If you are wondering what’s new… well, let’s just say the changes have made keyword research much better and a lot easier. And on top of that, later in this post, I’ll even give you a sneak peek at the new changes that we are making to the extension that will be released within 30 days.
So, what’s new?
Who says keyword research should be limited to Google?
What most people don’t know is that YouTube is the second most popular search engine and has been exploding.
On top of that, Amazon is the largest e-commerce site in the world and SEOs are doing Amazon SEO and Amazon ads… so why not have access to keyword research there, too?
Now, when you go to YouTube and perform a search you’ll see data on suggested keywords as you perform a search.
And if you want more details on any given keyword you searched for, just click “view all” next to the search bar and you’ll see something like this:
It breaks down search volume over the last 12 months as well as shows you if a keyword has any seasonal trends.
You can also see how competitive a keyword is to rank for, its cost per click data, how many people even click on any of the listings, and even the age range of the people who search for that term.
Also, what’s interesting is that you can see data on whether a keyword is searched more on mobile or desktop devices and the breakdown. This is important because mobile searches tend to not convert as well… so ideally you want to go after keywords that have more desktop searches when possible.
Now on the right side of any YouTube search listings page, you will also see more keyword suggestions.
It’s pretty similar to what the extension already shows on Google… this is more so our version for YouTube.
But with Amazon, we didn’t want to impact your user experience too much, so we decided to provide keyword data in the most unobtrusive way possible…
Anytime you perform a search on Amazon, you’ll see keyword data on the suggestions.
So now anytime you want to do keyword research for social media or e-commerce, you can easily do so with the Ubersuggest Chrome extension.
But wait, there is more…
There is also one other important change made to the extension that you may have already noticed if you use Google on a regular basis.
When you search on Google, there is now traffic estimations under each URL.
This traffic estimation is for organic search traffic and it is done on a domain level. Eventually, we will tweak it to be page-based and even show you the other keywords each page ranks for… but for now, we are providing you with organic traffic estimates for each domain.
And if you are more of a visual person, in the right-hand sidebar you can also see the traffic estimation for any result in the top 10.
So if you want to know traffic data in addition to keyword suggestions when you perform a Google search, make sure you install the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension.
But the best is still to come…
My goal is to make major releases to Ubersuggest every month if possible… every other month if all doesn’t go as planned.
The next big one is introducing competitor analysis features within the extension.
Right now if you click on the “Ubersuggest” logo within your Chrome browser you see something like this:
Now, that’s not really useful.
So, within the next 30 days when you click on the “Ubersuggest” logo within Chrome, I am thinking of showing something like this:
For any domain you’ll be able to see the following metrics:
Domain metrics – you’ll see a quick overview of each domain. From the number of organic keywords a site ranks for to their estimated organic traffic, domain score, and even number of backlinks.
Historical traffic – you’ll see an organic traffic chart of the last 6 months to any given site.
Top pages by country – want to know the most popular pages on your competitor’s site? This table will show you just that.
Top keywords by country – you’ll also be able to see the most popular keywords that drive traffic to that site.
Conclusion
If you already have the Ubersuggest Chrome extension installed, you may need to reinstall it because we now show you data on YouTube and Amazon. That means you’ll have to grant Ubersuggest permission to show you data on those two sites.
If you are wondering what’s new… well, let’s just say the changes have made keyword research much better and a lot easier. And on top of that, later in this post, I’ll even give you a sneak peek at the new changes that we are making to the extension that will be released within 30 days.
So, what’s new?
Who says keyword research should be limited to Google?
What most people don’t know is that YouTube is the second most popular search engine and has been exploding.
On top of that, Amazon is the largest e-commerce site in the world and SEOs are doing Amazon SEO and Amazon ads… so why not have access to keyword research there, too?
Now, when you go to YouTube and perform a search you’ll see data on suggested keywords as you perform a search.
