Bruce Clay's Blog, page 38

Pubcon Liveblog: Link Building through Press Outreach

Pubcon Liveblog: Link Building through Press Outreach was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Rob Woods, SEO consultant, will share insights on press outreach that leads to strong links in this Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 session.

Rob Woods at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014

Why do Press Outreach?

One of the few authoritative links left that are guaranteed to stay safe for the foreseeable future
Press links have good link equity
One link can lead to many links
Don’t just focus on link equity – traffic is good, too, as are citations
Press links are important for small, local sites as well as big, national sites

Caveat: Going after press links are hard work, take time and money, and you are going to face rejection from reporters.

Getting Ready

Have something to say. A lot of people think they can reach out to the press without having something to say. Whatever you’re pitching must be newsworthy. You have to be helpful, know your stuff, and build a decent press page.

Press Page Must-Haves

Basic explanation of who you are
Proof of why you are an expert
Social proof if you have it (we have 100,000 Twitter followers, etc.)
Include the assets a writer would need (logos, infographics, images)
Contact info

What to Talk About

Leverage current events
Leverage seasonal events
Site or app launch
Major events

Finding the Right Journalists

Search for your major keywords and comb through the SERP results (10 pages deep even) and find articles on your subject. You can also comb through Google News results.

Find out as much as you can about the journalist. Journalists and bloggers get a ton of inquiries – differentiate yourself by knowing how to get their attention by getting to know what they write about, what they’re interested in.

Look at their Twitter, their LinkedIn, their bio pages, etc. Maybe you’ll find a commonality that you can mention in your initial correspondence (for example, perhaps you went to same college or root for the same sports team).

Associated Press and Reuters should be your top targets. If you’re reaching out to them, make sure to write custom, carefully crafted emails.

Remember:

Be useful.
Be timely.
Be available. Reporters work weird hours. Be there for them when they want you.
Don’t be afraid to give away the farm. Give them lots of information up front.
Respond quickly.

Tools

Muckrack: a good place to find journalists on Twitter, searching by “beat” or niche. Through Muckrack you can save lists and create alerts
Followerwonk: search Twitter bios by keyword
Use Vocus or Cision to find journalists and their contact info

Acing Your Interview

Be prepared for written, phone, Skype or live interviews
Make and use notes
Know your stuff
Be professional
Be flexible with your time. If they want 8 p.m. … be there at 8 p.m.
Get media training of public speaking experience
Practice
Bend over backwards
Have unique data or insight they can’t get anywhere else
Don’t be afraid to ask for the link

 

Pubcon Liveblog: Jason Calacanis on Startups that Save the World

Pubcon Liveblog: Jason Calacanis on Startups that Save the World was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Jason Calacanis is an angel investor who has invested in companies including Uber, ChartBeat, Whisper, SignPost and Thumbtack. He invests $10 million a year. He meets with 15 companies a week. He’s currently focusing a lot of his effort into Inside.acom, a news organization.

“I spend a lot of my time thinking bigger,” Calacanis says. “And a lot of that has to do with watching Google say ‘I have absolutely no limit to my ambition.’ I spend a lot of time meeting with startups and founders … And that puts me in a unique position to be optimistic and opportunistic.”

Calacanis’s keynote is unique – it’s not tactical or strategy-driven. It’s steeped in reality and meant to simply inspire and inform the audience of the amazing progress that startups and forward-thinking companies are bring to the world in the areas of six global problems.

Startups, he asserts, will solve our world’s problems rather than governments. His keynote, which is meant to inspire us, will cover major advances by tech and startup companies.

“A lot of the stuff in science fiction is becoming our reality today. You can see it in the pace in which we have to respond in our industry. Amazing opportunities are coming our way … We are at the safest, wealthiest and optimistic time in the history of our planet and species,” Calacanis shares.

Startups Save the World
Global Problem #1: Cancer

Cancer is the second most common killer of Americans after heart disease. In 2014, 585,000 Americans will die from cancer and 1.6 million new cases will be diagnosed.

COTA: Allows doctors to look at big data associated with cancer – this data helps them know what’s causing the cancer and how to treat it more effectively. This generation might be the last generation to see cancer as a fatal disease.
DWave: Looks at DNA and creates custom solutions for patients. 20 years away
Immuno Photonics: Labels the cancerous cells in your body and creates a virus to kill those cells.

Global Problem #2: Climate Change

Humans are causing extra warming in ocean, land and atmosphere. Rising sea levels are disrupting farming and food, species migration and extinction. Current emissions rate will yield dangerous temper rises by 2100.

