#blogpower

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Moz’s Brand-New SEO Learning Center Has Landed!

Posted by  rachelgooodmanmoore   CHAPTER 1: A New Hope  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, marketers who wanted to learn about SEO were forced to mine deep into the caverns of Google search engine result pages to find the answers to even the most simple SEO questions.

  Then, out of darkness came a new hope (with a mouthful of a name):

     ...the Learn SEO and Search Marketing hub!

     The SEO and Search Marketing hub housed resources like the Beginner’s Guide to SEO and articles about popular SEO topics like meta descriptions, title tags, and robots.txt. Its purpose was to serve as a one-stop-shop for visitors looking to learn what SEO was all about and how to use it on their own sites.

  The Learn SEO and Search marketing hub would go on to serve as a guiding light for searchers and site visitors looking to learn the ropes of SEO for many years to come.

  CHAPTER 2: The Learning Hub Strikes Back  Since its inception in 2010, this hub happily served hundreds of thousands of Internet folk looking to learn the ropes of SEO and search marketing. But time took its toll on the hub. As marketing and search engine optimization grew increasingly complex, the Learning Hub lapsed into disrepair. While new content was periodically added, that content was hard to find and often intermingled with older, out-of-date resources. The Learning Hub became less of a hub and more of a list of resources… some of which were also lists of resources.

     Offshoots like the Local Learning Center and Content Marketing Learning Center sprung up in an effort to tame the overgrown learning hub, but ‘twas all for naught: By autumn of 2016, Moz’s learning hub sites were a confusing nest of hard-to-navigate articles, guides, and 404s. Some articles were written for SEO experts and explained concepts in extensive, technical detail, while others were written for an audience with less extensive SEO knowledge. It was impossible to know which type of article you found yourself in before you wound up confused or discouraged.

  What had once been a useful resource for marketers of all backgrounds was languishing in its age.

   CHAPTER 3: The Return of the Learning Center  The vision behind the SEO and Search Marketing Hub had always been to educate SEOs and search marketers on the skills they needed to be successful in their jobs. While the site section continued to serve that purpose, somewhere along the along the way we started getting diminishing returns.

  Our mission, then, was clear: Re-invent Moz’s learning resources with a new structure, new website, and new content.

  As we set off on this mission, one thing was clear: The new Learning Center should serve as a home base for marketers and SEOs of all skill levels to learn what’s needed to excel in their work: from the fundamentals to expert-level content, from time-tested tenets of SEO success to cutting-edge tactics and tricks. If we weren’t able to accomplish this, our mission would all be for naught.

  We also believed that a new Learning Center should make it easy for visitors of all skill levels and learning styles to find value: from those folks who want to read an article then dive into their work; to those who want to browse through libraries of focused SEO videos; to folks who want to learn from the experts in hands-on webinars.

  So, that’s exactly what we built. 

  May we introduce to you the (drumroll, please) brand new, totally rebuilt  SEO Learning Center !

     Unlike the “list of lists” in the old Learn SEO and Search Marketing hub, the new Learning Center organizes content by topic.

  Each topic has its own “topic hub.” There are eleven of these and they cover:

     Ranking and Visibility  

  On-Site SEO  

  Links and Link Building  

  Local SEO  

  Keywords and Keyword Research  

  Crawling and Site Audits  

  Analytics and Reporting  

  Content Marketing  

  Social Media and Influencer Marketing  

  International SEO  

  Mobile SEO  

  Each of the eleven topic hubs host a slew of hand-picked articles, videos, blog posts, webinars, Q&A posts, templates, and training classes designed to help you dive deeper into your chosen SEO topic.

  All eleven of the hubs contain a “fundamentals” menu to help you wrap your brain around a topic, as well as a content feed with hundreds of resources to help you go even further. These feed resources are filterable by topic (for instance, content that’s about both ranking & visibility AND local SEO), SEO skill level (from beginner to advanced), and format.

      Use the Learning Center’s filters to zero in on exactly the content you’re looking for. 

  And, if you’re brand new to a topic or not sure where to start, you can always find a link to the Beginner’s Guide to SEO right at the top of each page.

  But we can only explain so much in words — check it out for yourself:

   Visit the new SEO Learning Center! 

  CHAPTER 4: The Content Awakens  One of the main motivations behind rebuilding the Learning Center website was to make it easier for folks to find and move through a slew of educational content, be that a native Learning Center article, a blog post, a webinar, or otherwise. But it doesn’t do any good to make content easier to find if that content is totally out-of-date and unhelpful.

     In addition to our mission to build a new Learning Center, we’ve also been quietly updating our existing articles to include the latest best practices, tactics, strategies, and resources. As part of this rewrite, we’ve also made an effort to keep each article as focused as possible around  specifically  one topic — a complete explanation of everything someone newer to the world of SEO needs to know about the given topic. What did that process look like in action? Check it out:

     As of now we’ve updated 50+ articles, with more on the way!

  Going forward, we’ll continue to iterate on the search experience within the new Learning Center. For example, while we always have our site search bar available, a Learning Center-specific search function would make finding articles even easier — and that’s just one of our plans for the future. Bigger projects include a complete update of the Beginner’s Guide to SEO (keep an eye on the blog for more news there, too), as well as our other introductory guides.

  Help us, Moz-i Wan Community, you’re our only hope  We’ve already telekinetically moved mountains with this project, but the Learning Center is your resource — we’d love to hear what you’d like to see next, or if there’s anything really important you think we’ve missed. Head over, check it out, and tell us what you think in the comments!

   Explore the new SEO Learning Center! 

    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!

http://bit.ly/2fPH1aj

#socialmediamarketing #internetmarketing #newportbeachseo #smallbusinessmarketing #linkbuilding #blogpower #contentwriting #articlewriting #bestlocalseo #seo

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Is the New, Most Powerful Ranking Factor “Searcher Task Accomplishment?” - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by  randfish   Move over, links, content, and RankBrain — there’s a new ranking factor in town, and it’s a doozy. All kidding aside, the idea of searcher task accomplishment is a compelling argument for how we should be optimizing our sites. Are they actually solving the problems searchers seek answers for? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains how searcher task accomplishment is what Google ultimately looks for, and how you can keep up.

