In the back of this presentation, there's three slides with a list of videos that I've


MozCon 2014 - 24 - Richard Baxter - Developing Your Own Great Interactive Content

collected up.


And if you watched every single one of them, then after about a day, you could probably


blag your way through a conversation with a web developer about what they're doing,


which we've got to have.


So that's the what.


This is the stuff that I think we all need to understand a little bit better.


But all of this started to make sense to me a little bit more.


When I came across the New York Times innovation report, it was leaked.


A lot of soul searching for those guys internally about where they were headed, what they were


doing, how their performance was working out.


And there's one quote in particular that stood out to me.


I'd rather have a snowfall builder than a snowfall.


Let's not forget that the New York Times took a year to produce that piece of work.


And we don't have a year.


I think usually most of us have about two months at best to get something shipped and


on with the next thing.


So that idea really resonated with me.


And it's what triggered this phase of our evolution as an agency.


I became really interested in the how.


Some of this is about being able to have a conversation with a web developer and actually


being able to produce something that's great.


Some of it's about being able to run a project that works, that isn't stressful, that comes


in on budget and on time and on scope.


And I was very lucky because, yeah, my team who are super busy, they let me use their


time for us to all reflect together on precisely how this kind of thing should be done.


We've been doing it already, but we've been doing it for clients.


And when you're doing client work, actually, you get less time to learn and develop yourselves.


So this was fun.


This is part of what we came up with.


And I'm going to explain to you what this is in a little while, but this is the thing


that we built.


It's part of an article that we wrote on the topology of the physical Internet, how undersea


cables are there and they're transmitting all of our data and the NSA is tapping into


them, but you guys don't know they're there.


And it's a super interesting story.


And this little bit here, I'll explain how it's built in a moment, but it's been around


for a few days and we've had a lot of success with it because the Washington Post wrote


about it, which I liked.


Thank you, guys.


So there's my team over there.


Where are they?


They're all hiding.


Hi, team.


And Liam's here today and I promised my team that I'd embarrass him by calling him out,


but I'm calling him out for the good work and the leadership that he exerted on us all


to make this thing happen.


So I want to talk to you about the how, right?


What is the process that we used broadly?


What stuff do you need to know to create a project like this to get it to work?


And for me, I became a client of our agency for a little while, and so the first interaction


that I had with my agency was I was invited to a creative presentation meeting.


And that was the output of a creative planning session.


So I was presented with a whole bunch of different ideas, right?


Now, these are ideas that Liam and the team, Sophie, Dan, everybody who was working on


this, put together to present back to me the things that they would like to create.


In fact, they were just topic ideas at this point, like broadly we've discovered this


subject and we think that it's got some appeal and we'd love your permission to explore it


in a little bit more detail.


That's fundamentally the purpose of what we often refer to as a creative planning meeting


with a client.


I'll talk to you about what was happening before that in a moment, but this is important.


So first of all, Pete was talking about creativity yesterday, and I think actually learning a


methodology to help us be more creative is quite a big challenge for us at the moment


because what I've always found SEOs or content marketers tend to do is you guys come up with


what you're usually told that you've got to produce an infographic or four or something


in the next six months.


You've got volumes to meet.


You've got to write articles.


And then the next thing that happens is you come up with a title for these ideas, right,


because that's what you've got to do.


And then you go off and you do the research for that title.


And that's really, it's so tough to come up with an idea for a story that people in that


space are going to really enjoy before you've done any real research about the topic as


a whole.


And what this book teaches you is the most effective method to collect all of your ideas


together, like investigate a topic in its fullest, and then let that information, let


that research start to inspire you with the things that stand out that people might want


to enjoy and read.


And check out Liam's post on the same thing.


Even though it's titled There is No Creative Method, it's actually about a creative method.


So kind of misleading.


Anyway, so there I am in this meeting.


And by genuine coincidence, one of the ideas that the guys presented to me happened to


be the main theme of a book that I was reading at the time.


And the book's called Tubes, and it's by a guy called Andrew Blum.


Now we all live on the internet, right?


And so we need to understand how the internet works.


This book will teach you that in a couple of hours.


It's actually a really interesting read.


It could be labeled as boring, but I don't think there's any such thing as boring.


I think there's useful and there's crap and there's very little in between.


Read this book because what Andrew does, it's not just about the story of how the internet


works.


It's also the fact that he's taken an idea that you might label as boring, and he's made


it really interesting.


Like, I got so excited about the internet after I'd read this.


It was, yeah.


So anyway, we're in the meeting, and Liam and the guys present this idea to me, and


my face lit up.


But so did theirs.


In the time that they'd been researching this topic, they got really interested in it.


And this is, I think, probably one of the most important things that we need to accept


about ourselves, that we have unique interests, we have unique experiences, and we bring those


with us when we're working on projects like this.


And as a client or as an in-house manager, whatever position you're in, when you see


the people around you who are going to build something for you, get excited about one of


those things, choose that.


Think about the people that they are and the unique skills that they bring.


Sophie, who was in the meeting, she builds maps and things like that with Fusion Tables


by embedding Google Maps in her blogs.


And that's really impressive.


And we sort of knew in this meeting that it would probably head in the direction of a


piece of long form and given the topic, there'll be a map.


So we're going to need a map.


Let's choose somebody who's interested in doing that.


So at this stage, they've run this meeting with me, and I've kind of decided on a topic.


We think that we've got a story.


We kind of have that.


But not how to tell it.


We are not saying we've got to produce an interactive or we've got to produce an infographic.


What can we talk about?


Because I think that's kind of the wrong way around.


You need to absorb a topic first and then decide the medium by which you're going to


communicate that thing.


I think that makes a lot of sense.


So there's a bunch of stuff that was going on before this meeting.


I've deliberately skipped ahead.


So let's skip back.


One of the biggest lessons that we've learned as an agency while we're producing this type


of work, technical setup and feasibility.


Rolls off the tongue.


But remember that example that I gave you of the iconic cars thing at the beginning?


There was a key detail about the way that would be hosted, which really screwed us up.


Like we had to rebuild it overnight.


Had we done this, we would have known that was going to be an issue.


So technical setup is, well, that's talking with the development team and asking them


how the content you're going to be providing to them is going to be hosted.


And if the development team don't know, speak to the network people, right?


And we'd learned that there was this caching, this load balancing that was executing the


JavaScript which broke that project.


But we learned and now we have a checklist of things that we ask when we meet up with


the server team to make sure we can serve it.


That was lesson number one.


Lesson number two is that if you're planning to sort of head in a particular direction


with a particular type of story, before you present it to the people that decide whether


or not that's a good idea, you really should get together with the people that you're going


to ask to build it.


And the reason why is that, and I'll explain this in a moment, is that if you create designs,


you get excited about your wire frames, what you're doing is you're scoping functionality.


But if you're doing the design work first before you've spoken to a developer, what


you're doing is you're scoping entirely unique functionality that might need a total custom


development solution to be able to build.


And so with a few small changes, you might have just added six months of bandwidth to


a development project and you just don't know about it yet.


So we sit down with the developers and we say, listen, we think we're going to present


this idea to our client.


What do you think to this?


And the cool thing that developers will do if you give them lots of advanced notice is


they'll say, well, if you're going to build a map, then you're going to need maybe a slider


and that's a little bit of custom JS, but we can pull the data from the Google Maps


API and as long as you're storing it in JSON, we can call for it with this and we can change


that scroll action with some jQuery.


They get excited and they feel part of it, but also you very, very quickly start to understand


how your project's going to work.


And that's very exciting.


And more on that in a minute, because we take that a little bit further.


I said that is why we do technical setup and feasibility.


Do it first.


So last year I was talking about really targeted outreach and I talked about how we involve


stakeholders right at the beginning of a project.


And that's because I don't believe that marketers are the right people to be producing expert


level content.


We need to assist experts to produce expert level content.


And so we start with an idea and then we find out who it is that has some influence in a


space.


We do it early on.


We do it before we've done much research.


We certainly do it before we've put pen to paper.


We're not writing anything yet.


We're certainly not designing anything.


We find people who would be willing to contribute.


And we find experts, we find publishers that are sold on the idea of publishing this work


for us.


Super exciting stuff, because when you get a positive response back, A, they're going


to give you some feedback on the story and that's going to help you shape what it is


that you're going to do.


But also you can go into a content project with a sense of hope that it's going to be


a success.


That's your motivator.


You've got Wired or The Verge who are interested and you're going to work super hard to make


sure that you've built something for them, something that they want to run with.


Because that's how we seed our content.


We don't do any paid promotion at Built Visible.


It's all earned.


And we make it earned because of the stakeholder recruitment process right at the beginning.


And we involve them all the way through.


So the next stage is we've got our stakeholders.


The client is kind of happy about the idea.


We know that it's possible.


So the next thing we need to do is start the asset collection and the research.


So I said, you know, let's study a topic.


Let's really soak it up before we decide on the title, before we decide on the exact story.


That is this process.


And we use a tool at Built Visible called Murali.


And what Murali does, it's a canvas on which we can store ideas, snippets of text, images.


And as you're working around the canvas, you can begin to position things so they have


some relevance to each other.


You can start thinking about the flow of your storyboard, which I'll talk about in a moment.


So I love Murali and I was blown away by this when the guy showed me it.


