Fresh Web Explorer, which has quickly grown to become my favorite. I'm addicted to that


MozCon 2014 - 01 - Welcome! with Rand Fishkin

guy. We launched a new Moz bar about a month ago. We launched some help with Not Provided


a few weeks back through the landing pages report that kind of predictably shows which


keywords are sending traffic probably to your sites and pages. And today we actually launched


something new. It's been a while since we had a MozCon launch. This is the new action


dashboard, which you'll find inside Moz Analytics. Your data may not be in there until the end


of the week, but it might be. And you can talk to Matt Brown. He'd love to chat with


you about this. And Moz has, in my opinion, a big challenge ahead of it. And that big


challenge is to take on to become the promise of what we can become. I have never worked


with more talented people than I work with today. I think the team is just extraordinary.


As is proven by all of you here today, our community, the demand for great software in


this industry, the demand for great content in this industry has never been stronger.


And I think we have an obligation to live up to that potential. I'm excited and scared


and hopeful about that challenge. So you all need to get ready for an amazing


MozCon. It is going to be amazing. We've got seriously our most impressive speaker lineup


yet. And we try and top that every year looking for people from all across the marketing world


and technology worlds. Some new faces, some old favorites. You're going to see some seriously


How to Deliver JSON-LD Recommendations the Easy Way - Whiteboard Friday

Hello Moz fans, my name is Serge, I'm a consultant at Distilled and this is another edition of


Whiteboard Friday. Today I want to take the next few minutes to talk to you about one


of my processes for delivering JSON-LD recommendations. Now it's worth noting up front that at Distilled


we work with a lot of large clients that have a lot of pages on their website, you know,


thousands, hundreds and thousands of pages. So if you work at an agency that works with


local businesses or smaller clients, this process may be a bit overkill but I hope you


find some use in it regardless. So as I mentioned, oftentimes at Distilled we get clients that


have, you know, hundreds and thousands of pages on their site and you can imagine if


your point of contact comes to you and essentially asks, hey, we don't have any markup on our


site, can you recommend all the JSON-LD on all the pages, please. If you're anything


like me, that could be a bit daunting, right, like that's a big ask and you can kind of


start, your wheels start spinning so to speak and oftentimes that leads to a little bit


of unproductivity. So I hope this process kind of helps get you unstuck and get started


and get to work. The first step in this process essentially is to list out all the templates


on the site. I'm assuming you're going to be dealing with, you know, an e-commerce site


or something like that and that's really the way that you're going to break down this problem


and take it from kind of a larger picture where someone comes to you and says, hey,


I need all the things on all the things and you break it down and say, okay, well really


what I need to focus on is a section at a time and what I need to do is give recommendations


for each section at a time. And to me that's a much more kind of organized way to come


at this and it's helped me a lot. So when you list out the templates, if you've had


this client for a while, you probably already know the templates that they have. If they're


new it's worth getting familiar with their site and thinking about things at a template


level regardless. So just simply hopping on the site, browsing around and making a list


of, you know, yeah, they have product pages and category pages and some different variations


of those. They have blog pages and a bunch of other kinds of pages and it's good to be


familiar with them. Our goal is to essentially recommend JSON-LD for each of those templates.


So that's really the first step is getting clear on which templates we're looking at


and what exists on the site. The second step is to choose one of those templates, just


one, and for example like the product page template and essentially go through that page


and jot down anything you think that can be marked up. Now if you've recommended Schema


before, if you've worked with JSON-LD or any kind of markup, you'd be familiar with a lot


of the kind of standards across the board and it does get familiar over time. So, you


know, once you do this your second time or third time or tenth time, you'll have a good


idea of what kind of markup goes on a product page or what kind of markup goes on a category


page. If it's your first time, just go on the page and I'd encourage you to just browse


through and look at schema.org or some other example sites that are similar, see what they're


doing and kind of jot down by yourself, you know, in a notebook or something, what you


think can be marked up. So on a product page you can note down that, yeah, you know, there's


an image of the product, there's a price, there's a URL, there are breadcrumbs on the


page, there are reviews, et cetera. And you're just going through and kind of making a list


of that very simply. The next step is to essentially take those notes and convert them into JSON-LD.


And at this point people tend to kind of, you know, freak out a little bit but you don't


have to be a developer to do this, it's very accessible. If this is your first time going


about it, I'm not going to get into all the specifics and, you know, how to do that. This


is more of a framework of approaching that but there's a lot of great articles that I


can link to. Just reach out to me and I can hook you up with that. But the third step


again is to convert those notes into actual JSON-LD. And that process is fairly straightforward.


What I like to do is open up the page or representative URL from that template that I'm working on.


So, for a product page, open that up in my browser. I would like to have schema.org open,


that's kind of the canonical resource for schema information. And then I also like to


have a few competitor sites open that are similar. If you're working on an e-commerce


brand, you're fortunate that there's a lot of great examples of sites that are doing


this well and that's publicly available to you and you can check out what they're doing


and how they're doing it. So, my process is kind of just going through that list, going


on schema.org or going on a competitor site or a previous site you've worked on. You know,


if you're looking at something like, let's say, the cost of the product, you can look


that up on schema.org. You can see that there's an offer type markup. You can copy that into


the schema testing tool and essentially validate that it works. And once you validate it, you


just go down the list further. You know, if you start off with the price, you can move


on to breadcrumbs, et cetera. And at the end of step three, you essentially have all the


JSON-LD that you need, certainly the core elements, to kind of start down the next step.


And the next step is to pause and check in with your point of contact because if you're


working on a large scale site and you're going to have 10 or 15 of these templates you're


working on for JSON-LD, it's worthwhile to essentially say, hey, can we do a 30-minute


check in because I'm done with the first template and I want to make sure that, you know, this


all makes sense and this is in a format that's going to be good for you. And speaking of


format, what I like to do personally is just use Google Drive, set up a folder in the client


folder, and title it JSON-LD, give the client access to that. And within that folder, you're


just going to have a bunch of different documents and each document is going to be per template.


So for the product page example, you would have a document in that folder titled Product


JSON-LD and you would copy any of the JSON-LD that you validated in the schema testing tool


and paste it in that doc and that's what you'd be walking through with your point of contact


or with the developer. And pretty much take any feedback they have. If they want it in


a different format, take that into account and revise it and meet with them again. But


pretty much get a green light before moving forward to work on the other templates. And


that's really the next step is at that point, once you have the green light, the developer


feels good about it or your point of contact feels good about it, you're just going to


kind of rinse and repeat. So you're going to go back to step two, you're going to choose


another template. If you've done the product page one, hop over to the category page template


and do the same thing. You know, jot down what can be marked up, transfer those notes


into JSON-LD using, you know, competitor sites or similar sites, using schema.org, using


the structured data validating tool. It's the same process and at that point, you're


just kind of on cruise control, you know. And it's nice because it takes, again, something


that initially could have been fairly stressful, at least for me. And it breaks it down in


a way that, you know, makes sense and you can focus because of that. So again, this


process has worked really well for me. At Distilled, you know, we like to think about


kind of frameworks and how to approach bigger problems like this and break them down and


kind of make them more simple because we found that allows us to do our best work. And this


is just one of those processes. So that's all I have for you all today. Thank you so


much for tuning in. If you have any questions or comments or if you have any experiences


kind of implementing or recommending JSON-LD, I'd love to hear them. So give me a shout


on Twitter or in the comments or anything like that. Thank you so much for tuning in


#WhiteboardFriday: Winning SEO with Keyword Research

Howdy Moz fans! Welcome to a very special edition of Whiteboard Friday talking about keyword research today.


Now keyword research, you know how important it is. It forms the basis of all successful SEO.


People who are good at keyword research and having a good research strategy,


that often makes the difference between winning and having an SEO campaign that just goes nowhere.


I love keyword research because we all have an idea of what we think we want to rank for, right?


But when you use keyword research, you can use data to find opportunities and surprises that you didn't even know existed.


So I wanted to spell a myth about keyword research.


A lot of people think it's about finding the right tool and you enter the keyword into a tool, you get a list.


Technically that is keyword research and that's a fine starting point, but it's not so much about the tool.


It's about a process. It's about a process of creating a strategy for your entire website and finding those winning keywords that you can rank for


and gain traffic from that are relevant to your business. So it's more than just a tool, it's a process.


There are entire guides and webinars about this, but I think we can simplify it.


And in the next few minutes, I want to show you the basics of a winning keyword research process


that I think you can start to master in just a few minutes and get the fundamentals.


In fact, I did write a guide about this. We'll talk about it at the end of the video.


It's completely available, but I want to go over the basics so you can start to get an understanding of the process that will help you win with keyword research.


So first of all, a concept that you're probably familiar with is the idea of seed keywords.


We call them seeds because they help grow your keyword list and expand it.


Seed keywords are more important than people think, and I'll tell you why in just a second.


So many tools will give you seed keywords, but I want to dismiss the idea of thinking in terms of tools for just a second.


When researching seed keywords, I propose that you think of it in terms of questions, questions that you want to ask yourself.


