Central Perk: 50 Tips & Takeaways from BlueGlass LA

marți, 1 mai 2012

50 Tips & Takeaways from BlueGlass LA

Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:38 AM PDT

Last week I got the chance to attend the latest BlueGlass conference in LA. I’ve got to admit, when heading out to the US I had high expectations for this event having heard a lot of buzz around previous conferences they’ve held and you might have seen my interview with Chris Winfield ahead of the event. But I’d have to say, they exceeded expectations way beyond what I ever expected!

This was quite easily the best search event I have ever attended (and there’s been quite a few now!), the sessions were packed full of great content – once you’ve been to a lot of conferences you find yourself skipping quite a few sessions, but this conference was the exception – and every session was full to the back of the room! But as is normally the way, the highlight was the networking – you really could just sell tickets for “an audience with Greg Boser” show! Getting the chance to meet everyone before the event at Mike’s SEO BBQ was a great way to kick-off the conference – and the intimate feel of the event by having a limited number of 125 attendees and all staying at the amazing Standard Hotel in Downtown LA with a free bar and rooftop party is always an appreciated nice touch!

Anyway getting into the content, I’ve organised my tweets and notes so that hopefully you can pickup a couple of useful tips even if you weren’t able to attend the event:

Google

A writer who has the biggest reach is who @GregBoser recommends hiring. This person can influence people in search result …
Start removing title tags and see how Google rewrites them. Let Google give you hints on what they think is best. @Gregboser
Great tip from @GregBoser 450 character descriptions give #SEO experts more control over SERP descriptions

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Use descriptive words on buttons – ‘create a gift’, not ‘buy now’ @hnshah
Design for conversions tips; CROToolkit, lightbox promotions, cross-promo ad banners, promote top posts @hnshah
Stick to basics on Twitter, share great, relevant & interesting content. @KISSmetrics grown to 88,000 followers @hnshah
Use aweber & WordPress for drip email marketing on blogs @hnshah
CRO tools; whichtestwon.com, usertesting.com, 99designs.com for landing pages, visualwebsiteoptimizer.com @hnshah
Great CRO landing page examples; RipFire, DollarShaveClub @jasonnazar
Can also have social proof on purchase page…’verified by’, better business bureau, etc.@jasonnazar
Use social proof CRO – client logos (e.g. visualwebsiteoptimizer.com), as seen on, customer testimonials @jasonnazar
Call-to-action; size, colour & text biggest CRO quick win. Dark forest green button converts well – agree, green means go! @jasonnazar
Single biggest CRO tip; headline most important text on page – not call-to-action or on-page text. Great example; Square @jasonnazar

On-Site SEO

Evaluate those low performing pages. Good reminder to either optimize them, or 301 to higher value sections. @alanbleiweiss
Are your highest visited/stickiest pages converting? A/B test your call-to-action & content wording. @alanbleiweiss
In Page Analytics in GA recommended by @alanbleiweiss to determine phrases people find relevant, based on internal CTRs
400% increase in organic visits shown by @alanbleiweiss as example of why you don’t need to look at granular kw level
Smart bet is keyword data could go completely & not provided to =100% – interesting prediction by @alanbleiweiss
‘SEO is organic ad writing’ great quote by @aimclear
@aimclear As far as KWs go, (not set) means the URL, GATC , or AdWords wasn’t set up correctly.
‘Within analytics work on the short-tail first because it helps you understand the long-tail.’ @aimclear
GA not provided tip; segment landing page data by keyword & map to GWT to compare no of kw visits @aimclear
@alanbleiweiss: So many finally validating what i was advocating last spring abt schema as the 2012 big opportunity in SEO

Link Building

Buy traditional advertising then use that relationship to get free editorial links that last forever. @RavenJon
Build private lists & set auto reminders to interact w/ people you want to connect w/ on Twitter @RavenJon
Position yourself or your client as an expert source. Recommends @helpareporter to help them find you @RavenJon
FullContact, BuzzStream & Tout recommended by @RavenJon to find contact details & manage relationships
Great answer from @jamies to my question; how do you value how much a link is worth? Measure attention & traffic it generates
@jamies Is tearing up , fantastic realtime ideas, highlighting TheVerge CMS, also likes AtlanticWire
Great tip by @jamies: Google Analytics Query Explorer can be used to map traffic alongside links in @seomoz

Content Marketing / Infographics

Infographic tips; work with a great publishing partner, capitalise on previous success & tap proven ideas @danieltynski
Serve needs of business & potential customers, once you’ve targeted audience, by creating remarkable content @danieltynski
Build a content team: Community Mgr, Content Strategist, Moderators, Guest Authors, Video Producers, Graphic Designers
43% of online news is shared via social networks, 27% of ppl who share are frequent sharers & responsible for 87% of shares

