Machine SEO

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Looking Beyond Keywords: How to Drive Conversion with Visual Search & Search by Camera

Let’s play a game. I’ll show you an image. You type in the keyword to find the exact product featured in the image online. Ready?

Google her sunglasses…

What did you type? Brown sunglasses? Brown sunglasses with heavy frame? Retro-look brown sunglasses with heavy frame? It doesn’t matter how long-tail you go, it will be difficult to find that exact pair, if not impossible. And you’re not alone.

For 74% of consumers, traditional text-based keyword searches are inefficient at helping find the right products online.

But much of your current search behavior is based on the false premise that you can describe things in words. In many situations, we can’t.

And this shows in the data. Sometimes we forget that Google Images accounts for 22.6% of all searches — searches where traditional methods of searching were not the best fit.

Image credit: Sparktoro

But I know what you’re thinking. Image SEO drives few to no sessions, let alone conversions. Why should I invest my limited resources into visual marketing?

Because humans are visual creatures. And now, so too are mobile phones — with big screens, multiple cameras, and strong depth perception.

Developments in computer vision have led to a visual marketing renaissance. Just look to visual search leader Pinterest, who reported that 55% of their users shop on the platform. How well do those users convert? Heap Analytics data shows that on shopping cart sizes under $199, image-based Pinterest Ads have an 8.5% conversion rate. To put that in context, that's behind Google’s 12.3% but in front of Facebook’s 7.2%.

Not only can visual search drive significant conversions online. Image recognition is also driving the digitalization and monetization in the real world.

The rise of visual search in Google

Traditionally, image search functioned like this: Google took a text-based query and tried to find the best visual match based on metadata, markups, and surrounding copy.

But for many years now, the image itself can also act as the search query. Google can search for images with images. This is called visual search.

Google has been quietly adding advanced image recognition capabilities to mobile Google Images over the last years, with a focus on the fashion industry as a test case for commercial opportunities (although the functionality can be applied to automotive, travel, food, and many other industries). Plotting the updates, you can see clear stepping stone technologies building on the theme of visual search.

Related images (April 2013): Click on a result to view visually similar images. The first foray into visual search.
Collections (November 2015): Allows users to save images directly from Google’s mobile image search into folders. Google’s answer to a Pinterest board.
Product images in web results (October 2016): Product images begin to display next to website links in mobile search.
Product details on images (December 2016): Click on an image result to display product price, availability, ratings, and other key information directly in the image search results.
Similar items (April 2017): Google can identify products, even within lifestyle images, and showcases similar items you can buy online.
Style ideas (April 2017): The flip side to similar items. When browsing fashion product images on mobile, Google shows you outfit montages and inspirational lifestyle photos to highlight how the product can be worn in real life.
Image badges (August 2017): Label on the image indicate what other details are available, encouraging more users to click; for example, badges such as “recipe” or a timestamp for pages featuring videos. But the most significant badge is “product,” shown if the item is available for purchase online.
Image captions (March 2018): Display the title tag and domain underneath the image.

Combining these together, you can see powerful functionality. Google is making a play to turn Google Images into shoppable product discovery — trying to take a bite out of social discovery platforms and give consumers yet another reason to browse on Google, rather than your e-commerce website.

Image credit: Google

What’s more, Google is subtly leveraging the power of keyword search to enlighten users about these new features. According to 1st May MozCast, 18% of text-based Google searches have image blocks, which drive users into Google Images.

This fundamental change in Google Image search comes with a big SEO opportunity for early adopters. Not only for transactional queries, but higher up the funnel with informational queries as well.

Let’s say you sell designer fashion. You could not only rank #1 with your blog post on a informational query on “kate middleton style,” including an image on your article result to enhance the clickability of your SERP listing. You can rank again on page 1 within the image pack, then have your products featured in Similar Items — all of which drives more high-quality users to your site.

And the good news? This is super simple to implement.

How to drive organic sessions with visual search

The new visual search capabilities are all algorithmically selected based on a combination of schema and image recognition. Google told TechCrunch:

“The images that appear in both the style ideas and similar items grids are also algorithmically ranked, and will prioritize those that focus on a particular product type or that appear as a complete look and are from authoritative sites.”

This means on top of continuing to establish Domain Authority site-wide, you need images that are original, high resolution, and clearly focus on a single theme. But most importantly, you need images with perfectly implemented structured markup to rank in Google Images.

To rank your images, follow these four simple steps:

1. Implement schema markup

To be eligible for similar items, you need product markup on the host page that meets the minimum metadata requirements of:

Name
Image
Price
Currency
Availability

But the more quality detail, the better, as it will make your results more clickable.

2. Check your implementation

Validate your implementation by running a few URLs through Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. But remember, just being valid is sometimes not enough. Be sure to look into the individual field result to ensure the data is correctly populating and user-friendly.

3. Get indexed

Be aware, it can take up to one week for your site’s images to be crawled. This will be helped along by submitting an image XML sitemap in Google Search Console.

4. Look to Google Images on mobile

Check your implementation by doing a site:yourdomain.cctld query on mobile in Google Images.

If you see no image results badges, you likely have an implementation issue. Go back to step 2. If you see badges, click a couple to ensure they show your ideal markup in the details.

Once you confirm all is well, then you can begin to search for your targeted keywords to see how and where you rank.

Like all schema markup, how items display in search results is at Google’s discretion and not guaranteed. However, quality markup will increase the chance of your images showing up.

It’s not always about Google

Visual search is not limited to Google. And no, I’m not talking about just Bing. Visual search is also creating opportunities to be found and drive conversion on social networks, such as Pinterest. Both brands allow you to select objects within images to narrow down your visual search query.

Image credit: MarTech Today

On top of this, we also have shoppable visual content on the rise, bridging the gap between browsing and buying. Although at present, this is more often driven by data feeds and tagging more so than computer vision. For example:

Brahmin offers shoppable catalogs
Topshop features user-generated shoppable galleries
Net-a-Porter’s online magazine features shoppable article
Ted Baker’s campaigns with shoppable videos
Instagram & Pinterest both monetize with shoppable social media posts

Such formats reduce the number of steps users need to take from content to conversion. And more importantly for SEOs, they exclude the need for keyword search.

I see a pair of sunglasses on Instagram. I don’t need to Google the name, then click on the product page and then convert. I use the image as my search query, and I convert. One click. No keywords.

...But what if I see those sunglasses offline?

Digitize the world with camera-based search

The current paradigm for SEOs is that we wait for a keyword search to occur, and then compete. Not only for organic rankings, but also for attention versus paid ads and other rich features.

With computer vision, you can cut the keyword search out of the customer journey. By entering the funnel before the keyword search occurs, you can effectively exclude your competitors.

Who cares if your competitor has the #1 organic spot on Google, or if they have more budget for Adwords, or a stronger core value proposition messaging, if consumers never see it?

Consumers can skip straight from desire to conversion by taking a photo with their smartphone.

Brands taking search by camera mainstream

Search by camera is well known thanks to Pinterest Lens. Built into the app, simply point your camera phone at a product discovered offline for online recommendations of similar items.

If you point Lens at a pair of red sneakers, it will find you visually similar sneakers as well as idea on how to style it.

Image credit: Pinterest

But camera search is not limited to only e-commerce or fashion applications.

Say you take a photo of strawberries. Pinterest understand you’re not looking for more pictures of strawberries, but for inspiration, so you'll see recipe ideas.

The problem? For you, or your consumers, Pinterest is unlikely to be a day-to-day app. To be competitive against keyword search, search by camera needs to become part of your daily habit.

Samsung understands this, integrating search by camera into their digital personal assistant Bixby, with functionality backed by powerful partnerships.

Pinterest Lens powers its images search
Amazon powers its product search
Google translates text
Foursquare helps to find places nearby

Bixby failed to take the market by storm, and so is unlikely to be your go-to digital personal assistant. Yet with the popularity of search by camera, it’s no surprise that Google has recently launched their own version of Lens in Google Assistant.

