SEO and Content Marketing with Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin

Search engine optimization (SEO) has come a long way since the days of stuffing keywords and hoping for the best. Back then, it was too often used to bolster weak writing, to trick people into reading something that wasn’t worth their time.

Now, good SEO makes great content even better. We use the keywords people search for to make sure what we offer will have value—which, in turn, makes the content naturally keyword rich. Good SEO practices help people find valuable content. As such, SEO is an essential part of content marketing strategy.

Few marketers know more about the mysterious inner workings of search engine algorithms than Rand Fishkin. Rand and the team at Moz have been helping clients improve their inbound marketing for over a decade. In addition to serving clients, Rand shares his expertise with the marketing community on the Moz blog, particularly in his Whiteboard Friday series.

As Arthur C. Clarke said (sort of), “Sufficiently advanced SEO is indistinguishable from magic.” So it makes sense that Rand’s official job title is “The Wizard of Moz.”

As part of the The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to Content Marketing, we asked Rand to share his thoughts on SEO’s role in content marketing strategy. Read on to learn which SEO skills all marketers should have, which opportunities marketers should capitalize on within the coming year, and more.

Ask the Expert with Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin

LinkedIn: If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin?

Rand Fishkin: I'd work hard on getting to know my audience, studying my competition, and formulating a strategy around what would resonate before I ever took to the content creation itself. But, from that point, everything would be experimentation and evolution based on what I learn. Every audience and every platform are different. I suspect that, depending on how unique the new audience I was going after was from my current audience (of mostly marketers and tech folks), it might take me some serious time to get good at finding a sweet spot.

LinkedIn: In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today?

Rand: A lot has changed, but I think, more than anything else, the last five years have reduced loyalty and attention to almost unrecognizable levels. No one subscribes to just a few feeds or just a few accounts on social media. No one's messages have a shot at reaching 60 or 70% of their audience—even the audience that's opted in and said "I want to see what you're sharing." All of the social networks have substantially reduced reach. Email deliver-ability and open rates continue to shrink. RSS readers are barely alive anymore. Earning your audience's attention five years ago was relatively easy (or at least, much easier) if they'd already connected themselves to you. Today, that advantage is gone—a subscriber doesn't mean what it used to, and I doubt it ever will again.

Every new message you want to send will have to pierce the cacophony of noise that overwhelms us in the digital age.

LinkedIn: If you were tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you would be looking for?

Rand: Empathy. Great marketers have immense empathy for their audience. They can put themselves in their shoes, live their lives, feel what they feel, go where they go, and respond how they'd respond. That empathy comes out in content that resonates with your audience.

LinkedIn: In your opinion, what is the baseline of SEO skills content marketers need to have?

Rand: I think a content marketer actually needs more SEO skills than marketers in nearly any other position (with the obvious exception of SEO specialists themselves). That means understanding keyword research and how to do keyword targeting, how search engines generally rank pages, some of the technical aspects of SEO around indexation and crawling, how content on the same domain can boost that site's authority and ranking potential, etc. Given that content marketing isn't just about producing content, but about earning traffic to it as well, SEO should be a cornerstone of any content marketer's repertoire.

LinkedIn: What current SEO opportunities will content marketers be glad they acted upon two years from now?

Rand: First, better content > more content. This is one that's tough because A) many teams and managers and clients still want a certain number of pieces rather than aiming for fewer pieces of higher quality and B) quantity is how content marketers get their reps in—it's how we practice our art and get better at it.

The reason this matters so much is that engines are starting to learn which domains people prefer, to put those domains in front of them more and more. If you fall behind this curve, and a substantive portion of your content doesn't interest, excite, or engage visitors, you could quickly find yourself in a negative spiral of a feedback loop that lowers your aggregate rankings long term.

Second, schema and rich snippets. This one's obvious because it not only drives up clickthrough rates today, but is likely to have more and more influence and opportunity over time. If you get good at it now, you can expect a string of returns.

