Monthly Archives: March 2015

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

I love SEO. I love talking about SEO. Most non-SEO folk you talk to are generally very nice people. They may not understand everything you say, but they often nod their head and smile. The open-minded may even ask you to look at their site.

On the other hand, there's the non-SEO "expert" (loosely defined as someone who has a cousin in marketing) who represents a different beast altogether. Well intentioned but misinformed, they believe SEO is urban legend, no better than a Ponzi scheme.

Here's what I have to say to a few of the worst offenders.

1. SEO is a scam

What the friggin' what?

The above screenshot of organic traffic to Moz's own website shows the kind of success many strive for, but it is neither unusual or nor unattainable for folks that consistently invest in SEO as a marketing strategy.

Sadly, many business owners have been approached by less-than-ethical marketing vendors who promise SEO services but basically deliver nothing. If you are paying $49/month to a service that promises you top rankings in Google, it is almost certainly a scam.

That's not SEO.

Perhaps this most harmful of myths stems from those seeking quick and easy wins with little effort. Indeed, there are cases of SEO wins that meet these criteria, typically when a site has easily correctable technical problems. In other cases, SEO involves real effort and commitment which often pays additional rewards beyond the increase in traffic.

2. Google will figure it out

No. No they friggin' won't.

Here's what many webmasters see far too often when they trust search engines to do their SEO for them.

The temptation of many website owners and developers is to throw as many URLs as possible—sometimes millions—at Google's crawlers and pray that their mysterious algorithms will magically deliver these pages to valuable users. Alternatively, even sites with a handful of pages expect search engines to do all the heavy lifting.

Google is smart, but not magic.

What's forgotten in this equation is that Google and other search engines strive to mimic human behavior in evaluating content (and no human wants to sort through a million near-duplicate pages) and use human generated signals (such as links and engagement metrics) to crawl and rank results.

Every page delivered in search results should be unique, valuable, and more often than not contain technical clues to help search engines sort them from the billions of possible pages on the web. Without these qualities, search marketing is a game of chance that almost always loses.

3. We did SEO once

Congratulations. Buy yourself a cookie.

It's sad to see organic search traffic fall over time, but all to often that's exactly what happens when no effort is applied. Continually maintaining your SEO efforts is essential because of:

• Link degradation (a.k.a. link rot)
• Publishing new pages
• Evolving search engine algorithms
• The competition moving ahead of you
• Outdated content
• ...and more

For a small minority of sites, SEO doesn't need continual investment. My father-in-law's auto shop is a perfect example. He has more business than he needs, and as long as folks find him when searching for "Helfer Auto" he's happy. In this case, simply monitoring your SEO with the addition of a deeper dive 2-3 times per year may be sufficient.

For the rest of us, one-and-done SEO falls short.

4. Link building is dead (again)

Sigh.

Recently the SEO world got worked up when Google's John Mueller stated link building is something he'd "try to avoid."

Many misinterpreted this to mean that link building is bad, against the rules, and Google will penalize you for it.

In fact, nothing has changed that the fact that search engines use link authority and anchor text signals heavily in their search ranking algorithms. Or that white-hat link building is a completely legitimate and time-tested marketing practice.

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google's Algorithm by Rand Fishkin

I'm certain John was referring to the more manipulative type of link building, no doubt encountered frequently at Google. To be fair, this type of non-relevant, scaled approach to links should be avoided at all costs, and search engines have taken great strides to algorithmically detect and punish this behavior.

Marketers build links in a number of natural ways, and attracting links to your website remains darn-near essential for any successful SEO undertaking. If you need help, we write about it frequently.

5. I want to rank #1 for "magic keyword"

No. No you friggin' don't.

Look, here's a personal example. I really want to rank #1 for "SEO" because Moz offers SEO software. Because of our Beginner's Guide to SEO. Because SEO is our lifeblood.

But we don't, and it doesn't matter.

Moz typically ranks #2-3 for "SEO". It sends good traffic, but not nearly as good as the thousands of long-tail keywords with more focused intent. In fact, if you went through our entire keyword set, you would find that "SEO" by itself only sends a tiny fraction of our entire traffic, and we could easily survive without it.

The truth is, when you create solid content focused around topics, you almost always receive far more (and oftentimes better) traffic from long-tail keywords that you didn't try to rank for.

The magic happens when visits reach your site because the content matched thier needs, but not necessarily when you matched the right keywords.

6. Google hates SEO

Some days, it feels that way.

In truth, Google's relationship with SEO is much more nuanced.

1. Google readily states that SEO can "potentially improve your site and save time" and that many SEO agencies "provide useful services." Google even advises "If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better."
2. Google published their own SEO Starter Guide. While a bit out of date, it certainly encourages people to take advantage of SEO techniques to improve search visibility.
3. Google Analytics offers a series of SEO Reports. Keep in mind, these are almost laughably unusable due to the handicapped data quality.

