How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint

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How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint Posted: 13 May 2013 07:14 PM PDT Posted by Cyrus Shepard If you’re like most SEOs, you spend a lot of time reading. Over the past several years, I’ve spent 100s of hours studying blogs, guides, and Google patents. Not long ago, I realized that 90% of what I read each doesn’t change what I actually do - that is, the basic work of ranking a web page higher on Google. For newer SEOs, the process can be overwhelming. To simplify this process, I created this SEO blueprint. It’s meant as a framework for newer SEOs to build their own work on top of. This basic blueprint has helped, in one form or another, 100s of pages and dozens of sites to gain higher rankings. Think of it as an intermediate SEO instruction manual, for beginners. Level: Beginner to Intermediate Timeframe: 2 to 10 Weeks What you need to know: The blueprint assumes you have basic SEO knowledge: you’re not scared of title tags, can implement a rel=canonical, and you’ve built a link or two. (If this is your first time to the rodeo, we suggest reading the Beginners Guide to SEO and browsing our Learn SEO section.) Keyword Research 1. Working Smarter, Not Harder Keyword research can be simple or hard, but it should always be fun. For the sake of the Blueprint, let’s do keyword research the easy way. The biggest mistakes people make with keyword research are: Choosing keywords that are too broad Keywords with too much competition Keywords without enough traffic Keywords that don’t convert Trying to rank for one keyword at a time The biggest mistake people make is trying to rank for a single keyword at a time. This is the hard way. It’s much easier, and much more profitable, to rank for 100s or even 1,000s of long tail keywords with the same piece of content. Instead of ranking for a single keyword, let’s aim our project around a keyword theme. 2. Dream Your Keyword Theme Using keyword themes solves a whole lot of problems. Instead of ranking for one Holy Grail keyword, a better goal is to rank for lots of keywords focused around a single idea. Done right, the results are amazing. I assume you know enough about your business to understand what type of visitor you’re seeking and whether you’re looking for traffic, conversions, or both. Regardless, one simple rule holds true: the more specific you define your theme, the easier it is to rank. This is basic stuff, but it bears repeating. If your topic is the football, you’ll find it hard to rank for  “Super Bowl,” but slightly easier to rank for “Super Bowl 2014” - and easier yet to rank for “Best Super Bowl Recipes of 2014.” Don’t focus on specific words yet - all you need to know is your broad topic. The next step is to find the right keyword qualifiers. 3. Get Specific with Qualifiers Qualifiers are words that add specificity to keywords and define intent. They take many different forms. Time/Date: 2001, December, Morning Price/Quality: Cheap, Best, Most Popular Intent: Buy, Shop, Find Location: Houston, Outdoors, Online The idea is to find as many qualifiers as possible that fit your audience. Here’s where keyword tools enter the picture. You can use any keyword tool you like, but favorites include Wordstream, Keyword Spy, SpyFu, and Bing Keyword Tool and Übersuggest. For speed and real-world insight, Übersuggest is an all-time SEO favorite. Run a simple query and export over 100 suggested keyword based on Google’s own Autocomplete feature – based on actual Google searches. Did I mention it’s free? 4. Finding Diamonds in the Google Rough At this point you have a few dozen, or a few hundred keywords to pull into Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Pro Tip #1: While it’s possible to run over a hundred keyword phrases at once in Google’s Keyword Tool, you get more variety if you limit your searches to 5-10 at a time. Using “Exact” search types and “Local Monthly” search volume, we’re looking for 10-15 closely related keyword phrases with decent search volume, but not too much completion. Pro Tip #2: Be careful trusting the “Competition” column in Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This refers to bids on paid search terms, not organic search. 5. Get Strategic with the Competition Now that we have a basic keyword set, you need to find out if you can actually rank for your phrases. You have two basic methods of ranking the competition: Automated tools like the Keyword Difficulty Tool Eyeballing the SERPs If you have an SEOmoz PRO membership (or even a free trial) the Keyword Difficulty Tool calculates – on a 100 point scale – a difficulty score for each individual keyword phrase you enter. Keyword phrases in the 60-70+ range are typically competitive, while keywords in the 30-40 range might be considered low to moderately difficult. To get a better idea of your own strengths, take the most competitive keyword you currently rank #1 or #2 for, and run it through the tool. Even without automated tools, the best way to size up the competition is to eyeball the SERPs. Run a search query (non-personalized) for your keywords and ask yourself the following questions: Are the first few results optimized for the keyword? Is the keyword in the title tag? In the URL? On the page? What’s the Page and/or Domain Authority of the URL? Are the first few results authorities on the keyword subject? What’s the inbound anchor text? Can you deliver a higher quality resource for this keyword? You don’t actually have to rank #1 for any of your chosen words to earn traffic, but you should be comfortable cracking the top five. With keyword themes, the magic often happens from keywords you never even thought about. Case Study: Google Algo