Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'A Product-Based Approach to CRO'
Posted by CraigBradford
Before joining the world of digital marketing, I was a product design engineer.
Most of my clients at Distilled are now CRO projects and I've found my
background to be surprisingly useful. There's a lot of overlap between designing
physical products and designing websites that convert well. I'd like to share
some of the research methods that I use for CRO that I learned while designing
physical products. I like to use a framework of Learn, Look, Ask, and Try.
I first came across this while at university. It's the design research methods
used by
IDEO. They released this as a pack of playing cards. In their own words:
"IDEO Method Cards show 51 of the methods we use to inspire great design and
keep people at the center of our design process."
There are 51 cards each with a research method that belongs to one of the above
categories. The cards have since been made into an app. I find it useful when
trying to come up with new ways to get customer insights. You can download the
app
here.
Design methods in the learn section are about analyzing the information you've
collected to identify patterns and insights. One you might not have heard of is
error analysis.Error analysis
In simple terms you can think of error analysis as going around your site and
saying "what happens if I do that?" In product design you might hear this called
failure mode effects analysis (FMEA).
"Failure modes" means the ways, or modes, in which something might fail.
Failures are any errors or defects, especially ones that affect the customer.
"
Effects analysis" refers to studying the consequences of those failures.
While a lot of FMEA is overkill for designing a website (hopefully nobody is
going to die if they click the wrong button) I think the principles can be used
to help proactively find faults. Every website is different so you'll need to
think of your own scenarios but here are some to get you started:What if I use
my email instead of username to login?
What if I press the back button in the checkout funnel?
What if I need a refund?
What if I want to get the product delivered to my work address?
What If I order the wrong product?
You can see that these potential errors can be a mix of usability and customer
service. The point is to be proactive and anticipate what could go wrong. You
can then fix true errors (things that are just broken) or put processes in place
to ensure mistakes can be fixed easily when they do go wrong.
Extra tip
Google analytics has a great report that can help you find some of the most
common errors or problems. Look at the reverse goal path report and pick a goal
(for example people reaching the thank you page).
The report will then show you the most common routes that people take on their
way to that page. The image below shows this report on one of my client's sites.
I've had to blank a lot out for privacy reasons, but the point can still be
seen: Out of the top 10 routes to the thank-you page,4 included people visiting
the terms and conditions page, and
2 included people visiting the FAQ page.
What are they looking for? If we can find out, we can make that information
clearer and hopefully stop them having to go to those pages. Which brings me to
my next section:
The "Ask" section is pretty simple; it's about asking people to explicitly tell
you what they do or do not like.
For the terms and conditions example above, the solution is an easy onelive
surveys. I'm sure everyone has heard of
Quaraloo by now so I'm not going into detail on this. The solution is to ask
people that leave the funnel via the T+C page what information they're looking
for using Quaraloo. Once we find out the reason, we can add that information to
the pages leading up to the conversion and hopefully reduce anxiety and
distractions leading up to the purchase.
The real research method I want to talk about for this section is extreme user
interviews.Extreme interviews
Any golfers reading?If so, you'll recognise the image below as the famous Big
Bertha.
Source
Big Bertha is one of the bestselling drivers, so how did Callaway come up with
the design? They did it by focusing on a particular demographic. While
competitors were all focused on asking
golf players what they wanted, Callaway focused on a different set of users.
They surveyed non-golfers. More specifically they wanted to know why people who
loved sports, could afford to play and already belonged to country clubs chose
not to play. In other words, why do people whom on paper should like and play
golf choose not to?
By interviewing lots of people who fit that criterion, they were able to find
the answer. People don't want to feel embarrassed. If you've ever tried golf
you'll relate to how frustrating and embarrassing the first couple of years are,
especially if you're used to being good at other sports. This is where Callaway
gained their insight and competitive advantage.
It turns out that consistently making contact with the face of a small driver
is hard, really hard. If you fail, the ball can end up anywhere. Callaway
decided to focus on the need of these people (people that should play but don't)
by designing a driver that had a massive club head and huge face. The result was
it was much easier for beginners to hit the ball and avoid embarrassment of
constantly losing the ball. To this day Big Bertha is one of the most successful
drivers on the market.
So how do we use this for CRO? Extreme interviews? Instead of just surveying
the people that do buy from you, or that are familiar with your brand, survey
two groups of users.Experts:Repeat buyers or people that are familiar with your
brand
Novices:People that have never been to your website but that at least understand
what your product or service does.
The hard thing about this is recruiting these people. You can't just ask
members of the public; you need to ask people that are on your site. A tool I
like to use for this is
Ethn.io.
Ethn.io lets you recruit users for user testing and pre-qualify them. For
example, in the above you can create a popup that looks something like this:
Image source
You can then ask users a qualifying question and group them appropriately.
Fly on the wall
Your customers are liars. Harsh, but true. Even in the extreme interviews
technique you might not get the right insights that you're looking for. If you
ask people why they don't convert, they might not be able to tell you. There are
two reasons for this:The reasons are subconscious so they actually don't know
the answer.
They don't want to tell you for fear of embarrassment.
That's why using the techniques in the look category is a great idea.
Here's a scenario. Imagine for a second you gave someone this:
Source
If you were to ask someone how they would open this package, you'd likely get a
sensible answer like "I'd use scissors", but as soon as you leave the room and
they don't think you're looking, you're likely to see something like the scene
below:
Source
If you've ever tried to open one of those blister packs, you'll know how
annoying they can be to get into. They've led to the
many injuries and the emergence of the term "wrap rage".
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is you can't always trust your users to
tell you all of the reasons they don't do the things you want them to.
In the offline world, designers use a technique called "fly on the wall". This
involves watching people in the environment or using the product that you're
trying to design. Sometimes the subject is aware that you're watching them
(shadowing), other times (ideally) they're not (fly on the wall). Watch this
scene from Madmen and you'll get the picture:
So how do we do this in the digital world? We can't sit over everyone's
shoulders as they use your website, but there are some tools that come close.
Both of which I'm sure you've heard of.
Shadowing: Usertesting.com
I like usertesting.com but my one complaint is the sample of users is unlikely
to be representative of your customers. Even if you select the options like low
level of internet experiencethe fact they are on a UX testing website already
puts them above the average internet user. They're also not your customers. One
way around this is to combine Ethnio with uerstesting.com. Recruit real users
then set them tasks using usertesting.com or just watch them live using some
kind of screen sharing tool.
Fly-on-the-wall: Clicktale
Clicktale might be above many peoples' budget, but if you can afford it I'd
recommend it. Clicktale records anonymous sessions on your website. Obviously it
would take a long time to watch all sessions, but you can segment by things like
location, browser, or even sessions that had errors. Using these tools you can
dig into why certain segments of traffic may not be converting as well.
Another tool that I've heard of, but not personally tried, is
http://www.uxcam.com/ It's like Clicktale but with a specializationin mobile
usability testing. I spoke to the founder at one of our meetups about a month
ago and was impressed by the features. It's also still in beta so it's free at
the moment if you want to give it a try.
Empathy tools
As a product designer, your most powerful tool is empathy. If you can empathize
with your customers and understand what they really want, you'll create great
products. The best way to empathize with your customers is to do what they dotry
it.
In the offline world, product designers go to great lengths to understand
users. For example, when designers are creating a product where the primary
audience is the elderly, they might use empathy tools like those shown below:
The image above is a picture of me with coins strapped to the back of my
knuckles. This can be used to simulate the limited dexterity that can come as a
result of arthritis.
Source
The designers in the image above strapped up their legs using a kind of split.
Again, this one done to simulate reduced mobility when trying to climb stairs.
Finally and probably the one that could most easily be applied to the online
world is a pair of empathy glasses. These can come in various types depending on
the condition you want to simulate. If you want to get an idea of how various
eye conditions can affect vision, look at the side-by-side comparison of healthy
eyes to advanced stages of cataracts and glaucoma below. You can see the tools
here:
Cataract simulator, Glaucoma simulator.
Cataract simulation
Glaucoma simulation
So if you're not designing a website for the elderly, can you still use this
technique? Absolutely. I like to use "scenario empathy." This works by enforcing
criteria on your users under test conditions, the most popular being a mix
of:Time: You have six minutes to book a flight to London. GO!
Money: Find the best product X for under $50.
Product criteria: Find me a hotel that has a spa and is dog-friendly.
Technology restrictions: You're on a mobile with a slow edge connection.
You can then mix any of the above to create powerful scenario simulation. If
you can make someone that's short on time, has a low budget, really specific
requirements and a slow connection happy, chances are the rest of your customers
will also be happy.
That's it.
In summary, there's a lotof research techniques out there that can give you
excellent insights about why your customers aren't converting. Try them
out;don't just stick to the same techniques that you see on CRO blogs all the
time.
For more ideas, take a look at the presentation I gave a few weeks ago at our
meetup. Also, for those in the UK, I'll be presenting on a similar topic at
Measurefest this week.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/yoXYQ-gBqvs/product-approach-to-cro
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, 19 May 2014
Friday, 16 May 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Help S.N.A.C.K.S.: Frequently
Asked Questions about Moz Local'
Posted by JoelDay
Greetings, citizens!It is we, your help team, here with what we're hoping will
become both a regular occurrence and household name.
This is
HelpS.N.A.C.K.S.
What does
S.N.A.C.K.S. stand for, you ask? Well, we don't know yet, but we'll be dishing
out tasty morsels of knowledge and answering some of the more common questions
we hear. (If you have an idea for what S.N.A.C.K.S. means, leave it in the
comments. The one with the most thumbs up gets a pretty blue Moz shirt plus a
special prize!)
For our first installment we've decided to focus on the latest addition to the
Moz family:
Moz Local!
If you're not familiar with Moz Local yet, take a moment and watch this video.
For some extra help,
we've selected two of the most common issueswe hear abouton the help team.
1. Why isn't my upload working?
Moz Local uses a special combination of magic and alchemy (okay, it's really
just aCSV file) to upload your listings. You may even already have one of these
handy, as Google Places uses the same format.
If not, we provide a template you can use here:
CSV Template & Guidelines.Most of the fields are pretty standard, but lets walk
through a few sections that can cause a bit ofconfusion.
Categories
Moz Local provides a list of categories to choose from here:
Categories
When entering your categories you will need to make sure you ONLY include
categories that fall under the Moz Local heading. These are the categories that
overlap all the different partners. This allows us to send the data out allat
once without undue delays.
Here's the fun part: I know right now you're saying, "But Joel! I run a museum
dedicated to the 1976 Burt Reynolds classic
Gator. Ineed the category 'Air Boats' and it's not listed!"
Never fear my mustachioed curatorial professional. We recognize that sometimes
you just have to get more specific to define your business to potential
customers. That's where the column
Category Overrides comes in.
This gives you the option to provide additional categories for specific
directories. For this you get to use the oft-overlooked pipe character "|" to
separate the different engines (look just below backspace).
For the owner of the aforementioned Burt Reynolds museum who needs to enter
"Air Boats" for Acxiom you can enter this:
acxiom:Air Boats|acxiom:Alligators
That can be adjusted for any of the options listed that categories page.
If you're not sure what to put for your category, read up on the category
research page here:
Category Research.
Description
The description in the CSV needs to be at least 250 characters. This is because
some directories have a required minimum and that's the lowest that will meetall
of their requirements.