Finally, link outreach and link-earning content. Many of us keep hearing how link building is dead, and it's something I've said myself. But the need for links is not dead, and it doesn't even appear that links are getting less correlated with high rankings. So links are still something we need, but classic, old-school, manipulative and low-quality link building is diminished if not gone. Thus, we need to produce content that naturally earns links, and content that's likely to earn links once we do the right kinds of outreach. Then we need to do that outreach!

The best part is that if you get good at link earning and link outreach now, you'll rank and earn visibility and those links will compound and earn you more and more rankings over time.

Thanks to Rand for carving out time to talk with us. You can follow him @randfish and find more of his always awesome content on the Moz blog.

Again Google Local 3-Pack Makeover!

Google continues to update the display for local search results in the Local Pack by removing the website, directions and call buttons from listings, and replacing with an image.

Over the past six months we have seen numerous tests in the pack display. Today we are seeing a widespread (re) appearance of the snack pack type display that shows images instead of the click to call icon.

Previously this display was exclusive to restaurants and hotels but today (anyways) is being seen across most types of retail and service industry results. Although NOT on lawyers or doctors.

We have seen this style before but the rollout today seems more broad based. A test? The new normal?

The imagery persists across the local finder requiring at least two clicks in to get to driving directions or click to call….. the rabbit hole appears to be getting ever deeper.

Here is a comparable screen shot taken last week that shows the same search result and comparable screen :

Whether this is the new normal this week or not, it clearly demonstrates Google’s desire to:

1. Keep searchers at Google and
2. Force them into the Local finder.

This has plusses and minuses from the local business POV. It makes it harder for users to take immediate action and but it provides users with a greater range of choices from which to choose. The former hurts those ranking in the 3-pack and the latter helps all the others. What it does for any given businesses traffic is unclear.

Obviously this design offers up significantly more choices to the user and in doing so moves away from the idea of “the 3 best” companies that is implied with the 3 pack. If this were tied to the horizontal local finder that you now see in the Google iOS app, the idea that the listings are more equal would be even further reinforced.

Like with most recent changes this one, if it is a real rollout, seems to offer a mixed bag for the merchant and plus for Google and a few more steps for the searcher.

A Little History: Three, Ten, Seven, Three

In 2006, Google launched the One Box. In terms of local listings, this was also known as the very first “3-Pack.” This box was a blessing to many wishing to receive local business information quickly.

In January 2008, Google began to unveil its new 10 pack. The 10 pack was a godsend to many SEO professionals offering local listing services to their clients, as they could prove real ROI (“Look, you’re being highlighted by the Google Gods!”).

By October 2009, the 10 Pack was cut to the lucky 7 pack (Lucky for some, anyway!). Many local SEO professional saw this as a challenge, but not one that was too difficult to master. Google has been very straightforward from the beginning, explaining what was expected of local businesses in their online presence in order to appear on the new 7 pack.

In 2015, after a long, strong run, the 7 pack that local SEO professional have grown to love and master was replaced by what is now known as the Google Snack Pack.

How To Dominate The Google Snack Pack & Local SEO

If you don't have a Google Local SEO Strategy to Get your Business Found on Google Maps, You can follow My Local SEO Strategy. Adopting My Local SEO strategy will help your business flourish locally. Whether you are a local brick and mortar retailer or a national brand, starting at home is an excellent way to get your feet wet with Local SEO and become a local authority. I always advise clients that before you worry about your visibility around the world, take the top spot in your home city and scale up from there.

So how to do you get started? Get ahead of your competition and stay there with My 4 Phase Local SEO Strategies.

1. Full Citation Audit: The most important part of any Local SEO Campaign is ensuring NAP consistency, which is why MY every single Local SEO Campaign starts with a full audit. Without this crucial step (that most cheap competitors skip), you’d be throwing money down the drain.

I put every campaign through this extremely detailed, time intensive process. I record correct and incorrect citations, avoiding any duplication of efforts. This results in a fully detailed report, including a road map on how to repair incorrect citations most effectively.

2. Local Citations Building: Local Directory Citations are the bread and butter of Local SEO. With MY careful, manual submissions, I make sure you are in the BEST directories for your niche and market. This is not just a standard list of directories. Every single campaign is different and I leverage 3 strategies for determining which directories to submit to for that particular client.

