Monthly Archives: February 2015

Posted by Isla_McKetta

True life confession: Although I've worked with some of the smartest SEOs, architects, and CPAs in the business, you couldn't always tell from their writing. Which is a problem. Because while some of them are client-facing (so the client gets to know their smarts firsthand—either in person or on the phone), some are only known by the lackluster reports they turn in.

This is a post about how anyone (whether you're an expert in SEO, PPC, social media, or even... content marketing) can write a clearer, more persuasive report. And the lessons contained herein can help you with any form of corporate communication, whether you're writing for a client or your boss.

Get ready to sound smarter.

Be assertive

Being assertive doesn't mean you should stand on your desk and shout your opinions like you're auditioning to be the next Hulk. Instead, have confidence in the data and recommendations you're reporting and convey that confidence in your writing. Because if you're not confident, you might not be ready to write the report. So go double-check your research and then use the following tactics to sound like the authority you are:

Ditch "I think"

I think there are a lot of things you could possibly say to show a client what they might or might not do depending on how they interpret your recommendations.

Notice how that sentence had no spine? That's because it's filled with empty phrases—words that do nothing for the sentence but convey how unwilling its author is to make a point.

Phrases like "I think," "I feel," and "might" are couching words—things you say when you're trying to leave yourself an out, and they make you sound passive and unsure. Go through your report and check for couching words. Ask yourself if you need them (in case of actual uncertainty like "Google might…") or if you can cut them out and strengthen your points.

Dump the passive voice

Mistakes are often made as we try to get around to a point with our writing.

One of those mistakes is in failing to use the active voice. Every sentence has an actor (subject) and an action (verb). While it's nice to vary your sentence structure sometimes, stick to "actor commits action" when you have something important to say (especially when you have bad news to break).

Be careful with dependent clauses

If you want to sound confident and decisive, lead with an independent clause instead of a dependent one (like I did here).

Time for a (mercifully quick) jump back to elementary school grammar. Independent clauses are the ones that can stand on their own as a complete sentence. They have a subject, verb, and usually an object. Dependent clauses don't.

Dependent clauses are often added to an independent clause to increase the level of information in a sentence. Let's flip that last sentence so you can watch the dependent clause move from the end to the front:

To increase the level of information in a sentence, dependent clauses are often added to an independent clause.

Dependent clauses are very useful, but some writers fall into a pattern of starting most of their sentences with them. That delay of the independent clause can make you sound like you're hesitating to get to the point. It can also make you seem passive or like there's something you're trying to hide. That's not how you want to come off in a report.

Choose a point of view (and stick to it)

Some companies prefer to write from a formal (and somewhat) distant third person perspective where "I" is never used; I prefer the more conversational first person.

You can write your report from any point of view you want, but be careful with those pronouns.

The most common mistake I see is for the writer to get indecisive with the pronouns and start throwing around the word "we" as in "we need to fix your title tags." Which could mean that the consultant is taking responsibility for the title tags, or it could be a general suggestion that the title tags need fixing.

Try instead, "your title tags need to be updated; we plan to start work on those during the second month of our engagement." Still uses the word "we," but now it's more obvious who's doing what (and will save you some embarrassing followup conversations).

Write for your audience

Industries with a high degree of fiduciary responsibility are often more accustomed to the use of a formal tone. Meanwhile, writers in other industries, like fashion, automotive, and anything related to the Internet, can get away with a much more casual voice.

You may have noticed by now that I start a lot of sentences with conjunctions like "and" and "but." I also use contractions. Both are part of a conversational tone that's "Mozzy," but if I was writing for a different audience, I would button the top button on my style (and maybe even add a tie).

You know your clients and their style of communication. It's reflected in everything from their RFP to the latest call. Try to mirror their tone (unless you think they came to you for a big shakeup) and your audience will feel like you understand their culture and needs. That means your work is more likely to be accepted.

Explain things

Remember that you were hired because of your unique expertise. That means that you know things the person reading the report doesn't.

When you're introducing a concept your client or boss likely hasn't encountered (or might be a little rusty on), give a short refresher to keep them engaged.

Don't over-explain things

No one likes to feel like an idiot. Going step by step through all the things anyone could ever want to know about a concept (whether foreign or not) has the potential to not only annoy your audience, but also distract from your main point.

If you come across a concept in writing your report that requires extensive education of your reader, either create an addendum where they can read as much as they need to, or schedule a phone call, training, or other way to get them all the info they need.

Use numbers (wisely)

Ninety-nine percent of SEOs have more data than they can ever reasonably convey to the client.

