Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Learning How To Be A Manager'
Posted by caitlin.krumdieck
Introduction from Will Critchlow:
I want to introduce the post that follows for two reasons. First, its a little
different to the majority of posts we write for the SEOmoz blog, and second, its
Caitlins first post here.Caitlin Krumdieck is our Director of Client Development
at Distilled. Until she joined the company (as a sales executive), I had sold
every piece of work that Distilled had done. She (supposedly) joined the company
to assist me in responding to leads and putting together proposals. When she
out-sold me in her third month, it became clear that I should be making way for
her to do her thing and her growth at Distilled has continued from there. Along
the way, shes learned some interesting things about herself and the various
roles shes held in the company. Ihope you enjoy reading about Caitlins growth
and development and take away something useful for your own career and company.
Throwing myself in the deep end (aka learning how to be a manager)
I always thought I wanted to be a manager. Growing up naturally bossy and bit
of a control freak, it just seemed like the natural spot for me to end up. So
when I stepped into my first management position at Distilled, I was surprised
at how hard the transition was. Moving from consultant to manager of a team
required a complete change of mindset and challenged me in ways I never
expected. Today, I'll be sharing the four things I believe are worth thinking
about if you are looking to make the move into management.
Gut check: make sure you actually want to be a manager
About three months after my transition from London Sales Exec into the Head of
Sales role, I had a very frank conversation with Will Critchlow (Distilled's
Co-Founder) about my role. He then asked me point blank if I actually wanted to
be a manager.
For me, this was a career-changing question. At the time, I was having a tough
time letting go of my old responsibilities and moving forward into management
responsibilities. I had been working in sales for over six years. I loved the
buzz of talking to clients and closing deals. I liked the fact that I was
personally responsible for bringing in revenue for Distilled, and I still valued
my contribution to the company by the amount of money I could generate. So
instead of focusing all my time and energy on how to make my team awesome, I was
still spending at least 70% of my time trying to bring in new business. This
meant I was essentially doing two jobs, over working myself, and not giving my
team the management support they needed.
My answer to Will was, Let me think about it. I surprised myself by not going
right back to him with a, Hell yeah, I want to be a manager response. I spent a
few days really thinking about the changes I would need to make if I really
wanted to step into a management position. To help me evaluate both
opportunities, I made a list of the responsibilities for each. I thought about
what it would mean to my day-to-day work, and I asked myself quite frankly, Will
I be happy as a manager?
I think a lot of people make the mistake of skipping this step. They think
that, because management seems like a step up, it is the natural progression
they should strive for. But the truth is that management isnt for everyone. It
is a somewhat thankless job that requires a lot of patience, focus,
determination, and self-motivation. It isnt just a progression from a consulting
role; its a complete job change.
In the end, I decided to challenge myself and devote myself fully to becoming a
great manager. I would love to say that from the moment I made that decision
everything changed, but to be honest, it took about another nine months before I
made the full transition.
So before you eagerly put yourself forward for that management position, ask
yourself, Do I really want to be a manager? If you are currently a consultant
and love working on accounts, would you be happy if your daily responsibilities
shifted from being at the heart of the action to becoming the person setting
team targets, having line manager meetings, and generally solving problems?
Would you miss the thrill of the discovery that only comes from day-in, day-out
work with clients? These aren't easy questions, and it is well worth taking the
time out to really think about what a move into management means.Rand wrotea
great postcovering the management vs contributor conundrum, highlighting how
management isn't everything and shouldn't be the only growth path within a
company.
Transitioning: re-learning how to be a team player
When I was in high school, I was the goalie for my schools water polo team.
This role requires a lot of the same characteristics of a great manager. While
everyone knows that it is the goalies job to stop the ball from going in the
net, it is also the goalies responsibility to set plays into motion. However,
once the ball is in play, they need to get their ass back to the goal and
provide support. From the vantage point in the goal, you can see the whole pool,
so it is your job to let the other members of the team know what's going on, but
you cant actually get involved. A goalie is the ultimate support position. Sure,
you get credit for any major saves, but you never get credit for the goals your
offense scores.
Management is very similar. At Distilled, we subscribe to the belief that good
management means being the support for the whole rest of the team, not the other
way around. We are avid believers of Joel Spolskys support function approach to
management.
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/the-management-team-guest-post-from-joel-spolsky.html
As a manager, you have to be constantly aware of everything happening and make
yourself available to help, but you need to let your team score their own goals.
A good manager doesnt take all the great leads/clients; they share their
experience and knowledge so their team is able to step up and perform on their
own.
Another big mind shift for me in going from a consultant to a manager, was
learning to see my teams success as my success. While I wasnt out there directly
making clients happy, I was supporting a team that was getting results. That is
the management win.
Learning to lead: dont dictate, start a flywheel
We talk about the power of flywheels a lot at Distilled. Building a great team
should be approached with the same ideology and methodology as starting a
flywheel. The goal is the same: ideally, when you push hard in a consistent
direction for a length of time, it seems to get easier and easier to build
momentum. With a small team and big targets, it was essential for me to think
about how, as the manager, I could push my team to get the best possible results
and continued growth for Distilled.
Its easy to assume that you know what all the right answers are and that your
team should do things your way. This was a mistake I made when I first started
managing my team. As the first sales person at Distilled, I created a lot of our
original sales material. I thought the most successful approach would be to get
my team to just use what I built and go out and sell the way I would sell
things. That approach worked OK for a while, but it was short-sighted and didnt
allow us to leverage the talent within our team. It also meant I had to be
involved with every major deal we did, which limited our ability to speak with a
larger number of clients.
So I took a step back. I stopped telling people how I thought they should
approach working with a new client, and I started asking them what they thought
they should do. I forced myself to stop getting involved in every conversation,
and gave my team the space and responsibility to own all the client
relationships, only bringing me in when they really need me. Instead of
bulldozing in when trying to solve problems, I started to refuse to give my team
advice until they told me what they thought a solution looked like.
The results have been amazing. My team has grown in confidence and the work
they are doing now is more than twice as good as it was when I was forcing my
approach on them. We are talking to more clients than ever before, and were able
to double business last year without growing the size of our team.
Getting results: make sure your team knows what is expected of them
As a sales team, it was easy to focus target setting on revenue, but that only
looks at part of the picture. If you only focus on the money coming in, you
might miss some crucial areas of personal development that need to also be
addressed as a manager. While I could use our sales reporting system to see how
my team was performing, I couldnt see if they were happy or achieving what they
wanted to in their roles.
The first step I took was to redefine the roles within our team and to set out
clear responsibilities of the roles my team currently filled and what
progression into more senior roles would look like. I made sure to focus not
just on their sales targets, but also team development responsibilities within
the role. I put in more ownership-based responsibilities so the team could see
how they were a part of the big picture and not just a cog. This helped my team
to see exactly what is expected of them and what they can start working on to
progress to the next level within the team. It also allowed me to open up
conversations with my team on what sideways steps might look like, should
someone on the team choose to move in a new direction.
Once I had the roles clearly defined, I sent out a happiness survey to each
member of my team. Here are the questions I asked my team.
On a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best, how happy are you in your roll at the
moment? On a scale from 1-5 with 5 being the best, how do you feel you are
performing in your role?
Do you feel like you know what is expected of you in your role?
On a scale from 1-5 with 5 being the best, do you feel that you are well
supported in your roll?
On a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best, do you feel you get the support you
need from Caitlin?
What do you feel is your biggest accomplishment in the past 12 months?
Where do you think you have failed or would like to improve?
What do you think of the targets set for 2012/2013 (this past year)?
What are areas you feel like you could use more support in?
What is one thing Caitlin can do for you to support you in your role?
Do you understand what Caitlin's role is?
What is one thing you would like to see improve/change/grow for the Client
Development team for the New Year?
How would you rank the general quality of leads you have received in the past
3 months?
My line manager Duncan Morris (Distilled CEO) had used a similar tactic with me
in our line manager meetings and I found it was a great way to open up
conversations about happiness and personal development. In the past when asking
my team, How are you doing? I tended to get half thought-out answers. Giving
them the space to write at length about it and asking them to assign a number to
how they felt about how things were going, meant I got much more critical
responses. It also allowed me to ask them what I needed to do as their manager
to get them to the next level, which forced them to give me critical feedback.
This really opened up conversations and has led to better personal development,
increased team happiness, and improvements in openness across the team.
Wrapping up
Every company is going to demand different things from its management team, but
I found getting the team management side of things right is one of the most
important steps I took. It wasnt until I got that right that I really started to
feel like a manager. There have been a lot of lessons along the way and I could
probably write another whole post on the challenges of setting targets, managing
difficult consultants and clients, and the importance of communication. However,
I felt these three things really sum up the major lessons I learned as a person
when moving into a management role and are the most transferable, regardless of
the type of manager you are looking to be.
If you would like some more references, I found these resources very helpful:
Good to Great
Anything from Dale Carnegie especially How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job
Bob Nelsons 1001 Ways to Energize and Empower Employees
One of the great things about being a manager is that you are always learning
and there is always more to think about when trying to help your team grow. I
hope sharing my own learning experinces has helped and I would love to hear from
others who have advice on how to manage a team effectively.
I'll leave you with an aswer I had to give recently, when someone I was
interviewing asked me what I love about my job:For the past four years, I have
found my self doing something brand new and challanging every day. No week is
the same. Finally, while a manager may not get a lot of credit for all the
behind the scenes work you do supporting the team, seeing your team be
successful can be supremely rewarding and fulfilling.
Good luck!
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Monday 27 May 2013
Tuesday 21 May 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] The 7 Most Dangerous Blog Design Mistakes
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The 7 Most Dangerous Blog Design
Mistakes'
There are many millions of blogs on the internet, and probably about 98% of them
are garbage to be honest. And because there is so much choice out there, it is
very hard to stand out - unless you can "WOW" a first time visitor with a great
design, inte...
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Mistakes'
There are many millions of blogs on the internet, and probably about 98% of them
are garbage to be honest. And because there is so much choice out there, it is
very hard to stand out - unless you can "WOW" a first time visitor with a great
design, inte...
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[Build Backlinks Online] 6 Ways to Make More Out of Your Facebook Ad Campaign
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '6 Ways to Make More Out of Your
Facebook Ad Campaign'
Whatever you think about Facebook, theres one thing thats hard to dispute: Mark
Zuckerberg isnt afraid to mix things up and try new strategies, and thats
especially true when it comes to advertising. If you dont follow the social
network closely, its easy to miss the newest advertising tools and tips. Lets
take a quick [...]6 Ways to Make More Out of Your Facebook Ad Campaign is a post
from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/facebook/6-ways-to-make-more-out-of-your-facebook-ad-campaign/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-ways-to-make-more-out-of-your-facebook-ad-campaign
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Facebook Ad Campaign'
Whatever you think about Facebook, theres one thing thats hard to dispute: Mark
Zuckerberg isnt afraid to mix things up and try new strategies, and thats
especially true when it comes to advertising. If you dont follow the social
network closely, its easy to miss the newest advertising tools and tips. Lets
take a quick [...]6 Ways to Make More Out of Your Facebook Ad Campaign is a post
from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/facebook/6-ways-to-make-more-out-of-your-facebook-ad-campaign/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-ways-to-make-more-out-of-your-facebook-ad-campaign
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[Build Backlinks Online] The 3 Steps for Success in a Multi-device Search World
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The 3 Steps for Success in a
Multi-device Search World'
Posted by Aleyda Solis
We live in a multi-device world, and if you're still focused on improving your
visibility, traffic, and conversions solely for desktop users, you're losing a
great opportunity. This gap, coupled with the fact that you're probably staying
behind your competitors and unconnected with your audience, is not great for
business. Not convinced? Let's see some data...
Mobile search is booming.
It's already driving important multi-channel conversions.
However, we're still not doing our best for mobile and are losing
opportunities.
Despite the multichannel conversions that mobile search drives, we're still not
making the most out of it. There are people that feel it is still too
complicated and insecure to purchase goods on their smartphones:
Unfortunately, what are now fundamental aspects on our desktop-focused
optimization activities are sometimes still unknown when developing a
mobile-focused presence, even for some very important websites. For example:
A. Some websites don't have a mobile-focused presence
Remember that, despite having an audience that may be using the most advanced
smartphones and tablets, they still need an optimized offer that fulfills their
specific behaviors (not necessarily the same than the one from the desktop
users), providing the best experience according to their device characteristics
(and device-specific restrictions).
For example, can you guess which of these two sites provide me the best
experience, is really optimized for me, will make me stay (as a consequence),
and have a higher chance of conversions from me?
Although I have an iPhone 5 and my fingers are tiny, it's very difficult for me
to browse, interact, and consume information if the site doesn't have a version
well-optimized for the device I'm using.
B. Some sites have a mobile presence, but forget about optimization
fundamentals
On the other hand, other websites have a mobile presence (websites and apps
included), but that doesn't mean they're really optimized. As I mentioned
before, basics from our day-to-day "desktop focused" optimization activities are
for some reason forgotten when we go mobile or tablet.
For example, many websites love promoting their apps with intrusive
interstitials that disrupt the user mobile web flow, requiring interaction from
the user in order to continue:
What about relevant, descriptive titles? This optimization basic is frequently
forgotten, even by big websites when they go mobile (although these are
well-optimized in their desktop versions):
How about businesses that forget to create a landing page on their site for
their own mobile apps? When you search for the app, you get the first results
with iTunes store profiles that may confuse you (which one to choose?) featuring
not-so-great descriptions, along with some posts with negative reviews:
Time to get better control of your own app web results? Yes, please.
Two questions arise from these situations:
Can you blame people for not converting from their mobile devices?
How can you change it?
First, let's acknowledge the challenge of a multi-device ecosystem. Once we get
a handle on it, we'll have an overall vision in order to make the best
decisions, optimize your presence accordingly, and maximize your opportunities.
Mobile, Tablet, Web vs. App: The Segmentation Challenge
Usually, the first question we need to answer when we go mobile (whether
smartphone or tablet focused) is: do I develop a website or an app?
