I was like, geez, it's going to be a lot of hard language in my mouth coming out.


MozCon 2015 - 09 - Online Personalization that Actually Works with Cara Harshman

So I'm today going to talk about how you can all use personalization to work at your business.


And I want to start by giving a story of a time that personalization worked really well


on me.


So it's 2015, the month of February, and two of my roommates, Kate and Jared, told us that


they're moving out of our San Francisco apartment and across the bay into Oakland, which for


context is the city that most people move to from San Francisco when they want to get


really serious and start doing things like pickling or having a chicken coop in their


backyard.


So I'm really sad to lose Jared and Kate, two beloved roommates, but I'm really stoked


because it means that I get to move upstairs to the attic bedroom of our apartment with


this view.


I'm like, yes, I get the whole view of the city.


This is amazing.


How fast can you move out?


The only problem is that I have no furniture.


I am moving out of a very tiny bedroom in the apartment and I need to find some stuff


to live with.


So I'm on the hunt and I go to CB2, one of my most favorite furniture stores, that is


the little sister of Crate and Barrel, and I find this, the Peek-a-Boo Media Console.


I love it.


I can picture my television and my stereo just floating so effortlessly on top of this


thing.


So I browse around.


I'm like really into it.


I'm looking at it.


And then I'm just kind of dismayed, though, because it's $400.


That thing is a lot of money.


And I'm not ready to purchase.


So on the first visit, I browse and I bounce.


The next day, I get an email from CB2, or maybe like two days later, I get an email


from CB2 that really struck me because it said this, 15% off all acrylics.


Now this table that I just showed you is an acrylic table.


So I was like, oh, I want to buy an acrylic table.


Let me go back to the website and browse around more.


So I go back.


I'm pleased to see that it's heavily discounted, but I'm still just not ready to own this thing.


I'm still not ready to purchase.


I need to go look at Craigslist and other things to see if I can find it for cheaper.


So I do that.


And then the next day, I get another email from CB2.


And this one tickled me.


It was just amazing.


Still deciding.


Like, yes, I'm still deciding.


Oh, my God.


I don't know if I need this or not.


Wow.


You just spoke right to my heart.


You just pulled my heartstrings.


So I go back to the website and I decide that this is the right time.


I'm ready.


I just haven't found anything on Craigslist, so I'm going to purchase.


And I'm very happy to say that the Peekaboo Media Console is still pleasing me to this


day.


Here it is, my bedroom.


That lamp, also CB2, by the way.


So this is an amazing example of personalization at work.


A company is using what they know about me to deliver relevant content that will hopefully


make me convert.


So CB2 knows that I'm interested in these acrylic tables, so they send me relevant emails


and ask me if I'm still deciding to get me to purchase.


And I converted.


Hooray.


Today, email is a really powerful channel for personalization.


Same with retargeting, which we've heard a little bit about from Dwayne earlier.


We've all probably experienced emails that are more relevant to you or retargeted ads.


And this is because it works.


These things are proven tactics to get people to do what you want them to do on your websites,


for your business.


But there's a really huge opportunity to add another channel to your personalization strategy


that many people are ignoring today.


And that channel is your website.


People are browsing your website all over the place.


They're on their desktop phones or their desktop.


They're on their mobile phones.


And your website is this really massive asset that you have that's going underutilized when


it comes to personalization.


We're spending a ton of money, a ton of effort on AdWords, on relevant email campaigns to


send people to, sending all this money and effort to a generic version of our websites.


The same visitor gets the same experience no matter what they came in on or how you


acquired them.


Well, I want to say that that is not cutting it anymore.


The one size fits all web is dead.


And I would go so far as to say that it's also lazy.


Because we have so much information about our visitors, like who they are, where they


came from, how we acquired them, their past behavior, for example, we can use all of these


tidbits of information to make the web more personal for them.


And we're already used to it.


I mean, think about just how we exude ourselves in person in real life.


If I walk into a store, I might be treated like searching for shoes.


I might be treated differently than a man who walks into the store searching for shoes.


We give signals of who we are every single day.


It's time that the web kept up with us.


So today I want to give a framework for how we can start thinking about personalization


at all of our own businesses.


And so hopefully we can go back to our offices and start doing online personalization that


actually works.


So the framework has three ingredients.


The first one is the who.


Who are you targeting?


How are you slicing and dicing all the different visitors coming to your site into unique segments


and personalizing content based on those segments?


That is the what.


The what are you showing the who.


And then the third one is how.


How are you prioritizing all of these millions of ideas that you have to personalize?


Because we all know that there's no limit of the ideas we can have, but which ones are


actually going to get shipped or built and shipped?


That's another story.


So this framework starts with the who.


And there's three major ways that I've seen in my work at Optimizely that I've seen people


think about how they're slicing their audiences.


And that is based on context or the status of the visitor.


So are they logged in or are they logged out?


Are they coming from an AdWords campaign or are they coming from organic search?


Then things like demographic qualities.


These are things that you innately know to be true about a visitor.


Whether the visitor is a male or a female.


Whether they are located in Seattle or San Francisco.


And then there's behavior.


The things that a visitor has done on your website.


This is a little bit more complicated because there's a lot of different ways that you can


figure out who's done what, for example.


But we'll get into it.


So I want to give to highlight each of these attributes, I want to give some examples of


businesses that have been doing personalization and slicing their audiences in these three


ways.


And I'll start with an example of a website called Secret Escapes.


Now Secret Escapes is a travel deals website based in the UK.


And they are spending a ton of money on AdWords.


They're bidding on keywords like luxury travel, spa breaks.


Because spa breaks is a thing that you say in the UK, I guess, for like spa vacations


or spa holidays, something.


And they're sending all of that traffic to this landing page.


Now this landing page looks pretty good.


I think it's like it was converting decently for them.


But they wanted to find out how they could decrease the money, decrease the spend on


AdWords.


And they came up with a number of hypotheses for this.


So they decided to try personalizing their landing pages based on the keyword that a


visitor was coming in from.


So here is the generic version of the page.


Every single visitor who comes there, no matter from what AdWord it is that they clicked on,


sees this version of the landing page.


Now here's the personalized version they tried for the keyword spa breaks.


So they decided to change the messaging and the image to put people in the mood, to put


them in that spa luxury environment.


So they, in other words, personalized the content of the landing page based on the keyword


that brought them there.


We call this symmetric messaging.


It's really powerful.


And again, it's very powerful because this worked extremely well for them.


They saw a 32% increase in conversions on traffic from this AdWords keyword just by


making the messaging on the ad symmetric to the messaging on the landing page.


Now this isn't just a lot of new leads for Secret Escapes.


This is a potentially money savings for their AdWords account because the bounce rate on


this page is going down, so the quality score could be going up.


So I really recommend that you guys all go out and try this on any of your AdWords landing


pages because I've seen it work time and time again.


So this is Secret Escapes using context or the status of the visitor and how the visitor


came to their site to personalize.


Okay.


The next example is another example of context, and this comes from AdRoll.


AdRoll is a B2B website that offers a retargeting service, and they are personalizing here on


their homepage based on the status that a visitor is in, whether they're presale or


post-sale.


They're doing a really simple change here.


For the presale experience, they're giving people a phone number to call that they want


to have questions or want to talk to a sales human on the other end of that line.


They're giving them the presale.


But for post-sale, they're giving people a link to the support center.


So maybe people don't want to talk to someone, they're already sold, they have questions.


So a really simple way to personalize the content of your site based on the context


that a visitor or the status that a visitor is in.


Another one from AdRoll is more getting into the demographic of a visitor.


So here they are targeting the sites to Enterprise and SMB audiences by changing the header CTA.


For Enterprise, they want to get people on the phone.


They have a whole fleet of sales humans.


They want people talking to them.


So request a demo and get in touch with us.


But they also have a free trial that you can just try it out real quick and easy.


So for them, they think that this demographic of Enterprise versus SMB audience is going


to improve and be more personal and relevant to their audiences.


So that's a great example of demographic.


Now I want to give you an example of behavior.


And this one comes from an e-commerce company called The Climb.


They are based in Portland, Oregon, and they sell outdoor gear and fun things that you


can go backpacking and stuff with.


So these are a group of really savvy retailers.


They know that they want to show the right products to the right people who will actually


buy them.


Those are the right people who actually buy these products.


So they've looked through their data, and they found that the leading indicator as to


whether or not someone will buy their product is whether or not they bought something in


the past.


So if someone's bought in the past and they want to try to get the best products in front


of those people to maybe buy them again or just to buy them.


So they created a different experience for the past purchasers segment of their visitor


base.


And they decided to show them Oakley products because Oakley has a really high margin.


They sell really well, and what they pay for them is a lot less than what they can sell


them for.


So they decided to try targeting past purchasers with Oakley products.


And this went pretty well for them.


They saw a 10% increase in conversions on checkouts of Oakley products for the segment


of past purchasers.


So this isn't like a whopping crazy 90% or some really amazing number, but 10% on one


segment is really significant.


Because if you can unlock all these different incremental gains across many different segments


of your audience, then it becomes a sea change and a ton of success and a ton of revenue.


So those are the three ways that I've seen and that commonly people are segmenting their


different audiences on what to show and who they're showing different personalized experiences


for, based on context, based on demographics, and based on behavior.


So I hope that you're thinking right now on, OK, how could I slice and dice my visitors?


How could I use the context or the status they're in to show them a really great experience


based on a little bit what I know about them?