That's because clients (at least sane ones) don't want to know what every single keyword ranked on every day last month. They want to know if their overall rankings are up or down, what that means for their business, and how to push rankings upward in general in the future.

Numbers are very useful (and can be very powerful) if you're using graphs and tables that tell a story, but without your interpretation, they're all kind of meaningless.

So although you have access to all the numbers in the world, the real magic of your report is in getting inside your reader's head and figuring out what they need to understand about the numbers. Then use the analysis portion of your report to translate that data into answers.

Write fewer words

Concision is an art. Redundancy is annoying. Write as few words as you can to convey your point.

Don't let big words interfere with meaning

An immense vocabulary can obfuscate significance.

This is true of using big words to sound smart and also if you're spouting jargon at people who don't understand it. You might notice from reading this post that I use very little jargon. That's because the vocab words I learned in creative writing won't mean anything to most of you and I can usually find a clearer way to express marketing jargon.

So if your clients (and all the people who will read the report) regularly use words like "earned media," "freemium," and "EPV," you can use them too. But if you have any doubt, try to find a way to use a more accessible word or add some context so everyone can follow you.

Think about general scanability

Your clients are busy. You want them to get the most out of a report they might only ever scan.

All the things you've learned about writing for the Internet apply to writing reports:

• Short sentences (that aren't choppy) are easier to read.
• Keeping each paragraph to one topic with a topic sentence makes it easier to scan.
• Using bullet points (when appropriate) will help your reader digest all that information you've created for them.

Help your reader out by making all your great information intelligible.

Employ an executive summary

Keep the person who signs your checks in the loop with a few words.

To write an effective executive summary, give the highlights:

• Why was the work undertaken?
• What problems were found?
• Next steps

The summary should run between a paragraph and a page (depending on how long your report is). That means you want to save all that delicious analysis you've slaved over for the report itself.

Use templates at your own risk

I know, a lot of the things you're saying to one client are 90% the same as what you're saying to the next client, and creating a template just makes your job more efficient. But if you aren't carefully reading the resulting document, you might be making a mistake (like using the wrong client name or giving them instructions for Omniture when they use GA) that takes much longer to clean up than writing an original report would have.

Trust me, about the third time you're reading over the same words in the same order (even if for different clients), you are too far inside the template to see the mistakes. But your client is reading this report for the first time ever and they won't miss a thing :/. Speaking of which...

Proofreading isn't optional

You aren't qualified to proofread you're [sic] own work.

Not saying anything about your reading or grammar skills, but I'm 99% certain that you've spent so long staring at that report that you are beyond spotting your own typos. Find a second reader. If you're in absolute dire straits and can't find a buddy, read the report aloud to yourself.

Feel smarter already? I hope so. Because you've worked too hard to pull all that information together just to have it fall flat because of a bad report. Tell me about your report writing disasters (and things you'd like help with) in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by randfish

Y'all remember how last October, we launched a new section in Open Site Explorer called "Link Opportunities?" While I was proud of that work, there was one section that really disappointed me at the time (and I said as much in my comments on the post).

Well, today, that disappointment is over, because we're stepping up the Link Intersect tool inside OSE big time:

Literally thousands of sweet, sweet link opportunities are now yours at the click of a button

In the initial launch, Link Intersect used Freshscape (which powers Fresh Web Explorer). Freshscape is great for certain kinds of data - links and mentions that come from newly publishes pages that are in news sources, blogs, and feeds. But it's not great for non-news/blogs/feed sources because it's intentionally avoiding those!

For example, in the screenshot above, I wanted to see all the pages that link to SeriousEats.com and SplendidTable.org but don't link to SmittenKitchen.com.

• Using the Fresh Web Explorer query RD:SeriousEats.com RD:SplendidTable.org -RD:SmittenKitchen.com gets me only 1 result (a post on Splendid Table that links to SeriousEats)
• Using the new, Mozscape-powered Link Intersect tool, I found 672 pages that fit those parameters!

That's 671 more, juicy link opportunities thanks to the hard work of the Moz Big Data and Research Tools teams.

How does the new Link Intersect work?

The tool looks at the top 250,000 links our index has pointing to each of the intersecting targets you enter, and the top 1 mllion links in our index pointing to the excluded URL.

Link Intersect then runs a differential comparison to determine which of the 250K links to each of the intersecting targets are from the same URL or root domain, and removes any of those links that point to the top million links to the excluded URL/root/sub domain.