As I shared in this State of Search post, your decision should be based on
certain factors such as your business model; the goals you're trying to achieve;
how important is for your content to have a wider reach, and if it is web
indexable or not; whether or not you need to provide a complex functionality
that requires a higher hardware integration or connection independence; and if
your audience is highly-concentrated in few devices types and platforms. You'll
need to asses these characteristics along with mobile web and apps pros and
cons:
When you're deciding whether going mobile with a website or an app is the best
option for you, use the following visualization to analytze the alternatives:
You'll see that is easier to targetyour mobile audience with less web presence
than to do so with an app that is much more segmented.
However, when you think beyond the development alternatives to target your
mobile audience with the required functionalities and start thinking about how
you can optimize, grow the visibility, and generate conversions,you'll find that
most of the principles and good practices are the same (or can be easily
extrapolated):
Realize that, despite the many segmentation levels a multi-device presence may
have from a development and audience perspective, there are optimization
principles that are the same for any type of approach, platform, and device type
that you should be taking into consideration in order to make the most out of
the organic search channels to connect with your audience.
It's now the time to identify these similar principles and good practices to
make the most out the multi-device search opportunity, instead of focusing on
its complexities as an excuse. Otherwise, you will stay behind.
3 Steps to Improve Your Visibility in a Multi-device Search World
1. Optimize your presence for multi-device search visibility
People not only search for websites through web search, but also for apps
(whether from smartphones, tablets, or desktops, remember we're in a
multi-device world), so it's fundamental that you don't forget about creating
and optimizing a mobile web presence to increase your mobile app visibility
through web search, too.
Take a look at the exact-match local monthly search volume for some mobile apps
related keywordsin the US, from desktop and laptop devices:
And the volume for the searches from mobile devices with full Internet
browsers:
So, if you want to maximize the chances that your mobile presence (web or app)
gets the search visibility, users, and conversions it deserves, then you need to
make sure that it's easily found through the web search results. If you have a
mobile app, you'll also need to take into consideration your visibility in the
app store search. Let's see how!
1.1. Mobile web: select and optimize the best mobile web approach for your
situation
When you're developing a mobile website, the key is to select the best setting
according to your characteristics, restrictions, and needs. These settings
include responsive web, dynamic serving, or parallel mobile sites.
I've posted and presented about these many times, so it may be easier to check
out what I've shared before and avoid repeating myself. You'll see that eachone
of these alternatives have their pros and cons, as well as specific and general
SEO best practices that I discussed in this Moz post andMozinarsome months ago
about mobile SEO:
Nonetheless, beyond specifically optimizing each mobile web alternative
according to their characteristics, there are mobile web optimization
fundamentals that should always be followed:
1.1.1. Reorganize your content to be correctly displayed in mobile devices
Prioritizing the devices used by your audience (that you can identify through
your Google Analytics "Audience > Mobile > Devices" report) gives the
required visibility to the most important elements of your content. Think about
your user's goals as well as your own, and align them to reorganize your web
interface:
Beware of elements (like flash or interstitials) that are not correctly
displayed, dont work, or provide a bad user and search experience. Take a look
at the following Mobile usability resources:
Organizing Mobileby Luke Wroblewski
Nielsen's Mobile Website and Application Usability Report and Mobile Site vs.
Full Site article
Brad Frost post about Content Parity
1.1.2. Optimize your mobile pages relevance
Make your titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and, of course, your page's main
content relevant for your mobile web audience. Take your keywords into
consideration, and the visibility limitation of mobile search results in the
different type of devices:
Use mobile emulators and user agent switchers to easily validate by yourself
how your own pages are shown in mobile search results (for smartphones and
tablets, too), along with your competitors.
1.1.3. Enhance your pages visibility with structured markup and Google+
presence
Use structured data markup(reviews, people, businesses, apps, etc.), Google's
authorship,and create a presence in Google+ for your business to enhance your
page's results visibility, not only in desktop results, but also in your mobile
search results (where the visibility provided by these can be even higher in
comparison):
Google has also recently announced content recommendationsfor mobile sites with
a Google+ presence that will make the visibility obtained with it even higher.
1.1.4. Make your mobile site fast
Your mobile site has higher speed restrictions due to mobile networks and CPU
capabilities, which means it's even more important to optimize its speed.
Use your Google Analytics site speed report information to easily identify your
pages load times and analyze them withGoogle's PageSpeed Insights mobile filter
to identify opportunities to improve them:
Follow PageSpeed's mobile best practices and take into consideration what's
explained in this "Make the Mobile Web faster" article.
1.1.5. Serve the right web version according to the used device
It's important to effectively identify the type of device (desktop, tablet,
smartphone) used by your visitors and provide them the right web version by
using different techniques according to the Mobile Web approach you're
following:
With CSS media-queries withresponsive Web
With User agent detection with dynamic serving
With User agent detection and redirects with aparallel mobile site
1.2. Mobile apps: create and optimize landing pages for apps in your site
Give visibility to your app beyond the app store search results by creating a
landing page for each of your mobile apps on your own website. Make the landing
pages relevant, and optimize them to rank for popular searches of users looking
for your apps:
Make sure to feature testimonials and reviews, and add a visible link to your
app store page with call to actions to incentivize downloads:
Integrate your social presence as well, inviting for shares in social networks:
Additionally, Google has recently announced even more integration with Google+
for apps by showingGoogle+ Sign-Inapp activitiesin their results, which would
also give your results more visibility:
1.2. App Store Search
Although app store search optimization is still in early stages when we compare
it with web search and is specific to each app store (Android Market and the
Apple App Store),it's also evolving,aligning each time more with web search type
of factors, with an algorithm that is looking to reward:
Relevance: with the relevant terms in the App name, description, and keywords
Popularity: with download rate, install base, ratings, comments, and even
external review sites
Take these into consideration for your app store presence, by optimizing the
different elements of your profile:
In addition to promoting, gamifying your mobile experience (with profiles,
levels, badges, rewards, lists, etc.) to incentivize your app users activity is
a huge download driver. Take a look at how successful apps do it, like
Foursquare:
You can additionally promote your app through relevant sites in the sector,
such as app review blogs and communities:
On the other hand, take into consideration that sometimes app store preview
pages also rank in web search results and that there's also a specific
"Applications" search feature in Google, listing only application related
presence, for which these optimization best practices would be also beneficial
in order to get a better visibility:
There are also sites and tools like App AnnieandSearchman that provide free app
store statistics about the top apps per store, category, and country, which can
serve you as an input when optimizing your app:
2. Cross promote between your multi-device presence
Create awareness of your multi-device web and app presence through each other.
Promote your mobile app in a non-intrusive way (no interstitials) by inviting
users to download it when accessing the mobile site with a relevant device or to
switch to another web version, as shown in these images:
Make sure you also create awareness about your different multi-device presence
through all of your channels, from email signatures to social profiles to your
home page and emails, with updates and specially targeted mobile offers:
3. Measure to improve your multi-device presence
You cannot improve what you cannot measure, so it's fundamental to track,
continuously analyze, and make improvements not only to your desktop, but also
to your mobile presence based on their analytics data. You can still usingGoogle
Analyticsfor this, which provides anSDK for mobile app analytics.
3.1. For your web presence
You can use Google Analytics mobile reports and default segments along with
your own advanced segments and dashboards to follow-up and verify if you're
advancing as expected with the traffic and conversions volume and trend per
device type, keywords, and pages:
To easily check your Google Analytics campaign tagging and referrers for your
mobile site (or your competitors), you can use user agent switchers along with
Google Analytics debuggers extensions for your browser:
For Firefox: use thisuser agent switcher and Google Analytics debugger
For Chrome: use this user agent switcher and Google Analytics debugger
Unfortunately, there are issues with the search referrer data that are not
passed from the Safari search box in iOS 6,and as a consequence, it's shown as
direct traffic in your analytics platform. Something similar also happens for
Android 4 mobile search traffic. Check outthis post by AJ Khonshowing how we can
create an advanced segment in Google Analytics to calculate the approximate
amount of the lost search traffic.
3.1. For your apps
The mobile app analytics will give you information about the amount of active
users, screen views, sessions to demographic information, used app versions,
goal completions, and in-app revenue:
Additionally, to verify your Google Analytics campaign tagging and referrers
for your mobile app (or your competitors), you can set a proxy on your own
computer, using a software like Charles Proxy(available for Windows and Mac), so
you'll be able to monitor the HTTP traffic that goes through it, even the one
from the apps installed on your mobile (that you'll need to set so it uses your
computer as proxy).
Follow these installation and configuration stepsto set your computer as a
proxy and configure your mobile network settings to use it as an HTTP proxy
(you'll need to add in the manual proxy settings your computer IP as the server
one with the 8888 port):
Now you'll able to monitor the HTTP requests made from your mobile through
Charles, including the ones made by your apps, as it can be seen in the
following example:
You can use this not only with your own apps, but with your competitor's to
check how they're tracking their mobile traffic and with your providers or
partners to see if they're effectively tagging their campaigns.
Be sure to take a look atthis Distilled postwith a complete check-list that
will guide you with the necessary settings and questions to better measure your
mobile presence.
Conclusion: There's no excuse. Start optimizing for multi-device search now.
As you can see, there's no excuse to not optimize for a multi-device search
ecosystem. It's true that the landscape may become more segmented, but many of
the best practices and optimization steps can be aligned between the different
presences, and will give you the chance to connect with an audience that you're
likely already losing.
Remember that search is always evolving, and if you don't catch it now, it
might be even more difficult with new type of device andsearch interactions in a
future that look even more segmented.
Do you have any questions or would like to share your opinions? I look forward
to your comments!
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Multi-device Search World'
Posted by Aleyda Solis
We live in a multi-device world, and if you're still focused on improving your
visibility, traffic, and conversions solely for desktop users, you're losing a
great opportunity. This gap, coupled with the fact that you're probably staying
behind your competitors and unconnected with your audience, is not great for
business. Not convinced? Let's see some data...
Mobile search is booming.
It's already driving important multi-channel conversions.
However, we're still not doing our best for mobile and are losing
opportunities.
Despite the multichannel conversions that mobile search drives, we're still not
making the most out of it. There are people that feel it is still too
complicated and insecure to purchase goods on their smartphones:
Unfortunately, what are now fundamental aspects on our desktop-focused
optimization activities are sometimes still unknown when developing a
mobile-focused presence, even for some very important websites. For example:
A. Some websites don't have a mobile-focused presence
Remember that, despite having an audience that may be using the most advanced
smartphones and tablets, they still need an optimized offer that fulfills their
specific behaviors (not necessarily the same than the one from the desktop
users), providing the best experience according to their device characteristics
(and device-specific restrictions).
For example, can you guess which of these two sites provide me the best
experience, is really optimized for me, will make me stay (as a consequence),
and have a higher chance of conversions from me?
Although I have an iPhone 5 and my fingers are tiny, it's very difficult for me
to browse, interact, and consume information if the site doesn't have a version
well-optimized for the device I'm using.
B. Some sites have a mobile presence, but forget about optimization
fundamentals
On the other hand, other websites have a mobile presence (websites and apps
included), but that doesn't mean they're really optimized. As I mentioned
before, basics from our day-to-day "desktop focused" optimization activities are
for some reason forgotten when we go mobile or tablet.
For example, many websites love promoting their apps with intrusive
interstitials that disrupt the user mobile web flow, requiring interaction from
the user in order to continue:
What about relevant, descriptive titles? This optimization basic is frequently
forgotten, even by big websites when they go mobile (although these are
well-optimized in their desktop versions):
How about businesses that forget to create a landing page on their site for
their own mobile apps? When you search for the app, you get the first results
with iTunes store profiles that may confuse you (which one to choose?) featuring
not-so-great descriptions, along with some posts with negative reviews:
Time to get better control of your own app web results? Yes, please.
Two questions arise from these situations:
Can you blame people for not converting from their mobile devices?
How can you change it?
First, let's acknowledge the challenge of a multi-device ecosystem. Once we get
a handle on it, we'll have an overall vision in order to make the best
decisions, optimize your presence accordingly, and maximize your opportunities.
Mobile, Tablet, Web vs. App: The Segmentation Challenge
Usually, the first question we need to answer when we go mobile (whether
smartphone or tablet focused) is: do I develop a website or an app?
As I shared in this State of Search post, your decision should be based on
certain factors such as your business model; the goals you're trying to achieve;
how important is for your content to have a wider reach, and if it is web
indexable or not; whether or not you need to provide a complex functionality
that requires a higher hardware integration or connection independence; and if
your audience is highly-concentrated in few devices types and platforms. You'll
need to asses these characteristics along with mobile web and apps pros and
cons:
When you're deciding whether going mobile with a website or an app is the best
option for you, use the following visualization to analytze the alternatives:
You'll see that is easier to targetyour mobile audience with less web presence
than to do so with an app that is much more segmented.
However, when you think beyond the development alternatives to target your
mobile audience with the required functionalities and start thinking about how
you can optimize, grow the visibility, and generate conversions,you'll find that
most of the principles and good practices are the same (or can be easily
extrapolated):
Realize that, despite the many segmentation levels a multi-device presence may
have from a development and audience perspective, there are optimization
principles that are the same for any type of approach, platform, and device type
that you should be taking into consideration in order to make the most out of
the organic search channels to connect with your audience.
It's now the time to identify these similar principles and good practices to
make the most out the multi-device search opportunity, instead of focusing on
its complexities as an excuse. Otherwise, you will stay behind.
3 Steps to Improve Your Visibility in a Multi-device Search World
1. Optimize your presence for multi-device search visibility
People not only search for websites through web search, but also for apps
(whether from smartphones, tablets, or desktops, remember we're in a
multi-device world), so it's fundamental that you don't forget about creating
and optimizing a mobile web presence to increase your mobile app visibility
through web search, too.
Take a look at the exact-match local monthly search volume for some mobile apps
related keywordsin the US, from desktop and laptop devices:
And the volume for the searches from mobile devices with full Internet
browsers:
So, if you want to maximize the chances that your mobile presence (web or app)
gets the search visibility, users, and conversions it deserves, then you need to
make sure that it's easily found through the web search results. If you have a
mobile app, you'll also need to take into consideration your visibility in the
app store search. Let's see how!
1.1. Mobile web: select and optimize the best mobile web approach for your
situation
When you're developing a mobile website, the key is to select the best setting
according to your characteristics, restrictions, and needs. These settings
include responsive web, dynamic serving, or parallel mobile sites.
