To use Fresh Web Explorer, you do have to be an SEOmoz Pro member. If you have an account, just enter the phrase you want to track mentions of or the URL:

Google Alerts can be buggy, there’s a delay, and there’s often a lot of junk that gets shared. The Fresh Web Explorer (from all of our testing so far) appears to be very accurate. Only in a few instances were mentions not on the page, but these were for low-quality scraper sites that are rotating content frequently.

Q&A with Matthew Brown of SEOmoz

Do you have any pending features you can share with everyone?

Our big features that we’re working on currently: Improving the quality and quantity of feeds, improving the feed modeling, and working on integration in SEOmoz Pro campaign products. There’s some other surprises in store as well ;)

Do you know how the Freshscape index stacks up against other social listening tools? Are you the biggest and best when it comes to feed count?

It’s early to measure ourselves against competitors, either in terms of feed count or quality. We’re seeing a bit of evidence that we’re consistent with services like Google Trends. For example, here’s a search that a user found for ‘Pistorius’: http://i.imgur.com/eMIsuC9.png – It’s tough to measure against Google’s opaque 1-100 score, but the trendlines match up reasonably well. We’d never expect them to completely match, but the timing and spikes should look similar.

What’s the best way for the community to request additional feeds? I know Radian6 allows for a list of other URLs to search for a given dashboard.

We’re already looking at mechanisms with which feeds can be added. It’s high up on the feature list.

When trying to exclude a branded URL, what’s the best route? Tried using something like [seomoz -url:seomoz.org], but this still returns SEOmoz URLs. That’s not the exact query I used, but basically, a client URL wasn’t getting removed from mentions when I tried using “-url:”

That’s high up in the queue. We wanted to get a high-performing beta release out to our customers before adding on features, which will no doubt require extensive testing.

13 Ways to Use Fresh Web Explorer

After poking around the Fresh Web Explorer, here are a few methods I immediately found opportunities for with each of our clients that all online marketers can add to their tool set as well:

1. Reclaim backlinks. Sometimes people link to the wrong URL. It happens! Find those mentions and reach out to request an update on the backlink.
2. Build relationships. Use Fresh Web Explorer to identify bloggers who may have mentioned your product, service, or site organically, and now you can thank them for that mention and start to build a real relationship. Ask them how they found out about your brand and if they have any other experiences with it. Ask them if they have feedback on how to make your site or services stronger. Avoid asking them for a link—that’s rude. Befriend them, then ask for the link!
3. Respond to customer service issues. Customer service doesn’t have to be about something negative, but I found a client mention where the blogger said they were eagerly awaiting the catalog, but hadn’t received it, yet. This is a perfect opportunity to get them a catalog (and fast) with a personal follow-up or note to thank them for the mention. Don’t ask for anything, just go out of your way to be human. I guarantee this will have positive results for SEO as well.
4. Spot trends and seasonal change. Matthew mentioned that the Fresh Web Explorer’s only real competitor might be Google Trends. You can do a phrase search to identify recent seasonal mentions and sources. This is a great opportunity to identify potential ideas for content, too.
5. Conduct a competitive analysis/needs assessment. Just like the trend/seasonal change analysis, you can add competitor URLs and track the number of backlinks and citations they accumulated during a peak busy season such as Valentine’s Day or Spring Break. You can use this to inform your SEO and social media strategies, but most important as a way to demonstrate to your superiors the missed opportunities!
   
6. Build collateral for your brand. Sometimes your customers take better quality pictures of your products than you do. They don’t always take the time to share those with you, but they will share them with their community. Locate amazing reviews of your products online and request to host those pictures on your site as real product shots from customers or as a featured post on your blog.
7. Find customer reviews/testimonials. Just like collateral, customers don’t always share their opinions, especially if it’s positive. Yes, that’s right, your customers will usually only share a life-changing positive experience or a truly awful experience, but they’re not going to go out of their way to share a normal experience. They will however mention to their friends online that they received a sweater in the mail and it was perfect for their new spring wedding dress. Reach out and ask them if you can post their review on your site or blog!
8. Understand social reach. Google Analytics’ new social reports only pick up actual URL shares on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google+ and even through services like Pocket. Unfortunately, the Fresh Web Explorer doesn’t appear to pull these social mentions, but it will pull mentions from other social sources (i.e. blogs) where content is getting produced as part of a social outreach campaign.
9. Audit brand usage. This can simply be about discovery of brand mentions and how the brand is being used or for the link builders among us… this opens a door to communicate with the blogger/media outlet about the proper usage of the brand. This may actually garner some great backlinks or fixes to a link that might not point to the ideal location.
10. Audit other department/agency activities. Work with/at an enterprise-level organization? You’re probably not the only service provider. Audit outreach strategies of other SEO companies, link builders, PR teams, and social media teams. You might find some really insightful or truly terrifying campaigns.
11. Find paid links. You know what really bugs me? A client who says they no longer engage in paid link activity, but they do! Use the Fresh Web Explorer to identify potential paid links and open the door to a serious conversation about the risk/reward of this method.
12. Audit sponsored posts. Just like paid links, sometimes a particular section of an organization may be engaged in sponsored posts without disclosure or nofollows appended to the URLs. This could seriously hurt your website if Google spots these posts even though they’re just smart branding in the eyes of the campaign manager. Find problems before they become disasters!
13. Find negative SEO. I haven’t seen a ton of this in the wild, but just like paid link identification, you can use the Fresh Web Explorer to find folks who may be building low-quality, high-risk backlinks to your site in the hopes that it will hurt your performance.

Additional reading on the Fresh Web Explorer:

Bookmarklets for url and sd search operators
Getting Low Hanging Links Using Fresh Web Explorer by Bill Sebald

Have questions about the Fresh Web Explorer? Hit up Matthew on Twitter! For real, they want feedback.

I’m frequently running into new prospective clients who’ve embraced the dark side of SEO. It’s like they’ve begun their Jedi training under Lord Vader, instead of Yoda. Then like Anakin Skywalker, they got their arm cut off by a penguin (take another look at Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, and tell me I’m wrong).

So they come to me wary, wanting to ask all the right questions so that their next SEO expert doesn’t cause them to get their other arm lopped off too. But, their understanding of SEO from their previous consultant–master of the Dark Side–has them asking all the wrong questions.

