seo

Posted by Dr-Pete

This post is a part of the “Starting Over” series, the story of starting a blog (MinimalTalent.com) from scratch. See the end of the post for links to the rest of the series.

In parts one and two, I showed how I got my blog off the ground, indexed by Google, and just starting to rank. Now, it’s time to dive in and sand off any rough edges, before they cause future SEO injuries.

(1) Spot-check the SERPs

Marketing automation tools are great, but sometimes we get so enamored with those tools that we forget they only offer a window into the big picture. Early in a site’s life, I’m a big believer in actually typing in searches and seeing how your results look in the wild. The first time I started ranking for the phrase “minimal talent,” it looked something like this:

On the bright side, the site was getting picked up on Google+ (thanks, Jeremy!). Unfortunately, Google was creating a snippet from my first blog post. Why? Well, I hadn’t actually specified a Meta description. Sometimes, even the professionals forget the basics. Once I fixed the problem, I kept watching and eventually saw this:

There’s a wealth of information in this one image. I learned that Google was using my Meta description, but that it might be a bit long (note the odd jump to mid-sentence). I learned that Google was picking my authorship attribution and displaying my profile picture. I learned that my title wasn’t getting cut off. I learned all of this by just opening my eyes and looking.

(2) Google Webmaster Tools

Ok, now that we’ve at least made a few sanity checks with our own eyes, let’s see what the tools have to say. First, is Google indexing the site the way we’d like them to? Since I set up an XML sitemap, I can just go to “Crawl > Sitemaps”, and see something like this:

I’ve submitted 8 pages, and all 8 were indexed – so far, so good. Of course, the “indexed” count on this page only tells you which of the URLs in your sitemaps have been indexed. To get a glimpse at Google’s full index stats for your site, go to “Google Index > Index Status”:

The total count is right in the ballpark of my sitemap count, which, at least in my case, is good. Of course, Google didn’t index any pages before the site existed, so the graph really isn’t that useful. Over time, though, it can show you any unusual trends.

Keep in mind that, for large sites, you can’t expect every single page to be indexed, and that’s often not even desirable. The more you break up your sitemaps, the more you’ll be able to spot problems. If you see your total index count really take off, or you know it’s just way too large (your site has 500 pages, and Google has indexed 25,000), then this could be a sign of runaway URL parameters and duplicate content.

Finally, let’s make sure I don’t have any obvious crawl errors. Go to “Crawl > Crawl Errors” and you should see an overview like this:

I’ve got two “Not found” (404) errors, which really isn’t bad at all. I’m a bit concerned that my initial WordPress “Hello World” post is popping up, so let’s click on that:

The “Error details” aren’t particularly useful here, so I’ll go straight to “Linked from” and can see that the bad URL was on the page itself (a non-issue) and the home-page. Looking at the home-page source code, this link is now gone. So, Google just crawled the site a bit too early, and this problem should take care of itself.

(3) Moz Analytics

While Google Webmaster Tools has a lot of useful information, there can be pitfalls to getting the story from just one point-of-view (especially when it’s Google’s). Let’s look for any crawl issues in Moz Analytics, starting with “Search > Crawl Diagnostics”. Toward the bottom of the page, I get this summary:

Problems are sorted (left-to-right) from high priority to low priority, but my job this time around is pretty easy. I have 38 occurrences of one error, “Missing Meta Description Tag.” This is problematic not just because of the error, but because I really don’t expect to have 38 pages of the site crawled. So. Let’s drill down and look at a few sample pages…

A quick spot-check of the site reveals that these pages do not, in fact, have custom Meta descriptions. While this isn’t mission critical just yet, I should add them soon for my main pages.

As for the 38 crawled pages, it looks as if Moz Analytics is crawling my comment/reply pages. Looking at the source code, these pages have two Meta Robots directives and a rel=canonical tag in place, which is probably giving the crawlers some grief. It’s probably not a big issue, but let’s make sure that Google isn’t indexing these pages, by using the “site:” operator with “inurl:” on the comment/reply URL parameter. Entering the following into Google…

site:minimaltalent.com inurl:replytocom

…results in no documents found. So, at this point, it looks like Moz is being a little overprotective. It may be worth removing either the canonical or Meta Robots down the line, to make sure I’m sending Google clear signals.

Now, let’s look at what really matters – have my rankings improved? Or, at the very least, are they stable?