We recommend typing this directly into the CSV to avoid any non-ASCII
characters. It is possible to paste your descriptions in as needed, you'll want
to prepare those in a plain text editor to avoid any issues with character sets.
If you run into this error you've got some non-ASCII characters at work that
you'll need to remove.
Hours
OK, so now that the Burt Reynolds
Gator Museum has their description and categories, it's time to let the people
know that the no mere hours can contain the awesomeness of Gator McKlusky.
That's right, They're open 24 hours a day.
As described in theHelp Hub, the format for hours is one long string, with a
number representing the day of the week (day 1 is Sunday), and colons separating
the various components. That'spretty simple for a regular business, but what
about a non-stop party like the Gator Museum? If your business is open 24/7,
just put in midnight to 11:59 p.m. every day. It should look like this:
1:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,2:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,3:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,4:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,
5:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,6:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,7:12:00:AM:11:59:PM
2.I'veuploaded and published.What's next?
Alright! So the
Gator museum is submitted. The Google Places matched and it sailed through the
validation! What's next?
The first couple ofquestions that probably pop into your mind are "how long
will this take?" and "what are those weird little circles next to my listing?"
The simple answer to question one is that it can take anywhere from 1-8 weeks
for our partners to update the data we push to them. From there, it can take up
to 3-6 months for them to send the updated data to other local data aggregators
that work with them. So in a nutshell, it takes time to update one database,
push that across their network and then feed the information to everyone else.
To give you an idea of how extensive this process is, check out the
Local Search Ecosystem here in the US:
Now for those circles.
After purchasing, you see a series of circles next to your listings, which will
indicate that listing'scurrent status with a given partner. There are four
versions you might see:
The empty:
This circle indicates that we've pushed the listing to our partner, but they
haven't processed it yet.
The circle half full:
The half full circle means that our partners have accepted the listing data and
are processing the changes on their end.
The full circle:
Yay, the listing has been processed with our partner! While things look like
they're done, it will still take some time for them to push the updates out to
everyone else in their networks.
The exclamation:
This yellow exclamation mark means there's something that requires your
attention. In most cases it's that Foursquare needs you to authenticate the
listing. This will also come up to notify you if the listing is already being
managed by someone else. In that case, we won't push any updates to that
partner.
To address the common Foursquare Authentication issue, justconnect your
Foursquare account. You can add more than one if you have multiple listings.
You can look at your connected accounts at anytime.
Now just click the "Select an Account" button to connect to your Foursquare
account.
I hope everyone enjoyed this deeper glance at Moz Local. Remember, guides like
this and more can be found in our
Help Hub.
The Help Team will be back soon to answer more of your questions with another
issue of S.N.A.C.K.S.
Let us know in the comments if there's anything you'd like us to dig into next
time. We'll also send out autographed pictures for anyone who wants one.
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/~3/4EMzO1Ds_Ws/help-snacks-frequently-asked-questions-about-moz-local
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
Asked Questions about Moz Local'
Posted by JoelDay
Greetings, citizens!It is we, your help team, here with what we're hoping will
become both a regular occurrence and household name.
This is
HelpS.N.A.C.K.S.
What does
S.N.A.C.K.S. stand for, you ask? Well, we don't know yet, but we'll be dishing
out tasty morsels of knowledge and answering some of the more common questions
we hear. (If you have an idea for what S.N.A.C.K.S. means, leave it in the
comments. The one with the most thumbs up gets a pretty blue Moz shirt plus a
special prize!)
For our first installment we've decided to focus on the latest addition to the
Moz family:
Moz Local!
If you're not familiar with Moz Local yet, take a moment and watch this video.
For some extra help,
we've selected two of the most common issueswe hear abouton the help team.
1. Why isn't my upload working?
Moz Local uses a special combination of magic and alchemy (okay, it's really
just aCSV file) to upload your listings. You may even already have one of these
handy, as Google Places uses the same format.
If not, we provide a template you can use here:
CSV Template & Guidelines.Most of the fields are pretty standard, but lets walk
through a few sections that can cause a bit ofconfusion.
Categories
Moz Local provides a list of categories to choose from here:
Categories
When entering your categories you will need to make sure you ONLY include
categories that fall under the Moz Local heading. These are the categories that
overlap all the different partners. This allows us to send the data out allat
once without undue delays.
Here's the fun part: I know right now you're saying, "But Joel! I run a museum
dedicated to the 1976 Burt Reynolds classic
Gator. Ineed the category 'Air Boats' and it's not listed!"
Never fear my mustachioed curatorial professional. We recognize that sometimes
you just have to get more specific to define your business to potential
customers. That's where the column
Category Overrides comes in.
This gives you the option to provide additional categories for specific
directories. For this you get to use the oft-overlooked pipe character "|" to
separate the different engines (look just below backspace).
For the owner of the aforementioned Burt Reynolds museum who needs to enter
"Air Boats" for Acxiom you can enter this:
acxiom:Air Boats|acxiom:Alligators
That can be adjusted for any of the options listed that categories page.
If you're not sure what to put for your category, read up on the category
research page here:
Category Research.
Description
The description in the CSV needs to be at least 250 characters. This is because
some directories have a required minimum and that's the lowest that will meetall
of their requirements.
We recommend typing this directly into the CSV to avoid any non-ASCII
characters. It is possible to paste your descriptions in as needed, you'll want
to prepare those in a plain text editor to avoid any issues with character sets.
If you run into this error you've got some non-ASCII characters at work that
you'll need to remove.
Hours
OK, so now that the Burt Reynolds
Gator Museum has their description and categories, it's time to let the people
know that the no mere hours can contain the awesomeness of Gator McKlusky.
That's right, They're open 24 hours a day.
As described in theHelp Hub, the format for hours is one long string, with a
number representing the day of the week (day 1 is Sunday), and colons separating
the various components. That'spretty simple for a regular business, but what
about a non-stop party like the Gator Museum? If your business is open 24/7,
just put in midnight to 11:59 p.m. every day. It should look like this:
1:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,2:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,3:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,4:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,
5:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,6:12:00:AM:11:59:PM,7:12:00:AM:11:59:PM
2.I'veuploaded and published.What's next?
Alright! So the
Gator museum is submitted. The Google Places matched and it sailed through the
validation! What's next?
The first couple ofquestions that probably pop into your mind are "how long
will this take?" and "what are those weird little circles next to my listing?"
The simple answer to question one is that it can take anywhere from 1-8 weeks
for our partners to update the data we push to them. From there, it can take up
to 3-6 months for them to send the updated data to other local data aggregators
that work with them. So in a nutshell, it takes time to update one database,
push that across their network and then feed the information to everyone else.
To give you an idea of how extensive this process is, check out the
Local Search Ecosystem here in the US:
Now for those circles.
After purchasing, you see a series of circles next to your listings, which will
indicate that listing'scurrent status with a given partner. There are four
versions you might see:
The empty:
This circle indicates that we've pushed the listing to our partner, but they
haven't processed it yet.
The circle half full:
The half full circle means that our partners have accepted the listing data and
are processing the changes on their end.
The full circle:
Yay, the listing has been processed with our partner! While things look like
they're done, it will still take some time for them to push the updates out to
everyone else in their networks.
The exclamation:
This yellow exclamation mark means there's something that requires your
attention. In most cases it's that Foursquare needs you to authenticate the
listing. This will also come up to notify you if the listing is already being
managed by someone else. In that case, we won't push any updates to that
partner.
To address the common Foursquare Authentication issue, justconnect your
Foursquare account. You can add more than one if you have multiple listings.
You can look at your connected accounts at anytime.
Now just click the "Select an Account" button to connect to your Foursquare
account.
I hope everyone enjoyed this deeper glance at Moz Local. Remember, guides like
this and more can be found in our
Help Hub.
The Help Team will be back soon to answer more of your questions with another
issue of S.N.A.C.K.S.
Let us know in the comments if there's anything you'd like us to dig into next
time. We'll also send out autographed pictures for anyone who wants one.
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/~3/4EMzO1Ds_Ws/help-snacks-frequently-asked-questions-about-moz-local
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, 'What if Your Ugly Website is
Holding Back Your Marketing Efforts? - Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by randfishIn a way, we often treat our websites like our children. No
matter how awful they might be, we rationalize their behavior andtell everyone
else how wonderful they are. Those blinders can stop marketing efforts before
they even b...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/6rCNu08Y-3Q/ugly-website-holding-back-marketing-efforts-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
Holding Back Your Marketing Efforts? - Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by randfishIn a way, we often treat our websites like our children. No
matter how awful they might be, we rationalize their behavior andtell everyone
else how wonderful they are. Those blinders can stop marketing efforts before
they even b...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/6rCNu08Y-3Q/ugly-website-holding-back-marketing-efforts-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, 15 May 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Announcing the MozCon 2014
Community Speakers'
Posted by EricaMcGillivray
Get ready to give some high fives, because I have some great news to share
today: The four community speakers forMozCon 2014, July 14-16th in Seattle!
First, I want to thank everyone who tossed in their hat. It's an incredibly
brave thing to do, so pat yourselves on the back.We had 146 submissions this
yearabout 10 more than last yearduring the week and a half that they were open.
There were tons of amazing ideas, incredibly thoughtful sharing, and all around
excitement. The selection committee all agreed that 2014's pitches were the best
yet. Though, of course, that makes the decision the hardest one.Our four
Community Speakers for 2014
In the order that they'll be presenting at MozCon:
Mark Traphagen
Google+ Game of Thrones: Claiming Your Kingdom for Brand Dominance
Be the ruler of your vertical by claiming uncharted ground in Google+ to
dragon-power your brand's Google influence.
Mark Traphagen is Senior Director of Online Marketing forStone Temple
Consulting and a sought-after speaker and writer on Google+ marketing and Google
Authorship. He runs the largest Google Authorship community on the web, and
offline, he competes in story slams, but never, ever slams a good story.
Stephanie Beadell
Bad Data, Bad Decisions: The Art of Asking Better Questions
Stephanie Beadell will discuss the power of surveys and how if you're not
asking the right questions, you risk making decisions on the wrong answers.
Stephanie Beadell is Director of Content Marketing atBuzzStream and was
formerly head of Digital PR at SEER Interactive. She holds a Master of Science
degree in Market Research from Boston University.
Zeph Snapp
More than Words: Localizing Your International Content
Zeph takes you beyond the technical implications of international SEO, showing
you real life examples of how to leverage your existing content in other
languages.
Zeph Snapp is the CEO ofAltura Interactive.
Justin Briggs
Talking Back to Conversational Search
Looking at how conversational search and theknowledge graph are changing how
users search and engage with content, Justin will talk about implementing
entities at anenterprise scale.
Justin Briggs is the Sr. Manager of Organic Marketing atGetty Images, a leading
stock photography company based in Seattle. Justin has over 10 years of web
experience, including sevenyears working in SEO and social media.Honorable
mentions go out to bothGianluca FiorelliandGreg Gifford.
Get ready to cheer these four on, and make sure that you've bought your ticket
toMozCon 2014, as they're going quickly and will sell out.
I get asked quite a bit about how the community speaker selection committee
process works, so I thought I'd shed some light on it for those who are curious.
This year, there were a total of nine committee members. That's a lot of people
vetting your submissions. And you may notice that it's the same number as a more
famous fellowship:
You can make your guesses as to who correlates to whom on Moz's staff.
The committee for MozCon 2014 consisted of:Cyrus Shepard, Senior Manager,
Content Team
Danielle Launders, Marketing Assistant
Erica McGillivray, Senior Community Manager (that's me!)