Here’s my list of my 5 least favorite pre-engagement questions from potential clients who are recovering from a past SEO relationship gone bad.

1) “Can you show me an example of an SEO audit you did for another customer?”

Two words: client confidentiality. If you use a real document from a past client, you’re going to have to redact much of it.

You really don’t want to share even a checklist, because if you’re like me, you’ve compiled your list from a number of sources and ideas over the years, and it’s your intellectual property. You can also pretty much guarantee that anything you share with a client prior to an engagement is going to be shared with the other consultants as the client tries to gauge who’s the best (“here’s what this other consultant said…what do YOU think?”).

You can counter this by saying:

Your best practices list is your intellectual property, and the recommendations you made for any other client is their intellectual property. Share with them a testimonial from a client for whom the site audit recommendations had a substantial impact on their site traffic and/or conversions instead.

2) “Do you have a list of keywords you recommend based on your research?”

image courtesy Keith Williamson

Keep in mind where this came from: their last SEO company provided them with a list of the top 3,000 target keywords they should focus on, along with 19 unintelligible metrics for each keyword. And just because they didn’t understand it in the slightest (nor did their last SEO company), this doesn’t mean the sheer weight of the document didn’t impress them.

Keyword research is an important and non-trivial part of any good SEO campaign. It’s more than just the search volumes; it’s the mix of that plus seeing what KINDS of results (organic, local, local universal, shopping, video, image, news, etc.) show for each term, combined with how competitive the term is in each of those kinds of results that figure highly on page one.

If you’re going do it for free as part of your quote, you’re either a fool, or you probably haven’t done enough research. And don’t think you can provide that for free up front and make it up in the overall bid. I’ve had multiple clients take another company’s keyword research from their quote and hand it to me, telling me they don’t need me to do that bit because they’ve already got it… here you go. I’d redo it anyway, because I don’t trust that the other company looks at all the factors I look at.

Your answer, then?

Keyword Research is a critical part of any SEO analysis, and it should be beyond the scope of what can be done in an initial quote. It’s worth explaining a bit about the importance of competitive analysis when choosing your targets.

3) “Can you give me a quote for monthly SEO services that guarantee top rankings for the most highly searched terms for our industry?”

Guarantee: the 4-letter word of the SEO industry.

First, there’s no reasonable guarantee in this business; there’s always a competitor or two (or ten) out there who’s hired someone as good as you to do the same thing for their client.

Second, the client here has been taught the wrong goal: rankings are a FACTOR for online success, but there is more to rankings than that:

• Conversion–Is your presence in the SERPs translating to traffic? Is what’s showing in your headline (i.e. page title) and excerpt (i.e. meta description) compelling?
• Do you have rich snippets appearing?
• Are you getting the author’s photo to appear via rel=author? This is worth an increase in click-through rate of 30% to as much as 150% or more
• Once the user clicks through, do they convert into a customer? Or bounce back to the SERPs and click on your competitor?

Third, the opportunity for the client might not be in getting traffic from the most highly-searched terms: their opportunity for more traffic, conversions, etc. might be in the long-tail. For instance, by tuning their templates that generate their 10,000 product pages, instead of their home page, they could increase traffic. The question the client SHOULD be asking is more along the lines of something like this:

“What would it cost to grow my online sales by x%, and how long do you think it would take to get there?”

You’re not going to be able to guarantee anything, but a quick look at their link profile, the search volumes for a few obvious terms, and the link profiles of those companies in the top spots on page one today is enough to give you an idea whether their goal is realistic (easy or hard). This will also tell you if their goals are achievable by quick on-page fixes or a long-term online marketing and link building grind.

I actually had a client who came to me, ready to spend a respectable amount on search marketing, but every single term I could come up with for their product came up with virtually no measurable search volume AND the competition was intense. The client was up against big-box stores with a physical presence. It seems that while it was a reasonably common and popular product, it wasn’t one people were buying or even researching online. It was something people buy in-person, where they can touch and feel it. I had to advise them NOT to use my SEO services (or anyone else’s), but to spend their money on more traditional marketing and presence in brick-and-mortar retailers. Perhaps I missed some brilliant off-the-wall search term… and if some other SEO consultant discovers it and leads them to success, well, certainly they deserve the “win” and I should hang my tail in shame.

4) “How many links are you going to build for me per month and what will it cost per link?”

To paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi: These are not the links you’re looking for.

And if this is how you’re going to measure your SEO success, I can tell you what it’s going to cost you–80% of your traffic from a Penguin penalty. When it comes to Google spotting buckets of cheap, easy-to-get links, let’s just say this: the Death Star is fully operational.

A better question might be:

“What kinds of links are you going to get for me, and what’s the cost in time and money like for each of those kinds of links?”

Your answer will involve different kinds of outreach, content-creation effort, sponsorships/donations to charities, a real PR campaign that inspires real reporters/bloggers to write about specific important things the client has done, etc.

In fact, any question that starts with “Can you guarantee…”–well, this is like asking a quarterback if he can guarantee that they’ll win the Super Bowl before signing his contract. You can’t guarantee anything. The client’s competitors are engaging with other search marketers, and some of them may be even more talented than you are.

When faced with this question, I like to respond that I’ll guarantee to do my best to grow their business at a reasonable cost, and like the quarterback, I can point to my past successes as a likely indicator of success with my new “team.”

So, to answer this:

Of course, you can price your services any way you’d like. The key is to get the client to understand that a more meaningful way to measure your impact is going to be in things like new customers, revenue, and traffic. Most importantly you want them to understand that rankings are merely one factor in a much bigger equation.

5) “Do you do pay-for-performance? We want to structure the contract in such a way that we only pay if we get results.”

In principle, this isn’t unreasonable or really all that problematic, but we all know that in general it takes a fair bit of time to see results for most of the SEO tactics we employ. Occasionally we’ll have a client with a rockin’ backlink profile, and all we have to do is tweak some page titles and some internal anchor text here and there, and within a month we’re golden. For the majority of sites, the results are going to come from things that take months: content generation that THEN needs to be promoted, and THEN develops links that will start taking effect a month after that.

