What's Your AMP Traffic Really Doing? Set Up Reporting in 10 Minutes

Posted by Jeremy_Gottlieb

The other day, my colleague Tom Capper wrote a post about getting more traffic when you can’t rank any higher. I was really pleased that he wrote it, because it tackles a challenge I think about all the time. As SEOs, our hands are tied: we’re often not able to make product-level decisions that could create new markets, and we’re not Google’s algorithms — we can’t force a particular page to rank higher. What’s an SEO to do?

What if we shifted focus from transactional queries (for e-commerce, B2C, or B2B sites) and focused on the informational type of queries that are one, two, three, and possibly four or more interactions away from actually yielding a conversion? These types of queries are often quite conversational (i.e. "what are the best bodyweight workouts?") and very well could lead to conversions down the road if you’re try to sell something (like fitness-related products or supplements).

If we shift our focus to queries like the question I just posed, could we potentially enter more niches for search and open up more traffic? I’d hypothesize yes — and for some, driving this additional traffic is all one needs; whatever happens with that traffic is irrelevant. Personally, I’d rather drive qualified, relevant traffic to a client and then figure out how we can monetize that traffic down the road.

To accomplish this, over the past year I’ve been thinking a lot about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

What are Accelerated Mobile Pages?

According to Google,

"The AMP Project is an open-source initiative aiming to make the web better for all. The project enables the creation of websites and ads that are consistently fast, beautiful, and high-performing across devices and distribution platforms."

What this really means is that Google wants to make the web faster, and probably doesn’t trust the majority of sites to adequately speed up their pages or do so on a reasonable timeframe. Thus, AMP were created to allow for pages to load extremely fast (by cutting out the fat from your original source code) and provide an awesome user experience. Users can follow some basic instructions, use WordPress or other plugins, and in practically no time have mobile variants of their web content that loads super fast.

Why use AMP?

While AMP is not yet (or possibly ever going to be) a ranking factor, the fact that it loads fast certainly helps in the eyes of almighty Google and can contribute to higher rankings and clicks.

Let’s take a look at the query "Raekwon McMillan," the Miami Dolphins second-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft out of Ohio State University:

Notice how of these cards on mobile, two contain a little lightning bolt and the word "AMP?" The prevalence of AMP results in the SERPs is becoming more and more common. It’s reasonable to think that while the majority of people who use Google are not currently familiar with AMP, over time and through experience, they will realize that AMP pages with that little icon load much faster than regular web pages and will gravitate towards AMP pages through a type of subconscious Pavlovian training.

Should I use AMP?

There are rarely any absolutes in this world, and this is no exception. Only you will know, based upon your particular needs at this time. AMP is typically used by news publishers like the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, and many others, but it’s important to note that it's not limited to this type of entity. While there is an AMP news carousel that frequently appears on mobile and is almost exclusively the domain of large publishing sites, AMP results are increasingly appearing in the regular results, like with the Raekwon McMillan example.

I'm a fan of leveraging blog content on AMP to generate as many eyeballs as possible on our pages, but I'm still a bit leery about putting product pages on AMP (though this is now possible). My end goal is to drive traffic and brand familiarity through the blog content and then ultimately drive more sales as people are either retargeted to via paid or come back from other sources, direct, organic or otherwise to actually complete the purchase. If your blog has strong, authoritative content, deploying AMP could potentially be a great way to generate more visibility and clicks for your site.

I must point out, however, that AMP doesn’t come without potential drawbacks. There are strict guidelines around what you can and can’t do with it, such as not having email popups, possible reduction in ad revenue, analytics complications, and requiring maintenance of a new set of pages. If you do decide that the potential gain in organic traffic is worth the tradeoffs, we can get into how to best measure the success of AMP for your site.

Now you have AMP traffic — so what?

If your goal is to drive more organic traffic, you need to be prepared for the questions that will come if that traffic does not yield revenue in Google Analytics. First, we need to keep in mind that GA's default attribution is via last direct click, but the model can be altered to report different numbers. This means that if you have a visitor who searches something organically, enters via the blog, and doesn't purchase anything, yet 3 days later comes back via direct and purchases a product, the default conversion reporting in GA would assign no credit to the organic visit, giving all of the conversion credit to the direct visit.

But this is misleading. Would that conversion have happened if not for the first visit from organic search? Probably not.

By going into the Conversions section of GA and clicking on Attribution > Model Comparison Tool, you’ll be able to see a side-by-side comparison of different conversion models, such as:

• First touch (all credit goes to first point-of-entry to site)
• Last touch (all credit goes to the point-of-entry of session where conversion took place)
• Position-based (credit is primarily shared between the first and last points-of-entry, with less credit being shared amongst the intermediary steps)

There are also a few others, but I find them to be less interesting. For more information, read here. You can also click on Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions to see the number of conversions by channel which were used along the way to a conversion, but was not the channel of conversion.

AMP tracking complications

Somewhat surprisingly, tracking from AMP is not as easy or as logical as one might expect. To begin with, AMP uses a separate Analytics snippet than your standard GA tracking code, so if you already have GA installed on your site and you decide to roll out AMP, you will need to set up the specific AMP analytics. (For more information on AMP analytics, please read Accelerated Mobile Pages Via Google Tag Manager and Adding Analytics to Your AMP Pages).

In a nutshell, the client ID (which tracks a specific user’s engagement with a site over time in GA) is not shared by default between AMP analytics and the regular tracking code, though there are some hack-y ways to get around this (WARNING: this gets very technically in-depth). I think there are two very important questions when it comes to AMP measurement:

1. How much revenue are these pages responsible for?
2. How much engagement are we driving from AMP pages?

In the Google Analytics AMP analytics property, it's simple to see how many sessions there are and what the bounce and exit rates are. From my own experience, bounce and exit rates are usually pretty high (depending on UX), but the number of sessions increases overall. So, if we’re driving more and more users, how can we track and improve engagement beyond the standard bounce and exit rates? Where do we look?

How to measure real value from AMP in Google Analytics Acquisition > Referrals

I propose looking into our standard GA property and navigating to our referring sources within Acquisition, where we’ll select the AMP source, highlighted below.

Once we click there, we’ll see the full referring URLs, the number of sessions each URL drove to the non-AMP version of the site, the number of transactions associated with each URL, the amount of revenue associated per URL, and more.

Important note here: These sessions are not the total number of sessions on each AMP page; rather, these are the number of sessions that originated on an AMP URL and were referred to the non-AMP property.

Why is this particular report interesting?

1. It allows us to see which specific AMP URLs are referring the most traffic to the non-AMP version of the site
2. It allows us to see how many transactions and how much revenue comes from a session initiated by a specific AMP URL
   1. From here, we can analyze why certain pages refer more traffic or end up with more conversions, then apply any findings to other AMP URLs

Why is this particular report incomplete?

• It only shows us conversions and revenue that happened during one session (last-touch attribution)
  • It is very likely that most of your blog traffic will be higher-funnel and informational, not transactional, so conversions are more likely to happen at later touch points than the first one

Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions

If we really want to have the best understanding of how much revenue and conversions happen from visits to AMP URLs, we need to analyze the assisted conversions report. While you can certainly find value from analyzing the model comparison tool (also found within the conversions tab of GA), if we want to answer the question, "How many conversions and how much revenue are we driving from AMP URLs?", it’s best answered in the Assisted Conversions section.

One of the first things that we’ll need to do is create a custom channel grouping within the Assisted Conversions section of Conversions.

