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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Overcoming Client Objections -
Whiteboard Friday'


Posted by Brittan Bright

Whether the objection is over a line in your contract or an aspect of your
process, when a client's thinking doesn't align with your own, moving projects
forward can be difficult or impossible. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Brittan
Bright shares her insight into some of the most common objections, along with
recommendations for how to get things back on track.






WBF - Overcoming Client Objections - Brittan Bright






For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard:






Video Transcription



Hi, everyone. Welcome to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Brittan Bright. I'm
the director of client strategy at iAcquire. Today we're going to be talking
about overcoming client objections. So my role is to work directly with clients.
For SEOs, sometimes this can be challenging, and depending on how your
organization determines how they're going to service clients, these skills are
helpful at every level of an organization.


Some common objections we have over here are things I'd like to cover today.
I also have a checklist of how you can think through the thought process of how
to effectively overcome some of these objections or find a way to compromise
with them.


One of them is, commonly, our clients are going to object to our contract.
Sometimes it's during the negotiation phase. Sometimes you get a new point of
contact at an organization that might review the contract and interpret it
differently. Sometimes there are stipulations that are mandated by one company
or another that they can't agree to. So oftentimes, a contract can be a point of
contention with the clients at any stage in the relationship.


Objections to recommendations. Not everybody thinks that every
recommendation we make as a service provider is always going to be as brilliant
as we think it is, or be able to actually implement the recommendations in the
full way that we intend them to be. We have to be prepared to understand and
speak to any objections that we encounter when it comes to the recommendations
that we make for our clients.


Our business model. This is an interesting one. I've seen a lot of
conversations about this in the blogs and on Twitter, but it's challenging
because everybody is kind of trying to figure out the best way to service
clients. Different people have approached it in a variety of ways. Sometimes
clients have a preference. Sometimes clients just want what they want, and it
really depends. You have to be able to speak to your business model and overcome
that when it becomes a challenge and in a relationship with a client, as well.


To your process. This is an interesting one. It depends, again, on your
point of contact and who you're working with at an organization, but there are
times that you may have your process questioned. There may be a client that is
particularly interested in a specific tactic being done a specific way. There
are many times we are having to defend and sometimes explain our process, and I
think there are some really productive ways that we can get around that.


Then also your staff. Not everyone likes the people that have been assigned
to their account. Not everyone is able to work effectively. Not everyone is able
to understand personalities. So that is something that we have to be prepared to
do, is understand how we can overcome objections to the staff that has been
assigned to a specific account.


I have several different ways that we can look at this, because as we all
know, there is not just one answer to this. It's very customized to the
particular client, to your organization, to the situation, and to the project.
So instead of telling you exactly what to do, I think it's helpful to understand
a good way to think through some of these issues. So I put together a checklist
of things I like to go through in my mind as I'm advising my team on how to
overcome some of these challenges when we encounter them.


Understanding the objection. That's really, really important and often not
thought about. Sometimes a client might come back and say, "Hey, I don't like
the terms of this contract," and provide a different solution like, "I want a
30-day out," or, "I want to be able to approve every single thing that you do
before I see it," just something that will throw off the process. Instead of
reacting to the actual thing that the client says, we need to make sure that we
understand the root of that issue. Is it because they have quality concerns? Is
there another way that we can overcome that?


Is there something we didn't do in the sales process that left them feeling
a little unsure and wanting a little bit more of the process in their control?
Is a 30-day out something standard across their organization? Is there another
way that we could compromise with that and understand what needs to be achieved
in order to get buy-in from possibly someone higher up, who determines whether
or not a contract is approved? So understanding what the objection is and what's
behind it is often more important than just immediately reacting to what the
objection is at first.


One solution to contract objections that I thought I'd share, that is pretty
simple, is sometimes using their contract. Now, obviously that's not ideal, but
there are some organizations that have very, very strict contracts, and we all
know what it's like to get held up in legal, or their industries are very
particular. If it's something that your organization allows you to do, sometimes
using their contract is a way to show that you're taking a few steps toward the
direction of really compromising and resolving the issue with the client, and
can be very much appreciated and realized by creating a better relationship
through the length of the engagement with the client.


Understanding the objection goes both ways too. So if you're a client and
you have an objection to something that your service provider is doing, it is in
your best interest to make sure that your objection is understood to who you're
working with. Like I said, if your issue is with the contract, instead of
necessarily kind of coming up with a solution, try to make sure that the person
you're negotiating with understands where you're coming from, because they might
have a creative solution that they've done for another client in the past that
they can then do for you.


Put yourself in the objector's shoes. Empathy is key. I always think this
one is very obvious, but I'm told that it's not. This is something that's
really, really important when it comes to working with other people. The reason
you've been hired, or the reason you're hiring someone, is to help you succeed.
That can be a very personal thing. It determines how people perform. It
determines how people are reviewed in their jobs. It's a very, very personal
thing.


So putting yourself in someone shoes will help you understand some of the
feedback you're getting on some of these. Maybe someone rejected your
recommendation because it was completely the opposite of something that they,
themselves, had championed before bringing you on board. Understanding that you
might be coming in and, unbeknownst to you, possibly destroying some of the work
or negating some of the work that the person you're now working directly with
had put into place, and the sort of emotions and feelings behind that, might
help you approach rephrasing your recommendation in another way.


Also, some internal road blocks, understanding how challenging and
frustrating it might be to know what the right thing is to do and not be able to
do it. Be creative. This is a huge, huge thing. Really, really talented SEOs
have the ability to apply an artistry to the science that is SEO. Having the
ability to be creative with your recommendations, to make sure that there are
things that your client can implement, is extremely powerful, and it will get
you a long-term client.


Do unto others, the golden rule. Again, something that seems pretty obvious,
but it can be easy to forget when we get caught up in the passion and the
frustration of the way we pour our heart and souls into the work that we do,
especially when we feel misunderstood or maybe under-appreciated by the client.
For example, if someone doesn't like your business model, if someone would
rather speak to one of the consultants that's working on their project, instead
of maybe their account manager, or maybe somebody wants to speak to someone more
senior than the person they've been assigned to, there are a lot of different
ways that accounts are serviced, and that is a tough decision to make as an
organization.


So something that I like to point out is to know that the sales process
never ends. If somebody doesn't understand your business model, then that could
be part of the challenge. So never forget that you need to stay on your toes
with your clients. You always need to help them understand why they're working
with you, why we're doing everything we can to make them be successful, and
don't forget to be on your best behavior and pull out all the stops. You know,
don't get lazy just because you have a client already locked down. This will
help them get a better appreciation for things like the way you choose to run
your business.