                 Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

  Video Transcription  Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we’re chatting about a new Google ranking factor. 

Now, I want to be clear. This is not something that’s directly in Google’s algorithm for sure. It’s just that they’re measuring a lot of things that lead us to this conclusion. This is essentially what Google is optimizing toward with all of their ranking signals, and therefore it’s what SEOs nowadays have to think about optimizing for with our content. And that is searcher task accomplishment.

   So what do I mean by this? Well, look, when someone does a search like “disinfect a cut,” they’re trying to actually accomplish something. In fact, no matter what someone is searching for, it’s not just that they want a set of results. They’re actually trying to solve a problem. For Google, the results that solve that problem fastest and best and with the most quality are the ones that they want to rank.

  In the past, they’ve had to do all sorts of algorithms to try and get at this from obtuse angles. But now, with a lot of the work that they’re doing around measuring engagement and with all of the data that’s coming to them through Chrome and through Android, they’re able to get much, much closer to what is truly accomplishing the searcher’s task. That’s because they really want results that satisfy the query and fulfill the searcher’s task.

     So pretty much every — I’m excluding navigational searches — but every informational and transactional type of search — I mean, navigational, they just want to go to that website — but informational and transactional search query is basically this. It’s I have an  expression of need . That’s what I’m telling Google. But behind that, there’s a bunch of  underlying goals , things that I want to do. I want to know information. I want to accomplish something. I want to complete an activity.

  When I do that, when I perform my search, I have this sort of  evaluation of results . Is this going to help me do what I want? Then I  choose one , and then I  figure out whether that result actually helps me complete my task . If it does, I might have discovery of additional needs around that, like once you’ve answered my disinfect a cut, now it’s, okay, now I kind of want to know how to prevent an infection, because you described using disinfectant and then you said infections are real scary. So let me go look up how do I prevent that from happening. So there’s that  discovery of additional needs . Or you decide, hey, this did not help me complete my task. I’m going to go back to evaluation of results, or I’m going to go back to my expression of need in the form of a different search query.

  That’s what gives Google the information to say, “Yes, this result helped the searcher accomplish their task,” or, “No, this result did not help them do it.”

  Some examples of searcher task accomplishment   This is true for a bunch of things. I’ll walk you through some examples.

     If I search for how to get a book published, that’s an expression of need. But underlying that is a bunch of different goals like, well, you’re going to be asking about like traditional versus self-publishing, and then you’re going to want to know about agents and publishers and the publishing process and the pitch process, which is very involved. Then you’re going to get into things like covers and book marketing and tracking sales and all this different stuff, because once you reach your evaluation down here and you get into discovery of additional needs, you find all these other things that you need to know.

     If I search for “invest in Ethereum,” well maybe I know enough to start investing right away, but probably, especially recently because there’s been a ton of search activity around it, I probably need to understand: What the heck is the blockchain and what is cryptocurrency, this blockchain-powered currency system, and what’s the market for that like, and what has it been doing lately, and what’s my purchase process, and where can I actually go to buy it, and what do I have to do to complete that transaction?

     If I search for something like “FHA loans,” well that might mean I’m in the mindset of thinking about real estate. I’m buying usually my first house for an FHA loan, and that means that I need to know things about conditions by region and the application process and what are the providers in my area and how can I go apply, all of these different things.

     If I do a search for “Seattle event venues,” well that means I’m probably looking for a list of multiple event venues, and then I need to narrow down my selection by the criteria I care about, like region, capacity, the price, the amenities. Then once I have all that, I need contact information so that I can go to them.

  In all of these scenarios, Google is going to reward the results that help me accomplish the task, discover the additional needs, and solve those additional needs as well, rather than the ones that maybe provide a slice of what I need and then make me go back to the search results and choose something else or change my query to figure out more.

  Google is also going to reward, and you can see this in all these results, they’re going to reward ones that give me all the information I need, that help me accomplish my task before they ask for something in return. The ones that are basically just a landing page that say, “Oh yeah, Seattle event venues, enter your email address and all this other information, and we’ll be in touch with a list of venues that are right for you.” Yeah, guess what? It doesn’t matter how many links you have, you are not ranking, my friends.

  That is so different from how it used to be. It used to be that you could have that contact form. You could have that on there. You could not solve the searcher’s query. You could basically be very conversion rate-focused on your page, and so long as you could get the right links and the right anchor text and use the right keywords on the page, guess what? You could rank. Those days are ending. I’m not going to say they’re gone, but they are ending, and this new era of searcher task accomplishment is here.

  Challenge: The conflict between SEO & CRO   There’s a challenge. I want to be totally up front that there is a real challenge and a problem between this world of optimizing for searcher task accomplishment and the classic world of we want our conversions. So the CRO in your organization, which might be your director of marketing or it might be your CEO, or maybe if your team is big enough, you might have a CRO specialist, conversation rate optimization specialist, on hand. They’re thinking, “Hey, I need the highest percent of form completions possible.”

  So when someone lands on this page, I’m trying to get from two percent to four percent. How do we get four percent of people visiting this page to complete the form? That means removing distractions. That means not providing information up front. That means having a great teaser that says like, “Hey, we can give this to you, and here are testimonials that say we can provide this information. But let’s not give it right up front. Don’t give away the golden goose, my friend. We want these conversions. We need to get our qualified leads into the funnel,” versus the SEO, who today has to think about, “How do I get searchers to accomplish their task without friction?” This lead capture form, that’s friction.