In here, we need to:

1. Click "Channel Groupings," select "Create a custom channel grouping"
2. Name the channel "AMP"
3. Set a rule as a source containing your other AMP property (type in “amp” into the form and it will begin to auto-populate; just select the one you need)
4. Click "Save"

Why is this particular report interesting?

1. We’re able to see how many assisted as well as last click/direct conversions there were by channel
2. We’re able to change the look-back window on a conversion to anywhere from 1–90 days to see how it affects the sales cycle

Why is this particular report incomplete?

• We’re unable to see which particular pages are most responsible for driving traffic, revenue, and conversions

Conclusion

As both of these reports are incomplete on their own, I recommend any digital marketer who is measuring the effect of AMP URLs to use the two reports in conjunction for their own reporting. Doing so will provide the value of:

1. Informing us which AMP URLs refer the most traffic to our non-AMP pages, providing us a jumping-off point for analysis of what type of content and CTAs are most effective for moving visitors from AMP deeper into the site
2. Informing us how many conversions happen with different attribution models

It’s possible that a quick glance at your reports will show very low conversion numbers, especially when compared with other channels. That does not necessarily mean AMP should be abandoned; rather, those pages should receive further investment and optimization to drive deeper engagement in the same session and retargeting for future engagement. Google actually does allow you to set up your AMP pages to retarget with Google products so users can see products related to the content they visited.

You can also add in email capture forms to your AMP URLs to re-engage with people at a later time, which is useful because AMP does not currently allow for interstitials or popups to capture a user’s information.

What do you do next with the information collected?

1. Identify why certain pages refer more traffic than others to non-AMP URLs. Is there a common factor amongst pages that refer more traffic and others that don’t?
2. Identify why certain pages are responsible for more revenue than other pages. Do all of your AMP pages contain buttons or designated CTAs?
3. Can you possibly capture more emails? What would need to be done?

Ultimately, this reporting is just the first step in benchmarking your data. From here you can pull insights, make recommendations, and monitor how your KPIs progress. Many people have been concerned or confused as to whether AMP is valuable or the right thing for them. It may or may not be, but if you’re not measuring it effectively, there’s no way to really know. There's a strong likelihood that AMP will only increase in prominence over the coming months, so if you’re not sure how to attribute that traffic and revenue, perhaps this can help get you set up for continued success.

Did I miss anything? How do you measure the success (or failure) of your AMP URLs? Did I miss any KPIs that could be potentially more useful for your organization? Please let me know in the comments below.

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WeChat Stores May Change the E-Commerce in China

Wechat is challenging Taobao the digital mall for E-Commerce in China. And the new Wechat Store may change the game for Alibaba.

The Craze for Social Commerce in China

The emergence of new technology has transformed our consumption environment in an impressive way in China. Brands and influencers have quickly succeeded in penetrating the Chinese market and society by using tools that intertwine into the everyday lives of individuals. (Read Guide to Understand KOL in China)

It is a fact; online commerce takes a prominent place in China. It has become a complete ecosystem that interweaves into all the components of the digital landscape. It connects a multitude of Internet users and no longer dissociates from the physical experience.

The development of social networks has made it possible to change the behaviors and habits of Internet users and offers more freedom and power to consumers.

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Building a Community of Advocates Through Smart Content

Posted by Michelle_LeBlanc

From gentle criticism to full-on trolls, every brand social media page or community sometimes faces pushback. Maybe you’ve seen it happen. Perhaps you’ve even laughed along as a corporation makes a condescending misstep or a local business publishes a glaring typo. It’s the type of thing that keeps social media and community managers up at night. Will I be by my phone to respond if someone needs customer service help? Will I know what to write if our brand comes under fire? Do we have a plan for dealing with this?

Advocates are a brand’s best friend

In my years of experience developing communities and creating social media content, I’ve certainly been there. I won’t try to sell you a magic elixir that makes that anxiety go away, but I've witnessed a phenomenon that can take the pressure off. Before you can even begin to frame a response as the brand, someone comes out of the woodwork and does it for you. Defending, opening up a conversation, or perhaps deflecting with humor, these individuals bring an authenticity to the response that no brand could hope to capture. They are true advocates, and they are perhaps the most valuable assets a company could have.

But how do you get them?

Having strong brand advocates can help insulate your brand from crisis, lead to referring links and positive media coverage, AND help you create sustainable, authentic content for your brand. In this blog post, I’ll explore a few case studies and strategies for developing these advocates, building user-generated content programs around them, and turning negative community perceptions into open dialogue.

Case study 1: Employee advocates can counter negative perceptions

To start, let’s talk about negative community perceptions. Almost every company deals with this to one degree or another.

In the trucking industry, companies deal with negative perceptions not just of their individual company, but also of the industry as a whole. You may not be aware of this, but our country needs approximately 3.5 million truck drivers to continue shipping daily supplies like food, medicine, deals from Amazon, and everything else you’ve come to expect in your local stores and on your doorstep. The industry regularly struggles to find enough drivers. Older drivers are retiring from the field, while younger individuals may be put off by a job that requires weeks away from home. Drivers that are committed to the industry may change jobs frequently, chasing the next hiring bonus or better pay rate.

How does a company counter these industry-wide challenges and also stand out as an employer from every other firm in the field?

Using video content, Facebook groups, and podcasts to create employee advocates

For one such company, we looked to current employees to become brand advocates in marketing materials and on social media. The HR and internal communications team had identified areas of potential for recruitment — e.g. separating military, women — and we worked with them to identify individuals that represented these niche characteristics, as well as the values that the company wanted to align themselves with: safety, long-term tenure with the company, affinity for the profession, etc. We then looked for opportunities to tell these individuals' stories in a way that was authentic, reflected current organic social media trends, and provided opportunities for dialogue.

In one instance, we developed a GoPro-shot, vlog-style video program around two female drivers that featured real-life stories and advice from the road. By working behind the scenes with these drivers, we were able to coach them into being role models for our brand advocate program, modeling company values in media/PR coverage and at live company events.

One driver participated in an industry-media live video chat where she took questions from the audience, and later she participated in a Facebook Q&A on behalf of the brand as well. It was our most well-attended and most engaged Q&A to date. Other existing and potential drivers saw these individuals becoming the heroes of the brand’s stories and, feeling welcomed to the dialogue by one of their own, became more engaged with other marketing activities as a result. These activities included:

• A monthly call-in/podcast show where drivers could ask questions directly of senior management. We found that once a driver had participated in this forum, they were much more likely to stay with the company — with a 90% retention rate!
• A private Facebook group where very vocal and very socially active employees could have a direct line to the company’s driver advocate to express opinions and ask questions. In addition to giving these individuals a dedicated space to communicate, this often helped us identify trends and issues before they became larger problems.
• A contest to nominate military veterans within the company to become a brand spokesperson in charge of driving a military-themed honorary truck. By allowing anyone to submit a nomination for a driver, this contest helped us discover and engage members of the audience that were perhaps less likely to put themselves forward out of modesty or lack of esteem for their own accomplishments. We also grew our email list, gained valuable insights about the individuals involved, and were able to better communicate with more of this “lurker” group.

By combining these social media activities with traditional PR pitching around the same themes, we continued to grow brand awareness as a whole and build an array of positive links back to the company.

When it comes to brand advocates, sometimes existing employees simply need to be invited in and engaged in a way that appeals to their own intrinsic motivations — perhaps a sense of belonging or achievement. For many employee-based audiences, social media engagement with company news or industry trends is already happening and simply needs to be harnessed and directed by the brand for better effect.