Oroeco: Will create plants that take more carbon out of the atmosphere than the plants that exist today. Currently, Oroeco has created a tobacco plant that glows in the dark by gene sequence modification.
Global Forest Watch: Crowd source techniques mapping every square mile of the planet’s forest and the forest density – then we’ll know in real time when people are destroying the forest and where we need to plant more trees.

Global Problem #3: Energy

Germany had a number of days last year where more than 50% of their energy came from renewable energy. Calacanis is not nervous about energy. Nuclear energy is hundreds of time safer than coal energy. France is 90% nuclear energy.

Nest: Learning algo and customization can help us use less energy.
OPower: Realtime app for looking at use of energy in your home, your city, your appliances, by room – it will be built into your outlets. The algo will know the energy patterns of each appliance.
Solar City: Storing solar in your batteries
TESLA

Global Problem #4: Hunger

One in nine humans goes to bed hungry every night. One in six Americans is food insecure. We will need 70 percent more food by 2060.

Bitty Foods: creating cookies made with cricket flour – flours made from ground up crickets. The crickets create a protein-based flour that is sustainable and less costly.
Hampton Creek Foods: Fake eggs – when you mix into a cookie or baked good, you can’t tell the difference.
Food Cowboy: Matches people that need food with people throwing food away

Global Problem #5: Jobs

There is a perception that there will always be jobs – it’s not true. The technology has caused the eradication of a lot of jobs. The efficiency of the American work is extraordinary today and jobs are going away. Occupy Wall Street was a moment of civil unrest.

AirBnB: People in NYC are renting their apartments for 300 dollars a night and making a ton of money. We have changed as a society. Hotel stays would have cost much more in the nineties – now you get jet off to Japan and not even worry about where you’re staying – there will be an AirBnB nearby.
Uber: People are moving to cities with Uber, Lyft and Sidecar because the drivers are netting $20 or $30 an hour – well above the minimum wage. Calacanis recently rode with a driver who moved to San Francisco from Atlanta to get a job with Uber to raise money for his family. He’d been out of work and he saw Uber as the solution to his family’s troubles. He’s calculated he’ll be out of debt in six months, and move back home. Moral of the story? These jobs are saving people who can’t get work.
Thumbtack: You type what you want (anything from design to tennis instruction), they send the request in detail to a bunch of freelancers, and you get it. There are people on their platform that are making significant amounts of money through their talents.

Global Problem #6: Repression

More than 1.6 billion people in the world have no say in how they are governed. Citizens asserting rights suffer harassment and persecution without recourse. In 2012, one in six people lived in countries without free press.

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube: It’s the new Amnesty International – people take to Twitter and let people know when injustices are occurring. You can’t hide your bad behavior when it’s broadcast publicly for millions by citizens. Government can’t ignore it when we all know about it.

Jason Calacanis’s Final Thoughts

I am in shock over how many things that needed to change have, in fact, changed. It’s an amazing time for entrepreneurs.

Dare to be great.
Do big things.
Think even bigger.

Our work is hard, but it’s lifting the world up.

Pubcon Liveblog: Pinterest and Other Missed Social SEO Opportunities

Pubcon Liveblog: Pinterest and Other Missed Social SEO Opportunities was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Have an interest in Pinterest? You should – there are 70 million users are Pinterest, and their business is up for grabs. John Rampton, editor-at-large at Search Engine Journal, Stephan Spencer, vice president of SEO at Covario, and Cynthia Johnson, director of social media marketing at RankLab, share their insights on wielding Pinterest for to drive traffic, build community and boost sales.

Cynthia Johnson, John Rampton and Stephan Spencer at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014

Stephan Spencer on Pinterest Magic: 20+ Tips and Tricks that Will Amaze and Astound You

The boards in the top row will get the most views. If you’re a sizeable brand, you might have several boards, and the boards you want to get traffic should be in that top row.
Your descriptions are not only important for SEO – if you have great descriptions you can show in Pinterest newsletters.
Vertical images perform better. Consider longer pins, but don’t make them too long.
Text on photos instantly jazzes up the photos and are more likely to attract attention. Only choose text that complements the photo – it’s easy to choose something bad.

Content Ideas and How to Spread Content

Take advantages of the popularity of memes, quotes and infographics

Create your own memes with online tools:

Canva
Pinstamatic (only for Pinterest)
ly

Get content out there by interacting with influencers. Don’t have influential followers? Tag an influencer’s Twitter handle and then tweet out the pin!

To every turn there is a season. Seasonal items do fantastically on Pinterest. Be about a month ahead. Don’t be like Kohl’s and post Christmas tree pins in August. Do consider organizing your boards by season.

