A Practical Guide to Content and Its Metrics - Moz Blog

A Practical Guide to Content and Its Metrics

Posted by gfiorelli1

A small disclaimer:

Before you start reading, I want to say that I am not an analytics expert per se, but a strategic SEO and digital marketing consultant. On the other hand, in my daily work of auditing and designing holistic digital marketing strategies, I deal a lot with Analytics in order to understand my clients' gaps and opportunities.

For that reason, what you are going to read isn't an "ultimate guide," but instead my personal and practical guide to content and its metrics, filled with links to useful resources that helped me solving the big contents' metric mystery. I happily expect to see your ideas in the comments.

The difference between content and formats

One of the hardest things to measure is content effectiveness, mostly because there exists great confusion about its changing nature and purpose. One common problem is thinking of "content" and "formats" as synonyms, which leads to frustration and, with the wrong scaling processes present, may also lead to Google disasters.

What is the difference between content and formats?

1. Content is any message a brand/person delivers to an audience;
2. Formats are the specific ways a brand/person can deliver that message (e.g. data visualizations, written content, images/photos, video, etc.).

Just to be clear: We engage and eventually share the ideas and emotions that content represents, not its formats. Formats are just the clothing we choose for our content, and keeping the fashion metaphor, some ways of dressing are better than others for making a message more explicit.

Strategy, as in everything in marketing, also plays a very important role when it comes to content.

It is during the strategic phase that we attempt to understand (both thanks to our own site analysis and competitive analysis of others' sites) if our content is responding to our audience's interests and needs, and also to understand what metrics we must choose in order to assess its success or failure.

Paraphrasing an old Pirelli commercial tagline: Content without strategy is nothing.

Strategy: Starting with why/how/what

When we are building a content strategy, we should ask ourselves (and our clients and CMOs) these classic questions:

1. Why does the brand exist?
2. How does the brand solidify its "why?"
3. What specific tactics will the brand use for successfully developing the "how?"

Only when we have those answers can we understand the goals of our content, what metrics to consider, and how to calculate them.

Let use an example every Mozzer can understand.

Why does Moz exist?

The answer is in its tagline:

• Inbound marketing is complicated. Moz's software makes it easy.

How does Moz solidify its "why?"

• Moz produces a series of tools, which help marketers in auditing, monitoring and taking insightful decisions about their web marketing projects.
• Moreover, Moz creates and publishes content, which aims to educate marketers to do their jobs better.

If you notice, we can already pick out a couple of generic goals here:

1. Leads > subscriptions;
2. Awareness (that may ultimately drive leads).

What specific tactics does Moz use for successfully achieving its main goals?

Considering the nature of the two main goals we clarified above, we can find content tactics covering all the areas of the so-called content matrix.

Some classic content matrix models are the ones developed by Distilled (in the image above) and Smart Insights and First 10, but it is a good idea to develop your own based on the insights you may have about your specific industry niche.

The things Moz does are many, so I am presenting an incomplete list here.

In the "Purchase" side and with conversion and persuasion as end goals:

• Home page and "Products" section of Moz.com (we can define them as "organic landing pages");
• Content about tools
  • Free tools;
  • Pro tools (which are substantially free for a 30-day trial period).
• CPC landing pages;
• Price page with testimonials;
• "About" section;
• Events sponsorship.

In the "Awareness" side and with educational and entertainment (or pure engagement) purposes:

• The blogs (both the main blog and UGC);
• The "Learn and Connect" section, which includes the Q&A;
• Guides;
• Games (The SEO Expert Quiz can surely be considered a game);
• Webinars;
• Social media publishing;
• Email marketing
• Live events (MozCon and LocalUp, but also the events where Moz Staff is present with one or more speakers).

Once we have the content inventory of our web site, we can relatively easily identify the specific goals for the different pieces of content, and of the single type of content we own and will create.

I will usually not consider content like tools, sponsorship, or live events, because even though content surely plays a role in their goals' achievement, there are also other factors like user satisfaction and serendipity involved which are not directly related to content itself or cannot be easily measured.

Measuring landing/conversion pages' content

This may be the easier kind of content to measure, because it is deeply related to the more general measures of leads and conversions, and it is also strongly related to everything CRO.

