Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Use Paid Promotion to Refine Your
SEO and Make Your Visitors More Valuable'
Posted by shannonskinner
I recently found myself trying to give a client a rough estimate of the value
organic traffic brought them. In the process of doing so, I stumbled upon the
world of paid promotion. Considering Rand's Whiteboard Friday about
surviving the SEO slog, paid promotion is important to tactics that we know do
provide immediate tangible value, and I wondered if there was potential for it
to be a part of a wider online marketing strategy that could also enhance the
work of SEO. I want to open up that world a bit and discuss what I
discovered:how paid promotion can complement organic search.
First, let me define what I mean by "paid promotion." This might include
typical paid search, but also display ads, remarketing, and paid ads on
platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Paid promotion comes in many forms,
including sponsored images, sponsored stories, andeverything elsein the
following image (tap/click to enlarge):
Image source: http://imgur.com/z059ueV.png
Recently, there's been lots of discussion of the
decreasing organic reach on Facebook. It seems that there's been a shift in the
Facebook algorithmâcertain posts have seen a decrease, others an increase
in organic reach. Pages with over 500,000 likes are seeing a particularlymassive
decrease in organic reach, perhaps in an effort to encourage them to pay for
ads. Additionally, MarketingLand recently reported that Pinterest will be adding
promoted pins.
The reality is, paid promotion has a lot to offer online marketing, and can
really complement some of what you might be doing with search marketing and
optimization. Paid promotion offers a way to test things out to make sure
they're worth putting the effort and resources into, as well as add more punch
to the impact that search is already making for a site. Paid promotion offers
quick results you can control, making it a greatcomplement to your overall
marketing strategy.
Test things out: Use Facebook and AdWords to test your ideas
Optimizing for search and creating interesting content that will get shared
requires a lot of investment. Paid promotion can be used to test recommendations
and creative ideas out before investing a lot of time, energy, and resources
into making them happen. It can also be usedafter content hasbeen made to ensure
you're using optimal headlines. Upworthy provided a really fantastic deck for
how to make things go viral, and it included the recommendation of using
Facebook as a means to test headlines.
The Sweet Science Of Virality from Upworthy
Titles can be the difference, according to
Upworthy, between one million views and 17 million views. That's a pretty big
impact. I particularly love this deck because theyuse examples to illustrate how
you really can't predict which titles will work with people, making it critical
to test. And then test some more.
I've used Facebook ads to estimate interest in projects.Is the
click-throughrate (CTR) good enough to actually build out a project?If not, it's
better to go back to the drawing board and make sure you'll actually have an
audience. For a little more depth, this post also explains how to do what
Upworthy did to optimizetheir headlines.You can set up an ad campaign relatively
cheaplyâyou can purchase over 200,000 unique impressions for around $100
on Facebook (side ads, not feed ads, which are a bit more expensive). From
there,you can calculate whether there is a statistically significant difference
in the CTRs of each of your variances (if you need a statistics refresher,you
can easily usethis fantastic spreadsheet fromVisual Website Optimizer).
Image Source:Visual Website Optimizer
It can be used for determining the significance of any test by simply having
two sets of conversion statisticsâin this case, for "Visitors," you'd
enter the number of impressions & for "Conversions" you'd enter the number of
clicks. The spreadsheet provides a YES or NO about whether the difference
between the two sets of numbers is significant with 90, 95 or 99% confidence,
making the math super easy.If the difference between your tests isn't
significant, you'll have to run them again with a larger sample, or they may be
equivalently impactful, so you could use another version to test again.
Facebook has the advantage of segmentationâwhatever population you want
to target can be targetedâcat lovers, people who like a particular musical
artist, play tennis or live in a small town, but aren't from that location. Any
segmentation you can imagine, you can target.
To test for free, you can use Upworthy's trick of posting to specific cities
with different headlines, but considering the recent decrease in organic reach,
that may not yield the kind of results you're looking for.
AdWords can also be useful to
test out titles and keywords to target, as well as viability of new products.
Each of these tests will vary in price greatly depending upon the type of
keywords you're targeting as well as the number of clicks you end up needing to
get statistically significant results (same situation as with Facebook).
Unfortunately, you won't know exactly what you need until you've got it, but if
you can give yourself around $500 of budget, to test a few headlines, you may
well be able to get some quality data.
Either using Facebook or AdWords to test out headlines means you need something
to click to. I've found great success withLaunchRockâit's super easy to
set up and either use their server or your own to point visitors to. The added
bonus is that you can easily collect contact information, generating leads while
you're testing things out.
AdWords can also be a great
source of keyword data, in part because you can see what the conversion rates
are for different keywords for your site. You could use a similar technique for
Twitter, or really any other advertising platform. But these are some of the
most commonly used and advertised on, and relatively easy to launch advertising
for.
The advantage for SEO of testing in this way is that you can then select which
keywords to target and titles to usenot just based on volume of queries, but
also by how conversion rates for your site are for each query. Getting 500,000
new visitors where only 5,000 turn into new clients is not as fantastic as
getting 100,000 new visitors where 10,000 of them turn into new clients. The
same is true, of course, for amount of revenue. Not all traffic is equal, and
paid search can help SEO determine which traffic should be pursued, and which
titles to use to do so.
Pack more punch: Use remarketing to convertmore visitors intocustomers
It's great to get traffic to your site. It's even better for traffic to
generate revenue. Remarketing is basically targeting previous visitors to
encourage them to behave in the way you'd likeâbuying your product,
signing up for your email list, etc. It is
extremely effective (one study says an incredible 1,046% increase in trademark
lift!). Remarketing is effectivebecause, as AJ Kohn at Blind Five Year Old
explains, you are marketing to people who already came to your site. Larry Kim
provided an excellent case study on using remarketing to enhance the impact of
SEO on Moz last fall. It's a fantastic example of how powerful remarketing can
be for search, because it is a way to build brand.
There are some simple ways to do remarketingâremind a visitorto a
particular product that they were looking at that exact productâbut there
are also some other, more inventive ways to use remarketing. Get them to join
your mailing list. Offer a discount if they come back and buy. The important
thing, as Larry says in his post,is to:Provide them a call to action ("sign up
for our mailing list!")
Include branding or images that will improve brand recall
Image Source:ReachLocal
Always do some A/B testing with your remarketing campaigns to ensure you're
using the optimal ads. If your ad is in your brand voice, and has a message that
fits with your brand, you will be getting value out of the ads into the future,
because your ads will not only be leading to immediate action off of your call
to action, but also building up the recall of your brand.
Twitter conducted a study about the impact of impressions on brand favorability
and brand lift, as well as purchase intent. While this information is clearly
aimed at encouraging promoted tweets, and should thus taken with a grain of
salt, psychology has firmly demonstrated that familiarity breeds likability. If
you want people to like your brand, they should be familiar with it. And
impressions are one way to enhance familiarity.
As with testing out headlines and keywords that convert, remarketing can
optimize value ofthe visitors search brings to a site. Reaching out to people
who have visited the site, and thus clearly shown that they are interested at
some level in what you're offering can turn visitors into conversions, either as
customers today, or leads to nurture.
What do you thinkâwhen have you seen paid promotion complement SEO? Do
you think it should be a completely distinct strategy? Let me know in the
comments below!Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on
the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz
team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt
down but want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/lfTADNIuQzo/using-paid-promotion-to-enhance-seo
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Monday, 7 April 2014
Friday, 4 April 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'The Rules of Link Building -
Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by Cyrus-Shepard
Much of marketing, especially SEO, has shifted from a game with very few rules
to a game that Google is fairly strictly refereeing. With their old tactics
eliciting penalties, many marketers are simply throwing in the towel.
I...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/wS66gwIqpBc/the-rules-of-link-building-whiteboard-friday
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by Cyrus-Shepard
Much of marketing, especially SEO, has shifted from a game with very few rules
to a game that Google is fairly strictly refereeing. With their old tactics
eliciting penalties, many marketers are simply throwing in the towel.
I...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/wS66gwIqpBc/the-rules-of-link-building-whiteboard-friday
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Thursday, 3 April 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'How to Rebrand Your Social Media
Accounts'
Posted by EricaMcGillivray
Remember when Moz rebranded way back in May 2013? (Seems like a lifetime ago
for this Mozzer, but, alas: startup life.) Well, since then a ton of you have
reached out in
our Q&A forum and on social media to ask just what we did to get this done.
Rebrands happen. While this is a late tale, it's a story better toldlate than
never, and it's not as scary as you think, I promise.
Plan early. No, really early.
Don't put off thinking about your social media accounts until the last second
of your rebrand. In several cases, you have to work with other companies to get
things done, andyou might have to file trademark claims if your new brand name's
been taken. You're also probably going to want to have some new artwork for your
Facebook background as well as other social pretties, which means involving your
graphic designers. Not to mention, besides your name, you'll need to update
company information, and I recommend putting documentation together to copy and
paste from on game day. I personally got to work at 4 a.m. on Moz's rebrand day,
and I can tell you that preparation saved me from a lot of terrible mistakes by
this non-morning person. Not enough earl grey in the world.
Twitter
You want to grab your new Twitter handle as soon as your company's new name
has been selected. You may need to negotiate with someone who might already have
your choice. (Note that it's against Twitter's terms of service to pay for a
handle.) Or if there's only a squatter, you can reach out to Twitter for either
a trademark violation or just
their inactive account policy.
At Moz, we secured our Twitter handle
@Moz almost two years before we rebranded, which meant that we were more than
ready come rebrand day.