And if you want more details on any given keyword you searched for, just click “view all” next to the search bar and you’ll see something like this:
It breaks down search volume over the last 12 months as well as shows you if a keyword has any seasonal trends.
You can also see how competitive a keyword is to rank for, its cost per click data, how many people even click on any of the listings, and even the age range of the people who search for that term.
Also, what’s interesting is that you can see data on whether a keyword is searched more on mobile or desktop devices and the breakdown. This is important because mobile searches tend to not convert as well… so ideally you want to go after keywords that have more desktop searches when possible.
Now on the right side of any YouTube search listings page, you will also see more keyword suggestions.
It’s pretty similar to what the extension already shows on Google… this is more so our version for YouTube.
But with Amazon, we didn’t want to impact your user experience too much, so we decided to provide keyword data in the most unobtrusive way possible…
Anytime you perform a search on Amazon, you’ll see keyword data on the suggestions.
So now anytime you want to do keyword research for social media or e-commerce, you can easily do so with the Ubersuggest Chrome extension.
But wait, there is more…
There is also one other important change made to the extension that you may have already noticed if you use Google on a regular basis.
When you search on Google, there is now traffic estimations under each URL.
This traffic estimation is for organic search traffic and it is done on a domain level. Eventually, we will tweak it to be page-based and even show you the other keywords each page ranks for… but for now, we are providing you with organic traffic estimates for each domain.
And if you are more of a visual person, in the right-hand sidebar you can also see the traffic estimation for any result in the top 10.
So if you want to know traffic data in addition to keyword suggestions when you perform a Google search, make sure you install the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension.
But the best is still to come…
My goal is to make major releases to Ubersuggest every month if possible… every other month if all doesn’t go as planned.
The next big one is introducing competitor analysis features within the extension.
Right now if you click on the “Ubersuggest” logo within your Chrome browser you see something like this:
Now, that’s not really useful.
So, within the next 30 days when you click on the “Ubersuggest” logo within Chrome, I am thinking of showing something like this:
For any domain you’ll be able to see the following metrics:
Domain metrics – you’ll see a quick overview of each domain. From the number of organic keywords a site ranks for to their estimated organic traffic, domain score, and even number of backlinks.
Historical traffic – you’ll see an organic traffic chart of the last 6 months to any given site.
Top pages by country – want to know the most popular pages on your competitor’s site? This table will show you just that.
Top keywords by country – you’ll also be able to see the most popular keywords that drive traffic to that site.
Conclusion
If you already have the Ubersuggest Chrome extension installed, you may need to reinstall it because we now show you data on YouTube and Amazon. That means you’ll have to grant Ubersuggest permission to show you data on those two sites.
I hate to tell you, but Googling “blog topic ideas” is not going to give you the content you should be creating.
Not all content is created equal. Letting the internet tell you what to blog about leads to mediocrity. Mediocrity is fine in some cases, like forcing yourself to show up at the gym at 5:00 p.m. when you’d much rather call it a day. But if you’re going to try and stand out in the very crowded search results page, you won’t stand a chance.
The reality is, it’s hard
The web is overrun with companies that have bigger budgets than you and can churn out content every day. Meanwhile, you’re lucky to get a blog post out once a month. Where you put your time can make or break your digital efforts. How do you compete? What content will grow your traffic month after month and year after year?
If you’re going to put your time into creating and promoting a blog post, and hope to get results, you owe it to yourself to figure out what you’re best suited to blog about.
Forget the 50 handy tools and blog topic lists
The internet will say: “Just research topics using these 50 handy tools and you’ll get a ton of ideas!” That’s cancelled. Slogging away with topics every week for three-plus years taught me that this advice — though well-intentioned — quickly wears thin. Especially if your topic or industry is niche.
So here’s what I would recommend instead:
Figure out what your people care about
Find where the magic happens
Keyword research your topics
Brainstorm, categorize, and prioritize
Execute
And that’s what we’ll cover. It may take a little more time, but it will give you ideas and direction you can use for months.