We can measure the effectiveness of our landing/conversion pages' content easily with Google Analytics, especially if we remember to implement content grouping (here's the official Google guide) and follow the suggestions Jeff Sauer offered in this post on Moz.

We can find another great resource and practical suggestions in this older (but still valid) post by Justin Cutroni: How to Use Google Analytics Content Grouping: 4 Business Examples. The example Justin offers about Patagonia.com is particularly interesting, because it is explicitly about product pages.

On the other hand, we should always remember that the default conversion rate metric should not be taken as the only metric to incorporate into decision-making; the same is true when it comes to content performance and optimization. In fact, as Dan Barker said once, the better we segment our analysis the better we can understand the performance of our money pages, give a better meaning to the conversion rate value and, therefore, correct and improve our sales and leads.

Good examples of segmentation are:

• Conversions per returning visitor vs new visitor;
• Conversions per type of visitor based on demographic data;
• Conversions per channel/device.

These segmented metrics are fundamental for developing A/B tests with our content.

Here are some examples of A/B tests for landing/conversion pages' content:

• Title tags and meta description A/B tests (yes, title tags and meta descriptions are content too, and they have a fundamental role in CTR and "first impressions");
• Prominent presence of testimonials vs. a more discreet one;
• Tone of voice used in the product description (copywriting experiment);
• Product slideshow vs. video.

Here are a few additional sources about CRO and content, surely better than me for inspiring you in this specific field:

• Unbounce;
• Optimizely;
• ConversionXL.

Measuring on-site "editorial" content

Here is where things start getting a little more complicated.

Blog posts, guides, white papers, and similar content usually do not have a conversion/lead nature, at leastnot directly. Usually their goals are more intangible ones, such as creating awareness, likability, trust, and authority.

In other cases, then, this kind of content also serves the objective of creating and maintaining an active community, as it does in the case of Moz. I tend to consider this a subset, though, because in many niches creating a community is not a top priority. Or, even if it is, it does not offer a reliable flux of "signals" so as to appropriately measure the effectiveness of our content because of pure lack of statistical evidence.

A good starting place is measuring the so-called consumption metrics.

Again, the ideal is to implement content grouping in Google Analytics (see the video above), because that way we can segment every different kind of editorial content.

For instance, if we have a blog, not only we can create a group for it, but we can also create

• As many groups as there are categories and tags on our blog;
• groups by average length of the posts;
• groups per the kind of prominent formats used (video posts like Moz's Whiteboard Fridays, infographics, long-form, etc.).

This are just three examples; think about your own measuring needs and the nature of your content, and you will come out with other ideas for content groupings.

The following are basic metrics that you'll need to consider when measuring your editorial content:

1. Pageviews / Unique Pageviews
2. Pages / Session
3. Time on Page

The ideal is to analyze these metrics at least with these secondary levels:

• Medium / Sources, so you can understand what channel contributed the most to your content visibility. Remember, though, that dark search/social is a reality that can screw up your metrics (check out Marshall Simmonds' deck from MozCon 2015);
• User Type, so to see what percent of the Pageviews is due to returning visitors (a good indicator of the level of trust and authority our content has) and new ones (which indicates the ability our content has to attract new potentially long-lasting readers);
• Mobile, which is useful in understanding the environments in which our users mostly interact with our content, and how we have to optimize its experience depending on the device used, hence helping making our content more memorable.

You surely can have fun also analyzing your content's performance by segmenting them per demographic indicators. For instance, it may be interesting to see what affinity categories of your readers there are, depending on the categorization used in your blog and that you have replicated in your content grouping. This, in fact, can help us in better understanding the personas composing our audience, and so refining the targeting of our content.

As you can see, I did not mention bounce rate as a metric to consider, and there is a reason for that: Bounce rate is tricky, and its misinterpretation can lead to bad decisions.

Instead of bounce rate, when it comes to editorial content (and blog posts in particular), I prefer to consider scroll completion, a metric we can retrieve using Tag Manager (see this post by Optimize Smart).

Finally, especially if you also grouped content for outstanding format used (video, embedded SlideShare, etc.), you will need to retrieve users' interactions through Tag Manager. However, if you really want to dig into the analysis of how that content is consumed by users, you will need to export your Analytics data and then combine it with data from external sources, like YouTube Analytics, SlideShare Analytics, etc.