We saw one great one today from Matthew where he showed the what is code that they personalized


the experience for that, for returning visitors, and gave them a little bit of data like, you're


almost there.


You're X amount of thousand words through.


That's a really great example of using context to personalize.


So as you're thinking about this, remember that you have existing audiences right under


your nose.


You probably have natural lists already of the way you're thinking about your visitors,


and you can start personalizing experiences for them.


So let's say you do MPS score, for example.


Well, you probably have promoters and hopefully not many detractors.


You could be personalizing the site for each one of them, or logged in versus logged out,


or subscriber versus non-subscriber.


There's no one-size-fits-all way to do this because personalization is personal.


So you just got to try it, see what you have on your own site, and then start personalizing


for, understand your audience.


And only, excuse me, the best person to do that is you.


Okay.


So that's the who.


One pillar of our framework for personalization.


Next I want to talk about the what.


What are you showing each of these different audiences?


And this is the content that's fueling your personalization campaign.


So what I want to say about the what is that this is really a hypothesis.


There's not one thing that's always going to be amazing for return visitors, or one


thing that's always going to be amazing for new visitors.


It's a hypothesis.


This is a great time to flex your A-B testing hypothesis muscles, which I'm sure you're


all developing at a rapid rate.


Flex these hypothesis generation muscles and start thinking of, well, how can I move the


needle for this segment?


What would be good for them?


So hopefully a lot of you are A-B testing the audience already.


Can I get a show of hands to see who's A-B testing today?


Amazing.


Yes.


Okay.


That's so great.


So if you're already thinking about how you can improve the experience for all of your


traffic, then you can be thinking about how to improve the experience for a segment of


your traffic.


So to go on with the what, I want to extrapolate this problem of me searching for furniture


in my apartment, because it's a really big room, people.


This room is not filling itself.


Still on a journey.


So let's say I go to a media website.


It's like a DIY website, and they have ideas for how to furnish your attic apartment, things


to do.


So if I am coming there and I'm a new visitor, one idea is to show me an onboarding experience


with a tour of the site.


Because if I'm coming in and I'm just searching for attic apartments, well, I might want to


know that you also have content for the kitchen remodeling or for my living room.


So if I'm a new visitor, maybe giving me an experience of a tour of everything that you


offer would be a really great way to get me to return and keep sharing the great information


you have with my friends.


But if I'm a return visitor, maybe give me an email signup newsletter call to action.


I've already expressed interest in you.


You're valuable to me.


I'm coming back to you.


So capture that value and give me more reason to come back.


So two quick ways you could personalize for new visitors or return visitors if you are


a media site.


Some examples here.


Let's say you're a retail site, and I am the visitor.


I'm coming to you to shop for couches.


And you know as the retail site that I, the shopper, am located in San Francisco.


Well, I have a hypothesis that you might sell me more furniture if you give me local in-store


pickup options.


Because furniture shipping is really expensive, and it takes a while.


And so if I have the opportunity to drive my car over to you, then maybe I'll be more


likely to check out.


One example.


One hypothesis.


We don't know.


We have to test it.


Or if I haven't visited the site in 90 days, maybe give me a promotional offer for a limited


time discount to give me a little bit of incentive to get back and to be purchasing.


I've seen these things work.


They're great hypotheses.


But you take this to your team.


Go explore what you could possibly show these people, because there's so many things under


the sun to show them.


But a word to the wise as you're thinking about this is don't be creepy.


So creepy is super arbitrary, because what's creepy to me may not be creepy to you.


I was not at all creeped out by CB2 when they said, still deciding.


But I could have been very creeped out if they were like, still deciding on the acrylic


table that you viewed twice and haven't purchased.


So be thoughtful with the way that you execute these personalization campaigns.


Dana said it really well earlier when she said that great marketing feels right.


So if it feels right to you and your business and you're really thinking about your company


values, then creepiness won't even be an issue.


Just don't be as creepy as this van that says Hogwarts Express on it.


I mean, like, what?


This is amazing.


This really exists.


Found on the internet.


It must be true.


So when you're thinking about your personalization levels, just keep it like down here, not up


here if this is Hogwarts, creeper van.


Just keep it down here.


Okay.


Then you'll be golden.


So that was the what, the second stop in our framework personalization journey.


So now I want to talk about, and when you're thinking about what, remember that it's a


hypothesis.


If you can do A-B testing, you're already doing all this hypothesis and ideas for A-B


testing, then personalization will come really naturally, because it's just thinking about


what's going to work best for a different segment of your audience.


Now I want to talk about the how.


And once you have all these ideas out, you've got like your Google Doc or your Trello board


or your JiraQ of all these different ideas, now it's time to think about how to build


and ship them, which ones get built and shipped.


And I've talked to a lot of businesses about this.


I do case studies at Optimizely, so I've talked to a lot of companies about how they think


about prioritization, and it comes down to three things.


One, the potential business impact that this personalization effort can have.


Two, the technical effort to execute this personalization campaign.


And three, the requirements to sustain it.


So when you're thinking about personalization, there's not, or prioritization, it's too similar,


when you're thinking about prioritization, you could be really strict and have a point


system, like one point for each business criteria that this personalization thing meets.


Or you could be really loose and go out for beers and just talk with your coworkers about


what's going to work, what's not going to work, and just be really loose with it.


I've seen both work.


It's all up to you and how you want to frame it.


But I do have some takeaways and some actionable advice for when you're thinking about prioritization.


And the first one is take big bites for big impact.


By big bites, I mean starting to segment for audiences that either represent a lot of traffic


or a lot of value.


Because at first, you don't want to start personalizing for all the possible little


niche segments that have like 1,000 or 100 visitors in them, because you're not going


to get really actionable results from that personalization.


So instead, think about audiences, think about who makes up most of your traffic.


Go to your Google Analytics.


This is all visible right there.


Your top level insights about who's coming to your website.


Maybe you can slice it based on new versus returning visitors, or people from a desktop


site or a mobile site.


Don't get too aggressive with really segmenting for one-to-one personalization.


The Amazon level, you could get there eventually, but start small.


Start with small amount of personalizations that have a really big value, big impact.


So there's the big traffic component to this, but there's also the type of traffic that


has a lot of value.


So think about the traffic that you're spending the most amount of money to acquire.


And you better be personalizing for them, because if you're paying for them to come


to your site, then you better be converting them into value for your business.


So this is what Secret Escapes was doing from that example earlier.


They were taking their AdWords traffic and hypothesizing ways to turn more of that traffic


into leads and value for leads that they could sell vacations to.


So when you're thinking about how to find the potential business impact, take big bites,


not little nibbles.


The second pro tip on here is be realistic about the technical effort it's going to take


you to actually execute this personalization campaign.


Do you have the resources to identify this audience?


Do you know what the dependencies are?


How are you going to execute it?


Now there's a lot of software out there that can help you do this, but if you don't have


the software, then think about do you have the analyst resources or any developer resources


that you might need to identify or give a cookie to a visitor to identify them as logged


in versus logged out.


And within a given time period, I suggest diversifying the amount of complexity that


you're taking on with personalization.


So in one quarter, let's say, you want to do three personalized campaigns.


So one might be really high complexity and another two may be really low complexity and


really high value.


So diversify a bit and see where it falls and see what feels good and natural to you.


So be realistic about the technical effort it will take you to execute this thing.


Next, don't slice your audiences too thin.


Slicing your audiences into a ton of different segments is going to create a content problem


because once you have all these different types of segments of visitors and all these


hypotheses of what to show them, then you'd actually need to show them something different.


So if you're slicing your audiences too thin, then you might not have the content resources


available or you might be spending too much time on unique content for each of those audiences.


And another point on this is that you should give your audiences the chance to surprise


you.


So let's go back to that Climb example.


If the Climb is only showing their past purchasers things like Oakley beanies and sunglasses,


then those visitors might forget that they actually have backpacks and tents and all


these other types of gear too.


So don't slice your audiences too thin to avoid content problems and pigeonholing of


your audience, of what your audience thinks about you.


So that's the how.


How to prioritize which personalizations you're going to build and ship.


So I've just gone through this framework for personalization, the who to target, the what


are you going to show them, and how are you going to prioritize it.


So now I want to leave you with a word to the wise, a little word of wisdom, and a call


to action.


So this sentence is that the power of personalization is in how you wield it.


There's plenty of ways that marketers can use personalization for evil, but there's


plenty more ways that we can use personalization for good, to be more relevant to how we talk


to our visitors, to give them the experiences that they're expecting, because all these


companies like Amazon and Netflix and even Business Times, what we saw earlier, are personalizing


the experiences that they deliver to their visitors.


So we as marketers need to start, well not we as marketers, but we as all these more


small medium businesses need to start thinking about how we can leverage the strategy as


well to be more relevant and competitive out there in the world.


So there's a couple reasons that personalization, or a couple ways you could think about personalization


being really valuable, and that's if you're using personalization to deliver value to


your customers, that's amazing.


But if you're being personal for the sake of being personal, that's not really a good


reason to personalize.


So remember that the power of personalization is all in how you wield it.


And now a call to action.


Go forth and personalize.


I think after this you should think about two things.


Who are you personalizing for?


Think about some audiences that you can go and identify right now and start thinking


about what experience would you deliver to them.


Come up with a bunch of lists of hypotheses and ideas, and then try to see how you want


to start getting them built.