And so we start to collect our assets and our snippets of research for that.


This isn't authorship.


This isn't writing.


This is just here are the raw materials for this piece of work.


Here it is in action on Liam's desk.


Sorry, buddy.


I had to blur your Post-it note.


Anyway, the way Liam's using this piece of Murali, this piece of software, he's using


it with dual screens.


So he's dragging images from one screen to the next as he's traversing that part of the


Internet as he's doing his research.


So you can build research so quickly just by doing this, copying bits of text, pasting,


dragging images across, linking them together, positioning them together into subtopics.


That's the way to do it.


And by the way, on that screen, that is a piece of interactive content to help people


with property owners, liability insurance and commercial property.


Super boring content, but I think it's going to do really well because it's the only insurance


company that are doing it right.


Anyway.


So now we've got all of our pieces in play.


We've got our assets, we've got our images, we've got all of that stuff.


We need to really start thinking about storyboard creation.


Now, you guys are going to be really disappointed when you see one of our storyboards because


they're a bit dull.


But they do their job.


And that's what they're there to do.


It's an iterative document that helps us structure certain aspects of the story we're going to


tell.


It is not visual.


I'll show you.


In a storyboard, we have three key characteristics.


Data, flow, and assets.


This is how they all work together.


So our data are our raw materials.


They're snippets of text, links to images, you know, whatever those things are, the things


that you'll probably use to brief a journalist or a copywriter.


Then you start working on flow.


And a storyboard is an iterative thing.


You start to sort of position where you think each one of these pieces of information might


exist.


And therefore, you start to think about how it's organized, how it might flow.


And it starts off as a random jumble of ideas and begins to become something that you could


build in chronological order.


And then finally, the assets that you're collecting.


So copy and images, because, you know, by this point in the story, we've probably already


decided that this is going to be a long-form interactive piece of content.


It's going to have images.


Obviously, it's going to have text.


It's going to have some authorship.


And we're going to need some features.


And features are the things that we've briefed the developers on by this point, too.


Some of these processes work together.


Features being a map or something.


And I'll explain that in a moment.


So all of that connects together and becomes your experience.


But we still haven't thought about the design.


And it still isn't the right time for us to start thinking about the design.


It's too early.


So this is our storyboard.


I told you you'd be disappointed with it.


It's a Word document.


And it stays a Word document throughout the throughout its whole life.


And this is what goes to a developer, by the way.


And the reason why we don't use any visuals is that a storyboard needs to brief on the


structure of the content.


Right?


I'll explain why I think that's important in a moment.


So in one of the earlier iterations of the storyboard, I think you can get so far when


it's okay to brief the developers to start work.


Because there are some components of something like an interactive that actually need some


thought and they need to be developed first.


You know, it's okay to start these things in chunks.


And we use a version of rapid prototyping, which is an idea that's been around in web


development for quite a long time.


It's nothing new, but I think it's something that's quite new to content marketing.


So when we sat down with the development team early on, we sort of talked to them roughly


about what we'd need.


But the stage when the developers actually start doing the work, we have to have a very,


very clear idea of the medium via which we're going to tell a story.


Is it video or is it a presentation, a microsite, is it an article, whatever.


And the features that we're going to find in that piece of work as well.


So, you know, an embedded chart, video embed, SVG animation, et cetera.


And if you've got the data for them to be able to make a start on those components of


the work, then that is the right time to get them to actually make a start.


Because to make these projects work super well, what we've got to do is just speed it


up and make it kind of like more efficient.


And we need to use the maximum amount of notice time for these guys to do their best job as


we possibly can.


So that's why we start them early.


But remember, this stuff, you know, this is your content, right?


So we're developing the storyboard, we're collecting our assets, we've made a start


on the authorship, we know roughly the type of structure that we're going to use for the


presentation.


So on that note, we put the content in a browser, we structure it, and then we start developing


the ideas around that.


So we're developing in the browser.


And that's because the work that we produce is for the web.


It isn't for Photoshop.


So why would we start with Photoshop?


Let's prototype it.


Let's get the functionality right.


And then let's brief that into a designer.


So this is whoops, yeah, we can use this one.


I've skipped one.


This is the first version of the prototype that the dev team built.


The storyboard, its flow, the content assets that we've given them were enough for them


to be able to build a first early version.


And obviously most of the work, I mean, look at the design.


The design's rough, it's pretty bad.


But most of the work was already happening in this.


This thing, this map started life on its own in just a browser, and they developed that


first.


I'll explain how it works in a minute.


And then they positioned the content all around it, and they were using our responsive style


sheet for that.


So you imagine giving this to a designer and say, look, can you style this for us, versus


trying to write a huge PowerPoint presentation with screenshots, and I want it to be a bit


like this, and maybe it needs to be arranged like that.


Designers design a presentation layer.


They're less good at designing web functionality for you.


And we've learned that, because when we brief PSDs into developers, they have a funny look


on their faces.


They say they hate you.


So that's why we do that.


So eventually, once we're happy with the prototype, we've iteratively got the content in, we're


happy with the way things like the interactive components function, that's when it goes to


the designer.


And the designer sends this back in a couple of days instead of a couple of months.


And it just comes back styled, because that's what designers do.


Now because the developers have already structured the web page, they've used the right markup,


it's a relatively trivial matter of them just styling it.


So they've got to update their CSS style sheet, put any new class attributes in, et cetera,


et cetera.


And that's easy.


They know what to do when you ask them to do that.


So this is what the finished product looked like, because we went through this process,


and we've learned a lot, but ultimately, we wanted to build something that we could put


out there just to market ourselves, just to show, yeah, no, we can do this, and we're


pretty excited about it.


And so this is what we ended up with.


And this map is, well, Pete Wales calls it witchcraft.


He built it.


It's based in Google Fusion Tables.


The data that you see there comes from the organization called TeleGeography.


They're the guys that map the undersea cables.


And they also produced us a KML layer, which means that we can position cables around the


map.


The slider, that's custom JavaScript.


That's just executing.


It's just revealing a new node every time the slider moves.


The data is stored in Google Fusion Tables.


And Google Fusion Tables can talk to the Google Maps API.


And there's an article on this on Built Visible, so you can learn how to do this yourself.


The secret sauce, but it's not really secret.


If you have a poke around in the sauce, you can use the JavaScript.


There's some custom JavaScript that animates it.


So this was quite a lot of dev work.


But actually, we're just using systems and products that are there for us already.


So anyway, launch is easy, actually.


When you've gotten interactive with it's all ready, you've got your stakeholders, you've


stayed in touch with them, so the publishers are sort of aware.


They've given feedback on the development work, and they're ready to go with it.


Launch becomes pretty easy.


And obviously, you push that out there.


And I mean, it's a useful tip, actually.


What we learned to do was password protect the interactive.


So when it went out to the publishers, they felt like there was more of an exclusive sort


of feel to the piece of work.


But anyway, so that was launch.


Our good friend Darren at Built Visible pushed out the emails for us, and we got some coverage.


So it went out in the Washington Post, and the traffic was amazing, and we're super happy


with it.


This is an older slide.


It's done even better since.


Washington Post covered it, Daily Mail.


Gosh, it was really popular in Greece and Finland and the Netherlands, I think because


they love undersea cables or something.


But anyway, we've got a ton of traffic, and we're really, really happy about it.


But the point of this whole thing was what is it that we can learn about ourselves along


the way?


We've now got this process, and what I want you all to do is just take that process and


develop it for yourselves and see if it makes your project development work any easier.


For us, we learned a bunch of stuff.


So on bandwidth, if you're building one of these things, think about whether or not you're


going to be exceeding the rate limits of any of the data service providers that you're


using.


Google Fusion Tables can only handle 25,000 views unique request per day, and I think


we used that up quite quickly.


And you can see from Pete's comment, apparently, we didn't do the due diligence on bandwidth


we don't know.


We didn't know where our limits were, so that came as a surprise, and we had to put in an


arbitrary load balancer just to cache the request if they were the same as requests


that had already been made by the people.


Shareable assets, we took a long, long time developing this map, and then somebody came


along and made an animated GIF out of it, and that was more successful than our map.


And we were like, oh, because we'd also spent a long time trying to develop the map to make


it embeddable, and we couldn't do that because it was just too complicated.


So we binned that part of the project.


The whole time, we could have just produced an animated GIF, and now everybody's linking


to the Washington Post like this.


This was, I think we had 16,000 sessions come from this one piece of coverage in a couple


of hours on Friday.


I mean, it was really, really insane.


People love this topic.


It's quite a boring topic, but people love it.


This is good, because I'm quite a boring person.


I'm a geek.


Anyway.


And then you realize actually when you're doing interactive or when you're doing something


like a new kind of a project, you forget to remember all of the stuff that you've learned


from similar but slightly different projects.


So you know when you were doing your first infographic and you had to get the title right


and make the landing page experience a bit really compelling?


Then you go into interactive mode and you forget all of those rules.


And the same applies to the SEO.


On page speed, the guys sent out a JPEG that was four megabytes, and the load time was


just insane.


So I compressed that down to 600K and got below a second and a half.


You have to remember to be an SEO when you're evaluating this stuff.


The non JavaScript-enabled version has some 404s in it in the nav.


Lesson learned.


Evaluate your work as an SEO.


