Pubcon Las Vegas 2014

1. New Mobile Behavior and Click-to-Call Strategies

Learn how to enhance your PPC campaigns with click-to-call extensions — and why they matter so much — as Jason Spievak (CEO of Invoca) and Daryl Colwell (Senior Vice President, Matomy Media Group) take the Pubcon stage to talk mobile search advertising.

2. Chris Brogan on Mission-Driven Execution

In Wednesday morning’s opening keynote from Pubcon Las Vegas, Chris Brogan shares inspiring examples of brand and mission. Keep the mission alive with content and participation. Content is the drum that calls us together.

3. Search Algorithm Chaos & Keyword (Not Provided)

In this Pubcon Las Vegas session, Bruce Clay (president of Bruce Clay, Inc.), Prashant Puri (co-founder of AdLift) and Jake Bohall (vice president of marketing at Virante) are going to talk about an always-hot topic in SEO: Keyword data (Not Provided).

4. SEO Mosh Pit

It’s Pubcon’s 15th birthday (and the final panel), and you know it’s a party when there’s beer and cake and an SEO Mosh Pit, a Q&A session where conference attendees get to ask their questions of some of digital marketing’s best minds and leaders, including Bruce Clay, about the current SEO state of affairs.

5. The Importance of ‘Buyer Legends’ with Jeffrey Eisenberg

There’s so much that goes into online marketing, and marketing at largeBuyer legends” are what marketer and bestselling author Jeffrey Eisenberg calls the narratives that craft a customer journey – and it’s also the name the company that he runs with his brother. In this morning’s keynote, Eisenberg will dive into buyer legends, exploring why they matter and what goes into them.

6. SEO Copywriting Style Guide: Tools & Tricks for SEO Writers

The lessons shared by these panelists, including Bruce Clay, Inc.’s SEO Manager, Mindy Weinstein, help writers craft content for people that’s also rich for search engines. Whether you’re writing an article, a blog post, your home page — where do you start? You need to start with the human element.

7. Link Building Without a Penalty

Rhea Drysdale, Joe Youngblood and Russ Jones talk about link building. While this session was covered, Bruce Clay, Inc. does not endorse any of these tactics. Always proceed with caution when it comes to any link building effort.

8. Jay Baer, Author of Youtility – Help Not Hype

Marketing is more challenging than ever. Attention spans are shorter, consumers demand more knowledge, and what worked twenty years ago won’t work today. What does work for gaining mindshare? Being helpful.

9. Real-Time Content Marketing with Wearables & Google Glass

When it comes to wearables, devices and technology are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and Internet marketers are embarking on a new frontier: real-time marketing.

10. Link Building through Press Outreach

Rob Woods, SEO consultant, will share insights on press outreach that leads to strong links in this Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 session. Caveat: Going after press links are hard work, take time and money, and you are going to face rejection from reporters.

11. Jason Calacanis on Startups that Save the World

Angel investor Jason Calacanis’s keynote is unique – it’s not tactical or strategy-driven. It’s steeped in reality and meant to simply inspire and inform the audience of the amazing progress that startups and forward-thinking companies are bring to the world in the areas of six global problems. Startups, he asserts, will solve our world’s problems rather than governments. His keynote, that is meant to inspire us, will cover major advances by tech and startup companies.

12. Pinterest and Other Missed Social SEO Opportunities

Have an interest in Pinterest? You should – there are 70 million users are Pinterest, and their business is up for grabs. John Rampton, editor-at-large at Search Engine Journal, Stephan Spencer, vice president of SEO at Covario, and Cynthia Johnson, director of social media marketing at RankLab, share their insights on wielding Pinterest for to drive traffic, build community and boost sales.

13.Utilizing Personas in Social Media Contests

One of the most common reasons why business fail to gain ROI from their social media marketing efforts is their failure to fashion their content to target specific personas.

SMX East 2014

1. Google’s Gary Illyes Talks HTTPS & the Future of Secure Search; SEO VIPS Share Data/Experiences with HTTPS

Googler Gary Illyes, talks about the future of secure search, Google’s thoughts on secure search, and the possible return of keyword data (scroll to Q & A at end). Eric Enge says he’s seen “no material change” in moving to secure search, and Raza Zaidi weighs in on RSS and WordPress in relation to secure search.

2. BuzzFeed Founder Jonah Peretti Talks Going Viral, SEO, Social Media and More

Jonah Peretti, founder of BuzzFeed, has a history of Internet brilliance. Before founding BuzzFeed, he was a co-founder of the Huffington Post. For tonight’s grand finale, Search Engine Land Founding Editor Danny Sullivan picks Peretti’s brain on the early days of SEO at the Huffington Post, the nature of social sharing, the nuances of different social networks, the role (or lack thereof) of SEO at BuzzFeed, native advertising, and more.

3. 25 Smart Examples of Structured Data You Can Use Now

Have you reviewed your website inventory ad implemented structured data markup wherever applicable. Perhaps most important to your decision of whether or not you need to add markup now, speaker Mike Arnesen shares how to track the ROI of rich snippets.

4 . How SEO & SEM Can Help Each Other

SEO and PPC VIPs Lisa Williams, Aaron Levy and Brett Snyder break down the relationship between SEO and SEM from an operational and tactical level during the first session of Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East 2014’s Tactics Track.

5. All Search is Now Social

Think of an apple and a bag of marbles. Both simple images, and when you compare the two you’ll get an idea of the shift that social media has caused brands to make to stay relevant today. An apple is the old way of thinking of your brand, unified and on-message. The bag of marbles is a little more assorted, a collection, not a unified message but it has 300% more surface area. You’re able to increase the surface area of your brand by releasing individual advocates.

6. SEO Is Never Dead — Marshall Simmonds

In this opening summit session at SMX East, the SEO thought-leading veteran Marshall Simmonds puts to rest the popular critique of search engine optimization, “SEO is dead.” He explains: “If Google is constantly changing, we [search marketers] have to be constantly moving to meet those changes.

7. Branding Your Data Visualizations with Annie Cushing

Annie Cushing makes data pretty and meaningful for her clients with Excel dashboards customized in their colors and fonts and will be imparting her guidelines for making your data visualizations fit your brand, making it a brand identity tool online.

8. The 4th Wave of Content Marketing

We’re at the forefront of a movement to make technologists and marketers talk to each other. This session is called “The 4th Wave of Content Marketing: From Passive to Interactive” and it’s about the next thing in content. Don’t just publish more, make it interactive with marketing apps.

9. Twitter Cards & Facebook’s Open Graph

Take your social game to the next level by implementing Twitter Cards and Open Graph Tags. The speakers in this panel assert that social strategy means thinking about social posts as if they are ads (and therefore crafting them with the same amount of care and creativity).