Compromise when you can. That's really, really important. Sometimes we just
have to compromise. We can't draw a hard line in the sand. I think this is
really, really hard for some people, particularly when it might seem very clear
cut from a technical perspective. For example, with your process, I know that we
have that challenge sometimes internally, when we're doing creative things. For
example, if we're creating a infographic for a client, and the client might have
a different vision, and sometimes we need to really take that vision into
consideration and understand why it's important to them, what we can do on our
end, even if it might be outside of what we would typically recommend. If it's
something that goes more towards the goals that the client has laid out for us,
sometimes we might just have to do a little compromising.


But in this, trust is essential. So when your process needs to be
compromised, make sure it's happening, not to appease a client, but because the
client trusts you and you trust the client. You trust that the client knows that
you're going outside of your process, and this might mean sacrifices in other
areas, and the client will be less likely to challenge your process if they
trust that you have their best interests at heart and that you understand their
business. So trust is really, really important when overcoming this particular
objection.


Then don't compromise when you shouldn't. This is very, very, very
important, and also something that's very difficult. Sometimes you do have to
draw a line in the sand. Sometimes you do have to say no. Sometimes you do have
to walk away, because respect is very, very important. I'm going to use this as
it relates to your staff, but again, everything on this checklist can apply to
all of these objections.


When it relates to your staff, you might have a client who doesn't treat one
of your staff members very well. I don't like to compromise in that situation.
Now if it's a situation where someone on my team has dropped the ball or has
done something disrespectful, which hasn't happened, under my watch at least, I
believe and I support my team, and I think that's really, really important. If
you support and you invest in your team and that's visible to the client, then
there are times when you shouldn't compromise, and you should hold your ground,
because respect on a mutual level for your client, and the work they do, and for
them to have that for you, creates a much better foundation for a long-lasting
client relationship.


So that's all I have for today. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing
all of you at MozCon. I will be speaking there, and I hope to meet some of you
in person. Thanks.




Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'A New Analysis of Google SERPs
Across Search Volume and Site Type'


Posted by Matt Peters

At Moz, we have been following up on our 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors
study by continuing to analyze interesting aspects of the data. One of our most
frequently asked questions is, "Do you see any systematic differences in
Google's search results across search volume or topic category?" By design, our
main study used a broad keyword set across all search volumes and industries to
capture Google's overall search algorithm. As a result, we weren't able to
answer this question since it requires segmenting the data into different
buckets. In this post, I'll do just that and dig into the data in an attempt to
answer this question.

Our approach

We used a subset of the data from our 2013 Ranking Factors study, focusing on
a few of the most important factors. In the main study, we collected the top 50
search results for about 15,000 keywords from Google, along with more then 100
different factors. These included links, anchor text, on-page factors, and
social signals, among others. Then, for each factor we computed the mean
Spearman correlation between the factor and search position. Here's a great
graphic from Rand that helps illustrate how to interpret the correlations:




In general, a higher correlation means that the factor is more closely related
to a higher ranking than a lower correlation. It doesn't necessarily mean that
there is causation!


In addition to search results and factors, we collected the categories from
AdWords (e.g. "Home and Garden") and the monthly US (local) search volume. This
allows us to examine correlations across these different segments.

Search volume

First up is search volume. We segmented each keyword into one of three buckets
depending on the average local (US) monthly search volume from AdWords: less
than 5,000 searches per month, 5,000-15,000 searches per month, and more than
15,000 searches per month.


To begin exploring the data, here is the median page and domain authority in
each bucket, along with the total percentage of results with a domain name
exactly matching the keyword:




Not too surprisingly, we see the overall page authority, domain authority and
the exact match domain (EMD) percentage all increase with search volume. This is
presumably because higher-volume queries are targeted by larger, more
authoritative sites.


Now, an overall higher page authority for high-volume queries doesn't
necessarily mean that the correlation with search position will be larger. The
correlation measures the extent to which page authority (or any other factor)
can predict the ordering. As a example, consider two three-result SERPs, one
with page authorities of 90, 92, and 88 for the first three positions; and
another with values of 30, 20, and 10. The first SERP has higher values overall,
but a lower correlation. To examine how these impact search ordering, we can
compute the mean Spearman correlation in each bucket:





And for those who prefer a chart:





From left to right, the table lists link-related factors (page authority,
domain authority, and exact match anchor text); a brand-related factor (number
of domain mentions in the last 30 days from Fresh Web Explorer); social factors
(number of Google +1s, Facebook shares, and tweets); and keyword-related factors
(keyword usage on the page, in the title, and EMD).


Looking at the data, we can see a few interesting things:


The correlations increase noticeably with search volume for link, brand, and
social media factors.
The correlations are mostly constant for keyword-related factors (keyword usage
on the page or in the domain name).

Primarily, point #1 says that these factors do a better job at predicting rank
as search volume increases. We'd expect to see a larger discrepancy in the link
or social metrics throughout the SERPs in higher volume queries than in
lower-volume queries. One corollary is that SERPs from lower-volume queries are
more heavily influenced by factors that aren't represented in the table (e.g.
positive or negative user signals).

One implication of point #2 is that Google's keyword-document relevance
algorithm is the same for high- and low-volume queries. That is, their method
for determining what a page is about doesn't depend the query popularity.


We can make this more concrete by considering two different queries and SERPs:
one high volume ("cheap flights" with more than 1 million searches per month),
and one low-volume ("home goods online" with less than 500 searches per month).
For reference, here are the top results for each search, with the page and
domain authority from the MozBar:




Above: Google SERP for "cheap flights"




Above: Google SERP for "home goods online"


When a user enters a query, Google first determines which of the many pages in
its index are relevant to the query, then ranks the results. A popular query
will likely have several relevant pages (or more) with many links, since they
are targeted by marketers. In this case, Google should have plenty of signals to
determine ranking. A relevant page with high page authority? Check, put it in
the top 10. On the other hand, pages in the dark corners of the internet with
relatively few links are likely most relevant to low-volume queries. In the
low-volume case, since the link signals aren't as clear, Google is forced to
rely more heavily on other signals to determine ranking, and the correlations
decrease. This example oversimplifies the complexity of the algorithm, but
provides some intuitive understanding of the data.

Site category

We can repeat the analysis for the different AdWords categories. First, the
median page and domain authority and EMD percentage:







And the mean Spearman correlations:





Overall, the trends are similar to search volume, with significant differences
in the link correlations, and smaller differences in the keyword-related
correlations. The explanation for these results is similar to the one above for
search volume. The industries with the largest link and social correlations
â "Health" and "Travel & Tourism" â tend to have broad-based queries
targeted by lots of sites. On the other hand, the industries near the bottom of
the table â "Apparel," "Dining & Nightlife," and "Retailers & General
Merchandise" â all tend to have specific or local intent queries that are
likely to be relevant to specific product pages or smaller sites.