It’s looking good. I took the top spot for my brand name (“minimal talent”), kept the #1 spot for my tagline, and have even moved into the top 10 for “minimalism 101”. I don’t expect to be ranking for “minimalism” or “yahoo logo” any time soon – these are stretch goals at best. What’s important is to see gradual progress, even if that progress isn’t always as fast as you’d like.

(4) Google Analytics

Are these rankings helps my traffic? Honestly, only a tiny bit. Here’s the graph of sessions for the first couple of months:

It’s not a bad graph, as graphs go, but the spikes correspond with blog posts and almost entirely with traffic from social media (at this point, primarily Twitter). The small increase in traffic between posts toward the right side of the graph is a good sign, and some of that is coming from Google.

I think this graph really illustrates the dilemma of modern SEO. You aren’t going to get search exposure without first building traffic and interest somehow. For me, social is one obvious tool, but for the first few months of a project that means a sustained effort on an established network. For someone with no network at all, the build-up is going to take even longer.

Recapping Parts 1-3

I hope this short series has at least given you some insight into getting started and how the pieces can all come together. I hope it’s also not entirely bad news – ranking in 2014 isn’t easy, but it can be done, and getting the basics right does still matter quite a bit.

We’re going to put this series on hold until something interesting happens to Minimal Talent that’s worth talking about. If anyone has specific questions about getting started or about the site’s successes or failures so far, please chime in.

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!

Posted by gfiorelli1

One month ago I had a crazy idea: analyzing one year of Moz Q&As, and Trevor was even crazier accepting it.

My original idea was both to understand the most common issues the Moz Community discusses and asks for help with, and also to understand how the trends in our industry are reflected in Q&A.

After the first few days of digging into the data, though, I started seeing that there was a problem: a sub-optimal Q&A structure is preventing a truly accurate analysis of the same.

For this reason, this post has been conceived as a two part series:

1. Auditing a Q&A site/section;
2. What insights can the analysis of the Moz Q&A site/section offer?

This first part goes beyond the simple analysis of a community and, using the Moz Q&A section, takes into account and discusses issues that are common to all Q&A sites.

The second part will published within a few weeks (I’m still “digesting” data and discovering great insights).

Auditing a Q&A site/section 

Before people were sharing kittens and selfies on Facebook and Instagram, “social” was a synonym of “forums” in Internet-speak. 

In forums, people were (and still are) sharing knowledge, funny things, and questions. Forums were the first collaborative space in the web, maybe the purest symbol of the web philosophy.

The forum’s collaborative nature and crowdsourced knowledge is so strong that – upon reflection – the success of social networks, which mimic forums (Reddit is a clear example), must be essentially attributed to it.

The advantages and difficulties of a Q&A site/section

Q&A sites are a specific variant of the forum idea, and their model is quite simple: People ask and answer questions about certain topics.

From an SEO point of view a well executed and maintained Q&A site/section has great positive effects:

1. It may help your site rank for long tails;
2. It may help your site earn natural links;
3. It may help your site earn social visibility (hence second-tier links);
4. It may help you discover ideas for new content;
5. It’s a great source for content to repurpose into other channels;
6. The data you collect thanks to the Q&A may help you with other business decisions; or
7. It may help you understand if a business decision was correct or not.

Its positive effects, then, have clear reflections on branding and thought leadership.

The simplest ideas, though, are usually the most complex to shape into something real.

The first difficulty is building a community that is able to feed the Q&A in the first place.

Even if I know people who could create hundreds of fake accounts all asking and answering questions in order to “show” a lively forum and thus attract new members, if you are creating a Q&A section as a feature in your site, then it may be better to create it when you already have even a small (but loyal) community.

Here is not the place to discuss how to build a community around your brand (check The Truly Monumental Guide to Building Online Communities by Mack Web Solutions for more on that), but if you are creating a Q&A section you must think at it as a product. Hence, first you must conduct an audience analysis, define the personas that you want to target with the Q&A, and from there, build the architecture of the section and shape its voice.

Moz doesn’t have this problem, as it has one of biggest and more loyal communities in its niche. Nevertheless, even if I am sure that Moz has portrayed what kind of personas are using its Q&A well, I tend to believe that this section of the Moz site has been designed more for marketers with at least a minimum of experience in the use of forums than it was for marketing newbies.

