If you missed the launch event: Now why did I decide that I like this car so much that I want to make it my next car. Number one reason is safety. If you are an SUV buyer you most likely have kids, and you value nothing more in a car than safety. And Tesla […] Continue reading → Posted by ryanwashereThis 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.In my 28 … Continue reading →
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It’s a near-universal experience for consultants and in-house SEOs who’ve worked on numerous organic search campaigns. The first 3–6 months (longer if the site is very large or complex) of any SEO effort is almost always exclusively dedicated to fixing mistakes, improving existing issues, tweaking and tuning the sub-optimal, and generally closing the gap between what exists now and current best practices.
The beautiful part of SEO is that, once completed, these efforts can have ongoing and compounding benefits for months or years to come. The newly accessible and optimized pages start earning rankings and traffic, which beget more links, more personalization-biasing, more exposure, more sharing, and more business. If you’ve got competent content & dev teams continually checking items off the list (and not creating many new ones), slowly the list of actionable, low-hanging fruit dwindles. I like to call this “the SEO plateau.”
The existing parts of the site have been optimized. The processes for content creation are now efficient and up to SEO standards. That immense task-list of SEO to-dos is now a stable, manageable group of regularly addressed items. Don’t get me wrong—it’s an AMAZING place to be. There are plenty of companies that never reach it (since the move from SEOmoz to Moz, even we never have!).But this cleared backlog also creates its own problems, namely the frustrating “What Are You Gonna Do Now?” question.
Sadly, answering with an “Are you kidding me?! SEO just 10X’d your traffic, streamlined your conversion process, and brings in more than half of all new customers!” just doesn’t cut it. That’s why we need to look at the 5 opportunities that nearly every organization has to jump-start from plateau to high-growth SEO. Not every one of these will make sense for every site, but each deserves analysis and investigation.
For this post, I’m going to assume you’re a moderately advanced SEO and you’ve already optimized pieces like on-page SEO, made your snippets rock with killer titles & meta descriptions, fixed every technical issue that might have held you back, and gone through a few rounds of keyword research and content creation/amplification. This process is about what comes next.
The 5 SEO Growth Opportunities:
If you’re hitting that plateau, and finding year-over-year growth has stalled for organic search traffic, explore the descriptions below and make a smart call about what deserves your attention for the year ahead. Sometimes, that option may not be obvious, in which case: experiment, iterate, measure, and then determine how to prioritize.
This option comes up most often when search traffic growth starts to stall but rankings remain high. Growth-focused organizations aren’t satisfied dominating rankings for keywords they already own, so they chase an ever-expanding list of terms and phrases that could bring valuable traffic.
Thing is, a lot of the time, this makes sense. It’s an obvious move, but this is one of those seemingly elusive times when what’s obvious and what’s right often as not line up.
The keys to success with expanding your keyword list (and content creation targets) are:
1) Understanding your audience and the keywords that will actually drive value
Sadly, sometimes we get so focused on rankings and traffic that we forget that alone, these serve no purpose. If your new-found SEO boost brings in loads of new visits with little measurable impact on short or long-term conversions (even to the next stages of the funnel like return visits or email signups or a visit to the product pages), you might be barking up the wrong tree. It’s OK to treat some traffic as purely brand-focused, and some content as likely-to-earn links but unlikely to convert visitors. But if the ratios get out of whack, it’s your job to rein it in and get back to sensible targeting.
2) Knowing your domain’s ranking ability
In niche after niche, there are a few powerful sites who can put up even mediocre content and rank well for it. In essence, they’ve trained Google (and searchers) to prefer their content on those topics. But, this power takes an incredible amount of time and energy to earn. Thanks to our recent acquisition of SERPscape, I can actually quantify this:
Well, OK, technically this is all Russ Jones’ work (thanks buddy!), but the numbers make it clear. The overwhelming majority of sites only rank for a small handful of keywords, and it’s only a few who ever break through and earn consistently high rankings across a large set of commercially-valuable SERPs.
If you have this goal (and long term, anyone seeking to dominate a sizable market should), you’ll need to pursue that healthy mix of crazy, we’ll-never-rank-for-it stretch goals, comfortable targets, and easy hits. Domain authority is one metric that can help, but given the complexity of topical authority in Google these days, there’s also a sixth sense professional SEOs develop that should be applied here, too.
3) Hitting your sweet spot for amplification and links
We’ve learned recently that social media almost never works as the sole source of links that help earn rankings. But, we also know that without links, content is very unlikely to rank. Thus, the content we produce needs to aim for the kinds of amplification that can drive direct traffic and value, as well as the kinds that can earn links and rank. That’s a challenge for almost every content creator, especially those who also try to make that content fit a promotional or revenue-driving goal (a very rare and impressive accomplishment indeed).