Takeaways

In this post, we have explored how a few individual ranking factors vary
across search volume and keyword category. Correlations of link- and
social-related metrics increase with search volume, but correlations of
keyword-related factors (usage on page and in the domain name) are constant
across search volume. Taken together, this suggests that Google is using the
same query document relevance algorithm for both head and tail queries, but that
link metrics predict SERPs from popular queries better then tail queries. We see
something similar across site categories with the largest differences in link
related correlations. Industries like "Health" that have broad, informational
queries have higher correlations than industries like "Apparel" that tend to
have queries with specific product intent.

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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'The Fundamentals of Building and
Managing Your Community'


Posted by MackenzieFogelson

When it comes down to it, your job is to get stuff done. If you're in
marketing, it doesn't matter if you work in-house, out-of-house, for a tiny
company, or for the largest brand in the world.


Your job is to get results.


I may be biased, but building community sure does seem like one of the best
ways to not only keep pace with the continuous change we're experiencing in the
web marketing industry, but also to achieve big goals for your business.


There's a lot of work that comes along with building a community, and it does
take time. But it's a powerful and sustainable solution to heighten brand
awareness, build trust and reputation, establish the right connections, and
lower the cost of customer acquisition.


There's a lot of ways you can build a community around your brand. We've found
that there are some very fundamental pieces that will make building and managing
your community a success (each conveniently falling within a five-step process).

The fundamentals of building your community

We've tried a lot of things as we've helped many of our clients (and
ourselves) build community. We've found these five core steps, forming this
fundamental structure and process, to be quite powerful.




In a nutshell, here's how it breaks down:

1. Figure out your goals

Hopefully you're getting tired of hearing me say this by now, but you've got
to set goals for your whole business, and not just for SEO or content or social
media. These goals are the building blocks for the strategy and direction of
your business (not just for your marketing or your community).


You can have huge and lofty goals that are more visionary for your company and
then also smaller, short-term project type goals that you have in mind for
improving things, building things, and just overall stuff that you'd like to
accomplish. Have a mix of both. When you get to the part where you're developing
your strategy, you can prioritize and plan for accomplishing all of these
things.
Some really important things that we've discovered as we've helped companies
set their goals:



Think voice and buy-in
When setting goals, it helps with buy-in if you give everyone in your company
a voice. That doesn't mean that everyone and their mother comes to a
goal-setting meeting. You can ask individual teams to send a list of their top
three goals via email. The marketing team can organize, consolidate, filter, and
then use these suggestions as a framework for what the company is looking to
accomplish.


Mo' money, mo' problemsThe goals you set for your company need to go beyond
revenue goals. Certainly the end goal of all of this community building stuff is
to grow your revenue. Think beyond that, though, and include the direction that
you want to take your brand. Think about how you can focus more on your customer
and improving their experience.



Break it down
It's okay for goals to be high level: "we want to be thought leaders," or "we
want to improve customer service," but it's your job to break those more
visionary goals down by asking, "what does that really mean? What does that
actually look like?" This will bring these goals down to a more granular level,
so that you know what exactly what you're attempting to achieve.


When working with clients, we have found that they need our help getting
focused and setting the right goals. So we normally ask them to provide us with
a list of goals for their company as a whole (they can send departmental goals
as well), and then we do a little discovery research in order to propose the set
of goals we'd recommend working on. We present these proposed goals and discuss
them both for buy-in and to set the tone for the work that's ahead.






2. Define meaningful KPIs

Once you have goals defined, you've got to work on defining key performance
indicators so that you can actually measure the goals that you have just defined
(which translates to proving your value). The reason we define KPIs before we
develop a strategy is for buy-in. We've found that it is important to have a
discussion about KPIs to bring unspoken expectations to the surface. This
provides an opportunity to get everybody on the same page.


Come to the KPI meeting prepared with the goals you're proposing in one column
and some suggested KPIs in another. Then ask the question:


"What kind of data would you like to see in order to prove that we're
effecting change?"


This provides the C-Suite (or whoever else approves your budget) with an
opportunity to review the KPIs you're proposing to serve as an indication of
progress. It also allows them to provide their feedback for additional KPIs
they'd like to track. From this conversation you can gauge whether you need to
spend some more time on education and buy-in.


Keep in mind that not everything is easily measured. And not everything is
going to be measured in Google Analytics. Be creative with how you can prove the
value of your efforts. Avinash has some great posts to get you thinking in this
direction.


Side note: I'm hesitant to provide examples of KPIs because they are going to
be different for every company and every goal. Defining KPIs isn't easy. It's
something dynamic for which you've got to test, collect data, and adjust. But
don't adjust the KPIs to tweak data to make your efforts look good. It's okay to
own up to data that doesn't quite get you where you want to be in your initial
iterations; that's the contrast you need to figure out how your efforts need to
be adjusted in order to get you where you want to go.


3. Develop a creative strategy (and select your tools)

Now's the challenging (but fun) part. You've got to come up with creative ways
to reach these goals you've set. Develop a strategy that will serve as your
detailed road map.


Keep these things in mind as you're working on strategy development:



Strategy jam FTW
Hold a strategy jam session with a small group, and have everyone come to the
meeting with ideas ready to roll. During your meeting, don't filter any of the
ideas. Just think up a list of all the creative ideas for reaching the goals
you've set.
After the strategy jam, schedule an additional meeting to filter, organize,
and prioritize the ideas that made the final cut during the jam. This is
certainly where you match up budgets (make sure you can actually afford to do
what you're proposing), team resources, and time frames for deliverables.
Once the budget and resources have been vetted, you can throw a high-level
outline of the strategy over to your boss, team, or client. That way, if they
don't like the direction you're headed, you haven't wasted time by flushing out
any ideas in detail just yet. If you have to ditch something, no harm done. This
also provides another opportunity for buy-in because you're showing that you
value their input by asking for their feedback.
Once you receive feedback on your high level ideas, you're ready to develop
your road map in detail.


12-month vision; iterations of 2-3 months
When working on developing the detailed plan of your strategy, it's probably a
good idea to show all of the creative things you want to accomplish in the next
12 months (that vision or higher level plan), but then of course you want to
detail the first 2-3 months on a day-by-day/week-by-week basis so that the whole
team has a road map.
Working in iterations of 2-3 months toward your goals will allow enough time
to get some momentum and collect some data, but isn't so long that you can't
change course if your ideas flop and you need to do something different.
As you move along into the execution of all of this stuff, note that you'll
need to hold strategy jams every three months or so and repeat this same
process. It's a lot of work but makes such a big difference in results.


Match tools to goals
As you're planning out your creative strategy, now is the time to select the
tools that are going to get the job done. Our typical set of tools for building
community tends to be SEO, social media, content, email marketing, and outreach.
Whatever it's gonna take to accomplish your goals.