The more we share, the more we have. This is also true in Marketing.

Consumption metrics, though, are not enough in order to understand the performance of your content, especially if you strongly rely on a community and one of the content objectives is creating and growing a community around your brand.

I am talking of the so-called sharing metrics:

1. Social shares (Likes, Tweets, Pins, etc.);
2. Inbound links;
3. Un-linked mentions
4. Email forwarding.

All this can be tracked and measured (e.g.: social shares, mentions on web sites or on social).

I usually add comments into these Metrics, because of the social nature comments have. Again, thanks to Tag Manager, you can easily tag when someone clicks on the "add comment" button.

A final metric we should always consider is the page value. As Google itself explains in that Help Page:

Page value is a measure of influence. It's a single number that can help you better understand which pages on your site drive conversions and revenue. Pages with a high Page Value are more influential than pages with a low Page Value [Page Value is also shown for groups of content].

The combined analysis of consumption and social metrics can offer us a very granular understanding of how our content is performing, therefore how to optimize our strategy and/or how to start conducting A/B tests.

On the other hand, such a granular vision is not the ideal for reporting, especially if we have to report to a board of directors and not to our in-house or in-agency counterpart.

In that case being able to resume all these metrics (or the most relevant ones) in just one metric is very useful.

How to do it? My suggestion is to follow (and adapt to your own needs) the methodology used by the Moz editorial team and described in this post by Trevor Klein.

What about the ROI of editorial content? Don't give up; I'll talk about it below.

Measuring the ROI of content marketing and content-based link building campaigns

Theoretically measuring the ROI of something is relatively easy:

(Return - Investment) / Investment = ROI.

However the difficulty is not in that formula itself, but in the values used in that formula.

How to calculate the investment value?

Usually we have a given budget assigned for our content marketing and/or content-based campaigns. If that is the case, perfect! We have a figure to use for the investment value.

A complete different situation is when we must present a budget proposal and/or assign part of the budget to each campaign in a balanced and considered way.

In this post by Caroline Gilbert for Siege Media you can find great suggestions about how to calculate a content marketing budget, but I would like to present mine, too, which is based on competitive analysis.

Here's what I do:

1. Identify the distinct competitors which created content related to what we will target with our campaign. I rely on both SERP analysis (i.e.: using the Keyword Difficulty Tool by Moz) and information we can retrieve with a "keyword search" on Buzzsumo.
2. Retrieve all meaningful content metrics:
   • Links (another reason why I use the Keyword Difficulty Tool);
   • Social shares per kind of social network (these are available from BuzzSumo). Remember that some of these social shares can be tallied by sponsored content (check this Social Media Explorer post about how to do Facebook competitive analysis).
   • Estimated traffic to the content's URL (data retrieved via SimilarWeb).
3. Assign a monetary value to the metrics retrieved.
4. Calculate the competitors' potential investment value.
5. Calculate the median investment value of all the competitors.
6. Consider the delta between what the client/company invested in content marketing (or link building, if it is moving from classic old link building to modern link earning) before, as well as the median investment value of the competitors.
7. Calculate and propose the content marketing / content-based campaign's value in a range which goes from "minimum viable budget" to "ideal."

Reality teaches us that the proposed investment is not the same than the real investment, but at least we then have some data for proposing it and not just a gut feeling. However, we must be prepared to work with budgets that are more on the "minimum viable" side than on the ideal one.

How to calculate revenue?

You can find a good number of ROI calculators, but I particularly like the Fractl one, because it is very easy to understand and use.

Their general philosophy is to calculate ROI in terms of how much traffic, links, and social shares the content itself has generated organically, hence how much it helped saving in paid promotion.

If you look at it, it reminds the methodology I described above (points 1 to 7).

However, when it comes to social shares, you should avoid the classic mistake of considering only the social shares directly generated by the page your content has been published.

For instance, let's take the Idioms of the World campaigns Verve Search did for HotelClub.com and which won the European Search Awards.

If we we look only at its own social share metrics, we will have just a partial picture:

Instead, if we see what are the social shares metrics of the pages that linked and talked about it, we will have the complete picture.