The actual switchover on Twitter was quite easy. We knew that we wanted to
keep the old @SEOmoz account for monitoring and branding purposes, and we wanted
to seamlessly transition all of our @SEOmoz followers to @Moz.
To switch, we first changed the @Moz account's name to something random like
@Moz23, and then we changed @SEOmoz to @Moz and @Moz23 to @SEOmoz. I had two
different browsers open and logged into both accounts, which let me make all
these changes in seconds. All followers of @SEOmoz were then automatically
following @Moz.
If you're verified, you do lose your account verification when you switch your
name, but we were easily able to get it back by emailing our ad account folks at
Twitter, who were clued into our rebrand before it happened. (We like to have
backup plans for our backup plans.)Facebook
Facebook is perhaps a trickier network on whichto change your company name,
particularly if you have more than 200 followers and your new brand name is
three characters or less. We have both at
Moz, and this meant that Facebook had to make all these changes for us.
If you are changing an account with over 200 followers, you can apply to
Facebook for a rebrand. We were lucky; at that time, we had an ads account
person that we connected with directly; if there's one time to call in a favor,
it's during a rebrand.
The good news is that since our rebrand, Facebook has made it easier to
request a page name and vanity URL change. It can take up to several days or
weeks to process on their end through this request page, so keep that in mind.
I've also heard reports from those in the UK that this feature may not be
released all over the world. You can also only change your vanity URL once!
Warning: Make sure you change your page name before you change your URL as
Facebook needs to approve the name change.
Facebook required a ton of documentation from us around our rebrand. They
wanted to see our legal trademark on Moz (easy enough with public records); our
marketing documentation (we sent them an internal slide deck and screenshots of
our new site in the staging environment); our rebrand press release; and
documentation that we owned Moz.com. We also had to keep our fingers crossed
that no one from Facebook would leak our rebrand (not that it was top secret or
we're famous).
Unfortunately, if you're planning a rebrand and your company culture or
rebrand situation is one of non-disclosure agreements and super-secretive plans,
you may run into a roadblock here. Even at Moz, we questioned internally about
how much information to give away without a non-disclosure agreement. You must
upload documentation of your rebrand and legal rights to the new name. Here's
what Facebook says:
All said and done, we gave Facebook enough documentation and gave them our new
name and the date and time to switch over our account. At 7 a.m. on May 30th, we
went from SEOmoz to Moz on our Facebook company page, with our fans intact.
Your vanity URL is an easy change in Facebook through their interface. However,
you can only change a page's name once; so just in case your name change isn't
approved and you are forced to start from scratch, you want to keep that vanity
URL free. Once you change the vanity URL, you cannot claim your old brand, and
the old vanity URL will redirect users back to the Facebook homepage.Google+
If anyone actually figures out how to change avanity URL on Google+, please
call me! But I get ahead of myself.
Back in the day when it seemed like only Lady Gaga had a vanity URL, SEOmoz
had one. The legends say that one day the gods smiled on us, and we were granted
+SEOmoz.
I thought in my naivet© that I could change the vanity URLsince we
already had one, or that after a period of time Google would realize we'd
changed our name and do it for us. I was wrong on both accounts. I'd also hoped
that maybe once everyone else started getting vanity URLs, there would be an
option to edit ours. No such luck.
You can change your company page name on the profile section of the interface
to anything you want: smelly cat, lover of potato chips, trampler of paper
dinosaurs. Or, you know, your new rebranded name.
Pro tip: the old garble of random numbers assigned to you will still redirect
you to your company even if you have a vanity URL. At Moz, we chose to use the
number to link to our company page to from our site. This was so you, gentle
reader, didn't ask about site errors and so we hedged our bets in case we wake
up one morning to a new vanity URL.
You also don't want to forget about reverifying your new domain URL,
especially if you're working on authorship and publisher status. Make sure your
web developer knows this, and don't forget to have your bloggers change their
personal G+ profiles to reflect your new domain URL for authorship.
Our G+ company page reads Moz now, but that darn vanity URL still says +SEOmoz.
Good thing Google doesn't care about SEO on its own pages. ;)YouTube
Make sure your YouTube accountânow forcibly associated with a Google+
page as part of YouTube's anti-spam effortsâis a manager of your G+
business page. Then connect them together so all ofyour YouTube videos will
appear on your G+ page; you can easily share your videos there; and so all your
YouTube comments and shares show up in your G+ page notifications. While you
don't have to do this pre-rebrand, it will make your life easier as
your page name change on G+ will change your YouTube name, too, so you only
have to do one.
There are some odd rules on YouTube surrounding vanity URLs, though. In some
still confusing circumstances where YouTube does not allow you to have a vanity
URL that anyone hadever associated withan accountâeven if that account
wasdeletedâwe weren't able to secure Moz, but instead went with
MozHQ for our vanity URL.
That said, as long as no one's ever had your brand name, you can easily change
your channel name to your brand without any worry. Make sure your brand's
YouTube account's cooperating with the new G+ page connections, and that it's
associated with a non-employee business email address, not an employee's email,
whetherpersonal or professional. At one place I worked, an employee accidentally
hooked up their personal email to the YouTube account, and we lost our brand
name!Pinterest
Pinterest is super easy. All you have to do is edit away and easily change
your brand information to your new name. Don't forget, if you have a new domain
URL, to re-verify your site.
If someone has your new brand name on Pinterest, you can
file a trademark claim. When we were SEOmoz, we were successful in getting the
SEOmoz username from a squatter. However, when it came to Moz, the very active
user wasn't using the name in a way that violated our trademark, so Pinterest
did not give us the Moz username. So we're MozHQ there.LinkedIn
Let me tell you, LinkedIn is not the community manager's friend. Sadly,
rebranding is no more friendly. At Moz, we have both a
Company Page and a Group.Company Page
I have some bad news: There is no way to change your company page in a
rebrand.
At Moz, we tried reaching out to LinkedIn so see if we could work something
out, but no one returned our messages. :( Instead, we created an entirely new
company page from scratch and posted a message on our old one that we'd moved.
Which means we lost 7,000 followers there.
Special note: If you have a three letter name, LinkedIn will have a hard time
displaying your new company name when employees go to update their profiles.
After a legion of Mozzers filed support tickets with LinkedIn, we were able to
get a workaround. However, before that, it kept trying to make us say we worked
for Mozilla. :)Group
For those of you running Groups, it's super easy to rebrand. Mostly because
your vanity URLs aren't real vanity URLs, and you can easily change your name.
Note: We can't change our Moz Group any longer because we passed a 20,000
member barrier, beyondwhich you must get extra LinkedIn permissions to grow your
Group. This happened post-rebrand, so we were able to easily change it in May.
Now for your vanity URL, you can literally type any words into it, and it
won't matter. The numbers are what directs you to the right group. For example:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Moz-2976409http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Kittens-2976409http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Matt-Cutts-2976409
All those URLs go straight to the Moz Group. :)Instagram
While we aren't using Instagram at Mozâyes, I know!âit's pretty
easy to change your Instagram information, as long as your brand name's not
taken. Simply edit your profile name and it and the vanity URL change:
If your brand name is taken, you can
file a trademark claim with them.Tumblr
On Tumblr, there are two different places for you to change for your rebrand
as you'll want to change both your blog's name and your URL. This will also
likely depend on the purpose of your Tumblr. Here we use our Tumblr,
Moz Health, to update our customers and community when things go haywire.
For the name, this is located in editing featuring associated with the blog's
design and title field. (When I first started on Tumblr, I couldn't decide on a
name for my blog, and it took me forever to change it from Untitled!)
For the vanity URL, your username is associated with it, if you're using
tumblr.com as your URL. You can change your username to anything that's not
already taken.
Redirecting it a URL on your site:
Special note: If you have more than one Tumblr blog, you cannot change which
is your main Tumblr blog associated with your account when you're commenting via
Tumblr. This can be frustrating. I recommend changing your username instead of
starting a second Tumblr under the same username for your new brand. You don't
want people going to your old brand name!More than just switching names.
Of course, a rebrand is more than just switching names on social. You have to
make sure your social media messages are aligned with your PR, content, and
more. You also have to respond to the people reaching out to you.
On Moz rebrand day through the next week, we sent out over 800 message from
the main @Moz Twitter account, and that doesn't even count the rest of our
social accounts or our on-site blog and in ourQ&A forum.
We had an entire action plan around the coverage for our community team, and I
suggest starting not with the details but with your goals. Then, work down to
those details and sharing with all those involved in the rebrand efforts.
Our community coverage rebrand goals were:Make sure that all accounts are
switched over to Moz names.
Make our audience happy with the rebrand.
Answer 95% of all questions, in a timely manner, about the brand and the beta
product.
Have full coverage for launch and then next 24 hours as needed.
I'm happy to say that this part of our rebrand went very smoothly, and I wish
the best for all of you going on the same adventure! I'd also love to hear about
your stories.Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on
the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz
team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt
down but want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/naZjZxTCmpQ/how-to-rebrand-your-social-media-accounts
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Accounts'
Posted by EricaMcGillivray
Remember when Moz rebranded way back in May 2013? (Seems like a lifetime ago
for this Mozzer, but, alas: startup life.) Well, since then a ton of you have
reached out in
our Q&A forum and on social media to ask just what we did to get this done.
Rebrands happen. While this is a late tale, it's a story better toldlate than
never, and it's not as scary as you think, I promise.