Figure out your people
The best way to find blog topic ideas is to look at your audience. What are their pain points, concerns, and obsessions when it comes to your products? Easier said than done sometimes, but chances are you already have at least an inkling on why they choose you. So start there and backtrack.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have some research or set personas to use. If you aren’t, make do. The point isn’t to get hung up on idealizing your audience, or nailing down that brand of tofu sausage they like. The point is to nail down their pain points and desires and move on.
Think about your best customers: How are you helping them live their best life? What are you helping them solve? What frustrates them about your line of services? When do they realize they need someone like you?
Take the time to understand the people that currently buy from you. So you can find more of them. In some cases, finding your audience is easy. In other instances, your audience is really diverse, or you just want what your neighbor’s having. Getting the perfect audience persona isn’t super important. Just get a good enough portrait, and move on.
Find where the magic happens
I barely passed math in college but one thing I did get was Venn diagrams. Two circles, and the magic is where they intersect, cool.
When mulling over what to blog about, I use this type of diagram to decide what I am best positioned to talk about. On the left would be the audience interests and concerns that you figured out in the previous step. On the right, your expertise. In the middle, you get a set of themes that you can specialize in. This doubles as the position you can take in your customer’s world. If you can pinpoint a mix of exciting, aspirational, and realistic themes here, that’s best.
It’s one thing to know what your audience likes. But chase that, and you’re competing with Medium or Buzzfeed.
It’s another to know what you’re good at talking about. But chase that, and you’re talking to yourself.
The magic is finding the spot where your audience’s interests and yours intersect.
During a recent workshop, a woman asked me, “I’m a photographer, and the people who like to work with me are outdoorsy — so are you saying I should create a blog post on hikes in the area?”
No.
Don’t do that.
There are a lot of websites out there that are way more invested in writing about hikes than you, and chances are they have more authority in that topic.
My reply to her: “How about creating content around the most photographable hikes in the area? You can create one blog post for Instagram, another for portraits, and even another one for engagement photos!”
The point is not to create content just because people care about X, Y, or Z. Ask yourself what you are best equipped to talk about, and how that intersects with your audience's interests. The more specific, and more unique to you and your audience, the better.
Keyword research your topics
Once you know your sweet spot, think about general topics and plug those into a doc or spreadsheet. Then pull those ideas into your favorite keyword research tool. I generally start with a list that has one root word, and export out different keyword ideas using a few tools. As I get more ideas, I plug those in, export, and build a small but healthy list to work with.
There are a couple of tools worth investing in to get this information (and some free options, too). Because I believe in a simplified approach to tools, I recommend:
A keyword research tool like Moz, SEMrush, or Keywordtool.io
A content research tool like Answer the Public, or Buzzsumo
A bonus tool like Ubersuggest or good old “People Also Ask”
Rank your bounty by monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and social interest. Then, cherry pick the topics you want to tackle for the quarter.
Don’t be disheartened if your key terms are competitive. It’s the 2020s — anything worth anything is competitive. The goal is to start creating content that will pay off over time, while you grow your domain authority.
Word of caution: the topics you pick should be in your sweet spot and help your readers live their best life.
Brainstorm, categorize, and prioritize
Once you've defined the themes that can anchor your content efforts, use these four categories to help you pick topics within those areas. I like to think of this approach as a pyramid where you cover all the obvious “duh” questions before moving on to the sexy stuff.
Think about topics that would apply in each of these four sections, starting with the largest, general foundation category.
Evergreen content relates directly to the product or industry. These are the questions people ask day in and day out. At face value, the keywords may seem like small fish — i.e., they only get 800 to 1K monthly searches. But if they are aligned with your topic, then you very much want to answer these questions. If you don’t, someone else will. Ultimately, the goal of content is to bring in website visitors who are researching your product or service.