I've posted and presented about these many times, so it may be easier to check
out what I've shared before and avoid repeating myself. You'll see that eachone
of these alternatives have their pros and cons, as well as specific and general
SEO best practices that I discussed in this Moz post andMozinarsome months ago
about mobile SEO:
Nonetheless, beyond specifically optimizing each mobile web alternative
according to their characteristics, there are mobile web optimization
fundamentals that should always be followed:
1.1.1. Reorganize your content to be correctly displayed in mobile devices
Prioritizing the devices used by your audience (that you can identify through
your Google Analytics "Audience > Mobile > Devices" report) gives the
required visibility to the most important elements of your content. Think about
your user's goals as well as your own, and align them to reorganize your web
interface:
Beware of elements (like flash or interstitials) that are not correctly
displayed, dont work, or provide a bad user and search experience. Take a look
at the following Mobile usability resources:
Organizing Mobileby Luke Wroblewski
Nielsen's Mobile Website and Application Usability Report and Mobile Site vs.
Full Site article
Brad Frost post about Content Parity
1.1.2. Optimize your mobile pages relevance
Make your titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and, of course, your page's main
content relevant for your mobile web audience. Take your keywords into
consideration, and the visibility limitation of mobile search results in the
different type of devices:
Use mobile emulators and user agent switchers to easily validate by yourself
how your own pages are shown in mobile search results (for smartphones and
tablets, too), along with your competitors.
1.1.3. Enhance your pages visibility with structured markup and Google+
presence
Use structured data markup(reviews, people, businesses, apps, etc.), Google's
authorship,and create a presence in Google+ for your business to enhance your
page's results visibility, not only in desktop results, but also in your mobile
search results (where the visibility provided by these can be even higher in
comparison):
Google has also recently announced content recommendationsfor mobile sites with
a Google+ presence that will make the visibility obtained with it even higher.
1.1.4. Make your mobile site fast
Your mobile site has higher speed restrictions due to mobile networks and CPU
capabilities, which means it's even more important to optimize its speed.
Use your Google Analytics site speed report information to easily identify your
pages load times and analyze them withGoogle's PageSpeed Insights mobile filter
to identify opportunities to improve them:
Follow PageSpeed's mobile best practices and take into consideration what's
explained in this "Make the Mobile Web faster" article.
1.1.5. Serve the right web version according to the used device
It's important to effectively identify the type of device (desktop, tablet,
smartphone) used by your visitors and provide them the right web version by
using different techniques according to the Mobile Web approach you're
following:
With CSS media-queries withresponsive Web
With User agent detection with dynamic serving
With User agent detection and redirects with aparallel mobile site
1.2. Mobile apps: create and optimize landing pages for apps in your site
Give visibility to your app beyond the app store search results by creating a
landing page for each of your mobile apps on your own website. Make the landing
pages relevant, and optimize them to rank for popular searches of users looking
for your apps:
Make sure to feature testimonials and reviews, and add a visible link to your
app store page with call to actions to incentivize downloads:
Integrate your social presence as well, inviting for shares in social networks:
Additionally, Google has recently announced even more integration with Google+
for apps by showingGoogle+ Sign-Inapp activitiesin their results, which would
also give your results more visibility:
1.2. App Store Search
Although app store search optimization is still in early stages when we compare
it with web search and is specific to each app store (Android Market and the
Apple App Store),it's also evolving,aligning each time more with web search type
of factors, with an algorithm that is looking to reward:
Relevance: with the relevant terms in the App name, description, and keywords
Popularity: with download rate, install base, ratings, comments, and even
external review sites
Take these into consideration for your app store presence, by optimizing the
different elements of your profile:
In addition to promoting, gamifying your mobile experience (with profiles,
levels, badges, rewards, lists, etc.) to incentivize your app users activity is
a huge download driver. Take a look at how successful apps do it, like
Foursquare:
You can additionally promote your app through relevant sites in the sector,
such as app review blogs and communities:
On the other hand, take into consideration that sometimes app store preview
pages also rank in web search results and that there's also a specific
"Applications" search feature in Google, listing only application related
presence, for which these optimization best practices would be also beneficial
in order to get a better visibility:
There are also sites and tools like App AnnieandSearchman that provide free app
store statistics about the top apps per store, category, and country, which can
serve you as an input when optimizing your app:
2. Cross promote between your multi-device presence
Create awareness of your multi-device web and app presence through each other.
Promote your mobile app in a non-intrusive way (no interstitials) by inviting
users to download it when accessing the mobile site with a relevant device or to
switch to another web version, as shown in these images:
Make sure you also create awareness about your different multi-device presence
through all of your channels, from email signatures to social profiles to your
home page and emails, with updates and specially targeted mobile offers:
3. Measure to improve your multi-device presence
You cannot improve what you cannot measure, so it's fundamental to track,
continuously analyze, and make improvements not only to your desktop, but also
to your mobile presence based on their analytics data. You can still usingGoogle
Analyticsfor this, which provides anSDK for mobile app analytics.
3.1. For your web presence
You can use Google Analytics mobile reports and default segments along with
your own advanced segments and dashboards to follow-up and verify if you're
advancing as expected with the traffic and conversions volume and trend per
device type, keywords, and pages:
To easily check your Google Analytics campaign tagging and referrers for your
mobile site (or your competitors), you can use user agent switchers along with
Google Analytics debuggers extensions for your browser:
For Firefox: use thisuser agent switcher and Google Analytics debugger
For Chrome: use this user agent switcher and Google Analytics debugger
Unfortunately, there are issues with the search referrer data that are not
passed from the Safari search box in iOS 6,and as a consequence, it's shown as
direct traffic in your analytics platform. Something similar also happens for
Android 4 mobile search traffic. Check outthis post by AJ Khonshowing how we can
create an advanced segment in Google Analytics to calculate the approximate
amount of the lost search traffic.
3.1. For your apps
The mobile app analytics will give you information about the amount of active
users, screen views, sessions to demographic information, used app versions,
goal completions, and in-app revenue:
Additionally, to verify your Google Analytics campaign tagging and referrers
for your mobile app (or your competitors), you can set a proxy on your own
computer, using a software like Charles Proxy(available for Windows and Mac), so
you'll be able to monitor the HTTP traffic that goes through it, even the one
from the apps installed on your mobile (that you'll need to set so it uses your
computer as proxy).
Follow these installation and configuration stepsto set your computer as a
proxy and configure your mobile network settings to use it as an HTTP proxy
(you'll need to add in the manual proxy settings your computer IP as the server
one with the 8888 port):
Now you'll able to monitor the HTTP requests made from your mobile through
Charles, including the ones made by your apps, as it can be seen in the
following example:
You can use this not only with your own apps, but with your competitor's to
check how they're tracking their mobile traffic and with your providers or
partners to see if they're effectively tagging their campaigns.
Be sure to take a look atthis Distilled postwith a complete check-list that
will guide you with the necessary settings and questions to better measure your
mobile presence.
Conclusion: There's no excuse. Start optimizing for multi-device search now.
As you can see, there's no excuse to not optimize for a multi-device search
ecosystem. It's true that the landscape may become more segmented, but many of
the best practices and optimization steps can be aligned between the different
presences, and will give you the chance to connect with an audience that you're
likely already losing.
Remember that search is always evolving, and if you don't catch it now, it
might be even more difficult with new type of device andsearch interactions in a
future that look even more segmented.
Do you have any questions or would like to share your opinions? I look forward
to your comments!
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Monday 20 May 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Why Tumblr Will Make Yahoo Billions: The Chronic Undervaluation of Display and Mobile' 
You may view the latest post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordStreamBlog/~3/pketNIIBCc8/yahoo-buys-tumblr You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
There's been a lot of negative stuff in the press so far about how Yahoo is making a big blunder with its recent acquisition of Tumblr.
In this article, I'll explain why I think they're all wrong.
But first, let's address the critics, who in general, seem to be focused on two main points:
1. Yahoo Sucks at Integrating Companies (See Flickr)
In 2005, photo sharing site Flickr was at the forefront of the social media revolution. But, as some critics have pointed out, Yahoo's reign has brought with it a complete lack of innovation, and as a result the company failed to do anything interesting with the huge audience Flickr had.
All this is true – however, it happened under Yahoo's previous management, before Marissa Mayer took over the helm. This is backwards-looking, not forwards-looking. Yahoo has vowed "not to Screw up [Tumblr]", and I even expect to see stunning changes to Flickr in the near future as the company looks to re-invigorate its core products.
2. Yahoo Overpaid for Tumblr
According to Quantcast, Tumblr gets about 60 billion U.S. page views per year. Using current prices for ad inventory those page views will spin off $108 million per year if a net $1.79 RPM (revenue per thousand page views) is achieved – so Tumblr's $1B price tag works out to be rougly 10x this year's revenues, which is rich because it's not clear what the monetization model is or how users will react to more ads on their blogs.
Now here's why the critics are wrong (ha ha).
1. Display ads will not automatically ruin Tumblr.
Yes, it's true that showing stupid ads for weird weight loss tricks and finding singles in your area could potentially destroy Tumblr, but who says that Tumblr needs to adopt the Facebook model of ad serving? Google showed that serving relevant ads at the right time not only make them boatloads of money, but also add value to the user experience.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer promises platform monetization will be done in a way that will follow the form and function of the platform "in a way that's meaningful" for users and their expectations. She and Tumblr CEO, David Karp, share a mutual love of pop culture and both desire to deliver online ad content "to be as great as the content".
2. Display ads are way undervalued.
A few months ago, WordStream did a study on average AdWords conversion rates, cost per actions, etc. Google asked us to unpublish the study results, however you can still see the data on third-party sites, like this one.
Basically what we found was that the average Cost-Per-Action for direct response marketing on the Google Display Network was lower than the average CPA for advertising on Google Search in certain industries, like Automotive and Travel.
You read that correctly – display ads were actually beating out search ad performance in certain verticals, when you took into consideration the entire purchase funnel including cost per click and post-click conversion rates.
What's driving this monumental shift are two things:
- Ridiculously expensive CPC's like $50+ for "auto insurance," which makes search marketing pretty pricy in lucrative verticals. Advertisers are getting stretched to the limit here and what's happening is that advertising budget is being shifted towards other options – stuff like display and mobile ads.
- Big advances in display ad targeting, like remarketing to deliver the right ad to right person at right time; this does wonders for advertiser ROI. We work with a bunch of vendors in the space including Google and display ad tech has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last year. I'm talking about stuff like:
- Search Remarketing (Search Companion)
- New Mobile Ad Formats for Display Ads
- Remarketing Lists for Search (RSLA)
- Etc.
And if Google can do this, all YHOO has to do is build-in better ad serving intelligence to increase CTR from the average 0.1% and improve post-click conversion rates by more than the industry average of around 0.4% which is already being done by Google Display Network.– if they build it, advertisers will pay for performance. Just achieving similar numbers could increase the average revenue per page view by 4x, and who says they can't do better.
3. Mobile is Worth Way More than Desktop
Approximately half of Tumblr users access the site content via mobile. Wall Street is completely confused about the value of mobile. Conventional wisdom is that because companies like Facebook and Google have struggled to monetize mobile, that mobile is somehow less valuable.
Here at WordStream, we're finding the opposite to be true: mobile clicks and calls are worth way more to advertisers. We're seeing that:
- The time between "searching" and "taking action" (like buying or ordering something) is much shorter on mobile
- Calls from mobile devices are 4+ times more likely to convert to a sale than someone filling out a standard "contact-us" form
While historically, mobile CPC's have lagged desktop CPC's, we believe that within the next 12 months, this situation will be reversed.
So in summary – billions more eyeballs and better display ad targeting monetization and more valuable mobile clicks = huge value to advertisers = big bucks for YHOO and that perspective is why it makes sense that Yahoo would want to pay over $1B to acquire Tumblr.
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Before You Start an Online Business, Watch This FIRST!'
Before starting an online business, watch this video first. You’ll discover how to avoid the MOST common mistake many beginners make that keeps them a slave to their business. Not learning this lesson early-on costs many entrepreneurs the freedom and flexibility the so desperately desire.
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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'APIs for Data-Driven Marketers'
Posted by Dr. Pete
Data is everywhere, and companies are virtually climbing over each other to
give it away. If youre a data-driven content marketer, data is opportunity, but
accessing that data can take some technical know-how. This is a guide to APIs,
one of the key methods for accessing 3rd-party data, and also a mini-directory
of some of the most useful APIs currently available to marketers.
What Is an API?
Lets start with the official definition API stands for Application Programming
Interface. Sorry, Im not the one who lets engineers name things. Put simply, an
API is a way to let you talk to a 3rd-party application, usually either to
retrieve data or update that application. Were going to focus primarily on the
first use (retrieving data), and it looks something like this:
The API itself isnt really a box floating in space, so much as a chunk of code
that acts as a gatekeeper. That code helps translate the third partys data into
something you can read, and it makes sure that only authorized users can access
the data (a process called authentication).
Why Should I Care?
There are hundreds of applications on the market that collect useful data, and
many of them are making that data available for free or very cheaply. You can
use that data to do original research, create unique content or even build your
own applications. If youd rather stick to beet farming, well then thats cool,
too.
Where Do I Start?
Heres the bad news APIs are far from standardized, and youre going to have to
understand data structures and write some code. This is not a how-to manual so
much as an overview of whats out there that can help you decide if the world of
APIs is right for you. There are some bright spots on the horizon tools and
sites that make programming APIs easier and Ill cover some of those at the end.
Following is a list of hand-selected APIs (Ill do my best not to play
favorites, and our competitors are on the list), broken down into a few industry
categories, and alphabetical within each category. For each API, Ill provide a
main link, a documentation link (documentation can be way too hard to find), a
brief description of whats available in that API, and whether or not theres a
free version. APIs are split into five sections:
APIs for SEO
APIs for PPC
APIs for Social
Miscellaneous APIs
API Support Tools
The last section covers sites and tools that can help you if you're new to
APIs, new to programming, or just are hunting for something that's not on this
list.
(1) APIs for SEO
This section contains APIs for organic SEO data, including keyword research and
link profiling.
Bing Search(Docs)
The Bing search API allows you to integrate Bing search results and search data
directly into your applications, including web search, images, news, videos,
related search, and spelling suggestions.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Majestic SEO(Docs)
The Majestic API includes a wide range of link metrics, including full
back-link lists, discovery dates for links, anchor text, redirection
information, and ACRank. Some features are limited to the paid version.