The first is simply, what do I want to rank for?


So let's in this hypothetical example, our client sells calligraphy pens.


They're like, Cyrus, I want to rank for calligraphy pens. That's great. That will be your starting point, your first seed keyword.


So a second question you can ask is, what do I already rank for?


Well, let's say the client has an existing website. They sell some pens. Maybe they do well.


Maybe they don't. So we want to dig into the data of what is already sending them traffic.


And we can do this with a lot of keyword research tools, Moz, A-Res, Semirash.


I prefer Moz. 500 million keywords. It's a great set, but you can use whatever you want.


So you want to search by keywords by site or keywords by URL, and we can enter our client site and see that, oh, they rank for pen starter kit.


Their rank is number one. It only receives 10 visits a month. So maybe that's not such a good seed keyword.


But Best Calligraphy Pen, they rank number eight. 500 visits a month. Calligraphy Supplies, 14th, 750 keywords a month.


Those are excellent seed keywords. So we're going to make note of those and use them a little later in the process.


You can also get this data from Google Search Console, rank and volume.


Wherever you get it from, these are what you want to search for. Great keywords that you already rank for, but maybe not number one with good search volume.


Finally, let's say you don't have an existing website or you're starting a new project from scratch, you don't have a lot of existing data.


You want to ask, what do my competitors rank for or the top ranking site?


So I might Google Calligraphy Pens and see who ranks number one, pop it into Keyword Explorer and see all their ranking keywords here and start to find the good seed keywords.


So I can see that they rank for Calligraphy Kit. That sounds pretty relevant. 750 visits a month.


Pen Starter and not so much. I'd probably throw that one out. Learn Calligraphy. That's a great seed keyword.


I'm going to make note of that. 1200 visits a month. You can get seed keywords from literally any keyword tool.


Some of our favorites beyond Keyword Explorer, Google Trends, Answer the Public has a great free option.


People also ask, anywhere you want to get your seed keywords, that's where you form the basis of your list.


So next, we're going to start building our list. Seed keywords move into list building.


So this is where we want to use a robust keyword research tool such as such as Moz, A-Refs or whatever you want.


And we start, we're entering our seed keywords, Calligraphy Pens.


We're going to get a list of keywords sorted by relevance and volume.


Now there are many metrics in keyword research such as keyword difficulty, click through rate, importance, things like that.


For right now, we only want to be concerned with two metrics, relevance and volume.


Well, you can concern yourself with the other metrics a little later when we're sorting and filtering.


But right now, we want to find more seed keywords. That's the key difference here in this process.


We're not just finding related keywords, we're finding more seed keywords. We're reiterating.


So Calligraphy Pen Set, highly relevant, five means highly relevant, volume of 100.


All right, we're going to mark that. That becomes a new seed. Calligraphy Amazon.


OK, that only has a three relevance score. Unless you're Amazon, that's probably not the most relevant keyword.


We're going to cross it off the list. Calligraphy Font, Calligraphy Pens Price.


Wow, that's great. Calligraphy Inc. Great with high volume.


So what we have done now is we have collected more seeds and we're going to throw those seeds back in and discover even more related keywords,


more seeds, and we're going to start building out our list.


That's the process. Not just get a list of related keywords, but you're finding more seeds.


And when you find more seeds, continually do this, these become new pages of your site or new entire content section.


So we could have a section on Calligraphy Inc. We could have a page on price.


We're going to group these in our spreadsheets together.


And every time we find a new seed, it can become a new topic, a new page, a new idea.


The idea is you want to find as many seeds as possible.


So when we get these seeds, we're going to reinsert them back, but we're also going to do one final step that a lot of people forget or just don't realize.


And that is the competitive analysis, because the keyword tool is going to find a lot.


Moz Keyword Explorer does a particularly excellent, excellent job of this.


But one thing, if you're not using Keyword Explorer, one thing I'd like to do is I'll take my seed keyword, calligraphy inc., and I'll put it into Google.


And I'll see who's ranking in the top one, two, three, four, five positions.


And I'll look specifically for sites that specialize in this. Like I might throw out Amazon or things like that.


But Inc Warehouse, Shop Calligraphy Inc. I'll take this page and I'll put it in Keyword Explorer, Keywords by Site or URL.


And I'll get all the other keywords that this page or site ranks for, because they've undoubtedly tried a lot of content.


They know what works, what doesn't work. And I'll find new seeds that way.


So I can say that Inc Warehouse ranks for best calligraphy inc. That's a good one.


Calligraphy Inc. Set. Great new seed keyword. Calligraphy Inc. Bottle. Another great seed keyword.


So then we have new seeds, new pages, new topics.


We can take these and start the process again.


And we do this over and over and over again until we have a complete site, a complete set of keywords for every page,


every conceivable ranking position, and we can start to build a strategy out from that.


After this, we can start to sort and filter by keyword volume and difficulty and things like that.


But that's a process for another time.


So I've documented this strategy and so much more in a brand new Keyword Research Guide, the Master Guide to Keyword Research.


We just released it. It's available free. It covers this topic in depth.


And we try to make these concepts as easy as possible to help you win SEO.


We're going to link to it below. You can download it and let me know what you think.


So I hope you learned something today. If you like this video, please share it with anybody that you can.


It would be a great favor to me. OK, until next time.


Daily SEO Fix: Identify and Fix Duplicate Content

Hi, I'm Jo from the learning team here at Moz.


Today I'm going to show you Moz Pro's site crawl and how you can identify duplicate content


issues on your site and a couple of quick wins.


Duplicate content affects a lot of websites, especially ecommerce sites that sell multiple


products that are very similar to each other.


Duplicate content can be a problem on some sites because it can cause Google to get confused


about which URL deserves to be indexed and rank in the search engine results.


Site crawl's content issues tool will show you a list of all the pages on your site that


contain duplicate content.


Within Moz Pro, that means two or more pages that have at least 90% overlap in content


or code.


Let's hop into the tool.


In site crawl, click on content issues and then click on the duplicate content option.


You can then click on why and how to fix below for a brief overview of the reasons duplicate


content can be an issue and some options for remedying it.


Scroll down to the list of all the pages that we were able to identify when we crawled your


site that have duplicate content.


Now you can use these sorting functions at the top here.


These will help you to prioritise the pages you might want to fix.


You can filter by ascending and descending page authority to find a list of URLs and


to filter it by the likelihood of those pages ranking or crawl depth to identify pages by


their distance from your site's homepage.


You can also click on the arrow underneath preview for any of these URLs so that you


can see a list of other pages on your site that are very similar to the page in question.


You can also click the magnifying glass under the analyse option to see more details about


that particular URL.


As we scroll down we can see more information about the issues identified for this page.


As you can see in the explanation of the duplicate content issue type below, there are a few


different ways you might consider fixing this problem.


If it is in fact affecting your page's ability to be indexed and ranked.


One simple way to indicate to Google that two pages are identical but that only one


of them should be ranked is to add canonical tags that point to the master version of your


URL.


That would be the one you prefer to appear in Google's index and search results.


If your duplicate content issue is caused by parametisation of some of your URLs due


to sorting and filtering within your site, you can use Google's Search Console URL


parameters tool to block crawling of URLs that contain specific parameters.


Thank you for joining me today for this daily fix.


If you're new to Moz, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial.


And if you wanted to explore more about the Moz Pro tool, you can book a one-to-one walkthrough


MozCon 2015 - 23 - Rocking Your CRO Efforts with Radical Redesigns with Chris Dayley

Today I'm going to be talking about a A B testing tactic that can have a massive impact


on your conversion rates and your A B testing strategies and that's running radical redesign


tests. Now as soon as I say radical redesign tests I know some of you are going to be squirming


in your seats and feeling kind of like this, right? Radical redesigns are scary. They can


be scary. They can feel scary because a new design on a page of your site can sometimes


be just as likely to drop conversion rates as it can be to lift conversion rates. I think


we've all seen examples of failed design tests. What I'm going to talk about today are some


ways that you can run effective radical redesign tests on your site. I'm even going to suggest


that if you're not radically redesigning key conversion pages of your site periodically


throughout the year you may be missing out on huge opportunities with your audience.


So I'm going to compare your website for a minute to a chainsaw. So you've got your chainsaw,


you've got your landing page, your conversion page, and you're out there cutting down trees,


you're converting visitors, generating phone calls, selling product, whatever the purpose


of your page is. Over time that chain on your chainsaw is going to start to dull. So what


do you do? You go and you start running tests on your page. So you test in new headlines


and you test your images. You test your buttons, right? And that's like kind of like going


around your chainsaw and sharpening one individual blade at a time. Something you need to do


in order to keep that blade, that chain sharp. But what you find is that eventually you'll


get to a point where that chainsaw is about as sharp as you can get it. And so the only


way to make rapid improvement is to take the whole chain off and put on a better one. And


that's kind of what running a radical redesign test does. So let me show you an example when


I say radical redesign testing of what I'm talking about. So this is obviously an old


chainsaw, right? This design hadn't been touched in years. And they actually had run some


headline testing and their headline testing generated about a 3% lift in conversion rate. So


very small. We came in and we tested three radically different designs for this


particular landing page. Our winner generated a 64% lift in conversion rate. And which,


you know, that's months if not years of testing on the old design. But not only that, the


interesting thing was after we ran this radical redesign and pushed the winner, we ran a


round of headline testing and saw a 20% lift in conversion rate compared to a 3% lift before.