If your cash flow allows it, offering the client a 10-20% holdback on the invoices until traffic rises X% from the start of the project is a way to give that client an assurance that you’re confident in your abilities, and have some skin in the game. Be aware of the risks here though. Anything from an algorithm change by Google, or significant progress by their competitors, or a late effect of some shady link building by their last SEO company could bite you back there in that dark place under your Jedi robes.

If you offer a hold-back based on performance, you need to be prepared to lose that portion of the invoice for factors that are truly beyond your control. As Yoda says: “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”

Stepping Back A Bit

As you deal with questions like this from prospective clients, you need to remember that the clients have been CONDITIONED by their past experiences. They’re used to easy wins from (relatively) cheap tricks. And, they’re probably thinking that they’ve just been burned by someone with the same job title you have. You may very well be in a situation where you’re never going to make them really happy, and the job is more trouble and stress for you and your team than it’s worth.

The elephant in the room for any SEO firm or individual consultant is that SEO has a massive reputation problem. The issue is part lack of regulation, part scale, and part perception. As an industry we can’t hunt down every person who claims they’re an SEO who will get you “first in the search engines, guaranteed!” We can’t stop the mountains of spam that fall into small business owner’s email inboxes daily. The Internet is a very large place, with a lot of hidey-holes.

One of the few things that we can control as an individual or company is how we talk about ourselves, how we speak to our clients, and how we speak to other industry professionals. When your industry is the Internet, nothing is private; the only face that we have is our public one.

Allow me to step on the soapbox here, just a little bit, and say–as someone who has studied the English language extensively–what you say and how you say it matters. “RCS” or “link juice” may be a term that will catch a person’s ear and become “buzzworthy”, but it is not a term that will leave potential clients impressed with your authority, knowledge, or business acumen. We need to elevate our language as well as bridge the disconnect between Internet and traditional marketing.

Here are a few ways to sound like the more mature SEO industry we’ve become:

• Black hat, white hat, gray hat, and everything in between: Let’s stop talking about hats and instead discuss risk tolerance. Are you using high-risk link SEO tactics, low-risk or something in the middle? Hats make us sound like evil villains not savvy marketers.
• Link juice: This term has made me wince since I started in the industry. Link “juice” is the associative authority of a link. Call it link authority, or call it passed link value. We want to explain our industry and how it works while still sounding professional.
• Link condom: I hadn’t actually heard this before until Rhea mentioned it when I was initially brainstorming–a link condom is the rel=”nofollow” attribute, which as SEOs know, kills any passed link value. (See, look at me, following my own advice!) We don’t need sexual connotations to get attention, SEO is an established enough industry that (most) people listen to us without the shock and awe routine.
• Link love: Quite the opposite of a link condom, a “loved” link is a link to an external site that is fully followed. While this is a term I use internally with my co-workers, I would say a more appropriate term to whomever you’re reporting to would be “citation” or “co-citation.”
• Linksploitation: (from SEO-Theory)This is targeting links in a “formulaic process according to precise criteria.” Don’t use made up words! A more appropriate term would be “targeted link building.”
• RCS (Real Company Stuff or Real Company S**t): While it may have been a trending hashtag on Twitter during Mozcon and it’s easy to throw around the virtual water cooler, RCS is a very industry specific term. It’s more than fine to use internally, but when walking into a Fortune 100 boardroom “RCS” is tough to explain quickly. Use marketing terms that resonate better like an integrated marketing campaign. Avoid unnecessary barriers to understanding when you’re speaking with a client or potential client.
• Splog: Can we stop word mashing? Especially random words with blog? “Vlog” should be avoided, too. A splog is a spam blog. Someone who doesn’t know what “splog” is will probably go somewhere at least vaguely sexual. Even the impression of derogatory language comes off as unprofessional. Clean up the connotations and call it a low-quality blog.
• Linkerati: This is an old school SEO term that few new marketers hear anymore. The linkerati are the people who control web properties that you want to get links from. Today the majority of us just say, “link prospects” or “potential contacts” and let’s keep it that way.
• Blacklisted or penalty: Neither of these terms are inherently wrong, but they’re used incorrectly everyday. Let’s be more cautious when talking about what may be happening with a site. Blacklisted means the site is literally out of the index. A penalty may be manual or algorithmic and causes a noticeable drop in rankings. Not every site that experiences a loss has been blacklisted or penalized.

SEO is a maturing industry, and our language should mature along with it. While I have no inherent objections to most of this terminology (expect for “link juice”) the industry reputation is what it is partially because all of this SEO jargon alienates those who want to educate themselves. Satire has its place, but we seriously need to re-vamp our communication habits. While so many of us are advocating the importance of understanding a client’s brand message and aligning our work with other departments, we are helping to create and establish the divide between SEO and traditional marketers when we use the expressions that we do.

We need to present a uniform front, eat a slice of humble pie, and acknowledge the inheritance of the SEO industry. We are marketers. Marketing was around long before the Internet was a glimmer of an idea. Why are we not using marketing language with more frequency? To really move forward, SEO needs to speak the language of traditional marketing and branding, not the other way around.

“bundle into three things: Community, Content and Campaigns, all pointed towards a well thought out content strategy.”

I believe it is a great philosophy and way of approaching SEO strategies, but as a long time forum and Twitter lurker, I think there is a bit TOO much RCS being thrown around. This leads me to the conclusion that not everyone realizes either what RCS really means, or how hard it is to achieve. While the effort and consideration to create better, astonishing ideas that convert for SEO efforts are leading the industry in a positive direction, there are a few things to keep in mind.

You were hired to get results, not waste money on “cool ideas.”

I for one always get a pain in my chest when I remind myself of what’s said above. Our primary responsibility as SEOs, to our company and our client (sometimes one and the same), is to create results that improve a company’s performance metrics. Before jumping into a long-term or in-depth strategy that checks off all of the RCS boxes (refresher: engaging, leading, educating, caring) keep in mind that quantifiable results are still necessary, if not the primary goal.

I have come across many ideas that are good and applicable for all of the aforementioned reasons, yet fail to have translatable SEO results. Coming up with great ideas is not the challenge; the challenge is being able to translate that idea and prove to yourself, your company, and the client that there is a tangible return on this investment. Sadly the internet can’t run on cat memes alone… right?