Free Version?YES, but limited functionality.
Raven Tools(Docs)
The Raven Tools API lets customers access and update account and campaign
information. It can also be used to access link data from your Raven campaigns.
Free Version?NO, paid accounts only.
SEOmoz Mozscape(Docs)
SEOmoz's API has access to proprietary metrics, including MozRank, Domain
Authority, and Page Authority, as well as link metrics such as linking root
domains and anchor text data.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
WordStream Keyword Tool(Docs)
WordStream's Keyword Tool API lets you access WordStream's keyword volume
metrics, along with related keywords and structured keyword suggestions.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
(2) APIs for PPC
The following APIs provide access to major ad platforms, including Google,
Bing, and Facebook.
Bing Ads API (Docs)
While primarily a campaign management platform, the Bing Ads API does have
access to useful data, including keword volume and keyword
suggestions/opportunities.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Facebook Ads API (Docs)
The Facebook Ads API provides access to managing Facebook campaigns, as well
as statistics about Facebook keyword searches and audience segments.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Google AdWords API (Docs)
Like Bing, the Google AdWords API is mainly for campaign management and
building AdWords apps, but it also the only portal to Google keyword volume
data. Getting authorized can be a long process.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
SEMRush API (Docs)
The SEMRush API has a number of tools for both organic and paid search
campaigns, but where it really shines is in competitive analysis, especially for
paid search.
Free Version?NO, starts at $15/month.
(3) APIs for Social
These APIs can access a wealth of information from major social networks and
social aggregators.
Facebook Graph(Docs)
Facebook's "Graph" API is the primariy interface to building Facebook-based
apps, updating Facebook accounts, and accessing Facebook social graph data.
There are other, secondary Facebook APIs.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
FollowerWonk (Docs)
FollowerWonk's Social Authority API scores Twitter users on a 1-100 scale, for
simple influence scoring and comparisons (Note: FollowerWonk is a part of
SEOmoz).
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Gnip (Docs)
Gnip provides an enterprise-level API with "firehose" and filtered streams for
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and more. Pricing is custom and is aimed at
large-scale applications.
Free Version?YES, but trial only.
Google+ (Docs)
The official Google+ API allows you to manage accounts, build apps, and access
to data from user profiles, posts, and comments. It includes some limited search
capability.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Klout(Docs)
The Klout API provides access to Klout's aggregate social metrics, including
Klout score, influencers, influence graphs, and topics of influence.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
PeerIndex(Docs)
PeerIndex is another social aggregator, and their API provides data on multiple
influence metrics, including activity, authority, and audience scores.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
SharedCount (Docs)
The SharedCount API lets you access sharing stats on a number of platforms,
including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious,
StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Topsy (Docs)
The Topsy Otter API is an alternative source for Twitter data, including a
number of useful search functions - search by keyword, by links mentioned, by
popluar stories on a domain, etc.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Twitter (Docs)
The official Twitter RESTful API includes many tools for account management and
data gathering, including individual tweet and user data, follower stats, and a
variety of search options.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
(4) Miscellaneous APIs
Here are some other useful APIs, including Google products, analytics, and text
processing.
AlchemyAPI(Docs)
AlchemyAPI provides a Natural Language Processing engine to perform tasks such
as sentiment analysis, named entity extraction, author extraction, and topic
categorization.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Google Analytics API (Docs)
The Google Analytics API is a full-featured system to manage GA accounts and
profiles, customize tracking codes, and to access and export analytics data.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Google Places API (Docs)
The Google Places API allows you to access the entire family of Google local
data, including Google Maps, Google+ Local, and Google Places search.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
PageSpeed Insights(Docs)
PageSpeed Insights is a Google Developer tool for website performance
analysis. The PageSpeed API allows access to PageSpeed scores and
recommendations.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Repustate(Docs)
The Repustate API provides access to a number of advanced algorithms,
including sentiment analysis, social media monitioring, and predictive
analytics.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
(5) API Support Tools
If you're new to APIs, this section can help get you started or find APIs
outside the scope of this post.
CodeAcademy API Track
CodeAcademy is a resource for learning programming concepts and languages. The
API track has specific online courses designed to help you learn API coding.
Free Version?YES.
Mashape (Docs)
Mashape is an API marketplace that allows you to access over 2,000 APIs from a
single account. Mashape also lets you distribute and monetize your own APIs.
Free Version?YES, depending on the API.
ProgrammableWeb
ProgrammableWeb is a directory of over 9,000 APIs on a wide variety of topics.
ProgrammableWeb has its own API, that allows you to access their search
database.
Free Version?YES.
SEER Interactive SEO Toolbox (Docs)
SEER's all-in-one interactive toolbox lets you access multple APIs via Excel,
including Google Analytics, SEOmoz, Majestic, Raven, Twitter, and Klout.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
SEOGadget Excel API Extensions (Docs)
The SEOGadget API extension for Excel allows you to easily call link data from
Excel spreadsheets, including SEOmoz, Majestic, and additional SEOGadget data.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
What Are Your Favorites?
While I don't intend this to be an exhaustive list of APIs, I'll try to keep
the post up to date with the most useful APIs for marketers (assuming that
people are interested). So, feel free to share your favorite data-collection
APIs in the comments.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/OYIVR1mq-Q4/apis-for-datadriven-marketers
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
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Build Backlinks Online
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Posted by Dr. Pete
Data is everywhere, and companies are virtually climbing over each other to
give it away. If youre a data-driven content marketer, data is opportunity, but
accessing that data can take some technical know-how. This is a guide to APIs,
one of the key methods for accessing 3rd-party data, and also a mini-directory
of some of the most useful APIs currently available to marketers.
What Is an API?
Lets start with the official definition API stands for Application Programming
Interface. Sorry, Im not the one who lets engineers name things. Put simply, an
API is a way to let you talk to a 3rd-party application, usually either to
retrieve data or update that application. Were going to focus primarily on the
first use (retrieving data), and it looks something like this:
The API itself isnt really a box floating in space, so much as a chunk of code
that acts as a gatekeeper. That code helps translate the third partys data into
something you can read, and it makes sure that only authorized users can access
the data (a process called authentication).
Why Should I Care?
There are hundreds of applications on the market that collect useful data, and
many of them are making that data available for free or very cheaply. You can
use that data to do original research, create unique content or even build your
own applications. If youd rather stick to beet farming, well then thats cool,
too.
Where Do I Start?
Heres the bad news APIs are far from standardized, and youre going to have to
understand data structures and write some code. This is not a how-to manual so
much as an overview of whats out there that can help you decide if the world of
APIs is right for you. There are some bright spots on the horizon tools and
sites that make programming APIs easier and Ill cover some of those at the end.
Following is a list of hand-selected APIs (Ill do my best not to play
favorites, and our competitors are on the list), broken down into a few industry
categories, and alphabetical within each category. For each API, Ill provide a
main link, a documentation link (documentation can be way too hard to find), a
brief description of whats available in that API, and whether or not theres a
free version. APIs are split into five sections:
APIs for SEO
APIs for PPC
APIs for Social
Miscellaneous APIs
API Support Tools
The last section covers sites and tools that can help you if you're new to
APIs, new to programming, or just are hunting for something that's not on this
list.
(1) APIs for SEO
This section contains APIs for organic SEO data, including keyword research and
link profiling.
Bing Search(Docs)
The Bing search API allows you to integrate Bing search results and search data
directly into your applications, including web search, images, news, videos,
related search, and spelling suggestions.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Majestic SEO(Docs)
The Majestic API includes a wide range of link metrics, including full
back-link lists, discovery dates for links, anchor text, redirection
information, and ACRank. Some features are limited to the paid version.
Free Version?YES, but limited functionality.
Raven Tools(Docs)
The Raven Tools API lets customers access and update account and campaign
information. It can also be used to access link data from your Raven campaigns.
Free Version?NO, paid accounts only.
SEOmoz Mozscape(Docs)
SEOmoz's API has access to proprietary metrics, including MozRank, Domain
Authority, and Page Authority, as well as link metrics such as linking root
domains and anchor text data.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
WordStream Keyword Tool(Docs)
WordStream's Keyword Tool API lets you access WordStream's keyword volume
metrics, along with related keywords and structured keyword suggestions.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
(2) APIs for PPC
The following APIs provide access to major ad platforms, including Google,
Bing, and Facebook.
Bing Ads API (Docs)
While primarily a campaign management platform, the Bing Ads API does have
access to useful data, including keword volume and keyword
suggestions/opportunities.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Facebook Ads API (Docs)
The Facebook Ads API provides access to managing Facebook campaigns, as well
as statistics about Facebook keyword searches and audience segments.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Google AdWords API (Docs)
Like Bing, the Google AdWords API is mainly for campaign management and
building AdWords apps, but it also the only portal to Google keyword volume
data. Getting authorized can be a long process.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
SEMRush API (Docs)
The SEMRush API has a number of tools for both organic and paid search
campaigns, but where it really shines is in competitive analysis, especially for
paid search.
Free Version?NO, starts at $15/month.
(3) APIs for Social
These APIs can access a wealth of information from major social networks and
social aggregators.
Facebook Graph(Docs)
Facebook's "Graph" API is the primariy interface to building Facebook-based
apps, updating Facebook accounts, and accessing Facebook social graph data.
There are other, secondary Facebook APIs.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
FollowerWonk (Docs)
FollowerWonk's Social Authority API scores Twitter users on a 1-100 scale, for
simple influence scoring and comparisons (Note: FollowerWonk is a part of
SEOmoz).
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Gnip (Docs)
Gnip provides an enterprise-level API with "firehose" and filtered streams for
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and more. Pricing is custom and is aimed at
large-scale applications.
Free Version?YES, but trial only.
Google+ (Docs)
The official Google+ API allows you to manage accounts, build apps, and access
to data from user profiles, posts, and comments. It includes some limited search
capability.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Klout(Docs)
The Klout API provides access to Klout's aggregate social metrics, including
Klout score, influencers, influence graphs, and topics of influence.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
PeerIndex(Docs)
PeerIndex is another social aggregator, and their API provides data on multiple
influence metrics, including activity, authority, and audience scores.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
SharedCount (Docs)
The SharedCount API lets you access sharing stats on a number of platforms,
including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious,
StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Topsy (Docs)
The Topsy Otter API is an alternative source for Twitter data, including a
number of useful search functions - search by keyword, by links mentioned, by
popluar stories on a domain, etc.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Twitter (Docs)
The official Twitter RESTful API includes many tools for account management and
data gathering, including individual tweet and user data, follower stats, and a
variety of search options.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
(4) Miscellaneous APIs
Here are some other useful APIs, including Google products, analytics, and text
processing.
AlchemyAPI(Docs)
AlchemyAPI provides a Natural Language Processing engine to perform tasks such
as sentiment analysis, named entity extraction, author extraction, and topic
categorization.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
Google Analytics API (Docs)
The Google Analytics API is a full-featured system to manage GA accounts and
profiles, customize tracking codes, and to access and export analytics data.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Google Places API (Docs)
The Google Places API allows you to access the entire family of Google local
data, including Google Maps, Google+ Local, and Google Places search.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
PageSpeed Insights(Docs)
PageSpeed Insights is a Google Developer tool for website performance
analysis. The PageSpeed API allows access to PageSpeed scores and
recommendations.
Free Version?YES,but authorization required.
Repustate(Docs)
The Repustate API provides access to a number of advanced algorithms,
including sentiment analysis, social media monitioring, and predictive
analytics.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
(5) API Support Tools
If you're new to APIs, this section can help get you started or find APIs
outside the scope of this post.
CodeAcademy API Track
CodeAcademy is a resource for learning programming concepts and languages. The
API track has specific online courses designed to help you learn API coding.
Free Version?YES.
Mashape (Docs)
Mashape is an API marketplace that allows you to access over 2,000 APIs from a
single account. Mashape also lets you distribute and monetize your own APIs.
Free Version?YES, depending on the API.
ProgrammableWeb
ProgrammableWeb is a directory of over 9,000 APIs on a wide variety of topics.
ProgrammableWeb has its own API, that allows you to access their search
database.
Free Version?YES.
SEER Interactive SEO Toolbox (Docs)
SEER's all-in-one interactive toolbox lets you access multple APIs via Excel,
including Google Analytics, SEOmoz, Majestic, Raven, Twitter, and Klout.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
SEOGadget Excel API Extensions (Docs)
The SEOGadget API extension for Excel allows you to easily call link data from
Excel spreadsheets, including SEOmoz, Majestic, and additional SEOGadget data.
Free Version?YES, but rate-limited.
What Are Your Favorites?
While I don't intend this to be an exhaustive list of APIs, I'll try to keep
the post up to date with the most useful APIs for marketers (assuming that
people are interested). So, feel free to share your favorite data-collection
APIs in the comments.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/OYIVR1mq-Q4/apis-for-datadriven-marketers
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How Not to Market to Women: Fashion Isn't ALL Women Care About' 
You may view the latest post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordStreamBlog/~3/rDLQinWJhgk/marketing-to-women You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Dear companies that market to women: Stop trying to sell me stuff that has nothing to do with fashion by fashion-washing your ads. I hate this marketing trend! Much in the way that toy companies think little girls will only be interested if it's pink, brands that sell everything from house paint to yogurt have decided that the only way to market products to women is via association with makeup and clothes. It's sexist, it's cynical, and it just doesn't make sense.
Here are a few of the more egregious examples of this marketing trend I've seen in the past year.
The Fage Lipstick Ad
Mmm, creamy luxury! What a great ad for lipstick!
Wait, what? This is an ad for yogurt?
We don't even need to get into the irrationality of yogurt being marketed solely to women – my husband eats 10 times as much yogurt as I do. I'm just trying to understand the connection between lipstick and yogurt. This picture doesn't make me hungry at all. And if I just put on red lipstick, I sure wouldn't want to smear it up by eating a container of yogurt afterwards.
What the hell are they thinking?
The GEICO Shoes Ad
A really good way to know that a book is written by a woman and intended to be bought and read by women? If it has shoes on the cover.
This one has an engagement ring too! Women like shiny, pointy things!