4. Do all the work in the execution step

Now that you have your plan written, get to work. Make sure the proper
tracking and measurement is set up so that you're collecting data on your KPIs.
Then follow your strategy and be consistent. People on your team (and on other
teams) are going to keep coming at you with things that will seem emergent but
aren't necessarily part of the strategy. This is where you get to tell them to
"check the goals, baby" (and the plan that you've established that will get you
there). There will be things (time-sensitive things) that may force you to
derail your strategy. But be careful to stay focused on goals and keeping your
attention on the actionables outlined according to the strategy.


Part of your execution will most certainly be the daily management of your
community (and I've provided some fundamentals on this below).


5. Evaluate your progress with analysis

Now's your chance to figure out what's working and what's not. What needs more
time? What are you missing? Analyze the data you've collected and then do
something with it.


Whatever you do, don't be lame and adjust your goals or KPIs just to make your
efforts look good. Part of the process of measuring this stuff is determining
what works. You're going to fall flat on some stuff. That's what testing is all
about (and that's why you work in iterations of 2-3 months and allow for
agility).



As you build your community (and your business), remember that these are your
bones. This is the stuff that will keep you grounded. No matter what comes at
you as you're growing your community, always bring it back to these five core
steps.


The fundamentals of managing your community

If you're working on implementing the five core steps of community building,
you've got your bases covered. So what about the fundamentals of managing this
community? What is your community manager's role? What are the key pieces that
will be part of their job? How do they play a part in this community building
stuff?


If we had to pick five things to focus on, this is what we'd choose:

1. Working with strategists and strategizing

So this is the way we work this at Mack Web, but you may have a different
dynamic (working in-house vs. agency), so you can shape this however it works
best for you.


We have strategists who are responsible for developing and directing strategy
and for analyzing everything they possibly can in order to make a difference in
our clients' businesses. In order to effectively do this and help those
businesses grow their communities, they need to work in perfect harmony with the
community manager.


Depending on who you have on your community-building team, there will be
someone (probably your CMO) who needs to operate like our strategists by keeping
their fingers on the pulse of the business, setting goals, developing strategy,
communicating with internal and external teams, keeping up on product
development, engaging with customers, and executing all of the pieces that come
along with the strategy so that everyone is getting stuff done and accomplishing
goals.


You're going to have all kinds of other people inside of your company who are
also playing a role in executing your strategy and building your community. Some
people are going to write content. Some people are going to create assets like
infographics and video. Some people are going to be reading and learning and
sharing knowledge.


Your strategist is responsible for leading this team. And of course, working
closely with your community manager to ensure that they're maintaining the
thriving flow of your community.


Certainly there is strategy to all of this good stuff. Community managers will
work with strategists to develop actual strategy and ensure that the base of
your community is growing.


2. Learning and identifying

One of the biggest jobs your community manager has (as well as other people on
your team) is to become a subject matter expert in your industry. But they also
need to learn about tangential and related industries that may become vertical
and new market opportunities.


So the deal with reading and staying up on industry knowledge is that your
community manager has to be a lot of places soaking up information that could be
valuable to your company (or your clients).


What will help with narrowing focus here (and making the time spent on social
media as valuable as possible) is identifying the WHOM:



WHOM to follow
Your community manager will be responsible for doing the digging to identify
the people and companies you need to be following on social media. This also
means narrowing down the blogs you should be reading and engaging with.


WHOM to engage with
Again, you're looking to strategically target an audience of both influencers
and friends. These are the people with whom your community manager (and of
course other key members of your team) are going to focus on building
relationships. They're going to share their stuff, ask them for feedback, and
look for ways to engage them in your community.


WHOM to monitor
Monitoring and listening is a really important part of your community
manager's work. They'll be watching for all kinds of opportunity in your
community and on social media in general (more detail on this below).


WHOM to emulate
Ideally, you'll want your community manager to find a community management
mentor. There are so many amazing community managers to learn from. Your
Community Manager will want to find a few to emulate and try the things they do
with their community. It's their job to add your company's personality, style,
and align with the goals that you are working toward.


3. Blogging

Two things here that we've found to work well for community managers in
relation to the blog:



Manage blog content
Depending on the size and roles on your team, your community manager could be
the one to manage the content that goes on the blog. They can work on
scheduling, launching stuff, and making sure there is a variety of content (see
the Knowledge Spreadsheet idea below).
Certainly, the community manager is an ideal person to engage with those who
comment on your blog. And they can also make sure that spam is being
consistently removed.


Generating content and seeking guest opportunities
Ideally you want all kinds of voices on your blog, and your community manager
is one of them. In addition to being featured on your own blog, your community
manager can be focused on finding other reputable blogs where your team can
contribute knowledge. In alignment with your strategy, your community manager
can take the WHOM they've identified (above) and seek out matches for guest
blogging.
Guest blogging on other reputable blogs is an opportunity to build
relationships with key companies and influencers. It allows your company to find
other possible communities to strategically attract to your own community by
providing them value. Your community manager can find these opportunities and
bring them to fruition.


4. Engaging, monitoring and listening, and brand loyalty

Your community manager is a bridge that connects all of the places where your
customers and community members will experience your brand. They can help build
that experience that connects the online and offline worlds with your website
and social media outlets, the blog, and any other place that is an open door
inviting people into your community and your business.


Your community manager can focus on these things to assist with engagement:



Relationships
Your Community Manager will continuously develop relationships both on and
offline. They will go to events. Talk to people. Make friends. Among the most
important friends that they will make are other community managers. There's a
kinship there that is key to forging beneficial partnerships and also learning
to be a better community manager.


Monitoring and listeningMonitoring and listening is also part of engagement and
is a big part of a community manager's role. Social monitoring and listening is
a dirty job. Seriously. It's a lot of work. There are tools that can alleviate
some of the pain, but when it comes down to it, monitoring and listening on
social media requires a real human sifting through stuff other real humans are
saying and that can be arduous. You really do have to be dedicated to
sherlocking (which is the term we use to describe rooting around and researching
and otherwise detecting) conversations, and doing what it takes to find
opportunities that can be taken advantage of. A community manager's job is to
find those nuggets of opportunity, analyze them, and put them into action.
In general you'll want to have your bases covered by listening for things
like:

Brand-specific content (brand name, product names, employee names)
Keywords (discovered through SEO research)
Competitors
Industry-specific content and other content opportunities
Relationship opportunities


Your community manager can be looking for possible partnerships, friendships,
and relationships. All ways to help people, grow your community, and build your
business.
Brand loyalty
Another way to increase engagement and accelerate community growth is by
embracing your community members in an expression of gratitude for their brand
loyalty (something Joanna Lord discussed at MozCon). These efforts need to be
tied to your overall company goals. Your community manager can research,
identify, and suggest possible ways to reward your community members and
encourage brand loyalty.
Your community manager can create a brand loyalty program. A process they can
use to decide how to reward your customers and your community (with all kinds of
swag) and when such rewards should be given out.
Cultivating brand loyalty can also come from performing "random acts of
kindness" in your community. I remember Moz doing this when my cup broke shortly
after returning home from my first MozCon conference.