But what about when it comes to individuals that have no financial motivation to promote a brand? At the other end of the brand advocate spectrum from employees are those who affiliate themselves with a cause. They may donate money or volunteer for a specific organization, but when it comes down to it, they don’t have inherent loyalty to one group and can easily go from engaged to enraged.

Case study 2: UGC can turn volunteers into advocates

One nonprofit client that we have the privilege of working with dealt with this issue on a regular basis. Beyond misunderstandings about their funding sources or operations, they occasionally faced backlash about their core mission on social media. After all, for any nonprofit or cause out there, it's easy to point to two or ten others that may be seen as "more worthy," depending on your views. In addition, the nature of their cause tended to attract a lot of attention in the holiday giving period, with times of low engagement through the rest of the year.

Crowdsourcing user-generated content for better engagement

To counter this and better engage the audience year-round, we again looked for opportunities to put individual faces and stories at the forefront of marketing materials.

In this case, we began crowdsourcing user-generated content through monthly contesting programs during the organization's "off" months. Photos submitted during the contests could be used as individual posts on social media or remixed across videos, blog posts, or as a starting point for further conversation and promotion development with the individuals. As Facebook was the primary promotion point for these contests, they attracted those who were already highly engaged with the organization and its page. During the initial two-month program, the Facebook page gained 16,660 new fans with no associated paid promotion, accounting for 55% of total page Likes in the first half of 2016.

Perhaps even more importantly, the organization was able to save on internal labor in responding to complaints or negative commentary on posts as even more individuals began adding their own positive comments. The organization’s community manager was able to institute a policy of waiting to respond after any negative post, allowing the brand advocates time to chime in with a more authentic, volunteer-driven voice.

By inviting their most passionate supporters more deeply into the fold and giving them the space and trust to communicate, the organization may have lost some measure of control over the details of the message, but they gained support and understanding on a deeper level. These individuals not only influenced others within the social media pages of the organization, but also frequently shared content and tagged friends, acting as influencers and bringing others into the fold.

How you can make it work for your audience

As you can see, regardless of industry, building a brand advocate program often starts with identifying your most passionate supporters and finding a way to appeal to their existing habits, interests, and motivations — then building content programs that put those goals at the forefront. Marketing campaigns featuring paid influencers can be fun and can certainly achieve rapid awareness and reach, but they will never be able to counter the lasting value of an authentic advocate, particularly when it comes to countering criticism or improving the perceived status of your brand or industry.

To get started, you can follow a few quick tips:

• Understand your existing community.
  • Take a long look at your active social audience and try to understand who those people are: Employees? Customers?
  • Ask yourself what motivates them to participate in dialogue and how can you provide more of that.
• Work behind the scenes.
  • Send private messages and emails, or pick up the phone and speak with a few audience members.
  • Getting a few one-on-one insights can be incredibly helpful in content planning and inspiring your strategy.
  • By reaching out individually, you really make people feel special. That’s a great step towards earning their advocacy.
• Think: Where else can I use this?
  • Your advocates and their contributions are valuable. Make sure you take advantage of that value!
  • Reuse content in multiple formats or invite them to participate in new ways.
  • Someone who provides a testimonial might be able to act as a source for your PR team, as well.

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What No One Tells You About Running a Sweepstakes

When I was 18, my dad gave me my first business book. He said, “If I can teach you at 18 what I learned at 36 you will be way ahead of me.” He was right, but what he didn’t anticipate was the speed at which business and marketing would change. It’s no longer enough to read business books. I subscribe to a wide variety of blogs and newsletters so I can keep abreast of the latest ideas and trends. There are a lot of great articles giving you social sweepstakes marketing ideas, but as I have combined my business background with my hobby, I spot pitfalls in giveaways most marketers miss. Here is what you don’t know about running a sweepstakes via any social media channel.

Everyone Else is Doing it.
PITFALL #1 Not adding giveaways into your annual marketing plan.

Sweepstakes, contests, and giveaways that are tied to your brand, product, local or national event, or milestone is a fun and dynamic way to engage with your customers, fans, and followers.

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How to Improve Your LinkedIn Engagement

Want your LinkedIn posts to attract more viewers? Wondering how to increase views and shares of your LinkedIn content? In this article, you’ll discover five simple tactics to improve engagement on your LinkedIn posts. #1: Write Text-Only Posts You’ve probably heard that people engage more when a social media post shows an image or video.

This post How to Improve Your LinkedIn Engagement first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

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Marketers Need to Stop Lying to Themselves (New Research)

New research launched last week by Marketo shows that marketers—both B2C and B2B—continue to be borderline delusional in terms of what customers actually expect, and how they are and are not delivering against those demands.

The State of Engagement report surveyed 1,000-plus global marketers and 1,000-plus consumers in an effort to understand how (and whether) consumers want to engage with brands, and what companies need to do to best satiate those needs.

Timing on this research was particularly interesting for me, as it launched while I was at the terrific Content Experience 2017 conference which was staged by my friends at Uberflip, in Toronto. The thread throughout the Content Experience event was how to use content marketing to deliver relevant information to consumers, across the customer journey.

At multiple points throughout the event, including my keynote, presenters emphasized that companies need to understand their customers better.

Remarkably, most marketers think they already have this licked, but consumers disagree:

82% of marketers believe they have a deep understanding of customers. 56% of customers agree.
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This lack of understanding—at least from the customers’ perspective—yields an obvious, negative outcome: diminished relevancy. And relevancy is a big, big deal to consumers:

Irrelevant content is the number one reason consumers don't engage more often with brands
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While marketers think they know enough to be relevant, they understand that something is being lost in translation, as less than half of participating marketers believe their consumer engagement efforts are meeting brand objectives.

48% of marketers think their engagement efforts are achieving organization strategic objectives
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Relevancy Is the Killer App

As I wrote about in my recent post “Are You Making the Most Common Marketing Mistake“:

“Every marketer in the history of the world tells themselves the same lie, and when doing so, makes the same mistake.

The lie they tell themselves is, “My customers are just too busy.” They believe customers are too busy to read the blog, watch the video, sit through the demo, or interact with the Instagram post.

This is completely untrue. It’s not about busy. Are people busier now, or when there was no microwave, ATM, or Uber? We are less busy than ever.

What’s changed is that there is more competition for attention. So when a customer says they are ‘too busy’ to interact with the company, that’s a euphemism. What they really mean, but rarely say, is that what you have put in front of them is simply not RELEVANT enough.

If you give a customer or prospect the information she needs, in the format she prefers, at the moment when it’s convenient, the time needed to consume and interact with that information will magically appear.

Relevancy is the killer app, and relevant marketing creates attention.”

We, as marketers, know this to be true. We know that consumers demand relevancy and specificity like never before. But this research shows that we are massively over-estimating the relevancy that we are actually delivering to consumers. They don’t, as a general rule, WANT to engage with brands unless they are research a purchase, or making a purchase, per this research.

Consequently, brands must work even harder to become and stay relevant, and that requires truly KNOWING your customers more than ever. It’s easy to convince yourself that you have a real handle on your customers’ needs, but too often we are inferring that knowledge through data and reports.

If you want to know what customers really need, get out there and actually talk to customers. Second best option is to talk to people in your company that do talk to customers routinely, like the sales and customer service departments.

This discrepancy between how much marketers think they know customers and how much customers think marketers know them is a real problem.

Thanks to Marketo for putting together The State of Engagement report. Lots of great data in this research, beyond the exposure of marketers’ collective, present-day hubris.

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Going Beyond Google: Are Search Engines Ready for JavaScript Crawling & Indexation?

