How to Promote & Market Your Website With Micro-Influencers

By Louis Beaudreau

Fun marketing fact: the idea of enlisting celebrities to sell products and services is well over 100 years old. In the late 1800s, trading cards emblazoned with famous faces often accompanied products to beef up the company’s appeal.

Think of them as the old-timey equivalent of Taylor Swift or Kylie Jenner snapping an Instagram #ad.

And it makes sense. Of course you want your product to be endorsed by someone with an extensive pool of fans and followers. After all, the more eyes and ears that are drawn to your company, the more your company thrives.

But since the outset of the social media boom, there are more and more companies competing for the chance to nab a celebrity mention, and most small businesses never even get that chance. Celebrity influencers refuse far more companies than they do deals with, and their fees are very steep.

So, as the keeper of your website’s brand, and one who wants to expand that website through social media marketing, what do you do?

You seek out micro-influencers.

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Who Are Micro-Influencers?

Micro-influencers are people on social media who work in or regularly post about a specific field or niche. Unlike a celebrity, public figure, or field expert, micro-influencers have a smaller circle of influence with a higher level of direct engagement. Typically, a micro-influencer with have followers in the thousands or tens of thousands but will not break into the hundreds of thousands.

Here’s an example.

A woman who runs a successful maternity class and posts blogs and instructional videos regularly will have less followers than a big website like Motherhood.com. However, the amount of actual follower engagement per average post could be greater for the maternity guru relative to the size of her follower base.

Do you have what it takes to run an online business? Here are 4 key traits of successful entrepreneurs.

Why Work with Micro-Influencers?

Micro-influencers are individuals with relatively modest social networks, but they still have a great deal to offer your brand. Here are a few reasons why you should consider partnering with a small-time social star to promote your blog or website.

1. Their Fees Are Affordable

This is perhaps the most immediate reason for you to seek out micro-influencers. Although the idea of a Kardashian promoting your product sounds amazing, the reality is that celebrity endorsements cost a lot of money. Even a single Instagram post by a celebrity can cost tens of thousands of dollars, if not more.

A micro-influencer, on the other hand, is supremely more affordable. In fact, 97 percent of micro-influencers charge less than $500 for a sponsored post on Instagram.

Additionally, micro-influencers in your business vertical are enthusiastic about what you’re enthusiastic about. If you make a good product, many times simply reaching out to micro-influencers — or sending them a sample — will result in them promoting your brand for free!

2. The Engagement Metrics Are Impressive

Micro-influencers have much better engagement rates on social media platforms than celebrities do. Markerly conducted a study on Instagram engagement recently that showed that as social media influencers gained more followers, the amount of likes actually decreased over time.

Out of the 800,000 Instagram users that were analyzed, the ones with less than 1,000 followers yielded likes 8 percent of the time; those with 1,000–10,000 yielded likes 4 percent of the time; and those with 10,000–100,000 yielded a 2.4 percent like rate. Influencers with over a million followers only earned likes 1.7 percent of the time.

Additionally, a study from Experticity found that micro-influencers have about 22.2 times more conversations with their followers on Instagram than mainstream influencers or average users. This is because micro-influencers are passionate about their interests and those who share them.

If you’ve got a blog, you need to be tracking these four key metrics.

3. They’ve Got a Target Audience

Micro-influencers have a much more targeted audience and follower base than bigger social media influencers. Somebody may be following Kanye West for his music, his fashion brand, or his occasional rants. With micro-influencers, people follow them for their passion regarding a single interest or closely related cluster of interests.

Sarah Ware, CEO and co-founder of Markerly, told Digiday last year that working with 30–40 micro-influencers on promoting a weight-loss tea actually resulted in a higher customer conversion rate than when they partnered with the Kardashians to promote that same product.

According to a series of customer surveys from Experticity, 82 percent of customers were highly likely to follow a micro-influencer’s recommendation on a product or service, due to their passion and experience.

To keep your audience engaged, you need to bring value to your users. Here’s how.

One popular brand that has recently achieved a lot of success through micro-influencer marketing is every hipster’s favorite bubbly water company: LaCroix.

Tapping into millennials’ tastes, LaCroix has been using micro-influencers, primarily on Instagram, to promote its brand through product awareness posts. The company specifically target users with modest follower counts for a more authentic, grassroots approach to advertising. La Croix reaches out to these users with product vouchers or other various product offers so that they post pictures containing the bubbly beverages. Pretty cool.

It is important to remember that while those influencers in the public eye have massive followings on social media, micro-influencers are more authentic when it comes to brand promotion. They are knowledgable and passionate about their vertical, and as a result, their Instagram and Twitter feeds reflect that.

How to Find The Right Micro-Influencers For Your Brand

Now that you know how valuable micro-influencers can be, how do you find the right ones to promote your website and grow your brand? And how should you contact them? We’ll break it down.

1. Listen with Social Monitoring Tools

Social monitoring — sometimes called social listening — is a way to collect information in real time about who is talking about your brand online and where it is being talked about.

Social monitoring tools, such as Sprout Social, Brand24, Mention, and many others, are specially designed to aggregate all online sources — think social media platforms, blogs, websites, forums, online publications, etc. — that mention keywords related to your brand or vertical into a single dashboard interface. From there, you can track conversations and pinpoint who your potential micro-influencers are.