While Google seems to encourage search engine optimization, it almost certainly hates manipulative SEO. The type of SEO meant to trick search engines into believing false popularity and relevancy signals in order to rank content higher.

In fact, many of the myths in the post boil down to some folks' inability to distinguish between hard-working SEO and search engine spam. Which leads us to:

7. SEO is dead, because Google Answers

It's scary for SEOs when we ask Google a question and see an actual answer instead of a link, as in the example below. It's even more frightening when Google takes over entire verticals such as the weather, mortgage calculators, or song lyrics.

With the flip of a button, it seems Google can wipe out entire business models.

Screenshot hat tip to Dan Barker

In reality, search growth and traffic continues to grow for most industries. Consider the following:

• World Internet and search activity continues to rise, particularly in the mobile sector. This generally indicates that more users are performing more searches on a greater number of devices.
• MozCast reports only 4.9% of Google searches result in an answer box.
• A recent study by Stone Temple showed that 74.3% of Google answer boxes contained linked attribution, while the rest was public domain knowledge.

Anecdotal evidence further suggests that even when presented with answer boxes, a large number of users click through to the cited website.

People want answers, but at least for now they also want their websites.

8. SEO is all tricks

Really? This is plain sad. Somebody make me a sad salad.

"Tricks" is what professionals call bad, manipulative SEO that gets you penalized. The problem, I believe, is the first thing any developer or marketing manager hears about SEO is something close to "put more keywords in the title tag."

If that's all SEO is, it does sound like tricks.

Real SEO makes every part of content organization and the browsing experience better. This includes:

1. Creating content that reverse engineers user needs
2. Making content more discoverable, both for humans and search engine crawlers
3. Improving accessibility through site architecture and user experience
4. Structuring data for unambiguous understanding
5. Optimizing for social sharing standards
6. Improving search presence by understanding how search engines generate snippets
7. Technical standards to help search engines categorize and serve content to the right audience
8. Improving website performance through optimizations such as site speed
9. Sharing content with the right audiences, increasing exposure and traffic through links and mentions

Each of these actions is valuable by itself. By optimizing your web content from every angle, you may not even realize you're doing SEO, but you'll reap many times the rewards.

9. PageRank

Actually, I like PageRank.

But it's still a flippin' myth.

PageRank was an incredibly innovative solution allowing Google to gauge the popularity of a webpage to the point that they could build the world's best search engine on the concept.

Despite what people say, PageRank is very likely still a part of Google's algorithm (although with severely reduced influence). More than that, PageRank gave Google the ability to build more advanced algorithms on top of the basic system.

Consider concepts like Topic Sensitive Page Rank or even this recent paper on entity salience from Google Research which highlights the use of a PageRank-like system.

The source of many bad myths

So why is PageRank such a bad myth?

1. Toolbar PageRank, the PageRank most SEOs talk about, will likely never be updated again.
2. PageRank correlates poorly with search engine rankings, to the point that we quit studying it long ago.
3. PageRank is easy to manipulate.

Fortunately, Google has moved away from talking about PageRank or supporting it in a public-facing way. This will hopefully lead to an end of people using PageRank for manipulative purposes, such as selling links and shady services.

If you're interested, several companies have developed far more useful link metrics including Majestic's Citation Flow, Ahrefs Rank, and Moz's Page and Domain Authority.

10. Social activity doesn't affect SEO

At this point, I barely have strength left to argue.

Explaining this myth could take an entire post, so I'll boil it down the bare facts. The basic argument goes like this:

"Google says they don't use Facebook likes or Tweet counts to rank websites. Therefore, social activity doesn't matter to SEO."

This statement is half right, but can you guess which half?

It's true that Google does not use metrics such as Facebook shares or Twitter Followers directly in search rankings.

On the other hand, successful social activity can have significant secondary effects on your SEO efforts. Social activity helps address two of the major tasks facing SEOs:

1. Search engine discovery and indexation
2. Content distribution, which leads to links and shares

Perhaps no one explains it better than AJ Kohn, in his excellent Social Signals and SEO.

Stolen with permission from AJ Kohn

Successful social activity puts your content in front of the right group of users, increasing visits, engagement, and brand signals like the number of users searching for your site. Finally, the simple act of more influencers visiting your content can lead to more links and further sharing, and the cycle repeats itself. All of these secondary effects can significantly boost your SEO efforts.

More myths from SEOs

We asked several folks on Twitter about thier least favorite SEO myths. Here are a few favorite replies.