Strategy 1: Ego directories – The most popular, traffic dense, authority directories.

Strategy 2: Competitor directories – I take your specific keywords and find out what citations are important not only in your industry but your specific SERPs.

Strategy 3: Competitor review directories – I scrape competitor review directories to find Google trusted directories.

I claim all the most important directories where possible, and provide detailed instructions for all others that should be verified by the client (some require a phone call for verification or other methods). Only live profiles are delivered, including all login info.

3. Rich Media Citations: Anyone can do plain old directory submissions, but to make them count, I beef them up with geo-tagged photos and videos, plus citations and links from rich media sources.

Video: I create straightforward, Animoto style video slideshows, with music, pictures and text. These videos are optimized to the fullest extent, including geo-meta data. I then submit these videos to the top video hosting sources, creating high authority, legit links and citations.

Photos: Here, you provide ME with 10, ideally relevant & branded images. I optimize, upload, and again optimize, including geo-meta data. I then submit these images to the top image hosting sources, creating high authority, legit links and citations.

4. Social Citations: Social Media Today brings together the news, trends and best practices around enterprise social and digital marketing. I make sure you’re ahead of the game and rounding out your citation profile by getting you awesome Social Citations.

In this phase, I create careful, manual Social Citations Submissions, adding all media and content which again results in high authority, legit links and citations. I submit to powerful & authoritative social media sites.

Need Help? Contact Me.

Content Marketing: 6 Steps to Building Your Editorial Calendar

I've seen content marketers in a state of paralysis, overwhelmed with the responsibility to create a constant stream of quality content. I get it. It's daunting to even get started because it’s not just about churning out blog posts, either; part of content creation is fitting each piece into an overall strategy. 

In the last B2B Content Marketing benchmarks, nearly half of those with stagnant programs said content creation was a major factor. Which makes sense. I get questions from marketers who ask me, "where do I even start?" Or claim, "we just don't have enough content." 

Let's conquer this together. 

It all starts with an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is a tool you and your team can use to map out content for the entire year. Building out your calendar naturally focuses your strategy, ensuring that you have the right mix of content types, the right topics covered, and enough content for each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Now that you know where to start, here’s just 6 steps to building out your editorial calendar that I guarantee we relieve any paralyzed marketers. 

1. Find Your Topics

First things first -- it's your job to identify the most relevant topics for your audience. You’re looking for the sweet spot where your audience’s needs and your brand’s expertise overlap. But don't lock yourself in a room and stare at a blank whiteboard. Act like an investigative reporter and hit the streets, if you will, to understand what resonates most with your audience. 

• The Field: What are the conversations they're having with prospects -- what are their pain points, what keeps them up at night?
• Buyer Personas: Assuming you have these already, use these as a catalyst to understanding what's important to them. 
• Social Media: What content topics and thought leaders are your audience engaging with the most?
• Keyword Research: Leverage Google Adwords to understand the key phrases around your brand's expertise, their search volume and competitiveness. 
• Forums: Find where your audience goes to get answers and consume content. 

Basically, anywhere your customers are talking is a place your brand can listen. All of these sources will help identify the broad topics that will shape your calendar.

2. Audit Existing Content

When marketers tell me, "we just don't have enough content" for a content strategy, I quickly dismiss their argument. Sure, if you're literally launching your business today, chances are you don't have much content. But in most cases, your marketing team has been sending emails, promoting eBooks and whitepapers and publishing blogs for some time now -- perhaps just not at the always-on pace and volume of an effective content strategy.

So start your quest for sourcing more content by auditing the work you have already spent resources creating. Once you have your topics in place based on your research conducted in step 1, check your back catalog for content that fits. 

I always say if you have a 20 page eBook, you can squeeze 20 blogs from it. Or if you have just 5 blogs on a similar topic, you have an eBook. If you want to test me, find me on LinkedIn -- happy to prove my theory. 

Dig into your Big Rock assets and slice and dice. Look for older blog posts that still have value but are due for a makeover and re-launch. Find successful email content and convert into a blog. Turn webinars into Q&A blogs and presentations into SlideShare decks.

