correct that is also useful in comparison with itself. Parameters that are useful in comparison


across events and event types. This is the time to be doing that. Create those rules, make them


clear, make sure that people on other teams, anybody else who might be setting up events even


outside of the inbound search team or the marketing team or whatever team you're sitting on, make sure


that they have that. If you have clients make sure you're doing a whole training session with them on


what the rules are and how to use those rules to configure events in the future. Make a video,


document it, share it out. The more you can do now to set yourself up for success in the future,


the more valuable your GA4 data set is going to be from day one and going forward. So if you get


nothing else out of this video take some time to think about data governance and how you're going


to make sure your data is useful and consistent going forward. Now that we have this beautiful


data set, we're collecting data, it's configured, we've got a year. We've got at this point, I'm


filming this at MOSCon 2022, we've got a year left to talk to these people about the difference


between our apples and oranges and help them fall in love with oranges. So your CEO, your board,


whoever it is that loves that report, don't just recreate that report with them for them with GA4


data. Take some time to talk with them to understand what it is about that information that


they use to make decisions, what it is about that report that they look at that helps them do their


job. Find out how to solve that same problem for them with GA4 data rather than just trying to make


GA4 look as much like UA as possible because over time it's going to be less and less the case and


over time people are going to forget about universal and now you just have a GA4 instance


that looks like Universal Analytics for no reason. Now is the time to not do that. Resist the pressure


to do that and figure out what your GA4 install is going to look like in 2023 and 2025, maybe even


2030. Institute those rules now so that you can help your board, you can help your CEO, you can


help your clients and their bosses and their bosses' bosses fall in love with your new reports.


They're beautiful, they're oranges to oranges, they've got new robust actionable data that you're


using in new exciting advanced ways. This is coming, it's happening. Right now is a really


important moment in terms of making sure that everybody is on board with what the changes are,


in terms of making sure that everybody is on board with how we're going to collect data in the future


and giving everyone a year to fall in love with this new report before they have no other options.


If you have questions about any of this or you just want to talk about Google Analytics 4 and geek


out about data collection, please holler at me at Twitter on anytime. I'm very friendly and I love


3 Creative Ways to Give Your Content Efforts a Boost - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to a special Christmas edition of White Beard Friday.


This week, I wanted to try and help with just a few tactical suggestions on some creative


ways to pump up those content marketing campaigns.


So I've seen that many, many folks in the SEO world, of course, naturally, are investing


in content marketing because content is the path to links and amplification and search


traffic.


And sometimes those content campaigns can feel a little stale or repetitive.


And so I have some creative ideas, things that I've seen some people executing on that


I think we might be able to leverage for some of our work.


First one, if you can identify in your community these sort of small but vocal niche groups


that are, and when I say your community, it doesn't have to be people you already reach.


It can be people inside the community of content generation and of topical interest around


your subject matter.


And then help them to amplify their voices or their causes or their pet projects, etc.


So I'll use the example of being in the foodie and gourmand world, right?


So here's a bunch of foodies, but this particular tiny group is extremely passionate about food


trucks.


And in particular, they really hate the laws that restrict food truck growth, right?


A lot of cities don't allow food trucks to be in certain spaces.


They have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get licensed.


They are not permitted to be permanently in a place for a whole week, whatever it is,


right?


Whatever those legal restrictions are.


And so by serving this small group, you might think that content is way too niche.


The wonderful part is that content is the kind that gets amplified very loudly, very


repetitively, that can help you earn links and traffic to this small community.


And if that community is small and loud and feels like their voices aren't being heard


elsewhere, you can build some great brand advocacy inside that group as well.


By the way, I would urge you to be authentic.


Choose causes that you or your company also care about.


Don't just pick something at random.


All right.


So, if you can, try and seek out products and services that your audience uses or needs


but that doesn't actually directly conflict with your business, right?


And then create a resource that lists or rates or ranks and recommends those top choices.


We've actually done this a few times at Moz.


I have this recommended list, right, of agency and consultant providers.


But Moz does not compete with any of those but it's a helpful list and as a result of


listing those folks, right, and having this sort of process around it, many of those people


are pumping up that content.


Now, here's another example, right?


So, Foodie Moz, Foodie Moz sounds like a great domain.


I should go register that.


Right after this hat stops hitting me in the back of the head.


I don't know how Santa deals with that.


So Foodie Moz presents the best cookbooks of 2017.