@CyrusShepard That Google doesn't use any visit/engagement/traffic data in any way in their search quality systems

— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard the one that still bugs me the most is PageRank

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard The disavow tool is useless. :)

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) February 20, 2015

@dan_shure @CyrusShepard How about "you can absolutely, unequivocally rely on the canonical tag... even when set up perfect" :(

— Bill Sebald (@billsebald) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard you should have x number of keywords in your keywords meta tag, you know, the tag you don't need.

— Chris McElroy (@SEOpn) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That SEO is something that can be done once and then your site is magically all-good for rankings nirvana for the rest of days

— Christian Bullock (@ChristianBk) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard that there is no point getting more than one link from the same domain as it doesn't pass anymore value.

— Tim Grice (@Tim_Grice) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That you can pay an agency $100/month and “rank #1 for everything!”

— Brandon Hassler (@BrandonHassler) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That it's easy. If it's that damn easy, how come Google invest huge amounts in providing *relevancy* (algos, patents, tech)?

— Tony Dimmock (@Tony_DWM) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard Google favors pages that run AdWords. I roll my eye whenever I heard this from a "subject expert" and they've died in my mind.

— victorpan (@victorpan) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard Bonus myth, SEO is dead! :)

— Hardik Oza (@Ozaemotion) February 20, 2015

What SEO myth drives you nuts? Let us know in the comments below!

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Posted by RuthBurrReedy

Finding your next SEO hire is hard, but it's only half the battle. Growing a team isn't just about hiring—it's about making your whole team, newbies and experts alike, better marketers.

It's almost impossible to build a one-size-fits-all training program for digital marketers, since the tasks involved will depend a lot on the role. Even "SEO" can mean a lot of different things. Your role might be highly technical, highly creative, or a mix of both. Tactics like local SEO or conversion rate optimization might be a huge part of an SEO's job or might be handled by another person entirely. Sometimes an SEO role includes elements like social media or paid search. The skills you teach your trainees will depend on what you need them to do, and more specifically, what you need them to do right now.

Whatever the specifics of the marketing role, you need to make sure you're providing a growth plan for your digital marketers (this goes for your more experienced team members, as well as your newbies). A professional growth plan helps you and your team members:

• Track whether or not they're making progress in their roles. Taking on a new skill set can be daunting. Having a growth plan can alleviate some of the stress less-experienced employees may feel when learning a new skill, and makes sure more experienced employees aren't stagnating.
• Spot problem areas. Everyone's talents are different, but you don't want someone to miss out on growth opportunities because they're such a superstar in one area and are neglecting everything else.
• Have conversations around promotions and raises. Consistently tracking people's development across a variety of skill sets allows you to compare where someone is now to where they were when you hired them; it also gives you a framework to discuss what additional steps might be needed before a promotion or raise is in order, and help them develop a plan to get there.
• Advance their careers. One of your duties as their manager is to make sure you're giving them what they need to continue on their career path. A professional development plan should be managed with career goals in mind.
• Increase employee retention. Smart people like to learn and grow, and if you're not providing them ways to do so, they're not going to stick around.

We have technical/on-page SEOs, content marketers, local SEOs and marketing copywriters all working together on the same team at BigWing. We wanted to create a framework for professional development that we could apply to the whole team, so we identified a set of areas that any digital marketer should be growing in, regardless of their focus. This growth plan is part of everyone's mid-year and year-end reviews.

Here's what it looks like:

Growth areas for digital marketers

Want your own copy of the Professional Advancement Sheet? Get it here!

Tactical -> strategic

At the beginner level, team members are still learning the basic concepts and tasks associated with their role, and how those translate to the client metrics they're being measured on. It takes time to encounter and fix enough different kinds of things to know "in x situation, look at a, b and c and then try y or z."

As someone grows in their role, they will learn more advanced tactics. They should also be more and more able to use critical thinking to figure out how to solve problems and tackle longer-term client goals and projects. At the senior level, an SEO should be building long-term strategies and be comfortable with unusual campaigns and one-off projects.

Small clients -> big clients

There are plenty of small brochure websites in the world, and these sites are a great testing ground for the fundamentals of SEO: they may still have weird jacked-up problems (so many websites do), but they are a manageable size and don't usually have the potential for esoteric technical issues that large, complex sites do. Once someone has a handle on SEO, you can start assigning bigger and badder sites and projects (with plenty of mentoring from more experienced team members—more on that later).

We thought about making this one "Easy clients -> difficult clients," because there's another dimension to this line of progress: increasingly complex client relationships. Clients with very large or complicated websites (or clients with more than one website) are likely to have higher budgets, bigger internal staff, and more stakeholders. As the number of people involved increases, so does the potential for friction, so a senior-level SEO should be able to handle those complex relationships with aplomb.