10. Automation Does Not Equal Strategy

SMX speaker Kevin Ryan posits that “a Tool Box Does Not a Cabinet Make” as referenced in the alternate title of this session on marketing automation. Ryan is going to speak on a bad habit: focusing on the new, shiny new technology and neglecting the strategy.

11. The Future of a Brand

What is a brand and how are marketers in control of a brand? These are the questions she’s been tackling this decade because things have changed, and branding is now a business driver. As such, a brand should have it’s own budget, it’s own team and it’s own conversation with the executives. Joanna Lord explains the best practices of what some better brands are doing.

12. SMX East Evening Forum with Danny Sullivan

Search Engine Land Editor in Chief Danny Sullivan fields questions from the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East 2014 audience. Find out what he had to say about Authorship, markup, local SEO, how to teach SEO in college and much more.

13. Tough Love: What I Wish CMOs Knew About Search Marketing

Internet marketers know the importance of SEO, SEM and content marketing … but that’s not always the case with the C-Suite. Hillary Glaser stresses the importance of maintaining SEO. If your CEO/CMO is unconvinced of the power of ongoing Internet marketing, Glaser’s insights are definitely must-shares. Erin Everhart shares the seven things she wishes execs understood. Tom Alison rounds out the session by sharing compelling statistics on the future of Internet marketing, and why PPC is necessary for branded terms.

14. Creating, Testing & Optimizing Paid Search Ads

PPC pros share their top tips on testing ads, including tips that account for the shift of mobile users. From “always be testing” guidelines to creating ad testing framewor, discover what matters most when it comes to creating, testing and measuring ads.

15. Learn With Google — Attribution Strategies

In the Learn with Google classroom, the topic of the morning is: Attribution Strategies to Inform Your Search and Digital Investments. Because understanding the interplay of channels leads to smarter marketing investments.

16. What SEOs Should Be Doing with Mobile

When it comes to mobile, Google prefers responsive design. But there is no ranking boost or penalty for using this method when designing your mobile site. Cindy Krum, Michael Martin, Jim Yu and Gary Illyes talk about what happens when sites use dynamic serving, separate sites and responsive design — or some combination of all three.

17. The Importance of Imagery

In a stream of consciousness presentation of images, SMX speaker Rhonda Hanson, Sr. Director of Digital Marketing, Global Marketing, formerly of Concur, thinks about using images to your advantage and points out a few dos, don’ts and trends.

18. Making Moments Matter

The sales funnel has exploded. However, the pieces of the funnel are still highly relevant. You need to be there in the consideration phase. You need to streamline the purchase process so it’s frictionless. You need to work to maintain retention and get fanatical loyalty.

19. Keyword Research for Better Content & Audience Engagement

SEO masterminds Michael King, Jason White and Joe Pawlikowski share their top insights on keyword research. Discover their favorite tools, tried-and-true tactics, thoughts on persona research, (Not Provided) and much more.

20. Deconstructing Pigeon, Google’s New Local Search Algorithm

In July, the quality of Google local search results took a turn for the worse, experts say. The cause? A pesky little creature called the Pigeon Update crawled into the maps, local packs and authoritative one boxes. Learn what changed for searches with generic terms, geolocally modified terms, and see some of the wacky-broken results that have cropped up since Pigeon landed.

21. Conversion Rate Rock Stars

Luke Summerfield shares brilliant insights on designing your site and content to appeal to people’s unconscious brains (i.e., where emotions live). Then Paras Chopra and Khalid Saleh talk technical CRO matters.

22. Search & Find: Marketing in the Age of the Internet of Things

In this session at SMX East, speaker Erynn Petersen takes a high-level view of a future where we don’t go to a phone or computer to get online, but rather all the devices and appliances around us are online.

23. Competitive Research for SEO

This session dives into competitive research that will help you identify your true competition (it isn’t always who you think it is) and then assess why and how they are outranking you. Armed with this information, you can fight back and rise to the top of the SERP.

The post 36 Coast-to-Coast Liveblog Posts Covering Pubcon Las Vegas & SMX East 2014 appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

When Danny Sullivan and an audience of search marketers have a public forum to ask questions of Bing and Google reps and search marketing industry veterans, you can learn something. Here’s a snippet from the session that just happened at SMX East:

Danny Sullivan: “When can we expect that overdue Penguin update, Gary?”

Gary Illyes (Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google): “Soon.  Very soon. Maybe next week.”

Read the rest of this frank, PowerPoint-free Q&A session to learn why Gary Illyes called the next Penguin a “delightful update.” Moderated by Danny Sullivan, this highly-engaged discussion, fielded a range of questions, from SMX first-timers to seasoned search veterans.

Speakers:

• Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc. (@bruceclayinc)
• Janet Driscoll Miller, President and CEO, Marketing Mojo (@janetdmiller)
• Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google (@methode)
• Vincent Wehren, Lead Program Manager, Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft (@vincentwehren)
• Ellen White, Director, Organic Search (SEO), Team Detroit / Ford Motor Company (@ellenreathwhite)

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Founding Editor, Search Engine Land (@dannysullivan)

Introduction and Words from Danny Sullivan

In true form, and in fully  integrated fashion, the session opens with the announcement that this is the first session ever at SMX that paired SEOs with Search Engines together in the same session. Although in previous years sessions like this have been conducted, the SEO panelists and search engine reps were separated. Danny jokingly points out that the two search engine representatives, Wehren (Bing) and Illyes (Google), were seated at each end of the panel, separated by the three SEOs.

Negative SEO? Fact or Fiction?

From the opening bell, we immediately hit the ground running.  The first question from the audience was posed to the entire panel:

Q: We’ve had two negative backlink attacks and a ton of negative links aimed at our site. Do you (the panel) recommend using a disavow tool or something else?

Bruce Clay fielded the question by quickly explaining to the audience a top-level view of his thoughts on negative SEO. He made it clear that if a company’s portfolio is indeed filled with negative links and they are five years old already, they may be of your own doing, and not as a result of an attack.

New Algorithm Update: Coming Next Week?

With the gloves off, Danny cut right to the chase and posed the next question directly to Gary Illyes:

Q: When can we expect that overdue Penguin update, Gary?

Illyes replied quickly, “Soon.  Very soon. Maybe next week,” and explained that the next update will be a “delightful update.” He adds that Google has probably made updates every single week or every single month since the last update, attacking sites on all sides, however, the new “maybe out next week” penalty is aimed to make both users and webmaster’s lives easier. “We want webmasters and users to be happy,” concluded Illyes, to a cheer of claps and laughs.