Odds are even your most popular content last year still didn’t reach your entire potential audience. So don’t be shy about adding new value and republishing.

3. Plan Content throughout the Buyer’s Journey

Once you have identified some re-purposed content that can act as tent poles to your calendar, it's now time to work on the gaps. Make sure each piece is targeted at a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, and aim for a healthy mix of early and late stage content.

Many marketers focus their content on the late stages, because perception is that this content is contributing more directly to revenue. But without a healthy proportion of early-stage content, you won’t be building an audience for the late-stage stuff -- a cart before the horse issue, if you will. 

For help turning your topics into blog posts, try HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator, or Portent’s Content Idea Generator.

4. Set Your Cadence

Is it better to publish daily, three times a week, once a fortnight? Plenty of research has been conducted to find the perfect publishing cadence. But I'm sorry to say, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The one thing we do know is that consistency is far more important than frequency.

So as you plan your calendar, plan to publish as frequently as you can reliably create high-quality content. Your audience may prefer short-form content every day or more substantial pieces weekly. Use your best-performing pieces from the past year, as well as your current capacity, to set a sustainable cadence.

5. Fill in Your Blanks

Now it’s time to actually fill out your calendar. This is the fun part because you start to really see your content strategy come alive. Start with your broad topics, then fill each of your content slots with related posts from your existing content and your idea generation sessions. Aim for a mix of content types for variety, and make sure to vary the stage of the buyer’s journey.

A few recurring series can help fill out the calendar, and can give your audience something to look forward to every month. For example, on the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions blog we do a Marketing Book Worth a Look and Millennial Minute each month, and a Trending Content roundup weekly.

It’s also a good idea to leave an open slot or two each month for timely posts, new turkey slices, guest posts, or news jacking—anything that would add value but is hard to plan in advance.

6. Adjust As Needed

Once your calendar is complete, it can guide you throughout the year. But don’t carve it in stone—it should be a living document, evolving and iterating. Evaluate how each piece of content performs, and use that data to make strategic tweaks to the calendar. The focus should always be on what is resonating with your audience, not what you planned six months ago.

Creating a year’s worth of content is a hefty challenge for marketers. Start with a quarter or just the next two months. Leverage your research to generate broad themes and then build out secondary and tertiary topics based on those broad themes. Add existing content, recurring series, and a few wild cards, and you will find your calendar starting to fill up in no time.

Top 13 SEO Resources: Become a SEO Expert

Being a SEO Expert means understanding how skills such as SEO, content, social media savvy, and other skills impact our ability to move the needle for ourselves and the organizations we work for.

When it comes to SEO, marketers don’t need to gain an intimate understanding of search engine algorithms. Rather, marketers simply need to have a basic understanding of how SEO impacts the “findability” of content. The following ten resources will get you there, and then some.

For Beginners: If you’re completely new to SEO, building a sound foundation of knowledge is your first step. Check out these three resources to get up to speed on the basics.

1. Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (pdf). While I wouldn’t tell anyone to do “Whatever Google says” to do to get your website to rank, it’s important to know what Google’s public position is on a variety of tactics/techniques you might employ.

2. The Beginners Guide to SEO by Moz. This classic resource from Moz includes chapters on how search engines work, keyword research, analytics, and other SEO topics. Check out the ground-level introduction to discover best practices you can put to immediate use in your content marketing.

3. Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors.
Get in the know about on-the-page and off-the-page elements that impact your SEO with this SlideShare presentation from Search Engine Land. Discover how content quality, keyword use, site architecture, and other factors influence search engine results pages (SERPs).

4. An Introductory Guide to PPC by HubSpot.
This eBook outlines the potential benefits of paid search and how campaigns work. Find information on creating a keyword strategy, setting a PPC budget, optimizing ad copy, measuring performance, and other aspects of campaigns.

Taking to the Next Level: Tips and Tools from the Experts: Take your knowledge to the next level with specific tactics and tool recommendations from well-known SEO experts. These next four search resources are chock-full of insights you can use to optimize content.