Plan early. No, really early.
Don't put off thinking about your social media accounts until the last second
of your rebrand. In several cases, you have to work with other companies to get
things done, andyou might have to file trademark claims if your new brand name's
been taken. You're also probably going to want to have some new artwork for your
Facebook background as well as other social pretties, which means involving your
graphic designers. Not to mention, besides your name, you'll need to update
company information, and I recommend putting documentation together to copy and
paste from on game day. I personally got to work at 4 a.m. on Moz's rebrand day,
and I can tell you that preparation saved me from a lot of terrible mistakes by
this non-morning person. Not enough earl grey in the world.
You want to grab your new Twitter handle as soon as your company's new name
has been selected. You may need to negotiate with someone who might already have
your choice. (Note that it's against Twitter's terms of service to pay for a
handle.) Or if there's only a squatter, you can reach out to Twitter for either
a trademark violation or just
their inactive account policy.
At Moz, we secured our Twitter handle
@Moz almost two years before we rebranded, which meant that we were more than
ready come rebrand day.
The actual switchover on Twitter was quite easy. We knew that we wanted to
keep the old @SEOmoz account for monitoring and branding purposes, and we wanted
to seamlessly transition all of our @SEOmoz followers to @Moz.
To switch, we first changed the @Moz account's name to something random like
@Moz23, and then we changed @SEOmoz to @Moz and @Moz23 to @SEOmoz. I had two
different browsers open and logged into both accounts, which let me make all
these changes in seconds. All followers of @SEOmoz were then automatically
following @Moz.
If you're verified, you do lose your account verification when you switch your
name, but we were easily able to get it back by emailing our ad account folks at
Twitter, who were clued into our rebrand before it happened. (We like to have
backup plans for our backup plans.)Facebook
Facebook is perhaps a trickier network on whichto change your company name,
particularly if you have more than 200 followers and your new brand name is
three characters or less. We have both at
Moz, and this meant that Facebook had to make all these changes for us.
If you are changing an account with over 200 followers, you can apply to
Facebook for a rebrand. We were lucky; at that time, we had an ads account
person that we connected with directly; if there's one time to call in a favor,
it's during a rebrand.
The good news is that since our rebrand, Facebook has made it easier to
request a page name and vanity URL change. It can take up to several days or
weeks to process on their end through this request page, so keep that in mind.
I've also heard reports from those in the UK that this feature may not be
released all over the world. You can also only change your vanity URL once!
Warning: Make sure you change your page name before you change your URL as
Facebook needs to approve the name change.
Facebook required a ton of documentation from us around our rebrand. They
wanted to see our legal trademark on Moz (easy enough with public records); our
marketing documentation (we sent them an internal slide deck and screenshots of
our new site in the staging environment); our rebrand press release; and
documentation that we owned Moz.com. We also had to keep our fingers crossed
that no one from Facebook would leak our rebrand (not that it was top secret or
we're famous).
Unfortunately, if you're planning a rebrand and your company culture or
rebrand situation is one of non-disclosure agreements and super-secretive plans,
you may run into a roadblock here. Even at Moz, we questioned internally about
how much information to give away without a non-disclosure agreement. You must
upload documentation of your rebrand and legal rights to the new name. Here's
what Facebook says:
All said and done, we gave Facebook enough documentation and gave them our new
name and the date and time to switch over our account. At 7 a.m. on May 30th, we
went from SEOmoz to Moz on our Facebook company page, with our fans intact.
Your vanity URL is an easy change in Facebook through their interface. However,
you can only change a page's name once; so just in case your name change isn't
approved and you are forced to start from scratch, you want to keep that vanity
URL free. Once you change the vanity URL, you cannot claim your old brand, and
the old vanity URL will redirect users back to the Facebook homepage.Google+
If anyone actually figures out how to change avanity URL on Google+, please
call me! But I get ahead of myself.
Back in the day when it seemed like only Lady Gaga had a vanity URL, SEOmoz
had one. The legends say that one day the gods smiled on us, and we were granted
+SEOmoz.
I thought in my naivet© that I could change the vanity URLsince we
already had one, or that after a period of time Google would realize we'd
changed our name and do it for us. I was wrong on both accounts. I'd also hoped
that maybe once everyone else started getting vanity URLs, there would be an
option to edit ours. No such luck.
You can change your company page name on the profile section of the interface
to anything you want: smelly cat, lover of potato chips, trampler of paper
dinosaurs. Or, you know, your new rebranded name.
Pro tip: the old garble of random numbers assigned to you will still redirect
you to your company even if you have a vanity URL. At Moz, we chose to use the
number to link to our company page to from our site. This was so you, gentle
reader, didn't ask about site errors and so we hedged our bets in case we wake
up one morning to a new vanity URL.
You also don't want to forget about reverifying your new domain URL,
especially if you're working on authorship and publisher status. Make sure your
web developer knows this, and don't forget to have your bloggers change their
personal G+ profiles to reflect your new domain URL for authorship.
Our G+ company page reads Moz now, but that darn vanity URL still says +SEOmoz.
Good thing Google doesn't care about SEO on its own pages. ;)YouTube
Make sure your YouTube accountânow forcibly associated with a Google+
page as part of YouTube's anti-spam effortsâis a manager of your G+
business page. Then connect them together so all ofyour YouTube videos will
appear on your G+ page; you can easily share your videos there; and so all your
YouTube comments and shares show up in your G+ page notifications. While you
don't have to do this pre-rebrand, it will make your life easier as
your page name change on G+ will change your YouTube name, too, so you only
have to do one.
There are some odd rules on YouTube surrounding vanity URLs, though. In some
still confusing circumstances where YouTube does not allow you to have a vanity
URL that anyone hadever associated withan accountâeven if that account
wasdeletedâwe weren't able to secure Moz, but instead went with
MozHQ for our vanity URL.
That said, as long as no one's ever had your brand name, you can easily change
your channel name to your brand without any worry. Make sure your brand's
YouTube account's cooperating with the new G+ page connections, and that it's
associated with a non-employee business email address, not an employee's email,
whetherpersonal or professional. At one place I worked, an employee accidentally
hooked up their personal email to the YouTube account, and we lost our brand
name!Pinterest
Pinterest is super easy. All you have to do is edit away and easily change
your brand information to your new name. Don't forget, if you have a new domain
URL, to re-verify your site.
If someone has your new brand name on Pinterest, you can
file a trademark claim. When we were SEOmoz, we were successful in getting the
SEOmoz username from a squatter. However, when it came to Moz, the very active
user wasn't using the name in a way that violated our trademark, so Pinterest
did not give us the Moz username. So we're MozHQ there.LinkedIn
Let me tell you, LinkedIn is not the community manager's friend. Sadly,
rebranding is no more friendly. At Moz, we have both a
Company Page and a Group.Company Page
I have some bad news: There is no way to change your company page in a
rebrand.
At Moz, we tried reaching out to LinkedIn so see if we could work something
out, but no one returned our messages. :( Instead, we created an entirely new
company page from scratch and posted a message on our old one that we'd moved.
Which means we lost 7,000 followers there.
Special note: If you have a three letter name, LinkedIn will have a hard time
displaying your new company name when employees go to update their profiles.
After a legion of Mozzers filed support tickets with LinkedIn, we were able to
get a workaround. However, before that, it kept trying to make us say we worked
for Mozilla. :)Group
For those of you running Groups, it's super easy to rebrand. Mostly because
your vanity URLs aren't real vanity URLs, and you can easily change your name.
Note: We can't change our Moz Group any longer because we passed a 20,000
member barrier, beyondwhich you must get extra LinkedIn permissions to grow your
Group. This happened post-rebrand, so we were able to easily change it in May.
Now for your vanity URL, you can literally type any words into it, and it
won't matter. The numbers are what directs you to the right group. For example:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Moz-2976409http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Kittens-2976409http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Matt-Cutts-2976409
All those URLs go straight to the Moz Group. :)Instagram
While we aren't using Instagram at Mozâyes, I know!âit's pretty
easy to change your Instagram information, as long as your brand name's not
taken. Simply edit your profile name and it and the vanity URL change:
If your brand name is taken, you can
file a trademark claim with them.Tumblr
On Tumblr, there are two different places for you to change for your rebrand
as you'll want to change both your blog's name and your URL. This will also
likely depend on the purpose of your Tumblr. Here we use our Tumblr,
Moz Health, to update our customers and community when things go haywire.
For the name, this is located in editing featuring associated with the blog's
design and title field. (When I first started on Tumblr, I couldn't decide on a
name for my blog, and it took me forever to change it from Untitled!)
For the vanity URL, your username is associated with it, if you're using
tumblr.com as your URL. You can change your username to anything that's not
already taken.
Redirecting it a URL on your site:
Special note: If you have more than one Tumblr blog, you cannot change which
is your main Tumblr blog associated with your account when you're commenting via
Tumblr. This can be frustrating. I recommend changing your username instead of
starting a second Tumblr under the same username for your new brand. You don't
want people going to your old brand name!More than just switching names.
Of course, a rebrand is more than just switching names on social. You have to
make sure your social media messages are aligned with your PR, content, and
more. You also have to respond to the people reaching out to you.
On Moz rebrand day through the next week, we sent out over 800 message from
the main @Moz Twitter account, and that doesn't even count the rest of our
social accounts or our on-site blog and in ourQ&A forum.
We had an entire action plan around the coverage for our community team, and I
suggest starting not with the details but with your goals. Then, work down to
those details and sharing with all those involved in the rebrand efforts.