Just as with engaging, monitoring, and social listening, your community
manager will want to keep track of all brand loyalty efforts so that you can
evaluate the effectiveness of this program. This will certainly be part of
setting goals, defining KPIs, and strategy development when you're back working
on building your community base.


5. Training

Whether your team is in-house or you're working with clients, education is a
really powerful part of your community manager's routine. Especially because not
everyone on your team is going to be overly excited about the power of community
and using social media.
As a community manager, you've got to rally the troops and get them to
contribute to community management efforts. But they don't need to be on social
media to do this.


I've talked about this hack before, but we've been using this internally to
manage the Mack Web community and it's worked so well for us (and our clients)
that I'm sharing it again.





This is a Community Management Knowledge Spreadsheet and it's made a
tremendous difference in the quality and variety of value that we've been
sharing with our community.


Remember when we talked about identifying the WHOM and finding targeted blogs
to be reading and engaging? Share those sources with your team (and encourage
them to provide you with others). Then ask them to contribute what they're
reading here on your knowledge spreadsheet.


Everyone in your entire company can contribute here. Your community manager
then plays bouncer and decides what is appropriate and useful for your community
(making sure it's actually a fit for your community), where it gets shared (be
respectful that each outlet has different needs), and when. Getting your team to
participate in ongoing learning is just one way to train your team ongoing and
manage your community.



There are going to be many other things that your community manager can do to
contribute to the management and growth of your community. Your community
management fundamentals may look entirely different. Again, it all depends on
the goals that you're wanting to accomplish for your business.


Wrapping it up (a.k.a conclusion)

Building a community is a great way to put integrated marketing into action
(which is what is going to help you weather the Goog and build valuable assets
in your business). These community building and management fundamentals will
help you grow your community from the inside out. They will keep you focused on
creating quality content and resources. They will encourage you to continually
work on improving your products and services. They will motivate you to engage
with and listen to your customers and their feedback. Using these fundamentals
will help your entire team â strategists, community manager, and the rest
â accomplish goals for your whole business.


Have you tested these community building and management fundamentals in your
company? What have I missed? Looking forward to our conversation in the comments
below.

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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Inside In-depth Articles:
Dissecting Google's Latest Feature'


Posted by Dr-Pete

Last week, Google launched its latest feature, the "In-depth articles" block.
Like News results or local packs, in-depth articles are a rich SERP element that
sits in the left-hand column but doesn't count as a standard, organic result.
Here's an example, from a search for "rainforest":




We originally spotted in-depth articles in testing as early as July, and as of
August 6th the feature officially went live for English queries on Google.com.
Over the weekend, I re-tuned our MozCast 10K engine (which tracks a set of
10,000 queries and their features) to take a deeper look at in-depth articles.
This post covers what we know so far.

Variations on a theme

All in-depth article blocks we're currently tracking have three results
â I've seen no exception to this rule yet, although that could change as
Google collects more data and adapts. There are a few minor variations to how
in-depth articles appear. Here's a complete snippet, which includes an image
thumbnail, title, description, publisher icon, publisher, and author (from a
search for "presidential candidates"):




Some in-depth article listings don't have authorship (from a search for
"wedding pictures"):




Finally, some listings don't have publisher icons or names (from a search for
"jobs"):







So far, every in-depth article result I've seen in the wild has had an image,
title, description, and either a publisher name or domain name. Image thumbnails
seem to be taken directly from the articles and cropped.


In testing, we saw some in-depth article blocks in the middle of search
results, but every example I've seen since launch has appeared at the end of the
results page â after organic results, but before the bottom ad block.
That's only based on anecdotal evidence, as we're not currently tracking the
position, and Google is likely to mix things up as they move forward and test
new variations.


One oddity â in-depth article blocks seem to appear on pages with nine
organic results, suggesting that the in-depth block itself may be treated as
result #10. It's getting harder and harder to tell the true count of rankings,
but it looks like natural result #10 is getting pushed to page 2, and the block
is simply inserted.




Some basic statistics

Across the 10,000 queries that MozCast tracks, 352 displayed in-depth articles
the morning of August 12th, which equates to roughly 3.5% of queries. By volume
(using Google's "global" volume metric), these queries accounted for 6.9% of
total volume for our 10K data set, suggesting that the search terms tended to be
higher-than-average volume.


Google has suggested that in-depth articles will typically trigger for "broad"
topics, but that's a bit vague, so let's take a look at a few examples from
different ends of the spectrum. First off, here are ten high-volume searches (as
measured by Google's "global volume" metric) that triggered in-depth articles on
8/12:


jobs
ancestry
50 shades of grey
wedding dresses
forever21
bruce springsteen
smartphone
led
pregnancy
medicare


While these cover the range from a popular novel to a trendy mall store, it
does seem like searcher intent is fairly vague in these queries. Someone
searching for "led" could be shopping for light bulbs or trying to figure out
when Robert Plant is playing near them. The in-depth results for "jobs"
contained one article about Steve Jobs:




There's been some speculation that "broad" might refer to "head" queries
(often, single-word searches). Here's the distribution of the 352 queries by
number of words (the number in parentheses is the percentage for the entire 10K
data set):


1-word = 37.5% (21.1%)
2-word = 50.3% (45.6%)
3-word = 9.1% (24.4%)
4-word = 2.6% (7.0%)
5+-word = 0.6% (2.0%)


It's important to note that the keyword set we use does not contain very
long-tail queries and is generally skewed toward shorter phrases. The average
word count of all 352 queries is 1.80. For reference, the average word count for
our entire 10K data set is 2.24 â so, Google does seem to be leaning a bit
toward shorter queries. For reference, here are the five longest queries that
showed in-depth articles in our data set:


church of jesus christ of latter day saints
the girl with the dragon tattoo movie
department of homeland security
post traumatic stress disorder
mitt romney for president


Our 10K engine tracks a wide variety of queries (by volume, competitiveness,
length, industry, etc.), but they do tend a bit toward commercial keywords. We
don't have exact data on brand vs. non-brand queries or commercial vs.
informational, but it does appear that in-depth queries are appearing across a
wide range of intent.

The news connection

Clearly, it's hard not to see a news and big media connection in these
in-depth articles. Are in-depth articles a replacement for news results? No (at
least not for now) â many of the results we tracked had both in-depth
articles and a news box. For example, a search for the popular novel "50 Shades
of Grey" showed standard news results:




âas well as in-depth articles (note, that there's no overlap between the
articles):




Are posts with news results more likely to show in-depth articles? It
certainly looks that way. Across our entire 10K data set, 16.8% of queries
contained a news result block on August 12th. For that same time period, 55.7%
of queries with in-depth articles contained news results. There's almost
definitely some algorithmic connection between these two entities.