Wondering which social platforms are right for your brand? We’ve done the research for you.

2. Track Keywords and Phrases

Once you get set up with a social monitoring platform, it is important to choose which specialized keywords and phrases you want to keep track of. The goal here is to seek out and monitor conversations about your company, or at the very least, your company’s vertical.

Once you create your keyword-based project using one of these tools, you will start to see brand mentions over a period of time. For each of these mentions, you can see the source of the mention, the number of followers that source has, the influencer score (based on followers, social reach and engagement) and the number of interactions associated with the mention.

You’ll have the ability to sort your list of mentions by the influence of these social media authors and see who might be a likely candidate for micro-influencer marketing.

Keywords got you down? Here are five no-brainer SEO tips for optimization newbies.

3. Contact Via Social Media

Once you have a list of micro-influencers that you could potentially use to boost your brand, it’s time to open up a dialogue.

Remember: it’s important to peruse the content of your micro-influencer hopefuls. Make sure their ideals align with your own and that you personally value their voice, perspective, and substance.

Find as many micro-influencers that meet your criteria as possible, and contact them through social media platforms or contact forms on their websites. Present your product or service to them and explain what you want your brand to achieve through cooperation with them.

Focus on engaging new enthusiasts and customers, and make sure your micro-influencers are honest about your brand and have access to the kind of people you want to reach out to. It always helps incentivizing your micro-influencers as well, whether or whether not you are paying them. They may love your brand and want to promote it, but it never hurts giving away freebies, à la La Croix.

If you don’t use a social monitoring tool, there are other low-cost ways to spot potential micro-influencers.

• Conduct relevant hashtag searches on Twitter or Instagram
• Research top accounts
• Google the top bloggers in your field of interest
• Search for micro-influencers in your list of followers

When working with micro-influencers, honesty, relevance, and engagement are the key metrics for successfully and healthily growing your own website’s brand.

These 6 common content mistakes could be weighing your website down.

How a Micro-Influencer Can Promote Your Website

Now that you know how useful micro-influencers are and how to contact them, let’s take a look at a few ways they can promote your website and brand. Whether you make music, sell furniture, or offer a subscription-based service, micro-influencers can help your online presence grow in these key ways:

1. They Can Review Your Product or Service

Micro-influencers have a knack for reviewing what you make and what you do. Again, they are already niche enthusiasts with focused, passionate followings, so when they review your product or service, it doesn’t fall on deaf ears.

Say you’re a songwriter or composer. You just put up some new music on your website, and you want people to listen to it and review it on their own platforms. Your music is in the indie bedroom dream electropop chillwave genre (because of course it is), and you’ve found a number of popular bloggers who write primarily about that genre. A number of solid, well-written reviews from micro-influencers could really build your fan base and stir up buzz in that corner of the music industry.

Remember, micro-influencers and their followers are already excited about what you’re excited about.

2. They Can Demonstrate Your Product or Service

Giving your brand a glowing recommendation is fantastic, but that is certainly not where a micro-influencer’s expertise ends. There are plenty of creative ways a micro-influencer can actually bring your brand to life for their followers.

For instance, if your website is a place where carpentry enthusiasts can purchase tools and furniture-making kits, have your micro-influencer make a video or write a blog post on how to make a particular piece of furniture using your product. You can even put a link to their tutorial on your own website for some healthy cross-promotion.

According to that study from Experticity, the average consumer considers micro-influencers to be more helpful and adept than basic online users at explaining how a product or service works. It really helps consumers jump on board more quickly if they actually see your product or service in action.

3. They Can Offer Giveaways to Followers

In truth, any mention of your website or brand helps with promotion. However, micro-influencers can have a much more direct effect through giveaways.

For example, if you are working with micro-influencers who are  enthusiastic about your website, then offer them promo codes or exclusive links for them to give away to their followers. Promoting yourself in this way shows a generous character, and it’s a smart, collaborative way to get the word out to many people.

It is absolutely worth your time to get creative with your micro-influencers. Open a dialogue, and see how their specific skill set can aid your overall brand. Turn your micro-influencers into your fans. Then let your fans work for you!

A Word About Micro-Influencers & The Federal Trade Commission

If you are paying a micro-influencer to boost your brand, it is important to understand the basic rule of sponsored online content. It’s very simple (and primarily directed at micro-influencers): if you are paid to write a review on your blog or promote a brand on any social media platform, your audience needs to know that you were paid.

Using #ad on a Twitter or Instagram post or writing something like, “This post was sponsored by [company name]” on your blog are absolutely must dos. Also, if you have a strong YouTube following and get paid by a company to review their product or service in a video, you must clearly state that the video is sponsored.

The two keys here are clarity and honesty.

As a brand, you do not want to fool your potential customers when you advertise, and your micro-influencers don’t want to lose their credibility or authenticity that they’ve worked hard to cultivate. It is very important that both parties are well aware of what is acceptable. Check out the FTC’s comprehensive guide to online advertising to read the fine print.