  So every organization, I think, needs to decide which way they’re going to go. Are they going to go for basically long-term SEO, which is I’m going to solve the searcher’s task, and then I’m going to figure out ways later to monetize and to capture value? Or am I going to basically lose out in the search results to people who are willing to do this and go this route instead and drive traffic from other sources? Maybe I’ll rank with different pages and I’ll send some people here, or maybe I will pay for my traffic, or I’ll try and do some barnacle SEO and get links from people who do rank up top there, but I won’t do it directly myself. This is a choice we all have.

  How do we nail searcher task accomplishment?  All right. So how do you do this? Let’s say you’ve gone the SEO path. You’ve decided, “Yes, Rand, I’m in. I want to help the searcher accomplish their task. I recognize that I’m going to have to be willing to sacrifice some conversion rate optimization.” Well, there are two things here.

   1. Gain a deep understanding of what drives searchers to search  .  

     2. What makes some searchers come away unsatisfied. 

  Once they’ve performed this query, why do they click the back button? Why do they choose a different result? Why do they change their query to something else? There are ways we can figure out both of these.

   To help with number 1 try: 

  Some of the best things that you can do are  talk to people who actually have those problems and who are actually performing those searches or have performed them  through...

     Interviews  

  Surveys  

  I will provide you with a  link  to a document that I did around specifically how to get a book published. I did a survey that I ran that looked at searcher task accomplishment and what people hoped that content would have for them, and you can see the results are quite remarkable. I’ll actually embed my presentation on searcher task accomplishment in this Whiteboard Friday and make sure to  link  to that as well.

     In-person conversations , and powerful things can come out of those that you wouldn’t get through remote or through email. 

 You can certainly  look at competitors . So check out what your competitors are saying and what they’re doing that you may not have considered yet. 

 You can try  putting yourself in your searcher’s shoes .  

  What if I searched for disinfect a cut? What would I want to know? What if I searched for FHA loans? I’m buying a house for the first time, what am I thinking about? Well, I’m thinking about a bunch of things. I’m thinking about price and neighborhood and all this. Okay, how do I accomplish all that in my content, or at least how do I provide navigation so that people can accomplish all that without having to go back to the search results?

   To help with number 2 try:  

  Understanding what makes those searchers come away unsatisfied.

     Auto-suggest and related searches are great . In fact, related searches, which are at the very bottom of the page in a set of search results, are usually searches people performed after they performed the initial search. I say usually because there can be some other things in there. But usually someone who searched for FHA loans then searches for jumbo loans or 30-year fixed loans or mortgage rates or those kinds of things. That’s the next step. So you can say, “You know what? I know what you want next. Let me go help you.” Auto-suggest related searches, those are great for that. 

  Internal search analytics  for people who landed on a page and performed a site search or clicked on a Next link on your site. What did they want to do? Where did they want to go next? That helps tell you what those people need. 

  Having conversations with those who only got partway through your funnel . So if you have a lead capture at some point or you collect email at some point, you can reach out to people who initially came to you for a solution but didn’t get all the way through that process and talk to them. 

  Tracking the SERPs and watching who rises vs falls in the rankings . Finally, if you track the search results, generally speaking what we see here at Moz, what I see for almost all the results I’m tracking is that more and more people who do a great job of this, of searcher task accomplishment, are rising in the rankings, and the folks who are not are falling.  

  So over time, if you watch those in your spaces and do some rank tracking competitively, you can see what types of content is helping people accomplish those tasks and what Google is rewarding.

  That said, I look forward to your comments. We’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

            Why We Can’t Do SEO WIthout CRO    from   Rand Fishkin      Video transcription  by  Speechpad.com 

    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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#huntingtonbeachseo #seo #articlewriting #internetmarketing #bestlocalseo #digitalmarketing #contentwriting #leadgeneration #blogpower #newportbeachseo

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Do iPhone Users Spend More Online Than Android Users?

Posted by  MartyMeany   Apple has just launched their latest flagship phones to market and later this year they’ll release their uber-flagship: the iPhone X. The iPhone X is the most expensive iPhone yet, at a cool $999. With so many other smartphones on the market offering similar functionality, it begs the question: Do iPhone users simply spend more money than everyone else?

  At  Wolfgang Digital , we love a bit of data, so we’ve trawled through a massive dataset of 31 million iPhone and Android sessions to finally answer this question. Of course, we’ve got some actionable nuggets of digital marketing strategy at the end, too!

  Why am I asking this question?  Way back when, before joining the online marketing world, I sold mobile phones. I couldn’t get my head around why people bought iPhones. They’re more expensive than their Android counterparts, which usually offer the same, if not increased, functionality (though you could argue the latter is subjective).

  When I moved into the e-commerce department of the same phone retailer, my team would regularly grab a coffee and share little nuggets of interesting e-commerce trends we’d found. My personal favorite was a tale about Apple users spending more than desktop users. The  story I read  talked about how a hotel raised prices for people booking while using an Apple device. Even with the increased prices, conversion rates didn’t budge as the hotel raked in extra cash.

  I’ve always said this story was anecdotal because I simply never saw the data to back it up. Still, it fascinated me.

  Finding an answer  Fast forward a few years and I’m sitting in Wolfgang Digital behind the huge dataset that powered our  2017 E-Commerce Benchmark KPI Study . It occurred to me that this data could answer some of the great online questions I’d heard over the years. What better place to start than that tale of Apple users spending more money online than others?

  The online world has changed a little since I first asked myself this question, so let’s take a fresh 2017 approach.

  Do iPhone users spend more than Android users?  When this hypothesis first appeared, people were comparing Mac desktop users and PC desktop users, but the game has changed since then. To give the hypothesis a fresh 2017 look, we’re going to ask whether iPhone users spend more than Android users. Looking through the 31 million sessions on both iOS and Android operating systems, then filtering the data by mobile, it didn’t take long to find the the answer to this question that had followed me around for years. The results were astonishing:

     On average, Android users spend $11.54 per transaction. iPhone users, on the other hand, spend a whopping $32.94 per transaction.  That means iPhone users will spend almost three times as much as Android users when visiting an e-commerce site. 