The big winners (so far)

So, given the news connection, do the major news sources have an advantage? At
least for now, it seems that way. The 352 searches with in-depth articles on
August 12th contained 1,056 articles, which were housed on 123 unique root
domains. The top 10 root domains accounted for almost 57% of the total allotment
of in-depth articles. Here are the top 10, in order:


nytimes.com (20.4%)
wsj.com (6.1%)
newyorker.com (4.5%)
guardian.co.uk (4.3%)
wired.com (4.1%)
vanityfair.com (3.9%)
businessweek.com (3.8%)
nymag.com (3.3%)
theatlantic.com (3.3%)
thedailybeast.com (3.2%)

Within our data set, the New York Times alone accounted for one-fifth of the
articles listed in in-depth article blocks. Most of the heavy hitters were
generally considered news sites â other big brands like Yahoo.com and
MSN.com had isolated articles, but Google didn't seem to show them any
particular favoritism.

To be fair, some smaller news sites and niche sites did show up in the list.
Here's an in-depth article listing from the West Virginia Gazette, for example
(from a search for "routers"):




Here's an example of a niche publication, Yoga Journal, getting listed (from a
search for "knee pain"):




Clearly, big publications have an early-mover advantage right now, but what's
unclear is whether that advantage is baked into the in-depth article algorithm
or is just a consequence of other authority and content factors. So, that leads
us to the million-dollar question: what does it take to break into the in-depth
box?

Getting in on the action

While big news organizations have an advantage, there's no compelling evidence
that in-depth articles are a private club. In fact, Google has already posted a
support document with advice on getting listed in in-depth articles. I'll give
you a quick-and-dirty summary:


Use Schema.org article markup

Set up authorship markup
Set up a Google+ account, including your logo
Properly handle paginated articles
Use "first click free" for paywall content


Ana Hoffman wrote a good post that goes into more detail on these in-depth
article support factors. Of course, these aren't sufficient conditions to get
listed â domain authority, content quality, and traditional ranking
factors undoubtedly are also at play here. The good news is that Google is
telling us that you do have a chance at getting in, and there are ways to help
the process.


I suspect Google will be experimenting with and expanding in-depth articles
over the next few months, so all of this data is preliminary and subject to
change. If you're a news site or have reputable, long-form content, I'd strongly
consider at least putting the signals above into place. If anyone manages to
break into an in-depth box, we'd love to hear your story.

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[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE

Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'How to Carve Out Marketing
Strategies by Mining Your Competitors' Backlinks'


Posted by Annie Cushing



Image from the National Archives


If you want to see how your competitors are gaining a strategic advantage, one
of the best tactics to overtake them is to take a deep dive into their
backlinks. They leave breadcrumbs behind that reveal their best tactics. Then
pivot (no pun intended), glean ideas from their brilliance, and do it even
better!

Required skill: pivot tables

If you don't know how to use pivot tables, you need to check out this video
walkthrough. I teach you everything you need to know and then some.

Download example pivot table

I redacted my client's data from the pivot table in the Excel sheet, but you
can get an idea of how I pulled together the data in the "Raw Data" tab and then
see how I organized my pivot table in that tab. You can, of course, organize
yours however you feel is best. But hopefully this will provide a good
jumping-off point. I also sorted my pivot table by domain authority in
descending order and then filtered out links from
[free-subdomain].wordpress.com.


You can download the Excel workbook from Dropbox.

Steps to pull data together

Step 1: Pull your site's (or client's) backlinks â using Open Site
Explorer, Majestic SEO, ahrefs, or whatevs â as well as a few of your main
competitors. Then pull them together into a formatted table.


Step 2: Add another column and label it "Site." What I typically do is add the
domain (without the http:// or www to minimize noise) and double-click the
bottom-right corner of the cell to fill down to the bottom of the data set.
Rinse and repeat each time you add a new batch of backlinks. When you finish,
you'll have a single table that contains a mashup of backlinks.







Step 3: Extract the domains from the backlink URLs using the LEFT and SEARCH
functions. If you haven't done this before, I demonstrate how in this video
tutorial. (Or you can download the demo workbook from the post and just copy the
formulas.)


Step 4: Create your pivot table using these settings:




Step 5: As a general rule, I don't like how Excel merely indents rows in the
default, "Compact" pivot table format. In our data set here, where we have three
different values pulled down in rows (Domain, Site, and URL). This can cause
your rows to get really congested, and it can be hard to differentiate them. For
this reason, if I pull multiple values into the Rows field list, I prefer the
Outline layout. You can check it out in the Excel file download.


To set your pivot table to "Outline," click on any cell in the pivot table and
go to Pivot Table Tools > Design tab > Layout > Report Layout > Show
in Outline Form (Mac: PivotTable tab > Design > Layout > Outline
Layout).


Step 6: I pulled individual observations into text boxes to the left of the
pivot table. I used text boxes for a couple reasons:


I didn't want to mess up the heights of rows inside my pivot table.
I could attach links to the text boxes that linked to the individual cells in
the pivot table.


Step 7: Dive into the data and start reverse-engineering strategies (using the
observations I pulled out as a template, if you'd like). I can assure you there
are many more to excavate from that data set!

Video tutorial

For you visual learners out there, I pulled together a 10-minute video
walkthrough of some of the key steps I took to organize the data for analysis.


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[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE

Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Custom Segments to Increase Sales'


Posted by CraigBradford

One of the things that I like most about Google Analytics is that it can be as
simple or as complex as you like. Out of the box it's very easy to use. Without
much experience, you can quickly see the basics, like the amount of traffic you
receive as well as the medium and source of traffic. But: We have a problem. The
problem is that that's where most people stop. Too many people are making bad
decisions by looking at Google Analytics data from a 30,000-foot view. With a
little more work you can reveal some quick insights that could reveal easy CRO
wins. To demonstrate how, I'll cover a couple of advanced segments that I like
to use and explain how to set each of them up using custom variables, event
tracking, and filters. Advanced segments are a huge area; you can make almost
unlimited variations, so I've just picked a few that will hopefully inspire you
to create some advanced segments of your own (I'd love to hear about them in the
comments).

Attribution

Before doing anything, it's important to have a data set that you can trust,
and that starts with proper attribution. If you haven't already read Annie
Cushing's blog post "Take Credit Where Credit's Due," I highly recommend it, as
it goes into a lot more detail on attribution. The full video is also available
on the Distilled store.


Attribution starts with ensuring the correct mediums and sources are getting
credit for the sales and actions they generate. The opposite is also true: You
don't want good channels getting diluted by cross-contamination of bad channels.
By default, Google has the basics covered, as shown below.