In my experience, the content that has the best likelihood of nailing these is going to be at the intersection of three things: content about which you (the content creator) have great passion, content where you can add unique value that previously has not existed (or hasn’t been easily available) on the web before, and content that resonates with your audience and creates an emotional desire to share and amplify.
Nail that consistently and you’ll be back on your way to the flywheel of SEO growth.
The list of verticals available through Google is astounding, but you can rely on Mozcast to help sort through the noise to ID the signal:
Via Mozcast’s Feature Graph across 10,000 daily-tracked SERPs
If a vertical is in less than 1% of search results, it probably doesn’t make a great target unless you have a very specific niche market where that feature’s penetration is considerably higher.
The process here is simple: if a vertical or feature appears in a substantive number of search results globally and/or in a considerable number of the SERPs you care about to attract your search visits, it’s almost certainly worth some effort. Google News, Shopping, Reviews, Images, Knowledge Panels, Tweets, Local Boxes, and more all have the potential to take away a lot of the clicks that would ordinarily go to “classic blue links”-style results. If you can own that SERP real estate before or even in addition to your competition, your traffic growth opportunities have considerably more room to rise.
One important note: YouTube on its own is the world’s second-largest search engine. If video isn’t coming up as a big opportunity for you, double check that math! For almost every niche there’s a good possibility that video can bring in terrific audience attention and branding value, even if the traffic isn’t as direct as from Google itself. Video SEO has changed since Google’s move away from rich snippets for non-YouTube content, but it’s still a massive search channel.
Many, many times, I’ve looked at a set of competitive search results, seen Moz ranking in the top 3, and thought, “We’re good here; maybe I’ll target something else.” But, that mentality may be costing me some real opportunity:
Multiple listings in the same set of search results isn’t just about getting more real estate, but about boosting traffic and click-through rate for both. Some analyses (that I sadly cannot locate anymore and didn’t properly bookmark) have shown that two listings in the search results can have a greater CTR than just position X + position Y. Like great romances, the effect of dual listings is greater than the sum of its parts.
Likewise, thinking that #2 or #3 are “good enough” is also probably costing me the chance to scale search traffic considerably. Depending on the CTR curve you like best, #1 is averaging 1.5x–2.5X as much traffic as #2, and in SERPs where verticals or SERP features may be intruding, it could be even higher.
Via my Moz Analytics account
Ignore that SEO traditionalist in your head that bypasses keywords where you already rank in the top 3 or top 5, and double-down on the SERPs where you’re just inches from 1st place (or another great piece of content away from a double-ranking).
I can’t count the number of times I’ve started helping an organization think through SEO and discovered that the only keywords they pursue are those that lead directly to conversions.
Repeat after me: “SEO is not PPC.”
That means in SEO, you don’t need to limit your keyword targets to only those with a given conversion rate. Your ROI equation can be years in length because organic search will keep sending visits for years if you earn and maintain high rankings. It also means that your keyword and content pairs shouldn’t be limited to those producing conversions at all. At Moz, for example, we know that the path to conversion can be long and winding.
A couple years back, we found that the average person taking a free trial of our software had visited Moz’s website 7.5X before signing up. SEVEN AND A HALF! What’s more, those who visited more times before they converted tended to be better customers—they used more features, were less likely to cancel, and were more likely to participate in our community, too. It’s been wonderful knowing that the goal of most of our content is simply to make raving fans out of the people who interact with it, not to necessarily turn those visitors into buyers as quickly and efficiently as possible.
This lesson doesn’t just apply to us—you, too, should be thinking about where your customers’ journey begins and what they’re searching for long before they ever consider your product (or any solution) to their problems:
#1 – It tends to be considerably less competitive to target terms and phrases that have lower commercial/direct-conversion-intent.
#2 – The keyword and content universes higher up the funnel often expand exponentially, giving you vastly greater opportunities for search traffic growth.
Imagine you’re helping a local roofer in Seattle, WA with their SEO. The current keyword options are probably very limited and hyper-competitive (e.g. “seattle roofing,” “roof leak seattle,” “roofing contractor seattle,” and so on). But, move up the funnel and suddenly a whole world of possibilities reveal themselves (“roof protection,” “comparison of roof sealants,” “seattle roof weatherproofing,” “best shingles for roofs in windstorm,” etc). I know local small businesses who’ve built their entire conversion funnel around educational content posted through photo tutorials to their website and videos on YouTube. They end-around the traditional conversion-focused keywords by earning a loyal audience that amplifies their work through word-of-mouth, often when they’ve never even been a direct customer!