Our community coverage rebrand goals were:Make sure that all accounts are
switched over to Moz names.
Make our audience happy with the rebrand.
Answer 95% of all questions, in a timely manner, about the brand and the beta
product.
Have full coverage for launch and then next 24 hours as needed.
I'm happy to say that this part of our rebrand went very smoothly, and I wish
the best for all of you going on the same adventure! I'd also love to hear about
your stories.Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on
the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz
team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt
down but want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/naZjZxTCmpQ/how-to-rebrand-your-social-media-accounts
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Now Accepting #MozCon 2014 Speaker
Submissions. Ready, Set, Pitch!'
Posted by EricaMcGillivray
Are you ready for
MozCon 2014, July 14-16th, in Seattle? We've been up to our elbows in planning
since December and about knee-high since the last MozCon. Before we go any
further, you have bought your MozCon 2014 tick...
You may view the latest post at
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You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Submissions. Ready, Set, Pitch!'
Posted by EricaMcGillivray
Are you ready for
MozCon 2014, July 14-16th, in Seattle? We've been up to our elbows in planning
since December and about knee-high since the last MozCon. Before we go any
further, you have bought your MozCon 2014 tick...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/ByONK4SSd7s/now-accepting-mozcon-2014-speaker-submissions
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Local Landing Pages: A Guide To
Great Implementation In Every Situation'
Posted by MiriamEllis
Do you keep seeing terms like "city landing pages" and "service area pages"
mentioned on Local SEO blogs and find yourself wondering if this form of
marketing is a good match for your business? The topic of local landing pages
has been super-active in the Moz Q&A Forum recently, and I've written this post
to honor all of these great questions we're getting. This guide defines
different types of local landing pages and identifies four distinct business
models united by the need to earn visibility for local-focused Internet
searches. By reading this guide, you will not only become fluent in the subject
of local landing pages, but will also be ready to implement the right types of
pages for your unique business.
Single-location service area business
This is the plumber working out of his house and traveling to clients in a 30
mile radius, the caretaker who sets out from her office each day to provide
in-home services to elders, and the tow truck operator going out from a truck
yard to rescue stranded drivers. If you travel from your home or office to serve
customers, rather than them coming to you for services, your business is the
definition of a single-location service area business (an SAB). You have a
dedicated street address and a local phone number, but you don't expect your
customers to come to you.
To my recollection, this is the precise business model around which the term
"city landing page" first came into common usage in the Local SEO industry, and
this form of marketing has evolved, in part, in an effort to counteract some of
Google's bias toward physical location. When Google created their local product,
it was definitely more geared toward brick-and-mortar businesses than SABs, and
it remains so to this day.
Most SABs will be unable to obtain rankings in Google's local pack of results
for any city other than the one in which they are physically located, and this
leaves business owners wondering how they can accurately represent the fact that
they serve in a variety of locations. The answer is to pursue organic rankings,
rather than local ones, for these other service cities. Developing landing pages
on the company website is one of the key techniques for achieving this desired
visibility.
How it works:Identify the key cities in which you serve, beyond your city of
location.
Create a unique page of content on your website for each of these cities.
Link to these pages from a top level menu, perhaps under a heading such as
"Cities We Serve."
If possible, earn social mentions and links for these pages.FAQ:
Q: I serve a huge number of cities. Do I really have to create a page for each
one?
A: Without a unique page for each city, you're unlikely to rank organically
for relevant queries. That being said, it's not typically reasonable to create
50 city landing pages all at once. Instead, start by identifying your very most
important cities (maybe 5 or 10 of them). Develop well-planned, high-quality
pages for each of them. You can then continue to build out new pages over time,
or, consider the idea of developing an on-site blog to begin publishing ongoing
content about your less-important service cities as well as your important ones.
Q: I've put the same content with the city name swapped out on 20 different
pages. Is this okay?
A: No! You're putting your website at risk for a duplicate content penalty.
The absolute rule of developing local landing pages is that the content is
unique on each one. If you can't find something unique to write about, don't
create the page.
Q: I serve my whole state. Could I just optimize for that?
A: You could take that approach, if keyword research indicates that people
search for what you offer by state. Typically, though, users either search for a
service + a city, and even if they don't, Google will localize searchers'
results based on the location of their device. Hence, if you want to show up for
"fence builders in Denver," you've got to have a page on your site that speaks
to this need. If your website is simply optimized for "Colorado," it isn't
locally optimized and you can't expect Google to consider you as a relevant
answer for queries containing or stemming from cities like Denver, Boulder, or
Colorado Springs.
Q: Can I build a Google+ Local page for each of my service cities and earn
rankings this way?
A: Only if you have real, physical offices there. You are only eligible to
build one Google+ Local page per physical location (with the exception of
multi-partner practices and large campuses like hospitals). It's forbidden to
build them for any city where you aren't physically located.
Q: Can I use virtual offices to create a presence in my service cities?
A: No. Google prohibits the use of P.O. Boxes and virtual offices. Unless
you've got a physical, staffed location where someone is answering the telephone
during stated business hours, you should not be using such addresses to appear
like you're physically located in your service cities. This is not only against
Google's rules, but it's misleading to your customers. If you can get a real
office and staff it, great. Otherwise, don't do this.
Q: What if I just put a list of my service cities on my homepage?
A: This one's a bit complex. If you serve just a few locations, it's perfectly
fine to mention these in a natural manner on your homepage, but you shouldn't
count on this to be enough to earn rankings for your business unless you have no
competition. It's much better to build a page for each city. Something you
should definitely avoid doing is putting a big block of text anywhere on your
website listing cities or zip codes. Google's webmaster guidelines cite this as
a spammy practice.
Q: How can I meet the challenge of creating unique content for each of my city
landing pages?
A: This is where your creativity counts most! Consider the following options
for brainstorming and creating unique, terrific content:Showcase completed
projects in each city, using text and photos.
Publish customer testimonials from customers in each city, encoded in Schema
review markup.
Interview your service people who serve those cities, introducing them to your
customers.
Create and publish city-related videos on each page and offer a transcript.
Offer city-specific specials in rotation from city to city.
Consider creating infographics specific to each city.
Share advice and news regarding laws, codes, weather, terrain or issues that are
important to a specific community and relevant to your industry.
Provide unique do-it-yourself tips for things customers can do on their own.
Create opportunities for user-generated content through contests and
promotions.
Share details of your involvement in specific cities, such as events you
participate in or organizations you sponsor.
Think outside the box; come up with something not on this list that nobody else
has thought of doing!
Single location brick-and-mortar business
This is the restaurant, dental office, or retail shop with just one physical
location. In this case, the whole website is going to be optimized for the city
in which the business exists and local landing pages are typically not going to
be a good fit.
That being said, there is a common question surrounding this business model
that needs to be addressed; one that often arises when a business is located in
a small town near larger cities.FAQ:
Q: My clients come to me from surrounding cities. I want to rank for these
other/bigger locales. Could I publish landing pages for each of these places
from which clients come to me?
A: It's understandable that if your business is located just outside of
Dallas, Boston, or San Francisco and people come to you from these cities for
services, you might want to achieve high rankings there. To my mind, this comes
down to a question of relevance and usefulness. Would it be relevant or useful
to create pages on your website stating, "Customer Joe comes to us from Dallas?"
Probably not. Knowing a detail like this doesn't really help anybody, and if
this is your only connection to a neighboring community, you probably shouldn't
attempt to create local landing pages.
However, if your business has more of a link than this to surrounding towns or
cities, you might have something of value to write about. A legitimate
connection might include, but not be limited to, the following hypothetical
scenarios:A physician with privileges at a major city hospital
A therapist who speaks at major city conferences
An attorney who serves at courts in other cities
A sporting goods store that sponsors sports teams in other cities
An organization that hosts events in other cities
You should be able to determine if your business has this type of link to a
neighboring community that could generate interesting content. Will writing
about these things be enough to make you #1 organically for cities in which
you're not physically located? Likely not, but the effort could earn you some
visibility. Whether the investment of time and money will be worthwhile depends
on the findings of your industry research. If you can identify gaps you can fill
in the SERPs or know you've got sluggish competitors, a good effort here could
yield exciting results.
Multi-location brick-and-mortar or service area business
In this scenario, you have more than one office, either from which your staff
travels to offer services or to which your customers come to do business. In
both cases you will be creating local landing pages for each physical address.
Provided that each location has a unique phone number and is staffed during
stated open hours, you are allowed to create a Google+ Local page for each
office, too.FAQ:
Q: How should I optimize my website if I've got multiple locations?
A: There are nuances to this situation which I'll do my best to address here.
Your scenario might consist of being a local restaurant chain with five branches
in a state or a multi-state franchise with 100 or more locations. If you've got
a main headquarters and a just a handful of additional locations, you might
consider optimizing the homepage and about page for the headquarters and putting
the complete NAP of all locations in the footer and on the contact page of the
site, in addition to building a local landing page for each office, optimized
with its unique NAP in the opening copy.
If you have a handful of locations, but they are all of equal value, I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand rather than the physical location, and then putting the complete NAP
of all locations in the footer and on the contact page, as well as the unique
NAP on each respective local landing page.
If you have a large number of locations (let's say 10 or more), I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand, rather than locations. I would not put more than 10 NAPs in the
footer. I'd leave that for the contact page and for the individual local landing
pages. If it's reasonable, put navigational links to these local landing pages
in a menu. If not, make them accessible via a clickable map, ZIP code search or
similar feature. Include them all in an on-site sitemap.