But for some websites, that "(none)" category can make up a significant
portion of your traffic. Referral traffic isn't great either, as it doesn't tell
you about the "why" part. Was it a press release that drove a lot of that
traffic? Or was it email?


Thankfully, we have the ability to do campaign tracking using URL parameters
that can help make these mediums more useful. The medium that's usually impacted
by this the most is email. By default, Google groups email into the referral
bucket.


To avoid this, you can create a new "email" medium by tagging all links in
emails with URL parameters. Explaining tagging in detail is out of the scope of
this post, so I'm going to assume you know how to do it. If you don't, you can
read up on how to track emails in this post.


#Protip: The most common objection people have to using URL tagging is that it
creates ugly URLs for users. Here's a solution.


Let's assume I want to track the people that visit the Annie Cushing video I
recommended. The URL might look something like this:



http://www.distilled.net/store/sl-bos-2013-cushing/?utm_source=moz.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=annie+cushing+video


Pretty horrible. But your users never need to see it, thanks to some HTML5
goodness. You put the link in some anchor text, such as click here. Then on that
landing page you would add something like this:


_gaq.push(function() {
window.history.pushState('','', 'some-page');
});


This means after the Google Analytics code has fired and collected all the
attribution data from the horrible-looking parameters, the URL will be changed
to whatever you set in the quotes. In this case it would change the URL to:


http://www.distilled.net/store/sl-bos-2013-cushing/some-page


But it could be anything you like. See this blog post from Rob Ousbey on the
topic.


The downside to this is if people then share or link to that page it will 404,
so if you just want to chop off the parameters, just replace the "some page"
part with a â#'. There's probably a better way to do this so that there's
no #, but I'm not a developer so I settle for "good enough" on this kind of
thing.


So, to be clear, the action here is to get all your attribution set up
correctly. For lots of details on how to do that, see Annie's post. Doing so
will allow you to do some proper CPA analysis for the various channels you use.

Tracking form errors

Regardless of how easy you make your checkout process, there will always be
people that struggle with the forms, so we want to know how and where these
people are having problems. If we manage that, we make more sales. There are
solutions such as Clicktale that allow you to analyse the forms on your site,
but they don't allow you to tie that together with other metrics from your GA,
such as conversion rates. To do this, I want to use Google Analytics event
tracking to create an event any time someone fails to do something correctly on
any of the fields in the form. Events use the following format:


_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)


In my case I want to set:


Category = Form Error
Action = Submit
Opt_label = A way to identify the field that caused the error, for example
"Phone number" or "Post Code"


You then need to set this to fire only when there is a validation error on the
page. A validation error is that annoying red text that appears when you mess
something up on a form. From a technical point of view there are a couple of
different ways this can be done, depending whether the form is validated on the
client side via JavaScript or on the server side (in which case the page will be
reloaded).

Server side

On the HTML that gets sent to the browser when an error occurs, you'll need to
add the event tracking to the text that fires next to each of the fields. Doing
it this way allows you to not only see users that had problems, but will also
let you see specifically what fields people have the most trouble with. You can
then slice and dice that data however you like in GA to find other things like
browser OS, etc.

Client side

If the validation is being done on the client side using something like
JavaScript, the same process needs to be used, but the events will need to be
fired by the script that creates the errors.


_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'form error', 'submit', 'phone number']);

Tracking email unsubscribers for content analysis

Most email management services will allow you to see stats like open rates,
number of people unsubscribing, etc., but they don't give you many insights into
why those people unsubscribed â which is what we really need to know. To
help get some insights it can be useful to find out which content those people
have read the most, as this could potentially let you see what kind of content
your audience doesn't like. You could even go as far as looking at authors.


To do this, you'll need an email provider that lets you add some custom code
to the unsubscribe page. At Distilled we use MailChimp, which I know has this
feature, but I'm not sure about others. You can then use whatever method you
like to bucket these users, you could add a custom variable or event tracking to
your Google analytics code, like this:


_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'email', 'unsubscribed']);


The advantage of events is you can use them with goals, which would allow you
to track over time and set up alerts for spikes in unsubscription rates.


Once this is set up, you'll want to create an "unsubscribed" advanced segment
in Google Analytics for the event name like that shown below in the example:




Once you have these people in a group, you can start to slice the data however
you like to find trends among the people who don't want to be on your list
anymore.

Logged in/out

Depending on the type of site you have, it may or may not make sense to create
segments based on whether your users are logged in or out. For example, you may
have a different checkout process if you're logged in. Wouldn't it be nice if
you could see the difference between conversion rates between logged-in and
logged-out users? Or compare the behaviors of logged-in users compared to
logged-out users? Thankfully, this is pretty easy to do. In fact if you look at
the source code of this page, you can see how. Do a search in the source code
for "setCustomVar" and you'll see what I mean. You'll see one of a few options
but they will all follow a format like this:




This sets a custom variable with "user-type" as "visitor." If you're logged in
and a pro member, you might see "Pro." From a CRO perspective, the point in
doing this is you can see how different groups of people act on the site and use
that information to increase the conversion rate of each group. You'll typically
find that logged-out users convert less, as they have extra steps in the
process, but you can always optimize the registration process to make it as
painless as possible. When possible, I'd always take the Amazon approach and
leave people logged in as long as possible, and have their credit card details
saved to allow for quick and painless payment.


Also, once you can track people that are logged in, you can create advanced
segments for things like "logged in users that added an item to their cart but
didn't buy." These are easy pickings; on the server side you can segment by
these users and send them an email to remind them that they have items in their
shopping cart that they are just one click away from buying.

Find the "whales"



Photo by Gerard Lacz


I got this idea from Avinash. You can read the full post here. The idea is
that you create a segment of users that typically spend more than the average
customer, hence the term "whale." This is also why it's a good idea to have your
attribution tracking set up correctly from the start, as you need to know where
those whales came from as well as how much they cost to acquire compared to the
average customer.


To do this, segment by users that bought more than a certain number of items:




Image credit


Once you have this data, you can begin to focus on the other data that's
available to you, such as the medium and source of those users, and double down
on the best channels.


That's all for now, I hope you've found this useful and I'd love to hear some
of the custom segments or interesting ways you use Google Analytics in the
comments.

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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'SEO's Dilemma - Link Building vs.
Content Marketing - Whiteboard Friday'


Posted by randfish

Today's web marketers face a difficult decision: Do they stick with the
classic link-building and keyword-marketing techniques they know have worked in
the past, or do they opt to spend time on the broader realm of content
marketing?


In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores the reasons you might choose one
path over the other.






SEO's Dilemma - Link Building vs Content Marketing - Whiteboard Friday





For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard:



Video Transcription



Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I want
to address a dilemma that a lot of SEOs and a lot of marketers face and that is
sort of choice between what should I be doing to move the needle on my search
traffic? Should I be doing kind of classic SEO, the keyword targeting plus link
building, which moves the needle? Or should I be thinking more broadly in terms
of kind of a full content marketing spectrum? I'll describe these two, and I'll
talk about why it's so tough for these guys who are at this fork in the road.