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How to Delete a Google My Business Listing – A Common Question with a Complex Answer

Posted by MiriamEllis

“How do I delete a Google listing?” is an FAQ on local SEO forums — and it represents an oversimplification of a complicated and multifaceted issue. The truth is, simple deletion is seldom the answer. Rather, most events that arise in the course of doing business require knowing which steps to take to properly manage GMB listings so that they’re helping your business instead of harming it.

When it comes to managing unwanted or problematic Google My Business listings, it’s a case of horses for courses. There isn’t a single set of instructions you can reliably follow, because your particular scenario defines which steps you should take. The following table should help you identify common situations and choose the one that most closely matches yours. From there, you’ll learn which actions are available to you, and which ones, unfortunately, can’t be accomplished.

Because management of problem GMB listings usually requires either being in control of them or unverifying them, our chart begins with three verification scenarios, and then moves on to cover other typical business events.

Scenario	Context	Steps	Notes
Unverify a Verified Listing You Control	You have a listing in your GMB dashboard that you no longer wish to control.	Log into your GMB dashboard Click “edit” Click the “info” tab Click “remove listing” Check all the checkboxes Click “delete account”	No worries: The last step does NOT delete your Google account or the listing, itself. It simply un-verifies it so that you are no longer controlling it. The listing will still exist and someone else can take control of it.
Verify an Unverified Listing to Gain Control	You need to take control of an unwanted listing. You can tell it’s not verified, because it’s marked “claim this business” in Google Maps or “own this business?” in the knowledge panel.	Simply follow the normal verification process outlined by Google.	Once you’ve verified the listing, you can take next steps to manage it if it's problematic.
Take Control of a Listing Someone Else Verified	You need to take control of an unwanted listing, but someone else has verified it. You can tell it’s verified, because it lacks the attributes of “claim this business” in Google Maps or “own this business?” in the knowledge panel.	Contact Google via these steps Google will contact the owner If Google doesn’t hear back from the owner in one week, you can verify the listing	There are some anecdotal accounts of owners being able to prove to Google their rights to control a listing based on their control of an email address that matches the website domain, but no guarantees. You may need to seek legal counsel to mediate resolution with a third party who refuses to relinquish control of the listing.
Manage a Duplicate Listing for a Brick-and-Mortar Business	Your business serves customers at your location (think a retail shop, restaurant, law practice). You find more than one listing representing the business, either at its present location, at an incorrect location, or at a previous location.	If the address exactly matches the correct, current address of the business, contact Google to request that they merge the two listings into one. If the address contains an error and the business never existed there, use the “suggest an edit” link on Google Maps, toggle the yes/no switch to “yes,” and choose the “never existed” radio button. If the address is one the business previously occupied, see the section in this table on business moves.	If reviews have become associated with a business address that contains an error, you can try to request that the reviews be transferred PRIOR to designating that the business “never existed” in Google Maps.
Manage a Duplicate Listing for a Service Area Business (SAB)	Your business serves customers at their locations (think a plumber, landscaper, or cleaning service). You find more than one listing representing the business.	Once you’ve verified the duplicate listing, contact Google to request that they merge the two listings into one.	Remember that Google’s guidelines require that you keep addresses for SAB listings hidden.
Manage an Unwanted Listing for a Multi-Practitioner Business	The business has multiple partners (think a legal firm or medical office). You discover multiple listings for a specific partner, or for partners who no longer work there, or for partner who are deceased.	Unfortunately, Google will not remove multi-practitioner listings for partners who are presently employed by the business. If the partner no longer works there, read this article about the dangers of ignoring these listings. Then, contact Google to request that they designate the listing as “moved” (like when a business moves) to the address of the practice — not to the partner’s new address. *See notes. If, regrettably, a partner has passed away, contact Google to show them an obituary.	In the second scenario, Google can only mark a past partner’s listing as moved if the listing is unverified. If the listing is verified, it would be ideal if the old partner would unverify it for you, but, if they are unwilling to do so, at least try to persuade them to update the listing with the details of their new location as a last resort. Unfortunately, this second option is far from ideal. On a separate note, if the unwanted listing pertains to a solo-practitioner business (there’s a listing for both the company and for a single practitioner who operates the company), you can contact Google to ask that they merge the two listings in an effort to combine the ranking power of the two listings, if desired.
Manage a Listing When a Business Moves	Your company is moving to a new location. You want to avoid having the listing marked as “permanently closed,” sending a wrong signal to consumers that you’ve gone out of business.	Update your website with your new contact information and driving directions Update your existing GMB listing in the Google My Business dashboard. Don’t create a new listing! Update your other local business listings to reflect your new info. A product like Moz Local can greatly simplify this big task.	Be sure to use your social platforms to advertise your move. Be sure to be on the lookout for any new duplicate listings that may arise as a result of a move. Again, Moz Local will be helpful for this. Google will generally automatically move your reviews from your old location to your new one, but read this to understand exceptions.
Manage a Listing Marked “Permanently Closed”	A listing of yours has ended up marked as “permanently closed,” signaling to consumers that you may have gone out of business. Permanently closed listings are also believed to negatively impact the rankings of your open business.	If the “permanently closed” label exists on a verified listing for a previous location the business occupied, unverify the listing. Then contact Google to ask them to mark it as moved to the new location. This should rectify the “permanently closed” problem. If the permanently closed listing exists on a listing for your business that someone else as verified (i.e., you don’t control the listing), please see the above section labeled “Take Control of a Listing Someone Else Verified.” If you can get control of it in your dashboard and then unverify it, you’ll then be able to contact Google to ask them to mark it as moved.	The “permanently closed” label can also appear on listings for practitioners who have left the business. See the section of this chart labeled “Manage an Unwanted Listing for a Multi-Practitioner Business.”
Manage a Merger/Acquisition	Many nuances to this scenario may dictate specific steps. If the merger/acquisition includes all of the previous physical locations remaining open to the public under the new name, just edit the details of the existing GMB listings to display that new name. But, if the locations that have been acquired close down, move onto the next steps.	Don’t edit the details of the old locations to reflect the new name Unverify the listings for the old locations Finally, contact Google to ask them to mark all the old locations listings as moved to the new location.	Mergers and acquisitions are complex and you may want to hire a consultant to help you manage this major business event digitally. You may also find the workload significantly lightened by using a product like Moz Local to manage the overhaul of core citations for all the businesses involved in the event.
Manage a Spam Listing	You realize a competitor or other business is violating Google’s guidelines, as in the case of creating listings at fake locations. You want to clean up the results to improve their relevance to the local community.	Find the listing in Google Maps Click the “suggest an edit” link Toggle the yes/no toggle to “yes” Choose the radio button for “spam” Google will typically email you if/when your edit is accepted	Google doesn’t always act on spam. If you follow the outlined steps and don’t get anywhere with them, you may want to post the spam example in the GMB forum in hopes that a Top Contributor there might escalate the issue. Unfortunately, spam is very common. Don’t be surprised if a spammer who gets caught comes right back on and continues to spam.
Manage a Listing with Bad Reviews	Your company is embarrassed by the negative reviews that are attached to its GMB listing. You wish you could just make the whole thing disappear.	If the reviews violate Google’s policy, consider these steps for taking action. Be advised that Google may not remove them, regardless of clear violations. If the reviews are negative but genuine, Google will not remove them. Remedy the problems, in-house, that consumers are citing and master responding to reviews in a way that can save customers and your business. If the business is unable to remedy structural problems being cited in reviews, the company may lack the necessary components for success.	Short of completely rebranding and moving your business to a new location, your business must be prepared to manage negative reviews. Unless consumers are citing illegal behaviors (in which case, you need legal counsel rather than marketing), negative reviews should be viewed as a FREE blueprint for fixing the issues that customers are citing. Bear in mind that many unhappy customers won’t take the time to complain. They’ll just go away in silence and never return to your business again. When a customer takes the time to voice a complaint, seize this as a golden opportunity to win him back and to improve your business for all future customers.

