Posted by Aleyda

[Estimated read time: 9 minutes]

I know you would never change a URL without identifying where to 301-redirect it and making sure that the links, XML sitemaps, and/or canonical tags are also updated. But if you’ve been doing SEO for a while, I bet you’ve also had a few clients — even big ones — coming to you after they’ve tried to do structural web changes or migrations of any type without taking SEO best practices into consideration.

Whenever this happens, your new client comes to you for help in an “emergency” type of situation in which there are two characteristics when doing the required SEO analysis:

1. You need to prioritize:
   Your client is likely very nervous about the situation. You don’t have a lot of time to invest at the beginning to do a full audit right away. You’ll need to focus on identifying what hasn’t been done during the migration to make sure that the fundamental causes of the traffic loss are fixed — then you can move on with the rest.
   
   
2. You might not have all the data:
   You might have only the basics — like Google Analytics & Google Search Console — and the information that the client shares with you about the steps they took when doing the changes. There are usually no previous rankings, crawls, or access to logs. You’ll need to make the most out of these two fairly easy-to-get data sources, new crawls that you can do yourself, and third-party “historical” ranking data. In this analysis we’ll work from this existing situation as a “worst-case scenario,” so anything extra that you can get will be an added benefit.

How can you make the most out of your time and basic data access to identify what went wrong and fix it — ASAP?

Let’s go through the steps for a “minimum viable” web migration validation to identify the critical issues to fix:

1. Verify that the web migration is the cause of the traffic loss.

To start, it’s key to:

• Obtain from the client the specific changes that were done and actions taken during the migration, so you can identify those that had been likely missed and prioritize their validations when doing the analysis.
• Check that the time of the traffic loss coincides with that of the migration to validate that it was actually the cause, or if there were different or coinciding factors that might have affected at the same time that you can later take into consideration when doing the full audit and analysis.

To identify this, compare the before and after with other traffic sources, per device & the migrated areas of your site (if not all of them changed), etc.

Use the “Why My Web Traffic Dropped” checklist to quickly verify that the loss has nothing to do with, for example, incorrect Google Analytics settings after the migration or a Google update happening at the same time.

I’ve had situations where the organic search traffic loss had coincided not only with the web migration but also with the date of a Phantom update (and they had the type of characteristics that were targeted).

If this is the case, you can’t expect to regain all the traffic after fixing the migration-related issues. There will be further analysis and implementations needed to fix the other causes of traffic loss.

2. Identify the pages that dropped the most in traffic, conversions, & rankings.

Once you verify that the traffic loss is due (completely or partially) to the web migration, then the next step is to focus your efforts on analyzing and identifying the issues in those areas that were hit the most from a traffic, conversions, & rankings perspective. You can do this by comparing organic search traffic per page before and after the migration in Google Analytics:

Select those that previously had the highest levels of traffic & conversions and that lost the highest percentages of traffic.

You can also do something similar with those pages with the highest impressions, clicks, & positions that have also had the greatest negative changes from the Google Search Console “Search Analytics” report:

After gathering this data, consolidate all of these pages (and related metrics) in an Excel spreadsheet. Here you’ll have the most critical pages that have lost the most from the migration.

3. Identify the keywords for which these pages were ranking for and start monitoring them.

In most cases the issues will be technical (though sometimes they may be due to structural content issues). However, it’s important to identify the keywords for which these pages had been ranking in the past that lost visibility post-migration, start tracking them, and be able to verify their improvement after the issues are fixed.

This can be done by gathering data from tools with historical keyword ranking features — like SEMrush, Sistrix, or SearchMetrics — that also show you which pages have lost rankings during a specific period of time.

This can be a bit time-consuming, so you can also use URLProfiler to discover those keywords that were ranking in the past. It easily connects with your Google Search Console “Search Analytics” data via API to obtain their queries from the last 3 months.

As a result, you’ll have your keyword data and selected critical pages to assess in one spreadsheet:

Now you can start tracking these keywords with your favorite keyword monitoring tool. You can even track the entire SERPs for your keywords with a tool like SERPwoo.

4. Crawl both the list of pages with traffic drops & the full website to identify issues and gaps.

Now you can crawl the list of pages you’ve identified using the “list mode” of an SEO crawler like Screaming Frog, then crawl your site with the “crawler mode,” comparing the issues in the pages that lost traffic versus the new, currently linked ones.

You can also integrate your site crawl with Google Analytics to identify gaps (ScreamingFrog and Deepcrawl have this feature) and verify crawling, indexation, and even structural content-related issues that might have been caused by the migration. The following are some of the fundamentals that I recommend you take a look at, answering these questions:

A.) Which pages aren’t in the web crawl (because they’re not linked anymore) but were receiving organic search traffic?

Do these coincide with the pages that have lost traffic, rankings, & conversions? Have these pages been replaced? If so, why they haven’t been 301-redirected towards their new versions? Do it.

B.) Is the protocol inconsistent in the crawls?

Especially if the migration was from one version to the other (like HTTP to HTTPS), verify whether there are pages still being crawled with their HTTP version because links or XML sitemaps were not updated… then make sure to fix it.