If we all work together, I think, to do this to make the experiences that we deliver online


more relevant and more delightful, then we'll have a lot to talk about.


So many case studies.


So once you do this, tweet at me, think about, I want to write about it, I want to learn


from you, from your successes and your failures.


That failure is good.


This is a really new domain that people are getting into.


This dirty word of personalization is just taking hold really fast.


So if we can all just get our hands around it and start playing with it, then we'll be


able to write the book for personalization in the future.


So thank you, everyone, so much.


Yay.


So happy.


That's awesome.


So a lot of people are listening.


Like at Moz, we do some personalization.


I know there's a lot of head nodding.


Companies that are already doing it, they're going, yeah, we need to do more of that.


Companies that aren't doing it, I think they're asking the question, how do I get started?


What technology do I need?


What platform do I need to get started on this?


Because it sounds great.


What recommendations do you have in that area?


I knew I was going to get this question.


It's a good one.


So the answer to that is that there's a lot of different tools that are starting to come


up on the market really fast with personalization.


I don't have a recommendation for the one that you must use because they're all very


different depending on what kind of personalization or kind of who you are as a company.


So I might just say that Optimizely just started, we just released our new personalization product.


So you can sign up for that.


But also, there's a lot of things out there like rich relevance, smart content.


I don't have the direct answer for which one you should be using today.


But there are tools out there.


And that deserves its own talk, basically, because there's so much you could just, there's


so many different tools.


So we're going to do a blog post on that, on the Optimizely blog, and I will make sure


to tweet it out to everyone when it's done.


But I guess one other thing to say is that you don't need these tools to start personalizing.


There's things you can do right now just with a developer that would be helpful to start,


to deliver a different experience based on what you can infer about your visitor.


Okay.


And maybe this is the same question.


Evan Davis, and by the way, Evan Davis, you've been tweeting great questions all day.


Thank you.


Is there a way to, inexpensive way to personalize for small businesses?


Let's see.


Yes, there's definitely an inexpensive way to personalize for small businesses.


I think everyone, no matter if you're a huge business or a really small business, can take


advantage of the data you have about your visitors and personalize for them.


So what I would say is think about the existing list that you have today, and maybe you don't


treat each, the existing like natural ways that you're segmenting your audiences today.


And you don't have to think about each one as a hypothesis.


It doesn't all need to be measured immediately because you know that, you might know this


is just a better thing to deliver than the norm for everyone.


So I would say for small businesses to get the most bang out of their effort and time,


then just don't be super, super focused on measuring the impact that each single personalization


has.


Interesting.


Yeah.


Okay.


Next question by this is from David DeMille, recommendations for customizations of service


industry sites with an offline presence.


Can we, are there any data sources out there offline that we can pull into the online experience?


Yeah, yeah.


So that's interesting.


I don't know the answer to that.


I don't know which companies can actually, which tools out there are really being used


to do online personalization and tailor it to online or like close that feedback loop.


But I encourage you all to tweet at me or tweet to each other if you know the answer


because I think that a lot of people could benefit from that answer.


Fair enough.


Gotta say if I don't know.


If I don't know, I don't want to give you bullshit.


Something we're thinking about it was, and this is pretty much your last question.


Can you use pages, Rand asked, can you use pages visited on a blog to personalize?


Have you seen any good examples of that where people visit specific content and then it's


personalized?


Oh, okay.


So for based on they viewed a specific type of content.


Yeah, totally.


That's a great example I think of ways people can personalize.


Because let's say you, for me, I run Optimize These Blog and if I know people are coming


in and they only want to read about AB testing content, they only want to read about, let's


say media content if there's like vertical base, that's a really powerful way to slice


your audiences and deliver media content specifically to them.


So one way you could do it is by having different blog feeds, like different newsletters.


So if you have people who only want to read media content, then maybe you give them the


option to opt into a media only newsletter or e-commerce only or a B2B only newsletter.


Excellent.


And people want to learn more about this, the Optimize These Blogs.


Yeah.


The Optimize These Blogs is a great place.


And AB testing.


We're working on a blog post right now on the impact that personalization has on SEO.


So it's a real doozy.


It's a big question and there's, like I said, the business is like the cutting edge.


We're not really sure out there of everyone what impact personalization will have on search


rankings.


But all we can say is that Google personalizes their own websites.


So it must be good.


It must be good.


It must not hurt.


Kara Harshman, everybody.


What Is a Core Update? – Whiteboard Friday

Happy Friday, Moz fans. I'm here at SearchLove London recording this Whiteboard Friday. Don't


know when it will reach you, but this is a bit of a different take on how to think about


core updates. So obviously, I'm filming this in October. We've just had three updates back


to back in quick succession. I think it's quite interesting that we had three updates


and they were described in very different ways. So we had a helpful content update,


a core update, and a product update or product review update. It's interesting that sometimes


Google talks about updates very specifically. So I think the best examples are things like


HTTPS or Core Web Vitals, page experience update, where they're very concrete about


what they're going to do, how they're going to do it, how they're going to measure it,


how it's going to impact the algorithm. Then you have core updates where they do say things,


they tend to be saying the same thing every time. So every single core update they've


said, make good content, work on your expertise, authority to this, trust. And this isn't very


concrete, it's not very specific about what they've changed this particular time. And


indeed, if you're a site that's affected by these updates, it can feel quite random. It


can feel like you're just going upwards or downwards. There's no particular rhyme or


reason. So how can that be? So I want to give you some different ways to think about that.


So the two different ways that I'd like to focus on, one of them is this concept of a


refresh. So Google used to talk a lot about algorithm refreshes. This is up to about 2012.


And what they meant was, this is something that was different to an algorithm update.


So it wasn't called an update, it was called a refresh as distinct. And they were trying


to say that this would kind of be like a mini reset of how the algorithm was thinking about


certain things. And if you look at how they talk about core updates in the documentation,


they say things like this. So your site might not recover until the next core update. So


you'd have situations where this is your rankings in blue, this is your competitors rankings


in red, you get to a point where they've improved their site over time gradually, they've not


been recognized for it. And then a core update comes along and suddenly they go up to your


position, you go down and you're left thinking, oh, that was a little bit random. Because


it wasn't random, it was just they were gradually being recognized things they'd worked on,


or suddenly being recognized things that worked on gradually over time. The other concept


I'd like to talk about is the extent to which Google is testing that iteratively testing


over time they again, they talk about this in their own documentation. And there's, there's


an article that I've come back to quite a few times back in 2018, it probably linked


beneath where they they invited some, some journalists to a to a meeting of their search


engineering team. And that in that meeting, they were talking about how they were thinking


about some changes they were making to the SERPs. And they talked a lot about how they


were going to run some things as a test and look at certain metrics, see how they were


improved. So it's, it's important to think that Google has their own metrics that they're


iterating towards. And they're not necessarily saying, oh, your site is bad, there's something


wrong with your site, they might be saying, oh, well, what we're aiming for at this point


could be more beneficially affecting some sites and others. And ultimately, if someone


comes up, someone else has to go down. And indeed, if we look at in MOSCAS data, if we


look at sites that are affected by at least four updates, so this is looking over the


last since medic, technically, there were some core updates before medic, but I think


the industry has been very focused on this since medic, if we look at the core updates,


of which there have been 12 now, and the sites are affected by at least four of them, the


vast majority in MOSCAS data had both some positive, some major positive movements, and


some major negative movements. So this is this tiny green slice represents the sites


that only saw positive movements. And this red slice, the sites that only saw negative


movements. So it's incredibly unusual to have mono directional movement, which just shows


that people are winning and losing as Google tests different things. It's not necessarily


that some sites are just better suited to core updates and win every time. That's very,


very rare. I also want to talk a little bit about the longer term. I think it's important


when we think about these updates to zoom out a bit, because these short term effects


can seem more, more random, harder to explain, hard to predict. So I've looked at a lot of


sites again in the MOSCAS data over time, and how they've been impacted by each update.


So this is an example. Obviously, it's drawn on a whiteboard. So it's not super precise.


But this example I've attempted to illustrate here is actually Reuters, the news organization,


and I've chosen them because this is a site that obviously produces a lot of original


content. It's very authoritative. It's hard to criticize it from the from the regards


that Google likes to talk about in its core updates, discussions and announcement. And


these bars represent how it was affected by each core update over a period of time. So


it had some big negative hits, not many serious, not many serious gains from these updates.


This doesn't look very good. If you track how their traffic grew, or their visibility


grew within MOSCAS over time, it looks a little bit different. So it sort of gradually grows


over time through. So what this means is even though on the on the days of the specific


updates, they were taking sometimes negative, negative hits, like if you look at the week


before and the week afterwards, sometimes they took big hits. Obviously, there's long


periods of time between these updates, they might still be able to grow. So say there's


there might be three months between these bars. And even though they took a big hit


here, they're growing over the next three months, you know, maybe over here, they take


this big hit, but they've more than recovered it by the time they get to the next update,


take this hit more than recovered it by the time they get to the next one. And that could


be that their SEO team is working some magic behind the scenes. But this is quite consistent


trend. This happens to a lot of sites. And what I would suspect is actually happening


is Google is when they launched the core update there to some degree, resetting certain things


looking at things afresh valuing different metrics, and then over time, whatever historically


was making that site perform will creep back in and start to be considered again. So I


hope that was interesting. That's just a few different ways to think about core updates


besides the the usual the usual messaging that we get, which is very consistently just


eat good content. I'm not saying you shouldn't do those things. Those are important. This


longer term trend that you get with a lot of sites that do do those things shows how


important it is. But I think when you look at individual updates, you have to keep in


mind that it's not necessarily that Google is suddenly optimizing for these things more


Putting Trust into Domain Authority Presented by Wil Reynolds

Alright, let's have some fun. So we're going to talk about trust and domain authority and


metrics. Actually, no, we're not. What we're going to talk about today is domain authority.