Turn JavaScript off.


And brief your designers to respect your main browser sizes.


So you know, iPhone, iPad, desktop.


We had a little bit of difficulty with this, because somebody forgot to make that clear.


Fortunately, we've got Pete who managed to pick up the mess and clean it all up for us.


And then test with responseinator, because responseinator will just give you all of the


different views that you need to be able to make sure this thing works.


If it goes wrong, I think it's either because we've missed a step in the process, one that


we knew about but chose to ignore almost every time, or there's something new that we need


to update the process with, as in we've learned something.


We've got to skip it.


And the golden rule, the thing that I learned most clearly from this, because I decided


I wasn't quite happy with the first version of the design and I delayed the project for


two weeks to get that fixed, is if you don't love something, you can't ship it.


You've got a team of marketers who are going to be promoting a piece of work.


If you give them a crap piece of work to push out there, they're just not going to put their


hearts into it.


Anyway, that's pretty much me.


I just want to thank Liam, Danny, Darren, Robin, Pete, and Daniel Butler for their hard


work on this project.


This wasn't my work.


They were the ones that built it, not me.


And Jeff, of course, for letting me use his precious little resource in his team to make


it happen.


So when you give me a round of applause, I'd appreciate it if you could give them a round


of applause.


Thank you very, very much.


Thank you, Richard.


So the people can see this on the site right now.


It's there.


I think we've tweeted it.


Yeah, take a look, have a poke around.


Yeah, I saw it.


It was amazing.


Yeah, cool.


So I just have one question for you.


We have to get you on a flight really soon.


So someone like me who's not as technical, I'm a content marketer, some of the technical


stuff's a little intimidating when I look at it.


When you're hiring content marketers at BuildVisible, how important is it for you that people come


in with strong technical skills, able to do some of this stuff from the get-go?


Not at all.


Yeah, so because of, I think, the way things are in the UK, it's very, very difficult to


find people with lots of experience in this because it's quite cutting-edge stuff.


I've built you a bunch of resources, like download the presentation and have a look


at what it is.


I would rather hire a super-smart junior, like a fresh graduate, teach them everything


they need to do to learn to be able to do it, teach them SEO.


These kids are amazing.


And obviously, sometimes we're lucky when we find somebody with the right skills, but


I would rather start from scratch with these guys.


Training and development is good and promote internally always.


It's our thing.


Invest in training your employees.


Absolutely, yeah.


Richard Baxter, thanks so much.


Writing Headlines that Serve SEO, Social Media, and Website Visitors All Together - WBF

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


This week we're going to chat about writing headlines.


One of the big problems that headlines have is that they need to serve multiple audiences,


so it's not just ranking and search engines.


And even if it was, the issue is that we need to do well on social media.


We need to serve our website visitors well in order to rank in the search engines.


This gets very challenging.


I've tried to illustrate this with a Venn diagram here.


So you can see basically, in the SEO world of headline writing, what I'm trying to do


is rank well, earn high click-through rate, because I want a lot of those visitors to


the search results to choose my result, not somebody else's.


I want low pogo sticking.


I don't want anyone clicking the back button and choosing someone else's result because


I didn't fulfill their needs.


I need to earn links, and I've got to have engagement.


On the social media side, it's pretty different actually.


I'm trying to earn amplification, which can often mean the headline tells as much of the


story as possible.


Even if you don't read the piece, you amplify it, you retweet it, you reshare it, right?


I'm looking for clicks, and I'm looking for comments and engagement on the post.


I'm not necessarily too worried about that back button and the selection of another item.


In fact, time on site might not even be a big concern at all.


For website visitors, both of these are channels that drive traffic, but for the site itself,


I'm trying to drive right visitors, the ones who are going to be loyal, who are going to


come back, hopefully who are going to convert.


I want to not confuse anyone.


I want to deliver on my promise so that I don't create a bad brand reputation and detract


from people wanting to click on me in the future.


For those of you who have visited a site like a Forbes or maybe even a Buzzfeed and you


have an association of, oh, man, this is going to be that clickbait stuff, and I don't want


to click on their stuff, I'm going to choose somebody else in the results instead of this


brand that I remember having a bad experience with.


There's some notable direct conflicts in here.


One of them, keywords for SEO can be really boring on social media sites.


When you try and keyword stuff especially or be keyword heavy, your social performance


tends to go terribly.


Creating mystery on social, so essentially not saying what the piece is truly about but


just creating an inkling of what it might be about, harms the clarity that you need


for search in order to rank well and in order to drive those clicks from a search engine.


Also hurts your ability generally to do keyword targeting.


The need for engagement and brand reputation that you've got for your website visitors


is really going to hurt you if you're trying to develop those clickbait style pieces that


do so well on social.


In search, ranking for low relevance keywords is going to drive very unhappy visitors, people


who don't care that just because you happen to rank for this doesn't necessarily mean


that you should have because you didn't serve the visitor intent with the actual content.


So how do we resolve this?


It's not actually a terribly hard process.


In 2017 and beyond, what's nice is that search engines and social and visitors all have enough


shared stuff that most of the time we can get to good happy resolution.


First off, I'm going to ask you to determine who your primary audience is, your primary


goals and some prioritization of those channels.


You might say, hey, this piece is really targeted at search.


If it does well on social, that's fine, but this is going to be our primary traffic driver.


Or you might say, this is really for internal website visitors who are browsing around our


site.


If it happens to drive some traffic from search or social, well, that's fine, but that's not


our intent.


Step two, for those non-conflicting elements, right?


This could be like the page title that you use for SEO doesn't always have to perfectly


match the headline.


If it's a not even close match, that's a real problem, but an imperfect match can still


be okay.


What's nice in social is you have things like Twitter cards and the Facebook markup, graph


markup, and that open graph markup means that you can have slightly different content there


than what you might be using for your snippet, your meta description in search engines.


So you can separate those out or choose to keep those distinct, and that can help you


as well.


Step three, I'm going to ask you, author that like the most straightforward version of the


headline first, and then step four is to write the opposite of that, the most social friendly


or click likely, click worthy version.


Doesn't necessarily have to worry about keywords, doesn't have to worry about accuracy or telling


the whole story without any of these other considerations.


Then in step five, we're going to take three and four and just merge them into something


that will work for both, that compromises in the right ways, compromises based on your


primary audience, your primary goals, and then add in the critical keywords that you're


going to need.


I've tried to illustrate this a bit with an example.


Nest came out, Nest, right, which was Google bought them years ago, and then they became


part of the Alphabet Corporation that Google evolved into, and so Nest is sort of separately


owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company, and Nest came out with this new alarm system.


In fact, the day we're filming this, this Whiteboard Friday, they came out with a new


alarm system.


So they're no longer just a provider of thermostats inside houses, they now have something else.


If I'm a tech news site and I'm writing about this, I know that I'm trying to target gadget


and news readers.


My primary channel is going to be social first, but secondarily search engines.


The goal that I'm trying to reach, that's engagement followed by visits and then hopefully


some newsletter signups to my tech site.


My title and headline in this case probably need to match very closely.


The social callouts, the social cards and the open graph, that can be unique from the


meta description if need be or from the search snippet if need be.


So I'm going to do step three, author of the straightforward headline, and that for me


is going to be, Nest has a new alarm system, video doorbell and outdoor camera.


A little boring, probably not going to do tremendously well in social, but it probably


would do decently well in search.


The number four, my social click likely version is going to be something more like Nest is


no longer just a thermostat.


Their new security system will blow you away.


That's not the best headline in the universe, but I'm not a great headline writer.


However, you get the idea.


This is the click likely social version, the one that you see the headline and you go,


oh, they have a new security system.


I wonder what's involved in that.


You create some mystery.


You don't know that it includes a video doorbell, an outdoor camera and an alarm.


You just hear they've got a new security system.


Well, I better look at it.


Then I can try and compromise and say, hey, I know that I need to have video doorbell,


camera, alarm and Nest.


Those are my keywords.


Those are the important ones.


That's what people are going to be searching for around this announcement, so I've got


to have them in there.


I want to have them close to the front.


Nest's new alarm, video doorbell and camera are about to be on every home's must-have


list.


All right, resolved in there.


This process of writing headlines to serve these multiple different sometimes competing


priorities is totally possible with nearly everything you're going to do in SEO, in social


and for your website visitors.


This resolution process is something hopefully you can leverage to get better results.


All right, everyone.


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


Mind Games: Craft Killer Experiences with 7 Lessons from Cognitive Psychology by Sarah Weise

So I'm here today to talk with you about persuasion.


As a digital marketer, how often have you been asked to convince your customers to click


that button, buy that product, stay on that page just a little bit longer?


It's your job to entice, to persuade.


Now I've thought about persuasion a lot over the years as an experienced designer, sure,


but as a parent also, I have two little girls under the age of five who can best be described


as free spirits.


And most days I'll admit it's a pleading mess.


Please take two bites of anything or good grief, get the underwear off of your head.


We're about to walk into the school.


I know I'm seeing some nods.


There's some other parents out there, huh?


So as you can imagine, I've practiced persuasion quite a bit and the techniques I'm going to


share with you today, I'll assure you, work both with two-year-olds and with your digital


cars.


Now the common thread between all of these techniques that we're going to talk about


today is that they all have to do with the human brain, how we think, how we process


information, how we make decisions online.