Learning -> teaching

At the beginner level, people are learning digital marketing in general and learning about our specific internal processes. As they gain experience, they become a resource for team members still in the "learning" phase, and at the senior level they should be a go-to for tough questions and expert opinions.

Even a beginner digital marketer may have other things to teach the team; skills learned from previous careers, hobbies or side gigs can be valuable additions. For example, we had a brand-new team member with a lot of experience in photography, a valuable skill for content marketers; she was able to start teaching her teammates more about taking good photos while still learning other content marketing fundamentals herself.

I love this stock picture because the chalkboard just says "learning." Photo via Pixabay.

Since managers can't be everywhere at once, more experienced employees must take an active role in teaching. It's not enough that they be experts (which is why this scale doesn't go from "Learning" to "Mastering"); they have to be able to impart that expertise to others. Teaching is more than just being available when people have questions, too: senior team members are expected to be proactive about taking the time to show junior team members the ropes.

Prescribed -> creative

The ability to move from executing a set series of tasks to creating creative, heavily client-focused digital marketing campaigns is, in my opinion, one of the best predictors of long-term SEO success. When someone is just starting out in SEO, it's appropriate to have a fairly standard set of tasks they're carrying out. For a lot of those small sites that SEO trainees start on, that set of SEO fundamentals goes a long way. The challenge comes when the basics aren't enough.

Creative SEO comes from being able to look at a client's business, not just their website, and tailor a strategy to their specific needs. Creative SEOs are looking for unique solutions to the unique problems that arise from that particular client's combination of business model, target market, history and revenue goals. Creativity can also be put to work internally, in the form of suggested process improvements and new revenue-driving projects.

General -> T-shaped

The concept of the T-shaped marketer has been around for a few years (if you're not familiar with the idea, you can read up on it on Rand's blog or the Distilled blog). Basically, it means that in addition to deep knowledge whatever area(s) of inbound marketing we specialize in, digital marketers should also work to develop basic knowledge of a broad set of marketing disciplines, in order to understand more about the craft of marketing as a whole.

Source: The T-Shaped Marketer

A digital marketer who's just starting out will naturally be focusing more on the broad part of their T, getting their head around the basic concepts and techniques that make up the digital marketing skill set. Eventually most people naturally find a few specialty areas that they're really passionate about. Encouraging employees to build deep expertise ultimately results in a whole team full of subject matter experts in a whole team's worth of subjects.

Beginner -> expert

This one is pretty self-explanatory. The important thing to note is that expertise isn't something that just happens to you after you do something a lot (although that's definitely part of it). Honing expertise means actively pursuing new learning opportunities and testing new ideas and tactics, and we look for the pursuit of expertise as part of evaluating someone's professional growth.

Observing -> leading

Anyone who is working in inbound marketing should be consistently observing the industry—they should be following search engine news, reading blog posts from industry experts, and attending events and webinars to learn more about their craft. It's a must-do at all levels, and even someone who's still learning the ropes can be keeping an eye on industry buzz and sharing items of interest with their co-workers.

Not everyone is crazy about the phrase "thought leadership." When you're a digital marketing agency, though, your people are your product—their depth of knowledge and quality of work is a big part of what you're selling. As your team gains experience and confidence, it's appropriate to expect them to start participating more in the digital marketing space, both online and in person. This participation could look like:

• Pitching and speaking at marketing conferences
• Contributing to blogs, whether on your site or in other marketing communities
• Organizing local tech meetups
• Regularly participating in online events like #seochat

...or a variety of other activities, depending on the individual's talents and interests. Not only does this kind of thought-leadership activity promote your agency brand, it also helps your employees build their personal brands—and don't forget, a professional development plan needs to be as much about helping your people grow in their careers as it is about growing the skill sets you need.

Low output -> high output

I love the idea of meticulous, hand-crafted SEO, but let's be real: life at an agency means getting stuff done. When people are learning to do stuff, it takes them longer to do (which is BY FAR MY LEAST FAVORITE PART OF LEARNING TO DO THINGS, I HATE IT SO MUCH), so expectations of the number of clients/volume of work they can handle should scale appropriately. It's okay for people to work at their own pace and in their own way, but at some point you need to be able to rely on your team to turn things around quickly, handle urgent requests, and consistently hit deadlines, or you're going to lose customers.

You may notice that some of these growth areas overlap, and that's okay—the idea is to create a nuanced approach that captures all the different ways a digital marketer can move toward excellence.

Like with all other aspects of a performance review, it's important to be as specific as possible when discussing a professional growth plan. If there's an area a member of your team needs to make more progress in, don't just say e.g. "You need to be more strategic." Come up with specific projects and milestones for your marketer to hit so you're both clear on when they're growing and what they need to do to get to the next level.

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