Update When SEOmoz launched the Google Algorithm Change HIstory (run by Dr. Pete) we used a similar process for keyword research to explore the theme “Google Algorithm” and more specifically, “Google Algorithm Change.” According to Google’s search tool, we could expect a no more than a couple thousand visits a month – best case – for these exact terms. Fortunately, because the project was well received and because we optimized around a board keyword theme of “Google Algorithm,” the Algo Update receives lots of traffic outside our pre-defined keywords. This is where the long tail magic happens: How can you improve your chances of ranking for more long tail keywords? Let’s talk about content, architecture, on-page optimization and link building. Content 6. Creating Value Want to know the truth? I hate the word content. It implies words on a page, a commodity to be produced, separated from the value it creates. Content without value is spam. In the Google Algorithm Update example above, we could have simply written 100 articles about Google’s Algorithm and hoped to rank. Instead, the conversation started by asking how we could create a valuable resource for webmasters. For your keyword theme, ask first how you can create value. Value is harder to produce than mere words, but value is rewarded 100x more. Value is future proof & algorithm proof. Value builds links by itself. Value creates loyal fans. Value takes different forms. It’s a mix of: Utility Emotional response Point of view (positive or negative) Perceived value, including fame of the author Your content doesn’t have to include all 4 of these characteristics, but it should excel in one or more to be successful. A study of the New York Times found key characteristics of content to be influential in making the Most Emailed list. Source: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077\ 7. Driving Your Content Vehicle Here’s a preview: the Blueprint requires you create at least one type of link bait, so now is a good time to think about the structure of your content. What’s the best way to deliver value given your theme? Perhaps it’s an Infographic Video series A new tool An interview series Slide deck How-to guide Q&A Webinar or simple blog post Perhaps, it’s all of these combined. The more ways you find to deliver your content and the more channels you take advantage of, the better off you’ll be. Not all of your content has to go viral, but you want to create at least one “tent-pole” piece that’s better than anything else out there and you’re proud to hang your hat on. If you need inspiration, check out Distilled's guide to Viral Linkbait or QuickSprout’s Templates for Content Creation. 8. Title – Most Important Work Goes Here Spend two hours, minimum, writing your title. Sound ridiculous? If you’re an experienced title writer like Rand Fishkin, you can break this rule. For the rest of us, it’s difficult to underplay the value delivered by a finely crafted title. Write 50 titles or more before choosing one. Study the successful titles on Inbound.org, Mashable, Wired, or your favorite publication. Whatever you do, read this fantastic post by Dan Shure and the headline resources at CopyBlogger. 9. Length vs. Depth - Why it Matters How long should your content be? A better question is: How deep should it be? Word count by itself is a terrible metric to strive for, but depth of content helps you to rank in several ways. Adds uniqueness threshold to avoid duplicate content Deeper topic exploration makes your content “about” more Quality, longer content is correlated with more links and higher rankings I. Uniqueness At a minimum, your content needs to meet a minimum uniqueness threshold in order for it to rank. Google reps have gone on record to say a couple sentences is sometimes sufficient, but in reality a couple hundred words is much safer. II. Long Tail Opportunities Here’s where the real magic happens. The deeper your content and the more in-depth you can explore a particular topic, the more your content becomes “about.” The more your content is “about”, the more search queries it can answer well. The more search queries you can answer well, the more traffic you can earn. Google’s crawlers continuously read your content to determine how relevant it is to search queries. They evaluate paragraphs, subject headings, photographs and more to try to understand your page. Longer, in-depth content usually send more relevancy signals than a couple short sentences. III. Depth, Length, and Links Numerous correlation studies have shown a positive relationship between rankings and number of words in a document. “The length in HTML and the HTML within the <body> tag were the highest correlated factors, in fact with correlations of .12 they could be considered somewhat if not hugely significant. While these factors probably are not implemented within the algorithm, they are good signs of what Google is looking for; quality content, which in many cases means long or at least sufficiently lengthy pages.” - Mark Collier The Open Algorithm This could be attributed longer, quality content earning more links. John Doherty examined the relationship between the length of blog posts on SEOmoz and the number of links each post earned, and found a strong relationship. 10. Content Qualities You Can Bank On If you don’t focus on word count, how do you add quality “depth” to your content? SEOs have written volumes about how Google might define quality including metrics such as reading level, grammar, spelling, and even Author Rank. Most is speculation, but it’s clear Google does use guidelines to separate good content from bad. My favorite source for clues comes from the set of questions Google published shortly after the first Panda update. Here are a few of my favorites. 