Plus, although it technically falls under the paid search umbrella, RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) mean that if someone’s already visited your site once and you know you want to reach them again if they search for more downfunnel keywords, you can bid higher and more effectively for them in Google AdWords.
For larger organizations seeking to expand their markets, growing beyond your local country and/or local language may be an avenue of considerable opportunity. It’s not easy, and in SEO, it can require starting nearly from scratch (depending on how you’re pursuing international expansion—new TLD extensions vs. subfolders, etc). This is not my area of expertise by any means, but I love what Eli Schwartz says about the practice in his post: don’t assume, and don’t stereotype.
Do your keyword and market research first! Don’t assume (see?!) a practice, product, service, or niche will be equally large in a market simply because it has similar economics, population, or even language. The English love Marmite, but it’s just not gonna fly in the US (or really any other country for that matter). American TV producers seeking to export Desperate Housewives of City X will likely find themselves up a creek. And Bavarian home mural painting services will find themselves stymied pretty much everywhere but Bavaria (which is sad because I find them delightful).
Note: This list obviously isn’t comprehensive for all forms of web marketing or even all inbound/earned channels. Content, social, email, community, paid media, etc. could all be worthy of consideration. But if your team focuses on SEO or if you believe organic search is where the best opportunities lie, the tactics you want are probably contained within these.
P.S. One more—it’s sometimes interesting to experiment with how adding or subtracting paid search ads can impact your organic traffic. We’ve seen case studies where it’s had both effects, so don’t assume!
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Posted by TrentonGreener
Google Analytics (GA) is a phenomenal tool that most of us, including myself, use in a very limited capacity. It’s not that we don’t want to use all of the functionality of this great product, but that we’re unaware of the potential opportunities available to us as marketers. Often times, when we do find that new and exciting feature, it astounds and astonishes us; I often find myself consumed by the possibilities. That’s how it felt when I first found GA’s “Data Import” feature. I had no idea that I could load not only my AdWords data into GA, but also all of my other paid efforts as well—from social, to search, to display, and even direct mail. I could import the cost data of each campaign into Google Analytics and do an ROI analysis using functionalities such as the Model Comparison Tool. In this post, I’m going to walk you through how to do exactly that.
We’ll be diving into GA’s ability to import relevant campaign data such as cost, clicks, and impressions using the built-in Google Analytics “Data Import” functionality. This feature is useful for not only importing your non-AdWords paid marketing channels—such as Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Twitter, AdRoll, Outbrain, and so on—but can also be used to import refund data, customer data, and much more. To see the full scope of use, see this support documentation.
For this guide, you’ll need to have Universal Analytics installed. You can check that you indeed do have Universal Analytics under the “Admin” section of the GA interface, within the “Property” column. Under “Property Settings,” if your Tracking ID begins with UA, then you likely do.
If you’re not yet upgraded to Universal Analytics, here’s the Google documentation on getting started and here’s a great resource from Kissmetrics to help get you on the right track.
All righty, let’s get started on this. For our example today, we’ll be importing cost, click, and impression data from a sample Bing Ads account to sync up with our existing session-based data at the campaign and keyword level. There are five major steps to importing this data into Google Analytics. We’ll go through each step and ensure you have a deep understanding of the process required to make this all go off without a hitch.
While it’s not technically an action step, since we’re adding Bing data at the campaign and keyword levels, the first thing to note is that we can only add data to a custom campaign that has already been defined within GA through UTM parameters. This means that we cannot add cost, click, or impression data to traffic that’s being incorrectly tracked within GA. If you don’t currently have auto-tagging or manual tags within your (in this case) Bing account, then the traffic will likely come through as organic, referral, or possibly even direct. Here’s a link to Bing’s support article on how to implement these tags if you haven’t already. However, this same principle applies to any type of import you’d be trying to do here, no matter whether that be Bing, Facebook, etc.
Now that we have our Custom Campaign ducks in a row, it’s time to create the actual data set. We’ll need to establish which data set type you want to use (full list here). In our case, we’ll be using the “Cost Data Set” type. To do this, we’re going to go into the Admin panel of the GA account that we’re trying to upload the data to. Under the “Property” column, we’re going to select “Data Import” (see image below). Don’t fret about this being property level; we’ll select the views within this property that we wish to affect later.
We’re then going to select the “New Data Set” option, select the “Cost Data” radial option, and continue. This can be seen in the following two slides:
Now that we’ve selected our type, the next action for us to take is to properly name our data set and select the views within this property that are to be affected. You can choose to select no views and edit this at a later time, but I’d recommend adding these changes to a copied view that you have created.