Search engines, social networks, and e-commerce giants are all investing in search by camera...

...because of impressive impacts on KPIs. BloomReach reported that e-commerce websites reached by search by camera resulted in:

48% more product views
75% greater likelihood to return
51% higher time on site
9% higher average order value

Camera search has become mainstream. So what’s your next step?

How to leverage computer vision for your brand

As a marketer, your job is to find the right use case for your brand, that perfect point where either visual search or search by camera can reduce friction in conversion flows.

Many case studies are centered around snap-to-shop. See an item you like in a friend's home, at the office, or walking past you on the street? Computer vision takes you directly from picture to purchase.

But the applications of image recognition are only limited by your vision. Think bigger.

Branded billboards, magazines ads, product packaging, even your brick-and-mortar storefront displays all become directly actionable. Digitalization with snap-to-act via a camera phone offers more opportunities than QR codes on steroids.

If you run a marketplace website, you can use computer vision to classify products: Say a user wants to list a pair of shoes for sale. They simply snap a photo of the item. With that photo, you can automatically populate the fields for brand, color, category, subcategory, materials, etc., reducing the number of form fields to what is unique about this item, such as the price.

A travel company can offer snap-for-info on historical attractions, a museum on artworks, a healthy living app on calories in your lunch.

What about local SEO? Not only could computer vision show the rating or menu of your restaurant before the user walks inside, but you could put up a bus stop ad calling for hungry travelers to take a photo. The image triggers Google Maps, showing public transport directions to your restaurant. You can take the customer journey, quite literally. Tell them where to get off the bus.

And to build such functionality is relatively easy, because you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are many open-source image recognition APIs to help you leverage pre-trained image classifiers, or from which you can train your own:

Google Cloud Vision
Amazon Rekognition
IBM Watson
Salesforce Einstein
Slyce
Clarifai

Let’s make this actionable. You now know computer vision can greatly improve your user experience, conversion rate and sessions. To leverage this, you need to:

Make your brand visual interactive through image recognition features
Understand how consumers visually search for your products
Optimize your content so it’s geared towards visual technology

Visual search is permeating online and camera search is becoming commonplace offline. Now is the time to outshine your competitors. Now is the time to understand the foundations of visual marketing. Both of these technologies are stepping stones that will lead the way to an augmented reality future.

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Source: Moz Blog

Friday, June 1, 2018

PICA Protocol: A Visualization Prescription for Impactful Data Storytelling - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by Lea-Pica

If you find your presentations are often met with a lukewarm reception, it's a sure sign it's time for you to invest in your data storytelling. By following a few smart rules, a structured approach to data visualization could make all the difference in how stakeholders receive and act upon your insights. In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, we're thrilled to welcome data viz expert Lea Pica to share her strategic methodology for creating highly effective charts.

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

Video Transcription

Hello, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm here to talk to you this week about a very hot topic in the digital marketing space. So my name is Lea Pica, and I am a data storytelling trainer, coach, speaker, blogger, and podcaster at LeaPica.com.

I want to tell you a little story. So as 12 years I spent as a digital analyst and SEM, I used to present insights a lot, but nothing ever happened as a result of it. People fell asleep or never responded. No action was being taken. So I decided to figure out what was happening, and I learned all these great tricks for doing it.

What I learned in my journey is that effective data visualization communicates a story quickly, clearly, accurately, and ethically, and it had really four main goals — to inform decisions, to inspire action, to galvanize people, and most importantly to communicate the value of the work that you do.

Now, there are lots of things you can do, but I was struggling to find one specific process that was going to help me get from what I was trying to communicate to getting people to act on it. So I developed my own methodology. It's called the PICA Protocol, and it's a visualization prescription for impactful data storytelling. What I like about this protocol is that it's practical, approachable. It's not complicated. It's prescriptive, and it's repeatable. I believe it's going to get you where you need to go every time.

So let's say one of your managers, clients, stakeholders is asking you for something like, "What are our most successful keyword groups?" Something delightfully vague like that. Now, before you jump into your data visualization platform and start dropping charts like it's hot, I want you to take a step back and start with the first step in the process, which is P for purpose.

P for Purpose

So I found that every great data visualization started with a very focused question or questions.

Why do you exist? Get philosophical with it.
What need of my audience are you meeting?
What decisions are you going to inform?

These questions help you get really focused about what you're going to present and avoid the sort of needle in a haystack approach to seeing what might stick.

So the answers to these questions are going to help you make an important decision, to choose an appropriate chart type for the message that you're trying to convey. Some of the ways you want to do that — I hear you guys are like into keywords a little bit — you want to listen for the keywords of what people are asking you for. So in this case, we have "most successful." Okay, that indicates a comparison. Different types or campaigns or groups, those are categories. So it sounds like what we're going for is a categorical comparison. There are other kinds of keywords you can look for, like changing over time, how this affects that. Answers or opinions. All of those are going to help you determine your most appropriate visual.

Now, in this case, we have a categorical comparison, so I always go back to basics. It's an oldie but goodie, but we're going to do the tried-and-true bar chart. It's universally understood and doesn't have a learning curve. What I would not recommend are pie charts. No, no, no. Unless you only have two segments in your visual and one is unmistakably larger than the other, pie charts are not your best choice for communicating categorical comparison, composition, or ranking.

I for Insight

So we have our choice. We're now going to move on to the next step in the methodology, which is I for insight. So an insight is something that gives a person a capacity to understand something quickly, accurately, and intuitively. Think of those criteria.

So here, does my display surface the story and answer these questions intuitively? That's our criteria. The components of that are:

Layout and orientation. So how is the chart configured? Very often we'll use vertical bar charts for categorical comparison, but that will end up having diagonal labels if they're really long, and unless your audience walks around like this all the time, it's going to be confusing because that would be weird. So you want to make sure it's oriented well.
Labeling. In the case of bars, I always prefer to label each bar directly rather than relying on just an axis, because then their eyes aren't jumping from bar to axis to bar to axis and they're paying more attention to you. That's also for line charts. Very often I'll label a line with a maximum, a minimum, and maybe the most important data point.
Interpretation of the data and where we're placing it, the location.
- So our interpretation, is it objective or is it subjective? So subjective words are like better or worse or stupid or awesome. Those are opinions. But objective words are higher, lower, most efficient, least efficient. So you really want your observations to be objective.
- Have you presented it ethically? Or have you manipulated the view in a way that isn't telling a really ethical picture, like adjusting a bar axis above zero, which is a no-no? But you can do that with a line graph in certain cases. So look for those nuances. You want to basically ask yourself, "Would I be able to uphold this visual in a court of law or sleep at night?"
- Location of that insight. So very often we'll put our insights, our interpretation down here or in really tiny letters up here. Then up here we'll put big letters saying this is sales, my keyword category. No. What we want to do is we want to put our interpretation up here. This top area is the most important real estate on your visual. That's where their eyes are going to look first. So think of this like a BuzzFeed headline for your visual. What do you want them to take away? You can always put what the chart is here in a little subtitle.
Make recommendations. Because that's what a really powerful visual is going to do.
- I always suggest having two recommendations at least, because this way you're empowering your audience with a choice. This way you can actually be subjective. That is okay in this case, because that's your unique subject matter expertise.
- Are your recommendations accountable to specific people? Are they feasible?
- What's the cost of not acting on your recommendations? Put some urgency behind it. So I like to put my recommendations in a little box or callout on the side here so it's really clear after I've presented my facts.

C for Context

The next step in the methodology is C for context. What this is saying is, "Do I have all the data points I need to paint a complete picture, or is there more to this story?" So some additional lenses you might find useful are past period comparison, targets or benchmarks are useful, segmentation, things like geography, mobile device. Or what are the typical questions or arguments that your audience has when you present data? They can be super value contextual points.