A very brief history of the Moz Q&A

The Q&A section was created in 2007 as a a Freemium feature. Only Pro subscribers could ask a limited number of questions per month to SEOmoz, but everybody (if the question wasn’t labeled as “private”) could read the Q&A.

In 2012, Moz revamped the Q&A section, eliminating the “private” questions and opening it to everybody, also introducing gamification rules (the “500 thumbs up rule”) which:

1. From one side can help fighting forum spam;
2. Push people to be proactive on the site and in the Q&A in order to fully participate in the community.

What didn’t really change was the architecture of the Q&A itself, which is partly still operating.

From the image above, apart from the funny Roger image, we can see how the categories were very broad back in 2012. That gave way to the more detailed architecture we see today.

First commandment: Strive for a perfect Q&A IA and navigation

Choosing a very broad architecture, especially in Q&As and Forums, can be a great idea in order:

1. To avoid thin categories;
2. To avoid “too many choices angst” (a syndrome caused also by eCommerce mega-menus).

But it also has some risks, such as:

1. Difficulties in extracting unique valuable data;
2. Too broad of categories may risk looking very similar, especially to a non-expert audience (i.e.: “Technical SEO Issues” and “On Page/Site Optimization”).

The two issues listed above can be enhanced, then, by offering Q&A users the ability to enter their questions in up to a maximum of five categories, also in different topical areas.

This freedom, however, is:

1. Making it difficult to attribute a question to only one topic when it comes to data analysis;
2. Maybe contributing to the confusion the question askers may already have.

Hey Gianluca, weren’t you saying Moz Q&A was broad? Here I see a complex taxonomy!

Yes! The Moz Q&A has evolved through the years for the better, and the taxonomy used right now is very clear (check it out by trying to ask a question), but it still has issues, especially from a navigation point of view.

For instance, when we enter the Q&A home page we see by default the latest-submitted questions, but if we want to restrict our search, we may have a panic attack, because we can choose between 45 categories, and many appear to be very similar.

Too much freedom is not freedom, therefore: When offering users navigation through a taxonomy, it is always better to funnel them from broad to a more detailed offering, using both contextual menus and a way to go back in the architecture navigation.

Unfortunately, the Moz Q&A lacks both:

1. Because the main categories of the Q&A, i.e. “Moz Resources” or “Online Marketing,” are virtual and not made explicit with a real category page, the possibility of creating contextual menus is substantially hindered;
2. Because the Q&A section doesn’t include a breadcrumb navigation (the lack of which is probably not helping Googlebot in easily understanding the section’s information architecture). 

Avoid confusion between categories and tags

In the recent past there was a sort of “anti-tags” crusade, especially in the blogging world.

This can be attributed to the misuse of tagging, which is usually considered to be a synonym of categorizing things, when the two in reality have a very different nature:

1. A category is that ontology value that include everything related to a specific topic. For instance, under the category “Link Building” we can find questions about broken link building, guest blogging, news syndication, image link attribution et al;
2. A tag is that transversal taxonomy value that reunites under its label questions from different categories, which share a same topic. For instance a tag “infographics” could be attached to questions that have been listed in different categories like Web Design, Technical SEO, Link Building and Content/Blogging.

If used well, then, tags can really improve the usability of a Q&A site:

1. Helping the asker specifying even better the nature of its question;
2. Help the Q&A community members (and the casual visitors, who are not into the Q&A niche jargon) in following only those specific topics about which they are interested.

From an SEO point of view, then, a well thought-out tagging system (which includes both a suggested tag engine and, ideally, a semantic tagging consolidation engine, and takes into account the duplicated content issue) can help the Q&A site become visible to an even greater set of queries, thanks especially to the semantic topical nature of the Tags’ pages.

Use category pages as topical hubs

When it comes to category pages, Q&As (and Forums in general) may present us some of the same uncertainties that categories in classified ads or eCommerce sites present, the main one being related to the weight we want to give to category pages in relation to the pages of the questions themselves.

In the case of Moz (just speculating here, now) the doubt was certainly greater, because the Moz Blog’s categories tend to overlap those of the Q&A section. This is immediately understandable if we look at the “link building” topic, which is both a Q&A and a Blog category (also because the Q&A categorization was modeled after that of the Blog, which came first).

In this case, Moz has decided that the blog is its main content asset (and has been since the beginning), and therefore the blog categories should have priority. They acted in order to have them ranking over the Q&A’s. And it did well.