Posted by goralewicz

I recently published the results of my JavaScript SEO experiment where I checked which JavaScript frameworks are properly crawled and indexed by Google. The results were shocking; it turns out Google has a number of problems when crawling and indexing JavaScript-rich websites.

Google managed to index only a few out of multiple JavaScript frameworks tested. And as I proved, indexing content doesn’t always mean crawling JavaScript-generated links.

This got me thinking. If Google is having problems with JavaScript crawling and indexation, how are Google’s smaller competitors dealing with this problem? Is JavaScript going to lead you to full de-indexation in most search engines?

If you decide to deploy a client-rendered website (meaning a browser or Googlebot needs to process the JavaScript before seeing the HTML), you're not only risking problems with your Google rankings — you may completely kill your chances at ranking in all the other search engines out there.

Google + JavaScript SEO experiment

To see how search engines other than Google deal with JavaScript crawling and indexing, we used our experiment website, http:/jsseo.expert, to check how Googlebot crawls and indexes JavaScript (and JavaScript frameworks’) generated content.

The experiment was quite simple: http://jsseo.expert has subpages with content parsed by different JavaScript frameworks. If you disable JavaScript, the content isn’t visible — i.e. if you go to http://ift.tt/2gm0jah, all the content within the red box is generated by Angular 2. If the content isn’t indexed in Yahoo, for example, we know that Yahoo’s indexer didn’t process the JavaScript.

Here are the results:

As you can see, Google and Ask are the only search engines to properly index JavaScript-generated content. Bing, Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex are completely JavaScript-blind and won’t see your content if it isn’t HTML.

The next step: Can other search engines index JavaScript?

Most SEOs only cover JavaScript crawling and indexing issues when talking about Google. As you can see, the problem is much more complex. When you launch a client-rendered JavaScript-rich website (JavaScript is processed by the browser/crawler to “build” HTML), you can be 100% sure that it’s only going to be indexed and ranked in Google and Ask. Unfortunately, Google and Ask cover only ~64% of the whole search engine market, according to statista.com.

This means that your new, shiny, JavaScript-rich website can cost you ~36% of your website’s visibility on all search engines.

Let’s start with Yahoo, Bing, and AOL, which are responsible for 35% of search queries in the US.

Yahoo, Bing, and AOL

Even though Yahoo and AOL were here long before Google, they’ve obviously fallen behind its powerful algorithm and don’t invest in crawling and indexing as much as Google. One reason is likely the relatively high cost of crawling and indexing the web compared to the popularity of the website.

Google can freely invest millions of dollars in growing their computing power without worrying as much about return on investment, whereas Bing, AOL, and Ask only have a small percentage of the search market.

However, Microsoft-owned Bing isn't out of the running. Their growth has been quite aggressive over last 8 years:

Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about one of the market pioneers: AOL. Do you remember the days before Google? This video will surely bring back some memories from a simpler time.

If you want to learn more about search engine history, I highly recommend watching Marcus Tandler’s spectacular TEDx talk.

Ask.com

What about Ask.com? How is it possible that Ask, with less than 1% of the market, can invest in crawling and indexing JavaScript? It makes me question if the Ask network is powered by Google’s algorithm and crawlers. It's even more interesting looking at Ask’s aversion towards Google. There were already some speculations about Ask’s relationship with Google after Google Penguin in 2012, but we can now confirm that Ask’s crawling is using Google’s technology.

DuckDuckGo and Yandex

Both DuckDuckGo and Yandex had no problem indexing all the URLs within http://jsseo.expert, but unfortunately, the only content that was indexed properly was the 100% HTML page (http://ift.tt/2gkDEuM).

Baidu

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t manage to index http://jsseo.expert in Baidu.com. It turns out you need a mainland China phone number to do that. I don’t have any previous experience with Baidu, so any and all help with indexing our experimental website would be appreciated. As soon as I succeed, I will update this article with Baidu.com results.

Going beyond the search engines

What if you don’t really care about search engines other than Google? Even if your target market is heavily dominated by Google, JavaScript crawling and indexing is still in an early stage, as my JavaScript SEO experiment documented.

Additionally, even if crawled and indexed properly, there is proof that JavaScript reliance can affect your rankings. Will Critchlow saw a significant traffic improvement after shifting from JavaScript-driven pages to non-JavaScript reliant.

Is there a JavaScript SEO silver bullet?

There is no search engine that can understand and process JavaScript at the level our modern browsers can. Even so, JavaScript isn’t inherently bad for SEO. JavaScript is awesome, but just like SEO, it requires experience and close attention to best practices.

If you want to enjoy all the perks of JavaScript without worrying about problems like Hulu.com’s JavaScript SEO issues, look into isomorphic JavaScript. It allows you to enjoy dynamic and beautiful websites without worrying about SEO.

If you've already developed a client-rendered website and can’t go back to the drawing board, you can always use pre-rendering services or enable server-side rendering. They often aren’t ideal solutions, but can definitely help you solve the JavaScript crawling and indexing problem until you come up with a better solution.

Regardless of the search engine, yet again we come back to testing and experimenting as a core component of technical SEO.

The future of JavaScript SEO

I highly recommend you follow along with how http://jsseo.expert/ is indexed in Google and other search engines. Even if some of the other search engines are a little behind Google, they'll need to improve how they deal with JavaScript-rich websites to meet the exponentially growing demand for what JavaScript frameworks offer, both to developers and end users.

For now, stick to HTML & CSS on your front-end. :)

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6 Ways to Track (and Beat) Your Competitors on Social

According to recent Pew findings, 69 percent of the public uses social media today. This means that a huge portion of your market is active on social media, which you probably know already—and your competitors know, too. Define, track, and beat your competitors on social media using the tools laid out below.

1. Be Intentional About Choosing Your Competitors

You think you know who your competitors are, but you might not be seeing the full picture. This depends on how you define competitors. There are two categories of competitors.

1. Your direct competitors: These are the brands competing with you for dollars in the bank. They sell the same (or comparable) product or service.
2. Your competitors for audience awareness and interaction: These brands don’t do the same thing you do. The overlap is in target audience, as an increasingly large number of brands compete for similar demographics. If you’re having trouble identifying your target audience, check this post out.

You should be tracking competitors from both of these categories on a regular basis, so you can learn which new content ideas and delivery mechanisms your competitors are investing in, learn from their successes and pitfalls, and gain a deeper understanding into which content resonates best with your shared audience.

2. Determine Your Baseline

After you’ve identified the different competitive sets (one for direct competitors, one for audience competitors) that you want to track, it’s time to set a baseline. Run an easy analysis to understand how you stack up against each competitive set, and zero in on the specific posts and campaigns which are driving engagement and audience growth for your competitors.

from Simply Measured Social Analytics

Then, set a goal. Be as specific as possible when setting your goal: The more specific the goal, the more likely you are to hit it. If you’re behind when it comes to the engagement metrics that matter to your brand, whether those are shares, replies, likes, comments, and/or interactions on a specific social network, set a goal for percentage growth over the next quarter and year.

If you’re ahead, take a look at your past growth, and make a goal to replicate or exceed that growth percentage so that you stay in the lead.

3. Know Who Is Receiving More Positive (and Negative) Sentiment

By viewing the conversation around your industry topic across multiple social channels, from Facebook to Reddit, you can discern whether you or your competitors are defining and dominating the conversation from an earned social perspective. In other words, how do people really feel about you and your competitors? How do you match up when it comes to brand health?

from Simply Measured Listening

Not all engagement is good engagement, after all.