A perfect example of a creative idea that also had great translatable SEO results can be seen with American Express’ Small Business Saturday campaign. Re-occurring as a nationwide event for its third year only a few days ago, American Express has been able to connect with small businesses across the country and create a new nation-wide shopping trend, benefiting all parties involved tremendously. This isn’t just RCS, this is RCS on behalf of all the participating stores and communities. The intangible benefits of brand awareness and perception as well as the tangible sales results have been very successful so far. The very impressive backlink profile doesn’t hurt AmEX either, just see for yourself.

You must gain client trust before implementation.

While the issue of client-agency trust can be talked about in volumes, I wanted to highlight why trust is so important for a new SEO marketing technique. For a long time now many companies have had a misunderstanding of search marketing, and it seemed like many did not want to learn more about it as long as their SEO agencies brought in the results. While this attitude is currently changing for the better, we still have much work to do before SEO is fully understood and given the respect and budgets needed for effective RCS.

RCS strategies require that SEOs do something different from established, quick-win tactics, and it must be understood that the C-Suite will be a bit skeptical.

But, can we blame them?

When SEOs cannibalize their efforts by charging premium fees, leaving clients in the dark, and then get penalized, this kills the industry’s positive push towards credibility and legitimacy. It’s a bit like this trust fail:

Shallow search marketing practices of comment spam, paid links, and reciprocal link networks that set clients up for failure long-term make it less likely for future investment in “big ideas.” How many companies hit by poor past decisions are now being asked to spend a large amount of time, money, and resources for new results?

I would be a bit skeptical myself.

This is why cultivating a strong, trusting relationship between you and your client is so important not just to get new campaigns rolling, but to be able to have open and transparent communication. Not all companies will be willing to give the go-ahead for a new resource-intensive tactic without a solid foundation of trust. At Outspoken Media, we begin building this trust from day one, which allows us to have many great relationships and provide great Internet marketing services and results. It also gives us the privilege to speak openly with our clients and offer the very best we can.

RCS isn’t just about SEO strategy anymore.

As I said before, most successful RCS campaigns will be very resource-intensive, and it will not just be completed by an SEO. Sorry. RCS is not just about you or your job function alone. Think back to the traditional marketing you learned in school… and if you never learned or can’t remember that far back, then think back to the last episode of Mad Men you watched.

“Real Company Stuff” in essence is just a hip term for an integrated marketing strategy that focuses not on impressions, purchases, or brand awareness, but on organic link generation. If we are to shift towards creating strong integrated marketing campaigns, we have to stop thinking like link-builders and start thinking like traditional marketers (less focus on tactics, more focus on strategy). This transition in thought process may be hard for those stuck in their ways, but adaptation and change (thanks algorithm updates) are things that we excel at.

Acting with the bigger picture in mind allows SEOs to get large scale campaigns and projects pushed forward and see amazing results. It also forces us to understand that these bigger strategies will most likely require a green-light from the legal department and VP of Marketing, and at least, the input from development, social, PR, design, etc. The faster we learn to play well with others, the faster we can transition to successful integrated marketing campaigns.

As my awesome boss Rhea just discussed (I’ve linked twice now… go read it), the SEO industry IS maturing, and the push towards integrated marketing strategies is a perfect example of this. While the misunderstood will still throw around “#RCS” like it’s a hot buzzword, it is up to us to act and behave like the professional marketers we are. The time to be transparent and responsible is now–go out there and create an integrated marketing strategy that brings the incredible results it deserves.

Just remember to keep these three things in mind:

1. Quantifiable results are still the priority,
2. Strong client-agency trust is a necessity,
3. and you are not alone. Learn to get along with other company divisions, they can be your best friend or worst nightmare.

Agree, disagree, or have another great example of an SEO-focused integrated marketing strategy? Let me know in the comments below!

While there are numerous industry experts who have covered
the topic extensively before, one of the most overriding statements is that relationship building “takes time.” Yes, it does, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t break it up into smaller chunks of time that don’t inadvertently consume your entire morning, or day, or week.

I’m here to offer you ways to build a relationship with your target in just 15 minutes a day. That’s right, 15 minutes. Put on your egg timer, or the alarm on your phone, or whatever you use to keep yourself on track. The team here at Outspoken Media can tell you I’m crazy deadline-driven/time-aware, so when I say 15 minutes, I do my darndest to mean it. While in sum, these strategies could eat up your day, this is my advice: choose one target a day to focus on, and use a few tactics. By the end of a month, you could potentially have 20+ relationships in the works. All for a measly 5 hours.

I’m going to present this from probably one of the hardest positions to work from-an in-house marketer, many of whom I work with every day. I am assuming there is no access to social media accounts (or at least not without a massive headache from legal or the social media team constantly asking “Why?”). All I am assuming is that there is a branded email that you have access to, and maybe that you can get content on your company blog, as, more often than not that is what I’ve seen in-house teams be able to easily access. As an agency SEO or consultant, these tactics are also still relevant and useful.

Initial Contact

Comment

Yes, commenting. Not comment spam purely for a followed link. Take two minutes and actually read a recent article (that may or may not be related to your company) and leave a thoughtful comment.

And just to clarify for those of you out there that may be wondering, no, I am not categorizing commenting on a person’s blog post as a link that would be reported to the boss or the CEO. All of these tactics are vehicles for the relationship (and link) that you want.

Email

While there are some people whose email inboxes are sacred; I’ve been pretty fearless personally with my own sites when conducting outreach, and had great success. It may not be the easiest thing to hear, but when you’re building a relationship, get rid of canned responses or templated emails.

• Be charismatic and genuine (even if that means using improper grammar)
• Use their language
• Ask a question that doesn’t involve the words “guest post” at all

Respect Their Time

Do you like reading your email when you have 70 unread messages in your inbox?

No?!

Then don’t expect anyone else to, either. Take a guess based on the size of a given publication how busy whomever you contact is going to be and craft your message accordingly. The editor of a smaller, niche website may appreciate your long, gushy, email, but the editor of TechCrunch will not.

This also means not following up every two hours pestering them to see if they’ve read your email. Simple answer: No, they haven’t. They have a job. And a life.

Mentions

I’m not talking about tweets, re-tweets or Facebook shares, or even egobait, I’m just talking about simply mentioning (and linking) to whomever you’re interested in within a blog post on your company blog. A third of all the Internet is on WordPress-and WordPress allows Pingbacks. Chances are, if you mention a person in a blog post, they’ll notice.