Whew! Eleven common Google My Business listing management scenarios, each requiring its own set of steps. It’s my hope that this chart will not only help explain why few cases really come down to deleting GMB listings, and also, that it will serve as a handy reference for you when particular situations arise in your workday.

Helpful links

1. If you’re not sure if you have problem listings, do a free lookup with the Moz Check Listing tool.
2. If you’re a Moz Pro member, you have access to our Q&A forum. Please feel free to ask our community questions if you’re unsure about whether a GMB listing is problematic.
3. The Google My Business Forum can be a good bet for getting advice from volunteer Top Contributors (and sometimes Google staffers) about problem GMB listings. Be prepared to share all of the details of your scenario if you post there.
4. If you find yourself dealing with difficult Google My Business listing issues on a regular basis, I recommend reading the work of Joy Hawkins, who is one of the best technical local SEOs in the industry.
5. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is to contact Google directly to try to get help with a tricky problem. Here is their main Contact page. If you’re a Google Adwords customer, you can phone 1-866-2Google and select the option for Google My Business support. Another way to seek help (and this is sometimes the fastest route) is to tweet to Google’s GMB Twitter account. Be advised that not every Google rep has had the benefits of complete training. Some interactions may be more satisfactory than others. And, if you are a digital marketer, do be prepared to set correct client expectations that not all problems can be resolved. Sometimes, even your best efforts may not yield the desired results, due to the limitations of Google’s local product.

Why it’s worth the effort to work to resolve problematic Google listings

Cumulatively speaking, inaccurate and duplicative listings can misinform and misdirect consumers while also sapping your ranking strength. Local business listings are a form of customer service, and when this element of your overall marketing plan is neglected, it can lead to significant loss of traffic and revenue. It can also negatively impact reputation in the form of negative reviews citing wrong online driving directions or scenarios in which customers end up at the old location of a business that has moved.

Taken altogether, these unwanted outcomes speak to the need for an active location data management strategy that monitors all business listings for problems and takes appropriate actions to remedy them. Verifying listings and managing duplicates isn’t glamorous work, but when you consider what’s at stake for the business, it’s not only necessary work, but even heroic. So, skill up and be prepared to tackle the thorniest situations. The successes can be truly rewarding!

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Source: Moz Blog

Ranking Fluctuations: What to Expect + How to React - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Rankings fluctuations can be panic-inducing, but they happen to everyone. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses why ranking fluctuations occur, the importance of keeping your cool during those darker moments, and how to identify when you should actually be concerned.