Original research answers a question or provides insight for an area closely tied to what you do. It’s premium content (long form blog posts, supporting guest posts) that takes more resources to create than a typical blog post, but helps build domain authority. This content hopefully helps you get links from reputable sources and is also fun to work in.
Trends and timely content are blog posts that aim to generate buzz, capture attention, and may aid in link building, but tend to be short-lived. These are topics that are in your sweet spot and hot right now. Jump on these seasonally.
Lifestyle content is blog content on topics that relate to company values and will connect with readers. Yes, it’s nice to show the human side of your business, because people buy from people they like. But I’d rather have a post that answers my questions over a post showing me cute dog photos, you?
What might seem like basic info to you might be a totally new revelation to your potential audience.
I've built a blog to attract over 100K monthly visitors, and one thing I learned was that the content that brought us traffic month after month was the basic stuff. The simple, how do I figure out ______ stuff.
And chances are your blog (or website for that matter) lacks this “beginning of the buyer’s journey” content. If you think everybody knows this stuff, they don’t. You’re probably too close to it — I’ve been there, too.
Questions you can ask yourself to get going:
What are some common questions that your audience asks? What are the solutions you can give them?
How would you explain this concept to your grandma, or a kid?
What is a cool trend with __________ that is worth investing in?
What do you wish your best customers knew about __________?
Sources of information you can also look at:
Trade pubs (for ideas that can be repurposed for the general audience)
Events (for ideas that can be super timely and relevant to a select audience)
Influencers in your space (for ideas on what your audience gravitates to)
Execution
Ideally you’ll have a mix of topics on the pyramid to choose from, each quarter. Schedule those. I’ve used Google Sheets, or Trello. The cool kids use Airtable — whatever floats your boat and helps you get your content out.
Eyes on the prize
Blog traffic growth should pick up speed over time. If you build your content accordingly, it will. Determine the point where your interests and your audience interests intersect. Find topics that cater to that sweet spot by answering common FAQs. Add original research seasonally, and sprinkle in some trends and lifestyle content.
When you create blog topics that are more in line with your brand and your strengths, and that match what your audience is looking for, you are much more likely to stand out in a crowded space. The internet is hella crowded — to differentiate and appeal to customers, you need to “do you” best.
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There's a new ranking factor in town: Core Web Vitals. Expected in 2021, this Google-announced algorithm change has a few details you should be aware of. Cyrus Shepard dives in this week on Whiteboard Friday.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cyrus Shepard here at Moz. Today we're talking about the next official Google ranking factor — Core Web Vitals. Now what do I mean by official ranking factor?
Google makes hundreds of changes a year. Every week they introduce new changes to their algorithm. Occasionally they announce ranking factor changes. They do this in particular when something is important or they want to encourage people, webmasters to make changes to their site beforehand. They do this for important things like HTTPS and other signals.
So this is one they actually announced. It's confusing to a lot of people, so I wanted to try to demystify what this ranking signal means, what we can do to diagnose and prepare for it, and basically get in a place where we're ready for things to happen. So what is it? Big first question.
What are Core Web Vitals?
So these are real-world experience metrics that Google is looking at, that answer things like: How fast does the page load? How fast is it interactive? How fast is it stable? So basically, when visitors are using your web page on a mobile or a desktop device, what's that experience like in terms of speed, how fast can they interact with it, things like that.
Now it's joining a group of metrics that Google calls Page Experience signals. It's not really a standalone. It's grouped in with these Page Experience metrics that are separate from the text on the page. So these are signals like mobile friendliness, HTTPS, intrusive interstitials, which are those pop-ups that come on and appear.
It's not so much about the text of the page, which are traditional ranking signals, but more about the user experience and what it's like, how pleasant it is to use the page, how useful it is. These are especially important on mobile when sometimes the speed isn't as high. So that's what Google is measuring here. So that's what it is.
Where is this going to affect rankings?
Well, it's going to affect all regular search results, mobile and desktop, based on certain criteria. But also, and this is an important point, Core Web Vitals are going to become a criteria to appear in Google Top Stories. These are the news results that usually appear at the top of search results.