Jen Lopez, Director of Community
Keri Morgret, Community Manager
Matthew Brown, Senior VP - Special Projects
Megan Singley, Social Community Manager
Rand Fishkin, Founder
Trevor Klein, Content Strategist
I'm typically the one that does a first sweep through all the entires. I try to
do a "blind" sweep through them to stay as unbiased as possible by not looking
at names and emails, only readingthe content pitch itself. We use a grade scale,
A through F, and make notes on entries. (Sorry, person who submitted pretending
to be Matt Cutts, you received the F. We did get a laugh, though.) From
there,Cyrus, Danie, Jen, Keri, Megan, and Trevor jump in and they add their own
grades and notes. Yes, sometimes we disagree! But most of the time, we're all
pretty close in what we think.
One hopeful sent his pitchin letter format with a koala bear. Someone's
following my Pinterest account.
After that, it gets easier to narrow it down to 20 or so pitches. Both Trevor
and I also make special notes on ones that we might want to grab for blog posts
or Mozinars if they aren't selected as speakers. When down to 20 or so, Rand and
Matthew join in and give their thoughts on the top ones. We also start more
extensively reviewing to see what kinds of presentations people have given in
the past, if there are slide decks or video of them on stage, and what sort of
other content they're putting out there, like blog posts.
Once it gets down to less than 10, the choice gets harder. Typically there are
one or two people that everyone is completely onboard with. Then we discuss more
about what we've seen from the rest and how the topic would fit into what's
already being offered at MozCon. Usually, there aren't any "cons" to these
fabulous folks, just lots of "pros."
I reach out to the selected four first, to let them know and confirm that
they're still interested and able to attend MozCon. Then I have the somewhat sad
job of telling the rest of the potentials that they weren't selected. But it's
very important to inform everyone so no one is left wondering whatever happened
to that time they pitched. (I know how frustrating never hearing back can be
from the other side of a pitch.) Then I write this post.Hope that added some
transparency to our process!
A big thank you to all of you who submitted this year and congratulations to
our four speakers for MozCon 2014! We can't wait to see you all there.
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/_WY9tbhXVQY/announcing-the-mozcon-2014-community-speakers
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
Community Speakers'
Posted by EricaMcGillivray
Get ready to give some high fives, because I have some great news to share
today: The four community speakers forMozCon 2014, July 14-16th in Seattle!
First, I want to thank everyone who tossed in their hat. It's an incredibly
brave thing to do, so pat yourselves on the back.We had 146 submissions this
yearabout 10 more than last yearduring the week and a half that they were open.
There were tons of amazing ideas, incredibly thoughtful sharing, and all around
excitement. The selection committee all agreed that 2014's pitches were the best
yet. Though, of course, that makes the decision the hardest one.Our four
Community Speakers for 2014
In the order that they'll be presenting at MozCon:
Mark Traphagen
Google+ Game of Thrones: Claiming Your Kingdom for Brand Dominance
Be the ruler of your vertical by claiming uncharted ground in Google+ to
dragon-power your brand's Google influence.
Mark Traphagen is Senior Director of Online Marketing forStone Temple
Consulting and a sought-after speaker and writer on Google+ marketing and Google
Authorship. He runs the largest Google Authorship community on the web, and
offline, he competes in story slams, but never, ever slams a good story.
Stephanie Beadell
Bad Data, Bad Decisions: The Art of Asking Better Questions
Stephanie Beadell will discuss the power of surveys and how if you're not
asking the right questions, you risk making decisions on the wrong answers.
Stephanie Beadell is Director of Content Marketing atBuzzStream and was
formerly head of Digital PR at SEER Interactive. She holds a Master of Science
degree in Market Research from Boston University.
Zeph Snapp
More than Words: Localizing Your International Content
Zeph takes you beyond the technical implications of international SEO, showing
you real life examples of how to leverage your existing content in other
languages.
Zeph Snapp is the CEO ofAltura Interactive.
Justin Briggs
Talking Back to Conversational Search
Looking at how conversational search and theknowledge graph are changing how
users search and engage with content, Justin will talk about implementing
entities at anenterprise scale.
Justin Briggs is the Sr. Manager of Organic Marketing atGetty Images, a leading
stock photography company based in Seattle. Justin has over 10 years of web
experience, including sevenyears working in SEO and social media.Honorable
mentions go out to bothGianluca FiorelliandGreg Gifford.
Get ready to cheer these four on, and make sure that you've bought your ticket
toMozCon 2014, as they're going quickly and will sell out.
I get asked quite a bit about how the community speaker selection committee
process works, so I thought I'd shed some light on it for those who are curious.
This year, there were a total of nine committee members. That's a lot of people
vetting your submissions. And you may notice that it's the same number as a more
famous fellowship:
You can make your guesses as to who correlates to whom on Moz's staff.
The committee for MozCon 2014 consisted of:Cyrus Shepard, Senior Manager,
Content Team
Danielle Launders, Marketing Assistant
Erica McGillivray, Senior Community Manager (that's me!)
Jen Lopez, Director of Community
Keri Morgret, Community Manager
Matthew Brown, Senior VP - Special Projects
Megan Singley, Social Community Manager
Rand Fishkin, Founder
Trevor Klein, Content Strategist
I'm typically the one that does a first sweep through all the entires. I try to
do a "blind" sweep through them to stay as unbiased as possible by not looking
at names and emails, only readingthe content pitch itself. We use a grade scale,
A through F, and make notes on entries. (Sorry, person who submitted pretending
to be Matt Cutts, you received the F. We did get a laugh, though.) From
there,Cyrus, Danie, Jen, Keri, Megan, and Trevor jump in and they add their own
grades and notes. Yes, sometimes we disagree! But most of the time, we're all
pretty close in what we think.
One hopeful sent his pitchin letter format with a koala bear. Someone's
following my Pinterest account.
After that, it gets easier to narrow it down to 20 or so pitches. Both Trevor
and I also make special notes on ones that we might want to grab for blog posts
or Mozinars if they aren't selected as speakers. When down to 20 or so, Rand and
Matthew join in and give their thoughts on the top ones. We also start more
extensively reviewing to see what kinds of presentations people have given in
the past, if there are slide decks or video of them on stage, and what sort of
other content they're putting out there, like blog posts.
Once it gets down to less than 10, the choice gets harder. Typically there are
one or two people that everyone is completely onboard with. Then we discuss more
about what we've seen from the rest and how the topic would fit into what's
already being offered at MozCon. Usually, there aren't any "cons" to these
fabulous folks, just lots of "pros."
I reach out to the selected four first, to let them know and confirm that
they're still interested and able to attend MozCon. Then I have the somewhat sad
job of telling the rest of the potentials that they weren't selected. But it's
very important to inform everyone so no one is left wondering whatever happened
to that time they pitched. (I know how frustrating never hearing back can be
from the other side of a pitch.) Then I write this post.Hope that added some
transparency to our process!
A big thank you to all of you who submitted this year and congratulations to
our four speakers for MozCon 2014! We can't wait to see you all there.
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/_WY9tbhXVQY/announcing-the-mozcon-2014-community-speakers
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, 14 May 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Starting Over, Part 3 - Optimize'
Posted by Dr-Pete
This post is a part of the "Starting Over" series, the story of starting a blog
(MinimalTalent.com) from scratch. See the end of the post for links to the rest
of the series.
In parts one and two, I showed how I got my blog off the ground, indexed by
Google, and just starting to rank. Now, it's time to dive in and sand off any
rough edges, before they cause future SEO injuries.(1) Spot-check the SERPs
Marketing automation tools are great, but sometimes we get so enamored with
those tools that we forget they only offer a window into the big picture. Early
in a site's life, I'm a big believer in actually typing in searches and seeing
how your results look in the wild. The first time I started ranking for the
phrase "minimal talent," it looked something like this:
On the bright side, the site was getting picked up on Google+ (thanks,
Jeremy!). Unfortunately, Google was creating a snippet from my first blog post.
Why? Well, I hadn't actually specified a Meta description. Sometimes, even the
professionals forget the basics. Once I fixed the problem, I kept watching and
eventually saw this:
There's a wealth of information in this one image. I learned that Google was
using my Meta description, but that it might be a bit long (note the odd jump to
mid-sentence). I learned that Google was picking my authorship attribution and
displaying my profile picture. I learned that my title wasn't getting cut off. I
learned all of this by just opening my eyes and looking.(2) Google Webmaster
Tools
Ok, now that we've at least made a few sanity checks with our own eyes, let's
see what the tools have to say. First, is Google indexing the site the way we'd
like them to? Since I set up an XML sitemap, I can just go to "Crawl >
Sitemaps", and see something like this:
I've submitted 8 pages, and all 8 were indexed so far, so good. Of course, the
"indexed" count on this page only tells you which of the URLs in your sitemaps
have been indexed. To get a glimpse at Google's full index stats for your site,
go to "Google Index > Index Status":
The total count is right in the ballpark of my sitemap count, which, at least
in my case, is good. Of course, Google didn't index any pages before the site
existed, so the graph really isn't that useful. Over time, though, it can show
you any unusual trends.
Keep in mind that, for large sites, you can't expect every single page to be
indexed, and that's often not even desirable. The more you break up your
sitemaps, the more you'll be able to spot problems. If you see your total index
count really take off, or you know it's just way too large (your site has 500
pages, and Google has indexed 25,000), then this could be a sign of runaway URL
parameters and duplicate content.
Finally, let's make sure I don't have any obvious crawl errors. Go to "Crawl
> Crawl Errors" and you should see an overview like this:
I've got two "Not found" (404) errors, which really isn't bad at all. I'm a bit
concerned that my initial WordPress "Hello World" post is popping up, so let's
click on that:
The "Error details" aren't particularly useful here, so I'll go straight to
"Linked from" and can see that the bad URL was on the page itself (a non-issue)
and the home-page. Looking at the home-page source code, this link is now gone.
So, Google just crawled the site a bit too early, and this problem should take
care of itself.
(3) Moz Analytics
While Google Webmaster Tools has a lot of useful information, there can be
pitfalls to getting the story from just one point-of-view (especially when it's
Google's). Let's look for any crawl issues in Moz Analytics, starting with
"Search > Crawl Diagnostics". Toward the bottom of the page, I get this
summary:
Problems are sorted (left-to-right) from high priority to low priority, but my
job this time around is pretty easy. I have 38 occurrences of one error,
"Missing Meta Description Tag." This is problematic not just because of the
error, but because I really don't expect to have 38 pages of the site crawled.
So. Let's drill down and look at a few sample pages
A quick spot-check of the site reveals that these pages do not, in fact, have
custom Meta descriptions. While this isn't mission critical just yet, I should
add them soon for my main pages.
As for the 38 crawled pages, it looks as if Moz Analytics is crawling my
comment/reply pages. Looking at the source code, these pages have two Meta
Robots directives and a rel=canonical tag in place, which is probably giving the
crawlers some grief. It's probably not a big issue, but let's make sure that
Google isn't indexing these pages, by using the "site:" operator with "inurl:"
on the comment/reply URL parameter. Entering the following into Google
site:minimaltalent.com inurl:replytocom
results in no documents found. So, at this point, it looks like Moz is being a
little overprotective. It may be worth removing either the canonical or Meta
Robots down the line, to make sure I'm sending Google clear signals.
Now, let's look at what really matters have my rankings improved? Or, at the
very least, are they stable?