11. LDA, nTopic, and Words on the Page Google is a machine. It can’t yet understand your page like a human can, but it’s getting close. Search engines use sophisticated algorithms to model your sentences, paragraphs, blocks, and content sections. Not only do they want to understand your keywords, but also your topic, intent, and expertise as well. How do you know if your content fits Google’s model of expectations? For example, if your topic is “Super Bowl Recipes,” Google might expect to see content about grilling, appetizers, and guacamole. Content that addresses these topics will likely rank higher than pages that talk about what color socks you’re wearing today. Words matter. SEOs have discovered that using certain words around a topic associated with concepts like LDA and nTopic are correlated with higher rankings. Virante offers an interesting stand alone keyword suggestion tool called nTopic. The tools analyzes your keywords and suggests related keywords to improve your relevancy scores. 12. Better than LDA - Poor Man's Topic Modeling Since we don’t have access to Google’s computers for topic modeling, there’s a far simpler way to structure your content that I find far superior to worrying about individual words: Use the keyword themes you created at the beginning of this blueprint. You’ve already done the research using Google’s keyword tool to find closely related keyword groups. Incorporating these topics into your content may help increase your relevancy to your given topic. Example: Using the Google Algorithm project cited above, we found during keyword research that certain keywords related to our theme show up repeatedly, time and time again. If we conducted this research today, we would find phrases like “Penguin SEO” and “Panda Updates” frequently in our results. Google suggests these terms via the keyword tool because they consider them closely related. So any content that explored “Google Algorithm Change” might likely include a discussion of these ideas. Note: This isn't real LDA, simply a way of adding relevant topics to your content that Google might associate with your subject matter. 13. Design Is 50% of the Battle If you have any money in your budget, spend it on design. A small investment with a designer typically pays outsized dividends down the road. Good design can: Lower bounce rate Increase page views Increase time on site Earn more links Establish trust … All of which can help earn higher rankings. “Design doesn’t just matter, it’s 50% of the battle.” -Rand Fishkin Dribbble.com is one of our favorite source of design inspiration. Architecture Here’s the special secret of the SEO Blueprint: you’re not making a single page to rank; you’re making several. 14. Content Hubs Very few successful websites consist of a single page. Google determines context and relevancy not only by what’s on your page, but also by the pages around it and linking to it. The truth is, it’s far easier to rank when you create Content Hubs exploring several topics in depth focused around a central theme. Using our “Super Bowl Recipes” example, we might create a complete section of pages, each exploring a different recipe in depth. 15. Linking the Hub Together Because your pages now explore different aspects of the same broad topic, it makes sense to link them together. Your page about guacamole relates to your page about nachos. Your page about link building relates to your page about infographics. Your page about Winston Churchill relates to major figures of World War II. It also helps them to rank by distributing PageRank, anchor text, and other relevancy signals. 16. Find Your Center Content Hubs work best with a “hub” or center. Think of the center as the master document that acts as an overview or gateway to all of your individual content pages. The hub is the authority page. Often, the hub is a link bait page or a category level page. It’s typically the page with the most inbound links and often as a landing page for other sections of your site. For great example of Hub Pages, check out: CopyBloggers Magnetic Headlines SEOmoz's Learn SEO Amazon’s author pages (this one about Stephen King) On-Page Optimization 17. Master the Basics You could write an entire book about on-page optimization. If you’re new to SEO, one of the best ways to learn is by using SEOmoz’s On-page Report Card (free, registration required) The tool grades 36 separate on-page SEO elements, gives you a report and suggestions on how to fix each element. Working your way through these issues is an excellent way to learn (and often used by agencies and companies as a way to teach SEO principals) Beyond the basics, let’s address a few slightly more advanced tactics to take advantage of your unique keyword themes and hub pages, in addition to areas where beginners often make mistakes. 18. Linking Internally for the Reasonable Surfer Not all links are created equal (One of the greatest SEO blog posts ever written!) So, when you interlink your internal pages within your content hub together, keep in mind a few important points. Links from inside unique content pass more value than navigation links. Links higher up the page pass more value than links further down. Links in HTML text pass more weight than image links. When interlinking your content, it’s best to keep links prominent and “editorial” – naturally link to your most important content pages higher up in the HTML text. 19. Diversify Your Anchor Text - Naturally If Google’s Penguin update taught us anything, it’s that over-thinking anchor text is bound to get us in trouble. When you link naturally and editorially to other places on the web, you naturally diversify your anchor text. The same should hold true when you link internally. Don’t choose your anchor text to fit your keywords; choose your anchor