5. Google SEO Guide: The Ultimate Resource by WordStream is one of the best SEO resource available online. It covers Keyword Research to How to get authority backlinks.


6. Learning SEO from the Experts “Solve for the humans!” Another HubSpot Guide.
This touchstone advice from HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah kicks off an eBook that provides SEO direction from the pros. Chapters from search authorities address keyword fundamentals, on and off-page SEO techniques, and link building best practices.

7. 21 Simple and Free SEO Tools to Instantly Improve Your Marketing By Buffer.
Buffer Content Crafter Kevan Lee observes in his blog post, “It’s amazing the difference a good tool can make.” Kevan goes on to provide resources for tasks that include checking the speed and usability of your site, analyzing links, and identifying duplicate content.

8. 37 Awesome Tools to Get the Most from Your SEO Campaigns by SEJ.
Because search engine optimization is so tool-dependent, there seems no better way to cap things off than with this listicle from Search Engine Land. Access tools that can immediately make you better at SEO analysis, link prospecting, and measurement.

Becoming Your Organization's Resident SEO Expert: How would you like to become the go-to SEO resource at your organization? Get there with the help of these final three advanced SEO resources.

9. The Advanced Guide to SEO by Neil Patel.
Go beyond the basics with Neil Patel and Sujan Patel in this Quick Sprout resource for getting more out of SEO initiatives. The infographic-style presentation provides a deep dive look at topics like indexation, accessibility, site performance, and advanced data research.

10. Search Engine Journal YouTube Channel.
Another must-subscribe for anyone interested in what’s next in SEO, Search Engine Journal’s YouTube channel offers frequent posts with industry newsmakers. Hundreds of archived videos cover SEO strategy, local search, and much more.

11. 58 Resources to Help You Learn and MasterSEO by KOSSmetrics.
Dig into this KISSmetrics post for a nice blend of quick tips, resources, and insights. Explore information on Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, review industry-specific SEO best practices, and get a list of bookmark-worthy blogs on content marketing.

12. Webmaster World.
Most SEO bloggers are guilty of writing too much theory and too little in the way of concrete examples. As a result, we’re often left thinking, “sounds good, but how do I know this really works?”

Webmaster World is one of the oldest and most trusted forums on topics related to web development and marketing online as a whole. These are real webmasters sharing their thoughts and issues in an environment conducive to open discussion. As a result, the threads often involve specific issues, a variety of voices and, most importantly, no-holds-barred discussion of the issue at hand.

13. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine.
This the legendary paper submitted by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin during their Ph.D. work at Stanford. It is a blueprint of sorts of the original working model for Google.

While in its current form Google in many ways dwarfs the original concept, the original Google concept was truly an engineering work of art – and reading the paper above will take you a long way in understanding the processes that are at the core of the search engines we know today.

Improving your SEO is a great way to make sure your hard work gets noticed by the right people. Rounding out your knowledge doesn’t need to be hard; just nailing the basics can do wonders for your brand’s visibility. Use insights, practices, and tools from these resources and you’ll be well on your way to earning your “SEO savvy” label.

Top Marketers Say: Stop Doing These Things for Greater Success in 2017

It’s always easy to find advice on what new strategies, tactics, and tools marketers should add to their mix. Especially this time of year, the internet overflows with advice. Start this new habit. Try this browser extension. Use this time management plan.

It’s good to learn and grow, of course. It’s great to add to your skill set or your toolbox. You can’t add on forever, though—eventually you need to take a few things out to stop from getting in your own way.

We asked some of our favorite marketing experts what you should stop doing in 2017 to be more productive, more efficient, and achieve better results. Here’s what they had to say.

Marketing Experts Say: Stop Doing These Things in 2017

1. Ardath Albee, CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist, Marketing Interactions

In 2017, marketers should stop thinking in terms of campaigns. Every time a campaign ends you give your audience a reason to reconsider how relevant your company is to their needs. This is especially true if the campaign ends before they know everything they need to make a buying decision. Most B2B campaigns do, forcing your buyers to go find someone else who’s telling the rest of the story they want to hear.