Become a Contributor

Sometimes there will be sites that don’t accept guest posts because they are looking for more long-term writers. A lot of pure “link builders” have historically shyed away from opportunites like that because it would build a footprint (if said link builder was working from an unbranded persona) or because it was too much time invested when becoming a contriubutor to a site wouldn’t build diversity in linking domains or C-Blocks. But! For building a relationship, it’s a great opportunity. If it’s within the scope of your responsibilites and you can take on writing with the frequency they desire, do it.

Connect

This is yet another reason why going after irrelevant targets is a lost opportunity. When you’re looking at a site that is in the same industry you are in, you can talk shop with them! You both got into the industry for a reason – you both have a passion for it somewhere, somehow. Let that show!

Continuing Relationships

Follow Up

Follow up matters. While people have a life and don’t want to read an email, the flipside of that is: people have a life. Email clients break and lose emails. Sometimes things just get lost in the shuffle, nothing personal. Don’t be afraid to follow up-though usually I give it a week of hearing crickets before I send a second email. A week can be a long time in the world of an email inbox, so schedule yourself a reminder when you send the initial email, whether that’s using a plugin like Boomerang or setting a deadline on a task through Trello.

Referrals

This is more appropriate after you’ve been in communication with someone for a while, but again – you’re in the same industry, and if you’re doing it right, you’re reaching out to and talking with a LOT of people. If you’re in touch with a blogger who is working on a project and needs help, reach out to some of your own contacts on their behalf to see if they’d be interested in helping said blogger. You’ll generate goodwill both with the blogger and with everyone as a whole. When you help others out without expectation of something in return, it tends to work in your favor.

Rinse and Repeat

Just because you’ve gotten past the “getting to know you” phase, that doesn’t mean you should stop commenting, mentioning, emailing or connecting with them. Keep it going!

What quick things do you do to build relationships online?

With the responsibility of a Board of Directors buzzing in my head, it’s no wonder that when a potential client recently reached out to Outspoken Media, something in their needs stood out. The client wanted a health check performed for their site, but not a standard SEO audit. They wanted a comprehensive link evaluation at the end of the year that would report on the overall health of the site’s link portfolio and approach. Link assessments (or audits) aren’t necessarily new, especially after a year of Penguin attacks, but this company has been diligent about having a check-up done annually for almost eight years! I’d wager that many of us don’t go to our doctors with that level of regularity, much less give the same professional opinion to our search marketing.

What was most impressive about this company was that the link evaluation was assigned by their Board of Directors!

Speaking on behalf of the entire Internet, we use “awesome” far too liberally in conversation, but I was genuinely awe-inspired by this decision from the client’s Board. It demonstrates a couple of things:

1) Responsibilities of Boards of Directors Have Grown

Does your company or do your clients have a Board of Directors or Board of Advisors? Does your Board have a system of accountability for your SEO efforts or do they even understand the web enough to comment? If they don’t and you have an online presence (which I assume you do since you’re reading Outspoken Media), they should be working to add a Board member with the skills needed to hold everyone more accountable to the health of such a vital marketing channel.

According to BoardSource, the Board of Directors has ten basic responsibilities (in their case speaking primarily for non-profit boards, but we can extend the example to corporate boards as well):

1. Determine the Organization’s Mission and Purpose
2. Select the Executive
3. Support the Executive and Review His or Her Performance
4. Ensure Effective Organizational Planning
5. Ensure Adequate Resources
6. Manage Resources Effectively
7. Determine and Monitor the Organization’s Products, Services and Programs
8. Enhance the Organization’s Public Image
9. Serve as a Court of Appeal
10. Assess Its Own Performance

Finding the right Board member who can be held accountable to these responsibilities and the specific needs of your organization or business is essential for responsible growth. Once the Board is in place, it’s your responsibility (as the business or organization) to educate them and give them the information they need to make informed decisions. Without your input, they cannot do an effective job. Once the Board has an understanding of the business model and threats to it, they can set up a system of checks and balances like the link evaluation. Unfortunately, this is a rare event.

At Pubcon 2012 I asked around to see how many SEOs had encountered this and no one had ever heard of it. A few of you were actually nervous about the prospect (I wonder why…). Other SEOs told me stories of Boards who were intimately aware of and involved with SEO, sometimes quite productively and profitably, but at other times with personal agendas and their favorite, quotable SEO personalities to parrot in the hopes of tripping up a well-intentioned in-house SEO. Regardless of each Board’s familiarity with SEO, the concept of an outside link evaluation wasn’t a fourth quarter budget requirement.

If your business relies on organic search performance for a significant portion of its livelihood and your Board of Directors cannot explain what search engine optimization or link building is, much less evaluate its performance, I suggest you find your Board in breach of their directorial duty. Or, to reiterate, educate them and add a Board member to the mix with the expertise needed to hold everyone accountable. Which brings me to my second observation about the Board requested link evaluation.

2) SEOs are Being Held Accountable

Please note, I did not say “agency or consultants,” but ALL SEOs. Whether you’re an in-house SEO, the VP of Digital Marketing, or client-facing, the fourth quarter link evaluation holds us accountable to our methods and approach, which in turn holds our bosses accountable for setting realistic expectations.

Search marketers know that unreasonable expectations are often be set by the higher ups in an organization when it comes to organic search. The actual results may not be unreasonable, but getting them done safely (e.g. through low-risk methods), within a given timeframe, and with all of the resources and buy-in you need to get the job done, can be next to impossible. This is when we see the decision to go high-risk get made. There’s pressure coming down from the boss to meet their goals, so we cut corners to hit an overly aggressive goal that should have been set with more care and internal education.

In other words–put pressure on an SEO and you don’t get a diamond, you get a big Google bitch slap because someone outsourced link development to the wrong company (or the right company, because they understood the risks, but will never stand by them when it’s time to file that reconsideration request and publicly out their link builder). The link evaluation holds the Board, President, VPs, in-house marketers and contractors accountable. Now, the responsibility lies with the Board of Directors to do something with this data to help prevent “yes sir” problems.