text to fit the content around it. Practically speaking, this means linking internally with a mix of partial match keyword and related phrases. Don’t be scared to link occasionally without good keywords in the anchor – the link can still pass relevancy signals. When it comes to linking, it’s safer to under-do it than over-do it. Spouce: Google's SEO Starter Guide 20. Title Tags - Two Quick Tips We assume you know how to write a compelling title tag. Even today, keyword usage in the title tag is one of the most highly correlated on-page ranking factors that we know. That said, Google is getting strict about over-optimizing title tags, and appears to be further cracking down on titles “written for SEO.” Keep this in mind when crafting your title tags I. Avoid boilerplates It used to be common to tack on your business phrase or main keywords to the end of every title tag, like so: Plumbing Supplies – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures Pipes & Fittings – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures Toilet Seat Covers – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures While we don’t have much solid data, many SEOs are now asserting that “boilerplate” titles tacked on to the end of every tag are no longer a good idea. Brand names and unique descriptive information is okay, but making every title as unique as possible is the rule of the day. II. Avoid unnecessary repetition – Google also appears (at least to many SEOs) on what’s considered the lower threshold of “keyword stuffing.” In years past it was a common rule of thumb never to repeat your keyword more than twice in the title. Today, to be on the safe side, you might be best to consider not repeating your keywords more than once. 21. Over-Optimization: Titles, URLs, and Links Writing for humans not only gets you more clicks (which can lead to higher rankings), but hardly ever gets you in trouble with search engines. As SEOs we're often tempted to get a "perfect score" which means exactly matching our title tags, URLs, inbound anchor text, and more. unfortunately, this isn't natural in the real world, and Google recognizes this. Diversify. Don’t over-optimize. 22. Structured Data Short and simple: Make structured data part of every webpage. While structured data hasn’t yet proven to be a large ranking factor, it’s future-facing value can be seen today in rich snippet SERPs and social media sharing. In some verticals, it’s an absolute necessity. There’s no rule of thumb about what structured data to include, but the essentials are: Facebook Open Graph tags Twitter Cards Authorship Publisher Business information Reviews Events To be honest, if you’re not creating pages with structured data, you’re probably behind the times. For an excellent guide about Micro Data and Schema.org, check out this fantastic resource from SEOGadget. Building Links 23. The 90/10 Rule of Link Building This blueprint contains 25 steps to rank your content, but only the last three address link building. Why so few? Because 90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building. If you have a hard time building links, it may be because you have these numbers reversed. Creating great content first solves a ton of problems down the line: Good content makes link building easier Attracts higher quality links in less time Builds links on its own even when sleeping or on vacation If you’re new to marketing or relatively unknown, you may need to spend more than 10% of your time building relationships, but don’t let that distract you from crafting the type of content that folks find so valuable they link to you without you even asking. 24. All Link Building is Relationships - Good & Bad This blueprint doesn't go into link building specifics, as there are 100's of ways to build quality links to every good project. That said, a few of my must link building resources: Jon Cooper's Complete List of Link Building Strategies StumbleUpon Paid Discovery Citation Labs Promoted Tweets Ontolo eReleases - Press releases not for links, but for exposer BuzzStream Paddy Moogan's excellent Link Building Book These resources give you the basic tools and tactics for a successful link building campaign, but keep in mind that all good link building is relationship building. Successful link builders understand this and foster each relationship and connection. Even a simple outreach letter can be elevated to an advanced form of relationship building with a little effort, as this Whiteboard Friday by Rand so graciously illustrates.     25. Tier Your Link Building... Forever The truth is, for professionals, link building never ends. Each content and link building campaign layers on top of previous content, and the web as a whole like layers of fine Greek baklava. For example, this post could be considered linkbait for SEOmoz, but it also links generously to several other content pieces within the Moz family, and externally as well; spreading both the link love and the relationship building as far as possible at the same time. SEOmoz links generously to other sites: the link building experience is not just about search engines, but the people experience, as well. We link to great resources, and build links for the best user experience possible. When done right, the search engines reward exactly this type of experience with higher rankings. For an excellent explanation as to why you should link out to external sites when warranted, read AJ Kohns excellent work, Time to Long Click. One of my favorite posts on SEOmoz was 10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock. Not only was the first link on the page directed to our own SEO tools, but we linked and praised our competitors as well. Linkbait at its finest. 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!