4. Deliver a Clear, Effective Message

The best way to deliver a message your audience will connect with—and get a leg up on your competitors while you’re at it—is to understand what they’re talking about with one another. How is your target audience interacting with their own following around relevant topics to your brand and industry?

from Simply Measured Listening

5. Own Relevant Events and Holidays in Your Field

Beating your competitors on social is an audience-first strategy. Which events matter to your audience, and how can you become a part of these conversations? Spend some time researching popular events for your target demographic, listening to what they’re talking about now, and planning your content calendar around the events which are hot in your space.

Beating your competitors on social is an audience-first strategy.
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6. Be Strategic About Where You Put Your Ad Dollars

There are so many places to spend your social ad dollars. Be thoughtful about which social channels and campaigns you devote money to—and make sure that if your competitors are there, promoting hashtags and boosting posts, you’re there, too. Keep an eye on your competitors’ promoted posts, and use social analytics to gauge which social posts are performing best organically, so you can make smarter ad decisions using that information.

Want to learn more about how you can use social analytics—listening included—to beat the competition? Head to the Simply Measured blog or give our product a spin today.

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How to Add an Email Subscription Form to Facebook

Having a website and social media accounts are both necessary to get your business noticed. To stay in touch with potential clients email blasts and newsletters are your best avenue of communication. You have a sign-up form on your website, but where else can you add your subscription form to stay in touch and generate leads via email? Social Media!

Making it easy for Facebook visitors to sign up for your website email list. People like easy.

Giving people an easy way to subscribe to your email list on Facebook, dramality increases the likelihood they will subscribe. I’m going to walk you through the steps of where and how to add subscription forms to each of those accounts.

Tip: If you open a window with your social media account and keep this window open, you can view them side-by-side. It will be easy to follow along and accomplish this task.

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How to Develop a Better Content Creation Process

Sometimes, crafting content can be like banging your head against the wall—too many ideas, too many deadlines, too many writers, producers, and designers to wrangle. It can feel less like herding cats and more like fighting off a swarm of bees.

Congratulations! This is what having a wealth of content feels like, and it’s a way better problem to have than not enough content. Nevertheless, let’s fix it—there are solutions you can implement to get those unruly posts back in line. In fact, I’ve got eight for you. Use this list of tips, tools, and process tweaks on an ad hoc basis for a quick fix to a specific problem, or roll all of them into your process for a total content creation process makeover.

1. Make the Process Clear, Simple, and Accessible

Can your content creation process be explained in a few sentences, or does it require elaborate charts? If your contributors can’t follow your process easily, they won’t.

Take a hard look at your process and see what you can do to simply or clarify the steps. Make sure a well-written, reader-friendly guide to the process is available in an easy-to-access place for all potential contributors. When people bring an idea for future content, send them the guidelines directly.

For the medium-sized public relations firm I work for (and our content marketing clients), I prefer to stick to the basics when it comes to management applications and parameters. In fact, I typically just use Outlook and Excel for this—seriously.

Why so old school? Using familiar tools makes contributing easier for contributors outside the content marketing world.

Can you explain your content creation process in a few sentences, or does it require elaborate charts?
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2. Make Contributors Tie Their Posts to Content Goals and Categories

Submission forms can be an excellent funnel for this purpose in large organizations. For small ones, it’s probably fine to have contributors just email this information with the post. Make note of your process for this—and the goal and category options available to your contributors—in the aforementioned process document. Even though this information is probably easy to identify as you review the post, requiring a contributor to connect the dots for you forces them think about it as they draft.

One way to ensure this happens is to set up your writers as “Contributors” in their WordPress user profiles. This requires them to submit new posts to an Administrator before their work can be published. This creates a smooth review funnel that gives writers the ability to select a post category right from the sidebar.

If they don’t select a category, send it back to them and ask them to address the issue.

3. Use a Content Calendar

By laying out opportunities and tying them to specific dates, you simultaneously create a signup system for those who want to contribute and allow contributors to self-assign deadlines. This relieves some of the burden of assigning content, and also makes you less of a “bad guy” if you have to put your foot down when that deadline finally rolls around—after all, they chose it.

There are ample tools available for this. It can be as simple an outline in Word or Excel or an actual calendar like Outlook and Google Calendar. If you want something more robust, CoSchedule is a great tool, too.

4. Make Your Style Guide Easy to Follow

You may be seeing a pattern here. Making resources about your organization’s content creation accessible and easy to understand makes the process smoother for everyone. Think of these resources as pieces of content marketing themselves—for your content program.

However, don’t confuse “clear and easy to understand” with “simplified.” It’s not necessary to dumb down or eliminate complex rules that protect the brand. Just be thoughtful about how you present them to make them user-friendly.

At my firm, the assumed base for any style guide is the AP Style Guide. As public relations professionals, we’re already pretty well-versed in it. We list any additional rules, client “quirks,” or deviations in a Word document.

5. Build a Small Core Team

The key word here is “small.” A small core team can allow for flexibilities that are crucial within the flow of content creation that a large team typically cannot accomodate. Each member of this team should have enough of a defined role to know where they contribute.

However, for small organizations where people with a content role also have a lot of other responsibilities, keeping these roles loose can foster a sense that we all share accountability for delivering at each step, which allows all members to step in and support each other. The content development load is more manageable when it is shared.

As needed, create sub-teams that report to a core team member. This can help organizations with more robust content plans keep up with the scale of the work.

For major content marketing clients, I get specific with my content team: We’re all responsible for making sure the overall content plan stays on track to meet targets, like releasing a blog post every week and keeping the social media queue full. One person is tasked to write the post scheduled this week, while another is responsible for scheduling all of next week’s social media posts. Another is responsible for assessing the latest social media ad run analytics and delivering a report.

Every team needs a point person with that eagle’s eye view making sure a specific person is attached to each specific task involved in keeping the overall strategy moving forward.

6. Assign Content Focus Areas

You can do this by division, by team, or even by individual, if you have great content creators you want to put to work more frequently. This focuses contributors’ content, making it a lot easier for them to deliver content that is on point. Creativity loves a boundary—you’re likely making it easier for contributors to develop ideas, too.

One of the things I love about working at a medium (or even a small) company is that we all know everyone else. I’m able to take the time to observe what gets each team member excited, and what they perform best at. Then, I can ask them to focus on content related to that strength. But this guidance is just as important—perhaps even more so—when working with a group too large for this.

When I work with client companies with large teams, I work with our primary point of contact to create subject matter expert profiles—people we can count on to know a topic inside and out, and deliver awesome content on that topic. Then, we work with those SME’s on an ongoing basis to identify new topics and opportunities within their focus areas.

7. Praise Success

It’s important to celebrate your team’s successes—and to do it publicly. When people see well-done work rewarded, they are more motivated to follow suit.

But don’t stop at a simple pat on the back. Take the time to share some insight into what you believe caused that piece of content to go above and beyond. This turns the moment into a learning opportunity for the entire team that reinforces best practices.

At my PR firm, I use our monthly company-wide meeting to give a shout-out to the most popular blog posts for the month. I love this because it’s simple, offers top performers public praise, and serves as educational for the entire team as we identify trends.

8. Expand Your Vocabulary

Don’t worry, we’re not dictionary-crunching. I recommend adopting a single word often left out of office conversations: No.

The best trick? Your rejection doesn’t have to be pronounced “n-o.” It can be expressed in much nicer ways, especially when enforcing the other tactics listed here:

• “Sorry, our calendar is full for the month. Touch base again in a few weeks.”
• “We know from experimentation that this type of content works better when [insert fact here]. Can you try re-drafting that way?”
• “Unfortunately, this doesn’t tie to our content goals. Let’s brainstorm something that better supports our established content plan.”