So one interesting thing happens when you test in a radical redesign, you effectively reset


the tables on your A B testing efforts and you give yourself room to continue to grow with


your audience. So the question comes up, when should I run radical redesign tests? First is


if you're going to redesign anyways, right? If you're redesigning your product. Second, if


conversion rates are stagnant, so if you're running A B tests and you're no longer finding lift


in conversion rate. And finally, at the start of a new test cycle, and this is where I want to


talk about for a minute. So let me show you an example of what a test cycle can look like. So


you start out, you do your research, you're going to dive into your analytics, see if you can


figure out what challenges your users are having with your current page or what opportunities


you may have in front of you, put together a strategy, and you launch immediately into the


radical redesign. Now you might have to do a couple of rounds of redesign testing. Maybe you


don't find a winner immediately. But once you've found a winner in that radical redesign test


phase, you analyze and you move on into the iterative testing phase. Now this is where you're


going to go and you're going to test everything on that new design. So you're going to test


your headlines, content, images, colors, buttons, everything on the page, right? And when you've


gotten through your iterative testing phase, then you're going to start the cycle over again.


Now this whole process should take no more than six months. And that's not an arbitrary


number. What we found is that about every six months, user behavior on the web radically


changes. And the reason for that is that about every six months, there's new best practices.


There's new design best practices, there's new trends, and your CEO is going to keep you well


aware of this, right? Your CEO is going to be running into your office going, look at what


Apple is doing on their website. We've got to copy them, right? Or here's what our biggest


competitor is doing. We've got to do something like them. But the problem with that line of


thinking is that once something has become a design best practice, it stops being a best


practice. Let me say that again. Once something becomes a design best practice, it stops


being a best practice. That's because once your users start to see things everywhere on the


web, they start to ignore them. And this happens all the time. It happens with


advertisements, it happens with parallax websites, right? The first time you go there,


they're really cool and awesome. And then you start to see them everywhere and you start to


numb that particular thing out. And so if you're not doing a radical redesign test on your


key pages of your site every six months, you may be operating under assumptions that are no


longer valid for your audience. So I'm going to suggest four radical rules for creating an


effective redesign test. Radical rule number one, test multiple hypotheses. Now, we heard


about this on Monday, about testing hypotheses. And it's something that's considered a best


practice when you're running A-B tests. But for some reason, when companies start to test


design, the idea of hypotheses goes out the window and it's all creative, right? Maybe it's


just because design is in our right brain and maybe testing is over here in our left brain.


Whatever it is, companies just don't do it when they think about design. So let me show an


example of testing multiple hypotheses and what that can lead to. So this particular page,


this was a best practice landing page for PPC. They had done lots of A-B testing on this


page and it was working great for their campaigns. We approached a radical redesign and we


tested in four hypotheses. And obviously, you'll notice that we changed a lot of things on


this page and we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But our first hypothesis was if we


can create a variation that speaks more to the user. So these are small business owners


looking for loans. So if we can create an image that looks a little bit more like a small


business owner, resonates more with the audience, we'll find higher conversion rates. Our


second hypothesis, we took that a little bit farther and we said, well, maybe we can, if we


test multiple different types of business owners, it will be more likely to resonate with the


audience. Our third hypothesis was by removing the image and giving content, the users would


have a better reason to fill out the form, right, to convert. Our final hypothesis was the


users would prefer a quick clear path to conversion. So a call to action and a form. So I'll


let you guys guess real quick which one you thought won. And our winner was the one that removed


the images and focused on content. Now, that may seem like common sense to you or maybe not.


But the interesting thing here and the reason I wanted to bring it up is if we hadn't tested


multiple hypotheses, we would not have found this extreme lift in conversion. Because what


the client wanted to do was let's just redesign the existing page and let's get a better image


and, you know, and that will be the best approach. So you've got to be willing to think outside


the box and test multiple hypotheses. Radical rule number two, separate desktop and mobile.


Now, we heard about this a lot yesterday, about the difference between desktop and mobile.


But again, when it comes to design testing, for some reason, companies are saying whatever


works for my desktop users, we're going to take that and shrink it down for mobile. That may


work for some users. But for a lot of users, that doesn't work. And that's because the use


case for a mobile device is totally different. So I'll show an example. And sometimes you


have clients that let you use their images. Sometimes you just have to use pictures of cats


instead. So I apologize for that. But for this particular page, this was the mobile


responsive version of the desktop site. So for the desktop site, four images, four product


shots with value points, that worked very well on desktop. Shrunk it down for mobile.


Mobile conversion rates were actually somewhat decent. This was working okay. There was a


call button that was down below what I was able to show on the design here. We said, well,


maybe the mobile user is going to want a more customized approach. So we tested in three


alternative ways of presenting this page. We said, well, maybe the users will want to call in.


And so let's test different ways that we can feature click to call. Maybe the users won't want


as many images or will want the information presented differently. So let's test different ways


of showing the content. The winner, we ended up having the click to call button featured very


prominently at the top. We removed most of the images. The form was lower on the page. So what


we thought would happen was, well, call volume is going to go up and form completions are


probably going to go down. What happened was we saw a lift to both. So form completions and


call volume increased. And that, again, reinforced the idea to us that our mobile users are


engaging with our page completely differently than our desktop users. And so if you don't


separate the two, you're likely going to miss out on major opportunities. Radical rule number


three, use your tools, break the rules. Let me explain to you what I mean when I say that. So


when I say break your rules, I'm talking about the rules that almost every company has for their


users. Their assumptions, best practices, they may even be things that you've tested in the


past and found to be true. They sound like this. We don't believe in above and below the


fold. Our users scroll and read. Or we only design above the fold. Or less content is more. Or


more content is better. Or our users love image heavy pages. Or our users hate images. These


types of assumptions that you have about your users. But because user behavior is changing so


rapidly on the web, if you don't challenge your assumptions, then again, you're operating on


assumptions which may not be true. So let me show you an example. So a client in the medical


space had run some tests a couple of years ago and found that their users were scrolling,


they were engaging with a lot of content on the page. So they had designed all of their pages


on their site to be super long scroll, lots of information, multiple calls to action down below


the fold. We installed heat mapping. This is a crazy egg scroll map. We found that was no


longer true. So the users weren't scrolling on most of these pages. So the first thing of


course that the client says is, well, we've got to figure out a way to get them to scroll down


because all that information is really important. So let's test some visual cues to tell them


that there's information down below the fold. Let's try and show them a way to scroll down.


But again, that's sort of like forcing your audience to do what you want them to do, right? So


we tested one variation where we just removed all of that content below the fold and ended up


seeing a 63% lift in form completions and we had another side bonus of 530% lift in email


subscriptions, right? So we found another thing that was way at the bottom of the page that we


didn't think was very important, but apparently that was something that was important to the


users. But you've got to be willing to challenge your current assumptions and test breaking


the rules and see what happens and see what your audience is doing now. Radical rule number


four, you need to run radical redesign tests for at least two weeks. Now it's best practice


in the AB testing space to run a test until you get at least a 95% statistical significance.


Let's be honest, a lot of us can get a 95% statistical significance in a day, maybe even an


hour. A 95% statistical significance by itself is meaningless. So a lot of companies will give


themselves another minimum standard to meet of, okay, let's run a test for at least a week.


We'll get one day of the week in there, right? But radical redesigns even more than any other


type of tests are going to have erratic conversion rates. And I'll show you what I mean by that.


So here's a radical redesign test we ran. The green line on the bottom is our control design.


The blue and pink lines above that are variants that we tested. You can see at the end of the


first week our two variants were tied. So what would most companies do at this point? Most


companies would say, well, let's keep it going for a couple more days. We had a 95% statistical


significance at this point. So give it a couple more days and see if one pulls ahead. And sure


enough, all throughout the next week variant B pulled ahead. But if we had called the test at


this point, we would have called the wrong winner. Because into the third week, experience C,


the true winner, pulled ahead. And then once the data leveled off and normalized, we found


that experience C was by far the winner. But you need to give your test long enough for the


erratic behavior to end and let your test normalize. And usually at least two weeks is


required for that. So the last thing that I want to just touch on is after you run a


radical redesign test, it is so important to follow up with rigorous iterative testing and


test everything on that new design. Every test can't be a radical redesign. So you've got to


go around and sharpen every blade on that chainsaw, right? Test your headlines. Test your


call to action. Your content. This is where you're really going to drive specific learnings


about your audience. And then follow up and radical redesign test again. Every six months,


radical redesign test and you guys will see how your audience behavior is changing and you'll


create better experiences for your audience. Thank you.


Thank you. We have lots of questions coming in. And the one question that is coming up over and


over is everyone wants to know about the tools. Let's specifically go first to like small


businesses. What's the best tool or your favorite tool specifically to use in testing for, you


know, someone who doesn't necessarily have a huge budget?