Now, Foodie Moz might be in the food and recipe world but turns out the wonderful part is


cookbooks are something that is used by their audience but not directly conflicting with


them and since it's not self-promotional but it is useful to your audience, the likelihood


that you can earn links and amplification because you seem like a non-self-interested


party is much greater, right?


You're providing value without asking anything in return.


It's not like anyone buying these cookbooks would help you.


It's not like you have some ulterior motive in ranking this one number one or that one


number two, right?


You're merely putting together an unbiased set of resources that help your audience and


that is a great way to get a piece of content to do well.


Third, last but not least here, if you can find content creators who have been very successful,


you can recruit them, the people who had hit pieces to create content for your brand.


In a lot of ways, this is like cheating.


It's almost like buying links except instead of buying the links, you're buying the time


and energy of the person who creates content that you have high likelihood or high propensity


for being successful in that content niche with what they create because of their past


track record and the audience they've already built.


Pro tip here, journalists and media contributors, even contributors to online media like a BuzzFeed


or something like that, are great targets.


Why?


Well, because they're usually poorly paid and they're desperate to build a portfolio


of professional work.


Some of these folks are insanely talented and they already have networks of people who


have liked their work in the past and have helped amplify them.


If you can use a tool like BuzzSumo, that would be generally what I'd recommend.


There's a few others, but BuzzSumo is really great for this.


You can search for, for example, recipes and see the most shared content in the recipe


world in, say, the last three months.


And then we can identify, oh, here we go, this person wrote the hardest recipe challenge


gifts.


Oh, all right, that did really, really well.


I wonder if we can see who that is.


Oh, look, she does freelance work.


I bet she can write for us.


It's like cheating.


It's a great hack.


It's a great way to recruit someone who you know is likely to have a great shot at their


work doing well, give them the freedom to write what they want, to create what they


want, and then host it on your site.


A great way to do content creation for a decent price that has a high likelihood of solid


amplification.


All right, everyone, look forward to some of your thoughts and tactics.


For those of you who celebrate Christmas, a Merry Christmas from all of us at Moz.


For those of you who celebrate Hanukkah, happy belated Hanukkah.


I know I'm filming this during Hanukkah, but it's probably after Hanukkah that you're seeing


it.


For those of you who are celebrating any other holiday this year, a very happy holiday season


to you.


And we look forward to joining you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


MozCon 2015 - 02 - How to Make Your Marketing Match Your Reality with Dana DiTomaso

Once upon a time we worked with a client who was a manufacturer and I'm not going to say


what kind of manufacturer in case they guess.


It doesn't have a happy ending, this story.


They were a manufacturer and so they had their manufacturing division and their sales and


marketing and their installation and other parts of their company, their dealer network


and we worked with just their marketing department.


We reported to their director of marketing and when they started working with us their


main pain was that they were spending too much on pay-per-click campaigns.


Great, we'll fix that.


We reduced their cost per click, we drove three times as many leads with the same kind


of spend, you know, all those magical things look great in a case study.


But then as we worked with them more and more we saw that things weren't quite right.


Their reviews were terrible, like just really awful reviews and this was back when before


Google made you use your real name to leave reviews so they were like, oh that's our competition.


Okay, and one of them was obviously their competition, they left bad reviews for every


company in town except for the company they worked at.


Okay, legit.


But then there was more and more bad reviews and there were persistent bad reviews, like


that person who was so mad that they would write a bad review and then leave it on every


possible review site including ones we didn't even know of until we saw the brand name pop


up in our search.


Okay, they're really mad.


And so we bring this to the marketing department and say, hey, maybe you could fix this.


And they'd say, oh, that's installation's problem.


It's like, well, it's kind of your problem because we can actually see your conversion


rate going down.


We can see more searches for your brand name reviews.


We can see more searches for your brand name sucks.


That's not what we want to have.


And they say, no, that's installation's problem.


Like, can you please take $1,000 out of your marketing budget and make this right for this


other angry, angry, angry person who continues to leave reviews?


No, we can't do that either.


So it got to the point where we felt gross marketing this company.


They had all the right things, right?


They had a good reputation if you hadn't bought their stuff yet.


They had a Better Business Bureau logo.


They didn't have any outstanding cases.


They won Canada's 50 Best Employers to Work At award, which is not really an award you


win.


It's an award you pay for, but people don't know that.


They had all the awards, and they looked reputable.


So as marketers, we felt like we couldn't keep marketing this product.


It was wrong.


And for them, they couldn't get their different departments together to solve the fundamental


issues.


Their marketing did not match their reality.


And this happens a lot in organizations now.


You have one person who does your digital marketing, and you have someone else at the


radio station who writes your ads and puts them out.