#MozCon 2013 Agenda Posted: 13 May 2013 02:06 AM PDT 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 We’ve all sent guest post pitches and "link building requests" and begged for precious links any way and anywhere we can. But, that simply isn’t 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, you’ll 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 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. 4:10pm - 4:40pm 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%. 4:40pm - 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. We’ve 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!

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Seth's Blog : The reason they call it a browser

 

The reason they call it a browser

Over the last ten years, the amount that we buy online has gone up. So have the number of ads we click on every day. We're all clicking around, browsing and sometimes buying.

But, while these interactions and transactions have been growing, the amount of time we spend online and the number of pages we visit have gone up dramatically faster.

Mobile multiplies this.

Do the math. More time, more pages, not nearly so much more in the way of transaction. A visit from a mobile user is almost certainly less likely to convert into a click, particularly a purchase. Your tweets are seen by ten times as many people, but only twice as likely to get clicked on as they used to be. All the attention we seem to get from the outside world is going up fast, but the amount of interaction it leads to is not.

There's a whole lot of people spending a lot of time browsing, not taking action. Permission doesn't scale at the same rate browsing does, which is why permission is worth more than ever before. In fact, the easiest way for a post to not spread is for you to ask someone to actually do something.

Call it attention inflation. More time spent looking, less time spent clicking. We're being conditioned to sit back and assume that action is the exception, not the rule. Sort of like the difference between the supermarket (where no one browses) and the windows of a fancy store (where everyone does).

"I'm just looking" is the new definition of online behavior.

Years ago, I was lucky enough to get a booth on the route of a political march. I had self-published a book directly related to the issue, and more than 450,000 people walked within twenty feet of my booth. I sold four of the 4,000 copies I brought with me. I lowered my price 90% and sold two more copies. 

It took me a while but then I realized that people had come to march, not to shop.

This thinking explains why good real estate sites are so mobile-friendly (and why mobile is so real-estate-friendly). If you're sitting in front of a house that's for sale and take the time to look up the information, you're exactly the right person in exactly the right place.

When dealing with a community that browses, you'll need new math:

• More pageviews to make a transaction is the norm, like it or not
• Sharing is more important than ever before, because transactions require more views
• Sponsorships and unclickable banners outperform measurable media (think about the signs on the boards at a hockey game--everyone sees them all night, but no one interacts with them)
• The price paid for each advertising impression is going to go down

Since the very beginning (I've been doing online media since 1991), clicks have been undervalued and measurable media has been at a disadvantage compared to traditional unmeasured ads (how many clicks does a TV ad get?). As the web/mobile gets closer to ubiquity, the behaviors of people consuming media get ever closer to the old model of passivity. Sponsorship and visibility will continue to matter, clicks and interactions will go way up in value and overall pageviews will continue to inflate.