Yeah, testing on a budget I would absolutely say to use either Optimizely or Visual Website


Optimizer. I personally like Optimizely the best. I actually have a free account up to about


10,000 visitors. But they have a very good platform. When you get into more enterprise level


testing, there's really no substitute for Adobe's target product. But it is very cost


prohibitive. So I would recommend starting with Optimizely.


All right. So there you go, everyone. The other thing that we have is some of the a number of


questions. People keep coming back to the mobile versus desktop. And they want to know,


you know, will it radically hurt you if on mobile you have a lot less content or you have


something different? I think the worry is that making those two different can cause other


types of issues. What are your thoughts on that?


Right. Yeah. And specifically with performance, again, my mantra is that you just have to


test because you never know what the difference is going to be with your mobile audience. So,


you know, the example that I showed, showed one particular type of behavior. But every


audience is going to perform differently on mobile. Some like more content, some like less


content. Some like to have everything right in that initial screen. But if you don't test on


your mobile audience, you'll never know. You'll never know how radically different your


conversion rates could be. And that's really the challenge that I think that most companies


face is once they've got that responsive design, once they have a mobile experience, they call


it good. And that's not good enough, especially with how much we see mobile continuing to


grow. Yeah. It's very much like what Meg was saying. It's like, oh, you got to


responsive. Your site's done. It's mobile. Yay. Right? But without looking and digging


into it a bit deeper, you might not actually know for sure.


Exactly. So another question is everyone wants to know about how it's going to mess up your


SEO, you know, doing this testing. And I know this is a question that has, you know, comes


around every year, I feel like. But do you have any tips or any like don't worry about it,


any good advice on making sure you don't kill your SEO by running some of these tests?


So the actual testing process won't affect your SEO at all. So the way that most of these


testing tools work is it's just a line of JavaScript. And so it's going to serve up these


different experiences via JavaScript. So it won't affect your SEO during the process. Now


obviously, once you call a winner, if it is dramatically different than your old page,


you'll have to monitor that and see if you've removed a bunch of content, did that affect


your rankings, right? But the actual testing process itself does not affect your SEO.


All right. And Dave Minkal wants to make sure that we ask this question. He's posted it to


several hashtags. Why do you think that the erratic performance trend between the


variants exists that first week or so? Whereas, you know, that picture you're showing that's


like you think it's one thing and then after it levels off, you see it's something totally


different. Yeah. So there's a lot of reasons for that. So if you have return visitors to your


site, you're going to have people that are coming and going, ooh, a new design. Let's check


this out, right? So that's part of it is that initially people are going to be checking


these new experiences out, seeing what's going on. There's also just erratic behavior in


general when you're running AV tests. So when you run any type of AV test, the initial test


data, because you have such limited data, every additional conversion or every additional 10


conversions is going to affect those conversion rates so much. And so it's super important to


wait until those erratic conversion rates normalize. And, you know, a lot of companies will


put a test up. The first day they'll see like 150% left and go, we've got to call it. We've


got to call it. You've got to push that winner now or else I'm missing out on a ton of revenue.


But I have seen, you know, and there's lots of great blog posts out there about false


positives, right, or false winners. And this happens all the time. You'll have a variation


that wins for a couple of days and then it turns out over the long run loses. So it's super


important to give the test long enough where you see those conversion rates normalize, you


see the data kind of level off before you call any conclusions.


Awesome. Thank you so much. We have learned a ton and I'm sure there are going to be, you're


going to get bombarded with even more questions after. I'm assuming you'll be around to take


some questions. So everyone, let's give a big round of applause and a thank you to Chris.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

Hi, I'm Michael from the onboarding team here at Moz.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

Today I'm going to show you how to filter keyword suggestions in Keyword Explorer.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

Filtering keyword suggestions is a really good way of finding keywords that would be appropriate for your task at hand.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

For example, if you're creating new blog content or maybe some FAQs for your customers,


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

you can select keyword suggestions that are questions.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

So first of all, we go to Keyword Suggestions in the Keyword Research section of Moz Pro.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

Then we enter the keyword that we want to see suggestions for.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

I'm going to go with chia seeds.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

We click Analyze.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

This will show us a list of keyword suggestions for chia seeds.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

If we want to filter that list, we go to this dropdown here.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

And if we select Display Keyword Suggestions that are questions,


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

we get a list of questions for chia seeds.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

If you want to sort these by relevancy, you can do.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

Or you can also choose to sort by monthly volume.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

If you want to change the filter to something else, you can go back to the dropdown.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

And maybe if you want to select based on closely related topics,


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

you can see some other terms that are also used on pages that you'll find chia seeds on.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

So if you find any keywords that you like here, don't forget to add them to a keyword list.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords

So that's how you filter keyword suggestions in Keyword Explorer.


Daily SEO Fix - Filtering Keywords


A Step-by-Step Process for Discovering and Prioritizing the Best Keywords - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're chatting about keyword research and a step-by-step process to choose and prioritize


the best possible keywords that we can for your SEO campaigns.


So let's get started with step one.


The first thing that a lot of folks do is they only use a single source.


They go to AdWords for example or maybe they'll go to Suggest or possibly they'll start with


SEMrush which has an awesome corpus and database but it's sort of based on a single source.


My strong suggestion is a lot of the sources have only one type of data in them and you


want to combine them.


The five that I really like, five or six that I really like are first off AdWords is a great


source.


They're generally speaking commercially focused terms.


AdWords knows that people want to buy those keywords for pay-per-click search and so they


try and include commercial terms that people are actually going to convert on.


They hide a lot of stuff that frankly Google feels like is not going to get people the


conversions they're looking for because the problem is if you buy the wrong keywords you


don't blame yourself for poor keyword targeting, you blame Google for sending you bad traffic.


So AdWords has hidden some of those things.


They'll show them to you if you type them directly in but not otherwise.


Suggest, you can go to Google Suggest and in fact Google related searches which are


at the bottom of the search versus the top and the bar that you type.


Those both give sort of variants and or searches that people who search for this also performed.


Then you'll see there's a lot of tools out there.


SEMrush is by far the most popular one and in my opinion a really, really good one too


for keyword to rankings graph.


Essentially what this is saying is here are keywords that the pages that rank for the


keyword you gave us also rank for or same thing at the domain level.


It's sort of creating and mapping those things so that you can get broader terms than you


ordinarily would have with just these other methods.


That's pretty cool.


Another one that's very, very cool and very sophisticated that some SEOs are doing is


topic modeling based keywords and this is essentially saying, hey, show me terms and


phrases that co-occur on lots of documents, high quality documents hopefully, with the


term or phrase that I'm targeting.


You can find those through tools like Alchemy API.


It's a little challenging to use but there you go.


Bunch of tools, SEMrush and AdWords, you can use Google Search for a bunch of these.


Uber Suggest to get some of the suggestions.


Keyword tool.io actually has a number of these inside it.


KeyCompete and SpyFu are similar to SEMrush.


Alchemy API helps you with topic modeling.


Then somewhat self-promotionally, and I apologize for that, but Keyword Explorer, which Moz just


launched this week and which we're pretty excited about.


I was actually the product architect for that so I'm feeling quite excited and very proud


of my team.


Keyword Explorer, shamelessly, has all of these in there.


I think our topic modeling is actually a little better than Alchemy APIs.


I think our keyword to rankings graph is almost as good, maybe in some cases better, maybe


in some cases not as good as what SEMrush has.


We also get suggestion-related real-time.


We obviously have a big corpus that we've gathered from AdWords too.


Step two, I've done my keyword suggestions.


I've got all of these.


Now I need to pick which keywords from these suggestion lists am I actually going to try


targeting.


If I do that, it's not really a tool-based thing, although you certainly could use something


like a Google Doc or Excel or a Google Spreadsheet, or you could do it right inside some of these


tools.


KeywordTool.io and Keyword Explorer both have like an add this to my list type of feature.


AdWords does too.


What I want to do is match multiple types of searcher intent based on your content and


keyword goals.


This has little to do with what the keywords actually say and more to do with what am I


trying to accomplish with my SEO and with my content.


For example, let's say I'm an online coffee bean roaster and seller.


Maybe I'm independent, I have a location, but I also want to sell my beans and my grounds


and accessories online, which is awesome.


There are some keywords that are going to match with my goal of direct conversion.


People are likely looking for this because they want to buy it, and I want to be in front


of them when they're looking to buy it.


Those are keywords like coffee beans online, buy coffee beans, coffee accessories, stove


top espresso machines, getting more specific.


Then I'm also looking at doing some strategic content to target folks early in the buying


stage, like before they actually think, oh, I'm going to buy from them.


I just want them to have an association with us.


I want anyone who's interested in coffee, coffee aficionados, researchers, people who


are passionate about the topic, to find me and have an association with my brand.


In order to do that, I might target keywords like flavors of coffee beans, best independent


coffee roasters in the US, home barista resources.


People aren't going to convert on these keywords, best home coffee techniques.