Previously, AMP was a requirement to appear in those Top Stories. AMP is going away. So you still have to meet the requirements for regular Google News inclusion, but AMP is not going to be a requirement anymore to appear in Top Stories. But you are going to have to meet a minimum threshold of Core Web Vitals.
So that's an important point. So this could potentially affect a lot of ranking results.
When is it going to happen?
Well, Google has told us that it's going to happen sometime in 2021. Because of COVID-19, they have pushed back the release of this within the algorithm, and they want to give webmasters extra time to prepare.
They have promised us at least six months' notice to get ready. As of this recording, today we have not received that six-month notice. When that updates, we will update this post to let you know when that's going to be. So anytime Google announces a ranking factor change, the big question is:
How big of a change is this going to be?
How much do I have to worry about these metrics, and how big of results are we going to see shift in Google SERPs? Well, it's important to keep in mind that Google has hundreds of ranking signals. So the impact of any one signal is usually not that great. That said, if your site is particularly poor at some of these metrics, it could make a difference.
If you're in a highly competitive environment, competing against people for highly competitive terms, these can make a difference. So it probably is not going to be huge based on past experience with other ranking signals, but it is still something that we might want to address especially if you're doing pretty poorly.
The other thing to consider, some Google signals have outsized impact beyond their actual ranking factors. Things like page speed, it's probably a pretty small signal, but as users experience it, it can have outsized influence. Google's own studies show that for pages that meet these thresholds of Core Web Vitals, visitors are 24% less likely to abandon the site.
So even without Core Web Vitals being an official Google ranking factor, it can still be important because it provides a better user experience. Twenty-four percent is like gaining 24% more traffic without doing anything, simply by making your site a little more usable. So even without that, it's probably still something we want to consider.
Three signals for Core Web Vitals
So I want to jump briefly into the specifics of Core Web Vitals, what they're measuring. I think people get a little hung up on these because they're very technical. Their eyes kind of glaze over when you talk about them. So my advice would be let's not get hung up on the actual specifics. But I think it is important to understand, in layman's terms, exactly what's being measured.
More importantly, we want to talk about how to measure, identify problems, and fix these things if they happen to be wrong. So very briefly, there are three signals that go into Core Web Vitals.
1. Largest contentful paint (LCP)
The first being largest contentful paint (LCP). This basically asks, in layman's terms, how fast does the page load? Very easy concept. So this is hugely influenced by the render time, the largest image, video, text in the viewport.
That's what Google is looking at. The largest thing in the viewport, whether it be a desktop page or a mobile page, the largest piece of content, whether it be an image, video or text, how fast does that take to load? Very simple. That can be influenced by your server time, your CSS, JavaScript, client side rendering.
All of these can play a part. So how fast does it load?
2. Cumulative shift layout (CSL)
The second thing, cumulative shift layout (CSL). Google is asking with this question, how fast is the page stable? Now I'm sure we've all had an experience where we've loaded a page on our mobile phone, we go to click a button, and at the last second it shifts and we hit something else or something in the page layout has an unexpected layout shift.
That's poor user experience. So that's what Google is measuring with cumulative shift layout. How fast is everything stable? The number one reason that things aren't stable is that image sizes often aren't defined. So if you have an image and it's 400 pixels wide and tall, those need to be defined in the HTML. There are other reasons as well, such as animations and things like that.
But that's what they're measuring, cumulative shift layout.
3. First input delay (FID)
Third thing within these Core Web Vitals metrics is first input delay (FID). So this question is basically asking, how fast is the page interactive? To put it another way, when a user clicks on something, a button or a JavaScript event, how fast can the browser start to process that and produce a result?
It's not a good experience when you click on something and nothing happens or it's very slow. So that's what that's measuring. That can depend on your JavaScript, third-party code, and there are different ways to dig in and fix those. So these three all together are Core Web Vitals and play into the page experience signals. So like I said, let's not get hung up on these.