GEICO – whose ads are usually pretty great – seems to be taking a page from chick lit's book with this ad:
"You spent weeks looking for those perfect pumps." (No I didn't.) "Fortunately, it only takes 15 minutes to see how much you could save with GEICO." I just … don't know. I have a vagina and feet but I like the caveman ad way better than this.
The Benjamin Moore "Life in Color" Commercial
In this commercial, you see a woman buying lipstick and clothes, piling up the shopping bags like a champ before she finally goes into a paint store.
It's actually CONFUSING. It feels like a commercial for Marshall's or Macy's, not Benjamin Moore. And I sort of feel like the more likely you are to be a shopaholic, the less likely you are to be a do-it-yourself-er type. The more time I spend in Sephora, the less time I spend painting the family room.
The Lean Cuisine "All the Rage" Commercial
Here's another example of a brand making a nonexistent connection between fashion and their product – this time they're using clothes to (try to) sell frozen dinners:
"Fashion or food, it's all about taste!" Oh look, the purple cabbage matches the suede platforms! This is just dumb. Nobody buys food because it goes with their outfit.
Crystal Light's "Mix and Match" Ad
This example is more subtle – at least the imagery is of the actual product they're selling:
This time it's the language that's borrowed from fashion: "I like to mix and match." Because this ad appeared in a fashion magazine, I can sort of get on board with the subliminal connection. It's the more blatantly obvious assumption that women won't be interested in paint or car insurance unless you trick them with shoes and lipstick that I find offensive.
Have you noticed this trend? What do you think?
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
Monday 13 May 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] How To Find The Best ClickBank Products To Promote
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How To Find The Best ClickBank
Products To Promote'
This article is for those of you who have already signed up for ClickBank but
you failed to find the right products to promote or perhaps you want to increase
the number of sales you're getting. Maybe you are someone who actually stopped
promoting Clic...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/yu6BhaVPQVQ/best-clickbank-products.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Products To Promote'
This article is for those of you who have already signed up for ClickBank but
you failed to find the right products to promote or perhaps you want to increase
the number of sales you're getting. Maybe you are someone who actually stopped
promoting Clic...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/yu6BhaVPQVQ/best-clickbank-products.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Should You Include the Same Keyword with All Match Types in AdWords?' 
You may view the latest post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordStreamBlog/~3/KwZLA7AH87M/same-keyword-all-match-types You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
There is an age-old argument about structuring your account based on the match type of the keywords in each ad group. Should you add all keywords on exact, phrase, and broad (and don't forget modified broad)? What is the right way to do it? If there are so many ways to structure, how do you choose? These are all questions that, so far, I haven't seen definitive answers to. Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to structure an account – do this, don't do that, add this, follow this best practice, etc. But who is right?
Hard evidence seems to be lacking for one view or another, but is adding all these match types ever necessary? If you have a keyword on a broad match type, why do you need phrase and exact? Aren't you already getting enough traffic? And this is where the problem lies; people don't know the differences of the match types, when to use them and why. You don't need all three match types for each keyword in an ad group if you understand the fundamentals of each match type. I find it unnecessary to add all three match types and costly if you do structure your account that way.
Broad match keywords can bring in a lot of unwanted traffic, and you end up spending more time adding negatives and fighting with your low CTR's than you do working on other important parts in your account. I don't think broad match is all doom and gloom, but I do find it to be time-consuming, and they usually end up being the underperforming keywords in your account.
One good thing about having all three match types is the ability to test each keyword match type against each other to find out which one is cheaper, has a better CTR, and drives more conversions than the others. Usually, through testing, you can find out which match types work for you and which ones don't.
Looking at the example above, you can see that in this case, the broad match keyword "Design your own favors" has the highest number of impressions, lowest CTR, and a pretty low cost per click. The same keyword on exact match has a high CTR, low impressions and a more expensive CPC. Then the phrase match version has a low CTR, decent amount of impressions and the lowest CPC.
This would be a case of what I mentioned earlier, where the broad match keyword now becomes one of your more time-consuming tasks to manage. It seems to be doing satisfactory but it is also the most costly keyword in the group. My suggestion, in this case, would be to stick with the exact match keyword. While it is a bit more expensive per click, you know that the searchers are looking for your keyword exactly. You should be willing to pay slightly more for those search queries that are the most relevant because the searcher is more likely to convert to a customer. Also, the exact matched keyword has the best average position and overall seems to be the best match type based on the historical data.
Knowing the different match types is vital to figuring out which ones to use in your account. As a rule of thumb, broad tends to be more expansive, phrase is great for those keywords that only make sense in that exact order or phrasing (typically branded terms), and exact is great for those competitive terms that may be a bit more costly but you know you always want to show up for, or those terms that don't make sense in any other order. Everyone has a match type they like to stick with but knowing which works best for your business is the best and most efficient way of saving time and money. Testing your keywords on all three match types is always an option, but it is time-consuming, can be costly and may not be worth it for those who have a limited budget. If you can accomplish your business goals using an exact match keyword, then why add it on phrase and broad as well?
There are many ways to structure your account and everyone does it differently. Some think that adding all three match types will bring in traffic and clicks which will lead to conversions. Others think that having all three in an ad group will capture all audiences out there which they think is the best approach. Personally, I'd rather have less traffic if I know I'm bringing in the right traffic. However, everyone has an opinion on this topic and I would love to hear yours! If you feel differently or would like to weigh in, let me know by commenting below.
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
[Build Backlinks Online] #MozCon 2013 Agenda
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '#MozCon 2013 Agenda'
Posted by Erica McGillivray
Holy cannoli, it's MozCon 2013 Agenda time! July 8th-July 10th here in Seattle
are going to be out-of-this-world.
I know many of you have been asking for the complete MozCon schedule, and we've
been working hard with all our 2013 speakers to find those perfect words to
express how awesome MozCon's going to be. I'm thrilled for the variety of
programming we'll have from local SEO and mobile content strategy to video and
marketing analytics. There will be plenty of amazingess to fill your brain.
You'll see that we have some MozCon favorites returning like Avinash Kaushik,
Wil Reynolds, and Joanna Lord, and we've invited some great new folks like Kyle
Rush, Karen McGrane, and Dana DiTomaso. Those are some insanely smart industry
experts! You'll learn a ton of actionable info to take home and start
implementing on your site(s) right after MozCon.
And for those of you wanting to know about the party... This year we're raising
the roof of the EMP Museum. That's right, we wanted to meet and greet our
community while hiding from Daleks. We've listened to your needs, and the EMP's
amazing space works for those who want to rock out to karaoke as well as those
interested in quieter conversations with a new friend.
Sing your heart out if you choose.
If that hasn't got you purchasing your ticket yet...
MozCon 2013 Agenda
Monday
8:00am - 9:00am Breakfast
9:00 am - 9:30am Intro: The Year in SEO, Marketing, and Moz with Rand Fishkin
9:30am - 10:00am Really Targeted Outreach with Richard Baxter
Weve all sent guest post pitches and "link building requests" and begged for
precious links any way and anywhere we can. But, that simply isnt marketing. We
have all the tools for a better way of finding our audience and determining what
they love. Richard will show you a data-driven approach to marketing your brand
to your target audience. No more guesswork, youll know exactly how to get the
right eyeballs on your content.
10:00am - 10:30am International SEO and the Future of Your ROI with Aleyda
Solis
Take a bold step into the international market. Aleya will walk you through how
to calculate the possible ROI of international sales, how to sell it to your
boss or client, and the practical how-to's of international implementation on
your site.
10:30am - 10:50am Break
10:50am - 11:50am Simplifying Complexity: Three Ideas For Higher ROI with
Avinash Kaushik
One of the awesome realities of our existence is that we have to deal with a
lot of complexity. Often the natural response to that is to try and overpower
that with even more complexity. In this session, we'll apply the Occam's Razor
to three user cases and learn practical tips.
11:50am - 1:20pm Lunch
1:20pm - 1:50pm Wordless Wednesdays: How to Swaggerjack the Power of Visual
Memes with Lena West
Image-heavy, responsive websites are all the rage, but can be problematic for
SEO, load times, and other inbound marketing concerns. But how does this balance
out with the popularity of images-based memes like "Wordless Wednesday"? Lena
will examine these visual memes and their impact on traffic, and she'll talk
about how you can parlay the power of visual memes into serious search and
traffic results.
1:50pm - 2:20pm Rapid Fire Link Building Tips for Your Content with Ross
Hudgens
You've built your content and made it King. Now what? Ross teaches you how to
take your content and turn it into links for your site. Whether you're just
hunting for backlinks or building up social shares, you'll find all the tips to
get your community engaged and building those links for you.
2:20pm - 3:00pm Hot Off the Press: 2013 Ranking Factors with Matt Peters
Moz's data scientist Dr. Matt walks you through the 2013 Ranking Factors. He'll
be breaking down Google's cutting-edge ways of how they figure out if your pages
are relevant beyond keywords. You'll walk away with an understanding of the data
and the knowledge to craft a sound SEO strategy.
3:00pm - 3:30pm Strings to Things: Entities and SEO with Matthew Brown
In the last year, Google and Bing have both indicated a shift to entity-based
search results as part of their evolution. Google has unscored this point with
rich snippets and Knowledge Graph, and Bing has now upped the ante on personal
search results with Bing Snapshots. Find out how you can adopt strategies to
stay ahead of the curve in the new world of semantic search results.
3:30pm - 3:50pm Break
3:50pm - 4:20pm The Mobile Content Mandate with Karen McGrane
Do you think "no one will ever want to do that on mobile"? Chances are, someone
already wants to. Karen will discuss why you need to deliver content wherever
your customer wants to consume it and the risks of ignoring mobile users.
She'll also explain how to start your mobile content strategy, define what you
want to publish, construct the relationship between your mobile and desktop
site, and evolve your editorial workflow and content management tools.
4:20pm - 4:50pm Building a Better Business with Digital Marketing with
Mackenzie Fogelson
Extraordinary businesses and communities are built with a higher purpose than
just making money. Mack will walk you through how you can achieve bigger
objectives for your clients or for your own business. Using the power of digital
marketing tools (along with passion and hard work), you'll learn how to shape
and foster your company and the community around it.
4:50 - 5:20pm The 7 Heavenly Habits of Inspired Inbound Marketers with Dharmesh
Shah
Curious about how some of the world's best inbound marketers work? How do they
come up with ideas for content? What's their policy on handling Twitter
mentions? How much do they really spend on A/B testing? Dharmesh will walk you
through these habits and more.
Tuesday
8:00am - 9:00am Breakfast
9:00am - 9:30am Building a Winning Video Marketing Strategy with Phil
Nottingham
Phil's going to guide to you through the process of building a video content
strategy from inception to launch. He'll explain the creative and technical
tactics required to win the internet with video. By the end of this session,
you'll know where to host your video, how to optimize it, what kind of content
you should be creating, and how to get professional quality returns without
spending a fortune.
9:30am - 9:45am The Next Generation of Mozscape with Phil Smith
As we crawl the web, collecting data, our Mozscape has run into a few pitfalls
as we've grown. Phil's been working on an incremental indexing for the next
generation of Mozscape, and he'll give you insights on how this faster, fresher,
and scalable index will be useful to you.
9:45am - 10:00am How to Moz Lingo: Cross-Team Communication When Crisis Hits
with Carin Overturf
Mozzy does not alway mean bright and shiny. Sometimes things go south, and it's
these times when good communication across all teams, technical and
not-so-technical, is critical. Carin brings the tactics she's learned about
effective crisis management after surviving a few storms as a technical manager
on the Mozscape team.
10:00am - 10:15am Empower Your Customers to Become Your Evangelists with Aaron
Wheeler
You have the power to turn customers into one of your strongest, most
cost-effective marketing teams. By creating great experiences for customers
during good times and bad, they'll share their successes and demonstrate the
value you've given them to a broader audience, much to the delight of your
marketing and customer service teams.
10:15am - 10:30am Engineer Your Life: Agile for Work and Play with Miranda
Rensch
Agile development, it's not just for software companies anymore. Miranda will
show us how you can use an agile process to plan anything from side-projects,
marketing launches, and personal improvement goals. You'll come away with
templates and processes to try in your own team or at home!
10:30am - 10:50am Break
10:50am - 11:20am Let's Play for Keeps: Building Customer Loyalty with Joanna
Lord
We all know that customer loyalty is a key ingredient in building brands,
hitting revenue goals, and cultivating a community. Joanna will walk you through
how the landscape has changed, and she'll leave you with tools and tips on how
to build customer loyalty that lasts.
11:20am - 11:50pm Ecommerce SEO: Cutting Edge Tactics That Scale with Adam
Audette
Fight Panda and other modern SEO realities by using the best on-page techniques
and content strategies for your ecommerce site. Adam teaches you how to
sustainably improve your click-through-rates as SERPs become noisier and
properly prepare for G+ and Graph Search. Then he'll round things out be giving
practical advice on how to build your ecommerce team and work flows.
11:50pm - 1:20pm Lunch
1:20pm - 1:50pm Building Your Business: Relationship and Other Critical "Soft"
Skills with Brittan Bright
Ever dealt with a difficult client or a boss who just didn't understand?
Brittan teaches you essential relationship building skills and tips and tricks
for making your business interactions smooth and easy. Whether you're always
putting out fires or pitching new ideas, you won't want to miss this.
1:50pm - 2:20pm Win Through Optimization and Testing with Kyle Rush
Kyle shares his knowledge from the front lines of the most intense web campaign
to date: the 2012 US presidential election. His team won big for Obama with a
data-driven approach. Kyle will explore tactics like how they increased
donations by 49% and help you implement these wins for your site.
2:20pm - 2:50pm How Gender and Cultural Differences in Web Psychology Affect
the Customer Experience with Nathalie Nahai
Are you missing half your audience? Your site may be giving off the wrong
psychology signals and causing potential customers to click away. Nathalie
covers how gender and cultural differences impact your business and winning
tactics to change the message and convert more customers.
2:50pm - 3:20pm Breaking Up with Your Keyword-Based KPIs with Annie Cushing
Raise your hand if you hate (not provided)? Annie shows you how to raise your
battle cry by finding your keyword data elsewhere. By changing your focus from
(not provided) to what your landing pages can tell you, you'll be able to audit
your site even better than before.