Note: One of the most talked about points after the session was Illyes statement that it may already be too late to disavow for the upcoming Penguin update.

On the Importance of User Experience (UX)

An audience question on the state of 404 errors quickly evolved into the importance of user experience.  Some highlights of the panelist comments on the immediate future of UX:

• For Google, UX will become more and more important in the near future, “Maybe even by next week,” Illyes joked.
• It’s not a bad thing to let your site trigger 404 errors, especially from a user experience.
• Don’t neglect mobile. Mobile UX will become incredibly important to everyone, especially soon.

On the Proper Use of Structured Data

Shifting from the topic of penalties, the panel discussion got lively, addressing this question on structured data:

Q: If we add structured data to an event that occurs yearly, do we update the data or create a whole new page?

In the case of an event like SMX, where people might be interested in the history of the event, creating a new page will improve the benefits for the user. In addition, adding new structured data to the pre-existing page may not make much of a difference in search. However, when that event is over, that year’s agenda will be archived to its own page and the next year’s event agenda will maintain the link equity on the same canonical agenda page, illustrating the concept of “evergreen”.

Lightning Round

The final five minutes of the session including a lightning round of quick, short-answer questions. The questions came in fast, and the responses came in even faster. Here’s a short recap of the lightning fast Q&A.

Q: Is it possible for Google to give some progress reports on the status of disavows?

A: Yes. – Gary Illyes

Q: Can we expect that to happen?

A: I will examine that internally. – Gary Illyes

Q: Do mobile-deep links allow searches to crawl deeper into native mobile apps?

A: Yes, to Android apps. No, to iPhone apps. – Gary Illyes

Q: Hey Bing, how do you feel about what Google’s doing with https? Are you going to give boosts as well?

A: Having secure sites is a good idea, we love the idea. But we index what the user is looking for, so the answer is no. – Vincent Wehren

Q: What exactly was new in Panda 4.1?

A: I did not know. – Gary Illyes

A: I haven’t seen a difference. – Bruce Clay

Q: Has mobile search volume passed desktop?

A: I cannot recall, I can’t access my deep memory. – Gary Illyes

Q: Do the Search Engines prefer absolute linking over relative linking?

A: It doesn’t matter. – Gary Illyes

A: We don’t see a difference. – Vincent Wehren

The post SMX East Liveblog: At Meet the Search Engines Session, Google Says Penguin May Come Next Week appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Speakers:

• Eric Enge, CEO, Stone Temple Consulting (@stonetemple)
  
• Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google (@methode)
• Raza Zaidi, VP of Product & Technology, Gigaom (@rzaidi)

Gary Illyes: Insights from Google

“You can blame me for the HTTPS ranking boost.”

Humans have basic needs. Maslow came up with the hierarchy of needs:

• Self-actualization
• Esteem
• Love/Belonging
• Safety
• Physiological

We have a basic need for security.

Twitter uses HTTPS for all users by default. Facebook uses HTTPS for all users.

At Google, we had really deep discussions about HTTPS. As a ranking signal, it affects less than 1% of queries. It’s a very lightweight symbol. Relevance and high-quality content are much stronger signals.

In 2014, Search Engine Roundtable migrated to HTTPS.

Later, Cloudfare announced they made SSL available for all customers.

Less than 10% of the discovered URLS are HTTPS – this is a crazily low number. Over time, this should reach 100%. 30% of the queries have at least one HTTPS in the results. I want this to increase.

Objections from Webmasters to HTTPS

1. It slows things down. Illyes points out that Google is obsessed with speed — “We are obsessed with speed. We care about every single millisecond.” To that end, he asserts that it is entirely possible to implement secure search and maintain speed.
2. It’s just not worth it (my site is just a blog, a small news site, etc.). If humans have a basic need for security, how can you possibly say it’s not worth it? It’s a basic need.
3. It’s complicated. It’s really not. I have a degree in journalism; I managed to switch my site in four hours — if I can do it, you can do it, too. If you can’t, I’m very sure your hosting company can do it.

What’s next?

We need to think big – we need to implement moonshot thinking. We want to brave things and things that no one has dared to do before.

Google has Been Brainstorming

If you are going to shop on a site would you go through the checkout process on HTTP? You would probably not. Would you give your login credentials to a page that’s not secure? I wouldn’t. A broken certificate means no certificate at all – we might want to start pointing out to our users if they are going to an insecure page, on all browsers, not just Chrome. This is something we’re thinking about.

Message from John Mueller (via Illyes)

“We heard reports that after switching to HTTPS some people’s rankings dropped. We are actively looking into these reports. We don’t see any correlation to migration. HTTPS should be very transparent and not painful at all. For some people it worked brilliantly and I know that for most sites, it has to work because our index will just handle it well.”

Raza Zaidi

WordPress

• WordPress VIPS’s implementation of HTTPS uses Server Name Indication (SNI)
  • Not supported on XP and old version of IE
  • Warnings will be present to user resulting in lost traffic
• Also can support HTTP Strict Transport Security HSTS
  • This degrades gracefully so no traffic loss
• Using WordPress plugin to forward all HTTP traffic (from bookmarks, old links, etc.) to HTTPS

RSS Readers

• Historical users will have subscribed to the HTP version
• The feeds will be broken; users will need to manually resubscribe to the feeds
• Place FAQs prominently on the site

Eric Enge: HTTPS as a Ranking Factor (or Not)

Stone Temple Consulting switched its own site and tracked URLs, looking at the date the HTTPS was switched over by Google.

We found that of 12 pages indexed, there were 6 improved rankings, 5 got worse, and 1 had no change. There was no material change.

Data from SEO Clarity’s study on HTTPS (looking at 218 million sites including GoDaddy) also showed that SEO Clarity went through no material change.

Stone Temple Consulting found that Digicert had provided Stone Temple Consulting with extended validation SSL Certificate by default. This has a stricter level of validation, caused a 2-day delay in the HTTPS switch, and SSLGuru flagged the certificate as an issue.

In Q & A, someone asks Illyes: “If everything is HTTPS can we please get back our keyword data?

Illyes: “We are in talks with our execs about it. That’s all I can say. I can’t make any promises.”

The post SMX East Liveblog: Google’s Gary Illyes Talks HTTPS & the Future of Secure Search; SEO VIPS Share Data/Experiences with HTTPS appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Speakers:

• Paras Chopra, Founder & CEO, Wingify (@paraschopra)
• Khalid Saleh, CEO, Invesp (@khalidh)
• Luke Summerfield, Director of Inbound Marketing, Savvy Panda (@savvyluke)

Luke Summerfield: Brain-Based Marketing

What is our goal as marketers? To drive human behavior.