In this case, I might decide that while they care about the number of sales, because that's most successful to them, I care about the keywords "conversion rates." So I'm going to add a second bar chart here like this, and I'm going to see there's a different story that's popping out here now.

Now, this is where your data storytelling really comes into play. This particular strategy is called a table lens or a side-by-side bar chart. It's what I recommend if you want to combine two categorical metrics together.

A for Aesthetics

Now, the last step in the methodology is A for aesthetics. Aesthetics are how things look. So it's not about making it look pretty. No, it's asking, "Does my viz comply with brain best practices of how we absorb information?"

1. Decrease visual noise

So the first step in doing that is we want to decrease visual noise, because that creates a lot of tension. So decreasing noise will increase the chance of a happy brain.

Now, I'm a crunchy granola hippie, so I love to detox every day. I've developed a data visualization detox that entails removing things like grid lines, borders, axis lines, line markers, and backgrounds. Get all of that junk out of there, really clean up. You can align everything to the left to make sure that the brain is following things properly down. Don't center everything.

2. Use uniform colors (plus one standout color for emphasis)

Now, you'll notice that most of my bars here have a uniform color — simple black. I like to color everything one color, because then I'll use a separate, standout color, like this blue, to strategically emphasize my key message. You might notice that I did that throughout this step for the words that I want you to pick out. That's why I colored these particular bars, because this feels like the story to me, because that is the storytelling part of this message.

Notice that I also colored the category in my observation to create a connective tissue between these two items. So using color intentionally means things like using green for good and red for bad, not arbitrarily, and then maybe blue for what's important.

3. Source your data

Then finally, you always want to source your data. That increases the trust. So you want to put your platform and your date range. Really simple.

So this is the anatomy of an awesome data viz. I've adapted it from a great book called "Good Charts" by my friend, Scott Berinato. What I have found that by using this protocol, you're going to end up with these wonderful, raving fans who are going to love your work and understand your value. I included a little kitty fan because I can. It's my Whiteboard Friday.

So that is the protocol. I actually have included a free gift for you today. If you click the link at the end of this post, you'll be able to sign up for a Chart Detox Checklist, a full printable PICA Protocol prescription and a Chart Choosing Guide.

Get the PICA Protocol prescription

I would actually love to hear from you. What are the kinds of struggles that you have in presenting your insights to stakeholders, where you just feel like they're not getting the value of what you're doing? I'd love to hear any questions you have about the methodology as well.

So thank you for watching this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next week, and please remember to viz responsibly, my friends. Namaste.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Source: Moz Blog

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Getting Real with Retail: An Agency’s Guide to Inspiring In-Store Excellence

Posted by MiriamEllis

A screenshot of a negative 1-star review citing poor customer service

No marketing agency staffer feels good when they see a retail client getting reviews like this on the web.

But we can find out why they’re happening, and if we’re going above-and-beyond in our work, we just might be able to catalyze turning things around if we’re committed to being honest with clients and have an actionable strategy for their in-store improvements.

In this post, I’ll highlight some advice from an internal letter at Tesla that I feel is highly applicable to the retail sector. I’d also like to help your agency combat the retail blues headlining the news these days with big brands downsizing, liquidating and closing up shop — I’m going to share a printable infographic with some statistics with you that are almost guaranteed to generate the client positivity so essential to making real change. And, for some further inspiration, I’d like to offer a couple of anecdotes involving an Igloo cooler, a monk, reindeer moss, and reviews.

The genuine pain of retail gone wrong: The elusive cooler, "Corporate," and the man who could hardly stand

“Hi there,” I greeted the staffer at the customer service counter of the big department store. “Where would I find a small cooler?”

“We don’t have any,” he mumbled.

“You don’t have any coolers? Like, an Igloo cooler to take on a picnic to keep things cold?”

“Maybe over there,” he waved his hand in unconcern.

And I stood there for a minute, expecting him to actually figure this out for me, maybe even guide me to the appropriate aisle, or ask a manager to assist my transaction, if necessary. But in his silence, I walked away.

“Hi there,” I tried with more specificity at the locally owned general store the next day. “Where would I find something like a small Igloo cooler to keep things cold on a picnic?”

“I don’t know,” the staffer replied.

“Oh…” I said, uncomfortably.

“It could be upstairs somewhere,” he hazarded, and left me to quest for the second floor, which appeared to be a possibly-non-code-compliant catch-all attic for random merchandise, where I applied to a second dimly illuminated employee who told me I should probably go downstairs and escalate my question to someone else.

And apparently escalation was necessary, for on the third try, a very tall man was able to lift his gaze to some coolers on a top shelf… within clear view of the checkout counter where the whole thing began.

Why do we all have experiences like this?

“Corporate tells us what to carry” is the almost defensive-sounding refrain I have now received from three employees at two different Whole Foods Markets when asking if they could special order items for me since the Amazon buyout.

Because, you know, before they were Amazon-Whole Foods, staffers would gladly offer to procure anything they didn’t have in stock. Now, if they stop carrying that Scandinavian vitamin D-3 made from the moss eaten by reindeer and I’ve got to have it because I don’t want the kind made by irradiating sheep wool, I’d have to special order an entire case of it to get my hands on a bottle. Because, you know, “Corporate.”

Why does the distance between corporate and customer make me feel like the store I’m standing in, and all of its employees, are powerless? Why am I, the customer, left feeling powerless?

So maybe my search for a cooler, my worries about access to reindeer moss, and the laughable customer service I’ve experienced don’t signal “genuine pain.” But this does:

This is genuine pain. When customer service is failing to the point that badly treated patrons are being further distressed by the sight of fellow shoppers meeting the same fate, the cause is likely built into company structure. And your marketing agency is looking at a bonafide reputation crisis that could presage things like lawsuits, impactful reputation damage, and even closure for your valuable clients.

When you encounter customer service disasters, it begs questions like:

Could no one in my situation access a list of current store inventory, or, barring that, seek out merchandise with me instead of risking the loss of a sale?
Could no one offer to let “corporate” know that I’m dissatisfied with a “customer service policy” that would require me to spend $225 to buy a whole case of vitamins? Why am I being treated like a warehouse instead of a person?
Could no one at the pharmacy see a man with a leg wound about to fall over, grab a folding chair for him, and keep him safe, instead of risking a lawsuit?

I think a “no” answer to all three questions proceeds from definite causes. And I think Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, had such causes in mind when he recently penned a letter to his own employees.

“It must be okay for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.”

“Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the 'chain of command.' Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.

A major source of issues is poor communication between depts. The way to solve this is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.

In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a 'company rule' is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.”
- Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla

Let’s parlay this uncommon advice into retail. If it’s everyone’s job to access a free flow of information, use common sense, make the right thing happen, and change rules that don’t make sense, then:

Inventory is known by all store staff, and my cooler can be promptly located by any employee, rather than workers appearing helpless.
Employees have the power to push back and insist that, because customers still expect to be able to special order merchandise, a specific store location will maintain this service rather than disappoint consumers.
Pharmacists can recognize that patrons are often quite ill and can immediately place some chairs near the pharmacy counter, rather than close their eyes to suffering.

“But wait,” retailers may say. “How can I trust that an employee’s idea of ‘common sense’ is reliable?”

Let’s ask a monk for the answer.

“He took the time...”

I recently had the pleasure of listening to a talk given by a monk who was defining what it meant to be a good leader. He hearkened back to his young days, and to the man who was then the leader of his community.

“He was a busy man, but he took the time to get to know each of us one-on-one, and to be sure that we knew him. He set an example for me, and I watched him,” the monk explained.

Most monasteries function within a set of established rules, many of which are centuries old. You can think of these guidelines as a sort of policy. In certain communities, it’s perfectly acceptable that some of the members live apart as hermits most of the year, only breaking their meditative existence by checking in with the larger group on important holidays to share what they’ve been working on solo. In others, every hour has its appointed task, from prayer, to farming, to feeding people, to engaging in social activism.