3:20pm - 3:40pm Break
3:40pm - 4:10pm Next Level Local Tactics: Making Your SEO Stand Out with Dana
DiTomaso
Competing against giant brands in the Local SEO space can be daunting, but
Dana's here to turn your epic battle into an epic win. She'll show you how to
put personality into your local search efforts so that local searchers want to
know who you are. Dana's practical tactics and advice for thinking around the
problem will crank your creativity up to 120%.
4:10pm - 4:40pm End-to-End Local Optimization with David Mihm
The paradox of Local Search has always been that it's one of SEO's most
time-consuming areas, and yet, the businesses who stand to gain the most have
the smallest budgets and limited internal resources. Whether you're an agency
serving SMB clients or a large brand with hundreds of locations, scaling your
efforts is critical. Learn how to increase the efficiency of your Local
optimization process with these tips and tools from David.
4:40pm - 5:10pm Cater to Your Audience via UX with Allison Urban
User experience is critical to making your audience feel your site, services,
or products are for them. Allison will use case studies to show why UX matters
and how it conveys respect for your customers. Then she'll deliver tactics and
advice she learned while working on MailChimp's redesign.
5:10pm - 5:40pm Living in the Future of User Behavior with Will Critchlow
As the technology space constantly changes, users and their behavior adjust
with the tide. But what should we do? Will takes a look at where the trends are
going and gives you the tactics and tips to keep up and maybe get ahead of the
game.
7:30pm - 11:00pm Party at the EMP
Wednesday
08:00am - 9:00am Breakfast
9:00am - 9:40am Beyond 10 Blue Links: The Future of Ranking with Pete Meyers
In the year since we launched MozCast, the face of Google has changed
dramatically. Weve seen the roll-out of 7-result SERPs, the rapid expansion of
Knowledge Graph, mass-adoption of authorship, and dozens of new features, rich
snippets, and widgets. Ranking is no longer just a number, and achieving it is a
moving target. Find out how to think like a brand and carve out a place in the
SERP of the future.
9:40am - 10:10am Using Metrics to Build Social Media Engagement with Carrie
Gouldin
Between Edgerank, noise, and upcoming networks, social metics are daunting.
Carrie will show you what makes interesting content, how to track links, read
metrics, and keep your followers hungry for more. By testing and trying new
things, she's built up a 25-50% engagement rate for ThinkGeek's Facebook and you
can too for your brand.
10:10am - 10:30am Break
10:30am - 11:00am The Search for Company Culture and Why It Matters with Sarah
Bird
Whether you realize it or not, your company has a culture. Is it helping you or
holding you back? Learn how to identify your company culture, foster the culture
you want, and avoid common pitfalls. Sarah will share what she's learned at Moz,
and why what works for one company might not work for yours.
11:00am - 12:00pm Why the Internet Hates Us and Can #RCS Change That
Perception? with Wil Reynolds
Post-MozCon 2012, Wil has been focused on helping you get things done by using
#RCS paired with facts and figures from his own company, his clients, and
insights from 30 members of top US design agencies. He's also been reviewing the
successes, the failures, and the steps his team put into place for change. Wil
wants to get the word out that it's time to stop chasing all the shiny SEO
shortcuts!
12:00pm - 1:30pm Lunch
1:30pm - 2:00pm Building Your Community From the Ground Up with Jen Lopez
What if we had to start over and rebuild the Moz community from scratch? Jen
walks us through the steps, from how to start building an audience all the way
through to how she'd build her team. Learn actionable tactics and deep insights
that you can apply to building your community, both internally and externally,
for your business.
2:00pm - 3:20pm Community Speakers!
This could be you! We're having four community speakers. Have you tossed your
hat in the ring? Applications due Tuesday, May 14th at 5pm PDT.
3:20pm - 3:40pm Break
3:40pm - 4:40pm The Secret Ingredients of Better Marketing with Rand Fishkin
Content bombards our online experience. Ads and salespeople interrupt us. But
every now and then, marketing is truly remarkable and its message transforms
from unwelcome to irresistible What makes it stand out? Why do some companies
inspire us to take action and to share them? The ingredients have been hidden
too long. It's time we discovered the what, why, and how behind crafting better
marketing.
4:40pm - 5:10pm Ultimate Q&A
Get your questions answered by our amazing speakers. Unlike the traditional
give-it-up, Ultimate Q&A gives you the opportunity to pinpoint what amazing tips
you'd like to know and gives you the actionable and inspirational information
you crave.
Wowzers, that's a lot of crazy amazing stuff. See you there!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/BPF3Q-JlYKc/mozcon-2013-agenda
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Posted by Erica McGillivray
Holy cannoli, it's MozCon 2013 Agenda time! July 8th-July 10th here in Seattle
are going to be out-of-this-world.
I know many of you have been asking for the complete MozCon schedule, and we've
been working hard with all our 2013 speakers to find those perfect words to
express how awesome MozCon's going to be. I'm thrilled for the variety of
programming we'll have from local SEO and mobile content strategy to video and
marketing analytics. There will be plenty of amazingess to fill your brain.
You'll see that we have some MozCon favorites returning like Avinash Kaushik,
Wil Reynolds, and Joanna Lord, and we've invited some great new folks like Kyle
Rush, Karen McGrane, and Dana DiTomaso. Those are some insanely smart industry
experts! You'll learn a ton of actionable info to take home and start
implementing on your site(s) right after MozCon.
And for those of you wanting to know about the party... This year we're raising
the roof of the EMP Museum. That's right, we wanted to meet and greet our
community while hiding from Daleks. We've listened to your needs, and the EMP's
amazing space works for those who want to rock out to karaoke as well as those
interested in quieter conversations with a new friend.
Sing your heart out if you choose.
If that hasn't got you purchasing your ticket yet...
MozCon 2013 Agenda
Monday
8:00am - 9:00am Breakfast
9:00 am - 9:30am Intro: The Year in SEO, Marketing, and Moz with Rand Fishkin
9:30am - 10:00am Really Targeted Outreach with Richard Baxter
Weve all sent guest post pitches and "link building requests" and begged for
precious links any way and anywhere we can. But, that simply isnt marketing. We
have all the tools for a better way of finding our audience and determining what
they love. Richard will show you a data-driven approach to marketing your brand
to your target audience. No more guesswork, youll know exactly how to get the
right eyeballs on your content.
10:00am - 10:30am International SEO and the Future of Your ROI with Aleyda
Solis
Take a bold step into the international market. Aleya will walk you through how
to calculate the possible ROI of international sales, how to sell it to your
boss or client, and the practical how-to's of international implementation on
your site.
10:30am - 10:50am Break
10:50am - 11:50am Simplifying Complexity: Three Ideas For Higher ROI with
Avinash Kaushik
One of the awesome realities of our existence is that we have to deal with a
lot of complexity. Often the natural response to that is to try and overpower
that with even more complexity. In this session, we'll apply the Occam's Razor
to three user cases and learn practical tips.
11:50am - 1:20pm Lunch
1:20pm - 1:50pm Wordless Wednesdays: How to Swaggerjack the Power of Visual
Memes with Lena West
Image-heavy, responsive websites are all the rage, but can be problematic for
SEO, load times, and other inbound marketing concerns. But how does this balance
out with the popularity of images-based memes like "Wordless Wednesday"? Lena
will examine these visual memes and their impact on traffic, and she'll talk
about how you can parlay the power of visual memes into serious search and
traffic results.
1:50pm - 2:20pm Rapid Fire Link Building Tips for Your Content with Ross
Hudgens
You've built your content and made it King. Now what? Ross teaches you how to
take your content and turn it into links for your site. Whether you're just
hunting for backlinks or building up social shares, you'll find all the tips to
get your community engaged and building those links for you.
2:20pm - 3:00pm Hot Off the Press: 2013 Ranking Factors with Matt Peters
Moz's data scientist Dr. Matt walks you through the 2013 Ranking Factors. He'll
be breaking down Google's cutting-edge ways of how they figure out if your pages
are relevant beyond keywords. You'll walk away with an understanding of the data
and the knowledge to craft a sound SEO strategy.
3:00pm - 3:30pm Strings to Things: Entities and SEO with Matthew Brown
In the last year, Google and Bing have both indicated a shift to entity-based
search results as part of their evolution. Google has unscored this point with
rich snippets and Knowledge Graph, and Bing has now upped the ante on personal
search results with Bing Snapshots. Find out how you can adopt strategies to
stay ahead of the curve in the new world of semantic search results.
3:30pm - 3:50pm Break
3:50pm - 4:20pm The Mobile Content Mandate with Karen McGrane
Do you think "no one will ever want to do that on mobile"? Chances are, someone
already wants to. Karen will discuss why you need to deliver content wherever
your customer wants to consume it and the risks of ignoring mobile users.
She'll also explain how to start your mobile content strategy, define what you
want to publish, construct the relationship between your mobile and desktop
site, and evolve your editorial workflow and content management tools.
4:20pm - 4:50pm Building a Better Business with Digital Marketing with
Mackenzie Fogelson
Extraordinary businesses and communities are built with a higher purpose than
just making money. Mack will walk you through how you can achieve bigger
objectives for your clients or for your own business. Using the power of digital
marketing tools (along with passion and hard work), you'll learn how to shape
and foster your company and the community around it.
4:50 - 5:20pm The 7 Heavenly Habits of Inspired Inbound Marketers with Dharmesh
Shah
Curious about how some of the world's best inbound marketers work? How do they
come up with ideas for content? What's their policy on handling Twitter
mentions? How much do they really spend on A/B testing? Dharmesh will walk you
through these habits and more.
Tuesday
8:00am - 9:00am Breakfast
9:00am - 9:30am Building a Winning Video Marketing Strategy with Phil
Nottingham
Phil's going to guide to you through the process of building a video content
strategy from inception to launch. He'll explain the creative and technical
tactics required to win the internet with video. By the end of this session,
you'll know where to host your video, how to optimize it, what kind of content
you should be creating, and how to get professional quality returns without
spending a fortune.
9:30am - 9:45am The Next Generation of Mozscape with Phil Smith
As we crawl the web, collecting data, our Mozscape has run into a few pitfalls
as we've grown. Phil's been working on an incremental indexing for the next
generation of Mozscape, and he'll give you insights on how this faster, fresher,
and scalable index will be useful to you.
9:45am - 10:00am How to Moz Lingo: Cross-Team Communication When Crisis Hits
with Carin Overturf
Mozzy does not alway mean bright and shiny. Sometimes things go south, and it's
these times when good communication across all teams, technical and
not-so-technical, is critical. Carin brings the tactics she's learned about
effective crisis management after surviving a few storms as a technical manager
on the Mozscape team.
10:00am - 10:15am Empower Your Customers to Become Your Evangelists with Aaron
Wheeler
You have the power to turn customers into one of your strongest, most
cost-effective marketing teams. By creating great experiences for customers
during good times and bad, they'll share their successes and demonstrate the
value you've given them to a broader audience, much to the delight of your
marketing and customer service teams.
10:15am - 10:30am Engineer Your Life: Agile for Work and Play with Miranda
Rensch
Agile development, it's not just for software companies anymore. Miranda will
show us how you can use an agile process to plan anything from side-projects,
marketing launches, and personal improvement goals. You'll come away with
templates and processes to try in your own team or at home!
10:30am - 10:50am Break
10:50am - 11:20am Let's Play for Keeps: Building Customer Loyalty with Joanna
Lord
We all know that customer loyalty is a key ingredient in building brands,
hitting revenue goals, and cultivating a community. Joanna will walk you through
how the landscape has changed, and she'll leave you with tools and tips on how
to build customer loyalty that lasts.
11:20am - 11:50pm Ecommerce SEO: Cutting Edge Tactics That Scale with Adam
Audette
Fight Panda and other modern SEO realities by using the best on-page techniques
and content strategies for your ecommerce site. Adam teaches you how to
sustainably improve your click-through-rates as SERPs become noisier and
properly prepare for G+ and Graph Search. Then he'll round things out be giving
practical advice on how to build your ecommerce team and work flows.
11:50pm - 1:20pm Lunch
1:20pm - 1:50pm Building Your Business: Relationship and Other Critical "Soft"
Skills with Brittan Bright
Ever dealt with a difficult client or a boss who just didn't understand?
Brittan teaches you essential relationship building skills and tips and tricks
for making your business interactions smooth and easy. Whether you're always
putting out fires or pitching new ideas, you won't want to miss this.
1:50pm - 2:20pm Win Through Optimization and Testing with Kyle Rush
Kyle shares his knowledge from the front lines of the most intense web campaign
to date: the 2012 US presidential election. His team won big for Obama with a
data-driven approach. Kyle will explore tactics like how they increased
donations by 49% and help you implement these wins for your site.
2:20pm - 2:50pm How Gender and Cultural Differences in Web Psychology Affect
the Customer Experience with Nathalie Nahai
Are you missing half your audience? Your site may be giving off the wrong
psychology signals and causing potential customers to click away. Nathalie
covers how gender and cultural differences impact your business and winning
tactics to change the message and convert more customers.
2:50pm - 3:20pm Breaking Up with Your Keyword-Based KPIs with Annie Cushing
Raise your hand if you hate (not provided)? Annie shows you how to raise your
battle cry by finding your keyword data elsewhere. By changing your focus from
(not provided) to what your landing pages can tell you, you'll be able to audit
your site even better than before.
3:20pm - 3:40pm Break
3:40pm - 4:10pm Next Level Local Tactics: Making Your SEO Stand Out with Dana
DiTomaso
Competing against giant brands in the Local SEO space can be daunting, but
Dana's here to turn your epic battle into an epic win. She'll show you how to
put personality into your local search efforts so that local searchers want to
know who you are. Dana's practical tactics and advice for thinking around the
problem will crank your creativity up to 120%.
4:10pm - 4:40pm End-to-End Local Optimization with David Mihm
The paradox of Local Search has always been that it's one of SEO's most
time-consuming areas, and yet, the businesses who stand to gain the most have
the smallest budgets and limited internal resources. Whether you're an agency
serving SMB clients or a large brand with hundreds of locations, scaling your
efforts is critical. Learn how to increase the efficiency of your Local
optimization process with these tips and tools from David.