The human brain has two parts – our conscious and unconscious and they don’t communicate very well together. As marketers, we are trying to get the unconscious brain – where all the emotions are.

And yet … user tests, focus groups, feedback, interviews, surveys – those all explore the conscious brain, not the part that actually drives behavior.

Instead, we should look at data and the psychology of why people behave the way they do in the first place.

Brain-Based Design

Authority. We are more influence by people that hold a position of power or authority. Show authority by:

• Supply customers with testimonials and case studies
• Get awards and highlight them
• Showcasing high profile clients
• Partner with authorities – feed off their credibility

Social Proof. We are influenced by decisions of groups of other people.

• Show the number of customers you’ve helped.
• Showcase community favorites, use user photos and videos.
• Incorporate reviews and ratings

Reciprocity. We are more likely to take action when we are given something of value. Build reciprocity by:

• Creating great quality blog posts.
• Thank You Page offers for secondary conversions

People that are Like Us. We are attracted to people that have similar core values and remind us of ourselves.

• Use images on your site that reflect the personas visiting it.
• When choosing which testimonials, choose the testimonials that are from customers that your targeted personas will be able to relate to.

Brain-Based Design

Reticular Activating System – this tells our brain what we should focus in on and what we shouldn’t focus in on.

Motion – we are hardwired to see things that are moving – when you want to focus a user’s attention, show don’t tell. Use video for your most important pieces of content. Or Javascript animation. Or slide ups – when something slides up at the bottom of a blog post, for example.

Mirror Neurons

When you see something happen to another person, your brain lights up with similar emotions. That’s why there are laugh tracks on sitcoms, for example.

Use actionable words – they also elicit mirror neurons.

Images Our Brains Are Attracted To

We are attracted to people, specifically beautiful people and babies. Use these images whenever you can at conversion groups. We also gravitate to individuals rather than groups of people. Furthermore, users will concentrate on where the subject is looking. Therefore, if you can use a beautiful woman, holding a baby, looking in the direction of your most-prized content … all the better.

Paras Chopra: How to Graduate from Tactical A/B Testing to Research-Backed Conversion Optimization Process

 The UX Optimization Process

• Research users
• Form hypothesis and list problems
• Prioritize problems
• Conduct experiments
• Deliver personalized experiences
• Measure and benchmark metrics

Consider doing a customer survey and simply ask people to list three things they don’t like about your website. For Chopra’s website, he did this and discovered people really didn’t like the color of his site (purple).

Put A/B testing on a calendar. Implement it into your process. Have a full-time person devoted to this.

Track conversion rates religiously.

Khalid Saleh: 3 Principals for Higher Conversions

Increasing conversion rates is a complex problem.

3-4% is the average conversion rate.

Increasing the rate requires sophisticated analysis. You must come up with focused solutions a that have a high probability of success.

Aim at 9-12% conversion rates

CRO is a long-term process.

Focus on pages with high exit and bounce rates. Look at the checkout process, as well.

Be Careful with Best Practices

• Usability principals are good in theory, but difficult in practices.
• What works for one website does not work for others.
• Move beyond simple analytics metrics to determine starting points.
• Determine KPIs before starting.
• Conduct monthly assessment.
• Start by creating goals in Google.

The post SMX East Liveblog: Conversion Rate Rock Stars appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Speakers:

• Michael King, Digital Marketing Consultant, iPullRank (@ipullrank)
• Joe Pawlikowski, Marketing Team Leader, PushFire (@joepawl)
• Jason White, Director of SEO, DragonSearch (@sonray)

Joe Pawlikowski: Keyword Research to Generate Content Ideas

In doing keyword research, Pawlikowski is always trying to figure out user intent behind a search, thinking about the users’ problems, objections and motivations — to determine them, he conducts keyword research. The following are his preferred tools.

SEMRush

Let’s say there’s an e-commerce site that sells hats.

Pawlikowski likes to use SEMRush as a competitive research tool. He uses the PPC tool to generate keyword ideas for SEO. Let’s say we take cowboy hats – SEMRush will give us 964 keyword ideas when we input “cowboy hat.”

When looking for keyword ideas, Pawlikowski likes to stick with keyword terms that have search traffic in the double digits – still valuable, but not super competitive.

Whenever creating content, give your customers more than they could ever anticipate – that’s what makes you stand out. Analogy: a skyscraper only makes the news when it’s the tallest. You either need to be the “tallest,” or drill down into niches.

KeywordTool.io

Get 750 Google Keyword suggestions for free. Simply type in a keyword or keyword phrase and find a huge sample of queries that include the keyword or phrase.

Buzzsumo

Find what content related to your keyword or keyword phrases are performing best socially.

Pawlikowski suggests:

• Coming up with 10 blog post ideas every day.
• Reviewing your ideas weekly.
• Mating your ideas. They might seem disparate but all your ideas will come together at some point. The best idea is the coupling of two ideas.

Jason White: Keyword Research for Better Content & Audience Engagement

Jason had a client that wanted to raise $200,000 through social media, referral traffic and organic search. White looked at their historical conversion rates and loan volume to determine the conversion rate he would need going forward. Using the Keyword Planner and Google Webmaster Data, White mapped out what rate of conversions he would need each month. Based on that data, he could shape the campaign and share that data with the client. The process is essentially a mini audit, and it helps you set a client’s expectations from the start.

Michael King: Persona Driven Keyword Research

Keyword research is in disarray – the things you find in keyword research are crazy. People are searching for keywords … big deal. Good keyword search accounts for intent … but these are all abstractions

Keywords are just the vehicle by which people searching to fulfill a need.

When you’re searching for “Subway,” what are you searching for? The restaurant? Or transportation? Modern keyword research needs to be about entity matching.

Map Keywords to Personas

This ultimately helps you understand what people are trying to do with their search. Map keywords to need states.

Who cares about (Not Provided)? All that matters is who is searching and what matters to them. Keywords are gone and Google provides more than enough data to determine what types of users are coming to your site. Use that in the context of landing pages, internal search and channels.

Understand your users’ vocabulary and work to get a sense of what people are talking about when they’re searching.

What needs arise at every stage of the customer journey? Map those needs to touch points.

King’s Favorite Tools

• Adwords Keyword planner
• SEMRush
• Keyword.Tool.io
• Bottlenose Sonar
• Topsy
• SEOTools for Excel
• GREPWords
• Keyword Studio
• Alchemy API
• NTopic
• SearchMetrics
• Stat
• Excel-Rest
• Postman
• SEOGadget for Excel

Keyword Portfolio

King would take his keyword portfolio and do audience surveys to ask how they would search for those keywords and match it up to his own research.

Persona and need state classification must be done by hand.