How to measure & fix
Let's focus on what's really important. If you have a problem, how do you measure how you're doing with Core Web Vitals, and how do you fix those issues? Google has made it very, very simple to discover. The first thing you want to do is look in Search Console. They have a new report there — Core Web Vitals. They will tell you all your URLs that they have in their index, whether they're poor, needs improvement, or good.
If you have URLs that are poor or needs improvement, that's when you want to investigate and find out what's wrong and how you can improve those pages. Every report in Search Console links to a report in Page Speed Insights. This is probably the number-one tool you want to use to diagnose your problems with Core Web Vitals.
It's powered by Lighthouse, a suite of performance metric tools. You want to focus on the opportunities and diagnostics. Now I'm going to be honest with you. Some of these can get pretty technical. You may need a web developer who is an expert in page speed or someone else who can comfortably address these problems if you're not very technical.
We have a number of resources here on the Moz Blog dealing with page speed. We'll link to those in the comments below. But generally, you want to go through and you want to address each of these opportunities and diagnostics to improve your Core Web Vitals score and get these out of poor and needs improvement into good. Now if you don't have access to Search Console, Google has put these reports in many, many tools across the web.
Lighthouse, of course, you can run for any page. Chrome Dev Tools, the Crux API. All of these are available and resources for you to find out exactly how your site is performing with Core Web Vitals and go in and we have until sometime in 2021 to address these things. All right, that's it.
That's Core Web Vitals in a nutshell. We've got more than six months to go. Get ready. At least at a very minimum dive in and see how your site is performing and see if we can find some easy wins to get our sites up to speed. All right. Thanks, everybody.
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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.
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.#MozConpic.twitter.com/mCvWUpDTKQ
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#MozConpic.twitter.com/S4RwlkC6pp
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.#MozConpic.twitter.com/S6fClFevZo
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).
We’ve officially released the Moz API for Google Sheets and want to take you on a quick feature tour.
This Google Sheets add-on allows users to gather Moz URL metrics easily without using code directly in a Google Sheet and provides a few extra functions to help you manipulate data.
In the past, if you wanted link metrics for hundreds of URLs, you either had to enter them manually one at a time, or you needed technical expertise to use the LinkScape API. So, I built this free Google Sheets add-on, and now you can pull link metrics for those URLs in seconds, no coding required.
Here are a few use cases for the Moz API for Sheets add-on:
Get Moz Spam Score in metric to assist toxic link analysis (paid plan required).
Get domain authority and page authority in bulk to help you assess the quality of sites for link outreach, domain valuation, and more (available with free and paid plans).
Use built-in custom formulas to parse URLs, save URLs to the Wayback Archive, etc., all without having to write complicated nested formulas or use regular expressions.
Here’s what you can expect as output from the add-on:
The only thing you’ll need to get started is a Google account and Mozscape API credentials (a free plan is available).
Important limitations:
The free plan will allow the collection of domain authority and page authority for 200 URLs at a time, at a rate of 10 URLs per 10 seconds.
The paid plan will allow all metrics for 10,000 URLs at a time with no rate limiting.
Once you have the add-on installed, you’ll need to enter your Mozscape API credentials to activate the tool. From there, simply select your metrics and add in your URLs to get the report working.
The formulas tab
There are a few helpful custom formulas that come with the add-on. Simply click on the “formulas” tab at the bottom of the add-on to see them. As you type any of these formulas, a help file will pop up to guide you.
For example, use the =PARSE_URL formula to quickly parse URLs into the root, path, anchor, and more without having to write novel-length formulas or remember difficult regular expressions.
Stuck? Click on the “help” tab to display additional information.
That's it! We hope you enjoy the add-on and we welcome your feedback.
P.S. A massive thank you to Britney Muller and Cyrus Shepard for giving me the opportunity to build the add-on and being incredibly patient/helpful during the process.
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