3) The SEO Industry is Maturing

My final observation from the link evaluation is that the SEO industry is maturing along with the modern Board. This was the common theme from MozCon and SMX East 2012–the SEO industry is becoming more established as a marketing solution. We can stop feeling like the confusing red-headed stepchild of the marketing world and put on our big girl pants. We aren’t magicians and car mechanics, we’re marketers, just like every other integrated marketing channel and we have metrics and goals to meet. We have tools that allow us to report on our progress. We have resources that help us educate our teams and decision makers. There are no more excuses for pretending like we’re the Wild West of the Internet. We’re grown, accept it and let’s up our game with more polished work and systems of accountability.

This is a post written from my heart after being truly impressed by our potential (soon current) client’s business model and the responsibility the Board of Directors feels for the success of the site’s performance. This is real and innovative stuff and more Board of Directors should be taking note. If your business relies on SEO for sales, do not accept a Board member who refuses to expand their knowledge of this area.

Is your Board of Directors doing enough? Not sure? Send them this post!

Think your Board is the bee’s knees? Tell me why in the comments below. I would love to find more positive examples of amazing Boards actively involved in SEO and online marketing.

Ryan Jones is a wicked smart SEO who works with SapientNitro and rants on his personal blog (dotCult) about all things SEO, Penguin, and analytics. He’s one of the most “outspoken” marketers we know and Rhea will be moderating a panel with Ryan at the upcoming SMX East conference, October 2nd-4th in Manhattan. We hope to see you there! In the meantime, Ryan shares what you should be measuring and why.

When somebody comes to me asking for data I always ask the same questions: Why? What are you going to do with it? I don’t enjoy giving people a hard time [too much] and I’m not [that] lazy. I just want to make sure that they’re asking the right questions and answering them with the right data.

If you take one lesson away from this rant, let it be this: If you’re not asking questions, you’re not providing as much value as you could be. Chances are you were hired for your expertise, experience, knowledge, and insights – not simply your ability to sort numbers in excel. The person asking you for data has expertise, experience, knowledge, and insights too – but if it’s not in your field then it’s your job to ask these questions and ensure you provide them with the right data to make the right decisions.

A good analyst needs to understand not only what they’re measuring but why they’re measuring it too. Proper analysis demands it.

It’s not enough to just measure what’s easily measureable; we also need a reason for measuring it. If there was a formula for increasing web sales our jobs would be easy, but there isn’t. The closest we come is that dreaded correlation word everybody keeps throwing around. When we apply statistics to our website data we can get an idea of things that correlate highly with sales. We can then focus on increasing or optimizing those “things.” It’s here that lots of companies run into trouble. I’d like to use hypothetical (but based on a true story) example to illustrate just what can happen when people don’t ask why.

Imagine the following scenario: (Note: I’m making this up, but I see this type of thinking all the time.)

A senior executive learns (correctly) that Youtube views correlate highly to sales.The latest correlation data says so.   The executive sends out the order but only includes the ‘what’ without the ‘why.’ “Hey, get us more Youtube views. They’re important,” he bellows, and his words echo throughout the company. Wanting to impress their boss, managers incorporate Youtube views into their bonus metrics and make them a priority.

Fast forward a few weeks and suddenly paid search ads are now pointing to Youtube instead of the company website. The company homepage is driving people to Youtube instead of into the shopping cart. Product features and testimonials have been replaced with embedded Youtube videos. Youtube video descriptions now call out more videos from the company.  Sales are down and mid-level managers are screaming that we obviously need more Youtube views.

It sounds absurd, but I’ve actually seen this exact scenario happen at some very large companies (thankfully, not so much within my company.) Go ahead and substitute Youtube views with  facebook likes, pagerank, mozrank, alexa rank, twitter followers, retweets, reviews, ratings,plus ones, links, diggs, sphinns, or any other easily to measure number you prefer – it doesn’t change the story. Do you see the underlying issue?   The problem is, it’s easy to focus so much on what to measure that we often forget about why we’re measuring it in the first place.

This is quite common in large corporations where departments are siloed and it’s easy for people to focus on their own goals rather than the company’s best interests, but it can happen within smaller companies too – usually when people stop asking “why?”  (Pro Tip: your bonus is nice but your salary pays more – focus on optimizing that.)

Ok, back to the story. Our executive was right. Youtube views did correlate highly with sales, but let’s remember that correlation doesn’t imply causation. (Seriously, SEOs, please understand that point.) Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean that one causes the other. It’s important to understand why Youtube views correlate with sales. For this, we need to go back to our Marketing 101 sales funnel. It kind of looks like this:

Awareness, Interest (or consideration), Desire, Action. There’s probably 200 other versions of the sales funnel but we’ll stick with this one. I want to focus on the top of the funnel. That’s where metrics like Youtube views, Facebook likes, and even many of your advertising campaigns fall. They’re what we call “High Funnel Activities” or “HFAs” for short. The nice thing about HFAs is that they often lead to LFAs (Lower Funnel Activities.) Both HFAs and LFAs are subclasses of KPIs but we’ll cover all of that in Marketing 201 next semester. For those who are still taking Marketing 101, the marketing funnel actually works just like that funnel at the top of your beer bong; the more you fill the top the more that comes out at the bottom. Theoretically, increased awareness leads to increased action – except that didn’t happen in our above example. Why not?

In our example we were so focused on ensuring that the top of the funnel was full that we forgot about the bottom. Instead of pouring more into it, we just stuck a cork in the bottom. The top stayed full and we hit our awareness goals, but only because we trapped customers in the awareness stage and wouldn’t let them leave. In the real world, it’s quite similar to replacing the cash register with a sales pitch. Customers are standing in line with money in their hands and instead of taking it you’re telling them how awesome your product is. Stop talking and let them buy it.

It may sound extreme, but I’ll reiterate that I’ve seen several companies face this exact issue in the past. They didn’t understand why things were correlated so they couldn’t properly use that correlation to their advantage.

Analytics isn’t about compiling numbers. That’s called reporting and it can be automated (or assigned to interns.) Real analytics involve insight. Analysts need to understand not only what is happening but why it’s happening and what we should do about it. That’s called actionable reporting and if you’re interested in that you won’t want to miss the performance SEO metrics session featuring me (@ryanjones) @rhea, @vanessafox, and @statrob at SMX east next month.