The post SMX East Liveblog: Keyword Research for Better Content & Audience Engagement appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Three Key Takeaways

• When you try to make something that works for search and social instead of focusing on just one, you end up making something that doesn’t work for either.
• Users expect media to be broader than just hard news — having the comics alongside politics, or kitten videos alongside coverage of the Ebola crisis, are appropriate for news sites.
• Don’t make assumptions about why something succeeds. Test it. Think you went viral because of X, Y and Z? Do X, Y and Z again and see what happens. A lot of times, things aren’t succeeding for the reasons you think they are.

Read on to experience more of the keynote conversation with Jonah Peretti.

SMX Keynote Conversation with Jonah Peretti

Danny Sullivan: What was it like to pioneer SEO for news content at The Huffington Post?

Jonah Peretti: We kind of accidentally discovered SEO. When The Huffington Post first launched, there were not article pages – on the left-hand side there were blog posts and on the right there were links. We didn’t get any search traffic, or very little. We realized as the site started to grow that we needed to add categories beyond politics. What we quickly realized was that (people only went to) the front page. So we started taking the best quotes and articles (and putting them on the home page). And then people linked and visited. We had a tool that showed CTR on headlines, and we had already started editing headlines based on that data, and moving articles around.

With BuzzFeed, the site was focused on getting traffic off of the social sharing. You have 150 million visitors and 75 percent are from social. (Tell us more about your focus on social.)

In the early days of BuzzFeed we were trying to do search and social – when Panda was introduced, we lost most of our search traffic overnight. We weren’t hit by Panda – we found out later there was a bug. It turned out we had put our embed inside a different domain for Javascript security reasons and it was “BuzzFed” – Google thought someone was injecting malware onto our site – Google was like, oops, and we fixed it.

But during that month of confusion, we started focusing on social. The way search and social work, they’re so different. When you make something to work for both, you end up making something that works for neither. A lot of social sharing is about emotion and connection – when someone shares a cute kitten video, they’re not sharing it because they care about cats; they’re sharing it because they want to share the emotion. If you stuff that with keywords, it detracts from the emotion.

Across your network of sites, Facebook was driving four times the traffic of Google in 2013. What is your take — is the BuzzFeed network unique or is Facebook really that much more powerful than Google?

I think it depends a little bit on what types of sites you are looking at; increasingly for news content, people are getting more and more of their news on social.

Do you still think about SEO at BuzzFeed?

We don’t really think about it that much. What I hope would happen is that Google would use more social signals to rank content so that when we make something amazing that is reaching millions of people it would at least show up in Google. (If something is) loved by millions of people and it’s dark to Google (that doesn’t seem right).

As a publisher, how do you view Google — as friend or foe?

We have a really deep partnership with YouTube; we work a lot with Google via YouTube. We did over 200 million video views on YouTube last month — we focus on shareability of videos — the signal that matters is when they see content on BuzzFeed and they need to share it. If you make things shareable — content that people really, truly love — people will share it and you’ve done a good job. We have a four-acre studio lot in Los Angeles for making videos. We think about Google from a video standpoint.

How do you see BuzzFeed trying to balance fun and seriousness?

In the past, newspapers have battled over the comics — you couldn’t be a serious political newspaper without having a great comic, because without a great comic, no one would read them. Usually there’s a combo of seriousness and fun. When you look at CBS, you have Big Brother and then you have 60 Minutes — people realize there’s a difference. The fact that it’s all done by CBS is not an issue. In the same way, we can have BuzzFeed News and BuzzFeed Life.

When you look at something that does well … you try to understand what it was about that content that (made it go viral). Tell us more about that process.

If you think the reason it’s viral is because it has corgis in it, make another post with corgis and see if it goes viral. If you think it’s because it’s tied to a holiday or it’s short or long or because it was posted to Facebook … whatever you think it is, make your statement but don’t assume that you know you’re right. Trying to repeat successes causes you to think both creatively and scientifically … That’s the kind of process that we’re going through all the time and that leads to new kinds of content and discoveries. A lot of time things aren’t working for the reasons you think you are.

Google asserts that links on native advertising should be blocked from passing along credit. Do you think publishers in general think about Google rules when they’re doing native advertising?

It probably depends on the publisher. It is kind of complicated, but some are sophisticated about search. It is controversial and interesting for Google — if the best content is branded, shouldn’t it still show up at the top of search results? You’ll see “Dear Kitten” show up at the top of search results, and if people were searching for that video and it didn’t show up, Google would be doing a bad job.

How does BuzzFeed view Twitter?

We love Twitter. Our breaking news Twitter account has been growing really fast. Our reporters will often just post directly to Twitter if it’s a factual, quick thing. Sometimes something is discovered on Twitter and jumps to Facebook — we see something get big on Pinterest from Facebook. It jumps.

How does BuzzFeed view Google+?

Could you explain (Google+) to me? I had a Google executive tell me that this is the biggest network and I was missing out — but I couldn’t tell if he was playing a prank. If we wanted to put a team on Google+ … where would they start?

Is there a single metric you focus on most? Page views? Shares? Engagement? Time on page?

Sharing is one of the key ones for us. It shows that you actually want to share this with another person. You don’t just look at sharing, though. (Time on page matters) because if people are sharing without reading you might think, are they sharing this because somehow I made them feel socially obligated to share this?

The post SMX East Keynote: BuzzFeed Founder Jonah Peretti Talks Going Viral, SEO, Social Media & More appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Moderator: Matt McGee, Editor In Chief, Search Engine Land & Marketing Land (@mattmcgee)

Speakers:

• Adam Dorfman, SVP – Product & Technology, SIM Partners (@phixed)
• David Mihm, Director of Local Search Strategy, Moz (@davidmihm)
• Andrew Shotland, President, Local SEO Guide (@localseoguide)

Pigeon Analysis by David Mihm: Back to the Future

David Mihm looks at 4 things about Pigeon for this presentation:

1. What Google said
2. What Mozcast says
3. What the experts say
4. Takeaways

1. What Google Told Search Engine Land about the Local Search Update

1. Web ranking signals are going up
2. Knowledge Graph behavior going up
3. Some change to distance location parameters

Let’s look at how these 3 things hold up to the results of his analysis of search results according to Moz data.

1. The query “day spa san francisco” shows a very similar set of results in local Google Maps and web rankings. This looks like supporting evidence for what Google said.

2. Knowledge Graph: it’s clear there was an update. There are now some strange results like an answer box for a query where it doesn’t really make sense (e.g., “DWI attorney new Orleans” is not a query that should get an answer box). Google is definitely ratcheting up the KG signals, but it isn’t getting it right yet.