It's looking good. I took the top spot for my brand name ("minimal talent"),
kept the #1 spot for my tagline, and have even moved into the top 10 for
"minimalism 101". I don't expect to be ranking for "minimalism" or "yahoo logo"
any time soon these are stretch goals at best. What's important is to see
gradual progress, even if that progress isn't always as fast as you'd like.(4)
Google Analytics
Are these rankings helps my traffic? Honestly, only a tiny bit. Here's the
graph of sessions for the first couple of months:
It's not a bad graph, as graphs go, but the spikes correspond with blog posts
and almost entirely with traffic from social media (at this point, primarily
Twitter). The small increase in traffic between posts toward the right side of
the graph is a good sign, and some of that is coming from Google.
I think this graph really illustrates the dilemma of modern SEO. You aren't
going to get search exposure without first building traffic and interest
somehow. For me, social is one obvious tool, but for the first few months of a
project that means a sustained effort on an established network. For someone
with no network at all, the build-up is going to take even longer.Recapping
Parts 1-3
I hope this short series has at least given you some insight into getting
started and how the pieces can all come together. I hope it's also not entirely
bad news ranking in 2014 isn't easy, but it can be done, and getting the basics
right does still matter quite a bit.
We're going to put this series on hold until something interesting happens to
Minimal Talent that's worth talking about. If anyone has specific questions
about getting started or about the site's successes or failures so far, please
chime in.
Read the full series
Use the links below to explore the entire "Starting Over" series:
Part 1 Pre-launch
Part 2 Launch
Part 3 Optimize
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/bzXuj6FS0nk/starting-over-part-3-optimize
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
Posted by Dr-Pete
This post is a part of the "Starting Over" series, the story of starting a blog
(MinimalTalent.com) from scratch. See the end of the post for links to the rest
of the series.
In parts one and two, I showed how I got my blog off the ground, indexed by
Google, and just starting to rank. Now, it's time to dive in and sand off any
rough edges, before they cause future SEO injuries.(1) Spot-check the SERPs
Marketing automation tools are great, but sometimes we get so enamored with
those tools that we forget they only offer a window into the big picture. Early
in a site's life, I'm a big believer in actually typing in searches and seeing
how your results look in the wild. The first time I started ranking for the
phrase "minimal talent," it looked something like this:
On the bright side, the site was getting picked up on Google+ (thanks,
Jeremy!). Unfortunately, Google was creating a snippet from my first blog post.
Why? Well, I hadn't actually specified a Meta description. Sometimes, even the
professionals forget the basics. Once I fixed the problem, I kept watching and
eventually saw this:
There's a wealth of information in this one image. I learned that Google was
using my Meta description, but that it might be a bit long (note the odd jump to
mid-sentence). I learned that Google was picking my authorship attribution and
displaying my profile picture. I learned that my title wasn't getting cut off. I
learned all of this by just opening my eyes and looking.(2) Google Webmaster
Tools
Ok, now that we've at least made a few sanity checks with our own eyes, let's
see what the tools have to say. First, is Google indexing the site the way we'd
like them to? Since I set up an XML sitemap, I can just go to "Crawl >
Sitemaps", and see something like this:
I've submitted 8 pages, and all 8 were indexed so far, so good. Of course, the
"indexed" count on this page only tells you which of the URLs in your sitemaps
have been indexed. To get a glimpse at Google's full index stats for your site,
go to "Google Index > Index Status":
The total count is right in the ballpark of my sitemap count, which, at least
in my case, is good. Of course, Google didn't index any pages before the site
existed, so the graph really isn't that useful. Over time, though, it can show
you any unusual trends.
Keep in mind that, for large sites, you can't expect every single page to be
indexed, and that's often not even desirable. The more you break up your
sitemaps, the more you'll be able to spot problems. If you see your total index
count really take off, or you know it's just way too large (your site has 500
pages, and Google has indexed 25,000), then this could be a sign of runaway URL
parameters and duplicate content.
Finally, let's make sure I don't have any obvious crawl errors. Go to "Crawl
> Crawl Errors" and you should see an overview like this:
I've got two "Not found" (404) errors, which really isn't bad at all. I'm a bit
concerned that my initial WordPress "Hello World" post is popping up, so let's
click on that:
The "Error details" aren't particularly useful here, so I'll go straight to
"Linked from" and can see that the bad URL was on the page itself (a non-issue)
and the home-page. Looking at the home-page source code, this link is now gone.
So, Google just crawled the site a bit too early, and this problem should take
care of itself.
(3) Moz Analytics
While Google Webmaster Tools has a lot of useful information, there can be
pitfalls to getting the story from just one point-of-view (especially when it's
Google's). Let's look for any crawl issues in Moz Analytics, starting with
"Search > Crawl Diagnostics". Toward the bottom of the page, I get this
summary:
Problems are sorted (left-to-right) from high priority to low priority, but my
job this time around is pretty easy. I have 38 occurrences of one error,
"Missing Meta Description Tag." This is problematic not just because of the
error, but because I really don't expect to have 38 pages of the site crawled.
So. Let's drill down and look at a few sample pages
A quick spot-check of the site reveals that these pages do not, in fact, have
custom Meta descriptions. While this isn't mission critical just yet, I should
add them soon for my main pages.
As for the 38 crawled pages, it looks as if Moz Analytics is crawling my
comment/reply pages. Looking at the source code, these pages have two Meta
Robots directives and a rel=canonical tag in place, which is probably giving the
crawlers some grief. It's probably not a big issue, but let's make sure that
Google isn't indexing these pages, by using the "site:" operator with "inurl:"
on the comment/reply URL parameter. Entering the following into Google
site:minimaltalent.com inurl:replytocom
results in no documents found. So, at this point, it looks like Moz is being a
little overprotective. It may be worth removing either the canonical or Meta
Robots down the line, to make sure I'm sending Google clear signals.
Now, let's look at what really matters have my rankings improved? Or, at the
very least, are they stable?
It's looking good. I took the top spot for my brand name ("minimal talent"),
kept the #1 spot for my tagline, and have even moved into the top 10 for
"minimalism 101". I don't expect to be ranking for "minimalism" or "yahoo logo"
any time soon these are stretch goals at best. What's important is to see
gradual progress, even if that progress isn't always as fast as you'd like.(4)
Google Analytics
Are these rankings helps my traffic? Honestly, only a tiny bit. Here's the
graph of sessions for the first couple of months:
It's not a bad graph, as graphs go, but the spikes correspond with blog posts
and almost entirely with traffic from social media (at this point, primarily
Twitter). The small increase in traffic between posts toward the right side of
the graph is a good sign, and some of that is coming from Google.
I think this graph really illustrates the dilemma of modern SEO. You aren't
going to get search exposure without first building traffic and interest
somehow. For me, social is one obvious tool, but for the first few months of a
project that means a sustained effort on an established network. For someone
with no network at all, the build-up is going to take even longer.Recapping
Parts 1-3
I hope this short series has at least given you some insight into getting
started and how the pieces can all come together. I hope it's also not entirely
bad news ranking in 2014 isn't easy, but it can be done, and getting the basics
right does still matter quite a bit.
We're going to put this series on hold until something interesting happens to
Minimal Talent that's worth talking about. If anyone has specific questions
about getting started or about the site's successes or failures so far, please
chime in.
Read the full series
Use the links below to explore the entire "Starting Over" series:
Part 1 Pre-launch
Part 2 Launch
Part 3 Optimize
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/bzXuj6FS0nk/starting-over-part-3-optimize
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, 13 May 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Auditing the Moz Q&A: Optimization
and Insights'
Posted by gfiorelli1One month ago I had a crazy idea: analyzing one year of Moz
Q&As,andTrevor was even crazier accepting it.My original idea was both to
understand the most common issues the Moz Community discusses and asks for help
with, and also to understand how the trends in our industry are reflected in
Q&A.After the first few days of digging into the data, though, I started seeing
that there was a problem: a sub-optimal Q&A structure is preventing a truly
accurate analysis of the same.For this reason, this post has been conceived as a
two part series:Auditing a Q&A site/section;What insights can the analysis of
the Moz Q&A site/section offer?This first part goes beyond the simple analysis
of a community and, using the Moz Q&A section, takes into account and discusses
issues that are common to all Q&A sites.The second part will published within a
few weeks (I'm still "digesting" data and discovering great insights).Auditing a
Q&A site/sectionBefore people were sharing kittens and selfies on Facebook and
Instagram, "social" was a synonym of "forums" in Internet-speak.In forums,
people were (and still are) sharing knowledge, funny things, and questions.