But we could choose to follow the opposite path, using Q&A as the main content asset and, therefore, using its categories and sub-categories pages as “topical hubs.”

The concept of the topical hub is becoming more important every day, because of the evolution of Google itself and its shift to semantics and “understanding things” as opposed to simply indexing pages.

A topical hub, to be clear, is a page where people interested in a topic can start their research and navigation about the topic and its subtopics. They find relevant content about the topic itself, and these pages are some of the most important landing pages from an organic search perspective. 

A topical hub, in the case of a Q&A category and tag page, should therefore evolve from being a simple paginated list of questions. It should move from being a transition page to become a full “reference page”.

What are the elements of a topical hub?

1. A clear description of what the topic the hub is about. It seems a bit “old-school” SEO, but it really isn’t. In Q&A sites, then, it has the particular function of confirming for people that they have landed on the correct page, which is both good for them and for those of us administering the Q&A. For instance, the category labeled “Reporting” in the Moz Q&A is quite confusing, as many people refer to it thinking about their Moz Analytics reports (with essentially support-related questions), and not about reporting in the broader sense.
2. The list of questions, with the visualization options you may desire to offer depending on the priorities you have assigned to the Q&A itself;
3. Contextual menu, in order to create relations between sister categories;
4. Tags menu, in order to create relations with transversal topics (also helping facilitate the crawling of questions pertaining to separate categories);
5. Contextual related content. In the case of Moz, contextual content can be:
   1. Related educational content from Moz Academy;
   2. Related webinars;
   3. Related posts or post categories from the main blog and YouMoz.

Moz should suggest the Link Building Moz Academy videos in its Link Building category page in Q&A.

Help your analysts, empower your moderators

As we have seen, every Moz subscriber can include a question in up to five categories. Even though this is great for the users, from an analysis point of view it can make collecting insights quite difficult.

For instance, when I was analyzing one year of Moz Q&As, it was very hard to understand which category to attributing the main value to, because the large majority of the questions had been associated with more than one category (many in all the five categories allowed).

For this reason, apart from creating a tag system, it would be a wise idea to empower the moderators so that they can eventually place a question in a better-suited category and/or eliminate a question from an inappropriate or inconsistent category.

(Re)discover the importance of internal search

Internal search is the secret feature that makes sites with a massive amount of content stand out and be loved by their users.

It’s obviously not the only one, but when we think of sites like Amazon, Zillow, Tripadvisor, or Yelp, we can easily understand how internal search plays a major role in how a user of those sites is satisfied. 

For that same reason, a certain specialization within SEO (one which is becoming more and more important) is what can be defined as Vertical Search Engine Optimization, meaning optimizing for the internal search algorithms of sites like the ones I just mentioned.

A Q&A site’s internal search, then, is essential for:

1. Helping users find questions for which they seek the answers; and
2. Limiting the creation of substantially duplicated content, with all the administrative loss of time it may cause.

We should not forget, finally, how the analysis of internal searches can help us re-discover a big percentage of the keywords Google hides behind the (not provided) wall.

If you have a small Q&A site, maybe the best solution is to rely on the Custom Search Engine offered by Google, which is also relatively easy to connect to Google Analytics. 

But if you have a big Q&A site, then Google CSE may be not enough. In that case, even if there exist third-party commercial solutions, creating a native internal search algorithm is the best choice.

This is the path Moz followed, but is its algorithm a good one? It is not bad, but it could be improved.

In fact, when we perform an internal search (try “how to use hreflang?”), the internal SERP offered is not really the best one:

The first-ranking question is dated 2012; the second and fourth have responses, but are still tagged as not answered. The best question is ranking third.

Sure, Moz’s internal search allows us to refine our searches using advanced filters (for instance, searching for questions similar to ours in a determined category), but still, that should be an option, not a necessity.