We're going to start talking about domain authority and we're going to get way off of


that. But you know, we're Moz people, so we all know domain authority, it's the number.


But if you actually break those two words into two separate words and look them up in


the dictionary. Have you ever heard of somebody like, oh, that's their domain? That doesn't


mean it's their URL, does it? It means it's their area of expertise. And authority, is


that a number to you? When you say someone's authoritative, are you like, 22? There he


is. He's got a 22 authority. Actually, what it is, it's a metric to help us understand


trust in my opinion. I obviously don't do any of the math behind it, so I don't know


what the heck I'm talking about. You know what I do know a thing or two about? I know


a thing or two about feelings. I'm not telling you whether this feeling is right or wrong,


I'm just saying I know a thing or two about feelings. And I want to show you some things,


I want to ask you how you might feel about them. So you're getting ready for, you know,


to get all the answers you need to an interview so you can ace that interview. And your options


are either, yeah, you know, give me your email or I don't want a second interview. Anybody


here ever go out for a job and interview and go, I don't want a second interview? Didn't


think so. Or my favorite, protect your friends with Keeper, they will thank you. Your options


are either next or you have no freaking friends, you freaking loser. Those are your options.


How does that feel? Like, you know, we're marketers and sometimes I think we get so


into the data we forget that there are people who have feelings behind, like I think the


example that Rebecca just showed, give it up for Rebecca, by the way, I love that freaking


presentation. Love that. That was awesome. Like, you forget, like, oh, yeah, that algorithmic


thing that made you feel really happy might make somebody else feel really crappy. So


this is how it feels when I go through the web these days, especially when I hit marketing


websites.


Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!


You have no friends. Shame!


You don't want the second interview. Shame!


No, I don't want to be successful. Click Shame!


That is the state of the internet.


That is the state of most of the websites you work on.


Because you are trying to shame people into doing the next thing you want them to do.


And it's gotten so bad you're willing to tell people they have no friends.


If you think that stuff is funny,


there's a URL, go to it.


Thank you Emma for helping me to waste a good hour of my day the day you send it to me.


I will now waste that hour for all of these people.


So if you want to shame anybody for wasting an hour of your day looking at these lovely confirmation messages,


blame Emma, still not me. I'm just the messenger.


So these are things we're going to talk about today.


I'm not going to ask you to close your eyes,


but I'm going to ask you to imagine you got a new job today.


You've been hired to work for a company that sells beauty products for African-American women.


By the way, what I'm going to show you taught me a thing or two about this and I'm,


you know, I'm African-American. My sister was actually a model


and she actually was the second runner-up in the Miss New Jersey Teen Pageant.


So I know these things are so I thought and I didn't even have empathy for this.


So think about the tactics you would do on day one and impress your boss.


I want you to really think about what that thing would be.


What's the first tools you'd open to show your boss?


Look at all the opportunity I'm going to help you to go get.


And now let's watch this video together. We just have been conditioned to go to the corner


and find our spot where we've been placed.


There is a section called ethnic.


And there is an aisle called beauty.


To be honest, we've dealt with it our whole lives to the point of internalizing it.


Do I feel like I'm beautiful? Is ethnic not beautiful?


When I go to the beauty aisle, I feel secluded and helpless.


It's been frustrating. This is just the way it is.


I'll let you watch the rest. Might you change the thing that you thought you were going to do day one,


the first tool you were going to open to show your boss or your manager or your client that opportunity


after seeing that video? I know I would.


Oh, the people I'm marketing to feel secluded.


They feel like, well, am I not beautiful because I'm in the ethnic aisle?


Those are the baggage. That's the baggage that people bring with them when they click on your websites


that you don't even know about. And what I'm hoping today to do is to help to give you some things


that might help you to get just a little bit more empathy for what the people that you actually are


wanting to do to do the things you'd like them to do.


What's really interesting is I saw that video.


I had the chance to be in a commercial for Amex a while back and I asked them,


what's the most inspirational video you've ever seen?


And that was the one that they showed me. Truly touching when you think about it.


And those are the things that people bring that every click you get, every visit, every piece of traffic you get.


So now that you've thought about how you might change it,


I'm going to show you on a small scale something you can do to just get a little bit better in your marketing,


to help it better connect with people.


So yes, you are seeing 307% increase in click-through rate without improving a ranking for one page


where we tweaked a meta description. Well, how do we tweak that meta description?


We went over to our friends on the PPC team and we said,


but what kind of messaging are you using to get maximum click-through rates on your ads?


We then copied that, tweaked it a bit, sent it to the client.


We did this for a bunch of different things. There's a URL there. Jordan Frank is here.


So whoever's running this, your account today, tweet out Jordan Frank's study.


Him and Alexis Wolfer did great work on this together.


We worked on it, all three of us kind of together,


but we increased the client's organic click-through rate for 30,


I think, or 40 URLs and all the client had to do was copy


and paste meta descriptions that came from their PPC.


We didn't increase their rankings one bit,


but we did help to increase their projected revenue a ton.


How can you do these things?


These are some of the things that we're starting to do.


We're looking at chat logs for our clients at scale.


You know, there's a lot of tools, word clouds and you know,


things of that nature. Sentiment analysis. They'll say,


hey, here's what people are thinking. Here's what people are saying.


Here's the problems they have. It doesn't mean you have to change your keyword strategy to go after all the keywords,


but it helps you to understand the baggage that people are bringing.


You can interview people or my favorite is something that I'll be talking about at SearchLove London.


Sorry, it's going to be expensive for maybe some of you to go,


but it's going to be worth it. I'm telling you, it's going to be awesome.


But we actually started, me and a guy named Daryl Greer at our company, tweet him out


so people know to follow him because I like the way he thinks and the way that we think together.


So, Daryl and I were working on a pitch for a client and what we did is we had people go through the search results


and record their screens and we had them talk out.


So we were pitching a client in the moving space and we said,


you know what? I haven't moved in a while. Have you? No.


I said, well, what would happen if we took away all the keyword research tools to find out how to market to these people?


What would we come up with? He's like, well, maybe we would just talk to them.


I'm like, damn skippy we will. So what we did is we found a bunch of people who recently moved


and we asked them, we had them go to a search result and we had them click on a bunch of results


and we had them verbalize. What do you think when you see this? What do you like when you see it?


What don't you like? What do you feel about the way this looks? Does it feel high quality or low quality?


Does it really feel like it solved your problem? Did it feel like some spam?


And people talked these things out. One of the things that we found is if you're doing a one-way move


and you miscalculate how much crap you got to put in your truck


and you have to go back and back again, you have just doubled or tripled the cost of your move.


Keyword research was never going to teach me that. What's the problem people had


when your view all says 500 and X number square cubic feet.


You don't know how much that is. One in two rooms.


Well, I've seen one bedrooms that are 1600 square feet and one bedrooms that are 200 square feet.


That's a risk. Those were the problems that this woman in this video was articulating


that I would have never thought of if I had sat in the keyword Explorer.


You got to combine the tools we have with an understanding of people and you can do amazing shit.


There's no volume on these words.


So you're never going to find it. But after you saw that video, it's everything.


It's baggage. It's what people are bringing. It's how people feel.


But for most of us, we're going to go no volume, no time.


I got to go afterwards. I have at least this much volume


and you're missing out on opportunities to not necessarily target those people.


I'm asking you to understand those people. So often we're putting the volume first.


Google second and the people last and the hard part is that we don't do things rationally.


I think I've shown this to you all before but I'm going to show it until I die


because until everybody can repeat this themselves without me having to show it again.


I'm going to show it. University puts a group of people through an MRI.


They look at the medial orbital frontal cortex,


which is an active part of the brain that is responsible for decision-making


and they give them wine piped into the MRI.


And as I sip the wine, they go the wine you're drinking right now is a $90 bottle of wine.


They take them out, clink the bottles around, God bless you.


And then they say now you are drinking a $10 bottle of wine.


The activity in the decision-making and pleasure parts of the brain is completely different.


Look at second 14.


Look at the Delta at the 14th second between how you feel about the same wine


when I tell you it's 90 bucks versus 10 bucks.


That's how decisions are made.


We have to understand that this is how the brain works


and keyword research is not going to teach you that.


Keyword research needs to be a part of this or this needs to be a part of keyword research.


I'm not going to go through this example


because Ray I found a much more expensive bag than I did yesterday,


but you get it. I feel like marketer-first marketing needs to die.


A nice horrible death. Marketer-first marketing leads to us going.


What's the volume me and the other 20,000 other people who also want to rank for this one word


and number one are all going to run for it. Run for it.


The words available. Let's all go get it.


That's how it is when you show somebody a high-volume keyword.


It's like crack. But like that's not smart.


You realize saying well this word is search for more than any other word.


I should target it is a strategy that every other person is also thinking of too.


So now you're competing with everybody else.


But when it's time to actually educate somebody it's freaking crickets.


When it's time to actually understand all the questions people ask before they hit that head keyword.