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 are chatting about rankings fluctuations.

So many of you who monitor your rankings in Google might do so weekly or daily or monthly. For those of you who do it daily, you probably observe something like this. I made this up. This is not actually the keyword I tracked, but these are the numbers that I saw. So, basically, you might see that, over the course of four or five days, you hop around from number one, number two, one, one, one. But as you go down this list to the ranking position four or five or six, you're seeing things like oh number 5, and then I'm ranking number 21, number 19, 7, 8. Gosh, it's just going all over the place. This happens quite a bit actually.

Many folks ask questions on the Moz Q&A platform and all over the web and to their SEO professionals like, "Why are my rankings jumping around so much? Is this bad? Is there something I should do?" The answer, generally speaking, is no. Rankings bounce around like this in most search results, especially in the sort of bottom half of page one and especially page two, three, four, or five quite a bit, a tremendous amount in fact.

We see SERP fluctuation as being quite high, quite common and consistently so. It is rarely actually the case that you see that number one, number two, number three positions that stay that way for extended periods of time, many weeks or months without moving at all. Some random days you will check it and you will see some of these changes. Others you'll see them in their consistent positions.

What to expect in rankings flux

A few things to note:

1. There is obviously more fluctuation in the lower down results, on average, usually than there are in the higher results.

So if I get my rankings up here, can I expect no flux? Not exactly.

2. When you first gain rankings in the top three, four, or five, let's say, you will usually see more fluctuation than after you've been there for a sustained period.

So what's unusual is to see a ton of rankings fluctuation for a URL that's been ranking for a keyword in position one or two or three for two or three months in a row. That's pretty uncommon. You might see one or two position changes, but you usually don't see four or five or six.

3. You should also expect to see more fluctuation, even in the top results, when there's a highly temporal topic or result. That you can observe by looking at the search results and seeing if Google has got that gray text that says three hours ago or two days ago, or they give a specific date of when it came out, March 15th. When you see those and lots of them, you should expect more fluctuation.

What to do

What should you do about this? Well, first off, please, please, please, please...

1. Do not freak out. A lot of people just lose their cool with their SEOs or with their team or with themselves. They panic. I would urge you not to arbitrarily change your tactics.

If you're observing rankings fluctuation like the kind I'm describing -- so down here in the five, six, seven positions, up here in the three, four, five positions from day to day -- that's okay. You are not doing something wrong or bad, at least not necessarily and not usually.

2. I would urge you to use weeks as your time period, not days, and measure at least four to six weeks of rankings before you start to freak out over, "Hey, there's too much rankings fluctuation."

3. You should also compare your own fluctuation to your competitors. So if you see, hey, I'm ranking here and I'm fluctuating a bunch, oh, but it turns actually the positions around me are also fluctuating, guess what? It's not you. It's the SERP. It's Google. Don't blame yourself for this.

4. I would try and compare your rankings to traffic. So it can be the case that if you're hitting your rankings on a particular day or from a personalized device or a geographic area or something like that, that you could be getting different kinds of rankings than what's actually being seen by most people.

• Now, rank trackers, like Moz's or SEMrush's or Ahrefs or Searchmetrics or any of these folks who do rank tracking at scale, use a non-personalized, non-geo-biased system. I'll show you how to replicate it in the comments if you're interested. But you should expect that you might see some of that bias.
• So what I'd urge you to do is also look at your page traffic. So if you look at traffic to your pages and then organic search, if this is me over here with Healthfind, maybe I should check how many visits from organic search did this page get. Oh, actually it looks pretty consistent from day to day and week to week. Well, maybe I shouldn't panic then. Probably you shouldn't.

5. The thing to be concerned about is precipitous falls over many pages in a quick period of time. So if you see that you've got 20 pages on your site, 50 pages on your site, they all lost rankings yesterday and fairly significantly, okay, that's cause for real concern. Now I would go investigate. I'd see if you did something wrong, or if maybe Google caught something that they thought was sketchy that you were doing, or if they devalued some of your links, or you had some site problems, whatever. But normal flux, so two to four positions regularly at the top or more down at the bottom, that is to be expected.

Don't panic. You're going to be okay. Google fluctuates all the time. And we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Source: Moz Blog

Level Up Your SEO Skills at MozCon Workshops: SEO-Intensive

Posted by Danielle_Launders

Can’t get enough of MozCon? Neither can we.

Join us a day early for our new half-day working session series and have fun learning, brainstorming, and collaborating with some of the brightest minds at Moz.

They’ll cover all of the nitty-gritty aspects of SEO to help those new to the industry have a better understanding of ranking in the SERPs.

Those who are more experienced will get some hands-on time with Moz’s SEO experts to fine-tune their skills and take home some actionable tips and action plans.

I’m in! Save my spot!

The details

Exclusive to MozCon attendees, these additional workshops are interactive 75-minute working sessions designed to have attendees leave with outlines, strategies, and action plans to start implementing right away. You’ll be able to customize your workshop agenda by choosing 3 out of the 5 available workshops to attend in the order of your choice. Read through the workshop descriptions below so you can plan your perfect day when you register.