I'm trying to learn.


I'm trying to get help.


I'm trying to get content, not necessarily buy directly.


Then I probably have some, I might in my content strategy have some idea that, hey, I also


want to target coffee influencers, people who are influential in this world.


Could be journalists and bloggers and people who write for magazines and folks who are


very popular on Twitter or Facebook or have popular Instagram accounts.


I want them to be aware of us.


So I might go after things like barista competitions.


Barista competitions, if I have a big list of those, well, lots of baristas and folks


who run coffee shops are going to be looking for that.


I can influence them, get in their head, get them to know my brand.


Coffee shop awards, same thing.


Worldwide coffee bean wholesale cost comparison.


Aha, this is going to the suppliers and the coffee bean buyers around the world and looking


at price trends and tracking.


That's kind of some of that data that a lot of those folks might have.


Probably a small audience, but very influential people.


How to open a new coffee shop.


Now I'm targeting coffee entrepreneurs who are also potential influencers for me.


So you're going to take, these lists won't apply to all of your efforts.


Your efforts are going to be determined by your specific strategic goals, but you should


make keyword lists and match those up to all the keywords you see here so that you know


what types of things you're trying to do with those keywords.


I would encourage you, if you're doing this, to make a different list for each one of those.


Step three.


This is where we have to get very, very data driven because what I want to do is I want


to take all the keywords in each of the lists that I have and I want to get the metrics


for them so I can prioritize properly.


So what I've done here is I've taken a list of keywords.


I have my volume, right, how much are they searched for.


Difficulty, how hard will it be to rank in the organic results.


Click through rate opportunity, meaning what other features are in the search results,


you know, images, news boxes, ads, videos up at the top, instant answers, knowledge


graph on the right hand side that's going to draw clicks away from my potential to get


searchers to click on my result.


I need click through rate opportunity in my scoring, otherwise I might be biased to keywords


that look great, but in fact get very little click through rate.


Importance, this is essentially my personal priority, right, and it's something where


it's not a metric that comes from anywhere else.


I use it internally.


Like, I know, for example, that coffee beans online is a very, very important keyword because


it directly relates to what I'm selling.


It's the first thing I'm offering, so I'm going to put it at a 10 out of 10 versus maybe


how to open a coffee shop, which, look, that's some content marketing that I might do in


the future, but it's not a high priority right now for me from an important standpoint.


And then all of these metrics, right, so it's kind of like, you know, this metric combined


with this metric combined with this metric should give me some form of potential, right,


and I want to come up with an algorithm.


You could come up with your own or you could use tools like keyword toolio and tool.io


and keyword explorer have an algorithm that combines these types of scores to give you


a consistent one for potential.


And the idea is I want high volume, low difficulty, strong click through rate opportunity, and


high importance that should give me a good potential score.


And then hopefully what I can do is just sort by this potential metric and now I get my


prioritized list of keywords.


If I don't take this data-driven approach, you can wind up just in a world of hurt where


you're targeting the wrong keywords, not being as intelligent as you could be.


You can do this with something like AdWords and then an export to Excel or to Google Spreadsheets.


You can do this with a tool like WordStream who does a great job of it, particularly for


paid search, and you can leverage some of that for organic too.


Like I said, keyword tool.io, obviously Excel and Google Spreadsheets, and then keyword


explorer does this right inside the tool as well.


Step four, now what I want to do is I want to determine my keyword targeting and my new


content creation needs and the priority of those processes.


So after I look at this, I might refactor a few things and say, wow, you know what?


That is pretty strong.


Even though I set it as a low importance, I'm kind of interested, I'm more interested


in this how to open a coffee shop than I was previously based on the metrics that I saw


there, the opportunity I think I've got.


So here's my prioritize list.


A, I'm going to start by optimizing my homepage for coffee beans online.


I've decided that's the best keyword that I can possibly target on there.


That's what I'm going after.


B, I want to create a new coffee accessories page.


Maybe I didn't have one before.


I see that that's a high opportunity, high potential keyword.


I want it.


I need to create a new page.


Now I also need to go get inventory relationships established with all my accessory providers


so that I can actually ship folks that stuff.


C, I've decided that I really like that how to open a coffee shop and I want to create


a guide.


That's going to be one of my key content marketing pieces and therefore I'm going to go interview


ten successful coffee entrepreneurs, folks who've opened some successful shops, and then


I'm going to assemble some content, build a survey, target 500 coffee shops in the US


maybe that I already have relationships with or that I don't so that I can get a survey


of data back.


I'll outreach to each one individually or I'll have my SEO content person do that.


Now I'm going to create that guide based on the feedback that I get from there.


Now it's data driven and I have a bunch of people who are likely to help support it because


they've contributed to it.


Finally, I might say, hey, I really like that best independent coffee roaster.


That keyword looks real strong to me.


I want to target that one too.


That's also going to go into my content marketing efforts so I'm going to establish some criteria


for that one.


I'm going to do some research and I'm going to send out awards to the winners after we


pick those through whatever process we decide.


This is a phenomenal way to go through keyword research and keyword targeting to get the


content and the optimization priorities that you need for SEO.


I think if you choose the right data and the right tools, you use multiple sources, you


intelligently build the right kinds of lists, you use metrics to prioritize and are data


driven rather than just pure intuition, and you prioritize your work based on this, you


can have phenomenal success.


All right, everyone, look forward to your feedback and comments.


Certainly, if you haven't given Keyword Explorer a spin yet, I'd encourage you to do so.


I think it's pretty cool, but obviously there's lots of good competitors out there too and


you can check them out as well.


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


Core Web Vitals: What Next? — Tom Capper

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and welcome to another White Word Friday. This week's video is about


Core Web Vitals, and before you immediately Alt-F4, pause the video, press back, something


like that. No, we haven't got stuck in time. This isn't a video from 2020. This is looking


forwards. I'm not going to cover what the basic metrics are or how they work, that kind


of thing in this video. There was a very good White Word Friday about a year ago from Cyrus


about all of those things, which hopefully will be linked below. What this video is going


to be looking at is where we are now and what happens next, because the page experience


updates from Google are very much not done. They're still coming, this is still ongoing.


This is probably going to get more important over time, not less, even though the hype


has kind of subsided a little bit. So firstly, I want to look at some of the historical context


in terms of how we got where we are. So I've got this timeline on this side of the board


and you can see in May 2020, which is nearly two years ago now, Google first announced


this. This is an extraordinarily long time really in SEO and Google update terms, but


they announced it and then we had these two delays and it felt like it was taking forever.


And I think there's some important implications here because my theory is that, I've written


about this before and again, hopefully that will also be linked below, but my theory is


that reason for the delays was that too few pages would have been getting a boost if they


had rolled out when they originally intended to. Partly because too few sites had actually


improved their performance and partly because Google is getting data from Chrome, the Chrome


user experience or Crux data, and it's from real users using Chrome and for a lot of pages


for a long time, including now really, they didn't really have a good enough sample size


to draw conclusions. The coverage is not incredible. So because of that, initially when they had


even less data, they were in an even worse position to roll out something and they don't


want to make a change to their algorithm that rewards a small number of pages disproportionately,


right? Because that would just distort their results. It will make their results worse


for users, which is not what they're aiming for. That would ruin all of their own metrics.


So because of these delays, we were sort of held up until June last year. But what I've


just explained, this system of only having enough sample size for more heavily visited


pages, this is important for webmasters, not just Google. This is why, we'll come back


to it later when we talk about what's going to happen next, I think. But this is why whenever


we display Core Vitals data in MOS Pro and whenever we talk about it publicly, we encourage


you to look at your highest traffic or most important pages or your highest ranking pages,


that kind of thing, rather than just looking at your slowest pages or something like that.


You need to prioritize and triage. So we encourage you to sort by traffic and look at the most


specific, alongside performance or something like that. But so anyway, June 2021, we did


start having this rollout and it was all rolled out within two or three months. But it wasn't


quite what we expected or what we were told to expect. In the initial FAQ and the initial


documentation from Google, they talked about sites getting a boost if they passed a certain


threshold for all three metrics, all three of the new metrics they're introducing. And


although they kind of started to become more ambiguous about that over time, that definitely


isn't what happened with the rollout. So we tracked this with with ModCast data. So between


the start and the end of when Google said they were rolling it out, we looked at the


pages ranking top 20 in ModCast that had passes for 0, 1, 2, 3 of the metrics against the


thresholds that Google had published. Now, one thing that's worth noticing about this


chart before we even looked at it any more closely is that all of these lines trend downwards.


And that's because of what I was talking about with the with the sample sizes increasing,


with Google getting data on more pages over time. So as they got more pages, they started


incorporating more low traffic or in other words, low ranking pages into the Crux data.


And that meant that the average rank of a page that has Crux data will go down. Because


when we first started looking at this, only about even though this is top 20 rankings


for competitive keywords, only about 30% of them even had Crux data in the first place.