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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• Social Mood Darkens in Europe, Especially France, as French Economy in Freefall
• Cameron Faces Cabinet Crisis of His Own Making; Purposely Self-Inflicted Wounds
• Paul Krugman "Was" Right

Social Mood Darkens in Europe, Especially France, as French Economy in Freefall Posted: 13 May 2013 11:20 PM PDT A PEW study on European Attitudes shows social mood is darkening in the Eurozone, but especially in France. The 78 page study "The New Sick Man of Europe: The European Union" is worth a look in entirety, but let's turn the spotlight on France. France in Free Fall The euro crisis first undermined France's economy, and now there is strong evidence that it has severely eroded French public attitudes toward the economy, the European project and the country's domestic leadership. Moreover, France has always bridged Europe's north and south. French language and culture has Latin roots, but France has historically been considered in the same economic and political league as Germany and Britain. And in their public attitudes, the French were neither Northerners nor Southerners, but a hybrid of the two. Now, measured by a number of indicators, the French look less like Germans and a lot more like the Spanish, the Italians and the Greeks. In the current poll such sentiment reaches a new low, with just 9% saying the economy is performing well. And that judgment is down 21 points since 2007. Only 11% of the French think their economy will improve over the next 12 months, making the French among the most pessimistic of Europeans. And just 9% think their children will be better off financially than their parents, by far the gloomiest forecast for the next generation. The economic downturn over the past six years has also sharply increased the portion of the French population suffering basic deprivation. And reported incidences of not having enough money to pay for food and health care over the past year have increased more in France since 2007 than in any other of the EU countries surveyed. The French have long had their doubts about whether European economic integration has been good for the French economy. In 1991, the year before creation of the single European market, a plurality of 44% feared that integration would weaken France. Today, these doubts have morphed into strong convictions. Nearly three-quarters (77%) of the French think closer business ties with the rest of Europe have undermined their overall economy. In 2004, 69% had a positive opinion about the Brussels-based institution. But by 2013, just 41% have a favorable view. Moreover, more than half (53%) of the French oppose giving more decision making power to Brussels. And only 40% would consider financial assistance to other EU nations facing economic distress, down from 53% in 2010. Nevertheless, 63% of the French want to keep the euro and not go back to the franc. Opinion Gap With Germany Widens That 33-point difference six years ago is now a 66-point difference, as just 9% of the French and 75% of Germans see their economy as good. Moreover, the French and the Germans differ so greatly over the challenges facing their economies that they look as if they live on different continents, not within a single European market. Fully 80% of the French say unemployment is a very big problem; less than a third (28%) of the Germans agree. About two-thirds (68%) of the French think inflation is a major issue, while just 31% of Germans are similarly worried about rising prices. And 71% of the French are very troubled about public debt; only 37% of the Germans share such intensity of concern. The French and the Germans also disagree on whether to help out other European Union nations in distress. And their positions have flip-flopped. In 2010, roughly half (53%) the French backed bailouts, while only 42% of Germans agreed. Today, about half (52%) of the Germans support such financial assistance, while just 40% of the French do so. French Attitudes Worsen - Look More Like Greece, Spain Italy More than nine-in-ten Spanish, Italians and Greeks think their economy is doing poorly, as do roughly nine-in-ten French. About two-thirds or more in all four countries think their governmental leader has done a bad job handling the economic crisis. Nearly three-quarters of the French, Greeks and Italians believe that economic integration has been bad for their country. More than half of the French, Spanish and Greeks look unfavorably on the EU. And by all of these indicators, French attitudes have worsened dramatically since 2007, much as has sentiment in Spain and Italy, for which there are comparable data. Support For Further Integration Wanes Leaders are still committed to the eurozone project with Brussels having still more control, but the average European citizen sure isn't. Interestingly, just 18% in France back a Keynesian solution to their woes even though socialists are in control. A pair of key charts from the report shows increasing skepticism towards further integration. People's confidence in the European Union as an institution is waning even faster. A median of only 45% now think favorably of the Brussels-based organization. That support is down 34 percentage points in Spain, 21 points in France and 20 points in Italy. For now, the majority in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Greece want to remain on the euro even as distrust of the nannycrats in Brussels mounts. Given such strong sentiment against further integration, I wonder how long support for the euro can last, but it sure is not forever. Adding fat to the fire, the euro itself cannot possibly survive in its current state. 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.