Blogging / Cultivating Visibility

Email marketing tips from @chrisbrogan Brevity – 250 words max, don’t start with view in browser, don’t use dontreply@ address
Nice tip from @copyblogger @chrisbrogan unsubscribe your annoying email subscribers, e.g. grammar nazi’s who always reply!
Plain text emais have better delivery rates, take people to landing pages, healthy ratio of value vs promotion @copyblogger
‘We don’t buy lists, we build audiences.’ ~Brian Clark @copyblogger
‘never invest in the carpet, invest in the people who are walking on it!’ @chrisbrogan
’Don’t be an artist. Be a business person who makes art.’ – @chrisbrogan
There’s so many bloggers out there, but lack of real quality in most niches – still lots of big opportunities @copyblogger
Thanks for the @copyblogger 10 landing page commandments @JasonNazar

WordPress

Understand WP version numbers: .1 is a major release, .2 is a security update @yoast

Trusted Recommendations & New PR

‘always take your work seriously, don’t take yourself seriously’ great advice from @soniasimone
Best pitches in the world are 7 words that describe exactly what you’re pitching @petershankman
We tend to think more ass in chair time produces more. Take breaks. @soniasimone
I never write unless I’ve just gotten a workout in. Working out spawns creativity. @petershankman
Don’t just sent out press releases, have conversations @soniasimone
‘if you’re not making money from it, you’re doing it wrong’ on PR @petershankman
‘Personal recommendation is the new PR’ – absolutely true! @misswetapatel

There’s also been some great write-ups on the sessions, checkout the BlueGlass blog where Kelsey Libert did a great job on covering the key points from each. And if anyone else has tips to add or questions – please feel free to do so in the comments and I’ll keep an eye on these.

Top Takeaways from the Search Firestarters Event on Attribution

Posted: 30 Apr 2012 05:59 AM PDT

Last Thursday was the first Search Firestarters event, hosted by Google and Only Dead Fish – and we were lucky enough to get an invitation. Here are our top takeaways!

Martin McNulty, from Forward3D

Don't try to attribute your way out of a rubbish marketing campaign. If your marketing is rubbish no attribution model will fix that.
Modelling is not measuring – it's about statistics and odds.
Concentrate on what you can control – it's all very well finding out the volume of search depends on cloud cover, but you can't control the weather so you can't do anything about it.
Some companies will get most conversions from just one click – there's not much point doing attribution modelling if it's only for a couple of conversions.

Helen Southgate, from BSkyB

Attribution has flaws:
- People buy and research on many devices, and you can't track them between these – this is only going to get worse in the future
- Tracking is based on cookies, and assumes one person only has one cookie.
There are several objectives:
- Want to understand advertising and justify spend.
- Want to prove worth of the brand.
- Want to understand customer journey and message differently depending on what stage the customer is in.
At Sky they're using a staged approach:
- Getting all the data sorted (so everything can be meaningfully compared)
- Working out the objectives of the stakeholders
- Get top line information – what the channels are doing
- Look at different media partners, keywords – deeper level stuff
- Test different combinations of different channels, and different ads at different stages

David Richards, from ZenithOptimedia

Attribution does provide a wealth of insight.
- Generics can influence people and push them to the brand
- Look at different behaviour of people from different sources.
But it isn't a silver bullet.
- You should only do it if it makes sense for your business.
- There are lots of things you can fix before it's worthwhile doing attribution modelling (such as getting the best website possible)
We're missing so many things, such as TV and radio advertising, or the effect of competitors' advertising pushing generic searches.

Tom Cull, from Carat Manchester

There are two levels to attribution modelling
- The macro scale (with econometrics) – for looking at the channel mix
- The micro scale (with clicks and conversions) – for optimising at a finer level
There's no single standard model. Tom starts with a standard model and customises for each client as they get more data.
Beware the "so what?" trap: some clients ask for attribution data but then don't do anything with them. Take action based on your data.
- Eliminate non-converters
- Change the channel mix
Build an engagement model, based on on-site activity, and feed that into the attribution model
Process has to be collaborative – you have to involve all the right client-side data holders.
Don't rely solely on attribution modelling – the tools are getting better but the data are getting worse. You could optimise yourself out of important keywords your model can't assign the correct value to. Accept the limitations of the data.

From the Q&A

How do you choose the right model? Martin starts with big chunks of data and working out the relationships between them, and doesn't get more complicated. He suggests looking at Google Analytics with different attribution models and seeing if there's a difference between them.

How do you line up everyone in a large organisation? Helen said that it was a challenge, but she got buy-in by having an unbiased and holistic view of attribution, and sold it as it could drive a lot more high quality sales.

Doesn't last click work best for many real world situations? "Yes", said Martin. Helen said that it was still worth looking at last click attribution, but using the more complicated models could help understand and optimise.

To round things up, the panel were asked for a single recommendation:

Martin – Keep it simple.
Helen – Know your objectives.
David – Work with the things you can change today.
Tom – Don't fall into the "so what?" trap. Don't do attribution unless you're prepared to do things on the back of it.