C.) Are canonicalized pages pointing towards non-relevant URLs?

Check whether the canonical tags of the migrated pages are still pointing to the old URLs, or if the canonical tags were changed and are suddenly pointing to non-relevant URLs (such as the home page, as in the example below). Make sure to update them to point to their relevant, original URL if this is the case.

D.) Are the pages with traffic loss now blocked via robots.txt or are non-indexable?

If so, why? Unblock all pages that should be crawled, indexed, and ranking as well as they were before.

E.) Verify whether the redirects logic is correct.

Just because the pages were redirected doesn’t mean that those redirects were correct. Identify these type of issues by asking the following questions:

• Are the redirects going to relevant new page-versions of the old ones?
  Verify if the redirects are going to the correct page destination that features similar content and has the same purpose as the one redirected. If they’re not, make sure to update the redirects.
• Are there any 302 redirects that should become 301s (as they are permanent and not temporary)
  Update them.
• Are there any redirect loops that might be interfering with search crawlers reaching the final page destination?
  Update those as well.
  
  Especially if you have an independent mobile site version (under an “m” subdomain, for example), you’ll want to verify their redirect logic specifically versus the desktop one.

• Are there redirects going towards non-indexable, canonicalized, redirected or error pages?
  Prioritize their fixing.
  
  To facilitate this analysis, you can use OnPage.org‘s “Redirects by Status Code” report.

• Why are these redirected pages still being crawled?
  
  Update the links and XML sitemaps still pointing to the pages that are now redirecting to others, so that they go directly to the final page to crawl, index, and rank.
• Are there duplicate content issues among the lost traffic pages?
  The configuration of redirects, canonicals, noindexation, or pagination might have changed and therefore these pages might now be featuring content that’s identified as duplicated and should be fixed.

5. It’s time to implement fixes for the identified issues.

Once you ask these questions and update the configuration of your lost traffic pages as mentioned above, it’s important to:

1. Update all of your internal links to go to the final URL destinations directly.
2. Update all of your XML sitemaps to eliminate the inclusion of the old URLs, only leaving the new ones and resubmitting them to the Google Search Console
3. Verify whether there are any external links still going to non-existent pages that should now redirect. This way, in the future and with more time, you can perform outreach to the most authoritative sites linking to them so they can be updated.
4. Submit your lost traffic pages to be recrawled with the Google Search Console “Fetch as Google” section.

After resubmitting, start monitoring the search crawlers’ behavior through your web logs (you can use the Screaming Frog Log Analyzer), as well as your pages’ indexation, rankings, & traffic trends. You should start seeing a positive move after a few days:

Remember that if the migration required drastic changes (like if you’ve migrated over another domain, for example), it’s natural to see a short-term rankings and traffic loss. This can be true even if it’s now correctly implemented and the new domain has a higher authority. You should take this into consideration; however, if the change has improved the former optimization status, the mid- to long-term results should be positive.

As you can see above, you can recover from this type of situation if you make sure to prioritize and fix the issues with negative effects before moving on to change anything else that’s not directly related. Once you’ve done this and see a positive trend, you can then begin a full SEO audit and process to improve what you’ve migrated, maximizing the optimization and results of the new web structure.

I hope this helps you have a quicker, easier web migration disaster recovery!

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Posted by willcritchlow

What would you say if I told you that the average SEO at a big company has been waiting over six months for their highest priority technical change and doesn’t anticipate seeing it deployed for at least another six months? (40+% have been waiting over a year).

If you work in that kind of environment, there’s a good chance you’re not surprised, and if you’ve worked as a consultant and your experience is anything like mine, you might even be asking yourself “is that all?” It’s such a common challenge, and it’s so core to our fundamental goal of making a real difference for our clients, that the ability to effect change has even made it into Distilled’s core values.

Challenges in this area are a growing problem for big companies. As startups in particular come to grips with continuous deployment and similar approaches that bring agility to their processes, big companies risk being left behind on an aging technology stack.

Board member Fred Wilson deploys code at Etsy. Photo credit.

The stats I opened with came from surveying a range of SEOs at big companies — a couple of dozen people responsible for billions of pageviews/month. I put together a survey form, sought out suitable people to respond — from mine and Distilled’s extended network — and then focused in on those managing big sites.

I’m still very interested in hearing more thoughts on this topic by the way, so if you haven’t shared your experiences with me, you can still go ahead and do that:

Take the Enterprise SEO Survey

If I get tons of new data, I’ll happily return to update this post.

My goal was to hear more about the real problems faced by enterprise SEOs and to collate that information for all of you so that we can all become more effective. To do this, I asked:

• What is the technical change you are most desperate to make to your site that’s been difficult to get done?
• How long have you been waiting for this change?
• When do you anticipate you will finally see it live?
• What is holding it up?
• How big of a problem is this kind of thing for your organization?

Breakdown of the responses

Here’s how long people have been waiting for the technical change they are most desperate to get implemented (42% have been waiting longer than a year):

And most (58%) don’t anticipate seeing that change live for at least another 6 months:

Why does this happen?