We don't really want to answer that. Why? Well the keyword research volume is too low.


The best example of market. I'm going to shame all of you right now.


The best example of marketer-first marketing is my friend


and your friend Mrs. Gated Content.


Oh, you didn't like that one. You gated content having people.


I'm going to tell you what that says to me and you may not like it,


but I really don't care. What I hear when you put up something in front of me


getting your content is I hear trust me.


It's going to be awesome. Give up your email


and hopefully your phone number so I can bother you


when you're trying to spend time with your son.


What I hear is give me something before I give you something.


That's what you're saying. You are saying I'm not giving you shit


until you give me something. Oh, but we went to mods.com


and we're going to help people. We learned all these psychological things.


It doesn't matter if you ultimately want to keep freaking crapping on your customers.


Oh, but once you become a customer, we're going to put you first.


No more pop-ups. You know what? Some things work.


It doesn't mean they should be done. Why?


Because we're marketers. You want to see some things that worked in marketing?


But ask yourself, should they have been done?


Let me show you an example. Why don't you give your toddler some Coca-Cola


as early as humanly possible? I had her first round of teeth


are going to fall out anyway, so why don't we just start it a little earlier?


Obesity? Nah. That worked. Should we have done it?


Or my favorite, my dentist recommends Viceroy cigarettes. Marketers.


This is the gated content pop-up of their generation.


Did it work? Yes. Who in here loves kissing a smoker?


Like right after the cigarette. It's awesome.


It reminds me of like casino marketing and I saw this and I have to share it with you


because I'm targeted by these people because it's in my neighborhood right around the corner.


And sometimes, you know, I stay out a little bit later than I should


and I decide that I should play some craps. So I go there and I see Gertrude at the slot machine


with her like Paul mall where it's like all ash and she's hooked into the freaking,


you know, Wheel of Fortune machine and it's saying every time she pulls in her tracking


every time how long she hesitates so she can get a buffet.


And this is the reality of what the casino kind of looks like.


Like Vegas is a little bit better than this,


but if you're anywhere other than Vegas in a casino, it's kind of looks like this.


Be honest. It's all right. And then I looked at casino marketing for this casino near me


and I went, oh, yeah, like drink some wine. Here a great jazz band tonight.


And maybe if you went at the tables, you'll have a threesome?


Like threesomes. Cool. But the problem with threesomes at this hotel


or this casino is that Gertrude's there.


And Gertrude, the only thing Gertrude's pulling on is that slot machine.


I don't give women buffets afterwards. I'm like, girl, you got to get out.


Just playing. I'm married. Y'all know I don't do that mess.


Threesome. God, what horrible marketing.


These things don't lead to anything that I really want to talk to you about though.


I want to start to show you examples of things that build brand and trust.


And I want you to go find these things everywhere they are.


The inspiration doesn't have to be big. I'm going to show you examples.


None of these things are big. They're small. They're easy to do.


You just have to have the will to decide to do them.


So I have a laptop addiction. I have four laptops here.


There's a Surface, Dell XPS 13, a Chromebook, and a MacBook.


I've sold two of them now. I'm getting over my addiction.


If you go to this URL, though, you see a bunch of people just helping people get laptops.


Look at this. Eight minutes ago, 35 minutes ago, an hour ago, an hour ago, an hour ago, an hour ago.


Reddit thread. So just a laptop on Reddit. Probably the best place on the whole internet to find,


to have people help you find the right laptop for your situation.


The saddest part about this thread and all these people helping people is the marketers came in.


You. Yeah, you. You. You. You, the marketers. And me too.


We came in and instead of spending their time helping people to find the right laptop,


they had to work on building an affiliate link policy.


We're going to have to stop doing the thing that we built this group to do


because the marketers ran in and started affiliate linking.


I would never be the CMO of Best Buy. I curse too much.


They probably don't want what I have to offer. It's fine.


But if I was their CMO, I would give everybody an hour off.


You know, the people in the blue shirts go, you got an hour off.


And with that hour off, you're going to go into this Reddit thread.


And the only rule you have is don't link to BestBuy.com when you do it.


I want to build the company and the brand that is known for helping people wherever they are,


figure out what the right laptops are. And my belief is that on that,


people will start going to Best Buy because they feel better about us.


The problem is, is nobody stays in their freaking job more than two years to see this actually go through to fruition.


The goal here is how can we add value somehow?


Value. Great thread. Another great thread.


Started in November 2009, a pilot in a poker forum said, I'm going to come board.


Probably ran out of money. I am going to answer any questions that you have.


I'll just sit here and answer questions. November 2009,


when I had to put my slides in and give them to Erica,


you can see that just four days ago, or at the time it was four days ago, within an hour.


So look at the time that the question was asked. I think it's like eight something.


He answered the same day at 9 30. An hour.


Look how many answers there's been. 7,403.


Who are you picking to write your content? Airline people?


This guy. Go find this guy.


He has responded in an hour, seven years later, to a thread with 7,400 responses that he started.


That's probably better than any of the content you've ever built. And he's doing it for free.


Pay him. Man, I love content like that.


What are these folks doing right now? There's a lot more that could be done.


That's all I'm saying. To help people feel more comfortable.


And deep down, when you start understanding what makes people love brands and fall in love with brands,


one of the things is, is when they make our problems their problem.


Layovers. We hate them. But the airlines are kind of like,


you know, it's our job to get you there safe, but you already bought a ticket.


They're basically like, well, if you wanted a direct flight, then you should have paid more money.


Why don't you get a better job? But one airline decided to do something slightly different.


And I want to share that with you right now. Six hours is a long time,


especially if you're stuck at the airport.


That's why we found a way to make time fly. We call it layover with a local.


It's connecting the thousands passing through the airport with the hundreds of thousands living in Amsterdam.


So you can turn your transfer into a trip. Simply open the app and we'll set you up with a local.


Grab a free ride into the city and see a side of Amsterdam most travelers miss.


Because locals know all the right places. They know where the best Dutch sushi is.


Show you all the hot spots of Amsterdam. Or even teach you what a cop stone is.


You get it. Wouldn't that be awesome?


Next time you're looking for a flight and there might be a chance of a layover in Amsterdam for another few hours,


and you typically skip over it, if you had known that that existed, might you go,


I might make the most out of that layover, have a little bit of fun,


smoke a little bud, stop by the red light district, get some coffee, whatever it is you want to do.


I mean, they said it in their own damn ad. Smart. They're able to poke fun at themselves.


And then recently something hit me. I'm like, one of the things that made Google Google was, to me, misspellings.


Because Google said, when you make a mistake, you fat-fingered fool,


and you type it in wrong, we're not going to say, nah, you're wrong.


Or when you don't know how to spell because you're stupid,


we're not going to tell you you're stupid. We're actually going to say, you meant, did you mean?


It's interesting how much we love brands that make our problem their problem.


I hated it when I mistyped something,


and I got one of the pages that like I probably built in like the early 2000s that were built for misspellings.


You know, you're like, great. I found a page built for misspellings.


Awesome. Nothing solves my problem like a page built for misspellings.


Anybody taking paper notes? Awesome.


Why don't you do me a favor? Crumble one of them up and throw it at me.


Seriously, so somebody is close enough, crumble it up, throw it at me.


Awesome. I hear somebody crumbling. I should have known it would have been Oosby. Psh, Brits, they play soccer.


Kick it to me. Reach! There we go.


All right. So this piece of paper, did you write douchebag on this, Zeph?


So this piece of paper used to not be crumbled.


And if you take a crumbled piece of paper, no matter how hard you try to flatten it out,


it still kind of looks a little effed up, right? To me, that's trust.


With your brand, every interaction you have starts off with a clean sheet of paper.


One with no wrinkles, no folds, no crumpled up anything.


And when you pop stuff up on people, when you say, do you have no friends?


Or whatever it is you're doing to get conversions, you can't undo that.


Now, I think with enough advertising these days, you might be able to, but spare me.


Work with me here. I want you all to crumble up a piece of paper, stick it in your cube somewhere,


uncrumble it, and remind yourself to not do that to your customers.


Do not take advantage of the fact that they're there for a solution,


and you're there to give them whatever you want to give them.


Wine, party, threesome, whatever it is.


I think we have to remember that each interaction with a person, a brand, a website,


it's doing one of these three things. This presentation right now is doing one of these three things.


Either you've seen a presentation before and you go, wow, who's bringing it again?


I've seen him do this before, I like it. And I'm reinforcing what you already thought.


Or you go, wow, this new guy, I haven't seen him. Some of the stuff he's making makes sense.


And I'm building? Or you're like, God, man, would you stop talking about people?


When are you going to give me like 50 tools? And maybe I'm destroying.


Either way, one of those three things is happening right now.


And for every person on your website that is looking for a solution to a problem,


one of those three things is happening there as well.


One of the hardest things about trust is, you know, I was ordering food, free delivery.


I know what that means. 40 to 60 minutes, not nebulous. I have a feeling for what that is.


And I'm not so hungry. Two dollar signs. Okay. Like, I don't know if your scale is three, four, five or six.


But okay, I got a feeling. So I put all that stuff in my, in my cart.


Went to go check out. Saw my total.


Oh, service fee. $6.26. Oh, crumbled paper.


So you told me the delivery was free. And then when I put the stuff in my cart, somehow, oh, I'm sorry.


Maybe I misinterpreted. I thought free delivery meant when I order something from you when it comes to my house,


if I went and picked it up at your place, it's the same cost as if I had it delivered.