This offers specific feedback that reinforces best practices and arms you to be an effective gatekeeper to control content. It can be pretty tough, especially when saying “no” to a client expert. In these cases, I try to focus on strengths, be specific, and approach the effort as a collaboration.

Here’s an email format I’ve used with very positive results to reshape drafts into compelling publishable works:

Sarah,

Thank you so much for taking the time to get this done—I know you are very busy!

I love the reflections you included in this post. However, I did modify it a bit, just trying to apply a little more of a blog structure to it, optimizing it in a way that makes it more digestible for online readers (breaking it down into small sections and framing it by the key takeaways). You can see my suggestions tracked in the attached updated draft.

I hope I have not overstepped or put words in your mouth in the process. Please take a look and modify as you see fit to maintain your voice and factual accuracy. I am happy to address any questions or talk through this further, if you’d like. 

-Emily

Better Process, Better Content

A robust content creation system can easily go haywire. There are a ton of pieces that all have to come together, and they’re all constantly in motion. It’s enough to drive anybody to swear off content altogether. But there is a lot you can do to reel your team back in from the edge of mayhem. Whether you apply one of these tips or all of them, you’re on your way back to an organized, well-oiled machine.

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How to Create Testimonial Videos

Do you want to use customer endorsements in your social media marketing? Wondering how to create a persuasive testimonial video? In this article, you’ll learn how to produce an effective testimonial video to share on social media. Why Testimonial Videos? People value the opinions of their peers. According to a BrightLocal study, 84% of consumers

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Relive MozCon with the 2017 Video Bundle

Posted by Danielle_Launders

MozCon may be over, but we just can’t get enough of it — and that's why our team has worked hard to bring the magic back to you with our MozCon 2017 Video Bundle. You'll have 26 sessions at your fingertips to watch over and over again — that’s over 14 hours of future-focused sessions aiming to level up your SEO and online marketing skills. Get ahead of Google and its biggest changes to organic search with Dr. Pete Meyers, prepare for the future of mobile-first indexing with Cindy Krum, and increase leads through strategic data-driven design with Oli Gardner.

Ready to dive into all of the excitement? Feel free to jump ahead:

Buy the MozCon 2017 Video Bundle

For our friends that attended MozCon 2017, check your inbox: You should find an email from us that will navigate you to your videos. The same perk applies for next year — your ticket to MozCon 2018 includes the full video bundle. We do have a limited number of super early bird tickets (our best deal!) still available.

This year's MozCon was truly special. We are honored to host some of the brightest minds in the industry and the passion and insights they bring to the stage. We know you'll enjoy all the new tactics and innovative topics just as much as we did.

But don’t just take our word for it...

Here’s a recap of one attendee's experience:

“Attending MozCon is like a master's course in digital marketing. With so many knowledgeable speakers sharing their insights, their methods, and their tools all in the hopes of making me a better digital marketer, it seems like a waste not to take advantage of it.”
– Sean D. Francis, Director of SEO at Blue Magnet Interactive

The video bundle

You’ll have access to 26 full video presentations from MozCon.

For $299, the MozCon 2017 video bundle gives you instant access to:

• 26 videos (that’s over 14 hours of content)
• Stream or download the videos to your computer, tablet, or phone. The videos are iOS, Windows, and Android-compatible
• Downloadable slide decks for presentations

Buy the MozCon 2017 Video Bundle

Want a free preview?

If you haven’t been to a MozCon before, you might be a little confused by all of the buzz and excitement. To convince you that we're seriously excited, we're sharing one of our highly-rated sessions with you for free! Check out "How to Get Big Links" with Lisa Myers in the full session straight from MozCon 2017. Lisa shares how her and her team were able to earn links and coverage from big sites such as New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and BBC.

I want to thank the team behind the videos and for all the hours of editing, designing, coding, processing, and more. We love being able to share this knowledge and couldn’t do it without the crew's efforts. And to the community, we wish you happy learning and hope to see you at MozCon 2018 in July!

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5 Types of Infographic Layouts For Visualizing Information

Not all infographic templates you come across will necessarily be perfectly formatted for the information you are trying to visualize. In some cases, you might have a text-heavy article that you want to transform into an infographic, and at other times you might have a lot of survey results to work with. Sifting through mountains of templates can often be overwhelming. Even if you’re working with a designer, it can be difficult to effectively articulate what you’re looking for. But sometimes you don’t need an infographic designer to create something beautiful and effective.

The following are five types of infographic layouts that will make the process of transitioning text or data to a visual format, much easier.

1) Step-by-Step Infographic

If you’ve got an article or a “how-to-guide” that you need to visualize, the best layout to work with is a Step-by-Step or process layout.

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How to Set a Facebook Ad Budget

Wondering how much you should spend on Facebook ads? Do you need to set a budget? In this article, you’ll discover how to set a Facebook advertising budget by working backward from the revenue you need to generate. #1: Set a Target Revenue Goal Defining a revenue goal for your campaign seems like a simple

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Facebook Publisher Changes, YouTube Breaking News Section, and Facebook Camera Updates

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show with Erik Fisher, Kim Reynolds, and Jeff Sieh, we explore Facebook Publisher changes, YouTube Breaking News, Facebook Camera updates,

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How to Determine if a Page is "Low Quality" in Google's Eyes - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

What are the factors Google considers when weighing whether a page is high or low quality, and how can you identify those pages yourself? There's a laundry list of things to examine to determine which pages make the grade and which don't, from searcher behavior to page load times to spelling mistakes. Rand covers it all in this episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about how to figure out if Google thinks a page on a website is potentially low quality and if that could lead us to some optimization options.

So as we've talked about previously here on Whiteboard Friday, and I'm sure many of you have been following along with experiments that Britney Muller from Moz has been conducting about removing low-quality pages, you saw Roy Hinkis from SimilarWeb talk about how they had removed low-quality pages from their site and seen an increase in rankings on a bunch of stuff. So many people have been trying this tactic. The challenge is figuring out which pages are actually low quality. What does that constitute?

What constitutes "quality" for Google?So Google has some ideas about what's high quality versus low quality, and a few of those are pretty obvious and we're familiar with, and some of them may be more intriguing. So...

• Google wants unique content.
• They want to make sure that the value to searchers from that content is actually unique, not that it's just different words and phrases on the page, but the value provided is actually different. You can check out the Whiteboard Friday on unique value if you have more questions on that.
• They like to see lots of external sources linking editorially to a page. That tells them that the page is probably high quality because it's reference-worthy.
• They also like to see high-quality pages, not just sources, domains but high-quality pages linking to this. That can be internal and external links. So it tends to be the case that if your high-quality pages on your website link to another page on your site, Google often interprets that that way.
• The page successfully answers the searcher's query.

This is an intriguing one. So if someone performs a search, let's say here I type in a search on Google for "pressure washing." I'll just write "pressure wash." This page comes up. Someone clicks on that page, and they stay here and maybe they do go back to Google, but then they perform a completely different search, or they go to a different task, they visit a different website, they go back to their email, whatever it is. That tells Google, great, this page solved the query.

If instead someone searches for this and they go, they perform the search, they click on a link, and they get a low-quality mumbo-jumbo page and they click back and they choose a different result instead, that tells Google that page did not successfully answer that searcher's query. If this happens a lot, Google calls this activity pogo-sticking, where you visit this one, it didn't answer your query, so you go visit another one that does. It's very likely that this result will be moved down and be perceived as low quality in Google.