When we first looked at this, it's gone up a lot since then. So it now includes more


low ranking pages. So that's why there's this sort of general downwards shift. So the thing


to notice here is the pages passing all three, all three thresholds, these are the ones that


Google said were going to get a big boost. And these went down by 0.2, which is about


the same as the pages that were passing one or two thresholds. So I'm going to go out


on a limb and say that that was just the general shift caused by incorporating more pages into


Crux data. The really noticeable thing was the pages that passed zero. The pages that


passed zero thresholds, they went down by 1.1. Went down by 1.1 positions. So instead


of it being pass all three and get a boost, it's more like pass zero and get a penalty.


Or you could rephrase that positively right and say the exact same thing as pass one and


get a boost relative to these ones that are falling off a cliff and dropping over one


ranking position. So there was the big impact, it seems, from the rollout, but not necessarily


the one that we were told to expect, which is interesting. And I suspect that's because


Google perhaps was more confident about the data on the sites performing very badly than


about the data on the sites performing very well. Now, in terms of what happens next,


I think this is relevant because in February or March, probably as you're watching this


video, Google have said they're going to be rolling out this same page experience update


on desktop. So we assume it'll work the same way. So what you've seen here on smartphone


only, this will be replicated on desktop at the start of this year. So you probably see


something very similar with very poorly performing sites. If you're already watching this video,


you probably have little or no time to get this fixed or they'll see a ranking drop,


which if maybe that's one of your competitors, that could be good news, right? But I don't


think it'll stop there. There's two other things I expect to happen. So one is you might


remember with HTTPS updates and particularly with mobile GEDden, we expected this really


big seismic change. But what actually happened was when the update rolled out, it was very


toned down, not much noticeable shifted. But then over time, Google sort of quietly turned


up the wick. And these days we would all expect a very mobile unfriendly site to perform very


poorly in search, right? Even though the initial impact of that algorithm update was very minor.


I think something similar will happen here. The slower sites will feel a bigger and bigger


penalty, gradually building, I don't mean like a manual penalty, but a bigger disadvantage,


gradually building over time. Until in a few years time, we would all intuitively understand


that a site that doesn't pass three thresholds or something is going to perform horribly.


The last change I'm expecting to see, which Google hinted about initially, is new metrics.


So they initially said that they would probably update this annually. And you can already


see on web.dev that Google is talking about a couple of new metrics, and those are smoothness


and responsiveness. So smoothness is to do with the frames per second of animations on


the page. So when you're scrolling up and down the page, is it more like a slideshow


or a sort of fluid video? And then responsiveness is how quickly the page interacts or responds


to your interactions. So we already have one of the current metrics is first input delay,


but as it says in the name, that's only the first input. So I'm expecting this to care


more about things that happen further into your browsing experience on that page. So


these are things I think you have to think about going forwards through 2022 and beyond


before Vitals. I think the main lesson to take away is you don't want to over focus


on the three metrics we have now, because if you just leave your page as kind of having


a terrible user experience, but somehow sort of wiggling its way through these three metrics,


that's only going to punish you in the long run. It'll be like the old school link builders


that are just constantly getting penalized as they find their way around every new update


rather than finding a more sustainable technique. I think you have to do the same. You have


to aim for a genuinely good user experience or this isn't going to work out for you. Anyway,


The Impact of Queries, Long and Short Clicks, and CTR on Google's Rankings - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about click-through rate, queries and clicks, long versus short


clicks, and queries themselves in terms of how they impact the rankings.


So recently we've had in the last year a ton of very interesting experiments, or at least


a small handful of very interesting experiments, looking at the impact that could be had by


getting together kind of a sample set of searchers and having them perform queries, click on


things, click on things and click the back button.


And these experiments have actually shown results, at least some of them have, others


haven't, and there's interesting dichotomies between the two that I'll talk about at the


end of this.


Because of that, and because of some recent patent applications and some research papers


that have come to light from the search engines themselves, we've started to rethink the way


user and usage data are making their way into search engines, and we're starting to rethink


the importance of them.


You can see that in the ranking factor survey this year, folks giving user and usage data


a higher than ever sentiment around the importance of that information in search rankings.


So let me talk about three different elements that we're experiencing and that we have been


talking about in the SEO world and how they can impact your rankings potentially.


So first off is queries themselves, and this has to do primarily with a paper that Google


wrote or a patent application that they wrote around site quality and the quality of search


results.


Queries themselves could be used in the search results to say, hey, wait a minute, we see,


we Google, see a lot of searches that are combining a brand name with a generic term


or phrase.


And because we're seeing that, we might start to associate the generic term with the brand


term.


I'll give you an example.


I've done a search here for sushi rice, you can see there's Alton Brown ranking number


one and then no recipes dot com, make my sushi dot com, and then Morimoto.


Morimoto's recipe is in food and wine.


And if lots and lots of folks are starting to say like, wow, Morimoto's sushi rice is


just incredible and it kind of starts up this movement around how do we recreate Morimoto's


sushi rice.


So many, many people are performing searches specifically for Morimoto sushi rice, not


just generic sushi rice.


Google might start to see that and say, you know what, because I see that hundreds of


people a day are searching for this particular brand, the Morimoto sushi rice recipe, maybe


I should take the result from Morimoto on food and wine dot com and move that higher


up in the rankings than I normally would have them.


Those queries themselves are impacting the search results for the non-branded version,


just the sushi rice version of that query.


And Google's written about this.


We're doing some interesting testing around this right now with the iMac Labs and maybe


I'll be able to report more soon in the future on the impact of that.


Some folks in the SEO space have already reported that they see this impact as their brand grows


and as these brand associations grow, their rankings for the non-branded term rise as


well, even if they're not earning a bunch of links or getting a lot of other ranking


signals that you'd normally expect.


Second one is clicks and click-through rate.


So Google might be thinking, right, if there's a result that's significantly overperforming


its rankings' ordinary position performance, right, so if, for example, we say, you know,


let's look at the third result, right, here's how to make perfect sushi rice, this is from


makemysushi.com, let's imagine that the normal in this set of search results that on average


the position three result gets about 11%.


But Google is seeing that these guys, makemysushi.com, is getting a 25% click-through rate, much


higher than their normal 11%.


Well, Google might kind of scratch their head and go, you know what, it seems like whatever


the snippet is here or the title, the domain, the meta description, whatever we're showing


here is really interesting, folks.


And so perhaps we should rank them higher than they rank today.


Maybe that click-through rate is a signal to Google of, gosh, people are deeply interested


in this, it's more interesting than the average result of that position, let's move them up.


And this is something that I've tested, that IMEC Lab has tested, and seen results, at


least when it's done with real searchers and enough of them to have an impact.


You can kind of observe this.


There was a post on my blog last year and we did another experiment, well, a series


of several experiments, several of which have showed results time and time again.


That's a pretty interesting one that click-through rate can be done like that.


The third one and the final one we'll talk about today is long versus short clicks.


So this is essentially if searchers are clicking on a particular result but they're immediately


clicking the back button and going back to the search results and choosing a different


result, that could tell the search engine, could tell Google that maybe that result's


not that great.


Maybe searchers are deeply unhappy with that result for whatever reason.


For example, let's say Google looked at number two, right, the norecipes.com, and they looked


at number four from food and wine, and they said, gosh, the number two result has an average


time on site of 11 seconds and a bounce back to the SERPs rate of 76%.


So 76% of searchers who click on food and wine from this particular search, sorry, click


on no recipes, come back and choose a different result.


That's clearly, they're very disappointed.


But number four, the food and wine result from Morimoto, time on site averages is like


two minutes and 50 seconds.


That's where we see them, and of course they can get this data from places like Chrome,


they can get it from Android, they are not necessarily looking at the same numbers that


you're looking at in your analytics.


They're not taking it from Google Analytics.


I believe them when they say that they're not, but certainly if you look at the terms


of use and terms of service for Chrome and Android, oh, they are allowed to collect that


data and use it any way they want.


And the return to SERPs rate is only 9%.


So 91% of the people who are hitting food and wine, they're staying on there, they're


satisfied, they don't have to search for sushi rice recipes anymore.


They're happy.


Well, this tells Google, maybe that number two result is not making my searchers happy,


and potentially I should rank number four instead.


There's some important items to consider around all this, because if your gears turn the way


my gears turn, you're always thinking like, wait a minute, can't Black Hat folks manipulate


this stuff?


Isn't this really open to all sorts of noise and problems?


The answer is, yeah, it could be, but remember a few things.


First off, gamingness almost never works.


In fact, there was a great study published on search engine land that was called, I think,


something like click through rate is not an organic ranking signal, it doesn't work.


And it talked about a guy who fired up a ton of proxy servers, had them click a bunch of


stuff, faking traffic essentially by using bots, and didn't see any movement at all.


But you compare that to another report that was published on search engine land, again,


just recently, which replicated the experiment that I and the iMac Labs folks did using real


human beings, and they did see results.


The rankings rose rather quickly and kind of stayed there.


So real human beings searching, very different story from bots searching.


And I think, look, we remember back in the days when AdWords first came out, when Omniture


was there, that Google spent a ton of time and a lot of work to identify fraudulent types


of clicks, fraudulent types of search activity, and they do a great job of limiting that in


the AdWords account.