And then you have your customer service department, your call center, and they have their own


training manuals and training guides and what to say and what not to say.


And then you have your social media team who's basically making it up as they go along.


And I'm sure they're all nice people, but they don't necessarily work in the same department.


They may not work at the same company.


This could be all outsourced different agencies, and so they're not working together.


And we talk about silos and breaking down the silos, but really, at the end of the day,


it isn't just the silos within marketing.


It's the silos within your entire organization.


And what happens as a result of this is that your brand is broken.


Your brand is not delivering the kind of experience that it should.


And so we're going to fix that.


Your brand is your promise.


Your brand says, if you go with us, this is what's going to happen.


And different brands have different kinds of promises.


You know, if you do marketing for Comcast, you have a difficult job.


I think Comcast is basically the only American company I consistently hear bad things about.


Not even like one good story ever.


So if you're here from Comcast, I'm sorry.


That's got to be a hard job.


Please write a memoir.


I will read it.


But your brand is your promise right now.


Comcast promises, well, you're stuck with us, right?


And that's what they're trying for.


But if you think about your own brand and what you're promising people, does that promise


actually match the reality?


And it's more than marketing.


It's more than your promoted tweets.


It's more than your radio ad.


It's more than your billboard.


It's how you're greeted when you walk into a store.


When you call somebody, what does it sound like?


We have our clients, we called them, and I said, put me on hold.


I want to hear what it sounds like.


And it was fuzzy radio.


I'm like, okay, so let's fix that.


It's stuff like that.


And it's all these different things that come together to make a brand.


And so you're probably looking at this right now and saying, Dana, I don't have control


over these things.


That's ridiculous.


But when you're done with a brand strategy, which we're going to walk through today, you


should or you will.


So for example, looking at this list, I'm sure you're adding up in your mind what you


actually have control over at your job.


Maybe it's one small part of this.


Maybe it's several pieces.


You think vehicles.


I don't have control over vehicles.


Maybe I can put a wrap on it so our logo's on it and therefore it's branded.


But it's not really branded because if I get cut off by your truck on the road, I have


now had a bad brand experience.


I am mad at you.


And I can't call because we have hands-free cell phone laws.


So I'm just going to sit there and see that your stupid company and your stupid truck.


And I'm going to feel a little bit less happy if I want to buy your products and services


later.


I'm going to feel a little bit less excited about buying your products.


And that is the essence of creating that good brand experience.


Getting away from the bad things that take away from the brand and instead building a


solid foundation.


For example, this is an airline in Canada, WestJet.


They do fly to US destinations.


If you like to visit Canada, they're very nice.


They are very, very friendly.


And if you've been in Western Canada, you will know about the friendliness that you


experience there.


It's like aggressive friendly.


Coming from Ontario originally, it took me a little bit to get adjusted to it.


I was used to grumpy Toronto and people were so nice.


But for WestJet, they're very family friendly.


This is their magic plane.


It doesn't just fly to Orlando.


It flies around.


And if you tweet, hey, I spotted the magic plane and used the hashtag, apparently they


toss you some credits for a flight on WestJet, which is pretty cool.


But they do this thing every Christmas.


And I don't know how many of you here have seen this.


They call it the WestJet Christmas miracle.


And it will make you cry.


So don't watch it now.


Maybe like on your break in the corner so you can weep.


One that really stuck with me is there was a flight from Toronto to Calgary, which is


about a four, four and a half hour flight.


And when you were at the gate, there was a little video box and there's Santa saying,


hey, what do you want for Christmas?


And you said to Santa, what you wanted, some people said socks.


Some other people said a TV.


The guy who said socks probably regretted it.


And then the plane takes off.


They're like, oh, WestJet, they're so cute.


They asked me what I wanted for Christmas.


They get to Calgary, they get off the plane, and instead of luggage, out comes their presents.


In the four hours the plane was in the air, WestJet employees went and bought everything


on that list.


And there's crying.


There's more crying.


And instead of spending money on a TV campaign, they did this.


And it was a beautiful execution of a digital first campaign.


It was on YouTube, sponsored social, didn't worry about offline.


It happened because it was that amazing.


It went around the world.


You may have seen it.


It was all over BuzzFeed for a couple of days.


But then Michaela, our account manager at Kickpoint, took a flight with WestJet.


And one of the things that they do, part of their brand, is they tell funny jokes.


When you're, and by funny I mean like dad jokes, like puns and stuff.


When you're, after you land them while you're taxiing, because that's really the most boring


part of the flight, everybody gets antsy.