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MozCon Workshops: SEO-Intensive Schedule

Sunday, July 16
$400

12:30–1:00pm | Registration
1:00–2:15pm | First Workshop
2:15–2:25pm | Break
2:25–3:40pm | Second Workshop
3:40–3:50pm | Break
3:50–5:05pm | Third Workshop

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The workshops

The 10 Jobs of SEO-focused Content

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz

Content creation, optimization, and amplification are powerful levers for SEO, but with more companies than ever investing in the practice, you'll need a competitive edge to get value. More than how to rank content, Rand shows how to make the right content for the right platforms, get it in front of the right people, and earn value from that visibility.

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Keyword Targeting for RankBrain and Beyond

Dr. Pete Meyers, Marketing Scientist

The days of one keyword, one page are gone. Thanks in part to machine learning, Google can interpret keyword concepts, understand intent, answer questions, and even guess questions you didn't ask. Dr. Pete guides you through a future-proof approach to keyword research, keyword targeting, and content structure and help you understand where to put your effort.

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Make the Most of Moz Pro: Insider Tips & Tricks

Brian Childs, Training Program Manager

Want to save time doing SEO analysis? Learn shortcuts and lesser-known features in Moz Pro from our Training Program Manager, Brian Childs. Unlock the full power of Moz Pro as Brian shows you easy ways to develop reports, analyze competitors, and find link building opportunities.

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Risk-Averse Link Building at Scale

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist

Nearly all link building strategies tend to either fall afoul of Google's guidelines or fail to deliver effective, sustainable results. Learn a practical strategy for scaling link acquisition efforts comfortably within Google's guidelines, detailing the strategies, tools, and tactics to amplify link growth. Participants will walk away with a sound foundation for executing white hat link building campaigns safely and effectively.

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Technical KPI-driven SEO Audits

Britney Muller, SEO & Content Architect

Learn how to deliver technical SEO audits that are rooted in a website’s specific goals. What sections of the site convert the most visitors and need close attention to detail? What technical site fixes would provide the most opportunity?

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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!

Source: Moz Blog

Open Letter to Web Designers: Please Make SEO Friendly Websites

Open Letter to Web Designers: Please Make SEO Friendly Websites

After the incredible craze for a well-structured SEO strategy in today’s internet world, it’s surprising that there are still many web developers who completely overlook the idea of SEO when creating a website.

However, the simple fact of the matter is that if you want to increase your brand’s awareness and bring more traffic to your website, effective site optimization should be your top priority. Think of it as a well-constructed powerful machine that won’t work without a small but essential screw. That small screw is SEO – an integral part of your success.

SEO Friendly Websites

According to Sam McRoberts, a CEO of VUDU Marketing, search engine optimization is no longer viewed only as a marketing tactic, but as a branding play. It’s not a brainer that more and more people (between 80-90%) are checking reviews prior to any purchase, and the number is constantly on the increase.

So, do you want your business to go viral or not?

Take a look at some of the best practices how to make search engines crawl more easily and your web design more SEO friendly.

Create an effective URL structure

If you want people to swing up a visit and navigate your site with a breeze, you need to invest your time into creating a friendlier URL. Extremely long URLs will bounce the visitors of your site, especially if they are trying to memorize it or create a link to it. Keep in mind, URLs are displayed in search results below the document’s title and can, therefore, provide a search user with a valuable information on the page. Instead of making long and confusing URLs with fewer recognizable words, create an optimized consumer-pleasant URL structure that contains relevant keywords. This should help both the search engines and users get the clear layout of your page content. Google suggests using shorter ones with generic page names and excessive keywords as it will remove the ambiguity and make the content much clearer to the user.

https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

Use optimized keywords and a high-quality content

Ever since the beginning of an online search, marketers have been using the tactic of keyword search to increase customers’ exposure to the brand. Not only are you given the ability to incorporate keywords in any article and the design of your site, but you can also use them to optimize images. Make sure you find best keywords prior to the beginning of the SEO campaign. Google Keyword Planner, a handy tool that will make the search much more efficient, will help you with that.

No matter how effective keyword search is in manipulating search engines, “stuffing” keywords literally everywhere, from website slogans to URLs, can be detrimental to your business rather than critical. For example, if the targeted keyword is “Sydney Opera House” and the content you include doesn’t provide any relevant or natural information about it, but irrelevant content instead, then you will fail to rank for “Sydney Opera”. Use your keywords as naturally as possible and always know the topics your visitors will be looking for.

https://www.promotemyplace.com/blog/choosing-keywords-for-holiday-rental-website

Improve your site’s navigation

There is nothing more frustrating and intimidating for users than having to spend their precious time trying to find the desired content. If you want to avoid this kind of scenario, you need to develop a quick, simple and efficient navigation. The first thing you should be concerned about is how your potential visitors will go from your root page to other pages with more specific content.