I'm sure that they're doing that on the organic SEO side as well.


So manipulation is going to be very, very tough, if not impossible.


If you don't get real searchers and a real pattern that looks like a bunch of people


who are logged in, logged out, geographically distributed, distributed by demographic profile,


distributed by previous searcher behavior, look like they're real normal people searching.


If you don't have that kind of a pattern, this stuff is not going to work.


And plenty of our experiments didn't work as well.


Even if none of this is a ranking factor, even if you say to yourself, you know what,


Rand, none of the experiments that you ran or iMac Labs ran or the Search Engine Land


Study published, none of them, I don't believe them.


I think they're all wrong.


I find holes in all of them.


Guess what?


So what?


It doesn't matter.


Is there any reason that you wouldn't optimize for a higher click-through rate?


Is there any reason you wouldn't optimize for longer clicks versus shorter clicks?


Is there any reason that you wouldn't optimize to try and get more branded search traffic,


people associating your brand with the generic term?


No way.


You're going to do this anyway.


It's one of those wonderful benefits of doing holistic, broad thinking SEO and broad organic


marketing in general that helps you whether you believe these are ranking signals or not.


And that's a great thing.


And then third and finally, I did want to mention, and I'll link to a few of these experiments,


well, to the set of experiments that we've seen out there about these topics, but the


experiments have been somewhat inconsistent, but there are some patterns in them.


As we've been running these, what we've seen is if you get more people searching, you tend


to have a much better chance of getting a good result.


The test that I ran on Twitter and on social media that had several thousand people participating


rose right up to the top real fast.


The ones that only had a few hundred people didn't seem to move the needle.


Same story with long tail queries versus more head of the demand curve stuff.


It's harder to move more entrenched rankings just like it would be with links.


And the results tend to last only between a few hours and a few days.


And I think that makes total sense as well because after you've inflated the click signals


or query signals or long click signals or whatever it is with these experimental results,


over time those are going to fall away and the norm that existed previously is going


to return.


And so naturally you would expect to see those results return back to what they were prior


to the experiments.


So with all that said, I'm looking forward to some great discussion in the Q&A.


I know that plenty of you out there have been trying and experimenting on your own with


this stuff, and some of you have seen great results from improving your click-through


updates, improving your snippets, making your pages better for searchers and keeping them


on it longer.


And I'm sure we're going to have some interesting discussion about all these types of experiments.


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


Take care.


How Reddit Can Help Your Brand Next Level Your Content Marketing [MozCon 2017] — Daniel Russell

Coming up with new content ideas on a regular basis can be very difficult.


Today I'm going to talk about how you can transform that process using Reddit.


So, like I said, it's hard to regularly come up with ideas


for your content marketing campaigns.


It's even harder sometimes to then take those ideas and then transform them


into actually successful campaigns.


And then it can sometimes be even harder still to get buy-in from your bosses,


from your teams, from your clients for those content ideas,


especially if you're trying to do something new, right,


that hasn't been proven in the past.


Luckily, there are these online forums where people on the internet have come together


to discuss different topics, to post different types of content,


and we can use those to find amazing content.


Reddit right now is the biggest and, in my opinion, the best forum on the internet,


which follows that Reddit is currently an amazing place to find content


and potentially the biggest and best place to find content.


The goal is, by the end of the next 15 minutes here, that you'll be able


to understand why Reddit is the king of forums on the internet right now,


why it's an amazing place to find content, what tools you can use


to then find content ideas on Reddit, and then how to transform those ideas


into actual actionable campaigns.


But quick history behind forums.


It's good to understand how we got here, where Reddit came from.


A long time ago, dinosaur age in internet terms, we had IRC.


That grew up a little, became message boards around dedicated topics.


Message boards became more formal with slashdot and then dig, and now we've got Reddit.


And Reddit, as Rand mentioned earlier today, is a really big deal now.


It's the number eight most popular website on the internet as a whole,


according to its Alexa ranking.


And just in January of this year alone, it saw 274 million unique visitors.


And a lot of those people are coming back on a very, very regular basis.


So it is seeing billions of clicks and visits every year.


In fact, just by show of hands, how many of you have used Reddit before?


Almost everybody.


How many of you have used Reddit in the last like 24 hours?


Almost the same hands.


How many of you are using Reddit right now?


Reddit is a big deal.


So what is it that makes it so attractive and addictive?


Why do people keep coming back to it?


Well, there's a couple of key features that we'll be able to break down here.


These key features are, again, what makes Reddit so attractive,


but then also what makes it so good for us as marketers.


First key feature is something called subreddits.


These are smaller forums within Reddit that are dedicated to a particular topic.


For example, there is the movies subreddit.


You might go here if you want to post a discussion about a recent film,


or if you want to read reviews about a film,


or if you want to see the latest trailer or poster.


There's the food subreddit, which is if you like to take pictures of your food,


if you like to look at pictures of food, this is like heaven for you.


But things get even more granular from there.


There is a subreddit for just about everything under the sun.


For example, this is Old People Facebook.


Old People Facebook is a subreddit dedicated to the funny things


that grandparents and aunts and uncles will post on social media.


Here's a couple examples of those posts.


First, we got Charles.


He posted Kmart's Facebook page and says, Carol's cat died yesterday.


I'm sure Kmart had a little huddle about this.


Like, what do we do?


We're a counseling place now?


Kmart did a great job, said, we are so sorry to hear that, Charles.


We love kitties so much, they truly become a part of the family.


Vincent, I'm assuming one of Charles' friends, sees this and decides to get in.


He says, Earl's guinea pig died last year.


Another example, Jean posts on Sbarro's corporate page,


says, if you notice, I never say much.


I keep my feelings to myself.


I'm sure they loved hearing that.


Their social team was on the ball.


They say, tell us more, Jean.


Jean says, I said enough.


Lastly, Joel, not the Joel that just spoke, hopefully.


Joel posted to Old Country Buffet's page.


He's just really hungry.


He wants some corn.


He's probably struggling with voice commands and voice search.


And he says, order corn.


When he doesn't get a response, he tries again, order corn.


Hello?


Can I speak to a real person?


Excuse me, please order corn.


He slowly descends into despair as he realizes no corn will be had.


Another example of a kind of more niche subreddit, Shower Thoughts.


This is dedicated to those epiphanies that you'll


have when you're getting ready in the morning.


I like this one a lot.


It says, if I see Google in a show or movie, I think nothing of it.


But if I see Bing, I know it's product placement.


This one says, there should be a millennial edition of Monopoly,


where you just walk around the board paying rent, never able to buy anything.


There really is a subreddit for just about everything


under the sun, which is incredibly valuable for us as marketers.


Because we're always looking to try to gather data and gather evidence


for our target market.


And on Reddit, people are self-segregating,


breaking themselves up into different interest groups


in these different subreddits.


Another key feature, discussion threads.


Basically, people can comment on content,


and then they can comment on comments, et cetera.


What this allows is you can have a focus group around content


that you haven't even created.


You can find a piece of content that you like on Reddit


and go and read through the comments.


And you can see if people may get a feedback on it, if they really liked it.


Maybe sometimes they have ideas for other types of content


that they think would perform really well.


There's upvoting and downvoting.


And this is great.


When I was mentioning having a hard time getting buy-in from bosses,


upvoting and downvoting really helps that.


Because what you can do is, and for those that don't know,


on Reddit, if you like something, you upvote it.


If you don't like it, you downvote it.


And what you can do is you can look at the most upvoted content.


That has already been validated, sometimes by tens of thousands


of people who have upvoted it.


So there's already validation built in.


And those upvotes then contribute to another Reddit feature,


which is rankings.


The top content automatically rises and becomes more visible.


The way rankings are determined in Reddit is a combination of the number


of upvotes compared to the number of downvotes over a certain period of time.


And if you get enough upvotes in that period of time,


that content may make it to the front page.


And the front page is just an amalgamation of all of the top content


from the most popular subreddits.


Usually these subreddits that are sending things


to the front page are bigger, more popular subreddits.


So the food subreddit I mentioned before has over 12 million subscribers.


And that is most often what you'll see on the front page.


There's also some rules of Reddit that are important to understand.


The more you can understand these,


the more you'll understand why you see the type of content that you do on Reddit.


So here is a breakdown of the most important rules.


The first is no spam.


The second is no vote manipulation.


And while people still manipulate votes on Reddit for sure, this is important


because it means that most likely when you're seeing upvotes on something,


those are real people behind those numbers.


It's not something that's been faked.


Each subreddit has its own rules.


For example, the biggest subreddit around interpreting,


visualizing, discussing data.


It's called Data is Beautiful.


They have a rule where you can only post things about politics on Thursdays.


That's just the unlucky day for that sub.


That's the only time that you can post content about that.


So if you're looking for political content,


you won't find it on most of the other days.


Something to keep in mind.


But what does all of this mean for us?


How do we take these features and then get content ideas?


Well, that is the golden question.


How do we find golden content ideas on Reddit?


Well, the first step is to become an active user.


And you don't need to use it every day.


You don't need to become a Reddit super user by any means.