The most common reasons given for the inability to get their top priority changes made were:

• Marketing team priorities fall behind those of other teams (53%)
• The change they want is “not possible” with current platform (37%)
• Every change has to pass through a long dev backlog (32%)

The full range of answers can be mainly bucketed into two big reasons:

1. Difficulty in proving the value in advance or making the business case
2. Legacy technology or outdated processes hampering progress

Is it a big deal?

While the most common response was that it was “just” a serious frustration, almost half of the people I spoke to (47%) reported that inability to make these kinds of changes is stopping their team hitting their objectives or cramping the performance of the whole company:

Given the scale of company we are talking about here, this is incredible — especially for the fifth of people who said it’s cramping the performance of the whole company. That turns it from some geek thing into a burning issue for senior leadership.

What should we do about it?

1. Get better at consulting (even in-house)

The quickest win (which can feel like cheating) is to improve our personal consulting, persuasion, and communication skills. Getting things done sometimes comes down to making our case more effectively — either with more data or with a better argument. Some resources that you might find useful here include:

• Our consulting skills module in DistilledU (warning: paywall)
• Other things we’ve written:
  • The section on structuring business writing in my SEO due diligence post
  • 50 things you should learn about your client (by @robousbey)
• Bestselling books:
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
  • Selling to Win by Richard Denny (everything is a sale!)
  • How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

2. Make better business cases

One specific part of consulting skills that is particularly important in getting things done in big orgs is the ability to build a business case. This requires financial/data analysis skills, but it’s important to remember that it’s not enough to make an Excel model — you also need to tell the story (see some of the resources above).

I spoke on this subject a couple of years ago at our San Diego SearchLove conference in 2013 in a talk about technical (slides here, video here [behind a paywall — if you don’t have a DistilledU account, you can use this link to get access to that video for free]). I talked about:

1. Winning hearts as well as minds — with descriptions of your vision, competitor comparisons, proof that customers care etc.
2. Preparing like you are going to have to go into a meeting with Jeff Bezos (I love some of the stories here and you should particularly read about Steve Yegge’s experiences)

We’re getting really excited about the kinds of business cases we are able to build with split-testing. When you can present data like this, it gets way easier to get things done:

(That’s a screenshot from our new tool — ODN — by the way. If you’d like a demo, you can register your interest here).

3. Make things better over time

All of the problems I’ve talked about here are compounded by technical debt. A great goal for enterprise/in-house folks is to build the flywheels and to do the things now that will make all of this easier in the future. Upgrading core infrastructure, getting towards continuous integration and fast deployment, and improving slow processes all have long-term ROI.

In particular, getting in place tools like tag management move many kinds of change directly into the hands of the marketing team. This is again our thinking behind building our ODN tool — in addition to building business cases, it’s designed to get changes live in the interim until they can be fully built-out into the back-end.

I think my best general recommendations in this area are to start with the lean startup — I had read some articles about it, but it was only when I saw Eric Ries speak (before I’d read the book) that I truly “got it” about what he was calling an MVP which is actually closer to what Rand called marketing first than it is to building an ugly prototype. This image explains it well:

Great illustration explaining Minimum Viable Product: Build a slice across, instead of one layer at a time #UX pic.twitter.com/7FShBZ9rHe
— Scott Kerr (@scott_kerr) 28 October 2014

Some more resources:

• HBR on the lean startup
• The lean enterprise (lean principles within a big company)
• Lean startup applied to SEO by @the_timallen

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments — and don’t forget that if you are in charge of search for a big site, I’d still love to hear your experiences in the survey:

Take the Enterprise SEO Survey

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Posted by randfish

On-page SEO is no longer a simple matter of checking things off a list. There’s more complexity to this process in 2016 than ever before, and the idea of “optimization” both includes and builds upon traditional page elements. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores the eight principles you’ll need for on-page SEO success going forward.

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

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about on-page SEO, keyword targeting but beyond keyword targeting into all the realms of the things that we need to optimize on an individual URL in order to have the best chance of success in the search engines in 2016.

So what does that involve? Well look, we could spend a tremendous amount of time on any one of these, but I’m going to share eight principles that are behind all of the tactical work that you would put into optimizing that page for that keyword term, phrase, or set of phrases. Most likely, in 2016, it is a set of phrases that you’re targeting rather than just a single keyword term.

1. Fulfill the searcher’s goal and satisfy their intent

What we are trying to do is fulfill the searcher’s goal and satisfy their intent. So there’s an intent behind every search query. I’m seeking some information. I’m seeking to accomplish a task. Oftentimes, that initial intent is different from the final goal that someone might have.

I’ll give you an example. When someone searches for types of wedding formal wear, we might infer from that query that, right now, their specific intent behind this search is they want to see different kinds of potential formalwear that they could wear to a wedding, maybe as a guest or as a bride or a groom. But their ultimate goal is probably going to be to decide on one of those specific things and then potentially purchase that item or take something from their wardrobe and add it in there.

But this means that we need to try and serve both intents. It’s actually going to be really tough if we’re an ecommerce player to say, “Hey, you know what, I want a rank for types of wedding formal wear, and I want to rank for it with a page that tells people to buy this particular tuxedo.”