I'm sorry. I must have misunderstood.


Somewhere along the ride, the delivery is free, but the service is $6.26.


Another way to build trust, and one of the things I like to do,


is see where there are opportunities to completely not make someone have to search.


Those opportunities are rarely found here, because people don't even know to search for it.


I'll give you an example. Here's the tail of two different buttons. Easy button.


What company did this? Staples. We all know it. Huge win. Viral win. Easy button.


We all know the brand, right? Obviously, they did a great job.


When you hit the easy button, all my lovely people reminded me who this brand was,


what did the easy button actually do for you?


Oh, so we know the brand.


We've now associated the brand with building something that says it makes nothing easy for me.


Hey, if anybody in this room wants to not make something easy for me, let me know.


No, I don't want to hear from you. I want you to, when I hit the button,


I want you to make stuff easy. So my favorite easy button is this one.


It sits on top of my washing machine, and if I run out of my Tide pods, which is what I use,


I hit this button and the stuff shows up. This is the real easy button.


I wish they had one of these for printer paper at my office.


Oh, we're out. Just hit the button, because I know it's so hard to send an email out


and tell people that the printer is out of paper.


That's the easy button. But one thing I want to remind you is the button is only as good as the promise.


And the promise is only as good as how much I trust you.


Because when you make a promise, you build hope.


When you tell me you're going to do something, you are building hope.


When you deliver on a promise, you build trust.


And to be honest with you, I don't care what you all think about Amazon, one way or the other, good or bad,


that's not what I'm up here to talk about. But I trust them.


Why do I trust them? Well, when's the last time you heard of them being hacked? Target!


I'm on Prime. I get my stuff in one to two days, consistently.


And when I don't, they send me a push notification saying it's not going to come on time.


So then I don't have to log in, get the freaking code, drop it in the FedEx, find out that it's late.


They make it easier. But usually everything comes in one to two days.


The returns are easy, works great on my mobile, and they have my credit card stored.


Huge. I hate putting in my credit card on my mobile.


It's the worst. And I wonder if maybe Stat and SimilarWeb and a bunch of other folks can get together.


Yeah, I was looking for onesies. Whoever was laughing. I'm a dad now.


So I was looking for onesies and I said, wow, I wonder if Stat and maybe SIR and maybe SimilarWeb


could get together and say, what happens when Amazon creeps up into a top spot like this?


How many of us have Prime? God!


Oh my God, right? Like, so those trust factors are true for me.


They're true for you too.


So when I see that Walmart's got something 50 cents cheaper, there is no way I'm going to click on that thing.


What's really interesting is, is I actually don't Google product on Google anymore.


I Google product on Amazon.


And Bloomreach did a study where I'm not the only one.


A lot of you do too. You go right to Amazon and start searching, which is very interesting for my e-comm SEOs in the house.


So my point in all this is, how about we try to spend a little less time going viral and a lot more time going helpful.


That easy button from Amazon is awesome.


Another thing you can do is what I call jumping to SERP. I don't know if John Cooper's here.


I saw him here last year. But this, I love this tweet he sent out because I am a Honey fan.


And when you go to Honey, what they do is instead of you having to take the current user journey when you want to put a coupon in,


which is leave the website you're on, leave the experience, go out to a bunch of websites that want to put a bunch of pop-ups on you,


and you have no friends, and give me your email, and half these don't work, and advertising.


Or we can just drop the code right into the shopping cart on the page you're on so you don't have to do all that.


Wouldn't that be a little bit of an easy button for you? You're like, yep,


I would love for you to just drop a code right into the page so I don't have to do those 15 searches


and hope that I don't get freaking some kind of weird malware on my computer at the same time as I'm trying to save 52 bucks.


1.9 million installers who have probably stopped searching for your brand name and the word coupons.


Hurts. I want you all to try to think of a friction removal exercise for yourself.


Where can you move the friction in the process? And as I was back there practicing, I'm like, wait,


you know, if you looked at a keyword or a landing page,


and you knew that you ranked for it, and you started looking at other landing pages that people are highly likely to hit,


you could almost understand a journey that said, if somebody searches on Google,


hits this landing page, searches on Google, hits this landing page, searches on Google, hits this landing page,


they're actually continuing to look for a solution.


How could we better solve that so that so many people don't have to constantly come back to my site three or four times throughout that journey?


Let's build one long answer. How can I minimize the number of searches?


So I might, Rand is close, so don't throw anything at me, Rand. That was a little bit ago.


But one of my favorite tools in the world is Answer the Public for keyword research.


Not for volume. For understanding people.


I love the which. So I was doing this research for the North Face.


Which North Face jacket is warmest? The furry one to get. The most popular. The furry one. The best.


The best for skiing. This is all the why behind when I type in North Face jacket,


I'm going to go do something, right? Uh oh.


Okay, this video should play. I'm going to show you what North Face built.


So you can play this video, please. You can see that what they built.


So I'm going to Scotland, which I did. It's a good time, Rand. We had a good time.


And this is when I'm going. And it's asking me,


what are you looking for? Notice they're walking me through a series of answers or questions that will lead me to what I want.


They're able to look at what the winds are going to be like at that time,


traditionally, what the weather's like, and they gave me four options.


Do you want it to be lighter, heavier? Is it going to rain? Are you going to be hiking?


And as I answer these, it continues to refine and recommend to me the few that fit what I'm looking for.


This is amazing. I love this tool. There's a problem, though.


You can't find it. Because it doesn't rank for squat.


Look at all those double digits. IBM Watson and North Face have partnered up to build that.


The problem is, is they put all their money into YouTube ads and TV.


And nobody said, let's make sure we actually rank for words around like,


I don't know, like if you're looking for North Face jacket, we built this thing with IBM for millions of dollars.


Maybe we should make it show up. This is the role that we play.


Let's go back to those meta descriptions. I'm looking for which jacket is the warmest.


Sorry, Google, I'm not ready to buy yet. Thanks for jamming it down my throat once again.


Now I don't want to buy. I want a solution. I'm looking at the meta descriptions here.


Look at those descriptions. Do any of them tell you this is our warmest jacket?


This is the jacket that's good for skiing. This is the one with the furry hood around it.


No, they're not. So when your ranking report says you rank number one,


two, three and four, it's not telling you whether you're solving that person's problem.


The top answer is actually a Yahoo answer from 2009, which has to be freaking wrong.


So maybe there's a little meta description tweaking. We might get more click throughs on this.


Maybe. Not totally solving the user's problem.


Let me show you an example of somebody who's done it great.


So you all can after this go reverse engineer how they're doing it. Callaway, golf clubs.


Here we go. What is your gender in hand?


Walking me through the process. What's your typical score? Mine's zero because I can't golf,


but you know, humor me. How long can you hit the seven iron?


They walk you through it. They make a recommendation.


So much easier than the thousand searches I would have had to do to land on different websites


with different UX with different answers, different authority to do that.


And it ranks like hotcakes. Look at all them single digits.


Ranks like hotcakes. If you're looking at the volume.


Wrong place to look right now. We'll get to that in a second.


So let's reverse engineers tools like that.


I think that's one of the roles that search professionals can play is let's make sure you don't spend a lot of money on something and nobody can find it.


But all this stuff we've been talking about over the last two days all the stuff about feelings and whatnot.


You can't go to your boss and be like, yeah, I want to help people feel better about our website.


Now, as you're trying to get fired. So if I don't empower you with ways to pitch this to your bosses,


your clients, whoever it may be to help you turn caring about people into money. I'm doing you a disservice.


There's inspiration, but then we got to have some perspiration after that to actually get something done.


So this is how I'm going to walk you through how I do this pitch.


First, use your own data to pitch to revenue. Show the client something that's already ranked.


That could be similar if you've already got rankings on something that says,


hey, this is already ranking. This is how much traffic it's getting. Here's how many conversions it's getting.


You already have that data. Throw it in SEM rush. Find all the words that are ranking.


I don't care if you're if you're cut off as the top three, top five, top ten.


I don't care. Find the ones that are already ranking and you get to say social proof, client, boss, whoever.


I can get things ranked in the top X. Proof. I have done that. Great.


So that's undeniable. These words rank for this thing that we asked you to build.


Yes, yes. And getting confirmation at each one of these steps from the person you're pitching is key.


So you go, oh, let's say that page gets, you know, a thousand visitors a month,


and I'm able to tell that a hundred of them come from Google. Awesome. That's me. Yes, boss. That's me. Awesome.


You got to go, well, you're not really valuing the visit very much because it's the visits got to be worth more than zero


because we don't convert every one of our paid search clicks.


And you're okay with people clicking on your paid search ads at a certain amount and not converting.


So there has to be a value that's greater than zero for every visit that I get.


How many of you are pitching your assets and telling the client, hey, here's how many visits we got.


And I can't say it's worth tons of money, but I can tell you it's greater than zero.


And PPC is a great place to start. So then you go, great. Each month I'm driving $300 in visit value.


Wrong. Do not go that way. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's not each month.


Do it over the course of three years. When you build great content that truly solves problems for people,


so few people are willing to do it, the crap will rank for years. You don't believe me? Here you go.


I built this in 2011 for a client. Do the math. It ain't 2011 anymore. I have not touched it since it launched.


What we realized five years ago was that when people are looking for how to fill out their W-2, everybody's writing paragraphs.