Next we select which columns are to be added to our schema. “Medium” and “Source” are required in our case as we’re doing a Cost Data Set, but then we’re given the option to choose at least one of “Clicks,” “Cost,” and “Impressions,” and finally we are given the option to add as any additional columns as we’d like. I’ve added all the possible selections for a Cost Data Set in the below image. Note that we won’t actually be using all of these, as many of them aren’t able to be used outside of AdWords campaigns. This just serves as a demonstration.
You’ll also notice the option to either overwrite or sum the data. We’re selecting overwrite, but if you wanted to add additional data to specific days, you might select the summation option.
We’ll be adding “Clicks,” “Cost,” and “Impressions” in the first section, and “Campaign” and “Keyword” in the second section. You can see what this looks like below:
Once you select the “Save” option at the bottom of the page, the Data Set has been created. You’ll notice that “Save” becomes “Done,” and an additional section appears. We want to select “Get schema,” which will create an additional popup window which allows you to download the Excel template to use for this upload.
When the dialog box shown below appears, select the “Download schema template” option and an Excel file will be downloaded with the required headers already inserted for you. You can set this aside for now, as we’ll need it at the end of the next step.
Below is the Schema CSV template for our example.
Now all that’s left is to download the data from the relevant source, do some minor formatting, and upload our data.
Since we’re trying to add clicks, cost, and impression data at the campaign and keyword levels, we need to ensure that our downloads include all of this data. We also need to ensure that our data is defined at the day level. I won’t dive into how to download the data from each individual source, as each platform is a little different and each has sufficient documentation of these steps, but there are a few important formatting items to remember (here’s a link to documentation). Line breaks and commas will break the data set and force it to fail to upload correctly, or worse, upload incorrect data. Because of this, you’ll want to remove any commas from your data. Date formatting has to be in YYYYMMDD format. When you export data from most of these sources, they’ll be in another format. Below is a quick and easy way to fix that. I prefer to do this before transferring the data from our data export to our data schema template, but there’s no one correct way to do it.
First, select the first cell you want to edit, and then choose “More Number Formats” under the number formatting section.
Then, choose a custom category and type “yyyymmdd” in the “Type:” field. This should change the “sample” to look similar to my own—just likely with different dates.
Finally, select the cell that you changed, and then use the format painter to copy this format down through all of your dates. Voilà, your date formatting is now Google approved!
The last part of step three is to copy the data over to our Excel schema template and match up the columns. It’s usually easier to reorganize this first so it’s a simple matter of copy and paste, but that’s up to you. Save this file and head back into the Google Analytics Admin interface.
We’re returning back to the Data Import section within the Admin panel and clicking through to the “Manage uploads” button that has appeared next to the Data Set we created in step two.
We’re going to select “Upload a file”:
Upload the file. Note that data can take up to 24 hours to actually appear in the GA interface. Even if the upload has been successful, it will likely still take additional time to sync the data throughout GA. In my experience, it usually takes about four to six hours, but Google’s documentation says up to 24 hours.
Remember in the last step where I mentioned date formatting? You don’t want to be like me. Here’s why: If you try to upload the data without using YYYYMMDD formatting, you get an error and have to re-upload the data—but the real kicker is that there’s no way to delete your failure! = It’s a cruel reminder every time you go back to upload again.
Now that we’ve successfully imported the data, all that’s left to do is wait until it’s synced.
Once the cost, clicks, and impressions data has been imported and has finished syncing with the existing traffic data at the source/medium, campaign, and keyword levels, you have the ability to see this data in two important places within GA. Firstly, the “Cost Analysis” section of “Acquisition” under the “Campaigns” parent tab displays campaign and ecommerce information similar to what you’d see under the “AdWords” section of “Acquisition.” This will display all source/mediums and campaigns, not just CPC campaigns—viewing the data can be a little funky, as you’re unlikely to have cost, click, or impression data for your organic traffic. Adding some filters to narrow down your point of view can really help make this easier to digest.
Secondly, and in my opinion much more excitingly, we have the Model Comparison Tool. If you haven’t discovered this majestic beast, you should set aside an hour, grab a cup of coffee, and just play—particularly if you run paid marketing campaigns and have revenue or ecommerce data in GA. But while having the ability to do attribution-based ROI analysis is an amazing way to get a better read on the effect your marketing campaigns are having on the business’s bottom line, there’s the added benefit of being able to analyze the effectiveness of campaigns and keywords in aggregate across multiple sources.
I hope this walkthrough helped to guide you during your first GA data import and gives you the confidence to continue to utilize this extremely powerful feature for more than just cost data imports. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below, and if you have any questions, feel free to drop them there as well.
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