So if you don't know that your traffic dropped, if you don't know that your click-through


#WhiteboardFriday: Every Metric Is A Vanity Metric

rate dropped, and let's say your traffic dropped, you don't know why it dropped, which page


is, which keywords, what rankings were affected.


Did you have lower rankings or did you have rankings on less keywords?


You can't go back and fix this and figure out what happened.


And so tracking that bottom line number isn't enough.


And at that point, that has become a vanity metric.


That's become something that you're celebrating, but you're not really understanding how you


got there.


And I think we're all aware of that to a point.


Maybe we don't do it, but we know we should.


But the other thing I miss, I think sometimes, and that we miss, is something I'm going to


refer to as replication.


And yes, I tried a little too hard to get three R's in here, but this is repeating success.


If something works and you get a bunch of sales, and even if it's high margin, you get


profitable sales, but you don't know what you did.


You don't know what really drove that.


Where did the traffic come from?


What was the source of that?


Was it specific pieces of content?


Was it specific keywords?


What campaign was that tied to?


You can't replicate that success.


So it's not just about fixing something when it's broken, when the dollars start to dry


up, but when things go well, not just celebrating, but going back and trying to work up the funnel


and figuring out what you did right.


Because if you don't know what you did right, you can't do it again.


So three R's results, consider the context of the metric, repairs, be able to work up


the funnel and know what's broken.


And if things go well, replication, be able to repeat your successes and hopefully do


it again.


So again, vanity, it's not in the metric, it's in us.


And you can have vanity with any of these things.


So don't get caught up in any one thing.


Consider the whole funnel.


I hope you can avoid the mistakes and I hope you can repeat your successes.


Thanks a lot and I'll see you next time.


How to Make the SEO Case to Small Businesses - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting


about how to make the SEO case to small businesses, small business owners, small business CEOs,


maybe even some medium businesses as well. And I want to start by saying that this is


a challenge for a lot of us, but it's a challenge for both types of SEO folks. For in-house


folks, you might be the marketing person at your company, maybe there's only a handful


of you, you're a relatively small business and you're trying to make the case, hey, boss,


team, we should invest in SEO. And likewise, for a lot of consultants who are serving small


and medium businesses or very small local businesses, making this case to potential


clients can be really tough too. And that's what we're here to talk about. So, first step,


the thing that I recommend starting with always is show search queries with obvious purchase


intent, obvious visitor intent where it's essentially just a no-brainer to imagine that


7 out of 10 people who are searching for this particular query are going to be looking to


make a transaction with your business or with a business just like yours. So, for example,


if I'm a dentist, I'm not sure that I would go in and I would pitch them, hey, there's


a lot of searches for teeth hygiene tips, we could do some great content marketing,


build some great brand awareness. You can imagine the head of a dental practice saying,


you know, I'm not sure that's going to convert into business for us, at least not directly.


And maybe you can make that tougher case around content marketing and secondary branding and


all that kind of stuff. But if you say, hey, guess what, there are people searching for


Milwaukee dentists. Well, if I'm a dentist in Milwaukee, it's pretty hard for me to argue,


I don't think they're looking for us. And you can get even more specific, right? So,


I could go long tail and I could say, or longer tail and I could say, hey, they're looking


in our neighborhood, in our specific region or they're looking for particular features


that we have or particular services that we uniquely offer. All of those things can help


to narrow that, make that very, very obvious intent. Second thing is you're going to want


to highlight probably with a slide or a presentation showing this off in a really simple fashion.


There are people searching for these types of terms, right? Things like Milwaukee dentist


or Brewers Hill dentist, which Brewers Hill being a neighborhood in Milwaukee. Milwaukee


dentists that accept badger care, a particular kind of insurance or discount, dental discount.


Milwaukee pediatric dentists serving kids, makes sense. You want to show off the volume.


This isn't like keyword research that SEOs would do, right? The keyword research that


we would do would include different types of metrics. But you want to show them volume


because you're trying to illustrate how many people are looking for these things each month.