When in actuality, I'm sitting there with my W-2 form. Sorry, Canadians. Look it up later.


When I'm looking at my W-2 form and I'm going, what's this box mean? What's that mean? What's that mean?


I wish that you would just show me the freaking image so I can mouse over it and understand what the box means.


Five, five and a half years old has not been touched since it launched.


Let's throw that SOB into SEM rush. Single digits like crazy.


Hasn't been touched in five years. You have to pitch your content that you're going to build to solve problems for years.


Go use my example as a way to show them that this is possible.


Everybody wants to write freaking paragraphs. Why would I write this thing to rank for these words


when I can just get a paragraph done for 50 bucks? Because of this.


So now you've got, hey, things rank. Hey, there's volume. And the cool part is we're in the off season.


We're not doing our taxes right now. We actually built it here, have not touched it since then,


and five years later, it's actually grown in search volume.


It's an appreciating asset. Every year this client gets this like, whoa, look at the gifts that just showed up.


Woo, gifts. Thanks, dear. They don't even know who built it. So many people have left.


Whoever built this thing, thanks for the traffic bump. Still helping people better than the content,


and it's just now starting to slip a little bit, and we still have rankings like that.


The next thing you've got to look at are your assisted conversions.


How many times is your content driving conversions or assisting conversions down the funnel?


If you're going to pitch somebody on big content and you're not doing visit value, conversion value,


and assisted conversion value, you are underselling your value.


And then you get to do the slam dunk. Daryl Dawkins, Chocolate Thunder, baby. Sixers, woo hoo.


Now you add all this up, and all you're doing to your boss right now is saying,


I have done this before and I understand the value of what I have done. Right?


Don't run off and do your big pitch. The first thing you want to do is this.


I always do this with clients when I ask them to try something big. Let's say I'm off by 50%.


Let's say I'm wrong. Let's say I'm way wrong. So much of this Google stuff moves around.


Is that amount compelling or is it kind of yawn worthy?


There's nothing wrong with showing your client a $43,000 opportunity.


You just have to remember that they may not want to be overly involved in getting it.


They're not going to turn down you finding a $40,000 opportunity.


You just have to then put on your hat to be like,


I have to figure out a way to get this done with minimal involvement from them.


I've had clients be like, oh, that million dollar opportunity you found?


You know the other opportunity I'm working on? No, it's a $15 million opportunity.


I go, oh, I get it. So I need to solve this problem within my team by myself


and not ask you every week to help me with it. They're like, yeah,


but I'll take the million bucks in my revenue for sure.


The fun part is in the second part of the pitch because now you've proven it all out.


So now what you want to do is find all the other words that don't rank in the positions that the,


that the positions you have gotten before are in.


Say, hey, here's a bunch of words where we're not ranking so well on.


Golf clubs for beginners, buy golf clubs, best golf clubs for beginner.


We're ranking for them, but low enough to not have the same effect as when we're in the top five.


Let's just say that's what your target is. And then you get to make a belief hypothesis.


You approve the math with the client. You go, so all that math we said,


how many leads we need to get a conversion to get it this to get it that that's cool.


They go, yep, it's cool. You go, awesome. First step, multiply that visit value by three years.


Then you go to the assist. How many assisted conversions am I going to get based off of my own data?


Iverson based off of my own data.


So when somebody goes, well, why do you believe that? I'm looking at our own data to make up my assumptions.


And then you do the slam dunk, baby. Now you add all that up and you're gonna be like,


yeah, baby. Yeah, I got you. You're giving me all my budget.


I'm gonna do all this stuff. And I don't want you to do this yet.


I want you to do this. Smart consultants do this.


What if I'm off by half? What if Google changed some weird crap on me?


What if our website goes down for 16 months? Is that still a compelling number?


Yes or no? What assumptions have I made? What's right or wrong?


Check your assumptions. And then for the next three years,


you just get to go through the office being like, you got money.


You got money. You got money. Hey, you got money.


You got money. I have a client, a former client who I haven't touched the asset for them in five years,


and I get to go into their office if I ever get invited back,


because I think they threw me out last time, and I'm like, you still got money.


You might not like me, but you got money. You got money.


You got money. You got leads. How'd you get that goal? My old shit that you don't like anymore, right?


Money, conversions, dollar signs. We need more dollar signs in this inspiration.


If you really want to rub it in the salt into someone's wound,


you show them a number one site that's SEO'd with a lot of content that nobody really wants.


Show them how if you build a guide that walks people through the process,


you think you can not only build all the brand and the trust and all that great stuff,


but God knows I don't want to read 5200 words about how to select a golf club,


but it does rank. I missed part of the presentation yesterday.


I'm really sorry, but I saw a slide that Zeph sent out,


and it was like the 70%, 20%, 10%. The way you get your experimental budget is you kill this,


and then you go to your boss and you go, hey, well, wait. I also have to protect you from the future.


Google changes a ton. So I now want to be able to react to changes in the marketplace that we can't control.


Like when the word photo editor, which you've ranked for for years, starts to drop,


or when people search for it on their mobile, it actually shows an app pack that we don't have an app for.


So, ooh, maybe I need to help protect against that, or rich snippets are showing up. Thanks, Booch.


Can I call you Booch? You're getting called Booch today.


Something else I want you all to do. See that Pixlr showing up there? That's a screenshot from my mobile.


I searched for photo editor. Google gave me a brand.


Do me a favor, all of you people, since the Wi-Fi is working so well. Shout out, Maz.


Wi-Fi on point this time. Awesome job. Awesome job.


So since you're all on Wi-Fi, search for small business CRM.


Search for it. Like, do it. Search for small business CRM. Hit enter.


Once you're done, go back into your search bar, clear it out, and hit the letter Z.


Oh, I can see you, Lauren, Lindsay, and Emma. Hello.


Did anybody see Zoho CRM show up? How many of you? Raise your hands. We got to see this.


All right, look around. Look around. Keep your hands up.


That's a lot of people who were recommended a brand. The most popular Z word on the internet is Zillow.


And you've got Zulily, and you've got Zika. They are definitely more popular right now than Zoho CRM.


These are the kind of things that disrupt, and you have to make sure that you set aside 10% of that budget to experiment with the disruptions,


so you're not a victim of them, but you can be an active participant in them.


I'm going to skip through some slides.


So, because there's so many other factors at play, when I want to check whether or not something in the brand is affecting my results,


and I'm starting to see somebody show up, but they're not getting more links, they're not getting more this, they're not getting more that,


a couple places you can go. Trends is one. So, they're recommending Pixlr.


I searched for a couple of other high-ranking websites and said, well, they're getting more volume on trends.


It might be one thing. This is just checks and balances. We used to maybe understand what's at play.


You can look at moat.com. Moat tells you where they're running banner ads.


We saw USAA running banner ads. Anybody here work for USA? I saw what you did. It was good stuff.


You guys ran banner ads on going to your auto loan calculator and completely knocked my client out of the spot they were in,


and they weren't very happy about it. And because they didn't choose to do any offline marketing to it, you still own it.


Good job. They're on page two. And I can't get them to do commercials.


So, you're going to stay there for a while. Or maybe they're running TV.


I spot TV. Drop your competitor in. These are some of the factors that build trust


and engagement in ways that if you're only sitting there building content and doing SEO,


you may not necessarily take advantage of. So, TSA. Ooh, boring industry, right?


But even in the TSA, by the way, you can put an underscore in the middle of a Google suggest,


and it will give you this instead of the traditional way, just in case you didn't know that.


And you look at all the different ways people are searching for it,


and I respect the fact they understand what people are looking for and decided to put it right there on their home page.


They might fill you up and you might not like it or you might like it.


But at least they're understanding what people are looking for and bringing that front and center on their —


not front and center, but they're making it part of their home page.


I think following the TSA is awesome because they found a way to take that boring-ass job they have


and get 453,000 followers. That's more than Gary Vaynerchuk.


Like, the TSA has more followers on Instagram than Gary V. That's crazy.


I guess it ends with you, Gary. Absolutely crazy. I love watching the TSA.


Eli Overbay. This guy does some cool stuff.


One day he hit me up and said, hey, Will, I've unfollowed all my followers,


and I'm only — I went to your follower tab, pull all them out, and I'm only following the people you follow.


Because I know you get your inspiration from somewhere, and I want to see where you get it from.


So he unfollowed everybody he follows on Twitter and only followed the people that I follow.


Now, I'm going to ask you — he did that. I was like, oh, that's smart.


Here's the link to him and follow his ass on Twitter because he's a smart dude.


But imagine if you took your top 10 customers, used a tool like Follow-a-Wonk or something


to show their Twitter handles — let's say they're your top 10 revenue-producing customers


or most frequently visited or whatever — and then you unfollowed everybody


and then only followed the people that they all follow in common.


Might you get a little bit more empathy and understanding for what it is that they see,


what they see when they get on the Twitter, what ads they get, what kind of people they follow,


what people they unfollow? Might that give you a little bit of a better understanding for them?


Yes. You look at Trulia. You can rank for words related to homes,


but if you're in an area where there's a significant amount of Chinese Americans


and you don't know this, then you don't understand why they buy.


Not all of them. Some. Data.


This is why just ranking or showing up isn't always good enough.


You have to understand the why people buy.


You can have a great ranking in your city for these words around whatever —


homes, home purchases, realtor, whatever —


and if demographically there are more and more folks coming there from China


or Chinese Americans, you may actually go, well, why am I not selling?