So they tell bad jokes.


And usually they're like cheesy, like what's brown and sticky?


A stick.


Ahh.


Ugh.


But you're a little bit delirious because you've just been on a plane for four hours,


so it's hilarious.


And this one time when Michaela took the flight, the flight attendant told a really inappropriate,


sexist joke.


And half the plane laughed and half the plane went ugh.


And those people felt a little bit less great about WestJet.


Humans like consistency.


We like things to be the same.


We like to have expectations.


Consistency is why brand restaurants exist.


I have stayed at the Hyatt Olive 8 three times for this conference.


We've stayed in three different rooms, I'm sure.


They look the same.


Like it could be the same room for all I know.


And it's cool because when I get there, I know what I'm going to picture.


We like consistency.


I had to return something from Lenovo.


I bought the wrong kind of plug.


And Anthony, my friend Anthony, I was waiting and waiting and waiting, and then he popped


on chat.


He says, hey, Dana, three exclamation marks.


Happy hump day, three exclamation marks.


And then thank you for contacting Lenovo's post sale customer service chat located at


our global headquarters in North Carolina.


My name is Anthony.


I provide you with extremely satisfying customer service today.


I'm pretty sure the first two lines were actually Anthony and the third line was not.


Or so am I talking to a human or I'm talking to a robot or maybe it's like Skynet.


Is it the Lenovo cyborg who's now doing support?


It felt weird.


And it was like this throughout the entire chat.


I was sending screenshots and sending it around the office.


Because it was just it was crazy that he felt that he could say happy hump day, which is


funny, but come on.


And then they got this like Lenovo script.


Again, brand inconsistency.


And good marketing feels right.


Good marketing makes someone say, oh, I don't believe in advertising.


Well, they choose Coke versus Pepsi.


Good marketing makes people make decisions that they're unconscious of.


And every time you interrupt, every time there's a bad brand experience, you're making people


think.


We do not want people to think.


And this is why we need brand strategy.


And this is why digital marketers are uniquely equipped to lead brand strategy.


When I talk to people about brand strategy, in fact, I was talking to someone this morning


while we were walking here and I was talking about what I'm going to talk about today.


And he said, yeah, I see that all the time in our locations and how people are greeted


and all this other stuff.


I see the connections.


And if you're used to working in one little silo, like, say, radio or billboard or some


offline traditional channels, you don't necessarily think of all the different connections that


go into that final product.


But digital marketers do.


All of us in this room are able to understand brand in a totally new way.


So I think that we are all very well equipped to go for the future of marketing.


Dan just talked about this, lots of different speakers today are going to talk about this.


This is where marketing is going.


The brand that manages to get their stuff together and provide a consistent brand experience


is going to win over their competition, hands down.


So let's get started.


I would like you to picture a brand continuum.


At one end we have Dove.


Now when I say Dove, I'm sure you think of something.


Women wearing white, people looking in a mirror and crying, some sort of sketch, maybe the


parody that they did.


And when you think of Protein World, I imagine you probably think of something a little bit


different.


Now Protein World, I don't know how many people know about these ads.


They ran an ad campaign in the UK, a little bit in New York, and it was a picture of a


woman wearing a tiny bikini.


Are you beach body ready?


I am not beach body ready according to Protein World.


I'm okay with that.


I also don't use Dove, I'm somewhere in the middle.


So Dove and Protein World have two very different brand statements.


This is Protein World's.


When you read this, there's some words that really stick out.


Revolution is one of them.


It's a very aggressive word, right?


Healthier, leaner, fitter, stronger.


Sounds like a Daft Punk song.


But this is their brand statement.


And then this is Dove's.


And this is just a portion of Dove's.


Dove's is exceptionally long, and I decided not to give Eric a hives and just take a portion


of it.


But confidence, not anxiety.


Positive relationship.


Self-esteem.


Full potential.


And if you put these together, you can see that at their heart, they're really saying


the same thing.


It's all about self-improvement.


It's about making yourself better one way or the other.


Protein World's is, you've got to look good in that bikini.


And Dove is, you are awesome just the way you are.


But there's still self-improvement at their heart.


Their brand strategy is how they execute on that message of self-improvement in very,


very different ways.


So when you go back and you start thinking about your brand strategy, I encourage you


to start with your core values.


Maybe you have a mission statement.


Maybe you have none of these things.


Maybe your mission statement says things like, world class, or synergies, or doesn't really


say anything at all.


But it's a place to start.


Kick Point's core value is we help you do better.


That could be applied to almost anything.