Now our brains process information at unimaginable speeds and we like to think that our decisions


are made based on careful consideration, but in fact that's not the case.


That's not true.


Ninety-five percent of our decisions are made unconsciously.


Now when making decisions online or anywhere else, there are three parts of the brain that


are engaged.


According to neuro researchers, the first part of the brain that engages is your survival


brain, also known as the lizard brain.


Now the survival brain is kind of a jerk.


It processes every input around it and asks things like, can I eat it?


Will it hurt me?


Can I have sex with it?


Now this is nothing new.


Marketers have known this for years and that's why juicy burgers, fear tactics, and sexy


women sell products every time.


So after the survival brain processes an input and decides that it's not a survival issue,


it passes the input along to the emotional brain.


And the emotional brain, now this is the part of the brain that you use when you read a


news story that excites you or when you cry at a sad movie.


It helps you to empathize, to connect with other people, to feel what other people are


feeling.


This is the primary decision maker in your brain.


Now after you've made a decision with your emotional brain, it's then and only then,


pretty much, that your rational brain kicks in and makes up a justification for why you've


just made the decision that you've made.


Yes, that's right.


The rational brain justifies decisions more than a politician.


Have you seen, do you remember those commercials on TV, the Save the Animal commercials?


You know the ones with the sad puppies and Sarah McLachlan?


Yeah.


Let's take a look.


Hi, I'm Sarah McLachlan.


Will you be an angel for a helpless animal?


Every day innocent animals are abused, beaten and neglected and they're crying out for help.


Please call the number on your screen and join the BCSBCA with a monthly gift right


now.


For just $18 a month, only 60 cents a day, you'll help rescue animals from their abusers


and provide medical care, food, shelter and love.


So this is how it translates online.


And even though this is a really old video, it's still used today.


Why?


Because it works.


It is so effective.


And I use this example to show you and to illustrate the point of how the brain works.


So what's happening here?


Your survival brain kicks in and it says, well, this is not a survival issue, so it


passes it to the emotional brain.


Then the emotional brain takes over and if you decide to donate, it's because you have


empathized with those poor puppies or maybe Sarah McLachlan's hairstyle.


I don't know.


But after that, your rational brain kicks in and it says things like it's only 60 cents


a day.


That's not much.


Or it makes up those kind of rationale to justify the emotional decision that you've


just made.


Regardless of the fact that the emotional center of your brain makes most of the decisions,


the most persuasive websites and campaigns tap into all three decision-making parts of


your brain.


Now that you've had a crash course in how the human mind works, I want to introduce


you to the seven techniques that will boost your campaign's effectiveness, boost the persuasiveness


of your websites.


Have you ever seen somebody staring up in the sky and you kind of walk along and you


look up too because you're just wondering what they're staring at?


Right?


Well, online we do the same type of thing.


Online when we're not sure about making a purchase decision, we look to others to see


what they're doing.


And this is social proof.


So I go to Amazon and I type in kids' books and this one pops up.


And this is the one that I pay attention to in the search results.


Why?


Because it's got this bestseller badge.


That's the Mean Girls badge.


It says, oh, I'm oh so popular.


And then I say, okay, well, it's a bestseller.


Must be worthwhile.


Lots of people have bought it.


Okay.


What's a star rating?


Oh, pretty good ratings.


Four and a half out of five stars.


But how many people have actually bought this book?


1,400 people have loved reading about Dragon's Love Tacos.


This must be worthwhile.


Sold.


And you know what?


On a side note, I spent so much money collecting these examples for you today.


So reviews, star rankings, the like button, even testimonials on your own site, they're


all so popular just for this reason.


And so I go to Facebook.


Right?


And people like my friend's video of her kid in gymnastics class.


Oh, it must be worth my time to watch it.


2,100 people like the rug that I pinned on Pinterest.


Woo!


I have good taste.


Little confirmation bias there.


Back to an Amazon example, I like this rice cooker.


It's a little more expensive than the Dragon's Love Tacos book.


So I'm probably going to read some reviews.


As a customer, I'll probably only read the top reviews and the bottom reviews.


Probably will totally ignore the reviews in the middle.


And guess what Amazon does that is so smart.


They pull them out for you.


Top positive review, top critical review.


This is so smart because it saves your customer clicks and times and gets you to that conversion


faster.


This is an example that drives engagement with social proof.


This is from Neil Patel's website.


100,000 monthly visitors.


It must be worthwhile.


I should put my email in there.


The most persuasive sites, though, they're not just talking about how many people in


general have done something.


They connect with you in terms of your friends, people you know, or people who you think are


going to be like you.


Have you ever seen these little cards in hotel bathrooms, the ones that say, save the planet,


reuse your towels?


Well, in 2008, there was a study done by Goldstein and Chaldini, and they played with the messaging


on these little cards.


They had messages like help the hotel save energy.


And then they played with some messages with some social proof.


75% of guests at this hotel reused their towels, and then 75% of guests who have stayed in


this room specifically reused their towels.


Check out the towel reuse rates.


It's incredible, right?


Just a little bit of social proof, and people respond.


The same goes for websites.


Here's an example of a candidate's website, and it's not just the fact that 5 million


people have liked this site.


It's the fact that my buddy Rob and 52 of my other friends have liked this site.


That's social proof.


On the Red Cross's site, on their volunteer page, 25,000 people have donated, and then


specifically they're targeting nurses and nursing students to volunteer.


So 15,000 nurses and nursing students have volunteered.


If you are a nurse or a nursing student, you will say, hey, those are my people, and you'll


be more likely to volunteer because of that messaging.


Here's the Moz page.


There's some great targeted social proof going on here.


35,000 customers?


Well done, Rand.


What can you say?


Yeah.


But check this out.


Look at all these different logos that are up here.


These may not be the biggest or most recognizable names, but they're likely, and tell me if


I'm wrong, they're likely similar to the type of customers that Moz wants to target in the


future.


Right?


Rand says yes.


Scarcity.


So another way to encourage social proof that's slightly nuanced is scarcity.


This taps into a slightly different part of the brain, though, whereas social proof tapped


into your emotional brain, this is more hitting that survival brain.


Ooh, something's running out.


It might hurt me.


I need to go get it.


And also your rational brain.


So this is like another, you're about to make this decision.


This is another reason to actually convert.


So I'm sure you've all seen this on airline websites where they say only two seats left.


It's even more powerful when I got this message as I'm looking at an airline flight.


Only two seats left and 3,000 other people are shopping for this exact same flight right


now.


You better get on that.


It's a nice little comparison, and we'll talk about comparison in a few slides.


What's even more powerful is that Orbitz takes this a step further and gives your survival


brain a reason to breathe easy.


Less risk.


You can cancel within 24 hours.


I'll definitely book it now.


I can cancel within 24 hours.


Yet another reason to purchase.


There's also a time-sensitive nature to scarcity.


This sale ends on September 6th.


Check this out.


You're going to count down and note that it's counting down by seconds because you're not


going to stay on here and watch it count.


You're not going to stay on here for a full minute and watch it.


Wiggly stuff is distracting and your eye goes right to it, so you're going to watch the


seconds maybe and look to pay attention a little bit more if it's counting down in seconds.


Amazon shouts, limited time offer.


How about this one?


Deal of the day with another countdown.


Rooms are filling up quick.


Better snag yours while they last.


So what's worse than almost losing something?


Losing it.


We hate to lose.


In fact, it feels worse to lose than it feels good to gain.


That's the basis of the prospect theory or loss aversion.


It's connected to the survival part of your brain again that doesn't like us to take risks.


Imagine you're in the market for a car.


You see, oh, let me go back.


You're in the market for a car and ooh, it's a fancy example.


So you go and you, to one of these car websites and you're building your personal car and


you come to this and it says panorama roof.


And you're thinking, wow, I've already built a bunch of this car.


It's pretty expensive.


Yeah, I could skip the panorama roof.


But what happens if it's already checked?


It's already on your car, your personal built car.


How would it change?


Well, in my experience, people are 14 times less likely to uncheck the box.


They don't want to lose that panorama roof because it's already in their car.


People hate to lose even when it's not really theirs to lose.


On benefits.gov, I wanted to use at least one government example.


On benefits.gov, it says their goal here is to get you to click on this big yellow button


that says start benefits finder and take a five-minute survey to find out what government


benefits you're eligible for.


So let's look at the copy.


It says looking for benefits, answer questions to find out which government benefits you


may be eligible to receive.


Okay.


Well, it's plain English.


I'll give them that.


But there's no emotional triggers at all in there.


Let's throw some loss aversion in there.


This is how I might change it.


Don't leave your government benefits on the table.


Your benefits.


They're yours and you're about to lose them.


Loss aversion.


And then let's add in some social proof and call out some audiences specifically.


Veteran, student, foster parent, low income.


Take our questionnaire to find out what government benefits you're eligible to receive.


That's going to get them more clicks.


And now what happens if people click that button and then they're dropping off the survey?


They're not staying for the full five minutes to complete the survey?


What could we do then?


Well, we can compare that five minutes to something that seems a lot longer.


And that's the next technique, comparison.


We've got to make five minutes seem longer.


And here's how we could do it.


Oh, wow, I'm going to have to read this real small for me.