So, what should the ranking factors be in a vertical Q&A search algorithm like the one Moz uses? Here are some suggestions:

• The presence of keywords in the question title;
• The presence of keywords in the question body;
• The presence of keywords in the answers. For instance, “hreflang” may not be present in the question itself, but may be present in one or more responses, which means the question can be relevant for the user’s query;
• The presence of one or more “Good Answers.” Good Answers are those that, in the Moz Q&A system, earn 3 or more thumbs up or are defined as such by a Q&A moderator. Clearly, a question with one or more good answers deserves better visibility in an internal SERP;
• The presence of one or more “Staff Endorsements.” When an answer is particularly good, moderators may endorse it, giving it a bigger value than simple answers or even “Good Answers.” This should be the equivalent of links in the case of Moz Q&A :-);
• Tbe freshness of the question. The reason is obvious: Questions, especially in inbound marketing, tend to become obsolete after a short time (but, remember, there are important exceptions). Therefore, showing the questions that match all the previous factors and that are also fresh as ranking first should be the rule.

Don’t forget the “suggested question” feature

Somehow related to the internal search algorithm issue, we can also find the “suggested question” issue.

This is something Quora was quite able to solve:

When someone is writing a question, Quora interprets the question they are writing (not always very well, to be honest) and presents the asker a list of already-answered questions that might solve the one they are about to ask. If the questions presented are not satisfying the user, they can still proceed to post their own question.

This feature is very helpful, again, for preventing the Q&A from being flooded with very similar questions, which is both useless for the users and the Q&A site itself (not to mention that it could be a potentially substantial duplicate content generator).

Pay attention to design changes

When I started analyzing the more than 20,000 questions users posted in Moz’s Q&A between May 2013 and April 2014, the first thing I noticed was an large decline in the number of questions posted after May 2013.

We must remember that one year ago this site rebranded from SEOmoz to Moz.

At first, then, I thought that the fall in the Q&A postings was due to some SEO factors. But, after sharing this insight and discussing it with the Moz marketing team, I focused on the re-design of the site as the potential reason for that drop.

In fact, if we look how the SEOmoz.org menu was, we will see that the Internal Q&A link was easily reachable by the users from the main menu:

In the Moz.com site, the link to the Moz Q&A can be discovered and clicked only if we first click on “Community,” opening the community hub page, and then click on Q&A.

Just moving the internal link away from the main menu may have caused the drop in posts.

What’s in the second part of this post?

This is the end of the fist part of this “Auditing the Moz Q&A” mini-series.

In the second part we will have a lot of fun, because analyzing 20,000+ questions can really offer us a realistic portrait of our industry’s fears, hopes, and trends.

I want to leave you with a teaser:

The Moz community has an obsession, and it’s not cats, sex, or whatever: It’s Google.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Hannah_Smith

You heard it here first: Burritos are the new bacon.

Bacon is *so* last year. 

Not so long ago if you wanted to create content to capture the hearts and minds of the internet at large, bacon would be your topic of choice. 

However, today, dear friends, you might be better off working burritos into your content. We’ve seen runaway successes like Tiny Hamsters Eating Tiny Burritos, Classic Love Scenes Improved by Burritos, and when burritos are made incorrectly (yes, apparently this happens) we see an outpouring of rage like this.

Dear reader, I am of course kidding. Sadly, the future of marketing is not burritos. 

In truth, dear reader, as much as I’d love to tell you the future of marketing is as straight-forward as a particular foodstuff, I’d be doing us all a grave disservice.

I got to thinking about this particular topic a few months ago when prepping for SMX Munich. I’ve been working in this industry for about 7 years, which makes me a comparative youngster, but nonetheless, during that time we’ve seen huge changes.

Remember when keyword density was a thing?

You’d see these sites which huge, apparently empty footers. You’d hit ctrl+a to reveal the densely packed keywords in text the same colour as the background.

Remember how strongly weighted anchor text was?

It was so strongly weighted, we were able to do stuff like this:

Over the years there have been many updates, and some of the most interesting include:

• 2009: Vince saw big brands get a boost
• 2010: Caffeine saw a new web indexing system
• 2011: Panda saw a crackdown on “thin” content
• 2012: Venice saw localised results ranking for general or broad queries without a geographic modifier
• 2012: Penguin saw a crackdown on low quality links
• 2013: Hummingbird saw a move from indexing to understanding

All of which means that, today, search queries which shouldn’t work do in fact work:

This is the sort of query my dear Mother has been typing into search engines for years. Historically these sorts of queries simply didn’t yield the results she was looking for. Today, with increasing frequency, they do.

These sorts of developments are unquestionably good for users, however they may not be quite so good for publishers who rely on ad revenue, and indeed for brands.