We can use (again) BuzzSumo for retrieving this data (also using its Content Analysis feature), or using URL Profiler.

As you can imagine, you can calculate the ROI of your editorial content using the same methodology.

Obviously the Fractl ROI calculator is far from being perfect, as it does not consider the offline repercussion a content campaign may have (the Idioms of the World campaign was organically published in a outstanding placement on The Guardian's paper version, for instance), but it is a solid base for crafting your own ROI calculation.

Conclusions

So, we have arrived at the end of this personal guide about content and its metrics.

Remember these important things:

• Don't be data driven, be data informed;
• Think strategically, act tactically;
• Content's metrics vary depending on the goals of content itself.

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Seth's Blog : The illusion of control

The illusion of control

It's modern and very widespread. It motivates us, frightens us and drives our consumer mania: The idea that we are in control. That our work is so leveraged and important that through force of will, we can ensure that things will turn out as we choose. 

We extend this to our sports and hobbies and adventures, as well. The compelling belief that we're almost in control, that we're right at the edge, that this ski run or this play or this experience will be the one we earned through our extensive planning and investment and skill.

Financial advisors and travel businesses and everyone in between peddles us the story that if we just team up with them, we'll get exactly what we expect, that it will all be as we dreamed it to be.

You can see where the disappointment lies. We're never in control, not of anything but the monologue in our head and the actions we choose to take. Everything else, if we're lucky, is a matter of influence. If we do our work and invest our energy, perhaps we can influence events, perhaps we can contribute to things turning out in a way we're pleased with.

That's a tough sell if you're in the service business. "Pay us extra and we'll work to influence events…" And yet, back against the wall, the powerless customer service person shrugs her shoulders and says, "it's out of our control."

And the boss has to say to her board, "we missed the numbers, but we did our best to influence them." (Interesting to note that oil company executives get huge bonuses in years their companies do well because of high prices, but when oil prices go down, it's obviously not their fault).

And the team says to its fans, "next year." 

When the illusion of control collides with the reality of influence, it highlights the fable the entire illusion is based on.

You're responsible for what you do, but you don't have authority and control over the outcome. We can hide from that, or we can embrace it.

       

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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• Capital Controls Destroy Greek Small Businesses; Bank Shares Plunge Again; Record Contraction
• More on Ukraine's "Right Sector" Movement
• Factory Orders Rise 2nd Time in 11 Months, Led by Aircraft; The "Bounce" in Five Pictures
• 3D Printing an Ornate Bridge Over a Water in Amsterdam