The point is that everyone within a given community knows the basic guidelines, because at some point, they’ve been well-communicated. Beyond that, it is up to the individual to see whether they can happily live out their personal expression within the policy.

It’s a lot like retail can be, when done right. And it hinges on the question:

“Has culture been well-enough communicated to every employee so that he or she can act like the CEO of the company would in wide variety of circumstances?”

Or to put it another way, would Amazon owner Jeff Bezos be powerless to get me my vitamins?

The most accessible modern benchmark of good customer service — the online review — is what tells the public whether the CEO has “set the example.” Reviews tell whether time has been taken to acquaint every staffer with the business that employs them, preparing them to fit their own personal expression within the company’s vision of serving the public.

An employee who is able to recognize that an injured patron needs a seat while awaiting his prescription should be empowered to act immediately, knowing that the larger company supports treating people well. If poor training, burdensome chains of command, or failure to share brand culture are obstacles to common-sense personal initiative, the problem must be traced back to the CEO and corrected, starting from there.

And, of course, should a random staffer’s personal expression genuinely include an insurmountable disregard for other people, they can always be told it’s time to leave the monastery...

For marketing agencies, opportunity knocks

So your agency is auditing a valuable incoming client, and their negative reviews citing dirty premises, broken fixtures, food poisoning, slowness, rudeness, cluelessness, and lack of apparent concern make you say to yourself,

“Well, I was hoping we could clean up the bad data on the local business listings for this enterprise, but unless they clean up their customer service at 150 of their worst-rated locations, how much ROI are we really going to be able to deliver? What’s going on at these places?”

Let’s make no bones about this: Your honesty at this critical juncture could mean the difference between survival and closure for the brand.

You need to bring it home to the most senior level person you can reach in the organization that no amount of honest marketing can cover up poor customer service in the era of online reviews. If the brand has fallen to the level of the pharmacy I’ve cited, structural change is an absolute necessity. You can ask the tough questions, ask for an explanation of the bad reviews.

“But I’m just a digital marketer,” you may think. “I’m not in charge of whatever happens offline.”

Think again.

Headlines in retail land are horrid right now:

The mall crisis is secretly morphing into a full-on Armageddon - Business Insider
America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning - Bloomberg
Retail Wreck? Over 1,000 Stores Close in a Single Week - NBC
8 Companies Amazon is Killing - Investopedia
These major retailers have closed more than 5,000 stores in 2017 - Clark.com

If you were a retail brand C-suite and were swallowing these predictions of doom with your daily breakfast, wouldn’t you be looking for inspiration from anyone with genuine insight? And if a marketing agency should make it their business to confront the truth while also being the bearer of some better news, wouldn’t you be ready to listen?

What is the truth? That poor reviews are symptoms smart doctors can use for diagnosis of structural problems.
What is the better news? The retail scenario is not nearly as dire as it may seem.

Why let hierarchy and traditional roles hold your agency back? Tesla wouldn’t. Why not roll up your sleeves and step into in-store? Organize and then translate the narrative negative reviews are telling about structural problems for the brand which have resulted in dangerously bad customer service. And then, be prepared to counter corporate inertia born of fear with some eye-opening statistics.

Print and share some good retail tidings

Print your own copy of this infographic to share with clients.

At Moz, we’re working with enterprises to get their basic location data into shape so that they are ready to win their share of the predicted $1.4 trillion in mobile-influenced local sales by 2021, and your agency can use these same numbers to combat indecision and apathy for your retail clients. Look at that second statistic again: 90% of purchases are still happening in physical stores. At Moz, we ask our customers if their data is ready for this. Your agency can ask its clients if their reputations are ready for this, if their employees have what they need to earn the brand’s piece of that 90% action. Great online data + great in-store service = table stakes for retail success.

While I won’t play down the unease that major brand retail closures is understandably causing, I hope I’ve given you the tools to fight the “retail disaster” narrative. 85% more mobile users are searching for things like “Where do I buy that reindeer moss vitamin D3?” than they were just 3 years ago. So long as retail staff is ready to deliver, I see no “apocalypse” here.

Investing time

So, your agency has put in the time to identify a reputation problem severe enough that it appears to be founded in structural deficiencies or policies. Perhaps you’ve used some ORM software to do review sentiment analysis to discover which of your client’s locations are hurting worst, or perhaps you’ve done an initial audit manually. You've communicated the bad news to the most senior-level person you can reach at the company, and you've also shared the statistics that make change seem very worthwhile, begging for a new commitment to in-store excellence. What happens next?

While there are going to be nuances specific to every brand, my bet is that the steps will look like this for most businesses:

C-suites need to invest time in creating a policy which a) abundantly communicates company culture, b) expresses trust in employee initiative, and c) dispenses with needless “chain of command” steps, while d) ensuring that every public facing staffer receives full and ongoing training. A recent study says 62% of new retail hires receive less than 10 hours of training. I’d call even these worrisome numbers optimistic. I worked at 5 retail jobs in my early youth. I’d estimate that I received no more than 1 hour of training at any of them.
Because a chain of command can’t realistically be completely dispensed with in a large organization, store managers must then be allowed the time to communicate the culture, encourage employees to use common sense, define what “common sense” does and doesn’t look like to the company, and, finally, offer essential training.
Employees at every level must be given the time to observe how happy or unhappy customers appear to be at their location, and they must be taught that their observations are of inestimable value to the brand. If an employee suggests a solution to a common consumer complaint, this should be recognized and rewarded.
Finally, customers must be given the time to air their grievances at the time of service, in-person, with accessible, responsive staff. The word “corporate” need never come into most of these conversations unless a major claim is involved. Given that it may cost as much as 7x more to replace an unhappy customer than to keep an existing one happy, employees should be empowered to do business graciously and resolve complaints, in most cases, without escalation.

Benjamin Franklin may or may not have said that “time is money.” While the adage rings true in business, reviews have taught me the flip side — that a lack of time equals less money. Every negative review that cites helpless employees and poor service sounds to my marketing ears like a pocketful of silver dollars rolling down a drain.

The monk says good leaders make the time to communicate culture one-on-one.

Tesla says rules should change if they’re ridiculous.

Chairs should be offered to sick people… where common sense is applied.

Reviews can read like this:

And digital marketers have never known a time quite like this to have the ear of retail, maybe stepping beyond traditional boundaries into the fray of the real world. Maybe making a fundamental difference.

Source: Moz Blog

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

10 Blogging ‘Firsts’ to Celebrate (From Launch Onwards)

Do you ever look at other bloggers and feel you’ll never catch up to where they are?

Perhaps they have hundreds – or thousands, or even hundreds of thousands – of subscribers to their email newsletter. Maybe they’re making a full-time living blogging, or even employing a whole team of staff.

If you’re still in the early stages of blogging, it can seem like no matter how hard you work you’re not really achieving anything at all.

But you are.

Every little step you take brings you closer to your goals. And today I want you to think about the milestones you’ve already achieved (or are close to achieving).

For each milestone I’ll share links to further help and guidance on ProBlogger, and a note on where you can get help with that particular milestone in:

our free course, Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog
our premium course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Before we begin, it’s important to remember that you don’t have to hit these milestones in order. There’s no right way to reach them, and you may want to tackle ‘writing a guest post’ long before you get your first comment on your blog.

Milestone #1: Creating Your Blog Itself

This is a huge milestone, and one many would-be bloggers never actually achieve. Launching your blog is a real achievement, so celebrate it.

You may not have written any posts yet. Your blog might not look quite the way you want it to. And you may feel confused or a bit lost when you stare at the WordPress dashboard. But your blog is online, and that’s what matters. You can keep learning and tweaking as you go forward.

Take the Course:

Completing our free course, Ultimate Guide to Starting Your Blog, will help you get ready to launch. But Step 7 in particular will guide you through the process of getting your blog up and running.

Milestone #2: Publishing Your First Post

You might well have written your first post before you launch your blog. But whether you did or not, publishing your very first blog post is always something to celebrate.