While dropdown and flyout menus can be hard for both robots and people to handle, text links and easily manageable items can take a headache out of unnecessary searching for the right content. Also, you should consider creating breadcrumb lists – rows which include internal links at the top or bottom of the page and enable your visitors to quickly navigate and reach the section they want in a matter of a second.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/breadcrumbs-in-web-design-examples-and-best-practices/

Integrate social media into your website

Whether you like it or not, we have all more or less become dependent on social media which, consequently, has a major effect on many aspects of our lives. The fact that brands spend a huge amount of money to maintain their online social presence supports the idea that it has become very difficult to achieve business success without advertising the product on social platforms and attracting social media followers. Integrate social media into your web’s design and share your content across the web. Set up a social media sharing by integrating social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ into your website’s design. Promote sharing buttons at the bottom of each page so that visitors can share the content and increase the number of inbound links. This will undoubtedly increase your brand’s awareness and create a group of loyal customers with a unique source of customer intelligence.

http://blog.ourchurch.com/2013/10/21/12-ways-to-integrate-social-media-into-your-website/

Create an eye-catching meta description

Another part of search marketing that deserves much attention is a page’s description meta tag. Meta description includes the snippet of the text displayed beneath the listing in the results which gives the summary of what the page is about. Google will use these snippets depending on whether or not they match up with the user’s query. To achieve this, you need to create a readable, eye-catching description presented in a sentence or a short paragraph in bold types. To make sure you’ve crafted the contents that will increase your site’s search engine rank, make use of Google Webmaster Tools – a tool which provides you with a useful content analysis. Also, a compelling and effective meta description can simulate people to click through your site which has a major effect on the rankings.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Why is SEO so important?

The greatest thing about the SEO is its ability to give you global presence, make you more visible and, most importantly, help you reach more potential customers. Building a professional site with an amazing theme is a good starting point, but it’s not enough to reach your ultimate goal. SEO will help you discover what your user’s love or hate, deliver great user experience, and, eventually, discover your target audience. Also, SEO grabs more market share. Finally, be mindful that this invaluable tool is gaining popularity on daily basis and that even the most successful businesses invested in it. It’s important to keep up with fashions and improve your position. So, develop a winning SEO strategy, get yourself a top-ranked position and outmaneuver your leading competitors.

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About the Author

Maja Mrsic is a professional content writer and editor at Active Collab. After finishing her Master’s Degree in English studies, she pursued a career in content and technical writing in digital marketing.

Source: SEO For Growth

Q&A: TopRank Marketing’s SEO Experts Share Tips for Creating Better Content

As a member of TopRank Marketing’s (epic) content team, it’s certainly no surprise that I spend much of my day developing and executing content strategies for the wide array of client programs I work on.

And as I settle in for a content extravaganza each day, my work is guided by an important agency principle: Create content that allows our clients to be the best answer for their audience.

Lucky for me—and perhaps unlucky for them—my work station is strategically placed within staring and shouting distance of every one of our SEO experts. As seasoned marketers know, quality and strategic SEO is absolutely key to crafting content that helps you satisfy your audience’s quest for answers. So, I’m often picking the brains of my neighbors to help me create content that will get results.

Today, I summoned insights  from three members of our SEO team to share with you. Below you’ll find some helpful tips and insights for better leveraging SEO within your content planning and creation efforts.

What does the “perfect balance” between SEO and user experience look like?

User experience should have the “perfect balance” of SEO without anyone realizing that it’s been optimized already. The SEO aspect of content or user experience should be baked into the process early so that the optimization is as natural as possible.

The Takeaway: Make SEO an intricate part of your content planning and creation process, rather than an afterthought.

Kevin Cotch, SEO Analyst

How can marketers leverage existing content to take advantage of SEO opportunities?

I have two favorite ways to use existing content to take advantage of SEO opportunities. The first one is to look for evergreen content that doesn’t really move KPIs. For example, I love to find a blog post that drives thousands of visits and doesn’t really drive many leads. Chances are that post does a great job answering a searcher’s question and that’s why it is receiving loads of organic traffic. I like to try and figure out what question the searcher will ask next. Once you’ve figured that out you can add a call to action that offers an opt in to an email campaign or offer the visitor a downloadable asset.

You can also leverage existing content by identifying what Google doesn’t like. Many companies have multiple blog posts about ancient holiday parties, volunteer events, etc. Google will spend time and resources adding that content to their index and then never let it see the light of day. I like to look for pages and posts that are indexable and don’t receive organic traffic. Then I do one of two things. I either tell Google to ignore it or I try to improve the content so it is of value to searchers.

The Takeaway: Your work doesn’t end when your content is published. Take the time to analyze how your content is performing, and take advantage of opportunities to make it better for the user and search engines.

Steve Slater, Digital Advertising & SEO Manager

What are some key characteristics of “good” SEO content?

Overall, I think that the most important factors that make a piece of content good for SEO (i.e. robots) are the same as those that make content good for users (i.e. humans).

The best content:

• Is targeted towards a specific niche
• Is built upon an understanding of which questions and pain points are relevant to said niche
• Delivers value to readers by answering questions or helping to address pain points

The Takeaway: When you understand what your audience is searching for you can create amazing content that delivers value to people and search engines.

Evan Prokop, Senior Analytics Manager

Bonus: What’s one of the quickest ways to evaluate a piece of content’s SEO value or opportunities?