Marketers who choose campaigns are also choosing to alienate their audiences when the campaign ends. Instead, focus on a continuum of engagement that builds momentum over the course of the customer relationship— at a minimum from prospect to customer, and if possible through to advocate. This requires the continuity, compassion, and commitment that campaigns inherently lack.

2. Gini Dietrich, CEO, Arment Dietrich, Inc.

The one thing marketers should stop doing in 2017 is THE WRONG MARKETING AUTOMATION. Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell that, but let’s get real. Just because you CAN send multiple emails if someone doesn’t open a previous one, doesn’t mean you should.

I’ve seen two big trends this year: 1) The email that says, on the third or fourth try, “You haven’t responded to me, which means you a) must be rude; b) must not need us; c) must be trapped under something heavy and can’t call for help.” And 2) The email that says, “You must be busy so I’m popping this at the top of your inbox so you can get to it more quickly.”

Both of these approaches assume marketers have the correct list and the people they are emailing are, at best, warm leads. When, in fact, most are cold leads and are from purchased lists. This strategy does not work. So stop it. Stop it now!

3. Amy Higgins, Strategic Marketing Consultant

I wish marketers would stop deciding on their tracking parameters as the last step to their marketing campaigns. Many marketers will publish and promote content without adding trackable data parameters. Or, they add one-off trackable data parameters that are not related to a high-arching goal or campaign metric.

Worse, many add the tracking parameters at the last stage. This is where mistakes can happen in a last-minute effort to getting a campaign launched. You could even end up with trackable data that goes nowhere or adds extra complexity to your data reports.

If you develop your data strategy while you are developing the campaign, you can map the customer journey and decide what metrics you need and do not need to track.  Ask yourself, what's the main goal of the campaign? What journey do you want your customers to follow? What are you trying to get your audience to do at each stage?

4. Doug Kessler, Creative Director & Co-Founder, Velocity Partners, Ltd

Marketers should stop kissing the asses of our executive 'stakeholders' and start standing up for what we know to be great marketing.

A dumb idea from a Senior VP is still a dumb idea.

Marketers need the backbone to point that out, instead of rushing off to execute it.

They know their stuff. We respect that. We need to start insisting that we know ours.

5. John Lincoln, CEO, Ignite Visibility

I can give you a long list of things that marketers should not do next year. There's so many ineffective strategies that people are wasting their money on right now. It's really sad to see. That being said, the one thing that really resonates with me is that marketers should absolutely not be blogging without any clear goals in mind. I cannot tell you how many blogs I see out there with absolutely no purpose.

What these people do not realize is that their blog traffic can be used for remarketing, it can be used to capture email addresses, it can be used to push people into their sales funnel, it can be used to strategically target large keywords on the internet that have buying intent, it can be used to grow the size of your social media community significantly, it can be used to create ecourses and it is the single most important part of your business for thought leadership (in most cases).

If you know how to blog correctly and you're adding something new to the conversation it can dramatically increase the size of your business. It is at the heart of your entire marketing strategy and most people are doing it just dead wrong. In 2017 I encourage everybody to really define their goals for blogging and study up on how to get there and really maximize the potential of their blog. Most marketers are leaving money on the table there. They don't realize the power that their blog has and next year they really need to grab a hold of it and not continue to make this mistake.

6. Katie Martell, Marketing Consultant

Please, stop buying technology when you really need to solve your strategy problems. Many tools create efficiency, many tools make you more effective, but no tool will help you if you are lacking a foundational strategy. Invest in understanding your customers. Invest in improving your story and your content. Invest in aligning with sales.

With so many options in MarTech, many teams face a new challenge: managing their existing tech stack. Don't get caught up in the hype and when you do make a purchase, hold your vendors accountable to helping you get the most out of your money spent. 

7. Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute

According to CMI/MarketingProfs latest research, 70% of marketers are planning to create more content in 2017.  For most companies, I believe this is a mistake.  The majority of enterprise content does nothing for the intended audience. 

I would focus on creating less, but more impactful content on fewer channels...on initiatives that are truly differentiated and truly help us to create better customers.  Consolidate what you are doing so that what you keep makes the most impact possible.