Cameron Faces Cabinet Crisis of His Own Making; Purposely Self-Inflicted Wounds Posted: 13 May 2013 10:33 AM PDT Over the weekend, the UK Secretary of Defence and the Education Minister caused a stir when they publicly stated on Sunday they would vote to leave the European Union if a referendum were to be held now. Cabinet Crisis Erupts The Guardian reports David Cameron faces EU cabinet crisis as ministers break ranks. David Cameron is struggling to maintain Tory discipline over Europe after cabinet loyalists Michael Gove and Philip Hammond said on Sunday they would vote to leave the European Union if a referendum were to be held now. Gove, the education minister, confirmed for the first time that he believes that leaving the EU would have "certain advantages", while Hammond, the defence secretary, later said he too would vote to leave if he was asked to endorse the EU "exactly as it is today". This is fresh on the heels of an announcement last week that former cabinet minister Michael Portillo and Lord Lawson call for Britain to leave the EU. Lawson was Thatcher's longest-serving chancellor. David Cameron faced growing Tory pressure on Europe last night when the former cabinet minister Michael Portillo threw his weight behind the call by Lord Lawson for Britain to leave the EU. As Boris Johnson entered the fray, by saying that Britain should be prepared to quit if it fails to secure better membership terms, Portillo said he "fervently" hopes the British people have the "guts" to vote no. The intervention by a second Tory grandee came as Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher's official biographer, revealed that the late prime minister came to believe after she left office that Britain should quit the EU. Writing in this week's issue of the Spectator, Moore says that Thatcher kept her views private after she was advised that her views would push her to "the fringes of public life". Cameron pledged in his speech on the EU in January that he would hold a referendum by 2017 after negotiating a series of reforms to the EU with fellow European leaders. But the former defence secretary writes: "I have not been impressed by Mr Cameron's pledge. Given his party's electoral prospects, I doubt if he expects to have to deliver on it. But in any case, he seems to have decided already that Britain should stay in." Purposely Self-Inflicted Wounds These wounds are self-inflicted. No one believes Cameron has any intention of holding a referendum as promised, because no one can possibly believe one of Cameron's pre-requirements for the referendum. Recall that Cameron pledged to hold a referendum after he is re-elected. He may not survive that vote. But even if he does, his next condition on holding a referendum was renegotiation of the treaty with the rest of Europe. There is virtually no chance of that happening, at least along the lines of Cameron's pledge. So why the promises? Clearly, Cameron would rather lie about the referendum and take the punishment than tell the truth. Hopefully a full-scale cabinet revolt and a full-scale revolt by the party will knock some sense into him before he loses the election. 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.