Enabling Rich Pins

Rich pins should show a little taste to what is on the website. Rich pins can highlight:

Business location
Real time pricing
Article snippets
Movie ratings
Pinboards managed by several contributors
Invite key influencers to pin to it
Shows on every contributor’s page

Group Pinboards

Avoid pinning at dinner time – your audience is mostly women and that’s not a good time. Focus on early mornings or weekends.

The tool Ahalogy lets marketers:

Schedule pins
Edit photos
License content

John Rampton: 13 Tips to Rock Your Pinterest Account

Connect all your accounts and share.
Tag other pinners in your posts. (You can only tag those you are friends with).
Like and comment on other people’s pins. 99% of the time you should be like, sharing, pinning and commenting – you should only be promoting yourself 1% of the time. It’s about building community, not promoting yourself.
Write an informative description. Use hashtags.
Tip iPhone apps to create beautiful pics. Rampton’s favorite apps are PicArt, Over, and BeautifulMess. Creating beautiful art leads to more engagement.
Auto add a Pin It Button to every photo. User Pinterest Image Pinner.
Replace your site with your website URL.
Add the price to your products. Consider changing the price on oft-pinned items by a penny – everyone pinning
Pin images of trending news in your niche.
Postris – Use this to see trends in your particular niche and gin inspiration for what people are searching and actually repining. Typically things start trending on Instagram and move to Pinterest. Posris is a tool for Instagram, but
Use ViralTag. Let’s your schedule out pins in advance.
Use NinjaPinner. This will automatically follow unfollow and like pins. PS Don’t unfollow people – there’s no point. Use NinjaPinner to follow those that follow you.
Here is a 1 hour a week Pinterest Plan – Use Viral Tag to schedule pins of the next 7 days. Go to Pinterest, visit 30 to 50 pins that are popular to your niche and comment. Next, go to NinjaPinner and have it follow people that add you. Go into Google Analytics and check you stats.
Make sure your pins are visible to search. Turn privacy off.
Make sure Your Account is set up as business page
Verify your website.
Name your boards with keywords. Use location mode
Use keywords in your pin descriptions.
File names become your image name – change the file name to something relevant.
Create boards with repins only. They show up in search results.
Map your pins. Pinterest maps are powered by Foursquare – switch on the “add a map” functionality.
Share your boards.
Adjust your Pinterest strategy to support mobile traffic. 75% of Pinterest users will access Pinterest from a mobile device.
Keep your four best boards in the first four slots on your profile – why? Because those are the boards you see on mobile.
Consider your character limits. On iOS you only see up to 100 characters, on Android 125
Size your image appropriately.
Make sure you website is mobile-friendly. They’re likely going to be coming to your site via Pinterest on a mobile device – don’t send them to a bad user experience.

Cynthia Johnson: 14 Pinterest Tips to Expand Your Reach

Make sure your pins are visible to search. Turn privacy off.
Make sure Your Account is set up as business page
Verify your website.
Name your boards with keywords. Use location mode
Use keywords in your pin descriptions.
File names become your image name – change the file name to something relevant.
Create boards with repins only. They show up in search results.
Map your pins. Pinterest maps are powered by Foursquare – switch on the “add a map” functionality.
Share your boards.
Adjust your Pinterest strategy to support mobile traffic. 75% of Pinterest users will access Pinterest from a mobile device.
Keep your four best boards in the first four slots on your profile – why? Because those are the boards you see on mobile.
Consider your character limits. On iOS you only see up to 100 characters, on Android 125
Size your image appropriately.
Make sure you website is mobile-friendly. They’re likely going to be coming to your site via Pinterest on a mobile device – don’t send them to a bad user experience.

Pubcon Keynote Liveblog: Chris Brogan on Mission-Driven Execution

Pubcon Keynote Liveblog: Chris Brogan on Mission-Driven Execution was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Chris Brogan, CEO of Owner Media Group, opens the Wednesday morning keynote with a discussion of spirit and war. He recalls the Spartan war – the training, the vigilance, the stacked odds – and quotes King Leonidas: “Action produces the appetite for more action.”

Chris Brogan at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014

Recently, Brogan began competing in Spartan races, modern adventure races that are a cross between running a marathon and getting beat up. There’s a certain shoe that you can only get after completing three Spartan races that becomes a coveted goal of many racers. People are eager to talk about their participation in a Spartan race, and it becomes a lifestyle.

CrossFit is similar – how do you know if someone’s a CrossFitter? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you. As with Spartan races, CrossFit enthusiasts adopt CrossFit as a lifestyle and are more than eager to spread the word on social media and talk up the CrossFit life.

CrossFit and Spartan races, Brogan says, are prime examples of brands that have a mission and a story – they’re so much more than simply a membership to a gym – and that’s why people are willing to spend $150 on Crossfit when an inexpensive gym can cost $10 a month.