This means it's possible for sites and pages with massive quantities of links that we won't show every intersecting link we know about, but since the sorting is in Page Authority order, you'll get the highest quality/most important ones at the top.

You can use Link Intersect to see three unique views on the data:

• Pages that link to subdomains (particularly useful if you're interested in shared links to sites on hosted subdomains like blogspot, wordpress, etc or to a specific subdomain section of a competitor's site)
• Pages that link to root domains (my personal favorite, as I find the results the most comprehensive)
• Root domains that link to the root domains (great if you're trying to get a broad sense of domain-level outreach/marketing targets)

Note that it's possible the root domains will actually expose more links that pages because the domain-level link graph is easier and faster to sort through, so the 250K limit is less of a barrier.

Like most of the reports in Open Site Explorer, Link Intersect comes with a handy CSV Export option:

When it finishes (my most recent one took just under 3 minutes to run and email me), you'll get a nice email like this one:

Please ignore the grammatical errors. I'm sure our team will fix those up soon :-)

Why are these such good link/outreach/marketing targets?

Generally speaking, this type of data is invaluable for link outreach because these sites and pages are ones that clearly care about the shared topics or content of the intersecting targets. If you enter two of your primary competitors, you'll often get news media, blog posts, reference resources, events, trade publications, and more that produce content in your topical niche.

They're also good targets because they actually link out! This means you can avoid sifting through sites whose policies or practices mean they're unlikely to ever link to you - if they've linked to those other two chaps, why not you, too?!

Basically, you can check the trifecta of link opportunity goodness boxes (which I've helpfully illustrated above, because that's just the kind of SEO dork I am).

Link Intersect is limited only by your own creativity - so long as you can keep finding sites and pages on the web whose links might also be a match for your own site, we can keep digging through trillions of links, finding the intersects, and giving them back to you.

3 examples of Link Intersect in action

Let's look at some ways we might put this to use in the real world:

#1: I'm trying to figure out who links to my two big competitors in the world of book reviews

First off, remember that Link Intersect works on a root domain or subdomain level, so we wouldn't want to use something like the NYTimes' review of books, because we'd be finding all the intersections to NYTimes.com. Instead, we want to pick more topically-focused domains, like these two:

You'll also note that I've used a fake website as my excluded URL - this is a great trick for when you're simply interested in any sites/pages that link to two domains and don't need to remove a particular target.

#2: I've got a locally-focused website doing plumbing and need a few link sources to help boost my potential to rank in local and organic SERPs

In this instance, I'll certainly look at pages linking to combinations of the top ranking sites in the local results, e.g. the 15 results for this query:

This is a solid starting point, especially considering how few links local sites often need to perform well. But we can get creative by branching outside of plumbing and exploring related fields like construction:

Focusing on better-linked-to industries and websites will give more results, so we want to try to broaden rather than narrow our categories and look for the most-linked-to sites in given verticals for comparisons.

#3: I'm planning some new content around weather patterns for my air conditioning website and want to know what news and blog sites cover extreme weather content

First, I'm going to start by browsing some search results for content in this field that's received some serious link activity. By turning on my Mozbar's SERPs overlay, I can see the sites and pages that have generated loads of links:

Now I can run a few combinations of these through the Link Intersect Tool:

While those domain names make me fear for humanity's intelligence and future survival, they also expose a great link opportunity tactic I hadn't previously considered - climate science deniers and the more politically charged universe of climate science overall.

I hope you enjoy the new Link Intersect tool as much as I have been - I think it's one of the best things we've put in Open Site Explorer in the last few months, though what we're releasing in March might beat even that, so stay tuned!

And, as always, please do give us feedback and feel free to ask questions in the comments below or through the Moz Community Q+A.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Beverley_Distilled

As part of the promotions and online PR team at Distilled, I spend the majority of my time trying to get the attention of journalists. If you've ever worked in PR you'll know that this isn't always as easy as it sounds. Journalists are busy. They're on a deadline, they're knee-deep in an article that's exponentially more timely than whatever you're pitching to get coverage for. That email you spent half an hour perfecting? It's getting scanned for something newsworthy, for surprising facts, for data that's going to make an interesting story, and something that's going to make their readers hit the ‘share' buttons.

When I'm not working at Distilled, I run a travel blog and I'm a freelance writer. Consequently I find myself on the receiving end of the kind of emails I send out in my day job. More often than not, I hit the archive button and move on. Why? Because a lot of the pitches I get are totally irrelevant to my readership and, honestly, if you can't take one minute to visit my site ask yourself whether you actually want you client in front of an audience of travel-lovers, then welcome to my trash folder.