I got the great billboard of myself and I got all this stuff going on.


Why am I not selling? Maybe you don't understand the people behind the searches


that got to you and found you.


So the last thing I'm going to wrap up with here is where does your story actually connect?


That's a picture of my son. He makes it in every slide because I love him.


I had a chance to purchase the book Uncommon Service. It's a good book.


I recommend it. I was buying it used. $3.99, $3.99, $3.99.


Sorry, it's so pixelated. Yankee Clipper Books, San Francisco, Goodwill.


Let me tell you the difference about how they chose to use their small space


for where they can talk about the book. They didn't talk about the book.


They talked about the why. San Francisco Goodwill says your purchase


creates jobs and transforms lives. Thank you.


Yankee Clipper Books says, nearly new condition?


You laugh because which one are you going to probably buy from? The price is the same.


Shit, the price could have been double. I'd have spent more with them because they told a story


in that little space. And I bought the books from them.


Ranking gives you the opportunity to deliver on your brand's promise, but it doesn't mean you did.


So I want to make sure that you think of it that way. Just because you rank number one


doesn't mean you're solving problems for anybody. I want you to start thinking,


am I actually solving that problem for that user? Are you going to keep doing what you're doing


before you came to MozCon today? This is a picture at my mom's house.


Somebody's job is to still produce the movie times in the newspaper.


And the last thing I'll leave you all with since I'm at time is I want to give a big thank you to Erica


and Charlene and rest of Moz. They have made me a much better speaker.


They've given me a hard time. Erica, you've given me a hard time wherever you are, girl.


Love you. You've given me the hardest time on my slide decks.


She has beaten me up over and over again.


And I think she did all that because she wanted to make sure that all of you had a great set of speakers


Mark Traphagen - Becoming Better SEO Scientists - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Mazers.


Mark Trappiggen from Stone Temple Consulting here today to share with you how to become


a better SEO scientist.


We know that SEO is a science in a lot of ways.


And everything I'm going to say today applies not only to SEO but testing things like your


ad words, how does that work, quality scores.


There's a lot of different applications you can make in marketing.


We'll focus on the SEO world because that's where we do a lot of testing.


And what I want to talk to you about today is how that really is a science and how we


need to bring better science in it to get better results.


The reason is in astrophysics, things like that, we know there's something that they're


talking about these days called dark matter.


And dark matter is something that we know it's there.


It's pretty much accepted that it's there.


We can't see it.


We can't measure it directly.


We don't even know what it is.


We can't even imagine what it is yet.


And yet we know it's there because we see its effect on things like gravity and mass.


So its effects are everywhere.


And that's a lot like search engines, isn't it?


It's like Google or Bing.


We see the effects but we don't see the inside of the machine.


We don't know exactly what's happening in there.


So what do we do?


We do experiments.


We do tests to try to figure that out, to see the effects.


And from the effects outside, we can make better guesses about what's going on inside


and do a better job of giving those search engines what they need to connect us with


our customers and prospects.


That's the goal in the end.


Now, the problem is there's a lot of testing going on out there, a lot of experiments that


maybe aren't being run very well.


They're not being run according to scientific principles that have been proven over centuries


to get the best possible results.


So today I want to give you just very quickly 10 basic steps, 10 basic things that a real


scientist goes through on their way to trying to give you better data.


And let's see what we can do with those in our SEO testing in the future.


So let's start with number one.


You got to start with a hypothesis.


Your hypothesis is the question that you want to solve.


You always start with a good question in mind and it's got to be relatively narrow.


You've got to narrow it down to something very specific.


So something like how does time on page affect rankings, that's pretty narrow.


That's very specific.


That's a good question.


Might be able to test that.


But something like how do social signals affect rankings, that's too broad.


You've got to narrow it down.


Get it down to one simple question.


Then you choose a variable that you're going to test.


Out of all the things that you could do, that you could play with, that you could tweak,


you should choose one thing or at least a very few things that you're going to tweak


and say when we tweak this, when we change this, when we do this one thing, what happens?


Does it change anything out there in the world that we're looking at?


That's the variable.


Next step is to set a sample group.


Where are you going to gather the data from?


Where is it going to come from?


So that's the world that you're working in here.


And out of all the possible data that's out there, where are you going to gather your


data and how much?


That's the small circle within the big circle.


Now even though it's smaller, you're probably not going to get all the data in the world.


You're not going to scrape every search ranking that's possible or visit every URL.


You've got to ask yourself, is it large enough that we're at least going to get some validity?


If I wanted to find out what is the typical person in Seattle and I might walk through


just one part of the Moz offices here, I'd get some kind of view, but is that a typical


average person from Seattle?


I've been around here at Moz, probably not.


But this was large enough and also it should be randomized as much as possible.


You want to be careful that you're not, again, going back to that example, if I just stayed


here within the walls of Moz and do research about Mozers, I'd learn a lot about what Mozers


do, what Mozers think, how they behave, but that may or may not be applicable to the larger


world outside.


So you randomize.


So we want to control.


Your control is, so we've got our sample group.


If possible, it's always good to have another sample group that you don't do anything to.


You do not manipulate the variable in that group.


Now why do you have that?


You have that so that you can say, to some extent, if we saw a change when we manipulated


our variable and we did not see it in the control group, the same thing didn't happen,


then it's not just part, more likely it's not just part of the natural things that happen


in the world or in the search engine.


If possible, even better, you want to make that double blind, what scientists call double


blind, which means that even you, the experimenter, don't know who that control group is out of


all the people that you're, or all the SERPs that you're looking at or whatever it is because


even if you don't, as careful as you might be and honest as you might be, you can end


up manipulating the results if you know who is who within the test group.


It's not going to apply to every test that we do at SEO, but a good thing to have in


mind as you work on that.


Next very quickly, duration.


How long does it have to be?


Is there sufficient time?


If you're just testing, like if I share a URL to Google+, how quickly does it get indexed


in the SERPs?


You might only need a day on that because typically it takes less than a day in that


case.


But if you're looking at seasonality effects, you might need to go over several years to


get a good test on that.


Let's move to the second group here.


The sixth thing, keep a clean lab.


Now what that means is try as much as possible to keep anything that might be dirtying your


results.


Any kind of variables creeping in that you didn't want to have in the test.


Hard to do, but especially in what we're testing, but do the best you can to keep out the dirt.


Manipulate only one variable.


So choose one out of all the things that you could tweak or change, choose one thing or


a very small set of things.


That'll give more accuracy to your test.


The more variables that you change, the more other effects and inner effects that are going


to happen that you may not be counting for and are going to muddy your results.


Make sure you have statistical validity when you go to analyze those results.


Now that's beyond the scope of this little talk, but you can read up on that or even


better if you're able to, hire somebody or work with somebody who is a trained data scientist


or has training in statistics so they can look at your evaluation and say the correlations


or whatever you're seeing.


Does it have a statistical significance?


Very important.


Transparency.


As much as possible, share with the world your data set, your full results, your methodology.


What did you do?


How did you set up the study?


That's going to be important to our last step here, which is replication and falsification.


One of the most important parts of any scientific process.


So what you want to invite is, hey, we did this study, we did this test, here's what


we found, here's how we did it, here's the data.


And invite other people to ask the same question again and run the same kind of test.


Do they get the same results?


Somebody runs it again, do they get the same results?


And then even better if you have some people out there that say like, I don't think you're


right about that because I think you missed this and I'm going to throw this in and see


what happens.


Aha, they falsified.


That might make you feel like you failed, but it's success because in the end, what


are we after?


We're after the truth about what really works.


So think about your next test, your next experiment that you do.


How can you apply these ten principles to do better testing, get better results, and


have better marketing?


How to Build the Right Traffic Metrics Dashboard for 2016 - Whiteboard Friday 1

Howdy Moz fans and happy new year! Welcome to 2016. It's going to be a very, very exciting


year in search, in all things digital, in the web marketing world. We have an incredible


year ahead of us and I want to help this year by celebrating some of the success of 2015


but also by assisting you in measuring and being able to answer critical questions about


your success in 2016. And to do that, one of the things we need is a better metrics


dashboard. Now look, there is no perfect solution out there, there's no plug and play, one size


fits all. What I'm going to give you here is a methodology for how you can set your


team and yourself up for success in 2016 with a great metrics dashboard that shows you how


things work through your funnel. But you're going to have to tweak this. What I'm going


to show you today is not going to be perfect, it's not going to apply to you or to everyone,


it's going to need some personalization on your behalf. And so what I want to give you


is the framework to do this and some of the ways that we think about funnel and web traffic


here at Moz. So let me start with awareness. We've got our classic web marketing funnel


here, right? It goes from awareness to I've heard of your brand, I know something about


who you are, I first visit your website, I make returning visits to your site, I make


a conversion at some point. And then what happens from there is very individually tailored


and so I won't get into retention marketing and retention analytics here. But if you have


a great dashboard that can show you these phases and give you the numbers to walk through,


you can do something that very few organizations can do. And that is answer the key four questions


that always come up around performance. How are we doing? What are we doing? Right? So


what are we doing means how many people visited this? Did that change perform well for us?


Are we improving over last month? Are we improving quarter over quarter or year over year? How


much? How much did we grow or shrink? In what capacities? When did it happen? And the most


important part, why? And if you build this dashboard correctly, you can answer all of


those. It's really a beautiful thing. So let's start at the awareness phase. When I talk