  Slightly smug that I’ve finally answered my question, how do we turn this from being an interesting nugget of information to an actionable insight?

  What does this mean for digital marketers?  As soon as you read about iPhone users spending three times more than Android users, I’m sure you started thinking about targeting users specifically based on their operating system. If iOS users are spending more money than their Android counterparts, doesn’t it make sense to shift your spend and targeting towards iOS users?

  You’re right. In both Facebook and AdWords, you can use this information to your advantage.

  Targeting operating systems within Facebook  Of the “big two” ad platforms, Facebook offers the most direct form of operating system targeting. When creating your ads, Facebook’s Ad Manager will give you the option to target “All Mobile Devices,” “iOS Devices Only,” or “Android Devices Only.” These options mean you can target those high average order value-generating iPhone users.

     Targeting operating systems within AdWords  AdWords will allow you to target operating systems for both Display Campaigns and Video Campaigns. When it comes to Search, you can’t target a specific operating system. You can, however, create an OS-based audience using Google Analytics. Once this audience is built, you can remarket to an iOS audience with “iPhone”-oriented ad texts. Speaking at Wolfgang Essentials this year,  Wil Reynolds  showed  clips of people talking through their decision to click in SERPs . It’s incredible to see people skipping over year-old content before clicking an article that mentions “iPhone.” Why? Because that user has an iPhone. That’s the power of relevancy.

  You’ll also be able to optimize and personalize your bids in Search, safe in the knowledge that iPhone users are more likely to spend big than Android users.

     There you have it. Don’t let those mad stories you hear pass you by. You might just learn something!

    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!

http://bit.ly/2gxHwWO

#blogpower #internetmarketing #newportbeachseo #socialmediamarketing #lagunabeachseo #digitalmarketing #seo #contentwriting #smallbusinessmarketing #bestlocalseo

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Listen to MozPod, the Free SEO Podcast from Moz

Posted by  BrianChilds   We’re marketers. We know from firsthand experience that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to get done. And that’s even more true once you commit to leveling up and learning new skills.

   The learning curve for developing digital marketing skills can be steep, and staying informed as things evolve and change (thanks, Google) can feel like a full-time job. Our  Moz Training  has classes to help accelerate the learning process, but as startup folks ourselves, we understand the importance of multitasking.

     Learn SEO on the go  We’re thrilled to introduce MozPod, an SEO podcast focused on sharing lessons from digital marketing experts. Episodes are led by instructors from Moz Academy and we discuss a wide variety of digital marketing concepts, from common terminology to recent changes and best practices.

   Check it out on iTunes 

  Where can I listen in?  

  iTunes  

  The MozPod homepage  

   Upcoming episodes  Our first series covers conversion rate optimization, PageRank, and link building:

  Ep. 1: The Science of Crawling and Indexing   Guest: Neil Martinsen-Burrell of Moz  Dr. Neil Martinsen-Burrell shares his perspective as a statistician on the development of Page Authority and Domain Authority. Great data and interesting stats.

  Ep. 2: What’s a Good Conversion Rate?   Guest: Carl Schmidt of Unbounce  Carl discusses the  Unbounce Conversion Rate Benchmark Report  and what SEOs can learn from an analysis of over 74 million landing page visitors. Great for content writers.

  Ep. 3: Link Building Fundamentals   Guest: The PageOnePower team  MozPod interviews PageOnePower about how search engines place value on links. Collin, Cody, and Nicholas share the personal wisdom they’ve gained from working at a link building company.

   Want to be a guest on MozPod?  If you’d like to  share your recent SEO analysis or have a topic you think MozPod listeners would find valuable, please send us your ideas! MozPod is a place for our community of SEOs and digital marketers to learn. We’d love to hear from you.

  Simply fill out this form to share your idea:  Be on MozPod 

   Give it a listen and let us know what topics you’d like to hear about in the comments!

   Listen to MozPod on iTunes 

    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!

http://bit.ly/2i2bB48

#socialmediamarketing #bestlocalseo #contentwriting #blogpower #lagunabeachseo #internetmarketing #huntingtonbeachseo #newportbeachseo #leadgeneration #smallbusinessmarketing

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Getting SEO Value from rel=“nofollow” Links - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by  randfish   Plenty of websites that make it easy for you to contribute don’t make it easy to earn a followed link from those contributions. While rel=nofollow links reign in the land of social media profiles, comments, and publishers, there’s a few ways around it. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares five tactics to help you earn equity-passing followed links using traditionally nofollow-only platforms.

               Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

      Video Transcription  Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about how you can get SEO value from nofollowed links. So in the SEO world, there are followed links. These are the normal ones that you find on almost every website. But then you can have nofollowed links, which you’ll see in the HTML code of a website. You will see the normal thing is a href=somewebsite in here. If you see this rel=nofollow, that means that the search engines — Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. — will not count this link as passing link equity, at least certainly not in the same way that a followed link would.

  So when you see these, you can see them by looking in the source code yourself. You could turn on the  MozBar  and use the “Show nofollow links” on the Page button and see these.

  What sort of links use rel=nofollow?  But the basic story is that you’re not getting the same SEO value from them. But there are ways to get it. Recently you might have seen in the SEO news world that Inc. and Forbes and a few other sites like them, last year it was Huffington Post, started applying nofollow tags to all the links that belong to articles from contributors. So if I go and write an article for Inc. today, the links that I point out from my bio and my snippet on there, they’re not going to pass any value, because they have this nofollow applied.

  A) Social media links (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)  There are a bunch of types of links use this. Social media, so Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which is one of the reasons why you can’t just boost your linked profile by going to these places and leaving a bunch of links around.

  B) Comments (news articles, blogs, forums, etc.)  Comments, so from news articles or blogs or forums where there’s discussion, Q&A sites, those comments, all the links in them that you leave again nofollowed.