3. Andrew Shotland’s article “Is your local business ready for Google’s neighborhood algorithm?” shows good evidence of the truth of No. 3. Searching for “convenience store,” a general term, gives you a tight radius of results to your location. By adding a geomodifier, results open to a larger radius. This is true for carousel results as well.

2. What Mozcast Shows

Dr. Pete is the Moz mad scientist. He pulled some data that showed a 23% drop in total results showing local packs.

There was a fairly even breakdown of gains and losses. Losses were often on real-estate related terms while branded terms saw gains in packs and one boxes.

Takeaway: If you’re a brand with physical locations in a given market, if you can make your physical locations clear to Google you’re likely to get authoritative one box or in the packs.

Here’s an example of a generic term that gained local authoritative one boxes: “boats for sale” search in Connecticut gives an authoritative one box to Jack Regan’s Yacht Shop. The best guess as to why is Google is using a signal from Acxiom, a known data aggregator Google uses for local data.

3. What the Experts Say

Every year David Mihm surveys the local search industry experts about local search ranking factors (LSRF) that are gaining and losing importance. Here are the generally agreed upon winners and losers this year.

2014 LSRF Big Winners:

• Domain authority
• Proximity to searcher
• Quality of inbound links

2014 LSRF Big Losers:

• Proximity to centroid
• Physical address in city of search
• Verified GMB pages
• Quantity of structured citations
• Proximity to other businesses in industry

He sees Pigeon as an amplification of Hummingbird — that is, a strong brand preference. Web signals like links have never been good at identifying worthy local businesses. Directories’ internal links are more powerful than all but a handful of inbound links.

What about pack results? Spammers who know Google’s playbook are the ones winning.

To recap:

Pigeon Analysis by Andrew Shotland

Andrew Shotland does local SEO for both big sites and little local ones. In May, local pack results disappeared for a lot of real estate-related queries. That seemed freaky, and not good for his real estate clients. Over 30 days they pulled this data for 24 real estate clients.

Traffic of real estate clients:

Impressions according to GWT:

Clicks according to GWT:

They saw the same pattern for roofing clients and moving company clients.

The analysis:

• Traffic was going up even though local pack results had disappeared.
• Pigeon was awesome for sites that lost head terms and were getting long-tail traffic.
• Seemed to be seasonality at play.
• Impressions jacked up after Pigeon.
• Traffic started to drop as impressions started to drop.
• Their conclusion from the data is that nothing really changed in terms of performance for roofing and moving company clients.

What about directories?

If you lose pack results, directories will naturally rise up; that probably happened for stronger directories like Yelp and Trip Advisor, but it turned out that for most smaller directories, the rankings hadn’t gone up, and some lost traffic post-Pigeon.

For most directories they work with and those they’ve talked to, Pigeon was +/- 5%.

And a notable difference after Pigeon is that there’s plenty of spam! He himself made some fake listings to test with fake addresses and exact match domains set up with a Yext power listing; those fake results got up in pack rankings in about 3 days.

Key Learning: Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive You Crazy

There are cases where Google’s backend data set is broken, and the only fix is to wait for Google to figure out what’s broken and fix it.

Pigeon Analysis by Adam Dorfman

Adam Dorfman’s presentation is available at: http://bit.do/pigeon.

For the following findings he analyzed:

• Sample size of 5000 location pages
• Data collection timeline: 2 weeks pre-Pigeon, Pigeon (7/24), 2 weeks post-Pigeon

He likes to take Matt Cutts and Google at their word to believe that any changes by Google are meant to improve quality of search results. So, he doesn’t worry as much about a change to quantity of traffic, but rather looks to see indications of improvement in quality of traffic; that is, if (on-page) conversion rate goes up.

Analysis of Pigeon traffic and conversion rate shifts:

• Traffic: -5.71%
• Conversion rate: -6%

Oops.

What difference makers to measure?

1. Business detail
2. Offsite factor
3. Onsite factor

Business detail

They looked at an effect from a business’s distance from centroid, or center of city. In:

• Small markets there was a massive drop with distance of 20 miles or more from city center
• Suburban areas there was a narrowing of search results to near the city center
• Large markets there was a slight preference for locations just outside of urban city centers, dropping off outside of 20-mile radius

Offsite factors

If you’re a new business and you have no links, you really need a few links to get into the game. Page authority matters. External factors are increasing in importance.

Onsite factors

ZIP code served and area served are two things local clients often have on site. They that found having multiple ZIP codes, up to 3, helped conversions. Likewise, listing more areas served was a big boost to performance.

On-page optimization still matters. Over-optimization is being targeted. Keep experimenting.

Takeaways

• Pigeon Update doesn’t equal improved SERPs.
• Where your business is still matters.
• Attach your business to strong domains where possible. This is called “barnacling,” attaching yourself to strong domains.
• And don’t over-optimize your location pages.
• Experiment with what you’re doing on your website and location pages.

The post SMX East Liveblog: Deconstructing Pigeon, Google’s New Local Search Algorithm appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Speakers:

• Tom Alison, Managing Director, Vincodo
• Erin Everhart, SEO Manager, The Home Depot (@erinever)
• Hillary Glaser, SEO Manager, Lowe Campbell Ewald (@hilly293)

Hillary Glaser

It’s hard when you work in an agency and your CEO/CMO has so much on their plate, it’s hard for them to understand the importance of Internet marketing. Traditional and digital need to coexist, but the C-suite needs to know that.

Search takes time. It takes effort. In order for SEO/SEM to work, you need to invest, maintain and train.

SEO is not dead. SEO is integral. SEO is not just a function of content or coding – it should be woven into the entire marketing plan. Note:

• Search is an investment
• Link building is 100% necessary
• Commercials, print ads and mailers can create search inquiries for your business. Make sure what you’re doing on and offline mirror each other.
• Your competitors are doing marketing – you can do it better with SEO, SEM and social.
• Organic search traffic doesn’t just appear out of thin air. And it’s not a one-time thing. It requires maintenance and consistent care.
• Invest in full-time SEO, SEM and social media professionals. They’re worth every single penny that you pay them.

Maintenance

This is key to a great SEO campaign. SEO never ends – it’s ongoing. Maintaining a website is easier than having it break and having to rebuild it. We all know the algorithm changes constantly – if you’re not vigilant, that’s when fiascos can happen.

Training

Constant training is essential considering all the algorithm changes. Employees – from top to bottom – need to attend conferences, have proper tools, etc. Stay ahead of the game with sharp skills – it benefits the entire company.

Erin Everhart

Sometimes CEOs/CMOs don’t understand how difficult of an undertaking ranking for terms are. SEO managers have to continually explain their roles.