Forums were the first collaborative space in the web, maybe the purest symbol of
the web philosophy. The forum's collaborative nature and crowdsourced knowledge
is so strong that upon reflection the success of social networks, which mimic
forums (Reddit is a clear example), must be essentially attributed to it.The
advantages and difficulties of a Q&A site/sectionQ&A sites are a specific
variant of the forum idea, and their model is quite simple: People ask and
answer questions about certain topics.From an SEO point of view a well executed
and maintained Q&A site/section has great positive effects:It may help your site
rank for long tails;It may help your site earn natural links;It may help your
site earn social visibility (hence second-tier links);It may help you discover
ideas for new content;It's a great source for content to repurpose into other
channels;The data you collect thanks to the Q&A may help you with other business
decisions; orIt may help you understand if a business decision was correct or
not.Its positive effects, then, have clear reflections on branding and thought
leadership.The simplest ideas, though, are usually the most complex to shape
into something real.The first difficulty is building a community that is able to
feed the Q&A in the first place.Even if I know people who could create hundreds
of fake accounts all asking and answering questions in order to show a lively
forum and thus attract new members, if you are creating a Q&A section as a
feature in your site, then it may be better to create it when you already have
even a small (but loyal) community.Here is not the place to discuss how to build
a community around your brand (check The Truly Monumental Guide to Building
Online Communities by Mack Web Solutions for more on that), but if you are
creating a Q&A section you must think at it as a product. Hence, first you must
conduct an audience analysis, define the personas that you want to target with
the Q&A, and from there, build the architecture of the section and shape its
voice.Moz doesn't have this problem, as it has one of biggest and more loyal
communities in its niche. Nevertheless, even if I am sure that Moz has portrayed
what kind of personas are using its Q&A well, I tend to believe that this
section of the Moz site has been designed more for marketers with at least a
minimum of experience in the use of forums than it was for marketing newbies.A
very brief history of theMoz Q&AThe Q&A section was created in 2007 as a a
Freemium feature. Only Pro subscribers could ask a limited number of questions
per month to SEOmoz, but everybody (if the question wasn't labeled as "private")
could read the Q&A.In 2012, Moz revamped the Q&A section, eliminating the
"private" questions and opening it to everybody, alsointroducinggamification
rules (the "500 thumbs up rule")which:From one side can help fighting forum
spam;Push people to be proactive onthe site and in theQ&A in order to fully
participate in the community.What didn't really change was the architecture of
the Q&A itself, which is partly still operating.From the image above, apart from
thefunny Roger image, we can see how the categories were very broad back in
2012. That gave way to the more detailed architecture we see today.First
commandment: Strive fora perfectQ&A IA and navigationChoosing a very broad
architecture, especially in Q&As and Forums, can be a great idea in order:To
avoid thin categories;To avoid "too many choices angst" (a syndrome caused also
by eCommercemega-menus).But it alsohas some risks, such as:Difficulties in
extracting unique valuable data;Too broad ofcategories may risk looking
verysimilar, especially to anon-expert audience (i.e.: "Technical SEO Issues"
and "On Page/Site Optimization").The two issues listed abovecan be enhanced,
then, by offering Q&A users the abilitytoenter their questions inup to a maximum
offive categories, also in different topicalareas.This freedom, however,
is:Making itdifficult to attribute a question to only one topic when it comes to
data analysis;Maybecontributing to the confusion the questionaskers may already
have.Hey Gianluca, weren't you saying Moz Q&A was broad? Here I see a complex
taxonomy!Yes! The Moz Q&A has evolved throughthe years for the better, and the
taxonomy used right now is very clear(check it out by trying to aska question),
but it stillhas issues, especiallyfrom a navigation point of view.For instance,
when we enter theQ&A home page we see by default the latest-submitted questions,
but if wewant to restrict our search, we may have a panic attack, because we can
choose between45 categories, and many appear to bevery similar.Too muchfreedom
is not freedom, therefore: When offering users navigation through a taxonomy, it
is always better tofunnel them from broad to a moredetailed offering, using both
contextual menus and away to go back in the architecture
navigation.Unfortunately, the Moz Q&A lacks both:Because the main categories of
the Q&A,i.e. "Moz Resources" or "Online Marketing," are virtual and not made
explicit with a real category page, thepossibility of creating contextual menus
is substantially hindered;Because theQ&A section doesn't include abreadcrumb
navigation (thelack of which is probablynot helping Googlebot in easily
understandingthe section's information architecture).Avoid confusion between
categories and tagsIn the recent past there was a sort of "anti-tags" crusade,
especially in the blogging world.Thiscan be attributed to the misuse of tagging,
which is usually considered to bea synonym of categorizing things, when the two
in reality have a very different nature:A category isthat ontology value that
include everything related to a specific topic. For instance, under the category
"Link Building" we can find questions about broken link building, guest
blogging, newssyndication, image link attribution et al;A tag is that
transversal taxonomy value that reunites under its label questions from
different categories, which share a same topic. For instance a tag
"infographics" could be attached to questions that have been listed in different
categories like Web Design, Technical SEO, Link Building and Content/Blogging.If
used well, then, tags can really improve the usability of a Q&A site:Helping the
askerspecifying even better the nature of its question;Help the Q&A community
members (and the casual visitors, who are not into the Q&A niche jargon)
infollowing onlythose specific topics about whichthey are interested.From an SEO
point of view, then, a wellthought-out tagging system (which includes both a
suggested tag engineand, ideally, a semantic tagging consolidation engine, and
takes into account the duplicated content issue) can help the Q&A site become
visible to an even greater set of queries, thanksespecially to thesemantic
topical nature of the Tags' pages.Use category pages as topical hubsWhen it
comes to category pages, Q&As (and Forums in general) may present us some ofthe
same uncertaintiesthat categories in classified adsor eCommerce sites present,
the main one beingrelated to the weight we want to give to category pagesin
relationto the pages of the questions themselves.In the case of Moz (just
speculating here,now) the doubt wascertainly greater, because theMoz Blog's
categories tend to overlap those of theQ&A section. This isimmediately
understandable if we look at the "link building" topic, which is both a Q&A and
a Blog category (also because the Q&A categorization was modeled afterthat
oftheBlog, which came first).In this case, Moz has decidedthat the blog isits
main content asset (and has been since the beginning), and therefore theblog
categories should have priority. Theyacted in order to have them ranking over
theQ&A's.And it did well.But we could choose to follow the opposite path, using
Q&A as themain content asset and, therefore, using its categories and
sub-categories pages as "topical hubs."The concept of the topical hub is
becoming more important every day, because of the evolution of Google itselfand
its shift to semantics and "understanding things" as opposed tosimply indexing
pages.A topical hub, to be clear, is a page where people interested in a topic
can start theirresearch and navigationabout the topic and its subtopics.
Theyfind relevant content about the topic itself, and these pages aresomeofthe
most importantlanding pages from an organic search perspective.A topical hub, in
the case of a Q&A category and tagpage, should therefore evolve from being a
simple paginated list of questions. It should move frombeing a transition page
to becomea full"reference page".What are the elementsof a topical hub?A clear
description of whatthe topic the hub is about. It seems a bit "old-school" SEO,
but it reallyisn't. In Q&A sites, then, it has the particular function of
confirming forpeople that they havelanded onthe correct page, which is both good
for them and for those of us administering the Q&A. For instance, thecategory
labeled"Reporting" in the Moz Q&A is quite confusing, as many people refer to it
thinking abouttheir Moz Analytics reports (withessentially
support-relatedquestions), and not aboutreporting in thebroader sense.The list
of questions, with the visualization options you may desire to offer depending
on the priorities you have assigned to the Q&A itself;Contextual menu, in order
to create relations between sister categories;Tags menu, in order to create
relations with transversal topics (alsohelping facilitatethe crawling of
questions pertaining to separate categories);Contextual related content. In the
case of Moz, contextual content can be:
Related educational content fromMoz Academy;Relatedwebinars;Related posts or
post categoriesfromthe main blog andYouMoz.Moz should suggest the Link Building
Moz Academy videos in its Link Building category page in Q&A.Help your analysts,
empower your moderatorsAs we have seen, every Moz subscriber can include
aquestion in up to five categories. Even though this is great for the users,
from an analysis point of view it can make collecting insightsquite
difficult.For instance, when I was analyzing one year of Moz Q&As, it was very
hard to understand whichcategory toattributing the main value to,because the
largemajority of the questions had been associated withmore than one category
(many in all the five categories allowed).For this reason, apart fromcreating
atag system,it would be a wise idea toempower the moderators so that they can
eventually place a question in a better-suited category and/or eliminate a
question from an inappropriate or inconsistent category.(Re)discover the
importance of internal searchInternal search is thesecret feature that makes
sites with amassive amount of content stand out and be loved by their users.It's
obviouslynot the only one, but when we think ofsites like Amazon, Zillow,
Tripadvisor, or Yelp, we can easily understand how internal search plays a major
role in how a user of those sitesis satisfied.For that same reason, a
certainspecialization within SEO (onewhichis becoming more and more important)
is what can be defined as Vertical Search Engine Optimization, meaning
optimizing for the internal search algorithms of sites likethe ones I just
mentioned.A Q&A site's internal search, then, is essential for:Helping users
find questions for which they seek the answers; andLimiting the creation of
substantially duplicated content, with all theadministrative loss of time it
maycause.We should not forget, finally, how the analysis of internal searches
can help us re-discover a big percentage of the keywords Google hides behind the
(not provided) wall.If you have a small Q&A site, maybe the best solution is
torely on theCustom Search Engine offered by Google, which is alsorelatively
easy to connect to Google Analytics.But if you have a big Q&A site, then Google
CSE may be not enough. In that case, even if thereexist third-party commercial
solutions, creating a native internal search algorithm is the best choice.This
is the path Moz followed, but is its algorithm a good one? It is not bad, but it
could be improved.In fact, when we perform an internal search (try "how to use
hreflang?"), the internal SERP offered is not really the best one:The
first-ranking question is dated 2012; the second and fourth have responses, but
are still tagged as not answered. The best question is ranking third.Sure, Moz's
internal search allows us to refine our searches using advanced filters (for
instance, searching forquestions similar to ours in a determined category), but
still,that shouldbe an option, not a necessity.So, what should the ranking
factorsbein a vertical Q&A search algorithm like the oneMoz uses? Here aresome
suggestions:The presence ofkeywords in the question title;The presence of
keywords in the question body;The presence of keywords in the answers. For
instance, "hreflang" may not be present in the question itself, but may be
presentin one or more responses, which meansthe question can be relevant for the
user's query;The presence of one or more "Good Answers." Good Answers are those
that, in the Moz Q&A system, earn 3 or more thumbs up or are defined as such by
a Q&A moderator. Clearly, a question with one or more good answers deserves
bettervisibilityin an internal SERP;The presence of one or more "Staff
Endorsements." When an answer is particularly good, moderators may endorse it,
giving it a bigger value than simple answers or even"Good Answers." This should
be the equivalent of links in the case of Moz Q&A :-);Tbe freshness of the
question. The reason is obvious: Questions, especially in inbound marketing,
tend to become obsolete after a short time (but, remember,there are important
exceptions). Therefore, showing thequestions thatmatch all the previous factors
and thatare alsofresh as ranking firstshould be therule.Don't forget the
"suggested question" featureSomehow related to the internal search algorithm
issue, we can alsofindthe "suggested question" issue.This is something Quora was
quiteable to solve:When someone is writing a question, Quora interprets the
question they arewriting (not always very well, to be honest) and presents the
asker a list ofalready-answered questionsthat mightsolve the one they are
aboutto ask. If the questions presented are not satisfying the user, theycan
still proceed topost theirown question.This feature is very helpful, again, for
preventing theQ&A frombeing flooded with very similar questions, which is both
useless for the users and the Q&A site itself (not to mention that itcould be a
potentially substantialduplicate content generator).Pay attention to design
changesWhen I started analyzing the more than 20,000 questions users posted in
Moz'sQ&A between May 2013 and April 2014, the first thing I noticed was an
largedecline in the number ofquestions posted after May 2013.We must remember
that one year ago this site rebranded from SEOmoz to Moz.At first, then, I
thought that the fall in the Q&A postings was due to some SEO factors. But,
after sharing this insight and discussing itwith the Moz marketing team, I
focused on the re-design of the site as the potential reason for that drop.In
fact, if we lookhow theSEOmoz.org menu was, we will see that the Internal Q&A
link was easily reachable by the users from the main menu:In the Moz.com site,
the link to the Moz Q&A can be discovered and clicked only if we firstclickon
"Community," opening the community hub page, and thenclick on Q&A.Just moving
the internal link awayfrom the main menu may have caused the drop inposts.What's
in the second part of this post?This is the end of the fist part of this
"Auditing the Moz Q&A" mini-series.In the second part we will have a lot of fun,
because analyzing 20,000+ questions can really offer us a realistic portrait of
our industry's fears, hopes, and trends.I want to leave you with a teaser:The
Moz community has an obsession, and it's not cats, sex, or whatever: It's
Google.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/hfvjpCwvHN0/auditing-the-moz-qa-optimization-and-insights
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
and Insights'
Posted by gfiorelli1One month ago I had a crazy idea: analyzing one year of Moz
Q&As,andTrevor was even crazier accepting it.My original idea was both to
understand the most common issues the Moz Community discusses and asks for help
with, and also to understand how the trends in our industry are reflected in
Q&A.After the first few days of digging into the data, though, I started seeing
that there was a problem: a sub-optimal Q&A structure is preventing a truly
accurate analysis of the same.For this reason, this post has been conceived as a
two part series:Auditing a Q&A site/section;What insights can the analysis of
the Moz Q&A site/section offer?This first part goes beyond the simple analysis
of a community and, using the Moz Q&A section, takes into account and discusses
issues that are common to all Q&A sites.The second part will published within a
few weeks (I'm still "digesting" data and discovering great insights).Auditing a
Q&A site/sectionBefore people were sharing kittens and selfies on Facebook and
Instagram, "social" was a synonym of "forums" in Internet-speak.In forums,
people were (and still are) sharing knowledge, funny things, and questions.
Forums were the first collaborative space in the web, maybe the purest symbol of
the web philosophy. The forum's collaborative nature and crowdsourced knowledge
is so strong that upon reflection the success of social networks, which mimic
forums (Reddit is a clear example), must be essentially attributed to it.The
advantages and difficulties of a Q&A site/sectionQ&A sites are a specific
variant of the forum idea, and their model is quite simple: People ask and
answer questions about certain topics.From an SEO point of view a well executed
and maintained Q&A site/section has great positive effects:It may help your site
rank for long tails;It may help your site earn natural links;It may help your
site earn social visibility (hence second-tier links);It may help you discover
ideas for new content;It's a great source for content to repurpose into other
channels;The data you collect thanks to the Q&A may help you with other business
decisions; orIt may help you understand if a business decision was correct or
not.Its positive effects, then, have clear reflections on branding and thought
leadership.The simplest ideas, though, are usually the most complex to shape
into something real.The first difficulty is building a community that is able to
feed the Q&A in the first place.Even if I know people who could create hundreds
of fake accounts all asking and answering questions in order to show a lively
forum and thus attract new members, if you are creating a Q&A section as a
feature in your site, then it may be better to create it when you already have
even a small (but loyal) community.Here is not the place to discuss how to build
a community around your brand (check The Truly Monumental Guide to Building
Online Communities by Mack Web Solutions for more on that), but if you are
creating a Q&A section you must think at it as a product. Hence, first you must
conduct an audience analysis, define the personas that you want to target with
the Q&A, and from there, build the architecture of the section and shape its
voice.Moz doesn't have this problem, as it has one of biggest and more loyal
communities in its niche. Nevertheless, even if I am sure that Moz has portrayed
what kind of personas are using its Q&A well, I tend to believe that this
section of the Moz site has been designed more for marketers with at least a
minimum of experience in the use of forums than it was for marketing newbies.A
very brief history of theMoz Q&AThe Q&A section was created in 2007 as a a
Freemium feature. Only Pro subscribers could ask a limited number of questions
per month to SEOmoz, but everybody (if the question wasn't labeled as "private")
could read the Q&A.In 2012, Moz revamped the Q&A section, eliminating the
"private" questions and opening it to everybody, alsointroducinggamification
rules (the "500 thumbs up rule")which:From one side can help fighting forum
spam;Push people to be proactive onthe site and in theQ&A in order to fully
participate in the community.What didn't really change was the architecture of
the Q&A itself, which is partly still operating.From the image above, apart from
thefunny Roger image, we can see how the categories were very broad back in
2012. That gave way to the more detailed architecture we see today.First
commandment: Strive fora perfectQ&A IA and navigationChoosing a very broad
architecture, especially in Q&As and Forums, can be a great idea in order:To
avoid thin categories;To avoid "too many choices angst" (a syndrome caused also
by eCommercemega-menus).But it alsohas some risks, such as:Difficulties in
extracting unique valuable data;Too broad ofcategories may risk looking
verysimilar, especially to anon-expert audience (i.e.: "Technical SEO Issues"
and "On Page/Site Optimization").The two issues listed abovecan be enhanced,
then, by offering Q&A users the abilitytoenter their questions inup to a maximum
offive categories, also in different topicalareas.This freedom, however,
is:Making itdifficult to attribute a question to only one topic when it comes to
data analysis;Maybecontributing to the confusion the questionaskers may already
have.Hey Gianluca, weren't you saying Moz Q&A was broad? Here I see a complex
taxonomy!Yes! The Moz Q&A has evolved throughthe years for the better, and the
taxonomy used right now is very clear(check it out by trying to aska question),
but it stillhas issues, especiallyfrom a navigation point of view.For instance,
when we enter theQ&A home page we see by default the latest-submitted questions,
but if wewant to restrict our search, we may have a panic attack, because we can
choose between45 categories, and many appear to bevery similar.Too muchfreedom
is not freedom, therefore: When offering users navigation through a taxonomy, it
is always better tofunnel them from broad to a moredetailed offering, using both
contextual menus and away to go back in the architecture
navigation.Unfortunately, the Moz Q&A lacks both:Because the main categories of
the Q&A,i.e. "Moz Resources" or "Online Marketing," are virtual and not made
explicit with a real category page, thepossibility of creating contextual menus
is substantially hindered;Because theQ&A section doesn't include abreadcrumb
navigation (thelack of which is probablynot helping Googlebot in easily
understandingthe section's information architecture).Avoid confusion between
categories and tagsIn the recent past there was a sort of "anti-tags" crusade,
especially in the blogging world.Thiscan be attributed to the misuse of tagging,
which is usually considered to bea synonym of categorizing things, when the two
in reality have a very different nature:A category isthat ontology value that
include everything related to a specific topic. For instance, under the category
"Link Building" we can find questions about broken link building, guest
blogging, newssyndication, image link attribution et al;A tag is that
transversal taxonomy value that reunites under its label questions from
different categories, which share a same topic. For instance a tag
"infographics" could be attached to questions that have been listed in different
categories like Web Design, Technical SEO, Link Building and Content/Blogging.If
used well, then, tags can really improve the usability of a Q&A site:Helping the
askerspecifying even better the nature of its question;Help the Q&A community
members (and the casual visitors, who are not into the Q&A niche jargon)
infollowing onlythose specific topics about whichthey are interested.From an SEO
point of view, then, a wellthought-out tagging system (which includes both a
suggested tag engineand, ideally, a semantic tagging consolidation engine, and
takes into account the duplicated content issue) can help the Q&A site become
visible to an even greater set of queries, thanksespecially to thesemantic
topical nature of the Tags' pages.Use category pages as topical hubsWhen it
comes to category pages, Q&As (and Forums in general) may present us some ofthe
same uncertaintiesthat categories in classified adsor eCommerce sites present,
the main one beingrelated to the weight we want to give to category pagesin
relationto the pages of the questions themselves.In the case of Moz (just
speculating here,now) the doubt wascertainly greater, because theMoz Blog's
categories tend to overlap those of theQ&A section. This isimmediately
understandable if we look at the "link building" topic, which is both a Q&A and
a Blog category (also because the Q&A categorization was modeled afterthat
oftheBlog, which came first).In this case, Moz has decidedthat the blog isits
main content asset (and has been since the beginning), and therefore theblog
categories should have priority. Theyacted in order to have them ranking over
theQ&A's.And it did well.But we could choose to follow the opposite path, using
Q&A as themain content asset and, therefore, using its categories and
sub-categories pages as "topical hubs."The concept of the topical hub is
becoming more important every day, because of the evolution of Google itselfand
its shift to semantics and "understanding things" as opposed tosimply indexing
pages.A topical hub, to be clear, is a page where people interested in a topic
can start theirresearch and navigationabout the topic and its subtopics.
Theyfind relevant content about the topic itself, and these pages aresomeofthe
most importantlanding pages from an organic search perspective.A topical hub, in
the case of a Q&A category and tagpage, should therefore evolve from being a
simple paginated list of questions. It should move frombeing a transition page
to becomea full"reference page".What are the elementsof a topical hub?A clear
description of whatthe topic the hub is about. It seems a bit "old-school" SEO,
but it reallyisn't. In Q&A sites, then, it has the particular function of
confirming forpeople that they havelanded onthe correct page, which is both good
for them and for those of us administering the Q&A. For instance, thecategory
labeled"Reporting" in the Moz Q&A is quite confusing, as many people refer to it
thinking abouttheir Moz Analytics reports (withessentially
support-relatedquestions), and not aboutreporting in thebroader sense.The list
of questions, with the visualization options you may desire to offer depending
on the priorities you have assigned to the Q&A itself;Contextual menu, in order
to create relations between sister categories;Tags menu, in order to create
relations with transversal topics (alsohelping facilitatethe crawling of
questions pertaining to separate categories);Contextual related content. In the
case of Moz, contextual content can be:
Related educational content fromMoz Academy;Relatedwebinars;Related posts or
post categoriesfromthe main blog andYouMoz.Moz should suggest the Link Building
Moz Academy videos in its Link Building category page in Q&A.Help your analysts,
empower your moderatorsAs we have seen, every Moz subscriber can include
aquestion in up to five categories. Even though this is great for the users,
from an analysis point of view it can make collecting insightsquite
difficult.For instance, when I was analyzing one year of Moz Q&As, it was very
hard to understand whichcategory toattributing the main value to,because the
largemajority of the questions had been associated withmore than one category
(many in all the five categories allowed).For this reason, apart fromcreating
atag system,it would be a wise idea toempower the moderators so that they can
eventually place a question in a better-suited category and/or eliminate a
question from an inappropriate or inconsistent category.(Re)discover the
importance of internal searchInternal search is thesecret feature that makes
sites with amassive amount of content stand out and be loved by their users.It's
obviouslynot the only one, but when we think ofsites like Amazon, Zillow,
Tripadvisor, or Yelp, we can easily understand how internal search plays a major
role in how a user of those sitesis satisfied.For that same reason, a
certainspecialization within SEO (onewhichis becoming more and more important)
is what can be defined as Vertical Search Engine Optimization, meaning
optimizing for the internal search algorithms of sites likethe ones I just
mentioned.A Q&A site's internal search, then, is essential for:Helping users
find questions for which they seek the answers; andLimiting the creation of
substantially duplicated content, with all theadministrative loss of time it
maycause.We should not forget, finally, how the analysis of internal searches
can help us re-discover a big percentage of the keywords Google hides behind the
(not provided) wall.If you have a small Q&A site, maybe the best solution is
torely on theCustom Search Engine offered by Google, which is alsorelatively
easy to connect to Google Analytics.But if you have a big Q&A site, then Google
CSE may be not enough. In that case, even if thereexist third-party commercial
solutions, creating a native internal search algorithm is the best choice.This
is the path Moz followed, but is its algorithm a good one? It is not bad, but it
could be improved.In fact, when we perform an internal search (try "how to use
hreflang?"), the internal SERP offered is not really the best one:The
first-ranking question is dated 2012; the second and fourth have responses, but
are still tagged as not answered. The best question is ranking third.Sure, Moz's
internal search allows us to refine our searches using advanced filters (for
instance, searching forquestions similar to ours in a determined category), but
still,that shouldbe an option, not a necessity.So, what should the ranking
factorsbein a vertical Q&A search algorithm like the oneMoz uses? Here aresome
suggestions:The presence ofkeywords in the question title;The presence of
keywords in the question body;The presence of keywords in the answers. For
instance, "hreflang" may not be present in the question itself, but may be
presentin one or more responses, which meansthe question can be relevant for the
user's query;The presence of one or more "Good Answers." Good Answers are those
that, in the Moz Q&A system, earn 3 or more thumbs up or are defined as such by
a Q&A moderator. Clearly, a question with one or more good answers deserves
bettervisibilityin an internal SERP;The presence of one or more "Staff
Endorsements." When an answer is particularly good, moderators may endorse it,
giving it a bigger value than simple answers or even"Good Answers." This should
be the equivalent of links in the case of Moz Q&A :-);Tbe freshness of the
question. The reason is obvious: Questions, especially in inbound marketing,
tend to become obsolete after a short time (but, remember,there are important
exceptions). Therefore, showing thequestions thatmatch all the previous factors
and thatare alsofresh as ranking firstshould be therule.Don't forget the
"suggested question" featureSomehow related to the internal search algorithm
issue, we can alsofindthe "suggested question" issue.This is something Quora was
quiteable to solve:When someone is writing a question, Quora interprets the
question they arewriting (not always very well, to be honest) and presents the
asker a list ofalready-answered questionsthat mightsolve the one they are
aboutto ask. If the questions presented are not satisfying the user, theycan
still proceed topost theirown question.This feature is very helpful, again, for
preventing theQ&A frombeing flooded with very similar questions, which is both
useless for the users and the Q&A site itself (not to mention that itcould be a
potentially substantialduplicate content generator).Pay attention to design
changesWhen I started analyzing the more than 20,000 questions users posted in
Moz'sQ&A between May 2013 and April 2014, the first thing I noticed was an
largedecline in the number ofquestions posted after May 2013.We must remember
that one year ago this site rebranded from SEOmoz to Moz.At first, then, I
thought that the fall in the Q&A postings was due to some SEO factors. But,
after sharing this insight and discussing itwith the Moz marketing team, I
focused on the re-design of the site as the potential reason for that drop.In
fact, if we lookhow theSEOmoz.org menu was, we will see that the Internal Q&A
link was easily reachable by the users from the main menu:In the Moz.com site,
the link to the Moz Q&A can be discovered and clicked only if we firstclickon
"Community," opening the community hub page, and thenclick on Q&A.Just moving
the internal link awayfrom the main menu may have caused the drop inposts.What's
in the second part of this post?This is the end of the fist part of this
"Auditing the Moz Q&A" mini-series.In the second part we will have a lot of fun,
because analyzing 20,000+ questions can really offer us a realistic portrait of
our industry's fears, hopes, and trends.I want to leave you with a teaser:The
Moz community has an obsession, and it's not cats, sex, or whatever: It's
Google.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/hfvjpCwvHN0/auditing-the-moz-qa-optimization-and-insights
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, 12 May 2014
[Build Great Backlinks] TITLE
Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Bacon, Burritos, and the Future of
Marketing'
Posted by Hannah Smith
You heard it here first:Burritos are the new bacon.
Bacon is *so* last year.
Not so long ago if you wanted to create content to capture the hearts and minds
of the internet at large, bacon would be your topic of choice.
However, today, dear friends, you might be better off working burritos into
your content. We've seen runaway successes likeTiny Hamsters Eating Tiny
Burritos,Classic Love Scenes Improved by Burritos, and whenburritos are made
incorrectly (yes, apparently this happens) we see anoutpouring of rage likethis.
Dear reader, I amof course kidding.Sadly, the future of marketing is not
burritos.
In truth, dear reader, asmuch as I'd love to tell you the future of marketing
is as straight-forward as a particular foodstuff, I'd be doing us all a grave
disservice.
I got to thinking about this particular topic a few months ago when prepping
for SMX Munich. I've been working in this industry for about 7 years, which
makes me a comparative youngster, but nonetheless, during that time we've seen
huge changes.
Remember when keyword density was a thing?
You'd see these sites which huge, apparently empty footers. You'd hit ctrl+a to
reveal the densely packed keywords in text the same colour as the background.
Remember how strongly weighted anchor text was?
It was so strongly weighted, we were able to do stuff like this:
Over the years there have been many updates, andsome of the most interesting
include:2009: Vince saw big brands get a boost
2010: Caffeine saw a new web indexing system
2011: Panda saw a crackdown on "thin" content
2012: Venice saw localised results ranking for general or broad queries without
a geographic modifier
2012: Penguin saw a crackdown on low quality links
2013: Hummingbird saw a move from indexing to understanding
All of which means that, today, search queries which shouldn't work do in fact
work:
This is the sort of query my dear Mother has been typing into search engines
for years. Historically these sorts of queries simply didn't yield the results
she was looking for. Today, with increasing frequency, they do.
These sorts of developments are unquestionably good for users, however they may
not be quite so good for publishers who rely on ad revenue, and indeed for
brands.
A search like this will yield the result directly in the SERP;there's no need
to click through to a website. There are many other examples of this:
Try queries like "how many calories in an egg", or "how tall is Jason
Priestley".
But it's not just informational queries that have been affected by changes to
the SERPs. A search for "flights from London to Munich" sees the first organic
result pushed way below the fold:
It's fair to say that it's getting a lot tougher out there.But it's not just
search that's changing...
Wearable tech is causing a stir
Not too long ago, a woman named Sarah Slocum claimed to have beenattacked for
wearing GoogleGlass in a bar in San Francisco. There have been many conflicting
accounts of what actually happened that night, and I'm not in a position to
comment either way. However,what I think is interesting is the backlash which
has ensuedagainst this technology.
As a result, many establishments are banning customers from usingGoogleGlass in
their premises.
Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that GoogleGlass usagewon't ever
be accepted, but it's important to understand thatwhen humans and technology
collide, things get complicated.
Regardless of the future of GoogleGlass, device usage is changing
Mobile used to mean "away from your PC," but today, 77% of mobile searches are
completed in a location where a PC is available (source).
We alsomulti-screen:
57% of the time when we're using a smartphone we're also using another device
67% of the time when we're using a PC we're also using another device
75% of the time when we're using a tablet we're also using another device
77% of the time when we're watching TV we're also using another device
TV doesn't mean *on* a TV anymore
5% of homes in the US don't have a TV, and thiszero-TV group is growing. The US
had more than 5million zero-TV households in 2013, up from 2million in 2007. But
that doesn't mean they're not watching TV: 67% justget their TV content on other
devices.
Why?
Traditional TV scheduling limits people who don't want limits. They want to
watch TV whenever and wherever it suits them.
This means TV advertising is also changing
As audiences continue to fragment, thereach of TV advertisements is becoming a
problem. Many are simply switching and showing their ads online;YouTube ads, for
example, are becoming more prevalent. However, I think this fails to take into
account the difference in consumers' mindsets.
Now I don't love watching ads on TV, but I'm reasonably comfortable with it.
Most of the time when I'm watching TV I'll put up with the ads because I figure
that the ads are the price I pay for watching the shows I want to watch.
However, when a friend sends me a link to a YouTube video, at the point at
which the pre-roll ad starts playing I don't know for sure this is a video I
*really* want to watch. As such the pre-roll ad maddens me. Many others also
feel the same. I sit, primed to skip the ad as those 5 seconds crawl by.
Right now, advertisers have failed to take into account these different modes
of human behaviour. Pre-roll ads on YouTube are not the same as ad on TV. We
react differently to them. I think in the future pre-roll ads either need to
change, or they won't survive.
It's not just TV; the way we consume *all* content is changing
Mitchell Kapour once said "Getting information off the internet is like taking
a drink from a fire hydrant."
To combat this issue we all uses filters (to some degree) to get our content.
We may filter by publisher, i.e. we'll only consume content from certain sites
(as opposed to trying to consume *all* the content). Or we'll have trusted
curators feed us content (this is what's often happening on Twitter; you'll read
the content the people you follow and trust recommend).
However, our technology also protects us from unwanted content:
The algorithm which determines what appears in your Facebook feed is based on
your previous interactions. As such you'll see more content from those friends
who's updates you like and comment on than those you never interact with.
Similarly, if you've previously "liked" a brand page on Facebook, but then
never interact with any of their content in your feed, you'll stop seeing that
content.
But it gets worse. Ogilvy predictsorganic Facebook reach is destined to hit
zero.
It's not just Facebook, since Gmail launched the tabbed inbox,
unsurprisingly,open rates are down.
Permission marketing may no longer be enough
All of this leads me to believe that permission marketing may no longer be
enough. All of those permission assets we spent years buildingemail lists,
active Facebook pages, etc.are likely to become less and less effective in terms
of reach.
Wait, what are you saying here?
Don't panic. I've not tricked you into reading yet another "[insert your
marketing tactic of choice] is dead" post. But things are changing, and they're
changing rapidly.Current trends
Here are some trends which I think are interesting:
Real-time
Remember this?
Power out? No problem.
pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC
Oreo Cookie (@Oreo)
February 4, 2013
In thewrite-ups we sawhyperbole abound:
"The message was retweeted and 'liked' abajillion times" ~ Brad Tuttle,
Time
Really?
Close to 16,000 retweets = a bajillion?
The real success was around the amount of press attention this received. In
real terms the tweet itself was not that successful.
Nevertheless it's an interesting trend because it appear lightning doesn't just
strike twice - it strikes over and over again:
Hey
@Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs
Arby's (@Arbys)
January 27, 2014
And as if we could forget:
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever.
#oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow)
March 3, 2014
Online-first content
Many of the mostsuccessful pieces of content we've seen online actually existed
offline first. So we've seen many examples of ads created for TV do well online;
examples includeOld Spice, andEvian Rollerbabies. But I think we're seeing an
interesting trend toward content that was created specifically for an online
audience.
Dear reader, allow me to introduce you to the only pre-roll ad I've ever
elected not to skip.
Now clearly, I can't get it to run like a pre-roll, but you can do this for
yourself.
Click play, then position your mouse over the pause button.
Watch for five seconds.
Let me know if this piqued your interest sufficiently that you wanted to watch
the whole thing
I've also been enjoying what some brands are doing with Vine, check out:Lowes,
this gem fromTarget andGeneral Electric's 6 Second Science Fair.
We're also seeing a wave of films that don't feel like commercials:
Perhaps the most interesting trend:brands with values
By values, I mean brands that stand for something.
Moz hasTAGFEE, Innocent talks a lot aboutbeing sustainable, Patagonia talks
aboutenvironmentalism.Nike has this:
When you stand for something like that, you get tocreate thingslike this:
There's also evidence to suggest that standing for something can translate into
real business benefits.
Brands which are "meaningful" outperform the stock market by 120%.So what does
the future hold?
I wanted to round this up by making some predictions. Some are "safe," some are
less so. But where's the fun in telling you stuff you already knew?"Safe"
predictionsWe'll see more devices being adopted which will lead to more
technical challenges as we'll need to ensure everything we create worksacross
these devices.
We'll be under even more pressure to measure everything more accurately. We'll
need to track people, not sessions and figure out multi-channel attribution
properly.
We'll be even less reliant on organic search than we are today. Being overly
reliant on one channel is too risky.A"less-safe" PredictionThere will be a
deluge of content. But no content fatigue. Filters will become so sophisticated
that people just won't see it.Somewhat "out there" prediction:
Only brands that stand for something will survive.
In Europe and the US people wouldn't care if 92% of brands disappeared
(source).
In search we're perhaps more keenly aware of this than other marketers.We've
seen many affiliates fall thanks to changes in the algorithm, never to return.
Only the affiliates that were alsorecognisable brands survived.
Why?
Well people would think that Google was "broken" if major brands didn't show up
for relevant queries; that's why major brands make it back into the index fairly
quickly, even if they don't play by Google's rules.
But it goes deeper than that. Consumers are more savvy today than they once
were. If they actively dislike a brand, or what they stand for, they have the
tools at their disposal to easily go elsewhere. If your brand doesn't stand for
something, or people don't like what it stands for they are easily able to find
alternatives. Technology has empowered people in ways previously unimaginable.
But being 'big' isn't enough. If you want to ensure your brand retains
visibility in the future I think the only way will be to ensure people love your
brand enough to search for you by name.
Contrast these two searches:
The search for "BBC weather" doesn't yield a summary of the weather direct in
the SERP. Instead, BBC weather, quite rightly, ranks first.
Now of course there are no guarantees for the future, but I'd suggest that a
branded search is unlikely to yield a result where said brand is pushed below a
Google property.
Only time will tell.
When we think about the future of marketing its easy to slip into the trap of
thinking purely about technological challenges. However, the truth is that
marketing isnt changing
because of technology. Marketing is changing because consumers expectations are
evolving.
Consumers expect brands to deliver a seamless experience, regardless of their
location or the device they're using.
When they speak, they expect brands to respond.
They aren't interested in your self-serving messaging, oryour attempts to be
'down with the kids', but they'll happily be entertained.
Most of all you need them to love your brand and love your marketing. So much
so, that they'll actively seek it our for themselves and share it with their
friends.
I believe that as an industry we will evolve.
I've only been in the industry for 7 years,many of you have been doing this for
much longer than me and I *know* how adaptable you are.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the future, and your thoughts on my
predictions.
For those who are interested, you can view my full SMX deck below:
Humans, Technology & The Future of Marketing - SMX Munich 2014 from Hannah
Smith
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/LhkTl1ShW7k/thoughts-on-the-future-of-marketing
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
Marketing'
Posted by Hannah Smith
You heard it here first:Burritos are the new bacon.
Bacon is *so* last year.
Not so long ago if you wanted to create content to capture the hearts and minds
of the internet at large, bacon would be your topic of choice.
However, today, dear friends, you might be better off working burritos into
your content. We've seen runaway successes likeTiny Hamsters Eating Tiny
Burritos,Classic Love Scenes Improved by Burritos, and whenburritos are made
incorrectly (yes, apparently this happens) we see anoutpouring of rage likethis.
Dear reader, I amof course kidding.Sadly, the future of marketing is not
burritos.
In truth, dear reader, asmuch as I'd love to tell you the future of marketing
is as straight-forward as a particular foodstuff, I'd be doing us all a grave
disservice.
I got to thinking about this particular topic a few months ago when prepping
for SMX Munich. I've been working in this industry for about 7 years, which
makes me a comparative youngster, but nonetheless, during that time we've seen
huge changes.
Remember when keyword density was a thing?
You'd see these sites which huge, apparently empty footers. You'd hit ctrl+a to
reveal the densely packed keywords in text the same colour as the background.
Remember how strongly weighted anchor text was?
It was so strongly weighted, we were able to do stuff like this:
Over the years there have been many updates, andsome of the most interesting
include:2009: Vince saw big brands get a boost
2010: Caffeine saw a new web indexing system
2011: Panda saw a crackdown on "thin" content
2012: Venice saw localised results ranking for general or broad queries without
a geographic modifier
2012: Penguin saw a crackdown on low quality links
2013: Hummingbird saw a move from indexing to understanding
All of which means that, today, search queries which shouldn't work do in fact
work:
This is the sort of query my dear Mother has been typing into search engines
for years. Historically these sorts of queries simply didn't yield the results
she was looking for. Today, with increasing frequency, they do.
These sorts of developments are unquestionably good for users, however they may
not be quite so good for publishers who rely on ad revenue, and indeed for
brands.
A search like this will yield the result directly in the SERP;there's no need
to click through to a website. There are many other examples of this:
Try queries like "how many calories in an egg", or "how tall is Jason
Priestley".
But it's not just informational queries that have been affected by changes to
the SERPs. A search for "flights from London to Munich" sees the first organic
result pushed way below the fold:
It's fair to say that it's getting a lot tougher out there.But it's not just
search that's changing...
Wearable tech is causing a stir
Not too long ago, a woman named Sarah Slocum claimed to have beenattacked for
wearing GoogleGlass in a bar in San Francisco. There have been many conflicting
accounts of what actually happened that night, and I'm not in a position to
comment either way. However,what I think is interesting is the backlash which
has ensuedagainst this technology.
As a result, many establishments are banning customers from usingGoogleGlass in
their premises.
Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that GoogleGlass usagewon't ever
be accepted, but it's important to understand thatwhen humans and technology
collide, things get complicated.
Regardless of the future of GoogleGlass, device usage is changing
Mobile used to mean "away from your PC," but today, 77% of mobile searches are
completed in a location where a PC is available (source).
We alsomulti-screen:
57% of the time when we're using a smartphone we're also using another device
67% of the time when we're using a PC we're also using another device
75% of the time when we're using a tablet we're also using another device
77% of the time when we're watching TV we're also using another device
TV doesn't mean *on* a TV anymore
5% of homes in the US don't have a TV, and thiszero-TV group is growing. The US
had more than 5million zero-TV households in 2013, up from 2million in 2007. But
that doesn't mean they're not watching TV: 67% justget their TV content on other
devices.
Why?
Traditional TV scheduling limits people who don't want limits. They want to
watch TV whenever and wherever it suits them.
This means TV advertising is also changing
As audiences continue to fragment, thereach of TV advertisements is becoming a
problem. Many are simply switching and showing their ads online;YouTube ads, for
example, are becoming more prevalent. However, I think this fails to take into
account the difference in consumers' mindsets.
Now I don't love watching ads on TV, but I'm reasonably comfortable with it.
Most of the time when I'm watching TV I'll put up with the ads because I figure
that the ads are the price I pay for watching the shows I want to watch.
However, when a friend sends me a link to a YouTube video, at the point at
which the pre-roll ad starts playing I don't know for sure this is a video I
*really* want to watch. As such the pre-roll ad maddens me. Many others also
feel the same. I sit, primed to skip the ad as those 5 seconds crawl by.
Right now, advertisers have failed to take into account these different modes
of human behaviour. Pre-roll ads on YouTube are not the same as ad on TV. We
react differently to them. I think in the future pre-roll ads either need to
change, or they won't survive.
It's not just TV; the way we consume *all* content is changing
Mitchell Kapour once said "Getting information off the internet is like taking
a drink from a fire hydrant."
To combat this issue we all uses filters (to some degree) to get our content.
We may filter by publisher, i.e. we'll only consume content from certain sites
(as opposed to trying to consume *all* the content). Or we'll have trusted
curators feed us content (this is what's often happening on Twitter; you'll read
the content the people you follow and trust recommend).
However, our technology also protects us from unwanted content:
The algorithm which determines what appears in your Facebook feed is based on
your previous interactions. As such you'll see more content from those friends
who's updates you like and comment on than those you never interact with.
Similarly, if you've previously "liked" a brand page on Facebook, but then
never interact with any of their content in your feed, you'll stop seeing that
content.
But it gets worse. Ogilvy predictsorganic Facebook reach is destined to hit
zero.
It's not just Facebook, since Gmail launched the tabbed inbox,
unsurprisingly,open rates are down.
Permission marketing may no longer be enough
All of this leads me to believe that permission marketing may no longer be
enough. All of those permission assets we spent years buildingemail lists,
active Facebook pages, etc.are likely to become less and less effective in terms
of reach.
Wait, what are you saying here?
Don't panic. I've not tricked you into reading yet another "[insert your
marketing tactic of choice] is dead" post. But things are changing, and they're
changing rapidly.Current trends
Here are some trends which I think are interesting:
Real-time
Remember this?
Power out? No problem.
pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC
Oreo Cookie (@Oreo)
February 4, 2013
In thewrite-ups we sawhyperbole abound:
"The message was retweeted and 'liked' abajillion times" ~ Brad Tuttle,
Time
Really?
Close to 16,000 retweets = a bajillion?
The real success was around the amount of press attention this received. In
real terms the tweet itself was not that successful.
Nevertheless it's an interesting trend because it appear lightning doesn't just
strike twice - it strikes over and over again:
Hey
@Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs
Arby's (@Arbys)
January 27, 2014
And as if we could forget:
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever.
#oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow)
March 3, 2014
Online-first content
Many of the mostsuccessful pieces of content we've seen online actually existed
offline first. So we've seen many examples of ads created for TV do well online;
examples includeOld Spice, andEvian Rollerbabies. But I think we're seeing an
interesting trend toward content that was created specifically for an online
audience.
Dear reader, allow me to introduce you to the only pre-roll ad I've ever
elected not to skip.
Now clearly, I can't get it to run like a pre-roll, but you can do this for
yourself.
Click play, then position your mouse over the pause button.
Watch for five seconds.
Let me know if this piqued your interest sufficiently that you wanted to watch
the whole thing
I've also been enjoying what some brands are doing with Vine, check out:Lowes,
this gem fromTarget andGeneral Electric's 6 Second Science Fair.
We're also seeing a wave of films that don't feel like commercials:
Perhaps the most interesting trend:brands with values
By values, I mean brands that stand for something.
Moz hasTAGFEE, Innocent talks a lot aboutbeing sustainable, Patagonia talks
aboutenvironmentalism.Nike has this:
When you stand for something like that, you get tocreate thingslike this:
There's also evidence to suggest that standing for something can translate into
real business benefits.
Brands which are "meaningful" outperform the stock market by 120%.So what does
the future hold?
I wanted to round this up by making some predictions. Some are "safe," some are
less so. But where's the fun in telling you stuff you already knew?"Safe"
predictionsWe'll see more devices being adopted which will lead to more
technical challenges as we'll need to ensure everything we create worksacross
these devices.
We'll be under even more pressure to measure everything more accurately. We'll
need to track people, not sessions and figure out multi-channel attribution
properly.
We'll be even less reliant on organic search than we are today. Being overly
reliant on one channel is too risky.A"less-safe" PredictionThere will be a
deluge of content. But no content fatigue. Filters will become so sophisticated
that people just won't see it.Somewhat "out there" prediction:
Only brands that stand for something will survive.
In Europe and the US people wouldn't care if 92% of brands disappeared
(source).
In search we're perhaps more keenly aware of this than other marketers.We've
seen many affiliates fall thanks to changes in the algorithm, never to return.
Only the affiliates that were alsorecognisable brands survived.
Why?
Well people would think that Google was "broken" if major brands didn't show up
for relevant queries; that's why major brands make it back into the index fairly
quickly, even if they don't play by Google's rules.
But it goes deeper than that. Consumers are more savvy today than they once
were. If they actively dislike a brand, or what they stand for, they have the
tools at their disposal to easily go elsewhere. If your brand doesn't stand for
something, or people don't like what it stands for they are easily able to find
alternatives. Technology has empowered people in ways previously unimaginable.
But being 'big' isn't enough. If you want to ensure your brand retains
visibility in the future I think the only way will be to ensure people love your
brand enough to search for you by name.
Contrast these two searches:
The search for "BBC weather" doesn't yield a summary of the weather direct in
the SERP. Instead, BBC weather, quite rightly, ranks first.
Now of course there are no guarantees for the future, but I'd suggest that a
branded search is unlikely to yield a result where said brand is pushed below a
Google property.
Only time will tell.
When we think about the future of marketing its easy to slip into the trap of
thinking purely about technological challenges. However, the truth is that
marketing isnt changing
because of technology. Marketing is changing because consumers expectations are
evolving.
Consumers expect brands to deliver a seamless experience, regardless of their
location or the device they're using.
When they speak, they expect brands to respond.
They aren't interested in your self-serving messaging, oryour attempts to be
'down with the kids', but they'll happily be entertained.
Most of all you need them to love your brand and love your marketing. So much
so, that they'll actively seek it our for themselves and share it with their
friends.
I believe that as an industry we will evolve.
I've only been in the industry for 7 years,many of you have been doing this for
much longer than me and I *know* how adaptable you are.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the future, and your thoughts on my
predictions.
For those who are interested, you can view my full SMX deck below:
Humans, Technology & The Future of Marketing - SMX Munich 2014 from Hannah
Smith
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/LhkTl1ShW7k/thoughts-on-the-future-of-marketing
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
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