Finding government benefits you're entitled to is not easy.


You'd have to dig through hundreds of government sites.


It would take you forever.


Now we're comparing five minutes to forever.


So five minutes seems like a really short amount of time.


You might not even find what you're looking for.


On benefits.gov, we put an end to that.


We've consolidated the benefits from hundreds of government sites into one place.


And all you have to do is answer a five-minute survey.


Let's do this.


People are willing to spend the time when they're interested.


But the setup's important.


Another comparison example can be found in numbers.


And sometimes with numbers, it's called anchoring.


You'll see that sometimes.


$19.99 is crossed out.


You will only pay $16.26 for this Lego set.


Some websites show you the amount that you're saving in dollars.


Some will show you the amount that you're saving in percentages.


Now this example specifically combines scarcity and comparison for this.


Sorry, not scarcity.


This comparison with an emotional element.


Exclusivity.


Take a look at this.


You will only get this good price if you're a VIP member.


Ooh, doesn't that make you feel special that you're a VIP member and you get this good


price?


This is an example from Shoe Dazzle.


The next technique is called association.


And we heard a fantastic presentation earlier today from Kindra telling us how powerful


storytelling is.


Now if you take that powerful story and you associate it with a visual, even in whether


it's a photo or a video, it makes it really, really powerful.


Here's an example from St. Jude's donation page.


Now most donation pages typically just have a form.


It's got your name, your e-mail, your credit card information, your address maybe, the


amount that you're going to donate.


And St. Jude's has all that, but it's just below a story.


And this is a story about a child named Jordan.


Now you're reading about Jordan and suddenly your donation is not cash.


You're not donating cash.


You're donating thermometers for kids like Jordan.


You're donating bone marrow needles and platelet count tests and pediatric crutches for kids


like Jordan.


When you think about St. Jude's, you'll remember this picture of Jordan and you'll remember


her story.


That's association.


Here's an example from a B2B website.


This photo, this is a company that sells new mother coaching services to companies.


And this photo beautifully illustrates the story it's trying to sell.


Moms get it done.


How many of you are new or have been a new parent and you remember the juggle that it


is?


This photo represents that.


And it really associates well with the story.


It makes your emotional brain say, hey, we need this for our company.


We're going to go straight to our HR department and tell them we need this.


And then your rational brain kicks in and it's saying things like, well, it will probably


increase retention.


It costs two to three times a person's salary to replace them.


It will boost morale.


It complements our diversity initiatives.


Oh, yeah, that's right.


That's a good decision to go to HR and say we need this.


Story plus picture.


That's association.


Now, how many of you by show of hands have heard of a company called Pong Cases?


So this is a cell phone case company that makes a cell phone case that protects you


against radiation.


Sounds gimmicky, right?


Well it's not.


It's apparently the only one that's been proven in independent FCC labs to actually redirect


the radiation away from your head when you're talking on the phone.


How do they show that it's not a hoax?


By showing where they're featured in.


The Wall Street Journal, Wired, USA Today, Fast Company, Time, these are big names.


This is the authority principle.


And it satisfies your survival brain and says this won't hurt me.


It's not a hoax.


In the same way, a website like wagefiring.com faces damaged credibility with these cheesy


stock photos and those huge buttons with the weird monospace font on them.


But what it does have going for it are these official IRS badges.


This is a legitimate company.


That's the authority principle.


Some companies are trying to be their own authority.


This is Amazon's choice.


And when you scroll over it says Amazon's choice for Legos.


It can also be found in URLs, the HTTPS, the lock symbol, the word secure.


Now the next and final technique that we'll talk about is reasons.


And we've hit on this a little bit when we were talking about the rational brain before.


If you your rational brain creates reasons that support the decision you've already made


with your emotional brain.


So if you on your website, especially near a call to action, provide a reason, your rational


brain doesn't have to think quite so much.


It quickly says yes, that's the reason.


So this first example is Intel's payroll website.


It uses some nice social proof.


Most popular it says.


And then reasons, two reasons right there to click on that button.


This is hip camp.


Gives you a whole list of reasons.


One of the reasons is actually in the call to action button.


On REI's website the reasons are just below the button.


It doesn't actually matter what the reason is so much.


Just the fact that it's there and it's near the call to action button helps the rational


brain.


Actually it's sort of like the tipping point to making that decision, to clicking on that


button.


Now there's another nuance that most digital marketers don't know and it's the word because.


The word because sets off a special trigger in your mind.


The rational brain thinks oh, a reason is coming and it pays more attention.


So use the word because in your copy.


It works.


Now when you're putting these reasons on your website, if you can put them in a video, 64%


more buy after watching a video.


Now it doesn't have to be boring.


Video product descriptions can be really fun.


Here's an example from Zappos that fits perfectly with their brand personality.


Hey it's Junus Zappos.com with the Puma Speedcat.


This shoe has soft suede pigskin and a full grain leather upper and comes in many colors


as well.


This shoe is very flexible which will give you freedom on the pedal.


This shoe has textile lining and a removable insole.


It's fast too.


Puma logo here.


And a Puma logo here.


Okay.


It goes on and on.


Go Google it.


It's funny.


So another one that does this really well is Theory 11 and they craft beautiful product


descriptions where they're not describing it like Zappos, they're actually showing you


how to use the product.


So let's take a look.


There we go.


on this for low key like three or four years now.


So I'm excited to push it out and let you guys enjoy it.


Peace.


So that not only told you a story associated


the video with the story, but it also showed you


a product description.


Now, there are a lot of psychological techniques


out there.


And sometimes people ask me, how many should I use on my site?


Should I throw them all onto one site or just use a couple?


And it all depends.


I know that's the consulting response.


But it all depends.


What works for me is to figure out the journey of the user


and where they are in their decision-making journey


at any given time, at any given goal point,


or a place where you're having an issue on your site,


and figure out are they at a point


where they're using their survival brain,


or just arrived, or are they making an emotional decision


at that moment, or are they actually,


I thought they already made the decision.


They're just trying to justify it.


So survival brain, emotional brain, rational brain.


Now, let's look at a site that actually I


found one site that uses all of the techniques


that we've talked about today.


So we'll take a quick look at that.


This is called Ride.


It's a website that sells a bike that can on-demand switch to,


it's a normal bicycle that can on-demand switch


to an electric bike.


So it'll go and you don't have to pedal.


Immediately when you go to this site,


you feel this sense of movement and freedom.


You see Social Proof.


They're specifically targeting young urban professionals.


That's exactly who you're seeing in this video.


Then it gets into Reason, Sweating Optional.


Kind of a funny reason.


Some specs.


It says things like it can go up to 20 miles an hour,


25 mile radius.


There's theft insurance provided.


There's tech specs at the top.


Next, you see some scarcity.


On that top banner right there, it


says that the August and September production


runs sold out.


So you better book your spot now.


If you've never heard of Ride before,


here's where it's featured in.


Authority.


Ride is $79 per month, which may seem like a lot


until you compare it to the alternatives of owning


a car, public transportation, or ride share taxi service.


Here's the association piece.


They tell a story about how each bike is handcrafted,


and they show a video of it, association.


The scarcity continues through checkout.


Oops.


Scarcity continues through checkout,


where $79 just doesn't buy your bike.


It actually puts you on a waiting list for a bike.


Your ride is waiting.


Don't miss out.


Loss aversion.


Take a test ride.


That's so you can get emotionally connected


to the bike, and then you don't want to lose it.


It's your bike.


So now that you understand how the human mind makes decisions,


you understand these techniques, whether you're


trying to persuade a two-year-old


or whether you're trying to persuade


your digital customers, go ahead.


Play mind games.


Because more persuasive experiences await.


Thank you.


#WhiteboardFriday: How to Get Your Web Dev on Board with SEO

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


Today we're talking all about how to get your web dev on board with SEO.


So really excited, I think you'll notice my biggest point here,


and I couldn't feel more strongly about the fact that we really do have so much to learn from developers, it's wild.


So hopefully this video helps kind of open some of your minds or expand some of the ways in which you can do that,


because it'll make you a lot stronger.


So first and foremost, create a genuine relationship with the developers you work with.


Better understand their role and how they're measuring their own success.


Know what languages they program in.


Better understanding their perspective and their opinion on things helps you create a better working relationship.


And part of that is cultivating trust.


And one of the ways in which I've found some success cultivating that trust is just admitting when I have no idea how to implement a particular SEO fix.


Or even when I sort of think that I do, I prefer to ask, you know, what is the best way you see this being implemented?


How would you most efficiently implement this change or optimization?


And more frequently than not, they will have a way better way to make these website changes because they have that back end knowledge of the website.


So, you know, being humble, kind of expressing that you don't know everything,


you're not trying to step in and tell them how to program pages or how to fix that.


It should be way more of a communication and a transaction of just information from both sides.


Learning from developers, like I said, it helps you become a much, much stronger SEO.


I promise you it is one of my most favorite things working here at Moz.


I have learned so much from the developers here.


Likewise, some of the developers have learned things from myself and other fellow SEOs that work here.


Right? This is a, you know, a symbiotic working relationship where developers want to program sites and pages that do well in search.


Right? And I think it's part of your job to express and communicate the potential value of a well-crafted webpage.