Hitting ‘Publish’ on that first piece might feel daunting (or even terrifying), but from here onwards it will get easier.

One post might feel very insignificant. But all bloggers started with zero posts. And that one post could be the start of a major project, or even a whole new career.

Take the Course:

Hopefully, post #1 will be the first of many. To learn more about the content creation process, check out Day 7 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which covers the publishing process.

Milestone #3: Receiving Your First Comment

The first comment you receive on your blog is a real achievement. Someone isn’t just reading. They’re taking the time to respond.

If you share your blog with friends and family, hopefully at least one of them will leave a comment. But you may want to look for other new bloggers (perhaps in a group such as the ProBlogger Community), and make a point of commenting on their posts. Hopefully they’ll return the favour and comment on yours.

Take the Course:

To learn how to create content readers will pay attention to (and hopefully comment on), take a look at Day 16: Get Your Reader’s Attention in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Milestone #4: Getting Your First Email Subscriber

Just getting an email list set up can be a challenge for many new bloggers. So if you’ve managed that, congratulations. Hopefully it won’t be long before you have your very first subscriber.

One subscriber might seem like a tiny drop in a very large ocean. But if you can persuade one person to sign up for your email list, you can persuade more. Soon you’ll be able to celebrate 10 subscribers, and then 100.

Take the Course:

For help with setting up your email list, check out the bonus module to the Ultimate Start a Blog Course: Your Blog’s Email List. (You’ll receive this bonus module at the end of the course once you’ve worked through the launch process.)

Milestone #5: Sending Your First Email Newsletter

You’ve got your email list set up, and people have subscribed and received your welcome message. Now it’s time to send out your very first email newsletter.

If you’re writing separate content for your email newsletter (rather than just sending out your blog posts), it can feel like a waste of time creating newsletters for the three people on your email list – especially if they’re your mum, dad and big sister. But all the newsletters you write will be archived by your mailing list provider, so you can link to them from future newsletters or even your blog.

Take the Course:

For help with writing and sending your first email newsletter, take a look at Day 19: Newsletter of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Milestone #6: Getting Your First Tweet or Share

When someone shares one of your posts on Twitter or Facebook, their followers or friends might click through to read it – potentially bringing you lots of new readers.

Even if you don’t get a single new reader from your first tweet/share, it’s still a lovely moment. Someone cared about your blog post enough to want to tell everyone they know about it.

Most bloggers (even those who get a lot of tweets) think it’s nice to say “Thanks” to people who share their posts. This can be a great way to build a relationship with your readers, who may be well on their way to becoming firm fans.

Take the Course:

The bonus module ‘Your Blog’s Social Media’ (part of the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog course) helps you get set up with Facebook, Twitter and so on.

Milestone #7: Reading Your First Email from a Reader

Once you’ve been blogging for a few weeks or months, you might be quite used to getting comments, tweets, shares and so on.

But your first actual email from a reader, though can feel very special. It might be a reply to your newsletter, perhaps saying, “This is just what I needed to read. Thank you!” Or it might come as a message through your contact page, with a reader telling you how much they enjoy your blog.

Save any emails like this somewhere safe. You might want to give them a particular tag in Gmail, or even copy them into a separate file. On the days when blogging feels like a lot of hard work for little reward, re-read them. They might make all the difference.

Take the Course:

Getting emails from readers is lovely. But emailing your readers individually can be a great way to grow your blog in the early weeks and months. For help with this, check out Day 25: Personally Email Your Readers in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course.

Milestone #8: Writing Your First Forum or Group Post

Not all bloggers want to join forums or groups. But if you’re willing to give them a try they can be a brilliant source of help and support – no matter what stage you’re at.

Writing your first post on a blogging-related forum or in a blogging-related Facebook group can feel daunting. But simply ‘lurking’ and reading other people’s posts won’t be nearly so helpful to you.

Many people begin by writing an introduction post, which can be a good way to start. But you’ll get a better response from starting a new topic where you ask a question.

That might be a question relating to something you’re struggling with (“I can’t seem to get Google Analytics working and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong”). Or it could be an open-ended question that engages others (e.g. “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from blogging in the past six months?”)

If you’d like to be part of a friendly and supportive Facebook group for bloggers, check out the ProBlogger Community.

Take the Course:

For more help with joining groups and networking, check out Day 11: Engage and Network in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course.

Milestone #9: Writing Your First Guest Post

This is a milestone some bloggers feel they’re not ready for. But the truth is you’re probably more ready than you think.

Writing your first guest post for another blog is a great way to get your name out there and to bring in more readers. Many large blogs accept guest posts, and they won’t normally care how big or well known your own blog is. They just care about how well you can write.

Guest posting is a huge topic we’ve covered in depth on ProBlogger (see the Further Reading below). But the most important thing to remember is the worst anyone can say is “No”. Even if you reach out with a post and it’s rejected, you can simply try another blog.

Take the Course:

Day 21: Guest Posting in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog covers what you need to know to have a great chance of success with your guest posts.

Milestone #10: Making Your First Dollar

Not all bloggers want to make money. But if you do, making your very first dollar is a crucial milestone.

You might think one dollar is hardly worth celebrating. But that one dollar shows it’s possible to make money from your blog. If you can make one dollar, you can make ten. If you can make ten, you can make a hundred. And so on.

That first dollar might come from any number of means. It could be advertising revenue, or an affiliate commision. It might be a donation, or someone supporting you on Patreon. It might be your first sale (or a fraction of it) after you’ve launched a product.

However you make that dollar, it’s well worth celebrating.

Take the Course:

For lots of help on making money, check out Day 14: When and How to Make Money Blogging in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

All these ‘firsts’ are ones you could reach quite early on in the life of your blog – potentially in the first few weeks. But if it’s taken you longer than that, please don’t feel there’s anything wrong with your blog or your approach to blogging. Gradual, steady progress is still progress.

Once you’ve been blogging for a full year, you might want to see how many of these milestones you’ve managed to achieve . You might also want to evaluate how that first year went for you.

Here’s a quick recap of all the “firsts” we’ve covered:

Milestone #1: Creating Your Blog Itself
Milestone #2: Publishing Your First Post
Milestone #3: Receiving Your First Comment
Milestone #4: Getting Your First Email Subscriber
Milestone #5: Sending Your First Email Newsletter
Milestone #6: Getting Your First Tweet or Share
Milestone #7: Reading Your First Email from a Reader
Milestone #8: Writing Your First Forum or Group Post
Milestone #9: Writing Your First Guest Post
Milestone #10: Making Your First Dollar

Which of these have you already achieved?

Which one are you working towards next? How will you go about it (especially if it’s something you can only influence or encourage rather than control)? Leave a comment below to tell us.

Photo credit: Social Cut

The post 10 Blogging ‘Firsts’ to Celebrate (From Launch Onwards) appeared first on ProBlogger.

Source: ProBlogger

Tracking Your Link Prospecting Using Lists in Link Explorer

Posted by Dr-Pete

I'm a lazy marketer some days — I'll admit it. I don't do a lot of manual link prospecting, because it's a ton of work, outreach, and follow-up. There are plenty of times, though, where I've got a good piece of content (well, at least I hope it's good) and I want to know if it's getting attention from specific sites, whether they're in the search industry or the broader marketing or PR world. Luckily, we've made that question a lot easier to answer in Link Explorer, so today's post is for all of you curious but occasionally lazy marketers. Hop into the tool if you want to follow along:

Open Link Explorer

(1) Track your content the lazy way

When you first visit Link Explorer, you'll see that it defaults to "root domain":

Some days, you don't want to wade through your entire domain, but just want to target a single piece of content. Just enter or paste that URL, and select "exact page" (once you start typing a full path, we'll even auto-select that option for you):

Now I can see just the link data for that page (note: screenshots have been edited for size):

Good news — my Whiteboard Friday already has a decent link profile. That's already a fair amount to sort through, and as the link profile grows, it's only going to get tougher. So, how can I pinpoint just the sites I'm interested in and track those sites over time?

