Using CRO to Make Great Content - Whiteboard Friday

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Using CRO to Make Great Content - Whiteboard Friday Posted: 01 Dec 2011 01:07 PM PST Posted by caseyhen This week we are joined by Carlos del Rio from Agillian, who is based here in Seattle, WA. Carlos will discusses a method that will help you make great content by following 3 easy steps. After watching the video dive into the comments and discuss what your thoughts are on using CRO to make great content. P.S. It looks like we might have also been joined by a fly, so please excuse him when he flies across the screen a few times.... Video Transcription Hey Mozzers. I'm Carlos del Rio. I own a consultancy called Agillian, and I am the author of "User Driven Change: Give Them What They Want" and a "Strategic Framework for Emerging Media," which is kind of a mouthful. Even I have trouble saying it. I am here today to tell you how to use CRO to make great content, and when I say to make great content, I mean for any portion of your marketing campaign. So, you need to make sure that you meet the most basic portion of conversion optimization. I mean the three things that are the most important for all conversion rates are a clear action, a clear purpose, and a clear value. That's what every landing page is trying to do. That's what every pay-per-click ad is trying to do. Tell a person what you want them to do, tell them what it is about, and communicate what the value they're going to get out of the interaction. So, "Buy tires cheap," or "Buy tires, free delivery." Something where they know what it is that they are coming for and that they get something at the other end. For example, if you are writing a piece of content for your blog, you want to be able to answer, "Is it clear what the purpose of this blog is? Is it clear what the topic is? Is it clear that there is a value for this person to share it with their friends?" Essentially if you are doing blog and content marketing, it is really for the links. We know that's what it's about. Same thing with if you're making LOLcats. Same thing if you're sending out an email to solicit a link buy. So, in all of your strategies you want to know what is this particular campaign doing. Is it helping our users understand what they can do with us? Is it helping them understand who we are, or is it helping them understand what the value is? Each one of the individual pieces, like each piece of link bait or each email or each tool that you build is supposed to answer all three of these very clearly. You want to know exactly how to interact with it. You want to know what it is going to do. You want to know why is it of value to you. So, if you take the example of, like, LOLcats, we've all seen these. The difference between the millions of LOLcats that nobody cares about and the LOLcats that end up being in your Facebook stream every 15 minutes are that the ones that get shared answer the clear action, which is share me; what is the purpose, this is a LOLcat; and what is the value, this is the funniest LOLcat that I've seen all day. This is the LOLcat that crosses over with my community. If I was to make a cat playing on a computer that said, "I'm up in your Internet messing with your title tags," you're going to find that funny because you are in SEO, but almost everybody else is going to be like, uh, lame. If you were, say, This or That, Rebecca Kelley did a thing recently that was, "Does Justin Beiber look like Velma from Scooby Doo?" This enrages both people who like Justin Beiber and people who like Velma. So, what she is doing is creating a place where you interact with this piece of content, and she has two groups of people that want to interact with this type of content. They get to show what they think, and they get a value out of having you know what they think. When they pass this on to their friends who come in and do those three things to derive value for themselves, you get traffic, which you are monetizing. It is the same thing with the LOLcats. Cheezburger makes money off of people coming to visit. They get people coming to visit by thinking about a clear action, a clear purpose, and a clear value from the perspective of their users. In the same way, you are here in the Moz community, and they have two kinds of users. They have basic users and they have premium users. Well, they keep building new tools, and they have to think about: What is the action of this tool, what is the purpose of this tool, and is it going to be valuable to the community? When they write out to every one of the basic members and say, "We have this great new tool," they have to really go through this process twice. They have the process of does the tool meet these standards? Is it clear what I can do with the tool? Is it clear what the tool is going to deal with? Is it clear that I can get some value out of it? They also have to write an email that it's very clear what they want you to do, which is switch from being a basic to being a premium user. It has to be very clear what this tool is going to do for you, and it has to be very clear that you're going to derive value out of it. Otherwise, they aren't going to get a good conversion rate. So, hopefully, these examples will give you something that's actionable for your business and let you take conversion rate optimization into all of the things that you're doing for your marketing. I'm Carlos del Rio. Thanks. Video transcription by Speechpad.com Do you like this post? Yes No