Right? Show them how much more powerful their code and their work can be if set up properly


or set up with thinking about, you know, JavaScript and Google crawling, different aspects of it.


That's what makes it a really efficient working relationship.


And be open to just learning new things from your developers.


Number three, be a champion of the developers you work with.


Right? Understand what it is they're trying to accomplish.


And if there's any way you can help support that or consider that in your work and the things, you know, you're making progress on, it's a win-win.


Right? This is a common problem and something that a lot of people ask about is creating this workflow or process in which you can keep an eye on dev changes.


For really large websites, this can get unwieldy.


So it can be difficult to keep an eye on changes that might affect SEO.


But if you can have that conversation with a developer, a team of developers that you work with on what's the best way to manage this.


Right? Can you add me to GitHub so I can look at things that are getting pushed or whatever that might be.


It can really help create, you know, this space where you're doing preventative SEO.


Right? You're making sure that nothing goes terribly wrong in the future and kind of makes it more manageable in the long run.


Share your SEO wins with the developers, especially when they've helped you and maybe provided better solutions.


You should absolutely thank them and what a great opportunity to sort of share in those wins and continue to grow that working relationship.


And lastly, you know, ask for feedback. If you feel like you're struggling to communicate with a group of developers or a single developer,


just be honest and ask, you know, use some radical candor and ask, you know, how can I better work with you?


How can I better support you? And opening that up for some feedback can also help to strengthen the relationship.


And then the one last thing that I hope you can really leverage as a tool to grow in your SEO efforts


and to help you get more things done with the development teams is the developers cheat sheet to SEO.


Right? This is a great resource to open up this conversation with developers,


to sit down and have a conversation about why some of these things are important to you as an SEO and what comes to mind when they look at it.


Right? They have a totally different perspective on a lot of the things within this sheet.


And so it's a great opportunity for you to sit down and have those conversations and be able to excel in your SEO efforts.


So I hope some of this helps. I think it's one of the most important things in getting SEO work done and seeing that success.


So please let me know what you think down below in the comments.


I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this, what's worked for you, what hasn't worked for you, what other questions you have.


Daily SEO Fix: General Question About SEO Reporting

Hi, I'm Varun and I'm a Non-Mooring Specialist at Moz.


Today, I'll be showing you a few tips and tricks by which you can create reports on


the Moz Pro.


Let's jump in the door.


There are many different ways by which you can create reports on the Moz Pro.


For example, if you want to report on the performance of your tracked keywords, you


can simply go to rankings.


You need to scroll down where you could see all the keywords and then select export CSV


option here.


If you want to filter out the keywords before you export them, you can use these filters


to filter the keywords out by text, location or label.


And once you have the filtered results down here, then you can export to CSV.


To report on your site crawl issues, you can go to site crawl section in the tool and scroll


down where you could see all the issues and then select export to CSV option.


In this particular category, if you want to report on the site crawl issues by category,


then you will need to scroll up where you could see all the issues by category.


And just for instance, if I have to report on the redirect issues, I'll click on that


particular category here, scroll down where I could see all the issues and then I can


export to CSV.


On almost every page of the site crawl, you'll see this option to export to PDF.


So every page you see in the site crawl area, you can export that page in a PDF format and


save it.


You can also report on your links by simply going to the link section and then you can


use either of these two options, export CSV or export PDF.


If you want to have all of this data into one single report, then you can go to the


custom report section and from here you click on the create or schedule PDF report.


From this section, you can either choose to start from scratch or you can select from


one of the pre-med templates that we already have here.


These templates will only be available to you when you are on a medium or a higher plan.


And once you are done creating the report, you can then click on create report and this


way you will be able to schedule the report to be sent over to your colleagues or your


clients on a weekly or monthly basis.


I hope that this video has been helpful.


Remember, if you want to look into any of it further and need someone to speak about


it, then you can book a one-to-one walkthrough with one of our OnBottom specialists as we


are here to help you in understanding the tool as well as make you realize the value


this tool can bring to your business.


Blue Ocean SEO Strategy — Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans, welcome back to another Whiteboard Friday.


I am PJ Howland.


I am the head of SEO and Evergreen content at leaders.com.


So my background is kind of that sweet spot right in between if you've got SEO over here


and content and editorial over here, that middle ground where SEO and editorial content


collide.


And if you're familiar with that world, you know that we are dealing with thinner margins,


we have fewer resources, and we have less clear direction.


So this is the world we operate in.


It's a place where we're trying to just get a little bit of an advantage over our competitors.


And it's kind of created this fixed mindset of just trying to scrape by to just get a


little bit of an advantage.


However, I think that there's a mindset that can really help break this mold to make sure


that every single month is actually your best month ever.


And so it's the Blue Ocean SEO strategy.


So what is Blue Ocean SEO strategy?


Well, start with what Blue Ocean strategy is.


Maybe you've read the book Blue Ocean Strategy, maybe you've heard the term thrown around,


maybe you haven't heard of it at all.


Give me just one minute and I'll kind of explain this with a story.


So back in the days when circuses were traveling the countryside, there were two predominant


circuses Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey.


And they would spend lots of time, energy, resources trying to one up each other.


They were producing who can have crazier stunts, who can have weirder clowns, who can have


more eccentric animal tricks or whatever.


And it got to the point to where they were competing so hard with each other that they


forgot what their customers really cared about.


And the sentiments of the day were that, hey, we don't want to see multiple rings.


We don't like looking everywhere.


Put it back down to one ring.


We don't like the animal tricks.


They're cruel.


They're outdated.


But these circuses were so fixed on competing each other that both of them ended up losing


out.


And then who should come along?


This new player Cirque du Soleil.


Now, if you've been to a Cirque du Soleil show, you probably know where I'm going with


this.


It's unlike a traditional circus.


In fact, it's unlike anything else out there.


But what they did do is they took what worked and excluded what didn't work from a traditional


circus.


So they cut out the cruel animal acts.


They also kept in the clowns and the acrobats because those were working in the traditional


And they brought in this kind of third heat of this theater element, this fine theater


experience.


And if you've been to a Cirque show, you know what I'm talking about.


There's definitely a narrative there.


And so what they've done is they've created a blue ocean.


They've created a world where there really is no direct apples to apples competitors.


Now Cirque du Soleil isn't the only player out there who's done this.


We could talk about iTunes.


What were your options before iTunes?


Netflix.


Same thing.


Before Netflix was on the scene, where were you watching your stuff?


Airbnb.


You see where I'm going with this at all three of these businesses or products launch, there


really wasn't anything out there.


It was a true blue ocean.


So how do we get that from an SEO perspective?


Well, we need to start by realizing where SEO is right now.


So SEO is a fixed mindset game.


Inherently it is a red ocean strategy.


And if you don't believe me, let me illustrate it this way.


You have this situation where you've got a keyword, you look at your competitor and you


see, hey, they've got 100 links and you say, big deal.


I'll get 200 links.


Their site speed score is 80.


I'm going to make it 90.


We're going to have 90.


They write 1500 words.


You see where I'm going with this.


We write 2,500 words.


That's not really, that's not blue ocean thinking.


That is fixed red ocean fierce competition mindset thinking.


But it's where a lot of SEOs find themselves.


Heck, I've been there.


That is essentially skyscraper content.


It's skyscraper article building.


And hey, there's been a place for that, but at its core, it really is red ocean fixed


mindset thinking.


So how do we get over that?


How do we as SEOs, digital marketers, content marketers, how do we get over the fact that


we're playing a red ocean game?


Well, it starts with the customer.


So picture this.


Picture you're sitting down with a customer, except you're not a marketer anymore.


You maybe work on the fulfillment or service or product side and you sit down with them


and you say, hey, we are enhancing our product, our service, our fulfillment.


What is going to make it a better solution for you?


And just picture a great conversation where they're going back and forth to you.


You collect valuable insight and at the end you produce a better product and that customer


is grateful for it.


Now picture that same customer, except swap out yourself as a product marketer and now


you're a marketer marketer and you're talking about your SEO strategy and you say, hey,


so what we do is we look at the competitors and we add more words.


We see the links that they build and we add more links.


What do you think of that?


How does that benefit you?


The customer is going to look at you and say, that doesn't help me at all.


That's not what I asked for.


That's not what I want.


That's not the deal of how businesses work.


You're here to make my world easier.


And truth be told, when we add more words to a page, sometimes we're just making more


words out there.


You know what I mean?


It's something that the customers don't want to deal with.


So we live in this reality though where as SEOs, as editorial professionals, as content


marketers, we're in this place where we're tasked with almost an impossible task.


How do we deliver exceptional content when the people producing that, maybe it's an SEO,


maybe it's a writer, aren't necessarily the subject matter experts.


So it starts with what you give the writer or the SEO to actually begin this project.


And so I've found so many people start with, they just say, hey, here's the keyword.


Go for it.


We're trying to rank for this.


Just get that piece of content out.


And inevitably you will produce a skyscraper piece of content with that.


That sets everyone up for failure.


Nobody wins when all you do is start off with a keyword.


Instead, what I have found is it really takes detailed write-ups that begin with interviews


with subject matter experts.


My interviews that, or my outlines that I produce with my team, I've never seen one


under two pages.


Most of them are between three to five pages that we produce for these individual topics.


That all has to come from your own insight with your team.


I can't really produce what your customer wants.