Remember that the content must be unique on all of these pages to avoid
duplicate content penalties.
Q: I'm having trouble brainstorming ideas for making these local landing pages
unique. What can I write about?
A: Consider the following ideas for inspiration:Showcase your work in each
city, writing up great project descriptions.
If different services, products or classes are available at different locations,
describe these.
Create city-specific coupons and contests.
Develop infographics and videos, accompanied by text descriptions of their
content.
Offer advice that is specifically relevant to a given community.
Offer excellent driving directions.
Introduce the staff at specific locations; interview them if possible.
Add Schema-encoded customer testimonials for each city.
Q: I run an SAB with several physical offices that each serve their own radius.
What kinds of landing pages should I be building?
A: You'll build a unique landing page for each office, optimized with its
unique NAP. You'll be linking from the Google+ Local page for each office to its
respective page on the website. Additionally, you can then set about building up
a set of city landing pages (with no NAP) for each of the cities in the service
radius of each office. If this ends up looking like way too many pages, consider
blogging to begin covering these service cities over time with descriptions of
your completed products.
National company desiring a local presence
For national businesses, the increasing presence of local results for
important keyword searches has often seemed like encroachment rather than a
blessing. You may find that much of the search engine result real estate is now
being taken up by local companies. In such a situation, it's natural to wonder
if building out some type of local landing page would help you to gain back
visibility that may have been lost. As I see it, these are the two options in
this scenario:
1. If you have staffed, physical locations in some cities and make in-person
contact with your customers, then you are eligible to create a local landing
page and attached Google+ Local page for each physical office. You can take
advantage of the techniques described above in this article. For cities you
serve but where you're not physically located, you should determine whether it
is reasonable to create unique content for each city, or if your customers'
needs will be better served by something like an interactive map.
2. If you have no physical offices or in-person contact with customers, your
business does not qualify for Google+ Local pages, and the development of
on-site local landing pages may just not make sense. For example, if you're a
virtual services provider supporting all of the US, creating a page for every
single city in the country probably isn't a reasonable approach to marketing.
After all, if what you offer is the same for everybody, nationwide, what can you
find to write about that would be different from page to page across thousands
of pages?
In such a scenario, it's likely better to offer excellent content about your
services accompanied by a map of your service cities, rather than attempting to
rank for every, individual city with the landing page technique. Likely, you
will need to rely on PPC to geo-target your advertising and turn to social media
to create a presence in important communities.
For national businesses, building a strong brand is critical. Google tends to
'get' brands and if someone is searching for "Whole Foods Market" or
"McDonalds," Google is typically going to surface reasonably appropriate results
for the searcher, even if the company isn't getting their optimization perfect.
Fair or not, this is how I see local search working these days, and the smaller
your company is, the harder you'll have to work to combine excellent Local SEO
practices with efforts to get your brand name established in your target
communities.In conclusion
"Does it make sense?" is the question I'd suggest as a determining factor for
the types of local landing pages you build. If you can build unique, helpful
pages, then the effort will likely be worth it. If you're having to stretch to
find a rationale for the development of these types of pages, chances are,
they're not a good fit.
Do you have inspiring suggestions for the types of content business owners can
create to make their local landing pages especially neat or helpful? If so,
please share your ideas with the community!Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a
semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips,
and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of
stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/5e81VN1B4Cw/local-landing-pages-guide
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Great Implementation In Every Situation'
Posted by MiriamEllis
Do you keep seeing terms like "city landing pages" and "service area pages"
mentioned on Local SEO blogs and find yourself wondering if this form of
marketing is a good match for your business? The topic of local landing pages
has been super-active in the Moz Q&A Forum recently, and I've written this post
to honor all of these great questions we're getting. This guide defines
different types of local landing pages and identifies four distinct business
models united by the need to earn visibility for local-focused Internet
searches. By reading this guide, you will not only become fluent in the subject
of local landing pages, but will also be ready to implement the right types of
pages for your unique business.
Single-location service area business
This is the plumber working out of his house and traveling to clients in a 30
mile radius, the caretaker who sets out from her office each day to provide
in-home services to elders, and the tow truck operator going out from a truck
yard to rescue stranded drivers. If you travel from your home or office to serve
customers, rather than them coming to you for services, your business is the
definition of a single-location service area business (an SAB). You have a
dedicated street address and a local phone number, but you don't expect your
customers to come to you.
To my recollection, this is the precise business model around which the term
"city landing page" first came into common usage in the Local SEO industry, and
this form of marketing has evolved, in part, in an effort to counteract some of
Google's bias toward physical location. When Google created their local product,
it was definitely more geared toward brick-and-mortar businesses than SABs, and
it remains so to this day.
Most SABs will be unable to obtain rankings in Google's local pack of results
for any city other than the one in which they are physically located, and this
leaves business owners wondering how they can accurately represent the fact that
they serve in a variety of locations. The answer is to pursue organic rankings,
rather than local ones, for these other service cities. Developing landing pages
on the company website is one of the key techniques for achieving this desired
visibility.
How it works:Identify the key cities in which you serve, beyond your city of
location.
Create a unique page of content on your website for each of these cities.
Link to these pages from a top level menu, perhaps under a heading such as
"Cities We Serve."
If possible, earn social mentions and links for these pages.FAQ:
Q: I serve a huge number of cities. Do I really have to create a page for each
one?
A: Without a unique page for each city, you're unlikely to rank organically
for relevant queries. That being said, it's not typically reasonable to create
50 city landing pages all at once. Instead, start by identifying your very most
important cities (maybe 5 or 10 of them). Develop well-planned, high-quality
pages for each of them. You can then continue to build out new pages over time,
or, consider the idea of developing an on-site blog to begin publishing ongoing
content about your less-important service cities as well as your important ones.
Q: I've put the same content with the city name swapped out on 20 different
pages. Is this okay?
A: No! You're putting your website at risk for a duplicate content penalty.
The absolute rule of developing local landing pages is that the content is
unique on each one. If you can't find something unique to write about, don't
create the page.
Q: I serve my whole state. Could I just optimize for that?
A: You could take that approach, if keyword research indicates that people
search for what you offer by state. Typically, though, users either search for a
service + a city, and even if they don't, Google will localize searchers'
results based on the location of their device. Hence, if you want to show up for
"fence builders in Denver," you've got to have a page on your site that speaks
to this need. If your website is simply optimized for "Colorado," it isn't
locally optimized and you can't expect Google to consider you as a relevant
answer for queries containing or stemming from cities like Denver, Boulder, or
Colorado Springs.
Q: Can I build a Google+ Local page for each of my service cities and earn
rankings this way?
A: Only if you have real, physical offices there. You are only eligible to
build one Google+ Local page per physical location (with the exception of
multi-partner practices and large campuses like hospitals). It's forbidden to
build them for any city where you aren't physically located.
Q: Can I use virtual offices to create a presence in my service cities?
A: No. Google prohibits the use of P.O. Boxes and virtual offices. Unless
you've got a physical, staffed location where someone is answering the telephone
during stated business hours, you should not be using such addresses to appear
like you're physically located in your service cities. This is not only against
Google's rules, but it's misleading to your customers. If you can get a real
office and staff it, great. Otherwise, don't do this.
Q: What if I just put a list of my service cities on my homepage?
A: This one's a bit complex. If you serve just a few locations, it's perfectly
fine to mention these in a natural manner on your homepage, but you shouldn't
count on this to be enough to earn rankings for your business unless you have no
competition. It's much better to build a page for each city. Something you
should definitely avoid doing is putting a big block of text anywhere on your
website listing cities or zip codes. Google's webmaster guidelines cite this as
a spammy practice.
Q: How can I meet the challenge of creating unique content for each of my city
landing pages?
A: This is where your creativity counts most! Consider the following options
for brainstorming and creating unique, terrific content:Showcase completed
projects in each city, using text and photos.
Publish customer testimonials from customers in each city, encoded in Schema
review markup.
Interview your service people who serve those cities, introducing them to your
customers.
Create and publish city-related videos on each page and offer a transcript.
Offer city-specific specials in rotation from city to city.
Consider creating infographics specific to each city.
Share advice and news regarding laws, codes, weather, terrain or issues that are
important to a specific community and relevant to your industry.
Provide unique do-it-yourself tips for things customers can do on their own.
Create opportunities for user-generated content through contests and
promotions.
Share details of your involvement in specific cities, such as events you
participate in or organizations you sponsor.
Think outside the box; come up with something not on this list that nobody else
has thought of doing!
Single location brick-and-mortar business
This is the restaurant, dental office, or retail shop with just one physical
location. In this case, the whole website is going to be optimized for the city
in which the business exists and local landing pages are typically not going to
be a good fit.
That being said, there is a common question surrounding this business model
that needs to be addressed; one that often arises when a business is located in
a small town near larger cities.FAQ:
Q: My clients come to me from surrounding cities. I want to rank for these
other/bigger locales. Could I publish landing pages for each of these places
from which clients come to me?
A: It's understandable that if your business is located just outside of
Dallas, Boston, or San Francisco and people come to you from these cities for
services, you might want to achieve high rankings there. To my mind, this comes
down to a question of relevance and usefulness. Would it be relevant or useful
to create pages on your website stating, "Customer Joe comes to us from Dallas?"
Probably not. Knowing a detail like this doesn't really help anybody, and if
this is your only connection to a neighboring community, you probably shouldn't
attempt to create local landing pages.