When I was a Communications major with a concentration in Advertising, I had to share a lot of classes with the Journalism students. I’ve since forgotten the majority of the AP Stylebook and can barely speak much less write, but there’s one lesson that stuck with me—the inverted pyramid.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a journalism technique in which the writer frames an article with the most important information at the top, details in the middle and more general information towards the bottom. The point is that most readers won’t get through an entire article so you want to give all of the facts as quickly as possible. If they’re truly interested in the subject, they’ll read through the details, but if not they still walk away informed.

The “most important information” usually means the five W’s: who, what, where, when, why (and sometimes how). While this structure can kill creative license, it’s my professional belief that the inverted pyramid should be *the* standard for link development and outreach emails.

Here’s an example of the inverted pyramid in the wild with an article I found on the Wall Street Journal online: Baidu Launches a Mobile Browser

The first sentence of the article is:

“China’s largest search engine by revenue, released its own mobile-Internet browser and said Monday it would invest in a new cloud-computing center in a bid to gain more control over how Internet users in China access the Web through smartphones.”

With just one sentence, the reader walks away knowing:

• Who: Baidu, China’s largest search engine
• What: Release mobile browser
• Where: Online
• When: Monday
• Why: To gain more control over how Internet users in China access the Web through smartphones
• How: Through investment in a new cloud-computing center

The rest of the article has more words, but I’m busy, just like you and didn’t bother to read them. Why would I? I got the whole story in one sentence.

You know who else doesn’t read past the first sentence? Email recipients of your link building and marketing outreach. Why don’t they read past the first line?

• You didn’t get to the point.
• You sounded too professional.
• You sounded unprofessional.
• You sounded like a robot.
• You sounded like that guy whose great uncle died and needs you to hold his money.
• You addressed her as Mr.
• You addressed him as Madame.
• You didn’t say anything important to them.
• You talked about you the whole time.
• You didn’t get the name of their business right.
• You buried the lead.

Marketers, like journalists, have a responsibility to their audience to grab their attention and give them everything they need in one line or less. When doing link building, use the inverted pyramid for your outreach efforts. Put the facts in the opening line, details after that and if you feel it’s necessary add other relevant information to the end. Pair this structure with a personalized, appreciative and genuine tone, and you will see immediate increases in your response rates.

No one likes to have their time wasted, especially when you’re asking them for a favor. Like Neil Patel, outreach recipients only have so much time in their lives. Save a life–use the inverted pyramid to drive link building success.

Hat tip to Geordie Carswell for Neil’s contact form find.
Photo credit: Wikipedia

You’re a marketer. And half your job is marketing your ideas. Like it or not, you have to be good at proving your point, ‘cause being right isn’t enough. You have to justify the time, dollars and effort required for your internet marketing campaign. In the meeting room struggle for resources, your best weapon is great data presentation.

So why do so many of us suck at it?

I blame my liberal-arts education. I majored in History. My first 2 years of college, I memorized more dates and trivia than Alex Trebec. It wasn’t until I hit the higher-level stuff someone explained that events tell a story. Folks more easily follow a story told visually than one told verbally.

Want to get better? Avoid these six gigantic visualization mistakes:

1: 3D madness

Before the TV manufacturers convinced us we need crappy 3D for our homes, presenters decided that charts are always better in three dimensions. I beg to differ. 3D may let you cram more data into a single chart, but it doesn’t help:

What. the. hell.

Just because you have a tool doesn’t mean you should use it. Instead of using 3D to break up data or, even worse, using 3D for no reason at all, stick to flat, simple 2D graphics and use small multiples to compare different series:

2: Chartjunk

Edward Tufte coined the term Chartjunk. It describes all the crap folks shove into a chart, apparently to make it more ‘attractive’, ‘striking’ or ‘eye-catching’:

GAAAAH MY EYES!!!

By the way, ‘striking’ and ‘eye-catching’ are words bosses have thrown at me as reasons for optical splinters like the above chart. May I suggest a simpler layout that looks less like a hairdo in a 1980s John Kusack film (I loved Better off Dead, but the big hair…):

Isn’t that better?

3: Worthless data

I’m not doing a chart for this one. But the next PPC agency that tries to justify their existence with a unique visitors chart gets a thumb drive up their left nostril. Show me what matters.

Stopping now.

4: Data propaganda

At first glance, this chart shows a pretty sharp upward trend:

Double down! Triple down! Whatever this is we want more of it!!!

Unless you look at the scale. It doesn’t start at zero. I totally understand why someone would do this. But you need to call it out, or start with a chart that shows the scale from zero. Otherwise, you’re just doing data propaganda.

It is your job to tell the story in the data. It is not your job to make up that story. Get the difference?

5: Riddled with bullets

One of the most heartbreaking examples of failed data visualization comes from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Mission control saw the foam strike the Columbia’s wing on liftoff. They asked an engineering team to evaluate the problem. This is what they got in return:

From http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/discourse and the New York Times

Am I blaming the engineers? Hell, no. But the critical datapoint here was hidden at the bottom of the page: The foam that broke off on liftoff was much, much larger than anything in their tests. History is full of times where one piece of information could’ve changed everything, and that data was in front of the decision makers. Count this as one more time.

Don’t use bullets if a drawing works better:

Hopefully, no one’s lives will ever depend on it. But clarity is always worth creating.

6: Being lazy

How exactly does this prove you’re worth a damn to me?

It doesn’t. It’s an export from Google Analytics. It has zero analysis, and zero insight. I can get this myself. This is the worst of the visualization sins: Not actually visualizing anything. As a marketer, you’ve got all the power to help me see my company’s next steps. Use it. Don’t waste it.

Without further ado, please welcome Zeph Snapp from Not Just SEO. He’s super talented, multilingual and has some very important international SEO advice to share.

Having an international website ought to be a priority for almost every organization. With the US economy stalling, and emerging markets living up to their title, targeting international website visitors can be an excellent way to grow your business in tough economic times. Many of you have probably seen your international traffic rise over the past year (go take a look, I can wait), and since international internet usage will quadruple by 2015, figuring out ways to make us foreigners feel good about your website is going to be an excellent investment.

1) Go Mobile

Optimizing your website for mobile browsing is a huge part of setting your website up for international success, especially for B2C and e-Commerce sites. According to the IDC mobile device browsing will overtake PC’s somewhere between 2014 and 2016. Even if this were not the case, International SEO is in large part aimed at emerging markets.