  C) Open submission content (Quora, Reddit, YouTube, etc.)  Open submission content, so places like Quora where you could write a post, or Reddit, where you could write a post, or YouTube where you could upload a video and have a post and have a link, most of those, in fact almost all of them now have nofollows as do the profile links that are associated. Your Instagram account, for example, that would be a social media one. But it’s not just the pictures you post on Instagram. Your profile link is one of the only places in the Instagram platform where you actually get a real URL that you can send people to, but that is nofollowed on the web.

  D) Some publishers with less stringent review systems (Forbes, Buzzfeed, LinkedIn Pulse, etc.)  Some publishers now with these less stringent publishing review systems, so places like Inc., Forbes, BuzzFeed in some cases with their sponsored posts, Huffington Post, LinkedIn’s Pulse platform, and a bunch of others all use this rel=nofollow.

  Basic evaluation formula for earning followed links from the above sources   

  The basic formula that we need to go to here is: How do you contribute to all of these places in ways that will ultimately result in followed links and that will provide you with SEO value? So we’re essentially saying I’m going to do X. I know that’s going to bring a nofollowed link, but that nofollowed link will result in this other thing happening that will then lead to a followed link.

   Do X → Get rel=nofollow link → Results in Y → Leads to followed link 

  5 examples/tactics to start  This other thing happening can be a bunch of different things. It could be something indirect. You post something with your site on one of these places. It includes a nofollow link. Someone finds it. We’ll just call this guy over here, this is our friendly editor who works for a publication and finds it and says, “Hmm, that link was actually quite useful,” or the information it pointed to was useful, the article was useful, your new company seems useful, whatever it is. Later, as that editor is writing, they will link over to your site, and this will be a followed link. Thus, you’re getting the SEO value. You’ve indirectly gained SEO value essentially through amplification of what you were sharing through your link.

  Google likes this. They want you to use all of these places to show stuff, and then they’re hoping that if people find it truly valuable, they’ll pick it up, they’ll link to it, and then Google can reward that.

  So some examples of places where you might attempt this in the early stages. These are a very small subset of what you could do, and it’s going to be different for every industry and every endeavor.

  1. Quora contributions  But Quora contributions, especially those if you have relevant or high value credentials or very unique, specific experiences, that will often get picked up by the online press. There are lots of editors and journalists and publications of all kinds that rely on interesting answers to Quora questions to use in their journalism, and then they’ll cite you as a source, or they’ll ask you to contribute, they’ll ask you for a quote, they’ll point to your website, all that kind of stuff.

  2. Early comments on low-popularity blogs  Early comments especially in, I know this is going to sound odd, but low-popularity blogs, rather than high-popularity ones. Why low popularity? Because you will stand out. You’re less likely to be seen as a spammer, especially if you’re an authentic contributor. You don’t get lost in the noise. You can create intrigue, give value, and that will often lead to that writer or that blogger picking you up with followed links in subsequent posts. If you want more on this tactic, by the way, check out our Whiteboard Friday on comment marketing from last year. That was a deep dive into this topic.

  3. Following and engaging with link targets on Twitter  Number three, following and engaging with your link targets on Twitter, especially if your link targets are heavily invested in Twitter, like journalists, B2B bloggers and contributors, and authors or people who write for lots of different publications. It doesn’t have to be a published author. It can just be a writer who writes for lots of online pieces. Then sharing your related content with them or just via your Twitter account, if you’re engaging with them a lot, chances are good you can get a follow back, and that will lead to a lot of followed up links with a citation.

  4. Link citations from Instagram images  Instagram accounts. When you post images on Instagram, if you use the hashtags — hashtag marketing is kind of one of the only ways to get exposure on Instagram — but if you use hashtags that you know journalists, writers, editors, and publications of any kind in your field are picking up and need, especially travel, activities, current events, stuff that’s in the news, or conferences and events, many times folks will pick up those images and ask you for permission to use them. If you’re willing to give it, you can earn link citations. Another important reason to associate that URL with your site so that people can get in touch with you.

  5. Amplify content published on your site by republishing on other platforms  If you’re using some of these platforms that are completely nofollow or platforms that are open contribution and have follow links, but where we suspect Google probably doesn’t count them, Medium being one of the biggest places, you can use republishing tactics. So essentially you’re writing on your own website first. Writing on your own website first, but then you are republishing on some of these other places.

  I’m going to go Forbes. I’m going to publish my column on Forbes. I’m going to go to Medium. I’m going to publish in my Medium account. I’m going to contribute Huffington Post with the same piece. I’m republishing across these multiple platforms, and essentially you can think of this as it’s not duplicate content. You’re not hurting yourself, because these places are all pointing back to your original. It’s technically duplicate content, but not the kind that’s going to be bothersome for search engines.

  You’re essentially using these the same way you would use your Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, where you are pushing it out as a way to say, “Here, check this out if you’re on these platforms, and here’s the original back here.” You can do that with the full article, just like you would do full content in RSS or full content for email subscribers. Then use those platforms for sharing and amplification to get into the hands of people who might link later.

   So nofollowed links, not a direct impact, but potentially a very powerful, indirect way to get lots of good links and lots of good SEO value.

  All right, everyone, hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we’ll see you again next week. Take care.

   Video transcription  by  Speechpad.com 

    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!

http://bit.ly/2y18Owe

#lagunabeachseo #socialmediamarketing #huntingtonbeachseo #articlewriting #blogpower #digitalmarketing #internetmarketing #newportbeachseo #bestlocalseo #contentwriting

[krestmarketinggroup-blog]

Getting SEO Value from rel=“nofollow” Links - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by  randfish   Plenty of websites that make it easy for you to contribute don’t make it easy to earn a followed link from those contributions. While rel=nofollow links reign in the land of social media profiles, comments, and publishers, there’s a few ways around it. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares five tactics to help you earn equity-passing followed links using traditionally nofollow-only platforms.

               Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

      Video Transcription  Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about how you can get SEO value from nofollowed links. So in the SEO world, there are followed links. These are the normal ones that you find on almost every website. But then you can have nofollowed links, which you’ll see in the HTML code of a website. You will see the normal thing is a href=somewebsite in here. If you see this rel=nofollow, that means that the search engines — Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. — will not count this link as passing link equity, at least certainly not in the same way that a followed link would.

  So when you see these, you can see them by looking in the source code yourself. You could turn on the  MozBar  and use the “Show nofollow links” on the Page button and see these.

  What sort of links use rel=nofollow?  But the basic story is that you’re not getting the same SEO value from them. But there are ways to get it. Recently you might have seen in the SEO news world that Inc. and Forbes and a few other sites like them, last year it was Huffington Post, started applying nofollow tags to all the links that belong to articles from contributors. So if I go and write an article for Inc. today, the links that I point out from my bio and my snippet on there, they’re not going to pass any value, because they have this nofollow applied.

  A) Social media links (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)  There are a bunch of types of links use this. Social media, so Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which is one of the reasons why you can’t just boost your linked profile by going to these places and leaving a bunch of links around.

  B) Comments (news articles, blogs, forums, etc.)  Comments, so from news articles or blogs or forums where there’s discussion, Q&A sites, those comments, all the links in them that you leave again nofollowed.

  C) Open submission content (Quora, Reddit, YouTube, etc.)  Open submission content, so places like Quora where you could write a post, or Reddit, where you could write a post, or YouTube where you could upload a video and have a post and have a link, most of those, in fact almost all of them now have nofollows as do the profile links that are associated. Your Instagram account, for example, that would be a social media one. But it’s not just the pictures you post on Instagram. Your profile link is one of the only places in the Instagram platform where you actually get a real URL that you can send people to, but that is nofollowed on the web.

  D) Some publishers with less stringent review systems (Forbes, Buzzfeed, LinkedIn Pulse, etc.)  Some publishers now with these less stringent publishing review systems, so places like Inc., Forbes, BuzzFeed in some cases with their sponsored posts, Huffington Post, LinkedIn’s Pulse platform, and a bunch of others all use this rel=nofollow.

  Basic evaluation formula for earning followed links from the above sources   

  The basic formula that we need to go to here is: How do you contribute to all of these places in ways that will ultimately result in followed links and that will provide you with SEO value? So we’re essentially saying I’m going to do X. I know that’s going to bring a nofollowed link, but that nofollowed link will result in this other thing happening that will then lead to a followed link.

   Do X → Get rel=nofollow link → Results in Y → Leads to followed link 

  5 examples/tactics to start  This other thing happening can be a bunch of different things. It could be something indirect. You post something with your site on one of these places. It includes a nofollow link. Someone finds it. We’ll just call this guy over here, this is our friendly editor who works for a publication and finds it and says, “Hmm, that link was actually quite useful,” or the information it pointed to was useful, the article was useful, your new company seems useful, whatever it is. Later, as that editor is writing, they will link over to your site, and this will be a followed link. Thus, you’re getting the SEO value. You’ve indirectly gained SEO value essentially through amplification of what you were sharing through your link.

  Google likes this. They want you to use all of these places to show stuff, and then they’re hoping that if people find it truly valuable, they’ll pick it up, they’ll link to it, and then Google can reward that.

  So some examples of places where you might attempt this in the early stages. These are a very small subset of what you could do, and it’s going to be different for every industry and every endeavor.

  1. Quora contributions  But Quora contributions, especially those if you have relevant or high value credentials or very unique, specific experiences, that will often get picked up by the online press. There are lots of editors and journalists and publications of all kinds that rely on interesting answers to Quora questions to use in their journalism, and then they’ll cite you as a source, or they’ll ask you to contribute, they’ll ask you for a quote, they’ll point to your website, all that kind of stuff.

  2. Early comments on low-popularity blogs  Early comments especially in, I know this is going to sound odd, but low-popularity blogs, rather than high-popularity ones. Why low popularity? Because you will stand out. You’re less likely to be seen as a spammer, especially if you’re an authentic contributor. You don’t get lost in the noise. You can create intrigue, give value, and that will often lead to that writer or that blogger picking you up with followed links in subsequent posts. If you want more on this tactic, by the way, check out our Whiteboard Friday on comment marketing from last year. That was a deep dive into this topic.

  3. Following and engaging with link targets on Twitter  Number three, following and engaging with your link targets on Twitter, especially if your link targets are heavily invested in Twitter, like journalists, B2B bloggers and contributors, and authors or people who write for lots of different publications. It doesn’t have to be a published author. It can just be a writer who writes for lots of online pieces. Then sharing your related content with them or just via your Twitter account, if you’re engaging with them a lot, chances are good you can get a follow back, and that will lead to a lot of followed up links with a citation.

  4. Link citations from Instagram images  Instagram accounts. When you post images on Instagram, if you use the hashtags — hashtag marketing is kind of one of the only ways to get exposure on Instagram — but if you use hashtags that you know journalists, writers, editors, and publications of any kind in your field are picking up and need, especially travel, activities, current events, stuff that’s in the news, or conferences and events, many times folks will pick up those images and ask you for permission to use them. If you’re willing to give it, you can earn link citations. Another important reason to associate that URL with your site so that people can get in touch with you.

  5. Amplify content published on your site by republishing on other platforms  If you’re using some of these platforms that are completely nofollow or platforms that are open contribution and have follow links, but where we suspect Google probably doesn’t count them, Medium being one of the biggest places, you can use republishing tactics. So essentially you’re writing on your own website first. Writing on your own website first, but then you are republishing on some of these other places.

  I’m going to go Forbes. I’m going to publish my column on Forbes. I’m going to go to Medium. I’m going to publish in my Medium account. I’m going to contribute Huffington Post with the same piece. I’m republishing across these multiple platforms, and essentially you can think of this as it’s not duplicate content. You’re not hurting yourself, because these places are all pointing back to your original. It’s technically duplicate content, but not the kind that’s going to be bothersome for search engines.