That’s tough for a bunch of reasons. You don’t know whether that formalwear is going to be necessarily black tie in the United States, which is tuxedo. You don’t know whether that person is a male or a female when they’re performing the search. A woman, well, they might buy a tuxedo but probably not, at least statistically speaking, they’re probably not going to. They’re probably going to buy a dress. You might have much more success with a piece of content like 20 suits and tuxes men look great in at a wedding. Especially if I’m targeting men or if this is types of men’s wedding formalwear, that’s probably going to be the piece of content that has a great chance of serving the searcher’s intent and fulfilling their goals, especially if we then take that content and link off to the places where you can buy or accessorize all those different pieces. So we’re trying to do both of these items in number one.

2. Speed, speed, & more speed

This is very simplistic, but the idea is really easy here. We know that user satisfaction is a signal that Google interprets in some ways directly and in many, many ways indirectly. We also know that abandonment rates are very high, even higher on mobile for longer-loading pages. We know that pages that have fast load times earn more links and amplification. We know that pages that earn more links earn more engagement on them. We know that all of these things including speed itself is positively correlated with rankings, and we know that Google has made page load speed a small, albeit small, but a ranking signal inside their algorithm directly. So critically important.

3. Create trust & engagement through UI, UX, and branding

Related to number two is number three, which is creating trust and engagement through UI, UX, and branding. Speed is certainly a big part of the user experience. This is also critical because these two both touch on being mobile friendly, having that multi-device friendliness so that it’s capable on any device. UI, UX, and branding though go into some different areas. So if I have my website, I’m really looking for a few different aspects of it from the SEO point of view.

This is frustrating because it touches on a lot of things that historically have been outside the control of search engine optimization professionals. Thankfully, as SEO becomes more multidisciplinary inside a marketing team, hopefully we have more ability to influence these things, stuff like:

• Have people actually heard of your domain?
• Do they know you, like you, and trust you?
• Do you have UI and visual elements that make them perceive you as being trustworthy, even if this is the first time they’ve ever heard of you? That can be things like the images on the page. It can be the navigation. It can be the color scheme. It can be the UI library that you might be using or how you’ve done the visual layout of things. All of those pieces go into that “Do you look trustworthy?” That’s certainly a consideration that a lot of folks have when they’re looking at searches.
• Are you intuitive to access? I mean intuitive both from a navigation standpoint and from the consumption of the content on the page as well.
• Hopefully, you have some external validation signals to indicate that the content you have and the brand that you are is trustworthy. Those can be things like testimonials. They can also mean things like references or citations for the data or information that you’re providing or links out, all that kind of stuff.

4. Avoid elements that dissuade visitors

You want to avoid elements that distract searchers or dissuade them from visiting you either at this time or in the future. The most common ones of these that we like to talk about a lot are ones that interfere with the content consumption experience. That’s things like overlays. “Do you want to stay married? If so, download our guide.” Then you have to say, “Yes, of course I want to stay married,” or “No, I’m a terrible person and I will not click on your popup,” and then another popup will come up.

Those types of overlays obviously have negative impacts, and you can see them in your user and usage data, your engagement data. You can determine how much of a sacrifice you’re willing to make in exchange for, “Well, we did get some email addresses out of this, or we got some conversion rate and so we’re willing to make that sacrifice,” versus “No, we’re not willing to make these sacrifices.” You have to choose what types of engagement-dissuading apparatuses you’re willing to put on your site.

But be aware, pogo sticking is a ranking signal. It’s something that they judge indirectly for sure and directly potentially as well. Pogo sticking meaning a searcher clicked on your listing in the results, they went to your site, and then they clicked the “Back” button and chose someone else from the results. Google interprets that and Bing interprets that very poorly for you.

5. Keyword targeting

Keyword targeting, classic on-page ranking signal, still true today. I know that many of us still see or are starting to see a lot more entrants into the search results that don’t do very particular keyword targeting, at least don’t do it the way we’ve historically perceived it, where it’s very keyword-driven. But it’s still incredibly smart to do this if and when you can. You just need to balance it out with all these other aspects.

Title element

Places that I would start. In fact, this is basically in order of importance. Title element, I would place the keyword term or phrase, the most important term or phrase that you’re targeting in the title element in the headline of the page. That can be the H1 tag, but it doesn’t need to be it. It could be just the bold, big headline at the top. That should match the page title generally speaking or be very close, because what you don’t want is you don’t want a searcher who clicked on one title element and then landed on a page that had a different headline and they perceived that mismatch, and so they clicked the “Back” button. That’s dangerous.

Page content, external anchor links, alt attributes, and URL

You want it obviously in the page content. If you can, when you can control it, you want it in external anchor links to the page. So if, for example, I have my home page about weddings and I am interviewed for something, I might put in my bio something about the wedding styles website that I own and control, and I would link back to that in that external anchor text. I want it potentially in the alt attribute of any images or photos or visuals that I’ve got on the page. I want it in the URL. Again, if I can control it and the URL is less important, so we’re going in decreasing order of importance here.