But you need to use it enough so


that you start to understand the environment, the culture around


the Reddit community, what different Reddit users care about.


The next step is to master Reddit's search function.


Reddit has a search bar.


It's pretty mediocre.


It doesn't do a great job of delivering results.


But you can drill down in your searches by using search parameters.


You can search by author.


So if you have a particular user that's posted really good content in the past,


you can look at just that user's content.


You can search by website.


So if you're trying to do something around sports,


you can look at what has been the most upvoted from ESPN.com.


You can then sort the results that you get.


So for example, you can sort by top content.


So the most upvoted content within my search.


The newest content or


the content that's received the most discussion, the most comments, right?


You can also limit your results to different amounts of time.


You can do the past hour, past 24 hours, past year.


You can also limit results to a particular subreddit.


And this is useful because, say I was doing a campaign for a restaurant.


We wanted to do something around chicken.


If I just typed in chicken,


I'd probably get results of people calling each other chickens and things like that.


If I limit it just to the food subreddit, then I can be sure that I'm going to be


looking at the top content that actually has to do with food.


You can filter subreddits.


So if you just want to look at all of the content that has been posted under


a particular topic, you can go in and you can look at the top content from that


subreddit, the most controversial, which sometimes is valuable.


This just means the ones that get a lot of upvotes and a lot of downvotes.


You can also look at it based off of time,


based off of what's going up, what's going down.


But what has been most valuable for us at Go Fish Digital in terms of


a combination of these different features, the MVF, most valuable filter combo,


has been a combination of looking at the top content from a particular subreddit,


a subreddit that matches our topic, over the past month.


The reason you want to put the past month in there is that if you go too long,


you might get things that have been played out.


You know, like you might get Harlem Shake videos or things like that.


If you're just looking at the past month, then you'll be able to get things that


are more recent, maybe haven't played out as much yet.


Now some examples of how to take all of this and apply it.


Case study one.


This is an example of taking the most popular subreddits and


then taking the best content from those and


transforming it into something for one of our clients.


Our client was a software provider.


They provided, it's an anonymous feedback tool for corporate environments.


And they needed backlinks and social shares.


Who doesn't, right?


Our Reddit find was that data is beautiful subreddit that I mentioned earlier.


This was always getting a lot of upvotes, this subreddit.


It was frequently on the front page.


A lot of people like to tweet the stuff out that they found there.


So what we did was we looked at the top content.


It shared a lot of similarities.


The top post from Wednesday was very similar to top posts from Thursday.


They all had kind of the same graph set up.


A lot of them had the same kind of title structure.


And so we took that and we modeled it for our own data.


We did a survey about how people value anonymity online.


Essentially, people do.


They value anonymity online.


But we modeled the graphs that we saw, the graph formats.


We looked at the title structures so that every graph had a title that pulled out


some kind of juicy bit from the statistics.


And this performed really well.


In fact, you can see here somebody took it and posted it on Reddit.


And it got over 4,000 upvotes itself.


And it did really well after that as well.


It got over 600 links.


Obviously, not all of them were perfect quality.


But still, over 600 links and over 7,000 social shares.


Another example.


This is an example of looking at a top content around a particular idea


or a particular topic, not necessarily within a subreddit.


The client here was a limo and shuttling company.


Potentially kind of boring.


So we turned to Reddit.


Our need here was backlinks.


Everybody needs backlinks.


And our find on Reddit was presidential limos.


People really like to post content about presidential limos.


Has bulletproof glass.


Has like its own oxygen tank in there.


It's built like a tank.


It really is.


At least the new ones are.


And so we took that concept, found the presidential limo posts


that were most upvoted.


And then we created our own content from it.


And the result was a morphing GIF of presidential limos over the years.


And here's that GIF.


Basically, it shows things going from pretty average, typical,


nice cars back in the 50s and 60s and 70s.


And then slowly transforming into the big behemoth tanks that we have today.


And people really like this.


People liked it on social media.


People liked it at different reporting outlets.


We got multiple domain authority 90 plus links from this.


And then on top of that, even though it wasn't necessarily part of our goals,


we got social shares as well.


Another case study.


This is an example of why it's important to be relatively active on Reddit.


If you do want to use it as a source for content ideas.


The client here was a jeweler, a large online jeweler.


They needed, again, backlinks and brand exposure.


And our find was this thing called the hydraulic press channel.


Hydraulic press channel was on the front page pretty much every week


for about two months earlier last year.


Basically, it's this guy in Finland.


And he owns a machine shop.


And he takes things like watermelons and computers.


And he sticks them in his hydraulic press.


And he smashes them.


People love it.


They upvote it to heaven.


It's just an amazing thing.


I found his email address.


And I sent him an email.


And I said, hey, if we get you a really big diamond,


like one that could show up on film, will you smash it?


And then make sure that you mention that our jeweler client sent it to you.


And then make sure you include a link to our jeweler client in the description.


And if any reporters reach out to you to ask about it,


make sure that you mention where it came from.


And he said yes.


So the result was a diamond crushing video.


Here's a small snippet of that.


So they say that diamonds are forever.


But how long?


It was a big diamond, it wasn't a very nice diamond.


Don't be too worried.


It wasn't that nice of a diamond.


But it was big.


I'm pretty sure he practiced that.


They say that diamonds are forever.


For a really long time before he made the video.


It was one of the most popular comments on Reddit about the video, actually.


It was about that comment he made.


This just blew up.


It was the number one video on YouTube for over 24 hours.


It had 10 and a half million views.


It got coverage from almost every single news outlet,


including the Weather Channel.


The Weather Channel decided to talk about crushing diamonds.


And we got some bonus links.


Just throw in some bonus links there, too.


It was awesome.


We have a new standard now that content has to be diamond crushing.


Has to be diamond crushing content.


Reddit is powerful.


Reddit is so powerful because you get so many people going there


on a regular basis.


And you have live data that you can constantly draw from.


So that things can be validated.


Ideas can be validated.


You can have focus groups in the comments long before you ever


take that content for approval by a client, by a boss, by your team.


Now there are some limitations of Reddit to keep in mind.


Reddit data is skewed.


And it's definitely not the end of the world.


It's definitely something that you're going to want to be aware of.


The Pew Research Center did a study about Reddit.


And here are some of their findings.


Reddit is overwhelmingly male.


Like two to one ratio.


That has been changing recently.


There's been more females joining.


But it's still, right now, for the time being, overwhelmingly male.


It's overwhelmingly young.


64% are in the 19 to 29-year-old range.


It's more educated than the typical demographic.


42% have a college degree or more.


18% have high school or less.


The rest are still in college or dropped out of college.


So it's a pretty highly educated demographic.


It's very white.


70% white and Hispanic.


And then it's also very liberal.


It's an 81 to 19% split between liberal, moderate, to conservative.


Now with this being said, if you're trying to build a campaign around


like women's beauty products or something like that,


there is a subreddit for that, right?


Even though 33% of Reddit's user base is female, maybe you don't want to look at all of Reddit.


But you can look at a particular subreddit.


And that's still extremely valuable.


So to recap.


Become an active user.


Master the search function.


Again, there's a lot of parameters there.


You can get really tricky with it.


But that's how you bring those good ideas to the top.


Once you find those good ideas, model and riff off of them, right?


Take it, take the presidential limo pictures that have been posted and think


of how you can just polish it a little bit.


How you can one-up it a little bit.


And then remember Reddit's limits.


The data is skewed.


Keep that in mind and you'll still find great ideas.


And you'll be well on your way to creating top diamond crushing content.


Thank you.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Music


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

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


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Today we're going to go over all things image link building,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

which is sort of an art.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I'm so excited to dig into this with you.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

First and foremost, you need to know your link targets.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

What are those top platforms or websites that you would really like to acquire a link from?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From there, you can start to understand who might be influencers on those platforms.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Who's writing the content? Who might you contact?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Also, what are the top pages currently for those sites?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

There's a number of tools that give you a glimpse into that information.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Moz's OSC OpenSight Explorer will show you top pages.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

SEMrush has a top page report.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

SimilarWeb has a popular page report.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can dig into all that information there. Really interesting stuff.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can also start to dig into old popular images and then update them.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

What are old popular images within your space that you could have an opportunity to revamp and update?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

A really neat way to dig into some of that is BuzzSumo's Infographics Filter.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Then you would insert the topic.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You enter the industry or the topic you're trying to address


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and then search by the infographics to see if you can come across anything.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can also just transform popular content into images.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I think there's so much opportunity in doing that for new statistic reports, new data that comes out.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

There's tons of great opportunity to transform those into multiple images


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and leverage that across different platforms for link building.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Again, just understanding who those influencers are.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From here, we're going to dive into the keyword research part of this whole puzzle.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

This is really understanding the intent behind people searching about the topic or the product or whatever it might be.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Something you can do is evaluate keywords with link intent.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

This is a brilliant concept I heard about a couple weeks back from Dan Schur's podcast, Thank You Dan.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Essentially, it's the idea that keywords with statistics or facts after the keyword


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

have link intent baked into the search query.