  You’re essentially using these the same way you would use your Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, where you are pushing it out as a way to say, “Here, check this out if you’re on these platforms, and here’s the original back here.” You can do that with the full article, just like you would do full content in RSS or full content for email subscribers. Then use those platforms for sharing and amplification to get into the hands of people who might link later.

   So nofollowed links, not a direct impact, but potentially a very powerful, indirect way to get lots of good links and lots of good SEO value.

  All right, everyone, hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we’ll see you again next week. Take care.

   Video transcription  by  Speechpad.com 

    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!

http://bit.ly/2y18Owe

#bestlocalseo #newportbeachseo #blogpower #internetmarketing #huntingtonbeachseo #articlewriting #seo #socialmediamarketing #linkbuilding #smallbusinessmarketing

[krestmarketinggroup-blog]

New Findings Show Google Organic Clicks Shifting to Paid

Posted by  Brian_W   On the Wayfair SEO team, we keep track of our non-branded click curves: the average click-through rate (CTR) for each ranking position. This helps us accurately evaluate the potential opportunity of keyword clusters.

  Over the last two years, the total share of organic clicks on page one of our e-commerce SERPs has dropped 25% on desktop and 55% on mobile.

  For the ad-heavy non-local SERPs that we work in, paid ads are likely now earning nearly the same percentage of clicks as organic results — a staggering change from most of the history of Google.

  Organic CTR loses 25% of click share on desktop, 55% on mobile  Looking at 2015 vs 2017 data for all keywords ranking organically on the first page, we’ve seen a dramatic change in CTR. Below we’ve normalized our actual CTR on a 1–10 scale, representing a total drop of 25% of click share on desktop and 55% on mobile.

      Organic receives 25% less desktop CTR and 55% less mobile CTR compared to two years ago.  

  The much larger drop on mobile is particularly relevant because we’ve seen large traffic shifts to mobile over the last two years as well. The overall percentage drop plays out somewhat similarly across the first page of results; however, the top four were most heavily impacted.

         The first four organic results were most heavily impacted by the CTR shift from organic to paid. 

  About the data  It’s important to note that this type of CTR change is not true for every SERP. This data is only applicable to e-commerce intent search queries, where ads and PLAs are on nearly every query.

  We gather the impression, click, and rank data from Search Console. While Search Console data isn’t quantitatively correct, it does appear to be directionally correct for us (if we see clicks double in Search Console, we also see organic Google traffic double in our analytics), site improvements that lead to meaningful CTR gains appear to be reflected in Search Console, we can roughly verify impressions via ad data, and we can confirm the accuracy of rank. For purposes of this data pull, we excluded any keywords that Search Console reported as a non-integer rank (such as ranking 1.2). We have thousands of page one keywords, including many large head terms comprising millions of combined clicks, which gives us a lot of data for each ranking position.

  We remove all branded queries from the data, which hugely skews click curves.

  It’s important to note that paid ads are not getting all the clicks that organic is not. In addition to the small number of people who click beyond the first page, a surprising number do not click at all. Our best guess is that all ads combined now get about the same percentage of clicks (for our results) as all organic results combined.

  Why is this happening?  It’s no secret to SEOs who work on transactional keywords why we no longer gain as large a share of clicks for our best rankings. We suspect the primary causes are the following:

    Ads serving on more queries 

 More ads per query 

 Larger ads, with more space given to each ad 

 Google Shopping (which show up on more queries, list more products per query, and take up more space) 

 Subtler ad labeling, making it less obvious that an ad is an ad  

  At Wayfair, we’ve seen Google Shopping results appear on more and more search queries over the last year. Using  Stat  Search Analytics, we can track the growth in queries serving Google Shopping results (modified by search volume to give a qualitative visibility score) across the 25,000 keywords we track daily on mobile and desktop. The overall share of voice of Google Shopping has grown nearly 60% in the last year.

      Number of transactional queries serving Google Shopping has grown nearly 60% in the last year. 

  On top of this, we’re often seeing four PPC ads for a typical non-branded commercial term, in addition to the Google Shopping results.

     And with the expanded size of ads on mobile, almost none of our queries show anything other than ads without scrolling:

     This great image from  Edwords  shows the steady growth in percent of the desktop page consumed by ads for a query that has only three ad results. We go from seeing five organic results above the scroll, to just one. In more recent years we’ve seen this size growth explode on mobile as well.

     At the same time that ads have grown, the labeling of ads has become increasingly subtle. In a 2015 study, Ofcom found that  half of adults  don’t recognize ads in Google, and about  70% of teenagers  didn’t recognize Google ads — and ad labeling has become substantially less obvious since then. For most of its history, Google ads were labeled by a large colored block that was intuitively separate from the non-ad results, though sometimes not visible on monitors with a higher brightness setting.

  2000 – Shaded background around all ads:   

  2010 – Shaded background still exists around ads:    

  2014 – No background; yellow box label next to each ad (and ads take up a lot more space):   

  2017 – Yellow box changed to green, the same color as the URL it’s next to (and ads take up even more space):   

  2017 – Green box changed to a thin green outline the same color as the URL:   

  What to do about it  The good news is that this is impacting everyone in e-commerce equally, and all those search clicks are still happening — in other words, those users haven’t gone away. The growth in the number of searches each year means that you probably aren’t seeing huge losses in organic traffic; instead, it will show as small losses or anemic growth. The bad news is that it will cost you — as well as your competitors — more money to capture the same overall share of search traffic.

  A strong search marketing strategy has always involved organic, paid search, and PLA combined. Sites optimizing for all search channels are already well-positioned to capture search traffic regardless of ad changes to the SERPs: if SEO growth slows, then PLA and paid search growth speeds up. As real estate for one channel shrinks, real estate for others grows.