Image file name

I want it in the image name. Especially if I’m trying to rank in Google image search, image name, the file name of the actual image does matter and is important.

Internal links

Finally, I want it in internal links to the degree that it’s intelligent and balanced and doesn’t look spammy.

Do all these items, you’ve got your keyword targeting down. But this is not like the past, where just nailing keyword targeting is going to take my rankings to where they need to be. I’ve got to do all these other seven things too, including number six, related topics targeting.

6. Related topics targeting

So related topics is basically this concept that Google has a huge graph of lexical combinations and semantic analysis. They can essentially say, “Hey, when we see wedding formalwear, we often also see these terms and phrases, terms like tuxedo, tux, wedding dress, bowtie, vest.” In the United Kingdom, almost certainly we would see waistcoat, which is what we call a vest here in the United States, or a wedding suit, which is what is traditionally worn in weddings in the U.K. versus a tuxedo here in the United States.

Now, given that Google sees these terms and phrases very commonly associated with this one, they’ve essentially started to build up this graph between these, and so these topics they would say are very important to this search term. If someone’s looking for wedding formalwear, it’s unusual for them to find a page that has high relevance for users that doesn’t also include these types of words and phrases.

Therefore, as a search marketer, as a content creator, we need to think about: What are those terms and phrases that are related here, and how do I make sure to include them in my content? If I don’t, my ranking opportunity may decrease compared to my competitors who’ve intelligently used those terms and phrases.

7. Snippet optimization

With a page, we’re not just trying to drive the ranking. We’re also trying to drive the click. So ranking number four and earning a 6% click-through rate, that might not be great, especially if the average is more like 11%. Then we’re earning half the average for our ranking position. That seems a little funny. Those percentages are not precise, but you get the idea.

We want to have the best-optimized snippet that we possibly can in the SERP. So you can see here I’ve got this, “what to wear to a formal wedding,” “a guide from randsfashion.com” and it’s mobile-friendly. It’s published on May 10, 2016. Then it has this nice meta description, the snippet there. This is essentially my advertisement to searchers saying, “Please click on my link. I want your click.”

On-page elements

Bunch of elements that go into this: the title, obviously, the meta description. The URL format, this randsfashion.com, very simple on home pages, gets much more complex when we have pages that are internal because Google starts to assign categories if you have messy URL parameters or inconsistent categories, tagging systems that can get nasty.

Publication date

Publication date matters quite a bit, especially for searches that have a fresh component. So if people are searching for types of wedding formalwear, well, you might not need to worry too much. But what if lots of people who search for this search for types of wedding formalwear 2016? Well, now you really need that fresh publication date. In fact, if Google sees lots of people search for that, they might actually take it as an intent signal that types of wedding formalwear alone deserves that date in there and that they should be ranking fresher content higher up because lots of people are looking for more recent, modern stuff.

Use of schema

Whenever there’s an opportunity, for example, if you’re in the recipe space, there are schema markups specifically for recipes. If you’re in the news space, there are opportunities for news. If you do video, Google doesn’t really obey it very much, except with YouTube, but there are video opportunities for schema markup. There are all sorts of other kinds depending on what you’re in, certainly local and maps and a bunch of other ones.

Domain name

That is something to consider. In fact, when you’re registering a domain name and building out a site, you should be thinking about how people want to click on it, the brandability, the snippet optimization, all that.

Content format

Content format is particularly important because Google, especially when there’s a more question-based search query, they’ve started showing those longer meta descriptions. So if you can encapsulate what you know is essentially the critical piece of content that answers the user’s question, chances are you might be able to get that larger space, vertical space in the SERP, and that might mean that you can draw more clicks in as well.

This works really well with lists. It works nicely with forums and discussions, threads. It works nicely with elements where you have a bunch of specific how-to, step-by-step process, those types of things. Same story with instant answer possibilities that you want to appear at the top of that Google SERP with an instant answer if you can. We know that that actually doesn’t take away click-through rate. It actually drives more of it. In fact, the real estate there means that you often get more clicks than organic position one, which is pretty great. Of course, all the different kinds of SERP feature opportunities like we talked about — images, maps, local, news, what have you.

8. Unique value + amplification

This is the final piece of things that we’re thinking about as we do on-page optimization in 2016. That is I need to be thinking about: What bar do I need to reach in order to have a chance to rank, rank well, and rank consistently?

This is tough. So if the difficulty of ranking is very easy, the bar that I need to cross is probably somewhere between classic, good, unique content, like this content is good, it’s unique, and it exists. That’s all it needs. That’s a very, very low bar. Even for easy rankings, I would not suggest making that your bar.

I’d put it somewhere between there and twice as good as anyone else in the competition, but essentially targeting the same types of things. You’re doing the same kind of content. You just feel like you’re better than anything else in the top 10. That might be a reasonable enough bar for an easy ranking.

If it gets moderate, if it gets tough, I need to go up to uniquely valuable. Uniquely valuable, by that, we’ve had a whole Whiteboard Friday on it, which we can refer to, but uniquely valuable being this idea that I provide a value that no one else in the search results provides. So it’s not simply that I’m doing a better job. I’m also doing a unique job of providing information or data or visuals, whatever it is that is more and different value than anybody else.