Keep the mission alive with content and participation. Make the users the content creators. The CrossFitters and Spartan racers are telling the brand story.

Brand vs. Mission

Brand is the outward expression of a mission. Mission is what drives your deepest purpose. Match these well for excellence.

Mission is the mast. Service fills the sails. Content is the drum that calls us together.

Mission and service together is the best it can be.

Make Content Drive Mission

Business is about belonging. CrossFitters feel like they belong to something.

Give people something bigger than the sales pitch and they’ll sell it FOR you.

But YOU have to believe, too.

Start with a need. Owners struggle with making the best use of their freedom and learning how to best serve a community.

Side note: entrepreneurs are crappy with their time – they spend time as if it’s infinite and money as if it’s finite.

The Russell Simmons Method of Marketing

Brogan shares an anecdote – when he gave free webinars, he would have about 100 attendees. When he decided to charge $20 for the webinar, he had more than 600 signups. There’s obviously a lesson there. The small charge made it feel like a value add.

Moreover, in the webinars, Brogan was pitching a $1,000 product. He was working with very different price points, which he refers to as the Russell Simmons method of marketing – because you can find Russell Simmons products in both Kmart and Nordstrom.

Messaging

Brogan includes messages like this on his site: “We equip owners for success. Not people. Not us. This is a mission. We serve owners and help them own the game they most want to win.”

Doesn’t this sound more interesting than “we want to help you with your business?” What’s on your website? Is it something someone would put on a flag and follow behind? Is it a true mission that people can believe in?

Connection

When you hit reply on Chris Brogan’s newsletter, you are able to reply directly to Brogan. Brogan points out that this is important – and 80% of the time, the people who reply are the same people who are going to be willing to open their wallets.

Pubcon Liveblog: New Mobile Behavior and Click-to-Call Strategies

Pubcon Liveblog: New Mobile Behavior and Click-to-Call Strategies was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Learn how to enhance your mobile marketing strategies and PPC campaigns with click-to-call extensions (and why they matter so much) as Jason Spievak (CEO of Invoca) and Daryl Colwell (Senior Vice President, Matomy Media Group) take the Pubcon stage to talk mobile search advertising.

Jason Spievak: Mobile Changes Everything

Jason Spievak

Mobile is the default platform for both consumer and business interactions.

It’s not that the path to purchase has migrated to the smartphone. It’s that it has evolved entirely.

More than 30 billion calls occurred to businesses in the past year. You can’t understand how business is performing unless you can connect the online media source that drove them.

Click-to-Call Enhances Your Campaign in 3 Ways

Drive immediate action through click-to-call. Make it easy for customers to reach you through their preferred channel. 47% of mobile users will explore other brands if there is no phone number associate with the business’ search results (Google Mobile Playbook 2013).
Improve Customer Experience. Stop pushing forms.
Use Data. Don’t optimize on assumptions. Use real data. Know the ads, keywords, and landing pages that are driving calls.

Daryl Colwell: Back to the Future with Pay-Per-Call Marketing

Daryl Colwell

The average American consumer spends 34 hours a month browsing the Internet on a mobile device (source: Direct Marketing News). By 2018, mobile search will drive 73 billion inbound calls to advertisers (source: BIA/Kelsey).

Old vs. New Media: Inbound Calls

Google is extremely concerned with how users experience mobile – Google asks you to rate a phone call after placing it through a click-to-call.

Back to the Future: What Worked Then Works Now

In classified ads, for example, you see features, benefits, and phone number. The clients and needs are the same – the method is different. Now we put that same information in a PPC ad.

Why Getting Leads Via Calls Matters

Phone calls have a higher payout than traditional lead generation. It’s a small “real estate” investment for a big return.

There are 30-50% conversion rates on a call.

In order to track your calls, give your media partner a unique phone number for consumers to call. Then you can identify all the calls that your call extensions are driving.

Advertiser Benefits of Leads Generated Through Call Extensions

Cost effective
ROI Focused
100% connection rate with interested and engaged consumers
Consumers who dial in are further along the sales funnel
Higher transparency into lead (call) quality

Pubcon Liveblog: Search Algorithm Chaos & Keyword (Not Provided)

Pubcon Liveblog: Search Algorithm Chaos & Keyword (Not Provided) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

In this Pubcon Las Vegas session, Bruce Clay (president of Bruce Clay, Inc.), Prashant Puri (co-founder of AdLift) and Jake Bohall (vice president of marketing at Virante) are going to talk about an always-hot topic in SEO: Keyword data (Not Provided). Clay explains why he thinks (Not Provided) is not that big of a deal. Puri shares fresh ideas for gathering up more keyword data, regardless of keyword data provision by Google. And Bohall talks about chaos theory and how it applies to SEO.