• The page has got to load fast on any connection.
• They want to see high-quality accessibility with intuitive user experience and design on any device, so mobile, desktop, tablet, laptop.
• They want to see actually grammatically correct and well-spelled content. I know this may come as a surprise, but we've actually done some tests and seen that by having poor spelling or bad grammar, we can get featured snippets removed from Google. So you can have a featured snippet, it's doing great in the SERPs, you change something in there, you mess it up, and Google says, "Wait, no, that no longer qualifies. You are no longer a high-quality answer." So that tells us that they are analyzing pages for that type of information.
• Non-text content needs to have text alternatives. This is why Google encourages use of the alt attribute. This is why on videos they like transcripts. Here on Whiteboard Friday, as I'm speaking, there's a transcript down below this video that you can read and get all the content without having to listen to me if you don't want to or if you don't have the ability to for whatever technical or accessibility, handicapped reasons.
• They also like to see content that is well-organized and easy to consume and understand. They interpret that through a bunch of different things, but some of their machine learning systems can certainly pick that up.
• Then they like to see content that points to additional sources for more information or for follow-up on tasks or to cite sources. So links externally from a page will do that.

This is not an exhaustive list. But these are some of the things that can tell Google high quality versus low quality and start to get them filtering things.

How can SEOs & marketers filter pages on sites to ID high vs. low quality?

As a marketer, as an SEO, there's a process that we can use. We don't have access to every single one of these components that Google can measure, but we can look at some things that will help us determine this is high quality, this is low quality, maybe I should try deleting or removing this from my site or recreating it if it is low quality.

In general, I'm going to urge you NOT to use things like:

A. Time on site, raw time on site

B. Raw bounce rate

C. Organic visits

D. Assisted conversions

Why not? Because by themselves, all of these can be misleading signals.

So a long time on your website could be because someone's very engaged with your content. It could also be because someone is immensely frustrated and they cannot find what they need. So they're going to return to the search result and click something else that quickly answers their query in an accessible fashion. Maybe you have lots of pop-ups and they have to click close on them and it's hard to find the x-button and they have to scroll down far in your content. So they're very unhappy with your result.

Bounce rate works similarly. A high bounce rate could be a fine thing if you're answering a very simple query or if the next step is to go somewhere else or if there is no next step. If I'm just trying to get, "Hey, I need some pressure washing tips for this kind of treated wood, and I need to know whether I'll remove the treatment if I pressure wash the wood at this level of pressure," and it turns out no, I'm good. Great. Thank you. I'm all done. I don't need to visit your website anymore. My bounce rate was very, very high. Maybe you have a bounce rate in the 80s or 90s percent, but you've answered the searcher's query. You've done what Google wants. So bounce rate by itself, bad metric.

Same with organic visits. You could have a page that is relatively low quality that receives a good amount of organic traffic for one reason or another, and that could be because it's still ranking for something or because it ranks for a bunch of long tail stuff, but it is disappointing searchers. This one is a little bit better in the longer term. If you look at this over the course of weeks or months as opposed to just days, you can generally get a better sense, but still, by itself, I don't love it.

Assisted conversions is a great example. This page might not convert anyone. It may be an opportunity to drop cookies. It might be an opportunity to remarket or retarget to someone or get them to sign up for an email list, but it may not convert directly into whatever goal conversions you've got. That doesn't mean it's low-quality content.

THESE can be a good start:

So what I'm going to urge you to do is think of these as a combination of metrics. Any time you're analyzing for low versus high quality, have a combination of metrics approach that you're applying.

1. That could be a combination of engagement metrics. I'm going to look at...

• Total visits
• External and internal
• I'm going to look at the pages per visit after landing. So if someone gets to the page and then they browse through other pages on the site, that is a good sign. If they browse through very few, not as good a sign, but not to be taken by itself. It needs to be combined with things like time on site and bounce rate and total visits and external visits.

2. You can combine some offsite metrics. So things like...

• External links
• Number of linking root domains
• PA and your social shares like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn share counts, those can also be applicable here. If you see something that's getting social shares, well, maybe it doesn't match up with searchers' needs, but it could still be high-quality content.

3. Search engine metrics. You can look at...

• Indexation by typing a URL directly into the search bar or the browser bar and seeing whether the page is indexed.
• You can also look at things that rank for their own title.
• You can look in Google Search Console and see click-through rates.
• You can look at unique versus duplicate content. So if I type in a URL here and I see multiple pages come back from my site, or if I type in the title of a page that I've created and I see multiple URLs come back from my own website, I know that there's some uniqueness problems there.

4. You are almost definitely going to want to do an actual hand review of a handful of pages.

• Pages from subsections or subfolders or subdomains, if you have them, and say, "Oh, hang on. Does this actually help searchers? Is this content current and up to date? Is it meeting our organization's standards?"

Make 3 buckets:

Using these combinations of metrics, you can build some buckets. You can do this in a pretty easy way by exporting all your URLs. You could use something like Screaming Frog or Moz's crawler or DeepCrawl, and you can export all your pages into a spreadsheet with metrics like these, and then you can start to sort and filter. You can create some sort of algorithm, some combination of the metrics that you determine is pretty good at ID'ing things, and you double-check that with your hand review. I'm going to urge you to put them into three kinds of buckets.

I. High importance. So high importance, high-quality content, you're going to keep that stuff.

II. Needs work. second is actually stuff that needs work but is still good enough to stay in the search engines. It's not awful. It's not harming your brand, and it's certainly not what search engines would call low quality and be penalizing you for. It's just not living up to your expectations or your hopes. That means you can republish it or work on it and improve it.

III. Low quality. It really doesn't meet the standards that you've got here, but don't just delete them outright. Do some testing. Take a sample set of the worst junk that you put in the low bucket, remove it from your site, make sure you keep a copy, and see if by removing a few hundred or a few thousand of those pages, you see an increase in crawl budget and indexation and rankings and search traffic. If so, you can start to be more or less judicious and more liberal with what you're cutting out of that low-quality bucket and a lot of times see some great results from Google.

All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we'll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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7 Insanely Effective Ways to Write Tweets that Drive Traffic

Are you struggling with writing tweets that get clicks back to your content? It can be a challenge – trust me, I know.

But driving traffic is often the number one goal of businesses using Twitter for business, and rightly so. After all, Twitter is designed for people who are looking for information.

In fact, Twitter’s CMO, Leslie Berland, recently put it best in a speech at CES 2017 in an attempt to demystify the purpose of the platform. She said, “Twitter is the place to see what’s happening.” Hell, it’s even right there when you go to compose a tweet!

Unlike other social media platforms, Twitter’s main purpose and benefit is not to connect online with people you already know.

On those other platforms (think Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat), most messages from businesses are an interruption to the social experience.

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5 Ways Panera Bread Creates an Engaging Customer Experience – A Case Study

Panera Bread wants to be a comfortable place for their customers to gather. Their stores have been designed to invite and welcome customers to enjoy relaxing, conversation, reading; all in a casual atmosphere.

Panera has built a successful business based on providing an experience that was aligned with their mission; until it wasn’t. The brand discovered the in-store experience was no longer relaxing. Customers were lined up waiting for orders, often there were long lines waiting to order. Success can breed complacency. Unless a brand adopts a disrupting mindset, they may realize the need for change too late.

I’ll use the Panera Bread case study as an example of a brand that identified significant challenges that threatened their growth, maybe their existence, and took steps to disrupt themselves. I’ll also offer some practical insights and questions for you to consider. Panera 2.0 was a significant initiative designed to bring the customer experience back into alignment with their mission.