(2) Make a list of link prospects

This is the one part we can't automate for you. Make a list of prospects in whatever tool you please. Here's an imaginary list I created in Excel:

Obviously, this list is on the short side, but let's say I decide to pull a few of the usual suspects from the search marketing world, plus one from the broader marketing world, and a couple of aspirational sites (I'm probably not going to get that New York Times link, but let's dream big).

(3) Create a tracking list in Link Explorer

Obviously, I could individually search for these domains in my full list of inbound links, but even with six prospects, that's going to take some time. So, let's do this the lazy way. Back in Link Explorer, look at the very bottom of the left-hand navigation and you'll see "Link Targeting Lists":

Keep scrolling — I promise it's down there. Click on it, and you'll see something like this:

On the far-right, under the main header, click on "[+] Create new list." You'll get an overlay with a three-step form like the one below. Just give your list a name, provide a target URL (the page you want to track links to), and copy-and-paste in your list of prospects. Here's an example:

Click "Save," and you should immediately get back some data.

Alas, no link from the New York Times. The blue icons show me that the prospects are currently linking to Moz.com, but not to my target page. The green icon shows me that I've already got a head-start — Search Engine Land is apparently linking to this post (thanks, Barry!).

Click on any arrow in the "Notes" column, and you can add a note to that entry, like so:

Don't forget to hit "Save." Congratulations, you've created your first list! Well, I've created your first list for you. Geez, you really are lazy.

(4) Check in to track your progress

Of course, the real magic is that the list just keeps working for you. At any time, you can return to "Link Tracking Lists" on the Link Explorer menu, and now you'll see a master list of all your lists:

Just click on the list name you're interested in, and you can see your latest-and-greatest data. We can't build the links for you, but we can at least make keeping track of them a lot easier.

Bonus video: Now in electrifying Link-o-Vision!

Ok, it's just a regular video, although it does require electricity. If you're too lazy to read (in which case, let's be honest, you probably didn't get this far), I've put this whole workflow into an enchanting collection of words and sounds for you:

I hope you'll put your newfound powers to good. Let us know how you're using Tracking Lists (or how you plan to use them) in the comments, and where you'd like to see us take them next!

Source: Moz Blog

Monday, May 28, 2018

How Much Data Is Missing from Analytics? And Other Analytics Black Holes

Posted by Tom.Capper

If you’ve ever compared two analytics implementations on the same site, or compared your analytics with what your business is reporting in sales, you’ve probably noticed that things don’t always match up. In this post, I’ll explain why data is missing from your web analytics platforms and how large the impact could be. Some of the issues I cover are actually quite easily addressed, and have a decent impact on traffic — there’s never been an easier way to hit your quarterly targets. ;)

I’m going to focus on GA (Google Analytics), as it's the most commonly used provider, but most on-page analytics platforms have the same issues. Platforms that rely on server logs do avoid some issues but are fairly rare, so I won’t cover them in any depth.

Side note: Our test setup (multiple trackers & customized GA)

On Distilled.net, we have a standard Google Analytics property running from an HTML tag in GTM (Google Tag Manager). In addition, for the last two years, I’ve been running three extra concurrent Google Analytics implementations, designed to measure discrepancies between different configurations.

(If you’re just interested in my findings, you can skip this section, but if you want to hear more about the methodology, continue reading. Similarly, don’t worry if you don’t understand some of the detail here — the results are easier to follow.)

Two of these extra implementations — one in Google Tag Manager and one on page — run locally hosted, renamed copies of the Google Analytics JavaScript file (e.g. www.distilled.net/static/js/au3.js, instead of www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js) to make them harder to spot for ad blockers. I also used renamed JavaScript functions (“tcap” and “Buffoon,” rather than the standard “ga”) and renamed trackers (“FredTheUnblockable” and “AlbertTheImmutable”) to avoid having duplicate trackers (which can often cause issues).

This was originally inspired by 2016-era best practice on how to get your Google Analytics setup past ad blockers. I can’t find the original article now, but you can see a very similar one from 2017 here.

Lastly, we have (“DianaTheIndefatigable”), which just has a renamed tracker, but uses the standard code otherwise and is implemented on-page. This is to complete the set of all combinations of modified and unmodified GTM and on-page trackers.

Two of Distilled’s modified on-page trackers, as seen on https://www.distilled.net/

Overall, this table summarizes our setups:

Tracker	Renamed function?	GTM or on-page?	Locally hosted JavaScript file?
Default	No	GTM HTML tag	No
FredTheUnblockable	Yes - “tcap”	GTM HTML tag	Yes
AlbertTheImmutable	Yes - “buffoon”	On page	Yes
DianaTheIndefatigable	No	On page	No

I tested their functionality in various browser/ad-block environments by watching for the pageviews appearing in browser developer tools:

Reason 1: Ad Blockers

Ad blockers, primarily as browser extensions, have been growing in popularity for some time now. Primarily this has been to do with users looking for better performance and UX on ad-laden sites, but in recent years an increased emphasis on privacy has also crept in, hence the possibility of analytics blocking.

Effect of ad blockers

Some ad blockers block web analytics platforms by default, others can be configured to do so. I tested Distilled’s site with Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin, two of the most popular ad-blocking desktop browser addons, but it’s worth noting that ad blockers are increasingly prevalent on smartphones, too.

Here’s how Distilled’s setups fared:

(All numbers shown are from April 2018)

Setup	Vs. Adblock	Vs. Adblock with “EasyPrivacy” enabled	Vs. uBlock Origin
GTM	Pass	Fail	Fail
On page	Pass	Fail	Fail
GTM + renamed script & function	Pass	Fail	Fail
On page + renamed script & function	Pass	Fail	Fail

Seems like those tweaked setups didn’t do much!

Lost data due to ad blockers: ~10%

Ad blocker usage can be in the 15–25% range depending on region, but many of these installs will be default setups of AdBlock Plus, which as we’ve seen above, does not block tracking. Estimates of AdBlock Plus’s market share among ad blockers vary from 50–70%, with more recent reports tending more towards the former. So, if we assume that at most 50% of installed ad blockers block analytics, that leaves your exposure at around 10%.

Reason 2: Browser “do not track”

This is another privacy motivated feature, this time of browsers themselves. You can enable it in the settings of most current browsers. It’s not compulsory for sites or platforms to obey the “do not track” request, but Firefox offers a stronger feature under the same set of options, which I decided to test as well.

Effect of “do not track”

Most browsers now offer the option to send a “Do not track” message. I tested the latest releases of Firefox & Chrome for Windows 10.

Setup	Chrome “do not track”	Firefox “do not track”	Firefox “tracking protection”
GTM	Pass	Pass	Fail
On page	Pass	Pass	Fail
GTM + renamed script & function	Pass	Pass	Fail
On page + renamed script & function	Pass	Pass	Fail

Again, it doesn’t seem that the tweaked setups are doing much work for us here.

Lost data due to “do not track”: <1%

Only Firefox Quantum’s “Tracking Protection,” introduced in February, had any effect on our trackers. Firefox has a 5% market share, but Tracking Protection is not enabled by default. The launch of this feature had no effect on the trend for Firefox traffic on Distilled.net.

Reason 3: Filters

It’s a bit of an obvious one, but filters you’ve set up in your analytics might intentionally or unintentionally reduce your reported traffic levels.

For example, a filter excluding certain niche screen resolutions that you believe to be mostly bots, or internal traffic, will obviously cause your setup to underreport slightly.

Lost data due to filters: ???

Impact is hard to estimate, as setup will obviously vary on a site-by site-basis. I do recommend having a duplicate, unfiltered “master” view in case you realize too late you’ve lost something you didn’t intend to.