4:40pm - 5:10pm Cater to Your Audience via UX with Allison Urban
User experience is critical to making your audience feel your site, services,
or products are for them. Allison will use case studies to show why UX matters
and how it conveys respect for your customers. Then she'll deliver tactics and
advice she learned while working on MailChimp's redesign.
5:10pm - 5:40pm Living in the Future of User Behavior with Will Critchlow
As the technology space constantly changes, users and their behavior adjust
with the tide. But what should we do? Will takes a look at where the trends are
going and gives you the tactics and tips to keep up and maybe get ahead of the
game.
7:30pm - 11:00pm Party at the EMP
Wednesday
08:00am - 9:00am Breakfast
9:00am - 9:40am Beyond 10 Blue Links: The Future of Ranking with Pete Meyers
In the year since we launched MozCast, the face of Google has changed
dramatically. Weve seen the roll-out of 7-result SERPs, the rapid expansion of
Knowledge Graph, mass-adoption of authorship, and dozens of new features, rich
snippets, and widgets. Ranking is no longer just a number, and achieving it is a
moving target. Find out how to think like a brand and carve out a place in the
SERP of the future.
9:40am - 10:10am Using Metrics to Build Social Media Engagement with Carrie
Gouldin
Between Edgerank, noise, and upcoming networks, social metics are daunting.
Carrie will show you what makes interesting content, how to track links, read
metrics, and keep your followers hungry for more. By testing and trying new
things, she's built up a 25-50% engagement rate for ThinkGeek's Facebook and you
can too for your brand.
10:10am - 10:30am Break
10:30am - 11:00am The Search for Company Culture and Why It Matters with Sarah
Bird
Whether you realize it or not, your company has a culture. Is it helping you or
holding you back? Learn how to identify your company culture, foster the culture
you want, and avoid common pitfalls. Sarah will share what she's learned at Moz,
and why what works for one company might not work for yours.
11:00am - 12:00pm Why the Internet Hates Us and Can #RCS Change That
Perception? with Wil Reynolds
Post-MozCon 2012, Wil has been focused on helping you get things done by using
#RCS paired with facts and figures from his own company, his clients, and
insights from 30 members of top US design agencies. He's also been reviewing the
successes, the failures, and the steps his team put into place for change. Wil
wants to get the word out that it's time to stop chasing all the shiny SEO
shortcuts!
12:00pm - 1:30pm Lunch
1:30pm - 2:00pm Building Your Community From the Ground Up with Jen Lopez
What if we had to start over and rebuild the Moz community from scratch? Jen
walks us through the steps, from how to start building an audience all the way
through to how she'd build her team. Learn actionable tactics and deep insights
that you can apply to building your community, both internally and externally,
for your business.
2:00pm - 3:20pm Community Speakers!
This could be you! We're having four community speakers. Have you tossed your
hat in the ring? Applications due Tuesday, May 14th at 5pm PDT.
3:20pm - 3:40pm Break
3:40pm - 4:40pm The Secret Ingredients of Better Marketing with Rand Fishkin
Content bombards our online experience. Ads and salespeople interrupt us. But
every now and then, marketing is truly remarkable and its message transforms
from unwelcome to irresistible What makes it stand out? Why do some companies
inspire us to take action and to share them? The ingredients have been hidden
too long. It's time we discovered the what, why, and how behind crafting better
marketing.
4:40pm - 5:10pm Ultimate Q&A
Get your questions answered by our amazing speakers. Unlike the traditional
give-it-up, Ultimate Q&A gives you the opportunity to pinpoint what amazing tips
you'd like to know and gives you the actionable and inspirational information
you crave.
Wowzers, that's a lot of crazy amazing stuff. See you there!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/BPF3Q-JlYKc/mozcon-2013-agenda
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] The Calgary Zoo Shares its Annual Report on Instagram
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Calgary Zoo Shares its Annual
Report on Instagram'
When preparing its 2012 Annual Report, The Calgary Zoo traded its traditional
PDF for Instagram. Proclaiming the 2012 Annual Report The Year of the Penguins,
55 photos and captions serve as the report pages and content. Packed full of the
stats, financial figures and even a welcome note from their President & Chief
Executive Officer, [...]The Calgary Zoo Shares its Annual Report on Instagram is
a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing
Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-image-of-the-week/the-calgary-zoo-shares-its-annual-report-on-instagram/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-calgary-zoo-shares-its-annual-report-on-instagram
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Report on Instagram'
When preparing its 2012 Annual Report, The Calgary Zoo traded its traditional
PDF for Instagram. Proclaiming the 2012 Annual Report The Year of the Penguins,
55 photos and captions serve as the report pages and content. Packed full of the
stats, financial figures and even a welcome note from their President & Chief
Executive Officer, [...]The Calgary Zoo Shares its Annual Report on Instagram is
a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing
Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-image-of-the-week/the-calgary-zoo-shares-its-annual-report-on-instagram/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-calgary-zoo-shares-its-annual-report-on-instagram
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] How H&R Block Activated 90,000 Seasonal Tax Pros in Social Media
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How H&R Block Activated 90,000
Seasonal Tax Pros in Social Media'
Scott Gulbransen, Director of Social Business Strategy at H&R Block, joins the
Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss the structure of social that allowed
90,000 H&R tax professionals to mobilize in unison earlier this year, driving
engagement at a local level, and dealing with federal regulations as a financial
services company in social media. [...]How H&R Block Activated 90,000 Seasonal
Tax Pros in Social Media is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media
Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-pros-podcast/how-hr-block-activated-90000-seasonal-tax-pros-in-social-media/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-hr-block-activated-90000-seasonal-tax-pros-in-social-media
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Seasonal Tax Pros in Social Media'
Scott Gulbransen, Director of Social Business Strategy at H&R Block, joins the
Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss the structure of social that allowed
90,000 H&R tax professionals to mobilize in unison earlier this year, driving
engagement at a local level, and dealing with federal regulations as a financial
services company in social media. [...]How H&R Block Activated 90,000 Seasonal
Tax Pros in Social Media is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media
Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-pros-podcast/how-hr-block-activated-90000-seasonal-tax-pros-in-social-media/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-hr-block-activated-90000-seasonal-tax-pros-in-social-media
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] How You Make a Customer Smarter in 6 Seconds
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How You Make a Customer Smarter
in 6 Seconds'
Ive been critical in the past of Vine, and brands often clumsy attempts to turn
it into the next venue for clever real-time marketing. But with a new series of
10 inherently useful Vines, Lowes demonstrates that six seconds is plenty of
time to create Youtility. We try to provide content that has as much [...]How
You Make a Customer Smarter in 6 Seconds is a post from: Convince and Convert:
Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing-2/how-you-make-a-customer-smarter-in-6-seconds/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-you-make-a-customer-smarter-in-6-seconds
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
in 6 Seconds'
Ive been critical in the past of Vine, and brands often clumsy attempts to turn
it into the next venue for clever real-time marketing. But with a new series of
10 inherently useful Vines, Lowes demonstrates that six seconds is plenty of
time to create Youtility. We try to provide content that has as much [...]How
You Make a Customer Smarter in 6 Seconds is a post from: Convince and Convert:
Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing-2/how-you-make-a-customer-smarter-in-6-seconds/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-you-make-a-customer-smarter-in-6-seconds
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Friday 10 May 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] The Clients I Can't Afford To Take
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Clients I Can't Afford To
Take'
Posted by Bill Sebald
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it
provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are
entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Creating demand where none currently exists is the expertise of a bullshit
artist. Some in sales would take offense to that statement; some would agree.
Where I believe this talent fails is with a particular kind of recurring revenue
service consulting and agency work. Inevitably you run out of steam and alibis.
If you cant produce what you promise, you either have to pack up your wagon and
flee to another dusty town (which, lets face it, is how some SEOs and digital
marketers practice), or suffer sleepless nights worrying about facing your
clients in the morning.
Personally, I dont like traveling. I also really like my sleep.
This is a post about how I choose better clients. It starts with introspection,
and ends with a connection. For each of these tips, Im thinking specifically of
a client I let walk away. If a strong partnership is what you seek, then you
have to be able to decline potential clients. The customer is not always right.
Sometimes theyre downright dangerous.
Now, I know this isnt possible in every company. An agency I worked with rarely
says no to work. Bad clients pile on and contribute to driving away employees in
routine mass departures. When I was worked there relationships got contentious,
and frankly, I didnt see a lot of flawless consulting happening. The phrase we
used around the office to convince ourselves this was normal was, thats agency
life.
I came to learn that wasnt agency life.
To remind ourselves of some of the marketing ideologies we learned in college;
most retailers employ the marketing department philosophy, whereas search fits
the marketing concept. In SEO marketing we want to answer the searches being
made more often than any other task, which may not fit nicely into a clients ROI
demands. Luckily, this is something we can get ahead of with early, open
communication with the prospect. Sometimes you're able to reset expectations,
sometimes not (where I kindly refer them to someone more of their mindset). It's
important to ask goal-oriented questions here, and give a real thought to what
you're positioned to achieve. What do they consider success? Does it match your
beliefs? Have they had SEO before, and what were their frustrations? Are you
better for them? Can you help them help you help them?
If you can truly embrace what you are as a service provider, and nurture deals
accordingly, youre in a very fortunate position. If you can perform SEO under
the auspice of what is required for the client, instead of what the client
thinks needs to be done, youre well on your way to a successful partnership.
Clients I Avoid
Sometimes you need to cut the line before you reel in the catch. Once the catch
breaks the water line, do you see a snagged horseshoe crab? Cut it. Did you pull
in flounder? Invite me over for dinner. Im a student of psychology and naturally
think I size people up pretty well. There are basically three traits (or
character flaws) that I am on high-alert for. As soon as I hit one, not only do
I feel compelled to be reserved, but I close up sometimes prematurely. Here are
some of the personality types I avoid, and some tips on uncovering their true
identities.
(Caveat: First impressions arent always accurate. First impressions should not
the last chance to make a good impression. Its very easy to misread people. I do
keep that in the back of my head, just to balance me out.)
The Egomaniac
Some prospects may want to impress you. Sometimes they routinely impress
themselves. Personally, I find them awfully hard to communicate with. You know
the traits they ask you questions only to cut you off and answer themselves.
They are micro-managers. They brag incessantly about their past experiences.
They believe theyre the only one that can truly defeat Superman.
Theyre the type of person to say, I didnt get to where I am by not speaking up.
While on paper that sounds like a good trait, these can also be the people who
have trouble accepting someone elses expertise. They may not see the value of
your otherwise salient recommendations. They tend to only respect other
egomaniacs
But sometimes this is a front. Sometimes the egomaniac is socially awkward. A
good skill in business is recognizing emotions, character flaws, and humanity
when it really exists. Sometimes the egomaniac thinks he needs to be a killer. I
have seen this disguise many, many times in my career.
I remember a client who managed to take down an entire marketing department
with a previous agency. He was a product of a big name business advisor firm
(name left out to prevent lawsuits) and drove some of my co-workers into therapy
honestly. There may have been no pleasing him, but the powers that be refused
to cut ties. We werent able to do what we knew was best; we ultimately became an
order taker for someone who wasnt an expert in our field, but thought he was.
This guy may truly be a serial killer at large.
Alternatively, I recall meeting with a prospect that ran an unimpressive
ecommerce business. During the initial meeting I found myself listening to an
hour long diatribe about him and how he shaped the company into what they are
today. Interesting and something worth knowing in detail down the line, but I
was there to talk about how I could help with their SEO. After finally asking
two questions, in which I maybe got three words out, it was pretty clear this
wasnt going to be a productive meeting. Still, I stayed with the pitch process.
Fortunately I made the right move, as this marketing director turned out to be
more bark than bite. Weve had a pretty successful three year run together, once
the pretences went away.
I need a point person I want to spend time with. If the real soul of the point
person and company cant be lured out quickly, it may be a dead deal for me.
What to Do
Embrace the company culture and teams personality. Try to be yourself, not who
you think they want you to be. Ultimately you want a partner and a friend, not
just a client and paycheck. If you dont have an egomaniac account manager, this
relationship could go down in flames.
Make it personal, but dont take it personally. I always try finding something
in common with the prospects. Its a sales tactic for sure, and an ice breaker,
but I find it useful to quickly peel back the personality layers. I try to see
who they really are. I remember a client pitch where I learned the CMO was in a
Philly band. Knowing the band, and playing music myself, we were able to connect
on a non-business level. I know this is a crazy concept for some agencies that
prefer to be more formal, but It really helps you understand the personality and
temperament of the people youre going to be working with.
Maybe its not your call to accept or deny the egomaniac, micro-managing client.
In some cases you can still make it work. Communication (and some good habits)
can go a long way in getting the client to bond with you, without you throwing
away any integrity. Weve all had a micro-managing boss at one time in our lives.
Take some learnings from that experience. There are plenty of great tips online
for that problem that can be leveraged with a micromanaging client:
http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2011/09/stop-being-micromanaged.html
http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/how-to-manage-a-micromanaging-boss
http://michaelhyatt.com/micromanager.html
http://nahidc.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-deal-with-micromanaging-boss.html
The Dictator
Some clients (think they) know exactly what they want. That can be a good
thing. Sometimes though, they dont want it the way you deliver it. Its vital to
know when you simply cant deliver. How can you under-promise and over-deliver if
you arent structured to meet their simplest expectations? Have you ever gotten a
hamburger right at McDonalds when you told them to make it special? No its
impossible. The employees have panic attacks behind the grill. Its not how
McDonalds is built.
I had one prospect reach out to me about six months ago. We had worked together
in a small capacity before. He told me precisely what he was looking for he
required someone to manage a department that needed to communicate with the
Sydney office at 6 am, and required I hit a certain goal each month. This was a
goal I not only didnt believe was reasonable, but probably impossible (not to
mention the only time Im up at 6 am is when I havent fallen asleep yet).
My services arent excessively flexible by design I simply cant answer all the
demands of most dictators. My services have a specific design with defined
specialties. I know my teams strengths and weaknesses. I know my plan in and
out, and would have struck out with his needs. I had to face the facts and let
that prospect go, even though it was a nice payday.
What to Do
Try to break the well take anything model. Thats how people get hurt including
your employees. A clients SEO and digital marketing need has become ubiquitous.
Maybe theyll be open to your specialized take on their business?