Kevin: One of the quickest ways to evaluate a piece of content’s SEO value or opportunities would be seeing how many organic conversions it drives. Organic conversions can range from actual purchases to subscribing to an email list. Marketers should put less emphasis on keyword rankings for SEO value as there are more than just one keyword that drives people (organically) to a website or conversion.

Steve: One of the quickest ways to evaluate a piece of content’s SEO value is to look at the Organic Landing Page report in Google Analytics. This report tells you the pages that searchers land on right after they see search results. This means that the pages in this report are the pages that come up in search results. When you are looking through this report you can identify pages that drive conversions and you can also identify pages that drive searchers back to Google to look for a better answer.

Evan: Put yourself in your reader’s shoes by doing a search using a phrase that you think your content is most relevant for (i.e. should rank for) and honestly ask yourself, or a friend, if it delivers a satisfying answer to what you searched for. If it doesn’t for you, you can bet it won’t for your readers either.

Next, compare your content to what’s already ranking. Is your title at least as compelling as the competition? Are you covering the topic as well? Does the page load fast and look nice on either desktop or mobile? If the answer to any of these questions is no, there’s your opportunity.

What are your burning SEO and content questions? Ask them in the comments section below.

Source: TopRank® Marketing

5 WordPress Plugins You Should Be Using for SEO

With the thousands of WordPress plugins available it is tough to know which are the best ones for SEO. There are the obvious SEO plugins you should already be using, such as Yoast or the All in One SEO Pack, then there are the not-so-obvious plugins that can help boost your site’s SEO even more. Below are 5 WordPress plugins you should download right now. Good News: they are all free.

Broken Link Checker

Broken links on your website have a negative effect on SEO. Search engines rank websites by crawling links and when there are multiple dead links within your site it can result in spiders no longer crawling the site. Not Found (404 errors) also cause poor user experience, which can hurt your site’s rankings. Broken Link Checker is a great tool that monitors your entire website searching for broken links. It can alert you via email or on the WordPress dashboard whenever a broken link is found.

Redirection

Speaking of broken links, you’ll need a plugin that can help redirect your 404 errors to the new appropriate pages. The Redirection plugin easily allows you to monitor all your 404 errors and 301 redirects. Whether you are migrating from an old website or just need to redirect one page, the Redirection plugin is the one plugin you’ll be sure to need.

Internal Link Building

Internal linking is extremely beneficial for your website’s SEO, however there are certain rules to follow if you want to get results. Creating internal links within your site helps tell Google which other pages on your website are important. It also helps provide site users with further reading options and information. Internal linking can also help improve rankings for certain keywords if used correctly. The Internal Link Building plugin easily allows you to link to blog posts and pages on your site by letting you assign keywords given to specific destination URLs.

Google XML Sitemap

Creating a sitemap for your website is another important tool for SEO because it outlines the structure of your website for search engines. A sitemap lists all the pages within your site that you want search engines to crawl and index. Therefore, whenever content is changed or updates are made to the site, a sitemap alerts Google and other search engines more quickly to be indexed faster. The Yoast SEO plugin and All in One SEO Pack already have a built-in sitemap feature, but if you aren’t using either of these, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin is another great option. All you have to do is activate the plugin and then register your sitemap with Google Webmaster Tools. Once you have successfully submitted your sitemap, crawlers can easily see the complete structure of your site.

All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are becoming more popular in search results every day. If you aren’t familiar with what a rich snippet is, it is a search result that displays a short summary of the most important and precise information a user is looking for. They typically attract more users’ attention because they are displayed as a larger result and provide information right away. Recipes, products, restaurants, events, businesses, and more can all be shown as a rich snippet and contain interactive elements such as ratings, price, photos, and more. The All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin can help your website rank higher as a rich snippet.

All of the above plugins are a great way to help improve your site’s SEO. However, there are many more plugins and tools available that you can use to reach your goals. Learn about other free SEO tools to increase traffic to your WordPress site, or if you have a favorite WordPress plugin let us know in the comments.

Source: Netvantage Marketing

Smart retailer hacks for immediate SEO results

I want to talk with you about retail this week: specifically about a couple of hacks that site owners are using to improve their Google rankings.

The first one we’re looking at is stars. If you can get your stars found in search then it will help your click-through rate immensely. The way you can do this depends on your site. Try going into Google Search Console and click on ‘Structured Data’. You’ll be able to see which pages on your site already have structured data, which is how the stars are usually displayed. If you have a star product rating on your site, structured data is the way to get it into search results. We’ve seen remarkable progress in just weeks for some sites, so it’s worth investigating.

Another thing you can do is to get your important product information as high on the page as possible. You might have some regular content currently at the top of the page that talks about specials and sales, or maybe a slider that is taking up valuable screen real estate. We’re finding that the more of this content you have, the lower it will suppress your rankings. Move that content down and put it below the actual product. When people do a search, they want to get to the product first. Moving that content actually makes that page rank higher.

One more thing we’ve been talking about is building your brand. We’ve seen bloggers who love the content they’re putting out, but they’re not doing the work to move it up the rankings. Successful bloggers do the work to build their brands, and the results come to them. Don’t worry about building backlinks. Build your brand instead.

This article was originally published on stewartmedia.com.au

Source: SmartCompany