The things Everhart wishes execs understood …

1. Yes, you still need links to rank. Link building (and SEO) can never die. 92% of U.S. adults use search engines to find information. 56% percent use search engines at least once a day. That is proof SEO will never die – links are a key signal. Links will not go away, even though link building has changed.
2. No, We Have No Idea How Many Links You Need. It’s different for every page. It’s vastly dependent on the keyword you’re targeting. What we do know, however
3. We don’t have Content Just Lying Around. We’ve beat content to death, and “content is king” has marred by the content landscape – it’s not about just pushing out as much content as possible. Content should be quality. It takes time, it requires doing research to determine what content is right for your audience. We’re talking 15 minutes for a Facebook post alone. And, the task doesn’t end with hitting publish. You can’t just sit back and wait for the links to come. It doesn’t happen like that.
4. No Place Exists to Just “Get Some Links.” Link building is tailored to the Content.
5. And We Certainly Can’t “Ask for a Link.” That’s like asking a stranger to marry you – links have to be earned. And sometimes, all that earning requires is having great content. But more often, a relationship needs to be cultivated.
6. This Will Take Longer Than You Like. There’s no way to know how long it will take to make you rank. Link building is an investment. It has to incubate before you can see any results.
7. Make Sure You Set the Right Expectations. You have to let them know that this is not an easy or a quick process from the start.

Tom Alison

Know why things show up – CEOs are forever asking “Why is this showing up?” Or not showing up. Or showing up on an inappropriate query, etc.

On top of SEO, it’s necessary to do PPC for branded terms. CEOs like to ask about that. So, remind them:

• There are 15-30% more clicks for terms that rank in organic search and paid search
• Call and link extensions on ads lead to better traffic
• Ads push competitors down or off your brand
• Ads offer impression analytics
• Ads can actually be inexpensive if optimized properly

Remember that advertising at large effects SEO.

Recent Google research shows that search ads create, on average, an 80% lift in aided awareness and 52% in unaided awareness.

Forrester estimates that 50% of U.S. offline retail sales will be influenced by the in Internet by 2017.

The post SMX East Liveblog: Tough Love … What I Wish CMOs Knew About Search Marketing appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Speakers:

• Carrie Albright, Account Manager, Hanapin Marketing (@albright_c)
• Brad Geddes, Founder, Certified Knowledge (@bgTheory)
• Jake Stewart, Sr. Product Manager, Adlucent (@Adlucent)

Carrie Albright: Always Be Testing

Albright tells us to always be testing – always have two or three ads running that are bouncing off each other. But where do you focus your ad copy testing? Spend extra time to customize ad tests – we may break the tests into pieces. How do you break them down?

Albright mentions a client who had software – in an ad that mentioned that they also had long-term training, the CTR went up 172 percent. Moral of the story? Include unique benefits and features in your ad copy.

Another example – one of Albright’s clients was a school. When she added enrollment dates to ad copy, conversion rates went up. More relevant information helped ad performance.

Pay attention to major factors, like word choice, word order and synonyms. She reminds the audience to always use keyword modifiers and to use “free” whenever possible/relevant.

Albright says that you should test everything, no matter how small – because even a small increase or decrease in CTR matters, and testing even small things gives you more knowledge to wield when crafting your next ad. Small things to test include:

• Punctuation
• Extended headlines
• Adding display URL
• Title case vs. sentence case
• & vs. and
• Using TM or R
• Reversing placement message

Brad Geddes: Creating an Ad Testing Framework

Geddes dives into brainstorming – where can we get ideas for ads? He suggests:

• Social mentions
• Customer support inquiries
• Forums
• Company reviews
• Competitive research
• Previous marketing efforts
• Customer onboarding interviews
• Search query data
• And much more

Then, ask yourself “big questions”:

• Are consumers price sensitive?
• Does location matter?
• Does shipping matter?
• Is selection important?
• How much does quality matter?
• What’s your best CTA?
• Should your display URL be products, geo, CTAs, or something else?
• Do we need to prequalify clicks?

Determine how you want to segment your ad. If on mobile, segment by device.

Geddes shared that he recently tested 1.1 billion ads that were run across mobile devices – only 3% used mobile preferred ads.

List out your ad tests. Label your ads. Use pivot tables of software to analyze the data.

Remember:

• Don’t use brand names in non-branded ad groups.
• GEOs increase CPI – break out campaigns by GEO.
• “Calls Us” or “Get Directions” works best on mobile devices.
• “Learn More” works best on desktop.

Note: There is no “winning” ad – what wins for each campaign is different.

Jake Stewart: Changing Behavior on Mobile

Ways to Measure the True Impact of Mobile

Use geo-targeting to test mobile lift across devices.

1. Split your market into geographic areas of roughly equivalent population and demographics.
2. Compare performance to determine mobile effect
   • Test group target mobile computer and tablet devices
   • Control group target only computer and tablet
3. Use Google’s Estimated Cross Device Conversions Metric
   • This data is derived from the behavior of customers logged in to Google on multiple devices and extrapolated across all traffic.
4. Expand the definition of success when calculating the overall impact of mobile advertising
   • In-store visits: Radio Shack found that 40-60 percent of people who used the store locator function on a mobile device visited a brick-and-mortar location.
   • Micro conversions: Assign a value to events that are likely to influence sales in the future such as user registrations, email subscriptions or catalog sign-ups.
   • Link offline sales: Use a data onboarding partner to assess the impact of mobile advertising on offline sales.

Ad Best Practices/Must-Dos

Always use mobile-preferred ads with content tailored to mobile devices.

Description Line 1 should be written as a stand-alone sentence with proper punctuation, which may prompt Google to add it as a headline.

Use mobile-friendly ad extensions to drive traffic to other conversion channels such as a call center or offline line. Call extensions can increase CTR by 6–8%. Ads with locations extensions average 10% higher CTR.

Starting Oct. 15, ad extensions may show instead of Description Line 2 ad copy – this change makes extensions all the more important. Ensure that critical info is in Description Line 2.

Rotate ad extensions and formats to determine the best-performing variations. Some ad types may perform better on different keyword portfolios, so test constantly.

Test different mobile landing pages to optimize RPC.

The post SMX East Liveblog: Creating, Testing & Optimizing Paid Search Ads appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Moderator: Elisabeth Osmeloski, Director of Audience Development, Third Door Media, Inc. (@elisabethos)

Speakers:

• Mike Arnesen, SEO Team Manager, SwellPath (@mike_arnesen)
• Justin Briggs, Sr. Manager, Organic Marketing, Getty Images (@justinrbriggs)
• Samuel Edwards, Online Media Strategist, Tenthwave Digital (@samuel_quincy)

7 Examples of Structured Data You Can Implement Today

Samuel Edwards works at a full service marketing agency.