Then finally, what we’ve called 10x content. If you have an insane difficulty of ranking, that might be the minimum bar that you need to hit, and we’ll link over the 10x video as well.

Basically, the questions that I’m asking when I’m talking about providing unique value and being worthy of amplification, which is something that our content needs to consider too, is: What makes this better than what already ranks? Do you have a great answer to that question? If you don’t, you should probably get one before you try targeting those keywords and producing that content.

Why will this be difficult or impossible for others to replicate? What’s the barrier to entry that your content provides, that all the other content providers can’t just look and go, “Oh, well I see that Rand’s done a very nice job ranking there. I’ll just take that and do it. That should be easy.” You need a barrier to entry. What value does this page provide that no other page in the SERPs provides? That goes to our unique value question.

The last one, who. Who will help amplify this piece of content and why? If you don’t have a great answer to who and why, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to get that amplification. If you can’t get the amplification, it’s going to be really, really hard to rank, because as much as on-page optimization does matte — and all of these eight principles matter for rankings — SEO in 2016 is not merely about on-page but about off-page as well, just as it’s been the last decade, 15 years. So, as we’re creating content, we need to think about that amplification process too.

All right everyone, look forward to your thoughts, and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Posted by CharleneKate

Ever dreamed of going to MozCon and imagined yourself watching Dr. Pete’s talk, taking photos with Roger, and giving Rand a fist bump? Or maybe you’ve always gone to MozCon and just can’t budget it this year? Well, we have the opportunity of a lifetime for you!

This year, we’re thrilled to try something new and give our community members a chance to win an exclusive VIP MozCon experience! A free ticket to MozCon 2016 including optional VIP front row seating, accommodations (with suite upgrade) for the entire conference, airfare/transportation to Seattle, and shuttle service from Sea-Tac Airport to Olive 8 Hyatt. The whole shebang!

We’re asking you to put together a piece of content to tell us why we should send you to MozCon. We want your content to be original and creative!

First step: Create some awesome, compelling content.

Here’s a few content types that you can use:

A video (must be 1 minute or less): Get in front of the camera.

A blog post: Make the case using your brilliant writing skills.

A song: Are you musically gifted? Write and sing a song.

A photo album: Are you a visual person? This might be for you.

A drawing or painting: Perhaps you’re more inclined to draw it out.

A reenactment: You know you’ve always wanted to plaster on a Rand mustache and give some SEO advice.

These are just a few ideas. You’re more than welcome to combine the content types. Perhaps you’ll write a song and make a music video. This is your oyster, so don’t hold back — let your creative juices flow!

Second step: Submit!

Once your content is created, tweet us a link to your content @Moz and use the hashtag #mozcon by Sunday, May 29th at 5:00pm PDT. Be sure to follow these instructions in order for your submission to qualify. Don’t forget to add a contact email address easily visible within your content so we can reach you by email for next steps and/or communication.

Submissions will be reviewed by a selection committee at Moz. The first run-through will look at all submissions to make sure they qualify. The second run-through will be shared with all 200 Mozzers, and they’ll vote for their favorite entries. The one with the most votes wins the free trip to MozCon 2016.

Wait, don’t go yet! Be sure to read the nitty-gritty:

• Mozzers will judge entries based on creativity of content.
• Submissions close on Sunday, May 29th at 5:00pm PDT.
• The winner will be announced, and the winner’s content will be shared from @Moz via Twitter, on Monday, June 6th.
• You must be able to attend MozCon, September 12–14, 2016 in Seattle. Prize is non-transferrable.
• All submissions must adhere to the MozCon Code of Conduct.
• Contest is void where prohibited by law.
• The value of the prize will be reported for tax purposes as required by law; the winner will receive an IRS form 1099 at the end of the calendar year and a copy of such form will be filed with the IRS. The winner is solely responsible for reporting and paying any and all applicable taxes related to the prizes and paying any expenses associated with any prize which are not specifically provided for in the official rules.

Winner will get an exclusive VIP MozCon experience that includes:

• A free ticket to MozCon 2016, including optional VIP front row seating (valued at $999).
• Accommodations with suite upgrade at the Hyatt at Olive 8 from September 11–15, 2016 (valued at $1,100).
• Best available domestic and international travel rates to Seattle that Moz will book for you (valued at $1,000+).
• Roundtrip shuttle service from Sea-Tac Airport to Hyatt at Olive 8 (valued at $100).

OK, go on and get started on your stellar content. We can’t wait to see all your submissions!

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Posted by CosetteJarrett

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

[Estimated read time: 12 minutes]

Whether you’ve been in the digital PR biz for years, or you’re a recent grad starting your first job, you stand to benefit from a few tips for building and maintaining valuable relationships with influencers at target publications.

That’s why I’ve teamed up with my digital PR team at Clearlink to compile a list of our favorite outreach tactics.

Finding an email address

1. Share prospect lists via BuzzStream

BuzzStream allows you to share prospect lists with fellow digital PR specialists to view one another’s notes on specific publications and their staff. You can use this tool to see which email templates have worked for your coworkers in the past and which contacts they’ve found that you haven’t. Knowing the history of communication between that publication and your colleagues is essential.