Reason 4: GTM vs. on-page vs. misplaced on-page

Google Tag Manager has become an increasingly popular way of implementing analytics in recent years, due to its increased flexibility and the ease of making changes. However, I’ve long noticed that it can tend to underreport vs. on-page setups.

I was also curious about what would happen if you didn’t follow Google’s guidelines in setting up on-page code.

By combining my numbers with numbers from my colleague Dom Woodman’s site (you’re welcome for the link, Dom), which happens to use a Drupal analytics add-on as well as GTM, I was able to see the difference between Google Tag Manager and misplaced on-page code (right at the bottom of the <body> tag) I then weighted this against my own Google Tag Manager data to get an overall picture of all 5 setups.

Effect of GTM and misplaced on-page code

Traffic as a percentage of baseline (standard Google Tag Manager implementation):

	Google Tag Manager	Modified & Google Tag Manager	On-Page Code In <head>	Modified & On-Page Code In <head>	On-Page Code Misplaced In <Body>
Chrome	100.00%	98.75%	100.77%	99.80%	94.75%
Safari	100.00%	99.42%	100.55%	102.08%	82.69%
Firefox	100.00%	99.71%	101.16%	101.45%	90.68%
Internet Explorer	100.00%	80.06%	112.31%	113.37%	77.18%

There are a few main takeaways here:

On-page code generally reports more traffic than GTM
Modified code is generally within a margin of error, apart from modified GTM code on Internet Explorer (see note below)
Misplaced analytics code will cost you up to a third of your traffic vs. properly implemented on-page code, depending on browser (!)
The customized setups, which are designed to get more traffic by evading ad blockers, are doing nothing of the sort.

It’s worth noting also that the customized implementations actually got less traffic than the standard ones. For the on-page code, this is within the margin of error, but for Google Tag Manager, there’s another reason — because I used unfiltered profiles for the comparison, there’s a lot of bot spam in the main profile, which primarily masquerades as Internet Explorer. Our main profile is by far the most spammed, and also acting as the baseline here, so the difference between on-page code and Google Tag Manager is probably somewhat larger than what I’m reporting.

I also split the data by mobile, out of curiosity:

Traffic as a percentage of baseline (standard Google Tag Manager implementation):

	Google Tag Manager	Modified & Google Tag Manager	On-Page Code In <head>	Modified & On-Page Code In <head>	On-Page Code Misplaced In <Body>
Desktop	100.00%	98.31%	100.97%	100.89%	93.47%
Mobile	100.00%	97.00%	103.78%	100.42%	89.87%
Tablet	100.00%	97.68%	104.20%	102.43%	88.13%

The further takeaway here seems to be that mobile browsers, like Internet Explorer, can struggle with Google Tag Manager.

Lost data due to GTM: 1–5%

Google Tag Manager seems to cost you a varying amount depending on what make-up of browsers and devices use your site. On Distilled.net, the difference is around 1.7%; however, we have an unusually desktop-heavy and tech-savvy audience (not much Internet Explorer!). Depending on vertical, this could easily swell to the 5% range.

Lost data due to misplaced on-page code: ~10%

On Teflsearch.com, the impact of misplaced on-page code was around 7.5%, vs Google Tag Manager. Keeping in mind that Google Tag Manager itself underreports, the total loss could easily be in the 10% range.

Bonus round: Missing data from channels

I’ve focused above on areas where you might be missing data altogether. However, there are also lots of ways in which data can be misrepresented, or detail can be missing. I’ll cover these more briefly, but the main issues are dark traffic and attribution.

Dark traffic

Dark traffic is direct traffic that didn’t really come via direct — which is generally becoming more and more common. Typical causes are:

Untagged campaigns in email
Untagged campaigns in apps (especially Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Misrepresented organic
Data sent from botched tracking implementations (which can also appear as self-referrals)

It’s also worth noting the trend towards genuinely direct traffic that would historically have been organic. For example, due to increasingly sophisticated browser autocompletes, cross-device history, and so on, people end up “typing” a URL that they’d have searched for historically.

Attribution

I’ve written about this in more detail here, but in general, a session in Google Analytics (and any other platform) is a fairly arbitrary construct — you might think it’s obvious how a group of hits should be grouped into one or more sessions, but in fact, the process relies on a number of fairly questionable assumptions. In particular, it’s worth noting that Google Analytics generally attributes direct traffic (including dark traffic) to the previous non-direct source, if one exists.

Discussion

I was quite surprised by some of my own findings when researching this post, but I’m sure I didn’t get everything. Can you think of any other ways in which data can end up missing from analytics?

Source: Moz Blog

Friday, May 25, 2018

How Do You Set Smart SEO Goals for Your Team/Agency/Project? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Are you sure that your current SEO goals are the best fit for your organization? It's incredibly important that they tie into both your company goals and your marketing goals, as well as provide specific, measurable metrics you can work to improve. In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand outlines how to set the right SEO goals for your team and shares two examples of how different businesses might go about doing just that.

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 SEO goals, how to set smart ones, how to measure your progress against them, how to amplify those goals to the rest of your organization so that people really buy in to SEO.

This is a big challenge. So many folks that I've talked to in the field have basically said, "I'm not sure exactly how to set goals for our SEO team that are the right ones." I think that there's a particularly pernicious problem once Google took away the keyword-level data for SEO referrals.

So, from paid search, you can see this click was on this keyword and sent traffic to this page and then here's how it performed after that. In organic search, you can no longer do that. You haven't been able to do it for a few years now. Because of that removal, proving the return on investment for SEO has been really challenging. We'll talk in a future Whiteboard Friday about proving ROI. But let's focus here on how you get some smart SEO goals that are actually measurable, trackable, and pertain intelligently to the goals of the business, the organization.

Where to start:

So the first thing, the first problem that I see is that a lot of folks start here, which seems like a reasonable idea, but is actually a terrible idea. Don't start with your SEO goals. When your SEO team gets together or when you get together with your consultants, your agency, don't start with what the SEO goals should be.

Start with the company goals. This is what our company is trying to accomplish this quarter or this year or this month.
Marketing goals. Go from there to here's how marketing is going to contribute to those company goals. So if the company has a goal of increasing sales, marketing's job is what? Is marketing's job improving the conversion funnel? Is it getting more traffic to the top of the funnel? Is it bringing back more traffic that's already been to the site but needs to be re-earned? Those marketing goals should be tied directly to the company goals so that anyone and everyone in the organization can clearly see, "Here's why marketing is doing what they're doing."
SEO goals. Next, here's how SEO contributes to those marketing goals. So if the goal is around, as we mentioned, growing traffic to the top of the funnel, for example, SEO could be very broad in their targeting. If it's bringing people back, you've got to get much more narrow in your keyword targeting.
Specific metrics to measure and improve. From those SEO goals, you can get the outcome of specific metrics to measure and improve.

Measurable goal metrics

So that list is kind of right here. It's not very long. There are not that many things in the SEO world that we can truly measure directly. So measurable goal metrics might be things like...

1. Rankings. Which we can measure in three ways. We can measure them globally, nationally, or locally. You can choose to set those up.

2. Organic search visits. So this would be just the raw traffic that is sent from organic search.

3. You can also separate that into branded search versus non-branded search. But it's much more challenging than it is with paid, because we don't have the keyword data. Thus, we have to use an implied or inferred model, where essentially we say, "These pages are likely to be receiving branded search traffic, versus these pages that are likely to be receiving non-branded search traffic."

A good example is the homepage of most brands is most likely to get primarily branded search traffic, whereas resource pages, blog pages, content marketing style pages, those are mostly going to get unbranded. So you can weight those appropriately as you see fit.

Tracking your rankings is crucially important, because that way you can see which pages show up for branded queries versus which pages show up for unbranded queries, and then you can build pretty darn good models of branded search versus non-branded search visits based on which landing pages are going to get traffic.

4. SERP ownership. So ideas around your reputation in the search results. So this is essentially looking at the page of search results that comes up for a given query and what results are in there. There might be things you don't like and don't want and things you really do want, and the success and failure can be measured directly through the rankings in the SERP.