So, in link building land, we research some keywords to target. We know we
want to go after those. Maybe we've already been assigned them by our boss or
our team or our client if we're doing consulting. Then we try and go out and
find potential opportunities to earn links. Maybe we do a little bit of
comparative analysis. We'll run the Keyword Difficulty tool and look at how
people who are ranking for that keyword have done in terms of link metrics
versus how we're doing, and maybe we'll do a little bit of on-page optimization
as well. But mostly it's around this link opportunity stuff.


I think a lot of folks in the classic SEO world do this, even today, and it
does work. They go out and get those links. Maybe they do outreach, find
competitive links, find open link opportunities around the Web, whatever it is
that can move the needle on the links. But it's really about that
push-for-direct outreach and direct link building, not kind of passively sitting
back and letting the links hopefully roll in.


Then you move up in the rankings. Slowly, but steadily, you will move up
because links are still a big portion of the search engines' algorithms, Google
and Bing both. Over time, if you are moving the needle on links more than your
competition, chances are good that you will be able to outrank them, assuming
you are doing other things right.


On the flip side is the content marketing world. In content marketing land,
this is a very, very different approach. We kind of take the broad view at the
beginning of: Who is the audience that I want to reach? Who are all the people
in that audience group? Then, what do they use? What channels do they use to
discover content, to share things, to influence one another and to be
influenced, and to discover new stuff, like the products, services, mission that
I'm trying to fulfill or that I'm trying to sell them?


That could be things like Twitter and Facebook. It could be blogs that they
read. It might be influencers that they follow on social networks or through
email channels or whatever it is. Obviously, it's going to be a lot of Google
searches. Google is still quite a bit of the Web's search traffic. Maybe it's
YouTube, people using video to find these things.


Then, I'm going to take from this audience and where they are and what
they're doing. I want to create content that will appeal to my target audience,
the people I'm directly trying to reach and to their influencers. That might be
a webinar, a video, a blog, a free tool, whatever it is.


Now I'm going to go out and do influencer outreach. I'm going to try and do
good, smart keyword targeting on Google. I'm going to promote my stuff on
social. I'm going to reach out to my community, maybe through email or directly.


Then, I'm going to hope to get the results of a little bit of increased
traffic. I'm going to hopefully grow my community. If I'm producing valuable
content stuff, more people will follow my social accounts, more people subscribe
to my email, more people will be personalized by the connections that they've
got to me through Google, so that their Google search results will be biased in
my favor. I'll move up a little in SEO because my domain authority hopefully
grows some and I get a few links and referring traffic.


Then, I rinse and repeat this model over and over until I feel like, hey,
now I need to go target new audiences, and I'm going to repeat this process all
over again.


The challenge here is that . . . and I've seen this discussion happening in
the SEO world and, in fact, I think it's a very fair discussion to have. There
are folks who are kind of in link building land who say, "This works for me;
this doesn't work for me." You hear all sorts of reasons why it doesn't work for
them. Maybe it's who their client or who their team or what their product is or
who they're trying to reach. They say, "Well, they're just not interested. They
don't do a lot of content consumption. They're not influenced by social channels
and by YouTube and by blogs and by industry news or trade shows and events, or
whatever these things are that I can use to amplify my content. I'm not getting
value from this, and so I'm going to stick to this. I get some links. I move up
in the rankings. I get more visits for the key terms I'm going after. That turns
into conversions. This is what I'm after."


Actually, I think it's okay. I know that in the past many folks have kind of
assumed that oh, well Rand is really against this, or Moz is really against this
world. But that's not actually the case. If this is working for you, I don't
have a problem with it.


What I have a problem with is when people don't think holistically and don't
make the conscious choice and simply stick to what they have been doing because
they've seen it work in the past. Even if it is not working as well or if it
keeps getting harder or if something like Penguin comes along and penalizes a
bunch of the tactics that you were using to get those links, you just stay on
the treadmill. That's where I think things get really dangerous, and I've got
some ideas here about how you can choose.


One of the things that I think you should be conscientious about is goals
and metrics. Are your goals tied to broad marketing efforts? Are we trying to
get lots of people aware of our brand, aware of our product? Are we trying to do
some positioning? Are we trying to get people to change their minds about how
they solve a problem and come over to our world? Or is our metric just are we
ranking well? Are we getting traffic directly from Google for the rankings, for
the keywords that we care about, and are we converting them? If that's your
whole goal and metric, maybe link building land is the right way to go. Maybe
this is a little bit broad.


Secondary, are you thinking long term or short term?


In the long term, one of the things that I do worry about is a lot of these
tactics and a lot of Google's algorithm has been getting more and more focused
on things that are outside of just how many linking root domains do you have,
and does the anchor text include your keywords, and is it pointing to a page
that you're targeting?


They're getting a lot smarter. They're using a ton more signals than they
were just three or four years ago. They're doing a lot more rich data options,
rich snippets, different types of results. The classic 10 blue links, I think
Dr. Pete found that was like 15% of search results are ten blue links and that's
it. That's not a lot of opportunity. Even if you are moving up, boy, you've got
to be pretty hopeful that they stick with this model and that the algorithm
doesn't change too much and that links continue to be a huge powering force and
that nothing else overtakes those.


Multi-channel versus single. If search, in particular search rankings on
primary keyword targeted phrases, are really the only channel that's producing
any kind of results and you don't even see that in a multi-channel attribution,
that social or that content or email or referring links or something else, long
tail searches or whatever, are having a positive influence, then link building
land looks a little more attractive and content marketing land doesn't.


Finally, if the breadth versus depth of your skill set, your team, your SEO,
your web marketing team is really around, "Hey, we're good at this. You know, we
haven't quite figured out this stuff yet. We don't have the people, the staff,
the resources, the time, the energy, the buy-in from management to do these
things."


Well then, I understand going after link building land. I think that what's
important is that we have a conscious conversation and we understand the
dichotomy and the different reasons we might choose one of these paths, not that
we always pick one or we always pick the other.


In fact, there might be times when you are in content marketing land and
you're right here in and doing some SEO and you really move over to doing this
cycle a little bit continuously because that is the focus of your efforts right
now. It could be that you're over here and you do some analysis. Maybe you're
doing your analysis around your keyword targeting and you say, "Boy, we've got
good links to our page, but our domain authority just doesn't help us. We need a
broader set of influencers and of links and of people using our stuff. We really
need to boost our overall domain and brand awareness. Maybe we want to get into
content marketing land for a little while.


So, this choice is certainly up to you. I'm sure there will be a great
discussion in the comments, and I look forward to that. Thanks for joining me.
Take care.




Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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