2. Use Rapportive to narrow down your guesses

Can’t find an email? Rapportive might be your answer. This Gmail plugin helps you pull up email addresses for your target editors and journalists, based on guesses you enter into the “recipient” line of a new email. You can make up to five guesses at a time. When you find a winner, you’ll see the full name and image connected to the recipient’s LinkedIn profile pop up to the right of your screen.

3. Use Twitter to search for email addresses

If Rapportive turns up dry, try taking your search to Twitter. Simply search your target’s full name plus the word “email” to see if they’ve tweeted it back to others who have requested it before. For example, to find mine you could search “Cosette Jarrett email” to see if it turns up.

4. Check annual reports

If you’re looking for the contact info of higher-ups at a company or publication, annual reports could be a great place to look. Search Google for the reports, then scroll to the bottom to see if they’ve included contact info.

5. Search for your target on YouTube

Some journalists and bloggers have YouTube channels where they publish additional work. My team has found contact info in the “about” pages for our targets’ YouTube channels.

6. Use the Datanyze Insider Chrome extension

This Chrome extension helps you find the right email address for a given journalist in a process that is a bit simpler than Rapportive’s process. Once you’ve signed up and downloaded the extension, you can highlight the names of your target journalists, editors, and bloggers to get their name in the proper email address format for their publication.

In my example below, I highlighted my own name and right-clicked to run it through Datanyze for this publication. Although I don’t have a Tech.co email address, it did pull up the correct email format for staff at the publication.

7. Check their Facebook profile’s “about” section

Often, companies will provide their email address in the “about” section of their profile pages. If the email listed is not for the department you’re trying to reach, ask them to put you in touch with your desired contact.

8. Check LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a fantastic place to look for contact info for journalists and editors. Once you’ve found the person you’re looking for using a search like “Editor in Chief at CNET,” click to view his or her profile. Even if you’re not connected, it is possible that they’ve listed their email publicly under the “Contact Info” tab below the profile picture.

9. Check the Google+ page “about” section

Another place to look for the proper email for your target is his or her Google+ page. If they have an email address listed, it will be under the “about” section next to “posts.” If it’s not there, look at all of the publications he or she has contributed to (also on this page) and try to find an email address at each of those sites under their author bio.

10. Run the email address though MailTester

To test an email address to make sure it’s still active, you can run it through MailTester. This will give you a green result if the email is in use, and a red result if it’s not. The example below shows a correct match.

Personalizing your pitch

11. Check your target’s Twitter feed

Generic pitches don’t work anymore. If you want to build relationships at your target publications, you have to get personal. A great way to do this is to check the Twitter feeds of the journalists/editors you plan to pitch. What’s important to them? What have they written recently? How could you tie these things into your pitch to let them know you’ve done your research?

12. Search for a personal website

Another great way to get to know the person you plan to pitch is to check out his or her personal website. This will likely come up when you search their name on Google, but it’s also commonly listed on their Twitter profile. Their website will help you answer questions such as: “What are they interested in?” “What topics do they like to write about?” “What makes them tick?” You might also find solid contact info on their personal site, too.

13. Scope out Pinterest

If you’re looking for a blogger’s interests to personalize your pitch, perhaps one of the best places to look outside of their blog is their Pinterest board. Scope out their boards to see if you share any common interests that you could bring up in your pitch.

14. Google a writer’s byline

Another important part of getting to know the person you’re pitching is researching what they like to write about. When you search a target journalist or blogger’s byline, you can see where they’ve written outside of their current place of employment. Maybe you’ve written for some of the same publications and could bring that up in your introduction. Perhaps you could learn more about their writing beat based on what they’ve written elsewhere.

15. Identify alma mater alumni

Run a LinkedIn search to find others who graduated from your college or university. Start by searching your target publication’s name in the search bar, then scroll down to find the spot to filter by school on the left side of the results. Chances are, you’ll find at least a few who work at your target publications. Discussing your shared alma mater could help you break the ice before your “ask.”

16. Find current interns

I’ve used LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook to find people who interned for a target company/blog network, and then I emailed them to ask for advice on how best to pitch current editors.

17. Look for portfolio profiles

Many journalists have portfolio profiles on sites like clippings.me. They will often post their favorite/best performing articles there. This can be a good indicator of what type of pitches they will like and what issues are important to them.

18. Reach out to bloggers where they’re most comfortable

For a lot of home and family bloggers, Pinterest is home. Think about how you can establish genuine connections through their posts. Once you’ve introduced yourself by interacting with their boards, reach out from your personal account with an “ask” that’s tailored to the blogger’s beat and interests.

19. Match your tone to your target

Check out your target’s tweets and articles. How do they write? Casually? Formally? Match your tone to the journalist’s most frequently used tone to make your pitch more appealing.

20. Pay attention to time zones

It’s important to keep time zones in mind before you send your pitch. Find out what city the journalist or editor lives in and adjust your sending time accordingly. In most cases, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can help you find the correct city of residence. Try not to pitch before or after they start or end their workday.