However, if your business has more of a link than this to surrounding towns or
cities, you might have something of value to write about. A legitimate
connection might include, but not be limited to, the following hypothetical
scenarios:A physician with privileges at a major city hospital
A therapist who speaks at major city conferences
An attorney who serves at courts in other cities
A sporting goods store that sponsors sports teams in other cities
An organization that hosts events in other cities
You should be able to determine if your business has this type of link to a
neighboring community that could generate interesting content. Will writing
about these things be enough to make you #1 organically for cities in which
you're not physically located? Likely not, but the effort could earn you some
visibility. Whether the investment of time and money will be worthwhile depends
on the findings of your industry research. If you can identify gaps you can fill
in the SERPs or know you've got sluggish competitors, a good effort here could
yield exciting results.
Multi-location brick-and-mortar or service area business
In this scenario, you have more than one office, either from which your staff
travels to offer services or to which your customers come to do business. In
both cases you will be creating local landing pages for each physical address.
Provided that each location has a unique phone number and is staffed during
stated open hours, you are allowed to create a Google+ Local page for each
office, too.FAQ:
Q: How should I optimize my website if I've got multiple locations?
A: There are nuances to this situation which I'll do my best to address here.
Your scenario might consist of being a local restaurant chain with five branches
in a state or a multi-state franchise with 100 or more locations. If you've got
a main headquarters and a just a handful of additional locations, you might
consider optimizing the homepage and about page for the headquarters and putting
the complete NAP of all locations in the footer and on the contact page of the
site, in addition to building a local landing page for each office, optimized
with its unique NAP in the opening copy.
If you have a handful of locations, but they are all of equal value, I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand rather than the physical location, and then putting the complete NAP
of all locations in the footer and on the contact page, as well as the unique
NAP on each respective local landing page.
If you have a large number of locations (let's say 10 or more), I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand, rather than locations. I would not put more than 10 NAPs in the
footer. I'd leave that for the contact page and for the individual local landing
pages. If it's reasonable, put navigational links to these local landing pages
in a menu. If not, make them accessible via a clickable map, ZIP code search or
similar feature. Include them all in an on-site sitemap.
Remember that the content must be unique on all of these pages to avoid
duplicate content penalties.
Q: I'm having trouble brainstorming ideas for making these local landing pages
unique. What can I write about?
A: Consider the following ideas for inspiration:Showcase your work in each
city, writing up great project descriptions.
If different services, products or classes are available at different locations,
describe these.
Create city-specific coupons and contests.
Develop infographics and videos, accompanied by text descriptions of their
content.
Offer advice that is specifically relevant to a given community.
Offer excellent driving directions.
Introduce the staff at specific locations; interview them if possible.
Add Schema-encoded customer testimonials for each city.
Q: I run an SAB with several physical offices that each serve their own radius.
What kinds of landing pages should I be building?
A: You'll build a unique landing page for each office, optimized with its
unique NAP. You'll be linking from the Google+ Local page for each office to its
respective page on the website. Additionally, you can then set about building up
a set of city landing pages (with no NAP) for each of the cities in the service
radius of each office. If this ends up looking like way too many pages, consider
blogging to begin covering these service cities over time with descriptions of
your completed products.
National company desiring a local presence
For national businesses, the increasing presence of local results for
important keyword searches has often seemed like encroachment rather than a
blessing. You may find that much of the search engine result real estate is now
being taken up by local companies. In such a situation, it's natural to wonder
if building out some type of local landing page would help you to gain back
visibility that may have been lost. As I see it, these are the two options in
this scenario:
1. If you have staffed, physical locations in some cities and make in-person
contact with your customers, then you are eligible to create a local landing
page and attached Google+ Local page for each physical office. You can take
advantage of the techniques described above in this article. For cities you
serve but where you're not physically located, you should determine whether it
is reasonable to create unique content for each city, or if your customers'
needs will be better served by something like an interactive map.
2. If you have no physical offices or in-person contact with customers, your
business does not qualify for Google+ Local pages, and the development of
on-site local landing pages may just not make sense. For example, if you're a
virtual services provider supporting all of the US, creating a page for every
single city in the country probably isn't a reasonable approach to marketing.
After all, if what you offer is the same for everybody, nationwide, what can you
find to write about that would be different from page to page across thousands
of pages?
In such a scenario, it's likely better to offer excellent content about your
services accompanied by a map of your service cities, rather than attempting to
rank for every, individual city with the landing page technique. Likely, you
will need to rely on PPC to geo-target your advertising and turn to social media
to create a presence in important communities.
For national businesses, building a strong brand is critical. Google tends to
'get' brands and if someone is searching for "Whole Foods Market" or
"McDonalds," Google is typically going to surface reasonably appropriate results
for the searcher, even if the company isn't getting their optimization perfect.
Fair or not, this is how I see local search working these days, and the smaller
your company is, the harder you'll have to work to combine excellent Local SEO
practices with efforts to get your brand name established in your target
communities.In conclusion
"Does it make sense?" is the question I'd suggest as a determining factor for
the types of local landing pages you build. If you can build unique, helpful
pages, then the effort will likely be worth it. If you're having to stretch to
find a rationale for the development of these types of pages, chances are,
they're not a good fit.
Do you have inspiring suggestions for the types of content business owners can
create to make their local landing pages especially neat or helpful? If so,
please share your ideas with the community!Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a
semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips,
and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of
stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/5e81VN1B4Cw/local-landing-pages-guide
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Parallax Scrolling Websites and
SEO - A Collection of Solutions and Examples'
Posted by Carla_DawsonThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to
the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.
Parallax Scrolling is one of the latest trends in web design, yet most
parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly. I have observed this trend on
sites like Awwwards, theFWA and many more. I have also observed that there are
many articles that say parallax scrolling is not ideal for search engines.
Parallax Scrolling is a design technique and it is ideal for search engines if
you know how to apply it. I have collected a list of great tutorials and real
SEO-friendly parallax websites to help the community learn how to use both
techniques together. There appears to be lots of confusion in the community and
I want to clear it up.
Parallax Scrolling â its origins and definition
Parallax Scrolling was originally created for the video game industry as a
âspecial effectsâ technique to give the audience an illusion of
depth. According to Wikipedia, parallax scrolling is
Parallax scrolling is a special scrolling technique in computer graphics,
wherein background images move by the camera slower than foreground images,
creating an illusion of depth
The web design industry defines parallax scrolling as
Creative Bloq
One big web design trend of the moment is parallax scrolling, which involves
the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect
as you scroll down the page. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but when used
sparingly it can provide a nice, subtle element of depth.
Observations
It is defined as a design technique or trend.
The definition of parallax scrolling talks about a technique that tries to
accomplish 3D-like effects.
It talks about moving layers at different velocities
It does not talk about one page web design or web structure.
Parallax scrolling and web design - current industry trends
Parallax Scrolling is in style these days. The trend began in 2011 when Ian
Coyle created the very first parallax website for Nike "Nike Better World" on
2011. Here are several articles mentioning web design trends for 2014 and they
all mention parallax scrolling. Also note that the trend was strong in 2013.
Designing A Website For 2014
Website Design Trends In 2014: Clean And Simple Rules
Web Design Trends to Watch in 2014
Most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO friendly
I claim above that most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly.
Where do I get the data to make this claim? Note just because most are not
SEO-friendly does not mean they cannot be SEO-friendly.
Here are several samples
20 Best Websites with Parallax Scrolling of 2013
35 great examples of parallax scrolling websites
Awwwards Parallax Websites
Most of these examples of parallax scrolling websites have one-page web
architectures. Since most web designers apply parallax scrolling to one-page web
design, there is a misconception in the industry that parallax scrolling is
restricted to one page.
Ok ok....technicalities...so how does one do a parallax scrolling website that
is SEO-friendly?
How to create a parallax scrolling website for search engines?
Before designing a website with parallax scrolling and for search engines it
is important to keep in mind the following things;
Parallax Scrolling is a design technique that moves different layers of content,
images or backgrounds at different speeds.
Regular onsite SEO requirements like schema, address in footer, etc. still
apply. Remember, start with an SEO architecture, and then apply the design to
the architecture.
Parallax Scrolling is not ideal for mobile version. It makes the website to
heavy. Remove parallax scrolling for mobile views.
There are three main techniques. Here are some real examples of parallax
scrolling websites that are SEO-friendly or almost SEO-friendly.
Technique #1 â "One page" web design with parallax scrolling using Jquery
iProspectâs Senior SEO specialist Kevin Ellen created the following
tutorial - Parallax Scrolling and SEO How to use JQuery to SEO your website.
This technique addresses the issue of one page web designs that use parallax
scrolling and basically tweaks it for search engines. I am mentioning this
technique first since there are so many one page parallax scrolling websites on
the market. Please note that Kevinâs sample âParallax SEOâ
site is not really parallax since it does not move different items at different
velocities, however I am mentioning it because his technique can easily be
applied to most one page parallax scrolling websites on the market.
Google Webmaster recently published this article Infinite Scroll Search
Friendly. It addresses the same issue that Kevin did in his article but with
more detail. I highly recommend reading both. You should be able to fix any one
page parallax scrolling website with both these sources.
The solution's use the help of jQuery's 'pushState's' functionality. This
allows a parallax scrolling page to be 'cut' into various sections which can be
identified in the SERPs, each with their unique URL and meta data. As a result,
one single page to be indexed multiple times, for different content.