And then you want to show are you ranking or are we ranking for this already and are


the people we think of as our top competitors in the market, right? The three dental practices


right around us, are they ranking? And if it's the case that they are, yes, yes, yes,


yes, no, no, yes, a little, no, aha. This is a phenomenal way to convince folks, even


folks who are not necessarily motivated by the, hey, people are searching for us, they're


often motivated by the people are going to our competitors instead of us because we haven't


invested in this channel or in this practice. That can be a great case to make. Step three,


I recommend a lot of times you need to really prove it with small business owners, especially


the skeptical ones. And so starting with AdWords is a great way to go, especially because you


can then show the cost to clicks comparison. So for example, let's say we're going to run


a 90-day ad campaign. We don't have to run it for all 90 days. We could run a campaign


for a week, maybe even just three days, right? And if we get enough data, we can use that


to extrapolate out. And we can say, okay, we know that a 90-day ad campaign with Google


to get us into these sorts of average positions and get this much traffic will cost us approximately


$3,000. We think it'll bring us about 450 clicks based on what we've observed so far.


That translates to about 10 leads because we get about one per 40 to 50 visits. And


we close about half the leads that come to us through search. All right, that's a 200%


ROI, assuming that the average customer is spending $500 with us on their first visit,


whatever it is, right? So there's your ROI number. Now, what would happen if we ran a


90-day SEO campaign? Well, it turns out that's going to cost us $6,000. Maybe that's three


months of half of this person's salary, or it is three months of using this particular


consultant or that kind of thing. And what do we expect? Well, we expect that search


visits versus the 90 days prior to the campaign for the 90 days after the campaign, not during


the campaign because you'll be slowly ramping up, right? So you've got sort of that before


period where you're here, the during period where you're ramping up, and the after period


where you're sort of at that higher new medium. We're going to expect that we're going to


get 900 new visitors from search. We think we can get 25 leads from that. We think we


can close 12, approximately half of those, and we think the ROI will be 250%. So now


we can start to do those ROI comparisons. And you can see, aha, SEO is, it appears,


a better investment, generally speaking. Plus, you make this investment. And then if you


can explain to the folks, hey, guess what? Half your traffic goes up. It stays up. We


don't have to keep paying for it every time. Not every click costs us money, right? You


run that campaign. It goes on ad infinitum. Step four, you want to transparently show


your process, preferably speaking with as similar examples as you possibly can, but


not directly competitive. So what I mean here is, hey, we talked to Rita's Bake Shop last


year. We did some work for her. Rita was nowhere in Google. She wasn't showing up at all. We


verified her local listings. Let me show you what a local listing is. We built her some


links. Let me show you some of the links that we acquired. Some of them were from press.


Some of them were from getting her included in local listing services. And we did some


keyword research and targeting. So we changed up some of our pages. And I'll show you some


examples of that in my pitch deck, right, my slide pitch deck. In six months, you can


see from her Google Analytics, traffic grew 500%. You don't have to show off the actual


traffic. You can scrub the axis on the side there so that the numbers don't appear, and


you can simply show the growth. And search is now her number two source of new customers


behind only referring customers, which is terrific, right? And you want to illustrate


this process so that it doesn't seem mysterious. It doesn't seem like, oh, you couldn't do


this yourself. It's just, it's challenging. There's a lot of work to do. You have to know


the ins and outs of it, right? And someone has to actually go and do these things. A


lot of skepticism is not always in the small business world because of ROI or lack of belief


that it might do something, but lack of understanding of the process and a lack of communication


between SEO professionals or marketing professionals and the end customer, the client, or the team,


the boss, the manager. Step five, you should be willing to listen, absolutely you have


to, listen to objections and concerns with empathy, right? If your potential person is


complaining like, hey, we had these problems in the past. This is why I don't invest. This


is why I prefer just to run some Facebook ads or why I prefer not to get involved with


the internet at all or we have this other service that say they do SEO for us. Why would


we need to go with you as well? But even though you're listening and you're obviously going


to be answering those objections, hopefully with data and information as well as with


empathetic concern, you should be willing to walk away from poor matches. There are


going to be a lot of them. Every consultant I've talked to and many, many in-house, unfortunately,


marketing folks who do SEO have said, yeah, there are a lot of times where we had to do


a ton of work to convince our potential client or team or boss to invest in this. Then once


we got rolling, there was just impediment after impediment because the belief wasn't


really there. The trust wasn't there and the willingness to invest wasn't there. If those


things are lacking, this process is just going to be way harder than going out and pitching


someone else. I might urge you to do that. All right, everyone, look forward to hearing


some of your tips in the comments for how you've convinced small and medium business


owners to invest in SEO. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard