#Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow
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Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow
We love collaborating with bloggers and today we’re pleased to be able to share this guest post with you from Ivan Siladji. Ivan’s a dad and a blogger and he’s sharing his tips for keeping up with content creation. Enjoy!
Let’s be real for just a minute. For most of us, this whole blogging thing is a part time gig. Some people never want to take their writing full-time, you know, the making a living from it kind of full time. For many, blogging is a way to journal their life – and it’s a great way of doing that. Kudos.
For others, myself taken, the blogging journey we are all on is one that will one day provide for financially, and then some.
The bridge between hobby content creation, being part time and then ultimately full time is a long journey that best be enjoyed with long nights, sore typing thumbs and a glass of wine. It all gets interesting when you couple all of this with a full-time job, being a dad to two kids under six, married life, family life, taking time for health and all the other things this wonderful thing called life may throw at you.
Content Creation – Why Create?
Legacy. That’s it for me. For you that might be different, and probably will. My mission is to interact with as many people as I can while I’m here and in some way, shape or form, leave a lasting impact, big or small, trivial or profound. Content creation and the internet is the easiest and most direct way of doing that. It’s also the most competitive. And if I can support my lifestyle while doing all of this it just seems like a no-brainer. Of course, there is always a catch. I’ll give you a hint – it starts with “W”.
So Where Do You Fit In?
My perspective starts with me standing all alone, on that bridge, this little guy from the big city of Sydney, Australia — long way from home, I know. I’m currently walking that line between hobby content creator and part time blogger. Sure, I hope to take this thing full time but the biggest thing I’ve learned in the last four years would have to be patience.
I currently create content around three main pillars – written in the form of my blog or other articles, such as this that you’re reading now. Second is video content and that’s where my YouTube channel comes in. There I document my journey and life in the form of vlogging and create other short form videos for my community. Then there is the third pillar – the audio component. Think of podcasting for example. In my case, this is my anchor station where I aim to put out daily “plogging” content – think of vlogging or blogging but in podcast form. Then there is the plethora of micro content that strings all of this together – Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. All of which in their own right are quickly becoming, if not already, pillar content platforms.
I took the route of these three main pillars because they integrate well. I can write a piece of content in blog form and then speak about it in audio form, opening up further conversation and bringing to life the voice behind the written post, and vice versa. YouTube vlogging allows me to take my community along for the journey and pull together a video that visually tells the story I am trying to convey in otherwise written form. And in all honestly, humans are very visual creatures. Personally, I’m always painting the picture in my mind of what a writer looks like behind a post – video is perfect to share what that looks like with your own community, especially if you’re comfortable to do that sort of thing.
How Do You Keep Up?
Before you think about how you are going to go about all of this it’s important to accept the fact that it will involve a great deal of work, which, if you’re passionate about all of this content creation stuff, shouldn’t be a problem, most of the time. If you don’t have kids you’re ahead of the game for time as evening, night and early morning hours are still your own. If kids have somehow made their way into your lives you’re in for a journey of time management. Don’t worry, it can be done, you just have to manage a few extra things.
Now that you’ve accepted the fact that work will be involved, it’s important that you get clear about what it is you are trying to do. Get clear about the pillar content forms you want to pursue. Don’t focus so much on the social platform or you will be hedging your content on the success of the platform and any algorithms they throw your way. Rather, focus on the content types. For instance, when I say I vlog for YouTube I also have these vlogs as video posts on my public Facebook page – Facebook is really upping their attention on video content so engagement for that type of content is usually higher and Facebook gives it some preference in their feeds.
From here it’s all about when. This is where the ‘keeping up’ part comes into play. I’ll make it easy for you from the get-go. You won’t always keep up. Accept that. As you make progress and get better at your craft you inherently get busier. Opportunities come more often which means you’re writing more frequently than you otherwise anticipated and with that comes an increase in your content distribution efforts. You spend more time engaging with your readers, viewers and/or listeners and building a community — personally, that’s the best part and it’s a lot of fun.
Tools Of The Trade
Like any job, you need specific tools to get you through specific tasks. Personally, I use a number of tools to make the process of content creation all that bit easier. These include (and are free without taking any upgrade options);
Evernote – I use Evernote to create written content for platforms outside of my own blog, for example, contributor pieces. If I’m writing directly for my own blog I write directly within WordPress, my sites hosting platform. The text editor there is more than ample for how I like to write so I keep within that. However, when it comes to writing for someone else, jotting down notes or getting an audio note in, especially while out-and-about, I don’t go past Evernote.
Pages – I manage my facebook page through the native pages app by Facebook. It gives better reporting and power over your page. I’ve used this for years so I’m not sure if it’s normal practice now but if it’s not and you’re still managing your page within Facebook itself, try the pages app.
Canva – I’ve recently signed up with Canva (oh Canva, where have tho’ been). In a nutshell, Canva makes creating anything visual so much easier. They have all the templates you need for all the major platforms. I use this via google chrome as an in browser app as well as on my iPhone when not at my desktop.
Asana – Need a task and project management tool? Asana is your new best friend. This cloud based app on desktop and mobile is powerful, visually appealing and makes setting up tasks and projects much easier. After you play around with this app and get your bearings around it you’ll never look back. You can organise your tasks by project and assign sub-tasks. And if you have a team it gets even better as you can assign tasks to your team and open workflows between members.
Bit.ly – Bit.ly is my go-to link shortening app. I like this as it allows me to track click throughs from social platforms and other parts of the interweb so I know in more detail who is getting exposed to my content and from where.
WordPress – I natively create most of my blog content within the mobile version of WordPress. Because most content today is consumed within a mobile device I figured it made sense to create the content within one. This allows me to see what my posts will look like on mobile which gives me a chance to iron out most blogging layout bugs before I hit publish.
iPhone / DSLR / External Microphone / Tripod – I’m an Apple guy but if you’re an Android user all of what I’ve written here will still work. I record 95% of my video content on my iPhone and subsequently do 80% of my video editing within the device as well. Sometimes I go to desktop but it’s usually much easier and quicker to do it right from my device. Point is – you don’t need to get fancy. Although I use Adobe software for higher end video and photography work, apple iMovie is more than capable of getting you started. I also carry in my kit a DSLR (although I’m using it much less these days), an external microphone for audio content such as that which I put out on Anchor when I’m in the office as well as a tripod to hold my iPhone or DSLR when shooting video. Take home message is you can do most of your content creation using nothing else than your smartphone and any excuse otherwise is exactly that – an excuse.
I’m Still Hearing You In The Background…
I’m well aware some of you are still saying – good for you but I just don’t have the time. Respect. I get it. But I don’t buy it from most of you. I truly would love to see you win at this. Even before I do. The journey is long, so engage in a little patience, sprinkle on some consistency (the hardest part) and take small steps to climb big mountains. Utilise tivo to record your favourite show for later or skip it all together. If you’re naturally a night person – go to bed an hour or two later. Morning person? Wake up an hour or two earlier. Catching a train? Write a post. Waiting in queue for a latte? Engage on Twitter. Taking an Uber? Record a podcast. Out and about? Record a vlog. It just comes down to work.
Given this post threw a lot at you, I truly hope it’s given you a little more edge. I love creating content, particularly that in written form. Being part of an online community has introduced me to more people than I ever thought I’d get to know and it’s been a hell-of-a journey. Be open to patience, and be willing to travel the blogging journey long term – results come not over night but rather after many keystrokes. Most of all – enjoy the journey. I am.
About Ivan
Sydney, Australia. That’s where I’m from. It’s a big place. Me – I’m a little smaller. I’m a normal dad, of two wonderful children, a boy and a girl. I’m married to one amazingly attractive woman who’s patience for being swamped by my intensity is admirable.
I blog. It is a means for me to let out my creative juices all the while working in a crazy job and raising a family. It’s a place to share my opinions, albeit sometimes controversial, share lessons I have learned that might be of use and hopefully bring some joy to someone’s life. Some of the experiences I draw lessons from are my work as a scientist and manager of people, parenting, business, lessons from blogging, family and of course a general interest in things like the outdoors, lifestyle and self-awareness.
For me, the best part of writing is connecting with you, the reader, and each time I do I’m forever grateful for the new friendships that are formed.
If you like this post I’d love to connect with you more. You can reach me by email, visit my blog or catch me on Facebook most days of the week.
The post Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow appeared first on NC Blogger Network.
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Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow
We love collaborating with bloggers and today we’re pleased to be able to share this guest post with you from Ivan Siladji. Ivan’s a dad and a blogger and he’s sharing his tips for keeping up with content creation. Enjoy!
Let’s be real for just a minute. For most of us, this whole blogging thing is a part time gig. Some people never want to take their writing full-time, you know, the making a living from it kind of full time. For many, blogging is a way to journal their life – and it’s a great way of doing that. Kudos.
For others, myself taken, the blogging journey we are all on is one that will one day provide for financially, and then some.
The bridge between hobby content creation, being part time and then ultimately full time is a long journey that best be enjoyed with long nights, sore typing thumbs and a glass of wine. It all gets interesting when you couple all of this with a full-time job, being a dad to two kids under six, married life, family life, taking time for health and all the other things this wonderful thing called life may throw at you.
Content Creation – Why Create?
Legacy. That’s it for me. For you that might be different, and probably will. My mission is to interact with as many people as I can while I’m here and in some way, shape or form, leave a lasting impact, big or small, trivial or profound. Content creation and the internet is the easiest and most direct way of doing that. It’s also the most competitive. And if I can support my lifestyle while doing all of this it just seems like a no-brainer. Of course, there is always a catch. I’ll give you a hint – it starts with “W”.
So Where Do You Fit In?
My perspective starts with me standing all alone, on that bridge, this little guy from the big city of Sydney, Australia — long way from home, I know. I’m currently walking that line between hobby content creator and part time blogger. Sure, I hope to take this thing full time but the biggest thing I’ve learned in the last four years would have to be patience.
I currently create content around three main pillars – written in the form of my blog or other articles, such as this that you’re reading now. Second is video content and that’s where my YouTube channel comes in. There I document my journey and life in the form of vlogging and create other short form videos for my community. Then there is the third pillar – the audio component. Think of podcasting for example. In my case, this is my anchor station where I aim to put out daily “plogging” content – think of vlogging or blogging but in podcast form. Then there is the plethora of micro content that strings all of this together – Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. All of which in their own right are quickly becoming, if not already, pillar content platforms.
I took the route of these three main pillars because they integrate well. I can write a piece of content in blog form and then speak about it in audio form, opening up further conversation and bringing to life the voice behind the written post, and vice versa. YouTube vlogging allows me to take my community along for the journey and pull together a video that visually tells the story I am trying to convey in otherwise written form. And in all honestly, humans are very visual creatures. Personally, I’m always painting the picture in my mind of what a writer looks like behind a post – video is perfect to share what that looks like with your own community, especially if you’re comfortable to do that sort of thing.
How Do You Keep Up?
Before you think about how you are going to go about all of this it’s important to accept the fact that it will involve a great deal of work, which, if you’re passionate about all of this content creation stuff, shouldn’t be a problem, most of the time. If you don’t have kids you’re ahead of the game for time as evening, night and early morning hours are still your own. If kids have somehow made their way into your lives you’re in for a journey of time management. Don’t worry, it can be done, you just have to manage a few extra things.
Now that you’ve accepted the fact that work will be involved, it’s important that you get clear about what it is you are trying to do. Get clear about the pillar content forms you want to pursue. Don’t focus so much on the social platform or you will be hedging your content on the success of the platform and any algorithms they throw your way. Rather, focus on the content types. For instance, when I say I vlog for YouTube I also have these vlogs as video posts on my public Facebook page – Facebook is really upping their attention on video content so engagement for that type of content is usually higher and Facebook gives it some preference in their feeds.
From here it’s all about when. This is where the ‘keeping up’ part comes into play. I’ll make it easy for you from the get-go. You won’t always keep up. Accept that. As you make progress and get better at your craft you inherently get busier. Opportunities come more often which means you’re writing more frequently than you otherwise anticipated and with that comes an increase in your content distribution efforts. You spend more time engaging with your readers, viewers and/or listeners and building a community — personally, that’s the best part and it’s a lot of fun.
Tools Of The Trade
Like any job, you need specific tools to get you through specific tasks. Personally, I use a number of tools to make the process of content creation all that bit easier. These include (and are free without taking any upgrade options);
Evernote – I use Evernote to create written content for platforms outside of my own blog, for example, contributor pieces. If I’m writing directly for my own blog I write directly within WordPress, my sites hosting platform. The text editor there is more than ample for how I like to write so I keep within that. However, when it comes to writing for someone else, jotting down notes or getting an audio note in, especially while out-and-about, I don’t go past Evernote.
Pages – I manage my facebook page through the native pages app by Facebook. It gives better reporting and power over your page. I’ve used this for years so I’m not sure if it’s normal practice now but if it’s not and you’re still managing your page within Facebook itself, try the pages app.
Canva – I’ve recently signed up with Canva (oh Canva, where have tho’ been). In a nutshell, Canva makes creating anything visual so much easier. They have all the templates you need for all the major platforms. I use this via google chrome as an in browser app as well as on my iPhone when not at my desktop.
Asana – Need a task and project management tool? Asana is your new best friend. This cloud based app on desktop and mobile is powerful, visually appealing and makes setting up tasks and projects much easier. After you play around with this app and get your bearings around it you’ll never look back. You can organise your tasks by project and assign sub-tasks. And if you have a team it gets even better as you can assign tasks to your team and open workflows between members.
Bit.ly – Bit.ly is my go-to link shortening app. I like this as it allows me to track click throughs from social platforms and other parts of the interweb so I know in more detail who is getting exposed to my content and from where.
WordPress – I natively create most of my blog content within the mobile version of WordPress. Because most content today is consumed within a mobile device I figured it made sense to create the content within one. This allows me to see what my posts will look like on mobile which gives me a chance to iron out most blogging layout bugs before I hit publish.
iPhone / DSLR / External Microphone / Tripod – I’m an Apple guy but if you’re an Android user all of what I’ve written here will still work. I record 95% of my video content on my iPhone and subsequently do 80% of my video editing within the device as well. Sometimes I go to desktop but it’s usually much easier and quicker to do it right from my device. Point is – you don’t need to get fancy. Although I use Adobe software for higher end video and photography work, apple iMovie is more than capable of getting you started. I also carry in my kit a DSLR (although I’m using it much less these days), an external microphone for audio content such as that which I put out on Anchor when I’m in the office as well as a tripod to hold my iPhone or DSLR when shooting video. Take home message is you can do most of your content creation using nothing else than your smartphone and any excuse otherwise is exactly that – an excuse.
I’m Still Hearing You In The Background…
I’m well aware some of you are still saying – good for you but I just don’t have the time. Respect. I get it. But I don’t buy it from most of you. I truly would love to see you win at this. Even before I do. The journey is long, so engage in a little patience, sprinkle on some consistency (the hardest part) and take small steps to climb big mountains. Utilise tivo to record your favourite show for later or skip it all together. If you’re naturally a night person – go to bed an hour or two later. Morning person? Wake up an hour or two earlier. Catching a train? Write a post. Waiting in queue for a latte? Engage on Twitter. Taking an Uber? Record a podcast. Out and about? Record a vlog. It just comes down to work.
Given this post threw a lot at you, I truly hope it’s given you a little more edge. I love creating content, particularly that in written form. Being part of an online community has introduced me to more people than I ever thought I’d get to know and it’s been a hell-of-a journey. Be open to patience, and be willing to travel the blogging journey long term – results come not over night but rather after many keystrokes. Most of all – enjoy the journey. I am.
About Ivan
Sydney, Australia. That’s where I’m from. It’s a big place. Me – I’m a little smaller. I’m a normal dad, of two wonderful children, a boy and a girl. I’m married to one amazingly attractive woman who’s patience for being swamped by my intensity is admirable.
I blog. It is a means for me to let out my creative juices all the while working in a crazy job and raising a family. It’s a place to share my opinions, albeit sometimes controversial, share lessons I have learned that might be of use and hopefully bring some joy to someone’s life. Some of the experiences I draw lessons from are my work as a scientist and manager of people, parenting, business, lessons from blogging, family and of course a general interest in things like the outdoors, lifestyle and self-awareness.
For me, the best part of writing is connecting with you, the reader, and each time I do I’m forever grateful for the new friendships that are formed.
If you like this post I’d love to connect with you more. You can reach me by email, visit my blog or catch me on Facebook most days of the week.
The post Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow appeared first on NC Blogger Network.
from WordPress http://ift.tt/2viU7on
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That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
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That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There’s endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning:
Some cool things: – AI-generated faces – Auto-excuse generator (need that)
Leveraging for SEO: – Keyword research – Forecasting time series – Extracting entities and categories from URLs – Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire – focus on the “long clicks” – the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result.
Google tends to show answers for the “short clicks” within the SERP – if it doesn’t now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
“Your clients don’t continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them.” It’s like falling in love. — @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon
Don’t trust Search Console impressions, y’all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics
Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript – you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo
holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else’s results. Do things your own way.”
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client’s transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers.
Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you’re going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don’t wait until you must, chances are you’re going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: – Unique – Defensible – Sustainable – Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though – it’s a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
“I don’t know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they’re the ones that write our checks.” – @wilreynolds
So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
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That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2DJOfeB via IFTTT
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Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
from The Moz Blog https://tracking.feedpress.com/link/9375/13725526/mozcon-virtual-day-two-recap
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2DJOfeB More on https://seouk4.weebly.com/
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
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That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/thats-a-wrap-mozcon-virtual-2020-day-two-recap/
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There’s endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning:
Some cool things: – AI-generated faces – Auto-excuse generator (need that)
Leveraging for SEO: – Keyword research – Forecasting time series – Extracting entities and categories from URLs – Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire – focus on the “long clicks” – the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result.
Google tends to show answers for the “short clicks” within the SERP – if it doesn’t now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
“Your clients don’t continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them.” It’s like falling in love. — @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon
Don’t trust Search Console impressions, y’all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics
Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript – you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo
holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else’s results. Do things your own way.”
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client’s transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers.
Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you’re going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don’t wait until you must, chances are you’re going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: – Unique – Defensible – Sustainable – Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though – it’s a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
“I don’t know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they’re the ones that write our checks.” – @wilreynolds
So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
Source link
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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!
0 notes
Text
That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap
Posted by cheryldraper
Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.
Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!
Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!
Let’s jump right in.
Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.
There's endless possibilities w/ #machinelearning: Some cool things: - AI-generated faces - Auto-excuse generator (need that) Leveraging for SEO: - Keyword research - Forecasting time series - Extracting entities and categories from URLs - Internal link analysis #mozcon
— Seer Interactive (@SeerInteractive) July 15, 2020
Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:
Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function
Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!
Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve
Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.
“What is a click without the intent to be there?”
Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.
Great point by the wonderful @izzionfire - focus on the "long clicks" - the ones where users spend a long time on your page after clicking your result. Google tends to show answers for the "short clicks" within the SERP - if it doesn't now, it will soon.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) July 15, 2020
Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:
Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
Look for these patterns:
Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions
Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.
Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem
Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.
She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.
"Your clients don't continue buying from you because you meet their expectations. They do it because you EXCEED them." It's like falling in love. -- @FlavillaFongang #MozCon pic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) July 15, 2020
Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:
Can you offer a unique experience?
Can you create a community?
Can you offer integrations?
Can you partner with people to bring something new?
Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.
Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss
We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.
If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.
This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.
7 promotional strategies 1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists) 2. Expanded social posts 3. Avoid JarJar outreach 4. The Jedi mind trick 5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts 6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits 7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:
Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.
Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?
Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.
Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.
TL;DR version of @JoyanneHawkins presentation at #mozcon Don't trust Search Console impressions, y'all
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 15, 2020
Joy shared some major findings:
Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent
If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.
Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.
That moment you think you kinda know technical SEO and then you see @iPullRank at #MozCon. Mind. BLOWN.
— Lauren Turner (@laurentracy_) July 15, 2020
We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.
How do you identify which keyword on a site owns a URL? -Position -Traffic -Linking authority metrics Use on all ranking pages to determine best URL for each keyword on the site, then adjust anchor text as needed@iPullRank #MozCon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) July 15, 2020
All Google products have services you can connect to via ABScript - you can create a full data ecosystem, all via basic JavaScript@iPullRank #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 15, 2020
@ipullrank #seo #mozcon #techseo holy fizzle Ebay builds internal links programatically to boost rankings from page 2 to page 1.
— Noah Learner (@noahlearner) July 15, 2020
There were so many of these, friends!
The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."
Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights
The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!
These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:
If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
What does your best day ever look like?
What didn’t work last time?
The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.
Actually testing your client's transaction process. I only do that when setting up eCommerce tracking and test the purchasing journey for customers. Go beyond what data implies and see for yourself how you stack up to your competitors. Brilliant @danaditomaso #MozCon pic.twitter.com/dkz21fK1kd
— nikrangerseo (@nikrangerseo) July 15, 2020
As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.
David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers
David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:
Wit.ai for search intent classification
Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
Webhooks for passing data
Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku
We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.
#mozcon @dsottimano dropping a ton of automation knowledge and showcasing @bigmlcom power pic.twitter.com/p3gWVBbWX5
— John Murch (@johnmurch) July 15, 2020
Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!
Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable
Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.
The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.
When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:
Adding new service lines
Raising prices
Automating tasks
Acquiring new business
At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.
If you experiment only when you have to, you're going to fail. If you experiment now, when you can and don't wait until you must, chances are you're going to grow, succeed and beat out your competitors. @rjonesx #MozCon
— Amy merrill (@MissAmyMerrill) July 15, 2020
Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry
SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.
First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.
Competitive advantages should be: - Unique - Defensible - Sustainable - Valuable Consistent@HeatherPhysioc #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 15, 2020
Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.
Steps to having a competitive advantage (not just linear though - it's a cyclical process) via @HeatherPhysioc #Mozcon pic.twitter.com/W0ZBAduKHP
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) July 15, 2020
As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:
Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
Write a brand statement.
Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?
She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.
Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?
Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.
The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.
"I don't know a whole lot of CEOs that read Search Engine Land, but they're the ones that write our checks." - @wilreynolds So instead of throwing shade at our least-favorite phrases the c-suite uses, we may want to make sure non-SEOs understand our value.#MozCon pic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).
SEO + PPC + Analytics + CRM = magic@wilreynolds #mozcon pic.twitter.com/JICfWiOB3X
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 15, 2020
Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.
That’s a wrap
Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.
While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.
If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.
Until next year, Moz fans!
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