A search like this will yield the result directly in the SERP; there’s no need to click through to a website. There are many other examples of this:

Try queries like “how many calories in an egg”, or “how tall is Jason Priestley”.

But it’s not just informational queries that have been affected by changes to the SERPs. A search for “flights from London to Munich” sees the first organic result pushed way below the fold:

It’s fair to say that it’s getting a lot tougher out there. But it’s not just search that’s changing…

Wearable tech is causing a stir

Not too long ago, a woman named Sarah Slocum claimed to have been attacked for wearing Google Glass in a bar in San Francisco. There have been many conflicting accounts of what actually happened that night, and I’m not in a position to comment either way. However, what I think is interesting is the backlash which has ensued against this technology. 

As a result, many establishments are banning customers from using Google Glass in their premises.

Just to be clear, I’m not necessarily saying that Google Glass usage won’t ever be accepted, but it’s important to understand that when humans and technology collide, things get complicated.

Regardless of the future of Google Glass, device usage is changing

Mobile used to mean “away from your PC,” but today, 77% of mobile searches are completed in a location where a PC is available (source). 

We also multi-screen:

• 57% of the time when we’re using a smartphone we’re also using another device
• 67% of the time when we’re using a PC we’re also using another device
• 75% of the time when we’re using a tablet we’re also using another device
• 77% of the time when we’re watching TV we’re also using another device

TV doesn’t mean *on* a TV anymore

5% of homes in the US don’t have a TV, and this zero-TV group is growing. The US had more than 5 million zero-TV households in 2013, up from 2 million in 2007. But that doesn’t mean they’re not watching TV: 67% just get their TV content on other devices.

Why?

Traditional TV scheduling limits people who don’t want limits. They want to watch TV whenever and wherever it suits them.

This means TV advertising is also changing

As audiences continue to fragment, the reach of TV advertisements is becoming a problem. Many are simply switching and showing their ads online; YouTube ads, for example, are becoming more prevalent. However, I think this fails to take into account the difference in consumers’ mindsets.

Now I don’t love watching ads on TV, but I’m reasonably comfortable with it. Most of the time when I’m watching TV I’ll put up with the ads because I figure that the ads are the price I pay for watching the shows I want to watch.

However, when a friend sends me a link to a YouTube video, at the point at which the pre-roll ad starts playing I don’t know for sure this is a video I *really* want to watch. As such the pre-roll ad maddens me. Many others also feel the same. I sit, primed to skip the ad as those 5 seconds crawl by.

Right now, advertisers have failed to take into account these different modes of human behaviour. Pre-roll ads on YouTube are not the same as ad on TV. We react differently to them. I think in the future pre-roll ads either need to change, or they won’t survive.

It’s not just TV; the way we consume *all* content is changing

Mitchell Kapour once said “Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.”

To combat this issue we all uses filters (to some degree) to get our content. We may filter by publisher, i.e. we’ll only consume content from certain sites (as opposed to trying to consume *all* the content). Or we’ll have trusted curators feed us content (this is what’s often happening on Twitter; you’ll read the content the people you follow and trust recommend).

However, our technology also protects us from unwanted content:

The algorithm which determines what appears in your Facebook feed is based on your previous interactions. As such you’ll see more content from those friends who’s updates you like and comment on than those you never interact with.

Similarly, if you’ve previously “liked” a brand page on Facebook, but then never interact with any of their content in your feed, you’ll stop seeing that content.

But it gets worse. Ogilvy predicts organic Facebook reach is destined to hit zero.

It’s not just Facebook, since Gmail launched the tabbed inbox, unsurprisingly, open rates are down.

Permission marketing may no longer be enough

All of this leads me to believe that permission marketing may no longer be enough. All of those permission assets we spent years building—email lists, active Facebook pages, etc.—are likely to become less and less effective in terms of reach.

Wait, what are you saying here?

Don’t panic. I’ve not tricked you into reading yet another “[insert your marketing tactic of choice] is dead” post. But things are changing, and they’re changing rapidly.

Current trends

Here are some trends which I think are interesting:

Real-time

Remember this?

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

In the write-ups we saw hyperbole abound:

“The message was retweeted and ‘liked’ a bajillion times” ~ Brad Tuttle,  Time

Really?

Close to 16,000 retweets = a bajillion?

The real success was around the amount of press attention this received. In real terms the tweet itself was not that successful.