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Selling With Video: YouTube and Facebook Video Marketing

Want to create a sales video that converts? Looking for expert tips about building rapport with your prospects? To explore how to sell with video on YouTube and Facebook, I interview Jeremy Vest. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to

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The Voice Playbook – Building a Marketing Plan for the Next Era in Computing

Posted by SimonPenson

Preface

This post serves a dual purpose: it's a practical guide to the realities of preparing for voice right now, but equally it's a rallying call to ensure our industry has a full understanding of just how big, disruptive, and transformational it will be — and that, as a result, we need to stand ready.

My view is that voice is not just an add-on, but an entirely new way of interacting with the machines that add value to our lives. It is the next big era of computing.

Brands and agencies alike need to be at the forefront of that revolution. For my part, that begins with investing in the creation of a voice team.

Let me explain just how we plan to do that, and why it’s being actioned earlier than many will think necessary….

Jump to a section:

Why is voice so important?
When is it coming in a big way?
Who are the big players?
Where do voice assistants get their data from?
How do I shape my strategy and tactics to get involved?
What skill sets do I need in a "voice team?"

Introduction

"The times, they are a-changing."
– Bob Dylan

Back in 1964, that revered folk-and-blues singer could never have imagined just what that would mean in the 21st century.

As we head into 2018, we're nearing a voice interface-inspired inflection point the likes of which we haven't seen before. And if the world’s most respected futurist is to be believed, it’s only just beginning.

Talk to Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Chief Engineer and the man Bill Gates says is the "best person to predict the future," and he’ll tell you that we are entering a period of huge technological change.

For those working across search and many other areas of digital marketing, change is not uncommon. Seismic events, such as the initial roll out of Panda and Penguin, reminded those inside it just how painful it is to be unprepared for the future.

At best, it tips everything upside down. At worst, it kills those agencies or businesses stuck behind the curve.

It’s for exactly this reason that I felt compelled to write a post all about why I'm building a voice team at Zazzle Media, the agency I founded here in the UK, as stats from BrightEdge reveal that 62% of marketers still have no plans whatsoever to prepare for the coming age of voice.

I’m also here to argue that while the growth traditional search agencies saw through the early 2000s is over, similar levels of expansion are up for grabs again for those able to seamlessly integrate voice strategies into an offering focused on the client or customer.

Winter is coming!

Based on our current understanding of technological progress, it's easy to rest on our laurels. Voice interface adoption is still in its very early stages. Moore’s Law draws a (relatively) linear line through technological advancement, giving us time to take our positions — but that era is now behind us.

According to Kurzweil’s thesis on the growth of technology (the Law of Accelerating Returns),

"we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years."

Put another way, he explains that technology does not progress in a linear way. Instead, it progresses exponentially.

"30 steps linearly get you to 30. One, two, three, four, step 30 you're at 30. With exponential growth, it's one, two, four, eight. Step 30, you're at a billion," he explained in a recent Financial Times interview.

In other words, we're going to see new tech landing and gaining traction faster than we ever realized it possible, as this chart proves:

Above, Kurzweil illustrates how we’ll be able to produce computational power as powerful as a human brain by 2023. By 2037 we’ll be able to do it for less than a one-cent cost. Just 15 years later computers will be more powerful than the entire human race as a whole. Powerful stuff — and proof of the need for action as voice and the wider AI paradigm takes hold.

Voice

So, what does that mean right now? While many believe voice is still a long ways off, one point of view says it's already here — and those fast enough to grab the opportunity will grow exponentially with it. Indeed, Google itself says more than 20% of all searches are already voice-led, and will reach 50% by 2020.

Let’s first deal with understanding the processes required before then moving onto the expertise to make it happen.

What do we need to know?

We’ll start with some assumptions. If you are reading this post, you already have a good understanding of the basics of voice technology. Competitors are joining the race every day, but right now the key players are:

• Microsoft Cortana – Available on Windows, iOS, and Android.
• Amazon Alexa – Voice-activated assistant that lives on Amazon audio gear (Echo, Echo Dot, Tap) and Fire TV.
• Google Assistant – Google’s voice assistant powers Google Home as well as sitting across its mobile and voice search capabilities.
• Apple Siri – Native voice assistant for all Apple products.

And (major assistants) coming soon:

• Samsung Bixby – Native voice assistant for Samsung products.
• (Yet to be named) Facebook assistant – They already have M for Messenger, and Mark Zuckerberg is personally testing "Jarvis AI" in his home.

All of these exist to allow consumers the ability to retrieve information without having to touch a screen or type anything.

That has major ramifications for those who rely on traditional typed search and a plethora of other arenas, such as the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT).

In short, voice allows us to access everything from our personal diaries and shopping lists to answers to our latest questions and even to switch our lights off.

Why now?

Apart from the tidal wave of tech now supporting voice, there is another key reason for investing in voice now — and it's all to do with the pace at which voice is actually improving.

In a recent Internet usage study by KPCB, Andrew NG, chief scientist at Chinese search engine Baidu, was asked what it was going to take to push voice out of the shadows and into its place as the primary interface for computing.

His point was that at present, voice is "only 90% accurate" and therefore the results are sometimes a little disappointing. This slows uptake.

But he sees that changing soon, explaining that "As speech recognition accuracy goes from, say, 95% to 99%, all of us in the room will go from barely using it today to using it all the time. Most people underestimate the difference between 95% and 99% accuracy — 99% is a game changer... “

When will that happen? In the chart below we see Google’s view on this question, predicting we will be there in 2018!

Is this the end for search?

It is also important to point out that voice is an additional interface and will not replace any of those that have gone before it. We only need to look back at history to see how print, radio, and TV continue to play a part in our lives alongside the latest information interfaces.

Moz founder Rand Fishkin made this point in a recent WBF, explaining that while voice search volumes may well overtake typed terms, the demand for traditional SERP results and typed results will continue to grow also, simply because of the growing use of search.

The key will be creating a channel strategy as well as a method for researching both voice and typed opportunity as part of your overall process.

What’s different?

The key difference when considering voice opportunity is to think about the conversational nature that the interface allows. For years we've been used to having to type more succinctly in order to get answers quickly, but voice does away with that requirement.

Instead, we are presented with an opportunity to ask, find, and discover the things we want and need using natural language.

This means that we will naturally lengthen the phrases we use to find the stuff we want — and early studies support this assumption.

In a study by Microsoft and covered by the brilliant Purna Virji in this Moz post from last year, we can see a clear distinction between typed and voice search phrase length, even at this early stage of conversational search. Expect this to grow as we get used to interacting with voice.

The evidence suggests that will happen fast too. Google’s own data shows us that 55% of teens and 40% of adults use voice search daily. Below is what they use it for:

While it is easy to believe that voice only extends to search, it's important to remember that the opportunity is actually much wider. Below we can see results from a major 2016 Internet usage study into how voice is being used:

Clearly, the lion's share is related to search and information retrieval, with more than 50% of actions relating to finding something local to go/see/do (usually on mobile) or using voice as an interface to search.

But an area sure to grow is the leisure/entertainment sector. More on that later.

The key question remains: How exactly do you tap into this growing demand? How do you become the choice answer above all those you compete with?

With such a vast array of devices, the answer is a multi-faceted one.

Where is the data coming from?

To answer the questions above, we must first understand where the information is being accessed from and the answer, predictably, is not a simple one. Understanding it, however, is critical if you are to build a world-class voice marketing strategy.

To make life a little easier, I’ve created an at-a-glance cheat sheet to guide you through the process. You can download it by clicking on the banner below.

http://ift.tt/2w6Eu2e