A Brief Overview of Structured Data

It’s info formatted in a universally understandable way; abiding by a predetermined set of rules that define data types and the relations between them (schema markup). Users understand the context of content on a given page, while search engines aren’t always able to discern the difference between “seal” musician, animal, approval. Do a search for “seal” and look at the funny hybrid result.

Rich Snippets are available for recipe, product, review, event — you’ve probably seen this before.

1. Review Rich Snippet

When review info is marked up, Google can present that info on a SERP. We see star rating, number of reviews. The main topic of the page has to be about a specific product/service. Can’t be in the adult industry. If the markup contains a single review, the reviewer’s name has to be legitimate.

2. Product Rich Snippets

Merchants can give search engines product info for rich snippets. Aggregate rating, total reviews, item price, item availability, and essentially endless qualities. Whatever you markup for crawlers you want displayed to the user as well. Product markup on product listing or category pages aren’t displayed. Has to be on the individual product page.

3. Event Rich Snippets

Day, dates, name of event, venue of event and city of the event. You can also markup performer, doorTime, startDate, location. Info has to be as detailed as possible. Event names aren’t supported if you include something like a call to action.

4. Job Listings Rich Snippets

Listings, company, job title, location. Can also add hiring organization, base salary, industry, and more.

5. Restaurant Rich Snippets

Ratings, number of reviews, price range. Can also add address, rating value, rating count.

6. Application Rich Snippets

Image, rating, number of reviews, offer and prices. Can add OS, reviews, screenshot of app. You have to incorporate at least 2 of the following properties: aggregate rating, offer, OS or software application category.

7. Recipe Rich Snippets: A Case Study with Duncan Hines

Ratings, total reviews, calories, minutes to cook and a lot more, as you can see in the slide:

You may be thinking that sounds great but do I need to display structured data on all the appropriate pages? Yes.

Everyone is doing it! Prior to implementation, Tenthwave analyzed the top 263 organic search terms driving traffic to DuncanHines.com from Google and we found that at least one result on page had structured data.

Getting Started

1. Used schema for recipe and looked through the item properties applicable.
2. Sitewide implementation via a template with HTML markup, the schema tags as well as placeholders into which the server injects the actual recipe data when rendering the recipe detail page. Nearly all the pages on the site are UGC so this template stamped structured data on all new pages.
3. Validate using the Structured Data Testing Tool.

Early Results

Markup was implemented in mid February. Organic search traffic from Google increased by 35.07% from Jan. prior and YOY increase was 93.46%. Plus quite a few specific results saw increases above the average, like 73.56% to 389% for Mountain Dew cake recipe.

Observe Ranking Increases: While Google claims adding markup doesn’t affect rankings, they found that 75% of 263 terms analyzed in the test saw an improvement in search rankings within two weeks of implementing Schema markup.

GWT is your best friend. Use it to validate the code you’re implementing. Use the testing tool, use Fetch as Google to crawl and find errors, then fix the errors reported.

Apps and Structured Markup

Justin Briggs will talk about conversational search and entities as mobile is moving to cross the tipping point and the majority of our traffic will come from mobile devices. The data we’re getting is more personal, too. It has access to location, email, applications. Search can execute functions, get into your apps, play songs, schedule invites, get into your email.

Conversational Search: users speak directly into search. the search is aware of hotel reservation ability. it understands that the hotel is an entity (known location) and it’s location aware.

App Indexing (Android apps): SE will know the apps installed and which are used most frequently; when you open a result from a SERP it may open the page in your HuffPo app, for instance.

Creating Indexable Apps

There’s an App URL format. Set up deep linking inside of an application. It can support multiple types of schemes. It can support a host path that takes you into the app. The control file for app deep linking is AndroidManifest.xml. When your app is crawlable and indexable, the next step is attaching that to web pages. Use JSON-LD for this. JSON-LD is a lightweight linking data structure. Implementation is effectively the same as corresponding mdot pages.

When you have a crawlable, indexable app you can add App Indexing API. This sends user behavior back to Google. Another consideration is noindexing sections of your app.

Leveraging App Actions

How do we get to a world where you tell your mobile “OK Google drive to Grandma’s house” and it opens a map app and controls the car. Or, just open the app Spotify to play the song you tell it to play. The Knowledge Graph is where it begins. KG means Google understands relationships and actions that can be applied to different types of entities.

Schema in email: Structured data in emails can appear in search results. If you send yourself an email with details about your trip to San Francisco, opening up Google Now will give you weather for SF.

8 More Ways to Implement and Track Structured Data

Mike Arnesen will talk about something that bridges the gap between SEO and analytics. Who has a plan to track the ROI of structured data on your site? You can see the impact of structured data by using Google Tag Manager, a way to deliver tags on your site so you don’t have to engage a development team every time you want to make a change to your site. You have container code for Google Tag Manager and then pushing changes go through tag manager interface which is pushed out through the container tag. bit.ly/semantic-hobbit

1. Audit and Discovery — Let’s see what we have here.

Use analytcis and Screaming Frog to identify prime targets for improvement.  You may have a blog, events, case studies. Look at the content types you can implement structured data on.

2. Implementation Plan

What content on your site is important? Trick question! It’s all important!

Build templates and guides you can use for all content types.

3. Events — Decide which events matter to you

When you’ve identified events on your site, go to GTM to create a tag name, type and web property ID for GA. Then select track type event, giving values that are recorded in GA such as category and action (like “person markup on-page”). You then select firing rules (like “has person markup rule”). Rule name and conditions (event that “equals gtm.dom” then fire the macro).

4. Start tracking — Set tag manager to listen for structured data

Custom JavaScript Macro: Detect schema.org markup on page and the result is true or false (do or don’t fire).

Creation order and naming conventions for  Macros, Rules and Tags: has to be created in that order.

5. Groupings — Keep track of each grouping

When you have this tracking and baseline info coming into GA, setup dynamic content grouping in GTM.

6. Goals — Create a goal to track performance

7. Watch the crawl — keep monitoring Google’s crawling to ID missing data or errors.

8. All Powerful Search — one sitelink to rule them all. Google rolled out a new feature, a site search box. SItes with a lot of popularity and navigational searches. This sends the user to a site: search for that website. A lot of publishers are nervous because the sercher is staying in Google longer. But instead, you’re making a handoff into your direct interal search experience. You have that visitor, staying on your site, and all the search traffic data (no not provided). Create a custom HTML tag in GTM to get Google to handoff search to site’s internal search.

The post SMX East Liveblog: 25 Smart Examples of Structured Data You Can Use Now appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..