That's not where you want to be; the trash folder. You want to be in the yes folder, if there is in fact such a thing. You want your email to be so compelling, so full of the little details that make a journalist's job easier, that their mouse doesn't even hover near the delete button, let alone actually press it.

So how do you make it easy for a journalist to say yes to you?

Stop with the flattery

Flattery might work when you're doing blogger outreach. Or, should I say, genuine flattery works; as a blogger I've received way too many emails where the the first sentence reads like a random positive adjective generator's been used to say some nice things about my blog so that the sender, seemingly too busy to visit my site for a few minutes, doesn't have to do any actual research.

Genuine flattery works with bloggers because it's our site, our hard work, our money being poured into site design and hosting every month, our bedside lamps burning until the early hours as we write, and promote, and plan, and pitch.

Journalists are doing their jobs. You don't need to tell them that the article they wrote for The Atlantic back in 2013 really resonated with you. You don't need to try to make them like you. You don't need to make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So stop. Stop with the flattery and get to the point.

'CC' is a big no-no

I get it, OK, you're busy. I'm busy. We're all busy. You know what you shouldn't be too busy to do if you really want journalists to cover your story? You shouldn't be so busy that you don't have a few minutes to send a separate email to each journalist you're pitching.

Unless you're pitching an exclusive story journalists know that you're probably going to be pitching to more than one publication. That's OK, that's what you should be doing to try and obtain the maximum amount of coverage for your company or client.

What you don't want them to think is that you've sent the exact same email to every single journalist with the exact same information which, if you send a blanket email, is basically what you're doing.

When you do that you're almost saying ‘OK, I've done no research into your publication, no research into the kinds of articles you've written in the past, and I haven't tailored any of my pitch to appeal to you or your audience' which is exactly what you don't want.

Write some of the story for them

Imagine if you told your friends you'd cook them dinner anytime they wanted. They wouldn't have to give you any notice. All they had to do was turn up at your door with the ingredients.

Except word gets around and, one day, you're facing the prospect of cooking 20 different meals for 20 different friends. I don't know what your culinary skills are like but can we all just agree that this would be a somewhat stressful and annoying situation?

Now imagine that those 20 people turn up with their ingredients again, except this time they've done some of the work for you. Onions have been diced, garlic's been crushed. Everything you need to make the meal is there, you just need to bind them together.

How much better do you feel? How much more willing are you to forgive your friends for turning up unannounced?

That's kind of what you need to do for journalists. No, not invite them around for dinner; do some of the work for them so that they can write the story around the facts.

In practical terms, I tend to take the stats that are most relevant to their audience, the parts that I want them to focus on, and include them in my pitch email on separate lines. This way, the journalist can see the most important details at a glance without having to dig through data, or read a huge press release. Help them write the story you want them to write about your client and you're much more likely to get a ‘yes' out of them.

Don't Be a Tease, Be Proactive

Do you have images that the journalist can use should they choose to run the story? Do you have a press release with more information in it? Do you have contact details for your company or client's spokesperson?

Maybe you have an awesome interactive graphic the journalist can feature, or an iframe they can use to host it on their site fully. Maybe you have all the things.

So why are you only teasing the journalist in your first email?

‘I have some photos of the product if you want to use them'

‘I can also get your the details of our expert on this.'

‘Let me know if you need anything else.'

Seriously? If you have these things available, give them to the journalist now. Be proactive. If you think they're going to be useful include them in your email. Attach the photos, copy the press release underneath your pitch in the body of the email, include the iframe code.

Journalists are under more pressure than ever to get stories published. They don't spend all day working on one article, they're writing multiple articles each day. This is why it's so important that you give them everything you think they could possibly need so that they can get on with writing the story instead of replying to your email.

Build a relationship

Good news: you did your research, you sent a pitch, and a journalist covered your story. But your relationship with that journalist doesn't stop there. In fact, what you do after they've hit publish on their article is almost as important as everything you did before you hit send on your pitch.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a piece of creative we'd built for one of our clients some coverage on the site of one of the UK's largest national newspapers so, afterwards, I emailed my contact to say ‘thank you' and shared the article on my social media channels. It literally took me all of 10 seconds.

I mean, sure, I didn't get another email back from my contact (remember when I said journalists were busy?) but that's because, by that point, she was probably more interested in writing her next article.

And that's OK, because the next time I have a story I think she'd be interested in covering, and I email her, I'll carry on the email thread and she'll know that I was helpful, and quick to reply, and courteous. Things that go a long way in the world of PR.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!