Jake Bohall, Prashant Puri and Bruce Clay at Pubcon session Taming Algo Chaos and (Not Provided)

Bruce Clay: “Provided” Is a Fallacy and So Is (Not Provided)

Clay tells us that the very idea of (Not Provided) is a fallacy; definitive, black-and-white keyword data was never available to us – why? Because for the past six years, Google has been modifying our SERP results based on data and search history. Note the following link that began showing up in 2008:

We know that web history and location have been a long-time disruption. When you consider these disruptions, you realize that analytics data can be somewhat misleading.

Consider this: if you search for “drug rehab” you get research papers, but if you search for drug rehab in Hollywood, you get a local rehab centers. Google assumes that people searching “drug rehab” in Hollywood are looking for a center, rather than researching, and that’s based on Google’s understanding of these searchers’ IP addresses.

The moral of the story is that all along, our SERP results have been modified based on Google’s interpretation of their search history and location.

Dealing with Web History

Google Instant shows what is actually being queried. Use it to find out what related terms people are searching for. SEOs need to care about those related queries, as well. Google Instant shows us those.

Google Instant

Google Instant is 100% query based. We can look at it to see the frequency of a query. It is manipulatable. As we go through web history, we can see the words — in descending sequence by continuation — that people search often. If they make sense for our page, we need to integrate these queries onto our pages.

Dealing with Locations

As you search in different cities, you get all sorts of different results. One of the things you might want to do is set your location in different metros and see how it effects the SERP. Moreover, you have to account for the fact that the meaning of a word in one city might take on a different meaning in another city. Every geolocation effects the SERP.

This is a major factor in the mobile landscape. Mobile will disrupt everything. It’s already disrupting everything. Mobile results are based on intent. Is the intent shopping? Researching? Google determines this on the fly.

Traffic, Not Keywords

We’re not selling keywords; we’re selling traffic. Attribution matters. Specifically, high traffic and low bounce rate is what we’re after.

As to pinpointing keywords that are driving our traffic, we can come very close, but there’s no way to identify a single keyword. We can identify, for example, a group of four keywords, but that’s as close as we can come.

One landing page can rank for multiple keywords. It’s difficult to say I got this traffic because of this keyword. The correlation is hard to prove.

And remember:

20% of searches each day are new or haven’t been conducted in 6 months.
70% of queries have no exact match keywords.
5% of users queries are greater than 3 words.

There is a significant difference between data and wisdom; we can look at the data and realize provided didn’t mean as much as we thought. “Provided” was a fallacy.

Prashant Puri: Sources of Keyword Data

Google said (Not Provided) was only going to affect 10% of data, but according to Puri it, in fact, affects 90%. How do you get more data? Puri suggests downloading search query data on monthly basis. The data is rolling, so you have to keep up with it.

Maximize Your Search Query Data

The way to maximize your search query data is to dive deep into the categories on your site.

Use the folder level URLs as separate websites — this lets you get a lot more data.

Pury shares that with one client, there were 6,572 pieces of search data available. After listing folder level URLs as separate websites and de-duping, that number rose to 16,514.

You will get 80% more search query data, and the process takes less than ten minutes.

Understanding the Attribution Model

“The only use for last click attribution now is to get your fired. Avoid it. ” —Avinash Kaushik

Attribution segments show that 35% of conversions have more than one touch point. The majority of your conversions could happen at the first click, but there are a lot that have multiple click attribution.

You need to figure out which attribution model works for you. There’s no one-size-fits-all model.

Takeaways

Set up Google Webmaster Tools and extract historical data
Set up folder level/category structure on Google Webmaster Tools
Understand page level metrics for your top landing pages
Analyze the data for three segments: Not Provided, Brand and Non-Brand
Leverage an attribution model that works for your website

Jake Bohall on Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory: the branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions, so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences.

The internet is chaos — and Google is attempting to make sense of that chaos.

Google is trying to organize chaos through its algorithm.

And yet Eric Schmidt testified before Congress that there were more than 500 unnamed changes, and yet there were only 8 named changes. It’s a growing war between Google and spammers.

Are SEOs the bad guys or the good guys? Bohall points out that most SEOs, by the very nature of their optimization efforts, are violating Google’s guidelines. Every time we work for links, he asks, are we not attempting to manipulate links? That is against Google’s terms of service. So, we need to be smarter than the algorithm and evolve. You have to evolve with the times. Meaning better content and better links. Better content means greater relevance and better links means greater authorities.

We should not fall prey to fear, uncertainty and doubt. We must move forward and make great content.