Paul Krugman "Was" Right Posted: 13 May 2013 01:24 AM PDT Before discussing Paul Krugman and how right he was, let's first take a look at the Spiegel Online report EU To Impose Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels. Back in 2008, the German solar manufacturing industry was riding the crest of a wave of growth fuelled by generous subsidies and high demand. That year, the darling of the German solar industry, SolarWorld, logged a 31 percent annual increase in revenue for a total of €900 million ($1.18 billion) and expanded its operations by opening North America's largest solar cell plant. Four short years later, in 2012, the company announced €492 million in losses, and today SolarWorld is in the midst of a major debt restructuring deal to stave off bankruptcy. Ironically, SolarWorld made it just long enough to see the success of the effort it spearheaded to slap tariffs on Chinese companies it suspected of conducting price dumping in order to wipe out the competition. On Wednesday, the European Commission in Brussels agreed to impose punitive tariffs of 47 percent on Chinese solar goods. Last year, China sold €21 billion worth of solar panels and related components in Europe. But all of that is just about to get a lot more expensive with a 47 percent cost increase on panels made in the country. The levies are likely to see a response from China, which has already threatened tariffs seen as reactive in an industry that grew by a power of ten in the last five years as solar panels dropped in price by more than 75 percent. And as with any quickly growing industry, the road has been rocky and strewn with wrecks. SolarWorld helped launch the anti-dumping case with a formal complaint filed together with other solar companies with European Commission last July and a similar case in the United States that resulted in tariffs of up to 250 percent on Chinese solar module manufacturers. Clean Energy Hypocrites Please note the irony in these tariffs. The EU is hell bent on promoting "clean energy" but does not want clean energy if the cost is too cheap. Obama's position is similar. Supposedly China is dumping solar panels below cost? So what? If the EU and US were really interested in clean energy and reducing emissions, the only thing better than cheap solar panels would be free solar panels. Step back for a second and think of the benefits of free panels. On one side of the equation, the EU and US would lose a few hundred solar panel making jobs. However, hundreds if not thousands of businesses and individuals would employ solar panels if they were free. Think of all the trucking jobs, dock unloading jobs, and installation jobs, that would result from free solar panels. Whatever jobs were lost in manufacturing (if any), would come back 100 times over in other jobs. Ironically, and in spite of all the protests from manufacturers, I rather doubt any manufacturing jobs were lost in the first place. Did you catch the key words in the first sentence in the Spiegel article? Here is the key sentence again: "Back in 2008, the German solar manufacturing industry was riding the crest of a wave of growth fuelled by generous subsidies and high demand." Without generous subsidies, the European solar panel manufacturers were not profitable in the first place. And so the clean energy hypocrites are also trade hypocrites. It's OK for the EU to offer energy subsidies but not China. The economic illiterates in Brussels would tax the sun for providing free energy if they could. However, they cannot do that so they tax the closest thing. Mittal urges EU to protect itself against China imports With that backdrop, it should not be surprising to learn Mittal urges EU to protect itself against China imports. Lakshmi Mittal has urged Europe to erect trade barriers to protect its manufacturers as the Indian steel tycoon attacked policy makers for stifling demand through tough austerity measures. The owner of the world's biggest steelmaker by sales said the future of EU manufacturing depended on politicians in Brussels helping industry face what he said was unfair competition from China. The London-based entrepreneur said Brussels should consider applying higher tariffs on imports of Chinese-produced steel, similar to the ones to be imposed on solar panels made in China. He argued that Chinese producers of steel were over producing, lowering the price of the metal globally. Insanity of Protectionism Cheaper prices are a good thing. The cheaper steel prices, the cheaper cars and anything made out of steel will be. Whatever consumers do not spend on steel, they will spend on something else. Once again there will be more doc unloading jobs, more trucking jobs, more installation jobs, etc., etc. Cheaper prices of goods and services is always a good thing. What About Krugman? So what does this have to do with Krugman? Actually, everything. After all, Krugman "was" right. The key word is "was". Before Krugman's mind turned to mush (probably a result of acquiring the "conscience of a liberal"), he was on the right side of free trade. In 1997 Krugman wrote a brilliant article "In Praise of Cheap Labor", stating "Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all". I wrote about Krugman's position in Fair Trade is Unfair; In Praise of Cheap Labor; Are Bad Jobs at Bad Wages Better than No Jobs at All? Please check it out. Krugman "Was" Right. However, the definition of "was" requires one to go back to 1997 to see just that. Petition of the Candle Makers The EU's preposterous "unfair advantage" argument was lampooned by French economist Frederic Bastiat back in 1845 when he penned 'Petition of the Candle Makers'. In his article, candle makers were incensed that the light of the sun could be had for free. The sun's unfair trade advantage was to the "detriment of fair industries" who could not compete against the sun's price. Something had to be done to "shut off as much as possible, all access to natural light, and thereby create a need for artificial light" so that "industry in France will encouraged". For further reading, and a case involving alleged "unfair competition" from Skype, please see Extremely Difficult to Keep Up With Economic Stupidity. How and Why We Forget the Obvious It is a simple statement of fact that the more goods and services we receive for our money, the better off we all are. The cheaper, the better! Time and time again we forget free trade and lower prices are a benefit! We forget because unions, socialists, and corporations forced to compete against the sun (or Skype), scream "unfair advantage" at the top of their lungs, via political contributions to politicians willing to "tax the sun" to be re-elected. 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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