Pros â It is a good fix for an existing one page parallax scrolling
website that needs to SEOed. It is a good technique for small websites that are
not interested in hard core analytics.
Cons â Bad for analytics. I suspect bounce rates may be higher on these
kinds of sites as scrolling through the website may occur rather quickly and to
a software program it would appear as a quick enter-exit per URL.
Flower Beauty
Woj Kwas mentioned this website in this Mozâs Q&A. This website does not
fit the technical definition of parallax scrolling but it does use the JQuery
/Infinite scrolling technique. FlowerBeaty.com allows the user to scroll through
the entire website and through multiple URLâs. It doesn't classify as
parallax scrolling since it does not play with layers and velocities. I am
mentioning it because it has received some visibility. It is not a parallax
scrolling website since it does not have multiple layers that move at different
velocities.
Technique #2 â Multipage parallax scrolling website on SEO architecture
This technique is very simple and easy to understand. You start with a SEO web
architecture and then place the parallax scrolling design effects on each SEO
URL. Wanda Anglin wrote a tutorial on this technique here. I have not been able
to find any other tutorials that mention this technique, if you do, please let
me know.
xDawson (Yes this is my website, but I have yet to find a perfectly SEOed
parallax scrolling website. If you do, please pin it here).
This website accomplished a very strict SEO architecture (definitely over
optimized) and placed parallax scrolling on almost every internal URL.
It did accomplish the movement of layers at different velocities however it
did not accomplish the âillusion of depthâ or the âtelling of
a storyâ. Although it does qualify as parallax scrolling, it does not use
parallax scrolling as the trend is today.
Pros â Good for analytics in that each URL has its own content, easy to
implement
Cons â Loading times can be a problem with this technique as too much
parallax scrolling may make browser loading time longer than it should be. It
may be a bit too âinteractiveâ. Designing each for each URL can be
expensive and keeps the design rigid.
Recommendations - Use parallax scrolling sparingly throughout the website
instead of on every URL. Reduces loading time and makes the website more
natural. It also will reduce design expenses and lets the website be a bit more
flexible.
Kickpoint
This website placed parallax scrolling on its homepage and on one internal
page. Notice the homepage and the services page have parallax scrolling.
Pros â Good for analytics and easy to design and implement
Cons - Does not have a 100% SEO Architecture. Notice the Services page did not
divide up the topics of SEO, PPC, SMM, and Content Marketing onto unique
URLâs with unique title and meta descriptions.
Recommendations â Divide up the content on the services page or use
Jquery fix (see technique #2). Add unique titles and meta descriptions.
Technique #3 â Parallax Scrolling on homepage and regular SEO architecture
Spotify
Another technique is to place parallax scrolling on the homepage and then
include other URLâs that are SEO-friendly, but do not have parallax
scrolling.
Pros â Keeps the website light and flexible. It is easy to design and
more affordable than technique #1.
Cons â Not maximizing creativity or making the website super
âinteractiveâ
Do the solutions above solve the parallax scrolling SEO conflict?
I obviously believe they do, but I am interested in hearing the
communityâs opinion on this issue. I love the parallax scrolling design
technique and am a strong believer in making websites beautiful and creative but
also SEO-friendly. I hope this collection of SEO parallax websites and tutorials
help you learn how to apply both techniques together. And remember, parallax
scrolling is just a design technique that can be used on different kinds of web
architectures.
This article was co-authored with Kevin Ellen from iProspect UK. You can find
more information about Kevin here. https://twitter.com/Kevin_Ellen and
uk.linkedin.com/in/kevinellen
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/ILct7NvTQKE/parallax-scrolling-websites-and-seo-a-collection-of-solutions-and-examples
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
SEO - A Collection of Solutions and Examples'
Posted by Carla_DawsonThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to
the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.
Parallax Scrolling is one of the latest trends in web design, yet most
parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly. I have observed this trend on
sites like Awwwards, theFWA and many more. I have also observed that there are
many articles that say parallax scrolling is not ideal for search engines.
Parallax Scrolling is a design technique and it is ideal for search engines if
you know how to apply it. I have collected a list of great tutorials and real
SEO-friendly parallax websites to help the community learn how to use both
techniques together. There appears to be lots of confusion in the community and
I want to clear it up.
Parallax Scrolling â its origins and definition
Parallax Scrolling was originally created for the video game industry as a
âspecial effectsâ technique to give the audience an illusion of
depth. According to Wikipedia, parallax scrolling is
Parallax scrolling is a special scrolling technique in computer graphics,
wherein background images move by the camera slower than foreground images,
creating an illusion of depth
The web design industry defines parallax scrolling as
Creative Bloq
One big web design trend of the moment is parallax scrolling, which involves
the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect
as you scroll down the page. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but when used
sparingly it can provide a nice, subtle element of depth.
Observations
It is defined as a design technique or trend.
The definition of parallax scrolling talks about a technique that tries to
accomplish 3D-like effects.
It talks about moving layers at different velocities
It does not talk about one page web design or web structure.
Parallax scrolling and web design - current industry trends
Parallax Scrolling is in style these days. The trend began in 2011 when Ian
Coyle created the very first parallax website for Nike "Nike Better World" on
2011. Here are several articles mentioning web design trends for 2014 and they
all mention parallax scrolling. Also note that the trend was strong in 2013.
Designing A Website For 2014
Website Design Trends In 2014: Clean And Simple Rules
Web Design Trends to Watch in 2014
Most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO friendly
I claim above that most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly.
Where do I get the data to make this claim? Note just because most are not
SEO-friendly does not mean they cannot be SEO-friendly.
Here are several samples
20 Best Websites with Parallax Scrolling of 2013
35 great examples of parallax scrolling websites
Awwwards Parallax Websites
Most of these examples of parallax scrolling websites have one-page web
architectures. Since most web designers apply parallax scrolling to one-page web
design, there is a misconception in the industry that parallax scrolling is
restricted to one page.
Ok ok....technicalities...so how does one do a parallax scrolling website that
is SEO-friendly?
How to create a parallax scrolling website for search engines?
Before designing a website with parallax scrolling and for search engines it
is important to keep in mind the following things;
Parallax Scrolling is a design technique that moves different layers of content,
images or backgrounds at different speeds.
Regular onsite SEO requirements like schema, address in footer, etc. still
apply. Remember, start with an SEO architecture, and then apply the design to
the architecture.
Parallax Scrolling is not ideal for mobile version. It makes the website to
heavy. Remove parallax scrolling for mobile views.
There are three main techniques. Here are some real examples of parallax
scrolling websites that are SEO-friendly or almost SEO-friendly.
Technique #1 â "One page" web design with parallax scrolling using Jquery
iProspectâs Senior SEO specialist Kevin Ellen created the following
tutorial - Parallax Scrolling and SEO How to use JQuery to SEO your website.
This technique addresses the issue of one page web designs that use parallax
scrolling and basically tweaks it for search engines. I am mentioning this
technique first since there are so many one page parallax scrolling websites on
the market. Please note that Kevinâs sample âParallax SEOâ
site is not really parallax since it does not move different items at different
velocities, however I am mentioning it because his technique can easily be
applied to most one page parallax scrolling websites on the market.
Google Webmaster recently published this article Infinite Scroll Search
Friendly. It addresses the same issue that Kevin did in his article but with
more detail. I highly recommend reading both. You should be able to fix any one
page parallax scrolling website with both these sources.
The solution's use the help of jQuery's 'pushState's' functionality. This
allows a parallax scrolling page to be 'cut' into various sections which can be
identified in the SERPs, each with their unique URL and meta data. As a result,
one single page to be indexed multiple times, for different content.
Pros â It is a good fix for an existing one page parallax scrolling
website that needs to SEOed. It is a good technique for small websites that are
not interested in hard core analytics.
Cons â Bad for analytics. I suspect bounce rates may be higher on these
kinds of sites as scrolling through the website may occur rather quickly and to
a software program it would appear as a quick enter-exit per URL.
Flower Beauty
Woj Kwas mentioned this website in this Mozâs Q&A. This website does not
fit the technical definition of parallax scrolling but it does use the JQuery
/Infinite scrolling technique. FlowerBeaty.com allows the user to scroll through
the entire website and through multiple URLâs. It doesn't classify as
parallax scrolling since it does not play with layers and velocities. I am
mentioning it because it has received some visibility. It is not a parallax
scrolling website since it does not have multiple layers that move at different
velocities.
Technique #2 â Multipage parallax scrolling website on SEO architecture
This technique is very simple and easy to understand. You start with a SEO web
architecture and then place the parallax scrolling design effects on each SEO
URL. Wanda Anglin wrote a tutorial on this technique here. I have not been able
to find any other tutorials that mention this technique, if you do, please let
me know.
xDawson (Yes this is my website, but I have yet to find a perfectly SEOed
parallax scrolling website. If you do, please pin it here).
This website accomplished a very strict SEO architecture (definitely over
optimized) and placed parallax scrolling on almost every internal URL.
It did accomplish the movement of layers at different velocities however it
did not accomplish the âillusion of depthâ or the âtelling of
a storyâ. Although it does qualify as parallax scrolling, it does not use
parallax scrolling as the trend is today.
Pros â Good for analytics in that each URL has its own content, easy to
implement
Cons â Loading times can be a problem with this technique as too much
parallax scrolling may make browser loading time longer than it should be. It
may be a bit too âinteractiveâ. Designing each for each URL can be
expensive and keeps the design rigid.