Capital Controls Destroy Greek Small Businesses; Bank Shares Plunge Again; Record Contraction Posted: 04 Aug 2015 05:16 PM PDT Record Manufacturing Contraction Greece may as well have gone to hell in a handbasket. Carnage is everywhere one looks, but let's start with the Markit Greece PMI report that shows record manufacturing contraction. July saw factory production in Greece contract sharply amid an unprecedented drop in new orders and difficulties in purchasing raw materials. The headline seasonally adjusted Markit Greece Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index® registered 30.2, well below the neutral 50.0 mark and its lowest ever reading. Record contractions were registered for almost all variables monitored by the survey, including output, new orders, employment and stocks. There was also a record lengthening in suppliers' delivery times. July's sharp decrease in the level of new business at manufacturers surpassed the previous record set in February 2012. Panel members commented on the impact of capital controls on demand, and also cited a generally uncertain operating environment which further weighed on sales. A sharp and accelerated decrease in new export orders (also a series record) added to the overall reduction in new work. July's survey signalled the steepest drop in factory employment ever recorded during the 16-plus years of data collection. The decrease was the fourth in successive months, following marginal job losses throughout the second quarter of the year. A lack of availability of supplies meanwhile contributed to a rise in average purchase prices, with the rate of cost inflation accelerating from the previous month to the second-fastest since September 2012. In contrast, prices charged by manufacturers for goods decreased to the greatest extent for over two years, the rate of decline notably more marked than the moderate pace of deflation recorded during the month before. Greece Manufacturing PMI Businesses Gasp Over Capital Controls The Financial Times reports Greek Businesses Left Gasping as Capital Controls Bite. "Good and healthy companies that survived the crisis have been rendered helpless because they can't import raw materials," said Constantine Michalos, president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry. As frustration mounts, the Piraeus port in Athens has become a maritime parking lot to about 8,000 shipping containers waiting for importers who cannot yet pay the outstanding bills on their shipments. Rena Simou, a clothing retailer who operates outlets on several popular tourist islands, said her business is headed for collapse if she cannot deliver stock before mid-August when the summer tourist season begins to wind down. "My boxes are waiting in customs but I can't send the rest of the money from my Greek account. It's a business disaster," she said. "If the controls aren't lifted soon retailers like me will become like east Europeans in the 1990s . . . We'll be suitcase traders." Question for Rena Why did you have a Greek bank account? The smart money got out long ago. I'm not blaming people for being dumb. Rather, I simply point out that being economically illiterate has its consequences. Those lowest on the totem pole will take the hardest hit. And the bailout? No one but creditors have been bailed out. The average person on the street has been brutalized. When the carnage appears to be over, those who were smart enough to get the hell out, will have plenty of money to come back in and purchase bankrupt businesses and properties at rock-bottom prices. Market Reopens Shares Plunge The stock market collapsed yesterday following its restricted reopening. On Monday Greek Bank Shares Crash 30% as Market Reopens. Shares in Greek banks crashed 30% Monday as trading resumed on the Athens stock exchange for the first time since the country was nearly forced to abandon the euro last month. The benchmark index in Athens opened nearly 23% lower, with banking stocks the biggest losers. The country's four biggest lenders -- Piraeus (BPIRF), Alpha Bank (ALBKF), the National Bank of Greece (NBG) and Eurobank all plunged 30% -- the daily limit -- immediately after the open. Stocks in other sectors recovered slightly during the session but the index still shed more than 16% by the close. Bank Shares Plunge Again Today, Bank Shares Hammered Again. Capital controls will destroy what's left of Greece. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com  Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

More on Ukraine's "Right Sector" Movement Posted: 04 Aug 2015 12:36 PM PDT In response to Ukraine's Ultra-Right Militia Threatens Military Coup, I received an email from Jacob Dreizin on statements made by the Financial Times that I quoted. Jacob writes ... Hello Mish, The FT was inexcusably sloppy in its writing. Here's a quick clarification. The Right Sector is not a battalion, nor do they call themselves one. A battalion is at most 300 men in a compact location, whereas Right Sector has thousands of members across Ukraine. The Right Sector  is more like a "movement", almost a political party, albeit with guns and some for-profit criminal operations. The FT confuses Right Sector with a number of smaller, battalion or regiment-sized groups operating in the occupied parts of the Donbass, some of whom are openly Nazi in orientation. Despite the threats, the Right Sector is not capable of a coup. It was humiliated in Transcarpathia last month, when it attacked the local mafia over a business dispute, then had to run and hide once the military showed up. Its threat to launch protests in Kiev fizzled after only a few hundred showed up. After this sad performance, its leaders have had to talk of a coup/revolution in order to save face. However, it has succeeded in making Poroshenko look even more ineffectual in the eyes of the Western media and perhaps Western governments as well. In that sense, the group is a real threat to Kiev. Jacob More Questions Than Answers Jacob's comments shed some needed light on Ukraine, but in doing so, created another series of questions. Whether or not the "movement", as Jacob accurately calls it, is technically capable of a coup may not matter. Might some rogue members try anyway? Alternatively, instead of a coup, might they simply opt to take out Poroshenko and see what happens next? Kiev was willing to tolerate the Right Sector because its troops took the side of Kiev against the separatists. However, by calling for a nationwide no-confidence referendum on president Petro Poroshenko, followed up with threats of a coup (idle or not), the movement has created a huge problem for the president. Another Simmering Pot Can Poroshenko make the Right Sector an officially recognized unit of the regular army as they demand, even though they call for Poroshenko's removal by force? Should Poroshenko ban them? Ignore them? Meanwhile, the pot simmers. Attempts by the government to put a lid on the pot could cause it to explosively boil over. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Factory Orders Rise 2nd Time in 11 Months, Led by Aircraft; The "Bounce" in Five Pictures Posted: 04 Aug 2015 10:50 AM PDT Factory orders rose for only the second time in eleven months, in line with the Consensus Estimate. Factory orders rose nearly as expected in June, up 1.8 percent for only the second gain in the last 11 months. The durable goods component, initially released last week, is unrevised at plus 3.4 percent in a gain distorted by aircraft orders but one that does reflect a pop higher for capital goods. The non-durables component, data released with today's report, rose 0.4 percent on order gains for oil and chemicals. Orders for civilian aircraft jumped 65 percent in the month following, in routine up-and-down fashion for this component, a 32 percent downswing in May. Industries reporting respectable gains include 0.5 percent for furniture and 0.6 percent for motor vehicles as well as a 1.5 percent gain for machinery. Orders for energy equipment bounced back 5.5 percent after sinking 25 percent in May. Year-on-year, energy equipment is down 51 percent. Looking at totals again, shipments rose a very solid 0.5 percent with shipments of core capital goods up 0.3 percent. The latter, which is a key reading that excludes aircraft, isn't spectacular but is still a solid gain for business investment. Unfilled orders, which have been in contraction most of the year, were unchanged in June. Inventories rose 0.6 percent in a build that falls in line with shipments, keeping the inventory-to-shipments ratio at a manageable 1.35. Chart Perspective On the Bounce  This was a decent but not spectacular report and only the second in nearly a year. A chart of new orders and shipments provides a good perspective. Here are a few more charts from Fred, all showing notable weakness on a year-over-year basis. Durable Goods New Orders Export New Orders Excluding Motor Vehicles New Orders for Nondurable Goods New Orders Excluding Transportation Year-over-year new orders were down once again, in many ways. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