That's something I invite you to figure out on your own.


However, I have found that customers, no matter what industry you're in, I don't care if it's


B2B, B2C, I don't care if you're selling SaaS or if you've got an e-commerce platform, whatever.


The person that says, yes, I want to buy that is always a person.


Ten times out of ten, you're dealing with people.


So what do people want?


People want reality.


They want authenticity.


There are three things that I think can help anyone regardless of the industry that you're


in boost up your content.


When I'm talking about content, that could be articles, it could be blog posts, it could


be landing pages, it could be white papers, whatever.


The point is that people want reality.


Here's how I've been able to find really good delivery methods for this.


Stories.


My world is a lot more article focused, but we try to start every article with a story.


People love that.


I find a much higher time on page when we lead out with stories.


And I know what you're thinking is like, well, Wikipedia is someone we're competing against


so they don't start with a story.


Nobody starts with a story.


Okay.


Decide if you want to be a Red Ocean player or a Blue Ocean player.


The next thing is advice.


Now, again, going back to the reality of it is that we're dealing with situations where


we've got writers who aren't subject matter experts.


That's okay.


Nobody's in trouble for that reality of the situation.


But it does matter that you seek that advice out.


So schedule interviews with subject matter experts and buy your team a book.


Have a book club within your organization.


Make sure that you're building expertise within your group.


And finally, examples.


People want reality.


They want authenticity.


If you have customer data, if you have case studies, I don't think you should be gating


all of that necessarily.


There's a great use case to be made for just letting that stuff out there.


People want to see real examples happening in the wild.


So you come up with this Blue Ocean strategy that only you can produce because you should


know your customer better than me and you want to figure out how to measure it.


Well, if you've been doing content marketing for more than, I don't know, the last 30 minutes,


you know that there's a big gap between the first piece of content produced and the dollars


in the pocket of the organization.


There's a lot that happens in between there.


So how do you actually make sure that you can come through on this with proper measurement?


I have found that time on page is the first thing that goes up.


So before we kind of rolled out this with leaders.com, we were seeing average time on


page between three and a half to four minutes.


You know, not good, not bad, fine, whatever.


But after rolling this out, we're seeing average time on page of between five and a half to


six and a half minutes.


I have pages that are almost 3000 words in length that actually get read.


We have articles that have average time on page of eight minutes or higher.


And that's a really validating thing.


And I believe that after time on page goes up, then you can start seeing if your rankings


and traffic go up.


Now you can see right here, there's no tinfoil hat.


I'm not making a direct insinuation that there is a correlation between time on page and


the rankings that Google is going to hand out to you.


What I am saying is that good content gets noticed.


And when it gets noticed, you're going to see those links come in.


And you see how this works.


We're starting, we're starting backwards, right?


Like a lot of the times we lead off with saying, I want more links, but in reality, is that


really going to serve us?


I would rather play a game where links come as a byproduct of good content.


So what's really the takeaway here?


I think it's a mindset takeaway.


In my organization, we've buried skyscraper content.


It's dead.


It's in the ground.


Now it doesn't mean we don't look at competitors.


Obviously that would be silly not to do.


We're an SEO.


However, I think that if you want to really transition to a blue ocean limitless mindset,


there has to be some kind of reality check where you say, hey, at some point I'm not


going to be listening to the competitors for every little word that I write on my webpage.


Thanks for watching the video today.


I look forward to hearing your comments.


For anyone that's done this type of shift in their organization, look forward to engaging


with you in a good discussion in the comments below.


Thanks for stopping by today.


Should SEOs and Marketers Continue to Track and Report on Keyword Rankings? - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about keyword ranking reports.


So there have been a few articles that have come out recently on a number of big industry


sites around whether SEOs should still be tracking their keyword rankings.


And I want to be clear, Moz has a little bit of a vested interest here.


And so the question is, can you actually trust me, who obviously I'm a big shareholder in


Moz, and I'm the founder, and so I care a lot about how Moz does his software business,


we help people track rankings, does that mean I'm biased?


I'm going to do my best not to be.


So rather than saying you absolutely should track rankings, I'm instead going to address


what most of these articles have brought up as the problems of rank tracking, and then


talk about some solutions by which you can do this.


My suspicion is you should probably be rank tracking.


I think that if you turn it off and you don't do it, it's very hard to get a lot of the


value that we need as SEOs, a lot of the intelligence.


It's true there are challenges with keyword ranking reports, but not true enough to avoid


doing it entirely.


We still get too much value from them.


So let's start with the case against keyword ranking data.


First off, keyword ranking reports are inaccurate.


There's personalization, localization, and device type, and that biases, right?


That has removed what is the one true ranking.


We've done a bunch of analyses of these, and this is absolutely the case.


Personalization turns out doesn't change ranking that much on average.


For an individual, it can change rankings dramatically.


If they visited your website before, right, that they could be historically biased to


you, or if they visited your competitors, they could be biased.


Their previous search history might have biased them in a single session, those kinds of things.


But with the removal of Google Plus from search results, personalization is actually not as


dramatically changing as it used to be.


Localization though, still huge, absolutely, and device differences, still huge.


But we can address this.


The way to do that is by tracking these things separately.


So here you can see I've got a ranking report that shows me my mobile rankings versus my


desktop rankings.


I think this is absolutely essential, especially if you're getting a lot of traffic from both


mobile and desktop search.


You need to be tracking those separately.


Super smart.


Of course we should do that.


We can do the same thing on the local side as well.


I can say here, look, this is how I rank in Seattle.


Here's how I rank in Minneapolis.


Here's how I rank in the U.S. with no geographic personalization if Google were to do that.


Those types of rankings can also be pretty good.


It is true that local rank tracking has gotten a little more challenging, but we've seen


that folks like, well, Moz itself, but folks like GetStat, SERPs.com, SearchMetrics, they


have all adjusted their rank tracking methodologies in order to have accurate local rank tracking.


It's pretty good.


Same with device type.


Pretty darn good.


All right, B. Another big problem that is expressed by a number of folks here is we


no longer know how much traffic an individual keyword sends.


Because we don't know how much an individual keyword sends, we can't really say what's


the value of ranking for that keyword.


Therefore, why bother to even track keyword rankings?


I think this is a little bit of spurious logic.


The leap there doesn't quite make sense to me, but I will say this.


If you don't know which keywords are sending you traffic specifically, you still know which


pages are receiving search traffic.


That is reported.


You can get it in your Google Analytics or your Omniture Report, whatever you're using,


and then you can tie that back to keyword ranking reports showing which pages are receiving


traffic from which keywords.


Most all of the rank tracking platforms, Moz included, has a report that shows you something


like this.


It says here are the keywords that we believe are likely to have sent these percentages


of traffic to this page based on the keywords that you're tracking, based on the pages that


are ranking for them, and how much search traffic those pages receive.


Let's track that.


We can look at pages receiving visits from search, and we can look at which keywords


they rank for, and then we can tie those together, which gives us the ability to then make not


only a report like this, but a report that estimates the value contributed by content


and by pages rather than by individual keywords.


In a lot of ways, this is almost superior to our previous methodology of tracking by


keyword.


Keyword can still be estimated through AdWords, through paid search, but this can be estimated


on a content basis, which means you get credit for how much value the page has created based


on all the search traffic that's flowed to it and where that sat in your attribution


life cycle of people visiting those pages.


All right, C. Another problem.


Pages often rank for keywords that they aren't specifically targeting, right, because Google's


gotten way better with user intent, and so it can be hard or even impossible to track


those rankings because we don't know what to look for.


Okay, I hear you.


That is a challenge.


This means basically what we have to do is broaden the set of keywords that we look at


and deal with the fact that we're going to have to do sampling, right?


We can't track every possible keyword unless you have a crazy budget, in which case, you


know, go talk to Rob Bucci up at Stat, and he will set you up with a huge campaign to


track all your millions of keywords.


But if you have a smaller budget, what you have to do is sample, and you sample by sets


of keywords like these are my high conversion keywords, right?


I'm going to assume I have a flower delivery business, so flower delivery and floral gifts


and flower arrangements for offices.


My long tail keywords like artisan rose varieties and floral alternatives for special occasions,


and my branded keywords like rants flowers or flowers by rant.


I can create a bunch of different buckets like this, sample the keywords that are in


them, and then I can track each of these separately, and now I can see, ah, these are sets of keywords


where I've generally been moving up and receiving more traffic.


These are sets of keywords where I've generally been moving down.


These are sets of keywords that perform better or worse on mobile or desktop or better or


worse in these geographic areas.


Right now I can really start to get true intelligence from there.


Don't let your keyword targeting, your keyword targeting meaning which pages, what keywords


you're targeting on which pages determine what you rank track, or don't let it do that


exclusively.


Sure, go ahead and take that list and put that in there, but then also do some more


expansive keyword research to find those broad sets of search terms and phrases that you


should be monitoring.


Now we can really solve this issue.


All right, D. This one I think is a pretty insidious problem, but for many organizations,


ranking reports are more of a historical artifact.


We're not tracking them for a particular reason.


We're tracking them because that's what we've always tracked and or because we think we're


supposed to track them.


Those are terrible reasons to track things.


You should be looking for reasons of real value and actionability.


Let's give some examples here.


What I want you to do is identify the goals of rank tracking first.