     If you haven’t been strongly invested in search ads or PLAs, then the Chinese proverb on the best time to plant a tree applies perfectly:

   The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. 

  With a similar percentage of clicks going to paid and organic, your investment in each should be similar (unless, of course, you have some catching up to do with one channel).

    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!

http://bit.ly/2xXXX6a

#contentwriting #blogpower #bestlocalseo #socialmediamarketing #newportbeachseo #seo #internetmarketing #lagunabeachseo #articlewriting #digitalmarketing

[krestmarketinggroup-blog]

New Findings Show Google Organic Clicks Shifting to Paid

Posted by  Brian_W   On the Wayfair SEO team, we keep track of our non-branded click curves: the average click-through rate (CTR) for each ranking position. This helps us accurately evaluate the potential opportunity of keyword clusters.

  Over the last two years, the total share of organic clicks on page one of our e-commerce SERPs has dropped 25% on desktop and 55% on mobile.

  For the ad-heavy non-local SERPs that we work in, paid ads are likely now earning nearly the same percentage of clicks as organic results — a staggering change from most of the history of Google.

  Organic CTR loses 25% of click share on desktop, 55% on mobile  Looking at 2015 vs 2017 data for all keywords ranking organically on the first page, we’ve seen a dramatic change in CTR. Below we’ve normalized our actual CTR on a 1–10 scale, representing a total drop of 25% of click share on desktop and 55% on mobile.

      Organic receives 25% less desktop CTR and 55% less mobile CTR compared to two years ago.  

  The much larger drop on mobile is particularly relevant because we’ve seen large traffic shifts to mobile over the last two years as well. The overall percentage drop plays out somewhat similarly across the first page of results; however, the top four were most heavily impacted.

         The first four organic results were most heavily impacted by the CTR shift from organic to paid. 

  About the data  It’s important to note that this type of CTR change is not true for every SERP. This data is only applicable to e-commerce intent search queries, where ads and PLAs are on nearly every query.

  We gather the impression, click, and rank data from Search Console. While Search Console data isn’t quantitatively correct, it does appear to be directionally correct for us (if we see clicks double in Search Console, we also see organic Google traffic double in our analytics), site improvements that lead to meaningful CTR gains appear to be reflected in Search Console, we can roughly verify impressions via ad data, and we can confirm the accuracy of rank. For purposes of this data pull, we excluded any keywords that Search Console reported as a non-integer rank (such as ranking 1.2). We have thousands of page one keywords, including many large head terms comprising millions of combined clicks, which gives us a lot of data for each ranking position.

  We remove all branded queries from the data, which hugely skews click curves.

  It’s important to note that paid ads are not getting all the clicks that organic is not. In addition to the small number of people who click beyond the first page, a surprising number do not click at all. Our best guess is that all ads combined now get about the same percentage of clicks (for our results) as all organic results combined.

  Why is this happening?  It’s no secret to SEOs who work on transactional keywords why we no longer gain as large a share of clicks for our best rankings. We suspect the primary causes are the following:

    Ads serving on more queries 

 More ads per query 

 Larger ads, with more space given to each ad 

 Google Shopping (which show up on more queries, list more products per query, and take up more space) 

 Subtler ad labeling, making it less obvious that an ad is an ad  

  At Wayfair, we’ve seen Google Shopping results appear on more and more search queries over the last year. Using  Stat  Search Analytics, we can track the growth in queries serving Google Shopping results (modified by search volume to give a qualitative visibility score) across the 25,000 keywords we track daily on mobile and desktop. The overall share of voice of Google Shopping has grown nearly 60% in the last year.

      Number of transactional queries serving Google Shopping has grown nearly 60% in the last year. 

  On top of this, we’re often seeing four PPC ads for a typical non-branded commercial term, in addition to the Google Shopping results.

     And with the expanded size of ads on mobile, almost none of our queries show anything other than ads without scrolling:

     This great image from  Edwords  shows the steady growth in percent of the desktop page consumed by ads for a query that has only three ad results. We go from seeing five organic results above the scroll, to just one. In more recent years we’ve seen this size growth explode on mobile as well.

     At the same time that ads have grown, the labeling of ads has become increasingly subtle. In a 2015 study, Ofcom found that  half of adults  don’t recognize ads in Google, and about  70% of teenagers  didn’t recognize Google ads — and ad labeling has become substantially less obvious since then. For most of its history, Google ads were labeled by a large colored block that was intuitively separate from the non-ad results, though sometimes not visible on monitors with a higher brightness setting.

  2000 – Shaded background around all ads:   

  2010 – Shaded background still exists around ads:    

  2014 – No background; yellow box label next to each ad (and ads take up a lot more space):   

  2017 – Yellow box changed to green, the same color as the URL it’s next to (and ads take up even more space):   

  2017 – Green box changed to a thin green outline the same color as the URL:   

  What to do about it  The good news is that this is impacting everyone in e-commerce equally, and all those search clicks are still happening — in other words, those users haven’t gone away. The growth in the number of searches each year means that you probably aren’t seeing huge losses in organic traffic; instead, it will show as small losses or anemic growth. The bad news is that it will cost you — as well as your competitors — more money to capture the same overall share of search traffic.

  A strong search marketing strategy has always involved organic, paid search, and PLA combined. Sites optimizing for all search channels are already well-positioned to capture search traffic regardless of ad changes to the SERPs: if SEO growth slows, then PLA and paid search growth speeds up. As real estate for one channel shrinks, real estate for others grows.

     If you haven’t been strongly invested in search ads or PLAs, then the Chinese proverb on the best time to plant a tree applies perfectly:

   The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. 

  With a similar percentage of clicks going to paid and organic, your investment in each should be similar (unless, of course, you have some catching up to do with one channel).

    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!

http://bit.ly/2xXXX6a

#lagunabeachseo #blogpower #bestlocalseo #articlewriting #leadgeneration #smallbusinessmarketing #internetmarketing #contentwriting #huntingtonbeachseo #linkbuilding