Quality Content Matters

Unique. Implement rich snippets, micro data and UGC.
Relevant. Topical relevancy
Authority. Share and create authority socially.

Bohall talks about the idea of broken link building — finding pages that existed in the past that was linked to significantly, but no longer exist. Create something new based on this abandoned content, and then ask people to update their links to your content.

Pubcon Liveblog: SEO Copywriting Style Guide — Tools & Tricks for SEO Writers

Pubcon Liveblog: SEO Copywriting Style Guide — Tools & Tricks for SEO Writers was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Mindy Weinstein, SEO Manager of Bruce Clay, Inc., and Lindsay Mineo, senior search strategist at ThunderActive, share tips and tools for SEO copywriting. Their lessons help writers craft content for people that’s also rich for search engines.

Lindsay Mineo and Mindy Weinstein answer questions at Pubcon Las Vegas

Mindy Weinstein: 4 Tips that Address the Human Element of Content Marketing

Whether you’re writing an article, a blog post, your home page … where do you start? You need to start with the human element.

Copywriting Tip #1: Listen to Your Audience

You have to know what your audience wants to hear from you. You need to understand them.

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” —Ralph Nichols

How do you listen to your audience?

Learn everything you can about your target audience
Plan to write about topics and answer questions your audience cares about
Content must show that you understand what your prospects or customers want and or need to hear
Be empathetic

Close your eyes and imagine the people you’re talking to – your competitors aren’t doing that. You need to build trust and empathize above all else.

This goes beyond saying “Welcome to Our Website” – there are more than 18 million sites boasting this, and it does nothing for the visitor.

Don’t start writing until you’ve answered these questions:

What does your audience want or need?
What do they expect?
How can your website help them?

Your first sentence is huge – that’s when you’re going to capture someone and get them to keep reading. And in that sentence, it needs to address why they’re there and what they need.

Listen to your audience by:

Using Social Media. This is the closest you’ll get to reading people’s minds.
Conducting Surveys. Obtain comments and feedback. Get insights into what they care about. Get to know them.
Customer Service. Hear from the front lines.
Focus Groups. Discover perceptions.
Reach out to your existing customers.

Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO Manager Mindy Weinstein shares her four top tips for copywriting at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014.

Copywriting Tip #2: Research Your Keywords

Target the right keywords. Know the demographic behind the keywords. Don’t neglect the associated keywords (synonyms).

Weinstein’s keyword research tools:

Brainstorming
Bing Ads Intelligence
Keyword Tool I/O
Soovle
KSP Tool
Google AdWords Keyword Planner
Google Trends
Google Instant

Copywriting Tip #3: Create Your BluePrint

Each keyword is different. You need to understand the intent. You also need to know what the search engines are rewarding. Review the top ranked pages. Determine the normal behavior of your competitors.

Weinstein’s recommended analysis tools:

SEOToolSet Single Page Analyzer
Internet Marketing Ninjas On-Page Optimization Tool
WooRank Website Review
Microsoft Word and Excel (get organized)
Google advanced Search (allows you to look at reading level. This functionality was added when Panda came out – that signals that reading level matters to Google. You need to make sure your content’s reading level is appropriate by looking at the reading level of the already ranking pages)

Copywriting Tip #4: Develop Magnetic Content

Stay focused on your audience and incorporate the “You” attitude – that means that when you’re communicating, keep your audience (the “you”) at the forefront of your mind. Don’t focus on yourself – be ready to answer questions, such as:

Why should they listen?
Why should they care?
Why was this message even created in the first place?

Use the appropriate tone and messaging. Engage and connect. Create an editorial calendar – otherwise you’re going about things blindly.

Discover your headline’s emotional marketing value with one of Weinstein’s favorite tools: Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer. Studies show that headlines with a higher EMV have more social shares.

Lindsay Mineo: Tools and Tricks for SEO Writers

Lindsay Mineo at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014

Whether you’re writing for a brand or an agency you’re likely going to be reporting to someone who doesn’t understand SEO.

Persona Building

Relate to your audience as human beings – they’re the ones who are visiting your website and converting, not robots.

Keyword Research

Find the topics you should be addressing with the AdWords Keyword Planner. It’s free, and helps you find new keywords. Get traffic estimates for keywords and search volume, as well.

Finding the Right Voice

Connect with your audience as people. Ask you client or brand what voice they prefer to use. They might want to be humorous. They might want to be uber professional. Find out at the start so you know what tone to wield.

If you’re writing for a legal or medical site, still try to have personality in the writing – avoid sounding like an encyclopedia.
If you are able to write in humorous tone, make sure not to be insensitive. Brands who use the wrong hashtag or photo or words can come under fire.