A Letter to Google from Inbound Marketers Posted: 01 Dec 2011 02:48 AM PST Posted by Jlbraaten 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. Hi Google. It’s been great between us, hasn’t it? You’ve always provided great research and measurement tools to support a great search engine, and in return, I’ve done my best to create quality material on the web. Inbound marketers and Google working together, we’ve been improving the Internet one quality web page after another for a while now. But lately you’ve been doing a few things that make me think you don’t want inbound marketers to create excellent website content anymore. Perhaps you’re just in it to maintain your high prestige now and don’t care about us like you once did. I wanted to drop you a note about few thoughts on inbound marketers’ minds. SSL Search Sleight of Hand When you made SSL search the default, we all cringed as you justified hiding organic keyword traffic data in web analytics tools in the name of user privacy. While I also value user privacy, a few things about what you said didn’t add up. For example, in a recent SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday (about six minutes in), Rand noted to Microsoft’s Duane Forrester that Bing does a good job handling user privacy for keyword traffic in web analytics tools where Google will now be sending (not provided) instead. They’re not considering any changes as drastic as you are. Why did it have to be that way, Google? You announced that 10 percent would be the norm, and cushioned the announcement by rolling the change out slowly. Now, some sites are reporting between 20 to 50 percent of their organic search traffic as (not provided) instead of the actual keywords since you flipped the switch in early November. Personally, I'm up to about 15%. Meanwhile, AdWords customers get every bit of keyword data, personalized URLs, and all. What’s up with that? Does that mean that privacy matters unless someone is willing to pay to remove it? Are you aware of how obvious this is to people? It just seems a little evil, and I thought you were against that sort of thing. Just sayin’. Multi-Channel Second Fiddle When you announced Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF) in Google Analytics, I was thrilled to get a level of attribution reporting on the channels that are sending traffic to my site. It was neat to see how social media and organic search supported and assisted the goals of my websites. But then I found that while we can segment and group traffic by channel (e.g., search, social, etc.), Google Analytics users can’t organize MCFs by organic landing page or sections of a website. How am I supposed to see how people interact with the sections of my website as they make their way through their buying process over multiple visits? Again, you allowed us to group segments and channel groupings by AdWords landing page, but not by organic landing page, according to Nick and Avinash of Web Analytics TV (about 5:15 minutes in). Apparently, Google, you only pull in AdWords data for that feature. Of course. Inbound marketers are second fiddle again. What Gives, Google? I’ve heard a lot of rumblings lately that perhaps all of these recent indiscretions on inbound marketers are leading up to a suite of offerings for us in the new Google Analytics Premium. For a tiny investment of only six figures a year, I too can have my data back in addition to a person to call and talk to? It doesn’t seem like it’s a fair exchange, especially given how much we’ve given you while you were still up-and-coming. Before Google Analytics, you knew what happened within Google search, and you saw how sites linked to each other, but you didn’t yet know how people behaved when they were on websites. You needed our data to weave together a complete picture of the web. And so you bought Urchin, and we all signed up and gave you our data, confident that it would help you make the Internet a better place for all of us. Now I’m not sure it was such a great idea. It feels like you got what you needed from us and now you’re going to make the collective “us” pay to continue enjoying the benefits of what we thought was a mutually beneficial relationship. Some may say that’s what we get for using a free product, but I guess I expected more from you, Google. I want my data back. I want parity with PPC. And, I would kindly like the “&limit=N” feature back too. I miss the old Google that believed in democracy of information and in doing the right thing. Please remember all the good times we’ve had together, and reconsider some of your recent neglect of inbound marketers. Thanks for listening.  Do you like this post? Yes No

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