3D Printing an Ornate Bridge Over a Water in Amsterdam Posted: 04 Aug 2015 12:46 AM PDT Every month, 3D printing possibilities get increasingly elaborate. For example (with thanks to reader Tim Wallace for the links): The Goal of MX3D is to 3D print a steel bridge. Really. With our robots that can "draw" steel structures in 3D, we will print a bridge over water in the center of Amsterdam. We research and develop groundbreaking, cost-effective robotic technology with which we can 3D print beautiful, functional objects in almost any form. The ultimate test? Printing an intricate, ornate metal bridge for a special location to show what our robots and software, engineers, craftsmen and designers can do. The bridge will be designed by Joris Laarman. That process using new Autodesk software will be a research project in itself. It will sync with the technical development and take into account the location. The project is a collaboration between MX3D, design software company Autodesk, construction company Heijmans and many others. From September 2015 the progress of the project can be followed in our visitor center. MX3D and the City of Amsterdam will announce the exact location of the bridge soon. MX3D's engineers, craftsmen and software experts bring together digital technology, robotics and traditional industrial production in the MX3D Bridge project; they research the construction site of the future, test and share their knowledge within an AMS-3D Building FieldLab. Conceptual Design Tim Geurtjens, CTO MX3D: "What distinguishes our technology from traditional 3D printing methods is that we work according to the 'Printing Outside the box' principle. By printing with 6-axis industrial robots, we are no longer limited to a square box in which everything happens. Printing a functional, life-size bridge is of course the ideal way to showcase the endless possibilities of this technique." Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

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Distance from Perfect - Moz Blog

Distance from Perfect

Posted by wrttnwrd

In spite of all the advice, the strategic discussions and the conference talks, we Internet marketers are still algorithmic thinkers. That's obvious when you think of SEO.

Even when we talk about content, we're algorithmic thinkers. Ask yourself: How many times has a client asked you, "How much content do we need?" How often do you still hear "How unique does this page need to be?"

That's 100% algorithmic thinking: Produce a certain amount of content, move up a certain number of spaces.

But you and I know it's complete bullshit.

I'm not suggesting you ignore the algorithm. You should definitely chase it. Understanding a little bit about what goes on in Google's pointy little head helps. But it's not enough.

A tale of SEO woe that makes you go "whoa"

I have this friend.

He ranked #10 for "flibbergibbet." He wanted to rank #1.

He compared his site to the #1 site and realized the #1 site had five hundred blog posts.

"That site has five hundred blog posts," he said, "I must have more."

So he hired a few writers and cranked out five thousand blogs posts that melted Microsoft Word's grammar check. He didn't move up in the rankings. I'm shocked.