Recommendations - Use parallax scrolling sparingly throughout the website
instead of on every URL. Reduces loading time and makes the website more
natural. It also will reduce design expenses and lets the website be a bit more
flexible.
Kickpoint
This website placed parallax scrolling on its homepage and on one internal
page. Notice the homepage and the services page have parallax scrolling.
Pros â Good for analytics and easy to design and implement
Cons - Does not have a 100% SEO Architecture. Notice the Services page did not
divide up the topics of SEO, PPC, SMM, and Content Marketing onto unique
URLâs with unique title and meta descriptions.
Recommendations â Divide up the content on the services page or use
Jquery fix (see technique #2). Add unique titles and meta descriptions.
Technique #3 â Parallax Scrolling on homepage and regular SEO architecture
Spotify
Another technique is to place parallax scrolling on the homepage and then
include other URLâs that are SEO-friendly, but do not have parallax
scrolling.
Pros â Keeps the website light and flexible. It is easy to design and
more affordable than technique #1.
Cons â Not maximizing creativity or making the website super
âinteractiveâ
Do the solutions above solve the parallax scrolling SEO conflict?
I obviously believe they do, but I am interested in hearing the
communityâs opinion on this issue. I love the parallax scrolling design
technique and am a strong believer in making websites beautiful and creative but
also SEO-friendly. I hope this collection of SEO parallax websites and tutorials
help you learn how to apply both techniques together. And remember, parallax
scrolling is just a design technique that can be used on different kinds of web
architectures.
This article was co-authored with Kevin Ellen from iProspect UK. You can find
more information about Kevin here. https://twitter.com/Kevin_Ellen and
uk.linkedin.com/in/kevinellen
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/ILct7NvTQKE/parallax-scrolling-websites-and-seo-a-collection-of-solutions-and-examples
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'You'll Cry Tears of Joy When You
Learn how Easy Viral Videos Can Be'
Posted by jennita
Today, I'm super-excited to introduce our latest product from Moz, MozWorthy!
It's a tool that takes your regular (perhaps even boring) videos, adds some
"oomph" and pizzazz, and makes it go viral.
With so much talk about content marketing on the riseâand guest posting
on the declineâwe wanted to build something that helps in both instances.
You make the videoâheck, it doesn't even have to be that greatâand
we do the rest.
Check out the video we used as the test. What started out as just a regular
old video, turned into a HUGE HIT around the world. In fact, it was the original
version of the "internet famous" FIRST KISS video.
You can jump in and give MozWorthy! a try now, or read a bit more about why we
made it, see some examples, and learn how it works.
Start using MozWorthy!
How it began
At the end of February, many of us at Moz participated in Ship It Week. This
was a time when we focused on using all our internal talent, enthusiasm, and fun
to collectively come together and innovate. This meant more than just coding and
building things, but working to build new ideas, frameworks, and anything else
we could imagine to innovate at Moz. MozWorthy! was one of the tools we created.
Our top-rated Ship It Week project is a tool that helps you learn the names of
all the Mozzers, called "Name That Mozzer." It was built as an internal tool
only, to help staff get to know others on the team. A big thanks to Brandon for
all the work he put into making Moz a better place!
Although that one was a favorite among staff, we knew that several other
projects would be used and loved by the community. For example, Peter Bray built
Zoom Profiler, a tool that allows users to very quickly analyze a competitor,
influencer, or customer to find their most important relationships, their top
tweets, and their top content sources.
At the same time, Evan came up with the idea of making it easier for people to
get their videos to go viral. As a team, we thought our customers would really
love it as well, so we jumped in full force: The product, design, dev, and
marketing teams got together to create something truly helpful!
Start using MozWorthy!
How it works
Ok, ok, let's get down to the real dirt. How does this baby work?! It's quite
simple, and it only takes a few steps to find yourself in viral video world.
Upload your video to YouTube. (Right now, the tool only works with YouTube
videos, since it's still in its infancy. However, we plan on adding Vimeo,
Wistia, and other platforms soon.) If you already have a video on YouTube that
you'd like to use, that's great too.
Give it a basic title; you don't need anything fancy here. We'll do the work
for you!
Once your video is uploaded, head on over to mozworthy.moz.com to add the
link to your video and fill out a couple of key attributes.
Hit submit! Then we do the rest for you.
Viral title generator
Once you submit your video, we take it and process both the video and title.
Using super-special Moz data based on what words are the most clickable and
linkable, we create a viral title for you. A combination of your title,
attributes you added, and the addition of "highly viral keywords" will be used
to make your title as ahhMOZing as possible.
Video enhancements
But we don't want to stop at just the title. We also take your video and make
enhancements to it that will make people love it even more. Honestly, your video
doesn't even have to be all that good, and we'll make it great. I mean, everyone
wants to do mediocre work and press an easy button to make it awesome, right?
Increased social shares
Creating a great title and updating the video are all good and great. But what
you really want is for people to see it, right? Cool. We help with that too.
You'll see social shares across all the major platforms (Twitter, Facebook,
Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube) go up practically instantaneously.
A couple examples
Ok, I know you all well, and you're not going to settle until you see exactly
how it works. Which is cool, so I have a few examples to show you the kind of
virality I'm talking about here!
This One Weird Trick Will Keep You Energized All Day
This one is fairly straightforward, but wow, look at that title!
You'll Never Believe What This Former Philologist Caught on Video
This is just a short, simple video as you see. But with MozWorthy! we were
able to add oomph to the video, and make the title something that even your
grandmother will want to share.
So, what are you waiting for? Go check out MozWorthy! right now, and see what
we can do for your social shares!
Start using MozWorthy!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/97q8fUqzQ8Q/mozworthy-the-viral-video-generator
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Learn how Easy Viral Videos Can Be'
Posted by jennita
Today, I'm super-excited to introduce our latest product from Moz, MozWorthy!
It's a tool that takes your regular (perhaps even boring) videos, adds some
"oomph" and pizzazz, and makes it go viral.
With so much talk about content marketing on the riseâand guest posting
on the declineâwe wanted to build something that helps in both instances.
You make the videoâheck, it doesn't even have to be that greatâand
we do the rest.
Check out the video we used as the test. What started out as just a regular
old video, turned into a HUGE HIT around the world. In fact, it was the original
version of the "internet famous" FIRST KISS video.
You can jump in and give MozWorthy! a try now, or read a bit more about why we
made it, see some examples, and learn how it works.
Start using MozWorthy!
How it began
At the end of February, many of us at Moz participated in Ship It Week. This
was a time when we focused on using all our internal talent, enthusiasm, and fun
to collectively come together and innovate. This meant more than just coding and
building things, but working to build new ideas, frameworks, and anything else
we could imagine to innovate at Moz. MozWorthy! was one of the tools we created.
Our top-rated Ship It Week project is a tool that helps you learn the names of
all the Mozzers, called "Name That Mozzer." It was built as an internal tool
only, to help staff get to know others on the team. A big thanks to Brandon for
all the work he put into making Moz a better place!
Although that one was a favorite among staff, we knew that several other
projects would be used and loved by the community. For example, Peter Bray built
Zoom Profiler, a tool that allows users to very quickly analyze a competitor,
influencer, or customer to find their most important relationships, their top
tweets, and their top content sources.
At the same time, Evan came up with the idea of making it easier for people to
get their videos to go viral. As a team, we thought our customers would really
love it as well, so we jumped in full force: The product, design, dev, and
marketing teams got together to create something truly helpful!
Start using MozWorthy!
How it works
Ok, ok, let's get down to the real dirt. How does this baby work?! It's quite
simple, and it only takes a few steps to find yourself in viral video world.
Upload your video to YouTube. (Right now, the tool only works with YouTube
videos, since it's still in its infancy. However, we plan on adding Vimeo,
Wistia, and other platforms soon.) If you already have a video on YouTube that
you'd like to use, that's great too.
Give it a basic title; you don't need anything fancy here. We'll do the work
for you!
Once your video is uploaded, head on over to mozworthy.moz.com to add the
link to your video and fill out a couple of key attributes.
Hit submit! Then we do the rest for you.
Viral title generator
Once you submit your video, we take it and process both the video and title.
Using super-special Moz data based on what words are the most clickable and
linkable, we create a viral title for you. A combination of your title,
attributes you added, and the addition of "highly viral keywords" will be used
to make your title as ahhMOZing as possible.
Video enhancements
But we don't want to stop at just the title. We also take your video and make
enhancements to it that will make people love it even more. Honestly, your video
doesn't even have to be all that good, and we'll make it great. I mean, everyone
wants to do mediocre work and press an easy button to make it awesome, right?
Increased social shares
Creating a great title and updating the video are all good and great. But what
you really want is for people to see it, right? Cool. We help with that too.
You'll see social shares across all the major platforms (Twitter, Facebook,
Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube) go up practically instantaneously.
A couple examples
Ok, I know you all well, and you're not going to settle until you see exactly
how it works. Which is cool, so I have a few examples to show you the kind of
virality I'm talking about here!
This One Weird Trick Will Keep You Energized All Day
This one is fairly straightforward, but wow, look at that title!
You'll Never Believe What This Former Philologist Caught on Video
This is just a short, simple video as you see. But with MozWorthy! we were
able to add oomph to the video, and make the title something that even your
grandmother will want to share.
So, what are you waiting for? Go check out MozWorthy! right now, and see what
we can do for your social shares!
Start using MozWorthy!
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Build Great Backlinks
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
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