Nevertheless it’s an interesting trend because it appear lightning doesn’t just strike twice – it strikes over and over again:

Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs

— Arby’s (@Arbys) January 27, 2014

And as if we could forget:

If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014

Online-first content

Many of the most successful pieces of content we’ve seen online actually existed offline first. So we’ve seen many examples of ads created for TV do well online; examples include Old Spice, and Evian Rollerbabies. But I think we’re seeing an interesting trend toward content that was created specifically for an online audience.

Dear reader, allow me to introduce you to the only pre-roll ad I’ve ever elected not to skip.

Now clearly, I can’t get it to run like a pre-roll, but you can do this for yourself. 

I’ve also been enjoying what some brands are doing with Vine, check out: Lowes, this gem from Target and General Electric’s 6 Second Science Fair.

We’re also seeing a wave of films that don’t feel like commercials:

Perhaps the most interesting trend: brands with values

By values, I mean brands that stand for something.

Moz has TAGFEE, Innocent talks a lot about being sustainable, Patagonia talks about environmentalism. Nike has this:

When you stand for something like that, you get to create things like this:

There’s also evidence to suggest that standing for something can translate into real business benefits.  Brands which are “meaningful” outperform the stock market by 120%.

So what does the future hold?

I wanted to round this up by making some predictions. Some are “safe,” some are less so. But where’s the fun in telling you stuff you already knew?

“Safe” predictions

• We’ll see more devices being adopted which will lead to more technical challenges as we’ll need to ensure everything we create works across these devices. 
• We’ll be under even more pressure to measure everything more accurately. We’ll need to track people, not sessions and figure out multi-channel attribution properly.
• We’ll be even less reliant on organic search than we are today. Being overly reliant on one channel is too risky.

A “less-safe” Prediction

• There will be a deluge of content. But no content fatigue. Filters will become so sophisticated that people just won’t see it.

Somewhat “out there” prediction:

Only brands that stand for something will survive.

In Europe and the US people wouldn’t care if 92% of brands disappeared (source). 

In search we’re perhaps more keenly aware of this than other marketers. We’ve seen many affiliates fall thanks to changes in the algorithm, never to return. Only the affiliates that were also recognisable brands survived.

Why? 

Well people would think that Google was “broken” if major brands didn’t show up for relevant queries; that’s why major brands make it back into the index fairly quickly, even if they don’t play by Google’s rules.

But it goes deeper than that. Consumers are more savvy today than they once were. If they actively dislike a brand, or what they stand for, they have the tools at their disposal to easily go elsewhere. If your brand doesn’t stand for something, or people don’t like what it stands for they are easily able to find alternatives. Technology has empowered people in ways previously unimaginable.

But being ‘big’ isn’t enough. If you want to ensure your brand retains visibility in the future I think the only way will be to ensure people love your brand enough to search for you by name.

Contrast these two searches:

The search for “BBC weather” doesn’t yield a summary of the weather direct in the SERP. Instead, BBC weather, quite rightly, ranks first.

Now of course there are no guarantees for the future, but I’d suggest that a branded search is unlikely to yield a result where said brand is pushed below a Google property. 

Only time will tell.

When we think about the future of marketing it’s easy to slip into the trap of thinking purely about technological challenges. However, the truth is that marketing isn’t changing because of technology. Marketing is changing because consumers’ expectations are evolving.

Consumers expect brands to deliver a seamless experience, regardless of their location or the device they’re using. 

When they speak, they expect brands to respond.

They aren’t interested in your self-serving messaging, or your attempts to be ‘down with the kids’, but they’ll happily be entertained.

Most of all you need them to love your brand and love your marketing. So much so, that they’ll actively seek it our for themselves and share it with their friends.

I believe that as an industry we will evolve. 

I’ve only been in the industry for 7 years, many of you have been doing this for much longer than me and I *know* how adaptable you are.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the future, and your thoughts on my predictions.

For those who are interested, you can view my full SMX deck below:

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!

Posted by randfish

If you’re looking to increase traffic to your blog, there are many tactics that can significantly boost your progress. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand lays a roadmap for the journey, offering 10 of the best tactics for you to keep in mind along the way.

For reference, here’s a still of this week’s whiteboard!

Video transcription

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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!