Never over-promise. Never wear a hat you dont own. Stay calm. SEOs are in a
great position already, with a great inherent value. Sometimes there are other
providers who can do a better job than you in a certain area, so why not let
them? Build some relationships between other service providers and create
friendly-competition. When a client says "I want this," say "we do this." Keep
it professional and offer to help them find someone who fits their model.
This may create serendipity and good karma. Ive actually gotten referrals from
prospects Ive turned down. Not often, but its the magic of networking,
relationships, and good deeds. Never underestimate the power of serendipity:
http://moz.com/rand/manufacturing-serendipity/
http://www.openforum.com/articles/8-ways-to-cultivate-serendipity-in-business-and-life/
http://www.greenlaneseo.com/blog/2012/09/creating-your-own-seo-serendipity/
The Negotiator
Its great to be on the payer side of negotiation. I find negotiating deals
quite fun. But when the tables are turned, and Im the service provider, I flex
very little in price. Its less because Im a jerk and more because of my respect
for my work and values.
Wharton grads are taught to believe in what theyre worth; anything less and
youre potentially softening the product. When a client tells me his budget is X,
and I need it to by upwards around Y, the negotiation needs to stop. This was a
huge lesson I learned after years of thinking about cash flow, and not quality
of life.
I recently had a prospect that came to me and asked if I was available for
consulting. As I always do, I brought up the budget question early on. He said,
I can spend about $300 a month. Now I know some SEOs can stretch that and get
rankings. Im always impressed by these guys, but at that rate, I would fall on
my face (and my sword). Id fail at providing the only values I know how to
create. Id be scrambling to get good work done, and in the end, it would
probably not be worth the aggravation after taxes.
Still, I tried to help him find someone who was better suited, while advising
that his monthly fee was more likely to attract amateurs that might cost him
more in the end. He was able to come up a little and I was able to refer him to
another local SEO who fit his needs much better. Again, investing in
serendipity.
I cant say this enough - Take a bad deal financially and you will pay for it.
Ive never seen a need to pad the price for negotiation in our industry. Were not
selling used cars here.
What to Do
Dont budge unless youve priced yourself out of the market. Also, dont risk
putting yourself in a bad relationship because you settled. It doesnt tend to
work out in marriage, government, or business.
Clearly display all the items a client could be getting in an engagement with
you and encourage the prospect to see the value if they pay up instead of going
with an amateur. If you have a price youre proud of, then you should also have
results and confidence to stand behind.
Some agencies find it very difficult to talk about money, as it gets slipped in
as a line item at the back of a proposal. These proposals are often written
after hours of conversations. I propose you bring the money conversation early
to qualify your prospects. I go so far as put my rates and packages right on my
website and always encourage my prospects to review those pages in an
introductory email. I dont like wasting hours on a deal that was never meant to
be. Ive found this to be a very positive technique to getting deals signed
quickly, as some clients prefer the openness and honesty. Not everyone likes
haggling, and will happily pay a price when they know its fair.
Conclusion
Sometimes a bad client can teach you how to be a better consultant, but I dont
wish a bad client upon anyone. In my 10+ years of consulting, Id like to think
the lessons I learned (some of which Im sharing here) can really be learned
through some tough and common sense.
Agencies are busy places, but you need to take time (off-sites work nicely) to
really figure out what your service model is. Whether its from the top down, or
just your specific department, having a thought out manifesto on the clients
youre not going to take could be transformational to the success of your
consulting business.
Oh, and if by chance you encounter a hybrid of all these client-types above,
the only tip I have is flee. Ive yet to find any way to tame this three-headed
egotistical, dictating, negotiating creature. Thats schizophrenia on a level I
cant even comprehend.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/imFspX1xPbM/the-clients-i-cant-afford-to-take
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Take'
Posted by Bill Sebald
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it
provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are
entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Creating demand where none currently exists is the expertise of a bullshit
artist. Some in sales would take offense to that statement; some would agree.
Where I believe this talent fails is with a particular kind of recurring revenue
service consulting and agency work. Inevitably you run out of steam and alibis.
If you cant produce what you promise, you either have to pack up your wagon and
flee to another dusty town (which, lets face it, is how some SEOs and digital
marketers practice), or suffer sleepless nights worrying about facing your
clients in the morning.
Personally, I dont like traveling. I also really like my sleep.
This is a post about how I choose better clients. It starts with introspection,
and ends with a connection. For each of these tips, Im thinking specifically of
a client I let walk away. If a strong partnership is what you seek, then you
have to be able to decline potential clients. The customer is not always right.
Sometimes theyre downright dangerous.
Now, I know this isnt possible in every company. An agency I worked with rarely
says no to work. Bad clients pile on and contribute to driving away employees in
routine mass departures. When I was worked there relationships got contentious,
and frankly, I didnt see a lot of flawless consulting happening. The phrase we
used around the office to convince ourselves this was normal was, thats agency
life.
I came to learn that wasnt agency life.
To remind ourselves of some of the marketing ideologies we learned in college;
most retailers employ the marketing department philosophy, whereas search fits
the marketing concept. In SEO marketing we want to answer the searches being
made more often than any other task, which may not fit nicely into a clients ROI
demands. Luckily, this is something we can get ahead of with early, open
communication with the prospect. Sometimes you're able to reset expectations,
sometimes not (where I kindly refer them to someone more of their mindset). It's
important to ask goal-oriented questions here, and give a real thought to what
you're positioned to achieve. What do they consider success? Does it match your
beliefs? Have they had SEO before, and what were their frustrations? Are you
better for them? Can you help them help you help them?
If you can truly embrace what you are as a service provider, and nurture deals
accordingly, youre in a very fortunate position. If you can perform SEO under
the auspice of what is required for the client, instead of what the client
thinks needs to be done, youre well on your way to a successful partnership.
Clients I Avoid
Sometimes you need to cut the line before you reel in the catch. Once the catch
breaks the water line, do you see a snagged horseshoe crab? Cut it. Did you pull
in flounder? Invite me over for dinner. Im a student of psychology and naturally
think I size people up pretty well. There are basically three traits (or
character flaws) that I am on high-alert for. As soon as I hit one, not only do
I feel compelled to be reserved, but I close up sometimes prematurely. Here are
some of the personality types I avoid, and some tips on uncovering their true
identities.
(Caveat: First impressions arent always accurate. First impressions should not
the last chance to make a good impression. Its very easy to misread people. I do
keep that in the back of my head, just to balance me out.)
The Egomaniac
Some prospects may want to impress you. Sometimes they routinely impress
themselves. Personally, I find them awfully hard to communicate with. You know
the traits they ask you questions only to cut you off and answer themselves.
They are micro-managers. They brag incessantly about their past experiences.
They believe theyre the only one that can truly defeat Superman.
Theyre the type of person to say, I didnt get to where I am by not speaking up.
While on paper that sounds like a good trait, these can also be the people who
have trouble accepting someone elses expertise. They may not see the value of
your otherwise salient recommendations. They tend to only respect other
egomaniacs
But sometimes this is a front. Sometimes the egomaniac is socially awkward. A
good skill in business is recognizing emotions, character flaws, and humanity
when it really exists. Sometimes the egomaniac thinks he needs to be a killer. I
have seen this disguise many, many times in my career.
I remember a client who managed to take down an entire marketing department
with a previous agency. He was a product of a big name business advisor firm
(name left out to prevent lawsuits) and drove some of my co-workers into therapy
honestly. There may have been no pleasing him, but the powers that be refused
to cut ties. We werent able to do what we knew was best; we ultimately became an
order taker for someone who wasnt an expert in our field, but thought he was.
This guy may truly be a serial killer at large.
Alternatively, I recall meeting with a prospect that ran an unimpressive
ecommerce business. During the initial meeting I found myself listening to an
hour long diatribe about him and how he shaped the company into what they are
today. Interesting and something worth knowing in detail down the line, but I
was there to talk about how I could help with their SEO. After finally asking
two questions, in which I maybe got three words out, it was pretty clear this
wasnt going to be a productive meeting. Still, I stayed with the pitch process.
Fortunately I made the right move, as this marketing director turned out to be
more bark than bite. Weve had a pretty successful three year run together, once
the pretences went away.
I need a point person I want to spend time with. If the real soul of the point
person and company cant be lured out quickly, it may be a dead deal for me.
What to Do
Embrace the company culture and teams personality. Try to be yourself, not who
you think they want you to be. Ultimately you want a partner and a friend, not
just a client and paycheck. If you dont have an egomaniac account manager, this
relationship could go down in flames.
Make it personal, but dont take it personally. I always try finding something
in common with the prospects. Its a sales tactic for sure, and an ice breaker,
but I find it useful to quickly peel back the personality layers. I try to see
who they really are. I remember a client pitch where I learned the CMO was in a
Philly band. Knowing the band, and playing music myself, we were able to connect
on a non-business level. I know this is a crazy concept for some agencies that
prefer to be more formal, but It really helps you understand the personality and
temperament of the people youre going to be working with.
Maybe its not your call to accept or deny the egomaniac, micro-managing client.
In some cases you can still make it work. Communication (and some good habits)
can go a long way in getting the client to bond with you, without you throwing
away any integrity. Weve all had a micro-managing boss at one time in our lives.
Take some learnings from that experience. There are plenty of great tips online
for that problem that can be leveraged with a micromanaging client:
http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2011/09/stop-being-micromanaged.html
http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/how-to-manage-a-micromanaging-boss
http://michaelhyatt.com/micromanager.html
http://nahidc.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-deal-with-micromanaging-boss.html
The Dictator
Some clients (think they) know exactly what they want. That can be a good
thing. Sometimes though, they dont want it the way you deliver it. Its vital to
know when you simply cant deliver. How can you under-promise and over-deliver if
you arent structured to meet their simplest expectations? Have you ever gotten a
hamburger right at McDonalds when you told them to make it special? No its
impossible. The employees have panic attacks behind the grill. Its not how
McDonalds is built.
I had one prospect reach out to me about six months ago. We had worked together
in a small capacity before. He told me precisely what he was looking for he
required someone to manage a department that needed to communicate with the
Sydney office at 6 am, and required I hit a certain goal each month. This was a
goal I not only didnt believe was reasonable, but probably impossible (not to
mention the only time Im up at 6 am is when I havent fallen asleep yet).
My services arent excessively flexible by design I simply cant answer all the
demands of most dictators. My services have a specific design with defined
specialties. I know my teams strengths and weaknesses. I know my plan in and
out, and would have struck out with his needs. I had to face the facts and let
that prospect go, even though it was a nice payday.
What to Do
Try to break the well take anything model. Thats how people get hurt including
your employees. A clients SEO and digital marketing need has become ubiquitous.
Maybe theyll be open to your specialized take on their business?
Never over-promise. Never wear a hat you dont own. Stay calm. SEOs are in a
great position already, with a great inherent value. Sometimes there are other
providers who can do a better job than you in a certain area, so why not let
them? Build some relationships between other service providers and create
friendly-competition. When a client says "I want this," say "we do this." Keep
it professional and offer to help them find someone who fits their model.
This may create serendipity and good karma. Ive actually gotten referrals from
prospects Ive turned down. Not often, but its the magic of networking,
relationships, and good deeds. Never underestimate the power of serendipity:
http://moz.com/rand/manufacturing-serendipity/
http://www.openforum.com/articles/8-ways-to-cultivate-serendipity-in-business-and-life/
http://www.greenlaneseo.com/blog/2012/09/creating-your-own-seo-serendipity/
The Negotiator
Its great to be on the payer side of negotiation. I find negotiating deals
quite fun. But when the tables are turned, and Im the service provider, I flex
very little in price. Its less because Im a jerk and more because of my respect
for my work and values.
Wharton grads are taught to believe in what theyre worth; anything less and
youre potentially softening the product. When a client tells me his budget is X,
and I need it to by upwards around Y, the negotiation needs to stop. This was a
huge lesson I learned after years of thinking about cash flow, and not quality
of life.
I recently had a prospect that came to me and asked if I was available for
consulting. As I always do, I brought up the budget question early on. He said,
I can spend about $300 a month. Now I know some SEOs can stretch that and get
rankings. Im always impressed by these guys, but at that rate, I would fall on
my face (and my sword). Id fail at providing the only values I know how to
create. Id be scrambling to get good work done, and in the end, it would
probably not be worth the aggravation after taxes.
Still, I tried to help him find someone who was better suited, while advising
that his monthly fee was more likely to attract amateurs that might cost him
more in the end. He was able to come up a little and I was able to refer him to
another local SEO who fit his needs much better. Again, investing in
serendipity.
I cant say this enough - Take a bad deal financially and you will pay for it.
Ive never seen a need to pad the price for negotiation in our industry. Were not
selling used cars here.
What to Do
Dont budge unless youve priced yourself out of the market. Also, dont risk
putting yourself in a bad relationship because you settled. It doesnt tend to
work out in marriage, government, or business.
Clearly display all the items a client could be getting in an engagement with
you and encourage the prospect to see the value if they pay up instead of going
with an amateur. If you have a price youre proud of, then you should also have
results and confidence to stand behind.
Some agencies find it very difficult to talk about money, as it gets slipped in
as a line item at the back of a proposal. These proposals are often written
after hours of conversations. I propose you bring the money conversation early
to qualify your prospects. I go so far as put my rates and packages right on my
website and always encourage my prospects to review those pages in an
introductory email. I dont like wasting hours on a deal that was never meant to
be. Ive found this to be a very positive technique to getting deals signed
quickly, as some clients prefer the openness and honesty. Not everyone likes
haggling, and will happily pay a price when they know its fair.
Conclusion
Sometimes a bad client can teach you how to be a better consultant, but I dont
wish a bad client upon anyone. In my 10+ years of consulting, Id like to think
the lessons I learned (some of which Im sharing here) can really be learned
through some tough and common sense.
Agencies are busy places, but you need to take time (off-sites work nicely) to
really figure out what your service model is. Whether its from the top down, or
just your specific department, having a thought out manifesto on the clients
youre not going to take could be transformational to the success of your
consulting business.
Oh, and if by chance you encounter a hybrid of all these client-types above,
the only tip I have is flee. Ive yet to find any way to tame this three-headed
egotistical, dictating, negotiating creature. Thats schizophrenia on a level I
cant even comprehend.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/imFspX1xPbM/the-clients-i-cant-afford-to-take
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
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