"That guy's spamming," he decided, "I'll just report him to Google and hope for the best."

What happened? Why didn't adding five thousand blog posts work?

It's pretty obvious: My, uh, friend added nothing but crap content to a site that was already outranked. Bulk is no longer a ranking tactic. Google's very aware of that tactic. Lots of smart engineers have put time into updates like Panda to compensate.

He started like this:

And ended up like this:

Alright, yeah, I was Mr. Flood The Site With Content, way back in 2003. Don't judge me, whippersnappers.

Reality's never that obvious. You're scratching and clawing to move up two spots, you've got an overtasked IT team pushing back on changes, and you've got a boss who needs to know the implications of every recommendation.

Why fix duplication if rel=canonical can address it? Fixing duplication will take more time and cost more money. It's easier to paste in one line of code. You and I know it's better to fix the duplication. But it's a hard sell.

Why deal with 302 versus 404 response codes and home page redirection? The basic user experience remains the same. Again, we just know that a server should return one home page without any redirects and that it should send a 'not found' 404 response if a page is missing. If it's going to take 3 developer hours to reconfigure the server, though, how do we justify it? There's no flashing sign reading "Your site has a problem!"

Why change this thing and not that thing?

At the same time, our boss/client sees that the site above theirs has five hundred blog posts and thousands of links from sites selling correspondence MBAs. So they want five thousand blog posts and cheap links as quickly as possible.

Cue crazy music.

SEO lacks clarity

SEO is, in some ways, for the insane. It's an absurd collection of technical tweaks, content thinking, link building and other little tactics that may or may not work. A novice gets exposed to one piece of crappy information after another, with an occasional bit of useful stuff mixed in. They create sites that repel search engines and piss off users. They get more awful advice. The cycle repeats. Every time it does, best practices get more muddled.

SEO lacks clarity. We can't easily weigh the value of one change or tactic over another. But we can look at our changes and tactics in context. When we examine the potential of several changes or tactics before we flip the switch, we get a closer balance between algorithm-thinking and actual strategy.

Distance from perfect brings clarity to tactics and strategy

At some point you have to turn that knowledge into practice. You have to take action based on recommendations, your knowledge of SEO, and business considerations.

That's hard when we can't even agree on subdomains vs. subfolders.

I know subfolders work better. Sorry, couldn't resist. Let the flaming comments commence.

To get clarity, take a deep breath and ask yourself:

"All other things being equal, will this change, tactic, or strategy move my site closer to perfect than my competitors?"

Breaking it down:

"Change, tactic, or strategy"

A change takes an existing component or policy and makes it something else. Replatforming is a massive change. Adding a new page is a smaller one. Adding ALT attributes to your images is another example. Changing the way your shopping cart works is yet another.

A tactic is a specific, executable practice. In SEO, that might be fixing broken links, optimizing ALT attributes, optimizing title tags or producing a specific piece of content.

A strategy is a broader decision that'll cause change or drive tactics. A long-term content policy is the easiest example. Shifting away from asynchronous content and moving to server-generated content is another example.

"Perfect"

No one knows exactly what Google considers "perfect," and "perfect" can't really exist, but you can bet a perfect web page/site would have all of the following:

1. Completely visible content that's perfectly relevant to the audience and query
2. A flawless user experience
3. Instant load time
4. Zero duplicate content
5. Every page easily indexed and classified
6. No mistakes, broken links, redirects or anything else generally yucky
7. Zero reported problems or suggestions in each search engines' webmaster tools, sorry, "Search Consoles"
8. Complete authority through immaculate, organically-generated links

These 8 categories (and any of the other bazillion that probably exist) give you a way to break down "perfect" and help you focus on what's really going to move you forward. These different areas may involve different facets of your organization.

Your IT team can work on load time and creating an error-free front- and back-end. Link building requires the time and effort of content and outreach teams.

Tactics for relevant, visible content and current best practices in UX are going to be more involved, requiring research and real study of your audience.

What you need and what resources you have are going to impact which tactics are most realistic for you.

But there's a basic rule: If a website would make Googlebot swoon and present zero obstacles to users, it's close to perfect.

"All other things being equal"

Assume every competing website is optimized exactly as well as yours.