5. Search volume. So for folks who are trying to improve their brand's affinity and reputation on the web and trying to grow the quantity of branded search, which is a good metric, you can look at that through things like Google Trends or through a Google AdWords campaign or through something like Moz's Keyword Explorer.

6. Links and link metrics. So you could look at the growth or shrinkage of links over time. You can measure that through things like the number of linking root domains, the total number of links. Authority or spam metrics and how those are distributed.

7. Referral traffic. And last, but not least, most SEO campaigns, especially those that focus on links or improving rankings, are going to also send referral traffic from the links that are built. So you can watch referral traffic and what those referrers are and whether they came from pages where you built links with SEO intent.

So taking all of these metrics, these should be applied to the SEO goals that you choose that match up with your marketing and company goals. I wanted to try and illustrate this, not just explain it, but illustrate it through two examples that are very different in what they're measuring.

Example one

So, first off, Taft Boots, they've been advertising like crazy to me on Instagram. Apparently, I must need new boots.

Grow online sales. Let's say that their big company goal for 2018 is "grow online sales to core U.S. customers, so the demographics and psychographics they're already reaching, by 30%."
Increase top of funnel website traffic by 50%. So marketing says, "All right, you know what? There's a bunch of ways to do that, but we think that our best opportunity to do that is to grow top of funnel, because we can see how top of funnel turns into sales over time, and we're going to target a number of 50% growth." This is awesome. This can turn into very measurable, actionable SEO goals.
Grow organic search visits 70%. We can say, "Okay, we know that search is going to contribute an outsized quantity of this 50% growth. So what we want to do is take search traffic up by 70%. How are we going to do that? We have four different plans.
- A. We're going to increase our blog content, quality and quantity.
- B. We're going to create new product pages that are more detailed, that are better optimized, that target good searches.
- C. We're going to create a new resources section with some big content pieces.
- D. We're going to improve our link profile and Domain Authority."

Now, you might say, "Wait a minute. Rand, this is a pretty common SEO methodology here." Yes, but many times this is not directly tied to the marketing goals, which is not directly tied to the business goals. If you want to have success as an SEO, you want to convince people to keep investing in you, you want to keep having that job or that consulting gig, you've got to connect these up.

From these, we can then say, "Okay, for each one, how do we measure it?" Well...

A. Quantity of content and search visits/piece. Blog content can be measured through the quantity of content we produce, the search visits that each of those pieces produce, and what the distribution and averages are.
B. Rankings and organic traffic. Is a great way to measure product pages and whether we're hitting our goals there.
C. Link growth, rankings, and traffic. That's a great way to measure the new resources section.
D. Linking root domains plus the DA distribution and maybe Spam Score distribution. That's a great way to measure whether we're improving our link profile.

All of these, this big-picture goal is going to be measured by the contribution of search visits to essentially non-homepage and non-branded pages that contribute to the conversion funnel. So we have a methodology to create a smart goal and system here.

Example two

Another example, totally different, but let's try it out because I think that many folks have trouble connecting non-e-commerce pages, non-product stuff. So we're going to use Book-It Theatre. They're a theater group here in the Seattle area. They use the area beneath Seattle Center House as their space. They basically will take popular books and literature and convert them into plays. They'll adapt them into screenplays and then put on performances. It's quite good. We've been to a few shows, Geraldine and I have, and we really like them.

So their goal — I'm making this up, I don't actually know if this is their goal — but let's say they want to...

Attract theater goers from outside the Seattle area. So they're looking to hit tourists and critics, people who are not just locals, because they want to expand their brand.
Reach audiences in 4 key geographies — LA, Portland, Vancouver, Minneapolis. So they decide, "You know what? Marketing can contribute to this in four key geographies, and that's where we're going to focus a bunch of efforts — PR efforts, outreach efforts, offline media, and SEO. The four key geographies are Los Angeles, Portland, Vancouver, and Minneapolis. We think these are good theater-going towns where we can attract the right audiences."

So what are we going to do as SEOs? Well, as SEOs, we better figure out what's going to match up to this.

Drive traffic from these regions to Book-It Theatre's pages and to reviews of our show. So it's not just content on our site. We want to drive people to other critics and press that's reviewed us.
- A. So we're going to create some geo landing pages, maybe some special offers for people from each of these cities.
- B. We're going to identify third-party reviews and hopefully get critics who will write reviews, and we're going to ID those and try and drive traffic to them.
- C. We're going to do the same with blog posts and informal critics.
- D. We're going to build some content pages around the books that we're adapting, hoping to drive traffic, that's interested in those books, from all over the United States to our pages and hopefully to our show.

So there are ways to measure each of these.

A. Localized rankings in Moz Pro or a bunch of other rank tracking tools. You can set up geo-specific localized rankings. "I want to track rankings in Vancouver, British Columbia. I want to track rankings from Los Angeles, California." Those might look different than the ones you see here in Seattle, Washington.
B. We can do localized rankings and visits from referrals for the third-party reviews. We won't be able to track the visits that those pages receive, but if they mention Book-It Theatre and link to us, we can see, oh yes, look, the Minneapolis Journal wrote about us and they linked to us, and we can see what the reviews are from there.
C. We can do localized rankings and visits from referrals for the third-party blog posts.
D. Local and national ranking, organic visits. For these Book-It content pages, of course, we can track our local and national rankings and the organic visits.

Each of these, and as a whole, the contribution of search visits from non-Seattle regions, so we can remove Seattle or Washington State in our analytics and we can see: How much traffic did we get from there? Was it more than last year? What's it contributing to the ticket sales conversion funnel?

You can see how, if you build these smart goals and you measure them correctly and you align them with what the company and the marketing team is trying to do, you can build something really special. You can get great involvement from the rest of your teams, and you can show the value of SEO even to people who might not believe in it already.

All right, everyone. Look forward to your thoughts and feedback in the comments, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Source: Moz Blog

Pages

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

The rise of visual search in Google

How to drive organic sessions with visual search

1. Implement schema markup

2. Check your implementation

3. Get indexed

4. Look to Google Images on mobile

It’s not always about Google

Digitize the world with camera-based search

Brands taking search by camera mainstream

How to leverage computer vision for your brand

Friday, June 1, 2018

Video Transcription

P for Purpose

I for Insight

C for Context

A for Aesthetics

1. Decrease visual noise

2. Use uniform colors (plus one standout color for emphasis)

3. Source your data

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

The genuine pain of retail gone wrong: The elusive cooler, "Corporate," and the man who could hardly stand

“He took the time...”

For marketing agencies, opportunity knocks

Print and share some good retail tidings

Investing time

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Milestone #1: Creating Your Blog Itself

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #2: Publishing Your First Post

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #3: Receiving Your First Comment

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #4: Getting Your First Email Subscriber

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #5: Sending Your First Email Newsletter

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #6: Getting Your First Tweet or Share

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #7: Reading Your First Email from a Reader

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #8: Writing Your First Forum or Group Post

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #9: Writing Your First Guest Post

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

Milestone #10: Making Your First Dollar

Further Reading:

Take the Course:

(1) Track your content the lazy way

(2) Make a list of link prospects

(3) Create a tracking list in Link Explorer

(4) Check in to track your progress

Bonus video: Now in electrifying Link-o-Vision!

Monday, May 28, 2018

Side note: Our test setup (multiple trackers & customized GA)

Reason 1: Ad Blockers

Effect of ad blockers

Lost data due to ad blockers: ~10%

Reason 2: Browser “do not track”

Effect of “do not track”

Lost data due to “do not track”: <1%

Reason 3: Filters

Lost data due to filters: ???

Reason 4: GTM vs. on-page vs. misplaced on-page

Effect of GTM and misplaced on-page code

Lost data due to GTM: 1–5%

Lost data due to misplaced on-page code: ~10%

Bonus round: Missing data from channels

Dark traffic

Attribution