What do I want to solve?


What would I do differently based on whether this data came back to me in one way or another?


If you don't have a great answer to that question, definitely don't bother tracking that thing.


That should be the rule of all analytics.


If your goal is to say, hey, I want to be able to attribute a search traffic gain or


a search traffic loss to what I've done on my site or what Google has changed out there,


that is crucially important.


I think that's core to SEO.


If you don't have that, I'm not sure how we can possibly do our jobs.


We attribute search traffic gains and losses by tracking broadly, a broad enough set of


keywords hopefully in enough buckets to be able to get a good sample set by tracking


the pages that receive that traffic so we can see if a page goes way down in its search


visits.


We can look at, oh, what was that page ranking for?


Oh, it was ranking for these keywords.


Oh, they dropped.


Or, no, they didn't drop, but you know what?


We looked in Google Trends and the traffic demand for those keywords dropped.


We know that this is a seasonality thing or a fluctuation in demand or those types of


topics.


And we can track by geography and device so that we can say, hey, we lost a bunch of traffic.


Oh, we're no longer mobile friendly.


That is a problem.


Or, hey, we're tracking and, hey, we're no longer ranking in this geography.


Oh, that's because these two competitors came in and they took over that market from us.


Second goal we could look at would be something like identify pages that are in need of work,


but they only require a small amount of work to have a big change in traffic.


So we could do things like track pages that rank on page two for given keywords.


If we have a bunch of those, we can say, hey, maybe just a few on-page tweaks, a few links


to these pages, and we could move up substantially.


We had a Whiteboard Friday where we talked about how you could do that with internal


linking previously and have seen some remarkable results there.


We can track keywords that rank in position four to seven on average.


Those are your big wins because if you can move up from position four, five, six, seven


to one, two, three, you can double, triple your search traffic that you're receiving


from keywords like that.


And you might as well – you should also track long-tail, untargeted keywords.


So if you've got a long-tail bucket like we've got up here, I can then say, aha, I don't


have a page that's even targeting any of these keywords.


I should make one.


I could probably rank very easily because I have an authoritative website and some good


content, and that's really all you might need.


The last goal that we might look at is some up-and-coming competitors.


I want to track who's in my space, who might be creeping up there, and so I should track


the most common domains that rank on page one or two across my keyword sets, and I can


track specific competitors.


I might say, hey, Joel's Flower Delivery Service looks like it's doing really well.


I'm going to set them up as a competitor, and I'm going to track their rankings specifically,


or I'm going to see – you could use something like SEMrush and see specifically what are


all the keywords they rank for that you don't rank for.


This type of data, in my view, is still tremendously important to SEO no matter what platform you're


using, but if you're having these problems or if these problems are being expressed to


you, now you have some solutions.


I look forward to your comments.


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


Keyword+Year Content Rankings Hack - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about what is sometimes known as the keyword plus year hack.


This is the idea that you take a keyword that has some existing search volume and you add


on a date, either a month or a month and a year, and you are able to outrank many of


the other players because it's a much less competitive space.


I'll show you what I'm talking about.


It helps to have an example.


So let's say there are a good number of people every year who search for the best web designs,


right?


They want to get design inspiration or they just want to see what's out there.


They're looking for the design gallery, so they search for best web designs.


Many times, though, those folks will get results from the last five to ten years and they'll


see those in there and they'll go, you know, I want something more modern, more updated.


And so they will revise their query to best web designs 2016.


In fact, many people even start with these queries, right?


So they want to see the top Android games of January 2017, right?


They want to see the best summer dishes 2017, right, for planning on cooking something.


They're looking for like something that is trendy.


Maybe they're looking around fashion or you see this a lot in searches around hairstyle


or anything that is grading products or services, right?


Who are the best real estate agents in Seattle?


No, no, not the 2012 edition of Seattle Met magazine.


I want 2017.


And so they'll add this year on there.


What's great is because this year or month only happens like as it happens, right, those


searches only happen as we get to that time period, the keyword research will not expose


it to you, right?


So if, for example, let's make this 2017, right, so best web designs 2017.


We're filming this Whiteboard Friday in January.


There have only just started to be a few searches for best web designs 2017.


There have only just started to be a few any keyword searches that include the word 2017


because 2017 has just started.


Therefore, your competitors are not seeing those in their keyword research list.


They're not targeting them.


There's not a ton of content out there yet.


And so it's easier.


Even though the volume tends to be lower, right, than the usual keyword, sometimes it's


higher but usually lower, you will find it is vastly easier to rank for.


And it's also the case, this is sort of beautiful, if you're using this tactic, even though it's


higher in volume to have best web designs versus best web designs 2017, the one without


the year, it is often the case that Google will bias to show more recent content, especially


if there are lots of searches that get revised to include the temporal number or date.


That is awesome because it means that you can win twice.


You can rank for this one, which of course the search volume for it will die off at the


end of the year, but you might be able to rank for this one as well.


And if you keep that updated, right, and change it up and add to it, retire the old one, move


the old one over to an old URL, put the new one up at the new URL, or keep the same URL


if you're trying to build on top of the link authority that you've built to that URL, you


can have some awesome ranking and traffic power.


How do you do this?


Well, so you want to conduct the keyword research without using the date, right?


So I'm going to start with non-date keywords.


So if I'm in Keyword Explorer or if I'm doing my keyword research in AdWords or wherever


I am, right, I would search for best web design, get a big list of my target keywords.


Then I would go look at last year numbers.


So for example, I would search for 2016 best web design or best web design 2016 or anything


from my keyword export or list that includes years.


I would go two and three years ago so that I could get a sense for the volume that includes


the year.


I would also be looking for month at this time.


Then I'd use Google Trends or if you're not a fan of Google Trends, they can be a little


squirrelly with some data.


SimilarWeb and Jumpshot also have keyword trend data at least at the head of the demand


curve that can be good and try and identify some of that seasonality.


If you see that there's a high season that includes a particular month, that's often


an indication that month plus year could be there.


Then you can go and look in here, right?


I could add May 2016 best web design to see if there's actually search volume for just


the May keyword.


Then I'm going to use Google SERPs, right?


I'm going to check the keyword difficulty of those SERPs and I'd probably look to see


how many different outlets are producing monthly or annual content.


For annual content, it's really going to be very January and February centric.


That's when it all gets produced.


Then if it is underserved, right, that means there's more opportunity there.


But even still, it's almost always a lower difficulty, easier to get in there.


You want to target and create that timely content.


To do that, you're going to be using recent data.


I want to use, if I were creating a page to target best web design 2017, I would want


to use designs that have come out in the last month only or maybe just at the very end of


I want to employ emerging trends and language.


Maybe it's PWAs, right?


Maybe it is language around clean design, whatever the trends in the field are right


now.


Then I want to try and serve the recency of the searcher's intent by giving them the


ability or showing right up front that my data is and my information is very recent


and that I'm helping them with what's going on now, not just historically.


You want to publish this content as early as you can in the period without doing it


earlier, right?


What I don't want to do is have my launch be in December 2016.


December is a very quiet period anyway.


It's tough to get traction and attention.


It's tough to build links.


But it also can be the case that you won't hit the search algorithms' recency systems.


Google has these algorithms called the QDF, right?


Query Deserves Freshness.


If they see that you're producing that content a month or two months before it's actually


the right date, there's going to be skepticism both from users who might stumble upon it


or find it, but also from engines.


You want to publish early in the period but not any earlier than that.


With this tactic, yeah, you can hack your way to some pretty awesome traffic.


I look forward to hearing from all of you who have done this, who are trying it, and


hear your experiences.


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


SEO Best Practices for Canonical URLS + the Rel=Canonical Tag - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about some SEO best practices for canonicalization and use


of the rel canonical tag.


Before we do that, I think it pays to talk about what a canonical URL is, because a canonical


URL doesn't just refer to a page upon which we are targeting or using the rel canonical


tag.


Canonicalization has been around, in fact, much longer than the rel canonical tag itself,


which came out in 2009.


There are a bunch of different things that a canonical URL means.


First off, what we're trying to say is this URL is the one that we want Google and the


other search engines to index and to rank.


These other URLs that potentially have similar content or that are serving a similar purpose


or perhaps are exact duplicates, but for some reason we have additional URLs of them, those


ones should all tell the search engines, no, no, this guy over here is the one you want.


So for example, I've got a canonical URL, abc.com slash a, right?


Then I have a duplicate of that for some reason.


Maybe it's a historical artifact or a problem in my site architecture.


Maybe I intentionally did it.


Maybe I'm doing it for some sort of tracking or testing purposes.


But that URL is at abc.com slash b.


Then I have this other version, abc.com slash a, question mark ref equals Twitter.


What's going on there?


Well, that's a URL parameter.


The URL parameter doesn't change the content.


The content is exactly the same as a, but I really don't want Google to get confused


and rank this version, which can happen, by the way.


You'll see URLs that are not the original version that have some weird URL parameter


ranking in Google sometimes.


Sometimes this version gets more links than this version because it was shared on Twitter,


and so that's the one everybody picked up and copied and pasted and linked to.


That's all fine and well, so long as we canonicalize it.


Or this one, it's a print version.


It's abc.com slash a print dot HTML.


So in all of these cases, right, what I want to do is I want to tell Google, don't index