Scope Out the Competition

Find out what you can do better. Try using Facebook Graph Search for competitor analysis.
All of your content should have some visual aspect to it.
Make sure to use white space.
Fully understand the language you’re speaking in. Are you writing regional content? Make sure your terms and/or slang is appropriate for the region. This really is important if you are outsourcing your content.
Write for the people, not the robots.
Use Title tags and Meta Descriptions; use your keywords but don’t stuff them.

Measuring Your Results

Mineo’s list of recommended tools:

Quora
Content Idea Generator
Google+ Communities
com
Your competitors’ social media accounts
Majestic SEO
Buffer’s Big List of 1879 Words that Convert
Title Tag Planner
Read-Able.com
Open Site Explorer
Content Idea Generator
Mail Chimp or Survey Monkey
Optimizely

Pubcon Keynote Liveblog: The Importance of ‘Buyer Legends’ with Jeffrey Eisenberg

Pubcon Keynote Liveblog: The Importance of ‘Buyer Legends’ with Jeffrey Eisenberg was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

“Buyer legends” are what marketer and bestselling author Jeffrey Eisenberg calls the narratives that craft a customer journey – and it’s also the name the company that he runs with his brother. In this morning’s keynote, Eisenberg will dive into buyer legends, exploring why they matter and what goes into them.

“Buyer Legends: The Executive Storyteller’s Guide”

People want wisdom. What they’re always looking for is one thing – they love to hear one thing – do this little thing and everything will work. They just love to take one nugget that makes a huge impact on their business.

But we don’t have just one thing.

There’s so much that goes into online marketing, and marketing at large:

Copywriting
Testing and experimentation
Search marketing
Social media
Design and layout
Psychology, human behavior and persuasion
Marketing and branding
Sales Presentation
Usability and user experiences
Information architecture
Business and web analytics

Finding one thing leads to a feeling of celebration — a feeling where everything went right. Think the 1986 Mets. A world series is a great metaphor for how to run a business – every marketing success comes from a long-term campaign for success. It’s about doing a lot of things right, not just one thing right.

Buyer Legends

Knowing that there can be no one single thing that makes or break marketing, buyer legends become all the more important. Buyer legends are the narrative that craft a customer journey, but they’re also an integral business process.

“Buyer Legends is a business process that combines the emotional power of storytelling with hard data to open new opportunities, spot gaps and optimize your sales and marketing.

Buyer Legends communicate the brand’s story intent and critical touch point responsibilities within every level of an organization from the boardroom to the stockroom.

Buyer Legends deliver improved execution, communications, testing and provide a big boost to the bottom line.”

Jeffrey Eisenberg, “Buyer Legends: The Executive Storyteller’s Guide”

Why You Can’t Look at Hard Data Alone

The problem with hard data is that we’re looking through a quantitative lens and throw out empathy. This isn’t an opinion; there have been studies that definitively show when one part of the brain is turned on, the other side is turned off. You need to pay attention to both sides.

You need to tell stories. Stories lead to neural coupling, mirroring, dopamine production and increased cortex activity.

Conversion is a Journey, Not a Destination

“Conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action you want them to take. It’s a reflection of your effectiveness and customer satisfaction. For you to achieve your goals, visitors must first achieve theirs.” —Bryan Eisenberg at ClickZ 2001

When thinking about personas, don’t just think about the personas – be the persona. Experience it.

Eisenberg thinks Amazon does a great job of this, and calls Amazon the most customer-centric company he can think of. He quotes CEO Jeff Bezos: “The most important single things is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.”

Hard data shows that customer experience leaders have a far greater ROI than customer experience laggards.

Amazon’s model works. Realize:

Amazon has a 13 percent higher American Customer satisfaction index than competitors.
Amazon has seven times the category depth of competitors.
Amazon’s prices are 5 to 14 percent lower than their competitors.

10 Essential Elements of a Buyer Legend

Who?
Their purpose and objectives
The sequence of steps in their plan
The rational for their plan
Key decisions
Emotional struggles
Anti-goals (the pre-mortem – what you don’t want to happen)
Constraints and considerations
Reasonable alternatives
How will you measure it?

Why are buyer legends Important? A buyer legend:

Improves communication. Everyone gets the big picture and the details.
Improves execution. Direction communication instead of implied instructions.
Improves testing. Better variations to test, and if variations fail look to assumptions.
Makes more money. Improved experiences increase conversions and are worth the investment of time upfront.

Read more about buyer legends in the aptly titled eBook “Buyer Legends,” to be released Oct. 27, by Jeffrey Eisenberg and Brian Eisenberg.