Posted by danatanseo

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Working as an in-house SEO Strategist for a small business forces me to get “scrappy” every day with tools and techniques. I’m constantly on the lookout for an opportunity that can help my company market to broader audiences for less money. In the past I’ve written on how you can add video overlays to your YouTube videos using Google AdWords and generate traffic back to your site without spending a dime. (P.S. This is still working, so if you haven’t done it, read this post then get on over to AdWords and get your video overlays rockin’).

Learn how to add Lead Generation Cards or LGCs to your Tweets!

What is a LGC?  LGC = Lead Generation Card (specifically in Twitter)

A LGC in Twitter is a form that can be attached to your Tweet that allows your followers to directly send you their contact information with the click of a single button in Twitter. Here is an example of what a LGC looks like:

Here is a Tweet containing the LGC:

Here is what appears when an end user clicks “View details:”

Notice how the box is pre-populated with your recipient’s email address, enabling them to click the Call to Action button and beam their contact information to you in a single click. Ooohh, Aaahhh…Très Nifty! 

“But wait!” you say, “I don’t have any budget to pay for Promoted Tweets!”

Great! Neither do I! We have that in common!

The beauty of Twitter LGCs is that you can add a LGC to a regular non-promoted Tweet and it doesn’t cost you a single solitary penny.

It’s Free…that’s right….I said the F-word.

Caveat – You can’t compose and publish the Tweet from your regular Twitter admin home page. You have to compose and send the Tweet from inside Twitter Ads. Here’s how you do it:

1. Log in to Twitter
2. Click the Setting Icon and select “Twitter Ads” from the drop down menu [Screenshot below]

3.  Click on the “Creatives” Tab in the top Nav Menu in Twitter Ads and Select “Cards”

4.  Click “Create your first Lead Generation Cards” – Bonus: You Can have an unlimited number of cards! 

Here’s what the form looks like:

You’ll need to make sure you have the link to your Website’s privacy policy handy. Plus you’ll need to have an alternative URL where end-users can visit a page to find out more about you and/or your offer. Other than that, all the dimensions you need or right there on the page. Very easy.

5.  Once your card is set up, click the “Tweets” tab, just to the left of the “Cards” tab. [Screenshot below] You can also get there by selecting “Tweets” in the “Creatives” drop down menu in the Top Nav.

6.  Click the blue “Compose Tweet” button located in the upper right corner.

7.  Leave the default delivery setting set to Standard. Compose your tweet & Click the last icon on the right just below your “Tweet” box (when you scroll over it, it says “Attach a Card to This Tweet”) 

8.  Select the card you would like to attach to your Tweet.

9.  Send your Tweet!

That’s it. Now you can grab your favorite beverage, sit back in your chair and just watch the cash roll in. Okay, maybe not, but you did just manage to attach a lead generation mechanism to your Tweet without spending one red cent!

Now, once you have cards set up in your Twitter Ads account, the steps are even easier. All you will have to do in that case is log in to Twitter. Click “Twitter Ads” from your settings menu. Click “Tweets” under the “Creatives” drop down in the top Nav. Click the blue “Compose Tweet” button. Write your Tweet, select the card and voila!

But wait, there’s more!

So, you might be thinking, “Great! But how do I get notified that someone filled out a Twitter LGC? What do I do with that info?”

Along with getting free LGCs, you also get access to some pretty nice analytic data for Tweets sent from your Twitter Ads account. So, here’s how you track and download your leads:

1. Navigate back to the “Card” Tab under “Creatives.”
2. Next to the card corresponding to the leads you want to access, mouse over the white area right below the card’s URL [Screenshot]

3.  Upload these into your favorite email program (we love Mailchimp!) or CRM and have at it!

For those of you who are visual learners, I’ve created a step by step video that walks you through the whole process:

There you have it. You’ve just successfully set up your Twitter Lead Generation Card and are ready to start raking in free leads from Twitter! Now I want to hear what your creative ideas are for implementing this and using it for your business. How do you think using Twitter Lead Generation cards along with your Tweets can augment your marketing program? I’d love to see them in the comments!

P.S. After this was written I received some excellent questions in the comments regarding two important points that need to be included in this post. The first one is that you have to sign up for a Twitter Advertising account in order for the “Twitter Ads” selection to appear in the drop down menu of your account settings. You can do that via this link: https://business.twitter.com/start-advertising The second one is that this is only currently available to people who live in the United States, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Thanks to travelcarma and Daniel_in_la for bringing this up in the comments!

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!