Building valuable relationships

21. Make sure a journalist is still employed at your target publication

Before you spend your time investing in a relationship with a journalist at a major publication, it’s worthwhile to make sure he or she is still writing there. You can run a site search to find their most recent article to figure this out. For example, below I’ve searched my own name on a publication I regularly write for to find my most recent article.

22. Conduct an Instagram search

At the very least, the person on the receiving end of your pitch wants to know you’re not a robot. If you’ve got an appropriate Instagram, try finding your target reporters and editors there. Follow them for a bit and like the pictures you actually find interesting and fun. This will help you introduce yourself in a unique way, so your pitch isn’t completely cold when you send it later.

23. Ask questions in the comments below a target’s most recent article

A great way to show that you’re genuinely interested in a reporter or blogger’s work is to comment on their recent articles, ask questions, and share your opinions.

24. Reach out via Facebook

Once again, the person on the receiving end of your pitch wants to know that you are, in fact, a human. Sometimes reaching out via Facebook can help you establish this. Reaching out via Messenger is a great idea if you can’t track down a proper email address.

25. Connect on LinkedIn

Perhaps one of the best ways to build a relationship with a journalist or editor is to send a connection request on LinkedIn. This keeps things professional and allows them to check out your writing credentials.

26. Form a Twitter bond

A great way to start engaging with a journalist before you pitch is to attempt to spark a Twitter bond. Find common interests and strike up Twitter conversations from their recent tweets that interest you. Don’t simply tweet generic comments or a link to your most recent project, though. They already get a lot of that. Be real and treat them like a friend, rather than a potential business opportunity.

27. Check Twitter hashtags for influencers

Go through Twitter hashtags to find influencers within your area of expertise. For example, I work with tech brands, so I was active in the #CES feed throughout the event. Find posts that are meaningful to you, and engage with those who published them. You’ll learn more about your industry while making valuable connections.

28. Use HARO in reverse

The best way to get something is to give first. For your next article, seek expert advice from others in your industry on HARO. Once you’ve got a few responses, keep the relationship going beyond the piece’s publication date. Most respondents are PR people who will offer additional opportunities for coverage and even story ideas later.

29. Plan an “accidental” run-in

Check out your target journalists’ social media feeds (especially Twitter) to find out which events they’re attending next. Plan to attend the same events — not only to learn more about your industry, but to plan a potential opportunity to meet your target journalists in person.

Guaranteeing success following initial outreach

30. Always follow up! Always!

If you feel insecure about following up after a person or publication has not responded to your email, don’t.

Follow-up is an essential component in any successful outreach plan. You’d be surprised at how many publications really did miss your first email or forgot to respond.

31. Follow up on HARO opportunities, too

HARO is a fantastic tool for landing brand mentions and quality links. You should be following up after every initial pitch. Find the personal email of a journalist you recently pitched and send a quick follow-up to make sure the pitch you sent via HARO made it to his or her inbox.

32. Use Yesware for email tracking

The sad truth is that most of the outreach emails you send will yield little to no response. Although none of us can completely control whether or not the editor or journalist on the other end will respond, Yesware email tracking can at least tell us if and when our emails were opened. This helps with timing follow-up emails and lets you know if the potential problem was the subject line or the pitch itself.

33. Use BuzzStream tracking for mass outreach

This is similar to Yesware tracking. However, it allows you to track the emails you send via BuzzStream. This is a great new feature that allows you to track the mass outreach you conduct through BuzzStream as you would track the smaller outreach efforts you send through your email account.

34. Use Boomerang to schedule follow-ups

Boomerang facilitates your outreach game by allowing you to schedule follow-ups for contacts who haven’t responded. This helps you get the first touch communication you need for effective outreach.

35. Don’t stop at one location

Most large publications have multiple offices — one in New York, one in London, one in Australia, etc. If Australia doesn’t answer, contact London. If London doesn’t answer, pitch New York.

Lexi Mills (a.k.a. the Outreach Goddess) said she once did this with a large publication. After being denied by the first office, she contacted another. The second office she pitched ended up running her story. Even better? The story was wildly successful!

36. Maintain your relationships

After you’ve taken the time to build a valuable relationship with an editor, journalist, PR specialist, or blogger, it’s important to stay in touch. If you’ve connected with them via your social channels, continue to engage with them on a regular basis. Maybe even send a quick email to give kudos when you come across an awesome post of theirs. Being a person who is genuinely interested in their work (even after they’ve done what you wanted them to) shows that you are a solid go-to for future projects.

These tried-and-true tips have helped my team drum up killer links and brand mentions on sites for various well-known publications like Mashable, Elle Décor, Fast Company, Huffington Post, USA Today, and Daily Mail. Hopefully these tips will help you establish solid digital press coverage for your client or brand, as well.

As one final closing tip, I recommend you continue to learn all that you can from industry influencers to keep up as the field continues to evolve and present new challenges. One of the best ways to do this is to follow digital PR/content marketing innovators like Lexi Mills, Ross Hudgens, and Larry Kim.

What are some outreach tips your team has used successfully?

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