Opportunity Alert! Ask Google AdWords and Analytics Questions in Person at BCI’s Pubcon Booth

Opportunity Alert! Ask Google AdWords and Analytics Questions in Person at BCI’s Pubcon Booth was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

How often can you chat search advertising face to face with Google? Google representatives are answering your questions in Bruce Clay, Inc.’s Pubcon booth 207 on Wednesday, Oct. 8, from noon to 2 p.m.

Search marketing industry conferences like this week’s Pubcon Las Vegas are an opportunity to move your own SEM game to a new level of effectiveness. By attending Pubcon sessions you expect to hear cutting-edge tactics from marketing wizards in your field, and you may chase down some face-to-face time with these experts at the conference hotel bar. That’s the payoff of conference attendance. It’s not as common to get in face-time with Google employees, but now, at our booth Wednesday, you can ask Google AdWords reps your questions.

We’re excited to be hosting this special in-person opportunity with Google as part of the Google Partners program. Google’s experts will be answering questions about:

Current and recent AdWords announcements or features, such as callout extensions and phone tracking
Google Shopping, the transition from PLAs along with holiday or seasonal AdWords advice
Google Analytics best practices as they apply to AdWords campaign management
Leveraging Google Analytics to improve AdWords performance

Sort out your Google AdWords issues with Google reps and Bruce Clay, Inc. this Wednesday at Pubcon Las Vegas.

If you don’t already have plans to attend Pubcon, we’ve got you covered! Get 20% off registration with the code rc-1330920. For an Expo Hall pass on Wednesday only, registration (before discount) is just $75. We look forward to meeting with you there and sharing our booth with Google!

Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 Liveblog Schedule & Where We’ll Be

Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 Liveblog Schedule & Where We’ll Be was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

The Bruce Clay, Inc. team will be speaking, liveblogging and exhibiting at this week’s Pubcon Las Vegas. If you’ll be there, heads up that Google reps will be fielding questions about AdWords and Analytics at the the BCI booth 207 Wednesday from 12-2 p.m. 

You can also catch our President Bruce Clay and SEO Manager Mindy Weinstein, SEM Manager Michael Shore and Lead Sr. SEO Analyst Robert Ramirez, in Booth 207 in the Exhibit Hall. If you have any questions on SEO, SEM, SMM, content marketing or anything else Internet marketing-related, stop by the booth and fire away. We’d love to find out how we can help you grow your business.

Presentations on SEO Copywriting, Linkbuilding and What to Do about Penalties and Google’s Algo Flux

Bruce Clay and Mindy Weinstein will speaking and moderating several sessions. If you’re looking for insights into SEO, take a look at these sessions:

Mindy Weinstein’s Pubcon Speaking Schedule

Tuesday, October 7

10:15-11:25 Copywriting Style Guide – Tools & Tricks for SEO Writers (Salon E)

2:30-3:45 Tomorrow’s SEO Today – Social Search and Beyond (Salon C)

3:50-4:50 (Moderating) Blog Content Editorial Management (Salon E)

Bruce Clay’s Pubcon Speaking Schedule

Tuesday, October 7

12:05-12:40 What to Do About Penalties (Exhibit Hall Demo Theater)

2:30-3:45 Taming Algo Chaos and [Not Provided] (Salon A)

Thursday, October 9

11:00-12:00 Linkbuilding without a Penalty (Salon C)

3:00-3:50 SEO Mosh Pit

Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 Liveblogging Schedule

For those not attending Pubcon (or looking for copious session notes), check back on the BCI Blog all week long for liveblog coverage. Bruce Clay, Inc. blogger Kristi Kellogg will be liveblogging sessions as they happen.

Day 1: Tuesday, Oct. 7

Time
Pubcon Las Vegas Session




9 a.m.

Keynote: Ted Murphy

10:15 a.m.
Copywriting Style Guide: Tools and Tricks for SEO Writers


2:30 p.m.
Taming Algo Chaos and (Not Provided)


3:50 p.m.
New Mobile Behavior and Click to Call Strategies

 

Day 2: Wednesday, Oct. 8

Time
Pubcon Las Vegas Session




9 a.m.

Keynote: Chris Brogan

10:30 a.m.
Pinterest and Other Missed Social SEO Opportunities


1:10 p.m.
Keynote: Jason Calacanis


2:45 p.m.
Link Building Via a Press Outreach Campaign


3:15 p.m
Optimizing for Google Glass and Wearable Technology

 

Day 3: Thursday, Oct. 9

Time
Pubcon Las Vegas Session




10 a.m.

Keynote: Jay Baer

11 a.m.
Linkbuilding without a Penalty


1:40 p.m.
Utilizing Personas in Social Media Contests


3 p.m.
SEO Mosh Pit — Guest Liveblogger Matthew Young