Mobile devices are cheaper than PC’s and laptops. For consumers in countries where the average income is less than $15,000 a year, spending 7% of their income on a laptop is not reasonable. Devices are much cheaper as a rule, so the barrier to entry drops.

As a rule, B2C organizations should generally place a higher priority on mobile than B2B, but it is still important for all organizations. For my B2B clients who target Latin America, mobile traffic represents over 10% of their traffic right now, and has been increasing at a steady clip over the past 18 months.

Of course mobile devices are also getting better at reading websites as they were intended to be seen, so be careful about leaving out too much functionality. Google has come out in favor of responsive web design for SEO, so that is what we suggest as well. If you are an SMB you can get a responsive design Word Press theme for free! For large organizations, having your programming and design team learn about responsive design is a great investment.

2) Detect the Language

The most accepted way for a global website to handle this is to use an IP sniffer that will detect what country the visitor is from and automatically send them to the correct version of the website. However, you always need to be sensitive to the fact that there could be extenuating circumstances. For example, I live and work in Mexico, but prefer English language, especially when booking trips. The IP sniffer automatically sends me to the Mexican version of the website. Normally this would be a source of frustration. But Expedia.mx does this:

I’m instantly given the choice, and now it is up to me.

GoDaddy does something similar, but they do it in a much more overt way:

This feels over the top. Having a pop-up window is an acceptable solution to the problem for many users, but I have a bias against them. For people who have a low tolerance to spam, this can be a deal breaker. The data that Hubspot has collected on pop-ups shows that they are effective, but you still run the risk of alienating some users. Granted, in this case the only action they are asking you to take is to choose a website, but Expedia’s version is far more elegant. While it makes an assumption (that you would prefer to be on the .mx site), they also give you an easy way to get back to the US version.

No matter what you decide, do some testing to ensure that you’ve chosen correctly. It might be that GoDaddy people were not clicking on the Spanish version at all and that is why they decided on the popup.

Some large companies don’t do any IP sniffing. For example Adobe sends you to their English language home page no matter where you are browsing, if you click on their organic results. However if you click on their AdWords result, they send you to the designated country page. Adobe also hides the option to choose to view the site in a different language down in the footer. This makes sense for them because visitors probably want to read the content in English no matter where they are coming from.

However, the majority of businesses should display their language options more prominently. This leads us to…

3) Don’t Use Flags

As a proud Mexican (dual US) citizen, it makes me cringe anytime I see this:

I know that UX design philosophy states that you should use symbols rather than text whenever possible, but this is not the way. As a US citizen, would how would you like to see this on an international website?

Especially if you were making a purchasing decision it would make you suspicious about the site, and force to investigate further. Or more likely just leave. So why is this ok for companies targeting Latin America?

It’s not.

That doesn’t mean that you have to do something complicated. If you are only going to translate to Spanish (which is where most companies start), then keep things as simple as possible. Best Buy shows how it should work:

All you need to do is put the language options in the header in simple text. If you have more than two languages, you can make a drop down menu so that users can choose for themselves.

4) Be Sensitive to Language Differences

Language is the tool we use most when interacting with the world, and as such is probably the most important part of any website. The best design, the easiest user interface can be negatively influenced if the language is off message. But the complexity of languages across the globe is tough to get exactly right.

Planning the tone of the language and deciding how you want to address your site visitors is a huge part of a successful international website.

In Japan, verb conjugation depends on the level of person we are addressing, inferior, equal or superior. The level of respect varies for each individual and physical setting. If you are a candy company, it might be fine to write to your users as equals, but if you offer IT services it will be safer to refer to your readers as superior. In fact, not doing so would signal arrogance or unprofessionalism.

In French there are two ways of talking to people that depending on the relationship that you have with them. One is for more formalized situations, like when you meet someone for the first time, talk to someone in a superior position or with employees in a store. It implies respect, but also a distance that might not be the best strategy for your brand. The other is much more informal, used just for friends and family. As a rule, French speakers in Quebec and Africa are more tolerant of informality that those in France.

Spanish has some of the hierarchical speech, but it changes depending on the country. Check out this infographic on how to address Spanish speakers if you are interested in learning more about this issue. Latin America seems like a homogenous region, but there are significant differences in the grammatical rules from country to country.

So, before you attempt a translation of your website, decide on a tone. Do you want to be friendly or formal? The best way to do this is by creating customer personae, and using the resulting models to define the type of copy you want on your foreign language sites. Create a document that clearly and concisely shows the types customers you are seeking.

When interviewing translators (or international SEO agencies), practice reflective listening. This means after you tell them what you want, ask them to summarize what you are looking for from a tone and topic perspective so you can ensure that they understand your prospective customers and goals.

5) Don’t Use Stock Images

It can be tempting to just go to shutterstock.com and purchase some multicultural images of people for your international websites, but resist the temptation. Stock photos signal a less than stellar organization. Because the barrier to entry on the web is so low, there are tons of websites that are created on a daily basis. I haven’t found statistics on this, but empirically the SERP’s in Latin America are filled with websites and business directories that have been abandoned. That is why we tend to trust bigger brands, because we know they have been/will be in business for a long time.

The other problem is that when you purchase stock images there is the inherent risk that someone else has already used it. While doing research we found three different companies who used this image on their homepage:

Don’t do it.

Yes, stock images are much cheaper than a photo shoot, especially on location, but there are other options. Our favorite is to ask the client to take pictures of their employees at work and play, or ask customers to send in photos of themselves with their product. You can even turn it into a marketing initiative (link building, anyone?). Even if the visitor might not feel personally represented, these photos are a more genuine representation of who you are. And internationally this is the most important hurdle you have to climb. Also, with the advent of excellent digital cameras and HD video, it is much cheaper to create unique media than it used to be.

Note: Careful with the Benetton Effect

If you do have the means to do create some new images for your international website, try not to go overboard with the multi-cultural pictures. A picture of a group photo with each face from a different race can make you look like you are trying too hard.

At the end of the day, both you and your international visitors want the same thing: their needs to be met. Chances are if you have been doing so in the US, repeating your success abroad is going to be an interesting new challenge. And if you ever need someone to check out an initial version of your home page, I’m always glad to help!