Now ask: Will this [tactic, change or strategy] move you closer to perfect?

That's the "all other things being equal" rule. And it's an incredibly powerful rubric for evaluating potential changes before you act. Pretend you're in a tie with your competitors. Will this one thing be the tiebreaker? Will it put you ahead? Or will it cause you to fall behind?

"Closer to perfect than my competitors"

Perfect is great, but unattainable. What you really need is to be just a little perfect-er.

Chasing perfect can be dangerous. Perfect is the enemy of the good (I love that quote. Hated Voltaire. But I love that quote). If you wait for the opportunity/resources to reach perfection, you'll never do anything. And the only way to reduce distance from perfect is to execute.

Instead of aiming for pure perfection, aim for more perfect than your competitors. Beat them feature-by-feature, tactic-by-tactic. Implement strategy that supports long-term superiority.

Don't slack off. But set priorities and measure your effort. If fixing server response codes will take one hour and fixing duplication will take ten, fix the response codes first. Both move you closer to perfect. Fixing response codes may not move the needle as much, but it's a lot easier to do. Then move on to fixing duplicates.

Do the 60% that gets you a 90% improvement. Then move on to the next thing and do it again. When you're done, get to work on that last 40%. Repeat as necessary.

Take advantage of quick wins. That gives you more time to focus on your bigger solutions.

Sites that are "fine" are pretty far from perfect

Google has lots of tweaks, tools and workarounds to help us mitigate sub-optimal sites:

• Rel=canonical lets us guide Google past duplicate content rather than fix it
• HTML snapshots let us reveal content that's delivered using asynchronous content and JavaScript frameworks
• We can use rel=next and prev to guide search bots through outrageously long pagination tunnels
• And we can use rel=nofollow to hide spammy links and banners

Easy, right? All of these solutions may reduce distance from perfect (the search engines don't guarantee it). But they don't reduce it as much as fixing the problems.

The next time you set up rel=canonical, ask yourself:

"All other things being equal, will using rel=canonical to make up for duplication move my site closer to perfect than my competitors?"

Answer: Not if they're using rel=canonical, too. You're both using imperfect solutions that force search engines to crawl every page of your site, duplicates included. If you want to pass them on your way to perfect, you need to fix the duplicate content.

When you use Angular.js to deliver regular content pages, ask yourself:

"All other things being equal, will using HTML snapshots instead of actual, visible content move my site closer to perfect than my competitors?"

Answer: No. Just no. Not in your wildest, code-addled dreams. If I'm Google, which site will I prefer? The one that renders for me the same way it renders for users? Or the one that has to deliver two separate versions of every page?

When you spill banner ads all over your site, ask yourself…

You get the idea. Nofollow is better than follow, but banner pollution is still pretty dang far from perfect.

Mitigating SEO issues with search engine-specific tools is "fine." But it's far, far from perfect. If search engines are forced to choose, they'll favor the site that just works.

Not just SEO

By the way, distance from perfect absolutely applies to other channels.

I'm focusing on SEO, but think of other Internet marketing disciplines. I hear stuff like "How fast should my site be?" (Faster than it is right now.) Or "I've heard you shouldn't have any content below the fold." (Maybe in 2001.) Or "I need background video on my home page!" (Why? Do you have a reason?) Or, my favorite: "What's a good bounce rate?" (Zero is pretty awesome.)

And Internet marketing venues are working to measure distance from perfect. Pay-per-click marketing has the quality score: A codified financial reward applied for seeking distance from perfect in as many elements as possible of your advertising program.

Social media venues are aggressively building their own forms of graphing, scoring and ranking systems designed to separate the good from the bad.

Really, all marketing includes some measure of distance from perfect. But no channel is more influenced by it than SEO. Instead of arguing one rule at a time, ask yourself and your boss or client: Will this move us closer to perfect?

Hell, you might even please a customer or two.

One last note for all of the SEOs in the crowd. Before you start pointing out edge cases, consider this: We spend our days combing Google for embarrassing rankings issues. Every now and then, we find one, point, and start yelling "SEE! SEE!!!! THE GOOGLES MADE MISTAKES!!!!" Google's got lots of issues. Screwing up the rankings isn't one of them.

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